Podcasts about perez prado

 Every year about this time there's a quick burst of blossom, a promise of renewal and that first pitch of the national pastime. I don't know about you but it's my favorite time of year, a time when winter's cold is shut down and we've got that Spring Fever. This week's show will take time out for a couple sets celebrating and remembering baseball's past through music with the likes of The Treniers, Danny Kaye, and Dr. John with some early rapping from Mel Allen of all people. And that's just the half of it because the fever goes beyond the diamond: we'll share songs of April love with Shirley Jones, Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White with Perez Prado, Nina Simone, Martha Tilton, and a run of classic country with Johnny Horton, Sons of the Pioneers and the Sons of the San Joaquin. From stickball to kite-flying to the first frisbees of the year in the local park. Let's get away from it all. 

El piano de Bebo Valdés o el trombón azul de Juan Pablo Torres sobre "Mi Querida Babel" abren y cierran una especial edición dedicada a una época dorada en la que reinó Celia Cruz pero también Benny Moré."El "Barbaro del Ritmo" ,"el más grande", "el que marcó el camino", según me confesaron Celia y Juan Pablo, murió en 1963, hepática cirrosis. Rolando Colombié, su pianista como lo fue de Celia, mi invitado, testigo en la distancia más corta del "Sonero Mayor" y de un tiempo que vio nacer y morir estrellas como la de Bebo Valdés, el trio Matamoros, Dámaso Perez Prado, Chano Pozo o Cachao. Junto a Benny, los legendarios rumberos de ayer desfilando a su conjuro, sólo un año antes de dejarnos también.Si este momento no te pone en pie es que estás muerto. Puedes hacerte socio del Club Babel y apoyar este podcast: mundobabel.com/club Si te gusta Mundo Babel puedes colaborar a que llegue a más oyentes compartiendo en tus redes sociales y dejar una valoración de 5 estrellas en Apple Podcast o un comentario en Ivoox. Para anunciarte en este podcast, ponte en contacto con: mundobabelpodcast@gmail.com.

El piano de Bebo Valdés o el trombón azul de Juan Pablo Torres sobre "Mi Querida Babel" abren y cierran una especial edición dedicada a una época dorada en la que reinó Celia Cruz pero también Benny Moré."El "Barbaro del Ritmo" ,"el más grande", "el que marcó el camino", según me confesaron Celia y Juan Pablo, murió en 1963, hepática cirrosis. Rolando Colombié, su pianista como lo fue de Celia, mi invitado, testigo en la distancia más corta del "Sonero Mayor" y de un tiempo que vio nacer y morir estrellas como la de Bebo Valdés, el trio Matamoros, Dámaso Perez Prado, Chano Pozo o Cachao. Junto a Benny, los legendarios rumberos de ayer desfilando a su conjuro, sólo un año antes de dejarnos también.Si este momento no te pone en pie es que estás muerto. Puedes hacerte socio del Club Babel y apoyar este podcast: mundobabel.com/club Si te gusta Mundo Babel puedes colaborar a que llegue a más oyentes compartiendo en tus redes sociales y dejar una valoración de 5 estrellas en Apple Podcast o un comentario en Ivoox. Para anunciarte en este podcast, ponte en contacto con: mundobabelpodcast@gmail.com.

Zu Gast bei Roger Schawinski ist der bekannte «Happy Day»-Moderator Röbi Koller, welcher am 5. April zum letzten Mal seine Sendung präsentieren wird. Doch welche weniger bekannte Seite steckt hinter dem stets gut gelaunten TV-Mann? In dieser Sendung erfahren Sie es. Songs: I Want You - Bob Dylan, 13 Buone Ragioni - Zucchero, In The Blood - John Mayer, Sway - Rosemary Clooney, Perez Prado, Tu me dois rien - Stephan Eicher

Te presentamos tres compilaciones del sello Jukebox Factory. Oscuros y divertidos singles de los años 50 y 60 extraídos de las valijas del pinchadiscos y coleccionista francés El Vidocq. Los títulos hablan por sí solos. “Monster-O-Rama Vol.4”, “Bongo a Go-Go” y “Ohana Hawaiiana”.Playlist;FRANKLYN STEIN “Zotz”ARCHIE KING “The vampire”THE MAGICS Zombie walk”BILLY WARD and HIS DOMINOES “Cave man”TOMMY BRUCE “Monster Gonzalez”IGOR and THE MANIACS “The big green”MAURICE WHITE “Big bad wolf”HARLEY HATCHER ORCHESTRA “African safari pt2”THE CATALINAS “Cha Cha Joe”LUCKY MILLINDER and HIS ORCHESTRA “Bongo boogie”FRANCES FAYE “Summertime”THE INTERNATIONAL BONGO BAND “Mr Bongo man”FRANKIE BRENT “Banging on the bongo”PRESTON EPPS “B’wana bongos”THE PLAYBOYS “Hawaiian war chant”TOMMY SANDS “Hawaiian rock”FELIX MENDELSSOHN and HIS HAWAIIAN SERENADERS “My little grass shack in Kealakekua”PEREZ PRADO and HIS ORCHESTRA “Hawaiian cha cha cha”WEBLEY EDWARDS “Hukilau”FRANKIE VAUGHAN “Little kookie paradise”LOUIS ARMSTRONG and THE POLYNESIANS “On a coconut island”Escuchar audio

Sintonía: "Mambo Boogie" - Johnny Otis Orchestra"Crazy... Crazy..." - D. Perez Prado; "Cozy and Bossa" - Cozy Cole; "Mah-Mah Limbo" - Steve Allen; "Rhythm 56" - Les Cha-Cha Boys; "Mambo Arribique" - Otis Freeman; "Fever" - La Lupe; "Mambo borracho" - Tito Alberti y su Típica Orquesta; "Bikini" - The Bikinis; "Chaquito" - Chaquito and his Orchestra; "Loop de Loop Mambo" - The Robins; "Midnight Mambo" - The Tides; "Rock´n Wail Merengue" - Johnny Conquet; "Tortillas and Beans" - Stan Kenton; "El Bantu" - Ray Barreto; "A la salud" - Stan La Baum; "Los barbaros" - Shorty Rogers and His OrchestraTodas las músicas (menos la sintonía), extraídas de la recopilación (1xLP+CD) "Mambo, Cha-Cha-Cha & Calypso Vol. 2: Crazy Session!" (Jukebox Music Factory, 2018)Todas las músicas compiladas por El VidocqBonus tracks: "Perdido Mambo" - Larry Ligett; "Wild Weekend Cha Cha" - The Rockin´ Rebels y Mambo Boogie de Johnny Otis Orchestra extraídas del volumen 3 de la misma colecciónEscuchar audio

Sintonía: "Navel Maneuver" - Ross Bagdasarian"Congo Mongo" - Guitar Gable & The Musical Kings; "Loco" - The Terrifics; "El pachuco bailarin" - Eddy Warner & sa Musique Tropicale; "Zindy Lou" - The Mariners; "Arabia" - The Delco´s; "Shish-Kebab" - Ralph Marterie & his Orchestra; "Boppin´ With The Mambo" - The Sultans; "Margarita" - Chuck Rio & his Originals; "Zimba" - Karl Denver; "Voo Doo Drums" - Les Elgart & His Orchestra; "Sun Sun" - Xavier Cugat; "Safari" - Ward Darby; "Ungaua-Part 1" - The Kingpins; "Alekum Salem Suby" - D. Perez Prado et son Orchestre; "Loukoum" - Kemal Rachid et ses Ottomans; "Navel Maneuver" - Ross Bagdasarian Todas las músicas extraídas de la recopilación (1xLP + CD incluido) "Exotic-O-Rama" (Juke Box Music Factory, 2016), compiladas a partir de 7" de la colección privada de El VidocqEscuchar audio

Sintonía: "Leyenda mexicana" - Perez Prado"Avanti" - "Too Happy" - "Crash Point" - "The Big Parade" - "Frequent Flier" - "The Stalker pt. II" - "Smoketree Serenade", extraídas del álbum "Designs In Music" (Vampisoul, 2006/Vampi CD 044) del cantante, compositor, productor y músico estadounidense Ben Vaughn. Todas las músicas compuestas e interpretadas por Ben Vaughn"Helena x Aldine" - "A Babilonia de David" - "Desejos ardentes" - "Pixoxó em lua de Mel" - "Vera, a Diaba Loira" - "O Eterno Pecado Horizontal" - "Simplesmente Glória" - "Mulher Objeto", extraídas de "Sexy 70- Music Inspired by the brazilian sacanagem movies of the 1970´s" (yb music/Vampisoul 2005/Vampi CD 063) del compositor, productor y multi-instrumentista brasileño Che (Alexandre Caparroz). Todas las músicas compuestas e interpretadas por CheEscuchar audio

Sintonía: "Beautiful Margaret" - Perez Prado"Mrs. Autumn" - Javi Ruibal; "Patio custodio" - Paco de Lucía; "Liziqi" - Javi Ruibal; "There Comes a Time" - Tony Williams; "Lubna" - Javi Ruibal; "Maestro Sabica" - Jose Almarcha; "Quédate conmigo" - Javier Ruibal (padre) y "Josephine" - Javier RuibalEscuchar audio

Mexicana" - Perez Prado"Nutbush City Limits" - "Sexy Ida (part 1)" - "I Idolize You" - "Sweet Rhode Island Red" - "Get Back" - "Living for the City" - "I Want To Take You Higher" - "Higher Ground" - "Workin´ Together" - "Drift Away" - "I´m Yours (Use Me Anyway You Wanna)" - "Early In the Morning" - "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" (Live) - "Proud Mary" (Live)Todas las músicas extraídas de la recopilación (1xCD) "Nutbush City Limits" (Disky/EMI, 1996)Todas las músicas interpretadas por Ike (voz/guitarra) & Tina Turner (voz)  Escuchar audio

Sintonía: "Estrellita del Sur" - Perez Prado"Zerox" - Adam And The Ants; "I Can´t Stand My Baby" - The Rezillos; "Hungry" - The Zeros; "I Must Be Mad" - Woody & The Splinters; "Saints And Sinners" - Jonny & The Self Abusers; "One To Infinity" - The Outsiders; "Reasons" - Skids; "Soft Ground" - The Proles; "I Am A Dalek" - The Art Attacks; "On Me" - Bears; "Flares ´n´ Slippers; "Never Been So Stuck" - Nicky & The Dots; "Danger Love" - The Vice Creems; "Hypocrite" - The Newtown Neurotics; "Timewall" - Fire Exit; "Time Tunnel" - English Subtitles; "My Friends" - The Dark; "Why Are Fire Engines Red" - Victim; "I´ve Been Hurt (So Many Times Before)" - Silent Noise; "Anthem" - The X-Certs; "Venus Eccentric" - Neon HeartsTodas las músicas extraídas de la recopilación (4xCD) "Action Time Vision: A Story of Independent UK Punk 1976-1979 (Cherry Red Records, 2016)Escuchar audio

DJ Mdeck smashes the sound barrier with uptempo groovers by Perez Prado and Hot Chocolate then dives into OG samples behind classics by Busta Rhymes, MF Doom, Dilated Peoples and more. Plus zoneout herbs from Doctor Bionic and Raquel Rodriguez, a New York barfest with generals Talib Kweli, Buckshot and Skyzoo and breakneck blends from DibiaseMTL and DJ Wreckx. View the full playlist for this show at https://www.wefunkradio.com/show/1231 Enjoying WEFUNK? Listen to all of our mixes at https://www.wefunkradio.com/shows/

Brilliant drummer and percussionist talks about growing up learning music from his father and five brothers, joining Perez Prado in Las Vegas in 1964 and his relationship with Joe Zawinul in Weather Report and beyond. All Timer...

Mother's Day!  Entertainment from 1955.  NYC banned spitting, 1st world wide radio broadcast, Oldest University in the America's opened.  Todays birthdays - Katharine Hepburn, George Carlin, Steve Winwood, Billy Squier, Kix Brooks, Ving Rhames, Emilio Estevez, Stephen Baldwin, Kim Fields, Jason Biggs, Rami Malek.  Perry Como died. Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard    http://defleppard.com/I love my mommy - The KiboomersCherry pind & apple blossom white - Perez Prado & his orchestraIn the jailhouse now - Webb PierceBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent  http://50cent.com/Higher love - Steve WinwoodEverybody wants you - Billy SquierBoot scoot boogie - Brooks & DunnCatch a falling star - Perry ComoExit - Its not love - Dokken      http://dokken.net/Follow Jeff Stampka on Facebook

Scholar and singer Hannah Burgé Luviano joins Rebecca to discuss the career of the "King of Mambo," Dámaso Perez Prado. Unable to achieve much acclaim in Cuba because of his unique compositional style, Pérez Prado struck gold after relocating to Mexico in the 1940s.Songs played:México LindoMi GalloMambo PolitécnicoPianolaSend us a Text Message.Support the Show.If you like this podcast, please subscribe and give us a 5-star rating on Apple PodcastsFollow The Clave Chronicles on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @clavechronicleshttps://theclavechronicles.buzzsprout.comIntro and outro music: "Bengo Latino," Jimmy Fontanez/Media Right Productions

Folks, this is Cover Me number 293. Covers by: Lenny Dee, Bad Manners, Lou Bega, Bjelleklang, Black-Ingvars, The Jack Million Band, Leo, Big Time Orchestra Tidal playlist here

'The very least you can do'David Greenberger, Hikaru Hayashi, David Byrne, Axel Krygier, Prefab Sprout, Roddy Doyle, Stevie Wonder, Young Marble Giants, DJ Yoda (Double Dee & Steinski Remix), David Bowie, Zadie Smith, Kid Loco, Adam Bloom, Perez Prado, Maggie & Terre Roche

This weeks trip to the One Room Paradise finds Pat K digging through some classic Latin sides from Perez Prado and Jimmy Sabater, a detour through Brazil with Erasmo Carlos and Jonas Sa, and plenty of hipshaking soul and r&b 45s to round things out. This one is a killer!Tune into new broadcasts of One Room Paradise, the 2nd & 4th Sunday from 7 - 8 PM - EST / 12 - 1 AM GMT. (Monday)For more info visit: https://thefaceradio.com/on-target////Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Las grandes Orquestas del mundo en escena, gracias a su conductor Carlos Bautista

Alex Acuña es un percusionista peruano de gran trayectoria que participó en las grabaciones del disco Rattle And Hum, que este mes cumple 35 años. Logramos contactarlo y realizar esta entrevista sobre cómo llegó a participar en el disco, su intervención (¿o no?) en la canción Hawkmoon 269, sus conversaciones con Bono, las casi-clases con Larry y más. También nos cuenta de su historia y su llegada a Estados Unidos de la mano del legendario Perez Prado, cómo con que llegó a tocar con el mismísimo Elvis Presley en Las Vegas, su participación en Los Hijos del Sol, su visión de la música actual, el reconocimiento que recibirá en los próximos Grammy Latino y mucho más! Una entrevista no planeada pero que salió de sorpresa en este mes aniversario de Rattle And Hum. Escuchen el Ep 36 donde analizamos el disco y prepárense para el Audio-Comentario de Rattle And Hum: La Película en el próximo episodio. Nuestros agradecimientos a U2 Perú por la ayuda! ***** Suscríbanse, dennos Like, 5 estrellas y compartan este capítulo. Sígannos en Facebook.com/u2Chile.net Como @u2chile en Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, TikTok, Threads, Bluesky y Mastodon Y en nuestro sitio web U2Chile.net

Las grandes Orquestas del mundo en escena, gracias a su conductor Carlos Bautista

Musico, Compositor, Arreglista Cubano que se nacionaliza Mexicano, conocido como “EL REY DEL MAMBO”, todo esto y mas fue DAMASO PEREZ PRADO. En compañía de Herick Garcia (Hijo del actor Andres Garcia) y su servidor y titular Peterboy, los llevaremos a recorrer la vida de este grande, pero, además! La mama de nuestro invitado (Melina Mey) fue la primer bailarina del famoso “Cara de Foca”, asi que nos podrá contar muchas, muchísimas cosas que no se conocen de este grande. Ni siquiera en los programas mas poderosos de espectáculos, solo su servidor, RadioLA y mi sección llamada “Divas & Divos del Cine Mexicano” tendremos esa información. El maestro, además de ser un genio y un divo, y una gran figura dentro y fuera del mundo del espectaculo, fuera de el, era totalmente diferente su forma de ser. De eso y mas hablara nuestro invitado, cosas que no conocemos de esta estrella y que nos dejaran con “la boca abierta”

Desarrollado en La Habana, en la década de los años 40 del pasado siglo, el mambo se convertiría en uno de los estilos de música latina que más rápido se propagaron por el planeta, cruzándose con otros sonidos del más diverso pelaje. Cocinamos una selección de blues, rhythm n’ blues, rock’n’roll, doo wop, surf, jazz o exótica con sabor… a mambo. Playlist; (sintonía) COZY COLE “Cozy’s mambo” XAVIER CUGAT “Cuban mambo” TITO PUENTE “Hong Kong mambo” DUKE JENKINS and HIS ORCHESTRA “Mambo blues” RUTH BROWN “Mambo baby” BILL HALEY “Mambo rock” NOLAN STRONG and THE DIABLOS “Mambo of love” THE CELEBRITIES “Mambo daddy” THE ROBINS “Loop the loop mambo” THE HAWKETTS “Mardi Gras Mambo” RENATO CAROSONE “Mambo italiano” LINK WRAY and HIS WRAYMEN “Rumble mambo” BETTY REILLY “Let’s mambo” MARTIN DENNY “M’gambo mambo” OTIS FREEMAN “Mambo arribique” SONIDO GALLO NEGRO “Mambo cósmico” THE LIMBOOS “Space mambo” MIKE BARBWIRE “El surfista de mambo” TITO RAMIREZ “Mambo 666” PEREZ PRADO “Mambo en sax” Escuchar audio

Reabrimos las puertas de ese club subterráneo para ofrecerte una sesión sin palabras ni interrupciones. Todo el material que escucharás procede de los recopilatorios Big Balls que cada año compila el DJ Francho para regalarlos en cada edición del festival Rockin Race Jamboree. Playlist; (sintonía) LOS SIETE DE JOHN BARRY "La amenaza" FATS DOMINO "Estoy viviendo bien" ROSCO GORDON "Seguramente te amo" LLOYD PRICE "El pollo y el bop" BROOK BENTON "Hurtin' inside" PAUL ANKA "Uh Uh" JOHNNY RIVERS "Foolkiller" LOS TOKENS "A-B-C- 1-2-3" DELL MACK "No se puede juzgar un libro por la portada PEREZ PRADO "El giro de hava nagila" LOS CHICOS DE PELUCHE "Jezabel" KIP TYLER "Jungle hop" LOS SEIS PASTEL "No puedo bailar" JIMMY FAUTHEREE "No puedo encontrar el pomo de la puerta" COLLAY y LOS SATÉLITES "Chica de al lado" WALLY DEANE y HIS FLIPS "Drag on" BIG SUNNY y HIS FURYS "Fail" EDDIE KANE "Un nuevo tipo de amor" TOMMY ROE "Oh Carol" LOS CASUALS "Mustang 2+2" DON y DEWEY "Just a little lovin'" RAY y LINDY "Big Betty" THE AVENGERS "Tema de Batman" EDDIE BOND "Aquí viene el tren" SONIDOS INCORPORADOS "Rinky dink" RICHARD BERRY "Rock rock rock" Escuchar audio

Woodrow Wilson. Wilson became the first southern President since the Civil War in 1912. He promised progressivism, but invaded Mexico, intervened in Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Honduras and militarily occupied Nicaragua during his entire presidency. He opposed women's rights to vote and advocated Jim Crow laws against blacks. In 1919 during his second term, he sufferred a paralyzing stroke and his wife secretly conducted the office of the presidency until 1921. Questioning: Who's running the office in the White House today. MUSIC Lloyd Glenn, Perez Prado, Ruth Etting, Jorge Negrete, Amos Mibum

In this episode we celebrate the incredible musical legacy of saxophonist, composer and bandleader Wayne Shorter, born August 25, 1933 in Newark New Jersey and passed away March 2, 2023. My special guest is Alex Acuña, a prolific drummer, percussionist, composer, and bandleader who has amassed more 900 recording credits. (its probably more now) After touring with Perez Prado during the 1960s and playing with Elvis Presley in Las Vegas in the early '70s -  In 1974, Acuña and his family moved to Las Vegas. He continued working with Prado's show band, and played for Elvis Presley's Las Vegas residencies in addition to serving in backing bands and orchestras for Olivia Newton John and the Temptations. Drummer/percussionist Don Alias heard him with the latter and suggested he try playing jazz. Alias arranged an audition with Weather Report and Acuña joined that band for their 1975 tour. He moved to Los Angeles and played on the band's two most successful studio outings, Black Market and Heavy Weather, and he toured with the group until 1978. During his tenure, Weather Report backed Joni Mitchell on Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. He has been a recording and touring sideman to a dazzling array of artists ranging from Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell to Andre Crouch and Blondie.The stellar & diverse list of artists Alex has worked with seems never ending, the word prolific is an understatement. Wayne Shorter was a saxophonist, bandleader and composer. His compositions became jazz standards and he received worldwide recognition and critical praise.  Wayne Shorter won 12 Grammy Awards. His mastery of the soprano saxophone earned him (beginning in 1970) Down Beat's annual poll-winner on that instrument… winning the critics' poll for 10 consecutive years and the readers' poll for 18 years.  The New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff described Shorter in 2008 as "probably jazz's greatest living small-group composer and a contender for greatest living improviser". Via Wayne Shorter, We Love You! Source: https://drummerworld.com/drummers/Alex_Acuna.htmlSource: https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/alex-acuna/Host Maggie LePique, a radio veteran since the 1980's at NPR in Kansas City Mo. She began her radio career in Los Angeles in the early 1990's and has worked for Pacifica station KPFK Radio in Los Angeles since 1994.Support the show

Episode 164 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "White Light/White Heat" and the career of the Velvet Underground. This is a long one, lasting three hours and twenty minutes. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-three minute bonus episode available, on "Why Don't You Smile Now?" by the Downliners Sect. 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/ Errata I say the Velvet Underground didn't play New York for the rest of the sixties after 1966. They played at least one gig there in 1967, but did generally avoid the city. Also, I refer to Cale and Conrad as the other surviving members of the Theater of Eternal Music. Sadly Conrad died in 2016. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Velvet Underground, and some of the avant-garde pieces excerpted run to six hours or more. I used a lot of resources for this one. Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story by Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga is the best book on the group as a group. I also used Joe Harvard's 33 1/3 book on The Velvet Underground and Nico. Bockris also wrote one of the two biographies of Reed I referred to, Transformer. The other was Lou Reed by Anthony DeCurtis. Information on Cale mostly came from Sedition and Alchemy by Tim Mitchell. Information on Nico came from Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon by Richard Witts. I used Draw a Straight Line and Follow it by Jeremy Grimshaw as my main source for La Monte Young, The Roaring Silence by David Revill for John Cage, and Warhol: A Life as Art by Blake Gopnik for Warhol. I also referred to the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of the 2021 documentary The Velvet Underground.  The definitive collection of the Velvet Underground's music is the sadly out-of-print box set Peel Slowly and See, which contains the four albums the group made with Reed in full, plus demos, outtakes, and live recordings. Note that the digital version of the album as sold by Amazon for some reason doesn't include the last disc -- if you want the full box set you have to buy a physical copy. All four studio albums have also been released and rereleased many times over in different configurations with different numbers of CDs at different price points -- I have used the "45th Anniversary Super-Deluxe" versions for this episode, but for most people the standard CD versions will be fine. Sadly there are no good shorter compilation overviews of the group -- they tend to emphasise either the group's "pop" mode or its "avant-garde" mode to the exclusion of the other. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I begin this episode, there are a few things to say. This introductory section is going to be longer than normal because, as you will hear, this episode is also going to be longer than normal. Firstly, I try to warn people about potentially upsetting material in these episodes. But this is the first episode for 1968, and as you will see there is a *profound* increase in the amount of upsetting and disturbing material covered as we go through 1968 and 1969. The story is going to be in a much darker place for the next twenty or thirty episodes. And this episode is no exception. As always, I try to deal with everything as sensitively as possible, but you should be aware that the list of warnings for this one is so long I am very likely to have missed some. Among the topics touched on in this episode are mental illness, drug addiction, gun violence, racism, societal and medical homophobia, medical mistreatment of mental illness, domestic abuse, rape, and more. If you find discussion of any of those subjects upsetting, you might want to read the transcript. Also, I use the term "queer" freely in this episode. In the past I have received some pushback for this, because of a belief among some that "queer" is a slur. The following explanation will seem redundant to many of my listeners, but as with many of the things I discuss in the podcast I am dealing with multiple different audiences with different levels of awareness and understanding of issues, so I'd like to beg those people's indulgence a moment. The term "queer" has certainly been used as a slur in the past, but so have terms like "lesbian", "gay", "homosexual" and others. In all those cases, the term has gone from a term used as a self-identifier, to a slur, to a reclaimed slur, and back again many times. The reason for using that word, specifically, here is because the vast majority of people in this story have sexualities or genders that don't match the societal norms of their times, but used labels for themselves that have shifted in meaning over the years. There are at least two men in the story, for example, who are now dead and referred to themselves as "homosexual", but were in multiple long-term sexually-active relationships with women. Would those men now refer to themselves as "bisexual" or "pansexual" -- terms not in widespread use at the time -- or would they, in the relatively more tolerant society we live in now, only have been in same-gender relationships? We can't know. But in our current context using the word "homosexual" for those men would lead to incorrect assumptions about their behaviour. The labels people use change over time, and the definitions of them blur and shift. I have discussed this issue with many, many, friends who fall under the queer umbrella, and while not all of them are comfortable with "queer" as a personal label because of how it's been used against them in the past, there is near-unanimity from them that it's the correct word to use in this situation. Anyway, now that that rather lengthy set of disclaimers is over, let's get into the story proper, as we look at "White Light, White Heat" by the Velvet Underground: [Excerpt: The Velvet Underground, "White Light, White Heat"] And that look will start with... a disclaimer about length. This episode is going to be a long one. Not as long as episode one hundred and fifty, but almost certainly the longest episode I'll do this year, by some way. And there's a reason for that. One of the questions I've been asked repeatedly over the years about the podcast is why almost all the acts I've covered have been extremely commercially successful ones. "Where are the underground bands? The alternative bands? The little niche acts?" The answer to that is simple. Until the mid-sixties, the idea of an underground or alternative band made no sense at all in rock, pop, rock and roll, R&B, or soul. The idea would have been completely counterintuitive to the vast majority of the people we've discussed in the podcast. Those musics were commercial musics, made by people who wanted to make money and to  get the largest audiences possible. That doesn't mean that they had no artistic merit, or that there was no artistic intent behind them, but the artists making that music were *commercial* artists. They knew if they wanted to make another record, they had to sell enough copies of the last record for the record company to make another, and that if they wanted to keep eating, they had to draw enough of an audience to their gigs for promoters to keep booking them. There was no space in this worldview for what we might think of as cult success. If your record only sold a thousand copies, then you had failed in your goal, even if the thousand people who bought your record really loved it. Even less commercially successful artists we've covered to this point, like the Mothers of Invention or Love, were *trying* for commercial success, even if they made the decision not to compromise as much as others do. This started to change a tiny bit in the mid-sixties as the influence of jazz and folk in the US, and the British blues scene, started to be felt in rock music. But this influence, at first, was a one-way thing -- people who had been in the folk and jazz worlds deciding to modify their music to be more commercial. And that was followed by already massively commercial musicians, like the Beatles, taking on some of those influences and bringing their audience with them. But that started to change around the time that "rock" started to differentiate itself from "rock and roll" and "pop", in mid 1967. So in this episode and the next, we're going to look at two bands who in different ways provided a model for how to be an alternative band. Both of them still *wanted* commercial success, but neither achieved it, at least not at first and not in the conventional way. And both, when they started out, went by the name The Warlocks. But we have to take a rather circuitous route to get to this week's band, because we're now properly introducing a strand of music that has been there in the background for a while -- avant-garde art music. So before we go any further, let's have a listen to a thirty-second clip of the most famous piece of avant-garde music ever, and I'll be performing it myself: [Excerpt, Andrew Hickey "4'33 (Cage)"] Obviously that won't give the full effect, you have to listen to the whole piece to get that. That is of course a section of "4'33" by John Cage, a piece of music that is often incorrectly described as being four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence. As I've mentioned before, though, in the episode on "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", it isn't that at all. The whole point of the piece is that there is no such thing as silence, and it's intended to make the listener appreciate all the normal ambient sounds as music, every bit as much as any piece by Bach or Beethoven. John Cage, the composer of "4'33", is possibly the single most influential avant-garde artist of the mid twentieth century, so as we're properly introducing the ideas of avant-garde music into the story here, we need to talk about him a little. Cage was, from an early age, torn between three great vocations, all of which in some fashion would shape his work for decades to come. One of these was architecture, and for a time he intended to become an architect. Another was the religious ministry, and he very seriously considered becoming a minister as a young man, and religion -- though not the religious faith of his youth -- was to be a massive factor in his work as he grew older. He started studying music from an early age, though he never had any facility as a performer -- though he did, when he discovered the work of Grieg, think that might change. He later said “For a while I played nothing else. I even imagined devoting my life to the performance of his works alone, for they did not seem to me to be too difficult, and I loved them.” [Excerpt: Grieg piano concerto in A minor] But he soon realised that he didn't have some of the basic skills that would be required to be a performer -- he never actually thought of himself as very musical -- and so he decided to move into composition, and he later talked about putting his musical limits to good use in being more inventive. From his very first pieces, Cage was trying to expand the definition of what a performance of a piece of music actually was. One of his friends, Harry Hay, who took part in the first documented performance of a piece by Cage, described how Cage's father, an inventor, had "devised a fluorescent light source over which Sample" -- Don Sample, Cage's boyfriend at the time -- "laid a piece of vellum painted with designs in oils. The blankets I was wearing were white, and a sort of lampshade shone coloured patterns onto me. It looked very good. The thing got so hot the designs began to run, but that only made it better.” Apparently the audience for this light show -- one that predated the light shows used by rock bands by a good thirty years -- were not impressed, though that may be more because the Santa Monica Women's Club in the early 1930s was not the vanguard of the avant-garde. Or maybe it was. Certainly the housewives of Santa Monica seemed more willing than one might expect to sign up for another of Cage's ideas. In 1933 he went door to door asking women if they would be interested in signing up to a lecture course from him on modern art and music. He told them that if they signed up for $2.50, he would give them ten lectures, and somewhere between twenty and forty of them signed up, even though, as he said later, “I explained to the housewives that I didn't know anything about either subject but that I was enthusiastic about both of them. I promised to learn faithfully enough about each subject so as to be able to give a talk an hour long each week.” And he did just that, going to the library every day and spending all week preparing an hour-long talk for them. History does not relate whether he ended these lectures by telling the housewives to tell just one friend about them. He said later “I came out of these lectures, with a devotion to the painting of Mondrian, on the one hand, and the music of Schoenberg on the other.” [Excerpt: Schoenberg, "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte"] Schoenberg was one of the two most widely-respected composers in the world at that point, the other being Stravinsky, but the two had very different attitudes to composition. Schoenberg's great innovation was the creation and popularisation of the twelve-tone technique, and I should probably explain that a little before I go any further. Most Western music is based on an eight-note scale -- do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do -- with the eighth note being an octave up from the first. So in the key of C major that would be C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C: [demonstrates] And when you hear notes from that scale, if your ears are accustomed to basically any Western music written before about 1920, or any Western popular music written since then, you expect the melody to lead back to C, and you know to expect that because it only uses those notes -- there are differing intervals between them, some having a tone between them and some having a semitone, and you recognise the pattern. But of course there are other notes between the notes of that scale. There are actually an infinite number of these, but in conventional Western music we only look at a few more -- C# (or D flat), D# (or E flat), F# (or G flat), G# (or A flat) and A# (or B flat). If you add in all those notes you get this: [demonstrates] There's no clear beginning or end, no do for it to come back to. And Schoenberg's great innovation, which he was only starting to promote widely around this time, was to insist that all twelve notes should be equal -- his melodies would use all twelve of the notes the exact same number of times, and so if he used say a B flat, he would have to use all eleven other notes before he used B flat again in the piece. This was a radical new idea, but Schoenberg had only started advancing it after first winning great acclaim for earlier pieces, like his "Three Pieces for Piano", a work which wasn't properly twelve-tone, but did try to do without the idea of having any one note be more important than any other: [Excerpt: Schoenberg, "Three Pieces for Piano"] At this point, that work had only been performed in the US by one performer, Richard Buhlig, and hadn't been released as a recording yet. Cage was so eager to hear it that he'd found Buhlig's phone number and called him, asking him to play the piece, but Buhlig put the phone down on him. Now he was doing these lectures, though, he had to do one on Schoenberg, and he wasn't a competent enough pianist to play Schoenberg's pieces himself, and there were still no recordings of them. Cage hitch-hiked from Santa Monica to LA, where Buhlig lived, to try to get him to come and visit his class and play some of Schoenberg's pieces for them. Buhlig wasn't in, and Cage hung around in his garden hoping for him to come back -- he pulled the leaves off a bough from one of Buhlig's trees, going "He'll come back, he won't come back, he'll come back..." and the leaves said he'd be back. Buhlig arrived back at midnight, and quite understandably told the strange twenty-one-year-old who'd spent twelve hours in his garden pulling the leaves off his trees that no, he would not come to Santa Monica and give a free performance. But he did agree that if Cage brought some of his own compositions he'd give them a look over. Buhlig started giving Cage some proper lessons in composition, although he stressed that he was a performer, not a composer. Around this time Cage wrote his Sonata for Clarinet: [Excerpt: John Cage, "Sonata For Clarinet"] Buhlig suggested that Cage send that to Henry Cowell, the composer we heard about in the episode on "Good Vibrations" who was friends with Lev Termen and who created music by playing the strings inside a piano: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] Cowell offered to take Cage on as an assistant, in return for which Cowell would teach him for a semester, as would Adolph Weiss, a pupil of Schoenberg's. But the goal, which Cowell suggested, was always to have Cage study with Schoenberg himself. Schoenberg at first refused, saying that Cage couldn't afford his price, but eventually took Cage on as a student having been assured that he would devote his entire life to music -- a promise Cage kept. Cage started writing pieces for percussion, something that had been very rare up to that point -- only a handful of composers, most notably Edgard Varese, had written pieces for percussion alone, but Cage was: [Excerpt: John Cage, "Trio"] This is often portrayed as a break from the ideals of his teacher Schoenberg, but in fact there's a clear continuity there, once you see what Cage was taking from Schoenberg. Schoenberg's work is, in some senses, about equality, about all notes being equal. Or to put it another way, it's about fairness. About erasing arbitrary distinctions. What Cage was doing was erasing the arbitrary distinction between the more and less prominent instruments. Why should there be pieces for solo violin or string quartet, but not for multiple percussion players? That said, Schoenberg was not exactly the most encouraging of teachers. When Cage invited Schoenberg to go to a concert of Cage's percussion work, Schoenberg told him he was busy that night. When Cage offered to arrange another concert for a date Schoenberg wasn't busy, the reply came "No, I will not be free at any time". Despite this, Cage later said “Schoenberg was a magnificent teacher, who always gave the impression that he was putting us in touch with musical principles,” and said "I literally worshipped him" -- a strong statement from someone who took religious matters as seriously as Cage. Cage was so devoted to Schoenberg's music that when a concert of music by Stravinsky was promoted as "music of the world's greatest living composer", Cage stormed into the promoter's office angrily, confronting the promoter and making it very clear that such things should not be said in the city where Schoenberg lived. Schoenberg clearly didn't think much of Cage's attempts at composition, thinking -- correctly -- that Cage had no ear for harmony. And his reportedly aggressive and confrontational teaching style didn't sit well with Cage -- though it seems very similar to a lot of the teaching techniques of the Zen masters he would later go on to respect. The two eventually parted ways, although Cage always spoke highly of Schoenberg. Schoenberg later gave Cage a compliment of sorts, when asked if any of his students had gone on to do anything interesting. At first he replied that none had, but then he mentioned Cage and said “Of course he's not a composer, but an inventor—of genius.” Cage was at this point very worried if there was any point to being a composer at all. He said later “I'd read Cowell's New Musical Resources and . . . The Theory of Rhythm. I had also read Chavez's Towards a New Music. Both works gave me the feeling that everything that was possible in music had already happened. So I thought I could never compose socially important music. Only if I could invent something new, then would I be useful to society. But that seemed unlikely then.” [Excerpt: John Cage, "Totem Ancestor"] Part of the solution came when he was asked to compose music for an abstract animation by the filmmaker Oskar Fischinger, and also to work as Fischinger's assistant when making the film. He was fascinated by the stop-motion process, and by the results of the film, which he described as "a beautiful film in which these squares, triangles and circles and other things moved and changed colour.” But more than that he was overwhelmed by a comment by Fischinger, who told him “Everything in the world has its own spirit, and this spirit becomes audible by setting it into vibration.” Cage later said “That set me on fire. He started me on a path of exploration of the world around me which has never stopped—of hitting and stretching and scraping and rubbing everything.” Cage now took his ideas further. His compositions for percussion had been about, if you like, giving the underdog a chance -- percussion was always in the background, why should it not be in the spotlight? Now he realised that there were other things getting excluded in conventional music -- the sounds that we characterise as noise. Why should composers work to exclude those sounds, but work to *include* other sounds? Surely that was... well, a little unfair? Eventually this would lead to pieces like his 1952 piece "Water Music", later expanded and retitled "Water Walk", which can be heard here in his 1959 appearance on the TV show "I've Got a Secret".  It's a piece for, amongst other things, a flowerpot full of flowers, a bathtub, a watering can, a pipe, a duck call, a blender full of ice cubes, and five unplugged radios: [Excerpt: John Cage "Water Walk"] As he was now avoiding pitch and harmony as organising principles for his music, he turned to time. But note -- not to rhythm. He said “There's none of this boom, boom, boom, business in my music . . . a measure is taken as a strict measure of time—not a one two three four—which I fill with various sounds.” He came up with a system he referred to as “micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure,” what we would now call fractals, though that word hadn't yet been invented, where the structure of the whole piece was reflected in the smallest part of it. For a time he started moving away from the term music, preferring to refer to the "art of noise" or to "organised sound" -- though he later received a telegram from Edgard Varese, one of his musical heroes and one of the few other people writing works purely for percussion, asking him not to use that phrase, which Varese used for his own work. After meeting with Varese and his wife, he later became convinced that it was Varese's wife who had initiated the telegram, as she explained to Cage's wife "we didn't want your husband's work confused with my husband's work, any more than you'd want some . . . any artist's work confused with that of a cartoonist.” While there is a humour to Cage's work, I don't really hear much qualitative difference between a Cage piece like the one we just heard and a Varese piece like Ionisation: [Excerpt: Edgard Varese, "Ionisation"] But it was in 1952, the year of "Water Music" that John Cage made his two biggest impacts on the cultural world, though the full force of those impacts wasn't felt for some years. To understand Cage's 1952 work, you first have to understand that he had become heavily influenced by Zen, which at that time was very little known in the Western world. Indeed he had studied with Daisetsu Suzuki, who is credited with introducing Zen to the West, and said later “I didn't study music with just anybody; I studied with Schoenberg, I didn't study Zen with just anybody; I studied with Suzuki. I've always gone, insofar as I could, to the president of the company.” Cage's whole worldview was profoundly affected by Zen, but he was also naturally sympathetic to it, and his work after learning about Zen is mostly a continuation of trends we can already see. In particular, he became convinced that the point of music isn't to communicate anything between two people, rather its point is merely to be experienced. I'm far from an expert on Buddhism, but one way of thinking about its central lessons is that one should experience things as they are, experiencing the thing itself rather than one's thoughts or preconceptions about it. And so at Black Mountain college came Theatre Piece Number 1: [Excerpt: Edith Piaf, "La Vie En Rose" ] In this piece, Cage had set the audience on all sides, so they'd be facing each other. He stood on a stepladder, as colleagues danced in and around the audience, another colleague played the piano, two more took turns to stand on another stepladder to recite poetry, different films and slides were projected, seemingly at random, onto the walls, and the painter Robert Rauschenberg played scratchy Edith Piaf records on a wind-up gramophone. The audience were included in the performance, and it was meant to be experienced as a gestalt, as a whole, to be what we would now call an immersive experience. One of Cage's students around this time was the artist Allan Kaprow, and he would be inspired by Theatre Piece Number 1 to put on several similar events in the late fifties. Those events he called "happenings", because the point of them was that you were meant to experience an event as it was happening rather than bring preconceptions of form and structure to them. Those happenings were the inspiration for events like The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, and the term "happening" became such an integral part of the counterculture that by 1967 there were comedy films being released about them, including one just called The Happening with a title track by the Supremes that made number one: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "The Happening"] Theatre Piece Number 1 was retrospectively considered the first happening, and as such its influence is incalculable. But one part I didn't mention about Theatre Piece Number 1 is that as well as Rauschenberg playing Edith Piaf's records, he also displayed some of his paintings. These paintings were totally white -- at a glance, they looked like blank canvases, but as one inspected them more clearly, it became apparent that Rauschenberg had painted them with white paint, with visible brushstrokes. These paintings, along with a visit to an anechoic chamber in which Cage discovered that even in total silence one can still hear one's own blood and nervous system, so will never experience total silence, were the final key to something Cage had been working towards -- if music had minimised percussion, and excluded noise, how much more had it excluded silence? As Cage said in 1958 “Curiously enough, the twelve-tone system has no zero in it.” And so came 4'33, the piece that we heard an excerpt of near the start of this episode. That piece was the something new he'd been looking for that could be useful to society. It took the sounds the audience could already hear, and without changing them even slightly gave them a new context and made the audience hear them as they were. Simply by saying "this is music", it caused the ambient noise to be perceived as music. This idea, of recontextualising existing material, was one that had already been done in the art world -- Marcel Duchamp, in 1917, had exhibited a urinal as a sculpture titled "Fountain" -- but even Duchamp had talked about his work as "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice". The artist was *raising* the object to art. What Cage was saying was "the object is already art". This was all massively influential to a young painter who had seen Cage give lectures many times, and while at art school had with friends prepared a piano in the same way Cage did for his own experimental compositions, dampening the strings with different objects. [Excerpt: Dana Gillespie, "Andy Warhol (live)"] Duchamp and Rauschenberg were both big influences on Andy Warhol, but he would say in the early sixties "John Cage is really so responsible for so much that's going on," and would for the rest of his life cite Cage as one of the two or three prime influences of his career. Warhol is a difficult figure to discuss, because his work is very intellectual but he was not very articulate -- which is one reason I've led up to him by discussing Cage in such detail, because Cage was always eager to talk at great length about the theoretical basis of his work, while Warhol would say very few words about anything at all. Probably the person who knew him best was his business partner and collaborator Paul Morrissey, and Morrissey's descriptions of Warhol have shaped my own view of his life, but it's very worth noting that Morrissey is an extremely right-wing moralist who wishes to see a Catholic theocracy imposed to do away with the scourges of sexual immorality, drug use, hedonism, and liberalism, so his view of Warhol, a queer drug using progressive whose worldview seems to have been totally opposed to Morrissey's in every way, might be a little distorted. Warhol came from an impoverished background, and so, as many people who grew up poor do, he was, throughout his life, very eager to make money. He studied art at university, and got decent but not exceptional grades -- he was a competent draughtsman, but not a great one, and most importantly as far as success in the art world goes he didn't have what is known as his own "line" -- with most successful artists, you can look at a handful of lines they've drawn and see something of their own personality in it. You couldn't with Warhol. His drawings looked like mediocre imitations of other people's work. Perfectly competent, but nothing that stood out. So Warhol came up with a technique to make his drawings stand out -- blotting. He would do a normal drawing, then go over it with a lot of wet ink. He'd lower a piece of paper on to the wet drawing, and the new paper would soak up the ink, and that second piece of paper would become the finished work. The lines would be fractured and smeared, broken in places where the ink didn't get picked up, and thick in others where it had pooled. With this mechanical process, Warhol had managed to create an individual style, and he became an extremely successful commercial artist. In the early 1950s photography was still seen as a somewhat low-class way of advertising things. If you wanted to sell to a rich audience, you needed to use drawings or paintings. By 1955 Warhol was making about twelve thousand dollars a year -- somewhere close to a hundred and thirty thousand a year in today's money -- drawing shoes for advertisements. He also had a sideline in doing record covers for people like Count Basie: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Seventh Avenue Express"] For most of the 1950s he also tried to put on shows of his more serious artistic work -- often with homoerotic themes -- but to little success. The dominant art style of the time was the abstract expressionism of people like Jackson Pollock, whose art was visceral, emotional, and macho. The term "action paintings" which was coined for the work of people like Pollock, sums it up. This was manly art for manly men having manly emotions and expressing them loudly. It was very male and very straight, and even the gay artists who were prominent at the time tended to be very conformist and look down on anything they considered flamboyant or effeminate. Warhol was a rather effeminate, very reserved man, who strongly disliked showing his emotions, and whose tastes ran firmly to the camp. Camp as an aesthetic of finding joy in the flamboyant or trashy, as opposed to merely a descriptive term for men who behaved in a way considered effeminate, was only just starting to be codified at this time -- it wouldn't really become a fully-formed recognisable thing until Susan Sontag's essay "Notes on Camp" in 1964 -- but of course just because something hasn't been recognised doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and Warhol's aesthetic was always very camp, and in the 1950s in the US that was frowned upon even in gay culture, where the mainstream opinion was that the best way to acceptance was through assimilation. Abstract expressionism was all about expressing the self, and that was something Warhol never wanted to do -- in fact he made some pronouncements at times which suggested he didn't think of himself as *having* a self in the conventional sense. The combination of not wanting to express himself and of wanting to work more efficiently as a commercial artist led to some interesting results. For example, he was commissioned in 1957 to do a cover for an album by Moondog, the blind street musician whose name Alan Freed had once stolen: [Excerpt: Moondog, "Gloving It"] For that cover, Warhol got his mother, Julia Warhola, to just write out the liner notes for the album in her rather ornamental cursive script, and that became the front cover, leading to an award for graphic design going that year to "Andy Warhol's mother". (Incidentally, my copy of the current CD issue of that album, complete with Julia Warhola's cover, is put out by Pickwick Records...) But towards the end of the fifties, the work for commercial artists started to dry up. If you wanted to advertise shoes, now, you just took a photo of the shoes rather than get Andy Warhol to draw a picture of them. The money started to disappear, and Warhol started to panic. If there was no room for him in graphic design any more, he had to make his living in the fine arts, which he'd been totally unsuccessful in. But luckily for Warhol, there was a new movement that was starting to form -- Pop Art. Pop Art started in England, and had originally been intended, at least in part, as a critique of American consumerist capitalism. Pieces like "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?" by Richard Hamilton (who went on to design the Beatles' White Album cover) are collages of found images, almost all from American sources, recontextualised and juxtaposed in interesting ways, so a bodybuilder poses in a room that's taken from an advert in Ladies' Home Journal, while on the wall, instead of a painting, hangs a blown-up cover of a Jack Kirby romance comic. Pop Art changed slightly when it got taken up in America, and there it became something rather different, something closer to Duchamp, taking those found images and displaying them as art with no juxtaposition. Where Richard Hamilton created collage art which *showed* a comic cover by Jack Kirby as a painting in the background, Roy Lichtenstein would take a panel of comic art by Kirby, or Russ Heath or Irv Novick or a dozen other comic artists, and redraw it at the size of a normal painting. So Warhol took Cage's idea that the object is already art, and brought that into painting, starting by doing paintings of Campbell's soup cans, in which he tried as far as possible to make the cans look exactly like actual soup cans. The paintings were controversial, inciting fury in some and laughter in others and causing almost everyone to question whether they were art. Warhol would embrace an aesthetic in which things considered unimportant or trash or pop culture detritus were the greatest art of all. For example pretty much every profile of him written in the mid sixties talks about him obsessively playing "Sally Go Round the Roses", a girl-group single by the one-hit wonders the Jaynettes: [Excerpt: The Jaynettes, "Sally Go Round the Roses"] After his paintings of Campbell's soup cans, and some rather controversial but less commercially successful paintings of photographs of horrors and catastrophes taken from newspapers, Warhol abandoned painting in the conventional sense altogether, instead creating brightly coloured screen prints -- a form of stencilling -- based on photographs of celebrities like Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and, most famously, Marilyn Monroe. That way he could produce images which could be mass-produced, without his active involvement, and which supposedly had none of his personality in them, though of course his personality pervades the work anyway. He put on exhibitions of wooden boxes, silk-screen printed to look exactly like shipping cartons of Brillo pads. Images we see everywhere -- in newspapers, in supermarkets -- were art. And Warhol even briefly formed a band. The Druds were a garage band formed to play at a show at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, the opening night of an exhibition that featured a silkscreen by Warhol of 210 identical bottles of Coca-Cola, as well as paintings by Rauschenberg and others. That opening night featured a happening by Claes Oldenburg, and a performance by Cage -- Cage gave a live lecture while three recordings of his own voice also played. The Druds were also meant to perform, but they fell apart after only a few rehearsals. Some recordings apparently exist, but they don't seem to circulate, but they'd be fascinating to hear as almost the entire band were non-musician artists like Warhol, Jasper Johns, and the sculptor Walter de Maria. Warhol said of the group “It didn't go too well, but if we had just stayed on it it would have been great.” On the other hand, the one actual musician in the group said “It was kind of ridiculous, so I quit after the second rehearsal". That musician was La Monte Young: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Well-Tuned Piano"] That's an excerpt from what is generally considered Young's masterwork, "The Well-Tuned Piano". It's six and a half hours long. If Warhol is a difficult figure to write about, Young is almost impossible. He's a musician with a career stretching sixty years, who is arguably the most influential musician from the classical tradition in that time period. He's generally considered the father of minimalism, and he's also been called by Brian Eno "the daddy of us all" -- without Young you simply *do not* get art rock at all. Without Young there is no Velvet Underground, no David Bowie, no Eno, no New York punk scene, no Yoko Ono. Anywhere that the fine arts or conceptual art have intersected with popular music in the last fifty or more years has been influenced in one way or another by Young's work. BUT... he only rarely publishes his scores. He very, very rarely allows recordings of his work to be released -- there are four recordings on his bandcamp, plus a handful of recordings of his older, published, pieces, and very little else. He doesn't allow his music to be performed live without his supervision. There *are* bootleg recordings of his music, but even those are not easily obtainable -- Young is vigorous in enforcing his copyrights and issues takedown notices against anywhere that hosts them. So other than that handful of legitimately available recordings -- plus a recording by Young's Theater of Eternal Music, the legality of which is still disputed, and an off-air recording of a 1971 radio programme I've managed to track down, the only way to experience Young's music unless you're willing to travel to one of his rare live performances or installations is second-hand, by reading about it. Except that the one book that deals solely with Young and his music is not only a dense and difficult book to read, it's also one that Young vehemently disagreed with and considered extremely inaccurate, to the point he refused to allow permissions to quote his work in the book. Young did apparently prepare a list of corrections for the book, but he wouldn't tell the author what they were without payment. So please assume that anything I say about Young is wrong, but also accept that the short section of this episode about Young has required more work to *try* to get it right than pretty much anything else this year. Young's musical career actually started out in a relatively straightforward manner. He didn't grow up in the most loving of homes -- he's talked about his father beating him as a child because he had been told that young La Monte was clever -- but his father did buy him a saxophone and teach him the rudiments of the instrument, and as a child he was most influenced by the music of the big band saxophone player Jimmy Dorsey: [Excerpt: Jimmy Dorsey, “It's the Dreamer in Me”] The family, who were Mormon farmers, relocated several times in Young's childhood, from Idaho first to California and then to Utah, but everywhere they went La Monte seemed to find musical inspiration, whether from an uncle who had been part of the Kansas City jazz scene, a classmate who was a musical prodigy who had played with Perez Prado in his early teens, or a teacher who took the class to see a performance of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra: [Excerpt: Bartok, "Concerto for Orchestra"] After leaving high school, Young went to Los Angeles City College to study music under Leonard Stein, who had been Schoenberg's assistant when Schoenberg had taught at UCLA, and there he became part of the thriving jazz scene based around Central Avenue, studying and performing with musicians like Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Eric Dolphy -- Young once beat Dolphy in an audition for a place in the City College dance band, and the two would apparently substitute for each other on their regular gigs when one couldn't make it. During this time, Young's musical tastes became much more adventurous. He was a particular fan of the work of John Coltrane, and also got inspired by City of Glass, an album by Stan Kenton that attempted to combine jazz and modern classical music: [Excerpt: Stan Kenton's Innovations Orchestra, "City of Glass: The Structures"] His other major musical discovery in the mid-fifties was one we've talked about on several previous occasions -- the album Music of India, Morning and Evening Ragas by Ali Akhbar Khan: [Excerpt: Ali Akhbar Khan, "Rag Sindhi Bhairavi"] Young's music at this point was becoming increasingly modal, and equally influenced by the blues and Indian music. But he was also becoming interested in serialism. Serialism is an extension and generalisation of twelve-tone music, inspired by mathematical set theory. In serialism, you choose a set of musical elements -- in twelve-tone music that's the twelve notes in the twelve-tone scale, but it can also be a set of tonal relations, a chord, or any other set of elements. You then define all the possible ways you can permute those elements, a defined set of operations you can perform on them -- so you could play a scale forwards, play it backwards, play all the notes in the scale simultaneously, and so on. You then go through all the possible permutations, exactly once, and that's your piece of music. Young was particularly influenced by the works of Anton Webern, one of the earliest serialists: [Excerpt: Anton Webern, "Cantata number 1 for Soprano, Mixed Chorus, and Orchestra"] That piece we just heard, Webern's "Cantata number 1", was the subject of some of the earliest theoretical discussion of serialism, and in particular led to some discussion of the next step on from serialism. If serialism was all about going through every single permutation of a set, what if you *didn't* permute every element? There was a lot of discussion in the late fifties in music-theoretical circles about the idea of invariance. Normally in music, the interesting thing is what gets changed. To use a very simple example, you might change a melody from a major key to a minor one to make it sound sadder. What theorists at this point were starting to discuss is what happens if you leave something the same, but change the surrounding context, so the thing you *don't* vary sounds different because of the changed context. And going further, what if you don't change the context at all, and merely *imply* a changed context? These ideas were some of those which inspired Young's first major work, his Trio For Strings from 1958, a complex, palindromic, serial piece which is now credited as the first work of minimalism, because the notes in it change so infrequently: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "Trio for Strings"] Though I should point out that Young never considers his works truly finished, and constantly rewrites them, and what we just heard is an excerpt from the only recording of the trio ever officially released, which is of the 2015 version. So I can't state for certain how close what we just heard is to the piece he wrote in 1958, except that it sounds very like the written descriptions of it I've read. After writing the Trio For Strings, Young moved to Germany to study with the modernist composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. While studying with Stockhausen, he became interested in the work of John Cage, and started up a correspondence with Cage. On his return to New York he studied with Cage and started writing pieces inspired by Cage, of which the most musical is probably Composition 1960 #7: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "Composition 1960 #7"] The score for that piece is a stave on which is drawn a treble clef, the notes B and F#, and the words "To be held for a long Time". Other of his compositions from 1960 -- which are among the few of his compositions which have been published -- include composition 1960 #10 ("To Bob Morris"), the score for which is just the instruction "Draw a straight line and follow it.", and Piano Piece for David  Tudor #1, the score for which reads "Bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water onto the stage for the piano to eat and drink. The performer may then feed the piano or leave it to eat by itself. If the former, the piece is over after the piano has been fed. If the latter, it is over after the piano eats or decides not to". Most of these compositions were performed as part of a loose New York art collective called Fluxus, all of whom were influenced by Cage and the Dadaists. This collective, led by George Maciunas, sometimes involved Cage himself, but also involved people like Henry Flynt, the inventor of conceptual art, who later became a campaigner against art itself, and who also much to Young's bemusement abandoned abstract music in the mid-sixties to form a garage band with Walter de Maria (who had played drums with the Druds): [Excerpt: Henry Flynt and the Insurrections, "I Don't Wanna"] Much of Young's work was performed at Fluxus concerts given in a New York loft belonging to another member of the collective, Yoko Ono, who co-curated the concerts with Young. One of Ono's mid-sixties pieces, her "Four Pieces for Orchestra" is dedicated to Young, and consists of such instructions as "Count all the stars of that night by heart. The piece ends when all the orchestra members finish counting the stars, or when it dawns. This can be done with windows instead of stars." But while these conceptual ideas remained a huge part of Young's thinking, he soon became interested in two other ideas. The first was the idea of just intonation -- tuning instruments and voices to perfect harmonics, rather than using the subtly-off tuning that is used in Western music. I'm sure I've explained that before in a previous episode, but to put it simply when you're tuning an instrument with fixed pitches like a piano, you have a choice -- you can either tune it so that the notes in one key are perfectly in tune with each other, but then when you change key things go very out of tune, or you can choose to make *everything* a tiny bit, almost unnoticeably, out of tune, but equally so. For the last several hundred years, musicians as a community have chosen the latter course, which was among other things promoted by Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, a collection of compositions which shows how the different keys work together: [Excerpt: Bach (Glenn Gould), "The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: Fugue in F-sharp minor, BWV 883"] Young, by contrast, has his own esoteric tuning system, which he uses in his own work The Well-Tuned Piano: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Well-Tuned Piano"] The other idea that Young took on was from Indian music, the idea of the drone. One of the four recordings of Young's music that is available from his Bandcamp, a 1982 recording titled The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath, consists of one hour, thirteen minutes, and fifty-eight seconds of this: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath"] Yes, I have listened to the whole piece. No, nothing else happens. The minimalist composer Terry Riley describes the recording as "a singularly rare contribution that far outshines any other attempts to capture this instrument in recorded media". In 1962, Young started writing pieces based on what he called the "dream chord", a chord consisting of a root, fourth, sharpened fourth, and fifth: [dream chord] That chord had already appeared in his Trio for Strings, but now it would become the focus of much of his work, in pieces like his 1962 piece The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, heard here in a 1982 revision: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer"] That was part of a series of works titled The Four Dreams of China, and Young began to plan an installation work titled Dream House, which would eventually be created, and which currently exists in Tribeca, New York, where it's been in continuous "performance" for thirty years -- and which consists of thirty-two different pure sine wave tones all played continuously, plus purple lighting by Young's wife Marian Zazeela. But as an initial step towards creating this, Young formed a collective called Theatre of Eternal Music, which some of the members -- though never Young himself -- always claim also went by the alternative name The Dream Syndicate. According to John Cale, a member of the group, that name came about because the group tuned their instruments to the 60hz hum of the fridge in Young's apartment, which Cale called "the key of Western civilisation". According to Cale, that meant the fundamental of the chords they played was 10hz, the frequency of alpha waves when dreaming -- hence the name. The group initially consisted of Young, Zazeela, the photographer Billy Name, and percussionist Angus MacLise, but by this recording in 1964 the lineup was Young, Zazeela, MacLise, Tony Conrad and John Cale: [Excerpt: "Cale, Conrad, Maclise, Young, Zazeela - The Dream Syndicate 2 IV 64-4"] That recording, like any others that have leaked by the 1960s version of the Theatre of Eternal Music or Dream Syndicate, is of disputed legality, because Young and Zazeela claim to this day that what the group performed were La Monte Young's compositions, while the other two surviving members, Cale and Conrad, claim that their performances were improvisational collaborations and should be equally credited to all the members, and so there have been lawsuits and countersuits any time anyone has released the recordings. John Cale, the youngest member of the group, was also the only one who wasn't American. He'd been born in Wales in 1942, and had had the kind of childhood that, in retrospect, seems guaranteed to lead to eccentricity. He was the product of a mixed-language marriage -- his father, William, was an English speaker while his mother, Margaret, spoke Welsh, but the couple had moved in on their marriage with Margaret's mother, who insisted that only Welsh could be spoken in her house. William didn't speak Welsh, and while he eventually picked up the basics from spending all his life surrounded by Welsh-speakers, he refused on principle to capitulate to his mother-in-law, and so remained silent in the house. John, meanwhile, grew up a monolingual Welsh speaker, and didn't start to learn English until he went to school when he was seven, and so couldn't speak to his father until then even though they lived together. Young John was extremely unwell for most of his childhood, both physically -- he had bronchial problems for which he had to take a cough mixture that was largely opium to help him sleep at night -- and mentally. He was hospitalised when he was sixteen with what was at first thought to be meningitis, but turned out to be a psychosomatic condition, the result of what he has described as a nervous breakdown. That breakdown is probably connected to the fact that during his teenage years he was sexually assaulted by two adults in positions of authority -- a vicar and a music teacher -- and felt unable to talk to anyone about this. He was, though, a child prodigy and was playing viola with the National Youth Orchestra of Wales from the age of thirteen, and listening to music by Schoenberg, Webern, and Stravinsky. He was so talented a multi-instrumentalist that at school he was the only person other than one of the music teachers and the headmaster who was allowed to use the piano -- which led to a prank on his very last day at school. The headmaster would, on the last day, hit a low G on the piano to cue the assembly to stand up, and Cale had placed a comb on the string, muting it and stopping the note from sounding -- in much the same way that his near-namesake John Cage was "preparing" pianos for his own compositions in the USA. Cale went on to Goldsmith's College to study music and composition, under Humphrey Searle, one of Britain's greatest proponents of serialism who had himself studied under Webern. Cale's main instrument was the viola, but he insisted on also playing pieces written for the violin, because they required more technical skill. For his final exam he chose to play Hindemith's notoriously difficult Viola Sonata: [Excerpt: Hindemith Viola Sonata] While at Goldsmith's, Cale became friendly with Cornelius Cardew, a composer and cellist who had studied with Stockhausen and at the time was a great admirer of and advocate for the works of Cage and Young (though by the mid-seventies Cardew rejected their work as counter-revolutionary bourgeois imperialism). Through Cardew, Cale started to correspond with Cage, and with George Maciunas and other members of Fluxus. In July 1963, just after he'd finished his studies at Goldsmith's, Cale presented a festival there consisting of an afternoon and an evening show. These shows included the first British performances of several works including Cardew's Autumn '60 for Orchestra -- a piece in which the musicians were given blank staves on which to write whatever part they wanted to play, but a separate set of instructions in *how* to play the parts they'd written. Another piece Cale presented in its British premiere at that show was Cage's "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra": [Excerpt: John Cage, "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra"] In the evening show, they performed Two Pieces For String Quartet by George Brecht (in which the musicians polish their instruments with dusters, making scraping sounds as they clean them),  and two new pieces by Cale, one of which involved a plant being put on the stage, and then the performer, Robin Page, screaming from the balcony at the plant that it would die, then running down, through the audience, and onto the stage, screaming abuse and threats at the plant. The final piece in the show was a performance by Cale (the first one in Britain) of La Monte Young's "X For Henry Flynt". For this piece, Cale put his hands together and then smashed both his arms onto the keyboard as hard as he could, over and over. After five minutes some of the audience stormed the stage and tried to drag the piano away from him. Cale followed the piano on his knees, continuing to bang the keys, and eventually the audience gave up in defeat and Cale the performer won. After this Cale moved to the USA, to further study composition, this time with Iannis Xenakis, the modernist composer who had also taught Mickey Baker orchestration after Baker left Mickey and Sylvia, and who composed such works as "Orient Occident": [Excerpt: Iannis Xenakis, "Orient Occident"] Cale had been recommended to Xenakis as a student by Aaron Copland, who thought the young man was probably a genius. But Cale's musical ambitions were rather too great for Tanglewood, Massachusetts -- he discovered that the institute had eighty-eight pianos, the same number as there are keys on a piano keyboard, and thought it would be great if for a piece he could take all eighty-eight pianos, put them all on different boats, sail the boats out onto a lake, and have eighty-eight different musicians each play one note on each piano, while the boats sank with the pianos on board. For some reason, Cale wasn't allowed to perform this composition, and instead had to make do with one where he pulled an axe out of a single piano and slammed it down on a table. Hardly the same, I'm sure you'll agree. From Tanglewood, Cale moved on to New York, where he soon became part of the artistic circles surrounding John Cage and La Monte Young. It was at this time that he joined Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, and also took part in a performance with Cage that would get Cale his first television exposure: [Excerpt: John Cale playing Erik Satie's "Vexations" on "I've Got a Secret"] That's Cale playing through "Vexations", a piece by Erik Satie that wasn't published until after Satie's death, and that remained in obscurity until Cage popularised -- if that's the word -- the piece. The piece, which Cage had found while studying Satie's notes, seems to be written as an exercise and has the inscription (in French) "In order to play the motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities." Cage interpreted that, possibly correctly, as an instruction that the piece should be played eight hundred and forty times straight through, and so he put together a performance of the piece, the first one ever, by a group he called the Pocket Theatre Piano Relay Team, which included Cage himself, Cale, Joshua Rifkin, and several other notable musical figures, who took it in turns playing the piece. For that performance, which ended up lasting eighteen hours, there was an entry fee of five dollars, and there was a time-clock in the lobby. Audience members punched in and punched out, and got a refund of five cents for every twenty minutes they'd spent listening to the music. Supposedly, at the end, one audience member yelled "Encore!" A week later, Cale appeared on "I've Got a Secret", a popular game-show in which celebrities tried to guess people's secrets (and which is where that performance of Cage's "Water Walk" we heard earlier comes from): [Excerpt: John Cale on I've Got a Secret] For a while, Cale lived with a friend of La Monte Young's, Terry Jennings, before moving in to a flat with Tony Conrad, one of the other members of the Theatre of Eternal Music. Angus MacLise lived in another flat in the same building. As there was not much money to be made in avant-garde music, Cale also worked in a bookshop -- a job Cage had found him -- and had a sideline in dealing drugs. But rents were so cheap at this time that Cale and Conrad only had to work part-time, and could spend much of their time working on the music they were making with Young. Both were string players -- Conrad violin, Cale viola -- and they soon modified their instruments. Conrad merely attached pickups to his so it could be amplified, but Cale went much further. He filed down the viola's bridge so he could play three strings at once, and he replaced the normal viola strings with thicker, heavier, guitar and mandolin strings. This created a sound so loud that it sounded like a distorted electric guitar -- though in late 1963 and early 1964 there were very few people who even knew what a distorted guitar sounded like. Cale and Conrad were also starting to become interested in rock and roll music, to which neither of them had previously paid much attention, because John Cage's music had taught them to listen for music in sounds they previously dismissed. In particular, Cale became fascinated with the harmonies of the Everly Brothers, hearing in them the same just intonation that Young advocated for: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "All I Have to Do is Dream"] And it was with this newfound interest in rock and roll that Cale and Conrad suddenly found themselves members of a manufactured pop band. The two men had been invited to a party on the Lower East Side, and there they'd been introduced to Terry Phillips of Pickwick Records. Phillips had seen their long hair and asked if they were musicians, so they'd answered "yes". He asked if they were in a band, and they said yes. He asked if that band had a drummer, and again they said yes. By this point they realised that he had assumed they were rock guitarists, rather than experimental avant-garde string players, but they decided to play along and see where this was going. Phillips told them that if they brought along their drummer to Pickwick's studios the next day, he had a job for them. The two of them went along with Walter de Maria, who did play the drums a little in between his conceptual art work, and there they were played a record: [Excerpt: The Primitives, "The Ostrich"] It was explained to them that Pickwick made knock-off records -- soundalikes of big hits, and their own records in the style of those hits, all played by a bunch of session musicians and put out under different band names. This one, by "the Primitives", they thought had a shot at being an actual hit, even though it was a dance-craze song about a dance where one partner lays on the floor and the other stamps on their head. But if it was going to be a hit, they needed an actual band to go out and perform it, backing the singer. How would Cale, Conrad, and de Maria like to be three quarters of the Primitives? It sounded fun, but of course they weren't actually guitarists. But as it turned out, that wasn't going to be a problem. They were told that the guitars on the track had all been tuned to one note -- not even to an open chord, like we talked about Steve Cropper doing last episode, but all the strings to one note. Cale and Conrad were astonished -- that was exactly the kind of thing they'd been doing in their drone experiments with La Monte Young. Who was this person who was independently inventing the most advanced ideas in experimental music but applying them to pop songs? And that was how they met Lou Reed: [Excerpt: The Primitives, "The Ostrich"] Where Cale and Conrad were avant-gardeists who had only just started paying attention to rock and roll music, rock and roll was in Lou Reed's blood, but there were a few striking similarities between him and Cale, even though at a glance their backgrounds could not have seemed more different. Reed had been brought up in a comfortably middle-class home in Long Island, but despised the suburban conformity that surrounded him from a very early age, and by his teens was starting to rebel against it very strongly. According to one classmate “Lou was always more advanced than the rest of us. The drinking age was eighteen back then, so we all started drinking at around sixteen. We were drinking quarts of beer, but Lou was smoking joints. He didn't do that in front of many people, but I knew he was doing it. While we were looking at girls in Playboy, Lou was reading Story of O. He was reading the Marquis de Sade, stuff that I wouldn't even have thought about or known how to find.” But one way in which Reed was a typical teenager of the period was his love for rock and roll, especially doo-wop. He'd got himself a guitar, but only had one lesson -- according to the story he would tell on numerous occasions, he turned up with a copy of "Blue Suede Shoes" and told the teacher he only wanted to know how to play the chords for that, and he'd work out the rest himself. Reed and two schoolfriends, Alan Walters and Phil Harris, put together a doo-wop trio they called The Shades, because they wore sunglasses, and a neighbour introduced them to Bob Shad, who had been an A&R man for Mercury Records and was starting his own new label. He renamed them the Jades and took them into the studio with some of the best New York session players, and at fourteen years old Lou Reed was writing songs and singing them backed by Mickey Baker and King Curtis: [Excerpt: The Jades, "Leave Her For Me"] Sadly the Jades' single was a flop -- the closest it came to success was being played on Murray the K's radio show, but on a day when Murray the K was off ill and someone else was filling in for him, much to Reed's disappointment. Phil Harris, the lead singer of the group, got to record some solo sessions after that, but the Jades split up and it would be several years before Reed made any more records. Partly this was because of Reed's mental health, and here's where things get disputed and rather messy. What we know is that in his late teens, just after he'd gone off to New

Em seu clássico livro de memórias, Living to Tell the Tale, García Márquez relata seus dias como um jovem vivendo em um bordel em Barranquilla, tentando escrever e, acima de tudo, dançando a noite toda. Em uma passagem, ele relata uma noite passada dançando e cantando mambos e boleros, e descreve sentir uma "onda de libertação". A canção que ele lembra especificamente é "Mambo Numero 5", de Perez Prado.

En esta nueva entrega del dossier dedicado a Tim Burton, que coordina Ignacio Pablo Rico, visitamos "Bitelchús", el origen mediático del mito estético de Burton. Participan en el debate Christian Franco, Ignacio Pablo Rico y Yago Paris. El tema que cierra el podcast es "Claudia", de Perez Prado: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSQU3hzPlgY

This episode looks at the looks at iconic instrumentals and the facts behind the tracks including; Perez Prado, The Moontrekkers, The Tornados, Joe Meek, Bill Frisell, Dick Dale and His Del-Tones, James Last and Jefferson Airplane.Wise Choice is an official Wise Music Group podcast celebrating 50 years of Wise Music and taking the opportunity to delve into the vast catalogue of incredible songs and artists that are part of the Wise family. The show is hosted by Wise Music songwriting and composing team Adam and Paula Pickering aka The Daydream Club. They asked the Wise Music teams from all over the world to choose their absolute favourite songs from the Wise Music catalogue (their Wise Choice). From this list Adam & Paula look into the history surrounding the songs and where the story leads them with connections to other notable versions, covers and samples.New episodes every other Wednesday.If you liked this you might also enjoy Composing Myself - an official Wise Music podcast featuring interviews with composers and songwriters, taking an in-depth look at their process.Tracklist:Guaglione - Perez PradoGuaglione - Aurelio FierroNight of the Vampire - The MoontrekkersTelstar - The TornadosTelstar - Bill FrisellMisirlou - Dick Dale & His Del-TonesPump It - Black Eyed PeasEinsamer Hirte (Lonely Shepherd) - James Last & Gheorghe ZamfirEmbryonic Journey - Jefferson Airplane Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

All of the songs from this week's Song of the Night segment. Artists include: Aretha Franklin, Taking Back Sunday, & Perez Prado.

De LAURYN HILL, CHER, BON JOVI,... a NANCY RAMOS, SANDRO, CONNIE FRANCIS, LOS PLATTERS, JANIS JOPLIN, BEATLES, PRESLEY... Baila con HECTOR LAVOE, DIANA ROSS & SUPREMES, LOSHERMANOS RIGUAL, PEREZ PRADO,... Recuerda a SOFIA LOREN y CARY GRANT, "OLIVER", GASPARIN (EL FANTASMA AMISTOSO),FORMULA 1, GRANDES LIGAS, COPA DAVIS,... Y MUCHO!!! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/genteenambiente/support

Damaso Perez Prado was a Cuban bandleader, pianist, composer and arranger who popularized mambo in the 1950's.

Episode 223, “1958 Hit Parade,” presents 20 of the best-selling single records of 1958, including performances The Kalin Twins, The Everly Brothers, Pat Boone, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Perez Prado, Chuck Berry, and 13 more.... Read More The post Episode 223, “1958 Hit Parade,” appeared first on Sam Waldron.

This is the first in a series of Cuban music shows that will introduce some of the classics of Cuban music. Cuba, La Isla Bonita where Madonna sings in her eponymous hit is also a musical paradise and one of the most musical places in the world. The creation of a vast number of music styles produced as a result of the combination of European and African musical patterns is outstanding. Son, Rhumba, Habanera, fillin, Mambo, Cha Cha Cha, guajira, trova, guaracha are just among the styles developed in the pearl of the Antilles. In the first show, Sabor Añejo will introduce the old music styles before Fidel Castro and the bearded men took over the running of Cuba. In the 1940s the Tim Pan Alley Publishing house in the US considered the immense appeal of Cuban music and were jealous of the perennial best-sellers Cuba produced compared to the average hits they only managed to make, that only lasted for a few months. Peanut Vendor (El Manisero), La Paloma or Guantanamera are some of these perennial compositions. The only music style included in this first show which was not produced in Cuba is the Latin Jazz groundbreaking piece of Manteca. This jazz hybrid is a composition by the Cuban Conga player Chano Pozo in the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band. Manteca opened a new genre in Jazz form. What was called Cuban Bop, then Cuban Jazz and now Latin Jazz? Antonio Machin, Chano Pozo, Beni More, Arsenio Rodriguez, Guillermo Portabales, Miguelito Valdes, Cachao, Mongo Santamaria, Bebo Valdes, Celina, Perez Prado, Graciela, La Lupe, Machito & his Afro Cubans, Francisco Aguabella, Cuarteto D'Aida, El Gran Fellove and the Buena Vista Social Club are essential names of Cuban music. All of them are included in Sabor Añejo of the Cuban Music. MUSIC: 1- Estudio en Trompeta- CACHAO Y SU RITMO CALENTE (descarga) 2- Barabatiri - BENI MORE (EL BARBARO DEL RITMO) 3- Bruca Manigua - MIGUELITO VALDES (MR BABALÚ) 4- Macunsere - MONGO SANTAMARIA AND FRANCISCO AGUABELLA 5- Manteca - DIZZIE GILLESPIE BIG BAND (starring CHANO POZO) 6- Moliendo café - GRACIELA with the MACHITO AND HIS AFRO CUBANS 7- No se que voy a hacer - CUARTETO D'AIDA 8- El Manisero (the Peanut Vendor) - DON AZPIAZU & THE HAVANA CASINO ORCHESTRA (starring ANTONIO MACHIN) 9- Canto a la Habana - BEBO VALDES Y SU ORQUESTA SABOR DE CUBA 10 - Vaya p'al monte - ARSENIO RODRIGUEZ 11- El carretero - GUILLERMO PORTABALES 12- Yo soy el Punto Cubano - CELINA 13- Mango, mangue - EL GRAN FELLOVE 14- Mambo no. 8 - PEREZ PRADO ORCHESTRA 15- Descarga Cacho - CACHAO 16- Besito para tí - MONGO SANTAMARIA Y LA LUPE 17- El cuarto de Tula - BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB (live at the Carnegie Hall, NY)

Hola Que Tal? Dámaso Pérez Prado es conocido sobre todo por sus aportes al género del mambo, que tiene sus orígenes en el danzón cubano y que daría pauta al surgimiento y desarrollo del chachachá, así como también de la música surgida a finales de la década de 1950 y conocida luego, desde principios de los años 1970 como salsa.…

.

Señora bonita, mi amigo amo de casa. Jueves al fin, Hoy se bebe, hoy se gasta, hoy se fuma como un rasta si Dios lo permite pero momento, antes de irse a perrear hasta trapear el suelo hay que desinformar. Pare la oreja súbale a su radito porque estas, estas son las noticias.¡SEGUIRÁ EN LA GRANDE Y CON LA PIJAMA A RAYAS! Emilio Lozoya seguirá en la cárcel por el ‘caso Odebrecht'. Al fin, una perra alegría.¡LOS RICOS TAMBIÉN LLORAMOS! El Tio Slim se la Perez Prado y no podrá entrar al negocio de televisión de paga. No te agüites tío, al rato te marco, via Telmex obvio.¡SÍ PIQUENSE, PERO NO DONDE SEA! Cofepris alerta sobre vacunas clandestinas contra COVID-19 en Edomex. Las del gobierno son gratis y legales, no la amuelen.Y EN LA MAÑANERA: “Bendición de Dios tener a López-Gatell en la pandemia” grita AMLO a los cuatro vientos. Pues sí tan bueno que se lo lleven… o sea a la OMS o algo así… o al más allá, no cierto, es broma… o no… ya pues ya pues.Completamente en vivo y en directo de grupo fórmula, central del perreo y la desinformancia transmitiendo para ya tu sabe y hasta el suelo papi. Se quedan con el líder del clan informativo, el sensei de las redes, la porrista de la radio: Chumel Torres.

Las grandes Orquestas del mundo en escena, gracias a su conductor Carlos Bautista

Hoy en el programa: ·       Paty estrada y su ayuda a la comunidad.·       No se vale con Jaime Piña que digan que el canelo es el mejor boxeador de México Eso no es cierto y eso no se vale.·        En su editorial Michelle Rivera nos habló del trato que reciben en la carita del lado de Estados Unidos.·        Andy Valdez nos hablo en el baul de los recuerdos de Perez Prado ·        En la canción de Gastón, parodia cantada sobre la canción A mi burro·       Jorge Lozano nos habló de cómo mantener la llama del amor.·       Con la diva de México hablamos de la adopcion.·       La ultima palabra con Gustavo Adolfo Infante hablo de las cancelaciones en los conciertos en el estado de México por la delincuencia organizada, de Octavio Ocaña, de Ricardo El Tuca Ferretti.·       Llamadas y reflexión que tocaran tu corazón.

Las grandes Orquestas del mundo en escena, gracias a su conductor Carlos Bautista

Zapatos, maletas y dobles fondos en la chaqueta son algunas de las creativas formas de traficar, pero usar la  choya  es de otro nivel en nuestro stupid del día.Los robots no la van a Perez Prado y si al compa obrero no le gusta el jale y si el pisteo, un androide ocupará tu puesto. Reflexiones sobre el avance tecnológico con nuestros anfitriones del Free-Guey Show. Nada que madura Justin Bieber y esta vez lanza un nuevo reto a Tom Cruise, de subirse a un cuadrilátero para darse madrazos con el famoso actor.Andamos bien o andamos mal en nuestra economía, con Andrés Gutierrez el machete pa tu billete.¿Cómo hacer para discutir menos con tu pareja? Recomendaciones con el Dr Cesar Lozano.

Það er mikilvægt að ungt fólk hefji búskap, í húfi er fæðuöryggi þjóðarinnar. Þetta segir Vigdís Häsler, framkvæmdastjóri Bændasamtaka Íslands. Nýverið var opnað fyrir umsóknir um styrki til nýliðunar í landbúnaði. Mikill áhugi hefur verið á styrkjunum síðustu ár og líklegt að svo verði einnig nú. Ekki liggja fyrir upplýsingar um hve margir bændur vilja hætta búskap sökum aldurs eða annars. Erlendir ferðamenn eru tiltölulega fáséðir á götum Lundúna, Parísar og Kaupmannahafnar. Sigrún Davíðsdóttir, sem búsett er í þeirri fyrstnefndu og hefur heimsótt hinar tvær að undanförnu, sagði frá í Lundúnaspjalli. PCR próf í Lundúnum kostar um 30 þúsund íslenskar krónur. Hún sagði líka frá nýrri kvikmynd Bille August um tiltekinn kafla í lífi Karena Blixen og væntanlegum hljómleikum Víkings Heiðars Ólafssonar á Prom tónlistarhátíðinni sem BBC stendur að. Hallgrímskirkja í Reykjavík er í 38. sæti á lista lesenda ferðavefjarins Big7travel yfir fegurstu byggingar heims. Sigríður Hjálmarsdóttir, framkvæmdastjóri Hallgrímskirkju, fagnaði þessu í spjalli um kirkjuna. Tónlist: Bréfið hennar Stínu - Diddú, Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White - Perez Prado, Mambo nr. 5 - Perez Prado, Fólk eins og við þekkjum - Tríó Ómars Guðjónssonar. Umsjón: Björn Þór Sigbjörnsson

Það er mikilvægt að ungt fólk hefji búskap, í húfi er fæðuöryggi þjóðarinnar. Þetta segir Vigdís Häsler, framkvæmdastjóri Bændasamtaka Íslands. Nýverið var opnað fyrir umsóknir um styrki til nýliðunar í landbúnaði. Mikill áhugi hefur verið á styrkjunum síðustu ár og líklegt að svo verði einnig nú. Ekki liggja fyrir upplýsingar um hve margir bændur vilja hætta búskap sökum aldurs eða annars. Erlendir ferðamenn eru tiltölulega fáséðir á götum Lundúna, Parísar og Kaupmannahafnar. Sigrún Davíðsdóttir, sem búsett er í þeirri fyrstnefndu og hefur heimsótt hinar tvær að undanförnu, sagði frá í Lundúnaspjalli. PCR próf í Lundúnum kostar um 30 þúsund íslenskar krónur. Hún sagði líka frá nýrri kvikmynd Bille August um tiltekinn kafla í lífi Karena Blixen og væntanlegum hljómleikum Víkings Heiðars Ólafssonar á Prom tónlistarhátíðinni sem BBC stendur að. Hallgrímskirkja í Reykjavík er í 38. sæti á lista lesenda ferðavefjarins Big7travel yfir fegurstu byggingar heims. Sigríður Hjálmarsdóttir, framkvæmdastjóri Hallgrímskirkju, fagnaði þessu í spjalli um kirkjuna. Tónlist: Bréfið hennar Stínu - Diddú, Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White - Perez Prado, Mambo nr. 5 - Perez Prado, Fólk eins og við þekkjum - Tríó Ómars Guðjónssonar. Umsjón: Björn Þór Sigbjörnsson

LACHO RIVERO, PERCUSIONISTA CUBANO DIRECTOR DE LA ORQUESTA PÉREZ PRADO EN EUROPA. HIJO DEL PIANISTA Y COMPOSITOR, FACUNDO RIVERO CHARLA CON GILDA MIRÓS PROGRAMA DE RADIO EN MIAMI, 1990s. CONTIENE MÚSICA.

Como siempre que aparece un nuevo número de la revista Más Jazz, me gusta dar una visión musical de sus contenidos para así animaros a que os suscribais a la única revista especializada en jazz de nuestro país que sigue editándose en papel. En esta ocasión prácticamente todo el número está dedicado a diferentes formas de abordar el jazz desde latinoamérica, además de algún que otro articulo de músicas con mayor o menor relación. En el programa escucharemos algunos cha-cha-chás, de la mano de artistas como Perez Prado, Enrique Jorrín o Xavier Cugat. Colombia también estará representada por Jaime Uribe y el grupo Seresta. Por supuesto, si hablamos de latin jazz, Cuba tiene que aparecer, y tendrá a tres pianistas magníficos que residen en nuestro pais: Iván 'Melón' Lewis, Pepe Rivero y Javier Massó 'Caramelo de Cuba' Más curioso es el proyecto Radio Huachaca, que mezcla el folclore chileno con el jazz manouche. Y México también tendrá su representación con dos de sus más míticos músicos de jazz, Hector Hallal 'El árabe' y Tino Contreras. El programa terminará con un par de temas del pianista congoleño Ray Lema, conjuntamente con su colega francés Laurent de Wilde, y como guinda un poco de ska de la mano del grupo venezolano Ska Jazz Messengers. Como veis, un especial muy veraniego para entreteneros allá donde estéis, en la playa o en la montaña. O en la ciudad si aún no habéis cogido las vacaciones.

While I am familiar with this band leader's music, I was not familiar with the main piece of music on this record. It's not really his style. So we'll hear the story of why Perez Prado wrote it and we'll listen to all three movements in Volume 26: Voodoo Suite #jazz #jazzmusic #perezprado #shortyrogers #mambo #kingofmambo #oldvinyl #oldmusic #skipsscratchesandpops #spinningmydadsvinyl #spinvinyl #spinoldvinyl #giveitaspin Perez Prado, featuring Shorty Rogers ‎– Voodoo Suite Plus Six All-Time Greats Label: RCA Victor ‎– LPM-1101 Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Mono Released: 1955 Genre: Jazz, Latin Style: Latin Jazz, Afro-Cuban Jazz, Cha-Cha, Mambo I Can't get started composed in 1938 by Vernon Duke Voodoo Suite Composed in 1954 by Perez Prado In the Mood Composed by saxophonist Joe Garland in 1938 ASCAP, BMI licenses provided by third-party platforms for music that is not under Public Domain.

Episode #6: Baritone Sax Conspiracy and Mob Roulette Uploaded: April 3, 2021 Charles Papasoff: Mouvements [17:03] Jean Derome: L'Espoir de ne pas perdre Espoir I. 1er mouvement [3:27] II. 2ième mouvement-Loose Cannons [5:31] III. 3ième mouvement (version courte) [0:59] Christian Gavillet: Verdi [11:06] David Mott: God's Clothes for Shaman Bobbi [8:45] Bo Van Der Vef: IBC [5:05] Charles Mingus, arr. Hamiet Bluiett and Charles Papasoff: Pithecanthropus Erectus [4:44] International Baritone Conspiracy: Charles Papasoff, baritone saxophone Hamiet Bluiett, baritone saxophone Jean Derome, baritone saxophone David Mott, baritone saxophone Christian Gavillet, baritone saxophone Bo Van Der Werf, baritone saxophone VICTO cd038 Jay Hawkins: The Whammy [2:34] Strange [2:06] Screamin' Jay Hawkins, vocals Orchestra conducted by Sammy Lowe Hank Penny and Ruth Hall: Bloodshot eyes [2:50] Leon and Otis René: Sweet Lucy Brown [2:31] Emanuel Brown: Spread the news [2:14] Anon: Saturday night [2:10] Anon: Josephine [2:20] Wynonie Harris, vocals Isley Brothers: Everybody's gonna Rock [2:24] I wanna know [2:18] David Clowney: The Drag [2:17] Ronald Isley: Rockin' McDonald [2:16] The Isley Brothers, vocals based on Perez Prado: 7-11 [2:33] Gone All Stars ? Brandon and ? Williams: Screamin' ball (at Dracula Hall) [2:21] The Duponts, vocals Anon: Hippy dippy daddy [2:04] The Cookies, vocals Chuck Berry: Roll over Beethoven [2:25] The 4 Chaps, vocals Anon: Hindu baby [2:46] The Emanons, vocals Anon: Ding dong [2:13] The Echoes, vocals Anon: Woo woo train [2:57] The Valentines, vocals Anon: Dance with me [2:17] The Chaperones, vocals Anon: Ain't you gonna [2:19] Jesse Powell & The Caddies, vocals Anon: Alabama Rock and Roll [2:42] Mabel King, vocals SEQUEL RECORDS NEM CD 670

Lou Bega’s career didn’t take off until he discovered Perez PradoSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lou Bega's career didn't take off until he discovered Perez Prado See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Master drummer and percussionist Alex Acuña was born in Pativilca, Peru and recognized at an early age that he wanted career in music.  One of the most successful drummers to come out of South America.  He was a part of music history on a number of occasions and has drummed for countless albums and music greats.  Raised in a musical family, Alex decided to take up the drums at the age of 4.  Upon moving to Lima, Peru Alex quickly became known as one of Peru's most accomplished session drummers recording for various artists and television shows.  Alex moved to Puerto Rico and there studied at the art of classical percussion at the Conservatory of Music. Alex worked in Las Vegas with Elvis Presley and Diana Ross before moving to Los Angeles.  With the jazz group Weather Report, Alex recorded the first jazz fusion record to sell over 1 million copies.  As an in demand session drummer and percussionist, Alex has played on hundreds of television shows and motion pictures.  His album credits include artists such as U2, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Ella Fitzgerald, Al Jarreau, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston, Roberta Flack, Carlos Santana, The Gipsy Kings.  A master hand drummer and percussionist, Alex is known for his unique style of drumming and is one of the most versatile drummers of Afro-Cuban and Latin music What you will hear Alex's upbringing and the influence of faith and prayer early on in his life. Recognizing his love for music at an early age. Early childhood musical experiences. Working in Lima, Peru and meeting Perez Prado which kicked off his touring career. Exposure to all styles and genres of music and auditing his siblings music lessons. Alex's biggest influences. 1970's fusion of music in New York. Racism Martial Arts and the importance of keeping the 6 S's as you age:Stamina, Strength, Strategy, Skills, Speed, Spirit. Alex's faith, walk and family. Quotes “I had to learn to be humble.” “I'm a follower of the great players because I love to learn.” “For me music is huge, it's profound, it has no ending, it's deep.” “I learned how to listen to the heart of the player.” “With every experience you become a warrior of life.” --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/iammusicgrouppodcast/support (https://anchor.fm/iammusicgrouppodcast/support)

E ora a chi lo mandi?La clip è "Guaglione" qui nella versione di Perez Prado (autori Nicola Salerno e Giuseppe Fanciulli-1956 all rights reserved)

Uur 1 1. Count your blessings – Bing Crosby 2. The man with the child in his eyes – Kate Bush 3. Alles komt goed – Philippe Robrecht 4. Tous mes souvenirs me tuent – Francoise Hardy 5. Dreams of the everyday housewife – Glen Campbell 6. Hear the bells – Calexico 7. Sonho meu – Maria Bethania & Gal Costa 8. I can’t sing the blues – The Ragtime Rumours 9. Loves me like a rock – Paul Simon 10. Kathy’s song – Eva Cassidy 11. Het komt goed – Ricky Koole 12. Dieter Malinek, Ulla und Ich – Reinhard Mey 13. Looking for the summer – Chris Rea 14. Dandelion – Carolina Story 15. Mambo No. 5 – Perez Prado Uur 2 1. The man you are in me – Janis Ian 2. Samen met u onder een paraplu – Hetty Blok & Leen Jongewaard 3. September – Sting & Zucchero 4. Silence – Hindi Zahra 5. The Magdalene Laundries – The Chieftains & Joni Mitchell 6. The first time ever I saw your face – James Blake 7. Le café des trois colombes – Patrick Fiori & Lola Dubini 8. Houd moed – Britta Maria & Maurits Fondse 9. Dancing on the ceiling – Chet Baker 10. Do I hear a waltz – Sammy Davis jr. 11. Winter bird/When winter comes – Paul McCartney 12. Iemand – Herman van Veen 13. Vermelho – Vanessa da Mata 14. X-mas bells - Släpstick

'Our ignorance is its bliss'Shoshana Zuboff, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Demetri Kofinas, Beny Moré and Perez Prado, The Exciters

'Our ignorance is its bliss' Shoshana Zuboff, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Demetri Kofinas, Beny Moré and Perez Prado, The Exciters

Hola Que Tal? Mambo es un género musical y danza que se desarrolló originalmente en Cuba. La palabra “mambo” es un afronegrismo, de manera similar a otros términos musicales afroamericanos. En este programa haremos un pequeño tributo a Damaso Perez Prado, conocido…

La sombra de la duda sobre las cosas más nimias, qué me pongo, o a quien "bloqueo" pero también qué bailo y con quien. Difícil decisión entre el mambo de Perez Prado y el rock de Elvis en los 50. Entre el limbo rock y el hully gully con el Duo Dinámico como "facilitadores". Bailes de alternancia -izquierda-izquierda/derecha-derecha- como la yenka o totalizadores como el twist de Chubby Checker, propios como la rumba, exóticos como el boogaloo. La indecisión, en la vida como en el baile, se produce cuando se interrumpe el flujo entre los hemisferios, lo dice la ciencia. Especial indecisos, dubitativos e incluso confundidos. Escuchar audio

1999 macht Lou Bega bereits mehrere Jahre Musik, wartet auf den großen Erfolg. Dann poliert den Klassiker des kubanischen Musikers und Mambokönigs Perez Prado auf: Mambo No. 5 ist geboren - und damit ein weltweiter Sommerhit.

Acelerando el danzón y dándole a la síncopa, el mambo y Dámaso Perez Prado, su rey indiscutible. Un frenesí bailable en los 50 pero indomable hasta el presente en salones de baile y clubs selectos. Desde sus míticos orígenes con Arsenio Rodriguez o Israel Lopez "Cachao" a las electrónicas "covers" de Lou Bega ("Mambo Nº5") pasando por Benny Moré."Locas por el Mambo" en la voz del propio Beny, "Mack the Knife" en la de Rosemary Clooney. Muchos los contendientes al cetro de "rey del mambo" y algunos podían llamarse Tito Puente ("Mambo Diablo") en una sesión Irresistible. Pista para bailadores. ¡Por Libertonia!, como grita Groucho Marx, convertido en su surrealista presidente, en "Sopa de Ganso". Escuchar audio

Radio Nova revisite ses propres classiques : les raretés de tous bords qui rythment notre antenne, de la soul-funk au hip-hop en passant par les musiques afro-latines et la pop. Aujourd'hui : « Sway » de Rosemary Clooney & Perez Prado. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Show 96, “December Babies,” presents music performed by 15 artists who had birthdays in December. Performers include Matt Monro, Arthur Fiedler, Frank Sinatra, Connie Francis, Perez Prado, Joe Williams, Freddy Cannon, Little Richard, Brenda Lee,... Read More The post Show 96, “December Babies,” appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Embodied carbon is carbon that is emitted in the production of materials, and the building industry is responsible for 40% of global annual emissions. Buildings are the problem AND the solution and understanding the immediate impacts of embodied carbon is absolutely vital. We define the critical difference between operational and embodied carbon, and explain why net zero energy buildings simply aren't enough at this moment in time. We take a pass at understanding the numbers behind them. We also spend the second half of the podcast talking about the materials that we either must, or absolutely should not specify. Wood is good, steel and concrete are bad, but anyone in the industry knows that this doesn't leave us with a simple puzzle to solve. Be sure to head over to Greenbuildingadvisor.com for additional content and related articles. The cocktail of the episode is the Bennett Cocktail. Be sure to check our our lame Facebook page for a detailed recipe. As always, our theme music is Zelda's Theme by Perez Prado, and our featured song this episode is "747" by Bill Callahan.

Episode thirty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and at the terrible afterlife of child stardom. 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 “Space Guitar” by Johnny “Guitar” Watson. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no books on the Teenagers, as far as I know, so as I so often do when talking about vocal groups I relied heavily on Marv Goldberg’s website. Some information also comes from Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll by John A. Jackson. Some background on George Goldner was from Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz. And for more on Morris Levy, see Me, the Mob, and the Music, by Tommy James with Martin Fitzpatrick. This compilation contains every recording by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, together or separately, as well as recordings by Lewis Lymon and the Teenchords, a group led by Lymon’s brother. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript The story of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers is, like so many of the stories we’re dealing with in this series, a story of heartbreak and early death, a story of young people of colour having their work become massively successful and making no money off it because of wealthy businessmen stealing their work. But it’s also a story of what happens when you get involved with the Mafia before you hit puberty, and your career peaks at thirteen. The Teenagers only had one really big hit, but it was one of the biggest hits of the fifties, and it was a song that is almost universally known to this day. So today we’re going to talk about “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” The Teenagers started when two black teenagers from New York, Jimmy Merchant and Sherman Garnes, left the vocal group they’d formed, which was named “the Earth Angels” after the Penguins song, and hooked up with two Latino neighbours, Joe Negroni and Herman Santiago. They named themselves the Ermines. Soon after, they were the support act for local vocal group the Cadillacs: [Excerpt, The Cadillacs, “Speedoo”] They were impressed enough by the Cadillacs that in honour of them they changed their name, becoming the Coup de Villes, and after that the Premiers. They used to practice in the hallway of the apartment block where Sherman Garnes lived, and eventually one of the neighbours got sick of hearing them sing the same songs over and over. The neighbour decided to bring out some love letters his girlfriend had written, some of which were in the form of poems, and say to the kids “why don’t you turn some of these into songs?” And so they did just that — they took one of the letters, containing the phrase “why do birds sing so gay?” and Santiago and Merchant worked out a ballad for Santiago to sing containing that phrase. Soon after this, the Premiers met up with a very young kid, Frankie Lymon, who sang and played percussion in a mambo group. I suppose I should pause here to talk briefly about the mambo craze. Rock and roll wasn’t the only musical style that was making inroads in the pop markets in the fifties — and an impartial observer, looking in 1953 or 1954, might easily have expected that the big musical trend that would shape the next few decades would be calypso music, which had become huge in the US for a brief period. But that wasn’t the only music that was challenging rock and roll. There were a whole host of other musics, usually those from Pacific, Latin-American and/or Caribbean cultures, which tend to get lumped together as “exotica” now, and “mambo” was one of those. This was a craze named after a song by the Cuban bandleader Perez Prado, “Mambo Jambo”: [Excerpt: Perez Prado, “Mambo Jambo”] That song was popular enough that soon everyone was jumping on the bandwagon — for example, Bill Haley and the Comets with “Mambo Rock”: [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, “Mambo Rock”] The group that Frankie Lymon was performing with was one of those groups, but he was easily persuaded instead to join the Premiers. He was the young kid who hung around with them when they practiced, not the leader, and not even a major part of the group. Not yet, anyway. But everything changed for the group when Richie Barrett heard them singing on a street corner near him. These days, Barrett is best-known for his 1962 single “Some Other Guy”, which was later covered by the Beatles, among others: [Excerpt: Richie Barrett, “Some Other Guy”] But at the time he was the lead singer of a group called the Valentines: [Excerpt: The Valentines, “Tonight Kathleen”] He was also working for George Goldner at Rama Records as a talent scout and producer, doing the same kind of things that Ike Turner had been doing for Chess and Modern, or that Jesse Stone did for Atlantic — finding the acts, doing the arrangements, doing all the work involved in turning some teenage kid into someone who could become a star. Goldner was someone for whom most people in the music industry seem to have a certain amount of contempt — he was, by most accounts, a fairly weak-willed figure who got himself into great amounts of debt with dodgy people. But one thing they’re all agreed on is that he had a great ear for a hit, because as Jerry Leiber put it he had the taste of a fourteen-year-old girl. George Goldner had actually got into R&B through the mambo craze. When Goldner had started in the music industry, it had been as the owner of a chain of nightclubs which featured Latin music. The clubs became popular enough that he also started Tico Records, a label that put out Latin records, most notably early recordings by Tito Puente. [Excerpt: Tito Puente: “Vibe Mambo”] When the mambo boom hit, a lot of black teenagers started attending Goldner’s clubs, and he became interested in the other music they were listening to. He started first Rama Records, as a label for R&B singles, and then Gee records, named after the most successful record that had been put out on Rama, “Gee”, by the Crows. However, Goldner had a business partner, and his name was Morris Levy, and Levy was *not* someone you wanted involved in your business in any way. In this series we’re going to talk about a lot of horrible people — and in fact we’ve already covered more than a few of them — yet Morris Levy was one of the worst people we’re going to look at. While most of the people we’ve discussed are either terrible people in their personal life (if they were a musician) or a minor con artist who ripped off musicians and kept the money for themselves, Morris Levy was a terrible human being *and* a con artist, someone who used his Mafia connections to ensure that the artists he ripped off would never even think of suing him, because they valued their lives too much. We’ll be looking at at least one rock and roll star, in the 1960s, who died in mysterious circumstances after getting involved with Levy. Levy had been the founder of Birdland, the world-famous jazz club, in the 1940s, but when ASCAP came to him asking for the money they were meant to get for their songwriters from live performances, Levy had immediately seen the possibilities in music publishing. Levy then formed a publishing company, Patricia Music, and a record label, Roulette, and started into the business of properly exploiting young black people, not just having them work in his clubs for a night, but having them create intellectual property he could continue exploiting for the rest of his life. Indeed, Levy was so keen to make money off dubious intellectual property that he actually formed a company with his friend Alan Freed which attempted to trademark the phrase “rock and roll”, on the basis that this way any records that came out labelled as such would have to pay them for the privilege. Thankfully, the term caught on so rapidly that there was no way for them to enforce the trademark, and it became genericised. But this is who Levy was, and how he made his money — at least his more legitimate money. Where he got the rest from is a matter for the true crime podcasts. There are several people who report death threats, or having to give up their careers, or suddenly move thousands of miles away from home, to avoid Levy’s revenge on artists who didn’t do exactly what he said. So when we’re looking at a group of literal teenage kids — and black teenagers at that, with the smallest amount of institutional privilege possible, you can be sure that he was not going to treat them with the respect that they were due. Levy owned fifty percent of Goldner’s record companies, and would soon grow to own all of them, as Goldner accumulated more gambling debts and used his record labels to pay them off. But at the start of their career, the group didn’t yet have to worry about Levy. That would come later. For now, they were dealing with George Goldner. And Goldner was someone who was actually concerned with the music, and who had been producing hits consistently for the last few years. At the time the Premiers signed with him, for example, he had just produced “You Baby You” for the Cleftones. [Excerpt: The Cleftones, “You Baby You”] When Richie Barrett brought the Premiers to Goldner, he was intrigued because two of the members were Latino, and he was such a lover of Latin music. But he quickly latched on to the potential of Frankie Lymon as a star. Lymon was a captivating performer, and when you watch video footage of him now you can’t help but think of Michael Jackson, who followed almost exactly the same early career trajectory a decade later. While the other band members were the normal kind of teenage kids who joined doo-wop groups, and were clearly a little reserved, Lymon just *went for it*, working the crowd like a young James Brown with absolutely no self-consciousness at all. He also had a gorgeous falsetto voice, and knew how to use it. As we’ve heard, many of the doo-wop groups of the fifties weren’t particularly proficient singers, but Lymon did have a real vocal talent. He was clearly a potential star. Frankie Lymon wasn’t even originally meant to be the lead singer on “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” — that distinctive falsetto that makes the record so memorable was a late addition. The song was originally meant to be sung by Herman Santiago, and it was only in the studio that the song was rearranged to instead focus on the band’s youngest — and youngest-sounding — member. [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”] When the record came out, it wasn’t credited to the Premiers, but to “The Teenagers, featuring Frankie Lymon”. Goldner hadn’t liked the group’s name, and decided to focus on their big selling point — their youth, and in particular the youth of their new lead singer. Much of the work to make the record sound that good was done not by the Teenagers or by Goldner, but by the session saxophone player Jimmy Wright, who ended up doing the arrangements on all of the Teenagers’ records, and whose idea it was to start them with Sherman Garnes’ bass intros. Again, as with so many of these records, there was a white cover version that came out almost immediately — this time by the Diamonds, a group of Canadians who copied the formula of their fellow countrymen the Crew Cuts and more or less cornered the market in white remakes of doo-wop hits. [Excerpt: The Diamonds, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”] But in a sign of how the times were changing, the Diamonds’ version of the song only went to number twelve, while the Teenagers’ version went to number six, helped by a massive push from Morris Levy’s good friend Alan Freed. Partly this may have been down to the fact that all the Diamonds were adults, and they simply couldn’t compete with the novelty sound of a boy who sounded prepubescent, singing in falsetto. Falsetto had, of course, always been a part of the doo-wop vocal blend, but it had been a minor part up to this point. Lead vocals would generally be sung in a smooth high tenor, but would very rarely reach to the truly high notes. Lymon, by virtue of his voice not yet having broken, introduced a new timbre into rock and roll lead vocals, and he influenced almost every vocal group that followed. There might have been a Four Seasons or a Jan and Dean or a Beach Boys without Lymon, but I doubt it. There was also a British cover version, by Alma Cogan, a middle-of-the-road singer known as “the girl with the giggle in her voice”. [Excerpt: Alma Cogan, “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”] This sort of thing was common in Britain well into the sixties, as most US labels didn’t have distribution in the UK, and so if British people wanted to hear American rock and roll songs, they would often get them in native cover versions. Cogan was a particular source of these, often recording songs that had been R&B hits. We will see a lot more of this in future episodes, as we start to look more at the way rock and roll affected the UK. The Teenagers followed the success of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” with “I Want You to Be My Girl”: [Excerpt, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, “I Want You to Be My Girl”] This one did almost as well, reaching a peak of number thirteen in the pop charts. But the singles after that did less well, although “I’m Not A Juvenile Delinquent” became a big hit in the UK. The record label soon decided that Lymon needed to become a solo star, rather than being just the lead singer of the Teenagers. Quite why they made this decision was difficult to say, as one would not normally deliberately break up a hit act. But presumably the calculation was that they would then have two hit acts — solo Frankie Lymon, and the Teenagers still recording together. It didn’t work out like that. Lymon inadvertently caused another crisis in the ongoing battle of rock and roll versus racism. Alan Freed had a new TV series, The Big Beat, which was a toned-down version of Freed’s radio show. By this point, real rock and roll was already in a temporary decline as the major labels fought back, and so Freed’s show was generally filled with the kind of pre-packaged major label act, usually named Bobby, that we’ll be talking about when we get to the later fifties. For all that Freed had a reputation as a supporter of black music, what he really was was someone with the skill to see a bandwagon and jump on it. But still, some of the black performers were still popular, and so Freed had Lymon on his showr. But his show was aimed at a white audience, and so the studio audience was white, and dancing. And Frankie Lymon started to dance as well. A black boy, dancing with a white girl. This did not go down well at all with the Southern network affiliates, and within a couple of weeks Freed’s show had been taken off the TV. And that appearance, the one that destroyed Freed’s show, was almost certainly Lymon’s very first ever solo performance. One might think that this did not augur well for his future career, and that assessment would be largely correct. Neither Lymon nor the Teenagers would ever have another hit after they split. The last few records credited to Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers were in fact Lymon solo recordings, performed with other backing singers. “Goody Goody” did manage to reach number twenty on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, “Goody Goody”] Everything after that did worse. Lymon’s first solo single, “My Girl”, failed to chart: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon, “My Girl”] He continued making records for another couple of years, but nothing came of any of them, and when his voice broke he stopped sounding much like himself. The last recording he made that came even close to being a hit was a remake of Bobby Day’s “Little Bitty Pretty One” from 1960. [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon, “Little Bitty Pretty One”] And the Teenagers didn’t fare much better. They went through several new lead singers. There was Billy Lobrano, a white kid who according to Jimmy Merchant sounded more like Eddie Fisher than like Lymon: [Excerpt: The Teenagers, “Mama Wanna Rock”] Then there was Freddie Houston, who would go on to be the lead singer in one of the many Ink Spots lineups touring in the sixties, and then they started trying to focus on the other original group members, for example calling themselves “Sherman and the Teenagers” when performing the Leiber and Stoller song “The Draw”: [Excerpt: Sherman and the Teenagers, “The Draw”] As you can hear, none of these had the same sound as they’d had with Lymon, and they eventually hit on the idea of getting a woman into the group instead. They got in Sandra Doyle, who would later be Zola Taylor’s replacement in the Platters, and struggled on until 1961, when they finally split up. Lymon’s life after leaving the Teenagers was one of nothing but tragedy. He married three times, every time bigamously, and his only child died two days after the birth. Lymon would apparently regularly steal from Zola Taylor, who became his second wife, to feed his heroin addiction. He briefly reunited with the Teenagers in 1965, but they had little success. He spent a couple of years in the army, and appeared to have got himself clean, and even got a new record deal. But the night before he was meant to go back into the studio, he fell off the wagon, for what would be the last time. Frankie Lymon died, aged just twenty-five, and a has-been for almost half of his life, of a heroin overdose, in 1968. The other Teenagers would reunite, with Lymon’s brother joining them briefly, in the 70s. Sherman Garnes died in 1977, and Joe Negroni in 1978, but Santiago and Merchant continued, off and on, with a lineup of the Teenagers — a version of the band continues to this day, still featuring Herman Santiago, and Merchant remained with the band until his retirement a few years ago. But their first hit caused legal problems: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”] “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?” was written by Herman Santiago, with the help of Jimmy Merchant. But neither Santiago or Merchant were credited on the song when it came out. The credited songwriters for the song are Frankie Lymon — who did have some input into rewriting it in the studio — and Morris Levy, who had never even heard the song until after it was a massive hit. George Goldner was originally credited as Lymon’s co-writer, and of course Goldner never wrote it either, but at least he was in the studio when it was recorded. But when Levy bought out Goldner’s holdings in his companies, he also bought out his rights to songs he was credited for, so Levy became the legal co-writer of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” In 1992 Santiago and Merchant finally won the credit for having written “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”, but in 1996 the ruling was overturned. They’d apparently waited too long to take legal action over having their song stolen, and so the rights reverted to Lymon and Morris Levy — who had never even met the band when they wrote the song. But, of course, Lymon wasn’t alive to get the money. But his widow was. Or rather, his widows, plural, were. In the 1980s, three separate women claimed to be Lymon’s widow and thus his legitimate heir. One was his first wife, who he had married in 1964 while she was still married to her first husband. One was Zola Taylor, who Lymon supposedly married bigamously a year after his first marriage, but who couldn’t produce any evidence of this, and the third was either his second or third wife, who he married bigamously in 1967 while still married to his first, and possibly his second, wife. That third wife eventually won the various legal battles and is now in charge of the Frankie Lymon legacy. “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?” has gone on to be a standard, recorded by everyone from Joni Mitchell to the Beach Boys to Diana Ross. But Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers stand as a cautionary tale, an example that all too many people were still all too eager to follow.

Episode thirty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and at the terrible afterlife of child stardom. 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 "Space Guitar" by Johnny "Guitar" Watson. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no books on the Teenagers, as far as I know, so as I so often do when talking about vocal groups I relied heavily on Marv Goldberg's website. Some information also comes from Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll by John A. Jackson. Some background on George Goldner was from Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz. And for more on Morris Levy, see Me, the Mob, and the Music, by Tommy James with Martin Fitzpatrick. This compilation contains every recording by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, together or separately, as well as recordings by Lewis Lymon and the Teenchords, a group led by Lymon's brother. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript The story of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers is, like so many of the stories we're dealing with in this series, a story of heartbreak and early death, a story of young people of colour having their work become massively successful and making no money off it because of wealthy businessmen stealing their work. But it's also a story of what happens when you get involved with the Mafia before you hit puberty, and your career peaks at thirteen. The Teenagers only had one really big hit, but it was one of the biggest hits of the fifties, and it was a song that is almost universally known to this day. So today we're going to talk about "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" The Teenagers started when two black teenagers from New York, Jimmy Merchant and Sherman Garnes, left the vocal group they'd formed, which was named "the Earth Angels" after the Penguins song, and hooked up with two Latino neighbours, Joe Negroni and Herman Santiago. They named themselves the Ermines. Soon after, they were the support act for local vocal group the Cadillacs: [Excerpt, The Cadillacs, "Speedoo"] They were impressed enough by the Cadillacs that in honour of them they changed their name, becoming the Coup de Villes, and after that the Premiers. They used to practice in the hallway of the apartment block where Sherman Garnes lived, and eventually one of the neighbours got sick of hearing them sing the same songs over and over. The neighbour decided to bring out some love letters his girlfriend had written, some of which were in the form of poems, and say to the kids "why don't you turn some of these into songs?" And so they did just that -- they took one of the letters, containing the phrase "why do birds sing so gay?" and Santiago and Merchant worked out a ballad for Santiago to sing containing that phrase. Soon after this, the Premiers met up with a very young kid, Frankie Lymon, who sang and played percussion in a mambo group. I suppose I should pause here to talk briefly about the mambo craze. Rock and roll wasn't the only musical style that was making inroads in the pop markets in the fifties -- and an impartial observer, looking in 1953 or 1954, might easily have expected that the big musical trend that would shape the next few decades would be calypso music, which had become huge in the US for a brief period. But that wasn't the only music that was challenging rock and roll. There were a whole host of other musics, usually those from Pacific, Latin-American and/or Caribbean cultures, which tend to get lumped together as "exotica" now, and "mambo" was one of those. This was a craze named after a song by the Cuban bandleader Perez Prado, "Mambo Jambo": [Excerpt: Perez Prado, "Mambo Jambo"] That song was popular enough that soon everyone was jumping on the bandwagon -- for example, Bill Haley and the Comets with "Mambo Rock": [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, "Mambo Rock"] The group that Frankie Lymon was performing with was one of those groups, but he was easily persuaded instead to join the Premiers. He was the young kid who hung around with them when they practiced, not the leader, and not even a major part of the group. Not yet, anyway. But everything changed for the group when Richie Barrett heard them singing on a street corner near him. These days, Barrett is best-known for his 1962 single "Some Other Guy", which was later covered by the Beatles, among others: [Excerpt: Richie Barrett, "Some Other Guy"] But at the time he was the lead singer of a group called the Valentines: [Excerpt: The Valentines, "Tonight Kathleen"] He was also working for George Goldner at Rama Records as a talent scout and producer, doing the same kind of things that Ike Turner had been doing for Chess and Modern, or that Jesse Stone did for Atlantic -- finding the acts, doing the arrangements, doing all the work involved in turning some teenage kid into someone who could become a star. Goldner was someone for whom most people in the music industry seem to have a certain amount of contempt -- he was, by most accounts, a fairly weak-willed figure who got himself into great amounts of debt with dodgy people. But one thing they're all agreed on is that he had a great ear for a hit, because as Jerry Leiber put it he had the taste of a fourteen-year-old girl. George Goldner had actually got into R&B through the mambo craze. When Goldner had started in the music industry, it had been as the owner of a chain of nightclubs which featured Latin music. The clubs became popular enough that he also started Tico Records, a label that put out Latin records, most notably early recordings by Tito Puente. [Excerpt: Tito Puente: "Vibe Mambo"] When the mambo boom hit, a lot of black teenagers started attending Goldner's clubs, and he became interested in the other music they were listening to. He started first Rama Records, as a label for R&B singles, and then Gee records, named after the most successful record that had been put out on Rama, "Gee", by the Crows. However, Goldner had a business partner, and his name was Morris Levy, and Levy was *not* someone you wanted involved in your business in any way. In this series we're going to talk about a lot of horrible people -- and in fact we've already covered more than a few of them -- yet Morris Levy was one of the worst people we're going to look at. While most of the people we've discussed are either terrible people in their personal life (if they were a musician) or a minor con artist who ripped off musicians and kept the money for themselves, Morris Levy was a terrible human being *and* a con artist, someone who used his Mafia connections to ensure that the artists he ripped off would never even think of suing him, because they valued their lives too much. We'll be looking at at least one rock and roll star, in the 1960s, who died in mysterious circumstances after getting involved with Levy. Levy had been the founder of Birdland, the world-famous jazz club, in the 1940s, but when ASCAP came to him asking for the money they were meant to get for their songwriters from live performances, Levy had immediately seen the possibilities in music publishing. Levy then formed a publishing company, Patricia Music, and a record label, Roulette, and started into the business of properly exploiting young black people, not just having them work in his clubs for a night, but having them create intellectual property he could continue exploiting for the rest of his life. Indeed, Levy was so keen to make money off dubious intellectual property that he actually formed a company with his friend Alan Freed which attempted to trademark the phrase "rock and roll", on the basis that this way any records that came out labelled as such would have to pay them for the privilege. Thankfully, the term caught on so rapidly that there was no way for them to enforce the trademark, and it became genericised. But this is who Levy was, and how he made his money -- at least his more legitimate money. Where he got the rest from is a matter for the true crime podcasts. There are several people who report death threats, or having to give up their careers, or suddenly move thousands of miles away from home, to avoid Levy's revenge on artists who didn't do exactly what he said. So when we're looking at a group of literal teenage kids -- and black teenagers at that, with the smallest amount of institutional privilege possible, you can be sure that he was not going to treat them with the respect that they were due. Levy owned fifty percent of Goldner's record companies, and would soon grow to own all of them, as Goldner accumulated more gambling debts and used his record labels to pay them off. But at the start of their career, the group didn't yet have to worry about Levy. That would come later. For now, they were dealing with George Goldner. And Goldner was someone who was actually concerned with the music, and who had been producing hits consistently for the last few years. At the time the Premiers signed with him, for example, he had just produced "You Baby You" for the Cleftones. [Excerpt: The Cleftones, "You Baby You"] When Richie Barrett brought the Premiers to Goldner, he was intrigued because two of the members were Latino, and he was such a lover of Latin music. But he quickly latched on to the potential of Frankie Lymon as a star. Lymon was a captivating performer, and when you watch video footage of him now you can't help but think of Michael Jackson, who followed almost exactly the same early career trajectory a decade later. While the other band members were the normal kind of teenage kids who joined doo-wop groups, and were clearly a little reserved, Lymon just *went for it*, working the crowd like a young James Brown with absolutely no self-consciousness at all. He also had a gorgeous falsetto voice, and knew how to use it. As we've heard, many of the doo-wop groups of the fifties weren't particularly proficient singers, but Lymon did have a real vocal talent. He was clearly a potential star. Frankie Lymon wasn't even originally meant to be the lead singer on "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" -- that distinctive falsetto that makes the record so memorable was a late addition. The song was originally meant to be sung by Herman Santiago, and it was only in the studio that the song was rearranged to instead focus on the band's youngest -- and youngest-sounding -- member. [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?"] When the record came out, it wasn't credited to the Premiers, but to "The Teenagers, featuring Frankie Lymon". Goldner hadn't liked the group's name, and decided to focus on their big selling point -- their youth, and in particular the youth of their new lead singer. Much of the work to make the record sound that good was done not by the Teenagers or by Goldner, but by the session saxophone player Jimmy Wright, who ended up doing the arrangements on all of the Teenagers' records, and whose idea it was to start them with Sherman Garnes' bass intros. Again, as with so many of these records, there was a white cover version that came out almost immediately -- this time by the Diamonds, a group of Canadians who copied the formula of their fellow countrymen the Crew Cuts and more or less cornered the market in white remakes of doo-wop hits. [Excerpt: The Diamonds, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?"] But in a sign of how the times were changing, the Diamonds' version of the song only went to number twelve, while the Teenagers' version went to number six, helped by a massive push from Morris Levy's good friend Alan Freed. Partly this may have been down to the fact that all the Diamonds were adults, and they simply couldn't compete with the novelty sound of a boy who sounded prepubescent, singing in falsetto. Falsetto had, of course, always been a part of the doo-wop vocal blend, but it had been a minor part up to this point. Lead vocals would generally be sung in a smooth high tenor, but would very rarely reach to the truly high notes. Lymon, by virtue of his voice not yet having broken, introduced a new timbre into rock and roll lead vocals, and he influenced almost every vocal group that followed. There might have been a Four Seasons or a Jan and Dean or a Beach Boys without Lymon, but I doubt it. There was also a British cover version, by Alma Cogan, a middle-of-the-road singer known as "the girl with the giggle in her voice". [Excerpt: Alma Cogan, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?"] This sort of thing was common in Britain well into the sixties, as most US labels didn't have distribution in the UK, and so if British people wanted to hear American rock and roll songs, they would often get them in native cover versions. Cogan was a particular source of these, often recording songs that had been R&B hits. We will see a lot more of this in future episodes, as we start to look more at the way rock and roll affected the UK. The Teenagers followed the success of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" with "I Want You to Be My Girl": [Excerpt, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, "I Want You to Be My Girl"] This one did almost as well, reaching a peak of number thirteen in the pop charts. But the singles after that did less well, although "I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent" became a big hit in the UK. The record label soon decided that Lymon needed to become a solo star, rather than being just the lead singer of the Teenagers. Quite why they made this decision was difficult to say, as one would not normally deliberately break up a hit act. But presumably the calculation was that they would then have two hit acts -- solo Frankie Lymon, and the Teenagers still recording together. It didn't work out like that. Lymon inadvertently caused another crisis in the ongoing battle of rock and roll versus racism. Alan Freed had a new TV series, The Big Beat, which was a toned-down version of Freed's radio show. By this point, real rock and roll was already in a temporary decline as the major labels fought back, and so Freed's show was generally filled with the kind of pre-packaged major label act, usually named Bobby, that we'll be talking about when we get to the later fifties. For all that Freed had a reputation as a supporter of black music, what he really was was someone with the skill to see a bandwagon and jump on it. But still, some of the black performers were still popular, and so Freed had Lymon on his showr. But his show was aimed at a white audience, and so the studio audience was white, and dancing. And Frankie Lymon started to dance as well. A black boy, dancing with a white girl. This did not go down well at all with the Southern network affiliates, and within a couple of weeks Freed's show had been taken off the TV. And that appearance, the one that destroyed Freed's show, was almost certainly Lymon's very first ever solo performance. One might think that this did not augur well for his future career, and that assessment would be largely correct. Neither Lymon nor the Teenagers would ever have another hit after they split. The last few records credited to Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers were in fact Lymon solo recordings, performed with other backing singers. "Goody Goody" did manage to reach number twenty on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, "Goody Goody"] Everything after that did worse. Lymon's first solo single, "My Girl", failed to chart: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon, "My Girl"] He continued making records for another couple of years, but nothing came of any of them, and when his voice broke he stopped sounding much like himself. The last recording he made that came even close to being a hit was a remake of Bobby Day's "Little Bitty Pretty One" from 1960. [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon, "Little Bitty Pretty One"] And the Teenagers didn't fare much better. They went through several new lead singers. There was Billy Lobrano, a white kid who according to Jimmy Merchant sounded more like Eddie Fisher than like Lymon: [Excerpt: The Teenagers, "Mama Wanna Rock"] Then there was Freddie Houston, who would go on to be the lead singer in one of the many Ink Spots lineups touring in the sixties, and then they started trying to focus on the other original group members, for example calling themselves "Sherman and the Teenagers" when performing the Leiber and Stoller song "The Draw": [Excerpt: Sherman and the Teenagers, "The Draw"] As you can hear, none of these had the same sound as they'd had with Lymon, and they eventually hit on the idea of getting a woman into the group instead. They got in Sandra Doyle, who would later be Zola Taylor's replacement in the Platters, and struggled on until 1961, when they finally split up. Lymon's life after leaving the Teenagers was one of nothing but tragedy. He married three times, every time bigamously, and his only child died two days after the birth. Lymon would apparently regularly steal from Zola Taylor, who became his second wife, to feed his heroin addiction. He briefly reunited with the Teenagers in 1965, but they had little success. He spent a couple of years in the army, and appeared to have got himself clean, and even got a new record deal. But the night before he was meant to go back into the studio, he fell off the wagon, for what would be the last time. Frankie Lymon died, aged just twenty-five, and a has-been for almost half of his life, of a heroin overdose, in 1968. The other Teenagers would reunite, with Lymon's brother joining them briefly, in the 70s. Sherman Garnes died in 1977, and Joe Negroni in 1978, but Santiago and Merchant continued, off and on, with a lineup of the Teenagers -- a version of the band continues to this day, still featuring Herman Santiago, and Merchant remained with the band until his retirement a few years ago. But their first hit caused legal problems: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?"] "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" was written by Herman Santiago, with the help of Jimmy Merchant. But neither Santiago or Merchant were credited on the song when it came out. The credited songwriters for the song are Frankie Lymon -- who did have some input into rewriting it in the studio -- and Morris Levy, who had never even heard the song until after it was a massive hit. George Goldner was originally credited as Lymon's co-writer, and of course Goldner never wrote it either, but at least he was in the studio when it was recorded. But when Levy bought out Goldner's holdings in his companies, he also bought out his rights to songs he was credited for, so Levy became the legal co-writer of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" In 1992 Santiago and Merchant finally won the credit for having written "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?", but in 1996 the ruling was overturned. They'd apparently waited too long to take legal action over having their song stolen, and so the rights reverted to Lymon and Morris Levy -- who had never even met the band when they wrote the song. But, of course, Lymon wasn't alive to get the money. But his widow was. Or rather, his widows, plural, were. In the 1980s, three separate women claimed to be Lymon's widow and thus his legitimate heir. One was his first wife, who he had married in 1964 while she was still married to her first husband. One was Zola Taylor, who Lymon supposedly married bigamously a year after his first marriage, but who couldn't produce any evidence of this, and the third was either his second or third wife, who he married bigamously in 1967 while still married to his first, and possibly his second, wife. That third wife eventually won the various legal battles and is now in charge of the Frankie Lymon legacy. "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" has gone on to be a standard, recorded by everyone from Joni Mitchell to the Beach Boys to Diana Ross. But Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers stand as a cautionary tale, an example that all too many people were still all too eager to follow.

Episode thirty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and at the terrible afterlife of child stardom. 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 “Space Guitar” by Johnny “Guitar” Watson. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no books on the Teenagers, as far as I know, so as I so often do when talking about vocal groups I relied heavily on Marv Goldberg’s website. Some information also comes from Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll by John A. Jackson. Some background on George Goldner was from Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz. And for more on Morris Levy, see Me, the Mob, and the Music, by Tommy James with Martin Fitzpatrick. This compilation contains every recording by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, together or separately, as well as recordings by Lewis Lymon and the Teenchords, a group led by Lymon’s brother. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript The story of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers is, like so many of the stories we’re dealing with in this series, a story of heartbreak and early death, a story of young people of colour having their work become massively successful and making no money off it because of wealthy businessmen stealing their work. But it’s also a story of what happens when you get involved with the Mafia before you hit puberty, and your career peaks at thirteen. The Teenagers only had one really big hit, but it was one of the biggest hits of the fifties, and it was a song that is almost universally known to this day. So today we’re going to talk about “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” The Teenagers started when two black teenagers from New York, Jimmy Merchant and Sherman Garnes, left the vocal group they’d formed, which was named “the Earth Angels” after the Penguins song, and hooked up with two Latino neighbours, Joe Negroni and Herman Santiago. They named themselves the Ermines. Soon after, they were the support act for local vocal group the Cadillacs: [Excerpt, The Cadillacs, “Speedoo”] They were impressed enough by the Cadillacs that in honour of them they changed their name, becoming the Coup de Villes, and after that the Premiers. They used to practice in the hallway of the apartment block where Sherman Garnes lived, and eventually one of the neighbours got sick of hearing them sing the same songs over and over. The neighbour decided to bring out some love letters his girlfriend had written, some of which were in the form of poems, and say to the kids “why don’t you turn some of these into songs?” And so they did just that — they took one of the letters, containing the phrase “why do birds sing so gay?” and Santiago and Merchant worked out a ballad for Santiago to sing containing that phrase. Soon after this, the Premiers met up with a very young kid, Frankie Lymon, who sang and played percussion in a mambo group. I suppose I should pause here to talk briefly about the mambo craze. Rock and roll wasn’t the only musical style that was making inroads in the pop markets in the fifties — and an impartial observer, looking in 1953 or 1954, might easily have expected that the big musical trend that would shape the next few decades would be calypso music, which had become huge in the US for a brief period. But that wasn’t the only music that was challenging rock and roll. There were a whole host of other musics, usually those from Pacific, Latin-American and/or Caribbean cultures, which tend to get lumped together as “exotica” now, and “mambo” was one of those. This was a craze named after a song by the Cuban bandleader Perez Prado, “Mambo Jambo”: [Excerpt: Perez Prado, “Mambo Jambo”] That song was popular enough that soon everyone was jumping on the bandwagon — for example, Bill Haley and the Comets with “Mambo Rock”: [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, “Mambo Rock”] The group that Frankie Lymon was performing with was one of those groups, but he was easily persuaded instead to join the Premiers. He was the young kid who hung around with them when they practiced, not the leader, and not even a major part of the group. Not yet, anyway. But everything changed for the group when Richie Barrett heard them singing on a street corner near him. These days, Barrett is best-known for his 1962 single “Some Other Guy”, which was later covered by the Beatles, among others: [Excerpt: Richie Barrett, “Some Other Guy”] But at the time he was the lead singer of a group called the Valentines: [Excerpt: The Valentines, “Tonight Kathleen”] He was also working for George Goldner at Rama Records as a talent scout and producer, doing the same kind of things that Ike Turner had been doing for Chess and Modern, or that Jesse Stone did for Atlantic — finding the acts, doing the arrangements, doing all the work involved in turning some teenage kid into someone who could become a star. Goldner was someone for whom most people in the music industry seem to have a certain amount of contempt — he was, by most accounts, a fairly weak-willed figure who got himself into great amounts of debt with dodgy people. But one thing they’re all agreed on is that he had a great ear for a hit, because as Jerry Leiber put it he had the taste of a fourteen-year-old girl. George Goldner had actually got into R&B through the mambo craze. When Goldner had started in the music industry, it had been as the owner of a chain of nightclubs which featured Latin music. The clubs became popular enough that he also started Tico Records, a label that put out Latin records, most notably early recordings by Tito Puente. [Excerpt: Tito Puente: “Vibe Mambo”] When the mambo boom hit, a lot of black teenagers started attending Goldner’s clubs, and he became interested in the other music they were listening to. He started first Rama Records, as a label for R&B singles, and then Gee records, named after the most successful record that had been put out on Rama, “Gee”, by the Crows. However, Goldner had a business partner, and his name was Morris Levy, and Levy was *not* someone you wanted involved in your business in any way. In this series we’re going to talk about a lot of horrible people — and in fact we’ve already covered more than a few of them — yet Morris Levy was one of the worst people we’re going to look at. While most of the people we’ve discussed are either terrible people in their personal life (if they were a musician) or a minor con artist who ripped off musicians and kept the money for themselves, Morris Levy was a terrible human being *and* a con artist, someone who used his Mafia connections to ensure that the artists he ripped off would never even think of suing him, because they valued their lives too much. We’ll be looking at at least one rock and roll star, in the 1960s, who died in mysterious circumstances after getting involved with Levy. Levy had been the founder of Birdland, the world-famous jazz club, in the 1940s, but when ASCAP came to him asking for the money they were meant to get for their songwriters from live performances, Levy had immediately seen the possibilities in music publishing. Levy then formed a publishing company, Patricia Music, and a record label, Roulette, and started into the business of properly exploiting young black people, not just having them work in his clubs for a night, but having them create intellectual property he could continue exploiting for the rest of his life. Indeed, Levy was so keen to make money off dubious intellectual property that he actually formed a company with his friend Alan Freed which attempted to trademark the phrase “rock and roll”, on the basis that this way any records that came out labelled as such would have to pay them for the privilege. Thankfully, the term caught on so rapidly that there was no way for them to enforce the trademark, and it became genericised. But this is who Levy was, and how he made his money — at least his more legitimate money. Where he got the rest from is a matter for the true crime podcasts. There are several people who report death threats, or having to give up their careers, or suddenly move thousands of miles away from home, to avoid Levy’s revenge on artists who didn’t do exactly what he said. So when we’re looking at a group of literal teenage kids — and black teenagers at that, with the smallest amount of institutional privilege possible, you can be sure that he was not going to treat them with the respect that they were due. Levy owned fifty percent of Goldner’s record companies, and would soon grow to own all of them, as Goldner accumulated more gambling debts and used his record labels to pay them off. But at the start of their career, the group didn’t yet have to worry about Levy. That would come later. For now, they were dealing with George Goldner. And Goldner was someone who was actually concerned with the music, and who had been producing hits consistently for the last few years. At the time the Premiers signed with him, for example, he had just produced “You Baby You” for the Cleftones. [Excerpt: The Cleftones, “You Baby You”] When Richie Barrett brought the Premiers to Goldner, he was intrigued because two of the members were Latino, and he was such a lover of Latin music. But he quickly latched on to the potential of Frankie Lymon as a star. Lymon was a captivating performer, and when you watch video footage of him now you can’t help but think of Michael Jackson, who followed almost exactly the same early career trajectory a decade later. While the other band members were the normal kind of teenage kids who joined doo-wop groups, and were clearly a little reserved, Lymon just *went for it*, working the crowd like a young James Brown with absolutely no self-consciousness at all. He also had a gorgeous falsetto voice, and knew how to use it. As we’ve heard, many of the doo-wop groups of the fifties weren’t particularly proficient singers, but Lymon did have a real vocal talent. He was clearly a potential star. Frankie Lymon wasn’t even originally meant to be the lead singer on “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” — that distinctive falsetto that makes the record so memorable was a late addition. The song was originally meant to be sung by Herman Santiago, and it was only in the studio that the song was rearranged to instead focus on the band’s youngest — and youngest-sounding — member. [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”] When the record came out, it wasn’t credited to the Premiers, but to “The Teenagers, featuring Frankie Lymon”. Goldner hadn’t liked the group’s name, and decided to focus on their big selling point — their youth, and in particular the youth of their new lead singer. Much of the work to make the record sound that good was done not by the Teenagers or by Goldner, but by the session saxophone player Jimmy Wright, who ended up doing the arrangements on all of the Teenagers’ records, and whose idea it was to start them with Sherman Garnes’ bass intros. Again, as with so many of these records, there was a white cover version that came out almost immediately — this time by the Diamonds, a group of Canadians who copied the formula of their fellow countrymen the Crew Cuts and more or less cornered the market in white remakes of doo-wop hits. [Excerpt: The Diamonds, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”] But in a sign of how the times were changing, the Diamonds’ version of the song only went to number twelve, while the Teenagers’ version went to number six, helped by a massive push from Morris Levy’s good friend Alan Freed. Partly this may have been down to the fact that all the Diamonds were adults, and they simply couldn’t compete with the novelty sound of a boy who sounded prepubescent, singing in falsetto. Falsetto had, of course, always been a part of the doo-wop vocal blend, but it had been a minor part up to this point. Lead vocals would generally be sung in a smooth high tenor, but would very rarely reach to the truly high notes. Lymon, by virtue of his voice not yet having broken, introduced a new timbre into rock and roll lead vocals, and he influenced almost every vocal group that followed. There might have been a Four Seasons or a Jan and Dean or a Beach Boys without Lymon, but I doubt it. There was also a British cover version, by Alma Cogan, a middle-of-the-road singer known as “the girl with the giggle in her voice”. [Excerpt: Alma Cogan, “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”] This sort of thing was common in Britain well into the sixties, as most US labels didn’t have distribution in the UK, and so if British people wanted to hear American rock and roll songs, they would often get them in native cover versions. Cogan was a particular source of these, often recording songs that had been R&B hits. We will see a lot more of this in future episodes, as we start to look more at the way rock and roll affected the UK. The Teenagers followed the success of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” with “I Want You to Be My Girl”: [Excerpt, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, “I Want You to Be My Girl”] This one did almost as well, reaching a peak of number thirteen in the pop charts. But the singles after that did less well, although “I’m Not A Juvenile Delinquent” became a big hit in the UK. The record label soon decided that Lymon needed to become a solo star, rather than being just the lead singer of the Teenagers. Quite why they made this decision was difficult to say, as one would not normally deliberately break up a hit act. But presumably the calculation was that they would then have two hit acts — solo Frankie Lymon, and the Teenagers still recording together. It didn’t work out like that. Lymon inadvertently caused another crisis in the ongoing battle of rock and roll versus racism. Alan Freed had a new TV series, The Big Beat, which was a toned-down version of Freed’s radio show. By this point, real rock and roll was already in a temporary decline as the major labels fought back, and so Freed’s show was generally filled with the kind of pre-packaged major label act, usually named Bobby, that we’ll be talking about when we get to the later fifties. For all that Freed had a reputation as a supporter of black music, what he really was was someone with the skill to see a bandwagon and jump on it. But still, some of the black performers were still popular, and so Freed had Lymon on his showr. But his show was aimed at a white audience, and so the studio audience was white, and dancing. And Frankie Lymon started to dance as well. A black boy, dancing with a white girl. This did not go down well at all with the Southern network affiliates, and within a couple of weeks Freed’s show had been taken off the TV. And that appearance, the one that destroyed Freed’s show, was almost certainly Lymon’s very first ever solo performance. One might think that this did not augur well for his future career, and that assessment would be largely correct. Neither Lymon nor the Teenagers would ever have another hit after they split. The last few records credited to Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers were in fact Lymon solo recordings, performed with other backing singers. “Goody Goody” did manage to reach number twenty on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, “Goody Goody”] Everything after that did worse. Lymon’s first solo single, “My Girl”, failed to chart: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon, “My Girl”] He continued making records for another couple of years, but nothing came of any of them, and when his voice broke he stopped sounding much like himself. The last recording he made that came even close to being a hit was a remake of Bobby Day’s “Little Bitty Pretty One” from 1960. [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon, “Little Bitty Pretty One”] And the Teenagers didn’t fare much better. They went through several new lead singers. There was Billy Lobrano, a white kid who according to Jimmy Merchant sounded more like Eddie Fisher than like Lymon: [Excerpt: The Teenagers, “Mama Wanna Rock”] Then there was Freddie Houston, who would go on to be the lead singer in one of the many Ink Spots lineups touring in the sixties, and then they started trying to focus on the other original group members, for example calling themselves “Sherman and the Teenagers” when performing the Leiber and Stoller song “The Draw”: [Excerpt: Sherman and the Teenagers, “The Draw”] As you can hear, none of these had the same sound as they’d had with Lymon, and they eventually hit on the idea of getting a woman into the group instead. They got in Sandra Doyle, who would later be Zola Taylor’s replacement in the Platters, and struggled on until 1961, when they finally split up. Lymon’s life after leaving the Teenagers was one of nothing but tragedy. He married three times, every time bigamously, and his only child died two days after the birth. Lymon would apparently regularly steal from Zola Taylor, who became his second wife, to feed his heroin addiction. He briefly reunited with the Teenagers in 1965, but they had little success. He spent a couple of years in the army, and appeared to have got himself clean, and even got a new record deal. But the night before he was meant to go back into the studio, he fell off the wagon, for what would be the last time. Frankie Lymon died, aged just twenty-five, and a has-been for almost half of his life, of a heroin overdose, in 1968. The other Teenagers would reunite, with Lymon’s brother joining them briefly, in the 70s. Sherman Garnes died in 1977, and Joe Negroni in 1978, but Santiago and Merchant continued, off and on, with a lineup of the Teenagers — a version of the band continues to this day, still featuring Herman Santiago, and Merchant remained with the band until his retirement a few years ago. But their first hit caused legal problems: [Excerpt: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”] “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?” was written by Herman Santiago, with the help of Jimmy Merchant. But neither Santiago or Merchant were credited on the song when it came out. The credited songwriters for the song are Frankie Lymon — who did have some input into rewriting it in the studio — and Morris Levy, who had never even heard the song until after it was a massive hit. George Goldner was originally credited as Lymon’s co-writer, and of course Goldner never wrote it either, but at least he was in the studio when it was recorded. But when Levy bought out Goldner’s holdings in his companies, he also bought out his rights to songs he was credited for, so Levy became the legal co-writer of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” In 1992 Santiago and Merchant finally won the credit for having written “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”, but in 1996 the ruling was overturned. They’d apparently waited too long to take legal action over having their song stolen, and so the rights reverted to Lymon and Morris Levy — who had never even met the band when they wrote the song. But, of course, Lymon wasn’t alive to get the money. But his widow was. Or rather, his widows, plural, were. In the 1980s, three separate women claimed to be Lymon’s widow and thus his legitimate heir. One was his first wife, who he had married in 1964 while she was still married to her first husband. One was Zola Taylor, who Lymon supposedly married bigamously a year after his first marriage, but who couldn’t produce any evidence of this, and the third was either his second or third wife, who he married bigamously in 1967 while still married to his first, and possibly his second, wife. That third wife eventually won the various legal battles and is now in charge of the Frankie Lymon legacy. “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?” has gone on to be a standard, recorded by everyone from Joni Mitchell to the Beach Boys to Diana Ross. But Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers stand as a cautionary tale, an example that all too many people were still all too eager to follow.

What is a Living Building? It is rooted in place yet harvests all it needs (energy, water), is adapted to its climate and site, operates pollution-free, is comprised of integrated systems, and...is BEAUTIFUL. Phil and Chris talk about Living Building Challenge, a certification program that aims to transform the market place, with all it's joys and challenges. Collaborating for the first time, their firms are working on an LBC project, The Ecology School in Saco, Maine. They discuss the 7 petals (and 20 imperatives) put forth by the LBC in detail and chat about how this process has fundamentally changed how they practice as architects. Be sure to head over to Greenbuildingadvisor.com for additional content and related articles. The cocktail of the episode is a Notorious F.L.I.P. Be sure to check out our lame facebook page for a detailed recipe. As always our theme music is Zelda's Theme by Perez Prado, and our featured song this episode is "Buoys" by Panda Bear.

In cold climates, Multi-zone heat pump systems (or multi-split systems) are developing a reputation for greatly under-performing , in terms of energy efficiency. Don't freak out! Chris and Phil have special guest, Dana Fischer of Mitsubishi, over to share a beverage and get to the bottom of this problem and how to properly approach the design of multi-zone heat pumps for your energy efficient house (or building). Be sure to head over to Greenbuildingadvisor.com for additional content and related articles. The cocktail of the episode is Hot Buttered Rum! and a fantastic cranberry mocktail of Phil's creation. Be sure to check out our lame facebook page for more detailed recipes. As always our theme music is Zelda's Theme by Perez Prado, and our featured song is Two-Headed Boy by Neutral Milk Hotel. Stay warm, friends!

NYC Radio Live listeners get to hang out with Jacob Plasse from Orquesta Akokán.The 12 piece cuban Grammy Nominated band revives the sound of the renowned dance orchestras of the 1940s and 1950s with influences such as  Arsenio Rodriguez, Perez Prado, and Beny Moré

Thema is Voetbalplaatsjes met muziek van Ronnie en de Ronnies, Tröckener Kecks, Jack Hammer, Drs. P en Perez Prado.

Découvrez ce qui se cache derrière nos douze mots de l'année. Pour juin, voici "Juke-box". Extraits : "Le claqueur de doigts" de Serge Gainsbourg - éditeurs WARNER CHAPPELL MUSIC FRANCE et MELODY NELSON PUBLISHING / "Mambo Numero Ocho" de Perez de Perez Prado

Uur 1 1. Confess ? Patti Page 2. Grandma?s hands ? Bill Withers 3. Alles doet er toe ? Herman van Veen 4. For Emily whenever I may find her ? Simon & Garfunkel 5. This shirt ? Mary Chapin Carpenter 6. Mindel de mai auto ? Tete Alhinho 7. Mens durf te leven ? Wende 8. Thomas County law ? Iron & Wine 9. Les play-boys ? Jacques Dutronc 10. Zien stad steit op ? Joosten, Alders & Pollux 11. My mind is for sale ? Jack Johnson 12. Who was it ? Gilbert O?Sullivan 13. Cad e sin don te sin ? Tri Yann 14. Seems I?m never tired loving you ? Lizz Wright 15. I?m blue ? Ikettes 16. Mambon o. 5 ? Perez Prado & His Orchestra Uur 2 1. The other side of the sun ? Janis Ian 2. Jeepers creepers ? Tony Bennett 3. Mi sono legato ? Alberto Patrucco 4. Thuishavensamba ? Cornelis Vreeswijk 5. Cocco bello ? Silje Nergaard 6. Calling you ? Jevetta Steele 7. I?m only sleeping ? The Beatles 8. Pourvu ? Gauvain Sers 9. You keep coming back like a song ? Bing Crosby 10. Puttin? on the ritz ? Rufus Wainwright 11. Het land van Maas en Waal ? Boudewijn de Groot 12. Find a way home ?Mala Vita 13. Jazzman ? Carole King 14. La Lola ? Cafe Quijano 15. Ain?t no mountain high enough ? Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

 Born in Pativilca, Peru, 100 miles north of Lima, Alex Acuña was born into a musical family that inspired him and helped shape him as a musician. His father and five brothers were all musicians. Alex taught himself how to play the drums from the age of four. By the time Alex turned ten, he was already playing in local bands. As a teenager, he moved to Lima and became one of Peru's most accomplished session drummers, performing on many recording projects for artists, as well as film and television productions.In Lima, Alex also earned a glowing reputation for his live performances. So much so, that at the age of eighteen, Alex was chosen in 1964 by the great Cuban band leader, Perez Prado, to join his big band. It was with the Prado band that Alex first traveled to the United States. In 1965, Alex moved to Puerto Rico to work as a studio musician and play locally. During this period, he also studied for three years at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, playing as a classical percussionist with the Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the famed Spanish cellist master Pablo Casals.Alex moved to Las Vegas in 1974, where he played with such greats as Elvis Presley Diana Ross, Paul Anka, Frank Sinatra, Olivia Newton John. Between 1975 and 1977, he made part of jazz history when he became both drummer and percussionist for one of the most innovative and pioneering jazz groups of our time, Weather Report. He first performed as percussionist (October 1975 to April 1976), and later as drummer (April 1976 to October 1977). He recorded two albums with the group: “Black Market” (1976) and the highly successful “Heavy Weather” (1977), which included the famous tracks “Birdland” and “Havona.” “Heavy Weather” became the first jazz-fusion album to sell a million copies.Alex next moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1978 where he quickly earned the position of a valued session drummer and percussionist for recordings, television and motion pictures. His countless album credits include such diverse artist as U2, Paul McCartney, Blondy, Joni Mitchell, Jay Z, Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston, Annie Lennox, Sergio Mendes, Yellow , Joe Cocker, Jennifer Nettles, Jackets, Chic Corea, Herbie Hancock, Paco de Lucia, Ron Carter, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Julio Iglesias, Koinonia, Chris Botti, Chano Dominguez, Tom Jones, Seals, Juan Gabriel, Luis Miguel, Placido Domingo, Ron Kenoly, Sam Phillips, The Winnans, Phil Keagy, Lee Ritenour, Larry Carlton,Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul and also has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, Metropole Orchestra, WDR big band, Alex has also performed live with the likes of Al Jarreau, Bobby McFerrin Roberta Flack, Antonio Carlos Jobim, The Gipsy Kings, Paco de Lucia, Celia Cruz, Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock, Christina Aguilera, James Taylor, Michael Mc Donald, Tito Puente, Roy Orbison, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Palmieri, to name a few. Additionally, Alex has recorded film scores under the direction of Great Composers:Gustavo Dudamel, Dave Grusin, Alan Silvestri, Michele Legrand, Bill Conti, Michele Colombier, Marvin Hamlish, Maurice Jarre, Alexandre Desplat, Heitor Pereyra, Mark Isham, Michael, Giacchino, John Dabney, John Powell, James Newton Howard, Hans Zimmer, Randy Newman, John Williams, Harry Gerson Williams, Lalo Schiffrin, Steve Jablonski, Christophe Becker and many others. He became the recipient of many awards and honors including theEmeritus MVP award from NARAS (National Academy of Recording for the Arts and Sciences) and winner of the "Best Latin/Brazilian Percussionist" of Modern Drummer's Readers Poll for fifteen consecutive years.Alex's South American and Caribbean roots and understanding of contemporary and classical music make him a complete and skilled master musician. In 2000, Alex Acuña y Su Acuarela De Tambores received a Grammy nomination for “Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album” for "Rhythms for a New Millennium". This solo album included varying styles of Latin, South American and African percussion. The nomination confirmed Alex's vast knowledge and expertise of percussion rhythms. Zan Stewart of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Alex Acuña is the epitome of the world music percussionist, to whom no style is a stranger".Alex also received two Latin Grammy nominations in 2003. Los Hijos del Sol “To My Country”, which was released by his independent record label – NIDO Entertainment. The second Latin Grammy nomination came for Tolu’s “Bongo de Van Gogh” released by Tonga Productions. In 2004, Alex released his follow up album by Alex Acuña and the Unknowns titled “No Accent”. New Cd called Barxeta by Losen records 2013. In addition, Alex has composed music for various artists and produced "Thinking of You" by Alex Acuña and the Unknowns, "Rumberos Poetry" by Tolú and "Aliyah" by Kay Silberling. This year will see the release of some new DVD projects for Drum Channel.Alex is widely known as an educator, gifted teacher and clinician of drums and percussion. He has recorded four solo instructional videos and provides seminars at universities such as UC Los Angeles, Berklee School of Music in Boston. USC and other top international schools of music.http://www.DWDrums.comhttp://www.GonBopsPercussion.comhttp://www.Evans.com All there companies sponsor Alex.He is also credited with the design of Zildjian's "Azuka" line of cymbals, signature Vic Firth sticks and the caddy stick bag, the Alex Acuña line of Signature percussion instruments with GonBops – 4 Special Edition Congas, 5 Cow Bells, Timbales, Bongos and his own Especial Edition Peruvian Cajon.Innovation, energy and pure heart characterize Alex's playing. It is easy to see why Alex Acuña is one of the most sought after musicians of our time. Alex recognizes his music as a gift from the Lord Jesus and gives all the glory to God!http://www.myspace.com/acunahoffmathisenhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35KT2leNa30http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=148441735197932 Famous Movies where Alex is playing since 2000: Drum LineThe Incredible HancockMr. and Mrs. SmithMission Impossible 3 & 4 Star Trek Into the Darkness Star TrekRatatouille UPHop Super 8Italian JobBeverly Hills Chihuahua Happy Feet TransformersSpeed Racer REDThe Kite RunnerX-Men Origin- Wolverine BurlesqueEntangled Bourn Legacy Bucket List Toy Story 3Cars 2 Monte Carlo Happy FeetHansel & Gretel Jupiter Ascending Monsters University John CarterCars Smurf Frozen TangleBourne Legacy Monte CarloDown Of the Planets of the ApesTomorrowland Jupiter Ascending Inside Out MinionsJurassic World Inside OutZootopia The Big ShortSecret Lies Of Pets Jungle Book

Om 21:00 uur Maarten Eilander en Frits Jonker met Train To Nowhere. Thema is weer Floorfillers. Muziek van Captain Beefheart, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Sister Sledge, Howlin’ Wolf en Perez Prado.

Tropical Club #34Et voici le retour du Tropical Club épisode 34, l'émission qui ne renonce jamais à faire durer l'été même au cœur de l'hiver. Si tu as du mal avec le gris, l'actu morose, les courses de Noël qui démarre, les particules fines et les métros qui n'avancent pas, nous allons te faire oublier les soucis de la vie.Avec ou sans Fidel, Alain, François et les autres, nous allons vous faire découvrir encore ce soir des titres qui vous donneront une sensation de sable fin entre les doigts de pieds, et de chaleur sur votre peau flétrie par le froid. George et Andy vous propose au menu de ce soir : du rock, du mambo, de la dub tropicale mais aussi la dédicace des auditeurs par Xavier notre plagiste, l'instant tropical de Jean-Kevin. Alors pousse le son très fort chez toi, enlève ton pull, déplie le parasol, sers toi un drink et mets toi en maillot... Le tropical club va te faire du bien aux oreilles.La playlistGun's and Roses - Welcome to the jungleParce même sous les tropiques la vie est une jungle.Leon Else - Dance Parce que manger et bouger c'est important... n'oublie pas tes 5 fruits et légumes par jour.Le titre tropical de Jean-Kevin : Plaisir Coupable - Amour CaraïbesParce qu'il faut que tu saches que ça existe.Lemmy Ashton - Breaker Breaker Parce qu'on va tout casser.La "dédicasse" des auditeurs par Xavier le plagiste : Human League - Together in electric dreamsToshiki Kadomatsu - Good Bye Memory Disco by MoonsungParce que le Japon, on en parle pas assez.Queen - I'm in love with my carParce que des auditeurs l'ont réclamé la semaine dernière.Quantic et Flowering Inferno featuring Hollie Cook - Shuffle them shoes Parce qu'en Amérique du sud, il y a de la musique moderne et pas que des Mariachis.The Beach Boys - Little Honda Parce que Brian Wilson... tout simplement.Edmundo Ros and his orchestra - Mambo n°5 (reprise de Perez Prado, 1949)Parce qu'une reprise, c'est comme les sushis, c'est bon quand c'est bien fait.[caption id="attachment_45338" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Avec Alain et Fidel, mets toi à l'aise pour écouter de la bonne musique.[/caption] 

Lee and Daniel are taking a couple-episode break before jumping in to what will be an extensive Spaghetti Western series. For this episode they are joined by their friend, fellow podcaster, musician, and published writer Kit Power, who suggested the two films for review this time: "Tommy" (1975) & "Parents" (1989). Because this was recorded a bit later in the week and way much earlier in the day than what Lee and Dan are used to, the whisky hits them much harder. They fully blame Kit for this, BTW. At any rate, the conversation goes deep in to both films, and a lot of both fun and serious issues are brought up. This might be one of the best of all time for the podcast when it's all said and done, even if there's a few audio glitches here and there (sorry for that, but it's nowhere near un-listenable). Also covered: listener comments & what they've watched as of late, and Kit get's to answer the One Actor's Filmography desert island question. "Tommy" IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073812/combined "Parents" IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098068/combined Kit Power can be found in these places: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Kit-Power/e/B00K6J438K Twitter: https://twitter.com/KitGonzo Watching Robocop With Kit Power Podcast: http://talkingrobocop.libsyn.com/ Ginger Nuts of Horror: http://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/index.html His band The Disciples of Gonzo on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/disciplesofgonzo Featured music: "I'm Free" by The Who & "Cerezo Rosa" by Perez Prado.

Out of The Cave I can hear Ciro's Theme, dedicated to an almost mythical creature His Name Was King and he carried The Message: Na Poi it said and went on to dance the Mambo #5 dressed in Red Black And Green. You can still see him sometimes walking around the Inner City Blues, and personally it Make Me Wanna Holler. Oldies? Maybe.. good tunes definitely. Seldom played? Even more so, so let's shed some light on these gems and bring them back to the air. Only on RadioLina!! #Justgoodmusic #Justpressplay #Radiolina1 Respectively: Culver City Dub Collective, Federico De' Robertis, Luis Bacalov & Edda Dell'Orso, The Vampires' Sound Incorporation, Fela Kuti & The Africa '70, Perez Prado, Roy Ayers, Marvin Gaye

Out of The Cave I can hear Ciro's Theme, dedicated to an almost mythical creature His Name Was King and he carried The Message: Na Poi it said and went on to dance the Mambo #5 dressed in Red Black And Green. You can still see him sometimes walking around the Inner City Blues, and personally it Make Me Wanna Holler.Oldies? Maybe.. good tunes definitely. Seldom played? Even more so, so let's shed some light on these gems and bring them back to the air. Only on RadioLina!! #Justgoodmusic #Justpressplay #Radiolina1Respectively: Culver City Dub Collective, Federico De' Robertis, Luis Bacalov & Edda Dell'Orso, The Vampires' Sound Incorporation, Fela Kuti & The Africa '70, Perez Prado, Roy Ayers, Marvin Gaye

On this week's podcast, music from Paul McCartney, Bruno Mars, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Wu-Tang Clan, The Who, John Cage, Neil Young and Randy Bachman, The Shadows, African Jazz Pioneers, Kalahari Roses, Esperanza Spalding, The Perez Prado Orchestra, and Sexteto Miramar. SUBSCRIBE: iTunes  TWITTER: @MusicFirstPcast FACEBOOK: Music First Podcast EMAIL: MusicFirstPodcast@gmail.com