Podcasts about The Mills Brothers

French-American musician and composer Zoé Basha released her debut album Gamble on April 17. Blending storytelling traditions, Appalachian mountain songs, Irish traditional music, and American blues and ragtime, the album is a woozy melange. We talk about her life journey, travelling around the US, joining the Occupy San Francisco protests, moving to Dingle, Dublin, France to learn traditional French timber framing, and back to Ireland. Throughout it all, there's music, though she did fall out of love with it for a while before Rufous Nightjar started up with Anna Mieke and Branwen Kavanagh. And now comes her debut solo album Gamble. From the press release: Zoé's debut is an intimate exploration of identity, grief, the deconstructing of societal norms, and the complexities of human connection, all delivered with a mesmerising voice that echoes the vulnerability and depth of her diverse influences. Inspired by the greats of times passed such as Billie Holiday, The Mills Brothers, Jimmie Rodgers, Joni Mitchell, Texas Gladden, Edith Piaf and The Steve Miller Band– as well as her peers in the Irish folk music scene, Zoé Basha savours the sounds of golden eras with contemporary nuance and shameless honesty. Zoé Basha tour dates: April 24: De Burgos Club, Galway April 25: The Glens Centre, Manorhamilton, Leitrim April 26: The Duncairn, Belfast April 27: The Record Room, Limerick May 1: Fennelly's of Callan, Kilkenny May 2: Bray Jazz Fest, Wicklow May 3: The Crane Lane Theatre, Cork May 4: Blennerville, Tralee, Co. Kerry (co-headling with Rachel Sermanni) Buy Gamble: https://zoebasha.net/album/3407338/gamble

#190 Broadcast 190 - Episode 183 - The Crooners - 20250412 - 3 in 1 = The Mills Brothers by Jim Reeves

Today on Artful Living we go back in time to enjoy The Mills Brothers. One of America's finest vocal groups, as we travel back to 1930's and beyond! Join us.

For many decades, whenever anyone at a Flood gathering was celebrating a birthday, the guys turned to David Peyton to lead them in a rousing rendition of … no, oh, hell no, not THAT song… (Does this bunch really look like “Happy Birthday to You” people?) No, Br'er Peyton suggested a much more appropriate nativity-observing song for the Flood flock. Not only that, Dave enhanced the tune with his own special touch, the addition of a juicy reference to a sex scandal that was rocking West Virginia politics. More on that little tidbit in a moment.For now, you can hear Dave's birthday tune — a sassy 1930s hokum number — by scrolling back to the top of this article and click the Play button on the video that Flood Manager Pamela Bowen shot 14 years ago this week. The occasion for Pamela's footage was a housewarming at the clubhouse at the Wyngate retirement village where devoted Flood fans Norman and Shirley Davis had just moved. For the fun evening, about 30 of the Davises' new neighbors were in the audience. Among them were guitarist Jacob Scarr's grandparents who were also new residents. The senior Scarrs had been regulars at Flood gigs ever since their grandson's joined the band several years earlier.The SongA highlight of the evening was Peyton's performance of the birthday song; The Flood's version of “You Can't Get That Stuff No More” with Charlie Bowen and Michelle Hoge's harmonies and solos by Dave, Jacob, Joe Dobbs and Doug Chaffin.Back in 2003, when a take on the tune was included on the I'd Rather Be Flooded album, the band described it as a 1932 Tampa Red/Georgia Tom song. That was correct as far as it went, but a little deeper research would have taught the guys that the song actually was written and recorded a year or two earlier by a remarkable young singer/actor/comedian named Sam Theard.Performing well into the 1970s under assorted stage names — including Lovin' Sam and Spo-Dee-O-Dee — Theard was born in New Orleans in 1904. Before he was 20, he was performing with a circus, then working in theaters and nightclubs.Meeting up with Flood heroes Tampa Red and Cow Cow Davenport, Theard recorded one of his best known songs — "(I'll Be Glad When You're Dead) You Rascal You” — for Brunswick in 1929. Over the years that song was covered by everyone from Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and The Mills Brothers to Fats Domino, Dr. John and Taj Mahal.In the 1930s and '40s, using the name Spo-Dee-O-Dee, Theard was a regular as a comedian at New York's Apollo Theater.It was during this period that he co-wrote his next famous song, “Let the Good Times Roll,” with Louis Jordan, who recorded it with his Tympany Five in 1946. In 1961 at the 3rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony, Ray Charles won a Grammy for his version of that tune.In the 1950s, Theard wrote for a number of jazz greats, including Hot Lips Page, Count Basie, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Roy Eldridge.Then in the last decade of his life, Theard was discovered by television, appearing in episodes of a variety of shows, including “Sanford and Son” and “Little House of Prairie.”The Ickie Frye InfusionBut you're still thinking about that political sex scandal, aren't you? The one that Peyton worked into The Flood's version of “You Can't Get That Stuff No More”? Okay, here's that story:The original song, as recorded in 1932 by Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, included this verse: There goes Joe with a great big knife Somebody been messin' round with his wife.However, when The Flood recorded it in a marathon studio session in Charleston in November 2003, Dave sang the verse as: There's Ickie Frye with a great long knife. Somebody been a-messin' round with his wife…Uh, Ickie who? Sure, that's not a well-known name today, but if you were a news-reading West Virginian in 2003, you certainly would have known about Phillip “Ickie” Frye, a bass-playing TV/computer repairman who had just blown up Gov. Bob Wise's political career. Newspapers across the state trumpeted the news of how Frye revealed that his wife — state employee Angela Mascia, in charge of European projects for the state development office — was having an extramarital affair with the governor.Red-faced, Wise admitted his infidelity. “I apologize deeply,” Wise said, “to the people of our state for my actions. In my private life, I have let many people down." The following year, Frye even filed to run for governor to "dog Wise," he said, over the affair, but he dropped out when Wise himself announced he would not seek re-election. Soon after The Flood's album was released, Ickie Frye emailed Peyton to thank him for the shout-out on the tune. The ex-governor had no comment. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

We remember the night Joe Dobbs wandered into The Flood band room a couple of decades ago and said, “Hey, do you know the song ‘Satin Doll'?”Boy, was he asking the right guy. Charlie Bowen grew up in a home full of his dad's jazz records by Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington and Count Basie and his mom's Harry James and The Mills Brothers.In BowenWorld, “Satin Doll” was as much a part of the household soundtrack as anything on the radio right then.Joe didn't really know any of the tune's honored status in the jazz world. However, he was tickled by a folksy jazz rendition of it that was recorded live by fiddler Stephane Grappelli and David Grisman in 1981 and he was ready to tackle it himself.With that, the tune trotted into The Flood repertoire. Click the button below to transport back to 2011 and hear Joe with Flood Lite (Doug Chaffin on bass, Charlie on guitar) sampling the song at the start of a jam session at the Bowen House.About the SongIn 1953, Duke Ellington interrupted his long-time association with Columbia Records to sign with Capitol, thinking the upstart recording company might more effectively promote his music.Among the tunes waxed in the first Capitol session that spring was “Satin Doll,” a song Ellington had just written with his favorite collaborator, Billy Strayhorn. Duke wrote the riff sketch and Strayhorn fleshed it out with harmony and lyrics.Billy's lyrics, though, were not were not considered commercially viable, so Duke's 1953 recording was an instrumental. It was five years later when lyricist Johnny Mercer — a Capitol Records cofounder — wrote sassy new words that resulted in the song we know today.But Who WAS the Satin Doll?Strayhorn biographer David Hajdu famously advanced the notion that Billy named the song after his mother, Lillian, saying that the composer's pet name for his mom was “Satin Doll.”That's a charming story, but the Ellington family has a different take on the tale. Duke's son Mercer wrote in his 1978 memoir that he suspected the mystery woman was his dad's long-time companion, Beatrice “Evie” Ellis.Writing in Duke Ellington In Person: An Intimate Memoir, Mercer said Evie continued to believe the song was written for her. “Pop would always be leaving notes in the house addressing her affectionately as ‘Dearest Doll,' ‘Darling Doll' and so on.”Today's Flood Take on the Tune“Satin Doll” lately has started visiting the Flood band room again. It was the first tune of the evening at last week's rehearsal. Listen as Randy, Jack and Charlie start outlining the tune, laying down the rhythm and those cool chords while Danny is still setting up.You'll hear Charlie sing the first verse. By the second verse in comes Dan's beautiful guitar. In a minute, he's in full gear, and then he's soloing on two idea-filled choruses that define the entire outing.Got That SwingFinally, if you'd like to put a little more swing in your Friday thing, remember that the free Radio Floodango music streaming feature's gotcha cover. Click here to tune in the Swingin' Channel for a randomized playlist of some of The Flood's jazzier moments over the years. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Shortly after he recorded “Peggy Day” — exactly 56 years ago today, in fact, an appropriate choice for Valentine's Day! — Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone magazine, “I kind of had The Mills Brothers in mind when I did that one.”A laugh was shared by Dylan and RS Editor Jann Wenner over that thought. However, the remark later really would resonate in the world of The Flood, which has taken much musical inspiration from The Mills Brothers, on everything from “Up a Lazy River” and “Lulu's Back in Town” to “Am I Blue?” and “Opus One.”In other words, Floodsters heard in Bob's little-loved love song a kind of pastiche of the 1930s and ‘40s, its rhythms recalling that era's classic swing thing.StepchildStill, "Peggy Day" remains one of the stepchildren in the Dylan oeuvre. In fact, the tune's only claim to fame is that it was the B-side when Bob released "Lay, Lady, Lay" as a hit single in the summer of '69. Unlike a lot of Dylan songs, "Peggy Day" has no intriguing backstory or associated legend, no deep, nuanced lyrics to invite exegesis by college graduate seminars.As a result, some Dylanologists seem to actually hate the tune. “Frankly, embarrassing,” Clinton Heylin once said of it, while Billboard magazine was even cheekier about the entire Nashville Skyline album from which it came: “The satisfied man speaks in clichés,” the magazine purred with a pucker.Shout-Out to The FloodNo wonder “Peggy Day” is so seldom performed by other artists. A few years ago, Tony Attwood started covering Dylan covers in a series of articles for his fascinating Untold Dylan web site. When Tony turned to “Peggy Day,” he located only one non-Dylan recording of the song: The Flood's version on its 2013 Cleanup & Recovery album.Attwood was complementary of The Flood's performance on the album, which featured the call-and-response vocals by Charlie Bowen and Michelle Hoge. (Click here to hear it, complete with solos by Sam St. Clair, Dave Peyton and Doug Chaffin.)“It's a jolly bit of fun,” Attwood wrote, “which shows this is certainly a song that has cover possibilities — in terms of a second vocalist — the harmonies in the middle 8 are gorgeous as is the instrumental break.”A Little Sumpin' Sumpin' from The VaultActually, a decade before that the song almost made it onto an earlier Flood album. “Peggy Day” was among the dozens of numbers the band recorded during a 10-hour marathon studio session with the late, great George Walker, an evening that yielded 2003's I'd Rather Be Flooded.The tune didn't make the cut for the album, but since things don't get thrown away much around here, the rendition has been patiently passing its time in The Flood Files, just waiting for this moment to arise.Click the button below to hear this archival “Peggy Day” treatment with Sam's harmonica and Charlie's vocals along with a bevy of late Flood tribal elders, including Joe Dobbs on fiddle, Chuck Romine on tenor banjo, Dave Peyton on Autoharp and Doug Chaffin on bass:Our 2025 Take on the TuneSo, this bit of fluff from Bob's fat and happy country squire days of the late 1960s is one of his least-recorded song, but The Flood obviously has always enjoyed playing it over the decades. Here's a joyous take on the tune from a recent rehearsal, featuring solos from everyone in the room, Danny and Randy, Sam and Jack. Happy Valentine's Day, dear ones!And Speaking of Love…Finally, if you'd like a little more Flood in your day of love, remember The Valentine Blend playlist in the free Radio Floodango music streaming service. Click below to read all about it! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Tonight Show  Ep1067 66-12-05 Barry Goldwater, Mills Brothers, Yvonne Constant

If your mom (or your grandma or maybe great-grandmother) was a Bobby-soxer in the 1940s, she probably danced to this tune. Sociologists call the bunch born in the 1930s “The Silent Generation” — a term first used in a 1951 Time magazine story to describe their alleged cautious and passive nature — but, well, seriously? Anyone who ever saw them dance didn't think they were all that darn docile. After all, these “Silents” are the same folks who gave us the jitterbug, not to mention setting the stage for early rock ‘n' roll.About This SongAs reported here previously, Sy Oliver's composition “Opus One” was a hit on the radio for Tommy Dorsey in late 1944, but it was an even bigger smash a year later. That's when singer Anita O'Day recorded it with a rocking band fronted by drummer Gene Krupa and featuring legendary trumpeter Roy Eldridge.The song has gone on to be covered many times over the years, from versions by Harry James to those of The Mills Brothers and The Four Freshmen. For more on the song's history — including the story of those sassy lyrics added by Sid Garris — check out this earlier Flood Watch article.Meanwhile, here in The Flood Zone, the song is a perfect warmup for an evening of fun at the weekly rehearsal, offering solo space for everyone in the room.About the VideoThe sound in this video is audio from last week's rehearsal. Meanwhile, for the film footage thanks go out to Douglas K. Morris and Shane Finster of Armstrong Cable.As reported earlier, Doug and Shane dropped into a Flood rehearsal last summer to record an episode of their award-winning Armstrong Neighborhood Channel's Press Room Recordings series. It was a treat to revisit the video from that night to enhance this week's winter evening film.More Swing Tunes?Finally, if you'd like a little more from the “Swing” column on The Flood's menu, the free Radio Floodango music streaming feature has a channel just for you.Click here for a randomized playlist of swing tunes from over the band's decades. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Songs include: Don't You Know I Love you by The Clovers, You'll Never Know by Frank Sinatra, Now I Know by Dinah Shore, You Know I Love You by BB King, I Don't Know Enough by The Mills Brothers and I Really Don't Want To Know by Less Paul and Mary Ford. 

#167 Broadcast 167 - Episode 160 - The Crooners - 20241102 - 3 in 1 = The Mills Brothers by Jim Reeves

Tonight Show  Ep1067 66-12-05 Barry Goldwater, Mills Brothers, Yvonne Constant

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Josephine Baker was only 20 years old when she recorded the song “Dinah” at her first studio session 98 years ago this fall. That was just a year after the provocative dancer/singer arrived in Paris, immediately setting the town on fire with her risqué shows at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.And a West Virginian was right there to help her light those blazes.Ada “ Bricktop” Smith, a young Alderson, WV, native, was in Paris several years ahead of Baker, entertaining at composer Cole Porter's famous parties, often teaching his guests the latest dance crazes, such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom. Josephine Baker always acknowledged she was one Ada Smith's protégés in those heady early days of The Jazz Age.“I didn't get my first break on Broadway,” Baker told London's Guardian a half century later. No, she was just a nameless hoofer in the chorus line in those New York shows, she said, but “I became famous first in France in the Twenties.”“Oh yes,” she added, “Bricktop was there. Me and her were the only two, and we had a marvelous time. Of course, everyone who was anyone knew Bricky. And they got to know Miss Baker as well."Ada Smith became one of 1920s' best known American singers/dancers, owning the famed “Chez Bricktop” in Paris from 1924 to 1961. She even got a shout-out in Woody Allen's hit film, Midnight in Paris, in 2011 when the character of Zelda Fitzgerald proposes an evening's escapade:In the next scene, Cole Porter, the Fitzgeralds and their fabulous friends pile into a period open car and tear down Parisian streetd into the night.Ending up at Chez Bricktop, they watch Josephine Baker dance (and the Fitzgeralds drink…)Back to the Song“Dinah,” considered an anthem of the Roarin' Twenties, was not quite two years old when Josephine Baker recorded it that autumn day in 1926 in Paris.It was back in The States that she learned the hot number when she sang it at New York's Plantation Club on Broadway as the understudy to Ethel Waters.Obviously, the song was still much on Baker's mind when she strolled into the Odeon studio for her first recording session. The band recruited to accompany her on the date is thought to be members of a group called “Olivier's Jazz Boys.”“Dinah” by then had been introduced to the world by Waters within a year of its composition in 1925. After it was recorded by Waters for Columbia in 1926, the song went on to be waxxed by everyone from Fletcher Henderson and Cab Calloway to Bing Crosby, the Mills Brothers and the Boswell Sisters to Chet Baker, Thelonious Monk and Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli.And, as noted in an earlier Flood Watch article, the tune was famously among the favorites of trumpeter Louis Armstrong, who perform it in most of his numerous live shows and his radio appearances for decades after initially recording it in 1930.Our Take on the TuneWhenever the guys haven't seen each other for a couple of weeks, there's always a special joy when they all get back together again. That was certainly the case at last week's rehearsal. Add to that the fact that Floodster Emeritus Paul Martin dropped by to sit in. That always cranks up the energy level in the room. And you can just hear in this first tune of the evening. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Sounds Like Radio is back with Volume 179 and today Your Humble Host will be talkin' all about The Great Gildersleeve from July 9, 1952 and his plans to go out on that lake with his new found girlfriend (or so he thinks) Miss McKinley. She's pretty fickle though as she already has plans of her own. Uh oh, trouble in paradise. But if I know Gildy he'll figure a way. To help out our hero we have the wild and wonderful Wanda Jackson (our featured picture this week), Vaughn Monroe,, Kay Starr, Bing Crosby & the Mills Brothers, Ella Mae Morse (she's another spitfire) & Eddy Arnold. But Your Humble Host is never satisfied until he plays you a bonus song and this is from our own record collection of the 1970's, a beautiful song by Tim Moore. You might want to get out your hanky for them tears when listening to this one.

Jane brings Vintage Autumn Radio Music to WKXL Artful Living. Come and enjoy Autumn classics of the 1940s by Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, The Mills Brothers as well as other wonderful performers. Autumn is almost upon us!

Send us a Text Message.Welcome to Guess the Year! This is an interactive, competitive podcast series where you will be able to play along and compete against your fellow listeners. Here is how the scoring works:1 point: get the year correct within 10 years (e.g., you guess 1975 and it is between 1965-1985)4 points: get the year correct within 5 years (e.g., you guess 2004 and it is between 1999-2009)7 points: get the year correct within 2 years (e.g., you guess 1993 and it is between 1991-1995)10 points: get the year dead on!Guesses can be emailed to drandrewmay@gmail.com or texted using the link at the top of the show notes (please leave your name).I will read your scores out before the next episode, along with the scores of your fellow listeners! Please email your guesses to Andrew no later than 12pm EST on the day the next episode posts if you want them read out on the episode (e.g., if an episode releases on Monday, then I need your guesses by 12pm EST on Wednesday; if an episode releases on Friday, then I need your guesses by 12 pm EST on Monday). Note: If you don't get your scores in on time, they will still be added to the overall scores I am keeping. So they will count for the final scores - in other words, you can catch up if you get behind, you just won't have your scores read out on the released episode. All I need is your guesses (e.g., Song 1 - 19xx, Song 2 - 20xx, Song 3 - 19xx, etc.). Please be honest with your guesses! Best of luck!!The answers to today's ten songs can be found below. If you are playing along, don't scroll down until you have made your guesses. .....Have you made your guesses yet? If so, you can scroll down and look at the answers......Okay, answers coming. Don't peek if you haven't made your guesses yet!.....Intro song: Evolve by Phish (2024)Song 1: My Soul by Clifton Chenier (1959)Song 2: Heaven by Los Lonely Boys (2004)Song 3: Frankenstein by Edgar Winter Group (1972)Song 4: Brokenhearted by Karmin (2012)Song 5: Old Home Place by The Dillards (1963)Song 6: Love Me Dead by Ludo (2007)Song 7: Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley by Lee Dorsey (1970)Song 8: Boombastic by Shaggy (1995)Song 9: When the Circus Comes by Los Lobos (1992)Song 10: Paper Doll by The Mills Brothers (1948)

#154 Broadcast 154 - Episode 147 - The Crooners - 20240803 - 3 in 1 = The Mills Brothers by Jim Reeves

Music includes: Oklahoma Highlights, On the Mall, Route 66, Bugle Call Rag, Happy Go Lucky Local and Salute to Our Fighting Men. Performers include: the Boston Pops, the Andrews Sisters, the Mills Brothers, Duke Ellington, Ralph Flanagan and the Goldman Band. 

It's the deep blue sea for Gildy, well, it's the deep water reservoir anyway. It's Sounds Like Radio Volume 169 and we find GIldy trying to build up his name as water commissioner in the town. He needs publicity that mean a deep dive in the water reservoir! Your Humble Host will try to build Gildy's confidence with a few folks he's brought with him, Robert Mitchum drinks calypso style water, Dinah Shore, Phil Harris, Emmylou Harris, Bing Crosby, Lee Wiley, Mills Brothers & Sophie Tucker. We've all gathered for another funny and oh so great musical episode of Sounds Like Radio!

Songs include: It Don't Mean a Thing, If It Ain't Got That Swing, Swing It Sister, Waltz In Swing Time, Rug Cutter's Swing, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Swinging On a Star. Performers include: Duke Ellington, Les Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Miller, the Mills Brothers and the Fisk Jubilee Quartet. 

#130 Broadcast 130 - Episode 123 - The Crooners - 20240217 - 3 in 1 = The Mills Brothers by Jim Reeves

Froggy Fresh bringing us back from break. The Mills Brothers are no longer with us. KG set the mood last night by watching Doug Unplugged. Audio of Oli Marmol talking about Nolan Gorman. Jack Flaherty wearing 45 in honor of Bob Gibson. Retire 51. Audio of MLB Network with some famous Jack and Joe Buck calls. Reliving the magic of the 2011 World Series Game 6.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Froggy Fresh bringing us back from break. The Mills Brothers are no longer with us. KG set the mood last night by watching Doug Unplugged. Audio of Oli Marmol talking about Nolan Gorman. Jack Flaherty wearing 45 in honor of Bob Gibson. Retire 51. Audio of MLB Network with some famous Jack and Joe Buck calls. Reliving the magic of the 2011 World Series Game 6.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mills Brothers bring us back. History of Jazz music. Iggy's gripe with a local festival. Discussion of music. Iggy plays a tune from Courtney Hadwin. EMOTD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mills Brothers bring us back. History of Jazz music. Iggy's gripe with a local festival. Discussion of music. Iggy plays a tune from Courtney Hadwin. EMOTD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today's show features music performed by Fats Domino and The Mills Brothers

Songs include: Nobody's Sweetheart, Nobody's Darlin But Mine, Time Waits For No One, I Ain't Got Nobody and You're Nobody Till  Somebody Loves You. Musicians include: Helen Forrest, Thomas "Fats" Waller, the Mills Brothers, Judy Garland, Blind Willie Johnson and Doris Day.

Mills Brothers. Real Estate. How far is Orlando from the Ocean? The listeners question Iggy's assessment of the distance from Orlando to the ocean. Math is hard. Dear Deidre about open relationships. Iggy expresses interest in being "gay for pay". How much in net worth would the gentleman need to have? Does Iggy need a 2nd job? Should he start writing his book? The STL sports radio documentary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mills Brothers. Real Estate. How far is Orlando from the Ocean? The listeners question Iggy's assessment of the distance from Orlando to the ocean. Math is hard. Dear Deidre about open relationships. Iggy expresses interest in being "gay for pay". How much in net worth would the gentleman need to have? Does Iggy need a 2nd job? Should he start writing his book? The STL sports radio documentary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bing Crosby Podcast 1948-12-29 Guests The Mills Brothers, Al Jolson 1948-12-30 (320) Guest Doris Day, Gordon MacRae's Railroad Hour 1949-01-03 (14) Eddie Cantor in Whoopee

Special presentation of Philco Radio Time with Bing Crosby and The Mills Brothers. It originally aired on December 29, 1948.Please email questions and comments to host@classiccomedyotr.com.Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/classiccomedyotr. Please share this podcast with your friends and family.You can also subscribe to our podcast on Spreaker.com, Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Google podcasts.This show is supported by Spreaker Prime.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5818299/advertisement

Episode 292, Christmas 2023, celebrates secular holiday music performed by 21 artists, including The Andrews Sisters, The Mills Brothers, Andy Williams, Ernest Tubb, Kate Smith, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Pearl Bailey, The Platters, and Connie... Read More The post Episode 292, Christmas 2023 appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Swing and more tonight: Benny Goodman & His Orchestra, Count Basie, Chick Webb (featuring Ella Fitzgerald), Frank Sinatra with Harry James and his Orchestra, Artie Shaw & His Orchestra, The Mills Brothers, Mel Tormé, Rosemary Clooney and Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, Johnny Hodges, Anita O'Day, Annie Ross & Gerry Mulligan, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Cassandra Wilson.

The Mills Brothers were the first African-American artists to have their own show on national network radio. They became a worldwide sensation for their ability to mimic musical instruments. Donald, Herbert, Harry, and John Jr, were born into a family of nine in Piqua, Ohio. They started singing in church, and were so talented they began appearing on Cincinnati radio stations. The jazz vocal quartet went on to make more than 2,000 recordings, which sold more than 50 million copies, with 3 dozen going gold. Their first number one hit was Paper doll in 1943. The Mills Brothers also appeared in films, and later on television. They were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1998. you will hear their pioneering CBS Radio show from 1930, and their appearances on The Andrews Sisters Show in 1945, the Spike Jones Spotlight Revue in 1948, and Guest Time in the 1950s. For more podcasts visit KRobCollection.com

Fresh from a couple of weeks away, we're going for the easy listening, classic pieces from the Great American Songbook. Join Dave Stroud on a dream-laden journey on the waters of the past century of America's music as he pairs up some of the classic ballads and torch songs from the past. Mostly crooners but there's plenty of jazz and pop standards to celebrate. We'll hear pairings from The Mills Brothers and Les Paul & Mary Ford, Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan, Rosemary Clooney and Leon Redbone, Etta James, Billie Holiday, and Peggy Lee. That's the short list. We'll hear versions of “Fever”, “Dream”, “Smile”, “April in Paris” and “Autumn Leaves” in a show that reminds us that so many of these pop standards hold up well when put to the test of time. Drop by on a Friday morning where there's whispering grasses among the autumn leaves here on Sonoma County Community Radio. 

In this episode we examine and listen to Disc #526 of the V-Disc Collection.  This V-Disc features vintage recordings by The Mills Brothers, Mitchell Ayers and His Orchestra and a classic by The Andrews Sisters. (E025) * All music in this podcast are Creative Commons.  Artists are credited within the podcast.

  This episode of Backstage Jazz features an interview with legendary jazz pianist and former Denver Public Schools Music Educator, Neil Bridge. Joining him is his wife and Muse, Vocalist/Collaborator, Karen Lee Bridge. Neil Bridge is a legendary Jazz Piano player, composer, arranger, band leader, musical director, and former DPS music educator. Throughout his illustrious career, he has accompanied Mel Torme, Anita O'Day, Nancy Wilson, Dakota Staton, Johnny Smith, The Mills Brothers, Clark Terry, Sonny Stitt, and many more. He is well known for accompanying Johnny Smith (legendary world-class guitar player) for 30 years. Karen Lee is currently fulfilling her passion for singing. Her dreams came true, and she finally fulfilled her lifetime wishes of singing professionally. Karen explains, “ I have been enrolled in the “N.B.A.O.M.,” for 30 glorious years. It's the “Neil Bridge Academy Of Music!” The music featured in the shows includes “Grooving' in the City” and “Come Back To Me.” Both tracks can be found on the new album In The Key of Music (Neil Bridge & The Pride Featuring Karen Lee Bridge), which can be purchased here: https://neilbridgemusic.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-key-of-music. The Bridges will perform with Quintessence: Wayne Wilkinson Guitar), Mark Simon (Bass), and Todd Reid (Drums) at Dazzle on Friday, October 6, 2023, for a 7 p.m. show. Tickets are available here: https://www.dazzledenver.com.  For more info on The bridges, please visit: https://www.neilbridgemusic.com Thanks for listening, and please support the artists you hear by seeing them live and online. Purchase their music so they can continue to distract, comfort, provoke, and inspire --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/backstagejazz/message

When he was 15, Connor Clough taught himself how to become aware he was dreaming while he was dreaming. It seemed kind of fun–until it wasn't. Along the way he faced a question that has puzzled thinkers for millennia: Are dreams just collections of memories and emotions dredged up from our subconscious? Or are dreams really some sort of window into transcendent reality?Support sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth at wng.org/donate. Music licensed via podcastmusic.com from Strike Music, Figure and Groove, ALIBI, Atomica Music, and Pink Shark Music.Song: “Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland” by The Mills Brothers.

Hello everyone. I am working on some new shows that are not quite finished. So here is a show i produced back in 2013 and it features the vocal groups from the big band era. Some of the groups were solo acts and others sang as part of the band. Who could forget groups like the Andrews Sisters, the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, the Pied Pipers and the Modernaires? In addition, I tried to give a little history of each group. I hope you enjoy all the vocal groups this week solo and as part of the band. Please visit this podcast at http://bigbandbashfm.blogspot.com

Charlie Parr is an incorruptible outsider who writes novelistic, multi-layered stories that shine a kaleidoscopic light on defiant, unseen characters thriving in the shadows all around us. With a sound deeply tied to the blues and folk traditions of an earlier era, Parr has released 14 studio albums and tours the globe performing at legendary venues like Newport Folk Festival, The Kennedy Center, The Troubadour, and Bowery Ballroom. But he hasn't moved to LA or Nashville; he's stayed in the cold grey north of Minnesota, because that's his home. The Depot Jazz Quartet features legendary piano player Paul Ierino, John Thorene on bass, Rick Bruner on drums, and Randy Lee leads the group on various woodwinds. An accomplished musician, Randy Lee's various professional bands and associations have found him accompanying artists including Wayne Newton, Riudus Reid, Paul McKee, and the Mills Brothers to name of few. Notably, he has performed and toured alongside legendary superstars of Motown the Four Tops and the Temptations. This episode features recordings from both acts' 2022 performances under the tent.   First broadcast in 1994, Tent Show Radio is a weekly one-hour radio program showcasing the best live recordings from acclaimed music acts and entertainers who grace the Big Top Chautauqua stage each summer in beautiful Bayfield, WI. In the program's nearly 30-year history it has featured artists like Johnny Cash, B.B King, Brandi Carlile, Willie Nelson, Don McLean, and many more. Hosted by celebrated New York Times best-selling author Michael Perry-who weaves stories and humor throughout each episode - Tent Show Radio features performances from renowned national & regional artists, with regular appearances featuring Big Top's own unique brand of shows that feature songs and stories performed by its acclaimed house band, The Blue Canvas Orchestra. Tent Show Radio is independently produced by Big Top Chautauqua, a non-profit performing arts organization, with a mission to present performances and events that celebrate history and the environment - along with their annual summer concert series - nestled in the woods on the shores of Lake Superior and the Apostle Islands.   EPISODE CREDITSMichael Perry - Host Phillip Anich - Announcer Matt Jugenheimer - Engineer & Producer Gina Nagro - Marketing Support FOLLOW BIG TOP CHAUTAUQUA https://www.facebook.com/bigtopchautauqua/ https://www.instagram.com/bigtopchautauqua/ https://www.tiktok.com/@bigtopchautauqua https://twitter.com/BigBlueTent FOLLOW MICHAEL PERRYhttps://sneezingcow.com/ https://www.facebook.com/sneezingcow https://www.instagram.com/sneezingcow/ https://twitter.com/sneezingcow/ 2023 TENT SHOW RADIO SPONSORSAshland Area Chamber of Commerce - https://www.visitashland.com/  Bayfield Chamber and Visitor Bureau - https://www.bayfield.org/  Bayfield County Tourism - https://www.bayfieldcounty.wi.gov/150/Tourism  The Bayfield Inn - https://bayfieldinn.com/  Cable Area Chamber of Commerce - https://www.cable4fun.com/  Washburn Area Chamber of Commerce - https://washburnchamber.com/ SPECIAL THANKSWisconsin Public Radio - https://www.wpr.org/ 

Performers include: Mae West & Duke Ellington, Jimmie Rodgers & Louis Armstrong, Perry Como & Betty Hutton, Dick Powell & the Mills Brothers and Carmen Miranda & the Andrews Sisters.  Songs include: Breezing Along With the Breeze, My Old Flame, Out For No Good, Confess, Too Old To Cut the Mustard and A Bushel and a Peck. 

Vintage Classic Radio presents "Saturday Matinee". Tune in every Saturday for a mix of comedy, music or romance from the golden age of radio that will keep you entertained. Our lineup this Saturday includes: 1. "Mrs. Moonlight" from Lux Radio Theatre (June 26th, 1939): In this enchanting radio play, Lux Radio Theatre presents a heartwarming story of love, sacrifice, and second chances. Follow the tale of Mrs. Moonlight, a widow who finds herself at a crossroads when an unexpected visitor from her past arrives. Starring a talented cast of actors, this romantic story will keep you captivated from start to finish. Full Cast: Mrs. Moonlight: Janet Gaynor Richard Bower: George Brent Mr. Hart: Charles Butterworth Martha: Nella Walker Henry Bower: Donald Meek Dr. Adams: Gordon Oliver Sarah: Virginia Weidler Edward: Tommy Bupp Jenkins: Victor Rodman 2. "The Maxwell is Stolen" from Jack Benny Show (October 1st, 1950): Get ready for laughter and excitement as the legendary Jack Benny takes center stage in this hilarious episode of his popular radio show. When Jack's beloved Maxwell car gets stolen, chaos ensues as he embarks on a quest to recover it. With a stellar cast of comedic talents, this radio play is guaranteed to tickle your funny bone and leave you in stitches. "The Jack Benny Show" was one of the most beloved and long-running radio programs of the mid-20th century. It starred Jack Benny, a comedic genius known for his impeccable timing, witty humor, and ability to create hilarious situations out of everyday occurrences. The show's blend of comedy sketches, witty banter, and memorable characters made it a fan favorite that entertained audiences for decades. Full Cast: Jack Benny: Jack Benny Mary Livingston: Mary Livingston Rochester: Eddie Anderson Don Wilson: Don Wilson Phil Harris: Phil Harris Dennis Day: Dennis Day Frank Nelson: Frank Nelson Additional voices: Various supporting actors 3. "The Chesterfield Show" with Bing Crosby - Special Guest Stars Ella Fitzgerald and Mills Brothers (November 9th, 1949) "The Chesterfield Show" was a highly popular radio program that showcased the incredible talents of Bing Crosby, one of the most iconic and beloved entertainers of the 20th century. Bing Crosby's smooth vocals and charismatic stage presence captivated audiences week after week. The show featured a delightful blend of music, comedy, and guest performances, making it a true variety extravaganza. "The Chesterfield Show" also regularly welcomed esteemed guest stars, and this episode featuring Ella Fitzgerald and The Mills Brothers is a shining example of the incredible talent that graced the program. Ella Fitzgerald, known as the First Lady of Song, brought her mesmerizing vocals and captivating stage presence to the show, while The Mills Brothers added their harmonious blend of voices, creating unforgettable musical moments.

Bobby Sanabria is an eight time Grammy-nominee as a leader. Known as a drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, conductor, documentary film producer, educator, activist, and bandleader, his versatility as both a drummer and percussionist, from small group to big band, has become legendary. A native son of the South Bronx born to Puerto Rican parents, he has performed and recorded with every major figure in the world of Latin jazz and salsa, from the founder of the Afro-Cuban/Latin jazz movement Mario Bauzá, to Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaría, Dizzy Gillespie, Chico O'Farrill, Ray Barretto, Candido, to Larry Harlow, Ruben Blades, Celia Cruz, and jazz luminaries as diverse as Henry Threadgill, Charles McPherson, Randy Brecker, Joe Chambers, Jean Lucien, The Mills Brothers, and others. DRUM! Magazine named him Percussionist of the Year (2005); he was named Percussionist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2011 and 2013. In 2006, he was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame. He was a recipient of the 2018 Jazz Education Network (JEN) LeJENS of Jazz Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as a musician and educator. In 2008 Congressman Dennis Kucinich honored his work as a musician and educator by reading his name into the Congressional Record and in 2018 the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus honored him as a musician, educator. Every single one of his big band recordings, seven in total, have been nominated for Grammys. His 2018 recording, ‘West Side Story Reimagined,' reached #1 on the national Jazz Week radio charts, was nominated for a 2018 Grammy, and won the prestigious 2019 Record of The Year Award from the Jazz Journalists Association. Partial proceeds from sales of this double CD went to the Jazz Foundation of America's Puerto Rico Relief Fund for musicians. He is the Co-Artistic Director of the Bronx Music Heritage Center and the forthcoming Bronx Music Hall. His lifetime dedication to spreading the history, culture, of jazz and Latin jazz to the general public as a performer, as well as educating a new generation of players, composers, arrangers, has no parallel. A member of Max Roach's legendary M'BOOM percussion ensemble, he is on the faculty of the New School (his 26th year) and was on the faculty of NYU, his alma mater Berklee, and was on the faculty of the Manhattan School fo Music for 20 years where he conducted/taught the Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra receiving two Grammy nominations for recordings he did with directing his students. Sanabria is also the on air host of the Latin Jazz Cruise on WBGO FM and wbgo.org, the number one jazz station in the nation. Lehman College in NYC has recently awarded Maestro Sanabria an Honorary Doctorate. His new double CD, which will be released on May 12 2023, is a double CD with his Multiverse Big Band entitled VOX HUMANA. Recorded live at Dizzy's Club-Cola in NYC, it features three of jazz's finest contemporary vocalists - Janis Siegel from the Manhattan Transfer, blues and jazz Queen Antoinette Montague, and multi-lingual powerhouse Jennifer Jade Ledesna. In this episode, Bobby talks about:    His MULTIVERSE Big Band    Seeing Tito Puente perform at 12 years old    The new record - VOX HUMANA    Inspiring the next generation    The history of music as related to the history of America    Afro-cuban rhythms and their origins

Celebrating 800 episodes with a show devoted to number songs. Tunes include: Seven Come Eleven, Two Sleepy People, Twenty-Four Hours a Day, A Thousand Goodnights and I See a Million People.  Performers include: Billie Holiday, the Mills Brothers, Jack Teagarden, Glenn Miller, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Jackie Gleason & Joe Marsala. 

This is the final part of our celebration of Black History Month. Today we will highlight the band led by Jimmie Lunceford and in the second half, I have some assorted selections to play. I have really enjoyed putting together this series and today I have pulled out many of the major hits by the Lunceford Orchestra. Some of the assorted cuts include songs from Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Teddy Wilson, The Mills Brothers and a few others. Please visit this podcast at http://bigbandbashfm.blogspot.com

In 1951, 15-year-old Bruce Belland sneaked into a backstage door at Ciro's Nightclub to get a glimpse of his idols, The Mills Brothers. That fateful night inspired Bruce to form The Four Preps and forge a vocal harmony career that brought us the hits, “26 Miles” and “Big Man.” Bruce has spent 70 years loaded with questions for his musical heroes and, at long last, he gets to pose them to John H. Mills II, the son of original Mills Brother Donald Mills. John toured with his father for 17 years and he's got answers!We hand our fanboy the reins and these two harmony kings go deep into shop talk, discussing style, phrasing, timing, technique and arrangements. They share road stories, talk about John's childhood with his trailblazing father and uncles and explore how each of them related to their larger-than-life fathers.Plus, Fritz and Weezy are recommending My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman and Avatar: The Way of Water.Path Points of Interest:The Mills BrothersThe Mills Brothers on WikipediaMills Brothers Documentary Part 1Part 2Part 3John Mills in a Tribute to Glenn Miller and the Vocal Groups - Feb. 19thBruce BellandThe Four PrepsAvatar: The Way of the Water - In TheatersMy Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman

Songs include: Lazy, Lazy River, I Ain't Lazy, I'm Just Dreaming, Lazy Mama, Lazy Susan, Lazy Day and I'm Lazy, That's All. Performers include: the Mills Brothers, Pearl Bailey, Woody Hermann, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, King Oliver, Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman.

Episode one hundred and fifty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Heroes and Villains” by the Beach Boys, and the collapse of the Smile album. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a sixteen-minute bonus episode available, on "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" by the Electric Prunes. 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 There is no Mixcloud this week, because there were too many Beach Boys songs in the episode. I used many resources for this episode. As well as the books I referred to in all the Beach Boys episodes, listed below, I used Domenic Priore's book Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece and Richard Henderson's 33 1/3 book on Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle. Stephen McParland has published many, many books on the California surf and hot-rod music scenes, including several on both the Beach Boys and Gary Usher.  His books can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Andrew Doe's Bellagio 10452 site is an invaluable resource. Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys FAQ is a good balance between accuracy and readability. And Philip Lambert's Inside the Music of Brian Wilson is an excellent, though sadly out of print, musicological analysis of Wilson's music from 1962 through 67. Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin is the best biography of Wilson. I have also referred to Brian Wilson's autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson, and to Mike Love's, Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. As a good starting point for the Beach Boys' music in general, I would recommend this budget-priced three-CD set, which has a surprisingly good selection of their material on it, including the single version of “Heroes and Villains”. The box set The Smile Sessions  contains an attempt to create a finished album from the unfinished sessions, plus several CDs of outtakes and session material. Transcript [Opening -- "intro to the album" studio chatter into "Our Prayer"] Before I start, I'd just like to note that this episode contains some discussion of mental illness, including historical negative attitudes towards it, so you may want to check the transcript or skip this one if that might be upsetting. In November and December 1966, the filmmaker David Oppenheim and the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein collaborated on a TV film called "Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution".  The film was an early attempt at some of the kinds of things this podcast is doing, looking at how music and social events interact and evolve, though it was dealing with its present rather than the past. The film tried to cast as wide a net as possible in its fifty-one minutes. It looked at two bands from Manchester -- the Hollies and Herman's Hermits -- and how the people identified as their leaders, "Herman" (or Peter Noone) and Graham Nash, differed on the issue of preventing war: [Excerpt: Inside Pop, the Rock Revolution] And it made a star of East Coast teenage singer-songwriter Janis Ian with her song about interracial relationships, "Society's Child": [Excerpt: Janis Ian, "Society's Child"] And Bernstein spends a significant time, as one would expect, analysing the music of the Beatles and to a lesser extent the Stones, though they don't appear in the show. Bernstein does a lot to legitimise the music just by taking it seriously as a subject for analysis, at a time when most wouldn't: [Excerpt: Leonard Bernstein talking about "She Said She Said"] You can't see it, obviously, but in the clip that's from, as the Beatles recording is playing, Bernstein is conducting along with the music, as he would a symphony orchestra, showing where the beats are falling. But of course, given that this was filmed in the last two months of 1966, the vast majority of the episode is taken up with musicians from the centre of the music world at that time, LA. The film starts with Bernstein interviewing Tandyn Almer,  a jazz-influenced songwriter who had recently written the big hit "Along Comes Mary" for The Association: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] It featured interviews with Roger McGuinn, and with the protestors at the Sunset Strip riots which were happening contemporaneously with the filming: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] Along with Frank Zappa's rather acerbic assessment of the potential of the youth revolutionaries: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] And ended (other than a brief post-commercial performance over the credits by the Hollies) with a performance by Tim Buckley, whose debut album, as we heard in the last episode, had featured Van Dyke Parks and future members of the Mothers of Invention and Buffalo Springfield: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] But for many people the highlight of the film was the performance that came right before Buckley's, film of Brian Wilson playing a new song from the album he was working on. One thing I should note -- many sources say that the voiceover here is Bernstein. My understanding is that Bernstein wrote and narrated the parts of the film he was himself in, and Oppenheim did all the other voiceover writing and narration, but that Oppenheim's voice is similar enough to Bernstein's that people got confused about this: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] That particular piece of footage was filmed in December 1966, but it wasn't broadcast until April the twenty-fifth, 1967, an eternity in mid-sixties popular music. When it was broadcast, that album still hadn't come out. Precisely one week later, the Beach Boys' publicist Derek Taylor announced that it never would: [Excerpt: Brian Wilson, "Surf's Up"] One name who has showed up in a handful of episodes recently, but who we've not talked that much about, is Van Dyke Parks. And in a story with many, many, remarkable figures, Van Dyke Parks may be one of the most remarkable of all. Long before he did anything that impinges on the story of rock music, Parks had lived the kind of life that would be considered unbelievable were it to be told as fiction. Parks came from a family that mixed musical skill, political progressiveness, and achievement. His mother was a scholar of Hebrew, while his father was a neurologist, the first doctor to admit Black patients to a white Southern hospital, and had paid his way through college leading a dance band. Parks' father was also, according to the 33 1/3 book on Song Cycle, a member of "John Philip Sousa's Sixty Silver Trumpets", but literally every reference I can find to Sousa leading a band of that name goes back to that book, so I've no idea what he was actually a member of, but we can presume he was a reasonable musician. Young Van Dyke started playing the clarinet at four, and was also a singer from a very early age, as well as playing several other instruments. He went to the American Boychoir School in Princeton, to study singing, and while there he sang with Toscaninni, Thomas Beecham, and other immensely important conductors of the era. He also had a very special accompanist for one Christmas carolling session. The choir school was based in Princeton, and one of the doors he knocked on while carolling was that of Princeton's most famous resident, Albert Einstein, who heard the young boy singing "Silent Night", and came out with his violin and played along. Young Van Dyke was only interested in music, but he was also paying the bills for his music tuition himself -- he had a job. He was a TV star. From the age of ten, he started getting roles in TV shows -- he played the youngest son in the 1953 sitcom Bonino, about an opera singer, which flopped because it aired opposite the extremely popular Jackie Gleason Show. He would later also appear in that show, as one of several child actors who played the character of Little Tommy Manicotti, and he made a number of other TV appearances, as well as having a small role in Grace Kelly's last film, The Swan, with Alec Guinness and Louis Jourdain. But he never liked acting, and just did it to pay for his education. He gave it up when he moved on to the Carnegie Institute, where he majored in composition and performance. But then in his second year, his big brother Carson asked him to drop out and move to California. Carson Parks had been part of the folk scene in California for a few years at this point. He and a friend had formed a duo called the Steeltown Two, but then both of them had joined the folk group the Easy Riders, a group led by Terry Gilkyson. Before Carson Parks joined, the Easy Riders had had a big hit with their version of "Marianne", a calypso originally by the great calypsonian Roaring Lion: [Excerpt: The Easy Riders, "Marianne"] They hadn't had many other hits, but their songs became hits for other people -- Gilkyson wrote several big hits for Frankie Laine, and the Easy Riders were the backing vocalists on Dean Martin's recording of a song they wrote, "Memories are Made of This": [Excerpt: Dean Martin and the Easy Riders, "Memories are Made of This"] Carson Parks hadn't been in the group at that point -- he only joined after they'd stopped having success -- and eventually the group had split up. He wanted to revive his old duo, the Steeltown Two, and persuaded his family to let his little brother Van Dyke drop out of university and move to California to be the other half of the duo. He wanted Van Dyke to play guitar, while he played banjo. Van Dyke had never actually played guitar before, but as Carson Parks later said "in 90 days, he knew more than most folks know after many years!" Van Dyke moved into an apartment adjoining his brother's, owned by Norm Botnick, who had until recently been the principal viola player in a film studio orchestra, before the film studios all simultaneously dumped their in-house orchestras in the late fifties, so was a more understanding landlord than most when it came to the lifestyles of musicians. Botnick's sons, Doug and Bruce, later went into sound engineering -- we've already encountered Bruce Botnick in the episode on the Doors, and he will be coming up again in the future. The new Steeltown Two didn't make any records, but they developed a bit of a following in the coffeehouses, and they also got a fair bit of session work, mostly through Terry Gilkyson, who was by that point writing songs for Disney and would hire them to play on sessions for his songs. And it was Gilkyson who both brought Van Dyke Parks the worst news of his life to that point, and in doing so also had him make his first major mark on music. Gilkyson was the one who informed Van Dyke that another of his brothers, Benjamin Riley Parks, had died in what was apparently a car accident. I say it was apparently an accident because Benjamin Riley Parks was at the time working for the US State Department, and there is apparently also some evidence that he was assassinated in a Cold War plot. Gilkyson also knew that neither Van Dyke nor Carson Parks had much money, so in order to help them afford black suits and plane tickets to and from the funeral, Gilkyson hired Van Dyke to write the arrangement for a song he had written for an upcoming Disney film: [Excerpt: Jungle Book soundtrack, "The Bare Necessities"] The Steeltown Two continued performing, and soon became known as the Steeltown Three, with the addition of a singer named Pat Peyton. The Steeltown Three recorded two singles, "Rock Mountain", under that group name: [Excerpt: The Steeltown Three, "Rock Mountain"] And a version of "San Francisco Bay" under the name The South Coasters, which I've been unable to track down. Then the three of them, with the help of Terry Gilkyson, formed a larger group in the style of the New Christy Minstrels -- the Greenwood County Singers. Indeed, Carson Parks would later claim that  Gilkyson had had the idea first -- that he'd mentioned that he'd wanted to put together a group like that to Randy Sparks, and Sparks had taken the idea and done it first. The Greenwood County Singers had two minor hot one hundred hits, only one of them while Van Dyke was in the band -- "The New 'Frankie and Johnny' Song", a rewrite by Bob Gibson and Shel Silverstein of the old traditional song "Frankie and Johnny": [Excerpt: The Greenwood County Singers, "The New Frankie and Johnny Song"] They also recorded several albums together, which gave Van Dyke the opportunity to practice his arrangement skills, as on this version of  "Vera Cruz" which he arranged: [Excerpt: The Greenwood County Singers, "Vera Cruz"] Some time before their last album, in 1965, Van Dyke left the Greenwood County Singers, and was replaced by Rick Jarrard, who we'll also be hearing more about in future episodes. After that album, the group split up, but Carson Parks would go on to write two big hits in the next few years. The first and biggest was a song he originally wrote for a side project. His future wife Gaile Foote was also a Greenwood County Singer, and the two of them thought they might become folk's answer to Sonny and Cher or Nino Tempo and April Stevens: [Excerpt: Carson and Gaile, "Somethin' Stupid"] That obviously became a standard after it was covered by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. Carson Parks also wrote "Cab Driver", which in 1968 became the last top thirty hit for the Mills Brothers, the 1930s vocal group we talked about way way back in episode six: [Excerpt: The Mills Brothers, "Cab Driver"] Meanwhile Van Dyke Parks was becoming part of the Sunset Strip rock and roll world. Now, until we get to 1967, Parks has something of a tangled timeline. He worked with almost every band around LA in a short period, often working with multiple people simultaneously, and nobody was very interested in keeping detailed notes. So I'm going to tell this as a linear story, but be aware it's very much not -- things I say in five minutes might happen after, or in the same week as, things I say in half an hour. At some point in either 1965 or 1966 he joined the Mothers of Invention for a brief while. Nobody is entirely sure when this was, and whether it was before or after their first album. Some say it was in late 1965, others in August 1966, and even the kind of fans who put together detailed timelines are none the wiser, because no recordings have so far surfaced of Parks with the band. Either is plausible, and the Mothers went through a variety of keyboard players at this time -- Zappa had turned to his jazz friend Don Preston, but found Preston was too much of a jazzer and told him to come back when he could play "Louie Louie" convincingly, asked Mac Rebennack to be in the band but sacked him pretty much straight away for drug use, and eventually turned to Preston again once Preston had learned to rock and roll. Some time in that period, Van Dyke Parks was a Mother, playing electric harpsichord. He may even have had more than one stint in the group -- Zappa said "Van Dyke Parks played electric harpsichord in and out." It seems likely, though, that it was in summer of 1966, because in an interview published in Teen Beat Magazine in December 66, but presumably conducted a few months prior, Zappa was asked to describe the band members in one word each and replied: "Ray—Mahogany Roy—Asbestos Jim—Mucilage Del—Acetate Van Dyke—Pinocchio Billy—Boom I don't know about the rest of the group—I don't even know about these guys." Sources differ as to why Parks didn't remain in the band -- Parks has said that he quit after a short time because he didn't like being shouted at, while Zappa said "Van Dyke was not a reliable player. He didn't make it to rehearsal on time and things like that." Both may be true of course, though I've not heard anyone else ever criticise Parks for his reliability. But then also Zappa had much more disciplinarian standards than most rock band leaders. It's possibly either through Zappa that he met Tom Wilson, or through Tom Wilson that he met Frank Zappa, but either way Parks, like the Mothers of Invention, was signed to MGM records in 1966, where he released two solo singles co-produced by Wilson and an otherwise obscure figure named Tim Alvorado. The first was "Number Nine", which we heard last week, backed with "Do What You Wanta": [Excerpt: Van Dyke Parks, "Do What You Wanta"] At least one source I've read says that the lyrics to "Do What You Wanta" were written not by Parks but by his friend Danny Hutton, but it's credited as a Parks solo composition on the label. It was after that that the Van Dyke Parks band -- or as they were sometimes billed, just The Van Dyke Parks formed, as we discussed last episode, based around Parks, Steve Stills, and Steve Young, and they performed a handful of shows with bass player Bobby Rae and drummer Walt Sparman, playing a mix of original material, primarily Parks' songs, and covers of things like "Dancing in the Street". The one contemporaneous review of a live show I've seen talks about  the girls in the audience screaming and how "When rhythm guitarist Steve Stillman imitated the Barry McGuire emotional scene, they almost went wiggy". But The Van Dyke Parks soon split up, and Parks the individual recorded his second single, "Come to the Sunshine": [Excerpt: Van Dyke Parks, "Come to the Sunshine"] Around the time he left the Greenwood County Singers, Van Dyke Parks also met Brian Wilson for the first time, when David Crosby took him up to Wilson's house to hear an acetate of the as-yet-unreleased track "Sloop John B". Parks was impressed by Wilson's arrangement techniques, and in particular the way he was orchestrating instrumental combinations that you couldn't do with a standard live room setup, that required overdubbing and close-micing. He said later "The first stuff I heard indicated this kind of curiosity for the recording experience, and when I went up to see him in '65 I don't even think he had the voices on yet, but I heard that long rotational breathing, that long flute ostinato at the beginning... I knew this man was a great musician." [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B (instrumental)"] In most of 1966, though, Parks was making his living as a session keyboard player and arranger, and much of the work he was getting was through Lenny Waronker. Waronker was a second-generation music industry professional. His father, Si Waronker, had been a violinist in the Twentieth Century Fox studio orchestra before founding Liberty Records (the label which indirectly led to him becoming immortalised in children's entertainment, when Liberty Records star David Seville named his Chipmunk characters after three Liberty executives, with Simon being Si Waronker's full forename). The first release on Liberty Records had been a version of "The Girl Upstairs", an instrumental piece from the Fox film The Seven-Year Itch. The original recording of that track, for the film, had been done by the Twentieth Century Fox Orchestra, written and conducted by Alfred Newman, the musical director for Fox: [Excerpt: Alfred Newman, "The Girl Upstairs"] Liberty's soundalike version was conducted by Newman's brother Lionel, a pianist at the studio who later became Fox's musical director for TV, just as his brother was for film, but who also wrote many film scores himself. Another Newman brother, Emil, was also a film composer, but the fourth brother, Irving, had gone into medicine instead. However, Irving's son Randy wanted to follow in the family business, and he and Lenny Waronker, who was similarly following his own father by working for Liberty Records' publishing subsidiary Metric Music, had been very close friends ever since High School. Waronker got Newman signed to Metric Music, where he wrote "They Tell Me It's Summer" for the Fleetwoods: [Excerpt: The Fleetwoods, "They Tell Me It's Summer"] Newman also wrote and recorded a single of his own in 1962, co-produced by Pat Boone: [Excerpt: Randy Newman, "Golden Gridiron Boy"] Before deciding he wasn't going to make it as a singer and had better just be a professional songwriter. But by 1966 Waronker had moved on from Metric to Warner Brothers, and become a junior A&R man. And he was put in charge of developing the artists that Warners had acquired when they had bought up a small label, Autumn Records. Autumn Records was a San Francisco-based label whose main producer, Sly Stone, had now moved on to other things after producing the hit record "Laugh Laugh" for the Beau Brummels: [Excerpt: The Beau Brummels, "Laugh Laugh"] The Beau Brummels  had had another hit after that and were the main reason that Warners had bought the label, but their star was fading a little. Stone had also been mentoring several other groups, including the Tikis and the Mojo Men, who all had potential. Waronker gathered around himself a sort of brains trust of musicians who he trusted as songwriters, arrangers, and pianists -- Randy Newman, the session pianist Leon Russell, and Van Dyke Parks. Their job was to revitalise the career of the Beau Brummels, and to make both the Tikis and the Mojo Men into successes. The tactic they chose was, in Waronker's words, “Go in with a good song and weird it out.” The first good song they tried weirding out was in late 1966, when Leon Russell came up with a clarinet-led arrangement of Paul Simon's "59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)" for the Tikis, who performed it but who thought that their existing fanbase wouldn't accept something so different, so it was put out under another name, suggested by Parks, Harpers Bizarre: [Excerpt: Harpers Bizarre, "Feeling Groovy"] Waronker said of Parks and Newman “They weren't old school guys. They were modern characters but they had old school values regarding certain records that needed to be made, certain artists who needed to be heard regardless. So there was still that going on. The fact that ‘Feeling Groovy' was a number 10 hit nationwide and ‘Sit Down, I Think I Love You'  made the Top 30 on Western regional radio, that gave us credibility within the company. One hit will do wonders, two allows you to take chances.” We heard "Sit Down, I Think I Love You" last episode -- that's the song by Parks' old friend Stephen Stills that Parks arranged for the Mojo Men: [Excerpt: The Mojo Men, "Sit Down, I Think I Love You"] During 1966 Parks also played on Tim Buckley's first album, as we also heard last episode: [Excerpt: Tim Buckley, "Aren't You the Girl?"] And he also bumped into Brian Wilson on occasion, as they were working a lot in the same studios and had mutual friends like Loren Daro and Danny Hutton, and he suggested the cello part on "Good Vibrations". Parks also played keyboards on "5D" by the Byrds: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"] And on the Spirit of '67 album for Paul Revere and the Raiders, produced by the Byrds' old producer Terry Melcher. Parks played keyboards on much of the album, including the top five hit "Good Thing": [Excerpt: Paul Revere and the Raiders, "Good Thing"] But while all this was going on, Parks was also working on what would become the work for which he was best known. As I've said, he'd met Brian Wilson on a few occasions, but it wasn't until summer 1966 that the two were formally introduced by Terry Melcher, who knew that Wilson needed a new songwriting collaborator, now Tony Asher's sabbatical from his advertising job was coming to an end, and that Wilson wanted someone who could do work that was a bit more abstract than the emotional material that he had been writing with Asher. Melcher invited both of them to a party at his house on Cielo Drive -- a house which would a few years later become notorious -- which was also attended by many of the young Hollywood set of the time. Nobody can remember exactly who was at the party, but Parks thinks it was people like Jack Nicholson and Peter and Jane Fonda. Parks and Wilson hit it off, with Wilson saying later "He seemed like a really articulate guy, like he could write some good lyrics". Parks on the other hand was delighted to find that Wilson "liked Les Paul, Spike Jones, all of these sounds that I liked, and he was doing it in a proactive way." Brian suggested Parks write the finished lyrics for "Good Vibrations", which was still being recorded at this time, and still only had Tony Asher's dummy lyrics,  but Parks was uninterested. He said that it would be best if he and Brian collaborate together on something new from scratch, and Brian agreed. The first time Parks came to visit Brian at Brian's home, other than the visit accompanying Crosby the year before, he was riding a motorbike -- he couldn't afford a car -- and forgot to bring his driver's license with him. He was stopped by a police officer who thought he looked too poor to be in the area, but Parks persuaded the police officer that if he came to the door, Brian Wilson would vouch for him. Brian got Van Dyke out of any trouble because the cop's sister was a Beach Boys fan, so he autographed an album for her. Brian and Van Dyke talked for a while. Brian asked if Van Dyke needed anything to help his work go smoothly, and Van Dyke said he needed a car. Brian asked what kind. Van Dyke said that Volvos were supposed to be pretty safe. Brian asked how much they cost. Van Dyke said he thought they were about five thousand dollars. Brian called up his office and told them to get a cheque delivered to Van Dyke for five thousand dollars the next day, instantly earning Van Dyke's loyalty. After that, they got on with work. To start with, Brian played Van Dyke a melody he'd been working on, a melody based on a descending scale starting on the fourth: [Plays "Heroes and Villains" melody] Parks told Wilson that the melody reminded him vaguely of Marty Robbins' country hit "El Paso" from 1959, a song about a gunfighter, a cantina, and a dancing woman: [Excerpt: Marty Robbins, "El Paso"] Wilson said that he had been thinking along the same lines, a sort of old west story, and thought maybe it should be called "Heroes and Villains". Parks started writing, matching syllables to Wilson's pre-conceived melody -- "I've been in this town so long that back in the city I've been taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long, long time" [Excerpt: Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, "Heroes and Villains demo"] As Parks put it "The engine had started. It was very much ad hoc. Seat of the pants. Extemporaneous values were enforced. Not too much precommitment to ideas. Or, if so, equally pursuing propinquity." Slowly, over the next several months, while the five other Beach Boys were touring, Brian and Van Dyke refined their ideas about what the album they were writing, initially called Dumb Angel but soon retitled Smile, should be. For Van Dyke Parks it was an attempt to make music about America and American mythology. He was disgusted, as a patriot, with the Anglophilia that had swept the music industry since the arrival of the Beatles in America two and a half years earlier, particularly since that had happened so soon after the deaths both of President Kennedy and of Parks' own brother who was working for the government at the time he died. So for him, the album was about America, about Plymouth Rock, the Old West, California, and Hawaii. It would be a generally positive version of the country's myth, though it would of course also acknowledge the bloodshed on which the country had been built: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Bicycle Rider" section] As he put it later "I was dead set on centering my life on the patriotic ideal. I was a son of the American revolution, and there was blood on the tracks. Recent blood, and it was still drying. The whole record seemed like a real effort toward figuring out what Manifest Destiny was all about. We'd come as far as we could, as far as Horace Greeley told us to go. And so we looked back and tried to make sense of that great odyssey." Brian had some other ideas -- he had been studying the I Ching, and Subud, and he wanted to do something about the four classical elements, and something religious -- his ideas were generally rather unfocused at the time, and he had far more ideas than he knew what to usefully do with. But he was also happy with the idea of a piece about America, which fit in with his own interest in "Rhapsody in Blue", a piece that was about America in much the same way. "Rhapsody in Blue" was an inspiration for Brian primarily in how it weaved together variations on themes. And there are two themes that between them Brian was finding endless variations on. The first theme was a shuffling between two chords a fourth away from each other. [demonstrates G to C on guitar] Where these chords are both major, that's the sequence for "Fire": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow/Fire"] For the "Who ran the Iron Horse?" section of "Cabin Essence": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Cabinessence"] For "Vegetables": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Vegetables"] And more. Sometimes this would be the minor supertonic and dominant seventh of the key, so in C that would be Dm to G7: [Plays Dm to G7 fingerpicked] That's the "bicycle rider" chorus we heard earlier, which was part of a song known as "Roll Plymouth Rock" or "Do You Like Worms": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Bicycle Rider"] But which later became a chorus for "Heroes and Villains": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains"] But that same sequence is also the beginning of "Wind Chimes": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wind Chimes"] The "wahalla loo lay" section of "Roll Plymouth Rock": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Roll Plymouth Rock"] And others, but most interestingly, the minor-key rearrangement of "You Are My Sunshine" as "You Were My Sunshine": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "You Were My Sunshine"] I say that's most interesting, because that provides a link to another of the major themes which Brian was wringing every drop out of, a phrase known as "How Dry I Am", because of its use under those words in an Irving Berlin song, which was a popular barbershop quartet song but is now best known as a signifier of drunkenness in Looney Tunes cartoons: [Excerpt: Daffy Duck singing "How Dry I Am" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap4MMn7LpzA ] The phrase is a common one in early twentieth century music, especially folk and country, as it's made up of notes in the pentatonic scale -- it's the fifth, first, second, and third of the scale, in that order: [demonstrates "How Dry I Am"] And so it's in the melody to "This Land is Your Land", for example, a song which is very much in the same spirit of progressive Americana in which Van Dyke Parks was thinking: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "This Land is Your Land"] It's also the start of the original melody of "You Are My Sunshine": [Excerpt: Jimmie Davis, "You Are My Sunshine" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYvgNEU4Am8] Brian rearranged that melody when he stuck it into a minor key, so it's no longer "How Dry I Am" in the Beach Boys version, but if you play the "How Dry I Am" notes in a different rhythm, you get this: [Plays "He Gives Speeches" melody] Which is the start of the melody to "He Gives Speeches": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "He Gives Speeches"] Play those notes backwards, you get: [Plays "He Gives Speeches" melody backwards] Do that and add onto the end a passing sixth and then the tonic, and then you get: [Plays that] Which is the vocal *countermelody* in "He Gives Speeches": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "He Gives Speeches"] And also turns up in some versions of "Heroes and Villains": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains (alternate version)"] And so on. Smile was an intricate web of themes and variations, and it incorporated motifs from many sources, both the great American songbook and the R&B of Brian's youth spent listening to Johnny Otis' radio show. There were bits of "Gee" by the Crows, of "Twelfth Street Rag", and of course, given that this was Brian Wilson, bits of Phil Spector. The backing track to the verse of "Heroes and Villains": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains"] Owed more than a little to a version of "Save the Last Dance For Me" that Spector had produced for Ike and Tina Turner: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "Save the Last Dance For Me"] While one version of the song “Wonderful” contained a rather out-of-place homage to Etta James and “The Wallflower”: [Excerpt: “Wonderful (Rock With Me Henry)”] As the recording continued, it became more and more obvious that the combination of these themes and variations was becoming a little too much for Brian.  Many of the songs he was working on were made up of individual modules that he was planning to splice together the way he had with "Good Vibrations", and some modules were getting moved between tracks, as he tried to structure the songs in the edit. He'd managed it with "Good Vibrations", but this was an entire album, not just a single, and it was becoming more and more difficult. David Anderle, who was heading up the record label the group were looking at starting, would talk about Brian playing him acetates with sections edited together one way, and thinking it was perfect, and obviously the correct way to put them together, the only possible way, and then hearing the same sections edited together in a different way, and thinking *that* was perfect, and obviously the correct way to put them together. But while a lot of the album was modular, there were also several complete songs with beginnings, middles, ends, and structures, even if they were in several movements. And those songs showed that if Brian could just get the other stuff right, the album could be very, very, special. There was "Heroes and Villains" itself, of course, which kept changing its structure but was still based around the same basic melody and story that Brian and Van Dyke had come up with on their first day working together. There was also "Wonderful", a beautiful, allusive, song about innocence lost and regained: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wonderful"] And there was CabinEssence, a song which referenced yet another classic song, this time "Home on the Range", to tell a story of idyllic rural life and of the industrialisation which came with westward expansion: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "CabinEssence"] The arrangement for that song inspired Van Dyke Parks to make a very astute assessment of Brian Wilson. He said later "He knew that he had to adhere to the counter-culture, and I knew that I had to. I think that he was about as estranged from it as I was.... At the same time, he didn't want to lose that kind of gauche sensibility that he had. He was doing stuff that nobody would dream of doing. You would never, for example, use one string on a banjo when you had five; it just wasn't done. But when I asked him to bring a banjo in, that's what he did. This old-style plectrum thing. One string. That's gauche." Both Parks and Wilson were both drawn to and alienated from the counterculture, but in very different ways, and their different ways of relating to the counterculture created the creative tension that makes the Smile project so interesting. Parks is fundamentally a New Deal Liberal, and was excited by the progresssive nature of the counterculture, but also rather worried about its tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and to ignore the old in pursuit of the new. He was an erudite, cultured, sophisticated man who thought that there was value to be found in the works and attitudes of the past, even as one must look to the future. He was influenced by the beat poets and the avant garde art of the time, but also said of his folk music period "A harpist would bring his harp with him and he would play and recite a story which had been passed down the generations. This particular legacy continued through Arthurian legend, and then through the Middle Ages, and even into the nineteenth century. With all these songs, half of the story was the lyrics, and the folk songs were very interesting. They were tremendously thought-driven songs; there was nothing confusing about that. Even when the Kingston Trio came out -- and Brian has already admitted his debt to the Kingston Trio -- 'Tom Dooley', the story of a murder most foul 'MTA' an urban nightmare -- all of this thought-driven music was perfectly acceptable.  It was more than a teenage romantic crisis." Brian Wilson, on the other hand, was anything *but* sophisticated. He is a simple man in the best sense of the term -- he likes what he likes, doesn't like what he doesn't like, and has no pretensions whatsoever about it. He is, at heart, a middle-class middle-American brought up in suburbia, with a taste for steaks and hamburgers, broad physical comedy, baseball, and easy listening music. Where Van Dyke Parks was talking about "thought-driven music", Wilson's music, while thoughtful, has always been driven by feelings first and foremost. Where Parks is influenced by Romantic composers like Gottschalk but is fundamentally a craftsman, a traditionalist, a mason adding his work to a cathedral whose construction started before his birth and will continue after his death, Wilson's music has none of the stylistic hallmarks of Romantic music, but in its inspiration it is absolutely Romantic -- it is the immediate emotional expression of the individual, completely unfiltered. When writing his own lyrics in later years Wilson would come up with everything from almost haiku-like lyrics like "I'm a leaf on a windy day/pretty soon I'll be blown away/How long with the wind blow?/Until I die" to "He sits behind his microphone/Johnny Carson/He speaks in such a manly tone/Johnny Carson", depending on whether at the time his prime concern was existential meaninglessness or what was on the TV. Wilson found the new counterculture exciting, but was also very aware he didn't fit in. He was developing a new group of friends, the hippest of the hip in LA counterculture circles -- the singer Danny Hutton, Mark Volman of the Turtles, the writers Michael Vosse and Jules Siegel, scenester and record executive David Anderle -- but there was always the underlying implication that at least some of these people regarded him as, to use an ableist term but one which they would probably have used, an idiot savant. That they thought of him, as his former collaborator Tony Asher would later uncharitably put it, as "a genius musician but an amateur human being". So for example when Siegel brought the great postmodern novelist Thomas Pynchon to visit Brian, both men largely sat in silence, unable to speak to each other; Pynchon because he tended to be a reactive person in conversation and would wait for the other person to initiate topics of discussion, Brian because he was so intimidated by Pynchon's reputation as a great East Coast intellectual that he was largely silent for fear of making a fool of himself. It was this gaucheness, as Parks eventually put it, and Parks' understanding that this was actually a quality to be cherished and the key to Wilson's art, that eventually gave the title to the most ambitious of the complete songs the duo were working on. They had most of the song -- a song about the power of music, the concept of enlightenment, and the rise and fall of civilisations: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surf's Up"] But Parks hadn't yet quite finished the lyric. The Beach Boys had been off on tour for much of Brian and Van Dyke's collaboration, and had just got back from their first real tour of the UK, where Pet Sounds had been a smash hit, rather than the middling success it had been in the US, and "Good Vibrations" had just become their first number one single. Brian and Van Dyke played the song for Brian's brother Dennis, the Beach Boys' drummer, and the band member most in tune with Brian's musical ambitions at this time. Dennis started crying, and started talking about how the British audiences had loved their music, but had laughed at their on-stage striped-shirt uniforms. Parks couldn't tell if he was crying because of the beauty of the unfinished song, the humiliation he had suffered in Britain, or both. Dennis then asked what the name of the song was, and as Parks later put it "Although it was the most gauche factor, and although maybe Brian thought it was the most dispensable thing, I thought it was very important to continue to use the name and keep the elephant in the room -- to keep the surfing image but to sensitise it to new opportunities. One of these would be an eco-consciousness; it would be speaking about the greening of the Earth, aboriginal people, how we had treated the Indians, taking on those things and putting them into the thoughts that come with the music. That was a solution to the relevance of the group, and I wanted the group to be relevant." Van Dyke had decided on a title: "Surf's Up": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surf's Up"] As the group were now back from their tour, the focus for recording shifted from the instrumental sessions to vocal ones. Parks had often attended the instrumental sessions, as he was an accomplished musician and arranger himself, and would play on the sessions, but also wanted to learn from what Brian was doing -- he's stated later that some of his use of tuned percussion in the decades since, for example, has come from watching Brian's work. But while he was also a good singer, he was not a singer in the same style as the Beach Boys, and they certainly didn't need his presence at those sessions, so he continued to work on his lyrics, and to do his arrangement and session work for other artists, while they worked in the studio. He was also, though, starting to distance himself from Brian for other reasons. At the start of the summer, Brian's eccentricity and whimsy had seemed harmless -- indeed, the kind of thing he was doing, such as putting his piano in a sandbox so he could feel the sand with his feet while he wrote, seems very much on a par with Maureen Cleave's descriptions of John Lennon in the same period. They were two newly-rich, easily bored, young men with low attention spans and high intelligence who could become deeply depressed when understimulated and so would get new ideas into their heads, spend money on their new fads, and then quickly discard them. But as the summer wore on into autumn and winter, Brian's behaviour became more bizarre, and to Parks' eyes more distasteful. We now know that Brian was suffering a period of increasing mental ill-health, something that was probably not helped by the copious intake of cannabis and amphetamines he was using to spur his creativity, but at the time most people around him didn't realise this, and general knowledge of mental illness was even less than it is today. Brian was starting to do things like insist on holding business meetings in his swimming pool, partly because people wouldn't be able to spy on him, and partly because he thought people would be more honest if they were in the water. There were also events like the recording session where Wilson paid for several session musicians, not to play their instruments, but to be recorded while they sat in a pitch-black room and played the party game Lifeboat with Jules Siegel and several of Wilson's friends, most of whom were stoned and not really understanding what they were doing, while they got angrier and more frustrated. Alan Jardine -- who unlike the Wilson brothers, and even Mike Love to an extent, never indulged in illegal drugs -- has talked about not understanding why, in some vocal sessions, Brian would make the group crawl on their hands and knees while making noises like animals: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains Part 3 (Animals)"] As Parks delicately put it "I sensed all that was destructive, so I withdrew from those related social encounters." What this meant though was that he was unaware that not all the Beach Boys took the same attitude of complete support for the work he and Brian had been doing that Dennis Wilson -- the only other group member he'd met at this point -- took. In particular, Mike Love was not a fan of Parks' lyrics. As he said later "I called it acid alliteration. The [lyrics are] far out. But do they relate like 'Surfin' USA,' like 'Fun Fun Fun,' like 'California Girls,' like 'I Get Around'? Perhaps not! So that's the distinction. See, I'm into success. These words equal successful hit records; those words don't" Now, Love has taken a lot of heat for this over the years, and on an artistic level that's completely understandable. Parks' lyrics were, to my mind at least, the best the Beach Boys ever had -- thoughtful, intelligent, moving, at times profound, often funny, often beautiful. But, while I profoundly disagree with Love, I have a certain amount of sympathy for his position. From Love's perspective, first and foremost, this is his source of income. He was the only one of the Beach Boys to ever have had a day job -- he'd worked at his father's sheet metal company -- and didn't particularly relish the idea of going back to manual labour if the rock star gig dried up. It wasn't that he was *opposed* to art, of course -- he'd written the lyrics to "Good Vibrations", possibly the most arty rock single released to that point, hadn't he? -- but that had been *commercial* art. It had sold. Was this stuff going to sell? Was he still going to be able to feed his wife and kids? Also, up until a few months earlier he had been Brian's principal songwriting collaborator. He was *still* the most commercially successful collaborator Brian had had. From his perspective, this was a partnership, and it was being turned into a dictatorship without him having been consulted. Before, it had been "Mike, can you write some lyrics for this song about cars?", now it was "Mike, you're going to sing these lyrics about a crow uncovering a cornfield". And not only that, but Mike had not met Brian's new collaborator, but knew he was hanging round with Brian's new druggie friends. And Brian was behaving increasingly weirdly, which Mike put down to the influence of the drugs and these new friends. It can't have helped that at the same time the group's publicist, Derek Taylor, was heavily pushing the line "Brian Wilson is a genius". This was causing Brian some distress -- he didn't think of himself as a genius, and he saw the label as a burden, something it was impossible to live up to -- but was also causing friction in the group, as it seemed that their contributions were being dismissed. Again, I don't agree with Mike's position on any of this, but it is understandable. It's also the case that Mike Love is, by nature, a very assertive and gregarious person, while Brian Wilson, for all that he took control in the studio, is incredibly conflict-avoidant and sensitive. From what I know of the two men's personalities, and from things they've said, and from the session recordings that have leaked over the years, it seems entirely likely that Love will have seen himself as having reasonable criticisms, and putting them to Brian clearly with a bit of teasing to take the sting out of them; while Brian will have seen Love as mercilessly attacking and ridiculing the work that meant so much to him in a cruel and hurtful manner, and that neither will have understood at the time that that was how the other was seeing things. Love's criticisms intensified. Not of everything -- he's several times expressed admiration for "Heroes and Villains" and "Wonderful" -- but in general he was not a fan of Parks' lyrics. And his criticisms seemed to start to affect Brian. It's difficult to say what Brian thinks about Parks' lyrics, because he has a habit in interviews of saying what he thinks the interviewer wants to hear, and the whole subject of Smile became a touchy one for him for a long time, so in some interviews he has talked about how dazzlingly brilliant they are, while at other times he's seemed to agree with Love, saying they were "Van Dyke Parks lyrics", not "Beach Boys lyrics". He may well sincerely think both at the same time, or have thought both at different times. This came to a head with a session for the tag of "Cabinessence": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Cabinessence"] Love insisted on having the line "over and over the crow flies uncover the cornfield" explained to him, and Brian eventually decided to call Van Dyke Parks and have him come to the studio. Up to this point, Parks had no idea that there was anything controversial, so when Brian phoned him up and very casually said that Mike had a few questions about the lyrics, could he come down to the studio? He went without a second thought. He later said "The only person I had had any interchange with before that was Dennis, who had responded very favorably to 'Heroes and Villains' and 'Surf's Up'. Based on that, I gathered that the work would be approved. But then, with no warning whatsoever, I got that phone call from Brian. And that's when the whole house of cards came tumbling down." Parks got to the studio, where he was confronted by an angry Mike Love, insisting he explain the lyrics. Now, as will be, I hope, clear from everything I've said, Parks and Love are very, very, *very* different people. Having met both men -- albeit only in formal fan-meeting situations where they're presenting their public face -- I actually find both men very likeable, but in very different ways. Love is gregarious, a charmer, the kind of man who would make a good salesman and who people use terms like "alpha male" about. He's tall, and has a casual confidence that can easily read as arrogance, and a straightforward sense of humour that can sometimes veer into the cruel. Parks, on the other hand, is small, meticulously well-mannered and well-spoken, has a high, precise, speaking voice which probably reads as effeminate to the kind of people who use terms like "alpha male", and the kind of devastating intelligence and Southern US attention to propriety which means that if he *wanted* to say something cruel about someone, the victim would believe themselves to have been complimented until a horrific realisation two days after the event. In every way, from their politics to their attitudes to art versus commerce to their mannerisms to their appearance, Mike Love and Van Dyke Parks are utterly different people, and were never going to mix well. And Brian Wilson, who was supposed to be the collaborator for both of them, was not mediating between them, not even expressing an opinion -- his own mental problems had reached the stage where he simply couldn't deal with the conflict. Parks felt ambushed and hurt, Love felt angry, especially when Parks could not explain the literal meaning of his lyrics. Eventually Parks just said "I have no excuse, sir", and left. Parks later said "That's when I lost interest. Because basically I was taught not to be where I wasn't wanted, and I could feel I wasn't wanted. It was like I had someone else's job, which was abhorrent to me, because I don't even want my own job. It was sad, so I decided to get away quick." Parks continued collaborating with Wilson, and continued attending instrumental sessions, but it was all wheelspinning -- no significant progress was made on any songs after that point, in early December. It was becoming clear that the album wasn't going to be ready for its planned Christmas release, and it was pushed back to January, but Brian's mental health was becoming worse and worse. One example that's often cited as giving an insight into Brian's mental state at the time is his reaction to going to the cinema to see John Frankenheimer's classic science fiction horror film Seconds. Brian came in late, and the way the story is always told, when he was sat down the screen was black and a voice said from the darkness, "Hello Mr. Wilson". That moment does not seem to correspond with anything in the actual film, but he probably came in around the twenty-four minute mark, where the main character walks down a corridor, filmed in a distorted, hallucinatory manner, to be greeted: [Excerpt: Seconds, 24:00] But as Brian watched the film, primed by this, he became distressed by a number of apparent similarities to his life. The main character was going through death and rebirth, just as he felt he was. Right after the moment I just excerpted, Mr. Wilson is shown a film, and of course Brian was himself watching a film. The character goes to the beach in California, just like Brian. The character has a breakdown on a plane, just like Brian, and has to take pills to cope, and the breakdown happens right after this: [Excerpt: Seconds, from about 44:22] A studio in California? Just like where Brian spent his working days? That kind of weird coincidence can be affecting enough in a work of art when one is relatively mentally stable, but Brian was not at all stable. By this point he was profoundly paranoid -- and he may have had good reason to be. Some of Brian's friends from this time period have insisted that Brian's semi-estranged abusive father and former manager, Murry, was having private detectives watch him and his brothers to find evidence that they were using drugs. If you're in the early stages of a severe mental illness *and* you're self-medicating with illegal drugs, *and* people are actually spying on you, then that kind of coincidence becomes a lot more distressing. Brian became convinced that the film was the work of mind gangsters, probably in the pay of Phil Spector, who were trying to drive him mad and were using telepathy to spy on him. He started to bar people who had until recently been his friends from coming to sessions -- he decided that Jules Siegel's girlfriend was a witch and so Siegel was no longer welcome -- and what had been a creative process in the studio degenerated into noodling and second-guessing himself. He also, with January having come and the album still not delivered, started doing side projects,  some of which, like his production of tracks for photographer Jasper Daily, seem evidence either of his bizarre sense of humour, or of his detachment from reality, or both: [Excerpt: Jasper Daily, "Teeter Totter Love"] As 1967 drew on, things got worse and worse. Brian was by this point concentrating on just one or two tracks, but endlessly reworking elements of them. He became convinced that the track "Fire" had caused some actual fires to break out in LA, and needed to be scrapped. The January deadline came and went with no sign of the album. To add to that, the group discovered that they were owed vast amounts of unpaid royalties by Capitol records, and legal action started which meant that even were the record to be finished it might become a pawn in the legal wrangling. Parks eventually became exasperated by Brian -- he said later "I was victimised by Brian Wilson's buffoonery" -- and he quit the project altogether in February after a row with Brian. He returned a couple of weeks later out of a sense of loyalty, but quit again in April. By April, he'd been working enough with Lenny Waronker that Waronker offered him a contract with Warner Brothers as a solo artist -- partly because Warners wanted some insight into Brian Wilson's techniques as a hit-making producer. To start with, Parks released a single, to dip a toe in the water, under the pseudonym "George Washington Brown". It was a largely-instrumental cover version of Donovan's song "Colours", which Parks chose because after seeing the film Don't Look Back, a documentary of Bob Dylan's 1965 British tour, he felt saddened at the way Dylan had treated Donovan: [Excerpt: George Washington Brown, "Donovan's Colours"] That was not a hit, but it got enough positive coverage, including an ecstatic review from Richard Goldstein in the Village Voice, that Parks was given carte blanche to create the album he wanted to create, with one of the largest budgets of any album released to that date. The result was a masterpiece, and very similar to the vision of Smile that Parks had had -- an album of clever, thoroughly American music which had more to do with Charles Ives than the British Invasion: [Excerpt: Van Dyke Parks, "The All Golden"] But Parks realised the album, titled Song Cycle, was doomed to failure when at a playback session, the head of Warner Brothers records said "Song Cycle? So where are the songs?" According to Parks, the album was only released because Jac Holzman of Elektra Records was also there, and took out his chequebook and said he'd release the album if Warners wouldn't, but it had little push, apart from some rather experimental magazine adverts which were, if anything, counterproductive. But Waronker recognised Parks' talent, and had even written into Parks' contract that Parks would be employed as a session player at scale on every session Waronker produced -- something that didn't actually happen, because Parks didn't insist on it, but which did mean Parks had a certain amount of job security. Over the next couple of years Parks and Waronker co-produced the first albums by two of their colleagues from Waronker's brains trust, with Parks arranging -- Randy Newman: [Excerpt: Randy Newman, "I Think It's Going to Rain Today"] And Ry Cooder: [Excerpt: Ry Cooder, "One Meat Ball"] Waronker would refer to himself, Parks, Cooder, and Newman as "the arts and crafts division" of Warners, and while these initial records weren't very successful, all of them would go on to bigger things. Parks would be a pioneer of music video, heading up Warners' music video department in the early seventies, and would also have a staggeringly varied career over the years, doing everything from teaming up again with the Beach Boys to play accordion on "Kokomo" to doing the string arrangements on Joanna Newsom's album Ys, collaborating with everyone from U2 to Skrillex,  discovering Rufus Wainwright, and even acting again, appearing in Twin Peaks. He also continued to make massively inventive solo albums, releasing roughly one every decade, each unique and yet all bearing the hallmarks of his idiosyncratic style. As you can imagine, he is very likely to come up again in future episodes, though we're leaving him for now. Meanwhile, the Beach Boys were floundering, and still had no album -- and now Parks was no longer working with Brian, the whole idea of Smile was scrapped. The priority was now to get a single done, and so work started on a new, finished, version of "Heroes and Villains", structured in a fairly conventional manner using elements of the Smile recordings. The group were suffering from numerous interlocking problems at this point, and everyone was stressed -- they were suing their record label, Dennis' wife had filed for divorce, Brian was having mental health problems, and Carl had been arrested for draft dodging -- though he was later able to mount a successful defence that he was a conscientious objector. Also, at some point around this time, Bruce Johnston seems to have temporarily quit the group, though this was never announced -- he doesn't seem to have been at any sessions from late May or early June through mid-September, and didn't attend the two shows they performed in that time. They were meant to have performed three shows, but even though Brian was on the board of the Monterey Pop Festival, they pulled out at the last minute, saying that they needed to deal with getting the new single finished and with Carl's draft problems. Some or all of these other issues almost certainly fed into that, but the end result was that the Beach Boys were seen to have admitted defeat, to have handed the crown of relevance off to the San Francisco groups. And even if Smile had been released, there were other releases stealing its thunder. If it had come out in December it would have been massively ahead of its time, but after the Beatles released Sgt Pepper it would have seemed like it was a cheap copy -- though Parks has always said he believes the Beatles heard some of the Smile tapes and copied elements of the recordings, though I don't hear much similarity myself. But I do hear a strong similarity in "My World Fell Down" by Sagittarius, which came out in June, and which was largely made by erstwhile collaborators of Brian -- Gary Usher produced, Glen Campbell sang lead, and Bruce Johnston sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "My World Fell Down"] Brian was very concerned after hearing that that someone *had* heard the Smile tapes, and one can understand why. When "Heroes and Villains" finally came out, it was a great single, but only made number twelve in the charts. It was fantastic, but out of step with the times, and nothing could have lived up to the hype that had built up around it: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains"] Instead of Smile, the group released an album called Smiley Smile, recorded in a couple of months in Brian's home studio, with no studio musicians and no involvement from Bruce, other than the previously released singles, and with the production credited to "the Beach Boys" rather than Brian. Smiley Smile has been unfairly dismissed over the years, but it's actually an album that was ahead of its time. It's a collection of stripped down versions of Smile songs and new fragments using some of the same motifs, recorded with minimal instrumentation. Some of it is on a par with the Smile material it's based on: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wonderful"] Some is, to my ears, far more beautiful than the Smile versions: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wind Chimes"] And some has a fun goofiness which relates back to one of Brian's discarded ideas for Smile, that it be a humour album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "She's Going Bald"] The album was a commercial flop, by far the least successful thing the group had released to that point in the US, not even making the top forty when it came out in September, though it made the top ten in the UK, but interestingly it *wasn't* a critical flop, at least at first. While the scrapping of Smile had been mentioned, it still wasn't widely known, and so for example Richard Goldstein, the journalist whose glowing review of "Donovan's Colours" in the Village Voice had secured Van Dyke Parks the opportunity to make Song Cycle, gave it a review in the New York Times which is written as if Goldstein at least believes it *is* the album that had been promised all along, and he speaks of it very perceptively -- and here I'm going to quote quite extensively, because the narrative about this album has always been that it was panned from the start and made the group a laughing stock: "Smiley Smile hardly reads like a rock cantata. But there are moments in songs such as 'With Me Tonight' and 'Wonderful' that soar like sacred music. Even the songs that seem irrelevant to a rock-hymn are infused with stained-glass melodies. Wilson is a sound sculptor and his songs are all harmonious litanies to the gentle holiness of love — post-Christian, perhaps but still believing. 'Wind Chimes', the most important piece on the album, is a fine example of Brian Wilson's organic pop structure. It contains three movements. First, Wilson sets a lyric and melodic mood ("In the late afternoon, you're hung up on wind chimes"). Then he introduces a totally different scene, utilizing passages of pure, wordless harmony. His two-and-a-half minute hymn ends with a third movement in which the voices join together in an exquisite round, singing the words, "Whisperin' winds set my wind chimes a-tinklin'." The voices fade out slowly, like the bittersweet afternoon in question. The technique of montage is an important aspect of Wilson's rock cantata, since the entire album tends to flow as a single composition. Songs like 'Heroes and Villains', are fragmented by speeding up or slowing down their verses and refrains. The effect is like viewing the song through a spinning prism. Sometimes, as in 'Fall Breaks and Back to Winter' (subtitled "W. Woodpecker Symphony"), the music is tiered into contrapuntal variations on a sliver of melody. The listener is thrown into a vast musical machine of countless working gears, each spinning in its own orbit." That's a discussion of the album that I hear when I listen to Smiley Smile, and the group seem to have been artistically happy with it, at least at first. They travelled to Hawaii to record a live album (with Brian, as Bruce was still out of the picture), taking the Baldwin organ that Brian used all over Smiley Smile with them, and performed rearranged versions of their old hits in the Smiley Smile style. When the recordings proved unusable, they recreated them in the studio, with Bruce returning to the group, where he would remain, with the intention of overdubbing audience noise and releasing a faked live album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "California Girls [Lei'd studio version]"] The idea of the live album, to be called Lei'd in Hawaii, was scrapped, but that's not the kind of radical reimagining of your sound that you do if you think you've made an artistic failure. Indeed, the group's next albu

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