American soul and gospel singer
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4 episodes with Merry Clayton
4 episodes with Merry Clayton
3 episodes with Merry Clayton
3 episodes with Merry Clayton
2 episodes with Merry Clayton
2 episodes with Merry Clayton
3 episodes with Merry Clayton
3 episodes with Merry Clayton
2 episodes with Merry Clayton
Hommage au grand, avec Etienne Jaumet, Emile Omar et Reza Pounewatchy !Roy Ayers - Everybody Loves The Sunshine (Tiny Desk Concert ) HAIM - Relationships Myd - Song for YouEnnio Moricon - Dance onHerbie Mann - Hold On, I'm Comin' Roy Ayers Ubiquity - Ain't no Sunshine Roy Ayers - Aragon Roy Ayers - Running AwaySylvia Striplin - You Can't Turn Me AwayEthal Beatty - It's Your Love Roy Ayers feat. Merry Clayton & Sylvia Cox Roseaux - You SayFela Kuti & Roy Ayers - 2000 Blacks Got to Be FreeRoy Ayers - ChicagoRoy Ayers Ubiquity - Starbooty
Tracklist de cet épisode : 1. Merry Clayton – Southern man 2. Tanika Charles – Remember to remember 3. The excitements – Keepin'on 4. The Four Tops – Standing on the shadows of love 5. Jade MacRae – Out of... Continue Reading →
As a bonus to our 1000th episode, senior producers Alex Claiborne and Andrew Gill chime in with some of their favorite guests and most memorable moments from Sound Opinions.Become a Patreon member to hear the full episode: https://bit.ly/3slWZvcSign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/3eEvRnGMake a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/3dmt9lUSend us a Voice Memo: Desktop: bit.ly/2RyD5Ah Mobile: sayhi.chat/soundopsJoin our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3sivr9TSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Muchos conocemos esta canción por Cher, pero resulta que tiene historia antes. Otros piensan que es de Betty Everet, pero también tiene historia antes. Así que en este episodio contamos la historia desde el inicio y la conocemos desde el inicio, desde antes incluso que Merry Clayton. Conoce todas las canciones que suenan en este enlace: https://elrecuentomusical.com/shoop-cher-clayton-everett/ Guion: Emma Mussoll Locución y edición: Margot Martín Este episodio de “El Recuento Musical” cuenta con la colaboración del Ministerio de Cultura y su financiación, a través de las ayudas para la promoción del sector del podcast, que se enmarcan dentro del Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia financiado por la Union Eurpea con los fondos Next Generation EU.
Pete see out the year with a show packed full of funky goodness, soulful vibes and a sprinkling of Christmas cheer. There are birthday celebrations for Merry Clayton & Lee Dorsey, a track by the late Terry Hall and a whole bunch of great tracks to keep you moving. For more info and tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/superfly-funk-and-soul-show/Tune into new broadcasts of the Superfly Funk & Soul Show, LIVE, Fridays from 10 AM - 12 PM EST / 3 - 5 PM GMT.//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Snap INTO it, girlarina! The queens re-cast Cher movies with poets.Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:Read Patricia Smith's "Incendiary Art."Here's Cher's cover of “Shoop Shoop (It's in His Kiss)." And here's Merry Clayton's version.Cher starred in the movie Mask, which was released in 1985. Mask won the Academy Award for Best Makeup at the 58th ceremony, while Cher and Stoltz received Golden Globe Award nominations for their performances. Watch the scene where Rusty Dennis (Cher) barges into a high school to fight for her son. The director, when asked a question about the most difficult actor he'd worked with, replied it was Cher. If you haven't read Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day," go here.For more about the Future Library, read an article here. One of Jorie Graham's poems that make James cry is "At Luca Signorelli's Resurrection of the Body." Read Marie Ponsot's poem "Language Acquisition"You can read Jericho Brown's iconic poem "Track 5: Summertime" here. Or watch a video of him reading it here.Here's the trailer for The Witches of Eastwick, which is also a 1984 novel by John Updike.Read Sandra Beasley's blog here. Listen to Beasley read her poem "Peaches" (first published in Cherry Tree).Read more about Rigoberto González here. Cher was just inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Watch her induction speech and a live performance of "Believe" here.
**The Groove Doctors Friday Drive Time Show Replay On traxfm.org. This Week The Groove Doctor Featured 80's Grooves/Rare Groove/Contemporary Soul From Lonnie Liston Smith. Leon Bryant. Millie Scott. Kleeer. Merry Clayton. Curtis Hairston. Mary Ann Farra. Jimmy Smith. Kinky Foxx. Patterson Twins & More . #originalpirates #soulmusic #boogie #80ssoul #RareGrooves 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 : facebook.com/profile.php?id=10...100092342916738 Trax FM Live On Hear This: hearthis.at/k8bdngt4/live Tunerr: tunerr.co/radio/Trax-FM Radio Garden: Trax FM Link: 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**
As we continue our spotlight on Raphael Saadiq, I'll also have music from George Clinton & The P-Funk All Stars, Mary Mary, KoKo-Pop, Merry Clayton, Blue Lab Beats, Anna-Marie Johnson and much more besides . . . Stop on by and hear what you've been missing . . . Welcome To The Soul Show (SDP Intro) - Radio JingleStay - Glenn JonesSwitch - Ali TennantGroove On (Original 2012 ReMaster) - Yo-Yo HoneyEmotion - Merry ClaytonWalking - Mary MaryThe Change (Mastered) - Cornell C.C. CarterHolding Onto You - JagFor The Soul - Potatohead People & Moka OnlyAint No Change - The New BirthPumpin' It Up [Album Version] - P-Funk All StarsBrother (feat. Natalie Lindi) - Blue Lab BeatsSo In Love - Lalah HathawayThe Only Way (feat. Uhmeer) - Kaidi TathamThe Top - CatpackEveryday - Lucy PearlWe Fight We Love (Ft. Raphael Saadiq) - Q-TipDifferent Times - Raphael SaadiqI Couldn't Keep It To Myself - Tony Toni TonéWarm Weather - Pieces Of A DreamHoney - Citrus SunTake You To Heaven - Earth, Wind & FireTake Me Back - Lukas SettoI'm In Love With You - KoKo-PopJoy (Hallelujah) (Radio Version) - Marley Marl, Lady AlmaMe And You (Dance Version) - The Chi-LitesBlack Balloon - Syleena JohnsonWaiting for Your Love - Anna-Marie JohnsonKeep On Movin - Stefan MahendraI Can't Stop (Turning You On) - Silk#dejavufm #souldamnphisticated #thesouldamnphisticatedradioshow #soulfulsunday #streamhowulike #streamwhereyalike #hearwhatyouvebeenmissing #soulfulsundaytrilogy
Nombreuses sont les personnes à faire carrière dans l'industrie musicale, mais à rester invisibles aux yeux du grand public. Ces petites (même si parfois plus grosses qu'on ne le croie) mains, ce sont les musiciens de studio, les arrangeurs, les compositeurs, les producteurs et aussi les choristes. La chanteuse qui nous intéresse aujourd'hui fait d'ailleurs partie de cette dernière catégorie. Durant de longues années, Merry Clayton a en effet posé sa voix en studio sur les succès et chansons moins connues de plusieurs dizaines d'artistes sans que jamais personne, parmi les auditeurs, ne s'en soucie réellement et ne la reconnaisse véritablement. Cependant, l'une de ses prestations a particulièrement marqué les gens, au point de la mettre un peu plus en lumière et de lui permettre d'enregistrer par la suite plusieurs albums, dont son tout premier : Gimme Shelter. Quelle est donc cette chanson qui lui a permis de connaître la gloire ? Oh, vous avez peut-être déjà une petite idée, mais si ce n'est pas le cas, il va falloir appuyer sur « Lecture » pour le découvrir. Titres diffusés durant l'émission : I've got Life - Merry Clayton Who Can I Count On? - Bobby Darin & Merry Clayton Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones Here Comes Those Heartaches Again - Merry Clayton Yes - Merry Clayton Tell All The People - Merry Clayton Bridge Over Troubled Water - Merry Clayton I Ain't Gonna Worry My Life Away - Merry Clayton Gimme Shelter - Merry Clayton Le Twitter de l'émissionLe Twitter de Fox
Podcast Music Intro and Vocals by: Gail NoblesPhoto: Angela GeorgeUsage: CC BY-SA 3.0Mary Clayton is a soul and Gospel singer she worked with many major recording artist for decades including a duet with Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones song "Gimme Shelter". Clayton is prominently featured in 20 Feet from Stardom, the Oscar-winning documentary about background singers and their contributions to the music industry.Clayton was born in Gert Town, New Orleans, Louisiana. She was born on Christmas Day, and was given the name "Merry" because of the December 25th birthdate. Clayton's voice as a backing singer can be heard on songs by Pearl Bailey, Tom Jones, Linda Ronstadt, and Carole King just to name a few. Clayton is often credited as having recorded with Elvis Presley.Clayton began her recording career in 1962, at the age of 14. She made studio albums in the 70s Give Me Shelter 1970, 1971 Mary Clayton, 1975 Keep Your Eye On The Sparrow, 1979 Emotion, 1994 Miracles, and in 2021 Beautiful Scars. Beautiful Scars is a beautiful album.On June 16, 2014, Clayton was critically injured and almost died after being involved in a car crash in Los Angeles, California. She had to loose both her legs at the knees. When I hear her singing on her album, I can understand her soulful voice and words to her songs. My favorite gospel single on the gospel album is Beautiful Scars is Touch the Hymn of his Garment. Like Sam Cooke, she can really sing that song. I'm sure she can relate to the woman in the Bible days because a miracle happened for Mary Clayton. God kept her and f God is good. His mercy is as wide as the sea and his love is deeper than the ocean. You're listening to a show about the gospel greats. I'm your host, Gail Nobles. Today's topic: Merry Clayton.
Playlist: Dynamic Concept - La Da DaKAYTRANADA, featuring Charlotte Day Wilson - StillBADBADNOTGOOD - Juan's WorldDominique Fils Aime - Moi je t'aimeDub Stax, featuring Ammoye - (Sittin' on) The Dock of the BayGLEN WASHINGTON - VictoryCHESTER MILLER - Set Yourself FreeAndrew Bird, featuring Alan Hampton,Ted Poor - You's Be So Nice to Come Home ToJones, Aaron Taylor - BelieveBegonia - Get to YouJerome Thomas, Pitch 92 - Sock it to MeQuantic, featuring Andreya Triana - Brooklyn HeatMoses Sumney - VintageRay La Montagne - Step into Your PowerSharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Matter of TimeYannis & the Yaw, Tony Allen, Yannis - Under the StrikesJust A Band, Bajah, Chance the Rapper - GentlemanWitch - Ain't NobodyBrooklyn Funk Essentials - Hold it DownJafunk, Adi Oasis, Triple H Horns - Yellow DazeJordan Rakei - FreedomRoy Ayers, featuring Merry Clayton, the Delfonic Edit - What's the T?Mr President, Mr Day - Love & HappinessSeverino & Giacomo Moras - MaledettoAmp Fiddler - FaithManou Gallo, featuring Bootsy Collins - Abj GrooveDisco Orchestral - Do It Again
Pop/Rock artist Eric Carmen, suddenly passed away weekend of 3/9-3/10. He was lucky to write, produce, play musical instruments, and sing like the music he admired. Making it as Raspberries' frontman and his own solo career, I tribute his life in 5 of these popular hits he was involved in. Theme Song: "Dance Track", composed by Jessica Ann CatenaEric Carmen's websiteTribute Playlist:"Go All the Way" - Raspberries (1972)"All By Myself" (1975)"All By Myself" - Celine Dion (1996)Celine Dion interview clip on What Happens Live (2019)"Almost Paradise (Love Theme from Footloose)" - Mike Reno & Ann Wilson"Almost Paradise" in Footloose"Almost Paradise" - Eric Carmen & Merry Clayton (1988)Footloose (1984)Footloose (2011)"Hungry Eyes" (1987-1988)"Hungry Eyes" sceneDirty Dancing (1987)"Make Me Lose Control" (1988)Related Episode: Ep. 164 - Irene Cara's Top 3 Hits
Host Chuck Da Fonk brings you this first episode of the fifth season of the FSQ program on The Face Radio, but don't think of it as the kick off, it's just the soft launch as he gets adjusted to an all new, fast paced two hour format for the show. New music includes unreleased FSQ jams and fresh releases from Tigerbalm, Giulia Tess, MrMilkDee & Jill Rock Jones, Rollover DJs, Seven Davis Jr x Life on Planets. Don't miss George Clinton's hot new collaboration with the artist Erick the Architect. A special dig into the catalogs of unsung soul singers Merry Clayton and Angelo Bond, and a slice rare 1982 Talking Heads concert.Tune into new broadcasts of FSQ, Thursday from 3 - 5 PM EST / 8 - 10 PM GMT.For more info visit: https://thefaceradio.com/fsq///Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week, Pete has pulled together a show full of floor fillers, aimed to keep you moving throughout. It's a fun filled show with the addition of birthday celebrations for Merry Clayton and Gwen McCrae as well as a few soulful Christmas tunes to get you in the mood for the holiday season ahead. Tune into new broadcasts of the Superfly Funk & Soul Show, LIVE, Friday from 10 AM - 12 PM EST / 3 - 5 PM GMT.For more info visit: https://thefaceradio.com/superfly-funk-and-soul-show///Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Más vientos, metales, cuernos, trombones y trompetas, saxos clarinetes y trompas… De Harlem (Nueva York) a Melbourne (Australia), de Los Ángeles (California) o de Waco( Texas) o Boston a Madrid-Jaén, de Nueva Orleans a Catania (Sicilia) o a las Midlands o a Barking en Inglaterra. Arreglos orquestales que elevan espíritus, melodías para la eternidad. Canciones de orquestación elevada para que nos gusten los lunes. Dedicado a nuestro amigo el gran guitarrista José Taboada (Zenet)DISCO 1 ZENET Dieta de besosDISCO 2 THE BAMBOOS & Kings Everything Gonna Be OK (4)DISCO 3 STONE FOUNDATION & BETTY LAVETTE Season Of Change (9)DISCO 4 LITTLE RICHARD The Girl Can’t Help It (11)DISCO 5 KATRINA & THE WAVES Walking On Sunshine (Cara B Corte 1))DISCO 6 MARIO BIONDI Shine (2)DISCO 7 ROY HARGROVE Ms. Garvey, Ms.Garvey (2)DISCO 8 JAMES TAYLOR Ain’t No Song (6)DISCO 9 KATE TAYLOR Look At Granny Run, Run (6)DISCO 10 MERRY CLAYTON Country Road (3)DISCO 11 KARINA El Baúl de los Recuerdos (7)DISCO 12 SAMMY DAVIS JR. Let There Be Love (3) *DISCO 13 JIM HORN Slow Train To Memphis (1)Bonus Track ABDÓN ALCARAZ Decir adiós con Toni Zenet y José Ángel TaboadaEscuchar audio
**The Groove Doctors Friday Drive Time Show Replay On traxfm.org. This Week The Groove Doctor Featured 80's Grooves/Rare Groove/Contemporary Soul From Norman Conners. Edee Leatherwood. Edwin Starr. Booker T Jones. Chic. Merry Clayton. Ohio Players. Sylvia. Jean Carne. Soul Survivors. James Easley. The Whispers & More . The Groove Doctors Drive Time Show Live Friday's At 5PM UK Time The Station: traxfm.org #traxfm #groovedoctor #drivetimeshow #soul #funk #boogie #raregrooves #70dance #80dance #70ssoul #80ssoul #disco #neosoul #r&b #groovedoctor #contemporarysoul 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 : facebook.com/profile.php?id=10...100092342916738 Trax FM Live On Hear This: hearthis.at/k8bdngt4/live Tunerr: tunerr.co/radio/Trax-FM Radio Garden: Trax FM Link: 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**
It's all about brand new good for you beats from KTM, Jaigo, champions of the Brighton Indie Rock scene Sock Draw, Guava, Neil Landstrum and K-Lone showered with extras provided by the likes of Uroy, Michael Campbell, Edwin Star, Merry Clayton, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Bruce Willis, Pat Floyd and way more! This is Dub Intervention.Tune into new broadcasts of Dub Intervention, Saturday from 8 - 10 PM EST / 1 - 3 AM GMT (Sunday).For more info visit: https://thefaceradio.com/dub-intervention///Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Today, we're delving into the legendary album "Let It Bleed" by the rock 'n' roll icons, The Rolling Stones. Released in 1969, "Let It Bleed" marked a pivotal moment in rock history. This album is a raw, unapologetic, and electrifying journey into the depths of the blues, rock, and the sheer essence of rebellion that defined the 1960s. The Rolling Stones, led by the charismatic Mick Jagger and the virtuoso Keith Richards, crafted an album that captures the zeitgeist of an era marked by social change and cultural upheaval. "Let It Bleed" is a musical tour de force, fusing elements of blues, country, and rock into a sonic cocktail that's as potent today as it was over 50 years ago. The album boasts an impressive roster of tracks that have become anthems of rock 'n' roll rebellion. From the anthemic "Gimme Shelter," featuring the haunting vocals of Merry Clayton, to the gritty blues of "Midnight Rambler," and the mournful "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Let It Bleed" takes listeners on a wild, emotional rollercoaster. The album's lyrics are a reflection of the turbulent times, tackling themes of love, war, and social unrest with a candor that resonated deeply with its audience. Mick Jagger's swaggering vocals, Keith Richards' unforgettable guitar licks, and the impeccable musicianship of the band members created an album that's both timeless and emblematic of its era. "Let It Bleed" didn't just change the face of rock music; it defined it. It's an album that inspired countless musicians and continues to influence artists across genres. Its impact on popular culture is immeasurable, with its tracks finding their way into countless films, commercials, and TV shows. As we gently place the needle on this vinyl masterpiece, we invite you to join us on a musical journey through the raucous and profound sounds of "Let It Bleed." We'll explore The Rolling Stones' role in shaping rock 'n' roll, the album's enduring legacy, and its rightful place among the pantheon of rock classics. So, dear listeners, let's turn up the volume and let the music of The Rolling Stones bleed into your soul on this episode of "Dem Vinyl Boyz"!
Finally... these two buddies who love music get back together to chat about stuff... Peter Gabriel was in Detroit recently and El Carpe got to go - and the two of us are going to see the Volbeats open for Ben Harper next week... will be an eclectic show ! We talk about great guitar work - started with Ben Harper, then Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen... then into the weeds with Merry Clayton & the Stones - gimmie shelter ! We give props to Playing for Change (great Charity) and many other emotion wrenching songs. Join us for the silly. We had a great time - hope you do too. (support your local musicians whenever possible)
The Rolling Stones released their tenth US studio album (eighth in the UK) entitled Let it Bleed at the end of November, 1969. The band had worked on the material in the studio off and on through most of the year, with recording beginning in earnest back in February of 1969 (though work on "You Can't Always Get What You Want" began in November of the previous year). The album would reach number 3 on the US album chart and number 1 on the UK charts, and would produce some of the best known standards of the Stones' collection.The band experienced significant turmoil during the recording of this album. Founding member and multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones was rapidly descending into a drug-induced stupor, causing him to be released from the band in the midst of the album's production. Jones would be found dead in his swimming pool a month after leaving the band. His replacement, Mick Taylor, would appear on a couple of songs for the album, but was not involved in the bulk of the recording. Thus the lion's share of all guitar work fell to guitarist Keith Richards, handling both rhythm and lead guitar parts for most tracks.“Let It Bleed” returns to a blues sound with country and gospel elements, but the lyrics tend towards darker, more gritty themes. Perhaps the album was influenced by the disillusionment of society due to the Vietnam war, racial unrest, and/or protests on college campuses. Certainly the darker side of drug use comes out in many of the songs.In addition to releasing this album just before December 1969, the Rolling Stones participated in the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, a concert which would feature the Hell's Angels utilized as “security” for the event, and which would be considered one of the darkest days of the Rock era due to the violence, extensive property damage, and death associated with the event. Some consider this to be the sad end to the “summer of love” aesthetic attributed to the rock music of the late 60's.One of the founding What the Riff?!? hosts, Brian Dickhute returns to sit in for John Lynch, and brings us this iconic album. Gimme ShelterThe opening track to the album was initially inspired by Richards' observations of people running to get out of a rain storm, but the theme broadens to look at how the world seemed to be closing in with tension, war, and violence. American singer Merry Clayton contributes the female vocals to this track.Let It BleedMick Jagger and Keith Richards penned the honky tonk (country tonk?) title track, which finishes off side 1 of the album. The lyrics contain numerous sexual and drug references, though the theme is more about people providing and finding emotional support in others.Monkey MenWhile it is difficult to call any track from this album a “deeper cut,” we agreed this one is about as close to that as we can find. Jagger and Richards wrote it as a tribute to Italian pop artist Mario Schifano, a contemporary of Andy Warhol whom Jaggar had met when he had a cameo in one of Schifano's movies. You Can't Always Get What You WantThe first song recorded for the album is the last track on side 2. This iconic song features the London Bach Choir, and features verses covering love, politics, and drugs — common themes of the day. The verses begin with optimism and end with disillusionment, returning to a sense of realism in the chorus. It may be the most popular of all recordings by the Stones. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Come and Get It by Badfinger (from the motion picture “The Magic Christian”) Honestly folks, I thought this was the Beatles, and had no idea that it was from this movie. Paul McCartney did write this song for Badfinger, and the movie starred Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr. STAFF PICKS:Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye by SteamLong before it became a staple of sports venues, Rob's staff pick was written by Paul Leka, Gary DiCarlo, and Dale Frasheur under what was then a fictitious band name, Steam. The song would hit number 1 on the pop charts, although it was intended as a B-side.Backfield In Motion by Mel and TimBruce continues the sports theme in the staff picks with this song about a girl who is running around on her man. This song with allusions to penalties in football, baseball, and boxing went to number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 3 on the R&B Chart.I'll Hold Out My Hand by The CliqueWayne features a positive soul sound from a two-hit wonder. The Clique would see this song top out at number 45 on the US charts. The lyrics urge someone who is turning inward to reach out instead and strive for their full potential. “I'll be your friend - you don't have to be mine.”Take a Letter Maria by R.B. GreavesBrian finishes our staff picks with a sing-song story about a business man who loses his wife while working overtime. He has his secretary take a letter with copies for his wife and his lawyer. By the end of the song he is scheduling a date with his secretary, Maria. INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:Groovy Grubworm by Harlow Wilcox & the OakiesWe weren't sure if it would be a comedy or an instrumental number, but this instrumental piece was on the charts at the end of 1969, peaking at number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Coohgroup presents Everybody Loves Roy Ayers DJ Tribute Parts One and Two - Recorded LIVE at Sanders Studios Brooklyn NY on Saturday September 9 2023It's the 10 year anniversary of this special tribute party conceived and put together by my brother Siddiq @coohcatgroup.Music by @djtahleim and me and we'll be playing originals, songs that sampled Mr. Ayers and artists from the Roy Ayers family tree.Marketplace and the @kinkytacotruck adds to the VIBES @ Sanders Studios 525 Waverly Ave (between Fulton St/Atlantic Ave). No cover. #everybodylovesroyayers #weliveinbrooklynbabyVibrations - Roy AyersA Tear To A Smile - Roy AyersBrand New Feeling (feat. Merry Clayton & Sylvia Cox) this - Roy AyersSoulful and Unique - Roy Ayers, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed MuhammadGotta Find A Lover - Roy AyersYou Send Me - Roy AyersMystic Voyage (feat. Carla Vaughn) - Roy AyersMy Life - Mary J. BligeFIND YOUR WINGS (Instrumental) - Tyler, The CreatorSynchronize Vibration - Roy Ayers, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed MuhammadRemember To Remember - Rick HolmesSunshine (Demo) - Roy AyersDaylight - RAMPSearching (original) - Roy AyersSearchin' (LIVE) - Roy AyersThe Black Five - Roy Ayers UbiquityRed Black And Green - Roy AyersAfrica Centre of the World (feat. Roy Ayers) - Fela KutiWe Live In Brooklyn, Baby (original) - Roy AyersMystic Voyage (live) - Roy AyersLove Will Bring Us Back Together - Roy AyersEverybody Loves The Sunshine - Roy AyersKwajilori - Roy AyersBlack Family - Roy AyersLong Time Ago - Roy Ayers2000 Blacks Got to be Free (feat. Roy Ayers) - Fela KutiRunning Away - Roy AyersSweet Tears – Roy AyersExpansions featuring Roy Ayers (12" Mix) - Scott GroovesDangerous Vibes (Heller & Farley Flute Dub) - Ferry UltraOur Time Is Coming - MAW, Roy AyersGet Up (feat. Roy Ayers) - Kyoto Jazz Massive / DJ KAWASAKICan't You See Me (LIVE) - Roy AyersHeat Of The Beat - Roy AyersFreaky Deaky - Roy AyersHey, Uh, What You Say Come On - Roy Ayers UbiquitySearching - The Africa 70 Version (Yoruba Soul/Suite) - Roy AyersPoo Poo La La - Roy Ayers(...then DJ Tahleim continued the vibes!)https://www.instagram.com/coohcatgroup/ + https://soundcloud.com/dj-tahleim + https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/djqoolmarvsoundshttps://linktr.ee/qooldjmarv
Are you ready for some footballlllll? College football is underway, and the NFL starts this week. That means there are plenty of opportunities for dumb moments.We're covering absurd start times in heat waves, suspensions from the NCAA around transfer rules, coaches getting too cute with late-game decisions, and much more.Plus, dumb predictions for the NFL season, a cliche about misunderstood quotes, and what the heck was this chain crew doing?Also, Joey's story about the Rolling Stones was all wrong. It was Merry Clayton singing backup vocals on "Gimme Shelter." It's like he barely even knows his pop music trivia!
Often in music, the prominence is placed on the title stars, without much regard to the people behind the scenes that help make the magic happen. This week, Sadie sheds light on a hidden part of the music industry: backup vocalists. We delve into the extraordinary careers of Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, and the unsung backup vocalists who have famous harmonies featured on some of our favorite songs, often remaining hidden in plain sight. We discuss their careers, the times they have been uncredited or misrepresented, their humility, their time with the stars, and many of the other voices that played this vital role including Judith Hill, Lisa Fischer, Tata Vega, and Jo Lawry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Journalist and novelist Dawnie Walton joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about U.S. concert culture. Why are live concerts so popular this summer and why have they so often become violent? Walton discusses how recent examples of fan violence speak to racism and sexism in American culture, as well as the role social media plays in fandom. Finally, she reads from her 2021 novel, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, which focuses on the fictional partnership between a Black American woman, singer Opal Jewel, and a white British man, guitarist Neville Charles, and discusses her story's connection to the infamous Altamont Free Concert in 1969. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This episode of the podcast was produced by Lynn Snyder and Anne Kniggendorf. Dawnie Walton The Final Revival of Opal & Nev Others: “It's ‘Bey Day' in ‘Swiftieapolis,'” by Tommy Wiita, Bring Me The News “How Taylor Swift Broke Ticketmaster,” by Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, Nov. 18, 2022 “No report filed for alleged attack at Monica concert: Detroit police,” by Jakkar Aimery, The Detroit News “Bebe Rexha Hit in the Face by Thrown Cell Phone at NYC Concert,” by Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone “Ava Max and Bebe Rexha were attacked by men on stage at their own concerts, why?” by Furvah Shah, Cosmopolitan Magazine “The Chaos of Altamont and the Murder of Meredith Hunter,” by Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker, Mar. 28, 2019 “Jason Aldean's 'Small Town' is part of a long legacy with a very dark side,” by Amanda Marie Martinez, National Public Radio “The traumatic story of Merry Clayton and The Rolling Stones,” by Arun Starkey, Far Out Magazine, Dec. 25, 2021 Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions, by Francesca T. Royster Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Agradece a este podcast tantas horas de entretenimiento y disfruta de episodios exclusivos como éste. ¡Apóyale en iVoox! Esta edición especial está dedicada a un saxofonista de sonido único: Ronnie Laws. Repasamos su colaboraciones junto a artistas como Shakatak, Merry Clayton, Alphonse Mouzon, Doc Powell, Jason Miles, Norman Brown, Jeff Lorber, Jazz Crusaders, Brian Culbertson, Howard Hewett, Larry Dunn y Earth, Wind & Fire.Escucha este episodio completo y accede a todo el contenido exclusivo de Cloud Jazz Smooth Jazz. Descubre antes que nadie los nuevos episodios, y participa en la comunidad exclusiva de oyentes en https://go.ivoox.com/sq/27170
Let your soul glow and the funds flow with our 2023 Funding Drive special! Featuring handpicked gems from the worldwide underground by Michael Kiwanuka, Cookin Soul, Frezidante, Green Cap Unity and more. Plus hip-hop anthems and uncut rawness from Heavy D and Doug E. Fresh, a soul rollercoaster with Merry Clayton, and masterful reworks by Kon and Nicholas. View the full playlist for this show at https://www.wefunkradio.com/show/1153 Enjoying WEFUNK? Listen to all of our mixes at https://www.wefunkradio.com/shows/
Literally everything is conspiring to deter us from The Real Dirty Dancing: Episode 4, but luckily we have this EXTRA BONUS EPISODE with Danny and Pickle. We all make fun of Eric Carmen and his weird Hungry Eyes. Josh quickly tells Danny the plot of Dirty Dancing, which apparently he hasn't seen, while Vince pretends to know the words to Merry Clayton's "Yes." Then more Bret Michaels talk. Finally, we hate Bill Medley but still, (We Have) The Time of Our Lives. Pickle postulates that Shania Twain always knew the truth about Brad Pitt, and we discuss Peeping v. Cucking.
From Pink Floyd to Peter Gabriel, legendary Canadian record producer Bob Ezrin takes us through the highlights of his nearly 50-year career. Legendary backup singer Merry Clayton talks about her first solo album in more than 25 years, Beautiful Scars, which she made in the aftermath of a life-altering car accident.
From Pink Floyd to Peter Gabriel, legendary Canadian record producer Bob Ezrin takes us through the highlights of his nearly 50-year career. Legendary backup singer Merry Clayton talks about her first solo album in more than 25 years, Beautiful Scars, which she made in the aftermath of a life-altering car accident.
En este episodio revisamos algunos de los puntos más importantes de "Let It Bleed" de The Rolling Stones, conversando sobre sus principales canciones, el inicio de la etapa dorada de la banda, el contexto musical y de la banda en la época, entre otros factores.
Its been a long, strange trip. For 10 years we've invited the always affable Dustin Prince to help us count down the most essential and must-hear cover songs of all time. At long last we're putting this series to bed and we are cordially inviting you to join us for a final send off. Check out the ultimate cover songs playlist! All of the songs from Volumes 1-10 (Part 1) are here on ye old Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4MYLdxgfChXizjkH8Jg7ax?si=58ed31aa541342c8You know you want to hear those bonus episodes, including November's upcoming show Top Ten Opening Lyrics with special guest Shannon Hurley. Just $2 a month gets you there. Find out more at our Patreon:https://alltimetoptenpod.com
Alright, folks, Erika and Paul take Labor Movie Month out of the office and into a mansion to discuss 1987's Maid To Order. How does this reimagining of Cinderella age? Are there nightclubs that serve caviar?? What even were foam parties??? You'll have to listen to find out!
Episode 152 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “For What It's Worth”, and the short but eventful career of Buffalo Springfield. 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 "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" by Glen Campbell. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, there's a Mixcloud mix containing all the songs excerpted in the episode. This four-CD box set is the definitive collection of Buffalo Springfield's work, while if you want the mono version of the second album, the stereo version of the first, and the final album as released, but no demos or outtakes, you want this more recent box set. For What It's Worth: The Story of Buffalo Springfield by Richey Furay and John Einarson is obviously Furay's version of the story, but all the more interesting for that. For information on Steve Stills' early life I used Stephen Stills: Change Partners by David Roberts. Information on both Stills and Young comes from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young by David Browne. Jimmy McDonough's Shakey is the definitive biography of Neil Young, while Young's Waging Heavy Peace is his autobiography. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before we begin -- this episode deals with various disabilities. In particular, there are descriptions of epileptic seizures that come from non-medically-trained witnesses, many of whom took ableist attitudes towards the seizures. I don't know enough about epilepsy to know how accurate their descriptions and perceptions are, and I apologise if that means that by repeating some of their statements, I am inadvertently passing on myths about the condition. When I talk about this, I am talking about the after-the-fact recollections of musicians, none of them medically trained and many of them in altered states of consciousness, about events that had happened decades earlier. Please do not take anything said in a podcast about music history as being the last word on the causes or effects of epileptic seizures, rather than how those musicians remember them. Anyway, on with the show. One of the things you notice if you write about protest songs is that a lot of the time, the songs that people talk about as being important or impactful have aged very poorly. Even great songwriters like Bob Dylan or John Lennon, when writing material about the political events of the time, would write material they would later acknowledge was far from their best. Too often a song will be about a truly important event, and be powered by a real sense of outrage at injustice, but it will be overly specific, and then as soon as the immediate issue is no longer topical, the song is at best a curio. For example, the sentencing of the poet and rock band manager John Sinclair to ten years in prison for giving two joints to an undercover police officer was hugely controversial in the early seventies, but by the time John Lennon's song about it was released, Sinclair had been freed by the Supreme Court, and very, very few people would use the song as an example of why Lennon's songwriting still has lasting value: [Excerpt: John Lennon, "John Sinclair"] But there are exceptions, and those tend to be songs where rather than talking about specific headlines, the song is about the emotion that current events have caused. Ninety years on from its first success, for example, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" still has resonance, because there are still people who are put out of work through no fault of their own, and even those of us who are lucky enough to be financially comfortable have the fear that all too soon it may end, and we may end up like Al begging on the streets: [Excerpt: Rudy Vallee, "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?"] And because of that emotional connection, sometimes the very best protest songs can take on new lives and new meanings, and connect with the way people feel about totally unrelated subjects. Take Buffalo Springfield's one hit. The actual subject of the song couldn't be any more trivial in the grand scheme of things -- a change in zoning regulations around the Sunset Strip that meant people under twenty-one couldn't go to the clubs after 10PM, and the subsequent reaction to that -- but because rather than talking about the specific incident, Steve Stills instead talked about the emotions that it called up, and just noted the fleeting images that he was left with, the song became adopted as an anthem by soldiers in Vietnam. Sometimes what a song says is nowhere near as important as how it says it. [Excerpt: Buffalo Springfield, "For What It's Worth"] Steve Stills seems almost to have been destined to be a musician, although the instrument he started on, the drums, was not the one for which he would become best known. According to Stills, though, he always had an aptitude for rhythm, to the extent that he learned to tapdance almost as soon as he had learned to walk. He started on drums aged eight or nine, after somebody gave him a set of drumsticks. After his parents got sick of him damaging the furniture by playing on every available surface, an actual drum kit followed, and that became his principal instrument, even after he learned to play the guitar at military school, as his roommate owned one. As a teenager, Stills developed an idiosyncratic taste in music, helped by the record collection of his friend Michael Garcia. He didn't particularly like most of the pop music of the time, but he was a big fan of pre-war country music, Motown, girl-group music -- he especially liked the Shirelles -- and Chess blues. He was also especially enamoured of the music of Jimmy Reed, a passion he would later share with his future bandmate Neil Young: [Excerpt: Jimmy Reed, "Baby, What You Want Me To Do?"] In his early teens, he became the drummer for a band called the Radars, and while he was drumming he studied their lead guitarist, Chuck Schwin. He said later "There was a whole little bunch of us who were into kind of a combination of all the blues guys and others including Chet Atkins, Dick Dale, and Hank Marvin: a very weird cross-section of far-out guitar players." Stills taught himself to play like those guitarists, and in particular he taught himself how to emulate Atkins' Travis-picking style, and became remarkably proficient at it. There exists a recording of him, aged sixteen, singing one of his own songs and playing finger-picked guitar, and while the song is not exactly the strongest thing I've ever heard lyrically, it's clearly the work of someone who is already a confident performer: [Excerpt: Stephen Stills, "Travellin'"] But the main reason he switched to becoming a guitarist wasn't because of his admiration for Chet Atkins or Hank Marvin, but because he started driving and discovered that if you have to load a drum kit into your car and then drive it to rehearsals and gigs you either end up bashing up your car or bashing up the drum kit. As this is not a problem with guitars, Stills decided that he'd move on from the Radars, and join a band named the Continentals as their rhythm guitarist, playing with lead guitarist Don Felder. Stills was only in the Continentals for a few months though, before being replaced by another guitarist, Bernie Leadon, and in general Stills' whole early life is one of being uprooted and moved around. His father had jobs in several different countries, and while for the majority of his time Stills was in the southern US, he also ended up spending time in Costa Rica -- and staying there as a teenager even as the rest of his family moved to El Salvador. Eventually, aged eighteen, he moved to New Orleans, where he formed a folk duo with a friend, Chris Sarns. The two had very different tastes in folk music -- Stills preferred Dylan-style singer-songwriters, while Sarns liked the clean sound of the Kingston Trio -- but they played together for several months before moving to Greenwich Village, where they performed together and separately. They were latecomers to the scene, which had already mostly ended, and many of the folk stars had already gone on to do bigger things. But Stills still saw plenty of great performers there -- Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonius Monk in the jazz clubs, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, and Richard Pryor in the comedy ones, and Simon and Garfunkel, Richie Havens, Fred Neil and Tim Hardin in the folk ones -- Stills said that other than Chet Atkins, Havens, Neil, and Hardin were the people most responsible for his guitar style. Stills was also, at this time, obsessed with Judy Collins' third album -- the album which had featured Roger McGuinn on banjo and arrangements, and which would soon provide several songs for the Byrds to cover: [Excerpt: Judy Collins, "Turn, Turn, Turn"] Judy Collins would soon become a very important figure in Stills' life, but for now she was just the singer on his favourite record. While the Greenwich Village folk scene was no longer quite what it had been a year or two earlier, it was still a great place for a young talented musician to perform. As well as working with Chris Sarns, Stills also formed a trio with his friend John Hopkins and a banjo player called Peter Tork who everyone said looked just like Stills. Tork soon headed out west to seek his fortune, and then Stills got headhunted to join the Au Go Go Singers. This was a group that was being set up in the same style as the New Christy Minstrels -- a nine-piece vocal and instrumental group that would do clean-sounding versions of currently-popular folk songs. The group were signed to Roulette Records, and recorded one album, They Call Us Au-Go-Go Singers, produced by Hugo and Luigi, the production duo we've previously seen working with everyone from the Tokens to the Isley Brothers. Much of the album is exactly the same kind of thing that a million New Christy Minstrels soundalikes were putting out -- and Stills, with his raspy voice, was clearly intended to be the Barry McGuire of this group -- but there was one exception -- a song called "High Flyin' Bird", on which Stills was able to show off the sound that would later make him famous, and which became so associated with him that even though it was written by Billy Edd Wheeler, the writer of "Jackson", even the biography of Stills I used in researching this episode credits "High Flyin' Bird" as being a Stills original: [Excerpt: The Au-Go-Go Singers, "High Flyin' Bird"] One of the other members of the Au-Go-Go Singers, Richie Furay, also got to sing a lead vocal on the album, on the Tom Paxton song "Where I'm Bound": [Excerpt: The Au-Go-Go Singers, "Where I'm Bound"] The Au-Go-Go Singers got a handful of dates around the folk scene, and Stills and Furay became friendly with another singer playing the same circuit, Gram Parsons. Parsons was one of the few people they knew who could see the value in current country music, and convinced both Stills and Furay to start paying more attention to what was coming out of Nashville and Bakersfield. But soon the Au-Go-Go Singers split up. Several venues where they might otherwise have been booked were apparently scared to book an act that was associated with Morris Levy, and also the market for big folk ensembles dried up more or less overnight when the Beatles hit the music scene. But several of the group -- including Stills but not Furay -- decided they were going to continue anyway, and formed a group called The Company, and they went on a tour of Canada. And one of the venues they played was the Fourth Dimension coffee house in Fort William, Ontario, and there their support act was a rock band called The Squires: [Excerpt: The Squires, "(I'm a Man And) I Can't Cry"] The lead guitarist of the Squires, Neil Young, had a lot in common with Stills, and they bonded instantly. Both men had parents who had split up when they were in their teens, and had a successful but rather absent father and an overbearing mother. And both had shown an interest in music even as babies. According to Young's mother, when he was still in nappies, he would pull himself up by the bars of his playpen and try to dance every time he heard "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie": [Excerpt: Pinetop Smith, "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie"] Young, though, had had one crucial experience which Stills had not had. At the age of six, he'd come down with polio, and become partially paralysed. He'd spent months in hospital before he regained his ability to walk, and the experience had also affected him in other ways. While he was recovering, he would draw pictures of trains -- other than music, his big interest, almost an obsession, was with electric train sets, and that obsession would remain with him throughout his life -- but for the first time he was drawing with his right hand rather than his left. He later said "The left-hand side got a little screwed. Feels different from the right. If I close my eyes, my left side, I really don't know where it is—but over the years I've discovered that almost one hundred percent for sure it's gonna be very close to my right side … probably to the left. That's why I started appearing to be ambidextrous, I think. Because polio affected my left side, and I think I was left-handed when I was born. What I have done is use the weak side as the dominant one because the strong side was injured." Both Young's father Scott Young -- a very famous Canadian writer and sports broadcaster, who was by all accounts as well known in Canada during his lifetime as his son -- and Scott's brother played ukulele, and they taught Neil how to play, and his first attempt at forming a group had been to get his friend Comrie Smith to get a pair of bongos and play along with him to Preston Epps' "Bongo Rock": [Excerpt: Preston Epps, "Bongo Rock"] Neil Young had liked all the usual rock and roll stars of the fifties -- though in his personal rankings, Elvis came a distant third behind Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis -- but his tastes ran more to the more darkly emotional. He loved "Maybe" by the Chantels, saying "Raw soul—you cannot miss it. That's the real thing. She was believin' every word she was singin'." [Excerpt: The Chantels, "Maybe"] What he liked more than anything was music that had a mainstream surface but seemed slightly off-kilter. He was a major fan of Roy Orbison, saying, "it's almost impossible to comprehend the depth of that soul. It's so deep and dark it just keeps on goin' down—but it's not black. It's blue, deep blue. He's just got it. The drama. There's something sad but proud about Roy's music", and he would say similar things about Del Shannon, saying "He struck me as the ultimate dark figure—behind some Bobby Rydell exterior, y'know? “Hats Off to Larry,” “Runaway,” “Swiss Maid”—very, very inventive. The stuff was weird. Totally unaffected." More surprisingly, perhaps, he was a particular fan of Bobby Darin, who he admired so much because Darin could change styles at the drop of a hat, going from novelty rock and roll like "Splish Splash" to crooning "Mack The Knife" to singing Tim Hardin songs like "If I Were a Carpenter", without any of them seeming any less authentic. As he put it later "He just changed. He's completely different. And he's really into it. Doesn't sound like he's not there. “Dream Lover,” “Mack the Knife,” “If I Were a Carpenter,” “Queen of the Hop,” “Splish Splash”—tell me about those records, Mr. Darin. Did you write those all the same day, or what happened? He just changed so much. Just kinda went from one place to another. So it's hard to tell who Bobby Darin really was." And one record which Young was hugely influenced by was Floyd Cramer's country instrumental, "Last Date": [Excerpt: Floyd Cramer, "Last Date"] Now, that was a very important record in country music, and if you want to know more about it I strongly recommend listening to the episode of Cocaine and Rhinestones on the Nashville A-Team, which has a long section on the track, but the crucial thing to know about that track is that it's one of the earliest examples of what is known as slip-note playing, where the piano player, before hitting the correct note, briefly hits the note a tone below it, creating a brief discord. Young absolutely loved that sound, and wanted to make a sound like that on the guitar. And then, when he and his mother moved to Winnipeg after his parents' divorce, he found someone who was doing just that. It was the guitarist in a group variously known as Chad Allan and the Reflections and Chad Allan and the Expressions. That group had relatives in the UK who would send them records, and so where most Canadian bands would do covers of American hits, Chad Allan and the Reflections would do covers of British hits, like their version of Geoff Goddard's "Tribute to Buddy Holly", a song that had originally been produced by Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Chad Allan and the Reflections, "Tribute to Buddy Holly"] That would later pay off for them in a big way, when they recorded a version of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' "Shakin' All Over", for which their record label tried to create an air of mystery by releasing it with no artist name, just "Guess Who?" on the label. It became a hit, the name stuck, and they became The Guess Who: [Excerpt: The Guess Who, "Shakin' All Over"] But at this point they, and their guitarist Randy Bachman, were just another group playing around Winnipeg. Bachman, though, was hugely impressive to Neil Young for a few reasons. The first was that he really did have a playing style that was a lot like the piano style of Floyd Cramer -- Young would later say "it was Randy Bachman who did it first. Randy was the first one I ever heard do things on the guitar that reminded me of Floyd. He'd do these pulls—“darrr darrrr,” this two-note thing goin' together—harmony, with one note pulling and the other note stayin' the same." Bachman also had built the first echo unit that Young heard a guitarist play in person. He'd discovered that by playing with the recording heads on a tape recorder owned by his mother, he could replicate the tape echo that Sam Phillips had used at Sun Studios -- and once he'd attached that to his amplifier, he realised how much the resulting sound sounded like his favourite guitarist, Hank Marvin of the Shadows, another favourite of Neil Young's: [Excerpt: The Shadows, "Man of Mystery"] Young soon started looking to Bachman as something of a mentor figure, and he would learn a lot of guitar techniques second hand from Bachman -- every time a famous musician came to the area, Bachman would go along and stand right at the front and watch the guitarist, and make note of the positions their fingers were in. Then Bachman would replicate those guitar parts with the Reflections, and Neil Young would stand in front of him and make notes of where *his* fingers were. Young joined a band on the local circuit called the Esquires, but soon either quit or was fired, depending on which version of the story you choose to believe. He then formed his own rival band, the Squires, with no "e", much to the disgust of his ex-bandmates. In July 1963, five months after they formed, the Squires released their first record, "Aurora" backed with "The Sultan", on a tiny local label. Both tracks were very obviously influenced by the Shadows: [Excerpt: The Squires, "Aurora"] The Squires were a mostly-instrumental band for the first year or so they were together, and then the Beatles hit North America, and suddenly people didn't want to hear surf instrumentals and Shadows covers any more, they only wanted to hear songs that sounded a bit like the Beatles. The Squires started to work up the appropriate repertoire -- two songs that have been mentioned as in their set at this point are the Beatles album track "It Won't Be Long", and "Money" which the Beatles had also covered -- but they didn't have a singer, being an instrumental group. They could get in a singer, of course, but that would mean splitting the money with another person. So instead, the guitarist, who had never had any intention of becoming a singer, was more or less volunteered for the role. Over the next eighteen months or so the group's repertoire moved from being largely instrumental to largely vocal, and the group also seem to have shuttled around a bit between two different cities -- Winnipeg and Fort William, staying in one for a while and then moving back to the other. They travelled between the two in Young's car, a Buick Roadmaster hearse. In Winnipeg, Young first met up with a singer named Joni Anderson, who was soon to get married to Chuck Mitchell and would become better known by her married name. The two struck up a friendship, though by all accounts never a particularly close one -- they were too similar in too many ways; as Mitchell later said “Neil and I have a lot in common: Canadian; Scorpios; polio in the same epidemic, struck the same parts of our body; and we both have a black sense of humor". They were both also idiosyncratic artists who never fit very well into boxes. In Fort William the Squires made a few more records, this time vocal tracks like "I'll Love You Forever": [Excerpt: The Squires, "I'll Love You Forever"] It was also in Fort William that Young first encountered two acts that would make a huge impression on him. One was a group called The Thorns, consisting of Tim Rose, Jake Holmes, and Rich Husson. The Thorns showed Young that there was interesting stuff being done on the fringes of the folk music scene. He later said "One of my favourites was “Oh Susannah”—they did this arrangement that was bizarre. It was in a minor key, which completely changed everything—and it was rock and roll. So that idea spawned arrangements of all these other songs for me. I did minor versions of them all. We got into it. That was a certain Squires stage that never got recorded. Wish there were tapes of those shows. We used to do all this stuff, a whole kinda music—folk-rock. We took famous old folk songs like “Clementine,” “She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain,” “Tom Dooley,” and we did them all in minor keys based on the Tim Rose arrangement of “Oh Susannah.” There are no recordings of the Thorns in existence that I know of, but presumably that arrangement that Young is talking about is the version that Rose also later did with the Big 3, which we've heard in a few other episodes: [Excerpt: The Big 3, "The Banjo Song"] The other big influence was, of course, Steve Stills, and the two men quickly found themselves influencing each other deeply. Stills realised that he could bring more rock and roll to his folk-music sound, saying that what amazed him was the way the Squires could go from "Cottonfields" (the Lead Belly song) to "Farmer John", the R&B song by Don and Dewey that was becoming a garage-rock staple. Young in turn was inspired to start thinking about maybe going more in the direction of folk music. The Squires even renamed themselves the High-Flying Birds, after the song that Stills had recorded with the Au Go Go Singers. After The Company's tour of Canada, Stills moved back to New York for a while. He now wanted to move in a folk-rock direction, and for a while he tried to persuade his friend John Sebastian to let him play bass in his new band, but when the Lovin' Spoonful decided against having him in the band, he decided to move West to San Francisco, where he'd heard there was a new music scene forming. He enjoyed a lot of the bands he saw there, and in particular he was impressed by the singer of a band called the Great Society: [Excerpt: The Great Society, "Somebody to Love"] He was much less impressed with the rest of her band, and seriously considered going up to her and asking if she wanted to work with some *real* musicians instead of the unimpressive ones she was working with, but didn't get his nerve up. We will, though, be hearing more about Grace Slick in future episodes. Instead, Stills decided to move south to LA, where many of the people he'd known in Greenwich Village were now based. Soon after he got there, he hooked up with two other musicians, a guitarist named Steve Young and a singer, guitarist, and pianist named Van Dyke Parks. Parks had a record contract at MGM -- he'd been signed by Tom Wilson, the same man who had turned Dylan electric, signed Simon and Garfunkel, and produced the first albums by the Mothers of Invention. With Wilson, Parks put out a couple of singles in 1966, "Come to the Sunshine": [Excerpt: The Van Dyke Parks, "Come to the Sunshine"] And "Number Nine", a reworking of the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: [Excerpt: The Van Dyke Parks, "Number Nine"]Parks, Stills, and Steve Young became The Van Dyke Parks Band, though they didn't play together for very long, with their most successful performance being as the support act for the Lovin' Spoonful for a show in Arizona. But they did have a lasting resonance -- when Van Dyke Parks finally got the chance to record his first solo album, he opened it with Steve Young singing the old folk song "Black Jack Davy", filtered to sound like an old tape: [Excerpt: Steve Young, "Black Jack Davy"] And then it goes into a song written for Parks by Randy Newman, but consisting of Newman's ideas about Parks' life and what he knew about him, including that he had been third guitar in the Van Dyke Parks Band: [Excerpt: Van Dyke Parks, "Vine Street"] Parks and Stills also wrote a few songs together, with one of their collaborations, "Hello, I've Returned", later being demoed by Stills for Buffalo Springfield: [Excerpt: Steve Stills, "Hello, I've Returned"] After the Van Dyke Parks Band fell apart, Parks went on to many things, including a brief stint on keyboards in the Mothers of Invention, and we'll be talking more about him next episode. Stills formed a duo called the Buffalo Fish, with his friend Ron Long. That soon became an occasional trio when Stills met up again with his old Greenwich Village friend Peter Tork, who joined the group on the piano. But then Stills auditioned for the Monkees and was turned down because he had bad teeth -- or at least that's how most people told the story. Stills has later claimed that while he turned up for the Monkees auditions, it wasn't to audition, it was to try to pitch them songs, which seems implausible on the face of it. According to Stills, he was offered the job and turned it down because he'd never wanted it. But whatever happened, Stills suggested they might want his friend Peter, who looked just like him apart from having better teeth, and Peter Tork got the job. But what Stills really wanted to do was to form a proper band. He'd had the itch to do it ever since seeing the Squires, and he decided he should ask Neil Young to join. There was only one problem -- when he phoned Young, the phone was answered by Young's mother, who told Stills that Neil had moved out to become a folk singer, and she didn't know where he was. But then Stills heard from his old friend Richie Furay. Furay was still in Greenwich Village, and had decided to write to Stills. He didn't know where Stills was, other than that he was in California somewhere, so he'd written to Stills' father in El Salvador. The letter had been returned, because the postage had been short by one cent, so Furay had resent it with the correct postage. Stills' father had then forwarded the letter to the place Stills had been staying in San Francisco, which had in turn forwarded it on to Stills in LA. Furay's letter mentioned this new folk singer who had been on the scene for a while and then disappeared again, Neil Young, who had said he knew Stills, and had been writing some great songs, one of which Furay had added to his own set. Stills got in touch with Furay and told him about this great band he was forming in LA, which he wanted Furay to join. Furay was in, and travelled from New York to LA, only to be told that at this point there were no other members of this great band, but they'd definitely find some soon. They got a publishing deal with Columbia/Screen Gems, which gave them enough money to not starve, but what they really needed was to find some other musicians. They did, when driving down Hollywood Boulevard on April the sixth, 1966. There, stuck in traffic going the other way, they saw a hearse... After Steve Stills had left Fort William, so had Neil Young. He hadn't initially intended to -- the High-Flying Birds still had a regular gig, but Young and some of his friends had gone away for a few days on a road trip in his hearse. But unfortunately the transmission on the hearse had died, and Young and his friends had been stranded. Many years later, he would write a eulogy to the hearse, which he and Stills would record together: [Excerpt: The Stills-Young Band, "Long May You Run"] Young and his friends had all hitch-hiked in different directions -- Young had ended up in Toronto, where his dad lived, and had stayed with his dad for a while. The rest of his band had eventually followed him there, but Young found the Toronto music scene not to his taste -- the folk and rock scenes there were very insular and didn't mingle with each other, and the group eventually split up. Young even took on a day job for a while, for the only time in his life, though he soon quit. Young started basically commuting between Toronto and New York, a distance of several hundred miles, going to Greenwich Village for a while before ending up back in Toronto, and ping-ponging between the two. In New York, he met up with Richie Furay, and also had a disastrous audition for Elektra Records as a solo artist. One of the songs he sang in the audition was "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing", the song which Furay liked so much he started performing it himself. Young doesn't normally explain his songs, but as this was one of the first he ever wrote, he talked about it in interviews in the early years, before he decided to be less voluble about his art. The song was apparently about the sense of youthful hope being crushed. The instigation for it was Young seeing his girlfriend with another man, but the central image, of Clancy not singing, came from Young's schooldays. The Clancy in question was someone Young liked as one of the other weird kids at school. He was disabled, like Young, though with MS rather than polio, and he would sing to himself in the hallways at school. Sadly, of course, the other kids would mock and bully him for that, and eventually he ended up stopping. Young said about it "After awhile, he got so self-conscious he couldn't do his thing any more. When someone who is as beautiful as that and as different as that is actually killed by his fellow man—you know what I mean—like taken and sorta chopped down—all the other things are nothing compared to this." [Excerpt: Neil Young, "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Elektra demo)"] One thing I should say for anyone who listens to the Mixcloud for this episode, that song, which will be appearing in a couple of different versions, has one use of a term for Romani people that some (though not all) consider a slur. It's not in the excerpts I'll be using in this episode, but will be in the full versions on the Mixcloud. Sadly that word turns up time and again in songs of this era... When he wasn't in New York, Young was living in Toronto in a communal apartment owned by a folk singer named Vicki Taylor, where many of the Toronto folk scene would stay. Young started listening a lot to Taylor's Bert Jansch albums, which were his first real exposure to the British folk-baroque style of guitar fingerpicking, as opposed to the American Travis-picking style, and Young would soon start to incorporate that style into his own playing: [Excerpt: Bert Jansch, "Angie"] Another guitar influence on Young at this point was another of the temporary tenants of Taylor's flat, John Kay, who would later go on to be one of the founding members of Steppenwolf. Young credited Kay with having a funky rhythm guitar style that Young incorporated into his own. While he was in Toronto, he started getting occasional gigs in Detroit, which is "only" a couple of hundred miles away, set up by Joni and Chuck Mitchell, both of whom also sometimes stayed at Taylor's. And it was in Detroit that Neil Young became, albeit very briefly, a Motown artist. The Mynah Birds were a band in Toronto that had at one point included various future members of Steppenwolf, and they were unusual for the time in that they were a white band with a Black lead singer, Ricky Matthews. They also had a rich manager, John Craig Eaton, the heir to the Eaton's department store fortune, who basically gave them whatever money they wanted -- they used to go to his office and tell him they needed seven hundred dollars for lunch, and he'd hand it to them. They were looking for a new guitarist when Bruce Palmer, their bass player, bumped into Neil Young carrying an amp and asked if he was interested in joining. He was. The Mynah Birds quickly became one of the best bands in Toronto, and Young and Matthews became close, both as friends and as a performance team. People who saw them live would talk about things like a song called “Hideaway”, written by Young and Matthews, which had a spot in the middle where Young would start playing a harmonica solo, throw the harmonica up in the air mid-solo, Matthews would catch it, and he would then finish the solo. They got signed to Motown, who were at this point looking to branch out into the white guitar-group market, and they were put through the Motown star-making machine. They recorded an entire album, which remains unreleased, but they did release a single, "It's My Time": [Excerpt: The Mynah Birds, "It's My Time"] Or at least, they released a handful of promo copies. The single was pulled from release after Ricky Matthews got arrested. It turned out his birth name wasn't Ricky Matthews, but James Johnson, and that he wasn't from Toronto as he'd told everyone, but from Buffalo, New York. He'd fled to Canada after going AWOL from the Navy, not wanting to be sent to Vietnam, and he was arrested and jailed for desertion. After getting out of jail, he would start performing under yet another name, and as Rick James would have a string of hits in the seventies and eighties: [Excerpt: Rick James, "Super Freak"] Most of the rest of the group continued gigging as The Mynah Birds, but Young and Palmer had other plans. They sold the expensive equipment Eaton had bought the group, and Young bought a new hearse, which he named Mort 2 – Mort had been his first hearse. And according to one of the band's friends in Toronto, the crucial change in their lives came when Neil Young heard a song on a jukebox: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "California Dreamin'"] Young apparently heard "California Dreamin'" and immediately said "Let's go to California and become rock stars". Now, Young later said of this anecdote that "That sounds like a Canadian story to me. That sounds too real to be true", and he may well be right. Certainly the actual wording of the story is likely incorrect -- people weren't talking about "rock stars" in 1966. Google's Ngram viewer has the first use of the phrase in print being in 1969, and the phrase didn't come into widespread usage until surprisingly late -- even granting that phrases enter slang before they make it to print, it still seems implausible. But even though the precise wording might not be correct, something along those lines definitely seems to have happened, albeit possibly less dramatically. Young's friend Comrie Smith independently said that Young told him “Well, Comrie, I can hear the Mamas and the Papas singing ‘All the leaves are brown, and the skies are gray …' I'm gonna go down to the States and really make it. I'm on my way. Today North Toronto, tomorrow the world!” Young and Palmer loaded up Mort 2 with a bunch of their friends and headed towards California. On the way, they fell out with most of the friends, who parted from them, and Young had an episode which in retrospect may have been his first epileptic seizure. They decided when they got to California that they were going to look for Steve Stills, as they'd heard he was in LA and neither of them knew anyone else in the state. But after several days of going round the Sunset Strip clubs asking if anyone knew Steve Stills, and sleeping in the hearse as they couldn't afford anywhere else, they were getting fed up and about to head off to San Francisco, as they'd heard there was a good music scene there, too. They were going to leave that day, and they were stuck in traffic on Sunset Boulevard, about to head off, when Stills and Furay came driving in the other direction. Furay happened to turn his head, to brush away a fly, and saw a hearse with Ontario license plates. He and Stills both remembered that Young drove a hearse, and so they assumed it must be him. They started honking at the hearse, then did a U-turn. They got Young's attention, and they all pulled into the parking lot at Ben Frank's, the Sunset Strip restaurant that attracted such a hip crowd the Monkees' producers had asked for "Ben Frank's types" in their audition advert. Young introduced Stills and Furay to Palmer, and now there *was* a group -- three singing, songwriting, guitarists and a bass player. Now all they needed was a drummer. There were two drummers seriously considered for the role. One of them, Billy Mundi, was technically the better player, but Young didn't like playing with him as much -- and Mundi also had a better offer, to join the Mothers of Invention as their second drummer -- before they'd recorded their first album, they'd had two drummers for a few months, but Denny Bruce, their second drummer, had become ill with glandular fever and they'd reverted to having Jimmy Carl Black play solo. Now they were looking for someone else, and Mundi took that role. The other drummer, who Young preferred anyway, was another Canadian, Dewey Martin. Martin was a couple of years older than the rest of the group, and by far the most experienced. He'd moved from Canada to Nashville in his teens, and according to Martin he had been taken under the wing of Hank Garland, the great session guitarist most famous for "Sugarfoot Rag": [Excerpt: Hank Garland, "Sugarfoot Rag"] We heard Garland playing with Elvis and others in some of the episodes around 1960, and by many reckonings he was the best session guitarist in Nashville, but in 1961 he had a car accident that left him comatose, and even though he recovered from the coma and lived another thirty-three years, he never returned to recording. According to Martin, though, Garland would still sometimes play jazz clubs around Nashville after the accident, and one day Martin walked into a club and saw him playing. The drummer he was playing with got up and took a break, taking his sticks with him, so Martin got up on stage and started playing, using two combs instead of sticks. Garland was impressed, and told Martin that Faron Young needed a drummer, and he could get him the gig. At the time Young was one of the biggest stars in country music. That year, 1961, he had three country top ten hits, including a number one with his version of Willie Nelson's "Hello Walls", produced by Ken Nelson: [Excerpt: Faron Young, "Hello Walls"] Martin joined Faron Young's band for a while, and also ended up playing short stints in the touring bands of various other Nashville-based country and rock stars, including Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, and the Everly Brothers, before heading to LA for a while. Then Mel Taylor of the Ventures hooked him up with some musicians in the Pacific Northwest scene, and Martin started playing there under the name Sir Raleigh and the Coupons with various musicians. After a while he travelled back to LA where he got some members of the LA group Sons of Adam to become a permanent lineup of Coupons, and they recorded several singles with Martin singing lead, including the Tommy Boyce and Steve Venet song "Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day", later recorded by the Monkees: [Excerpt: Sir Raleigh and the Coupons, "Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day"] He then played with the Standells, before joining the Modern Folk Quartet for a short while, as they were transitioning from their folk sound to a folk-rock style. He was only with them for a short while, and it's difficult to get precise details -- almost everyone involved with Buffalo Springfield has conflicting stories about their own careers with timelines that don't make sense, which is understandable given that people were talking about events decades later and memory plays tricks. "Fast" Eddie Hoh had joined the Modern Folk Quartet on drums in late 1965, at which point they became the Modern Folk Quintet, and nothing I've read about that group talks about Hoh ever actually leaving, but apparently Martin joined them in February 1966, which might mean he's on their single "Night-Time Girl", co-written by Al Kooper and produced and arranged by Jack Nitzsche: [Excerpt: The Modern Folk Quintet, "Night-Time Girl"] After that, Martin was taken on by the Dillards, a bluegrass band who are now possibly most famous for having popularised the Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith song "Duellin' Banjos", which they recorded on their first album and played on the Andy Griffith Show a few years before it was used in Deliverance: [Excerpt: The Dillards, "Duellin' Banjos"] The Dillards had decided to go in a country-rock direction -- and Doug Dillard would later join the Byrds and make records with Gene Clark -- but they were hesitant about it, and after a brief period with Martin in the band they decided to go back to their drummerless lineup. To soften the blow, they told him about another band that was looking for a drummer -- their manager, Jim Dickson, who was also the Byrds' manager, knew Stills and his bandmates. Dewey Martin was in the group. The group still needed a name though. They eventually took their name from a brand of steam roller, after seeing one on the streets when some roadwork was being done. Everyone involved disagrees as to who came up with the name. Steve Stills at one point said it was a group decision after Neil Young and the group's manager Frazier Mohawk stole the nameplate off the steamroller, and later Stills said that Richey Furay had suggested the name while they were walking down the street, Dewey Martin said it was his idea, Neil Young said that he, Steve Sills, and Van Dyke Parks had been walking down the street and either Young or Stills had seen the nameplate and suggested the name, and Van Dyke Parks says that *he* saw the nameplate and suggested it to Dewey Martin: [Excerpt: Steve Stills and Van Dyke Parks on the name] For what it's worth, I tend to believe Van Dyke Parks in most instances -- he's an honest man, and he seems to have a better memory of the sixties than many of his friends who led more chemically interesting lives. Whoever came up with it, the name worked -- as Stills later put it "We thought it was pretty apt, because Neil Young is from Manitoba which is buffalo country, and Richie Furay was from Springfield, Ohio -- and I'm the field!" It almost certainly also helped that the word "buffalo" had been in the name of Stills' previous group, Buffalo Fish. On the eleventh of April, 1966, Buffalo Springfield played their first gig, at the Troubadour, using equipment borrowed from the Dillards. Chris Hillman of the Byrds was in the audience and was impressed. He got the group a support slot on a show the Byrds and the Dillards were doing a few days later in San Bernardino. That show was compered by a Merseyside-born British DJ, John Ravenscroft, who had managed to become moderately successful in US radio by playing up his regional accent so he sounded more like the Beatles. He would soon return to the UK, and start broadcasting under the name John Peel. Hillman also got them a week-long slot at the Whisky A-Go-Go, and a bidding war started between record labels to sign the band. Dunhill offered five thousand dollars, Warners counted with ten thousand, and then Atlantic offered twelve thousand. Atlantic were *just* starting to get interested in signing white guitar groups -- Jerry Wexler never liked that kind of music, always preferring to stick with soul and R&B, but Ahmet Ertegun could see which way things were going. Atlantic had only ever signed two other white acts before -- Neil Young's old favourite Bobby Darin, who had since left the label, and Sonny and Cher. And Sonny and Cher's management and production team, Brian Stone and Charlie Greene, were also very interested in the group, who even before they had made a record had quickly become the hottest band on the circuit, even playing the Hollywood Bowl as the Rolling Stones' support act. Buffalo Springfield already had managers -- Frazier Mohawk and Richard Davis, the lighting man at the Troubadour (who was sometimes also referred to as Dickie Davis, but I'll use his full name so as not to cause unnecessary confusion in British people who remember the sports TV presenter of the same name), who Mohawk had enlisted to help him. But Stone and Greene weren't going to let a thing like that stop them. According to anonymous reports quoted without attribution in David Roberts' biography of Stills -- so take this with as many grains of salt as you want -- Stone and Greene took Mohawk for a ride around LA in a limo, just the three of them, a gun, and a used hotdog napkin. At the end of the ride, the hotdog napkin had Mohawk's scrawled signature, signing the group over to Stone and Greene. Davis stayed on, but was demoted to just doing their lights. The way things ended up, the group signed to Stone and Greene's production company, who then leased their masters to Atlantic's Atco subsidiary. A publishing company was also set up for the group's songs -- owned thirty-seven point five percent by Atlantic, thirty-seven point five percent by Stone and Greene, and the other twenty-five percent split six ways between the group and Davis, who they considered their sixth member. Almost immediately, Charlie Greene started playing Stills and Young off against each other, trying a divide-and-conquer strategy on the group. This was quite easy, as both men saw themselves as natural leaders, though Stills was regarded by everyone as the senior partner -- the back cover of their first album would contain the line "Steve is the leader but we all are". Stills and Young were the two stars of the group as far as the audience were concerned -- though most musicians who heard them play live say that the band's real strength was in its rhythm section, with people comparing Palmer's playing to that of James Jamerson. But Stills and Young would get into guitar battles on stage, one-upping each other, in ways that turned the tension between them in creative directions. Other clashes, though were more petty -- both men had very domineering mothers, who would actually call the group's management to complain about press coverage if their son was given less space than the other one. The group were also not sure about Young's voice -- to the extent that Stills was known to jokingly apologise to the audience before Young took a lead vocal -- and so while the song chosen as the group's first A-side was Young's "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing", Furay was chosen to sing it, rather than Young: [Excerpt: Buffalo Springfield, "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing"] On the group's first session, though, both Stills and Young realised that their producers didn't really have a clue -- the group had built up arrangements that had a complex interplay of instruments and vocals, but the producers insisted on cutting things very straightforwardly, with a basic backing track and then the vocals. They also thought that the song was too long so the group should play faster. Stills and Young quickly decided that they were going to have to start producing their own material, though Stone and Greene would remain the producers for the first album. There was another bone of contention though, because in the session the initial plan had been for Stills' song "Go and Say Goodbye" to be the A-side with Young's song as the B-side. It was flipped, and nobody seems quite sure why -- it's certainly the case that, whatever the merits of the two tracks as songs, Stills' song was the one that would have been more likely to become a hit. "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" was a flop, but it did get some local airplay. The next single, "Burned", was a Young song as well, and this time did have Young taking the lead, though in a song dominated by harmonies: [Excerpt: Buffalo Springfield, "Burned"] Over the summer, though, something had happened that would affect everything for the group -- Neil Young had started to have epileptic seizures. At first these were undiagnosed episodes, but soon they became almost routine events, and they would often happen on stage, particularly at moments of great stress or excitement. Several other members of the group became convinced -- entirely wrongly -- that Young was faking these seizures in order to get women to pay attention to him. They thought that what he wanted was for women to comfort him and mop his brow, and that collapsing would get him that. The seizures became so common that Richard Davis, the group's lighting tech, learned to recognise the signs of a seizure before it happened. As soon as it looked like Young was about to collapse the lights would turn on, someone would get ready to carry him off stage, and Richie Furay would know to grab Young's guitar before he fell so that the guitar wouldn't get damaged. Because they weren't properly grounded and Furay had an electric guitar of his own, he'd get a shock every time. Young would later claim that during some of the seizures, he would hallucinate that he was another person, in another world, living another life that seemed to have its own continuity -- people in the other world would recognise him and talk to him as if he'd been away for a while -- and then when he recovered he would have to quickly rebuild his identity, as if temporarily amnesiac, and during those times he would find things like the concept of lying painful. The group's first album came out in December, and they were very, very, unhappy with it. They thought the material was great, but they also thought that the production was terrible. Stone and Greene's insistence that they record the backing tracks first and then overdub vocals, rather than singing live with the instruments, meant that the recordings, according to Stills and Young in particular, didn't capture the sound of the group's live performance, and sounded sterile. Stills and Young thought they'd fixed some of that in the mono mix, which they spent ten days on, but then Stone and Greene did the stereo mix without consulting the band, in less than two days, and the album was released at precisely the time that stereo was starting to overtake mono in the album market. I'm using the mono mixes in this podcast, but for decades the only versions available were the stereo ones, which Stills and Young both loathed. Ahmet Ertegun also apparently thought that the demo versions of the songs -- some of which were eventually released on a box set in 2001 -- were much better than the finished studio recordings. The album was not a success on release, but it did contain the first song any of the group had written to chart. Soon after its release, Van Dyke Parks' friend Lenny Waronker was producing a single by a group who had originally been led by Sly Stone and had been called Sly and the Mojo Men. By this time Stone was no longer involved in the group, and they were making music in a very different style from the music their former leader would later become known for. Parks was brought in to arrange a baroque-pop version of Stills' album track "Sit Down I Think I Love You" for the group, and it became their only top forty hit, reaching number thirty-six: [Excerpt: The Mojo Men, "Sit Down I Think I Love You"] It was shortly after the first Buffalo Springfield album was released, though, that Steve Stills wrote what would turn out to be *his* group's only top forty single. The song had its roots in both LA and San Francisco. The LA roots were more obvious -- the song was written about a specific experience Stills had had. He had been driving to Sunset Strip from Laurel Canyon on November the twelfth 1966, and he had seen a mass of young people and police in riot gear, and he had immediately turned round, partly because he didn't want to get involved in what looked to be a riot, and partly because he'd been inspired -- he had the idea for a lyric, which he pretty much finished in the car even before he got home: [Excerpt: The Buffalo Springfield, "For What it's Worth"] The riots he saw were what became known later as the Riot on Sunset Strip. This was a minor skirmish between the police and young people of LA -- there had been complaints that young people had been spilling out of the nightclubs on Sunset Strip into the street, causing traffic problems, and as a result the city council had introduced various heavy-handed restrictions, including a ten PM curfew for all young people in the area, removing the permits that many clubs had which allowed people under twenty-one to be present, forcing the Whisky A-Go-Go to change its name just to "the Whisk", and forcing a club named Pandora's Box, which was considered the epicentre of the problem, to close altogether. Flyers had been passed around calling for a "funeral" for Pandora's Box -- a peaceful gathering at which people could say goodbye to a favourite nightspot, and a thousand people had turned up. The police also turned up, and in the heavy-handed way common among law enforcement, they managed to provoke a peaceful party and turn it into a riot. This would not normally be an event that would be remembered even a year later, let alone nearly sixty years later, but Sunset Strip was the centre of the American rock music world in the period, and of the broader youth entertainment field. Among those arrested at the riot, for example, were Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda, neither of whom were huge stars at the time, but who were making cheap B-movies with Roger Corman for American International Pictures. Among the cheap exploitation films that American International Pictures made around this time was one based on the riots, though neither Nicholson, Fonda, or Corman were involved. Riot on Sunset Strip was released in cinemas only four months after the riots, and it had a theme song by Dewey Martin's old colleagues The Standells, which is now regarded as a classic of garage rock: [Excerpt: The Standells, "Riot on Sunset Strip"] The riots got referenced in a lot of other songs, as well. The Mothers of Invention's second album, Absolutely Free, contains the song "Plastic People" which includes this section: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Plastic People"] And the Monkees track "Daily Nightly", written by Michael Nesmith, was always claimed by Nesmith to be an impressionistic portrait of the riots, though the psychedelic lyrics sound to me more like they're talking about drug use and street-walking sex workers than anything to do with the riots: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daily Nightly"] But the song about the riots that would have the most lasting effect on popular culture was the one that Steve Stills wrote that night. Although how much he actually wrote, at least of the music, is somewhat open to question. Earlier that month, Buffalo Springfield had spent some time in San Francisco. They hadn't enjoyed the experience -- as an LA band, they were thought of as a bunch of Hollywood posers by most of the San Francisco scene, with the exception of one band, Moby Grape -- a band who, like them had three guitarist/singer/songwriters, and with whom they got on very well. Indeed, they got on rather better with Moby Grape than they were getting on with each other at this point, because Young and Stills would regularly get into arguments, and every time their argument seemed to be settling down, Dewey Martin would manage to say the wrong thing and get Stills riled up again -- Martin was doing a lot of speed at this point and unable to stop talking, even when it would have been politic to do so. There was even some talk while they were in San Francisco of the bands doing a trade -- Young and Pete Lewis of Moby Grape swapping places -- though that came to nothing. But Stills, according to both Richard Davis and Pete Lewis, had been truly impressed by two Moby Grape songs. One of them was a song called "On the Other Side", which Moby Grape never recorded, but which apparently had a chorus that went "Stop, can't you hear the music ringing in your ear, right before you go, telling you the way is clear," with the group all pausing after the word "Stop". The other was a song called "Murder in my Heart for the Judge": [Excerpt: Moby Grape, "Murder in my Heart for the Judge"] The song Stills wrote had a huge amount of melodic influence from that song, and quite a bit from “On the Other Side”, though he apparently didn't notice until after the record came out, at which point he apologised to Moby Grape. Stills wasn't massively impressed with the song he'd written, and went to Stone and Greene's office to play it for them, saying "I'll play it, for what it's worth". They liked the song and booked a studio to get the song recorded and rush-released, though according to Neil Young neither Stone nor Greene were actually present at the session, and the song was recorded on December the fifth, while some outbursts of rioting were still happening, and released on December the twenty-third. [Excerpt: Buffalo Springfield, "For What it's Worth"] The song didn't have a title when they recorded it, or so Stills thought, but when he mentioned this to Greene and Stone afterwards, they said "Of course it does. You said, 'I'm going to play the song, 'For What It's Worth'" So that became the title, although Ahmet Ertegun didn't like the idea of releasing a single with a title that wasn't in the lyric, so the early pressings of the single had "Stop, Hey, What's That Sound?" in brackets after the title. The song became a big hit, and there's a story told by David Crosby that doesn't line up correctly, but which might shed some light on why. According to Crosby, "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" got its first airplay because Crosby had played members of Buffalo Springfield a tape he'd been given of the unreleased Beatles track "A Day in the Life", and they'd told their gangster manager-producers about it. Those manager-producers had then hired a sex worker to have sex with Crosby and steal the tape, which they'd then traded to a radio station in return for airplay. That timeline doesn't work, unless the sex worker involved was also a time traveller, because "A Day in the Life" wasn't even recorded until January 1967 while "Clancy" came out in August 1966, and there'd been two other singles released between then and January 1967. But it *might* be the case that that's what happened with "For What It's Worth", which was released in the last week of December 1966, and didn't really start to do well on the charts for a couple of months. Right after recording the song, the group went to play a residency in New York, of which Ahmet Ertegun said “When they performed there, man, there was no band I ever heard that had the electricity of that group. That was the most exciting group I've ever seen, bar none. It was just mind-boggling.” During that residency they were joined on stage at various points by Mitch Ryder, Odetta, and Otis Redding. While in New York, the group also recorded "Mr. Soul", a song that Young had originally written as a folk song about his experiences with epilepsy, the nature of the soul, and dealing with fame. However, he'd noticed a similarity to "Satisfaction" and decided to lean into it. The track as finally released was heavily overdubbed by Young a few months later, but after it was released he decided he preferred the original take, which by then only existed as a scratchy acetate, which got released on a box set in 2001: [Excerpt: Buffalo Springfield, "Mr. Soul (original version)"] Everyone has a different story of how the session for that track went -- at least one version of the story has Otis Redding turning up for the session and saying he wanted to record the song himself, as his follow-up to his version of "Satisfaction", but Young being angry at the idea. According to other versions of the story, Greene and Stills got into a physical fight, with Greene having to be given some of the valium Young was taking for his epilepsy to calm him down. "For What it's Worth" was doing well enough on the charts that the album was recalled, and reissued with "For What It's Worth" replacing Stills' song "Baby Don't Scold", but soon disaster struck the band. Bruce Palmer was arrested on drugs charges, and was deported back to Canada just as the song started to rise through the charts. The group needed a new bass player, fast. For a lipsynch appearance on local TV they got Richard Davis to mime the part, and then they got in Ken Forssi, the bass player from Love, for a couple of gigs. They next brought in Ken Koblun, the bass player from the Squires, but he didn't fit in with the rest of the group. The next replacement was Jim Fielder. Fielder was a friend of the group, and knew the material -- he'd subbed for Palmer a few times in 1966 when Palmer had been locked up after less serious busts. And to give some idea of how small a scene the LA scene was, when Buffalo Springfield asked him to become their bass player, he was playing rhythm guitar for the Mothers of Invention, while Billy Mundi was on drums, and had played on their second, as yet unreleased, album, Absolutely Free: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Call any Vegetable"] And before joining the Mothers, Fielder and Mundi had also played together with Van Dyke Parks, who had served his own short stint as a Mother of Invention already, backing Tim Buckley on Buckley's first album: [Excerpt: Tim Buckley, "Aren't You the Girl?"] And the arrangements on that album were by Jack Nitzsche, who would soon become a very close collaborator with Young. "For What it's Worth" kept rising up the charts. Even though it had been inspired by a very local issue, the lyrics were vague enough that people in other situations could apply it to themselves, and it soon became regarded as an anti-war protest anthem -- something Stills did nothing to discourage, as the band were all opposed to the war. The band were also starting to collaborate with other people. When Stills bought a new house, he couldn't move in to it for a while, and so Peter Tork invited him to stay at his house. The two got on so well that Tork invited Stills to produce the next Monkees album -- only to find that Michael Nesmith had already asked Chip Douglas to do it. The group started work on a new album, provisionally titled "Stampede", but sessions didn't get much further than Stills' song "Bluebird" before trouble arose between Young and Stills. The root of the argument seems to have been around the number of songs each got on the album. With Richie Furay also writing, Young was worried that given the others' attitudes to his songwriting, he might get as few as two songs on the album. And Young and Stills were arguing over which song should be the next single, with Young wanting "Mr. Soul" to be the A-side, while Stills wanted "Bluebird" -- Stills making the reasonable case that they'd released two Neil Young songs as singles and gone nowhere, and then they'd released one of Stills', and it had become a massive hit. "Bluebird" was eventually chosen as the A-side, with "Mr. Soul" as the B-side: [Excerpt: Buffalo Springfield, "Bluebird"] The "Bluebird" session was another fraught one. Fielder had not yet joined the band, and session player Bobby West subbed on bass. Neil Young had recently started hanging out with Jack Nitzsche, and the two were getting very close and working on music together. Young had impressed Nitzsche not just with his songwriting but with his arrogance -- he'd played Nitzsche his latest song, "Expecting to Fly", and Nitzsche had said halfway through "That's a great song", and Young had shushed him and told him to listen, not interrupt. Nitzsche, who had a monstrous ego himself and was also used to working with people like Phil Spector, the Rolling Stones and Sonny Bono, none of them known for a lack of faith in their own abilities, was impressed. Shortly after that, Stills had asked Nitzsch
Get the story from behind the MUSICIANS who made some of the greatest albums of all time. This episode discusses Backup Singers- the unsung heroes who keep every album harmonized and sounding amazing. We give a little background on some of today's biggest artists, specifically, projects they sang backup on (Sheryl Crow, Mariah Carey, John Legend). We also discuss several different "backup" singers including Merry Clayton, Clare Torry, The Jordanaires, and many more. The singers bring new levels to albums from the Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Pink Floyd to the King himself, Elvis Presley. Listen to the stories behind the music! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/album4theday/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/album4theday/support
The collaborations discussed in this episode:• When Eric Clapton was brought in by The Beatles...• When the legendary backup singer Merry Clayton was brought in by The Rolling Stones...• When Duane Allman took Wilson Pickett to the next level and birthed Southern Rock...• When Stevie Wonder created a signature sound on the harmonica...• When Jeff Beck joined Jon Bon Jovi...• When Adam Duritz and Mike Campbell helped Jakob Dylan...• When Elvis Costello helped Squeeze with a hit song...• When Eddie Van Halen answered the call from MJ and Quincy Jones...
The collaborations discussed in this episode:• When Eric Clapton was brought in by The Beatles...• When the legendary backup singer Merry Clayton was brought in by The Rolling Stones...• When Duane Allman took Wilson Pickett to the next level and birthed Southern Rock...• When Stevie Wonder created a signature sound on the harmonica...• When Jeff Beck joined Jon Bon Jovi...• When Adam Duritz and Mike Campbell helped Jakob Dylan...• When Elvis Costello helped Squeeze with a hit song...• When Eddie Van Halen answered the call from MJ and Quincy Jones...
This week we celebrate a special landmark—our 300th episode. Many thanks to you—our listeners—for coming back to our show week after week to hear the stories of real people, just like yourself, who have found hope and peace in the word of God and in Jesus Calling. For this very special episode, we have three guests who have all experienced their share of scars from the hard parts of life, but have found a way to see their scars as badges of honor, and they recognize how God has strengthened them through their pain so that they can reach others with His message of love and healing. We're talking with NFL and MLB star Tim Tebow, singer Merry Clayton, and actor Dean Cain. Links, Products, and Resources Mentioned: Jesus Calling Podcast Jesus Calling Jesus Always Jesus Listens Past interview: Michelle Wilbur-Christiansen Upcoming interview: Jeanne Lakin Tim Tebow Frank Thomas Psalm 139:14 NIV Mission Possible: Go Create a Life That Counts Merry Clayton Rolling Stones Lynyrd Skynryd Beautiful Scars Billy Preston Ray Charles www.merryclayton.com Dean Cain No Vacancy trailer No Vacancy website No Vacancy Facebook No Vacancy Twitter Lois & Clark Sean Penn Chris Penn Rob Lowe Charlie Sheen Emilio Estevez Princeton University Young Guns Beverly Hills 90210 God's Not Dead Cecil Johnson It's a Wonderful Life Interview Quotes: “If I didn't know what God says about me, then it would be so easy to get caught up with the highs and the lows.” - Tim Tebow “We are here to love God and love people. And He has made it possible through the blood of the cross to have a mission possible life, one that truly counts. Not one that is about one day, but one that is about this day. This day, it is a chance to make our life count.” - Tim Tebow “It's so easy to get caught up in those emotions because they speak really loud. Ask for truth to speak louder.” - Tim Tebow “We can choose courage, because even in the midst of the trials and the midst of a tribulation, the midst of the negativity, in the midst of the criticism, we know all we have to do is keep fighting because He wins the game for us.” - Tim Tebow “We wanted His will to be done. Not me, not my will, but His will, because that's the way we live.” - Merry Clayton “God is still here. He hasn't left us. He's still here. We're still in the palm of His hands.” - Merry Clayton “I think being a parent changes you because you're no longer the most important thing. And then you start to sort of understand the whole idea behind faith and behind God.” - Dean Cain “I humble myself before God every single day because life itself is humbling.” - Dean Cain ________________________ Enjoy watching these additional videos from Jesus Calling YouTube channel: Audio Playlist: https://bit.ly/2PrbuwH Video Playlist: https://bit.ly/2PsmEkJ What's Good? Playlist: https://bit.ly/3i7VUlZ ________________________ Connect with Jesus Calling Instagram Facebook Twitter Pinterest YouTube Jesus Calling Website
Welcome to Gimme Shelter-The latest episode of The Steven Thompson Experience. Thanks to each and every one of you for tuning in to the show and joining us on this journey. I am talking about The Twilight Zone, Quasimodo, Catastrophizing , Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the song Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones. I hope you enjoy the episode! And if you do please subscribe and spread the word to your friends and ask them to listen as well! About the Show: Each episode of the Steven Thompson Experience is designed to Educate, Inform and Inspire people to pursue their gifts and use them to serve others. I also want to introduce you to new heroes who showed bravery and courage in the face of many obstacles. Bonus in honor of Women's History month check out the Merry Clayton version of Gimme Shelter- https://youtu.be/AHvXhWJ0oHU
A force-of-nature singer, The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter," and Simon & Garfunkel's secular hymn made spiritual. A playlist of this and other songs relevant to the episode can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1kL1nQAZYxb9aMlX486Nxk?si=b12db8d602754d2a You can read The Best Song Ever (This Week) for free at bestsong.substack.com.
Author Dawnie Walton talks with hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot about what inspired her debut novel, The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, a fantasy rock history about a fierce black singer in the 1970s. Plus Jim and Greg talk with Merry Clayton, whose iconic performance on "Gimme Shelter" still didn't make her a household name. Join our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3sivr9TBecome a member on Patreon: https://bit.ly/3slWZvcSign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/3eEvRnGMake a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/3dmt9lURecord a Voice Memo: https://bit.ly/2RyD5Ah Featured Songs:Merry Clayton, "Southern Man," Merry Clayton, Ode, 1971Material, "Bustin' Out," Bustin' Out, Celluloid, 1981Talking Heads, "Slippery People (Live)," Stop Making Sense, Sire, 1984Betty Davis, "Dedicated To the Press," Nasty Gal, Island, 1975Betty Davis, "They Say I'm Different," They Say I'm Different, Just Sunshine, 1974The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter," Let It Bleed, Decca, 1969Bobby Darin, "Who Can I Count On?," You're the Reason I'm Living, Capitol, 1963Elvis Presley, "Happy Ending," It All Happened At the World's Fair (Original Soundtrack), RCA Victor, 1963Ray Charles, "I Won't Leave," A Portrait of Ray, ABC, 1968Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Sweet Home Alabama," Second Helping, MCA, 1974Merry Clayton, "Touch The Hem Of His Garment," Beautiful Scars, Ode Sounds & Visuals, 2021Merry Clayton, "A Song For You," Merry Clayton, Ode, 1971Merry Clayton, "Deliverance," Beautiful Scars, Ode Sounds & Visuals, 2021Lil Nas X, "Montero (Call Me By Your Name)," Montero, Columbia, 2021
What classic song did Dylan leave off his debut album? Which song did Dylan write about meeting Elvis in Vegas? Which song did Chrissie Hynde say was "genius"? Join Stevie Nix as he answers all of these questions and more on this episode that looks at covers of Bob Dylan's acoustic songs.WARNING: This episode contains traces of thieving.Featured songs [in chronological order]:Blowin' in the Wind [Elvis Presley]Girl From The North Country [George Ezra]Boots Of Spanish Leather [The Lumineers]Restless Farewell [Joan Baez]Tomorrow Is A Long Time [Elvis Presley]One Too Many Mornings [Draco Rosa, Killing The Day]The Times They Are A-Changin' [Merry Clayton, Ben Sidran]To Ramona [Pete Molinari]All I Really Want To Do [Cher, The Byrds]It Ain't Me, Babe [Bettye Lavette]It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) [The Duhks, Billy Preston, Terence Trent D'Arby]I Shall Be Released [Beth Rowley]Simple Twist Of Fate [The Villagers, Sarah Jarosz, Diana Krall]A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall [Laura Marling, Bryan Ferry]Bob Dylan Playlist #1Bob Dylan Playlist #220 Bob Dylan Covers One Of Which Contains MultitudesJoin Stevie on Spotifywww.songsungnew.com
On an all-new episode of Blindspots, the hosts take a look at a pair of films from two of America's most revered auteur filmmakers. First up, Jake introduces Kristy to the perfect distillation of Robert Altman's comedic sensibilities with 1970's Brewster McCloud. Then, Kristy shares Jonathan Demme's raw and emotionally loaded masterwork that is 2008's Rachel Getting Married. Don your wingsuit, take flight, and enjoy.Songs used in the episode include White Feather Wings by Merry Clayton from Brewster McCloud and Unknown Legend by Neil Young performed by Tunde Adebimpe for Rachel Getting Married.
This week hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot share their favorite songs defined by their backing vocals, much like Merry Clayton left her mark on The Rolling Stones' song "Gimme Shelter." Plus they review the new album from Eleventh Dream Day and learn what they're missing in Brockhampton.Join our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3sivr9TBecome a member on Patreon: https://bit.ly/3slWZvcMake a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/3dmt9lURecord a Voice Memo: https://bit.ly/2RyD5Ah Featured Songs:The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter," Let It Bleed, Decca, 1969BROCKHAMPTON, "BUZZCUT (feat. Danny Brown)," Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine, RCA, 2021BROCKHAMPTON, "THE LIGHT," Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine, RCA, 2021BROCKHAMPTON, "THE LIGHT PT. II," Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine, RCA, 2021BROCKHAMPTON, "DEAR LORD," Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine, RCA, 2021Eleventh Dream Day, "Since Grazed," Since Grazed, Comedy Minus One, 2021Eleventh Dream Day, "Tyrian Purple," Since Grazed, Comedy Minus One, 2021Eleventh Dream Day, "A Case to Carry On," Since Grazed, Comedy Minus One, 2021R.E.M., "Superman," Lifes Rich Pageant, I.R.S., 1986Stereolab, "French Disko," (Single), Duophonic, 1994The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B," Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966Sam Cooke, "Bring It On Home to Me," (Single), RCA, 1962Billy Joel, "The Longest Time," An Innocent Man, Columbia, 1983The Turtles, "Elenore," The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands, White Whale, 1968Laura Nyro and Labelle, "I Met Him on a Sunday," Gonna Take a Miracle, Columbia, 1971Ray Charles, "(Night Time Is) The Right Time," The Genius Sings the Blues, Atlantic, 1961David Bowie, "Young Americans," Young Americans, RCA, 1975Eric B. & Rakim, "Paid in Full," Paid in Full, Island, 1987
We share more stories from Merry Clayton that didn't fit into our prior episode. Join our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3sivr9TBecome a member on Patreon: https://bit.ly/3slWZvcMake a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/3dmt9lURecord a Voice Memo: https://bit.ly/2RyD5Ah
Black women haven't been celebrated enough in rock music. Author Dawnie Walton talks with hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot about how that inspired her debut novel, The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, a fantasy rock history about a fierce black singer in the 1970s. Plus Jim and Greg talk with Merry Clayton, whose iconic performance on "Gimme Shelter" still didn't make her a household name. Join our Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3rozD7uBecome a member on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/soundopinionsMake a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/36zIhZK Record a Voice Memo: https://bit.ly/2PaahgL Featured Songs:Merry Clayton, "Southern Man," Merry Clayton, Ode, 1971Material, "Bustin' Out," Bustin' Out, Celluloid, 1981Talking Heads, "Slippery People (Live)," Stop Making Sense, Sire, 1984Betty Davis, "Dedicated To the Press," Nasty Gal, Island, 1975Betty Davis, "They Say I'm Different," They Say I'm Different, Just Sunshine, 1974The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter," Let It Bleed, Decca, 1969Bobby Darin, "Who Can I Count On?," You're the Reason I'm Living, Capitol, 1963Elvis Presley, "Happy Ending," It All Happened At the World's Fair (Original Soundtrack), RCA Victor, 1963Ray Charles, "I Won't Leave," A Portrait of Ray, ABC, 1968Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Sweet Home Alabama," Second Helping, MCA, 1974Merry Clayton, "Touch The Hem Of His Garment," Beautiful Scars, Ode Sounds & Visuals, 2021Merry Clayton, "A Song For You," Merry Clayton, Ode, 1971Merry Clayton, "Deliverance," Beautiful Scars, Ode Sounds & Visuals, 2021Art d'Ecco, "Tv God," Tv God (Single), Paper Bag, 2021
Sarah Dash defines the word "legend." As an award-winning vocalist, songwriter, motivational speaker, educator, entrepreneur, and humanitarian, Sarah is a unique force whose voice has touched millions of listeners around the world. From co-founding Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles and making history as a member of Labelle to becoming the very first Music Ambassador (2017) of Trenton, New Jersey, Sarah has blazed a trail in every facet of her remarkable career. Music has been a constant source of inspiration in Sarah's life ever since her childhood in Trenton. The seventh of thirteen children born to Elder Abraham Dash and Mother Elizabeth Dash, Sarah sang in the Trenton Church of Christ Choir as a young girl and entertained her classmates with renditions of standards like "With These Hands." The radio dial introduced her to everything from R&B and rock 'n' roll to country and polka, with the voices of Tina Turner, Gladys Knight, and Smokey Robinson shaping some of Sarah's earliest influences alongside albums by Mahalia Jackson, Nat "King" Cole, Andy Williams, and her brother's jazz collection. Doo-wop groups The Capris and The Dells inspired the name of Sarah's first group, the Del-Capris, which included another Trenton-based singer, Nona Hendryx. When Sarah and Nona teamed with Patricia (Patti) Holte and Cynthia (Cindy) Birdsong of The Ordettes, a new group was born — The Bluebelles. Beginning in 1962, Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles were among the most dynamic vocal groups of the 1960s, recording for major labels like Cameo-Parkway and Atlantic, touring the Chitlin' Circuit, and earning rave reviews for their appearances at the Apollo Theater where they were affectionately nicknamed "The Sweethearts of the Apollo." Four years after Cindy Birdsong left the Bluebelles to join Diana Ross & the Supremes, Sarah, Patti, and Nona signed with Warner Bros., unveiling a new name and a new style on Labelle (1971) and Moon Shadow (1972), and recording with acclaimed singer-songwriter Laura Nyro on Gonna Take a Miracle (1971). Working with manager and former Ready Steady Go! producer Vicki Wickham, the trio began writing their own songs and geared their sound towards a progressive fusion of rock and soul. With the release of Pressure Cookin' (1973) on RCA, Labelle transformed into funk-rock goddesses outfitted in fashion-forward couture. A trio of albums on Epic Records, the gold-selling Nightbirds (1974), Phoenix (1975), and Chameleon (1976), sparked Labelle's breakthrough to mainstream success. They topped the Hot 100 with "Lady Marmalade," graced the cover of Rolling Stone, sold out theaters across the country, and made history as the first black group to perform at New York's Metropolitan Opera House. After Labelle parted ways in 1977, Sarah embarked on a successful solo career. She acted in and wrote the theme song to Watch Your Mouth! (1978), a PBS series produced by Ellis Haizlip (Soul!) that also starred Joe Morton (Scandal). She released three albums on CBS-distributed Kirshner Records, Sarah Dash (1978), Oo-La-La (1980), and Close Enough (1981), scoring a massive disco hit with "Sinner Man," which featured Jerry Butler. Throughout the '80s and '90s, she recorded a series of club singles, including "Low Down Dirty Rhythm," plus her fourth solo effort You're All I Need (1988) on EMI-Manhattan Records. Her highly accalimed Gospel project featured several of her own self-penned tracks, including "I'm Still Here," which has since become a show-stopper of her concerts. In between producing her one-woman stage shows, "Dash of Diva" and "Sarah: One Woman," Sarah brought her talent to several different projects. Having worked with a variety of acts like Living Colour, Nile Rodgers, Alice Cooper, The Marshall Tucker Band, The O'Jays, Wilson Pickett and Bo Diddley over the years, she toured and recorded with Keith Richards' X-Pensive Winos and appeared on the Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels (1989) album. She reunited with Patti and Nona for the #1 club hit "Turn It Out" (1995), received the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's "Pioneer Award" in 1999, and recorded the Labelle reunion album Back to Now (2008), featuring productions by Lenny Kravitz, Wyclef Jean, and Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff. In 2017, the members of Labelle were inducted to the Philadelphia Music Alliance's Music Walk of Fame. She's a member of the Grammy Board of Governors (Philadelphia chapter), serves as the Grammy New Jersey Ambassador for the Advocacy Board of the Membership Committee, and is a member of the Grammy Hall of Fame (2003), as well as the Board of Trustees for the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra. Most recently, she joined fellow legends at the Apollo Theater for the Jazz Foundation of America's salute to singer Merry Clayton. Sarah Dash has built on a legacy that traces more than 50 years of music. Like the greatest music legends, there is truly no limit to the inspiration Sarah Dash brings to every note she sings.
Merry Clayton never had a big hit, but her voice can be heard in dozens of songs you know (we've listened to one of them here before-- see episode #42). One of the legendary background singers profiled in the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, most of her solo work is largely unknown-- which is a shame, because there's some great music on those albums. Take this example from her first album, Gimme Shelter. Merry takes this James Taylor classic to a whole new place, one of my favorite cover songs of all time."Country Road" (James Taylor) Copyright 1970 Blackwood Music Inc./Country Road Music Inc. (BMI)If you enjoyed this show, please check out these related episodes:https://lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-rolling-stones-gimme-shelterhttps://lovethatsongpodcast.com/aretha-franklin-a-change-is-gonna-comehttps://lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-temptations-i-cant-get-next-to-youhttps://lovethatsongpodcast.com/earth-wind-fire-shining-starhttps://lovethatsongpodcast.com/stevie-wonder-i-wish-- This show is just one of many great music-related podcasts on the Pantheon network. Check them all out!
Merry Clayton never had a big hit, but her voice can be heard in dozens of songs you know (we've listened to one of them here before-- see episode #42). One of the legendary background singers profiled in the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, most of her solo work is largely unknown-- which is a shame, because there's some great music on those albums. Take this example from her first album, Gimme Shelter. Merry takes this James Taylor classic to a whole new place, one of my favorite cover songs of all time. "Country Road" (James Taylor) Copyright 1970 Blackwood Music Inc./Country Road Music Inc. (BMI) If you enjoyed this show, please check out these related episodes: https://lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-rolling-stones-gimme-shelter https://lovethatsongpodcast.com/aretha-franklin-a-change-is-gonna-come https://lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-temptations-i-cant-get-next-to-you https://lovethatsongpodcast.com/earth-wind-fire-shining-star https://lovethatsongpodcast.com/stevie-wonder-i-wish -- This show is just one of many great music-related podcasts on the Pantheon network. Check them all out! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Merry Clayton never had a big hit, but her voice can be heard in dozens of songs you know (we've listened to one of them here before-- see episode #42). One of the legendary background singers profiled in the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, most of her solo work is largely unknown-- which is a shame, because there's some great music on those albums. Take this example from her first album, Gimme Shelter. Merry takes this James Taylor classic to a whole new place, one of my favorite cover songs of all time."Country Road" (James Taylor) Copyright 1970 Blackwood Music Inc./Country Road Music Inc. (BMI)If you enjoyed this show, please check out these related episodes:https://lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-rolling-stones-gimme-shelterhttps://lovethatsongpodcast.com/aretha-franklin-a-change-is-gonna-comehttps://lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-temptations-i-cant-get-next-to-youhttps://lovethatsongpodcast.com/earth-wind-fire-shining-starhttps://lovethatsongpodcast.com/stevie-wonder-i-wish-- This show is just one of many great music-related podcasts on the Pantheon network. Check them all out!
In her podcast, Grace Bassett places “Gimme Shelter” at the center of the anti-war and Civil Rights movements as a song that, in her words, “somehow captured the feelings of impending doom felt by many Americans” in 1969. Using the lens of apocalypse to analyze the song's lyrical and sonic chaos, the anxiety and righteous anger of the moment, and the biography of Merry Clayton (whose fiery vocals elevate the song's power), Grace delves deeply into the song's social overtones and brings them into the present. At the end of this podcast, you'll be able to hear an interview with its creator, where she digs deeper into her podcast research, conclusions, and production process.
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