Podcasts about Sir Douglas Quintet

Nueva entrega de los Hits del Billboard, una serie mensual dedicada a recordar singles que alcanzaron su puesto más alto en listas de pop de EEUU en este mismo mes de hace 60 años.Playlist;(sintonía) HERB ALPERT’S TIJUANA BRASS “Whipped cream” (top 69)HERMAN’S HERMITS “Mrs. Brown, You've got a lovely daughter” (top 1)THE BEATLES “Ticket to ride” (top 1)THE BEACH BOYS “Help me Rhonda” (top 1)MARVIN GAYE “I’ll be doggone” (top 8)THE TEMPTATIONS “It’s growing” (top 18)THE MIRACLES “Ooo baby baby” (top 16)THE ROLLING STONES “The last time” (top 9)THEM “Gloria” (top 71)GEORGIE FAME and THE BLUE FLAMES “In the meantime” (top 97)TOM JONES “It’s not unusual” (top 10)GARY LEWIS and THE PLAYBOYS “Count me in” (top 2)SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET “She’s about a mover” (top 13)BOB DYLAN “Subterranean homesick blues” (top 39)THE SEEKERS “I’ll never find another you” (top 4)SOLOMON BURKE “Got to get you off my mind” (top 22)SAM COOKE “It’s got the whole world shakin’” (top 41)THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS “Just once in my life” (top 9)Escuchar audio

Con Van Morrison, The Four Tops, Roberta Flack, Gilbert O´Sullivan, Biz Markie, Garth Brooks, Johnny Lee, Alan Jackson, The Lemon Twigs, Dough Sham & the Sir Douglas Quintet, Roberto Vecchioni y Mina.

Lee and Daniel pay a bit of tribute to the recently departed Gene Hackman by talking briefly about what he meant to each of them, and then covering a film he appeared in before he hit it big in "The French Connection". The film in question is the Bill Norton-directed "Cisco Pike" (1971), which was a tailor-made debut film for then upcoming musician Kris Kristofferson. The hosts conversation revolve around this film's place in the series of counterculture films that came in the wake of "Easy Rider", the overall vibe of the film, and the familiar character actors that pop up, as well as Gene Hackman making way more out of his role than one would think was needed. The hosts also talk about what they've watched as of late. "Cisco Pike" IMDB  Catch out Lee on the latest Cinema Beef and a recent Everything I learned From Movies.   Catch Daniel on I Don't Speak German.  Featured Music: "Michoacan" by The Sir Douglas Quintet & "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever do Again)" by Kris Kristofferson.

note from the archivist: Jimmy did not write episode notes for the remaining episodes artwork by Dakota (@DEEP_RED_BELLS) Songs: When You See Those Flying Saucers by the Buchanan Brothers Lawd, I'm Just a Country Boy in This Great Big Freaky City by the Sir Douglas Quintet

Tomamos conciencia de los kilitos de más que hemos pillado este verano. Por ello planteamos una sesión de ejercicios para ponernos en forma a ritmo de rocknroll y resistir las tentaciones culinarias. Una divertida sesión sin más pretensión que pasar un buen rato, que eso también es sano.Playlist;(sintonía) LINK WRAY “Fat back”THE MORELLS “Gettin’ in shape”FATS DOMINO “Hey Fat Man”LOUIS JORDAN and THE TYMPANY FIVE “You’re much too fat and that’s that”THE DOVELLS “You can’t sit down”JEANETTE BABY WASHINGTON “Move on”SIMON SCOTT and THE LE ROYS “Move it baby”LARRY WILLIAMS “Short fat Fanny”DON COVAY “Fat man”THE ROCKYFELLERS “Don’t sit down”RAY SANDERS “Karate”CHUCK GALLEGOS and THE FABULOUS CYCLONES “Chilli beans”SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET “Bacon fat”THE MARATHONS “Peanut butter”TOMMY HANCOCK “Tacos for two”HASIL ADKINS “No more hot dogs”THE STRANGELOVES “I want candy”THE FUZILLIS “Pizza sure is good”RANGONES “Viciado en sanduich”BOBBY RAMONE “I don’t wanna stand up”THE UNTAMED YOUTH “Beer bust blues”TOMMY and THE ROCKETS “Beer fun and rocknroll”Escuchar audio

Mark, Lou, and Perry talk about The Sir Douglas Quintet and CCR also Desmond Child plus music trivia, random relish,newsfeed topics and much more.. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/perry--dedovitch/message

It's a whole lotta fuzz on this garage rock heavy episode of Punks in Parkas!Hear tracks from the likes of Sir Douglas Quintet, ? and the Mysterians, The Castaways and more!Tune into new broadcasts of Punks In Parkas, Every Monday from Midday – 1 PM EST / 5 - 6 PM GMTFor more info visit: https://thefaceradio.com/punks-in-parkas//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's early February, and time for love & conversation ... so this week's song is the 1965 classic "She's About A Mover" by the Sir Douglas Quintet (2:57). A simple groove, great manly singing from SIr Doug himself, and a cavernous, carnivalesque organ sound will keep this in the canon for years to come. The song migrated to Germany later in the year and The Boots gave it a good home (42:29). The organ is comparatively chintzy & warbly, but this is a remarkable raucous racket with strangled, snotty vocals and sloppy, sporadic shakers! The pride of Ste. Hycanithe, Quebec are up next, Les Hou-Lops (58:27). They don't worry about what Doug Sahm said and create a sharp French language version with an acoustic axe subbing for the organ riff. Sounds better than it sounds!!  The filthy fourth is a WILD version by The Alarm Clocks (1:18:16). This is the most garage version here, so lissen up! Lastly but not leastly is a totally unique version by Dottie Cambridge (1:40:06). The most kinetic version - soulful vocals, guitar stings, horns, a funky drum breakdown, all under 2 minutes!! And we did it all under two hours!!!

Starting with the salutary opening voice over: “The Sir Douglas Quintet is back, we'd like to thank all our beautiful friends all over the country and all the beautiful vibrations, we love you…” - this Tex-Mex, flower-power rave up let's you know that you're in for a groovy ride. Doug Sahm's Tejana inflected combo from the borderlands broke up after their weed bust, and he relocated to the Bay Area where his head was turned around by the Hippies up there. Inspired by what he was experiencing, he re-recruited 3 of his original compatriots, including his childhood friend, the sizzling Vox organist, Augie Myers, and they produced this powerful tribute to the Northern California scene. I didn't know much about this group, and what I did know was fabricated. They were dubbed The Sir Douglas Quintet by their record producer in order to capitalize on the British Invasion juggernaut that was happening in '65, and their first single, She's About a Mover struck gold. That's all I knew until I heard this anthem with its indelible organ riff, and then my radar was properly installed. Years later, when Sundazed released The Mono Singles '68-'72 I immediately bought it and it overstimulated my CD player. What a collection! Every cut is a gem.The one time child prodigy who appeared with Hank Williams at the age of 12, before the Hillbilly Shakespeare met his untimely fate, also died too young. Doug Sahm was only 58 when he passed, but he left behind a trove of unforgettable music.

This week it is another listerner's pick as we dig into the debut solo LP by Texas music legend Doug Sahm, 1972's Doug Sahm and Band. Doug Sahm was by all accounts a musical prodigy, having mastered the guitar, steel guitar, mandolin, and fiddle by age 8. Born and raised in San Antonio, TX, Sahm was attracted to a variety of music: blues from the black clubs of his neighborhood, the  horn heavy conjunto music of the west side, country, polka, rock n' roll, really anything that had soul. Like a sponge, Sahm soaked it all up and used it to create his own sound, first with the Sir Douglas Quintet and later on his own as a solo artist, that was a unique blending of all of it. For his first real solo effort Doug Sahm and Band, Sahm was joined by one heck of a studio band, with Bob Dylan, Dr. John, David "Fathead" Newman, Flaco Jimenez, David Bromberg and Kenny Kosek (to name a few). Instead the ego driven mess this could have been, the album is a fun and energetic romp that  draws upon all of his musical influences. Its eclectic and its a joy to listen to. 

Singles Going Around- Summer In The CityMC5- "Kick Out The James" (Preview Pressing)The 13th Floor Elevators- "Slip Inside This House"The Beach Boys- "Never Learn Not To Love"The Coasters- "Poison Ivy"The Rolling Stones- "Bitch"Sir Douglas Quintet- "Mendicino"Paul McCartney- "Do You"Nirvana- "Sliver"The Doors- "Twentieth Century Fox"Dr John- "Jump Sturdy"The Beatles- "If I Needed Someone"Billy Joel- "Don't Ask Me Why"The Drifters- "Some Kind of Wonderful"The Beach Boys- "Let Him Run Wild"The Band- "Look Out Cleveland"Blossom Dearie- "I Hear Music"The Beach Boys- "I Was Made To Love Her"The Association- "Along Comes Mary"Dr John- "I Walk On Guilded Splinters"

There are good reasons why Freddie Steady Krc has a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Academy of Music, a Texas Tornado Award from Buddy Magazine, and is in the Texas Music Hall of Fame. His rich musical history all comes together in Freddie Steady's Wild Country project, a setting in which the music of his many incarnations all comes together. Krc (rhymes with search) landed in Austin at the moment that a musical revolution was getting started at a styles-don't-matter joint called the Armadillo. By the time he hit town, he was also passionate about the Tex-Mex mix of the Sir Douglas Quintet (his first concert), the psychedelic sounds of rock innovators the 13th Floor Elevators, and the soulful folk of singer/songwriters like B. W. Stevenson and Jerry Jeff Walker. Session drumming includes studio work with everyone from Sir Douglas Quintet's Augie Meyers to Carole King, Pink Floyd's Roger Waters to The Faces' Ronnie Lane. Freddie's greatest stage memories include performing for Presidents Clinton and Ford, drumming gigs with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and with legendary San Francisco's Charlatans at Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His dozens of credits as a record producer include Peter Lewis of Moby Grape, Sal Valentino of The Beau Brummels, and Al Staehely of Spirit. https://www.freddiesteadykrc.com The Arwen Lewis Show Host | Arwen Lewis Executive Producer | Jeremiah D. Higgins Producer - Sound Engineer - Richard “Dr. D” Dugan https://arwenlewismusic.com/ www.thejeremiahshow.com @jeremiahdhiggins https://linktr.ee/jeremiahdhiggins

Episode 166 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Crossroads", Cream, the myth of Robert Johnson, and whether white men can sing the blues. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-eight-minute bonus episode available, on “Tip-Toe Thru' the Tulips" by Tiny Tim. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I talk about an interview with Clapton from 1967, I meant 1968. I mention a Graham Bond live recording from 1953, and of course meant 1963. I say Paul Jones was on vocals in the Powerhouse sessions. Steve Winwood was on vocals, and Jones was on harmonica. Resources As I say at the end, the main resource you need to get if you enjoyed this episode is Brother Robert by Annye Anderson, Robert Johnson's stepsister. There are three Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Cream, Robert Johnson, John Mayall, and Graham Bond excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here -- one, two, three. This article on Mack McCormick gives a fuller explanation of the problems with his research and behaviour. The other books I used for the Robert Johnson sections were McCormick's Biography of a Phantom; Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson, by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow; Searching for Robert Johnson by Peter Guralnick; and Escaping the Delta by Elijah Wald. I can recommend all of these subject to the caveats at the end of the episode. The information on the history and prehistory of the Delta blues mostly comes from Before Elvis by Larry Birnbaum, with some coming from Charley Patton by John Fahey. The information on Cream comes mostly from Cream: How Eric Clapton Took the World by Storm by Dave Thompson. I also used Ginger Baker: Hellraiser by Ginger Baker and Ginette Baker, Mr Showbiz by Stephen Dando-Collins, Motherless Child by Paul Scott, and  Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. The best collection of Cream's work is the four-CD set Those Were the Days, which contains every track the group ever released while they were together (though only the stereo mixes of the albums, and a couple of tracks are in slightly different edits from the originals). You can get Johnson's music on many budget compilation records, as it's in the public domain in the EU, but the double CD collection produced by Steve LaVere for Sony in 2011 is, despite the problems that come from it being associated with LaVere, far and away the best option -- the remasters have a clarity that's worlds ahead of even the 1990s CD version it replaced. And for a good single-CD introduction to the Delta blues musicians and songsters who were Johnson's peers and inspirations, Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson, compiled by Elijah Wald as a companion to his book on Johnson, can't be beaten, and contains many of the tracks excerpted in this episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start, a quick note that this episode contains discussion of racism, drug addiction, and early death. There's also a brief mention of death in childbirth and infant mortality. It's been a while since we looked at the British blues movement, and at the blues in general, so some of you may find some of what follows familiar, as we're going to look at some things we've talked about previously, but from a different angle. In 1968, the Bonzo Dog Band, a comedy musical band that have been described as the missing link between the Beatles and the Monty Python team, released a track called "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?": [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Band, "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?"] That track was mocking a discussion that was very prominent in Britain's music magazines around that time. 1968 saw the rise of a *lot* of British bands who started out as blues bands, though many of them went on to different styles of music -- Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, Chicken Shack and others were all becoming popular among the kind of people who read the music magazines, and so the question was being asked -- can white men sing the blues? Of course, the answer to that question was obvious. After all, white men *invented* the blues. Before we get any further at all, I have to make clear that I do *not* mean that white people created blues music. But "the blues" as a category, and particularly the idea of it as a music made largely by solo male performers playing guitar... that was created and shaped by the actions of white male record executives. There is no consensus as to when or how the blues as a genre started -- as we often say in this podcast "there is no first anything", but like every genre it seems to have come from multiple sources. In the case of the blues, there's probably some influence from African music by way of field chants sung by enslaved people, possibly some influence from Arabic music as well, definitely some influence from the Irish and British folk songs that by the late nineteenth century were developing into what we now call country music, a lot from ragtime, and a lot of influence from vaudeville and minstrel songs -- which in turn themselves were all very influenced by all those other things. Probably the first published composition to show any real influence of the blues is from 1904, a ragtime piano piece by James Chapman and Leroy Smith, "One O' Them Things": [Excerpt: "One O' Them Things"] That's not very recognisable as a blues piece yet, but it is more-or-less a twelve-bar blues. But the blues developed, and it developed as a result of a series of commercial waves. The first of these came in 1914, with the success of W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues", which when it was recorded by the Victor Military Band for a phonograph cylinder became what is generally considered the first blues record proper: [Excerpt: The Victor Military Band, "Memphis Blues"] The famous dancers Vernon and Irene Castle came up with a dance, the foxtrot -- which Vernon Castle later admitted was largely inspired by Black dancers -- to be danced to the "Memphis Blues", and the foxtrot soon overtook the tango, which the Castles had introduced to the US the previous year, to become the most popular dance in America for the best part of three decades. And with that came an explosion in blues in the Handy style, cranked out by every music publisher. While the blues was a style largely created by Black performers and writers, the segregated nature of the American music industry at the time meant that most vocal performances of these early blues that were captured on record were by white performers, Black vocalists at this time only rarely getting the chance to record. The first blues record with a Black vocalist is also technically the first British blues record. A group of Black musicians, apparently mostly American but led by a Jamaican pianist, played at Ciro's Club in London, and recorded many tracks in Britain, under a name which I'm not going to say in full -- it started with Ciro's Club, and continued alliteratively with another word starting with C, a slur for Black people. In 1917 they recorded a vocal version of "St. Louis Blues", another W.C. Handy composition: [Excerpt: Ciro's Club C**n Orchestra, "St. Louis Blues"] The first American Black blues vocal didn't come until two years later, when Bert Williams, a Black minstrel-show performer who like many Black performers of his era performed in blackface even though he was Black, recorded “I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,” [Excerpt: Bert Williams, "I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,”] But it wasn't until 1920 that the second, bigger, wave of popularity started for the blues, and this time it started with the first record of a Black *woman* singing the blues -- Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] You can hear the difference between that and anything we've heard up to that point -- that's the first record that anyone from our perspective, a hundred and three years later, would listen to and say that it bore any resemblance to what we think of as the blues -- so much so that many places still credit it as the first ever blues record. And there's a reason for that. "Crazy Blues" was one of those records that separates the music industry into before and after, like "Rock Around the Clock", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", Sgt Pepper, or "Rapper's Delight". It sold seventy-five thousand copies in its first month -- a massive number by the standards of 1920 -- and purportedly went on to sell over a million copies. Sales figures and market analysis weren't really a thing in the same way in 1920, but even so it became very obvious that "Crazy Blues" was a big hit, and that unlike pretty much any other previous records, it was a big hit among Black listeners, which meant that there was a market for music aimed at Black people that was going untapped. Soon all the major record labels were setting up subsidiaries devoted to what they called "race music", music made by and for Black people. And this sees the birth of what is now known as "classic blues", but at the time (and for decades after) was just what people thought of when they thought of "the blues" as a genre. This was music primarily sung by female vaudeville artists backed by jazz bands, people like Ma Rainey (whose earliest recordings featured Louis Armstrong in her backing band): [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider Blues"] And Bessie Smith, the "Empress of the Blues", who had a massive career in the 1920s before the Great Depression caused many of these "race record" labels to fold, but who carried on performing well into the 1930s -- her last recording was in 1933, produced by John Hammond, with a backing band including Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Give Me a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer"] It wouldn't be until several years after the boom started by Mamie Smith that any record companies turned to recording Black men singing the blues accompanied by guitar or banjo. The first record of this type is probably "Norfolk Blues" by Reese DuPree from 1924: [Excerpt: Reese DuPree, "Norfolk Blues"] And there were occasional other records of this type, like "Airy Man Blues" by Papa Charlie Jackson, who was advertised as the “only man living who sings, self-accompanied, for Blues records.” [Excerpt: Papa Charlie Jackson, "Airy Man Blues"] But contrary to the way these are seen today, at the time they weren't seen as being in some way "authentic", or "folk music". Indeed, there are many quotes from folk-music collectors of the time (sadly all of them using so many slurs that it's impossible for me to accurately quote them) saying that when people sang the blues, that wasn't authentic Black folk music at all but an adulteration from commercial music -- they'd clearly, according to these folk-music scholars, learned the blues style from records and sheet music rather than as part of an oral tradition. Most of these performers were people who recorded blues as part of a wider range of material, like Blind Blake, who recorded some blues music but whose best work was his ragtime guitar instrumentals: [Excerpt: Blind Blake, "Southern Rag"] But it was when Blind Lemon Jefferson started recording for Paramount records in 1926 that the image of the blues as we now think of it took shape. His first record, "Got the Blues", was a massive success: [Excerpt: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Got the Blues"] And this resulted in many labels, especially Paramount, signing up pretty much every Black man with a guitar they could find in the hopes of finding another Blind Lemon Jefferson. But the thing is, this generation of people making blues records, and the generation that followed them, didn't think of themselves as "blues singers" or "bluesmen". They were songsters. Songsters were entertainers, and their job was to sing and play whatever the audiences would want to hear. That included the blues, of course, but it also included... well, every song anyone would want to hear.  They'd perform old folk songs, vaudeville songs, songs that they'd heard on the radio or the jukebox -- whatever the audience wanted. Robert Johnson, for example, was known to particularly love playing polka music, and also adored the records of Jimmie Rodgers, the first country music superstar. In 1941, when Alan Lomax first recorded Muddy Waters, he asked Waters what kind of songs he normally played in performances, and he was given a list that included "Home on the Range", Gene Autry's "I've Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle", and Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". We have few recordings of these people performing this kind of song though. One of the few we have is Big Bill Broonzy, who was just about the only artist of this type not to get pigeonholed as just a blues singer, even though blues is what made him famous, and who later in his career managed to record songs like the Tin Pan Alley standard "The Glory of Love": [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "The Glory of Love"] But for the most part, the image we have of the blues comes down to one man, Arthur Laibley, a sales manager for the Wisconsin Chair Company. The Wisconsin Chair Company was, as the name would suggest, a company that started out making wooden chairs, but it had branched out into other forms of wooden furniture -- including, for a brief time, large wooden phonographs. And, like several other manufacturers, like the Radio Corporation of America -- RCA -- and the Gramophone Company, which became EMI, they realised that if they were going to sell the hardware it made sense to sell the software as well, and had started up Paramount Records, which bought up a small label, Black Swan, and soon became the biggest manufacturer of records for the Black market, putting out roughly a quarter of all "race records" released between 1922 and 1932. At first, most of these were produced by a Black talent scout, J. Mayo Williams, who had been the first person to record Ma Rainey, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, but in 1927 Williams left Paramount, and the job of supervising sessions went to Arthur Laibley, though according to some sources a lot of the actual production work was done by Aletha Dickerson, Williams' former assistant, who was almost certainly the first Black woman to be what we would now think of as a record producer. Williams had been interested in recording all kinds of music by Black performers, but when Laibley got a solo Black man into the studio, what he wanted more than anything was for him to record the blues, ideally in a style as close as possible to that of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Laibley didn't have a very hands-on approach to recording -- indeed Paramount had very little concern about the quality of their product anyway, and Paramount's records are notorious for having been put out on poor-quality shellac and recorded badly -- and he only occasionally made actual suggestions as to what kind of songs his performers should write -- for example he asked Son House to write something that sounded like Blind Lemon Jefferson, which led to House writing and recording "Mississippi County Farm Blues", which steals the tune of Jefferson's "See That My Grave is Kept Clean": [Excerpt: Son House, "Mississippi County Farm Blues"] When Skip James wanted to record a cover of James Wiggins' "Forty-Four Blues", Laibley suggested that instead he should do a song about a different gun, and so James recorded "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues"] And Laibley also suggested that James write a song about the Depression, which led to one of the greatest blues records ever, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues"] These musicians knew that they were getting paid only for issued sides, and that Laibley wanted only blues from them, and so that's what they gave him. Even when it was a performer like Charlie Patton. (Incidentally, for those reading this as a transcript rather than listening to it, Patton's name is more usually spelled ending in ey, but as far as I can tell ie was his preferred spelling and that's what I'm using). Charlie Patton was best known as an entertainer, first and foremost -- someone who would do song-and-dance routines, joke around, play guitar behind his head. He was a clown on stage, so much so that when Son House finally heard some of Patton's records, in the mid-sixties, decades after the fact, he was astonished that Patton could actually play well. Even though House had been in the room when some of the records were made, his memory of Patton was of someone who acted the fool on stage. That's definitely not the impression you get from the Charlie Patton on record: [Excerpt: Charlie Patton, "Poor Me"] Patton is, as far as can be discerned, the person who was most influential in creating the music that became called the "Delta blues". Not a lot is known about Patton's life, but he was almost certainly the half-brother of the Chatmon brothers, who made hundreds of records, most notably as members of the Mississippi Sheiks: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Sheiks, "Sitting on Top of the World"] In the 1890s, Patton's family moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi, and he lived in and around that county until his death in 1934. Patton learned to play guitar from a musician called Henry Sloan, and then Patton became a mentor figure to a *lot* of other musicians in and around the plantation on which his family lived. Some of the musicians who grew up in the immediate area around Patton included Tommy Johnson: [Excerpt: Tommy Johnson, "Big Road Blues"] Pops Staples: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken"] Robert Johnson: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Crossroads"] Willie Brown, a musician who didn't record much, but who played a lot with Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson and who we just heard Johnson sing about: [Excerpt: Willie Brown, "M&O Blues"] And Chester Burnett, who went on to become known as Howlin' Wolf, and whose vocal style was equally inspired by Patton and by the country star Jimmie Rodgers: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightnin'"] Once Patton started his own recording career for Paramount, he also started working as a talent scout for them, and it was him who brought Son House to Paramount. Soon after the Depression hit, Paramount stopped recording, and so from 1930 through 1934 Patton didn't make any records. He was tracked down by an A&R man in January 1934 and recorded one final session: [Excerpt, Charlie Patton, "34 Blues"] But he died of heart failure two months later. But his influence spread through his proteges, and they themselves influenced other musicians from the area who came along a little after, like Robert Lockwood and Muddy Waters. This music -- or that portion of it that was considered worth recording by white record producers, only a tiny, unrepresentative, portion of their vast performing repertoires -- became known as the Delta Blues, and when some of these musicians moved to Chicago and started performing with electric instruments, it became Chicago Blues. And as far as people like John Mayall in Britain were concerned, Delta and Chicago Blues *were* the blues: [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "It Ain't Right"] John Mayall was one of the first of the British blues obsessives, and for a long time thought of himself as the only one. While we've looked before at the growth of the London blues scene, Mayall wasn't from London -- he was born in Macclesfield and grew up in Cheadle Hulme, both relatively well-off suburbs of Manchester, and after being conscripted and doing two years in the Army, he had become an art student at Manchester College of Art, what is now Manchester Metropolitan University. Mayall had been a blues fan from the late 1940s, writing off to the US to order records that hadn't been released in the UK, and by most accounts by the late fifties he'd put together the biggest blues collection in Britain by quite some way. Not only that, but he had one of the earliest home tape recorders, and every night he would record radio stations from Continental Europe which were broadcasting for American service personnel, so he'd amassed mountains of recordings, often unlabelled, of obscure blues records that nobody else in the UK knew about. He was also an accomplished pianist and guitar player, and in 1956 he and his drummer friend Peter Ward had put together a band called the Powerhouse Four (the other two members rotated on a regular basis) mostly to play lunchtime jazz sessions at the art college. Mayall also started putting on jam sessions at a youth club in Wythenshawe, where he met another drummer named Hughie Flint. Over the late fifties and into the early sixties, Mayall more or less by himself built up a small blues scene in Manchester. The Manchester blues scene was so enthusiastic, in fact, that when the American Folk Blues Festival, an annual European tour which initially featured Willie Dixon, Memhis Slim, T-Bone Walker, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and John Lee Hooker, first toured Europe, the only UK date it played was at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, and people like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jimmy Page had to travel up from London to see it. But still, the number of blues fans in Manchester, while proportionally large, was objectively small enough that Mayall was captivated by an article in Melody Maker which talked about Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies' new band Blues Incorporated and how it was playing electric blues, the same music he was making in Manchester. He later talked about how the article had made him think that maybe now people would know what he was talking about. He started travelling down to London to play gigs for the London blues scene, and inviting Korner up to Manchester to play shows there. Soon Mayall had moved down to London. Korner introduced Mayall to Davey Graham, the great folk guitarist, with whom Korner had recently recorded as a duo: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, "3/4 AD"] Mayall and Graham performed together as a duo for a while, but Graham was a natural solo artist if ever there was one. Slowly Mayall put a band together in London. On drums was his old friend Peter Ward, who'd moved down from Manchester with him. On bass was John McVie, who at the time knew nothing about blues -- he'd been playing in a Shadows-style instrumental group -- but Mayall gave him a stack of blues records to listen to to get the feeling. And on guitar was Bernie Watson, who had previously played with Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. In late 1963, Mike Vernon, a blues fan who had previously published a Yardbirds fanzine, got a job working for Decca records, and immediately started signing his favourite acts from the London blues circuit. The first act he signed was John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and they recorded a single, "Crawling up a Hill": [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "Crawling up a Hill (45 version)"] Mayall later called that a "clumsy, half-witted attempt at autobiographical comment", and it sold only five hundred copies. It would be the only record the Bluesbreakers would make with Watson, who soon left the band to be replaced by Roger Dean (not the same Roger Dean who later went on to design prog rock album covers). The second group to be signed by Mike Vernon to Decca was the Graham Bond Organisation. We've talked about the Graham Bond Organisation in passing several times, but not for a while and not in any great detail, so it's worth pulling everything we've said about them so far together and going through it in a little more detail. The Graham Bond Organisation, like the Rolling Stones, grew out of Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. As we heard in the episode on "I Wanna Be Your Man" a couple of years ago, Blues Incorporated had been started by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, and at the time we're joining them in 1962 featured a drummer called Charlie Watts, a pianist called Dave Stevens, and saxophone player Dick Heckstall-Smith, as well as frequent guest performers like a singer who called himself Mike Jagger, and another one, Roderick Stewart. That group finally found themselves the perfect bass player when Dick Heckstall-Smith put together a one-off group of jazz players to play an event at Cambridge University. At the gig, a little Scottish man came up to the group and told them he played bass and asked if he could sit in. They told him to bring along his instrument to their second set, that night, and he did actually bring along a double bass. Their bluff having been called, they decided to play the most complicated, difficult, piece they knew in order to throw the kid off -- the drummer, a trad jazz player named Ginger Baker, didn't like performing with random sit-in guests -- but astonishingly he turned out to be really good. Heckstall-Smith took down the bass player's name and phone number and invited him to a jam session with Blues Incorporated. After that jam session, Jack Bruce quickly became the group's full-time bass player. Bruce had started out as a classical cellist, but had switched to the double bass inspired by Bach, who he referred to as "the guv'nor of all bass players". His playing up to this point had mostly been in trad jazz bands, and he knew nothing of the blues, but he quickly got the hang of the genre. Bruce's first show with Blues Incorporated was a BBC recording: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, "Hoochie Coochie Man (BBC session)"] According to at least one source it was not being asked to take part in that session that made young Mike Jagger decide there was no future for him with Blues Incorporated and to spend more time with his other group, the Rollin' Stones. Soon after, Charlie Watts would join him, for almost the opposite reason -- Watts didn't want to be in a band that was getting as big as Blues Incorporated were. They were starting to do more BBC sessions and get more gigs, and having to join the Musicians' Union. That seemed like a lot of work. Far better to join a band like the Rollin' Stones that wasn't going anywhere. Because of Watts' decision to give up on potential stardom to become a Rollin' Stone, they needed a new drummer, and luckily the best drummer on the scene was available. But then the best drummer on the scene was *always* available. Ginger Baker had first played with Dick Heckstall-Smith several years earlier, in a trad group called the Storyville Jazzmen. There Baker had become obsessed with the New Orleans jazz drummer Baby Dodds, who had played with Louis Armstrong in the 1920s. Sadly because of 1920s recording technology, he hadn't been able to play a full kit on the recordings with Armstrong, being limited to percussion on just a woodblock, but you can hear his drumming style much better in this version of "At the Jazz Band Ball" from 1947, with Mugsy Spanier, Jack Teagarden, Cyrus St. Clair and Hank Duncan: [Excerpt: "At the Jazz Band Ball"] Baker had taken Dobbs' style and run with it, and had quickly become known as the single best player, bar none, on the London jazz scene -- he'd become an accomplished player in multiple styles, and was also fluent in reading music and arranging. He'd also, though, become known as the single person on the entire scene who was most difficult to get along with. He resigned from his first band onstage, shouting "You can stick your band up your arse", after the band's leader had had enough of him incorporating bebop influences into their trad style. Another time, when touring with Diz Disley's band, he was dumped in Germany with no money and no way to get home, because the band were so sick of him. Sometimes this was because of his temper and his unwillingness to suffer fools -- and he saw everyone else he ever met as a fool -- and sometimes it was because of his own rigorous musical ideas. He wanted to play music *his* way, and wouldn't listen to anyone who told him different. Both of these things got worse after he fell under the influence of a man named Phil Seaman, one of the only drummers that Baker respected at all. Seaman introduced Baker to African drumming, and Baker started incorporating complex polyrhythms into his playing as a result. Seaman also though introduced Baker to heroin, and while being a heroin addict in the UK in the 1960s was not as difficult as it later became -- both heroin and cocaine were available on prescription to registered addicts, and Baker got both, which meant that many of the problems that come from criminalisation of these drugs didn't affect addicts in the same way -- but it still did not, by all accounts, make him an easier person to get along with. But he *was* a fantastic drummer. As Dick Heckstall-Smith said "With the advent of Ginger, the classic Blues Incorporated line-up, one which I think could not be bettered, was set" But Alexis Korner decided that the group could be bettered, and he had some backers within the band. One of the other bands on the scene was the Don Rendell Quintet, a group that played soul jazz -- that style of jazz that bridged modern jazz and R&B, the kind of music that Ray Charles and Herbie Hancock played: [Excerpt: The Don Rendell Quintet, "Manumission"] The Don Rendell Quintet included a fantastic multi-instrumentalist, Graham Bond, who doubled on keyboards and saxophone, and Bond had been playing occasional experimental gigs with the Johnny Burch Octet -- a group led by another member of the Rendell Quartet featuring Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, Baker, and a few other musicians, doing wholly-improvised music. Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, and Baker all enjoyed playing with Bond, and when Korner decided to bring him into the band, they were all very keen. But Cyril Davies, the co-leader of the band with Korner, was furious at the idea. Davies wanted to play strict Chicago and Delta blues, and had no truck with other forms of music like R&B and jazz. To his mind it was bad enough that they had a sax player. But the idea that they would bring in Bond, who played sax and... *Hammond* organ? Well, that was practically blasphemy. Davies quit the group at the mere suggestion. Bond was soon in the band, and he, Bruce, and Baker were playing together a *lot*. As well as performing with Blues Incorporated, they continued playing in the Johnny Burch Octet, and they also started performing as the Graham Bond Trio. Sometimes the Graham Bond Trio would be Blues Incorporated's opening act, and on more than one occasion the Graham Bond Trio, Blues Incorporated, and the Johnny Burch Octet all had gigs in different parts of London on the same night and they'd have to frantically get from one to the other. The Graham Bond Trio also had fans in Manchester, thanks to the local blues scene there and their connection with Blues Incorporated, and one night in February 1963 the trio played a gig there. They realised afterwards that by playing as a trio they'd made £70, when they were lucky to make £20 from a gig with Blues Incorporated or the Octet, because there were so many members in those bands. Bond wanted to make real money, and at the next rehearsal of Blues Incorporated he announced to Korner that he, Bruce, and Baker were quitting the band -- which was news to Bruce and Baker, who he hadn't bothered consulting. Baker, indeed, was in the toilet when the announcement was made and came out to find it a done deal. He was going to kick up a fuss and say he hadn't been consulted, but Korner's reaction sealed the deal. As Baker later said "‘he said “it's really good you're doing this thing with Graham, and I wish you the best of luck” and all that. And it was a bit difficult to turn round and say, “Well, I don't really want to leave the band, you know.”'" The Graham Bond Trio struggled at first to get the gigs they were expecting, but that started to change when in April 1963 they became the Graham Bond Quartet, with the addition of virtuoso guitarist John McLaughlin. The Quartet soon became one of the hottest bands on the London R&B scene, and when Duffy Power, a Larry Parnes teen idol who wanted to move into R&B, asked his record label to get him a good R&B band to back him on a Beatles cover, it was the Graham Bond Quartet who obliged: [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "I Saw Her Standing There"] The Quartet also backed Power on a package tour with other Parnes acts, but they were also still performing their own blend of hard jazz and blues, as can be heard in this recording of the group live in June 1953: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Quartet, "Ho Ho Country Kicking Blues (Live at Klooks Kleek)"] But that lineup of the group didn't last very long. According to the way Baker told the story, he fired McLaughlin from the group, after being irritated by McLaughlin complaining about something on a day when Baker was out of cocaine and in no mood to hear anyone else's complaints. As Baker said "We lost a great guitar player and I lost a good friend." But the Trio soon became a Quartet again, as Dick Heckstall-Smith, who Baker had wanted in the band from the start, joined on saxophone to replace McLaughlin's guitar. But they were no longer called the Graham Bond Quartet. Partly because Heckstall-Smith joining allowed Bond to concentrate just on his keyboard playing, but one suspects partly to protect against any future lineup changes, the group were now The Graham Bond ORGANisation -- emphasis on the organ. The new lineup of the group got signed to Decca by Vernon, and were soon recording their first single, "Long Tall Shorty": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Long Tall Shorty"] They recorded a few other songs which made their way onto an EP and an R&B compilation, and toured intensively in early 1964, as well as backing up Power on his follow-up to "I Saw Her Standing There", his version of "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "Parchman Farm"] They also appeared in a film, just like the Beatles, though it was possibly not quite as artistically successful as "A Hard Day's Night": [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat trailer] Gonks Go Beat is one of the most bizarre films of the sixties. It's a far-future remake of Romeo and Juliet. where the two star-crossed lovers are from opposing countries -- Beatland and Ballad Isle -- who only communicate once a year in an annual song contest which acts as their version of a war, and is overseen by "Mr. A&R", played by Frank Thornton, who would later star in Are You Being Served? Carry On star Kenneth Connor is sent by aliens to try to bring peace to the two warring countries, on pain of exile to Planet Gonk, a planet inhabited solely by Gonks (a kind of novelty toy for which there was a short-lived craze then). Along the way Connor encounters such luminaries of British light entertainment as Terry Scott and Arthur Mullard, as well as musical performances by Lulu, the Nashville Teens, and of course the Graham Bond Organisation, whose performance gets them a telling-off from a teacher: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat!] The group as a group only performed one song in this cinematic masterpiece, but Baker also made an appearance in a "drum battle" sequence where eight drummers played together: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat drum battle] The other drummers in that scene included, as well as some lesser-known players, Andy White who had played on the single version of "Love Me Do", Bobby Graham, who played on hits by the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five, and Ronnie Verrell, who did the drumming for Animal in the Muppet Show. Also in summer 1964, the group performed at the Fourth National Jazz & Blues Festival in Richmond -- the festival co-founded by Chris Barber that would evolve into the Reading Festival. The Yardbirds were on the bill, and at the end of their set they invited Bond, Baker, Bruce, Georgie Fame, and Mike Vernon onto the stage with them, making that the first time that Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce were all on stage together. Soon after that, the Graham Bond Organisation got a new manager, Robert Stigwood. Things hadn't been working out for them at Decca, and Stigwood soon got the group signed to EMI, and became their producer as well. Their first single under Stigwood's management was a cover version of the theme tune to the Debbie Reynolds film "Tammy". While that film had given Tamla records its name, the song was hardly an R&B classic: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Tammy"] That record didn't chart, but Stigwood put the group out on the road as part of the disastrous Chuck Berry tour we heard about in the episode on "All You Need is Love", which led to the bankruptcy of  Robert Stigwood Associates. The Organisation moved over to Stigwood's new company, the Robert Stigwood Organisation, and Stigwood continued to be the credited producer of their records, though after the "Tammy" disaster they decided they were going to take charge themselves of the actual music. Their first album, The Sound of 65, was recorded in a single three-hour session, and they mostly ran through their standard set -- a mixture of the same songs everyone else on the circuit was playing, like "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Got My Mojo Working", and "Wade in the Water", and originals like Bruce's "Train Time": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Train Time"] Through 1965 they kept working. They released a non-album single, "Lease on Love", which is generally considered to be the first pop record to feature a Mellotron: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Lease on Love"] and Bond and Baker also backed another Stigwood act, Winston G, on his debut single: [Excerpt: Winston G, "Please Don't Say"] But the group were developing severe tensions. Bruce and Baker had started out friendly, but by this time they hated each other. Bruce said he couldn't hear his own playing over Baker's loud drumming, Baker thought that Bruce was far too fussy a player and should try to play simpler lines. They'd both try to throw each other during performances, altering arrangements on the fly and playing things that would trip the other player up. And *neither* of them were particularly keen on Bond's new love of the Mellotron, which was all over their second album, giving it a distinctly proto-prog feel at times: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Baby Can it Be True?"] Eventually at a gig in Golders Green, Baker started throwing drumsticks at Bruce's head while Bruce was trying to play a bass solo. Bruce retaliated by throwing his bass at Baker, and then jumping on him and starting a fistfight which had to be broken up by the venue security. Baker fired Bruce from the band, but Bruce kept turning up to gigs anyway, arguing that Baker had no right to sack him as it was a democracy. Baker always claimed that in fact Bond had wanted to sack Bruce but hadn't wanted to get his hands dirty, and insisted that Baker do it, but neither Bond nor Heckstall-Smith objected when Bruce turned up for the next couple of gigs. So Baker took matters into his own hands, He pulled out a knife and told Bruce "If you show up at one more gig, this is going in you." Within days, Bruce was playing with John Mayall, whose Bluesbreakers had gone through some lineup changes by this point. Roger Dean had only played with the Bluesbreakers for a short time before Mayall had replaced him. Mayall had not been impressed with Eric Clapton's playing with the Yardbirds at first -- even though graffiti saying "Clapton is God" was already starting to appear around London -- but he had been *very* impressed with Clapton's playing on "Got to Hurry", the B-side to "For Your Love": [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Got to Hurry"] When he discovered that Clapton had quit the band, he sprang into action and quickly recruited him to replace Dean. Clapton knew he had made the right choice when a month after he'd joined, the group got the word that Bob Dylan had been so impressed with Mayall's single "Crawling up a Hill" -- the one that nobody liked, not even Mayall himself -- that he wanted to jam with Mayall and his band in the studio. Clapton of course went along: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Bluesbreakers, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] That was, of course, the session we've talked about in the Velvet Underground episode and elsewhere of which little other than that survives, and which Nico attended. At this point, Mayall didn't have a record contract, his experience recording with Mike Vernon having been no more successful than the Bond group's had been. But soon he got a one-off deal -- as a solo artist, not with the Bluesbreakers -- with Immediate Records. Clapton was the only member of the group to play on the single, which was produced by Immediate's house producer Jimmy Page: [Excerpt: John Mayall, "I'm Your Witchdoctor"] Page was impressed enough with Clapton's playing that he invited him round to Page's house to jam together. But what Clapton didn't know was that Page was taping their jam sessions, and that he handed those tapes over to Immediate Records -- whether he was forced to by his contract with the label or whether that had been his plan all along depends on whose story you believe, but Clapton never truly forgave him. Page and Clapton's guitar-only jams had overdubs by Bill Wyman, Ian Stewart, and drummer Chris Winter, and have been endlessly repackaged on blues compilations ever since: [Excerpt: Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, "Draggin' My Tail"] But Mayall was having problems with John McVie, who had started to drink too much, and as soon as he found out that Jack Bruce was sacked by the Graham Bond Organisation, Mayall got in touch with Bruce and got him to join the band in McVie's place. Everyone was agreed that this lineup of the band -- Mayall, Clapton, Bruce, and Hughie Flint -- was going places: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Jack Bruce, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] Unfortunately, it wasn't going to last long. Clapton, while he thought that Bruce was the greatest bass player he'd ever worked with, had other plans. He was going to leave the country and travel the world as a peripatetic busker. He was off on his travels, never to return. Luckily, Mayall had someone even better waiting in the wings. A young man had, according to Mayall, "kept coming down to all the gigs and saying, “Hey, what are you doing with him?” – referring to whichever guitarist was onstage that night – “I'm much better than he is. Why don't you let me play guitar for you?” He got really quite nasty about it, so finally, I let him sit in. And he was brilliant." Peter Green was probably the best blues guitarist in London at that time, but this lineup of the Bluesbreakers only lasted a handful of gigs -- Clapton discovered that busking in Greece wasn't as much fun as being called God in London, and came back very soon after he'd left. Mayall had told him that he could have his old job back when he got back, and so Green was out and Clapton was back in. And soon the Bluesbreakers' revolving door revolved again. Manfred Mann had just had a big hit with "If You Gotta Go, Go Now", the same song we heard Dylan playing earlier: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] But their guitarist, Mike Vickers, had quit. Tom McGuinness, their bass player, had taken the opportunity to switch back to guitar -- the instrument he'd played in his first band with his friend Eric Clapton -- but that left them short a bass player. Manfred Mann were essentially the same kind of band as the Graham Bond Organisation -- a Hammond-led group of virtuoso multi-instrumentalists who played everything from hardcore Delta blues to complex modern jazz -- but unlike the Bond group they also had a string of massive pop hits, and so made a lot more money. The combination was irresistible to Bruce, and he joined the band just before they recorded an EP of jazz instrumental versions of recent hits: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] Bruce had also been encouraged by Robert Stigwood to do a solo project, and so at the same time as he joined Manfred Mann, he also put out a solo single, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'" [Excerpt: Jack Bruce, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'"] But of course, the reason Bruce had joined Manfred Mann was that they were having pop hits as well as playing jazz, and soon they did just that, with Bruce playing on their number one hit "Pretty Flamingo": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Pretty Flamingo"] So John McVie was back in the Bluesbreakers, promising to keep his drinking under control. Mike Vernon still thought that Mayall had potential, but the people at Decca didn't agree, so Vernon got Mayall and Clapton -- but not the other band members -- to record a single for a small indie label he ran as a side project: [Excerpt: John Mayall and Eric Clapton, "Bernard Jenkins"] That label normally only released records in print runs of ninety-nine copies, because once you hit a hundred copies you had to pay tax on them, but there was so much demand for that single that they ended up pressing up five hundred copies, making it the label's biggest seller ever. Vernon eventually convinced the heads at Decca that the Bluesbreakers could be truly big, and so he got the OK to record the album that would generally be considered the greatest British blues album of all time -- Blues Breakers, also known as the Beano album because of Clapton reading a copy of the British kids' comic The Beano in the group photo on the front. [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Ramblin' On My Mind"] The album was a mixture of originals by Mayall and the standard repertoire of every blues or R&B band on the circuit -- songs like "Parchman Farm" and "What'd I Say" -- but what made the album unique was Clapton's guitar tone. Much to the chagrin of Vernon, and of engineer Gus Dudgeon, Clapton insisted on playing at the same volume that he would on stage. Vernon later said of Dudgeon "I can remember seeing his face the very first time Clapton plugged into the Marshall stack and turned it up and started playing at the sort of volume he was going to play. You could almost see Gus's eyes meet over the middle of his nose, and it was almost like he was just going to fall over from the sheer power of it all. But after an enormous amount of fiddling around and moving amps around, we got a sound that worked." [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Hideaway"] But by the time the album cane out. Clapton was no longer with the Bluesbreakers. The Graham Bond Organisation had struggled on for a while after Bruce's departure. They brought in a trumpet player, Mike Falana, and even had a hit record -- or at least, the B-side of a hit record. The Who had just put out a hit single, "Substitute", on Robert Stigwood's record label, Reaction: [Excerpt: The Who, "Substitute"] But, as you'll hear in episode 183, they had moved to Reaction Records after a falling out with their previous label, and with Shel Talmy their previous producer. The problem was, when "Substitute" was released, it had as its B-side a song called "Circles" (also known as "Instant Party -- it's been released under both names). They'd recorded an earlier version of the song for Talmy, and just as "Substitute" was starting to chart, Talmy got an injunction against the record and it had to be pulled. Reaction couldn't afford to lose the big hit record they'd spent money promoting, so they needed to put it out with a new B-side. But the Who hadn't got any unreleased recordings. But the Graham Bond Organisation had, and indeed they had an unreleased *instrumental*. So "Waltz For a Pig" became the B-side to a top-five single, credited to The Who Orchestra: [Excerpt: The Who Orchestra, "Waltz For a Pig"] That record provided the catalyst for the formation of Cream, because Ginger Baker had written the song, and got £1,350 for it, which he used to buy a new car. Baker had, for some time, been wanting to get out of the Graham Bond Organisation. He was trying to get off heroin -- though he would make many efforts to get clean over the decades, with little success -- while Bond was starting to use it far more heavily, and was also using acid and getting heavily into mysticism, which Baker despised. Baker may have had the idea for what he did next from an article in one of the music papers. John Entwistle of the Who would often tell a story about an article in Melody Maker -- though I've not been able to track down the article itself to get the full details -- in which musicians were asked to name which of their peers they'd put into a "super-group". He didn't remember the full details, but he did remember that the consensus choice had had Eric Clapton on lead guitar, himself on bass, and Ginger Baker on drums. As he said later "I don't remember who else was voted in, but a few months later, the Cream came along, and I did wonder if somebody was maybe believing too much of their own press". Incidentally, like The Buffalo Springfield and The Pink Floyd, Cream, the band we are about to meet, had releases both with and without the definite article, and Eric Clapton at least seems always to talk about them as "the Cream" even decades later, but they're primarily known as just Cream these days. Baker, having had enough of the Bond group, decided to drive up to Oxford to see Clapton playing with the Bluesbreakers. Clapton invited him to sit in for a couple of songs, and by all accounts the band sounded far better than they had previously. Clapton and Baker could obviously play well together, and Baker offered Clapton a lift back to London in his new car, and on the drive back asked Clapton if he wanted to form a new band. Clapton was as impressed by Baker's financial skills as he was by his musicianship. He said later "Musicians didn't have cars. You all got in a van." Clearly a musician who was *actually driving a new car he owned* was going places. He agreed to Baker's plan. But of course they needed a bass player, and Clapton thought he had the perfect solution -- "What about Jack?" Clapton knew that Bruce had been a member of the Graham Bond Organisation, but didn't know why he'd left the band -- he wasn't particularly clued in to what the wider music scene was doing, and all he knew was that Bruce had played with both him and Baker, and that he was the best bass player he'd ever played with. And Bruce *was* arguably the best bass player in London at that point, and he was starting to pick up session work as well as his work with Manfred Mann. For example it's him playing on the theme tune to "After The Fox" with Peter Sellers, the Hollies, and the song's composer Burt Bacharach: [Excerpt: The Hollies with Peter Sellers, "After the Fox"] Clapton was insistent. Baker's idea was that the band should be the best musicians around. That meant they needed the *best* musicians around, not the second best. If Jack Bruce wasn't joining, Eric Clapton wasn't joining either. Baker very reluctantly agreed, and went round to see Bruce the next day -- according to Baker it was in a spirit of generosity and giving Bruce one more chance, while according to Bruce he came round to eat humble pie and beg for forgiveness. Either way, Bruce agreed to join the band. The three met up for a rehearsal at Baker's home, and immediately Bruce and Baker started fighting, but also immediately they realised that they were great at playing together -- so great that they named themselves the Cream, as they were the cream of musicians on the scene. They knew they had something, but they didn't know what. At first they considered making their performances into Dada projects, inspired by the early-twentieth-century art movement. They liked a band that had just started to make waves, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band -- who had originally been called the Bonzo Dog Dada Band -- and they bought some props with the vague idea of using them on stage in the same way the Bonzos did. But as they played together they realised that they needed to do something different from that. At first, they thought they needed a fourth member -- a keyboard player. Graham Bond's name was brought up, but Clapton vetoed him. Clapton wanted Steve Winwood, the keyboard player and vocalist with the Spencer Davis Group. Indeed, Winwood was present at what was originally intended to be the first recording session the trio would play. Joe Boyd had asked Eric Clapton to round up a bunch of players to record some filler tracks for an Elektra blues compilation, and Clapton had asked Bruce and Baker to join him, Paul Jones on vocals, Winwood on Hammond and Clapton's friend Ben Palmer on piano for the session. Indeed, given that none of the original trio were keen on singing, that Paul Jones was just about to leave Manfred Mann, and that we know Clapton wanted Winwood in the band, one has to wonder if Clapton at least half-intended for this to be the eventual lineup of the band. If he did, that plan was foiled by Baker's refusal to take part in the session. Instead, this one-off band, named The Powerhouse, featured Pete York, the drummer from the Spencer Davis Group, on the session, which produced the first recording of Clapton playing on the Robert Johnson song originally titled "Cross Road Blues" but now generally better known just as "Crossroads": [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] We talked about Robert Johnson a little back in episode ninety-seven, but other than Bob Dylan, who was inspired by his lyrics, we had seen very little influence from Johnson up to this point, but he's going to be a major influence on rock guitar for the next few years, so we should talk about him a little here. It's often said that nobody knew anything about Robert Johnson, that he was almost a phantom other than his records which existed outside of any context as artefacts of their own. That's... not really the case. Johnson had died a little less than thirty years earlier, at only twenty-seven years old. Most of his half-siblings and step-siblings were alive, as were his son, his stepson, and dozens of musicians he'd played with over the years, women he'd had affairs with, and other assorted friends and relatives. What people mean is that information about Johnson's life was not yet known by people they consider important -- which is to say white blues scholars and musicians. Indeed, almost everything people like that -- people like *me* -- know of the facts of Johnson's life has only become known to us in the last four years. If, as some people had expected, I'd started this series with an episode on Johnson, I'd have had to redo the whole thing because of the information that's made its way to the public since then. But here's what was known -- or thought -- by white blues scholars in 1966. Johnson was, according to them, a field hand from somewhere in Mississippi, who played the guitar in between working on the cotton fields. He had done two recording sessions, in 1936 and 1937. One song from his first session, "Terraplane Blues", had been a very minor hit by blues standards: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Terraplane Blues"] That had sold well -- nobody knows how well, but maybe as many as ten thousand copies, and it was certainly a record people knew in 1937 if they liked the Delta blues, but ten thousand copies total is nowhere near the sales of really successful records, and none of the follow-ups had sold anything like that much -- many of them had sold in the hundreds rather than the thousands. As Elijah Wald, one of Johnson's biographers put it "knowing about Johnson and Muddy Waters but not about Leroy Carr or Dinah Washington was like knowing about, say, the Sir Douglas Quintet but not knowing about the Beatles" -- though *I* would add that the Sir Douglas Quintet were much bigger during the sixties than Johnson was during his lifetime. One of the few white people who had noticed Johnson's existence at all was John Hammond, and he'd written a brief review of Johnson's first two singles under a pseudonym in a Communist newspaper. I'm going to quote it here, but the word he used to talk about Black people was considered correct then but isn't now, so I'll substitute Black for that word: "Before closing we cannot help but call your attention to the greatest [Black] blues singer who has cropped up in recent years, Robert Johnson. Recording them in deepest Mississippi, Vocalion has certainly done right by us and by the tunes "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" and "Terraplane Blues", to name only two of the four sides already released, sung to his own guitar accompaniment. Johnson makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur" Hammond had tried to get Johnson to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts we talked about in the very first episodes of the podcast, but he'd discovered that he'd died shortly before. He got Big Bill Broonzy instead, and played a couple of Johnson's records from a record player on the stage. Hammond introduced those recordings with a speech: "It is tragic that an American audience could not have been found seven or eight years ago for a concert of this kind. Bessie Smith was still at the height of her career and Joe Smith, probably the greatest trumpet player America ever knew, would still have been around to play obbligatos for her...dozens of other artists could have been there in the flesh. But that audience as well as this one would not have been able to hear Robert Johnson sing and play the blues on his guitar, for at that time Johnson was just an unknown hand on a Robinsonville, Mississippi plantation. Robert Johnson was going to be the big surprise of the evening for this audience at Carnegie Hall. I know him only from his Vocalion blues records and from the tall, exciting tales the recording engineers and supervisors used to bring about him from the improvised studios in Dallas and San Antonio. I don't believe Johnson had ever worked as a professional musician anywhere, and it still knocks me over when I think of how lucky it is that a talent like his ever found its way onto phonograph records. We will have to be content with playing two of his records, the old "Walkin' Blues" and the new, unreleased, "Preachin' Blues", because Robert Johnson died last week at the precise moment when Vocalion scouts finally reached him and told him that he was booked to appear at Carnegie Hall on December 23. He was in his middle twenties and nobody seems to know what caused his death." And that was, for the most part, the end of Robert Johnson's impact on the culture for a generation. The Lomaxes went down to Clarksdale, Mississippi a couple of years later -- reports vary as to whether this was to see if they could find Johnson, who they were unaware was dead, or to find information out about him, and they did end up recording a young singer named Muddy Waters for the Library of Congress, including Waters' rendition of "32-20 Blues", Johnson's reworking of Skip James' "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "32-20 Blues"] But Johnson's records remained unavailable after their initial release until 1959, when the blues scholar Samuel Charters published the book The Country Blues, which was the first book-length treatment ever of Delta blues. Sixteen years later Charters said "I shouldn't have written The Country Blues when I did; since I really didn't know enough, but I felt I couldn't afford to wait. So The Country Blues was two things. It was a romanticization of certain aspects of black life in an effort to force the white society to reconsider some of its racial attitudes, and on the other hand it was a cry for help. I wanted hundreds of people to go out and interview the surviving blues artists. I wanted people to record them and document their lives, their environment, and their music, not only so that their story would be preserved but also so they'd get a little money and a little recognition in their last years." Charters talked about Johnson in the book, as one of the performers who played "minor roles in the story of the blues", and said that almost nothing was known about his life. He talked about how he had been poisoned by his common-law wife, about how his records were recorded in a pool hall, and said "The finest of Robert Johnson's blues have a brooding sense of torment and despair. The blues has become a personified figure of despondency." Along with Charters' book came a compilation album of the same name, and that included the first ever reissue of one of Johnson's tracks, "Preaching Blues": [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Preaching Blues"] Two years later, John Hammond, who had remained an ardent fan of Johnson, had Columbia put out the King of the Delta Blues Singers album. At the time no white blues scholars knew what Johnson looked like and they had no photos of him, so a generic painting of a poor-looking Black man with a guitar was used for the cover. The liner note to King of the Delta Blues Singers talked about how Johnson was seventeen or eighteen when he made his recordings, how he was "dead before he reached his twenty-first birthday, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend", how he had "seldom, if ever, been away from the plantation in Robinsville, Mississippi, where he was born and raised", and how he had had such stage fright that when he was asked to play in front of other musicians, he'd turned to face a wall so he couldn't see them. And that would be all that any of the members of the Powerhouse would know about Johnson. Maybe they'd also heard the rumours that were starting to spread that Johnson had got his guitar-playing skills by selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads at midnight, but that would have been all they knew when they recorded their filler track for Elektra: [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] Either way, the Powerhouse lineup only lasted for that one session -- the group eventually decided that a simple trio would be best for the music they wanted to play. Clapton had seen Buddy Guy touring with just a bass player and drummer a year earlier, and had liked the idea of the freedom that gave him as a guitarist. The group soon took on Robert Stigwood as a manager, which caused more arguments between Bruce and Baker. Bruce was convinced that if they were doing an all-for-one one-for-all thing they should also manage themselves, but Baker pointed out that that was a daft idea when they could get one of the biggest managers in the country to look after them. A bigger argument, which almost killed the group before it started, happened when Baker told journalist Chris Welch of the Melody Maker about their plans. In an echo of the way that he and Bruce had been resigned from Blues Incorporated without being consulted, now with no discussion Manfred Mann and John Mayall were reading in the papers that their band members were quitting before those members had bothered to mention it. Mayall was furious, especially since the album Clapton had played on hadn't yet come out. Clapton was supposed to work a month's notice while Mayall found another guitarist, but Mayall spent two weeks begging Peter Green to rejoin the band. Green was less than eager -- after all, he'd been fired pretty much straight away earlier -- but Mayall eventually persuaded him. The second he did, Mayall turned round to Clapton and told him he didn't have to work the rest of his notice -- he'd found another guitar player and Clapton was fired: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, "Dust My Blues"] Manfred Mann meanwhile took on the Beatles' friend Klaus Voorman to replace Bruce. Voorman would remain with the band until the end, and like Green was for Mayall, Voorman was in some ways a better fit for Manfred Mann than Bruce was. In particular he could double on flute, as he did for example on their hit version of Bob Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann "The Mighty Quinn"] The new group, The Cream, were of course signed in the UK to Stigwood's Reaction label. Other than the Who, who only stuck around for one album, Reaction was not a very successful label. Its biggest signing was a former keyboard player for Screaming Lord Sutch, who recorded for them under the names Paul Dean and Oscar, but who later became known as Paul Nicholas and had a successful career in musical theatre and sitcom. Nicholas never had any hits for Reaction, but he did release one interesting record, in 1967: [Excerpt: Oscar, "Over the Wall We Go"] That was one of the earliest songwriting attempts by a young man who had recently named himself David Bowie. Now the group were public, they started inviting journalists to their rehearsals, which were mostly spent trying to combine their disparate musical influences --

Damos un paseo por una ciudad imaginada, una ciudad musical que hemos construido a nuestro gusto con unas cuantas canciones favoritas que sirvan para llevarte a nuestros rincones favoritos.Playlist;(sintonía) THE JAM “in the city”PETE MOLINARI “Streetcar named desire”SMALL FACES “Itchycoo Park”THE WATERBOYS “Meet me at the station”BLACK LIPS “Modern art”LOU REED “Dirty Blvd”THE KINKS “Dead end Street”THE CHORDS “In my Street”THE DOORS “Love Street”THE KAISERS “Wishing Street”GENE VINCENT “Bop Street”THE CADETS “Heartbreak Hotel”THE ROBINS “Smokey Joe’s café”RAY CHARLES “Lonely avenue”LOUIS ARMSTRONG “Blueberry Hill”THE LEN PRICE 3 “Telegraph Hill”THE SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET “You are walking the streets tonight”THE POGUES “Rain street”KING CURTIS “Sittin’ on the dock of the bay” Escuchar audio

Singles Going Around- Hush Your MouthT. Rex- "20th Century Boy"Sir Douglas Quintet- "She's About A Mover"The Trashmen- "Bird Gasp '65"Booker T & The M.G.'s- "Hip Hug Her"Cream- "Swlabr"Soledad Brothers- "Sugar & Spice"Jeff Beck- "Beck's Bolero"The Readymen- "Disintegration"Al Ferrier- "Rockabilly Blues"International Submarine Band- "The Russians Are Coming"Bob Seger System- "2+2=?"Plastic Betrand- "Ca Plan Por Moi"Frank Wilson- "Do I Love You?"Sir Douglas Quintet- "Heya Heya"*All selections taken from the original records.

1. Crispian St Peters 2. Small Faces 3. Van Morrison 4. The Hollies 5. Box Tops 6. Dion 7. Crazy World Of Arthur Brown 8. Amen Corner 9. Simple Image 10. Hi-Revving Tongues 11. Spencer Davis Group 12. The Monkees 13. Jnr Walker & The Allstars 14. Doors 15. Clarence Carter 16. Max Merrett And The Meteors 17. Sir Douglas Quintet 18. Diana Ross And The Supre

Ben Vaughn es un conocido músico y productor estadounidense con una trayectoria a sus espaldas de casi cuatro décadas. Es también un gran conocedor musical, un estudioso de los sonidos del pasado con un gusto exquisito y ecléctico como selector de canciones, faceta que muestra de forma semanal en su programa de radio The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn. Playlist; (sintonía) DICK HYMAN “The Liquidator” ALAN VEGA “Juke box baby” NINA SIMONE “See-line woman” SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET “Mendocino” SLIM HARPO “Baby scratch my back” NINO ROTA “Amacord” CHARLIE FEATHERS “Can’t hardly stand it” MICKY LEE LANE “Shaggy dog” TIM HARDIN “Misty roses” THE CRAMPS “Human fly” SERGE GAINSBOURG “Requiem pour un twister” ASTRUD GILBERTO “Agua de beber” DELROY WILSON “Better must come” ALEX CHILTON “Bangkok” CHARLEY PRIDE “Is anybody goin’ to San Antone” PETER SARSTEDT “Where do you go to my lovely” LINK WRAY “Fat back” ARTHUR ALEXANDER “Anna” Escuchar audio

Thanks for listening! I am counting down the 29 albums that have sold 15 million or more as of July 27, 2022. This time we hear from Steve Miller and his band and Toto, featuring Michael Jackson. Okay, it's Michael Jackson and a few Thriller cuts but Toto makes the music on this LP. You'll hear Sir Douglas Quintet, Michael Martin Murphy and more. Reminder: Tales Vinyl Tells live at 5 pm Central time Wednesdays can be heard at 103.7 & 107.1 FM and you can stream it live at RadioFreeNashville.org and on your Alexa device when you set up the RadioFreeNashville online skill. After that, all you have to tell her to do is, “Alexa, play RadioFreeNashville.” See what she says about that. “I don't know that one”??

Well looky here - we have The Kinks up first this week with "Who'll Be the Next In Line" - a minor hit for them in 1965 (2:02). In this under-rated rock rhumba, Ray Davies and the band inhabit the mind of a bitter pub drinker: a lurching, sorta Latin groove and vocal performance make this one of the earliest examples of musical theatre in  RD's songwriting catalog. Next in line are The Knack - no, not those guys, these are some 60s freakbeaters who mod-ify the song by speeding it up and adding some cool guitar slashes while they impatiently wait for the next schlub to fall for the femme fatale (43:15). The third in our series of suspects is the Sir Douglas Quintet, who swapped out the Latin rhythm for a very satisfying Tex-Mex flavour (1:04:37). It's got that accordion-sounding organ that we like from ? and the Mysterians and those unheralded new wavers Joe 'King' Carrasco and the Crowns. The final perp is Yonin Bayashi, who focus on the "prog" part of the lurching chord progression from the original (1:25:16).  Wordless sopranos, pizzicatos & arpeggios - an overall disorienting take, but it kinda works?  Now fade away, okay?

Label: Tribe 8308Year: 1965Condition: M-Last Price: $20.00. Not currently available for sale.Here's a beautiful copy of the single that Dave Marsh ranks at #491 in his list of the 1,001 greatest 45s of Rock'n' Soul. And don't neglect the terrific B side... also essential Sir Douglas Quintet! By the way, this was a non-album single until Tribe released a "Greatest Hits" LP in 1966. Fortunately, that LP contains both of these great tracks. Note: This 45 record has Mint labels. The vinyl (styrene) grades a strong EX, with light signs of prior use. Miraculously, the fragile grooves preserve pristine Mint audio, both sides!

This time on Soundcheck, Ben goes further into the weeds of country music with Michael and Brody! This should be a good place to start for any rock fans looking to get into country music! Yee Haw! Featured Artists: Guy Clark, David Allan Coe, Johnny Paycheck, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Sir Douglas Quintet, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Neil Young, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, The Flying Burrito Brothers, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Loudon Wainwright III, Lucinda Williams, Todd Snider, Iris DeMent, John Prine, Merle Haggard, Dinosaur Jr., Ray Price, The International Submarine Band, Kindness, Texas

Doug Sahm - Best Of Doug Sahm & The Sir Douglas Quintet 1968-19751. Doug Sahm - Mendocino Richard Townend & The Mighty BossCats - Short StoriesRichard Townend & The Mighty BossCats - 01 Got to Pay Your Dues Richard Townend & The Mighty BossCats - Short StoriesRichard Townend & The Mighty BossCats - 13 You Are Amazing Richard Townend & The Mighty BossCats - Short StoriesRichard Townend & The Mighty BossCats - 02 Just The Way It Was Samantha Fish on Audiotree Live (2018)4. Samantha Fish - Daughters (Audiotree Live Version Dr. John - The Definitive Pop Collection (2CD)CD17 Dr. John - Wash, Mama, Wash Dr. John - The Definitive Pop Collection (2CD)CD21 Dr. John - Right Place Wrong Time Dr. John - The Definitive Pop Collection (2CD)CD22 Dr. John - Such A Night Albert Castiglia 2020 Wild and FreeF Searching the Desert for the Blues Dr Feelgood - Malpractice 19756 - Don't Let Your Daddy Know Blues Traveler Hurry Up & Hang Around 2018I Phone Call From Leavenworth Laurence Jones Christina Skjolberg & Albert Castiglia - Blues Caravan Live 20141 - Join Me On The Blues Caravan Theodis Ealey - 1992 - Headed Back To Hurtsville8 - Lil' Brown Eyes Tito Jackson - Under Your Spell (2021)8. That Kind of Love (feat. Grady Champion & Kenny Neal Boost - BoostBOOST! - BOOST! - 02 - Lucky Like Lola Leavin' Boost - BoostBOOST! - BOOST! - 06 - One Moment in Time Boost - BoostBOOST! - BOOST! - 04 - Maggie's Theme Tas Cru - 2010 - Jus' Desserts7 - Eau de 'Nother Man Arlen Roth - Hot Pickups 19804 - When A Man Loves A Woman Lindsay & Brad - Lindsay Beaver & Brad Stivers6. Take It Slow Willie Mabon - 1979 - Chicago Blues Session4 - Moanin' Blues Mick Kolassa_ Wasted YouthWasted Youth7 Feeling Sorry For Myself Luke Winslow-King - I'm Glad Trouble Don't Last Always6 - Watch Me Go Laurence Jones - Thunder In The Sky9 - Thunder In The Sky BIG DADDY WILSONBig Daddy Wilson - Deep In My Soul7. Deep in My Soul Amos Milburn - Bad Bad Whiskey - 2009 - 224 - NC5 - Walking Blues

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou [00:25] "Ancestral Recall" May Our Chambers Be Full Sacred Bones SBA-007 2020 Two great heavy tastes that taste great together! De La Soul [04:20] "Me, Myself, and I" Me, Myself, And I Tommy Boy TB 926 B A 3-sided 12" single of the classic De La Soul jam. What? 3-sided, you ask? Indeed! Side Two has parallel tracks. In this infamous sample-strong song we can hear Ohio Players, Funkadelic, Edwin Birdsong, Doug E. Fresh, and Loose Ends. Johnny Cash [08:04] "25 Minutes to Go" Mean as Hell - Ballads from the True West Columbia CS 2446 1966 Gooo...ohhh...ohhh...ohhh... Another fun Shel Silverstein tune for Mr. Cash. Pink Floyd [11:16] "San Tropez" Meddle Harvest SMAS-832 1971 This jaunty tune has long been one of my favorite Floyd songs. Clan of Xymox [16:16] "Louise" Medusa 4AD CAD 613 1986 Mmmm... darkwave. Blonde Redhead [21:34] "For the Damaged" Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons Touch and Go TG216 2000 Evidently this Chopin-based song is of some signficance to Rick and Morty fans. Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Paul Kletzki [24:32] "Dance of the Clowns, Op. 61, No. 11" Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream Angel Record 35146 1962(?) Quite the dance! Sir Douglas Quintet [26:09] "Mendocino" Mendocino Smash/Mercury SRS 67115 1966 It's entirely possible that you've never heard the title track to this album. If that's the case, enjoy! Gravy Train!!!! [30:16] "Hella Nervous" The "Menz" E.P. Cold Crush 003 2002 Hella. Definitely hella. Aidan Baker & Jakob Thiesen [32:30] "Dangers Will Breed" Mépris Interior Massacre I.M.02 2013 Two great tastes that taste great together! Ultra Vivid Scene [41:20] "Mercy Seat" Mercy Seat 4AD BAD 906 1989 Waaaaay back in the waaaay back, I would play this song over and over and over again. I was obsessed. Bing Crosby with the Andrews Sisters [47:50] "Mele Kalikimaka" Merry Christmas Decca DL 78128 1961 (original release: 1955) A snappy number from Bing and the gals that was originally recorded in 1950. Johnny Mathis [50:41] "Sleigh Ride" Merry Christmas Columbia CS 8021 1972 (original release 1958) A mighty smooth sleigh ride indeed. The Radio City Music Hall Symphony Orchestra & Chorus [53:39] "Carol of the Bells" Merry Christmas America from the Radio City Music Hall Continental CR 1009 1972 Now that is an ending.

Enjoying the show? Please support BFF.FM with a donation. Playlist 0′00″ Maybe She by Arthur Russell on Love Is Overtaking Me (Audika) 3′32″ Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again) (Album Version) by Kris Kristofferson on The Silver Tongued Devil and I (Monument Records) 7′07″ You Were On My Mind by Judy Roderick on Woman Blue (Vanguard Records) 10′27″ Love Me When You Can by Merle Haggard on I'm Always on a Mountain When I fall (MCA Records) 13′45″ Canción Mixteca by Harry Dean Stanton on Partly Fiction (Omnivore Recordings) 16′24″ This Day and Time by Rusty Kershaw on Cajun In Blues Country (Rhino) 23′13″ Where I Lead Me by Townes Van Zandt on Delta Momma Blues (Fat Possum) 25′53″ Waymore's Blues by Waylon Jennings on Dreaming My Dreams (RCA Records) 28′34″ I See the Want To In Your Eyes by Gary Stewart on Out of Hand (RCA Records) 31′06″ I Don't Want to Go Home by Sir Douglas Quintet on The Mono Singles '68-'72 (Sundazed Records) 34′12″ I Don't Want to Talk About It by Crazy Horse on Crazy Horse (Reprise) 39′25″ Going Down To the River by Mississippi Fred McDowell on The Alan Lomax Recordings (Mississippi Records) 45′48″ Free Man In Paris by Joni Mitchell on Court and Spark (Asylum records) 49′05″ It Ain't Fair by Ben E. King on Anthology (Rhino) 51′25″ Blue Jade by Buddy Emmons on Emmons Guitar Inc. (Emmons Guitar, Inc.) 55′42″ Reel Ten by The Plugz on Repo Man OST (MCA Records) Check out the full archives on the website.

Thoughts What If? Did you ever look at someone famous who is supremely talented, but is not a believer and think, “Just think of the impact they could have if they would live their life for the Lord?” I have, many times. I was born just about the same time as rock & roll. I remember doo wop music playing on the radio, I remember Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Drifters, Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Elvis and so many others in the 50s. And then came perhaps the greatest decade of music…the 60s. The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Ray Charles, Jefferson Airplane, Otis Redding, The Doors, Sir Douglas Quintet, Hendrix, Three Dog Night,  Aretha Franklin. I could go on for hours. Anyway, when I was younger I often thought, “It's too bad these guys don't see that their gift, their talent, is from God. Man, if they would only believe and use that talent for Him! What an impact that would make on the world.” Here's What! The Apostle Paul, when he was still Saul, was famous in his time. His talent was in studying the Law and persecuting Christians. He was well known as a hater of Christians. Until he met Jesus. Once Jesus changed his life, Paul had the greatest impact of anyone since, besides the Lord Himself. Your Past Is Past! Is there something in your past that you are ashamed of? Something that holds you back from proclaiming your story with boldness? Do you think the people that knew you before will say, “He talks a good talk, but I've seen him do some really bad things.” Well guess what. Those things you did before have been forgiven. Sure, they're part of your history…part of your story…but if Jesus could take a person like Paul and use him, He can surely use you.  Paul didn't hide his past, did he? He acknowledged it, and then he said, “But then I met Jesus!”  Your past does not define you. Your relationship with Jesus defines you. Because of that, you are perfect in the sight of God. You have nothing to be ashamed of.  Be like Paul. Share your story with confidence. Make an impact in your world. Today's Bible Translation Bible translation used in today's episode: Ch. 25-25 NLT Support Please remember that this is a listener supported show. Your support of any amount is needed and very much appreciated. Find out how by clicking here. When you buy through links on this site, we may earn an affiliate commission, and you will earn our gratitude. Design: Steve Webb | Photo: Daniel Burka on Unsplash Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents By Rod Dreher / Sentinel Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn once noted that people often assume that their democratic government would never submit to totalitarianism---but Dreher says it's happening. Sounding the alarm about the insidious effects of identity politics, surveillance technology, psychological manipulation, and more, he equips contemporary Christian dissidents to see, judge, and act as they fight to resist the erosion of our freedoms. 304 pages, hardcover from Sentinel.

More music from and stories about meeting legendary musical artists along my path. From mistaken identities, chance encounters, emcee duties and friends traveling through. Some rare tracks and live recordings. Some hits and lots of great performances. The Righteous Brothers, The Sir Douglas Quintet, Freddy Fender, Augie Meyers, Mumbo Gumbo, Little Feat, Willie Nelson with Toots Hibbert, Buddy Holly, Gary Busey, Richie Valens, Lou Diamond Phillips, Loggins and Messina, Bob Hite of Canned Heat, Robben Ford, Rick Nelson with James Burton, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, John Pisano, Tony Bennett with Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Ed King, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and The Jefferson Airplane. While I was working on this show, it brought back memories of more legendary musical artists I've crossed paths with. Part 5 is coming soon... Thanks for listening and your support! @stewstrauss on Twitter and Instagram Stewart Strauss Thespian on Facebook --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stewart-strauss/support

More music from and stories about meeting legendary musical artists along my path. From mistaken identities, chance encounters, emcee duties and friends traveling through. Some rare tracks and live recordings. Some hits and lots of great performances. The Righteous Brothers, The Sir Douglas Quintet, Freddy Fender, Augie Meyers, Mumbo Gumbo, Little Feat, Willie Nelson with Toots Hibbert, Buddy Holly, Gary Busey, Richie Valens, Lou Diamond Phillips, Loggins and Messina, Bob Hite of Canned Heat, Robben Ford, Rick Nelson with James Burton, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, John Pisano, Tony Bennett with Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Ed King, Lynyrd Skynyrd,  and The Jefferson Airplane. While I was working on this show, it brought back memories of more legendary musical artists I've crossed paths with. Part 5 is coming soon... Thanks for listening and your support! @stewstrauss on Twitter and Instagram

Where Did You Sleep Last Night, In the Pines, My Girl o Black Girl es una canción que ha logrado sobrevivir al paso del tiempo. Su sencillez y el misterio que la rodea, hizo que acabara cerrando el Unplugged de Nirvana en 1993. Pero pasan los años y la canción sigue aquí: Leadbelly, Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Mark Lanegan, Cows, Grateful Dead, Joan Baez o The Sir Douglas Quintet... la lista es interminable. Para cerrar el programa de hoy charlamos con Ana de VANITY ROSE que con la ayuda de Marga Roca nos regala un versión de esta canción. 🙏Espacio patrocinado por: CARMEN VENTURA, NORBERTO BLANQUER, JORDI, ROSA RIVAS, INFESTOS, 61 GARAGE, MR.KAFFE, ISRAEL, TOLO SENT, ANXO, RAUL SANCHEZ, VICTORGB, EDUARDO MAYORDONO, BARON72, EDUARDO VAQUERIZO, LIP, ALEJANDRO GOMEZ, DANI RM, JOCIO, AYTIRO SAKI, MARCOS, PABLO ARABIA, CARLOS CONSEGLIERI, JEKY LOSABE, CESMUNSAL, LARUBIAPRODUCCIONES, RUBIO CARBÓN, PILAR DÍEZ, ALFONSO MOYA, JON LÓPEZ, FERNANDO MASERO, RODRIGO GUADIÁN, DOMINGO SANTABÁRBARA, JOSE MIGUEL, ALEXANDER CASTAÑEDA, ANTO78, JULMORGON, JUANMI, MIGUEL BLANCO, JUAN CARLOS ACERO y varios oyentes anónimos. ¡¡GRACIAS!! 🅱️9️⃣0️⃣

En El Guateque caminaremos por el mundo con Adriangela, recordaremos por si aniversario a Glenn Miller y Harry Belafonte; también el lanzamiento de 'Surfin' USA' (en marzo del 63), pero nos ocupamos de la versión que hicieron The Rocking Boys, una canción post San valentin,sobre corazones rotos con Adriano Celentano, ídolo de la generación ye-ye de los años 60 del siglo pasado, famoso en España por temas como ‘Azzurro' o ‘Preghero'. Las grandes orquestas, influenciadas por la musica americana, también sonaron en los bailes, de la época de oro del radio, y hoy sonará el mexicano Pablo Beltrán Ruiz y su Orquesta. Una magnífica Donna Hightower canta en francés un cover de la jamaicana Millie Jackson. Y de los Pop Tops recuperamos su 'Hideaway'. Luis Aguilé llegó de Buenos Aires a finales de los cincuenta y nunca más nos abandonó. Al principio de su carrera cantó rock and roll, y lo escuchamos con una versión del "She's about a mover", Sir Douglas Quintet. Desempolvamos uno de los éxitos más comerciales de Juan Pardo , que mezcla versos en castellano y gallego; mostramos el éxito de regreso de Neil Sedaka en Estados Unidos (después de una serie de sencillos a principios de la década de 1960). , y el primero de varios éxitos de los 70 para él. La canción había sido un éxito anteriormente en Inglaterra, donde se lanzó por primera vez. También se nos ha presentado en este guateque Rocco Walter Torrebruno Orgini, conocido como Torrebruno, que en 1962 participó en el Festival de la Canción de San Remo. Y para lenta tenemos a Nicola di Bari, el último romántico. Seguimos recordando a Los Mustang tras la perdida de su batería, y recuperamos el segundo amor de Los Brincos. Y felicitamos a nuestros vecinos andaluces con Raphael. El Niño de Linares ha sido nombrado Hijo Predilecto de Andalucía.Y ya sabes que nos gusta que nos escribas a El Guateque. ORM/RTRM. c/ de la Olma, 27. Murcia 30005. ¡Manda cartas!

FIRST SET: A Part of America Herein1. Bingo Trappers – “King In Exile” [Shrimper/Sing, Eunuchs!, 1997]2. Bobby Darin – “Jingle Jangle Jungle” [Direction, 1968]3. Ego Summit – “Illogical” [Old Age/No Age, 1997]4. The Ronettes – “(The Best Part Of) Breakin' Up” [Philles, 1964]5. Hugh Masekela – “If There's Anybody Out There” [UNI, 1969](Mic Break)6. Sir Douglas Quintet – “Song Of Everything” [Smash, 1968]7. Amiri Baraka – “I Love Music” [India Navigation, 1982]8. Tom Troccoli's Dog – “Orcanese Faretheewell” [SST, 1985]9. Gilberto Gil – “Miserere Nóbis” [Phillips, 1968]10. Vashti Bunyan – “Coldest Night Of The Year” [Dicristina, 2007]11. Francisca Griffin – “My Wish” [CoCoMuse, 2019](Mic Break)12. Felt – “Dismantled King Is Off The Throne” [Cherry Red, 1984]13. Psychedelic Horseshit – “New Wave Hippies” [Siltbreeze, 2007]14. Patrick Cowley – “Do It Any Way You Wanna” [Dark Entries, 2020]15. The Fates – “No Romance” [Taboo/Finders Keepers, 1985/2014]16. Diana Ross – “Didn't You Know You'd Have To Cry Sometime?” [Motown, 1971]17. John Davis & Dennis Callaci – “The Weight Of Joy” [Shrimper/Inundation, 2020]SECOND SET: Security Questions with the Bingo Trappers1. Interview Part One2. “Amazer Amazer” live performance3. “Rearranging The Light” live performance4. Interview Part Two5. “I Saw The Ghost Of Gram Parsons” live performance6. “What's The Score” live performanceAll four performed songs are from the Bingo Trappers' latest LP, “Giddy Wishes,” available at our Grapefruit web store! Please seek out the band's entire discography and experience that extremely rare feat, a band who has not only never recorded a bad album but has never even made a less-than-fantastic one.THIRD SET: Inherent Vibes – Cover Songs Edition1. Purple Snow – “Down By The River” (Neil Young) [Saquarius/Now Again, 1969/2017]2. Dump – “Girls + Boys” (Prince) [Shrimper, 2001]3. Alex Chilton - “Surfer Girl” (The Beach Boys) [Bootleg, 2016]4. The Slits – “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” (Marvin Gaye) [Island, 1979]5. Barbara Keith – “All Along The Watchtower” (Bob Dylan) [Reprise, 1973](Mic Break)6. Garbage & The Flowers – “You Ain't Goin Nowhere” (Bob Dylan) [Paradise Daily, 2016]7. Psandwich – “Home Before The Snowfall” (Sixth Station) [Columbus Discount, 2011]8. Condo Fucks – “With A Girl Like You” (The Troggs) [Matador, 2009]9. The Troggs – “Good Vibrations” (The Beach Boys) [Pye, 1975]10. Rosabella – “Ragazzino Senza Cuore” (Cat Stevens) [CGD, 1971](Mic Break)11. Silicon Teens – “Let's Dance” (Chris Montez) [Mute, 1979]12. Mark & Suzann Farmer – “Dreams” (Fleetwood Mac) [MSJ, 1978]13. The Heptones – “Sea Of Love” (Phil Phillips with The Twilights) [Studio One, 1968]14. Townes Van Zandt – “Dead Flowers” (The Rolling Stones) [Omnivore, 2013](Mic Break)15. Stop Having Children – Mr. Soul/Satisfaction (Buffalo Springfield/The Rolling Stones) [YouHadToBeThere, 2015]

The Ray Davies Songbook : -The Pretenders “Stop Your Sobbing” -Robert Palmer “You Really Got Me” -Graham Bonnet “Set Me Free” -Little Angels “Tired Of Waiting” -Andy Taylor “Lola” -David Essex “Waterloo Station” -Eddi Reader “Wonder Boy” -Bob Geldof “Sunny Afternoon” -The Kinks “Scattered” -Elvis Costello “ Days” -Marianne Faithfull “Rosie, Rosie (Aka Rosy Won't You Please Come Home)” -The Cascades “I Bet You Won't Stay” -Sir Douglas Quintet “Who'll Be The Next In Line” -The Romantics “She's Got Everything” -The Fall “Victoria” -The Stranglers “All Day And All Of The Night” Escuchar audio

Show #875 Happy New Year 01. Bees Deluxe - Prison Of Love (3:29) (Mouthful Of Bees, Slapping Cat Records, 2020) 02. Jarkka Rissanen & Sons of the Desert - Tomcat (4:46) (Single, Humu Records, 2020) 03. Layla Zoe - Nowhere Left To Go (3:47) (Nowhere Left To Go, Layla Zoe Music, 2021) 04. Curtis Salgado - The Longer That I Live (3:51) (Damage Control, Alligator Records, 2021) 05. Selwyn Birchwood - Living In A Burning House (4:08) (Living In A Burning House, Alligator Records, 2021) 06. Chris Cain - I Believe I Got Off Cheap (3:19) (Raising Cain, Alligator Records, 2021) 07. Reid Jamieson - Last Day Of The Year (2:53) (Songs For A Winter's Night, self-release, 2012) 08. The Beatles - Revolution (4:15) (White Album, Apple Records, 1968) 09. Tino Gonzales - Rule Of Heart (6:21) (The Right Time, Just Us Recordings, 2012) 10. Danny Barnes - Loser (5:34) (Dirt On The Angel, Terminus Records, 2003) 11. John Prine - When I Get To Heaven (3:42) (The Tree Of Forgiveness, Oh Boy Records, 2018) 12. Steve Goodman - Chicken Cordon Bleus (3:00) (Somebody Else's Troubles, Buddah Records, 1972) 13. David Bromberg - Suffer To Sing The Blues (4:48) (David Bromberg, Columbia Records, 1972) 14. Mothers Of Invention - Magdalena (6:24) (Just Another Band From L.A., Bizarre/Reprise Records, 1972) 15. King Biscuit Boy - Mean Old Lady (3:42) (King Biscuit Boy, Epic Records, 1974) 16. Ben E King - Young Boy Blues (2:17) (The Ben E. King Story, Atlantic Records, 1975) 17. Frankie Miller - (I can't) Breakaway (4:16) (Double Trouble, Chrysalis Records, 1978) 18. Alan Price - You're Telling Me (5:34) (Between Today And Yesterday, Warner Bros Records, 1974) 19. Sir Douglas Quintet - the gypsy (3:33) (The Return Of Doug Saldaña, Philips Records, 1971) 20. Grand Funk Railroad - Out To Get You (4:44) (Good Singin' Good Playin', MCA Records, 1976) Bandana Blues is and will always be a labor of love. Please help Spinner deal with the costs of hosting & bandwidth. Visit www.bandanablues.com and hit the tipjar. Any amount is much appreciated, no matter how small. Thank you.

Train To Nowhere staat op punt van vertrek uit het Amsterdamse Centraal Station. Alleen De Dijk springt nog snel aan boord, waarna de trein koers zet richting Achterhoek, Drenthe, Bennekom, Brugge en Austin. De provincie slaat terug met felle en geestige protestsongs van Bernard (voorheen Bennie) Jolink, Skik en Hans Dorrestijn, terwijl Raymond van het Groenewoud en het Sir Douglas Quintet de lof van Mokum bezingen. Tussendoor rock & roll en surfmuziek van Les Robots.

Label: Tribe 8308Year: 1965Condition: MLast Price: $24.00. Not currently available for sale.From a warehouse find, this is a new, unplayed stock copy, in its original American London Group factory sleeve. Here's a Mint copy of the single that Dave Marsh ranks at #491 in his list of the 1,001 greatest 45s of Rock'n' Soul. And don't neglect the terrific B side... also essential Sir Douglas Quintet! By the way, this was a non-album single until Tribe released a "Greatest Hits" LP in 1966. Fortunately, that LP contains both of these great tracks. Note: This beautiful 45 record has no notable flaws, grading Mint across the board (Labels, Vinyl, Audio).

  Episode ninety-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Song To Woody” by Bob Dylan, and at the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Sherry” by the Four Seasons. 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 always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This might not be available in the US, due to the number of Woody Guthrie songs in a row. Dylan’s first album is in the public domain in Europe, so a variety of reissues of it exist. An interesting and cheap one is this, which pairs it (and a non-album single by Dylan) with two Carolyn Hester albums which give a snapshot of the Greenwich Village scene, on one of which Dylan plays harmonica. The Harry Smith Anthology is also now public domain, and can be freely downloaded from archive.org.  I have used *many* books for this episode, most of which I will also be using for future episodes on Dylan: The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk and Elijah Wald is the fascinating and funny autobiography of Dylan’s mentor in his Greenwich Village period. Escaping the Delta by Elijah Wald is the definitive book on Robert Johnson. Information on Woody Guthrie comes from Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie by Ed Cray. Chronicles Volume 1 by Bob Dylan is a partial, highly inaccurate, but thoroughly readable autobiography. Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I’ve also used Robert Shelton’s No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   1962 is the year when the sixties really started, and in the next few episodes we will see the first proper appearances of several of the musicians who would go on to make the decade what it was. By two weeks from now, when we get to episode one hundred and the end of the second year of the podcast, the stage will be set for us to look at that most mythologised of decades. And so today, we’re going to take our first look at one of the most important of the sixties musicians, the only songwriter ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, a man who influenced every single performer and songwriter for at least the next decade, and whose work inspired a whole subgenre, albeit one he had little but contempt for. We’re going to look at his first album, and at a song he wrote to his greatest influence. And we’re also going to look at how his career intersected with someone we talked about way back in the very first episode of this podcast. Today we’re going to look at Bob Dylan, and at “Song to Woody”: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “Song to Woody”] This episode is going to be a little different from several of the other episodes we’ve had recently. At the time he made his first album, Dylan was not the accomplished artist he quickly became, but a minor performer whose first record only contained two original songs. But he was from a tradition that we’ve looked at only in passing before. We’ve barely looked at the American folk music tradition, and largely ignored the musicians who were major figures in it, because those figures only really enter into rock and roll in a real way starting with Dylan. So as part of this episode, we’re going to have very brief, capsule, looks at a number of other musicians we’ve not touched on before. I’ll only be giving enough background for these people so you can get a flavour of them — in future episodes when we look at the folk and folk-rock scenes, we’ll also fill in some more of the background of these artists. That also means this episode is going to run a little long, just because there’s a lot to get through. Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in the Minnesota Iron Range, an area of the US that was just beginning a slow descent into poverty, as the country suddenly needed a lot less metal after the end of World War II. He was born in Duluth, but moved to Hibbing, a much smaller town, when he was very young. As a kid, he was fascinated with music that sounded a little odd. He was first captivated by Johnnie Ray — and incidentally, Clinton Heylin, in his biography of Dylan, thinks that this must be wrong, and “Dylan has surely mixed up his names” and must be thinking of Johnny Ace, because “Ray’s main period of chart success” was 1956-58. Heylin’s books are usually very, very well researched, but here he’s showing his parochialism. Johnnie Ray’s biggest *UK* hits were in 1956-8, but in the US his biggest hits came in 1951, and he had a string of hits in the very early fifties.  Ray’s hits, like “Cry”, were produced by Mitch Miller, and were on Columbia records: [Excerpt: Johnnie Ray, “Cry”] Shortly after his infatuation with Ray’s music, he fell for the music of Hank Williams in a big way, and became obsessed with Williams’ songwriting: [Excerpt: Hank Williams, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”] He also became a fan of another Hank, Hank Snow, the country singer who had been managed by Colonel Tom Parker, and through Snow he became aware of the songs of Jimmie Rodgers, who Snow frequently covered, and who Snow admired enough that Snow’s son was named Jimmie Rodgers Snow.  But he soon also became a big fan of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. He taught himself to play rudimentary piano in a Little Richard style, and his ambition, as quoted in his high school yearbook, was to join Little Richard’s band. He was enough of a fan of rock and roll music that he went to see Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper on the penultimate date of their ill-fated tour. He later claimed to have seen a halo over Holly’s head during the performance. His first brush with fame came indirectly as a result of that tour. A singer from Fargo, North Dakota, named Bobby Vee, was drafted in to cover for Holly at the show that Holly had been travelling to when he died. Vee sounded a little like Holly, if you didn’t listen too closely, and he had a minor local hit with a song called “Suzy Baby”: [Excerpt: Bobby Vee, “Suzy Baby”] Dylan joined Vee’s band for a short while under the stage name Elston Gunn, playing the piano, though he was apparently not very good (he could only play in C, according to some sources I’ve read), and he didn’t stay in Vee’s band very long. But while he was in Vee’s band, he would tell friends and relatives that he *was* Bobby Vee, and at least some people believed him. Vee would go on to have a career as one of the wave of Bobbies that swarmed all over American Bandstand in the late fifties and early sixties, with records like “Rubber Ball”: [Excerpt: Bobby Vee, “Rubber Ball”] While Dylan made his name with a very different kind of music, he would always argue that Vee deserved rather more respect than he usually got, and that there was some merit to his music. But it wasn’t until he went to university in Minneapolis that Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, and changed everything about his life. As many people do when they go to university, he reinvented himself — he took on a new name, which has variously been quoted as having been inspired by Marshall Dillon from the TV series Gunsmoke and by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. He stopped studying, and devoted his time to music and chasing women. And he also took on a new musical style. The way he tells it, he had an epiphany in a record shop listening booth, listening to an album by the folk singer Odetta. Odetta was an astonishing singer who combined elements of folk, country, and blues with an opera-trained voice, and Dylan was probably listening to her first album, which was largely traditional folk songs, plus one song each by Lead Belly and Jimmie Rodgers: [Excerpt: Odetta, “Muleskinner Blues”] Dylan had soon sold his electric guitar and bought an acoustic, and he immediately learned all of Odetta’s repertoire and started performing her songs, and Lead Belly’s, with a friend, “Spider” John Koerner, who would later become a fairly well-known folk blues musician in his own right: [Excerpt: Ray, Koerner, and Glover, “Hangman”] And then, at a coffee-shop, he got talking with a friend of his, Flo Castner, and she invited him to come round to her brother’s apartment, which was nearby, because she thought he might be interested in some of the music her brother had. Dylan discovered two albums at Lyn Castner’s house that day that would change his life. The first, and the less important to him in the short term, is one we’ve talked about before — he heard the Spirituals to Swing album, the record of the 1938 Carnegie Hall concerts that we talked about back in the first few episodes of the podcast: [Excerpt: Big Joe Turner & Pete Johnson, “It’s Alright, Baby”] That album impressed him, but it was the other record he heard that day that changed everything for him immediately. It was a collection of recordings by Woody Guthrie. Guthrie is someone we’ve only mentioned in passing so far, but he was pivotal in the development of American folk music in the 1940s, and in particular he was important in the politicisation of that music. In the 1930s, there wasn’t really a distinction made between country music and folk — that distinction is one that only really came later — and Guthrie had started out as a country singer, singing songs inspired by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, and other 1920s greats. For most of his early twenties he’d bummed around Oklahoma and Texas doing odd jobs as a sign painter, psychic, faith healer, and whatever else he could pick up a little money for. But then in 1936 he’d travelled out to California in search of work. When there, he’d hooked up with a cousin, Jack Guthrie, who was a Western singer, performing the kind of Western Swing that would later become rockabilly. We don’t have any recordings of Jack from this early, but when you listen to him in the forties, you can hear the kind of hard-edged California Western Swing that would influence most of the white artists we looked at in the first year or so of the podcast: [Excerpt: Jack Guthrie, “Oakie Boogie”] Woody and Jack weren’t musically compatible — this was when country and western were seen as very, very different genres, rather than being lumped into one — but they worked together for a while. Jack was the lead singer and guitarist, and Woody was his comedy sidekick, backing vocalist, and harmonica player. They performed with a group called the Beverly Hillbillies and got their own radio show, The Oakie and Woody Show, but it wasn’t successful, and Jack decided to give up the show. Woody continued with a friend, Maxine Crissman, who performed as “Lefty Lou From Old Mizzou”. The Woody and Lefty act became hugely popular, but Lefty eventually also quit, due to her health failing, and while at the time she seems to have been regarded as the major talent in the duo, her leaving the act was indirectly the best thing that ever happened to Guthrie. The radio station they were performing on was owned by a fairly left-wing businessman who had connections with the radical left faction of the Democratic Party (and in California in the thirties that could be quite radical, somewhere close to today’s Democratic Socialists of America), and when Lefty quit the act, the owner of the station gave Guthrie another job — the owner also ran a left-wing newspaper, and since Guthrie was from Oklahoma, maybe he would be interested in writing some columns about the plight of the Okie migrants?  Guthrie went and spent time with those people, and his shock at the poverty they were living in and the discrimination they were suffering seems to have radicalised him. He started hanging round with members of the Communist Party, though he apparently never joined — he wasn’t all that interested in Marxist theory or the party line, he just wanted to take the side of the victims against the bullies, and he saw the Communists as doing that. He was, though, enough of a fellow traveller that when World War II started he took the initial Communist line of it being a capitalist’s fight that socialists should have no part of (a line which was held until Russia joined the war, at which point it became a crusade against the evils of fascism). His employer was a more resolute anti-fascist, and so Guthrie lost his newspaper job, and he decided to move across the country to New York, where he hooked up with a group of left-wing intellectuals and folk singers, centring on Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly. It was this environment, centred in Almanac House in Greenwich Village, that spawned the Almanac Singers and later the Weavers, who we talked about a few episodes back. And Guthrie had been the most important of all of them. Guthrie was a folk performer — a big chunk of his repertoire was old songs like “Ida Red”, “Stackolee”, and “Who’s Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?” – but he also wrote songs himself, taking the forms of old folk and country songs, and reworking the lyrics — and sometimes, but not always, the music — creating songs that dealt with events that were happening at the time. There were songs about famous outlaws, recast as Robin Hood type figures: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, “Pretty Boy Floyd”] There were talking blues with comedy lyrics: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, “Talking Fishing Blues”] There were the famous Dust Bowl Ballads, about the dust storms that had caused so much destruction and hardship in the west: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, “The Great Dust Storm”] And of course, there was “This Land is Your Land”, a radical song about how private property is immoral and unnatural, which has been taken up as an anthem by people who would despise everything that Guthrie stood for: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, “This Land is Your Land”] It’s not certain which records by Guthrie Dylan heard that day — he talks about it in his autobiography, but the songs he talks about weren’t ones that were on the same album, and he seems to just be naming a handful of Guthrie’s songs. What is certain is that Dylan reacted to this music in a visceral way. He decided that he had to *become* Woody Guthrie, and took on Guthrie’s playing and singing style, even his accent. However, he soon modulated that slightly, when a friend told him that he might as well give up — Ramblin’ Jack Elliot was already doing the Guthrie-imitation thing. Elliot, like Dylan, was a middle-class Jewish man who had reinvented himself as a Woody Guthrie copy — in this case, Elliot Adnopoz, the son of a surgeon, had become Ramblin’ Jack the singing cowboy, and had been an apprentice of Guthrie, living with him and learning everything from him, before going over to Britain, where his status as an actual authentic American had meant he was one of the major figures in the British folk scene and the related skiffle scene. Alan Lomax, who had moved to the UK temporarily to escape the anti-Communist witch hunts, had got Elliot a contract with Topic Records, a folk label that had started out as part of the Workers’ Music Association, which as you can probably tell from the name was affiliated with the Communist Party of Great Britain. There he’d recorded an album of Guthrie songs, which Dylan’s acquaintance played for him: [Excerpt: Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, “1913 Massacre”] Dylan was shocked that there was someone out there doing the same thing, but then he just took on aspects of Elliot’s persona as well as Guthrie’s. He was going to be the next Woody Guthrie, and that meant inhabiting his persona utterly, and giving his whole repertoire over to Guthrie songs. He was also, though, making tentative efforts at writing his own songs, too. One which we only have as a lyric was written to a girlfriend, and was set to the same tune we just heard — Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre”. The lyrics were things like “Hey, hey Bonny, I’m singing to you now/The song I’m singing is the best I know how” Incidentally, the woman that was written for is yet another person in the story who now has a different name — she became a moderately successful actor, appearing in episodes of Star Trek and Gunsmoke, and changed her name to Jahanara Romney shortly after her marriage to the hippie peace activist Wavy Gravy (which isn’t Mr. Gravy’s birth name either). Their son, whose birth name was Howdy Do-Good Gravy Tomahawk Truckstop Romney, also changed his name later on, you’ll be unsurprised to hear. Dylan by this point was feeling as constrained by the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as he had earlier by the small town Hibbing. In January 1961, he decided he was going to go to New York, and while he was there he was going to go and meet Woody Guthrie in person. Guthrie was, by this time, severely ill — he had Huntington’s disease, a truly awful genetic disorder that had also killed his mother. Huntington’s causes dementia, spasmodic movements, a loss of control of the body, and a ton of other mental and physical symptoms. Guthrie had been in a psychiatric hospital since 1956, and was only let out every Sunday to see family at a friend’s house.  Bob Dylan quickly became friendly with Guthrie, visiting him regularly in the hospital to play Guthrie’s own songs for him, and occasionally joining him on the family visits on Sundays. He only spent a few months doing this — Dylan has always been someone who moved on quickly, and Guthrie also moved towards the end of 1961, to a new hospital closer to his family, but these visits had a profound effect on the young man. When not visiting Guthrie, Dylan was spending his time in Greenwich Village, the Bohemian centre of New York. The Village at that time was a hotbed of artists and radicals, with people like the poet Allen Ginsberg, the street musician Moondog, and Tiny Tim, a ukulele player who sang Rudy Vallee songs in falsetto, all part of the scene. It was also the centre of what was becoming the second great folk revival. That revival had been started in 1952, when the most important bootleg ever was released, Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music: [Excerpt: Blind Lemon Jefferson, “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean”] Harry Smith was a record collector, experimental filmmaker, and follower of the occultist Aleister Crowley. His greatest work seems at least in part to have been created as a magickal work, with album covers designed by himself full of esoteric symbolism. Smith had a huge collection of old 78 records — all of them things that had been issued commercially in the late 1920s and early thirties, when the record industry had been in a temporary boom before the depression. Many of these records had been very popular in the twenties, but by 1952 even the most popular acts, like Blind Lemon Jefferson or the Carter Family, were largely forgotten. So Smith and Moe Asch, the owner of Folkways Records, took advantage of the new medium, the long-playing album, and put together a six-album set of these recordings, not bothering with trivialities like copyright even though, again, most of these had been recorded for major labels only twenty or so years earlier — but at this time there was not really such a thing as a market for back catalogue, and none of the record labels involved seem to have protested. Smith’s collection was an idiosyncratic one, based around his own tastes. It ran the gamut from hard blues: [Excerpt: Joe Williams’ Washboard Blues Singers, “Baby Please Don’t Go”] To the Carter Family’s country recordings of old ballads that date back centuries: [Excerpt: The Carter Family, “Black Jack Davey”] To gospel: [Excerpt: Sister Clara Hudmon, “Stand By Me”] But put together in one place, these records suggested the existence of a uniquely American roots music tradition, one that encompassed all these genres, and Smith’s Anthology became the favourite music of the same type of people who in the UK around the same time were becoming skifflers — many of them radical leftists who had been part of the US equivalent of the trad jazz movement (who were known as “mouldy figs”) and were attracted by the idea of an authentic music of the working man. The Harry Smith Anthology became the core repertoire for every American folk musician of the fifties, the seed around which the whole movement crystallised. Every folkie knew every single song on those records. Those folkies had started playing at coffee shops in Greenwich Village, places that were known as basket houses, because they didn’t charge for entry or pay the artists, but the performers could pass a basket and split whatever the audience decided to donate.  Originally, the folk musicians were not especially popular, and in fact they were booked for that reason. The main entertainment for those coffee shops was poetry, and the audience for poetry would mostly buy a single coffee and make it last all night. The folkies were booked to come on between the poets and play a few songs to make the audience clear out to make room for a new audience to come and buy new coffees. However, some of the people got good enough that they actually started to get their own audiences, and within a short time the roles were reversed, with the poets coming on to clear out the folk audience. Dylan’s first gigs were on this circuit, playing on bills put together by Fred Neil, a musician who was at this point mostly playing blues songs but who within a few years would write some of the great classics of the sixties singer-songwriter genre: [Excerpt: Fred Neil, “Everybody’s Talkin'”] By the time Dylan hit the scene, there were quite a few very good musicians in the Village, and the folk scene had grown to the point that there were multiple factions. There were the Stalinists, who had coalesced around Pete Seeger, the elder statesman of the scene, and who played a mixture of summer-camp singalong music and topical songs about news events. There were the Zionists, who were singing things like “Hava Nagilah”. There were bluegrass players, and there were the two groups that most attracted Dylan — those who sang old folk ballads, and those who sang the blues. Those latter two groups tended to cluster together, because they were smaller than the other groups, and also because of their own political views — while all of the scene were leftists, the blues and ballad singers tended either to be vaguely apolitical, or to be anarchists and Trotskyites rather than Stalinists. But they had a deeper philosophical disagreement with the Stalinists — Seeger’s camp thought that the quality of a song was secondary to the social good it could do, while the blues and ballad singers held that the important thing was the music, and any political or social good was a nice byproduct. There was a huge amount of infighting between these small groups — the narcissism of small differences — but there was one place they would all hang out. The Folklore Centre was a record and bookshop owned by a man named Izzy Young, and it was where you would go to buy every new book, to buy and sell copies of the zines that were published, and to hang out and find out who the new musicians on the scene were.  And it was at the Folklore Centre that Dylan met Dave Van Ronk: [Excerpt: Dave Van Ronk, “Cocaine Blues”] Van Ronk was the most important musician in the blues and ballads group of folkies, and was politically an anarchist who, through his connection with the Schachtmanites (a fringe-left group who were more Trotskyite than the Trotskyites, and whose views sometimes shaded into anarchism) was becoming converted to Marxism. A physically massive man, he’d started out as a traditional jazz guitarist and banjo player, but had slowly moved on into the folk side of things through his love of blues singers like Bessie Smith and folk-blues artists like Lead Belly. Van Ronk had learned a great deal from Rev. Gary Davis, a blind gospel-blues singer whose technique Van Ronk had studied: [Excerpt: Rev. Gary Davis, “Death Don’t Have No Mercy”] Van Ronk was one of the few people on the Village scene who was a native New Yorker, though he was from Queens rather than the Village, and he was someone who had already made a few records that Dylan had heard, mostly of the standard repertoire: [Excerpt: Dave Van Ronk, “See That My Grave is Kept Clean”] Dylan consciously sought him out as the person to imitate on the scene, and he was soon regularly sleeping on Van Ronk’s couch and being managed for a brief time by Van Ronk’s wife. Once again, Dylan was learning everything he could from the people he was around — but he had a much bigger ambition than anyone else on the scene. A lot of the people on that scene have been very bitter over the years about Dylan, but Van Ronk, who did more for Dylan than anyone else on the scene, never really was — the two stopped being close once he was no more use to Dylan, as so often happened, but they remained friendly, because Van Ronk was secure enough in himself and his own abilities that he didn’t need the validation of being important to the big star. Van Ronk was an important mentor to him for a crucial period of six months or so, and Dylan always acknowledged that, just as Van Ronk always acknowledged Dylan’s talent. And that talent, at least at first, was a performing talent rather than a songwriting one. Dylan was writing songs by now, but hardly any, and when he did perform them, he was not acknowledging them. His first truly successful song, a song about nuclear war, “Let Me Die in my Footsteps”, he would introduce as a Weavers song: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “Let Me Die in my Footsteps”] For the most part, his repertoire was still only Woody Guthrie songs, but people were amazed by his personal charisma, his humour — one comparison you see time and again when people talk about his early performances is Charlie Chaplin — and his singing. There are so many jokes about Dylan’s vocals that this sounds like a joke, but among the folk crowd, his phrasing in particular — as influenced by the R&B records he grew up listening to as by Guthrie — was considered utterly astonishing. Dylan started publishing some of his song lyrics in Broadside, a magazine for new topical songs, and in other magazines like Sing Out! These were associated with the Communist side of the folk movement, and Dylan had a foot in both camps through his association with Guthrie and Guthrie’s friends. Through these people he got to know Suze Rotolo, a volunteer with the Congress of Racial Equality, who became his girlfriend, and her sister Carla, who was the assistant to Alan Lomax, who was now back from the UK, and the Rotolos played a part in Dylan’s big breakthrough.  The timeline that follows is a bit confused, but Carla Rotolo recorded some of the best Village folk singers, and wrote to John Hammond about the tape, mentioning Dylan in particular. At the same time, Hammond’s son John Hammond Jr, another musician on the circuit and a friend of Dylan’s, apparently mentioned Dylan to his father. Dylan was also working on Robert Shelton, the folk critic of the New York Times, who eventually gave Dylan a massive rave review for a support slot he’d played at Gerde’s Folk City. And the same day that review came out, eight days after Carla Rotolo’s letter, Dylan was in the recording studio with the folk singer Carolyn Hester, playing harmonica on a few of her tracks, and Hammond was the producer: [Excerpt: Carolyn Hester, “I’ll Fly Away”] Hammond had, of course, organised the Spirituals to Swing concerts which had influenced Dylan. And not only that, he’d been the person to discover Billie Holiday, and Count Basie. And Charlie Christian. He was now working for Columbia Records, where he’d just produced the first secular records for a promising new gospel singer who had decided to turn pop, named Aretha Franklin: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, “Today I Sing the Blues”] So Hammond was an important figure in many ways, and he had a lot of latitude at Columbia Records. He decided to sign Dylan, and even though Mitch Miller, Columbia’s head of A&R at the time, had no clue what Hammond saw in Dylan, Hammond’s track record was good enough that he was allowed to get on with it and put out an album. Hammond also gave Dylan an album to take home and listen to, a record which hadn’t come out yet, a reissue of some old blues records called “King of the Delta Blues Singers” by Robert Johnson: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, “Crossroads Blues”] There has been a hell of a lot of mythology about Johnson over the years, so much so that it’s almost impossible to give anyone who’s heard of him at all an accurate impression of Johnson’s place in music history. One question I have been asked repeatedly since I started this podcast is “How come you didn’t start with Robert Johnson?”, and if you don’t know about him, you’ll get an idea of his general perception among music fans from the fact that I recently watched an episode of a science fiction TV series where our heroes had to go back in time to stop the villains from preventing Johnson from making his recordings, because by doing that they could stop rock and roll from ever existing. There’s a popular perception that Johnson was the most important blues musician of his generation, and that he was hugely influential on the development of blues and R&B, and it’s simply false. He *was* a truly great musician, and he *was* hugely influential — but he was influential on white musicians in the sixties, not black musicians in the thirties, forties, and fifties. In his lifetime, his best selling records sold around five thousand copies, which to put it in perspective is about the same number of people who’ve listened to some of my more popular podcast episodes. Johnson’s biographer Elijah Wald — a man who, like I do, has a huge respect for Johnson’s musicianship, has said “knowing about Johnson and Muddy Waters but not about Leroy Carr or Dinah Washington [is] like knowing about, say, the Sir Douglas Quintet but not knowing about the Beatles.” I’d agree, except that the Sir Douglas Quintet were much, much, bigger in the sixties than Robert Johnson was in the thirties. Johnson’s reputation comes entirely from that album that Hammond had handed Dylan. Hammond had been one of the tiny number of people who had actually listened to Johnson at the time he was performing. Indeed, Hammond had wanted to get Johnson to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts, only to find that Johnson had died only a short time earlier — they’d got Big Bill Broonzy to play in his place, and played a couple of Johnson’s records from the stage. That had, in fact, kickstarted Broonzy’s later second career as a folk-blues musician playing for largely white audiences, rather than as a proto-Chicago-blues performer playing for Black ones. Hammond’s friend Alan Lomax had also been a fan of Johnson — he’d gone to Mississippi later, to try to record Johnson, also without having realised that Johnson had died. But far from Johnson being the single most important blues musician of the thirties, as he is now portrayed in popular culture, if you’d asked most blues musicians or listeners about Robert Johnson in the twenty-three years between his death and the King of the Delta Blues Singers album coming out, most of them would have looked at you blankly, or maybe asked if you meant Lonnie Johnson, the much more famous musician who was a big inspiration for Robert. When King of the Delta Blues Singers came out, it changed all that, and made Robert Johnson into a totemic figure among white blues fans, and we’ll see over the next year or two a large number of very important musicians who took inspiration from him — and deservedly so. While the myth of Robert Johnson has almost no connection to the real man, his music demonstrated a remarkable musical mind — he was a versatile, skilled guitarist and arranger, and someone whose musical palette was far wider than his recorded legacy suggests — Ramblin’ Johnny Shines, who travelled with Johnson for a time, describes him as particularly enjoying playing songs like “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby” and Jimmie Rodgers songs, and polkas, calling Johnson “a polka hound, man”. And even though in his handful of recording sessions he was asked only to play blues, you can still hear elements of that: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, “They’re Red Hot”] But the music wasn’t the main thing that grabbed Dylan. Dylan played the album for Dave Van Ronk, who was unimpressed — musically, Johnson just didn’t seem very original to Van Ronk, who played Dylan records by Skip James, Leroy Carr, and others, showing Dylan where Johnson had picked up most of his musical ideas. And Dylan had to agree with him that Johnson didn’t sound particularly original in that context — but he also didn’t care, reasoning that many of the Woody Guthrie songs he loved were rewrites of old Carter Family songs, so if Johnson was rewriting Leroy Carr songs that was fair enough. What got to Dylan was Johnson’s performance style, but also his ability with words. Johnson had a very sparse, economical, lyrical style which connected with Dylan on a primordial level. Most of those who became fans of Johnson following the release of King of the Delta Blues Singers saw Johnson as an exotic and scary figure — the myth commonly told about him is that he sold his soul at a crossroads to the Devil in return for the ability to play the guitar, though that’s a myth that was originally told about a different Mississippi blues man called Tommy Johnson, and there’s no evidence that anyone thought that of him at the time — and so these later fans see his music as being haunted. Dylan instead seems to see Johnson as someone very like himself — in his autobiography, Chronicles, Dylan talks about Johnson being a bothersome kid who played harmonica, who was later taught a bit of guitar and then learned the rest of his music from records, rather than from live performers. Dylan’s version of Johnson is closer to the reality, as far as we know it, than the Johnson of legend is, and Dylan seems to have been delighted when he found out much later that the name of the musician who taught Johnson to play guitar was Ike Zimmerman. Dylan immediately tried to incorporate Johnson’s style into his own songwriting, and we’ll see the effects of that in future episodes. But that songwriting wouldn’t be seen much on his debut album. And nor would his Woody Guthrie repertoire. Instead, Dylan performed a set of traditional ballads and blues numbers, most of which he never performed live normally, and at least half of which were arrangements that Dylan copied wholesale from Dave Van Ronk. [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “See That My Grave is Kept Clean”] The album was recorded quickly, in a couple of days. Hammond found Dylan incredibly difficult to work with, saying he had appalling mic technique, and for many of the songs Dylan refused to do a second take. There were only two originals on the album. One, “Talkin’ New York”, was a comedy talking blues about his early time in New York, very much in the style of Woody Guthrie’s talking blues songs. The other, “Song To Woody”, was a rewrite of his earlier “Song For Bonny”, which was itself a rewrite of Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre”. The song is a touching one, Dylan paying tribute to his single biggest influence: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “Song to Woody”] Dylan was moving on, and he knew he was moving on, but he had to say goodbye. Dylan’s first album was not a success, and he became known within Columbia Records as “Hammond’s Folly”, but nor did it lose money, since it was recorded so quickly. It’s a record that Dylan and Hammond both later spoke poorly of, but it’s one I rather like, and one of the best things to come out of the Greenwich Village folk scene. But by the time it came out, Dylan’s artistic heart was already elsewhere, and when we come back to him in a couple of months, we’ll be seeing someone who had completely reinvented himself.  

  Episode ninety-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Song To Woody" by Bob Dylan, and at the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Sherry" by the Four Seasons. 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 always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This might not be available in the US, due to the number of Woody Guthrie songs in a row. Dylan's first album is in the public domain in Europe, so a variety of reissues of it exist. An interesting and cheap one is this, which pairs it (and a non-album single by Dylan) with two Carolyn Hester albums which give a snapshot of the Greenwich Village scene, on one of which Dylan plays harmonica. The Harry Smith Anthology is also now public domain, and can be freely downloaded from archive.org.  I have used *many* books for this episode, most of which I will also be using for future episodes on Dylan: The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk and Elijah Wald is the fascinating and funny autobiography of Dylan's mentor in his Greenwich Village period. Escaping the Delta by Elijah Wald is the definitive book on Robert Johnson. Information on Woody Guthrie comes from Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie by Ed Cray. Chronicles Volume 1 by Bob Dylan is a partial, highly inaccurate, but thoroughly readable autobiography. Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   1962 is the year when the sixties really started, and in the next few episodes we will see the first proper appearances of several of the musicians who would go on to make the decade what it was. By two weeks from now, when we get to episode one hundred and the end of the second year of the podcast, the stage will be set for us to look at that most mythologised of decades. And so today, we're going to take our first look at one of the most important of the sixties musicians, the only songwriter ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, a man who influenced every single performer and songwriter for at least the next decade, and whose work inspired a whole subgenre, albeit one he had little but contempt for. We're going to look at his first album, and at a song he wrote to his greatest influence. And we're also going to look at how his career intersected with someone we talked about way back in the very first episode of this podcast. Today we're going to look at Bob Dylan, and at "Song to Woody": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Song to Woody"] This episode is going to be a little different from several of the other episodes we've had recently. At the time he made his first album, Dylan was not the accomplished artist he quickly became, but a minor performer whose first record only contained two original songs. But he was from a tradition that we've looked at only in passing before. We've barely looked at the American folk music tradition, and largely ignored the musicians who were major figures in it, because those figures only really enter into rock and roll in a real way starting with Dylan. So as part of this episode, we're going to have very brief, capsule, looks at a number of other musicians we've not touched on before. I'll only be giving enough background for these people so you can get a flavour of them -- in future episodes when we look at the folk and folk-rock scenes, we'll also fill in some more of the background of these artists. That also means this episode is going to run a little long, just because there's a lot to get through. Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in the Minnesota Iron Range, an area of the US that was just beginning a slow descent into poverty, as the country suddenly needed a lot less metal after the end of World War II. He was born in Duluth, but moved to Hibbing, a much smaller town, when he was very young. As a kid, he was fascinated with music that sounded a little odd. He was first captivated by Johnnie Ray -- and incidentally, Clinton Heylin, in his biography of Dylan, thinks that this must be wrong, and "Dylan has surely mixed up his names" and must be thinking of Johnny Ace, because "Ray’s main period of chart success" was 1956-58. Heylin's books are usually very, very well researched, but here he's showing his parochialism. Johnnie Ray's biggest *UK* hits were in 1956-8, but in the US his biggest hits came in 1951, and he had a string of hits in the very early fifties.  Ray's hits, like "Cry", were produced by Mitch Miller, and were on Columbia records: [Excerpt: Johnnie Ray, "Cry"] Shortly after his infatuation with Ray's music, he fell for the music of Hank Williams in a big way, and became obsessed with Williams' songwriting: [Excerpt: Hank Williams, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"] He also became a fan of another Hank, Hank Snow, the country singer who had been managed by Colonel Tom Parker, and through Snow he became aware of the songs of Jimmie Rodgers, who Snow frequently covered, and who Snow admired enough that Snow's son was named Jimmie Rodgers Snow.  But he soon also became a big fan of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. He taught himself to play rudimentary piano in a Little Richard style, and his ambition, as quoted in his high school yearbook, was to join Little Richard's band. He was enough of a fan of rock and roll music that he went to see Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper on the penultimate date of their ill-fated tour. He later claimed to have seen a halo over Holly's head during the performance. His first brush with fame came indirectly as a result of that tour. A singer from Fargo, North Dakota, named Bobby Vee, was drafted in to cover for Holly at the show that Holly had been travelling to when he died. Vee sounded a little like Holly, if you didn't listen too closely, and he had a minor local hit with a song called "Suzy Baby": [Excerpt: Bobby Vee, "Suzy Baby"] Dylan joined Vee's band for a short while under the stage name Elston Gunn, playing the piano, though he was apparently not very good (he could only play in C, according to some sources I've read), and he didn't stay in Vee's band very long. But while he was in Vee's band, he would tell friends and relatives that he *was* Bobby Vee, and at least some people believed him. Vee would go on to have a career as one of the wave of Bobbies that swarmed all over American Bandstand in the late fifties and early sixties, with records like "Rubber Ball": [Excerpt: Bobby Vee, "Rubber Ball"] While Dylan made his name with a very different kind of music, he would always argue that Vee deserved rather more respect than he usually got, and that there was some merit to his music. But it wasn't until he went to university in Minneapolis that Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, and changed everything about his life. As many people do when they go to university, he reinvented himself -- he took on a new name, which has variously been quoted as having been inspired by Marshall Dillon from the TV series Gunsmoke and by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. He stopped studying, and devoted his time to music and chasing women. And he also took on a new musical style. The way he tells it, he had an epiphany in a record shop listening booth, listening to an album by the folk singer Odetta. Odetta was an astonishing singer who combined elements of folk, country, and blues with an opera-trained voice, and Dylan was probably listening to her first album, which was largely traditional folk songs, plus one song each by Lead Belly and Jimmie Rodgers: [Excerpt: Odetta, "Muleskinner Blues"] Dylan had soon sold his electric guitar and bought an acoustic, and he immediately learned all of Odetta's repertoire and started performing her songs, and Lead Belly's, with a friend, "Spider" John Koerner, who would later become a fairly well-known folk blues musician in his own right: [Excerpt: Ray, Koerner, and Glover, "Hangman"] And then, at a coffee-shop, he got talking with a friend of his, Flo Castner, and she invited him to come round to her brother's apartment, which was nearby, because she thought he might be interested in some of the music her brother had. Dylan discovered two albums at Lyn Castner's house that day that would change his life. The first, and the less important to him in the short term, is one we've talked about before -- he heard the Spirituals to Swing album, the record of the 1938 Carnegie Hall concerts that we talked about back in the first few episodes of the podcast: [Excerpt: Big Joe Turner & Pete Johnson, "It's Alright, Baby"] That album impressed him, but it was the other record he heard that day that changed everything for him immediately. It was a collection of recordings by Woody Guthrie. Guthrie is someone we've only mentioned in passing so far, but he was pivotal in the development of American folk music in the 1940s, and in particular he was important in the politicisation of that music. In the 1930s, there wasn't really a distinction made between country music and folk -- that distinction is one that only really came later -- and Guthrie had started out as a country singer, singing songs inspired by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, and other 1920s greats. For most of his early twenties he'd bummed around Oklahoma and Texas doing odd jobs as a sign painter, psychic, faith healer, and whatever else he could pick up a little money for. But then in 1936 he'd travelled out to California in search of work. When there, he'd hooked up with a cousin, Jack Guthrie, who was a Western singer, performing the kind of Western Swing that would later become rockabilly. We don't have any recordings of Jack from this early, but when you listen to him in the forties, you can hear the kind of hard-edged California Western Swing that would influence most of the white artists we looked at in the first year or so of the podcast: [Excerpt: Jack Guthrie, "Oakie Boogie"] Woody and Jack weren't musically compatible -- this was when country and western were seen as very, very different genres, rather than being lumped into one -- but they worked together for a while. Jack was the lead singer and guitarist, and Woody was his comedy sidekick, backing vocalist, and harmonica player. They performed with a group called the Beverly Hillbillies and got their own radio show, The Oakie and Woody Show, but it wasn't successful, and Jack decided to give up the show. Woody continued with a friend, Maxine Crissman, who performed as "Lefty Lou From Old Mizzou". The Woody and Lefty act became hugely popular, but Lefty eventually also quit, due to her health failing, and while at the time she seems to have been regarded as the major talent in the duo, her leaving the act was indirectly the best thing that ever happened to Guthrie. The radio station they were performing on was owned by a fairly left-wing businessman who had connections with the radical left faction of the Democratic Party (and in California in the thirties that could be quite radical, somewhere close to today's Democratic Socialists of America), and when Lefty quit the act, the owner of the station gave Guthrie another job -- the owner also ran a left-wing newspaper, and since Guthrie was from Oklahoma, maybe he would be interested in writing some columns about the plight of the Okie migrants?  Guthrie went and spent time with those people, and his shock at the poverty they were living in and the discrimination they were suffering seems to have radicalised him. He started hanging round with members of the Communist Party, though he apparently never joined -- he wasn't all that interested in Marxist theory or the party line, he just wanted to take the side of the victims against the bullies, and he saw the Communists as doing that. He was, though, enough of a fellow traveller that when World War II started he took the initial Communist line of it being a capitalist's fight that socialists should have no part of (a line which was held until Russia joined the war, at which point it became a crusade against the evils of fascism). His employer was a more resolute anti-fascist, and so Guthrie lost his newspaper job, and he decided to move across the country to New York, where he hooked up with a group of left-wing intellectuals and folk singers, centring on Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly. It was this environment, centred in Almanac House in Greenwich Village, that spawned the Almanac Singers and later the Weavers, who we talked about a few episodes back. And Guthrie had been the most important of all of them. Guthrie was a folk performer -- a big chunk of his repertoire was old songs like "Ida Red", "Stackolee", and "Who's Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?" – but he also wrote songs himself, taking the forms of old folk and country songs, and reworking the lyrics -- and sometimes, but not always, the music -- creating songs that dealt with events that were happening at the time. There were songs about famous outlaws, recast as Robin Hood type figures: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "Pretty Boy Floyd"] There were talking blues with comedy lyrics: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "Talking Fishing Blues"] There were the famous Dust Bowl Ballads, about the dust storms that had caused so much destruction and hardship in the west: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "The Great Dust Storm"] And of course, there was "This Land is Your Land", a radical song about how private property is immoral and unnatural, which has been taken up as an anthem by people who would despise everything that Guthrie stood for: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "This Land is Your Land"] It's not certain which records by Guthrie Dylan heard that day -- he talks about it in his autobiography, but the songs he talks about weren't ones that were on the same album, and he seems to just be naming a handful of Guthrie's songs. What is certain is that Dylan reacted to this music in a visceral way. He decided that he had to *become* Woody Guthrie, and took on Guthrie's playing and singing style, even his accent. However, he soon modulated that slightly, when a friend told him that he might as well give up -- Ramblin' Jack Elliot was already doing the Guthrie-imitation thing. Elliot, like Dylan, was a middle-class Jewish man who had reinvented himself as a Woody Guthrie copy -- in this case, Elliot Adnopoz, the son of a surgeon, had become Ramblin' Jack the singing cowboy, and had been an apprentice of Guthrie, living with him and learning everything from him, before going over to Britain, where his status as an actual authentic American had meant he was one of the major figures in the British folk scene and the related skiffle scene. Alan Lomax, who had moved to the UK temporarily to escape the anti-Communist witch hunts, had got Elliot a contract with Topic Records, a folk label that had started out as part of the Workers' Music Association, which as you can probably tell from the name was affiliated with the Communist Party of Great Britain. There he'd recorded an album of Guthrie songs, which Dylan's acquaintance played for him: [Excerpt: Ramblin' Jack Elliot, "1913 Massacre"] Dylan was shocked that there was someone out there doing the same thing, but then he just took on aspects of Elliot's persona as well as Guthrie's. He was going to be the next Woody Guthrie, and that meant inhabiting his persona utterly, and giving his whole repertoire over to Guthrie songs. He was also, though, making tentative efforts at writing his own songs, too. One which we only have as a lyric was written to a girlfriend, and was set to the same tune we just heard -- Guthrie's "1913 Massacre". The lyrics were things like "Hey, hey Bonny, I’m singing to you now/The song I’m singing is the best I know how" Incidentally, the woman that was written for is yet another person in the story who now has a different name -- she became a moderately successful actor, appearing in episodes of Star Trek and Gunsmoke, and changed her name to Jahanara Romney shortly after her marriage to the hippie peace activist Wavy Gravy (which isn't Mr. Gravy's birth name either). Their son, whose birth name was Howdy Do-Good Gravy Tomahawk Truckstop Romney, also changed his name later on, you'll be unsurprised to hear. Dylan by this point was feeling as constrained by the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as he had earlier by the small town Hibbing. In January 1961, he decided he was going to go to New York, and while he was there he was going to go and meet Woody Guthrie in person. Guthrie was, by this time, severely ill -- he had Huntington's disease, a truly awful genetic disorder that had also killed his mother. Huntington's causes dementia, spasmodic movements, a loss of control of the body, and a ton of other mental and physical symptoms. Guthrie had been in a psychiatric hospital since 1956, and was only let out every Sunday to see family at a friend's house.  Bob Dylan quickly became friendly with Guthrie, visiting him regularly in the hospital to play Guthrie's own songs for him, and occasionally joining him on the family visits on Sundays. He only spent a few months doing this -- Dylan has always been someone who moved on quickly, and Guthrie also moved towards the end of 1961, to a new hospital closer to his family, but these visits had a profound effect on the young man. When not visiting Guthrie, Dylan was spending his time in Greenwich Village, the Bohemian centre of New York. The Village at that time was a hotbed of artists and radicals, with people like the poet Allen Ginsberg, the street musician Moondog, and Tiny Tim, a ukulele player who sang Rudy Vallee songs in falsetto, all part of the scene. It was also the centre of what was becoming the second great folk revival. That revival had been started in 1952, when the most important bootleg ever was released, Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music: [Excerpt: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"] Harry Smith was a record collector, experimental filmmaker, and follower of the occultist Aleister Crowley. His greatest work seems at least in part to have been created as a magickal work, with album covers designed by himself full of esoteric symbolism. Smith had a huge collection of old 78 records -- all of them things that had been issued commercially in the late 1920s and early thirties, when the record industry had been in a temporary boom before the depression. Many of these records had been very popular in the twenties, but by 1952 even the most popular acts, like Blind Lemon Jefferson or the Carter Family, were largely forgotten. So Smith and Moe Asch, the owner of Folkways Records, took advantage of the new medium, the long-playing album, and put together a six-album set of these recordings, not bothering with trivialities like copyright even though, again, most of these had been recorded for major labels only twenty or so years earlier -- but at this time there was not really such a thing as a market for back catalogue, and none of the record labels involved seem to have protested. Smith's collection was an idiosyncratic one, based around his own tastes. It ran the gamut from hard blues: [Excerpt: Joe Williams' Washboard Blues Singers, "Baby Please Don't Go"] To the Carter Family's country recordings of old ballads that date back centuries: [Excerpt: The Carter Family, "Black Jack Davey"] To gospel: [Excerpt: Sister Clara Hudmon, "Stand By Me"] But put together in one place, these records suggested the existence of a uniquely American roots music tradition, one that encompassed all these genres, and Smith's Anthology became the favourite music of the same type of people who in the UK around the same time were becoming skifflers -- many of them radical leftists who had been part of the US equivalent of the trad jazz movement (who were known as “mouldy figs”) and were attracted by the idea of an authentic music of the working man. The Harry Smith Anthology became the core repertoire for every American folk musician of the fifties, the seed around which the whole movement crystallised. Every folkie knew every single song on those records. Those folkies had started playing at coffee shops in Greenwich Village, places that were known as basket houses, because they didn't charge for entry or pay the artists, but the performers could pass a basket and split whatever the audience decided to donate.  Originally, the folk musicians were not especially popular, and in fact they were booked for that reason. The main entertainment for those coffee shops was poetry, and the audience for poetry would mostly buy a single coffee and make it last all night. The folkies were booked to come on between the poets and play a few songs to make the audience clear out to make room for a new audience to come and buy new coffees. However, some of the people got good enough that they actually started to get their own audiences, and within a short time the roles were reversed, with the poets coming on to clear out the folk audience. Dylan's first gigs were on this circuit, playing on bills put together by Fred Neil, a musician who was at this point mostly playing blues songs but who within a few years would write some of the great classics of the sixties singer-songwriter genre: [Excerpt: Fred Neil, "Everybody's Talkin'"] By the time Dylan hit the scene, there were quite a few very good musicians in the Village, and the folk scene had grown to the point that there were multiple factions. There were the Stalinists, who had coalesced around Pete Seeger, the elder statesman of the scene, and who played a mixture of summer-camp singalong music and topical songs about news events. There were the Zionists, who were singing things like "Hava Nagilah". There were bluegrass players, and there were the two groups that most attracted Dylan -- those who sang old folk ballads, and those who sang the blues. Those latter two groups tended to cluster together, because they were smaller than the other groups, and also because of their own political views -- while all of the scene were leftists, the blues and ballad singers tended either to be vaguely apolitical, or to be anarchists and Trotskyites rather than Stalinists. But they had a deeper philosophical disagreement with the Stalinists -- Seeger's camp thought that the quality of a song was secondary to the social good it could do, while the blues and ballad singers held that the important thing was the music, and any political or social good was a nice byproduct. There was a huge amount of infighting between these small groups -- the narcissism of small differences -- but there was one place they would all hang out. The Folklore Centre was a record and bookshop owned by a man named Izzy Young, and it was where you would go to buy every new book, to buy and sell copies of the zines that were published, and to hang out and find out who the new musicians on the scene were.  And it was at the Folklore Centre that Dylan met Dave Van Ronk: [Excerpt: Dave Van Ronk, "Cocaine Blues"] Van Ronk was the most important musician in the blues and ballads group of folkies, and was politically an anarchist who, through his connection with the Schachtmanites (a fringe-left group who were more Trotskyite than the Trotskyites, and whose views sometimes shaded into anarchism) was becoming converted to Marxism. A physically massive man, he'd started out as a traditional jazz guitarist and banjo player, but had slowly moved on into the folk side of things through his love of blues singers like Bessie Smith and folk-blues artists like Lead Belly. Van Ronk had learned a great deal from Rev. Gary Davis, a blind gospel-blues singer whose technique Van Ronk had studied: [Excerpt: Rev. Gary Davis, "Death Don't Have No Mercy"] Van Ronk was one of the few people on the Village scene who was a native New Yorker, though he was from Queens rather than the Village, and he was someone who had already made a few records that Dylan had heard, mostly of the standard repertoire: [Excerpt: Dave Van Ronk, "See That My Grave is Kept Clean"] Dylan consciously sought him out as the person to imitate on the scene, and he was soon regularly sleeping on Van Ronk's couch and being managed for a brief time by Van Ronk's wife. Once again, Dylan was learning everything he could from the people he was around -- but he had a much bigger ambition than anyone else on the scene. A lot of the people on that scene have been very bitter over the years about Dylan, but Van Ronk, who did more for Dylan than anyone else on the scene, never really was -- the two stopped being close once he was no more use to Dylan, as so often happened, but they remained friendly, because Van Ronk was secure enough in himself and his own abilities that he didn't need the validation of being important to the big star. Van Ronk was an important mentor to him for a crucial period of six months or so, and Dylan always acknowledged that, just as Van Ronk always acknowledged Dylan's talent. And that talent, at least at first, was a performing talent rather than a songwriting one. Dylan was writing songs by now, but hardly any, and when he did perform them, he was not acknowledging them. His first truly successful song, a song about nuclear war, "Let Me Die in my Footsteps", he would introduce as a Weavers song: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Let Me Die in my Footsteps"] For the most part, his repertoire was still only Woody Guthrie songs, but people were amazed by his personal charisma, his humour -- one comparison you see time and again when people talk about his early performances is Charlie Chaplin -- and his singing. There are so many jokes about Dylan's vocals that this sounds like a joke, but among the folk crowd, his phrasing in particular -- as influenced by the R&B records he grew up listening to as by Guthrie -- was considered utterly astonishing. Dylan started publishing some of his song lyrics in Broadside, a magazine for new topical songs, and in other magazines like Sing Out! These were associated with the Communist side of the folk movement, and Dylan had a foot in both camps through his association with Guthrie and Guthrie's friends. Through these people he got to know Suze Rotolo, a volunteer with the Congress of Racial Equality, who became his girlfriend, and her sister Carla, who was the assistant to Alan Lomax, who was now back from the UK, and the Rotolos played a part in Dylan's big breakthrough.  The timeline that follows is a bit confused, but Carla Rotolo recorded some of the best Village folk singers, and wrote to John Hammond about the tape, mentioning Dylan in particular. At the same time, Hammond's son John Hammond Jr, another musician on the circuit and a friend of Dylan's, apparently mentioned Dylan to his father. Dylan was also working on Robert Shelton, the folk critic of the New York Times, who eventually gave Dylan a massive rave review for a support slot he'd played at Gerde's Folk City. And the same day that review came out, eight days after Carla Rotolo's letter, Dylan was in the recording studio with the folk singer Carolyn Hester, playing harmonica on a few of her tracks, and Hammond was the producer: [Excerpt: Carolyn Hester, "I'll Fly Away"] Hammond had, of course, organised the Spirituals to Swing concerts which had influenced Dylan. And not only that, he'd been the person to discover Billie Holiday, and Count Basie. And Charlie Christian. He was now working for Columbia Records, where he'd just produced the first secular records for a promising new gospel singer who had decided to turn pop, named Aretha Franklin: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Today I Sing the Blues"] So Hammond was an important figure in many ways, and he had a lot of latitude at Columbia Records. He decided to sign Dylan, and even though Mitch Miller, Columbia's head of A&R at the time, had no clue what Hammond saw in Dylan, Hammond's track record was good enough that he was allowed to get on with it and put out an album. Hammond also gave Dylan an album to take home and listen to, a record which hadn't come out yet, a reissue of some old blues records called "King of the Delta Blues Singers" by Robert Johnson: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Crossroads Blues"] There has been a hell of a lot of mythology about Johnson over the years, so much so that it's almost impossible to give anyone who's heard of him at all an accurate impression of Johnson's place in music history. One question I have been asked repeatedly since I started this podcast is "How come you didn't start with Robert Johnson?", and if you don't know about him, you'll get an idea of his general perception among music fans from the fact that I recently watched an episode of a science fiction TV series where our heroes had to go back in time to stop the villains from preventing Johnson from making his recordings, because by doing that they could stop rock and roll from ever existing. There's a popular perception that Johnson was the most important blues musician of his generation, and that he was hugely influential on the development of blues and R&B, and it's simply false. He *was* a truly great musician, and he *was* hugely influential -- but he was influential on white musicians in the sixties, not black musicians in the thirties, forties, and fifties. In his lifetime, his best selling records sold around five thousand copies, which to put it in perspective is about the same number of people who've listened to some of my more popular podcast episodes. Johnson's biographer Elijah Wald -- a man who, like I do, has a huge respect for Johnson's musicianship, has said "knowing about Johnson and Muddy Waters but not about Leroy Carr or Dinah Washington [is] like knowing about, say, the Sir Douglas Quintet but not knowing about the Beatles." I'd agree, except that the Sir Douglas Quintet were much, much, bigger in the sixties than Robert Johnson was in the thirties. Johnson's reputation comes entirely from that album that Hammond had handed Dylan. Hammond had been one of the tiny number of people who had actually listened to Johnson at the time he was performing. Indeed, Hammond had wanted to get Johnson to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts, only to find that Johnson had died only a short time earlier -- they'd got Big Bill Broonzy to play in his place, and played a couple of Johnson's records from the stage. That had, in fact, kickstarted Broonzy's later second career as a folk-blues musician playing for largely white audiences, rather than as a proto-Chicago-blues performer playing for Black ones. Hammond's friend Alan Lomax had also been a fan of Johnson -- he'd gone to Mississippi later, to try to record Johnson, also without having realised that Johnson had died. But far from Johnson being the single most important blues musician of the thirties, as he is now portrayed in popular culture, if you'd asked most blues musicians or listeners about Robert Johnson in the twenty-three years between his death and the King of the Delta Blues Singers album coming out, most of them would have looked at you blankly, or maybe asked if you meant Lonnie Johnson, the much more famous musician who was a big inspiration for Robert. When King of the Delta Blues Singers came out, it changed all that, and made Robert Johnson into a totemic figure among white blues fans, and we'll see over the next year or two a large number of very important musicians who took inspiration from him -- and deservedly so. While the myth of Robert Johnson has almost no connection to the real man, his music demonstrated a remarkable musical mind -- he was a versatile, skilled guitarist and arranger, and someone whose musical palette was far wider than his recorded legacy suggests -- Ramblin' Johnny Shines, who travelled with Johnson for a time, describes him as particularly enjoying playing songs like "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby" and Jimmie Rodgers songs, and polkas, calling Johnson "a polka hound, man". And even though in his handful of recording sessions he was asked only to play blues, you can still hear elements of that: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "They're Red Hot"] But the music wasn't the main thing that grabbed Dylan. Dylan played the album for Dave Van Ronk, who was unimpressed -- musically, Johnson just didn't seem very original to Van Ronk, who played Dylan records by Skip James, Leroy Carr, and others, showing Dylan where Johnson had picked up most of his musical ideas. And Dylan had to agree with him that Johnson didn't sound particularly original in that context -- but he also didn't care, reasoning that many of the Woody Guthrie songs he loved were rewrites of old Carter Family songs, so if Johnson was rewriting Leroy Carr songs that was fair enough. What got to Dylan was Johnson's performance style, but also his ability with words. Johnson had a very sparse, economical, lyrical style which connected with Dylan on a primordial level. Most of those who became fans of Johnson following the release of King of the Delta Blues Singers saw Johnson as an exotic and scary figure -- the myth commonly told about him is that he sold his soul at a crossroads to the Devil in return for the ability to play the guitar, though that's a myth that was originally told about a different Mississippi blues man called Tommy Johnson, and there's no evidence that anyone thought that of him at the time -- and so these later fans see his music as being haunted. Dylan instead seems to see Johnson as someone very like himself -- in his autobiography, Chronicles, Dylan talks about Johnson being a bothersome kid who played harmonica, who was later taught a bit of guitar and then learned the rest of his music from records, rather than from live performers. Dylan's version of Johnson is closer to the reality, as far as we know it, than the Johnson of legend is, and Dylan seems to have been delighted when he found out much later that the name of the musician who taught Johnson to play guitar was Ike Zimmerman. Dylan immediately tried to incorporate Johnson's style into his own songwriting, and we'll see the effects of that in future episodes. But that songwriting wouldn't be seen much on his debut album. And nor would his Woody Guthrie repertoire. Instead, Dylan performed a set of traditional ballads and blues numbers, most of which he never performed live normally, and at least half of which were arrangements that Dylan copied wholesale from Dave Van Ronk. [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “See That My Grave is Kept Clean”] The album was recorded quickly, in a couple of days. Hammond found Dylan incredibly difficult to work with, saying he had appalling mic technique, and for many of the songs Dylan refused to do a second take. There were only two originals on the album. One, "Talkin' New York", was a comedy talking blues about his early time in New York, very much in the style of Woody Guthrie's talking blues songs. The other, "Song To Woody", was a rewrite of his earlier "Song For Bonny", which was itself a rewrite of Guthrie's "1913 Massacre". The song is a touching one, Dylan paying tribute to his single biggest influence: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Song to Woody"] Dylan was moving on, and he knew he was moving on, but he had to say goodbye. Dylan's first album was not a success, and he became known within Columbia Records as "Hammond's Folly", but nor did it lose money, since it was recorded so quickly. It's a record that Dylan and Hammond both later spoke poorly of, but it's one I rather like, and one of the best things to come out of the Greenwich Village folk scene. But by the time it came out, Dylan's artistic heart was already elsewhere, and when we come back to him in a couple of months, we'll be seeing someone who had completely reinvented himself.  

Dan's live and off to a random ride that starts bumpy but the trail smooths as it goes. Deep bike tracks from The Pretenders, Sir Douglas Quintet and The Head & The Heart, plus a Hank bike crash story, along with the usual dark commentary.

Enjoying the show? Please support BFF.FM with a donation. Playlist 0′0″ Singing Tractors 12 by Arthur's Landing on Arthur's Landing (Strut) 5′49″ Bacon Fat by Andre Williams on Bacon Fat: The Fortune Singles 1956-1957 (Rumble Records) 8′51″ Dogon A.D. by Julius Hemphill on Dogon A.D. (Freedom) 23′41″ Long Face by Bobby Charles on Bobby Charles (Bearsville) 27′9″ I Don't Want by Sir Douglas Quintet on Mendocino (SMASH/Mercury) 31′59″ Speak On Up by Joe King on Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label (Numero Group) 35′1″ New Horizons I by Sounds of Liberation on Sounds of Liberation (Porter Records) 45′34″ The Dark Tree by Horace Tapscott Quartet on The Giant Is Awakened (Flying Dutchmen) 46′38″ On The Other Ocean by David Behrman on OHM+: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music (1948-1980) (Ellipsis Arts) The next World of Echo is on Monday, September 7th at 7:00 am. Check out the full archives on the website.

Christian gets to spend time behind the kit with Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer, Doug “Cosmo” Clifford. They go through his life in music, first with the giants CCR, which between 1966-1973 were one of the most massively successful rock acts to ever hit the charts. Then they talk about the dissolution, the days in Tahoe as environmental activist, losing Tom Fogerty to AIDS, the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame debacle, reforming with CCR bassist Stu Cook that toured as Creedence Clearwater Revisited until retiring last year and most importantly, his new album Magic Window, that was mostly recorded in 1985, but now out for release!Doug Clifford achieved fame as the drummer of Creedence Clearwater Revival, a band he put together with his friends Stu Cook, John Fogerty and Tom Fogerty. They were in junior high school when they started playing and achieved worldwide success after signing with Fantasy Records in 1967. Although best known as a drummer, Clifford sang harmony vocals and contributed songs to the Creedence catalogue. He's been singing, writing songs and making music for as long as he can remember. After a lifetime on the road – ten years with Creedence Clearwater Revival and its predecessors and 25 years with Creedence Clearwater Revisited – the band he put together with bassist Stu Cook to perform live tunes from the Creedence catalogue – he's ready to again make his mark as a singer and songwriter. He'll be releasing Magic Window, a solo album recorded in 1985 and updated in 2020 on April 24, 2020, on CD Baby and all on streaming platforms.Clifford wrote the Magic Window songs at his piano at his Lake Tahoe, Nevada home. During downtime, he'd gaze out at the lake and mountains and write, sometimes alone, and sometimes with collaborators. “I had an analog studio with a good tape deck, so I could try out ideas without looking at the clock. I'd invite friends in to jam and experiment. I made Magic Window with Russell DaShiell on lead guitar. Russell's also an engineer and co-produced the sessions with me. I was going to use it to look for a record deal, but I got busy with other projects and touring. I just forgot about it.”  Some of those projects included producing albums for Doug Sahm of the Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados, playing in Steve Miller's band and then joining Stu Cook to play Creedence hits with Creedence Clearwater Revisited. They have performed worldwide for 25 years, amassing many fans and crossing multiple generations to bring the wonderful CCR hits to people. They released an RIAA certified platinum live album.  Last year, while cleaning out his garage, Clifford found the Magic Window masters.“I'd forgotten about the tapes, but they were in great shape. We were able to transfer the recordings to digital and warm things up a bit. I discovered more than 100 songs.”  “Music's always been a medicine and a meditation for me. It doesn't matter if I'm down or up. It works both ways. We've seen some trying times in the last few years, and we can all use some love and magic. I put my heart and soul into the positive messages on this album. This is a good time to share them with the world.” https://dougcosmoclifford.com/https://concord.com/concord-albums/doug-cosmo-clifford/https://open.spotify.com/album/7KOK93bVycTNCpQW4GOrNd

Christian gets to spend time behind the kit with Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer, Doug “Cosmo” Clifford. They go through his life in music, first with the giants CCR, which between 1966-1973 were one of the most massively successful rock acts to ever hit the charts. Then they talk about the dissolution, the days in Tahoe as environmental activist, losing Tom Fogerty to AIDS, the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame debacle, reforming with CCR bassist Stu Cook that toured as Creedence Clearwater Revisited until retiring last year and most importantly, his new album Magic Window, that was mostly recorded in 1985, but now out for release! Doug Clifford achieved fame as the drummer of Creedence Clearwater Revival, a band he put together with his friends Stu Cook, John Fogerty and Tom Fogerty. They were in junior high school when they started playing and achieved worldwide success after signing with Fantasy Records in 1967. Although best known as a drummer, Clifford sang harmony vocals and contributed songs to the Creedence catalogue. He’s been singing, writing songs and making music for as long as he can remember.  After a lifetime on the road – ten years with Creedence Clearwater Revival and its predecessors and 25 years with Creedence Clearwater Revisited – the band he put together with bassist Stu Cook to perform live tunes from the Creedence catalogue – he’s ready to again make his mark as a singer and songwriter. He’ll be releasing Magic Window, a solo album recorded in 1985 and updated in 2020 on April 24, 2020, on CD Baby and all on streaming platforms. Clifford wrote the Magic Window songs at his piano at his Lake Tahoe, Nevada home. During downtime, he’d gaze out at the lake and mountains and write, sometimes alone, and sometimes with collaborators. “I had an analog studio with a good tape deck, so I could try out ideas without looking at the clock. I’d invite friends in to jam and experiment. I made Magic Window with Russell DaShiell on lead guitar. Russell’s also an engineer and co-produced the sessions with me. I was going to use it to look for a record deal, but I got busy with other projects and touring. I just forgot about it.”   Some of those projects included producing albums for Doug Sahm of the Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados, playing in Steve Miller’s band and then joining Stu Cook to play Creedence hits with Creedence Clearwater Revisited. They have performed worldwide for 25 years, amassing many fans and crossing multiple generations to bring the wonderful CCR hits to people. They released an RIAA certified platinum live album.   Last year, while cleaning out his garage, Clifford found the Magic Window masters. “I’d forgotten about the tapes, but they were in great shape. We were able to transfer the recordings to digital and warm things up a bit. I discovered more than 100 songs.”  “Music’s always been a medicine and a meditation for me. It doesn’t matter if I’m down or up. It works both ways. We’ve seen some trying times in the last few years, and we can all use some love and magic. I put my heart and soul into the positive messages on this album. This is a good time to share them with the world.”  https://dougcosmoclifford.com/ https://concord.com/concord-albums/doug-cosmo-clifford/ https://open.spotify.com/album/7KOK93bVycTNCpQW4GOrNd

Christian gets to spend time behind the kit with Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer, Doug “Cosmo” Clifford. They go through his life in music, first with the giants CCR, which between 1966-1973 were one of the most massively successful rock acts to ever hit the charts. Then they talk about the dissolution, the days in Tahoe as environmental activist, losing Tom Fogerty to AIDS, the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame debacle, reforming with CCR bassist Stu Cook that toured as Creedence Clearwater Revisited until retiring last year and most importantly, his new album Magic Window, that was mostly recorded in 1985, but now out for release!Doug Clifford achieved fame as the drummer of Creedence Clearwater Revival, a band he put together with his friends Stu Cook, John Fogerty and Tom Fogerty. They were in junior high school when they started playing and achieved worldwide success after signing with Fantasy Records in 1967. Although best known as a drummer, Clifford sang harmony vocals and contributed songs to the Creedence catalogue. He's been singing, writing songs and making music for as long as he can remember. After a lifetime on the road – ten years with Creedence Clearwater Revival and its predecessors and 25 years with Creedence Clearwater Revisited – the band he put together with bassist Stu Cook to perform live tunes from the Creedence catalogue – he's ready to again make his mark as a singer and songwriter. He'll be releasing Magic Window, a solo album recorded in 1985 and updated in 2020 on April 24, 2020, on CD Baby and all on streaming platforms.Clifford wrote the Magic Window songs at his piano at his Lake Tahoe, Nevada home. During downtime, he'd gaze out at the lake and mountains and write, sometimes alone, and sometimes with collaborators. “I had an analog studio with a good tape deck, so I could try out ideas without looking at the clock. I'd invite friends in to jam and experiment. I made Magic Window with Russell DaShiell on lead guitar. Russell's also an engineer and co-produced the sessions with me. I was going to use it to look for a record deal, but I got busy with other projects and touring. I just forgot about it.”  Some of those projects included producing albums for Doug Sahm of the Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados, playing in Steve Miller's band and then joining Stu Cook to play Creedence hits with Creedence Clearwater Revisited. They have performed worldwide for 25 years, amassing many fans and crossing multiple generations to bring the wonderful CCR hits to people. They released an RIAA certified platinum live album.  Last year, while cleaning out his garage, Clifford found the Magic Window masters.“I'd forgotten about the tapes, but they were in great shape. We were able to transfer the recordings to digital and warm things up a bit. I discovered more than 100 songs.”  “Music's always been a medicine and a meditation for me. It doesn't matter if I'm down or up. It works both ways. We've seen some trying times in the last few years, and we can all use some love and magic. I put my heart and soul into the positive messages on this album. This is a good time to share them with the world.” https://dougcosmoclifford.com/https://concord.com/concord-albums/doug-cosmo-clifford/https://open.spotify.com/album/7KOK93bVycTNCpQW4GOrNd

Christian gets to spend time behind the kit with Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer, Doug “Cosmo” Clifford. They go through his life in music, first with the giants CCR, which between 1966-1973 were one of the most massively successful rock acts to ever hit the charts. Then they talk about the dissolution, the days in Tahoe as environmental activist, losing Tom Fogerty to AIDS, the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame debacle, reforming with CCR bassist Stu Cook that toured as Creedence Clearwater Revisited until retiring last year and most importantly, his new album Magic Window, that was mostly recorded in 1985, but now out for release! Doug Clifford achieved fame as the drummer of Creedence Clearwater Revival, a band he put together with his friends Stu Cook, John Fogerty and Tom Fogerty. They were in junior high school when they started playing and achieved worldwide success after signing with Fantasy Records in 1967. Although best known as a drummer, Clifford sang harmony vocals and contributed songs to the Creedence catalogue. He’s been singing, writing songs and making music for as long as he can remember.  After a lifetime on the road – ten years with Creedence Clearwater Revival and its predecessors and 25 years with Creedence Clearwater Revisited – the band he put together with bassist Stu Cook to perform live tunes from the Creedence catalogue – he’s ready to again make his mark as a singer and songwriter. He’ll be releasing Magic Window, a solo album recorded in 1985 and updated in 2020 on April 24, 2020, on CD Baby and all on streaming platforms. Clifford wrote the Magic Window songs at his piano at his Lake Tahoe, Nevada home. During downtime, he’d gaze out at the lake and mountains and write, sometimes alone, and sometimes with collaborators. “I had an analog studio with a good tape deck, so I could try out ideas without looking at the clock. I’d invite friends in to jam and experiment. I made Magic Window with Russell DaShiell on lead guitar. Russell’s also an engineer and co-produced the sessions with me. I was going to use it to look for a record deal, but I got busy with other projects and touring. I just forgot about it.”   Some of those projects included producing albums for Doug Sahm of the Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados, playing in Steve Miller’s band and then joining Stu Cook to play Creedence hits with Creedence Clearwater Revisited. They have performed worldwide for 25 years, amassing many fans and crossing multiple generations to bring the wonderful CCR hits to people. They released an RIAA certified platinum live album.   Last year, while cleaning out his garage, Clifford found the Magic Window masters. “I’d forgotten about the tapes, but they were in great shape. We were able to transfer the recordings to digital and warm things up a bit. I discovered more than 100 songs.”  “Music’s always been a medicine and a meditation for me. It doesn’t matter if I’m down or up. It works both ways. We’ve seen some trying times in the last few years, and we can all use some love and magic. I put my heart and soul into the positive messages on this album. This is a good time to share them with the world.”  https://dougcosmoclifford.com/ https://concord.com/concord-albums/doug-cosmo-clifford/ https://open.spotify.com/album/7KOK93bVycTNCpQW4GOrNd

407 - Flaco Jiménez Flaco Jiménez is a master musician. He is an icon of conjunto music, an accordionist and singer, he's been performing across seven decades, starting with performances as a child. His music has been recognized throughout Latin America, the United States and the world. A veteran recording artist, Flaco Jiménez has won multiple Grammys and is a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner, a founding member of the Sir Douglas Quintet. Some of the greatest musicians and singers have worked with Flaco Jiménez: Dr. John, Ry Cooder, Peter Rowan, Bob Dylan, Buck Owens, Dwight Yoakam and the Rolling Stones. It's a great honor to welcome Flaco Jiménez: legendary musician, performer and recording artist. He's right here on The Paul Leslie Hour and it would be an honor if you listened. The Paul Leslie Hour is a talk show dedicated to “Helping People Tell Their Stories.” Some of the most iconic people of all time drop in to chat. Frequent topics include Arts, Entertainment and Culture.

404 - Augie Meyers Augie Meyers is one of the living legends in the world of music. A founding member of the Texas Tornados as well as the Sir Douglas Quintet. A multi-instrumentalist, he's proficient on keyboards, guitar, accordion, and vocals. Meyers is a singer-songwriter, performing & recording artist, producer, studio session musician and a great storyteller. He's recorded with the best of the best: Flaco Jiménez, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and many others. There is hardly a genre his work hasn't influenced. It's an entertaining ride with one of the greats.The Paul Leslie Hour is a talk show dedicated to “Helping People Tell Their Stories.” Some of the most iconic people of all time drop in to chat. Frequent topics include Arts, Entertainment and Culture.

More quality jamz... 1) I've Been Waiting For You by Neil Young 2) Easy Ride by Relatively Clean Rivers 3) Life on the Road by Man 4) The Fool by Quicksilver Messenger Service 5) Lately I by The Maldives 6) I Don't Want by Sir Douglas Quintet 7) Nevada Fighter by Michael Nesmith 8) Lonesome L.A. Cowboy by New Riders of the Purple Sage 9) Outlaw Man by David Blue 10) Lonesome Valley by Magnolia Electric Co 11) Country Moon Pt 1 by New Madrid 12) Old Man by Help Yourself 13) No Other by Gene Clark 14) Falling Rain by Reigning Sound 15) Hotel Chambermaid by Graham Parker & The Rumour 16) Morning Rain by The Hot Dogs  

Vandaag is het muzikale thema Back To Texas starring Doug Sahm, The Sir Douglas Quintet en The White Texas Soul Shouter Roy Head.

A pre-Motown cut by Rare Earth, a rare cut from one of Motown's biggest acts, plus records by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, the Moving Sidewalks, the Sir Douglas Quintet, the Graham Bond Organization, the Sorrows, obscure American garage bands, and more.

2019 has been one of the most exhausting years on record, at least it feels that way as June comes to a close. It's my hope that EPISODE #75 of Random Old Records is a little sunshine in all of this rain, a little escapism from the tough and angry world outside, a little bit of fun and relief from all this work. Download it to your device of choice and get ready for 58 minutes and 42 seconds of jams for the heart and soul.You'll hear brand new music from the legendary Meat Puppets, who just released one of their best albums 30 years into their run, power pop from The Resonars and Julian Leal, new and old dreamy psychedelic pop from The Third Eye, Garcia Peoples, and Olden Yolk, classics from Sir Douglas Quintet and Barbara Manning, plus so so much more. This episode is dedicated to everyone out there just getting by and trying their best. I hope you enjoy it!Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to Random Old Records via Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or RSS. If you like the show, please rate it and write a review! You can also go the traditional route and stream or download the new episode below. Come back next month for another episode of Random Old Records. As always, thanks for listening!Random Old Records Podcast #75Released 06/26/19DOWNLOAD HERE (Right-Click, "Save As")1. Jerry Jeff Walker - "Gettin' By"(Viva Terlingua, MCA 1973)2. Sir Douglas Quintet - "And It Didn't Even Bring Me Down"(Mendocino, Smash 1969)3. George Kent - "I Always Did Like Leavenworth"(The Hangman's Blues, Iron Mountain 2016)4. Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs - "Big City Lights"(On Tour, MGM 1965)5. The Bakersfield Poppy Pickers - "It's Written All Over My Face"(Happy Lovin' Time, Big Beat 2015)--Mystery Mansion!6. Meat Puppets - "Unfrozen Memory"(Dusty Notes, Megaforce 2019)7. Natural Child - "Rounder"(Dancin' With Wolves, Burger 2014)8. Art Lown - "Deep Blue Sea"(Sad About The Times, Anthology 2019)9. The Third Eye - "Valley Of Sadness"(Love, Peace and Poetry: African Psychedelic Music, QDK 2004)--Ants!10. Sheridan-Price - "Face In My Window"(This Is To Certify That..., Gemini 1970)11. Dungen - "Sisten Gasten"(Allas Sak, Mexican Summer 2015)12. Garcia Peoples - "Break Me Down"(Natural Facts, Beyond Beyond Is Beyond 2019)13. Olden Yolk - "Blue Paradigm"(Living Theatre, Trouble In Mind 2019)--No more loud music!14. The Resonars - "The Man Who Does Nothing"(No Exit, Trouble In Mind 2019)15. Julian Leal - "Be Mine"(Julian Leal, Hozac 2019)16. Faith Healer - "Sufferin' Creature"(Try ;-), Mint 2017)17. Barbara Manning - "Every Pretty Girl"(Lately I Keep Scissors, Heyday 1989)18. The Fastbacks - "K Street"(And His Orchestra, Popllama 1987)

We're starting on the second half! In which we get very fussy about punctuation, express our relief that the Golliwogs changed their name, and wonder how the Sir Douglas Quintet didn't get sued for plagiarism. Also, TWO of these songs contain well-known rock stars in disguise! The Hombres - Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) The Golliwogs - Fight Fire The New Colony Six - At the River's Edge The Daily Flash - Jack of Diamonds Lyme & Cybelle - Follow Me The Choir - It's Cold Outside The Rare Breed - Beg, Borrow and Steal The Sir Douglas Quintet - She's About a Mover Opening music: The Hector Collectors  https://thehectorcollectors.bandcamp.com/   Closing credits music: Kenneth Kraylie  https://kennethkraylie.bandcamp.com/ https://casinos.bandcamp.com/

Smashing Orange [00:27] a side: "Not Very Much to See" b side: "Collide" Ringers Lactate RL03 1991 Some fine Loop-esque shoegaze grunge from Delaware's own Smashing Orange. Caught them at The Marquee in New York on a bill with Primus and The Fluid. George Jones and the Jones Boys [06:54] a side: "Not What I Had in Mind" b side: "I Saw Me" United Artists UA528 1963 Reached number 7 on the Country charts. The Rubinoos [13:21] a side: "Nothing a Little Love Won't Cure (stereo)" b side: "Nothing a Little Love Won't Cure (mono)" Berserkley Records ZS8-5810 1977 Power pop from the People's Republic of Berkeley. Guns N' Roses [18:40] a side: "November Rain" b side: "Sweet Child o' Mine" Geffen Records GEFS7-19067 1991 Is "November Rain" really just "Candle in the Wind" disguised as a power ballad? Inquiring minds want to know! Sir Douglas Quintet [34:38] a side: "Nuevo Laredo (mono)" b side: "Nuevo Laredo (mono)" Smash Records S-2259 1970 Some mighty fine Tex-Mex from the man who loves to sing about municipalities. The Shadows of the Knight [37:17] a side: "Oh Yeah" b side: "Light Bulb Blues" Dunwich Records DN-10155 1966 Sure the a-side is a garage rock classic, but dang that b-side is blistering. Palace Brothers [43:27] a side: "Ohio River Boat Song" b side: "Drinking Woman" Drag City Records DC25 1993 The first stirrings of His Bonnieness from Louisville. The Blank Tapes [50:19] a side: "1000 Leather Tassels" b side: "Mr. Mister" Volcom Ent. Vinyl Club VEVC0037 2014 Some fine jangle pop form Matt Adams and Pearl Charles. Music behind the DJ: "Gomez" by Vic Mizzy.

Carnaval dit weekend en daarom staat Train To Nowhere dit weekend in het teken van feestmuziek. Je hoort Trini Lopez, Sir Douglas Quintet, The Bobbettes, The Shangri-La’s, Otis Redding.

Doug Clifford is a founding member a drummer of the band that Bruce Springsteen credits as saving his ass on many occasions when he was starting out playing bars in New Jersey.He made that comment while induction his band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame . Creedence Clearwater Revival's music is still a staple of US radio airplay;the band has sold 26 million albums in the United States alone. Rolling Stone ranked them as one of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time list. Aside from his work with CCR he also produced Groovers Paradise for former Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados frontman Doug Sahm.. Clifford continued to perform and record with Doug Sahm through the 1980s. Then Following a relatively long period of musical inactivity, He and former CCR member Stu Cook formed Creedence Clearwater Revisited in 1995, 23 years later he is still on the road, They will be here on Long Island at the Paramount on July 25th, He joins Mark and AJ to talk about it all. Tune in each week on 540 am in NY NJ CT and streaming on www.sportstalknylive.com at 7pm Sundays for the live broadcast.Please take a moment to like our fan page WLIE 540 AM SPORTSTALKNY and follow us on twitter @sportstalkn

Om 21:00 uur Vic van de Reijt met Train To Nowhere dit keer bijgestaan door Ron Tebbens. Fijne uptempo muziek van o.a. Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Stealers Wheel, Sir Douglas Quintet en Talking Heads.

"Come to the Table" host Sean McCoy talks about tragedy, service, and faith.   Check out the "Come to the Table" podcast (where love is about listening to understand, not to react).   This week's Pairings: This episode of the podcast pairs particularly well with Saint Arnold Brewery's 5 O'Clock Pils, Greens Creek cheese from Veldhuizen Cheeses, and the song “She’s About A Mover” by the Sir Douglas Quintet.  

Episode 24 with Augie Meyers, from The Sir Douglas Quintet, The Texas Tornadoes, solo success, and many other projects. Features a rare track from The Sir Douglas Quintet.

Did you ever look at someone famous who is supremely talented, but is not a believer and think, “Just think of the impact they could have if they would live their life for the Lord?” I have, many times. I was born just about the same time as rock & roll. I remember doo wap music playing on the radio, I remember Dave Seville and Alvin and the Chipmunks, I remember The Purple People Eater, Elvis and so many others in the 50s. And then came perhaps the greatest decade of music…the 60s. The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Sir Douglas Quintet, Three Dog Night, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin. I could go on for hours. Anyway, I’ve often thought, “It’s too bad these guys don’t see that their gift, their talent, is from God. Man, if they would only believe and use that talent for Him! What an impact that would make on the world.” The Apostle Paul, when he was still Saul, was famous in his time. His talent was in studying the Law and persecuting Christians. He was well known as a hater of Christians. Until he met Jesus. Once Jesus changed his life, Paul had the greatest impact of anyone since, besides the Lord Himself. Is there something in your past that you are ashamed of? Something that holds you back from proclaiming your story with boldness? Do you think the people that knew you before will say, “He talks a good talk, but I’ve seen him do some really bad things.” Well guess what. Those things you did before have been forgiven. Sure, they’re part of your history…part of your story…but if Jesus could take a person like Paul and use him, He can surely use you. Paul didn’t hide his past, did he? He acknowledged it, and then he said, “But then I met Jesus!” Your past does not define you. Your relationship with Jesus defines you. Because of that, you are perfect in the sight of God. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Be like Paul. Share your story with confidence. Make an impact in your world.

By Brother Cinaedus #Pride48, #MusicMemories

Brian talks about seeing Sir Douglas Quintet with Jay Farrar and Mark Ortman, meeting Doug Sahm, Doug Sahm stories, the history of Coffee Creek, Uncle Tupelo’s final gig, Jeff Tweedy/Jay Farrar stories, Cheap Trick reaching out to The Bottle Rockets,… Continue Reading →

show#39907.30.11 Going to see Dweezil tonight!!!Steve Marriotte & Packet Of Three -  Five Long Years (All Or Nothing  Live In London DVD 1985 recording)Humble Pie - 79th Street Blues (Bonus Track Town & Country)  Darcy Perry Band - Soul Of A Man (Phoenix 2008)Hadden Sayers - Lap Of Luxury (Hard Dollar 2011)Mikey JR - Pocket Full of Money (it ain't hard to tell)David Gogo - Where The Devil Won't Go (Different Views 2009)Tony Vega Band - Mumbo Jumbo (Tastes Like Love 2004)Cream - Politician (Strange Brew: The Very Best of Cream 1983)Humble Pie - I'm Ready (Performance: Rockin' The Fillmore [Live] 1971)The J. Geils Band - Serves You Right to Suffer (The J. Geils Band 1970)Spinner's Section:even more vinylRalph Shine Blues Band: I can tell (6:25) (-, Blue Rock'it, 1983)Lloyd Jones Struggle: you ought to know better (2:57) (-, Criminal, 1986)Brian Setzer: Rosie in the middle (3:07) (Live Nude Guitars, EMI, 1988)James Harman Band: just as well to kill me (4:30) (Extra Napkins, Rivera, 1988)Sonny Boy Williamson: keep your hand out of my pocket (1958) (2:45) (Bummer Road, Chess, 196?)Buddy Guy: I found a true love (1961) (6:10) (I Was Walking Trough The Woods, Chess, 196?)Howlin' Wolf: Natchez burnin' (2:09) (Poor Boy, Chess, 196?)Sir Douglas Quintet: the gypsy (3:35) (The Return Of Doug Saldaña, Philips, 1971) Sign my petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/sanity/ http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/sanity