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3 episodes with Long John Baldry
3 episodes with Long John Baldry
3 episodes with Long John Baldry
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Epysode 32: "Silent Song Through The Land" In this epysode we dive into Ron Davies' 1973 album "Silent Song Through the Land", a stunning blend of folk and rock that showcases his incredible storytelling. Known for his songs being covered by legends like David Bowie, Three Dog Night, Dolly Parton, Joe Cocker, Long John Baldry, Dave Edmunds, and many others, Ron Davies' impact on music is undeniable. We'll also treat you to an exclusive, never-before-released track from Ron himself, offering a rare glimpse into his creative process. Don't miss this chance to discover a hidden gem of the 70s and hear a song that's never been heard—until now! I hope you dig "Silent Song Through The Land" as much as I do. -Farmer John ===CONNECT/SUPPORT=== Transport yourself into the realm of grooviness by supporting us on Patreon using this link --> patreon.com/FarmerJohnMusic Use this link to follow us on Facebook --> https://www.facebook.com/farmerjohnmusic/ Use this link to follow us on Instagram --> https://www.instagram.com/vinyl.relics.podcast/ Use this link to follow us on TikTok --> https://www.tiktok.com/@vinylrelicspodcast Use this link to follow us on BlueSky --> https://bsky.app/profile/farmerjohnmusic.bsky.social And find us on X here --> @VinylRelicsPod Email me here --> farmerjohnmusic@gmail.com ===LINKS=== Listen to the full interview with Eric Apoe on KUOW Radio here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXGrv2Zp79s Buy Gail's book "The Last of The Outlaws" and other great stuff at www.gaildavies.com Check out Ron's albums and other information at wwwrondavies.com My band is Newport Electric. Check out our music here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5y6kGmYnS4SWvqAfijhDdp?si=5gUMW013TPGCBI2yiaJA7w ===THE MUSIC=== Songs used in this Epysode, in order of appearance. Here's a link to a Spotify playlist for all the tracks featured ( *denotes track is not available on Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Xq5koBXcoGLzvnsjTK5aJ?si=c01bd731696a436d *BULLANGUS "No Cream For The Maid" HANK WILLIAMS "Jambalaya" ELVIS PRESLEY "That's All Right Mama" *ANDRES SEGOVIA "Prelude In Chords" THE WAILERS "Tall Cool One" *THE WAILERS "Hold" *THE WAILERS "My Girl" *THE WAILERS "Tears (Don't Have To Fall)" *THE WAILERS "Think Kindly Baby" *THE WAILERS "It's You Alone" *RON AND GAIL DAVIES "Yesterday's Blues" (exclusive track, never before released) THREE DOG NIGHT "It Ain't Easy" LONG JOHN BALDRY "It Ain't Easy DAVID BOWIE "Ziggy Stardust" DAVID BOWIE "Amsterdam" DAVID BOWIE "It Ain't Easy" RON DAVIES "It Ain't Easy" SON HOUSE "Death Letter Blues" RON DAVIES "What Life Must Be Like For Some" RON DAVIES "Change" RON DAVIES "The Clown" THE ROLLING STONES "Gimme Shelter" RON DAVIES "Silent Song Through The Land" RON DAVIES "Yesterday Is All I Want" RON DAVIES "Open Road, The Open Sky" RON DAVIES "Lover And The Loved" *RON DAVIES "Misty Roses" *RON DAVIES "It Ain't Easy" (second version) *RON DAVIES "I Don't Believe It" JOAN BAEZ "Steal Across The Border" RON DAVIES "Cool, Southern Breeze" RON DAVIES "Tie It In A Knot" GAIL DAVIES "Grandma's Song" *RON AND GAIL DAVIES "It's You Alone" *JOHN PRINE "You Stayed Away Too Long" *DOLLY PARTON "It's Too Late" *RON DAVIES "Sittin' On Top Of The Clouds" ??MYSTERY ARTIST?? tune into next week's epysode to find out... NEWPORT ELECTRIC "So It Goes" (This is my band. Shameful self-promotion...) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
**It's The Relax With Rendell Show Replay On Trax FM & Rendell Radio. Rendell Featured 60's/70's/Easy Listening Cuts From Roy Orbison, Unit 4 2, Springfields, Spinners, Scaffold, Ricky Nelson, Platers, Marvin Gaye, Long John Baldry, Marcels, Little Richard, Lesley Gore, Johnny Cymbal, Jim Reeves, Jan & Dean, Gary Puckett & The Union Gap, Four Pennies, Equals, Eddie Cochran, Chiffons, Brenton Wood, Bobby Vee, The Beatles, Archies & More. #originalpirates #60s #70s #retro #popmusic #easylistening Catch Rendell Every Saturday From 8PM UK Time The Stations: Trax FM & Rendell Radio Listen Live Here Via The Trax FM Player: chat.traxfm.org/player/index.html Mixcloud LIVE :mixcloud.com/live/traxfm Free Trax FM Android App: play.google.com/store/apps/det...mradio.ba.a6bcb The Trax FM Facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092342916738 Trax FM Live On Hear This: hearthis.at/k8bdngt4/live Tunerr: tunerr.co/radio/Trax-FM Radio Garden: Trax FM Link: http://radio.garden/listen/trax-fm/IEnsCj55 OnLine Radio Box: onlineradiobox.com/uk/trax/?cs...cs=uk.traxRadio Radio Deck: radiodeck.com/radio/5a09e2de87...7e3370db06d44dc Radio.Net: traxfmlondon.radio.net Stream Radio : streema.com/radios/Trax_FM..The_Originals Live Online Radio: liveonlineradio.net/english/tr...ax-fm-103-3.htm **
The boys are courting Canada to claim Minnesota as the 11th province, playing very ride-worthy deep Canadian tracks from names you've never heard. Included: Bif Naked; Tire Pump; Hemingway Corner; July Talk; Long John Baldry; Junkhouse; The Pursuit of Happiness; Spirit of the West; Bif Naked (again); Emma Albani; Amanda Marshall; Tom Green
The gruesome twosome have a fun episode for you with some funny WDYLTW, Jordan is all set, and Alex delivers the Top 10 largest concerts of time
Peter Sears (born 27 May 1948) is an English rock music musician. In a career spanning more than six decades, he has been a member of many bands and has moved through a variety of musical genres, from early R&B, psychedelic improvisational rock of the 1960s, folk, country music, arena rock in the 1970s, and blues. He usually plays bass, keyboards, or both in bands. Pete Sears played on the Rod Stewart albums Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells A Story (which was listed high in Rolling Stone's top 500 best albums of all time), Never a Dull Moment, and Smiler. He also played on the hit singles "Maggie May", and "Reason to Believe". During this period, Sears toured the US with Long John Baldry blues band, and played with John Cipollina in Copperhead. Sears joined the band Jefferson Starship in 1974 and remained with the group through the transition to Starship, before departing in 1987. After leaving Starship he worked with bluesman Nick Gravenites, and many other artists including Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Bob Weir, Maria Muldaur, Rich Kirch, Taj Mahal, and Mimi Farina. (1992 to 2002) he played keyboards in the Jorma Kaukonen Trio with Kaukonen and Michael Falzarano, and with Kaukonen, Falzarano, and Jack Casady and Harvey Sorgen in Hot Tuna. Sears has played with many other musicians through the years, including Dr. John, John Lee Hooker, Leigh Stephens and Micky Waller in Silver Metre; Long John Baldry, Copperhead with John Cipollina, Jerry Garcia, Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Levon Helm, Steve Kimock, Dave Hidalgo, Sons of Fred, Fleur de Lyse, Sam Gopal Dream, Jimi Hendrix, Pete Brown, Bob Weir, Los Cenzontles, Phil Lesh, Leftover Salmon, and Los Lobos.[5][6] Currently, he divides his time between the David Nelson Band, Chris Robinson and Green Leaf Rustlers, Zero, California Kind, Harvey Mandel, and Moonalice. Sears has also written and recorded the original score for many documentary films, including the award-winning "The Fight in the Fields" – Cesar Chávez and the Farmworkers Struggle directed by Ray Telles and Rick Tehada Flores. His most recent film, also directed by Ray Telles and co-produced by Ken Rabin, is called The Storm That Swept Mexico (2011) about the Mexican Revolution.
This brilliant Brian Auger joins Gary and Guy this week for another must listen episode of Rockonteurs.Brian is a total gent and was there from the earliest days of Rock and Roll as the go to organ and piano guy.He formed The Steampacket with Long John Baldry, Julie Driscoll, and Rod Stewart in 1965. His influence is felt far and wide in the business and artists like Elton John and Jools Holland cite Brian as a massive influence.He's funny, charming, and hugely entertaining and his music is well worth a listen. Instagram: @rockonteurs @guyprattofficial @garyjkemp @brianaugerb3 @gimmesugarproductionsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@rockonteursFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/RockonteursProduced by Ben Jones for Gimme Sugar Productions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This brilliant Brian Auger joins Gary and Guy this week for another must listen episode of Rockonteurs.Brian is a total gent and was there from the earliest days of Rock and Roll as the go to organ and piano guy.He formed The Steampacket with Long John Baldry, Julie Driscoll, and Rod Stewart in 1965. His influence is felt far and wide in the business and artists like Elton John and Jools Holland cite Brian as a massive influence.He's funny, charming, and hugely entertaining and his music is well worth a listen. Instagram: @rockonteurs @guyprattofficial @garyjkemp @brianaugerb3 @gimmesugarproductionsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@rockonteursFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/RockonteursProduced by Ben Jones for Gimme Sugar Productions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Paul Myers is a music and comedy encyclopedia with stories galore! He's toured with the Barenaked Ladies. He's worked with the Kids In The Hall. He's stayed at Todd Rundgren's Kauai residence (OK, he was interviewing the maestro for a book). You get the idea! Paul waxed poetic on his time in the Gravelberrys (Check out "Wonder Where You Are Tonight." It is a vibe!) and as a radio personality and writer. He has tremendous stories that can be found within this podcast! Give it a listen! Also, check out the Record Store Day Podcast biweekly wherever you get your podcasts!
Edition 703 of "Blues is the Truth," curated and presented by the incomparable Ian McHugh, marks a historic moment as it becomes the inaugural show to grace the airwaves of Buddy Guy Radio. As always, McHugh delivers an electrifying blend of blues classics, deep cuts, and emerging talents, promising listeners an unforgettable journey through the soul-stirring landscape of blues music. The episode features the beloved regular segments that fans have come to cherish, including "The Song Remains the Same," where timeless tracks are revisited and celebrated, and "The Title Track Tango," a segment that delves into a pair of albums by spotlighting their titular tracks. Additionally, the revered Paul Michael introduces a standout selection in "Blues Driver," ensuring that each moment of the show is filled with sonic treasures waiting to be unearthed. Buddy Guy's unmistakable touch graces the airwaves with soulful melodies and searing guitar licks, setting the stage for an unforgettable musical odyssey. Among the luminaries featured are Connolly Hayes, Otis Grand, Big Harp George, Jimmie Vaughan, Johnny Guitar Watson, Doug Macleod, The Guv'Nors, T Bone Walker, The Cinelli Brothers, Billy Bragg, Brigitte Purdy, Paul Cook Blues Band featuring Katie Bradley, David Sinclair 4, Long John Baldry, Linsey Alexander, Mississippi Heat, Steve Purcell, Big Mama Thornton, BB King, Richard Townend and the Mighty Bosscats, Travelling Blue Kings, Duke Robillard, Amba Tremain, and the Steady Rollin' Revue. With a lineup as rich and diverse as the blues itself, edition 703 of "Blues is the Truth" is a testament to the genre's enduring power to captivate, inspire, and move audiences of all backgrounds. So, tune in, turn up the volume, and let the blues wash over you in all its raw, unfiltered glory.
☕️ Buy me a coffee: https://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/s...
| Artist | Title | Album Name | Album Copyright | JJ Grey & Mofro | Olustee | Olustee | | | Sam Mitchell | Come On In My Kitchen | Shake That Thing [The Blues In Britain 1963-1973] | Deb Ryder | 1. A Storm's Coming | Enjoy The Ride | Vizztone | | Killing Floor | Lou's Blues | Shake That Thing [The Blues In Britain 1963-1973] | Struggle Buggy | Tear 'Em Down | | Billy Thompson | That Devil | Billy Thompson BT 2018 release | Alexis Korner | Steal Away | Shake That Thing [The Blues In Britain 1963-1973] | Mark Hummel | I Didn't Need Another Heartache | Ain't Easy No More | | Long John Baldry | It Still Ain't Easy | It Still Ain't Easy | | Trond Olsen Band | Lonelyhearted Blues | A New Day Coming | | The Golden Gate Quartet | Lord, Am I Born to Die. | Gospel Masters: Rock My Soul | Freddie Bell And The Bellboys | Rompin And Stompin | Debut Recordings (1956-57) | Vince Eager | This Should Go On Forever | The Best Of British Rock 'n' Roll [Disc 2) | Animals | See See Rider | Shake That Thing [The Blues In Britain 1963-1973]
| Artist | Title | Album Name | Album Copyright | | Phil Doleman | Shake That Thing | Gonna Tip Out Tonight | | Jackie Mc Auley | Poor Howard | Shake That Thing [The Blues In Britain 1963-1973] | Travis Bowlin & Single | Four Four Fever | | | | James Pitts Band | Let's Talk | Come To Play The Blues | | Struggle Buggy | Blues For Sunrise | Tear 'Em Down | | | Delta Moon | Coolest Fools | Cabbage Town | | | Peter Frampton, Rob Arthur, Adam Lester, Dan Wojciechowski, Dav | Me And My Guitar | All Blues Feter Frampton and Friends (2019) | Long John Baldry | Shake That Thang | It Still Ain't Easy | | | Cripple Clarence Lofton | Sweetest Thing Born | Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 (1935-1939) | J. J. Cale & Eric Clapton | Heads In Georgia | The Road To Escondido | | Robert Hill & Joanne Lediger | Nobody's Fault But Mine | Revelation | | | Adam Faith | Ah, Poor Little Baby | The Best Of British Rock 'n' Roll [Disc 2) | Bo Diddley | Hey! Bo Diddley | Jungle Music (The Blues Collection) | Lurrie Bell | Somebody Help Me | Kiss of Sweet Blues | | | Katie Henry | Love Like Kerosene | Get Goin' | | |
Here is my radio show "Bluesland" from February 15, 2024. Just click on the link/picture. The music includes Janis Joplin, Long John Baldry, Taj Mahal, The J. Geils Band, Robert Cray, Gary Moore, George Thorogood and The Destroyers plus more fine blues, soul and rock n roll. See you next Thursday 7-9 PM on the radio at KMRE 88.3 FM or www.kmre.org.
•He's played with Jimi Hendrix, Sonny Boy Williamson, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page, Billy Cobham, Spencer Davies, Long John Baldry, Rod Stewart, John McLaughlin, Tom Jones, Eric Burdon and many, many more. •With Julie Driscoll he had a huge hit with a masterful psychedelic rendition of Dylan's "This Wheel's on Fire” •He's been hailed as the godfather of acid jazz, sampled by hip hop stars and nominated for a Grammy Award. •At 82, BRIAN AUGER is still moving, grooving, sharp as a pin - and 'beginning again' as he says. •We hear his extraordinary story and of the sign posts pointing the way on his musical journey - from the London Blitz - through the Soho jazz clubs of the 60s - to Venice Beach. •Thanks to Greg Boroman and Karma Augur for making this happen. *For More on Brian * For more on the Auger Incorporated Archive release *Let us know where you are at(a few questions about you) *Get Our Bulletin #counterculture #music #hammondorgan #soho #sohoclubs #soho #sohohistory #londonhistory #juliedriscoll #brianauger #hendrix #6oslondon #acidjazz
The Manfreds start their 60th Anniversary Tour in September with Paul, Mike D'Abo and Tom McGuinnness in the line-up. He talks to us here about the first and best shows he's seen and … … being told “there's a soul/R&B singer in Birmingham and if he ever comes to London you're finished”. … how Brian Jones “opened up a secret door”. ... “stealing from Tennyson” for the lyrics of 5-4-3-2-1. … being with Mick Jagger and Long John Baldry watching Alexis Korner calling up guest “shouters” and all thinking “pick me!” … what T-Bone Walker taught him. … seeing Lonnie Donegan at the Kings Theatre, Southampton, and the absurdity of doing ‘It Takes A Worried Man' in your skiffle band when you're only 15. … Bob Dylan at Earl's Court. … the earth-shifting impact of the Modern Jazz Quartet. … and the early adventures of ‘Blues Boy' Jones. Tickets for the Manfreds' 60 Anniversary tour here …https://myticket.co.uk/artists/the-manfredsTickets for Word In The Park in London on June 3rd here!: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-happy-return-of-word-in-the-park-tickets-576193870377Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early and ad-free access to all of our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Manfreds start their 60th Anniversary Tour in September with Paul, Mike D'Abo and Tom McGuinnness in the line-up. He talks to us here about the first and best shows he's seen and … … being told “there's a soul/R&B singer in Birmingham and if he ever comes to London you're finished”. … how Brian Jones “opened up a secret door”. ... “stealing from Tennyson” for the lyrics of 5-4-3-2-1. … being with Mick Jagger and Long John Baldry watching Alexis Korner calling up guest “shouters” and all thinking “pick me!” … what T-Bone Walker taught him. … seeing Lonnie Donegan at the Kings Theatre, Southampton, and the absurdity of doing ‘It Takes A Worried Man' in your skiffle band when you're only 15. … Bob Dylan at Earl's Court. … the earth-shifting impact of the Modern Jazz Quartet. … and the early adventures of ‘Blues Boy' Jones. Tickets for the Manfreds' 60 Anniversary tour here …https://myticket.co.uk/artists/the-manfredsTickets for Word In The Park in London on June 3rd here!: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-happy-return-of-word-in-the-park-tickets-576193870377Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early and ad-free access to all of our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Manfreds start their 60th Anniversary Tour in September with Paul, Mike D'Abo and Tom McGuinnness in the line-up. He talks to us here about the first and best shows he's seen and … … being told “there's a soul/R&B singer in Birmingham and if he ever comes to London you're finished”. … how Brian Jones “opened up a secret door”. ... “stealing from Tennyson” for the lyrics of 5-4-3-2-1. … being with Mick Jagger and Long John Baldry watching Alexis Korner calling up guest “shouters” and all thinking “pick me!” … what T-Bone Walker taught him. … seeing Lonnie Donegan at the Kings Theatre, Southampton, and the absurdity of doing ‘It Takes A Worried Man' in your skiffle band when you're only 15. … Bob Dylan at Earl's Court. … the earth-shifting impact of the Modern Jazz Quartet. … and the early adventures of ‘Blues Boy' Jones. Tickets for the Manfreds' 60 Anniversary tour here …https://myticket.co.uk/artists/the-manfredsTickets for Word In The Park in London on June 3rd here!: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-happy-return-of-word-in-the-park-tickets-576193870377Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early and ad-free access to all of our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A native of Vancouver but currently residing in Nashville, where he works as a solo artist, sideman, and record producer, Steve has forged an impressive career full of highlights and awards, including: 7 Juno Awards as artist/producer, 18 times nominated 3 times named "Producer Of The Year" at Western Canadian Music Awards 4 times named "Producer Of The Year" at Canadian Folk Music Awards Recipient of many other awards including Maple Blues Awards, Grand Prix De Jazz De Montreal, Blues Blast Awards, and many Western Canadian Music Awards and Canadian Folk Awards as an artist and producer Steve's multi-faceted career has brought him to countless international festivals, working on the stage and in the studio with an extensive cast of musicians, including John Hammond, Sonny Landreth, Van Dyke Parks, David Hidalgo, Colin James, Jim Byrnes, Jill Barber, Dave Alvin, Joe Henry, Tim O'Brien, Fats Kaplin, Colin James, The McCrary Sisters, Matt Chamberlain, Del Rey, Birds of Chicago, Allison Russell, Long John Baldry, Bruce Cockburn, Kelly Joe Phelps, Linda McRae, CR Avery, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Geoff Muldaur, Scott Amendola, Danny Barnes, The Deep Dark Woods, Colin Linden, Big Dave McLean, and many others. Steve's studio, The Henhouse, located in Nashville (and previously in Vancouver) has hosted countless artists and been the home to over 80 releases. With a beautifully warm and organic setting to stay and record, it promises to become a destination for many more to come. His groundbreaking work with Jesse Zubot in Zubot and Dawson kicked things off in 1998, leading to 2 albums with Toronto jazz stalwarts Andrew Downing and Kevin Turcotte in the award-winning Great Uncles of the Revolution. Steve's solo recording output started with 2001's award-winning acoustic “Bug Parade”, he next explored blues and Hawaiian influences in depth with “We Belong To The Gold Coast” in 2005. 2008 saw the release of 2 albums – “Telescope” which was the culmination of studies with Greg Leisz and featured music written for the pedal steel guitar, and “Waiting For The Lights To Come Up”, a collection of new songs. He followed that with 2011's acclaimed "Nightshade", which Acoustic Guitar magazine named to it's Top-10 guitar albums of the year. 2014's “Rattlesnake Cage” – was an award-winning exploration of solo acoustic and slide guitar. Dawson's 2018 release “Lucky Hand” is a mesmerizing collection of original fingerstyle and slide guitar instrumentals, 5 of which feature Dawson reuniting with his old cohort Jesse Zubot, who arranged incredible string quartet parts to flow with the music. Recorded live off the floor it brings together the American Primitive style Steve has often explored and cutting-edge strings to create music unlike anything you've heard before. Birds of Chicago, Allison Russell, Matt Anderson, etc. Steve is also host and producer of the podcast Music Makers and Soul Shakers. 135 episodes in 6 years. Steven has worked with artists from all over the world, and continues to work as a side-person and freelance musician both on stage and in the studio. Steve is also the creator of the well-loved Music Makers and Soul Shakers podcast, which has been going for over 6 years and 135 episodes. He spent the last few years pre-pandemic on the road playing guitar, steel and dobro with Allison Russell's band Birds of Chicago, and Canadian powerhouse Matt Andersen. He has produced, engineered and mixed over 100 albums for many artists from all over the world, and continues to work as a side-person and freelance musician both on stage and in the studio. Steve is also the creator of the well-loved Music Makers and Soul Shakers podca In 2022/2023, Steve released 3 albums throughout the year - “Gone, Long Gone” is the first. From gentle fingerstyle folk tunes to blazing, funky Americana grooves, to Hawaiian-style slide guitar instrumentals, this album covers a lot of sonic territory. The second album, “Phantom Threshold” came out on August 12, 2022 and is an all-instrumental sonic trip featuring the Telescope Three - Jay Bellerose on drums, Jeremy Holmes on bass, and Chris Gestrin on keyboards. All driven by the melodies and improvisations of Steve's pedal steel guitar. Now comes the promised third album Eyes Closed, Dreaming. It's filled with Albertan friend Matt Patershuk co-writes and well chosen covers. Bobby Charles Small Town Talk, Ian Tyson's Long time to get old, Cowboy Jack Clements Guess things happen that way and the classic Singing the Blues. Lots to talk about with long time friend Steve Dawson. Steve's current tour dates April 20 Dream Cafe Penticton April 21 Rogue Folk Club Vancouver April 22 Bozzini's Chilliwack April 28 First Church of Christ Scientist Victoria May 3 The Basement Saskatoon May 4 The Aviary Edmonton May 5 Festival Hall Calgary
This week we discuss dip, Smurfs, Long John Baldry, Rosie O'Donnel, Roseanne Barr's "Cancel This!", Bethany Mandel, Dave Mustaine, Black Sabbath, and Kamen Rider toys. Please help our friend and Jortscentrist Laura if you can. https://gofund.me/92e54c8e https://podvoices.help https://donations4abortion.com Please help support our friend Tim! https://www.gofundme.com/f/tims-head-trauma-and-living-expenses Join our Peloton! https://www.patreon.com/JortsCenter Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/342135897580300 Subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/jortscenter Follow us on Twitter at @JortsCenterPod Will is @wapplehouse Josh is @otherjrobbins Ryan is @ryhanbeard Vic is @Dokktorvikktor Dan is @motleycruedetat
This is a programme dedicated to the cool sounds of the mods. A genuine youth movement originated in Great Britain in the swinging sixties years. London was the coolest place on earth between 1962 to 1964 when young people flew there in hordes to hang around the smokey jazz clubs in Soho. Vespas riding through the narrow streets of Central London and mini skirts wore by the thin London young girls. Jazz, Blues and Soul was the music to listen and great bands were emerging every day immersed in these sounds. Small Faces, Graham Bond Organisation, The Artwooods, Rod Stewart the Mod singing in the Steampacket of Long John Baldry, The Birds (with the right spelling and counting with future Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood), the Action, The Attacks, The Zoot Money Big Roll band, The Creation, the Who, etc. Even the non-mod bands were influenced and the rest of the world was soon catching up and following all the action happening in London. Even Bob Dylan changed his folk days attire for the Carnaby Street style. So please stay connected, relax and enjoy the cool sounds of the Mods! A podcast programme dedicated to Russell Taylor who passed away 4 years ago and is missed so much by friends and music lovers. He was the founder of Crocodile records and the best man to be found behind a counter in a record shop. His encyclopaedic knowledge of the best music was the best guide to browsing among piles of records. Essential info email - ndfm@mail.com Website - https://www.nudirectionsfm.com NDFM Music player - https://pod.co/nudirections Please enjoy the music We love. NDFM Playlist 1- My generation (instrumental) - THE WHO (in the introduction) 2- When I'm in the crowd - THE JAM 3- Organ grinder's - JIMMY SMITH 4- Wade in the Water - RAMSEY LEWIS TRIO 5- Route 66 - NAT KING COLE 6- In and out - RICHARD “GROOVES” HOLMES 7- Where you belong - EDDIE BOYD 8- I'm with you all the way - DOROTHY BERRY & JIMMY NORMAN 9- Watch your step - BOBBY PARKER 10- My babe - LITTLE WALTER 1 1- Can I get a witness - MARVIN GAYE 12- Time is on my side - IRMA THOMAS 13- I'm the one who loves you - THE IMPRESSIONS 14- Going to a go-go - SMOKEY ROBINSON & THE MIRACLES 15- This old heart of mine (is weak) - THE SUPREMES 16- Cool Jerk - THE CAPITOLS 17- Who's makin love - JOHNNIE TAYLOR 18- Liquidator - HARRY J ALL STARS 19- Summer breeze - JACKIE MITTOO 20- Bring down the birds - HERBIE HANCOCK 21- Keep on Running - THE SPENCER DAVIS GROUP 22- Sweet thing - GEORGIE FAME & THE BLUE FLAMES 23- Come home baby - ROD STEWART & P P ARNOLD 24- In my lonely room - THE ACTION 25- I'm looking for a saxophonist doubling French horn wearing size 37 boots - THE ARTWOODS 26- No good without you - THE BIRDS 27- Zoot suit - THE HIGH NUMBERS (later know as THE WHO) 28- I gotta move - THE KINKS 29- Biff bang pow! - THE CREATION 30- Oh Baby! - THE GRAHAM BOND ORGANISATION 31- You need loving - SMALL FACES 32- Shout - LULU & THE LUVVERS 33- Head over heels - THE STYLOS 34- Stop stop stop - GRAHAM GOULDMAN 35- It's all over now baby blue - THEM 36- Everybody needs somebody to love - THE ROLLING STONES 37- Shake - OTIS REDDING 38- Call me lightning - THE WHO
Episode 159 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Itchycoo Park” by the Small Faces, and their transition from Mod to psychedelia. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "The First Cut is the Deepest" by P.P. Arnold. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As so many of the episodes recently have had no Mixcloud due to the number of songs by one artist, I've decided to start splitting the mixes of the recordings excerpted in the podcasts into two parts. Here's part one and part two. I've used quite a few books in this episode. The Small Faces & Other Stories by Uli Twelker and Roland Schmit is definitely a fan-work with all that that implies, but has some useful quotes. Two books claim to be the authorised biography of Steve Marriott, and I've referred to both -- All Too Beautiful by Paolo Hewitt and John Hellier, and All Or Nothing by Simon Spence. Spence also wrote an excellent book on Immediate Records, which I referred to. Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan both wrote very readable autobiographies. I've also used Andrew Loog Oldham's autobiography Stoned, co-written by Spence, though be warned that it casually uses slurs. P.P. Arnold's autobiography is a sometimes distressing read covering her whole life, including her time at Immediate. There are many, many, collections of the Small Faces' work, ranging from cheap budget CDs full of outtakes to hundred-pound-plus box sets, also full of outtakes. This three-CD budget collection contains all the essential tracks, and is endorsed by Kenney Jones, the band's one surviving member. And if you're intrigued by the section on Immediate Records, this two-CD set contains a good selection of their releases. ERRATUM-ISH: I say Jimmy Winston was “a couple” of years older than the rest of the band. This does not mean exactly two, but is used in the vague vernacular sense equivalent to “a few”. Different sources I've seen put Winston as either two or four years older than his bandmates, though two seems to be the most commonly cited figure. Transcript For once there is little to warn about in this episode, but it does contain some mild discussions of organised crime, arson, and mental illness, and a quoted joke about capital punishment in questionable taste which may upset some. One name that came up time and again when we looked at the very early years of British rock and roll was Lionel Bart. If you don't remember the name, he was a left-wing Bohemian songwriter who lived in a communal house-share which at various times was also inhabited by people like Shirley Eaton, the woman who is painted gold at the beginning of Goldfinger, Mike Pratt, the star of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), and Davey Graham, the most influential and innovative British guitarist of the fifties and early sixties. Bart and Pratt had co-written most of the hits of Britain's first real rock and roll star, Tommy Steele: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, "Rock with the Caveman"] and then Bart had gone solo as a writer, and written hits like "Living Doll" for Britain's *biggest* rock and roll star, Cliff Richard: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard, "Living Doll"] But Bart's biggest contribution to rock music turned out not to be the songs he wrote for rock and roll stars, and not even his talent-spotting -- it was Bart who got Steele signed by Larry Parnes, and he also pointed Parnes in the direction of another of his biggest stars, Marty Wilde -- but the opportunity he gave to a lot of child stars in a very non-rock context. Bart's musical Oliver!, inspired by the novel Oliver Twist, was the biggest sensation on the West End stage in the early 1960s, breaking records for the longest-running musical, and also transferred to Broadway and later became an extremely successful film. As it happened, while Oliver! was extraordinarily lucrative, Bart didn't see much of the money from it -- he sold the rights to it, and his other musicals, to the comedian Max Bygraves in the mid-sixties for a tiny sum in order to finance a couple of other musicals, which then flopped horribly and bankrupted him. But by that time Oliver! had already been the first big break for three people who went on to major careers in music -- all of them playing the same role. Because many of the major roles in Oliver! were for young boys, the cast had to change frequently -- child labour laws meant that multiple kids had to play the same role in different performances, and people quickly grew out of the roles as teenagerhood hit. We've already heard about the career of one of the people who played the Artful Dodger in the original West End production -- Davy Jones, who transferred in the role to Broadway in 1963, and who we'll be seeing again in a few episodes' time -- and it's very likely that another of the people who played the Artful Dodger in that production, a young lad called Philip Collins, will be coming into the story in a few years' time. But the first of the artists to use the Artful Dodger as a springboard to a music career was the one who appeared in the role on the original cast album of 1960, though there's very little in that recording to suggest the sound of his later records: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott, "Consider Yourself"] Steve Marriott is the second little Stevie we've looked at in recent episodes to have been born prematurely. In his case, he was born a month premature, and jaundiced, and had to spend the first month of his life in hospital, the first few days of which were spent unsure if he was going to survive. Thankfully he did, but he was a bit of a sickly child as a result, and remained stick-thin and short into adulthood -- he never grew to be taller than five foot five. Young Steve loved music, and especially the music of Buddy Holly. He also loved skiffle, and managed to find out where Lonnie Donegan lived. He went round and knocked on Donegan's door, but was very disappointed to discover that his idol was just a normal man, with his hair uncombed and a shirt stained with egg yolk. He started playing the ukulele when he was ten, and graduated to guitar when he was twelve, forming a band which performed under a variety of different names. When on stage with them, he would go by the stage name Buddy Marriott, and would wear a pair of horn-rimmed glasses to look more like Buddy Holly. When he was twelve, his mother took him to an audition for Oliver! The show had been running for three months at the time, and was likely to run longer, and child labour laws meant that they had to have replacements for some of the cast -- every three months, any performing child had to have at least ten days off. At his audition, Steve played his guitar and sang "Who's Sorry Now?", the recent Connie Francis hit: [Excerpt: Connie Francis, "Who's Sorry Now?"] And then, ignoring the rule that performers could only do one song, immediately launched into Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy!" [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Oh Boy!"] His musical ability and attitude impressed the show's producers, and he was given a job which suited him perfectly -- rather than being cast in a single role, he would be swapped around, playing different small parts, in the chorus, and occasionally taking the larger role of the Artful Dodger. Steve Marriott was never able to do the same thing over and over, and got bored very quickly, but because he was moving between roles, he was able to keep interested in his performances for almost a year, and he was good enough that it was him chosen to sing the Dodger's role on the cast album when that was recorded: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott and Joyce Blair, "I'd Do Anything"] And he enjoyed performance enough that his parents pushed him to become an actor -- though there were other reasons for that, too. He was never the best-behaved child in the world, nor the most attentive student, and things came to a head when, shortly after leaving the Oliver! cast, he got so bored of his art classes he devised a plan to get out of them forever. Every art class, for several weeks, he'd sit in a different desk at the back of the classroom and stuff torn-up bits of paper under the floorboards. After a couple of months of this he then dropped a lit match in, which set fire to the paper and ended up burning down half the school. His schoolfriend Ken Hawes talked about it many decades later, saying "I suppose in a way I was impressed about how he had meticulously planned the whole thing months in advance, the sheer dogged determination to see it through. He could quite easily have been caught and would have had to face the consequences. There was no danger in anybody getting hurt because we were at the back of the room. We had to be at the back otherwise somebody would have noticed what he was doing. There was no malice against other pupils, he just wanted to burn the damn school down." Nobody could prove it was him who had done it, though his parents at least had a pretty good idea who it was, but it was clear that even when the school was rebuilt it wasn't a good idea to send him back there, so they sent him to the Italia Conti Drama School; the same school that Anthony Newley and Petula Clark, among many others, had attended. Marriott's parents couldn't afford the school's fees, but Marriott was so talented that the school waived the fees -- they said they'd get him work, and take a cut of his wages in lieu of the fees. And over the next few years they did get him a lot of work. Much of that work was for TV shows, which like almost all TV of the time no longer exist -- he was in an episode of the Sid James sitcom Citizen James, an episode of Mr. Pastry's Progress, an episode of the police drama Dixon of Dock Green, and an episode of a series based on the Just William books, none of which survive. He also did a voiceover for a carpet cleaner ad, appeared on the radio soap opera Mrs Dale's Diary playing a pop star, and had a regular spot reading listeners' letters out for the agony aunt Marje Proops on her radio show. Almost all of this early acting work wa s utterly ephemeral, but there are a handful of his performances that do survive, mostly in films. He has a small role in the comedy film Heavens Above!, a mistaken-identity comedy in which a radical left-wing priest played by Peter Sellers is given a parish intended for a more conservative priest of the same name, and upsets the well-off people of the parish by taking in a large family of travellers and appointing a Black man as his churchwarden. The film has some dated attitudes, in the way that things that were trying to be progressive and antiracist sixty years ago invariably do, but has a sparkling cast, with Sellers, Eric Sykes, William Hartnell, Brock Peters, Roy Kinnear, Irene Handl, and many more extremely recognisable faces from the period: [Excerpt: Heavens Above!] Marriott apparently enjoyed working on the film immensely, as he was a fan of the Goon Show, which Sellers had starred in and which Sykes had co-written several episodes of. There are reports of Marriott and Sellers jamming together on banjos during breaks in filming, though these are probably *slightly* inaccurate -- Sellers played the banjolele, a banjo-style instrument which is played like a ukulele. As Marriott had started on ukulele before switching to guitar, it was probably these they were playing, rather than banjoes. He also appeared in a more substantial role in a film called Live It Up!, a pop exploitation film starring David Hemmings in which he appears as a member of a pop group. Oddly, Marriott plays a drummer, even though he wasn't a drummer, while two people who *would* find fame as drummers, Mitch Mitchell and Dave Clark, appear in smaller, non-drumming, roles. He doesn't perform on the soundtrack, which is produced by Joe Meek and features Sounds Incorporated, The Outlaws, and Gene Vincent, but he does mime playing behind Heinz Burt, the former bass player of the Tornadoes who was then trying for solo stardom at Meek's instigation: [Excerpt: Heinz Burt, "Don't You Understand"] That film was successful enough that two years later, in 1965 Marriott came back for a sequel, Be My Guest, with The Niteshades, the Nashville Teens, and Jerry Lee Lewis, this time with music produced by Shel Talmy rather than Meek. But that was something of a one-off. After making Live It Up!, Marriott had largely retired from acting, because he was trying to become a pop star. The break finally came when he got an audition at the National Theatre, for a job touring with Laurence Olivier for a year. He came home and told his parents he hadn't got the job, but then a week later they were bemused by a phone call asking why Steve hadn't turned up for rehearsals. He *had* got the job, but he'd decided he couldn't face a year of doing the same thing over and over, and had pretended he hadn't. By this time he'd already released his first record. The work on Oliver! had got him a contract with Decca Records, and he'd recorded a Buddy Holly knock-off, "Give Her My Regards", written for him by Kenny Lynch, the actor, pop star, and all-round entertainer: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott, "Give Her My Regards"] That record wasn't a hit, but Marriott wasn't put off. He formed a band who were at first called the Moonlights, and then the Frantiks, and they got a management deal with Tony Calder, Andrew Oldham's junior partner in his management company. Calder got former Shadow Tony Meehan to produce a demo for the group, a version of Cliff Richard's hit "Move It", which was shopped round the record labels with no success (and which sadly appears no longer to survive). The group also did some recordings with Joe Meek, which also don't circulate, but which may exist in the famous "Teachest Tapes" which are slowly being prepared for archival releases. The group changed their name to the Moments, and added in the guitarist John Weider, who was one of those people who seem to have been in every band ever either just before or just after they became famous -- at various times he was in Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Family, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and the band that became Crabby Appleton, but never in their most successful lineups. They continued recording unsuccessful demos, of which a small number have turned up: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott and the Moments, "Good Morning Blues"] One of their demo sessions was produced by Andrew Oldham, and while that session didn't lead to a release, it did lead to Oldham booking Marriott as a session harmonica player for one of his "Andrew Oldham Orchestra" sessions, to play on a track titled "365 Rolling Stones (One For Every Day of the Year)": [Excerpt: The Andrew Oldham Orchestra, "365 Rolling Stones (One For Every Day of the Year)"] Oldham also produced a session for what was meant to be Marriott's second solo single on Decca, a cover version of the Rolling Stones' "Tell Me", which was actually scheduled for release but pulled at the last minute. Like many of Marriott's recordings from this period, if it exists, it doesn't seem to circulate publicly. But despite their lack of recording success, the Moments did manage to have a surprising level of success on the live circuit. Because they were signed to Calder and Oldham's management company, they got a contract with the Arthur Howes booking agency, which got them support slots on package tours with Billy J Kramer, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Kinks, and other major acts, and the band members were earning about thirty pounds a week each -- a very, very good living for the time. They even had a fanzine devoted to them, written by a fan named Stuart Tuck. But as they weren't making records, the band's lineup started changing, with members coming and going. They did manage to get one record released -- a soundalike version of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me", recorded for a budget label who rushed it out, hoping to get it picked up in the US and for it to be the hit version there: [Excerpt: The Moments, "You Really Got Me"] But the month after that was released, Marriott was sacked from the band, apparently in part because the band were starting to get billed as Steve Marriott and the Moments rather than just The Moments, and the rest of them didn't want to be anyone's backing band. He got a job at a music shop while looking around for other bands to perform with. At one point around this time he was going to form a duo with a friend of his, Davy Jones -- not the one who had also appeared in Oliver!, but another singer of the same name. This one sang with a blues band called the Mannish Boys, and both men were well known on the Mod scene in London. Marriott's idea was that they call themselves David and Goliath, with Jones being David, and Marriott being Goliath because he was only five foot five. That could have been a great band, but it never got past the idea stage. Marriott had become friendly with another part-time musician and shop worker called Ronnie Lane, who was in a band called the Outcasts who played the same circuit as the Moments: [Excerpt: The Outcasts, "Before You Accuse Me"] Lane worked in a sound equipment shop and Marriott in a musical instrument shop, and both were customers of the other as well as friends -- at least until Marriott came into the shop where Lane worked and tried to persuade him to let Marriott have a free PA system. Lane pretended to go along with it as a joke, and got sacked. Lane had then gone to the shop where Marriott worked in the hope that Marriott would give him a good deal on a guitar because he'd been sacked because of Marriott. Instead, Marriott persuaded him that he should switch to bass, on the grounds that everyone was playing guitar since the Beatles had come along, but a bass player would always be able to find work. Lane bought the bass. Shortly after that, Marriott came to an Outcasts gig in a pub, and was asked to sit in. He enjoyed playing with Lane and the group's drummer Kenney Jones, but got so drunk he smashed up the pub's piano while playing a Jerry Lee Lewis song. The resulting fallout led to the group being barred from the pub and splitting up, so Marriott, Lane, and Jones decided to form their own group. They got in another guitarist Marriott knew, a man named Jimmy Winston who was a couple of years older than them, and who had two advantages -- he was a known Face on the mod scene, with a higher status than any of the other three, and his brother owned a van and would drive the group and their equipment for ten percent of their earnings. There was a slight problem in that Winston was also as good on guitar as Marriott and looked like he might want to be the star, but Marriott neutralised that threat -- he moved Winston over to keyboards. The fact that Winston couldn't play keyboards didn't matter -- he could be taught a couple of riffs and licks, and he was sure to pick up the rest. And this way the group had the same lineup as one of Marriott's current favourites, Booker T and the MGs. While he was still a Buddy Holly fan, he was now, like the rest of the Mods, an R&B obsessive. Marriott wasn't entirely sure that this new group would be the one that would make him a star though, and was still looking for other alternatives in case it didn't play out. He auditioned for another band, the Lower Third, which counted Stuart Tuck, the writer of the Moments fanzine, among its members. But he was unsuccessful in the audition -- instead his friend Davy Jones, the one who he'd been thinking of forming a duo with, got the job: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and the Lower Third, "You've Got a Habit of Leaving"] A few months after that, Davy Jones and the Lower Third changed their name to David Bowie and the Lower Third, and we'll be picking up that story in a little over a year from now... Marriott, Lane, Jones, and Winston kept rehearsing and pulled together a five-song set, which was just about long enough to play a few shows, if they extended the songs with long jamming instrumental sections. The opening song for these early sets was one which, when they recorded it, would be credited to Marriott and Lane -- the two had struck up a writing partnership and agreed to a Lennon/McCartney style credit split, though in these early days Marriott was doing far more of the writing than Lane was. But "You Need Loving" was... heavily inspired... by "You Need Love", a song Willie Dixon had written for Muddy Waters: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "You Need Love"] It's not precisely the same song, but you can definitely hear the influence in the Marriott/Lane song: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "You Need Loving"] They did make some changes though, notably to the end of the song: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "You Need Loving"] You will be unsurprised to learn that Robert Plant was a fan of Steve Marriott. The new group were initially without a name, until after one of their first gigs, Winston's girlfriend, who hadn't met the other three before, said "You've all got such small faces!" The name stuck, because it had a double meaning -- as we've seen in the episode on "My Generation", "Face" was Mod slang for someone who was cool and respected on the Mod scene, but also, with the exception of Winston, who was average size, the other three members of the group were very short -- the tallest of the three was Ronnie Lane, who was five foot six. One thing I should note about the group's name, by the way -- on all the labels of their records in the UK while they were together, they were credited as "Small Faces", with no "The" in front, but all the band members referred to the group in interviews as "The Small Faces", and they've been credited that way on some reissues and foreign-market records. The group's official website is thesmallfaces.com but all the posts on the website refer to them as "Small Faces" with no "the". The use of the word "the" or not at the start of a group's name at this time was something of a shibboleth -- for example both The Buffalo Springfield and The Pink Floyd dropped theirs after their early records -- and its status in this case is a strange one. I'll be referring to the group throughout as "The Small Faces" rather than "Small Faces" because the former is easier to say, but both seem accurate. After a few pub gigs in London, they got some bookings in the North of England, where they got a mixed reception -- they went down well at Peter Stringfellow's Mojo Club in Sheffield, where Joe Cocker was a regular performer, less well at a working-man's club, and reports differ about their performance at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, though one thing everyone is agreed on is that while they were performing, some Mancunians borrowed their van and used it to rob a clothing warehouse, and gave the band members some very nice leather coats as a reward for their loan of the van. It was only on the group's return to London that they really started to gel as a unit. In particular, Kenney Jones had up to that point been a very stiff, precise, drummer, but he suddenly loosened up and, in Steve Marriott's tasteless phrase, "Every number swung like Hanratty" (James Hanratty was one of the last people in Britain to be executed by hanging). Shortly after that, Don Arden's secretary -- whose name I haven't been able to find in any of the sources I've used for this episode, sadly, came into the club where they were rehearsing, the Starlight Rooms, to pass a message from Arden to an associate of his who owned the club. The secretary had seen Marriott perform before -- he would occasionally get up on stage at the Starlight Rooms to duet with Elkie Brooks, who was a regular performer there, and she'd seen him do that -- but was newly impressed by his group, and passed word on to her boss that this was a group he should investigate. Arden is someone who we'll be looking at a lot in future episodes, but the important thing to note right now is that he was a failed entertainer who had moved into management and promotion, first with American acts like Gene Vincent, and then with British acts like the Nashville Teens, who had had hits with tracks like "Tobacco Road": [Excerpt: The Nashville Teens, "Tobacco Road"] Arden was also something of a gangster -- as many people in the music industry were at the time, but he was worse than most of his contemporaries, and delighted in his nickname "the Al Capone of pop". The group had a few managers looking to sign them, but Arden convinced them with his offer. They would get a percentage of their earnings -- though they never actually received that percentage -- twenty pounds a week in wages, and, the most tempting part of it all, they would get expense accounts at all the Carnaby St boutiques and could go there whenever they wanted and get whatever they wanted. They signed with Arden, which all of them except Marriott would later regret, because Arden's financial exploitation meant that it would be decades before they saw any money from their hits, and indeed both Marriott and Lane would be dead before they started getting royalties from their old records. Marriott, on the other hand, had enough experience of the industry to credit Arden with the group getting anywhere at all, and said later "Look, you go into it with your eyes open and as far as I was concerned it was better than living on brown sauce rolls. At least we had twenty quid a week guaranteed." Arden got the group signed to Decca, with Dick Rowe signing them to the same kind of production deal that Andrew Oldham had pioneered with the Stones, so that Arden would own the rights to their recordings. At this point the group still only knew a handful of songs, but Rowe was signing almost everyone with a guitar at this point, putting out a record or two and letting them sink or swim. He had already been firmly labelled as "the man who turned down the Beatles", and was now of the opinion that it was better to give everyone a chance than to make that kind of expensive mistake again. By this point Marriott and Lane were starting to write songs together -- though at this point it was still mostly Marriott writing, and people would ask him why he was giving Lane half the credit, and he'd reply "Without Ronnie's help keeping me awake and being there I wouldn't do half of it. He keeps me going." -- but for their first single Arden was unsure that they were up to the task of writing a hit. The group had been performing a version of Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", a song which Burke always claimed to have written alone, but which is credited to him, Jerry Wexler, and Bert Berns (and has Bern's fingerprints, at least, on it to my ears): [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"] Arden got some professional writers to write new lyrics and vocal melody to their arrangement of the song -- the people he hired were Brian Potter, who would later go on to co-write "Rhinestone Cowboy", and Ian Samwell, the former member of Cliff Richard's Drifters who had written many of Richard's early hits, including "Move It", and was now working for Arden. The group went into the studio and recorded the song, titled "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?": [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?"] That version, though was deemed too raucous, and they had to go back into the studio to cut a new version, which came out as their first single: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?"] At first the single didn't do much on the charts, but then Arden got to work with teams of people buying copies from chart return shops, bribing DJs on pirate radio stations to play it, and bribing the person who compiled the charts for the NME. Eventually it made number fourteen, at which point it became a genuinely popular hit. But with that popularity came problems. In particular, Steve Marriott was starting to get seriously annoyed by Jimmy Winston. As the group started to get TV appearances, Winston started to act like he should be the centre of attention. Every time Marriott took a solo in front of TV cameras, Winston would start making stupid gestures, pulling faces, anything to make sure the cameras focussed on him rather than on Marriott. Which wouldn't have been too bad had Winston been a great musician, but he was still not very good on the keyboards, and unlike the others didn't seem particularly interested in trying. He seemed to want to be a star, rather than a musician. The group's next planned single was a Marriott and Lane song, "I've Got Mine". To promote it, the group mimed to it in a film, Dateline Diamonds, a combination pop film and crime caper not a million miles away from the ones that Marriott had appeared in a few years earlier. They also contributed three other songs to the film's soundtrack. Unfortunately, the film's release was delayed, and the film had been the big promotional push that Arden had planned for the single, and without that it didn't chart at all. By the time the single came out, though, Winston was no longer in the group. There are many, many different stories as to why he was kicked out. Depending on who you ask, it was because he was trying to take the spotlight away from Marriott, because he wasn't a good enough keyboard player, because he was taller than the others and looked out of place, or because he asked Don Arden where the money was. It was probably a combination of all of these, but fundamentally what it came to was that Winston just didn't fit into the group. Winston would, in later years, say that him confronting Arden was the only reason for his dismissal, saying that Arden had manipulated the others to get him out of the way, but that seems unlikely on the face of it. When Arden sacked him, he kept Winston on as a client and built another band around him, Jimmy Winston and the Reflections, and got them signed to Decca too, releasing a Kenny Lynch song, "Sorry She's Mine", to no success: [Excerpt: Jimmy Winston and the Reflections, "Sorry She's Mine"] Another version of that song would later be included on the first Small Faces album. Winston would then form another band, Winston's Fumbs, who would also release one single, before he went into acting instead. His most notable credit was as a rebel in the 1972 Doctor Who story Day of the Daleks, and he later retired from showbusiness to run a business renting out sound equipment, and died in 2020. The group hired his replacement without ever having met him or heard him play. Ian McLagan had started out as the rhythm guitarist in a Shadows soundalike band called the Cherokees, but the group had become R&B fans and renamed themselves the Muleskinners, and then after hearing "Green Onions", McLagan had switched to playing Hammond organ. The Muleskinners had played the same R&B circuit as dozens of other bands we've looked at, and had similar experiences, including backing visiting blues stars like Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, and Howlin' Wolf. Their one single had been a cover version of "Back Door Man", a song Willie Dixon had written for Wolf: [Excerpt: The Muleskinners, "Back Door Man"] The Muleskinners had split up as most of the group had day jobs, and McLagan had gone on to join a group called Boz and the Boz People, who were becoming popular on the live circuit, and who also toured backing Kenny Lynch while McLagan was in the band. Boz and the Boz People would release several singles in 1966, like their version of the theme for the film "Carry on Screaming", released just as by "Boz": [Excerpt: Boz, "Carry on Screaming"] By that time, McLagan had left the group -- Boz Burrell later went on to join King Crimson and Bad Company. McLagan left the Boz People in something of a strop, and was complaining to a friend the night he left the group that he didn't have any work lined up. The friend joked that he should join the Small Faces, because he looked like them, and McLagan got annoyed that his friend wasn't taking him seriously -- he'd love to be in the Small Faces, but they *had* a keyboard player. The next day he got a phone call from Don Arden asking him to come to his office. He was being hired to join a hit pop group who needed a new keyboard player. McLagan at first wasn't allowed to tell anyone what band he was joining -- in part because Arden's secretary was dating Winston, and Winston hadn't yet been informed he was fired, and Arden didn't want word leaking out until it had been sorted. But he'd been chosen purely on the basis of an article in a music magazine which had praised his playing with the Boz People, and without the band knowing him or his playing. As soon as they met, though, he immediately fit in in a way Winston never had. He looked the part, right down to his height -- he said later "Ronnie Lane and I were the giants in the band at 5 ft 6 ins, and Kenney Jones and Steve Marriott were the really teeny tiny chaps at 5 ft 5 1/2 ins" -- and he was a great player, and shared a sense of humour with them. McLagan had told Arden he'd been earning twenty pounds a week with the Boz People -- he'd actually been on five -- and so Arden agreed to give him thirty pounds a week during his probationary month, which was more than the twenty the rest of the band were getting. As soon as his probationary period was over, McLagan insisted on getting a pay cut so he'd be on the same wages as the rest of the group. Soon Marriott, Lane, and McLagan were all living in a house rented for them by Arden -- Jones decided to stay living with his parents -- and were in the studio recording their next single. Arden was convinced that the mistake with "I've Got Mine" had been allowing the group to record an original, and again called in a team of professional songwriters. Arden brought in Mort Shuman, who had recently ended his writing partnership with Doc Pomus and struck out on his own, after co-writing songs like "Save the Last Dance for Me", "Sweets For My Sweet", and "Viva Las Vegas" together, and Kenny Lynch, and the two of them wrote "Sha-La-La-La-Lee", and Lynch added backing vocals to the record: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Sha-La-La-La-Lee"] None of the group were happy with the record, but it became a big hit, reaching number three in the charts. Suddenly the group had a huge fanbase of screaming teenage girls, which embarrassed them terribly, as they thought of themselves as serious heavy R&B musicians, and the rest of their career would largely be spent vacillating between trying to appeal to their teenybopper fanbase and trying to escape from it to fit their own self-image. They followed "Sha-La-La-La-Lee" with "Hey Girl", a Marriott/Lane song, but one written to order -- they were under strict instructions from Arden that if they wanted to have the A-side of a single, they had to write something as commercial as "Sha-La-La-La-Lee" had been, and they managed to come up with a second top-ten hit. Two hit singles in a row was enough to make an album viable, and the group went into the studio and quickly cut an album, which had their first two hits on it -- "Hey Girl" wasn't included, and nor was the flop "I've Got Mine" -- plus a bunch of semi-originals like "You Need Loving", a couple of Kenny Lynch songs, and a cover version of Sam Cooke's "Shake". The album went to number three on the album charts, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the number one and two spots, and it was at this point that Arden's rivals really started taking interest. But that interest was quelled for the moment when, after Robert Stigwood enquired about managing the band, Arden went round to Stigwood's office with four goons and held him upside down over a balcony, threatening to drop him off if he ever messed with any of Arden's acts again. But the group were still being influenced by other managers. In particular, Brian Epstein came round to the group's shared house, with Graeme Edge of the Moody Blues, and brought them some slices of orange -- which they discovered, after eating them, had been dosed with LSD. By all accounts, Marriott's first trip was a bad one, but the group soon became regular consumers of the drug, and it influenced the heavier direction they took on their next single, "All or Nothing". "All or Nothing" was inspired both by Marriott's breakup with his girlfriend of the time, and his delight at the fact that Jenny Rylance, a woman he was attracted to, had split up with her then-boyfriend Rod Stewart. Rylance and Stewart later reconciled, but would break up again and Rylance would become Marriott's first wife in 1968: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "All or Nothing"] "All or Nothing" became the group's first and only number one record -- and according to the version of the charts used on Top of the Pops, it was a joint number one with the Beatles' double A-side of "Yellow Submarine" and "Eleanor Rigby", both selling exactly as well as each other. But this success caused the group's parents to start to wonder why their kids -- none of whom were yet twenty-one, the legal age of majority at the time -- were not rich. While the group were on tour, their parents came as a group to visit Arden and ask him where the money was, and why their kids were only getting paid twenty pounds a week when their group was getting a thousand pounds a night. Arden tried to convince the parents that he had been paying the group properly, but that they had spent their money on heroin -- which was very far from the truth, the band were only using soft drugs at the time. This put a huge strain on the group's relationship with Arden, and it wasn't the only thing Arden did that upset them. They had been spending a lot of time in the studio working on new material, and Arden was convinced that they were spending too much time recording, and that they were just faffing around and not producing anything of substance. They dropped off a tape to show him that they had been working -- and the next thing they knew, Arden had put out one of the tracks from that tape, "My Mind's Eye", which had only been intended as a demo, as a single: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "My Mind's Eye"] That it went to number four on the charts didn't make up for the fact that the first the band heard of the record coming out at all was when they heard it on the radio. They needed rid of Arden. Luckily for them, Arden wasn't keen on continuing to work with them either. They were unreliable and flakey, and he also needed cash quick to fund his other ventures, and he agreed to sell on their management and recording contracts. Depending on which version of the story you believe, he may have sold them on to an agent called Harold Davison, who then sold them on to Andrew Oldham and Tony Calder, but according to Oldham what happened is that in December 1966 Arden demanded the highest advance in British history -- twenty-five thousand pounds -- directly from Oldham. In cash. In a brown paper bag. The reason Oldham and Calder were interested was that in July 1965 they'd started up their own record label, Immediate Records, which had been announced by Oldham in his column in Disc and Music Echo, in which he'd said "On many occasions I have run down the large record companies over issues such as pirate stations, their promotion, and their tastes. And many readers have written in and said that if I was so disturbed by the state of the existing record companies why didn't I do something about it. I have! On the twentieth of this month the first of three records released by my own company, Immediate Records, is to be launched." That first batch of three records contained one big hit, "Hang on Sloopy" by the McCoys, which Immediate licensed from Bert Berns' new record label BANG in the US: [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] The two other initial singles featured the talents of Immediate's new in-house producer, a session player who had previously been known as "Little Jimmy" to distinguish him from "Big" Jim Sullivan, the other most in-demand session guitarist, but who was now just known as Jimmy Page. The first was a version of Pete Seeger's "The Bells of Rhymney", which Page produced and played guitar on, for a group called The Fifth Avenue: [Excerpt: The Fifth Avenue, "The Bells of Rhymney"] And the second was a Gordon Lightfoot song performed by a girlfriend of Brian Jones', Nico. The details as to who was involved in the track have varied -- at different times the production has been credited to Jones, Page, and Oldham -- but it seems to be the case that both Jones and Page play on the track, as did session bass player John Paul Jones: [Excerpt: Nico, "I'm Not Sayin'"] While "Hang on Sloopy" was a big hit, the other two singles were flops, and The Fifth Avenue split up, while Nico used the publicity she'd got as an entree into Andy Warhol's Factory, and we'll be hearing more about how that went in a future episode. Oldham and Calder were trying to follow the model of the Brill Building, of Phil Spector, and of big US independents like Motown and Stax. They wanted to be a one-stop shop where they'd produce the records, manage the artists, and own the publishing -- and they also licensed the publishing for the Beach Boys' songs for a couple of years, and started publicising their records over here in a big way, to exploit the publishing royalties, and that was a major factor in turning the Beach Boys from minor novelties to major stars in the UK. Most of Immediate's records were produced by Jimmy Page, but other people got to have a go as well. Giorgio Gomelsky and Shel Talmy both produced tracks for the label, as did a teenage singer then known as Paul Raven, who would later become notorious under his later stage-name Gary Glitter. But while many of these records were excellent -- and Immediate deserves to be talked about in the same terms as Motown or Stax when it comes to the quality of the singles it released, though not in terms of commercial success -- the only ones to do well on the charts in the first few months of the label's existence were "Hang on Sloopy" and an EP by Chris Farlowe. It was Farlowe who provided Immediate Records with its first home-grown number one, a version of the Rolling Stones' "Out of Time" produced by Mick Jagger, though according to Arthur Greenslade, the arranger on that and many other Immediate tracks, Jagger had given up on getting a decent performance out of Farlowe and Oldham ended up producing the vocals. Greenslade later said "Andrew must have worked hard in there, Chris Farlowe couldn't sing his way out of a paper bag. I'm sure Andrew must have done it, where you get an artist singing and you can do a sentence at a time, stitching it all together. He must have done it in pieces." But however hard it was to make, "Out of Time" was a success: [Excerpt: Chris Farlowe, "Out of Time"] Or at least, it was a success in the UK. It did also make the top forty in the US for a week, but then it hit a snag -- it had charted without having been released in the US at all, or even being sent as a promo to DJs. Oldham's new business manager Allen Klein had been asked to work his magic on the US charts, but the people he'd bribed to hype the record into the charts had got the release date wrong and done it too early. When the record *did* come out over there, no radio station would play it in case it looked like they were complicit in the scam. But still, a UK number one wasn't too shabby, and so Immediate Records was back on track, and Oldham wanted to shore things up by bringing in some more proven hit-makers. Immediate signed the Small Faces, and even started paying them royalties -- though that wouldn't last long, as Immediate went bankrupt in 1970 and its successors in interest stopped paying out. The first work the group did for the label was actually for a Chris Farlowe single. Lane and Marriott gave him their song "My Way of Giving", and played on the session along with Farlowe's backing band the Thunderbirds. Mick Jagger is the credited producer, but by all accounts Marriott and Lane did most of the work: [Excerpt: Chris Farlowe, "My Way of Giving"] Sadly, that didn't make the top forty. After working on that, they started on their first single recorded at Immediate. But because of contractual entanglements, "I Can't Make It" was recorded at Immediate but released by Decca. Because the band weren't particularly keen on promoting something on their old label, and the record was briefly banned by the BBC for being too sexual, it only made number twenty-six on the charts. Around this time, Marriott had become friendly with another band, who had named themselves The Little People in homage to the Small Faces, and particularly with their drummer Jerry Shirley. Marriott got them signed to Immediate, and produced and played on their first single, a version of his song "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?": [Excerpt: The Apostolic Intervention, "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?"] When they signed to Immediate, The Little People had to change their name, and Marriott suggested they call themselves The Nice, a phrase he liked. Oldham thought that was a stupid name, and gave the group the much more sensible name The Apostolic Intervention. And then a few weeks later he signed another group and changed *their* name to The Nice. "The Nice" was also a phrase used in the Small Faces' first single for Immediate proper. "Here Come the Nice" was inspired by a routine by the hipster comedian Lord Buckley, "The Nazz", which also gave a name to Todd Rundgren's band and inspired a line in David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust": [Excerpt: Lord Buckley, "The Nazz"] "Here Come the Nice" was very blatantly about a drug dealer, and somehow managed to reach number twelve despite that: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Here Come the Nice"] It also had another obstacle that stopped it doing as well as it might. A week before it came out, Decca released a single, "Patterns", from material they had in the vault. And in June 1967, two Small Faces albums came out. One of them was a collection from Decca of outtakes and demos, plus their non-album hit singles, titled From The Beginning, while the other was their first album on Immediate, which was titled Small Faces -- just like their first Decca album had been. To make matters worse, From The Beginning contained the group's demos of "My Way of Giving" and "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?", while the group's first Immediate album contained a new recording of "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?", and a version of "My Way of Giving" with the same backing track but a different vocal take from the one on the Decca collection. From this point on, the group's catalogue would be a complete mess, with an endless stream of compilations coming out, both from Decca and, after the group split, from Immediate, mixing tracks intended for release with demos and jam sessions with no regard for either their artistic intent or for what fans might want. Both albums charted, with Small Faces reaching number twelve and From The Beginning reaching number sixteen, neither doing as well as their first album had, despite the Immediate album, especially, being a much better record. This was partly because the Marriott/Lane partnership was becoming far more equal. Kenney Jones later said "During the Decca period most of the self-penned stuff was 99% Steve. It wasn't until Immediate that Ronnie became more involved. The first Immediate album is made up of 50% Steve's songs and 50% of Ronnie's. They didn't collaborate as much as people thought. In fact, when they did, they often ended up arguing and fighting." It's hard to know who did what on each song credited to the pair, but if we assume that each song's principal writer also sang lead -- we know that's not always the case, but it's a reasonable working assumption -- then Jones' fifty-fifty estimate seems about right. Of the fourteen songs on the album, McLagan sings one, which is also his own composition, "Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire". There's one instrumental, six with Marriott on solo lead vocals, four with Lane on solo lead vocals, and two duets, one with Lane as the main vocalist and one with Marriott. The fact that there was now a second songwriter taking an equal role in the band meant that they could now do an entire album of originals. It also meant that their next Marriott/Lane single was mostly a Lane song. "Itchycoo Park" started with a verse lyric from Lane -- "Over bridge of sighs/To rest my eyes in shades of green/Under dreaming spires/To Itchycoo Park, that's where I've been". The inspiration apparently came from Lane reading about the dreaming spires of Oxford, and contrasting it with the places he used to play as a child, full of stinging nettles. For a verse melody, they repeated a trick they'd used before -- the melody of "My Mind's Eye" had been borrowed in part from the Christmas carol "Gloria in Excelsis Deo", and here they took inspiration from the old hymn "God Be in My Head": [Excerpt: The Choir of King's College Cambridge, "God Be in My Head"] As Marriott told the story: "We were in Ireland and speeding our brains out writing this song. Ronnie had the first verse already written down but he had no melody line, so what we did was stick the verse to the melody line of 'God Be In My Head' with a few chord variations. We were going towards Dublin airport and I thought of the middle eight... We wrote the second verse collectively, and the chorus speaks for itself." [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Itchycoo Park"] Marriott took the lead vocal, even though it was mostly Lane's song, but Marriott did contribute to the writing, coming up with the middle eight. Lane didn't seem hugely impressed with Marriott's contribution, and later said "It wasn't me that came up with 'I feel inclined to blow my mind, get hung up, feed the ducks with a bun/They all come out to groove about, be nice and have fun in the sun'. That wasn't me, but the more poetic stuff was." But that part became the most memorable part of the record, not so much because of the writing or performance but because of the production. It was one of the first singles released using a phasing effect, developed by George Chkiantz (and I apologise if I'm pronouncing that name wrong), who was the assistant engineer for Glyn Johns on the album. I say it was one of the first, because at the time there was not a clear distinction between the techniques now known as phasing, flanging, and artificial double tracking, all of which have now diverged, but all of which initially came from the idea of shifting two copies of a recording slightly out of synch with each other. The phasing on "Itchycoo Park" , though, was far more extreme and used to far different effect than that on, say, Revolver: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Itchycoo Park"] It was effective enough that Jimi Hendrix, who was at the time working on Axis: Bold as Love, requested that Chkiantz come in and show his engineer how to get the same effect, which was then used on huge chunks of Hendrix's album. The BBC banned the record, because even the organisation which had missed that the Nice who "is always there when I need some speed" was a drug dealer was a little suspicious about whether "we'll get high" and "we'll touch the sky" might be drug references. The band claimed to be horrified at the thought, and explained that they were talking about swings. It's a song about a park, so if you play on the swings, you go high. What else could it mean? [Excerpt: The Small Faces, “Itchycoo Park”] No drug references there, I'm sure you'll agree. The song made number three, but the group ran into more difficulties with the BBC after an appearance on Top of the Pops. Marriott disliked the show's producer, and the way that he would go up to every act and pretend to think they had done a very good job, no matter what he actually thought, which Marriott thought of as hypocrisy rather than as politeness and professionalism. Marriott discovered that the producer was leaving the show, and so in the bar afterwards told him exactly what he thought of him, calling him a "two-faced", and then a four-letter word beginning with c which is generally considered the most offensive swear word there is. Unfortunately for Marriott, he'd been misinformed, the producer wasn't leaving the show, and the group were barred from it for a while. "Itchycoo Park" also made the top twenty in the US, thanks to a new distribution deal Immediate had, and plans were made for the group to tour America, but those plans had to be scrapped when Ian McLagan was arrested for possession of hashish, and instead the group toured France, with support from a group called the Herd: [Excerpt: The Herd, "From the Underworld"] Marriott became very friendly with the Herd's guitarist, Peter Frampton, and sympathised with Frampton's predicament when in the next year he was voted "face of '68" and developed a similar teenage following to the one the Small Faces had. The group's last single of 1967 was one of their best. "Tin Soldier" was inspired by the Hans Andersen story “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”, and was originally written for the singer P.P. Arnold, who Marriott was briefly dating around this time. But Arnold was *so* impressed with the song that Marriott decided to keep it for his own group, and Arnold was left just doing backing vocals on the track: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Tin Soldier"] It's hard to show the appeal of "Tin Soldier" in a short clip like those I use on this show, because so much of it is based on the use of dynamics, and the way the track rises and falls, but it's an extremely powerful track, and made the top ten. But it was after that that the band started falling apart, and also after that that they made the work generally considered their greatest album. As "Itchycoo Park" had made number one in Australia, the group were sent over there on tour to promote it, as support act for the Who. But the group hadn't been playing live much recently, and found it difficult to replicate their records on stage, as they were now so reliant on studio effects like phasing. The Australian audiences were uniformly hostile, and the contrast with the Who, who were at their peak as a live act at this point, couldn't have been greater. Marriott decided he had a solution. The band needed to get better live, so why not get Peter Frampton in as a fifth member? He was great on guitar and had stage presence, obviously that would fix their problems. But the other band members absolutely refused to get Frampton in. Marriott's confidence as a stage performer took a knock from which it never really recovered, and increasingly the band became a studio-only one. But the tour also put strain on the most important partnership in the band. Marriott and Lane had been the closest of friends and collaborators, but on the tour, both found a very different member of the Who to pal around with. Marriott became close to Keith Moon, and the two would get drunk and trash hotel rooms together. Lane, meanwhile, became very friendly with Pete Townshend, who introduced him to the work of the guru Meher Baba, who Townshend followed. Lane, too, became a follower, and the two would talk about religion and spirituality while their bandmates were destroying things. An attempt was made to heal the growing rifts though. Marriott, Lane, and McLagan all moved in together again like old times, but this time in a cottage -- something that became so common for bands around this time that the phrase "getting our heads together in the country" became a cliche in the music press. They started working on material for their new album. One of the tracks that they were working on was written by Marriott, and was inspired by how, before moving in to the country cottage, his neighbours had constantly complained about the volume of his music -- he'd been particularly annoyed that the pop singer Cilla Black, who lived in the same building and who he'd assumed would understand the pop star lifestyle, had complained more than anyone. It had started as as fairly serious blues song, but then Marriott had been confronted by the members of the group The Hollies, who wanted to know why Marriott always sang in a pseudo-American accent. Wasn't his own accent good enough? Was there something wrong with being from the East End of London? Well, no, Marriott decided, there wasn't, and so he decided to sing it in a Cockney accent. And so the song started to change, going from being an R&B song to being the kind of thing Cockneys could sing round a piano in a pub: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Lazy Sunday"] Marriott intended the song just as an album track for the album they were working on, but Andrew Oldham insisted on releasing it as a single, much to the band's disgust, and it went to number two on the charts, and along with "Itchycoo Park" meant that the group were now typecast as making playful, light-hearted music. The album they were working on, Ogden's Nut-Gone Flake, was eventually as known for its marketing as its music. In the Small Faces' long tradition of twisted religious references, like their songs based on hymns and their song "Here Come the Nice", which had taken inspiration from a routine about Jesus and made it about a drug dealer, the print ads for the album read: Small Faces Which were in the studios Hallowed be thy name Thy music come Thy songs be sung On this album as they came from your heads We give you this day our daily bread Give us thy album in a round cover as we give thee 37/9d Lead us into the record stores And deliver us Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake For nice is the music The sleeve and the story For ever and ever, Immediate The reason the ad mentioned a round cover is that the original pressings of the album were released in a circular cover, made to look like a tobacco tin, with the name of the brand of tobacco changed from Ogden's Nut-Brown Flake to Ogden's Nut-Gone Flake, a reference to how after smoking enough dope your nut, or head, would be gone. This made more sense to British listeners than to Americans, because not only was the slang on the label British, and not only was it a reference to a British tobacco brand, but American and British dope-smoking habits are very different. In America a joint is generally made by taking the dried leaves and flowers of the cannabis plant -- or "weed" -- and rolling them in a cigarette paper and smoking them. In the UK and much of Europe, though, the preferred form of cannabis is the resin, hashish, which is crumbled onto tobacco in a cigarette paper and smoked that way, so having rolling or pipe tobacco was a necessity for dope smokers in the UK in a way it wasn't in the US. Side one of Ogden's was made up of normal songs, but the second side mixed songs and narrative. Originally the group wanted to get Spike Milligan to do the narration, but when Milligan backed out they chose Professor Stanley Unwin, a comedian who was known for speaking in his own almost-English language, Unwinese: [Excerpt: Stanley Unwin, "The Populode of the Musicolly"] They gave Unwin a script, telling the story that linked side two of the album, in which Happiness Stan is shocked to discover that half the moon has disappeared and goes on a quest to find the missing half, aided by a giant fly who lets him sit on his back after Stan shares his shepherd's pie with the hungry fly. After a long quest they end up at the cave of Mad John the Hermit, who points out to them that nobody had stolen half the moon at all -- they'd been travelling so long that it was a full moon again, and everything was OK. Unwin took that script, and reworked it into Unwinese, and also added in a lot of the slang he heard the group use, like "cool it" and "what's been your hang-up?": [Excerpt: The Small Faces and Professor Stanley Unwin, "Mad John"] The album went to number one, and the group were justifiably proud, but it only exacerbated the problems with their live show. Other than an appearance on the TV show Colour Me Pop, where they were joined by Stanley Unwin to perform the whole of side two of the album with live vocals but miming to instrumental backing tracks, they only performed two songs from the album live, "Rollin' Over" and "Song of a Baker", otherwise sticking to the same live show Marriott was already embarrassed by. Marriott later said "We had spent an entire year in the studios, which was why our stage presentation had not been improved since the previous year. Meanwhile our recording experience had developed in leaps and bounds. We were all keenly interested in the technical possibilities, in the art of recording. We let down a lot of people who wanted to hear Ogden's played live. We were still sort of rough and ready, and in the end the audience became uninterested as far as our stage show was concerned. It was our own fault, because we would have sussed it all out if we had only used our brains. We could have taken Stanley Unwin on tour with us, maybe a string section as well, and it would have been okay. But we didn't do it, we stuck to the concept that had been successful for a long time, which is always the kiss of death." The group's next single would be the last released while they were together. Marriott regarded "The Universal" as possibly the best thing he'd written, and recorded it quickly when inspiration struck. The finished single is actually a home recording of Marriott in his garden, including the sounds of a dog barking and his wife coming home with the shopping, onto which the band later overdubbed percussion, horns, and electric guitars: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "The Universal"] Incidentally, it seems that the dog barking on that track may also be the dog barking on “Seamus” by Pink Floyd. "The Universal" confused listeners, and only made number sixteen on the charts, crushing Marriott, who thought it was the best thing he'd done. But the band were starting to splinter. McLagan isn't on "The Universal", having quit the band before it was recorded after a falling-out with Marriott. He rejoined, but discovered that in the meantime Marriott had brought in session player Nicky Hopkins to work on some tracks, which devastated him. Marriott became increasingly unconfident in his own writing, and the writing dried up. The group did start work on some new material, some of which, like "The Autumn Stone", is genuinely lovely: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "The Autumn Stone"] But by the time that was released, the group had already split up. The last recording they did together was as a backing group for Johnny Hallyday, the French rock star. A year earlier Hallyday had recorded a version of "My Way of Giving", under the title "Je N'Ai Jamais Rien Demandé": [Excerpt: Johnny Hallyday, "Je N'Ai Jamais Rien Demandé"] Now he got in touch with Glyn Johns to see if the Small Faces had any other material for him, and if they'd maybe back him on a few tracks on a new album. Johns and the Small Faces flew to France... as did Peter Frampton, who Marriott was still pushing to get into the band. They recorded three tracks for the album, with Frampton on extra guitar: [Excerpt: Johnny Hallyday, "Reclamation"] These tracks left Marriott more certain than ever that Frampton should be in the band, and the other three members even more certain that he shouldn't. Frampton joined the band on stage at a few shows on their next few gigs, but he was putting together his own band with Jerry Shirley from Apostolic Intervention. On New Year's Eve 1968, Marriott finally had enough. He stormed off stage mid-set, and quit the group. He phoned up Peter Frampton, who was hanging out with Glyn Johns listening to an album Johns had just produced by some of the session players who'd worked for Immediate. Side one had just finished when Marriott phoned. Could he join Frampton's new band? Frampton said of course he could, then put the phone down and listened to side two of Led Zeppelin's first record. The band Marriott and Frampton formed was called Humble Pie, and they were soon releasing stuff on Immediate. According to Oldham, "Tony Calder said to me one day 'Pick a straw'. Then he explained we had a choice. We could either go with the three Faces -- Kenney, Ronnie, and Mac -- wherever they were going to go with their lives, or we could follow Stevie. I didn't regard it as a choice. Neither did Tony. Marriott was our man". Marriott certainly seemed to agree that he was the real talent in the group. He and Lane had fairly recently bought some property together -- two houses on the same piece of land -- and with the group splitting up, Lane moved away and wanted to sell his share in the property to Marriott. Marriott wrote to him saying "You'll get nothing. This was bought with money from hits that I wrote, not that we wrote," and enclosing a PRS statement showing how much each Marriott/Lane
In this episode we invite esteemed author RJ Smith to tell us about his career, his adopted Los Angeles, and his new biography of Chuck Berry.We start in Detroit, where RJ was raised on a diet of AM radio, the Stooges and Creem magazine, then follow him to New York and his decade of writing for the Village Voice. He talks about the impact of Lester Bangs and Robert Christgau before explaining why he followed the Voice's executive editor Kit Rachlis to California and the L.A. Weekly. We hear how he became fascinated by the pre-rock history of African-American L.A. and how that led to the publication of The Great Black Way (2008). His fourth book, Chuck Berry: An American Life, gives us the opportunity to discuss the problematic brilliance of St. Louis's "Black bard of white teen angst", a half-century after the creepy novelty comedy of 'My Ding-a-Ling' gave the Black-rock pioneer a No. 1 hit on both sides of the Atlantic.We return to our L.A. theme to hear clips from a 1991 audio interview in which Tracy "Ice-T" Marrow talks to Andy Gill about the birth of gangsta rap and his thrash-metal side project Body Count. RJ recalls his own writing about West Coast hip hop before we say a sad goodbye to the great Wilko Johnson and hear the-then Dr. Feelgood guitarist speaking to Mick Gold in 1975.Mark quotes from some of the pieces he's added to the RBP library, including interviews with Long John Baldry and Olivia Newton-John, after which Jasper wraps matters up with remarks on articles about Deadmau5 and Asian Dub Foundation.Many thanks to special guest RJ Smith. Chuck Berry: An American Life is published by Omnibus in the UK and Hachette in the US and is available now from all good bookshops.Pieces discussed: Chuck Berry, Chuck Berrier, Chuck Berriest, Interview with RJ Smith, Charles Brown, N.W.A., Ice-T audio, Dr. Feelgood, Wilko Johnson, Rab Noakes, Long John Baldry, Free, Captain Beefheart, B. Bumble and the Stingers, Simon and Garfunkel, Olivia Newton-John, Deadmau5 and Asian Dub Foundation.
In this episode we invite esteemed author RJ Smith to tell us about his career, his adopted Los Angeles, and his new biography of Chuck Berry.We start in Detroit, where RJ was raised on a diet of AM radio, the Stooges and Creem magazine, then follow him to New York and his decade of writing for the Village Voice. He talks about the impact of Lester Bangs and Robert Christgau before explaining why he followed the Voice's executive editor Kit Rachlis to California and the L.A. Weekly. We hear how he became fascinated by the pre-rock history of African-American L.A. and how that led to the publication of The Great Black Way (2008). His fourth book, Chuck Berry: An American Life, gives us the opportunity to discuss the problematic brilliance of St. Louis's "Black bard of white teen angst", a half-century after the creepy novelty comedy of 'My Ding-a-Ling' gave the Black-rock pioneer a No. 1 hit on both sides of the Atlantic.We return to our L.A. theme to hear clips from a 1991 audio interview in which Tracy "Ice-T" Marrow talks to Andy Gill about the birth of gangsta rap and his thrash-metal side project Body Count. RJ recalls his own writing about West Coast hip hop before we say a sad goodbye to the great Wilko Johnson and hear the-then Dr. Feelgood guitarist speaking to Mick Gold in 1975.Mark quotes from some of the pieces he's added to the RBP library, including interviews with Long John Baldry and Olivia Newton-John, after which Jasper wraps matters up with remarks on articles about Deadmau5 and Asian Dub Foundation.Many thanks to special guest RJ Smith. Chuck Berry: An American Life is published by Omnibus in the UK and Hachette in the US and is available now from all good bookshops.Pieces discussed: Chuck Berry, Chuck Berrier, Chuck Berriest, Interview with RJ Smith, Charles Brown, N.W.A., Ice-T audio, Dr. Feelgood, Wilko Johnson, Rab Noakes, Long John Baldry, Free, Captain Beefheart, B. Bumble and the Stingers, Simon and Garfunkel, Olivia Newton-John, Deadmau5 and Asian Dub Foundation.
Nos rockeuses et rockers se dévoilent, ils se laissent lire comme un livre ouvert, ils nous révèlent ce qui se cache dans leur vie, ce qu'ils ont traversé. Ils partagent leur souvenir avec nous en musique ! Sur son album " Not Too Late ", Norah Jones revient sur cette période charnière, en 1999, où elle venait de quitter Dallas pour s'établir à New York dans un tout petit appartement (une little room) du fameux Greenwich Village. En tant que chanteur de Queen, Freddie Mercury n'aimait pas trop parler de lui, mais lorsqu'il lance sa carrière solo en 1985, il lève un peu le voile sur certains traits de sa personnalité. Ozzy Osbourne, en 1991, publie sur son album " No More Tears ", le très autobiographique " Road To Nowhere " dans laquelle il revient sur les moments " down " de sa vie : la drogue, l'alcool, les excès de rock star capricieuse aussi. 1975, " Someone Saved My Life Tonight "… Elton John et son fidèle parolier Bernie Taupin évoquent un " Sugar Bear ", petit surnom de leur ami et musicien Long John Baldry, Elton John, qui n'assume pas encore totalement son homosexualité, est sur le point de se marier avec Linda Woodrock, tout cela sonne faux et ses amis lui conseillent d'arrêter ce cirque… Deux semaines avant le mariage, Elton John annule tout ! --- Du lundi au vendredi, Fanny Gillard et Laurent Rieppi vous dévoilent l'univers rock, au travers de thèmes comme ceux de l'éducation, des rockers en prison, les objets de la culture rock, les groupes familiaux et leurs déboires, et bien d'autres, chaque matin dans Coffee on the Rocks à 6h30 et rediffusion à 13h30 dans Lunch Around The Clock.
The Dean Von Music Podcast Show Coming to you Live from Las Vegas, Nevada
The Dean Von Music Podcast Show Premiers Season #2 Episode #11 - Mick Clark played with some of Blues Legends of Rock & Roll like Roy Young, Jon Entwistle, Chuck, Billy Ocean, Jeff Beck, Deep Purple's Jon Lord, Long John Baldry, Tony Ashton, Hudson Ford Band, Wings Howie Casey, Foreigner's Dennis Elliott, The Les Humphries Singers, Davey Pattison, John Lawton and many others. Mick talks about the Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix, Kathi McDonald and many more. You don't want to miss this rare and once in a lifetime interview, Dean sits down with Mick Clarke and asks some very deep questions as to how Mick got started and who he played with during his music career. We are giving away a Music Download to the first 100 Subscribers of Youtube or Spotify and a FREE T-Shirt to the lucky winner of the Drawing November 1, 2022, GOOD LUCK! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/deanvonmusicpodcastshow/support
Liner Notes: Revealing Chats With Canada's Retro Music Makers
Jack Lavin is an accomplished, multi-talented producer, singer songwriter, bassist, harmonic player, guitarist, drummer and founding member of the Powder Blues Band. In this chat with Dan Hare, Jack talks about living in San Francisco in the late ‘60s and a commune in Oregon in the early ‘70s; why he moved to Vancouver and why he continues to live in Canada; the not-so-great experience of playing with Chuck Berry; his involvement in Prism's first album and why he was replaced; the birth of Powder Blues Band, where the band name came from and why the members sold records out of the back of a station wagon; hanging out with Long John Baldry and Jeff Healey; what he is doing now and so much more. Find out about Jack and his new album @ jacklavin.com
In the latest episode of Retrosonic Podcast, Steve from Retro Man Blog and Buddy Ascott of The Fallen Leaves are on location at the excellent Eel Pie Island Museum in Twickenham in the company of museum curator Michele Whitby and music historian Pete Watt. We discuss the rich musical heritage of what has become known as the Thames Delta and the birthplace of 60's British Beat and R'n'B, focusing on the legendary Eel Pie Island Hotel and some of the famous acts who played there. From it's opening night in 1956 and the Trad Jazz of Acker Bilk, Chris Barber and George Melly to the last show in 1970, the Hotel hosted gigs by many hugely influential bands and artists. There were shows by the leading importers of American Blues and R'n'B such as Alexis Corner, Long John Baldry and John Mayall, the originators Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker and of course, their young acolytes such as the Rolling Stones, The Artwoods and Downliners Sect. That's not to forget Soul acts like Jimmy Cliff and Geno Washington and even the later incarnation when the Hotel was transformed into Colonel Barefoot's Rock Garden and started putting on Heavy Rock and Psychedelic acts such as The Who, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Joe Cocker and Black Sabbath. One of the most fascinating aspects is discovering all the now legendary names who made early pre-fame and fortune appearances at the Eel Pie Hotel including David Bowie with The Manish Boys, Jeff Beck with The Tridents, Ian McLagan with The Muleskinners and Eel Pie audience regular, Rod 'The Mod' Stewart with Steampacket. Join us for this fascinating journey, not only around the Eel Pie Island Museum itself but on a magical trip through years of local music history. The episode is soundtracked by choice cuts from Downliners Sect, Rolling Stones, The Who, The Manish Boys, The Steampacket, Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames, The Artwoods, The Muleskinners and Geno Washington. For full track listing, photos from the museum, further info and links please check out the feature at Retro Man Blog at the link below:https://retroman65.blogspot.com/2022/09/retrosonic-podcast-eel-pie-island.html
De Britse bluesmuzikant Long John Baldry is Dood maar niet vergeten. Hij overleed op 21 juli 2005 in het General Hospital in Vancouver na een longontsteking. Hij was 64 jaar oud. Long John Baldry heet…Continue Reading "IM: Long John Baldry"
Today we welcome a musical legend to the show. Keyboardist Brian Auger is a musician steeped in the golden age of rock n roll. They say you can judge a man on the company he keeps and Brian Auger has worked with some of the greatest of all time. The Yardbirds, Rod Stewart, Julie Driscoll, Jimi Hendrix, Long John Baldry, Eric Burdon, Alphonse Mouson and a whole host of others. Through his band Brian Augers Oblivion Express he has shared a stage with everyone from Earth Wind and Fire to Led Zepplin and Frank Zappa. After over 50 years performing at the top level we are more than excited to talk to Brian about his Phonographic Memories. We also talk a little bit of politics, Joe Strummers politics in fact. Gregor Gall pops in to talk about his new book 'The Punk politics of Joe Strummer".But we kick off with the glorious news that Eamon has risen from the DJ ashes.Please like, subscribe and tell your friends about us. Deb has written a lovely article about Brian Auger for the Big Issue:https://www.bigissue.com/culture/music/the-legendary-brian-auger-has-a-goldmine-of-tracks-and-rock-anecdotes/You can buy Gregor Gall's book here:https://lighthousebookshop.com/events/the-punk-rock-politics-of-joe-strummerThe Black Wax Solution now lives at The Phoenix Bristol, 'We Climb Disco Mountain' is on the last Friday of every month.https://www.facebook.com/BlackwaxsolutionSee ya in about a month. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Liner Notes: Revealing Chats With Canada's Retro Music Makers
Tom Lavin is guitar, vocals, front man and founding member of the Legendary Powder Blues, the 1981 Juno award-winner for best new band. Over the course of his career, he has been a performer, writer, arranger, composer, publisher, manager, and educator. As a record producer, Tom has over a dozen gold, and platinum records for Powder Blues, Prism, April Wine, others.In this chat with host Dan Hare Tom talks about: why he moved to Canada from the U.S.-and why he was arrested the first time he returned; playing with Prism in the band's early days; putting together Powder Blues; building Blue Wave Studio; working with B.B. King and Long John Baldry among others; living in Hollywood; the song idea ZZ Top took from Tom; upcoming shows for Powder Blues, and much more. Find out about Tom and Powder Blues @ powderblues.net
Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool (Genesis Publications, 2021), brings together all of his finest work including a wealth of previously unseen photographs and treasured drawings. McCartney takes us from his very first photograph, taken with the family Kodak Brownie box camera, to experimenting with his Rollei Magic camera and finding a love in surrealism, through to capturing the Merseybeat scene in Liverpool. The venues that were at the heart of the city are all featured, including the Casbah Club, the Jacaranda Club, Hope Hall, the Tower Ballroom and the legendary Cavern Club. This signed, limited edition book reveals the secrets of the Sixties and Seventies Liverpool through McCartney's photography, illustrations, and commentary. In a commentary that is honest, revealing and often humorous, McCartney describes growing up in a post-war Liverpool and the cultural sensation that followed. McCartney shares his love of satire, poetry and music, and his experience of being there to photograph the talent that came out of Liverpool, including his own group, the Scaffold. From the Beatles to the Fourmost, and from the Roadrunners to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, McCartney captured the local bands as well as Liverpool's poets and artists, including Adrian Henri, Sam Walsh and Maurice Cockrill, RA. In Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool the incredible visiting acts that Liverpool welcomed are also celebrated, including Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and Long John Baldry. With each photograph, McCartney gives a fascinating insight into the history of the vibrant city. Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool (Genesis Publications, 2021), brings together all of his finest work including a wealth of previously unseen photographs and treasured drawings. McCartney takes us from his very first photograph, taken with the family Kodak Brownie box camera, to experimenting with his Rollei Magic camera and finding a love in surrealism, through to capturing the Merseybeat scene in Liverpool. The venues that were at the heart of the city are all featured, including the Casbah Club, the Jacaranda Club, Hope Hall, the Tower Ballroom and the legendary Cavern Club. This signed, limited edition book reveals the secrets of the Sixties and Seventies Liverpool through McCartney's photography, illustrations, and commentary. In a commentary that is honest, revealing and often humorous, McCartney describes growing up in a post-war Liverpool and the cultural sensation that followed. McCartney shares his love of satire, poetry and music, and his experience of being there to photograph the talent that came out of Liverpool, including his own group, the Scaffold. From the Beatles to the Fourmost, and from the Roadrunners to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, McCartney captured the local bands as well as Liverpool's poets and artists, including Adrian Henri, Sam Walsh and Maurice Cockrill, RA. In Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool the incredible visiting acts that Liverpool welcomed are also celebrated, including Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and Long John Baldry. With each photograph, McCartney gives a fascinating insight into the history of the vibrant city. Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool (Genesis Publications, 2021), brings together all of his finest work including a wealth of previously unseen photographs and treasured drawings. McCartney takes us from his very first photograph, taken with the family Kodak Brownie box camera, to experimenting with his Rollei Magic camera and finding a love in surrealism, through to capturing the Merseybeat scene in Liverpool. The venues that were at the heart of the city are all featured, including the Casbah Club, the Jacaranda Club, Hope Hall, the Tower Ballroom and the legendary Cavern Club. This signed, limited edition book reveals the secrets of the Sixties and Seventies Liverpool through McCartney's photography, illustrations, and commentary. In a commentary that is honest, revealing and often humorous, McCartney describes growing up in a post-war Liverpool and the cultural sensation that followed. McCartney shares his love of satire, poetry and music, and his experience of being there to photograph the talent that came out of Liverpool, including his own group, the Scaffold. From the Beatles to the Fourmost, and from the Roadrunners to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, McCartney captured the local bands as well as Liverpool's poets and artists, including Adrian Henri, Sam Walsh and Maurice Cockrill, RA. In Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool the incredible visiting acts that Liverpool welcomed are also celebrated, including Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and Long John Baldry. With each photograph, McCartney gives a fascinating insight into the history of the vibrant city. Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool (Genesis Publications, 2021), brings together all of his finest work including a wealth of previously unseen photographs and treasured drawings. McCartney takes us from his very first photograph, taken with the family Kodak Brownie box camera, to experimenting with his Rollei Magic camera and finding a love in surrealism, through to capturing the Merseybeat scene in Liverpool. The venues that were at the heart of the city are all featured, including the Casbah Club, the Jacaranda Club, Hope Hall, the Tower Ballroom and the legendary Cavern Club. This signed, limited edition book reveals the secrets of the Sixties and Seventies Liverpool through McCartney's photography, illustrations, and commentary. In a commentary that is honest, revealing and often humorous, McCartney describes growing up in a post-war Liverpool and the cultural sensation that followed. McCartney shares his love of satire, poetry and music, and his experience of being there to photograph the talent that came out of Liverpool, including his own group, the Scaffold. From the Beatles to the Fourmost, and from the Roadrunners to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, McCartney captured the local bands as well as Liverpool's poets and artists, including Adrian Henri, Sam Walsh and Maurice Cockrill, RA. In Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool the incredible visiting acts that Liverpool welcomed are also celebrated, including Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and Long John Baldry. With each photograph, McCartney gives a fascinating insight into the history of the vibrant city. Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture
Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool (Genesis Publications, 2021), brings together all of his finest work including a wealth of previously unseen photographs and treasured drawings. McCartney takes us from his very first photograph, taken with the family Kodak Brownie box camera, to experimenting with his Rollei Magic camera and finding a love in surrealism, through to capturing the Merseybeat scene in Liverpool. The venues that were at the heart of the city are all featured, including the Casbah Club, the Jacaranda Club, Hope Hall, the Tower Ballroom and the legendary Cavern Club. This signed, limited edition book reveals the secrets of the Sixties and Seventies Liverpool through McCartney's photography, illustrations, and commentary. In a commentary that is honest, revealing and often humorous, McCartney describes growing up in a post-war Liverpool and the cultural sensation that followed. McCartney shares his love of satire, poetry and music, and his experience of being there to photograph the talent that came out of Liverpool, including his own group, the Scaffold. From the Beatles to the Fourmost, and from the Roadrunners to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, McCartney captured the local bands as well as Liverpool's poets and artists, including Adrian Henri, Sam Walsh and Maurice Cockrill, RA. In Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool the incredible visiting acts that Liverpool welcomed are also celebrated, including Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and Long John Baldry. With each photograph, McCartney gives a fascinating insight into the history of the vibrant city. Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies
| Artist | Title | Album Name | Album Copyright | Half Deaf Clatch | Pea Vine Blues | A Tribute To Charley Patton | The Blues Against Youth | Goin' To Chicago | As The Tide Gets High And Low | Gov't Mule | If Heartaches Were Nickels | Heavy Load Blues | | Richard Grosso | Nadine | The Road and the Ring | The Cinelli Brothers | Choo Ma Gum | Villa Jukejoint | | Matt Backer | I Wish You Would Ft Sarah Jane Morris | BACKERNALIA | | Prakash Slim | Blues Raga | Country Blues From Nepal | Andy Lindquist | That Old Crow | My Name Is Mud | | Floyd Dixon | Let's Dance | Gems From The Peacock Vaults | Chickenbone Slim | Wild Eyed Woman | Serve It To Me Hot | | Brian Auger | Up Above My Head feat. Long John Baldry & Rod Stewart & The Ste | Auger Incorporated | | Chuck Berry | Johnny B. Goode | Chuck Berry | | Tornadoes w Billy Fury | That's Alright Mama | John, Paul, George, Dave, Brian, Tony & More; The Birth of the | Albert Collins | My Woman Has A Black Cat Bone.wav | Live 1992-1993 |
In this episode, we chat about another Long John Baldry album, self titled called Long John Baldry, an epic Pink Floyd album called The Wall and a pleasant surprise of an album by an artist called Lene Lovich called Stateless. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/reviewsfromthecrawlspace/message
Author and podcaster Paul Myers wanted to be a rock star, not a journalist and storyteller. But his career has taken him to some amazing places. He's written books about Long John Baldry, Todd Rundgren, the Barenaked Ladies, and The Kids in the Hall. He's interviewed Elton John, and spent time in Alcatraz with Stevie Nicks. He's working on a new book about comedian John Candy. And he's the host of the fascinating Record Store Day podcast. In this episode of Digging Deep, we learn about Paul's creative family, where his love of music began, and delve into the connection between music and memory. He also talks about luck, taking chances, and embracing change. Paul speaks candidly about his relationship with alcohol, and how a question from his wife more than 20 years ago put him on the path to sobriety. And, he tells the story of how an interview with the legendary Randy Bachman ended up with Paul joining him on stage for a concert and even getting an invitation to his wedding. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It was wonderful to sit down at last with multi-BMI Award-winning composer, conducted, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist, Bennett Salvay. Scheduled to join me on March 11th, 2020, I chickened as he and wingman, Pete George, had very r4ecnt;y flown (and boy were their arms tired), and the COVID threat was ever-growing. Two days later we were in lockdown. Here, 19 months later we be. Some things, and people, are worth waiting for. Bennett was working on the Linda Ronstadt doc, Linda and The Mockingbirds, with Jackson Browne, a follow-up doc to Linda Ronstadt: The Sound Of My Voice, which Bennett scored, which won the Critics Choice award for Best Music Documentary of 2019, when the crazy hit. We talked about the projects Bennett's completed during the pandemic, including a new feature, Bonded as well as various and sundry other projects. What makes it all so stunning is that he's doing all this, as well as playing, keys and golf, fishing, all after a nearly fatal accident which affected... well, no spoilers. Please watch. Bennett's resilience, courage, and gratitude saved the man, the music, the links, but has cost some fish their lives. And, is inspiration almost beyond compare. Playing keys, sax, and flute, Bennett began playing in his teens, his first professional gig was with Long John Baldry. he had a hit with Bang Bang but it was working for Garry Marshall that turned out to be the Game Changer. At 21, Bennett was hired as a PA (translation:: gofer) for Garry Marshall's shows. Within months he was the music coordinator for Mork And MIndy, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, where he segued to composer. He jammed with Robin Williams, arranged a singing Anson Williams, and Lenny and the Squidtones, where as fate would have it he would meet guitarist, one day to become a close friend, and an Emmy-Winning composer hisself, Snuffy Walden, who, after a string of smash hit sitcoms, including Full House, and Perfect Strangers, moved Bennett into hour-long drama with their collaborations on Friday Night Lights, Providence, and Early Edition to name but three. There were films to score, the Jeepers Creepers series, #1 at the box office, The Wolf of Wall Street, five James Keach docs to date, as well working with The Brian Setzer Orchestra, Rob Zombie, Motley Crue, and continues to work extensively with Cheap Trick. Bennett Salvay has stories to spare, perseverance to admire, and talent out the wazoo. I'll be thinking twice about complaining and whimping out on anything, any time soon. Bennett Salvay Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson Wed, 10/20/21/, 5 pm PT, 8 pm ET Streamed Live on my Facebook Replay here https://bit.ly/3nceg9u All BROADcasts, as podcasts, also available on iTunes apple.co/2dj8ld3 Stitcher bit.ly/2h3R1fla tunein bit.ly/2gGeItj Also on iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Voox, OwlTail, Backtracks, PlayerFM, Himalaya, Podchaser, and Listen Notes Thanks to Rick Smolke of Quik Impressions, the best printers, printing, the best people people-ing. quikimpressions.com Nicole Venables of Ruby Begonia Hair Studio Beauty and Products, for tresses like the stars she coifs, and regular people, like me. I love my hair, and I love Nicole. http://www.rubybegoniahairstudio.com/ Blue Microphones and Kevin Walt
Liner Notes: Revealing Chats With Canada's Retro Music Makers
Professional musician/saxophonist Johnny Ferreira has a long association of recording and touring with Colin James and Long John Baldry and has written several courses and books on how to play a saxophone. He has also toured with such heavyweights as The Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, Robert Plant and others. In this chat with Dan Hare Johnny shares: why he started playing sax in high school; how he connected with Colin James; the expenses of touring; what he sacrificed along the way, and what he is doing now.
One FM presenter Josh Revens and Steve present 'Whatever Happened To?' This week's topic is singer Long John Baldry. This program originally aired on Monday the 9th of August, 2021. Contact the station on admin@fm985.com.au or (+613) 58313131 The ONE FM 98.5 Community Radio podcast page operates under the license of Goulburn Valley Community Radio Inc. (ONE FM) Number 1385226/1. PRA AMCOS (Australasian Performing Right Association Limited and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society) that covers Simulcasting and Online content including podcasts with musical content, that we pay every year. This licence number is 1385226/1.
Urodzeni: Cat Stevens / Yusuf Islam, Eric Bazilian (Hooters), Tommy Shaw (Styx), Charlotte Gainsbourg, “The Diary of Horace Wimp”, Ania Wyszkoni (foto).Zmarli: Jerry Goldsmith, Long John Baldry, Wojciech Przybylski.Nagranie z roku 2021.
Who plays Rage, QOTSA, Snoop Dogg, alongside Fleetwood Mac, The Cars, Howlin' Wolf and Long John Baldry? Woods does. The podcast about music, untethered by genre or era. Everyone this time is 6' 1" or taller, except for one. Support the Show: https://www.jeffwoodsradio.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Paul Myers is an author (books about The Kids in the Hall, Long John Baldry, Todd Rundgren, and Barenaked Ladies), a musician (The Gravelberrys, Flam!, and The Paul and John), a podcaster (The Record Store Day Podcast), and more. Part of that "more" includes being a big They Might Be Giants fan, which is why Paul joined cohosts John Walker and Jon Uleis for this special episode. So pull the blanket over your withered legs, get comfy, and train your ears on a discussion about the longterm appeal of this singular band, using Paul's song picks as a guide. Did we mention you should e-mail us? No? Well you should. (9secreteps@gmail.com)
Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday Dizzy Gillespie, Rod Stewart, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Eric Clapton, the Moody Blues, Mick Fleetwood, Pink Floyd, Georgie Fame, Ginger Baker, Long John Baldry, the Small Faces … the roll call of those who played in the Soho basement called The Flamingo is a who's who of 50s and 60s cool. Journalist and author Pete Watts takes us on a trip through time and down the stairs of 33 Wardour Street to hear stories of one of London's most important lost and legendary venues. We hear how the Flamingo was hugely influential on up and coming musical stars of the 60s like Pete Townsend and The Rolling Stones, how it played an influential roll in the history of black music in the city and how you can perhaps still catch its spirit in the gents' loos of the Irish theme pub that now occupies the site.. For more on Pete Watts: the great wen For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture www.bureauoflostculture.com
Liner Notes: Revealing Chats With Canada's Retro Music Makers
Al Harlow is an icon of the Vancouver music scene and member of the iconic Canadian band Prism. In this chat Al shares with host Dan Hare: his exposure to the late sixties musicians; memories of first human be-in in Vancouver; living in England and being mentored by Long John Baldry; Bryan Adams writing contribution to Prism; touring with Meatloaf; his special friendship with Prism lead singer, the late Ron Tabak; tales from his upcoming book and so much more on the business of music.
Episode 123 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", the Righteous Brothers, Shindig! and "blue-eyed soul". 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 "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum I say the music in the bridge drops down to “just the bass”. Obviously there is also a celeste on that section. Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of Righteous Brothers songs. A lot of resources were used for this episode. Time of My Life: A Righteous Brother's Memoir is Bill Medley's autobiography. Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson is a good overview of the Brill Building scene, and I used it for bits about how Mann and Weil wrote their songs. I've referred to two biographies of Spector in this episode, Phil Spector: Out of His Head by Richard Williams and He's a Rebel by Mark Ribkowsky. This two-CD set contains all of the Righteous Brothers recordings excerpted here, all their hits, and a selection of Medley and Hatfield's solo work. It would be an absolutely definitive set, except for the Spector-era tracks being in stereo. There are many compilations available with some of the hits Spector produced, but I recommend getting Back to Mono, a four-CD overview of his career containing all the major singles put out by Philles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to look at a record that according to BMI is the most-played song of the twentieth century on American radio, and continued to be the most played song for the first two decades of the twenty-first as well, a record that was arguably the artistic highpoint of Phil Spector's career, and certainly the commercial highpoint for everyone involved. We're going to look at "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" by the Righteous Brothers: [Excerpt: The Righteous Brothers, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"] In this episode we're going to take one of our first looks at an American act who owed their success to TV. We've seen these before, of course -- we've talked in passing about Ricky Nelson, and there was an episode on Chubby Checker -- but there have been relatively few. But as we pass into the mid-sixties, and television becomes an even more important part of the culture, we'll see more of this. In 1964, ABC TV had a problem. Two years before, they'd started a prime-time folk TV show called Hootenanny: [Excerpt: Jack Linkletter introducing Hootenanny] That programme was the source of some controversy -- it blacklisted Pete Seeger and a few other Communist folk musicians, and while Seeger himself argued against a boycott, other musicians were enraged, in part because the term Hootenanny had been popularised by Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and other Communist musicians. As a result, several of the top names in the folk scene, like Joan Baez and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, refused to appear on the show. But plenty of performers did appear on the show, usually those at the poppier end of the spectrum, like the New Christie Minstrels: [Excerpt: The New Christie Minstrels, "This Train (live on Hootenanny)"] That lineup of the New Christie Minstrels featured, among others, Barry McGuire, Gene Clark, and Larry Ramos, all of whom we should be seeing in future episodes. But that in itself says something about the programme's problems, because in 1964, the music industry changed drastically. Suddenly, folk music was out, and rock music was in. Half the younger musicians who appeared on Hootenanny -- like those three, but also John Sebastian, John Phillips, Cass Elliot, and others -- all decided they were going to give up singing mass harmony versions of "Go Tell it on the Mountain" accompanied by banjo, and instead they were going to get themselves some electric guitars. And the audience, likewise, decided that they'd rather see the Beatles and the Stones and the Dave Clark Five than the New Christie Minstrels, the Limeliters, and the Chad Mitchell Trio, if that was all the same to the TV companies. And so ABC needed a new prime-time music variety show, and they needed it in a hurry. But there was a problem -- when the music industry is shifting dramatically and all of a sudden it's revolving around a style of music that is based on a whole other continent, what do you do to make a TV show featuring that music? Well, you turn to Jack Good, of course. For those of you who haven't listened to all the earlier episodes, Jack Good had basically invented rock and roll TV, and he'd invented it in the UK, at a time when rock and roll was basically a US-only genre. Good had produced a whole string of shows -- Six-Five Special, Oh Boy!, Boy Meets Girls, and Wham! -- which had created a set of television conventions for the presentation of rock and roll, and had managed to get an audience by using a whole host of British unknowns, with the very occasional guest appearance by a visiting American rocker. In 1962, he'd moved to the US, and had put together a pilot episode of a show called "Young America Swings the World", financed with his own money. That programme had been on the same lines as his UK shows, and had featured a bunch of then-unknowns, like Jackie DeShannon. It had also featured a band led by Leon Russell and containing Glen Campbell and David Gates, none of whom were famous at the time, and a young singer named P.J. Proby, who was introduced to Good by DeShannon and her songwriting partner Sharon Sheeley, whose demos he worked on. We talked a bit about Proby back in the episode on "LSD-25" if you want to go back and listen to the background on that. Sheeley, of course, had known Good when he worked with her boyfriend Eddie Cochran a few years earlier. "Young America Swings the World" didn't sell, and in 1964, Good returned to England to produce a TV special for the Beatles, "Around the Beatles", which also featured Millie singing "My Boy Lollipop", Cilla Black, Sounds Incorporated, the Vernons Girls, and Long John Baldry singing a Muddy Waters song with the Beatles shouting the backing vocals from the audience: [Excerpt: Long John Baldry, "Got My Mojo Working"] The show also featured Proby, who Good had brought over from the US and who here got his first TV exposure, singing a song Rufus Thomas had recorded for Stax: [Excerpt: P.J. Proby, "Walking the Dog"] Around the Beatles obviously sold to the US, and ABC, who bought it, were suddenly interested in Jack Good's old pilot, too. They asked him to produce two more pilots for a show which was eventually named Shindig! Incidentally, I've seen many people, including some on the production staff, say that the first episode of Shindig! was an episode of Ready Steady Go! with the titles changed. It wasn't. The confusion seems to arise because early in Shindig's run, Around the Beatles was also broadcast by ABC, and when Dave Clark later bought the rights to Around The Beatles and Ready Steady Go!, he released a chunk of Around the Beatles on VHS as a Ready Steady Go special, even though it was made by a totally different production team. Good got together with Sharon Sheeley and her husband, the DJ Jimmy O'Neill, and they started collaborating on the pilots for the show, which eventually credited the three of them as co-creators and producers. The second pilot went in a very different direction -- it was a country music programme, hosted by Roy Clark, who would later become a household name for co-hosting Hee-Haw, and featuring Johnny Cash, along with PJ Proby doing a couple of cover versions of old folk songs that Lonnie Donegan had made famous -- "Rock Island Line" and "Cumberland Gap". But for the third pilot, Good, Sheeley, and O'Neill went back to the old Oh Boy! formula -- they got a couple of properly famous big guest stars, in this case Little Richard and the Angels, who had had a number one the previous year with "My Boyfriend's Back", and a rotating cast of about a dozen unknown or little-known musical acts, all local, who they could fill the show with. The show opened with a medley with all or most of the cast participating: [Excerpt: Shindig Pilot 3 Opening Medley] And then each artist would perform individually, surrounded by a dancing audience, with minimal or no introductions, in a quick-paced show that was a revelation to American audiences used to the polite pacing of American Bandstand. For the most part, they performed cover versions -- on that pilot, even the Angels, rather than doing their own recentish number one record, sang a cover version of "Chapel of Love" -- and in a sign of the British influence, the pilot also featured what may be the first ska performance by an American group -- although they seem to think that "the ska" is a dance, rather than ska being a style of music: [Excerpt: the Hollywood All-Stars, "Jamaica Ska", plus Jimmy O'Neill intro] That show featured Delaney Bramlett, who would later go on to become a fairly well-known and important performer, and the Blossoms, who we've talked about previously. Both of those would become regular parts of the Shindig cast, as would Leon Russell, Bobby Sherman, Jackie and Gayle, Donna Loren, and Glen Campbell. That pilot led to the first broadcast episode, where the two main star acts were Sam Cooke, who sang a non-waltz version of "The Tennessee Waltz" and "Blowin' in the Wind", both from his cabaret act, and the Everly Brothers -- who as well as doing their own songs performed with Cooke at the end of the show in a recording which I only wish wasn't so covered with audience screams, though who can blame the audience? [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Everly Brothers, "Lucille"] Shindig was the first prime-time pop music show in the US, and became massively popular -- so much so that it quickly spawned a rival show on NBC, Hullabaloo. In a sign of just how much transatlantic back-and-forth there was at this time, and possibly just to annoy future researchers, NBC's Hullabaloo took its name, though nothing else, from a British TV show of the same name. That British TV show was made by ABC, which is not the same company as American ABC, and was a folk and blues show clearly patterned after Hootenanny, the show Shindig had replaced on American ABC. (And as a quick aside, if you're at all interested in the early sixties British folk and blues movements, I can't recommend Network's double-DVD set of the British Hullabaloo highly enough). Shindig! remained on air for two years, but the show's quality declined markedly after Jack Good left the show a year or so in, and it was eventually replaced on ABC's schedules by Batman, which appealed to largely the same audience. But all that was in the future. Getting back to the first broadcast episode, the Everlys also appeared in the opening medley, where they sang an old Sister Rosetta Tharpe song with Jackie and Gayle and another unknown act who had appeared in the pilot -- The Righteous Brothers: [Excerpt: Jackie and Gayle, The Righteous Brothers, and the Everly Brothers, "Gonna Build a Mountain/Up Above My Head"] The Righteous Brothers would appear on nine out of sixteen episodes broadcast between September and December 1964, and a further seventeen episodes during 1965 -- by which time they'd become the big breakout stars of the show, and had recorded the song that would become the most-played song, *ever*, on American radio, beating out such comparatively unpopular contenders as "Never My Love", "Yesterday", "Stand By Me" and "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You", a record that was played so much that in thirty-six years it had clocked up forty-five years of continuous airtime. The Righteous Brothers were a Californian vocal duo consisting of baritone Bill Medley and tenor Bobby Hatfield. Medley's career in the music business had started when he was nineteen, when he'd just decided to go to the office of the Diamonds, the white vocal group we mentioned in passing in the episode on "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" who much like the Crew Cuts had had hits by covering records by Black artists: [Excerpt: The Diamonds, "Little Darlin'"] Young Bill Medley fancied himself as a songwriter, and he brought the Diamonds a few of his songs, and they ended up recording two of them -- "Chimes of My Heart", which remained unreleased until a later compilation, and "Woomai-Ling", which was the B-side to a flop single: [Excerpt: The Diamonds, "Woomai-Ling"] But Medley was inspired enough by his brief brush with success that he decided to go into music properly. He formed a band called the Paramours, which eventually gained a second singer, Bobby Hatfield, and he and Hatfield also started performing as a duo, mostly performing songs by Black R&B artists they grew up listening to on Hunter Hancock's radio show. While Medley doesn't say this directly in his autobiography, it seems likely that the duo's act was based specifically on one particular Black act -- Don and Dewey. We've mentioned Don and Dewey before, and I did a Patreon episode on them, but for those who don't remember their brief mentions, Don "Sugarcane" Harris and Dewey Terry were an R&B duo signed to Specialty Records, and were basically their second attempt at producing another Little Richard, after Larry Williams. They were even less successful than Williams was, and had no hits themselves, but they wrote and recorded many songs that would become hits for others, like "Farmer John", which became a garage-band staple, and "I'm Leaving it Up to You", which was a hit for Donny and Marie Osmond. While they never had any breakout success, they were hugely popular among R&B lovers on the West Coast, and two of their other singles were "Justine": [Excerpt: Don and Dewey, "Justine"] And "Ko Ko Joe", which was one of their few singles written by someone else -- in this case by Sonny Bono, who was at that time working for Specialty: [Excerpt: Don and Dewey, "Ko Ko Joe"] Hatfield and Medley would record both those songs in their early months working together, and would also perform them on Shindig! The duo were different in many ways -- Medley was tall and Hatfield comparatively short, Medley sang in a deep bass-baritone and Hatfield in a high tenor, and Hatfield was gregarious, outgoing, and funny while Medley was self-effacing and shy. The duo would often perform comedy routines on stage, patterned after Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and Hatfield was always the comedian while Medley was the straight man. But on the other hand, Hatfield was actually quite uncomfortable with any level of success -- he just wanted to coast through life and had no real ambition, while Medley was fiercely driven and wanted to become huge. But they both loved R&B music, and in many ways had similar attitudes to the British musicians who, unknown to them at the time, were trying to play R&B in the UK. They were white kids who loved Black music, and desperately wanted to do justice to it. Orange County, where Medley and Hatfield lived, was at the time one of the whitest places in America, and they didn't really have much competition on the local scene from authentic R&B bands. But there *was* a Marine base in the area, with a large number of Black Marines, who wanted to hear R&B music when they went out. Medley and Hatfield quickly became very popular with these audiences, who would address them as "brother", and called their music "righteous" -- and so, looking for a name for their duo act, they became The Righteous Brothers. Their first single, on a tiny local label, was a song written by Medley, "Little Latin Lupe Lou": [Excerpt: The Righteous Brothers, "Little Latin Lupe Lou"] That wasn't a success to start with, but picked up after the duo took a gig at the Rendezvous Ballroom, the surf-rock venue where Dick Dale had built his reputation. It turned out that "Little Latin Lupe Lou" was a perfect song to dance the Surfer's Stomp to, and the song caught on locally, making the top five in LA markets, and the top fifty nationally. It became a standard part of every garage band's repertoire, and was covered several times with moderate success, most notably by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, whose cover version made the top twenty in 1966: [Excerpt: Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, "Little Latin Lupe Lou"] The Righteous Brothers became *the* act that musicians in Southern California wanted to see, even though they were very far from being huge -- Elvis, for example, would insist on his friends coming to see the duo when he was in LA filming, even though at the time they were playing at bowling alleys rather than the more glamorous venues his friends would rather visit. Georgie Woods, a Black DJ in Philadelphia who enjoyed their music but normally played Black records coined a term to describe them -- "blue-eyed soul" -- as a way of signalling to his listeners that they were white but he was going to play them anyway. The duo used that as the title of their second album, and it soon became a generic term for white people who were influenced by Black music -- much to Medley's annoyance. As he put it later "It kind of bothers me when other singers call themselves “blue-eyed soul” because we didn't give ourselves that name. Black people named us that, and you don't just walk around giving yourself that title." This will, of course, be something that comes up over and over again in this history -- the question of how much it's cultural appropriation for white people to perform in musical styles created by Black people, and to what extent it's possible for that to be given a pass when the white musicians in question are embraced by Black musicians and audiences. I have to say that *to me*, Medley's attempts to justify the duo's use of Black styles by pointing out how much Black people liked their music don't ring *entirely* true, but that at the same time, I do think there's a qualitative difference between the early Righteous Brothers singles and later blue-eyed soul performers like Michael Bolton or Simply Red, and a difference between a white act embraced by Black audiences and one that is mostly appealing to other white people. This is something we're going to have to explore a lot more over the course of the series, and my statements about what other people thought about this at the time should not be taken as me entirely agreeing with them -- and indeed it shouldn't be taken as me agreeing with *myself*. My own thoughts on this are very contradictory, and change constantly. While "Little Latin Lupe Lou" was a minor hit and established them as locally important, none of their next few singles did anything at all, and nor did a solo single that Bobby Hatfield released around this time: [Excerpt: Bobby Hatfield, "Hot Tamales"] But the duo picked up enough of a following as a live act that they were picked for Shindig! -- and as an opening act on the Beatles' first US tour, which finished the same week that Shindig! started broadcasting. It turned out that even though the duo's records hadn't had any success, the Beatles, who loved to seek out obscure R&B records, had heard them and liked them, and George Harrison was particularly interested in learning from Barry Rillera, the guitarist who played with them, some of the guitar techniques he'd used. Shindig! took the duo to stardom, even though they'd not yet had a hit. They'd appear most weeks, usually backed by a house band that included Delaney Bramlett, James Burton, Russ Titelman, Larry Knechtel, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Ray Pohlman, Glenn Hardin, and many other of the finest studio musicians in LA -- most, though not all, of them also part of the Wrecking Crew. They remained favourites of people who knew music, even though they were appearing on this teen-pop show -- Elvis would apparently regularly phone the TV company with requests for them to sing a favourite song of his on the next week's show, and the TV company would arrange it, in the hopes of eventually getting Elvis on the show, though he never made an appearance. Medley had a certain level of snobbery towards white pop music, even after being on that Beatles tour, but it started to soften a bit after the duo started to appear on Shindig! and especially after meeting the Beach Boys on Shindig's Christmas episode, which also featured Marvin Gaye and Adam Faith. Medley had been unimpressed with the Beach Boys' early singles, but Brian Wilson was a fan of the Righteous Brothers, and asked Medley to accompany him into the men's toilets at the ABC studios -- not for any of the reasons one might imagine, but because the acoustics in the room were so good that the studio had actually installed a piano in there. There, Wilson asked Medley to listen to his group singing their version of "The Lord's Prayer": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "The Lord's Prayer"] Medley was blown away by the group's tight harmonies, and instantly gained a new respect for Wilson as an arranger and musician. The two became lifelong friends, and as they would often work in adjoining rooms in the same studio complex, they would often call on each other to help solve a musical problem. And the reason they would work in the same studios is because Brian Wilson was a huge admirer of Phil Spector, and those were the studios Spector used, so Wilson had to use them as well. And Phil Spector had just leased the last two years of the Righteous Brothers' contract from Moonglow Records, the tiny label they'd been on to that point. Spector, at this point, was desperate to try something different -- the new wave of British acts that had come over were swamping the charts, and he wasn't having hits like he had been a few months earlier. The Righteous Brothers were his attempt to compromise somewhat with that -- they were associated with the Beatles, after all, and they were big TV stars. They were white men, like all the new pop stars, rather than being the Black women he'd otherwise always produced for his own label, but they had a Black enough sound that he wasn't completely moving away from the vocal sound he'd always used. Medley, in particular, was uneasy about working with Spector -- he wanted to be an R&B singer, not a pop star. But on the other hand, Spector made hits, and who didn't want a hit? For the duo's first single on Philles, Spector flew Mann and Weil out from New York to LA to work with him on the song. Mann and Weil took their inspiration from a new hit record that Holland-Dozier-Holland had produced for a group that had recently signed to Motown, the Four Tops: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Baby I Need Your Loving"] Mann and Weil took that feeling, and came up with a verse and chorus, with a great opening line, "You never close your eyes any more when I kiss your lips". They weren't entirely happy with the chorus lyric though, considering it a placeholder that they needed to rewrite. But when they played it for Spector, he insisted that "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" was a perfect title, and shouldn't be changed. Spector added a long bridge, based around a three-chord riff using the "La Bamba" chords, and the song was done. Spector spent an inordinate amount of time getting the backing track done -- Earl Palmer has said that he took two days to get one eight-bar section recorded, because he couldn't communicate exactly how he wanted the musicians to play it. This is possibly partly because Spector's usual arranger, Jack Nitzsche, had had a temporary falling out with him, and Spector was working with Gene Page, who did a very good job at copying Nitzsche's style but was possibly not as completely in tune with Spector's wishes. When Spector and Mann played the song to the Righteous Brothers, Bill Medley thought that the song, sung in Spector and Mann's wispy high voices, sounded more suitable for the Everly Brothers than for him and Hatfield, but Spector insisted it would work. Of course, it's now impossible to think of the song without hearing Medley's rich, deep, voice: [Excerpt: The Righteous Brothers, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"] When Mann first heard that, he thought Spector must have put the record on at the wrong speed, Medley's voice was so deep. Bobby Hatfield was also unimpressed -- the Righteous Brothers were a duo, yet Medley was singing the verses on his own. "What am I supposed to do while the big guy's singing?" he asked. Spector's response, "go to the bank!" But while Medley is the featured singer during Mann and Weil's part of the song, Hatfield gets his own chance to shine, in the bridge that Spector added, which for me makes the record -- it's one of the great examples of the use of dynamics in a pop record, as after the bombast of the chorus the music drops down to just a bass, then slowly builds in emotional intensity as Medley and Hatfield trade off phrases: [Excerpt: The Righteous Brothers, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"] The record was released in December 1964, and even though the Righteous Brothers didn't even perform it on Shindig! until it had already risen up the charts, it made number one on the pop charts and number two on the R&B charts, and became the fifth biggest hit of 1965 in the US. In the UK, it looked like it wasn't going to be a hit at all. Cilla Black, a Liverpudlian singer who was managed by Brian Epstein and produced by George Martin, rushed out a cover version, which charted first: [Excerpt: Cilla Black, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"] On their second week on the charts, Black was at number twelve, and the Righteous Brothers at number twenty. At this point, Andrew Oldham, the Rolling Stones' manager and a huge fan of Spector's work, actually took out an ad in Melody Maker, even though he had no financial interest in the record (though it could be argued that he did have an interest in seeing his rival Brian Epstein taken down a peg), saying: "This advert is not for commercial gain, it is taken as something that must be said about the great new PHIL SPECTOR Record, THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS singing ‘YOU'VE LOST THAT LOVIN' FEELING'. Already in the American Top Ten, this is Spector's greatest production, the last word in Tomorrow's sound Today, exposing the overall mediocrity of the Music Industry. Signed Andrew Oldham P.S. See them on this week's READY, STEADY, GO!" The next week, Cilla Black was at number two, and the Righteous Brothers at number three. The week after, the Righteous Brothers were at number one, while Black's record had dropped down to number five. The original became the only single ever to reenter the UK top ten twice, going back into the charts in both 1969 and 1990. But Spector wasn't happy, at all, with the record's success, for the simple reason that it was being credited as a Righteous Brothers record rather than as a Phil Spector record. Where normally he worked with Black women, who were so disregarded as artists that he could put records by the Ronettes or the Blossoms out as Crystals records and nobody seemed to care, here he was working with two white men, and they were starting to get some of the credit that Spector thought was due only him. Spector started to manipulate the two men. He started with Medley, who after all had been the lead singer on their big hit. He met up with Medley, and told him that he thought Bobby Hatfield was dead weight. Who needed a second Righteous Brother? Bill Medley should go solo, and Spector should produce him as a solo artist. Medley realised what was happening -- the Righteous Brothers were a brand, and Spector was trying to sabotage that brand. He turned Spector down. The next single was originally intended to be a song that Mann and Weil were working on, called "Soul and Inspiration", but Spector had second thoughts, and the song he chose was written by Goffin and King, and was essentially a rewrite of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". To my mind it's actually the better record, but it wasn't as successful, though it still made the US top ten: [Excerpt: The Righteous Brothers, "Just Once in My Life"] For their third Philles single, Spector released "Hung on You", another intense ballad, very much in the mould of their two previous singles, though not as strong a song as either. But it was the B-side that was the hit. While Spector produced the group's singles, he wasn't interested in producing albums, leaving Medley, a decent producer in his own right, to produce what Spector considered the filler tracks. And Medley and Hatfield had an agreement that on each album, each of them would get a solo spot. So for Hatfield's solo spot on the first album the duo were recording for Philles, Medley produced Hatfield singing the old standard "Unchained Melody", while Medley played piano: [Excerpt: The Righteous Brothers, "Unchained Melody"] That went out on the B-side, with no production credit -- until DJs started playing that rather than "Hung on You". Spector was furious, and started calling DJs and telling them they were playing the wrong side, but they didn't stop playing it, and so the single was reissued, now with a Spector production credit for Medley's production. "Unchained Melody" made the top five, and now Spector continued his plans to foment dissent between the two singers. This time he argued that they should follow up "Unchained Melody" with "Ebb Tide" -- "Unchained Melody" had previously been a hit for both Roy Hamilton and Al Hibbler, and they'd both also had hits with "Ebb Tide", so why not try that? Oh, and the record was only going to have Bobby Hatfield on. It would still be released as a Righteous Brothers record, but Bill Medley wouldn't be involved. That was also a hit, but it would be the last one the duo would have with Philles Records, as they moved to Mercury and Medley started producing all their records. But the damage had been done -- Spector had successfully pit their egos against each other, and their working relationship would never be the same. But they started at Mercury with their second-biggest hit -- "Soul and Inspiration", the song that Mann and Weil had written as a follow-up to "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'": [Excerpt: The Righteous Brothers, "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration"] That went to number one, and apparently to this day Brian Wilson will still ask Bill Medley whenever they speak "Did you produce that? Really?", unable to believe it isn't a Phil Spector production. But the duo had been pushed apart. and were no longer happy working together. They were also experiencing personal problems -- I don't have details of Hatfield's life at this period, but Medley had a breakdown, and was also having an affair with Darlene Love which led to the breakup of his first marriage. The duo broke up in 1968, and Medley put out some unsuccessful solo recordings, including a song that Mann and Weil wrote for him about his interracial relationship with Love, who sang backing vocals on the record. It's a truly odd record which possibly says more about the gender and racial attitudes of everyone involved at that point than they might have wished, as Medley complains that his "brown-eyed woman" doesn't trust him because "you look at me and all you see are my blue eyes/I'm not a man, baby all I am is what I symbolise", while the chorus of Black women backing him sing "no no, no no" and "stay away": [Excerpt: Bill Medley, "Brown-Eyed Woman"] Hatfield, meanwhile, continued using the Righteous Brothers name, performing with Jimmy Walker, formerly the drummer of the Knickerbockers, who had been one-hit wonders with their Beatles soundalike "Lies": [Excerpt: The Knickerbockers, "Lies"] Walker and Hatfield recorded one album together, but it was unsuccessful, and they split up. Hatfield also tried a solo career -- his version of "Only You" is clearly patterned after the earlier Righteous Brothers hits with "Unchained Melody" and "Ebb Tide": [Excerpt: Bobby Hatfield, "Only You"] But by 1974, both careers floundering, the Righteous Brothers reformed -- and immediately had a hit with "Rock and Roll Heaven", a tribute to dead rock stars, which became their third highest-charting single, peaking at number three. They had a couple more charting singles, but then, tragically, Medley's first wife was murdered, and Medley had to take several years off performing to raise his son. They reunited in the 1980s, although Medley kept up a parallel career as a solo artist, having several minor country hits, and also having a pop number one with the theme song from Dirty Dancing, "I've Had the Time of My Life", sung as a duet with Jennifer Warnes: [Excerpt: Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, "I've Had the Time of My Life"] A couple of years later, another Patrick Swayze film, Ghost, would lead to another unique record for the Righteous Brothers. Ghost used "Unchained Melody" in a crucial scene, and the single was reissued, and made number nineteen in the US charts, and hit number one in many other countries. It also sparked a revival of their career that made "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" rechart in the UK. But "Unchained Melody" was only reissued on vinyl, and the small label Curb Records saw an opportunity, and got the duo to do a soundalike rerecording to come out as a CD single. That CD single *also* made the top twenty, making the Righteous Brothers the only artist ever to be at two places in the top twenty at the same time with two versions of the same song -- when Gene and Eunice's two versions of "Ko Ko Mo" had charted, they'd been counted as one record for chart purposes. The duo continued working together until 2003, when Bobby Hatfield died of a cocaine-induced heart attack. Medley performed as a solo artist for several years, but in 2016 he took on a partner, Bucky Heard, to perform with him as a new lineup of Righteous Brothers, mostly playing Vegas shows. We'll see a lot more blue-eyed soul artists as the story progresses, and we'll be able to look more closely at the issues around race and appropriation with them, but in 1965, unlike all the brown-eyed women like Darlene Love who'd come before them, the Righteous Brothers did become the first act to break free of Phil Spector and have hits without him -- though we will later see at least one Black woman Spector produced who became even bigger later. But still, they'll always be remembered primarily for the work they did with Spector, and somewhere, right now, at least one radio station is still playing "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", and it'll probably continue to do so as long as radio exists.
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As the founder and president of Linus Entertainment, Geoff Kulawick grew the start up label to become one of the most successful independent music companies in Canada.Mr. Kulawick has successfully sourced, negotiated and closed on the asset purchase of twelve prominent label and publishing catalogs, most recent the closing on January 1 2021 of the Borealis Records & Publishing catalog, with over 100 albums of sound recordings and compositions including the catalog of iconic singer songwriter Stan Rogers, and the Stony Plain Records & publishing catalog of over 100 albums including music of Ian Tyson, Blues Hall of Fame artists Ronnie Earl, Duke Robillard, Eric Bibb, Sue Foley, Long John Baldry, and others.…
On this Randy Cooke interview, tons of cool stories: Playing with Tom Morello, Rik Emmett, Steve Stevens, Ian Thornley, Long John Baldry (at age 19!), Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr, Sass Jordan (in front of 450K people!) life-changing serendipitous musical encounters, hand-bombing, sneaking into a club (with his mom) to see The Police!... webbed feet, learning when to say “This isn’t a fit for me,” taking steps to change his situation, cooking, Call of Duty, Italy, moving to America, and why you need to acknowledge there are NO guarantees in life. GREAT Convo, super cool and real! If you’d like to support this show: http://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/support Randy Cooke is an in-demand LA touring and session drummer, originally from Toronto, Canada. Randy has played and toured with artists including Everyone Loves Guitar previous show guests Rik Emmett, Kim Mitchell, Honeymoon Suite (Derry Grehan), Steve Stevens & Ian Thornley... also Ronnie Hawkins, Ringo Starr, Dave Stewart, Colin Hay, Ian Gillan, Mick Jagger, Robbie Krieger, Leonard Cohen, Hanz Zimmer, Alanis Morissette, Tom Morello, and literally hundreds of others across multiple genres. He’s also recorded television jingles & movie soundtracks, including Jay Leno, David Letterman, Regis & Kelly, A&E Private Sessions, Larry King, CBS Early Show, The View, Martha Stewart, and the Grammys 50th year anniversary tribute to the Beatles. Subscribe https://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/subscribe/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EveryoneLovesGuitar/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everyonelovesguitar/
Episode 118 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Do-Wah-Diddy-Diddy” by Manfred Mann, and how a jazz group with a blues singer had one of the biggest bubblegum pop hits of the sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Walk on By” by Dionne Warwick. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of tracks by Manfred Mann. Information on the group comes from Mannerisms: The Five Phases of Manfred Mann, by Greg Russo, and from the liner notes of this eleven-CD box set of the group’s work. For a much cheaper collection of the group’s hits — but without the jazz, blues, and baroque pop elements that made them more interesting than the average sixties singles band — this has all the hit singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript: So far, when we’ve looked at the British blues and R&B scene, we’ve concentrated on the bands who were influenced by Chicago blues, and who kept to a straightforward guitar/bass/drums lineup. But there was another, related, branch of the blues scene in Britain that was more musically sophisticated, and which while its practitioners certainly enjoyed playing songs by Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters, was also rooted in the jazz of people like Mose Allison. Today we’re going to look at one of those bands, and at the intersection of jazz and the British R&B scene, and how a jazz band with a flute player and a vibraphonist briefly became bubblegum pop idols. We’re going to look at “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”] Manfred Mann is, annoyingly when writing about the group, the name of both a band and of one of its members. Manfred Mann the human being, as opposed to Manfred Mann the group, was born Manfred Lubowitz in South Africa, and while he was from a wealthy family, he was very opposed to the vicious South African system of apartheid, and considered himself strongly anti-racist. He was also a lover of jazz music, especially some of the most progressive music being made at the time — musicians like Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane — and he soon became a very competent jazz pianist, playing with musicians like Hugh Masakela at a time when that kind of fraternisation between people of different races was very much frowned upon in South Africa. Manfred desperately wanted to get out of South Africa, and he took his chance in June 1961, at the last point at which he was a Commonwealth citizen. The Commonwealth, for those who don’t know, is a political association of countries that were originally parts of the British Empire, and basically replaced the British Empire when the former colonies gained their independence. These days, the Commonwealth is of mostly symbolic importance, but in the fifties and sixties, as the Empire was breaking up, it was considered a real power in its own right, and in particular, until some changes to immigration law in the mid sixties, Commonwealth citizens had the right to move to the UK. At that point, South Africa had just voted to become a republic, and there was a rule in the Commonwealth that countries with a head of state other than the Queen could only remain in the Commonwealth with the unanimous agreement of all the other members. And several of the other member states, unsurprisingly, objected to the continued membership of a country whose entire system of government was based on the most virulent racism imaginable. So, as soon as South Africa became a republic, it lost its Commonwealth membership, and that meant that its citizens lost their automatic right to emigrate to the UK. But they were given a year’s grace period, and so Manfred took that chance and moved over to England, where he started playing jazz keyboards, giving piano lessons, and making some money on the side by writing record reviews. For those reviews, rather than credit himself as Manfred Lubowitz, he decided to use a pseudonym taken from the jazz drummer Shelly Manne, and he became Manfred Manne — spelled with a silent e on the end, which he later dropped. Mann was rather desperate for gigs, and he ended up taking a job playing with a band at a Butlin’s holiday camp. Graham Bond, who we’ve seen in several previous episodes as the leader of The Graham Bond Organisation, was at that time playing Hammond organ there, but only wanted to play a few days a week. Mann became the substitute keyboard player for that holiday camp band, and struck up a good musical rapport with the drummer and vibraphone player, Mike Hugg. When Bond went off to form his own band, Mann and Hugg decided to form their own band along the same lines, mixing the modern jazz that they liked with the more commercial R&B that Bond was playing. They named their group the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers, and it initially consisted of Mann on keyboards, Hugg on drums and vibraphone, Mike Vickers on guitar, flute, and saxophone, Dave Richmond on bass, Tony Roberts and Don Fay on saxophone and Ian Fenby on trumpet. As their experiences were far more in the jazz field than in blues, they decided that they needed to get in a singer who was more familiar with the blues side of things. The person they chose was a singer who was originally named Paul Pond, and who had been friends for a long time with Brian Jones, before Jones had formed the Rolling Stones. While Jones had been performing under the name Elmo Lewis, his friend had taken on Jones’ surname, as he thought “Paul Pond” didn’t sound like a good name for a singer. He’d first kept his initials, and performed as P.P. Jones, but then he’d presumably realised that “pee-pee” is probably not the best stage name in the world, and so he’d become just Paul Jones, the name by which he’s known to this day. Jones, like his friend Brian, was a fan particularly of Chicago blues, and he had occasionally appeared with Alexis Korner. After auditioning for the group at a ska club called The Roaring 20s, Jones became the group’s lead singer and harmonica player, and the group soon moved in Jones’ musical direction, playing the kind of Chicago blues that was popular at the Marquee club, where they soon got a residency, rather than the soul style that was more popular at the nearby Flamingo club, and which would be more expected from a horn-centric lineup. Unsurprisingly, given this, the horn players soon left, and the group became a five-piece core of Jones, Mann, Hugg, Vickers, and Richmond. This group was signed to HMV records by John Burgess. Burgess was a producer who specialised in music of a very different style from what the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers played. We’ve already heard some of his production work — he was the producer for Adam Faith from “What Do You Want?” on: [Excerpt: Adam Faith, “What Do You Want?”] And at the time he signed the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers, he was just starting to work with a new group, Freddie and the Dreamers, for whom he would produce several hits: [Excerpt: Freddie and the Dreamers, “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody”] Burgess liked the group, but he insisted that they had to change their name — and in fact, he insisted that the group change their name to Manfred Mann. None of the group members liked the idea — even Mann himself thought that this seemed a little unreasonable, and Paul Jones in particular disagreed strongly with the idea, but they were all eventually mollified by the idea that all the publicity would emphasise that all five of them were equal members of the group, and that while the group might be named after their keyboard player, there were five members. The group members themselves always referred to themselves as “the Manfreds” rather than as Manfred Mann. The group’s first single showed that despite having become a blues band and then getting produced by a pop producer, they were still at heart a jazz group. “Why Should We Not?” is an instrumental led by Vickers’ saxophone, Mann’s organ, and Jones’ harmonica: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Why Should We Not?”] Unsurprisingly, neither that nor the B-side, a jazz instrumental version of “Frere Jacques”, charted — Britain in 1963 wanted Gerry and the Pacemakers and Freddie and the Dreamers, not jazz instrumentals. The next single, an R&B song called “Cock-A-Hoop” written by Jones, did little better. The group’s big breakthrough came from Ready, Steady, Go!, which at this point was using “Wipe Out!” by the Surfaris as its theme song: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, “Wipe Out”] We’ve mentioned Ready, Steady, Go! in passing in previous episodes, but it was the most important pop music show of the early and mid sixties, just as Oh Boy! had been for the late fifties. Ready, Steady, Go! was, in principle at least, a general pop music programme, but in practice it catered primarily for the emerging mod subculture. “Mod” stood for “modernist”, and the mods emerged from the group of people who liked modern jazz rather than trad, but by this point their primary musical interests were in soul and R&B. Mod was a working-class subculture, based in the South-East of England, especially London, and spurred on by the newfound comparative affluence of the early sixties, when for the first time young working-class people, while still living in poverty, had a small amount of disposable income to spend on clothes, music, and drugs. The Mods had a very particular sense of style, based around sharp Italian suits, pop art and op art, and Black American music or white British imitations of it. For them, music was functional, and primarily existed for the purposes of dancing, and many of them would take large amounts of amphetamines so they could spend the entire weekend at clubs dancing to soul and R&B music. And that entire weekend would kick off on Friday with Ready, Steady, Go!, whose catchphrase was “the weekend starts here!” Ready, Steady, Go! featured almost every important pop act of the early sixties, but while groups like Gerry and the Pacemakers or the Beatles would appear on it, it became known for its promotion of Black artists, and it was the first major British TV exposure for Motown artists like the Supremes, the Temptations, and the Marvelettes, for Stax artists like Otis Redding, and for blues artists like John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson. Ready Steady Go! was also the primary TV exposure for British groups who were inspired by those artists, and it’s through Ready Steady Go! that the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, Them, and the Who, among others reached national popularity — all of them acts that were popular among the Mods in particular. But “Wipe Out” didn’t really fit with this kind of music, and so the producers of Ready Steady Go were looking for something more suitable for their theme music. They’d already tried commissioning the Animals to record something, as we saw a couple of weeks back, but that hadn’t worked out, and instead they turned to Manfred Mann, who came up with a song that not only perfectly fit the style of the show, but also handily promoted the group themselves: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “5-4-3-2-1”] That was taken on as Ready, Steady, Go!s theme song, and made the top five in the UK. But by the time it charted, the group had already changed lineup. Dave Richmond was seen by the other members of the group as a problem at this point. Richmond was a great bass player, but he was a great *jazz* bass player — he wanted to be Charles Mingus, and play strange cross-rhythms, and what the group needed at this point was someone who would just play straightforward blues basslines without complaint — they needed someone closer to Willie Dixon than to Mingus. Tom McGuinness, who replaced him, had already had a rather unusual career trajectory. He’d started out as a satirist, writing for the magazine Private Eye and the TV series That Was The Week That Was, one of the most important British comedy shows of the sixties, but he had really wanted to be a blues musician instead. He’d formed a blues band, The Roosters, with a guitarist who went to art school with his girlfriend, and they’d played a few gigs around London before the duo had been poached by the minor Merseybeat band Casey Jones and his Engineers, a group which had been formed by Brian Casser, formerly of Cass & The Cassanovas, the group that had become The Big Three. Casey Jones and his Engineers had just released the single “One Way Ticket”: [Excerpt: Casey Jones and His Engineers, “One-Way Ticket”] However, the two guitarists soon realised, after just a handful of gigs, that they weren’t right for that group, and quit. McGuinness’ friend, Eric Clapton, went on to join the Yardbirds, and we’ll be hearing more about him in a few weeks’ time, but McGuinness was at a loose end, until he discovered that Manfred Mann were looking for a bass player. McGuinness was a guitarist, but bluffed to Paul Jones that he’d switched to bass, and got the job. He said later that the only question he’d been asked when interviewed by the group was “are you willing to play simple parts?” — as he’d never played bass in his life until the day of his first gig with the group, he was more than happy to say yes to that. McGuinness joined only days after the recording of “5-4-3-2-1”, and Richmond was out — though he would have a successful career as a session bass player, playing on, among others, “Je t’Aime” by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, “Your Song” by Elton John, Labi Siffre’s “It Must Be Love”, and the music for the long-running sitcoms Only Fools and Horses and Last of the Summer Wine. As soon as McGuinness joined, the group set out on tour, to promote their new hit, but also to act as the backing group for the Crystals, on a tour which also featured Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and Joe Brown and his Bruvvers. The group’s next single, “Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble” was another original, and made number eleven on the charts, but the group saw it as a failure anyway, to the extent that they tried their best to forget it ever existed. In researching this episode I got an eleven-CD box set of the group’s work, which contains every studio album or compilation they released in the sixties, a collection of their EPs, and a collection of their BBC sessions. In all eleven CDs, “Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble” doesn’t appear at all. Which is quite odd, as it’s a perfectly serviceable, if unexceptional, piece of pop R&B: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble”] But it’s not just the group that were unimpressed with the record. John Burgess thought that the record only getting to number eleven was proof of his hypothesis that groups should not put out their own songs as singles. From this point on, with one exception in 1968, everything they released as an A-side would be a cover version or a song brought to them by a professional songwriter. This worried Jones, who didn’t want to be forced to start singing songs he disliked, which he saw as a very likely outcome of this edict. So he made it his role in the group to seek out records that the group could cover, which would be commercial enough that they could get hit singles from them, but which would be something he could sing while keeping his self-respect. His very first selection certainly met the first criterion. The song which would become their biggest hit had very little to do with the R&B or jazz which had inspired the group. Instead, it was a perfect piece of Brill Building pop. The Exciters, who originally recorded it, were one of the great girl groups of the early sixties (though they also had one male member), and had already had quite an influence on pop music. They had been discovered by Leiber and Stoller, who had signed them to Red Bird Records, a label we’ll be looking at in much more detail in an upcoming episode, and they’d had a hit in 1962 with a Bert Berns song, “Tell Him”, which made the top five: [Excerpt: The Exciters, “Tell Him”] That record had so excited a young British folk singer who was in the US at the time to record an album with her group The Springfields that she completely reworked her entire style, went solo, and kickstarted a solo career singing pop-soul songs under the name Dusty Springfield. The Exciters never had another top forty hit, but they became popular enough among British music lovers that the Beatles asked them to open for them on their American tour in summer 1964. Most of the Exciters’ records were of songs written by the more R&B end of the Brill Building songwriters — they would record several more Bert Berns songs, and some by Ritchie Barrett, but the song that would become their most well-known legacy was actually written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Like many of Barry and Greenwich’s songs, it was based around a nonsense phrase, but in this case the phrase they used had something of a longer history, though it’s not apparent whether they fully realised that. In African-American folklore of the early twentieth century, the imaginary town of Diddy Wah Diddy was something like a synonym for heaven, or for the Big Rock Candy Mountain of the folk song — a place where people didn’t have to work, and where food was free everywhere. This place had been sung about in many songs, like Blind Blake’s “Diddie Wah Diddie”: [Excerpt: Blind Blake, “Diddie Wah Diddie”] And a song written by Willie Dixon for Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, “Diddy Wah Diddy”] And “Diddy” and “Wah” had often been used by other Black artists, in various contexts, like Roy Brown and Dave Bartholomew’s “Diddy-Y-Diddy-O”: [Excerpt: Roy Brown and Dave Bartholomew, “Diddy-Y-Diddy-O”] And Junior and Marie’s “Boom Diddy Wah Wah”, a “Ko Ko Mo” knockoff produced by Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Junior and Marie, “Boom Diddy Wah Wah”] So when Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich wrote “Do-Wah-Diddy”, as the song was originally called, they were, wittingly or not, tapping into a rich history of rhythm and blues music. But the song as Greenwich demoed it was one of the first examples of what would become known as “bubblegum pop”, and is particularly notable in her demo for its very early use of the fuzz guitar that would be a stylistic hallmark of that subgenre: [Excerpt: Ellie Greenwich, “Do-Wah-Diddy (demo)”] The Exciters’ version of the song took it into more conventional girl-group territory, with a strong soulful vocal, but with the group’s backing vocal call-and-response chant showing up the song’s resemblance to the kind of schoolyard chanting games which were, of course, the basis of the very first girl group records: [Excerpt: The Exciters, “Do-Wah-Diddy”] Sadly, that record only reached number seventy-eight on the charts, and the Exciters would have no more hits in the US, though a later lineup of the group would make the UK top forty in 1975 with a song written and produced by the Northern Soul DJ Ian Levine. But in 1964 Jones had picked up on “Do-Wah-Diddy”, and knew it was a potential hit. Most of the group weren’t very keen on “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, as the song was renamed. There are relatively few interviews with any of them about it, but from what I can gather the only member of the band who thought anything much of the song was Paul Jones. However, the group did their best with the recording, and were particularly impressed with Manfred’s Hammond organ solo — which they later discovered was cut out of the finished recording by Burgess. The result was an organ-driven stomping pop song which had more in common with the Dave Clark Five than with anything else the group were doing: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”] The record reached number one in both the UK and the US, and the group immediately went on an American tour, packaged with Peter & Gordon, a British duo who were having some success at the time because Peter Asher’s sister was dating Paul McCartney, who’d given them a hit song, “World Without Love”: [Excerpt: Peter and Gordon, “World Without Love”] The group found the experience of touring the US a thoroughly miserable one, and decided that they weren’t going to bother going back again, so while they would continue to have big hits in Britain for the rest of the decade, they only had a few minor successes in the States. After the success of “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, EMI rushed out an album by the group, The Five Faces of Manfred Mann, which must have caused some confusion for anyone buying it in the hope of more “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” style pop songs. Half the album’s fourteen tracks were covers of blues and R&B, mostly by Chess artists — there were covers of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Ike & Tina Turner, and more. There were also five originals, written or co-written by Jones, in the same style as those songs, plus a couple of instrumentals, one written by the group and one a cover of Cannonball Adderly’s jazz classic “Sack O’Woe”, arranged to show off the group’s skills at harmonica, saxophone, piano and vibraphone: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Sack O’Woe”] However, the group realised that the formula they’d hit on with “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” was a useful one, and so for their next single they once again covered a girl-group track with a nonsense-word chorus and title — their version of “Sha La La” by the Shirelles took them to number three on the UK charts, and number twelve in the US. They followed that with a ballad, “Come Tomorrow”, one of the few secular songs ever recorded by Marie Knight, the gospel singer who we discussed briefly way back in episode five, who was Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s duet partner, and quite possibly her partner in other senses. They released several more singles and were consistently charting, to the point that they actually managed to get a top ten hit with a self-written song despite their own material not being considered worth putting out as singles. Paul Jones had written “The One in the Middle” for his friends the Yardbirds, but when they turned it down, he rewrote the song to be about Manfred Mann, and especially about himself: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “The One in the Middle”] Like much of their material, that was released on an EP, and the EP was so successful that as well as making number one on the EP charts, it also made number ten on the regular charts, with “The One in the Middle” as the lead-off track. But “The One in the Middle” was a clue to something else as well — Jones was getting increasingly annoyed at the fact that the records the group was making were hits, and he was the frontman, the lead singer, the person picking the cover versions, and the writer of much of the original material, but all the records were getting credited to the group’s keyboard player. But Jones wasn’t the next member of the group to leave. That was Mike Vickers, who went off to work in arranging film music and session work, including some work for the Beatles, the music for the film Dracula AD 1972, and the opening and closing themes for This Week in Baseball. The last single the group released while Vickers was a member was the aptly-titled “If You Gotta Go, Go Now”. Mann had heard Bob Dylan performing that song live, and had realised that the song had never been released. He’d contacted Dylan’s publishers, got hold of a demo, and the group became the first to release a version of the song, making number two in the charts: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “If You Gotta Go, Go Now”] Before Vickers’ departure, the group had recorded their second album, Mann Made, and that had been even more eclectic than the first album, combining versions of blues classics like “Stormy Monday Blues”, Motown songs like “The Way You Do The Things You Do”, country covers like “You Don’t Know Me”, and oddities like “Bare Hugg”, an original jazz instrumental for flute and vibraphone: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Bare Hugg”] McGuinness took the opportunity of Vickers leaving the group to switch from bass back to playing guitar, which had always been his preferred instrument. To fill in the gap, on Graham Bond’s recommendation they hired away Jack Bruce, who had just been playing in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with McGuinness’ old friend Eric Clapton, and it’s Bruce who played bass on the group’s next big hit, “Pretty Flamingo”, the only UK number one that Bruce ever played on: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Pretty Flamingo”] Bruce stayed with the band for several months, before going off to play in another band who we’ll be covering in a future episode. He was replaced in turn by Klaus Voorman. Voorman was an old friend of the Beatles from their Hamburg days, who had been taught the rudiments of bass by Stuart Sutcliffe, and had formed a trio, Paddy, Klaus, and Gibson, with two Merseybeat musicians, Paddy Chambers of the Big Three and Gibson Kemp of Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Paddy, Klaus, and Gibson, “No Good Without You Baby”] Like Vickers, Voorman could play the flute, and his flute playing would become a regular part of the group’s later singles. These lineup changes didn’t affect the group as either a chart act or as an act who were playing a huge variety of different styles of music. While the singles were uniformly catchy pop, on album tracks, B-sides or EPs you’d be likely to find versions of folk songs collected by Alan Lomax, like “John Hardy”, or things like “Driva Man”, a blues song about slavery in 5/4 time, originally by the jazz greats Oscar Brown and Max Roach: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “Driva Man”] But by the time that track was released, Paul Jones was out of the group. He actually announced his intention to quit the group at the same time that Mike Vickers left, but the group had persuaded him to stay on for almost a year while they looked for his replacement, auditioning singers like Rod Stewart and Long John Baldry with little success. They eventually decided on Mike d’Abo, who had previously been the lead singer of a group called A Band of Angels: [Excerpt: A Band of Angels, “(Accept My) Invitation”] By the point d’Abo joined, relations between the rest of the group and Jones were so poor that they didn’t tell Jones that they were thinking of d’Abo — Jones would later recollect that the group decided to stop at a pub on the way to a gig, ostensibly to watch themselves on TV, but actually to watch A Band of Angels on the same show, without explaining to Jones that that was what they were doing – Jones actually mentioned d’Abo to his bandmates as a possible replacement, not realising he was already in the group. Mann has talked about how on the group’s last show with Jones, they drove to the gig in silence, and their first single with the new singer, a version of Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman”, came on the radio. There was a lot of discomfort in the band at this time, because their record label had decided to stick with Jones as a solo performer, and the rest of the group had had to find another label, and were worried that without Jones their career was over. Luckily for everyone involved, “Just Like a Woman” made the top ten, and the group’s career was able to continue. Meanwhile, Jones’ first single as a solo artist made the top five: [Excerpt: Paul Jones, “High Time”] But after that and his follow-up, “I’ve Been a Bad, Bad, Boy”, which made number five, the best he could do was to barely scrape the top forty. Manfred Mann, on the other hand, continued having hits, though there was a constant struggle to find new material. d’Abo was himself a songwriter, and it shows the limitations of the “no A-sides by group members” rule that while d’Abo was the lead singer of Manfred Mann, he wrote two hit singles which the group never recorded. The first, “Handbags and Gladrags”, was a hit for Chris Farlowe: [Excerpt: Chris Farlowe, “Handbags and Gladrags”] That was only a minor hit, but was later recorded successfully by Rod Stewart, with d’Abo arranging, and the Stereophonics. d’Abo also co-wrote, and played piano on, “Build Me Up Buttercup” by the Foundations: [Excerpt: The Foundations, “Build Me Up Buttercup”] But the group continued releasing singles written by other people. Their second post-Jones single, from the perspective of a spurned lover insulting their ex’s new fiancee, had to have its title changed from what the writers intended, as the group felt that a song insulting “semi-detached suburban Mr. Jones” might be taken the wrong way. Lightly retitled, “Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James” made number two, while the follow-up, “Ha Ha! Said the Clown”, made number four. The two singles after that did significantly less well, though, and seemed to be quite bizarre choices — an instrumental Hammond organ version of Tommy Roe’s “Sweet Pea”, which made number thirty-six, and a version of Randy Newman’s bitterly cynical “So Long, Dad”, which didn’t make the charts at all. After this lack of success, the group decided to go back to what had worked for them before. They’d already had two hits with Dylan songs, and Mann had got hold of a copy of Dylan’s Basement Tapes, a bootleg which we’ll be talking about later. He picked up on one song from it, and got permission to release “The Mighty Quinn”, which became the group’s third number one: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “The Mighty Quinn”] The album from which that came, Mighty Garvey, is the closest thing the group came to an actual great album. While the group’s earlier albums were mostly blues covers, this was mostly made up of original material by either Hugg or d’Abo, in a pastoral baroque pop style that invites comparisons to the Kinks or the Zombies’ material of that period, but with a self-mocking comedy edge in several songs that was closer to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Probably the highlight of the album was the mellotron-driven “It’s So Easy Falling”: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, “It’s So Easy Falling”] But Mighty Garvey didn’t chart, and it was the last gasp of the group as a creative entity. They had three more top-ten hits, all of them good examples of their type, but by January 1969, Tom McGuinness was interviewed saying “It’s not a group any more. It’s just five people who come together to make hit singles. That’s the only aim of the group at the moment — to make hit singles — it’s the only reason the group exists. Commercial success is very important to the group. It gives us financial freedom to do the things we want.” The group split up in 1969, and went their separate ways. d’Abo appeared on the original Jesus Christ Superstar album, and then went into writing advertising jingles, most famously writing “a finger of fudge is just enough” for Cadbury’s. McGuinness formed McGuinness Flint, with the songwriters Gallagher and Lyle, and had a big hit with “When I’m Dead and Gone”: [Excerpt: McGuinness Flint, “When I’m Dead and Gone”] He later teamed up again with Paul Jones, to form a blues band imaginatively named “the Blues Band”, who continue performing to this day: [Excerpt: The Blues Band, “Mean Ol’ Frisco”] Jones became a born-again Christian in the eighties, and also starred in a children’s TV show, Uncle Jack, and presented the BBC Radio 2 Blues Programme for thirty-two years. Manfred Mann and Mike Hugg formed another group, Manfred Mann Chapter Three, who released two albums before splitting. Hugg went on from that to write for TV and films, most notably writing the theme music to “Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?”: [Excerpt: Highly Likely, “Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?”] Mann went on to form Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, who had a number of hits, the biggest of which was the Bruce Springsteen song “Blinded by the Light”: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, “Blinded by the Light”] Almost uniquely for a band from the early sixties, all the members of the classic lineup of Manfred Mann are still alive. Manfred Mann continues to perform with various lineups of his Earth Band. Hugg, Jones, McGuinness, and d’Abo reunited as The Manfreds in the 1990s, with Vickers also in the band until 1999, and continue to tour together — I still have a ticket to see them which was originally for a show in April 2020, but has just been rescheduled to 2022. McGuinness and Jones also still tour with the Blues Band. And Mike Vickers now spends his time creating experimental animations. Manfred Mann were a band with too many musical interests to have a coherent image, and their reliance on outside songwriters and their frequent lineup changes meant that they never had the consistent sound of many of their contemporaries. But partly because of this, they created a catalogue that rewards exploration in a way that several more well-regarded bands’ work doesn’t, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a major critical reassessment of them at some point. But whether that happens or not, almost sixty years on people around the world still respond instantly to the opening bars of their biggest hit, and “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” remains one of the most fondly remembered singles of the early sixties.
Episode 118 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Do-Wah-Diddy-Diddy" by Manfred Mann, and how a jazz group with a blues singer had one of the biggest bubblegum pop hits of the sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Walk on By" by Dionne Warwick. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of tracks by Manfred Mann. Information on the group comes from Mannerisms: The Five Phases of Manfred Mann, by Greg Russo, and from the liner notes of this eleven-CD box set of the group's work. For a much cheaper collection of the group's hits -- but without the jazz, blues, and baroque pop elements that made them more interesting than the average sixties singles band -- this has all the hit singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript: So far, when we've looked at the British blues and R&B scene, we've concentrated on the bands who were influenced by Chicago blues, and who kept to a straightforward guitar/bass/drums lineup. But there was another, related, branch of the blues scene in Britain that was more musically sophisticated, and which while its practitioners certainly enjoyed playing songs by Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters, was also rooted in the jazz of people like Mose Allison. Today we're going to look at one of those bands, and at the intersection of jazz and the British R&B scene, and how a jazz band with a flute player and a vibraphonist briefly became bubblegum pop idols. We're going to look at "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Do Wah Diddy Diddy"] Manfred Mann is, annoyingly when writing about the group, the name of both a band and of one of its members. Manfred Mann the human being, as opposed to Manfred Mann the group, was born Manfred Lubowitz in South Africa, and while he was from a wealthy family, he was very opposed to the vicious South African system of apartheid, and considered himself strongly anti-racist. He was also a lover of jazz music, especially some of the most progressive music being made at the time -- musicians like Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane -- and he soon became a very competent jazz pianist, playing with musicians like Hugh Masakela at a time when that kind of fraternisation between people of different races was very much frowned upon in South Africa. Manfred desperately wanted to get out of South Africa, and he took his chance in June 1961, at the last point at which he was a Commonwealth citizen. The Commonwealth, for those who don't know, is a political association of countries that were originally parts of the British Empire, and basically replaced the British Empire when the former colonies gained their independence. These days, the Commonwealth is of mostly symbolic importance, but in the fifties and sixties, as the Empire was breaking up, it was considered a real power in its own right, and in particular, until some changes to immigration law in the mid sixties, Commonwealth citizens had the right to move to the UK. At that point, South Africa had just voted to become a republic, and there was a rule in the Commonwealth that countries with a head of state other than the Queen could only remain in the Commonwealth with the unanimous agreement of all the other members. And several of the other member states, unsurprisingly, objected to the continued membership of a country whose entire system of government was based on the most virulent racism imaginable. So, as soon as South Africa became a republic, it lost its Commonwealth membership, and that meant that its citizens lost their automatic right to emigrate to the UK. But they were given a year's grace period, and so Manfred took that chance and moved over to England, where he started playing jazz keyboards, giving piano lessons, and making some money on the side by writing record reviews. For those reviews, rather than credit himself as Manfred Lubowitz, he decided to use a pseudonym taken from the jazz drummer Shelly Manne, and he became Manfred Manne -- spelled with a silent e on the end, which he later dropped. Mann was rather desperate for gigs, and he ended up taking a job playing with a band at a Butlin's holiday camp. Graham Bond, who we've seen in several previous episodes as the leader of The Graham Bond Organisation, was at that time playing Hammond organ there, but only wanted to play a few days a week. Mann became the substitute keyboard player for that holiday camp band, and struck up a good musical rapport with the drummer and vibraphone player, Mike Hugg. When Bond went off to form his own band, Mann and Hugg decided to form their own band along the same lines, mixing the modern jazz that they liked with the more commercial R&B that Bond was playing. They named their group the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers, and it initially consisted of Mann on keyboards, Hugg on drums and vibraphone, Mike Vickers on guitar, flute, and saxophone, Dave Richmond on bass, Tony Roberts and Don Fay on saxophone and Ian Fenby on trumpet. As their experiences were far more in the jazz field than in blues, they decided that they needed to get in a singer who was more familiar with the blues side of things. The person they chose was a singer who was originally named Paul Pond, and who had been friends for a long time with Brian Jones, before Jones had formed the Rolling Stones. While Jones had been performing under the name Elmo Lewis, his friend had taken on Jones' surname, as he thought "Paul Pond" didn't sound like a good name for a singer. He'd first kept his initials, and performed as P.P. Jones, but then he'd presumably realised that "pee-pee" is probably not the best stage name in the world, and so he'd become just Paul Jones, the name by which he's known to this day. Jones, like his friend Brian, was a fan particularly of Chicago blues, and he had occasionally appeared with Alexis Korner. After auditioning for the group at a ska club called The Roaring 20s, Jones became the group's lead singer and harmonica player, and the group soon moved in Jones' musical direction, playing the kind of Chicago blues that was popular at the Marquee club, where they soon got a residency, rather than the soul style that was more popular at the nearby Flamingo club, and which would be more expected from a horn-centric lineup. Unsurprisingly, given this, the horn players soon left, and the group became a five-piece core of Jones, Mann, Hugg, Vickers, and Richmond. This group was signed to HMV records by John Burgess. Burgess was a producer who specialised in music of a very different style from what the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers played. We've already heard some of his production work -- he was the producer for Adam Faith from "What Do You Want?" on: [Excerpt: Adam Faith, "What Do You Want?"] And at the time he signed the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers, he was just starting to work with a new group, Freddie and the Dreamers, for whom he would produce several hits: [Excerpt: Freddie and the Dreamers, "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody"] Burgess liked the group, but he insisted that they had to change their name -- and in fact, he insisted that the group change their name to Manfred Mann. None of the group members liked the idea -- even Mann himself thought that this seemed a little unreasonable, and Paul Jones in particular disagreed strongly with the idea, but they were all eventually mollified by the idea that all the publicity would emphasise that all five of them were equal members of the group, and that while the group might be named after their keyboard player, there were five members. The group members themselves always referred to themselves as "the Manfreds" rather than as Manfred Mann. The group's first single showed that despite having become a blues band and then getting produced by a pop producer, they were still at heart a jazz group. "Why Should We Not?" is an instrumental led by Vickers' saxophone, Mann's organ, and Jones' harmonica: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Why Should We Not?"] Unsurprisingly, neither that nor the B-side, a jazz instrumental version of "Frere Jacques", charted -- Britain in 1963 wanted Gerry and the Pacemakers and Freddie and the Dreamers, not jazz instrumentals. The next single, an R&B song called "Cock-A-Hoop" written by Jones, did little better. The group's big breakthrough came from Ready, Steady, Go!, which at this point was using "Wipe Out!" by the Surfaris as its theme song: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "Wipe Out"] We've mentioned Ready, Steady, Go! in passing in previous episodes, but it was the most important pop music show of the early and mid sixties, just as Oh Boy! had been for the late fifties. Ready, Steady, Go! was, in principle at least, a general pop music programme, but in practice it catered primarily for the emerging mod subculture. "Mod" stood for "modernist", and the mods emerged from the group of people who liked modern jazz rather than trad, but by this point their primary musical interests were in soul and R&B. Mod was a working-class subculture, based in the South-East of England, especially London, and spurred on by the newfound comparative affluence of the early sixties, when for the first time young working-class people, while still living in poverty, had a small amount of disposable income to spend on clothes, music, and drugs. The Mods had a very particular sense of style, based around sharp Italian suits, pop art and op art, and Black American music or white British imitations of it. For them, music was functional, and primarily existed for the purposes of dancing, and many of them would take large amounts of amphetamines so they could spend the entire weekend at clubs dancing to soul and R&B music. And that entire weekend would kick off on Friday with Ready, Steady, Go!, whose catchphrase was "the weekend starts here!" Ready, Steady, Go! featured almost every important pop act of the early sixties, but while groups like Gerry and the Pacemakers or the Beatles would appear on it, it became known for its promotion of Black artists, and it was the first major British TV exposure for Motown artists like the Supremes, the Temptations, and the Marvelettes, for Stax artists like Otis Redding, and for blues artists like John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson. Ready Steady Go! was also the primary TV exposure for British groups who were inspired by those artists, and it's through Ready Steady Go! that the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, Them, and the Who, among others reached national popularity -- all of them acts that were popular among the Mods in particular. But "Wipe Out" didn't really fit with this kind of music, and so the producers of Ready Steady Go were looking for something more suitable for their theme music. They'd already tried commissioning the Animals to record something, as we saw a couple of weeks back, but that hadn't worked out, and instead they turned to Manfred Mann, who came up with a song that not only perfectly fit the style of the show, but also handily promoted the group themselves: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "5-4-3-2-1"] That was taken on as Ready, Steady, Go!s theme song, and made the top five in the UK. But by the time it charted, the group had already changed lineup. Dave Richmond was seen by the other members of the group as a problem at this point. Richmond was a great bass player, but he was a great *jazz* bass player -- he wanted to be Charles Mingus, and play strange cross-rhythms, and what the group needed at this point was someone who would just play straightforward blues basslines without complaint -- they needed someone closer to Willie Dixon than to Mingus. Tom McGuinness, who replaced him, had already had a rather unusual career trajectory. He'd started out as a satirist, writing for the magazine Private Eye and the TV series That Was The Week That Was, one of the most important British comedy shows of the sixties, but he had really wanted to be a blues musician instead. He'd formed a blues band, The Roosters, with a guitarist who went to art school with his girlfriend, and they'd played a few gigs around London before the duo had been poached by the minor Merseybeat band Casey Jones and his Engineers, a group which had been formed by Brian Casser, formerly of Cass & The Cassanovas, the group that had become The Big Three. Casey Jones and his Engineers had just released the single "One Way Ticket": [Excerpt: Casey Jones and His Engineers, "One-Way Ticket"] However, the two guitarists soon realised, after just a handful of gigs, that they weren't right for that group, and quit. McGuinness' friend, Eric Clapton, went on to join the Yardbirds, and we'll be hearing more about him in a few weeks' time, but McGuinness was at a loose end, until he discovered that Manfred Mann were looking for a bass player. McGuinness was a guitarist, but bluffed to Paul Jones that he'd switched to bass, and got the job. He said later that the only question he'd been asked when interviewed by the group was "are you willing to play simple parts?" -- as he'd never played bass in his life until the day of his first gig with the group, he was more than happy to say yes to that. McGuinness joined only days after the recording of "5-4-3-2-1", and Richmond was out -- though he would have a successful career as a session bass player, playing on, among others, "Je t'Aime" by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, "Your Song" by Elton John, Labi Siffre's "It Must Be Love", and the music for the long-running sitcoms Only Fools and Horses and Last of the Summer Wine. As soon as McGuinness joined, the group set out on tour, to promote their new hit, but also to act as the backing group for the Crystals, on a tour which also featured Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and Joe Brown and his Bruvvers. The group's next single, "Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble" was another original, and made number eleven on the charts, but the group saw it as a failure anyway, to the extent that they tried their best to forget it ever existed. In researching this episode I got an eleven-CD box set of the group's work, which contains every studio album or compilation they released in the sixties, a collection of their EPs, and a collection of their BBC sessions. In all eleven CDs, "Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble" doesn't appear at all. Which is quite odd, as it's a perfectly serviceable, if unexceptional, piece of pop R&B: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble"] But it's not just the group that were unimpressed with the record. John Burgess thought that the record only getting to number eleven was proof of his hypothesis that groups should not put out their own songs as singles. From this point on, with one exception in 1968, everything they released as an A-side would be a cover version or a song brought to them by a professional songwriter. This worried Jones, who didn't want to be forced to start singing songs he disliked, which he saw as a very likely outcome of this edict. So he made it his role in the group to seek out records that the group could cover, which would be commercial enough that they could get hit singles from them, but which would be something he could sing while keeping his self-respect. His very first selection certainly met the first criterion. The song which would become their biggest hit had very little to do with the R&B or jazz which had inspired the group. Instead, it was a perfect piece of Brill Building pop. The Exciters, who originally recorded it, were one of the great girl groups of the early sixties (though they also had one male member), and had already had quite an influence on pop music. They had been discovered by Leiber and Stoller, who had signed them to Red Bird Records, a label we'll be looking at in much more detail in an upcoming episode, and they'd had a hit in 1962 with a Bert Berns song, "Tell Him", which made the top five: [Excerpt: The Exciters, "Tell Him"] That record had so excited a young British folk singer who was in the US at the time to record an album with her group The Springfields that she completely reworked her entire style, went solo, and kickstarted a solo career singing pop-soul songs under the name Dusty Springfield. The Exciters never had another top forty hit, but they became popular enough among British music lovers that the Beatles asked them to open for them on their American tour in summer 1964. Most of the Exciters' records were of songs written by the more R&B end of the Brill Building songwriters -- they would record several more Bert Berns songs, and some by Ritchie Barrett, but the song that would become their most well-known legacy was actually written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich. Like many of Barry and Greenwich's songs, it was based around a nonsense phrase, but in this case the phrase they used had something of a longer history, though it's not apparent whether they fully realised that. In African-American folklore of the early twentieth century, the imaginary town of Diddy Wah Diddy was something like a synonym for heaven, or for the Big Rock Candy Mountain of the folk song -- a place where people didn't have to work, and where food was free everywhere. This place had been sung about in many songs, like Blind Blake's "Diddie Wah Diddie": [Excerpt: Blind Blake, "Diddie Wah Diddie"] And a song written by Willie Dixon for Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Diddy Wah Diddy"] And "Diddy" and "Wah" had often been used by other Black artists, in various contexts, like Roy Brown and Dave Bartholomew's "Diddy-Y-Diddy-O": [Excerpt: Roy Brown and Dave Bartholomew, "Diddy-Y-Diddy-O"] And Junior and Marie's "Boom Diddy Wah Wah", a "Ko Ko Mo" knockoff produced by Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Junior and Marie, "Boom Diddy Wah Wah"] So when Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich wrote "Do-Wah-Diddy", as the song was originally called, they were, wittingly or not, tapping into a rich history of rhythm and blues music. But the song as Greenwich demoed it was one of the first examples of what would become known as "bubblegum pop", and is particularly notable in her demo for its very early use of the fuzz guitar that would be a stylistic hallmark of that subgenre: [Excerpt: Ellie Greenwich, "Do-Wah-Diddy (demo)"] The Exciters' version of the song took it into more conventional girl-group territory, with a strong soulful vocal, but with the group's backing vocal call-and-response chant showing up the song's resemblance to the kind of schoolyard chanting games which were, of course, the basis of the very first girl group records: [Excerpt: The Exciters, "Do-Wah-Diddy"] Sadly, that record only reached number seventy-eight on the charts, and the Exciters would have no more hits in the US, though a later lineup of the group would make the UK top forty in 1975 with a song written and produced by the Northern Soul DJ Ian Levine. But in 1964 Jones had picked up on "Do-Wah-Diddy", and knew it was a potential hit. Most of the group weren't very keen on "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", as the song was renamed. There are relatively few interviews with any of them about it, but from what I can gather the only member of the band who thought anything much of the song was Paul Jones. However, the group did their best with the recording, and were particularly impressed with Manfred's Hammond organ solo -- which they later discovered was cut out of the finished recording by Burgess. The result was an organ-driven stomping pop song which had more in common with the Dave Clark Five than with anything else the group were doing: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Do Wah Diddy Diddy"] The record reached number one in both the UK and the US, and the group immediately went on an American tour, packaged with Peter & Gordon, a British duo who were having some success at the time because Peter Asher's sister was dating Paul McCartney, who'd given them a hit song, "World Without Love": [Excerpt: Peter and Gordon, "World Without Love"] The group found the experience of touring the US a thoroughly miserable one, and decided that they weren't going to bother going back again, so while they would continue to have big hits in Britain for the rest of the decade, they only had a few minor successes in the States. After the success of "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", EMI rushed out an album by the group, The Five Faces of Manfred Mann, which must have caused some confusion for anyone buying it in the hope of more "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" style pop songs. Half the album's fourteen tracks were covers of blues and R&B, mostly by Chess artists -- there were covers of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Ike & Tina Turner, and more. There were also five originals, written or co-written by Jones, in the same style as those songs, plus a couple of instrumentals, one written by the group and one a cover of Cannonball Adderly's jazz classic "Sack O'Woe", arranged to show off the group's skills at harmonica, saxophone, piano and vibraphone: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Sack O'Woe"] However, the group realised that the formula they'd hit on with "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" was a useful one, and so for their next single they once again covered a girl-group track with a nonsense-word chorus and title -- their version of "Sha La La" by the Shirelles took them to number three on the UK charts, and number twelve in the US. They followed that with a ballad, "Come Tomorrow", one of the few secular songs ever recorded by Marie Knight, the gospel singer who we discussed briefly way back in episode five, who was Sister Rosetta Tharpe's duet partner, and quite possibly her partner in other senses. They released several more singles and were consistently charting, to the point that they actually managed to get a top ten hit with a self-written song despite their own material not being considered worth putting out as singles. Paul Jones had written "The One in the Middle" for his friends the Yardbirds, but when they turned it down, he rewrote the song to be about Manfred Mann, and especially about himself: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "The One in the Middle"] Like much of their material, that was released on an EP, and the EP was so successful that as well as making number one on the EP charts, it also made number ten on the regular charts, with "The One in the Middle" as the lead-off track. But "The One in the Middle" was a clue to something else as well -- Jones was getting increasingly annoyed at the fact that the records the group was making were hits, and he was the frontman, the lead singer, the person picking the cover versions, and the writer of much of the original material, but all the records were getting credited to the group's keyboard player. But Jones wasn't the next member of the group to leave. That was Mike Vickers, who went off to work in arranging film music and session work, including some work for the Beatles, the music for the film Dracula AD 1972, and the opening and closing themes for This Week in Baseball. The last single the group released while Vickers was a member was the aptly-titled "If You Gotta Go, Go Now". Mann had heard Bob Dylan performing that song live, and had realised that the song had never been released. He'd contacted Dylan's publishers, got hold of a demo, and the group became the first to release a version of the song, making number two in the charts: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] Before Vickers' departure, the group had recorded their second album, Mann Made, and that had been even more eclectic than the first album, combining versions of blues classics like "Stormy Monday Blues", Motown songs like "The Way You Do The Things You Do", country covers like "You Don't Know Me", and oddities like "Bare Hugg", an original jazz instrumental for flute and vibraphone: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Bare Hugg"] McGuinness took the opportunity of Vickers leaving the group to switch from bass back to playing guitar, which had always been his preferred instrument. To fill in the gap, on Graham Bond's recommendation they hired away Jack Bruce, who had just been playing in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with McGuinness' old friend Eric Clapton, and it's Bruce who played bass on the group's next big hit, "Pretty Flamingo", the only UK number one that Bruce ever played on: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Pretty Flamingo"] Bruce stayed with the band for several months, before going off to play in another band who we'll be covering in a future episode. He was replaced in turn by Klaus Voorman. Voorman was an old friend of the Beatles from their Hamburg days, who had been taught the rudiments of bass by Stuart Sutcliffe, and had formed a trio, Paddy, Klaus, and Gibson, with two Merseybeat musicians, Paddy Chambers of the Big Three and Gibson Kemp of Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Paddy, Klaus, and Gibson, "No Good Without You Baby"] Like Vickers, Voorman could play the flute, and his flute playing would become a regular part of the group's later singles. These lineup changes didn't affect the group as either a chart act or as an act who were playing a huge variety of different styles of music. While the singles were uniformly catchy pop, on album tracks, B-sides or EPs you'd be likely to find versions of folk songs collected by Alan Lomax, like "John Hardy", or things like "Driva Man", a blues song about slavery in 5/4 time, originally by the jazz greats Oscar Brown and Max Roach: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Driva Man"] But by the time that track was released, Paul Jones was out of the group. He actually announced his intention to quit the group at the same time that Mike Vickers left, but the group had persuaded him to stay on for almost a year while they looked for his replacement, auditioning singers like Rod Stewart and Long John Baldry with little success. They eventually decided on Mike d'Abo, who had previously been the lead singer of a group called A Band of Angels: [Excerpt: A Band of Angels, "(Accept My) Invitation"] By the point d'Abo joined, relations between the rest of the group and Jones were so poor that they didn't tell Jones that they were thinking of d'Abo -- Jones would later recollect that the group decided to stop at a pub on the way to a gig, ostensibly to watch themselves on TV, but actually to watch A Band of Angels on the same show, without explaining to Jones that that was what they were doing – Jones actually mentioned d'Abo to his bandmates as a possible replacement, not realising he was already in the group. Mann has talked about how on the group's last show with Jones, they drove to the gig in silence, and their first single with the new singer, a version of Dylan's "Just Like a Woman", came on the radio. There was a lot of discomfort in the band at this time, because their record label had decided to stick with Jones as a solo performer, and the rest of the group had had to find another label, and were worried that without Jones their career was over. Luckily for everyone involved, "Just Like a Woman" made the top ten, and the group's career was able to continue. Meanwhile, Jones' first single as a solo artist made the top five: [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "High Time"] But after that and his follow-up, "I've Been a Bad, Bad, Boy", which made number five, the best he could do was to barely scrape the top forty. Manfred Mann, on the other hand, continued having hits, though there was a constant struggle to find new material. d'Abo was himself a songwriter, and it shows the limitations of the "no A-sides by group members" rule that while d'Abo was the lead singer of Manfred Mann, he wrote two hit singles which the group never recorded. The first, "Handbags and Gladrags", was a hit for Chris Farlowe: [Excerpt: Chris Farlowe, "Handbags and Gladrags"] That was only a minor hit, but was later recorded successfully by Rod Stewart, with d'Abo arranging, and the Stereophonics. d'Abo also co-wrote, and played piano on, "Build Me Up Buttercup" by the Foundations: [Excerpt: The Foundations, "Build Me Up Buttercup"] But the group continued releasing singles written by other people. Their second post-Jones single, from the perspective of a spurned lover insulting their ex's new fiancee, had to have its title changed from what the writers intended, as the group felt that a song insulting "semi-detached suburban Mr. Jones" might be taken the wrong way. Lightly retitled, "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James" made number two, while the follow-up, "Ha Ha! Said the Clown", made number four. The two singles after that did significantly less well, though, and seemed to be quite bizarre choices -- an instrumental Hammond organ version of Tommy Roe's "Sweet Pea", which made number thirty-six, and a version of Randy Newman's bitterly cynical "So Long, Dad", which didn't make the charts at all. After this lack of success, the group decided to go back to what had worked for them before. They'd already had two hits with Dylan songs, and Mann had got hold of a copy of Dylan's Basement Tapes, a bootleg which we'll be talking about later. He picked up on one song from it, and got permission to release "The Mighty Quinn", which became the group's third number one: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "The Mighty Quinn"] The album from which that came, Mighty Garvey, is the closest thing the group came to an actual great album. While the group's earlier albums were mostly blues covers, this was mostly made up of original material by either Hugg or d'Abo, in a pastoral baroque pop style that invites comparisons to the Kinks or the Zombies' material of that period, but with a self-mocking comedy edge in several songs that was closer to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Probably the highlight of the album was the mellotron-driven "It's So Easy Falling": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "It's So Easy Falling"] But Mighty Garvey didn't chart, and it was the last gasp of the group as a creative entity. They had three more top-ten hits, all of them good examples of their type, but by January 1969, Tom McGuinness was interviewed saying "It's not a group any more. It's just five people who come together to make hit singles. That's the only aim of the group at the moment -- to make hit singles -- it's the only reason the group exists. Commercial success is very important to the group. It gives us financial freedom to do the things we want." The group split up in 1969, and went their separate ways. d'Abo appeared on the original Jesus Christ Superstar album, and then went into writing advertising jingles, most famously writing "a finger of fudge is just enough" for Cadbury's. McGuinness formed McGuinness Flint, with the songwriters Gallagher and Lyle, and had a big hit with "When I'm Dead and Gone": [Excerpt: McGuinness Flint, "When I'm Dead and Gone"] He later teamed up again with Paul Jones, to form a blues band imaginatively named "the Blues Band", who continue performing to this day: [Excerpt: The Blues Band, "Mean Ol' Frisco"] Jones became a born-again Christian in the eighties, and also starred in a children's TV show, Uncle Jack, and presented the BBC Radio 2 Blues Programme for thirty-two years. Manfred Mann and Mike Hugg formed another group, Manfred Mann Chapter Three, who released two albums before splitting. Hugg went on from that to write for TV and films, most notably writing the theme music to "Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?": [Excerpt: Highly Likely, "Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?"] Mann went on to form Manfred Mann's Earth Band, who had a number of hits, the biggest of which was the Bruce Springsteen song "Blinded by the Light": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann's Earth Band, "Blinded by the Light"] Almost uniquely for a band from the early sixties, all the members of the classic lineup of Manfred Mann are still alive. Manfred Mann continues to perform with various lineups of his Earth Band. Hugg, Jones, McGuinness, and d'Abo reunited as The Manfreds in the 1990s, with Vickers also in the band until 1999, and continue to tour together -- I still have a ticket to see them which was originally for a show in April 2020, but has just been rescheduled to 2022. McGuinness and Jones also still tour with the Blues Band. And Mike Vickers now spends his time creating experimental animations. Manfred Mann were a band with too many musical interests to have a coherent image, and their reliance on outside songwriters and their frequent lineup changes meant that they never had the consistent sound of many of their contemporaries. But partly because of this, they created a catalogue that rewards exploration in a way that several more well-regarded bands' work doesn't, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a major critical reassessment of them at some point. But whether that happens or not, almost sixty years on people around the world still respond instantly to the opening bars of their biggest hit, and "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" remains one of the most fondly remembered singles of the early sixties.
Episode one hundred and nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Blowin' in the Wind", Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, the UK folk scene and the civil rights movement. Those of you who get angry at me whenever I say anything that acknowledges the existence of racism may want to skip this one. 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 "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" by the Crystals. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This compilation contains all Peter, Paul and Mary's hits. I have used *many* books for this episode, most of which I will also be using for future episodes on Dylan: The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk and Elijah Wald is the fascinating and funny autobiography of Dylan's mentor in his Greenwich Village period, including his interactions with Albert Grossman. Chronicles Volume 1 by Bob Dylan is a partial, highly inaccurate, but thoroughly readable autobiography. Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. Only one book exists on Peter, Paul, and Mary themselves, and it is a hideously overpriced coffee table book consisting mostly of photos, so I wouldn't bother with it. Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World by Billy Bragg has some great information on the British folk scene of the fifties and sixties. And Singing From the Floor is an oral history of British folk clubs, including a chapter on Dylan's 1962 visit to London. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to look at the first manufactured pop band we will see in this story, but not the last -- a group cynically put together by a manager to try and cash in on a fad, but one who were important enough that in a small way they helped to change history. We're going to look at the March on Washington and the civil rights movement, at Bob Dylan blossoming into a songwriter and the English folk revival, and at "Blowin' in the Wind" by Peter, Paul, and Mary: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul and Mary, "Blowin' in the Wind"] Albert Grossman was an unusual figure in the world of folk music. The folk revival had started out as an idealistic movement, mostly centred on Pete Seeger, and outside a few ultra-commercial acts like the Kingston Trio, most of the people involved were either doing it for the love of the music, or as a means of advancing their political goals. No doubt many of the performers on the burgeoning folk circuit were also quite keen to make money -- there are very few musicians who don't like being able to eat and have a home to live in -- but very few of the people involved were primarily motivated by increasing their income. Grossman was a different matter. He was a businessman, and he was interested in money more than anything else -- and for that he was despised by many of the people in the Greenwich Village folk scene. But he was, nonetheless, someone who was interested in making money *from folk music* specifically. And in the late fifties and early sixties this was less of a strange idea than it might have seemed. We talked back in the episode on "Drugstore Rock and Roll" about how rock and roll music was starting to be seen as the music of the teenager, and how "teenager" was, for the first time, becoming a marketing category into which people could be segmented. But the thing about music that's aimed at a particular age group is that once you're out of that age group you are no longer the target audience for that music. Someone who was sixteen in 1956 was twenty in 1960, and people in their twenties don't necessarily want to be listening to music aimed at teenagers. But at the same time, those people didn't want to listen to the music that their parents were listening to. There's no switch that gets flipped on your twentieth birthday that means that you suddenly no longer like Little Richard but instead like Rosemary Clooney. So there was a gap in the market, for music that was more adult than rock and roll was perceived as being, but which still set itself apart from the pop music that was listened to by people in their thirties and forties. And in the late fifties and early sixties, that gap seemed to be filled by a commercialised version of the folk revival. In particular, Harry Belafonte had a huge run of massive hit albums with collections of folk, calypso, and blues songs, presented in a way that was acceptable to an older, more settled audience while still preserving some of the rawness of the originals, like his version of Lead Belly's "Midnight Special", recorded in 1962 with a young Bob Dylan on harmonica: [Excerpt: Harry Belafonte, "Midnight Special"] Meanwhile, the Kingston Trio had been having huge hits with cleaned-up versions of old folk ballads like "Tom Dooley": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "Tom Dooley"] So Grossman believed that there was a real market out there for something that was as clean and bright and friendly as the Kingston Trio, but with just a tiny hint of the bohemian Greenwich Village atmosphere to go with it. Something that wouldn't scare TV people and DJs, but which might seem just the tiniest bit more radical than the Kingston Trio did. Something mass-produced, but which seemed more authentic. So Grossman decided to put together what we would now call a manufactured pop group. It would be a bit like the Kingston Trio, but ever so slightly more political, and rather than being three men, it would be two men and a woman. Grossman had very particular ideas about what he wanted -- he wanted a waifish, beautiful woman at the centre of the group, he wanted a man who brought a sense of folk authenticity, and he wanted someone who could add a comedy element to the performances, to lighten them. For the woman, he chose Mary Travers, who had been around the folk scene for several years at this point, starting out with a group called the Song Swappers, who had recorded an album of union songs with Pete Seeger back in 1955: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger and the Song Swappers, "Solidarity Forever"] Travers was chosen in part because of her relative shyness -- she had never wanted to be a professional singer, and her introverted nature made her perfect for the image Grossman wanted -- an image that was carefully cultivated, to the point that when the group were rehearsing in Florida, Grossman insisted Travers stay inside so she wouldn't get a tan and spoil her image. As the authentic male folk singer, Grossman chose Peter Yarrow, who was the highest profile of the three, as he had performed as a solo artist for a number of years and had appeared on TV and at the Newport Folk Festival, though he had not yet recorded. And for the comedy element, he chose Noel Stookey, who regularly performed as a comedian around Greenwich Village -- in the group's very slim autobiography, Stookey compares himself to two other comedians on that circuit, Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, comparisons that were a much better look in 2009 when the book was published than they are today. Grossman had originally wanted Dave Van Ronk to be the low harmony singer, rather than Stookey, but Van Ronk turned him down flat, wanting no part of a Greenwich Village Kingston Trio, though he later said he sometimes looked at his bank account rather wistfully. The group's name was, apparently, inspired by a line in the old folk song "I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago", which was recorded by many people, but most famously by Elvis Presley in the 1970s: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago"] The "Peter, Paul, and Moses" from that song became Peter, Paul and Mary -- Stookey started going by his middle name, Paul, on stage, in order to fit the group name, though he still uses Noel in his daily life. While Peter, Paul, and Mary were the front people of the group, there were several other people who were involved in the creative process -- the group used a regular bass player, Bill Lee, the father of the filmmaker Spike Lee, who played on all their recordings, as well as many other recordings from Greenwich Village folk musicians. They also had, as their musical director, a man named Milt Okun who came up with their arrangements and helped them choose and shape the material. Grossman shaped this team into a formidable commercial force. Almost everyone who talks about Grossman compares him to Colonel Tom Parker, and the comparison is a reasonable one. Grossman was extremely good at making money for his acts, so long as a big chunk of the money came to him. There's a story about him signing Odetta, one of the great folk artists of the period, and telling her "you can stay with your current manager, and make a hundred thousand dollars this year, and he'll take twenty percent, or you can come with me, and make a quarter of a million dollars, but I'll take fifty percent". That was the attitude that Grossman took to everyone. He cut himself in to every contract, salami-slicing his artists' royalties at each stage. But it can't be denied that his commercial instincts were sound. Peter, Paul, and Mary's first album was a huge success. The second single from the album, their version of the old Weavers song "If I Had a Hammer", written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, went to number ten on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul and Mary, "If I Had a Hammer"] And the album itself went to number one and eventually went double-platinum -- a remarkable feat for a collection of songs that, however prettily arranged, contained a fairly uncompromising selection of music from the folk scene, with songs by Seeger, Dave van Ronk, and Rev. Gary Davis mixing with traditional songs like "This Train" and originals by Stookey and Yarrow. Their second album was less successful at first, with its first two singles flopping. But the third, a pretty children's song by Yarrow and his friend Leonard Lipton, went to number two on the pop charts and number one on the Adult Contemporary charts: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul, and Mary, "Puff the Magic Dragon"] Incidentally, Leonard Lipton, who wrote that lyric, became independently wealthy from the royalties from the song, and used the leisure that gave him to pursue his passion of inventing 3D projection systems, which eventually made him an even wealthier man -- if you've seen a 3D film in the cinema in the last couple of decades, it's almost certainly been using the systems Lipton invented. So Peter, Paul, and Mary were big stars, and having big hits. And Albert Grossman was constantly on the lookout for more material for them. And eventually he found it, and the song that was to make both him, his group, and its writer, very, very rich, in the pages of Broadside magazine. When we left Bob Dylan, he was still primarily a performer, and not really known for his songwriting, but he had already written a handful of songs, and he was being drawn into the more political side of the folk scene. In large part this was because of his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, with whom Dylan was very deeply in love, and who was a very political person indeed. Dylan had political views, but wasn't particularly driven by them -- Rotolo very much was, and encouraged him to write songs about politics. For much of early 1962, Dylan was being pulled in two directions at once -- he was writing songs inspired by Robert Johnson, and trying to adapt Johnson's style to fit himself, but at the same time he was writing songs like "The Death of Emmett Till", about the 1955 murder of a Black teenager which had galvanised the civil rights movement, and "The Ballad of Donald White", about a Black man on death row. Dylan would later be very dismissive of these attempts at topicality, saying "I realize now that my reasons and motives behind it were phony, I didn’t have to write it; I was bothered by many other things that I pretended I wasn’t bothered by, in order to write this song about Emmett Till, a person I never even knew". But at the time they got him a great deal of attention in the small US folk-music scene, when they were published in magazines like Broadside and Sing Out, which collected political songs. Most of these early songs are juvenilia, with a couple of exceptions like the rather marvellous anti-bomb song "Let Me Die in My Footsteps", but the song that changed everything for Dylan was a different matter. "Blowin' in the Wind" was inspired by the melody of the old nineteenth century song "No More Auction Block", a song that is often described as a "spiritual", though in fact it's a purely secular song about slavery: [Excerpt: Odetta, "No More Auction Block"] That song had seen something of a revival in folk circles in the late fifties, especially because part of its melody had been incorporated into another song, "We Shall Overcome", which had become an anthem of the civil rights movement when it was revived and adapted by Pete Seeger: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger, "We Shall Overcome"] Dylan took this melody, with its associations with the fight for the rights of Black people, and came up with new lyrics, starting with the line "How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?" He wrote two verses of the song -- the first and last verses -- in a short burst of inspiration, and a few weeks later came back to it and added another verse, the second, which incorporated allusions to the Biblical prophet Ezekiel, and which is notably less inspired than those earlier verses. In later decades, many people have looked at the lyrics to the song and seen it as the first of what would become a whole subgenre of non-protest protest songs -- they've seen the abstraction of "How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?" as being nice-sounding rhetoric that doesn't actually mean anything, in much the same way as something like, say, "Another Day in Paradise" or "Eve of Destruction", songs that make nonspecific complaints about nonspecific bad things. But while "Blowin' in the Wind" is a song that has multiple meanings and can be applied to multiple situations, as most good songs can, that line was, at the time in which it was written, a very concrete question. The civil rights movement was asking for many things -- for the right to vote, for an end to segregation, for an end to police brutality, but also for basic respect and acknowledgment of Black people's shared humanity. We've already heard in a couple of past episodes Big Bill Broonzy singing "When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?": [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?"] Because at the time, it was normal for white people to refer to Black men as "boy". As Dr. Martin Luther King said in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail", one of the greatest pieces of writing of the twentieth century, a letter in large part about how white moderates were holding Black people back with demands to be "reasonable" and let things take their time: "when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society... when your first name becomes“ and here Dr. King uses a racial slur which I, as a white man, will not say, "and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair." King's great letter was written in 1963, less than a year after Dylan was writing his song but before it became widely known. In the context of 1962, the demand to call a man a man was a very real political issue, not an aphorism that could go in a Hallmark card. Dylan recorded the song in June 1962, during the sessions for his second album, which at the time was going under the working title "Bob Dylan's Blues": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"] By the time he recorded it, two major changes had happened to him. The first was that Suze Rotolo had travelled to Spain for several months, leaving him bereft -- for the next few months, his songwriting took a turn towards songs about either longing for the return of a lost love, like "Tomorrow is a Long Time", one of his most romantic songs, or about how the protagonist doesn't even need his girlfriend anyway and she can leave if she likes, see if he cares, like "Don't Think Twice It's Alright". The other change was that Albert Grossman had become his manager, largely on the strength of "Blowin' in the Wind", which Grossman thought had huge potential. Grossman signed Dylan up, taking twenty percent of all his earnings -- including on the contract with Columbia Records Dylan already had -- and got him signed to a new publisher, Witmark Publishing, where the aptly-named Artie Mogull thought that "Blowin' in the Wind" could be marketed. Grossman took his twenty percent of Dylan's share of the songwriting money as his commission from Dylan -- and fifty percent of Witmark's share of the money as his commission from Witmark, meaning that Dylan was getting forty percent of the money for writing the songs, while Grossman was getting thirty-five percent. Grossman immediately got involved in the recording of Dylan's second album, and started having personality clashes with John Hammond. It was apparently Grossman who suggested that Dylan "go electric" for the first time, with the late-1962 single "Mixed-Up Confusion": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Mixed-Up Confusion"] Neither Hammond nor Dylan liked that record, and it seemed clear for the moment that the way forward for Dylan was to continue in an acoustic folk vein. Dylan was also starting to get inspired more by English folk music, and incorporate borrowings from English music into his songwriting. That's most apparent in "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", written in September 1962. Dylan took the structure of that song from the old English ballad, "Lord Randall": [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl, "Lord Randall"] He reworked that structure into a song of apocalypse, again full of the Biblical imagery he'd tried in the second verse of "Blowin' in the Wind", but this time more successfully incorporating it: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"] His interest in English folk music was to become more important in his songwriting in the following months, as Dylan was about to travel to the UK and encounter the British folk music scene. A TV director called Philip Saville had seen Dylan performing in New York, and had decided he would be perfect for the role of a poet in a TV play he was putting on, Madhouse in Castle Street, and got Dylan flown over to perform in it. Unfortunately, no-one seems to have told Dylan what would be involved in this, and he proved incapable of learning his lines or acting, so the show was rethought -- the role of the poet was given to David Warner, later to become one of Britain's most famous screen actors, and Dylan was cast in a new role as a singer called "Bobby", who had few or no lines but did get to sing a few songs, including "Blowin' in the Wind", which was the first time the song was heard by anyone outside of the New York folk scene. Dylan was in London for about a month, and while he was there he immersed himself in the British folk scene. This scene was in some ways modelled on the American scene, and had some of the same people involved, but it was very different. The initial spark for the British folk revival had come in the late 1940s, when A.L. Lloyd, a member of the Communist Party, had published a book of folk songs he'd collected, along with some Marxist analysis of how folk songs evolved. In the early fifties, Alan Lomax, then in the UK to escape McCarthyism, put Lloyd in touch with Ewan MacColl, a songwriter and performer from Manchester, who we heard earlier singing "Lord Randall". MacColl, like Lloyd, was a Communist, but the two also shared a passion for older folk songs, and they began recording and performing together, recording traditional songs like "The Handsome Cabin Boy": [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd, "The Handsome Cabin Boy"] MacColl and Lloyd latched on to the skiffle movement, and MacColl started his own club night, Ballads and Blues, which tried to push the skifflers in the direction of performing more music based in English traditional music. This had already been happening to an extent with things like the Vipers performing "Maggie May", a song about a sex worker in Liverpool: [Excerpt: The Vipers Skiffle Group, "Maggie May"] But this started to happen a lot more with MacColl's encouragement. At one point in 1956, there was even a TV show hosted by Lomax and featuring a band that included Lomax, MacColl, Jim Bray, the bass player from Chris Barber's band, Shirley Collins -- a folk singer who was also Lomax's partner -- and Peggy Seeger, who was Pete Seeger's sister and who had also entered into a romantic relationship with MacColl, whose most famous song, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", was written both about and for her: [Excerpt: Peggy Seeger, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"] It was Seeger who instigated what became the most notable feature at the Ballads and Blues club and its successor the Singer's Club. She'd burst out laughing when she saw Long John Baldry sing "Rock Island Line", because he was attempting to sing in an American accent. As someone who had actually known Lead Belly, she found British imitations of his singing ludicrous, and soon there was a policy at the clubs that people would only sing songs that were originally sung with their normal vowel sounds. So Seeger could only sing songs from the East Coast of the US, because she didn't have the Western vowels of a Woody Guthrie, while MacColl could sing English and Scottish songs, but nothing from Wales or Ireland. As the skiffle craze died down, it splintered into several linked scenes. We've already seen how in Liverpool and London it spawned guitar groups like the Shadows and the Beatles, while in London it also led to the electric blues scene. It also led to a folk scene that was very linked to the blues scene at first, but was separate from it, and which was far more political, centred around MacColl. That scene, like the US one, combined topical songs about political events from a far-left viewpoint with performances of traditional songs, but in the case of the British one these were mostly old sea shanties and sailors' songs, and the ancient Child Ballads, rather than Appalachian country music -- though a lot of the songs have similar roots. And unlike the blues scene, the folk scene spread all over the country. There were clubs in Manchester, in Liverpool (run by the group the Spinners), in Bradford, in Hull (run by the Waterson family) and most other major British cities. The musicians who played these venues were often inspired by MacColl and Lloyd, but the younger generation of musicians often looked askance at what they saw as MacColl's dogmatic approach, preferring to just make good music rather than submit it to what they saw as MacColl's ideological purity test, even as they admired his musicianship and largely agreed with his politics. And one of these younger musicians was a guitarist named Martin Carthy, who was playing a club called the King and Queen on Goodge Street when he saw Bob Dylan walk in. He recognised Dylan from the cover of Sing Out! magazine, and invited him to get up on stage and do a few numbers. For the next few weeks, Carthy showed Dylan round the folk scene -- Dylan went down great at the venues where Carthy normally played, and at the Roundhouse, but flopped around the venues that were dominated by MacColl, as the people there seemed to think of Dylan as a sort of cut-rate Ramblin' Jack Elliot, as Elliot had been such a big part of the skiffle and folk scenes. Carthy also taught Dylan a number of English folk songs, including "Lord Franklin": [Excerpt: Martin Carthy, "Lord Franklin"] and "Scarborough Fair": [Excerpt: Martin Carthy, "Scarborough Fair"] Dylan immediately incorporated the music he'd learned from Carthy into his songwriting, basing "Bob Dylan's Dream" on "Lord Franklin", and even more closely basing "GIrl From the North Country" on "Scarborough Fair": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Girl From The North Country"] After his trip to London, Dylan went over to Europe to see if he could catch up with Suze, but she had already gone back to New York -- their letters to each other crossed in the post. On his return, they reunited at least for a while, and she posed with him for the photo for the cover of what was to be his second album. Dylan had thought that album completed when he left for England, but he soon discovered that there were problems with the album -- the record label didn't want to release the comedy talking blues "Talking John Birch Society Paranoid Blues", because they thought it might upset the fascists in the John Birch Society. The same thing would later make sure that Dylan never played the Ed Sullivan Show, because when he was booked onto the show he insisted on playing that song, and so they cancelled the booking. In this case, though, it gave him an excuse to remove what he saw as the weaker songs on the album, including "Tomorrow is a Long Time", and replace them with four new songs, three of them inspired by traditional English folk songs -- "Bob Dylan's Dream", "Girl From the North Country", and "Masters of War" which took its melody from the old folk song "Nottamun Town" popularised on the British folk circuit by an American singer, Jean Ritchie: [Excerpt: Jean Ritchie, "Nottamun Town"] These new recordings weren't produced by John Hammond, as the rest of the album was. Albert Grossman had been trying from the start to get total control over Dylan, and didn't want Hammond, who had been around before Grossman, involved in Dylan's career. Instead, a new producer named Tom Wilson was in charge. Wilson was a remarkable man, but seemed an odd fit for a left-wing folk album. He was one of the few Black producers working for a major label, though he'd started out as an indie producer. He was a Harvard economics graduate, and had been president of the Young Republicans during his time there -- he remained a conservative all his life -- but he was far from conservative in his musical tastes. When he'd left university, he'd borrowed nine hundred dollars and started his own record label, Transition, which had put out some of the best experimental jazz of the fifties, produced by Wilson, including the debut albums by Sun Ra: [Excerpt: Sun Ra, "Brainville"] and Cecil Taylor: [Excerpt: Cecil Taylor, "Bemsha Swing"] Wilson later described his first impressions of Dylan: "I didn’t even particularly like folk music. I’d been recording Sun Ra and Coltrane … I thought folk music was for the dumb guys. This guy played like the dumb guys, but then these words came out. I was flabbergasted." Wilson would soon play a big part in Dylan's career, but for now his job was just to get those last few tracks for the album recorded. In the end, the final recording session for Dylan's second album was more than a year after the first one, and it came out into a very different context from when he'd started recording it. Because while Dylan was putting the finishing touches on his second album, Peter Paul and Mary were working on their third, and they were encouraged by Grossman to record three Bob Dylan songs, since that way Grossman would make more money from them. Their version of "Blowin' in the Wind" came out as a single a few weeks after The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out, and sold 300,000 copies in the first week: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul, and Mary, "Blowin' in the Wind"] The record went to number two on the charts, and their followup, "Don't Think Twice it's Alright", another Dylan song, went top ten as well. "Blowin' in the Wind" became an instant standard, and was especially picked up by Black performers, as it became a civil rights anthem. Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers said later that she was astonished that a white man could write a line like "How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?", saying "That's what my father experienced" -- and the Staple Singers recorded it, of course: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, "Blowin' in the Wind"] as did Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Blowin' in the Wind"] And Stevie Wonder: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Blowin' in the Wind"] But the song's most important performance came from Peter, Paul and Mary, performing it on a bill with Dylan, Odetta, Joan Baez, and Mahalia Jackson in August 1963, just as the song had started to descend the charts. Because those artists were the entertainment for the March on Washington, in which more than a quarter of a million people descended on Washington both to support President Kennedy's civil rights bill and to speak out and say that it wasn't going far enough. That was one of the great moments in American political history, full of incendiary speeches like the one by John Lewis: [Excerpt: John Lewis, March on Washington speech] But the most memorable moment at that march came when Dr. King was giving his speech. Mahalia Jackson shouted out "Tell them about the dream, Martin", and King departed from his prepared words and instead improvised based on themes he'd used in other speeches previously, coming out with some of the most famous words ever spoken: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream"] The civil rights movement was more than one moment, however inspiring, and white people like myself have a tendency to reduce it just to Dr. King, and to reduce Dr. King just to those words -- which is one reason why I quoted from Letter From Birmingham Jail earlier, as that is a much less safe and canonised piece of writing. But it's still true to say that if there is a single most important moment in the history of the post-war struggle for Black rights, it was that moment, and because of "Blowin' in the Wind", both Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary were minor parts of that event. After 1963, Peter, Paul and Mary quickly became passe with the British Invasion, only having two more top ten hits, one with a novelty song in 1967 and one with "Leaving on a Jet Plane" in 1969. They split up in 1970, and around that time Yarrow was arrested and convicted for a sexual offence involving a fourteen-year-old girl, though he was later pardoned by President Carter. The group reformed in 1978 and toured the nostalgia circuit until Mary's death in 2009. The other two still occasionally perform together, as Peter and Noel Paul. Bob Dylan, of course, went on to bigger things after "Blowin' in the Wind" suddenly made him into the voice of a generation -- a position he didn't ask for and didn't seem to want. We'll be hearing much more from him. And we'll also be hearing more about the struggle for Black civil rights, as that's a story, much like Dylan's, that continues to this day.
Episode one hundred and nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, the UK folk scene and the civil rights movement. Those of you who get angry at me whenever I say anything that acknowledges the existence of racism may want to skip this one. 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 “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by the Crystals. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This compilation contains all Peter, Paul and Mary’s hits. I have used *many* books for this episode, most of which I will also be using for future episodes on Dylan: The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk and Elijah Wald is the fascinating and funny autobiography of Dylan’s mentor in his Greenwich Village period, including his interactions with Albert Grossman. Chronicles Volume 1 by Bob Dylan is a partial, highly inaccurate, but thoroughly readable autobiography. Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I’ve also used Robert Shelton’s No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. Only one book exists on Peter, Paul, and Mary themselves, and it is a hideously overpriced coffee table book consisting mostly of photos, so I wouldn’t bother with it. Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World by Billy Bragg has some great information on the British folk scene of the fifties and sixties. And Singing From the Floor is an oral history of British folk clubs, including a chapter on Dylan’s 1962 visit to London. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we’re going to look at the first manufactured pop band we will see in this story, but not the last — a group cynically put together by a manager to try and cash in on a fad, but one who were important enough that in a small way they helped to change history. We’re going to look at the March on Washington and the civil rights movement, at Bob Dylan blossoming into a songwriter and the English folk revival, and at “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Peter, Paul, and Mary: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul and Mary, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] Albert Grossman was an unusual figure in the world of folk music. The folk revival had started out as an idealistic movement, mostly centred on Pete Seeger, and outside a few ultra-commercial acts like the Kingston Trio, most of the people involved were either doing it for the love of the music, or as a means of advancing their political goals. No doubt many of the performers on the burgeoning folk circuit were also quite keen to make money — there are very few musicians who don’t like being able to eat and have a home to live in — but very few of the people involved were primarily motivated by increasing their income. Grossman was a different matter. He was a businessman, and he was interested in money more than anything else — and for that he was despised by many of the people in the Greenwich Village folk scene. But he was, nonetheless, someone who was interested in making money *from folk music* specifically. And in the late fifties and early sixties this was less of a strange idea than it might have seemed. We talked back in the episode on “Drugstore Rock and Roll” about how rock and roll music was starting to be seen as the music of the teenager, and how “teenager” was, for the first time, becoming a marketing category into which people could be segmented. But the thing about music that’s aimed at a particular age group is that once you’re out of that age group you are no longer the target audience for that music. Someone who was sixteen in 1956 was twenty in 1960, and people in their twenties don’t necessarily want to be listening to music aimed at teenagers. But at the same time, those people didn’t want to listen to the music that their parents were listening to. There’s no switch that gets flipped on your twentieth birthday that means that you suddenly no longer like Little Richard but instead like Rosemary Clooney. So there was a gap in the market, for music that was more adult than rock and roll was perceived as being, but which still set itself apart from the pop music that was listened to by people in their thirties and forties. And in the late fifties and early sixties, that gap seemed to be filled by a commercialised version of the folk revival. In particular, Harry Belafonte had a huge run of massive hit albums with collections of folk, calypso, and blues songs, presented in a way that was acceptable to an older, more settled audience while still preserving some of the rawness of the originals, like his version of Lead Belly’s “Midnight Special”, recorded in 1962 with a young Bob Dylan on harmonica: [Excerpt: Harry Belafonte, “Midnight Special”] Meanwhile, the Kingston Trio had been having huge hits with cleaned-up versions of old folk ballads like “Tom Dooley”: [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, “Tom Dooley”] So Grossman believed that there was a real market out there for something that was as clean and bright and friendly as the Kingston Trio, but with just a tiny hint of the bohemian Greenwich Village atmosphere to go with it. Something that wouldn’t scare TV people and DJs, but which might seem just the tiniest bit more radical than the Kingston Trio did. Something mass-produced, but which seemed more authentic. So Grossman decided to put together what we would now call a manufactured pop group. It would be a bit like the Kingston Trio, but ever so slightly more political, and rather than being three men, it would be two men and a woman. Grossman had very particular ideas about what he wanted — he wanted a waifish, beautiful woman at the centre of the group, he wanted a man who brought a sense of folk authenticity, and he wanted someone who could add a comedy element to the performances, to lighten them. For the woman, he chose Mary Travers, who had been around the folk scene for several years at this point, starting out with a group called the Song Swappers, who had recorded an album of union songs with Pete Seeger back in 1955: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger and the Song Swappers, “Solidarity Forever”] Travers was chosen in part because of her relative shyness — she had never wanted to be a professional singer, and her introverted nature made her perfect for the image Grossman wanted — an image that was carefully cultivated, to the point that when the group were rehearsing in Florida, Grossman insisted Travers stay inside so she wouldn’t get a tan and spoil her image. As the authentic male folk singer, Grossman chose Peter Yarrow, who was the highest profile of the three, as he had performed as a solo artist for a number of years and had appeared on TV and at the Newport Folk Festival, though he had not yet recorded. And for the comedy element, he chose Noel Stookey, who regularly performed as a comedian around Greenwich Village — in the group’s very slim autobiography, Stookey compares himself to two other comedians on that circuit, Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, comparisons that were a much better look in 2009 when the book was published than they are today. Grossman had originally wanted Dave Van Ronk to be the low harmony singer, rather than Stookey, but Van Ronk turned him down flat, wanting no part of a Greenwich Village Kingston Trio, though he later said he sometimes looked at his bank account rather wistfully. The group’s name was, apparently, inspired by a line in the old folk song “I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago”, which was recorded by many people, but most famously by Elvis Presley in the 1970s: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago”] The “Peter, Paul, and Moses” from that song became Peter, Paul and Mary — Stookey started going by his middle name, Paul, on stage, in order to fit the group name, though he still uses Noel in his daily life. While Peter, Paul, and Mary were the front people of the group, there were several other people who were involved in the creative process — the group used a regular bass player, Bill Lee, the father of the filmmaker Spike Lee, who played on all their recordings, as well as many other recordings from Greenwich Village folk musicians. They also had, as their musical director, a man named Milt Okun who came up with their arrangements and helped them choose and shape the material. Grossman shaped this team into a formidable commercial force. Almost everyone who talks about Grossman compares him to Colonel Tom Parker, and the comparison is a reasonable one. Grossman was extremely good at making money for his acts, so long as a big chunk of the money came to him. There’s a story about him signing Odetta, one of the great folk artists of the period, and telling her “you can stay with your current manager, and make a hundred thousand dollars this year, and he’ll take twenty percent, or you can come with me, and make a quarter of a million dollars, but I’ll take fifty percent”. That was the attitude that Grossman took to everyone. He cut himself in to every contract, salami-slicing his artists’ royalties at each stage. But it can’t be denied that his commercial instincts were sound. Peter, Paul, and Mary’s first album was a huge success. The second single from the album, their version of the old Weavers song “If I Had a Hammer”, written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, went to number ten on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul and Mary, “If I Had a Hammer”] And the album itself went to number one and eventually went double-platinum — a remarkable feat for a collection of songs that, however prettily arranged, contained a fairly uncompromising selection of music from the folk scene, with songs by Seeger, Dave van Ronk, and Rev. Gary Davis mixing with traditional songs like “This Train” and originals by Stookey and Yarrow. Their second album was less successful at first, with its first two singles flopping. But the third, a pretty children’s song by Yarrow and his friend Leonard Lipton, went to number two on the pop charts and number one on the Adult Contemporary charts: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul, and Mary, “Puff the Magic Dragon”] Incidentally, Leonard Lipton, who wrote that lyric, became independently wealthy from the royalties from the song, and used the leisure that gave him to pursue his passion of inventing 3D projection systems, which eventually made him an even wealthier man — if you’ve seen a 3D film in the cinema in the last couple of decades, it’s almost certainly been using the systems Lipton invented. So Peter, Paul, and Mary were big stars, and having big hits. And Albert Grossman was constantly on the lookout for more material for them. And eventually he found it, and the song that was to make both him, his group, and its writer, very, very rich, in the pages of Broadside magazine. When we left Bob Dylan, he was still primarily a performer, and not really known for his songwriting, but he had already written a handful of songs, and he was being drawn into the more political side of the folk scene. In large part this was because of his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, with whom Dylan was very deeply in love, and who was a very political person indeed. Dylan had political views, but wasn’t particularly driven by them — Rotolo very much was, and encouraged him to write songs about politics. For much of early 1962, Dylan was being pulled in two directions at once — he was writing songs inspired by Robert Johnson, and trying to adapt Johnson’s style to fit himself, but at the same time he was writing songs like “The Death of Emmett Till”, about the 1955 murder of a Black teenager which had galvanised the civil rights movement, and “The Ballad of Donald White”, about a Black man on death row. Dylan would later be very dismissive of these attempts at topicality, saying “I realize now that my reasons and motives behind it were phony, I didn’t have to write it; I was bothered by many other things that I pretended I wasn’t bothered by, in order to write this song about Emmett Till, a person I never even knew”. But at the time they got him a great deal of attention in the small US folk-music scene, when they were published in magazines like Broadside and Sing Out, which collected political songs. Most of these early songs are juvenilia, with a couple of exceptions like the rather marvellous anti-bomb song “Let Me Die in My Footsteps”, but the song that changed everything for Dylan was a different matter. “Blowin’ in the Wind” was inspired by the melody of the old nineteenth century song “No More Auction Block”, a song that is often described as a “spiritual”, though in fact it’s a purely secular song about slavery: [Excerpt: Odetta, “No More Auction Block”] That song had seen something of a revival in folk circles in the late fifties, especially because part of its melody had been incorporated into another song, “We Shall Overcome”, which had become an anthem of the civil rights movement when it was revived and adapted by Pete Seeger: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger, “We Shall Overcome”] Dylan took this melody, with its associations with the fight for the rights of Black people, and came up with new lyrics, starting with the line “How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?” He wrote two verses of the song — the first and last verses — in a short burst of inspiration, and a few weeks later came back to it and added another verse, the second, which incorporated allusions to the Biblical prophet Ezekiel, and which is notably less inspired than those earlier verses. In later decades, many people have looked at the lyrics to the song and seen it as the first of what would become a whole subgenre of non-protest protest songs — they’ve seen the abstraction of “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” as being nice-sounding rhetoric that doesn’t actually mean anything, in much the same way as something like, say, “Another Day in Paradise” or “Eve of Destruction”, songs that make nonspecific complaints about nonspecific bad things. But while “Blowin’ in the Wind” is a song that has multiple meanings and can be applied to multiple situations, as most good songs can, that line was, at the time in which it was written, a very concrete question. The civil rights movement was asking for many things — for the right to vote, for an end to segregation, for an end to police brutality, but also for basic respect and acknowledgment of Black people’s shared humanity. We’ve already heard in a couple of past episodes Big Bill Broonzy singing “When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?”: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, “When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?”] Because at the time, it was normal for white people to refer to Black men as “boy”. As Dr. Martin Luther King said in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail”, one of the greatest pieces of writing of the twentieth century, a letter in large part about how white moderates were holding Black people back with demands to be “reasonable” and let things take their time: “when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society… when your first name becomes“ and here Dr. King uses a racial slur which I, as a white man, will not say, “and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.” King’s great letter was written in 1963, less than a year after Dylan was writing his song but before it became widely known. In the context of 1962, the demand to call a man a man was a very real political issue, not an aphorism that could go in a Hallmark card. Dylan recorded the song in June 1962, during the sessions for his second album, which at the time was going under the working title “Bob Dylan’s Blues”: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] By the time he recorded it, two major changes had happened to him. The first was that Suze Rotolo had travelled to Spain for several months, leaving him bereft — for the next few months, his songwriting took a turn towards songs about either longing for the return of a lost love, like “Tomorrow is a Long Time”, one of his most romantic songs, or about how the protagonist doesn’t even need his girlfriend anyway and she can leave if she likes, see if he cares, like “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”. The other change was that Albert Grossman had become his manager, largely on the strength of “Blowin’ in the Wind”, which Grossman thought had huge potential. Grossman signed Dylan up, taking twenty percent of all his earnings — including on the contract with Columbia Records Dylan already had — and got him signed to a new publisher, Witmark Publishing, where the aptly-named Artie Mogull thought that “Blowin’ in the Wind” could be marketed. Grossman took his twenty percent of Dylan’s share of the songwriting money as his commission from Dylan — and fifty percent of Witmark’s share of the money as his commission from Witmark, meaning that Dylan was getting forty percent of the money for writing the songs, while Grossman was getting thirty-five percent. Grossman immediately got involved in the recording of Dylan’s second album, and started having personality clashes with John Hammond. It was apparently Grossman who suggested that Dylan “go electric” for the first time, with the late-1962 single “Mixed-Up Confusion”: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “Mixed-Up Confusion”] Neither Hammond nor Dylan liked that record, and it seemed clear for the moment that the way forward for Dylan was to continue in an acoustic folk vein. Dylan was also starting to get inspired more by English folk music, and incorporate borrowings from English music into his songwriting. That’s most apparent in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, written in September 1962. Dylan took the structure of that song from the old English ballad, “Lord Randall”: [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl, “Lord Randall”] He reworked that structure into a song of apocalypse, again full of the Biblical imagery he’d tried in the second verse of “Blowin’ in the Wind”, but this time more successfully incorporating it: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”] His interest in English folk music was to become more important in his songwriting in the following months, as Dylan was about to travel to the UK and encounter the British folk music scene. A TV director called Philip Saville had seen Dylan performing in New York, and had decided he would be perfect for the role of a poet in a TV play he was putting on, Madhouse in Castle Street, and got Dylan flown over to perform in it. Unfortunately, no-one seems to have told Dylan what would be involved in this, and he proved incapable of learning his lines or acting, so the show was rethought — the role of the poet was given to David Warner, later to become one of Britain’s most famous screen actors, and Dylan was cast in a new role as a singer called “Bobby”, who had few or no lines but did get to sing a few songs, including “Blowin’ in the Wind”, which was the first time the song was heard by anyone outside of the New York folk scene. Dylan was in London for about a month, and while he was there he immersed himself in the British folk scene. This scene was in some ways modelled on the American scene, and had some of the same people involved, but it was very different. The initial spark for the British folk revival had come in the late 1940s, when A.L. Lloyd, a member of the Communist Party, had published a book of folk songs he’d collected, along with some Marxist analysis of how folk songs evolved. In the early fifties, Alan Lomax, then in the UK to escape McCarthyism, put Lloyd in touch with Ewan MacColl, a songwriter and performer from Manchester, who we heard earlier singing “Lord Randall”. MacColl, like Lloyd, was a Communist, but the two also shared a passion for older folk songs, and they began recording and performing together, recording traditional songs like “The Handsome Cabin Boy”: [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd, “The Handsome Cabin Boy”] MacColl and Lloyd latched on to the skiffle movement, and MacColl started his own club night, Ballads and Blues, which tried to push the skifflers in the direction of performing more music based in English traditional music. This had already been happening to an extent with things like the Vipers performing “Maggie May”, a song about a sex worker in Liverpool: [Excerpt: The Vipers Skiffle Group, “Maggie May”] But this started to happen a lot more with MacColl’s encouragement. At one point in 1956, there was even a TV show hosted by Lomax and featuring a band that included Lomax, MacColl, Jim Bray, the bass player from Chris Barber’s band, Shirley Collins — a folk singer who was also Lomax’s partner — and Peggy Seeger, who was Pete Seeger’s sister and who had also entered into a romantic relationship with MacColl, whose most famous song, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, was written both about and for her: [Excerpt: Peggy Seeger, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”] It was Seeger who instigated what became the most notable feature at the Ballads and Blues club and its successor the Singer’s Club. She’d burst out laughing when she saw Long John Baldry sing “Rock Island Line”, because he was attempting to sing in an American accent. As someone who had actually known Lead Belly, she found British imitations of his singing ludicrous, and soon there was a policy at the clubs that people would only sing songs that were originally sung with their normal vowel sounds. So Seeger could only sing songs from the East Coast of the US, because she didn’t have the Western vowels of a Woody Guthrie, while MacColl could sing English and Scottish songs, but nothing from Wales or Ireland. As the skiffle craze died down, it splintered into several linked scenes. We’ve already seen how in Liverpool and London it spawned guitar groups like the Shadows and the Beatles, while in London it also led to the electric blues scene. It also led to a folk scene that was very linked to the blues scene at first, but was separate from it, and which was far more political, centred around MacColl. That scene, like the US one, combined topical songs about political events from a far-left viewpoint with performances of traditional songs, but in the case of the British one these were mostly old sea shanties and sailors’ songs, and the ancient Child Ballads, rather than Appalachian country music — though a lot of the songs have similar roots. And unlike the blues scene, the folk scene spread all over the country. There were clubs in Manchester, in Liverpool (run by the group the Spinners), in Bradford, in Hull (run by the Waterson family) and most other major British cities. The musicians who played these venues were often inspired by MacColl and Lloyd, but the younger generation of musicians often looked askance at what they saw as MacColl’s dogmatic approach, preferring to just make good music rather than submit it to what they saw as MacColl’s ideological purity test, even as they admired his musicianship and largely agreed with his politics. And one of these younger musicians was a guitarist named Martin Carthy, who was playing a club called the King and Queen on Goodge Street when he saw Bob Dylan walk in. He recognised Dylan from the cover of Sing Out! magazine, and invited him to get up on stage and do a few numbers. For the next few weeks, Carthy showed Dylan round the folk scene — Dylan went down great at the venues where Carthy normally played, and at the Roundhouse, but flopped around the venues that were dominated by MacColl, as the people there seemed to think of Dylan as a sort of cut-rate Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, as Elliot had been such a big part of the skiffle and folk scenes. Carthy also taught Dylan a number of English folk songs, including “Lord Franklin”: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy, “Lord Franklin”] and “Scarborough Fair”: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy, “Scarborough Fair”] Dylan immediately incorporated the music he’d learned from Carthy into his songwriting, basing “Bob Dylan’s Dream” on “Lord Franklin”, and even more closely basing “GIrl From the North Country” on “Scarborough Fair”: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “Girl From The North Country”] After his trip to London, Dylan went over to Europe to see if he could catch up with Suze, but she had already gone back to New York — their letters to each other crossed in the post. On his return, they reunited at least for a while, and she posed with him for the photo for the cover of what was to be his second album. Dylan had thought that album completed when he left for England, but he soon discovered that there were problems with the album — the record label didn’t want to release the comedy talking blues “Talking John Birch Society Paranoid Blues”, because they thought it might upset the fascists in the John Birch Society. The same thing would later make sure that Dylan never played the Ed Sullivan Show, because when he was booked onto the show he insisted on playing that song, and so they cancelled the booking. In this case, though, it gave him an excuse to remove what he saw as the weaker songs on the album, including “Tomorrow is a Long Time”, and replace them with four new songs, three of them inspired by traditional English folk songs — “Bob Dylan’s Dream”, “Girl From the North Country”, and “Masters of War” which took its melody from the old folk song “Nottamun Town” popularised on the British folk circuit by an American singer, Jean Ritchie: [Excerpt: Jean Ritchie, “Nottamun Town”] These new recordings weren’t produced by John Hammond, as the rest of the album was. Albert Grossman had been trying from the start to get total control over Dylan, and didn’t want Hammond, who had been around before Grossman, involved in Dylan’s career. Instead, a new producer named Tom Wilson was in charge. Wilson was a remarkable man, but seemed an odd fit for a left-wing folk album. He was one of the few Black producers working for a major label, though he’d started out as an indie producer. He was a Harvard economics graduate, and had been president of the Young Republicans during his time there — he remained a conservative all his life — but he was far from conservative in his musical tastes. When he’d left university, he’d borrowed nine hundred dollars and started his own record label, Transition, which had put out some of the best experimental jazz of the fifties, produced by Wilson, including the debut albums by Sun Ra: [Excerpt: Sun Ra, “Brainville”] and Cecil Taylor: [Excerpt: Cecil Taylor, “Bemsha Swing”] Wilson later described his first impressions of Dylan: “I didn’t even particularly like folk music. I’d been recording Sun Ra and Coltrane … I thought folk music was for the dumb guys. This guy played like the dumb guys, but then these words came out. I was flabbergasted.” Wilson would soon play a big part in Dylan’s career, but for now his job was just to get those last few tracks for the album recorded. In the end, the final recording session for Dylan’s second album was more than a year after the first one, and it came out into a very different context from when he’d started recording it. Because while Dylan was putting the finishing touches on his second album, Peter Paul and Mary were working on their third, and they were encouraged by Grossman to record three Bob Dylan songs, since that way Grossman would make more money from them. Their version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” came out as a single a few weeks after The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan came out, and sold 300,000 copies in the first week: [Excerpt: Peter, Paul, and Mary, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] The record went to number two on the charts, and their followup, “Don’t Think Twice it’s Alright”, another Dylan song, went top ten as well. “Blowin’ in the Wind” became an instant standard, and was especially picked up by Black performers, as it became a civil rights anthem. Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers said later that she was astonished that a white man could write a line like “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?”, saying “That’s what my father experienced” — and the Staple Singers recorded it, of course: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] as did Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] And Stevie Wonder: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] But the song’s most important performance came from Peter, Paul and Mary, performing it on a bill with Dylan, Odetta, Joan Baez, and Mahalia Jackson in August 1963, just as the song had started to descend the charts. Because those artists were the entertainment for the March on Washington, in which more than a quarter of a million people descended on Washington both to support President Kennedy’s civil rights bill and to speak out and say that it wasn’t going far enough. That was one of the great moments in American political history, full of incendiary speeches like the one by John Lewis: [Excerpt: John Lewis, March on Washington speech] But the most memorable moment at that march came when Dr. King was giving his speech. Mahalia Jackson shouted out “Tell them about the dream, Martin”, and King departed from his prepared words and instead improvised based on themes he’d used in other speeches previously, coming out with some of the most famous words ever spoken: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”] The civil rights movement was more than one moment, however inspiring, and white people like myself have a tendency to reduce it just to Dr. King, and to reduce Dr. King just to those words — which is one reason why I quoted from Letter From Birmingham Jail earlier, as that is a much less safe and canonised piece of writing. But it’s still true to say that if there is a single most important moment in the history of the post-war struggle for Black rights, it was that moment, and because of “Blowin’ in the Wind”, both Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary were minor parts of that event. After 1963, Peter, Paul and Mary quickly became passe with the British Invasion, only having two more top ten hits, one with a novelty song in 1967 and one with “Leaving on a Jet Plane” in 1969. They split up in 1970, and around that time Yarrow was arrested and convicted for a sexual offence involving a fourteen-year-old girl, though he was later pardoned by President Carter. The group reformed in 1978 and toured the nostalgia circuit until Mary’s death in 2009. The other two still occasionally perform together, as Peter and Noel Paul. Bob Dylan, of course, went on to bigger things after “Blowin’ in the Wind” suddenly made him into the voice of a generation — a position he didn’t ask for and didn’t seem to want. We’ll be hearing much more from him. And we’ll also be hearing more about the struggle for Black civil rights, as that’s a story, much like Dylan’s, that continues to this day.
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Information on Chris Barber comes from Jazz Me Blues: The Autobiography of Chris Barber by Barber and Alyn Shopton. Information on Alexis Korner comes from Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. Two resources that I’ve used for this and all future Stones episodes — The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. I’ve also used Andrew Loog Oldham’s autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards’ Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. This compilation contains Alexis Korner’s pre-1963 electric blues material, while this contains the earlier skiffle and country blues music. The live performances by Chris Barber and various blues legends I’ve used here come from volumes one and two of a three-CD series of these recordings. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones’ singles up to 1971. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we’re going to look at a group who, more than any other band of the sixties, sum up what “rock music” means to most people. This is all the more surprising as when they started out they were vehemently opposed to being referred to as “rock and roll”. We’re going to look at the London blues scene of the early sixties, and how a music scene that was made up of people who thought of themselves as scholars of obscure music, going against commercialism ended up creating some of the most popular and commercial music ever made. We’re going to look at the Rolling Stones, and at “I Wanna Be Your Man”: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] The Rolling Stones’ story doesn’t actually start with the Rolling Stones, and they won’t be appearing until quite near the end of this episode, because to explain how they formed, I have to explain the British blues scene that they formed in. One of the things people asked me when I first started doing the podcast was why I didn’t cover people like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf in the early episodes — after all, most people now think that rock and roll started with those artists. It didn’t, as I hope the last hundred or so episodes have shown. But those artists did become influential on its development, and that influence happened largely because of one man, Chris Barber. We’ve seen Barber before, in a couple of episodes, but this, even more than his leading the band that brought Lonnie Donegan to fame, is where his influence on popular music really changes everything. On the face of it, Chris Barber seems like the last person in the world who one would expect to be responsible, at least indirectly, for some of the most rebellious popular music ever made. He is a trombone player from a background that is about as solidly respectable as one can imagine — his parents were introduced to each other by the economist John Maynard Keynes, and his father, another economist, was not only offered a knighthood for his war work (he turned it down but accepted a CBE), but Clement Atlee later offered him a safe seat in Parliament if he wanted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. But when the war started, young Chris Barber started listening to the Armed Forces Network, and became hooked on jazz. By the time the war ended, when he was fifteen, he owned records by Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and more — records that were almost impossible to find in the Britain of the 1940s. And along with the jazz records, he was also getting hold of blues records by people like Cow Cow Davenport and Sleepy John Estes: [Excerpt: Sleepy John Estes, “Milk Cow Blues”] In his late teens and early twenties, Barber had become Britain’s pre-eminent traditional jazz trombonist — a position he held until he retired last year, aged eighty-nine — but he wasn’t just interested in trad jazz, but in all of American roots music, which is why he’d ended up accidentally kick-starting the skiffle craze when his guitarist recorded an old Lead Belly song as a track on a Barber album, as we looked at back in the episode on “Rock Island Line”. If that had been Barber’s only contribution to British rock and roll, he would still have been important — after all, without “Rock Island Line”, it’s likely that you could have counted the number of British boys who played guitar in the fifties and sixties on a single hand. But he did far more than that. In the mid to late fifties, Barber became one of the biggest stars in British music. He didn’t have a breakout chart hit until 1959, when he released “Petit Fleur”, engineered by Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Chris Barber, “Petit Fleur”] And Barber didn’t even play on that – it was a clarinet solo by his clarinettist Monty Sunshine. But long before this big chart success he was a huge live draw and made regular appearances on TV and radio, and he was hugely appreciated among music lovers. A parallel for his status in the music world in the more modern era might be someone like, say, Radiohead — a band who aren’t releasing number one singles, but who have a devoted fanbase and are more famous than many of those acts who do have regular hits. And that celebrity status put Barber in a position to do something that changed music forever. Because he desperately wanted to play with his American musical heroes, and he was one of the few people in Britain with the kind of built-in audience that he could bring over obscure Black musicians, some of whom had never even had a record released over here, and get them on stage with him. And he brought over, in particular, blues musicians. Now, just as there was a split in the British jazz community between those who liked traditional Dixieland jazz and those who liked modern jazz, there was a similar split in their tastes in blues and R&B. Those who liked modern jazz — a music that was dominated by saxophones and piano — unsurprisingly liked modern keyboard and saxophone-based R&B. Their R&B idol was Ray Charles, whose music was the closest of the great R&B stars to modern jazz, and one stream of the British R&B movement of the sixties came from this scene — people like the Spencer Davis Group, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and Manfred Mann all come from this modernist scene. But the trad people, when they listened to blues, liked music that sounded primitive to them, just as they liked primitive-sounding jazz. Their tastes were very heavily influenced by Alan Lomax — who came to the UK for a crucial period in the fifties to escape McCarthyism — and they paralleled those of the American folk scene that Lomax was also part of, and followed the same narrative that Lomax’s friend John Hammond had constructed for his Spirituals to Swing concerts, where the Delta country blues of people like Robert Johnson had been the basis for both jazz and boogie piano. This entirely false narrative became the received wisdom among the trad scene in Britain, to the extent that two of the very few people in the world who had actually heard Robert Johnson records before the release of the King of the Delta Blues Singers album were Chris Barber and his sometime guitarist and banjo player Alexis Korner. These people liked Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Lead Belly, and Lonnie Johnson’s early recordings before his later pop success. They liked solo male performers who played guitar. These two scenes were geographically close — the Flamingo Club, a modern jazz club that later became the place where Georgie Fame and Chris Farlowe built their audiences, was literally across the road from the Marquee, a trad jazz club that became the centre of guitar-based R&B in the UK. And there wasn’t a perfect hard-and-fast split, as we’ll see — but it’s generally true that what is nowadays portrayed as a single British “blues scene” was, in its early days, two overlapping but distinct scenes, based in a pre-existing split in the jazz world. Barber was, of course, part of the traditional jazz wing, and indeed he was so influential a part of it that his tastes shaped the tastes of the whole scene to a large extent. But Barber was not as much of a purist as someone like his former collaborator Ken Colyer, who believed that jazz had become corrupted in 1922 by the evil innovations of people like Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, who were too modern for his tastes. Barber had preferences, but he could appreciate — and more importantly play — music in a variety of styles. So Barber started by bringing over Big Bill Broonzy, who John Hammond had got to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts when he’d found out Robert Johnson was dead. It was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy got to record with Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, “When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?”] And it was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy appeared on Six-Five Special, along with Tommy Steele, the Vipers, and Mike and Bernie Winters, and thus became the first blues musician that an entire generation of British musicians saw, their template for what a blues musician is. If you watch the Beatles Anthology, for example, in the sections where they talk about the music they were listening to as teenagers, Broonzy is the only blues musician specifically named. That’s because of Chris Barber. Broonzy toured with Barber several times in the fifties, before his death in 1958, but he wasn’t the only one. Barber brought over many people to perform and record with him, including several we’ve looked at previously. Like the rock and roll stars who visited the UK at this time, these were generally people who were past their commercial peak in the US, but who were fantastic live performers. The Barber band did recording sessions with Louis Jordan: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan and the Chris Barber band, “Tain’t Nobody’s Business”] And we’re lucky enough that many of the Barber band’s shows at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (a venue that would later host two hugely important shows we’ll talk about in later episodes) were recorded and have since been released. With those recordings we can hear them backing Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Chris Barber band, “Peace in the Valley”] Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee: [Excerpt: Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and the Chris Barber band, “This Little Light of Mine”] And others like Champion Jack Dupree and Sonny Boy Williamson. But there was one particular blues musician that Barber brought over who changed everything for British music. Barber was a member of an organisation called the National Jazz Federation, which helped arrange transatlantic musician exchanges. You might remember that at the time there was a rule imposed by the musicians’ unions in the UK and the US that the only way for an American musician to play the UK was if a British musician played the US and vice versa, and the National Jazz Federation helped set these exchanges up. Through the NJF Barber had become friendly with John Lewis, the American pianist who led the Modern Jazz Quartet, and was talking with Lewis about what other musicians he could bring over, and Lewis suggested Muddy Waters. Barber said that would be great, but he had no idea how you’d reach Muddy Waters — did you send a postcard to the plantation he worked on or something? Lewis laughed, and said that no, Muddy Waters had a Cadillac and an agent. The reason for Barber’s confusion was fairly straightfoward — Barber was thinking of Waters’ early recordings, which he knew because of the influence of Alan Lomax. Lomax had discovered Muddy Waters back in 1941. He’d travelled to Clarksdale, Mississippi hoping to record Robert Johnson for the Library of Congress — apparently he didn’t know, or had forgotten, that Johnson had died a few years earlier. When he couldn’t find Johnson, he’d found another musician, who had a similar style, and recorded him instead. Waters was a working musician who would play whatever people wanted to listen to — Gene Autry songs, Glenn Miller, whatever — but who was particularly proficient in blues, influenced by Son House, the same person who had been Johnson’s biggest influence. Lomax recorded him playing acoustic blues on a plantation, and those recordings were put out by the Library of Congress: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “I Be’s Troubled”] Those Library of Congress recordings had been hugely influential among the trad and skiffle scenes — Lonnie Donegan, in particular, had borrowed a copy from the American Embassy’s record-lending library and then stolen it because he liked it so much. But after making those recordings, Waters had travelled up to Chicago and gone electric, forming a band with guitarist Jimmie Rodgers (not the same person as the country singer of the same name, or the 50s pop star), harmonica player Little Walter, drummer Elgin Evans, and pianist Otis Spann. Waters had signed to Chess Records, then still named Aristocrat, in 1947, and had started out by recording electric versions of the same material he’d been performing acoustically: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “I Can’t Be Satisfied”] But soon he’d partnered with Chess’ great bass player, songwriter, and producer Willie Dixon, who wrote a string of blues classics both for Waters and for Chess’ other big star Howlin’ Wolf. Throughout the early fifties, Waters had a series of hits on the R&B charts with his electric blues records, like the great “Hoochie Coochie Man”, which introduced one of the most copied blues riffs ever: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “Hoochie Coochie Man”] But by the late fifties, the hits had started to dry up. Waters was still making great records, but Chess were more interested in artists like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and the Moonglows, who were selling much more and were having big pop hits, not medium-sized R&B ones. So Waters and his pianist Otis Spann were eager to come over to the UK, and Barber was eager to perform with them. Luckily, unlike many of his trad contemporaries, Barber was comfortable with electric music, and his band quickly learned Waters’ current repertoire. Waters came over and played one night at a festival with a different band, made up of modern jazz players who didn’t really fit his style before joining the Barber tour, and so he and Spann were a little worried on their first night with the group when they heard these Dixieland trombones and clarinets. But as soon as the group blasted out the riff of “Hoochie Coochie Man” to introduce their guests, Waters and Spann’s faces lit up — they knew these were musicians they could play with, and they fit in with Barber’s band perfectly: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, and the Chris Barber band, “Hoochie Coochie Man”] Not everyone watching the tour was as happy as Barber with the electric blues though — the audiences were often bemused by the electric guitars, which they associated with rock and roll rather than the blues. Waters, like many of his contemporaries, was perfectly willing to adapt his performance to the audience, and so the next time he came over he brought his acoustic guitar and played more in the country acoustic style they expected. The time after that he came over, though, the audiences were disappointed, because he was playing acoustic, and now they wanted and expected him to be playing electric Chicago blues. Because Muddy Waters’ first UK tour had developed a fanbase for him, and that fanbase had been cultivated and grown by one man, who had started off playing in the same band as Chris Barber. Alexis Korner had started out in the Ken Colyer band, the same band that Chris Barber had started out in, as a replacement for Lonnie Donegan when Donegan was conscripted. After Donegan had rejoined the band, they’d played together for a while, and the first ever British skiffle group lineup had been Ken and Bill Colyer, Korner, Donegan, and Barber. When the Colyers had left the group and Barber had taken it over, Korner had gone with the Colyers, mostly because he didn’t like the fact that Donegan was introducing country and folk elements into skiffle, while Korner liked the blues. As a result, Korner had sung and played on the very first ever British skiffle record, the Ken Colyer group’s version of “Midnight Special”: [Excerpt: The Ken Colyer Skiffle Group, “Midnight Special”] After that, Korner had also backed Beryl Bryden on some skiffle recordings, which also featured a harmonica player named Cyril Davies: [Excerpt: Beryl Bryden Skiffle Group, “This Train”] But Korner and Davies had soon got sick of skiffle as it developed — they liked the blues music that formed its basis, but Korner had never been a fan of Lonnie Donegan’s singing — he’d even said as much in the liner notes to an album by the Barber band while both he and Donegan were still in the band — and what Donegan saw as eclecticism, including Woody Guthrie songs and old English music-hall songs, Korner saw as watering down the music. Korner and Donegan had a war of words in the pages of Melody Maker, at that time the biggest jazz periodical in Britain. Korner started with an article headlined “Skiffle is Piffle”, in which he said in part: “It is with shame and considerable regret that I have to admit my part as one of the originators of the movement…British skiffle is, most certainly, a commercial success. But musically it rarely exceeds the mediocre and is, in general, so abysmally low that it defies proper musical judgment”. Donegan replied pointing out that Korner was playing in a skiffle group himself, and then Korner replied to that, saying that what he was doing now wasn’t skiffle, it was the blues. You can judge for yourself whether the “Blues From the Roundhouse” EP, by Alexis Korner’s Breakdown Group, which featured Korner, Davies on guitar and harmonica, plus teachest bass and washboard, was skiffle or blues: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner’s Breakdown Group, “Skip to My Lou”] But soon Korner and Davies had changed their group’s name to Blues Incorporated, and were recording something that was much closer to the Delta and Chicago blues Davies in particular liked. [Excerpt: Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated feat. Cyril Davies, “Death Letter”] But after the initial recordings, Blues Incorporated stopped being a thing for a while, as Korner got more involved with the folk scene. At a party hosted by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, he met the folk guitarist Davey Graham, who had previously lived in the same squat as Lionel Bart, Tommy Steele’s lyricist, if that gives some idea of how small and interlocked the London music scene actually was at this time, for all its factional differences. Korner and Graham formed a guitar duo playing jazzy folk music for a while: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, “3/4 AD”] But in 1960, after Chris Barber had done a second tour with Muddy Waters, Barber decided that he needed to make Muddy Waters style blues a regular part of his shows. Barber had entered into a partnership with an accountant, Harold Pendleton, who was secretary of the National Jazz Federation. They co-owned a club, the Marquee, which Pendleton managed, and they were about to start up an annual jazz festival, the Richmond festival, which would eventually grow into the Reading Festival, the second-biggest rock festival in Britain. Barber had a residency at the Marquee, and he wanted to introduce a blues segment into the shows there. He had a singer — his wife, Ottilie Patterson, who was an excellent singer in the Bessie Smith mould — and he got a couple of members of his band to back her on some Chicago-style blues songs in the intervals of his shows. He asked Korner to be a part of this interval band, and after a little while it was decided that Korner would form the first ever British electric blues band, which would take over those interval slots, and so Blues Incorporated was reformed, with Cyril Davies rejoining Korner. The first time this group played together, in the first week of 1962, it was Korner on electric guitar, Davies on harmonica, and Chris Barber plus Barber’s trumpet player Pat Halcox, but they soon lost the Barber band members. The group was called Blues Incorporated because they were meant to be semi-anonymous — the idea was that people might join just for a show, or just for a few songs, and they never had the same lineup from one show to the next. For example, their classic album R&B From The Marquee, which wasn’t actually recorded at the Marquee, and was produced by Jack Good, features Korner, Davies, sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith, Keith Scott on piano, Spike Heatley on bass, Graham Burbridge on drums, and Long John Baldry on vocals: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, “How Long How Long Blues”] But Burbridge wasn’t their regular drummer — that was a modern jazz player named Charlie Watts. And they had a lot of singers. Baldry was one of their regulars, as was Art Wood (who had a brother, Ronnie, who wasn’t yet involved with these players). When Charlie quit the band, because it was taking up too much of his time, he was replaced with another drummer, Ginger Baker. When Spike Heatley left the band, Dick Heckstall-Smith brought in a new bass player, Jack Bruce. Sometimes a young man called Eric Clapton would get up on stage for a number or two, though he wouldn’t bring his guitar, he’d just sing with them. So would a singer and harmonica player named Paul Jones, later the singer with Manfred Mann, who first travelled down to see the group with a friend of his, a guitarist named Brian Jones, no relation, who would also sit in with the band on guitar, playing Elmore James numbers under the name Elmo Lewis. A young man named Rodney Stewart would sometimes join in for a number or two. And one time Eric Burdon hitch-hiked down from Newcastle to get a chance to sing with the group. He jumped onto the stage when it got to the point in the show that Korner asked for singers from the audience, and so did a skinny young man. Korner diplomatically suggested that they sing a duet, and they agreed on a Billy Boy Arnold number. At the end of the song Korner introduced them — “Eric Burdon from Newcastle, this is Mick Jagger”. Mick Jagger was a middle-class student, studying at the London School of Economics, one of the most prestigious British universities. He soon became a regular guest vocalist with Blues Incorporated, appearing at almost every show. Soon after, Davies left the group — he wanted to play strictly Chicago style blues, but Korner wanted to play other types of R&B. The final straw for Davies came when Korner brought in Graham Bond on Hammond organ — it was bad enough that they had a saxophone player, but Hammond was a step too far. Sometimes Jagger would bring on a guitar-playing friend for a song or two — they’d play a Chuck Berry song, to Davies’ disapproval. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had known each other at primary school, but had fallen out of touch for years. Then one day they’d bumped into each other at a train station, and Richards had noticed two albums under Jagger’s arm — one by Muddy Waters and one by Chuck Berry, both of which he’d ordered specially from Chess Records in Chicago because they weren’t out in the UK yet. They’d bonded over their love for Berry and Bo Diddley, in particular, and had soon formed a band themselves, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, with a friend, Dick Taylor, and had made some home recordings of rock and roll and R&B music: [Excerpt: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, “Beautiful Delilah”] Meanwhile, Brian Jones, the slide player with the Elmore James obsession, decided he wanted to create his own band, who were to be called The Rollin’ Stones, named after a favourite Muddy Waters track of his. He got together with Ian Stewart, a piano player who answered an ad in Jazz News magazine. Stewart had very different musical tastes to Jones — Jones liked Elmore James and Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and especially Jimmy Reed, and very little else, just electric Chicago blues. Stewart was older, and liked boogie piano like Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, and jump band R&B like Wynonie Harris and Louis Jordan, but he could see that Jones had potential. They tried to get Charlie Watts to join the band, but he refused at first, so they played with a succession of other drummers, starting with Mick Avory. And they needed a singer, and Jones thought that Mick Jagger had genuine star potential. Jagger agreed to join, but only if his mates Dick and Keith could join the band. Jones was a little hesitant — Mick Jagger was a real blues scholar like him, but he did have a tendency to listen to this rock and roll nonsense rather than proper blues, and Keith seemed even less of a blues purist than that. He probably even listened to Elvis. Dick, meanwhile, was an unknown quantity. But eventually Jones agreed — though Richards remembers turning up to the first rehearsal and being astonished by Stewart’s piano playing, only for Stewart to then turn around to him and say sarcastically “and you must be the Chuck Berry artist”. Their first gig was at the Marquee, in place of Blues Incorporated, who were doing a BBC session and couldn’t make their regular gig. Taylor and Avory soon left, and they went through a succession of bass players and drummers, played several small gigs, and also recorded a demo, which had no success in getting them a deal: [Excerpt: The Rollin’ Stones, “You Can’t Judge a Book By its Cover”] By this point, Jones, Richards, and Jagger were all living together, in a flat which has become legendary for its squalour. Jones was managing the group (and pocketing some of the money for himself) and Jones and Richards were spending all day every day playing guitar together, developing an interlocking style in which both could switch from rhythm to lead as the song demanded. Tony Chapman, the drummer they had at the time, brought in a friend of his, Bill Wyman, as bass player — they didn’t like him very much, he was older than the rest of them and seemed to have a bad attitude, and their initial idea was just to get him to leave his equipment with them and then nick it — he had a really good amplifier that they wanted — but they eventually decided to keep him in the band. They kept pressuring Charlie Watts to join and replace Chapman, and eventually, after talking it over with Alexis Korner’s wife Bobbie, he decided to give it a shot, and joined in early 1963. Watts and Wyman quickly gelled as a rhythm section with a unique style — Watts would play jazz-inspired shuffles, while Wyman would play fast, throbbing, quavers. The Rollin’ Stones were now a six-person group, and they were good. They got a residency at a new club run by Giorgio Gomelsky, a trad jazz promoter who was branching out into R&B. Gomelsky named his club the Crawdaddy Club, after the Bo Diddley song that the Stones ended their sets with. Soon, as well as playing the Crawdaddy every Sunday night, they were playing Ken Colyer’s club, Studio 51, on the other side of London every Sunday evening, so Ian Stewart bought a van to lug all their gear around. Gomelsky thought of himself as the group’s manager, though he didn’t have a formal contract, but Jones disagreed and considered himself the manager, though he never told Gomelsky this. Jones booked the group in at the IBC studios, where they cut a professional demo with Glyn Johns engineering, consisting mostly of Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed songs: [Excerpt: The Rollin’ Stones, “Diddley Daddy”] Gomelsky started getting the group noticed. He even got the Beatles to visit the club and see the group, and the two bands hit it off — even though John Lennon had no time for Chicago blues, he liked them as people, and would sometimes pop round to the flat where most of the group lived, once finding Mick and Keith in bed together because they didn’t have any money to heat the flat. The group’s live performances were so good that the Record Mirror, which as its name suggested only normally talked about records, did an article on the group. And the magazine’s editor, Peter Jones, raved about them to an acquaintance of his, Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham was a young man, only nineteen, but he’d already managed to get himself a variety of jobs around and with famous people, mostly by bluffing and conning them into giving him work. He’d worked for Mary Quant, the designer who’d popularised the miniskirt, and then had become a freelance publicist, working with Bob Dylan and Phil Spector on their trips to the UK, and with a succession of minor British pop stars. Most recently, he’d taken a job working with Brian Epstein as the Beatles’ London press agent. But he wanted his own Beatles, and when he visited the Crawdaddy Club, he decided he’d found them. Oldham knew nothing about R&B, didn’t like it, and didn’t care — he liked pure pop music, and he wanted to be Britain’s answer to Phil Spector. But he knew charisma when he saw it, and the group on stage had it. He immediately decided he was going to sign them as a manager. However, he needed a partner in order to get them bookings — at the time in Britain you needed an agent’s license to get bookings, and you needed to be twenty-one to get the license. He first offered Brian Epstein the chance to co-manage them — even though he’d not even talked to the group about it. Epstein said he had enough on his plate already managing the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and his other Liverpool groups. At that point Oldham quit his job with Epstein and looked for another partner. He found one in Eric Easton, an agent of the old school who had started out as a music-hall organ player before moving over to the management side and whose big clients were Bert Weedon and Mrs. Mills, and who was letting Oldham use a spare room in his office as a base. Oldham persuaded Easton to come to the Crawdaddy Club, though Easton was dubious as it meant missing Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the TV, but Easton agreed that the group had promise — though he wanted to get rid of the singer, which Oldham talked him out of. The two talked with Brian Jones, who agreed, as the group’s leader, that they would sign with Oldham and Easton. Easton brought traditional entertainment industry experience, while Oldham brought an understanding of how to market pop groups. Jones, as the group’s leader, negotiated an extra five pounds a week for himself off the top in the deal. One piece of advice that Oldham had been given by Phil Spector and which he’d taken to heart was that rather than get a band signed to a record label directly, you should set up an independent production company and lease the tapes to the label, and that’s what Oldham and Easton did. They formed a company called Impact, and went into the studio with the Stones and recorded the song they performed which they thought had the most commercial potential, a Chuck Berry song called “Come On” — though they changed Berry’s line about a “stupid jerk” to being about a “stupid guy”, in order to make sure the radio would play it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “Come On”] During the recording, Oldham, who was acting as producer, told the engineer not to mic up the piano. His plans didn’t include Ian Stewart. Neither the group nor Oldham were particularly happy with the record — the group because they felt it was too poppy, Oldham because it wasn’t poppy enough. But they took the recording to Decca Records, where Dick Rowe, the man who had turned down the Beatles, eagerly signed them. The conventional story is that Rowe signed them after being told about them by George Harrison, but the other details of the story as it’s usually told — that they were judging a talent contest in Liverpool, which is the story in most Stones biographies, or that they were appearing together on Juke Box Jury, which is what Wikipedia and articles ripped off from Wikipedia say — are false, and so it’s likely that the story is made up. Decca wanted the Stones to rerecord the track, but after going to another studio with Easton instead of Oldham producing, the general consensus was that the first version should be released. The group got new suits for their first TV appearance, and it was when they turned up to collect the suits and found there were only five of them, not six, that Ian Stewart discovered Oldham had had him kicked out of the group, thinking he was too old and too ugly, and that six people was too many for a pop group. Stewart was given the news by Brian Jones, and never really forgave either Jones or Oldham, but he remained loyal to the rest of the group. He became their road manager, and would continue to play piano with them on stage and in the studio for the next twenty-two years, until his death — he just wasn’t allowed in the photos or any TV appearances. That wasn’t the only change Oldham made — he insisted that the group be called the Rolling Stones, with a g, not Rollin’. He also changed Keith Richards’ surname, dropping the s to be more like Cliff, though Richards later changed it back again. “Come On” made number twenty-one in the charts, but the band were unsure of what to do as a follow-up single. Most of their repertoire consisted of hard blues songs, which were unlikely to have any chart success. Oldham convened the group for a rehearsal and they ran through possible songs — nothing seemed right. Oldham got depressed and went out for a walk, and happened to bump into John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They asked him what was up, and he explained that the group needed a song. Lennon and McCartney said they thought they could help, and came back to the rehearsal studio with Oldham. They played the Stones an idea that McCartney had been working on, which they thought might be OK for the group. The group said it would work, and Lennon and McCartney retreated to a corner, finished the song, and presented it to them. The result became the Stones’ second single, and another hit for them, this time reaching number twelve. The second single was produced by Easton, as Oldham, who is bipolar, was in a depressive phase and had gone off on holiday to try to get out of it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] The Beatles later recorded their own version of the song as an album track, giving it to Ringo to sing — as Lennon said of the song, “We weren’t going to give them anything great, were we?”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] For a B-side, the group did a song called “Stoned”, which was clearly “inspired” by “Green Onions”: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “Stoned”] That was credited to a group pseudonym, Nanker Phelge — Nanker after a particular face that Jones and Richards enjoyed pulling, and Phelge after a flatmate of several of the band members, James Phelge. As it was an original, by at least some definitions of the term original, it needed publishing, and Easton got the group signed to a publishing company with whom he had a deal, without consulting Oldham about it. When Oldham got back, he was furious, and that was the beginning of the end of Easton’s time with the group. But it was also the beginning of something else, because Oldham had had a realisation — if you’re going to make records you need songs, and you can’t just expect to bump into Lennon and McCartney every time you need a new single. No, the Rolling Stones were going to have to have some originals, and Andrew Loog Oldham was going to make them into writers. We’ll see how that went in a few weeks’ time, when we pick up on their career.
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "I Wanna Be Your Man" by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on "The Monkey Time" by Major Lance. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Information on Chris Barber comes from Jazz Me Blues: The Autobiography of Chris Barber by Barber and Alyn Shopton. Information on Alexis Korner comes from Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. Two resources that I've used for this and all future Stones episodes -- The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. I've also used Andrew Loog Oldham's autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards' Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. This compilation contains Alexis Korner's pre-1963 electric blues material, while this contains the earlier skiffle and country blues music. The live performances by Chris Barber and various blues legends I've used here come from volumes one and two of a three-CD series of these recordings. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones' singles up to 1971. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to look at a group who, more than any other band of the sixties, sum up what "rock music" means to most people. This is all the more surprising as when they started out they were vehemently opposed to being referred to as "rock and roll". We're going to look at the London blues scene of the early sixties, and how a music scene that was made up of people who thought of themselves as scholars of obscure music, going against commercialism ended up creating some of the most popular and commercial music ever made. We're going to look at the Rolling Stones, and at "I Wanna Be Your Man": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] The Rolling Stones' story doesn't actually start with the Rolling Stones, and they won't be appearing until quite near the end of this episode, because to explain how they formed, I have to explain the British blues scene that they formed in. One of the things people asked me when I first started doing the podcast was why I didn't cover people like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf in the early episodes -- after all, most people now think that rock and roll started with those artists. It didn't, as I hope the last hundred or so episodes have shown. But those artists did become influential on its development, and that influence happened largely because of one man, Chris Barber. We've seen Barber before, in a couple of episodes, but this, even more than his leading the band that brought Lonnie Donegan to fame, is where his influence on popular music really changes everything. On the face of it, Chris Barber seems like the last person in the world who one would expect to be responsible, at least indirectly, for some of the most rebellious popular music ever made. He is a trombone player from a background that is about as solidly respectable as one can imagine -- his parents were introduced to each other by the economist John Maynard Keynes, and his father, another economist, was not only offered a knighthood for his war work (he turned it down but accepted a CBE), but Clement Atlee later offered him a safe seat in Parliament if he wanted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. But when the war started, young Chris Barber started listening to the Armed Forces Network, and became hooked on jazz. By the time the war ended, when he was fifteen, he owned records by Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and more -- records that were almost impossible to find in the Britain of the 1940s. And along with the jazz records, he was also getting hold of blues records by people like Cow Cow Davenport and Sleepy John Estes: [Excerpt: Sleepy John Estes, "Milk Cow Blues"] In his late teens and early twenties, Barber had become Britain's pre-eminent traditional jazz trombonist -- a position he held until he retired last year, aged eighty-nine -- but he wasn't just interested in trad jazz, but in all of American roots music, which is why he'd ended up accidentally kick-starting the skiffle craze when his guitarist recorded an old Lead Belly song as a track on a Barber album, as we looked at back in the episode on "Rock Island Line". If that had been Barber's only contribution to British rock and roll, he would still have been important -- after all, without "Rock Island Line", it's likely that you could have counted the number of British boys who played guitar in the fifties and sixties on a single hand. But he did far more than that. In the mid to late fifties, Barber became one of the biggest stars in British music. He didn't have a breakout chart hit until 1959, when he released "Petit Fleur", engineered by Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Chris Barber, "Petit Fleur"] And Barber didn't even play on that – it was a clarinet solo by his clarinettist Monty Sunshine. But long before this big chart success he was a huge live draw and made regular appearances on TV and radio, and he was hugely appreciated among music lovers. A parallel for his status in the music world in the more modern era might be someone like, say, Radiohead -- a band who aren't releasing number one singles, but who have a devoted fanbase and are more famous than many of those acts who do have regular hits. And that celebrity status put Barber in a position to do something that changed music forever. Because he desperately wanted to play with his American musical heroes, and he was one of the few people in Britain with the kind of built-in audience that he could bring over obscure Black musicians, some of whom had never even had a record released over here, and get them on stage with him. And he brought over, in particular, blues musicians. Now, just as there was a split in the British jazz community between those who liked traditional Dixieland jazz and those who liked modern jazz, there was a similar split in their tastes in blues and R&B. Those who liked modern jazz -- a music that was dominated by saxophones and piano -- unsurprisingly liked modern keyboard and saxophone-based R&B. Their R&B idol was Ray Charles, whose music was the closest of the great R&B stars to modern jazz, and one stream of the British R&B movement of the sixties came from this scene -- people like the Spencer Davis Group, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and Manfred Mann all come from this modernist scene. But the trad people, when they listened to blues, liked music that sounded primitive to them, just as they liked primitive-sounding jazz. Their tastes were very heavily influenced by Alan Lomax -- who came to the UK for a crucial period in the fifties to escape McCarthyism -- and they paralleled those of the American folk scene that Lomax was also part of, and followed the same narrative that Lomax's friend John Hammond had constructed for his Spirituals to Swing concerts, where the Delta country blues of people like Robert Johnson had been the basis for both jazz and boogie piano. This entirely false narrative became the received wisdom among the trad scene in Britain, to the extent that two of the very few people in the world who had actually heard Robert Johnson records before the release of the King of the Delta Blues Singers album were Chris Barber and his sometime guitarist and banjo player Alexis Korner. These people liked Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Lead Belly, and Lonnie Johnson's early recordings before his later pop success. They liked solo male performers who played guitar. These two scenes were geographically close -- the Flamingo Club, a modern jazz club that later became the place where Georgie Fame and Chris Farlowe built their audiences, was literally across the road from the Marquee, a trad jazz club that became the centre of guitar-based R&B in the UK. And there wasn't a perfect hard-and-fast split, as we'll see -- but it's generally true that what is nowadays portrayed as a single British "blues scene" was, in its early days, two overlapping but distinct scenes, based in a pre-existing split in the jazz world. Barber was, of course, part of the traditional jazz wing, and indeed he was so influential a part of it that his tastes shaped the tastes of the whole scene to a large extent. But Barber was not as much of a purist as someone like his former collaborator Ken Colyer, who believed that jazz had become corrupted in 1922 by the evil innovations of people like Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, who were too modern for his tastes. Barber had preferences, but he could appreciate -- and more importantly play -- music in a variety of styles. So Barber started by bringing over Big Bill Broonzy, who John Hammond had got to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts when he'd found out Robert Johnson was dead. It was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy got to record with Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?"] And it was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy appeared on Six-Five Special, along with Tommy Steele, the Vipers, and Mike and Bernie Winters, and thus became the first blues musician that an entire generation of British musicians saw, their template for what a blues musician is. If you watch the Beatles Anthology, for example, in the sections where they talk about the music they were listening to as teenagers, Broonzy is the only blues musician specifically named. That's because of Chris Barber. Broonzy toured with Barber several times in the fifties, before his death in 1958, but he wasn't the only one. Barber brought over many people to perform and record with him, including several we've looked at previously. Like the rock and roll stars who visited the UK at this time, these were generally people who were past their commercial peak in the US, but who were fantastic live performers. The Barber band did recording sessions with Louis Jordan: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan and the Chris Barber band, "Tain't Nobody's Business"] And we're lucky enough that many of the Barber band's shows at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (a venue that would later host two hugely important shows we'll talk about in later episodes) were recorded and have since been released. With those recordings we can hear them backing Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Chris Barber band, "Peace in the Valley"] Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee: [Excerpt: Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and the Chris Barber band, "This Little Light of Mine"] And others like Champion Jack Dupree and Sonny Boy Williamson. But there was one particular blues musician that Barber brought over who changed everything for British music. Barber was a member of an organisation called the National Jazz Federation, which helped arrange transatlantic musician exchanges. You might remember that at the time there was a rule imposed by the musicians' unions in the UK and the US that the only way for an American musician to play the UK was if a British musician played the US and vice versa, and the National Jazz Federation helped set these exchanges up. Through the NJF Barber had become friendly with John Lewis, the American pianist who led the Modern Jazz Quartet, and was talking with Lewis about what other musicians he could bring over, and Lewis suggested Muddy Waters. Barber said that would be great, but he had no idea how you'd reach Muddy Waters -- did you send a postcard to the plantation he worked on or something? Lewis laughed, and said that no, Muddy Waters had a Cadillac and an agent. The reason for Barber's confusion was fairly straightfoward -- Barber was thinking of Waters' early recordings, which he knew because of the influence of Alan Lomax. Lomax had discovered Muddy Waters back in 1941. He'd travelled to Clarksdale, Mississippi hoping to record Robert Johnson for the Library of Congress -- apparently he didn't know, or had forgotten, that Johnson had died a few years earlier. When he couldn't find Johnson, he'd found another musician, who had a similar style, and recorded him instead. Waters was a working musician who would play whatever people wanted to listen to -- Gene Autry songs, Glenn Miller, whatever -- but who was particularly proficient in blues, influenced by Son House, the same person who had been Johnson's biggest influence. Lomax recorded him playing acoustic blues on a plantation, and those recordings were put out by the Library of Congress: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "I Be's Troubled"] Those Library of Congress recordings had been hugely influential among the trad and skiffle scenes -- Lonnie Donegan, in particular, had borrowed a copy from the American Embassy's record-lending library and then stolen it because he liked it so much. But after making those recordings, Waters had travelled up to Chicago and gone electric, forming a band with guitarist Jimmie Rodgers (not the same person as the country singer of the same name, or the 50s pop star), harmonica player Little Walter, drummer Elgin Evans, and pianist Otis Spann. Waters had signed to Chess Records, then still named Aristocrat, in 1947, and had started out by recording electric versions of the same material he'd been performing acoustically: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "I Can't Be Satisfied"] But soon he'd partnered with Chess' great bass player, songwriter, and producer Willie Dixon, who wrote a string of blues classics both for Waters and for Chess' other big star Howlin' Wolf. Throughout the early fifties, Waters had a series of hits on the R&B charts with his electric blues records, like the great "Hoochie Coochie Man", which introduced one of the most copied blues riffs ever: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] But by the late fifties, the hits had started to dry up. Waters was still making great records, but Chess were more interested in artists like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and the Moonglows, who were selling much more and were having big pop hits, not medium-sized R&B ones. So Waters and his pianist Otis Spann were eager to come over to the UK, and Barber was eager to perform with them. Luckily, unlike many of his trad contemporaries, Barber was comfortable with electric music, and his band quickly learned Waters' current repertoire. Waters came over and played one night at a festival with a different band, made up of modern jazz players who didn't really fit his style before joining the Barber tour, and so he and Spann were a little worried on their first night with the group when they heard these Dixieland trombones and clarinets. But as soon as the group blasted out the riff of "Hoochie Coochie Man" to introduce their guests, Waters and Spann's faces lit up -- they knew these were musicians they could play with, and they fit in with Barber's band perfectly: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, and the Chris Barber band, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] Not everyone watching the tour was as happy as Barber with the electric blues though -- the audiences were often bemused by the electric guitars, which they associated with rock and roll rather than the blues. Waters, like many of his contemporaries, was perfectly willing to adapt his performance to the audience, and so the next time he came over he brought his acoustic guitar and played more in the country acoustic style they expected. The time after that he came over, though, the audiences were disappointed, because he was playing acoustic, and now they wanted and expected him to be playing electric Chicago blues. Because Muddy Waters' first UK tour had developed a fanbase for him, and that fanbase had been cultivated and grown by one man, who had started off playing in the same band as Chris Barber. Alexis Korner had started out in the Ken Colyer band, the same band that Chris Barber had started out in, as a replacement for Lonnie Donegan when Donegan was conscripted. After Donegan had rejoined the band, they'd played together for a while, and the first ever British skiffle group lineup had been Ken and Bill Colyer, Korner, Donegan, and Barber. When the Colyers had left the group and Barber had taken it over, Korner had gone with the Colyers, mostly because he didn't like the fact that Donegan was introducing country and folk elements into skiffle, while Korner liked the blues. As a result, Korner had sung and played on the very first ever British skiffle record, the Ken Colyer group's version of "Midnight Special": [Excerpt: The Ken Colyer Skiffle Group, "Midnight Special"] After that, Korner had also backed Beryl Bryden on some skiffle recordings, which also featured a harmonica player named Cyril Davies: [Excerpt: Beryl Bryden Skiffle Group, "This Train"] But Korner and Davies had soon got sick of skiffle as it developed -- they liked the blues music that formed its basis, but Korner had never been a fan of Lonnie Donegan's singing -- he'd even said as much in the liner notes to an album by the Barber band while both he and Donegan were still in the band -- and what Donegan saw as eclecticism, including Woody Guthrie songs and old English music-hall songs, Korner saw as watering down the music. Korner and Donegan had a war of words in the pages of Melody Maker, at that time the biggest jazz periodical in Britain. Korner started with an article headlined "Skiffle is Piffle", in which he said in part: "It is with shame and considerable regret that I have to admit my part as one of the originators of the movement...British skiffle is, most certainly, a commercial success. But musically it rarely exceeds the mediocre and is, in general, so abysmally low that it defies proper musical judgment". Donegan replied pointing out that Korner was playing in a skiffle group himself, and then Korner replied to that, saying that what he was doing now wasn't skiffle, it was the blues. You can judge for yourself whether the “Blues From the Roundhouse” EP, by Alexis Korner's Breakdown Group, which featured Korner, Davies on guitar and harmonica, plus teachest bass and washboard, was skiffle or blues: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner's Breakdown Group, "Skip to My Lou"] But soon Korner and Davies had changed their group's name to Blues Incorporated, and were recording something that was much closer to the Delta and Chicago blues Davies in particular liked. [Excerpt: Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated feat. Cyril Davies, "Death Letter"] But after the initial recordings, Blues Incorporated stopped being a thing for a while, as Korner got more involved with the folk scene. At a party hosted by Ramblin' Jack Elliot, he met the folk guitarist Davey Graham, who had previously lived in the same squat as Lionel Bart, Tommy Steele's lyricist, if that gives some idea of how small and interlocked the London music scene actually was at this time, for all its factional differences. Korner and Graham formed a guitar duo playing jazzy folk music for a while: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, "3/4 AD"] But in 1960, after Chris Barber had done a second tour with Muddy Waters, Barber decided that he needed to make Muddy Waters style blues a regular part of his shows. Barber had entered into a partnership with an accountant, Harold Pendleton, who was secretary of the National Jazz Federation. They co-owned a club, the Marquee, which Pendleton managed, and they were about to start up an annual jazz festival, the Richmond festival, which would eventually grow into the Reading Festival, the second-biggest rock festival in Britain. Barber had a residency at the Marquee, and he wanted to introduce a blues segment into the shows there. He had a singer -- his wife, Ottilie Patterson, who was an excellent singer in the Bessie Smith mould -- and he got a couple of members of his band to back her on some Chicago-style blues songs in the intervals of his shows. He asked Korner to be a part of this interval band, and after a little while it was decided that Korner would form the first ever British electric blues band, which would take over those interval slots, and so Blues Incorporated was reformed, with Cyril Davies rejoining Korner. The first time this group played together, in the first week of 1962, it was Korner on electric guitar, Davies on harmonica, and Chris Barber plus Barber's trumpet player Pat Halcox, but they soon lost the Barber band members. The group was called Blues Incorporated because they were meant to be semi-anonymous -- the idea was that people might join just for a show, or just for a few songs, and they never had the same lineup from one show to the next. For example, their classic album R&B From The Marquee, which wasn't actually recorded at the Marquee, and was produced by Jack Good, features Korner, Davies, sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith, Keith Scott on piano, Spike Heatley on bass, Graham Burbridge on drums, and Long John Baldry on vocals: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, "How Long How Long Blues"] But Burbridge wasn't their regular drummer -- that was a modern jazz player named Charlie Watts. And they had a lot of singers. Baldry was one of their regulars, as was Art Wood (who had a brother, Ronnie, who wasn't yet involved with these players). When Charlie quit the band, because it was taking up too much of his time, he was replaced with another drummer, Ginger Baker. When Spike Heatley left the band, Dick Heckstall-Smith brought in a new bass player, Jack Bruce. Sometimes a young man called Eric Clapton would get up on stage for a number or two, though he wouldn't bring his guitar, he'd just sing with them. So would a singer and harmonica player named Paul Jones, later the singer with Manfred Mann, who first travelled down to see the group with a friend of his, a guitarist named Brian Jones, no relation, who would also sit in with the band on guitar, playing Elmore James numbers under the name Elmo Lewis. A young man named Rodney Stewart would sometimes join in for a number or two. And one time Eric Burdon hitch-hiked down from Newcastle to get a chance to sing with the group. He jumped onto the stage when it got to the point in the show that Korner asked for singers from the audience, and so did a skinny young man. Korner diplomatically suggested that they sing a duet, and they agreed on a Billy Boy Arnold number. At the end of the song Korner introduced them -- "Eric Burdon from Newcastle, this is Mick Jagger". Mick Jagger was a middle-class student, studying at the London School of Economics, one of the most prestigious British universities. He soon became a regular guest vocalist with Blues Incorporated, appearing at almost every show. Soon after, Davies left the group -- he wanted to play strictly Chicago style blues, but Korner wanted to play other types of R&B. The final straw for Davies came when Korner brought in Graham Bond on Hammond organ -- it was bad enough that they had a saxophone player, but Hammond was a step too far. Sometimes Jagger would bring on a guitar-playing friend for a song or two -- they'd play a Chuck Berry song, to Davies' disapproval. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had known each other at primary school, but had fallen out of touch for years. Then one day they'd bumped into each other at a train station, and Richards had noticed two albums under Jagger's arm -- one by Muddy Waters and one by Chuck Berry, both of which he'd ordered specially from Chess Records in Chicago because they weren't out in the UK yet. They'd bonded over their love for Berry and Bo Diddley, in particular, and had soon formed a band themselves, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, with a friend, Dick Taylor, and had made some home recordings of rock and roll and R&B music: [Excerpt: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, "Beautiful Delilah"] Meanwhile, Brian Jones, the slide player with the Elmore James obsession, decided he wanted to create his own band, who were to be called The Rollin' Stones, named after a favourite Muddy Waters track of his. He got together with Ian Stewart, a piano player who answered an ad in Jazz News magazine. Stewart had very different musical tastes to Jones -- Jones liked Elmore James and Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and especially Jimmy Reed, and very little else, just electric Chicago blues. Stewart was older, and liked boogie piano like Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, and jump band R&B like Wynonie Harris and Louis Jordan, but he could see that Jones had potential. They tried to get Charlie Watts to join the band, but he refused at first, so they played with a succession of other drummers, starting with Mick Avory. And they needed a singer, and Jones thought that Mick Jagger had genuine star potential. Jagger agreed to join, but only if his mates Dick and Keith could join the band. Jones was a little hesitant -- Mick Jagger was a real blues scholar like him, but he did have a tendency to listen to this rock and roll nonsense rather than proper blues, and Keith seemed even less of a blues purist than that. He probably even listened to Elvis. Dick, meanwhile, was an unknown quantity. But eventually Jones agreed -- though Richards remembers turning up to the first rehearsal and being astonished by Stewart's piano playing, only for Stewart to then turn around to him and say sarcastically "and you must be the Chuck Berry artist". Their first gig was at the Marquee, in place of Blues Incorporated, who were doing a BBC session and couldn't make their regular gig. Taylor and Avory soon left, and they went through a succession of bass players and drummers, played several small gigs, and also recorded a demo, which had no success in getting them a deal: [Excerpt: The Rollin' Stones, "You Can't Judge a Book By its Cover"] By this point, Jones, Richards, and Jagger were all living together, in a flat which has become legendary for its squalour. Jones was managing the group (and pocketing some of the money for himself) and Jones and Richards were spending all day every day playing guitar together, developing an interlocking style in which both could switch from rhythm to lead as the song demanded. Tony Chapman, the drummer they had at the time, brought in a friend of his, Bill Wyman, as bass player -- they didn't like him very much, he was older than the rest of them and seemed to have a bad attitude, and their initial idea was just to get him to leave his equipment with them and then nick it -- he had a really good amplifier that they wanted -- but they eventually decided to keep him in the band. They kept pressuring Charlie Watts to join and replace Chapman, and eventually, after talking it over with Alexis Korner's wife Bobbie, he decided to give it a shot, and joined in early 1963. Watts and Wyman quickly gelled as a rhythm section with a unique style -- Watts would play jazz-inspired shuffles, while Wyman would play fast, throbbing, quavers. The Rollin' Stones were now a six-person group, and they were good. They got a residency at a new club run by Giorgio Gomelsky, a trad jazz promoter who was branching out into R&B. Gomelsky named his club the Crawdaddy Club, after the Bo Diddley song that the Stones ended their sets with. Soon, as well as playing the Crawdaddy every Sunday night, they were playing Ken Colyer's club, Studio 51, on the other side of London every Sunday evening, so Ian Stewart bought a van to lug all their gear around. Gomelsky thought of himself as the group's manager, though he didn't have a formal contract, but Jones disagreed and considered himself the manager, though he never told Gomelsky this. Jones booked the group in at the IBC studios, where they cut a professional demo with Glyn Johns engineering, consisting mostly of Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed songs: [Excerpt: The Rollin' Stones, "Diddley Daddy"] Gomelsky started getting the group noticed. He even got the Beatles to visit the club and see the group, and the two bands hit it off -- even though John Lennon had no time for Chicago blues, he liked them as people, and would sometimes pop round to the flat where most of the group lived, once finding Mick and Keith in bed together because they didn't have any money to heat the flat. The group's live performances were so good that the Record Mirror, which as its name suggested only normally talked about records, did an article on the group. And the magazine's editor, Peter Jones, raved about them to an acquaintance of his, Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham was a young man, only nineteen, but he'd already managed to get himself a variety of jobs around and with famous people, mostly by bluffing and conning them into giving him work. He'd worked for Mary Quant, the designer who'd popularised the miniskirt, and then had become a freelance publicist, working with Bob Dylan and Phil Spector on their trips to the UK, and with a succession of minor British pop stars. Most recently, he'd taken a job working with Brian Epstein as the Beatles' London press agent. But he wanted his own Beatles, and when he visited the Crawdaddy Club, he decided he'd found them. Oldham knew nothing about R&B, didn't like it, and didn't care -- he liked pure pop music, and he wanted to be Britain's answer to Phil Spector. But he knew charisma when he saw it, and the group on stage had it. He immediately decided he was going to sign them as a manager. However, he needed a partner in order to get them bookings -- at the time in Britain you needed an agent's license to get bookings, and you needed to be twenty-one to get the license. He first offered Brian Epstein the chance to co-manage them -- even though he'd not even talked to the group about it. Epstein said he had enough on his plate already managing the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and his other Liverpool groups. At that point Oldham quit his job with Epstein and looked for another partner. He found one in Eric Easton, an agent of the old school who had started out as a music-hall organ player before moving over to the management side and whose big clients were Bert Weedon and Mrs. Mills, and who was letting Oldham use a spare room in his office as a base. Oldham persuaded Easton to come to the Crawdaddy Club, though Easton was dubious as it meant missing Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the TV, but Easton agreed that the group had promise -- though he wanted to get rid of the singer, which Oldham talked him out of. The two talked with Brian Jones, who agreed, as the group's leader, that they would sign with Oldham and Easton. Easton brought traditional entertainment industry experience, while Oldham brought an understanding of how to market pop groups. Jones, as the group's leader, negotiated an extra five pounds a week for himself off the top in the deal. One piece of advice that Oldham had been given by Phil Spector and which he'd taken to heart was that rather than get a band signed to a record label directly, you should set up an independent production company and lease the tapes to the label, and that's what Oldham and Easton did. They formed a company called Impact, and went into the studio with the Stones and recorded the song they performed which they thought had the most commercial potential, a Chuck Berry song called "Come On" -- though they changed Berry's line about a "stupid jerk" to being about a "stupid guy", in order to make sure the radio would play it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Come On"] During the recording, Oldham, who was acting as producer, told the engineer not to mic up the piano. His plans didn't include Ian Stewart. Neither the group nor Oldham were particularly happy with the record -- the group because they felt it was too poppy, Oldham because it wasn't poppy enough. But they took the recording to Decca Records, where Dick Rowe, the man who had turned down the Beatles, eagerly signed them. The conventional story is that Rowe signed them after being told about them by George Harrison, but the other details of the story as it's usually told -- that they were judging a talent contest in Liverpool, which is the story in most Stones biographies, or that they were appearing together on Juke Box Jury, which is what Wikipedia and articles ripped off from Wikipedia say -- are false, and so it's likely that the story is made up. Decca wanted the Stones to rerecord the track, but after going to another studio with Easton instead of Oldham producing, the general consensus was that the first version should be released. The group got new suits for their first TV appearance, and it was when they turned up to collect the suits and found there were only five of them, not six, that Ian Stewart discovered Oldham had had him kicked out of the group, thinking he was too old and too ugly, and that six people was too many for a pop group. Stewart was given the news by Brian Jones, and never really forgave either Jones or Oldham, but he remained loyal to the rest of the group. He became their road manager, and would continue to play piano with them on stage and in the studio for the next twenty-two years, until his death -- he just wasn't allowed in the photos or any TV appearances. That wasn't the only change Oldham made -- he insisted that the group be called the Rolling Stones, with a g, not Rollin'. He also changed Keith Richards' surname, dropping the s to be more like Cliff, though Richards later changed it back again. "Come On" made number twenty-one in the charts, but the band were unsure of what to do as a follow-up single. Most of their repertoire consisted of hard blues songs, which were unlikely to have any chart success. Oldham convened the group for a rehearsal and they ran through possible songs -- nothing seemed right. Oldham got depressed and went out for a walk, and happened to bump into John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They asked him what was up, and he explained that the group needed a song. Lennon and McCartney said they thought they could help, and came back to the rehearsal studio with Oldham. They played the Stones an idea that McCartney had been working on, which they thought might be OK for the group. The group said it would work, and Lennon and McCartney retreated to a corner, finished the song, and presented it to them. The result became the Stones' second single, and another hit for them, this time reaching number twelve. The second single was produced by Easton, as Oldham, who is bipolar, was in a depressive phase and had gone off on holiday to try to get out of it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] The Beatles later recorded their own version of the song as an album track, giving it to Ringo to sing -- as Lennon said of the song, "We weren't going to give them anything great, were we?": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] For a B-side, the group did a song called "Stoned", which was clearly "inspired" by "Green Onions": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Stoned"] That was credited to a group pseudonym, Nanker Phelge -- Nanker after a particular face that Jones and Richards enjoyed pulling, and Phelge after a flatmate of several of the band members, James Phelge. As it was an original, by at least some definitions of the term original, it needed publishing, and Easton got the group signed to a publishing company with whom he had a deal, without consulting Oldham about it. When Oldham got back, he was furious, and that was the beginning of the end of Easton's time with the group. But it was also the beginning of something else, because Oldham had had a realisation -- if you're going to make records you need songs, and you can't just expect to bump into Lennon and McCartney every time you need a new single. No, the Rolling Stones were going to have to have some originals, and Andrew Loog Oldham was going to make them into writers. We'll see how that went in a few weeks' time, when we pick up on their career.
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)
We start with Long John Baldry, celebrate a couple of big birthdays in blues with trackd from John Mayall and Jimi Hendrix and then we get down to the rest of the show which features tracks from Collette Cooper, Keb' Mo', Chrsitone Kingfish Ingram, Mick Pini, The Steady Rollin' Revue, Ritchie Dave Porter, Toronzo Cannon, Kyle Esplin, Bobby Rush, and finishing with Freddie King, it's one hell of a show!
The next hour of The Roadhouse has a distinctively British flavor. Savoy Brown, Long John Baldry, and John Mayall are among the five British artists in the hour, along with music from Koko Taylor and Eric Bibb. The international flavor makes it especially easy to enjoy another hour of the finest blues you've never heard - the 819th Roadhouse.
The next hour of The Roadhouse has a distinctively British flavor. Savoy Brown, Long John Baldry, and John Mayall are among the five British artists in the hour, along with music from Koko Taylor and Eric Bibb. The international flavor makes it especially easy to enjoy another hour of the finest blues you've never heard - the 819th Roadhouse.
The next hour of The Roadhouse has a distinctively British flavor. Savoy Brown, Long John Baldry, and John Mayall are among the five British artists in the hour, along with music from Koko Taylor and Eric Bibb. The international flavor makes it especially easy to enjoy another hour of the finest blues you've never heard - the 819th Roadhouse.
Je hoort muziek van o.a. Art Garfunkel, Di-rect, Cuby & The Blizzards, Long John Baldry en Marc Anthony.
Tíminn flýgur áfram og hann teymir mig á eftir sér sagði skáldið. Það er því tilvalið að reyna að stöðva hann aðeins og skoða hvernig umhorfs var í heiminum þann 5. júlí árin 1955, 65, 75 og 85. Árið 1955 voru forsetahjónin í opinberri heimsókn í vestmannaeyjum en varðskipið sem flutti þau í eyjarnar gat ekki flutt þau til baka. Ástæðan var belgískur landhelgisbrjótur sem þurfti að ýta út úr landhelginni og var varðskipið sent til þeirra starfa. Reyndist þetta skip sem áður hafði verið staðið að ólöglegum veiðum. Ekki kemur fram hvernig forsetahjónin komust aftur heim. Kannski eru þau þarna ennþá? Árið 1965 sagði Vísir af norrænu þingi húsmæðrakennara og birti mynd af þungbúnum en ákaflega vel til höfðum eldri konum í fundarsal í Hagaskóla og árið 1975 var gestagangur á Íslandi, 100 þýskir áhugaljósmyndarar heimsóttu landið og einnig breska stuðhljómsveitin The River Band. Að auki kom enginn annar en Long John Baldry til landsins og söng með Hafróti á Röðli en einhvern veginn grunar mann að Jakob Frímann Magnússon hafi staðið að baki þeirri heimsókn enda tróðu Stuðmenn upp í Selfossbíói Tímaflakk með Bergsson og Blöndal er alla sunnudaga kl. 15.02 á Rás 2
Tíminn flýgur áfram og hann teymir mig á eftir sér sagði skáldið. Það er því tilvalið að reyna að stöðva hann aðeins og skoða hvernig umhorfs var í heiminum þann 5. júlí árin 1955, 65, 75 og 85. Árið 1955 voru forsetahjónin í opinberri heimsókn í vestmannaeyjum en varðskipið sem flutti þau í eyjarnar gat ekki flutt þau til baka. Ástæðan var belgískur landhelgisbrjótur sem þurfti að ýta út úr landhelginni og var varðskipið sent til þeirra starfa. Reyndist þetta skip sem áður hafði verið staðið að ólöglegum veiðum. Ekki kemur fram hvernig forsetahjónin komust aftur heim. Kannski eru þau þarna ennþá? Árið 1965 sagði Vísir af norrænu þingi húsmæðrakennara og birti mynd af þungbúnum en ákaflega vel til höfðum eldri konum í fundarsal í Hagaskóla og árið 1975 var gestagangur á Íslandi, 100 þýskir áhugaljósmyndarar heimsóttu landið og einnig breska stuðhljómsveitin The River Band. Að auki kom enginn annar en Long John Baldry til landsins og söng með Hafróti á Röðli en einhvern veginn grunar mann að Jakob Frímann Magnússon hafi staðið að baki þeirri heimsókn enda tróðu Stuðmenn upp í Selfossbíói Tímaflakk með Bergsson og Blöndal er alla sunnudaga kl. 15.02 á Rás 2
We are counting down our individual "Top" 5 guitar intros of all time. When we say "top" we really mean noteworthy. We breakdown each intro and talk about it OTRM style. In our Week in Music segment we toast to our listeners as we recently crossed the 1000 plays mark, we also discuss Paul McCartney's first solo album, and the late John Prine.Facebook: OnTheRecordMusicInstagram: OnTheRecordMusic
B.B. King - Everyday I have the Blues - B.B. King - Live At The Regal – 1967 Tyler Bryant (with larkin Poe) Crazy Days. Headcutters – My babe - Live At Mr. Jones Pub - 2016 Long John Baldry – Morning dew- Right To Sing The Blues Beth Hart – Fire on the Floor - War In My Mind (Deluxe Edition) (2019) Bernie Marsden – Bad Blood - Shine (2014) Robert Jon & The Wreck – Oh Miss Carolina – last light on the Highway – 2020 Jerry McCain - Ain’t no use for drug abuse - Better Late Than Never (Disc 1) - 2008 J.R. Band – Turn the page - My Way Or The Highway – 2002 Kendall Connection – Hello my Friend -The Kendall Connection – 2020 Kris Barras Band – Hail Mary - The Divine and Dirty – 2018 Paul Butterfield Blues Band – Blues with a feeling - 1965 Johnny Winter – Mojo Boogie - The Alligator Records Years - 2013
Leaving school at 15... dealing with anger and chaos spurred on by his dad, who abandoned the family when Caleb was only 12… how he met Elton John, what Joan Armatrading told Caleb 40 years later, crazy session with Harry Nilsson, losing the Elton gig and the downward spiral that occurred afterwards, reuniting with his father, finding God & happy endings for everyone Caleb Quaye was Elton John’s guitarist early onN, touring & playing on Empty Sky, Elton John, Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across the Water, Rock of the Westies, Captain Fantastic & the Brown Dirt Cowboy, Blue Moves, Live in Central Park NY. Caleb was also a successful side man, who played or toured w Billy Nicholls, Harry Nilsson, Al Kooper, Long John Baldry, Pete Townshend, Lou Reed, Shawn Phillips, Hall & Oates, Peter Criss, Dusty Springfield, others Support this Show: http://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/support Subscribe https://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/subscribe/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EveryoneLovesGuitar/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everyonelovesguitar/
De Canadese gitaar virtuoos en producer Steve Dawson groeide op in Vancouver en woont tegenwoordig in Nashville, alwaar hij zij eigen studio heeft genaamd The Henhouse. Hij heeft inmiddels 8 solo albums gemaakt en werkte mee aan meer dan 80 albums van andere artiesten. Hij speelde jarenlang in de band van Long John Baldry en werkte samen met o.a. The McCrary Sisters en Tim O? Brien.
De Canadese gitaar virtuoos en producer Steve Dawson groeide op in Vancouver en woont tegenwoordig in Nashville, alwaar hij zij eigen studio heeft genaamd The Henhouse. Hij heeft inmiddels 8 solo albums gemaakt en werkte mee aan meer dan 80 albums van andere artiesten. Hij speelde jarenlang in de band van Long John Baldry en werkte samen met o.a. The McCrary Sisters en Tim O? Brien.
Everyone knows that jazz and soul played a big part in the early mod scene, and so of course did the blues. Mostly white British youth became enamored of delta blues belted out by black American musicians in the mid to late '50s. The sounds of Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Slim Harpo, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddly, Lightning Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, and Sonny Boy Williamson swamped London music clubs. A first wave of older players latched on to the music like Alexis Korner, Zoot Money, George Fame, Cyril Davies and Graham Bond. These early blues adopters took other younger musicians under the collective wings and mentored the future stars of the British invasion in rhythm & blues such as Long John Baldry, Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Manfred Mann, Eric Burdon, Rod Stewart and more. It was these stars that the early mods embraced and turned into the icons of their burgeoning teen music scene. This then is the blues in the beginning of the mod era. As always find a complete track list over on the modcast homepage at http://www.mistersuave.com/2019/07/modcast-432-blues-in-beginning.html And keep up with me between modcasts: Twitter - @mistersuave Facebook - facebook.com/modmodworld Subscribe - iTunes Mr. Suave's Mod Mod World. Mod friendly music mixes since 2006.
This epic episode is comprised of two music icons… Boston and Elton John! Joe & Toby explore the sounds of “More Than A Feeling” and the original sample taken from Elton’s 1973 hit song. What we geek out over in this episode: Everything Elton John (a.k.a. Reg), bandmates Elton Dean and Long John Baldry (1966 Bluesology), Dr. Robotnik, lyricist Bernie Taupin, Tom Scholz & iconic band Boston, Polaroids & Hey Ya!, Mixolydian mode, and Samantha vs. Amanda.
Gestur Rokklands að þessu sinni er Jakob Frímann Magnússon, Stuðmaður með meiru. Við ætlum að hlusta saman á plötuna Horft í roðann sem hann gerði 23 ára gamall árið 1976, en Horft i roðann er mikil uppáhalds plata margra og merkileg að mörgu leyti. Þegar Horft í roðann var tekin upp voru fyrstu tvær plötur Stuðmanna komnar út, Sumar á Sýrlandi og Tívolí. Jakob var búinn að vera í talsverðan tíma í Bretlandi og spila með hljómsveit Long John Baldry. Hann gerði samning við Steinar Berg um að hefja plötuútgáfu, en splunkuný útgáfa Steinars (Steinar) gaf út plötur Stuðmanna, Spilverks Þjóðana og sólóplötu Jakobs - Horft í roðann. Platan var tekin upp í Los Angeles, London og í þá nýopnuðum Hljóðrita í Hafnarfirði. Platan fékk góðar viðtölur þegar hún kom út, fékk talsverða spilun í útvarpinu sem þá var eingöngu Rás 1 (Útvarpið). Platan seldist ágætlega og fólk um alt land söng með lögum eins og Sól í dag og Röndótta mær. Horft í roðann er konseptplata og fjallar í raun um líf eftir dauðann. Og á plötunni eru til skiptis lög sem hefðu sómt sér vel á plötum Stuðmanna, og svo Jazz-fusion rokk. Ansi sérstök og kannski sérkennilega blanda sem þó sýnir tvær mest áberandi hliðar Jakobs. Jakob segir frá plötunni og lögunum í Rokklandi vikunnar.
Gestur Rokklands að þessu sinni er Jakob Frímann Magnússon, Stuðmaður með meiru. Við ætlum að hlusta saman á plötuna Horft í roðann sem hann gerði 23 ára gamall árið 1976, en Horft i roðann er mikil uppáhalds plata margra og merkileg að mörgu leyti. Þegar Horft í roðann var tekin upp voru fyrstu tvær plötur Stuðmanna komnar út, Sumar á Sýrlandi og Tívolí. Jakob var búinn að vera í talsverðan tíma í Bretlandi og spila með hljómsveit Long John Baldry. Hann gerði samning við Steinar Berg um að hefja plötuútgáfu, en splunkuný útgáfa Steinars (Steinar) gaf út plötur Stuðmanna, Spilverks Þjóðana og sólóplötu Jakobs - Horft í roðann. Platan var tekin upp í Los Angeles, London og í þá nýopnuðum Hljóðrita í Hafnarfirði. Platan fékk góðar viðtölur þegar hún kom út, fékk talsverða spilun í útvarpinu sem þá var eingöngu Rás 1 (Útvarpið). Platan seldist ágætlega og fólk um alt land söng með lögum eins og Sól í dag og Röndótta mær. Horft í roðann er konseptplata og fjallar í raun um líf eftir dauðann. Og á plötunni eru til skiptis lög sem hefðu sómt sér vel á plötum Stuðmanna, og svo Jazz-fusion rokk. Ansi sérstök og kannski sérkennilega blanda sem þó sýnir tvær mest áberandi hliðar Jakobs. Jakob segir frá plötunni og lögunum í Rokklandi vikunnar.
Gestur Rokklands að þessu sinni er Jakob Frímann Magnússon, Stuðmaður með meiru. Við ætlum að hlusta saman á plötuna Horft í roðann sem hann gerði 23 ára gamall árið 1976, en Horft i roðann er mikil uppáhalds plata margra og merkileg að mörgu leyti. Þegar Horft í roðann var tekin upp voru fyrstu tvær plötur Stuðmanna komnar út, Sumar á Sýrlandi og Tívolí. Jakob var búinn að vera í talsverðan tíma í Bretlandi og spila með hljómsveit Long John Baldry. Hann gerði samning við Steinar Berg um að hefja plötuútgáfu, en splunkuný útgáfa Steinars (Steinar) gaf út plötur Stuðmanna, Spilverks Þjóðana og sólóplötu Jakobs - Horft í roðann. Platan var tekin upp í Los Angeles, London og í þá nýopnuðum Hljóðrita í Hafnarfirði. Platan fékk góðar viðtölur þegar hún kom út, fékk talsverða spilun í útvarpinu sem þá var eingöngu Rás 1 (Útvarpið). Platan seldist ágætlega og fólk um alt land söng með lögum eins og Sól í dag og Röndótta mær. Horft í roðann er konseptplata og fjallar í raun um líf eftir dauðann. Og á plötunni eru til skiptis lög sem hefðu sómt sér vel á plötum Stuðmanna, og svo Jazz-fusion rokk. Ansi sérstök og kannski sérkennilega blanda sem þó sýnir tvær mest áberandi hliðar Jakobs. Jakob segir frá plötunni og lögunum í Rokklandi vikunnar.
Het Album van de Week is "Miles To Go" van Colin James. Verder hoor je muziek van Long John Baldry, Anders Osborne,Waylon Irma Thomas, Buck Owens en Buddy Guy.
Het Album van de Week is "Miles To Go" van Colin James. Verder hoor je muziek van Long John Baldry, Anders Osborne,Waylon Irma Thomas, Buck Owens en Buddy Guy.
Het Album van de Week is "Miles To Go" van Colin James. Verder hoor je muziek van Long John Baldry, Anders Osborne,Waylon Irma Thomas, Buck Owens en Buddy Guy.
Reginald Dwight, nació el 25 de marzo de 1947, en la localidad inglesa de Pinner. Sus padres fueron Stanley Dwight , fallecido en 1991 a los 66 años y Sheila Eileen Dwight. Cierto día, la madre encontró al pequeño Elton interpretando en el piano de la casa una melodía que acababa de escuchar en la radio. Desde entonces fue incentivado por su abuela para que tocara el piano y fuera músico; con cuatro años ya podía interpretar melodías simples, y a los 7 tocaba música en fiestas familiares. Por aquellos años admiraba a Elvis Presley, Bill Haley & His Comets, Little Richard oJerry Lee Lewis. Educado en la Royal Academy of Music gracias a una beca que consiguió en 1958 a la edad de 11 años, a partir de entonces comenzó a frecuentar dicha escuela, para dar clase los sábados y actuar en el coro. Con el tiempo se dio cuenta de que lo suyo no era la música clásica, por lo que, 6 años después, en 1964, decidió abandonar esta institución para dedicarse a la música rock. A los 15 años trabajaba como pianista en un pub cercano donde le llamaban Reggie. Allí interpretaba canciones de Ray Charles y Jim Reeves. En 1964 Reggie y unos amigos formaron la banda Bluesology, donde conoció al cantante Long John Baldry. Como homenaje a él y al saxofonista Elton Dean adoptó el nombre artístico de Elton John. En 1969 formó parte de la banda Argosy. La única grabación del grupo fueron dos canciones, «Mr. Boyd» e «Imagine».
Holger Peterson started Stony Plain Records 40 years ago at his kitchen table with partner Alvin Jahns. It’s grown into one of the most respected independent labels in history, balancing a roster of legendary artists like Maria Muldaur, Ian Tyson and Long John Baldry with up and coming acts.To celebrate, they’ve released 40 Years of Stony Plain, a 3-disc set highlighting artists on the label, plus some rare and unreleased tracks. We also talk about putting together this great collection, and the resurgence of physical music.
Hoo boy, here we go, hitting up yet another big one. You might remember last time we looked at a well loved "classic" DiC show, it ended in us completely tearing it apart. Well fear not dear listener, for we actually enjoyed this one! A combination of bouncy animation with fantastic voice acting (at least on Long John Baldry's part) made this really rather entertaining. Do listen in for our full thoughts, wont you?All music this episode is from DiC & Sega. And Grieg, for some reason.
We fret about the ferocity of this year’s summer temperatures, reminding ourselves to take care. We grumble about the Centrelink ‘debt’ process and get cheerier as we remember it is birthday time for gay Felipe […] http://media.rawvoice.com/joy_beentheredonethat/p/joy.org.au/beentheredonethat/wp-content/uploads/sites/90/2017/01/2017-01-10-BeenThereDoneThat-HeatCentrelinkF.Rose-DDTHealthLongJohnBaldryCarnival.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:07 — 18.4MB) Subscribe or Follow Us: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS The post Heat, Centrelink, F.Rose, DDT, Health, Long John Baldry, Carnival appeared first on Been There Done That.
Lögin í þættinum tengjast söngvaranum Long John Baldry: She Broke My Heart með Stuðmönnum, How Lond, How Long Blues með Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, Hoochie Coochie Man með Hoochie Coochie Men, Roll 'em Pete með Hoochie Coochie Men, Gee Baby Ain't I Good To You með Steam Packet, Cuckoo með Long John Baldry, Come Back Baby með Bluesology, Let The Heartache Begin með Long John Baldry og (Under The Sun In) Mexico með Long John Baldry.
Twee uur lang OLM met Mart Smeets. Mart heeft z’n cd kast opgeruimd en heeft weer prachtige dingen gevonden. Jimmy Buffett, Bachman Turner Overdrive, een opmerkelijk nummer van The Beachboys, Clarence Gatemouth Brown en Long John Baldry.
Twee uur lang OLM met Mart Smeets. Mart heeft z’n cd kast opgeruimd en heeft weer prachtige dingen gevonden. Jimmy Buffett, Bachman Turner Overdrive, een opmerkelijk nummer van The Beachboys, Clarence Gatemouth Brown en Long John Baldry.
Broadcasting legend and iconic label-head, Holger Petersen is my guest this week. For anyone living in Canada over the last 40+ years, Holger has been the voice coming at you on Saturday nights on CBC Radio, bringing you great blues music on Saturday Night Blues, or even longer in Alberta on CKUA Radio. His label, Stony Plain Records, is also one of the oldest and most established roots music labels in North America. Holger has a long history with music, playing drums in bands growing up in Edmonton, promoting shows for the likes of Reverend Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt, and releasing a steady stream of music to the world by artists such as Jeff Healey, Long John Baldry, Duke Robillard, Ian Tyson, Corb Lund, and so many more. Holger and I had a chance to talk about that history, hanging with Jimmy Witherspoon and Jay McShann, being a fly on the wall for a Herbie Hancock record, traveling with Long John Baldry, and the path his life has taken to be one of Canada's great purveyors of amazing music. Thanks for listening!
As the year winds down, this edition of The Roadhouse is chock full of releases from 2015. Slam Allen, Rhiannon Giddens, Long John Baldry, Brother Dege, and Mike Henderson fill the hour. Along with 9 or 10 other tracks, they absolutely help make it another hour of the finest blues you've never heard - the 563rd Roadhouse.
show#48905.11.13Once again this week... just click on the tune you like to purchase!!! If you just want a single song or the whole album via digital download just click on MP3 link...for the whole physical CD click on CD link and this week iTunes and CD Baby links are included.... some are not available in MP3, but most are. Just email me if you need help!!MOTHERS DAY!!!!The Mothers Of Invention - Motherly Love (Freak Out! 1966)Spinner's Section:dry dry very dryJohnny Mastro & Mama's Boys: bone dry (3:44) (Pinch That Snake, self-release, 2001)Arthur Ebeling: until the well runs dry (3:29) (Piggy Dog, Dureco, 1995)Super Chikan: well gone dry (5:03) (Blues Come Home To Roost, Rooster Blues, 2000)Ruff Kutt Blues Band: drown on dry land (3:25) (Mill Block Blues, Ruff Kutt, 2011)Roy Buchanan: drowning on dry land (6:20) (Dancing On The Edge, Alligator, 1986)Arno: high and dry (3:36) (A Poil Commercial, DeLabel, 1999)Gary Primich: dry country blues (4:49) (Company Man, Black Top, 1997)Dave Alvin: dry river (3:53) (Blue Blvd, Hightone, 1991)Hazmat Modine: dry spell (4:45) (Bahamut, Barbes, 2006)Johnny Mastro & Mama's Boys: bone dry (2:47) (Beautiful Chaos, self-release, 2010)Back To Beardo:Arno - Mother's Little Helper (Arno Charles Ernest [Bonus Tracks] 2004)Elmo Williams & Hezekiah Early - Mother's Dead (Takes One to Know One 1998)Henry Butler - Mother-In-Law (PiaNOLA Live 2008)Jerome Godboo - Mother (Humdinger 2007)Sue Foley - Mother (New Used Car 2006)Jackie Payne Steve Edmonson Band - Mother-In-Law Blues (Overnight Sensation 2008)Long John Baldry with Rod Stewart - Mother Ain't Dead (Everything Stops For Tea 1972)Memphis Slim - Mother Earth (Memphis Slim 1961)The Nighthawks - Mother-In-Law Blues (Jacks & Kings 1977)Downchild Blues Band - Tell Your Mother (Dancing - Road Fever 1980)Little Richard - Thinkin 'Bout My Mother (The R&B Hits Of 1952)Buzzy Linhart - Mother's Red Light (Music 1970)Earl King - A Mother's Love (The R&B Years - 1954)Jason Vivone & The Billy Bats - One Hot Mother (Lather Rinse Repeat )John Nemeth - Mother In Law (Blues Live 2012)Humble Pie - Every Mother's Son (Town & Country 1969)Cream - Mother's Lament (Disraeli Gears 1967)Bobby Radcliff - A Real Mother For Ya (Natural Ball 2004)Bugs Henderson & The Shuffle Kings - I Want The Mother (Blue Music 2004)
show#47301.19.12Some equipment problems caused show to be a little lateLucky Peterson(with Tamara Peterson) - Been So Long (Live At The 55 Arts Club Berlin [Disc 1] 2012)Killing Floor - Milkman (Out Of Uranus 1970)Dr. Wu ...And Friends - Bo Diddley Tribute (Texas Blues Project Volume 2 2010)Rabbit Foot - Smokestack Lightnin' (Swamp Boogie 2012)Joe Beard - Ronnie Earl - Feets Out In The Hall (Blues Union 1996)Roomful of Blues - Every Dog Has Its Day (Raisin' A Ruckus 2008)RJ Mischo - Down To The Bottom (Knowledge You Can't Get In College 2010)Vidar Busk & The Voo Doodz - Red Lipstick (Jookbox Charade 2007)Chicken Shack - Remington Ride (OK Ken? 1993)Savoy Brown - Rock & Roll Star (Boogie Brothers 1974)John Hammond - Shake For Me (I Can Tell 1970)LONG JOHN BALDRY - Gallows Pole (35 Years of Stony Plain 2011)The Hollywood Fats Band - Little Girl (Rock This House)Bill Stuve - Chifereau Boogie (Say Man! 1996)Lynwood Slim & Junior Watson - Sittin' Here Drinkin' (Back To Back 1998)Hound Dog Taylor - Take Five (Natural Boogie 1974)Spinner's Section:Mel Brown - Little Girl, Don't You Know (Big Foot Country Girl 1973)B.B. King & Bobby Blue Bland - Don't Answer The Door (Togther for The First Time.... LIVE 1974)Denny Freeman - Testifyin' (Out of The Blue 1987)Ball, Barton, Strehli - Good Rockin' Daddy (Dream Come True 1990)Doug Sahm - You're Mine Tonight (Juke Box Music 1989)Mel Brown - I'd Rather Suck My Thumb (Eighteen Pounds of Unclean Chitlins 1973)Imperial Crowns - Nobody baby (Star of the West 2007)Juke Joints - Magic Shoes (Going To Chicago 2010)Gary Primich - That's What Love Was Made For (Dog House Music 2002)
In this edition of The Roadhouse, I'm once again sprinkling in some of the artists from the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival to give you a taste of my weekend. Long John Baldry, James Wheeler, Bo Ramsey, Fiona Boyes, and Robin Rogers lay the foundtion upon which we build another hour of the finest blues you've never heard - the 229th Roadhouse.
In this edition of The Roadhouse, I'm once again sprinkling in some of the artists from the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival to give you a taste of my weekend. Long John Baldry, James Wheeler, Bo Ramsey, Fiona Boyes, and Robin Rogers lay the foundtion upon which we build another hour of the finest blues you've never heard - the 229th Roadhouse.
show#28103.01.09Rusty Wright Blues - Hell on My Heels(3:51)Lee Michaels - Murder In My Heart (For the Judge) (3:38)Spinner's Section:good & badC.C. Adcock: y'all'd think she'd be good 2 me (C.C.Adcock) (Lafayette Marquis, Yep Roc, 2004)Monti Amundson: bad day, rough weeks (M.Admundson) (The Mean Eighteen, self-release, 1991)Jump Dicky Jump: what a good time we had (A.Ebeling) (Goin' Out!, Idiot, 1987)Chris Daniels & the Kings: bad thing (Wilson, Hadley, Greenberg) (In Your Face, Redstone/Provoque, 1992)San Pedro Slim: I've got a good thing (D.Kiefer) (Barhoppin', Barroom Blues, 2008)Long John Baldry: bad attitude (Hogan, Lindsay, Sheen) (Rock With The Best, Capitol, 1982)Lou Ann Barton: you'll lose a good thing (B.L.Ozen) (Read My Lips, Antone's, 1989) Omar & the Howlers: bad in a good way (S.Bruton, K.Dykes) (Boogie Man, Ruf, 2004)Back To Beardo: Jo Kelly Stephenson - Deep End (4:20)Spectrum - Manuela (3:42)Bullfrog Brown - WHISKERS fin (2:48)JJ Cale - Where the sun don't shine (3:07)Bjørn Berge - They Haven't Seen The Last Of Me (3:08)Alex Schultz - Who Will the Next Fool Be (4:58)Dave Fields - Still Itchin' (4:49)Fernando Noronha & Black Soul - Changes (6:03)The Blues Magoos - I'll Go Crazy (2:03)Joe Bonamassa - Funkier Than A Mosquito's Tweeter (5:00)Magic Sam's Blues Band - Keep Loving Me Baby (3:54)The Rusty Wright Band - World Upside Down (4:13)Too Slim and the Taildraggers - Last Train (4:04)The Beatles - Birthday (2:42)The Blues Magoos - That's All Folks (0:11)Does your music make the cut?Contact Beardo at thebeardo@gmail.com and we we'll talk..Meanwhile, Bandana Blues archives at http://beardo1@libsyn.com
show#21912.3.07Just Spinner this week...from the vinyl vaultDanny O'Keefe: farewell to Storyville (Spencer Williams) (Breezy Stories, Atlantic, 1973)George Smith: milk that cow (Smith) (…Of The Blues, MCA, 1969 / CrossCut, 1987)John Hartford: boogie (Hartford) (Aereo Plain, Warner Bros, 1971)King Biscuit Boy: the boogie walk (Newell) (Gooduns, Paramount, 1971)Shout Sister Shout: let me be your horse (Strentz) (45 RPM EP, Love Bandit, 1989)Long John Baldry: when you're ugly like me (Shulman, Goodman) (Rock With The Best, Capitol, 1982)
In the midst of a typically nasty snow and ice storm, The Little Blue House on the Wetlands heats up with a near-full slate of independent artists. B.C. Read, Bluesman Tom, Chainsaw Dupont, Chris Bell, and Long John Baldry are but a few of the great artists featured in this edition. It's another hot hour of the finest blues you've never heard - the 146th Roadhouse Podcast.
In the midst of a typically nasty snow and ice storm, The Little Blue House on the Wetlands heats up with a near-full slate of independent artists. B.C. Read, Bluesman Tom, Chainsaw Dupont, Chris Bell, and Long John Baldry are but a few of the great artists featured in this edition. It's another hot hour of the finest blues you've never heard - the 146th Roadhouse Podcast.
whole show all eighties, all vinyl, all Spinner Mark Hummel & the Blues Survivors: seven nites to rock (Playing In Your Town, Rockinitus, 1985) Howlin' Wilf & the Vee-Jays: same old nothing (Cry Wilf, Big Beat, 1986) Shout Sister Shout!: same day blues (45 rpm extended play, Love Bandit Records, 1989) The Frog: we got love (Be Kind To Animals Kiss A Frog, Polydor, 1982) Metropolitan Blues Allstars: don't dog my cat (Trying Times, June Appal, 1988) Paul deLay Band: I'm gonna stop (Burnin', Criminal Records, 1988) The Mighty Flyers: somebody (From The Start To The Finnish, BRB Records, 1985) Dr. Feelgood: no mo do yakamo (A Case Of The Shakes, United Artists, 1980) Ivy & the Terrace Tones: big city blues (Live, Blue Shadow, 1985) James Harman Band: rambler's blues (Extra Napkins, Rivera, 1988) Nappy Brown: life's ups and downs (Something Gonna Jump Out The Bushes, Black Top, 1987) Barrelhouse: blue ain't blue (Blue Ain't Blue, Ariola, 1983) Long John Baldry: 25 year of pain (Rock With The Best, Capitol, 1982) Anson Funderburgh & the Rockets: change neighborhoods (Sins, Black Top-Demon, 1987)
A tribute to Long John Baldry and new releases from Chris Beard, Doug Cox and Sam Hurrie
A short tribute to Long John Baldry who died today - full tribute on the show next week
Yes, another biopic about a British rock star in the 70's. And, it's a musical!. Join us as John Helix and I talk about the life of Elton John and how it compares to the movie, "Rocketman". We'll also find out why John won't see the movie. And. we discover the life of Long John Baldry. Who's that? Listen and find out.
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