Podcasts about Ross Bagdasarian

Sintonía: "Margarita" - Chuck Rio & His Originals"Voodoo Drums" - Akim; "Mama Ubangi Bangi" - The Four Sounds; "Turkish Coffee" - Laguestra & His Orchestra; "Ela ´Tho" - Morocco; "Navel Maneuver" - Ross Bagdasarian; "Ole Mambo" - Edmundo Ross and His Orchestra; "Yabba" - Hully Gully Boys; "Garden of Eden (Part 1)" - The Lincoln Trio; "Putti Putti" - The Maori Hi Five; "Hawaiian War Twist" - Les Chakachas; "Bawana Jindi" - Al Duncan; "Jungle Superman" - The Individuals; "Tarzan and Jane" - Jack And Jim; "Limbo Drum (Part 1)" - Young William And The Jamaicans; "Jungle Fever" - Dick Dale And The Del-Tones; "Jungle Beat" - Harold And BobTodas las músicas extraídas de la recopilación (1xLP+CD (incluido gratis)) "Exotic-O-Rama Volume 3" (Jukebox Music Factory, 2021)Bonus: "Zindy Lou" - The Mariners; "Arabia" - The Delco´s y "Sun Sun" de Xavier Cugat, extraídas del volumen 1Todas las músicas seleccionadas por El Vidocq Puedes escuchar el Exotic-O-Rama Volumen 1 en los podcasts de Sateli 3, con fecha del 13/02/2025Escuchar audio

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

Reciban un cordial saludo. Desde Cali (Colombia), les habla Sergio Luis López, compartiéndoles un nuevo episodio de "Así la escuché yo..." Terminaba la década de 1950, cuando el sello peruano MAG (sigla tomada de las letras iniciales del nombre de su propietario el señor Manuel Antonio Guerrero), reunió a un grupo de músicos del Perú cobijados bajo el proyecto Sonora MAG. Algunos de estos artistas fueron el reconocido Ñiko Estrada y la cantante Vicky Zamora, quienes grabaron la canción éxito incluida en el álbum “El Negro bembón” de 1959, titulada “Ven pa' mi casa”. Así la escuché yo… La melodía ya había sido éxito en el Caribe con letra adaptada al castellano por el inimitable cantante puertorriqueño Daniel Santos, quien la grabó en 1951 junto al sexteto cubano conocido como Los Jóvenes del Cayo con el título “Ven pa' mi casa”. Los anteriores temas musicales son en realidad versiones al castellano de la canción compuesta en 1939 por los estadounidenses (de origen armenio) Ross Bagdasarian y William Saroyan; la cual fue grabada originalmente en inglés por Kay Armen en 1951 con el título “Come on-a my house” (Ven a mi casa). Ese mismo año, llegó a ser éxito mundial la versión grabada en1951 por la cantante estadounidense Rosemary Clooney, bajo el título “Come on-a my house”. Como dato curioso, hay que decir que erróneamente se ha acreditado la versión de la Sonora MAG, a la orquesta del peruano Lucho Macedo; pero, en realidad, es la Sonora de Ñiko Estrada la que grabó “Ven pa' mi casa”. También hay que decir que algunas personas creen que esta versión la interpretó Celia Cruz con la Sonora Matancera; pero la verdad es que la encargada de popularizar “Ven pa' mi casa” fue la peruana Vicky Zamora, acompañada por la Sonora de Ñiko Estrada bajo la figura de La Sonora MAG. ¿Y tú, conocías la canción éxito en inglés grabada por Rosemary Clooney? Autores: Ross Bagdasarian & William Saroyan (estadounidenses) - Versión al castellano Daniel Santos (puertorriqueño) Ven pa' mi casa - Sonora MAG con Ñiko Estrada & Vicky Zamora (1959) “El Negro bembón con la Sonora MAG” álbum (1959) Canta: Vicky Zamora (nombre real Martha Zamora Huaco, peruana) Ñiko Estrada (nombre real Germán Antonio Estrada Alvarado, peruano) Género: Guaracha Rock Ven pa' mi casa - Daniel Santos & Los Jóvenes del Cayo (1951) single “Ven pa' mi casa/ Bula Waya” (1951) Daniel Santos (nombre real Daniel Doroteo de los Santos Betancourt, puertorriqueño) Los Jóvenes del Cayo (sexteto cubano) Género: Guaracha Come on-a my house - Kay Armen and The Ray Charles Singers (1951) single “Come on-a my house/Just in case” (1951) Kay Armen (nombre real Armenuhi Manoogian, estadounidense de padres armenios) Come on-a my house - Rosemary Clooney (1951) single "Come on-a my house/Rose of the mountain" (1951) Rosemary Clooney (estadounidense) ___________________ “Así la escuché yo…” Temporada: 8 Episodio: 15 Sergio Productions Cali – Colombia Sergio Luis López Mora

PEEK A BOO: Join me and blogger and film lover James S. Wilson as we talk two masterpieces, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love, two films about voyeurs and voyeurism.     “Why would a man leave his apartment three times on a rainy night with a suitcase and come back three times?” You're alone in your own apartment. Doing your thing. Maybe you've murdered someone. Or maybe you're having sex. When suddenly you get this feeling…Am I…being watched? Probably…Sounds like it's time for Episode 108 of Pop Art, where we find the pop culture in art and the art in pop culture. It's the podcast where my guest chooses a movie from popular culture, and I'll select a film from the more art/classic/indie/foreign side of cinema with a connection to it. Today, I am happy to welcome as my returning guest, blogger and film enthusiast, James S. Wilson, who has chosen as his film one of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpieces, Rear Window, while I have chosen one of Krzysztof Kieślowski's masterpieces, A Short Film About Love, both films about voyeurs and voyeurism.   And in this episode, we answer such questions as: Who slept on the set of Rear Window while it was being made? Why did Kieslowski decide not to use different directors for each entry in The Dekalog? Who is Bess Flowers? Why did Kieslowski expand A Short Film About Love into a feature film? Who is Ross Bagdasarian and what is his contribution to children's culture? How does both Hitchcock and Kieslowski's Catholicism influence their films? Who played Jeff's agent in Rear Window? What are the differences between the source materials and the final feature for both films?   Check out James's blog Blogging by Cinema-light at http://bloggingbycinemalight.blogspot.com/   Check out my blog at https://howardcasner.wordpress.com/     My books, More Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, The Starving Artists and Other Stories and The Five Corporations and One True Religion can be found at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=howard+casner&ref=nb_sb_noss   Be sure to like, follow or comment on my podcast. I'd love to know what you think. And check out the other episodes. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/howard-casner/support

…or "Endure Endor" In which our heroes obsess over Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure (1984), a forgotten Star Wars television movie. On the forest moon of Endor, two stranded kids enlist the help of the Ewoks to rescue their parents from the clutches of the gigantic Gorax.  ALSO FEATURING: Hansel & Gretel…with Ewoks! Dollar Tree Spiders! Production design by the great Joe Johnston! Zephyrhills Water! Anthony's Ross Bagdasarian mixtape! Cow-faced giants! Burl Ives narration! Star Wars topography! AND we're feeling really sicky!!! __________ Taylor Zaccario….Host, Director, Producer, Writer Nick Zaccario….Host, Director, Producer, Editor Anthony Graziani….Correspondent, Attack of the Clones Apologist

Voted on by our Patreon, we look at the what, how, and for-gods-sake-why of some of those most hated holiday songs! 02:40 Banned songs 08:09 Wonderful Christmastime 10:45 Chipmunks Song 16:36 Little Drummer Boy (Peace on Earth) Like what you hear?  Become a patron of the arts for as little as $2 a month!   Or buy the book or some merch.  Hang out with your fellow Brainiacs.  Reach out and touch Moxie on Facebook, Twitter,  or Instagram. Music: Kevin MacLeod, David Fesliyan.   Reach out and touch Moxie on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Links to all the research resources are on the website. In the early 80's, drought caused a famine that crippled the nation of Ethiopia.  It was a bad scene.  Half of the mortality rate is said to be attributable to “human rights violations.”  People around the world were moved, like Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof, who along with Midge Ure, wrote a fundraiser song.  Who could they get to sing it?  How about “everybody”?  The likes of Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Boy George, Bono, and Sting joined forces as Band Aid to record the fast-selling single in UK history, asking us the question “Do They Know It's Christmas?”  My name's… Some songs rub us the wrong way because they're sung by shrieking children on now-oudated equipment was was not kind to female and higher-pitched voices, songs like I'm Getting Nuthin for Christmas and All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth, standards which I think think would have died away if we weren't all made to sing them in elementary school.  Some are painfully goofy, like Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, but you almost have to give them a pass since it seems they accomplished what they set out to do.  Some songs make us their enemy by borrowing into our brains and setting up shop for hours or days on end, the dreaded holiday earworm, like Jingle Bell Rock and Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.  The mere mention of the title is enough to activate them like a sleeper cell of obnoxious holiday cheer.   Banned You might be able to forbid people in your own home from playing songs that irritate you –and I stress “might”-- but if you can find yourself with a bit of authority and a big enough humbug up your butt, you can try to make it so nobody has to hear the song either.  For instance, the 1952 classic “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” sung by 13-year-old Jimmy Boyd from Mississippi.  Did you realize the song was about the little boy not realizing that his Dad was dressed as Santa?  It had to be pointed out to me, and embarrassingly recently.  People were *scandalized by the musical marriage of sex and Christmas, with one churchgoer stating “mockery of decent family life as well as Christ's birthday.”  Many pearls were clutched.  They'd probably clutch them pearls twice as hard if I'd been there to tell them Jesus wasn't born on 12/25, but that's another show.  Boston's Catholic Archdiocese denounced it and the young Boyd had to meet with church leaders to explain that Mommy and Santa were properly, sanctily married.  A West Virginia broadcasting company prohibited its radio stations from playing this “insult to Santa Claus.”  The same thing happened to one of my husband's favorite songs, Lou Monte's “Dominick the Donkey,” but the people of WV went to bat for the little donkey who could take the Italian hills that were too much for the reindeer.  The public protested the ban so forcefully that it was repealed after less than two weeks; and this was in 1960, when 20% of homes in the US still didn't have a telephone.   For every time the hubs plays Dominick the Donkey, I play the Pogue's Fairytale of New York at least twice.  A lot of folks don't like, and I respect our difference of opinions, and think it's the farthest thing from a cheery Xmas song, and I agree with y'all there.  The 1987 duet with singer Kirsty MacColl, quickly became a UK holiday classic, famous then infamous in turn.  It tells the story of a toxic couple who seem to love each deep down, but should probably not be allowed within 200m of each other.  There's talk of drug use and insults, including a certain homophobic slur to rhyme with the word “maggot.”  In December 2019, BBC radio DJ Alex Dyke said he was cutting the song from his program.  The BBC had previously censored the song in 2007 with an unconvincing word-swap, but this brought more backlash than the original version had.  The BBC reversed course for a few years, then put the censored version back up.  What do you think?  soc med   Some songs we consider absolute standards, impeccable and indispensable, made people in their day as prickly as holl and less than jolly.  The BBC worried that “I'll Be Home for Christmas” could damage British morale during World War II, so no air-play for you!  In an amazingly blunt statement that would definitely trend on Twitter today:  “We have recently adopted a policy of excluding sickly sentimentality which, particularly when sung by certain vocalists, can become nauseating and not at all in keeping with what we feel to be the need of the public in this country.”   One of the most frequently cover and burlesqued-to songs, Santa Baby, wouldn't have become the classic it did if it had been sung by anyone other than the utterly incomparable Eartha Kitt.  Who doesn't love a Christmas song dripping in sexuality, sung by a loudly self-confident mixed race woman?  In 1953, a lot of people.   Radio stations refused to play it and political officials gnashed their teeth after Kitt performed Santa Baby at a dinner for the king and queen of Greece that November.  That was an unusual sentence and I'm stalling for time to let you process it.  However, Billboard magazine reported “Neither the King nor his Queen were one whit disturbed by the chantress's performance, nor by the song.”  Kitt was quoted as saying it was ‘inconceivable that anyone would question the ingenious poetry of the song.'”  I don't know about poetry, but I do know I don't want to hear any version other than hers.   Chipmunks My hatred for this next song cannot be overstated.  I almost hired an editor just for this section. It's shrill, it's pointless, and it's been playing for 63 freaking years.  It's the goddamn Chipmunks' song aka Christmas Don't Be Late.  I'm mad already.  Named after the president, chief engineer, and founder of Liberty Records, the furry little characters are the members of a “band”, called Alvin And The Chipmunks, while a “man” named David Seville functions as their human manager, catapulting them to super stardom.  The Chipmunks, three singing cartoon rodents in Victorian nightdresses apparently, or maybe ill-fitted sweater dresses, were the brainchild of a songwriter named Ross Bagdasarian, though he was better known by the pseudonym of David Seville, the name that would be immortalized as The Chipmunk's fictitious manager.  Bagdasarian was the son of Armenian immigrants to California, who served in the Army Air Force in WWII, which is how he came to find himself stationed in Seville, Spain.  He did a bit of acting, landing minor roles in Rear Window and Stalag 17.  Songwriting played out considerably better.  In 1951, he used the melody of an Armenian folk song to write Rosemary Clooney's hit, Come On-a My House. [sfx clip]    Bagdasarian-cum-Seville began toying around with voice distortion effects, speeding up and slowing down his voice to achieve the cute high pitched sound of the little animal's voices.  Consumer tape decks at the time had changeable speeds, but usually only in simple binary multiples, doubling or halving the speed, creating sounds an octave apart. Changing speeds of voices in these limited multiples creates extremely high or low pitches that sound too extreme for most purposes.  Disney used half-speed recording for his Chip ‘n Dale cartoon characters, making the extremely fast dialogue difficult to understand. As a result, dialog recorded at that speed had to consist of very short phrases.  Seville's chief innovation was to use tape machines that could vary speeds in between these extremes, creating more understandable and thus emotionally accessible voices that worked well for both singing and spoken dialogue.   The Chipmunk Song made its debut on Christmas 1958 and immediately became a smash hit, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart.  It would be the “band's” first and only #1 song, as well as Seville's second and final, No. 1 single.  The first was the song Witch Doctor, wanna hear it here it goes [sfx clip]  I guess when you have a hammer…    A write-up in Life magazine in 1959, noted that Bagdasarian/Seville was the first case in the "annals of popular music that one man has served as writer, composer, publisher, conductor and multiple vocalist of a hit record, thereby directing all possible revenues from the song back into his pocket."  That'd be impressive enough even if you didn't know that Seville couldn't read or write music, nor play any instruments, but now you do know that, so you should be quite impressed.   The Chipmunk Song earned them three Grammy Awards at the very first Grammy's the following May.  I'm going to say that again, because I don't think you heard me.  The Chipmunks song won three Grammy's.  In fairness, one is for best children's song.  A few years later, The Chipmunks landed their own television show as cartoon characters, but it did not command the same success their music career.  After Bagdasarian passed away unexpectedly in 1972, his son and daughter-in-law took over the voices of The Chipmunks, but it would take nearly ten years for The Chipmunks made it back to TV, with their 1981 Christmas special, the ingeniously named “A Chipmunk Christmas.”     Like a holiday Jason Vorhees, "The Chipmunk Song" re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 in 2007 with the CGI Alvin and Chipmunks movie.  As of December 25, 2011, Nielsen SoundScan estimated total sales of the digital track at 867,000 downloads, making it third on the list of all-time best-selling Christmas/holiday digital singles.  #3 was Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24 from Trans-Siberian Orchestra, who I've had the mixed blessing to see live – the performance was great but the stage light swept over the audience constantly; it was like having a camera flash go off in your face several times a minute.  #1 is, to the surprise of no one, Mariah Carey's 1994 "All I Want for Christmas Is You" and that's all the more attention she's getting from me.  If you ever want a real smdh moment, Google Mariah Carey's requirements to appear on camera for interviews.  The word “diva” doesn't begin to describe it.  Wonderful Now this one depends on the day.  Some days, it's so bad it's good and some days, and for some people all days, it's the regular kind of bad.  [sfx clip] Say what you will about it, you can't say Paul McCartney didn't put in the work.  Wonderful Christmastime features McCartney on guitar, bass, keyboards, drums and vocals, even the creepy-sounding ‘choir of children.'  Makes one wonder why he even kept a band around.  You see the other members of Wings in the video, but the song was all McCartney.   Like a number of holiday classics that you heard about in the episode #92, The Jews Who Wrote Christmas, Wonderful Christmastime was written on a ‘boiling hot day in July', and recorded during sessions for the McCartney II album.  It apparently took the former Beatle just ten minutes to pen the song which – some of us find that more readily-believable than others.  One of the most memorable elements of the song is the odd synthesiser sound that punctuates it throughout.  That is, if you care to know, a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, which was also used on the hit songs Bette Davis Eyes and What a Fool Believes.  Though I suppose it's still a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 even if you don't care to know.   It peaked at number six on the UK Singles Chart and has since become of the most widely played Christmas songs on radio.   Bonus fact: The Beatles only really had one Christmas release – Christmas Time Is Here Again, which was distributed to their fan club in 1967.  I imagine that would fetch a pretty pence on the secondary market. [sfx typing] checking ebay…Oh, they're actually pretty cheap.     If you don't like the song, you're not alone.  McCartney himself isn't all that keen on it, but he has begun playing it on UK tours in recent years.  You gotta give the people what they want and clearly enough people want Wonderful Christmastime.  According to the Forbes website, McCartney earns over $400,000 royalties from the song every year, though other sources claim that figure is probably the cumulative total. Little Drummer Boy As time passes, tastes change, culture shifts, new things are created and old things fall away.  We rarely ride in one-horse open sleighs –I can't remember the last time I was even in a closed one-horse sleigh– and it seems really strange to us that people sat about telling ghost stories.  So maybe that's why I don't understand The Little Drummer Boy.  How is a drum solo an appropriate gift for a sleeping infant and the woman who just squoze him out in a cow-shed?  The ox and lamb kept time?  That's literally the drummer's only job.  Well, that and making the rest of the band's drinking problem look reasonable.  Hey, what's the difference between a drummer and a drum machine?  You only have to punch the info into the drum machine once.  [sfx rimshot] What do you call a drummer who broke up with his girlfriend?  Homeless.  [sfx rimshot]  Don't worry, drummers, this abuse isn't exclusive.  What do you call the pretty girl on a bassist's arm?  A tattoo.  That's my time, good night!   How old do you think this slow, plodding song is?  I couldn't have put a year to my guess, but for some reason it surprised me that it was written in 1941.  The composure was a teacher named Katherine Kennicott Davis.  Originally called "Carol of the Drum" –does what it says on the tin– was based on an unidentified Czech carol and intended for choirs.  One group of singers took a liking to it and propelled it to success in 1951 - The Trapp Family Singers.   As boring as it is, The Little Drummer Boy lets us draw a straight line between the Trapp Family and ‘the lad insane' David Bowie.  In 1977, Bowie was 'actively trying to normalize' his career.  Debilitating drug addiction and accusations of Nazi-sympathizing threatened to sink his earning potential, so it was a no-brainer for him to appear on Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas.  Crosby was a crooner and golden age Hollywood icon and seemed like a means to the end because, as Bowie said later, “my mom likes him.”  The promise by producers to promote the video for Bowie's single Heroes, fitting as poorly as it did in the middle of a holiday special, certainly didn't hurt either.  The special starred Crosby, his actual family, and stars of the day like the model Twiggy, who my mother has still not forgiven for coming along and making curvy, busty figures unpopular.     So Bing Crosby and David Bowie.  On paper, it made no sense.  But in reality…it made even less sense.  A negative amount of sense, if that's mathematically possible.  I mean, just look at this juxtaposition.  You can see the two together on the Vodacast app… Bowie arrived in a mink coat, an earring, and bright red lipstick….to appear alongside Bing Crosby.  Bowie agreed to producers' demands to tone his look down, but asked/begged the producers if there was anything else, anything at all, he could sing, letting them know in no uncertain terms that he hated the song.   "Ian Fraser, who co-wrote the 'Peace on Earth' portion, told The Washington Post in 2006. 'We didn't know quite what to do.' Instead of panicking, he and two other men working on the special — Buz Kohan and Larry Grossman — hunkered down at a piano in the studio basement and spent 75 minutes working up the tune.  Ever professionals, Bowie and Crosby perfected the new song in less than an hour."  It was that professionalism that actually brought the men together.  According to Crosby's daughter, Mary, who was 18 at the time and a big Bowie fan,  "Eventually, Dad realized David was this amazing musician, and David realized Dad was an amazing musician. You could see them both collectively relax and then magic was made."  Bonus fact: Mary went on to become an actress, starring in the hit TV show Dallas, but she isn't the only thespian the Crosby legacy produced.  Bing's granddaughter Denise will always have a place in my heart as Tasha Yar, first chief of security on the Enterprise D and if you don't know what I'm talking about, maybe *you're* not cool enough to sit with *us* at lunch.   The special was recorded in mid-September, but Crosby would not see it released.  He died of a massive heart attack after a day of golfing in mid-October, so the special was aired posthumously at the end of November in the U.S. and on Christmas Eve in England.  Bizarrely, The single proved to be one of Bowie's fastest-selling singles, selling over 250,000 copies within its first month and being certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry one month after its release.  And what does it say about me that I had to do a second take, beause I read it as British Pornographic Industry.  They certify very different records.  One thing that helped propel that success was the fledgeling Music Television network, which in its original primitive state actually played music videos.  When it launched in 1981, there weren't really enough videos to fill up an entire channel, so they played what they had, including the 'Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy' clip, a lot.  This prompted RCA to issue an official release in 1982 with the arbitrary single B-side of "Fantastic Voyage" from The Lodger album.  Bowie was annoyed with that move, contributing to his departure from the label soon after.  Still, it was a high-charting single for Bowie in the post-Scary Monsters era, at least until Let's Dance came out three months later.   And that's…So the question was “Do they know it's Christmas?”.  Since Ethiopia is ⅔ Christian, yes.  I'd go out on a limb and say even the ⅓ that's Muslim knows. But the important thing is that 100% of the royalties go to the cause, and that figure sits north of $250 million.  Among the luminary names involved was a pre-beard George Michaels.  This was in his Wham days when he also recorded the song you're hearing now.  Recognize it?  To anyone who just lost Whamageddon… [sfx laughter]  Worth it.  Just passing it on after Red from Overly Sarcastic took me out during a video last year.  For everyone else, as the nearest Gen-X'er.  Remember…Thanks..     And that's…So the question was “Do they know it's Christmas?”.  Since Ethiopia is ⅔ Christian, yes.  I'd go out on a limb and say even the ⅓ that's Muslim knows. But the important thing is that 100% of the royalties go to the cause, and that figure sits north of $250 million.  Among the luminary names involved was a pre-beard George Michaels.  This was in his Wham days when he also recorded the song you're hearing now.  Recognize it?  To anyone who just lost Whamageddon… [sfx laughter]  Worth it.  Just passing it on after Red from Overly Sarcastic took me out during a video last year.  For everyone else, as the nearest Gen-X'er.  Remember…Thanks..    Sources: https://www.cbc.ca/music/read/david-bowie-bing-crosby-and-the-story-of-the-strangest-christmas-duet-ever-1.5008343 https://theconversation.com/christmas-earworms-the-science-behind-our-love-hate-relationship-with-festive-songs-89268 https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/worst-christmas-songs-of-all-time/3/ https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/story-behind-the-christmas-song-paul-mccartneys-wonderful-christmastime/ https://www.songfacts.com/facts/paul-mccartney/wonderful-christmastime https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/637970/banned-christmas-songs-past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chipmunk_Song_(Christmas_Don%27t_Be_Late) http://www.christmassongs.net/chipmunks-christmas-song https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Bagdasarian https://nowweknowem.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/david-sevilles-the-chipmunk-song-won-three-grammy-awards-today-in-1959-the-top-winner-at-the-inaugural-grammy-awards-now-we-know-em/ https://holidappy.com/holidays/History-of-Christmas-Carols-Little-Drummer-Boy https://www.newsweek.com/story-behind-bowie-bings-unlikely-holiday-duet-sends-welcome-message-divided-times-opinion-1478295

Get more at podsematary.com! Read our afterthoughts for this episode at https://twitter.com/PodSematary/status/1414385187417325571 CW: Suicide, Stalking It's Peeping Tom Week on Pod Sematary! Chris & Kelsey discuss rear-window ethics and sing Rihanna a little too much. The Classic Film: Rear Window (1954) "A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder” (IMDb.com). We're back to the Hitchcock classics with one of the holy trinity (according to Chris), a suspenseful thriller that asks, "Will she change for him?" The Modern Film: Disturbia (2007) "A teen living under house arrest becomes convinced his neighbor is a serial killer” (IMDb.com). A blatant rip-off of the Rear Window concept (along with three other movies we've covered on the show), Disturbia may not wow, but it's pretty good teen fare at the very least. Audio Sources: "Aaron Burr (Advertisement)" produced by Propaganda Films "Agent for H.A.R.M." (Mystery Science Theater 3000 S09E15) produced by Best Brains "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" produced by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, et al. "Bill Burr/Jack White" (Saturday Night Live S46E02) produced by Broadway Video & SNL Studios "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" written and performed by Ross Bagdasarian "Disturbia" (Film) produced by Dreamworks Pictures, et al. "Disturbia" (Song) written by Brian Kennedy, et al., and performed by Rihanna "Lovin' You" written by Minnie Riperton & Richard Rudolph and performed by Minnie Riperton "Pet Sematary" written by Dee Dee Ramone & Daniel Rey and performed by The Ramones "Rear Window" (1954) produced by Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions "When Harry Met Sally..." produced by Castle Rock Entertainment & Nelson Entertainment

A couple from Forgotten Songs favourite Harry Parry and his Radio Rhythm Club Sextet- Black eyes and Blues for eight. Three from another regular, Harry Roy- They're building another alley for Sally, There's joy in your heart coming home and Sentimental interlude. Wingy Manone is back. Love this one armed, hot trumpeter and we even get his great vocals in Manone Blues. Also up Kay Starr, Joan Regan and Felix Mendelssohn- he's accompanied by Roland Peachy on steel guitar. Humour, dated, from Clown Argo and Co and a comedy skit called a Gale in the night. Can find out nothing about them. Really quite bizarre is Alfi and Harry with The trouble with Harry. Its the conceit of Ross Bagdasarian, songwriter and producer at Liberty Records. Not out right funny but rather cool. Bagdasarian had a big hit with Witch Doctor under the name David Seville.  Freddy Mills, world champion boxer 1948-50, gives us a selection of singalong party songs. An all round celeb, films, TV and adverts, he was also a business man. He was found dead in his car in 1965. Verdict suicide, almost certainly murder. A much happier story is Ethel Smith, an amazingly good organist, who lived to 93. She gives us her biggest hit, Tico, Tico. Next a real oddity on a hand written MSS record label. They were the company that supplied record pressing equipment. What's the story behind this metal 78 of Get ready, get set, jump. Was it a sly pressing for a friend? A sample? Andy Iona, sounds Scottish but he was Hawaiian. Composer, writer and played steel guitar and saxophone. From him- Indebted to you. Lovely vocals on this track. A bonus record too, Charlie Barnet. Stay safe, stay positive.     

It's part 2 of the Ep. 33 and that means it's our birthday section. This weeks birthdays sees John celebrate the surprising life of the man behind The Chipmunks, Ross Bagdasarian, who you might know better as David Seville. Meanwhile Joseph honour DJ royalty and a pioneer who became the cliche all DJs followed, Tony Blackburn.  Like it, share it, review it and tell yer pals. 

Sup guys Greg here, but you would have figured that out considering whoever wrote this gives even half of a fuck about grammar and spelling. Yeah so anyways this week Rene edited and I did the easy shit, thats why it took an extra two days to put out; fuck Rene and his shitty computer. Anyways this weeks episode has a special guest by the name of Emma Gordon a.k.a. WhalesFrolic and she has some pretty damn interesting stories about the film industry. We discuss Alfred Hitchcock and his bullshit reasoning behind not letting his movie characters bang each other, just kidding. It's been a good long quarantine and I'm starting to lose control of my desire to fuck everything. Thanks for watching and please go follow Emma.https://www.twitch.tv/whalesfrolichttps://twitter.com/whalesfrolicBen's Room Twitter: https://twitter.com/bensroomshowInsta: @BensroomshowGreg's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/microp1Greg's interview to Rene:Why did they only cast white people? Cause gang gang Do people over the age of 60 eat ass? yes how else do old ppl wipe their assWhy did you tell me that you hate Emma and you hope you never see her again? character assassination Would you agree that being a stay at home dad would also be considered being the ultimate simp? Its the most manly thing you can doKick it with Andy Milonakis or Dirty Nasty? Andy. Dirt is cool but low key creepyAge you will finally take the shot out of my ass? NeverAlfred Hitchcock,Movie Review,Film Review,MicroP,MicroP1,MicroP Twitch,Grace Kelly,James Stewart,Thelma Ritter,Raymond Burr,Georgine Darcy,Wendell Corey,Ross Bagdasarian,Judith Evelyn,Sara Berner,Frank Cady,Mystery,Thriller,Rear,Window,John Michael Hayes,It had to be murder,L B Jeffries,Bens,Room,Podcast,Show,Old Film,Classic Movies,1954,CheezySleezy,Cornell Woolrich,Greg,Rene

In the twenty-seventh episode of MashUpheaval - your all-request, live performance mashup podcast - Amelia Ray performs two mashups: one of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe” (written by Bobbie Gentry) and Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.” (written by Tom T. Hall); and another of “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)” (written by Ross Bagdasarian) and Neil Young’s “Southern Man” (written by Neil Young).Episode video: https://youtu.be/rPCTD9IYW-I Song List:(1) “Ode to Ploy” - a mashup of  “Ode to Billie Joe” (written by Bobbie Gentry) and “Harper Valley P.T.A.” (written by Tom T. Hall)(2) “Chipmunk Man” - a mashup of “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)” (written by Ross Bagdasarian) and “Southern Man” (written by Neil Young)If you would like to request a mashup, send an email to: mashupheaval@ameliaray.netSupport this podcast: www.patreon.com/ameliaraywww.ameliaray.net

With one episode left until our milestone 50th episode, we take a long trip into the past for the seminal 2001 spy kids spoof Spy Kids! Shockingly, it's one of the best spy spoofs we've done. Scott then introduces us to Ross Bagdasarian. A pioneer of novelty songs, he was a writer for the Rosemary Clooney classic "Come On-A My House" as well as "Witch Doctor". He was also...instrumental...in a certain novelty song technique!  Finally, Marty bails on a visual gag as he presents a mannequin. We're jam packed this week!

Episode eighty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Three Steps to Heaven" by Eddie Cochran, and at the British tour which changed music and ended his life. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode, on "Quarter to Three" by Gary US Bonds. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/  ----more---- Resources   As usual, I have put together a Mixcloud mix with every song excerpted in this podcast. Much of the information here comes from Spencer Leigh's book Things Do Go Wrong, which looks specifically at the 1960 tour. I also used Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis.  While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran's music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. This CD contains the Saturday Club recordings by Vincent and Cochran, which are well worth listening to.   Pete Frame's The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though -- his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. And a fair chunk of the background information here also comes from the extended edition of Mark Lewisohn's Tune In, which is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the Beatles, British post-war culture, and British post-war music.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There's been a sad running theme in the episodes in recent months of rock stars dying in accidents. Sadly, in the 1950s and sixties, travelling long distances was even more dangerous than it is today, and rock musicians, who had to travel a lot more than most people, and did much of that travelling at night, were more likely to be in accidents than most. Today, we're going to look at yet another of these tragic deaths, of someone who is thought of in the US as being something of a one-hit wonder, but who had a much bigger effect on British music. We're going to look at what would be Eddie Cochran's final tour, and at his UK number one single "Three Steps to Heaven": [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Three Steps to Heaven"] When we left Eddie Cochran, he had just appeared in the film "The Girl Can't Help It", singing "Twenty Flight Rock", and he had also had a hit with "Sittin' in the Balcony". But he hadn't yet managed to establish himself as the star he knew he could be -- he was the whole package, singer, songwriter, and especially guitarist, and he hadn't yet made a record that showed him to his best advantage as an artist. "Twenty Flight Rock" had come close, but it wasn't a song he'd written himself, and the record hadn't yet been released in the US. Meanwhile, Liberty Records seemed to not understand what they had in him -- they were trying to push him to be another Pat Boone, and become a bland pop singer with no rock and roll in his sound. His first album, Singin' to My Baby, had little to do with the music that he was interested in playing. So Cochran needed to find something that would really put him on the map -- a song that would mean he wasn't just one of dozens of Fabians and Frankie Avalons and interchangeable Bobbies who were starting to take over shows like American Bandstand. "Twenty Flight Rock" hadn't ended up being a hit at all, despite its placement in a popular film -- they'd left it too long between the film coming out and releasing the record, and he'd lost that momentum. At the end of 1957 he'd gone on the Australian tour with Little Richard and Gene Vincent which had led to Richard retiring from rock and roll, and he'd become much closer with Vincent, with whom he'd already struck up a friendship when making The Girl Can't Help It. The two men bonded, particularly, over their love of guns, although they expressed that love in very different ways. Cochran had grown up in rural Minnesota, and had the same love of hunting and fishing that most men of his background did at that time (and that many still do). He was, by all accounts, an affable person, and basically well adjusted. Vincent, on the other hand, was a polite and friendly person when not drinking. Unfortunately, he was in constant pain from his leg wounds, and that meant he was drinking a lot, and when he was drunk he was an incredibly unpleasant, aggressive, person. His love of guns was mostly for threatening people with, and he seems to have latched on to Cochran as someone who could look after him when he got himself into awkward situations -- Cochran was so personally charming that he could defuse the situation when Vincent had behaved appallingly towards someone. At the time, Vincent seemed like a has-been and Cochran a never-would-be. This was late 1957, and it seemed like rock and roll records with guitars on were a fad that had already passed their sell-by date. The only white guitarist/vocalist other than Elvis who'd been having hits on a regular basis was Buddy Holly, and his records were doing worse and worse with each release. Vincent hadn't had a real hit since his first single, "Be Bop A Lula", while Cochran had made the top twenty with "Sittin' in the Balcony", but the highest he'd got after that was number eighty-two. He'd recently recorded a song co-written by George Mottola, who'd written "Goodnight My Love", but "Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie" stalled at number ninety-four when it was released in early 1958: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie"] So neither man was in a good place at the start of 1958, but they had very different attitudes -- Vincent was depressed and angry, but Cochran knew that something would come along. He was only nineteen, he was astonishingly good looking, he was a great guitarist -- if rock and roll didn't work out, something would. In early 1958, Cochran was still hunting for that elusive big hit, as he joined the Blue Caps in the studio, to provide bass, arrangements, and backing vocals on several tracks for Vincent's latest album. It's Cochran singing the bass vocals at the start of "Git It", one of Vincent's greatest tracks: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, "Git It"] But shortly after that recording, a major turn in Cochran's fortunes came from an unexpected place. Liberty Records had been in financial difficulties, and part of the reason that Cochran's records were unsuccessful was that they just didn't have the money to promote them as much as they'd like. But then at the beginning of April a man called Ross Bagdasarian, under the name David Seville, released a novelty song called "The Witch Doctor", featuring some mildly racist comedy and a sped-up voice. That record became a massive hit, selling over a million copies, going to number one, and becoming the fourth most successful record of 1958. Suddenly, Liberty Records was saved from bankruptcy. That made all the difference to the success of a track that Cochran had recorded on March the 28th, the same week he recorded those Gene Vincent sessions, and which came out at the tail-end of summer. Cochran had come up with a guitar riff that he liked, but he didn't have any lyrics for it, and his friend and co-writer Jerry Capehart said "there's never been a blues about the summer". The two of them came up with some comedy lyrics in the style of the Coasters, who had just started to have big hits, and the result became Cochran's only top ten hit in the US, reaching number eight, and becoming one of the best-remembered tracks of the fifties: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Summertime Blues"] That track was recorded with a minimal number of musicians -- Cochran played all the guitars and sang both vocal parts, his bass player Guybo Smith played the bass part, and the great session drummer Earl Palmer played drums. There was also a fourth person on the record -- Sharon Sheeley, who added handclaps, and who had written the B-side. Sheeley was a talented songwriter who also had a propensity for dating musicians. She'd dated one of the Everly Brothers for a while -- different reports name different brothers, but the consensus seems to be that it was Don -- and then when they'd split up, she'd written a song called "Poor Little Fool". She'd then faked having her car break down outside Ricky Nelson's house, and collared him when he came out to help. That sort of thing seemed to happen to Nelson a lot with songwriters -- Johnny and Dorsey Burnette had sold Nelson songs by sitting on his doorstep and refusing to move until he listened to them -- but it seemed to work out very well for him. The Burnettes wrote several hits for him, while Sheeley's "Poor Little Fool" became Nelson's first number one, as well as being the first number one ever on Billboard's newly-renamed Hot One Hundred, and the first number one single on any chart to be written by a woman without a male cowriter: [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, "Poor Little Fool"] Sheeley gets unfairly pigeonholed as a groupie (not that there's anything wrong with being a groupie) because she had relationships with musicians, and at this point she was starting a relationship with Cochran. But it's important to remember that when they got together, even though he was eighteen months older than her, she was the one who had written a number one single, and he was the one whose last record had gone to number ninety-four -- and that after her relationship with Cochran, she went on to form a writing partnership with Jackie DeShannon that produced a long string of hits for people like Brenda Lee and the Fleetwoods, as well as songs that weren't hits but probably deserved to be, like Ral Donner's "Don't Put Your Heart in His Hands": [Excerpt: Ral Donner, "Don't Put Your Heart in His Hands"] Sheeley was more invested in her relationship with Cochran than he was, but this has led rock writers to completely dismiss her as "just Eddie Cochran's girlfriend", when in terms of their relative statuses in the music industry, it would be more fair to define Cochran as "just Sharon Sheeley's boyfriend". I have to emphasise this point, because in the limited number of books about Cochran, you will see a lot of descriptions of her as "a groupie", "a fantasist", and worse, and very few mentions of the fact that she had a life outside her partner. "Summertime Blues" looked like it was going to be the start of Eddie Cochran's career as a rock and roll star, but in fact it was the peak of it, at least in the US. While the song was a big hit, the follow-up, "C'mon Everybody", which was written by Cochran and Capehart to much the same formula, but without the humour that characterised "Summertime Blues", didn't do so well: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "C'mon Everybody"] That made only number thirty-five on the US charts, and would be Cochran's last top forty record there -- but in the UK, it was a bigger hit than "Summertime Blues", reaching number six. "C'mon Everybody" was, though, big enough for Cochran to make some TV appearances. He'd agreed to go on tour with his friends Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens on a tour called the Winter Dance Party tour, but had bowed out when he got some offers of TV work. He definitely appeared on a show called Town Hall Party broadcast from California on February the second 1959, and according to Sheeley he was booked to appear in New York on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was the reason he'd decided not to do the tour, a few days later. As it turned out, Cochran never made that Ed Sullivan Show appearance, as in the early hours of February the third, his friends died in a plane crash. He refused to get on the plane to New York for the show, and instead drove out to the desert in his station wagon to grieve, and from that point on he developed a fear of flying. The follow-up to "C'mon Everybody", "Teenage Heaven", only went to number ninety-nine on the charts, and his next two singles didn't do much better. "Somethin' Else", a song that Sheeley had written for him, made number fifty-eight, while his cover version of Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So" didn't chart at all. 1959 was a depressing year for Cochran personally and professionally. But while "Somethin' Else" and "Hallelujah I Love Her So" were flops in the US, they both made the top thirty in the UK. In the US, guitar-based white rock and roll was now firmly out of fashion, with the audience split between black vocal groups singing R&B and white male solo singers called Bobby singing mid-tempo pop. But in the UK, the image of rock and roll in people's minds was still that of the rockabillies from a couple of years earlier -- while British musical trends would start to move faster than the US by the sixties, in the fifties they lagged a long way behind. And in particular, Cochran's friend Gene Vincent was doing much better in Britain than in the US. Very few US performers had toured the UK, and with the exception of Buddy Holly, most of those who had were not particularly impressive. Because of an agreement between the two countries' musicians' unions, it was difficult for musicians to perform in one country if they were from the other. It wasn't quite so difficult for solo performers, who could be backed by local musicians and were covered under a different agreement, but Lew and Leslie Grade, who had a virtual monopoly on the UK entertainment business, had had a very bad experience with Jerry Lee Lewis when his marriage to his teenage cousin had caused his UK tour to be cancelled, and anyway, Britain was an unimportant market a long way away from America, so why would Americans come all that way? For most of 1959, the closest thing to American rock and roll stars touring the UK were Connie Francis and Paul Anka, neither of whom screamed rock and roll rebellion. American rockers just didn't come to the UK. Unless they had nowhere else to go, that is -- and Gene Vincent had nowhere else to go. In the US, he was a washed-up has been who'd burned every single bridge, but in the UK he was an American Rock Star. In late 1959 he released a not-great single, "Wildcat": [Excerpt: Gene Vincent, "Wildcat"] That single wasn't doing particularly well, but then Larry Parnes and Jack Good hatched a plan. Good had a new TV show, "Boy Meets Girls", based around one of Parnes' artists, Marty Wilde, and also had a column in Disc magazine. They'd get an American rock star over to the UK, Parnes would stick him on a bill with a bunch of Parnes' acts, Good would put him on the TV show and promote him in Disc magazine, and the tour and TV show would split the costs. Wilde was, at the time, about to go into a career slump. He'd just got married, and he and his wife were trying for their first kid -- they'd decided that if it was a girl, they were going to call her Kim. It seemed likely they were going to lose his audience of teenage girls, as he was no longer available, and so Larry Parnes was trying to move him from rock and roll into musical styles that would be more suitable for adults, so his latest single was a ballad, "Bad Boy": [Excerpt: Marty Wilde, "Bad Boy"] That meant that Wilde's band, the Wildcats, made up at this point of Tony Belcher, Big Jim Sullivan, Licorice Locking and Brian Bennett, were no longer going to be suitable to back Wilde, as they were all rock and rollers, so they'd be fine for whichever rock star they could persuade over to the UK. Vincent was the only rock star available, and his latest single was even called "Wildcat". That made him perfect for Parnes' purposes, though Vincent was slightly nervous about using British musicians -- he simply didn't think that British musicians would be any good. As it turned out, Vincent had nothing to worry about on that score at least. When he got to the studios in Didsbury, in Manchester, where Boy Meets Girls was filmed, he met some of the best session musicians Britain had to offer. The house band for the show, the Flying Squad, was a smaller version of the bands that had appeared on Good's earlier shows, a nine-piece group that included organist Cherry Wainer and session drummer Andy White, and was led by Joe Brown. Brown was a Larry Parnes artist, who at this point had released one rather uninspired single, the country-flavoured "People Gotta Talk": [Excerpt: Joe Brown, "People Gotta Talk"] But Brown had an independent streak, which could be seen just from his name -- Larry Parnes had tried to change it, as he did with all his acts, but Brown had flat-out refused to be called Elmer Twitch, the name Parnes had chosen for him. He insisted on keeping his own name, and it was under that name that he became one of Britain's most respected guitarists. Vincent, amazingly, found these British musicians to be every bit as good as any musicians he'd worked with in the USA. But that was about all that he liked about the UK -- you couldn't get a hamburger or a pizza anywhere in the whole country, and the TV was only in black and white, and it finished at 11PM. For someone like Vincent, who liked to stay up all night watching old monster movies on TV, that was completely unacceptable. Luckily for him, at least he had his gun and knife to keep him occupied -- he'd strapped them both to the leg iron he used for his damaged leg, so they wouldn't set off the metal detectors coming into the country. But whatever his thoughts about the country as a whole, he couldn't help loving the audience reaction. Jack Good knew how to present a rock and roll star to an audience, and he'd moved Vincent out of the slacks and sweater vests and blue caps into the kind of leather that he'd already had Vince Taylor wear. He got Vincent to emphasise his limp, and to look pained at all times. He was imagining Vincent as something along the lines of Richard III, and wanted him to appear as dangerous as possible. He used all the tricks of stagecraft that he'd used on Taylor, but with the added advantage that Vincent had a remarkable voice, unlike Taylor. Sadly, as is the case with almost all of the British TV of the period, the videotapes of the performances have long since been wiped, but we have poor-quality audio that demonstrates both how good Vincent was sounding and how well the British musicians were able to adapt to backing him: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent, "Summertime", live on Boy Meets Girls] After making three appearances on Boy Meets Girls, Vincent was put on tour backed by the Wildcats, on a bill with acts like Wee Willie Harris and the Bachelors (the ones who recorded for Parlophone, not the later act of the same name), and "Wildcat" started going up the charts. Even though Gene Vincent hadn't had a hit in three years, he was a massive success with the British audiences, and as a result Parnes and Good decided that it might be an idea if they got another American star over here, and the obvious choice was Eddie Cochran. Cochran had the same agent as Vincent, and so there was a working relationship there; they both knew each other and so Vincent could help persuade Cochran over; and Cochran had had a string of top thirty hits in the UK, but was commercially dead in the US. It was tempting for Cochran, too -- as well as the obvious advantage of playing to people who were actually buying his record, the geography of Britain appealed. He'd been terrified of flying since Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had died, but the British tour would only involve the transatlantic flight -- all the travel once he was in the UK would be by road or rail. Before he came over, he had to record his next single, to be released while he was over in the UK. So on January the 8th, 1960, Eddie Cochran went into Gold Star Studios with his normal bass player, Guybo, and with his friends Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison, the guitarist and drummer of the Crickets, and they cut what turned out to be his last single, "Three Steps to Heaven": [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Three Steps to Heaven"] Two days later, he was in Britain, for the start of what was the biggest rock and roll tour in British history to that point -- a hundred and eight live appearances, plus several TV and radio appearances, in a little over three months, playing two shows a night most nights. Parnes felt he had to work them hard to justify their fees -- Vincent was getting $2500 a week, and Cochran $1000, while for example Billy Fury, at that point the biggest of Parnes' acts, was on a salary of twenty pounds a week. While Vincent had made a great impression largely despite himself, Cochran was a different matter. Everyone seemed to love him. Unlike Vincent, he was a musician's musician, and he formed close friendships with the players on the tour. Joe Brown, for example, remembers Cochran explaining to him that if you swap the G string on your guitar for a second B string, tuned down to G, you could bend a note a full tone -- Brown used that trick to make himself one of the most sought-after session players in the UK before his own pop career started to take off. It was also apparent that while Jack Good had had to create a stage act for Gene Vincent, he didn't have to do anything to make Cochran look good in front of the cameras. Marty Wilde said of him "The first thing I noticed about Eddie was his complexion. We British lads had acne and all the usual problems, and Eddie walked in with the most beautiful hair and the most beautiful skin - his skin was a light brown, beautiful colour, all that California sunshine, and I thought 'you lucky devil'. We had Manchester white all over us. And he had the most beautiful face -- the photographs never did the guy justice". From the moment Cochran started his set in Ipswich, by saying "It's great to be here in Hipswich" and wiggling his hips, he was utterly in command of the British audiences. Thankfully, because they did so many TV and radio sessions while they were over here, we have some idea of what these shows sounded like -- and from the recordings, even when they were in the antiseptic environment of a BBC recording studio, without an audience, they still sounded fantastic. On some shows, Cochran would start with his back to the audience, the band would start playing "Somethin' Else", the song that Sharon Sheeley had written for him that had been a minor hit, and he'd whirl round and face the audience on the opening line, "Well look-a there!" [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, "Somethin' Else [Eddie Cochran vocals]", Saturday Club version] The shows all had a number of acts on, all of them other than the stars Larry Parnes acts, and because there were so many shows, acts would get rotated in and out as the tour went on. But some of those who played on many dates were Vince Eager, who had named himself after Gene Vincent but quickly grew more attached to Eddie Cochran, who he started to regard as his best friend as the tour went on, Tony Sheridan, who was building a solo career after leaving the Oh Boy! band, Georgie Fame, who was already more interested in being a jazz and R&B pianist in the mould of Mose Allison than he was in being a pop star, Johnny Gentle, a Liverpudlian performer who never rose to massive success, and Billy Fury, by far the most talented of Parnes' acts. Fury was another Liverpudlian, who looked enough like Cochran that they could be brothers, and who had a top ten hit at the time with "Collette", one of many hits he wrote for himself: [Excerpt: Billy Fury, "Collette"]  Fury was something of a sex symbol, aided by the fact that he would stuff his pants with the cardboard tube from a toilet roll before going on stage. This would lead the girls to scream at him -- but would also lead their violent boyfriends to try to bottle him off stage, which meant he had more reason than most to have stagefright. Cochran would joke with Fury, and try to put him at ease -- one story has him telling a nervous Fury, about to go on stage, to just say to himself "I am the greatest performer in the world". Fury repeated back "I am the greatest performer in the world", and Cochran replied, "No you're not -- I am!" This kind of joking led to Cochran becoming immensely popular among all the musicians on the tour, and to him once again falling into his old role of protecting Gene Vincent from the consequences of his own actions, when Vincent would do things like cut up a suit belonging to one of the road managers, while the road manager was inside it. While Vincent was the headliner, Cochran was clearly the one who impressed the British audiences the most. We have some stories from people who saw the tour, and they all focus on Eddie. Particularly notable is the tour's residency in Liverpool, during which time Cochran was opening his set with his version of "What'd I Say": [Excerpt: Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, "What'd I Say [Eddie Cochran vocals]", Saturday Club version] We have this report of Cochran's performance in Liverpool: "Eddie blew me away. He had his unwound 3rd string, looked good and sang good and he was really getting to be a good guitarist… One moment will always represent Eddie to me. He finished a tune, the crowd stopped screaming and clapping, and he stepped up to the mike and before he said something he put both his hands back, pushed his hair back, and some girl, a single voice in the audience, she went ‘Eddie!’ and he said ‘Hi honey!’… I thought, ‘Yes! That’s it – rock ’n’ roll!’" That's a quote from George Harrison in the early 1990s. He'd gone to see the show with a friend, John Lennon -- it was Lennon's first ever rock and roll gig as an audience member, and one of a very small number he ever attended. Lennon never particularly enjoyed seeing live shows -- he preferred records -- but even he couldn't resist seeing Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent on the same bill. The Liverpool shows were massive successes, despite both American rockers being increasingly bored and turning more and more to drink as a result. Apparently the two would drink a bottle of bourbon between them before going on stage, and at one Liverpool show Cochran had to hold on to a mic stand to keep himself upright for the first two songs, before he sobered up enough to let go. The shows were successful enough that a local promoter, Allan Williams, asked if he could book Cochran and Vincent for another show, and Larry Parnes said yes -- after Liverpool, they had to play Newcastle, Manchester, London, and Bristol, taking up another month, and then Eddie Cochran was going to be going back to the US for a couple of weeks, but he could pencil them in for six weeks' time, when Cochran was going to come back. It's quite surprising that Cochran agreed to come back, because he was getting thoroughly sick of the UK. He'd asked Sharon Sheeley to fly over and join him, but other than her and Vincent he had nothing of home with him, and he liked sunshine, fast food, cold beer, and all-night TV, and hated everything about the British winter, which was far darker and wetter than anything he'd experienced. But on the other hand, he was enjoying making music with these British people. There's a great recording of Cochran, Vincent, Billy Fury, and Joe Brown jamming on the Willie Dixon blues song "My Babe" on "Boy Meets Girls": [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Billy Fury, Joe Brown, “My Babe”] But by the time the tour ended in Bristol, Eddie was very keen to get back. He was going to be bringing Vince Eager over to America to record, and arranged to meet him in London in the early hours of Easter Sunday. They were going to be taking the lunchtime plane from what was then London Airport but is now Heathrow. But there was a problem with getting there on time. There were very few trains between Bristol and London, and they'd have to get a car from the train station to the airport. But that Easter Sunday was the day of the annual Aldermaston March against nuclear weapons. These were massive marches which were big enough that they spawned compilation albums of songs to sing on the march, like Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's "Brother Won't You Join the Line": [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, "Brother Won't You Join the Line?"] But the main effect the march was having on Cochran and Vincent was that it meant that to be sure of catching their plane, they would have to travel overnight by car. At first, they asked one of the other artists on the tour, Johnny Gentle, if they could go in his car, but he already had a carful, so they ended up getting a local driver, named George Martin (not the one at Parlophone Records) to drive them overnight. They got into the back seat of the car -- Cochran sitting between Vincent and Sheeley, as Sheeley couldn't stand Vincent. Vincent took a sleeping pill and went to sleep almost immediately, but Sheeley and Cochran were in a good mood, singing "California Here We Come" together, when Martin took a turn too fast and hit a lamppost. Vincent and Sheeley suffered major injuries and had to spend time in hospital. Cochran died. A short while later, Johnny Gentle's car made its way onward towards London, and ran out of fuel. As all-night garages weren't a thing in Britain then, they flagged down a policeman who told them there'd been a crash, and they could see if the breakdown vehicle would let them siphon petrol from the wrecked car. They did, and it was only the next day they realised which car it was they'd taken the fuel from. One of the police at the scene – maybe even that one – was a cadet who would later change his name to Dave Dee, and become the lead singer in Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch. As soon as the news got out about Cochran's death, "Three Steps to Heaven", which had come out in the US, but not yet in the UK, was rush-released: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Three Steps to Heaven"] It went to number one, and became Cochran's biggest hit. Larry Parnes didn't see why Cochran's death should put a crimp in his plans, and so he immediately started promoting the shows for which Vincent and Cochran had been booked, calling them Eddie Cochran Tribute Shows, and talking to the press about how ironic it was that Cochran's last song was "Three Steps to Heaven". Vince Eager was so disgusted with Parnes that he never worked with him again. But those shows turned out to have a much bigger impact than anyone could have imagined. Allan Williams was worried that without Cochran, the show he'd got booked in Liverpool wouldn't get enough of a crowd, so he booked in a number of local bands -- Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Cass and the Cassanovas, Nero and the Gladiators, and Gerry and the Pacemakers -- to fill out the bill. This led to all the bands and musicians in Liverpool realising, for the first time, how much talent there was in the city and how many bands there were. That one show changed Liverpool from a town where there were a few bands to a town with a music scene, and May the third 1960 can be pointed to as the day that Merseybeat started. Parnes was impressed enough by the local groups that he decided that Liverpool might be a good place to look for musicians to back his singers on the road. And we'll pick up on what happened then in a few months. Sharon Sheeley, once she'd recovered from her injuries, went on to write hits for Brenda Lee, Jackie DeShannon, the Fleetwoods, and Irma Thomas, and when Jack Good moved back to the US, she renewed her acquaintance with him, and together with Sheeley's husband they created Shindig, the most important American music show of the sixties. But by the time she died in 2002, all her obituaries talked about was that she'd been Eddie Cochran's girlfriend. And as for Gene Vincent, he was already in chronic pain, suffering mood swings, and drinking too much before the accident hospitalised him. After that, all those things intensified. He became increasingly unreliable, and the hits dried up even in Britain by mid-1961. He made some good music in the sixties, but almost nobody was listening any more, and an attempted comeback was cut short when he died, aged thirty-six, in 1971, from illnesses caused by his alcoholism. Despite their tragic deaths, Vincent and Cochran, on that 1960 UK tour, almost accidentally catalysed a revolution in British music, and the changes from that will reverberate throughout the rest of this story.

Episode eighty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Three Steps to Heaven” by Eddie Cochran, and at the British tour which changed music and ended his life. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode, on “Quarter to Three” by Gary US Bonds. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/  —-more—- Resources   As usual, I have put together a Mixcloud mix with every song excerpted in this podcast. Much of the information here comes from Spencer Leigh’s book Things Do Go Wrong, which looks specifically at the 1960 tour. I also used Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis.  While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran’s music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. This CD contains the Saturday Club recordings by Vincent and Cochran, which are well worth listening to.   Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though — his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. And a fair chunk of the background information here also comes from the extended edition of Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In, which is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the Beatles, British post-war culture, and British post-war music.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There’s been a sad running theme in the episodes in recent months of rock stars dying in accidents. Sadly, in the 1950s and sixties, travelling long distances was even more dangerous than it is today, and rock musicians, who had to travel a lot more than most people, and did much of that travelling at night, were more likely to be in accidents than most. Today, we’re going to look at yet another of these tragic deaths, of someone who is thought of in the US as being something of a one-hit wonder, but who had a much bigger effect on British music. We’re going to look at what would be Eddie Cochran’s final tour, and at his UK number one single “Three Steps to Heaven”: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Three Steps to Heaven”] When we left Eddie Cochran, he had just appeared in the film “The Girl Can’t Help It”, singing “Twenty Flight Rock”, and he had also had a hit with “Sittin’ in the Balcony”. But he hadn’t yet managed to establish himself as the star he knew he could be — he was the whole package, singer, songwriter, and especially guitarist, and he hadn’t yet made a record that showed him to his best advantage as an artist. “Twenty Flight Rock” had come close, but it wasn’t a song he’d written himself, and the record hadn’t yet been released in the US. Meanwhile, Liberty Records seemed to not understand what they had in him — they were trying to push him to be another Pat Boone, and become a bland pop singer with no rock and roll in his sound. His first album, Singin’ to My Baby, had little to do with the music that he was interested in playing. So Cochran needed to find something that would really put him on the map — a song that would mean he wasn’t just one of dozens of Fabians and Frankie Avalons and interchangeable Bobbies who were starting to take over shows like American Bandstand. “Twenty Flight Rock” hadn’t ended up being a hit at all, despite its placement in a popular film — they’d left it too long between the film coming out and releasing the record, and he’d lost that momentum. At the end of 1957 he’d gone on the Australian tour with Little Richard and Gene Vincent which had led to Richard retiring from rock and roll, and he’d become much closer with Vincent, with whom he’d already struck up a friendship when making The Girl Can’t Help It. The two men bonded, particularly, over their love of guns, although they expressed that love in very different ways. Cochran had grown up in rural Minnesota, and had the same love of hunting and fishing that most men of his background did at that time (and that many still do). He was, by all accounts, an affable person, and basically well adjusted. Vincent, on the other hand, was a polite and friendly person when not drinking. Unfortunately, he was in constant pain from his leg wounds, and that meant he was drinking a lot, and when he was drunk he was an incredibly unpleasant, aggressive, person. His love of guns was mostly for threatening people with, and he seems to have latched on to Cochran as someone who could look after him when he got himself into awkward situations — Cochran was so personally charming that he could defuse the situation when Vincent had behaved appallingly towards someone. At the time, Vincent seemed like a has-been and Cochran a never-would-be. This was late 1957, and it seemed like rock and roll records with guitars on were a fad that had already passed their sell-by date. The only white guitarist/vocalist other than Elvis who’d been having hits on a regular basis was Buddy Holly, and his records were doing worse and worse with each release. Vincent hadn’t had a real hit since his first single, “Be Bop A Lula”, while Cochran had made the top twenty with “Sittin’ in the Balcony”, but the highest he’d got after that was number eighty-two. He’d recently recorded a song co-written by George Mottola, who’d written “Goodnight My Love”, but “Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie” stalled at number ninety-four when it was released in early 1958: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie”] So neither man was in a good place at the start of 1958, but they had very different attitudes — Vincent was depressed and angry, but Cochran knew that something would come along. He was only nineteen, he was astonishingly good looking, he was a great guitarist — if rock and roll didn’t work out, something would. In early 1958, Cochran was still hunting for that elusive big hit, as he joined the Blue Caps in the studio, to provide bass, arrangements, and backing vocals on several tracks for Vincent’s latest album. It’s Cochran singing the bass vocals at the start of “Git It”, one of Vincent’s greatest tracks: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, “Git It”] But shortly after that recording, a major turn in Cochran’s fortunes came from an unexpected place. Liberty Records had been in financial difficulties, and part of the reason that Cochran’s records were unsuccessful was that they just didn’t have the money to promote them as much as they’d like. But then at the beginning of April a man called Ross Bagdasarian, under the name David Seville, released a novelty song called “The Witch Doctor”, featuring some mildly racist comedy and a sped-up voice. That record became a massive hit, selling over a million copies, going to number one, and becoming the fourth most successful record of 1958. Suddenly, Liberty Records was saved from bankruptcy. That made all the difference to the success of a track that Cochran had recorded on March the 28th, the same week he recorded those Gene Vincent sessions, and which came out at the tail-end of summer. Cochran had come up with a guitar riff that he liked, but he didn’t have any lyrics for it, and his friend and co-writer Jerry Capehart said “there’s never been a blues about the summer”. The two of them came up with some comedy lyrics in the style of the Coasters, who had just started to have big hits, and the result became Cochran’s only top ten hit in the US, reaching number eight, and becoming one of the best-remembered tracks of the fifties: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Summertime Blues”] That track was recorded with a minimal number of musicians — Cochran played all the guitars and sang both vocal parts, his bass player Guybo Smith played the bass part, and the great session drummer Earl Palmer played drums. There was also a fourth person on the record — Sharon Sheeley, who added handclaps, and who had written the B-side. Sheeley was a talented songwriter who also had a propensity for dating musicians. She’d dated one of the Everly Brothers for a while — different reports name different brothers, but the consensus seems to be that it was Don — and then when they’d split up, she’d written a song called “Poor Little Fool”. She’d then faked having her car break down outside Ricky Nelson’s house, and collared him when he came out to help. That sort of thing seemed to happen to Nelson a lot with songwriters — Johnny and Dorsey Burnette had sold Nelson songs by sitting on his doorstep and refusing to move until he listened to them — but it seemed to work out very well for him. The Burnettes wrote several hits for him, while Sheeley’s “Poor Little Fool” became Nelson’s first number one, as well as being the first number one ever on Billboard’s newly-renamed Hot One Hundred, and the first number one single on any chart to be written by a woman without a male cowriter: [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Poor Little Fool”] Sheeley gets unfairly pigeonholed as a groupie (not that there’s anything wrong with being a groupie) because she had relationships with musicians, and at this point she was starting a relationship with Cochran. But it’s important to remember that when they got together, even though he was eighteen months older than her, she was the one who had written a number one single, and he was the one whose last record had gone to number ninety-four — and that after her relationship with Cochran, she went on to form a writing partnership with Jackie DeShannon that produced a long string of hits for people like Brenda Lee and the Fleetwoods, as well as songs that weren’t hits but probably deserved to be, like Ral Donner’s “Don’t Put Your Heart in His Hands”: [Excerpt: Ral Donner, “Don’t Put Your Heart in His Hands”] Sheeley was more invested in her relationship with Cochran than he was, but this has led rock writers to completely dismiss her as “just Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend”, when in terms of their relative statuses in the music industry, it would be more fair to define Cochran as “just Sharon Sheeley’s boyfriend”. I have to emphasise this point, because in the limited number of books about Cochran, you will see a lot of descriptions of her as “a groupie”, “a fantasist”, and worse, and very few mentions of the fact that she had a life outside her partner. “Summertime Blues” looked like it was going to be the start of Eddie Cochran’s career as a rock and roll star, but in fact it was the peak of it, at least in the US. While the song was a big hit, the follow-up, “C’mon Everybody”, which was written by Cochran and Capehart to much the same formula, but without the humour that characterised “Summertime Blues”, didn’t do so well: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “C’mon Everybody”] That made only number thirty-five on the US charts, and would be Cochran’s last top forty record there — but in the UK, it was a bigger hit than “Summertime Blues”, reaching number six. “C’mon Everybody” was, though, big enough for Cochran to make some TV appearances. He’d agreed to go on tour with his friends Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens on a tour called the Winter Dance Party tour, but had bowed out when he got some offers of TV work. He definitely appeared on a show called Town Hall Party broadcast from California on February the second 1959, and according to Sheeley he was booked to appear in New York on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was the reason he’d decided not to do the tour, a few days later. As it turned out, Cochran never made that Ed Sullivan Show appearance, as in the early hours of February the third, his friends died in a plane crash. He refused to get on the plane to New York for the show, and instead drove out to the desert in his station wagon to grieve, and from that point on he developed a fear of flying. The follow-up to “C’mon Everybody”, “Teenage Heaven”, only went to number ninety-nine on the charts, and his next two singles didn’t do much better. “Somethin’ Else”, a song that Sheeley had written for him, made number fifty-eight, while his cover version of Ray Charles’ “Hallelujah I Love Her So” didn’t chart at all. 1959 was a depressing year for Cochran personally and professionally. But while “Somethin’ Else” and “Hallelujah I Love Her So” were flops in the US, they both made the top thirty in the UK. In the US, guitar-based white rock and roll was now firmly out of fashion, with the audience split between black vocal groups singing R&B and white male solo singers called Bobby singing mid-tempo pop. But in the UK, the image of rock and roll in people’s minds was still that of the rockabillies from a couple of years earlier — while British musical trends would start to move faster than the US by the sixties, in the fifties they lagged a long way behind. And in particular, Cochran’s friend Gene Vincent was doing much better in Britain than in the US. Very few US performers had toured the UK, and with the exception of Buddy Holly, most of those who had were not particularly impressive. Because of an agreement between the two countries’ musicians’ unions, it was difficult for musicians to perform in one country if they were from the other. It wasn’t quite so difficult for solo performers, who could be backed by local musicians and were covered under a different agreement, but Lew and Leslie Grade, who had a virtual monopoly on the UK entertainment business, had had a very bad experience with Jerry Lee Lewis when his marriage to his teenage cousin had caused his UK tour to be cancelled, and anyway, Britain was an unimportant market a long way away from America, so why would Americans come all that way? For most of 1959, the closest thing to American rock and roll stars touring the UK were Connie Francis and Paul Anka, neither of whom screamed rock and roll rebellion. American rockers just didn’t come to the UK. Unless they had nowhere else to go, that is — and Gene Vincent had nowhere else to go. In the US, he was a washed-up has been who’d burned every single bridge, but in the UK he was an American Rock Star. In late 1959 he released a not-great single, “Wildcat”: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent, “Wildcat”] That single wasn’t doing particularly well, but then Larry Parnes and Jack Good hatched a plan. Good had a new TV show, “Boy Meets Girls”, based around one of Parnes’ artists, Marty Wilde, and also had a column in Disc magazine. They’d get an American rock star over to the UK, Parnes would stick him on a bill with a bunch of Parnes’ acts, Good would put him on the TV show and promote him in Disc magazine, and the tour and TV show would split the costs. Wilde was, at the time, about to go into a career slump. He’d just got married, and he and his wife were trying for their first kid — they’d decided that if it was a girl, they were going to call her Kim. It seemed likely they were going to lose his audience of teenage girls, as he was no longer available, and so Larry Parnes was trying to move him from rock and roll into musical styles that would be more suitable for adults, so his latest single was a ballad, “Bad Boy”: [Excerpt: Marty Wilde, “Bad Boy”] That meant that Wilde’s band, the Wildcats, made up at this point of Tony Belcher, Big Jim Sullivan, Licorice Locking and Brian Bennett, were no longer going to be suitable to back Wilde, as they were all rock and rollers, so they’d be fine for whichever rock star they could persuade over to the UK. Vincent was the only rock star available, and his latest single was even called “Wildcat”. That made him perfect for Parnes’ purposes, though Vincent was slightly nervous about using British musicians — he simply didn’t think that British musicians would be any good. As it turned out, Vincent had nothing to worry about on that score at least. When he got to the studios in Didsbury, in Manchester, where Boy Meets Girls was filmed, he met some of the best session musicians Britain had to offer. The house band for the show, the Flying Squad, was a smaller version of the bands that had appeared on Good’s earlier shows, a nine-piece group that included organist Cherry Wainer and session drummer Andy White, and was led by Joe Brown. Brown was a Larry Parnes artist, who at this point had released one rather uninspired single, the country-flavoured “People Gotta Talk”: [Excerpt: Joe Brown, “People Gotta Talk”] But Brown had an independent streak, which could be seen just from his name — Larry Parnes had tried to change it, as he did with all his acts, but Brown had flat-out refused to be called Elmer Twitch, the name Parnes had chosen for him. He insisted on keeping his own name, and it was under that name that he became one of Britain’s most respected guitarists. Vincent, amazingly, found these British musicians to be every bit as good as any musicians he’d worked with in the USA. But that was about all that he liked about the UK — you couldn’t get a hamburger or a pizza anywhere in the whole country, and the TV was only in black and white, and it finished at 11PM. For someone like Vincent, who liked to stay up all night watching old monster movies on TV, that was completely unacceptable. Luckily for him, at least he had his gun and knife to keep him occupied — he’d strapped them both to the leg iron he used for his damaged leg, so they wouldn’t set off the metal detectors coming into the country. But whatever his thoughts about the country as a whole, he couldn’t help loving the audience reaction. Jack Good knew how to present a rock and roll star to an audience, and he’d moved Vincent out of the slacks and sweater vests and blue caps into the kind of leather that he’d already had Vince Taylor wear. He got Vincent to emphasise his limp, and to look pained at all times. He was imagining Vincent as something along the lines of Richard III, and wanted him to appear as dangerous as possible. He used all the tricks of stagecraft that he’d used on Taylor, but with the added advantage that Vincent had a remarkable voice, unlike Taylor. Sadly, as is the case with almost all of the British TV of the period, the videotapes of the performances have long since been wiped, but we have poor-quality audio that demonstrates both how good Vincent was sounding and how well the British musicians were able to adapt to backing him: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent, “Summertime”, live on Boy Meets Girls] After making three appearances on Boy Meets Girls, Vincent was put on tour backed by the Wildcats, on a bill with acts like Wee Willie Harris and the Bachelors (the ones who recorded for Parlophone, not the later act of the same name), and “Wildcat” started going up the charts. Even though Gene Vincent hadn’t had a hit in three years, he was a massive success with the British audiences, and as a result Parnes and Good decided that it might be an idea if they got another American star over here, and the obvious choice was Eddie Cochran. Cochran had the same agent as Vincent, and so there was a working relationship there; they both knew each other and so Vincent could help persuade Cochran over; and Cochran had had a string of top thirty hits in the UK, but was commercially dead in the US. It was tempting for Cochran, too — as well as the obvious advantage of playing to people who were actually buying his record, the geography of Britain appealed. He’d been terrified of flying since Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had died, but the British tour would only involve the transatlantic flight — all the travel once he was in the UK would be by road or rail. Before he came over, he had to record his next single, to be released while he was over in the UK. So on January the 8th, 1960, Eddie Cochran went into Gold Star Studios with his normal bass player, Guybo, and with his friends Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison, the guitarist and drummer of the Crickets, and they cut what turned out to be his last single, “Three Steps to Heaven”: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Three Steps to Heaven”] Two days later, he was in Britain, for the start of what was the biggest rock and roll tour in British history to that point — a hundred and eight live appearances, plus several TV and radio appearances, in a little over three months, playing two shows a night most nights. Parnes felt he had to work them hard to justify their fees — Vincent was getting $2500 a week, and Cochran $1000, while for example Billy Fury, at that point the biggest of Parnes’ acts, was on a salary of twenty pounds a week. While Vincent had made a great impression largely despite himself, Cochran was a different matter. Everyone seemed to love him. Unlike Vincent, he was a musician’s musician, and he formed close friendships with the players on the tour. Joe Brown, for example, remembers Cochran explaining to him that if you swap the G string on your guitar for a second B string, tuned down to G, you could bend a note a full tone — Brown used that trick to make himself one of the most sought-after session players in the UK before his own pop career started to take off. It was also apparent that while Jack Good had had to create a stage act for Gene Vincent, he didn’t have to do anything to make Cochran look good in front of the cameras. Marty Wilde said of him “The first thing I noticed about Eddie was his complexion. We British lads had acne and all the usual problems, and Eddie walked in with the most beautiful hair and the most beautiful skin – his skin was a light brown, beautiful colour, all that California sunshine, and I thought ‘you lucky devil’. We had Manchester white all over us. And he had the most beautiful face — the photographs never did the guy justice”. From the moment Cochran started his set in Ipswich, by saying “It’s great to be here in Hipswich” and wiggling his hips, he was utterly in command of the British audiences. Thankfully, because they did so many TV and radio sessions while they were over here, we have some idea of what these shows sounded like — and from the recordings, even when they were in the antiseptic environment of a BBC recording studio, without an audience, they still sounded fantastic. On some shows, Cochran would start with his back to the audience, the band would start playing “Somethin’ Else”, the song that Sharon Sheeley had written for him that had been a minor hit, and he’d whirl round and face the audience on the opening line, “Well look-a there!” [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, “Somethin’ Else [Eddie Cochran vocals]”, Saturday Club version] The shows all had a number of acts on, all of them other than the stars Larry Parnes acts, and because there were so many shows, acts would get rotated in and out as the tour went on. But some of those who played on many dates were Vince Eager, who had named himself after Gene Vincent but quickly grew more attached to Eddie Cochran, who he started to regard as his best friend as the tour went on, Tony Sheridan, who was building a solo career after leaving the Oh Boy! band, Georgie Fame, who was already more interested in being a jazz and R&B pianist in the mould of Mose Allison than he was in being a pop star, Johnny Gentle, a Liverpudlian performer who never rose to massive success, and Billy Fury, by far the most talented of Parnes’ acts. Fury was another Liverpudlian, who looked enough like Cochran that they could be brothers, and who had a top ten hit at the time with “Collette”, one of many hits he wrote for himself: [Excerpt: Billy Fury, “Collette”]  Fury was something of a sex symbol, aided by the fact that he would stuff his pants with the cardboard tube from a toilet roll before going on stage. This would lead the girls to scream at him — but would also lead their violent boyfriends to try to bottle him off stage, which meant he had more reason than most to have stagefright. Cochran would joke with Fury, and try to put him at ease — one story has him telling a nervous Fury, about to go on stage, to just say to himself “I am the greatest performer in the world”. Fury repeated back “I am the greatest performer in the world”, and Cochran replied, “No you’re not — I am!” This kind of joking led to Cochran becoming immensely popular among all the musicians on the tour, and to him once again falling into his old role of protecting Gene Vincent from the consequences of his own actions, when Vincent would do things like cut up a suit belonging to one of the road managers, while the road manager was inside it. While Vincent was the headliner, Cochran was clearly the one who impressed the British audiences the most. We have some stories from people who saw the tour, and they all focus on Eddie. Particularly notable is the tour’s residency in Liverpool, during which time Cochran was opening his set with his version of “What’d I Say”: [Excerpt: Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, “What’d I Say [Eddie Cochran vocals]”, Saturday Club version] We have this report of Cochran’s performance in Liverpool: “Eddie blew me away. He had his unwound 3rd string, looked good and sang good and he was really getting to be a good guitarist… One moment will always represent Eddie to me. He finished a tune, the crowd stopped screaming and clapping, and he stepped up to the mike and before he said something he put both his hands back, pushed his hair back, and some girl, a single voice in the audience, she went ‘Eddie!’ and he said ‘Hi honey!’… I thought, ‘Yes! That’s it – rock ’n’ roll!’” That’s a quote from George Harrison in the early 1990s. He’d gone to see the show with a friend, John Lennon — it was Lennon’s first ever rock and roll gig as an audience member, and one of a very small number he ever attended. Lennon never particularly enjoyed seeing live shows — he preferred records — but even he couldn’t resist seeing Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent on the same bill. The Liverpool shows were massive successes, despite both American rockers being increasingly bored and turning more and more to drink as a result. Apparently the two would drink a bottle of bourbon between them before going on stage, and at one Liverpool show Cochran had to hold on to a mic stand to keep himself upright for the first two songs, before he sobered up enough to let go. The shows were successful enough that a local promoter, Allan Williams, asked if he could book Cochran and Vincent for another show, and Larry Parnes said yes — after Liverpool, they had to play Newcastle, Manchester, London, and Bristol, taking up another month, and then Eddie Cochran was going to be going back to the US for a couple of weeks, but he could pencil them in for six weeks’ time, when Cochran was going to come back. It’s quite surprising that Cochran agreed to come back, because he was getting thoroughly sick of the UK. He’d asked Sharon Sheeley to fly over and join him, but other than her and Vincent he had nothing of home with him, and he liked sunshine, fast food, cold beer, and all-night TV, and hated everything about the British winter, which was far darker and wetter than anything he’d experienced. But on the other hand, he was enjoying making music with these British people. There’s a great recording of Cochran, Vincent, Billy Fury, and Joe Brown jamming on the Willie Dixon blues song “My Babe” on “Boy Meets Girls”: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Billy Fury, Joe Brown, “My Babe”] But by the time the tour ended in Bristol, Eddie was very keen to get back. He was going to be bringing Vince Eager over to America to record, and arranged to meet him in London in the early hours of Easter Sunday. They were going to be taking the lunchtime plane from what was then London Airport but is now Heathrow. But there was a problem with getting there on time. There were very few trains between Bristol and London, and they’d have to get a car from the train station to the airport. But that Easter Sunday was the day of the annual Aldermaston March against nuclear weapons. These were massive marches which were big enough that they spawned compilation albums of songs to sing on the march, like Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger’s “Brother Won’t You Join the Line”: [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, “Brother Won’t You Join the Line?”] But the main effect the march was having on Cochran and Vincent was that it meant that to be sure of catching their plane, they would have to travel overnight by car. At first, they asked one of the other artists on the tour, Johnny Gentle, if they could go in his car, but he already had a carful, so they ended up getting a local driver, named George Martin (not the one at Parlophone Records) to drive them overnight. They got into the back seat of the car — Cochran sitting between Vincent and Sheeley, as Sheeley couldn’t stand Vincent. Vincent took a sleeping pill and went to sleep almost immediately, but Sheeley and Cochran were in a good mood, singing “California Here We Come” together, when Martin took a turn too fast and hit a lamppost. Vincent and Sheeley suffered major injuries and had to spend time in hospital. Cochran died. A short while later, Johnny Gentle’s car made its way onward towards London, and ran out of fuel. As all-night garages weren’t a thing in Britain then, they flagged down a policeman who told them there’d been a crash, and they could see if the breakdown vehicle would let them siphon petrol from the wrecked car. They did, and it was only the next day they realised which car it was they’d taken the fuel from. One of the police at the scene – maybe even that one – was a cadet who would later change his name to Dave Dee, and become the lead singer in Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch. As soon as the news got out about Cochran’s death, “Three Steps to Heaven”, which had come out in the US, but not yet in the UK, was rush-released: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Three Steps to Heaven”] It went to number one, and became Cochran’s biggest hit. Larry Parnes didn’t see why Cochran’s death should put a crimp in his plans, and so he immediately started promoting the shows for which Vincent and Cochran had been booked, calling them Eddie Cochran Tribute Shows, and talking to the press about how ironic it was that Cochran’s last song was “Three Steps to Heaven”. Vince Eager was so disgusted with Parnes that he never worked with him again. But those shows turned out to have a much bigger impact than anyone could have imagined. Allan Williams was worried that without Cochran, the show he’d got booked in Liverpool wouldn’t get enough of a crowd, so he booked in a number of local bands — Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Cass and the Cassanovas, Nero and the Gladiators, and Gerry and the Pacemakers — to fill out the bill. This led to all the bands and musicians in Liverpool realising, for the first time, how much talent there was in the city and how many bands there were. That one show changed Liverpool from a town where there were a few bands to a town with a music scene, and May the third 1960 can be pointed to as the day that Merseybeat started. Parnes was impressed enough by the local groups that he decided that Liverpool might be a good place to look for musicians to back his singers on the road. And we’ll pick up on what happened then in a few months. Sharon Sheeley, once she’d recovered from her injuries, went on to write hits for Brenda Lee, Jackie DeShannon, the Fleetwoods, and Irma Thomas, and when Jack Good moved back to the US, she renewed her acquaintance with him, and together with Sheeley’s husband they created Shindig, the most important American music show of the sixties. But by the time she died in 2002, all her obituaries talked about was that she’d been Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend. And as for Gene Vincent, he was already in chronic pain, suffering mood swings, and drinking too much before the accident hospitalised him. After that, all those things intensified. He became increasingly unreliable, and the hits dried up even in Britain by mid-1961. He made some good music in the sixties, but almost nobody was listening any more, and an attempted comeback was cut short when he died, aged thirty-six, in 1971, from illnesses caused by his alcoholism. Despite their tragic deaths, Vincent and Cochran, on that 1960 UK tour, almost accidentally catalysed a revolution in British music, and the changes from that will reverberate throughout the rest of this story.

Dan Seitz of Marvel's Flying Monkeys (a podcast where they discuss every Marvel movie minute by minute) joins us to discuss one of his personal childhood faves, 1987's The Chipmunk Adventure. This one is a WILD ride! We reminisce about USA's Up All Night with Rhonda Shear, and dive down a bunch of weird rabbit holes related to the production of this movie. If you need a Chipmunk Masseuse (or to be part of a roomful of hotties doing yoga and pilates while Madonna checks out their bodies and knows she's satisfied), you might want to hire Siri D. Galliano. The music in this movie is written by a bunch of talented songwriters, including Terry Shaddick, who wrote "Physical" (popularized by Olivia Newton John), Donna Weiss, who co-wrote "Bette Davis Eyes" along with Kim Carnes, Randy Goodrum, who wrote a bunch of hit songs, and Barry De Vorzon, who wrote a song for a different movie that later became a top hit as "Nadia's Theme" after it was used as a background for a montage of gymnast Nadia Comaneci's performances in a recap of the 1976 Olympics. The song was also used as the theme for The Young and the Restless. Of course The Chipmunk Adventure also included songs originally written by the Chipmunks' creator, Ross Bagdasarian, father of the current Chipmunks IP owner (and successor as the voice of Dave, Alvin, and Simon). Fun Fact: he named his alter ego David Seville because he was stationed in Seville, Spain during World War II.We also talk a bit about the egregiously racist stuff in this one, from the really horrible lecherous child sheikh and hostile jungle natives scenes to the Mexican festival with a Carmen Miranda number. Carmen Miranda was Brazilian and felt frustrated with the way she wasn't allowed to break out of a specific stereotype of "Latin culture" in her career. She's beloved and credited with paving the way for popular tropicalia artists of the 1960s, but it's complicated, and none of that is something The Chipmunk Adventure acknowledges or engages with when using one of her songs for a scene in a country that is definitely not Brazil. And then also we can't forget the sombrero shaped Taco Bell kind of establishment plopped in the middle of Mexico city, which Julia thought would fit right in at South of the Border, a roadside attraction in South Carolina with its own complicated race-related history. This Chipmunks journey is a wild ride, and the After These Messages episode coming up promises to be something else, too, since we're committed to watching part of Malibu Bikini Shop…

Dan Seitz of Marvel’s Flying Monkeys (a podcast where they discuss every Marvel movie minute by minute) joins us to discuss one of his personal childhood faves, 1987’s The Chipmunk Adventure. Image Description: Alvin, in just a loincloth, tooth necklace, and red baseball cap, faces off against Brittany, who’s wearing a pink harem outfit. Their stature is small, but their egos are extremely large.This one is a WILD ride! We reminisce about USA’s Up All Night with Rhonda Shear, and dive down a bunch of weird rabbit holes related to the production of this movie. If you need a Chipmunk Masseuse (or to be part of a roomful of hotties doing yoga and pilates while Madonna checks out their bodies and knows she’s satisfied), you might want to hire Siri D. Galliano. The music in this movie is written by a bunch of talented songwriters, including Terry Shaddick, who wrote “Physical” (popularized by Olivia Newton John), Donna Weiss, who co-wrote “Bette Davis Eyes” along with Kim Carnes, Randy Goodrum, who wrote a bunch of hit songs, and Barry De Vorzon, who wrote a song for a different movie that later became a top hit as “Nadia’s Theme” after it was used as a background for a montage of gymnast Nadia Comaneci’s performances in a recap of the 1976 Olympics. The song was also used as the theme for The Young and the Restless. Of course The Chipmunk Adventure also included songs originally written by the Chipmunks’ creator, Ross Bagdasarian, father of the current Chipmunks IP owner (and successor as the voice of Dave, Alvin, and Simon). Fun Fact: he named his alter ego David Seville because he was stationed in Seville, Spain during World War II.We also talk a bit about the egregiously racist stuff in this one, from the really horrible lecherous child sheikh and hostile jungle natives scenes to the Mexican festival with a Carmen Miranda number. Carmen Miranda was Brazilian and felt frustrated with the way she wasn’t allowed to break out of a specific stereotype of “Latin culture” in her career. She’s beloved and credited with paving the way for popular tropicalia artists of the 1960s, but it’s complicated, and none of that is something The Chipmunk Adventure acknowledges or engages with when using one of her songs for a scene in a country that is definitely not Brazil. And then also we can’t forget the sombrero shaped Taco Bell kind of establishment plopped in the middle of Mexico city, which Julia thought would fit right in at South of the Border, a roadside attraction in South Carolina with its own complicated race-related history. This Chipmunks journey is a wild ride, and the After These Messages episode coming up in a couple of days promises to be something else, too, since we’re committed to watching part of Malibu Bikini Shop… This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at thisiswhywerelikethis.substack.com/subscribe

Our guest today worked for many years for Marvel’s Crazy magazine, then doing Spies and Sabs for Cracked magazine for many more years, and then even more years drawing sports cartoons. Here he is, Michael Ricigliano. Plus, "Aaaaalllviiinnn: The Story of Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., Liberty Records, Format Films and The Alvin Show" is out. Order your copy today on Amazon or at BearManor Media.

Years after his father created a hit singing group of anthropomorphic rodents called The Chipmunks, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. made it his mission to revive his dad's beloved characters. Over the last 40 years, Ross Jr. and his wife Janice have built The Chipmunks into a billion dollar media franchise – run out of their home in Santa Barbara, California. PLUS for our postscript "How You Built That," we check back in with Alexander Van Dewark, who created a portable mat that helps people mix cement without a wheelbarrow or a paddle. (Original Broadcast Date: September 18, 2017.)

George fait sont retour en ce mois de décembre avec des cadeaux plein la hotte pour préparer vos fêtes dans la meilleure ambiance qui soit ! C'est une sorte de calendrier de l'avent musical éclectique et surprenant que vous allez vous mettre entre les oreilles pendant très exactement 59'. Avant de vous proposer par le menu la playlist de ce nouvel épisode de Reprends-moi, George vous propose un intermède humoristique sur les chants de Noël justement... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD9s7Vg-hnQ Sinon, voici quelques nouvelles de Xavier le plagiste : actuellement, il rame quelque part sur la Mer du Nord pour ramener à l'équipe du Tropical Club du saumon de première fraîcheur pour l'aquarium de l'émission.  De son côté Andy en est au troisième remontage des bandes de l'album "Smile" sur lesquelles il a mis la main de façon TOTALEMENT LÉGALE. Et maintenant et sans plus attendre... La playlist  Générique : les Muppets - Ringing of the Bell Tapis musical : The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds Fairuz - Laylit Eid (version originale One Horse Open Sleigh de James Pierpont, 1857) Canned Heat - The Chipmunk song/ Christmas don't be late (version originale de Ross Bagdasarian, 1958) Bande à part - Petit papa Noël (version originale de Tino Rossi, 1946) The Killers - Don't shoot me Santa (George a triché, c'est pas une reprise. Quel coquinou.) Sacha Distel - Noël Blanc (version originale White Christmas de Irvng Berlin, 1940 et interprétée par Bing Crosby en 1941) Ella Fitzgerald - Sleigh Ride (version originale de Leroy Anderson, 1946) Jermaine Dupri et Alicia Keys - Little drummer girl (version originale Little drummer boy de Katherine Kennicot Davis, 1941) Graeme Allwright - Petit garçon (version originale Old toy trains de Roger Miller, 1967) Zooey Deschanel et Leon Redbone - Baby, it's cold outside (version originale de Esther Williams et Ricardo Montalban, 1948) Otis Redding - Merry Christmas, baby (version originale de Johnny Moore 3 Blazers, 1947) Dalida - Vive le vent (version originale One Horse Open Sleigh de James Pierpont, 1857) Olivia Ruiz et Michel Legrand- Le Noël de la rue (version originale d'Edith Piaf, 1951) Bruce Springsteen - Santa Claus is coming to town (version originale de  John Frederick Coots et Haven Gillespie, 1934) Retrouvez l'épisode 2017 de Reprends-moi Spécial Pulls de Noël et musique        

Producer, director, animator and designer Bob Kurtz is my special guest this week. He's worked for many major animation studios including DePatie-Freleng, Jay Ward and Disney. I interviewed him for my upcoming book "Aaaaalllviiinnn: The Story of Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., Liberty Records, Format Films and The Alvin Show", available now for pre-order.

Welcome to day 3 of the 12 Days of Podcasts! Today's recommendation comes from Stacey.

Years after his father created a hit singing group of anthropomorphic rodents called The Chipmunks, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. made it his mission to revive his dad's beloved characters. Over the last 40 years, Ross Jr. and his wife Janice have built The Chipmunks into a billion dollar media franchise – run out of their home in Santa Barbara, California. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," how Daniel Clark-Webster and his three friends came up with RompHim – a company specializing in male rompers.

Trimsaran actually has 808 likes https://www.facebook.com/SpottedInTrimsaran/?fref=ts We're idiots and it took us way too long to figure out that the Cartoons version of the Witch Doctor is a cover of the David Seville version (whose real name is Ross Bagdasarian), who is also the creator of The Chipmunks, of Alvin and The Chipmunks fame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_Doctor_(song) Overcoming Artificial Stupidity - Stephen Wolfram http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/04/overcoming-artificial-stupidity/ As you can probably tell we didn't actually have a guest reporter from Yahoo Finance http://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-now-cheap-even-pirates-120218185.html Also here are the symbols for the quiz so you can play along at home & - Ampersand @ - At % - Percent Ƿƿ - Wynn Þþ - Thorn Ȝȝ - Yogh Ææ - Ash Ðð - Eth Ŋŋ - Eng

Om Eartha Kitt, kattkvinnan som gick i exil. Med gaytenor Rickard Söderberg, tonsättarna Renée Baker och Yvette Jackson. Tredje delen av "När vinden vänder". Birgitta Tollans programserie "När vinden vänder" handlar om människor som lyckades förverkliga sig och sina musikaliska drömmar mot alla odds.Medverkar gör operasångaren och opinionsbildaren Rickard Söderberg från Malmö, dirigenten och tonsättaren Renée Baker från Chicago och ljudkonstnären Yvette Jackson från San Diego.Citat direkt från Eartha Kitt, som skrev fyra självbiografier:Jag är inte kall, bara litet avdomnad ibland och det beror på min barndom.Jag har ingen ras, trosbekännelse eller färg. Jag tillhör alla!Ett av mina motton är att inte vara rädd för mig själv, mina tankar eller mina åsikter.Mitt liv kan summeras i sex ord: Rejected, ejected, dejected, used, accused, abused Avvisad, utstött, nedslagen, begagnad, utpekad, skymfad.Eartha Kitt föds som Eartha Mae Keith 1927. Hennes efternamn är en förkortning av kitten, kattunge, och hennes signum är ett speciellt kurrande läte.Eartha Kitt växer upp under eländiga förhållanden på en bomullsplantage i en liten stad som hette North i South Carolina, i den amerikanska södern. Förmodligen är hon resultatet av en våldtäkt. Hennes mor Anna Mae är en mix av afroamerikansk och Cherokee-indiansk härkomst. Fadern är okänd för henne, förmodligen en vit farmare. Modern döper henne Eartha av jord - eftersom bomullsskörden är bra det året hon föds.När hon är 71 år gammal vänder vinden för Eartha Kitt då hon får reda på sin exakta födelsedatum. Hon sätter igång en rättsprocess för att få namnet på sin biologiske far. Myndigheterna målar dock över faderns namn med svart färg på födelseattesten och förvägrar på så sätt Eartha Kitt att få kännedom om honom. Dottern Kitt Shapiroskriver senare: De skyddade den vite mannen. De hade aldrig gått igenom allt detta besvär för att skydda en svart man.Kitt Shapiro skriver också: Att 1927 i amerikanska Södern vara en ljushudad person bland svarta, var lika fasansfullt som att vara svart bland vita. Eartha kallades den gula flickan och ansågs, fastän hon bara var ett barn, för att tro att hon var förmer än andra. Eartha missbrukades, hon skymfades och blev kränkt och misshandlad både psykiskt och fysiskt.När Eartha Kitt är 8 år vänder vinden för henne, kanske för första gången: modern gifter sig och styvfadern förbjuder Eartha att leva tillsammans med dem eftersom hon är bi racial, alltså av s k blandras. Hon blir omhändertagen av en moster Rosa, vars släktingar dock fortsätter skymfningarna och tvingar barnet Eartha att arbeta på bomullsfälten. Kort därefter avlider Earthas mamma - modern blir dödligt förgiftad.- Åh, jag måste vara försiktig här, förklarar afroamerikanska dirigenten och tonsättarenReneé Baker från Chicago i programmet. Det där med identiteter och att vara sprungen ur två s k raser är fortfarande ett känsligt ämne i USA. Om Eartha Kitt hade varit ljusare, och kunnat passerat som vit, så hade hon kanske haft ett annorlunda liv. Men Eartha var inte vit nog och hade negroida drag. Jag är säker på att Eartha Kitt bar på en osäkerhet eftersom hon inte blev fullt accepterad i något läger, anser Renée Baker.-I USA bestämmer lagen att du skall kategoriseras som svart om du har en enda droppe svart blod i dig. Sanningen är ju att ingen av oss är oblandad. Vad är en ren svart person, vad är en total afroamerikansk människa? De flesta kände inte till att Eartha Kitt var av s k blandras, eftersom svarta människor finns i många olika schatteringar, förklarar Renée BakerLjudkonstnären från San Diego, Yvette Jackson, ser intervjuer med Eartha Kitt på YouTube och blir nyfiken på henne.- Eartha Kitt är originell och gåtfull, säger hon. Hennes unika sätt att kommunicera med rösten, där rytmiken går sin egen väg, hindrar inte att hon framstår som en operadiva.- Jag ser in i hennes fantastiska ögon och hör henne säga väl avvägda ord. Och tänker: vad är det som pågår inom henne? Vilka erfarenheter har lett henne hit? Vad är upphovet till hennes mystik? frågar sig Yvette Jackson, som fascineras av starka, svarta kvinnor som inte är konforma, utan sig själva. Eartha Kitts frimodighet attraherar henne och påminner henne om artisten Grace Jones.Under större delen av 1950- och 60-talen varvar Eartha Kitt jazz- och nattklubbsuppträdanden med filmroller och tv-underhållning. Hon spelar till exempelCat Woman i Läderlappen, uppträder i ett hundratal länder och sjunger på ett tiotal språk, bl a svenska.I Sverige medverkar Eartha Kitt 1962 i tv-programmet Kaskad, producerad av Åke Falck. Det belönas med Guldrosen i Montreux, som bästa underhållningsprogram.1968 blir Eartha Kitt svartlistad i USA efter en alltför frispråkig kritik mot Vietnamkriget. Hon går i exil och lever under tio år i Paris och i London. Vinden vänder igen och i Europa växer hon som artist och i sin integritet.Hemma i USA är det de homosexuella och transsexuella männen som håller Eartha Kitts repertoar vid liv. De köper hennes skivor och mimar till dem på scenerna.Själv förespråkar Eartha Kitt mycket tidigt samkönade äktenskap och hon ger stödkonserter för organisationer som arbetar med HIV/AIDS-frågor. Hon blir även Unicefs taleskvinna för utnyttjade barn.En svensk opinionsbildare i HBTQ-frågor är operasångaren Rickard Söderberg. För honom är Eartha Kitt en stor inspirationskälla.- För henne var det självklart att fylla sitt artister med mening och budskap. Musiken var en plattform för att förändra världen. Eartha Kitt är fullständigt respektlös vad gäller rytm och ton. Hon använder hela röstens register, lågt som högt, och rör sig obehindrat mellan de olika rösterna. Hennes röst ryter och smeker. Ett helt gränslöst musicerande, säger Rickard Söderberg, vars favoritlåtar är C'est si bon och C'est Magnifique.- Vi kan utan tvekan jämföra Eartha Kitt med operasångerskan Maria Callas. De två förändrade sina egna genrer med viljan att gestalta på eget sätt. Många gånger tycker jag Eartha Kitt rent vokalt låter vackrare än Callas gjorde på den gamla tiden. Det får vi bara acceptera. Det är ingen värdering i det. Det är bara så som det är, anser Rickard Söderberg.Många av Eartha Kitts singlar från 50- och 60-talet är djupt sexistiska då hon är tvungen ställa upp på bilder att ligga på golvet på en djurhud med en påk i handen. Typisk rubrik är Sexy brunettes in hi fi.- Bilderna är vidriga, säger Rickard Söderberg. Eartha Kitt blev exotiserad, som om hon vore ett freak. På den här tiden gjorde man det grövre än idag. Hon hade inte lika många val som andra artister på den tiden. Vi upplever dock inte Eartha Kitt som offer. Även om hon stoppas in i en speciell roll i en väldigt könsmaktsordnad miljö, så står hon stark på ett besynnerligt och fantastiskt sätt, anser Rickard Söderberg.1974 vänder vinden igen för Eartha Kitt. Det blir en triumfartade hemkomst från Paris tillBroadway i New York. Hon kallas nu Amerikas Älskarinna och säger själv: A man has always wanted to lay me down but he never wanted to pick me up Män vill alltid lägga ner mig men aldrig lyfta upp mig.Eartha Kitt vinner flera Emmy- och Tony-priser. Hon gör succé med diskolåten Where is My Man som ger henne en guldskiva. Hennes första. Och hösten 2006 är hon med i off-Broadway-musikalen Mimi le Duck.I recensionen i New York Times står att läsa: I föreställningen finns det endast en karaktär som är värd att nämnas: en biroll som lysande spelas av Eartha Kitt, två månader innan hon skall fylla 80 år!Eartha Kitt diagnostiseras med tjocktarmscancer. Den sista tiden arbetar hon aktivt tillsammans med  dottern Kitt Shapiro för att sprida kunskap om sjukdomen. De trycker upp blå band med texten Colon Cancer Awareness Se upp för tjocktarmscancer. Eartha Kitt är en aktivist in i det sista!Eartha Kitt dör juldagen 2008, 81 år gammal. Radiostationer över hela världen spelar då hennes anti-julsång Santa Baby. Låtlista:12:03 Billie Holiday, Harry Edison, Ben Webster, Jimmy Rowles, Barney Kessel, Red Mitchell, Alvin Stoller - Body And Soul Album: Holiday For Lovers Kompositör: Johnny Green Bolag: VERVE 12:05 Eartha Kitt - C'Mon A My House Album: C'Mon A My House Kompositör: Ross Bagdasarian, William Saroyan Bolag: SUBURBAN SQUIRE 12:06 Eartha Kitt, Henri René - Thursday's Child Album: Just An Old Fashioned Girl Kompositör: Elisse Boyd, Murray Grand Bolag: ARIOLA EXPRESS 12:08 Eartha Kitt, Danny James - The Blues Album: Eartha Kitt Live On Broadway Kompositör: Duke Ellington Bolag: CHANT DU MONDE               12:10 Eartha Kitt - My Heart Belongs To Daddy Album: My Greatest Songs Kompositör: Cole Porter Bolag: RCA 12:18 Eartha Kitt - Oh John Please Don'T Kiss Me Album: Oh John Please Don'T Kiss Me Kompositör: Fred Ebb, Phil Springer Bolag: HHH LICENSING 12:23 Grace Jones - Walking In The Rain Album: Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions (2) Kompositör: Harry Vanda, George Young Bolag: ISLAND 12:25 Eartha Kitt, Danny James - I Want To Be Evil Album: Eartha Kitt Live On Broadway Kompositör: Lester Judson, Raymond Taylor Bolag: CHANT DU MONDE 12:27 Eartha Kitt, Sanford Gold, Egon Kjerrman - Rosenkyssar Album: Minns Vårt 50-Tal Kompositör: Åke Gerhard Bolag: EMI 12:29 Eartha Kitt - Just An Old-Fashioned Girl Album: My Greatest Songs Kompositör: Marv Fisher Bolag: RCA  12:32 Rickard Söderberg - Juditha Triumphans Devicta Holofernis Barbarie: Nr 27 Del 2, "Armatae Face" Album: Castrato Arias Kompositör: Antonio Vivaldi Bolag: RICKARD SÖDERBERG 12:35 Eartha Kitt - C'Est Si Bon Album: Something's Gotta Give Kompositör: Henri Betti Bolag: COLUMBIA 12:39 Eartha Kitt, Tony Osborne - C'Est Magnifique Album: C'Est Magnifique Kompositör: Cole Porter Bolag: COLUMBIA 12:44 Eartha Kitt, Bronski Beat - My Discarded Men Album: I'M Still Here Kompositör: Steve Bronski, Eartha Kitt Bolag: ARIOLA 12:47 Maria Callas, Georges Pretre, Franska Radions Nationalorkester (Paris) - Carmen: Nr 5, Akt 1, "L'Amour Est Un Oiseau Rebelle" Album: La Divina Kompositör: Georges Bizet Bolag: EMI 12:50 Eartha Kitt, Danny James - Uska Dara Album: Eartha Kitt Live On Broadway Kompositör: Trad Från Turkiet Bolag: CHANT DU MONDE 12:54 Eartha Kitt - Where Is My Man Album: Where Is My Man Kompositör: Jacques Morali, Bruce Vilanch, Fred Zarr Bolag: MEGA 12:56 Eartha Kitt - Santa Baby Album: Driving Miss Daisy Kompositör: Joan Javits, Philip Springer, Tony Springer Bolag: VARESE SARABANDE

Luke met up with Ross Bagdasarian and Janice Karmen, the creators of the new Alvin and the Chipmunk movie, to talk about the latest film, Chipwrecked.