Podcast appearances and mentions of Norman Greenbaum

According to IMDb, the song "Spirit In The Sky" by Norman Greenbaum, is the most frequently used song in movies, having appeared in over 40 films. Play along with the FOUR witches in the house when they are asked to guess what song come from what movie! And now, Paul, Lysa, Shelley and Darryl!

STRONG SIDE! LEFT SIDE! Visit https://huel.com/rejects to get 15% off your order Download the PrizePicks today & use code REJECTS to get $50 instantly when you play $5! Come see us at MULTICON!! https://www.multihouse.io/multicon Remember The Titans Full Reaction Watch Along: https://www.patreon.com/thereelrejects Follow Us On Socials:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/  Tik-Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thereelrejects?lang=en Twitter: https://x.com/thereelrejects Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ Greg Alba and Aaron Alexander dive into one of the most iconic sports dramas of all time, Remember the Titans. Directed by Boaz Yakin, this powerful film stars Denzel Washington (Training Day, Glory) as Coach Herman Boone, who leads a newly integrated high school football team in 1971 Virginia. Joining him are Will Patton (Armageddon) as Coach Bill Yoast, Wood Harris (The Wire) as Julius Campbell, Ryan Hurst (Sons of Anarchy) as Gerry Bertier, Donald Faison (Scrubs) as Petey Jones, Ryan Gosling (Barbie & La La Land) and Hayden Panettiere (Heroes) as Sheryl Yoast. Greg and Aaron react to the film's most memorable and emotional scenes, including the "Strong Side, Left Side" moment, the inspirational locker room speech, and the heart-wrenching hospital scene. They also discuss the film's timeless themes of unity, overcoming prejudice, and teamwork. Whether you're reliving this classic or experiencing it for the first time, this reaction is full of insight, laughs, and heartfelt moments. The movie also features an incredible soundtrack with hits like Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum, Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye by Steam, Peace Train by Cat Stevens, Up Around the Bend by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and more. Follow Aaron On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealaaronalexander/?hl=en Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Apparel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ Music Used In Manscaped Ad:  Hat the Jazz by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ POWERED BY @GFUEL Visit https://gfuel.ly/3wD5Ygo and use code REJECTNATION for 20% off select tubs!! Head Editor: https://www.instagram.com/praperhq/?hl=en Co-Editor: Greg Alba Co-Editor: John Humphrey Music In Video: Airport Lounge - Disco Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ask Us A QUESTION On CAMEO: https://www.cameo.com/thereelrejects Follow TheReelRejects On FACEBOOK, TWITTER, & INSTAGRAM:  FB:  https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thereelrejects Follow GREG ON INSTAGRAM & TWITTER: INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/thegregalba/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thegregalba Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Remember when God was cool? In the early '70s, we had one legend and one nobody storm the charts about the greatness of the higher power, and we're going to see how gave glory to the Lord better? What's the better hippie-dippy religious song, George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" or Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky"?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

KAREN MASTERSON KOCH, founder, ALOE LIFE   How you can help improve your digestion and give yourself beautiful skin using ALOE LIFE aloe Vera   NORMAN GREENBAUM, singer/songwriter SPIRIT IN THE SKY   The #1 hit of 1970   VICTORAS KULVINSKAS, Godfather of the Raw Foods movement, author, Survival Into The 21st Century, selling over 500,000 copies Victoras at 85 years of age, studies, teaches, and runs his healing arts center in Costa Rica

MELANIE  Billboards No 1 Top Female Vocalist 1972, hit single, BRAND NEW PAIR OF ROLLERSKATES   ALVIN TAYLOR  drummer, producer, musical director, known for his work with Little Richard, Elton John, Eric Burdon, George Harrison, Billy Preston & Bob Welch NORMAN GREENBAUM singer/songwriter, SPIRIT IN THE SKY #1 Hit Internationally

The Daily Quiz - Music Today's Questions: Question 1: Who sung the song 'Smooth Criminal'? Question 2: What song did Norman Greenbaum have a hit with in 1969? Question 3: Which of these is a brass instrument? Question 4: Which British rock band released the song 'We Are the Champions'? Question 5: Which American Latin pop duo released the album 'En vivo'? Question 6: Which musician released the song 'Beat It'? Question 7: What type of instrument is a double bass? Question 8: Which Irish rock band released the single 'Zombie'? This podcast is produced by Klassic Studios Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

September 25th is "One Hit Wonder Day" and we celebrated it on WKXL with songs from Desmond Dekker and the Acres and Norman Greenbaum to Tiny Tim.

Welcome, friends! I hope you enjoy this conversation with my new pal and legendary rocker, Norman Greenbaum @normangreenbaummusic - Norman is a musician, singer, and songwriter from way back East and a long time ago. We had an unlikely chat about flies, the absence of snails in Alaska, the presence of snails in California, growing up in Boston, MA, "The Eggplant That Ate Chicago," our mutual friend, Erik Jacobsen @erikstravels2161 and, of course, Norman's life in music. It was an honor and a privilege to hear a tiny snippet of his tale. Share and Enjoy, won't you?Links -Watch the episode on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgJQ19LLW7wLearn more about Norman - www.SpiritInTheSky.com -Watch his podcast @normangreenbaummusic Buy some guitar strings - https://spiritinthesky.com/product/norman-greenbaum-electric-guitar-strings/Tunes in this Episode -Oscar Aleman - DelicadoThe Stovall Sisters - Spirit in the Sky (written by Norman Greenbaum) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The connection between wine and music is nothing short of amazing.  Moreover,nothing has the power... The post Episode #781 – Norman Greenbaum’s Legendary Spirit in the Sky’s Deep Wine Country Roots Life-Changing for Millions of Fans appeared first on .

NORMAN GREENBAUM ‘THE LOST INTERVIEWS' with RAY SHASHO EPISODE 13 -INTERVIEWED Dec 6th 2011 "When I die and they lay me to rest Gonna go to the place that's the best When I lay me down to die Goin'up to the spirit in the sky"   Norman Greenbaum is considered by many music experts to be a one-hit wonder.  But when the lyrics to that hit meant so much to so many and with eternal impact… then who cares? Greenbaum's “Spirit In The Sky” echoed an inspirational message of optimism for hope of an afterlife. The song reached #3 on the Billboard charts and sold two million singles by 1970, and during an important transitional period in music that witnessed Album-Oriented Rock formats overshadowing Top 40 singles on the airwaves. Greenbaum created one of the most recognizable guitar riffs in rock and roll history using an industrial fuzz tone. Released in 1969, “Sprit In The Sky” has stood the test of time. Greenbaum states, “Motorists actually still pull over to the side of the road when they hear the song being played on the radio.” And the song continues to be a heavily requested tune at funerals. Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Spirit In The Sky,” #341 on the list of top ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time.' Countless musicians have mimicked their version of the celestial composition including Elton John, DC Talk, Darrel Mansfield, The Stovall Sisters (The back-up singers on the original recording), Doctor and the Medics, Nina Hagen, and Norman's favorite cover version, The Kentucky Headhunters.  “Spirit In The Sky” has been featured in countless movies, TV series and commercials. The song has also been spotlighted on the 2008 music video game- Rock Band 2, enlightening a whole new generation of “Spirit” advocates. Norman Greenbaum began a music career as a member of Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band. Their sole hit was, “The Eggplant that Ate Chicago” (#52 on Billboard's top 100) in 1966. Greenbaum departed the band and began a solo career under the direction of producer Erik Jacobsen (Lovin' Spoonful, Sopwith Camel, Chris Issak). Raised of the Jewish faith, Greenbaum states that there wasn't much resentment from the Jewish Community over his Christian-like lyrics, especially his reference to Jesus. The only true criticism came from the Christian side who were not very pleased with his lyric… “Never been a sinner I never sinned.” Greenbaum says, “I just didn't know better at the time.” Today Norman Greenbaum is 69 years old and lives in Northern California. His 1969 metaphysical one- hit wonder continues to be adored and emulated by countless fans. Most recently Peter Frampton covered “Spirit In The Sky” on William Shatner's latest album, Seeking Major Tom. Norman enjoys sponsoring races at the local fair. He says, “All it consists of is getting around thirty friends together, having a party, and getting your picture taken with the winning racehorse.” He's also won a bunch of blue ribbons entering various works. Here's my interview with Songwriter/Vocalist/Guitarist/Rock and Roll Icon/ and a very amusing and hip guy… Norman Greenbaum. (We had to reschedule the original interview date because Mr. Greenbaum was feeling a bit under the weather).     Support us on PayPal!

-It's a Football Facts Monday….what's on Bill's mind today?-Also, SONG OF THE DAY (sponsored by Sartor Hamann Jewelers): "Spirit In the Sky" - Norman Greenbaum (1969)Show sponsored by GANA TRUCKINGAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Join the band as we discuss the 1969 album Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum.  Jill, our chief cheerleader and spiritualist, also tells us a tale of how a fan broke the Boston Celtics at home winning streak!website: actonmusicproject.comemail: music@actonmusicproject.comCraig's phone number: ‪(978) 310-1613‬

In Bonus Episode #07, Tobin Mayell joins the show for the first of a two-part conversation honoring the lives of his late parents—Norm Mayell and Christine Waddell. Here, Tobin recounts for us the core elements in his relationship with Norm—open-heartedly offering glimpses into the arc of the their father-son story. From early, unrequited longings to adult acceptances and eventually to the transmissions found in Norm's passing away from cancer in August of 2022, we come see that the father-son relationship has many moments over the course of time and just how much can live inside one parent-child relationship.We learn that Norm was a drummer in such bands as Sopwith Camel, Blue Cheer, and Norman Greenbaum, frequently taking him on the road while Tobin lived with his mother. We also learn that Norm later became a devout golfer, finding a spiritual magic in the game. Across his life we come to see that among other things, Norm lived with a kind-of private wisdom and natural magnetism that drew people towards him.Through this conversation with the How Humans Work show host, Jef Szi, Tobin helps us realize how death and life work hand-in-hand to give us unexpected teachings. Much was born for Tobin in his father's dying process. Tobin's own musical calling found new energy as the journey to memorialize his father placed Tobin—literally and figuratively—behind Norm's drumkit. As Tobin finds himself playing Norm's drums, singing his songs, and playing with Norm's former bandmates is a symmetry that is as satisfying as it is moving. Equally profound is hearing the unguarded connection that accompanies the moment—how childhood hungers were able to come full circle in ways that only Tobin can express. Looking Into the Beyond offers a profound validation the web of life. It shows us something of the essence of Norm's life as a man, a father, and musician, but it also shows us how the act of death is generative to those that live—releasing unfinished hurts and inspiring the energy of life to continue. As always, you are invited to listen-in, because in these two episodes that dive into Tobin's very personal journey of losing both his parents within months of one another, we get a real dose of how life and death collaborate in ways that are impossible to know beforehand.

On this episode, Part 2, Tom and Bert discuss the hidden gems of the music business known as "1 Hit Wonders".Growing up in the 1960's and 1970's we were treated with so many great songs where the Bands or Artists' success was tied to a song that brought them notoriety and Singles (45's) Chart fame.As the boys go through the lists you will surely recognize some "Oldies" like "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum,  "San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie, "Woodstock" by Matthews Southern Comfort and "Hey Baby" by Bruce Channel to name a few.HUGE Pop Culture/mainstream Monster hits like "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba, "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia, "Take on Me" by Aha and "Whomp, There it Is" by Tag Team are also discussed.And there are others where you might say, "Hmm, never herd that one before"! These songs span the decades and were all influential in their own way to many a music fan.Enjoy the show and Thanks for listening.You can email us at reeldealzmoviesandmusic@gmail.com or visit our Facebook page, Reel Dealz Podcast: Movies & Music Thru The Decades to leave comments and/or TEXT us at 843-855-1704 as well.

Celebrating listener love from all corners of the world, we honor the profound connection music has across borders. We open with a special meaning of Norman Greenbaum's ethereal "Spirit in the Sky," and then swiftly switch gears, strutting alongside Joe Jackson's fusion of genres on the edgy "Look Sharp! album.Navigating through the neon-lit landscape of the 80s, we chuckle over the curious case of misunderstood lyrics in Talk Talk's "It's My Life," before parachuting into the electrifying era of Van Halen's "1984." Feel the adrenaline surge with the ferocious roar of Eddie Van Halen's Lamborghini on "Panama" and the synth-heavy leap of "Jump." Finally, we turn the spotlight on The Beatles, as we commemorate the 60th anniversary of "Meet the Beatles," an album that forever altered the American music landscape. Reflect on the quirks between American and British album releases, as well as the tidal wave the Fab Four initiated. Learn Something New orRemember Something Old

SUMMARY:Songwriters Hall of Famer JD Souther joins Scott and Paul for an in-depth interview to kick off the New Year! PART ONE:Paul and Scott welcome two very special guests (ages 8 and 5) to help set the tone for the new year. Plus they reveal the clever message a listener sent in to win the Stax Christmas LP from the last episode. PART TWO:Our in-depth conversation with JD SoutherABOUT JD SOUTHER:JD Souther is perhaps best known for writing or co-writing ten songs recorded by the Eagles, including “Victim of Love,” “The Sad Café,” “How Long,” and the #1 hits “Best of My Love,” “New Kid in Town,” and “Heartache Tonight.” Another ten of his songs were recorded by Linda Ronstadt, among them “Faithless Love,” “Prisoner in Disguise,” and “Simple Man, Simple Dream.” The list of other artists who have drawn from the JD Souther songbook includes Bonnie Raitt, Rod Stewart, Conway Twitty, Glen Campbell, George Strait, Trisha Yearwood, Tom Jones, Roy Orbison, Raul Malo, Michael Buble, India.Arie, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Additionally, JD co-wrote three songs with Don Henley on his End of the Innoncence album, including “Heart of the Matter,” and found success with the Dixie Chicks' cover of his “I'll Take Care of You.” As an artist, JD launched his career with the group Longbranch / Pennywhistle, which he founded with future Eagle Glenn Frey. Soon after, he co-founded the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band with Chris Hillman of The Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield and Poco. In total, JD has released seven solo studio albums between 1972 and 2015, and landed two Top 10 hits as a recording artist with “You're Only Lonely” and the James Taylor duet “Her Town Too.” Souther was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2013. 

In this episode of Music & Meaning, host Charlie Peacock offers a narrative trip through the many ways Jesus has been represented in pop music: explicitly, implicitly, genuinely, and in mockery.  He discusses Jesus Christ Superstar, the rock opera that brought a contemporary Jesus to a new generation. This leads to a look into the '70s perspective of Jesus as a symbol of authenticity and rebellion, covering tracks from Norman Greenbaum, James Taylor, The Velvet Underground, and Black Sabbath, to name a few. As he moves through the decades, Charlie reflects on the evolving depictions of Jesus in music, from controversial metal bands in the '80s to Tupac Shakur's '90s rap, on to Kanye West's "Jesus Walks" in the 2000s, and much more, including Taylor Swift, The Killers, U2, and Lauren Daigle. In his own words, "I'm just shining a light on the persistent motif of Jesus in pop culture. Some musicians are simply namechecking Jesus. Others have interwoven the Jesus narrative into their music with curiosity and care." The episode wraps up with Charlie sharing his personal ethos regarding the mention of Jesus in music (and he might even be caught singing a little bit). Finally, he leaves us with a 50-song Spotify playlist that highlights a few of these diverse musical critiques of Jesus, the co-opting of his name, as well as tributes, praise, and true artistic reflection. The playlist offers listeners a second opportunity to soak up Jesus's significant impact on pop music titles and lyrics. Contemporary interest in who people say Jesus is, through music and entertainment, is alive and well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's podcast episode is a replay of a fun episode from May 9, 2019, featuring Norman Greenbaum, longtime Sonoma County resident famous for the song Spirit in the Sky (because today, Thursday December 14, The Drive is running a replay of the show from 2 weeks ago, live on Wine Country Radio, in our usual time slot). Enjoy this episode from pre-Covid-19 days! Norman Greenbaum and his portuguese guitar. Norman Greenbaum is our guest on Brew Ha Ha today, joining Steve Jaxon, Mark Carpenter and Herlinda Heras. He wrote and performed the iconic 1969 song "Spirit in the Sky." Herlinda Heras is back from her trip to Portugal and has brought three Portuguese beers to taste. Norman Greenbaum is a longtime Sonoma County resident. Steve asks Norman if the success of his song still surprises him. It has been in movies and commercials and continues to have its own life. Any band or singer wants to have a hit record, and he was lucky to have a hit on the charts. He says he may have been a one-hit wonder but it has been in over 60 movies and a couple dozen commercials. The song in commercials It was in an ad for Audi in the last Super Bowl. Spirit in the Sky was in the Budweiser Discovery Reserve American Red Lager beer advertisement. The beer was brewed to commemorate the 1969 moon landing. The song was recorded in San Francisco. Herlinda asks Norman to tell the story of the song and he remembers various scenes and themes from old Western films. The Stovall Sisters were his backup singers, they were from Oakland where they also sang in church. Mark Carpenter remembers the environment of the late 1960s and remembers the song as a really big hit. See our sponsor Victory House at Poppy Bank Epicenter online, for their latest viewing and menu options. Beers from Portugal Herlinda Heras has brought beers from Portugal, including an "APA" which they call an American Pale Ale. Praxis Brewery is in Coimbra which is famous for having really good water. The Praxis family younger generation has revived the brewery and Mark says it's a great example of Europeans doing an American style. It is 6% alcohol which is reasonable. There is also an 8/5% double Bock from Vaida Brewery outside of Aveiro which is south of Porto. Herlinda has also brought a beer with a woman on the label. Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date hours, menus, beers and more. Norman Greenbaum remembers that New York was a center of music recording but he was not fond of the city. He knew that Hollywood was the other center of that business so he went to LA. He started Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band and signed with a record company immediately. The Eggplant that Ate Chicago was their first hit. Now his songs have been in countless commercials and movies. Norman does say he is flabbergasted and thanks "the Spirit in the Sky for taking such good care of me." He never gets tired of hearing it even if he wrote it. It still sends shivers up his spine. Norman has brought a special guitar today which is from Portugal. He bought it at the flea market in Petaluma for $25, 40 years ago and brought it to a luthier for repairs. It disappeared and 42 years later, the guy contacted him saying it was fixed!  It is called a Viola de Terra made of birds-eye maple.

We share and discuss the 20 most frequently used songs in movies. In a article from FAR OUT MAGAZINE 2023 , the article was based on data published by a website called TUNEFIND. We cover the 20 movie songs along with some of the movies that featured them. WE NEED YOUR HELP!! It's quick, easy, and free - Please consider doing one or all of the following to help grow our audience: Leave Us A Five Star Review in one of the following places: Apple Podcast Podchaser Spotify Connect with us  Email us growinuprock@gmail.com Contact Form  Like and Follow Us on FaceBook Follow Us on Twitter Leave Us A Review On Podchaser Join The Growin' Up Rock Loud Minority Facebook Group Do You Spotify? Then Follow us and Give Our Playlist a listen. We update it regularly with kick ass rock n roll Spotify Playlist Buy and Support Music From The Artist We Discuss On This Episode Growin' Up Rock Amazon Store Pantheon Podcast Network Music in this Episode Provided by the Following: AC/DC, Danko Jones, The Isley Brothers, Billy Squier, Marvin Gaye, House Of Pain, Booker T & The MGs, Survivor, Wang Chung, The Turtles, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Young MC, Rob Base And DJ EZ Rock, Norman Greenbaum, Queen & David Bowie, Kiss, And C&C Music Factory Crank It Up New Music Spotlight Danko Jones -“Guess Who's Back” from Electric Sounds If you dig what you are hearing, go pick up the album or some merch., and support these artists. A Special THANK YOU to Restrayned for the Killer Show Intro and transition music!! Restrayned Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recorded live on KX FM 104.7 in Laguna Beach, California, today's Keith's Music Box features Little Feat, the Ramones, the Jim Carroll Band, Scandal, The Kinks, Dire Straits, It's a Beautiful Day, Nick Gilder, Robert Palmer, Roxy Music, Toy Matinee, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Jimi Hendrix, Norman Greenbaum, the Alan Parsons Project, the Moody Blues, the Raconteurs, Squeeze, the Searchers, Rufus with Chaka Khan, Foreigner, Jake Bugg, Steely Dan and Garbage.

Regardless of whether you know the name Norman Greenbaum or not, you most DEFINITELY know his hit 1969 song “Spirit In the Sky”. This uplifting single has appeared in countless movies, TV shows, and commercials, with its use showing no sign of slowing over five decades later. This week, we're joined by Rock and Roll Candle Co. founder Samm Strangeland to get spiritual about Greenbaum, and decide if he should've kept pumping out hits OR if his goats just needed him more than we did. If you like the show, be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. Email us at onehitthunderpodcast@gmail.com. Also, follow us on our social media: Twitter: @‌1hitthunderpod Instagram: onehitthunderpodcast Wanna create your own podcast? Contact us at We Know Podcasting for more information. Visit Punchline: A Band Called Punchline | Pittsburgh, PAfor Punchline tour dates, news, and merch. Sign up for more One Hit Thunder on our Patreon One Hit Thunder | Patreon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I know that many of my listeners wonder, "Is there a genre The BPP hasn't done? Well there is! And it's today!! And it's sacred music. Lots of hymns and good feelings between people. And no, we won't be doing Norman Greenbaum's 'Spirit In The Sky'. Sheesh. Tune in and pray on.

Episode 168 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Say a Little Prayer”, and the interaction of the sacred, political, and secular in Aretha Franklin's life and work. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "Abraham, Martin, and John" by Dion. 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 Aretha Franklin. Even splitting it into multiple parts would have required six or seven mixes. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. Information about Martin Luther King came from Martin Luther King: A Religious Life by Paul Harvey. I also referred to Burt Bacharach's autobiography Anyone Who Had a Heart, Carole King's autobiography A Natural Woman, and Soul Serenade: King Curtis and his Immortal Saxophone by Timothy R. Hoover. For information about Amazing Grace I also used Aaron Cohen's 33 1/3 book on the album. The film of the concerts is also definitely worth watching. And the Aretha Now album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick warning before I begin. This episode contains some moderate references to domestic abuse, death by cancer, racial violence, police violence, and political assassination. Anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to check the transcript rather than listening to the episode. Also, as with the previous episode on Aretha Franklin, this episode presents something of a problem. Like many people in this narrative, Franklin's career was affected by personal troubles, which shaped many of her decisions. But where most of the subjects of the podcast have chosen to live their lives in public and share intimate details of every aspect of their personal lives, Franklin was an extremely private person, who chose to share only carefully sanitised versions of her life, and tried as far as possible to keep things to herself. This of course presents a dilemma for anyone who wants to tell her story -- because even though the information is out there in biographies, and even though she's dead, it's not right to disrespect someone's wish for a private life. I have therefore tried, wherever possible, to stay away from talk of her personal life except where it *absolutely* affects the work, or where other people involved have publicly shared their own stories, and even there I've tried to keep it to a minimum. This will occasionally lead to me saying less about some topics than other people might, even though the information is easily findable, because I don't think we have an absolute right to invade someone else's privacy for entertainment. When we left Aretha Franklin, she had just finally broken through into the mainstream after a decade of performing, with a version of Otis Redding's song "Respect" on which she had been backed by her sisters, Erma and Carolyn. "Respect", in Franklin's interpretation, had been turned from a rather chauvinist song about a man demanding respect from his woman into an anthem of feminism, of Black power, and of a new political awakening. For white people of a certain generation, the summer of 1967 was "the summer of love". For many Black people, it was rather different. There's a quote that goes around (I've seen it credited in reliable sources to both Ebony and Jet magazine, but not ever seen an issue cited, so I can't say for sure where it came from) saying that the summer of 67 was the summer of "'retha, Rap, and revolt", referring to the trifecta of Aretha Franklin, the Black power leader Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (who was at the time known as H. Rap Brown, a name he later disclaimed) and the rioting that broke out in several major cities, particularly in Detroit: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] The mid sixties were, in many ways, the high point not of Black rights in the US -- for the most part there has been a lot of progress in civil rights in the intervening decades, though not without inevitable setbacks and attacks from the far right, and as movements like the Black Lives Matter movement have shown there is still a long way to go -- but of *hope* for Black rights. The moral force of the arguments made by the civil rights movement were starting to cause real change to happen for Black people in the US for the first time since the Reconstruction nearly a century before. But those changes weren't happening fast enough, and as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", there was not only a growing unrest among Black people, but a recognition that it was actually possible for things to change. A combination of hope and frustration can be a powerful catalyst, and whether Franklin wanted it or not, she was at the centre of things, both because of her newfound prominence as a star with a hit single that couldn't be interpreted as anything other than a political statement and because of her intimate family connections to the struggle. Even the most racist of white people these days pays lip service to the memory of Dr Martin Luther King, and when they do they quote just a handful of sentences from one speech King made in 1963, as if that sums up the full theological and political philosophy of that most complex of men. And as we discussed the last time we looked at Aretha Franklin, King gave versions of that speech, the "I Have a Dream" speech, twice. The most famous version was at the March on Washington, but the first time was a few weeks earlier, at what was at the time the largest civil rights demonstration in American history, in Detroit. Aretha's family connection to that event is made clear by the very opening of King's speech: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech"] So as summer 1967 got into swing, and white rock music was going to San Francisco to wear flowers in its hair, Aretha Franklin was at the centre of a very different kind of youth revolution. Franklin's second Atlantic album, Aretha Arrives, brought in some new personnel to the team that had recorded Aretha's first album for Atlantic. Along with the core Muscle Shoals players Jimmy Johnson, Spooner Oldham, Tommy Cogbill and Roger Hawkins, and a horn section led by King Curtis, Wexler and Dowd also brought in guitarist Joe South. South was a white session player from Georgia, who had had a few minor hits himself in the fifties -- he'd got his start recording a cover version of "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor", the Big Bopper's B-side to "Chantilly Lace": [Excerpt: Joe South, "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor"] He'd also written a few songs that had been recorded by people like Gene Vincent, but he'd mostly become a session player. He'd become a favourite musician of Bob Johnston's, and so he'd played guitar on Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme albums: [Excerpt: Simon and Garfunkel, "I am a Rock"] and bass on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, with Al Kooper particularly praising his playing on "Visions of Johanna": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"] South would be the principal guitarist on this and Franklin's next album, before his own career took off in 1968 with "Games People Play": [Excerpt: Joe South, "Games People Play"] At this point, he had already written the other song he's best known for, "Hush", which later became a hit for Deep Purple: [Excerpt: Deep Purple, "Hush"] But he wasn't very well known, and was surprised to get the call for the Aretha Franklin session, especially because, as he put it "I was white and I was about to play behind the blackest genius since Ray Charles" But Jerry Wexler had told him that Franklin didn't care about the race of the musicians she played with, and South settled in as soon as Franklin smiled at him when he played a good guitar lick on her version of the blues standard "Going Down Slow": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Going Down Slow"] That was one of the few times Franklin smiled in those sessions though. Becoming an overnight success after years of trying and failing to make a name for herself had been a disorienting experience, and on top of that things weren't going well in her personal life. Her marriage to her manager Ted White was falling apart, and she was performing erratically thanks to the stress. In particular, at a gig in Georgia she had fallen off the stage and broken her arm. She soon returned to performing, but it meant she had problems with her right arm during the recording of the album, and didn't play as much piano as she would have previously -- on some of the faster songs she played only with her left hand. But the recording sessions had to go on, whether or not Aretha was physically capable of playing piano. As we discussed in the episode on Otis Redding, the owners of Atlantic Records were busily negotiating its sale to Warner Brothers in mid-1967. As Wexler said later “Everything in me said, Keep rolling, keep recording, keep the hits coming. She was red hot and I had no reason to believe that the streak wouldn't continue. I knew that it would be foolish—and even irresponsible—not to strike when the iron was hot. I also had personal motivation. A Wall Street financier had agreed to see what we could get for Atlantic Records. While Ahmet and Neshui had not agreed on a selling price, they had gone along with my plan to let the financier test our worth on the open market. I was always eager to pump out hits, but at this moment I was on overdrive. In this instance, I had a good partner in Ted White, who felt the same. He wanted as much product out there as possible." In truth, you can tell from Aretha Arrives that it's a record that was being thought of as "product" rather than one being made out of any kind of artistic impulse. It's a fine album -- in her ten-album run from I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You through Amazing Grace there's not a bad album and barely a bad track -- but there's a lack of focus. There are only two originals on the album, neither of them written by Franklin herself, and the rest is an incoherent set of songs that show the tension between Franklin and her producers at Atlantic. Several songs are the kind of standards that Franklin had recorded for her old label Columbia, things like "You Are My Sunshine", or her version of "That's Life", which had been a hit for Frank Sinatra the previous year: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "That's Life"] But mixed in with that are songs that are clearly the choice of Wexler. As we've discussed previously in episodes on Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, at this point Atlantic had the idea that it was possible for soul artists to cross over into the white market by doing cover versions of white rock hits -- and indeed they'd had some success with that tactic. So while Franklin was suggesting Sinatra covers, Atlantic's hand is visible in the choices of songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "96 Tears": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "96 Tears'] Of the two originals on the album, one, the hit single "Baby I Love You" was written by Ronnie Shannon, the Detroit songwriter who had previously written "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Baby I Love You"] As with the previous album, and several other songs on this one, that had backing vocals by Aretha's sisters, Erma and Carolyn. But the other original on the album, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)", didn't, even though it was written by Carolyn: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] To explain why, let's take a little detour and look at the co-writer of the song this episode is about, though we're not going to get to that for a little while yet. We've not talked much about Burt Bacharach in this series so far, but he's one of those figures who has come up a few times in the periphery and will come up again, so here is as good a time as any to discuss him, and bring everyone up to speed about his career up to 1967. Bacharach was one of the more privileged figures in the sixties pop music field. His father, Bert Bacharach (pronounced the same as his son, but spelled with an e rather than a u) had been a famous newspaper columnist, and his parents had bought him a Steinway grand piano to practice on -- they pushed him to learn the piano even though as a kid he wasn't interested in finger exercises and Debussy. What he was interested in, though, was jazz, and as a teenager he would often go into Manhattan and use a fake ID to see people like Dizzy Gillespie, who he idolised, and in his autobiography he talks rapturously of seeing Gillespie playing his bent trumpet -- he once saw Gillespie standing on a street corner with a pet monkey on his shoulder, and went home and tried to persuade his parents to buy him a monkey too. In particular, he talks about seeing the Count Basie band with Sonny Payne on drums as a teenager: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Kid From Red Bank"] He saw them at Birdland, the club owned by Morris Levy where they would regularly play, and said of the performance "they were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before. What I heard in those clubs really turned my head around— it was like a big breath of fresh air when somebody throws open a window. That was when I knew for the first time how much I loved music and wanted to be connected to it in some way." Of course, there's a rather major problem with this story, as there is so often with narratives that musicians tell about their early career. In this case, Birdland didn't open until 1949, when Bacharach was twenty-one and stationed in Germany for his military service, while Sonny Payne didn't join Basie's band until 1954, when Bacharach had been a professional musician for many years. Also Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet bell only got bent on January 6, 1953. But presumably while Bacharach was conflating several memories, he did have some experience in some New York jazz club that led him to want to become a musician. Certainly there were enough great jazz musicians playing the clubs in those days. He went to McGill University to study music for two years, then went to study with Darius Milhaud, a hugely respected modernist composer. Milhaud was also one of the most important music teachers of the time -- among others he'd taught Stockhausen and Xenakkis, and would go on to teach Philip Glass and Steve Reich. This suited Bacharach, who by this point was a big fan of Schoenberg and Webern, and was trying to write atonal, difficult music. But Milhaud had also taught Dave Brubeck, and when Bacharach rather shamefacedly presented him with a composition which had an actual tune, he told Bacharach "Never be ashamed of writing a tune you can whistle". He dropped out of university and, like most men of his generation, had to serve in the armed forces. When he got out of the army, he continued his musical studies, still trying to learn to be an avant-garde composer, this time with Bohuslav Martinů and later with Henry Cowell, the experimental composer we've heard about quite a bit in previous episodes: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] He was still listening to a lot of avant garde music, and would continue doing so throughout the fifties, going to see people like John Cage. But he spent much of that time working in music that was very different from the avant-garde. He got a job as the band leader for the crooner Vic Damone: [Excerpt: Vic Damone. "Ebb Tide"] He also played for the vocal group the Ames Brothers. He decided while he was working with the Ames Brothers that he could write better material than they were getting from their publishers, and that it would be better to have a job where he didn't have to travel, so he got himself a job as a staff songwriter in the Brill Building. He wrote a string of flops and nearly hits, starting with "Keep Me In Mind" for Patti Page: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Keep Me In Mind"] From early in his career he worked with the lyricist Hal David, and the two of them together wrote two big hits, "Magic Moments" for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, "Magic Moments"] and "The Story of My Life" for Marty Robbins: [Excerpt: "The Story of My Life"] But at that point Bacharach was still also writing with other writers, notably Hal David's brother Mack, with whom he wrote the theme tune to the film The Blob, as performed by The Five Blobs: [Excerpt: The Five Blobs, "The Blob"] But Bacharach's songwriting career wasn't taking off, and he got himself a job as musical director for Marlene Dietrich -- a job he kept even after it did start to take off.  Part of the problem was that he intuitively wrote music that didn't quite fit into standard structures -- there would be odd bars of unusual time signatures thrown in, unusual harmonies, and structural irregularities -- but then he'd take feedback from publishers and producers who would tell him the song could only be recorded if he straightened it out. He said later "The truth is that I ruined a lot of songs by not believing in myself enough to tell these guys they were wrong." He started writing songs for Scepter Records, usually with Hal David, but also with Bob Hilliard and Mack David, and started having R&B hits. One song he wrote with Mack David, "I'll Cherish You", had the lyrics rewritten by Luther Dixon to make them more harsh-sounding for a Shirelles single -- but the single was otherwise just Bacharach's demo with the vocals replaced, and you can even hear his voice briefly at the beginning: [Excerpt: The Shirelles, "Baby, It's You"] But he'd also started becoming interested in the production side of records more generally. He'd iced that some producers, when recording his songs, would change the sound for the worse -- he thought Gene McDaniels' version of "Tower of Strength", for example, was too fast. But on the other hand, other producers got a better sound than he'd heard in his head. He and Hilliard had written a song called "Please Stay", which they'd given to Leiber and Stoller to record with the Drifters, and he thought that their arrangement of the song was much better than the one he'd originally thought up: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Please Stay"] He asked Leiber and Stoller if he could attend all their New York sessions and learn about record production from them. He started doing so, and eventually they started asking him to assist them on records. He and Hilliard wrote a song called "Mexican Divorce" for the Drifters, which Leiber and Stoller were going to produce, and as he put it "they were so busy running Redbird Records that they asked me to rehearse the background singers for them in my office." [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Mexican Divorce"] The backing singers who had been brought in to augment the Drifters on that record were a group of vocalists who had started out as members of a gospel group called the Drinkard singers: [Excerpt: The Drinkard Singers, "Singing in My Soul"] The Drinkard Singers had originally been a family group, whose members included Cissy Drinkard, who joined the group aged five (and who on her marriage would become known as Cissy Houston -- her daughter Whitney would later join the family business), her aunt Lee Warrick, and Warrick's adopted daughter Judy Clay. That group were discovered by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and spent much of the fifties performing with gospel greats including Jackson herself, Clara Ward, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But Houston was also the musical director of a group at her church, the Gospelaires, which featured Lee Warrick's two daughters Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick (for those who don't know, the Warwick sisters' birth name was Warrick, spelled with two rs. A printing error led to it being misspelled the same way as the British city on a record label, and from that point on Dionne at least pronounced the w in her misspelled name). And slowly, the Gospelaires rather than the Drinkard Singers became the focus, with a lineup of Houston, the Warwick sisters, the Warwick sisters' cousin Doris Troy, and Clay's sister Sylvia Shemwell. The real change in the group's fortunes came when, as we talked about a while back in the episode on "The Loco-Motion", the original lineup of the Cookies largely stopped working as session singers to become Ray Charles' Raelettes. As we discussed in that episode, a new lineup of Cookies formed in 1961, but it took a while for them to get started, and in the meantime the producers who had been relying on them for backing vocals were looking elsewhere, and they looked to the Gospelaires. "Mexican Divorce" was the first record to feature the group as backing vocalists -- though reports vary as to how many of them are on the record, with some saying it's only Troy and the Warwicks, others saying Houston was there, and yet others saying it was all five of them. Some of these discrepancies were because these singers were so good that many of them left to become solo singers in fairly short order. Troy was the first to do so, with her hit "Just One Look", on which the other Gospelaires sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Doris Troy, "Just One Look"] But the next one to go solo was Dionne Warwick, and that was because she'd started working with Bacharach and Hal David as their principal demo singer. She started singing lead on their demos, and hoping that she'd get to release them on her own. One early one was "Make it Easy On Yourself", which was recorded by Jerry Butler, formerly of the Impressions. That record was produced by Bacharach, one of the first records he produced without outside supervision: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "Make it Easy On Yourself"] Warwick was very jealous that a song she'd sung the demo of had become a massive hit for someone else, and blamed Bacharach and David. The way she tells the story -- Bacharach always claimed this never happened, but as we've already seen he was himself not always the most reliable of narrators of his own life -- she got so angry she complained to them, and said "Don't make me over, man!" And so Bacharach and David wrote her this: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Don't Make Me Over"] Incidentally, in the UK, the hit version of that was a cover by the Swinging Blue Jeans: [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "Don't Make Me Over"] who also had a huge hit with "You're No Good": [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "You're No Good"] And *that* was originally recorded by *Dee Dee* Warwick: [Excerpt: Dee Dee Warwick, "You're No Good"] Dee Dee also had a successful solo career, but Dionne's was the real success, making the names of herself, and of Bacharach and David. The team had more than twenty top forty hits together, before Bacharach and David had a falling out in 1971 and stopped working together, and Warwick sued both of them for breach of contract as a result. But prior to that they had hit after hit, with classic records like "Anyone Who Had a Heart": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Anyone Who Had a Heart"] And "Walk On By": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Walk On By"] With Doris, Dionne, and Dee Dee all going solo, the group's membership was naturally in flux -- though the departed members would occasionally join their former bandmates for sessions, and the remaining members would sing backing vocals on their ex-members' records. By 1965 the group consisted of Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, the Warwick sisters' cousin Myrna Smith, and Estelle Brown. The group became *the* go-to singers for soul and R&B records made in New York. They were regularly hired by Leiber and Stoller to sing on their records, and they were also the particular favourites of Bert Berns. They sang backing vocals on almost every record he produced. It's them doing the gospel wails on "Cry Baby" by Garnet Mimms: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And they sang backing vocals on both versions of "If You Need Me" -- Wilson Pickett's original and Solomon Burke's more successful cover version, produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] They're on such Berns records as "Show Me Your Monkey", by Kenny Hamber: [Excerpt: Kenny Hamber, "Show Me Your Monkey"] And it was a Berns production that ended up getting them to be Aretha Franklin's backing group. The group were becoming such an important part of the records that Atlantic and BANG Records, in particular, were putting out, that Jerry Wexler said "it was only a matter of common decency to put them under contract as a featured group". He signed them to Atlantic and renamed them from the Gospelaires to The Sweet Inspirations.  Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham wrote a song for the group which became their only hit under their own name: [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Sweet Inspiration"] But to start with, they released a cover of Pops Staples' civil rights song "Why (Am I treated So Bad)": [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Why (Am I Treated So Bad?)"] That hadn't charted, and meanwhile, they'd all kept doing session work. Cissy had joined Erma and Carolyn Franklin on the backing vocals for Aretha's "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"] Shortly after that, the whole group recorded backing vocals for Erma's single "Piece of My Heart", co-written and produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] That became a top ten record on the R&B charts, but that caused problems. Aretha Franklin had a few character flaws, and one of these was an extreme level of jealousy for any other female singer who had any level of success and came up in the business after her. She could be incredibly graceful towards anyone who had been successful before her -- she once gave one of her Grammies away to Esther Phillips, who had been up for the same award and had lost to her -- but she was terribly insecure, and saw any contemporary as a threat. She'd spent her time at Columbia Records fuming (with some justification) that Barbra Streisand was being given a much bigger marketing budget than her, and she saw Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick as rivals rather than friends. And that went doubly for her sisters, who she was convinced should be supporting her because of family loyalty. She had been infuriated at John Hammond when Columbia had signed Erma, thinking he'd gone behind her back to create competition for her. And now Erma was recording with Bert Berns. Bert Berns who had for years been a colleague of Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers at Atlantic. Aretha was convinced that Wexler had put Berns up to signing Erma as some kind of power play. There was only one problem with this -- it simply wasn't true. As Wexler later explained “Bert and I had suffered a bad falling-out, even though I had enormous respect for him. After all, he was the guy who brought over guitarist Jimmy Page from England to play on our sessions. Bert, Ahmet, Nesuhi, and I had started a label together—Bang!—where Bert produced Van Morrison's first album. But Bert also had a penchant for trouble. He courted the wise guys. He wanted total control over every last aspect of our business dealings. Finally it was too much, and the Erteguns and I let him go. He sued us for breach of contract and suddenly we were enemies. I felt that he signed Erma, an excellent singer, not merely for her talent but as a way to get back at me. If I could make a hit with Aretha, he'd show me up by making an even bigger hit on Erma. Because there was always an undercurrent of rivalry between the sisters, this only added to the tension.” There were two things that resulted from this paranoia on Aretha's part. The first was that she and Wexler, who had been on first-name terms up to that point, temporarily went back to being "Mr. Wexler" and "Miss Franklin" to each other. And the second was that Aretha no longer wanted Carolyn and Erma to be her main backing vocalists, though they would continue to appear on her future records on occasion. From this point on, the Sweet Inspirations would be the main backing vocalists for Aretha in the studio throughout her golden era [xxcut line (and when the Sweet Inspirations themselves weren't on the record, often it would be former members of the group taking their place)]: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] The last day of sessions for Aretha Arrives was July the twenty-third, 1967. And as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", that was the day that the Detroit riots started. To recap briefly, that was four days of rioting started because of a history of racist policing, made worse by those same racist police overreacting to the initial protests. By the end of those four days, the National Guard, 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville were all called in to deal with the violence, which left forty-three dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a police officer), 1,189 people were injured, and over 7,200 arrested, almost all of them Black. Those days in July would be a turning point for almost every musician based in Detroit. In particular, the police had murdered three members of the soul group the Dramatics, in a massacre of which the author John Hersey, who had been asked by President Johnson to be part of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders but had decided that would compromise his impartiality and did an independent journalistic investigation, said "The episode contained all the mythic themes of racial strife in the United States: the arm of the law taking the law into its own hands; interracial sex; the subtle poison of racist thinking by “decent” men who deny they are racists; the societal limbo into which, ever since slavery, so many young black men have been driven by our country; ambiguous justice in the courts; and the devastation in both black and white human lives that follows in the wake of violence as surely as ruinous and indiscriminate flood after torrents" But these were also the events that radicalised the MC5 -- the group had been playing a gig as Tim Buckley's support act when the rioting started, and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided afterwards to get stoned and watch the fires burning down the city through a telescope -- which police mistook for a rifle, leading to the National Guard knocking down Kramer's door. The MC5 would later cover "The Motor City is Burning", John Lee Hooker's song about the events: [Excerpt: The MC5, "The Motor City is Burning"] It would also be a turning point for Motown, too, in ways we'll talk about in a few future episodes.  And it was a political turning point too -- Michigan Governor George Romney, a liberal Republican (at a time when such people existed) had been the favourite for the Republican Presidential candidacy when he'd entered the race in December 1966, but as racial tensions ramped up in Detroit during the early months of 1967 he'd started trailing Richard Nixon, a man who was consciously stoking racists' fears. President Johnson, the incumbent Democrat, who was at that point still considering standing for re-election, made sure to make it clear to everyone during the riots that the decision to call in the National Guard had been made at the State level, by Romney, rather than at the Federal level.  That wasn't the only thing that removed the possibility of a Romney presidency, but it was a big part of the collapse of his campaign, and the, as it turned out, irrevocable turn towards right-authoritarianism that the party took with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Of course, Aretha Franklin had little way of knowing what was to come and how the riots would change the city and the country over the following decades. What she was primarily concerned about was the safety of her father, and to a lesser extent that of her sister-in-law Earline who was staying with him. Aretha, Carolyn, and Erma all tried to keep in constant touch with their father while they were out of town, and Aretha even talked about hiring private detectives to travel to Detroit, find her father, and get him out of the city to safety. But as her brother Cecil pointed out, he was probably the single most loved man among Black people in Detroit, and was unlikely to be harmed by the rioters, while he was too famous for the police to kill with impunity. Reverend Franklin had been having a stressful time anyway -- he had recently been fined for tax evasion, an action he was convinced the IRS had taken because of his friendship with Dr King and his role in the civil rights movement -- and according to Cecil "Aretha begged Daddy to move out of the city entirely. She wanted him to find another congregation in California, where he was especially popular—or at least move out to the suburbs. But he wouldn't budge. He said that, more than ever, he was needed to point out the root causes of the riots—the economic inequality, the pervasive racism in civic institutions, the woefully inadequate schools in inner-city Detroit, and the wholesale destruction of our neighborhoods by urban renewal. Some ministers fled the city, but not our father. The horror of what happened only recommitted him. He would not abandon his political agenda." To make things worse, Aretha was worried about her father in other ways -- as her marriage to Ted White was starting to disintegrate, she was looking to her father for guidance, and actually wanted him to take over her management. Eventually, Ruth Bowen, her booking agent, persuaded her brother Cecil that this was a job he could do, and that she would teach him everything he needed to know about the music business. She started training him up while Aretha was still married to White, in the expectation that that marriage couldn't last. Jerry Wexler, who only a few months earlier had been seeing Ted White as an ally in getting "product" from Franklin, had now changed his tune -- partly because the sale of Atlantic had gone through in the meantime. He later said “Sometimes she'd call me at night, and, in that barely audible little-girl voice of hers, she'd tell me that she wasn't sure she could go on. She always spoke in generalities. She never mentioned her husband, never gave me specifics of who was doing what to whom. And of course I knew better than to ask. She just said that she was tired of dealing with so much. My heart went out to her. She was a woman who suffered silently. She held so much in. I'd tell her to take as much time off as she needed. We had a lot of songs in the can that we could release without new material. ‘Oh, no, Jerry,' she'd say. ‘I can't stop recording. I've written some new songs, Carolyn's written some new songs. We gotta get in there and cut 'em.' ‘Are you sure?' I'd ask. ‘Positive,' she'd say. I'd set up the dates and typically she wouldn't show up for the first or second sessions. Carolyn or Erma would call me to say, ‘Ree's under the weather.' That was tough because we'd have asked people like Joe South and Bobby Womack to play on the sessions. Then I'd reschedule in the hopes she'd show." That third album she recorded in 1967, Lady Soul, was possibly her greatest achievement. The opening track, and second single, "Chain of Fools", released in November, was written by Don Covay -- or at least it's credited as having been written by Covay. There's a gospel record that came out around the same time on a very small label based in Houston -- "Pains of Life" by Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio: [Excerpt: Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio, "Pains of Life"] I've seen various claims online that that record came out shortly *before* "Chain of Fools", but I can't find any definitive evidence one way or the other -- it was on such a small label that release dates aren't available anywhere. Given that the B-side, which I haven't been able to track down online, is called "Wait Until the Midnight Hour", my guess is that rather than this being a case of Don Covay stealing the melody from an obscure gospel record he'd have had little chance to hear, it's the gospel record rewriting a then-current hit to be about religion, but I thought it worth mentioning. The song was actually written by Covay after Jerry Wexler asked him to come up with some songs for Otis Redding, but Wexler, after hearing it, decided it was better suited to Franklin, who gave an astonishing performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] Arif Mardin, the arranger of the album, said of that track “I was listed as the arranger of ‘Chain of Fools,' but I can't take credit. Aretha walked into the studio with the chart fully formed inside her head. The arrangement is based around the harmony vocals provided by Carolyn and Erma. To add heft, the Sweet Inspirations joined in. The vision of the song is entirely Aretha's.” According to Wexler, that's not *quite* true -- according to him, Joe South came up with the guitar part that makes up the intro, and he also said that when he played what he thought was the finished track to Ellie Greenwich, she came up with another vocal line for the backing vocals, which she overdubbed. But the core of the record's sound is definitely pure Aretha -- and Carolyn Franklin said that there was a reason for that. As she said later “Aretha didn't write ‘Chain,' but she might as well have. It was her story. When we were in the studio putting on the backgrounds with Ree doing lead, I knew she was singing about Ted. Listen to the lyrics talking about how for five long years she thought he was her man. Then she found out she was nothing but a link in the chain. Then she sings that her father told her to come on home. Well, he did. She sings about how her doctor said to take it easy. Well, he did too. She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown. The line that slew me, though, was the one that said how one of these mornings the chain is gonna break but until then she'll take all she can take. That summed it up. Ree knew damn well that this man had been doggin' her since Jump Street. But somehow she held on and pushed it to the breaking point." [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] That made number one on the R&B charts, and number two on the hot one hundred, kept from the top by "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)" by John Fred and his Playboy Band -- a record that very few people would say has stood the test of time as well. The other most memorable track on the album was the one chosen as the first single, released in September. As Carole King told the story, she and Gerry Goffin were feeling like their career was in a slump. While they had had a huge run of hits in the early sixties through 1965, they had only had two new hits in 1966 -- "Goin' Back" for Dusty Springfield and "Don't Bring Me Down" for the Animals, and neither of those were anything like as massive as their previous hits. And up to that point in 1967, they'd only had one -- "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees. They had managed to place several songs on Monkees albums and the TV show as well, so they weren't going to starve, but the rise of self-contained bands that were starting to dominate the charts, and Phil Spector's temporary retirement, meant there simply wasn't the opportunity for them to place material that there had been. They were also getting sick of travelling to the West Coast all the time, because as their children were growing slightly older they didn't want to disrupt their lives in New York, and were thinking of approaching some of the New York based labels and seeing if they needed songs. They were particularly considering Atlantic, because soul was more open to outside songwriters than other genres. As it happened, though, they didn't have to approach Atlantic, because Atlantic approached them. They were walking down Broadway when a limousine pulled up, and Jerry Wexler stuck his head out of the window. He'd come up with a good title that he wanted to use for a song for Aretha, would they be interested in writing a song called "Natural Woman"? They said of course they would, and Wexler drove off. They wrote the song that night, and King recorded a demo the next morning: [Excerpt: Carole King, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (demo)"] They gave Wexler a co-writing credit because he had suggested the title.  King later wrote in her autobiography "Hearing Aretha's performance of “Natural Woman” for the first time, I experienced a rare speechless moment. To this day I can't convey how I felt in mere words. Anyone who had written a song in 1967 hoping it would be performed by a singer who could take it to the highest level of excellence, emotional connection, and public exposure would surely have wanted that singer to be Aretha Franklin." She went on to say "But a recording that moves people is never just about the artist and the songwriters. It's about people like Jerry and Ahmet, who matched the songwriters with a great title and a gifted artist; Arif Mardin, whose magnificent orchestral arrangement deserves the place it will forever occupy in popular music history; Tom Dowd, whose engineering skills captured the magic of this memorable musical moment for posterity; and the musicians in the rhythm section, the orchestral players, and the vocal contributions of the background singers—among them the unforgettable “Ah-oo!” after the first line of the verse. And the promotion and marketing people helped this song reach more people than it might have without them." And that's correct -- unlike "Chain of Fools", this time Franklin did let Arif Mardin do most of the arrangement work -- though she came up with the piano part that Spooner Oldham plays on the record. Mardin said that because of the song's hymn-like feel they wanted to go for a more traditional written arrangement. He said "She loved the song to the point where she said she wanted to concentrate on the vocal and vocal alone. I had written a string chart and horn chart to augment the chorus and hired Ralph Burns to conduct. After just a couple of takes, we had it. That's when Ralph turned to me with wonder in his eyes. Ralph was one of the most celebrated arrangers of the modern era. He had done ‘Early Autumn' for Woody Herman and Stan Getz, and ‘Georgia on My Mind' for Ray Charles. He'd worked with everyone. ‘This woman comes from another planet' was all Ralph said. ‘She's just here visiting.'” [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"] By this point there was a well-functioning team making Franklin's records -- while the production credits would vary over the years, they were all essentially co-productions by the team of Franklin, Wexler, Mardin and Dowd, all collaborating and working together with a more-or-less unified purpose, and the backing was always by the same handful of session musicians and some combination of the Sweet Inspirations and Aretha's sisters. That didn't mean that occasional guests couldn't get involved -- as we discussed in the Cream episode, Eric Clapton played guitar on "Good to Me as I am to You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Good to Me as I am to You"] Though that was one of the rare occasions on one of these records where something was overdubbed. Clapton apparently messed up the guitar part when playing behind Franklin, because he was too intimidated by playing with her, and came back the next day to redo his part without her in the studio. At this point, Aretha was at the height of her fame. Just before the final batch of album sessions began she appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and she was making regular TV appearances, like one on the Mike Douglas Show where she duetted with Frankie Valli on "That's Life": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin and Frankie Valli, "That's Life"] But also, as Wexler said “Her career was kicking into high gear. Contending and resolving both the professional and personal challenges were too much. She didn't think she could do both, and I didn't blame her. Few people could. So she let the personal slide and concentrated on the professional. " Her concert promoter Ruth Bowen said of this time "Her father and Dr. King were putting pressure on her to sing everywhere, and she felt obligated. The record company was also screaming for more product. And I had a mountain of offers on my desk that kept getting higher with every passing hour. They wanted her in Europe. They wanted her in Latin America. They wanted her in every major venue in the U.S. TV was calling. She was being asked to do guest appearances on every show from Carol Burnett to Andy Williams to the Hollywood Palace. She wanted to do them all and she wanted to do none of them. She wanted to do them all because she's an entertainer who burns with ambition. She wanted to do none of them because she was emotionally drained. She needed to go away and renew her strength. I told her that at least a dozen times. She said she would, but she didn't listen to me." The pressures from her father and Dr King are a recurring motif in interviews with people about this period. Franklin was always a very political person, and would throughout her life volunteer time and money to liberal political causes and to the Democratic Party, but this was the height of her activism -- the Civil Rights movement was trying to capitalise on the gains it had made in the previous couple of years, and celebrity fundraisers and performances at rallies were an important way to do that. And at this point there were few bigger celebrities in America than Aretha Franklin. At a concert in her home town of Detroit on February the sixteenth, 1968, the Mayor declared the day Aretha Franklin Day. At the same show, Billboard, Record World *and* Cash Box magazines all presented her with plaques for being Female Vocalist of the Year. And Dr. King travelled up to be at the show and congratulate her publicly for all her work with his organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Backstage at that show, Dr. King talked to Aretha's father, Reverend Franklin, about what he believed would be the next big battle -- a strike in Memphis: [Excerpt, Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech" -- "And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right."] The strike in question was the Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike which had started a few days before.  The struggle for Black labour rights was an integral part of the civil rights movement, and while it's not told that way in the sanitised version of the story that's made it into popular culture, the movement led by King was as much about economic justice as social justice -- King was a democratic socialist, and believed that economic oppression was both an effect of and cause of other forms of racial oppression, and that the rights of Black workers needed to be fought for. In 1967 he had set up a new organisation, the Poor People's Campaign, which was set to march on Washington to demand a program that included full employment, a guaranteed income -- King was strongly influenced in his later years by the ideas of Henry George, the proponent of a universal basic income based on land value tax -- the annual building of half a million affordable homes, and an end to the war in Vietnam. This was King's main focus in early 1968, and he saw the sanitation workers' strike as a major part of this campaign. Memphis was one of the most oppressive cities in the country, and its largely Black workforce of sanitation workers had been trying for most of the 1960s to unionise, and strike-breakers had been called in to stop them, and many of them had been fired by their white supervisors with no notice. They were working in unsafe conditions, for utterly inadequate wages, and the city government were ardent segregationists. After two workers had died on the first of February from using unsafe equipment, the union demanded changes -- safer working conditions, better wages, and recognition of the union. The city council refused, and almost all the sanitation workers stayed home and stopped work. After a few days, the council relented and agreed to their terms, but the Mayor, Henry Loeb, an ardent white supremacist who had stood on a platform of opposing desegregation, and who had previously been the Public Works Commissioner who had put these unsafe conditions in place, refused to listen. As far as he was concerned, he was the only one who could recognise the union, and he wouldn't. The workers continued their strike, marching holding signs that simply read "I am a Man": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Blowing in the Wind"] The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP had been involved in organising support for the strikes from an early stage, and King visited Memphis many times. Much of the time he spent visiting there was spent negotiating with a group of more militant activists, who called themselves The Invaders and weren't completely convinced by King's nonviolent approach -- they believed that violence and rioting got more attention than non-violent protests. King explained to them that while he had been persuaded by Gandhi's writings of the moral case for nonviolent protest, he was also persuaded that it was pragmatically necessary -- asking the young men "how many guns do we have and how many guns do they have?", and pointing out as he often did that when it comes to violence a minority can't win against an armed majority. Rev Franklin went down to Memphis on the twenty-eighth of March to speak at a rally Dr. King was holding, but as it turned out the rally was cancelled -- the pre-rally march had got out of hand, with some people smashing windows, and Memphis police had, like the police in Detroit the previous year, violently overreacted, clubbing and gassing protestors and shooting and killing one unarmed teenage boy, Larry Payne. The day after Payne's funeral, Dr King was back in Memphis, though this time Rev Franklin was not with him. On April the third, he gave a speech which became known as the "Mountaintop Speech", in which he talked about the threats that had been made to his life: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech": “And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."] The next day, Martin Luther King was shot dead. James Earl Ray, a white supremacist, pled guilty to the murder, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming from what I've read, but the King family have always claimed that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy and that Ray was not the gunman. Aretha was obviously distraught, and she attended the funeral, as did almost every other prominent Black public figure. James Baldwin wrote of the funeral: "In the pew directly before me sat Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt—covered in black, looking like a lost, ten-year-old girl—and Sidney Poitier, in the same pew, or nearby. Marlon saw me, and nodded. The atmosphere was black, with a tension indescribable—as though something, perhaps the heavens, perhaps the earth, might crack. Everyone sat very still. The actual service sort of washed over me, in waves. It wasn't that it seemed unreal; it was the most real church service I've ever sat through in my life, or ever hope to sit through; but I have a childhood hangover thing about not weeping in public, and I was concentrating on holding myself together. I did not want to weep for Martin, tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep I would not be able to stop. There was more than enough to weep for, if one was to weep—so many of us, cut down, so soon. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin: and their widows, and their children. Reverend Ralph David Abernathy asked a certain sister to sing a song which Martin had loved—“Once more,” said Ralph David, “for Martin and for me,” and he sat down." Many articles and books on Aretha Franklin say that she sang at King's funeral. In fact she didn't, but there's a simple reason for the confusion. King's favourite song was the Thomas Dorsey gospel song "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", and indeed almost his last words were to ask a trumpet player, Ben Branch, if he would play the song at the rally he was going to be speaking at on the day of his death. At his request, Mahalia Jackson, his old friend, sang the song at his private funeral, which was not filmed, unlike the public part of the funeral that Baldwin described. Four months later, though, there was another public memorial for King, and Franklin did sing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at that service, in front of King's weeping widow and children, and that performance *was* filmed, and gets conflated in people's memories with Jackson's unfilmed earlier performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord (at Martin Luther King Memorial)"] Four years later, she would sing that at Mahalia Jackson's funeral. Through all this, Franklin had been working on her next album, Aretha Now, the sessions for which started more or less as soon as the sessions for Lady Soul had finished. The album was, in fact, bookended by deaths that affected Aretha. Just as King died at the end of the sessions, the beginning came around the time of the death of Otis Redding -- the sessions were cancelled for a day while Wexler travelled to Georgia for Redding's funeral, which Franklin was too devastated to attend, and Wexler would later say that the extra emotion in her performances on the album came from her emotional pain at Redding's death. The lead single on the album, "Think", was written by Franklin and -- according to the credits anyway -- her husband Ted White, and is very much in the same style as "Respect", and became another of her most-loved hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Think"] But probably the song on Aretha Now that now resonates the most is one that Jerry Wexler tried to persuade her not to record, and was only released as a B-side. Indeed, "I Say a Little Prayer" was a song that had already once been a hit after being a reject.  Hal David, unlike Burt Bacharach, was a fairly political person and inspired by the protest song movement, and had been starting to incorporate his concerns about the political situation and the Vietnam War into his lyrics -- though as with many such writers, he did it in much less specific ways than a Phil Ochs or a Bob Dylan. This had started with "What the World Needs Now is Love", a song Bacharach and David had written for Jackie DeShannon in 1965: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "What the "World Needs Now is Love"] But he'd become much more overtly political for "The Windows of the World", a song they wrote for Dionne Warwick. Warwick has often said it's her favourite of her singles, but it wasn't a big hit -- Bacharach blamed himself for that, saying "Dionne recorded it as a single and I really blew it. I wrote a bad arrangement and the tempo was too fast, and I really regret making it the way I did because it's a good song." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "The Windows of the World"] For that album, Bacharach and David had written another track, "I Say a Little Prayer", which was not as explicitly political, but was intended by David to have an implicit anti-war message, much like other songs of the period like "Last Train to Clarksville". David had sons who were the right age to be drafted, and while it's never stated, "I Say a Little Prayer" was written from the perspective of a woman whose partner is away fighting in the war, but is still in her thoughts: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] The recording of Dionne Warwick's version was marked by stress. Bacharach had a particular way of writing music to tell the musicians the kind of feel he wanted for the part -- he'd write nonsense words above the stave, and tell the musicians to play the parts as if they were singing those words. The trumpet player hired for the session, Ernie Royal, got into a row with Bacharach about this unorthodox way of communicating musical feeling, and the track ended up taking ten takes (as opposed to the normal three for a Bacharach session), with Royal being replaced half-way through the session. Bacharach was never happy with the track even after all the work it had taken, and he fought to keep it from being released at all, saying the track was taken at too fast a tempo. It eventually came out as an album track nearly eighteen months after it was recorded -- an eternity in 1960s musical timescales -- and DJs started playing it almost as soon as it came out. Scepter records rushed out a single, over Bacharach's objections, but as he later said "One thing I love about the record business is how wrong I was. Disc jockeys all across the country started playing the track, and the song went to number four on the charts and then became the biggest hit Hal and I had ever written for Dionne." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Oddly, the B-side for Warwick's single, "Theme From the Valley of the Dolls" did even better, reaching number two. Almost as soon as the song was released as a single, Franklin started playing around with the song backstage, and in April 1968, right around the time of Dr. King's death, she recorded a version. Much as Burt Bacharach had been against releasing Dionne Warwick's version, Jerry Wexler was against Aretha even recording the song, saying later “I advised Aretha not to record it. I opposed it for two reasons. First, to cover a song only twelve weeks after the original reached the top of the charts was not smart business. You revisit such a hit eight months to a year later. That's standard practice. But more than that, Bacharach's melody, though lovely, was peculiarly suited to a lithe instrument like Dionne Warwick's—a light voice without the dark corners or emotional depths that define Aretha. Also, Hal David's lyric was also somewhat girlish and lacked the gravitas that Aretha required. “Aretha usually listened to me in the studio, but not this time. She had written a vocal arrangement for the Sweet Inspirations that was undoubtedly strong. Cissy Houston, Dionne's cousin, told me that Aretha was on the right track—she was seeing this song in a new way and had come up with a new groove. Cissy was on Aretha's side. Tommy Dowd and Arif were on Aretha's side. So I had no choice but to cave." It's quite possible that Wexler's objections made Franklin more, rather than less, determined to record the song. She regarded Warwick as a hated rival, as she did almost every prominent female singer of her generation and younger ones, and would undoubtedly have taken the implication that there was something that Warwick was simply better at than her to heart. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Wexler realised as soon as he heard it in the studio that Franklin's version was great, and Bacharach agreed, telling Franklin's biographer David Ritz “As much as I like the original recording by Dionne, there's no doubt that Aretha's is a better record. She imbued the song with heavy soul and took it to a far deeper place. Hers is the definitive version.” -- which is surprising because Franklin's version simplifies some of Bacharach's more unusual chord voicings, something he often found extremely upsetting. Wexler still though thought there was no way the song would be a hit, and it's understandable that he thought that way. Not only had it only just been on the charts a few months earlier, but it was the kind of song that wouldn't normally be a hit at all, and certainly not in the kind of rhythmic soul music for which Franklin was known. Almost everything she ever recorded is in simple time signatures -- 4/4, waltz time, or 6/8 -- but this is a Bacharach song so it's staggeringly metrically irregular. Normally even with semi-complex things I'm usually good at figuring out how to break it down into bars, but here I actually had to purchase a copy of the sheet music in order to be sure I was right about what's going on. I'm going to count beats along with the record here so you can see what I mean. The verse has three bars of 4/4, one bar of 2/4, and three more bars of 4/4, all repeated: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] While the chorus has a bar of 4/4, a bar of 3/4 but with a chord change half way through so it sounds like it's in two if you're paying attention to the harmonic changes, two bars of 4/4, another waltz-time bar sounding like it's in two, two bars of four, another bar of three sounding in two, a bar of four, then three more bars of four but the first of those is *written* as four but played as if it's in six-eight time (but you can keep the four/four pulse going if you're counting): [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] I don't expect you to have necessarily followed that in great detail, but the point should be clear -- this was not some straightforward dance song. Incidentally, that bar played as if it's six/eight was something Aretha introduced to make the song even more irregular than how Bacharach wrote it. And on top of *that* of course the lyrics mixed the secular and the sacred, something that was still taboo in popular music at that time -- this is only a couple of years after Capitol records had been genuinely unsure about putting out the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", and Franklin's gospel-inflected vocals made the religious connection even more obvious. But Franklin was insistent that the record go out as a single, and eventually it was released as the B-side to the far less impressive "The House That Jack Built". It became a double-sided hit, with the A-side making number two on the R&B chart and number seven on the Hot One Hundred, while "I Say a Little Prayer" made number three on the R&B chart and number ten overall. In the UK, "I Say a Little Prayer" made number four and became her biggest ever solo UK hit. It's now one of her most-remembered songs, while the A-side is largely forgotten: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] For much of the

This week we take it to the limit and reflect on the life of Sinead O'Connor; Randy Meisner; Climate Change, John Kerry, IPCC, Antonio Gutteres; Nat West Bank; Colombia; Babies Born Alive in Australia; Niger; UFO's; The Ashes; Spirit in the Sky; The Hobbit; the Beano; SEEK - Capitalism or Communism; and Psalm 130 - with music from the Eagles, Sinead O'Connor, Jeff Wayne, Norman Greenbaum and the Getty's.  

Beth covers “One Toke Over the Line” by Brewer & Shipley and Amy covers "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum (both researched by Jr. Researcher, Tim).   Listen to the songs first before Amy and Beth ruin them for you.Email us at amyandbetharesorry@gmail.comVisit us on Instagram at https://instagram.com/sorryiruinedthatsong?igshid=1cqqhy050qg8qListen to our Spotify Playlist here:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4TWLMgrKwCQzh24umxIB5R?si=zUmNWqQfRwCBVzvExGLSvACheck us out on TikTok: https://vm.TikTok.com/TTPdMmQJS8/Logo artwork by: http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/MollyPukes

-Fuckery Friday -Drinking 7 Eleven Coffee! -Norman Greenbaum, - Spirit In The Sky -Best Thing Happened This Week: Deleting YouTube -Conservatives Need To Leave YouTube -Big Tech Censorship -Rumble Reminds Me Of The Way Used To Be In The Late 90s -Trump Triggers Liberals By Buying Water -Sweet Home Alabama Song Triggers Liberals -Confederate Flag Triggers Liberals -DJ Mixes Are Done On The Sly Show -I Don't Listen To Rap Music Anymore -Gender Queer Book & San Ramon Valley Unified -Republicans Who Complied During The Pandemic -You Need To Explain Policy To People! -You Can't Call Yourself A "Free Thinker" If You Got Masks and Got Vaccinated -I'm Very Traditional -We Are Behind Enemy Lines: The Far Left Bay Area -The Reason Why Blue America Is So Tense -Liberals Eating Liberals -Liberals Hate Liberals -Democrats Push Division -Joe Biden Hires Based On Race -Qualifications Over Race -George Lopez The Far Leftist -Woke Pastor Cecil Williams Stepping Down -Woke Churches -The Reason Why Sly Cusses A lot -I Was Never A Normie -Growing Up A Die Hard SFGiants Fan -People Subjecting Themselves To Tests -Masks Was The Worst Form Of Tyranny -I Want People To Win In Life -Small Business Are Affected, But Small Business Owners Voted For Democrats -Calibird Is Asleep -Lesbian Far-Leftist Colored Hair Woman Tries To Hit On Sly's Girl -She Said "You Have Amazing Eyes" -The Guess Who - These Eyes -Week Over -The End   FOLLOW THE SLY SHOW: THESLYSHOW.COM: https://tinyurl.com/2p843vt3 TELEGRAM: https://tinyurl.com/dsyurdwr GAB: https://tinyurl.com/bdfve3cx X: https://tinyurl.com/yc87pwrr INSTAGRAM: https://tinyurl.com/yc8zvded FACEBOOK: https://tinyurl.com/596p4pt8 RUMBLE: https://tinyurl.com/st3xztdr BITCHUTE: https://tinyurl.com/3adyysbk SPOTIFY: https://tinyurl.com/2s44wvat APPLE PODCASTS: https://tinyurl.com/yh87mnve GOOGLE PODCASTS: https://tinyurl.com/5n8hcfr4 AMAZON MUSIC: https://shorturl.at/bzEP1 AUDIBLE: https://tinyurl.com/5fpakxd7 PANDORA: https://tinyurl.com/484ucdv9 IHEART MEDIA: https://tinyurl.com/bdzjzdvk TUNE IN RADIO: https://tinyurl.com/3z97fk9w PODCHASER: https://tinyurl.com/2s49h7b5 PODCAST ADDICT: https://tinyurl.com/5n8k3h9z PLAYER FM: https://tinyurl.com/3898kccm PODCHASER: https://tinyurl.com/2s49h7b5 LISTEN NOTES: https://tinyurl.com/bdh6syue

-Fuckery Friday -Drinking 7 Eleven Coffee! -Norman Greenbaum, - Spirit In The Sky -Best Thing Happened This Week: Deleting YouTube -Conservatives Need To Leave YouTube -Big Tech Censorship -Rumble Reminds Me Of The Way Used To Be In The Late 90s -Trump Triggers Liberals By Buying Water -Sweet Home Alabama Song Triggers Liberals -Confederate Flag Triggers Liberals -DJ Mixes Are Done On The Sly Show -I Don't Listen To Rap Music Anymore -Gender Queer Book & San Ramon Valley Unified -Republicans Who Complied During The Pandemic -You Need To Explain Policy To People! -You Can't Call Yourself A "Free Thinker" If You Got Masks and Got Vaccinated -I'm Very Traditional -We Are Behind Enemy Lines: The Far Left Bay Area -The Reason Why Blue America Is So Tense -Liberals Eating Liberals -Liberals Hate Liberals -Democrats Push Division -Joe Biden Hires Based On Race -Qualifications Over Race -George Lopez The Far Leftist -Woke Pastor Cecil Williams Stepping Down -Woke Churches -The Reason Why Sly Cusses A lot -I Was Never A Normie -Growing Up A Die Hard SFGiants Fan -People Subjecting Themselves To Tests -Masks Was The Worst Form Of Tyranny -I Want People To Win In Life -Small Business Are Affected, But Small Business Owners Voted For Democrats  -Calibird Is Asleep -Lesbian Far-Leftist Colored Hair Woman Tries To Hit On Sly's Girl -She Said "You Have Amazing Eyes" -The Guess Who - These Eyes -Week Over -The End     Rumble: https://tinyurl.com/48hz3pux Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/4zuj4zwe Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/34b4r85n Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/yc87pwrr Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/yc8zvded Telegram: https://tinyurl.com/dsyurdwr Truth Social: https://tinyurl.com/2s46j7hu Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/596p4pt8 GETTR: https://tinyurl.com/t5y7e29c

Esta semana en Islas de Robinson, echamos a andar en el nuevo año, pisando territorio firme para afianzar. Suenan: DENNIS LINDE - “THE FAT OF THE LAND” (“LINDE MANOR”, 1970) / JOHN BUCK WILKIN - “APOCALYPSE 1969” (“IN SEARCH OF FOOD CLOTHING SHELTER AND SEX”, 1970) / BERNIE SCHWARTZ - "FOLLOW ME" ("THE WHEEL", 1970) / NORMAN GREENBAUM - “I.J.FOXX” (“BACK HOME AGAIN”, 1970) / ELYSE WEINBERG - "CITY OF THE ANGELS" ("GREASEPAINT SMILE", 1969/2015) / GARY KUPER - "HOME REMEDIES" ("SHOOT FOR THE MOON", 1971) / LINDA HOOVER - "ROLL BACK THE MEANING" ("I MEAN TO SHINE", 1970/2022) / DANNY O’KEEFE - “3:10 SMOKEY THURSDAY” (“DANNY O’KEEFE”, 1970) / DANIEL MOORE - “C.PAUL AND MABEL” (“DANIEL MOORE”, 1971) / LEON RUSSELL - “HURTSOME BODY” (“LEON RUSSELL”, 1970) / JOHN SIMON - “ANNIE LOOKS DOWN” (“JOHN SIMON’S ALBUM”, 1970) / TODD RUNDGREN - “ONCE BURNED” (“RUNT”, 1970) / MARK “MOOGY” KLINGMAN - “KILPATRICK’S DEFEAT” (“MOOGY”, 1972) / ESSRA MOHAWK - "IT'S BEEN A BEAUTIFUL DAY" ("PRIMORDIAL LOVERS", 1970) / DENNY DOHERTY - "GOT A FEELIN'" ("WHATCHA GONNA DO", 1971) / Escuchar audio

About This Broadcast: MAKING A GRATITUDE LIST. Thanksgiving may have come and gone but an attitude of gratitude is still the appropriate thought process all year long. For those living with life controlling issues, gratitude is paramount to our success in life. Join Dave, Roger and the Monty'man as they discuss making a gratitude list. Closing Song: The Day They Started Selling Beer in Church by Norman Greenbaum.

A smorgasbord of talent this week. The world's most notorious ‘one-hit-wonder, NORMAN GREENBAUM shares his experience writing ‘Spirit in the Sky'. The song was a huge success, selling over 2 million copies and appearing in 65 movies. In my conversation with him he talks about his orthodox Jewish upbringing and what his family thought about his hit song that was all about Jesus. Rocker ALICE COOPER joins us too to talk about his love for his home town Detroit, his latest album 'Detroit Stories' which is dedicated to that city and what life is like for him today. We also catch up with Grammy-winning composer and songwriter PAUL WILLIAMS who candidly explains his past obsession with drugs and alcohol, his journey to sobriety and the ways in which it changed his life and career. He talks about how writing has helped him in his recovery and continues to help today. Paul also provides sage advice to anyone facing similar issues and speaks of his time as a drug and alcohol counsellor. From the UK, THE AVERAGE WHITE BAND's ROGER BALL discusses the history of the Scottish band, their favourite songs, and what caused the band to split up. Roger fills us in on what it was like playing to audiences that thought they were coming to see a black group in concert. Very funny stuff! And finally, TALKING HEADS' CHRIS FRANTZ tells us about his latest book called 'Remain in Love', his feud with lead singer DAVID BYRNE and what lay behind many of their best songs. Chris walks us through the years when Talking Heads were one of the biggest bands in the world and shares what it was like to come down off that high. I hope you enjoy this week's special episode and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to send me a message sandy@abreathoffreshair.com.au You'll also find me on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SandyKayePresents/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa_p5zKTRrIfpAtwXVKBQVw Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sandykayepresents/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-kaye-7b35a317/ For more information about Norman Greenbaum: https://spiritinthesky.com/ Alice Cooper: https://alicecooper.com/ Paul Williams: http://www.paulwilliamsofficial.com/ The Average White Band: https://www.averagewhiteband.com/ Talking Heads: https://store.talkingheadsofficial.com/ and David Byrne: https://davidbyrne.com/

AC/DC : Hells Bells La reprise, l'original Disturbed : The Sound Of Silence Simon & Garfunkel : The Sound Of Silence Polyphia : Ego Death Chris Withley : Big Sky Country Trixie Withley : Strong Blood Tim Bowness : Glitter Fades The Blue Nile : The Downtown Lights Isaac Hayes : Theme From Shaft Marvin Gaye : Inner City Blues Mykki Bianco : Your Love Is Was Gift Silk Sonic : Leaves The Door Open Norman Greenbaum : Spirit In The Sky La reprise l'original The Flamin' Groovies : 19th Nervous Breakdown The Rolling Stones : 19th Nervous Breakdown The Snuts : Burn The Empire Warren Zevon: Werewolves Of London The Mars Volta : Blacklight Shine David Lindley : Mercury Blues Iron Maiden : Stranger In a Strange Land The Smashing Pumpkins : Reguiled AC/DC : Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap Trust : Tout ce qui nous sépare Rose Tattoo : Astra Wally Rachel Yamagata : Sunday Afternoon Beth Orton : Arms Around A Memory

In this full length episode, Chrisha and Catherine go into a more in-depth look at the upcoming series, The Winchesters. After their initial full on "nope" reaction to its first mention, they share what led them to give it a try. While still having reservations, they discuss what, exactly, from behind the scenes info, trailers, photo shoots, and posters, is making them excited enough to delve into a new season of podcasting. The Winchesters audio clip credits: The CW; JIB12Music clip credits: "Spirit in the Sky," by Norman Greenbaum

If you thought a podcast covering the week after the Queen's Plate would be an anticlimax, with nothing to talk about, listen to this one and admit you were wrong. There was a monster card of harness racing Saturday night from Mohawk - the William Wellwood Memorial, the Eternal Camnation, Jimmy Freight and Bulldog Hanover, both impressive in Canadian Pacing Derby Eliminations. At Woodbine on Sunday, 4 Yearling Sales Stakes races. We're still buzzing about Moria and in our Moria pack, trainer Kevin Attard tells us how the Queen's Plate changed his life. Owner Donnato Lanni of X-Men Racing explains how a group of harness men came to own Moira and how his children come up with colourful names, and Joe Nevills of the Paulick Report explains why Moira is a big story in the US. We've got the Travers Stakes from Saratoga and chaos at Mohawk Park last Monday in which no one was hurt thanks to safety protocol. Then there's this race from The Track On 2 in which the top 4 horses all shared the same name. And those listening to the entire podcast will be treated to music from Dire Straits, The Tubes, Norman Greenbaum, The Bobby Fuller Four and, of course, Jay and the Americans.

Tuesday's Analyzing the Lyric session. Today we explore Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky." We will break up the lyric and investigate the meaning. Thank you kindly. 8 AM ADT Weekly Itinerary: Monday: “Sermon Sunday” Tuesday: “Analyzing the Lyric” Wednesday: “Bible Study” Thursday: “Topical Trip” Friday: “Socio-Political” Please consider supporting the work, here are some options, DIGITAL SUPPORT:
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Be sure to take the 2-part trivia contest show out for a spin. Answers are posted at www.Facebook.com/PSBlues (and below)19. Bob Malone / Bad Moon a Risin'20. Duke Robillard / Who'll Stop the Rain 21. Tim Koehn / 100 Degrees in the Shade 22. Rex Granit Band / The Man in Chapter 23. Mississippi Heat / Silent Too Long24. Bernard Allison (feat Colin James) / My Way or the Highway 25. Joanne Shaw Taylor / I Don't Know What You Got 26. Samantha Fish / Kill or Be Kind27. Tedeschi Trucks Band / Have You Ever Loved a Woman 28. Larkin Poe / Easy Street29. Kenny Blues Boss Wayne / They Call Me the Breeze (JJ Cale) 30. Professor Longhair / Rockin' Pneumonia31. Tommy Castro / I Caught a Break 32. Johnny Winter / She Likes to Boogie Real Low 33. Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top) / My Lucky Card34. Dana Fuchs / Last to Know Pacific Street Blues & Americana2nd Yearly Music Trivia Contest The Answers (don't look yet...)There is still plenty of time to catch the show on Podcast and complete the challenge. Remember, it's for fun. Have fun! SCORING: 36 or higher = Music Trivia Jedi Knight 30 to 35 = Baby, You're A Smart (Wo) man25 to 29 = You Know Your Stuff24 to 16 = Pretty Dadgum good52 to 55 = Move over Rover, Let Jimi Take Over...Let's Form a Trivia Team and Hit the Bars on Trivia Night56 = A Prince(ss) Among FrogsThe Answers1. This track is not included in the contest2. This track is not included in the contest3. Lynyrd Skynyrd (1)4. Eric Clapton (1)            BONUS: Michelob Beer (1) 5. Cream (1) 6. Paul Simon (1)7. The Eagles (1)           BONUS: Jackson Browne (1) 8. George Thorogood (1) 9. Bill Withers (1) 10. Norman Greenbaum (1) 11. The Biblical Book of Ecclesiastics (1)           BONUS: The Byrds (1) 12. The Doobie Brothers (1) 13. Elvis Presley (1) 14. The Supremes (1) 15. Bob Segar (1) 16. The Traveling Wilburys (1)           BONUS 1: Jeff Lynne (1)           BONUS 2: Bob Dylan (1)           BONUS 3: George Harrison (1)           BONUS 4: Tom Petty (1)           BONUS 5: Roy Orbison (1)           SUPER BONUS: Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne (2) 17. Booker T & the MGs (1) 18. The Temptations (1)           BONUS: The Rolling Stones (1) 19. Pink Floyd (1)           BONUS: Syd Barrett (1) 20. Al Green (1)           BONUS: The Talking Heads (1) 21. The Rolling Stones (1) 22. Meatloaf (Bat Out of Hell) (1) 23, Jimi Hendrix (1) 24, Gerry Rafferty (1) 25. Booker T Jones (Booker T & the MGs) (1) 26. Robin Trower (1) 27. Creedence Clearwater Revival (1) 28. Steve Miller (1)           BONUS: Boz Scaggs (1) 29. Neil Young (1) 30. Van Morrison (1) 31. Jackson Five (1) 32. Beatles (1)           BONUS: The White Album (1)           SUPER BONUS: Charles Manson (2) 33. Bob Dylan (1) 34. Dr. John, a/k/a The Night Tripper,  a/k/a Mac Rebbanack (1) 35. Santana (1) 36. Johnny Winter (1)

About This Broadcast: ADDICTION IN THE WORLD OF SPORTS. Monty interviews Mark Ibanez, former Sports Director for FOX KTVU Channel 2. Mark is the longest tenured Bay Area sportscaster in history with 4 Emmys and 16 Emmy nominations. Mark shares his experience as it relates to addiction in the world of sports. Closing Song: Petaluma by Norman Greenbaum.

Welcome to Live From Progzilla Towers Edition 429. In this special edition we pay tribute to Paul Hanlon and heard music by Big Big Train, Neal Morse, Elbow, Flying Colors, Franck Carducci, Lazuli, Spock's Beard, Spectral Mornings, Norman Greenbaum, Tiger Moth Tales, Mystery, That Joe Payne & Transatlantic.

Easter with The Colvin Brothers means Easter with Breckman and One Take Taylor too! We feature tunes from Norman Greenbaum, The Doobies, BOC and Green Day (Figure it out!) We play Survey Says, feature Don't Turn Into Breckman LIVE Easter edition and figure out who Will Smith should slap next! The Colvin Brothers Show airs Sundays at 6pm on z93hv.com and is sponsored by Mahoney's Irish Pub & Steakhouse, 35 Main St, Poughkeepsie (845) 471-7026. Stop in for a pint today! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/colvin-brothers-on-z93/support

This episode on one-hit wonders is an extension of Warren Kurtz' Goldmine interviews with Norman Greenbaum and about Benny Mardones and Pete Carr, all of whom had only one hit in the Top 40. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode on one-hit wonders is an extension of Warren Kurtz' Goldmine interviews with Norman Greenbaum and about Benny Mardones and Pete Carr, all of whom had only one hit in the Top 40.

This episode on one-hit wonders is an extension of Warren Kurtz' Goldmine interviews with Norman Greenbaum and about Benny Mardones and Pete Carr, all of whom had only one hit in the Top 40. Part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode on one-hit wonders is an extension of Warren Kurtz' Goldmine interviews with Norman Greenbaum and about Benny Mardones and Pete Carr, all of whom had only one hit in the Top 40. Part of Pantheon Podcasts

The crowd has not yet returned to the house of God, but you can be sure the congregation has!  “Follow to Lead” by Stan O. Gleason: https://pentecostalpublishing.com/products/follow-to-lead-the-journey-of-a-disciple https://www.amazon.com/Follow-Lead-Journey-Disciple-Maker-ebook/dp/B01MYDOOLS … GIVE (Not 501c3): Cash App: $JustinCGleason PayPal: @JustinCGleason Venmo: @JustinCGleason … FOLLOW @JustinCGleason Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter … CONTACT JustinCGleason@Gmail.com … Performances modified from the original version to fit the format of this podcast:  “Micro Fire” by Silent Partner “Praise the Lord” by The Imperials, 1979 “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum, 1969

Norman Greenbaum is an American singer-songwriter. He is primarily known for writing and performing his 1969 song "Spirit in the Sky". The song, with its combination of 'heavy' guitar, hand-clapping, and spiritual lyrics, was released by Reprise Records in 1969. It sold two million copies in 1969 and 1970 and received a gold disc from the RIAA. It has subsequently been used in many films, advertisements, and television shows.Although "Spirit in the Sky" has a clear Christian theme, Greenbaum was and remains an observant Jew. Greenbaum says he was inspired to write the song after watching country singers singing a song on television. In an interview Greenbaum stated that Western movies were the real inspiration for "Spirit in the Sky":Though Greenbaum is generally regarded as a one-hit-wonder, several of his records placed prominently in the charts, including "Canned Ham" in 1970, which reached number 46 on the Billboard pop chart. In 1966, as the leader and composer of Dr West's Medicine Show and Junk Band, he recorded the novelty hit "The Eggplant That Ate Chicago". See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Happy resurrection egg time, witches! Grab yourself some chocolate bunnies or bilbies and join the sacred sonic circle as Lucy dissects the online war that broke out around Starhawk, a legend of Witchcraft who deserved way way better. This is important stuff, as its about how we treat our Witchcraft elders - and it needs to get much, much better. Learn about the new sacred sites discovered after the summer of fire (and why we will never go there) and discover the Irish Farmer who works with the faeries to heal the land. In the Cauldron there are some very juicy questions answered, including the meaning of dreams when your hands are covered in indigo, and Lucy shares really simple and super powerful ways to improve your second sight - worthwhile for anyone who wants to see auric fields or their own personal visions with a LOT more clarity. Song are the joyous classic Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum, Oh Golden Grain by Wendy Rule, and Damh the Bard’s Pagan Ways.Production by The Wizard, aka Shayne Brian. Add invaluable support by the bevy of Angeiic magickal beings at Lucy’s Patreon page, and three divine sponsors and that is why we have The Witchcast… If you want to support the show, please do leave a rating or a review and don’t forget to subscribe. Blessed be, and thankyou so much! The intro music is "We Are One" by the band Nordic Daughter. Find the band on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/nordicdaughter/ Or visit their website - http://nordicdaughter.com Music throughout the show includes tracks from Darksphere EmpireDownload the Darksphere Empire album here - https://darksphere-empire.bandcamp.com/album/after-the-rainSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Colvin Brothers finally mop up the remaining One Hit Wonders from the Fall and treat you to the likes of Norman Greenbaum, Lee Michaels, King Harvest, Bow Wow Wow and Blind Melon. Woody is back with weather (for a final TIME?!?) and Breckman expands his producer role to review the new ROCK TV Series. Speaking of TV, The Colvin Five takes a gander at shows that deserved a lot more than the only season they got. The Colvin Brothers on z93 airs 3pm Eastern Time every Sunday on z93.3 FM, z93hv.com AND z93 on the iHeart Radio App and our archives will continue to be gathered here in podcast form for those of you who are unable to tune in --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/colvin-brothers-on-z93/support

Welcome to the first episode of Mixtapes & Heartbreaks! We talk about the seminal track Screaming Infidelities by Dashboard Confessional and Spirit In The Sky by Norman Greenbaum as well as punk beers, 80's parenting and so much more! Check it out! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mixtapesheartbreaks/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mixtapesheartbreaks/support

Grab your protest sign and leave your clothes at home folks! We're headed back to the 60's this week. We talk about Norman Greenbaum and Buffalo Springfield; the oldest bands we've brought yet! If you like what you're hearing, go ahead and give us a slap on the butt with a nice review and maybe a social media follow. Oh and if you have some suggestions, let's hear them!

Norman Greenbaum's famous Spirit in the Sky was an instant classic, but was a classic then for reasons incomprehensible to those thinking it's a classic now.

On this week's show Kyle continues his exploration of classic Hoosier gospel music, with tunes from The Mighty Indiana Travelers, King James Version, The Sacred Four, and many more... including the Stovall Sisters, whose big break came after providing the background vocals for Norman Greenbaum's 1969 #1 hit "Spirit in the Sky".