Podcasts about Sixteen Tons

Comedians and co-authors Amber Nash and Greg Tavares discuss their new book, "Improv for Couples: Fun Games for You and Your Partner." Plus, we hear about SCAD Fashion's 2025 runway show, and Kosmo Vinyl stops by with the story behind Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Story of the Week (DR):Berkshire board names Greg Abel as CEO, Buffett to remain chairWarren Buffett says he'll propose Greg Abel take over as Berkshire Hathaway CEO at year-endWarren Buffett makes surprise announcement: He's stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway CEOOpenAI backs off push to become for-profit companyIn a nutshell, with help from its chatbot: “OpenAI has restructured into a hybrid model with a nonprofit parent company, OpenAI Inc., and a for-profit subsidiary now called a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). This shift allows for investment while keeping a focus on its mission of developing AGI for the benefit of humanity. The change responds to previous criticism about reducing nonprofit oversight.”OpenAI's nonprofit mission fades further into the rearviewSam Altman urges lawmakers against regulations that could ‘slow down' U.S. in AI race against ChinaKohl's CEO Fired After Investigation Finds 'Highly Unusual' Business Deal with Former Romantic PartnerKohl's CEO Ashley Buchanan was fired after an internal investigation revealed he violated the company's conflict-of-interest policies. The probe found that Buchanan directed business to a former romantic partner, Chandra Holt, who is the CEO of Beyond Inc. and founder of Incredibrew. Holt secured a multimillion-dollar consulting deal with Kohl's under unusually favorable terms, which Buchanan failed to disclose.As a result, Buchanan was dismissed for cause, forfeiting equity awards and required to repay a portion of his $2.5 million signing bonus.This marks the third CEO departure at Kohl's in just three years, highlighting ongoing leadership instability amid declining sales.Proxy Firms Split on Harley-Davidson Board Shake-Up MMGlass Lewis= Withhold; ISS = What's happening at Harley exactly?We have a fun twist at the proxy cage match between Harley Davidson and H Partners, who are 9% shareholders and have started a withhold vote campaign against long-tenured directors Jochen Zeitz, Thomas Linebarger, and Sara Levinson: Glass Lewis says “withhold” but ISS says “support”?Through lackluster reasoning based on hunches and not performance analytics, ISS revealed, without satire, that "[T]here are compelling reasons to believe that as a group [the targeted directors] still have a perspective that can be valuable” and, in discussing the candidacy of departing CEO Jochen Zeitz: “[I]t appears that his time in the role has been more positive than negative, which makes it hard to argue that his vote on a successor is worthless.”Testimony in House Hearing: “Exposing the Proxy Advisory Cartel: How ISS & Glass Lewis Influence Markets”A 2015 study found that 25 percent of institutional investors vote “indiscriminately” with ISS [1].In 2016, a study estimated that a negative recommendation from ISS leads to a 25-percentage point reduction in voting support for say-on-pay proposals [2].A 2018 study demonstrated that a negative recommendation from ISS was associated with a reduction in support of 17 percentage points for equity-plan proposals, 18 points for uncontested director elections, and 27 points for say-on-pay [3].In 2021, a study examining “robo-voting”—the practice of fund managers voting in lockstep with the recommendations of ISS—identified 114 financial institutions managing $5 trillion in assets that automated their votes in a manner aligned with ISS recommendations 99.5% of the time [4].A 2022 study provided further evidence that institutional investors are highly sensitive to an opposing recommendation from a proxy advisory firm. Opposition from ISS was associated with a 51 percent difference in institutional voting support compared with only a 2 percent difference among retail investors [5].During the 12 months ending June 30, 2024, negative recommendations from the two proxy advisory firms were associated with (1) a 17-percentage point difference in support for directors in uncontested elections at the S&P 500 (96.9% with the firms' support vs. 79.7% without); (2) a 35-percentage point gap for say-on-pay proposals (92.8% vs. 58.0%); and (3) a 36-percentage point difference for shareholder proposals (42.4% vs. 6.6%)Why Leo XIV? Pope's chosen name suggests commitment to social justicePope NamesLeo: Many Pope Leos were reformers or defenders of Church teachings.John: often linked to pastoral care and modernization.Paul: Reflects missionary zeal and intellectual work.Gregory: Reform, liturgy, and missionary outreach.Benedict: Benedict XVI emphasized faith and reason in a skeptical age.Pius: Emphasis on traditional piety and Church authority.Clement: Reconciliation and peacemaking.Innocent: Ironically, several Popes named Innocent wielded immense political power.Urban: Engagement with worldly and civic matters.Francis: Poverty, simplicity, ecological concern.CEO NamesWarren: cuddly billionaires who control everything, put family members on board, and say pithy thingsJamie: blowhard control freaks bankers who think they should be President and have something to say about everythingMark: college dropout social media dictators who have no oversight while charting humanity's demiseElon: arrogant and childish Wizard of Ozzian leaders who pretend to be company founders with world domination delusionsSundar: East Asian stewards meant to distract from actual Tech dictatorsTim: Genteel Southern cruise ship captains who keep a steady hand after replacing legendsEtc.Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):DR: Bill Gates to give away $200 billion by 2045, says Musk is 'killing' world's poorest childrenDR: This Subaru has an external airbag to protect cyclists: The design helps protect both pedestrians and cyclists in a crash MM DRMM: Proxy Firms Split on Harley-Davidson Board Shake-UpThe other major proxy firm, Glass Lewis, reached a different conclusion. It said Tuesday that the directors had “overseen starkly suboptimal shareholder returns,” and that removing them from the eight-person board likely wouldn't create any problems.MM: 80% of Gen Z, Millennials Plan to Increase Allocations to Sustainable Investments: Morgan Stanley SurveyAssholiest of the Week (MM):All Zuckerberg editionCertified watch guy ZuckMark Zuckerberg is a certified watch guy. Here are some of his standout timepieces, from a $120 Casio to a $900,000 Greubel Forse.These are the stories as Trump, whose ass Zuck's lips are firmly planted on, says you should only have 3 dolls - Zuck's watches, C.E.O. Pay Raise Sparks Outrage Among Teachers and Public Officers, 58 crypto wallets have made millions on Trump's meme coin. 764,000 have lost money, data shows, The best and worst looks billionaires wore to the 2025 Met GalaFriend maker Zuck DRMark Zuckerberg wants you to have more friends — but AI friendsMark Zuckerberg destroyed friendship. Now he wants to replace it with AI.Meanwhile, no wonder: Mark Zuckerberg says his management style involves no 1-on-1s, few direct reports, and a 'core army' of 30 running MetaMan with no friends says you need more and will provide fake ones?Human picker ZuckZuck's version of human friends probably the reason he wants to make you fake ones - hand-selected fake friends on the board (Patrick Collison and Dina Powell McCormick to Join Meta Board of Directors):4 tech bro dictators (Tan, Houston, Collison, Xu)3 tech bro suck ups (Andreessen, Alford, Songhurst)1 nepo baby dictator (Elkann)1 family dictator suck up (Travis)2 DJT suck ups (White, Powell McCormick)2 US govt suck ups (Killefer, Kimmitt)Prediction - Zuck to have the first true AI board member?Empathetic ZuckGaslighting, golden handcuffs, and toxicity: Former Meta employees shared what it was like to be laid off as low performersA former senior machine learning engineer at Meta described the shock of being laid off, only for a Meta recruiter to invite her to reapply three days later and skip the interview process.Two weeks before the layoffs, he said, his new manager told the team everyone was "safe." Then came the termination email — and a performance rating of "Meets Some Expectations," low on Meta's end-of-year rating scale. "How could they evaluate my performance when I'd only worked 10 weeks in 2024?" he said, adding that an HR director had said he was "too new to evaluate."An engineer was laid off after five months of leave for a serious health crisis while in the middle of disability-related negotiations.Meta exec apologizes to conservative activist Robby StarbuckLover ZuckMark Zuckerberg's Wife Was Weirded Out by His Strange Gift to HerHe made it for her not out of love, but because…The billionaire is apparently a huge fan of the sculptor behind the statue, the pop artist Daniel Arsham, but decided to go with his wife's likeness, he said on the podcast, because a statue of himself would have been "crazy."Academic ZuckMark Zuckerberg says college isn't preparing students for the job marketHeadliniest of the WeekDR: Olivia and John Randal Tyson Named to Tyson Foods Board of DirectorsDR: This new mental health service targets burned-out content creators: CreatorCare offers affordable therapy tailored to influencers and digital creators—addressing the rising mental health toll of life online.DR: Costco co-founder still goes into the office weekly at age 89: ‘To be successful, you've got to be pretty focused'Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal stepped down from his role in 2012. But Sinegal still goes to the office some TuesdaysDR: Billionaire KKR cofounders say 'emotional intelligence' should be a focus for young investorsKKR leadership page:1 of 8 are women: It HAS to be head of marketing, head of people, or head of legal stuff: so which is it? It's Chief Legal Officer Kathryn SudolBoard is 14:4F; no F in leadership role MM: Elon Musk's Urgent Concern: That the Earth Is Going to Get Swallowed by the Sun"Mars is life insurance for life collectively," Musk said. "So, eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the Sun. The Sun is gradually expanding, and so we do at some point need to be a multi-planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated."It is slated to happen in 6 billion yearsMM: Elon Musk is responsible for “killing the world's poorest children,” says Bill GatesWho Won the Week?DR: Pope #-267, duh. The world's greatest vampire CEO. And Villanova students (who are not openly gay or have vaginas), who all suddenly now believe they will eventually be the pope. MM: Your shitty washer/dryer, which no longer looks horrible: E.P.A. Plans to Shut Down the Energy Star ProgramPredictionsDR: Open AI's CEO, Mark VII, creates a deepfake video showing the country of China eating his baby at one of his homes in Hawaii causing the Trump administration to completely dismantle the SEC.MM: Sit tight for this, I have two: Euronext rebrands ESG in drive to help European defence firms - “energy, security, and geo-strategy” flops, so to LSEG rebrands its ESG Scores to “Emitting, Smoking, Gambling” so that investors can finally do ESG investing and feel good about itMusk gets his Texas wish. SpaceX launch site is approved as the new city of Starbase - I predict in 12 months, Musk is offering SpaceX employees that live in Starbase (a company town) crypto tokens instead of pay that are redeemable at stores in Starbase. To avoid them being called scrips, which were outlawed in the US in 1938 but still used anyway through the 1960s, Musk will list them on crypto exchanges that can be used to trade for dollars (but are totally worthless). Eventually, so indebted to the space plantation and Musk, there is a new renaissance of “resistance music” (a la “We Shall Overcome” and “Sixteen Tons”) with a song ranking number 1 in the US by the end of 2026.

durée : 00:05:23 - C'est une chanson - par : Frédéric Pommier - Elle est à l'affiche du théâtre de Poche Montparnasse dans "Scarlett O'Hara, la dernière conférence de presse de Vivien Leigh". Au micro de Frédéric Pommier, Caroline Sihol évoque la chanson "Sixteen tons" interprétée par les Platters, qui lui rappelle les étés de son enfance dans les Cévennes.

War, Huh, (Good God) What Is It Good For?? The assault intensifies as the Grung carrier relentlessly launches more drones. The massive tank locks onto Junktown and charges its cannon while the crew boldly charges down its barrel. The Homebrew crew is Grant Mielke, Andi Hadfield, Cody Smith, Emily Foulger, Mike Kennel, John Caley, and Tyrell Nye. We are currently engaged in our 3rd campaign: Beneath the Cracked Sky! You can support the show at ⁠⁠https://patreon.com/TheHomebrew⁠⁠ Campaign 1: Absurdism and a Millenium Abroad and Campaign 2: Retrograde Infinitum (Played on Cyberpunk Red) and a TON more bonus episodes, PDFs, artwork, and extras are available, along with member recognition!  Join the discord at ⁠⁠https://discord.gg/TheHomebrewPodcast⁠⁠ Check us out on Twitch! ⁠⁠⁠ https://www.twitch.tv/thehomebrewnetwork⁠⁠⁠ Merch and other links at ⁠⁠https://thehomebrewpodcast.com/⁠⁠ If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review, make sure you're following or subscribed, and share with your friends!

Soplan fuertes los vientos del Descontento.Dinero, ambición de poder desbocada , el engaño, la corrupción generalizada.... Canciones como “Sixteen Tons”, del minero atrapado entre la dura carga y la compañía que le endeuda o “If I Had a Hammer”, con lo que se desearía acabar, en la BSO para recordar que la historia se repite “La Marseillaise” que condujo a Maria Antonieta a la guillotina,” La Hoguera” el humor de Krahe en cuanto a correctivos o "Sólo por Miedo” , sobre la inacción que nos condena. Quien siembra vientos, recoge tempestades. eso también. Puedes hacerte socio del Club Babel y apoyar este podcast: mundobabel.com/club Si te gusta Mundo Babel puedes colaborar a que llegue a más oyentes compartiendo en tus redes sociales y dejar una valoración de 5 estrellas en Apple Podcast o un comentario en Ivoox. Para anunciarte en este podcast, ponte en contacto con: mundobabelpodcast@gmail.com.

Soplan fuertes los vientos del Descontento.Dinero, ambición de poder desbocada , el engaño, la corrupción generalizada.... Canciones como “Sixteen Tons”, del minero atrapado entre la dura carga y la compañía que le endeuda o “If I Had a Hammer”, con lo que se desearía acabar, en la BSO para recordar que la historia se repite “La Marseillaise” que condujo a Maria Antonieta a la guillotina,” La Hoguera” el humor de Krahe en cuanto a correctivos o "Sólo por Miedo” , sobre la inacción que nos condena. Quien siembra vientos, recoge tempestades. eso también. Puedes hacerte socio del Club Babel y apoyar este podcast: mundobabel.com/club Si te gusta Mundo Babel puedes colaborar a que llegue a más oyentes compartiendo en tus redes sociales y dejar una valoración de 5 estrellas en Apple Podcast o un comentario en Ivoox. Para anunciarte en este podcast, ponte en contacto con: mundobabelpodcast@gmail.com.

New York AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento talks about his role in leading one of the most powerful state federations in the country on the latest episode of The Voice Podcast. Cilento and UUP President Fred Kowal, the podcast's host, talk about Cilento's role in making the state AFL-CIO into a year-round legislative action network that has only grown stronger since he became president in 2011. The NYS AFL-CIO represents more than 2.2 million members across the state in both public and private sectors.    They also discuss the November 2024 presidential election and the state AFL-CIO's role in helping Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats running for Congress and state office win their races.   A new segment, Labor Lookback, spotlights important milestones in labor history. In this episode, Labor Lookback highlights songwriter and political activist Joe Hill, the House Un-American Activities Committee's 1947 hearings on alleged Communist influence in Hollywood's film industry and singer/songwriter Merle Travis, who wrote the smash working man's hit "Sixteen Tons."   In his Kowal's Coda segment, Kowal questions why MAGA supporters have the temerity to call themselves patriots when they—and their leader, Donald Trump—  are anything but. 

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 1164, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Mtv Video Of The Year Artists 1: 1988:"Need You Tonight/Meditate". INXS. 2: 2009:"Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)". Beyoncé. 3: 1984:"You Might Think". The Cars. 4: 2004:"Hey Ya!". OutKast. 5: 1993:"Jeremy". Pearl Jam. Round 2. Category: Classic Country Music 1: In 1963 Johnny Cash sang, "And it" this, this, this, "the ring of fire, the ring of fire". burns, burns, burns. 2: No "Dumb Blonde" (the name of her first hit in 1967), this buxom beauty was Country Music Entertainer of the Year in 1978. (Dolly) Parton. 3: In 1953 "Your Cheatin' Heart" was a big hit for this country singer who lived fast and died young that same year. Hank Williams, Sr.. 4: In a 1975 crossover hit, Freddy Fender put this word before his "Days" and "Nights". Wasted. 5: This country music legend didn't weigh "Sixteen Tons", but he was known as "The Ol' Pea Picker". Tennessee Ernie Ford. Round 3. Category: Egypt 1: It was closed June 6, 1967 and re-opened June 5, 1975. The Suez Canal. 2: Construction of this began in 1960 and cost about $1 billion. the Aswan Dam. 3: 1 of 3 men who each built one of the pyramids of Giza. (1 of) Cheops (Khufu) or (Khefren and Mykerinos). 4: Though this dam controls the Nile's flood waters, some say it's harmed the environment. Aswan High Dam. 5: While the pharaohs built ancient wonders, Ferdinand de Lesseps built this "modern" one. the Suez Canal. Round 4. Category: Fold It 5 Ways 1: Kids make these from 1 sheet of typing paper; they use a lot less fuel than a Cessna. Paper airplane. 2: The word origami means "paper folding" in this language. Japanese. 3: It's black and white and read all over; it's also the perfect size to make a hat. Newspaper. 4: Complex snout folds are needed to make this animal, whose next Chinese year is 2007. Pig/boar. 5: A square sheet of paper can become a star to put on a Christmas tree, a triangle becomes this Jewish star. Star of David. Round 5. Category: A World To Kiss 1: In this French pilgrimage city, many have kissed the stone in the cave where St. Bernadette had her vision. Lourdes. 2: In Spanish churches, besamanos and besapiés are the customs of kissing these 2 parts of religious statues. the hands and the feet. 3: Kissing this at a castle in County Cork will get you the gift of gab, or so they say. the Blarney Stone. 4: In the 1930s newly single women were known to kiss the Washoe County courthouse pillars in this divorce-friendly Nevada city. Reno. 5: It's traditional at this venerable state university to streak across the space known as the Lawn and kiss the Homer statue. University of Virginia. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/ AI Voices used

ההצלחה הגדולה של אלון מאסק, היא לא טוויטר ואפילו לא טסלה. מה שהופך את מאסק לדמות חשובה ומשפיעה היא SpaceX.החל משנת 2006 מאסק וחברת החלל שלו זכו בשורה של מכרזים של נאס"א ושל הממשל האמריקאי, מכרזים שמטרתם לפתח חלליות מסוגים שונים וטילים מסוגים שונים. במסגרת הפעילות של החברה, SpaceX משגרת אינספור דברים לחלל, חלקם מתפוצצים על כן השיגור וחלקם מתפוצצים כאשר הם מנסים לחזור ולכן מאסק החל לחפש אתר ניסויים שיהיה בבעלותו. הפתרון שלו היה להשתלט על כפר קטן בטקסס ואז לנסות ולקנות אותו ואת תושביו.המהלך האגרסיבי הזה הוא רק אחד בשורה של מהלכים שחלקם, כך נדמה, מבקשים להחיות קונספט שזכה לפופולריות במאה ה-19, קונספט של "עיירת חברה" שבו התאגיד לא רק מעסיק אותך, הוא גם בעל הבית שלך. אז מה אתם אומרים, הייתם רוצים שהאדם העשיר בעולם יהיה בעל הבית שלכם?קישורים:שיר: Sixteen Tonsהתחקיר של "מאד'ר ג'ונס"כתבה מצולמת: מאסק מנסה להשתלט על עיירהוול-סטריט ג'ורנל: מאסק בונה עיירה בטקססהסרטון של צ'אפ אמברוז

ההצלחה הגדולה של אלון מאסק, היא לא טוויטר ואפילו לא טסלה. מה שהופך את מאסק לדמות חשובה ומשפיעה היא SpaceX.החל משנת 2006 מאסק וחברת החלל שלו זכו בשורה של מכרזים של נאס"א ושל הממשל האמריקאי, מכרזים שמטרתם לפתח חלליות מסוגים שונים וטילים מסוגים שונים. במסגרת הפעילות של החברה, SpaceX משגרת אינספור דברים לחלל, חלקם מתפוצצים על כן השיגור וחלקם מתפוצצים כאשר הם מנסים לחזור ולכן מאסק החל לחפש אתר ניסויים שיהיה בבעלותו. הפתרון שלו היה להשתלט על כפר קטן בטקסס ואז לנסות ולקנות אותו ואת תושביו.המהלך האגרסיבי הזה הוא רק אחד בשורה של מהלכים שחלקם, כך נדמה, מבקשים להחיות קונספט שזכה לפופולריות במאה ה-19, קונספט של "עיירת חברה" שבו התאגיד לא רק מעסיק אותך, הוא גם בעל הבית שלך. אז מה אתם אומרים, הייתם רוצים שהאדם העשיר בעולם יהיה בעל הבית שלכם?קישורים:שיר: Sixteen Tonsהתחקיר של "מאד'ר ג'ונס"כתבה מצולמת: מאסק מנסה להשתלט על עיירהוול-סטריט ג'ורנל: מאסק בונה עיירה בטקססהסרטון של צ'אפ אמברוז

The singer and TV host, whose career encompassed country, pop, and gospel music, would become known for his hit songs "Sixteen Tons" and "The Shotgun Boogie".

Deep below, something stirs in the darkness and as Brian and MaryAnne descend down into the mine to save Becky they will encounter something the Mole Miners have been keeping hidden. Timmy will have too much sugar, Becky will hate Sixteen Tons and sometime later Brian will find the right words. The remainder of this season our episodes will be for charity. Pleasure support our Fallout For Hope fundraiser supporting the humanitarian work of Project Hope: ⁠⁠Tiltify - Fallout For Hope ⁠⁠ Written by George Wolf Produced and edited by Richard Loftus Dr. Mark Hauswirth ~ Brian Jessica Dickey ~ MaryAnne Ray Hauswirth ~ Becky Watts Logan Hauswirth ~ Timmy Joel De Jesus ~ Pete Myers Christian Mower ~ Bruno (Mr. Handy) Jessica Duval ~ Chloe the Clown (Robot) Kevin Chenard ~ Peter Ennis Clint Winberry ~ 76er#1 Keemo Provorse ~ 76er#2 Official Site: ⁠⁠https://fallout76podcast.com⁠⁠ Join Our Discord: ⁠⁠https://discord.gg/fnBFR6Rn8N⁠⁠ Patreon: ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/fallout76chadpodcast⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/fallout76podcast/⁠⁠ Reddit: ⁠⁠https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76creators/⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠http://bit.ly/YouTubeChad⁠⁠ Email and business inquiries:  ⁠⁠fchad@fallout76podcast.com⁠⁠ I hope to see you all in the Wasteland... CHAD: A Fallout 76 Story and its websites are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Bethesda Softworks LLC, ZeniMax Media Inc., Microsoft Corporation, or their affiliates or subsidiaries. All logos, designs, and product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. It does not reflect the views or opinions of either company or anyone officially involved in producing or managing Fallout 76. All other content on this site is copyright by the author, and is licensed under a ⁠⁠Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License⁠⁠. Audio program ©2023 Kenneth Vigue - All Rights Reserved. No reproduction of this content is permitted without express written consent. This content is protected by Digital Millennium Copyright Act Services Ltd. © --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fallout76podcast/message

Welcome to a brand new episode of Shark's Pond: A South Park Podcast. Join Bill as this week he reviews the season twenty-two episode "Unfulfilled". Topics discussed include how bad it is to work at an Amazon Fulfillment Center, how many versions of the song "Sixteen Tons" are there, Jeff Bezos as a character we probably never thought we'd see, Butters dad deciding if he should strike or not and much more.Theme song courtesy of Joseph McDade https://josephmcdade.com/ Follow the show on Twitter https://twitter.com/sharkspond97 Join the shows Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/sharkspond/

Im Sommerinterview Talk haben wir Malin Sweers, Felix Röschke und Stefan Hoffmann von Sixteen Tons Entertainment und Promotion Software zu Gast. Natürlich dreht sich alles um das neue deutsche Echtzeit-Strategiespiel  Emergency. P.S. Zum Zeitpunkt der Aufnahme des Interviews stand das Release Datum von Emergency noch nicht fest. Am 15. August können Spieler das Free2play Spiel direkt auf Steam spielen.

Aviation Stories Worth Sharing..... Memories of a Great Airline - Eastern Airlines.  Here are a few stories in Episode 5:  Voices in the Cabin; Chicken or Steak; Sixteen Tons; New Frontiers.  Join us after dinner tonight for more great memories of Eastern Airlines.  Go to:  blogtalkradio.com/capteddie at 8:00 pm EDT.  See you at the Gate..  

Matt and Drew discuss " Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford. To listen to the full show, visit ForgottenCountryRadioShow.com.

NOW YOU CAN CLICK ON THE TIMELINE TO FIND YOUR FAVORITE SEGMENT(S) OR LISTEN TO THE WHOLE SHOW! Please check out our full TWO-HOUR radio show, or snippets contained within, from Wednesday, January 25, 2023, wherein we discussed: 0:00 - Hello, Introduction, Update, and Today's Show Details 6:15 - "Arrogant Al" Entered the Fray! "Name That Tune" SegmentsAl's Health! 9:43 - Tony Dungy - and Abortion, Homosexuality, the Bible, and Cancel Culture 22:02 - Al Returns! Question About a Fight at a Wedding Reception - YIKES! - and People "Sitting In" at a Gig 24:35 - LIVE SINGING Segment, wherein the CHO Singing Group, comprised of "Cannabis Carl", "Hicksville Harry" and "Operatic Olivier" came in to sing, "Brick House", by The Commodores. As Al always says, what could possibly go wrong? 52:38 - Paul's Interview With Children's Book Author and Illustrator, SIVAN HONG 1:22:08 - Al Returns Again! 1:24:15 - LIVE SINGING Segment, wherein "Battling Bubba" came in to sing "Sixteen Tons", by Tennessee Ernie Ford. As Al always says, what could possibly go wrong? 1:35:30 - Paul's Interview With Author/Musician, DAVID E. FELDMAN 1:57:08 - Al Returns AGAIN - and Next Week's Guests As a reminder, you can catch all of our live shows on Wednesdays at 11:00 am (ET) on "Impact Radio USA", through the following site: http://www.ImpactRadioUSA.com (click on LISTEN NOW) (NOTE: Each live show is also repeated at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., and 5:00 am on the next day) Enjoy!

In our newest segment, one which reflects on our complete lack of judgement and discernment, we present LIVE SINGING, the segment that features various singers "singing" (yes, that word was intentionally placed within quotation marks!) some of your favorite songs! On today's show, "Battling Bubba" came in to sing, "Sixteen Tons", by Tennessee Ernie Ford. As Al often says, what could POSSIBLY go wrong???

In our newest segment, one which reflects on our complete lack of judgement and discernment, we present LIVE SINGING, the segment that features various singers "singing" (yes, that word was intentionally placed within quotation marks!) some of your favorite songs! On today's show, "Battling Bubba" came in to sing, "Sixteen Tons", by Tennessee Ernie Ford. As Al often says, what could POSSIBLY go wrong???

NOW YOU CAN CLICK ON THE TIMELINE TO FIND YOUR FAVORITE SEGMENT(S) OR LISTEN TO THE WHOLE SHOW! Please check out our full TWO-HOUR radio show, or snippets contained within, from Wednesday, January 25, 2023, wherein we discussed: 0:00 - Hello, Introduction, Update, and Today's Show Details 6:15 - "Arrogant Al" Entered the Fray! "Name That Tune" SegmentsAl's Health! 9:43 - Tony Dungy - and Abortion, Homosexuality, the Bible, and Cancel Culture 22:02 - Al Returns! Question About a Fight at a Wedding Reception - YIKES! - and People "Sitting In" at a Gig 24:35 - LIVE SINGING Segment, wherein the CHO Singing Group, comprised of "Cannabis Carl", "Hicksville Harry" and "Operatic Olivier" came in to sing, "Brick House", by The Commodores. As Al always says, what could possibly go wrong? 52:38 - Paul's Interview With Children's Book Author and Illustrator, SIVAN HONG 1:22:08 - Al Returns Again! 1:24:15 - LIVE SINGING Segment, wherein "Battling Bubba" came in to sing "Sixteen Tons", by Tennessee Ernie Ford. As Al always says, what could possibly go wrong? 1:35:30 - Paul's Interview With Author/Musician, DAVID E. FELDMAN 1:57:08 - Al Returns AGAIN - and Next Week's Guests As a reminder, you can catch all of our live shows on Wednesdays at 11:00 am (ET) on "Impact Radio USA", through the following site: http://www.ImpactRadioUSA.com (click on LISTEN NOW) (NOTE: Each live show is also repeated at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., and 5:00 am on the next day) Enjoy!

Music historian Deke Dickerson's biography of the music legend Merle Travis. Travis made his first record in Dayton while performing under an assumed name.

Presley Barker returns to the Reeves Theater with his brother Luke. On this show from May 20,2021 we also welcomed EmiSunshine to the show for the first time. These are two of the finest young musicians out there and we were honored. Both have been out there working since the age of 9 and continue to find new and exciting directions. Along with their great music, Martha and the band also do a fun version of the Merle Travis song, "Sixteen Tons," made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

Dr. Bill Howatt, Ph.D. Ed.D stopped by the Intentional Clinician Podcast to speak with Paul Krauss MA LPC about his work helping to improve people's experiences in their workplaces and more.  Dr. Bill Howatt, Ph.D. Ed. D. discuss workplace fairness, stress, burnout, and how companies can actually create a new model of work that reflects the values of workers today. Behavioral scientist Dr. Bill Howatt, Ph.D, Ed.D is founder and CEO of Howatt HR and widely recognized for his expertise in workplace mental health. He has more than 30 years of experience in mental health and addictive disorders, including working with senior executives at progressive and successful organizations nationally and internationally. Howatt is a mastermind at helping employees and employers work together to reduce mental harm and promote mental wellness at work.   He has published more than 500 articles with The Globe and Mail, Counselor Magazine, Chronicle Herald, Talent Canada, CEO Health and Safety Leadership Network, and OHS Magazine and published more than 50 books, including Globe and Mail bestseller The Cure for Loneliness. Howatt is the creator of Certificate in Psychologically Safe Leadership (CPSL), Certificate in Management Essentials, Pathway to Coping and Mental Fitness through the University of New Brunswick. He is active in workplace mental health research, including the CSA 2022 report Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace: Employer Practices in Response to COVID-19.   Are you a parent of an adult that is having major difficulties? Is there conflict in your family about how much help to give your adult child? Preview On-Demand Online Video Course for the Parents of Young Adults by Paul Krauss MA LPC Want to get trained in EMDR Therapy? Looking for some great advanced EMDR therapy trainings? Check out EMDR Training Solutions and Register Today!   Use the code INTENTIONAL at checkout, and get $100 Dollars OFF at Checkout! Remember, from my research, EMDR Training Solutions is the most affordable independent training on the market!  EMDR Training Solutions: for all of your EMDR training needs. Paul Krauss MA LPC is the Clinical Director of Health for Life Counseling Grand Rapids, home of The Trauma-Informed Counseling Center of Grand Rapids. Paul is also a Private Practice Psychotherapist, an Approved EMDRIA Consultant , host of the Intentional Clinician podcast, Behavioral Health Consultant, Clinical Trainer, and Counseling Supervisor. Paul is now offering consulting for a few individuals and organizations. Paul is the creator of the National Violence Prevention Hotline (in progress) as well as the Intentional Clinician Training Program for Counselors. Paul has been quoted in the Washington Post, NBC News, and Wired Magazine. Questions? Call the office at 616-200-4433.  If you are looking for EMDRIA consulting groups, Paul Krauss MA LPC is now hosting weekly online and in-person groups.  For details, click here. For general behavioral and mental health consulting for you or your organization. Follow Health for Life Grand Rapids: Instagram   |   Facebook     |     Youtube    Original Music: ”Shades of Currency" [Instrumental] from Archetypes by PAWL (Spotify) “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “Sixteen Tons” from Various Albums by Johnny Cash (Spotify)

For the final episode of the second season, the brothers enlist a special guest to help them make sense of getting older. Referenced and recommended resources include: Books and Literature: Peace in the Last Third of Life (https://amzn.to/3ygJpOE) by Paul Zahl, The Happiness Curve (https://amzn.to/3PteZ2P) by Jonathan Rauch, “Crossing the Bar” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45321/crossing-the-bar) by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Churchy (https://amzn.to/3uwYwTb) by Sarah Condon, Being Mortal (https://amzn.to/3RhG5vn) by Atul Gawande, The Genius and the Goddess (https://amzn.to/3NR19pt) by Aldous Huxley, Quatermass by Nigel Neale, "East Coker" (https://amzn.to/3InL3CT) by TS Eliot, Ecclesiastes Movies and Television: The Twilight Zone (“Spur of the Moment” and “The Trade-Ins”), Letters to Father Jacob (2009), Friday Night Lights (2006-2011), Journey to Italy (1954), The Adam Project (2022) Artwork: "The Voyage of Life" (http://www.explorethomascole.org/tour/items/73/series/) by Thomas Cole (1839-40) Songs: “Seventeen” by Sharon Van Etten, “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel, “When I Grow Up to Be a Man” by The Beach Boys, “Ashes to Ashes” by David Bowie, “Tired of Waiting” by The Kinks, “When I Was a Boy” by The Who, “Regret” by New Order, “Old" by Staryflyer 59, "Everybody Wants to Be a DJ", “Sixteen Tons” by Bob Cobra, “As Far as I Can Remember” by Pasteur Lappe, “Just Ain't Easy” by The Allman Brothers, “Highlands” by Bob Dylan Click here (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ZEDD3kbdFeuBjrMIhWi1V?si=058bfc64dedc426d) to listen to a playlist of the available tracks on Spotify.

Rocky Marciano ha sido uno de los más grandes pesos pesados de la historia. Se retiró como campeón imbatido con un récord de 49-0, con 43 nocauts. En este programa hablaremos de su vida, de sus comienzos y, sobre todo, de cómo su entrenador y maestro, Charley Goldman, empezó a trabajar con un peso pesado bajito, bracicorto, patoso y descoordinado y lo fue trabajando y puliendo hasta convertirlo en un gran campeón. Conoceremos los particulares métodos de Goldman para modelar a su boxeador sin que este perdiera su pegada natural. También cómo fueron dirigiendo su carrera hasta llevarlo al campeonato. Corte 1: “Jitterbug Boy”, Tom Waits Corte 2: “Tequila”, Rocco Torrebruno Corte 3: “Susie Q”, Dale Hawkins Corte 4: “Can the Can” Suzi Quatro Corte 5: “Grossinger's Cha Cha Cha”, Tito Puente Corte 5: “Sixteen Tons”, Tennessee Ernie Ford Corte 6: “Whatever it takes”, James Hunter Six

Con los Pops, Cristina y los Stops, versiones de Sixteen Tons y Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On, SAR Records, el sello de Sam Cooke, Rufus Thomas, Nathaniel Rateliff y Handsome Jack.

#50-46Intro/Outro: Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters50. I Put a Spell on You by Screamin' Jay Hawkins49. Money Honey by Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters48. Sweet Little Sixteen by Chuck Berry47. Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford46. Please, Please, Please by James BrownVote on your favorite song from today's episodeVote on your favorite song from Week 2

"Esperaré dia y noche tu vuelta...”, cantaba Rina Ketty en "J´attendrai” , la más famosa de las canciones de la II Guerra Mundial, cuando la ocupación alemana era respondida desde la Resistencia. Tiernas y desgarradoras como “El Partisano”, himnos como "Bella Ciao”, "Bandiera Rossa”, “Ay Carmela”o ,“Sixteen Tons”, desde el ”american way”. Sin olvidar el colaboracionismo y el oportunismo aparejado en canciones como “L´Opportuniste" de Dutronc. "Si estas escuchando esto eres la Resistencia".

"Esperaré dia y noche tu vuelta...”, cantaba Rina Ketty en "J´attendrai” , la más famosa de las canciones de la II Guerra Mundial, cuando la ocupación alemana era respondida desde la Resistencia. Tiernas y desgarradoras como “El Partisano”, himnos como "Bella Ciao”, "Bandiera Rossa”, “Ay Carmela”o ,“Sixteen Tons”, desde el ”american way”. Sin olvidar el colaboracionismo y el oportunismo aparejado en canciones como “L´Opportuniste" de Dutronc. "Si estas escuchando esto eres la Resistencia".

Amazon says it has the perfect solution to the housing crisis: why not let them house their workers in affordable housing near their workplaces, allowing them to also help control costs by supplying transportation, food, and other needs? Why? Oh, we'll tell you, and the answer is to be found in the old classic "Sixteen Tons". Then, COVID-19's path of death has shifted its focus: as more of your centrist-to-leftward population in America has gotten vaccinated versus the conservative side, more US conservatives are finding themselves hospitalized by the "hoax", with no few of them dying of it. Finally, we look at how Trump is suing to try and keep White House records from January 6th, 2021 from investigators into the Capitol Attack. Nothing suspicious there. All that and much more on TMI with Aldous Tyler for Friday, October 1, 2021. Listen in for YOUR Cure for the Common Media!

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 230, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Oxford, Cambridge Or Harvard 1: It's the oldest. Oxford. 2: One of its clubs gives out the Hasty Pudding Award. Harvard. 3: The current Prince of Wales earned his bachelor's degree there. Cambridge. 4: Its main library is the Bodleian. Oxford. 5: Its department of physics is the Cavendish Laboratory. Cambridge. Round 2. Category: Classic Disney Films 1: The title fawn in Disney's 1942 film is this deer. Bambi. 2: Mowgli finds out it's a jungle out there in this film based on Kipling's classic. The Jungle Book. 3: The Mickey Mouse version of this Dickens classic features Goofy as the ghost of Jacob Marley. A Christmas Carol. 4: Much of the music for this 1959 film, including the song "Once Upon A Dream" was adapted from an 1890 ballet. Sleeping Beauty. 5: Among the babes in "Babes in Toyland" are Ann Jillian as Bo Peep and this Mouseketeer as Mary Contrary. Annette Funicello. Round 3. Category: Auto Racing 1: Designating you as the winner, it's the flag each driver wants to see first at the end of an auto race. checkered flag. 2: It's the "aquatic" term for the rapid side to side movement a car's rear end can make while racing. fishing. 3: As the lead qualifier for an auto racing event, you'll occupy this "position" in the front row at the start of the race. pole position. 4: This type of auto racing start bears the name of a French town famous for a 24-hour race. Le Mans. 5: Also a term for architectural drawing, it's the fuel-saving practice of one car closely following another. drafting. Round 4. Category: Numbers In Song 1: Biggest hit for The Crests was about a birthday cake with this many candles. 16. 2: Neil Sedaka said, "You've turned into the prettiest girl I've ever seen" when she'd reached this age. sweet 16. 3: Title of the song that begins, "Some people say a man is made out of mud". "Sixteen Tons". 4: Lacy J. Dalton sang "God bless the boys who make the noise on" this Nashville street. 16th Avenue. 5: It's the specific distance mentioned in folk song "The Erie Canal". 15 miles. Round 5. Category: Geographer's Dictionary 1: From an old Norse word, it's a long, narrow, deep inlet of the sea. Fjord. 2: The main administrative municipality in a U.S. county. a county seat. 3: It's an old name for a Chinese seaport, or what the Swiss call their states. Canton. 4: "Oceanic" term for the coastal states between New England and the South, like Delaware and Maryland. Mid-Atlantic. 5: "Oceanic" term for the coastal states between New England and the South, like Delaware and Maryland. Mid-Atlantic. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!

You take one day off for Labor Day, and what do you get? This episode of THE STORY SONG PODCAST! Join your hosts for their review of the 1955 country standard, “Sixteen Tons,” written by Merle Travis and performed by Tennessee Ernie Ford. In this episode, we mine for gold in a song about coal by asking the hard-hitting questions — What are fists made of? At what age should you learn a trade? Is there a Labor Day sale at the company store? Saint Peter, don't you call us; we can't go. We'll be listening to this episode of THE STORY SONG PODCAST.Continue the conversation; follow THE STORY SONG PODCAST on social media. Follow us on Twitter (@Story_Song), Instagram (storysongpodcast), and Facebook (thestorysongpodcast).THE STORY SONG PODCAST is a member of the Pantheon Podcast Network.“Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford (from the album Ford Favorites) is available on Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Pandora, Spotify, or wherever you listen to music.

You take one day off for Labor Day, and what do you get? This episode of THE STORY SONG PODCAST! Join your hosts for their review of the 1955 country standard, “Sixteen Tons,” written by Merle Travis and performed by Tennessee Ernie Ford. In this episode, we mine for gold in a song about coal by asking the hard-hitting questions — What are fists made of? At what age should you learn a trade? Is there a Labor Day sale at the company store? Saint Peter, don't you call us; we can't go. We'll be listening to this episode of THE STORY SONG PODCAST. Continue the conversation; follow THE STORY SONG PODCAST on social media. Follow us on Twitter (@Story_Song), Instagram (storysongpodcast), and Facebook (thestorysongpodcast). THE STORY SONG PODCAST is a member of the Pantheon Podcast Network. “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford (from the album Ford Favorites) is available on Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Pandora, Spotify, or wherever you listen to music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You take one day off for Labor Day, and what do you get? This episode of THE STORY SONG PODCAST! Join your hosts for their review of the 1955 country standard, “Sixteen Tons,” written by Merle Travis and performed by Tennessee Ernie Ford. In this episode, we mine for gold in a song about coal by asking the hard-hitting questions — What are fists made of? At what age should you learn a trade? Is there a Labor Day sale at the company store? Saint Peter, don't you call us; we can't go. We'll be listening to this episode of THE STORY SONG PODCAST.Continue the conversation; follow THE STORY SONG PODCAST on social media. Follow us on Twitter (@Story_Song), Instagram (storysongpodcast), and Facebook (thestorysongpodcast).THE STORY SONG PODCAST is a member of the Pantheon Podcast Network.“Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford (from the album Ford Favorites) is available on Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Pandora, Spotify, or wherever you listen to music.

You take one day off for Labor Day, and what do you get? This episode of THE STORY SONG PODCAST! Join your hosts for their review of the 1955 country standard, “Sixteen Tons,” written by Merle Travis and performed by Tennessee Ernie Ford. In this episode, we mine for gold in a song about coal by asking the hard-hitting questions — What are fists made of? At what age should you learn a trade? Is there a Labor Day sale at the company store? Saint Peter, don't you call us; we can't go. We'll be listening to this episode of THE STORY SONG PODCAST. Continue the conversation; follow THE STORY SONG PODCAST on social media. Follow us on Twitter (@Story_Song), Instagram (storysongpodcast), and Facebook (thestorysongpodcast). THE STORY SONG PODCAST is a member of the Pantheon Podcast Network. “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford (from the album Ford Favorites) is available on Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Pandora, Spotify, or wherever you listen to music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“There is another America.  Remember it.  Those miners died for you.  You should at least know who they were.  And then let's all follow in their footsteps.  Long live the multiracial uprising in the hills of Appalachia in 1921.  Long live the Battle of Blair Mountain.” David Rovics U.S. Labor Day weekend 2021 marks the 100 year anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, which was part of the West Virginia Mine Wars.  The battle was the largest armed insurrection in the U.S. since the Civil War. The sacrifices of those miners and their families who fought on Blair Mountain laid down a foundation to fight for every worker's labor rights and protection and courageously stand up and face tyrannical men of murderous intent. Empathy Media Lab will be in West Virginia documenting the Battle of Blair Mountain Centennial Commemoration, including the United Mine Workers of America's reenactment of the famous march that ended in the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain. This short film is based on an audio essay by David Rovics and the song Sixteen Tons by Merle Travis. The following links providing more information about this labor struggle through: Dr. Charles B. Keeney's book The Road to Blair Mountain Saving a Mine Wars Battlefield from King Coal West Virginia Mine Wars Museum Matewan directed by John Sayles David Rovics website and twitter ABOUT EMLab   Empathy Media Lab is produced by Evan Matthew Papp and we are a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. Support media, authors, activists, artists, historians, and journalists, who are fighting to improve the prosperity of the working class everywhere. Solidarity forever.    Website - https://www.empathymedialab.com/  All Links: https://wlo.link/@empathymedialab      #LaborRadioPod #1U #UnionStrong #Blair100

"Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go! I owe my soul to the company store." If you recognize these lyrics [edited] and melody, you probably grew up watching black and white TV with Ernest Jennings “Tennessee Ernie” Ford, a resonant-voiced baritone and master of good-natured corn during the 1950s and 1960s. Ford's first spiritual album, Hymns, was certified gold in 1959; by 1963 it was the biggest-selling album in Capitol's catalogue. What was Ford's biggest hit? “Sixteen Tons," originally written by Merle Travis. Capitol Records encouraged Travis to write a series of songs that "sounded folky". He nailed it. My father loved this TV show. Read biographies on the Internet. Hear him sing songs on Spotify. Go to YouTube for album covers and more of his greatest hits. Thank you for listening.

The gang learns that the OG SCOOBY-DOO ON ZOMBIE ISLAND is a more contentious topic among us than we realized, before discovering that even in the best of circumstances, this revisiting leaves us light on words to say... but we've got plenty to sing. Mitch was too busy singing Sixteen Tons to do plugs. BRAND NEW ART by Jade Dickinson: @jadesketches on Instagram Find us on Twitter & Letterboxd: @theymadeanother / @tmao | @mrcoreyprice | @grahamthemallow // Listen to MK Podquest with Corey and Neal: https://anchor.fm/mkpodquest Find us on Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, RadioPublic, Breaker, Overcast and more as "They Made Another One?!" Reach us via email: tmaopodcast@gmail.com Music from filmmusic.io "Eighties Action" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) License: CC BY (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

This week I covered Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mariela-the-terrible-singer/support

"ERNIE IN THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME":https://countrymusichalloffame.org/artist/tennessee-ernie-ford/

Wednesday, 24th March 2021

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 23, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: We're Here To "Win" 1: Castle community that the Queen calls home Windsor. 2: TV's Dr. Phil got his first big exposure on her show Oprah Winfrey. 3: If you're playing Florizel, you're in this late Shakespeare play The Winter's Tale. 4: City that's home to the Blue Bombers of the CFL Winnipeg. 5: To use air to remove chaff from wheat to winnow. Round 2. Category: For Old Crimes' Sake 1: The man who shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel was vice president under this man Thomas Jefferson. 2: Assassin James Earl Ray was arrested in this capital city June 8, 1968 by Scotland Yard detectives London. 3: This publishing heiress was kidnapped on February 4, 1974 Patty Hearst. 4: Returning from the Third Crusade, this English "lion" king was kidnapped and held until a huge ransom was paid in 1194 Richard the Lion-Hearted. 5: Bank robber Clyde Barrow died along with this woman in a 1930s police ambush Bonnie Parker. Round 3. Category: The Getty 1: Type of chest seen here in the Getty collection; those of the Getty trust are quite full coffer. 2: One of the largest paintings at the Getty is Ensor's 1888 "Entry of Christ Into" this Belgian capital Brussels. 3: At the new Getty Center, admission is free, but you need $5 and a reservation to do this Park. 4: The previous Getty Museum, just south of this coastal community, will reopen to show antiquities Malibu. 5: The Getty calls its 110 acres of galleries and institutions this, like the grounds of a college Campus. Round 4. Category: Numbers In Song 1: Title of the song that begins, "Some people say a man is made out of mud" "Sixteen Tons". 2: Lacy J. Dalton sang "God bless the boys who make the noise on" this Nashville street 16th Avenue. 3: Biggest hit for The Crests was about a birthday cake with this many candles 16. 4: It's the specific distance mentioned in folk song "The Erie Canal" 15 miles. 5: Neil Sedaka said, "You've turned into the prettiest girl I've ever seen" when she'd reached this age sweet 16. Round 5. Category: What Did I Do With My Keys? 1: You left them in this (from the Latin for "fire"), you fool (from the Latin for "fool") the ignition. 2: They were in the pocket of those Red Tabs jeans from this company -- you know, the ones we just took to Goodwill Levi's. 3: One of these crow relatives famous for their love of shiny objects flew off with them magpie. 4: They turned up in the bottom of the neighbors' jetted bath -- as Emile Zola might say, this brand Jacuzzi. 5: They fell into this pot that's also a term for one who makes his money growing cotton planter. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!

Sintonía: "Amen Brother" - The Winstons Para esta "Music Non-Stop Sessions", arrasamos con una recopilación en vinilo (Star Light Entertainment, 2016) de 16 trallazos que escuchamos en su totalidad; Oh, Yeah !!! Buen provecho, amigos !!! "The Real Thing" - Troy Dodds; "Gloria" - Dee Clark; "Lover´s Hell" - Merle Kilgore; "No Love" - McKinley Mitchell; "I´m Never Gonna Cry Again" - Roberta Daye; "Hey Eula" - Barry Cryer; "Workin´ For My Baby" - Gary U.S. Bonds; "Fever Twist" - Henry Wright; "Laughing Over My Grave" - Ray Stevens; "Baby Please Don´t Go" - Jo Ann Henderson; "Sixteen Tons" - Lou Neefs; "Delilah Jones" - McGuire Sisters; "Bury Me Deep" - Chance Halladay; "Il n´a rien retrouvé" - Sylvie Vartan; "Trance" - Billy Dixon & The Topics; "I Idolize You" - Gail Harris And The Wailers Escuchar audio

Life on our terms, what do ya get?   It's really about the Robe, the Ring and the ShoesSupport the show (http://gritquest.com)

The evolution of a folk song, from its rootsiest roots to a marvel of orchestration and production. Sloop John B, originally recorded by The Cleveland Simmons Group, covered by The Kingston Trio, and by The Beach Boys. Outro music is Sixteen Tons by The Weavers.

The greatest diss track ever recorded, the 60s version of the Masked Singer, inspiration by the Velvet Fog, and a successful torch passing. You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch, covered by Aimee Mann, and by Pentatonix. You'll have to listen to the episode to learn the original artist, because there's a story there. Outro music is Sixteen Tons, by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

The dudes tackle their first romantic comedy with 1990's Joe Versus the Volcano. Strangely, the dude who claims to not like romantic comedies sure seems to like this movie more than the dude who doesn't claim to not like romantic comedies. And speaking of volcanoes, this episode's trivia battle is so seismically violent, Jordan and Nic have to add a new element to the game. Also, Nic has an irrational hatred for 1997's Trojan War. It only made $309 at the box office. Hasn't it suffered enough?All that and more on this very special 20th episode of Filmshake!Songs featured in this episode:"Love Theme from Joe Versus the Volcano" -- Georges Delerue"Sixteen Tons" -- Written by Merle Travis, performed by Eric BurdonCheck out Nic's review of Joe Versus the Volcano here:https://thenicsperiment.blogspot.com/2020/10/joe-versus-volcano.htmlFollow us on Twitter and Facebook!Visit our website too!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/filmshake)

Songs about work for Labor Day weekend. Songs for the long, dark night shift of the soul. Songs for when the whistle blows. Songs for when the job blows. Songs to whistle while you work, plus some new songs that have nothing to do with work. All this & much, much less!

Welcome to the seventh and final in the Pledge Week series of episodes, putting up old bonus episodes posted to my Patreon in an attempt to encourage more subscriptions. If you like this, consider subscribing to the Patreon at http://patreon.com/join/andrewhickey . I’m glad to say that this pledge week has been successful enough that I may do another of these in a year or so. This one is about “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, a record that was a huge influence on many, many artists in the mid fifties. —-more—- As we’re reaching the end of 1956, and are also now on the fiftieth episode of the podcast, I thought it worth while trying to fill in a few gaps in the year we’ve been covering. And one of those gaps is the song “Sixteen Tons”. We’ve mentioned this song a couple of times before — we talked during the episode on Bo Diddley about how much he liked the song, and it also came up in the episode on Johnny Cash, but because it’s not actually a rock and roll song as such we never looked at it in any more detail. But it’s a song that was a huge hit in 1956, and which influenced many rock and rollers, and so we should probably have a quick look at its history: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Sixteen Tons”] That’s the version of the song that became a hit in 1956, by Tennessee Ernie Ford, but it’s not the original version of the song. The song was originally written by Merle Travis, one of the greatest country guitarists of all time. Merle Travis is credited with the invention of “Travis picking”, a type of guitar playing where you play a bass line on the bottom two strings of the guitar while you play melody on the top two, with the melody syncopated as in ragtime — it’s a particular pattern that can be heard in everything from “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel to “Just Breathe” by Pearl Jam. Travis’ own playing was more complicated than the kind of music that now gets called “Travis picking”, as you can hear on, say, “Cannonball Rag”: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, “Cannonball Rag”] That owes a lot to ragtime and blues, not just to country music. While Travis is credited as the inventor of this style, he wasn’t actually its originator. It was actually invented by a black blues guitarist called Arnold Shultz, who lived in Travis’ home state of Kentucky. Shultz never made a record, but he taught the style to several other guitarists, including one called Kennedy Jones, who in turn taught it to many other guitarists — including Ike Everly, who we’ll be hearing more about in the second year of the main podcast. Travis spent the early part of his career as a fairly conventional country singer. He started off as one of the very first artists on Syd Nathan’s King Records, before King made its turn to the R&B for which it became better known, but then in 1946 he signed to Capitol Records, where he made country-pop records like “Divorce Me COD”: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, “Divorce Me COD”] But then Travis made an album called “Folk Songs of the Hills”, which was very different from anything else he’d recorded before. This was before the long-playing vinyl record, and so it was a box of four singles, all of which consisted just of Travis singing to his own acoustic guitar accompaniment. The songs were a mixture of the traditional folk songs that the title led you to expect: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, “John Henry”] and new songs written by Travis himself, mostly about the culture of the mining areas of Kentucky where he grew up. And “Sixteen Tons” was one of those. In its original version it started with a spoken introduction explaining the concept of “company scrip”, where someone could work for a company and be paid, not in cash that could be spent anywhere, but in tokens that could only be exchanged for goods sold by the company they worked for. This was an unfortunately common practice in the early and mid twentieth century, and those of you who’ve been following developments in cryptocurrencies and the big tech companies know that it’s making a return at the moment: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, “Sixteen Tons”] Travis’ recording was not particularly successful, and he went back to recording the honky tonk country records that he was successful with, but his career started to fade in the fifties. Until his friend Tennessee Ernie Ford, who had become nationally known thanks to some appearances on I Love Lucy, decided he wanted to record a new version of “Sixteen Tons” in 1956, a decade after Travis’ original version. Ford’s version is very, very, different from Travis’ original. It cuts out the spoken explanation, and where Travis’ version is a ragtime-influenced guitar track, Ford’s is taken at a much lower pitch, and it is dominated by clarinet and fingersnaps. It’s quite an astonishing arrangement, although it was soon imitated by all sorts of people, not least Peggy Lee in her version of “Fever”: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Sixteen Tons”] Ford’s recording became an instant classic, inspiring everyone from Johnny Cash to Bo Diddley to Tom Waits. It’s a perfect marriage of song, arrangement, and vocalist, and one of those records that perfectly encapsulates its time. It also revived the career of Merle Travis, who had stopped having any commercial success with his electric recordings, despite being a musician’s musician who every single other guitarist in the business looked up to. Suddenly people started to reevaulate Travis’ work, and he became an integral part of the new folk music movement. Travis continued playing the electric guitar, but he started recording solo albums of electric guitar performances of traditional songs, and became known as one of the great exponents of country guitar, as well as one of the great songwriters, with his “Dark as a Dungeon” in particular, another song from “Folk Songs of the Hills”, becoming a country standard. Tennessee Ernie Ford, meanwhile, went on to a career as a presenter of TV variety shows, and while he continued making records, none of them had the success, either artistically or commercially, of “Sixteen Tons”. But you only need to make one classic like that per career for your career to be worthwhile.

Welcome to the seventh and final in the Pledge Week series of episodes, putting up old bonus episodes posted to my Patreon in an attempt to encourage more subscriptions. If you like this, consider subscribing to the Patreon at http://patreon.com/join/andrewhickey . I'm glad to say that this pledge week has been successful enough that I may do another of these in a year or so. This one is about "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford, a record that was a huge influence on many, many artists in the mid fifties. ----more---- As we're reaching the end of 1956, and are also now on the fiftieth episode of the podcast, I thought it worth while trying to fill in a few gaps in the year we've been covering. And one of those gaps is the song "Sixteen Tons". We've mentioned this song a couple of times before -- we talked during the episode on Bo Diddley about how much he liked the song, and it also came up in the episode on Johnny Cash, but because it's not actually a rock and roll song as such we never looked at it in any more detail. But it's a song that was a huge hit in 1956, and which influenced many rock and rollers, and so we should probably have a quick look at its history: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons"] That's the version of the song that became a hit in 1956, by Tennessee Ernie Ford, but it's not the original version of the song. The song was originally written by Merle Travis, one of the greatest country guitarists of all time. Merle Travis is credited with the invention of "Travis picking", a type of guitar playing where you play a bass line on the bottom two strings of the guitar while you play melody on the top two, with the melody syncopated as in ragtime -- it's a particular pattern that can be heard in everything from "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel to "Just Breathe" by Pearl Jam. Travis' own playing was more complicated than the kind of music that now gets called "Travis picking", as you can hear on, say, "Cannonball Rag": [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Cannonball Rag"] That owes a lot to ragtime and blues, not just to country music. While Travis is credited as the inventor of this style, he wasn't actually its originator. It was actually invented by a black blues guitarist called Arnold Shultz, who lived in Travis' home state of Kentucky. Shultz never made a record, but he taught the style to several other guitarists, including one called Kennedy Jones, who in turn taught it to many other guitarists -- including Ike Everly, who we'll be hearing more about in the second year of the main podcast. Travis spent the early part of his career as a fairly conventional country singer. He started off as one of the very first artists on Syd Nathan's King Records, before King made its turn to the R&B for which it became better known, but then in 1946 he signed to Capitol Records, where he made country-pop records like "Divorce Me COD": [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Divorce Me COD"] But then Travis made an album called "Folk Songs of the Hills", which was very different from anything else he'd recorded before. This was before the long-playing vinyl record, and so it was a box of four singles, all of which consisted just of Travis singing to his own acoustic guitar accompaniment. The songs were a mixture of the traditional folk songs that the title led you to expect: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "John Henry"] and new songs written by Travis himself, mostly about the culture of the mining areas of Kentucky where he grew up. And "Sixteen Tons" was one of those. In its original version it started with a spoken introduction explaining the concept of "company scrip", where someone could work for a company and be paid, not in cash that could be spent anywhere, but in tokens that could only be exchanged for goods sold by the company they worked for. This was an unfortunately common practice in the early and mid twentieth century, and those of you who've been following developments in cryptocurrencies and the big tech companies know that it's making a return at the moment: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Sixteen Tons"] Travis' recording was not particularly successful, and he went back to recording the honky tonk country records that he was successful with, but his career started to fade in the fifties. Until his friend Tennessee Ernie Ford, who had become nationally known thanks to some appearances on I Love Lucy, decided he wanted to record a new version of "Sixteen Tons" in 1956, a decade after Travis' original version. Ford's version is very, very, different from Travis' original. It cuts out the spoken explanation, and where Travis' version is a ragtime-influenced guitar track, Ford's is taken at a much lower pitch, and it is dominated by clarinet and fingersnaps. It's quite an astonishing arrangement, although it was soon imitated by all sorts of people, not least Peggy Lee in her version of "Fever": [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons"] Ford's recording became an instant classic, inspiring everyone from Johnny Cash to Bo Diddley to Tom Waits. It's a perfect marriage of song, arrangement, and vocalist, and one of those records that perfectly encapsulates its time. It also revived the career of Merle Travis, who had stopped having any commercial success with his electric recordings, despite being a musician's musician who every single other guitarist in the business looked up to. Suddenly people started to reevaulate Travis' work, and he became an integral part of the new folk music movement. Travis continued playing the electric guitar, but he started recording solo albums of electric guitar performances of traditional songs, and became known as one of the great exponents of country guitar, as well as one of the great songwriters, with his "Dark as a Dungeon" in particular, another song from "Folk Songs of the Hills", becoming a country standard. Tennessee Ernie Ford, meanwhile, went on to a career as a presenter of TV variety shows, and while he continued making records, none of them had the success, either artistically or commercially, of "Sixteen Tons". But you only need to make one classic like that per career for your career to be worthwhile.

Welcome to the seventh and final in the Pledge Week series of episodes, putting up old bonus episodes posted to my Patreon in an attempt to encourage more subscriptions. If you like this, consider subscribing to the Patreon at http://patreon.com/join/andrewhickey . I’m glad to say that this pledge week has been successful enough that I may do another of these in a year or so. This one is about “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, a record that was a huge influence on many, many artists in the mid fifties. (more…)

Note: This is a new version because I uploaded the wrong file originally   Episode seventy-one of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs continues our look at British music TV by looking at the first time it affected American R&B, and is also our final look at Johnny Otis. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Short Shorts" by the Royal Teens, a group whose members went on to be far more important than one might expect.  Also, this is the first of hopefully many podcasts to come where 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.  Much of the information on Otis comes from Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story by George Lipsitz.  I've also referred extensively to two books by Otis himself, Listen to the Lambs, and Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue. I've used two main books on the British side of things:  Pete Frame's The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though -- his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. Billy Bragg's Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I've read on music at all, and talks about the problems between the musicians' unions. This three-CD set provides a great overview of Otis' forties and fifties work, both as himself and with other artists. Many of the titles will be very familiar to listeners of this podcast.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript And so we come to our last look at Johnny Otis, one of those people who has been turning up throughout the early episodes of the podcast. Indeed, he may continue to appear intermittently until at least the late sixties, as an influence and occasional collaborator. But the days of his influence on rock and roll music more or less came to an end with the rise of the rockabillies in the mid fifties, and from this point on he was not really involved in the mainstream of rock and roll. But in one of those curious events that happens sometimes, just as Otis was coming to the end of the run of hits he produced or arranged or performed on for other people, and the run of discoveries that changed music, he had a rock and roll hit under his own name for the first and only time. And that hit was because of the Six-Five Special, the British TV show we talked about last week: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Willie and the Hand Jive"] The way this podcast works, telling stories chronologically and introducing new artists as they come along, can sometimes make it seem like the music business in the fifties was in a constant state of revolution, with a new year zero coming up every year or two. "First-wave rockabilly is *so* January through August 1956, we're into late 1958 and everything's prototype soul now, granddad!" But of course the majority of the podcast so far has looked at a very small chunk of time, concentrating on the mid 1950s, and plenty of people who were making hits in 1955 were still having very active careers as of 1958, and that's definitely the case for Johnny Otis. While he didn't have that many big hits after rockabilly took over from R&B as the predominant form of rock and roll music, he was still making important records. For example, in 1957 he produced and co-wrote "Lonely, Lonely Nights" for Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, which became a local hit, and which he thought at the time was the first big record to feature a Chicano singer. We're going to talk about the Chicano identity in future episodes of the show, but Chicano (or Chicana or Chicanx) is a term that is usually used for Americans of Mexican origin. It can be both an ethnic and a cultural identifier, and it has also been used in the past as a racial slur. It's still seen as that by some people, but it's also the chosen identifier for a lot of people who reject other labels like Hispanic or Latino. To the best of my knowledge, it's a word that is considered acceptable and correct for white people to use when talking about people who identify that way -- which, to be clear, not all Americans of Mexican descent do, by any means -- but I'm very happy to have feedback about this from people who are affected by the word. And Little Julian Herrera did identify that way, and he became a hero among the Chicano population in LA when "Lonely Lonely Nights" came out on Dig Records, a label Otis owned: [Excerpt: Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, "Lonely, Lonely Nights"] But it turned out shortly afterwards that Herrera wasn't exactly what he seemed. Police came to Otis' door, and told him that the person he knew as Julian Herrera was wanted on charges of rape. And not only that, his birth name was Ron Gregory, and he was of Jewish ethnicity, and from a Hungarian-American family from Massachusetts. Apparently at some point he had run away from home and travelled to LA, where he had been taken in by a Mexican-American woman who had raised him as if he were her own son. That was pretty much the end of Little Julian Herrera's career -- and indeed shortly after that, Dig Records itself closed down, and Otis had no record contract. But then fate intervened, in the form of Mickey Katz. Mickey Katz was a comedian, who is now probably best known for his famous family -- his son is Joel Grey, the star of Cabaret, while his granddaughter, Jennifer Grey, starred in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Katz's comedy consisted of him performing parodies of currently-popular songs, giving them new lyrics referencing Jewish culture. A typical example is his version of "Sixteen Tons", making it about working at a deli instead of down a mine: [Excerpt: Mickey Katz, "Sixteen Tons"] Even though Katz's music was about as far from Otis' as one can imagine, Katz had been a serious musician before he went into comedy, and when he went to see Otis perform live, he recognised his talent as a bandleader, and called his record label, urging them to sign him. Katz was on Capitol, one of the biggest labels in the country, and so for the first time in many years, Otis had guaranteed major-label distribution for his records. In October 1957, Capitol took the unusual step of releasing four Johnny Otis singles at the same time, each of them featuring a different vocalist from his large stable of performers. None did especially well on the American charts at the time, but one, featuring Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy, would have a major impact on Otis' career. Marie Adams was someone who had been on the R&B scene for many years, and had been working with Otis in his show since 1953. She'd been born Ollie Marie Givens, but dropped the Ollie early on. She was a shy woman, who had to be pushed by her husband to audition for Don Robey at Peacock Records. Robey had challenged her to sing along with Dinah Washington's record "Harbor Lights": [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, "Harbor Lights"] When she'd proved she could sing that, Robey signed her, hoping that he'd have a second Big Mama Thornton on his hands. And her first single seemed to confirm him in that hope -- "I'm Gonna Play the Honky Tonks" went to number three on the R&B chart and became one of the biggest hit records Peacock had ever released: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, "I'm Gonna Play the Honky Tonks"] But her later career with Peacock was less successful. The follow-up was a version of Johnny Ace's "My Song", which seems to have been chosen more because Don Robey owned the publishing than because the song and arrangement were a good fit for her voice, and it didn't do anything much commercially: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, "My Song" Like many of Peacock's artists who weren't selling wonderfully she was handed over to Johnny Otis to produce, in the hopes that he could get her making hits. Sadly, he couldn't, and her final record for Peacock came in 1955, when Otis produced her on one of many records recorded to cash in on Johnny Ace's death, "In Memory": [Excerpt: Marie Adams, "In Memory"] But that did so poorly that it's never had an official rerelease, not even on a digital compilation I have which has half a dozen other tributes to Ace on it by people like Vanetta Dillard and Linda Hayes. Adams was dropped by her record label, but she was impressive enough as a vocalist that Otis -- who always had an ear for great singing -- kept her in his band, as the lead singer of a vocal trio, the Three Tons of Joy, who were so called because they were all extremely fat. (I say this not as a criticism of them. I'm fat myself and absolutely fat-positive. Fat isn't a term of abuse in my book). There seems to be some debate about the identity of the other two in the Three Tons of Joy. I've seen reliable sources refer to them as two sisters, Sadie and Francine McKinley, and as *Adams'* two sisters, Doris and Francine, and have no way of determining which of these is correct. The three of them would do synchronised dancing, even when they weren't singing, and they remained with Otis' show until 1960. And so when Capitol came to release its first batch of Johnny Otis records, one of them had vocals by Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy. The song in question was "Ma! He's Making Eyes At Me", a vaudeville song which dated back to 1921, and had originally sounded like this: [Excerpt: Billy Jones, "Ma! She's Making Eyes at Me"] In the hands of the Otis band and the Three Tons of Joy, it was transformed into something that owed more to Ruth Brown (especially with Marie Adams' pronunciation of "mama") than to any of the other performers who had recorded versions of the song over the decades: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and his Orchestra with Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy: "Ma, He's Making Eyes At Me"] In the US, that did nothing at all on the charts, but for some reason it took off massively in the UK, and went to number two on the pop charts over here. It was so successful, in fact, that there were plans for a Johnny Otis Show tour of the UK in 1958. Those plans failed, because of something I've not mentioned in this podcast before, but which radically shaped British music culture, and to a lesser extent American music culture, for decades. Both the American Federation of Musicians and their British equivalent, the Musicians' Union, had since the early 1930s had a mutual protectionist agreement which prevented musicians from one of the countries playing in the other. After the Duke Ellington band toured the UK in 1933, the ban came into place on both sides. Certain individual non-instrumental performers from one country could perform in the other, but only if they employed musicians from the other country. So for example Glenn Miller got his first experience of putting together a big band because Ray Noble, a British bandleader, had had hits in the US in the mid thirties. Noble and his vocalist Al Bowlly were allowed to travel to the US, but Noble's band wasn't, and so he had to get an American musician, Miller, to put together a new band. Similarly, when Johnnie Ray had toured the UK in the early fifties, he'd had to employ British musicians, and when Lonnie Donegan had toured the US on the back of "Rock Island Line"'s success, he was backed by Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio -- Donegan was allowed to sing, but not allowed to play guitar. In 1955, the two unions finally came to a one-in-one-out agreement, which would last for the next few decades, where musicians from each country could tour, but only as a like-for-like swap. So Louis Armstrong was allowed to tour the UK, but only on condition that Freddie Randall, a trumpet player from Devon, got to tour the US. Stan Kenton's band toured the UK, while the Ted Heath Orchestra (which was not, I should point out, led by the Prime Minister of the same name) toured the US. We can argue over whether Freddie Randall was truly an adequate substitute for Louis Armstrong, but I'm sure you can see the basic idea. The union was making sure that Armstrong wasn't taking a job that would otherwise have gone to a British trumpeter. Similarly, when Bill Haley and the Comets became the first American rock and roll group to tour the UK, in 1957, Lonnie Donegan was allowed to tour the US again, and this time he could play his guitar. The Three Tons of Joy went over to the UK to appear on the Six-Five Special, backed by British musicians and to scout out some possible tour venues with Otis' manager, but the plans fell through because of the inability to find a British group who could reasonably do a swap with Otis' band. They came back to the US, and cut a follow-up to "Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me", with vocals by Marie and Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and Marie Adams, "Bye Bye Baby"] That's an example of what Johnny Otis meant when he said later that he didn't like most of his Capitol recordings, because he was being pushed too far in a commercial rock and roll direction, while he saw himself as far closer in spirit to Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, or Louis Jordan than to Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly. The song is just an endless litany of the titles of recentish rock and roll hits, with little to recommend it. It made the top twenty in the UK, mostly on the strength of people having bought the previous single. The record after that was an attempt to capitalise on "Ma! He's Making Eyes At Me" -- it was another oldie, this time from 1916, and another song about making eyes at someone. Surely it would give them another UK hit, right?: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, "What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?"] Sadly, it sank without a trace -- at least until it was picked up by Emile Ford and the Checkmates, who released a soundalike cover version, which became the last British number one of the fifties and first of the sixties, and was also the first number one hit by a black British artist and the first record by a black British person to sell a million copies: [Excerpt: Emile Ford and the Checkmates, "What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?"] We'll be hearing more from Ford's co-producer on that record, a young engineer named Joe Meek, later in the series. But Otis had another idea for how to crack the British market. While the Three Tons of Joy had been performing on Six-Five Special, they had seen the British audiences doing a weird dance that only used their arms. It was a dance that was originally popularised by a British group that was so obscure that they never made a record, and the only trace they left on posterity was this dance and three photos, all taken on the same night by, of all people, Ken Russell. From those photos, the Bell Cats were one of the many British bands trying to sound like Bill Haley and the Comets. Their regular gig was at a coffee house called The Cat's Whisker, where they were popular enough that the audience were packed in like sardines -- the venue was so often dangerously overcrowded that the police eventually shut it down, and the owner reopened it as the first Angus Steak House, an infamous London restaurant chain. In those Bell Cats performances, the audience were packed so tightly that they couldn't dance properly, and so a new dance developed among the customers, and spread -- a dance where you only moved your hands. The hand jive. That dance spread to the audiences of the Six-Five Special, so much that Don Lang and his Frantic Five released "Six-Five Hand Jive" in March 1958: [Excerpt: Don Lang and His Frantic Five, "Six-Five Hand Jive"] Oddly, despite Six-Five Special not being shown in Sweden, that song saw no less than three Swedish soundalike cover versions, from (and I apologise if I mangle these names) Inger Bergrenn, Towa Carson, and the Monn-Keys. The Three Tons of Joy demonstrated the hand jive to Otis, and he decided to write a song about the dance. There was a fad for dance songs in 1958, and he believed that writing a song about a dance that was popular in Britain, where he'd just had a big hit -- and namechecking those other dances, like the Walk and the Stroll -- could lead to a hit followup to "Ma He's Making Eyes At Me". The dance also appealed to Otis because, oddly, it was very reminiscent of some of the moves that black American people would do when performing "Hambone", the folk dance-cum-song-cum-game that we discussed way back in episode thirty, and which inspired Bo Diddley's song "Bo Didlley". Otis coupled lyrics about hand-jiving to the Bo Diddley rhythm -- though he would always claim, for the rest of his life, that he'd heard that rhythm from convicts on a chain gang before Diddley ever made a record: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Willie and the Hand Jive"] Surprisingly, the record did nothing at all commercially in the UK. In fact, its biggest impact over here was that it inspired another famous dance. Cliff Richard cut his own version of "Willie and the Hand Jive" in 1959: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Shadows, "Willie and the Hand Jive"] His backing band, the Shadows, were looking for a way to liven up the visual presentation of that song when they performed it live, and they decided that moving in unison would work well for the song, and worked out a few dance steps. The audience reaction was so great that they started doing it on every song. The famous -- or infamous -- Shadows Walk had developed. But while "Willie and the Hand Jive" didn't have any success in the UK, in the US it became Otis' only top ten pop hit, and his first R&B top ten hit as a performer in six years, reaching number nine on the pop charts and number one on the R&B charts. This was despite several radio stations banning it, as they assumed the "hand jive" was a reference to masturbation -- even though on Otis' TV shows and his stage performances, the Three Tons of Joy would demonstrate the dance as Otis sang. As late as the nineties, Otis was still having to deal with questions about whether "Willie and the Hand Jive" had some more lascivious meaning. Of course, with him now being on a major label, he had to do follow-ups to his big hit, like "Willie Did The Cha-Cha": [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Willie Did The Cha-Cha"] But chart success remained elusive, and nothing he did after this point got higher than number fifty-two on the pop charts. The music industry was slowly moving away from the kind of music that Otis had always made -- as genres got narrower, his appreciation for all forms of black American music meant that he no longer appealed to people who wanted one specific style of music. He was also becoming increasingly involved in the civil rights movement, writing a weekly newspaper column decrying racism, helping his friend Mervyn Dymally who became the joint first black person elected to statewide office in the USA since the reconstruction, and working with Malcolm X and others. He had to deal with crosses burning on his lawn, and with death threats to his family -- while Otis was white, his wife was black. The result was that Otis recorded and toured only infrequently during the sixties, and at one point was making so little as a musician that his wife became the main breadwinner of the family while he was a stay-at-home father. After the Watts riots in 1965, which we'll talk about much more when we get to that time period, Otis wrote the book Listen to the Lambs, a combination political essay, autobiography, and mixture of eyewitness accounts of the riots that made a radical case that the first priority for the black community in which he lived wasn't so much social integration, which he believed impossible in the short term due to white racism, as economic equality -- he thought it was in the best interests, not only of black people but of white people as well, if black people were made equal economic participants in America as rapidly as humanly possible, and if they should be given economic and political control over their own lives and destinies. The book is fierce in its anger at systemic racism, at colonialism, at anglocentric beauty standards that made black people hate their own bodies and faces, at police brutality, at the war in Vietnam, and at the systemic inequalities keeping black people down. And over and again he makes one point, and I'll quote from the book here: "A newborn Negro baby has less chance of survival than a white. A Negro baby will have its life ended seven years sooner. This is not some biological phenomenon linked to skin colour, like sickle-cell anaemia; this is a national crime, linked to a white-supremacist way of life and compounded by indifference". Just to remind you, the word he uses there was the correct word for black people at the time he was writing. Some of the book is heartrending, like the description from a witness -- Otis gives over thirty pages of the book to the voices of black witnesses of the riots -- talking about seeing white police officers casually shoot black teenagers on the street and make bullseye signals to their friends as if they'd been shooting tin cans. Some is, more than fifty years later, out of date or "of its time", but the sad thing is that so many of the arguments are as timely now as they were then. Otis wrote a follow-up, Upside Your Head, in the early nineties inspired by the LA riots that followed the Rodney King beating, and no doubt were he alive today he would be completing the trilogy. But while politics had become Otis' main occupation, he hadn't stopped making music altogether, and in the late sixties he was contacted by Frank Zappa, who was such a fan of Otis that he copied his trademark beard from Otis. Otis and Zappa worked together in a casual way, with Otis mostly helping Zappa get in touch with musicians he knew who Zappa wanted to work with, like Don "Sugarcane" Harris. Otis also conducted the Mothers of Invention in the studio on a few songs while Zappa was in the control room, helping him get the greasy fifties sound he wanted on songs like "Holiday in Berlin": [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Holiday in Berlin, Full Blown"] Apparently while they were recording that, Otis was clapping his hands in the face of the bass player, Roy Estrada, who didn't like it at all. Given what I know of Estrada that's a good thing. Otis' teenage son Shuggie also played with Zappa, playing bass on "Son of Mr. Green Genes" from Zappa's Hot Rats album. Zappa then persuaded a small blues label, Kent Records, which was owned by two other veterans of the fifties music industry, the Bihari brothers, to sign Otis to make an album. "Cold Shot" by the New Johnny Otis Show featured a core band of just three people -- Otis himself on piano and drums, Delmar "Mighty Mouth" Evans on vocals, and Shuggie playing all the guitar and bass parts. Shuggie was only fifteen at the time, but had been playing with his father's band since he was eleven, often wearing false moustaches and sunglasses to play in venues serving alcohol. The record brought Otis his first R&B hit since "Willie and the Hand Jive", more than a decade earlier, "Country Girl": [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show, "Country Girl"] Around the same time, that trio also recorded another album, called "For Adults Only", under the name Snatch and the Poontangs, and with a cover drawn by Otis in a spot-on imitation of the style of Robert Crumb. For obvious reasons I won't be playing any of that record here, but even that had a serious sociological purpose along with the obscene humour -- Otis wanted to preserve bits of black folklore. Songs like "The Signifying Monkey" had been performed for years, and had even been recorded by people like Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon, but they'd always stripped out the sexual insults that make up much of the piece's appeal. Otis would in later years laugh that he'd received accusations of obscenity for "Roll With Me Henry" and for "Willie and the Hand Jive", but nobody had seemed bothered in the slightest by the records of Snatch and the Poontangs with their constant sexual insults. "Cold Shot" caused a career renaissance for Otis, and he put together a new lineup of the Johnny Otis Show, one that would feature as many as possible of the veteran musicians who he thought deserved exposure to a new audience. Probably the highest point of Otis' later career was a 1970 performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival, where his band featured, along with Johnny and Shuggie, Esther Phillips, Big Joe Turner, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Roy Milton, Pee Wee Crayton, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Roy Brown: [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show featuring Roy Brown, "Good Rocking Tonight"] That performance was released as a live album, and Clint Eastwood featured footage of that show -- the band performing "Willie and the Hand Jive" -- in his classic film Play Misty For Me. It was probably the greatest example of Otis' belief that all the important strands of black American music shared a commonality and could work in combination with each other. For the next few decades, Otis combined touring with as many of his old collaborators as possible -- Marie Adams, for example, rejoined the band in 1972 -- with having his own radio show in which he told people about black musical history and interviewed as many old musicians as he could, writing more books, including a cookbook and a collection of his art, running an organic apple juice company and food store, painting old blues artists in a style equally inspired by African art and Picasso, and being the pastor of a Pentecostal church -- but one with a theology so broadminded that it was not only LGBT-affirming but had Buddhist and Jewish congregants. He ran Blues Spectrum Records in the seventies, which put out late-career recordings by people like Charles Brown, Big Joe Turner, and Louis Jordan, some of them their last ever recordings. And he lectured in the history of black music at Berkeley. Johnny Otis died in 2012, aged ninety, having achieved more than most of us could hope to achieve if we lived five times that long, and having helped many, many more people to make the most of their talents. He died three days before the discovery of whom he was most proud, Etta James, and she overshadowed him in the obituaries, as he would have wanted.

Note: This is a new version because I uploaded the wrong file originally   Episode seventy-one of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs continues our look at British music TV by looking at the first time it affected American R&B, and is also our final look at Johnny Otis. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Short Shorts” by the Royal Teens, a group whose members went on to be far more important than one might expect.  Also, this is the first of hopefully many podcasts to come where 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.  Much of the information on Otis comes from Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story by George Lipsitz.  I’ve also referred extensively to two books by Otis himself, Listen to the Lambs, and Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue. I’ve used two main books on the British side of things:  Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though — his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. Billy Bragg’s Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I’ve read on music at all, and talks about the problems between the musicians’ unions. This three-CD set provides a great overview of Otis’ forties and fifties work, both as himself and with other artists. Many of the titles will be very familiar to listeners of this podcast.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript And so we come to our last look at Johnny Otis, one of those people who has been turning up throughout the early episodes of the podcast. Indeed, he may continue to appear intermittently until at least the late sixties, as an influence and occasional collaborator. But the days of his influence on rock and roll music more or less came to an end with the rise of the rockabillies in the mid fifties, and from this point on he was not really involved in the mainstream of rock and roll. But in one of those curious events that happens sometimes, just as Otis was coming to the end of the run of hits he produced or arranged or performed on for other people, and the run of discoveries that changed music, he had a rock and roll hit under his own name for the first and only time. And that hit was because of the Six-Five Special, the British TV show we talked about last week: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The way this podcast works, telling stories chronologically and introducing new artists as they come along, can sometimes make it seem like the music business in the fifties was in a constant state of revolution, with a new year zero coming up every year or two. “First-wave rockabilly is *so* January through August 1956, we’re into late 1958 and everything’s prototype soul now, granddad!” But of course the majority of the podcast so far has looked at a very small chunk of time, concentrating on the mid 1950s, and plenty of people who were making hits in 1955 were still having very active careers as of 1958, and that’s definitely the case for Johnny Otis. While he didn’t have that many big hits after rockabilly took over from R&B as the predominant form of rock and roll music, he was still making important records. For example, in 1957 he produced and co-wrote “Lonely, Lonely Nights” for Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, which became a local hit, and which he thought at the time was the first big record to feature a Chicano singer. We’re going to talk about the Chicano identity in future episodes of the show, but Chicano (or Chicana or Chicanx) is a term that is usually used for Americans of Mexican origin. It can be both an ethnic and a cultural identifier, and it has also been used in the past as a racial slur. It’s still seen as that by some people, but it’s also the chosen identifier for a lot of people who reject other labels like Hispanic or Latino. To the best of my knowledge, it’s a word that is considered acceptable and correct for white people to use when talking about people who identify that way — which, to be clear, not all Americans of Mexican descent do, by any means — but I’m very happy to have feedback about this from people who are affected by the word. And Little Julian Herrera did identify that way, and he became a hero among the Chicano population in LA when “Lonely Lonely Nights” came out on Dig Records, a label Otis owned: [Excerpt: Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, “Lonely, Lonely Nights”] But it turned out shortly afterwards that Herrera wasn’t exactly what he seemed. Police came to Otis’ door, and told him that the person he knew as Julian Herrera was wanted on charges of rape. And not only that, his birth name was Ron Gregory, and he was of Jewish ethnicity, and from a Hungarian-American family from Massachusetts. Apparently at some point he had run away from home and travelled to LA, where he had been taken in by a Mexican-American woman who had raised him as if he were her own son. That was pretty much the end of Little Julian Herrera’s career — and indeed shortly after that, Dig Records itself closed down, and Otis had no record contract. But then fate intervened, in the form of Mickey Katz. Mickey Katz was a comedian, who is now probably best known for his famous family — his son is Joel Grey, the star of Cabaret, while his granddaughter, Jennifer Grey, starred in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Katz’s comedy consisted of him performing parodies of currently-popular songs, giving them new lyrics referencing Jewish culture. A typical example is his version of “Sixteen Tons”, making it about working at a deli instead of down a mine: [Excerpt: Mickey Katz, “Sixteen Tons”] Even though Katz’s music was about as far from Otis’ as one can imagine, Katz had been a serious musician before he went into comedy, and when he went to see Otis perform live, he recognised his talent as a bandleader, and called his record label, urging them to sign him. Katz was on Capitol, one of the biggest labels in the country, and so for the first time in many years, Otis had guaranteed major-label distribution for his records. In October 1957, Capitol took the unusual step of releasing four Johnny Otis singles at the same time, each of them featuring a different vocalist from his large stable of performers. None did especially well on the American charts at the time, but one, featuring Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy, would have a major impact on Otis’ career. Marie Adams was someone who had been on the R&B scene for many years, and had been working with Otis in his show since 1953. She’d been born Ollie Marie Givens, but dropped the Ollie early on. She was a shy woman, who had to be pushed by her husband to audition for Don Robey at Peacock Records. Robey had challenged her to sing along with Dinah Washington’s record “Harbor Lights”: [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, “Harbor Lights”] When she’d proved she could sing that, Robey signed her, hoping that he’d have a second Big Mama Thornton on his hands. And her first single seemed to confirm him in that hope — “I’m Gonna Play the Honky Tonks” went to number three on the R&B chart and became one of the biggest hit records Peacock had ever released: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “I’m Gonna Play the Honky Tonks”] But her later career with Peacock was less successful. The follow-up was a version of Johnny Ace’s “My Song”, which seems to have been chosen more because Don Robey owned the publishing than because the song and arrangement were a good fit for her voice, and it didn’t do anything much commercially: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “My Song” Like many of Peacock’s artists who weren’t selling wonderfully she was handed over to Johnny Otis to produce, in the hopes that he could get her making hits. Sadly, he couldn’t, and her final record for Peacock came in 1955, when Otis produced her on one of many records recorded to cash in on Johnny Ace’s death, “In Memory”: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “In Memory”] But that did so poorly that it’s never had an official rerelease, not even on a digital compilation I have which has half a dozen other tributes to Ace on it by people like Vanetta Dillard and Linda Hayes. Adams was dropped by her record label, but she was impressive enough as a vocalist that Otis — who always had an ear for great singing — kept her in his band, as the lead singer of a vocal trio, the Three Tons of Joy, who were so called because they were all extremely fat. (I say this not as a criticism of them. I’m fat myself and absolutely fat-positive. Fat isn’t a term of abuse in my book). There seems to be some debate about the identity of the other two in the Three Tons of Joy. I’ve seen reliable sources refer to them as two sisters, Sadie and Francine McKinley, and as *Adams’* two sisters, Doris and Francine, and have no way of determining which of these is correct. The three of them would do synchronised dancing, even when they weren’t singing, and they remained with Otis’ show until 1960. And so when Capitol came to release its first batch of Johnny Otis records, one of them had vocals by Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy. The song in question was “Ma! He’s Making Eyes At Me”, a vaudeville song which dated back to 1921, and had originally sounded like this: [Excerpt: Billy Jones, “Ma! She’s Making Eyes at Me”] In the hands of the Otis band and the Three Tons of Joy, it was transformed into something that owed more to Ruth Brown (especially with Marie Adams’ pronunciation of “mama”) than to any of the other performers who had recorded versions of the song over the decades: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and his Orchestra with Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy: “Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me”] In the US, that did nothing at all on the charts, but for some reason it took off massively in the UK, and went to number two on the pop charts over here. It was so successful, in fact, that there were plans for a Johnny Otis Show tour of the UK in 1958. Those plans failed, because of something I’ve not mentioned in this podcast before, but which radically shaped British music culture, and to a lesser extent American music culture, for decades. Both the American Federation of Musicians and their British equivalent, the Musicians’ Union, had since the early 1930s had a mutual protectionist agreement which prevented musicians from one of the countries playing in the other. After the Duke Ellington band toured the UK in 1933, the ban came into place on both sides. Certain individual non-instrumental performers from one country could perform in the other, but only if they employed musicians from the other country. So for example Glenn Miller got his first experience of putting together a big band because Ray Noble, a British bandleader, had had hits in the US in the mid thirties. Noble and his vocalist Al Bowlly were allowed to travel to the US, but Noble’s band wasn’t, and so he had to get an American musician, Miller, to put together a new band. Similarly, when Johnnie Ray had toured the UK in the early fifties, he’d had to employ British musicians, and when Lonnie Donegan had toured the US on the back of “Rock Island Line”‘s success, he was backed by Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio — Donegan was allowed to sing, but not allowed to play guitar. In 1955, the two unions finally came to a one-in-one-out agreement, which would last for the next few decades, where musicians from each country could tour, but only as a like-for-like swap. So Louis Armstrong was allowed to tour the UK, but only on condition that Freddie Randall, a trumpet player from Devon, got to tour the US. Stan Kenton’s band toured the UK, while the Ted Heath Orchestra (which was not, I should point out, led by the Prime Minister of the same name) toured the US. We can argue over whether Freddie Randall was truly an adequate substitute for Louis Armstrong, but I’m sure you can see the basic idea. The union was making sure that Armstrong wasn’t taking a job that would otherwise have gone to a British trumpeter. Similarly, when Bill Haley and the Comets became the first American rock and roll group to tour the UK, in 1957, Lonnie Donegan was allowed to tour the US again, and this time he could play his guitar. The Three Tons of Joy went over to the UK to appear on the Six-Five Special, backed by British musicians and to scout out some possible tour venues with Otis’ manager, but the plans fell through because of the inability to find a British group who could reasonably do a swap with Otis’ band. They came back to the US, and cut a follow-up to “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me”, with vocals by Marie and Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and Marie Adams, “Bye Bye Baby”] That’s an example of what Johnny Otis meant when he said later that he didn’t like most of his Capitol recordings, because he was being pushed too far in a commercial rock and roll direction, while he saw himself as far closer in spirit to Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, or Louis Jordan than to Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly. The song is just an endless litany of the titles of recentish rock and roll hits, with little to recommend it. It made the top twenty in the UK, mostly on the strength of people having bought the previous single. The record after that was an attempt to capitalise on “Ma! He’s Making Eyes At Me” — it was another oldie, this time from 1916, and another song about making eyes at someone. Surely it would give them another UK hit, right?: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?”] Sadly, it sank without a trace — at least until it was picked up by Emile Ford and the Checkmates, who released a soundalike cover version, which became the last British number one of the fifties and first of the sixties, and was also the first number one hit by a black British artist and the first record by a black British person to sell a million copies: [Excerpt: Emile Ford and the Checkmates, “What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?”] We’ll be hearing more from Ford’s co-producer on that record, a young engineer named Joe Meek, later in the series. But Otis had another idea for how to crack the British market. While the Three Tons of Joy had been performing on Six-Five Special, they had seen the British audiences doing a weird dance that only used their arms. It was a dance that was originally popularised by a British group that was so obscure that they never made a record, and the only trace they left on posterity was this dance and three photos, all taken on the same night by, of all people, Ken Russell. From those photos, the Bell Cats were one of the many British bands trying to sound like Bill Haley and the Comets. Their regular gig was at a coffee house called The Cat’s Whisker, where they were popular enough that the audience were packed in like sardines — the venue was so often dangerously overcrowded that the police eventually shut it down, and the owner reopened it as the first Angus Steak House, an infamous London restaurant chain. In those Bell Cats performances, the audience were packed so tightly that they couldn’t dance properly, and so a new dance developed among the customers, and spread — a dance where you only moved your hands. The hand jive. That dance spread to the audiences of the Six-Five Special, so much that Don Lang and his Frantic Five released “Six-Five Hand Jive” in March 1958: [Excerpt: Don Lang and His Frantic Five, “Six-Five Hand Jive”] Oddly, despite Six-Five Special not being shown in Sweden, that song saw no less than three Swedish soundalike cover versions, from (and I apologise if I mangle these names) Inger Bergrenn, Towa Carson, and the Monn-Keys. The Three Tons of Joy demonstrated the hand jive to Otis, and he decided to write a song about the dance. There was a fad for dance songs in 1958, and he believed that writing a song about a dance that was popular in Britain, where he’d just had a big hit — and namechecking those other dances, like the Walk and the Stroll — could lead to a hit followup to “Ma He’s Making Eyes At Me”. The dance also appealed to Otis because, oddly, it was very reminiscent of some of the moves that black American people would do when performing “Hambone”, the folk dance-cum-song-cum-game that we discussed way back in episode thirty, and which inspired Bo Diddley’s song “Bo Didlley”. Otis coupled lyrics about hand-jiving to the Bo Diddley rhythm — though he would always claim, for the rest of his life, that he’d heard that rhythm from convicts on a chain gang before Diddley ever made a record: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] Surprisingly, the record did nothing at all commercially in the UK. In fact, its biggest impact over here was that it inspired another famous dance. Cliff Richard cut his own version of “Willie and the Hand Jive” in 1959: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Shadows, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] His backing band, the Shadows, were looking for a way to liven up the visual presentation of that song when they performed it live, and they decided that moving in unison would work well for the song, and worked out a few dance steps. The audience reaction was so great that they started doing it on every song. The famous — or infamous — Shadows Walk had developed. But while “Willie and the Hand Jive” didn’t have any success in the UK, in the US it became Otis’ only top ten pop hit, and his first R&B top ten hit as a performer in six years, reaching number nine on the pop charts and number one on the R&B charts. This was despite several radio stations banning it, as they assumed the “hand jive” was a reference to masturbation — even though on Otis’ TV shows and his stage performances, the Three Tons of Joy would demonstrate the dance as Otis sang. As late as the nineties, Otis was still having to deal with questions about whether “Willie and the Hand Jive” had some more lascivious meaning. Of course, with him now being on a major label, he had to do follow-ups to his big hit, like “Willie Did The Cha-Cha”: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie Did The Cha-Cha”] But chart success remained elusive, and nothing he did after this point got higher than number fifty-two on the pop charts. The music industry was slowly moving away from the kind of music that Otis had always made — as genres got narrower, his appreciation for all forms of black American music meant that he no longer appealed to people who wanted one specific style of music. He was also becoming increasingly involved in the civil rights movement, writing a weekly newspaper column decrying racism, helping his friend Mervyn Dymally who became the joint first black person elected to statewide office in the USA since the reconstruction, and working with Malcolm X and others. He had to deal with crosses burning on his lawn, and with death threats to his family — while Otis was white, his wife was black. The result was that Otis recorded and toured only infrequently during the sixties, and at one point was making so little as a musician that his wife became the main breadwinner of the family while he was a stay-at-home father. After the Watts riots in 1965, which we’ll talk about much more when we get to that time period, Otis wrote the book Listen to the Lambs, a combination political essay, autobiography, and mixture of eyewitness accounts of the riots that made a radical case that the first priority for the black community in which he lived wasn’t so much social integration, which he believed impossible in the short term due to white racism, as economic equality — he thought it was in the best interests, not only of black people but of white people as well, if black people were made equal economic participants in America as rapidly as humanly possible, and if they should be given economic and political control over their own lives and destinies. The book is fierce in its anger at systemic racism, at colonialism, at anglocentric beauty standards that made black people hate their own bodies and faces, at police brutality, at the war in Vietnam, and at the systemic inequalities keeping black people down. And over and again he makes one point, and I’ll quote from the book here: “A newborn Negro baby has less chance of survival than a white. A Negro baby will have its life ended seven years sooner. This is not some biological phenomenon linked to skin colour, like sickle-cell anaemia; this is a national crime, linked to a white-supremacist way of life and compounded by indifference”. Just to remind you, the word he uses there was the correct word for black people at the time he was writing. Some of the book is heartrending, like the description from a witness — Otis gives over thirty pages of the book to the voices of black witnesses of the riots — talking about seeing white police officers casually shoot black teenagers on the street and make bullseye signals to their friends as if they’d been shooting tin cans. Some is, more than fifty years later, out of date or “of its time”, but the sad thing is that so many of the arguments are as timely now as they were then. Otis wrote a follow-up, Upside Your Head, in the early nineties inspired by the LA riots that followed the Rodney King beating, and no doubt were he alive today he would be completing the trilogy. But while politics had become Otis’ main occupation, he hadn’t stopped making music altogether, and in the late sixties he was contacted by Frank Zappa, who was such a fan of Otis that he copied his trademark beard from Otis. Otis and Zappa worked together in a casual way, with Otis mostly helping Zappa get in touch with musicians he knew who Zappa wanted to work with, like Don “Sugarcane” Harris. Otis also conducted the Mothers of Invention in the studio on a few songs while Zappa was in the control room, helping him get the greasy fifties sound he wanted on songs like “Holiday in Berlin”: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, “Holiday in Berlin, Full Blown”] Apparently while they were recording that, Otis was clapping his hands in the face of the bass player, Roy Estrada, who didn’t like it at all. Given what I know of Estrada that’s a good thing. Otis’ teenage son Shuggie also played with Zappa, playing bass on “Son of Mr. Green Genes” from Zappa’s Hot Rats album. Zappa then persuaded a small blues label, Kent Records, which was owned by two other veterans of the fifties music industry, the Bihari brothers, to sign Otis to make an album. “Cold Shot” by the New Johnny Otis Show featured a core band of just three people — Otis himself on piano and drums, Delmar “Mighty Mouth” Evans on vocals, and Shuggie playing all the guitar and bass parts. Shuggie was only fifteen at the time, but had been playing with his father’s band since he was eleven, often wearing false moustaches and sunglasses to play in venues serving alcohol. The record brought Otis his first R&B hit since “Willie and the Hand Jive”, more than a decade earlier, “Country Girl”: [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show, “Country Girl”] Around the same time, that trio also recorded another album, called “For Adults Only”, under the name Snatch and the Poontangs, and with a cover drawn by Otis in a spot-on imitation of the style of Robert Crumb. For obvious reasons I won’t be playing any of that record here, but even that had a serious sociological purpose along with the obscene humour — Otis wanted to preserve bits of black folklore. Songs like “The Signifying Monkey” had been performed for years, and had even been recorded by people like Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon, but they’d always stripped out the sexual insults that make up much of the piece’s appeal. Otis would in later years laugh that he’d received accusations of obscenity for “Roll With Me Henry” and for “Willie and the Hand Jive”, but nobody had seemed bothered in the slightest by the records of Snatch and the Poontangs with their constant sexual insults. “Cold Shot” caused a career renaissance for Otis, and he put together a new lineup of the Johnny Otis Show, one that would feature as many as possible of the veteran musicians who he thought deserved exposure to a new audience. Probably the highest point of Otis’ later career was a 1970 performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival, where his band featured, along with Johnny and Shuggie, Esther Phillips, Big Joe Turner, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Roy Milton, Pee Wee Crayton, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Roy Brown: [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show featuring Roy Brown, “Good Rocking Tonight”] That performance was released as a live album, and Clint Eastwood featured footage of that show — the band performing “Willie and the Hand Jive” — in his classic film Play Misty For Me. It was probably the greatest example of Otis’ belief that all the important strands of black American music shared a commonality and could work in combination with each other. For the next few decades, Otis combined touring with as many of his old collaborators as possible — Marie Adams, for example, rejoined the band in 1972 — with having his own radio show in which he told people about black musical history and interviewed as many old musicians as he could, writing more books, including a cookbook and a collection of his art, running an organic apple juice company and food store, painting old blues artists in a style equally inspired by African art and Picasso, and being the pastor of a Pentecostal church — but one with a theology so broadminded that it was not only LGBT-affirming but had Buddhist and Jewish congregants. He ran Blues Spectrum Records in the seventies, which put out late-career recordings by people like Charles Brown, Big Joe Turner, and Louis Jordan, some of them their last ever recordings. And he lectured in the history of black music at Berkeley. Johnny Otis died in 2012, aged ninety, having achieved more than most of us could hope to achieve if we lived five times that long, and having helped many, many more people to make the most of their talents. He died three days before the discovery of whom he was most proud, Etta James, and she overshadowed him in the obituaries, as he would have wanted.

Note: This is a new version because I uploaded the wrong file originally   Episode seventy-one of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs continues our look at British music TV by looking at the first time it affected American R&B, and is also our final look at Johnny Otis. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Short Shorts” by the Royal Teens, a group whose members went on to be far more important than one might expect.  Also, this is the first of hopefully many podcasts to come where 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.  Much of the information on Otis comes from Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story by George Lipsitz.  I’ve also referred extensively to two books by Otis himself, Listen to the Lambs, and Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue. I’ve used two main books on the British side of things:  Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though — his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. Billy Bragg’s Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I’ve read on music at all, and talks about the problems between the musicians’ unions. This three-CD set provides a great overview of Otis’ forties and fifties work, both as himself and with other artists. Many of the titles will be very familiar to listeners of this podcast.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript And so we come to our last look at Johnny Otis, one of those people who has been turning up throughout the early episodes of the podcast. Indeed, he may continue to appear intermittently until at least the late sixties, as an influence and occasional collaborator. But the days of his influence on rock and roll music more or less came to an end with the rise of the rockabillies in the mid fifties, and from this point on he was not really involved in the mainstream of rock and roll. But in one of those curious events that happens sometimes, just as Otis was coming to the end of the run of hits he produced or arranged or performed on for other people, and the run of discoveries that changed music, he had a rock and roll hit under his own name for the first and only time. And that hit was because of the Six-Five Special, the British TV show we talked about last week: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The way this podcast works, telling stories chronologically and introducing new artists as they come along, can sometimes make it seem like the music business in the fifties was in a constant state of revolution, with a new year zero coming up every year or two. “First-wave rockabilly is *so* January through August 1956, we’re into late 1958 and everything’s prototype soul now, granddad!” But of course the majority of the podcast so far has looked at a very small chunk of time, concentrating on the mid 1950s, and plenty of people who were making hits in 1955 were still having very active careers as of 1958, and that’s definitely the case for Johnny Otis. While he didn’t have that many big hits after rockabilly took over from R&B as the predominant form of rock and roll music, he was still making important records. For example, in 1957 he produced and co-wrote “Lonely, Lonely Nights” for Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, which became a local hit, and which he thought at the time was the first big record to feature a Chicano singer. We’re going to talk about the Chicano identity in future episodes of the show, but Chicano (or Chicana or Chicanx) is a term that is usually used for Americans of Mexican origin. It can be both an ethnic and a cultural identifier, and it has also been used in the past as a racial slur. It’s still seen as that by some people, but it’s also the chosen identifier for a lot of people who reject other labels like Hispanic or Latino. To the best of my knowledge, it’s a word that is considered acceptable and correct for white people to use when talking about people who identify that way — which, to be clear, not all Americans of Mexican descent do, by any means — but I’m very happy to have feedback about this from people who are affected by the word. And Little Julian Herrera did identify that way, and he became a hero among the Chicano population in LA when “Lonely Lonely Nights” came out on Dig Records, a label Otis owned: [Excerpt: Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, “Lonely, Lonely Nights”] But it turned out shortly afterwards that Herrera wasn’t exactly what he seemed. Police came to Otis’ door, and told him that the person he knew as Julian Herrera was wanted on charges of rape. And not only that, his birth name was Ron Gregory, and he was of Jewish ethnicity, and from a Hungarian-American family from Massachusetts. Apparently at some point he had run away from home and travelled to LA, where he had been taken in by a Mexican-American woman who had raised him as if he were her own son. That was pretty much the end of Little Julian Herrera’s career — and indeed shortly after that, Dig Records itself closed down, and Otis had no record contract. But then fate intervened, in the form of Mickey Katz. Mickey Katz was a comedian, who is now probably best known for his famous family — his son is Joel Grey, the star of Cabaret, while his granddaughter, Jennifer Grey, starred in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Katz’s comedy consisted of him performing parodies of currently-popular songs, giving them new lyrics referencing Jewish culture. A typical example is his version of “Sixteen Tons”, making it about working at a deli instead of down a mine: [Excerpt: Mickey Katz, “Sixteen Tons”] Even though Katz’s music was about as far from Otis’ as one can imagine, Katz had been a serious musician before he went into comedy, and when he went to see Otis perform live, he recognised his talent as a bandleader, and called his record label, urging them to sign him. Katz was on Capitol, one of the biggest labels in the country, and so for the first time in many years, Otis had guaranteed major-label distribution for his records. In October 1957, Capitol took the unusual step of releasing four Johnny Otis singles at the same time, each of them featuring a different vocalist from his large stable of performers. None did especially well on the American charts at the time, but one, featuring Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy, would have a major impact on Otis’ career. Marie Adams was someone who had been on the R&B scene for many years, and had been working with Otis in his show since 1953. She’d been born Ollie Marie Givens, but dropped the Ollie early on. She was a shy woman, who had to be pushed by her husband to audition for Don Robey at Peacock Records. Robey had challenged her to sing along with Dinah Washington’s record “Harbor Lights”: [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, “Harbor Lights”] When she’d proved she could sing that, Robey signed her, hoping that he’d have a second Big Mama Thornton on his hands. And her first single seemed to confirm him in that hope — “I’m Gonna Play the Honky Tonks” went to number three on the R&B chart and became one of the biggest hit records Peacock had ever released: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “I’m Gonna Play the Honky Tonks”] But her later career with Peacock was less successful. The follow-up was a version of Johnny Ace’s “My Song”, which seems to have been chosen more because Don Robey owned the publishing than because the song and arrangement were a good fit for her voice, and it didn’t do anything much commercially: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “My Song” Like many of Peacock’s artists who weren’t selling wonderfully she was handed over to Johnny Otis to produce, in the hopes that he could get her making hits. Sadly, he couldn’t, and her final record for Peacock came in 1955, when Otis produced her on one of many records recorded to cash in on Johnny Ace’s death, “In Memory”: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “In Memory”] But that did so poorly that it’s never had an official rerelease, not even on a digital compilation I have which has half a dozen other tributes to Ace on it by people like Vanetta Dillard and Linda Hayes. Adams was dropped by her record label, but she was impressive enough as a vocalist that Otis — who always had an ear for great singing — kept her in his band, as the lead singer of a vocal trio, the Three Tons of Joy, who were so called because they were all extremely fat. (I say this not as a criticism of them. I’m fat myself and absolutely fat-positive. Fat isn’t a term of abuse in my book). There seems to be some debate about the identity of the other two in the Three Tons of Joy. I’ve seen reliable sources refer to them as two sisters, Sadie and Francine McKinley, and as *Adams’* two sisters, Doris and Francine, and have no way of determining which of these is correct. The three of them would do synchronised dancing, even when they weren’t singing, and they remained with Otis’ show until 1960. And so when Capitol came to release its first batch of Johnny Otis records, one of them had vocals by Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy. The song in question was “Ma! He’s Making Eyes At Me”, a vaudeville song which dated back to 1921, and had originally sounded like this: [Excerpt: Billy Jones, “Ma! She’s Making Eyes at Me”] In the hands of the Otis band and the Three Tons of Joy, it was transformed into something that owed more to Ruth Brown (especially with Marie Adams’ pronunciation of “mama”) than to any of the other performers who had recorded versions of the song over the decades: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and his Orchestra with Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy: “Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me”] In the US, that did nothing at all on the charts, but for some reason it took off massively in the UK, and went to number two on the pop charts over here. It was so successful, in fact, that there were plans for a Johnny Otis Show tour of the UK in 1958. Those plans failed, because of something I’ve not mentioned in this podcast before, but which radically shaped British music culture, and to a lesser extent American music culture, for decades. Both the American Federation of Musicians and their British equivalent, the Musicians’ Union, had since the early 1930s had a mutual protectionist agreement which prevented musicians from one of the countries playing in the other. After the Duke Ellington band toured the UK in 1933, the ban came into place on both sides. Certain individual non-instrumental performers from one country could perform in the other, but only if they employed musicians from the other country. So for example Glenn Miller got his first experience of putting together a big band because Ray Noble, a British bandleader, had had hits in the US in the mid thirties. Noble and his vocalist Al Bowlly were allowed to travel to the US, but Noble’s band wasn’t, and so he had to get an American musician, Miller, to put together a new band. Similarly, when Johnnie Ray had toured the UK in the early fifties, he’d had to employ British musicians, and when Lonnie Donegan had toured the US on the back of “Rock Island Line”‘s success, he was backed by Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio — Donegan was allowed to sing, but not allowed to play guitar. In 1955, the two unions finally came to a one-in-one-out agreement, which would last for the next few decades, where musicians from each country could tour, but only as a like-for-like swap. So Louis Armstrong was allowed to tour the UK, but only on condition that Freddie Randall, a trumpet player from Devon, got to tour the US. Stan Kenton’s band toured the UK, while the Ted Heath Orchestra (which was not, I should point out, led by the Prime Minister of the same name) toured the US. We can argue over whether Freddie Randall was truly an adequate substitute for Louis Armstrong, but I’m sure you can see the basic idea. The union was making sure that Armstrong wasn’t taking a job that would otherwise have gone to a British trumpeter. Similarly, when Bill Haley and the Comets became the first American rock and roll group to tour the UK, in 1957, Lonnie Donegan was allowed to tour the US again, and this time he could play his guitar. The Three Tons of Joy went over to the UK to appear on the Six-Five Special, backed by British musicians and to scout out some possible tour venues with Otis’ manager, but the plans fell through because of the inability to find a British group who could reasonably do a swap with Otis’ band. They came back to the US, and cut a follow-up to “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me”, with vocals by Marie and Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and Marie Adams, “Bye Bye Baby”] That’s an example of what Johnny Otis meant when he said later that he didn’t like most of his Capitol recordings, because he was being pushed too far in a commercial rock and roll direction, while he saw himself as far closer in spirit to Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, or Louis Jordan than to Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly. The song is just an endless litany of the titles of recentish rock and roll hits, with little to recommend it. It made the top twenty in the UK, mostly on the strength of people having bought the previous single. The record after that was an attempt to capitalise on “Ma! He’s Making Eyes At Me” — it was another oldie, this time from 1916, and another song about making eyes at someone. Surely it would give them another UK hit, right?: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?”] Sadly, it sank without a trace — at least until it was picked up by Emile Ford and the Checkmates, who released a soundalike cover version, which became the last British number one of the fifties and first of the sixties, and was also the first number one hit by a black British artist and the first record by a black British person to sell a million copies: [Excerpt: Emile Ford and the Checkmates, “What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?”] We’ll be hearing more from Ford’s co-producer on that record, a young engineer named Joe Meek, later in the series. But Otis had another idea for how to crack the British market. While the Three Tons of Joy had been performing on Six-Five Special, they had seen the British audiences doing a weird dance that only used their arms. It was a dance that was originally popularised by a British group that was so obscure that they never made a record, and the only trace they left on posterity was this dance and three photos, all taken on the same night by, of all people, Ken Russell. From those photos, the Bell Cats were one of the many British bands trying to sound like Bill Haley and the Comets. Their regular gig was at a coffee house called The Cat’s Whisker, where they were popular enough that the audience were packed in like sardines — the venue was so often dangerously overcrowded that the police eventually shut it down, and the owner reopened it as the first Angus Steak House, an infamous London restaurant chain. In those Bell Cats performances, the audience were packed so tightly that they couldn’t dance properly, and so a new dance developed among the customers, and spread — a dance where you only moved your hands. The hand jive. That dance spread to the audiences of the Six-Five Special, so much that Don Lang and his Frantic Five released “Six-Five Hand Jive” in March 1958: [Excerpt: Don Lang and His Frantic Five, “Six-Five Hand Jive”] Oddly, despite Six-Five Special not being shown in Sweden, that song saw no less than three Swedish soundalike cover versions, from (and I apologise if I mangle these names) Inger Bergrenn, Towa Carson, and the Monn-Keys. The Three Tons of Joy demonstrated the hand jive to Otis, and he decided to write a song about the dance. There was a fad for dance songs in 1958, and he believed that writing a song about a dance that was popular in Britain, where he’d just had a big hit — and namechecking those other dances, like the Walk and the Stroll — could lead to a hit followup to “Ma He’s Making Eyes At Me”. The dance also appealed to Otis because, oddly, it was very reminiscent of some of the moves that black American people would do when performing “Hambone”, the folk dance-cum-song-cum-game that we discussed way back in episode thirty, and which inspired Bo Diddley’s song “Bo Didlley”. Otis coupled lyrics about hand-jiving to the Bo Diddley rhythm — though he would always claim, for the rest of his life, that he’d heard that rhythm from convicts on a chain gang before Diddley ever made a record: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] Surprisingly, the record did nothing at all commercially in the UK. In fact, its biggest impact over here was that it inspired another famous dance. Cliff Richard cut his own version of “Willie and the Hand Jive” in 1959: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Shadows, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] His backing band, the Shadows, were looking for a way to liven up the visual presentation of that song when they performed it live, and they decided that moving in unison would work well for the song, and worked out a few dance steps. The audience reaction was so great that they started doing it on every song. The famous — or infamous — Shadows Walk had developed. But while “Willie and the Hand Jive” didn’t have any success in the UK, in the US it became Otis’ only top ten pop hit, and his first R&B top ten hit as a performer in six years, reaching number nine on the pop charts and number one on the R&B charts. This was despite several radio stations banning it, as they assumed the “hand jive” was a reference to masturbation — even though on Otis’ TV shows and his stage performances, the Three Tons of Joy would demonstrate the dance as Otis sang. As late as the nineties, Otis was still having to deal with questions about whether “Willie and the Hand Jive” had some more lascivious meaning. Of course, with him now being on a major label, he had to do follow-ups to his big hit, like “Willie Did The Cha-Cha”: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie Did The Cha-Cha”] But chart success remained elusive, and nothing he did after this point got higher than number fifty-two on the pop charts. The music industry was slowly moving away from the kind of music that Otis had always made — as genres got narrower, his appreciation for all forms of black American music meant that he no longer appealed to people who wanted one specific style of music. He was also becoming increasingly involved in the civil rights movement, writing a weekly newspaper column decrying racism, helping his friend Mervyn Dymally who became the joint first black person elected to statewide office in the USA since the reconstruction, and working with Malcolm X and others. He had to deal with crosses burning on his lawn, and with death threats to his family — while Otis was white, his wife was black. The result was that Otis recorded and toured only infrequently during the sixties, and at one point was making so little as a musician that his wife became the main breadwinner of the family while he was a stay-at-home father. After the Watts riots in 1965, which we’ll talk about much more when we get to that time period, Otis wrote the book Listen to the Lambs, a combination political essay, autobiography, and mixture of eyewitness accounts of the riots that made a radical case that the first priority for the black community in which he lived wasn’t so much social integration, which he believed impossible in the short term due to white racism, as economic equality — he thought it was in the best interests, not only of black people but of white people as well, if black people were made equal economic participants in America as rapidly as humanly possible, and if they should be given economic and political control over their own lives and destinies. The book is fierce in its anger at systemic racism, at colonialism, at anglocentric beauty standards that made black people hate their own bodies and faces, at police brutality, at the war in Vietnam, and at the systemic inequalities keeping black people down. And over and again he makes one point, and I’ll quote from the book here: “A newborn Negro baby has less chance of survival than a white. A Negro baby will have its life ended seven years sooner. This is not some biological phenomenon linked to skin colour, like sickle-cell anaemia; this is a national crime, linked to a white-supremacist way of life and compounded by indifference”. Just to remind you, the word he uses there was the correct word for black people at the time he was writing. Some of the book is heartrending, like the description from a witness — Otis gives over thirty pages of the book to the voices of black witnesses of the riots — talking about seeing white police officers casually shoot black teenagers on the street and make bullseye signals to their friends as if they’d been shooting tin cans. Some is, more than fifty years later, out of date or “of its time”, but the sad thing is that so many of the arguments are as timely now as they were then. Otis wrote a follow-up, Upside Your Head, in the early nineties inspired by the LA riots that followed the Rodney King beating, and no doubt were he alive today he would be completing the trilogy. But while politics had become Otis’ main occupation, he hadn’t stopped making music altogether, and in the late sixties he was contacted by Frank Zappa, who was such a fan of Otis that he copied his trademark beard from Otis. Otis and Zappa worked together in a casual way, with Otis mostly helping Zappa get in touch with musicians he knew who Zappa wanted to work with, like Don “Sugarcane” Harris. Otis also conducted the Mothers of Invention in the studio on a few songs while Zappa was in the control room, helping him get the greasy fifties sound he wanted on songs like “Holiday in Berlin”: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, “Holiday in Berlin, Full Blown”] Apparently while they were recording that, Otis was clapping his hands in the face of the bass player, Roy Estrada, who didn’t like it at all. Given what I know of Estrada that’s a good thing. Otis’ teenage son Shuggie also played with Zappa, playing bass on “Son of Mr. Green Genes” from Zappa’s Hot Rats album. Zappa then persuaded a small blues label, Kent Records, which was owned by two other veterans of the fifties music industry, the Bihari brothers, to sign Otis to make an album. “Cold Shot” by the New Johnny Otis Show featured a core band of just three people — Otis himself on piano and drums, Delmar “Mighty Mouth” Evans on vocals, and Shuggie playing all the guitar and bass parts. Shuggie was only fifteen at the time, but had been playing with his father’s band since he was eleven, often wearing false moustaches and sunglasses to play in venues serving alcohol. The record brought Otis his first R&B hit since “Willie and the Hand Jive”, more than a decade earlier, “Country Girl”: [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show, “Country Girl”] Around the same time, that trio also recorded another album, called “For Adults Only”, under the name Snatch and the Poontangs, and with a cover drawn by Otis in a spot-on imitation of the style of Robert Crumb. For obvious reasons I won’t be playing any of that record here, but even that had a serious sociological purpose along with the obscene humour — Otis wanted to preserve bits of black folklore. Songs like “The Signifying Monkey” had been performed for years, and had even been recorded by people like Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon, but they’d always stripped out the sexual insults that make up much of the piece’s appeal. Otis would in later years laugh that he’d received accusations of obscenity for “Roll With Me Henry” and for “Willie and the Hand Jive”, but nobody had seemed bothered in the slightest by the records of Snatch and the Poontangs with their constant sexual insults. “Cold Shot” caused a career renaissance for Otis, and he put together a new lineup of the Johnny Otis Show, one that would feature as many as possible of the veteran musicians who he thought deserved exposure to a new audience. Probably the highest point of Otis’ later career was a 1970 performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival, where his band featured, along with Johnny and Shuggie, Esther Phillips, Big Joe Turner, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Roy Milton, Pee Wee Crayton, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Roy Brown: [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show featuring Roy Brown, “Good Rocking Tonight”] That performance was released as a live album, and Clint Eastwood featured footage of that show — the band performing “Willie and the Hand Jive” — in his classic film Play Misty For Me. It was probably the greatest example of Otis’ belief that all the important strands of black American music shared a commonality and could work in combination with each other. For the next few decades, Otis combined touring with as many of his old collaborators as possible — Marie Adams, for example, rejoined the band in 1972 — with having his own radio show in which he told people about black musical history and interviewed as many old musicians as he could, writing more books, including a cookbook and a collection of his art, running an organic apple juice company and food store, painting old blues artists in a style equally inspired by African art and Picasso, and being the pastor of a Pentecostal church — but one with a theology so broadminded that it was not only LGBT-affirming but had Buddhist and Jewish congregants. He ran Blues Spectrum Records in the seventies, which put out late-career recordings by people like Charles Brown, Big Joe Turner, and Louis Jordan, some of them their last ever recordings. And he lectured in the history of black music at Berkeley. Johnny Otis died in 2012, aged ninety, having achieved more than most of us could hope to achieve if we lived five times that long, and having helped many, many more people to make the most of their talents. He died three days before the discovery of whom he was most proud, Etta James, and she overshadowed him in the obituaries, as he would have wanted.

Episode fifty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Honky Tonk” by Bill Doggett, and uses his career to provide a brief summary of the earlier episodes of the podcast as we’re now moving forward into the next stage of the story. 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 “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. —-more—- Resources  As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are many best-of collections of Doggett’s work available. This one seems to have the best sound quality and is a decent overview of his work. Information for this one comes from all over the place, including Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F Wald, Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, and Inkspots.ca    Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the fiftieth episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. We’re now ten percent of the way through our story, and also most of the way through 1956. I’m told that when history podcasts hit a big round number, it’s customary for them to do a jumping-on episode, perhaps a “story so far” which covers everything that’s been discussed up to that point, but in brief, so that new listeners can get up to speed. That’s sort of what I’m about to do here. This week, we’re going to look at a hit song from 1956, but by someone whose career interacted with almost everyone in the first twenty or so episodes of the podcast. We’re going to look again at some of that old music, not as isolated records by different artists, but as stages in the career of a single individual. We’re going to look at someone who was a jobbing musician, who’d take any job that was on offer, but who by virtue of just being a hard-working competent jobbing player and arranger managed to have an astonishing influence on the development of music. While rock and roll was primarily a vocal music, it wasn’t a completely clean break with the past, and for most of the decades from the 1920s through to the early 50s, if you wanted music for dancing you would want instrumental groups. The big bands did employ vocalists, of course, but you can tell who the focus was on from looking at the names of the bands — the Benny Goodman Orchestra, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Count Basie orchestra — all of the leaders of the big bands were instrumentalists. They played clarinet or trombone or piano, they didn’t sing. It was only with the musicians union strikes of the 1940s, which we’ve talked about before, that more through necessity than anything else the music industry moved from being dominated by instrumental music to being dominated by singers. But well into the 1960s we’ll still be seeing rock and roll hits that were purely instrumental. Indeed, we probably wouldn’t have rock and roll guitar bands at all without instrumental groups like the Ventures in the US or the Shadows in the UK who had hits with pure instrumental records. And one of the greatest of the early rock and roll instrumentals was by someone who didn’t actually consider himself a rock and roll musician. It’s a record that influenced everyone from James Brown to the Beach Boys, and it’s called “Honky Tonk”: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”] There is surprisingly little information out there about Bill Doggett, for someone who had such an impact on the fields of rock and roll, blues, jazz, and soul. There are no books about his life, and the only website devoted to him is one designed by his nephew, which… has all the flaws one might expect from a website put together about someone’s uncle. Doggett was born in 1916 in Philadelphia, and he moved to New York in his late teens and formed his own band, for which he was the piano player. But in 1938, Lucky Millinder was looking for a new band — the way Millinder worked was that he bought out, and took over the leadership, of existing bands, which then became “the Lucky Millinder Orchestra”. This incarnation of the Lucky Millinder Orchestra, the one that was put together by Doggett before Millinder took the band over, is the one that got a residency at the Savoy after Chick Webb’s band stopped playing there, and like Webb’s band this group was managed by Moe Gale. Doggett stayed on with Millinder as his pianist, and while with the group he appeared with Millinder in the 1938 all-black film Paradise in Harlem, playing on this song: [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, “I’ve Got To Put You Down”] Doggett was, from what I can tell, the de facto musical director for Millinder’s band in this period — Millinder was a frontman and occasional singer, but he couldn’t play an instrument and was reliant on the musicians in his band to work the arrangements out for him. Doggett was in the band when Moe Gale suggested that Sister Rosetta Tharpe would work well paired up with Millinder’s main singer, Trevor Bacon, in the same way that Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald had worked well together in the Chick Webb band. Doggett was the pianist during the whole of Tharpe’s time with the Millinder band, and he co-composed, with Millinder, the song that later gave its title to a biography of Tharpe, “Shout! Sister, Shout!”: [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, “Shout! Sister, Shout!”] If you listen to any of Tharpe’s big band recordings from her time with Millinder, it’s Doggett on the piano, and I strongly suspect it was Doggett who came up with the arrangements. Listen for example to his playing on “Lonesome Road”, another song that the MIllinder band performed on film: [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, “Lonesome Road”] The Millinder band were pivotal in the move from swing music to R&B, and Doggett was an important part in that move. While he’d left the band before they took on later singers like Wynonie Harris and Ruth Brown, he had helped set the band up to be the kind of band that those singers would feel comfortable in. Doggett was also in the band when they had their biggest hit, a song called “When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)”: [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, “When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)”] That’s most notable now for being one of the first recordings of a young trumpeter who was just starting out, by the name of Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie was quickly sacked by Millinder, who had a habit of getting rid of musicians before they reached their full potential. I’ve not been able to find out why Doggett left Millinder — whether he was one of those musicians who was sacked, or whether he just wanted to move on to other things — but whatever the reason, it can’t have been anything that put a stain on his reputation, because Doggett remained with Millinder’s manager, Moe Gale. We’ve mentioned Gale before several times, but he was the manager of almost every important black act based in New York in the late thirties and early forties, as well as running the Savoy Club, which we talked about in several of the earliest episodes of the podcast. Gale managed Millinder and Rosetta Tharpe, and also managed the Ink Spots, Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, and Louis Jordan, and so whenever one of his acts needed a musician, he would tend to find them from his existing pool of talent. And so this is how, straight after leaving Lucky Millinder’s band, Doggett found himself working for another Gale act, the Ink Spots. He joined them as their pianist and arranger, and stayed with them for several years: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “I’ll Get By”] The Ink Spots, if you don’t remember, were a vocal quartet who became the most popular black act of the forties, and who stuck to a unique formula based around Bill Kenny’s high tenor and Hoppy Jones’ low spoken bass. They had hit after hit during the forties with songs that all sound remarkably similar, and in the mid forties those songs were arranged by Bill Doggett. He was with the group for two years — starting with the classic line-up of the group, and staying with them through Charlie Fuqua being drafted and Deek Watson being fired. While he was a sideman rather than a full member of the group, he was important enough to them that he now gets counted in lists of proper members put together by historians of the band. He ended up leaving them less than two weeks before Hoppy Jones died, and during that time he played on fourteen of their hit singles, almost all of them sticking to the same formula they’d used previously, the “top and bottom”: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “Ev’ry Night About This Time”] The different acts managed by Moe Gale all sat in with each other when needed, so for example Trevor Bacon, the male vocalist with Millinder’s band, temporarily joined the Ink Spots when Deke Watson got sick for a few weeks. And so during the times when the Ink Spots weren’t touring, Doggett would also perform with Ella Fitzgerald, who was also managed by Gale. [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Time Alone Will Tell”] And indeed, during the end of Doggett’s time with the Ink Spots, Fitzgerald recorded a number of hit singles with the group, which of course featured Doggett on the piano. That included this one, which later went on to be the basis of “Train Kept A-Rollin'”, which we looked at a few episodes back: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots, “Cow Cow Boogie”] Doggett moved over full time to become Ella’s arranger and pianist at some point during the couple of weeks between Deek Watson leaving the Ink Spots and Hoppy Jones dying, in early October 1944, and stayed with her for a couple of years, before moving on to Illinois Jacquet’s band, taking the same role again, in the band that introduced the honking tenor saxophone into R&B, and thus into rock and roll: [Excerpt: Illinois Jacquet, “Doggin’ With Doggett”] He also played on one of the most important records in forties R&B — Johnny Otis’ “Harlem Nocturne”, the first hit for the man who would go on to produce most of the great R&B artists of the fifties: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Harlem Nocturne”] And he also led his own band for a while, the Bill Doggett Octet. They were the ones who recorded “Be-Baba-Leba” with Helen Humes on vocals — the song that probably inspired Gene Vincent to write a very similarly named song a few years later: [Excerpt: Helen Humes, “Be-Baba-Leba”] He then moved on to Louis Jordan’s band full time, and this is where his career really starts. Jordan was another act in Moe Gale’s stable, and indeed just like the Ink Spots he’d had hits duetting with Ella Fitzgerald, who he’d first worked with back in the 1930s in Chick Webb’s band. He was also, as you may remember from earlier episodes, the leader of the most popular R&B group in the late forties and early fifties — the one that inspired everyone from Chuck Berry to Bill Haley. And as with his tenure with the Ink Spots, Doggett was in Jordan’s band during its period of peak commercial success. The timeline for who Doggett played with when, as you can probably tell, is all over the place, because he seemed to be playing with two or three acts at any given time. And so officially, if you look at the timelines, so far as they exist, you see that it’s generally claimed that Bill Doggett joined Louis Jordan in 1949. But I’ve seen interviews with members of Jordan’s organisation that suggest he joined much earlier, but he would alternate with Jordan’s other piano player, Wild Bill Davis. The way they worked, according to Berle Adams, who was involved in Jordan’s management, was that Davis would spend a week on the road as Jordan’s piano player, while Doggett would spend the same week writing arrangements for the group, and then they would swap over, and Doggett would go out on the road while Davis would write arrangements. Either way, after a while, Doggett became the sole pianist for the group, as Davis struck out on his own, and Doggett once again basically became the musical director for one of the biggest bands in the R&B business. Doggett is often credited as the person who rewrote “Saturday Night Fish Fry” into one of Jordan’s biggest hits from its inauspicious original version, though Jordan is credited on the record: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Saturday Night Fish Fry”] During his time with Jordan, Doggett continued playing on records for Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and other artists, but he was paying close attention to Wild Bill Davis, who he had replaced in Jordan’s group. Davis had discovered the possibilities in a new musical instrument, the Hammond organ, and had formed a trio consisting of himself, a guitarist, and a drummer to exploit these possibilities in jazz music: [Excerpt: Wild Bill Davis, “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be”] Doggett was also fascinated by this instrument, especially when hearing it up close, as when Davis rejoined Jordan’s band to record “Tamburitza Boogie”, which had Doggett on piano and Davis on the Hammond organ: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Tamburitza Boogie”] When Doggett left Jordan’s band, he decided to form an organ trio just like Davis’. The only problem was that it was just like Davis’. His group had the same instrumentation, and Doggett and Davis had very similar playing styles. Still, Henry Glover got him a contract with King Records, and he started recording Hammond organ blues tracks in the Davis style: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett Trio, “Big Dog”] Davis and Doggett between them gave the Hammond organ its prominence in the world of jazz, R&B, and soul music. The Hammond organ has an odd image, as most people associate it with the cheesiest sort of light entertainment — certainly for anyone in Britain of the generation older than mine, for example, the name it conjures up is Reggie Dixon, possibly the least funky man ever. But in that part of music which is the intersection of jazz and R&B — the part of music inhabited by Jimmy Smith, Booker T Jones, Ray Charles, Georgie Fame, Billy Preston and others — the Hammond organ has become an essential instrument, used so differently that one might almost compare it to the violin, where the instrument is referred to as a fiddle when it’s played on folk or country songs. And that comes from Davis and Doggett and their almost simultaneous invention of a new style of keyboards for the new style of music that was coming up in the late forties and early fifties. But after a year or two of playing in an organ trio, Doggett decided that he didn’t want to keep making records that sounded so much like the ones Wild Bill Davis was making — he didn’t want to be seen as a copy. And so to vary the style, he decided to take on a honking saxophone player to be the group’s lead instrumentalist, while Doggett would concentrate on providing a rhythmic pad. This lineup of his group would go on to make the record that would make Doggett’s name. “Honky Tonk, Parts 1 and 2” came about almost by accident. As Doggett told the story, his biggest hit started out at a dance in Lima, Ohio on a Sunday night. The group were playing their normal set and people were dancing as normal, but then in between songs Billy Butler, Doggett’s guitarist, just started noodling an instrumental line on his bass strings: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk” intro] This hadn’t been planned — he was just noodling around, as all guitarists will do when given five seconds silence. But the audience started dancing to it, and if you’re in a bar band and the audience is dancing, you keep doing what you’re doing. As Butler was just playing a simple twelve-bar blues pattern, the rest of the group fell in with the riff he was playing, and he started soloing over them: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk” guitar soloing] After three choruses of this, Butler nodded to Clifford Scott, the group’s saxophone player, to take over, and Scott started playing a honking saxophone version of what Butler had been playing: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”, sax] After Scott played through it a few times, he looked over to Doggett to see if Doggett wanted to take a solo too. Doggett shook his head. The song had already been going about five minutes and what Butler and Scott had been playing was enough. The group quickly brought the song to a close using a standard blues outro: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”, outro] And that would have been the end of that. It’s the kind of thing that bar bands have jammed a million times, the sort of thing that if you’re a musician you think nothing of. They laughed at the end of the song, happy that they’d pulled off something that spontaneous and the audience had been OK with it, and carried on with the rest of their planned set. But then, a couple of songs later, someone in the audience came up and asked them if they could play that hot new song they’d been playing before again, not realising it had just been a spur-of-the-moment jam. OK, you give the audience what they want, the band members could remember more or less what they’d been playing, so they played it again. And the crowd went wild. And they played it again. And the crowd went wild again. By the end of the night they’d played that new song, the one they’d improvised based on Billy Butler’s guitar noodling, ten times. Doggett immediately phoned Syd Nathan at King Records, his label, and told him that they had a hit on their hands and needed to get it out straight away. But there was one problem — the song was over five minutes long, and a shellac 78RPM disc, which was still the most popular format for R&B music, could only hold three minutes per side. It would have to be a double-sided record. Nathan hated putting out records where the song continued onto the other side, because the jukebox operators who were his main customers didn’t like them. But he eventually agreed, and Doggett and his band got together in the studio and recorded their new instrumental in a single take. It was released as “Honky Tonk Part One” and part two, and they pressed up five thousand copies in the first week. Those sold out straight away, so the next week they pressed up twelve thousand five hundred copies. Those also sold straight away, and so for the next few weeks they started pressing up a hundred thousand copies a week. The song went to number one on the R&B charts, and became the biggest selling R&B song of 1956, spending thirteen weeks in total at number one — dropping down the charts and then back up again. It also reached number two on the pop charts, an astonishing feat for an R&B instrumental. It became a staple for cover bands, and it was recorded by the obvious instrumental acts like the Ventures and Duane Eddy — and indeed Duane Eddy’s whole style seems to have come from “Honky Tonk” — but by other people you might not expect, like Buddy Holly: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Honky Tonk”] The Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Honky Tonk”] And even James Brown: [Excerpt: James Brown, Honky Tonk”]  Doggett never had another hit quite as big as “Honky Tonk”, though his next few records, based on the “Honky Tonk” pattern, also made the top five on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Slow Walk”] He had ten more R&B top thirty hits over the course of the 1950s. But Doggett was being promoted as a rock and roll act, and playing bills with other rock and roll stars, and he didn’t really feel comfortable in the rock and roll world. When “Honky Tonk” came out, he was forty years old — by far the oldest of the people who had rock and roll hits in the mid fifties — and he was a jazz organ player, not a Little Richard type. He was also stuck repeating a formula — over the decade after “Honky Tonk” parts one and two he recorded tracks like “Honky Tonk (vocal version)”, “Hippy Dippy”, “Blip Blop”, “Yocky Dock”, and “Honky Tonk Bossa Nova”. His career as a charting artist more or less stopped after 1960, when he made the mistake of asking Syd Nathan if he could have a higher royalty rate, given the millions of dollars his recordings had brought in to King Records, and King dropped him. But it didn’t stop his career as a working musician. In 1962 he teamed up again with Ella Fitzgerald, who wanted to go back to making music with a bit more rhythm than her recent albums of ballads. The resulting album, “Rhythm is my Business”, featured Doggett’s arrangements and Hammond organ very prominently: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Hallelujah I Love Him So”] He also teamed up in 1969 with James Brown, who around that time was trying to pay back his dues to others who’d been artists on King Records when Brown had started with them in the fifties. As well as recording his album “Thinking About Little Willie John and Other Nice Things”, Brown had also been producing records for Hank Ballard, and now it was Bill Doggett’s turn. For Doggett, Brown produced and wrote “Honky Tonk Popcorn”: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk Popcorn”] Doggett spent most of the rest of his life touring the oldies circuit, a respected organist who would play hundreds of shows a year, until his death in 1996 aged eighty. He played “Honky Tonk” at every show, saying “I just wouldn’t be Bill Doggett if I didn’t play ‘Honky Tonk’. That’s what the people pay to hear, so that’s what they get.”

Episode fifty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Honky Tonk" by Bill Doggett, and uses his career to provide a brief summary of the earlier episodes of the podcast as we're now moving forward into the next stage of the story. 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 "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford. ----more---- Resources  As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are many best-of collections of Doggett's work available. This one seems to have the best sound quality and is a decent overview of his work. Information for this one comes from all over the place, including Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F Wald, Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, and Inkspots.ca    Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the fiftieth episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. We're now ten percent of the way through our story, and also most of the way through 1956. I'm told that when history podcasts hit a big round number, it's customary for them to do a jumping-on episode, perhaps a "story so far" which covers everything that's been discussed up to that point, but in brief, so that new listeners can get up to speed. That's sort of what I'm about to do here. This week, we're going to look at a hit song from 1956, but by someone whose career interacted with almost everyone in the first twenty or so episodes of the podcast. We're going to look again at some of that old music, not as isolated records by different artists, but as stages in the career of a single individual. We're going to look at someone who was a jobbing musician, who'd take any job that was on offer, but who by virtue of just being a hard-working competent jobbing player and arranger managed to have an astonishing influence on the development of music. While rock and roll was primarily a vocal music, it wasn't a completely clean break with the past, and for most of the decades from the 1920s through to the early 50s, if you wanted music for dancing you would want instrumental groups. The big bands did employ vocalists, of course, but you can tell who the focus was on from looking at the names of the bands -- the Benny Goodman Orchestra, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Count Basie orchestra -- all of the leaders of the big bands were instrumentalists. They played clarinet or trombone or piano, they didn't sing. It was only with the musicians union strikes of the 1940s, which we've talked about before, that more through necessity than anything else the music industry moved from being dominated by instrumental music to being dominated by singers. But well into the 1960s we'll still be seeing rock and roll hits that were purely instrumental. Indeed, we probably wouldn't have rock and roll guitar bands at all without instrumental groups like the Ventures in the US or the Shadows in the UK who had hits with pure instrumental records. And one of the greatest of the early rock and roll instrumentals was by someone who didn't actually consider himself a rock and roll musician. It's a record that influenced everyone from James Brown to the Beach Boys, and it's called "Honky Tonk": [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk"] There is surprisingly little information out there about Bill Doggett, for someone who had such an impact on the fields of rock and roll, blues, jazz, and soul. There are no books about his life, and the only website devoted to him is one designed by his nephew, which... has all the flaws one might expect from a website put together about someone's uncle. Doggett was born in 1916 in Philadelphia, and he moved to New York in his late teens and formed his own band, for which he was the piano player. But in 1938, Lucky Millinder was looking for a new band -- the way Millinder worked was that he bought out, and took over the leadership, of existing bands, which then became "the Lucky Millinder Orchestra". This incarnation of the Lucky Millinder Orchestra, the one that was put together by Doggett before Millinder took the band over, is the one that got a residency at the Savoy after Chick Webb's band stopped playing there, and like Webb's band this group was managed by Moe Gale. Doggett stayed on with Millinder as his pianist, and while with the group he appeared with Millinder in the 1938 all-black film Paradise in Harlem, playing on this song: [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, "I've Got To Put You Down"] Doggett was, from what I can tell, the de facto musical director for Millinder's band in this period -- Millinder was a frontman and occasional singer, but he couldn't play an instrument and was reliant on the musicians in his band to work the arrangements out for him. Doggett was in the band when Moe Gale suggested that Sister Rosetta Tharpe would work well paired up with Millinder's main singer, Trevor Bacon, in the same way that Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald had worked well together in the Chick Webb band. Doggett was the pianist during the whole of Tharpe's time with the Millinder band, and he co-composed, with Millinder, the song that later gave its title to a biography of Tharpe, "Shout! Sister, Shout!": [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, "Shout! Sister, Shout!"] If you listen to any of Tharpe's big band recordings from her time with Millinder, it's Doggett on the piano, and I strongly suspect it was Doggett who came up with the arrangements. Listen for example to his playing on "Lonesome Road", another song that the MIllinder band performed on film: [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, "Lonesome Road"] The Millinder band were pivotal in the move from swing music to R&B, and Doggett was an important part in that move. While he'd left the band before they took on later singers like Wynonie Harris and Ruth Brown, he had helped set the band up to be the kind of band that those singers would feel comfortable in. Doggett was also in the band when they had their biggest hit, a song called "When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)": [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, "When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)"] That's most notable now for being one of the first recordings of a young trumpeter who was just starting out, by the name of Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie was quickly sacked by Millinder, who had a habit of getting rid of musicians before they reached their full potential. I've not been able to find out why Doggett left Millinder -- whether he was one of those musicians who was sacked, or whether he just wanted to move on to other things -- but whatever the reason, it can't have been anything that put a stain on his reputation, because Doggett remained with Millinder's manager, Moe Gale. We've mentioned Gale before several times, but he was the manager of almost every important black act based in New York in the late thirties and early forties, as well as running the Savoy Club, which we talked about in several of the earliest episodes of the podcast. Gale managed Millinder and Rosetta Tharpe, and also managed the Ink Spots, Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, and Louis Jordan, and so whenever one of his acts needed a musician, he would tend to find them from his existing pool of talent. And so this is how, straight after leaving Lucky Millinder's band, Doggett found himself working for another Gale act, the Ink Spots. He joined them as their pianist and arranger, and stayed with them for several years: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, "I'll Get By"] The Ink Spots, if you don't remember, were a vocal quartet who became the most popular black act of the forties, and who stuck to a unique formula based around Bill Kenny's high tenor and Hoppy Jones' low spoken bass. They had hit after hit during the forties with songs that all sound remarkably similar, and in the mid forties those songs were arranged by Bill Doggett. He was with the group for two years -- starting with the classic line-up of the group, and staying with them through Charlie Fuqua being drafted and Deek Watson being fired. While he was a sideman rather than a full member of the group, he was important enough to them that he now gets counted in lists of proper members put together by historians of the band. He ended up leaving them less than two weeks before Hoppy Jones died, and during that time he played on fourteen of their hit singles, almost all of them sticking to the same formula they'd used previously, the "top and bottom": [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, "Ev'ry Night About This Time"] The different acts managed by Moe Gale all sat in with each other when needed, so for example Trevor Bacon, the male vocalist with Millinder's band, temporarily joined the Ink Spots when Deke Watson got sick for a few weeks. And so during the times when the Ink Spots weren't touring, Doggett would also perform with Ella Fitzgerald, who was also managed by Gale. [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "Time Alone Will Tell"] And indeed, during the end of Doggett's time with the Ink Spots, Fitzgerald recorded a number of hit singles with the group, which of course featured Doggett on the piano. That included this one, which later went on to be the basis of "Train Kept A-Rollin'", which we looked at a few episodes back: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots, "Cow Cow Boogie"] Doggett moved over full time to become Ella's arranger and pianist at some point during the couple of weeks between Deek Watson leaving the Ink Spots and Hoppy Jones dying, in early October 1944, and stayed with her for a couple of years, before moving on to Illinois Jacquet's band, taking the same role again, in the band that introduced the honking tenor saxophone into R&B, and thus into rock and roll: [Excerpt: Illinois Jacquet, "Doggin' With Doggett"] He also played on one of the most important records in forties R&B -- Johnny Otis' "Harlem Nocturne", the first hit for the man who would go on to produce most of the great R&B artists of the fifties: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Harlem Nocturne"] And he also led his own band for a while, the Bill Doggett Octet. They were the ones who recorded "Be-Baba-Leba" with Helen Humes on vocals -- the song that probably inspired Gene Vincent to write a very similarly named song a few years later: [Excerpt: Helen Humes, "Be-Baba-Leba"] He then moved on to Louis Jordan's band full time, and this is where his career really starts. Jordan was another act in Moe Gale's stable, and indeed just like the Ink Spots he'd had hits duetting with Ella Fitzgerald, who he'd first worked with back in the 1930s in Chick Webb's band. He was also, as you may remember from earlier episodes, the leader of the most popular R&B group in the late forties and early fifties -- the one that inspired everyone from Chuck Berry to Bill Haley. And as with his tenure with the Ink Spots, Doggett was in Jordan's band during its period of peak commercial success. The timeline for who Doggett played with when, as you can probably tell, is all over the place, because he seemed to be playing with two or three acts at any given time. And so officially, if you look at the timelines, so far as they exist, you see that it's generally claimed that Bill Doggett joined Louis Jordan in 1949. But I've seen interviews with members of Jordan's organisation that suggest he joined much earlier, but he would alternate with Jordan's other piano player, Wild Bill Davis. The way they worked, according to Berle Adams, who was involved in Jordan's management, was that Davis would spend a week on the road as Jordan's piano player, while Doggett would spend the same week writing arrangements for the group, and then they would swap over, and Doggett would go out on the road while Davis would write arrangements. Either way, after a while, Doggett became the sole pianist for the group, as Davis struck out on his own, and Doggett once again basically became the musical director for one of the biggest bands in the R&B business. Doggett is often credited as the person who rewrote "Saturday Night Fish Fry" into one of Jordan's biggest hits from its inauspicious original version, though Jordan is credited on the record: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, "Saturday Night Fish Fry"] During his time with Jordan, Doggett continued playing on records for Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and other artists, but he was paying close attention to Wild Bill Davis, who he had replaced in Jordan's group. Davis had discovered the possibilities in a new musical instrument, the Hammond organ, and had formed a trio consisting of himself, a guitarist, and a drummer to exploit these possibilities in jazz music: [Excerpt: Wild Bill Davis, "Things Ain't What They Used To Be"] Doggett was also fascinated by this instrument, especially when hearing it up close, as when Davis rejoined Jordan's band to record "Tamburitza Boogie", which had Doggett on piano and Davis on the Hammond organ: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, "Tamburitza Boogie"] When Doggett left Jordan's band, he decided to form an organ trio just like Davis'. The only problem was that it was just like Davis'. His group had the same instrumentation, and Doggett and Davis had very similar playing styles. Still, Henry Glover got him a contract with King Records, and he started recording Hammond organ blues tracks in the Davis style: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett Trio, "Big Dog"] Davis and Doggett between them gave the Hammond organ its prominence in the world of jazz, R&B, and soul music. The Hammond organ has an odd image, as most people associate it with the cheesiest sort of light entertainment -- certainly for anyone in Britain of the generation older than mine, for example, the name it conjures up is Reggie Dixon, possibly the least funky man ever. But in that part of music which is the intersection of jazz and R&B -- the part of music inhabited by Jimmy Smith, Booker T Jones, Ray Charles, Georgie Fame, Billy Preston and others -- the Hammond organ has become an essential instrument, used so differently that one might almost compare it to the violin, where the instrument is referred to as a fiddle when it's played on folk or country songs. And that comes from Davis and Doggett and their almost simultaneous invention of a new style of keyboards for the new style of music that was coming up in the late forties and early fifties. But after a year or two of playing in an organ trio, Doggett decided that he didn't want to keep making records that sounded so much like the ones Wild Bill Davis was making -- he didn't want to be seen as a copy. And so to vary the style, he decided to take on a honking saxophone player to be the group's lead instrumentalist, while Doggett would concentrate on providing a rhythmic pad. This lineup of his group would go on to make the record that would make Doggett's name. "Honky Tonk, Parts 1 and 2" came about almost by accident. As Doggett told the story, his biggest hit started out at a dance in Lima, Ohio on a Sunday night. The group were playing their normal set and people were dancing as normal, but then in between songs Billy Butler, Doggett's guitarist, just started noodling an instrumental line on his bass strings: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk" intro] This hadn't been planned -- he was just noodling around, as all guitarists will do when given five seconds silence. But the audience started dancing to it, and if you're in a bar band and the audience is dancing, you keep doing what you're doing. As Butler was just playing a simple twelve-bar blues pattern, the rest of the group fell in with the riff he was playing, and he started soloing over them: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk" guitar soloing] After three choruses of this, Butler nodded to Clifford Scott, the group's saxophone player, to take over, and Scott started playing a honking saxophone version of what Butler had been playing: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk", sax] After Scott played through it a few times, he looked over to Doggett to see if Doggett wanted to take a solo too. Doggett shook his head. The song had already been going about five minutes and what Butler and Scott had been playing was enough. The group quickly brought the song to a close using a standard blues outro: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk", outro] And that would have been the end of that. It's the kind of thing that bar bands have jammed a million times, the sort of thing that if you're a musician you think nothing of. They laughed at the end of the song, happy that they'd pulled off something that spontaneous and the audience had been OK with it, and carried on with the rest of their planned set. But then, a couple of songs later, someone in the audience came up and asked them if they could play that hot new song they'd been playing before again, not realising it had just been a spur-of-the-moment jam. OK, you give the audience what they want, the band members could remember more or less what they'd been playing, so they played it again. And the crowd went wild. And they played it again. And the crowd went wild again. By the end of the night they'd played that new song, the one they'd improvised based on Billy Butler's guitar noodling, ten times. Doggett immediately phoned Syd Nathan at King Records, his label, and told him that they had a hit on their hands and needed to get it out straight away. But there was one problem -- the song was over five minutes long, and a shellac 78RPM disc, which was still the most popular format for R&B music, could only hold three minutes per side. It would have to be a double-sided record. Nathan hated putting out records where the song continued onto the other side, because the jukebox operators who were his main customers didn't like them. But he eventually agreed, and Doggett and his band got together in the studio and recorded their new instrumental in a single take. It was released as "Honky Tonk Part One" and part two, and they pressed up five thousand copies in the first week. Those sold out straight away, so the next week they pressed up twelve thousand five hundred copies. Those also sold straight away, and so for the next few weeks they started pressing up a hundred thousand copies a week. The song went to number one on the R&B charts, and became the biggest selling R&B song of 1956, spending thirteen weeks in total at number one -- dropping down the charts and then back up again. It also reached number two on the pop charts, an astonishing feat for an R&B instrumental. It became a staple for cover bands, and it was recorded by the obvious instrumental acts like the Ventures and Duane Eddy -- and indeed Duane Eddy's whole style seems to have come from "Honky Tonk" -- but by other people you might not expect, like Buddy Holly: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Honky Tonk"] The Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Honky Tonk"] And even James Brown: [Excerpt: James Brown, Honky Tonk"]  Doggett never had another hit quite as big as "Honky Tonk", though his next few records, based on the "Honky Tonk" pattern, also made the top five on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Slow Walk"] He had ten more R&B top thirty hits over the course of the 1950s. But Doggett was being promoted as a rock and roll act, and playing bills with other rock and roll stars, and he didn't really feel comfortable in the rock and roll world. When "Honky Tonk" came out, he was forty years old -- by far the oldest of the people who had rock and roll hits in the mid fifties -- and he was a jazz organ player, not a Little Richard type. He was also stuck repeating a formula -- over the decade after "Honky Tonk" parts one and two he recorded tracks like "Honky Tonk (vocal version)", "Hippy Dippy", "Blip Blop", "Yocky Dock", and "Honky Tonk Bossa Nova". His career as a charting artist more or less stopped after 1960, when he made the mistake of asking Syd Nathan if he could have a higher royalty rate, given the millions of dollars his recordings had brought in to King Records, and King dropped him. But it didn't stop his career as a working musician. In 1962 he teamed up again with Ella Fitzgerald, who wanted to go back to making music with a bit more rhythm than her recent albums of ballads. The resulting album, "Rhythm is my Business", featured Doggett's arrangements and Hammond organ very prominently: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "Hallelujah I Love Him So"] He also teamed up in 1969 with James Brown, who around that time was trying to pay back his dues to others who'd been artists on King Records when Brown had started with them in the fifties. As well as recording his album "Thinking About Little Willie John and Other Nice Things", Brown had also been producing records for Hank Ballard, and now it was Bill Doggett's turn. For Doggett, Brown produced and wrote "Honky Tonk Popcorn": [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk Popcorn"] Doggett spent most of the rest of his life touring the oldies circuit, a respected organist who would play hundreds of shows a year, until his death in 1996 aged eighty. He played "Honky Tonk" at every show, saying "I just wouldn't be Bill Doggett if I didn't play 'Honky Tonk'. That's what the people pay to hear, so that's what they get."

Episode fifty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Honky Tonk” by Bill Doggett, and uses his career to provide a brief summary of the earlier episodes of the podcast as we’re now moving forward into the next stage of the story. 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 “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. (more…)

Episode fifty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Honky Tonk” by Bill Doggett, and uses his career to provide a brief summary of the earlier episodes of the podcast as we’re now moving forward into the next stage of the story. 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 “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. —-more—- Resources  As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are many best-of collections of Doggett’s work available. This one seems to have the best sound quality and is a decent overview of his work. Information for this one comes from all over the place, including Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F Wald, Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, and Inkspots.ca    Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the fiftieth episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. We’re now ten percent of the way through our story, and also most of the way through 1956. I’m told that when history podcasts hit a big round number, it’s customary for them to do a jumping-on episode, perhaps a “story so far” which covers everything that’s been discussed up to that point, but in brief, so that new listeners can get up to speed. That’s sort of what I’m about to do here. This week, we’re going to look at a hit song from 1956, but by someone whose career interacted with almost everyone in the first twenty or so episodes of the podcast. We’re going to look again at some of that old music, not as isolated records by different artists, but as stages in the career of a single individual. We’re going to look at someone who was a jobbing musician, who’d take any job that was on offer, but who by virtue of just being a hard-working competent jobbing player and arranger managed to have an astonishing influence on the development of music. While rock and roll was primarily a vocal music, it wasn’t a completely clean break with the past, and for most of the decades from the 1920s through to the early 50s, if you wanted music for dancing you would want instrumental groups. The big bands did employ vocalists, of course, but you can tell who the focus was on from looking at the names of the bands — the Benny Goodman Orchestra, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Count Basie orchestra — all of the leaders of the big bands were instrumentalists. They played clarinet or trombone or piano, they didn’t sing. It was only with the musicians union strikes of the 1940s, which we’ve talked about before, that more through necessity than anything else the music industry moved from being dominated by instrumental music to being dominated by singers. But well into the 1960s we’ll still be seeing rock and roll hits that were purely instrumental. Indeed, we probably wouldn’t have rock and roll guitar bands at all without instrumental groups like the Ventures in the US or the Shadows in the UK who had hits with pure instrumental records. And one of the greatest of the early rock and roll instrumentals was by someone who didn’t actually consider himself a rock and roll musician. It’s a record that influenced everyone from James Brown to the Beach Boys, and it’s called “Honky Tonk”: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”] There is surprisingly little information out there about Bill Doggett, for someone who had such an impact on the fields of rock and roll, blues, jazz, and soul. There are no books about his life, and the only website devoted to him is one designed by his nephew, which… has all the flaws one might expect from a website put together about someone’s uncle. Doggett was born in 1916 in Philadelphia, and he moved to New York in his late teens and formed his own band, for which he was the piano player. But in 1938, Lucky Millinder was looking for a new band — the way Millinder worked was that he bought out, and took over the leadership, of existing bands, which then became “the Lucky Millinder Orchestra”. This incarnation of the Lucky Millinder Orchestra, the one that was put together by Doggett before Millinder took the band over, is the one that got a residency at the Savoy after Chick Webb’s band stopped playing there, and like Webb’s band this group was managed by Moe Gale. Doggett stayed on with Millinder as his pianist, and while with the group he appeared with Millinder in the 1938 all-black film Paradise in Harlem, playing on this song: [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, “I’ve Got To Put You Down”] Doggett was, from what I can tell, the de facto musical director for Millinder’s band in this period — Millinder was a frontman and occasional singer, but he couldn’t play an instrument and was reliant on the musicians in his band to work the arrangements out for him. Doggett was in the band when Moe Gale suggested that Sister Rosetta Tharpe would work well paired up with Millinder’s main singer, Trevor Bacon, in the same way that Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald had worked well together in the Chick Webb band. Doggett was the pianist during the whole of Tharpe’s time with the Millinder band, and he co-composed, with Millinder, the song that later gave its title to a biography of Tharpe, “Shout! Sister, Shout!”: [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, “Shout! Sister, Shout!”] If you listen to any of Tharpe’s big band recordings from her time with Millinder, it’s Doggett on the piano, and I strongly suspect it was Doggett who came up with the arrangements. Listen for example to his playing on “Lonesome Road”, another song that the MIllinder band performed on film: [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, “Lonesome Road”] The Millinder band were pivotal in the move from swing music to R&B, and Doggett was an important part in that move. While he’d left the band before they took on later singers like Wynonie Harris and Ruth Brown, he had helped set the band up to be the kind of band that those singers would feel comfortable in. Doggett was also in the band when they had their biggest hit, a song called “When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)”: [Excerpt: Lucky Millinder, “When the Lights Go on Again (All Over the World)”] That’s most notable now for being one of the first recordings of a young trumpeter who was just starting out, by the name of Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie was quickly sacked by Millinder, who had a habit of getting rid of musicians before they reached their full potential. I’ve not been able to find out why Doggett left Millinder — whether he was one of those musicians who was sacked, or whether he just wanted to move on to other things — but whatever the reason, it can’t have been anything that put a stain on his reputation, because Doggett remained with Millinder’s manager, Moe Gale. We’ve mentioned Gale before several times, but he was the manager of almost every important black act based in New York in the late thirties and early forties, as well as running the Savoy Club, which we talked about in several of the earliest episodes of the podcast. Gale managed Millinder and Rosetta Tharpe, and also managed the Ink Spots, Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Webb, and Louis Jordan, and so whenever one of his acts needed a musician, he would tend to find them from his existing pool of talent. And so this is how, straight after leaving Lucky Millinder’s band, Doggett found himself working for another Gale act, the Ink Spots. He joined them as their pianist and arranger, and stayed with them for several years: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “I’ll Get By”] The Ink Spots, if you don’t remember, were a vocal quartet who became the most popular black act of the forties, and who stuck to a unique formula based around Bill Kenny’s high tenor and Hoppy Jones’ low spoken bass. They had hit after hit during the forties with songs that all sound remarkably similar, and in the mid forties those songs were arranged by Bill Doggett. He was with the group for two years — starting with the classic line-up of the group, and staying with them through Charlie Fuqua being drafted and Deek Watson being fired. While he was a sideman rather than a full member of the group, he was important enough to them that he now gets counted in lists of proper members put together by historians of the band. He ended up leaving them less than two weeks before Hoppy Jones died, and during that time he played on fourteen of their hit singles, almost all of them sticking to the same formula they’d used previously, the “top and bottom”: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “Ev’ry Night About This Time”] The different acts managed by Moe Gale all sat in with each other when needed, so for example Trevor Bacon, the male vocalist with Millinder’s band, temporarily joined the Ink Spots when Deke Watson got sick for a few weeks. And so during the times when the Ink Spots weren’t touring, Doggett would also perform with Ella Fitzgerald, who was also managed by Gale. [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Time Alone Will Tell”] And indeed, during the end of Doggett’s time with the Ink Spots, Fitzgerald recorded a number of hit singles with the group, which of course featured Doggett on the piano. That included this one, which later went on to be the basis of “Train Kept A-Rollin'”, which we looked at a few episodes back: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots, “Cow Cow Boogie”] Doggett moved over full time to become Ella’s arranger and pianist at some point during the couple of weeks between Deek Watson leaving the Ink Spots and Hoppy Jones dying, in early October 1944, and stayed with her for a couple of years, before moving on to Illinois Jacquet’s band, taking the same role again, in the band that introduced the honking tenor saxophone into R&B, and thus into rock and roll: [Excerpt: Illinois Jacquet, “Doggin’ With Doggett”] He also played on one of the most important records in forties R&B — Johnny Otis’ “Harlem Nocturne”, the first hit for the man who would go on to produce most of the great R&B artists of the fifties: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Harlem Nocturne”] And he also led his own band for a while, the Bill Doggett Octet. They were the ones who recorded “Be-Baba-Leba” with Helen Humes on vocals — the song that probably inspired Gene Vincent to write a very similarly named song a few years later: [Excerpt: Helen Humes, “Be-Baba-Leba”] He then moved on to Louis Jordan’s band full time, and this is where his career really starts. Jordan was another act in Moe Gale’s stable, and indeed just like the Ink Spots he’d had hits duetting with Ella Fitzgerald, who he’d first worked with back in the 1930s in Chick Webb’s band. He was also, as you may remember from earlier episodes, the leader of the most popular R&B group in the late forties and early fifties — the one that inspired everyone from Chuck Berry to Bill Haley. And as with his tenure with the Ink Spots, Doggett was in Jordan’s band during its period of peak commercial success. The timeline for who Doggett played with when, as you can probably tell, is all over the place, because he seemed to be playing with two or three acts at any given time. And so officially, if you look at the timelines, so far as they exist, you see that it’s generally claimed that Bill Doggett joined Louis Jordan in 1949. But I’ve seen interviews with members of Jordan’s organisation that suggest he joined much earlier, but he would alternate with Jordan’s other piano player, Wild Bill Davis. The way they worked, according to Berle Adams, who was involved in Jordan’s management, was that Davis would spend a week on the road as Jordan’s piano player, while Doggett would spend the same week writing arrangements for the group, and then they would swap over, and Doggett would go out on the road while Davis would write arrangements. Either way, after a while, Doggett became the sole pianist for the group, as Davis struck out on his own, and Doggett once again basically became the musical director for one of the biggest bands in the R&B business. Doggett is often credited as the person who rewrote “Saturday Night Fish Fry” into one of Jordan’s biggest hits from its inauspicious original version, though Jordan is credited on the record: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Saturday Night Fish Fry”] During his time with Jordan, Doggett continued playing on records for Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and other artists, but he was paying close attention to Wild Bill Davis, who he had replaced in Jordan’s group. Davis had discovered the possibilities in a new musical instrument, the Hammond organ, and had formed a trio consisting of himself, a guitarist, and a drummer to exploit these possibilities in jazz music: [Excerpt: Wild Bill Davis, “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be”] Doggett was also fascinated by this instrument, especially when hearing it up close, as when Davis rejoined Jordan’s band to record “Tamburitza Boogie”, which had Doggett on piano and Davis on the Hammond organ: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Tamburitza Boogie”] When Doggett left Jordan’s band, he decided to form an organ trio just like Davis’. The only problem was that it was just like Davis’. His group had the same instrumentation, and Doggett and Davis had very similar playing styles. Still, Henry Glover got him a contract with King Records, and he started recording Hammond organ blues tracks in the Davis style: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett Trio, “Big Dog”] Davis and Doggett between them gave the Hammond organ its prominence in the world of jazz, R&B, and soul music. The Hammond organ has an odd image, as most people associate it with the cheesiest sort of light entertainment — certainly for anyone in Britain of the generation older than mine, for example, the name it conjures up is Reggie Dixon, possibly the least funky man ever. But in that part of music which is the intersection of jazz and R&B — the part of music inhabited by Jimmy Smith, Booker T Jones, Ray Charles, Georgie Fame, Billy Preston and others — the Hammond organ has become an essential instrument, used so differently that one might almost compare it to the violin, where the instrument is referred to as a fiddle when it’s played on folk or country songs. And that comes from Davis and Doggett and their almost simultaneous invention of a new style of keyboards for the new style of music that was coming up in the late forties and early fifties. But after a year or two of playing in an organ trio, Doggett decided that he didn’t want to keep making records that sounded so much like the ones Wild Bill Davis was making — he didn’t want to be seen as a copy. And so to vary the style, he decided to take on a honking saxophone player to be the group’s lead instrumentalist, while Doggett would concentrate on providing a rhythmic pad. This lineup of his group would go on to make the record that would make Doggett’s name. “Honky Tonk, Parts 1 and 2” came about almost by accident. As Doggett told the story, his biggest hit started out at a dance in Lima, Ohio on a Sunday night. The group were playing their normal set and people were dancing as normal, but then in between songs Billy Butler, Doggett’s guitarist, just started noodling an instrumental line on his bass strings: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk” intro] This hadn’t been planned — he was just noodling around, as all guitarists will do when given five seconds silence. But the audience started dancing to it, and if you’re in a bar band and the audience is dancing, you keep doing what you’re doing. As Butler was just playing a simple twelve-bar blues pattern, the rest of the group fell in with the riff he was playing, and he started soloing over them: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk” guitar soloing] After three choruses of this, Butler nodded to Clifford Scott, the group’s saxophone player, to take over, and Scott started playing a honking saxophone version of what Butler had been playing: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”, sax] After Scott played through it a few times, he looked over to Doggett to see if Doggett wanted to take a solo too. Doggett shook his head. The song had already been going about five minutes and what Butler and Scott had been playing was enough. The group quickly brought the song to a close using a standard blues outro: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk”, outro] And that would have been the end of that. It’s the kind of thing that bar bands have jammed a million times, the sort of thing that if you’re a musician you think nothing of. They laughed at the end of the song, happy that they’d pulled off something that spontaneous and the audience had been OK with it, and carried on with the rest of their planned set. But then, a couple of songs later, someone in the audience came up and asked them if they could play that hot new song they’d been playing before again, not realising it had just been a spur-of-the-moment jam. OK, you give the audience what they want, the band members could remember more or less what they’d been playing, so they played it again. And the crowd went wild. And they played it again. And the crowd went wild again. By the end of the night they’d played that new song, the one they’d improvised based on Billy Butler’s guitar noodling, ten times. Doggett immediately phoned Syd Nathan at King Records, his label, and told him that they had a hit on their hands and needed to get it out straight away. But there was one problem — the song was over five minutes long, and a shellac 78RPM disc, which was still the most popular format for R&B music, could only hold three minutes per side. It would have to be a double-sided record. Nathan hated putting out records where the song continued onto the other side, because the jukebox operators who were his main customers didn’t like them. But he eventually agreed, and Doggett and his band got together in the studio and recorded their new instrumental in a single take. It was released as “Honky Tonk Part One” and part two, and they pressed up five thousand copies in the first week. Those sold out straight away, so the next week they pressed up twelve thousand five hundred copies. Those also sold straight away, and so for the next few weeks they started pressing up a hundred thousand copies a week. The song went to number one on the R&B charts, and became the biggest selling R&B song of 1956, spending thirteen weeks in total at number one — dropping down the charts and then back up again. It also reached number two on the pop charts, an astonishing feat for an R&B instrumental. It became a staple for cover bands, and it was recorded by the obvious instrumental acts like the Ventures and Duane Eddy — and indeed Duane Eddy’s whole style seems to have come from “Honky Tonk” — but by other people you might not expect, like Buddy Holly: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Honky Tonk”] The Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Honky Tonk”] And even James Brown: [Excerpt: James Brown, Honky Tonk”]  Doggett never had another hit quite as big as “Honky Tonk”, though his next few records, based on the “Honky Tonk” pattern, also made the top five on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Slow Walk”] He had ten more R&B top thirty hits over the course of the 1950s. But Doggett was being promoted as a rock and roll act, and playing bills with other rock and roll stars, and he didn’t really feel comfortable in the rock and roll world. When “Honky Tonk” came out, he was forty years old — by far the oldest of the people who had rock and roll hits in the mid fifties — and he was a jazz organ player, not a Little Richard type. He was also stuck repeating a formula — over the decade after “Honky Tonk” parts one and two he recorded tracks like “Honky Tonk (vocal version)”, “Hippy Dippy”, “Blip Blop”, “Yocky Dock”, and “Honky Tonk Bossa Nova”. His career as a charting artist more or less stopped after 1960, when he made the mistake of asking Syd Nathan if he could have a higher royalty rate, given the millions of dollars his recordings had brought in to King Records, and King dropped him. But it didn’t stop his career as a working musician. In 1962 he teamed up again with Ella Fitzgerald, who wanted to go back to making music with a bit more rhythm than her recent albums of ballads. The resulting album, “Rhythm is my Business”, featured Doggett’s arrangements and Hammond organ very prominently: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Hallelujah I Love Him So”] He also teamed up in 1969 with James Brown, who around that time was trying to pay back his dues to others who’d been artists on King Records when Brown had started with them in the fifties. As well as recording his album “Thinking About Little Willie John and Other Nice Things”, Brown had also been producing records for Hank Ballard, and now it was Bill Doggett’s turn. For Doggett, Brown produced and wrote “Honky Tonk Popcorn”: [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk Popcorn”] Doggett spent most of the rest of his life touring the oldies circuit, a respected organist who would play hundreds of shows a year, until his death in 1996 aged eighty. He played “Honky Tonk” at every show, saying “I just wouldn’t be Bill Doggett if I didn’t play ‘Honky Tonk’. That’s what the people pay to hear, so that’s what they get.”

Episode thirty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "I Walk The Line" by Johnny Cash, and is part two of a trilogy on the aftermath of Elvis leaving Sun, and the birth of rockabilly. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Don't Be Angry" by Nappy Brown.  ----more---- Errata Two minor errors I noticed while editing but didn't think were worth going back and redoing -- I pronounce "Belshazzar" incorrectly (it's pronounced as Cash does in the song, as far as I can tell), and I said that the lyric to "Get Rhythm" contains the phrase "if you get the blues", when of course it's "when you get the blues". Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. My main source for this episode is Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn. I'm relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. This triple-CD set contains everything Johnny Cash recorded for Sun Records. His early Sun singles are also on this ten-disc set, which charts the history of Sun Records, with the A- and B-sides of ninety of the first Sun singles in chronological order for an absurdly low price. This will help give you the full context for Cash's work, in a way hearing it in isolation wouldn't.     Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?  Transcript This podcast is called a history of rock music, but one of the things we're going to learn as the story goes on is that the history of any genre in popular music eventually encompasses them all. And at the end of 1955, in particular, there was no hard and fast distinction between the genres of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music. So today we're going to talk about someone who, to many, epitomises country music more than any other artist, but who started out recording for Sam Phillips at Sun Studios, making music that was stylistically indistinguishable from any of the other rockabilly artists there, and whose career would intertwine with all of them for decades to come. Before you listen to this one, you might want to go back and listen to last week's episode, on "Blue Suede Shoes", because the stories of Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins tie together quite a lot, and this is effectively part two of a three-parter, about Sun Records and the birth of rockabilly. Johnny Cash's birth name was actually J.R. Cash -- initials rather than a full name -- and that was how he was known until he joined the Air Force. His parents apparently had a disagreement over what their son's name should be, and so rather than give him full names, they just gave him initials. The Air Force wouldn't allow him to just use initials as his name, so he changed his name to John R. Cash. It was only once he became a professional musician that he took on the name Johnny Cash. He still never had a middle name, just a middle initial. While he was in the military, he'd been the very first American to learn that Stalin had died, as he'd been the radio operator who'd intercepted and decoded the Russian transmissions about it. But the military had never been the career he wanted. He wanted to be a singer. He just didn't know how. After returning to the US from his stint in the Air Force in Germany, aged twenty-two, Cash got married and moved to Memphis, to be near his brother. Cash's brother introduced him to two of his colleagues, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant. Both Perkins and Grant could play a little guitar, and they started getting together to play a little music, sometimes with a steel player called Red Kernodle. They were very, very, unskilled musicians, but that didn't matter. They had a couple of things that mattered far more than skill. They had a willingness to try anything if it might sound good, and they had Cash's voice, which even as a callow young man sounded like Cash had been carved out of rock and imbued with the spirit of an Old Testament prophet. Cash never had a huge range, but his voice had a sonority to it that was quite astonishing, a resonant bass-baritone that demanded you pay attention to what it had to say. And Cash had a determination that he was going to become a famous singer. He had no idea how one was to go about this, but he knew it was what he wanted to do. To start with, they mostly performed the gospel songs that Cash loved. This was the music that is euphemistically called Southern Gospel, but which is really white gospel. Cash had had a religious experience as a kid, when his elder brother, who had wanted to become a priest, had died and had had a deathbed vision of heaven and hell, and Cash wanted to become a gospel singer to pay tribute to his brother while also indulging his own love of music. But then at one of their jam sessions, Cash brought in a song he had written himself, called "Belshazzar", based on a story from the Bible: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash: "Belshazzar"] The other two were amazed. Not so much by the song itself, but by the fact that you could write a song at all. The idea that songs were something you write was not something that had really occurred to them. Cash, Perkins, and Grant all played acoustic guitar at first, and none of them were particularly good. They were mostly just hanging out together, having fun. They were just singing stuff they'd heard on the radio, and they particularly wanted to sound like the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "This Little Light of Mine"] They were having fun together, but that was all. But Cash was ambitious to do something more. And that "something more" took shape when he heard a record, one that was recorded the day after the plane that took Cash back into the US touched down: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "That's All Right Mama"] He liked the sound of that record a lot. And what he liked even more was hearing the DJ, after the song was played, say that the record was out on Sun Records, a label based in Memphis itself. Johnny, Luther, and Marshall went to see Elvis, Scotty, and Bill perform, playing on the back of a flatbed truck and just playing the two songs on their single. Cash was immediately worried – Elvis was clearly a teenager, and Cash himself was a grown man of twenty-two. Had he missed his chance at stardom? Was he too old? Cash had a chat with Elvis, and went along again the next night to see the trio performing a proper set at a nightclub, and this time he talked with Scotty Moore and asked him how to get signed to Sun. Moore told him to speak to Sam Phillips, and so Cash got hold of Sun's phone number and started calling, asking to speak to Phillips, who was never in – he was out on the road a lot of the time, pushing the label's records to distributors and radio stations. But Cash also knew that he was going to have to do something more to get recorded. He was going to have to turn his little guitar jam sessions into a proper group like Elvis, Scotty, and Bill, not just three people bashing away together at acoustic guitars. They sometimes had Red on steel guitar, but they still needed some variety. Cash was obviously going to be the lead singer, so it made sense for him to stick with the acoustic rhythm guitar. Luther Perkins got himself an electric guitar and started playing lead lines which amounted to little more than boogie-woogie basslines transposed up an octave. Marshall Grant, meanwhile, got himself a double bass, and taped markers on it to show him where the notes were. He'd never played one before, so all he could do was play single notes every other beat, with big gaps between the notes -- "Boom [pause] boom [pause] boom [pause] boom" -- he couldn't get his fingers between the notes any faster. This group was clearly not anything like as professional as Presley and his group, but they had *something*. Their limitations as musicians meant that they had to find ways to make the songs work without relying on complicated parts or virtuoso playing. As Luther Perkins would later put it, "You know how all those hot-shot guitarists race their fingers all over the strings? Well, they’re looking for the right sound. I found it.” But Cash was still, frankly, a little worried that his group weren't all that great, and when he finally went to see Sam Phillips in person, having failed to get hold of him on the phone, he went alone. Phillips was immediately impressed by Cash's bearing and presence. He was taller, and more dignified, than most of the people who came in to audition for Phillips. He was someone with presence, and gravitas, and Phillips thought he had the makings of a star. The day after meeting Phillips for the first time, Cash brought his musician friends around as well, and Johnny, Luther, Marshall, and Red all had a chat with Phillips. Phillips explained to them that they didn't need to be technically great musicians, just have the right kind of sound. The four of them rehearsed, and then came back to Phillips with some of the material they'd been practising. But when it came time to audition, their steel player got so scared that he couldn't tune his guitar, his hands were shaking so much. Eventually he decided that he was holding the other three back, and left the studio, and the audition continued with just the group who had now become the Tennessee Three – a name they chose because while they all now lived in Tennessee, none of them had originally come from there. Phillips liked their sound, but explained that he wasn't particularly interested in putting out gospel music. There's an urban legend that Phillips said "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell", though this was denied by Cash. But it is true that he'd had no sales success with gospel music, and that he wanted something more commercial. Whatever Phillips said, though, Cash took the hint, and went home and started writing secular songs. The one he came back to Phillips with, "Hey Porter", was inspired by the sound of the railway, and had a boom-chick-a-boom rhythm that would soon become Cash's trademark: [Excerpt, "Hey Porter": Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two] Phillips liked it, and the Tennessee Three set to recording it. Or at least that was what they were called when they recorded it, but by the time it was released Sam Phillips had suggested a slight name change, and the single came out under the name Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. As the Tennessee Two didn't have a drummer, Cash put paper between the strings and the fretboard of his acoustic guitar to deaden the sound and turn it into something that approximated the sound of a snare drum. The resulting boom-chick sound was one that would become a signature of Cash's recordings for the next few decades, a uniquely country music take on the two-beat rhythm. That sound was almost entirely forced on the group by their instrumental limitations, but it was a sound that worked. The song Cash brought in to Phillips as a possible B-side was called "Folsom Prison Blues", and it was only an original in the loosest possible sense. Before going off to Germany with the air force, Cash had seen a film called "Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison", and it had given Cash the idea that someone should write a song about that. But he'd put the idea to the back of his mind until two other inspirations arrived. The first was a song called "Crescent City Blues", which he heard on a Gordon Jenkins album that a fellow airman in Germany owned: [Excerpt: Gordon Jenkins (Beverly Maher vocals): "Crescent City Blues"] If you've not heard that song before, and are familiar with Cash's work, you're probably mildly in shock right now at just how much like “Folsom Prison Blues” that is. Jenkins' song in turn is also strongly inspired by another song, also titled "Crescent City Blues", by the boogie-woogie pianist Little Brother Montgomery: [Excerpt Little Brother Montgomery, "Crescent City Blues"] The second musical inspiration for Cash's prison song was a song by Cash's idol, Jimmie Rodgers, "Blue Yodel #1", also known as "T For Texas": [Excerpt: Jimmie Rodgers, "Blue Yodel #1"] The line "I'm gonna shoot poor Thelma, just to see her jump and fall" hit Cash hard, and he realised that the most morally bankrupt person he could imagine was someone who would kill someone else just to watch them die. He put this bleak amorality together with the idea of a song about Folsom, and changed just enough of the words to "Crescent City Blues" that it worked with this new concept of the character, and he titled the result "Folsom Prison Blues": [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "Folsom Prison Blues"] 9) Sam Phillips didn't think that was suitable as the B-side to "Hey Porter", and they eventually went for a sad song that Cash had written titled "Cry Cry Cry," but "Folsom Prison Blues" was put aside as a future possibility. When the contract was drawn up, the only person who was actually signed to Sun was Cash – Phillips didn't want to be tied to the other two musicians. But while only Cash was signed to the label, they split the money more or less equitably, in a forty-thirty-thirty split (other sources say that the split was completely equal). “Hey Porter” and “Cry Cry Cry” both charted, and "Folsom Prison Blues" became Cash's second single, and one of the songs that would define him for the rest of his career. It went to number four on the country and western chart, and established him as a genuine star of country music. It's around this time that Sun signed Carl Perkins, which caused problems. Cash resented the way that he was being treated by Phillips as being less important than Perkins. He thought that Phillips was now only interested in his new star, and wasn't going to bother promoting Cash's records any more. This would be a recurring pattern with Phillips over the next few years -- he would discover some new star and whoever his previous favourite was would be convinced that Phillips no longer cared about them any more. This is ultimately what led to Sun's downfall, as one by one his discoveries moved on to other labels that they believed valued them more than Phillips did. Phillips, on the other hand, always argued that he had to put in more time when dealing with a new discovery, because he had to build their career up, and that established artists would always forget what he'd done for them when they saw him doing the same things for the next person. That's not to say, though, that Cash disliked Perkins. Quite the contrary. The two became close friends -- though Cash became even closer with Clayton Perkins, Carl's wayward brother, who had a juvenile sense of humour that appealed to Cash. Cash even co-wrote a song with Perkins, "All Mama's Children", which became the B-side to Perkins' "Boppin' the Blues": [Excerpt, Carl Perkins, "All Mama's Children"] It's not the greatest song either man ever wrote, by any means, but it was the start of a working relationship that would continue off and on for decades, and which both men would benefit from significantly. By this point, Cash had started to build a following, and as you might expect given his inspiration, he was following the exact same career path as Elvis Presley. He was managed by Elvis' first proper manager, Bob Neal, and he was given a regular slot on the Louisiana Hayride, the country music radio show that Elvis had built his reputation on. But this meant that Cash was being promoted alongside Carl Perkins, as a rock and roll star. This would actually do wonders for Cash's career in the long term. A lot of people who wouldn't listen to anything labeled country were fans of Cash in the mid fifties, and remained with him, and this meant that his image was always a little more appealing to rock audiences than many other similar singers. You can trace a direct line between Cash being promoted as a rock and roller in 1955 and 56, and his comeback with the American Recordings series more than forty years later. But when Cash brought in a new song he'd written, about his struggle while on the road to be true to his wife (and, implicitly, also to his God), it caused a clash between him and Sam Phillips. That song was quite possibly inspired by a line in "Sixteen Tons", the big hit from Tennessee Ernie Ford that year, which Cash fell in love with when it came out, and which made Cash a lifelong fan of its writer Merle Travis: [Excerpt: "Sixteen Tons", Tennessee Ernie Ford] He never made the connection publicly himself, but that image of walking the line almost definitely stuck in Cash's mind, and it became the central image of a song he wrote while on the road, thinking about fidelity in every sense. "I Walk the Line" was the subject of a lot of debate between Cash and Phillips, neither of whom were entirely convinced by the other's argument. Cash was sure that the song was a good one, maybe the best song he ever wrote, but he wanted to play it as a slow, plaintive, lovelorn ballad. Phillips, on the other hand, wasn't so impressed by the song itself, but he thought that it had some potential if it was sped up to the kind of tempo that "Hey Porter", "Cry Cry Cry" and "Folsom Prison Blues" had all been performed in -- a rock and roll tempo, for Cash's rock and roll audience. Give it some rhythm, and some of the boom-chika-boom, and there might be something there. Cash argued that he didn't need to. After all, the other song he had brought in, one that he cared about much less and had originally written to give to Elvis, was a rock and roll song. The lyrics even went "Get rhythm if you get the blues": [Excerpt: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two: "Get Rhythm"] That song itself would go on to become a hit for Cash, and a staple of his live shows, but Phillips didn't see a reason why, just because one side of the record was uptempo, the other shouldn't be as well. He wanted the music to be universal, rather than personal, and to his mind a strong rhythm was necessary for universality. They eventually compromised and recorded two versions, a faster one recorded the way Phillips wanted it, and a slower one, the way Cash liked it. Cash walked out convinced that Phillips would see reason and release the slower version. He was devastated to find that Phillips had released the faster version. Cash later said, “The first time I heard it on the radio, I called him and said, ‘I hate that sound. Please don’t release any more records. I hate that sound.’ ” But then the record became a massive hit, and Cash decided that maybe the sound wasn't so bad after all. It went to number one on the country jukebox chart, made the top twenty in the pop charts, and sold more than two million copies as a single. Phillips had unquestionably had the right instincts, commercially at least. [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "I Walk The Line"] "I Walk The Line" has a very, very, unusual structure. There's a key change after every single verse. This is just not something that you do, normally. Most pop songs will either stay in one key throughout, have a different key for different sections (so they might be in a minor key for the verse and a major key for the chorus, for example) or have one key change near the end, to give the song a bit of a kick. Here, the first verse is in F, then it goes up a fourth for the second verse, in B flat. It goes up another fourth, to E flat, for the third verse, then for the fourth verse it's back down to B flat, and the fifth verse it's back down to F, though an octave lower. (For those wondering about those keys, either they're playing with capoes or, more likely, Sam Phillips sped the track up a semitone to make it sound faster.) And this is really very, very, clever in the way it sets the mood of the song. The song starts and ends in the same place both musically and lyrically -- the last verse is a duplicate of the first, though sung an octave lower than it started -- and the rising and falling overall arc of the song suggests a natural cycle that goes along with the metaphors in the lyrics -- the tides, heartbeats, day and night, dark and light. The protagonist of the song is walking a thin line, wobbling, liable at any moment to fall over to one side or another, just like the oscillation and return to the original tonal centre in this song. What sounds like a relatively crude piece of work is, when listened to closely, a much more inventive record. And this is true of the chord sequences in the individual verses too. The verses only have three chords each -- the standard three chords that most country or blues songs have, the tonic, subdominant and dominant of the key. But they're not arranged in the standard order that you'd have them in, in a three-chord trick or a twelve-bar blues. Instead the verses all start with the dominant, an unusual, unstable, choice that came about from Cash having once threaded a tape backwards and having been fascinated by the sound. The dominant is normally the last chord. Here it's the first. The backwards tape is also one story as to where he got the idea of the humming that starts every verse -- though Cash also used to claim that the humming was so he could find the right note because there were so many key changes. This is not a song that's structured like a normal country and western song, and it's quite an extraordinarily personal piece of work. It's an expression of one man's very personal aesthetic, no matter how much Sam Phillips altered it to fit his own ideas of what Cash should be recording. It's an utterly idiosyncratic, utterly *strange* record, and a very strong contender for the best thing Sun Records ever put out, which is a high bar to meet. The fact that this sold two million copies in a country market that is usually characterised as conservative shows just how wrong such stereotypes can be. It was a masterpiece, and Johnny Cash was set for a very, very, long and artistically successful career. But that career wouldn't be with Sun. His life was in turmoil, the marriage that he had written so movingly about trying to keep together was falling apart, and he was beginning to think that he would do better doing as Elvis had and moving to a major label. Soon he would be signed to Columbia, the label where he would spend almost all his career, but we'll have one last glimpse of him at Sun. before he went off to Columbia and superstardom, in a future episode. And next week, we'll look at how Elvis was doing away from Sun.

Episode thirty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Walk The Line” by Johnny Cash, and is part two of a trilogy on the aftermath of Elvis leaving Sun, and the birth of rockabilly. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Don’t Be Angry” by Nappy Brown.  —-more—- Errata Two minor errors I noticed while editing but didn’t think were worth going back and redoing — I pronounce “Belshazzar” incorrectly (it’s pronounced as Cash does in the song, as far as I can tell), and I said that the lyric to “Get Rhythm” contains the phrase “if you get the blues”, when of course it’s “when you get the blues”. Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. My main source for this episode is Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn. I’m relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. This triple-CD set contains everything Johnny Cash recorded for Sun Records. His early Sun singles are also on this ten-disc set, which charts the history of Sun Records, with the A- and B-sides of ninety of the first Sun singles in chronological order for an absurdly low price. This will help give you the full context for Cash’s work, in a way hearing it in isolation wouldn’t.     Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?  Transcript This podcast is called a history of rock music, but one of the things we’re going to learn as the story goes on is that the history of any genre in popular music eventually encompasses them all. And at the end of 1955, in particular, there was no hard and fast distinction between the genres of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music. So today we’re going to talk about someone who, to many, epitomises country music more than any other artist, but who started out recording for Sam Phillips at Sun Studios, making music that was stylistically indistinguishable from any of the other rockabilly artists there, and whose career would intertwine with all of them for decades to come. Before you listen to this one, you might want to go back and listen to last week’s episode, on “Blue Suede Shoes”, because the stories of Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins tie together quite a lot, and this is effectively part two of a three-parter, about Sun Records and the birth of rockabilly. Johnny Cash’s birth name was actually J.R. Cash — initials rather than a full name — and that was how he was known until he joined the Air Force. His parents apparently had a disagreement over what their son’s name should be, and so rather than give him full names, they just gave him initials. The Air Force wouldn’t allow him to just use initials as his name, so he changed his name to John R. Cash. It was only once he became a professional musician that he took on the name Johnny Cash. He still never had a middle name, just a middle initial. While he was in the military, he’d been the very first American to learn that Stalin had died, as he’d been the radio operator who’d intercepted and decoded the Russian transmissions about it. But the military had never been the career he wanted. He wanted to be a singer. He just didn’t know how. After returning to the US from his stint in the Air Force in Germany, aged twenty-two, Cash got married and moved to Memphis, to be near his brother. Cash’s brother introduced him to two of his colleagues, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant. Both Perkins and Grant could play a little guitar, and they started getting together to play a little music, sometimes with a steel player called Red Kernodle. They were very, very, unskilled musicians, but that didn’t matter. They had a couple of things that mattered far more than skill. They had a willingness to try anything if it might sound good, and they had Cash’s voice, which even as a callow young man sounded like Cash had been carved out of rock and imbued with the spirit of an Old Testament prophet. Cash never had a huge range, but his voice had a sonority to it that was quite astonishing, a resonant bass-baritone that demanded you pay attention to what it had to say. And Cash had a determination that he was going to become a famous singer. He had no idea how one was to go about this, but he knew it was what he wanted to do. To start with, they mostly performed the gospel songs that Cash loved. This was the music that is euphemistically called Southern Gospel, but which is really white gospel. Cash had had a religious experience as a kid, when his elder brother, who had wanted to become a priest, had died and had had a deathbed vision of heaven and hell, and Cash wanted to become a gospel singer to pay tribute to his brother while also indulging his own love of music. But then at one of their jam sessions, Cash brought in a song he had written himself, called “Belshazzar”, based on a story from the Bible: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash: “Belshazzar”] The other two were amazed. Not so much by the song itself, but by the fact that you could write a song at all. The idea that songs were something you write was not something that had really occurred to them. Cash, Perkins, and Grant all played acoustic guitar at first, and none of them were particularly good. They were mostly just hanging out together, having fun. They were just singing stuff they’d heard on the radio, and they particularly wanted to sound like the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “This Little Light of Mine”] They were having fun together, but that was all. But Cash was ambitious to do something more. And that “something more” took shape when he heard a record, one that was recorded the day after the plane that took Cash back into the US touched down: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “That’s All Right Mama”] He liked the sound of that record a lot. And what he liked even more was hearing the DJ, after the song was played, say that the record was out on Sun Records, a label based in Memphis itself. Johnny, Luther, and Marshall went to see Elvis, Scotty, and Bill perform, playing on the back of a flatbed truck and just playing the two songs on their single. Cash was immediately worried – Elvis was clearly a teenager, and Cash himself was a grown man of twenty-two. Had he missed his chance at stardom? Was he too old? Cash had a chat with Elvis, and went along again the next night to see the trio performing a proper set at a nightclub, and this time he talked with Scotty Moore and asked him how to get signed to Sun. Moore told him to speak to Sam Phillips, and so Cash got hold of Sun’s phone number and started calling, asking to speak to Phillips, who was never in – he was out on the road a lot of the time, pushing the label’s records to distributors and radio stations. But Cash also knew that he was going to have to do something more to get recorded. He was going to have to turn his little guitar jam sessions into a proper group like Elvis, Scotty, and Bill, not just three people bashing away together at acoustic guitars. They sometimes had Red on steel guitar, but they still needed some variety. Cash was obviously going to be the lead singer, so it made sense for him to stick with the acoustic rhythm guitar. Luther Perkins got himself an electric guitar and started playing lead lines which amounted to little more than boogie-woogie basslines transposed up an octave. Marshall Grant, meanwhile, got himself a double bass, and taped markers on it to show him where the notes were. He’d never played one before, so all he could do was play single notes every other beat, with big gaps between the notes — “Boom [pause] boom [pause] boom [pause] boom” — he couldn’t get his fingers between the notes any faster. This group was clearly not anything like as professional as Presley and his group, but they had *something*. Their limitations as musicians meant that they had to find ways to make the songs work without relying on complicated parts or virtuoso playing. As Luther Perkins would later put it, “You know how all those hot-shot guitarists race their fingers all over the strings? Well, they’re looking for the right sound. I found it.” But Cash was still, frankly, a little worried that his group weren’t all that great, and when he finally went to see Sam Phillips in person, having failed to get hold of him on the phone, he went alone. Phillips was immediately impressed by Cash’s bearing and presence. He was taller, and more dignified, than most of the people who came in to audition for Phillips. He was someone with presence, and gravitas, and Phillips thought he had the makings of a star. The day after meeting Phillips for the first time, Cash brought his musician friends around as well, and Johnny, Luther, Marshall, and Red all had a chat with Phillips. Phillips explained to them that they didn’t need to be technically great musicians, just have the right kind of sound. The four of them rehearsed, and then came back to Phillips with some of the material they’d been practising. But when it came time to audition, their steel player got so scared that he couldn’t tune his guitar, his hands were shaking so much. Eventually he decided that he was holding the other three back, and left the studio, and the audition continued with just the group who had now become the Tennessee Three – a name they chose because while they all now lived in Tennessee, none of them had originally come from there. Phillips liked their sound, but explained that he wasn’t particularly interested in putting out gospel music. There’s an urban legend that Phillips said “go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell”, though this was denied by Cash. But it is true that he’d had no sales success with gospel music, and that he wanted something more commercial. Whatever Phillips said, though, Cash took the hint, and went home and started writing secular songs. The one he came back to Phillips with, “Hey Porter”, was inspired by the sound of the railway, and had a boom-chick-a-boom rhythm that would soon become Cash’s trademark: [Excerpt, “Hey Porter”: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two] Phillips liked it, and the Tennessee Three set to recording it. Or at least that was what they were called when they recorded it, but by the time it was released Sam Phillips had suggested a slight name change, and the single came out under the name Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. As the Tennessee Two didn’t have a drummer, Cash put paper between the strings and the fretboard of his acoustic guitar to deaden the sound and turn it into something that approximated the sound of a snare drum. The resulting boom-chick sound was one that would become a signature of Cash’s recordings for the next few decades, a uniquely country music take on the two-beat rhythm. That sound was almost entirely forced on the group by their instrumental limitations, but it was a sound that worked. The song Cash brought in to Phillips as a possible B-side was called “Folsom Prison Blues”, and it was only an original in the loosest possible sense. Before going off to Germany with the air force, Cash had seen a film called “Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison”, and it had given Cash the idea that someone should write a song about that. But he’d put the idea to the back of his mind until two other inspirations arrived. The first was a song called “Crescent City Blues”, which he heard on a Gordon Jenkins album that a fellow airman in Germany owned: [Excerpt: Gordon Jenkins (Beverly Maher vocals): “Crescent City Blues”] If you’ve not heard that song before, and are familiar with Cash’s work, you’re probably mildly in shock right now at just how much like “Folsom Prison Blues” that is. Jenkins’ song in turn is also strongly inspired by another song, also titled “Crescent City Blues”, by the boogie-woogie pianist Little Brother Montgomery: [Excerpt Little Brother Montgomery, “Crescent City Blues”] The second musical inspiration for Cash’s prison song was a song by Cash’s idol, Jimmie Rodgers, “Blue Yodel #1”, also known as “T For Texas”: [Excerpt: Jimmie Rodgers, “Blue Yodel #1”] The line “I’m gonna shoot poor Thelma, just to see her jump and fall” hit Cash hard, and he realised that the most morally bankrupt person he could imagine was someone who would kill someone else just to watch them die. He put this bleak amorality together with the idea of a song about Folsom, and changed just enough of the words to “Crescent City Blues” that it worked with this new concept of the character, and he titled the result “Folsom Prison Blues”: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, “Folsom Prison Blues”] 9) Sam Phillips didn’t think that was suitable as the B-side to “Hey Porter”, and they eventually went for a sad song that Cash had written titled “Cry Cry Cry,” but “Folsom Prison Blues” was put aside as a future possibility. When the contract was drawn up, the only person who was actually signed to Sun was Cash – Phillips didn’t want to be tied to the other two musicians. But while only Cash was signed to the label, they split the money more or less equitably, in a forty-thirty-thirty split (other sources say that the split was completely equal). “Hey Porter” and “Cry Cry Cry” both charted, and “Folsom Prison Blues” became Cash’s second single, and one of the songs that would define him for the rest of his career. It went to number four on the country and western chart, and established him as a genuine star of country music. It’s around this time that Sun signed Carl Perkins, which caused problems. Cash resented the way that he was being treated by Phillips as being less important than Perkins. He thought that Phillips was now only interested in his new star, and wasn’t going to bother promoting Cash’s records any more. This would be a recurring pattern with Phillips over the next few years — he would discover some new star and whoever his previous favourite was would be convinced that Phillips no longer cared about them any more. This is ultimately what led to Sun’s downfall, as one by one his discoveries moved on to other labels that they believed valued them more than Phillips did. Phillips, on the other hand, always argued that he had to put in more time when dealing with a new discovery, because he had to build their career up, and that established artists would always forget what he’d done for them when they saw him doing the same things for the next person. That’s not to say, though, that Cash disliked Perkins. Quite the contrary. The two became close friends — though Cash became even closer with Clayton Perkins, Carl’s wayward brother, who had a juvenile sense of humour that appealed to Cash. Cash even co-wrote a song with Perkins, “All Mama’s Children”, which became the B-side to Perkins’ “Boppin’ the Blues”: [Excerpt, Carl Perkins, “All Mama’s Children”] It’s not the greatest song either man ever wrote, by any means, but it was the start of a working relationship that would continue off and on for decades, and which both men would benefit from significantly. By this point, Cash had started to build a following, and as you might expect given his inspiration, he was following the exact same career path as Elvis Presley. He was managed by Elvis’ first proper manager, Bob Neal, and he was given a regular slot on the Louisiana Hayride, the country music radio show that Elvis had built his reputation on. But this meant that Cash was being promoted alongside Carl Perkins, as a rock and roll star. This would actually do wonders for Cash’s career in the long term. A lot of people who wouldn’t listen to anything labeled country were fans of Cash in the mid fifties, and remained with him, and this meant that his image was always a little more appealing to rock audiences than many other similar singers. You can trace a direct line between Cash being promoted as a rock and roller in 1955 and 56, and his comeback with the American Recordings series more than forty years later. But when Cash brought in a new song he’d written, about his struggle while on the road to be true to his wife (and, implicitly, also to his God), it caused a clash between him and Sam Phillips. That song was quite possibly inspired by a line in “Sixteen Tons”, the big hit from Tennessee Ernie Ford that year, which Cash fell in love with when it came out, and which made Cash a lifelong fan of its writer Merle Travis: [Excerpt: “Sixteen Tons”, Tennessee Ernie Ford] He never made the connection publicly himself, but that image of walking the line almost definitely stuck in Cash’s mind, and it became the central image of a song he wrote while on the road, thinking about fidelity in every sense. “I Walk the Line” was the subject of a lot of debate between Cash and Phillips, neither of whom were entirely convinced by the other’s argument. Cash was sure that the song was a good one, maybe the best song he ever wrote, but he wanted to play it as a slow, plaintive, lovelorn ballad. Phillips, on the other hand, wasn’t so impressed by the song itself, but he thought that it had some potential if it was sped up to the kind of tempo that “Hey Porter”, “Cry Cry Cry” and “Folsom Prison Blues” had all been performed in — a rock and roll tempo, for Cash’s rock and roll audience. Give it some rhythm, and some of the boom-chika-boom, and there might be something there. Cash argued that he didn’t need to. After all, the other song he had brought in, one that he cared about much less and had originally written to give to Elvis, was a rock and roll song. The lyrics even went “Get rhythm if you get the blues”: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two: “Get Rhythm”] That song itself would go on to become a hit for Cash, and a staple of his live shows, but Phillips didn’t see a reason why, just because one side of the record was uptempo, the other shouldn’t be as well. He wanted the music to be universal, rather than personal, and to his mind a strong rhythm was necessary for universality. They eventually compromised and recorded two versions, a faster one recorded the way Phillips wanted it, and a slower one, the way Cash liked it. Cash walked out convinced that Phillips would see reason and release the slower version. He was devastated to find that Phillips had released the faster version. Cash later said, “The first time I heard it on the radio, I called him and said, ‘I hate that sound. Please don’t release any more records. I hate that sound.’ ” But then the record became a massive hit, and Cash decided that maybe the sound wasn’t so bad after all. It went to number one on the country jukebox chart, made the top twenty in the pop charts, and sold more than two million copies as a single. Phillips had unquestionably had the right instincts, commercially at least. [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, “I Walk The Line”] “I Walk The Line” has a very, very, unusual structure. There’s a key change after every single verse. This is just not something that you do, normally. Most pop songs will either stay in one key throughout, have a different key for different sections (so they might be in a minor key for the verse and a major key for the chorus, for example) or have one key change near the end, to give the song a bit of a kick. Here, the first verse is in F, then it goes up a fourth for the second verse, in B flat. It goes up another fourth, to E flat, for the third verse, then for the fourth verse it’s back down to B flat, and the fifth verse it’s back down to F, though an octave lower. (For those wondering about those keys, either they’re playing with capoes or, more likely, Sam Phillips sped the track up a semitone to make it sound faster.) And this is really very, very, clever in the way it sets the mood of the song. The song starts and ends in the same place both musically and lyrically — the last verse is a duplicate of the first, though sung an octave lower than it started — and the rising and falling overall arc of the song suggests a natural cycle that goes along with the metaphors in the lyrics — the tides, heartbeats, day and night, dark and light. The protagonist of the song is walking a thin line, wobbling, liable at any moment to fall over to one side or another, just like the oscillation and return to the original tonal centre in this song. What sounds like a relatively crude piece of work is, when listened to closely, a much more inventive record. And this is true of the chord sequences in the individual verses too. The verses only have three chords each — the standard three chords that most country or blues songs have, the tonic, subdominant and dominant of the key. But they’re not arranged in the standard order that you’d have them in, in a three-chord trick or a twelve-bar blues. Instead the verses all start with the dominant, an unusual, unstable, choice that came about from Cash having once threaded a tape backwards and having been fascinated by the sound. The dominant is normally the last chord. Here it’s the first. The backwards tape is also one story as to where he got the idea of the humming that starts every verse — though Cash also used to claim that the humming was so he could find the right note because there were so many key changes. This is not a song that’s structured like a normal country and western song, and it’s quite an extraordinarily personal piece of work. It’s an expression of one man’s very personal aesthetic, no matter how much Sam Phillips altered it to fit his own ideas of what Cash should be recording. It’s an utterly idiosyncratic, utterly *strange* record, and a very strong contender for the best thing Sun Records ever put out, which is a high bar to meet. The fact that this sold two million copies in a country market that is usually characterised as conservative shows just how wrong such stereotypes can be. It was a masterpiece, and Johnny Cash was set for a very, very, long and artistically successful career. But that career wouldn’t be with Sun. His life was in turmoil, the marriage that he had written so movingly about trying to keep together was falling apart, and he was beginning to think that he would do better doing as Elvis had and moving to a major label. Soon he would be signed to Columbia, the label where he would spend almost all his career, but we’ll have one last glimpse of him at Sun. before he went off to Columbia and superstardom, in a future episode. And next week, we’ll look at how Elvis was doing away from Sun.

Episode thirty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Walk The Line” by Johnny Cash, and is part two of a trilogy on the aftermath of Elvis leaving Sun, and the birth of rockabilly. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Don’t Be Angry” by Nappy Brown.  —-more—- Errata Two minor errors I noticed while editing but didn’t think were worth going back and redoing — I pronounce “Belshazzar” incorrectly (it’s pronounced as Cash does in the song, as far as I can tell), and I said that the lyric to “Get Rhythm” contains the phrase “if you get the blues”, when of course it’s “when you get the blues”. Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. My main source for this episode is Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn. I’m relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. This triple-CD set contains everything Johnny Cash recorded for Sun Records. His early Sun singles are also on this ten-disc set, which charts the history of Sun Records, with the A- and B-sides of ninety of the first Sun singles in chronological order for an absurdly low price. This will help give you the full context for Cash’s work, in a way hearing it in isolation wouldn’t.     Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?  Transcript This podcast is called a history of rock music, but one of the things we’re going to learn as the story goes on is that the history of any genre in popular music eventually encompasses them all. And at the end of 1955, in particular, there was no hard and fast distinction between the genres of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music. So today we’re going to talk about someone who, to many, epitomises country music more than any other artist, but who started out recording for Sam Phillips at Sun Studios, making music that was stylistically indistinguishable from any of the other rockabilly artists there, and whose career would intertwine with all of them for decades to come. Before you listen to this one, you might want to go back and listen to last week’s episode, on “Blue Suede Shoes”, because the stories of Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins tie together quite a lot, and this is effectively part two of a three-parter, about Sun Records and the birth of rockabilly. Johnny Cash’s birth name was actually J.R. Cash — initials rather than a full name — and that was how he was known until he joined the Air Force. His parents apparently had a disagreement over what their son’s name should be, and so rather than give him full names, they just gave him initials. The Air Force wouldn’t allow him to just use initials as his name, so he changed his name to John R. Cash. It was only once he became a professional musician that he took on the name Johnny Cash. He still never had a middle name, just a middle initial. While he was in the military, he’d been the very first American to learn that Stalin had died, as he’d been the radio operator who’d intercepted and decoded the Russian transmissions about it. But the military had never been the career he wanted. He wanted to be a singer. He just didn’t know how. After returning to the US from his stint in the Air Force in Germany, aged twenty-two, Cash got married and moved to Memphis, to be near his brother. Cash’s brother introduced him to two of his colleagues, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant. Both Perkins and Grant could play a little guitar, and they started getting together to play a little music, sometimes with a steel player called Red Kernodle. They were very, very, unskilled musicians, but that didn’t matter. They had a couple of things that mattered far more than skill. They had a willingness to try anything if it might sound good, and they had Cash’s voice, which even as a callow young man sounded like Cash had been carved out of rock and imbued with the spirit of an Old Testament prophet. Cash never had a huge range, but his voice had a sonority to it that was quite astonishing, a resonant bass-baritone that demanded you pay attention to what it had to say. And Cash had a determination that he was going to become a famous singer. He had no idea how one was to go about this, but he knew it was what he wanted to do. To start with, they mostly performed the gospel songs that Cash loved. This was the music that is euphemistically called Southern Gospel, but which is really white gospel. Cash had had a religious experience as a kid, when his elder brother, who had wanted to become a priest, had died and had had a deathbed vision of heaven and hell, and Cash wanted to become a gospel singer to pay tribute to his brother while also indulging his own love of music. But then at one of their jam sessions, Cash brought in a song he had written himself, called “Belshazzar”, based on a story from the Bible: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash: “Belshazzar”] The other two were amazed. Not so much by the song itself, but by the fact that you could write a song at all. The idea that songs were something you write was not something that had really occurred to them. Cash, Perkins, and Grant all played acoustic guitar at first, and none of them were particularly good. They were mostly just hanging out together, having fun. They were just singing stuff they’d heard on the radio, and they particularly wanted to sound like the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “This Little Light of Mine”] They were having fun together, but that was all. But Cash was ambitious to do something more. And that “something more” took shape when he heard a record, one that was recorded the day after the plane that took Cash back into the US touched down: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “That’s All Right Mama”] He liked the sound of that record a lot. And what he liked even more was hearing the DJ, after the song was played, say that the record was out on Sun Records, a label based in Memphis itself. Johnny, Luther, and Marshall went to see Elvis, Scotty, and Bill perform, playing on the back of a flatbed truck and just playing the two songs on their single. Cash was immediately worried – Elvis was clearly a teenager, and Cash himself was a grown man of twenty-two. Had he missed his chance at stardom? Was he too old? Cash had a chat with Elvis, and went along again the next night to see the trio performing a proper set at a nightclub, and this time he talked with Scotty Moore and asked him how to get signed to Sun. Moore told him to speak to Sam Phillips, and so Cash got hold of Sun’s phone number and started calling, asking to speak to Phillips, who was never in – he was out on the road a lot of the time, pushing the label’s records to distributors and radio stations. But Cash also knew that he was going to have to do something more to get recorded. He was going to have to turn his little guitar jam sessions into a proper group like Elvis, Scotty, and Bill, not just three people bashing away together at acoustic guitars. They sometimes had Red on steel guitar, but they still needed some variety. Cash was obviously going to be the lead singer, so it made sense for him to stick with the acoustic rhythm guitar. Luther Perkins got himself an electric guitar and started playing lead lines which amounted to little more than boogie-woogie basslines transposed up an octave. Marshall Grant, meanwhile, got himself a double bass, and taped markers on it to show him where the notes were. He’d never played one before, so all he could do was play single notes every other beat, with big gaps between the notes — “Boom [pause] boom [pause] boom [pause] boom” — he couldn’t get his fingers between the notes any faster. This group was clearly not anything like as professional as Presley and his group, but they had *something*. Their limitations as musicians meant that they had to find ways to make the songs work without relying on complicated parts or virtuoso playing. As Luther Perkins would later put it, “You know how all those hot-shot guitarists race their fingers all over the strings? Well, they’re looking for the right sound. I found it.” But Cash was still, frankly, a little worried that his group weren’t all that great, and when he finally went to see Sam Phillips in person, having failed to get hold of him on the phone, he went alone. Phillips was immediately impressed by Cash’s bearing and presence. He was taller, and more dignified, than most of the people who came in to audition for Phillips. He was someone with presence, and gravitas, and Phillips thought he had the makings of a star. The day after meeting Phillips for the first time, Cash brought his musician friends around as well, and Johnny, Luther, Marshall, and Red all had a chat with Phillips. Phillips explained to them that they didn’t need to be technically great musicians, just have the right kind of sound. The four of them rehearsed, and then came back to Phillips with some of the material they’d been practising. But when it came time to audition, their steel player got so scared that he couldn’t tune his guitar, his hands were shaking so much. Eventually he decided that he was holding the other three back, and left the studio, and the audition continued with just the group who had now become the Tennessee Three – a name they chose because while they all now lived in Tennessee, none of them had originally come from there. Phillips liked their sound, but explained that he wasn’t particularly interested in putting out gospel music. There’s an urban legend that Phillips said “go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell”, though this was denied by Cash. But it is true that he’d had no sales success with gospel music, and that he wanted something more commercial. Whatever Phillips said, though, Cash took the hint, and went home and started writing secular songs. The one he came back to Phillips with, “Hey Porter”, was inspired by the sound of the railway, and had a boom-chick-a-boom rhythm that would soon become Cash’s trademark: [Excerpt, “Hey Porter”: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two] Phillips liked it, and the Tennessee Three set to recording it. Or at least that was what they were called when they recorded it, but by the time it was released Sam Phillips had suggested a slight name change, and the single came out under the name Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. As the Tennessee Two didn’t have a drummer, Cash put paper between the strings and the fretboard of his acoustic guitar to deaden the sound and turn it into something that approximated the sound of a snare drum. The resulting boom-chick sound was one that would become a signature of Cash’s recordings for the next few decades, a uniquely country music take on the two-beat rhythm. That sound was almost entirely forced on the group by their instrumental limitations, but it was a sound that worked. The song Cash brought in to Phillips as a possible B-side was called “Folsom Prison Blues”, and it was only an original in the loosest possible sense. Before going off to Germany with the air force, Cash had seen a film called “Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison”, and it had given Cash the idea that someone should write a song about that. But he’d put the idea to the back of his mind until two other inspirations arrived. The first was a song called “Crescent City Blues”, which he heard on a Gordon Jenkins album that a fellow airman in Germany owned: [Excerpt: Gordon Jenkins (Beverly Maher vocals): “Crescent City Blues”] If you’ve not heard that song before, and are familiar with Cash’s work, you’re probably mildly in shock right now at just how much like “Folsom Prison Blues” that is. Jenkins’ song in turn is also strongly inspired by another song, also titled “Crescent City Blues”, by the boogie-woogie pianist Little Brother Montgomery: [Excerpt Little Brother Montgomery, “Crescent City Blues”] The second musical inspiration for Cash’s prison song was a song by Cash’s idol, Jimmie Rodgers, “Blue Yodel #1”, also known as “T For Texas”: [Excerpt: Jimmie Rodgers, “Blue Yodel #1”] The line “I’m gonna shoot poor Thelma, just to see her jump and fall” hit Cash hard, and he realised that the most morally bankrupt person he could imagine was someone who would kill someone else just to watch them die. He put this bleak amorality together with the idea of a song about Folsom, and changed just enough of the words to “Crescent City Blues” that it worked with this new concept of the character, and he titled the result “Folsom Prison Blues”: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, “Folsom Prison Blues”] 9) Sam Phillips didn’t think that was suitable as the B-side to “Hey Porter”, and they eventually went for a sad song that Cash had written titled “Cry Cry Cry,” but “Folsom Prison Blues” was put aside as a future possibility. When the contract was drawn up, the only person who was actually signed to Sun was Cash – Phillips didn’t want to be tied to the other two musicians. But while only Cash was signed to the label, they split the money more or less equitably, in a forty-thirty-thirty split (other sources say that the split was completely equal). “Hey Porter” and “Cry Cry Cry” both charted, and “Folsom Prison Blues” became Cash’s second single, and one of the songs that would define him for the rest of his career. It went to number four on the country and western chart, and established him as a genuine star of country music. It’s around this time that Sun signed Carl Perkins, which caused problems. Cash resented the way that he was being treated by Phillips as being less important than Perkins. He thought that Phillips was now only interested in his new star, and wasn’t going to bother promoting Cash’s records any more. This would be a recurring pattern with Phillips over the next few years — he would discover some new star and whoever his previous favourite was would be convinced that Phillips no longer cared about them any more. This is ultimately what led to Sun’s downfall, as one by one his discoveries moved on to other labels that they believed valued them more than Phillips did. Phillips, on the other hand, always argued that he had to put in more time when dealing with a new discovery, because he had to build their career up, and that established artists would always forget what he’d done for them when they saw him doing the same things for the next person. That’s not to say, though, that Cash disliked Perkins. Quite the contrary. The two became close friends — though Cash became even closer with Clayton Perkins, Carl’s wayward brother, who had a juvenile sense of humour that appealed to Cash. Cash even co-wrote a song with Perkins, “All Mama’s Children”, which became the B-side to Perkins’ “Boppin’ the Blues”: [Excerpt, Carl Perkins, “All Mama’s Children”] It’s not the greatest song either man ever wrote, by any means, but it was the start of a working relationship that would continue off and on for decades, and which both men would benefit from significantly. By this point, Cash had started to build a following, and as you might expect given his inspiration, he was following the exact same career path as Elvis Presley. He was managed by Elvis’ first proper manager, Bob Neal, and he was given a regular slot on the Louisiana Hayride, the country music radio show that Elvis had built his reputation on. But this meant that Cash was being promoted alongside Carl Perkins, as a rock and roll star. This would actually do wonders for Cash’s career in the long term. A lot of people who wouldn’t listen to anything labeled country were fans of Cash in the mid fifties, and remained with him, and this meant that his image was always a little more appealing to rock audiences than many other similar singers. You can trace a direct line between Cash being promoted as a rock and roller in 1955 and 56, and his comeback with the American Recordings series more than forty years later. But when Cash brought in a new song he’d written, about his struggle while on the road to be true to his wife (and, implicitly, also to his God), it caused a clash between him and Sam Phillips. That song was quite possibly inspired by a line in “Sixteen Tons”, the big hit from Tennessee Ernie Ford that year, which Cash fell in love with when it came out, and which made Cash a lifelong fan of its writer Merle Travis: [Excerpt: “Sixteen Tons”, Tennessee Ernie Ford] He never made the connection publicly himself, but that image of walking the line almost definitely stuck in Cash’s mind, and it became the central image of a song he wrote while on the road, thinking about fidelity in every sense. “I Walk the Line” was the subject of a lot of debate between Cash and Phillips, neither of whom were entirely convinced by the other’s argument. Cash was sure that the song was a good one, maybe the best song he ever wrote, but he wanted to play it as a slow, plaintive, lovelorn ballad. Phillips, on the other hand, wasn’t so impressed by the song itself, but he thought that it had some potential if it was sped up to the kind of tempo that “Hey Porter”, “Cry Cry Cry” and “Folsom Prison Blues” had all been performed in — a rock and roll tempo, for Cash’s rock and roll audience. Give it some rhythm, and some of the boom-chika-boom, and there might be something there. Cash argued that he didn’t need to. After all, the other song he had brought in, one that he cared about much less and had originally written to give to Elvis, was a rock and roll song. The lyrics even went “Get rhythm if you get the blues”: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two: “Get Rhythm”] That song itself would go on to become a hit for Cash, and a staple of his live shows, but Phillips didn’t see a reason why, just because one side of the record was uptempo, the other shouldn’t be as well. He wanted the music to be universal, rather than personal, and to his mind a strong rhythm was necessary for universality. They eventually compromised and recorded two versions, a faster one recorded the way Phillips wanted it, and a slower one, the way Cash liked it. Cash walked out convinced that Phillips would see reason and release the slower version. He was devastated to find that Phillips had released the faster version. Cash later said, “The first time I heard it on the radio, I called him and said, ‘I hate that sound. Please don’t release any more records. I hate that sound.’ ” But then the record became a massive hit, and Cash decided that maybe the sound wasn’t so bad after all. It went to number one on the country jukebox chart, made the top twenty in the pop charts, and sold more than two million copies as a single. Phillips had unquestionably had the right instincts, commercially at least. [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, “I Walk The Line”] “I Walk The Line” has a very, very, unusual structure. There’s a key change after every single verse. This is just not something that you do, normally. Most pop songs will either stay in one key throughout, have a different key for different sections (so they might be in a minor key for the verse and a major key for the chorus, for example) or have one key change near the end, to give the song a bit of a kick. Here, the first verse is in F, then it goes up a fourth for the second verse, in B flat. It goes up another fourth, to E flat, for the third verse, then for the fourth verse it’s back down to B flat, and the fifth verse it’s back down to F, though an octave lower. (For those wondering about those keys, either they’re playing with capoes or, more likely, Sam Phillips sped the track up a semitone to make it sound faster.) And this is really very, very, clever in the way it sets the mood of the song. The song starts and ends in the same place both musically and lyrically — the last verse is a duplicate of the first, though sung an octave lower than it started — and the rising and falling overall arc of the song suggests a natural cycle that goes along with the metaphors in the lyrics — the tides, heartbeats, day and night, dark and light. The protagonist of the song is walking a thin line, wobbling, liable at any moment to fall over to one side or another, just like the oscillation and return to the original tonal centre in this song. What sounds like a relatively crude piece of work is, when listened to closely, a much more inventive record. And this is true of the chord sequences in the individual verses too. The verses only have three chords each — the standard three chords that most country or blues songs have, the tonic, subdominant and dominant of the key. But they’re not arranged in the standard order that you’d have them in, in a three-chord trick or a twelve-bar blues. Instead the verses all start with the dominant, an unusual, unstable, choice that came about from Cash having once threaded a tape backwards and having been fascinated by the sound. The dominant is normally the last chord. Here it’s the first. The backwards tape is also one story as to where he got the idea of the humming that starts every verse — though Cash also used to claim that the humming was so he could find the right note because there were so many key changes. This is not a song that’s structured like a normal country and western song, and it’s quite an extraordinarily personal piece of work. It’s an expression of one man’s very personal aesthetic, no matter how much Sam Phillips altered it to fit his own ideas of what Cash should be recording. It’s an utterly idiosyncratic, utterly *strange* record, and a very strong contender for the best thing Sun Records ever put out, which is a high bar to meet. The fact that this sold two million copies in a country market that is usually characterised as conservative shows just how wrong such stereotypes can be. It was a masterpiece, and Johnny Cash was set for a very, very, long and artistically successful career. But that career wouldn’t be with Sun. His life was in turmoil, the marriage that he had written so movingly about trying to keep together was falling apart, and he was beginning to think that he would do better doing as Elvis had and moving to a major label. Soon he would be signed to Columbia, the label where he would spend almost all his career, but we’ll have one last glimpse of him at Sun. before he went off to Columbia and superstardom, in a future episode. And next week, we’ll look at how Elvis was doing away from Sun.

In honor of Father's Day, Laura and Nicole wax poetic about penises and the things that men put them into and also the things that men put inside them.

Welcome to episode thirty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This is the last of our three-part look at Chess Records, and focuses on "Bo Diddley" by Bo Diddley. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.  ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.I accidentally used a later rerecording of "I Wish You Would" by Billy Boy Arnold on the playlist, but I use the correct version in the podcast itself. Sorry about that. As this is part three of the Chess Records trilogy, you might want to listen to part one, on the Moonglows, and part two, on Chuck Berry, if you haven't already. Along with the resources mentioned in the previous two episodes, the resource I used most this time was Bo Diddley: Living Legend by George R. White, a strong biography told almost entirely in Diddley's own words from interviews, and the only full-length book on Diddley. This compilation contains Diddley's first six albums plus a bunch of non-album and live tracks, and has everything you're likely to want by Diddley on it, for under ten pounds. If you want to hear more Muddy Waters after hearing his back-and-forth with Diddley, this double CD set is a perfect introduction to him. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the final part of our trilogy about Chess Records. Last week, we looked at Chuck Berry. This week, we're going to deal with someone who may even have been more important. One of the many injustices in copyright law -- and something that we'll have a lot of cause to mention during the course of this series -- is that, for the entire time period covered by this podcast, it was impossible to copyright a groove or a rhythm, but you could copyright a melody line and lyric. And this has led to real inter-racial injustice. In general, black musical culture in the USA has emphasised different aspects of musical invention than white culture has. While white American musical culture -- particularly *rich* white musical culture -- has stressed inventive melodies and harmonic movement -- think of, say, Burt Bacharach or George Gershwin -- it has not historically stressed rhythmic invention. On the other hand, black musical culture has stressed that above everything else -- you'll notice that all the rhythmic innovations we've talked about in this series so far, like boogie woogie, and the backbeat, and the tresillo rhythm, all came from black musicians. That's not, of course, to say that black musicians can't be melodically inventive or white musicians rhythmically -- I'm not here saying "black people have a great sense of rhythm" or any of that racist nonsense. I'm just talking about the way that different cultures have prioritised different things. But this means that when black musicians have produced innovative work, it's not been possible for them to have any intellectual property ownership in the result. You can't steal a melody by Bacharach, but anyone can play a song with a boogie beat, or a shuffle, or a tresillo... or with the Bo Diddley beat. [Very short excerpt: “Bo Diddley”, Bo Diddley] Elias McDaniel's distinctive sound came about because he started performing so young that he couldn't gain entrance to clubs, and so he and his band had to play on street corners. But you can't cart a drum kit around and use it on the streets, so McDaniel and his band came up with various inventive ways to add percussion to the act. At first, they had someone who would come round with a big bag of sand and empty it onto the pavement. He'd then use a brush on the sand, and the noise of the brushing would provide percussion -- at the end of the performance this man, whose name was Sam Daniel but was called Sandman by everyone, would sweep all the sand back up and put it back into his bag for the next show. Eventually, though, Sandman left, and McDaniel hit on the idea of using his girlfriend's neighbour Jerome Green as part of the act. We heard Jerome last week, playing on "Maybellene", but he's someone who there is astonishingly little information about. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page, and you'll find barely more than a few paragraphs about him online. No-one even knows when he was born or died – *if* he died, though he seems to have disappeared around 1972. And this is quite astonishing when you consider that Green played on all Bo Diddley's classic records, and sang duet on a few of the most successful ones, *and* he played on many of Chuck Berry's, and on various other records by Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, the Moonglows... yet when you Google him, the third hit that comes up is about Robson Green and Jerome Flynn, a nineties soft-pop duo who span out of a soap opera. At first, Jerome's job was to pass the hat around and collect the money, but McDaniel decided to build Jerome a pair of maracas, and teach him how to play. And he learned to play very well indeed, adding a Latin sound to what had previously been just a blues band. Jerome's maracas weren't the only things that Elias McDaniel built, though. He had a knack for technology, though he was always rather modest about his own abilities. He built himself one of the very first tremelo systems for a guitar, making something out of old car bits and electronic junk that would break the electronic signal up. Before commercial tremelo systems existed, McDaniel was the only one who could make his guitar sound like that. The choppy guitar, with its signal breaking up deliberately, and the maracas being shook frantically, gave McDaniel's music a rhythmic drive unlike anything else in rock and roll. McDaniel and his band eventually got their music heard by Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Chess was impressed by a song called "Uncle John", which had lyrics that went "Uncle John's got corn ain't never been shucked/Uncle John's got daughters ain't never been... to school"; but he said the song needed less salacious lyrics, and he suggested retitling it “Bo Diddley”, which also became the stage name of the man who up until now had been called Elias McDaniel. The new lyrics were inspired by the black folk song "Hambone", which a few years earlier had become a novelty hit: [Excerpt: "Hambone", Red Saunders Orchestra with the Hambone Kids] Now, I have to be a bit careful here, because here I'm talking about something that's from a different culture from my own, and my understanding of it is that of an outsider. To *me*, "Hambone" seems to be a unified thing that's part song, part dance, part game. But my understanding may be very, very flawed, and I don't want to pretend to knowledge I don't have. But this is my best understanding of what “Hambone” is. "Hambone", like many folk songs, is not in itself a single song, but a collection of different songs with similar elements. The name comes from a dance which, it is said, dates back to enslaved people attempting to entertain themselves. Slaves in most of the US were banned from using drums, because it was believed they might use them to send messages to each other, so when they wanted to dance and sing music, they would slap different parts of their own bodies to provide percussive accompaniment. Now, I tend to be a little dubious of narratives that claim that aspects of twentieth-century black culture date back to slavery or, as people often claim, to Africa. A lot of the time these turn out to be urban myths of the "ring a ring a roses is about the bubonic plague" kind. One of the real tragedies of slavery is that the African culture that the enslaved black people brought over to the US was largely lost in the ensuing centuries, and so there's a very strong incentive to try to find things that could be a continuation of that. But that's the story around “Hambone”, which is also known as the “Juba beat”. Another influence Diddley would always cite for the lyrical scansion is the song “Hey Baba Reba”, which he would usually misremember as having been by either Cab Calloway or Louis Jordan, but was actually by Lionel Hampton: [Excerpt: Lionel Hampton, “Hey Baba Reba”] But the important thing to note is that the rhythm of all these records is totally different from the rhythm of the song "Bo Diddley". There's a bit of misinformation that goes around in almost every article about Diddley, saying "the Bo Diddley beat is just the 'Hambone' beat", and while Diddley would correct this in almost every interview he ever gave, the misinformation would persist -- to the point that when I first heard "Hambone" I was shocked, because I'd assumed that there must at least have been some slight similarity. There's no similarity at all. And that's not the only song where I've seen claims that there's a Bo Diddley beat where none exists. As a reminder, here's the actual Bo Diddley rhythm: [Very short excerpt: Bo Diddley, “Bo Diddley”] Now the PhD thesis on the development of the backbeat which I talked about back in episode two claims that the beat appears on about thirteen records before Diddley's, mostly by people we've discussed before, like Louis Jordan, Johnny Otis, Fats Domino, and Roy Brown. But here's a couple of examples of the songs that thesis cites. Here's "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" by Fats Domino: [Excerpt: "Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Fats Domino] And here's "That's Your Last Boogie", by Joe Swift, produced by Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Joe Swift, "That's Your Last Boogie"] As you can hear, they both have something that's *sort of* the Bo Diddley beat, but not really, among their other rhythms. It's most notable at the very start of "That's Your Last Boogie" [Intro: "That's Your Last Boogie"] That's what's called a clave beat -- it's sort of like the tresillo, with an extra bom-bom on the end. Bom bom-bom, bom-bom. That's not the Bo Diddley beat. The Bo Diddley beat actually varies subtly from bar to bar, but it's generally a sort of chunk-a chunk-a-chunk a-chunk a-chunk ah. It certainly stresses the five beats of the clave, but it's not them, and nor is it the "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm other people seem to claim for it. Most ridiculously, Wikipedia even claims that the Andrews Sisters' version of Lord Invader's great calypso song, "Rum and Coca Cola", has the Bo Diddley beat: [Excerpt: "Rum and Coca Cola", the Andrews Sisters] Both records have maracas, but that's about it. Incidentally, that song was, in the Andrews Sisters version, credited to a white American thief rather than to the black Trinidadian men who wrote it. Sadly appropriate for a song about the exploitation of Trinidadians for "the Yankee dollar". But none of these records have the Bo Diddley beat, despite what anyone might say. None of them even sound very much like Diddley's beat at all. The origins of the Bo Diddley beat were, believe it or not, with Gene Autry. We've talked before about Autry, who was the biggest Western music star of the late thirties and early forties, and who inspired all sorts of people you wouldn't expect, from Les Paul to Hank Ballard. But Diddley hit upon his rhythm when trying to play Autry's "I've Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle". [excerpt, Gene Autry, "I've Got Spurs that Jingle Jangle Jingle"] No, I don't see the resemblance either. But this ties back into what we were talking about last week, with the influence of country musicians on the blues and R&B musicians at Chess. And if you become familiar with his later work, it becomes clear that Diddley truly loved the whole iconography of the Western, and country music. He did albums called "Have Guitar Will Travel" (named after the Western TV show "Have Gun Will Travel") and "Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger". Diddley's work is rooted in black folklore -- things like hambone, but also the figure of Stagger Lee and other characters like the Signifying Monkey -- but it should be understood that black American folklore has always included the image of the black cowboy. The combination of these influences – the “Hambone” lyrical ideas, the cowboy rhythm, and the swaggering character Diddley created for himself – became this: [Excerpt: “Bo Diddley” by Bo Diddley] The B-side to the record, meanwhile, was maybe even more important. It's also an early example of Diddley *not* just reusing his signature rhythm. The popular image of Diddley has him as a one-idea artist remaking the same song over and over again -- and certainly he did often return to the Bo Diddley beat -- but he was a far more interesting artist than that, and recorded in a far wider variety of styles than you might imagine. And in "I'm A Man" he took on another artist's style, beating Muddy Waters at his own game. "I'm A Man" was a response to Waters' earlier "Hoochie Coochie Man": [Excerpt: "Hoochie Coochie Man", Muddy Waters] "Hoochie Coochie Man" had been written for Muddy Waters by Willie Dixon and was, as far as I can tell, the first blues record ever to have that da-na-na na-na riff that later became the riff that for most people defines the blues. "Hoochie Coochie Man" had managed to sum up everything about Waters' persona in a way that Waters himself had never managed with his own songs. It combined sexual braggadocio with hoodoo lore -- the character Waters was singing in was possessed of supernatural powers, from the day he was born, and he used those powers to "make pretty women jump and shout". He had a black cat bone, and a mojo, and a John the Conqueror root. It was a great riff, and a great persona, and a great record. But it was still a conventionally structured sixteen-bar blues, with the normal three chords that almost all blues records have. But Bo Diddley heard that and decided that was two chords too many. When you've got a great riff, you don't *need* chord changes, not if you can just hammer on that riff. So he came up with a variant of Dixon's song, and called it "I'm a Man". In his version, there was only the one chord: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "I'm a Man"] Willie Dixon guested on bass for that song, as it wasn't felt that Diddley's own bass player was getting the feeling right. There were also some changes made to the song in the studio -- as Diddley put it later: "They wanted me to spell 'man', but they weren't explaining it right. They couldn't get me to spell 'man'. I didn't understand what they were talking about!" But eventually he did sing that man is spelled m-a-n, and the song went on to be covered by pretty much every British band of the sixties, and become a blues standard. The most important cover version of it though was when Muddy Waters decided to make his own answer record to Diddley, in which he stated that *he* was a man, not a boy like Diddley. Diddley got a co-writing credit on this, though Willie Dixon, whose riff had been the basis of "I'm a Man", didn't. [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Mannish Boy"] And then there was Etta James' answer record, "W.O.M.A.N.", which once again has wild west references in it: [Excerpt: Etta James, "W.O.M.A.N."] And that… "inspired" Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to write this for Peggy Lee: [Excerpt: Peggy Lee, "I'm A Woman"] Of course, none of those records, except Muddy Waters', gave Bo Diddley a writing credit, just as Diddley didn't credit Dixon for his riff. At the same session as the single was recorded, Diddley's harmonica player, Billy Boy Arnold, recorded a single of his own, backed by Diddley and his band. "I'm Sweet on you Baby" wasn't released at the time, but it's a much more straightforward blues song, and more like Chess' normal releases. Chess were interested in making more records with Arnold, but we'll see that that didn't turn out well: [Excerpt: Billy Boy Arnold, "I'm Sweet on you Baby"] Despite putting out a truly phenomenal single, Diddley hit upon a real problem with his career, and one that would be one of the reasons he was never as popular as contemporaries like Chuck Berry. The problem, at first, looked like anything but. He was booked on the Ed Sullivan Show to promote his first single. The Ed Sullivan Show was the biggest TV show of the fifties and sixties. A variety show presented by the eponymous Sullivan, who somehow even after twenty years of presenting never managed to look or sound remotely comfortable in front of a camera, it was the programme that boosted Elvis Presley from stardom to superstardom, and which turned the Beatles from a local phenomenon in the UK and Europe into the biggest act the world had ever seen. Getting on it was the biggest possible break Diddley could have got, and it should have made his career. Instead, it was a disaster, all because of a misunderstanding. At the time, the country song "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford was a big hit: [Excerpt: "Sixteen Tons", Tennessee Ernie Ford] Diddley liked the song -- enough that he would later record his own version of it: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Sixteen Tons"] And so he was singing it to himself in his dressing room. One of the production staff happened to walk past and hear him, and asked if he could perform that song on the show. Diddley assumed he was being asked if he would do it as well as the song he was there to promote, and was flattered to be asked to do a second song. [Excerpt: Ed Sullivan introducing "Dr Jive", with all the confusion about what words he's using] When he got out on to the stage he saw the cue card saying "Bo Diddley Sixteen Tons", assumed it meant the song "Bo Diddley" followed by the song "Sixteen Tons", and so he launched into "Bo Diddley". After all, why would he go on the show to promote someone else's record? He was there to promote his own debut single. So of course he was going to play it. This was not what the production person had intended, and was not what Ed Sullivan wanted. Backstage, there was a confrontation that got so heated that Diddley had to be physically restrained from beating Sullivan with his guitar after Sullivan called Diddley a “black boy” (according to Diddley, “black” at that time and in that place, was a racial slur, though it's the polite term to use today). Sullivan yelled and screamed at Diddley and told him he would be blacklisted from network TV, and would certainly never appear on Sullivan's show again under any circumstances. After that first TV appearance, it would be seven years until Diddley's second. And unlike all his contemporaries he didn't even get to appear in films. Even Alan Freed, who greatly respected Diddley and booked him on his live shows, and who Diddley also respected, didn't have him appear in any of the five rock and roll films he made. As far as I can tell, the two minutes he was on the Ed Sullivan show is the only record of Bo Diddley on film or video from 1955 through 1962. And this meant, as well, that Chess put all their promotional efforts behind Chuck Berry, who for all his faults was more welcome in the TV studios. If Diddley wanted success, he had to let his records and live performances do the work for him, because he wasn't getting any help from the media. Luckily, his records were great. Not only was Diddley's first hit one of the great two-sided singles of all time, but his next single was also impressive. The story of "Diddley Daddy" dates back to one of the white cover versions of "Bo Diddley". Essex Records put out this cover version by Jean Dinning, produced by Dave Miller, who had earlier produced Bill Haley and the Comets' first records: [Excerpt: Jean Dinning, "Bo Diddley"] And, as with Georgia Gibbs' version of “Tweedle Dee”, the record label wanted to make the record sound as much like the original as possible, and so tried to get the original musicians to play on it, and made an agreement with Chess. They couldn't get Bo Diddley himself, and without his tremelo guitar it sounded nothing like the original, but they *did* get Willie Dixon on bass, Diddley's drummer Clifton James (who sadly isn't the same Clifton James who played the bumbling sheriff in "Live and Let Die" and "Superman II", though it would be great if he was), and Billy Boy Arnold on harmonica. But Billy Boy Arnold made the mistake of going to Chess and asking for the money he was owed for the session. Leonard Chess didn't like when musicians wanted paying, and complained to Bo Diddley about Arnold. Diddley told Arnold that Chess wasn't happy with him, and so Arnold decided to take a song he'd written, "Diddy Diddy Dum Dum", to another label rather than give it to Chess. He changed the lyrics around a bit, and called it "I Wish You Would": [Excerpt: Billy Boy Arnold, "I Wish You Would"] Arnold actually recorded that for Vee-Jay Records on the very day that Bo Diddley's second single was due to be recorded, and the Diddley session was held up because nobody knew where Arnold was. They eventually found him and got him to Diddley's session -- where Diddley started playing "Diddy Diddy Dum Dum". Leonard Chess suggested letting Arnold sing the song, but Arnold said "I can't -- I just recorded that for VeeJay", and showed Chess the contract. Diddley and Harvey Fuqua, who was there to sing backing vocals with the rest of the Moonglows, quickly reworked the song. Arnold didn't want to play harmonica on something so close to a record he'd just made, though he played on the B-side, and so Muddy Waters' harmonica player Little Walter filled in instead. The new song, entitled "Diddley Daddy", became another of Diddley's signature songs: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Diddley Daddy"] but the B-side, "She's Fine, She's Mine", was the one that would truly become influential: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "She's Fine, She's Mine"] That song was later slightly reworked into this, by Willie Cobbs: [Excerpt: Willie Cobbs, "You Don't Love Me"] That song was covered by pretty much every white guitar band of the late sixties -- the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Allman Brothers, Steve Stills and Al Kooper... the list goes on. But Cobbs' song itself was also slightly reworked, by Dawn Penn, in 1967, and became a minor reggae classic. Twenty-seven years later, in 1994, Penn rerecorded her song, based on Cobbs' song, based on Bo Diddley's song, and it became a worldwide smash hit, with Diddley getting cowriting credit: [Excerpt: Dawn Penn, "You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)"] And *that* has later been covered by Beyonce and Rhianna, and sampled by Ghostface Killah and Usher. And that's how important Bo Diddley was at this point in time. The B-side to his less-good follow-up to his debut provided enough material for sixty years' worth of hits in styles from R&B to jam band to reggae to hip-hop. And the song “Bo Diddley” itself, of course, would provide a rhythm for generations of musicians to take, everyone from Buddy Holly: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Not Fade Away”] to George Michael: [Excerpt George Michael, “Faith”] to U2: [Excerpt: U2, “Desire”] Because that rhythm was so successful – even though most of the success went to white people who didn't credit or pay Diddley – people tend to think of Diddley as a one-idea musician, which is far from the truth. Like many of his contemporaries he only had a short period where he was truly inventive -- his last truly classic track was recorded in 1962. But that period was an astoundingly inventive one, and we're going to be seeing him again during the course of this series. In his first four tracks, Diddley had managed to record three of the most influential tracks in rock history. But the next time we look at him, it will be with a song he wrote for other people -- a song that would indirectly have massive effects on the whole of popular music.  

Welcome to episode thirty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This is the last of our three-part look at Chess Records, and focuses on “Bo Diddley” by Bo Diddley. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.  —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.I accidentally used a later rerecording of “I Wish You Would” by Billy Boy Arnold on the playlist, but I use the correct version in the podcast itself. Sorry about that. As this is part three of the Chess Records trilogy, you might want to listen to part one, on the Moonglows, and part two, on Chuck Berry, if you haven’t already. Along with the resources mentioned in the previous two episodes, the resource I used most this time was Bo Diddley: Living Legend by George R. White, a strong biography told almost entirely in Diddley’s own words from interviews, and the only full-length book on Diddley. This compilation contains Diddley’s first six albums plus a bunch of non-album and live tracks, and has everything you’re likely to want by Diddley on it, for under ten pounds. If you want to hear more Muddy Waters after hearing his back-and-forth with Diddley, this double CD set is a perfect introduction to him. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the final part of our trilogy about Chess Records. Last week, we looked at Chuck Berry. This week, we’re going to deal with someone who may even have been more important. One of the many injustices in copyright law — and something that we’ll have a lot of cause to mention during the course of this series — is that, for the entire time period covered by this podcast, it was impossible to copyright a groove or a rhythm, but you could copyright a melody line and lyric. And this has led to real inter-racial injustice. In general, black musical culture in the USA has emphasised different aspects of musical invention than white culture has. While white American musical culture — particularly *rich* white musical culture — has stressed inventive melodies and harmonic movement — think of, say, Burt Bacharach or George Gershwin — it has not historically stressed rhythmic invention. On the other hand, black musical culture has stressed that above everything else — you’ll notice that all the rhythmic innovations we’ve talked about in this series so far, like boogie woogie, and the backbeat, and the tresillo rhythm, all came from black musicians. That’s not, of course, to say that black musicians can’t be melodically inventive or white musicians rhythmically — I’m not here saying “black people have a great sense of rhythm” or any of that racist nonsense. I’m just talking about the way that different cultures have prioritised different things. But this means that when black musicians have produced innovative work, it’s not been possible for them to have any intellectual property ownership in the result. You can’t steal a melody by Bacharach, but anyone can play a song with a boogie beat, or a shuffle, or a tresillo… or with the Bo Diddley beat. [Very short excerpt: “Bo Diddley”, Bo Diddley] Elias McDaniel’s distinctive sound came about because he started performing so young that he couldn’t gain entrance to clubs, and so he and his band had to play on street corners. But you can’t cart a drum kit around and use it on the streets, so McDaniel and his band came up with various inventive ways to add percussion to the act. At first, they had someone who would come round with a big bag of sand and empty it onto the pavement. He’d then use a brush on the sand, and the noise of the brushing would provide percussion — at the end of the performance this man, whose name was Sam Daniel but was called Sandman by everyone, would sweep all the sand back up and put it back into his bag for the next show. Eventually, though, Sandman left, and McDaniel hit on the idea of using his girlfriend’s neighbour Jerome Green as part of the act. We heard Jerome last week, playing on “Maybellene”, but he’s someone who there is astonishingly little information about. He doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, and you’ll find barely more than a few paragraphs about him online. No-one even knows when he was born or died – *if* he died, though he seems to have disappeared around 1972. And this is quite astonishing when you consider that Green played on all Bo Diddley’s classic records, and sang duet on a few of the most successful ones, *and* he played on many of Chuck Berry’s, and on various other records by Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, the Moonglows… yet when you Google him, the third hit that comes up is about Robson Green and Jerome Flynn, a nineties soft-pop duo who span out of a soap opera. At first, Jerome’s job was to pass the hat around and collect the money, but McDaniel decided to build Jerome a pair of maracas, and teach him how to play. And he learned to play very well indeed, adding a Latin sound to what had previously been just a blues band. Jerome’s maracas weren’t the only things that Elias McDaniel built, though. He had a knack for technology, though he was always rather modest about his own abilities. He built himself one of the very first tremelo systems for a guitar, making something out of old car bits and electronic junk that would break the electronic signal up. Before commercial tremelo systems existed, McDaniel was the only one who could make his guitar sound like that. The choppy guitar, with its signal breaking up deliberately, and the maracas being shook frantically, gave McDaniel’s music a rhythmic drive unlike anything else in rock and roll. McDaniel and his band eventually got their music heard by Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Chess was impressed by a song called “Uncle John”, which had lyrics that went “Uncle John’s got corn ain’t never been shucked/Uncle John’s got daughters ain’t never been… to school”; but he said the song needed less salacious lyrics, and he suggested retitling it “Bo Diddley”, which also became the stage name of the man who up until now had been called Elias McDaniel. The new lyrics were inspired by the black folk song “Hambone”, which a few years earlier had become a novelty hit: [Excerpt: “Hambone”, Red Saunders Orchestra with the Hambone Kids] Now, I have to be a bit careful here, because here I’m talking about something that’s from a different culture from my own, and my understanding of it is that of an outsider. To *me*, “Hambone” seems to be a unified thing that’s part song, part dance, part game. But my understanding may be very, very flawed, and I don’t want to pretend to knowledge I don’t have. But this is my best understanding of what “Hambone” is. “Hambone”, like many folk songs, is not in itself a single song, but a collection of different songs with similar elements. The name comes from a dance which, it is said, dates back to enslaved people attempting to entertain themselves. Slaves in most of the US were banned from using drums, because it was believed they might use them to send messages to each other, so when they wanted to dance and sing music, they would slap different parts of their own bodies to provide percussive accompaniment. Now, I tend to be a little dubious of narratives that claim that aspects of twentieth-century black culture date back to slavery or, as people often claim, to Africa. A lot of the time these turn out to be urban myths of the “ring a ring a roses is about the bubonic plague” kind. One of the real tragedies of slavery is that the African culture that the enslaved black people brought over to the US was largely lost in the ensuing centuries, and so there’s a very strong incentive to try to find things that could be a continuation of that. But that’s the story around “Hambone”, which is also known as the “Juba beat”. Another influence Diddley would always cite for the lyrical scansion is the song “Hey Baba Reba”, which he would usually misremember as having been by either Cab Calloway or Louis Jordan, but was actually by Lionel Hampton: [Excerpt: Lionel Hampton, “Hey Baba Reba”] But the important thing to note is that the rhythm of all these records is totally different from the rhythm of the song “Bo Diddley”. There’s a bit of misinformation that goes around in almost every article about Diddley, saying “the Bo Diddley beat is just the ‘Hambone’ beat”, and while Diddley would correct this in almost every interview he ever gave, the misinformation would persist — to the point that when I first heard “Hambone” I was shocked, because I’d assumed that there must at least have been some slight similarity. There’s no similarity at all. And that’s not the only song where I’ve seen claims that there’s a Bo Diddley beat where none exists. As a reminder, here’s the actual Bo Diddley rhythm: [Very short excerpt: Bo Diddley, “Bo Diddley”] Now the PhD thesis on the development of the backbeat which I talked about back in episode two claims that the beat appears on about thirteen records before Diddley’s, mostly by people we’ve discussed before, like Louis Jordan, Johnny Otis, Fats Domino, and Roy Brown. But here’s a couple of examples of the songs that thesis cites. Here’s “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” by Fats Domino: [Excerpt: “Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Fats Domino] And here’s “That’s Your Last Boogie”, by Joe Swift, produced by Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Joe Swift, “That’s Your Last Boogie”] As you can hear, they both have something that’s *sort of* the Bo Diddley beat, but not really, among their other rhythms. It’s most notable at the very start of “That’s Your Last Boogie” [Intro: “That’s Your Last Boogie”] That’s what’s called a clave beat — it’s sort of like the tresillo, with an extra bom-bom on the end. Bom bom-bom, bom-bom. That’s not the Bo Diddley beat. The Bo Diddley beat actually varies subtly from bar to bar, but it’s generally a sort of chunk-a chunk-a-chunk a-chunk a-chunk ah. It certainly stresses the five beats of the clave, but it’s not them, and nor is it the “shave and a haircut, two bits” rhythm other people seem to claim for it. Most ridiculously, Wikipedia even claims that the Andrews Sisters’ version of Lord Invader’s great calypso song, “Rum and Coca Cola”, has the Bo Diddley beat: [Excerpt: “Rum and Coca Cola”, the Andrews Sisters] Both records have maracas, but that’s about it. Incidentally, that song was, in the Andrews Sisters version, credited to a white American thief rather than to the black Trinidadian men who wrote it. Sadly appropriate for a song about the exploitation of Trinidadians for “the Yankee dollar”. But none of these records have the Bo Diddley beat, despite what anyone might say. None of them even sound very much like Diddley’s beat at all. The origins of the Bo Diddley beat were, believe it or not, with Gene Autry. We’ve talked before about Autry, who was the biggest Western music star of the late thirties and early forties, and who inspired all sorts of people you wouldn’t expect, from Les Paul to Hank Ballard. But Diddley hit upon his rhythm when trying to play Autry’s “I’ve Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle”. [excerpt, Gene Autry, “I’ve Got Spurs that Jingle Jangle Jingle”] No, I don’t see the resemblance either. But this ties back into what we were talking about last week, with the influence of country musicians on the blues and R&B musicians at Chess. And if you become familiar with his later work, it becomes clear that Diddley truly loved the whole iconography of the Western, and country music. He did albums called “Have Guitar Will Travel” (named after the Western TV show “Have Gun Will Travel”) and “Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger”. Diddley’s work is rooted in black folklore — things like hambone, but also the figure of Stagger Lee and other characters like the Signifying Monkey — but it should be understood that black American folklore has always included the image of the black cowboy. The combination of these influences – the “Hambone” lyrical ideas, the cowboy rhythm, and the swaggering character Diddley created for himself – became this: [Excerpt: “Bo Diddley” by Bo Diddley] The B-side to the record, meanwhile, was maybe even more important. It’s also an early example of Diddley *not* just reusing his signature rhythm. The popular image of Diddley has him as a one-idea artist remaking the same song over and over again — and certainly he did often return to the Bo Diddley beat — but he was a far more interesting artist than that, and recorded in a far wider variety of styles than you might imagine. And in “I’m A Man” he took on another artist’s style, beating Muddy Waters at his own game. “I’m A Man” was a response to Waters’ earlier “Hoochie Coochie Man”: [Excerpt: “Hoochie Coochie Man”, Muddy Waters] “Hoochie Coochie Man” had been written for Muddy Waters by Willie Dixon and was, as far as I can tell, the first blues record ever to have that da-na-na na-na riff that later became the riff that for most people defines the blues. “Hoochie Coochie Man” had managed to sum up everything about Waters’ persona in a way that Waters himself had never managed with his own songs. It combined sexual braggadocio with hoodoo lore — the character Waters was singing in was possessed of supernatural powers, from the day he was born, and he used those powers to “make pretty women jump and shout”. He had a black cat bone, and a mojo, and a John the Conqueror root. It was a great riff, and a great persona, and a great record. But it was still a conventionally structured sixteen-bar blues, with the normal three chords that almost all blues records have. But Bo Diddley heard that and decided that was two chords too many. When you’ve got a great riff, you don’t *need* chord changes, not if you can just hammer on that riff. So he came up with a variant of Dixon’s song, and called it “I’m a Man”. In his version, there was only the one chord: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, “I’m a Man”] Willie Dixon guested on bass for that song, as it wasn’t felt that Diddley’s own bass player was getting the feeling right. There were also some changes made to the song in the studio — as Diddley put it later: “They wanted me to spell ‘man’, but they weren’t explaining it right. They couldn’t get me to spell ‘man’. I didn’t understand what they were talking about!” But eventually he did sing that man is spelled m-a-n, and the song went on to be covered by pretty much every British band of the sixties, and become a blues standard. The most important cover version of it though was when Muddy Waters decided to make his own answer record to Diddley, in which he stated that *he* was a man, not a boy like Diddley. Diddley got a co-writing credit on this, though Willie Dixon, whose riff had been the basis of “I’m a Man”, didn’t. [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “Mannish Boy”] And then there was Etta James’ answer record, “W.O.M.A.N.”, which once again has wild west references in it: [Excerpt: Etta James, “W.O.M.A.N.”] And that… “inspired” Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to write this for Peggy Lee: [Excerpt: Peggy Lee, “I’m A Woman”] Of course, none of those records, except Muddy Waters’, gave Bo Diddley a writing credit, just as Diddley didn’t credit Dixon for his riff. At the same session as the single was recorded, Diddley’s harmonica player, Billy Boy Arnold, recorded a single of his own, backed by Diddley and his band. “I’m Sweet on you Baby” wasn’t released at the time, but it’s a much more straightforward blues song, and more like Chess’ normal releases. Chess were interested in making more records with Arnold, but we’ll see that that didn’t turn out well: [Excerpt: Billy Boy Arnold, “I’m Sweet on you Baby”] Despite putting out a truly phenomenal single, Diddley hit upon a real problem with his career, and one that would be one of the reasons he was never as popular as contemporaries like Chuck Berry. The problem, at first, looked like anything but. He was booked on the Ed Sullivan Show to promote his first single. The Ed Sullivan Show was the biggest TV show of the fifties and sixties. A variety show presented by the eponymous Sullivan, who somehow even after twenty years of presenting never managed to look or sound remotely comfortable in front of a camera, it was the programme that boosted Elvis Presley from stardom to superstardom, and which turned the Beatles from a local phenomenon in the UK and Europe into the biggest act the world had ever seen. Getting on it was the biggest possible break Diddley could have got, and it should have made his career. Instead, it was a disaster, all because of a misunderstanding. At the time, the country song “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford was a big hit: [Excerpt: “Sixteen Tons”, Tennessee Ernie Ford] Diddley liked the song — enough that he would later record his own version of it: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, “Sixteen Tons”] And so he was singing it to himself in his dressing room. One of the production staff happened to walk past and hear him, and asked if he could perform that song on the show. Diddley assumed he was being asked if he would do it as well as the song he was there to promote, and was flattered to be asked to do a second song. [Excerpt: Ed Sullivan introducing “Dr Jive”, with all the confusion about what words he’s using] When he got out on to the stage he saw the cue card saying “Bo Diddley Sixteen Tons”, assumed it meant the song “Bo Diddley” followed by the song “Sixteen Tons”, and so he launched into “Bo Diddley”. After all, why would he go on the show to promote someone else’s record? He was there to promote his own debut single. So of course he was going to play it. This was not what the production person had intended, and was not what Ed Sullivan wanted. Backstage, there was a confrontation that got so heated that Diddley had to be physically restrained from beating Sullivan with his guitar after Sullivan called Diddley a “black boy” (according to Diddley, “black” at that time and in that place, was a racial slur, though it’s the polite term to use today). Sullivan yelled and screamed at Diddley and told him he would be blacklisted from network TV, and would certainly never appear on Sullivan’s show again under any circumstances. After that first TV appearance, it would be seven years until Diddley’s second. And unlike all his contemporaries he didn’t even get to appear in films. Even Alan Freed, who greatly respected Diddley and booked him on his live shows, and who Diddley also respected, didn’t have him appear in any of the five rock and roll films he made. As far as I can tell, the two minutes he was on the Ed Sullivan show is the only record of Bo Diddley on film or video from 1955 through 1962. And this meant, as well, that Chess put all their promotional efforts behind Chuck Berry, who for all his faults was more welcome in the TV studios. If Diddley wanted success, he had to let his records and live performances do the work for him, because he wasn’t getting any help from the media. Luckily, his records were great. Not only was Diddley’s first hit one of the great two-sided singles of all time, but his next single was also impressive. The story of “Diddley Daddy” dates back to one of the white cover versions of “Bo Diddley”. Essex Records put out this cover version by Jean Dinning, produced by Dave Miller, who had earlier produced Bill Haley and the Comets’ first records: [Excerpt: Jean Dinning, “Bo Diddley”] And, as with Georgia Gibbs’ version of “Tweedle Dee”, the record label wanted to make the record sound as much like the original as possible, and so tried to get the original musicians to play on it, and made an agreement with Chess. They couldn’t get Bo Diddley himself, and without his tremelo guitar it sounded nothing like the original, but they *did* get Willie Dixon on bass, Diddley’s drummer Clifton James (who sadly isn’t the same Clifton James who played the bumbling sheriff in “Live and Let Die” and “Superman II”, though it would be great if he was), and Billy Boy Arnold on harmonica. But Billy Boy Arnold made the mistake of going to Chess and asking for the money he was owed for the session. Leonard Chess didn’t like when musicians wanted paying, and complained to Bo Diddley about Arnold. Diddley told Arnold that Chess wasn’t happy with him, and so Arnold decided to take a song he’d written, “Diddy Diddy Dum Dum”, to another label rather than give it to Chess. He changed the lyrics around a bit, and called it “I Wish You Would”: [Excerpt: Billy Boy Arnold, “I Wish You Would”] Arnold actually recorded that for Vee-Jay Records on the very day that Bo Diddley’s second single was due to be recorded, and the Diddley session was held up because nobody knew where Arnold was. They eventually found him and got him to Diddley’s session — where Diddley started playing “Diddy Diddy Dum Dum”. Leonard Chess suggested letting Arnold sing the song, but Arnold said “I can’t — I just recorded that for VeeJay”, and showed Chess the contract. Diddley and Harvey Fuqua, who was there to sing backing vocals with the rest of the Moonglows, quickly reworked the song. Arnold didn’t want to play harmonica on something so close to a record he’d just made, though he played on the B-side, and so Muddy Waters’ harmonica player Little Walter filled in instead. The new song, entitled “Diddley Daddy”, became another of Diddley’s signature songs: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, “Diddley Daddy”] but the B-side, “She’s Fine, She’s Mine”, was the one that would truly become influential: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, “She’s Fine, She’s Mine”] That song was later slightly reworked into this, by Willie Cobbs: [Excerpt: Willie Cobbs, “You Don’t Love Me”] That song was covered by pretty much every white guitar band of the late sixties — the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Allman Brothers, Steve Stills and Al Kooper… the list goes on. But Cobbs’ song itself was also slightly reworked, by Dawn Penn, in 1967, and became a minor reggae classic. Twenty-seven years later, in 1994, Penn rerecorded her song, based on Cobbs’ song, based on Bo Diddley’s song, and it became a worldwide smash hit, with Diddley getting cowriting credit: [Excerpt: Dawn Penn, “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”] And *that* has later been covered by Beyonce and Rhianna, and sampled by Ghostface Killah and Usher. And that’s how important Bo Diddley was at this point in time. The B-side to his less-good follow-up to his debut provided enough material for sixty years’ worth of hits in styles from R&B to jam band to reggae to hip-hop. And the song “Bo Diddley” itself, of course, would provide a rhythm for generations of musicians to take, everyone from Buddy Holly: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Not Fade Away”] to George Michael: [Excerpt George Michael, “Faith”] to U2: [Excerpt: U2, “Desire”] Because that rhythm was so successful – even though most of the success went to white people who didn’t credit or pay Diddley – people tend to think of Diddley as a one-idea musician, which is far from the truth. Like many of his contemporaries he only had a short period where he was truly inventive — his last truly classic track was recorded in 1962. But that period was an astoundingly inventive one, and we’re going to be seeing him again during the course of this series. In his first four tracks, Diddley had managed to record three of the most influential tracks in rock history. But the next time we look at him, it will be with a song he wrote for other people — a song that would indirectly have massive effects on the whole of popular music.  

Welcome to episode thirty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This is the last of our three-part look at Chess Records, and focuses on “Bo Diddley” by Bo Diddley. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.  —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.I accidentally used a later rerecording of “I Wish You Would” by Billy Boy Arnold on the playlist, but I use the correct version in the podcast itself. Sorry about that. As this is part three of the Chess Records trilogy, you might want to listen to part one, on the Moonglows, and part two, on Chuck Berry, if you haven’t already. Along with the resources mentioned in the previous two episodes, the resource I used most this time was Bo Diddley: Living Legend by George R. White, a strong biography told almost entirely in Diddley’s own words from interviews, and the only full-length book on Diddley. This compilation contains Diddley’s first six albums plus a bunch of non-album and live tracks, and has everything you’re likely to want by Diddley on it, for under ten pounds. If you want to hear more Muddy Waters after hearing his back-and-forth with Diddley, this double CD set is a perfect introduction to him. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the final part of our trilogy about Chess Records. Last week, we looked at Chuck Berry. This week, we’re going to deal with someone who may even have been more important. One of the many injustices in copyright law — and something that we’ll have a lot of cause to mention during the course of this series — is that, for the entire time period covered by this podcast, it was impossible to copyright a groove or a rhythm, but you could copyright a melody line and lyric. And this has led to real inter-racial injustice. In general, black musical culture in the USA has emphasised different aspects of musical invention than white culture has. While white American musical culture — particularly *rich* white musical culture — has stressed inventive melodies and harmonic movement — think of, say, Burt Bacharach or George Gershwin — it has not historically stressed rhythmic invention. On the other hand, black musical culture has stressed that above everything else — you’ll notice that all the rhythmic innovations we’ve talked about in this series so far, like boogie woogie, and the backbeat, and the tresillo rhythm, all came from black musicians. That’s not, of course, to say that black musicians can’t be melodically inventive or white musicians rhythmically — I’m not here saying “black people have a great sense of rhythm” or any of that racist nonsense. I’m just talking about the way that different cultures have prioritised different things. But this means that when black musicians have produced innovative work, it’s not been possible for them to have any intellectual property ownership in the result. You can’t steal a melody by Bacharach, but anyone can play a song with a boogie beat, or a shuffle, or a tresillo… or with the Bo Diddley beat. [Very short excerpt: “Bo Diddley”, Bo Diddley] Elias McDaniel’s distinctive sound came about because he started performing so young that he couldn’t gain entrance to clubs, and so he and his band had to play on street corners. But you can’t cart a drum kit around and use it on the streets, so McDaniel and his band came up with various inventive ways to add percussion to the act. At first, they had someone who would come round with a big bag of sand and empty it onto the pavement. He’d then use a brush on the sand, and the noise of the brushing would provide percussion — at the end of the performance this man, whose name was Sam Daniel but was called Sandman by everyone, would sweep all the sand back up and put it back into his bag for the next show. Eventually, though, Sandman left, and McDaniel hit on the idea of using his girlfriend’s neighbour Jerome Green as part of the act. We heard Jerome last week, playing on “Maybellene”, but he’s someone who there is astonishingly little information about. He doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, and you’ll find barely more than a few paragraphs about him online. No-one even knows when he was born or died – *if* he died, though he seems to have disappeared around 1972. And this is quite astonishing when you consider that Green played on all Bo Diddley’s classic records, and sang duet on a few of the most successful ones, *and* he played on many of Chuck Berry’s, and on various other records by Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, the Moonglows… yet when you Google him, the third hit that comes up is about Robson Green and Jerome Flynn, a nineties soft-pop duo who span out of a soap opera. At first, Jerome’s job was to pass the hat around and collect the money, but McDaniel decided to build Jerome a pair of maracas, and teach him how to play. And he learned to play very well indeed, adding a Latin sound to what had previously been just a blues band. Jerome’s maracas weren’t the only things that Elias McDaniel built, though. He had a knack for technology, though he was always rather modest about his own abilities. He built himself one of the very first tremelo systems for a guitar, making something out of old car bits and electronic junk that would break the electronic signal up. Before commercial tremelo systems existed, McDaniel was the only one who could make his guitar sound like that. The choppy guitar, with its signal breaking up deliberately, and the maracas being shook frantically, gave McDaniel’s music a rhythmic drive unlike anything else in rock and roll. McDaniel and his band eventually got their music heard by Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Chess was impressed by a song called “Uncle John”, which had lyrics that went “Uncle John’s got corn ain’t never been shucked/Uncle John’s got daughters ain’t never been… to school”; but he said the song needed less salacious lyrics, and he suggested retitling it “Bo Diddley”, which also became the stage name of the man who up until now had been called Elias McDaniel. The new lyrics were inspired by the black folk song “Hambone”, which a few years earlier had become a novelty hit: [Excerpt: “Hambone”, Red Saunders Orchestra with the Hambone Kids] Now, I have to be a bit careful here, because here I’m talking about something that’s from a different culture from my own, and my understanding of it is that of an outsider. To *me*, “Hambone” seems to be a unified thing that’s part song, part dance, part game. But my understanding may be very, very flawed, and I don’t want to pretend to knowledge I don’t have. But this is my best understanding of what “Hambone” is. “Hambone”, like many folk songs, is not in itself a single song, but a collection of different songs with similar elements. The name comes from a dance which, it is said, dates back to enslaved people attempting to entertain themselves. Slaves in most of the US were banned from using drums, because it was believed they might use them to send messages to each other, so when they wanted to dance and sing music, they would slap different parts of their own bodies to provide percussive accompaniment. Now, I tend to be a little dubious of narratives that claim that aspects of twentieth-century black culture date back to slavery or, as people often claim, to Africa. A lot of the time these turn out to be urban myths of the “ring a ring a roses is about the bubonic plague” kind. One of the real tragedies of slavery is that the African culture that the enslaved black people brought over to the US was largely lost in the ensuing centuries, and so there’s a very strong incentive to try to find things that could be a continuation of that. But that’s the story around “Hambone”, which is also known as the “Juba beat”. Another influence Diddley would always cite for the lyrical scansion is the song “Hey Baba Reba”, which he would usually misremember as having been by either Cab Calloway or Louis Jordan, but was actually by Lionel Hampton: [Excerpt: Lionel Hampton, “Hey Baba Reba”] But the important thing to note is that the rhythm of all these records is totally different from the rhythm of the song “Bo Diddley”. There’s a bit of misinformation that goes around in almost every article about Diddley, saying “the Bo Diddley beat is just the ‘Hambone’ beat”, and while Diddley would correct this in almost every interview he ever gave, the misinformation would persist — to the point that when I first heard “Hambone” I was shocked, because I’d assumed that there must at least have been some slight similarity. There’s no similarity at all. And that’s not the only song where I’ve seen claims that there’s a Bo Diddley beat where none exists. As a reminder, here’s the actual Bo Diddley rhythm: [Very short excerpt: Bo Diddley, “Bo Diddley”] Now the PhD thesis on the development of the backbeat which I talked about back in episode two claims that the beat appears on about thirteen records before Diddley’s, mostly by people we’ve discussed before, like Louis Jordan, Johnny Otis, Fats Domino, and Roy Brown. But here’s a couple of examples of the songs that thesis cites. Here’s “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” by Fats Domino: [Excerpt: “Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Fats Domino] And here’s “That’s Your Last Boogie”, by Joe Swift, produced by Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Joe Swift, “That’s Your Last Boogie”] As you can hear, they both have something that’s *sort of* the Bo Diddley beat, but not really, among their other rhythms. It’s most notable at the very start of “That’s Your Last Boogie” [Intro: “That’s Your Last Boogie”] That’s what’s called a clave beat — it’s sort of like the tresillo, with an extra bom-bom on the end. Bom bom-bom, bom-bom. That’s not the Bo Diddley beat. The Bo Diddley beat actually varies subtly from bar to bar, but it’s generally a sort of chunk-a chunk-a-chunk a-chunk a-chunk ah. It certainly stresses the five beats of the clave, but it’s not them, and nor is it the “shave and a haircut, two bits” rhythm other people seem to claim for it. Most ridiculously, Wikipedia even claims that the Andrews Sisters’ version of Lord Invader’s great calypso song, “Rum and Coca Cola”, has the Bo Diddley beat: [Excerpt: “Rum and Coca Cola”, the Andrews Sisters] Both records have maracas, but that’s about it. Incidentally, that song was, in the Andrews Sisters version, credited to a white American thief rather than to the black Trinidadian men who wrote it. Sadly appropriate for a song about the exploitation of Trinidadians for “the Yankee dollar”. But none of these records have the Bo Diddley beat, despite what anyone might say. None of them even sound very much like Diddley’s beat at all. The origins of the Bo Diddley beat were, believe it or not, with Gene Autry. We’ve talked before about Autry, who was the biggest Western music star of the late thirties and early forties, and who inspired all sorts of people you wouldn’t expect, from Les Paul to Hank Ballard. But Diddley hit upon his rhythm when trying to play Autry’s “I’ve Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle”. [excerpt, Gene Autry, “I’ve Got Spurs that Jingle Jangle Jingle”] No, I don’t see the resemblance either. But this ties back into what we were talking about last week, with the influence of country musicians on the blues and R&B musicians at Chess. And if you become familiar with his later work, it becomes clear that Diddley truly loved the whole iconography of the Western, and country music. He did albums called “Have Guitar Will Travel” (named after the Western TV show “Have Gun Will Travel”) and “Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger”. Diddley’s work is rooted in black folklore — things like hambone, but also the figure of Stagger Lee and other characters like the Signifying Monkey — but it should be understood that black American folklore has always included the image of the black cowboy. The combination of these influences – the “Hambone” lyrical ideas, the cowboy rhythm, and the swaggering character Diddley created for himself – became this: [Excerpt: “Bo Diddley” by Bo Diddley] The B-side to the record, meanwhile, was maybe even more important. It’s also an early example of Diddley *not* just reusing his signature rhythm. The popular image of Diddley has him as a one-idea artist remaking the same song over and over again — and certainly he did often return to the Bo Diddley beat — but he was a far more interesting artist than that, and recorded in a far wider variety of styles than you might imagine. And in “I’m A Man” he took on another artist’s style, beating Muddy Waters at his own game. “I’m A Man” was a response to Waters’ earlier “Hoochie Coochie Man”: [Excerpt: “Hoochie Coochie Man”, Muddy Waters] “Hoochie Coochie Man” had been written for Muddy Waters by Willie Dixon and was, as far as I can tell, the first blues record ever to have that da-na-na na-na riff that later became the riff that for most people defines the blues. “Hoochie Coochie Man” had managed to sum up everything about Waters’ persona in a way that Waters himself had never managed with his own songs. It combined sexual braggadocio with hoodoo lore — the character Waters was singing in was possessed of supernatural powers, from the day he was born, and he used those powers to “make pretty women jump and shout”. He had a black cat bone, and a mojo, and a John the Conqueror root. It was a great riff, and a great persona, and a great record. But it was still a conventionally structured sixteen-bar blues, with the normal three chords that almost all blues records have. But Bo Diddley heard that and decided that was two chords too many. When you’ve got a great riff, you don’t *need* chord changes, not if you can just hammer on that riff. So he came up with a variant of Dixon’s song, and called it “I’m a Man”. In his version, there was only the one chord: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, “I’m a Man”] Willie Dixon guested on bass for that song, as it wasn’t felt that Diddley’s own bass player was getting the feeling right. There were also some changes made to the song in the studio — as Diddley put it later: “They wanted me to spell ‘man’, but they weren’t explaining it right. They couldn’t get me to spell ‘man’. I didn’t understand what they were talking about!” But eventually he did sing that man is spelled m-a-n, and the song went on to be covered by pretty much every British band of the sixties, and become a blues standard. The most important cover version of it though was when Muddy Waters decided to make his own answer record to Diddley, in which he stated that *he* was a man, not a boy like Diddley. Diddley got a co-writing credit on this, though Willie Dixon, whose riff had been the basis of “I’m a Man”, didn’t. [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “Mannish Boy”] And then there was Etta James’ answer record, “W.O.M.A.N.”, which once again has wild west references in it: [Excerpt: Etta James, “W.O.M.A.N.”] And that… “inspired” Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to write this for Peggy Lee: [Excerpt: Peggy Lee, “I’m A Woman”] Of course, none of those records, except Muddy Waters’, gave Bo Diddley a writing credit, just as Diddley didn’t credit Dixon for his riff. At the same session as the single was recorded, Diddley’s harmonica player, Billy Boy Arnold, recorded a single of his own, backed by Diddley and his band. “I’m Sweet on you Baby” wasn’t released at the time, but it’s a much more straightforward blues song, and more like Chess’ normal releases. Chess were interested in making more records with Arnold, but we’ll see that that didn’t turn out well: [Excerpt: Billy Boy Arnold, “I’m Sweet on you Baby”] Despite putting out a truly phenomenal single, Diddley hit upon a real problem with his career, and one that would be one of the reasons he was never as popular as contemporaries like Chuck Berry. The problem, at first, looked like anything but. He was booked on the Ed Sullivan Show to promote his first single. The Ed Sullivan Show was the biggest TV show of the fifties and sixties. A variety show presented by the eponymous Sullivan, who somehow even after twenty years of presenting never managed to look or sound remotely comfortable in front of a camera, it was the programme that boosted Elvis Presley from stardom to superstardom, and which turned the Beatles from a local phenomenon in the UK and Europe into the biggest act the world had ever seen. Getting on it was the biggest possible break Diddley could have got, and it should have made his career. Instead, it was a disaster, all because of a misunderstanding. At the time, the country song “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford was a big hit: [Excerpt: “Sixteen Tons”, Tennessee Ernie Ford] Diddley liked the song — enough that he would later record his own version of it: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, “Sixteen Tons”] And so he was singing it to himself in his dressing room. One of the production staff happened to walk past and hear him, and asked if he could perform that song on the show. Diddley assumed he was being asked if he would do it as well as the song he was there to promote, and was flattered to be asked to do a second song. [Excerpt: Ed Sullivan introducing “Dr Jive”, with all the confusion about what words he’s using] When he got out on to the stage he saw the cue card saying “Bo Diddley Sixteen Tons”, assumed it meant the song “Bo Diddley” followed by the song “Sixteen Tons”, and so he launched into “Bo Diddley”. After all, why would he go on the show to promote someone else’s record? He was there to promote his own debut single. So of course he was going to play it. This was not what the production person had intended, and was not what Ed Sullivan wanted. Backstage, there was a confrontation that got so heated that Diddley had to be physically restrained from beating Sullivan with his guitar after Sullivan called Diddley a “black boy” (according to Diddley, “black” at that time and in that place, was a racial slur, though it’s the polite term to use today). Sullivan yelled and screamed at Diddley and told him he would be blacklisted from network TV, and would certainly never appear on Sullivan’s show again under any circumstances. After that first TV appearance, it would be seven years until Diddley’s second. And unlike all his contemporaries he didn’t even get to appear in films. Even Alan Freed, who greatly respected Diddley and booked him on his live shows, and who Diddley also respected, didn’t have him appear in any of the five rock and roll films he made. As far as I can tell, the two minutes he was on the Ed Sullivan show is the only record of Bo Diddley on film or video from 1955 through 1962. And this meant, as well, that Chess put all their promotional efforts behind Chuck Berry, who for all his faults was more welcome in the TV studios. If Diddley wanted success, he had to let his records and live performances do the work for him, because he wasn’t getting any help from the media. Luckily, his records were great. Not only was Diddley’s first hit one of the great two-sided singles of all time, but his next single was also impressive. The story of “Diddley Daddy” dates back to one of the white cover versions of “Bo Diddley”. Essex Records put out this cover version by Jean Dinning, produced by Dave Miller, who had earlier produced Bill Haley and the Comets’ first records: [Excerpt: Jean Dinning, “Bo Diddley”] And, as with Georgia Gibbs’ version of “Tweedle Dee”, the record label wanted to make the record sound as much like the original as possible, and so tried to get the original musicians to play on it, and made an agreement with Chess. They couldn’t get Bo Diddley himself, and without his tremelo guitar it sounded nothing like the original, but they *did* get Willie Dixon on bass, Diddley’s drummer Clifton James (who sadly isn’t the same Clifton James who played the bumbling sheriff in “Live and Let Die” and “Superman II”, though it would be great if he was), and Billy Boy Arnold on harmonica. But Billy Boy Arnold made the mistake of going to Chess and asking for the money he was owed for the session. Leonard Chess didn’t like when musicians wanted paying, and complained to Bo Diddley about Arnold. Diddley told Arnold that Chess wasn’t happy with him, and so Arnold decided to take a song he’d written, “Diddy Diddy Dum Dum”, to another label rather than give it to Chess. He changed the lyrics around a bit, and called it “I Wish You Would”: [Excerpt: Billy Boy Arnold, “I Wish You Would”] Arnold actually recorded that for Vee-Jay Records on the very day that Bo Diddley’s second single was due to be recorded, and the Diddley session was held up because nobody knew where Arnold was. They eventually found him and got him to Diddley’s session — where Diddley started playing “Diddy Diddy Dum Dum”. Leonard Chess suggested letting Arnold sing the song, but Arnold said “I can’t — I just recorded that for VeeJay”, and showed Chess the contract. Diddley and Harvey Fuqua, who was there to sing backing vocals with the rest of the Moonglows, quickly reworked the song. Arnold didn’t want to play harmonica on something so close to a record he’d just made, though he played on the B-side, and so Muddy Waters’ harmonica player Little Walter filled in instead. The new song, entitled “Diddley Daddy”, became another of Diddley’s signature songs: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, “Diddley Daddy”] but the B-side, “She’s Fine, She’s Mine”, was the one that would truly become influential: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, “She’s Fine, She’s Mine”] That song was later slightly reworked into this, by Willie Cobbs: [Excerpt: Willie Cobbs, “You Don’t Love Me”] That song was covered by pretty much every white guitar band of the late sixties — the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Allman Brothers, Steve Stills and Al Kooper… the list goes on. But Cobbs’ song itself was also slightly reworked, by Dawn Penn, in 1967, and became a minor reggae classic. Twenty-seven years later, in 1994, Penn rerecorded her song, based on Cobbs’ song, based on Bo Diddley’s song, and it became a worldwide smash hit, with Diddley getting cowriting credit: [Excerpt: Dawn Penn, “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)”] And *that* has later been covered by Beyonce and Rhianna, and sampled by Ghostface Killah and Usher. And that’s how important Bo Diddley was at this point in time. The B-side to his less-good follow-up to his debut provided enough material for sixty years’ worth of hits in styles from R&B to jam band to reggae to hip-hop. And the song “Bo Diddley” itself, of course, would provide a rhythm for generations of musicians to take, everyone from Buddy Holly: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Not Fade Away”] to George Michael: [Excerpt George Michael, “Faith”] to U2: [Excerpt: U2, “Desire”] Because that rhythm was so successful – even though most of the success went to white people who didn’t credit or pay Diddley – people tend to think of Diddley as a one-idea musician, which is far from the truth. Like many of his contemporaries he only had a short period where he was truly inventive — his last truly classic track was recorded in 1962. But that period was an astoundingly inventive one, and we’re going to be seeing him again during the course of this series. In his first four tracks, Diddley had managed to record three of the most influential tracks in rock history. But the next time we look at him, it will be with a song he wrote for other people — a song that would indirectly have massive effects on the whole of popular music.