Podcasts about okeh

In this inspiring episode of My Kind of People, host Meg Walker sits down with multi-talented Okeh Okwesia — a UK hip hop artist, personal trainer, and dance instructor who's using his voice and movement to empower others. Okeh shares his powerful story of breaking into the music scene, building self-confidence through creativity, and how inclusivity can transform lives.Whether you're into hip hop, personal growth, dance, or mental wellness, this episode is packed with motivation, real talk, and practical takeaways for anyone looking to reconnect with their rhythm — physically, mentally, and creatively.What you'll learn in this episode:✅ How music and dance can build confidence✅ The importance of inclusive creative spaces✅ Okeh's journey into UK hip hop culture✅ Tips for staying grounded while pursuing your passion✅ Why movement is medicine — for body and mind

•Arizona Dranes Born somewhere between 1889 to 1905, no specific record of her birthdate, however she was born in Greenville, Texas to Melton & Millie Dranes.  She was born blind and as a young girl she attended the Institute for Deaf, Dumb and Blind Colored Youths of the State of Texas.  It was in school where Blind children were typically taught trades as that was thought to be the only means of making a living for disabled people.  •Arizona began learning classical singing and piano and as attitudes began to change about the blind, early reformers raised money for the school by providing public exhibitions of blind students, demonstration they were competent and intellectual.  Arizona helped set her course by the curriculum which included an emphasis on music. •Arizona's recording journey peaked in 1928 to which she recorded “Just Look” on the Okeh record label.  It seems Arizona was the first woman to record gospel music.  Vocally her classical training was very apparent with the “rolling ‘r's”.  In parts of the song you can hear some of her classical cadence in her musical phrasing on the piano. •Here we and a truly unsung Gospel Music Pioneer in the woman Arizona Dranes. •Please send Let's Talk: Gospel Music Gold an email sharing your thoughts about this show segment also if you have any suggestions of future guests you would like to hear on the show. Send the email to ⁠⁠letstalk2gmg@gmail.com⁠⁠ •You may Subscribe to be alerted when the newest episode is published. Subscribe on Spotify and we will know you are a regular listener. All 4 Seasons of guests are still live; check out some other Podcast Episodes •LET'S TALK: GOSPEL MUSIC GOLD RADIO SHOW AIRS SATURDAY MORNING 9:00 AM CST / 10:00 AM EST ON INTERNET RADIO STATION WMRM-DB Aired on iHeart Radio & Live365 •Both Podcast and Radio show are heard anywhere in the World! •NEW BOOK RELEASE! •Legacy of James C. Chambers And his Contributions to Gospel Music History •Available for purchase on Amazon.com

A few weeks before his death in November 1966, Mississippi John Hurt's rendition of “Payday” was released as the opening track on his Today album for Vanguard Records.At the time, many fans believed the 74-year-old bluesman wrote the song, despite his introduction in which he characterized it as “an old tune… a ‘bandit tune.'” And we now know that a quarter of a century earlier, folklorist John Lomax recorded a version of “Payday” by lesser-known blues artists Willie Ford and Lucious Curtis in Natchez, Mississippi.Still, it is the John Hurt version that has become loved among syncopated fingerpicking guitarists; to this day his take on “Payday” is taught in classes and on YouTube videos.The John Hurt Odyssey: Part IThe Today album, hitting record stores in October 1966, marked the end of a remarkable three years for the venerable blues artist, who was born the son of freed slaves around 1892 in Teoc, Mississippi. John Smith Hurt grew up in the Mississippi Delta, living in Avalon, which sits midway between Greenwood and Holcomb just west of Highway 51.He left school at age 10 to be a farm hand and was taught guitar by a local songster and family friend. Hurt lived most of his life without electricity, did hard labor of all sorts and played music as a hobby at local dances. In the late 1920s, performing with local fiddler Willie Narmour, he won a competition and a chance to record with Okeh Records in two sessions, one in Memphis and another in New York City. John Hurt: Part IIThe resulting records were not a great commercial success — John went back to farming and raising a family that would grow to 14 children — but a quarter of a century later, his music entered the folk music canon. That's when two of those 1928 tracks were included in the holy grail of American music, Harry Smith's 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, considered one of the main catalysts for the folk and blues revival of the 1960s and ‘70s. A decade later, in 1962, the presence of those old cuts — “Frankie” and “Spike Driver Blues” — on in the Smith anthology prompted musicologist Dick Spottswood and his friend, Tom Hoskins, to track Hurt down. Hoskins persuaded him to perform several songs for his tape recorder to make sure he was the genuine article. Quickly convinced — in fact, folkies found Hurt even more proficient than he had been in his younger Okeh recording days — Hoskins encouraged him to move to Washington, D.C., to perform for a broader audience.For the last three years of his life, Hurt performed extensively at colleges, concert halls and coffeehouses, appearing on television shows ranging from “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson to Pete Seeger's “Rainbow Quest” on public TV. Much of Hurt's repertoire also was recorded for the Library of Congress, and his final tunes, recorded in 1964 and released two years later, are on Today.He also developed a delightful friendship with a young folksinger named Patrick Sky who produced that final album for Vanguard, where “Payday” is the opening track.Deeper Roots of “Payday”By the way, in the brand new book, Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs & Hidden Histories, published last spring, author Elijah Wald finds a much longer tail on the tune, not to mention a possible connection to another Flood favorite.Wald notes that back in 1908, Missouri pianist Blind Boone published a pair of “Southern Rag” medleys that African Americans were singing in that region around the turn of the century.“Medley number one was subtitled ‘Strains from the Alleys',” Wald writes, and included the first publication of “Making Me a Pallet on the Floor.'” Wald says the medley also featured “a song that probably reaches back to slavery times and would be recorded in later years as ‘Pay Day,' ‘Reuben,' and various other names.”Our Take on the TunePurists say this doesn't sound much like Mississippi John Hurt's original, but that's pretty much by design. Once The Flood folks learn a song, they usually stop listening to the original so it is free to find its own form in the Floodisphere. That's their take on what Pete Seeger's folklorist father Charles called “the folk process.”And in this instance, “Payday” has been processing in Floodlandia for more than 20 years now, ever since its inclusion on the band's first studio album back in 2001.Here's the current state of its evolution, taken from a recent rehearsal. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

A century ago this year, the fledgling record industry's first supergroup walked into a New York studio and waxed one of its greatest hit.The first time much of the world ever heard a rocking spiritual called “I'm a Pilgrim,” it was on the Oct. 4, 1924, Paramount Record release by the jazzy Norfolk Jubilee Quartet.Starting with its birth in 1919, the Norfolk Quartet offered a unique sound, characterized by a scat-like rhythmic pattern performed by founder Len Williams, the bass singer, while the rest of the group sang the melodies.In 20 years ending in 1940, the quartet recorded nearly 150 sides for Paramount, Okeh and Decca. A third of those songs were secular, for which the group tweaked its name to become the Norfolk Jazz Quartet.And the group was welcomed in that burgeoning jazz community. Soon after their first record in 1921, for instance, the guys were invited to appear with blues singer Mamie Smith in Baltimore and then to do a summer stint on stage in “The Flat Below,” a three-part play by vaudeville's Flournoy Eakin Miller and Aubrey Lyles.The Norfolk group continued to be an immense success in shows across the country, laying the foundation for all the jubilee quartets that followed them.Of course, the song “I Am a Pilgrim” is even more famous than the first group to record it. To today's listeners, in fact, the song is more likely associated with famous performances by the fabulous Kentuckian Merle Travis in the 1940s and beyond. That story is covered in an earlier Flood Watch article. Click here for that deeper dive into the tune's history.Our Take on the TuneThis great old song is often performed with mellow reverence by country and folk artists as well as by many gospel groups. However, The Flood guys, ever since they started doing the tune a couple of years ago, have taken their cue to the song's original recording a hundred years ago. Like the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet, The Flood likes to put a little cut its strut and a glide in its stride. Here's a track from last week's rehearsal. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Okeh, it's time for put some of da biggest debates to rest–snow cones is not shave ice & shave ice does not have a "d" in um. Sorry! Back in our third season we did one interview with one of the best shave ice shops up hea in Oregon, and we promised you folks wit one full blown episode where we focus on da beloved snack/dessert. Coby and Masao break it all down for you; da best place for get um, where shave ice came from, what's da best flavors and more! Be sure for check out our mayjah sponsors: ⁠https://www.4daysofaloha.com⁠ ⁠https://www.othebakeshop.com⁠ ⁠https://disandbark.com⁠

For the next three weeks we'll explore the music of Little Bill Gaither, a legendary Indianapolis blues singer and guitarist. Gaither was born in Kentucky in 1910. He spent his childhood in Louisville and moved to Indianapolis in the early 1930s. Gaither quickly found his place in the early Naptown blues scene, partnering with a local piano player named George “Honey” Hill”. They would go on to record dozens of classic blues records together. Gaither left behind a large catalog of music. From 1935 to 1941, he recorded over 100 songs for labels including Decca and Okeh. Gaither's music documented his life in Indianapolis, from the good times he had on the Avenue, to serious themes, like the outbreak of World War II, and the tuberculosis epidemic.  On this edition, listen to the early recordings of Little Bill Gaither.

Studio band using the Red Nichols stock company and led by trombonist Mole - one of the unsung heroes of 1920's Jazz. With Nichols on cornet, Art Schutt and Joe Sullivan on piano, Vic Berton, Gene Krupa and Stan King on drums, Eddie Lang, Carl Kress and Dick McDonough on guitar and banjo, Joe Tarto on tuba and reeds played by Jimmy Dorsey, Pee Wee Russell, Fud Livingston and Adrian Rollini. All recorded for OKeh in New York! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

In this episode, Dr. Laura Sicola interviews Ngozi Okeh, the global head of DEI at NextRoll, a marketing tech company. They delve into the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace and how it can significantly impact business success. In this episode you will learn: The practical application of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as a daily practice shaping workplace dynamics and opportunities. Strategies for effectively engaging executive leaders in DEI by aligning initiatives with organizational goals and priorities. Overcoming common misconceptions about DEI and fostering a culture of inclusivity and belonging. How vulnerability in leadership can lead to more meaningful contributions and collaboration among team members. Practical tips for managing nervousness in speaking engagements and enhancing communication effectiveness. The pitfalls of relying on the 'It Factor' in hiring decisions and the importance of grounding assessments in objective standards. Recognizing the influence of bias in decision-making and strategies for avoiding subjective biases. The value of seeking external perspectives and diverse viewpoints to challenge biases and make informed decisions.  About Ngozi: Ngozi Okeh is an accomplished DEI leader with a proven track record of driving initiatives to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into strategic business processes. She specializes in conceptualizing, defining, and operationalizing DEI principles to align with organizational goals, developing and overseeing policies and programs aimed at fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace culture. Holding a Master's degree in HR Management from Georgetown University, she brings extensive experience across multiple industries, including mortgage banking, government, and the tech sector. In her role as Global Head of DEI, Ngozi has led teams, collaborates with company executives, and provides strategic guidance to drive organizational change. Beyond her professional endeavors, she is actively involved in community service as a board member for Hunger Free America, demonstrating her commitment to creating a positive social impact.   You can connect with Ngozi in the following ways: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ngoziokeh/   You can connect with Dr. Laura Sicola in the following ways:   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlaurasicola LinkedIn Business Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/laurasicola-inc YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VocalImpactProductions Facebook: Dr. Laura Sicola Twitter: @LauraSicola Instagram: @drlaurasicola Website: https://laurasicola.com Laura's Online Course: virtualinfluence.today See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are you eating a candy salad or do you have some sense? NOLA OWES JAYDEN NOTHING OKEH! and also HAPPY BLACK HISTORY MONTH!!!!

If you were sitting around thinking of songs connected to The Mountain State, “Sweet Georgia Brown” probably wouldn't be on your list.It wasn't on ours either, even though we had loved and played the song for decades. But then about a dozen years ago, the late Dave Peyton dropped some song news on us at a jam session. “Hey, man,” we remember him saying with a big grin, “it's a West Virginia tune!”Of course, Brother Dave was absolutely right. Composer Maceo Pinkard, who went on to become one of the greatest composers in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s, was born in Bluefield, W.Va., where he got his education. While Pinkard wrote hundreds of tunes, including many for stage and screen, this 1925 jazz standard was his greatest one. Yes, she might have been a sweet Georgia peach, she had West Virginia roots.Bluefield BoyhoodSon of a West Virginia coal miner, Pinkard was educated at the Bluefield Colored Institute, class of 1913, and wrote his first major song — called “I'm Goin' Back Home” — the following year. (Today Bluefield State University holds a week-long festival each year in honor of its famous alumnus.)Pinkard had already formed his own orchestra and toured throughout the United States as conductor. In 1914 — at age 17 — Pinkard founded a theatrical agency in Omaha, Nebraska. Three years later found him in New York City creating Maceo Pinkard Music to sell compositions to national publishing companies.In the decade beginning in 1921, Pinkard produced a rich catalog, including such hits as “Sugar,” "Gimme a Little Kiss, Will Ya Huh?", “Here Comes the Showboat” and “At Twilight.” Another Pinkard composition from that period — “Them There Eyes” -- was a favorite of the great Billie Holiday, who recorded in 1939 on OKeh. It was one of the legend's signature tunes when she performed at George Wein's Storyville jazz club in Boston in 1952.Meanwhile, Bix Beiderbecke, with sidemen Gene Krupa and Benny Goodman, recorded Pinkard's "I'll Be A Friend with Pleasure" in 1930.Sweet Miss Brown The song that would top Maceo Pinkard's obituary in 1962 was co-written with lyricist Ken Casey. Soon after “Sweet Georgia Brown” was composed, it was introduced by bandleader Ben Bernie. As Bernie's nationally famous orchestra did much to popularize the number, Pinkard cut Bernie in for a share of the tune's royalties by giving him a co-writer credit.While the song today is an iconic jazz standard, it was not an instant hit. Bing Crosby recorded it in April 1932 with the Isham Jones Orchestra, reaching No. 2 in the charts. Four years later, Cab Calloway sang it in the movie The Singing Kid.Other RenditionsIt wasn't until 1949, though, that “Sweet Georgia Brown” reached its peak of popularity when it was recorded by Brother Bones and His Shadows. This novelty version, complete with whistling and bone-cracking, was a huge hit, spending 12 weeks on the Billboard charts. This version is the one you might know best, because it was adopted as the theme song of The Harlem Globetrotters basketball team starting in 1952. Still today they use it for their "Magic Circle" when the players warm up, passing around the ball and displaying their techniques and dexterity.Incidentally, a decade and a half later, The Beatles even had a comic version of the song. Their rendition contains the line In Liverpool she even dared / To criticize the Beatles' hair / With their whole fan club standing there.But Who Is Miss Brown?About Miss Brown's real-life identity, as those who regularly quote the Bible like to say, well, it's a mystery. Ken Casey's original 1925 lyrics make a number of references to African American culture. His rhymes make clear he's talking about a sweet brown-skinned woman from Georgia, possibly a prostitute, some say. The second verse, for instance, begins, Brown-skin gals, you'll get the blues, Brown-skin pals, you'll surely lose.Or was Miss Brown a white lady? In 1911, Dr. George Thaddeus Brown of the Georgia House of Representatives and his wife, Avis, welcomed a baby girl. Shortly after the child's birth, the Georgia General Assembly passed a resolution stating that the baby would be named “Georgia” after the state.Years later, in the lady's obituary, The Miami Herald wrote:According to family legend, it was her father who immortalized her when he met composer Ben Bernie in New York. A medical student at the time, George Brown told the composer about his family, including his youngest daughter with one brown eye and one green eye. Bernie whipped up lyrics to a melody by Kenneth Casey and Maceo Pinkard.Lots of errors here. Besides identifying Bernie as the “composer,” note that it was the 1890s when Dr. Brown attended post-graduate medical school in New York, decades before his daughter Georgia was born. Beyond that, there is a question of propriety. Dr. Brown's offspring would have been — what? — 14 when Pinkard's song was composed. Would you really celebrate your friend's teenage daughter with a song that said, Fellas she can't get / Are fellas that she ain't met? But hey, we didn't know her, so probably we ought to just keep our opinions to ourselves…Our Take on the Tune“Sweet Georgia Brown” has been in The Flood repertoire for a very long time. For instance, as reported earlier, back in 1977, when The Flood hosted a hootenanny one summer night at the Huntington Museum of Art, an instrumental version of the song was on the set list for the performance by Joe Dobbs, Dave Peyton, Stew Schneider and Charlie Bowen. Want to hear it? Click the button below:A quarter of a century after that, the tune was still front and center when it was featured on the band's first studio album in 2001. And, as we noted in an earlier article, “Sweet Georgia Brown” was on the set list for back-to-back shows on a magical weekend in the summer of 2002. Click the button below for a sampler of the tunes we played in those gigs, featuring solos by Joe and Dave, along with Chuck Romine, Doug Chaffin and Sam St. Clair:Today, a couple decades further along, “Sweet Georgia Brown” is still a showcase for all the folks on The Flood bandstand. In this 2024 version, we feature Charlie and Sam, along with Danny Cox, Randy Hamilton and Jack Nuckols.Swing It S'More?Finally, if that's how you like your Flood to roll, you might want to make Radio Floodango's free Swingin' playlist part of your day today for a randomize set of similar tunes.Click here to give it a spin. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Studio band led by the New Orleans trumpeter Wingy Manone for Vocalion, OKeh and Banner in 1934 and 1935. Using members of the Ben Pollack Orchestra (Matty Matlock, Eddie Miller, Gil Bowers, Nappy Lamare, Harry Goodman, Ray Bauduc) Manone recorded a mix of original jazz tunes and Tin Pan Alley pops with a driving rhythm and outstanding solos. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

Label: Epic/Coll. 2209Year: 1956Condition: MPrice: $10.00Originally released on Okeh 7072. If you've never heard the flip side of this great record, you're in for a treat! This reissue is now out of print... Last Mint copies. Note: Some of these copies have a touch of ringwear from storage, which is why the Label grade for this Mint record is Near Mint.

Episode 169 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Piece of My Heart" and the short, tragic life of Janis Joplin. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode available, on "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat & Tears. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There are two Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Big Brother and the Holding Company and Janis Joplin excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here — one, two . For information on Janis Joplin I used three biographies -- Scars of Sweet Paradise by Alice Echols, Janis: Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren, and Buried Alive by Myra Friedman. I also referred to the chapter '“Being Good Isn't Always Easy": Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield, and the Color of Soul' in Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination by Jack Hamilton. Some information on Bessie Smith came from Bessie Smith by Jackie Kay, a book I can't really recommend given the lack of fact-checking, and Bessie by Chris Albertson. I also referred to Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis And the best place to start with Joplin's music is this five-CD box, which contains both Big Brother and the Holding Company albums she was involved in, plus her two studio albums and bonus tracks. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, this episode contains discussion of drug addiction and overdose, alcoholism, mental illness, domestic abuse, child abandonment, and racism. If those subjects are likely to cause you upset, you may want to check the transcript or skip this one rather than listen. Also, a subject I should probably say a little more about in this intro because I know I have inadvertently caused upset to at least one listener with this in the past. When it comes to Janis Joplin, it is *impossible* to talk about her without discussing her issues with her weight and self-image. The way I write often involves me paraphrasing the opinions of the people I'm writing about, in a mode known as close third person, and sometimes that means it can look like I am stating those opinions as my own, and sometimes things I say in that mode which *I* think are obviously meant in context to be critiques of those attitudes can appear to others to be replicating them. At least once, I have seriously upset a fat listener when talking about issues related to weight in this manner. I'm going to try to be more careful here, but just in case, I'm going to say before I begin that I think fatphobia is a pernicious form of bigotry, as bad as any other form of bigotry. I'm fat myself and well aware of how systemic discrimination affects fat people. I also think more generally that the pressure put on women to look a particular way is pernicious and disgusting in ways I can't even begin to verbalise, and causes untold harm. If *ANYTHING* I say in this episode comes across as sounding otherwise, that's because I haven't expressed myself clearly enough. Like all people, Janis Joplin had negative characteristics, and at times I'm going to say things that are critical of those. But when it comes to anything to do with her weight or her appearance, if *anything* I say sounds critical of her, rather than of a society that makes women feel awful for their appearance, it isn't meant to. Anyway, on with the show. On January the nineteenth, 1943, Seth Joplin typed up a letter to his wife Dorothy, which read “I wish to tender my congratulations on the anniversary of your successful completion of your production quota for the nine months ending January 19, 1943. I realize that you passed through a period of inflation such as you had never before known—yet, in spite of this, you met your goal by your supreme effort during the early hours of January 19, a good three weeks ahead of schedule.” As you can probably tell from that message, the Joplin family were a strange mixture of ultraconformism and eccentricity, and those two opposing forces would dominate the personality of their firstborn daughter for the whole of her life.  Seth Joplin was a respected engineer at Texaco, where he worked for forty years, but he had actually dropped out of engineering school before completing his degree. His favourite pastime when he wasn't at work was to read -- he was a voracious reader -- and to listen to classical music, which would often move him to tears, but he had also taught himself to make bathtub gin during prohibition, and smoked cannabis. Dorothy, meanwhile, had had the possibility of a singing career before deciding to settle down and become a housewife, and was known for having a particularly beautiful soprano voice. Both were, by all accounts, fiercely intelligent people, but they were also as committed as anyone to the ideals of the middle-class family even as they chafed against its restrictions. Like her mother, young Janis had a beautiful soprano voice, and she became a soloist in her church choir, but after the age of six, she was not encouraged to sing much. Dorothy had had a thyroid operation which destroyed her singing voice, and the family got rid of their piano soon after (different sources say that this was either because Dorothy found her daughter's singing painful now that she couldn't sing herself, or because Seth was upset that his wife could no longer sing. Either seems plausible.) Janis was pushed to be a high-achiever -- she was given a library card as soon as she could write her name, and encouraged to use it, and she was soon advanced in school, skipping a couple of grades. She was also by all accounts a fiercely talented painter, and her parents paid for art lessons. From everything one reads about her pre-teen years, she was a child prodigy who was loved by everyone and who was clearly going to be a success of some kind. Things started to change when she reached her teenage years. Partly, this was just her getting into rock and roll music, which her father thought a fad -- though even there, she differed from her peers. She loved Elvis, but when she heard "Hound Dog", she loved it so much that she tracked down a copy of Big Mama Thornton's original, and told her friends she preferred that: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Hound Dog"] Despite this, she was still also an exemplary student and overachiever. But by the time she turned fourteen, things started to go very wrong for her. Partly this was just down to her relationship with her father changing -- she adored him, but he became more distant from his daughters as they grew into women. But also, puberty had an almost wholly negative effect on her, at least by the standards of that time and place. She put on weight (which, again, I do not think is a negative thing, but she did, and so did everyone around her), she got a bad case of acne which didn't ever really go away, and she also didn't develop breasts particularly quickly -- which, given that she was a couple of years younger than the other people in the same classes at school, meant she stood out even more. In the mid-sixties, a doctor apparently diagnosed her as having a "hormone imbalance" -- something that got to her as a possible explanation for why she was, to quote from a letter she wrote then, "not really a woman or enough of one or something." She wondered if "maybe something as simple as a pill could have helped out or even changed that part of me I call ME and has been so messed up.” I'm not a doctor and even if I were, diagnosing historical figures is an unethical thing to do, but certainly the acne, weight gain, and mental health problems she had are all consistent with PCOS, the most common endocrine disorder among women, and it seems likely given what the doctor told her that this was the cause. But at the time all she knew was that she was different, and that in the eyes of her fellow students she had gone from being pretty to being ugly. She seems to have been a very trusting, naive, person who was often the brunt of jokes but who desperately needed to be accepted, and it became clear that her appearance wasn't going to let her fit into the conformist society she was being brought up in, while her high intelligence, low impulse control, and curiosity meant she couldn't even fade into the background. This left her one other option, and she decided that she would deliberately try to look and act as different from everyone else as possible. That way, it would be a conscious choice on her part to reject the standards of her fellow pupils, rather than her being rejected by them. She started to admire rebels. She became a big fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, whose music combined the country music she'd grown up hearing in Texas, the R&B she liked now, and the rebellious nature she was trying to cultivate: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"] When Lewis' career was derailed by his marriage to his teenage cousin, Joplin wrote an angry letter to Time magazine complaining that they had mistreated him in their coverage. But as with so many people of her generation, her love of rock and roll music led her first to the blues and then to folk, and she soon found herself listening to Odetta: [Excerpt: Odetta, "Muleskinner Blues"] One of her first experiences of realising she could gain acceptance from her peers by singing was when she was hanging out with the small group of Bohemian teenagers she was friendly with, and sang an Odetta song, mimicking her voice exactly. But young Janis Joplin was listening to an eclectic range of folk music, and could mimic more than just Odetta. For all that her later vocal style was hugely influenced by Odetta and by other Black singers like Big Mama Thornton and Etta James, her friends in her late teens and early twenties remember her as a vocal chameleon with an achingly pure soprano, who would more often than Odetta be imitating the great Appalachian traditional folk singer Jean Ritchie: [Excerpt: Jean Ritchie, "Lord Randall"] She was, in short, trying her best to become a Beatnik, despite not having any experience of that subculture other than what she read in books -- though she *did* read about them in books, devouring things like Kerouac's On The Road. She came into conflict with her mother, who didn't understand what was happening to her daughter, and who tried to get family counselling to understand what was going on. Her father, who seemed to relate more to Janis, but who was more quietly eccentric, put an end to that, but Janis would still for the rest of her life talk about how her mother had taken her to doctors who thought she was going to end up "either in jail or an insane asylum" to use her words. From this point on, and for the rest of her life, she was torn between a need for approval from her family and her peers, and a knowledge that no matter what she did she couldn't fit in with normal societal expectations. In high school she was a member of the Future Nurses of America, the Future Teachers of America, the Art Club, and Slide Rule Club, but she also had a reputation as a wild girl, and as sexually active (even though by all accounts at this point she was far less so than most of the so-called "good girls" – but her later activity was in part because she felt that if she was going to have that reputation anyway she might as well earn it). She also was known to express radical opinions, like that segregation was wrong, an opinion that the other students in her segregated Texan school didn't even think was wrong, but possibly some sort of sign of mental illness. Her final High School yearbook didn't contain a single other student's signature. And her initial choice of university, Lamar State College of Technology, was not much better. In the next town over, and attended by many of the same students, it had much the same attitudes as the school she'd left. Almost the only long-term effect her initial attendance at university had on her was a negative one -- she found there was another student at the college who was better at painting. Deciding that if she wasn't going to be the best at something she didn't want to do it at all, she more or less gave up on painting at that point. But there was one positive. One of the lecturers at Lamar was Francis Edward "Ab" Abernethy, who would in the early seventies go on to become the Secretary and Editor of the Texas Folklore Society, and was also a passionate folk musician, playing double bass in string bands. Abernethy had a great collection of blues 78s. and it was through this collection that Janis first discovered classic blues, and in particular Bessie Smith: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Black Mountain Blues"] A couple of episodes ago, we had a long look at the history of the music that now gets called "the blues" -- the music that's based around guitars, and generally involves a solo male vocalist, usually Black during its classic period. At the time that music was being made though it wouldn't have been thought of as "the blues" with no modifiers by most people who were aware of it. At the start, even the songs they were playing weren't thought of as blues by the male vocalist/guitarists who played them -- they called the songs they played "reels". The music released by people like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Robert Johnson, Kokomo Arnold and so on was thought of as blues music, and people would understand and agree with a phrase like "Lonnie Johnson is a blues singer", but it wasn't the first thing people thought of when they talked about "the blues". Until relatively late -- probably some time in the 1960s -- if you wanted to talk about blues music made by Black men with guitars and only that music, you talked about "country blues". If you thought about "the blues", with no qualifiers, you thought about a rather different style of music, one that white record collectors started later to refer to as "classic blues" to differentiate it from what they were now calling "the blues". Nowadays of course if you say "classic blues", most people will think you mean Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker, people who were contemporary at the time those white record collectors were coming up with their labels, and so that style of music gets referred to as "vaudeville blues", or as "classic female blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] What we just heard was the first big blues hit performed by a Black person, from 1920, and as we discussed in the episode on "Crossroads" that revolutionised the whole record industry when it came out. The song was performed by Mamie Smith, a vaudeville performer, and was originally titled "Harlem Blues" by its writer, Perry Bradford, before he changed the title to "Crazy Blues" to get it to a wider audience. Bradford was an important figure in the vaudeville scene, though other than being the credited writer of "Keep A-Knockin'" he's little known these days. He was a Black musician and grew up playing in minstrel shows (the history of minstrelsy is a topic for another day, but it's more complicated than the simple image of blackface that we are aware of today -- though as with many "more complicated than that" things it is, also the simple image of blackface we're aware of). He was the person who persuaded OKeh records that there would be a market for music made by Black people that sounded Black (though as we're going to see in this episode, what "sounding Black" means is a rather loaded question). "Crazy Blues" was the result, and it was a massive hit, even though it was marketed specifically towards Black listeners: [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] The big stars of the early years of recorded blues were all making records in the shadow of "Crazy Blues", and in the case of its very biggest stars, they were working very much in the same mould. The two most important blues stars of the twenties both got their start in vaudeville, and were both women. Ma Rainey, like Mamie Smith, first performed in minstrel shows, but where Mamie Smith's early records had her largely backed by white musicians, Rainey was largely backed by Black musicians, including on several tracks Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider"] Rainey's band was initially led by Thomas Dorsey, one of the most important men in American music, who we've talked about before in several episodes, including the last one. He was possibly the single most important figure in two different genres -- hokum music, when he, under the name "Georgia Tom" recorded "It's Tight Like That" with Tampa Red: [Excerpt: Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, "It's Tight Like That"] And of course gospel music, which to all intents and purposes he invented, and much of whose repertoire he wrote: [Excerpt: Mahalia Jackson, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord"] When Dorsey left Rainey's band, as we discussed right back in episode five, he was replaced by a female pianist, Lil Henderson. The blues was a woman's genre. And Ma Rainey was, by preference, a woman's woman, though she was married to a man: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "Prove it on Me"] So was the biggest star of the classic blues era, who was originally mentored by Rainey. Bessie Smith, like Rainey, was a queer woman who had relationships with men but was far more interested in other women.  There were stories that Bessie Smith actually got her start in the business by being kidnapped by Ma Rainey, and forced into performing on the same bills as her in the vaudeville show she was touring in, and that Rainey taught Smith to sing blues in the process. In truth, Rainey mentored Smith more in stagecraft and the ways of the road than in singing, and neither woman was only a blues singer, though both had huge success with their blues records.  Indeed, since Rainey was already in the show, Smith was initially hired as a dancer rather than a singer, and she also worked as a male impersonator. But Smith soon branched out on her own -- from the beginning she was obviously a star. The great jazz clarinettist Sidney Bechet later said of her "She had this trouble in her, this thing that would not let her rest sometimes, a meanness that came and took her over. But what she had was alive … Bessie, she just wouldn't let herself be; it seemed she couldn't let herself be." Bessie Smith was signed by Columbia Records in 1923, as part of the rush to find and record as many Black women blues singers as possible. Her first recording session produced "Downhearted Blues", which became, depending on which sources you read, either the biggest-selling blues record since "Crazy Blues" or the biggest-selling blues record ever, full stop, selling three quarters of a million copies in the six months after its release: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Downhearted Blues"] Smith didn't make royalties off record sales, only making a flat fee, but she became the most popular Black performer of the 1920s. Columbia signed her to an exclusive contract, and she became so rich that she would literally travel between gigs on her own private train. She lived an extravagant life in every way, giving lavishly to her friends and family, but also drinking extraordinary amounts of liquor, having regular affairs, and also often physically or verbally attacking those around her. By all accounts she was not a comfortable person to be around, and she seemed to be trying to fit an entire lifetime into every moment. From 1923 through 1929 she had a string of massive hits. She recorded material in a variety of styles, including the dirty blues: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Empty Bed Blues] And with accompanists like Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong, "Cold in Hand Blues"] But the music for which she became best known, and which sold the best, was when she sang about being mistreated by men, as on one of her biggest hits, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do" -- and a warning here, I'm going to play a clip of the song, which treats domestic violence in a way that may be upsetting: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do"] That kind of material can often seem horrifying to today's listeners -- and quite correctly so, as domestic violence is a horrifying thing -- and it sounds entirely too excusing of the man beating her up for anyone to find it comfortable listening. But the Black feminist scholar Angela Davis has made a convincing case that while these records, and others by Smith's contemporaries, can't reasonably be considered to be feminist, they *are* at the very least more progressive than they now seem, in that they were, even if excusing it, pointing to a real problem which was otherwise left unspoken. And that kind of domestic violence and abuse *was* a real problem, including in Smith's own life. By all accounts she was terrified of her husband, Jack Gee, who would frequently attack her because of her affairs with other people, mostly women. But she was still devastated when he left her for a younger woman, not only because he had left her, but also because he kidnapped their adopted son and had him put into a care home, falsely claiming she had abused him. Not only that, but before Jack left her closest friend had been Jack's niece Ruby and after the split she never saw Ruby again -- though after her death Ruby tried to have a blues career as "Ruby Smith", taking her aunt's surname and recording a few tracks with Sammy Price, the piano player who worked with Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Ruby Smith with Sammy Price, "Make Me Love You"] The same month, May 1929, that Gee left her, Smith recorded what was to become her last big hit, and most well-known song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out": [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] And that could have been the theme for the rest of her life. A few months after that record came out, the Depression hit, pretty much killing the market for blues records. She carried on recording until 1931, but the records weren't selling any more. And at the same time, the talkies came in in the film industry, which along with the Depression ended up devastating the vaudeville audience. Her earnings were still higher than most, but only a quarter of what they had been a year or two earlier. She had one last recording session in 1933, produced by John Hammond for OKeh Records, where she showed that her style had developed over the years -- it was now incorporating the newer swing style, and featured future swing stars Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden in the backing band: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Gimme a Pigfoot"] Hammond was not hugely impressed with the recordings, preferring her earlier records, and they would be the last she would ever make. She continued as a successful, though no longer record-breaking, live act until 1937, when she and her common-law husband, Lionel Hampton's uncle Richard Morgan, were in a car crash. Morgan escaped, but Smith died of her injuries and was buried on October the fourth 1937. Ten thousand people came to her funeral, but she was buried in an unmarked grave -- she was still legally married to Gee, even though they'd been separated for eight years, and while he supposedly later became rich from songwriting royalties from some of her songs (most of her songs were written by other people, but she wrote a few herself) he refused to pay for a headstone for her. Indeed on more than one occasion he embezzled money that had been raised by other people to provide a headstone. Bessie Smith soon became Joplin's favourite singer of all time, and she started trying to copy her vocals. But other than discovering Smith's music, Joplin seems to have had as terrible a time at university as at school, and soon dropped out and moved back in with her parents. She went to business school for a short while, where she learned some secretarial skills, and then she moved west, going to LA where two of her aunts lived, to see if she could thrive better in a big West Coast city than she did in small-town Texas. Soon she moved from LA to Venice Beach, and from there had a brief sojourn in San Francisco, where she tried to live out her beatnik fantasies at a time when the beatnik culture was starting to fall apart. She did, while she was there, start smoking cannabis, though she never got a taste for that drug, and took Benzedrine and started drinking much more heavily than she had before. She soon lost her job, moved back to Texas, and re-enrolled at the same college she'd been at before. But now she'd had a taste of real Bohemian life -- she'd been singing at coffee houses, and having affairs with both men and women -- and soon she decided to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin. At this point, Austin was very far from the cultural centre it has become in recent decades, and it was still a straitlaced Texan town, but it was far less so than Port Arthur, and she soon found herself in a folk group, the Waller Creek Boys. Janis would play autoharp and sing, sometimes Bessie Smith covers, but also the more commercial country and folk music that was popular at the time, like "Silver Threads and Golden Needles", a song that had originally been recorded by Wanda Jackson but at that time was a big hit for Dusty Springfield's group The Springfields: [Excerpt: The Waller Creek Boys, "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"] But even there, Joplin didn't fit in comfortably. The venue where the folk jams were taking place was a segregated venue, as everywhere around Austin was. And she was enough of a misfit that the campus newspaper did an article on her headlined "She Dares to Be Different!", which read in part "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her Autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break out into song it will be handy." There was a small group of wannabe-Beatniks, including Chet Helms, who we've mentioned previously in the Grateful Dead episode, Gilbert Shelton, who went on to be a pioneer of alternative comics and create the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and Shelton's partner in Rip-Off Press, Dave Moriarty, but for the most part the atmosphere in Austin was only slightly better for Janis than it had been in Port Arthur. The final straw for her came when in an annual charity fundraiser joke competition to find the ugliest man on campus, someone nominated her for the "award". She'd had enough of Texas. She wanted to go back to California. She and Chet Helms, who had dropped out of the university earlier and who, like her, had already spent some time on the West Coast, decided to hitch-hike together to San Francisco. Before leaving, she made a recording for her ex-girlfriend Julie Paul, a country and western musician, of a song she'd written herself. It's recorded in what many say was Janis' natural voice -- a voice she deliberately altered in performance in later years because, she would tell people, she didn't think there was room for her singing like that in an industry that already had Joan Baez and Judy Collins. In her early years she would alternate between singing like this and doing her imitations of Black women, but the character of Janis Joplin who would become famous never sang like this. It may well be the most honest thing that she ever recorded, and the most revealing of who she really was: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, "So Sad to Be Alone"] Joplin and Helms made it to San Francisco, and she started performing at open-mic nights and folk clubs around the Bay Area, singing in her Bessie Smith and Odetta imitation voice, and sometimes making a great deal of money by sounding different from the wispier-voiced women who were the norm at those venues. The two friends parted ways, and she started performing with two other folk musicians, Larry Hanks and Roger Perkins, and she insisted that they would play at least one Bessie Smith song at every performance: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, Larry Hanks, and Roger Perkins, "Black Mountain Blues (live in San Francisco)"] Often the trio would be joined by Billy Roberts, who at that time had just started performing the song that would make his name, "Hey Joe", and Joplin was soon part of the folk scene in the Bay Area, and admired by Dino Valenti, David Crosby, and Jerry Garcia among others. She also sang a lot with Jorma Kaukonnen, and recordings of the two of them together have circulated for years: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and Jorma Kaukonnen, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] Through 1963, 1964, and early 1965 Joplin ping-ponged from coast to coast, spending time in the Bay Area, then Greenwich Village, dropping in on her parents then back to the Bay Area, and she started taking vast quantities of methamphetamine. Even before moving to San Francisco she had been an occasional user of amphetamines – at the time they were regularly prescribed to students as study aids during exam periods, and she had also been taking them to try to lose some of the weight she always hated. But while she was living in San Francisco she became dependent on the drug. At one point her father was worried enough about her health to visit her in San Francisco, where she managed to fool him that she was more or less OK. But she looked to him for reassurance that things would get better for her, and he couldn't give it to her. He told her about a concept that he called the "Saturday night swindle", the idea that you work all week so you can go out and have fun on Saturday in the hope that that will make up for everything else, but that it never does. She had occasional misses with what would have been lucky breaks -- at one point she was in a motorcycle accident just as record labels were interested in signing her, and by the time she got out of the hospital the chance had gone. She became engaged to another speed freak, one who claimed to be an engineer and from a well-off background, but she was becoming severely ill from what was by now a dangerous amphetamine habit, and in May 1965 she decided to move back in with her parents, get clean, and have a normal life. Her new fiance was going to do the same, and they were going to have the conformist life her parents had always wanted, and which she had always wanted to want. Surely with a husband who loved her she could find a way to fit in and just be normal. She kicked the addiction, and wrote her fiance long letters describing everything about her family and the new normal life they were going to have together, and they show her painfully trying to be optimistic about the future, like one where she described her family to him: "My mother—Dorothy—worries so and loves her children dearly. Republican and Methodist, very sincere, speaks in clichés which she really means and is very good to people. (She thinks you have a lovely voice and is terribly prepared to like you.) My father—richer than when I knew him and kind of embarrassed about it—very well read—history his passion—quiet and very excited to have me home because I'm bright and we can talk (about antimatter yet—that impressed him)! I keep telling him how smart you are and how proud I am of you.…" She went back to Lamar, her mother started sewing her a wedding dress, and for much of the year she believed her fiance was going to be her knight in shining armour. But as it happened, the fiance in question was described by everyone else who knew him as a compulsive liar and con man, who persuaded her father to give him money for supposed medical tests before the wedding, but in reality was apparently married to someone else and having a baby with a third woman. After the engagement was broken off, she started performing again around the coffeehouses in Austin and Houston, and she started to realise the possibilities of rock music for her kind of performance. The missing clue came from a group from Austin who she became very friendly with, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and the way their lead singer Roky Erickson would wail and yell: [Excerpt: The 13th Floor Elevators, "You're Gonna Miss Me (live)"] If, as now seemed inevitable, Janis was going to make a living as a performer, maybe she should start singing rock music, because it seemed like there was money in it. There was even some talk of her singing with the Elevators. But then an old friend came to Austin from San Francisco with word from Chet Helms. A blues band had formed, and were looking for a singer, and they remembered her from the coffee houses. Would she like to go back to San Francisco and sing with them? In the time she'd been away, Helms had become hugely prominent in the San Francisco music scene, which had changed radically. A band from the area called the Charlatans had been playing a fake-Victorian saloon called the Red Dog in nearby Nevada, and had become massive with the people who a few years earlier had been beatniks: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "32-20"] When their residency at the Red Dog had finished, several of the crowd who had been regulars there had become a collective of sorts called the Family Dog, and Helms had become their unofficial leader. And there's actually a lot packed into that choice of name. As we'll see in a few future episodes, a lot of West Coast hippies eventually started calling their collectives and communes families. This started as a way to get round bureaucracy -- if a helpful welfare officer put down that the unrelated people living in a house together were a family, suddenly they could get food stamps. As with many things, of course, the label then affected how people thought about themselves, and one thing that's very notable about the San Francisco scene hippies in particular is that they are some of the first people to make a big deal about what we now  call "found family" or "family of choice". But it's also notable how often the hippie found families took their model from the only families these largely middle-class dropouts had ever known, and structured themselves around men going out and doing the work -- selling dope or panhandling or being rock musicians or shoplifting -- with the women staying at home doing the housework. The Family Dog started promoting shows, with the intention of turning San Francisco into "the American Liverpool", and soon Helms was rivalled only by Bill Graham as the major promoter of rock shows in the Bay Area. And now he wanted Janis to come back and join this new band. But Janis was worried. She was clean now. She drank far too much, but she wasn't doing any other drugs. She couldn't go back to San Francisco and risk getting back on methamphetamine. She needn't worry about that, she was told, nobody in San Francisco did speed any more, they were all on LSD -- a drug she hated and so wasn't in any danger from. Reassured, she made the trip back to San Francisco, to join Big Brother and the Holding Company. Big Brother and the Holding Company were the epitome of San Francisco acid rock at the time. They were the house band at the Avalon Ballroom, which Helms ran, and their first ever gig had been at the Trips Festival, which we talked about briefly in the Grateful Dead episode. They were known for being more imaginative than competent -- lead guitarist James Gurley was often described as playing parts that were influenced by John Cage, but was equally often, and equally accurately, described as not actually being able to keep his guitar in tune because he was too stoned. But they were drawing massive crowds with their instrumental freak-out rock music. Helms thought they needed a singer, and he had remembered Joplin, who a few of the group had seen playing the coffee houses. He decided she would be perfect for them, though Joplin wasn't so sure. She thought it was worth a shot, but as she wrote to her parents before meeting the group "Supposed to rehearse w/ the band this afternoon, after that I guess I'll know whether I want to stay & do that for awhile. Right now my position is ambivalent—I'm glad I came, nice to see the city, a few friends, but I'm not at all sold on the idea of becoming the poor man's Cher.” In that letter she also wrote "I'm awfully sorry to be such a disappointment to you. I understand your fears at my coming here & must admit I share them, but I really do think there's an awfully good chance I won't blow it this time." The band she met up with consisted of lead guitarist James Gurley, bass player Peter Albin, rhythm player Sam Andrew, and drummer David Getz.  To start with, Peter Albin sang lead on most songs, with Joplin adding yelps and screams modelled on those of Roky Erickson, but in her first gig with the band she bowled everyone over with her lead vocal on the traditional spiritual "Down on Me", which would remain a staple of their live act, as in this live recording from 1968: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Down on Me (Live 1968)"] After that first gig in June 1966, it was obvious that Joplin was going to be a star, and was going to be the group's main lead vocalist. She had developed a whole new stage persona a million miles away from her folk performances. As Chet Helms said “Suddenly this person who would stand upright with her fists clenched was all over the stage. Roky Erickson had modeled himself after the screaming style of Little Richard, and Janis's initial stage presence came from Roky, and ultimately Little Richard. It was a very different Janis.” Joplin would always claim to journalists that her stage persona was just her being herself and natural, but she worked hard on every aspect of her performance, and far from the untrained emotional outpouring she always suggested, her vocal performances were carefully calculated pastiches of her influences -- mostly Bessie Smith, but also Big Mama Thornton, Odetta, Etta James, Tina Turner, and Otis Redding. That's not to say that those performances weren't an authentic expression of part of herself -- they absolutely were. But the ethos that dominated San Francisco in the mid-sixties prized self-expression over technical craft, and so Joplin had to portray herself as a freak of nature who just had to let all her emotions out, a wild woman, rather than someone who carefully worked out every nuance of her performances. Joplin actually got the chance to meet one of her idols when she discovered that Willie Mae Thornton was now living and regularly performing in the Bay Area. She and some of her bandmates saw Big Mama play a small jazz club, where she performed a song she wouldn't release on a record for another two years: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Ball 'n' Chain"] Janis loved the song and scribbled down the lyrics, then went backstage to ask Big Mama if Big Brother could cover the song. She gave them her blessing, but told them "don't" -- and here she used a word I can't use with a clean rating -- "it up". The group all moved in together, communally, with their partners -- those who had them. Janis was currently single, having dumped her most recent boyfriend after discovering him shooting speed, as she was still determined to stay clean. But she was rapidly discovering that the claim that San Franciscans no longer used much speed had perhaps not been entirely true, as for example Sam Andrew's girlfriend went by the nickname Speedfreak Rita. For now, Janis was still largely clean, but she did start drinking more. Partly this was because of a brief fling with Pigpen from the Grateful Dead, who lived nearby. Janis liked Pigpen as someone else on the scene who didn't much like psychedelics or cannabis -- she didn't like drugs that made her think more, but only drugs that made her able to *stop* thinking (her love of amphetamines doesn't seem to fit this pattern, but a small percentage of people have a different reaction to amphetamine-type stimulants, perhaps she was one of those). Pigpen was a big drinker of Southern Comfort -- so much so that it would kill him within a few years -- and Janis started joining him. Her relationship with Pigpen didn't last long, but the two would remain close, and she would often join the Grateful Dead on stage over the years to duet with him on "Turn On Your Lovelight": [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, "Turn on Your Lovelight"] But within two months of joining the band, Janis nearly left. Paul Rothchild of Elektra Records came to see the group live, and was impressed by their singer, but not by the rest of the band. This was something that would happen again and again over the group's career. The group were all imaginative and creative -- they worked together on their arrangements and their long instrumental jams and often brought in very good ideas -- but they were not the most disciplined or technically skilled of musicians, even when you factored in their heavy drug use, and often lacked the skill to pull off their better ideas. They were hugely popular among the crowds at the Avalon Ballroom, who were on the group's chemical wavelength, but Rothchild was not impressed -- as he was, in general, unimpressed with psychedelic freakouts. He was already of the belief in summer 1966 that the fashion for extended experimental freak-outs would soon come to an end and that there would be a pendulum swing back towards more structured and melodic music. As we saw in the episode on The Band, he would be proved right in a little over a year, but being ahead of the curve he wanted to put together a supergroup that would be able to ride that coming wave, a group that would play old-fashioned blues. He'd got together Stefan Grossman, Steve Mann, and Taj Mahal, and he wanted Joplin to be the female vocalist for the group, dueting with Mahal. She attended one rehearsal, and the new group sounded great. Elektra Records offered to sign them, pay their rent while they rehearsed, and have a major promotional campaign for their first release. Joplin was very, very, tempted, and brought the subject up to her bandmates in Big Brother. They were devastated. They were a family! You don't leave your family! She was meant to be with them forever! They eventually got her to agree to put off the decision at least until after a residency they'd been booked for in Chicago, and she decided to give them the chance, writing to her parents "I decided to stay w/the group but still like to think about the other thing. Trying to figure out which is musically more marketable because my being good isn't enough, I've got to be in a good vehicle.” The trip to Chicago was a disaster. They found that the people of Chicago weren't hugely interested in seeing a bunch of white Californians play the blues, and that the Midwest didn't have the same Bohemian crowds that the coastal cities they were used to had, and so their freak-outs didn't go down well either. After two weeks of their four-week residency, the club owner stopped paying them because they were so unpopular, and they had no money to get home. And then they were approached by Bob Shad. (For those who know the film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the Bob Shad in that film is named after this one -- Judd Apatow, the film's director, is Shad's grandson) This Shad was a record producer, who had worked with people like Big Bill Broonzy, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, and Billy Eckstine over an eighteen-year career, and had recently set up a new label, Mainstream Records. He wanted to sign Big Brother and the Holding Company. They needed money and... well, it was a record contract! It was a contract that took half their publishing, paid them a five percent royalty on sales, and gave them no advance, but it was still a contract, and they'd get union scale for the first session. In that first session in Chicago, they recorded four songs, and strangely only one, "Down on Me", had a solo Janis vocal. Of the other three songs, Sam Andrew and Janis dueted on Sam's song "Call on Me", Albin sang lead on the group composition "Blindman", and Gurley and Janis sang a cover of "All Is Loneliness", a song originally by the avant-garde street musician Moondog: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "All is Loneliness"] The group weren't happy with the four songs they recorded -- they had to keep the songs to the length of a single, and the engineers made sure that the needles never went into the red, so their guitars sounded far more polite and less distorted than they were used to. Janis was fascinated by the overdubbing process, though, especially double-tracking, which she'd never tried before but which she turned out to be remarkably good at. And they were now signed to a contract, which meant that Janis wouldn't be leaving the group to go solo any time soon. The family were going to stay together. But on the group's return to San Francisco, Janis started doing speed again, encouraged by the people around the group, particularly Gurley's wife. By the time the group's first single, "Blindman" backed with "All is Loneliness", came out, she was an addict again. That initial single did nothing, but the group were fast becoming one of the most popular in the Bay Area, and almost entirely down to Janis' vocals and on-stage persona. Bob Shad had already decided in the initial session that while various band members had taken lead, Janis was the one who should be focused on as the star, and when they drove to LA for their second recording session it was songs with Janis leads that they focused on. At that second session, in which they recorded ten tracks in two days, the group recorded a mix of material including one of Janis' own songs, the blues track "Women is Losers", and a version of the old folk song "the Cuckoo Bird" rearranged by Albin. Again they had to keep the arrangements to two and a half minutes a track, with no extended soloing and a pop arrangement style, and the results sound a lot more like the other San Francisco bands, notably Jefferson Airplane, than like the version of the band that shows itself in their live performances: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Coo Coo"] After returning to San Francisco after the sessions, Janis went to see Otis Redding at the Fillmore, turning up several hours before the show started on all three nights to make sure she could be right at the front. One of the other audience members later recalled “It was more fascinating for me, almost, to watch Janis watching Otis, because you could tell that she wasn't just listening to him, she was studying something. There was some kind of educational thing going on there. I was jumping around like the little hippie girl I was, thinking This is so great! and it just stopped me in my tracks—because all of a sudden Janis drew you very deeply into what the performance was all about. Watching her watch Otis Redding was an education in itself.” Joplin would, for the rest of her life, always say that Otis Redding was her all-time favourite singer, and would say “I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it.” [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "I Can't Turn You Loose (live)"] At the start of 1967, the group moved out of the rural house they'd been sharing and into separate apartments around Haight-Ashbury, and they brought the new year in by playing a free show organised by the Hell's Angels, the violent motorcycle gang who at the time were very close with the proto-hippies in the Bay Area. Janis in particular always got on well with the Angels, whose drugs of choice, like hers, were speed and alcohol more than cannabis and psychedelics. Janis also started what would be the longest on-again off-again relationship she would ever have, with a woman named Peggy Caserta. Caserta had a primary partner, but that if anything added to her appeal for Joplin -- Caserta's partner Kimmie had previously been in a relationship with Joan Baez, and Joplin, who had an intense insecurity that made her jealous of any other female singer who had any success, saw this as in some way a validation both of her sexuality and, transitively, of her talent. If she was dating Baez's ex's lover, that in some way put her on a par with Baez, and when she told friends about Peggy, Janis would always slip that fact in. Joplin and Caserta would see each other off and on for the rest of Joplin's life, but they were never in a monogamous relationship, and Joplin had many other lovers over the years. The next of these was Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish, who were just in the process of recording their first album Electric Music for the Mind and Body, when McDonald and Joplin first got together: [Excerpt: Country Joe and the Fish, "Grace"] McDonald would later reminisce about lying with Joplin, listening to one of the first underground FM radio stations, KMPX, and them playing a Fish track and a Big Brother track back to back. Big Brother's second single, the other two songs recorded in the Chicago session, had been released in early 1967, and the B-side, "Down on Me", was getting a bit of airplay in San Francisco and made the local charts, though it did nothing outside the Bay Area: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Down on Me"] Janis was unhappy with the record, though, writing to her parents and saying, “Our new record is out. We seem to be pretty dissatisfied w/it. I think we're going to try & get out of the record contract if we can. We don't feel that they know how to promote or engineer a record & every time we recorded for them, they get all our songs, which means we can't do them for another record company. But then if our new record does something, we'd change our mind. But somehow, I don't think it's going to." The band apparently saw a lawyer to see if they could get out of the contract with Mainstream, but they were told it was airtight. They were tied to Bob Shad no matter what for the next five years. Janis and McDonald didn't stay together for long -- they clashed about his politics and her greater fame -- but after they split, she asked him to write a song for her before they became too distant, and he obliged and recorded it on the Fish's next album: [Excerpt: Country Joe and the Fish, "Janis"] The group were becoming so popular by late spring 1967 that when Richard Lester, the director of the Beatles' films among many other classics, came to San Francisco to film Petulia, his follow-up to How I Won The War, he chose them, along with the Grateful Dead, to appear in performance segments in the film. But it would be another filmmaker that would change the course of the group's career irrevocably: [Excerpt: Scott McKenzie, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"] When Big Brother and the Holding Company played the Monterey Pop Festival, nobody had any great expectations. They were second on the bill on the Saturday, the day that had been put aside for the San Francisco acts, and they were playing in the early afternoon, after a largely unimpressive night before. They had a reputation among the San Francisco crowd, of course, but they weren't even as big as the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape or Country Joe and the Fish, let alone Jefferson Airplane. Monterey launched four careers to new heights, but three of the superstars it made -- Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who -- already had successful careers. Hendrix and the Who had had hits in the UK but not yet broken the US market, while Redding was massively popular with Black people but hadn't yet crossed over to a white audience. Big Brother and the Holding Company, on the other hand, were so unimportant that D.A. Pennebaker didn't even film their set -- their manager at the time had not wanted to sign over the rights to film their performance, something that several of the other acts had also refused -- and nobody had been bothered enough to make an issue of it. Pennebaker just took some crowd shots and didn't bother filming the band. The main thing he caught was Cass Elliot's open-mouthed astonishment at Big Brother's performance -- or rather at Janis Joplin's performance. The members of the group would later complain, not entirely inaccurately, that in the reviews of their performance at Monterey, Joplin's left nipple (the outline of which was apparently visible through her shirt, at least to the male reviewers who took an inordinate interest in such things) got more attention than her four bandmates combined. As Pennebaker later said “She came out and sang, and my hair stood on end. We were told we weren't allowed to shoot it, but I knew if we didn't have Janis in the film, the film would be a wash. Afterward, I said to Albert Grossman, ‘Talk to her manager or break his leg or whatever you have to do, because we've got to have her in this film. I can't imagine this film without this woman who I just saw perform.” Grossman had a talk with the organisers of the festival, Lou Adler and John Phillips, and they offered Big Brother a second spot, the next day, if they would allow their performance to be used in the film. The group agreed, after much discussion between Janis and Grossman, and against the wishes of their manager: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Ball and Chain (live at Monterey)"] They were now on Albert Grossman's radar. Or at least, Janis Joplin was. Joplin had always been more of a careerist than the other members of the group. They were in music to have a good time and to avoid working a straight job, and while some of them were more accomplished musicians than their later reputations would suggest -- Sam Andrew, in particular, was a skilled player and serious student of music -- they were fundamentally content with playing the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore and making five hundred dollars or so a week between them. Very good money for 1967, but nothing else. Joplin, on the other hand, was someone who absolutely craved success. She wanted to prove to her family that she wasn't a failure and that her eccentricity shouldn't stop them being proud of her; she was always, even at the depths of her addictions, fiscally prudent and concerned about her finances; and she had a deep craving for love. Everyone who talks about her talks about how she had an aching need at all times for approval, connection, and validation, which she got on stage more than she got anywhere else. The bigger the audience, the more they must love her. She'd made all her decisions thus far based on how to balance making music that she loved with commercial success, and this would continue to be the pattern for her in future. And so when journalists started to want to talk to her, even though up to that point Albin, who did most of the on-stage announcements, and Gurley, the lead guitarist, had considered themselves joint leaders of the band, she was eager. And she was also eager to get rid of their manager, who continued the awkward streak that had prevented their first performance at the Monterey Pop Festival from being filmed. The group had the chance to play the Hollywood Bowl -- Bill Graham was putting on a "San Francisco Sound" showcase there, featuring Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and got their verbal agreement to play, but after Graham had the posters printed up, their manager refused to sign the contracts unless they were given more time on stage. The next day after that, they played Monterey again -- this time the Monterey Jazz Festival. A very different crowd to the Pop Festival still fell for Janis' performance -- and once again, the film being made of the event didn't include Big Brother's set because of their manager. While all this was going on, the group's recordings from the previous year were rushed out by Mainstream Records as an album, to poor reviews which complained it was nothing like the group's set at Monterey: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Bye Bye Baby"] They were going to need to get out of that contract and sign with somewhere better -- Clive Davis at Columbia Records was already encouraging them to sign with him -- but to do that, they needed a better manager. They needed Albert Grossman. Grossman was one of the best negotiators in the business at that point, but he was also someone who had a genuine love for the music his clients made.  And he had good taste -- he managed Odetta, who Janis idolised as a singer, and Bob Dylan, who she'd been a fan of since his first album came out. He was going to be the perfect manager for the group. But he had one condition though. His first wife had been a heroin addict, and he'd just been dealing with Mike Bloomfield's heroin habit. He had one absolutely ironclad rule, a dealbreaker that would stop him signing them -- they didn't use heroin, did they? Both Gurley and Joplin had used heroin on occasion -- Joplin had only just started, introduced to the drug by Gurley -- but they were only dabblers. They could give it up any time they wanted, right? Of course they could. They told him, in perfect sincerity, that the band didn't use heroin and it wouldn't be a problem. But other than that, Grossman was extremely flexible. He explained to the group at their first meeting that he took a higher percentage than other managers, but that he would also make them more money than other managers -- if money was what they wanted. He told them that they needed to figure out where they wanted their career to be, and what they were willing to do to get there -- would they be happy just playing the same kind of venues they were now, maybe for a little more money, or did they want to be as big as Dylan or Peter, Paul, and Mary? He could get them to whatever level they wanted, and he was happy with working with clients at every level, what did they actually want? The group were agreed -- they wanted to be rich. They decided to test him. They were making twenty-five thousand dollars a year between them at that time, so they got ridiculously ambitious. They told him they wanted to make a *lot* of money. Indeed, they wanted a clause in their contract saying the contract would be void if in the first year they didn't make... thinking of a ridiculous amount, they came up with seventy-five thousand dollars. Grossman's response was to shrug and say "Make it a hundred thousand." The group were now famous and mixing with superstars -- Peter Tork of the Monkees had become a close friend of Janis', and when they played a residency in LA they were invited to John and Michelle Phillips' house to see a rough cut of Monterey Pop. But the group, other than Janis, were horrified -- the film barely showed the other band members at all, just Janis. Dave Getz said later "We assumed we'd appear in the movie as a band, but seeing it was a shock. It was all Janis. They saw her as a superstar in the making. I realized that though we were finally going to be making money and go to another level, it also meant our little family was being separated—there was Janis, and there was the band.” [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Bye Bye Baby"] If the group were going to make that hundred thousand dollars a year, they couldn't remain on Mainstream Records, but Bob Shad was not about to give up his rights to what could potentially be the biggest group in America without a fight. But luckily for the group, Clive Davis at Columbia had seen their Monterey performance, and he was also trying to pivot the label towards the new rock music. He was basically willing to do anything to get them. Eventually Columbia agreed to pay Shad two hundred thousand dollars for the group's contract -- Davis and Grossman negotiated so half that was an advance on the group's future earnings, but the other half was just an expense for the label. On top of that the group got an advance payment of fifty thousand dollars for their first album for Columbia, making a total investment by Columbia of a quarter of a million dollars -- in return for which they got to sign the band, and got the rights to the material they'd recorded for Mainstream, though Shad would get a two percent royalty on their first two albums for Columbia. Janis was intimidated by signing for Columbia, because that had been Aretha Franklin's label before she signed to Atlantic, and she regarded Franklin as the greatest performer in music at that time.  Which may have had something to do with the choice of a new song the group added to their setlist in early 1968 -- one which was a current hit for Aretha's sister Erma: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] We talked a little in the last episode about the song "Piece of My Heart" itself, though mostly from the perspective of its performer, Erma Franklin. But the song was, as we mentioned, co-written by Bert Berns. He's someone we've talked about a little bit in previous episodes, notably the ones on "Here Comes the Night" and "Twist and Shout", but those were a couple of years ago, and he's about to become a major figure in the next episode, so we might as well take a moment here to remind listeners (or tell those who haven't heard those episodes) of the basics and explain where "Piece of My Heart" comes in Berns' work as a whole. Bert Berns was a latecomer to the music industry, not getting properly started until he was thirty-one, after trying a variety of other occupations. But when he did get started, he wasted no time making his mark -- he knew he had no time to waste. He had a weak heart and knew the likelihood was he was going to die young. He started an association with Wand records as a songwriter and performer, writing songs for some of Phil Spector's pre-fame recordings, and he also started producing records for Atlantic, where for a long while he was almost the equal of Jerry Wexler or Leiber and Stoller in terms of number of massive hits created. His records with Solomon Burke were the records that first got the R&B genre renamed soul (previously the word "soul" mostly referred to a kind of R&Bish jazz, rather than a kind of gospel-ish R&B). He'd also been one of the few American music industry professionals to work with British bands before the Beatles made it big in the USA, after he became alerted to the Beatles' success with his song "Twist and Shout", which he'd co-written with Phil Medley, and which had been a hit in a version Berns produced for the Isley Brothers: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] That song shows the two elements that existed in nearly every single Bert Berns song or production. The first is the Afro-Caribbean rhythm, a feel he picked up during a stint in Cuba in his twenties. Other people in the Atlantic records team were also partial to those rhythms -- Leiber and Stoller loved what they called the baion rhythm -- but Berns more than anyone else made it his signature. He also very specifically loved the song "La Bamba", especially Ritchie Valens' version of it: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, "La Bamba"] He basically seemed to think that was the greatest record ever made, and he certainly loved that three-chord trick I-IV-V-IV chord sequence -- almost but not quite the same as the "Louie Louie" one.  He used it in nearly every song he wrote from that point on -- usually using a bassline that went something like this: [plays I-IV-V-IV bassline] He used it in "Twist and Shout" of course: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] He used it in "Hang on Sloopy": [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] He *could* get more harmonically sophisticated on occasion, but the vast majority of Berns' songs show the power of simplicity. They're usually based around three chords, and often they're actually only two chords, like "I Want Candy": [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] Or the chorus to "Here Comes the Night" by Them, which is two chords for most of it and only introduces a third right at the end: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] And even in that song you can hear the "Twist and Shout"/"La Bamba" feel, even if it's not exactly the same chords. Berns' whole career was essentially a way of wringing *every last possible drop* out of all the implications of Ritchie Valens' record. And so even when he did a more harmonically complex song, like "Piece of My Heart", which actually has some minor chords in the bridge, the "La Bamba" chord sequence is used in both the verse: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] And the chorus: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] Berns co-wrote “Piece of My Heart” with Jerry Ragavoy. Berns and Ragavoy had also written "Cry Baby" for Garnet Mimms, which was another Joplin favourite: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And Ragavoy, with other collaborators

Anyone who plays jazz guitar can thank Eddie Lang; he was the first guitarist to play as a soloist, and was an influential factor in the guitar replacing the banjo in jazz ensembles. Lang was a versatile player who could back Blues singers, play Classical music, and jam with the greatest musicians of his day. He was the house guitarist at Okeh from 1926 to 1933. Using the pseudonym of Blind willie Dunn

The first regular band Chick Webb had at the Savoy Ballroom before Ella Fitzgerald joined. Taft Jordan, Bobby Stark, Sandy Williams, Pete Clark, Edgar Sampson, Elmer Williams, Joe Steele, Don Kirkpatrick, John Truehart, John Kirby and Webb himself created some classic big band sounds largely directed by the compositions and arrangements by Sampson. Records for Columbia, OKeh, Decca. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-clark49/support

THE BILLY STEWART DISCOGRAPHYSingles:Chess 1625: "Billy's Blues" / "Billy's Blues"Argo 5256: "Billy's Blues" / "Billy's Blues"Okeh 4-7095: "Baby, You're My Only Love" / "Billy's Heartache" (1957 with Bo Diddley, backed by The "Marquees")Chess 1820: "Reap What You Sow" / "Fat Boy" (1962) – No. 18 R&B, No. 79 popChess 1835: "True Fine Lovin'" / "Wedding Bells" (1962)Chess 1852: "Scramble" / "Oh My, What Can the Matter Be" (1963)Chess 1868: "Strange Feeling" / "Sugar and Spice" (1963) – No. 25 R&B, No. 70 popChess 1888: "A Fat Boy Can Cry" / "Count Me Out" (1964)Chess 1905: "Tell It Like It Is" / "My Sweet Senorita" (1964)Chess 1922: "I Do Love You" / "Keep Loving" (1965) – No. 6 R&B, No. 26 popChess 1932: "Sitting in the Park" / "Once Again" (1965) – No. 4 R&B, No. 24 popChess 1941: "How Nice It Is" / "No Girl" (1965)Chess 1948: "Because I Love You" / "Mountain of Love" (1965)Chess 1960: "Love Me" / "Why Am I Lonely" (1966) – No. 38 R&BChess 1966: "Summertime" / "To Love, to Love" (1966) – No. 7 R&B, #10 popChess 1978: "Secret Love" / "Look Back and Smile" (1967) – No. 11 R&B, No. 29 popChess 1991: "Every Day I Have the Blues" / "Ol' Man River" (1967) – No. 41 R&B, No. 79 popChess 2002: "Cross My Heart" / "Why (Do I Love You So)?" (1968) – No. 34 R&B, No. 86 pop / No. 49 R&BChess 2053: "Tell Me the Truth" / "What Have I Done?" (1968) – No. 48 R&BChess 2063: "I'm In Love" / "Crazy 'Bout You, Baby" (1969)Chess 2080: "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" / "We'll Always Be Together" (1969)Albums:Chess 1496: I Do Love You (1965) (Billboard No. 97)Chess 1499: Unbelievable (1966) (Billboard No. 138)Chess 1513: Billy Stewart Teaches Old Standards New Tricks (1967)Chess 1540: Cross My Heart (1969)Chess 1547: Remembered (1970)Sugar Hill/Chess CH-8401: The Greatest Sides (1982)

One of the biggest stars in Prohibition Age New York was blues singer Gladys Bentley, who caused a stir in Harlem, wearing a top hat and tails, flirting with women in the audience, and singing raunchy lyrics. Despite Bentley's phenomenal talent, the repeal of Prohibition and the end of the jazz age led to waning interest in the type of bawdy performance for which she was known. Despite attempts to change with the times, Bentley was never again able to reach the level of fame she had once enjoyed. Joining me in this episode to discuss Gladys Bentley and queer Black women performers in Prohibition Age New York is Dr. Cookie Woolner, Associate Professor of History at the University of Memphis and author of The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire before Stonewall. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Them There Eyes,” performed by Gladys Bentley on You Bet Your Life on May 15, 1958. The episode image is a photo of Gladys Bentley on a card distributed by the Harry Walker Agency, with a caption that reads: “America's Greatest Sepia Player -- Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs;” the photo is in the Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and is in the public domain. Additional Sources: “I am Woman Again,” by Gladys Bentley, Ebony Magazine, August 1952. “Gladys Bentley: Gender-Bending Performer and Musician [video],” PBS American Masters Unladylike2020, June 2, 2020. “The Great Blues Singer Gladys Bentley Broke All the Rules,” by Haleema Shah, Smithsonian Magazine, March 14, 2019. “Overlooked – Gladys Bentley,” by Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times, 2019. “Honoring Notorious Gladys Bentley,” by Irene Monroe, HuffPost, Posted April 14, 2010 and updated May 25, 2011. “Blues Singer Gladys Bentley Broke Ground With Marriage to a Woman in 1931,” by Steven J. Niven, The Root, February 11, 2015. “Gladys Bentley on ‘You Bet Your Life' [video],” Aired on May 15, 1958; posted on YouTube by Joel Chaidez on December 18, 2009. “Gladys Bentley (feat. Eddie Lang) How Much Can I Stand? (1928) [video],” Audio recorded on November 2, 1928 and issued as a single by OKeh in 1929; posted on YouTube by randomandrare on April 16, 2010. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Solénoïde (21.08.2023) - Cette semaine, Solénoïde met à l'honneur le dub génétiquement bonifié de NORDUB (Okeh), un jumelage musical inédit entre la Norvège et la Jamaïque, avec d'un côté le duo rythmique SLY and ROBBIE et de l'autre le trompettiste NILS PETTER MOLVAER (accompagnés également de EIVIND AARSET à la guitare et VLADISLAV DELAY aux traitements numériques). Du côté de Toronto, un autre album collaboratif sera mis en lumière, un album qui voit le maniaque du breakcore VENETIAN SNARES s'acoquiner avec le renommé producteur DANIEL LANOIS. Et la cinquième œuvre intemporelle et vagabonde de l'accordéoniste FRODE HALTLI (‘Avant Folk'/ Hubro) vous évoquera certainement des ambiances de villages irlandais ou la bande-son d'une romance balkanique. Quoi qu'il en soit, cette mission 204 s'annonce des plus exaltantes !

Sintonía: "South Like West" - Johnny Watson "End Up Crying" - The Vibrations; "Memories" - The Triumphs; "Your Good Girl´s Gonna Go Bad" - Cookie Jackson; "You Ask For One Good Reason" - Larry Williams; "Rhythm" - Major Lance; "You´re Gonna Be Sorry" - The Opals; "Just Another Dance" - Marlina Mars; "Yesterday Is Gone" - The Variations; "You Can´t Take It Away" - Azie Mortimer; "A Little Bit Of Something (Beats A Whole Lot Of Nothing)" - Little Richard; "Second Class Lover" - Jean Dushon; "The Train" - The Belgianettes; "Can´t Live Without Her" - Billy Butler & The Chanters; "Hello Heartaches, Goodbye Love" - Joyce Davis; "That´s What Mama Say" - Walter Jackson; "Cool Breeze" - Gerald Sims; "Ain´t Gonna Move" - Larry Williams & Johnny Watson; "Let Me Show It To You" - The Fundamentals; "I´ll Leave It Up To You" - The Artistics Todas las músicas extraídas de la recopilación "OKeh - A Northern Soul Obsession Volume 2" (Kent Dance, 1997); músicas seleccionadas por Adrian Croasdell Escuchar audio

LET ME OFF UPTOWN by GENE KRUPA WITH ANITA O'DAY AND ROY ELDRIDGE(OKEH, 1941)This interpretation of this artifact can be as simple, or as complicated as one cares to make it. You can frame it as an anthem of solidarity, or as just another example of cultural appropriation. I choose the former. Granted, here you have an all white swing band, led by the theatrically energetic trapster Gene Krupa, featuring the pert suggestiveness of jazz songbird Anita O'Day in her debut at 22 years old - already displaying uncanny timing, and the horn section all genuflecting to the sole black member of the ensemble, the incomparable Roy Eldridge, who effortlessly blows the roof off the joint with his trumpet.The song celebrates the mythical Shangri-La of Harlem - the place where any aspiring hipster needs to visit to “get groovy”. The rhythm cuts deep, but takes its time to chug and build to an explosive finish by way of Roy's ascending wails of sound. But fundamentally, there is a winking humor to this recording (and “Soundie” video, too) that undergirds a message of brotherhood, and the shared reverence for the music. It hints that we have more in common than what divides us, and advises any non-believers to spend some time “uptown”.

I AIN'T GONNA MARRY by Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band with Maria Muldaur(From GARDEN OF JOY, Reprise 1967)I've always adored Maria Muldaur - we did a podcast on her previously - and, as an adolescent I would study her braided image on the cover of “Garden of Joy” with relish. She is mostly remembered for her radio hit “Midnight at the Oasis”, but her time with JIm Kweskin and the Jug Band was an unrivaled carnival of sexy fun, and “I Ain't Gonna Marry” is my favorite cut of all. This rendition swings with sass and bravado - Richard Greene plays the fiddle with sly insinuation, and when Fritz Richmond makes that punctuating “fart” sound at the end of the intro and middle section, I can't help grinning from ear to ear.  The original source of the tune was obscure, and Kweskin was coy about where he found it,  but thankfully, due to the far reach of the internet, I discovered that the original was written and recorded by “The Moanin' Mama” Sara Martin 44 years earlier, in 1923, on the Okeh label, under the title “Blind Man Blues”.  With all due respect to Ms. Martin, in my opinion the original doesn't hold a candle to Maria's interpretation. Garden of Joy was a Reprise release, which provided a major platform for this group, who had made its bones on the smaller Vanguard label, and was positioned here to leap into the big time.  That was certainly true for Maria, who recorded several albums for them after she went solo. But, here, at the summit of the Jug Band's power, she drops this major bombshell with unimpeded charismatic power. 

Bienvenidos amantes de la música, hoy nos convoca un pianista de sonido muy elegante y a la vez un compositor radical y creativo, Ahmad Jamal. Fallecido hace unos días a los 92 años ha tenido una carrera muy exitosa y productiva con más de 60 discos a su haber. Ya desde pequeño llamó la atención de Art Tatum quien destacó su "gran futuro" en el instrumento. Seguidor de la estructura de trío de Nat King Cole, potenció el formato haciendo dialogar a la sección rítmica con el pianista y no simplemente acompañando. Ese punto fue una gran inspiración para una generación de pianistas, como Bill Evans, Paul Bley o Keith Jarret quienes explotaron eso en sus tríos. Fue del gusto de Miles Davis al punto que este le pedía a su pianista Red Garland, que hiciera acordes como Jamal. "Si estás buscando arte placentero y a la vez un estatus radical, Ahmad Jamal es la persona". Eso dijo un crítico del New York Times acerca de él. John Hammond el productor de Benny Goodman lo reclutó para el sello Okeh y Epic, de donde escucharemos un selección de grabaciones de sus primeros tríos. Que lo disfruten! Los temas son: 1. Ahmad's Blues 2. Love for Sale 3. Autumm Leaves 4. Poinciana *Suscríbete a nuestro canal. Si ya lo has hecho, considera apoyarnos en Patreon como mecenas para hacer sustentable nuestro programa y mantener nuestro viaje en vuelo. (Podrás acceder a episodios anticipados y exclusivos) patreon.com/ViajeJazz?fan_landing=true *Ayúdanos con un Me gusta, Comparte y Comenta. * En viajealmundodeljazz.com encuentra un reproductor de Jazz Moderno y Jazz Clásico.

Some of the earliest albums recorded for popular commercial distribution were comedy albums. For example, various collections of humorous short stories recited by vaudeville comedians Records of comedy songs became popular, with vaudeville and musical comedy stars The Okeh label pioneered the practice of on-location recordings, In the 1920s, Okeh printed thousands of records But the record most commonly associated with the label might be “The OKeh Laughing Record.”

The great jazz innovator Jelly Roll Morton once told folklorist Alan Lomax that “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor” was one of the earlier country blues to come rambling into the big city of New Orleans. Morton said it was being played in the Crescent City many years before he was born there in 1890. As Jelly Roll further noted, "A pallet is something that — you get some quilts — in other words, it's a bed that's made on a floor without any four posters on 'em.”The song was even known to be favorite of a famous jazz forefather. In an early printed reference n 1911, the tune was reported to be featured in the repertoire of New Orleans' legendary cornetist Buddy Bolden.It Was Everybody's SongBut it wasn't only in New Orleans; up in Memphis, Jelly Roll's songwriting rival W.C. Handy must have heard it too.That's because Handy reappropriated big chunks of the same melody for his composition “Atlanta Blues,” first recorded in the Handy band's 1917 performance of "Sweet Child.” Nearly 40 years later, trumpeter Louis Armstrong put “Atlanta Blues” on disc in 1954. Shoot, there must be hundreds — maybe thousands — of versions of this old tune. Search Google for "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor" and you'll find references to recordings by everyone from Gillian Welch and Sandy Denny to Doc Watson and Odetta.The Flood got its particular version from a recording made in the early 1960s for Folkways by the late great Boston bluesmen Rolf Cahn and Eric Von Schmidt. Tracing Some RootsTo look for an origin story for the song, you probably should start with a 1906 report in The Indianapolis Freeman, which referred to a performance of it by "The Texas Teaser, Bennie Jones.” Two years later, the song appeared in sheet music form as part of John William “Blind” Boone's Southern Rag Medley No. One: Strains from the Alleys.The lyrics also appeared in a 1911 article by folklorist Howard Odum, who transcribed them from a performance he said he heard in Mississippi a few years before that.Early recordings of the song were made by Virginia Liston on OKeh in 1925 and Ethel Waters for Columbia in 1926, as well as by Mississippi John Hurt, who recorded it as “Ain't No Tellin'” in 1928.Meanwhile, back to Alan Lomax: Delta blues man Sam Chatmon once told the folklorist, “When I first started picking guitar, this was about the first or the second song I learned ... I was about 4 years old.” That would fix the year at 1900 and the place Bolton, Mississippi.Our Take on the Tune So, we're talking old here. And the older we get, the more we bristle at that thing we used to say each new year. You know, that “out with the old, in with the new” business? We're surely glad no one ever applied that silly rule to this great old song. The tune might be 150 years old, but it still righteously rocks, as we testify here with swinging solos from everybody in the band!By the Way… This is one of the songs we have on tap to play when we're back at Sal's Italian Eatery and Speakeasy in Ashland. Ky., one week from tonight.In other words, please mark it on your calendar. If you're free next Friday night, Jan. 13, come to downtown Ashland to party with The Flood at the coolest new venue in the Tri-State Area. We play from 6 to 9. We so love this place! Click here for our backstory on this establishment. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

When a friend recently asked us what song has the longest association with The Flood, we had to stop and think. Several old-timers are still in the band's repertoire. The Carter Family-inspired “Solid Gone,” for instance, has been in our collective consciousness all along, going way back to when David Peyton and Charlie Bowen were just a modest little duo in 1973. Uncle Dave Macon's “Way Downtown” has legs too; we have tapes from 1975 on which Charlie and Dave are doing that one with Roger Samples and Joe Dobbs the first time the new configuration began calling itself “The 1937 Flood.”Regularly Reborn SongBut the longest-lived Floodified tune that we have the most fun with — the one that has a rebirth with every new incarnation of the band — is the hokum classic “Jug Band Music,” which, as reported here earlier, we started doing in 1976.We learned the tune from a 1960s recording by our heroes, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. And they learned it from a 1934 recording by everybody's heroes, The Memphis Jug Band, headed up by the legendary Will Shade. Not unlike The Flood itself, the Memphis Jug Band didn't like to easily categorize its music, recording a wild mixture of ballads, dance tunes, knock-about novelty numbers, blues and even their own special take on pop tunes of their day.This particular tune Kweskin called simply "Jug Band Music," but when it was originally recorded on Nov. 8, 1934, and released on Vocalion and Okeh, Shade called his composition “Jug Band Quartette.” Jug Band CrazeAmong hokum performers to spring up in Memphis in the 1920s, the Memphis Jug Band was the most recorded, releasing more than 100 sides between 1927 and 1934 (rivaled only by another long-time Flood favorite, Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, incidenally). The jug band craze started in Louisville around 1905. By 1910 there were a number of bands active in that area, including string bands and jazz groups that added a jug player just to cash in on the craze. In 1925, Will Shade first heard the records of a Louisville jug band called the Dixieland Jug Blowers. He quickly convinced a local Memphis musician called "Lionhouse" to switch from blowing an empty whiskey bottle to a gallon jug, added Tee Wee Blackman on guitar and Ben Ramey and the Memphis Jug Band was born. Shade played guitar, harmonica and "bullfiddle" (a stand up bass made from a garbage can, a broom handle and a string). It was a loose-knit outfit with a constantly changing membership.Sounds So Sweet…They have a good five or six years, but by the mid 1930s, Memphis was in decline. Known as the "murder capital of the world," it was rife with corruption. Local politicians tried to combat the problems by closing down the gambling houses and brothels. That crackdown also signaled the end of the jug band era, because it removed many of the venues where that rowdy music had thrived. For that reason, when Shade and the guys trouped to Chicago in November 1934, they probably knew it was to be their last recording session. It was at that moment that this beloved jug band anthem was recorded, their celebratory lyrics a elegiac tribute to themselves, to their fellow musicians, and, most of all, to the music that even now sounds “so sweet … hard to beat.”Our Take on the TuneEvery configuration of The Flood, from 1976 to the present, has done its own variation of this happy song, each one, in its way, a loving tribute to our heroes. (As reported here earlier, the song was even central to our video debut on YouTube back in 2008.)This latest rendition, recorded at a recent gig, offers wonderful solos and fills by everyone in the band. Even the grins and winks seem to come through in the audio. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

The Bennie Moten band was the primary African-American band in Kansas City and the Oklahoma, St. Louis and Chicago regions for almost the entirety of the 1920's . . here we have their first recordings for OKeh and first two for Victor, chronically their development from 1923's New Orleans-styled group to the almost Fletcher Henderson sound of 1926 featuring Woodie Walder on clarinet, Lammar Wright on cornet, Thamon Hayes on trombone, Harlan Leonard on alto and Moten himself on piano. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-clark49/support

I learned this C tune from a 1931 Okeh recording of the Mississippi old time string bad the Newton County Hillbillies, featuring Alvis Massengale on fiddle. It's a practice recording from a few years ago, uploaded for the 11/11/22 Old Time TOTW. I am three finger picking my 1928 Vega Tubaphone with a semi-fretless conversion neck, in double C tuning (gCGCD)

I learned this C tune from a 1931 Okeh recording of the Mississippi old time string bad the Newton County Hillbillies, featuring Alvis Massengale on fiddle. It's a practice recording from a few years ago, uploaded for the 11/11/22 Old Time TOTW. I am three finger picking my 1928 Vega Tubaphone with a semi-fretless conversion neck, in double C tuning (gCGCD)

Solénoïde (05.09.2022) - L'album "Mass" du batteur BOBBY PREVITE a laissé l'équipage du Solénoïde bouche bée ! Sur ce projet, le vétéran new-yorkais ose l'impensable : emmener le chant polyphonique et médiéval (de Guillaume Dufay) aux limites du doom metal et de la drone music ! Une gageure sans pareil ! Le norvégien NILS PETTER MOLVAER mettra sa trompette au service d'un jazz rock brumeux et tumultueux, assorti d'effets électroniques, de riffs incisifs et de grooves endiablés. Venu lui aussi de Norvège, BIOSPHERE peaufinera un petit joyau atmosphérique incrusté de samples de musique folk est-européenne, susceptible de vous plonger dans un délicieux état de torpeur hypnotique. Les néerlandais MICHEL BANABILA et MACHINEFABRIEK signeront pour leur part une fresque sonore fascinante, habilement structurée entre cadences robotiques et emprunts naturalistes. De l'ambient music haut de gamme qui puise dans une large gamme de sources acoustiques et d'effets digitaux !

From an article by Steven C. Barr  1984Canadian Antique Phonograph Society (CAPS)   cpasnews.org      In early 1919 the Compo Company began operations, at first pressing Okeh masters for the Phonola label, and shortly thereafter pressing Gennett records for the Starr Piano Company's Canadian subsidiary; both phonograph firms had previously imported records. Herbert Berliner left his father's firm to serve as president of the Compo firm

A good deal of Western Swing,  some early country and a wee bit of blues. Have to give I haven't got a pot to cook(1936)  another airing. Naughtiness from The Sweet Violet Boys. Jimmie Revard and his Oklahoma Playboys- Ride 'em Cowboy(1936). A Bob Wills song. My only Bob Skyles and his Skyrockets trabk on vinyl next- The Rhythm King. Milton Brown and his Brownies- Yes sir(1936). Chicken Reel Stomp(1937)-The Tune Wranglers. The also performed as Tono Hombres and sang in Spanish. Wonderful blues from Buddy Jones- Settle down blues(1939) Buddy recorded over 80 sides for Decca. On piano is Moon Mulligan. Not Max as I say 'on air.' Bob Dunn on Steel guitar. Amade' Ardoin- La Valse a Abe and Two Step Eunice. A pioneer of Cajun and Zydeco music on record. Much legend surrounds his death. It now appears he probably died of V.D in 1942.  A unique voice and great accordion. The Georgia Crackers-  Joe Diamond(1927). The duo also performed as the Coffer Brothers. Dupree's Rome Boys- 12th Street Blues(1929). A popular dance band number of the time, adapted perfectly for guitar and fiddle. Lil McClintock- Don't think I'm Santa Clause(1930). McClintock was a street musican in Clinton South Carolina and only recorded four sides for Columbia. Nothing is known of his origins or what happened to him. An obscure but talented artist that came and went. Frank Hutchinson- K.C Blues(1929.)  Hutchinson is considered the best musician and singer of white country blues music and recorded around 40 sides for the Okeh label between 1926 and 1929. He played the steel guitar using a pen knife as a slide.  He'd worked as a miner in Virginia. Died young at 48.  I love this laid back track and his wee shout toward the end. We finish with that man Milton Brown and Hesitation Blues.  

Air Week: August 1-7, 2022 Early Billy Stewart & R&B Jail Songs Many 1960s soul legends had their start in 1950s R&B and this week, the “JukeIn The Back” takes a listen to Billy Stewart's early records for the Chess and Okeh labels. You can really hear Stewart's distinctive singing style develop on his early […]

This week I am going to continue with part two of the Mosaic box set, The Classic Columbia and Okeh Benny Goodman Orchestra Session 1939 -1957. These are many of the recordings that Benny made during those years and these are all instrumental recordings. Benny had some great vocalists during those years but Mosaic kept this set to just instrumentals. Some of the songs we'll be listening to include, Jersey Bounce, A String of Pearls, Birth of the Blues, I'll Get By, and many more. This set is no longer available and so I am happy to be able to present some of these great recordings. I hope you enjoy a look at some of the recordings by Benny and the orchestra. Please visit this podcast at http://bigbandbashfm.blogspot.com

One of America's greatest train song was first recorded by a cowboy band, a bunch of real Oklahoma wranglers who were not only good musicians, but also, as one of their earliest backers said, could “ride or rope anything that has horns, hide or hair.”On May 11, 1926, members of Otto Gray's Cowboy Band traveled from Ripley, Oklahoma, to St. Louis to wax two sides for Okeh. Their first number was issued as “Pistol Pete's Midnight Special,” named for their lead singer, guitarist Dave “Pistol Pete” Cutrell.The group, which toured tirelessly until its breakup in 1936 — often traveling in Cadillac sedans made look like railroad locomotives, complete with cow catchers — became America's first nationally famous cowboy band. A success on the theater circuits of the era, they were touted for their showmanship with whip and rope tricks, their music and varied repertoire, their flashy costumes and their visual humor.About the SongThat first song from their Okeh session became even more famous. “Midnight Special” is a traditional folk song thought to have originated among prisoners in the South. The lyrics first appeared in print in 1905 in an article published by African American scholar Howard Odum. Two decades later, in 1927, Carl Sandburg offered two different versions in his classic folk music collection, The American Songbag. That represented the first published versions of the song's music and words.Also in 1927, Louisiana-born blues artist Cryin' Sam Collins recorded the song for Gennett Records. Incidentally, his was the first version to refer to the train's “ever-lovin' light.” After Collins, the world would have to wait a few more years for Huddie Ledbetter (“Lead Belly”) to fully establish the song's prison cred. In 1934, he recorded a version of “Midnight Special” at Louisiana's Angola Prison for John and Alan Lomax, who then mistakenly reported Lead Belly as the song's author. The Lomaxes, in their book, Best Loved American Folk Songs, told a credible story identifying the Midnight Special as a train from Houston shining its light into a cell in the Sugar Land Prison. They said Ledbetter's version was a ballad “to match ‘Hard Times Poor Boy.' Like so many American folk songs,” they added, “its hero is not a man, but a train." About That Light…There always has been a bit of controversy over what it means for that "ever-lovin' light" to shine on you. Some folks says it is about some kind of salvation, that the light of the train that could take you away from those prison walls. In this context, it is reminiscent of the imagery of such gospel songs as “Let the Light from Your Lighthouse Shine on Me.” On the other hand, Sandburg had a darker view. The poet believed the light meant that the subject of the song would rather be run over by a train than spend even one more night in jail!Either way, as Bob Dylan once said in another context, "imagine it would be some kind of change."Our Take on the TuneNineteen years ago, when we went into the studio to record our third album with the late George Walker engineering, “Midnight Special” was the first number we laid down. After that, though, for some reason the tune just sort of drifted out of our collective consciousness. Until lately. Our old buddy, Floodster Emeritus Paul Martin has been dropping into the jam sessions recently, and that's got us revisiting some of the folkier corners of our repertoire. Here's a moment from a week or so ago. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

While G. Love is currently doing the press circuit to discuss his latest album, Philadelphia Mississippi, the affable blues artist is more than happy to talk about his experiences in the ‘90s. Born in Philadelphia and raised on the finest music that city had to offer in the ‘70s and ‘80s, namely soul and blues, G. Love moved to Boston to continue his busking career with hopes of landing a record deal. As glam became grunge, and grunge became pop-punk, G. Love's alternative hip-hop with blues-style guitar playing was a bit of an anomaly though, in retrospect, artists like Beck and Fun Lovin' Criminals could now be considered peers. A deal with Sony imprint Okeh was solidified in ‘94 with the release of the first G. Love and the Special Sauce album and G. Love got into the write, record, tour cycle for the rest of the decade releasing three more albums before the turn of the new century. Looking at G. Love's discography, he never slowed down though he left Okeh to release solo - and band - albums on Brushfire Records, all the while maintaining a consistent touring lifestyle. 2022's Philadelphia Mississippi was born out of pandemic SoulBques where G and his makeshift group of musician friends would hang out, grill up some meats, and sit around playing blues music. You can catch G. Love on stage opening the Dispatch/O.A.R. tour as well as headlining some of his own dates this summer.   Songs In This Episode: Intro - Rhyme for the Summertime 8:06 - Baby's Got Sauce Outro - Blues Music   Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon. Listen to the episode archive at DigMeOutPodcast.com.

While G. Love is currently doing the press circuit to discuss his latest album, Philadelphia Mississippi, the affable blues artist is more than happy to talk about his experiences in the ‘90s. Born in Philadelphia and raised on the finest music that city had to offer in the ‘70s and ‘80s, namely soul and blues, G. Love moved to Boston to continue his busking career with hopes of landing a record deal. As glam became grunge, and grunge became pop-punk, G. Love's alternative hip-hop with blues-style guitar playing was a bit of an anomaly though, in retrospect, artists like Beck and Fun Lovin' Criminals could now be considered peers. A deal with Sony imprint Okeh was solidified in ‘94 with the release of the first G. Love and the Special Sauce album and G. Love got into the write, record, tour cycle for the rest of the decade releasing three more albums before the turn of the new century. Looking at G. Love's discography, he never slowed down though he left Okeh to release solo - and band - albums on Brushfire Records, all the while maintaining a consistent touring lifestyle. 2022's Philadelphia Mississippi was born out of pandemic SoulBques where G and his makeshift group of musician friends would hang out, grill up some meats, and sit around playing blues music. You can catch G. Love on stage opening the Dispatch/O.A.R. tour as well as headlining some of his own dates this summer.   Songs In This Episode: Intro - Rhyme for the Summertime 8:06 - Baby's Got Sauce Outro - Blues Music   Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon. Listen to the episode archive at DigMeOutPodcast.com.

In the genesis of American popular music, few moments are as important as one that occurred exactly 100 years ago tonight.Louis Armstrong was just 20 years old — nervous and apprehensive — when he stepped off a train from his New Orleans hometown into Chicago's Illinois Central Station just before midnight on July 8, 1922. “Anybody watching me closely could have easily seen that I was a country boy,” Armstrong wrote in his first memoir, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans (1954). “I thought to myself: ‘Huh. I don't think I am going to like this old town.'” But that old town certainly would like him.Louis might never have gotten on that train in the first place — after all, he already had seen so many talented musicians come back to New Orleans broke and licking their wounds — but he had been called to the windy northern city to play second cornet with his long-time idol, the legendary Joe “King” Oliver in his Creole Jazz Band.We're all so lucky the wide-eyed young man made that trek. It was the first step in Louis Armstrong's birth as America's first music superstar. In Chicago, Armstrong would steadily outshine the rest of King Oliver's band. Before long he created his own Hot Five and Hot Seven bands. Their records throughout the 1920s and ‘30s document jazz's rapid early evolution, and they fill hundreds of pages in The Great American Songbook.What Song to Feature?So many great songs! It was hard for us to choose just one we to play to celebrate this momentous centennial.After all, many tunes in The Flood's repertoire are ones that we first heard on an Louis Armstrong recording, ranging from “St. Louis Blues,” “Ain't Misbehavin'” and “Sunny Side of the Street” to “All of Me,” “Basin Street Blues” and “Wonderful World.” We finally settled on one of the Louis's own favorites.“Dinah,” the biggest hit for Tin Pan Alley composer Harry Akst, was just five years old when Louis Armstrong recorded it for Okeh in 1930. The trumpeter's love the tune is apparent in the fact that for the next 40 years, he would perform it in most of his numerous live shows and on his radio appearances.The ultimate anthem to the sweetheart of the Roarin' 20s, “Dinah” was introduced by singer Ethel Waters at the Plantation Club on Broadway within a year of its composition in 1925. It then went on to be recorded by everyone from Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway and Josephine Baker to Bing Crosby, the Mills Brothers and the Boswell Sisters to Chet Baker, Thelonious Monk and Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. Curious FootnoteIncidentally, one singer — Fanny Rose Shore — became so identified with the song in the late 1930s that when radio DJ Martin Block could not remember Shore's name one night, he called her “that Dinah girl.” The label stuck and became her stage name; she would be “Dinah Shore” for the next 50 years.Our Take on the TuneOn this track, as we're sitting with “Dinah,” we bet you can hearing the grins going around the room!Listen to all the musical bantering, from Veezy playfully comping behind the vocals to Danny's happy passing chords under the solos. As Louis himself might say, joy comes in many forms — and some of them you can hum! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Saratoga Shout - The great Luis Russell band from 1929-30. Featuring Red Allen, J.C. Higginbotham, Albert Nicholas, Charlie Holmes, William Thornton Blue, Pops Foster and Paul Barbarin among others . . many of the sides released on OKeh by the Russell band as well as several under Red Allen's name for Victor and one backing Louis Armstrong! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-clark49/support

Song: God Told NicodemusSong by: The Golden Gate QuartetPodcast vocals (intro): Gail NoblesHi! I'm Gail Nobles and you're listening to The Gospel Greats. Today's topic: The Golden Gate Quartet.The Golden Gate Quartet (a.k.a. The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet) is a vocal gospel group. It was formed in 1934 and, with changes in membership, remains active.The group was founded as the Golden Gate Jubilee Singers in 1934, by four students at Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk, Virginia. According to the group's website, the original members were Willie Johnson (baritone 1980), William Langford (tenor; d. 1970), Henry Owens (second tenor 1970) and Orlandus Wilson (bass; 1917–1998); other sources state that Langford and Wilson replaced earlier members Robert "Peg" Ford and A.C. "Eddie" Griffin in 1935.From 1935, the group sang in churches and on local radio, gaining a regular spot on radio station WIS in Columbia, South Carolina in 1936.[ They began as a traditional jubilee quartet, combining the clever arrangements associated with barbershop quartets with rhythms borrowed from the blues and jazz like scat singing. They developed a broad repertoire of styles – from Owens' mournful, understated approach in songs such as "Anyhow" or "Hush, Somebody's Calling My Name", to the group's highly syncopated arrangements in "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego". Like The Mills Brothers in popular music, they would often include vocal special effects in their songs, imitating train sounds in songs such as "Golden Gate Gospel Train". Langford often sang lead, using his ability to range from baritone to falsetto, while Johnson narrated. Wilson's bass served as the anchor for the group and Owens harmonized with Langford and Johnson.In 1940 the group signed a new contract with Columbia Record's Okeh label and shortened their name to Golden Gate Quartet.The quartet lost their pre-eminent position in gospel music after the war, when they faced competition from the newer hard gospel quartets.The Golden Gates revived their career in 1955, however, when they toured Europe for the first time where they became widely popular. The group made their first tour of Africa in 1962, and during the early 1960s gradually expanded their accompanying band to Incorporate guitar, piano, bass, and drums.The Golden Gates sang a lot of songs. One of the songs that I like to hear the group sing is God Told Nicodemus.

Twitter: @podgaverockInsta: @podgaverockScreamin' Jay Hawkins' 1956 single “I Put a Spell On You” released on Okeh. Written by Jay Hawkins and Herb Slotkin and produced by Arnold Maxin.Personel:Vocals – Jalacy HawkinsGuitar – Mickey BakerPiano – Ernie HayesTenor saxophone – Sam "The Man" TaylorBaritone saxophone – Bud JohnsonBass – Al LucasDrums – David "Panama" FrancisArrangement – Leroy KirklandCover:Performed by Josh Bond and Neal MarshIntro Music:"Shithouse" 2010 release from "A Collection of Songs for the Kings". Written by Josh Bond. Produced by Frank Charlton.Other Artists Mentioned:David Gilmour

Twitter: @podgaverockInsta: @podgaverockScreamin' Jay Hawkins' 1956 single “I Put a Spell On You” released on Okeh. Written by Jay Hawkins and Herb Slotkin and produced by Arnold Maxin.Personel:Vocals – Jalacy HawkinsGuitar – Mickey BakerPiano – Ernie HayesTenor saxophone – Sam "The Man" TaylorBaritone saxophone – Bud JohnsonBass – Al LucasDrums – David "Panama" FrancisArrangement – Leroy KirklandCover:Performed by Josh Bond and Neal MarshIntro Music:"Shithouse" 2010 release from "A Collection of Songs for the Kings". Written by Josh Bond. Produced by Frank Charlton.Other Artists Mentioned:Puddle of MuddCalvin and HobbesCreedence Clearwater RevivalThemVan MorrisonNina SimoneJimi Hendrix “All Along the Watchtower”Bob DylanGuns n Roses “Welcome to the Jungle”Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit”Pearl Jam “Evenflow”Alan FreedBobby Pickett “Monster Mash”Little RichardMerv GriffinHocus PocusMuddy Waters “Got My Mojo Workin'”Mickey and Sylvia “Love is Strange”Big Joe Turner “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”Duke EllingtonThe Platters “Great Pretender”The Platters “Only You”Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons “Walk Like a Man”Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons “Big Girls Don't Cry”The Fabulous Baker BoysMichelle PfieferAmy WinehouseTom WaitsLed Zeppelin “Dazed and Confused”Howlin' Wolf “Evil”Robert JohnsonBlack SabbathMarilyn MansonThe Doors “Backdoor Man”Jim MorrisonMick JaggerVincent PriceAlice CooperMichael Jackson “Thriller”Alice in ChainsAnnie LennoxJeff BeckJoss StoneThe AnimalsAlan PriceDavid GilmourMica Pa risNotorious B.I.G.The Blair Witch Project

Episode 143 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Summer in the City'”, and at the short but productive career of the Lovin' Spoonful.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More" by the Walker Brothers and the strange career of Scott Walker. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. This box set contains all four studio albums by the Lovin' Spoonful, plus the one album by "The Lovin' Spoonful featuring Joe Butler", while this CD contains their two film soundtracks (mostly inessential instrumental filler, apart from "Darling Be Home Soon") Information about harmonicas and harmonicists comes from Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers by Kim Field. There are only three books about the Lovin' Spoonful, but all are worth reading. Do You Believe in Magic? by Simon Wordsworth is a good biography of the band, while his The Magic's in the Music is a scrapbook of press cuttings and reminiscences. Meanwhile Steve Boone's Hotter Than a Match Head: My Life on the Run with the Lovin' Spoonful has rather more discussion of the actual music than is normal in a musician's autobiography. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let's talk about the harmonica for a while. The harmonica is an instrument that has not shown up a huge amount in the podcast, but which was used in a fair bit of the music we've covered. We've heard it for example on records by Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "I'm a Man"] and by Bob Dylan: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"] and the Rolling Stones: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Little Red Rooster"] In most folk and blues contexts, the harmonicas used are what is known as a diatonic harmonica, and these are what most people think of when they think of harmonicas at all. Diatonic harmonicas have the notes of a single key in them, and if you want to play a note in another key, you have to do interesting tricks with the shape of your mouth to bend the note. There's another type of harmonica, though, the chromatic harmonica. We've heard that a time or two as well, like on "Love Me Do" by the Beatles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love Me Do"] Chromatic harmonicas have sixteen holes, rather than the diatonic harmonica's ten, and they also have a slide which you can press to raise the note by a semitone, meaning you can play far more notes than on a diatonic harmonica -- but they're also physically harder to play, requiring a different kind of breathing to pull off playing one successfully. They're so different that John Lennon would distinguish between the two instruments -- he'd describe a chromatic harmonica as a harmonica, but a diatonic harmonica he would call a harp, like blues musicians often did: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love These Goon Shows"] While the chromatic harmonica isn't a particularly popular instrument in rock music, it is one that has had some success in other fields. There have been some jazz and light-orchestral musicians who have become famous playing the instrument, like the jazz musician Max Geldray, who played in those Goon Shows the Beatles loved so much: [Excerpt: Max Geldray, "C-Jam Blues"] And in the middle of the twentieth century there were a few musicians who succeeded in making the harmonica into an instrument that was actually respected in serious classical music. By far the most famous of these was Larry Adler, who became almost synonymous with the instrument in the popular consciousness, and who reworked many famous pieces of music for the instrument: [Excerpt: Larry Adler, "Rhapsody in Blue"] But while Adler was the most famous classical harmonicist of his generation, he was not generally considered the best by other musicians. That was, rather, a man named John Sebastian. Sebastian, who chose to take his middle name as a surname partly to Anglicise his name but also, it seems, at least in part as tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach (which incidentally now makes it really, really difficult to search for copies of his masterwork "John Sebastian Plays Bach", as Internet searches uniformly think you're searching just for the composer...) started out like almost all harmonica players as an amateur playing popular music. But he quickly got very, very, good, and by his teens he was already teaching other children, including at a summer camp run by Albert Hoxie, a musician and entrepreneur who was basically single-handedly responsible for the boom in harmonica sales in the 1920s and 1930s, by starting up youth harmonica orchestras -- dozens or even hundreds of kids, all playing harmonica together, in a semi-militaristic youth organisation something like the scouts, but with harmonicas instead of woggles and knots. Hoxie's group and the various organisations copying it led to there being over a hundred and fifty harmonica orchestras in Chicago alone, and in LA in the twenties and thirties a total of more than a hundred thousand children passed through harmonica orchestras inspired by Hoxie. Hoxie's youth orchestras were largely responsible for the popularity of the harmonica as a cheap instrument for young people, and thus for its later popularity in the folk and blues worlds. That was only boosted in the Second World War by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, which we talked about in the early episodes of the podcast -- harmonicas had never been thought of as a serious instrument, and so most professional harmonica players were not members of the AFM, but were considered variety performers and were part of the American Guild of Variety Artists, along with singers, ukulele players, and musical saw players. Of course, the war did also create a problem, because the best harmonicas were made in Germany by the Hohner company, but soon a lot of American companies started making cheap harmonicas to fill the gap in the market. There's a reason the cliche of the GI in a war film playing a harmonica in the trenches exists, and it's largely because of Hoxie. And Hoxie was based in Philadelphia, where John Sebastian lived as a kid, and he mentored the young player, who soon became a semi-professional performer. Sebastian's father was a rich banker, and discouraged him from becoming a full-time musician -- the plan was that after university, Sebastian would become a diplomat. But as part of his preparation for that role, he was sent to spend a couple of years studying at the universities of Rome and Florence, learning about Italian culture. On the boat back, though, he started talking to two other passengers, who turned out to be the legendary Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart, the writers of such classic songs as "Blue Moon" and "My Funny Valentine": [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "My Funny Valentine"] Sebastian talked to his new friends, and told them that he was feeling torn between being a musician and being in the foreign service like his father wanted. They both told him that in their experience some people were just born to be artists, and that those people would never actually find happiness doing anything else. He took their advice, and decided he was going to become a full-time harmonica player. He started out playing in nightclubs, initially playing jazz and swing, but only while he built up a repertoire of classical music. He would rehearse with a pianist for three hours every day, and would spend the rest of his time finding classical works, especially baroque ones, and adapting them for the harmonica. As he later said “I discovered sonatas by Telemann, Veracini, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Hasse, Marcello, Purcell, and many others, which were written to be played on violin, flute, oboe, musette, even bagpipes... The composer seemed to be challenging each instrument to create the embellishments and ornaments to suit its particular voice. . . . I set about choosing works from this treasure trove that would best speak through my instrument.” Soon his nightclub repertoire was made up entirely of these classical pieces, and he was making records like John Sebastian Plays Bach: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Flute Sonata in B Minor BWV1030 (J.S. Bach)"] And while Sebastian was largely a lover of baroque music above all other forms, he realised that he would have to persuade new composers to write new pieces for the instrument should he ever hope for it to have any kind of reputation as a concert instrument, so he persuaded contemporary composers to write pieces like George Kleinsinger's "Street Corner Concerto", which Sebastian premiered with the New York Philharmonic: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Street Corner Concerto"] He became the first harmonica player to play an entirely classical repertoire, and regarded as the greatest player of his instrument in the world. The oboe player Jay S Harrison once wrote of seeing him perform "to accomplish with success a program of Mr. Sebastian's scope is nothing short of wizardry. . . . He has vast technical facility, a bulging range of colors, and his intentions are ever musical and sophisticated. In his hands the harmonica is no toy, no simple gadget for the dispensing of homespun tunes. Each single number of the evening was whittled, rounded, polished, and poised. . . . Mr. Sebastian's playing is uncanny." Sebastian came from a rich background, and he managed to earn enough as a classical musician to live the lifestyle of a rich artistic Bohemian. During the forties and fifties he lived in Greenwich Village with his family -- apart from a four-year period living in Rome from 1951 to 55 -- and Eleanor Roosevelt was a neighbour, while Vivian Vance, who played Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy, was the godmother of his eldest son. But while Sebastian's playing was entirely classical, he was interested in a wider variety of music. When he would tour Europe, he would often return having learned European folk songs, and while he was living in Greenwich Village he would often be visited by people like Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and other folk singers living in the area. And that early influence rubbed off on Sebastian's son, John Benson Sebastian, although young John gave up trying to learn the harmonica the first time he tried, because he didn't want to be following too closely in his father's footsteps. Sebastian junior did, though, take up the guitar, inspired by the first wave rock and rollers he was listening to on Alan Freed's show, and he would later play the harmonica, though the diatonic harmonica rather than the chromatic. In case you haven't already figured it out, John Benson Sebastian, rather than his father, is a principal focus of this episode, and so to avoid confusion, from this point on, when I refer to "John Sebastian" or "Sebastian" without any qualifiers, I'm referring to the younger man. When I refer to "John Sebastian Sr" I'm talking about the father. But it was John Sebastian Sr's connections, in particular to the Bohemian folk and blues scenes, which gave his more famous son his first connection to that world of his own, when Sebastian Sr appeared in a TV show, in November 1960, put together by Robert Herridge, a TV writer and producer who was most famous for his drama series but who had also put together documentaries on both classical music and jazz, including the classic performance documentary The Sound of Jazz. Herridge's show featured both Sebastian Sr and the country-blues player Lightnin' Hopkins: [Excerpt: Lightnin' Hopkins, "Blues in the Bottle"] Hopkins was one of many country-blues players whose career was having a second wind after his discovery by the folk music scene. He'd been recording for fourteen years, putting out hundreds of records, but had barely performed outside Houston until 1959, when the folkies had picked up on his work, and in October 1960 he had been invited to play Carnegie Hall, performing with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Young John Sebastian had come along with his dad to see the TV show be recorded, and had an almost Damascene conversion -- he'd already heard Hopkins' recordings, but had never seen anything like his live performances. He was at that time attending a private boarding school, Blair Academy, and his roommate at the school also had his own apartment, where Sebastian would sometimes stay. Soon Lightnin' Hopkins was staying there as well, as somewhere he could live rent-free while he was in New York. Sebastian started following Hopkins around and learning everything he could, being allowed by the older man to carry his guitar and buy him gin, though the two never became close. But eventually, Hopkins would occasionally allow Sebastian to play with him when he played at people's houses, which he did on occasion. Sebastian became someone that Hopkins trusted enough that when he was performing on a bill with someone else whose accompanist wasn't able to make the gig and Sebastian put himself forward, Hopkins agreed that Sebastian would be a suitable accompanist for the evening. The singer he accompanied that evening was a performer named Valentine Pringle, who was a protege of Harry Belafonte, and who had a similar kind of sound to Paul Robeson. Sebastian soon became Pringle's regular accompanist, and played on his first album, I Hear America Singing, which was also the first record on which the great trumpet player Hugh Masakela played. Sadly, Paul Robeson style vocals were so out of fashion by that point that that album has never, as far as I can tell, been issued in a digital format, and hasn't even been uploaded to YouTube.  But this excerpt from a later recording by Pringle should give you some idea of the kind of thing he was doing: [Excerpt: Valentine Pringle, "Go 'Way From My Window"] After these experiences, Sebastian started regularly going to shows at Greenwich Village folk clubs, encouraged by his parents -- he had an advantage over his peers because he'd grown up in the area and had artistic parents, and so he was able to have a great deal of freedom that other people in their teens weren't. In particular, he would always look out for any performances by the great country blues performer Mississippi John Hurt. Hurt had made a few recordings for Okeh records in 1928, including an early version of "Stagger Lee", titled "Stack O'Lee": [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Stack O'Lee Blues"] But those records had been unsuccessful, and he'd carried on working on a farm. and not performed other than in his tiny home town of Avalon, Mississippi, for decades. But then in 1952, a couple of his tracks had been included on the Harry Smith Anthology, and as a result he'd come to the attention of the folk and blues scholar community. They'd tried tracking him down, but been unable to until in the early sixties one of them had discovered a track on one of Hurt's records, "Avalon Blues", and in 1963, thirty-five years after he'd recorded six flop singles, Mississippi John Hurt became a minor star, playing the Newport Folk Festival and appearing on the Tonight Show. By this time, Sebastian was a fairly well-known figure in Greenwich Village, and he had become quite a virtuoso on the harmonica himself, and would walk around the city wearing a holster-belt containing harmonicas in a variety of different keys. Sebastian became a huge fan of Hurt, and would go and see him perform whenever Hurt was in New York. He soon found himself first jamming backstage with Hurt, and then performing with him on stage for the last two weeks of a residency. He was particularly impressed with what he called Hurt's positive attitude in his music -- something that Sebastian would emulate in his own songwriting. Sebastian was soon invited to join a jug band, called the Even Dozen Jug Band. Jug band music was a style of music that first became popular in the 1920s, and had many of the same musical elements as the music later known as skiffle. It was played on a mixture of standard musical instruments -- usually portable, "folky" ones like guitar and harmonica -- and improvised homemade instruments, like the spoons, the washboard, and comb and paper. The reason they're called jug bands is because they would involve someone blowing into a jug to make a noise that sounded a bit like a horn -- much like the coffee pot groups we talked about way back in episode six. The music was often hokum music, and incorporated elements of what we'd now call blues, vaudeville, and country music, though at the time those genres were nothing like as distinct as they're considered today: [Excerpt: Cincinnati Jug Band, "Newport Blues"] The Even Dozen Jug Band actually ended up having thirteen members, and it had a rather remarkable lineup. The leader was Stefan Grossman, later regarded as one of the greatest fingerpicking guitarists in America, and someone who will be coming up in other contexts in future episodes I'm sure, and they also featured David Grisman, a mandolin player who would later play with the Grateful Dead among many others;  Steve Katz, who would go on to be a founder member of Blood, Sweat and Tears and produce records for Lou Reed; Maria D'Amato, who under her married name Maria Muldaur would go on to have a huge hit with "Midnight at the Oasis"; and Joshua Rifkin, who would later go on to become one of the most important scholars of Bach's music of the latter half of the twentieth century, but who is best known for his recordings of Scott Joplin's piano rags, which more or less single-handedly revived Joplin's music from obscurity and created the ragtime revival of the 1970s: [Excerpt: Joshua Rifkin, "Maple Leaf Rag"] Unfortunately, despite the many talents involved, a band as big as that was uneconomical to keep together, and the Even Dozen Jug Band only played four shows together -- though those four shows were, as Muldaur later remembered, "Carnegie Hall twice, the Hootenanny television show and some church". The group did, though, make an album for Elektra records, produced by Paul Rothchild. Indeed, it was Rothchild who was the impetus for the group forming -- he wanted to produce a record of a jug band, and had told Grossman that if he got one together, he'd record it: [Excerpt: The Even Dozen Jug Band, "On the Road Again"] On that album, Sebastian wasn't actually credited as John Sebastian -- because he was playing harmonica on the album, and his father was such a famous harmonica player, he thought it better if he was credited by his middle name, so he was John Benson for this one album. The Even Dozen Jug Band split up after only a few months, with most of the band more interested in returning to university than becoming professional musicians, but Sebastian remained in touch with Rothchild, as they both shared an interest in the drug culture, and Rothchild started using him on sessions for other artists on Elektra, which was rapidly becoming one of the biggest labels for the nascent counterculture. The first record the two worked together on after the Even Dozen Jug Band was sparked by a casual conversation. Vince Martin and Fred Neil saw Sebastian walking down the street wearing his harmonica holster, and were intrigued and asked him if he played. Soon he and his friend Felix Pappalardi were accompanying Martin and Neil on stage, and the two of them were recording as the duo's accompanists: [Excerpt: Vince Martin and Fred Neil, "Tear Down the Walls"] We've mentioned Neil before, but if you don't remember him, he was one of the people around whom the whole Greenwich Village scene formed -- he was the MC and organiser of bills for many of the folk shows of the time, but he's now best known for writing the songs "Everybody's Talkin'", recorded famously by Harry Nilsson, and "The Dolphins", recorded by Tim Buckley. On the Martin and Neil album, Tear Down The Walls, as well as playing harmonica, Sebastian acted essentially as uncredited co-producer with Rothchild, but Martin and Neil soon stopped recording for Elektra. But in the meantime, Sebastian had met the most important musical collaborator he would ever have, and this is the start of something that will become a minor trend in the next few years, of important musical collaborations happening because of people being introduced by Cass Elliot. Cass Elliot had been a singer in a folk group called the Big 3 -- not the same group as the Merseybeat group -- with Tim Rose, and the man who would be her first husband, Jim Hendricks (not the more famous guitarist of a similar name): [Excerpt: Cass Elliot and the Big 3, "The Banjo Song"] The Big 3 had split up when Elliot and Hendricks had got married, and the two married members had been looking around for other musicians to perform with, when coincidentally another group they knew also split up. The Halifax Three were a Canadian group who had originally started out as The Colonials, with a lineup of Denny Doherty, Pat LaCroix and Richard Byrne. Byrne didn't turn up for a gig, and a homeless guitar player, Zal Yanovsky, who would hang around the club the group were playing at, stepped in. Doherty and LaCroix, much to Yanovsky's objections, insisted he bathe and have a haircut, but soon the newly-renamed Halifax Three were playing Carnegie Hall and recording for Epic Records: [Excerpt: The Halifax Three, "When I First Came to This Island"] But then a plane they were in crash-landed, and the group took that as a sign that they should split up. So they did, and Doherty and Yanovsky continued as a duo, until they hooked up with Hendricks and Elliot and formed a new group, the Mugwumps. A name which may be familiar if you recognise one of the hits of a group that Doherty and Elliot were in later: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Creeque Alley"] But we're skipping ahead a bit there. Cass Elliot was one of those few people in the music industry about whom it is impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say, and she was friendly with basically everyone, and particularly good at matching people up with each other. And on February the 7th 1964, she invited John Sebastian over to watch the Beatles' first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Like everyone in America, he was captivated by the performance: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand (live on the Ed Sullivan Show)"] But Yanovsky was also there, and the two played guitar together for a bit, before retreating to opposite sides of the room. And then Elliot spent several hours as a go-between, going to each man and telling him how much the other loved and admired his playing and wanted to play more with him. Sebastian joined the Mugwumps for a while, becoming one of the two main instrumentalists with Yanovsky, as the group pivoted from performing folk music to performing Beatles-inspired rock. But the group's management team, Bob Cavallo and Roy Silver, who weren't particularly musical people, and whose main client was the comedian Bill Cosby, got annoyed at Sebastian, because he and Yanovsky were getting on *too* well musically -- they were trading blues licks on stage, rather than sticking to the rather pedestrian arrangements that the group was meant to be performing -- and so Silver fired Sebastian fired from the group. When the Mugwumps recorded their one album, Sebastian had to sit in the control room while his former bandmates recorded with session musicians, who he thought were nowhere near up to his standard: [Excerpt: The Mugwumps, "Searchin'"] By the time that album was released, the Mugwumps had already split up. Sebastian had continued working as a session musician for Elektra, including playing on the album The Blues Project, which featured white Greenwich Village folk musicians like Eric Von Schmidt, Dave Van Ronk, and Spider John Koerner playing their versions of old blues records, including this track by Geoff Muldaur, which features Sebastian on harmonica and "Bob Landy" on piano -- a fairly blatant pseudonym: [Excerpt: Geoff Muldaur, "Downtown Blues"] Sebastian also played rhythm guitar and harmonica on the demos that became a big part of Tim Hardin's first album -- and his fourth, when the record company released the remaining demos. Sebastian doesn't appear to be on the orchestrated ballads that made Hardin's name -- songs like "Reason to Believe" and "Misty Roses" -- but he is on much of the more blues-oriented material, which while it's not anything like as powerful as Hardin's greatest songs, made up a large part of his repertoire: [Excerpt: Tim Hardin, "Ain't Gonna Do Without"] Erik Jacobsen, the producer of Hardin's records, was impressed enough by Sebastian that he got Sebastian to record lead vocals, for a studio group consisting of Sebastian, Felix Pappalardi, Jerry Yester and Henry Diltz of the Modern Folk Quartet, and a bass singer whose name nobody could later remember. The group, under the name "Pooh and the Heffalumps", recorded two Beach Boys knockoffs, "Lady Godiva" and "Rooty Toot", the latter written by Sebastian, though he would later be embarrassed by it and claim it was by his cousin: [Excerpt: Pooh and the Heffalumps, "Rooty Toot"] After that, Jacobsen became convinced that Sebastian should form a group to exploit his potential as a lead singer and songwriter. By this point, the Mugwumps had split up, and their management team had also split, with Silver taking Bill Cosby and Cavallo taking the Mugwumps, and so Sebastian was able to work with Yanovsky, and the putative group could be managed by Cavallo. But Sebastian and Yanovsky needed a rhythm section. And Erik Jacobsen knew a band that might know some people. Jacobsen was a fan of a Beatles soundalike group called the Sellouts, who were playing Greenwich Village and who were co-managed by Herb Cohen, the manager of the Modern Folk Quartet (who, as we heard a couple of episodes ago, would soon go on to be the manager of the Mothers of Invention). The Sellouts were ultra-professional by the standards  of rock groups of the time -- they even had a tape echo machine that they used on stage to give them a unique sound -- and they had cut a couple of tracks with Jacobsen producing, though I've not been able to track down copies of them. Their leader Skip Boone, had started out playing guitar in a band called the Blue Suedes, and had played in 1958 on a record by their lead singer Arthur Osborne: [Excerpt: Arthur Osborne, "Hey Ruby"] Skip Boone's brother Steve in his autobiography says that that was produced by Chet Atkins for RCA, but it was actually released on Brunswick records. In the early sixties, Skip Boone joined a band called the Kingsmen -- not the same one as the band that recorded "Louie Louie" -- playing lead guitar with his brother Steve on rhythm, a singer called Sonny Bottari, a saxophone player named King Charles, bass player Clay Sonier, and drummer Joe Butler. Sometimes Butler would get up front and sing, and then another drummer, Jan Buchner, would sit in in his place. Soon Steve Boone would replace Bonier as the bass player, but the Kingsmen had no success, and split up. From the ashes of the Kingsmen had formed the Sellouts, Skip Boone, Jerry Angus, Marshall O'Connell, and Joe Butler, who had switched from playing "Peppermint Twist" to playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in February 1964. Meanwhile Steve Boone went on a trip to Europe before starting at university in New York, where he hooked up again with Butler, and it was Butler who introduced him to Sebastian and Yanovsky. Sebastian and Yanovsky had been going to see the Sellouts at the behest of Jacobsen, and they'd been asking if they knew anyone else who could play that kind of material. Skip Boone had mentioned his little brother, and as soon as they met him, even before they first played together, they knew from his appearance that he would be the right bass player for them. So now they had at least the basis for a band. They hadn't played together, but Erik Jacobsen was an experienced record producer and Cavallo an experienced manager. They just needed to do some rehearsals and get a drummer, and a record contract was more or less guaranteed. Boone suggested Jan Buchner, the backup drummer from the Kingsmen, and he joined them for rehearsals. It was during these early rehearsals that Boone got to play on his first real record, other than some unreleased demos the Kingsmen had made. John Sebastian got a call from that "Bob Landy" we mentioned earlier, asking if he'd play bass on a session. Boone tagged along, because he was a fan, and when Sebastian couldn't get the parts down for some songs, he suggested that Boone, as an actual bass player, take over: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm"] But the new group needed a name, of course. It was John Sebastian who came up with the name they eventually chose, The Lovin' Spoonful, though Boone was a bit hesitant about it at first, worrying that it might be a reference to heroin -- Boone was from a very conservative, military, background, and knew little of drug culture and didn't at that time make much of a distinction between cannabis and heroin, though he'd started using the former -- but Sebastian was insistent. The phrase actually referred to coffee -- the name came from "Coffee Blues" by Sebastian's old idol Mississippi John Hurt – or at least Hurt always *said* it was about coffee, though in live performance he apparently made it clear that it was about cunnilingus: [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Coffee Blues"] Their first show, at the Night Owl Club, was recorded, and there was even an attempt to release it as a CD in the 1990s, but it was left unreleased and as far as I can tell wasn't even leaked. There have been several explanations for this, but perhaps the most accurate one is just the comment from the manager of the club, who came up to the group after their two sets and told them “Hey, I don't know how to break this to you, but you guys suck.” There were apparently three different problems. They were underrehearsed -- which could be fixed with rehearsal -- they were playing too loud and hurting the patrons' ears -- which could be fixed by turning down the amps -- and their drummer didn't look right, was six years older than the rest of the group, and was playing in an out-of-date fifties style that wasn't suitable for the music they were playing. That was solved by sacking Buchner. By this point Joe Butler had left the Sellouts, and while Herb Cohen was interested in managing him as a singer, he was willing to join this new group at least for the moment. By now the group were all more-or-less permanent residents at the Albert Hotel, which was more or less a doss-house where underemployed musicians would stay, and which had its own rehearsal rooms. As well as the Spoonful, Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty lived there, as did the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Joe Butler quickly fit into the group, and soon they were recording what became their first single, produced by Jacobsen, an original of Sebastian's called "Do You Believe in Magic?", with Sebastian on autoharp and vocals, Yanovsky on lead guitar and backing vocals, Boone on bass, Butler on drums, and Jerry Yester adding piano and backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] For a long time, the group couldn't get a deal -- the record companies all liked the song, but said that unless the group were English they couldn't sell them at the moment. Then Phil Spector walked into the Night Owl Cafe, where the new lineup of the group had become popular, and tried to sign them up. But they turned him down -- they wanted Erik Jacobsen to produce them; they were a team. Spector's interest caused other labels to be interested, and the group very nearly signed to Elektra. But again, signing to Elektra would have meant being produced by Rothchild, and also Elektra were an album label who didn't at that time have any hit single acts, and the group knew they had hit single potential. They did record a few tracks for Elektra to stick on a blues compilation, but they knew that Elektra wouldn't be their real home. Eventually the group signed with Charley Koppelman and Don Rubin, who had started out as songwriters themselves, working for Don Kirshner. When Kirshner's organisation had been sold to Columbia, Koppelman and Rubin had gone along and ended up working for Columbia as executives. They'd then worked for Morris Levy at Roulette Records, before forming their own publishing and record company. Rather than put out records themselves, they had a deal to license records to Kama Sutra Records, who in turn had a distribution deal with MGM Records. Koppelman and Rubin were willing to take the group and their manager and producer as a package deal, and they released the group's demo of "Do You Believe In Magic?" unchanged as their first single: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] The single reached the top ten, and the group were soon in the studio cutting their first album, also titled Do You Believe In Magic? The album was a mix of songs that were part of the standard Greenwich Village folkie repertoire -- songs like Mississippi John Hurt's "Blues in the Bottle" and Fred Neil's "The Other Side of This Life" -- and a couple more originals. The group's second single was the first song that Steve Boone had co-written. It was inspired by a date he'd gone on with the photographer Nurit Wilde, who sadly for him didn't go on a second date, and who would later be the mother of Mike Nesmith's son Jason, but who he was very impressed by. He thought of her when he came up with the line "you didn't have to be so nice, I would have liked you anyway", and he and Sebastian finished up a song that became another top ten hit for the group: [Excerpt: (The Good Time Music of) The Lovin' Spoonful, "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice"] Shortly after that song was recorded, but before it was released, the group were called into Columbia TV with an intriguing proposition. Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, two young TV producers, were looking at producing a TV show inspired by A Hard Day's Night, and were looking for a band to perform in it. Would the Lovin' Spoonful be up for it? They were interested at first, but Boone and Sebastian weren't sure they wanted to be actors, and also it would involve the group changing its name. They'd already made a name for themselves as the Lovin' Spoonful, did they really want to be the Monkees instead? They passed on the idea. Instead, they went on a tour of the deep South as the support act to the Supremes, a pairing that they didn't feel made much sense, but which did at least allow them to watch the Supremes and the Funk Brothers every night. Sebastian was inspired by the straight four-on-the-floor beat of the Holland-Dozier-Holland repertoire, and came up with his own variation on it, though as this was the Lovin' Spoonful the end result didn't sound very Motown at all: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Daydream"] It was only after the track was recorded that Yanovsky pointed out to Sebastian that he'd unconsciously copied part of the melody of the old standard "Got a Date With an Angel": [Excerpt: Al Bowlly, "Got a Date With an Angel"] "Daydream" became the group's third top ten hit in a row, but it caused some problems for the group. The first was Kama Sutra's advertising campaign for the record, which had the words "Lovin' Spoonful Daydream", with the initials emphasised. While the group were drug users, they weren't particularly interested in being promoted for that rather than their music, and had strong words with the label. The other problem came with the Beach Boys. The group were supporting the Beach Boys on a tour in spring of 1966, when "Daydream" came out and became a hit, and they got on with all the band members except Mike Love, who they definitely did not get on with. Almost fifty years later, in his autobiography, Steve Boone would have nothing bad to say about the Wilson brothers, but calls Love "an obnoxious, boorish braggart", a "marginally talented hack" and worse, so it's safe to say that Love wasn't his favourite person in the world. Unfortunately, when "Daydream" hit the top ten, one of the promoters of the tour decided to bill the Lovin' Spoonful above the Beach Boys, and this upset Love, who understandably thought that his group, who were much better known and had much more hits, should be the headliners. If this had been any of the other Beach Boys, there would have been no problem, but because it was Love, who the Lovin' Spoonful despised, they decided that they were going to fight for top billing, and the managers had to get involved. Eventually it was agreed that the two groups would alternate the top spot on the bill for the rest of the tour. "Daydream" eventually reached number two on the charts (and number one on Cashbox) and also became the group's first hit in the UK, reaching number two here as well, and leading to the group playing a short UK tour. During that tour, they had a similar argument over billing with Mick Jagger as they'd had with Mike Love, this time over who was headlining on an appearance on Top of the Pops, and the group came to the same assessment of Jagger as they had of Love. The performance went OK, though, despite them being so stoned on hash given them by the wealthy socialite Tara Browne that Sebastian had to be woken up seconds before he started playing. They also played the Marquee Club -- Boone notes in his autobiography that he wasn't impressed by the club when he went to see it the day before their date there, because some nobody named David Bowie was playing there. But in the audience that day were George Harrison, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Spencer Davis, and Brian Jones, most of whom partied with the group afterwards. The Lovin' Spoonful made a big impression on Lennon in particular, who put "Daydream" and "Do You Believe in Magic" in his jukebox at home, and who soon took to wearing glasses in the same round, wiry, style as the ones that Sebastian wore. They also influenced Paul McCartney, who wasn't at that gig, but who soon wrote this, inspired by "Daydream": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Good Day Sunshine"] Unfortunately, this was more or less the high point of the group's career. Shortly after that brief UK tour, Zal Yanovsky and Steve Boone went to a party where they were given some cannabis -- and they were almost immediately stopped by the police, subjected to an illegal search of their vehicle, and arrested. They would probably have been able to get away with this -- after all, it was an illegal search, even though of course the police didn't admit to that -- were it not for the fact that Yanovsky was a Canadian citizen, and he could be deported and barred from ever re-entering the US just for being arrested. This was the first major drug bust of a rock and roll group, and there was no precedent for the group, their managers, their label or their lawyers to deal with this. And so they agreed to something they would regret for the rest of their lives. In return for being let off, Boone and Yanovsky agreed to take an undercover police officer to a party and introduce him to some of their friends as someone they knew in the record business, so he would be able to arrest one of the bigger dealers. This was, of course, something they knew was a despicable thing to do, throwing friends under the bus to save themselves, but they were young men and under a lot of pressure, and they hoped that it wouldn't actually lead to any arrests. And for almost a year, there were no serious consequences, although both Boone and Yanovsky were shaken up by the event, and Yanovsky's behaviour, which had always been erratic, became much, much worse. But for the moment, the group remained very successful. After "Daydream", an album track from their first album, "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" had been released as a stopgap single, and that went to number two as well. And right before the arrest, the group had been working on what would be an even bigger hit. The initial idea for "Summer in the City" actually came from John Sebastian's fourteen-year-old brother Mark, who'd written a bossa nova song called "It's a Different World". The song was, by all accounts, the kind of thing that a fourteen-year-old boy writes, but part of it had potential, and John Sebastian took that part -- giving his brother full credit -- and turned it into the chorus of a new song: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] To this, Sebastian added a new verse, inspired by a riff the session player Artie Schroeck had been playing while the group recorded their songs for the Woody Allen film What's Up Tiger Lily, creating a tenser, darker, verse to go with his younger brother's chorus: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] In the studio, Steve Boone came up with the instrumental arrangement, which started with drums, organ, electric piano, and guitar, and then proceeded to bass, autoharp, guitar, and percussion overdubs. The drum sound on the record was particularly powerful thanks to the engineer Roy Halee, who worked on most of Simon & Garfunkel's records. Halee put a mic at the top of a stairwell, a giant loudspeaker at the bottom, and used the stairwell as an echo chamber for the drum part. He would later use a similar technique on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer". The track still needed another section though, and Boone suggested an instrumental part, which led to him getting an equal songwriting credit with the Sebastian brothers. His instrumental piano break was inspired by Gershwin, and the group topped it off with overdubbed city noises: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] The track went to number one, becoming the group's only number one record, and it was the last track on what is by far their best album, Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful. That album produced two more top ten hits for the group, "Nashville Cats", a tribute to Nashville session players (though John Sebastian seems to have thought that Sun Records was a Nashville, rather than a Memphis, label), and the rather lovely "Rain on the Roof": [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Rain on the Roof"] But that song caused friction with the group, because it was written about Sebastian's relationship with his wife who the other members of the band despised. They also felt that the songs he was writing about their relationship were giving the group a wimpy image, and wanted to make more rockers like "Summer in the City" -- some of them had been receiving homophobic abuse for making such soft-sounding music. The group were also starting to resent Sebastian for other reasons. In a recent contract renegotiation, a "key member" clause had been put into the group's record contract, which stated that Sebastian, as far as the label was concerned, was the only important member of the group. While that didn't affect decision-making in the group, it did let the group know that if the other members did anything to upset Sebastian, he was able to take his ball away with him, and even just that potential affected the way the group thought about each other. All these factors came into play with a song called "Darling Be Home Soon", which was a soft ballad that Sebastian had written about his wife, and which was written for another film soundtrack -- this time for a film by a new director named Francis Ford Coppola. When the other band members came in to play on the soundtrack, including that track, they found that rather than being allowed to improvise and come up with their own parts as they had previously, they had to play pre-written parts to fit with the orchestration. Yanovsky in particular was annoyed by the simple part he had to play, and when the group appeared on the Ed Sullivan show to promote the record, he mugged, danced erratically, and mimed along mocking the lyrics as Sebastian sang. The song -- one of Sebastian's very best -- made a perfectly respectable number fifteen, but it was the group's first record not to make the top ten: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Darling Be Home Soon"] And then to make matters worse, the news got out that someone had been arrested as a result of Boone and Yanovsky's efforts to get themselves out of trouble the year before. This was greeted with horror by the counterculture, and soon mimeographed newsletters and articles in the underground papers were calling the group part of the establishment, and calling for a general boycott of the group -- if you bought their records, attended their concerts, or had sex with any of the band members, you were a traitor. Yanovsky and Boone had both been in a bad way mentally since the bust, but Yanovsky was far worse, and was making trouble for the other members in all sorts of ways. The group decided to fire Yanovsky, and brought in Jerry Yester to replace him, giving him a severance package that ironically meant that he ended up seeing more money from the group's records than the rest of them, as their records were later bought up by a variety of shell companies that passed through the hands of Morris Levy among others, and so from the late sixties through the early nineties the group never got any royalties. For a while, this seemed to benefit everyone. Yanovsky had money, and his friendship with the group members was repaired. He released a solo single, arranged by Jack Nitzsche, which just missed the top one hundred: [Excerpt: Zal Yanovsky, "Just as Long as You're Here"] That song was written by the Bonner and Gordon songwriting team who were also writing hits for the Turtles at this time, and who were signed to Koppelman and Rubin's company. The extent to which Yanovsky's friendship with his ex-bandmates was repaired by his firing was shown by the fact that Jerry Yester, his replacement in the group, co-produced his one solo album, Alive and Well in Argentina, an odd mixture of comedy tracks, psychedelia, and tributes to the country music he loved. His instrumental version of Floyd Cramer's "Last Date" is fairly listenable -- Cramer's piano playing was a big influence on Yanovsky's guitar -- but his version of George Jones' "From Brown to Blue" makes it very clear that Zal Yanovsky was no George Jones: [Excerpt: Zal Yanovsky, "From Brown to Blue"] Yanovsky then quit music, and went into the restaurant business. The Lovin' Spoonful, meanwhile, made one further album, but the damage had been done. Everything Playing is actually a solid album, though not as good as the album before, and it produced three top forty hits, but the highest-charting was "Six O'Clock", which only made number eighteen, and the album itself made a pitiful one hundred and eighteen on the charts. The song on the album that in retrospect has had the most impact was the rather lovely "Younger Generation", which Sebastian later sang at Woodstock: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Younger Generation (Live at Woodstock)"] But at Woodstock he performed that alone, because by then he'd quit the group. Boone, Butler, and Yester decided to continue, with Butler singing lead, and recorded a single, "Never Going Back", produced by Yester's old bandmate from the Modern Folk Quartet Chip Douglas, who had since become a successful producer for the Monkees and the Turtles, and written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, who had written "Daydream Believer" for the Monkees, but the record only made number seventy-eight on the charts: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful featuring Joe Butler, "Never Going Back"] That was followed by an album by "The Lovin' Spoonful Featuring Joe Butler", Revelation: Revolution 69, a solo album by Butler in all but name -- Boone claims not to have played on it, and Butler is the only one featured on the cover, which shows a naked Butler being chased by a naked woman with a lion in front of them covering the naughty bits. The biggest hit other than "Never Going Back" from the album was "Me About You", a Bonner and Gordon song which only made number ninety-one: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful Featuring Joe Butler, "Me About You"] John Sebastian went on to have a moderately successful solo career -- as well as his appearance at Woodstock, he released several solo albums, guested on harmonica on records by the Doors, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young and others, and had a solo number one hit in 1976 with "Welcome Back", the theme song from the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Welcome Back"] Sebastian continues to perform, though he's had throat problems for several decades that mean he can't sing many of the songs he's best known for. The original members of the Lovin' Spoonful reunited for two performances -- an appearance in Paul Simon's film One Trick Pony in 1980, and a rather disastrous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Zal Yanovsky died of a heart attack in 2002. The remaining band members remained friendly, and Boone, Butler, and Yester reunited as the Lovin' Spoonful in 1991, initially with Yester's brother Jim, who had played in The Association, latterly with other members. One of those other members in the 1990s was Yester's daughter Lena, who became Boone's fourth wife (and is as far as I can discover still married to him). Yester, Boone, and Butler continued touring together as the Lovin' Spoonful until 2017, when Jerry Yester was arrested on thirty counts of child pornography possession, and was immediately sacked from the group. The other two carried on, and the three surviving original members reunited on stage for a performance at one of the Wild Honey Orchestra's benefit concerts in LA in 2020, though that was just a one-off performance, not a full-blown reunion. It was also the last Lovin' Spoonful performance to date, as that was in February 2020, but Steve Boone has performed with John Sebastian's most recent project, John Sebastian's Jug Band Village, a tribute to the Greenwich Village folk scene the group originally formed in, and the two played together most recently in December 2021. The three surviving original members of the group all seem to be content with their legacy, doing work they enjoy, and basically friendly, which is more than can be said for most of their contemporaries, and which is perhaps appropriate for a band whose main songwriter had been inspired, more than anything else, to make music with a positive attitude.

Sit back and enjoy an episode featuring some of my favorite records across a variety of down home styles. Just good records. Please subscribe to the show if you haven't done so already and share with family and friends. If you could be so kind, leave a review over at Apple podcasts as well as over at Spotify. Spotify has enabled a five star review system similar to Apple podcasts. Positive rankings sure do help the show. Also, go take a visit to the show's new website https://www.olddingyjukebox.com/home and have a look around. I appreciate the support.Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy this episode of the Old Ding Jukebox: “Groundhog Gravy, Bad Hearts and Drunkard's Blues”Donate to the podcast: https://paypal.me/christiangallo1?locale.x=en_USWebsite: https://www.olddingyjukebox.com/homeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/olddingyjukeboxpodcastInstagram: @olddingyjukeboxpodcastE-mail: mailto: olddingyjukebox@gmail.comBig Joe Williams “Bad Heart Blues” 1952Georgia Serenaders “Raise A Ruckus Tonight” 1929The Carter Sisters & Mother Maybelle “Solid Gone” 1953Bix Biederbecke “Wringin' and Twistin'” 1935 (originally Okeh 1927)Chicago Sunny Boy “Western Union Man” (Joe Hill Louis) 1953Jack Reedy and his Walker Mountain String Band “Groundhog” 1928Jimmie Yancey “Old Quaker Blues” 1940Mose Coffman “Lost Indian” 1970 (Field Recording)Welling and McGhee “Sweeping Through The Gates” 1930Lefty Frizzell “Always Late” 1951Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys “Drunkard Blues” 1938Barbecue Bob “Barbecue Blues” 1927Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers “Sidewalk Blues” 1926Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee “Confusion” 1958 (Folkways)Support the show (https://paypal.me/christiangallo1?locale.x=en_US)

Rebuscando y rebuscando, entre tantas pizarritas que en el mundo han sido, hemos seleccionado otro surtido que no dejará indiferentes a los aficionados... Esta noche tendremos joyas de Decca, Dot, Groove, Bluebird, Victor, Continental, Kalypso, Okeh, 49 State, Odeón... A partir de las 23.00 horas en la sintonía de Radio 3. Escuchar audio

Spade Cooley is living that good life, proudly sporting the title of "King of Western Swing." But as his career spirals downward so does his personal life -changing his family and career forever. This episode fun fact: OKEH records was founded by a German immigrant named Otto K. E. Heinemann. He named his New York City based label after his initials. In the early 1920's -1950's the label prided itself on recording lesser known acts and showcased performers of all genres. In the late 1950's- 1970's it primarily held Rhythm and Blues artists including "The Marquees" the doo-wop band founded by Reese Palmer and Marvin Gay (Before he changed his surname to Gaye.) Marvin would later be murdered by his own father. Sponsorship: Two Brothers Bicycle Company Website: https://www.twobrosbikeco.com Store Location: 624 Valley Street Lewistown PA 17044 Facebook: @2BrosBikeCo

Opening Salvo- The Usual Suspects- Kit & the Outlaws - Don't tread on me [Philips 1966 45 rpm* Bed - 2120Set 1 - Bowie & the Spiders- The Jean Genie [Live on the BBC]- Philamore Lincoln - Running by a river [ NEMS 1968] 45 rpm- The Nerves - Hanging on the telephone [The Nerves 1976 45 rpm EP- Duke Pearson - Los Ojos Alegros [the happy eyes] [Blue Note 1968 LP - The Phantom* Bed - 2120Set 2       Soul Sauce!- Young Jessie - Hit git & split [Modern 1956] 45 rpm- Timebox / Cal Tjader Mashup - Soul Sauce [Piccadilly '67 /  Verve 1965] 45 rpm's- Buffalo Springfield - Out of my mind [Atco 1966] LP - Buffalo Springfield- Jefferson Airplane - Let me in [MONO]  [RCA 1966] LP - Takes Off* Bed - 2120Set 3     Damage- Rex Garvin & the Mighty Cravers - Emulsified [Epic '61 / Okeh '63] 45 rpm- Nova Local - Games [Decca 1968] 45 rpm- REM - Gardening at night [IRS 1982] Chronic Town EP- Peter Himmelman - Beneath the damage & the dust [Epic 1992] LP - Flown this Acid World* Bed - 22120Over & Out - Pancho Sanchez - Cantaloupe Island [Concorde Picante 2009] LP -  Psychedelic Blues

Episode 124 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “People Get Ready", the Impressions, and the early career of Curtis Mayfield.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "I'm Henry VIII I Am" by Herman's Hermits. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud playlist, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. A lot of resources were used for this episode. Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs by Guy and Candie Carawan is a combination oral history of the Civil Rights movement and songbook. Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power by Aaron Cohen is a history of Chicago soul music and the way it intersected with politics. Traveling Soul: The Life of Curtis Mayfield  by Todd Mayfield with Travis Atria is a biography of Mayfield by one of his sons, and rather better than one might expect given that. Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul by Craig Werner looks at the parallels and divergences in the careers of its three titular soul stars. This compilation has a decent selection of recordings Mayfield wrote and produced for other artists on OKeh in the early sixties. This single-CD set of Jerry Butler recordings contains his Impressions recordings as well as several songs written or co-written by Mayfield. This double-CD of Major Lance's recordings contains all the hits Mayfield wrote for him. And this double-CD collection has all the Impressions' singles from 1961 through 1968. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A couple of episodes ago we had a look at one of the first classic protest songs of the soul genre. Today we're going to look at how Sam Cooke's baton was passed on to another generation of soul singer/songwriters, and at one of the greatest songwriters of that generation. We're going to look at the early career of Curtis Mayfield, and at "People Get Ready" by the Impressions: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "People Get Ready"] A quick note before I start this one -- there is no way in this episode of avoiding dealing with the fact that the Impressions' first hit with a Curtis Mayfield lead vocal has, in its title, a commonly used word for Romany people beginning with "g" that many of those people regard as a slur -- while others embrace the term for themselves. I've thought long and hard about how to deal with this, and the compromise I've come up with is that I will use excerpts from the song, which will contain that word, but I won't use the word myself. I'm not happy with that compromise, but it's the best I can do. It's unfortunate that that word turns up a *lot* in music in the period I'm covering -- it's basically impossible to avoid. Anyway, on with the show... Curtis Mayfield is one of those musicians who this podcast will almost by definition underserve -- my current plan is to do a second episode on him, but if this was a thousand-song podcast he would have a *lot* more than just two episodes. He was one of the great musical forces of the sixties and seventies, and listeners to the Patreon bonus episodes will already have come across him several times before, as he was one of those musicians who becomes the centre of a whole musical scene, writing and producing for most of the other soul musicians to come out of Chicago in the late fifties and early 1960s. Mayfield grew up in Chicago, in the kind of poverty that is, I hope, unimaginable to most of my listeners. He had to become "the man of the house" from age five, looking after his younger siblings as his mother went out looking for work, as his father abandoned his family, moved away, and changed his name. His mother was on welfare for much of the time, and Mayfield's siblings have talked about how their special Christmas meal often consisted of cornbread and syrup, and they lived off beans, rice, and maybe a scrap of chicken neck every two weeks. They were so hungry so often that they used to make a game of it -- drinking water until they were full, and then making sloshing noises with their bellies, laughing at them making noises other than rumbling. But while his mother was poor, Mayfield saw that there was a way to escape from poverty. Specifically, he saw it in his paternal grandmother, the Reverend A.B. Mayfield, a Spiritualist priest, who was the closest thing to a rich person in his life. For those who don't know what Spiritualism is, it's one of the many new religious movements that sprouted up in the Northeastern US in the mid to late nineteenth centuries, like the Holiness Movement (which became Pentecostalism), the New Thought, Christian Science, Mormonism, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Spiritualists believe, unlike mainstream Christianity, that it is possible to communicate with the spirits of the dead, and that those spirits can provide information about the afterlife, and about the nature of God and angels. If you've ever seen, either in real life or in a fictional depiction, a medium communicating with spirits through a seance, that's spiritualism. There are numbers of splinter spiritualist movements, and the one Reverend Mayfield, and most Black American Spiritualists at this time, belonged to was one that used a lot of elements of Pentecostalism and couched its teachings in the Bible -- to an outside observer not conversant with the theology, it might seem no different from any other Black church of the period, other than having a woman in charge. But most other churches would not have been funded by their presiding minister's winnings from illegal gambling, as she claimed to have the winning numbers in the local numbers racket come to her in dreams, and won often enough that people believed her. Reverend Mayfield's theology also incorporated elements from the Nation of Islam, which at that time was growing in popularity, and was based in Chicago. Chicago was also the home of gospel music -- it was where Sister Rosetta Tharpe had got her start and where Mahalia Jackson and Thomas Dorsey and the Soul Stirrers were all based -- and so of course Reverend Mayfield's church got its own gospel quartet, the Northern Jubilee Singers. They modelled themselves explicitly on the Soul Stirrers, who at the time were led by Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Jesus Gave Me Water"] Curtis desperately wanted to join the Northern Jubilee Singers, and particularly admired their lead singer, Jerry Butler, as well as being a huge fan of their inspiration Sam Cooke. But he was too young -- he was eight years old, and the group members were twelve and thirteen, an incommensurable gap at that age. So Curtis couldn't join the Jubilee singers, but he kept trying to perform, and not just with gospel -- as well as gospel, Chicago was also the home of electric blues, being where Chess Records was based, and young Curtis Mayfield was surrounded by the music of people like Muddy Waters: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Rollin' and Tumblin'"] And so as well as singing gospel songs, he started singing and playing the blues, inspired by Waters, Little Walter, and other Chess acts. His first instrument was the piano, and young Curtis found that he naturally gravitated to the black keys -- he liked the sound of those best, and didn't really like playing the white keys. I won't get into the music theory too much here, but the black keys on a piano make what is called a pentatonic scale -- a five-note scale that is actually the basis for most folk music forms, whether Celtic folk, Indian traditional music, the blues, bluegrass, Chinese traditional music... pentatonic scales have been independently invented by almost every culture, and you might think of them as the "natural" music, what people default to. The black notes on the piano make that scale in the key of F#: [Excerpt: pentatonic scale in F#] The notes in that are F#, G#, A#, C#, and D#. When young Curtis found a guitar in his grandmother's closet, he didn't like the way it sounded -- if you strum the open strings of a guitar they don't make a chord (well, every combination of notes is a chord, but they don't make one most people think of as pleasant) -- the standard guitar tuning is E, A, D, G, B, E. Little Curtis didn't like this sound, so he retuned the guitar to F#, A#, C#, F#, A#, F# -- notes from the chord of F#, and all of them black keys on the piano. Now, tuning a guitar to open chords is a fairly standard thing to do -- guitarists as varied as Keith Richards, Steve Cropper, and Dolly Parton tune their guitars to open chords -- but doing it to F# is something that pretty much only Mayfield ever did, and it meant his note choices were odd ones. He would later say with pride that he used to love it when other guitarists picked up his guitar, because no matter how good they were they couldn't play on his instrument. He quickly became extremely proficient as a blues guitarist, and his guitar playing soon led the Northern Jubilee Singers to reconsider having him in the band. By the time he was eleven he was a member of the group and travelling with them to gospel conventions all over the US. But he had his fingers in multiple musical pies -- he formed a blues group, who would busk outside the pool-hall where his uncle was playing, and he also formed a doo-wop group, the Alphatones, who became locally popular. Jerry Butler, the Jubilee Singers' lead vocalist, had also joined a doo-wop group -- a group called the Roosters, who had moved up to Chicago from Chattanooga. Butler was convinced that to make the Roosters stand out, they needed a guitarist like Mayfield, but Mayfield at first remained uninterested -- he already had his own group, the Alphatones. Butler suggested that Mayfield should rehearse with both groups, three days a week each, and then stick with the group that was better. Soon Mayfield found himself a full-time member of the Roosters. In 1957, when Curtis was fifteen, the group entered a talent contest at a local school, headlined by the Medallionaires, a locally-popular group who had released a single on Mercury, "Magic Moonlight": [Excerpt: The Medallionaires, "Magic Moonlight"] The Medallionaires' manager, Eddie Thomas, had been around the music industry since he was a child – his stepfather had been the great blues pianist Big Maceo Merriweather, who had made records like "Worried Life Blues": [Excerpt: Big Maceo Merriweather, "Worried Life Blues"] Thomas hadn't had any success in the industry yet, but at this talent contest, the Roosters did a close-harmony version of Sam Cooke's "You Send Me", and Thomas decided that they had potential, especially Mayfield and Butler. He signed them to a management contract, but insisted they changed their name. They cast around for a long time to find something more suitable, and eventually decided on The Impressions, because they'd made such an impression on Thomas. The group were immediately taken by Thomas on a tour of the large indie labels, and at each one they sang a song that members of the group had written, which was inspired by a song called "Open Our Eyes" by the Gospel Clefs: [Excerpt: The Gospel Clefs, "Open Our Eyes"] Herman Lubinsky at Savoy liked the song, and suggested that Jerry speak-sing it, which was a suggestion the group took up, but he passed on them. So did Ralph Bass at King. Mercury Records gave them some session work, but weren't able to sign the group themselves -- the session was with the big band singer Eddie Howard, singing backing vocals on a remake of "My Last Goodbye", a song he'd recorded multiple times before. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down a copy of that recording, the Impressions' first, only Howard's other recordings of the song. Eventually, the group got the interest of a tiny label called Bandera, whose owner Vi Muszynski was interested -- but she had to get the approval of Vee-Jay Records, the larger label that distributed Bandera's records. Vee-Jay was a very odd label. It was one of a tiny number of Black-owned record labels in America at the time, and possibly the biggest of them, and it's interesting to compare them to Chess Records, which was based literally across the road. Both put out R&B records, but Chess was white-owned and specialised in hardcore Chicago electric blues -- Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and so on. Vee-Jay, on the other hand, certainly put out its fair share of that kind of music, but they also put out a lot of much smoother doo-wop and early soul, and they would have their biggest hits a few years after this, not with blues artists, but with the Four Seasons, and with their licensing of British records by Frank Ifield and the Beatles. Both Vee-Jay and Chess were aiming at a largely Black market, but Black-owned Vee-Jay was much more comfortable with white pop acts than white-owned Chess. Muszynski set up an audition with Calvin Carter, the head of A&R at Vee-Jay, and selected the material the group were to perform for Carter -- rather corny songs the group were not at all comfortable with. They ran through that repertoire, and Carter said they sounded good but didn't they have any originals? They played a couple of originals, and Carter wasn't interested in those. Then Carter had a thought -- did they have any songs they felt ashamed of playing for him? Something that they didn't normally do? They did -- they played that song that the group had written, the one based on "Open Our Eyes". It was called "For Your Precious Love", and Carter immediately called in another group, the Spaniels, who were favourites of the Impressions and had had hits with records like "Goodnite Sweetheart Goodnite": [Excerpt: The Spaniels, "Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite"] Carter insisted on the Impressions singing their song for the Spaniels, and Butler in particular was very worried -- he assumed that Carter just wanted to take their song and give it to the bigger group. But after they played the song again, the Spaniels all enthused about how great the Impressions were and what a big hit the Impressions were going to have with the song. They realised that Carter just *really liked* them and the song, and wanted to show them off. The group went into the studio, and recorded half a dozen takes of "For Your Precious Love", but none of them came off correctly. Eventually Carter realised what the problem was -- Mayfield wasn't a member of the musicians' union, and so Carter had hired session guitarists, but they couldn't play the song the way Mayfield did. Eventually, Carter got the guitarists to agree to take the money, not play, and not tell the union if he got Mayfield to play on the track instead of them. After that, they got it in two takes: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler and the Impressions, "For Your Precious Love"] When it came out, the record caused a major problem for the group, because they discovered when they saw the label that it wasn't credited to "The Impressions", but to "Jerry Butler and the Impressions". The label had decided that they were going to follow the strategy that had worked for so many acts before -- put out records credited to "Singer and Group", and then if they were successful develop that into two separate acts. To his credit, Butler immediately insisted that the record company get the label reprinted, but Vee-Jay said that wasn't something they could do. It was too late, the record was going out as Jerry Butler and the Impressions and that was an end to it. The group were immediately put on the promotional circuit -- there was a rumour that Roy Hamilton, the star who had had hits with "Unchained Melody" and "Ebb Tide", was going to put out a cover version, as the song was perfectly in his style, and so the group needed to get their version known before he could cut his cover. They travelled to Philadelphia, where they performed for the DJ Georgie Woods. We talked about Woods briefly last episode -- he was the one who would later coin the term "blue-eyed soul" to describe the Righteous Brothers -- and Woods was also the person who let Dick Clark know what the important Black records were, so Clark could feature them on his show. Woods started to promote the record, and suddenly Jerry Butler and the Impressions were huge -- "For Your Precious Love" made number three on the R&B charts and number eleven on the pop charts. Their next session produced another hit, "Come Back My Love", although that only made the R&B top thirty and was nowhere near as big a hit: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler and the Impressions, "Come Back My Love"] That would be the last time the original lineup of the Impressions would record together. Shortly afterwards, before a gig in Texas, Jerry Butler called the President of the record label to sort out a minor financial problem. Once the problem had been sorted out, the president put the phone down, but then one of the other Impressions, Arthur Brooks, asked if he could have a word. Butler explained that the other person had hung up, and Brooks went ballistic, saying that Butler thought he was in charge, and thought that he could do all the talking for the group. Well, if he thought that, he could do all the singing too. Brooks and his brother Richard weren't going on stage. Sam Gooden said he wasn't going on either -- he'd been an original Rooster with the Brooks brothers before Butler had joined the group, and he was siding with them. That left Curtis Mayfield. Mayfield said he was still going on stage, because he wanted to get paid. The group solidarity having crumbled, Gooden changed his mind and said he might as well go on with them, so Butler, Mayfield, and Gooden went on as a trio. Butler noticed that the audience didn't notice a difference -- they literally didn't know the Brooks brothers existed -- and that was the point at which he decided to go solo. The Impressions continued without Butler, with Mayfield, Gooden, and the Brooks brothers recruiting Fred Cash, who had sung with the Roosters when they were still in Tennessee. Mayfield took over the lead vocals and soon started attracting the same resentment that Butler had. Vee-Jay dropped the Impressions, and they started looking round for other labels and working whatever odd jobs they could. Mayfield did get some work from Vee-Jay, though, working as a session player on records by people like Jimmy Reed. There's some question about which sessions Mayfield actually played -- I've seen conflicting information in different sessionographies -- but it's at least possible that Mayfield's playing on Reed's most famous record, "Baby What You Want Me to Do": [Excerpt: Jimmy Reed, "Baby What You Want Me to Do"] And one of Mayfield's friends, a singer called Major Lance, managed to get himself a one-off single deal with Mercury Records after becoming a minor celebrity as a dancer on a TV show. Mayfield wrote that one single, though it wasn't a hit: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "I Got a Girl"] Someone else who wasn't having hits was Jerry Butler. By late 1960 it had been two years since "For Your Precious Love" and Butler hadn't made the Hot One Hundred in that time, though he'd had a few minor R&B hits. He was playing the chitlin' circuit, and in the middle of a tour, his guitarist quit. Butler phoned Mayfield, who had just received a four hundred dollar tax bill he couldn't pay -- a lot of money for an unemployed musician in 1960. Mayfield immediately joined Butler's band to pay off his back taxes, and he also started writing songs with Butler. "He Will Break Your Heart", a collaboration between the two (with Calvin Carter also credited), made the top ten on the pop chart and number one on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "He Will Break Your Heart"] Even more important for Mayfield than writing a top ten hit, though, was his experience playing for Butler at the Harlem Apollo. Not because of the shows themselves, but because playing a residency in New York allowed him to hang out at the Turf, a restaurant near the Brill Building where all the songwriters would hang out. Or, more specifically, where all the *poorer* songwriters would hang out -- the Turf did roast beef sandwiches for fifty cents if you ate standing at the counter rather than seated at a table, and it also had twenty payphones, so all those songwriters who didn't have their own offices would do their business from the phone booths. Mayfield would hang out there to learn the secrets of the business, and that meant he learned the single most important lesson there is -- keep your own publishing. These writers, some of whom had written many hit songs, were living off twenty-five-dollar advances while the publishing companies were making millions. Mayfield also discovered that Sam Cooke, the man he saw as the model for how his career should go, owned his own publishing company. So he did some research, found out that it didn't actually cost anything to start up a publishing company, and started his own, Curtom, named as a portmanteau of his forename and the surname of Eddie Thomas, the Impressions' manager. While the Impressions' career was in the doldrums, Thomas, too, had been working for Butler, as his driver and valet, and he and Mayfield became close, sharing costs and hotel rooms in order to save money. Mayfield not only paid his tax bill, but by cutting costs everywhere he could he saved up a thousand dollars, which he decided to use to record a song he'd written specifically for the Impressions, not for Butler. (This is the song I mentioned at the beginning with the potential slur in the title. If you don't want to hear that, skip forward thirty seconds now): [Excerpt: The Impressions, "Gypsy Woman"] That track got the Impressions signed to ABC/Paramount records, and it made the top twenty on the pop charts and sold half a million copies, thanks once again to promotion from Georgie Woods. But once again, the follow-ups flopped badly, and the Brooks brothers quit the group, because they wanted to be doing harder-edged R&B in the mould of Little Richard, Hank Ballard, and James Brown, not the soft melodic stuff that Mayfield was writing. The Impressions continued as a three-piece group, and Mayfield would later say that this had been the making of them. A three-part harmony group allowed for much more spontaneity and trading of parts, for the singers to move freely between lead and backing vocals and to move into different parts of their ranges, where when they had been a five-piece group everything had been much more rigid, as if a singer moved away from his assigned part, he would find himself clashing with another singer's part. But as the group were not having hits, Mayfield was still looking for other work, and he found it at OKeh Records, which was going through something of a boom in this period thanks to the producer Carl Davis. Davis took Mayfield on as an associate producer and right-hand man,  primarily in order to get him as a guitarist, but Mayfield was also a valuable talent scout, backing vocalist, and especially songwriter. Working with Davis and arranger Johnny Pate, between 1963 and 1965 Mayfield wrote and played on a huge number of R&B hits for OKeh, including "It's All Over" by Walter Jackson: [Excerpt: Walter Jackson, "It's All Over"] "Gonna Be Good Times" for Gene Chandler: [Excerpt: Gene Chandler, "Gonna Be Good Times"] And a whole string of hits for Jerry Butler's brother Billy and his group The Enchanters, starting with "Gotta Get Away": [Excerpt: Billy Butler and the Enchanters, "Gotta Get Away"] But the real commercial success came from Mayfield's old friend Major Lance, who Mayfield got signed to OKeh. Lance had several minor hits written by Mayfield, but his big success came with a song that Mayfield had written for the Impressions, but decided against recording with them, as it was a novelty dance song and he didn't think that they should be doing that kind of material. The Impressions sang backing vocals on Major Lance's "The Monkey Time", written by Mayfield, which became a top ten pop hit: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "The Monkey Time"] Mayfield would write several more hits for Major Lance, including the one that became his biggest hit, "Um Um Um Um Um Um", which went top five pop and made number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "Um Um Um Um Um Um (Curious Mind)"] So Mayfield was making hits for other people at a furious rate, but he was somehow unable to have hits with his own group. He was still pushing the Impressions, but they had to be a weekend commitment -- the group would play gigs all over the country at weekends, but Monday through Friday Mayfield was in the studio cutting hits for other people -- and he was also trying to keep up a relationship not only with his wife and first child, but with the woman who would become his second wife, with whom he was cheating on his first. He was young enough that he could just about keep this up -- he was only twenty at this point, though he was already a veteran of the music industry -- but it did mean that the Impressions were a lower priority than they might have been. At least, they were until, in August 1963, between those two huge Major Lance hits, Curtis Mayfield finally wrote another big hit for the Impressions -- their first in their new three-piece lineup. Everyone could tell "It's All Right" was a hit, and Gene Chandler begged to be allowed to record it, but Mayfield insisted that his new song was for his group: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "It's All Right"] "It's All Right" went to number four on the pop chart, and number one R&B. And this time, the group didn't mess up the follow-up.  Their next two singles, "Talking About My Baby" and "I'm So Proud", both made the pop top twenty, and the Impressions were now stars. Mayfield also took a trip to Jamaica around this time, with Carl Davis, to produce an album of Jamaican artists, titled "The Real Jamaica Ska", featuring acts like Lord Creator and Jimmy Cliff: [Excerpt: Jimmy Cliff, "Ska All Over the World"] But Mayfield was also becoming increasingly politically aware. As the Civil Rights movement in the US was gaining steam, it was also starting to expose broader systemic problems that affected Black people in the North, not just the South. In Chicago, while Black people had been able to vote for decades, and indeed were a substantial political power block, all that this actually meant in practice was that a few powerful self-appointed community leaders had a vested interest in keeping things as they were. Segregation still existed -- in 1963, around the time that "It's All Right" came out, there was a school strike in the city, where nearly a quarter of a million children refused to go to school. Black schools were so overcrowded that it became impossible for children to learn there, but rather than integrate the schools and let Black kids go to the less-crowded white schools, the head of public education in Chicago decided instead to make the children go to school in shifts, so some were going ridiculously early in the morning while others were having to go to school in the evening. And there were more difficult arguments going on around segregation among Black people in Chicago. The issues in the South seemed straightforward in comparison -- no Black person wanted to be lynched or to be denied the right to vote. But in Chicago there was the question of integrating the two musicians' union chapters in the city. Some Black proponents of integration saw merging the two union chapters as a way for Black musicians to get the opportunity to play lucrative sessions for advertising jingles and so on, which only went to white players. But a vocal minority of musicians were convinced that the upshot of integrating the unions would be that Black players would still be denied those jobs, but white players would start getting some of the soul and R&B sessions that only Black players were playing, and thought that the end result would be that white people would gentrify those areas of music and culture where Black people had carved out spaces for themselves, while still denying Black people the opportunity to move into the white spaces. Mayfield was deeply, deeply, invested in the Civil Rights movement, and the wider discourse as more radical voices started to gain strength in the movement. And he was particularly inspired by his hero, Sam Cooke, recording "A Change is Gonna Come".  As the rhetoric of the Civil Rights movement was so deeply rooted in religious language, it was natural that Mayfield would turn to the gospel music he'd grown up on for his own first song about these issues, "Keep on Pushing": [Excerpt: The Impressions, "Keep on Pushing"] That became another huge hit, making the top ten on the pop chart and number one on the R&B chart. It's instructive to look at reactions to the Impressions, and to Mayfield's sweet, melodic, singing. White audiences were often dismissive of the Impressions, believing they were attempting to sell out to white people and were therefore not Black enough -- a typical reaction is that of Arnold Shaw, the white music writer, who in 1970 referred to the Impressions as Oreos -- a derogatory term for people who are "Black on the outside, white inside". Oddly, though, Black audiences seem not to have recognised the expertise of elderly white men on who was Black enough, and despite white critics' protestations continued listening to and buying the Impressions' records, and incorporating Mayfield's songs into their activism. For example, Sing For Freedom, a great oral-history-cum-songbook which collects songs sung by Civil Rights activists, collected contemporaneously by folklorists, has no fewer than four Impressions songs included, in lightly adapted versions, as sung by the Chicago Freedom Movement, the group led by Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson and others, who campaigned for an end to housing segregation in Chicago. It quotes Jimmy Collier, a Black civil rights activist and folk singer, saying "There's a rock 'n' roll group called the Impressions and we call them ‘movement fellows' and we try to sing a lot of their songs. Songs like ‘Keep On Pushin',' ‘I Been Trying,' ‘I'm So Proud,' ‘It's Gonna Be a Long, Long Winter,' ‘People Get Ready, There's a Train a-Comin',' ‘There's a Meeting Over Yonder' really speak to the situation a lot of us find ourselves in." I mention this discrepancy because this is something that comes up throughout music history -- white people dismissing Black people as not being "Black enough" and trying to appeal to whites, even as Black audiences were embracing those artists in preference to the artists who had white people's seal of approval as being authentically Black. I mention this because I am myself a white man, and it is very important for me to acknowledge that I will make similar errors when talking about Black culture, as I am here. "Keep on Pushing" was the Impressions' first political record, but by no means the most important. In 1965 the Civil Rights movement seemed to be starting to unravel, and there were increasing ruptures between the hardliners who would go on to form what would become the Black Power movement and the more moderate older generation. These ruptures were only exacerbated by the murder of Malcolm X, the most powerful voice on the radical side. Mayfield was depressed by this fragmentation, and wanted to write a song of hope, one that brought everyone together. To see the roots of the song Mayfield came up with we have to go all the way back to episode five, and to "This Train", the old gospel song which Rosetta Tharpe had made famous: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "This Train (live)"] The image of the train leading to freedom had always been a powerful one in Black culture, dating back to the Underground Railroad -- the network of people who helped enslaved people flee their abusers and get away to countries where they could be free. It was also a particularly potent image for Black people in the northern cities, many of whom had travelled there by train from the South, or whose parents had. Mayfield took the old song, and built a new song around it. His melody is closer than it might seem to that of "This Train", but has a totally different sound and feeling, one of gentle hope rather than fervent excitement. And there's a difference of emphasis in the lyrics too. "This Train", as befits a singer like Tharpe who belonged to a Pentecostal "holiness" sect which taught the need for upright conduct at all times, is mostly a list of those sinners who won't be allowed on the train. Mayfield, by contrast, had been brought up in a Spiritualist church, and one of the nine affirmations of Spiritualism is "We affirm that the doorway to reformation is never closed against any soul here or hereafter". Mayfield's song does talk about how "There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner, Whom would hurt all mankind just to save his own", but the emphasis is on how "there's hope for *all*, among those loved the most", and how "you don't need no baggage", and "don't need no ticket". It's a song which is fundamentally inclusive, offering a vision of hope and freedom in which all are welcome: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "People Get Ready"] The song quickly became one of the most important songs to the Civil Rights movement -- Doctor King called it "the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights movement" -- as well as becoming yet another big hit. We will continue to explore the way Mayfield and the Impressions reacted to, were inspired by, and themselves inspired Black political movements when we look at them again, and their political importance was extraordinary. But this is a podcast about music, and so I'll finish with a note about their musical importance. As with many R&B acts, the Impressions were massive in Jamaica, and they toured there in 1966. In the front row when they played the Carib Theatre in Kingston were three young men who had recently formed a group which they had explicitly modelled on the Impressions and their three-part harmonies. That group had even taken advantage of Jamaica's nonexistent copyright laws to incorporate a big chunk of "People Get Ready" into one of their own songs, which was included on their first album: [Excerpt: The Wailers, "One Love (1965 version)"] Bob Marley and the Wailers would soon become a lot more than an Impressions soundalike group, but that, of course, is a story for a future episode...

This one's good for a laugh.

This week we will be listening to selections from a Mosaic Record Company set that I have called the Classic Columbia and Okeh Benny Goodman Orchestra Sessions. This is part one of a show I did back in 2012 and repeated almost three years ago in 2019. These are all the instrumental recordings that Benny did for Columbia and the Okeh record label. Unfortunately the producers of this set omitted all the vocals. But there is some fantastic music by the Goodman band starting in 1939 when he switched to the Columbia label. If you are a Benny Goodman fan then I hope you enjoy these two programs. Please visit this podcast at http://bigbandbashfm.blogspot.com

You're listening to Judgment Day, an Okeh record made in 1926, and…