Podcasts about muscle shoals

Travis Wammack is a legendary guitarist and recording artist whose guitar licks have been featured on an estimated 60 million records sold. He was the first to develop and use the fuzz tone for an electric guitar. At the age of 16, he had his 1963 number-one hit, “Scratchy,” and by 1969, Wammack's skills landed him in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. There he teamed up with legendary producer Rick Hall at FAME Studios to record songs with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Little Richard, Mac Davis, Clarence Carter, the Osmond Brothers, Bobbie Gentry, Sam Cooke, and many others. Sit down with a legend and find out why Rolling Stone called Travis the “Fastest Guitar Player in the South” on this episode of "Rick & Bubba University"! Sponsors: Raycon: Whether you're working from home these days or just working on your fitness, now's the perfect time to get a pair of Premium Wireless Earbuds. Raycon ear buds start at about ½ the price of other premium brands you'll find out there on the market -- but they sound just as amazing.  You'll get 15% off your order when you go to https://BUYRAYCON.com/rickbubbapod.  Ladder is revolutionizing an age-old industry offering term life insurance at a personalized price, that can flex as your needs change. Why not pay a bit each month to protect the ones you love? Ladder makes it impressively fast and easy to get covered. You just need a few minutes, and a phone or laptop to apply. Ladder's smart algorithms work in real-time, so you'll find out instantly if you're approved. No hidden fees. Cancel any time. At Ladder, they've created a painless way to get the life insurance coverage you need for those you care about most. Check out Ladder today to see if you're instantly approved. Go to https://ladderlife.com/rickbubba. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

LEXI T.   Lexi is a talented recording artist hailing from Washington DC, known for her soulful R&B music. Her love for music started at a young age, as she watched her mother practice and sing at their family church. Lexi quickly began to mimic the songs and soon joined the youth choir, where her soulful voice was nurtured. As she grew older, Lexi began to perform at talent shows throughout Washington DC and take her music more seriously. By the age of 15, she had started working with Kemet Productions and was performing out of town, even earning the opportunity to perform at the NAACP Image Awards Pre show in LA. Lexi's talent and hard work led her to perform at esteemed venues such as the Roosevelt Hotel, the Cotton Club, and the legendary Apollo Theater by the time she was 16. Lexi has continued to work on her music and has gained a loyal following of fans who appreciate her unique style of R&B soul. Her new wave of live R&B soul promises to take the world by storm, and her new single "Table Manners" is already generating buzz and predicted to be a hit. With her powerful voice and magnetic stage presence, Lexi is poised for even greater success in the music industry. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ CHARLOTTA KERBS & THE STRAYS   Charlotta Kerbs & The Strays is a band co-founded by Finnish singer/songwriter Charlotta Kerbs and bassist/producer and songwriter Darrell Craig Harris (Cirque Du Soleil, Billy Preston, QUEEN Rock Symphony). Originally founded as an online collaboration, this new group has grown into a new two new singles, and an upcoming album release “Muscle Shoals Sessions” recorded this past December at the legendary FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama!

My special guest and fellow bass-player is Robban Hagnäs, a man of many hats - The owner of the Finnish record label - Ramasound Records Scandinavia. Well known Finnish bass player from the Wentus Blues band, show promoter and booking agent, producer, and club owner - phew, busy man! We talk about a lot of things. Robban is a really nice guy, and in fact the band Charlotta Kerbs and the Strays which I am part of, and recently tour Finland with is also on the Ramasound Records label. Robban steps up when I need a really high-quality bass to player with on tour in Finland and Sweden earlier this year.  so...listen in and enjoy our chat that covers a lot of ground. You can checkout Robban Hagnäs on his Facebook page, and more... https://www.facebook.com/robban.hagnas https://www.ramasound.com/ Music Matters with Darrell Craig Harris is sponsored by Kathy Ireland Worldwide & with support from Music Crowns in London, and Nigel John Farmer.~ my co-producer and voice over talent from his studio @VoiceWrapStudio.com Our thanks to Rodney Hall FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama for our intro and outro backing music clip.    A Big Shout and thanks to our friends at #AudioGeer , @sullenfamily and the awesome support! #Shure #MV7 #podcast mic!  Please check out our Music Matters podcast on @spotifypodcasts Hey, also check out the New Music Matters Podcast Website-  Please, support, LIKE and help us grow - check out our Social Media pages: #music #love #hiphop #rap #art #musician #artist #musica #instagood #singer #instagram #rock #like #dance #guitar #photography #song #bhfyp  #newmusic #life #producer #fashion #rapper #viral #songwriter #creative #podcast    

"If you keep your head and your ass in the same place, that'll happen on its own," says Jason Isbell on how he gets the most out of his live performances. On the heels of a new HBO documentary, he and Cory sit down for a deep discussion, talking creating genuine art that can also turn into hits, Muscle Shoals, and the intersection between "guitarist" and "songwriter"—as well as "for life" gear choices.Get 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywongVisit Jason Isbell: http://jasonisbell.comHit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.comVisit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.comVisit Premier Guitar: http://premierguitar.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/wongnotespodIG: https://www.instagram.com/wongnotespodProduced by Jason Shadrick and Cory WongAdditional Editing by Shawn PersingerPresented by DistroKid

This episode is brought to you by the 4th Annual BATify Freedom 5K for St. Jude. You can register here:https://www.benandtravis.com/store/p/batify or for sponsorship info email us at hello@benandtravis.com. We join Ben, Travis, Will and Blake on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Muscle Shoals, Alabama for the University of North Alabama Christian Student Center. The guys are participating for the 3rd year in a row. As Will shows out and keeps us in the mix, we ask each other some questions and we get some interesting answers. Is golf a sport? What is the importance of campus ministry on university campuses? What is your least favorite sports rule? Why do people love sports so much and does it have a purpose? What are the positives and negatives to having a group text? What is your "old man, get off my lawn" unpopular opinion? Join us for some fun on the links! Links mentioned in this episode: Get our free ebook "28 Days of Focused Living" here: https://www.benandtravis.com https://www.facebook.com/groups/benandtravis For extra content and material you can use for your family or ministry go to https://www.patreon.com/benandtravis Represent the show: https://www.benandtravis.com/store The Friday ReFresh: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-friday-refresh/id1611969995 Good Old Fashioned Dislike Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-old-fashioned-dislike/id1643163790 This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

They all came to Muscle Shoals and were all surprised.

Charlotta Kerbs & The Strays is a band co-founded by Finnish singer/songwriter Charlotta Kerbs and bassist/producer and songwriter Darrell Craig Harris (Cirque Du Soleil, Billy Preston, QUEEN Rock Symphony). Originally founded as an online collaboration, this new group has grown into a new two new singles, and an upcoming album release “Muscle Shoals Sessions” recorded this past December at the legendary FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama!   Every Step I Take from our new album “Muscle Shoals Sessions” recorded at the legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama

In 1966, Wilson Pickett entered FAME studios in Muscle Shoals to record some of his most famous songs of all time, including the now legendary – “Mustang Sally.” Originally written by Pickett's former Falcons bandmate, Sir Mack Rice, Pickett's version, produced by Atlantic Records' Jerry Wexler and FAME studios owner Rick Hall, took a great Rhythm and Blues hit to mainstream success, with the talents of the studio's incredible house musicians.  Subscribe to the email list and get yourself some free goodies: https://producelikeapro.com  Want to create radio ready mixes from the comfort of your home? Go check out https://promixacademy.com/courses/  Check out all other services here: https://linktr.ee/producelikeapro

--The Deep South Arrival Song (Lynyrd Skynyrd) --The Deep South Torture Basement! --The Deep South's Favorite Daughter (Britney Spears) --Our Three Songs/Artists/Albums! (Muscle Shoals, Robert Johnson, and John Lee Hooker) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tigs, JR The Handler, and Chad Blasi get into a Southern state of mind as they talk about the Muscle Shoals sound and share some of their experiences visiting the famous recording studios in Alabama. From Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Swampers, this trio covers it all. So kick back, grab a cold one, and tune in for some good ol' Southern rock talk with the Tigs Bits crew. www.tigsbits.com www.jrthehandler.com

Nate Ridgeway is a singer-songwriter from the Chattanooga, TN area. His style is easy rock with themes on love and life. His upcoming solo record “The Emancipation of a Heart” will be recorded this August in world famous and historic Muscle Shoals. You can support the project at nateridgeway.com.

You may not expect to hear names like Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan mentioned when studying the history of hydropower. You might know that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act in 1933, establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which has 29 power-generating dams in its power system, but you may not realize how much of a role FDR played in other hydropower projects. It's frankly an understatement to say all three of these men were hugely important in the development of U.S. hydropower. “I almost guarantee that most people do not realize that Henry Ford was such a significant player. He was a strong proponent of hydropower. He looked at water as free,” Bob Underwood, author of the book DAM IT! Electrifying America and Taming Her Waterways, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “He was experimenting with hydropower from the time he was a kid. He went on to develop 30 different hydroelectric facilities—small and large.” Underwood explained that Ford was also part of a major hydropower battle. It involved the Wilson Dam near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a small town located on the southern bank of the Tennessee River. President Woodrow Wilson had authorized construction of the Wilson Dam in 1916. The hydropower plant was intended to provide electricity for a munitions facility that was supporting the war effort during World War I, but the war ended before the dam was completed. Construction on the project languished after the war while Congress debated what to do with the property. Some senators wanted to sell the dam to a private company while others thought the government should retain public control of the property. Henry Ford made a surprise inspection tour of the Muscle Shoals facilities and the Wilson Dam site in June 1921. A month later, he submitted a bid for all the federal properties associated with the site. “And that's where he got into it with Senator Norris [from Nebraska], and that went on for four or five years,” said Underwood. Norris was one of the biggest public power advocates around. Although technically a Republican, Norris was fiercely independent and regularly collaborated with FDR, a Democrat. “[Ford] lost, but that sure elevated the view of hydropower in this world,” said Underwood. Although J.P. Morgan passed away a little over a year before World War I began, he played an important role in the history of hydropower during his lifetime. Underwood said even he didn't realize how influential J.P. Morgan was to the electric power generation industry before he started doing research for his book. He said Morgan was pulling strings behind the scenes, not only in the electrical business, but in everything else that was going on in his day. “He was always trying to build a monopoly in whatever industry it was,” said Underwood. “He manipulated Edison to merge another company of the time—a big competitor, Thomson-Houston—into Edison General Electric to form General Electric, essentially shoving Edison aside and out of his own company. And J.P. Morgan kept having huge influence through the financing of the industry—both the hydroelectric side of it, as well as the coal-fired side of it,” Underwood explained. But when it comes to big hydro projects, FDR gets much of the credit for making them happen. “He changed the industry,” Underwood said on the podcast. “Very influential.” Among FDR's significant hydropower accomplishments are two projects on the Columbia River: Bonneville and Grand Coulee. Four months after taking office in March 1933, FDR was able to cut through years of conflicts to get construction underway. Underwood wrote in his book, “His actions clearly established federal authority over the waters of the West."

On this episode we discuss a few of the sudden losses to the rock and roll community, the new album and song from Extreme and Metallica, and we climb the Wall of Tunes for a blues rock icon with a husky voice and a penchant for blues harp. The letter of the day is T. And did you know that Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers? #extreme #metallica #delbertmclinton #theswampershttps://www.facebook.com/obrienanddoug/ https://instagram.com/obrien_and_doug

My guests on today's episode were AJ and JJ Fountain, bandmates with locally-famous campfire folk music band A Brothers Fountain, and co-founders and partners of Stoked Ember Productions.  This was the brothers' 2nd time on the podcast, because I think they're a lot of fun to be around, and they always share great stories!  The brothers and most of the band went on a 20-day, 18-show tour this fall, all across the midwest and southeast and points between.  Followed shortly after that was a weeklong intensive recording session in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where they laid down their finest sounds so far - stay tuned for more on that!  In this episode, JJ shares an awesome story about going viral on the Jerry of the Day Instagram channel via a kayak on a ski slope!  Always fun to spend time with these two, so I hope you'll tune in for my conversation with AJ and JJ Fountain.  Episode Sponsor: InMotion, providing next-day delivery for local businesses. Contact InMotion at inmotionnoco@gmail.com

Episode 163 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay", Stax Records, and the short, tragic, life of Otis Redding. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-three minute bonus episode available, on "Soul Man" by Sam and Dave. 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 No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Redding, even if I split into multiple parts. The main resource I used for the biographical details of Redding was Dreams to Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul by Mark Ribowsky. Ribowsky is usually a very good, reliable, writer, but in this case there are a couple of lapses in editing which make it not a book I can wholeheartedly recommend, but the research on the biographical details of Redding seems to be the best. Information about Stax comes primarily from two books: Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax by Rob Bowman, and Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. There are two Original Album Series box sets which between them contain all the albums Redding released in his life plus his first few posthumous albums, for a low price. Volume 1, volume 2. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I begin -- this episode ends with a description of a plane crash, which some people may find upsetting. There's also a mention of gun violence. In 2019 the film Summer of Soul came out. If you're unfamiliar with this film, it's a documentary of an event, the Harlem Cultural Festival, which gets called the "Black Woodstock" because it took place in the summer of 1969, overlapping the weekend that Woodstock happened. That event was a series of weekend free concerts in New York, performed by many of the greatest acts in Black music at that time -- people like Stevie Wonder, David Ruffin, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, the Staple Singers, Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone, and the Fifth Dimension. One thing that that film did was to throw into sharp relief a lot of the performances we've seen over the years by legends of white rock music of the same time. If you watch the film of Woodstock, or the earlier Monterey Pop festival, it's apparent that a lot of the musicians are quite sloppy. This is easy to dismiss as being a product of the situation -- they're playing outdoor venues, with no opportunity to soundcheck, using primitive PA systems, and often without monitors. Anyone would sound a bit sloppy in that situation, right? That is until you listen to the performances on the Summer of Soul soundtrack. The performers on those shows are playing in the same kind of circumstances, and in the case of Woodstock literally at the same time, so it's a fair comparison, and there really is no comparison. Whatever you think of the quality of the *music* (and some of my very favourite artists played at Monterey and Woodstock), the *musicianship* is orders of magnitude better at the Harlem Cultural Festival [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips “I Heard it Through the Grapevine (live)”] And of course there's a reason for this. Most of the people who played at those big hippie festivals had not had the same experiences as the Black musicians. The Black players were mostly veterans of the chitlin' circuit, where you had to play multiple shows a day, in front of demanding crowds who wanted their money's worth, and who wanted you to be able to play and also put on a show at the same time. When you're playing for crowds of working people who have spent a significant proportion of their money to go to the show, and on a bill with a dozen other acts who are competing for that audience's attention, you are going to get good or stop working. The guitar bands at Woodstock and Monterey, though, hadn't had the same kind of pressure. Their audiences were much more forgiving, much more willing to go with the musicians, view themselves as part of a community with them. And they had to play far fewer shows than the chitlin' circuit veterans, so they simply didn't develop the same chops before becoming famous (the best of them did after fame, of course). And so it's no surprise that while a lot of bands became more famous as a result of the Monterey Pop Festival, only three really became breakout stars in America as a direct result of it. One of those was the Who, who were already the third or fourth biggest band in the UK by that point, either just behind or just ahead of the Kinks, and so the surprise is more that it took them that long to become big in America. But the other two were themselves veterans of the chitlin' circuit. If you buy the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Monterey Pop, you get two extra discs along with the disc with the film of the full festival on it -- the only two performances that were thought worth turning into their own short mini-films. One of them is Jimi Hendrix's performance, and we will talk about that in a future episode. The other is titled Shake! Otis at Monterey: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Shake! (live at Monterey Pop Festival)"] Otis Redding came from Macon, Georgia, the home town of Little Richard, who became one of his biggest early influences, and like Richard he was torn in his early years between religion and secular music -- though in most other ways he was very different from Richard, and in particular he came from a much more supportive family. While his father, Otis senior, was a deacon in the church, and didn't approve much of blues, R&B, or jazz music or listen to it himself, he didn't prevent his son from listening to it, so young Otis grew up listening to records by Richard -- of whom he later said "If it hadn't been for Little Richard I would not be here... Richard has soul too. My present music has a lot of him in it" -- and another favourite, Clyde McPhatter: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Have Mercy Baby"] Indeed, it's unclear exactly how much Otis senior *did* disapprove of those supposedly-sinful kinds of music. The biography I used as a source for this, and which says that Otis senior wouldn't listen to blues or jazz music at all, also quotes his son as saying that when he was a child his mother and father used to play him "a calypso song out then called 'Run Joe'" That will of course be this one: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, "Run Joe"] I find it hard to reconcile the idea of someone who refused to listen to the blues or jazz listening to Louis Jordan, but then people are complex. Whatever Otis senior's feelings about secular music, he recognised from a very early age that his son had a special talent, and encouraged him to become a gospel singer. And at the same time he was listening to Little Richard, young Otis was also listening to gospel singers. One particular influence was a blind street singer, Reverend Pearly Brown: [Excerpt: Reverend Pearly Brown, "Ninety Nine and a Half Won't Do"] Redding was someone who cared deeply about his father's opinion, and it might well have been that he would eventually have become a gospel performer, because he started his career with a foot in both camps. What seems to have made the difference is that when he was sixteen, his father came down with tuberculosis. Even a few years earlier this would have been a terminal diagnosis, but thankfully by this point antibiotics had been invented, and the deacon eventually recovered. But it did mean that Otis junior had to become the family breadwinner while his father was sick, and so he turned decisively towards the kind of music that could make more money. He'd already started performing secular music. He'd joined a band led by Gladys Williams, who was the first female bandleader in the area. Williams sadly doesn't seem to have recorded anything -- discogs has a listing of a funk single by a Gladys Williams on a tiny label which may or may not be the same person, but in general she avoided recording studios, only wanting to play live -- but she was a very influential figure in Georgia music. According to her former trumpeter Newton Collier, who later went on to play with Redding and others, she trained both Fats Gonder and Lewis Hamlin, who went on to join the lineup of James Brown's band that made Live at the Apollo, and Collier says that Hamlin's arrangements for that album, and the way the band would segue from one track to another, were all things he'd been taught by Miss Gladys. Redding sang with Gladys Williams for a while, and she took him under her wing, trained him, and became his de facto first manager. She got him to perform at local talent shows, where he won fifteen weeks in a row, before he got banned from performing to give everyone else a chance. At all of these shows, the song he performed was one that Miss Gladys had rehearsed with him, Little Richard's "Heeby Jeebies": [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Heeby Jeebies"] At this time, Redding's repertoire was largely made up of songs by the two greats of fifties Georgia R&B -- Little Richard and James Brown -- plus some by his other idol Sam Cooke, and those singers would remain his greatest influences throughout his career. After his stint with Williams, Redding went on to join another band, Pat T Cake and the Mighty Panthers, whose guitarist Johnny Jenkins would be a major presence in his life for several years. The Mighty Panthers were soon giving Redding top billing, and advertising gigs as featuring Otis "Rockin' Robin" Redding -- presumably that was another song in his live repertoire. By this time Redding was sounding enough like Little Richard that when Richard's old backing band, The Upsetters, were looking for a new singer after Richard quit rock and roll for the ministry, they took Redding on as their vocalist for a tour. Once that tour had ended, Redding returned home to find that Johnny Jenkins had quit the Mighty Panthers and formed a new band, the Pinetoppers. Redding joined that band, who were managed by a white teenager named Phil Walden, who soon became Redding's personal manager as well. Walden and Redding developed a very strong bond, to the extent that Walden, who was studying at university, spent all his tuition money promoting Redding and almost got kicked out. When Redding found this out, he actually went round to everyone he knew and got loans from everyone until he had enough to pay for Walden's tuition -- much of it paid in coins. They had a strong enough bond that Walden would remain his manager for the rest of Redding's life, and even when Walden had to do two years in the Army in Germany, he managed Redding long-distance, with his brother looking after things at home. But of course, there wasn't much of a music industry in Georgia, and so with Walden's blessing and support, he moved to LA in 1960 to try to become a star. Just before he left, his girlfriend Zelma told him she was pregnant. He assured her that he was only going to be away for a few months, and that he would be back in time for the birth, and that he intended to come back to Georgia rich and marry her. Her response was "Sure you is". In LA, Redding met up with a local record producer, James "Jimmy Mack" McEachin, who would later go on to become an actor, appearing in several films with Clint Eastwood. McEachin produced a session for Redding at Gold Star studios, with arrangements by Rene Hall and using several of the musicians who later became the Wrecking Crew. "She's All Right", the first single that came from that session, was intended to sound as much like Jackie Wilson as possible, and was released under the name of The Shooters, the vocal group who provided the backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Shooters, "She's All Right"] "She's All Right" was released on Trans World, a small label owned by Morris Bernstein, who also owned Finer Arts records (and "She's All Right" seems to have been released on both labels). Neither of Bernstein's labels had any great success -- the biggest record they put out was a single by the Hollywood Argyles that came out after they'd stopped having hits -- and they didn't have any connection to the R&B market. Redding and McEachin couldn't find any R&B labels that wanted to pick up their recordings, and so Redding did return to Georgia and marry Zelma a few days before the birth of their son Dexter. Back in Georgia, he hooked up again with the Pinetoppers, and he and Jenkins started trying local record labels, attempting to get records put out by either of them. Redding was the first, and Otis Redding and the Pinetoppers put out a single, "Shout Bamalama", a slight reworking of a song that he'd recorded as "Gamma Lamma" for McEachin, which was obviously heavily influenced by Little Richard: [Excerpt: Otis Redding and the Pinetoppers, "Shout Bamalama"] That single was produced by a local record company owner, Bobby Smith, who signed Redding to a contract which Redding didn't read, but which turned out to be a management contract as well as a record contract. This would later be a problem, as Redding didn't have an actual contract with Phil Walden -- one thing that comes up time and again in stories about music in the Deep South at this time is people operating on handshake deals and presuming good faith on the part of each other. There was a problem with the record which nobody had foreseen though -- Redding was the first Black artist signed to Smith's label, which was called Confederate Records, and its logo was the Southern Cross. Now Smith, by all accounts, was less personally racist than most white men in Georgia at the time, and hadn't intended that as any kind of statement of white supremacy -- he'd just used a popular local symbol, without thinking through the implications. But as the phrase goes, intent isn't magic, and while Smith didn't intend it as racist, rather unsurprisingly Black DJs and record shops didn't see things in the same light. Smith was told by several DJs that they wouldn't play the record while it was on that label, and he started up a new subsidiary label, Orbit, and put the record out on that label. Redding and Smith continued collaborating, and there were plans for Redding to put out a second single on Orbit. That single was going to be "These Arms of Mine", a song Redding had originally given to another Confederate artist, a rockabilly performer called Buddy Leach (who doesn't seem to be the same Buddy Leach as the Democratic politician from Louisiana, or the saxophone player with George Thorogood and the Destroyers). Leach had recorded it as a B-side, with the slightly altered title "These Arms Are Mine". Sadly I can't provide an excerpt of that, as the record is so rare that even websites I've found by rockabilly collectors who are trying to get everything on Confederate Records haven't managed to get hold of copies. Meanwhile, Johnny Jenkins had been recording on another label, Tifco, and had put out a single called "Pinetop": [Excerpt: Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers, "Pinetop"] That record had attracted the attention of Joe Galkin. Galkin was a semi-independent record promoter, who had worked for Atlantic in New York before moving back to his home town of Macon. Galkin had proved himself as a promoter by being responsible for the massive amounts of airplay given to Solomon Burke's "Just Out of Reach (of My Two Open Arms)": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Just Out of Reach (of My Two Open Arms)"] After that, Jerry Wexler had given Galkin fifty dollars a week and an expense account, and Galkin would drive to all the Black radio stations in the South and pitch Atlantic's records to them. But Galkin also had his own record label, Gerald Records, and when he went to those stations and heard them playing something from a smaller label, he would quickly negotiate with that smaller label, buy the master and the artist's contract, and put the record out on Gerald Records -- and then he would sell the track and the artist on to Atlantic, taking ten percent of the record's future earnings and a finder's fee. This is what happened with Johnny Jenkins' single, which was reissued on Gerald and then on Atlantic. Galkin signed Jenkins to a contract -- another of those contracts which also made him Jenkins' manager, and indeed the manager of the Pinetops. Jenkins' record ended up selling about twenty-five thousand records, but when Galkin saw the Pinetoppers performing live, he realised that Otis Redding was the real star. Since he had a contract with Jenkins, he came to an agreement with Walden, who was still Jenkins' manager as well as Redding's -- Walden would get fifty percent of Jenkins' publishing and they would be co-managers of Jenkins. But Galkin had plans for Redding, which he didn't tell anyone about, not even Redding himself. The one person he did tell was Jerry Wexler, who he phoned up and asked for two thousand dollars, explaining that he wanted to record Jenkins' follow-up single at Stax, and he also wanted to bring along a singer he'd discovered, who sang with Jenkins' band. Wexler agreed -- Atlantic had recently started distributing Stax's records on a handshake deal of much the same kind that Redding had with Walden. As far as everyone else was concerned, though, the session was just for Johnny Jenkins, the known quantity who'd already released a single for Atlantic. Otis Redding, meanwhile, was having to work a lot of odd jobs to feed his rapidly growing family, and one of those jobs was to work as Johnny Jenkins' driver, as Jenkins didn't have a driving license. So Galkin suggested that, given that Memphis was quite a long drive, Redding should drive Galkin and Jenkins to Stax, and carry the equipment for them. Bobby Smith, who still thought of himself as Redding's manager, was eager to help his friend's bandmate with his big break (and to help Galkin, in the hope that maybe Atlantic would start distributing Confederate too), and so he lent Redding the company station wagon to drive them to the session.The other Pinetoppers wouldn't be going -- Jenkins was going to be backed by Booker T and the MGs, the normal Stax backing band. Phil Walden, though, had told Redding that he should try to take the opportunity to get himself heard by Stax, and he pestered the musicians as they recorded Jenkins' "Spunky": [Excerpt: Johnny Jenkins, "Spunky"] Cropper later remembered “During the session, Al Jackson says to me, ‘The big tall guy that was driving Johnny, he's been bugging me to death, wanting me to hear him sing,' Al said, ‘Would you take some time and get this guy off of my back and listen to him?' And I said, ‘After the session I'll try to do it,' and then I just forgot about it.” What Redding didn't know, though Walden might have, is that Galkin had planned all along to get Redding to record while he was there. Galkin claimed to be Redding's manager, and told Jim Stewart, the co-owner of Stax who acted as main engineer and supervising producer on the sessions at this point, that Wexler had only funded the session on the basis that Redding would also get a shot at recording. Stewart was unimpressed -- Jenkins' session had not gone well, and it had taken them more than two hours to get two tracks down, but Galkin offered Stewart a trade -- Galkin, as Redding's manager, would take half of Stax's mechanical royalties for the records (which wouldn't be much) but in turn would give Stewart half the publishing on Redding's songs. That was enough to make Stewart interested, but by this point Booker T. Jones had already left the studio, so Steve Cropper moved to the piano for the forty minutes that was left of the session, with Jenkins remaining on guitar, and they tried to get two sides of a single cut. The first track they cut was "Hey Hey Baby", which didn't impress Stewart much -- he simply said that the world didn't need another Little Richard -- and so with time running out they cut another track, the ballad Redding had already given to Buddy Leach. He asked Cropper, who didn't play piano well, to play "church chords", by which he meant triplets, and Cropper said "he started singing ‘These Arms of Mine' and I know my hair lifted about three inches and I couldn't believe this guy's voice": [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "These Arms of Mine"] That was more impressive, though Stewart carefully feigned disinterest. Stewart and Galkin put together a contract which signed Redding to Stax -- though they put the single out on the less-important Volt subsidiary, as they did for much of Redding's subsequent output -- and gave Galkin and Stewart fifty percent each of the publishing rights to Redding's songs. Redding signed it, not even realising he was signing a proper contract rather than just one for a single record, because he was just used to signing whatever bit of paper was put in front of him at the time. This one was slightly different though, because Redding had had his twenty-first birthday since the last time he'd signed a contract, and so Galkin assumed that that meant all his other contracts were invalid -- not realising that Redding's contract with Bobby Smith had been countersigned by Redding's mother, and so was also legal. Walden also didn't realise that, but *did* realise that Galkin representing himself as Redding's manager to Stax might be a problem, so he quickly got Redding to sign a proper contract, formalising the handshake basis they'd been operating on up to that point. Walden was at this point in the middle of his Army service, but got the signature while he was home on leave. Walden then signed a deal with Galkin, giving Walden half of Galkin's fifty percent cut of Redding's publishing in return for Galkin getting a share of Walden's management proceeds. By this point everyone was on the same page -- Otis Redding was going to be a big star, and he became everyone's prime focus. Johnny Jenkins remained signed to Walden's agency -- which quickly grew to represent almost every big soul star that wasn't signed to Motown -- but he was regarded as a footnote. His record came out eventually on Volt, almost two years later, but he didn't release another record until 1968. Jenkins did, though, go on to have some influence. In 1970 he was given the opportunity to sing lead on an album backed by Duane Allman and the members of the Muscle Shoals studio band, many of whom went on to form the Allman Brothers Band. That record contained a cover of Dr. John's "I Walk on Guilded Splinters" which was later sampled by Beck for "Loser", the Wu-Tang Clan for "Gun Will Go" and Oasis for their hit "Go Let it Out": [Excerpt: Johnny Jenkins, "I Walk on Guilded Splinters"] Jenkins would play guitar on several future Otis Redding sessions, but would hold a grudge against Redding for the rest of his life for taking the stardom he thought was rightfully his, and would be one of the few people to have anything negative to say about Redding after his early death. When Bobby Smith heard about the release of "These Arms of Mine", he was furious, as his contract with Redding *was* in fact legally valid, and he'd been intending to get Redding to record the song himself. However, he realised that Stax could call on the resources of Atlantic Records, and Joe Galkin also hinted that if he played nice Atlantic might start distributing Confederate, too. Smith signed away all his rights to Redding -- again, thinking that he was only signing away the rights to a single record and song, and not reading the contract closely enough. In this case, Smith only had one working eye, and that wasn't good enough to see clearly -- he had to hold paper right up to his face to read anything on it -- and he simply couldn't read the small print on the contract, and so signed over Otis Redding's management, record contract, and publishing, for a flat seven hundred dollars. Now everything was legally -- if perhaps not ethically -- in the clear. Phil Walden was Otis Redding's manager, Stax was his record label, Joe Galkin got a cut off the top, and Walden, Galkin, and Jim Stewart all shared Redding's publishing. Although, to make it a hit, one more thing had to happen, and one more person had to get a cut of the song: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "These Arms of Mine"] That sound was becoming out of fashion among Black listeners at the time. It was considered passe, and even though the Stax musicians loved the record, Jim Stewart didn't, and put it out not because he believed in Otis Redding, but because he believed in Joe Galkin. As Stewart later said “The Black radio stations were getting out of that Black country sound, we put it out to appease and please Joe.” For the most part DJs ignored the record, despite Galkin pushing it -- it was released in October 1962, that month which we have already pinpointed as the start of the sixties, and came out at the same time as a couple of other Stax releases, and the one they were really pushing was Carla Thomas' "I'll Bring it Home to You", an answer record to Sam Cooke's "Bring it On Home to Me": [Excerpt: Carla Thomas, "I'll Bring it Home to You"] "These Arms of Mine" wasn't even released as the A-side -- that was "Hey Hey Baby" -- until John R came along. John R was a Nashville DJ, and in fact he was the reason that Bobby Smith even knew that Redding had signed to Stax. R had heard Buddy Leach's version of the song, and called Smith, who was a friend of his, to tell him that his record had been covered, and that was the first Smith had heard of the matter. But R also called Jim Stewart at Stax, and told him that he was promoting the wrong side, and that if they started promoting "These Arms of Mine", R would play the record on his radio show, which could be heard in twenty-eight states. And, as a gesture of thanks for this suggestion -- and definitely not as payola, which would be very illegal -- Stewart gave R his share of the publishing rights to the song, which eventually made the top twenty on the R&B charts, and slipped into the lower end of the Hot One Hundred. "These Arms of Mine" was actually recorded at a turning point for Stax as an organisation. By the time it was released, Booker T Jones had left Memphis to go to university in Indiana to study music, with his tuition being paid for by his share of the royalties for "Green Onions", which hit the charts around the same time as Redding's first session: [Excerpt: Booker T. and the MGs, "Green Onions"] Most of Stax's most important sessions were recorded at weekends -- Jim Stewart still had a day job as a bank manager at this point, and he supervised the records that were likely to be hits -- so Jones could often commute back to the studio for session work, and could play sessions during his holidays. The rest of the time, other people would cover the piano parts, often Cropper, who played piano on Redding's next sessions, with Jenkins once again on guitar. As "These Arms of Mine" didn't start to become a hit until March, Redding didn't go into the studio again until June, when he cut the follow-up, "That's What My Heart Needs", with the MGs, Jenkins, and the horn section of the Mar-Keys. That made number twenty-seven on the Cashbox R&B chart -- this was in the period when Billboard had stopped having one. The follow-up, "Pain in My Heart", was cut in September and did even better, making number eleven on the Cashbox R&B chart: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Pain in My Heart"] It did well enough in fact that the Rolling Stones cut a cover version of the track: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Pain in My Heart"] Though Redding didn't get the songwriting royalties -- by that point Allen Toussaint had noticed how closely it resembled a song he'd written for Irma Thomas, "Ruler of My Heart": [Excerpt: Irma Thomas, "Ruler of My Heart"] And so the writing credit was changed to be Naomi Neville, one of the pseudonyms Toussaint used. By this point Redding was getting steady work, and becoming a popular live act. He'd put together his own band, and had asked Jenkins to join, but Jenkins didn't want to play second fiddle to him, and refused, and soon stopped being invited to the recording sessions as well. Indeed, Redding was *eager* to get as many of his old friends working with him as he could. For his second and third sessions, as well as bringing Jenkins, he'd brought along a whole gang of musicians from his touring show, and persuaded Stax to put out records by them, too. At those sessions, as well as Redding's singles, they also cut records by his valet (which was the term R&B performers in those years used for what we'd now call a gofer or roadie) Oscar Mack: [Excerpt: Oscar Mack, "Don't Be Afraid of Love"] For Eddie Kirkland, the guitarist in his touring band, who had previously played with John Lee Hooker and whose single was released under the name "Eddie Kirk": [Excerpt: Eddie Kirk, "The Hawg, Part 1"] And Bobby Marchan, a singer and female impersonator from New Orleans who had had some massive hits a few years earlier both on his own and as the singer with Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns, but had ended up in Macon without a record deal and been taken under Redding's wing: [Excerpt: Bobby Marchan, "What Can I Do?"] Redding would continue, throughout his life, to be someone who tried to build musical careers for his friends, though none of those singles was successful. The changes in Stax continued. In late autumn 1963, Atlantic got worried by the lack of new product coming from Stax. Carla Thomas had had a couple of R&B hits, and they were expecting a new single, but every time Jerry Wexler phoned Stax asking where the new single was, he was told it would be coming soon but the equipment was broken. After a couple of weeks of this, Wexler decided something fishy was going on, and sent Tom Dowd, his genius engineer, down to Stax to investigate. Dowd found when he got there that the equipment *was* broken, and had been for weeks, and was a simple fix. When Dowd spoke to Stewart, though, he discovered that they didn't know where to source replacement parts from. Dowd phoned his assistant in New York, and told him to go to the electronics shop and get the parts he needed. Then, as there were no next-day courier services at that time, Dowd's assistant went to the airport, found a flight attendant who was flying to Memphis, and gave her the parts and twenty-five dollars, with a promise of twenty-five more if she gave them to Dowd at the other end. The next morning, Dowd had the equipment fixed, and everyone involved became convinced that Dowd was a miracle worker, especially after he showed Steve Cropper some rudimentary tape-manipulation techniques that Cropper had never encountered before. Dowd had to wait around in Memphis for his flight, so he went to play golf with the musicians for a bit, and then they thought they might as well pop back to the studio and test the equipment out. When they did, Rufus Thomas -- Carla Thomas' father, who had also had a number of hits himself on Stax and Sun -- popped his head round the door to see if the equipment was working now. They told him it was, and he said he had a song if they were up for a spot of recording. They were, and so when Dowd flew back that night, he was able to tell Wexler not only that the next Carla Thomas single would soon be on its way, but that he had the tapes of a big hit single with him right there: [Excerpt: Rufus Thomas, "Walking the Dog"] "Walking the Dog" was a sensation. Jim Stewart later said “I remember our first order out of Chicago. I was in New York in Jerry Wexler's office at the time and Paul Glass, who was our distributor in Chicago, called in an order for sixty-five thousand records. I said to Jerry, ‘Do you mean sixty-five hundred?' And he said, ‘Hell no, he wants sixty-five thousand.' That was the first order! He believed in the record so much that we ended up selling about two hundred thousand in Chicago alone.” The record made the top ten on the pop charts, but that wasn't the biggest thing that Dowd had taken away from the session. He came back raving to Wexler about the way they made records in Memphis, and how different it was from the New York way. In New York, there was a strict separation between the people in the control room and the musicians in the studio, the musicians were playing from written charts, and everyone had a job and did just that job. In Memphis, the musicians were making up the arrangements as they went, and everyone was producing or engineering all at the same time. Dowd, as someone with more technical ability than anyone at Stax, and who was also a trained musician who could make musical suggestions, was soon regularly commuting down to Memphis to be part of the production team, and Jerry Wexler was soon going down to record with other Atlantic artists there, as we heard about in the episode on "Midnight Hour". Shortly after Dowd's first visit to Memphis, another key member of the Stax team entered the picture. Right at the end of 1963, Floyd Newman recorded a track called "Frog Stomp", on which he used his own band rather than the MGs and Mar-Keys: [Excerpt: Floyd Newman, "Frog Stomp"] The piano player and co-writer on that track was a young man named Isaac Hayes, who had been trying to get work at Stax for some time. He'd started out as a singer, and had made a record, "Laura, We're On Our Last Go-Round", at American Sound, the studio run by the former Stax engineer and musician Chips Moman: [Excerpt: Isaac Hayes, "Laura, We're On Our Last Go-Round"] But that hadn't been a success, and Hayes had continued working a day job at a slaughterhouse -- and would continue doing so for much of the next few years, even after he started working at Stax (it's truly amazing how many of the people involved in Stax were making music as what we would now call a side-hustle). Hayes had become a piano player as a way of getting a little extra money -- he'd been offered a job as a fill-in when someone else had pulled out at the last minute on a gig on New Year's Eve, and took it even though he couldn't actually play piano, and spent his first show desperately vamping with two fingers, and was just lucky the audience was too drunk to care. But he had a remarkable facility for the instrument, and while unlike Booker T Jones he would never gain a great deal of technical knowledge, and was embarrassed for the rest of his life by both his playing ability and his lack of theory knowledge, he was as great as they come at soul, at playing with feel, and at inventing new harmonies on the fly. They still didn't have a musician at Stax that could replace Booker T, who was still off at university, so Isaac Hayes was taken on as a second session keyboard player, to cover for Jones when Jones was in Indiana -- though Hayes himself also had to work his own sessions around his dayjob, so didn't end up playing on "In the Midnight Hour", for example, because he was at the slaughterhouse. The first recording session that Hayes played on as a session player was an Otis Redding single, either his fourth single for Stax, "Come to Me", or his fifth, "Security": [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Security"] "Security" is usually pointed to by fans as the point at which Redding really comes into his own, and started directing the musicians more. There's a distinct difference, in particular, in the interplay between Cropper's guitar, the Mar-Keys' horns, and Redding's voice. Where previously the horns had tended to play mostly pads, just holding chords under Redding's voice, now they were starting to do answering phrases. Jim Stewart always said that the only reason Stax used a horn section at all was because he'd been unable to find a decent group of backing vocalists, and the function the horns played on most of the early Stax recordings was somewhat similar to the one that the Jordanaires had played for Elvis, or the Picks for Buddy Holly, basically doing "oooh" sounds to fatten out the sound, plus the odd sax solo or simple riff. The way Redding used the horns, though, was more like the way Ray Charles used the Raelettes, or the interplay of a doo-wop vocal group, with call and response, interjections, and asides. He also did something in "Security" that would become a hallmark of records made at Stax -- instead of a solo, the instrumental break is played by the horns as an ensemble: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Security"] According to Wayne Jackson, the Mar-Keys' trumpeter, Redding was the one who had the idea of doing these horn ensemble sections, and the musicians liked them enough that they continued doing them on all the future sessions, no matter who with. The last Stax single of 1964 took the "Security" sound and refined it, and became the template for every big Stax hit to follow. "Mr. Pitiful" was the first collaboration between Redding and Steve Cropper, and was primarily Cropper's idea. Cropper later remembered “There was a disc jockey here named Moohah. He started calling Otis ‘Mr. Pitiful' 'cause he sounded so pitiful singing his ballads. So I said, ‘Great idea for a song!' I got the idea for writing about it in the shower. I was on my way down to pick up Otis. I got down there and I was humming it in the car. I said, ‘Hey, what do you think about this?' We just wrote the song on the way to the studio, just slapping our hands on our legs. We wrote it in about ten minutes, went in, showed it to the guys, he hummed a horn line, boom—we had it. When Jim Stewart walked in we had it all worked up. Two or three cuts later, there it was.” [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Mr. Pitiful"] Cropper would often note later that Redding would never write about himself, but that Cropper would put details of Redding's life and persona into the songs, from "Mr. Pitiful" right up to their final collaboration, in which Cropper came up with lines about leaving home in Georgia. "Mr Pitiful" went to number ten on the R&B chart and peaked at number forty-one on the hot one hundred, and its B-side, "That's How Strong My Love Is", also made the R&B top twenty. Cropper and Redding soon settled into a fruitful writing partnership, to the extent that Cropper even kept a guitar permanently tuned to an open chord so that Redding could use it. Redding couldn't play the guitar, but liked to use one as a songwriting tool. When a guitar is tuned in standard tuning, you have to be able to make chord shapes to play it, because the sound of the open strings is a discord: [demonstrates] But you can tune a guitar so all the strings are the notes of a single chord, so they sound good together even when you don't make a chord shape: [demonstrates open-E tuning] With one of these open tunings, you can play chords with just a single finger barring a fret, and so they're very popular with, for example, slide guitarists who use a metal slide to play, or someone like Dolly Parton who has such long fingernails it's difficult to form chord shapes. Someone like Parton is of course an accomplished player, but open tunings also mean that someone who can't play well can just put their finger down on a fret and have it be a chord, so you can write songs just by running one finger up and down the fretboard: [demonstrates] So Redding could write, and even play acoustic rhythm guitar on some songs, which he did quite a lot in later years, without ever learning how to make chords. Now, there's a downside to this -- which is why standard tuning is still standard. If you tune to an open major chord, you can play major chords easily but minor chords become far more difficult. Handily, that wasn't a problem at Stax, because according to Isaac Hayes, Jim Stewart banned minor chords from being played at Stax. Hayes said “We'd play a chord in a session, and Jim would say, ‘I don't want to hear that chord.' Jim's ears were just tuned into one, four, and five. I mean, just simple changes. He said they were the breadwinners. He didn't like minor chords. Marvell and I always would try to put that pretty stuff in there. Jim didn't like that. We'd bump heads about that stuff. Me and Marvell fought all the time that. Booker wanted change as well. As time progressed, I was able to sneak a few in.” Of course, minor chords weren't *completely* banned from Stax, and some did sneak through, but even ballads would often have only major chords -- like Redding's next single, "I've Been Loving You Too Long". That track had its origins with Jerry Butler, the singer who had been lead vocalist of the Impressions before starting a solo career and having success with tracks like "For Your Precious Love": [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "For Your Precious Love"] Redding liked that song, and covered it himself on his second album, and he had become friendly with Butler. Butler had half-written a song, and played it for Redding, who told him he'd like to fiddle with it, see what he could do. Butler forgot about the conversation, until he got a phone call from Redding, telling him that he'd recorded the song. Butler was confused, and also a little upset -- he'd been planning to finish the song himself, and record it. But then Redding played him the track, and Butler decided that doing so would be pointless -- it was Redding's song now: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "I've Been Loving You Too Long"] "I've Been Loving You Too Long" became Redding's first really big hit, making number two on the R&B chart and twenty-one on the Hot One Hundred. It was soon being covered by the Rolling Stones and Ike & Tina Turner, and while Redding was still not really known to the white pop market, he was quickly becoming one of the biggest stars on the R&B scene. His record sales were still not matching his live performances -- he would always make far more money from appearances than from records -- but he was by now the performer that every other soul singer wanted to copy. "I've Been Loving You Too Long" came out just after Redding's second album, The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads, which happened to be the first album released on Volt Records. Before that, while Stax and Volt had released the singles, they'd licensed all the album tracks to Atlantic's Atco subsidiary, which had released the small number of albums put out by Stax artists. But times were changing and the LP market was becoming bigger. And more importantly, the *stereo* LP market was becoming bigger. Singles were still only released in mono, and would be for the next few years, but the album market had a substantial number of audiophiles, and they wanted stereo. This was a problem for Stax, because they only had a mono tape recorder, and they were scared of changing anything about their setup in case it destroyed their sound. Tom Dowd, who had been recording in eight track for years, was appalled by the technical limitations at the McLemore Ave studio, but eventually managed to get Jim Stewart, who despite -- or possibly because of -- being a white country musician was the most concerned that they keep their Black soul sound, to agree to a compromise. They would keep everything hooked up exactly the same -- the same primitive mixers, the same mono tape recorder -- and Stax would continue doing their mixes for mono, and all their singles would come directly off that mono tape. But at the same time, they would *also* have a two-track tape recorder plugged in to the mixer, with half the channels going on one track and half on the other. So while they were making the mix, they'd *also* be getting a stereo dump of that mix. The limitations of the situation meant that they might end up with drums and vocals in one channel and everything else in the other -- although as the musicians cut everything together in the studio, which had a lot of natural echo, leakage meant there was a *bit* of everything on every track -- but it would still be stereo. Redding's next album, Otis Blue, was recorded on this new equipment, with Dowd travelling down from New York to operate it. Dowd was so keen on making the album stereo that during that session, they rerecorded Redding's two most recent singles, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" and "Respect" (which hadn't yet come out but was in the process of being released) in soundalike versions so there would be stereo versions of the songs on the album -- so the stereo and mono versions of Otis Blue actually have different performances of those songs on them. It shows how intense the work rate was at Stax -- and how good they were at their jobs -- that apart from the opening track "Ole Man Trouble", which had already been recorded as a B-side, all of Otis Blue, which is often considered the greatest soul album in history, was recorded in a twenty-eight hour period, and it would have been shorter but there was a four-hour break in the middle, from 10PM to 2AM, so that the musicians on the session could play their regular local club gigs. And then after the album was finished, Otis left the session to perform a gig that evening. Tom Dowd, in particular, was astonished by the way Redding took charge in the studio, and how even though he had no technical musical knowledge, he would direct the musicians. Dowd called Redding a genius and told Phil Walden that the only two other artists he'd worked with who had as much ability in the studio were Bobby Darin and Ray Charles. Other than those singles and "Ole Man Trouble", Otis Blue was made up entirely of cover versions. There were three versions of songs by Sam Cooke, who had died just a few months earlier, and whose death had hit Redding hard -- for all that he styled himself on Little Richard vocally, he was also in awe of Cooke as a singer and stage presence. There were also covers of songs by The Temptations, William Bell, and B.B. King. And there was also an odd choice -- Steve Cropper suggested that Redding cut a cover of a song by a white band that was in the charts at the time: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] Redding had never heard the song before -- he was not paying attention to the white pop scene at the time, just to his competition on the R&B charts -- but he was interested in doing it. Cropper sat by the turntable, scribbling down what he thought the lyrics Jagger was singing were, and they cut the track. Redding starts out more or less singing the right words: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] But quickly ends up just ad-libbing random exclamations in the same way that he would in many of his live performances: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] Otis Blue made number one on the R&B album chart, and also made number six on the UK album chart -- Redding, like many soul artists, was far more popular in the UK than in the US. It only made number seventy-five on the pop album charts in the US, but it did a remarkable thing as far as Stax was concerned -- it *stayed* in the lower reaches of the charts, and on the R&B album charts, for a long time. Redding had become what is known as a "catalogue artist", something that was almost unknown in rock and soul music at this time, but which was just starting to appear. Up to 1965, the interlinked genres that we now think of as rock and roll, rock, pop, blues, R&B, and soul, had all operated on the basis that singles were where the money was, and that singles should be treated like periodicals -- they go on the shelves, stay there for a few weeks, get replaced by the new thing, and nobody's interested any more. This had contributed to the explosive rate of change in pop music between about 1954 and 1968. You'd package old singles up into albums, and stick some filler tracks on there as a way of making a tiny bit of money from tracks which weren't good enough to release as singles, but that was just squeezing the last few drops of juice out of the orange, it wasn't really where the money was. The only exceptions were those artists like Ray Charles who crossed over into the jazz and adult pop markets. But in general, your record sales in the first few weeks and months *were* your record sales. But by the mid-sixties, as album sales started to take off more, things started to change. And Otis Redding was one of the first artists to really benefit from that. He wasn't having huge hit singles, and his albums weren't making the pop top forty, but they *kept selling*. Redding wouldn't have an album make the top forty in his lifetime, but they sold consistently, and everything from Otis Blue onward sold two hundred thousand or so copies -- a massive number in the much smaller album market of the time. These sales gave Redding some leverage. His contract with Stax was coming to an end in a few months, and he was getting offers from other companies. As part of his contract renegotiation, he got Jim Stewart -- who like so many people in this story including Redding himself liked to operate on handshake deals and assumptions of good faith on the part of everyone else, and who prided himself on being totally fair and not driving hard bargains -- to rework his publishing deal. Now Redding's music was going to be published by Redwal Music -- named after Redding and Phil Walden -- which was owned as a four-way split between Redding, Walden, Stewart, and Joe Galkin. Redding also got the right as part of his contract negotiations to record other artists using Stax's facilities and musicians. He set up his own label, Jotis Records -- a portmanteau of Joe and Otis, for Joe Galkin and himself, and put out records by Arthur Conley: [Excerpt: Arthur Conley, "Who's Fooling Who?"] Loretta Williams [Excerpt: Loretta Williams, "I'm Missing You"] and Billy Young [Excerpt: Billy Young, "The Sloopy"] None of these was a success, but it was another example of how Redding was trying to use his success to boost others. There were other changes going on at Stax as well. The company was becoming more tightly integrated with Atlantic Records -- Tom Dowd had started engineering more sessions, Jerry Wexler was turning up all the time, and they were starting to make records for Atlantic, as we discussed in the episode on "In the Midnight Hour". Atlantic were also loaning Stax Sam and Dave, who were contracted to Atlantic but treated as Stax artists, and whose hits were written by the new Stax songwriting team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter: [Excerpt: Sam and Dave, "Soul Man"] Redding was not hugely impressed by Sam and Dave, once saying in an interview "When I first heard the Righteous Brothers, I thought they were colored. I think they sing better than Sam and Dave", but they were having more and bigger chart hits than him, though they didn't have the same level of album sales. Also, by now Booker T and the MGs had a new bass player. Donald "Duck" Dunn had always been the "other" bass player at Stax, ever since he'd started with the Mar-Keys, and he'd played on many of Redding's recordings, as had Lewie Steinberg, the original bass player with the MGs. But in early 1965, the Stax studio musicians had cut a record originally intending it to be a Mar-Keys record, but decided to put it out as by Booker T and the MGs, even though Booker T wasn't there at the time -- Isaac Hayes played keyboards on the track: [Excerpt: Booker T and the MGs, "Boot-Leg"] Booker T Jones would always have a place at Stax, and would soon be back full time as he finished his degree, but from that point on Duck Dunn, not Lewie Steinberg, was the bass player for the MGs. Another change in 1965 was that Stax got serious about promotion. Up to this point, they'd just relied on Atlantic to promote their records, but obviously Atlantic put more effort into promoting records on which it made all the money than ones it just distributed. But as part of the deal to make records with Sam and Dave and Wilson Pickett, Atlantic had finally put their arrangement with Stax on a contractual footing, rather than their previous handshake deal, and they'd agreed to pay half the salary of a publicity person for Stax. Stax brought in Al Bell, who made a huge impression. Bell had been a DJ in Memphis, who had gone off to work with Martin Luther King for a while, before leaving after a year because, as he put it "I was not about passive resistance. I was about economic development, economic empowerment.” He'd returned to DJing, first in Memphis, then in Washington DC, where he'd been one of the biggest boosters of Stax records in the area. While he was in Washington, he'd also started making records himself. He'd produced several singles for Grover Mitchell on Decca: [Excerpt: Grover Mitchell, "Midnight Tears"] Those records were supervised by Milt Gabler, the same Milt Gabler who produced Louis Jordan's records and "Rock Around the Clock", and Bell co-produced them with Eddie Floyd, who wrote that song, and Chester Simmons, formerly of the Moonglows, and the three of them started their own label, Safice, which had put out a few records by Floyd and others, on the same kind of deal with Atlantic that Stax had: [Excerpt: Eddie Floyd, "Make Up Your Mind"] Floyd would himself soon become a staff songwriter at Stax. As with almost every decision at Stax, the decision to hire Bell was a cause of disagreement between Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton, the "Ax" in Stax, who wasn't as involved in the day-to-day studio operations as her brother, but who was often regarded by the musicians as at least as important to the spirit of the label, and who tended to disagree with her brother on pretty much everything. Stewart didn't want to hire Bell, but according to Cropper “Estelle and I said, ‘Hey, we need somebody that can liaison between the disc jockeys and he's the man to do it. Atlantic's going into a radio station with six Atlantic records and one Stax record. We're not getting our due.' We knew that. We needed more promotion and he had all the pull with all those disc jockeys. He knew E. Rodney Jones and all the big cats, the Montagues and so on. He knew every one of them.” Many people at Stax will say that the label didn't even really start until Bell joined -- and he became so important to the label that he would eventually take it over from Stewart and Axton. Bell came in every day and immediately started phoning DJs, all day every day, starting in the morning with the drivetime East Coast DJs, and working his way across the US, ending up at midnight phoning the evening DJs in California. Booker T Jones said of him “He had energy like Otis Redding, except he wasn't a singer. He had the same type of energy. He'd come in the room, pull up his shoulders and that energy would start. He would start talking about the music business or what was going on and he energized everywhere he was. He was our Otis for promotion. It was the same type of energy charisma.” Meanwhile, of course, Redding was constantly releasing singles. Two more singles were released from Otis Blue -- his versions of "My Girl" and "Satisfaction", and he also released "I Can't Turn You Loose", which was originally the B-side to "Just One More Day" but ended up charting higher than its original A-side. It's around this time that Redding did something which seems completely out of character, but which really must be mentioned given that with very few exceptions everyone in his life talks about him as some kind of saint. One of Redding's friends was beaten up, and Redding, the friend, and another friend drove to the assailant's house and started shooting through the windows, starting a gun battle in which Redding got grazed. His friend got convicted of attempted murder, and got two years' probation, while Redding himself didn't face any criminal charges but did get sued by the victims, and settled out of court for a few hundred dollars. By this point Redding was becoming hugely rich from his concert appearances and album sales, but he still hadn't had a top twenty pop hit. He needed to break the white market. And so in April 1966, Redding went to LA, to play the Sunset Strip: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Respect (live at the Whisky A-Go-Go)"] Redding's performance at the Whisky A-Go-Go, a venue which otherwise hosted bands like the Doors, the Byrds, the Mothers of Invention, and Love, was his first real interaction with the white rock scene, part of a process that had started with his recording of "Satisfaction". The three-day residency got rave reviews, though the plans to release a live album of the shows were scuppered when Jim Stewart listened back to the tapes and decided that Redding's horn players were often out of tune. But almost everyone on the LA scene came out to see the shows, and Redding blew them away. According to one biography of Redding I used, it was seeing how Redding tuned his guitar that inspired the guitarist from the support band, the Rising Sons, to start playing in the same tuning -- though I can't believe for a moment that Ry Cooder, one of the greatest slide guitarists of his generation, didn't already know about open tunings. But Redding definitely impressed that band -- Taj Mahal, their lead singer, later said it was "one of the most amazing performances I'd ever seen". Also at the gigs was Bob Dylan, who played Redding a song he'd just recorded but not yet released: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Just Like a Woman"] Redding agreed that the song sounded perfect for him, and said he would record it. He apparently made some attempts at rehearsing it at least, but never ended up recording it. He thought the first verse and chorus were great, but had problems with the second verse: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Just Like a Woman"] Those lyrics were just too abstract for him to find a way to connect with them emotionally, and as a result he found himself completely unable to sing them. But like his recording of "Satisfaction", this was another clue to him that he should start paying more attention to what was going on in the white music industry, and that there might be things he could incorporate into his own style. As a result of the LA gigs, Bill Graham booked Redding for the Fillmore in San Francisco. Redding was at first cautious, thinking this might be a step too far, and that he wouldn't go down well with the hippie crowd, but Graham persuaded him, saying that whenever he asked any of the people who the San Francisco crowds most loved -- Jerry Garcia or Paul Butterfield or Mike Bloomfield -- who *they* most wanted to see play there, they all said Otis Redding. Redding reluctantly agreed, but before he took a trip to San Francisco, there was somewhere even further out for him to go. Redding was about to head to England but before he did there was another album to make, and this one would see even more of a push for the white market, though still trying to keep everything soulful. As well as Redding originals, including "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)", another song in the mould of "Mr. Pitiful", there was another cover of a contemporary hit by a guitar band -- this time a version of the Beatles' "Day Tripper" -- and two covers of old standards; the country song "Tennessee Waltz", which had recently been covered by Sam Cooke, and a song made famous by Bing Crosby, "Try a Little Tenderness". That song almost certainly came to mind because it had recently been used in the film Dr. Strangelove, but it had also been covered relatively recently by two soul greats, Aretha Franklin: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Try a Little Tenderness"] And Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Live Medley: I Love You For Sentimental Reasons/Try a Little Tenderness/You Send Me"] This version had horn parts arranged by Isaac Hayes, who by this point had been elevated to be considered one of the "Big Six" at Stax records -- Hayes, his songwriting partner David Porter, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and Al Jackson, were all given special status at the company, and treated as co-producers on every record -- all the records were now credited as produced by "staff", but it was the Big Six who split the royalties. Hayes came up with a horn part that was inspired by Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come", and which dominated the early part of the track: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"] Then the band came in, slowly at first: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"] But Al Jackson surprised them when they ran through the track by deciding that after the main song had been played, he'd kick the track into double-time, and give Redding a chance to stretch out and do his trademark grunts and "got-ta"s. The single version faded out shortly after that, but the version on the album kept going for an extra thirty seconds: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"] As Booker T. Jones said “Al came up with the idea of breaking up the rhythm, and Otis just took that and ran with it. He really got excited once he found out what Al was going to do on the drums. He realized how he could finish the song. That he could start it like a ballad and finish it full of emotion. That's how a lot of our arrangements would come together. Somebody would come up with something totally outrageous.” And it would have lasted longer but Jim Stewart pushed the faders down, realising the track was an uncommercial length even as it was. Live, the track could often stretch out to seven minutes or longer, as Redding drove the crowd into a frenzy, and it soon became one of the highlights of his live set, and a signature song for him: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness (live in London)"] In September 1966, Redding went on his first tour outside the US. His records had all done much better in the UK than they had in America, and they were huge favourites of everyone on the Mod scene, and when he arrived in the UK he had a limo sent by Brian Epstein to meet him at the airport. The tour was an odd one, with multiple London shows, shows in a couple of big cities like Manchester and Bristol, and shows in smallish towns in Hampshire and Lincolnshire. Apparently the shows outside London weren't particularly well attended, but the London shows were all packed to overflowing. Redding also got his own episode of Ready! Steady! Go!, on which he performed solo as well as with guest stars Eric Burdon and Chris Farlowe: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, Chris Farlowe and Eric Burdon, "Shake/Land of a Thousand Dances"] After the UK tour, he went on a short tour of the Eastern US with Sam and Dave as his support act, and then headed west to the Fillmore for his three day residency there, introducing him to the San Francisco music scene. His first night at the venue was supported by the Grateful Dead, the second by Johnny Talbot and De Thangs and the third by Country Joe and the Fish, but there was no question that it was Otis Redding that everyone was coming to see. Janis Joplin turned up at the Fillmore every day at 3PM, to make sure she could be right at the front for Redding's shows that night, and Bill Graham said, decades later, "By far, Otis Redding was the single most extraordinary talent I had ever seen. There was no comparison. Then or now." However, after the Fillmore gigs, for the first time ever he started missing shows. The Sentinel, a Black newspaper in LA, reported a few days later "Otis Redding, the rock singer, failed to make many friends here the other day when he was slated to appear on the Christmas Eve show[...] Failed to draw well, and Redding reportedly would not go on." The Sentinel seem to think that Redding was just being a diva, but it's likely that this was the first sign of a problem that would change everything about his career -- he was developing vocal polyps that were making singing painful. It's notable though that the Sentinel refers to Redding as a "rock" singer, and shows again how different genres appeared in the mid-sixties to how they appear today. In that light, it's interesting to look at a quote from Redding from a few months later -- "Everybody thinks that all songs by colored people are rhythm and blues, but that's not true. Johnny Taylor, Muddy Waters, and B.B. King are blues singers. James Brown is not a blues singer. He has a rock and roll beat and he can sing slow pop songs. My own songs "Respect" and "Mr Pitiful" aren't blues songs. I'm speaking in terms of the beat and structure of the music. A blues is a song that goes twelve bars all the way through. Most of my songs are soul songs." So in Redding's eyes, neither he nor James Brown were R&B -- he was soul, which was a different thing from R&B, while Brown was rock and roll and pop, not soul, but journalists thought that Redding was rock. But while the lines between these things were far less distinct than they are today, and Redding was trying to cross over to the white audience, he knew what genre he was in, and celebrated that in a song he wrote with his friend Art

Listen in on this fascinating guest hosted podcast with the two founders of Charlotta Kerbs and the Strays about their new single and upcoming album featuring the Muscle Shoals All Stars ~ new single on Feb 24 and the EP release is in mid-March 2023 both on Ramasound Records Scandinavia!  Charlotta Kerbs & The Strays is a global music project founded by and with Charlotta Kerbs and Darrell Craig Harris.  They recorded their new EP album at the legendary FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama in early December 2022, as a follow up to their highly successful three initial single releases. Charlotta Kerbs is a well-known singer-songwriter based in Finland. Darrell Craig Harris is a globally known pro bassist, composer, sports illustrated photographer and producer who's based in Las Vegas. We ALL hope you enjoy this show. Charlotta, Darrell and Nigel  here are some links to follow the progress of Charlotta Kerbs & The Strays https://www.ramasound.com/ https://www.instagram.com/charlottakerbsandthestrays/ https://www.facebook.com/charlottaandthestrays https://www.facebook.com/charlottakerbsmusic https://twitter.com/Fame_Music  The first single will be released Feb 24th on Ramasound Records! Charlotta Kerbs & The Strays recorded at the legendary FAME Recording Studios & Publishing Co.     in Muscle Shoals, Alabama! Music Matters with Darrell Craig Harris is sponsored by Kathy Ireland Worldwide & with support from Music Crowns in London, and Nigel John Farmer.~ my co-producer and voice over talent from his studio @  VoiceWrapStudio.com Our thanks to Rodney Hall FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama for our intro and outro backing music clip.    A Big Shout and thanks to our friends at #AudioGeer , @sullenfamily and the awesome support! #Shure #MV7 #podcast mic!  Please check out our Music Matters podcast on @spotifypodcasts Hey, also check out the New Music Matters Podcast Website-  Please, support, LIKE and help us grow - check out our Social Media pages: #music #love #hiphop #rap #art #musician #artist #musica #instagood #singer #instagram #rock #like #dance #guitar #photography #song #bhfyp  #newmusic #life #producer #fashion #rapper #viral #songwriter #creative #podcast  

With Joe out, Bro. Ryan sits down with Jono to unpack a busy week spent in Muscle Shoals, AL at the True Church Conference. They discuss the purpose of the conference and how world missions is exclusively the responsibility of the local church.

What does breaking from the fundamentalist Christian church and forging your own identify and sense of sanctuary look like? Hannah Aldridge's story paints a picture.Hannah Aldridge's music has been described as “dark country”. She grew up in a musical family. Her dad worked as a musician in Fame Studios, a recording studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where some of the most well-known singers of our time cut records, including the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin. Hannah grew up running around in that studio. She also grew up in a family that was fundamentalist Christian. In her early twenties, she started playing music on stages close to home. After she broke from the church, she started playing on stages all around the world. Her songs strike a delicate balance between rebellion and self-discovery. This episode is the first story on our show where we will weave a woman's story with her own, original music. You'll hear snippets of Hannah's music throughout. Hannah came-of-age in the South but she's spent a lifetime trying to create an identity outside of it. Hannah Aldridge's forthcoming album ‘Dream of America' will be released in early 2023. SEE HANNAH'S SPECIAL PATRON PERFORMANCEIf you're a patron of the show, Hannah has offered a special video recording of her track “Unbeliever.” Head over to Patreon to watch it! GET YOUR FREE COFFEE MUGBecome a patron of the podcast before March 1st, and we will send you an exclusive coffee mug as a thank you gift. See blog for images. Pledge any amount to get behind-the-scenes extras, discounts on merchandise and patron-only gifts. Become a patron today. JOIN OUR WALL OF FLAMEHelp us improve women's well-being through the power of story. Pledge $600 or more here and your name, bio and portrait will be added to our virtual monument: The Wall of Flame! REVIEW USHelp other women find us. Rate us on the Apple podcast app or on our website. SOCIALS & WEBIf You Knew Me websiteInstagramFacebookLinkedinSign Up for our Newsletter! CREDITS Produced by Jamie Yuenger and Piet Hurkmans. Our show's musical intro and outro is taken from the track “Thursday” by the independent artist Nick Takénobu Ogawa. You can listen and support his music on bandcamp here. Other music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How could the smallest town in the furthest corner become the epicenter of music? Because it has been the silent epicenter of the US from the beginning. In today's episode we cross paths with King Ferdinand, Ponce De Leon, Beethoven, W.C. Handy, Sam Philips, Robert E Lee, Charles Dickens, Helen Keller, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Alexander Graham Bell, Woodrow Wilson and even Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Foil. 

This week's Bent News, #43 includes: -The full story on the passing of David Crosby! (see Jimmy Webb tribute below) -Neil Young to play Willie Nelson's 90th birthday jam! -John Lennon "Lost Weekend" documentary due in April! -The lowdown on Rivals Sons! -Ian Hunter announces new album, Defiance! due in April! -Yes gather forces and sell back catalogue to Atlantic Records! -Doors members sell rights for charity and more! JIMMY WEBB on DAVD CROSBY: Croz, as he was known to his friends, was a gregarious, mischievous, sensitive guy who you could have a legitimate conversation with. I remember the first time I saw him up close: He had driven his black Mercedes Benz 450 SEL out into the desert to go sailplaning with me. He got out of the big sedan in a cloud of dust and strode toward me like a giant, a big grin plastered across his face. I knew in that instant that he was absolutely stone-not-afraid to ride in a glider or anything else you might think of. Conditions were lousy that day so I paid for an extra long tow, up to 10,000 feet because I knew rightly enough that we wouldn't be airborne for very long. I muddled around and kept us up for around 40 minutes or so, and the whole time he was like a child with a new toy. He was inquisitive about every detail of the mechanisms on board and did not get airsick - unlike some others I could mention! We landed safely in the late afternoon after a bond had been formed up about 5000 feet as we waved to hikers on the side of Mount Baden-Powell.   At the time I knew of him from my friend Art Garfunkel, who had used him profusely on backgrounds for the Watermark album, which Art and I cut with Barry Beckett in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. From listening to his lilting concert tenor on Artie's rough mixes, I resolved that if I could get him to do it, I would have him sing some backgrounds on some of my stuff. Endearingly, he came at first call and brought Graham Nash along with him. Most recently, he and Graham sang backgrounds on my song, “If These Walls Could Speak”, from my Fred Mollin-produced Still Within The Sound Of My Voice (2013). It's possible that this will turn out to be the last recording the two made together. He was there for me at Alice Tully Hall (NYC) the night a plethora of names showed up for my live concert birthday party. In short, whenever I asked him, he was there. If I have one regret in my life at this moment, it's that I didn't make time to get on the sailboat with him when I was asked during a rather busy trip to California. But he wouldn't want me to look back with any regret about anything. He was just that kind of cool, easy-going, sweet guy. His was a gigantic star, it shines still there somewhere above the Southern Cross, this sailor, prophet, humanitarian, intellectual, and songwriter. Oh, and lest I forget, father as well.  It's natural to feel a little emptiness when a friend passes but in this case I am aching and grieving for a whole magic, scintillating era of unsurpassed music, a time of beauty and elegance in musical art. In my mind he stands for all of that. The political conscience applied to the art of communicating with the masses. I was at David Geffen's house the afternoon Graham and Croz showed up with a little number called “Four Dead in Ohio”. When I heard it, they were angry and it resonated off the walls of the house in a way that made me think: this is a song that will change things. Godspeed, David. You left the world a better place than you found it. Love, Jimmy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I was recording "In The End" in Muscle Shoals just a week after demo'ing it, when bandleader Will McFarlane, asked, “Should we go full Otis on this one?” Otis Redding recorded his posthumous hit, “(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay,” in that very room on those very keyboards just months before dying in a plane crash in 1967. "Absolutely," I responded. The story behind Constellations' fifth and final song and Kyiv-penned music video, this week on Friends & Neighbors.

My special guest to kick-off off our new season 07 is Shevy Smith. Amongst her many talents, she is the founder of the new and already popular Ultimate Playlist App. Ultimate Playlist gives you the opportunity to win a minimum of $2k and a chance to win a $20k jackpot each day, simply for listening to, rating, and/or adding songs to your Apple Music playlist. I will add links so you can grab this outstanding app for yourself. The prizes are powered by the Arizona State Lottery, which, like many state lotteries, offers free, non-lottery games to help drive user engagement. Listen in as Shevy gives us insight into her background...her personal journey and her growing tally of achievements she's bagged to date. Here is a brief summary of her bio to help you get into the vibe... After signing a publishing deal in Nashville as a teenager and working as a writer and college touring artist, Smith migrated to the west coast and began a series of ventures designed to support other emerging artists. She created Forte Poesy, a youth-focused music education program empowering kids through songwriting and musicianship, whose curriculum was implemented in public and private schools in NYC, LA , and London. During this time, she also wrote, produced, and engineered numerous national tv/film campaigns for ABC, NBC, Soapnet, and ESPN, and in 2019, she teamed up with attorney and streaming technology expert Khalid Jones to form Elite Shout, a creative firm with the goal of leveraging emerging tech to provide innovative opportunities for developing and established recording artists.  Now, Shevy has introduced the Ultimate Playlist, a new mobile app that helps musicians grow their reach, by offering cash prizes to listeners who listen to and rate their songs. With 80,000 new songs uploaded to Spotify every day and the recording industry struggling to find new promotional avenues, Ultimate Playlist guarantees that artists will get their songs in front of active listeners, while also providing valuable data about how their music is being consumed https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.devscale.ultimateplaylist https://www.eliteshout.com/about Music Matters with Darrell Craig Harris is sponsored by Kathy Ireland Worldwide & with support from Music Crowns in London, and Nigel J.~ my co-producer and voice over talent from his studio @  VoiceWrapStudio.com Our thanks to Rodney Hall FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama for our intro and outro backing music clip.    A Big Shout and thanks to our friends at #AudioGeer , @sullenfamily and the awesome support! #Shure #MV7 #podcast mic!  Please check out our Music Matters podcast on @spotifypodcasts Hey, also check out the New Music Matters Podcast Website- and Music Matters SWAG - Please, support, LIKE and help us grow - check out our Social Media pages: #music #love #hiphop #rap #art #musician #artist #musica #instagood #singer #instagram #rock #like #dance #guitar #photography #song #bhfyp  #newmusic #life #producer #fashion #rapper #viral #songwriter #creative #podcast  

For Tosha Hill, music is a spiritual experience. Getting her start singing in local churches, Tosha is a singer/songwriter and an Alabama native. In this episode, she details her musical journey, from finding her sound to where she plans to go next. Follow North Alabama on Social Media! Website Instagram TikTok LinkedIn YouTube Twitter Facebook The Unexpected Adventures in North Alabama Podcast is a part of the Destination Marketing Podcast Network. It is hosted by Melea Hames and produced by Relic. To learn more about the Destination Marketing Podcast Network and to listen to our other shows, please visit https://thedmpn.com/. If you are interested in becoming a part of the network, please email adam@relicagency.com.

Located alongside the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and the studios there helped create some of the most important and resonant songs in rock and roll. On this episode, we look back at bit of the history of the Muscle Shoals sound, a trio of FAME Studio house bands, including the great "Swampers", and how Detroit's Bob Seger fused their sound with his heartland rock to produce some underappreciated but great songs - and one song ("Old Time Rock and Roll") that has been played way too much, burned deeply into our music brains, but whose story - from writing to the final version - is a wild one. We listen to a few Seger and Muscle Shoals Studios and Fame Studios tunes, hear some sublimely elegant Bob deep cuts, and have a blast rediscovering some of the famous and forgotten songs that came out of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. #muscleshoals #rolling stones #otisreddiing #wilsonpickett #bobseger #cher #osmonds #sweetsoulmusic SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts Spotify Stitcher Google Podcasts Read Rob's current and archived writing at rockforwardmusic.com website: rockpopandroll.com EMAIL: rockpoprollpodcast@gmail.com  

In this audio companion to my recently premiered documentary short, I trace my road trip from Memphis to Muscle Shoals writing and recording my tenth album, "Constellations," and reveal how a Texan waitress, Mexican tailor, and Tupelo pop icon's secrets helped inspire my path towards recovery.

Time to get "Back To The Shoals," as in Muscle Shoals, one of the most fertile musical regions of the U.S., especially in the '60s and '70s, but even through the decades since. So many great sessions becoming an amazing list of incredible records for one studio! In this episode, Markus says that maybe the boys should do a series of episodes about this amazing musical place where the feels come from the mud! This return underlines the need to do more episodes about this amazing place!  So, kick back and enjoy a little more from The Shoals! We love our sponsors!!! Please visit their web sites, and support them because they make this crazy show go: Boldfoot Socks  https://boldfoot.com Crooked Eye Brewery  https://crookedeyebrewery.com/ Don't forget that you can find all of our episodes, on-demand, for free right here on our web site: https://imbalancedhistory.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time to get "Back To The Shoals," as in Muscle Shoals, one of the most fertile musical regions of the U.S., especially in the '60s and '70s, but even through the decades since.So many great sessions becoming an amazing list of incredible records for one studio! In this episode, Markus says that maybe the boys should do a series of episodes about this amazing musical place where the feels come from the mud! This return underlines the need to do more episodes about this amazing place! So, kick back and enjoy a little more from The Shoals!We love our sponsors!!! Please visit their web sites, and support them because they make this crazy show go:Boldfoot Socks   https://boldfoot.comCrooked Eye Brewery   https://crookedeyebrewery.com/Don't forget that you can find all of our episodes, on-demand, for free right here on our web site: https://imbalancedhistory.com/  

On this edition of TMWS, I am traveling to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to talk with Courtney Akins, founder of Shoals United Stars, about her effort to support young people with different abilities. I hope that you will listen and share this show with others. What Courtney is doing is amazing!

082 - Drew Holcomb, Foy Vance and Christophe PaubertIn the latest episode of “Have Guitar Will Travel,” host James Patrick Regan connects with three artists – two musicans and a winemaker! Drew Holcomb talks about growing up in Memphis and his first guitar, an Ovation he played throughout his youth. A country-music performer, Drew has written songs heard on movie and TV soundtracks. On the road with his band, he hunts for guitars at pawn shops. Then, James talks to Foy Vance, a singer/songwriter from Scotland by way of Ireland. A Lowden player, he has worked at high-profile studios including Blackbird, Muscle Shoals, and Sun. The show closes with winemaker Christophe Paubert, who delves into the varieties offered at Stags Leap Winery. Music is hugely important in Christophe's life, and he shares thoughts on the bands he most wanted to see at last year's BottleRock Festival. Please like, comment, and share this podcast! Download Link

John is a first call guitarist, songwriter, and producer based in Nashville, Tennessee. Raised in Louisiana, John found his calling for guitar picking at an early age, and after discovering the roll of studio musicians, he traveled to LA to train at the Guitar institute of technology. After making fast friends with his instructors, John earned opportunities to see first hand how records were made. His next step was Muscle Shoals, where he honed his craft, and caught the ear of famed record producer David Briggs, who urged him to take the leap to Nashville. Through a 20/20 vision of purpose, and blind faith to trust the process, John has dominated the guitar player chair for over four decades. John's playing can be heard on records ranging from Alabama and Willie Nelson, to Kenny Chesney and Taylor Swift, to India Arie and Jewel. If that wasn't enough, John has also honed his craft as a songwriter, producer, and studio owner. Through continuing to expand his skill sets and creative approach, John has crafted the roadmap for long term success in an ever-evolving industry. The stories we unpack in this episode cover lessons that could easily be the one stop manual for success and fulfillment as a studio musician. Grab a pen, because you're going to want to take notes!Join The Band for FREE at studiomusicianacademy.comFor access to exclusive masterclass sessionsInstagramYoutube

The cult classic film Easy Rider was released this month.  A landmark counter culture movie, the film traces the journey of Wyatt and Billy as they make their way on motorcycles from a successful drug deal in Los Angeles to the Mardi Gras festival in New Orleans.  Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern wrote the film, and it stars Fonda, Hopper, and Jack Nicholson.  Dennis Hopper directed the movie.  Originally the plan was for Crosby, Stills & Nash to do all the songs on the soundtrack.  When the editor plugged in contemporary songs as placeholders, the sound convinced Dennis Hopper to reverse this decision.The Easy Rider Soundtrack was crafted with contemporary late 60's music, and stands out as an excellent example of the music of the counterculture.  Each piece used in the movie was curated with the idea of maintaining the story.  Wayne brings us this forerunner of prog rock and heavy metal. Don't Bogart Me by Fraternity of ManPsychedelic and blues rock band the Fraternity of Man would have their biggest hit with this song.  It recommends generosity with illicit smoking materials.  This song originally appeared on their self-titled debut album in 1968 before being included in this soundtrack.Ballad of Easy Rider by Roger McGuinnBob Dylan was an uncredited contributor on this song.  The Byrds front man Roger McGuinn performed this as a solo work.  It was the only song originally written for this film, and appeared on one of McGuinn's albums later.The Weight by The BandThis song chronicles the experience of a visitor to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, even though much of its influence is from the American South.  Nazareth is the home of Martin guitars, and that is why the lyrics transfer to that location.  Licensing could not be gained for the soundtrack even though it was used in the film, so a group called Smith was used for the soundtrack instead of The Band.Born To Be Wild by SteppenwolfSteppenwolf's most successful single appeared on their debut album in 1968 before being used in "Easy Rider."  Many consider it to be the first heavy metal song, and the lyric "heavy metal thunder" contributes to that.  This song would be used as a motorcycle anthem from this time on. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Wasn't Born to Follow by The Byrds (from the motion picture “Easy Rider”)Yes, we get to do a little double dipping with our entertainment track this week. STAFF PICKS:Put a Little Love in Your Heart by Jackie DeShannonRob opens this week's staff picks with a song that hit number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it was used in the film "Drugstore Cowboy."  Jackie DeShannon is best known for the song, "What the World Needs Now is Love."  DeShannon also wrote "Betty Davis Eyes" for Kim Carnes.In the Ghetto by Elvis Presley Brian brings us The King with a poignant song about a child from the dirt street part of town.  Writer Mac Davis was inspired by the story of a friend who grew up in poverty.  Elvis completely identified with this song because of his impoverished upbringing.I Can Sing a Rainbow/Love Is Blue by the Dells Bruce's staff pick is a cover medley of Sing a Rainbow, best known in its 1955 rendition by Peggy Lee, and Love is Blue, originally a French song best known as an instrumental easy listening piece by Paul Mauriat that was a number 1 hit in March of 1968.  the Dells hit number 22 on the US charts with this version during the height of their success between 1966 and 1973.I'd Rather Be an Old Man's Sweetheart by Candi Staton Wayne features a soul hit from Muscle Shoals.  This is Staton's first hit, rising to number 9 on the R&B charts, and number 46 on the pop charts.  Staton is known as the "First Lady of Southern Soul."  "I'd rather be an old man's sweetheart than a young man's fool."  INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:A Boy Named Sue by Johnny CashCash released this novelty song telling the story of a boy who had to grow up tough after his absentee father left him with the name of Sue.

* The photo on the left is of a great R & B Soul group based out of Fresno CA.   They performed all over the West coast and recorded numerous 45's (Hayward Lee and the Mauraders - circa 1966).PLAYLIST:00:00 | DJ | DICK LEE AND THE ICEMAN00:28 | WHAT I'D SAY | BRYMERS01:13 | DO YOU THINK YOU LOVE ME | BRYMERS03:09 | LAND OF 1000 DANCES | WILSON PICKETT06:11 | BROWN SUGAR | ROLLING STONES09:58 | EVERBODY | TOMMY ROE12:31 | SHAKE A TAIL FEATHER | JAMES AND BOBBY PURIFY16:12 | I FEEL GOOD | JAMES BROWN19:22 | OLD TIME ROCK-N-ROLL | BOB SEGAR23:49 | MUSTANG SALLY | COMMITMENTS28:54 | SWEET HOME ALABAMA | LYNNRD SKYNYRD32:33 | INTERVIEW - JEANNIE SANDERS |  37:18 | BLACK VELVET | JEANNIE SANDERS40:41 | SHOW ME | JOE TEX44:20 | SITTING ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY | OTTIS REDDING51:01 | YOU'RE NO GOOD | LINDA RONSTADT47:26 | WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN | PERCY SLEDGE54:21 | SWEET SOUL MUSIC | ARTHUR CONNLEY56:29 | PROUD MARY | IKE AND TINA TURNER59:28 | HOLD ON I'M COMING | BRYMERS"Dick Lee and 60's Garage Rock from California" is a weekly one hour show that features great California Garage Rock along with the hits of the day. The show can be heard on KOOL 100.7 FM-Saturdays-12:00 noon (PST-Hanford, CA), Amsterdam International Radio, WYML 99.9 FM (Chicago), M.A.D. FM - New Zealand, Replay Radio FM (U.K.), Way Out Radio FM (U.K.), Experience FM 103.9 ( Indianapolis), 60's Chart Busters (Cyprus), KCEG (N.D.), Supreme VIB-Z Radio (Jamaica), So Faking Radio (Arizona), KOGY 95 FM-Hawaiian Pacific Radio, The Rock 97.3 (Morro Bay, CA), Atlantic Radio FM (U.K.), Riot Radio (Maryville, IL), Black Hole FM (Milford, CT.), Community Radio-Long Island, (N.Y.), KEWL 98 FM (New Jersey), Akaroa World Radio-90.1 FM (New Zealand), FAB Radio Internation (Manchester, England), Classic Rock XL, (Ontario, Canada), Northern Pirate Radio (U.K.), HD Radio Network, (Dealfield, Wisconsin), KHJ FM 105.3 (Albany, Oregon), Canal Side Radio, (U.K.), Remember Then Radio (U.S.) WRTR(Tuscaloosa, Ala), Sixties City Garage Rock, (U.K.), 57 Chevy Radio (U.S.), NWCZ Radio (Seattle-Tacoma), WCNX 1710 AM (Middletown, CT), KRYZ 98.5 FM (Mariposa, CA), WCSQ 105.9 FM (Cobleskill, NY), Brill 1449 Radio (U.K.), WZPH Radio (Dade City, FL), SG1 Radio (U.K.), Radio Flawless (New York), KWRH (St. Louis, MO), KWCZ (Seattle, WA). KITZ (Gilchrist, OR), KNCP (LA Pine, OR.), KZSR (Paso Robles, CA.) KOWS Radio (Sonoma County/Santa Rosa, CA), Heat FM Radio (NY), Griffiti Radio (U.K.), Bay and Basin 92.7 FM-Australia, ZANJ Radio (Jamaica), Dusty Discs Radio (B.C., Canada), The Phoenix Radio Network (U.K.), KCIW 100.7 FM (Brookings, OR), Q95 Oldies (S.C.), KALH Radio (N.M.), KSHD-FM, (OR), Mystery Train Radio (U.K.), Drive-In-A Go-Go Radio (Ontario, Canada), E.K FM Radio (U.K.), Rebel Radio (U.K.), GR8 Chats Radio (U.K.), Thunder Radio Canada (Ontario, Canada), Total Mixx Radio (Virginia), Veterans Family Radio (U.K.), KSVB 91.4 FM (Big Bear, CA), Destiny Radio (U.K.) Fantasy Radio (U.K.), Curve Radio (U.K.), Beatz Radio (Bangladesh), Ambron Radio (U.K.), Curve Radio (U.K.), Fantasy Radio (U.K.), Ohio Broadcast Network (Columbus, OH), Solar FM (U.K.), Sho Off Radio (U.K.), Max Radio (N.Y.), On Air Hits (TX), Sea Wall Radio (Galvaston, TX), Now Hits Radio (U.K.), Cruize Radio (Australia), Urban Essex Radio (U.K.), Corvette Retro Radio (Athens, Ohio), "HU 1 Radio" (U.K.), "Bulls Eye Radio" (New York), Cofton Radio (U.K.), Radio For Fun (Australia), Sanctuary Radio (Denver, CO), Mad Wasp Radio (U.K.), Kings FM Radio (U.K.), OwlTail.com, Cherokee Nation Radio, AKA Radio, (California), Madness FM Radio (U.K.), Global Community Radio (New York), iHeart Radio, Fish Creek Radio (San Antonio, TX), Chris Max Radio (N.Y.), Hot Tunez Radio (U.K.), QSKY Radio (New York), I.E. Radio (U.S. and U.K.), BHP Radio (U.K.), The Mix 96 FM (La, Ala, Ga, and the U.K.), Ken Versa's Power Hit Radio (Colorado), Radio Hawk (Cornwall, Canada), KMBY 95.9 FM (Monterey, Santa Cruz, Carmel), CABMZK Radio (U.K.), 70's Greatest Hits Radio (U.S.), KFOK Radio (Georgetown, CA), KINT 98 FM (El Paso, TX), Scream Radio (UK), A.M.R. Radio (Atlanta, GA), Seabird Radio (U.K.), Thames Valley Community Radio (UK), Arvada Rocks Radio (Colorado), Shore Shore Radio Blackpool (U.K.), KFOK 95.1 FM (CA), Peak Wireless Radio (U.K.), Your Radio (U.K.), KYXZ 107.9 FM (Grover Beach, CA), "Classic Rock XL" (McElmon Media Group - London and Ontario),  "Cool Vibes Radio (U.K.), 121 Radio (U.K.),  P.V.R. Radio (U.K.), My Mix 94.3 FM (St. Louis, MO), Sound Up Station NFSR (Osaka, Japan), Indie Radio Music (Madison, WI), "WNYC-DB New York City Oldies Radio365,"  "Oldies Radio104" (Belpre, Ohio), "Anghami Radio," "Audible Radio,"  "Deezer Radio," "Star 107.8 FM (Australia),  WTEK Radio (Georgia), "The Hit Network Radio" (U.K.), and "KTRC-DB (Huston, TX).

När Mavis gick in i extasen och släppte fram sig själv gav hon populärmusiken en ny frihetskänsla. I del två når Staple Singers det verkliga genombrottet på skivbolaget Stax då de hamnar i en grå stenbyggnad i Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Staples hade insett att det behövdes mer än tro för att bekämpa förtrycket. Och samtidigt som gospelfundamentalisterna vände gruppen ryggen var de på väg i sin mest spännande fas.Memphis verkade vara Staple Singers öde. Det var här som de drabbades av hat och rasism, det var här som deras vän Martin Luther King mördades, och det var här som de fann sitt nya musikaliska hem. Staple Singers fortsatte att göra musik i Kings anda, och skapade tillsammans med några av söderns främsta låtskrivare klassiker som "Respect yourself", "If you're ready" och "I'll take you there". Men nya utmaningar väntade runt hörnet.

In this episode we welcome bestselling author and screenwriter Nick Hornby to RBP's Hammersmith HQ and ask him to talk about his new book Dickens & Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius.We start by asking Nick if his original plan was to become a music journalist, then proceed to his first awareness of Prince in 1979. A broad discussion of the Minneapolitan marvel – and the parallels with Charles Dickens's "no off-switch" prolificacy – takes in his first London show in 1981, his mastering of multiple overlapping genres, his (and Dickens's) "weakness for women"... and the profound shock of his death in 2016.The imminent reissue of Boz Scaggs's 1969 debut album provides the opportunity to hear clips from the late Andy Gill's 1997 audio interview with the blues-soul smoothie. Among other things, Nick, Barney and Jasper touch on Muscle Shoals, Silk Degrees and Boz's spine-tingling version of Richard Hawley's 'There's a Storm Comin''.After Jasper offers his thoughts on newly-added library pieces about the Human League and British hip hop, we indulge in a brief chat with the Fever Pitch author about football's World Cup, which at the time of recording had reached the semi-final stage. Find out who Nick wanted to win...Many thanks to special guest Nick Hornby. Dickens & Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius is published by Penguin and available now.Note that this episode was recorded on December 14th, four days before the sad news came through that we'd lost Specials/Fun Boy Three star Terry Hall.Pieces discussed: Betty Page sees Prince live at the Lyceum, Prince airs his Dirty Mind to John Abbey, Prince in Pieces by Chris Heath, Boz Scaggs audio interview, The Human League do Christmas and Stevie Chick on how UK hip-hop got its groove.

In this episode we welcome bestselling author and screenwriter Nick Hornby to RBP's Hammersmith HQ and ask him to talk about his new book Dickens & Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius.We start by asking Nick if his original plan was to become a music journalist, then proceed to his first awareness of Prince in 1979. A broad discussion of the Minneapolitan marvel – and the parallels with Charles Dickens's "no off-switch" prolificacy – takes in his first London show in 1981, his mastering of multiple overlapping genres, his (and Dickens's) "weakness for women"... and the profound shock of his death in 2016.The imminent reissue of Boz Scaggs's 1969 debut album provides the opportunity to hear clips from the late Andy Gill's 1997 audio interview with the blues-soul smoothie. Among other things, Nick, Barney and Jasper touch on Muscle Shoals, Silk Degrees and Boz's spine-tingling version of Richard Hawley's 'There's a Storm Comin''.After Jasper offers his thoughts on newly-added library pieces about the Human League and British hip hop, we indulge in a brief chat with the Fever Pitch author about football's World Cup, which at the time of recording had reached the semi-final stage. Find out who Nick wanted to win...Many thanks to special guest Nick Hornby. Dickens & Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius is published by Penguin and available now.Note that this episode was recorded on December 14th, four days before the sad news came through that we'd lost Specials/Fun Boy Three star Terry Hall.Pieces discussed: Betty Page sees Prince live at the Lyceum, Prince airs his Dirty Mind to John Abbey, Prince in Pieces by Chris Heath, Boz Scaggs audio interview, The Human League do Christmas and Stevie Chick on how UK hip-hop got its groove.

I like to tell people that I started Uncorking a Story as a way to give authors a platform for promoting their books, but the reality is that I had an ulterior motive behind starting the show—I wanted the opportunity to pick the brains of successful authors so that I could learn from them. As an author myself, what better way to learn from masters of the craft than having the chance to chat with them for an hour or so? Well, my worlds collided recently when I had the opportunity to interview Mark Thompson about his radio career and memoir, Don't Bump the Record Kid: My adventures with Mark and Brian. I mean, what better way to become a better podcaster than by having the chance to interview an inductee of the radio hall of fame? Meet Mark Thompson: Mark is world-renowned radio host and one half of the infamous Mark and Brian, which was heard every morning for twenty-five years on the nationally syndicated Mark and Brian Show originating from KLOS Radio in LA. Mark joined me on Uncorking a Story to discuss his career and memoir Don't Bump the Record, Kid: My Adventures with Mark and Brian. 100% of the books proceeds will go to saving the lives of puppies and kittens in Southern California Key Topics: How the light from his radio brought Mark comfort during his childhood nights in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. How his decision to leave home after high school and pursue a career in radio impacted the relationship Mark had with his father. Mark's rise to fame in the radio industry. Why, when his successful radio gig went from being a joy to a job, Mark decided to call it quits with his longtime partner. The story behind the charity Mark is supporting with the book Buy Don't Bump the Record Kid Website: https://myadventureswithmarkandbrian.com/ Amazon: https://amzn.to/3GiDEWf Connect with Mark: Website: https://myadventureswithmarkandbrian.com/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@markandlyndapodcast Connect with Mike Website: https://uncorkingastory.com/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSvS4fuG3L1JMZeOyHvfk_g Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uncorkingastory/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/uncorkingastory Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uncorkingastory LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/uncorking-a-story/ If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. If you have not done so already, please rate and review Uncorking a Story on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jason Isbell is a musician from Tennessee, and Will Welch is the Global Editorial Director at GQ from New York. We chat about the White Lotus finale, Ben Affleck spotted sipping a Starbies, noise canceling, people ask Will why he's always so dressed up, crushing pills with his boot, performing at the Kennedy Center Honors with Amy Grant, being stuck in hotel gyms with celebrities, we find out why Chris didn't get red carpet credentials at the Man Of The Year awards, how to travel with a $150,000 vintage guitar, Muscle Shoals scene report, Jason's top three prescription pills, getting the phone call from Lady Gaga when his song was picked for A Star Is Born, and what he did with his Morgan Wallen money, and growing up as a crusty ass punk rocker. instagram.com/jasonisbell instagram.com/willwelch twitter.com/donetodeath twitter.com/themjeans --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/howlonggone/support

Sunday, 32 years (December 11, 2022)Show #1,600Pay $0This week we embark on our 32nd year featuring show 1,600 with smatterings of holiday music mixed with new releases and spotlights on Mavis Staples as well as and Christine McVie & Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac Blues Band.Join us 9 - Noon CST @ 89.7 FMwww.podomatic.com/podcasts/KIWRblues1. Sugarray Rayford / Miss Information2. Patti LeBelle w/ Travis Tritt /When Something is Wrong with My Baby 3. Johnny Winter / Life is Hard 4. Edgar Winter w/ Keb Mo / Lone Star Blues 5. Keb Mo / Christmas is Annoying 6. BB King / To Someone that I Love 7. Trombone Shorty / Merry Christmas to All 8. Kermit Ruffins / A Saint's Christmas 9. Mavis Staple & Levon Helm / Wide River to Cross10. Rory Block / I'll Take You There11. Mike Farris / When Mavis Sings12. Muscle Shoals (feat Mike Farris) / Respect Yourself13. Tim Kohen / Drama Queen14. Son House / Preaching Blues 15. Robert Cray / Trick or Treat16. Otis Rush / Double Trouble 17. Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac Blues Band / Oh Well! 18. Warren Haynes feat Grace Potter & Railroad Earth / Gold Dust Woman19. Christie McVie / Song Bird

My guest Fia Nyxx is considered stylistically as somewhere in between Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Toni Braxton. She embraces a theatrical approach to her music and experimental clash of genres.   Fia is also seen as a Hollywood glam-star, garnished with a rockstar twist. On her latest release Red Umbrella, she unleashes a masterful vision for storytelling. The album attempts to connect the dots along a path less traveled, embracing strength through vulnerability, devine-femininity, spiritual awakening, sexual liberation and a love story.   Fia recorded her first album, Everything Girl, at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, AL. under the musical direction of Will McFarlane (Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, Bobby "Blue" Bland) and Brian Malouf (Michael Jackson, Queen, Madonna), and features players from the iconic Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, 'The Swampers.'  She has toured the U.S. and Asia, and has been featured on the back cover of Billboard Magazine, Rolling Stone, CelebMix, Music Connection, Elicit Magazine, Prelude Press, Buzz Music, The Hype Magazine among other publications.  That is the abbreviated version of her bio from FiaNyxx.com. Earlier this year, she did an impressive video for the single Escape, with dancer/choreographer Bobby Newberry (Danity Kane, Pussycat Dolls, Missy Elliot). In this conversation we talk about that video, plus PR, marketing, common indie artist struggles, release strategy, recording studio lessons, building confidence through repetition, and theatrical performance. I believe Fia was suffering from allergies or possibly a cold when we spoke. Fia, I hope you're all better now. Please enjoy this conversation with me and singer, songwriter, performer Fia Nyxx. Support the Unstarving Musician The Unstarving Musician exists solely through the generosity of its listeners, readers, and viewers. Learn how you can offer your support. This episode was powered by Music Marketing Method, a program for independent musicians looking to grow their music career. Music Marketing Method was created by my good friend Lynz Crichton. I'm in the program and I'm learning tons! I'm growing my fan base and learning about many ways that I'll be earning money in the new year. It's also helping me grow this podcast. How cool is that? To lean more and find out if Music Marketing Method can help your music career, visit UnstarvingMusician.com/MusicMarketing. This episode of the was powered by Liner Notes. Learn from the hundreds of musicians and industry pros I've spoken with for the Unstarving Musician on topics such as marketing, songwriting, touring, sync licensing and much more. Sign up for Liner Notes. Liner Notes is an email newsletter from yours truly, in which I share some of the best knowledge gems garnered from the many conversations featured on the Unstarving Musician. You'll also be privy to the latest podcast episodes and Liner Notes subscriber exclusives. Sign up at UnstarvingMusician.com. It's free and you can unsubscribe at anytime. Mentions and Related Episodes FiaNyxx.com  Fame Studios BobbyNewberry.com Escape Official Music Video - Bobby Newberry / Fia Nyxx / Sam J Garfield Resources The Unstarving Musician's Guide to Getting Paid Gigs, by Robonzo Music Marketing Method – The program that helps musicians find fans, grow an audience and make consistent income Bandzoogle – The all-in-one platform that makes it easy to build a beautiful website for your music Dreamhost – See the latest deals from Dreamhost, save money and support the UM in the process. More Resources for musicians Pardon the Interruption (Disclosure)  Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means I make a small commission, at no extra charge to you, if you purchase using those links. Thanks for your support! Visit UnstarvingMusician.com to sign up for Liner Notes to learn what I'm learning from the best indie musicians and music industry professionals. Stay in touch! @RobonzoDrummer on Twitter  and  Instagram @UnstarvingMusician on Facebook  and  YouTube

Heartland's Tim Benson is joined by Christopher M. Reali, assistant professor of music at Ramapo College, to discuss his new book, Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals. They chat about the Muscle Shoals music scene in the 1960's and 1970's, what exactly is the “Muscle Shoals Sound,” and how that sound became such a potent cultural power that still means something even up to the present day. They also talk about the overlooked history of Muscle Shoals' impact on country music and describes the region's recent transformation into a tourism destination and something of a pilgrimage stop for musicians from all over the world.Get the book here:  https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=45zfd3qs9780252044519Blues Blast Magazine: Mark Thompson – “Christopher M Reali – Music And Mystique In Muscle Shoals | Book Review”| https://www.bluesblastmagazine.com/christopher-m-reali-music-and-mystique-in-muscle-shoals-book-review/Deep South Magazine: Erin Z. Bass – “Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals” https://deepsouthmag.com/2022/07/19/music-and-mystique-in-muscle-shoals/Southern Review of Books: Lacey Lyons – “Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals” Chronicles a Legendary Music Scene https://southernreviewofbooks.com/2022/08/08/music-and-mystique-in-muscle-shoals-christopher-reali-interview/

Brooks Long is back and that means he and Nate are talking about a book written or co-written by the great David Ritz. While at Billboard magazine in the 1940s, Jerry Wexler coined the term Rhythm & Blues. He went on to become one of the great "record men" at Atlantic Records in the 1950s, 60s and 70s where he produced career-peak recordings by legends such as Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker, Ray Charles, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin. He also found time to be a villain in the stories of Stax Records, Bert Berns and FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.Buy the book and support the podcast.Download this episode.Don't miss Nate's interview with David Ritz.Don't miss Nate & Brooks discussing:Aretha FranklinRay CharlesDon't miss Nate's interview with Bert Berns biographer Joel Selvin.Don't miss Nate's interviews with Robert Gordon about Stax Records:Part 1Part 2Have a question or a suggestion for a topic or person for Nate to interview? Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Twitter.Follow us on Facebook.Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts.  

In which we waspishly suggest the odd nip and tuck is now standard practice - and name a few obvious suspects. And alight upon … … Nick Hornby's new book and the connections he's found between Dickens and Prince.   … support acts we've seen who became household names. … David's dinner with Jess Phillips MP and what happened the day JK Rowling got a tour of the House of Commons. … the former hospital orderly who walked into Muscle Shoals studios and had a worldwide hit with his first recording. … the real identities of S. Flavius Mercurius and Bijou Drains. … the all-round wonderfulness of the London Palladium. … extracts from Bob Dylan's new book and some of the songs he'll be exploring.… and a query from birthday guest Cathal Chu. Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It's completely risk free with Nord's 30 day money-back guarantee!Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast early, ad-free and with full visuals... alongside a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In which we waspishly suggest the odd nip and tuck is now standard practice - and name a few obvious suspects. And alight upon … … Nick Hornby's new book and the connections he's found between Dickens and Prince.   … support acts we've seen who became household names. … David's dinner with Jess Phillips MP and what happened the day JK Rowling got a tour of the House of Commons. … the former hospital orderly who walked into Muscle Shoals studios and had a worldwide hit with his first recording. … the real identities of S. Flavius Mercurius and Bijou Drains. … the all-round wonderfulness of the London Palladium. … extracts from Bob Dylan's new book and some of the songs he'll be exploring.… and a query from birthday guest Cathal Chu. Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It's completely risk free with Nord's 30 day money-back guarantee!Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive every future Word Podcast early, ad-free and with full visuals... alongside a whole load more!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Tennessee River mud that flows through The Shoals, to the studios, to the records, and the world, helped to forge that Muscle Shoals Sound, created by The Swampers. They were rural Alabama's answer to The Wrecking Crew and became bigger than most big city studio players, achieving so much, without leaving home. Well, there were a few trips to record in places like New York, and opening for The Beatles, when the situation required it. Those will be discussed, as well as the growth of a recording empire that was truly unique. From Rick Hall and Fame Studios forming, to the Swampers getting their nickname, their own place, and making amazing records, Markus & Ray wade through it all, and deliver a Shotgun 5 Faves of this amazing music!We have fantastic sponsors of our podcast, please visit their web sites, and support those who make the show go:Boldfoot Socks   https://boldfoot.comCrooked Eye Brewery   https://crookedeyebrewery.com/Don't forget that you can find all of our episodes, on-demand, for free right here on our web site: https://imbalancedhistory.com/