Podcasts about phil everly

Today on another edition of the Rarified Heir Podcast, we are Jason Everly, son of Phil Everly of the famed Everly Brothers. We connected with Jason after listening to his radio show on Sirius XM satellite radio on the Fifties Gold channel. It sparked a memory that Jason and host Josh Mills had attended the same middle school together at the Oakwood School in Los Angeles going back to the Carter administration. After rummaging around and finding a school yearbook, we emailed Jason with a photo of himself in 7th grade, asked him to be on the podcast and he graciously accepted. We covered a lot of topics on this episode, from intimidating science teachers to the time Paul Simon called Jason up to find out the best way to approach his dad for potential Simon and Garfunkel / Everly Brothers tour in the nineties. We also discussed the roots of the Everly Brothers, how Phil was a down-to-earth dad who spent a lot of time bonding with his son playing made up games and drawing together. We discussed the how his father and uncle essentially created a genre that became known as country-rock, how Phil helped his friend & arranger Warren Zevon title one of his biggest hits, the time Paul McCartney told Billy Joel that Phil Everly was his musical hero and much more. We also discussed the Everly Brothers infamous split, a famous cousin who was on a wildly popular television show in the 1970s, the evolution of radio performers Little Donnie and Baby Boy Phil, the hard scrabbled life the boys led until they found fame and fortune, Graham Nash, Kitty Wells, which song of the Brothers gets licensed the most, Jason's acting career and much more. What's our favorite part?  When Jason mixed up our science teacher Sol Rubenstein with guitarist Saul Hudson aka Slash from Guns-n-Roses. Your favorite part is coming up next on this episode of the Rarified Heir Podcast. Everyone has a story.

By the mid-70's the Beach Boys appeared to be a band that had been left behind.  Sales had been only moderate for their previous albums, and the band was struggling to determine their direction musically.  In the summer of 1973 the movie "American Graffiti" featured several Beach Boys songs, creating nostalgia for the earlier surfing music.Between the revived interest sparked by "American Graffiti" and the success of the Beatles "Red" and "Blue" compilation albums, the Beach Boys released a collection of hits from their early 60's catalogue called Endless Summer.  This featured songs from their Capitol Records days, 1962-1965.  It was a near-instant success reaching the top of the charts in the United States four months after its release, and becoming their second number 1 album on the US charts.  After the success of Endless Summer, the Beach Boys would reposition themselves as an oldies act, continuing in this vein for many years.  Brian Wilson would pen one further Beach Boys studio album in 1977 which would meet with meager sales.  Afterwards the band would focus on their classics until seeing a resurgence in the late 80's generated from another popular film, Tom Cruise's "Cocktail" Wayne brings us this surfin' themed compilation for this week's podcast. Catch A WaveA true surfing song, this tune is about being on a surfboard, waiting for the right wave to come along.  This song was originally released on the 1963 album "Surfer Girl," and a rewritten version was recorded by Jan and Dean as "Sidewalk Surfin."Little Deuce CoupeThis track is about a 1932-vintage Ford model 18 hot rod used in drag racing on the streets of California.  "American Graffiti" had featured the deuce coupe prominently, along with the Beach Boys song.  The lyrics were written by local radio DJ Roger Christian.Shut DownAnother song about drag racing, "shut down" means you are about to beat the person in the race.  The phrase "tach it up" may have lost some meaning in the era of automatic transmission, but the tachometer would run high for a drag race.  The song is told from the perspective of the driver of a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray in a race against a 1962 Dodge Dart.Fun, Fun, FunThe inspiration for this song was a story the Beach Boys heard during a radio interview.  The station owner described his daughter "borrowing" his 1963 Thunderbird to go to a drive-in hamburger shop.  The opening riffs were inspired by Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."   ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Uptown Saturday Night by Dobie Gray (from the motion picture “Uptown Saturday Night”)Sidney Poitier starred in and directed this action comedy which co-starred Bill Cosby, Harry Belafonte, Richard Pryor, and Flip Wilson. STAFF PICKS:The Joker by the Steve Miller BandLynch leads off the staff picks with a well known song from Steve Miller.  The names in the first line reference several of Miller's previous songs, as well as the made-up word "pompatus."  It barely cracked the top 40 in the US, hitting 40 on the Billboard Hot 100.  Miller borrowed some lyrics from the song "Lovey Dovey" when he talks about wanting to "shake your tree."The Air that I Breathe by the HolliesRob brings us a slow burning but iconic ballad that the Hollies covered.  The original was from Albert Hammond, and previously covered by Phil Everly.  The Hollies version was the most successful, going to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100.  Alan Parsons was the engineer on this song.Hollywood Swinging by Kool & the GangBruce's staff pick is the first number 1 R&B Single from Kool & the Gang.  It was a crossover hit as well, going to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100.  Rick Westfield is the keyboardist for it and sings lead.  The song is a true story of the keyboardist wanting to become "a bad piano-playing man" with the group. Rock and Roll Heaven by The Righteous BrothersWayne's features an ode to the rock stars who had died at an early age. This song is another example of a song that was covered, and did better than the original.  Climax performed this song in 1973 but did not chart, while the Righteous Brothers took it to the top 10 in the United States.  Lyric would be added in the years to come as more rock stars passed. INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:Chameleon by Herbie HancockThis jazz funk instrumental track closes out the podcast for the week.  Thanks for listening to “What the Riff?!?” NOTE: To adjust the loudness of the music or voices, you may adjust the balance on your device. VOICES are stronger in the LEFT channel, and MUSIC is stronger on the RIGHT channel.Please follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/whattheriffpodcast/, and message or email us with what you'd like to hear, what you think of the show, and any rock-worthy memes we can share.Of course we'd love for you to rate the show in your podcast platform!**NOTE: What the Riff?!? does not own the rights to any of these songs and we neither sell, nor profit from them. We share them so you can learn about them and purchase them for your own collections.

In Hollywood, the story beats of werewolf movies were codified in 1941 by a German-Jewish emigrant to Hollywood via London named Curt Siodmak, who wrote the seminal film 'The Wolf Man', starring Lon Chaney, Jr. 40 years later, John Landis made the most important and enduring and influential werewolf film ever made in 'An American Werewolf in London'. It was his follow-up to the one-two punch of 'Animal House' and 'The Blues Brothers'.  He could make any film he wanted, with anyone he wanted. So he made a script he'd begun when he was 18 years old. A script he'd first discussed with an aspiring special effects and creature-design guy named Rick Baker in 1971.  10 years later, he'd found two unknown leads, hired basically the entire cast of an acclaimed touring production of 'Nicholas Nickleby', and called Baker on the set of another werewolf movie ('The Howling') and convinced him to decamp to England to work on 'An American Werewolf in London'.  For his groundbreaking innovations on the film, Baker won the ver first Academy Award ever given for makeup special effects. Featuring a snappy, smart script, Landis' virtuosic comedy/horror chops, and an unexpected soundtrack of moon songs, 'An American Werewolf in London' is in a class by itself and is one of the most important films ever made. Other werewolf films of note and worthy of your time: 'Ginger Snaps' 'Wolfen' 'Wolf' 'Dog Soldiers' 'The Howling' 'The Wolf Man' (1941) 'Werewolf of London' (1935) "Werewolf of London' inspired Zevon's song 'Werewolves of London'. Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers had watched the film and told Zevon jokingly that he should write a song with that title and start a dance craze. And as far as listicles go, this one is well-reasoned by someone who knows their werewolf films: The 25 Best Werewolf Movies 

32.005  Let's rock it up, tear it up and RIP it up on a Tuesday nite! Join DJ Del Villarreal this evening on Rockabilly Radio's greatest LIVE rockin' 50's music program,  "Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show!" broadcasting from the world-famous Motorbilly Studio! Loads of hot new tracks to share on a frosty Winter night. Excited to hear music from Jared Petteys & Ronnie Crucher, The Diamond Daddies, Wild May West, Fatboy, The Kaisers, The Lucky Devils, Tornado Beat and The Shakers! PLUS we're celebrating Phil Everly's 86th birthday with some choice songs written & performed by the legendary Everly Brother. Email requests: del@motorbilly.com OR drop a comment below! Good to the last bop!™Please follow on FaceBook, Instagram & Twitter!

National popcorn day. Entertainment from 2021. Jockey underwear 1st went on sale, worlds fastest chicken plucker, WW1 1st air raid on Englan. Todays birthdays - Jean Stapleton, Nicholas Colasanto, Tippi Hedren, Phil Everly, Janis Joplin, Shelly Fabres, Dolly Parton, Robert Palmer, Martha Davis, Katey Segal, Paul Rodriguez, Drea de Matteo. Wilson Pickett died.Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard     http://defleppard.com/The popcorn song - BarneyMood - 24k Goldn   Iann DiorChampagne night - Lady ABirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent       http://50cent.com/All in the family TV themeCheers theme spoofWake up little susie - The Everly BrothersMercedes Benz - Janis JoplinJohnny angel - Shelly FabresPuppy love - Dolly PartonAddicted to love - Robert PalmerOnly the lonely - The MotelsMidnight hour - Wilson PickettExit - In my dreams - Dokken   https://www.dokken.net/  

I went to Roberto Venn School of Luthiery in 1997. Worked at Vince's Backstage music in Lafayette, La. until 2000. I then moved to the Hamptons, which was a mistake for my career. Ended up working other jobs, as well as repair to pay the bills. 2002 Moved to Nashville and ended up working for a company in Franklin that did factory refurbishments and Warranty repairs. I also had my own small shop and did a little touring with small bands. In December 06 I started working for Gruhn and was there till Aug. 2024. Even working for shops I've always had my own shop to do personal customer repairs. At Gruhn, I was a Repairman and Appraiser. I was tasked with going through the Electric instruments to inspect for originality. One of the repairs I did a lot of was Pickup rewinds. I've been rewinding pickups since 1999. Although I got most of my experience at Gruhn. I started building Pickups around 05. I have built and rewound pickups for a lot of folks In Nashville. Mostly players. Issac Brock of Modest Mouse uses my pickups in the Wicks guitars he uses in the studio and on tour. One of the Tele's Jack White uses in the Studio has one of my rewinds in the bridge position.I've worked for Songwriters like Kent Blazy (Garth Brooks, Patti Loveless, Chris Young), and producers like Mickey Jack Cones (Carrie Underwood, George Strait, etc.). I've worked with Jack White doing repairs, customization, and Tour Support since 2010. The cover of one of his 45's features him, one of the guitars I customized, and the Muppets. Through Gruhn I worked on instruments owned by a myriad of stars. I also curate the Private collection of the CEO of Gibson, Cesar Gueikian. As well as help take care of instruments at several Studios.IG - i_got_broke_guitarsSome Notable Instruments:Jack's Blue Tele Used on His first Solo Tours- I customizedJack's Blue Triple Jet- I did the finishJack's Black Tele- CustomizedThe Kay- too many repairs to list, this one gets thrown aroundThe Army/Navy-too many repairs over the yearsI've kept a lot of his instruments on the road.Neil Young's Old Black- refrettedChuck Panozzo (Styx)- Replaced the truss rods and repaired the neck on the Rickenbacker he used in the 70'sCaitlin Rose and Band, Butch Walker, Tommy Shaw- Styx, Will Evankovich- Styx, Brian Bell- WeezerAt Gruhn Worked on instruments played by:Clapton, Billy Gibbons, Billy Corgan, Clint Black, Tom Kiefer- Cinerella, Mick Mars, Phil Everly, Ira Louvin, John Denver, Mike Farris, Nancy Wilson, Tex Ritter , Mel Bay, the list goes on.........I once almost killed Loretta Lynn by knockin' her off the back of the stage. Once talked with a man in a turban, beard, and English Accent for 20 minutes, and never knew it was Cat Stevens.  Many early prototype guitars and early examples of Holy Grail guitars have been through my hands:First serial numbered and sold StratocasterProto Flying V, Stratocaster, Gretsch Duo Jet, Firebird, Rosewood Telecaster (yes, that predates George Harrison's), Les Paul Junior Prototype, Multiple one-off Chet Atkins Gretch Models, etc."Still on the Run" - https://www.fbrmusic.com/IG - treymitchellphotography IG - feeding_the_senses_unsensoredFB - facebook.com/profile.php?id=100074368084848Threads - www.threads.net/@treymitchellphotographyGuest Suggestions/Spons

Fáilte ar ais chuig eagrán nua de Ar An Lá Seo ar an 3ú lá de mí Eanair, liomsa Lauren Ní Loingsigh. I 1989 bhuaigh bean ó Chill Dara 250,000 punt sa Lotto nuair phioc sí cúpla uimhir ar Oíche Nollaig. Tar éis seachtain tosaigh sí á chuardach nuair a fuair sí amach gur bhuaigh sí. Ar deireadh bhí an ticéad I bpóca a fhear céile agus ansin fuair sí an t-airgead. I 2001 thug Ward McEllin comhairle do dhaoine a mbeidh ar an chlár teilifís Who Wants To Be A Millionaire chun comhaontú a scríobh suas lena 'phone a friend' roimh dhul ar an chlár. Dúirt sé gan aon chomhaontú foirmiúil a bheith ann go mbeidh easaontas mar gheall ar an airgead. I 1974 tofa Mrs P Mcnamara ó Chill an Dísirt, an chéad bain mar stiúrthóir den chomhlacht turasóireacht Shannonside. I 1989 fuair seandálaí píosaí mór dair, páirteach de mhuileann uisce. Cheap siad go raibh siad timpeall 1,500 bhliain. Fuair siad iad nuair a bhí siad ag doimhneacht sruthán chun tuile a laghdú. Sin Eminem le Stan an t-amhrán is mó ar an lá seo I 2001. Ag lean ar aghaidh le nuacht cheoil ar an lá seo I 2002 tháinig Liam agus Noel Gallagher amach ar barr I suirbhé. An cheist a bhí ann ná na daoine cáiliúla nach maith le daoine chónaí in aice leo. Fuair siad 40% den vóta. I 2014 fuair Phil Everly bás de bharr galar scamhóg. Bhí sé aois 74 agus fuair sé bás I gCalifornia. Agus ar deireadh breithlá daoine cáiliúla ar an lá seo rugadh Greta Thunberg sa tSualainn I 2003 agus rugadh aisteoir Mel Gibson I Nua Eabhrac ar an lá seo I 1956 agus seo chuid de na rudaí a rinne sé. Beidh mé ar ais libh an tseachtain seo chugainn le heagrán nua de ar an lá seo.

Bobby Tomberlin is one of the greatest songwriters in the history of country music. He's written one hit after another for just about everyone in country music including Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Faith Hill, Kenny Rogers, Blake Shelton and Diamond Rio. And even Barbra Streisand. And he's collaborated with Vince Gill, Hank Williams, Jr. and Phil Everly. He's been nominated for Grammys, CMA and ACM awards.My featured song is “The Gift”, my original love song from the album Made In New York by my band Project Grand Slam. Spotify link.---------------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!For more information and other episodes of the podcast click here. To subscribe to the podcast click here .To subscribe to our weekly Follow Your Dream Podcast email click here.To Rate and Review the podcast click here.“Dream With Robert”. Click here.—----------------------------------------ROBERT'S SINGLES:“SOSTICE” is Robert's newest single, with a rockin' Old School vibe. Called “Stunning!”, “A Gem!”, “Magnificent!” and “5 Stars!”.Click HERE for all links.—---------------------------------“THE GIFT” is Robert's ballad arranged by Grammy winning arranger Michael Abene and turned into a horn-driven Samba. Praised by David Amram, John Helliwell, Joe La Barbera, Tony Carey, Fay Claassen, Antonio Farao, Danny Gottlieb and Leslie Mandoki.Click HERE for all links.—-------------------------------------“LOU'S BLUES”. Robert's Jazz Fusion “Tone Poem”. Called “Fantastic! Great playing and production!” (Mark Egan - Pat Metheny Group/Elements) and “Digging it!” (Peter Erskine - Weather Report)!Click HERE for all links.—----------------------------------------“THE RICH ONES”. Robert's sublime, atmospheric Jazz Fusion tune. Featuring guest artist Randy Brecker (Blood Sweat & Tears) on flugelhorn. Click HERE for all links.—---------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with Bobby at:www.bobbytomberlinmusic.com Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com

Americana, Roots, Folk, Blues, Country.New and Classic Tracks. Episode includes music by Joni Mitchell, Phil Everly, Chip Taylor  and Patty Griffin.

National popcorn day. Entertainment from 2019. Jockey underwear 1st went on sale, worlds fastest chicken plucker, WW1 1st air raid on Englan. Todays birthdays - Jean Stapleton, Nicholas Colasanto, Tippi Hedren, Phil Everly, Janis Joplin, Shelly Fabres, Dolly Parton, Robert Palmer, Martha Davis, Katy Segal, Paul Rodriguez, Drea de Matteo. Wilson Pickett died.Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard http://defleppard.com/The popcorn song - BarneyWithout me - HalseyGood girl - Dustin LynchBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent http://50cent.com/All in the family TV themeCheers theme spoofWake up little susie - The Everly BrothersMercedes Benz - Janis JoplinJohnny angel - Shelly FabresPuppy love - Dolly PartonAddicted to love - Robert PalmerOnly the lonely - The MotelsMidnight hour - Wilson PickettExit - It's not love - Dokken

In this episode we welcome acclaimed novelist Michel Faber to RBP's Hammersmith HQ and ask him about his new book ... as well as about a 1979 interview he did with the young Nick Cave. Barney gets the ball rolling by asking the author of Under the Skin and The Crimson Petal and the White what he set out to do with Listen: On Music, Sound and Us. Viewing music through a variety of prisms — from nostalgia and snobbery to racial bias and auditory biology — was the book at least partly an exercise in demystification? A stimulating conversation unfolds as Michel answers questions about "MOJO-fication", vinyl fetishisation, and live performance. A tangent on tinnitus takes us to his memories of seeing (and hearing) one of the Birthday Party's last shows... and waking up temporarily deaf the next morning. Which in turn leads to discussion of the interview our guest did as a student at Melbourne University with the pre-Birthday Party Boys Next Door, and then to clips from a 1995 audio interview in which Nick Cave answers Andy Gill's questions about Murder Ballads and Kylie Minogue. Finally the "panel" considers the week's featured artist (and a key influence on the early Birthday Party): the archetypal "MOJO-fied" cult hero who traded musically under the moniker Captain Beefheart — and whose exceptional paintings as Don Van Vliet feature in a new exhibition at Mayfair's Michael Werner Gallery. After Mark quotes from recently-added library pieces on Little Walter, Sylvester, Ornette Coleman and Björk, Jasper wraps up the episode with his thoughts on articles about the aforementioned Kylie Minogue, Goodie Mob and The Face. Many thanks to special guest Michel Faber. Listen: On Music, Sound and Us is published by Canongate and available now from all good bookshops Pieces discussed: 'Revolution 9', David Byrne's How Music Works, Nick Cave: A Boy Next Door, Nick Cave audio, People talk about BEEFHEART!, Captain Beefheart, Don Van Vliet, Little Walter, Joni Mitchell, Iggy & the Stooges, Ornette Coleman, Björk, Phil Everly, Sylvester, McAlmont & Butler, Kylie Minogue, Goodie Mob and The Face.

Una de las canciones más recordadas en la discografía de la agrupación británica Nazareth es sin duda alguna su exitosa Balada rock de 1974 “Love hurts” (El amor duele). Así la escuché yo… Trece años atrás, la canción ya había sido versionada por el reconocido cantante estadounidense Roy Orbison, quien la grabó en 1961 bajo el título “Love hurts”. Ambas canciones son enrealidad nuevas versiones del tema compuesto por el estadounidense Boudleaux Bryant, la cual fue grabada originalmente en 1960 por el famoso dueto The Everly Brothers con el título “Love hurts” (El amor duele) ¿Y tú, conocías la canción original? Autor: Boudleaux Bryant (nombre real Diadorius Boudleaux Bryant, estadounidense) Love hurts - Nazareth (1974) single "Love hurts/Down" (1974) Canta: Dan McCaffrey (británico) Nazareth (banda británica cuyos miembros originales son Dan McCaffrey, Pete Agnew, Darrell Sweet, Manny Charlton, Billy Rankin y Zal Cleminson, británicos) Love hurts - Roy Orbison (1961) single "Love hurts/Running scared" (1961) "Crying" álbum (1962) With Bob Moore's Orchestra & Chorus Bob Moore (nombre real Robert Loyce Moore, estadounidense) Roy Orbison (nombre real Roy Keiton Orbison, estadounidense) Love hurts - The Everly Brothers (1960) "A date with The Everly Brothers" álbum (1960) The Everly Brothers son Don y Phil Everly, estadounidenses) Don Everly (nombre real Isaac Donald Everly, estadounidense) Phil Everly (nombre real Phillip Jason Everly, estadounidense ___________________ “Así la escuché yo…” Temporada: 6 Episodio: 64 Sergio Productions Cali – Colombia Sergio Luis López Mora

Paul McDonald's voice is immediately recognizable and impossible to ignore. Often compared to legends like Rod Stewart and Bob Dylan, his songs are relatable and universal. The poetic story-driven narratives and deeply catchy hooks in his music are delivered by a raspy yet refined voice reminiscent of another era yet that demands to be heard right now. He pulls off the rare feat of being a poet, visual artist, songwriter, adamant performer, and powerful vocalist. Born in Auburn, Alabama, he was raised on southern rock with bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers, roots, country, and gospel music intertwined with the late 60's Laurel Canyon folk scene.  He has been inspired by the authenticity and artistry of his heroes like Tom Petty, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and Jackson Browne.As a child, Paul was obsessed with everything music related, but never considered the idea of being a musician until his father bought him a guitar for Christmas at the age of 15. He immediately started writing his own songs and playing shows around town and in high school talent shows, but it was still more of a hobby and form of self-expression than a career path. In college, he joined the school's gospel choir and toured all through the southeast performing at small southern baptist churches. “It was one of my favorite seasons of life. I learned how to tune in with the higher power and sing from the soul.” During this time, he was still writing his own songs and was pushed once again by friends to start playing in bars and local venues around town. By his early 20s, he had started a band and was touring and making records full-time. “It all seemed to happen pretty quickly and naturally. I've been carrying around a guitar since I was a kid, and as soon as I ever tried to go in a different direction (he was two classes away from majoring in Biomedical Sciences at Auburn University), the universe would always pull me right back to the music. It was like I was supposed to be writing songs and playing shows for the rest of my life. There was no other option….and I haven't looked back ever since.”Paul's hope & mission is to spread peace, love, and unity through his music, connection & community through song.Paul dials into MNPR HQ from his tour bus to chat with Dino Bedrocker about life on the road, playing in a Travelling Wilburys tribute band, his new music, playing with legends of the music world, American Idol, earning his stripes in Nashville, coming to the UK, and the story behind how he came to own Phil Everly's suit.Support the show

National popcorn day. Pop cuture from 2007. Tin can invented, Jockey's went on sale, Scrabble went on sail, 1st air raid by Zepplins. Todays birthdays - Jean Stapleton, Nicholas Colasanto, Phil Everly, Janis Joplin, Tippi Hedron, Shelly Fabares, Dolly Parton, Robert Palmer, Martha Davis, Katy Segal, Paul Rodriguiez, Shawn Wayans, Drea de Matteo. Wilson Pickett died.

On this weeks episode, we dive deep into Heart Like A Wheel, the 1974 LP from  Linda Ronstadt. Possessing one of the strongest, versatile, and distinctive voices in rock has allowed Ronstadt to sing some of the greatest songs ever written in just about every musical genre. On this album, she interprets songs by variety of singers and songwriters to stunning effect, including James Taylor, Lowell George, Phil Everly, and Kate McGarrigle. While this was her fifth album, is was also her break out largely due to  the quality of Ronstadt's voice (which is is on full display here) and her intelligent rendering of the tunes within. 

Episode 229, “January Babies,” features the music of performers who were born in the month of January. Featured are Elvis Presley, Felicia Sanders, Phil Everly, Gisele MacKenzie, Sam Cooke, Tex Ritter, and six more.  ... Read More The post Episode 229, “January Babies,” appeared first on Sam Waldron.

A Place For My Stuff - Yes I have/had another podcast.  A couple of podcasts actually.  With the rising price of everything, I opted not to pay to have Inside the Guest Studio available forever.   I have this convenient landing spot called My Alien Life Podcast which WILL remain forever - thus, this is part of my life, as will be the episodes of Inside the Guest Studio.  A podcast that is graced by some unique and very talented people that live slightly off the grid. Enjoy Cameron In 1982 I walked into a music store in Kalispell Montana and heard his hit Someday Some Way...  I was hooked.  From that day forward, the cassette I purchased before going to Bible camp, was in every car I ever owned until 2015.  I mailed the cassette to my friend who had gotten out of drug treatment.  We listened to that cassette so many times in my car during high school.  The cassette arrived in his mailbox, SMASHED...   I was crushed. It was my indeed pleasure to interview, Marshall Crenshaw.  My hero.   Marshall Howard Crenshaw (born November 11, 1953) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and guitarist best known for hit songs such as "Someday, Someway," a US Top 40 hit in 1982, "Cynical Girl," and "Whenever You're on My Mind." He is also the co-author of one of the biggest radio hits of the ‘90s, the Gin Blossoms, "Til I Hear It From You." His music has roots in classic soul music and Buddy Holly, to whom Crenshaw was often compared in the early days of his career, and whom he portrayed in the 1987 film La Bamba. Born in Michigan, Crenshaw performed in the musical Beatlemania before releasing his self-titled album in 1982. Crenshaw could not replicate the commercial success of Marshall Crenshaw and follow-up Field Day (1983) with later albums. Crenshaw has also contributed songs to other artists, writing singles for Kirsty MacColl and the Gin Blossoms. A quote from Trouser Press summed up Marshall Crenshaw's early career: "Although he was seen as a latter-day Buddy Holly at the outset, he soon proved too talented and original to be anyone but himself."[   Marshall Crenshaw on Marshall Crenshaw — “One of the fundamental things about the project was that I set out to not make an album,” Marshall Crenshaw notes. “So I did this project, and now at the end of it, there's this album, for the album fans!….” The celebrated singer-songwriter-guitarist-producer is discussing #392: The EP Collection, his new CD on the Red River Entertainment label. The 14-track set collects a dozen standout tracks drawn from the innovative series of six 10” vinyl EPs that Crenshaw released between 2013 and 2015, plus a pair of never-before-heard rarities chosen especially for this collection. The EP series was the product of Crenshaw's decision to break away from the standard album/tour cycle by recording and releasing a steady stream of new music over an extended period. The endeavor proved wildly popular with his fans, and brought in lots of “I really did love the EP project, and I'm kind of sad that it's over,” Crenshaw comments. “I was looking for a different way of working that would keep me motivated; it was cool, because it had a sense of urgency; there was always something that had just come out and always something that was on the way. It was an inspiring way to work.” #392: The EP Collection's twelve studio recordings encompass six new Crenshaw originals and six cover songs. The former group includes the bittersweet and beautiful “Grab the Next Train,” the surging and howling “Move Now,” and the hypnotic and atmospheric “Driving and Dreaming”, while the cover numbers include a reverent remake of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David/Carpenters chestnut “Close to You,” James McMurtry's “Right Here Now,” longtime Crenshaw favorite Bobby Fuller's classic “Never to Be Forgotten” and vintage numbers by the Easybeats, the Move and the Lovin' Spoonful. Rounding out #392: The EP Collection are two previously unreleased tracks: a powerful live version of the Everly Brothers classic “Man with Money,” recorded with Crenshaw's frequent touring partners the Bottle Rockets, during the week after Phil Everly's passing, and the infectious “Front Page News,” a '90s recording of a previously-unheard original that Crenshaw wrote with noted country tunesmith Leroy Preston (“I can't remember when I did it, or why, but I like it!”, says Crenshaw). “I was fortunate to have lots of brilliant people helping me on these tracks, and they really lifted the proceedings,” Crenshaw reports. “I'm proud about the range of super-excellent musicians who came on board for these sessions.” #392: The EP Collection includes contributions from avant-jazz trumpet icon Stephen Bernstein, noted jazz vibraphonist Bryan Carrott, versatile Nashville bassist Byron House, Daniel Littleton of the band Ida, renowned composer/keyboardists Rob Morsberger and Jamie Saft, along with longstanding Crenshaw cohorts like guitarists Glen Burtnick and Andy York, bassist Graham Maby, Brian Wilson/Beach Boys sideman Jeffrey Foskett, and acclaimed indie troubadour Dan Bern, who co-wrote four songs with Crenshaw. Meanwhile, on several tracks, Crenshaw worked on his own in his home studio, overdubbing all or most of the instruments and vocal harmonies himself. Crenshaw states, “I've been into the Narcissist, solitary-genius thing for a long time. For instance, “‘Cynical Girl,' on my first album, is just me, and ‘Someday Someway' is my brother on drums and me on everything else. So working alone sometimes is standard procedure for Over the course of a recording career that's spanned three decades, 13 albums and hundreds of songs, the Michigan-bred artist's musical output has maintained a consistently high level of artistry, craftsmanship and passion, endearing him to a broad and loyal fan After getting an early break playing John Lennon in a touring company of the Broadway musical Beatlemania, Crenshaw began his recording career with the now-legendary indie single “Something's Gonna Happen.” His growing notoriety in his adopted hometown of New York City helped to win Crenshaw a deal with Warner Bros. Records, which released his self-titled 1982 debut album. That collection established Crenshaw as one of the era's preeminent rock ' n' rollers, and that was confirmed by such subsequent albums as Field Day, Downtown, Mary Jean & 9 Others, Good Evening, Life's Too Short, Miracle of Science, #447, What's in the Bag? and Jaggedland. Along the way, Crenshaw's compositions have been covered by a broad array of performers, including Bette Midler, Kelly Willis, Robert Gordon, Ronnie Spector, Marti Jones and the Gin Blossoms, with whom Crenshaw co-wrote the Top 10 single “Til I Hear It From You.” He's also provided music for several film soundtracks, appeared in the films La Bamba (in which he portrayed Buddy Holly) and Peggy Sue Got Married, and was nominated for Grammy and a Golden Globe awards for writing the title track for the film comedy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Since 2011, Crenshaw has hosted his own radio show, The Bottomless Pit, on New York's WFUV. He's currently working on Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger's much-anticipated HBO series Vinyl, doing “some session work, a little bit of songwriting..” His eclectic resume aside, songwriting and record-making remain at the center of Marshall Crenshaw's creative life, and #392: The EP Collection confirms that his musical flame continues to burn as brightly as ever. “I still love recorded music and believe in it as an art form, whether it's a single or album, or vinyl or CD,” Crenshaw asserts, adding, “I think I'll probably stick with it.”

Born in Lubbock, Texas, on September 7, 1936, Charles Hardin  Holley (he later dropped the "e"), after both grandfathers    the fourth child of Lawrence Odell "L.O." Holley and Ella Pauline Drake.    older siblings were Larry, Travis, and Patricia Lou.    nicknamed Buddy from a young age, and it stuck with him throughout his life.    Oddly enough, the newspaper announcement claimed that Buddy was actually a little girl. “A daughter weighing 8.5 lbs”, the Lubbock evening journal wrote. He was also only 6.5 pounds. And a boy. Buddy's family was mainly of English and Welsh descent and had some native American ancestry. During the Great Depression, the Holleys frequently moved residences within Lubbock; 17 in all.    His father changed jobs several times.    The Holley family were a musical household.  Except for Buddy's father, all family members could play an instrument or sing. His older brothers frequently entered local talent shows, and one time, his brothers signed up and Buddy wanted to play violin with them. However, Buddy couldn't play the violin.  Not wanting to break little Buddy's heart, his older brothers greased up the strings so it wouldn't make a sound. Buddy started singing his heart out and the three ended up winning the contest!  When WWII started, the U.S. government called his brothers into service. His brother Larry brought back a guitar he bought from a shipmate, and that guitar set Buddy's off. At 11 years old, Buddy started taking piano lessons.  Nine months later, he quit piano lessons and switched to guitar after seeing a classmate playing and singing on the school bus.    His parents initially bought him a steel guitar, but Buddy insisted he wanted a guitar like his brothers. They bought him a guitar, a gold top Gibson acoustic, from a pawn shop, and his brother Travis taught him to play it.  By 15, Buddy was proficient on guitar, banjo, and mandolin. During his early childhood, Holley was influenced by Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Snow, Bob Wills, and the Carter Family.  He started writing songs and working with his childhood friend Bob Montgomery. The two jammed together, practicing songs by the Louvin Brothers and Johnnie & Jack. They frequently listened to Grand Ole Opry's radio programs on WSM, Louisiana Hayride on KWKH (which they once drove 600 miles to okay just to be turned away), and Big D Jamboree.  If you're not familiar with the Grand Ol Opry, it's a weekly American country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, founded on November 28, 1925, by George D. Hay as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on Clearchannel's WSM, which first hit the airwaves on October 5, 1925. Its the longest-running radio broadcast in U.S. history.    At the same time he was practicing with Bob, Holley played with other musicians he met in high school, including Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison.    In 1952 Holley and Jack Neal participated as a duo billed as "Buddy and Jack" in a talent contest on a local television show.    After Neal left, he was replaced by his buddy Bob, and they were billed as "Buddy and Bob." By the mid-'50s, Buddy & Bob played their style of music called "western and bop ."    Holley was influenced by late-night radio stations that played the blues and rhythm and blues. Holley would sit in his car with Sonny Curtis and tune to distant “black” radio stations that could only be received at night when bigger stations turned off local transmissions.    Holley then changed his music by blending his earlier country and western influence with Rhythm and Blues. After seeing the legendary Elvis perform, Holly decided to pursue his career in music full-time once he graduated high school. By mid-1955, Buddy & Bob, who already worked with an upright bass player (played by Larry Welborn), added drummer Jerry Allison to their lineup. After seeing Elvis Presley performing live in Lubbock, who Pappy Dave Stone of KDAV booked, Buddy really wanted to get after it. In February, he opened for Elvis at the Fair Park Coliseum, in April at the Cotton Club, then again in June at the Coliseum. Elvis significantly influenced the group to turn more towards Rock n Roll. Buddy and the king became friends, with Buddy even driving Elvis around when he was in town. Eventually, Bob Montgomery, who leaned toward a traditional country sound, left the group, though they continued writing and composing songs together. Holly kept pushing his music toward a straight-ahead rock & roll sound, working with Allison, Welborn, and other local musicians, including his pal and guitarist Sonny Curtis and bassist Don Guess. In October, Holly was booked as the opener for Bill Haley & His Comets (Rock Around the Clock), to be seen by Nashville scout Eddie Crandall. Obviously impressed, Eddie Crandall talked Grand Ole Opry manager Jim Denny into finding a recording contract for Holley. Pappy Stone sent Denny a demo tape, which Denny forwarded to Paul Cohen. Cohen signed the band to Decca Records in February 1956.    In the contract, Decca accidentally misspelled Holley's surname as "Holly," From that point forward, he was known as "Buddy Holly." On January 26, 1956, Holly went to his first professional recording session with producer Owen Bradley. He was a part of two more sessions in Nashville.    the producer selected the session musicians and arrangements, Holly became frustrated by his lack of creative control. In April 1956, Decca released "Blue Days, Black Nights" as a single and "Love Me" on the B-side.    "B-sides" were secondary songs that were sent out with single records. They were usually just added to have something on the flip side. Later they became songs that bands would either not release or wait to release.  Jim Denny added Holly on tour as the opening act for Faron Young. While on this tour, they were promoted as "Buddy Holly and the Two Tones." Decca then called them "Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes." The label released Holly's second single, "Modern Don Juan," along with "You Are My One Desire."    Unfortunately, neither one of these singles tickled anyone's fancy. On January 22, 1957, Decca informed Holly that they wouldn't re-sign him and insisted he could not record the same songs for anyone else for five years. The same shit happened to Universal and me. A couple of classics, like "Midnight Shift" and "Rock Around with Ollie Vee," did come out of those Decca sessions, but nothing issued at the time went anywhere. It looked as though Holly had missed his shot at stardom.  Holly was disappointed with his time with Decca. inspired by Buddy Knox's "Party Doll" and Jimmy Bowen's "I'm Stickin' with You" he decided to visit Norman Petty, who produced and promoted both of those successful records.    Buddy, Jerry Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin, and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan pulled together and headed to Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico. The group recorded a demo of the now-classic, "That'll Be the Day," which they had previously recorded in Nashville. Now rockin' that lead guitar, Holly finally achieved the sound he wanted. They got the song nailed down and recorded. Along with Petty's help, the group got it picked up by Murray Deutsch, a publishing associate of Petty's, and Murray got it to Bob Thiele, an executive at Coral Records. Thiele loved it. Ironically, Coral Records was a subsidiary of Decca, the company Holly had signed with before. On a side note, a subsidiary is a smaller label under the major label's umbrella. For instance, Universal signed my band to Republic, a subsidiary of Universal Music that dealt primarily with rock genres, like Godsmack. Norman Petty saw the potential in Buddy and became his manager. He sent the record to Brunswick Records in New York City. Thiele saw the record as a potential hit, but there were some significant hurdles to overcome before it could be released.  According to author Philip Norman, in his book Rave On, Thiele would only get the most reluctant support from his record company. Decca had lucked out in 1954 when they'd signed Bill Haley & His Comets and saw their "Rock Around the Clock" top the charts. Still, very few of those in charge at Decca had a natural feel or appreciation for Rock & Roll, let alone any idea of where it might be heading or whether the label could (or should) follow it down that road. Also, remember that although Buddy had been dropped by Decca the year before, the contract that Holly signed explicitly forbade him from re-recording anything he had recorded for them, released or not, for five years. However, Coral was a subsidiary of Decca, and Decca's Nashville office could hold up the release and possibly even haul Holly into court.  "That'll Be the Day" was issued in May of 1957 mainly as an indulgence to Thiele, to "humor" him. The record was put out on the Brunswick label, more of jazz and R&B label, and credited to the Crickets. The group chose this name to prevent the suits at Decca -- and more importantly, Decca's Nashville office -- from finding out that this new release was from the guy they had just dropped. The name “The Crickets” was inspired by a band that Buddy and his group followed, called “the Spiders” and they initially thought about calling themselves “The Beetles”, with two E's, but Buddy said he was afraid people would want to “squash them.” So, they picked “The Crickets.” Petty also became the group's manager and producer, signing the Crickets, identified as Allison, Sullivan, and Mauldin, to a contract. Unfortunately, Holly wasn't listed as a member in the original document to keep his involvement with "That'll Be the Day" a secret. This ruse would later become the source of severe legal and financial problems for Buddy.    The song shot to #1 on the national charts that summer. But, of course, Decca knew Holly was in the band by then. So, with Thiele's persuasion and realizing they had a hit on their hands, the company agreed to release Holly from the five-year restriction on his old contract. This release left him free to sign any recording contract he wanted. While sorting out the ins and outs of Holly's legal situation, Thiele knew that Buddy was far more than a one-hit-wonder and that he could potentially write more and different types of hits. So, Holly found himself with two recording contracts, one with Brunswick as a member of the Crickets and the other with Coral Records as Buddy Holly, all thanks to Thiele's ingenious strategy to get the most out of Buddy and his abilities. By releasing two separate bodies of work, the Crickets could keep rockin' while allowing its apparent leader and "star" to break out on his own.    Petty, whose name seems fitting as we go through this, acted as their manager and producer. He handed out writing credits at random, gifting Niki Sullivan and Joe B. Mauldin (and himself) the co-authorship of the song, "I'm Gonna Love You Too," while leaving Holly's name off of "Peggy Sue." at first. The song title, “Peggy Sue” was named after Buddy's biggest fan. Petty usually added his own name to the credit line, something the managers and producers who wanted a more significant piece of the pie did back in the '50s. To be somewhat fair, Petty made some suggestions, which were vital in shaping certain Holly songs. However, he didn't contribute as much as all of his credits allow us to believe. Some confusion over songwriting was exacerbated by problems stemming from Holly's contracts in 1956. Petty had his own publishing company, Nor Va Jak Music, and Buddy signed a contract to publish his new songs. However, Holly had signed an exclusive agreement with another company the year before. To reduce his profile as a songwriter until a settlement could be made with Petty and convince the other publisher that they weren't losing too much in any compensation, buddy copyrighted many of his new songs under the pseudonym "Charles Hardin." So many names!   The dual recording contracts allowed Holly to record a crazy amount of songs during his short-lived 18 months of fame. Meanwhile, his band -- billed as Buddy Holly & the Crickets -- became one of the top attractions of the time. Holly was the frontman, singing lead and playing lead guitar, which was unusual for the era, and writing or co-writing many of their songs. But the Crickets were also a great band, creating a big and exciting sound (which is lost to history, aside from some live recordings from their 1958 British tour). Allison was a drummer ahead of his time and contributed to the songwriting more often than his colleagues, and Joe B. Mauldin and Niki Sullivan provided a solid rhythm section.   The group relied on originals for their singles, making them unique and years ahead of their time. In 1957-1958, songwriting wasn't considered a skill essential to a career in rock & Roll; the music business was still limping along the lines it had followed since the '20s. Songwriting was a specialized profession set on the publishing side of the industry and not connected to performing and recording. A performer might write a song or, even more rarely, like Duke Ellington (It Don't Mean A Thing), count composition among his key talents; however, this was generally left to the experts. Any rock & roller wanting to write songs would also have to get past the image of Elvis. He was set to become a millionaire at the young age of 22. He never wrote his songs, and the few songwriting credits he had resulted from business arrangements rather than writing anything.   Buddy Holly & the Crickets changed that seriously by hitting number one with a song they'd written and then reaching the Top Ten with originals like "Oh, Boy" and "Peggy Sue," They were regularly charging up the charts based on their songwriting. This ability wasn't appreciated by the public at the time and wouldn't be noticed widely until the '70s. Still, thousands of aspiring musicians, including John Lennon and Paul McCartney, from some unknown band called "The Beatles," took note of their success, and some of them decided to try and tried to be like Buddy. Also unknown at the time, Holly and his crew changed the primary industry method of recording, which was to bring the artist into the label's studio, working on their timetable. If an artist were highly successful, they got a blank check in the studio, and any union rules were thrown out, but that was rare and only happened to the highest bar of musicians. Buddy Holly & the Crickets, however, did their thing, starting with "That'll Be the Day," in Clovis, New Mexico, at Petty's studio. They took their time and experimented until they got the sound they were looking for. No union told them when to stop or start their work, and they delivered terrific records; not to mention, they were albums that sounded different than anything out there. The results changed the history of rock music. The group worked out a new sound that gave shape to the next wave of rock & Roll. Most definitely influenced was British rock & Roll and the British Invasion beat, with the lead and rhythm guitars working together to create a fuller, more complex sound. On songs such as "Not Fade Away," "Everyday," "Listen to Me," "Oh Boy!," "Peggy Sue," "Maybe Baby," "Rave On," "Heartbeat," and "It's So Easy," Holly took rock & roll's range and sophistication and pushed it without abandoning its excitement and, most importantly, it's fun. Holly and the band weren't afraid to push the envelope and try new things, even on their singles. "Peggy Sue" used changes in volume and timbre on the guitar that was usually only used in instrumental albums. "Words of Love" was one of the earliest examples of double-tracked vocals in rock & Roll, and the Beatles would jump on that train the following decade. Buddy Holly & the Crickets were extremely popular in America. Still, in England, they were even more significant; their impact was compared to Elvis and, in some ways, was even bigger. This success was because they toured England; Elvis didn't. They spent a month there in 1958, playing a list of shows that were still talked about 30 years later. It also had to do with their sound and Holly's persona on stage. The group's heavy use of rhythm guitar fit right in with the sound of skiffle music, a mix of blues, folk, country, and jazz elements that most of the younger British were introduced to playing music and their first taste of rock & Roll. Also, Holly looked a lot less likely a rock & roll star than Elvis. He was tall, skinny, and wore glasses; he looked like an ordinary dude who was good at music. Part of Buddy's appeal as a rock star was how he didn't look like one. He inspired tens of thousands of British teenagers who couldn't compare themselves to Elvis or Gene Vincent. (Be Bop A Lula) In the '50s, British guitarist Hank Marvin of the Shadows owed his look and that he wore his glasses proudly on-stage to Holly, and it was brought into the '70s by Elvis Costello.  Buddy may have played several different kinds of guitars but, he was specifically responsible for popularizing the Fender Stratocaster, especially in England. For many wannabe rock & rollers in the UK, Holly's 1958 tour was the first chance they'd had to see or hear this iconic guitar in action, and it quickly became the guitar of choice for anyone wanting to be a guitarist in England. In fact, Marvin is said to have had the first Stratocaster ever brought into England.   The Crickets became a trio with Sullivan dipping out in late 1957, right after the group's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, but a lot more would transpire over the next year or so. The group consolidated its success with the release of two L.P.s, The Chirping Crickets, and Buddy Holly. They had two successful international tours and performed more in the United States. Holly had also started to have different ideas and aspirations than Allison and Mauldin. They never thought of leaving Texas as their home, and they continued to base their lives there, while Buddy wanted to be in New York, not just to do business but to live. His marriage to Maria Elena Santiago, a receptionist in Murray Deutsch's office, made the decision to move to New York that much easier. By this time, Holly's music had become more sophisticated and complex, and he passed off the lead guitar duties in the studio to session player Tommy Alsup. He had done several recordings in New York using session musicians such as King Curtis. It was around this time that the band started to see a slight decline in sales. Singles such as "Heartbeat" didn't sell nearly as well as the 45s of 1957 that had rolled out of stores. It's said that Buddy might even have advanced further than most of the band's audience was willing to accept in late 1958. Critics believe that the song "Well...All Right" was years ahead of its time.   Buddy split with the group -- and Petty -- in 1958. This departure left him free to chase some of those newer sounds, which also left him low on funds. In the course of the split, it became clear to Holly and everyone else that Petty had been fudging the numbers and probably taken a lot of the group's income for himself. Unfortunately, there was almost no way of proving his theft because he never seemed to finish his "accounting" of the money owed to anyone. His books were ultimately found to be so screwed up that when he came up with various low five-figure settlements to the folks he robbed, they took it.   Holly vacationed with his wife in Lubbock, TX, and hung out in Waylin Jennings's radio station in December 1958. With no money coming in from Petty, Holly decided to earn some quick cash by signing to play the Midwest's Winter Dance Party package tour. For the start of the Winter Dance Party tour, he assembled a band consisting of Waylon Jennings (on bass), Tommy Allsup (on guitar), and Carl Bunch (on drums). Holly and Jennings left for New York City, arriving on January 15, 1959. Jennings stayed at Holly's apartment by Washington Square Park on the days before a meeting scheduled at the headquarters of the General Artists Corporation, the folks who organized the tour. They then traveled by train to Chicago to meet up with the rest of the band. The Winter Dance Party tour began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 23, 1959. The amount of travel involved created problems because whoever booked the tour dates didn't consider the distance between venues. On top of the scheduling conflicts, the unheated tour buses broke down twice in the freezing weather. In addition, Holly's drummer Carl Bunch was hospitalized for frostbite to his toes while aboard the bus, so Buddy looked for different transportation.  Buddy actually sat in on drums for the local bands while Richie Valenz played drums for Buddy.    On February 2, before their appearance in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered a four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza airplane for Jennings, Allsup, and himself, from Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa, for $108.  Holly wanted to leave after the performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake and fly to their next venue, in Moorhead, Minnesota, through Fargo, North Dakota. This plan would allow them time to rest, wash their clothes and avoid being on that crappy bus. The Clear Lake Show ended just before midnight, and Allsup agreed to flip a coin for the seat with Richie Valens. Valens called heads, and when he won, he reportedly said, "That's the first time I've ever won anything in my life" On a side note, Allsup later opened a restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas called Heads Up, in memory of this statement. Waylon Jennings voluntarily gave up his seat to J. P. Richardson (the Big Bopper), who had the flu and complained that the tour bus was too cold and uncomfortable for a man of his stature. When Buddy heard Waylon wouldn't be flying with him, he jokingly said, “I hope your old bus freezes up!” Then Waylon responded, “well, I hope your old plane crashes!” The last thing he would ever say to his friend. Roger Peterson, the pilot and only 21, took off in pretty nasty weather, although he wasn't certified to fly by instruments alone, failing an instrument test the year before. He was a big fan of Buddy's and didn't want to disappoint, so he called a more seasoned pilot to fly the trio to their destination. “I'm more of a Lawrence Welk fan.”  Sadly, shortly after 12:55 am on February 3, 1959, Holly, Valens, Richardson, and Peterson were killed instantly when the plane crashed into a frozen cornfield five miles northwest of Mason City, Iowa, airport shortly after takeoff. Buddy was in the front, next to the pilot. He loved flying and had been taking flying lessons. The three musicians were ejected from the plane upon impact, suffering severe head and chest injuries. Holly was 22 years old.   Holly's funeral was held on February 7, 1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock, TX. It was officiated by Ben D. Johnson, who married the Hollys' just months earlier. Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan, Bob Montgomery, and Sonny Curtis were pallbearers. Some sources say that Phil Everly, the one half of The Everly Brothers, was also the pallbearer, but he said at one time that he attended the funeral but was not a pallbearer. In addition, Waylon Jennings was unable to participate because of his commitment to the still-touring Winter Dance Party. Holly's body was buried in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, in the city's eastern part. His headstone has the correct spelling of his last name (Holley) and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar. His wife, María Elena, had to see the first reports of her husband's death on T.V. She claimed she suffered a miscarriage the following day. Holly's mother, who heard the news on the radio in Lubbock, Texas, screamed and collapsed. Because of Elena's miscarriage, the authorities implemented a policy against announcing victims' names until the families were informed. As a result, Mary did not attend the funeral and has never visited the gravesite. She later told the Avalanche-Journal, "In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane."    The accident wasn't considered a significant piece of news at the time, although sad. Most news outlets were run by out-of-touch older men and didn't think rock & Roll was anything more than to be exploited to sell newspapers or grab viewing audiences. However, Holly was clean-cut and scandal-free, and with the news of his recent marriage, the story contained more misery than other music stars of the period. For the teens of the time, it was their first glimpse of a public tragedy like this, and the news was heartbreaking. Radio station D.J.s were also traumatized. The accident and sudden way it happened, along with Holly and Valens being just 22 and 17, made it even worse. Hank Williams Sr had died at 29, but he was a drug user and heavy drinker, causing some to believe his young death was inevitable. The blues guitarist Johnny Ace had passed in 1954 while backstage at a show. However, that tragedy came at his hand in a game of Russian roulette. Holly's death was different, almost more personal to the public.     Buddy left behind dozens of unfinished recordings — solo transcriptions of his new compositions, informal jam sessions with bandmates, and tapes with songs intended for other musicians. Buddy recorded his last six original songs in his apartment in late 1958 and were his most recent recordings. In June 1959, Coral Records overdubbed two of the songs with backing vocals by the Ray Charles Singers and hired guns to emulate the Crickets sound. Since his death, the finished tracks became the first singles, "Peggy Sue Got Married"/"Crying, Waiting, Hoping." The new release was a success, and the fans and industry wanted more. As a result, all six songs were included in The Buddy Holly Story, Vol. 2 in 1960 using the other Holly demos and the same studio personnel. The demand for Holly records was so great, and Holly had recorded so many tracks that his record label could release new Holly albums and singles for the next ten years. Norman Petty, the alleged swindler, produced most of these new songs, using unreleased studio masters, alternative takes, audition tapes, and even amateur recordings (a few from 1954 with recorded with low-quality vocals). The final Buddy Holly album, "Giant," was released in 1969 with the single, "Love Is Strange," taking the lead.   These posthumous records did well in the U.S. but actually charted in England. New recordings of his music, like the Rolling Stones' rendition of "Not Fade Away" and the Beatles' rendition of "Words of Love," kept Buddy's name and music in the hearts and ears of a new generation of listeners. In the States, the struggle was a little more challenging. The rock & roll wave was constantly morphing, with new sounds, bands, and listeners continuously emerging, and the general public gradually forgot about Buddy and his short-lived legacy. Holly was a largely forgotten figure in his own country by the end of the '60s, except among older fans (then in their twenties) and hardcore oldies listeners. Things began to shift toward the end of the '60s with the start of the oldies boom. Holly's music was, of course, a part of this movement. But, as people listened, they also learned about the man behind the music. Even the highly respected rock zine Rolling Stone went out of its way to remind people who Buddy was. His posing images from 1957 and 1958, wearing his glasses, a jacket, and smiling, looked like a figure from another age. The way he died also set him apart from some of the deaths of rockers like Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison, musicians who, at the time, overindulged in the rock in roll lifestyle. Holly was different. He was eternally innocent in all aspects of his life. Don McLean, a relatively unknown singer/songwriter, who proudly considered himself a Buddy Holly fan, wrote and released a song called "American Pie," in 1971, catapulting him into the musical ethos. Although listeners assumed McLean wrote the song about President Kennedy, he let it be known publicly that he meant February 3, 1959, the day Holly died. Maclean was a holly fan and his death devastated him when he was only 11. The song's popularity led to Holly suddenly getting more press exposure than he'd ever had the chance to enjoy in his lifetime.     The tragic plane accident launched a few careers in the years after. Bobby Vee became a star when his band took over Holly's spot on the Winter Dance Party tour.  Holly's final single, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," hit the British charts in the wake of his death and rose to number one. Two years after the event, producer Joe Meek and singer Mike Berry got together to make "Tribute to Buddy Holly," a memorial single. But, unfortunately, rumor has it that Meek never entirely got over Holly's death, and he killed himself on the anniversary of the plane accident.   The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included Holly among its first class in 1986. Upon his induction, the Hall of Fame basked about the large quantity of material he produced during his short musical career. Saying, "He made a major and lasting impact on popular music ." Calling him an "innovator" for writing his own material, experimenting with double-tracking, and using orchestration. He was also revered for having "pioneered and popularized" the use of two guitars, bass, and drums by rock bands. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1986, saying his contributions "changed the face of Rock' n' Roll." Along with Petty, Holly developed techniques like overdubbing and reverb and other innovative instrumentation. As a result, according to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Holly became "one of the most influential pioneers of rock and roll" who had a "lasting influence" on genre performers of the 1960s.   Paul McCartney bought the rights to Buddy Holly's entire song catalog on July 1, 1976.   Lubbock TX's Walk of Fame has a statue honoring Buddy of him rocking his Fender, which Grant Speed sculpted in 1980. There are other memorials to Buddy Holly, including a street named in his honor and the Buddy Holly Center, which contains a museum of memorabilia and fine arts gallery. The Center is located on Crickets Avenue, one street east of Buddy Holly Avenue.  There was a musical about Buddy. Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, a “pioneering jukebox musical which worked his familiar hits into a narrative,” debuted in the West End in 1989. It ran until 2008, where it also appeared on Broadway, as well as in Australia and Germany, not to mention touring companies in the U.K. and U.S.   In 1994 "Buddy Holly" became a massive hit from the band Weezer, paying homage to the fallen rocker and is still played on the radio and whenever MTV decides to play videos on one of their side stations. Again, in ‘94, Holly's style also showed up in Quentin Tarantino's abstract and groundbreaking film Pulp Fiction, which featured Steve Buscemi playing a waiter impersonating Buddy.   In 1997, Buddy received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He was inducted into the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, as well. In 2010, Grant Speed's statue of Buddy and his guitar was taken down for repairs, and construction of a new Walk of Fame began. On May 9, 2011, the City of Lubbock held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Buddy and Maria Elena Holly Plaza, the new home of the statue and the Walk of Fame. The same year, on why would be Buddy's 75th birthday, a star with his name was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.   There were two tribute albums released in 2011: Verve Forecast's Listen to Me: Buddy Holly,  featuring Stevie Nicks, Brian Wilson, and Ringo Starr plus 13 other artists, and Fantasy/Concord's Rave on Buddy Holly, which had tracks from Paul McCartney, Patti Smith, the Black Keys, and Nick Lowe, among others.  Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens released his own Holly tribute album in 2009. Universal released True Love Ways, an album where original Holly recordings were overdubbed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 2018, just in time for Christmas. That album debuted at number 10 on the U.K. charts. Groundbreaking was held on April 20, 2017, to construct a new performing arts center in Lubbock, TX, dubbed the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences, a $153 million project in downtown Lubbock completed in 2020 located at 1300 Mac Davis Lane.   Recently, on May 5, 2019, an article on gearnews.com had a pretty cool story, if it's true.   The famous Fender Stratocaster played and owned by Buddy Holly that disappeared after his death in 1959 has been found, according to a new video documentary called "The '54".   Gill Matthews is an Australian drummer, producer, and collector of old Fender guitars. According to the documentary, he may have stumbled upon Buddy Holly's legendary guitar. The film is The '54 and tells the history of one particular 1954 Fender Stratocaster Gil purchased two decades after the plane crash that claimed Buddy's life. Experts cited in the film say there is a good chance that the guitar in Matthews' possession is indeed Buddy Holly's actual original '54 Fender Stratocaster. If this is true, it is possibly one of the most significant finds in guitar history. You can watch the video at gearnews.com and see all the evidence presented during the film.     Sources: A biography on allmusic.com written by Bruce Eder was the main source of information here with other info coming from the following Rave on: The Biography of Buddy Holly written by Phillip Norman   Buddy Holly : Rest In Peace by Don Mclean "Why Buddy Holly will never fade away" an article on The Telegraph website written by Phillip Norman   Various other articles were used and tidbits taken from wikipedia.   And Adam Moody   Consider becoming a producer of the show. www.accidentaldads.com www.iconsandoutlaws.com       

Il y a 65 ans, Don et Phil Everly poussaient la porte des studios RCA de Nashville pour enregistrer cette chanson écrite par le couple Bryant. Mais la suite fut plus difficile. Elvis Presley n'en a pas voulu et après une vingtaine d'autres refus, un producteur demanda aux frère Everly qui n'avaient rien fait jusqu'ici de l'enregistrer pour 64 dollars chacun. Ce fut leur premier succès, plus d'un million de 45 Tours vendus. Ray Charles en a fait une formidable version, version enjouée alors que le texte est d'une tristesse absolue, il n'est question que de rupture et de solitude. George Harrison l'a chantée, Sylvie Vartan l'a adaptée en français et plus récemment, Jean-Louis Aubert. Ecoutez La pépite musicale avec Anthony Martin du 01 mars 2022

  President Biden meets the press...........The GOP is gaining on Democrats in the latest Gallup survey.........Virginia AG going after woke prosecutors.....More kids killed in Chicago.......Phil Everly (1939-2014).......and other stories...  

By the time the Everly Brothers signed with Cadence Records in March 1957 (a deal midwifed by music publisher Wesley Rose of Acuff-Rose), they were singing teenage playlets crafted by songwriters Boudleaux and Felice Bryant overlaid with R&B rhythm patterns. They scored a string of hits, including “Bye, Bye Love,” “Wake Up, Little Susie,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” “Bird Dog,” and others. They became Grand Ole Opry members on June 1, 1957. In a sense, though, Don and Phil Everly were more important to Nashville. They were the first consistently successful rock & roll act to come from there. Their management and their songs came from Nashville, and they recorded there with local session musicians. In other words, they extended Nashville's sense of what was commercially possible. Learn more at the Country Music Hall of Fame/org/artist/the-everly-brothers. Lyrics Wake up, little Susie, wake up Wake up, little Susie, wake up We've both been sound asleep Wake up, little Susie and weep The movie's over, it's four o'clock And we're in trouble deep Wake up, little Susie Wake up, little Susie Well, what are we gonna tell your mama? What are we gonna tell your pa'? What are we gonna tell our friends when they say "Ooh, la, la"? Wake up, little Susie Wake up, little Susie Well, we told your mama that we'd be in by ten Well, Susie, baby, looks like we goofed again Wake up, little Susie Wake up, little Susie We gotta go home Well, what are we gonna tell your mama? What are we gonna tell your pa'? What are we gonna tell our friends when they say "Ooh, la, la"? SOURCE: COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME.org Isaac Donald Everly Born: Brownie, Kentucky, February 1, 1937 Died: August 21, 2021 Philip Everly Born: Chicago, Illinois, January 19, 1939 Died: January 3, 2014 Songwriters: Boudleaux Bryant / Felice Bryant Correction: pre·dic·a·ment; noun 1. a difficult, unpleasant, or embarrassing situation.

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Back with another episode of “3 Chord Truths”, where we talk with songwriters and musicians, and reveal their motivations as well as their amazing backstories.   In this episode, we pull up a chair and chat with songwriter, musician, and actor, Bobby Tomberlin. Bobby's single “I've Lived Country Music” provides the backdrop for this really great discussion with someone who has worked with, met, or is friends with many of the legends of country music, as well as some of today's artist. His stories are funny, sweet, always entertaining, and provide an amazing view of some of the history of the country music genre, as well as Bobby's personal connections and many experiences. It was a pleasure speaking with him, and we hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did making it. We wish to thank Bobby for his time with us talking about his amazing career. Bobby Tomberlin Bio: Grammy, CMA and ACM nominee Bobby Tomberlin started out in the music business at the age of 11 in his hometown of Luverne, Alabama interviewing legends such as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Keith Whitley. Mel Tillis gave Bobby his first publishing contract and for the past 14 years, Bobby has been a staff writer for CURB Records Publishing. Bobby co-wrote the number one country and Top 5 AC single, “One More Day” recorded by Diamond Rio. Bobby also co-authored an inspirational book by the same title. Bobby co-wrote the Top 10 single “A Good Day To Run” with Darryl Worley. Bobby has also had songs recorded by Josh Turner, Faith Hill, Kenny Rogers, Rodney Atkins, Joe Nichols, Terri Clark, Little Jimmy Dickens, the Oak Ridge Boys, Joe Diffie, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ty Herndon, Lee Greenwood, Chely Wright, Linda Davis, Chris Young, T. G. Sheppard, Eddy Arnold and many others. Some of Bobby's co-writers include Steve Wariner, Bill Anderson, Mac Davis, Steve Dorff, Phil Everly and Josh Turner. Bobby is one of the singers on the new CMT hit series, “The Singing Bee” Bobby has appeared on numerous other television shows including “Opry Backstage” and “The Bad Girls Club” on the Oxygen Network, where he starred in an episode. Bobby makes numerous live appearances every year across the country and is a featured guest on the Steve Dorff and Friends Songwriter Show.

The adventurous jazz punk percussionist and vibraphonist with Rickie Lee Jones, Ani DiFranco, Les Claypool, and Critters Buggin’, as well as his own groups including Punkadelick, Nolatet, and Billy Goat, is one of the most dynamic performers you’ll find anywhere. His terrific trilogy of Quarantine-era albums has raised the bar for everyone else. Mike comes clean about his triumphs and regrets over a stellar 30-year career that’s stronger than ever and as wild as it gets. Topics include a maiden episode, a road trip, an MRI, RIP Don (and Phil) Everly and Charlie Watts, a dead squirrel text, Texas roots, the Bad Brains, the DIY ethic, fIREHOSE, Ten Hands, Deep Ellum, prog rock, Fishbone, Zappa damage, the New Bohemians, Matt Chamberlin, a psychedelic epiphany, a dope habit, getting signed to Hollywood Records, Bob Cavallo, getting clean, Skerik, a genius quote, jam bands, “Shoot the Moon,” “Suitcase Man,” Elliott Smith, Alex McMurray, depression, Bob Wills, “1918,” a musical palette, Tito Puente, high jumps, and much more. Support the podcast here. Join the Patreon page here. Shop for Troubled Men’s Wear here. Subscribe, review, and rate (5 stars) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast source. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Intro music: Styler/Coman Break music: “Pelagic” from “1918” by Mike Dillon Outro music: “Shoot the Moon” by Mike Dillon and Punkadelick Troubled Men Podcast Facebook Troubled Men Podacst Instagram Mike Dillon Homepage Mike Dillon Facebook

After Don Everly's passing on August 21, 2021 joining his brother Phil Everly in rock and roll heaven, Vinnie gives a summarized history of the original fighting rock and roll brother duo the Everly Brothers from their musical back story to their success in the 1950's, faltering success in the 60's, and their ugly breakup in the 70's all the way up to their modern reunion and resurgence in the 1980's as a rock and roll force to be reckoned with preserving their legacies all the way up until Phil's death in 2014 and Don's recent death respectively.

Charity Nebbe meets Byron "BK" Davis, a Steinway International Artist, pianist and composer from Davenport. Davis has traveled the world, worked with artists like BB King, Billy Preston and plans to have more performances here in Iowa. Nebbe also speaks with two Shenandoah natives about the legacy of Don and Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers.

Damn the Torpedoes is the third studio album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and is the album where the group truly broke out into serious commercial success.  They had done well with their first album, with "Breakdown" breaking into the top 40, and "American Girl" receiving some air play.  But this album took the group to a different level.  Damn the Torpedoes was their first top 10 album, peaking at number 2 on the Billboard album charts for 7 weeks.  They were unfortunately kept out of the number 1 slot by the release of Pink Floyd's The Wall.Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are Mike Campbell on guitars and keyboards, Benmont Tench on keyboards and backing vocals, Ron Blair on bass, Stan Lynch on drums and backing vocals, and of course Tom Petty on lead, rhythm guitar, and harmonica.  Petty also produced the album.Damn the Torpedoes takes its name from Admiral Farragut's famous Civil War quote, but also reflects an attitude that the band was feeling.  At the time ABC Records was their distributor and assigned the contract to MCA.  Petty said that they couldn't assign the contract without permission.  MCA sued, and Petty declared bankruptcy as a strategic move to keep MCA at bay.  They finally settled by signing a new contract with Backstreet Records, which was an MCA subsidiary.The times were good for Petty's style of throwback rock and roll.  Disco was quite commercial and beginning to wane, and New Wave was just beginning its run.  MTV would also be a couple of years in the future.  The rock world was starved of solid rock and roll, and Petty was ready to step into the void with tight, radio-friendly singlesWe think this album is a winner, but as you know, even the losers get lucky sometimes! RefugeeThis is the second single from the album, released in January 1980.  It went to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100.  Petty and Mike Campbell wrote this, and it was one of the first songs Campbell wrote.  The song reflects the band's reaction to the pressures of the music business, and the struggle they had with MCA.What Are You Doin' In My Life?A deeper cut, this track is about a stalker girl that the guy can't make go away.  "Well, you're the last woman in the world that thrills me.  Now you got my girlfriend trying to kill me.  Honey, my friends think that I've gone crazy.  Can't you figure out that you ain't my baby?"Even The LosersBelieve it or not, this was not released as a single on the album outside of Australia.  There's a story behind this song.  Petty had a crush on a girl named Cindy in junior high school.  Years later in Gainesville, Florida, he hooked up with Cindy.  The next morning, Cindy told him their relationship consisted of only that night.  During that night, Petty realized that he needed to be in a rock and roll band, and this song sums up that night.Don't Do Me Like ThatThis is the first single from the album.  Petty wrote the song back in 1974 with a band called Mudcrutch.  This was Petty's first top 10 hit, reaching number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.  The singer relays the story of a friend who got his heart broken, and asks that his girlfriend not do the same.  I really like the sound of the organ on this piece. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:The Rose by Bette Midler (Main Theme from the motion picture The Rose)The song was a huge hit for Midler.  She played the main character, Mary Rose Foster, in this movie loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin. STAFF PICKS:You're Only Lonely by JD SoutherRob starts off the staff picks with a track  from Detroit born, Amarillo raised JD Souther.  His former roommate, Glenn Frey, sings backup on this song, along with Phil Everly and Jackson Browne.  JD Souther co-wrote a number of songs for the Eagles, which explains why this song may have a bit of an Eagles sound to it. Driver's Seat by Sniff N' The TearsWayne's brings us a one hit wonder.  It maintains a simple chord structure throughout, but builds in intensity as the song progresses.  Although we think of it as a driving song, the lyrics are really about disjointed feelings following a breakup, and not understanding how things would be over with someone you had been with so long.Good Girls Don't by The KnackBrian's staff pick was the follow-up to the massive hit "My Sharona."  Lead man Doug Fieger wrote this song in 1972, but couldn't get anyone to pick it up at the time.  He hated it by the time The Knack tried it, and they got it right in one take. Jane by Jefferson StarshipBruce brings us a hit from Jefferson Starship while Georgia native Mickey Thomas was front man.  It peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100.  Bassist David Freiberg wrote the lyrics (along with Jim McPherson) inspired by an old girlfriend. INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:Is There Anybody Out There by Pink FloydWhen The Wall kept Damn the Torpedoes stuck at number two, Tom Petty told Westwood One, "I love Pink Floyd but I hated them that year."

El Guateque, revista de música que despierta recuerdos en Onda Regional de MurciaOnda Regional de Murcia (orm.es; domingos, 22,00h) despide al maestro de las melodías Antón García Abril. Sus composiciones condensan toda una época. Un grande entre los grandes, nada que envidiar a los compositores norteamericanos. Una música que recuerda a sus contemporáneos Jobim, Bacharach o Henry Mancini. Tampoco faltan en este sincero homenaje LAS IBÉRICAS FC , una delantera de primera división. 11 corazones que al terreno saltan con emoción . La canción Once Corazones es de la cantante Rosalia, que rivalizó en popularidad con Conchita Velasco y Karina. una ye-yé flequillera. Marisol divierte a los niños de una guardería contándoles la historia de un simpático burrito, Bienvenido.El mes de marzo es el comienzo de la temporada de lluvias para la “masa atlántica” del Brasil. Razón por la cual el compositor Tom Jobim dedico una canción “Aguas de marzo” , que trata sobre el terreno sobre el que construiría su soñada casa en las afueras de Rio de Janeiro bajo la lluvia de marzo de 1972. Pero no es solamente una descripción del terreno, es la descripción de una estación, de un estado de ánimo, de un estado de la naturaleza. Cómo es posible que una leyenda del jazz que no tenía ni idea de hablar nuestro idioma se hiciera famosa en nuestro país cantando en español? Porque sí, Nat King Cole es especialmente recordado por las grabaciones que realizó de emblemáticos temas de raíces hispanas. En 1973 aparece el primero LP de Los Puntos, titulado: "Cuando salga la luna", posiblemente el mejor y más fresco de su carrera, que contenía doce canciones compuestas todas ellas por Pepe G. Grano de Oro (guitarra y segunda voz), entre las que se encontraba esta preciosidad de balada: "Un regalo para tí". En 1962 Luis Aguilé protagoniza con Mariquita Gallegos, con quien mantuvo un romance, la película La chacota y al año siguiente se establece definitivamente en España. Graham Nash jugó un papel importante en la historia temprana de los Hollies, pero después de su partida en diciembre de 1968, el grupo logró algunos de sus mayores éxitos. Después de escuchar la excelente versión de Phil Everly de "The Air That I Breathe" escrita por Albert Hammond y Mike Hazlewood, los Hollies grabaron la versión definitiva, diseñada por Alan Parsons. "Don't Cry Daddy" fue escrita por Scott Davis y grabada por "el rey del rock" entre el 15 y 21 de enero de 1969 . Muchos especulan que esta canción fue dedicada al padre de Elvis, Vernon Elvis Presley , que quedó viudo en 1958 y lo dejó muy afectado por mucho tiempo. En sus primeros discos encontramos a una Gelu dedicada sobre todo a versionar canciones sudamericanas y francesas; sin embargo a partir de 1962 comienza a grabar éxitos italianos de Mina y Rita Pavone, con quienes su voz guardaba un cierto parecido. Y llegó la primavera a la ciudad con Los Pasos.

In this episode we welcome the great blues & country writer Tony Russell, who talks about his new Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records — and the joys of the original Americana sound from the '20s to the '40s. Tony also talks us through his writing career from the late '60s to the present, with a particular nod to a 1972 Cream piece about B.B. King.The focus on the "Old-Time" country of Fiddlin' John Carson & Uncle Dave Macon carries through to discussion of those compelling revivalists Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, big faves of the RBP crew — and then to clips we hear from a 1983 audio interview with Phil Everly of peerless country-pop harmonists the Everly Brothers. Phil talks about the strained relationship with brother Don and the prospect of the Everlys reunion that happened in the fall of that year.For those less smitten by Appalachia and "high lonesome" close-harmony singing, there are heartfelt farewells to roots reggae icon Bunny Wailer & trad-jazzer turned "Father of British R&B" Chris Barber, both of whom were lost to the music world last week. There's effusive appreciation of the Wailers co-founder's classic 1976 solo debut Blackheart Man, while RBP's co-founder Martin Colyer pitches in with reminiscences of his uncle Ken's bandmate Barber.Mark talks us through his highlights from recent additions to the RBP Library, including the great Derek Taylor holding forth on the Stones' drug bust in 1967 and the recently-departed Chick Corea discussing his Return To Forever group with Zoo World's John Swenson in 1974. Barney namechecks a Kandia Crazy Horse hymn to the L.A. Canyons from 2009 and Jasper rounds things off with remarks on Danger Mouse's Rome project, from 2011, and London MC Sway's 2006 album This is My Demo.Many thanks to special guest Tony Russell, whose new book Rural Rhythm is published by OUP and available now.Pieces discussed: Charlie Poole, Uncle Dave Macon, B.B. King, Gillian Welch, Gillian Welch, Phil Everly, Bunny Wailer, The Wailers, Chris Barber, Chris Barber, Ben Webster, Peter Green, Curtis Mayfield, Roky Erickson, Rolling Stones, Chick Corea, The Time, L.L. Cool J, L.A. Canyons, Dave Edmunds, Valerie June, Sway and Danger Mouse.

In this episode we welcome the great blues & country writer Tony Russell, who talks about his new Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records — and the joys of the original Americana sound from the '20s to the '40s. Tony also talks us through his writing career from the late '60s to the present, with a particular nod to a 1972 Cream piece about B.B. King.The focus on the "Old-Time" country of Fiddlin' John Carson & Uncle Dave Macon carries through to discussion of those compelling revivalists Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, big faves of the RBP crew — and then to clips we hear from a 1983 audio interview with Phil Everly of peerless country-pop harmonists the Everly Brothers. Phil talks about the strained relationship with brother Don and the prospect of the Everlys reunion that happened in the fall of that year.For those less smitten by Appalachia and "high lonesome" close-harmony singing, there are heartfelt farewells to roots reggae icon Bunny Wailer & trad-jazzer turned "Father of British R&B" Chris Barber, both of whom were lost to the music world last week. There's effusive appreciation of the Wailers co-founder's classic 1976 solo debut Blackheart Man, while RBP's co-founder Martin Colyer pitches in with reminiscences of his uncle Ken's bandmate Barber.Mark talks us through his highlights from recent additions to the RBP Library, including the great Derek Taylor holding forth on the Stones' drug bust in 1967 and the recently-departed Chick Corea discussing his Return To Forever group with Zoo World's John Swenson in 1974. Barney namechecks a Kandia Crazy Horse hymn to the L.A. Canyons from 2009 and Jasper rounds things off with remarks on Danger Mouse's Rome project, from 2011, and London MC Sway's 2006 album This is My Demo.Many thanks to special guest Tony Russell, whose new book Rural Rhythm is published by OUP and available now. Pieces discussed: Charlie Poole, Uncle Dave Macon, B.B. King, Gillian Welch, Gillian Welch, Phil Everly, Bunny Wailer, The Wailers, Chris Barber, Chris Barber, Ben Webster, Peter Green, Curtis Mayfield, Roky Erickson, Rolling Stones, Chick Corea, The Time, L.L. Cool J, L.A. Canyons, Dave Edmunds, Valerie June, Sway and Danger Mouse.

In this episode we welcome the great blues & country writer Tony Russell, who talks about his new Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records — and the joys of the original Americana sound from the '20s to the '40s. Tony also talks us through his writing career from the late '60s to the present, with a particular nod to a 1972 Cream piece about B.B. King. The focus on the "Old-Time" country of Fiddlin' John Carson & Uncle Dave Macon carries through to discussion of those compelling revivalists Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, big faves of the RBP crew — and then to clips we hear from a 1983 audio interview with Phil Everly of peerless country-pop harmonists the Everly Brothers. Phil talks about the strained relationship with brother Don and the prospect of the Everlys reunion that happened in the fall of that year. For those less smitten by Appalachia and "high lonesome" close-harmony singing, there are heartfelt farewells to roots reggae icon Bunny Wailer & trad-jazzer turned "Father of British R&B" Chris Barber, both of whom were lost to the music world last week. There's effusive appreciation of the Wailers co-founder's classic 1976 solo debut Blackheart Man, while RBP's co-founder Martin Colyer pitches in with reminiscences of his uncle Ken's bandmate Barber. Mark talks us through his highlights from recent additions to the RBP Library, including the great Derek Taylor holding forth on the Stones' drug bust in 1967 and the recently-departed Chick Corea discussing his Return To Forever group with Zoo World's John Swenson in 1974. Barney namechecks a Kandia Crazy Horse hymn to the L.A. Canyons from 2009 and Jasper rounds things off with remarks on Danger Mouse's Rome project, from 2011, and London MC Sway's 2006 album This is My Demo. Many thanks to special guest Tony Russell, whose new book Rural Rhythm is published by OUP and available now. Pieces discussed: Charlie Poole, Uncle Dave Macon, B.B. King, Gillian Welch, Gillian Welch, Phil Everly, Bunny Wailer, The Wailers, Chris Barber, Chris Barber, Ben Webster, Peter Green, Curtis Mayfield, Roky Erickson, Rolling Stones, Chick Corea, The Time, L.L. Cool J, L.A. Canyons, Dave Edmunds, Valerie June, Sway and Danger Mouse.

In this episode we welcome the great blues & country writer Tony Russell, who talks about his new Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records — and the joys of the original Americana sound from the '20s to the '40s. Tony also talks us through his writing career from the late '60s to the present, with a particular nod to a 1972 Cream piece about B.B. King. The focus on the "Old-Time" country of Fiddlin' John Carson & Uncle Dave Macon carries through to discussion of those compelling revivalists Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, big faves of the RBP crew — and then to clips we hear from a 1983 audio interview with Phil Everly of peerless country-pop harmonists the Everly Brothers. Phil talks about the strained relationship with brother Don and the prospect of the Everlys reunion that happened in the fall of that year. For those less smitten by Appalachia and "high lonesome" close-harmony singing, there are heartfelt farewells to roots reggae icon Bunny Wailer & trad-jazzer turned "Father of British R&B" Chris Barber, both of whom were lost to the music world last week. There's effusive appreciation of the Wailers co-founder's classic 1976 solo debut Blackheart Man, while RBP's co-founder Martin Colyer pitches in with reminiscences of his uncle Ken's bandmate Barber. Mark talks us through his highlights from recent additions to the RBP Library, including the great Derek Taylor holding forth on the Stones' drug bust in 1967 and the recently-departed Chick Corea discussing his Return To Forever group with Zoo World's John Swenson in 1974. Barney namechecks a Kandia Crazy Horse hymn to the L.A. Canyons from 2009 and Jasper rounds things off with remarks on Danger Mouse's Rome project, from 2011, and London MC Sway's 2006 album This is My Demo. Many thanks to special guest Tony Russell, whose new book Rural Rhythm is published by OUP and available now. Pieces discussed: Charlie Poole, Uncle Dave Macon, B.B. King, Gillian Welch, Gillian Welch, Phil Everly, Bunny Wailer, The Wailers, Chris Barber, Chris Barber, Ben Webster, Peter Green, Curtis Mayfield, Roky Erickson, Rolling Stones, Chick Corea, The Time, L.L. Cool J, L.A. Canyons, Dave Edmunds, Valerie June, Sway and Danger Mouse.

Urodzeni: GEORGE MARTIN, STEPHEN STILLS, THOMAS BANGALTER, ZYGMUNT KONIECZNY,  SEWERYN KRAJEWSKI (foto),Zmarli: KEVIN MACMICHAEL, PHIL EVERLY...Nagranie: 2020.

Dave Pearlman has been playing pedal steel and guitar since 1968 and has performed with such notable artists as Dan Fogelberg, Phil Everly, Bill Medley, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Chuck Berry, Hoyt Axton, REO Speedwagon, Bobby Womack, Leslie Gore, Pat Boone, Michelle Shocked, Joe Walsh, Richie Furay, Al Jardine, Jesse Colin Young, Albert Lee, Terry Reid, and many others as well as having been recorded on many movie and television soundtracks and commercials. Dave ran a successful recording studio for many years and was given an award for engineering on a Grammy winning album as well as four Gold Albums and one Platinum Album. Dave now owns and operates Pearlman Microphones where he hand builds custom microphones for some of the top artists and studios in the world.www.pearlmanmicrophones.comwww.rotundrascal.comhttps://www.facebook.com/pearlmanmics/

The Everly Brothers "When Will I Be Loved" 1960 single released on Cadence written by Phil Everly and produced by Wesley Rose.Personel:Don Everly – guitar, vocalsPhil Everly – guitar, vocalsChet Atkins, guitarHank Garland, guitarLuther Brandon, guitarLightnin Chance, bassBuddy Harman, drumsFloyd Cramer, pianoLinda Ronstadt "When Will I Be Loved" 1975 on "Heart Like a Wheel" released on Capitol written by Phil Everly and produced by Peter AsherCover:Josh Bond rhythm guitar/vocalsNeal Marsh lead guitar/harmoniesIntro Music:"Shithouse" 2010 release from "A Collection of Songs for the Kings". Writer Josh Bond. Produced by Frank CharltonOther Artists Mentioned:The Commodores “Nightshift”Sly and the Family Stone “Greatest Hits”Marvin Gay “What’s Going On”CSNY “Ohio”Van Morrison “When Will I Learn Too Live in God”Buffalo Springfield “for What It’s Worth”Jim James “Eternally Even”Mahalia Jackson “Move On Up A Little Higher”Joe South “Games People Play”King Curtis “Soul Serenade”The Allman Brothers Band “Soulshine”The Everly Brothers “Cathy’s Clown”David ByrneBuddy HollyBill Haley and His CometsChet AtkinsBob Dylan “Highway 61 Re-Visited”Everly Brothers “Dream”Everly Brothers “Wake Up, Little Susie”ElvisThe EaglesDuane Eddy “Because They’re Young”Duane Eddy “$1,000,000 Worth of Twang”Roy Orbison “Only the Only”Waddy WachtelSteely DanWinonaShania TwainBurt Sugarman’s Midnight SpecialSoft Cell “Tainted Love”Everly Brothers “Love Hurts”Gram ParsonsThe BeatlesLouvin BrothersSimon and GarfunkelThe KinksMick JaggerKeith RichardsOld SchoolJohn Denver “When Will I Be Loved”GoodfellasRay Stevens  

From the streets of New Orleans to the heat of Los Angeles, Paul McCartney and Wings were at last finished with Venus And Mars, the follow-up LP to the wildly successful 1973 Band On The Run album -- and it was time to celebrate! What ensued was a veritable who's who of the Los Angeles music scene partying heartily aboard the permanently-docked ocean liner The Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. Macca's staggering guest list (reminiscent of the Wings launch party 4 years prior) included such stars as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Marvin Gaye, The Faces, Phil Everly, The Jackson Five, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Cher, Derek Taylor and Mal Evans. Even former Beatle George Harrison, with girlfriend Olivia by his side, was in attendance to christen the latest Wings effort. Invited but absent from the festivities were John Lennon and Ringo Starr, who themselves had a busy schedule as the spring of 1975 slowly drew to a close. Ringo O'Records, the brand new label fronted by Starr, was in the midst of its first big promotional push. Meanwhile, John Lennon would formally take the stage for (what would turn out to be) the final show of his career -- performing a variety of songs including cuts from his new Rock And Roll record at the A Salute to Sir Lew Grade: The Master Showman televised gala. A third of the way through 1975 and John Lennon still seemed very much in the public eye, but a cancelled April 14th recording session would wind up being a telltale sign of things to come in as the decade progressed... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode eighty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Cathy’s Clown” by The Everly Brothers, and at how after signing the biggest contract in music business history their career was sabotaged by their manager. 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 “Poetry in Motion” by Johnny Tillotson. (more…)

Episode eighty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Cathy’s Clown” by The Everly Brothers, and at how after signing the biggest contract in music business history their career was sabotaged by their manager. 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 “Poetry in Motion” by Johnny Tillotson.  —-more—-   Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there’s a decent one in French, but I don’t speak French well enough for that). Ike’s Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio,  and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it’s been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. This collection has all the Everlys’ recordings up to the end of 1962.  I would also recommend this recently-released box set containing expanded versions of their three last studio albums for Warners, including Roots, which I discuss in the episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   Transcript   This week we’re going to look at the Everly Brothers’ first and biggest hit of the sixties, a song that established them as hit songwriters in their own right, which was more personal than anything they’d released earlier, and which was a big enough hit that it saved what was to become a major record label. We’re going to look at “Cathy’s Clown”: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”] When we left the Everly Brothers, six months ago, we had seen them have their first chart hits and record the classic album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, an album that prefigured by several years the later sixties folk music revival, and which is better than much of the music that came out of that later scene. Both artistically and commercially, they were as successful as any artists of the early rock era. But Don Everly, in particular, wanted them to have more artistic control themselves — and if they could move to a bigger label as well, that was all the better. But as it happens, they didn’t move to a bigger label, just a richer one. Warner Brothers Records had started in 1958, and had largely started because of changes in the film industry. In the late 1940s and early fifties, the film industry was being hit on all sides. Anti-trust legislation meant that the film studios had to get rid of the cinema chains they owned, losing a massive revenue stream (and also losing the opportunity to ensure that their films got shown no matter how poor their reputation). A series of lawsuits from actors had largely destroyed the star system on which the major studios relied, and then television became a huge factor in the entertainment industry, cutting further into the film studios’ profits. An aside about that — one of the big reasons for the growth of television as America’s dominant entertainment medium is racism. In the thirties and forties, there had been huge waves of black people moving from rural areas to the cities in search of work, and we’ve looked at that and the way that led to the creation of rhythm and blues in many of the previous episodes. After World War II there was a corresponding period of white flight, where white people moved en masse away from the big cities and into small towns and suburbs, to get away from black people. This is largely what led to America’s car culture and general lack of public transport, because low-population-density areas aren’t as easy to serve with reliable public transport. And in the same way it’s also uneconomical to run mass entertainment venues like theatres and cinemas in low-population-density areas, and going to the cinema becomes much less enticing if you have to drive twenty miles to get to one, rather than walking down the street. So white flight had essentially meant the start of a process by which entertainment in America moved from the public sphere to the private one. This is also a big reason for the boom in record sales in the middle decades of last century — records are private entertainment, as opposed to going out to a dance or a show. And this left the big film studios in dire straits. But while they were down on their luck when it came to films, Warners were doing very well in the music publishing business, where unlike their ownership of cinemas they didn’t have to get rid of their properties. Warners had always owned the songs used in their films, and indeed one of the reasons that Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies existed in the first place was so that they could plug songs that Warners owned. When Tex Avery has Owl Jolson singing “I Love to Singa”: [Excerpt: “Owl Jolson”, “I Love to Singa”] That’s a song that had originally appeared in a Warners feature film a few months earlier, sung by Al Jolson and Cab Calloway: [Excerpt: Al Jolson and Cab Calloway, “I Love to Singa”] So Warners were making money from the music industry. But then they realised something. Tab Hunter, one of their film stars under contract to them, had started to have hit records. His record “Young Love” spent six weeks at number one: [Excerpt: Tab Hunter, “Young Love”] And whenever he was interviewed to promote a film, all the interviewers would ask about was his music career. That was bad enough — after all, he wasn’t signed to Warners as a singer, he was meant to be a film star — but what was worse was that the label Hunter was on, Dot Records, was owned by a rival film studio, Paramount. Warners would go to all the trouble of getting an interview set up for their star, and then all it would do was put money into Paramount’s pocket! They needed to get into the record business themselves, as a way to exploit their song catalogue if nothing else. At first they thought about just buying Imperial Records, but when that deal fell through they started their own label, and signed Hunter to it right at the point that his career nosedived. In the first two years that Warner Brothers Records existed, they only had two hit singles — “Kookie Kookie Lend Me Your Comb”, a record based on the Warner-owned TV series 77 Sunset Strip and co-performed by one of that series’ stars, Edd Byrnes: [Excerpt: Edd Byrnes and Connie Stevens, “Kookie Kookie Lend Me Your Comb”] And another record by Connie Stevens, who also sang on “Kookie Kookie Lend Me Your Comb”, and was the star of a different Warners TV series, Hawaiian Eye: [Excerpt: Connie Stevens, “Sixteen Reasons”] Everything else they released flopped badly. After two years they had lost three million dollars, and would have closed down the label altogether, except the label was owed another two million, and they didn’t want to write that off. The main reason for these losses was that the label was mostly releasing stuff aimed at the easy listening adult album market, records by people like Henry Mancini, and at the time the singles market was where the money was, and the singles market was dominated by young people. They needed some records that would appeal to young people. They decided that they needed the Everly Brothers. At the beginning of 1960, the duo had released ten singles since May 1957, of which nine had charted, as had four of the B-sides. They’d topped the pop charts twice, the R&B charts twice, and the country charts four times. At a time when even the biggest stars would occasionally release the odd flop, they were as close to a guaranteed hit-making machine as existed in the music industry. And they were looking to get away from Cadence Records, for reasons that have never been made completely clear. It’s usually said that they had artistic differences with Cadence, but at the same time they always credited Archie Bleyer from Cadence with being the perfect arranger for them — he arranged their final Cadence single, “Let it Be Me”: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Let it Be Me”] But for whatever reason, the Everlys *were* looking to find a new label, and Warner Brothers were desperate enough that they signed them up to the biggest contract ever signed in music business history up to that point. Remember that four years earlier, when Elvis had signed with RCA records, they’d paid a one-off fee of forty thousand dollars and *that* was reportedly the largest advance ever paid in the industry up until that point. Now, the Everlys were signing to Warners on a ten-year contract, with a guaranteed advance of one hundred thousand dollars a year for those ten years — the first million-dollar contract in music history. They were set up until 1970, and were sure to provide Warners with a string of hits that would last out the decade — or so it seemed at first. Their first recording for the label had an unusual melodic inspiration. Ferde Grofé was an arranger and orchestrator for Paul Whiteman’s jazz band in the 1920s and thirties. He’s particularly known these days for having been the original arranger of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” — Gershwin had written it for two pianos, and it was Grofé who had come up with the instrumental colouring that these days we think of as being so important to that piece: [Excerpt: Paul Whiteman “Rhapsody in Blue (original 1924 recording)”] Grofé had written a piece in 1931 called the “Grand Canyon Suite”, and its third movement, “On the Trail” had become the most popular piece of music he ever wrote. Disney made an Oscar-winning short with the suite as its soundtrack in 1958, and you can still hear “On the Trail” to this day in the Grand Canyon section of the Disneyland Railroad. But “On the Trail” was best known as the music that Phillip Morris used in their radio and TV commercials from the thirties through to the sixties. Here’s a bit from the original Whiteman recording of the piece: [Excerpt: Paul Whiteman, “Grand Canyon Suite: On the Trail”] Don took that melodic inspiration, and combined it with two sources of lyrical inspiration — when his dad had been a child, he’d had a crush on a girl named Mary, who hadn’t been interested, and his schoolfriends had taunted him by singing “Mary had a little Ike” at him. The other key to the song came when Don started thinking about an old crush of his own, a girl from his school called Catherine Coe — though in later years he was at pains to point out that the song wasn’t actually about her. They took the resulting song into the studio with the normal members of the Nashville A-Team, and it became only their second hit single with an A-side written by one of the brothers, reaching number one on both the pop and R&B charts: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”] I say it’s written by Don — the original issue of the record credited the songwriting to both Don and Phil, but Phil signed an agreement in 1980 relinquishing his claim to the song, and his name was taken off all future copies. It sounds to me like Don’s writing style, and all the anecdotes about its writing talk about him without mentioning any input from Phil, so I’m assuming for these purposes that it’s a Don solo composition. Listening to the record, which was the first that the duo produced for themselves, as well as being their first for Warners, you can hear why Don was at times dissatisfied with the songs that Felice and Boudleaux Bryant had written for the brothers. It’s a sophisticated piece of work in a number of different ways. For a start, there’s the way the music mirrors the lyric on the first line. That line is about separation — “Don’t want your love any more” — and the brothers start the line in unison, but Don’s voice slowly drops relative to Phil’s, so by the end of the line they’re a third apart. It’s like he’s stepping away: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”] The song’s structure also seems unusual. Wikipedia says it has a chorus and a bridge but no verse, while the Library of Congress disagrees and says it has a verse and a bridge but no chorus. Personally, I’d say that it definitely does have a chorus — the repeated section with the same words and melody each time it’s repeated, with both brothers singing, and with the title of the song at the end, seems as definitively a chorus as one could possibly ask for: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”] If that’s not a chorus, I’m honestly not sure what is. The reason this comes into question is the other section. I would call that section a verse, and I think most people would, and the song’s structure is a straightforward A-B-A-B repetition which one would normally call verse/chorus. But it’s such a change of pace that it feels like the contrasting section that normally comes with a bridge or middle eight. Indeed the first time I properly learned what a middle eight was — in a column in Mojo magazine in the mid-nineties called Doctor Rock which explained some basic musicology — it was specifically cited as an example of one: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”] Part of the reason that seems so different is that Don’s singing it solo, while the brothers are duetting on the choruses, and normally Don’s solo lines would be on a bridge or middle eight. Not always, but often enough that that’s what you expect if you’ve listened to a few of their records. But there’s also a change in rhythm. One of the things you’ll notice as we go further into the sixties is that, for a while in the early sixties, the groove in rock and roll — and also in soul — moved away from the swinging, shuffling rhythm you get in most of the fifties music we’ve looked at into a far more straightforward four-four rhythm. In roughly 1961 through 64 or so, you have things like the bam-bam-bam-bam four-on-the-floor beat of early Motown or Four Seasons records, or the chugga-chugga-chugga rhythm of surf guitar, rather than the looser, triplet-based grooves that you’d get in the fifties. And you can hear in “Cathy’s Clown” the shift in those rhythms happening in the song itself. The verses have an almost Latin feel, with lots of loose cymbal work from Buddy Harman: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”] While the choruses have an almost martial feel to them, a boom-BAP rhythm, and sound like they have two drummers on them: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”] While I say that sounds like there are two drummers, it’s still just Harman playing. The difference is that here the engineer, Bill Porter, who was the engineer on a lot of the Nashville recordings we’ve looked at, notably the Roy Orbison ones, had just obtained a new device — a tape loop. Now, I’ve seen some people misunderstand what it was that Porter did with this — thinking he looped the drums in the way one would loop things today, just playing the same recording over and over. It wasn’t that. Rather it was a way of doing what Sam Phillips had been doing with tape echo in Sun a few years earlier — there would be an endlessly circulating loop of tape, which had both record and playback heads. The drums would be recorded normally, but would also be recorded onto that tape loop, and then when it played back a few milliseconds later it would sound like a second drummer playing along with the first. It’s an almost inaudible delay, but it’s enough to give a totally different sound to the drums. Porter would physically switch this loop on and off while recording the track live — all the vocals and instruments were recorded live together, onto a three-track tape, and he would turn it on for the choruses and off for the verses. This is an early example of the kind of studio experimentation that would define the way records were made in the sixties. The rhythm that Harman played was also very influential — you can hear that it strongly influenced Paul McCartney if you listen to Beatles records like “What You’re Doing”, “Ticket to Ride”, and “Tomorrow Never Knows”, all of which have drum patterns which were suggested by McCartney, and all of which are strongly reminiscent of the “Cathy’s Clown” chorus. “Cathy’s Clown” topped the charts for five weeks, and sold two million copies. It was an immense success, and the Everlys seemed to be on top of the world. But it was precisely then that problems started for the duo. First, they moved from Nashville to LA. The main reason for that was that as well as being a record contract, their new contract with Warners would give them the opportunity to appear in films, too. So they spent six months taking acting lessons and doing screen tests, before concluding that neither of them could actually act or remember their lines, and wisely decided that they were going to stick to music. The one good thing they took from that six month period was that they rekindled their friendship with the Crickets, and Sonny Curtis wrote them a song called “Walk Right Back”, which made the top ten (and number one in the UK and New Zealand): [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Walk Right Back”] Curtis wrote that song while he was in basic training for the military, and when he got a pass for a few days he’d only written the first verse. He played the song to the brothers while he was out on his pass, and they said they liked it. He told them he’d write a second verse and send it to them, but by the time they received his letter with the lyrics for the second verse, they’d already recorded the song, just repeating the first verse. Curtis wasn’t the only one who had to go into basic military training. The brothers, too, knew they would be drafted sooner rather than later, and so they decided to do as several other acts we’ve discussed did, and sign up voluntarily for six months rather than be drafted for two years. Before they did so, they recorded another song, “Temptation”, an old standard from the thirties: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Temptation”] And that track marked the beginning of the end of the Everlys as a chart act. Because it was an old standard, the publishing was not owned by Acuff-Rose, and Wesley Rose was furious. He was both their manager and the owner of Acuff-Rose, the biggest publishing company in country music, and things between them had already become strained when the Everlys had moved to California while Rose had stayed in Nashville. Rose insisted that they only release Acuff-Rose songs as singles, and they refused, saying they wanted to put the single out. Rose retaliated in the most staggeringly petty manner imaginable. He stopped managing them, and he blocked them from being sent any new songs by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. Because he knew they’d already recorded “Love Hurts”, a song written by the Bryants, as an album track, he got Roy Orbison, who he also managed, to record a version and put it out as a B-side, as a spoiler in case the Everlys tried to release their version as a single: [Excerpt: Roy Orbison, “Love Hurts”] Worse than that, even, the Everlys were also signed to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, which meant that they were no longer allowed to record their own songs. For a while they tried writing under pseudonyms, but then Acuff-Rose found out about that and stopped them. For a while, even after basically taking a year away from music and being banned from recording their own songs, the brothers continued having hits. They also started another project — their own record label, Calliope, which would put out their outside projects. For Don, this was a mostly-instrumental adaptation of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance”, which he recorded with an arrangement by Neal Hefti, under the name “Adrian Kimberly”: [Excerpt: Adrian Kimberly, “Pomp and Circumstance”] That made the lower reaches of the US charts, but was banned by the BBC in Britain, because it would offend British patriotic sentiment (for those who don’t know, “Pomp and Circumstance”, under the name “Land of Hope and Glory”, is something of a second national anthem over here). Phil’s side project was a comedy folk group, the Keestone Family Singers, who recorded a parody of the Kingston Trio’s “Raspberries, Strawberries”, written by Glen Hardin of the Crickets: [Excerpt: The Keestone Family Singers, “Cornbread and Chitlings”] The other two singers on that track were people we’re going to hear a lot from in later episodes — a songwriter called Carole King, who a few months later would co-write the Everlys hit “Crying in the Rain”, and a session guitarist named Glen Campbell. But neither of these ventures were particularly successful, and they concentrated on their own records. For a while, they continued having hits. But having no access to the Bryants’ songs, and being unable to record the songs they were writing themselves, they relied more and more on cover versions, right at the point the market was starting to change to being based entirely around artists who wrote their own material. And on top of that, there were personal problems — Don was going through a divorce, and before they were inducted into the Marines, both Don and Phil had started seeing a doctor who gave them what they were told were “vitamin shots” to help them keep their energy up, but were actually amphetamines. Both became addicted, and while Phil managed to kick his addiction quickly, Don became incapacitated by his, collapsing on a UK tour and being hospitalised with what was reported as “food poisoning”, as most overdoses by rock musicians were in the early sixties, leaving Phil to perform on his own while Don recuperated. Their fall in popularity after “Temptation” was precipitous. Between 1957 and early 1961 they had consistently had massive hits. After “Temptation” they had three more top thirty hits, “Don’t Blame Me”, “Crying in the Rain”, and “That’s Old Fashioned”. They continued having regular hits in the UK through 1965, but after “That’s Old Fashioned” in early 1962 their US chart positions went seventy-six, forty-eight, a hundred and seven, a hundred and one, didn’t chart at all, a hundred and thirty-three… you get the idea. They only had two more top forty hits in the US in the rest of their career — “Gone Gone Gone” in 1964, which made number thirty-one, and “Bowling Green” in 1967 which made number forty. Eventually they got the ability to record their own material again, and also to record songs by the Bryants, but the enforced period of several years of relying on cover versions and old standards had left them dead as a commercial act. But surprisingly, they weren’t artistically dead. They did have a slump around the time of Don’s troubles, with a series of weak albums, but by 1965 they’d started making some very strong tracks, covering a stylistic range from soul to country to baroque pop to an entire album, Two Yanks in England, of covers of British songs, backed by the Hollies (who wrote eight of the twelve songs) and a young keyboard player named Reg Dwight, who would later change his name to Elton John: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Somebody Help Me”] In the middle of this commercial slump came their second album-length masterpiece, “Roots”, an album that, like their earlier “Songs Our Daddy Taught Us”, looked back to the music they’d grown up on., while also looking forward to the future, mixing new songs by contemporary writers like Merle Haggard and Randy Newman with older folk and country songs: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Illinois”] It stands with the great marriages of Americana, orchestral pop, and psychedelia from around that time, like Randy Newman’s first album and Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, and has many of the same people involved, including producer Lenny Waronker and keyboard player Van Dyke Parks. It’s conceived as a complete piece, with songs fading in and out to excerpts of the Everlys’ performances on the radio with their parents as children, and it’s quite, quite, lovely. And, like those other albums, it was a complete commercial flop. The brothers continued working together for several more years, recording a live album to finish off their ten-year Warners contract, and then switching to RCA, where they recorded a couple of albums of rootsy country-rock in the style of artists they had influenced like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. But nothing happened for them commercially, and they were getting less and less happy with working together. The two men argued about literally everything, from who was their father’s real favourite to politics — Phil was an intensely conservative Republican while Don is a liberal Democrat. They ended up travelling separately on tour and staying in separate hotels. It all came to a head in early 1973, when Don announced that their shows at Knotts Berry Farm would be their last, as he was tired of being an Everly brother. For the first of the two shows they were booked for, Don turned up drunk. After a few songs, Phil walked off stage, smashing his guitar. For the second show, Don turned up alone, and when someone in the crowd shouted “Where’s Phil?” He replied “The Everly Brothers died ten years ago”. Both of them had attempts at solo careers for a decade, during which time the only time they saw each other was reportedly at their father’s funeral. They both had minor points of success — an appearance on a film soundtrack here, a backing vocal on a hit record there — but no chart success, until in 1983 Phil had a UK top ten hit with a duet with Cliff Richard, “She Means Nothing to Me”: [Excerpt: Phil Everly and Cliff Richard, “She Means Nothing to Me”] But by this point, the brothers had reconciled, at least to an extent. They would never be close, but they’d regained enough of a relationship to work together, and they came together for a reunion show at the Royal Albert Hall, with a great band led by the country guitarist Albert Lee. That show was followed by a new album, produced by Dave Edmunds and featuring a lead-off single written for the brothers by Paul McCartney, “On the Wings of a Nightingale”: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “On the Wings of a Nightingale”] Over the next twenty-two years, the brothers would record a couple more studio albums, and would frequently guest on records by other people, including performing backing vocals on Paul Simon’s “Graceland”, from his massively successful album of the same name: [Excerpt: Paul Simon, “Graceland”] It was also Simon who enticed them into what turned out to be their final reunion, in 2004, after a period of a few years where once again the brothers hadn’t worked together. Simon had a similarly rocky relationship with his own duet partner Art Garfunkel, and when Simon and Garfunkel did their first tour together in over twenty years, they invited the Everly Brothers to tour with them as guests, doing a short slot by themselves and joining Simon and Garfunkel to perform “Bye Bye Love” together: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers and Simon & Garfunkel, “Bye Bye Love”] The year after that, they did what was to be their final tour, and I was lucky enough to see one of those shows myself. More than fifty years after they started performing together, they still sounded astonishing, and while they were apparently once again not on speaking terms offstage, you would never have known it from their effortless blend on stage, the kind of close harmony that you can only get when you know someone else’s voice as well as your own. After that tour, Phil Everly’s health put an end to the Everly Brothers — he died in 2014 from COPD, a lung disease brought on by his smoking, and for many years before that he had to use an oxygen tank at all times. That wasn’t an end to Everly infighting though — the most recent court date in the ongoing lawsuit between Phil’s estate and Don over the credit for “Cathy’s Clown” was only last month. But even though their relationship was fraught, they were still brothers, and Don has talked movingly of how he speaks every day to the portion of Phil’s ashes that he has in his house. The bonds that held them together were the same things that drove them apart, but Don knows that no matter how much longer he lives, he will always be one of the Everly Brothers.

Episode eighty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Cathy's Clown" by The Everly Brothers, and at how after signing the biggest contract in music business history their career was sabotaged by their manager. 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 "Poetry in Motion" by Johnny Tillotson.  ----more----   Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there's a decent one in French, but I don't speak French well enough for that). Ike's Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio,  and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it's been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. This collection has all the Everlys' recordings up to the end of 1962.  I would also recommend this recently-released box set containing expanded versions of their three last studio albums for Warners, including Roots, which I discuss in the episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   Transcript   This week we're going to look at the Everly Brothers' first and biggest hit of the sixties, a song that established them as hit songwriters in their own right, which was more personal than anything they'd released earlier, and which was a big enough hit that it saved what was to become a major record label. We're going to look at "Cathy's Clown": [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Cathy's Clown"] When we left the Everly Brothers, six months ago, we had seen them have their first chart hits and record the classic album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, an album that prefigured by several years the later sixties folk music revival, and which is better than much of the music that came out of that later scene. Both artistically and commercially, they were as successful as any artists of the early rock era. But Don Everly, in particular, wanted them to have more artistic control themselves -- and if they could move to a bigger label as well, that was all the better. But as it happens, they didn't move to a bigger label, just a richer one. Warner Brothers Records had started in 1958, and had largely started because of changes in the film industry. In the late 1940s and early fifties, the film industry was being hit on all sides. Anti-trust legislation meant that the film studios had to get rid of the cinema chains they owned, losing a massive revenue stream (and also losing the opportunity to ensure that their films got shown no matter how poor their reputation). A series of lawsuits from actors had largely destroyed the star system on which the major studios relied, and then television became a huge factor in the entertainment industry, cutting further into the film studios' profits. An aside about that -- one of the big reasons for the growth of television as America's dominant entertainment medium is racism. In the thirties and forties, there had been huge waves of black people moving from rural areas to the cities in search of work, and we've looked at that and the way that led to the creation of rhythm and blues in many of the previous episodes. After World War II there was a corresponding period of white flight, where white people moved en masse away from the big cities and into small towns and suburbs, to get away from black people. This is largely what led to America's car culture and general lack of public transport, because low-population-density areas aren't as easy to serve with reliable public transport. And in the same way it's also uneconomical to run mass entertainment venues like theatres and cinemas in low-population-density areas, and going to the cinema becomes much less enticing if you have to drive twenty miles to get to one, rather than walking down the street. So white flight had essentially meant the start of a process by which entertainment in America moved from the public sphere to the private one. This is also a big reason for the boom in record sales in the middle decades of last century -- records are private entertainment, as opposed to going out to a dance or a show. And this left the big film studios in dire straits. But while they were down on their luck when it came to films, Warners were doing very well in the music publishing business, where unlike their ownership of cinemas they didn't have to get rid of their properties. Warners had always owned the songs used in their films, and indeed one of the reasons that Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies existed in the first place was so that they could plug songs that Warners owned. When Tex Avery has Owl Jolson singing "I Love to Singa": [Excerpt: “Owl Jolson”, "I Love to Singa"] That's a song that had originally appeared in a Warners feature film a few months earlier, sung by Al Jolson and Cab Calloway: [Excerpt: Al Jolson and Cab Calloway, "I Love to Singa"] So Warners were making money from the music industry. But then they realised something. Tab Hunter, one of their film stars under contract to them, had started to have hit records. His record "Young Love" spent six weeks at number one: [Excerpt: Tab Hunter, "Young Love"] And whenever he was interviewed to promote a film, all the interviewers would ask about was his music career. That was bad enough -- after all, he wasn't signed to Warners as a singer, he was meant to be a film star -- but what was worse was that the label Hunter was on, Dot Records, was owned by a rival film studio, Paramount. Warners would go to all the trouble of getting an interview set up for their star, and then all it would do was put money into Paramount's pocket! They needed to get into the record business themselves, as a way to exploit their song catalogue if nothing else. At first they thought about just buying Imperial Records, but when that deal fell through they started their own label, and signed Hunter to it right at the point that his career nosedived. In the first two years that Warner Brothers Records existed, they only had two hit singles -- "Kookie Kookie Lend Me Your Comb", a record based on the Warner-owned TV series 77 Sunset Strip and co-performed by one of that series' stars, Edd Byrnes: [Excerpt: Edd Byrnes and Connie Stevens, "Kookie Kookie Lend Me Your Comb"] And another record by Connie Stevens, who also sang on "Kookie Kookie Lend Me Your Comb", and was the star of a different Warners TV series, Hawaiian Eye: [Excerpt: Connie Stevens, "Sixteen Reasons"] Everything else they released flopped badly. After two years they had lost three million dollars, and would have closed down the label altogether, except the label was owed another two million, and they didn't want to write that off. The main reason for these losses was that the label was mostly releasing stuff aimed at the easy listening adult album market, records by people like Henry Mancini, and at the time the singles market was where the money was, and the singles market was dominated by young people. They needed some records that would appeal to young people. They decided that they needed the Everly Brothers. At the beginning of 1960, the duo had released ten singles since May 1957, of which nine had charted, as had four of the B-sides. They'd topped the pop charts twice, the R&B charts twice, and the country charts four times. At a time when even the biggest stars would occasionally release the odd flop, they were as close to a guaranteed hit-making machine as existed in the music industry. And they were looking to get away from Cadence Records, for reasons that have never been made completely clear. It's usually said that they had artistic differences with Cadence, but at the same time they always credited Archie Bleyer from Cadence with being the perfect arranger for them -- he arranged their final Cadence single, "Let it Be Me": [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Let it Be Me"] But for whatever reason, the Everlys *were* looking to find a new label, and Warner Brothers were desperate enough that they signed them up to the biggest contract ever signed in music business history up to that point. Remember that four years earlier, when Elvis had signed with RCA records, they'd paid a one-off fee of forty thousand dollars and *that* was reportedly the largest advance ever paid in the industry up until that point. Now, the Everlys were signing to Warners on a ten-year contract, with a guaranteed advance of one hundred thousand dollars a year for those ten years -- the first million-dollar contract in music history. They were set up until 1970, and were sure to provide Warners with a string of hits that would last out the decade -- or so it seemed at first. Their first recording for the label had an unusual melodic inspiration. Ferde Grofé was an arranger and orchestrator for Paul Whiteman's jazz band in the 1920s and thirties. He's particularly known these days for having been the original arranger of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" -- Gershwin had written it for two pianos, and it was Grofé who had come up with the instrumental colouring that these days we think of as being so important to that piece: [Excerpt: Paul Whiteman "Rhapsody in Blue (original 1924 recording)"] Grofé had written a piece in 1931 called the "Grand Canyon Suite", and its third movement, "On the Trail" had become the most popular piece of music he ever wrote. Disney made an Oscar-winning short with the suite as its soundtrack in 1958, and you can still hear "On the Trail" to this day in the Grand Canyon section of the Disneyland Railroad. But "On the Trail" was best known as the music that Phillip Morris used in their radio and TV commercials from the thirties through to the sixties. Here's a bit from the original Whiteman recording of the piece: [Excerpt: Paul Whiteman, "Grand Canyon Suite: On the Trail"] Don took that melodic inspiration, and combined it with two sources of lyrical inspiration -- when his dad had been a child, he'd had a crush on a girl named Mary, who hadn't been interested, and his schoolfriends had taunted him by singing "Mary had a little Ike" at him. The other key to the song came when Don started thinking about an old crush of his own, a girl from his school called Catherine Coe -- though in later years he was at pains to point out that the song wasn't actually about her. They took the resulting song into the studio with the normal members of the Nashville A-Team, and it became only their second hit single with an A-side written by one of the brothers, reaching number one on both the pop and R&B charts: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Cathy's Clown"] I say it's written by Don -- the original issue of the record credited the songwriting to both Don and Phil, but Phil signed an agreement in 1980 relinquishing his claim to the song, and his name was taken off all future copies. It sounds to me like Don's writing style, and all the anecdotes about its writing talk about him without mentioning any input from Phil, so I'm assuming for these purposes that it's a Don solo composition. Listening to the record, which was the first that the duo produced for themselves, as well as being their first for Warners, you can hear why Don was at times dissatisfied with the songs that Felice and Boudleaux Bryant had written for the brothers. It's a sophisticated piece of work in a number of different ways. For a start, there's the way the music mirrors the lyric on the first line. That line is about separation -- "Don't want your love any more" -- and the brothers start the line in unison, but Don's voice slowly drops relative to Phil's, so by the end of the line they're a third apart. It's like he's stepping away: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Cathy's Clown"] The song's structure also seems unusual. Wikipedia says it has a chorus and a bridge but no verse, while the Library of Congress disagrees and says it has a verse and a bridge but no chorus. Personally, I'd say that it definitely does have a chorus -- the repeated section with the same words and melody each time it's repeated, with both brothers singing, and with the title of the song at the end, seems as definitively a chorus as one could possibly ask for: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Cathy's Clown"] If that's not a chorus, I'm honestly not sure what is. The reason this comes into question is the other section. I would call that section a verse, and I think most people would, and the song's structure is a straightforward A-B-A-B repetition which one would normally call verse/chorus. But it's such a change of pace that it feels like the contrasting section that normally comes with a bridge or middle eight. Indeed the first time I properly learned what a middle eight was -- in a column in Mojo magazine in the mid-nineties called Doctor Rock which explained some basic musicology -- it was specifically cited as an example of one: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Cathy's Clown"] Part of the reason that seems so different is that Don's singing it solo, while the brothers are duetting on the choruses, and normally Don's solo lines would be on a bridge or middle eight. Not always, but often enough that that's what you expect if you've listened to a few of their records. But there's also a change in rhythm. One of the things you'll notice as we go further into the sixties is that, for a while in the early sixties, the groove in rock and roll -- and also in soul -- moved away from the swinging, shuffling rhythm you get in most of the fifties music we've looked at into a far more straightforward four-four rhythm. In roughly 1961 through 64 or so, you have things like the bam-bam-bam-bam four-on-the-floor beat of early Motown or Four Seasons records, or the chugga-chugga-chugga rhythm of surf guitar, rather than the looser, triplet-based grooves that you'd get in the fifties. And you can hear in "Cathy's Clown" the shift in those rhythms happening in the song itself. The verses have an almost Latin feel, with lots of loose cymbal work from Buddy Harman: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Cathy's Clown"] While the choruses have an almost martial feel to them, a boom-BAP rhythm, and sound like they have two drummers on them: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Cathy's Clown"] While I say that sounds like there are two drummers, it's still just Harman playing. The difference is that here the engineer, Bill Porter, who was the engineer on a lot of the Nashville recordings we've looked at, notably the Roy Orbison ones, had just obtained a new device -- a tape loop. Now, I've seen some people misunderstand what it was that Porter did with this -- thinking he looped the drums in the way one would loop things today, just playing the same recording over and over. It wasn't that. Rather it was a way of doing what Sam Phillips had been doing with tape echo in Sun a few years earlier -- there would be an endlessly circulating loop of tape, which had both record and playback heads. The drums would be recorded normally, but would also be recorded onto that tape loop, and then when it played back a few milliseconds later it would sound like a second drummer playing along with the first. It's an almost inaudible delay, but it's enough to give a totally different sound to the drums. Porter would physically switch this loop on and off while recording the track live -- all the vocals and instruments were recorded live together, onto a three-track tape, and he would turn it on for the choruses and off for the verses. This is an early example of the kind of studio experimentation that would define the way records were made in the sixties. The rhythm that Harman played was also very influential -- you can hear that it strongly influenced Paul McCartney if you listen to Beatles records like "What You're Doing", "Ticket to Ride", and "Tomorrow Never Knows", all of which have drum patterns which were suggested by McCartney, and all of which are strongly reminiscent of the "Cathy's Clown" chorus. "Cathy's Clown" topped the charts for five weeks, and sold two million copies. It was an immense success, and the Everlys seemed to be on top of the world. But it was precisely then that problems started for the duo. First, they moved from Nashville to LA. The main reason for that was that as well as being a record contract, their new contract with Warners would give them the opportunity to appear in films, too. So they spent six months taking acting lessons and doing screen tests, before concluding that neither of them could actually act or remember their lines, and wisely decided that they were going to stick to music. The one good thing they took from that six month period was that they rekindled their friendship with the Crickets, and Sonny Curtis wrote them a song called "Walk Right Back", which made the top ten (and number one in the UK and New Zealand): [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Walk Right Back"] Curtis wrote that song while he was in basic training for the military, and when he got a pass for a few days he'd only written the first verse. He played the song to the brothers while he was out on his pass, and they said they liked it. He told them he'd write a second verse and send it to them, but by the time they received his letter with the lyrics for the second verse, they'd already recorded the song, just repeating the first verse. Curtis wasn't the only one who had to go into basic military training. The brothers, too, knew they would be drafted sooner rather than later, and so they decided to do as several other acts we've discussed did, and sign up voluntarily for six months rather than be drafted for two years. Before they did so, they recorded another song, "Temptation", an old standard from the thirties: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Temptation"] And that track marked the beginning of the end of the Everlys as a chart act. Because it was an old standard, the publishing was not owned by Acuff-Rose, and Wesley Rose was furious. He was both their manager and the owner of Acuff-Rose, the biggest publishing company in country music, and things between them had already become strained when the Everlys had moved to California while Rose had stayed in Nashville. Rose insisted that they only release Acuff-Rose songs as singles, and they refused, saying they wanted to put the single out. Rose retaliated in the most staggeringly petty manner imaginable. He stopped managing them, and he blocked them from being sent any new songs by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. Because he knew they'd already recorded "Love Hurts", a song written by the Bryants, as an album track, he got Roy Orbison, who he also managed, to record a version and put it out as a B-side, as a spoiler in case the Everlys tried to release their version as a single: [Excerpt: Roy Orbison, "Love Hurts"] Worse than that, even, the Everlys were also signed to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, which meant that they were no longer allowed to record their own songs. For a while they tried writing under pseudonyms, but then Acuff-Rose found out about that and stopped them. For a while, even after basically taking a year away from music and being banned from recording their own songs, the brothers continued having hits. They also started another project -- their own record label, Calliope, which would put out their outside projects. For Don, this was a mostly-instrumental adaptation of Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance", which he recorded with an arrangement by Neal Hefti, under the name "Adrian Kimberly": [Excerpt: Adrian Kimberly, "Pomp and Circumstance"] That made the lower reaches of the US charts, but was banned by the BBC in Britain, because it would offend British patriotic sentiment (for those who don't know, "Pomp and Circumstance", under the name "Land of Hope and Glory", is something of a second national anthem over here). Phil's side project was a comedy folk group, the Keestone Family Singers, who recorded a parody of the Kingston Trio's "Raspberries, Strawberries", written by Glen Hardin of the Crickets: [Excerpt: The Keestone Family Singers, "Cornbread and Chitlings"] The other two singers on that track were people we're going to hear a lot from in later episodes -- a songwriter called Carole King, who a few months later would co-write the Everlys hit "Crying in the Rain", and a session guitarist named Glen Campbell. But neither of these ventures were particularly successful, and they concentrated on their own records. For a while, they continued having hits. But having no access to the Bryants' songs, and being unable to record the songs they were writing themselves, they relied more and more on cover versions, right at the point the market was starting to change to being based entirely around artists who wrote their own material. And on top of that, there were personal problems -- Don was going through a divorce, and before they were inducted into the Marines, both Don and Phil had started seeing a doctor who gave them what they were told were "vitamin shots" to help them keep their energy up, but were actually amphetamines. Both became addicted, and while Phil managed to kick his addiction quickly, Don became incapacitated by his, collapsing on a UK tour and being hospitalised with what was reported as "food poisoning", as most overdoses by rock musicians were in the early sixties, leaving Phil to perform on his own while Don recuperated. Their fall in popularity after "Temptation" was precipitous. Between 1957 and early 1961 they had consistently had massive hits. After "Temptation" they had three more top thirty hits, "Don't Blame Me", "Crying in the Rain", and "That's Old Fashioned". They continued having regular hits in the UK through 1965, but after "That's Old Fashioned" in early 1962 their US chart positions went seventy-six, forty-eight, a hundred and seven, a hundred and one, didn't chart at all, a hundred and thirty-three... you get the idea. They only had two more top forty hits in the US in the rest of their career -- "Gone Gone Gone" in 1964, which made number thirty-one, and "Bowling Green" in 1967 which made number forty. Eventually they got the ability to record their own material again, and also to record songs by the Bryants, but the enforced period of several years of relying on cover versions and old standards had left them dead as a commercial act. But surprisingly, they weren't artistically dead. They did have a slump around the time of Don's troubles, with a series of weak albums, but by 1965 they'd started making some very strong tracks, covering a stylistic range from soul to country to baroque pop to an entire album, Two Yanks in England, of covers of British songs, backed by the Hollies (who wrote eight of the twelve songs) and a young keyboard player named Reg Dwight, who would later change his name to Elton John: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Somebody Help Me"] In the middle of this commercial slump came their second album-length masterpiece, "Roots", an album that, like their earlier "Songs Our Daddy Taught Us", looked back to the music they'd grown up on., while also looking forward to the future, mixing new songs by contemporary writers like Merle Haggard and Randy Newman with older folk and country songs: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Illinois"] It stands with the great marriages of Americana, orchestral pop, and psychedelia from around that time, like Randy Newman's first album and Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle, and has many of the same people involved, including producer Lenny Waronker and keyboard player Van Dyke Parks. It's conceived as a complete piece, with songs fading in and out to excerpts of the Everlys' performances on the radio with their parents as children, and it's quite, quite, lovely. And, like those other albums, it was a complete commercial flop. The brothers continued working together for several more years, recording a live album to finish off their ten-year Warners contract, and then switching to RCA, where they recorded a couple of albums of rootsy country-rock in the style of artists they had influenced like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. But nothing happened for them commercially, and they were getting less and less happy with working together. The two men argued about literally everything, from who was their father's real favourite to politics -- Phil was an intensely conservative Republican while Don is a liberal Democrat. They ended up travelling separately on tour and staying in separate hotels. It all came to a head in early 1973, when Don announced that their shows at Knotts Berry Farm would be their last, as he was tired of being an Everly brother. For the first of the two shows they were booked for, Don turned up drunk. After a few songs, Phil walked off stage, smashing his guitar. For the second show, Don turned up alone, and when someone in the crowd shouted "Where's Phil?" He replied "The Everly Brothers died ten years ago". Both of them had attempts at solo careers for a decade, during which time the only time they saw each other was reportedly at their father's funeral. They both had minor points of success -- an appearance on a film soundtrack here, a backing vocal on a hit record there -- but no chart success, until in 1983 Phil had a UK top ten hit with a duet with Cliff Richard, "She Means Nothing to Me": [Excerpt: Phil Everly and Cliff Richard, "She Means Nothing to Me"] But by this point, the brothers had reconciled, at least to an extent. They would never be close, but they'd regained enough of a relationship to work together, and they came together for a reunion show at the Royal Albert Hall, with a great band led by the country guitarist Albert Lee. That show was followed by a new album, produced by Dave Edmunds and featuring a lead-off single written for the brothers by Paul McCartney, "On the Wings of a Nightingale": [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "On the Wings of a Nightingale"] Over the next twenty-two years, the brothers would record a couple more studio albums, and would frequently guest on records by other people, including performing backing vocals on Paul Simon's "Graceland", from his massively successful album of the same name: [Excerpt: Paul Simon, "Graceland"] It was also Simon who enticed them into what turned out to be their final reunion, in 2004, after a period of a few years where once again the brothers hadn't worked together. Simon had a similarly rocky relationship with his own duet partner Art Garfunkel, and when Simon and Garfunkel did their first tour together in over twenty years, they invited the Everly Brothers to tour with them as guests, doing a short slot by themselves and joining Simon and Garfunkel to perform "Bye Bye Love" together: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers and Simon & Garfunkel, "Bye Bye Love"] The year after that, they did what was to be their final tour, and I was lucky enough to see one of those shows myself. More than fifty years after they started performing together, they still sounded astonishing, and while they were apparently once again not on speaking terms offstage, you would never have known it from their effortless blend on stage, the kind of close harmony that you can only get when you know someone else's voice as well as your own. After that tour, Phil Everly's health put an end to the Everly Brothers -- he died in 2014 from COPD, a lung disease brought on by his smoking, and for many years before that he had to use an oxygen tank at all times. That wasn't an end to Everly infighting though -- the most recent court date in the ongoing lawsuit between Phil's estate and Don over the credit for "Cathy's Clown" was only last month. But even though their relationship was fraught, they were still brothers, and Don has talked movingly of how he speaks every day to the portion of Phil's ashes that he has in his house. The bonds that held them together were the same things that drove them apart, but Don knows that no matter how much longer he lives, he will always be one of the Everly Brothers.

During 1957's "Show of Stars" in Vancouver, it was my job to introduce each act as they appeared on stage, then I would rush backstage and tape a quick interview with one of the stars. The show was literally a live jukebox presentation, hit artist after hit artist and song after song. Eddie Cochran, Jimmy Bowen, Buddy Knox, Don and Phil Everly, Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, George Hamilton IV, Buddy Holly and the Crickets - an incredible assortment of talent, a Who's Who of early rock and roll. Paul Anka was just fifteen when I first met him during this tour. He was arrogant but to me this was his way of covering up his obvious inferiority complex. After all, he was the youngest on the show, the shortest and had to compensate. His first hit "Diana" had just been released in the summer of 1957 and it launched his career. It came across as arrogance but there was no question about his talent and his stage presence. He was, at the time, the only Canadian who had made it into the international arena of Rock and Roll. On my taped interview with him during this time he sounds cocky but if he hadn't been, who else would have listened to him, who else would have promoted him? Paul Anka was, and always has been, his own best promoter. He works at this as much as he works at songwriting and everything that he involves himself with. One of the differences with Paul Anka was his ability to write most of his own material. He has not only written hits for himself, but for others. He wrote "My Way" for Frank Sinatra and "She's A Lady" for Tom Jones and many other hits for many other singers. His lasting power is proven with these contributions to the world of music. I have talked with Paul many times over the years and he has never forgotten our first meeting in Vancouver in those early days. He is an incredible person and a talent Canada can shout about.

The Best of T-Bone's Prime Cuts airs each Tuesday from 8-10pm EST on Boom Radio found exclusively at DailyBOOM.net.

Artie Shaw and his Gramercy Five [00:48] a side: "When the Quail Come Back to San Quentin" b side: "Tenderly" Clef Records EP-242 1955 There certainly are lots of quail in the Bay Area, surely there must be some near San Quentin? Planning for Burial a side: "When We Were Ghosts" [11:34] Mother Room b side: "Arise" [16:01] The Native Sound Records NATIVE010 2015 Planning for Burial is a great live act if you have the chance to catch him. Linda Ronstadt [23:43] a side: "When Will I Be Loved" b side: "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" Capitol Records 4050 1974 A mighty fine Phil Everly a-side and a mighty fine Buddy Holly b-side. The Supremes [29:22] a side: "Where Did Our Love Go?" b side: "He Means the World to Me" Motown Records M-1060 1964 Our love is right here! On Vinyl-O-Matic of course. The Damned [34:22] a side: "White Rabbit" b side: "Rabid (Over You)/Seagulls" Big Beat Records NS-85 1980 (1985 RE) Take that, hippies. Whitey on the Moon UK [43:58] a side: "Whitey on the Moon/Dinner for Two" b side: "(in which)/Mo' Tussin" isota records sody004 2002 For some reason, I am reminded of Kermit and Miss Piggy's dinner in The Muppet Movie with Steve Martin as their hapless waiter. Men at Work [55:50] a side: "Who Can It Be Now?" b side: "Anyone for Tennis?" Columbia Records 18-02888 1981 Why it's a hit record, that's who it is now. Don Gibson [01:02:14] a side: "Who Cares" b side: "A Stranger to Me" RCA Victor 47-7437 1958 Hit number 3 on the Country charts. Music behind the DJ: "The Four Seasons: Spring (Vivaldi)" by The New Koto Ensemble of Tokyo.

Episode fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Bye Bye Love” by The Everly Brotherss, and at the history of country close harmony. 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 “Short Fat Fannie” by Larry Williams. (more…)

Episode fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Bye Bye Love” by The Everly Brotherss, and at the history of country close harmony. 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 “Short Fat Fannie” by Larry Williams.  —-more—-   Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there’s a decent one in French, but I don’t speak French well enough for that). Ike’s Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio,  and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it’s been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. How Nashville Became Music City by Michael Kosser has a good amount of information on the Bryants. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. There are many, many cheap compilations of the Everly Brothers’ early material available. I’d recommend this one, because as well as all the hits up to 1962 it has the complete Songs our Daddy Taught Us.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   Transcript [Intro: Ike Everly introducing the Everly Brothers] We’ve talked before about how vocal harmonies are no longer a big part of rock music, but were essential to it in the fifties and sixties. But what we’ve not discussed is that there are multiple different types of harmony that we see in the music of that period. One, which we’ve already seen, is the vocal group sound — the sound of doo-wop. There, there might be a lead singer, but everyone involved has their own important role to play, singing separate backing vocal lines that intertwine. One singer will be taking a bass melody, another will be singing a falsetto line, and so on. It’s the sound of a collection of individual personalities, working together but to their own agendas. Another style which we’re going to look at soon is the girl group sound. There you have a lead singer singing a line on her own, and two or three backing vocalists echoing lines on the chorus — it’s the sound of a couple of friends providing support for someone who’s in trouble. The lead singer will sing her problems, and the friends will respond with something supportive. Then there’s the style which Elvis used — a single lead vocalist over a group of backing vocalists, mostly providing “oohs” and “aahs”. The backing vocals here just work as another instrumental texture. But there’s one style which would be as influential as any of these, and which was brought into rock and roll by a single act — a duo who, more than anyone else in rock music, epitomised vocal harmony: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] Don and Phil Everly were brought up in music. Their father, Ike Everly, had been a coalminer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, but decided to quit coal mining and become a professional musician when he was trapped in his second cave-in, deciding he wasn’t ever going to go through that a third time. He had learned a particular guitar style, which would later become known as “Travis picking” after its most famous exponent, Merle Travis — though Travis himself usually referred to it as “Muhlenberg picking”. Travis and Ike Everly knew each other, and it was Ike Everly, and Ike’s friend Mose Rager, who taught Travis how to play in that style, which they had learned from another friend, Kennedy Jones, who in turn learned it from a black country-blues player named Arnold Schultz, who had invented the style: [Excerpt, Ike Everly, “Blue Smoke”] Ike Everly was widely regarded as one of the greatest country guitarists of all time, and his “Ike Everly’s Rag” was later recorded by Merle Travis and Joe Maphis: [Excerpt: Merle Travis and Joe Maphis, “Ike Everly’s Rag”] But while Ike Everly was known as a country player, Don Everly would always later claim that deep down Ike was a blues man. He played country because that was what the audiences wanted to hear, but his first love was the blues. But even when playing country, he wasn’t just playing the kind of music that was becoming popular at the time, but he was also playing the old Appalachian folk songs, and teaching them to his sons. He would play songs like “Who’s Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”, which was most famously recorded by Woody Guthrie: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] The Everly family travelled all over the South and Midwest, moving between radio stations on which Ike Everly would get himself shows. As they grew old enough, his two sons, Don and Phil, would join him, as would his wife, though Margaret Everly was more of a manager than a performer. Don soon became good enough that he got his own fifteen-minute show, performing as “Little Donnie”, as well as performing with his family. The Everly family would perform their show live, first thing in the morning — they were playing country music and so they were supposed to be playing for the farmers, and their show began at 5AM, with the young boys heading off to school, still in the dark, after the show had finished. The radio show continued for many years, and the boys developed all sorts of tricks for keeping an audience entertained, which would stand them in good stead in future years. One thing they used to do was to have both brothers and their father play the same guitar simultaneously, with Phil fretting the bass notes, Ike Everly playing those notes, and Don playing lead on the top strings. I’ve not found a recording of them doing that together, but some footage does exist of them doing this with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his TV show — Ford, of course, being someone whose biggest hit had been written by Ike Everly’s old friend Merle Travis: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Everly Brothers, “Rattlesnake Daddy”] That kind of trick was fairly common among country acts at the time — Buck Owens and Don Rich would do pretty much the same act together in the 1960s, and like the Everlys would play fairly straightforward blues licks while doing it. But while Ike Everly was primarily an instrumentalist, his sons would become known mostly as singers. People often, incorrectly, describe the Everly Brothers as singing “bluegrass harmonies”. This is understandable, as bluegrass music comes from Kentucky, and does often have close harmonies in it. But the Everlys were actually singing in a style that was around for years before Bill Monroe started performing the music that would become known as bluegrass. There was a whole tradition of close harmony in country music that is usually dated back to the 1920s. The first people to really popularise it were a duo who were known as “Mac and Bob” — Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner. The two men met in Kentucky, at the Kentucky School for the Blind, where they were both studying music, in 1916. They started singing close harmony together in the early 1920s, and while they sang in the overly-enunciated way that was popular at the time, you can hear the roots of the Everlys’ style in their harmonies: [Excerpt: McFarland and Gardner, “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine”] The style is known as “close harmony” because the singers are singing notes that are close to each other in the scale, and it was the foundation of country vocal harmonies. Usually in this style, there are two singers, singing about a third apart. The lower singer will sing the melody, while the higher singer will harmonise, following the melody line closely. This style of harmony was particularly suited to the vocal blend you can get from siblings, who tend to have extremely similar voices — and if done well it can sound like one voice harmonising with itself. And so from the 1930s on there were a lot of brother acts who performed this kind of music. One duo who the Everlys would often point to as a particular influence was the Bailes Brothers: [Excerpt: the Bailes Brothers, “Oh So Many Years”] But at the time the Everly Brothers were coming up, there was one duo, more than any other, who were immensely popular in the close harmony style — the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “Midnight Special”] The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, were cousins of John D. Loudermilk, whose “Sittin’ in the Balcony” we heard in the Eddie Cochran episode a few weeks ago. They were country and gospel singers, who are nowadays probably sadly best known for the cover of their album “Satan is Real”, which often makes those Internet listicles about the most ridiculous album covers. But in the mid fifties, they were one of the most popular groups in country music, and influenced everyone — they were particular favourites of Elvis, and regular performers on the Grand Ole Opry. Their style was a model for the Everlys, but sadly so was their personal relationship. Ira and Charlie never got on, and would often get into fights on stage, and the same was true of the Everly Brothers. In 1970, Phil Everly said “We’ve only ever had one argument. It’s lasted twenty-five years”, and that argument would continue for the rest of their lives. There were various explanations offered for their enmity over the years, ranging from them vying to be their father’s favourite, to Don resenting Phil’s sweeter voice upstaging him — he was once quoted as saying “I’ve been a has-been since I was ten”. But fundamentally the two brothers were just too different in everything from temperament to politics — Don is a liberal Democrat, while Phil was a conservative Republican — and their views on how life should be lived. It seems most likely that two such different people resented being forced into constant proximity with each other, and reacted against it. And so the Everlys became another of those sibling rivalries that have recurred throughout rock and roll history. But despite their personal differences, they had a vocal blend that was possibly even better than that of the Louvins, if that’s possible. But talent on its own doesn’t necessarily bring success, and for a while it looked like the Everlys were going to be washed up before the brothers got out of their teens. While they had some success with their radio show, by 1955 there was much less of a market for live music on the radio — it was much cheaper for the radio stations to employ DJs to play records, now that the legal ban on broadcasting recordings had been lifted. The Everly family’s radio show ended, and both Ike and Margaret got jobs cutting hair, while encouraging their sons in their music career. After a few months of this, Margaret decided she was going to move the boys to Nashville, to try to get them a record deal, while Ike remained in nearby Knoxville working as a barber. While the family had not had much success in the music industry, they had made contacts with several people, and Chet Atkins, in particular, was an admirer, not only of Ike Everly’s guitar playing, but of his barbering skills as well — according to at least one account I’ve read, Atkins was a regular customer of Ike’s. Atkins seems to have been, at first, mostly interested in Don Everly as a songwriter and maybe a solo performer — he carried out some correspondence with Don while Don was still in school, and got Kitty Wells, one of the biggest country stars of the fifties, to record one of Don’s songs, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”, when Don was only sixteen: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”] That became a top twenty country hit, and Don looked like he might be on his way to a successful career, especially after another of his songs, “Here We Are Again”, was recorded by Anita Carter of the famous Carter family: [Excerpt: Anita Carter, “Here We Are Again”] But Margaret Everly, the Everlys’ mother and the person who seemed to have the ambition that drove them, didn’t want Don to be a solo star — she wanted the two brothers to be equal in every way, and would make sure they wore the same clothes, had the same toys growing up, and so on. She took Don’s royalties from songwriting, and used them to get both brothers Musicians’ union cards — in the same way, when Don had had his own radio show, Margaret had made Don give Phil half of his five-dollar fee. So solo stardom was never going to be in Don Everly’s future. Margaret wanted the Everly Brothers to be a successful duo, and that was that. Chet Atkins was going to help *both* her sons. Atkins got them a deal with Columbia Records in 1956 for a single, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”, written by Don: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”] That record flopped, and the Everlys were later very dismissive of it — Phil said of the two songs on that single “they were stinko, boy! Really stinko!” Columbia weren’t interested in putting out anything else by the Everlys, and quickly dropped them. Part of the reason was that they were signed as a country act, but they already wanted to do more, and in particular to incorporate more influence from the rhythm and blues music they were listening to. Don worshipped Hank Williams, and Phil loved Lefty Frizzell, but they both also adored Bo Diddley, and were obsessed with his style. Don, in particular — who was the more accomplished instrumentalist of the two, and who unlike Phil would play rhythm guitar on their records — wanted to learn how Diddley played guitar, and would spend a lot of time with Chet Atkins, who taught him how to play in the open tunings Diddley used, and some of the rhythms he was playing with. Despite the brothers’ lack of success on Columbia, Atkins still had faith in them, and he got in touch with his friend Wesley Rose, who was the president of Acuff-Rose publishing, the biggest music publishing company in Nashville at the time. Rose made a deal with the brothers. If they would sign to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, and if they’d agree to record only Acuff-Rose songs, he would look after their career and get them a record deal. They agreed, and Rose got them signed to Cadence Records, a mid-sized indie label whose biggest star at the time was Andy Williams. The first single they recorded for Cadence was a song that had been rejected by thirty other artists before it was passed on to the Everlys as a last resort. “Bye Bye Love” was written by the husband and wife team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had been writing for a decade, for people such as Carl Smith and Moon Mullican. Their first hit had come in 1948, with “Country Boy”, a song which Little Jimmy Dickens took to number seven on the country charts: [Excerpt: Little Jimmy Dickens, “Country Boy”] But they had not had much chart success after that, though they’d placed songs with various Nashville-based country singers. They were virtual unknowns, and their most recent song, “Bye Bye Love”, had been written for a duo called Johnny and Jack. They hadn’t been interested, so the Bryants had passed the song along to their friend Chet Atkins, who had tried to record it with Porter Wagoner, who had recorded other songs by the Bryants, like “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”: [Excerpt: Porter Wagoner, “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”] But when Atkins took the song into the studio, he decided it wasn’t strong enough for Wagoner. Atkins wanted to change a few chords, and Boudleaux Bryant told him that if the song wasn’t strong enough as it was, he just shouldn’t record it at all. But while the song might not have been strong enough for a big country star like Porter Wagoner, it was strong enough for Chet Atkins’ new proteges, who were, after all, hardly going to have a big hit. So Atkins took the multiply-rejected song in for the duo to record as their first single for Cadence. In one of those coincidences that seems too good to be true, Ike Everly was Boudleaux Bryant’s barber, and had been bragging to him for years about how talented his sons were, but Bryant had just dismissed this — around Nashville, everyone is a major talent, or their son or daughter or husband or wife is. Two things happened to change the rather mediocre song into a classic that would change the face of popular music. The first was, simply, the brothers’ harmonies. They had by this point developed an intuitive understanding of each other’s voices, and a superb musicality. It’s interesting to listen to the very first take of the song: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love (take 1)”] That’s Don singing the low lead and Phil taking the high harmony. Now, if you’re familiar with the finished record, you can tell that what Phil’s singing there isn’t the closer harmony part he ended up singing on the final version. There are some note choices there that he decided against for the final record. But what you can tell is that they are instinctively great harmony singers. It’s not the harmony part that would become famous, but it’s a *good* one in its own right. The second thing is that they changed the song from the rather sedate country song the Bryants had come up with, radically rearranging it. Don had written a song called “Give Me a Future”, which he’d intended to be in the Bo Diddley style, and one can hear something of Diddley’s rhythm in the stop-start guitar part: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Give Me a Future”] Don took that guitar part, and attached it to the Bryants’ song, and with the help of Chet Atkins’ lead guitar fills turned it into something quite new — a record with a rockabilly feel, but with country close harmony vocals: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] The brothers were, at first, worried because almost as soon as it came out, a cover version by Webb Pierce, one of the biggest names in country music, came out: [Excerpt: Webb Pierce, “Bye Bye Love”] But they were surprised to discover that while Pierce’s version did chart — reaching the top ten in the country charts — it was nowhere near as successful as their own version, which went to number one on the country charts and number two in pop, and charted on the R&B charts as well. After that success, the Bryants wrote a string of hits for the brothers, a run of classics starting with “Wake Up Little Suzie”, a song which was banned on many stations because it suggested impropriety — even though, listening to the lyrics, it very clearly states that no impropriety has gone on, and indeed that the protagonist is horrified at the suggestion that it might have: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Wake Up Little Suzie”] These records would usually incorporate some of Don’s Bo Diddley influence, while remaining firmly in the country end of rock and roll. The Bryants also started to give the brothers ballads like “Devoted to You” and “All I Have to Do is Dream”, which while they still deal with adolescent concerns, have a sweetness and melody to them quite unlike anything else that was being recorded by rock and roll artists of the time. After the first single, everything else that the Bryants wrote for the Everlys was tailored specifically to them — Boudleaux Bryant, who would attend more of the sessions, would have long conversations with the brothers and try to write songs that fit with their lives and musical tastes, as well as fitting them to their voices. One of the things that’s very noticeable about interviews with the brothers is that they both tend to credit Boudleaux alone with having written the songs that he co-wrote with his wife, even though everything suggests that the Bryants were a true partnership, and both have solo credits for songs that are stylistically indistinguishable from those written as a team. Whether this is pure sexism, or it’s just because Boudleaux is the one who used to demo the songs for them and so they think of him as the primary author, is hard to tell — probably a combination. This was also a perception that Boudleaux Bryant encouraged. While Felice was the person who had originally decided to go into songwriting, and was the one who came up with most of the ideas, Boudleaux was only interested in making money — and he’d often sneak off to write songs by himself so he would get all the money rather than have to share it with his wife. Boudleaux would also on occasion be given incomplete songs by friends like Atkins, and finish them up with Felice — but only Boudleaux and the original writer would get their names on it. The result was that Boudleaux got the credit from people around him, even when they knew better. One of my sources for this episode is an interview with the Bryants’ son, Dane, and at one point in that interview he says “Now, lots of times I will say, ‘My father.’ I mean Dad and Mom”. As the Everly brothers disagreed about almost everything, they of course disagreed about the quality of the material that the Bryants were bringing them. Phil Everly was always utterly unstinting in his praise of them, saying that the Bryants’ songs were some of the best songs ever written. Don, on the other hand, while he definitely appreciated material like “All I Have to Do is Dream”, wasn’t so keen on their writing in general, mostly because it dealt primarily with adolescent concerns. He thought that the material the brothers were writing for themselves — though still immature, as one would expect from people who were still in their teens at the start of their career — was aiming at a greater emotional maturity than the material the Bryants wrote. And on the evidence of their first album, that’s certainly true. The first album is, like many albums of the time, a patchy affair. It pulls together the hit singles the brothers had already released, together with a bunch of rather mediocre cover versions of then-current hits. Those cover versions tend to support Don’s repeated claims that the brothers were as interested in R&B and blues as in country — apart from a version of “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, all the covers are of R&B hits of the time — two by Little Richard, two by Ray Charles, and one by the relatively obscure blues singer Titus Turner. But among those songs, there are also a handful of Don Everly originals, and one in particular, “I Wonder if I Care as Much”, is quite an astonishing piece of songwriting: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “I Wonder If I Care As Much”] Don’s songs were often B-sides – that one was the B-side to “Bye Bye Love” – and to my mind they’re often rather more interesting than the A-sides. While that first album is rather patchy, the second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, is a minor revelation, and one of the pillars on which the Everly Brothers’ artistic reputation rests. It’s been suggested that the album was done as a way of getting back at the record company for some slight or other, by making a record that was completely uncommercial. That might be the case, but I don’t think so — and if it was, it was a gesture that backfired magnificently, as it’s still, sixty years on, a consistent seller. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us is precisely what it sounds like — an album consisting of songs the brothers had been taught by their father. It’s a mixture of Appalachian folk songs and country standards, performed by the brothers accompanied just by Don’s acoustic guitar and Floyd Chance on upright bass: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] It’s quite possibly the most artistically satisfying album made in the fifties by a rock and roll act, and it’s had such an influence that as recently as 2013 Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and the jazz-pop singer Norah Jones recorded an album, Foreverly, that’s just a cover version of the whole album: [Excerpt: Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] So as the 1950s drew to a close, the Everly Brothers were on top of the world. They’d had a run of classic singles, and they’d just released one of the greatest albums of all time. But there was trouble ahead, and when we pick up on their career again, we’ll see exactly how wrong things could go for them.  

Episode fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Bye Bye Love” by The Everly Brotherss, and at the history of country close harmony. 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 “Short Fat Fannie” by Larry Williams.  —-more—-   Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there’s a decent one in French, but I don’t speak French well enough for that). Ike’s Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio,  and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it’s been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. How Nashville Became Music City by Michael Kosser has a good amount of information on the Bryants. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. There are many, many cheap compilations of the Everly Brothers’ early material available. I’d recommend this one, because as well as all the hits up to 1962 it has the complete Songs our Daddy Taught Us.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   Transcript [Intro: Ike Everly introducing the Everly Brothers] We’ve talked before about how vocal harmonies are no longer a big part of rock music, but were essential to it in the fifties and sixties. But what we’ve not discussed is that there are multiple different types of harmony that we see in the music of that period. One, which we’ve already seen, is the vocal group sound — the sound of doo-wop. There, there might be a lead singer, but everyone involved has their own important role to play, singing separate backing vocal lines that intertwine. One singer will be taking a bass melody, another will be singing a falsetto line, and so on. It’s the sound of a collection of individual personalities, working together but to their own agendas. Another style which we’re going to look at soon is the girl group sound. There you have a lead singer singing a line on her own, and two or three backing vocalists echoing lines on the chorus — it’s the sound of a couple of friends providing support for someone who’s in trouble. The lead singer will sing her problems, and the friends will respond with something supportive. Then there’s the style which Elvis used — a single lead vocalist over a group of backing vocalists, mostly providing “oohs” and “aahs”. The backing vocals here just work as another instrumental texture. But there’s one style which would be as influential as any of these, and which was brought into rock and roll by a single act — a duo who, more than anyone else in rock music, epitomised vocal harmony: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] Don and Phil Everly were brought up in music. Their father, Ike Everly, had been a coalminer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, but decided to quit coal mining and become a professional musician when he was trapped in his second cave-in, deciding he wasn’t ever going to go through that a third time. He had learned a particular guitar style, which would later become known as “Travis picking” after its most famous exponent, Merle Travis — though Travis himself usually referred to it as “Muhlenberg picking”. Travis and Ike Everly knew each other, and it was Ike Everly, and Ike’s friend Mose Rager, who taught Travis how to play in that style, which they had learned from another friend, Kennedy Jones, who in turn learned it from a black country-blues player named Arnold Schultz, who had invented the style: [Excerpt, Ike Everly, “Blue Smoke”] Ike Everly was widely regarded as one of the greatest country guitarists of all time, and his “Ike Everly’s Rag” was later recorded by Merle Travis and Joe Maphis: [Excerpt: Merle Travis and Joe Maphis, “Ike Everly’s Rag”] But while Ike Everly was known as a country player, Don Everly would always later claim that deep down Ike was a blues man. He played country because that was what the audiences wanted to hear, but his first love was the blues. But even when playing country, he wasn’t just playing the kind of music that was becoming popular at the time, but he was also playing the old Appalachian folk songs, and teaching them to his sons. He would play songs like “Who’s Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”, which was most famously recorded by Woody Guthrie: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] The Everly family travelled all over the South and Midwest, moving between radio stations on which Ike Everly would get himself shows. As they grew old enough, his two sons, Don and Phil, would join him, as would his wife, though Margaret Everly was more of a manager than a performer. Don soon became good enough that he got his own fifteen-minute show, performing as “Little Donnie”, as well as performing with his family. The Everly family would perform their show live, first thing in the morning — they were playing country music and so they were supposed to be playing for the farmers, and their show began at 5AM, with the young boys heading off to school, still in the dark, after the show had finished. The radio show continued for many years, and the boys developed all sorts of tricks for keeping an audience entertained, which would stand them in good stead in future years. One thing they used to do was to have both brothers and their father play the same guitar simultaneously, with Phil fretting the bass notes, Ike Everly playing those notes, and Don playing lead on the top strings. I’ve not found a recording of them doing that together, but some footage does exist of them doing this with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his TV show — Ford, of course, being someone whose biggest hit had been written by Ike Everly’s old friend Merle Travis: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Everly Brothers, “Rattlesnake Daddy”] That kind of trick was fairly common among country acts at the time — Buck Owens and Don Rich would do pretty much the same act together in the 1960s, and like the Everlys would play fairly straightforward blues licks while doing it. But while Ike Everly was primarily an instrumentalist, his sons would become known mostly as singers. People often, incorrectly, describe the Everly Brothers as singing “bluegrass harmonies”. This is understandable, as bluegrass music comes from Kentucky, and does often have close harmonies in it. But the Everlys were actually singing in a style that was around for years before Bill Monroe started performing the music that would become known as bluegrass. There was a whole tradition of close harmony in country music that is usually dated back to the 1920s. The first people to really popularise it were a duo who were known as “Mac and Bob” — Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner. The two men met in Kentucky, at the Kentucky School for the Blind, where they were both studying music, in 1916. They started singing close harmony together in the early 1920s, and while they sang in the overly-enunciated way that was popular at the time, you can hear the roots of the Everlys’ style in their harmonies: [Excerpt: McFarland and Gardner, “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine”] The style is known as “close harmony” because the singers are singing notes that are close to each other in the scale, and it was the foundation of country vocal harmonies. Usually in this style, there are two singers, singing about a third apart. The lower singer will sing the melody, while the higher singer will harmonise, following the melody line closely. This style of harmony was particularly suited to the vocal blend you can get from siblings, who tend to have extremely similar voices — and if done well it can sound like one voice harmonising with itself. And so from the 1930s on there were a lot of brother acts who performed this kind of music. One duo who the Everlys would often point to as a particular influence was the Bailes Brothers: [Excerpt: the Bailes Brothers, “Oh So Many Years”] But at the time the Everly Brothers were coming up, there was one duo, more than any other, who were immensely popular in the close harmony style — the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “Midnight Special”] The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, were cousins of John D. Loudermilk, whose “Sittin’ in the Balcony” we heard in the Eddie Cochran episode a few weeks ago. They were country and gospel singers, who are nowadays probably sadly best known for the cover of their album “Satan is Real”, which often makes those Internet listicles about the most ridiculous album covers. But in the mid fifties, they were one of the most popular groups in country music, and influenced everyone — they were particular favourites of Elvis, and regular performers on the Grand Ole Opry. Their style was a model for the Everlys, but sadly so was their personal relationship. Ira and Charlie never got on, and would often get into fights on stage, and the same was true of the Everly Brothers. In 1970, Phil Everly said “We’ve only ever had one argument. It’s lasted twenty-five years”, and that argument would continue for the rest of their lives. There were various explanations offered for their enmity over the years, ranging from them vying to be their father’s favourite, to Don resenting Phil’s sweeter voice upstaging him — he was once quoted as saying “I’ve been a has-been since I was ten”. But fundamentally the two brothers were just too different in everything from temperament to politics — Don is a liberal Democrat, while Phil was a conservative Republican — and their views on how life should be lived. It seems most likely that two such different people resented being forced into constant proximity with each other, and reacted against it. And so the Everlys became another of those sibling rivalries that have recurred throughout rock and roll history. But despite their personal differences, they had a vocal blend that was possibly even better than that of the Louvins, if that’s possible. But talent on its own doesn’t necessarily bring success, and for a while it looked like the Everlys were going to be washed up before the brothers got out of their teens. While they had some success with their radio show, by 1955 there was much less of a market for live music on the radio — it was much cheaper for the radio stations to employ DJs to play records, now that the legal ban on broadcasting recordings had been lifted. The Everly family’s radio show ended, and both Ike and Margaret got jobs cutting hair, while encouraging their sons in their music career. After a few months of this, Margaret decided she was going to move the boys to Nashville, to try to get them a record deal, while Ike remained in nearby Knoxville working as a barber. While the family had not had much success in the music industry, they had made contacts with several people, and Chet Atkins, in particular, was an admirer, not only of Ike Everly’s guitar playing, but of his barbering skills as well — according to at least one account I’ve read, Atkins was a regular customer of Ike’s. Atkins seems to have been, at first, mostly interested in Don Everly as a songwriter and maybe a solo performer — he carried out some correspondence with Don while Don was still in school, and got Kitty Wells, one of the biggest country stars of the fifties, to record one of Don’s songs, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”, when Don was only sixteen: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”] That became a top twenty country hit, and Don looked like he might be on his way to a successful career, especially after another of his songs, “Here We Are Again”, was recorded by Anita Carter of the famous Carter family: [Excerpt: Anita Carter, “Here We Are Again”] But Margaret Everly, the Everlys’ mother and the person who seemed to have the ambition that drove them, didn’t want Don to be a solo star — she wanted the two brothers to be equal in every way, and would make sure they wore the same clothes, had the same toys growing up, and so on. She took Don’s royalties from songwriting, and used them to get both brothers Musicians’ union cards — in the same way, when Don had had his own radio show, Margaret had made Don give Phil half of his five-dollar fee. So solo stardom was never going to be in Don Everly’s future. Margaret wanted the Everly Brothers to be a successful duo, and that was that. Chet Atkins was going to help *both* her sons. Atkins got them a deal with Columbia Records in 1956 for a single, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”, written by Don: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”] That record flopped, and the Everlys were later very dismissive of it — Phil said of the two songs on that single “they were stinko, boy! Really stinko!” Columbia weren’t interested in putting out anything else by the Everlys, and quickly dropped them. Part of the reason was that they were signed as a country act, but they already wanted to do more, and in particular to incorporate more influence from the rhythm and blues music they were listening to. Don worshipped Hank Williams, and Phil loved Lefty Frizzell, but they both also adored Bo Diddley, and were obsessed with his style. Don, in particular — who was the more accomplished instrumentalist of the two, and who unlike Phil would play rhythm guitar on their records — wanted to learn how Diddley played guitar, and would spend a lot of time with Chet Atkins, who taught him how to play in the open tunings Diddley used, and some of the rhythms he was playing with. Despite the brothers’ lack of success on Columbia, Atkins still had faith in them, and he got in touch with his friend Wesley Rose, who was the president of Acuff-Rose publishing, the biggest music publishing company in Nashville at the time. Rose made a deal with the brothers. If they would sign to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, and if they’d agree to record only Acuff-Rose songs, he would look after their career and get them a record deal. They agreed, and Rose got them signed to Cadence Records, a mid-sized indie label whose biggest star at the time was Andy Williams. The first single they recorded for Cadence was a song that had been rejected by thirty other artists before it was passed on to the Everlys as a last resort. “Bye Bye Love” was written by the husband and wife team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had been writing for a decade, for people such as Carl Smith and Moon Mullican. Their first hit had come in 1948, with “Country Boy”, a song which Little Jimmy Dickens took to number seven on the country charts: [Excerpt: Little Jimmy Dickens, “Country Boy”] But they had not had much chart success after that, though they’d placed songs with various Nashville-based country singers. They were virtual unknowns, and their most recent song, “Bye Bye Love”, had been written for a duo called Johnny and Jack. They hadn’t been interested, so the Bryants had passed the song along to their friend Chet Atkins, who had tried to record it with Porter Wagoner, who had recorded other songs by the Bryants, like “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”: [Excerpt: Porter Wagoner, “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”] But when Atkins took the song into the studio, he decided it wasn’t strong enough for Wagoner. Atkins wanted to change a few chords, and Boudleaux Bryant told him that if the song wasn’t strong enough as it was, he just shouldn’t record it at all. But while the song might not have been strong enough for a big country star like Porter Wagoner, it was strong enough for Chet Atkins’ new proteges, who were, after all, hardly going to have a big hit. So Atkins took the multiply-rejected song in for the duo to record as their first single for Cadence. In one of those coincidences that seems too good to be true, Ike Everly was Boudleaux Bryant’s barber, and had been bragging to him for years about how talented his sons were, but Bryant had just dismissed this — around Nashville, everyone is a major talent, or their son or daughter or husband or wife is. Two things happened to change the rather mediocre song into a classic that would change the face of popular music. The first was, simply, the brothers’ harmonies. They had by this point developed an intuitive understanding of each other’s voices, and a superb musicality. It’s interesting to listen to the very first take of the song: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love (take 1)”] That’s Don singing the low lead and Phil taking the high harmony. Now, if you’re familiar with the finished record, you can tell that what Phil’s singing there isn’t the closer harmony part he ended up singing on the final version. There are some note choices there that he decided against for the final record. But what you can tell is that they are instinctively great harmony singers. It’s not the harmony part that would become famous, but it’s a *good* one in its own right. The second thing is that they changed the song from the rather sedate country song the Bryants had come up with, radically rearranging it. Don had written a song called “Give Me a Future”, which he’d intended to be in the Bo Diddley style, and one can hear something of Diddley’s rhythm in the stop-start guitar part: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Give Me a Future”] Don took that guitar part, and attached it to the Bryants’ song, and with the help of Chet Atkins’ lead guitar fills turned it into something quite new — a record with a rockabilly feel, but with country close harmony vocals: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] The brothers were, at first, worried because almost as soon as it came out, a cover version by Webb Pierce, one of the biggest names in country music, came out: [Excerpt: Webb Pierce, “Bye Bye Love”] But they were surprised to discover that while Pierce’s version did chart — reaching the top ten in the country charts — it was nowhere near as successful as their own version, which went to number one on the country charts and number two in pop, and charted on the R&B charts as well. After that success, the Bryants wrote a string of hits for the brothers, a run of classics starting with “Wake Up Little Suzie”, a song which was banned on many stations because it suggested impropriety — even though, listening to the lyrics, it very clearly states that no impropriety has gone on, and indeed that the protagonist is horrified at the suggestion that it might have: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Wake Up Little Suzie”] These records would usually incorporate some of Don’s Bo Diddley influence, while remaining firmly in the country end of rock and roll. The Bryants also started to give the brothers ballads like “Devoted to You” and “All I Have to Do is Dream”, which while they still deal with adolescent concerns, have a sweetness and melody to them quite unlike anything else that was being recorded by rock and roll artists of the time. After the first single, everything else that the Bryants wrote for the Everlys was tailored specifically to them — Boudleaux Bryant, who would attend more of the sessions, would have long conversations with the brothers and try to write songs that fit with their lives and musical tastes, as well as fitting them to their voices. One of the things that’s very noticeable about interviews with the brothers is that they both tend to credit Boudleaux alone with having written the songs that he co-wrote with his wife, even though everything suggests that the Bryants were a true partnership, and both have solo credits for songs that are stylistically indistinguishable from those written as a team. Whether this is pure sexism, or it’s just because Boudleaux is the one who used to demo the songs for them and so they think of him as the primary author, is hard to tell — probably a combination. This was also a perception that Boudleaux Bryant encouraged. While Felice was the person who had originally decided to go into songwriting, and was the one who came up with most of the ideas, Boudleaux was only interested in making money — and he’d often sneak off to write songs by himself so he would get all the money rather than have to share it with his wife. Boudleaux would also on occasion be given incomplete songs by friends like Atkins, and finish them up with Felice — but only Boudleaux and the original writer would get their names on it. The result was that Boudleaux got the credit from people around him, even when they knew better. One of my sources for this episode is an interview with the Bryants’ son, Dane, and at one point in that interview he says “Now, lots of times I will say, ‘My father.’ I mean Dad and Mom”. As the Everly brothers disagreed about almost everything, they of course disagreed about the quality of the material that the Bryants were bringing them. Phil Everly was always utterly unstinting in his praise of them, saying that the Bryants’ songs were some of the best songs ever written. Don, on the other hand, while he definitely appreciated material like “All I Have to Do is Dream”, wasn’t so keen on their writing in general, mostly because it dealt primarily with adolescent concerns. He thought that the material the brothers were writing for themselves — though still immature, as one would expect from people who were still in their teens at the start of their career — was aiming at a greater emotional maturity than the material the Bryants wrote. And on the evidence of their first album, that’s certainly true. The first album is, like many albums of the time, a patchy affair. It pulls together the hit singles the brothers had already released, together with a bunch of rather mediocre cover versions of then-current hits. Those cover versions tend to support Don’s repeated claims that the brothers were as interested in R&B and blues as in country — apart from a version of “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, all the covers are of R&B hits of the time — two by Little Richard, two by Ray Charles, and one by the relatively obscure blues singer Titus Turner. But among those songs, there are also a handful of Don Everly originals, and one in particular, “I Wonder if I Care as Much”, is quite an astonishing piece of songwriting: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “I Wonder If I Care As Much”] Don’s songs were often B-sides – that one was the B-side to “Bye Bye Love” – and to my mind they’re often rather more interesting than the A-sides. While that first album is rather patchy, the second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, is a minor revelation, and one of the pillars on which the Everly Brothers’ artistic reputation rests. It’s been suggested that the album was done as a way of getting back at the record company for some slight or other, by making a record that was completely uncommercial. That might be the case, but I don’t think so — and if it was, it was a gesture that backfired magnificently, as it’s still, sixty years on, a consistent seller. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us is precisely what it sounds like — an album consisting of songs the brothers had been taught by their father. It’s a mixture of Appalachian folk songs and country standards, performed by the brothers accompanied just by Don’s acoustic guitar and Floyd Chance on upright bass: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] It’s quite possibly the most artistically satisfying album made in the fifties by a rock and roll act, and it’s had such an influence that as recently as 2013 Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and the jazz-pop singer Norah Jones recorded an album, Foreverly, that’s just a cover version of the whole album: [Excerpt: Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] So as the 1950s drew to a close, the Everly Brothers were on top of the world. They’d had a run of classic singles, and they’d just released one of the greatest albums of all time. But there was trouble ahead, and when we pick up on their career again, we’ll see exactly how wrong things could go for them.  

Episode fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Bye Bye Love" by The Everly Brotherss, and at the history of country close harmony. 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 "Short Fat Fannie" by Larry Williams.  ----more----   Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there's a decent one in French, but I don't speak French well enough for that). Ike's Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio,  and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it's been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. How Nashville Became Music City by Michael Kosser has a good amount of information on the Bryants. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. There are many, many cheap compilations of the Everly Brothers' early material available. I'd recommend this one, because as well as all the hits up to 1962 it has the complete Songs our Daddy Taught Us.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   Transcript [Intro: Ike Everly introducing the Everly Brothers] We've talked before about how vocal harmonies are no longer a big part of rock music, but were essential to it in the fifties and sixties. But what we've not discussed is that there are multiple different types of harmony that we see in the music of that period. One, which we've already seen, is the vocal group sound -- the sound of doo-wop. There, there might be a lead singer, but everyone involved has their own important role to play, singing separate backing vocal lines that intertwine. One singer will be taking a bass melody, another will be singing a falsetto line, and so on. It's the sound of a collection of individual personalities, working together but to their own agendas. Another style which we're going to look at soon is the girl group sound. There you have a lead singer singing a line on her own, and two or three backing vocalists echoing lines on the chorus -- it's the sound of a couple of friends providing support for someone who's in trouble. The lead singer will sing her problems, and the friends will respond with something supportive. Then there's the style which Elvis used -- a single lead vocalist over a group of backing vocalists, mostly providing "oohs" and "aahs". The backing vocals here just work as another instrumental texture. But there's one style which would be as influential as any of these, and which was brought into rock and roll by a single act -- a duo who, more than anyone else in rock music, epitomised vocal harmony: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Bye Bye Love"] Don and Phil Everly were brought up in music. Their father, Ike Everly, had been a coalminer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, but decided to quit coal mining and become a professional musician when he was trapped in his second cave-in, deciding he wasn't ever going to go through that a third time. He had learned a particular guitar style, which would later become known as "Travis picking" after its most famous exponent, Merle Travis -- though Travis himself usually referred to it as "Muhlenberg picking". Travis and Ike Everly knew each other, and it was Ike Everly, and Ike's friend Mose Rager, who taught Travis how to play in that style, which they had learned from another friend, Kennedy Jones, who in turn learned it from a black country-blues player named Arnold Schultz, who had invented the style: [Excerpt, Ike Everly, "Blue Smoke"] Ike Everly was widely regarded as one of the greatest country guitarists of all time, and his "Ike Everly's Rag" was later recorded by Merle Travis and Joe Maphis: [Excerpt: Merle Travis and Joe Maphis, "Ike Everly's Rag"] But while Ike Everly was known as a country player, Don Everly would always later claim that deep down Ike was a blues man. He played country because that was what the audiences wanted to hear, but his first love was the blues. But even when playing country, he wasn't just playing the kind of music that was becoming popular at the time, but he was also playing the old Appalachian folk songs, and teaching them to his sons. He would play songs like "Who's Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?", which was most famously recorded by Woody Guthrie: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?"] The Everly family travelled all over the South and Midwest, moving between radio stations on which Ike Everly would get himself shows. As they grew old enough, his two sons, Don and Phil, would join him, as would his wife, though Margaret Everly was more of a manager than a performer. Don soon became good enough that he got his own fifteen-minute show, performing as "Little Donnie", as well as performing with his family. The Everly family would perform their show live, first thing in the morning -- they were playing country music and so they were supposed to be playing for the farmers, and their show began at 5AM, with the young boys heading off to school, still in the dark, after the show had finished. The radio show continued for many years, and the boys developed all sorts of tricks for keeping an audience entertained, which would stand them in good stead in future years. One thing they used to do was to have both brothers and their father play the same guitar simultaneously, with Phil fretting the bass notes, Ike Everly playing those notes, and Don playing lead on the top strings. I've not found a recording of them doing that together, but some footage does exist of them doing this with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his TV show -- Ford, of course, being someone whose biggest hit had been written by Ike Everly's old friend Merle Travis: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Everly Brothers, "Rattlesnake Daddy"] That kind of trick was fairly common among country acts at the time -- Buck Owens and Don Rich would do pretty much the same act together in the 1960s, and like the Everlys would play fairly straightforward blues licks while doing it. But while Ike Everly was primarily an instrumentalist, his sons would become known mostly as singers. People often, incorrectly, describe the Everly Brothers as singing "bluegrass harmonies". This is understandable, as bluegrass music comes from Kentucky, and does often have close harmonies in it. But the Everlys were actually singing in a style that was around for years before Bill Monroe started performing the music that would become known as bluegrass. There was a whole tradition of close harmony in country music that is usually dated back to the 1920s. The first people to really popularise it were a duo who were known as "Mac and Bob" -- Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner. The two men met in Kentucky, at the Kentucky School for the Blind, where they were both studying music, in 1916. They started singing close harmony together in the early 1920s, and while they sang in the overly-enunciated way that was popular at the time, you can hear the roots of the Everlys' style in their harmonies: [Excerpt: McFarland and Gardner, "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine"] The style is known as "close harmony" because the singers are singing notes that are close to each other in the scale, and it was the foundation of country vocal harmonies. Usually in this style, there are two singers, singing about a third apart. The lower singer will sing the melody, while the higher singer will harmonise, following the melody line closely. This style of harmony was particularly suited to the vocal blend you can get from siblings, who tend to have extremely similar voices -- and if done well it can sound like one voice harmonising with itself. And so from the 1930s on there were a lot of brother acts who performed this kind of music. One duo who the Everlys would often point to as a particular influence was the Bailes Brothers: [Excerpt: the Bailes Brothers, "Oh So Many Years"] But at the time the Everly Brothers were coming up, there was one duo, more than any other, who were immensely popular in the close harmony style -- the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "Midnight Special"] The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, were cousins of John D. Loudermilk, whose "Sittin' in the Balcony" we heard in the Eddie Cochran episode a few weeks ago. They were country and gospel singers, who are nowadays probably sadly best known for the cover of their album "Satan is Real", which often makes those Internet listicles about the most ridiculous album covers. But in the mid fifties, they were one of the most popular groups in country music, and influenced everyone -- they were particular favourites of Elvis, and regular performers on the Grand Ole Opry. Their style was a model for the Everlys, but sadly so was their personal relationship. Ira and Charlie never got on, and would often get into fights on stage, and the same was true of the Everly Brothers. In 1970, Phil Everly said "We've only ever had one argument. It's lasted twenty-five years", and that argument would continue for the rest of their lives. There were various explanations offered for their enmity over the years, ranging from them vying to be their father's favourite, to Don resenting Phil's sweeter voice upstaging him -- he was once quoted as saying "I've been a has-been since I was ten". But fundamentally the two brothers were just too different in everything from temperament to politics -- Don is a liberal Democrat, while Phil was a conservative Republican -- and their views on how life should be lived. It seems most likely that two such different people resented being forced into constant proximity with each other, and reacted against it. And so the Everlys became another of those sibling rivalries that have recurred throughout rock and roll history. But despite their personal differences, they had a vocal blend that was possibly even better than that of the Louvins, if that's possible. But talent on its own doesn't necessarily bring success, and for a while it looked like the Everlys were going to be washed up before the brothers got out of their teens. While they had some success with their radio show, by 1955 there was much less of a market for live music on the radio -- it was much cheaper for the radio stations to employ DJs to play records, now that the legal ban on broadcasting recordings had been lifted. The Everly family's radio show ended, and both Ike and Margaret got jobs cutting hair, while encouraging their sons in their music career. After a few months of this, Margaret decided she was going to move the boys to Nashville, to try to get them a record deal, while Ike remained in nearby Knoxville working as a barber. While the family had not had much success in the music industry, they had made contacts with several people, and Chet Atkins, in particular, was an admirer, not only of Ike Everly's guitar playing, but of his barbering skills as well -- according to at least one account I've read, Atkins was a regular customer of Ike's. Atkins seems to have been, at first, mostly interested in Don Everly as a songwriter and maybe a solo performer -- he carried out some correspondence with Don while Don was still in school, and got Kitty Wells, one of the biggest country stars of the fifties, to record one of Don's songs, "Thou Shalt Not Steal", when Don was only sixteen: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, "Thou Shalt Not Steal"] That became a top twenty country hit, and Don looked like he might be on his way to a successful career, especially after another of his songs, "Here We Are Again", was recorded by Anita Carter of the famous Carter family: [Excerpt: Anita Carter, "Here We Are Again"] But Margaret Everly, the Everlys' mother and the person who seemed to have the ambition that drove them, didn't want Don to be a solo star -- she wanted the two brothers to be equal in every way, and would make sure they wore the same clothes, had the same toys growing up, and so on. She took Don's royalties from songwriting, and used them to get both brothers Musicians' union cards -- in the same way, when Don had had his own radio show, Margaret had made Don give Phil half of his five-dollar fee. So solo stardom was never going to be in Don Everly's future. Margaret wanted the Everly Brothers to be a successful duo, and that was that. Chet Atkins was going to help *both* her sons. Atkins got them a deal with Columbia Records in 1956 for a single, "Keep A-Lovin' Me", written by Don: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Keep A-Lovin' Me"] That record flopped, and the Everlys were later very dismissive of it -- Phil said of the two songs on that single "they were stinko, boy! Really stinko!" Columbia weren't interested in putting out anything else by the Everlys, and quickly dropped them. Part of the reason was that they were signed as a country act, but they already wanted to do more, and in particular to incorporate more influence from the rhythm and blues music they were listening to. Don worshipped Hank Williams, and Phil loved Lefty Frizzell, but they both also adored Bo Diddley, and were obsessed with his style. Don, in particular -- who was the more accomplished instrumentalist of the two, and who unlike Phil would play rhythm guitar on their records -- wanted to learn how Diddley played guitar, and would spend a lot of time with Chet Atkins, who taught him how to play in the open tunings Diddley used, and some of the rhythms he was playing with. Despite the brothers' lack of success on Columbia, Atkins still had faith in them, and he got in touch with his friend Wesley Rose, who was the president of Acuff-Rose publishing, the biggest music publishing company in Nashville at the time. Rose made a deal with the brothers. If they would sign to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, and if they'd agree to record only Acuff-Rose songs, he would look after their career and get them a record deal. They agreed, and Rose got them signed to Cadence Records, a mid-sized indie label whose biggest star at the time was Andy Williams. The first single they recorded for Cadence was a song that had been rejected by thirty other artists before it was passed on to the Everlys as a last resort. "Bye Bye Love" was written by the husband and wife team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had been writing for a decade, for people such as Carl Smith and Moon Mullican. Their first hit had come in 1948, with "Country Boy", a song which Little Jimmy Dickens took to number seven on the country charts: [Excerpt: Little Jimmy Dickens, "Country Boy"] But they had not had much chart success after that, though they'd placed songs with various Nashville-based country singers. They were virtual unknowns, and their most recent song, "Bye Bye Love", had been written for a duo called Johnny and Jack. They hadn't been interested, so the Bryants had passed the song along to their friend Chet Atkins, who had tried to record it with Porter Wagoner, who had recorded other songs by the Bryants, like "Tryin' to Forget the Blues": [Excerpt: Porter Wagoner, "Tryin' to Forget the Blues"] But when Atkins took the song into the studio, he decided it wasn't strong enough for Wagoner. Atkins wanted to change a few chords, and Boudleaux Bryant told him that if the song wasn't strong enough as it was, he just shouldn't record it at all. But while the song might not have been strong enough for a big country star like Porter Wagoner, it was strong enough for Chet Atkins' new proteges, who were, after all, hardly going to have a big hit. So Atkins took the multiply-rejected song in for the duo to record as their first single for Cadence. In one of those coincidences that seems too good to be true, Ike Everly was Boudleaux Bryant's barber, and had been bragging to him for years about how talented his sons were, but Bryant had just dismissed this -- around Nashville, everyone is a major talent, or their son or daughter or husband or wife is. Two things happened to change the rather mediocre song into a classic that would change the face of popular music. The first was, simply, the brothers' harmonies. They had by this point developed an intuitive understanding of each other's voices, and a superb musicality. It's interesting to listen to the very first take of the song: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Bye Bye Love (take 1)"] That's Don singing the low lead and Phil taking the high harmony. Now, if you're familiar with the finished record, you can tell that what Phil's singing there isn't the closer harmony part he ended up singing on the final version. There are some note choices there that he decided against for the final record. But what you can tell is that they are instinctively great harmony singers. It's not the harmony part that would become famous, but it's a *good* one in its own right. The second thing is that they changed the song from the rather sedate country song the Bryants had come up with, radically rearranging it. Don had written a song called "Give Me a Future", which he'd intended to be in the Bo Diddley style, and one can hear something of Diddley's rhythm in the stop-start guitar part: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Give Me a Future"] Don took that guitar part, and attached it to the Bryants' song, and with the help of Chet Atkins' lead guitar fills turned it into something quite new -- a record with a rockabilly feel, but with country close harmony vocals: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Bye Bye Love"] The brothers were, at first, worried because almost as soon as it came out, a cover version by Webb Pierce, one of the biggest names in country music, came out: [Excerpt: Webb Pierce, "Bye Bye Love"] But they were surprised to discover that while Pierce's version did chart -- reaching the top ten in the country charts -- it was nowhere near as successful as their own version, which went to number one on the country charts and number two in pop, and charted on the R&B charts as well. After that success, the Bryants wrote a string of hits for the brothers, a run of classics starting with "Wake Up Little Suzie", a song which was banned on many stations because it suggested impropriety -- even though, listening to the lyrics, it very clearly states that no impropriety has gone on, and indeed that the protagonist is horrified at the suggestion that it might have: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Wake Up Little Suzie"] These records would usually incorporate some of Don's Bo Diddley influence, while remaining firmly in the country end of rock and roll. The Bryants also started to give the brothers ballads like "Devoted to You" and "All I Have to Do is Dream", which while they still deal with adolescent concerns, have a sweetness and melody to them quite unlike anything else that was being recorded by rock and roll artists of the time. After the first single, everything else that the Bryants wrote for the Everlys was tailored specifically to them -- Boudleaux Bryant, who would attend more of the sessions, would have long conversations with the brothers and try to write songs that fit with their lives and musical tastes, as well as fitting them to their voices. One of the things that's very noticeable about interviews with the brothers is that they both tend to credit Boudleaux alone with having written the songs that he co-wrote with his wife, even though everything suggests that the Bryants were a true partnership, and both have solo credits for songs that are stylistically indistinguishable from those written as a team. Whether this is pure sexism, or it's just because Boudleaux is the one who used to demo the songs for them and so they think of him as the primary author, is hard to tell -- probably a combination. This was also a perception that Boudleaux Bryant encouraged. While Felice was the person who had originally decided to go into songwriting, and was the one who came up with most of the ideas, Boudleaux was only interested in making money -- and he'd often sneak off to write songs by himself so he would get all the money rather than have to share it with his wife. Boudleaux would also on occasion be given incomplete songs by friends like Atkins, and finish them up with Felice -- but only Boudleaux and the original writer would get their names on it. The result was that Boudleaux got the credit from people around him, even when they knew better. One of my sources for this episode is an interview with the Bryants' son, Dane, and at one point in that interview he says "Now, lots of times I will say, 'My father.' I mean Dad and Mom". As the Everly brothers disagreed about almost everything, they of course disagreed about the quality of the material that the Bryants were bringing them. Phil Everly was always utterly unstinting in his praise of them, saying that the Bryants' songs were some of the best songs ever written. Don, on the other hand, while he definitely appreciated material like "All I Have to Do is Dream", wasn't so keen on their writing in general, mostly because it dealt primarily with adolescent concerns. He thought that the material the brothers were writing for themselves -- though still immature, as one would expect from people who were still in their teens at the start of their career -- was aiming at a greater emotional maturity than the material the Bryants wrote. And on the evidence of their first album, that's certainly true. The first album is, like many albums of the time, a patchy affair. It pulls together the hit singles the brothers had already released, together with a bunch of rather mediocre cover versions of then-current hits. Those cover versions tend to support Don's repeated claims that the brothers were as interested in R&B and blues as in country -- apart from a version of "Be-Bop-A-Lula", all the covers are of R&B hits of the time -- two by Little Richard, two by Ray Charles, and one by the relatively obscure blues singer Titus Turner. But among those songs, there are also a handful of Don Everly originals, and one in particular, "I Wonder if I Care as Much", is quite an astonishing piece of songwriting: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "I Wonder If I Care As Much"] Don's songs were often B-sides – that one was the B-side to “Bye Bye Love” – and to my mind they're often rather more interesting than the A-sides. While that first album is rather patchy, the second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, is a minor revelation, and one of the pillars on which the Everly Brothers' artistic reputation rests. It's been suggested that the album was done as a way of getting back at the record company for some slight or other, by making a record that was completely uncommercial. That might be the case, but I don't think so -- and if it was, it was a gesture that backfired magnificently, as it's still, sixty years on, a consistent seller. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us is precisely what it sounds like -- an album consisting of songs the brothers had been taught by their father. It's a mixture of Appalachian folk songs and country standards, performed by the brothers accompanied just by Don's acoustic guitar and Floyd Chance on upright bass: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] It's quite possibly the most artistically satisfying album made in the fifties by a rock and roll act, and it's had such an influence that as recently as 2013 Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and the jazz-pop singer Norah Jones recorded an album, Foreverly, that's just a cover version of the whole album: [Excerpt: Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, “Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] So as the 1950s drew to a close, the Everly Brothers were on top of the world. They'd had a run of classic singles, and they'd just released one of the greatest albums of all time. But there was trouble ahead, and when we pick up on their career again, we'll see exactly how wrong things could go for them.  

This week's episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is the second of two bonus episodes answering listener questions at the end of the first year of the podcast. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a bonus podcast, answering even more questions. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This one also includes the songs from the Patreon bonus episode, as that's even more questions and answers. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the second and final part of this year's question and answer bonus podcasts. This week I'm actually going to do two of these. The one that's going on the main podcast is going to consist of those questions that my backers asked that have to do primarily with the podcast and the music, while the one that's going only to backers consists mostly of questions that have been asked about me and my life and so forth -- stuff that might be less interesting to the casual listener, but that clearly someone is interested in. Next week I get back to the main story, with an episode about Carl Perkins, but right now we're going to jump straight into the questions.   Matthew Elmslie asks:   "It's not an issue you've had to confront yet, as you navigate the mid-'50s, but eventually you're going to come up against the clash between the concept of popular music where the basic unit is the song or single, and the one where the basic unit is the album. What are your thoughts on that and how do you plan to deal with it?" This is a question I had to give some consideration to when I was writing my book California Dreaming, which in many ways was sort of a trial run for the podcast, and which like the podcast told its story by looking at individual tracks. I think it can be a problem, but probably not in the way it first appears.   First, the period where the album was dominant was a fairly short one -- it's only roughly from 1967 through about 1974 that the bands who were getting the most critical respect were primarily thinking in terms of albums rather than singles. After that, once punk starts, the pendulum swings back again, so it's not a long period of time that I have to think of in those terms. But it is something that has to be considered during that period. On the other hand, even during that period, there were many acts who were still primarily singles acts -- the Monkees, Slade, the Move, T-Rex... many of whom, arguably, had more long-term influence than many of the album acts of the time.   I think for the most part, though, even the big album acts were still working mostly in ways that allow themselves to be looked at through the lens of single tracks. Like even on something like Dark Side of the Moon, which is about as concept-albumy as it gets, there's still "Money" and "Great Gig in the Sky" which are individual tracks people know even if they don't necessarily know the album, and which could be used as the focus of an episode on the album. Even with Led Zeppelin, who never released singles at all, there are tracks that might as well have been singles, like "Whole Lotta Love" or "Stairway to Heaven". So for the most part it's fairly easy to find a single track I can focus on.   The real problem only comes in for a handful of albums -- records, mostly from that period in the late sixties and early seventies, which absolutely deserve to be considered as part of the podcast, but which don't have standout tracks. It's hard to pick one track from, say, Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart or Astral Weeks by Van Morrison -- those two albums really do need considering as albums rather than as individual tracks -- there's no reason to choose, say, "Frownland" over "The Dust Blows Forward 'n' the Dust Blows Back" or vice versa, or "Madame George" over "Slim Slow Slider".   What I'll do in those cases will probably vary from case to case. So with Trout Mask Replica I'd probably just pick one song as the title song for the episode but still talk about the whole album, while with Astral Weeks the most likely thing is for me to focus the episode on "Brown-Eyed Girl", which isn't on the album, but talk about the making of Astral Weeks after "Brown-Eyed Girl" was a success. That's assuming I cover both those albums at all, but I named them because I'm more likely to than not.   [Excerpt: Van Morrison, “Brown-Eyed Girl”]   Russell Stallings asks: "Andrew, in [the] 60s it seems rock guitar was dominated by Stratocasters and Les Pauls, what was the guitar of choice in the period we are currently covering (1957) ?"   Well, 1957 is just about the point where this becomes an interesting question. Before this point the guitar hasn't played much of a part in the proceedings -- we've seen guitarists, but there've been more piano players -- 1957 is really the point where the guitar becomes the primary rock and roll instrument.   Before I go any further, I just want to say that I've never been a particular gearhead. There are people out there who can tell the difference instantly between different types of guitars based on a note or two. I'm not one of them -- I can sort of make out the difference between a Fendery sound and a Gibsony one and a Rickenbackery one, but not at a tremendous level of precision. I tend to care more about the technique of the player than the sound of the instrument, so this isn't my area of expertise. But I'll give this a go.   Now, there wasn't a straightforward single most popular guitar at this point. It's true that from the late sixties on rock pretty much standardised around the Les Paul and the Stratocaster -- though it was from the late sixties, and you get a lot of people playing different guitars in the early and mid sixties -- but in the fifties people were still figuring things out as individuals. But at the same time, there is, sort of, an answer to this.   The Strat wasn't particularly popular in the 50s. The only first-rank 50s rocker who played a Strat was Buddy Holly, who always played one on stage, though he varied his guitars in the studio from what I've read. Buddy Holly is indirectly the reason the Strat later became so popular -- he inspired Hank Marvin of the Shadows to get one, and Marvin inspired pretty much every guitarist in Britain to copy him. But other than in surf music, the Strat wasn't really popular until around 1967. You'd occasionally get a Telecaster player in the 50s -- Buck Owens, who played on quite a few rockabilly sessions for people like Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson before he became one of the greats of country music, played a Telecaster. And James Burton, who played in the fifties with Ricky Nelson and Dale Hawkins, among others, was another Telecaster player. But in general there weren't a lot of Fender players.   [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Hello, Mary Lou”, James Burton guitar solo]   Some people did play Gibsons -- most of the Chicago electric blues people seem to have been Gibson people, and so was Chuck Berry. Scotty Moore also played a Gibson. But rather than go for the Les Paul, they'd mostly go for hollow-body models like the L5, which could be played as either electric or acoustic. Scotty Moore also used a custom-built Echosonic amp, so he could get a similar guitar sound on stage to the one he'd got in the studio with Sam Phillips, and he used the L5 and Echosonic combination on all the Elvis hits of the fifties. Carl Perkins did play a Les Paul at first, including on "Blue Suede Shoes", but he switched to a Gibson ES-5 (and got himself an Echosonic from the same person who made Scotty Moore's) after that.   [Excerpt: Carl Perkins, “Matchbox”]   For acoustic guitar, people generally either used a Martin, like Elvis Presley or Ray Edenton, who was the session rhythm player who doubled Don Everly's guitar in the studio (Phil Everly would double it live, but he didn't play on the records), or they'd play a Gibson acoustic, as Don Everly and Buddy Holly did. But overwhelmingly the most popular guitar on rockabilly sessions -- which means in rock and roll for these purposes, since with the exception of Chuck Berry the R&B side of rock and roll remained dominated by piano and sax -- the most popular rockabilly guitar was a Gretsch. There were various popular models of Gretsch guitar, like the Duo Jet, but the most popular were the 6120, the Country Gentleman, and the Tennessean, all of which were variants on the same basic design, and all of which were endorsed by Chet Atkins, which is why they became the pre-eminent guitars among rockabilly musicians, all of whom idolised Atkins. You can hear how that guitar sounds when Atkins plays it here…   [Excerpt: Chet Atkins, “Mr. Sandman”]   Atkins himself played these guitars on sessions for Elvis (where he just played rhythm) and the Everly Brothers (for whom he played lead in the studio). Duane Eddy, Cliff Gallup of the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, and many more played Gretsch guitars in imitation of Atkins. Bo Diddley also played a Gretsch before he started playing his own custom-built guitar.   There was no default guitar choice in the 50s the way there was later, but the Gretsch seemed to be the choice of the guitarists who were most admired at the time, and so it also became the choice for anyone else who wanted that clean, country-style, rockabilly lead guitar sound. That sound went out of fashion in the later sixties, but George Harrison used a Gretsch for most of his early leads, and Michael Nesmith of the Monkees always played a Gretsch -- when they started doing twelve-strings, in 1966, they initially only made three, one for Chet Atkins, one for George Harrison, and one for Nesmith, though they later mass-produced them.   But anyway, yeah. No single answer, but Gretsch Country Gentleman, with a hollow-bodied Gibson in close second, is the closest you'll get.   William Maybury asks "About when does the History of Soul divorce from the History of Rock, in your eyes?" That's a difficult question, and it's something I'll be dealing with in a lot more detail when we get to the 1970s, over a whole series of episodes. This is the grotesquely oversimplified version. The short answer is -- when "soul" stopped being the label that was applied to cutting-edge black music that white people could rip off. The history of rock is, at least in part, a history of white musicians incorporating innovations that first appeared in black musicians' work. It's not *just* that, of course, but that's a big part of it.   Now, around 1970 or so, "rock" gets redefined specifically as music that is made by white men with guitars, and other people making identical music were something else. Like there's literally no difference, stylistically, between "Maggot Brain" by Funkadelic and things like Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac or "Watermelon in Easter Hay" by Frank Zappa, but people talk about P-Funk as a funk group rather than a rock group – I know the question was about soul, rather than funk, but in the early seventies there was a huge overlap between the two.   [Excerpt: Funkadelic, “Maggot Brain”]   But as long as soul music remained at the forefront of musical innovations, those innovations were incorporated by white "rock" acts, and any attempt to tell the story of rock music which ignores George Clinton or Stevie Wonder or Sly Stone or Marvin Gaye would be a fundamentally dishonest one.   But some time around the mid-seventies, "soul" stops being a label that's applied to innovative new music, and becomes a label for music that's consciously retro or conservative, people like, say, Luther Vandross. Not that there's anything wrong with retro music -- and there's some great soul music made in the 80s and 90s -- but the music that was at the cutting edge was first disco and then hip-hop, and that's the music that was spawning the innovations that the rock musicians would incorporate into their work.   And, indeed, after around 1980 rock itself becomes more consciously retro and less experimental, and so the rate of incorporation of new musical ideas slows down too, though never completely stops.   But there's always some fuzziness around genre labels. For example, if you consider Prince to be a soul musician, then obviously he's still part of the story. Same goes for Michael Jackson. I don't know if I'd consider either of them to be soul per se, but I could make a case for it, and obviously it's impossible to tell the story of rock in the eighties without those two, any more than you could tell it without, say, Bruce Springsteen.   So, really, there's a slow separation between the two genres over about a twenty-year period, starting in the mid-sixties and finishing in the mid-eighties. I *imagine* that Prince is probably the last new musician who might be described as soul who will be appearing in the podcast, but it really depends on where you draw the boundaries of what counts as soul. There'll be a few disco and hip-hop acts appearing over the last half of the series, and some of them might be considered soul by some people.   That's the best I can do at answering the question right now, but it's a vastly oversimplified version of the real answer, which is "listen to all the podcasts for the seventies when I get to them".   One from Jeff Stanzler:   "For me, the most surprising inclusion so far was the Janis Martin record. You did speak some about why you felt it warranted inclusion, but I'd love to hear more of your thinking on this, and maybe also on the larger philosophical question of including records that were more like significant signposts than records that had huge impact at the time."   [Excerpt: Janis Martin, “Drugstore Rock & Roll”]   Some of this goes back to some of the stuff I was talking about last week, about how there are multiple factors at play when it comes to any song I'm choosing, but the Janis Martin one makes a good example of how those factors play into each other.   First, everything I said in that episode is true -- it *is* an important signpost in the transition of rock and roll into a music specifically aimed at white teenagers, and it is the first record I've come across that deals with the 1950s of Happy Days and American Graffiti rather than the other things that were going on in the culture. Even though "Drugstore Rock and Roll" wasn't a massively successful record, I think that makes it worth including.   But there were other factors that warranted its inclusion too. The first of these was simply that I wanted to include at least one song by a woman at that point. If you don't count the Platters, who had one female member, it had been three months since the last song by a woman. I knew I was going to be doing Wanda Jackson a few weeks later, but it's important to me that I show how women were always part of the story of rock and roll. The podcast is going to be biased towards men, because it's telling the story of an industry that was massively biased towards men, but where women did have the opportunity to break through I want to give them credit. This is not including "token women" or anything like that -- rather it's saying "women have always been part of the story, their part of the story has been ignored, I want to do what I can to redress the balance a bit, so long as I don't move into actively misrepresenting history".   Then there's the fact that Janis Martin had what to my mind was a fascinating story, and one that allowed me to talk about a lot of social issues of the time, at least in brief.   And finally there's the way that her story ties in with those of other people I've covered. Her admiration of Ruth Brown allowed me to tie the story in with the episode on "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean", and also gave me a way to neatly bookend the story, while showing the influence of one of the songs I'd already covered. Her working for RCA and with the same musicians as Elvis meant that I could talk a bit more about those musicians, and her being marketed as "the Female Elvis" meant that I could talk about Elvis' larger cultural impact on the world in 1956, something that needed to be discussed in the series, but which I hadn't found space for in an episode on Elvis himself at that point. (And in talking about the various Elvis-based novelty records I was also able to mention a few figures who will turn up in future episodes, planting seeds for later).   [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and the Holly Twins, “I Want Elvis For Christmas”]   So that's the thinking there. Every episode has to serve a bunch of different purposes if I'm going to tell this story in only five hundred episodes, and the Janis Martin one, I think, did that better than many. As to the larger question of signposts versus impact at the time -- I am trying, for the most part, to tell the story from the point of view of the time we're looking at, and look at what mattered to listeners and other musicians at the time. But you also have to fill in the details of stuff that's going to affect things in the future. So for example you can't talk about REM without first having covered people like Big Star, so even though Big Star weren't huge at the time, they'll definitely be covered. On the other hand someone like, say, Nick Drake, who had little influence until he was rediscovered decades later, won't be covered, except maybe in passing when talking about other artists Joe Boyd produced, because he didn't really have an effect on the wider story.   In general, the prime consideration for any song that I include is -- does it advance the overall story I'm telling? There'll be stuff left out that would be in if the only criterion was how people reacted to it at the time, and there'll be stuff included which, on its own merits, just wouldn't make the list at all. There's one Adam Faith album track, for example, that I'm going to talk about in roughly nine months, which I think is almost certainly not even the best track that Adam Faith recorded that day, which is about as low a bar as it gets. But it'll be in there because it's an important link in a larger story, even though it's not a song that mattered at all at the time.   And a final question from Daniel Helton on whether I considered doing an episode on "Ain't Got No Home" by Clarence "Frogman" Henry.   [Excerpt: Clarence “Frogman” Henry, “Ain't Got No Home”]   It's a great record, but much of what I'd have to say about it would be stuff about the New Orleans scene and Cosimo Matassa's studio and so forth -- stuff that I'd probably already covered in the episodes on Fats Domino and Lloyd Price (including the episode on Price that's coming up later), so it'd be covering too much of the same ground for me to devote a full episode to it.   If I was going to cover Frogman in the main podcast, it would *probably* be with "I Don't Know Why (But I Do)" because that came out at a time when there were far fewer interesting records being made, and I'd then cover his history including "Ain't Got No Home" as part of that, but I don't think that's likely.   In fact, yeah, I'll pencil in "Ain't Got No Home" for next week's Patreon episode. Don't expect much, because those are only ten-minute ones, but it came out at around the same time as next week's proper episode was recorded, and it *is* a great record. I'll see what I can do for that one.   Anyway, between this and the Patreon bonus episode, I think that's all the questions covered. Thanks to everyone who asked one, and if I haven't answered your questions fully, please let me know and I'll try and reply in the comments to the Patreon post. We'll be doing this again next year, so sign up for the Patreon now if you want that. Next week we're back to the regular podcasts, with an episode on "Matchbox" by Carl Perkins. Also, I'm *hoping* -- though not completely guaranteeing yet -- that I'll have the book based on the first fifty episodes done and out by this time next week. These things always take longer than I expect, but here's hoping there'll be an announcement next week. See you then.  

This week’s episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is the second of two bonus episodes answering listener questions at the end of the first year of the podcast. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a bonus podcast, answering even more questions. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This one also includes the songs from the Patreon bonus episode, as that’s even more questions and answers. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the second and final part of this year’s question and answer bonus podcasts. This week I’m actually going to do two of these. The one that’s going on the main podcast is going to consist of those questions that my backers asked that have to do primarily with the podcast and the music, while the one that’s going only to backers consists mostly of questions that have been asked about me and my life and so forth — stuff that might be less interesting to the casual listener, but that clearly someone is interested in. Next week I get back to the main story, with an episode about Carl Perkins, but right now we’re going to jump straight into the questions.   Matthew Elmslie asks:   “It’s not an issue you’ve had to confront yet, as you navigate the mid-’50s, but eventually you’re going to come up against the clash between the concept of popular music where the basic unit is the song or single, and the one where the basic unit is the album. What are your thoughts on that and how do you plan to deal with it?” This is a question I had to give some consideration to when I was writing my book California Dreaming, which in many ways was sort of a trial run for the podcast, and which like the podcast told its story by looking at individual tracks. I think it can be a problem, but probably not in the way it first appears.   First, the period where the album was dominant was a fairly short one — it’s only roughly from 1967 through about 1974 that the bands who were getting the most critical respect were primarily thinking in terms of albums rather than singles. After that, once punk starts, the pendulum swings back again, so it’s not a long period of time that I have to think of in those terms. But it is something that has to be considered during that period. On the other hand, even during that period, there were many acts who were still primarily singles acts — the Monkees, Slade, the Move, T-Rex… many of whom, arguably, had more long-term influence than many of the album acts of the time.   I think for the most part, though, even the big album acts were still working mostly in ways that allow themselves to be looked at through the lens of single tracks. Like even on something like Dark Side of the Moon, which is about as concept-albumy as it gets, there’s still “Money” and “Great Gig in the Sky” which are individual tracks people know even if they don’t necessarily know the album, and which could be used as the focus of an episode on the album. Even with Led Zeppelin, who never released singles at all, there are tracks that might as well have been singles, like “Whole Lotta Love” or “Stairway to Heaven”. So for the most part it’s fairly easy to find a single track I can focus on.   The real problem only comes in for a handful of albums — records, mostly from that period in the late sixties and early seventies, which absolutely deserve to be considered as part of the podcast, but which don’t have standout tracks. It’s hard to pick one track from, say, Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart or Astral Weeks by Van Morrison — those two albums really do need considering as albums rather than as individual tracks — there’s no reason to choose, say, “Frownland” over “The Dust Blows Forward ‘n’ the Dust Blows Back” or vice versa, or “Madame George” over “Slim Slow Slider”.   What I’ll do in those cases will probably vary from case to case. So with Trout Mask Replica I’d probably just pick one song as the title song for the episode but still talk about the whole album, while with Astral Weeks the most likely thing is for me to focus the episode on “Brown-Eyed Girl”, which isn’t on the album, but talk about the making of Astral Weeks after “Brown-Eyed Girl” was a success. That’s assuming I cover both those albums at all, but I named them because I’m more likely to than not.   [Excerpt: Van Morrison, “Brown-Eyed Girl”]   Russell Stallings asks: “Andrew, in [the] 60s it seems rock guitar was dominated by Stratocasters and Les Pauls, what was the guitar of choice in the period we are currently covering (1957) ?”   Well, 1957 is just about the point where this becomes an interesting question. Before this point the guitar hasn’t played much of a part in the proceedings — we’ve seen guitarists, but there’ve been more piano players — 1957 is really the point where the guitar becomes the primary rock and roll instrument.   Before I go any further, I just want to say that I’ve never been a particular gearhead. There are people out there who can tell the difference instantly between different types of guitars based on a note or two. I’m not one of them — I can sort of make out the difference between a Fendery sound and a Gibsony one and a Rickenbackery one, but not at a tremendous level of precision. I tend to care more about the technique of the player than the sound of the instrument, so this isn’t my area of expertise. But I’ll give this a go.   Now, there wasn’t a straightforward single most popular guitar at this point. It’s true that from the late sixties on rock pretty much standardised around the Les Paul and the Stratocaster — though it was from the late sixties, and you get a lot of people playing different guitars in the early and mid sixties — but in the fifties people were still figuring things out as individuals. But at the same time, there is, sort of, an answer to this.   The Strat wasn’t particularly popular in the 50s. The only first-rank 50s rocker who played a Strat was Buddy Holly, who always played one on stage, though he varied his guitars in the studio from what I’ve read. Buddy Holly is indirectly the reason the Strat later became so popular — he inspired Hank Marvin of the Shadows to get one, and Marvin inspired pretty much every guitarist in Britain to copy him. But other than in surf music, the Strat wasn’t really popular until around 1967. You’d occasionally get a Telecaster player in the 50s — Buck Owens, who played on quite a few rockabilly sessions for people like Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson before he became one of the greats of country music, played a Telecaster. And James Burton, who played in the fifties with Ricky Nelson and Dale Hawkins, among others, was another Telecaster player. But in general there weren’t a lot of Fender players.   [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Hello, Mary Lou”, James Burton guitar solo]   Some people did play Gibsons — most of the Chicago electric blues people seem to have been Gibson people, and so was Chuck Berry. Scotty Moore also played a Gibson. But rather than go for the Les Paul, they’d mostly go for hollow-body models like the L5, which could be played as either electric or acoustic. Scotty Moore also used a custom-built Echosonic amp, so he could get a similar guitar sound on stage to the one he’d got in the studio with Sam Phillips, and he used the L5 and Echosonic combination on all the Elvis hits of the fifties. Carl Perkins did play a Les Paul at first, including on “Blue Suede Shoes”, but he switched to a Gibson ES-5 (and got himself an Echosonic from the same person who made Scotty Moore’s) after that.   [Excerpt: Carl Perkins, “Matchbox”]   For acoustic guitar, people generally either used a Martin, like Elvis Presley or Ray Edenton, who was the session rhythm player who doubled Don Everly’s guitar in the studio (Phil Everly would double it live, but he didn’t play on the records), or they’d play a Gibson acoustic, as Don Everly and Buddy Holly did. But overwhelmingly the most popular guitar on rockabilly sessions — which means in rock and roll for these purposes, since with the exception of Chuck Berry the R&B side of rock and roll remained dominated by piano and sax — the most popular rockabilly guitar was a Gretsch. There were various popular models of Gretsch guitar, like the Duo Jet, but the most popular were the 6120, the Country Gentleman, and the Tennessean, all of which were variants on the same basic design, and all of which were endorsed by Chet Atkins, which is why they became the pre-eminent guitars among rockabilly musicians, all of whom idolised Atkins. You can hear how that guitar sounds when Atkins plays it here…   [Excerpt: Chet Atkins, “Mr. Sandman”]   Atkins himself played these guitars on sessions for Elvis (where he just played rhythm) and the Everly Brothers (for whom he played lead in the studio). Duane Eddy, Cliff Gallup of the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, and many more played Gretsch guitars in imitation of Atkins. Bo Diddley also played a Gretsch before he started playing his own custom-built guitar.   There was no default guitar choice in the 50s the way there was later, but the Gretsch seemed to be the choice of the guitarists who were most admired at the time, and so it also became the choice for anyone else who wanted that clean, country-style, rockabilly lead guitar sound. That sound went out of fashion in the later sixties, but George Harrison used a Gretsch for most of his early leads, and Michael Nesmith of the Monkees always played a Gretsch — when they started doing twelve-strings, in 1966, they initially only made three, one for Chet Atkins, one for George Harrison, and one for Nesmith, though they later mass-produced them.   But anyway, yeah. No single answer, but Gretsch Country Gentleman, with a hollow-bodied Gibson in close second, is the closest you’ll get.   William Maybury asks “About when does the History of Soul divorce from the History of Rock, in your eyes?” That’s a difficult question, and it’s something I’ll be dealing with in a lot more detail when we get to the 1970s, over a whole series of episodes. This is the grotesquely oversimplified version. The short answer is — when “soul” stopped being the label that was applied to cutting-edge black music that white people could rip off. The history of rock is, at least in part, a history of white musicians incorporating innovations that first appeared in black musicians’ work. It’s not *just* that, of course, but that’s a big part of it.   Now, around 1970 or so, “rock” gets redefined specifically as music that is made by white men with guitars, and other people making identical music were something else. Like there’s literally no difference, stylistically, between “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic and things like Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac or “Watermelon in Easter Hay” by Frank Zappa, but people talk about P-Funk as a funk group rather than a rock group – I know the question was about soul, rather than funk, but in the early seventies there was a huge overlap between the two.   [Excerpt: Funkadelic, “Maggot Brain”]   But as long as soul music remained at the forefront of musical innovations, those innovations were incorporated by white “rock” acts, and any attempt to tell the story of rock music which ignores George Clinton or Stevie Wonder or Sly Stone or Marvin Gaye would be a fundamentally dishonest one.   But some time around the mid-seventies, “soul” stops being a label that’s applied to innovative new music, and becomes a label for music that’s consciously retro or conservative, people like, say, Luther Vandross. Not that there’s anything wrong with retro music — and there’s some great soul music made in the 80s and 90s — but the music that was at the cutting edge was first disco and then hip-hop, and that’s the music that was spawning the innovations that the rock musicians would incorporate into their work.   And, indeed, after around 1980 rock itself becomes more consciously retro and less experimental, and so the rate of incorporation of new musical ideas slows down too, though never completely stops.   But there’s always some fuzziness around genre labels. For example, if you consider Prince to be a soul musician, then obviously he’s still part of the story. Same goes for Michael Jackson. I don’t know if I’d consider either of them to be soul per se, but I could make a case for it, and obviously it’s impossible to tell the story of rock in the eighties without those two, any more than you could tell it without, say, Bruce Springsteen.   So, really, there’s a slow separation between the two genres over about a twenty-year period, starting in the mid-sixties and finishing in the mid-eighties. I *imagine* that Prince is probably the last new musician who might be described as soul who will be appearing in the podcast, but it really depends on where you draw the boundaries of what counts as soul. There’ll be a few disco and hip-hop acts appearing over the last half of the series, and some of them might be considered soul by some people.   That’s the best I can do at answering the question right now, but it’s a vastly oversimplified version of the real answer, which is “listen to all the podcasts for the seventies when I get to them”.   One from Jeff Stanzler:   “For me, the most surprising inclusion so far was the Janis Martin record. You did speak some about why you felt it warranted inclusion, but I’d love to hear more of your thinking on this, and maybe also on the larger philosophical question of including records that were more like significant signposts than records that had huge impact at the time.”   [Excerpt: Janis Martin, “Drugstore Rock & Roll”]   Some of this goes back to some of the stuff I was talking about last week, about how there are multiple factors at play when it comes to any song I’m choosing, but the Janis Martin one makes a good example of how those factors play into each other.   First, everything I said in that episode is true — it *is* an important signpost in the transition of rock and roll into a music specifically aimed at white teenagers, and it is the first record I’ve come across that deals with the 1950s of Happy Days and American Graffiti rather than the other things that were going on in the culture. Even though “Drugstore Rock and Roll” wasn’t a massively successful record, I think that makes it worth including.   But there were other factors that warranted its inclusion too. The first of these was simply that I wanted to include at least one song by a woman at that point. If you don’t count the Platters, who had one female member, it had been three months since the last song by a woman. I knew I was going to be doing Wanda Jackson a few weeks later, but it’s important to me that I show how women were always part of the story of rock and roll. The podcast is going to be biased towards men, because it’s telling the story of an industry that was massively biased towards men, but where women did have the opportunity to break through I want to give them credit. This is not including “token women” or anything like that — rather it’s saying “women have always been part of the story, their part of the story has been ignored, I want to do what I can to redress the balance a bit, so long as I don’t move into actively misrepresenting history”.   Then there’s the fact that Janis Martin had what to my mind was a fascinating story, and one that allowed me to talk about a lot of social issues of the time, at least in brief.   And finally there’s the way that her story ties in with those of other people I’ve covered. Her admiration of Ruth Brown allowed me to tie the story in with the episode on “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”, and also gave me a way to neatly bookend the story, while showing the influence of one of the songs I’d already covered. Her working for RCA and with the same musicians as Elvis meant that I could talk a bit more about those musicians, and her being marketed as “the Female Elvis” meant that I could talk about Elvis’ larger cultural impact on the world in 1956, something that needed to be discussed in the series, but which I hadn’t found space for in an episode on Elvis himself at that point. (And in talking about the various Elvis-based novelty records I was also able to mention a few figures who will turn up in future episodes, planting seeds for later).   [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and the Holly Twins, “I Want Elvis For Christmas”]   So that’s the thinking there. Every episode has to serve a bunch of different purposes if I’m going to tell this story in only five hundred episodes, and the Janis Martin one, I think, did that better than many. As to the larger question of signposts versus impact at the time — I am trying, for the most part, to tell the story from the point of view of the time we’re looking at, and look at what mattered to listeners and other musicians at the time. But you also have to fill in the details of stuff that’s going to affect things in the future. So for example you can’t talk about REM without first having covered people like Big Star, so even though Big Star weren’t huge at the time, they’ll definitely be covered. On the other hand someone like, say, Nick Drake, who had little influence until he was rediscovered decades later, won’t be covered, except maybe in passing when talking about other artists Joe Boyd produced, because he didn’t really have an effect on the wider story.   In general, the prime consideration for any song that I include is — does it advance the overall story I’m telling? There’ll be stuff left out that would be in if the only criterion was how people reacted to it at the time, and there’ll be stuff included which, on its own merits, just wouldn’t make the list at all. There’s one Adam Faith album track, for example, that I’m going to talk about in roughly nine months, which I think is almost certainly not even the best track that Adam Faith recorded that day, which is about as low a bar as it gets. But it’ll be in there because it’s an important link in a larger story, even though it’s not a song that mattered at all at the time.   And a final question from Daniel Helton on whether I considered doing an episode on “Ain’t Got No Home” by Clarence “Frogman” Henry.   [Excerpt: Clarence “Frogman” Henry, “Ain’t Got No Home”]   It’s a great record, but much of what I’d have to say about it would be stuff about the New Orleans scene and Cosimo Matassa’s studio and so forth — stuff that I’d probably already covered in the episodes on Fats Domino and Lloyd Price (including the episode on Price that’s coming up later), so it’d be covering too much of the same ground for me to devote a full episode to it.   If I was going to cover Frogman in the main podcast, it would *probably* be with “I Don’t Know Why (But I Do)” because that came out at a time when there were far fewer interesting records being made, and I’d then cover his history including “Ain’t Got No Home” as part of that, but I don’t think that’s likely.   In fact, yeah, I’ll pencil in “Ain’t Got No Home” for next week’s Patreon episode. Don’t expect much, because those are only ten-minute ones, but it came out at around the same time as next week’s proper episode was recorded, and it *is* a great record. I’ll see what I can do for that one.   Anyway, between this and the Patreon bonus episode, I think that’s all the questions covered. Thanks to everyone who asked one, and if I haven’t answered your questions fully, please let me know and I’ll try and reply in the comments to the Patreon post. We’ll be doing this again next year, so sign up for the Patreon now if you want that. Next week we’re back to the regular podcasts, with an episode on “Matchbox” by Carl Perkins. Also, I’m *hoping* — though not completely guaranteeing yet — that I’ll have the book based on the first fifty episodes done and out by this time next week. These things always take longer than I expect, but here’s hoping there’ll be an announcement next week. See you then.  

This week’s episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is the second of two bonus episodes answering listener questions at the end of the first year of the podcast. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a bonus podcast, answering even more questions. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This one also includes the songs from the Patreon bonus episode, as that’s even more questions and answers. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the second and final part of this year’s question and answer bonus podcasts. This week I’m actually going to do two of these. The one that’s going on the main podcast is going to consist of those questions that my backers asked that have to do primarily with the podcast and the music, while the one that’s going only to backers consists mostly of questions that have been asked about me and my life and so forth — stuff that might be less interesting to the casual listener, but that clearly someone is interested in. Next week I get back to the main story, with an episode about Carl Perkins, but right now we’re going to jump straight into the questions.   Matthew Elmslie asks:   “It’s not an issue you’ve had to confront yet, as you navigate the mid-’50s, but eventually you’re going to come up against the clash between the concept of popular music where the basic unit is the song or single, and the one where the basic unit is the album. What are your thoughts on that and how do you plan to deal with it?” This is a question I had to give some consideration to when I was writing my book California Dreaming, which in many ways was sort of a trial run for the podcast, and which like the podcast told its story by looking at individual tracks. I think it can be a problem, but probably not in the way it first appears.   First, the period where the album was dominant was a fairly short one — it’s only roughly from 1967 through about 1974 that the bands who were getting the most critical respect were primarily thinking in terms of albums rather than singles. After that, once punk starts, the pendulum swings back again, so it’s not a long period of time that I have to think of in those terms. But it is something that has to be considered during that period. On the other hand, even during that period, there were many acts who were still primarily singles acts — the Monkees, Slade, the Move, T-Rex… many of whom, arguably, had more long-term influence than many of the album acts of the time.   I think for the most part, though, even the big album acts were still working mostly in ways that allow themselves to be looked at through the lens of single tracks. Like even on something like Dark Side of the Moon, which is about as concept-albumy as it gets, there’s still “Money” and “Great Gig in the Sky” which are individual tracks people know even if they don’t necessarily know the album, and which could be used as the focus of an episode on the album. Even with Led Zeppelin, who never released singles at all, there are tracks that might as well have been singles, like “Whole Lotta Love” or “Stairway to Heaven”. So for the most part it’s fairly easy to find a single track I can focus on.   The real problem only comes in for a handful of albums — records, mostly from that period in the late sixties and early seventies, which absolutely deserve to be considered as part of the podcast, but which don’t have standout tracks. It’s hard to pick one track from, say, Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart or Astral Weeks by Van Morrison — those two albums really do need considering as albums rather than as individual tracks — there’s no reason to choose, say, “Frownland” over “The Dust Blows Forward ‘n’ the Dust Blows Back” or vice versa, or “Madame George” over “Slim Slow Slider”.   What I’ll do in those cases will probably vary from case to case. So with Trout Mask Replica I’d probably just pick one song as the title song for the episode but still talk about the whole album, while with Astral Weeks the most likely thing is for me to focus the episode on “Brown-Eyed Girl”, which isn’t on the album, but talk about the making of Astral Weeks after “Brown-Eyed Girl” was a success. That’s assuming I cover both those albums at all, but I named them because I’m more likely to than not.   [Excerpt: Van Morrison, “Brown-Eyed Girl”]   Russell Stallings asks: “Andrew, in [the] 60s it seems rock guitar was dominated by Stratocasters and Les Pauls, what was the guitar of choice in the period we are currently covering (1957) ?”   Well, 1957 is just about the point where this becomes an interesting question. Before this point the guitar hasn’t played much of a part in the proceedings — we’ve seen guitarists, but there’ve been more piano players — 1957 is really the point where the guitar becomes the primary rock and roll instrument.   Before I go any further, I just want to say that I’ve never been a particular gearhead. There are people out there who can tell the difference instantly between different types of guitars based on a note or two. I’m not one of them — I can sort of make out the difference between a Fendery sound and a Gibsony one and a Rickenbackery one, but not at a tremendous level of precision. I tend to care more about the technique of the player than the sound of the instrument, so this isn’t my area of expertise. But I’ll give this a go.   Now, there wasn’t a straightforward single most popular guitar at this point. It’s true that from the late sixties on rock pretty much standardised around the Les Paul and the Stratocaster — though it was from the late sixties, and you get a lot of people playing different guitars in the early and mid sixties — but in the fifties people were still figuring things out as individuals. But at the same time, there is, sort of, an answer to this.   The Strat wasn’t particularly popular in the 50s. The only first-rank 50s rocker who played a Strat was Buddy Holly, who always played one on stage, though he varied his guitars in the studio from what I’ve read. Buddy Holly is indirectly the reason the Strat later became so popular — he inspired Hank Marvin of the Shadows to get one, and Marvin inspired pretty much every guitarist in Britain to copy him. But other than in surf music, the Strat wasn’t really popular until around 1967. You’d occasionally get a Telecaster player in the 50s — Buck Owens, who played on quite a few rockabilly sessions for people like Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson before he became one of the greats of country music, played a Telecaster. And James Burton, who played in the fifties with Ricky Nelson and Dale Hawkins, among others, was another Telecaster player. But in general there weren’t a lot of Fender players.   [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Hello, Mary Lou”, James Burton guitar solo]   Some people did play Gibsons — most of the Chicago electric blues people seem to have been Gibson people, and so was Chuck Berry. Scotty Moore also played a Gibson. But rather than go for the Les Paul, they’d mostly go for hollow-body models like the L5, which could be played as either electric or acoustic. Scotty Moore also used a custom-built Echosonic amp, so he could get a similar guitar sound on stage to the one he’d got in the studio with Sam Phillips, and he used the L5 and Echosonic combination on all the Elvis hits of the fifties. Carl Perkins did play a Les Paul at first, including on “Blue Suede Shoes”, but he switched to a Gibson ES-5 (and got himself an Echosonic from the same person who made Scotty Moore’s) after that.   [Excerpt: Carl Perkins, “Matchbox”]   For acoustic guitar, people generally either used a Martin, like Elvis Presley or Ray Edenton, who was the session rhythm player who doubled Don Everly’s guitar in the studio (Phil Everly would double it live, but he didn’t play on the records), or they’d play a Gibson acoustic, as Don Everly and Buddy Holly did. But overwhelmingly the most popular guitar on rockabilly sessions — which means in rock and roll for these purposes, since with the exception of Chuck Berry the R&B side of rock and roll remained dominated by piano and sax — the most popular rockabilly guitar was a Gretsch. There were various popular models of Gretsch guitar, like the Duo Jet, but the most popular were the 6120, the Country Gentleman, and the Tennessean, all of which were variants on the same basic design, and all of which were endorsed by Chet Atkins, which is why they became the pre-eminent guitars among rockabilly musicians, all of whom idolised Atkins. You can hear how that guitar sounds when Atkins plays it here…   [Excerpt: Chet Atkins, “Mr. Sandman”]   Atkins himself played these guitars on sessions for Elvis (where he just played rhythm) and the Everly Brothers (for whom he played lead in the studio). Duane Eddy, Cliff Gallup of the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, and many more played Gretsch guitars in imitation of Atkins. Bo Diddley also played a Gretsch before he started playing his own custom-built guitar.   There was no default guitar choice in the 50s the way there was later, but the Gretsch seemed to be the choice of the guitarists who were most admired at the time, and so it also became the choice for anyone else who wanted that clean, country-style, rockabilly lead guitar sound. That sound went out of fashion in the later sixties, but George Harrison used a Gretsch for most of his early leads, and Michael Nesmith of the Monkees always played a Gretsch — when they started doing twelve-strings, in 1966, they initially only made three, one for Chet Atkins, one for George Harrison, and one for Nesmith, though they later mass-produced them.   But anyway, yeah. No single answer, but Gretsch Country Gentleman, with a hollow-bodied Gibson in close second, is the closest you’ll get.   William Maybury asks “About when does the History of Soul divorce from the History of Rock, in your eyes?” That’s a difficult question, and it’s something I’ll be dealing with in a lot more detail when we get to the 1970s, over a whole series of episodes. This is the grotesquely oversimplified version. The short answer is — when “soul” stopped being the label that was applied to cutting-edge black music that white people could rip off. The history of rock is, at least in part, a history of white musicians incorporating innovations that first appeared in black musicians’ work. It’s not *just* that, of course, but that’s a big part of it.   Now, around 1970 or so, “rock” gets redefined specifically as music that is made by white men with guitars, and other people making identical music were something else. Like there’s literally no difference, stylistically, between “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic and things like Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac or “Watermelon in Easter Hay” by Frank Zappa, but people talk about P-Funk as a funk group rather than a rock group – I know the question was about soul, rather than funk, but in the early seventies there was a huge overlap between the two.   [Excerpt: Funkadelic, “Maggot Brain”]   But as long as soul music remained at the forefront of musical innovations, those innovations were incorporated by white “rock” acts, and any attempt to tell the story of rock music which ignores George Clinton or Stevie Wonder or Sly Stone or Marvin Gaye would be a fundamentally dishonest one.   But some time around the mid-seventies, “soul” stops being a label that’s applied to innovative new music, and becomes a label for music that’s consciously retro or conservative, people like, say, Luther Vandross. Not that there’s anything wrong with retro music — and there’s some great soul music made in the 80s and 90s — but the music that was at the cutting edge was first disco and then hip-hop, and that’s the music that was spawning the innovations that the rock musicians would incorporate into their work.   And, indeed, after around 1980 rock itself becomes more consciously retro and less experimental, and so the rate of incorporation of new musical ideas slows down too, though never completely stops.   But there’s always some fuzziness around genre labels. For example, if you consider Prince to be a soul musician, then obviously he’s still part of the story. Same goes for Michael Jackson. I don’t know if I’d consider either of them to be soul per se, but I could make a case for it, and obviously it’s impossible to tell the story of rock in the eighties without those two, any more than you could tell it without, say, Bruce Springsteen.   So, really, there’s a slow separation between the two genres over about a twenty-year period, starting in the mid-sixties and finishing in the mid-eighties. I *imagine* that Prince is probably the last new musician who might be described as soul who will be appearing in the podcast, but it really depends on where you draw the boundaries of what counts as soul. There’ll be a few disco and hip-hop acts appearing over the last half of the series, and some of them might be considered soul by some people.   That’s the best I can do at answering the question right now, but it’s a vastly oversimplified version of the real answer, which is “listen to all the podcasts for the seventies when I get to them”.   One from Jeff Stanzler:   “For me, the most surprising inclusion so far was the Janis Martin record. You did speak some about why you felt it warranted inclusion, but I’d love to hear more of your thinking on this, and maybe also on the larger philosophical question of including records that were more like significant signposts than records that had huge impact at the time.”   [Excerpt: Janis Martin, “Drugstore Rock & Roll”]   Some of this goes back to some of the stuff I was talking about last week, about how there are multiple factors at play when it comes to any song I’m choosing, but the Janis Martin one makes a good example of how those factors play into each other.   First, everything I said in that episode is true — it *is* an important signpost in the transition of rock and roll into a music specifically aimed at white teenagers, and it is the first record I’ve come across that deals with the 1950s of Happy Days and American Graffiti rather than the other things that were going on in the culture. Even though “Drugstore Rock and Roll” wasn’t a massively successful record, I think that makes it worth including.   But there were other factors that warranted its inclusion too. The first of these was simply that I wanted to include at least one song by a woman at that point. If you don’t count the Platters, who had one female member, it had been three months since the last song by a woman. I knew I was going to be doing Wanda Jackson a few weeks later, but it’s important to me that I show how women were always part of the story of rock and roll. The podcast is going to be biased towards men, because it’s telling the story of an industry that was massively biased towards men, but where women did have the opportunity to break through I want to give them credit. This is not including “token women” or anything like that — rather it’s saying “women have always been part of the story, their part of the story has been ignored, I want to do what I can to redress the balance a bit, so long as I don’t move into actively misrepresenting history”.   Then there’s the fact that Janis Martin had what to my mind was a fascinating story, and one that allowed me to talk about a lot of social issues of the time, at least in brief.   And finally there’s the way that her story ties in with those of other people I’ve covered. Her admiration of Ruth Brown allowed me to tie the story in with the episode on “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”, and also gave me a way to neatly bookend the story, while showing the influence of one of the songs I’d already covered. Her working for RCA and with the same musicians as Elvis meant that I could talk a bit more about those musicians, and her being marketed as “the Female Elvis” meant that I could talk about Elvis’ larger cultural impact on the world in 1956, something that needed to be discussed in the series, but which I hadn’t found space for in an episode on Elvis himself at that point. (And in talking about the various Elvis-based novelty records I was also able to mention a few figures who will turn up in future episodes, planting seeds for later).   [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and the Holly Twins, “I Want Elvis For Christmas”]   So that’s the thinking there. Every episode has to serve a bunch of different purposes if I’m going to tell this story in only five hundred episodes, and the Janis Martin one, I think, did that better than many. As to the larger question of signposts versus impact at the time — I am trying, for the most part, to tell the story from the point of view of the time we’re looking at, and look at what mattered to listeners and other musicians at the time. But you also have to fill in the details of stuff that’s going to affect things in the future. So for example you can’t talk about REM without first having covered people like Big Star, so even though Big Star weren’t huge at the time, they’ll definitely be covered. On the other hand someone like, say, Nick Drake, who had little influence until he was rediscovered decades later, won’t be covered, except maybe in passing when talking about other artists Joe Boyd produced, because he didn’t really have an effect on the wider story.   In general, the prime consideration for any song that I include is — does it advance the overall story I’m telling? There’ll be stuff left out that would be in if the only criterion was how people reacted to it at the time, and there’ll be stuff included which, on its own merits, just wouldn’t make the list at all. There’s one Adam Faith album track, for example, that I’m going to talk about in roughly nine months, which I think is almost certainly not even the best track that Adam Faith recorded that day, which is about as low a bar as it gets. But it’ll be in there because it’s an important link in a larger story, even though it’s not a song that mattered at all at the time.   And a final question from Daniel Helton on whether I considered doing an episode on “Ain’t Got No Home” by Clarence “Frogman” Henry.   [Excerpt: Clarence “Frogman” Henry, “Ain’t Got No Home”]   It’s a great record, but much of what I’d have to say about it would be stuff about the New Orleans scene and Cosimo Matassa’s studio and so forth — stuff that I’d probably already covered in the episodes on Fats Domino and Lloyd Price (including the episode on Price that’s coming up later), so it’d be covering too much of the same ground for me to devote a full episode to it.   If I was going to cover Frogman in the main podcast, it would *probably* be with “I Don’t Know Why (But I Do)” because that came out at a time when there were far fewer interesting records being made, and I’d then cover his history including “Ain’t Got No Home” as part of that, but I don’t think that’s likely.   In fact, yeah, I’ll pencil in “Ain’t Got No Home” for next week’s Patreon episode. Don’t expect much, because those are only ten-minute ones, but it came out at around the same time as next week’s proper episode was recorded, and it *is* a great record. I’ll see what I can do for that one.   Anyway, between this and the Patreon bonus episode, I think that’s all the questions covered. Thanks to everyone who asked one, and if I haven’t answered your questions fully, please let me know and I’ll try and reply in the comments to the Patreon post. We’ll be doing this again next year, so sign up for the Patreon now if you want that. Next week we’re back to the regular podcasts, with an episode on “Matchbox” by Carl Perkins. Also, I’m *hoping* — though not completely guaranteeing yet — that I’ll have the book based on the first fifty episodes done and out by this time next week. These things always take longer than I expect, but here’s hoping there’ll be an announcement next week. See you then.  

Stray Cats [00:47] a side: "Rock This Town" b side: "You Can't Hurry Love" EMI Records B-8132 1981 A-side produced by Dave Edmunds and written by Brian Seltzer, and the b-side produced by Brian Seltzer and of course written by Holland, Dozier, and Holland. Link Wray & His Ray Men [07:17] a side: "Rumble" b side: "The Swag" Cadence Records 1347 1958 The a-side title was suggested by none other than Phil Everly. Be sure to check out the documentary Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (https://youtu.be/hovJUoyxulc). Leif Garrett [12:55] a side: "Runaround Sue" b side: "I Wanna Share a Dream with You" Atlantic Records 3440 1977 Yup, that's pretty much the sound of 1977 pop culture. Future nostalgia? Dion DiMucci he ain't. Also, Leif, no one wants to hear about your dreams. Iron Maiden [17:40] a side: "Running Free" b side: "Burning Ambition" EMI Records EMI 5032 1980 The sound of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Jane Wiedlin [24:44] a side: "Rush Hour" b side: "The End of Love" EMI Manhattan B-50118 1988 Fun fact: this song can be heard in the Corey and Corey classic License to Drive (https://youtu.be/a4KJtDxTqWQ). View at your own peril. Billy Harner [32:03] a side: "Sally Sayin' Somthing" b side: "Don't Want My Love" Kama Sutra Records KA226 1967 Not much I can tell you about this single except that it's on Kama Sutra Records and songwriting credits are by Sunshine and Poltergeist. I guess that is sayin' something. Eric Burdon and The Animals [37:21] a side: "San Franciscan Night" b side: "Good Times" MGM Records K13769 1967 Peace and love, peace and love. Till the meth moves in. Not to be confused with The Animals. The Corsairs [43:48] a side: "Save a Litte Monkey" b side: "Instrumental Background To Save A Little Monkey" Tuff Records TU5584 1963 You know I love a good monkey song, and the flipside is prime for the karaoke party room! Music behind the DJ: "Gomez" by Vic Mizzy Bonus Round The 5, 6, 7, 8s with Bloodshot Bill [50:15] a side: "My Little Muck Muck" b side: "Smell Was Grease and Chewing Gum" Pig Baby Records PBR014 2018

After years as a touring pedal steel guitarist with everyone from Dan Fogelberg and Phil Everly to Pat Boone and Bobby Womack, Dave Pearlman opened his Rotund Rascal Studio in North Hollywood in 1979. To save money on outside techs, Dave began to do repairs and modifications on classic mics like the U47, 67 and […]

After years as a touring pedal steel guitarist with everyone from Dan Fogelberg and Phil Everly to Pat Boone and Bobby Womack, Dave Pearlman opened his Rotund Rascal Studio in North Hollywood in 1979. To save money on outside techs, Dave began to do repairs and modifications on classic mics like the U47, 67 and AKG C12. His side business became so successful that Dave closed the studio after 25 years and started Pearlman Microphones. He now hand-builds a full line of excellent vintage-style tube mics, including the mostly overlooked Church MGM microphone from the 50s, Telefunken 250, and the U 47, among others. In the interview we talked about how he started building mics, the history of the famous Church microphone, finding vintage tubes, the magic of older parts, and much more.  On the intro I'll take a look at payola and how it’s making a legal comeback, and a new well-intentioned law that might end up hurting musicians in Pennsylvania.

"When we first started recording, it was before rock, so people thought we were hillbilly hicks. That was something we had to deal with; the girls didn't think we were cool, although they did a few years later. We had ducktails and wore peg-leg pants. We looked like rock n' rollers." Phil Everly, Everly Brothers Guess who we have back as our guest this week?? It's none other than MFP's original sound man, Taylor! Tune in as Taylor joins DJ Dave and Andrew for this special episode featuring music from Josh Ritter, The Everly Brothers, Slick Rick, The Generationals, Eminem with Beyonce, Aztec Camera, Dennis Brown, Jamiroquai, Nancy Wilson, and Chicago! SUBSCRIBE: iTunes TWITTER: @MusicFirstPcast FACEBOOK: Music First Podcast INSTAGRAM: MusicFirstPodcast EMAIL: MusicFirstPodcast@gmail.com

Sir Cliff Richard is our special guest this week as we discuss his new project (and 102nd overall), Just...Fabulous Rock 'n' Roll!  We'll hear several tunes from this project as well as songs with The Shadows and Phil Everly!  Plus, we hear a new live track from Brian Setzer, a classic live track from Ricky Nelson, rockers from Charlie Feathers, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Cactus Blossoms and pay tribute to recent Grammy Hall Of Fame song inductee, Dion's "The Wanderer"! Download all episodes on iTunes, stream on Google Play and iHeart Radio!   Intro Voice Over- Rob "Cool Daddy" Dempsey Intro Music Bed:  Brian Setzer- "Rockabilly Blues" Brian Setzer- "Vinyl Records" Ricky Nelson- "Milk Cow Blues" Cliff Richard interview Cliff Richard & The Shadows- "Dynamite" Segment 1 Cliff Richard- "Roll Over Beethoven" Segment 2 Cliff Richard & Elvis Presley- "Blue Suede Shoes" Cliff Richard & The Shadows- "C'mon Everybody" Segment 3 Cliff Richard- "Move It" Cliff Richard & Phil Everly- "She Means Nothing To Me" Segment 4 Cliff Richard- "Dimples" Dion- "The Wanderer" Charlie Feathers- "Wild Wild Party" Creedence Clearwater Revival- "My Baby Left Me" The Cactus Blossoms- "You're Dreaming" Outro Music Bed: Duane Eddy- "Peter Gunn"   www.cliffrichard.org www.facebook.com/sircliffrichard

Dave Pearlman returns to All About Guitar. Dave had been on before to talk about his world renowned microphones and now we are going to talk to Dave about his guitar playing, especially his steel guitar work! Having played with artists like Dan Fogelberg, Phil Everly, Bill Medley, Hoyt Axton, REO Speedwagon, Bobby Womack, Michelle Shocked, Joe Walsh and many others, we talk to Dave about steel guitar, his great tone, technique, tunings and more!

Dave Pearlman returns to All About Guitar. Dave had been on before to talk about his world renowned microphones and now we are going to talk to Dave about his guitar playing, especially his steel guitar work! Having played with artists like Dan Fogelberg, Phil Everly, Bill Medley, Hoyt Axton, REO Speedwagon, Bobby Womack, Michelle Shocked, Joe Walsh and many others, we talk to Dave about steel guitar, his great tone, technique, tunings and more!

Dave Pearlman returns to All About Guitar. Dave had been on before to talk about his world renowned microphones and now we are going to talk to Dave about his guitar playing, especially his steel guitar work! Having played with artists like Dan Fogelberg, Phil Everly, Bill Medley, Hoyt Axton, REO Speedwagon, Bobby Womack, Michelle Shocked, Joe Walsh and many others, we talk to Dave about steel guitar, his great tone, technique, tunings and more!

I had heard of Pearlman mics at NAMM, but really got my attention was when Carbe-Durand was on the show talking about their new album "A Bridge Between" and I was commenting how great the guitars sounded. Jean-Pierre mentioned that they use these new mics they got, Pearlmans, on almost all of the cuts. Dave Pearlman, the creator of these extraordinary microphones, is a guitar player, and a pedal steel player (stay tuned for Dave coming on the show with his pedal steel later in the fall). Dave has backed such artists as Dan Fogelberg, REO Speedwagon, Phil Everly, among others. He also has built a successful recording studio and won an award engineering a Grammy winning album. So Dave knows both sides of the microphone, in front and behind the console. We talk to Dave about microphones, what compelled him to bring a new set of microphones into the market, his take on great sound and how to capture it.

I had heard of Pearlman mics at NAMM, but really got my attention was when Carbe-Durand was on the show talking about their new album "A Bridge Between" and I was commenting how great the guitars sounded. Jean-Pierre mentioned that they use these new mics they got, Pearlmans, on almost all of the cuts. Dave Pearlman, the creator of these extraordinary microphones, is a guitar player, and a pedal steel player (stay tuned for Dave coming on the show with his pedal steel later in the fall). Dave has backed such artists as Dan Fogelberg, REO Speedwagon, Phil Everly, among others. He also has built a successful recording studio and won an award engineering a Grammy winning album. So Dave knows both sides of the microphone, in front and behind the console. We talk to Dave about microphones, what compelled him to bring a new set of microphones into the market, his take on great sound and how to capture it.

I had heard of Pearlman mics at NAMM, but really got my attention was when Carbe-Durand was on the show talking about their new album "A Bridge Between" and I was commenting how great the guitars sounded. Jean-Pierre mentioned that they use these new mics they got, Pearlmans, on almost all of the cuts. Dave Pearlman, the creator of these extraordinary microphones, is a guitar player, and a pedal steel player (stay tuned for Dave coming on the show with his pedal steel later in the fall). Dave has backed such artists as Dan Fogelberg, REO Speedwagon, Phil Everly, among others. He also has built a successful recording studio and won an award engineering a Grammy winning album. So Dave knows both sides of the microphone, in front and behind the console. We talk to Dave about microphones, what compelled him to bring a new set of microphones into the market, his take on great sound and how to capture it.

One of the true legends of music left us this week, when Phil Everly, one half of the most successful and influential music duos of all time passed away. The influence of The Everly Brothers is heard in just about everything that we love on this show, so a fitting tribute is in order with just a few of the many covers of songs written or recorded by Don & Phil. And believe it or not, last week’s 5 hour marathon didn’t cover all of the musical highlights of 2013, so a bunch more this week!