POPULARITY
20 episodes with Skiffle
2 episodes with Skiffle
4 episodes with Skiffle
2 episodes with Skiffle
2 episodes with Skiffle
15 episodes with Skiffle
2 episodes with Skiffle
13 episodes with Skiffle
4 episodes with Skiffle
Skiffle! Skiffle! Skiffle! När Ulf Henningsson och Åke Eriksson återvänder till Stockholm för 25:e gången går färden ända bort till 1957 och det blir skiffle för hela slanten. Nördigheten visar inga gränser när det snackas vinylbubblor, baroner, en Lill Lindfors-brorsa, en Rob'n'Raz-morsa och oändligt mycket mer, t o m Pistol Pete dyker upp. På bilden: Roban's Skiffle Group från Solna.
INTERVIEW: David Thorpe on backyard skiffle band show + instrument-making workshop by Zac Hoffman on Radio One 91FM Dunedin
This week in our history of rock music, the UK in the mid '50s is swept up in the skiffle craze, and in the USA, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis follow in Elvis's footprints.
In this episode, Danny is joined by Chris Spedding, one of the most versatile and well-respected guitarists in the world. As a singer, he had a hit in 1975 with Motorbikin´, produced the Sex Pistols" first recordings and opened for the Rolling Stones in the 1969 Hyde Park concert. Chris has worked with pretty much everyone in music. And most impressively of all, was the Womble with the Flying V. He and Danny discuss his remarkable musical journey from violinist to guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer. Chris´ career has spanned many genres of music including Skiffle, Country & Western, Jazz, punk, rock & roll and the CBGB scene; a career that included headlining the 100 Club Punk Festival and playing with Joan Armatrading, Bryan Ferry, Elton John, Katie Melua and many more. If you can´t get enough of these podcasts, head to https://www.patreon.com/DannyHurst to access my exclusive, member-only, fun-filled and fact-packed history-related videos. KEY TAKEAWAYS Chris grew up in Sheffield and arrived in London in 1961, living in Pimlico, Islington, Canonbury, Baker Street and Wimbledon. He moved to LA in the 70s and New York in the 90s. Chris came back to the UK in part because he was working mainly for Bryan Ferry. From the 1950s Denmark St became home to some of the world´s biggest modern music publishers. In the 70s it was the place to go to buy instruments. The Rolling Stones recorded their first album on Denmark St. Chris started his career playing country music on US Air Force bases, in the UK. BEST MOMENTS “At the time, it was much sexier to have a guitar than a violin .” “Having played with some orchestral members, they're just as bad as the rock and rollers.” “That was quite depressing seeing so many of the old music shops empty.” “I was in New York, interesting times.” “I used to love Amy Winehouse.” EPISODE RESOURCES http://www.chrisspedding.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Spedding Motorbikin´- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Juz4W9yEYA Toc H - https://tochcentenary.wordpress.com/2021/03/16/the-headquarter-buildings-of-toc-h HOST BIO Historian, performer, and mentor Danny Hurst has been engaging audiences for many years, whether as a lecturer, stand-up comic or intervention teacher with young offenders and excluded secondary students. Having worked with some of the most difficult people in the UK, he is a natural storyteller and entertainer, whilst purveying the most fascinating information that you didn't know you didn't know. A writer and host of pub quizzes across London, he has travelled extensively and speaks several languages. He has been a consultant for exhibitions at the Imperial War Museum and Natural History Museum in London as well as presenting accelerated learning seminars across the UK. With a wide range of knowledge ranging from motor mechanics to opera to breeding carnivorous plants, he believes learning is the most effective when it's fun. Uniquely delivered, this is history without the boring bits, told the way only Danny Hurst can. CONTACT AND SOCIALS https://instagram.com/dannyjhurstfacebook.com/danny.hurst.9638 https://twitter.com/dannyhurst https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-hurst-19574720
As Season 3 comes to a close, Erv welcomes former frontman from the band ‘Smile', Tim Staffell for a chat about his work with the band, which later was fronted by Freddie Bulsara, who changed his name to Mercury, and the band's name to ‘Queen'....and the rest, as they say, is history! Tim was an incredible guest, and we had a great discussion about his baptism into the Blues, his work with an earlier band with Brian May (1984), supporting Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix, and where he thought Hendrix might have progressed to, had he lived. It's been another fantastic Season, friends. We are looking forward to January, when Season 4 takes flight. Website: http://www.timstaffell.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/timbosta Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6EtRaGeodP9stdGz92vPtB YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSSBpXDNwwEhDKwwVqwQ1tQ _________________________Facebook: Time SignaturesYouTube: Time SignaturesFacebook: Capital Area Blues SocietyWebsite: Capital Area Blues SocietyFriends of Time Signatures _______Website: University of Mississippi Libraries Blues ArchiveWebsite: Killer Blues Headstone ProjectWebsite: Blues Society Radio Network
Creativity via 1 Wikipedia/1 Wiktionary Article to Start Off...daily For Most part.
One for me. Let me take you in my arms, and you with me. Know Your Grace. I'm not sure she'd be keen. Isn't that what we all want? Wouldn't that make everything worth it? Perhaps. Could it be your less devoted to my Estella? And. The rest? Deeply moving about human flight, perhaps, because we all carry within us memories of the time before our material bodies were fully formed. The time when we could fly, when we were spirits, living freely among spirits in a world bathed in the ineffable light of a spiritual sun. I'll wait for it anyway. So he starts to record these Leadbelly songs. Skiffle. Emerges. Skiffles. Really, it's like punk rock British musicians or or or wannabe musicians can express themselves because they've got acoustic guitar. The. Argues that the stage is in dialogue with vernacular, natural philosophical print. The project shows how this archive, taken up by early modern playwrights, complicates our understanding of the methods of deduction in the period and those who might. Thank you --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tadpole-slamp/support
Another trip for Gareth and Ryan back to the 50s...get down to the hips sounds of Rock'n'Roll, Doo Wop and Skiffle. Creepy interview with a future guitar legend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewNLaBhPRY8 A vicar's take on the Skiffle craze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hp0bqNwsVQ Beers = Yabby Dabba-Doo by Tallboy and Moose --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/six-pack-podcast/message
Adam talks with English musician Billy Bragg about the time they met in Glastonbury when Billy was keeping some unexpected company, why manners matter on social media, the challenge of being a progressive patriot, what posters Billy had on his wall as a boy, Dial-A-Disc and other ways we listened to music in the olden days, why Neil Young and Stanley Kubrick made their way to Barking, the fondness that Billy and I share for a certain brand of pudding, how Billy's approach to politics has evolved over the years, the fascinating place that Skiffle holds in music history and close encounters with Bob Dylan and David Bowie.CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGEThis conversation was recorded face to face in London on August 1st, 2023Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenRELATED LINKSBILLY BRAGG WEBSITEADAM AND JOE INTERVIEW BILLY BRAGG AT GLASTONBURY - 2000 (YOUTUBE)BILLY BRAGG'S SKIFFLE PLAYLIST (SPOTIFY)JIMMY PAGE (AGED 13) & BAND - 'MAMA DON'T WANT TO SKIFFLE ANYMORE', 'COTTONFIELDS' - 1957 (YOUTUBE)BILLY BRAGG - TANK PARK SALUTE (LIVE IN MILWAUKEE) - 2010 (YOUTUBE)MAVIS NICHOLSON INTERVIEW WITH BILLY BRAGG - 1986 (YOUTUBE)BILLY BRAGG - FULL ENGLISH BREXIT (LIVE PERFORMANCE) - 2017 (YOUTUBE)NEIL YOUNG - HARVEST TIME (CLIP) - (YOUTUBE)DELANEY AND BONNIE - GROUPIE (SUPERSTAR) - 1972 (YOUTUBE) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode we welcome the left's very own "national treasure" Billy Bragg – beamed in from his adopted Dorset – and ask him about the long and remarkable career that's enshrined in forthcoming box set The Roaring Forty. Billy revisits his Barking boyhood and early pop and folk influences, culminating in the 1977 formation of Clash-inspired punks Riff Raff. After a brief 1981 detour via the British Army, he explains how he settled on his unique solo style and delivery – and how he wound up on the cover of the NME in January 1984. Inevitably the conversation turns to politics and the way Billy has managed to retain his charm, humour and compassion in the face of hatred and extremism. An audio clip of Spectator editor Boris Johnson haranguing him at Glastonbury in 2000 is followed by discussion of left-wing patriotism, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party and our present-day hyperpolarisation. Martin recalls the day Billy came to tea to ask about the RBP co-founder's father Bill and uncle Ken – and the catalytic impact Ken Colyer's Jazzmen had on the music Billy chronicled so impressively in his 2017 book Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World. From the Colyers and Lonnie Donegan we cross the big pond to talk about Woody Guthrie, the agit-folk bard whose lyrics Billy and Wilco turned into 1998's Mermaid Avenue album. Clips from Chris Smith's 1999 audio interview with Woody's daughter (and archivist) Nora Guthrie prompt conversation about the Okie icon's mighty legacy. After Mark quotes from recently-added articles about the Stooges, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Dr. Dre, Jasper wraps matters up with remarks on Truth Hurts and FKA Twigs. Many thanks to special guest Billy Bragg. For more about The Roaring Forty, as well as Roots, Radicals and Rockers, visit his website at billybragg.co.uk. Pieces discussed: Billy Bragg on the cover of the NME, Who the hell does Billy Bragg think he is?, Billy Bragg comes to tea, Nora Guthrie audio, Billy Bragg's Mermaid Avenue, The Stooges, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Dr. Dre, Truth Hurts and FKA Twigs.
Throughout history, venues have helped define and nurture scenes. Sometimes music venues become central to the scenes they support. For example, The Hacienda in Manchester become synonymous with the Madchester scene in the early 90s.From the 1960s to the late 1990's, a tiny venue in Soho (London) became the heart of a music scene that spawned phenomenal stars. The venue was Bunjies. Although it wasn't a venue so much as it was a coffee shop with a tiny basement.We could list the acts who performed at Bunjies, but we figured it would be far more interesting to speak to someone who was there. Nick Blatchley is that man! In this episode of the Beat Motel podcast, we are thrilled to be joined by poet, writer, historian and occasional rapper Mr Nick Blatchley.Show linksVisit Nick's website at https://nickblatchleycopywriting.co.uk/Bunjies on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BunjiesBands and acts mentioned in this episode:Paul SimonBert JanschRalph McTellRod StewartAdam FaithDavid BowieJeff BuckleyJohn Cooper Clark
Este episodio es un viaje, una arqueología musical por el origen del que es considerado cómo el grupo más importante de la historia del rock. Les contamos la historia del primer álbum de estudio de los Beatles: «Please, Please me». Nos vamos para el Liverpool de finales de los años 50. Hablaremos de la Posguerra en el Reino Unido, de los muchachos que quisieron crear un mundo distinto a través de la música, del Skiffle y del Merseybeat. Haremos una escala por Hamburgo, el puerto alemán que le permitió crecer a las bandas de Liverpool. Y por último les narramos el recorrido que hay detrás del álbum que lo inició todo. Notas del episodio: MUBI nos esta patrocinando!, MUBI es una plataforma de cine curada a mano donde podrás descubrir una película nueva todos los días. Ingresa a mubi.com/dianauribe y obtén 30 días gratis de películas La dura Posguerra del Reino Unido: Austeridad y Racionamiento Y así llegó el Rock a Inglaterra The Merseybeat, el «sabor» del Rock que se creó en Liverpool Una historia de los «Quarrymen», la banda antes de los Beatles Hamburgo, el lugar dónde crecieron Los Beatles «Please, Please me» un álbum para la historia ¡Síguenos en nuestras Redes Sociales! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DianaUribe.fm/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/?hl=es-la Twitter: https://twitter.com/dianauribefm?lang=es Pagina web: https://www.dianauribe.fm
Friday, March 3rd, is my birthday! In our 5-plus years, I have never had a show fall on my birthday, so I'm calling this week's show my "birthday party show," and I'm inviting everyone to join the party! The music will be hot and it will rock your socks off! The teen sensation Havana Winter with her 6 million followers, will be doing her new song' Hollywood Forever'; Van Morrison will take us back to Skiffle music on his new album' Moving on Skiffle,' his 44th album! Brand new from Brian Ray and his Bayonets' Argentina'. Another new tune from The Shang Hi los,' Billy,' Underground host Palmyra Delran joins the party with I'm Satisfied,' Atlanta blues legend Buddy Moss makes his debut, and The Byrds, Outrageous Cherry, The Bangles, and many more help make this a cool birthday rock party for me. Shoutouts to People's Choice Storage and to Tina@Westgate Storage - I know the TPP team is excited to bring you both into the family. Happy belated b-day to my "Social Media Queen," Denise B. I'm sure she enjoyed sharing her special day with the nation for Presidents Day! T-Bone Anderson should have the show up as usual by 3 pm EST Friday. Thanks, as always, for listening to RadioWilderLive.com. #rocknroll #music #rocknrollmusic #selfstorage #happybirthday #rocknrollsensation
From 1928-1933 Victor Records (then in 1931 RCA Victor) produced a series of Blues, Jug Band, Gospel, Jazz. Skiffle and Sermon recordings specifically marketed to African American record buyers..and some hip hot jazz loving white folks!...Icons such as Memphis Jug Band, Blind Willie McTell, Fury Lewis, Tommy Johnson, Duke Ellington, Bennie Moten and Jelly Roll Morton were released on Victors special RACE "38,000" numerical series. Join us for part two of our exploration of the vintage 1928-33 Victor "Race" records releases. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/american-grooves-hour/support
The Mighty Manfred's guest this week is Van Morrison! Off Van's new album 'Moving on Skiffle', "Streamline Train" is our Coolest Song in the World this Week. Join the Mighty Manfred and Van Morrison for this week's Coolest Conversation, presented by Hard Rock
Billy Bragg, the Bard from Barking, is a singer-songwriter and activist renowned for his politically charged lyrics and social commentary. Billy began his career in the early 1980s with the release of his debut album, Life's A Riot with Spy Vs Spy, which featured the hit song "A New England" and established what was to become an abiding interest in politics. Over the years, Billy has released a dozen studio albums, several live albums, and has collaborated with other artists such as Wilco and Joe Henry. He is also a published author with books on Skiffle and politics. In addition to his music career, Bragg has been involved in various political campaigns and social issues. He is known for his passionate performances and dedication to using his platform to promote social justice. Brian Wise caught up with Billy Bragg to talk about his latest album, recorded and released during the pandemic, The Million Things That Never Happened. (Brian and Billy first spoke in 1984 not long after the release of that first album!). Billy Bragg will be back in Australia in March/April 2023 for a series of special shows including a headline appearance at the Port Fairy Folk Festival. This episode of the Rhythms Podcast is sponsored by The Port Fairy Folk Festival.
On this episode of Rock is Lit . . .Michael Gaspeny and I talk about Our experiences launching debut novels and the advice we'd give new authors who are about to launch their first booksThe backstory that inspired Michael to write the novel ‘A Postcard From the Delta'Blues as the main character in the novel's religion and what the Blues means to Michael When the Blues first grabbed MichaelHow the British Blues Explosion of the 1960s helped white kids discover classic Blues musicians The appropriation issueMichael's experience visiting Clarksdale, Mississippi in the late 1990sWhy making pilgrimages to music-related sites is so important to music loversRacial issues present in the novelRay Koob and I talk about His podcast, Imbalanced History of Rock and Roll, and some of the episodes he's done on Delta Blues (see the Imbalanced History of Rock and Roll website for more on those episodes)Defining characteristics of Delta Blues and some of the most well-known playersWhy Robert Johnson had the most unique style amongst all the Delta Blues musicians of his era, the legend about him selling is soul to the devil at the crossroads, his mysterious deathThe earliest Delta Blues recordings—facilitated by John and Alan LomaxDelta Blues as inspiration for the Skiffle movement in England in the 1960sThe few recorded female Delta Blues musicians, like Memphis MinnieBessie Smith's tragic death/the effects of racism on the music and artists of the early to mid-20th centuryThe history, lore, and Blues-related sites in Clarksdale, MSContemporary artists playing and recording Delta Blues MUSIC AND MEDIA IN THE EPISODE IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:(Copyright Free) Acoustic Delta Blues--Instrumental“Modern Love” by David Bowie“Smokestack Lightnin'” by Howlin' Wolf“You Can't Love What You Ain't Never Had” by Muddy Waters“Earth Angel” by The Penguins“Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson“I'm Ready” by Muddy Waters“Nothin' But The Devil” by Rory Gallagher“You Got to Move” by Mississippi Fred McDowell“Milk Cow Blues” by Freddie Spruell“Me and the Devil Blues” by Robert Johnson“When the Levee Breaks” by Memphis Minnie and Kansas JoeClip from the movie ‘Crossroads'“Serves Me Right to Suffer” by John Lee Hooker LINKS: Digital Dying Blog post on Michael Gaspeny, https://www.funeralwise.com/digital-dying/the-deathbed-poet-how-one-man-makes-poems-of-lifes-last-hours/North Carolina Writers' Network, articles on Michael Gaspeny, https://www.ncwriters.org/news/blog/tag/michael-gaspeny/ Imbalanced History of Rock and Roll Podcast's website, https://imbalancedhistory.com/Imbalanced History of Rock and Roll Twitter, @ImbalancedHisto Imbalanced History of Rock and Roll Facebook Christy Alexander Hallberg's website: https://www.christyalexanderhallberg.com/Christy Alexander Hallberg Twitter, @ChristyHallbergChristy Alexander Hallberg Instagram, @christyhallbergChristy Alexander Hallberg YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfSnRmlL5moSQYi6EjSvqag
On this episode of Rock is Lit . . . Michael Gaspeny and I talk about Our experiences launching debut novels and the advice we'd give new authors who are about to launch their first books The backstory that inspired Michael to write the novel ‘A Postcard From the Delta' Blues as the main character in the novel's religion and what the Blues means to Michael When the Blues first grabbed Michael How the British Blues Explosion of the 1960s helped white kids discover classic Blues musicians The appropriation issue Michael's experience visiting Clarksdale, Mississippi in the late 1990s Why making pilgrimages to music-related sites is so important to music lovers Racial issues present in the novel Ray Koob and I talk about His podcast, Imbalanced History of Rock and Roll, and some of the episodes he's done on Delta Blues (see the Imbalanced History of Rock and Roll website for more on those episodes) Defining characteristics of Delta Blues and some of the most well-known players Why Robert Johnson had the most unique style amongst all the Delta Blues musicians of his era, the legend about him selling is soul to the devil at the crossroads, his mysterious death The earliest Delta Blues recordings—facilitated by John and Alan Lomax Delta Blues as inspiration for the Skiffle movement in England in the 1960s The few recorded female Delta Blues musicians, like Memphis Minnie Bessie Smith's tragic death/the effects of racism on the music and artists of the early to mid-20th century The history, lore, and Blues-related sites in Clarksdale, MS Contemporary artists playing and recording Delta Blues MUSIC AND MEDIA IN THE EPISODE IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE: (Copyright Free) Acoustic Delta Blues--Instrumental “Modern Love” by David Bowie “Smokestack Lightnin'” by Howlin' Wolf “You Can't Love What You Ain't Never Had” by Muddy Waters “Earth Angel” by The Penguins “Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson “I'm Ready” by Muddy Waters “Nothin' But The Devil” by Rory Gallagher “You Got to Move” by Mississippi Fred McDowell “Milk Cow Blues” by Freddie Spruell “Me and the Devil Blues” by Robert Johnson “When the Levee Breaks” by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe Clip from the movie ‘Crossroads' “Serves Me Right to Suffer” by John Lee Hooker LINKS: Digital Dying Blog post on Michael Gaspeny, https://www.funeralwise.com/digital-dying/the-deathbed-poet-how-one-man-makes-poems-of-lifes-last-hours/ North Carolina Writers' Network, articles on Michael Gaspeny, https://www.ncwriters.org/news/blog/tag/michael-gaspeny/ Imbalanced History of Rock and Roll Podcast's website, https://imbalancedhistory.com/ Imbalanced History of Rock and Roll Twitter, @ImbalancedHisto Imbalanced History of Rock and Roll Facebook Christy Alexander Hallberg's website: https://www.christyalexanderhallberg.com/ Christy Alexander Hallberg Twitter, @ChristyHallberg Christy Alexander Hallberg Instagram, @christyhallberg Christy Alexander Hallberg YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfSnRmlL5moSQYi6EjSvqag Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We talk to John Gill - Singer Songwriter, Guitarist, Teacher and Producer. John is something of an institution on the local Derbyshire music scene and this year celebrates 50 year performing with this brother and sister in the Skiffle band Please Y'Self. We trace back over the decades to uncover the influential moments in his career which has made him such a respected and admired musician both on stage and working hard behind the scenes to help others.Presented in association with Affinity Photo - The hottest photo editing software on iPad, Mac & PChttps://affinity.serif.com/photoIntro Music by Johnny Monacohttps://www.johnnymonaco.com/ Incidental Music by Night Fires Please visit The Straight To Video Patreon Page to find out how you can help grow this show. https://patreon.com/stvpod
En Música de Contrabando, revista diaria de música en Onda Regional de Murcia(orm.es; 23,00h a 01,00h).Animals 2018 Remix Documentary es otro ejemplo mas de su grandeza. Se trata de un documental de 11 minutos acerca cómo se hizo la versión reeditada de su mítico álbum Animals. El proyecto grafico es obra de Po Powell, cofundador británico, junto a Storm Thorgerson, de la compañía Hipgnosis (1967), responsables de las cubiertas discográficas de Pink Floyd. Van Morrison anuncia hoy la salida de su nuevo disco, Moving On Skiffle . Todo un homenaje por parte del icónico y legendario artista irlandés al skiffle. San San Festival 2023 tendrá lugar en Benicàssim del 6 al 8 de abril del próximo año y en esta nueva edición contará con un cartel compuesto por bandas internacionales como los franceses Phoenix. Veneziola lanzan su sencillo "Jesús no ha llegado". Buena parte de la raíz de Veneziola proviene de Increíbles Ful. Para celebrar la gran recepción y el apoyo que está teniendo “There's Nothing But Pleasure”, el álbum de debut de Bubble and the Cigarettes, lanzaN un nuevo videoclip, dirigido por ellos mismos, de "He Asked Me To Quit Smoking", UNA de las canciones de este maravilloso disco. Este viernes se publica 'Soltarnos', el primer adelanto del que será el álbum de debut de Trashi. Un enérgico corte de indie pop-rock, fresco y generacional, que marca una clara evolución hacia la madurez Alien Tango entre los primeros artistas confirmados para South By Southwest (SXSW) 2023. El festival neerlandés ESNS (Eurosonic Noorderslag) ha dado a conocer las 15 artistas y bandas españolas que participarán en su edición de 2023, en la que España es el país invitado bajo el lema FOCUS ON SPAIN. Maestro Espada entre los invitados. Muerdo colabora en el nuevo sencillo del argentino El Purre. Después de ocho discos, el talento de Maria Rodés ha quedado patente en numerosas ocasiones. Pero “Fuimos Los Dos” es un disco especial, y no tan sólo por ser el primero en solitario para Elefant Records (después de esa maravilla a medias con LA ESTRELLA DE DAVID titulado “Contigo”). Estamos probablemente ante su trabajo más íntimo, en el que combina la canción de autor, el folklore latinoamericano y la experimentación sonora para expresar su visión sobre el final de las relaciones amorosas. Ya está disponible el primer trabajo en solitario, No parking tickets in the clouds, de Nacho Para.. La dificultad para juntarse con otros músicos durante la pandemia fue el impulso definitivo para grabar estas 12 canciones y llevarlas a un terreno más intimista, menos eléctrico, más folk-rock. Esta noche nos lo presenta con un acústico. Sahel Sounds, presenta el álbum recopilatorio Music from Saharan WhatsApp,A partir de una serie de EP digitales publicados en la página de Sahel Sounds Bandcamp en 2020, Music from Saharan WhatsApp presenta actuaciones de algunos de los artistas más emocionantes del Sahel. El primer sencillo del álbum es "Tarhanine" , de Amaria Hamadalher de Les Filles de Illlighadad. Fernando Rubio despide el programa con su East Wind.
Season Two of Hard Agree begins with Andrew Sumner welcoming back the world's greatest living fantasy author, Michael Moorcock, for the fourth instalment in their ongoing series of conversations about Michael's life and work. In this wide-ranging Season Two opener (aka Michael Moorcock's Multiverse IV) , Mike starts out recounting his skiffle adventures with the tea chest bass before covering off: Pete Seeger & Woody Guthrie; subscriptions to Encounter magazine; the intricacies of CIA funding; Bob Calvert, Dave Brock & Mike's association with Hawkwind; the abiding evil of Kensington Tories, William Shatner's interpretation of Sonic Attack; P.J. Proby reading T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land; tornado season in tornado alley; anti-Moorcock sentiment at the BBC; the secret origin of The Deep Fix, 2021's England vs Italy result, British soccer tribalism and mayhem in London's Frith Street. This is Moorcock's Multiverse, we're just living in it. Check out Michael's graphic novels here: https://forbiddenplanet.com/catalog/?q=michael%20moorcock&page=1 You can order Michael's books here: https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Moorcock/e/B000AQ6Q6G https://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Moorcock/e/B000AQ6Q6G Follow Michael on Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/buggerly.otherly Visit Moorcock's Miscellany: https://www.multiverse.org/ Follow Sumner on Social Media: http://twitter.com/sumnarr “Golden – The Hard Agree Theme” written and recorded for the podcast by DENIO Follow DENIO on Social Media: http://facebook.com/denioband/ http://soundcloud.com/denioband/ http://twitter.com/denioband/ http://instagram.com/denioband/ Follow the Spoilerverse on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric Regan: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John Horsley: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Did you know the Spoilerverse has a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Support the Spoilerverse on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry
Indigenous made Chicano, Hip Hop, Indie, Country, Skiffle, Aztec Folk Metal and more. Brought to you by Tunes From Turtle Island and Pantheon Podcasts. Brought to you by Turtle Island Radio and Pantheon Podcasts. Please, during this difficult time when artists can not play to live audiences, if you like the music you hear, go out and buy some of it. :) Tracks on this week's show are:Las Cafeteras - Thinking About YouFunkyMixx Productions & Jodie B - All Figured OutDecember Wind - So They KnowEarthChild & Kiva Mh - Waitiskwe & Tom Wilson - Mother LoveNadjiwan - Orange CrushStatus/Non-Status - Mashkiki SunsetNathan Cunningham - Drink About YouTanya Tagaq & The Halluci Nation - Collonizer (The HalluciNation Remix)Blue Moon Marquee - Hound Dog On A Chainearlymorning company - Life Clandestine instramentalCemican - Luna DesmembradaAnachnid - China DollTamara Podemski - PatienceAll songs on this podcast are owned by the artist(s) and are used for educational purposes only. All songs can be found for purchase or streaming wherever you get your great music. Please pick up these amazing tracks and support these artists. More info at https://artist.link/tunesfromturtleisland
The roots of Skiffle music can be traced to the 1890s. It was first recorded in the 1920s and 1930s and was somehow resurrected in the late 1950s in England. If it weren't for SKIFFLE music there would be no Beatles. This episode explores SKIFFLE'S early roots and recording From wash tub bass, kazoos, tin can drums to cigar box fiddles - the specific brand of American Folk Music helped launch the 1960s British Invasion YOU WILL HEAR: The Five Harmainiacs - SADDIE GREEN ( The Vamp Of New Orleans - 1926) Mississippi Jook Band - BARBECUE BUST ( 1936) Mobile Strugglers - FATTENING FROGS FOR SNAKES ( 1950s) also, Bobby Leacan's Need More Band, Dallas String Band and much more! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/american-grooves-hour/support
Czesc aus Oberhausen! Wie war dat mit der Vorfreude auf pinke Ballons und Trinkhalle? Wir legen noch kräftig Gitarren obendrauf!! Unser Gast heute ist Jürgen Reinke, Kurator für Rock und Pop am Tag der Trinkhallen 2022 - und wenn sich einer mit Klampfen auskennt, dann ja wohl er! Seit 2004 betreibt er den Verein Gitarrissimo, und macht mal richtig Ramba-Zamba im Gdanska, Oberhausens erste Adresse für Bluesrock, Lesungen - und Pierogi. Er erzählt von katholischen Kneipentours, Ferien in Iserlohn - und worauf man beim Booking achten sollte. Okay, wir kennen wenige von den Weltstars des Fingerstyle… aber Jürgen bringt sie hier direkt ans Büdchen! Bock auf Blues in Essen oder Skiffle in Moers? Dann pack deine Mundharmonika ein, schnall das Banjo ans Moped und auf zum Tag der Trinkhallen 2022! Man will ja auch musikalisch unterhalten werden bei Bömsken und Bier! Da gibts dann Hits…Hits…Hits live - und bis dahin jederzeit bei uns in der Spotify Playlist! Wer Beamtentum gegen Beatmeisterschaft eintauscht und wegen seiner eigenen Vinylsammlung nen Plattenladen übernimmt, der schiebt auch unsere Liste nach vorne! Da schliesst sich der Kreis! Glückauf, und rock on! F+J
Continuing our American travelogue with an extended stay in New York featuring the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Lou Reed, Billy Joel and Half Man Half Biscuit...of course.
@DonWoods tells @vincetracy about "The Story of #Skiffle" by "Skiffle" John Lomax.. We also discussed the #Finland #train strikes in the #UK #Tourism in #Spain #BBC #Media #Glastonbury and modern #Music
Hi Vince....I have attached the song for the end chat about the Finland gig......it is "The Story of Skiffle" by "Skiffle" John Lomax..which I wrote and produced for him.....this is the version which got us the gig...... 1.The train strikes and the one sided biassed reporting 2.In parts of Spain it is now illegal to pee in the sea..... enforcement should be interesting. 3.Complaints about Facebook accepting "upskirting" 4.Idiots who do and say stupid things are not the problem... the problem is the media for giving them publicity....obviously REAL problems are not news. 5.The Glastonbury Festival is getting full coverage which I have managed to avoid.....modern music has lost its way. 6.Strange things which happened on a gig I once did in Finland.....which includes this week's song selection "The Story of Skiffle"
Marc Brooks is a pannist and arranger who's made a name for himself arranging for the Brooklyn Panorama competition and as one of a trio of arrangers known as "The Three Amigos", arranging for Skiffle in San Fernando, Trinidad. In this episode, we discuss his background, how the trio came to be, what it takes to arrange for a steel band and how to keep the infrastructure in tact over time within a pan community. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/strike-up/support
Hackney dans l’est de Londres, nous sommes plus précisément le 30 septembre 1947, voit le jour un futur chanteur/guitariste et compositeur … A l’âge de 9 ans, il reçoit sa première guitare et forme un groupe de Skiffle. Un peu plus tard, à 12 ans, il est membre d’un trio ''Susie and The Hula Hoops'' dont la chanteuse n’est autre que la future star de pop Helen Shapiro. --- Chaque jeudi à 8h45, Raphael Scaini accueille Laurent Rieppi pour évoquer les débuts méconnus, et pas toujours glorieux de vos stars du Rock préférées. Préliminaires, le jeudi à 8h45 dans Coffee on the Rocks.
This is something a little different. This is just a guy talking. Nothing more nothing less.Episode 1: What makes your favourite musician so different from you?https://www.youtube.com/c/TheMercurialNumberSixhttps://twitter.com/mercurialno6https://www.instagram.com/mercurialno6/https://mercurial6.com/
I must say I have enjoyed the olympics....especially the friendship between the competitors,,, and the unbelievable skills of the young teenagers in the skateboarding,diving and gymnastics.....good to see respectful and well behaved youngsters displaying their talents instead of giving TV news coverage of complete morons throwing missiles at the police and the ambulance service....or acting like neanderthals at football matches.....even the boxers give each other a big hug after battering each other....let's hope some of this rubs off on the low life we have to put up with nowadays. s week my final travel feature takes us to Finland....not with Monty Lister but he strangely features in it....It was back n 2001 when I got a gig at a skiffle convention in Finland....I put a skiffle group together and off we went.....we arrived on a Friday...did the gig on the Saturday...spent Sunday looking around and back on the Monday....at the time I was working with Monty Lister on his Sunday morning programme on Radio Merseyside so I told him I would be missing on that day....the gig went very well on the Saturday night and the next day we were wandering around the town when a guy comes up to us and tells me how much he enjoyed the music and invited us to his restaurant for the afternoon....so we all jump in his car and he puts on a CD telling us this was the sort of music he liked.....first track was Monty Lister interviewing Bill Haley.....I couldn't believe it....he asked me if I knew this man....so I told him if I wasn't sitting in his car somewhere in the Arctic Circle I would be on the radio with him at that moment....took me a while to get over it....what were the chances of that? The story behind the Finland gig was I wrote a song for a dear friend of mine who was in one of the first skiffle groups in the area....called The Atlantics.....his name was John Lomax who I was inspired by in the late 50s....we became good friends when we met in the 90s which is when I wrote the song for him.....he sent it off to Hankasalmi in Finland where they have an annual skiffle convention.....we were then invited to go and perform there which we did....I put a small skiffle group together with John and we went there as The Atlantics....and had a great time.....so here is the song....The Story of Skiffle.
Cowboys, toys and childhood joys as the twins bathe in a wave of nostalgia. And Percy Shelley P.I. is back in the concluding instalment of ‘The Case of the Missing Case'.
Grit Friedrich sprach mit Sveriges Vänner aus Sachsen, in Paris singt Noëmi Waysfeld jiddische Chansons und Psychedelisches kommt aus Pakistan, Manfred Wagenbreth erinnert an den Skiffle-Musiker Lonnie Donegan.
In this (unintentionally American-ish) episode of We Are Not Amused, Tressa and Taylor discuss an often forgotten genre of music: Skiffle. Join us as we cover the genre’s American roots, British revival, and name-drop the famous rockstars that started out as old timey Skifflers (*cough* The Beatles *cough*). Outro music: “Rock Island Line” performed by Leadbelly --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
El programa "T'agrada el blues?" d'aquesta setmana proposa escoltar m
The Dynamic @DonWoods joins the vicarious @vincetracy to have a rant against #television programmes from #BBC and #itv which are not cutting the mustard! The standard of TV is becoming a joke......there are some decent programmes but you have to search for them by skilfully trying to dodge the cookery programmes or Ant and Dec.....and the talentless Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton with their selection of stars of stage screen and scrapheap....who they "chat" to about their latest book,play or comeback and have to roar laughing at nothing....then we have multi millionaire Gary Linacre sitting with a couple of football "pundits"discussing a football match we have just watched.....yes old Gary gets millions for his weekly 90 minutes....well worth my licence fee. The song this week is one I wrote for a dear friend of mine who is sadly no longer with us...."Skiffle"John Lomax who played in one of the first local skiffle groups in the 50s and I saw them on stage in 1958 which was the first time I heard an electric guitar played live......I met John many years later and we became good friends....John was featured in the TV series "Days That Shook The World" which was about the fatal water speed record attempt by Donald Campbell of which John had rare cine footage....this song was my tribute to him and actually got us a gig in Finland where we went and performed at their national skiffle convention ....so here it is "The Story of Skiffle" sung by John Lomax
Esta noche en Melodías Pizarras: La fiebre del Skiffle con Lonnie Donegan and his Skiffle Group y Original Barnstormers Spasm Band, además de enormidades de blues rural, western swing y blue yodel, de la mano de titanes como Memphis Jug Band, Hank Penny and His Radio Cowboys y Jimmie Rodgers. A partir de las 23.00 horas en la sintonía de Radio 3. Escuchar audio
This week’s episode looks at “Needles and Pins”, and the story of the second-greatest band to come out of Liverpool in the sixties, The Searchers. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a sixteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Farmer John” by Don and Dewey. 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…)
BILLY BRAGG pays a visit to the Bureau to lead us on an extraordinary whirlwind tour through the music that the counterculture forgot. Along the way we hear about the emergence of The Teenager in post-war Britain, the massive impact of Rock Around the Clock, the Soho espresso bar culture of the 50s and the birth of British youth culture. We explore why Skiffle, which soundtracked that youth culture for a few intense years and was the inspiration for musicians in The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones, has been oddly forgotten. And Billy explains why, as the first British DIY musical revolution, Skiffle provided the template for the Punk movement of the 70s that was to inspire him. Along the way, we get educated about the post war 'trad jazz' movement, the cultural stranglehold of the BBC - and the terrific transformatory power of a guy - or a girl - with a guitar. For more on Billy and his book Roots, Radicals and Rockers: https://www.billybragg.co.uk/product/roots-radicals-and-rockers-how-skiffle-changed-the-world-hardback-signed-by-billy/ Billy's Top Five Skiffle Tunes https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZtMpev7GhPIi-e2ajPxUd_FVyUQxMBbB For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture www.bureauoflostculture.com
En este episodio hablo de música acústica. Pido una disculpa por mi involuntario error no hay ral cosa como música de pobres
The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart on HBO Max is a well-rounded look at the meteoric rise and dramatic fall of one of pop's most influential bands.
Episode one hundred and nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, the UK folk scene and the civil rights movement. Those of you who get angry at me whenever I say anything that acknowledges the existence of racism may want to skip this one. 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 “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by the Crystals. 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…)
Episode one hundred and nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, the UK folk scene and the civil rights movement. Those of you who get angry at me whenever I say anything that acknowledges the existence of racism may want to skip this one. 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 “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by the Crystals. 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…)
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. 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…)
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "I Wanna Be Your Man" by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on "The Monkey Time" by Major Lance. 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. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Information on Chris Barber comes from Jazz Me Blues: The Autobiography of Chris Barber by Barber and Alyn Shopton. Information on Alexis Korner comes from Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. Two resources that I've used for this and all future Stones episodes -- The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. I've also used Andrew Loog Oldham's autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards' Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. This compilation contains Alexis Korner's pre-1963 electric blues material, while this contains the earlier skiffle and country blues music. The live performances by Chris Barber and various blues legends I've used here come from volumes one and two of a three-CD series of these recordings. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones' singles up to 1971. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to look at a group who, more than any other band of the sixties, sum up what "rock music" means to most people. This is all the more surprising as when they started out they were vehemently opposed to being referred to as "rock and roll". We're going to look at the London blues scene of the early sixties, and how a music scene that was made up of people who thought of themselves as scholars of obscure music, going against commercialism ended up creating some of the most popular and commercial music ever made. We're going to look at the Rolling Stones, and at "I Wanna Be Your Man": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] The Rolling Stones' story doesn't actually start with the Rolling Stones, and they won't be appearing until quite near the end of this episode, because to explain how they formed, I have to explain the British blues scene that they formed in. One of the things people asked me when I first started doing the podcast was why I didn't cover people like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf in the early episodes -- after all, most people now think that rock and roll started with those artists. It didn't, as I hope the last hundred or so episodes have shown. But those artists did become influential on its development, and that influence happened largely because of one man, Chris Barber. We've seen Barber before, in a couple of episodes, but this, even more than his leading the band that brought Lonnie Donegan to fame, is where his influence on popular music really changes everything. On the face of it, Chris Barber seems like the last person in the world who one would expect to be responsible, at least indirectly, for some of the most rebellious popular music ever made. He is a trombone player from a background that is about as solidly respectable as one can imagine -- his parents were introduced to each other by the economist John Maynard Keynes, and his father, another economist, was not only offered a knighthood for his war work (he turned it down but accepted a CBE), but Clement Atlee later offered him a safe seat in Parliament if he wanted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. But when the war started, young Chris Barber started listening to the Armed Forces Network, and became hooked on jazz. By the time the war ended, when he was fifteen, he owned records by Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and more -- records that were almost impossible to find in the Britain of the 1940s. And along with the jazz records, he was also getting hold of blues records by people like Cow Cow Davenport and Sleepy John Estes: [Excerpt: Sleepy John Estes, "Milk Cow Blues"] In his late teens and early twenties, Barber had become Britain's pre-eminent traditional jazz trombonist -- a position he held until he retired last year, aged eighty-nine -- but he wasn't just interested in trad jazz, but in all of American roots music, which is why he'd ended up accidentally kick-starting the skiffle craze when his guitarist recorded an old Lead Belly song as a track on a Barber album, as we looked at back in the episode on "Rock Island Line". If that had been Barber's only contribution to British rock and roll, he would still have been important -- after all, without "Rock Island Line", it's likely that you could have counted the number of British boys who played guitar in the fifties and sixties on a single hand. But he did far more than that. In the mid to late fifties, Barber became one of the biggest stars in British music. He didn't have a breakout chart hit until 1959, when he released "Petit Fleur", engineered by Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Chris Barber, "Petit Fleur"] And Barber didn't even play on that – it was a clarinet solo by his clarinettist Monty Sunshine. But long before this big chart success he was a huge live draw and made regular appearances on TV and radio, and he was hugely appreciated among music lovers. A parallel for his status in the music world in the more modern era might be someone like, say, Radiohead -- a band who aren't releasing number one singles, but who have a devoted fanbase and are more famous than many of those acts who do have regular hits. And that celebrity status put Barber in a position to do something that changed music forever. Because he desperately wanted to play with his American musical heroes, and he was one of the few people in Britain with the kind of built-in audience that he could bring over obscure Black musicians, some of whom had never even had a record released over here, and get them on stage with him. And he brought over, in particular, blues musicians. Now, just as there was a split in the British jazz community between those who liked traditional Dixieland jazz and those who liked modern jazz, there was a similar split in their tastes in blues and R&B. Those who liked modern jazz -- a music that was dominated by saxophones and piano -- unsurprisingly liked modern keyboard and saxophone-based R&B. Their R&B idol was Ray Charles, whose music was the closest of the great R&B stars to modern jazz, and one stream of the British R&B movement of the sixties came from this scene -- people like the Spencer Davis Group, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and Manfred Mann all come from this modernist scene. But the trad people, when they listened to blues, liked music that sounded primitive to them, just as they liked primitive-sounding jazz. Their tastes were very heavily influenced by Alan Lomax -- who came to the UK for a crucial period in the fifties to escape McCarthyism -- and they paralleled those of the American folk scene that Lomax was also part of, and followed the same narrative that Lomax's friend John Hammond had constructed for his Spirituals to Swing concerts, where the Delta country blues of people like Robert Johnson had been the basis for both jazz and boogie piano. This entirely false narrative became the received wisdom among the trad scene in Britain, to the extent that two of the very few people in the world who had actually heard Robert Johnson records before the release of the King of the Delta Blues Singers album were Chris Barber and his sometime guitarist and banjo player Alexis Korner. These people liked Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Lead Belly, and Lonnie Johnson's early recordings before his later pop success. They liked solo male performers who played guitar. These two scenes were geographically close -- the Flamingo Club, a modern jazz club that later became the place where Georgie Fame and Chris Farlowe built their audiences, was literally across the road from the Marquee, a trad jazz club that became the centre of guitar-based R&B in the UK. And there wasn't a perfect hard-and-fast split, as we'll see -- but it's generally true that what is nowadays portrayed as a single British "blues scene" was, in its early days, two overlapping but distinct scenes, based in a pre-existing split in the jazz world. Barber was, of course, part of the traditional jazz wing, and indeed he was so influential a part of it that his tastes shaped the tastes of the whole scene to a large extent. But Barber was not as much of a purist as someone like his former collaborator Ken Colyer, who believed that jazz had become corrupted in 1922 by the evil innovations of people like Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, who were too modern for his tastes. Barber had preferences, but he could appreciate -- and more importantly play -- music in a variety of styles. So Barber started by bringing over Big Bill Broonzy, who John Hammond had got to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts when he'd found out Robert Johnson was dead. It was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy got to record with Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?"] And it was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy appeared on Six-Five Special, along with Tommy Steele, the Vipers, and Mike and Bernie Winters, and thus became the first blues musician that an entire generation of British musicians saw, their template for what a blues musician is. If you watch the Beatles Anthology, for example, in the sections where they talk about the music they were listening to as teenagers, Broonzy is the only blues musician specifically named. That's because of Chris Barber. Broonzy toured with Barber several times in the fifties, before his death in 1958, but he wasn't the only one. Barber brought over many people to perform and record with him, including several we've looked at previously. Like the rock and roll stars who visited the UK at this time, these were generally people who were past their commercial peak in the US, but who were fantastic live performers. The Barber band did recording sessions with Louis Jordan: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan and the Chris Barber band, "Tain't Nobody's Business"] And we're lucky enough that many of the Barber band's shows at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (a venue that would later host two hugely important shows we'll talk about in later episodes) were recorded and have since been released. With those recordings we can hear them backing Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Chris Barber band, "Peace in the Valley"] Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee: [Excerpt: Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and the Chris Barber band, "This Little Light of Mine"] And others like Champion Jack Dupree and Sonny Boy Williamson. But there was one particular blues musician that Barber brought over who changed everything for British music. Barber was a member of an organisation called the National Jazz Federation, which helped arrange transatlantic musician exchanges. You might remember that at the time there was a rule imposed by the musicians' unions in the UK and the US that the only way for an American musician to play the UK was if a British musician played the US and vice versa, and the National Jazz Federation helped set these exchanges up. Through the NJF Barber had become friendly with John Lewis, the American pianist who led the Modern Jazz Quartet, and was talking with Lewis about what other musicians he could bring over, and Lewis suggested Muddy Waters. Barber said that would be great, but he had no idea how you'd reach Muddy Waters -- did you send a postcard to the plantation he worked on or something? Lewis laughed, and said that no, Muddy Waters had a Cadillac and an agent. The reason for Barber's confusion was fairly straightfoward -- Barber was thinking of Waters' early recordings, which he knew because of the influence of Alan Lomax. Lomax had discovered Muddy Waters back in 1941. He'd travelled to Clarksdale, Mississippi hoping to record Robert Johnson for the Library of Congress -- apparently he didn't know, or had forgotten, that Johnson had died a few years earlier. When he couldn't find Johnson, he'd found another musician, who had a similar style, and recorded him instead. Waters was a working musician who would play whatever people wanted to listen to -- Gene Autry songs, Glenn Miller, whatever -- but who was particularly proficient in blues, influenced by Son House, the same person who had been Johnson's biggest influence. Lomax recorded him playing acoustic blues on a plantation, and those recordings were put out by the Library of Congress: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "I Be's Troubled"] Those Library of Congress recordings had been hugely influential among the trad and skiffle scenes -- Lonnie Donegan, in particular, had borrowed a copy from the American Embassy's record-lending library and then stolen it because he liked it so much. But after making those recordings, Waters had travelled up to Chicago and gone electric, forming a band with guitarist Jimmie Rodgers (not the same person as the country singer of the same name, or the 50s pop star), harmonica player Little Walter, drummer Elgin Evans, and pianist Otis Spann. Waters had signed to Chess Records, then still named Aristocrat, in 1947, and had started out by recording electric versions of the same material he'd been performing acoustically: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "I Can't Be Satisfied"] But soon he'd partnered with Chess' great bass player, songwriter, and producer Willie Dixon, who wrote a string of blues classics both for Waters and for Chess' other big star Howlin' Wolf. Throughout the early fifties, Waters had a series of hits on the R&B charts with his electric blues records, like the great "Hoochie Coochie Man", which introduced one of the most copied blues riffs ever: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] But by the late fifties, the hits had started to dry up. Waters was still making great records, but Chess were more interested in artists like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and the Moonglows, who were selling much more and were having big pop hits, not medium-sized R&B ones. So Waters and his pianist Otis Spann were eager to come over to the UK, and Barber was eager to perform with them. Luckily, unlike many of his trad contemporaries, Barber was comfortable with electric music, and his band quickly learned Waters' current repertoire. Waters came over and played one night at a festival with a different band, made up of modern jazz players who didn't really fit his style before joining the Barber tour, and so he and Spann were a little worried on their first night with the group when they heard these Dixieland trombones and clarinets. But as soon as the group blasted out the riff of "Hoochie Coochie Man" to introduce their guests, Waters and Spann's faces lit up -- they knew these were musicians they could play with, and they fit in with Barber's band perfectly: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, and the Chris Barber band, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] Not everyone watching the tour was as happy as Barber with the electric blues though -- the audiences were often bemused by the electric guitars, which they associated with rock and roll rather than the blues. Waters, like many of his contemporaries, was perfectly willing to adapt his performance to the audience, and so the next time he came over he brought his acoustic guitar and played more in the country acoustic style they expected. The time after that he came over, though, the audiences were disappointed, because he was playing acoustic, and now they wanted and expected him to be playing electric Chicago blues. Because Muddy Waters' first UK tour had developed a fanbase for him, and that fanbase had been cultivated and grown by one man, who had started off playing in the same band as Chris Barber. Alexis Korner had started out in the Ken Colyer band, the same band that Chris Barber had started out in, as a replacement for Lonnie Donegan when Donegan was conscripted. After Donegan had rejoined the band, they'd played together for a while, and the first ever British skiffle group lineup had been Ken and Bill Colyer, Korner, Donegan, and Barber. When the Colyers had left the group and Barber had taken it over, Korner had gone with the Colyers, mostly because he didn't like the fact that Donegan was introducing country and folk elements into skiffle, while Korner liked the blues. As a result, Korner had sung and played on the very first ever British skiffle record, the Ken Colyer group's version of "Midnight Special": [Excerpt: The Ken Colyer Skiffle Group, "Midnight Special"] After that, Korner had also backed Beryl Bryden on some skiffle recordings, which also featured a harmonica player named Cyril Davies: [Excerpt: Beryl Bryden Skiffle Group, "This Train"] But Korner and Davies had soon got sick of skiffle as it developed -- they liked the blues music that formed its basis, but Korner had never been a fan of Lonnie Donegan's singing -- he'd even said as much in the liner notes to an album by the Barber band while both he and Donegan were still in the band -- and what Donegan saw as eclecticism, including Woody Guthrie songs and old English music-hall songs, Korner saw as watering down the music. Korner and Donegan had a war of words in the pages of Melody Maker, at that time the biggest jazz periodical in Britain. Korner started with an article headlined "Skiffle is Piffle", in which he said in part: "It is with shame and considerable regret that I have to admit my part as one of the originators of the movement...British skiffle is, most certainly, a commercial success. But musically it rarely exceeds the mediocre and is, in general, so abysmally low that it defies proper musical judgment". Donegan replied pointing out that Korner was playing in a skiffle group himself, and then Korner replied to that, saying that what he was doing now wasn't skiffle, it was the blues. You can judge for yourself whether the “Blues From the Roundhouse” EP, by Alexis Korner's Breakdown Group, which featured Korner, Davies on guitar and harmonica, plus teachest bass and washboard, was skiffle or blues: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner's Breakdown Group, "Skip to My Lou"] But soon Korner and Davies had changed their group's name to Blues Incorporated, and were recording something that was much closer to the Delta and Chicago blues Davies in particular liked. [Excerpt: Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated feat. Cyril Davies, "Death Letter"] But after the initial recordings, Blues Incorporated stopped being a thing for a while, as Korner got more involved with the folk scene. At a party hosted by Ramblin' Jack Elliot, he met the folk guitarist Davey Graham, who had previously lived in the same squat as Lionel Bart, Tommy Steele's lyricist, if that gives some idea of how small and interlocked the London music scene actually was at this time, for all its factional differences. Korner and Graham formed a guitar duo playing jazzy folk music for a while: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, "3/4 AD"] But in 1960, after Chris Barber had done a second tour with Muddy Waters, Barber decided that he needed to make Muddy Waters style blues a regular part of his shows. Barber had entered into a partnership with an accountant, Harold Pendleton, who was secretary of the National Jazz Federation. They co-owned a club, the Marquee, which Pendleton managed, and they were about to start up an annual jazz festival, the Richmond festival, which would eventually grow into the Reading Festival, the second-biggest rock festival in Britain. Barber had a residency at the Marquee, and he wanted to introduce a blues segment into the shows there. He had a singer -- his wife, Ottilie Patterson, who was an excellent singer in the Bessie Smith mould -- and he got a couple of members of his band to back her on some Chicago-style blues songs in the intervals of his shows. He asked Korner to be a part of this interval band, and after a little while it was decided that Korner would form the first ever British electric blues band, which would take over those interval slots, and so Blues Incorporated was reformed, with Cyril Davies rejoining Korner. The first time this group played together, in the first week of 1962, it was Korner on electric guitar, Davies on harmonica, and Chris Barber plus Barber's trumpet player Pat Halcox, but they soon lost the Barber band members. The group was called Blues Incorporated because they were meant to be semi-anonymous -- the idea was that people might join just for a show, or just for a few songs, and they never had the same lineup from one show to the next. For example, their classic album R&B From The Marquee, which wasn't actually recorded at the Marquee, and was produced by Jack Good, features Korner, Davies, sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith, Keith Scott on piano, Spike Heatley on bass, Graham Burbridge on drums, and Long John Baldry on vocals: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, "How Long How Long Blues"] But Burbridge wasn't their regular drummer -- that was a modern jazz player named Charlie Watts. And they had a lot of singers. Baldry was one of their regulars, as was Art Wood (who had a brother, Ronnie, who wasn't yet involved with these players). When Charlie quit the band, because it was taking up too much of his time, he was replaced with another drummer, Ginger Baker. When Spike Heatley left the band, Dick Heckstall-Smith brought in a new bass player, Jack Bruce. Sometimes a young man called Eric Clapton would get up on stage for a number or two, though he wouldn't bring his guitar, he'd just sing with them. So would a singer and harmonica player named Paul Jones, later the singer with Manfred Mann, who first travelled down to see the group with a friend of his, a guitarist named Brian Jones, no relation, who would also sit in with the band on guitar, playing Elmore James numbers under the name Elmo Lewis. A young man named Rodney Stewart would sometimes join in for a number or two. And one time Eric Burdon hitch-hiked down from Newcastle to get a chance to sing with the group. He jumped onto the stage when it got to the point in the show that Korner asked for singers from the audience, and so did a skinny young man. Korner diplomatically suggested that they sing a duet, and they agreed on a Billy Boy Arnold number. At the end of the song Korner introduced them -- "Eric Burdon from Newcastle, this is Mick Jagger". Mick Jagger was a middle-class student, studying at the London School of Economics, one of the most prestigious British universities. He soon became a regular guest vocalist with Blues Incorporated, appearing at almost every show. Soon after, Davies left the group -- he wanted to play strictly Chicago style blues, but Korner wanted to play other types of R&B. The final straw for Davies came when Korner brought in Graham Bond on Hammond organ -- it was bad enough that they had a saxophone player, but Hammond was a step too far. Sometimes Jagger would bring on a guitar-playing friend for a song or two -- they'd play a Chuck Berry song, to Davies' disapproval. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had known each other at primary school, but had fallen out of touch for years. Then one day they'd bumped into each other at a train station, and Richards had noticed two albums under Jagger's arm -- one by Muddy Waters and one by Chuck Berry, both of which he'd ordered specially from Chess Records in Chicago because they weren't out in the UK yet. They'd bonded over their love for Berry and Bo Diddley, in particular, and had soon formed a band themselves, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, with a friend, Dick Taylor, and had made some home recordings of rock and roll and R&B music: [Excerpt: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, "Beautiful Delilah"] Meanwhile, Brian Jones, the slide player with the Elmore James obsession, decided he wanted to create his own band, who were to be called The Rollin' Stones, named after a favourite Muddy Waters track of his. He got together with Ian Stewart, a piano player who answered an ad in Jazz News magazine. Stewart had very different musical tastes to Jones -- Jones liked Elmore James and Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and especially Jimmy Reed, and very little else, just electric Chicago blues. Stewart was older, and liked boogie piano like Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, and jump band R&B like Wynonie Harris and Louis Jordan, but he could see that Jones had potential. They tried to get Charlie Watts to join the band, but he refused at first, so they played with a succession of other drummers, starting with Mick Avory. And they needed a singer, and Jones thought that Mick Jagger had genuine star potential. Jagger agreed to join, but only if his mates Dick and Keith could join the band. Jones was a little hesitant -- Mick Jagger was a real blues scholar like him, but he did have a tendency to listen to this rock and roll nonsense rather than proper blues, and Keith seemed even less of a blues purist than that. He probably even listened to Elvis. Dick, meanwhile, was an unknown quantity. But eventually Jones agreed -- though Richards remembers turning up to the first rehearsal and being astonished by Stewart's piano playing, only for Stewart to then turn around to him and say sarcastically "and you must be the Chuck Berry artist". Their first gig was at the Marquee, in place of Blues Incorporated, who were doing a BBC session and couldn't make their regular gig. Taylor and Avory soon left, and they went through a succession of bass players and drummers, played several small gigs, and also recorded a demo, which had no success in getting them a deal: [Excerpt: The Rollin' Stones, "You Can't Judge a Book By its Cover"] By this point, Jones, Richards, and Jagger were all living together, in a flat which has become legendary for its squalour. Jones was managing the group (and pocketing some of the money for himself) and Jones and Richards were spending all day every day playing guitar together, developing an interlocking style in which both could switch from rhythm to lead as the song demanded. Tony Chapman, the drummer they had at the time, brought in a friend of his, Bill Wyman, as bass player -- they didn't like him very much, he was older than the rest of them and seemed to have a bad attitude, and their initial idea was just to get him to leave his equipment with them and then nick it -- he had a really good amplifier that they wanted -- but they eventually decided to keep him in the band. They kept pressuring Charlie Watts to join and replace Chapman, and eventually, after talking it over with Alexis Korner's wife Bobbie, he decided to give it a shot, and joined in early 1963. Watts and Wyman quickly gelled as a rhythm section with a unique style -- Watts would play jazz-inspired shuffles, while Wyman would play fast, throbbing, quavers. The Rollin' Stones were now a six-person group, and they were good. They got a residency at a new club run by Giorgio Gomelsky, a trad jazz promoter who was branching out into R&B. Gomelsky named his club the Crawdaddy Club, after the Bo Diddley song that the Stones ended their sets with. Soon, as well as playing the Crawdaddy every Sunday night, they were playing Ken Colyer's club, Studio 51, on the other side of London every Sunday evening, so Ian Stewart bought a van to lug all their gear around. Gomelsky thought of himself as the group's manager, though he didn't have a formal contract, but Jones disagreed and considered himself the manager, though he never told Gomelsky this. Jones booked the group in at the IBC studios, where they cut a professional demo with Glyn Johns engineering, consisting mostly of Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed songs: [Excerpt: The Rollin' Stones, "Diddley Daddy"] Gomelsky started getting the group noticed. He even got the Beatles to visit the club and see the group, and the two bands hit it off -- even though John Lennon had no time for Chicago blues, he liked them as people, and would sometimes pop round to the flat where most of the group lived, once finding Mick and Keith in bed together because they didn't have any money to heat the flat. The group's live performances were so good that the Record Mirror, which as its name suggested only normally talked about records, did an article on the group. And the magazine's editor, Peter Jones, raved about them to an acquaintance of his, Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham was a young man, only nineteen, but he'd already managed to get himself a variety of jobs around and with famous people, mostly by bluffing and conning them into giving him work. He'd worked for Mary Quant, the designer who'd popularised the miniskirt, and then had become a freelance publicist, working with Bob Dylan and Phil Spector on their trips to the UK, and with a succession of minor British pop stars. Most recently, he'd taken a job working with Brian Epstein as the Beatles' London press agent. But he wanted his own Beatles, and when he visited the Crawdaddy Club, he decided he'd found them. Oldham knew nothing about R&B, didn't like it, and didn't care -- he liked pure pop music, and he wanted to be Britain's answer to Phil Spector. But he knew charisma when he saw it, and the group on stage had it. He immediately decided he was going to sign them as a manager. However, he needed a partner in order to get them bookings -- at the time in Britain you needed an agent's license to get bookings, and you needed to be twenty-one to get the license. He first offered Brian Epstein the chance to co-manage them -- even though he'd not even talked to the group about it. Epstein said he had enough on his plate already managing the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and his other Liverpool groups. At that point Oldham quit his job with Epstein and looked for another partner. He found one in Eric Easton, an agent of the old school who had started out as a music-hall organ player before moving over to the management side and whose big clients were Bert Weedon and Mrs. Mills, and who was letting Oldham use a spare room in his office as a base. Oldham persuaded Easton to come to the Crawdaddy Club, though Easton was dubious as it meant missing Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the TV, but Easton agreed that the group had promise -- though he wanted to get rid of the singer, which Oldham talked him out of. The two talked with Brian Jones, who agreed, as the group's leader, that they would sign with Oldham and Easton. Easton brought traditional entertainment industry experience, while Oldham brought an understanding of how to market pop groups. Jones, as the group's leader, negotiated an extra five pounds a week for himself off the top in the deal. One piece of advice that Oldham had been given by Phil Spector and which he'd taken to heart was that rather than get a band signed to a record label directly, you should set up an independent production company and lease the tapes to the label, and that's what Oldham and Easton did. They formed a company called Impact, and went into the studio with the Stones and recorded the song they performed which they thought had the most commercial potential, a Chuck Berry song called "Come On" -- though they changed Berry's line about a "stupid jerk" to being about a "stupid guy", in order to make sure the radio would play it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Come On"] During the recording, Oldham, who was acting as producer, told the engineer not to mic up the piano. His plans didn't include Ian Stewart. Neither the group nor Oldham were particularly happy with the record -- the group because they felt it was too poppy, Oldham because it wasn't poppy enough. But they took the recording to Decca Records, where Dick Rowe, the man who had turned down the Beatles, eagerly signed them. The conventional story is that Rowe signed them after being told about them by George Harrison, but the other details of the story as it's usually told -- that they were judging a talent contest in Liverpool, which is the story in most Stones biographies, or that they were appearing together on Juke Box Jury, which is what Wikipedia and articles ripped off from Wikipedia say -- are false, and so it's likely that the story is made up. Decca wanted the Stones to rerecord the track, but after going to another studio with Easton instead of Oldham producing, the general consensus was that the first version should be released. The group got new suits for their first TV appearance, and it was when they turned up to collect the suits and found there were only five of them, not six, that Ian Stewart discovered Oldham had had him kicked out of the group, thinking he was too old and too ugly, and that six people was too many for a pop group. Stewart was given the news by Brian Jones, and never really forgave either Jones or Oldham, but he remained loyal to the rest of the group. He became their road manager, and would continue to play piano with them on stage and in the studio for the next twenty-two years, until his death -- he just wasn't allowed in the photos or any TV appearances. That wasn't the only change Oldham made -- he insisted that the group be called the Rolling Stones, with a g, not Rollin'. He also changed Keith Richards' surname, dropping the s to be more like Cliff, though Richards later changed it back again. "Come On" made number twenty-one in the charts, but the band were unsure of what to do as a follow-up single. Most of their repertoire consisted of hard blues songs, which were unlikely to have any chart success. Oldham convened the group for a rehearsal and they ran through possible songs -- nothing seemed right. Oldham got depressed and went out for a walk, and happened to bump into John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They asked him what was up, and he explained that the group needed a song. Lennon and McCartney said they thought they could help, and came back to the rehearsal studio with Oldham. They played the Stones an idea that McCartney had been working on, which they thought might be OK for the group. The group said it would work, and Lennon and McCartney retreated to a corner, finished the song, and presented it to them. The result became the Stones' second single, and another hit for them, this time reaching number twelve. The second single was produced by Easton, as Oldham, who is bipolar, was in a depressive phase and had gone off on holiday to try to get out of it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] The Beatles later recorded their own version of the song as an album track, giving it to Ringo to sing -- as Lennon said of the song, "We weren't going to give them anything great, were we?": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] For a B-side, the group did a song called "Stoned", which was clearly "inspired" by "Green Onions": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Stoned"] That was credited to a group pseudonym, Nanker Phelge -- Nanker after a particular face that Jones and Richards enjoyed pulling, and Phelge after a flatmate of several of the band members, James Phelge. As it was an original, by at least some definitions of the term original, it needed publishing, and Easton got the group signed to a publishing company with whom he had a deal, without consulting Oldham about it. When Oldham got back, he was furious, and that was the beginning of the end of Easton's time with the group. But it was also the beginning of something else, because Oldham had had a realisation -- if you're going to make records you need songs, and you can't just expect to bump into Lennon and McCartney every time you need a new single. No, the Rolling Stones were going to have to have some originals, and Andrew Loog Oldham was going to make them into writers. We'll see how that went in a few weeks' time, when we pick up on their career.
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. 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…)
Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. 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. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Information on Chris Barber comes from Jazz Me Blues: The Autobiography of Chris Barber by Barber and Alyn Shopton. Information on Alexis Korner comes from Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. Two resources that I’ve used for this and all future Stones episodes — The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. I’ve also used Andrew Loog Oldham’s autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards’ Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. This compilation contains Alexis Korner’s pre-1963 electric blues material, while this contains the earlier skiffle and country blues music. The live performances by Chris Barber and various blues legends I’ve used here come from volumes one and two of a three-CD series of these recordings. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones’ singles up to 1971. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we’re going to look at a group who, more than any other band of the sixties, sum up what “rock music” means to most people. This is all the more surprising as when they started out they were vehemently opposed to being referred to as “rock and roll”. We’re going to look at the London blues scene of the early sixties, and how a music scene that was made up of people who thought of themselves as scholars of obscure music, going against commercialism ended up creating some of the most popular and commercial music ever made. We’re going to look at the Rolling Stones, and at “I Wanna Be Your Man”: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] The Rolling Stones’ story doesn’t actually start with the Rolling Stones, and they won’t be appearing until quite near the end of this episode, because to explain how they formed, I have to explain the British blues scene that they formed in. One of the things people asked me when I first started doing the podcast was why I didn’t cover people like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf in the early episodes — after all, most people now think that rock and roll started with those artists. It didn’t, as I hope the last hundred or so episodes have shown. But those artists did become influential on its development, and that influence happened largely because of one man, Chris Barber. We’ve seen Barber before, in a couple of episodes, but this, even more than his leading the band that brought Lonnie Donegan to fame, is where his influence on popular music really changes everything. On the face of it, Chris Barber seems like the last person in the world who one would expect to be responsible, at least indirectly, for some of the most rebellious popular music ever made. He is a trombone player from a background that is about as solidly respectable as one can imagine — his parents were introduced to each other by the economist John Maynard Keynes, and his father, another economist, was not only offered a knighthood for his war work (he turned it down but accepted a CBE), but Clement Atlee later offered him a safe seat in Parliament if he wanted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. But when the war started, young Chris Barber started listening to the Armed Forces Network, and became hooked on jazz. By the time the war ended, when he was fifteen, he owned records by Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and more — records that were almost impossible to find in the Britain of the 1940s. And along with the jazz records, he was also getting hold of blues records by people like Cow Cow Davenport and Sleepy John Estes: [Excerpt: Sleepy John Estes, “Milk Cow Blues”] In his late teens and early twenties, Barber had become Britain’s pre-eminent traditional jazz trombonist — a position he held until he retired last year, aged eighty-nine — but he wasn’t just interested in trad jazz, but in all of American roots music, which is why he’d ended up accidentally kick-starting the skiffle craze when his guitarist recorded an old Lead Belly song as a track on a Barber album, as we looked at back in the episode on “Rock Island Line”. If that had been Barber’s only contribution to British rock and roll, he would still have been important — after all, without “Rock Island Line”, it’s likely that you could have counted the number of British boys who played guitar in the fifties and sixties on a single hand. But he did far more than that. In the mid to late fifties, Barber became one of the biggest stars in British music. He didn’t have a breakout chart hit until 1959, when he released “Petit Fleur”, engineered by Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Chris Barber, “Petit Fleur”] And Barber didn’t even play on that – it was a clarinet solo by his clarinettist Monty Sunshine. But long before this big chart success he was a huge live draw and made regular appearances on TV and radio, and he was hugely appreciated among music lovers. A parallel for his status in the music world in the more modern era might be someone like, say, Radiohead — a band who aren’t releasing number one singles, but who have a devoted fanbase and are more famous than many of those acts who do have regular hits. And that celebrity status put Barber in a position to do something that changed music forever. Because he desperately wanted to play with his American musical heroes, and he was one of the few people in Britain with the kind of built-in audience that he could bring over obscure Black musicians, some of whom had never even had a record released over here, and get them on stage with him. And he brought over, in particular, blues musicians. Now, just as there was a split in the British jazz community between those who liked traditional Dixieland jazz and those who liked modern jazz, there was a similar split in their tastes in blues and R&B. Those who liked modern jazz — a music that was dominated by saxophones and piano — unsurprisingly liked modern keyboard and saxophone-based R&B. Their R&B idol was Ray Charles, whose music was the closest of the great R&B stars to modern jazz, and one stream of the British R&B movement of the sixties came from this scene — people like the Spencer Davis Group, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and Manfred Mann all come from this modernist scene. But the trad people, when they listened to blues, liked music that sounded primitive to them, just as they liked primitive-sounding jazz. Their tastes were very heavily influenced by Alan Lomax — who came to the UK for a crucial period in the fifties to escape McCarthyism — and they paralleled those of the American folk scene that Lomax was also part of, and followed the same narrative that Lomax’s friend John Hammond had constructed for his Spirituals to Swing concerts, where the Delta country blues of people like Robert Johnson had been the basis for both jazz and boogie piano. This entirely false narrative became the received wisdom among the trad scene in Britain, to the extent that two of the very few people in the world who had actually heard Robert Johnson records before the release of the King of the Delta Blues Singers album were Chris Barber and his sometime guitarist and banjo player Alexis Korner. These people liked Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Lead Belly, and Lonnie Johnson’s early recordings before his later pop success. They liked solo male performers who played guitar. These two scenes were geographically close — the Flamingo Club, a modern jazz club that later became the place where Georgie Fame and Chris Farlowe built their audiences, was literally across the road from the Marquee, a trad jazz club that became the centre of guitar-based R&B in the UK. And there wasn’t a perfect hard-and-fast split, as we’ll see — but it’s generally true that what is nowadays portrayed as a single British “blues scene” was, in its early days, two overlapping but distinct scenes, based in a pre-existing split in the jazz world. Barber was, of course, part of the traditional jazz wing, and indeed he was so influential a part of it that his tastes shaped the tastes of the whole scene to a large extent. But Barber was not as much of a purist as someone like his former collaborator Ken Colyer, who believed that jazz had become corrupted in 1922 by the evil innovations of people like Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, who were too modern for his tastes. Barber had preferences, but he could appreciate — and more importantly play — music in a variety of styles. So Barber started by bringing over Big Bill Broonzy, who John Hammond had got to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts when he’d found out Robert Johnson was dead. It was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy got to record with Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, “When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?”] And it was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy appeared on Six-Five Special, along with Tommy Steele, the Vipers, and Mike and Bernie Winters, and thus became the first blues musician that an entire generation of British musicians saw, their template for what a blues musician is. If you watch the Beatles Anthology, for example, in the sections where they talk about the music they were listening to as teenagers, Broonzy is the only blues musician specifically named. That’s because of Chris Barber. Broonzy toured with Barber several times in the fifties, before his death in 1958, but he wasn’t the only one. Barber brought over many people to perform and record with him, including several we’ve looked at previously. Like the rock and roll stars who visited the UK at this time, these were generally people who were past their commercial peak in the US, but who were fantastic live performers. The Barber band did recording sessions with Louis Jordan: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan and the Chris Barber band, “Tain’t Nobody’s Business”] And we’re lucky enough that many of the Barber band’s shows at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (a venue that would later host two hugely important shows we’ll talk about in later episodes) were recorded and have since been released. With those recordings we can hear them backing Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Chris Barber band, “Peace in the Valley”] Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee: [Excerpt: Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and the Chris Barber band, “This Little Light of Mine”] And others like Champion Jack Dupree and Sonny Boy Williamson. But there was one particular blues musician that Barber brought over who changed everything for British music. Barber was a member of an organisation called the National Jazz Federation, which helped arrange transatlantic musician exchanges. You might remember that at the time there was a rule imposed by the musicians’ unions in the UK and the US that the only way for an American musician to play the UK was if a British musician played the US and vice versa, and the National Jazz Federation helped set these exchanges up. Through the NJF Barber had become friendly with John Lewis, the American pianist who led the Modern Jazz Quartet, and was talking with Lewis about what other musicians he could bring over, and Lewis suggested Muddy Waters. Barber said that would be great, but he had no idea how you’d reach Muddy Waters — did you send a postcard to the plantation he worked on or something? Lewis laughed, and said that no, Muddy Waters had a Cadillac and an agent. The reason for Barber’s confusion was fairly straightfoward — Barber was thinking of Waters’ early recordings, which he knew because of the influence of Alan Lomax. Lomax had discovered Muddy Waters back in 1941. He’d travelled to Clarksdale, Mississippi hoping to record Robert Johnson for the Library of Congress — apparently he didn’t know, or had forgotten, that Johnson had died a few years earlier. When he couldn’t find Johnson, he’d found another musician, who had a similar style, and recorded him instead. Waters was a working musician who would play whatever people wanted to listen to — Gene Autry songs, Glenn Miller, whatever — but who was particularly proficient in blues, influenced by Son House, the same person who had been Johnson’s biggest influence. Lomax recorded him playing acoustic blues on a plantation, and those recordings were put out by the Library of Congress: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “I Be’s Troubled”] Those Library of Congress recordings had been hugely influential among the trad and skiffle scenes — Lonnie Donegan, in particular, had borrowed a copy from the American Embassy’s record-lending library and then stolen it because he liked it so much. But after making those recordings, Waters had travelled up to Chicago and gone electric, forming a band with guitarist Jimmie Rodgers (not the same person as the country singer of the same name, or the 50s pop star), harmonica player Little Walter, drummer Elgin Evans, and pianist Otis Spann. Waters had signed to Chess Records, then still named Aristocrat, in 1947, and had started out by recording electric versions of the same material he’d been performing acoustically: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “I Can’t Be Satisfied”] But soon he’d partnered with Chess’ great bass player, songwriter, and producer Willie Dixon, who wrote a string of blues classics both for Waters and for Chess’ other big star Howlin’ Wolf. Throughout the early fifties, Waters had a series of hits on the R&B charts with his electric blues records, like the great “Hoochie Coochie Man”, which introduced one of the most copied blues riffs ever: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “Hoochie Coochie Man”] But by the late fifties, the hits had started to dry up. Waters was still making great records, but Chess were more interested in artists like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and the Moonglows, who were selling much more and were having big pop hits, not medium-sized R&B ones. So Waters and his pianist Otis Spann were eager to come over to the UK, and Barber was eager to perform with them. Luckily, unlike many of his trad contemporaries, Barber was comfortable with electric music, and his band quickly learned Waters’ current repertoire. Waters came over and played one night at a festival with a different band, made up of modern jazz players who didn’t really fit his style before joining the Barber tour, and so he and Spann were a little worried on their first night with the group when they heard these Dixieland trombones and clarinets. But as soon as the group blasted out the riff of “Hoochie Coochie Man” to introduce their guests, Waters and Spann’s faces lit up — they knew these were musicians they could play with, and they fit in with Barber’s band perfectly: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, and the Chris Barber band, “Hoochie Coochie Man”] Not everyone watching the tour was as happy as Barber with the electric blues though — the audiences were often bemused by the electric guitars, which they associated with rock and roll rather than the blues. Waters, like many of his contemporaries, was perfectly willing to adapt his performance to the audience, and so the next time he came over he brought his acoustic guitar and played more in the country acoustic style they expected. The time after that he came over, though, the audiences were disappointed, because he was playing acoustic, and now they wanted and expected him to be playing electric Chicago blues. Because Muddy Waters’ first UK tour had developed a fanbase for him, and that fanbase had been cultivated and grown by one man, who had started off playing in the same band as Chris Barber. Alexis Korner had started out in the Ken Colyer band, the same band that Chris Barber had started out in, as a replacement for Lonnie Donegan when Donegan was conscripted. After Donegan had rejoined the band, they’d played together for a while, and the first ever British skiffle group lineup had been Ken and Bill Colyer, Korner, Donegan, and Barber. When the Colyers had left the group and Barber had taken it over, Korner had gone with the Colyers, mostly because he didn’t like the fact that Donegan was introducing country and folk elements into skiffle, while Korner liked the blues. As a result, Korner had sung and played on the very first ever British skiffle record, the Ken Colyer group’s version of “Midnight Special”: [Excerpt: The Ken Colyer Skiffle Group, “Midnight Special”] After that, Korner had also backed Beryl Bryden on some skiffle recordings, which also featured a harmonica player named Cyril Davies: [Excerpt: Beryl Bryden Skiffle Group, “This Train”] But Korner and Davies had soon got sick of skiffle as it developed — they liked the blues music that formed its basis, but Korner had never been a fan of Lonnie Donegan’s singing — he’d even said as much in the liner notes to an album by the Barber band while both he and Donegan were still in the band — and what Donegan saw as eclecticism, including Woody Guthrie songs and old English music-hall songs, Korner saw as watering down the music. Korner and Donegan had a war of words in the pages of Melody Maker, at that time the biggest jazz periodical in Britain. Korner started with an article headlined “Skiffle is Piffle”, in which he said in part: “It is with shame and considerable regret that I have to admit my part as one of the originators of the movement…British skiffle is, most certainly, a commercial success. But musically it rarely exceeds the mediocre and is, in general, so abysmally low that it defies proper musical judgment”. Donegan replied pointing out that Korner was playing in a skiffle group himself, and then Korner replied to that, saying that what he was doing now wasn’t skiffle, it was the blues. You can judge for yourself whether the “Blues From the Roundhouse” EP, by Alexis Korner’s Breakdown Group, which featured Korner, Davies on guitar and harmonica, plus teachest bass and washboard, was skiffle or blues: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner’s Breakdown Group, “Skip to My Lou”] But soon Korner and Davies had changed their group’s name to Blues Incorporated, and were recording something that was much closer to the Delta and Chicago blues Davies in particular liked. [Excerpt: Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated feat. Cyril Davies, “Death Letter”] But after the initial recordings, Blues Incorporated stopped being a thing for a while, as Korner got more involved with the folk scene. At a party hosted by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, he met the folk guitarist Davey Graham, who had previously lived in the same squat as Lionel Bart, Tommy Steele’s lyricist, if that gives some idea of how small and interlocked the London music scene actually was at this time, for all its factional differences. Korner and Graham formed a guitar duo playing jazzy folk music for a while: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, “3/4 AD”] But in 1960, after Chris Barber had done a second tour with Muddy Waters, Barber decided that he needed to make Muddy Waters style blues a regular part of his shows. Barber had entered into a partnership with an accountant, Harold Pendleton, who was secretary of the National Jazz Federation. They co-owned a club, the Marquee, which Pendleton managed, and they were about to start up an annual jazz festival, the Richmond festival, which would eventually grow into the Reading Festival, the second-biggest rock festival in Britain. Barber had a residency at the Marquee, and he wanted to introduce a blues segment into the shows there. He had a singer — his wife, Ottilie Patterson, who was an excellent singer in the Bessie Smith mould — and he got a couple of members of his band to back her on some Chicago-style blues songs in the intervals of his shows. He asked Korner to be a part of this interval band, and after a little while it was decided that Korner would form the first ever British electric blues band, which would take over those interval slots, and so Blues Incorporated was reformed, with Cyril Davies rejoining Korner. The first time this group played together, in the first week of 1962, it was Korner on electric guitar, Davies on harmonica, and Chris Barber plus Barber’s trumpet player Pat Halcox, but they soon lost the Barber band members. The group was called Blues Incorporated because they were meant to be semi-anonymous — the idea was that people might join just for a show, or just for a few songs, and they never had the same lineup from one show to the next. For example, their classic album R&B From The Marquee, which wasn’t actually recorded at the Marquee, and was produced by Jack Good, features Korner, Davies, sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith, Keith Scott on piano, Spike Heatley on bass, Graham Burbridge on drums, and Long John Baldry on vocals: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, “How Long How Long Blues”] But Burbridge wasn’t their regular drummer — that was a modern jazz player named Charlie Watts. And they had a lot of singers. Baldry was one of their regulars, as was Art Wood (who had a brother, Ronnie, who wasn’t yet involved with these players). When Charlie quit the band, because it was taking up too much of his time, he was replaced with another drummer, Ginger Baker. When Spike Heatley left the band, Dick Heckstall-Smith brought in a new bass player, Jack Bruce. Sometimes a young man called Eric Clapton would get up on stage for a number or two, though he wouldn’t bring his guitar, he’d just sing with them. So would a singer and harmonica player named Paul Jones, later the singer with Manfred Mann, who first travelled down to see the group with a friend of his, a guitarist named Brian Jones, no relation, who would also sit in with the band on guitar, playing Elmore James numbers under the name Elmo Lewis. A young man named Rodney Stewart would sometimes join in for a number or two. And one time Eric Burdon hitch-hiked down from Newcastle to get a chance to sing with the group. He jumped onto the stage when it got to the point in the show that Korner asked for singers from the audience, and so did a skinny young man. Korner diplomatically suggested that they sing a duet, and they agreed on a Billy Boy Arnold number. At the end of the song Korner introduced them — “Eric Burdon from Newcastle, this is Mick Jagger”. Mick Jagger was a middle-class student, studying at the London School of Economics, one of the most prestigious British universities. He soon became a regular guest vocalist with Blues Incorporated, appearing at almost every show. Soon after, Davies left the group — he wanted to play strictly Chicago style blues, but Korner wanted to play other types of R&B. The final straw for Davies came when Korner brought in Graham Bond on Hammond organ — it was bad enough that they had a saxophone player, but Hammond was a step too far. Sometimes Jagger would bring on a guitar-playing friend for a song or two — they’d play a Chuck Berry song, to Davies’ disapproval. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had known each other at primary school, but had fallen out of touch for years. Then one day they’d bumped into each other at a train station, and Richards had noticed two albums under Jagger’s arm — one by Muddy Waters and one by Chuck Berry, both of which he’d ordered specially from Chess Records in Chicago because they weren’t out in the UK yet. They’d bonded over their love for Berry and Bo Diddley, in particular, and had soon formed a band themselves, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, with a friend, Dick Taylor, and had made some home recordings of rock and roll and R&B music: [Excerpt: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, “Beautiful Delilah”] Meanwhile, Brian Jones, the slide player with the Elmore James obsession, decided he wanted to create his own band, who were to be called The Rollin’ Stones, named after a favourite Muddy Waters track of his. He got together with Ian Stewart, a piano player who answered an ad in Jazz News magazine. Stewart had very different musical tastes to Jones — Jones liked Elmore James and Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and especially Jimmy Reed, and very little else, just electric Chicago blues. Stewart was older, and liked boogie piano like Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, and jump band R&B like Wynonie Harris and Louis Jordan, but he could see that Jones had potential. They tried to get Charlie Watts to join the band, but he refused at first, so they played with a succession of other drummers, starting with Mick Avory. And they needed a singer, and Jones thought that Mick Jagger had genuine star potential. Jagger agreed to join, but only if his mates Dick and Keith could join the band. Jones was a little hesitant — Mick Jagger was a real blues scholar like him, but he did have a tendency to listen to this rock and roll nonsense rather than proper blues, and Keith seemed even less of a blues purist than that. He probably even listened to Elvis. Dick, meanwhile, was an unknown quantity. But eventually Jones agreed — though Richards remembers turning up to the first rehearsal and being astonished by Stewart’s piano playing, only for Stewart to then turn around to him and say sarcastically “and you must be the Chuck Berry artist”. Their first gig was at the Marquee, in place of Blues Incorporated, who were doing a BBC session and couldn’t make their regular gig. Taylor and Avory soon left, and they went through a succession of bass players and drummers, played several small gigs, and also recorded a demo, which had no success in getting them a deal: [Excerpt: The Rollin’ Stones, “You Can’t Judge a Book By its Cover”] By this point, Jones, Richards, and Jagger were all living together, in a flat which has become legendary for its squalour. Jones was managing the group (and pocketing some of the money for himself) and Jones and Richards were spending all day every day playing guitar together, developing an interlocking style in which both could switch from rhythm to lead as the song demanded. Tony Chapman, the drummer they had at the time, brought in a friend of his, Bill Wyman, as bass player — they didn’t like him very much, he was older than the rest of them and seemed to have a bad attitude, and their initial idea was just to get him to leave his equipment with them and then nick it — he had a really good amplifier that they wanted — but they eventually decided to keep him in the band. They kept pressuring Charlie Watts to join and replace Chapman, and eventually, after talking it over with Alexis Korner’s wife Bobbie, he decided to give it a shot, and joined in early 1963. Watts and Wyman quickly gelled as a rhythm section with a unique style — Watts would play jazz-inspired shuffles, while Wyman would play fast, throbbing, quavers. The Rollin’ Stones were now a six-person group, and they were good. They got a residency at a new club run by Giorgio Gomelsky, a trad jazz promoter who was branching out into R&B. Gomelsky named his club the Crawdaddy Club, after the Bo Diddley song that the Stones ended their sets with. Soon, as well as playing the Crawdaddy every Sunday night, they were playing Ken Colyer’s club, Studio 51, on the other side of London every Sunday evening, so Ian Stewart bought a van to lug all their gear around. Gomelsky thought of himself as the group’s manager, though he didn’t have a formal contract, but Jones disagreed and considered himself the manager, though he never told Gomelsky this. Jones booked the group in at the IBC studios, where they cut a professional demo with Glyn Johns engineering, consisting mostly of Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed songs: [Excerpt: The Rollin’ Stones, “Diddley Daddy”] Gomelsky started getting the group noticed. He even got the Beatles to visit the club and see the group, and the two bands hit it off — even though John Lennon had no time for Chicago blues, he liked them as people, and would sometimes pop round to the flat where most of the group lived, once finding Mick and Keith in bed together because they didn’t have any money to heat the flat. The group’s live performances were so good that the Record Mirror, which as its name suggested only normally talked about records, did an article on the group. And the magazine’s editor, Peter Jones, raved about them to an acquaintance of his, Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham was a young man, only nineteen, but he’d already managed to get himself a variety of jobs around and with famous people, mostly by bluffing and conning them into giving him work. He’d worked for Mary Quant, the designer who’d popularised the miniskirt, and then had become a freelance publicist, working with Bob Dylan and Phil Spector on their trips to the UK, and with a succession of minor British pop stars. Most recently, he’d taken a job working with Brian Epstein as the Beatles’ London press agent. But he wanted his own Beatles, and when he visited the Crawdaddy Club, he decided he’d found them. Oldham knew nothing about R&B, didn’t like it, and didn’t care — he liked pure pop music, and he wanted to be Britain’s answer to Phil Spector. But he knew charisma when he saw it, and the group on stage had it. He immediately decided he was going to sign them as a manager. However, he needed a partner in order to get them bookings — at the time in Britain you needed an agent’s license to get bookings, and you needed to be twenty-one to get the license. He first offered Brian Epstein the chance to co-manage them — even though he’d not even talked to the group about it. Epstein said he had enough on his plate already managing the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and his other Liverpool groups. At that point Oldham quit his job with Epstein and looked for another partner. He found one in Eric Easton, an agent of the old school who had started out as a music-hall organ player before moving over to the management side and whose big clients were Bert Weedon and Mrs. Mills, and who was letting Oldham use a spare room in his office as a base. Oldham persuaded Easton to come to the Crawdaddy Club, though Easton was dubious as it meant missing Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the TV, but Easton agreed that the group had promise — though he wanted to get rid of the singer, which Oldham talked him out of. The two talked with Brian Jones, who agreed, as the group’s leader, that they would sign with Oldham and Easton. Easton brought traditional entertainment industry experience, while Oldham brought an understanding of how to market pop groups. Jones, as the group’s leader, negotiated an extra five pounds a week for himself off the top in the deal. One piece of advice that Oldham had been given by Phil Spector and which he’d taken to heart was that rather than get a band signed to a record label directly, you should set up an independent production company and lease the tapes to the label, and that’s what Oldham and Easton did. They formed a company called Impact, and went into the studio with the Stones and recorded the song they performed which they thought had the most commercial potential, a Chuck Berry song called “Come On” — though they changed Berry’s line about a “stupid jerk” to being about a “stupid guy”, in order to make sure the radio would play it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “Come On”] During the recording, Oldham, who was acting as producer, told the engineer not to mic up the piano. His plans didn’t include Ian Stewart. Neither the group nor Oldham were particularly happy with the record — the group because they felt it was too poppy, Oldham because it wasn’t poppy enough. But they took the recording to Decca Records, where Dick Rowe, the man who had turned down the Beatles, eagerly signed them. The conventional story is that Rowe signed them after being told about them by George Harrison, but the other details of the story as it’s usually told — that they were judging a talent contest in Liverpool, which is the story in most Stones biographies, or that they were appearing together on Juke Box Jury, which is what Wikipedia and articles ripped off from Wikipedia say — are false, and so it’s likely that the story is made up. Decca wanted the Stones to rerecord the track, but after going to another studio with Easton instead of Oldham producing, the general consensus was that the first version should be released. The group got new suits for their first TV appearance, and it was when they turned up to collect the suits and found there were only five of them, not six, that Ian Stewart discovered Oldham had had him kicked out of the group, thinking he was too old and too ugly, and that six people was too many for a pop group. Stewart was given the news by Brian Jones, and never really forgave either Jones or Oldham, but he remained loyal to the rest of the group. He became their road manager, and would continue to play piano with them on stage and in the studio for the next twenty-two years, until his death — he just wasn’t allowed in the photos or any TV appearances. That wasn’t the only change Oldham made — he insisted that the group be called the Rolling Stones, with a g, not Rollin’. He also changed Keith Richards’ surname, dropping the s to be more like Cliff, though Richards later changed it back again. “Come On” made number twenty-one in the charts, but the band were unsure of what to do as a follow-up single. Most of their repertoire consisted of hard blues songs, which were unlikely to have any chart success. Oldham convened the group for a rehearsal and they ran through possible songs — nothing seemed right. Oldham got depressed and went out for a walk, and happened to bump into John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They asked him what was up, and he explained that the group needed a song. Lennon and McCartney said they thought they could help, and came back to the rehearsal studio with Oldham. They played the Stones an idea that McCartney had been working on, which they thought might be OK for the group. The group said it would work, and Lennon and McCartney retreated to a corner, finished the song, and presented it to them. The result became the Stones’ second single, and another hit for them, this time reaching number twelve. The second single was produced by Easton, as Oldham, who is bipolar, was in a depressive phase and had gone off on holiday to try to get out of it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] The Beatles later recorded their own version of the song as an album track, giving it to Ringo to sing — as Lennon said of the song, “We weren’t going to give them anything great, were we?”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] For a B-side, the group did a song called “Stoned”, which was clearly “inspired” by “Green Onions”: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “Stoned”] That was credited to a group pseudonym, Nanker Phelge — Nanker after a particular face that Jones and Richards enjoyed pulling, and Phelge after a flatmate of several of the band members, James Phelge. As it was an original, by at least some definitions of the term original, it needed publishing, and Easton got the group signed to a publishing company with whom he had a deal, without consulting Oldham about it. When Oldham got back, he was furious, and that was the beginning of the end of Easton’s time with the group. But it was also the beginning of something else, because Oldham had had a realisation — if you’re going to make records you need songs, and you can’t just expect to bump into Lennon and McCartney every time you need a new single. No, the Rolling Stones were going to have to have some originals, and Andrew Loog Oldham was going to make them into writers. We’ll see how that went in a few weeks’ time, when we pick up on their career.
Join us for the second instalment of our Early Rock & Roll double-bill as we take a look at 1958’s “The Golden Disc”, starring pioneering British rocker and teen-idol Terry Dene! So slip a coin into our jukebox full of Rock ‘n’ Skiffle, blow the froth off your coffee and get with the Dene-agers to swoon at our hottest new star!*(Includes a spot of slipper-discussion and a peek at Terry’s unique guitar technique)Email: bpmoaca@gmail.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/BPMOACA/Twitter: https://twitter.com/bpmoacaShow Notes: https://tinyurl.com/BPMOACA5bNotezPlaylist: Season 1 Episode 05 (Part 2): The Golden Disc Playlist Terry Dene - The Singles 1957-61 The Golden Disc is available as part of Renown Films DVD box set Films With a Beat We played: “C’min and be Loved” (Len Paverman)“Dynamo” (Tommie Connor)*Circa 1958.NB: We should also point out that this episode was recorded before the recent passing of movie legend Sir Sean Connery; R.I.P. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Episode 101 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is the first one of the podcast’s third year. This one looks at “Telstar” by the Tornados, and the tragic life of Joe Meek, Britain’s first great pop auteur. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Apologies for the lateness of this one — my two-week break got extended when my computer broke down. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Wipe Out” by the Surfaris. 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…)
Billy Bragg talks to John Wilson about the music that changed the world - skiffle. His book arguing this, Roots, Radicals and Rockers, is also an insightful survey of post-war youth culture. This was simple music, played on homemade instruments by teenagers - punk before punk. But many skiffle players went on to great things - members of The Beatles, for instance. The Great Wave , a picture of a huge blue roller breaking over fishing boats, by the Japanese master, Hokusai, is one of the most widely recognised images in the world. An exhibition at the British Museum, Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, looks at the artist's latter years, his most creative according to the curator Tim Clark. And contemporary printmaker and artist Rebecca Salter explains the astonishing technique behind Hokusai's work. This weekend cinemas audiences can see Johnny Depp return as Captain Jack Sparrow in fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film, a role which earned him an Oscar nomination in 2003. But, recently his acting has been overshadowed by stories of his personal life and bad box-office returns - Film critic Angie Errigo comes into look at the career trajectory of the Hollywood actor.Yesterday violinist Nicola Benedetti was awarded The Queen's Medal for Music, the youngest person ever to receive it. She talks about her musical journey.Yesterday Tony Walsh responded to the atrocity in Manchester with poetry. He wasn't the first: Shelley wrote The Mask of Anarchy after the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819, and the bombing of the city in 1996 inspired poems, too. Michael Schmidt, director of the poetry publisher, Carcanent Press, based in Manchester, considers the way poets react to such events. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May.
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