Podcasts about The Soul Stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2024 58:47

This episode includes a long set in memory of Rev. Lawrence Roberts (pictured - pastor, producer, director of the Angelic Choir), plus music from the Caravans, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Corder Family of Nashville, Soul Stirrers, and others.

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Episode 176: Gospel Memories - May 11, 2024

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Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2024 60:12

A special Mother's Day set feat. Blind Boys of Alabama (pictured), Soul Stirrers, and Helen Robinson Youth Choir; plus a track from the new 2-CD reissue of Stars of Faith classics, Southwest MI State Choir, Bradley Singers, Thomas Whitfield Company, and others.

A December to Remember

'Toppers!

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2023

or direct download here.Two Toppers in one month? That's madness! Christmas madness? New Year's fever?? Hanukkah insanity??? And yet it is so. Features music by The Cyrkle, Heavenly Melody, Feebe N' the Ragweed Patche, Sam Cooke, Nichts, Leo Kottke, Charanjit Singh, Penny Saints, Tide Cartwright, Heavenly Melody (again), JJ Cale, Peter Peter Ivers Band, Dave Frishberg, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, The Sandals, The Soul Stirrers (with Sam Cooke), and Chrome off their Alien Soundtracks LP.

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SHOUT! Black Gospel Music Moments - "Christmas Joy" by The Soul Stirrers

Shout! Black Gospel Music Moments

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 17, 2023 2:00

The legendary Soul Stirrers recorded a handful of Christmas songs in the late 1960s, including the pop-oriented “Christmas Joy.”

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Episode 155: Gospel Memories - December 16, 2023

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 16, 2023 58:44

This episode includes selections from the new 3-CD of early recordings by the Ward Singers, a long set in memory of Arthur Lee Crume Sr. (Soul Stirrers, Highway QCs, and others), another Christmas gospel set, and more.

National Recording Registry 2023

Music From 100 Years Ago

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2023 41:40

Songs include: Sugar Foot Stomp, Jesus Give Me Water, Walking the Floor Over You, Piano Sonata #13, El Chivo and Jeep's Blues. Performers include: Cuarteto Coculense, James P. Johnson, Ernest Tubb, Arthur Schnabel, FDR and the Soul Stirrers.

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Episode 168: “I Say a Little Prayer” by Aretha Franklin

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2023

Episode 168 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Say a Little Prayer”, and the interaction of the sacred, political, and secular in Aretha Franklin's life and work. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "Abraham, Martin, and John" by Dion. 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/ Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. Even splitting it into multiple parts would have required six or seven mixes. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. Information about Martin Luther King came from Martin Luther King: A Religious Life by Paul Harvey. I also referred to Burt Bacharach's autobiography Anyone Who Had a Heart, Carole King's autobiography A Natural Woman, and Soul Serenade: King Curtis and his Immortal Saxophone by Timothy R. Hoover. For information about Amazing Grace I also used Aaron Cohen's 33 1/3 book on the album. The film of the concerts is also definitely worth watching. And the Aretha Now album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick warning before I begin. This episode contains some moderate references to domestic abuse, death by cancer, racial violence, police violence, and political assassination. Anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to check the transcript rather than listening to the episode. Also, as with the previous episode on Aretha Franklin, this episode presents something of a problem. Like many people in this narrative, Franklin's career was affected by personal troubles, which shaped many of her decisions. But where most of the subjects of the podcast have chosen to live their lives in public and share intimate details of every aspect of their personal lives, Franklin was an extremely private person, who chose to share only carefully sanitised versions of her life, and tried as far as possible to keep things to herself. This of course presents a dilemma for anyone who wants to tell her story -- because even though the information is out there in biographies, and even though she's dead, it's not right to disrespect someone's wish for a private life. I have therefore tried, wherever possible, to stay away from talk of her personal life except where it *absolutely* affects the work, or where other people involved have publicly shared their own stories, and even there I've tried to keep it to a minimum. This will occasionally lead to me saying less about some topics than other people might, even though the information is easily findable, because I don't think we have an absolute right to invade someone else's privacy for entertainment. When we left Aretha Franklin, she had just finally broken through into the mainstream after a decade of performing, with a version of Otis Redding's song "Respect" on which she had been backed by her sisters, Erma and Carolyn. "Respect", in Franklin's interpretation, had been turned from a rather chauvinist song about a man demanding respect from his woman into an anthem of feminism, of Black power, and of a new political awakening. For white people of a certain generation, the summer of 1967 was "the summer of love". For many Black people, it was rather different. There's a quote that goes around (I've seen it credited in reliable sources to both Ebony and Jet magazine, but not ever seen an issue cited, so I can't say for sure where it came from) saying that the summer of 67 was the summer of "'retha, Rap, and revolt", referring to the trifecta of Aretha Franklin, the Black power leader Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (who was at the time known as H. Rap Brown, a name he later disclaimed) and the rioting that broke out in several major cities, particularly in Detroit: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] The mid sixties were, in many ways, the high point not of Black rights in the US -- for the most part there has been a lot of progress in civil rights in the intervening decades, though not without inevitable setbacks and attacks from the far right, and as movements like the Black Lives Matter movement have shown there is still a long way to go -- but of *hope* for Black rights. The moral force of the arguments made by the civil rights movement were starting to cause real change to happen for Black people in the US for the first time since the Reconstruction nearly a century before. But those changes weren't happening fast enough, and as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", there was not only a growing unrest among Black people, but a recognition that it was actually possible for things to change. A combination of hope and frustration can be a powerful catalyst, and whether Franklin wanted it or not, she was at the centre of things, both because of her newfound prominence as a star with a hit single that couldn't be interpreted as anything other than a political statement and because of her intimate family connections to the struggle. Even the most racist of white people these days pays lip service to the memory of Dr Martin Luther King, and when they do they quote just a handful of sentences from one speech King made in 1963, as if that sums up the full theological and political philosophy of that most complex of men. And as we discussed the last time we looked at Aretha Franklin, King gave versions of that speech, the "I Have a Dream" speech, twice. The most famous version was at the March on Washington, but the first time was a few weeks earlier, at what was at the time the largest civil rights demonstration in American history, in Detroit. Aretha's family connection to that event is made clear by the very opening of King's speech: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech"] So as summer 1967 got into swing, and white rock music was going to San Francisco to wear flowers in its hair, Aretha Franklin was at the centre of a very different kind of youth revolution. Franklin's second Atlantic album, Aretha Arrives, brought in some new personnel to the team that had recorded Aretha's first album for Atlantic. Along with the core Muscle Shoals players Jimmy Johnson, Spooner Oldham, Tommy Cogbill and Roger Hawkins, and a horn section led by King Curtis, Wexler and Dowd also brought in guitarist Joe South. South was a white session player from Georgia, who had had a few minor hits himself in the fifties -- he'd got his start recording a cover version of "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor", the Big Bopper's B-side to "Chantilly Lace": [Excerpt: Joe South, "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor"] He'd also written a few songs that had been recorded by people like Gene Vincent, but he'd mostly become a session player. He'd become a favourite musician of Bob Johnston's, and so he'd played guitar on Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme albums: [Excerpt: Simon and Garfunkel, "I am a Rock"] and bass on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, with Al Kooper particularly praising his playing on "Visions of Johanna": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"] South would be the principal guitarist on this and Franklin's next album, before his own career took off in 1968 with "Games People Play": [Excerpt: Joe South, "Games People Play"] At this point, he had already written the other song he's best known for, "Hush", which later became a hit for Deep Purple: [Excerpt: Deep Purple, "Hush"] But he wasn't very well known, and was surprised to get the call for the Aretha Franklin session, especially because, as he put it "I was white and I was about to play behind the blackest genius since Ray Charles" But Jerry Wexler had told him that Franklin didn't care about the race of the musicians she played with, and South settled in as soon as Franklin smiled at him when he played a good guitar lick on her version of the blues standard "Going Down Slow": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Going Down Slow"] That was one of the few times Franklin smiled in those sessions though. Becoming an overnight success after years of trying and failing to make a name for herself had been a disorienting experience, and on top of that things weren't going well in her personal life. Her marriage to her manager Ted White was falling apart, and she was performing erratically thanks to the stress. In particular, at a gig in Georgia she had fallen off the stage and broken her arm. She soon returned to performing, but it meant she had problems with her right arm during the recording of the album, and didn't play as much piano as she would have previously -- on some of the faster songs she played only with her left hand. But the recording sessions had to go on, whether or not Aretha was physically capable of playing piano. As we discussed in the episode on Otis Redding, the owners of Atlantic Records were busily negotiating its sale to Warner Brothers in mid-1967. As Wexler said later “Everything in me said, Keep rolling, keep recording, keep the hits coming. She was red hot and I had no reason to believe that the streak wouldn't continue. I knew that it would be foolish—and even irresponsible—not to strike when the iron was hot. I also had personal motivation. A Wall Street financier had agreed to see what we could get for Atlantic Records. While Ahmet and Neshui had not agreed on a selling price, they had gone along with my plan to let the financier test our worth on the open market. I was always eager to pump out hits, but at this moment I was on overdrive. In this instance, I had a good partner in Ted White, who felt the same. He wanted as much product out there as possible." In truth, you can tell from Aretha Arrives that it's a record that was being thought of as "product" rather than one being made out of any kind of artistic impulse. It's a fine album -- in her ten-album run from I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You through Amazing Grace there's not a bad album and barely a bad track -- but there's a lack of focus. There are only two originals on the album, neither of them written by Franklin herself, and the rest is an incoherent set of songs that show the tension between Franklin and her producers at Atlantic. Several songs are the kind of standards that Franklin had recorded for her old label Columbia, things like "You Are My Sunshine", or her version of "That's Life", which had been a hit for Frank Sinatra the previous year: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "That's Life"] But mixed in with that are songs that are clearly the choice of Wexler. As we've discussed previously in episodes on Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, at this point Atlantic had the idea that it was possible for soul artists to cross over into the white market by doing cover versions of white rock hits -- and indeed they'd had some success with that tactic. So while Franklin was suggesting Sinatra covers, Atlantic's hand is visible in the choices of songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "96 Tears": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "96 Tears'] Of the two originals on the album, one, the hit single "Baby I Love You" was written by Ronnie Shannon, the Detroit songwriter who had previously written "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Baby I Love You"] As with the previous album, and several other songs on this one, that had backing vocals by Aretha's sisters, Erma and Carolyn. But the other original on the album, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)", didn't, even though it was written by Carolyn: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] To explain why, let's take a little detour and look at the co-writer of the song this episode is about, though we're not going to get to that for a little while yet. We've not talked much about Burt Bacharach in this series so far, but he's one of those figures who has come up a few times in the periphery and will come up again, so here is as good a time as any to discuss him, and bring everyone up to speed about his career up to 1967. Bacharach was one of the more privileged figures in the sixties pop music field. His father, Bert Bacharach (pronounced the same as his son, but spelled with an e rather than a u) had been a famous newspaper columnist, and his parents had bought him a Steinway grand piano to practice on -- they pushed him to learn the piano even though as a kid he wasn't interested in finger exercises and Debussy. What he was interested in, though, was jazz, and as a teenager he would often go into Manhattan and use a fake ID to see people like Dizzy Gillespie, who he idolised, and in his autobiography he talks rapturously of seeing Gillespie playing his bent trumpet -- he once saw Gillespie standing on a street corner with a pet monkey on his shoulder, and went home and tried to persuade his parents to buy him a monkey too. In particular, he talks about seeing the Count Basie band with Sonny Payne on drums as a teenager: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Kid From Red Bank"] He saw them at Birdland, the club owned by Morris Levy where they would regularly play, and said of the performance "they were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before. What I heard in those clubs really turned my head around— it was like a big breath of fresh air when somebody throws open a window. That was when I knew for the first time how much I loved music and wanted to be connected to it in some way." Of course, there's a rather major problem with this story, as there is so often with narratives that musicians tell about their early career. In this case, Birdland didn't open until 1949, when Bacharach was twenty-one and stationed in Germany for his military service, while Sonny Payne didn't join Basie's band until 1954, when Bacharach had been a professional musician for many years. Also Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet bell only got bent on January 6, 1953. But presumably while Bacharach was conflating several memories, he did have some experience in some New York jazz club that led him to want to become a musician. Certainly there were enough great jazz musicians playing the clubs in those days. He went to McGill University to study music for two years, then went to study with Darius Milhaud, a hugely respected modernist composer. Milhaud was also one of the most important music teachers of the time -- among others he'd taught Stockhausen and Xenakkis, and would go on to teach Philip Glass and Steve Reich. This suited Bacharach, who by this point was a big fan of Schoenberg and Webern, and was trying to write atonal, difficult music. But Milhaud had also taught Dave Brubeck, and when Bacharach rather shamefacedly presented him with a composition which had an actual tune, he told Bacharach "Never be ashamed of writing a tune you can whistle". He dropped out of university and, like most men of his generation, had to serve in the armed forces. When he got out of the army, he continued his musical studies, still trying to learn to be an avant-garde composer, this time with Bohuslav Martinů and later with Henry Cowell, the experimental composer we've heard about quite a bit in previous episodes: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] He was still listening to a lot of avant garde music, and would continue doing so throughout the fifties, going to see people like John Cage. But he spent much of that time working in music that was very different from the avant-garde. He got a job as the band leader for the crooner Vic Damone: [Excerpt: Vic Damone. "Ebb Tide"] He also played for the vocal group the Ames Brothers. He decided while he was working with the Ames Brothers that he could write better material than they were getting from their publishers, and that it would be better to have a job where he didn't have to travel, so he got himself a job as a staff songwriter in the Brill Building. He wrote a string of flops and nearly hits, starting with "Keep Me In Mind" for Patti Page: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Keep Me In Mind"] From early in his career he worked with the lyricist Hal David, and the two of them together wrote two big hits, "Magic Moments" for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, "Magic Moments"] and "The Story of My Life" for Marty Robbins: [Excerpt: "The Story of My Life"] But at that point Bacharach was still also writing with other writers, notably Hal David's brother Mack, with whom he wrote the theme tune to the film The Blob, as performed by The Five Blobs: [Excerpt: The Five Blobs, "The Blob"] But Bacharach's songwriting career wasn't taking off, and he got himself a job as musical director for Marlene Dietrich -- a job he kept even after it did start to take off. Part of the problem was that he intuitively wrote music that didn't quite fit into standard structures -- there would be odd bars of unusual time signatures thrown in, unusual harmonies, and structural irregularities -- but then he'd take feedback from publishers and producers who would tell him the song could only be recorded if he straightened it out. He said later "The truth is that I ruined a lot of songs by not believing in myself enough to tell these guys they were wrong." He started writing songs for Scepter Records, usually with Hal David, but also with Bob Hilliard and Mack David, and started having R&B hits. One song he wrote with Mack David, "I'll Cherish You", had the lyrics rewritten by Luther Dixon to make them more harsh-sounding for a Shirelles single -- but the single was otherwise just Bacharach's demo with the vocals replaced, and you can even hear his voice briefly at the beginning: [Excerpt: The Shirelles, "Baby, It's You"] But he'd also started becoming interested in the production side of records more generally. He'd iced that some producers, when recording his songs, would change the sound for the worse -- he thought Gene McDaniels' version of "Tower of Strength", for example, was too fast. But on the other hand, other producers got a better sound than he'd heard in his head. He and Hilliard had written a song called "Please Stay", which they'd given to Leiber and Stoller to record with the Drifters, and he thought that their arrangement of the song was much better than the one he'd originally thought up: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Please Stay"] He asked Leiber and Stoller if he could attend all their New York sessions and learn about record production from them. He started doing so, and eventually they started asking him to assist them on records. He and Hilliard wrote a song called "Mexican Divorce" for the Drifters, which Leiber and Stoller were going to produce, and as he put it "they were so busy running Redbird Records that they asked me to rehearse the background singers for them in my office." [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Mexican Divorce"] The backing singers who had been brought in to augment the Drifters on that record were a group of vocalists who had started out as members of a gospel group called the Drinkard singers: [Excerpt: The Drinkard Singers, "Singing in My Soul"] The Drinkard Singers had originally been a family group, whose members included Cissy Drinkard, who joined the group aged five (and who on her marriage would become known as Cissy Houston -- her daughter Whitney would later join the family business), her aunt Lee Warrick, and Warrick's adopted daughter Judy Clay. That group were discovered by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and spent much of the fifties performing with gospel greats including Jackson herself, Clara Ward, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But Houston was also the musical director of a group at her church, the Gospelaires, which featured Lee Warrick's two daughters Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick (for those who don't know, the Warwick sisters' birth name was Warrick, spelled with two rs. A printing error led to it being misspelled the same way as the British city on a record label, and from that point on Dionne at least pronounced the w in her misspelled name). And slowly, the Gospelaires rather than the Drinkard Singers became the focus, with a lineup of Houston, the Warwick sisters, the Warwick sisters' cousin Doris Troy, and Clay's sister Sylvia Shemwell. The real change in the group's fortunes came when, as we talked about a while back in the episode on "The Loco-Motion", the original lineup of the Cookies largely stopped working as session singers to become Ray Charles' Raelettes. As we discussed in that episode, a new lineup of Cookies formed in 1961, but it took a while for them to get started, and in the meantime the producers who had been relying on them for backing vocals were looking elsewhere, and they looked to the Gospelaires. "Mexican Divorce" was the first record to feature the group as backing vocalists -- though reports vary as to how many of them are on the record, with some saying it's only Troy and the Warwicks, others saying Houston was there, and yet others saying it was all five of them. Some of these discrepancies were because these singers were so good that many of them left to become solo singers in fairly short order. Troy was the first to do so, with her hit "Just One Look", on which the other Gospelaires sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Doris Troy, "Just One Look"] But the next one to go solo was Dionne Warwick, and that was because she'd started working with Bacharach and Hal David as their principal demo singer. She started singing lead on their demos, and hoping that she'd get to release them on her own. One early one was "Make it Easy On Yourself", which was recorded by Jerry Butler, formerly of the Impressions. That record was produced by Bacharach, one of the first records he produced without outside supervision: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "Make it Easy On Yourself"] Warwick was very jealous that a song she'd sung the demo of had become a massive hit for someone else, and blamed Bacharach and David. The way she tells the story -- Bacharach always claimed this never happened, but as we've already seen he was himself not always the most reliable of narrators of his own life -- she got so angry she complained to them, and said "Don't make me over, man!" And so Bacharach and David wrote her this: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Don't Make Me Over"] Incidentally, in the UK, the hit version of that was a cover by the Swinging Blue Jeans: [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "Don't Make Me Over"] who also had a huge hit with "You're No Good": [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "You're No Good"] And *that* was originally recorded by *Dee Dee* Warwick: [Excerpt: Dee Dee Warwick, "You're No Good"] Dee Dee also had a successful solo career, but Dionne's was the real success, making the names of herself, and of Bacharach and David. The team had more than twenty top forty hits together, before Bacharach and David had a falling out in 1971 and stopped working together, and Warwick sued both of them for breach of contract as a result. But prior to that they had hit after hit, with classic records like "Anyone Who Had a Heart": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Anyone Who Had a Heart"] And "Walk On By": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Walk On By"] With Doris, Dionne, and Dee Dee all going solo, the group's membership was naturally in flux -- though the departed members would occasionally join their former bandmates for sessions, and the remaining members would sing backing vocals on their ex-members' records. By 1965 the group consisted of Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, the Warwick sisters' cousin Myrna Smith, and Estelle Brown. The group became *the* go-to singers for soul and R&B records made in New York. They were regularly hired by Leiber and Stoller to sing on their records, and they were also the particular favourites of Bert Berns. They sang backing vocals on almost every record he produced. It's them doing the gospel wails on "Cry Baby" by Garnet Mimms: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And they sang backing vocals on both versions of "If You Need Me" -- Wilson Pickett's original and Solomon Burke's more successful cover version, produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] They're on such Berns records as "Show Me Your Monkey", by Kenny Hamber: [Excerpt: Kenny Hamber, "Show Me Your Monkey"] And it was a Berns production that ended up getting them to be Aretha Franklin's backing group. The group were becoming such an important part of the records that Atlantic and BANG Records, in particular, were putting out, that Jerry Wexler said "it was only a matter of common decency to put them under contract as a featured group". He signed them to Atlantic and renamed them from the Gospelaires to The Sweet Inspirations. Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham wrote a song for the group which became their only hit under their own name: [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Sweet Inspiration"] But to start with, they released a cover of Pops Staples' civil rights song "Why (Am I treated So Bad)": [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Why (Am I Treated So Bad?)"] That hadn't charted, and meanwhile, they'd all kept doing session work. Cissy had joined Erma and Carolyn Franklin on the backing vocals for Aretha's "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"] Shortly after that, the whole group recorded backing vocals for Erma's single "Piece of My Heart", co-written and produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] That became a top ten record on the R&B charts, but that caused problems. Aretha Franklin had a few character flaws, and one of these was an extreme level of jealousy for any other female singer who had any level of success and came up in the business after her. She could be incredibly graceful towards anyone who had been successful before her -- she once gave one of her Grammies away to Esther Phillips, who had been up for the same award and had lost to her -- but she was terribly insecure, and saw any contemporary as a threat. She'd spent her time at Columbia Records fuming (with some justification) that Barbra Streisand was being given a much bigger marketing budget than her, and she saw Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick as rivals rather than friends. And that went doubly for her sisters, who she was convinced should be supporting her because of family loyalty. She had been infuriated at John Hammond when Columbia had signed Erma, thinking he'd gone behind her back to create competition for her. And now Erma was recording with Bert Berns. Bert Berns who had for years been a colleague of Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers at Atlantic. Aretha was convinced that Wexler had put Berns up to signing Erma as some kind of power play. There was only one problem with this -- it simply wasn't true. As Wexler later explained “Bert and I had suffered a bad falling-out, even though I had enormous respect for him. After all, he was the guy who brought over guitarist Jimmy Page from England to play on our sessions. Bert, Ahmet, Nesuhi, and I had started a label together—Bang!—where Bert produced Van Morrison's first album. But Bert also had a penchant for trouble. He courted the wise guys. He wanted total control over every last aspect of our business dealings. Finally it was too much, and the Erteguns and I let him go. He sued us for breach of contract and suddenly we were enemies. I felt that he signed Erma, an excellent singer, not merely for her talent but as a way to get back at me. If I could make a hit with Aretha, he'd show me up by making an even bigger hit on Erma. Because there was always an undercurrent of rivalry between the sisters, this only added to the tension.” There were two things that resulted from this paranoia on Aretha's part. The first was that she and Wexler, who had been on first-name terms up to that point, temporarily went back to being "Mr. Wexler" and "Miss Franklin" to each other. And the second was that Aretha no longer wanted Carolyn and Erma to be her main backing vocalists, though they would continue to appear on her future records on occasion. From this point on, the Sweet Inspirations would be the main backing vocalists for Aretha in the studio throughout her golden era [xxcut line (and when the Sweet Inspirations themselves weren't on the record, often it would be former members of the group taking their place)]: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] The last day of sessions for Aretha Arrives was July the twenty-third, 1967. And as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", that was the day that the Detroit riots started. To recap briefly, that was four days of rioting started because of a history of racist policing, made worse by those same racist police overreacting to the initial protests. By the end of those four days, the National Guard, 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville were all called in to deal with the violence, which left forty-three dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a police officer), 1,189 people were injured, and over 7,200 arrested, almost all of them Black. Those days in July would be a turning point for almost every musician based in Detroit. In particular, the police had murdered three members of the soul group the Dramatics, in a massacre of which the author John Hersey, who had been asked by President Johnson to be part of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders but had decided that would compromise his impartiality and did an independent journalistic investigation, said "The episode contained all the mythic themes of racial strife in the United States: the arm of the law taking the law into its own hands; interracial sex; the subtle poison of racist thinking by “decent” men who deny they are racists; the societal limbo into which, ever since slavery, so many young black men have been driven by our country; ambiguous justice in the courts; and the devastation in both black and white human lives that follows in the wake of violence as surely as ruinous and indiscriminate flood after torrents" But these were also the events that radicalised the MC5 -- the group had been playing a gig as Tim Buckley's support act when the rioting started, and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided afterwards to get stoned and watch the fires burning down the city through a telescope -- which police mistook for a rifle, leading to the National Guard knocking down Kramer's door. The MC5 would later cover "The Motor City is Burning", John Lee Hooker's song about the events: [Excerpt: The MC5, "The Motor City is Burning"] It would also be a turning point for Motown, too, in ways we'll talk about in a few future episodes. And it was a political turning point too -- Michigan Governor George Romney, a liberal Republican (at a time when such people existed) had been the favourite for the Republican Presidential candidacy when he'd entered the race in December 1966, but as racial tensions ramped up in Detroit during the early months of 1967 he'd started trailing Richard Nixon, a man who was consciously stoking racists' fears. President Johnson, the incumbent Democrat, who was at that point still considering standing for re-election, made sure to make it clear to everyone during the riots that the decision to call in the National Guard had been made at the State level, by Romney, rather than at the Federal level. That wasn't the only thing that removed the possibility of a Romney presidency, but it was a big part of the collapse of his campaign, and the, as it turned out, irrevocable turn towards right-authoritarianism that the party took with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Of course, Aretha Franklin had little way of knowing what was to come and how the riots would change the city and the country over the following decades. What she was primarily concerned about was the safety of her father, and to a lesser extent that of her sister-in-law Earline who was staying with him. Aretha, Carolyn, and Erma all tried to keep in constant touch with their father while they were out of town, and Aretha even talked about hiring private detectives to travel to Detroit, find her father, and get him out of the city to safety. But as her brother Cecil pointed out, he was probably the single most loved man among Black people in Detroit, and was unlikely to be harmed by the rioters, while he was too famous for the police to kill with impunity. Reverend Franklin had been having a stressful time anyway -- he had recently been fined for tax evasion, an action he was convinced the IRS had taken because of his friendship with Dr King and his role in the civil rights movement -- and according to Cecil "Aretha begged Daddy to move out of the city entirely. She wanted him to find another congregation in California, where he was especially popular—or at least move out to the suburbs. But he wouldn't budge. He said that, more than ever, he was needed to point out the root causes of the riots—the economic inequality, the pervasive racism in civic institutions, the woefully inadequate schools in inner-city Detroit, and the wholesale destruction of our neighborhoods by urban renewal. Some ministers fled the city, but not our father. The horror of what happened only recommitted him. He would not abandon his political agenda." To make things worse, Aretha was worried about her father in other ways -- as her marriage to Ted White was starting to disintegrate, she was looking to her father for guidance, and actually wanted him to take over her management. Eventually, Ruth Bowen, her booking agent, persuaded her brother Cecil that this was a job he could do, and that she would teach him everything he needed to know about the music business. She started training him up while Aretha was still married to White, in the expectation that that marriage couldn't last. Jerry Wexler, who only a few months earlier had been seeing Ted White as an ally in getting "product" from Franklin, had now changed his tune -- partly because the sale of Atlantic had gone through in the meantime. He later said “Sometimes she'd call me at night, and, in that barely audible little-girl voice of hers, she'd tell me that she wasn't sure she could go on. She always spoke in generalities. She never mentioned her husband, never gave me specifics of who was doing what to whom. And of course I knew better than to ask. She just said that she was tired of dealing with so much. My heart went out to her. She was a woman who suffered silently. She held so much in. I'd tell her to take as much time off as she needed. We had a lot of songs in the can that we could release without new material. ‘Oh, no, Jerry,' she'd say. ‘I can't stop recording. I've written some new songs, Carolyn's written some new songs. We gotta get in there and cut 'em.' ‘Are you sure?' I'd ask. ‘Positive,' she'd say. I'd set up the dates and typically she wouldn't show up for the first or second sessions. Carolyn or Erma would call me to say, ‘Ree's under the weather.' That was tough because we'd have asked people like Joe South and Bobby Womack to play on the sessions. Then I'd reschedule in the hopes she'd show." That third album she recorded in 1967, Lady Soul, was possibly her greatest achievement. The opening track, and second single, "Chain of Fools", released in November, was written by Don Covay -- or at least it's credited as having been written by Covay. There's a gospel record that came out around the same time on a very small label based in Houston -- "Pains of Life" by Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio: [Excerpt: Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio, "Pains of Life"] I've seen various claims online that that record came out shortly *before* "Chain of Fools", but I can't find any definitive evidence one way or the other -- it was on such a small label that release dates aren't available anywhere. Given that the B-side, which I haven't been able to track down online, is called "Wait Until the Midnight Hour", my guess is that rather than this being a case of Don Covay stealing the melody from an obscure gospel record he'd have had little chance to hear, it's the gospel record rewriting a then-current hit to be about religion, but I thought it worth mentioning. The song was actually written by Covay after Jerry Wexler asked him to come up with some songs for Otis Redding, but Wexler, after hearing it, decided it was better suited to Franklin, who gave an astonishing performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] Arif Mardin, the arranger of the album, said of that track “I was listed as the arranger of ‘Chain of Fools,' but I can't take credit. Aretha walked into the studio with the chart fully formed inside her head. The arrangement is based around the harmony vocals provided by Carolyn and Erma. To add heft, the Sweet Inspirations joined in. The vision of the song is entirely Aretha's.” According to Wexler, that's not *quite* true -- according to him, Joe South came up with the guitar part that makes up the intro, and he also said that when he played what he thought was the finished track to Ellie Greenwich, she came up with another vocal line for the backing vocals, which she overdubbed. But the core of the record's sound is definitely pure Aretha -- and Carolyn Franklin said that there was a reason for that. As she said later “Aretha didn't write ‘Chain,' but she might as well have. It was her story. When we were in the studio putting on the backgrounds with Ree doing lead, I knew she was singing about Ted. Listen to the lyrics talking about how for five long years she thought he was her man. Then she found out she was nothing but a link in the chain. Then she sings that her father told her to come on home. Well, he did. She sings about how her doctor said to take it easy. Well, he did too. She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown. The line that slew me, though, was the one that said how one of these mornings the chain is gonna break but until then she'll take all she can take. That summed it up. Ree knew damn well that this man had been doggin' her since Jump Street. But somehow she held on and pushed it to the breaking point." [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] That made number one on the R&B charts, and number two on the hot one hundred, kept from the top by "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)" by John Fred and his Playboy Band -- a record that very few people would say has stood the test of time as well. The other most memorable track on the album was the one chosen as the first single, released in September. As Carole King told the story, she and Gerry Goffin were feeling like their career was in a slump. While they had had a huge run of hits in the early sixties through 1965, they had only had two new hits in 1966 -- "Goin' Back" for Dusty Springfield and "Don't Bring Me Down" for the Animals, and neither of those were anything like as massive as their previous hits. And up to that point in 1967, they'd only had one -- "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees. They had managed to place several songs on Monkees albums and the TV show as well, so they weren't going to starve, but the rise of self-contained bands that were starting to dominate the charts, and Phil Spector's temporary retirement, meant there simply wasn't the opportunity for them to place material that there had been. They were also getting sick of travelling to the West Coast all the time, because as their children were growing slightly older they didn't want to disrupt their lives in New York, and were thinking of approaching some of the New York based labels and seeing if they needed songs. They were particularly considering Atlantic, because soul was more open to outside songwriters than other genres. As it happened, though, they didn't have to approach Atlantic, because Atlantic approached them. They were walking down Broadway when a limousine pulled up, and Jerry Wexler stuck his head out of the window. He'd come up with a good title that he wanted to use for a song for Aretha, would they be interested in writing a song called "Natural Woman"? They said of course they would, and Wexler drove off. They wrote the song that night, and King recorded a demo the next morning: [Excerpt: Carole King, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (demo)"] They gave Wexler a co-writing credit because he had suggested the title. King later wrote in her autobiography "Hearing Aretha's performance of “Natural Woman” for the first time, I experienced a rare speechless moment. To this day I can't convey how I felt in mere words. Anyone who had written a song in 1967 hoping it would be performed by a singer who could take it to the highest level of excellence, emotional connection, and public exposure would surely have wanted that singer to be Aretha Franklin." She went on to say "But a recording that moves people is never just about the artist and the songwriters. It's about people like Jerry and Ahmet, who matched the songwriters with a great title and a gifted artist; Arif Mardin, whose magnificent orchestral arrangement deserves the place it will forever occupy in popular music history; Tom Dowd, whose engineering skills captured the magic of this memorable musical moment for posterity; and the musicians in the rhythm section, the orchestral players, and the vocal contributions of the background singers—among them the unforgettable “Ah-oo!” after the first line of the verse. And the promotion and marketing people helped this song reach more people than it might have without them." And that's correct -- unlike "Chain of Fools", this time Franklin did let Arif Mardin do most of the arrangement work -- though she came up with the piano part that Spooner Oldham plays on the record. Mardin said that because of the song's hymn-like feel they wanted to go for a more traditional written arrangement. He said "She loved the song to the point where she said she wanted to concentrate on the vocal and vocal alone. I had written a string chart and horn chart to augment the chorus and hired Ralph Burns to conduct. After just a couple of takes, we had it. That's when Ralph turned to me with wonder in his eyes. Ralph was one of the most celebrated arrangers of the modern era. He had done ‘Early Autumn' for Woody Herman and Stan Getz, and ‘Georgia on My Mind' for Ray Charles. He'd worked with everyone. ‘This woman comes from another planet' was all Ralph said. ‘She's just here visiting.'” [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"] By this point there was a well-functioning team making Franklin's records -- while the production credits would vary over the years, they were all essentially co-productions by the team of Franklin, Wexler, Mardin and Dowd, all collaborating and working together with a more-or-less unified purpose, and the backing was always by the same handful of session musicians and some combination of the Sweet Inspirations and Aretha's sisters. That didn't mean that occasional guests couldn't get involved -- as we discussed in the Cream episode, Eric Clapton played guitar on "Good to Me as I am to You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Good to Me as I am to You"] Though that was one of the rare occasions on one of these records where something was overdubbed. Clapton apparently messed up the guitar part when playing behind Franklin, because he was too intimidated by playing with her, and came back the next day to redo his part without her in the studio. At this point, Aretha was at the height of her fame. Just before the final batch of album sessions began she appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and she was making regular TV appearances, like one on the Mike Douglas Show where she duetted with Frankie Valli on "That's Life": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin and Frankie Valli, "That's Life"] But also, as Wexler said “Her career was kicking into high gear. Contending and resolving both the professional and personal challenges were too much. She didn't think she could do both, and I didn't blame her. Few people could. So she let the personal slide and concentrated on the professional. " Her concert promoter Ruth Bowen said of this time "Her father and Dr. King were putting pressure on her to sing everywhere, and she felt obligated. The record company was also screaming for more product. And I had a mountain of offers on my desk that kept getting higher with every passing hour. They wanted her in Europe. They wanted her in Latin America. They wanted her in every major venue in the U.S. TV was calling. She was being asked to do guest appearances on every show from Carol Burnett to Andy Williams to the Hollywood Palace. She wanted to do them all and she wanted to do none of them. She wanted to do them all because she's an entertainer who burns with ambition. She wanted to do none of them because she was emotionally drained. She needed to go away and renew her strength. I told her that at least a dozen times. She said she would, but she didn't listen to me." The pressures from her father and Dr King are a recurring motif in interviews with people about this period. Franklin was always a very political person, and would throughout her life volunteer time and money to liberal political causes and to the Democratic Party, but this was the height of her activism -- the Civil Rights movement was trying to capitalise on the gains it had made in the previous couple of years, and celebrity fundraisers and performances at rallies were an important way to do that. And at this point there were few bigger celebrities in America than Aretha Franklin. At a concert in her home town of Detroit on February the sixteenth, 1968, the Mayor declared the day Aretha Franklin Day. At the same show, Billboard, Record World *and* Cash Box magazines all presented her with plaques for being Female Vocalist of the Year. And Dr. King travelled up to be at the show and congratulate her publicly for all her work with his organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Backstage at that show, Dr. King talked to Aretha's father, Reverend Franklin, about what he believed would be the next big battle -- a strike in Memphis: [Excerpt, Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech" -- "And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right."] The strike in question was the Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike which had started a few days before. The struggle for Black labour rights was an integral part of the civil rights movement, and while it's not told that way in the sanitised version of the story that's made it into popular culture, the movement led by King was as much about economic justice as social justice -- King was a democratic socialist, and believed that economic oppression was both an effect of and cause of other forms of racial oppression, and that the rights of Black workers needed to be fought for. In 1967 he had set up a new organisation, the Poor People's Campaign, which was set to march on Washington to demand a program that included full employment, a guaranteed income -- King was strongly influenced in his later years by the ideas of Henry George, the proponent of a universal basic income based on land value tax -- the annual building of half a million affordable homes, and an end to the war in Vietnam. This was King's main focus in early 1968, and he saw the sanitation workers' strike as a major part of this campaign. Memphis was one of the most oppressive cities in the country, and its largely Black workforce of sanitation workers had been trying for most of the 1960s to unionise, and strike-breakers had been called in to stop them, and many of them had been fired by their white supervisors with no notice. They were working in unsafe conditions, for utterly inadequate wages, and the city government were ardent segregationists. After two workers had died on the first of February from using unsafe equipment, the union demanded changes -- safer working conditions, better wages, and recognition of the union. The city council refused, and almost all the sanitation workers stayed home and stopped work. After a few days, the council relented and agreed to their terms, but the Mayor, Henry Loeb, an ardent white supremacist who had stood on a platform of opposing desegregation, and who had previously been the Public Works Commissioner who had put these unsafe conditions in place, refused to listen. As far as he was concerned, he was the only one who could recognise the union, and he wouldn't. The workers continued their strike, marching holding signs that simply read "I am a Man": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Blowing in the Wind"] The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP had been involved in organising support for the strikes from an early stage, and King visited Memphis many times. Much of the time he spent visiting there was spent negotiating with a group of more militant activists, who called themselves The Invaders and weren't completely convinced by King's nonviolent approach -- they believed that violence and rioting got more attention than non-violent protests. King explained to them that while he had been persuaded by Gandhi's writings of the moral case for nonviolent protest, he was also persuaded that it was pragmatically necessary -- asking the young men "how many guns do we have and how many guns do they have?", and pointing out as he often did that when it comes to violence a minority can't win against an armed majority. Rev Franklin went down to Memphis on the twenty-eighth of March to speak at a rally Dr. King was holding, but as it turned out the rally was cancelled -- the pre-rally march had got out of hand, with some people smashing windows, and Memphis police had, like the police in Detroit the previous year, violently overreacted, clubbing and gassing protestors and shooting and killing one unarmed teenage boy, Larry Payne. The day after Payne's funeral, Dr King was back in Memphis, though this time Rev Franklin was not with him. On April the third, he gave a speech which became known as the "Mountaintop Speech", in which he talked about the threats that had been made to his life: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech": “And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."] The next day, Martin Luther King was shot dead. James Earl Ray, a white supremacist, pled guilty to the murder, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming from what I've read, but the King family have always claimed that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy and that Ray was not the gunman. Aretha was obviously distraught, and she attended the funeral, as did almost every other prominent Black public figure. James Baldwin wrote of the funeral: "In the pew directly before me sat Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt—covered in black, looking like a lost, ten-year-old girl—and Sidney Poitier, in the same pew, or nearby. Marlon saw me, and nodded. The atmosphere was black, with a tension indescribable—as though something, perhaps the heavens, perhaps the earth, might crack. Everyone sat very still. The actual service sort of washed over me, in waves. It wasn't that it seemed unreal; it was the most real church service I've ever sat through in my life, or ever hope to sit through; but I have a childhood hangover thing about not weeping in public, and I was concentrating on holding myself together. I did not want to weep for Martin, tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep I would not be able to stop. There was more than enough to weep for, if one was to weep—so many of us, cut down, so soon. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin: and their widows, and their children. Reverend Ralph David Abernathy asked a certain sister to sing a song which Martin had loved—“Once more,” said Ralph David, “for Martin and for me,” and he sat down." Many articles and books on Aretha Franklin say that she sang at King's funeral. In fact she didn't, but there's a simple reason for the confusion. King's favourite song was the Thomas Dorsey gospel song "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", and indeed almost his last words were to ask a trumpet player, Ben Branch, if he would play the song at the rally he was going to be speaking at on the day of his death. At his request, Mahalia Jackson, his old friend, sang the song at his private funeral, which was not filmed, unlike the public part of the funeral that Baldwin described. Four months later, though, there was another public memorial for King, and Franklin did sing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at that service, in front of King's weeping widow and children, and that performance *was* filmed, and gets conflated in people's memories with Jackson's unfilmed earlier performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord (at Martin Luther King Memorial)"] Four years later, she would sing that at Mahalia Jackson's funeral. Through all this, Franklin had been working on her next album, Aretha Now, the sessions for which started more or less as soon as the sessions for Lady Soul had finished. The album was, in fact, bookended by deaths that affected Aretha. Just as King died at the end of the sessions, the beginning came around the time of the death of Otis Redding -- the sessions were cancelled for a day while Wexler travelled to Georgia for Redding's funeral, which Franklin was too devastated to attend, and Wexler would later say that the extra emotion in her performances on the album came from her emotional pain at Redding's death. The lead single on the album, "Think", was written by Franklin and -- according to the credits anyway -- her husband Ted White, and is very much in the same style as "Respect", and became another of her most-loved hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Think"] But probably the song on Aretha Now that now resonates the most is one that Jerry Wexler tried to persuade her not to record, and was only released as a B-side. Indeed, "I Say a Little Prayer" was a song that had already once been a hit after being a reject. Hal David, unlike Burt Bacharach, was a fairly political person and inspired by the protest song movement, and had been starting to incorporate his concerns about the political situation and the Vietnam War into his lyrics -- though as with many such writers, he did it in much less specific ways than a Phil Ochs or a Bob Dylan. This had started with "What the World Needs Now is Love", a song Bacharach and David had written for Jackie DeShannon in 1965: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "What the "World Needs Now is Love"] But he'd become much more overtly political for "The Windows of the World", a song they wrote for Dionne Warwick. Warwick has often said it's her favourite of her singles, but it wasn't a big hit -- Bacharach blamed himself for that, saying "Dionne recorded it as a single and I really blew it. I wrote a bad arrangement and the tempo was too fast, and I really regret making it the way I did because it's a good song." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "The Windows of the World"] For that album, Bacharach and David had written another track, "I Say a Little Prayer", which was not as explicitly political, but was intended by David to have an implicit anti-war message, much like other songs of the period like "Last Train to Clarksville". David had sons who were the right age to be drafted, and while it's never stated, "I Say a Little Prayer" was written from the perspective of a woman whose partner is away fighting in the war, but is still in her thoughts: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] The recording of Dionne Warwick's version was marked by stress. Bacharach had a particular way of writing music to tell the musicians the kind of feel he wanted for the part -- he'd write nonsense words above the stave, and tell the musicians to play the parts as if they were singing those words. The trumpet player hired for the session, Ernie Royal, got into a row with Bacharach about this unorthodox way of communicating musical feeling, and the track ended up taking ten takes (as opposed to the normal three for a Bacharach session), with Royal being replaced half-way through the session. Bacharach was never happy with the track even after all the work it had taken, and he fought to keep it from being released at all, saying the track was taken at too fast a tempo. It eventually came out as an album track nearly eighteen months after it was recorded -- an eternity in 1960s musical timescales -- and DJs started playing it almost as soon as it came out. Scepter records rushed out a single, over Bacharach's objections, but as he later said "One thing I love about the record business is how wrong I was. Disc jockeys all across the country started playing the track, and the song went to number four on the charts and then became the biggest hit Hal and I had ever written for Dionne." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Oddly, the B-side for Warwick's single, "Theme From the Valley of the Dolls" did even better, reaching number two. Almost as soon as the song was released as a single, Franklin started playing around with the song backstage, and in April 1968, right around the time of Dr. King's death, she recorded a version. Much as Burt Bacharach had been against releasing Dionne Warwick's version, Jerry Wexler was against Aretha even recording the song, saying later “I advised Aretha not to record it. I opposed it for two reasons. First, to cover a song only twelve weeks after the original reached the top of the charts was not smart business. You revisit such a hit eight months to a year later. That's standard practice. But more than that, Bacharach's melody, though lovely, was peculiarly suited to a lithe instrument like Dionne Warwick's—a light voice without the dark corners or emotional depths that define Aretha. Also, Hal David's lyric was also somewhat girlish and lacked the gravitas that Aretha required. “Aretha usually listened to me in the studio, but not this time. She had written a vocal arrangement for the Sweet Inspirations that was undoubtedly strong. Cissy Houston, Dionne's cousin, told me that Aretha was on the right track—she was seeing this song in a new way and had come up with a new groove. Cissy was on Aretha's side. Tommy Dowd and Arif were on Aretha's side. So I had no choice but to cave." It's quite possible that Wexler's objections made Franklin more, rather than less, determined to record the song. She regarded Warwick as a hated rival, as she did almost every prominent female singer of her generation and younger ones, and would undoubtedly have taken the implication that there was something that Warwick was simply better at than her to heart. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Wexler realised as soon as he heard it in the studio that Franklin's version was great, and Bacharach agreed, telling Franklin's biographer David Ritz “As much as I like the original recording by Dionne, there's no doubt that Aretha's is a better record. She imbued the song with heavy soul and took it to a far deeper place. Hers is the definitive version.” -- which is surprising because Franklin's version simplifies some of Bacharach's more unusual chord voicings, something he often found extremely upsetting. Wexler still though thought there was no way the song would be a hit, and it's understandable that he thought that way. Not only had it only just been on the charts a few months earlier, but it was the kind of song that wouldn't normally be a hit at all, and certainly not in the kind of rhythmic soul music for which Franklin was known. Almost everything she ever recorded is in simple time signatures -- 4/4, waltz time, or 6/8 -- but this is a Bacharach song so it's staggeringly metrically irregular. Normally even with semi-complex things I'm usually good at figuring out how to break it down into bars, but here I actually had to purchase a copy of the sheet music in order to be sure I was right about what's going on. I'm going to count beats along with the record here so you can see what I mean. The verse has three bars of 4/4, one bar of 2/4, and three more bars of 4/4, all repeated: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] While the chorus has a bar of 4/4, a bar of 3/4 but with a chord change half way through so it sounds like it's in two if you're paying attention to the harmonic changes, two bars of 4/4, another waltz-time bar sounding like it's in two, two bars of four, another bar of three sounding in two, a bar of four, then three more bars of four but the first of those is *written* as four but played as if it's in six-eight time (but you can keep the four/four pulse going if you're counting): [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] I don't expect you to have necessarily followed that in great detail, but the point should be clear -- this was not some straightforward dance song. Incidentally, that bar played as if it's six/eight was something Aretha introduced to make the song even more irregular than how Bacharach wrote it. And on top of *that* of course the lyrics mixed the secular and the sacred, something that was still taboo in popular music at that time -- this is only a couple of years after Capitol records had been genuinely unsure about putting out the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", and Franklin's gospel-inflected vocals made the religious connection even more obvious. But Franklin was insistent that the record go out as a single, and eventually it was released as the B-side to the far less impressive "The House That Jack Built". It became a double-sided hit, with the A-side making number two on the R&B chart and number seven on the Hot One Hundred, while "I Say a Little Prayer" made number three on the R&B chart and number ten overall. In the UK, "I Say a Little Prayer" made number four and became her biggest ever solo UK hit. It's now one of her most-remembered songs, while the A-side is largely forgotten: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] For much of the

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down john lennon disc frank sinatra paul mccartney vietnam war gifted cream springfield democratic party fools doubts stevie wonder whitney houston hal amazing grace payne aretha franklin my life blonde drums gandhi baldwin backstage central park jet dolls kramer jimi hendrix reconstruction james brown motown warner brothers beach boys national guard blowing naacp mitt romney grateful dead goin richard nixon meatloaf marvin gaye chic hush mick jagger eric clapton quincy jones pains warwick miles davis mcgill university sweetheart george harrison clive george michael stonewall james baldwin amin pipes contending cooke tilt sparkle blob marlon brando ray charles continent diana ross pale rosa parks lou reed barbra streisand airborne little richard my heart blues brothers tony bennett gillespie monkees keith richards rising sun ella fitzgerald sam cooke stills redding van morrison i believe rock music garfunkel motor city black power cry baby duke ellington supremes jimmy page invaders buddy holly sidney poitier atlantic records barry manilow my mind carole king reach out black church luther vandross poor people gladys knight otis redding charlie watts phil spector dionne warwick hathaway jump street philip glass spector dowd burt bacharach eurythmics john cage isley brothers debussy twisting airborne divisions drifters simon says fillmore columbia records winding road soul train carol burnett hilliard thyme jefferson airplane chain reaction arif let it be jesse jackson stax curtis mayfield clapton jimmy johnson john newton clarksville marlene dietrich ahmet hey jude dizzy gillespie parsley eartha kitt les paul pavarotti paul harvey magic moments wexler muscle shoals frankie valli count basie dusty springfield andy williams coasters midnight hour john lee hooker natalie cole witch doctors john hammond dave brubeck last train godspell sarah vaughan donny hathaway mc5 peggy lee steve reich herb alpert republican presidential get no satisfaction arista shabazz birdland bridge over troubled water mahalia jackson clive davis games people play billy preston stan getz ben e king locomotion take my hand stoller scepter bobby womack steinway allman sister rosetta tharpe wilson pickett shea stadium warrick ginger baker cab calloway schoenberg wonder bread stephen stills god only knows barry gibb night away sammy davis eleanor rigby berns stax records bacharach big bopper jackson five buddah tim buckley sam moore lionel hampton preacher man grammies bill graham james earl ray stockhausen dramatics oh happy day thanksgiving parade duane allman cannonball adderley leiber wayne kramer solomon burke shirelles hamp natural woman phil ochs woody herman one you basie artistically montanez precious lord lesley gore kingpins nessun dorma ruth brown hal david al kooper bring me down female vocalist southern strategy nile rogers gene vincent franklins betty carter world needs now whiter shade joe robinson little prayer brill building rick hall jerry butler cissy houston king curtis you are my sunshine my sweet lord this girl aaron cohen bernard purdie mardin norman greenbaum precious memories henry george jackie deshannon gerry goffin bernard edwards cashbox loserville darius milhaud say a little prayer never grow old webern betty shabazz so fine tom dowd esther phillips ahmet ertegun james cleveland vandross fillmore west mike douglas show milhaud jerry wexler in love with you medgar david ritz arif mardin bob johnston wait until i was made john hersey joe south edwin hawkins ted white new africa peter guralnick make me over ralph burns ellie greenwich play that song pops staples lady soul champion jack dupree rap brown you make me feel like a natural woman brook benton spooner oldham henry cowell morris levy jesus yes don covay chuck rainey bert berns john fred charles cooke soul stirrers thomas dorsey how i got over i never loved civil disorders henry stone baby i love you will you love me tomorrow way i love you hollywood palace gene mcdaniels gospel music workshop larry payne harlem square club fruitgum company savoy records judy clay national advisory commission ertegun charles l hughes tilt araiza

Episode 130: Gospel Memories - June 3, 2023

gospel memories tina turner soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2023 58:20

This episode includes music from the O'Neal Twins, Sallie Martin Singers, Soul Stirrers, Ford Gospel Singers, Mary Deloach, Beautiful Zion MBC Choir, Gospel IQs, a gospel song from the late Tina Turner, and more.

Aretha Franklin - RESPECT

Un Dernier Disque avant la fin du monde

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2023 129:23

Bon.... Le Captain a pété les plombs.... Mais pour raconter correctement l'histoire, il fallait au moins ça..... Cet épisode est un Monstre de presque 2h10. J'espère qu'il vous plaira. Cpt Diligaf PLAYLIST Aretha Franklin, Respect Bobby Blue Bland, Turn on Your Love Light C.L. Franklin, The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest Bobby Blue Bland, I Pity the Fool Mahalia Jackson, Precious Lord, Take My Hand John Lee Hooker, Boogie Chillen Dinah Washington, Cold Cold Heart Dinah Washington, Big Long Slidin' Thing Clara Ward, Peace in the Valley C.L. Franklin, I Am Climbing Higher Mountains The Caravans, What Kind of Man is This? The Soul Stirrers, Touch the Hem of his Garment Art Tatum, Tiger Rag Aretha Franklin, There is a Fountain Filled With Blood Sam Cooke, You Send Me The Cleo-Patrettes, No Other Love Etta James, All I Could Do Was Cry Helen Humes, Today I Sing the Blues Sam Cooke, Today I Sing the Blues Aretha Franklin, Today I Sing the Blues Erma Franklin, Hello Again Al Jolson, Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody Aretha Franklin, Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody Andy Williams, Moon River Aretha Franklin, Try a Little Tenderness Otis Redding, Try a Little Tenderness Martin Luther King, Original ‘I Have a Dream' Speech Aretha Franklin, I Wanna Be Around Aretha Franklin, Skylark Aretha Franklin, What a Diff'rence a Day Made Brook Benton and Dinah Washington, Baby, You Got What it Takes Aretha Franklin, Runnin' Out of Fools Patti Page, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte Wilson Pickett, Mustang Sally Otis Redding, Respect Aretha Franklin I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You) (demo) Aretha Franklin, I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You) Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, Do Right Woman, Do Right Man Aretha Franklin, Do Right Woman, Do Right Man King Curtis, Green Onions Sam and Dave, When Something is Wrong With My Baby Simon and Garfunkel Still Crazy After All These Years (live in Central Park) Aretha Franklin, A Change is gonna come

babies peace man rock change touch bon aretha franklin diff hush runnin hem monstre dinah washington precious lord aretha franklin respect spooner oldham soul stirrers i never loved i pity way i love you

PipemanRadio Interviews Gringo Star at Shaky Knees 2023

The Adventures of Pipeman

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2023 16:11

On this episode of the Adventures of Pipeman, Pipeman is joined by Gringo Star, a band from Atlanta, Georgia. The band, which has been playing for a long time, is at Shaky Knee, and they discuss the rainy weather, which they hoped would turn into a Woodstock vibe. The band recounts how they kept their gear dry during the rain, and one of them shares that some of the best shows he has ever seen were downpours. They all agreed that it is better than extreme heat, which can be unbearable. Pipeman shares an experience from a festival he attended last year in France called Hell Fest, where it was 104 degrees, and he did interviews outside because it was cooler. The press tent was like a sauna, and he would take the rain over that any day. The band shares that the best gigs are when it is raining, and there is a little mud fest, and everyone is just having a blast. When asked to describe their music, Gringo Starr shares that they play a variety of rock and roll, and they have been playing together since 2007. The band is made up of two brothers, who started playing together when one was in high school and the other was in middle school. They started playing at middle school dances, and now they are playing at Shaky Knee. The band has played at music midtown, and they recount their experience with their old band name. You can find everything you need on how to follow them on social media, how to get the new music, how to buy some of the merch all over on their website gringostarr.net so be sure to check it out if you like what you hear.On June 2, Atlanta's Gringo Star will release their new album On And On And Gone out June 2 on My Anxious Mouth. Gringo Star is also announcing U.S. tour dates. The upcoming U.S. tour will include shows in New York City, Atlanta and more. All upcoming shows are listed below.Gringo Star have made a name for themselves as one of Atlanta's most valuable rock & roll exports, carrying the torch for hazy, psychedelic garage rock in a city primarily valued for its contributions to hip-hop. Brothers Nick and Peter Furgiuele are the constant creative force of Gringo Star, and have outlasted wave after wave of buzz bands and indie blog darlings, carving their own career path through constant reinvention and an unparalleled work ethic, amassing a loyal and enthusiastic international fanbase along the way. Their mind-bending take on doo-wop inspired R&B and British Invasion rock & roll has garnered praise from the likes of Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, Paste Magazine, KEXP & more, and landed them on bills alongside everyone from Cat Power and Feist to The Black Angels and Weezer, not to mention tours with Wavves, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, and their Atlanta-based contemporaries Black Lips.Though the band's 2008 album, All Y'all serves as the start of Gringo Star's storied career, the band's core songwriting duo, the Furgiuele brothers, have been playing together since they were kids, born into a family with strong ties to Georgia music history. “Our grandad started out in radio in the '40s and '50s in Columbus, GA.,” Nick explains. “He was a huge promoter of R&B back when it was still super segregated, and he was playing black music and putting on shows with Little Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers, a lot of Gospel shows. So we grew up hearing all these stories, listening to all this music. Our grandfather was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame posthumously. And my grandma—all her photo albums are like Jackie Wilson shirtless backstage, hanging out.”With their family's R&B connections and their young obsession with early rock & roll, it wasn't long before the two brothers started making music themselves. When Nick was 15 and Peter just 11, they picked up bass and drums, respectively, formed a rhythm section and joined their first garage band. “We played together in the house and messed around on a little two-track,” Nick says. “We've been writing songs together since before Peter was a teenager. We even played his 8th-grade dance.”Eventually, the brothers formed Gringo Star and began the career that has come to define their last decade. All Y'all and Count Yer Lucky Stars forced the world to pay attention. 2013's Floating Out To See found the band experimenting with producing their own records and layering more keys and strings into their compositions. 2016's The Sides and In Between contained some of the finest songwriting of the Furgiuele's career, and 2018's Back to the City reinvigorated their sound with a new intensity, equally dark and shimmering. The band's legendary live energy was captured in 2019's album Controlled Burn (Live In Atlanta). Despite multiple personnel changes, Nick and Peter have remained steadfast in their partnership, continuing to stand by one another through thick and thin in their artistic endeavours. There's no telling what comes next for Gringo Star, but there's no doubt that the Furgiuele brothers will continue to write and record on their own terms. “We've had a lot of opportunities over the past ten years. If we had an idea about something we wanted to, we did it,” says Nick. “I can't think of a single thing I'd change."Gringo Star Tour Dates U.S. Tour Dates 04.27 - New York, NY @ TV EYE04.29 - Asheville, NC @Fleetwoods05.05 - Atlanta, GA @ Shaky Knees Festival05.18 - Cincinnati, OH @ Northside Tavern05.19 - Green Bay, WI @ Badger State Brewery05.20 - Windsor, ON @ Meteor06.02 - Chattanooga, TN @ JJ's BohemiaTake some zany and serious journeys with The Pipeman aka Dean K. Piper, CST on The Adventures of Pipeman also known as Pipeman Radio syndicated globally “Where Who Knows And Anything Goes”. Listen to & Watch a show dedicated to motivation, business, empowerment, inspiration, music, comedy, celebrities, shock jock radio, various topics, and entertainment. The Adventures of Pipeman is hosted by Dean K. Piper, CST aka “The Pipeman” who has been said to be hybrid of Tony Robbins, Batman, and Howard Stern. The Adventures of Pipeman has received many awards, media features, and has been ranked for multiple categories as one of the Top 6 Live Radio Shows & Podcasts in the world. Pipeman Radio also consists of multiple podcasts showing the many sides of Pipeman. These include The Adventures of Pipeman, Pipeman in the Pit, and Positively Pipeman and more. You can find all of the Pipeman Podcasts anywhere you listen to podcasts. With thousands of episodes that focus on Intertainment which combines information and entertainment there is something for everyone including over 5000 interviews with celebrities, music artists/bands, authors, speakers, coaches, entrepreneurs, and all kinds of professionals.Then there is The Pipeman Radio Tour where Pipeman travels the country and world doing press coverage for Major Business Events, Conferences, Conventions, Music Festivals, Concerts, Award Shows, and Red Carpets. One of the top publicists in music has named Pipeman the “King of All Festivals.” So join the Pipeman as he brings “The Pipeman Radio Tour” to life right before your ears and eyes.The Adventures of Pipeman Podcasts are heard on The Adventures of Pipeman Site, Pipeman Radio, Talk 4 Media, Talk 4 Podcasting, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music, Audible, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts and over 100 other podcast outlets where you listen to Podcasts. The following are the different podcasts to check out and subscribe to:• The Adventures of Pipeman• Pipeman Radio• Pipeman in the Pit• Positively PipemanFollow @pipemanradio on all social media outletsVisit Pipeman Radio on the Web at linktr.ee/pipemanradio , theadventuresofpipeman.com, pipemanradio.com, talk4media.com, w4cy.com, talk4tv.com, talk4podcasting.comDownload The Pipeman Radio APPPhone/Text Contact – 561-506-4031Email Contact – dean@talk4media.com The Adventures of Pipeman is broadcast live daily at 8AM ET.The Adventures of Pipeman TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).The Adventures of Pipeman Radio Show is broadcast on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) and K4HD Radio (www.k4hd.com – Hollywood Talk Radio part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). The Adventures of Pipeman Podcast is also available on www.theadventuresofpipeman.com and www.pipemanradio.com Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.

tv new york spotify new york city interview france media talk gospel sound podcasts radio batman podcasting adventures web ga consequences concerts cincinnati apple podcast columbus google podcasts rock and roll punk audible tony robbins sides green bay woodstock new music conferences amazon music heavy metal pit windsor asheville james brown chattanooga conventions howard stern weezer hard rock ringo starr award shows pitchfork sam cooke rock music gringo music festivals british invasion feist hellfest cat power media network black angels tour dates paste magazine kexp jackie wilson red carpets black lips wavves w4cyradio deankpiper intertainment pipemanradio talk4podcasting little stevie wonder thepipeman pipemanradiotour soul stirrers shaky knees all y georgia music hall of fame pipeman k4hd radio brothers nick dean k piper pipemaninthepit kingofallfestivals pipeman radio show

PipemanRadio Interviews Gringo Star at Shaky Knees 2023

Pipeman in the Pit

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2023 16:11

On this episode of the Adventures of Pipeman, Pipeman is joined by Gringo Star, a band from Atlanta, Georgia. The band, which has been playing for a long time, is at Shaky Knee, and they discuss the rainy weather, which they hoped would turn into a Woodstock vibe. The band recounts how they kept their gear dry during the rain, and one of them shares that some of the best shows he has ever seen were downpours. They all agreed that it is better than extreme heat, which can be unbearable. Pipeman shares an experience from a festival he attended last year in France called Hell Fest, where it was 104 degrees, and he did interviews outside because it was cooler. The press tent was like a sauna, and he would take the rain over that any day. The band shares that the best gigs are when it is raining, and there is a little mud fest, and everyone is just having a blast. When asked to describe their music, Gringo Starr shares that they play a variety of rock and roll, and they have been playing together since 2007. The band is made up of two brothers, who started playing together when one was in high school and the other was in middle school. They started playing at middle school dances, and now they are playing at Shaky Knee. The band has played at music midtown, and they recount their experience with their old band name. You can find everything you need on how to follow them on social media, how to get the new music, how to buy some of the merch all over on their website gringostarr.net so be sure to check it out if you like what you hear.On June 2, Atlanta's Gringo Star will release their new album On And On And Gone out June 2 on My Anxious Mouth. Gringo Star is also announcing U.S. tour dates. The upcoming U.S. tour will include shows in New York City, Atlanta and more. All upcoming shows are listed below.Gringo Star have made a name for themselves as one of Atlanta's most valuable rock & roll exports, carrying the torch for hazy, psychedelic garage rock in a city primarily valued for its contributions to hip-hop. Brothers Nick and Peter Furgiuele are the constant creative force of Gringo Star, and have outlasted wave after wave of buzz bands and indie blog darlings, carving their own career path through constant reinvention and an unparalleled work ethic, amassing a loyal and enthusiastic international fanbase along the way. Their mind-bending take on doo-wop inspired R&B and British Invasion rock & roll has garnered praise from the likes of Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, Paste Magazine, KEXP & more, and landed them on bills alongside everyone from Cat Power and Feist to The Black Angels and Weezer, not to mention tours with Wavves, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, and their Atlanta-based contemporaries Black Lips.Though the band's 2008 album, All Y'all serves as the start of Gringo Star's storied career, the band's core songwriting duo, the Furgiuele brothers, have been playing together since they were kids, born into a family with strong ties to Georgia music history. “Our grandad started out in radio in the '40s and '50s in Columbus, GA.,” Nick explains. “He was a huge promoter of R&B back when it was still super segregated, and he was playing black music and putting on shows with Little Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers, a lot of Gospel shows. So we grew up hearing all these stories, listening to all this music. Our grandfather was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame posthumously. And my grandma—all her photo albums are like Jackie Wilson shirtless backstage, hanging out.”With their family's R&B connections and their young obsession with early rock & roll, it wasn't long before the two brothers started making music themselves. When Nick was 15 and Peter just 11, they picked up bass and drums, respectively, formed a rhythm section and joined their first garage band. “We played together in the house and messed around on a little two-track,” Nick says. “We've been writing songs together since before Peter was a teenager. We even played his 8th-grade dance.”Eventually, the brothers formed Gringo Star and began the career that has come to define their last decade. All Y'all and Count Yer Lucky Stars forced the world to pay attention. 2013's Floating Out To See found the band experimenting with producing their own records and layering more keys and strings into their compositions. 2016's The Sides and In Between contained some of the finest songwriting of the Furgiuele's career, and 2018's Back to the City reinvigorated their sound with a new intensity, equally dark and shimmering. The band's legendary live energy was captured in 2019's album Controlled Burn (Live In Atlanta). Despite multiple personnel changes, Nick and Peter have remained steadfast in their partnership, continuing to stand by one another through thick and thin in their artistic endeavours. There's no telling what comes next for Gringo Star, but there's no doubt that the Furgiuele brothers will continue to write and record on their own terms. “We've had a lot of opportunities over the past ten years. If we had an idea about something we wanted to, we did it,” says Nick. “I can't think of a single thing I'd change."Gringo Star Tour Dates U.S. Tour Dates 04.27 - New York, NY @ TV EYE04.29 - Asheville, NC @Fleetwoods05.05 - Atlanta, GA @ Shaky Knees Festival05.18 - Cincinnati, OH @ Northside Tavern05.19 - Green Bay, WI @ Badger State Brewery05.20 - Windsor, ON @ Meteor06.02 - Chattanooga, TN @ JJ's BohemiaPipeman in the Pit is a music and interview segment of The Adventures of Pipeman Radio Show (#pipemanradio) and from The King of All Festivals while on The Pipeman Radio Tour. Pipeman in the Pit features all kinds of music and interviews with bands & music artists especially in the genres of Heavy Metal, Rock, Hard Rock, Classic Rock, Punk Rock, Goth, Industrial, Alternative, Thrash Metal & Indie Music. Pipeman in the Pit also features press coverage of events, concerts, & music festivals. Pipeman Productions is an artist management company that sponsors the show introducing new local & national talent showcasing new artists & indie artists.Then there is The Pipeman Radio Tour where Pipeman travels the country and world doing press coverage for Major Business Events, Conferences, Conventions, Music Festivals, Concerts, Award Shows, and Red Carpets. One of the top publicists in music has named Pipeman the “King of All Festivals.” So join the Pipeman as he brings “The Pipeman Radio Tour” to life right before your ears and eyes.Pipeman in the Pit Podcasts are heard on Pipeman Radio, Talk 4 Media, Talk 4 Podcasting, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music, Audible, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts and over 100 other podcast outlets where you listen to Podcasts. The following are the different podcasts to check out and subscribe to:•The Adventures of Pipeman•Pipeman Radio•Pipeman in the Pit•Positively PipemanFollow @pipemanradio on all social media outletsVisit Pipeman Radio on the Web at linktr.ee/pipemanradio, theadventuresofpipeman.com, pipemanradio.com, talk4media.com, w4cy.com, talk4tv.com, talk4podcasting.comDownload The Pipeman Radio APPPhone/Text Contact – 561-506-4031Email Contact – dean@talk4media.com The Adventures of Pipeman is broadcast live daily at 8AM ET.The Adventures of Pipeman TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).The Adventures of Pipeman Radio Show is broadcast on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) and K4HD Radio (www.k4hd.com) – Hollywood Talk Radio part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Pipeman in the Pit Podcasts are also available on Pipeman Radio (www.pipemanradio.com), Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.

tv new york spotify new york city interview rock france media talk gospel sound podcasts radio podcasting adventures web ga consequences concerts cincinnati apple podcast columbus google podcasts rock and roll punk audible industrial sides green bay woodstock new music conferences amazon music heavy metal pit windsor asheville james brown chattanooga punk rock conventions goth weezer hard rock ringo starr award shows classic rock pitchfork sam cooke rock music gringo music festivals british invasion indie music feist hellfest thrash metal cat power media network black angels tour dates paste magazine kexp jackie wilson red carpets black lips wavves w4cyradio deankpiper pipemanradio talk4podcasting little stevie wonder thepipeman pipemanradiotour soul stirrers shaky knees all y georgia music hall of fame pipeman k4hd radio brothers nick pipemaninthepit kingofallfestivals pipeman radio show

Souldisco | The Gospel Truth: A Vinyl Me, Please Boxset Discussion with Jared Boyd

Vinyl Community Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2023 38:49

Welcome back to another episode of Vinyl Community Podcasts! This spin on the dance floor sees our friend Nadine c/o Souldisco return to our airwaves to share a splendid conversation with Jared "Jay B" Boyd on the recent boxset reissue effort from Vinyl Me, Please titled: "Truth Is Where It's At -- A Gospel Truth Collection". The Gospel Truth Label (aka Stax Records Gospel Label), was an imprint of the famous Stax Records label from Memphis, Tennessee. The Gospel Truth series debut in 1972 and produced over 20 albums until 1978, featuring some of the biggest names in Gospel music: The Rance Allen Group, The Staple Singers, The Soul Stirrers, The Pilgrim Jubilees, and The Mighty Clouds of Joy. These albums featured a wide range of Gospel music styles including traditional Gospel, contemporary Christian music, and Soul Gospel. The Gospel Truth series was known for its high-quality production and arrangements, with some of the most talented musicians and producers in the industry working on the albums. Lauded for it's powerful and uplifting messages, this series featured songs + albums touching on themes of faith, hope, and love. Although Stax Gospel and The Gospel Truth series had a relatively short lifespan, they made a significant impact on the Gospel music industry and helped to popularize Gospel music outside of the church. The legacy of Stax Gospel and The Gospel Truth series lives on, with their influence felt in the music of contemporary Gospel artists and the continued popularity of Gospel music worldwide. Jay B authored the special 20-page Listening Notes booklet included in this boxset. Limited to 1,000 numbered copies, the box set includes 6LPs on 180g black vinyl, with AAA lacquers cut from the original tapes by Ryan K. Smith of Sterling Sound. We trust you'll find this conversation informative, interesting, and fun! Thanks again for joining us on another episode of Vinyl Community Podcasts! For more information on host Nadine @Souldisco: https://www.youtube.com/@Souldisco For more information on the Gospel Truth VMP Boxset: https://www.vinylmeplease.com/products/truth-is-where-its-at-a-gospel-truth-collection?variant=40058905821274 For more information on Vinyl Community Podcasts: https://vinylcommunitypodcasts.com/

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Sam Cooke - A change is gonna come 2/2

Un Dernier Disque avant la fin du monde

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 16, 2023 78:02

Aujourd'hui, nous allons nous pencher sur l'une des plus grandes protest song soul de tous les temps, un disque qui a été le point culminant de la carrière de son chanteur et auteur-compositeur, et qui est devenu un des hymnes du mouvement des droits civiques. Mais nous allons également nous pencher sur le côté sombre de son créateur, et sur les événements qui ont conduit à sa mort prématurée. Plus que la plupart des autres épisodes, celui-ci nécessite un avertissement. Sam Cooke, “A Change is Gonna Come” The Soul Stirrers, “Touch the Hem of His Garment” Dale Cook, “Lovable” Harry Belafonte, “Jamaica Farewell” Bill Haley and the Comets, “Mary, Mary Lou” L.C. Cooke, “Do You Remember?” The Soul Stirrers, “Stand By Me, Father” Jackie Wilson, “I Know I'll Always Be in Love With You” Little Anthony and the Imperials, “I'm Alright” Sam Cooke, “Wonderful World” Sam Cooke, “Chain Gang” Johnny Morisette, “I'll Never Come Running Back to You” Sam Cooke, “Cupid” Sam Cooke, “The Riddle Song” Ersel Hickey, “Bluebirds Over the Mountain” Buddy Knox, “Party Doll” Bobby Darin, “Splish Splash” The Shirelles, “Only Time Will Tell” The Valentinos, “It's All Over Now” Muhammad Ali, “The Gang's All Here” Bob Dylan, “Blowin' in the Wind” Paul Robeson, “Ol' Man River” Sam Cooke, “A Change is Gonna Come” Sam Cooke, “Little Red Rooster” Sam Cooke, “Blowin' in the Wind” Womack and Womack, “Teardrops”

change touch gang aujourd cooke sam cooke hem stand by me womack comets blowin gonna come imperials teardrops do you remember soul stirrers

Sam Cooke (Part 1/2) - You Send Me

Un Dernier Disque avant la fin du monde

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2023 44:30

Sam Cooke a été, à bien des égards, le musicien noir le plus important de la fin des années cinquante et du début des années soixante, et sans lui, il est peu probable que nous ayons le genre de la soul tel que nous le connaissons aujourd'hui. Mais à ses débuts, il travaillait exclusivement dans le domaine du gospel et, dans ce domaine, il était une sorte de superstar. The Fisk Jubilee Singers, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” The Soul Stirrers feat. R.H. Harris, “In That Awful Hour” Johnnie Taylor and the Highway QCs, “I Dreamed That Heaven Was Like This” The Famous Blue Jay Singers, “Praising Jesus Evermore” the Soul Stirrers, “Come, Let Us Go Back to God” The Soul Stirrers, “Jesus Gave Me Water” Lawdy miss clawdy – Lloyd Price Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Nearer to Thee” Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Touch the Hem of His Garment” The Louvin Brothers, “This Little Light of Mine” Ray Charles, “This Little Girl of Mine” Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful” Dale Cook, “Lovable” Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Mean Old World” Sam Cooke, “You Send Me” Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “Stardust” Sam Cooke, “Summertime” Little Richard, “Rip it Up” Sam Cooke, “You Send Me” Jesse Belvin, “You Send Me” Cornell Gunter, “You Send Me” Teresa Brewer, “You Send Me” Sam Cooke, “I'll Come Running Back To You” The Valiants, “Good Golly Miss Molly” Sam Cooke – Chain Gang

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Episode 114: Gospel Memories - February 4, 2023

gospel memories birds sons mahalia jackson soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2023 60:37

This episode features music from the Dixie Hummingbirds, Sons of the Birds (pictured), Capitol City Quartette, Soul Stirrers, Mahalia Jackson, Emanon Chorale Ensemble, Brooklyn All Stars (happy birthday, Thomas Spann!), an in memoriam to Uncle Chucc Hamilton (Zion Messengers), and others.

Speaking in Tongues - Episode October 1, 2022

Speaking in Tongues

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2022

Playlist: Michael Ramos & Charanga Cakewalk - Huesos en el DesiertoTaj Mahal & Ry Cooder - Deep Sea DiverTami Neilson - King of Country MusicKobo Town - Along the WaySister Speak - EstuaryThe Movers - Give Five or MorePierre Kwenders - SaharaJon Balke - Enamorado de JupiterCalexico - CalderaYasmine Hamdan - DoussDuoud - Missy NouackshottMariel Buckley - Let You DownReuben & The Dark - Read Your MindNamgar - Sandlewood SaddleNiko Ne Zna - Opa CupaBlue Moon Marquee - Scream, Holler & HowlHard Bop Messengers - Traffic Both WaysVarious, featuring Billy McComiskey - The Boogie Reel/The Controversial ReelRichard Thompson - When the Saints Rise Out Their GravesNotas de 4 - He Perdido El CentroVarious, featuring The Soul Stirrers with Sam Cooke - Nearer to TheeRadha Botofasina - Move On Up a Little HigherSara Tavares - BalancêSeu Jorge And Almaz - Everybody Loves The Sunshine

Episode 93: Gospel Memories - September 10, 2022

Shout! Black Gospel Music Moments

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 10, 2022 60:37

The first episode back live in the WLUW studio is an all-quartet program in memory of gospel quartet promoter extraordinare, the late Zadella Mama Curtis. Quartets include the Soul Stirrers, Pearly Gates, Brooklyn All Stars, Southern Sons of Memphis, Songbirds of the South, and Pilgrim Jubilees.

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El Sótano - La Perra Blanco; por sus discos la conoceréis - 07/09/22

El sótano

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2022 59:01

La cantante y guitarrista Alba Blanco lidera el trío La Perra Blanco. Esta gaditana se ha convertido en la figura emergente más significativa del rocknroll años 50. Baja a presentarnos su último EP, “Won’t you come on” (Folc Records), y a regalarnos una sesión con algunos de sus artistas favoritos, mirando hacia las raíces de la música rockabilly. Playlist; LA PERRA BLANCO “Won’t you come on” LA PERRA BLANCO “Rock me baby” LA PERRA BLANCO “Nothing is worst (than this pain in my heart)” T BONE WALKER “Two bones and a pick” DOC and MERLE WATSON “Honey babe blues” BILL MONROE “Southern flavour” HANK WILLIAMS “My son calls another man daddy” CHARLES MINGUS “Freedom” SAM COOKE and THE SOUL STIRRERS “Just another day” HANK MOBLEY featuring LEE MORGAN “The morning after” BILLIE HOLIDAY “Strange fruit” LOS DESTROZAMITOS y MEI POP “Como una crema” LA PERRA BLANCO “What’s wrong with you” Escuchar audio

SHOUT! Black Gospel Music Moments - The Soul Stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 8, 2022 2:00

The last of the great incarnations of the Soul Stirrers featured the talented Crume brothers, Leroy and Arthur, heard here on “He's Been a Shelter for Me.

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«Bloodline Maintenance», un retour aux sources pour Ben Harper

Reportage Culture

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 5, 2022 3:51

Ben Harper est de retour. Le chanteur et guitariste américain vient de sortir un 17ᵉ album studio : Bloodline Maintenance. Un album empreint de la soul de Marvin Gaye, dans lequel le désormais quinquagénaire exprime ses inquiétudes face à l'état du monde ou évoque la mémoire de l'esclavage. La photo que Ben Harper a choisie pour la pochette de son 17ᵉ album donne le ton : celui d'un retour aux sources de son inspiration. Sources musicales et familiales comme en témoigne d'ailleurs aussi le titre : « Bloodline Maintenance » que l'on pourrait traduire par « entretien de la lignée ». C'est ce qu'explique Ben Harper : « C'est une photo de moi enfant. Je suis debout, un peu ébloui par le soleil, à côté de mon père. On est sur la plage. Mes parents écoutaient beaucoup de musique. J'ai de formidables souvenirs de mon père, jouant des percussions, mettant des disques. Et ma mère chantait en s'accompagnant à la guitare. Ce sont mes souvenirs d'enfance. » Blues, rock, folk, jazz et chœurs gospel, ce sont les musiques noires qui parcourent la musique de Ben Harper depuis ses débuts il y a trente ans : « Il y a du gospel nourri d'influences insoupçonnables. Je suis fan de Sam Cooke et the Soul Stirrers, du Golden Gate Quartet, des Blind Boys of Alabama. Mais mon travail avec le chœur sud-africain Lady Smith Black Mambazo est très important pour moi. Son leader, Joseph Shabalala (paix à son âme) était un ami. Les harmonies vocales de ce groupe m'ont profondément marqué. Je pense que les harmonies africaines mêlées aux harmonies américaines des chœurs gospel jouent un rôle dans mes dernières compositions ». Les racines africaines sont présentes. On l'entend aussi sur ce titre We need to talk about it qui parle de l'esclavage : « Le moment de la capture puis du transport de mes ancêtres africains sont encodés dans mon ADN. C'est dans mes gènes. Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé ? Qui a laissé faire cette abomination ? Comment cela a-t-il pu exister ? Comment un être humain peut-il être acheté, vendu, transporté, manipulé comme un objet ? Qu'est-ce qui a pu se passer pour qu'un tel crime arrive ? » Le climat actuel aux États-Unis, le racisme systémique et l'héritage réactionnaire de la présidence Trump, heurtent ce musicien très réfléchi de 52 ans. Ben Harper dit vouloir désormais s'installer en France : « Je n'idéalise aucun endroit. Mais à ce moment de ma vie, j'aspire à la paix. La paix de l'esprit et la paix de l'âme. Et je dois aller là où je suis en paix. C'est pourquoi je veux m'installer en France. » La France qui a toujours fait bon accueil à Ben Harper depuis son premier album, Welcome to the cruel world, en 1994. Ben Harper est actuellement en tournée européenne. Il se produira ce samedi soir (6 août) à Taormine, en Sicile.

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Episode 84: Gospel Memories - July 2, 2022

gospel detroit memories soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2022 60:17

This episode includes a set in memory of the late Melvin Boyd (Gospelaires, Ohio Wonders), hat tips to the Savettes and Tyrone Porter (Christianaires), plus the Clover Leaf Jubilee Quartet, St. James Choir of Detroit, Soul Stirrers, Little Lucy Smith on the organ, and others.

Episode 80: Gospel Memories - May 21, 2022

gospel ny memories buffalo soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2022 60:07

This episode includes music from the Soul Stirrers, Doris Akers, Upper Room Quintet, Original Five Blind Boys ft. Roscoe Robinson (pictured), Charles Watkins, Busy Bees, a long set of Buffalo gospel artists in memory of the Buffalo, NY, tragedy last week, and others.

Episode #620 – Sam Cooke

Juke In The Back » Podcast Feed

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2022 59:00

Air Week: March 21-27, 2022 Sam Cooke The “Juke In The Back” features a full hour of Sam Cooke, one of the distinctive and expressive voices ever pressed in wax. Cooke's early period singing gospel with the renowned Soul Stirrers is often cited, but hardly ever featured. Matt The Cat focuses on Sam Cooke's early […]

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#227 Bless Me For I Have Sinned

Subversive Undercroft

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2022 21:55

Today we jump right into the rite for Reconciliation of a penitent, otherwise known as Confession. Notes Episcopal Dictionary https://episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/all BCP Online https://www.bcponline.org Visit us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/subversiveundercroft Music Be Thou My Vision, Jaimie Jorge Stump the Priest Theme, Kristin Burkholder Just A Little Talk With Jesus, R.H. Harris & the Soul Stirrers

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Episode 68: Gospel Memories - February 19, 2022

jesus christ spirit gospel memories voices berkeley soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 19, 2022 60:18

This episode includes music from the Soul Stirrers, Gospel Harmonettes, Spirit of Memphis, Nicholas, Voices of Christ of Berkeley (pictured), DER Choral Ensemble, Apostolic Clefs, Lunenberg Travelers, and others.

Episode 60: Gospel Memories - December 25, 2021

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 25, 2021 58:55

The 21st Annual Christmas Caravan, featuring Christmas songs by the Soul Stirrers, Marion Williams, the Sons of Christ, Rev. Cleophus Robinson, the Angelic Gospel Singers, Mavis Staples, Daniels Singers, and many others.

D I O N Releases 'Stomping Ground' with All-Star Cast!

Interviewing the Legends: Rock Stars & Celebs

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2021 37:53

Dion and his music have long represented a special time and place, reflective of a moment when a song could mean so much. When a singer could sum up what it means to be young, in love and on top of the world. R & B, blues, doo-wop and that first wave of rock all influenced Dion's approach to music. “I Wonder Why” was Dion's first hit with The Belmonts and over the next two years the group earned a reputation not only for topping the charts, but for creating some of the most vital and exciting doo wop music on the American scene. With songs such as “I Wonder Why,” “A Teenager In Love” and “Where or When,” Dion & The Belmonts earned their place in music history. The great music kept coming as Dion ventured out as a solo artist in 1960, racking up a string of #1 hits. Over an incredible four-year run he cut one classic after another from the rollicking “Runaround Sue” to the driving “Lovers Who Wander” to “The Wanderer.” He quickly rose to the top ranks of recording artists. In 1968 Dion shot to the top of the charts once again with “Abraham, Martin and John,” a song that was as much an anthem for that era as his early hits had been for theirs. What followed in the ‘70s and ‘80s was a string of acclaimed LPs, many of which reflected his early interest in roots music. He turned increasingly to folk blues and gospel, again earning a reputation as an innovator. In 1989 Dion entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One of the Hall's earliest honorees, he was inducted just one year after the Beatles and Bob Dylan and at the same time as the Rolling Stones, Otis Redding and the Soul Stirrers. In over six decades he has never stopped writing, recording and performing new music. His voice is unmistakable. His music is original and entirely his own. His story is more relevant than ever. Please welcome musician-singer-songwriter, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer .… a true music legend… DION DiMucci to Interviewing the Legends. Purchase the latest album from DION entitled STOMPING GROUND With guest artists Boz Scaggs … Mark Knopfler Eric Clapton… Peter Frampton Patti Scialfa… Bruce Springsteen Billy F Gibbons… Keb' Mo' Sonny Landreth… Joe Bonamassa Also Joe Menza, Mike Menza, Marcia Ball, Jimmy Vivino, Rickie Lee Jones, Wayne Hood, and G.E. Smith with Pete Townshend's liner notes which Dion characterizes as “amazing.” Pioneering rock n' roll singer/songwriter Dion delivers yet another powerful collection of timeless blues with Stomping Ground. It's the follow-up to his universally acclaimed Keeping The Blues Alive Records debut, Blues With Friends, from 2020. Dion has yet again enlisted the music world's most iconic and talented stars to bring his blues to life. ALSO D I O N' S BOOK Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor & Music) by Dion Dimucci (Author), Mike Aquilina Dion came up out of the Bronx in the 50s and tore through the music charts in a ferocious display of talent. He continued to make great music while slowly returning to his Catholic roots. His hard-won wisdom filters through his stories whether he's recalling how he went shopping with John Lennon and ended up on the cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band or what it was like to travel in the Jim Crow South with Sam Cooke. available at amazon.com For more information about DION Visit www.diondimucci.com official website www.facebook.com/OfficialDion facebook https://twitter.com/thewandererdion twitter www.instagram.com/diondimucciofficial Instagram PURCHASE RAY'S BEST-SELLING BOOK ENTITLED THE ROCK STAR CHRONICLES SERIES ONE CHRONICLES, TRUTHS, CONFESSIONS AND WISDOM FROM THE MUSIC LEGENDS THAT SET US FREE …Order yours today on (Collector edition) Hardcover or E-book at bookbaby.com and amazon.com Featuring over 45 intimate conversations with some of the greatest rock legends the world will ever know. CHRIS SQUIRE... DR. JOHN... GREG LAKE... HENRY MCCULLOUGH... JACK BRUCE … JOE LALA… JOHNNY WINTER... KEITH EMERSON... PAUL KANTNER... RAY THOMAS... RONNIE MONTROSE... TONY JOE WHITE... DAVID CLAYTON-THOMAS… MIKE LOVE... TOMMY ROE... BARRY HAY... CHRIS THOMPSON... JESSE COLIN YOUNG... JOHN KAY... JULIAN LENNON... MARK LINDSAY... MICKY DOLENZ… PETER RIVERA ...TOMMY JAMES… TODD RUNDGREN... DAVE MASON... EDGAR WINTER... FRANK MARINO... GREGG ROLIE... IAN ANDERSON... JIM “DANDY” MANGRUM... JON ANDERSON... LOU GRAMM... MICK BOX... RANDY BACHMAN… ROBIN TROWER... ROGER FISHER... STEVE HACKETT... ANNIE HASLAM… ‘MELANIE' SAFKA... PETULA CLARK... SUZI QUATRO... COLIN BLUNSTONE… DAVE DAVIES... JIM McCARTY... PETE BEST BOOK REVIEW -By Literary Titan (5) STARS Support us!

#216 God? Can We Talk?

Subversive Undercroft

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2021 21:09

We're continuing our examination of prayer and its place as the cornerstone of life committed to following Jesus. Notes Episcopal Dictionary https://episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/all BCP Online https://www.bcponline.org Visit us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/subversiveundercroft Praying with Anglican Prayer Beads HERE Music Be Thou My Vision, Jaimie Jorge Stump the Priest Theme, Kristin Burkholder A Little Talk with Jesus, R. H. Harris &the Soul Stirrers

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Episode 134: “In the Midnight Hour” by Wilson Pickett

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 13, 2021

Episode 134 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “In the Midnight Hour", the links between Stax, Atlantic, and Detroit, and the career of Wilson Pickett. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Mercy Mercy" by Don Covay. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I say “After Arthur Alexander had moved on to Monument Records” – I meant to say “Dot Records” here, the label that Alexander moved to *before* Monument. I also misspeak at one point and say "keyboard player Chips Moman", when I mean to say "keyboard player Spooner Oldham". This is correct in the transcript/script, I just misread it. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Pickett. The main resource I used for the biographical details of Wilson Pickett was In the Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett. Information about Stax comes primarily from two books: Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax by Rob Bowman, and Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. The episodes of Cocaine and Rhinestones I reference are the ones on Owen Bradley and the Nashville A-Team. And information on the Falcons comes from Marv Goldberg. Pickett's complete Atlantic albums can be found in this excellent ten-CD set. For those who just want the hits, this single-CD compilation is significantly cheaper. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I start, just to say that this episode contains some discussion of domestic abuse, drug use, and abuse of employees by their employer, and one mention of an eating disorder. Also, this episode is much longer than normal, because we've got a lot to fit in. Today we're going to move away from Motown, and have a look at a record recorded in the studios of their great rival Stax records, though not released on that label. But the record we're going to look at is from an artist who was a bridge between the Detroit soul of Motown and the southern soul of Stax, an artist who had a foot in both camps, and whose music helped to define soul while also being closer than that of any other soul man to the music made by the white rock musicians of the period. We're going to look at Stax, and Muscle Shoals, and Atlantic Records, and at Wilson Pickett and "In the Midnight Hour" [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett: "In the Midnight Hour"] Wilson Pickett never really had a chance. His father, Wilson senior, was known in Alabama for making moonshine whisky, and spent time in prison for doing just that -- and his young son was the only person he told the location of his still. Eventually, Wilson senior moved to Detroit to start earning more money, leaving his family at home at first. Wilson junior and his mother moved up to Detroit to be with his father, but they had to leave his older siblings in Alabama, and his mother would shuttle between Michigan and Alabama, trying vainly to look after all her children. Eventually, Wilson's mother got pregnant while she was down in Alabama, which broke up his parents' marriage, and Wilson moved back down to Alabama permanently, to live on a farm with his mother. But he never got on with his mother, who was physically abusive to him -- as he himself would later be to his children, and to his partners, and to his bandmates. The one thing that Wilson did enjoy about his life in Alabama was the gospel music, and he became particularly enamoured of two gospel singers, Archie Brownlee of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Blind Boys, "Will My Jesus Be Waiting?"] And Julius Cheeks of the Sensational Nightingales: [Excerpt: The Sensational Nightingales, "God's World Will Never Pass Away"] Wilson determined to become a gospel singer himself, but he couldn't stand living with his mother in rural Alabama, and decided to move up to be with his father and his father's new girlfriend in Detroit. Once he moved to Detroit, he started attending Northwestern High School, which at the time was also being attended by Norman Whitfield, Florence Ballard, and Melvin Franklin. Pickett also became friendly with Aretha Franklin, though she didn't attend the same school -- she went to school at Northern, with Smokey Robinson -- and he started attending services at New Bethel Church, the church where her father preached. This was partly because Rev. Franklin was one of the most dynamic preachers around, but also because New Bethel Church would regularly feature performances by the most important gospel performers of the time -- Pickett saw the Soul Stirrers perform there, with Sam Cooke singing lead, and of course also saw Aretha singing there. He joined a few gospel groups, first joining one called the Sons of Zion, but he was soon poached by a more successful group, the Violinaires. It was with the Violinaires that he made what is almost certainly his first recording -- a track that was released as a promo single, but never got a wide release at the time: [Excerpt: The Violinaires, "Sign of the Judgement"] The Violinaires were only moderately successful on the gospel circuit, but Pickett was already sure he was destined for bigger things. He had a rivalry with David Ruffin, in particular, constantly mocking Ruffin and saying that he would never amount to anything, while Wilson Pickett was the greatest. But after a while, he realised that gospel wasn't where he was going to make his mark. Partly his change in direction was motivated by financial concern -- he'd physically attacked his father and been kicked out of his home, and he was also married while still a teenager, and had a kid who needed feeding. But also, he was aware of a certain level of hypocrisy among his more religious acquaintances. Aretha Franklin had two kids, aged only sixteen, and her father, the Reverend Franklin, had fathered a child with a twelve-year-old, was having an affair with the gospel singer Clara Ward, and was hanging around blues clubs all the time. Most importantly, he realised that the audiences he was singing to in church on Sunday morning were mostly still drunk from Saturday night. As he later put it "I might as well be singing rock 'n' roll as singing to a drunken audience. I might as well make me some money." And this is where the Falcons came in. The Falcons were a doo-wop group that had been formed by a Black singer, Eddie Floyd, and a white singer, Bob Manardo. They'd both recruited friends, including bass singer Willie Schofield, and after performing locally they'd decided to travel to Chicago to audition for Mercury Records. When they got there, they found that you couldn't audition for Mercury in Chicago, you had to go to New York, but they somehow persuaded the label to sign them anyway -- in part because an integrated group was an unusual thing. They recorded one single for Mercury, produced by Willie Dixon who was moonlighting from Chess: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Baby That's It"] But then Manardo was drafted, and the group's other white member, Tom Shetler, decided to join up along with him. The group went through some other lineup changes, and ended up as Eddie Floyd, Willie Schofield, Mack Rice, guitarist Lance Finnie, and lead singer Joe Stubbs, brother of Levi. The group released several singles on small labels owned by their manager, before having a big hit with "You're So Fine", the record we heard about them recording last episode: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "You're So Fine"] That made number two on the R&B charts and number seventeen on the pop charts. They recorded several follow-ups, including "Just For Your Love", which made number 26 on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Just For Your Love"] To give you some idea of just how interrelated all the different small R&B labels were at this point, that was originally recorded and released on Chess records. But as Roquel Davis was at that point working for Chess, he managed to get the rights to reissue it on Anna Records, the label he co-owned with the Gordy sisters -- and the re-released record was distributed by Gone Records, one of George Goldner's labels. The group also started to tour supporting Marv Johnson. But Willie Schofield was becoming dissatisfied. He'd written "You're So Fine", but he'd only made $500 from what he was told was a million-selling record. He realised that in the music business, the real money was on the business side, not the music side, so while staying in the Falcons he decided he was going to go into management too. He found the artist he was going to manage while he was walking to his car, and heard somebody in one of the buildings he passed singing Elmore James' then-current blues hit "The Sky is Crying": [Excerpt: Elmore James, "The Sky is Crying"] The person he heard singing that song, and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, was of course Wilson Pickett, and Schofield signed him up to a management contract -- and Pickett was eager to sign, knowing that Schofield was a successful performer himself. The intention was at first that Schofield would manage Pickett as a solo performer, but then Joe Stubbs got ideas above his station, and started insisting that the group be called "Joe Stubbs and the Falcons", which put the others' backs up, and soon Stubbs was out of the group. This experience may have been something that his brother later had in mind -- in the late sixties, when Motown started trying to promote groups as Lead Singer and The Group, Levi Stubbs always refused to allow his name to go in front of the Four Tops. So the Falcons were without a lead singer. They tried a few other singers in their circle, including Marvin Gaye, but were turned down. So in desperation, they turned to Pickett. This wasn't a great fit -- the group, other than Schofield, thought that Pickett was "too Black", both in that he had too much gospel in his voice, and literally in that he was darker-skinned than the rest of the group (something that Schofield, as someone who was darker than the rest of the group but less dark than Pickett, took offence at). Pickett, in turn, thought that the Falcons were too poppy, and not really the kind of thing he was at all interested in doing. But they were stuck with each other, and had to make the most of it, even though Pickett's early performances were by all accounts fairly dreadful. He apparently came in in the wrong key on at least one occasion, and another time froze up altogether and couldn't sing. Even when he did sing, and in tune, he had no stage presence, and he later said “I would trip up, fall on the stage and the group would rehearse me in the dressing room after every show. I would get mad, ‘cos I wanted to go out and look at the girls as well! They said, ‘No, you got to rehearse, Oscar.' They called me Oscar. I don't know why they called me Oscar, I didn't like that very much.” Soon, Joe Stubbs was back in the group, and there was talk of the group getting rid of Pickett altogether. But then they went into the studio to record a song that Sam Cooke had written for the group, "Pow! You're in Love". The song had been written for Stubbs to sing, but at the last minute they decided to give Pickett the lead instead: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Pow! You're in Love"] Pickett was now secure as the group's lead singer, but the group weren't having any success with records. They were, though, becoming a phenomenal live act -- so much so that on one tour, where James Brown was the headliner, Brown tried to have the group kicked off the bill, because he felt that Pickett was stealing his thunder. Eventually, the group's manager set up his own record label, Lu Pine Records, which would become best known as the label that released the first record by the Primettes, who later became the Supremes. Lu Pine released the Falcons' single "I Found a Love", after the group's management had first shopped it round to other labels to try to get them to put it out: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "I Found a Love"] That song, based on the old Pentecostal hymn "Yes Lord", was written by Pickett and Schofield, but the group's manager, Robert West, also managed to get his name on the credits. The backing group, the Ohio Untouchables, would later go on to become better known as The Ohio Players. One of the labels that had turned that record down was Atlantic Records, because Jerry Wexler hadn't heard any hit potential in the song. But then the record started to become successful locally, and Wexler realised his mistake. He got Lu Pine to do a distribution deal with Atlantic, giving Atlantic full rights to the record, and it became a top ten R&B hit. But by this point, Pickett was sick of working with the Falcons, and he'd decided to start trying for a solo career. His first solo single was on the small label Correc-Tone, and was co-produced by Robert Bateman, and featured the Funk Brothers as instrumental backing, and the Primettes on vocals. I've seen some claims that the Andantes are on there too, but I can't make them out -- but I can certainly make out the future Supremes: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Let Me Be Your Boy"] That didn't do anything, and Pickett kept recording with the Falcons for a while, as well as putting out his solo records. But then Willie Schofield got drafted, and the group split up. Their manager hired another group, The Fabulous Playboys, to be a new Falcons group, but in 1964 he got shot in a dispute over the management of Mary Wells, and had to give up working in the music industry. Pickett's next single, which he co-wrote with Robert Bateman and Sonny Schofield, was to be the record that changed his career forever. "If You Need Me" once again featured the Funk Brothers and the Andantes, and was recorded for Correc-Tone: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "If You Need Me"] Jerry Wexler was again given the opportunity to put the record out on Atlantic, and once again decided against it. Instead, he offered to buy the song's publishing, and he got Solomon Burke to record it, in a version produced by Bert Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] Burke wasn't fully aware, when he cut that version, that Wilson Pickett, who was his friend, had recorded his own version. He became aware, though, when Double-L Records, a label co-owned by Lloyd Price, bought the Correc-Tone master and released Pickett's version nationally, at the same time as Burke's version came out. The two men were annoyed that they'd been put into unwitting competition, and so started an unofficial nonaggression pact -- every time Burke was brought into a radio station to promote his record, he'd tell the listeners that he was there to promote Wilson Pickett's new single. Meanwhile, when Pickett went to radio stations, he'd take the opportunity to promote the new record he'd written for his good friend Solomon Burke, which the listeners should definitely check out. The result was that both records became hits -- Pickett's scraped the lower reaches of the R&B top thirty, while Burke, as he was the bigger star, made number two on the R&B chart and got into the pop top forty. Pickett followed it up with a soundalike, "It's Too Late", which managed to make the R&B top ten as there was no competition from Burke. At this point, Jerry Wexler realised that he'd twice had the opportunity to release a record with Wilson Pickett singing, twice he'd turned the chance down, and twice the record had become a hit. He realised that it was probably a good idea to sign Pickett directly to Atlantic and avoid missing out. He did check with Pickett if Pickett was annoyed about the Solomon Burke record -- Pickett's response was "I need the bread", and Wilson Pickett was now an Atlantic artist. This was at the point when Atlantic was in something of a commercial slump -- other than the records Bert Berns was producing for the Drifters and Solomon Burke, they were having no hits, and they were regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, rooted in a version of R&B that still showed its roots in jazz, rather than the new sounds that were taking over the industry in the early sixties. But they were still a bigger label than anything else Pickett had recorded for, and he seized the opportunity to move into the big time. To start with, Atlantic teamed Pickett up with someone who seemed like the perfect collaborator -- Don Covay, a soul singer and songwriter who had his roots in hard R&B and gospel music but had written hits for people like Chubby Checker. The two got together and recorded a song they wrote together, "I'm Gonna Cry (Cry Baby)": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "I'm Gonna Cry (Cry Baby)"] That did nothing commercially -- and gallingly for Pickett, on the same day, Atlantic released a single Covay had written for himself, "Mercy Mercy", and that ended up going to number one on the R&B chart and making the pop top forty. As "I'm Gonna Cry" didn't work out, Atlantic decided to try to change tack, and paired Pickett with their established hitmaker Bert Berns, and a duet partner, Tami Lyn, for what Pickett would later describe as "one of the weirdest sessions on me I ever heard in my life", a duet on a Mann and Weil song, "Come Home Baby": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett and Tami Lyn, "Come Home Baby"] Pickett later said of that track, "it didn't sell two records", but while it wasn't a hit, it was very popular among musicians -- a few months later Mick Jagger would produce a cover version of it on Immediate Records, with Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, and the Georgie Fame brass section backing a couple of unknown singers: [Excerpt: Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, "Come Home Baby"] Sadly for Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, that didn't get past being issued as a promotional record, and never made it to the shops. Meanwhile, Pickett went out on tour again, substituting on a package tour for Clyde McPhatter, who had to drop out when his sister died. Also on the tour was Pickett's old bandmate from the Falcons, Mack Rice, now performing as Sir Mack Rice, who was promoting a single he'd just released on a small label, which had been produced by Andre Williams. The song had originally been called "Mustang Mama", but Aretha Franklin had suggested he call it "Mustang Sally" instead: [Excerpt: Sir Mack Rice, "Mustang Sally"] Pickett took note of the song, though he didn't record it just yet -- and in the meantime, the song was picked up by the white rock group The Young Rascals, who released their version as the B-side of their number one hit, "Good Lovin'": [Excerpt: The Young Rascals, "Mustang Sally"] Atlantic's problems with having hits weren't only problems with records they made themselves -- they were also having trouble getting any big hits with Stax records. As we discussed in the episode on "Green Onions", Stax were being distributed by Atlantic, and in 1963 they'd had a minor hit with "These Arms of Mine" by Otis Redding: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "These Arms of Mine"] But throughout 1964, while the label had some R&B success with its established stars, it had no real major breakout hits, and it seemed to be floundering a bit -- it wasn't doing as badly as Atlantic itself, but it wasn't doing wonderfully. It wasn't until the end of the year when the label hit on what would become its defining sound, when for the first time Redding collaborated with Stax studio guitarist and producer Steve Cropper on a song: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Mr. Pitiful"] That record would point the way towards Redding's great artistic triumphs of the next couple of years, which we'll look at in a future episode. But it also pointed the way towards a possible future sound for Atlantic. Atlantic had signed a soul duo, Sam & Dave, who were wonderful live performers but who had so far not managed to translate those live performances to record. Jerry Wexler thought that perhaps Steve Cropper could help them do that, and made a suggestion to Jim Stewart at Stax -- Atlantic would loan out Sam & Dave to the label. They'd remain signed to Atlantic, but make their records at Stax studios, and they'd be released as Stax records. Their first single for Stax, "A Place Nobody Can Find", was produced by Cropper, and was written by Stax songwriter Dave Porter: [Excerpt: Sam and Dave, "A Place Nobody Can Find"] That wasn't a hit, but soon Porter would start collaborating with another songwriter, Isaac Hayes, and would write a string of hits for the duo. But in order to formalise the loan-out of Sam and Dave, Atlantic also wanted to formalise their arrangement with Stax. Previously they'd operated on a handshake basis -- Wexler and Stewart had a mutual respect, and they simply agreed that Stax would give Atlantic the option to distribute their stuff. But now they entered into a formal, long-term contract, and for a nominal sum of one dollar, Jim Stewart gave Atlantic the distribution rights to all past Stax records and to all future records they released for the next few years. Or at least, Stewart *thought* that the agreement he was making was formalising the distribution agreement. What the contract actually said -- and Stewart never bothered to have this checked over by an entertainment lawyer, because he trusted Wexler -- was that Stax would, for the sum of one dollar, give Atlantic *permanent ownership* of all their records, in return. The precise wording was "You hereby sell, assign and transfer to us, our successors or assigns, absolutely and forever and without any limitations or restrictions whatever, not specifically set forth herein, the entire right, title and interest in and to each of such masters and to each of the performances embodied thereon." Jerry Wexler would later insist that he had no idea that particular clause was in the contract, and that it had been slipped in there by the lawyers. Jim Stewart still thought of himself as the owner of an independent record label, but without realising it he'd effectively become an employee of Atlantic. Atlantic started to take advantage of this new arrangement by sending other artists down to Memphis to record with the Stax musicians. Unlike Sam and Dave, these would still be released as Atlantic records rather than Stax ones, and Jerry Wexler and Atlantic's engineer Tom Dowd would be involved in the production, but the records would be made by the Stax team. The first artist to benefit from this new arrangement was Wilson Pickett, who had been wanting to work at Stax for a while, being a big fan of Otis Redding in particular. Pickett was teamed up with Steve Cropper, and together they wrote the song that would define Pickett's career. The seeds of "In the Midnight Hour" come from two earlier recordings. One is a line from his record with the Falcons, "I Found a Love": [Excerpt: The Falcons, "I Found a Love"] The other is a line from a record that Clyde McPhatter had made with Billy Ward and the Dominoes back in 1951: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Do Something For Me"] Those lines about a "midnight hour" and "love come tumbling down" were turned into the song that would make Pickett's name, but exactly who did what has been the cause of some disagreement. The official story is that Steve Cropper took those lines and worked with Pickett to write the song, as a straight collaboration. Most of the time, though, Pickett would claim that he'd written the song entirely by himself, and that Cropper had stolen the credit for that and their other credited collaborations. But other times he would admit "He worked with me quite a bit on that one". Floyd Newman, a regular horn player at Stax, would back up Pickett, saying "Every artist that came in here, they'd have their songs all together, but when they leave they had to give up a piece of it, to a certain person. But this person, you couldn't be mad at him, because he didn't own Stax, Jim Stewart owned Stax. And this guy was doing what Jim Stewart told him to do, so you can't be mad at him." But on the other hand, Willie Schofield, who collaborated with Pickett on "I Found a Love", said of writing that "Pickett didn't have any chord pattern. He had a couple of lyrics. I'm working with him, giving him the chord change, the feel of it. Then we're going in the studio and I've gotta show the band how to play it because we didn't have arrangers. That's part of the songwriting. But he didn't understand. He felt he wrote the lyrics so that's it." Given that Cropper didn't take the writing credit on several other records he participated in, that he did have a consistent pattern of making classic hit records, that "In the Midnight Hour" is stylistically utterly different from Pickett's earlier work but very similar to songs like "Mr. Pitiful" cowritten by Cropper, and Pickett's longstanding habit of being dismissive of anyone else's contributions to his success, I think the most likely version of events is that Cropper did have a lot to do with how the song came together, and probably deserves his credit, but we'll never know for sure exactly what went on in their collaboration. Whoever wrote it, "In the Midnight Hour" became one of the all-time classics of soul: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] But another factor in making the record a success -- and in helping reinvent the Stax sound -- was actually Jerry Wexler. Wexler had started attending sessions at the Stax studios, and was astonished by how different the recording process was in the South. And Wexler had his own input into the session that produced "In the Midnight Hour". His main suggestion was that rather than play the complicated part that Cropper had come up with, the guitarist should simplify, and just play chords along with Al Jackson's snare drum. Wexler was enthusing about a new dance craze called the Jerk, which had recently been the subject of a hit record by a group called the Larks: [Excerpt: The Larks, "The Jerk"] The Jerk, as Wexler demonstrated it to the bemused musicians, involved accenting the second and fourth beats of the bar, and delaying them very slightly. And this happened to fit very well with the Stax studio sound. The Stax studio was a large room, with quite a lot of reverb, and the musicians played together without using headphones, listening to the room sound. Because of this, to stay in time, Steve Cropper had started taking his cue not just from the sound, but from watching Al Jackson's left hand going to the snare drum. This had led to him playing when he saw Jackson's hand go down on the two and four, rather than when the sound of the snare drum reached his ears -- a tiny, fraction-of-a-second, anticipation of the beat, before everyone would get back in sync on the one of the next bar, as Jackson hit the kick drum. This had in turn evolved into the whole group playing the backbeat with a fractional delay, hitting it a tiny bit late -- as if you're listening to the echo of those beats rather than to the beat itself. If anyone other than utterly exceptional musicians had tried this, it would have ended up as a car crash, but Jackson was one of the best timekeepers in the business, and many musicians would say that at this point in time Steve Cropper was *the* best rhythm guitarist in the world, so instead it gave the performances just enough sense of looseness to make them exciting. This slight delayed backbeat was something the musicians had naturally fallen into doing, but it fit so well with Wexler's conception of the Jerk that they started deliberately exaggerating it -- still only delaying the backbeat minutely, but enough to give the record a very different sound from anything that was out there: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] That delayed backbeat sound would become the signature sound of Stax for the next several years, and you will hear it on the run of classic singles they would put out for the next few years by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Booker T. and the MGs, Eddie Floyd and others. The sound of that beat is given extra emphasis by the utter simplicity of Al Jackson's playing. Jackson had a minimalist drum kit, but played it even more minimally -- other than the occasional fill, he never hit his tom at all, just using the kick drum, snare, and hi-hat -- and the hi-hat was not even miced, with any hi-hat on the actual records just being the result of leakage from the other mics. But that simplicity gave the Stax records a power that almost no other records from the period had: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] "In the Midnight Hour" made number one on the R&B charts, and made number twenty-one on the pop charts, instantly turning Pickett from an also-ran into one of the major stars of soul music. The follow-up, a soundalike called "Don't Fight It", also made the top five on the R&B charts. At his next session, Pickett was reunited with his old bandmate Eddie Floyd. Floyd would soon go on to have his own hits at Stax, most notably with "Knock on Wood", but at this point he was working as a staff songwriter at Stax, coming up with songs like "Comfort Me" for Carla Thomas: [Excerpt: Carla Thomas, "Comfort Me"] Floyd had teamed up with Steve Cropper, and they'd been... shall we say, "inspired"... by a hit for the Marvelettes, "Beechwood 45789", written by Marvin Gaye, Gwen Gordy and Mickey Stevenson: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Beechwood 45789"] Cropper and Floyd had come up with their own song, "634-5789", which Pickett recorded, and which became an even bigger hit than "In the Midnight Hour", making number thirteen on the pop charts as well as being Pickett's second R&B number one: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "634-5789"] At the same session, they cut another single. This one was inspired by an old gospel song, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do", recorded by Sister Rosetta Tharpe among others: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do"] The song was rewritten by Floyd, Cropper, and Pickett, and was also a moderate R&B hit, though nowhere as big as "634-5789": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do"] That would be the last single that Pickett recorded at Stax, though -- though the reasoning has never been quite clear. Pickett was, to put it as mildly as possible, a difficult man to work with, and he seems to have had some kind of falling out with Jim Stewart -- though Stewart always said that the problem was actually that Pickett didn't get on with the musicians. But the musicians disagree, saying they had a good working relationship -- Pickett was often an awful person, but only when drunk, and he was always sober in the studio. It seems likely, actually, that Pickett's move away from the Stax studios was more to do with someone else -- Pickett's friend Don Covay was another Atlantic artist recording at Stax, and Pickett had travelled down with him when Covay had recorded "See Saw" there: [Excerpt: Don Covay, "See Saw"] Everyone involved agreed that Covay was an eccentric personality, and that he rubbed Jim Stewart up the wrong way. There is also a feeling among some that Stewart started to resent the way Stax's sound was being used for Atlantic artists, like he was "giving away" hits, even though Stax's company got the publishing on the songs Cropper was co-writing, and he was being paid for the studio time. Either way, after that session, Atlantic didn't send any of its artists down to Stax, other than Sam & Dave, who Stax regarded as their own artists. Pickett would never again record at Stax, and possibly coincidentally once he stopped writing songs with Steve Cropper he would also never again have a major hit record with a self-penned song. But Jerry Wexler still wanted to keep working in Southern studios, and with Southern musicians, and so he took Pickett to FAME studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. We looked, back in the episode on Arthur Alexander, at the start of FAME studios, but after Arthur Alexander had moved on to Monument Records, Rick Hall had turned FAME into a home for R&B singers looking for crossover success. While Stax employed both Black and white musicians, FAME studios had an all-white rhythm section, with a background in country music, but that had turned out to be absolutely perfect for performers like the soul singer Joe Tex, who had himself started out in country before switching to soul, and who recorded classics like "Hold What You Got" at the studio: [Excerpt: Joe Tex, "Hold What You Got"] That had been released on FAME's record label, and Jerry Wexler had been impressed and had told Rick Hall to call him the next time he thought he had a hit. When Hall did call Wexler, Wexler was annoyed -- Hall phoned him in the middle of a party. But Hall was insistent. "You said to call you next time I've got a hit, and this is a number one". Wexler relented and listened to the record down the phone. This is what he heard: [Excerpt: Percy Sledge, "When a Man Loves a Woman"] Atlantic snapped up "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge, and it went to number one on the pop charts -- the first record from any of the Southern soul studios to do so. In Wexler's eyes, FAME was now the new Stax. Wexler had a bit of culture shock when working at FAME, as it was totally unlike anything he'd experienced before. The records he'd been involved with in New York had been mostly recorded by slumming jazz musicians, very technical players who would read the music from charts, and Stax had had Steve Cropper as de facto musical director, leading the musicians and working out their parts with them. By contrast, the process used at FAME, and at most of the other studios in what Charles Hughes describes as the "country-soul triangle" of Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and Nashville, was the process that had been developed by Owen Bradley and the Nashville A-Team in Nashville (and for a fuller description of this, see the excellent episodes on Bradley and the A-Team in the great country music podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones). The musicians would hear a play through of the song by its writer, or a demo, would note down the chord sequences using the Nashville number system rather than a more detailed score, do a single run-through to get the balance right, and then record. Very few songs required a second take. For Pickett's first session at FAME, and most subsequent ones, the FAME rhythm section of keyboard player Spooner Oldham, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, bass player Junior Lowe and drummer Roger Hawkins was augmented with a few other players -- Memphis guitarists Chips Moman and Tommy Cogbill, and the horn section who'd played on Pickett's Stax records, moonlighting. And for the first track they recorded there, Wexler wanted them to do something that would become a signature trick for Pickett over the next couple of years -- record a soul cover version of a rock cover version of a soul record. Wexler's thinking was that the best way for Pickett to cross over to a white audience was to do songs that were familiar to them from white pop cover versions, but songs that had originated in Pickett's soul style. At the time, as well, the hard backbeat sound on Pickett's hits was one that was more associated with white rock music than with soul, as was the emphasis on rhythm guitar. To modern ears, Pickett's records are almost the definition of soul music, but at the time they were absolutely considered crossover records. And so in the coming months Pickett would record cover versions of Don Covay's "Mercy Mercy", Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", and Irma Thomas' "Time is on My Side", all of which had been previously covered by the Rolling Stones -- and two of which had their publishing owned by Atlantic's publishing subsidiary. For this single, though, he was recording a song which had started out as a gospel-inspired dance song by the R&B singer Chris Kenner: [Excerpt: Chris Kenner, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] That had been a minor hit towards the bottom end of the Hot One Hundred, but it had been taken up by a lot of other musicians, and become one of those songs everyone did as album filler -- Rufus Thomas had done a version at Stax, for example. But then a Chicano garage band called Cannibal and the Headhunters started performing it live, and their singer forgot the lyrics and just started singing "na na na na", giving the song a chorus it hadn't had in its original version. Their version, a fake-live studio recording, made the top thirty: [Excerpt: Cannibal and the Headhunters, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] Pickett's version was drastically rearranged, and included a guitar riff that Chips Moman had come up with, some new lyrics that Pickett introduced, and a bass intro that Jerry Wexler came up with, a run of semiquavers that Junior Lowe found very difficult to play. The musicians spent so long working on that intro that Pickett got annoyed and decided to take charge. He yelled "Come on! One-two-three!" and the horn players, with the kind of intuition that comes from working together for years, hit a chord in unison. He yelled "One-two-three!" again, and they hit another chord, and Lowe went into the bass part. They'd found their intro. They ran through that opening one more time, then recorded a take: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] At this time, FAME was still recording live onto a single-track tape, and so all the mistakes were caught on tape with no opportunity to fix anything, like when all but one of the horn players forget to come in on the first line of one verse: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] But that kind of mistake only added to the feel of the track, which became Pickett's biggest hit yet -- his third number one on the R&B chart, and his first pop top ten. As the formula of recording a soul cover version of a rock cover version of a soul song had clearly worked, the next single Pickett recorded was "Mustang Sally", which as we saw had originally been an R&B record by Pickett's friend Mack Rice, before being covered by the Young Rascals. Pickett's version, though, became the definitive version: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] But it very nearly wasn't. That was recorded in a single take, and the musicians went into the control room to listen to it -- and the metal capstan on the tape machine flew off while it was rewinding. The tape was cut into dozens of tiny fragments, which the machine threw all over the room in all directions. Everyone was horrified, and Pickett, who was already known for his horrific temper, looked as if he might actually kill someone. Tom Dowd, Atlantic's genius engineer who had been a physicist on the Manhattan Project while still a teenager, wasn't going to let something as minor as that stop him. He told everyone to take a break for half an hour, gathered up all the randomly-thrown bits of tape, and spliced them back together. The completed recording apparently has forty splices in it, which would mean an average of a splice every four seconds. Have a listen to this thirty-second segment and see if you can hear any at all: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] That segment has the one part where I *think* I can hear one splice in the whole track, a place where the rhythm hiccups very slightly -- and that might well just be the drummer trying a fill that didn't quite come off. "Mustang Sally" was another pop top thirty hit, and Wexler's crossover strategy seemed to have been proved right -- so much so that Pickett was now playing pretty much all-white bills. He played, for example, at Murray the K's last ever revue at the Brooklyn Paramount, where the other artists on the bill were Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the Young Rascals, Al Kooper's Blues Project, Cream, and the Who. Pickett found the Who extremely unprofessional, with their use of smoke bombs and smashing their instruments, but they eventually became friendly. Pickett's next single was his version of "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", the Solomon Burke song that the Rolling Stones had also covered, and that was a minor hit, but his next few records after that didn't do particularly well. He did though have a big hit with his cover version of a song by a group called Dyke and the Blazers. Pickett's version of "Funky Broadway" took him to the pop top ten: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Funky Broadway"] It did something else, as well. You may have noticed that two of the bands on that Paramount bill were groups that get called "blue-eyed soul". "Soul" had originally been a term used for music made by Black people, but increasingly the term was being used by white people for their music, just as rock and roll and rhythm and blues before it had been picked up on by white musicians. And so as in those cases, Black musicians were moving away from the term -- though it would never be abandoned completely -- and towards a new slang term, "funk". And Pickett was the first person to get a song with "funk" in the title onto the pop charts. But that would be the last recording Pickett would do at FAME for a couple of years. As with Stax, Pickett was moved away by Atlantic because of problems with another artist, this time to do with a session with Aretha Franklin that went horribly wrong, which we'll look at in a future episode. From this point on, Pickett would record at American Sound Studios in Memphis, a studio owned and run by Chips Moman, who had played on many of Pickett's records. Again, Pickett was playing with an all-white house band, but brought in a couple of Black musicians -- the saxophone player King Curtis, and Pickett's new touring guitarist, Bobby Womack, who had had a rough few years, being largely ostracised from the music community because of his relationship with Sam Cooke's widow. Womack wrote what might be Pickett's finest song, a song called "I'm in Love" which is a masterpiece of metrical simplicity disguised as complexity -- you could write it all down as being in straight four-four, but the pulse shifts and implies alternating bars of five and three at points: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "I'm In Love"] Womack's playing on those sessions had two effects, one on music history and one on Pickett. The effect on music history was that he developed a strong working relationship with Reggie Young, the guitarist in the American Sound studio band, and Young and Womack learned each other's styles. Young would later go on to be one of the top country session guitarists, playing on records by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Waylon Jennings and more, and he was using Womack's style of playing -- he said later "I didn't change a thing. I was playing that Womack style on country records, instead of the hillbilly stuff—it changed the whole bed of country music." The other effect, though, was a much more damaging one. Womack introduced Pickett to cocaine, and Pickett -- who was already an aggressive, violent, abusive, man, became much more so. "I'm in Love" went to number four on the R&B charts, but didn't make the pop top forty. The follow-up, a remake of "Stagger Lee", did decently on the pop charts but less well on the R&B charts. Pickett's audiences were diverging, and he was finding it more difficult to make the two come together. But he would still manage it, sporadically, throughout the sixties. One time when he did was in 1968, when he returned to Muscle Shoals and to FAME studios. In a session there, the guitarist was very insistent that Pickett should cut a version of the Beatles' most recent hit. Now obviously, this is a record that's ahead in our timeline, and which will be covered in a future episode, but I imagine that most of you won't find it too much of a spoiler when I tell you that "Hey Jude" by the Beatles was quite a big hit: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude"] What that guitarist had realised was that the tag of the song gave the perfect opportunity for ad-libbing. You all know the tag: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude"] And so on. That would be perfect for a guitar solo, and for Pickett to do some good soul shouting over. Neither Pickett nor Rick Hall were at all keen -- the Beatles record had only just dropped off number one, and it seemed like a ridiculous idea to both of them. But the guitarist kept pressing to do it, and by the time the other musicians returned from their lunch break, he'd convinced Pickett and Hall. The record starts out fairly straightforward: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Hey Jude"] But it's on the tag when it comes to life. Pickett later described recording that part -- “He stood right in front of me, as though he was playing every note I was singing. And he was watching me as I sang, and as I screamed, he was screaming with his guitar.”: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Hey Jude"] That was not Pickett's biggest hit, but it was one of the most influential. It made the career of the guitarist, Duane Allman, who Jerry Wexler insisted on signing to his own contract after that, and as Jimmy Johnson, the rhythm guitarist on the session said, "We realised then that Duane had created southern rock, in that vamp." It was big enough that Wexler pushed Pickett to record a whole series of cover versions of rock songs -- he put out versions of "Hey Joe", "Born to be Wild" and "You Keep Me Hangin' On" -- the latter going back to his old technique of covering a white cover version of a Black record, as his version copied the Vanilla Fudge's arrangement rather than the Supremes' original. But these only had very minor successes -- the most successful of them was his version of "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies. As the sixties turned into the seventies, Pickett continued having some success, but it was more erratic and less consistent. The worlds of Black and white music were drifting apart, and Pickett, who more than most had straddled both worlds, now found himself having success in neither. It didn't help that his cocaine dependency had made him into an egomaniac. At one point in the early seventies, Pickett got a residency in Las Vegas, and was making what by most standards was a great income from it. But he would complain bitterly that he was only playing the small room, not the big one in the same hotel, and that the artist playing the big room was getting better billing than him on the posters. Of course, the artist playing the big room was Elvis Presley, but that didn't matter to Pickett -- he thought he deserved to be at least that big. He was also having regular fights with his record label. Ahmet Ertegun used to tell a story -- and I'm going to repeat it here with one expletive cut out in order to get past Apple's ratings system. In Ertegun's words “Jerry Wexler never liked Crosby, Stills & Nash because they wanted so much freaking artistic autonomy. While we were arguing about this, Wilson Pickett walks in the room and comes up to Jerry and says, ‘Jerry,' and he goes, ‘Wham!' And he puts a pistol on the table. He says, ‘If that [Expletive] Tom Dowd walks into where I'm recording, I'm going to shoot him. And if you walk in, I'm going to shoot you. ‘Oh,' Jerry said. ‘That's okay, Wilson.' Then he walked out. So I said, ‘You want to argue about artistic autonomy?' ” As you can imagine, Atlantic were quite glad to get rid of Pickett when he decided he wanted to move to RCA records, who were finally trying to break into the R&B market. Unfortunately for Pickett, the executive who'd made the decision to sign him soon left the company, and as so often happens when an executive leaves, his pet project becomes the one that everyone's desperate to get rid of. RCA didn't know how to market records to Black audiences, and didn't really try, and Pickett's voice was becoming damaged from all the cocaine use. He spent the seventies, and eighties going from label to label, trying things like going disco, with no success. He also went from woman to woman, beating them up, and went through band members more and more quickly as he attacked them, too. The guitarist Marc Ribot was in Pickett's band for a short time and said, (and here again I'm cutting out an expletive) " You can write about all the extenuating circumstances, and maybe it needs to be put in historical context, but … You know why guys beat women? Because they can. And it's abuse. That's why employers beat employees, when they can. I've worked with black bandleaders and white bandleaders who are respectful, courteous and generous human beings—and then I've worked with Wilson Pickett." He was becoming more and more paranoid. He didn't turn up for his induction in the rock and roll hall of fame, where he was scheduled to perform -- instead he hid in his house, scared to leave. Pickett was repeatedly arrested throughout this time, and into the nineties, spending some time in prison, and then eventually going into rehab in 1997 after being arrested for beating up his latest partner. She dropped the charges, but the police found the cocaine in his possession and charged him with that. After getting out, he apparently mellowed out somewhat and became much easier to get along with -- still often unpleasant, especially after he'd had a drink, which he never gave up, but far less violent and more easy-going than he had been. He also had something of a comeback, sparked by an appearance in the flop film Blues Brothers 2000. He recorded a blues album, It's Harder Now, and also guested on Adlib, the comeback duets album by his old friend Don Covay, singing with him and cowriting on several songs, including "Nine Times a Man": [Excerpt: Don Covay and Wilson Pickett, "Nine Times a Man"] It's Harder Now was a solid blues-based album, in the vein of similar albums from around that time by people like Solomon Burke, and could have led to Pickett having the same kind of late-career resurgence as Johnny Cash. It was nominated for a Grammy, but lost in the category for which it was nominated to Barry White. Pickett was depressed by the loss and just decided to give up making new music, and just played the oldies circuit until 2004, at which point he became too ill to continue. The duet with Covay would be the last time he went into the studio. The story of Pickett's last year or so is a painful one, with squabbles between his partner and his children over his power of attorney while he spent long periods in hospital, suffering from kidney problems caused by his alcoholism, and also at this point from bulimia, diabetes, and more. He was ill enough that he tried to make amends with his children and his ex-wife, and succeeded as well as anyone can in that situation. On the eighteenth of January 2006, two months before his sixty-fifth birthday, his partner took him to get his hair cut and his moustache shaped, so he'd look the way he wanted to look, they ate together at his assisted living facility, and prayed together, and she left around eleven o'clock that night. Shortly thereafter, Pickett had a heart attack and died, alone, some time close to the midnight hour.

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Episode 133: “My Girl” by the Temptations

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2021

Episode one hundred and thirty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "My Girl" by the Temptations, and is part three of a three-episode look at Motown in 1965. 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 "Yeh Yeh" by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. 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/ Resources As usual, I've put together a Mixcloud playlist of all the recordings excerpted in this episode. This box set is the definitive collection of the Temptations' work, but is a bit pricey. For those on a budget, this two-CD set contains all the hits. As well as the general Motown information listed below, I've also referred to Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Troubled Lives and Enduring Soul of the Temptations by Mark Ribowsky, and to Smokey Robinson's autobiography. For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown. To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. How Sweet It Is by Lamont Dozier and Scott B. Bomar is Dozier's autobiography, while Come and Get These Memories by Brian and Eddie Holland and Dave Thompson is the Holland brothers'. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 694 tracks released on Motown singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript For the last few weeks we've been looking at Motown in 1965, but now we're moving away from Holland, Dozier, and Holland, we're also going to move back in time a little, and look at a record that was released in December 1964. I normally try to keep this series in more or less chronological order, but to tell this story I had to first show the new status quo of the American music industry after the British Invasion, and some of what had to be covered there was covered in songs from early 1965. And the reason I wanted to show that status quo before doing this series of Motown records is that we're now entering into a new era of musical segregation, and really into the second phase of this story. In 1963, Billboard had actually stopped having an R&B chart -- Cashbox magazine still had one, but Billboard had got rid of theirs. The reasoning was simple -- by that point there was so much overlap between the R&B charts and the pop charts that it didn't seem necessary to have both. The stuff that was charting on the R&B charts was also charting pop -- people like Ray Charles or Chubby Checker or the Ronettes or Sam Cooke. The term "rock and roll" had originally been essentially a marketing campaign to get white people to listen to music made by Black people, and it had worked. There didn't seem to be a need for a separate category for music listened to by Black people, because that was now the music listened to by *everybody*. Or it had been, until the Beatles turned up. At that point, the American charts were flooded by groups with guitars, mostly British, mostly male, and mostly white. The story of rock and roll from 1954 through 1964 had been one of integration, of music made by Black people becoming the new mainstream of music in the USA. The story for the next decade or more would be one of segregation, of white people retaking the pop charts, and rebranding "rock and roll" so thoroughly that by the early 1970s nobody would think of the Supremes or the Shirelles or Sam Cooke as having been rock and roll performers at all. And so today we're going to look at the record that was number one the week that Billboard reinstated its R&B chart, and which remains one of the most beloved classics of the time period. We're going to look at the careers of two different groups at Motown, both of whom managed to continue having hits, and even become bigger, after the British Invasion, and at the songwriter and producer who was responsible for those hits -- and who was also an inspiration for the Beatles, who inadvertently caused that invasion. We're going to look at Smokey Robinson, and at "My Girl" by the Temptations: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] The story of the Temptations both starts and ends with Otis Williams. As I write this, Williams is the only living member of the classic Temptations lineup, and is the leader of the current group. And Williams also started the group that, after many lineup changes and mergers, became the Temptations, and was always the group's leader, even though he has never been its principal lead singer. The group that eventually became the Temptations started out when Williams formed a group with a friend, Al Bryant, in the late 1950s. They were inspired by a doo-wop group called the Turbans, who had had a hit in 1956 with a song called "When You Dance": [Excerpt: The Turbans, "When You Dance"] The Turbans, appropriately enough, used to wear turbans on their heads when they performed, and Williams and Bryant's new group wanted to use the same gimmick, so they decided to come up with a Middle-Eastern sounding group name that would justify them wearing Arabic style costumes. Unfortunately, they didn't have the greatest grasp of geography in the world, and so this turban-wearing group named themselves the Siberians. The Siberians recorded one single under that name -- a single that has been variously reported as being called "The Pecos Kid" and "Have Gun Will Travel", but which sold so poorly that now no copies are known to exist anywhere -- before being taken on by a manager called Milton Jenkins, who was as much a pimp as he was a manager, but who definitely had an eye for talent. Jenkins was the manager of two other groups -- the Primes, a trio from Alabama who he'd met in Cleveland when they'd travelled there to see if they could get discovered, and who had moved with him to Detroit, and a group he put together, called the Primettes, who later became the Supremes. The Primes consisted of three singers -- Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams (no relation to Otis, or to the soft-pop singer and actor of the same name), and Kell Osborne, who sang lead. The Primes became known around Detroit as some of the best performers in the city -- no mean feat considering that Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin, the Miracles and the Four Tops, just for a start, were performing regularly on the same circuit. Jenkins had big plans for his groups, and he sent them all to dance school to learn to perform choreographed routines. But then Jenkins became ill and disappeared from the scene, and the Primes split up. Kendricks and Paul Williams went back to Alabama, while Osborne moved on to California, where he made several unsuccessful records, including "The Bells of St. Mary", produced by Lester Sill and Lee Hazelwood and arranged by Phil Spector: [Excerpt: Kell Osborne, "The Bells of St. Mary"] But while the Primes had split up, the Siberians hadn't. Instead, they decided to get new management, which came in the person of a woman named Johnnie Mae Matthews. Matthews was the lead singer of a group called the Five Dapps, who'd had a local hit with a track called "Do Whap A Do", one of the few Dapps songs she didn't sing lead on: [Excerpt: The Five Dapps, "Do Whap A Do"] After that had become successful, Matthews had started up her own label, Northern -- which was apparently named after a brand of toilet paper -- to put out records of her group, often backed by the same musicians who would later become the core of the Funk Brothers. Her group, renamed Johnnie Mae Matthews and the Dapps, put out two more singles on her label, with her singing lead: [Excerpt: Johnnie Mae Matthews and the Dapps, "Mr. Fine"] Matthews had become something of an entrepreneur, managing other local acts like Mary Wells and Popcorn Wylie, and she wanted to record the Siberians, but two of the group had dropped out after Jenkins had disappeared, and so they needed some new members. In particular they needed a bass singer -- and Otis Williams knew of a good one. Melvin Franklin had been singing with various groups around Detroit, but Williams was thinking in particular of Franklin's bass vocal on "Needed" by the Voice Masters. We've mentioned the Voice Masters before, but they were a group with a rotating membership that included David Ruffin and Lamont Dozier. Franklin hadn't been a member of the group, but he had been roped in to sing bass on "Needed", which was written and produced by Gwen Gordy and Roquel Davis, and was a clear attempt at sounding like Jackie Wilson: [Excerpt: The Voice Masters, "Needed"] Williams asked Franklin to join the group, and Franklin agreed, but felt bad about leaving his current group. However, the Siberians also needed a new lead singer, and so Franklin brought in Richard Street from his group. Matthews renamed the group the Distants and took them into the studio. They actually got there early, and got to see another group, the Falcons, record what would become a million-selling hit: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "You're So Fine"] The Falcons, whose lead vocalist Joe Stubbs was Levi Stubbs' brother, were an important group in their own right, and we'll be picking up on them next week, when we look at a single by Joe Stubbs' replacement in the group. The Distants' single wouldn't be quite as successful as the Falcons', but it featured several people who would go on to become important in Motown. As well as several of the Funk Brothers in the backing band, the record also featured additional vocals by the Andantes, and on tambourine a local pool-hall hustler the group knew named Norman Whitfield. The song itself was written by Williams, and was essentially a rewrite of "Shout!" by the Isley Brothers: [Excerpt: The Distants, "Come On"] The Distants recorded a second single for Northern, but then Williams made the mistake of asking Matthews if they might possibly receive any royalties for their records. Matthews said that the records had been made with her money, that she owned the Distants' name, and she was just going to get five new singers. Matthews did actually get several new singers to put out a single under the Distants name, with Richard Street still singing lead -- Street left the group when they split from Matthews, as did another member, leaving the group as a core of Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Al Bryant. But before the split with Matthews, Berry Gordy had seen the group and suggested they come in to Motown for an audition. Otis, Melvin, and Al, now renamed the Elgins, wanted to do just that. But they needed a new lead singer. And happily, they had one. Eddie Kendricks phoned up Otis Williams and said that he and Paul Williams were back in town, and did Otis know of any gigs that were going? Otis did indeed know of such a gig, and Paul and Eddie joined the Elgins, Paul as lead singer and Eddie as falsetto singer. This new lineup of the group were auditioned by Mickey Stevenson, Motown's head of A&R, and he liked them enough that he signed them up. But he insisted that the name had to change -- there was another group already called the Elgins (though that group never had a hit, and Motown would soon sign up yet another group and change their name to the Elgins, leading to much confusion). The group decided on a new name -- The Temptations. Their first record was co-produced by Stevenson and Andre Williams. Williams, who was no relation to either Otis or Paul (and as a sidenote I do wish there weren't so many people with the surname Williams in this story, as it means I can't write it in my usual manner of referring to people by their surname) was a minor R&B star who co-wrote "Shake a Tail Feather", and who had had a solo hit with his record "Bacon Fat": [Excerpt: Andre Williams, "Bacon Fat"] Andre Williams, who at this point in time was signed to Motown though not having much success, was brought in because the perception at Motown was that the Temptations would be one of their harder-edged R&B groups, rather than going for the softer pop market, and he would be able to steer the recording in that direction. The song they chose to record was one that Otis Williams had written, though Mickey Stevenson gets a co-writing credit and may have helped polish it: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Oh Mother of Mine"] The new group lineup became very close, and started thinking of each other like family and giving each other nicknames -- though they also definitely split into two camps. Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin were always a pair, and Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams had come up together and thought of themselves as a team. Al Bryant, even though he had been with Otis from the beginning, was a bit of an outlier in this respect. He wasn't really part of either camp, and he was the only one who didn't get a nickname from the other band members. He was also the only one who kept his day job -- while the other four were all determined that they were going to make it as professional singers, he was hesitant and kept working at the dairy. As a result, whenever there were fights in the group -- and the fights would sometimes turn physical -- the fighting would tend to be between Eddie Kendricks and Melvin Franklin. Otis was the undisputed leader, and nobody wanted to challenge him, but from the beginning Kendricks and Paul Williams thought of Otis as a bit too much of a company man. They also thought of Melvin as Otis' sidekick and rubber stamp, so rather than challenge Otis they'd have a go at Melvin. But, for the most part, they were extremely close at this point. The Temptations' first single didn't have any great success, but Berry Gordy had faith in the group, and produced their next single himself, a song that he cowrote with Otis, Melvin, and Al, and which Brian Holland also chipped in some ideas for. That was also unsuccessful, but the next single, written by Gordy alone, was slightly more successful. For "(You're My) Dream Come True", Gordy decided to give the lead to Kendricks, the falsetto singer, and the track also featured a prominent instrumental line by Gordy's wife Raynoma -- what sounds like strings on the record is actually a primitive synthesiser called an ondioline: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "(You're My) Dream Come True"] That made number twenty-two on the R&B chart, and was the first sign of any commercial potential for the group -- and so Motown went in a totally different direction and put out a cover version, of a record by a group called the Diablos, whose lead singer was Barrett Strong's cousin Nolan. The Temptations' version of "Mind Over Matter" wasn't released as by the Temptations, but as by the Pirates: [Excerpt: The Pirates, "Mind Over Matter"] That was a flop, and at the same time as they released it, they also released another Gordy song under their own name, a song called "Paradise" which seems to have been an attempt at making a Four Seasons soundalike, which made number 122 on the pop charts and didn't even do that well on the R&B charts. Annoyingly, the Temptations had missed out on a much bigger hit. Gordy had written "Do You Love Me?" for the group, but had been hit with a burst of inspiration and wanted to do the record *NOW*. He'd tried phoning the various group members, but got no answer -- they were all in the audience at a gospel music show at the time, and had no idea he was trying to get in touch with them. So he'd pulled in another group, The Contours, and their version of the song went to number three on the pop charts: [Excerpt: The Contours, "Do You Love Me?"] According to the biography of the Temptations I'm using as a major source for this episode, that was even released on the same day as both "Paradise" and "Mind Over Matter", though other sources I've consulted have it coming out a few months earlier. Despite "Paradise"'s lack of commercial success, though, it did introduce an element that would become crucial for the group's future -- the B-side was the first song for the group written by Smokey Robinson. We've mentioned Robinson briefly in previous episodes on Motown, but he's worth looking at in a lot more detail, because he is in some ways the most important figure in Motown's history, though also someone who has revealed much less of himself than many other Motown artists. Both of these facts stem from the same thing, which is that Robinson is the ultimate Motown company man. He was a vice president of the company, and he was Berry Gordy's best friend from before the company even started. While almost every other artist, writer, or producer signed to Motown has stories to tell of perceived injustices in the way that Motown treated them, Robinson has always positioned himself on the side of the company executives rather than as one of the other artists. He was the only person outside the Gordy family who had a place at the very centre of the organisation -- and he was also one of a very small number of people during Motown's golden age who would write, produce, *and* perform. Now, there were other people who worked both as artists and on the backroom side of things -- we've seen that Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder would sometimes write songs for other artists, and that Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier had started out as performers before moving into songwriting. But these were mostly little dalliances -- in general, in Motown in the sixties, you were either a performer or you were a writer-producer. But Smokey Robinson was both -- and he was *good* at both, someone who was responsible for creating many of the signature hits of Motown. At this point in his career, Robinson had, as we've heard previously, been responsible for Motown's second big hit, after "Money", when he'd written "Shop Around" for his own group The Miracles: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Shop Around"] The Miracles had continued to have hits, though none as big as "Shop Around", with records like "What's So Good About Goodbye?": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "What's So Good About Goodbye?"] But Robinson had also been writing regularly for other artists. He'd written some stuff that the Supremes had recorded, though like all the Supremes material at this point it had been unsuccessful, and he'd also started a collaboration with the label's biggest star at this point, Mary Wells, for whom he'd written top ten hits like "The One Who Really Loves You": [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "The One Who Really Loves You"] and "You Beat Me To The Punch", co-written with fellow Miracle Ronnie White, which as well as going top ten pop made number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "You Beat Me to The Punch"] Between 1962 and 1964, Robinson would consistently write huge hits for Wells, as well as continuing to have hits with the Miracles, and his writing was growing in leaps and bounds. He was regarded by almost everyone at Motown as the best writer the company had, both for his unique melodic sensibility and for the literacy of his lyrics. When he'd first met Berry Gordy, he'd been a writer with a lot of potential, but he hadn't understood how to structure a lyric -- he'd thrown in a lot of unrelated ideas. Gordy had taken him under his wing and shown him how to create a song with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and Robinson had immediately understood what he needed to do. His lyrics, with their clever conceits and internal rhymes, became the ones that everyone else studied -- when Eddie Holland decided to become a songwriter rather than a singer, he'd spent months just studying Robinson's lyrics to see how they worked. Robinson was even admired by the Beatles, especially John Lennon -- one can hear his melismatic phrases all over Lennon's songwriting in this period, most notably in songs like "Ask Me Why", and the Beatles covered one of Robinson's songs on their second album, With the Beatles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "You Really Got a Hold On Me"] After writing the B-side to "Paradise", Robinson was given control of the Temptations' next single. His "I Want a Love I Can See" didn't do any better than "Paradise", and is in some ways more interesting for the B-side, "The Further You Look, The Less You See": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Further You Look, The Less You See"] That track's interesting because it's a collaboration between Robinson and Norman Whitfield, that pool-hall hustler who'd played tambourine on the Distants' first single. Whitfield had produced the records by the later Distants, led by Richard Street, and had then gone to work for a small label owned by Berry Gordy's ex-mother-in-law. Gordy had bought out that label, and with it Whitfield's contract, and at this point Whitfield was very much an apprentice to Robinson. Both men were huge admirers of the Temptations, and for the next few years both would want to be the group's main producer and songwriter, competing for the right to record their next single -- though for a good chunk of time this would not really be a competition, as Whitfield was minor league compared to Robinson. "I Want a Love I Can See" was a flop, and the Temptations' next single was another Berry Gordy song. When that flopped too, Gordy seriously started considering dropping the group altogether. While this was happening, though, Robinson was busily writing more great songs for his own group and for Mary Wells, songs like "What Love Has Joined Together", co-written with his bandmate Bobby Rogers: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "What Love Has Joined Together"] And the Temptations were going through their own changes. Al was becoming more and more of an outsider in the group, while also thinking of himself as the real star. He thought this even though he was the weak link -- Paul and Eddie were the lead singers, Otis was the band's leader, Melvin had a hugely distinctive bass voice, and Al was... just "the other one". Things came to a head at a gig in October 1963, when a friend of the group showed up. David Ruffin was so friendly with Melvin Franklin that Franklin called him his cousin, and he was also a neighbour of Otis'. He had been a performer from an early age -- he'd been in a gospel group with his older brother Jimmy and their abusive father. Once he'd escaped his father, he'd gone on to perform in a duo with his brother, and then in a series of gospel groups, including stints in the Dixie Nightingales and the Soul Stirrers. Ruffin had been taken on by a manager called Eddie Bush, who adopted him -- whether legally or just in their minds is an open question -- and had released his first single as Little David Bush when he was seventeen, in 1958: [Excerpt: Little David Bush, "You and I"] Ruffin and Bush had eventually parted ways, and Ruffin had taken up with the Gordy family, helping Berry Gordy Sr out in his construction business -- he'd actually helped build the studio that Berry Jr owned and where most of the Motown hits were recorded -- and singing on records produced by Gwen Gordy. He'd been in the Voice Masters, who we heard earlier this episode, and had also recorded solo singles with the Voice Masters backing, like "I'm In Love": [Excerpt: David Ruffin, "I'm In Love"] When Gwen Gordy's labels had been absorbed into Motown, so had Ruffin, who had also got his brother Jimmy signed to the label. They'd planned to record as the Ruffin Brothers, but then Jimmy had been drafted, and Ruffin was at a loose end -- he technically had a Motown contract, but wasn't recording anything. But then in October 1963 he turned up to a Temptations gig. For the encore, the group always did the Isley Brothers song "Shout!", and Ruffin got up on stage with them and started joining in, dancing more frantically than the rest of the group. Al started trying to match him, feeling threatened by this interloper. They got wilder and wilder, and the audience loved it so much that the group were called back for another encore, and Ruffin joined them again. They did the same song again, and got an even better reaction. They came back for a third time, and did it again, and got an even better reaction. Ruffin then disappeared into the crowd. The group decided that enough was enough -- except for Al, who was convinced that they should do a fourth encore without Ruffin. The rest of the group were tired, and didn't want to do the same song for a fourth time, and thought they should leave the audience wanting more. Al, who had been drinking, got aggressive, and smashed a bottle in Paul Williams' face, hospitalising him. Indeed, it was only pure luck that kept Williams from losing his vision, and he was left with a scar but no worse damage. Otis, Eddie, and Melvin decided that they needed to sack Al, but Paul, who was the peacemaker in the group, insisted that they shouldn't, and also refused to press charges. Out of respect for Paul, the rest of the group agreed to give Al one more chance. But Otis in particular was getting sick of Al and thought that the group should just try to get David Ruffin in. Everyone agreed that if Al did anything to give Otis the slightest reason, he could be sacked. Two months later, he did just that. The group were on stage at the annual Motown Christmas show, which was viewed by all the acts as a competition, and Paul had worked out a particularly effective dance routine for the group, to try to get the crowd going. But while they were performing, Al came over to Otis and suggested that the two of them, as the "pretty boys" should let the other three do all the hard work while they just stood back and looked good for the women. Otis ignored him and carried on with the routine they'd rehearsed, and Al was out as soon as they came offstage. And David Ruffin was in. But for now, Ruffin was just the missing element in the harmony stack, not a lead vocalist in his own right. For the next single, both Smokey Robinson and Berry Gordy came up with songs for the new lineup of the group, and they argued about which song should be the A-side -- one of the rare occasions where the two disagreed on anything. They took the two tracks to Motown's quality control meeting, and after a vote it was agreed that the single should be the song that Robinson had written for Eddie Kendricks to sing, "The Way You Do the Things You Do": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Way You Do the Things You Do"] At first, the group hadn't liked that song, and it wasn't until they rehearsed it a few times that they realised that Robinson was being cleverer than they'd credited him for with the lyrics. Otis Williams would later talk about how lines like "You've got a smile so bright, you know you could have been a candle" had seemed ridiculous to them at first, but then they'd realised that the lyric was parodying the kinds of things that men say when they don't know what to say to a woman, and that it's only towards the end of the song that the singer stops trying bad lines and just starts speaking honestly -- "you really swept me off my feet, you make my life complete, you make my life so bright, you make me feel all right": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Way You Do the Things You Do"] That track was also the first one that the group cut to a prerecorded backing track, Motown having upgraded to a four-track system. That allowed the group to be more subtle with their backing vocal arrangements, and "The Way You Do the Things You Do" is the point at which the Temptations become fully themselves. But the group didn't realise that at first. They spent the few weeks after the record's release away from Detroit, playing at the Michigan state fair, and weren't aware that it was starting to do things. It was only when Otis and David popped in to the Motown offices and people started talking to them about them having a hit that they realised the record had made the pop charts. Both men had been trying for years to get a big hit, with no success, and they started crying in each other's arms, Ruffin saying ‘Otis, this is the first time in my life I feel like I've been accepted, that I've done something.'” The record eventually made number eleven on the pop charts, and number one on the Cashbox R&B chart -- Billboard, as we discussed earlier, having discontinued theirs, but Otis Williams still thinks that given the amount of airplay that the record was getting it should have charted higher, and that something fishy was going on with the chart compilation at that point. Perhaps, but given that the record reached the peak of its chart success in April 1964, the high point of Beatlemania, when the Beatles had five records in the top ten, it's also just possible that it was a victim of bad timing. But either way, number eleven on the pop charts was a significant hit. Shortly after that, though, Smokey Robinson came up with an even bigger hit. "My Guy", written for Mary Wells, had actually only been intended as a bit of album filler. Motown were putting together a Mary Wells album, and as with most albums at the time it was just a collection of tracks that had already been released as singles and stuff that hadn't been considered good enough to release. But they were a track short, and Smokey was asked to knock together something quickly. He recorded a backing track at the end of a day cutting tracks for a *Temptations* album -- The Temptations Sing Smokey -- and everyone was tired by the time they got round to recording it, but you'd never guess that from the track itself, which is as lively as anything Motown put out. "My Guy" was a collaborative creation, with an arrangement that was worked on by the band -- it was apparently the Funk Brothers who came up with the intro, which was lifted from a 1956 record, "Canadian Sunset" by Hugo Winterhalter. Compare that: [Excerpt: Hugo Winterhalter, "Canadian Sunset"] to “My Guy”: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "My Guy"] The record became one of the biggest hits of the sixties -- Motown's third pop number one, and a million-seller. It made Mary Wells into a superstar, and the Beatles invited her to be their support act on their UK summer tour. So of course Wells immediately decided to get a better deal at another record label, and never had another hit again. Meanwhile, Smokey kept plugging away, both at his own records -- though the Miracles went through a bit of a dry patch at this point, as far as the charts go -- and at the Temptations. The group's follow-up, "I'll Be in Trouble", was very much a remake of "The Way You Do the Things You Do", and while it was good it didn't quite make the top thirty. This meant that Norman Whitfield got another go. He teamed up with Eddie Holland to write "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)", which did only slightly better than "I'll Be in Trouble": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)"] The competition between Robinson and Whitfield for who got to make the Temptations' records was heating up -- both men were capable of giving the group hits, but neither had given them the truly massive record that they were clearly capable of having. So Smokey did the obvious thing. He wrote a sequel to his biggest song ever, and he gave it to the new guy to sing. Up until this point, David Ruffin hadn't taken a lead vocal on a Temptations record -- Paul Williams was the group's official "lead singer", while all the hits had ended up having Eddie's falsetto as the most prominent vocal. But Smokey had seen David singing "Shout" with the group, and knew that he had lead singer potential. With his fellow Miracle Ronald White, Smokey crafted a song that was the perfect vehicle for Ruffin's vocal, an answer song to "My Guy", which replaced that song's bouncy exuberance with a laid-back carefree feeling: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] But it's not just Ruffin's record -- everyone talking about the track talks about Ruffin's vocal, or the steady pulse of James Jamerson's bass playing, and both those things are definitely worthy of praise, as of course are Robinson's production and Robinson and White's song, but this is a *Temptations* record, and the whole group are doing far more here than the casual listener might realise. It's only when you listen to the a capella version released on the group's Emperors of Soul box set that you notice all the subtleties of the backing vocal parts. On the first verse, the group don't come in until half way through the verse, with Melvin Franklin's great doo-wop bass introducing the backing vocalists, who sing just straight chords: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] It's not until the chorus that the other group members stretch out a little, taking solo lines and singing actual words rather than just oohs: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] They then drop back until the same point in the next verse, but this time rather than singing just the plain chords, they're embellishing a little, playing with the rhythm slightly, and Eddie Kendricks' falsetto is moving far more freely than at the same point in the first verse. [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] The backing vocals slowly increase in complexity until you get the complex parts on the tag. Note that on the first chorus they sang the words "My Girl" absolutely straight with no stresses, but by the end of the song they're all emphasising every word. They've gone from Jordanaires style precise straight harmony to a strong Black gospel feel in their voices, and you've not even noticed the transition: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] The track went to number one on the pop charts, knocking off "This Diamond Ring" by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, before itself being knocked off by "Eight Days a Week" by the Beatles. But it also went to number one on the newly reestablished R&B charts, and stayed there for six weeks: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] Smokey Robinson was now firmly established as the Temptations' producer, and David Ruffin as the group's lead singer. In 1965 Robinson and Pete Moore of the Miracles would write three more top-twenty pop hits for the group, all with Ruffin on lead -- and also manage to get a B-side sung by Paul Williams, "Don't Look Back", to the top twenty on the R&B chart. Not only that, but the Miracles were also on a roll, producing two of the biggest hits of their career. Pete Moore and Marv Tarplin had been messing around with a variant of the melody for "The Banana Boat Song", and came up with an intro for a song: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears"] Robinson took that as a jumping-off point and turned it into the song that would define their career: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears"] And later that year they came up with yet another million-seller for the Miracles with "Going to a Go-Go": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Going to a Go-Go"] Robinson and his collaborators were being rather overshadowed in the public perception at this point by the success of Holland-Dozier-Holland with the Supremes and the Four Tops, but by any standards the records the Temptations and the Miracles were putting out were massive successes, both commercially and artistically. But there were two things that were going to upset this balance. The first was David Ruffin. When he'd joined the group, he'd been the new boy and just eager to get any kind of success at all. Now he was the lead singer, and his ego was starting to get the better of him. The other thing that was going to change things was Norman Whitfield. Whitfield hadn't given up on the Temptations just because of Smokey's string of hits with them. Whitfield knew, of course, that Smokey was the group's producer while he was having hits with them, but he also knew that sooner or later everybody slips up. He kept saying, in every meeting, that he had the perfect next hit for the Temptations, and every time he was told "No, they're Smokey's group". He knew this would be the reaction, but he also knew that if he kept doing this he would make sure that he was the next in line -- that nobody else could jump the queue and get a shot at them if Smokey failed. He badgered Gordy, and wore him down, to the point that Gordy finally agreed that if Smokey's next single for the group didn't make the top twenty on the pop charts like his last four had, Whitfield would get his turn. The next single Smokey produced for the group had Eddie Kendricks on lead, and became the group's first R&B number one since "My Girl": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Get Ready"] But the R&B and pop charts were diverging, as we saw at the start. While that was their biggest R&B hit in a year, "Get Ready" was a comparative failure on the pop charts, only reaching number twenty-nine -- still a hit, but not the top twenty that Gordy had bet on. So Norman Whitfield got a chance. His record featured David Ruffin on lead, as all the group's previous run of hits from "My Girl" on had, and was co-written with Eddie Holland. Whitfield decided to play up the Temptations' R&B edge, rather than continue in the softer pop style that had brought them success with Robinson, and came up with something that owed as much to the music coming out of Stax and Atlantic at the time as it did to Motown's pop sensibilities: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg"] Whitfield's instinct to lean harder into the R&B sound paid off. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" returned the group to the pop top twenty, as well as going to number one on the R&B charts. From this point on, the Temptations were no longer Smokey's group, they were Norman Whitfield's, and he would produce all their hits for the next eight years. And the group were also now definitively David Ruffin's group -- or so it seemed. When we pick up on the story of the Temptations, we'll discover how Ruffin's plans for solo stardom worked out, and what happened to the rest of the Temptations under Whitfield's guidance.

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Episode 32: Motown Christmas Songs

Jingle Jank

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2021 55:39

Todd Killian from Christmas Clatter joins Jay and Scott to discuss Motown Christmas Songs. Artists include Kim Weston, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, The Four Tops, Aretha Franklin, The Soul Stirrers, and The Temptations. https://jinglejank.com/episodes/032.html

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Episode 41: Gospel Memories - August 7, 2021

gospel detroit memories tire soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2021 59:52

This episode features a congratulatory set for Elder Jack Ward on the release of his first solo album, "Already Made" (Bible & Tire), an in memoriam to Dr. Dorgan J. Needom of Detroit, plus music from the Roberta Martin Singers, Alex Bradford, Soul Stirrers, Loving Sisters, Gospel Messengers, and others.

Episode 39: Gospel Memories - July 24, 2021

music gospel memories soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2021 57:16

Special guests Spencer "Godfather" Taylor Jr. and Spencer Bouvier Taylor III of the Highway QCs, and author Noah Schaffer discuss "A General Becomes a Legend," the memoir of Spencer Taylor Jr. Music by the Highway QCs and Soul Stirrers.

Episode 34: Gospel Memories - June 19, 2021

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 19, 2021 60:48

This Juneteenth episode includes a 1927 version of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," plus music from Lucille Barbee, the Soul Stirrers, Bright Stars, Charles Taylor, Abyssinian B.C. Gospel Choir, a special Fathers Day song from Evelyn Turrentine-Agee, and others.

181 - Bible Study for Beginners | Deuteronomy: Chapters 29-34 + Psalm 90 (Part 6)

Karate Popcorn

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2021 11:12

Bible Study for Beginners | Deuteronomy: Chapters 29-34 + Psalm 90 (Part 6) This is part 6 of 6 In today's podcast, join Amy and Robyn as they continue their discussion in Deuteronomy. Here is a breakdown of what was discussed: - God is our refuge - the death of Moses - song recommendation: "Jesus Be A Fence Around Me" by The Soul Stirrers - what to read for next time "Keep your eyes on the Lord! You will shine like the sun and never blush with shame. I was a nobody, but I prayed, and the Lord saved me from all my troubles. If you honor the Lord, his angel will protect you." (Psalm 34:5-7) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ABOUT Opening a Bible for the first time can be intimidating. Join Amy & Robyn in an easy-to-follow discussion. This Basic Bible Study is perfect for beginners & those who have never read the Bible. Look for new podcasts every Tuesday & Friday morning! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BIBLE RESOURCES https://biblehub.com/ https://www.bible.com/ http://betterdaysarecoming.com/bible/pronunciation.html https://biblespeak.org/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/mybasicbiblestudy WEBSITE http://www.mybasicbiblestudy.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You can contact us through e-mail or regular old snail-mail: Basic Bible Study 7797 N. 1st St. #34 Fresno, CA 93720 basicbiblestudy19@gmail.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Episode 33: Gospel Memories - June 12, 2021

bible gospel memories vol tire soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2021 60:53

This episode includes cuts from the new collection from Bible & Tire, "The Last Shall Be First: The JCR Records Story, Vol. 2;" plus music from the Northwestern Community Ensemble, Soul Stirrers, Davis Sisters, Doris Akers, Silvertone Singers, and others.

Episode 124: “People Get Ready” by the Impressions

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2021

Episode 124 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “People Get Ready", the Impressions, and the early career of Curtis Mayfield. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "I'm Henry VIII I Am" by Herman's Hermits. 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/ Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud playlist, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. A lot of resources were used for this episode. Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs by Guy and Candie Carawan is a combination oral history of the Civil Rights movement and songbook. Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power by Aaron Cohen is a history of Chicago soul music and the way it intersected with politics. Traveling Soul: The Life of Curtis Mayfield by Todd Mayfield with Travis Atria is a biography of Mayfield by one of his sons, and rather better than one might expect given that. Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul by Craig Werner looks at the parallels and divergences in the careers of its three titular soul stars. This compilation has a decent selection of recordings Mayfield wrote and produced for other artists on OKeh in the early sixties. This single-CD set of Jerry Butler recordings contains his Impressions recordings as well as several songs written or co-written by Mayfield. This double-CD of Major Lance's recordings contains all the hits Mayfield wrote for him. And this double-CD collection has all the Impressions' singles from 1961 through 1968. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A couple of episodes ago we had a look at one of the first classic protest songs of the soul genre. Today we're going to look at how Sam Cooke's baton was passed on to another generation of soul singer/songwriters, and at one of the greatest songwriters of that generation. We're going to look at the early career of Curtis Mayfield, and at "People Get Ready" by the Impressions: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "People Get Ready"] A quick note before I start this one -- there is no way in this episode of avoiding dealing with the fact that the Impressions' first hit with a Curtis Mayfield lead vocal has, in its title, a commonly used word for Romany people beginning with "g" that many of those people regard as a slur -- while others embrace the term for themselves. I've thought long and hard about how to deal with this, and the compromise I've come up with is that I will use excerpts from the song, which will contain that word, but I won't use the word myself. I'm not happy with that compromise, but it's the best I can do. It's unfortunate that that word turns up a *lot* in music in the period I'm covering -- it's basically impossible to avoid. Anyway, on with the show... Curtis Mayfield is one of those musicians who this podcast will almost by definition underserve -- my current plan is to do a second episode on him, but if this was a thousand-song podcast he would have a *lot* more than just two episodes. He was one of the great musical forces of the sixties and seventies, and listeners to the Patreon bonus episodes will already have come across him several times before, as he was one of those musicians who becomes the centre of a whole musical scene, writing and producing for most of the other soul musicians to come out of Chicago in the late fifties and early 1960s. Mayfield grew up in Chicago, in the kind of poverty that is, I hope, unimaginable to most of my listeners. He had to become "the man of the house" from age five, looking after his younger siblings as his mother went out looking for work, as his father abandoned his family, moved away, and changed his name. His mother was on welfare for much of the time, and Mayfield's siblings have talked about how their special Christmas meal often consisted of cornbread and syrup, and they lived off beans, rice, and maybe a scrap of chicken neck every two weeks. They were so hungry so often that they used to make a game of it -- drinking water until they were full, and then making sloshing noises with their bellies, laughing at them making noises other than rumbling. But while his mother was poor, Mayfield saw that there was a way to escape from poverty. Specifically, he saw it in his paternal grandmother, the Reverend A.B. Mayfield, a Spiritualist priest, who was the closest thing to a rich person in his life. For those who don't know what Spiritualism is, it's one of the many new religious movements that sprouted up in the Northeastern US in the mid to late nineteenth centuries, like the Holiness Movement (which became Pentecostalism), the New Thought, Christian Science, Mormonism, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Spiritualists believe, unlike mainstream Christianity, that it is possible to communicate with the spirits of the dead, and that those spirits can provide information about the afterlife, and about the nature of God and angels. If you've ever seen, either in real life or in a fictional depiction, a medium communicating with spirits through a seance, that's spiritualism. There are numbers of splinter spiritualist movements, and the one Reverend Mayfield, and most Black American Spiritualists at this time, belonged to was one that used a lot of elements of Pentecostalism and couched its teachings in the Bible -- to an outside observer not conversant with the theology, it might seem no different from any other Black church of the period, other than having a woman in charge. But most other churches would not have been funded by their presiding minister's winnings from illegal gambling, as she claimed to have the winning numbers in the local numbers racket come to her in dreams, and won often enough that people believed her. Reverend Mayfield's theology also incorporated elements from the Nation of Islam, which at that time was growing in popularity, and was based in Chicago. Chicago was also the home of gospel music -- it was where Sister Rosetta Tharpe had got her start and where Mahalia Jackson and Thomas Dorsey and the Soul Stirrers were all based -- and so of course Reverend Mayfield's church got its own gospel quartet, the Northern Jubilee Singers. They modelled themselves explicitly on the Soul Stirrers, who at the time were led by Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Jesus Gave Me Water"] Curtis desperately wanted to join the Northern Jubilee Singers, and particularly admired their lead singer, Jerry Butler, as well as being a huge fan of their inspiration Sam Cooke. But he was too young -- he was eight years old, and the group members were twelve and thirteen, an incommensurable gap at that age. So Curtis couldn't join the Jubilee singers, but he kept trying to perform, and not just with gospel -- as well as gospel, Chicago was also the home of electric blues, being where Chess Records was based, and young Curtis Mayfield was surrounded by the music of people like Muddy Waters: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Rollin' and Tumblin'"] And so as well as singing gospel songs, he started singing and playing the blues, inspired by Waters, Little Walter, and other Chess acts. His first instrument was the piano, and young Curtis found that he naturally gravitated to the black keys -- he liked the sound of those best, and didn't really like playing the white keys. I won't get into the music theory too much here, but the black keys on a piano make what is called a pentatonic scale -- a five-note scale that is actually the basis for most folk music forms, whether Celtic folk, Indian traditional music, the blues, bluegrass, Chinese traditional music... pentatonic scales have been independently invented by almost every culture, and you might think of them as the "natural" music, what people default to. The black notes on the piano make that scale in the key of F#: [Excerpt: pentatonic scale in F#] The notes in that are F#, G#, A#, C#, and D#. When young Curtis found a guitar in his grandmother's closet, he didn't like the way it sounded -- if you strum the open strings of a guitar they don't make a chord (well, every combination of notes is a chord, but they don't make one most people think of as pleasant) -- the standard guitar tuning is E, A, D, G, B, E. Little Curtis didn't like this sound, so he retuned the guitar to F#, A#, C#, F#, A#, F# -- notes from the chord of F#, and all of them black keys on the piano. Now, tuning a guitar to open chords is a fairly standard thing to do -- guitarists as varied as Keith Richards, Steve Cropper, and Dolly Parton tune their guitars to open chords -- but doing it to F# is something that pretty much only Mayfield ever did, and it meant his note choices were odd ones. He would later say with pride that he used to love it when other guitarists picked up his guitar, because no matter how good they were they couldn't play on his instrument. He quickly became extremely proficient as a blues guitarist, and his guitar playing soon led the Northern Jubilee Singers to reconsider having him in the band. By the time he was eleven he was a member of the group and travelling with them to gospel conventions all over the US. But he had his fingers in multiple musical pies -- he formed a blues group, who would busk outside the pool-hall where his uncle was playing, and he also formed a doo-wop group, the Alphatones, who became locally popular. Jerry Butler, the Jubilee Singers' lead vocalist, had also joined a doo-wop group -- a group called the Roosters, who had moved up to Chicago from Chattanooga. Butler was convinced that to make the Roosters stand out, they needed a guitarist like Mayfield, but Mayfield at first remained uninterested -- he already had his own group, the Alphatones. Butler suggested that Mayfield should rehearse with both groups, three days a week each, and then stick with the group that was better. Soon Mayfield found himself a full-time member of the Roosters. In 1957, when Curtis was fifteen, the group entered a talent contest at a local school, headlined by the Medallionaires, a locally-popular group who had released a single on Mercury, "Magic Moonlight": [Excerpt: The Medallionaires, "Magic Moonlight"] The Medallionaires' manager, Eddie Thomas, had been around the music industry since he was a child – his stepfather had been the great blues pianist Big Maceo Merriweather, who had made records like "Worried Life Blues": [Excerpt: Big Maceo Merriweather, "Worried Life Blues"] Thomas hadn't had any success in the industry yet, but at this talent contest, the Roosters did a close-harmony version of Sam Cooke's "You Send Me", and Thomas decided that they had potential, especially Mayfield and Butler. He signed them to a management contract, but insisted they changed their name. They cast around for a long time to find something more suitable, and eventually decided on The Impressions, because they'd made such an impression on Thomas. The group were immediately taken by Thomas on a tour of the large indie labels, and at each one they sang a song that members of the group had written, which was inspired by a song called "Open Our Eyes" by the Gospel Clefs: [Excerpt: The Gospel Clefs, "Open Our Eyes"] Herman Lubinsky at Savoy liked the song, and suggested that Jerry speak-sing it, which was a suggestion the group took up, but he passed on them. So did Ralph Bass at King. Mercury Records gave them some session work, but weren't able to sign the group themselves -- the session was with the big band singer Eddie Howard, singing backing vocals on a remake of "My Last Goodbye", a song he'd recorded multiple times before. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down a copy of that recording, the Impressions' first, only Howard's other recordings of the song. Eventually, the group got the interest of a tiny label called Bandera, whose owner Vi Muszynski was interested -- but she had to get the approval of Vee-Jay Records, the larger label that distributed Bandera's records. Vee-Jay was a very odd label. It was one of a tiny number of Black-owned record labels in America at the time, and possibly the biggest of them, and it's interesting to compare them to Chess Records, which was based literally across the road. Both put out R&B records, but Chess was white-owned and specialised in hardcore Chicago electric blues -- Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and so on. Vee-Jay, on the other hand, certainly put out its fair share of that kind of music, but they also put out a lot of much smoother doo-wop and early soul, and they would have their biggest hits a few years after this, not with blues artists, but with the Four Seasons, and with their licensing of British records by Frank Ifield and the Beatles. Both Vee-Jay and Chess were aiming at a largely Black market, but Black-owned Vee-Jay was much more comfortable with white pop acts than white-owned Chess. Muszynski set up an audition with Calvin Carter, the head of A&R at Vee-Jay, and selected the material the group were to perform for Carter -- rather corny songs the group were not at all comfortable with. They ran through that repertoire, and Carter said they sounded good but didn't they have any originals? They played a couple of originals, and Carter wasn't interested in those. Then Carter had a thought -- did they have any songs they felt ashamed of playing for him? Something that they didn't normally do? They did -- they played that song that the group had written, the one based on "Open Our Eyes". It was called "For Your Precious Love", and Carter immediately called in another group, the Spaniels, who were favourites of the Impressions and had had hits with records like "Goodnite Sweetheart Goodnite": [Excerpt: The Spaniels, "Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite"] Carter insisted on the Impressions singing their song for the Spaniels, and Butler in particular was very worried -- he assumed that Carter just wanted to take their song and give it to the bigger group. But after they played the song again, the Spaniels all enthused about how great the Impressions were and what a big hit the Impressions were going to have with the song. They realised that Carter just *really liked* them and the song, and wanted to show them off. The group went into the studio, and recorded half a dozen takes of "For Your Precious Love", but none of them came off correctly. Eventually Carter realised what the problem was -- Mayfield wasn't a member of the musicians' union, and so Carter had hired session guitarists, but they couldn't play the song the way Mayfield did. Eventually, Carter got the guitarists to agree to take the money, not play, and not tell the union if he got Mayfield to play on the track instead of them. After that, they got it in two takes: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler and the Impressions, "For Your Precious Love"] When it came out, the record caused a major problem for the group, because they discovered when they saw the label that it wasn't credited to "The Impressions", but to "Jerry Butler and the Impressions". The label had decided that they were going to follow the strategy that had worked for so many acts before -- put out records credited to "Singer and Group", and then if they were successful develop that into two separate acts. To his credit, Butler immediately insisted that the record company get the label reprinted, but Vee-Jay said that wasn't something they could do. It was too late, the record was going out as Jerry Butler and the Impressions and that was an end to it. The group were immediately put on the promotional circuit -- there was a rumour that Roy Hamilton, the star who had had hits with "Unchained Melody" and "Ebb Tide", was going to put out a cover version, as the song was perfectly in his style, and so the group needed to get their version known before he could cut his cover. They travelled to Philadelphia, where they performed for the DJ Georgie Woods. We talked about Woods briefly last episode -- he was the one who would later coin the term "blue-eyed soul" to describe the Righteous Brothers -- and Woods was also the person who let Dick Clark know what the important Black records were, so Clark could feature them on his show. Woods started to promote the record, and suddenly Jerry Butler and the Impressions were huge -- "For Your Precious Love" made number three on the R&B charts and number eleven on the pop charts. Their next session produced another hit, "Come Back My Love", although that only made the R&B top thirty and was nowhere near as big a hit: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler and the Impressions, "Come Back My Love"] That would be the last time the original lineup of the Impressions would record together. Shortly afterwards, before a gig in Texas, Jerry Butler called the President of the record label to sort out a minor financial problem. Once the problem had been sorted out, the president put the phone down, but then one of the other Impressions, Arthur Brooks, asked if he could have a word. Butler explained that the other person had hung up, and Brooks went ballistic, saying that Butler thought he was in charge, and thought that he could do all the talking for the group. Well, if he thought that, he could do all the singing too. Brooks and his brother Richard weren't going on stage. Sam Gooden said he wasn't going on either -- he'd been an original Rooster with the Brooks brothers before Butler had joined the group, and he was siding with them. That left Curtis Mayfield. Mayfield said he was still going on stage, because he wanted to get paid. The group solidarity having crumbled, Gooden changed his mind and said he might as well go on with them, so Butler, Mayfield, and Gooden went on as a trio. Butler noticed that the audience didn't notice a difference -- they literally didn't know the Brooks brothers existed -- and that was the point at which he decided to go solo. The Impressions continued without Butler, with Mayfield, Gooden, and the Brooks brothers recruiting Fred Cash, who had sung with the Roosters when they were still in Tennessee. Mayfield took over the lead vocals and soon started attracting the same resentment that Butler had. Vee-Jay dropped the Impressions, and they started looking round for other labels and working whatever odd jobs they could. Mayfield did get some work from Vee-Jay, though, working as a session player on records by people like Jimmy Reed. There's some question about which sessions Mayfield actually played -- I've seen conflicting information in different sessionographies -- but it's at least possible that Mayfield's playing on Reed's most famous record, "Baby What You Want Me to Do": [Excerpt: Jimmy Reed, "Baby What You Want Me to Do"] And one of Mayfield's friends, a singer called Major Lance, managed to get himself a one-off single deal with Mercury Records after becoming a minor celebrity as a dancer on a TV show. Mayfield wrote that one single, though it wasn't a hit: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "I Got a Girl"] Someone else who wasn't having hits was Jerry Butler. By late 1960 it had been two years since "For Your Precious Love" and Butler hadn't made the Hot One Hundred in that time, though he'd had a few minor R&B hits. He was playing the chitlin' circuit, and in the middle of a tour, his guitarist quit. Butler phoned Mayfield, who had just received a four hundred dollar tax bill he couldn't pay -- a lot of money for an unemployed musician in 1960. Mayfield immediately joined Butler's band to pay off his back taxes, and he also started writing songs with Butler. "He Will Break Your Heart", a collaboration between the two (with Calvin Carter also credited), made the top ten on the pop chart and number one on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "He Will Break Your Heart"] Even more important for Mayfield than writing a top ten hit, though, was his experience playing for Butler at the Harlem Apollo. Not because of the shows themselves, but because playing a residency in New York allowed him to hang out at the Turf, a restaurant near the Brill Building where all the songwriters would hang out. Or, more specifically, where all the *poorer* songwriters would hang out -- the Turf did roast beef sandwiches for fifty cents if you ate standing at the counter rather than seated at a table, and it also had twenty payphones, so all those songwriters who didn't have their own offices would do their business from the phone booths. Mayfield would hang out there to learn the secrets of the business, and that meant he learned the single most important lesson there is -- keep your own publishing. These writers, some of whom had written many hit songs, were living off twenty-five-dollar advances while the publishing companies were making millions. Mayfield also discovered that Sam Cooke, the man he saw as the model for how his career should go, owned his own publishing company. So he did some research, found out that it didn't actually cost anything to start up a publishing company, and started his own, Curtom, named as a portmanteau of his forename and the surname of Eddie Thomas, the Impressions' manager. While the Impressions' career was in the doldrums, Thomas, too, had been working for Butler, as his driver and valet, and he and Mayfield became close, sharing costs and hotel rooms in order to save money. Mayfield not only paid his tax bill, but by cutting costs everywhere he could he saved up a thousand dollars, which he decided to use to record a song he'd written specifically for the Impressions, not for Butler. (This is the song I mentioned at the beginning with the potential slur in the title. If you don't want to hear that, skip forward thirty seconds now): [Excerpt: The Impressions, "Gypsy Woman"] That track got the Impressions signed to ABC/Paramount records, and it made the top twenty on the pop charts and sold half a million copies, thanks once again to promotion from Georgie Woods. But once again, the follow-ups flopped badly, and the Brooks brothers quit the group, because they wanted to be doing harder-edged R&B in the mould of Little Richard, Hank Ballard, and James Brown, not the soft melodic stuff that Mayfield was writing. The Impressions continued as a three-piece group, and Mayfield would later say that this had been the making of them. A three-part harmony group allowed for much more spontaneity and trading of parts, for the singers to move freely between lead and backing vocals and to move into different parts of their ranges, where when they had been a five-piece group everything had been much more rigid, as if a singer moved away from his assigned part, he would find himself clashing with another singer's part. But as the group were not having hits, Mayfield was still looking for other work, and he found it at OKeh Records, which was going through something of a boom in this period thanks to the producer Carl Davis. Davis took Mayfield on as an associate producer and right-hand man, primarily in order to get him as a guitarist, but Mayfield was also a valuable talent scout, backing vocalist, and especially songwriter. Working with Davis and arranger Johnny Pate, between 1963 and 1965 Mayfield wrote and played on a huge number of R&B hits for OKeh, including "It's All Over" by Walter Jackson: [Excerpt: Walter Jackson, "It's All Over"] "Gonna Be Good Times" for Gene Chandler: [Excerpt: Gene Chandler, "Gonna Be Good Times"] And a whole string of hits for Jerry Butler's brother Billy and his group The Enchanters, starting with "Gotta Get Away": [Excerpt: Billy Butler and the Enchanters, "Gotta Get Away"] But the real commercial success came from Mayfield's old friend Major Lance, who Mayfield got signed to OKeh. Lance had several minor hits written by Mayfield, but his big success came with a song that Mayfield had written for the Impressions, but decided against recording with them, as it was a novelty dance song and he didn't think that they should be doing that kind of material. The Impressions sang backing vocals on Major Lance's "The Monkey Time", written by Mayfield, which became a top ten pop hit: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "The Monkey Time"] Mayfield would write several more hits for Major Lance, including the one that became his biggest hit, "Um Um Um Um Um Um", which went top five pop and made number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Major Lance, "Um Um Um Um Um Um (Curious Mind)"] So Mayfield was making hits for other people at a furious rate, but he was somehow unable to have hits with his own group. He was still pushing the Impressions, but they had to be a weekend commitment -- the group would play gigs all over the country at weekends, but Monday through Friday Mayfield was in the studio cutting hits for other people -- and he was also trying to keep up a relationship not only with his wife and first child, but with the woman who would become his second wife, with whom he was cheating on his first. He was young enough that he could just about keep this up -- he was only twenty at this point, though he was already a veteran of the music industry -- but it did mean that the Impressions were a lower priority than they might have been. At least, they were until, in August 1963, between those two huge Major Lance hits, Curtis Mayfield finally wrote another big hit for the Impressions -- their first in their new three-piece lineup. Everyone could tell "It's All Right" was a hit, and Gene Chandler begged to be allowed to record it, but Mayfield insisted that his new song was for his group: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "It's All Right"] "It's All Right" went to number four on the pop chart, and number one R&B. And this time, the group didn't mess up the follow-up. Their next two singles, "Talking About My Baby" and "I'm So Proud", both made the pop top twenty, and the Impressions were now stars. Mayfield also took a trip to Jamaica around this time, with Carl Davis, to produce an album of Jamaican artists, titled "The Real Jamaica Ska", featuring acts like Lord Creator and Jimmy Cliff: [Excerpt: Jimmy Cliff, "Ska All Over the World"] But Mayfield was also becoming increasingly politically aware. As the Civil Rights movement in the US was gaining steam, it was also starting to expose broader systemic problems that affected Black people in the North, not just the South. In Chicago, while Black people had been able to vote for decades, and indeed were a substantial political power block, all that this actually meant in practice was that a few powerful self-appointed community leaders had a vested interest in keeping things as they were. Segregation still existed -- in 1963, around the time that "It's All Right" came out, there was a school strike in the city, where nearly a quarter of a million children refused to go to school. Black schools were so overcrowded that it became impossible for children to learn there, but rather than integrate the schools and let Black kids go to the less-crowded white schools, the head of public education in Chicago decided instead to make the children go to school in shifts, so some were going ridiculously early in the morning while others were having to go to school in the evening. And there were more difficult arguments going on around segregation among Black people in Chicago. The issues in the South seemed straightforward in comparison -- no Black person wanted to be lynched or to be denied the right to vote. But in Chicago there was the question of integrating the two musicians' union chapters in the city. Some Black proponents of integration saw merging the two union chapters as a way for Black musicians to get the opportunity to play lucrative sessions for advertising jingles and so on, which only went to white players. But a vocal minority of musicians were convinced that the upshot of integrating the unions would be that Black players would still be denied those jobs, but white players would start getting some of the soul and R&B sessions that only Black players were playing, and thought that the end result would be that white people would gentrify those areas of music and culture where Black people had carved out spaces for themselves, while still denying Black people the opportunity to move into the white spaces. Mayfield was deeply, deeply, invested in the Civil Rights movement, and the wider discourse as more radical voices started to gain strength in the movement. And he was particularly inspired by his hero, Sam Cooke, recording "A Change is Gonna Come". As the rhetoric of the Civil Rights movement was so deeply rooted in religious language, it was natural that Mayfield would turn to the gospel music he'd grown up on for his own first song about these issues, "Keep on Pushing": [Excerpt: The Impressions, "Keep on Pushing"] That became another huge hit, making the top ten on the pop chart and number one on the R&B chart. It's instructive to look at reactions to the Impressions, and to Mayfield's sweet, melodic, singing. White audiences were often dismissive of the Impressions, believing they were attempting to sell out to white people and were therefore not Black enough -- a typical reaction is that of Arnold Shaw, the white music writer, who in 1970 referred to the Impressions as Oreos -- a derogatory term for people who are "Black on the outside, white inside". Oddly, though, Black audiences seem not to have recognised the expertise of elderly white men on who was Black enough, and despite white critics' protestations continued listening to and buying the Impressions' records, and incorporating Mayfield's songs into their activism. For example, Sing For Freedom, a great oral-history-cum-songbook which collects songs sung by Civil Rights activists, collected contemporaneously by folklorists, has no fewer than four Impressions songs included, in lightly adapted versions, as sung by the Chicago Freedom Movement, the group led by Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson and others, who campaigned for an end to housing segregation in Chicago. It quotes Jimmy Collier, a Black civil rights activist and folk singer, saying "There's a rock 'n' roll group called the Impressions and we call them ‘movement fellows' and we try to sing a lot of their songs. Songs like ‘Keep On Pushin',' ‘I Been Trying,' ‘I'm So Proud,' ‘It's Gonna Be a Long, Long Winter,' ‘People Get Ready, There's a Train a-Comin',' ‘There's a Meeting Over Yonder' really speak to the situation a lot of us find ourselves in." I mention this discrepancy because this is something that comes up throughout music history -- white people dismissing Black people as not being "Black enough" and trying to appeal to whites, even as Black audiences were embracing those artists in preference to the artists who had white people's seal of approval as being authentically Black. I mention this because I am myself a white man, and it is very important for me to acknowledge that I will make similar errors when talking about Black culture, as I am here. "Keep on Pushing" was the Impressions' first political record, but by no means the most important. In 1965 the Civil Rights movement seemed to be starting to unravel, and there were increasing ruptures between the hardliners who would go on to form what would become the Black Power movement and the more moderate older generation. These ruptures were only exacerbated by the murder of Malcolm X, the most powerful voice on the radical side. Mayfield was depressed by this fragmentation, and wanted to write a song of hope, one that brought everyone together. To see the roots of the song Mayfield came up with we have to go all the way back to episode five, and to "This Train", the old gospel song which Rosetta Tharpe had made famous: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "This Train (live)"] The image of the train leading to freedom had always been a powerful one in Black culture, dating back to the Underground Railroad -- the network of people who helped enslaved people flee their abusers and get away to countries where they could be free. It was also a particularly potent image for Black people in the northern cities, many of whom had travelled there by train from the South, or whose parents had. Mayfield took the old song, and built a new song around it. His melody is closer than it might seem to that of "This Train", but has a totally different sound and feeling, one of gentle hope rather than fervent excitement. And there's a difference of emphasis in the lyrics too. "This Train", as befits a singer like Tharpe who belonged to a Pentecostal "holiness" sect which taught the need for upright conduct at all times, is mostly a list of those sinners who won't be allowed on the train. Mayfield, by contrast, had been brought up in a Spiritualist church, and one of the nine affirmations of Spiritualism is "We affirm that the doorway to reformation is never closed against any soul here or hereafter". Mayfield's song does talk about how "There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner, Whom would hurt all mankind just to save his own", but the emphasis is on how "there's hope for *all*, among those loved the most", and how "you don't need no baggage", and "don't need no ticket". It's a song which is fundamentally inclusive, offering a vision of hope and freedom in which all are welcome: [Excerpt: The Impressions, "People Get Ready"] The song quickly became one of the most important songs to the Civil Rights movement -- Doctor King called it "the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights movement" -- as well as becoming yet another big hit. We will continue to explore the way Mayfield and the Impressions reacted to, were inspired by, and themselves inspired Black political movements when we look at them again, and their political importance was extraordinary. But this is a podcast about music, and so I'll finish with a note about their musical importance. As with many R&B acts, the Impressions were massive in Jamaica, and they toured there in 1966. In the front row when they played the Carib Theatre in Kingston were three young men who had recently formed a group which they had explicitly modelled on the Impressions and their three-part harmonies. That group had even taken advantage of Jamaica's nonexistent copyright laws to incorporate a big chunk of "People Get Ready" into one of their own songs, which was included on their first album: [Excerpt: The Wailers, "One Love (1965 version)"] Bob Marley and the Wailers would soon become a lot more than an Impressions soundalike group, but that, of course, is a story for a future episode...

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Episode 122: “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke

Play Episode Listen Later May 18, 2021

Episode 122 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is a double-length (over an hour) look at “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke, at Cooke's political and artistic growth, and at the circumstances around his death. This one has a long list of content warnings at the beginning of the episode, for good reason... 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 "My Guy" by Mary Wells. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. For this episode, he also did the re-edit of the closing theme. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of songs by one artist. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick's work, it's an essential book if you're even slightly interested in the subject. Information on Allen Klein comes from Fred Goodman's book on Klein. The Netflix documentary I mention can be found here. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke's music for the beginner, and the only one to contain recordings from all four labels (Specialty, Keen, RCA, and Tracey) he recorded for. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start this episode, a brief acknowledgement -- Lloyd Price plays a minor role in this story, and I heard as I was in the middle of writing it that he had died on May the third, aged eighty-eight. Price was one of the great pioneers of rock and roll -- I first looked at him more than a hundred episodes ago, back in episode twelve -- and he continued performing live right up until the start of the coronavirus outbreak in March last year. He'll be missed. Today we're going to look at one of the great soul protest records of all time, a record that was the high point in the career of its singer and songwriter, and which became a great anthem of the Civil Rights movement. But we're also going to look at the dark side of its creator, and the events that led to his untimely death. More than most episodes of the podcast, this requires a content warning. Indeed, it requires more than just content warnings. Those warnings are necessary -- this episode will deal with not only a murder, but also sexual violence, racialised violence, spousal abuse, child sexual abuse, drug use and the death of a child, as well as being about a song which is in itself about the racism that pervaded American society in the 1960s as it does today. This is a story from which absolutely nobody comes out well, which features very few decent human beings, and which I find truly unpleasant to write about. But there is something else that I want to say, before getting into the episode -- more than any other episode I have done, and I think more than any other episode that I am *going* to do, this is an episode where my position as a white British man born fourteen years after Sam Cooke's death might mean that my perspective is flawed in ways that might actually make it impossible for me to tell the story properly, and in ways that might mean that my telling of the story is doing a grave, racialised, injustice. Were this song and this story not so important to the ongoing narrative, I would simply avoid telling it altogether, but there is simply no way for me to avoid it and tell the rest of the story without doing equally grave injustices. So I will say this upfront. There are two narratives about Sam Cooke's death -- the official one, and a more conspiratorial one. Everything I know about the case tells me that the official account is the one that is actually correct, and *as far as I can tell*, I have good reason for thinking that way. But here's the thing. The other narrative is one that is held by a lot of people who knew Cooke, and they claim that the reason their narrative is not the officially-accepted one is because of racism. I do not think that is the case myself. In fact, all the facts I have seen about the case lead to the conclusion that the official narrative is correct. But I am deeply, deeply, uncomfortable with saying that. Because I have an obligation to be honest, but I also have an obligation not to talk over Black people about their experiences of racism. So what I want to say now, before even starting the episode, is this. Listen to what I have to say, by all means, but then watch the Netflix documentary Remastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke, and *listen* to what the people saying otherwise have to say. I can only give my own perspective, and my perspective is far more likely to be flawed here than in any other episode of this podcast. I am truly uncomfortable writing and recording this episode, and were this any other record at all, I would have just skipped it. But that was not an option. Anyway, all that said, let's get on with the episode proper, which is on one of the most important records of the sixties -- "A Change is Gonna Come": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"] It's been almost eighteen months since we last looked properly at Sam Cooke, way back in episode sixty, and a lot has happened in the story since then, so a brief recap -- Sam Cooke started out as a gospel singer, first with a group called the Highway QCs, and then joining the Soul Stirrers, the most popular gospel group on the circuit, replacing their lead singer. The Soul Stirrers had signed to Specialty Records, and released records like "Touch the Hem of His Garment", written by Cooke in the studio: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Touch the Hem of His Garment"] Cooke had eventually moved away from gospel music to secular, starting with a rewrite of a gospel song he'd written, changing "My God is so wonderful" to "My girl is so lovable", but he'd released that under the name Dale Cook, rather than his own name, in case of a backlash from gospel fans: [Excerpt: Dale Cook, "Lovable"] No-one was fooled, and he started recording under his own name. Shortly after this, Cooke had written his big breakthrough hit, "You Send Me", and when Art Rupe at Specialty Records was unimpressed with it, Cooke and his producer Bumps Blackwell had both moved from Specialty to a new label, Keen Records. Cooke's first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show was a disaster -- cutting him off half way through the song -- but his second was a triumph, and "You Send Me" went to number one on both the pop and R&B charts, and sold over a million copies, while Specialty put out unreleased earlier recordings and sold over half a million copies of some of those. Sam Cooke was now one of the biggest things in the music business. And he had the potential to become even bigger. He had the looks of a teen idol, and was easily among the two or three best-looking male singing stars of the period. He had a huge amount of personal charm, he was fiercely intelligent, and had an arrogant selfishness that came over as self-confidence -- he believed he deserved everything the world could offer to him, and he was charming enough that everyone he met believed it too. He had an astonishing singing voice, and he was also prodigiously talented as a songwriter -- he'd written "Touch the Hem of His Garment" on the spot in the studio after coming in with no material prepared for the session. Not everything was going entirely smoothly for him, though -- he was in the middle of getting divorced from his first wife, and he was arrested backstage after a gig for non-payment of child support for a child he'd fathered with another woman he'd abandoned. This was a regular occurrence – he was as self-centred in his relationships with women as in other aspects of his life -- though as in those other aspects, the women in question were generally so smitten with him that they forgave him everything. Cooke wanted more than to be a pop star. He had his sights set on being another Harry Belafonte. At this point Belafonte was probably the most popular Black all-round entertainer in the world, with his performances of pop arrangements of calypso and folk songs: [Excerpt: Harry Belafonte, "Jamaica Farewell"] Belafonte had nothing like Cooke's chart success, but he was playing prestigious dates in Las Vegas and at high-class clubs, and Cooke wanted to follow his example. Most notably, at a time when almost all notable Black performers straightened their hair, Belafonte left his hair natural and cut it short. Cooke thought that this was very, very shrewd on Belafonte's part, copying him and saying to his brother L.C. that this would make him less threatening to the white public -- he believed that if a Black man slicked his hair back and processed it, he would come across as slick and dishonest, white people wouldn't trust him around their daughters. But if he just kept his natural hair but cut it short, then he'd come across as more honest and trustworthy, just an all-American boy. Oddly, the biggest effect of this decision wasn't on white audiences, but on Black people watching his appearances on TV. People like Smokey Robinson have often talked about how seeing Cooke perform on TV with his natural hair made a huge impression on them -- showing them that it was possible to be a Black man and not be ashamed of it. It was a move to appeal to the white audience that also had the effect of encouraging Black pride. But Cooke's first attempt at appealing to the mainstream white audience that loved Belafonte didn't go down well. He was booked in for a three-week appearance at the Copacabana, one of the most prestigious nightclubs in the country, and right from the start it was a failure. Bumps Blackwell had written the arrangements for the show on the basis that there would be a small band, and when they discovered Cooke would be backed by a sixteen-piece orchestra he and his assistant Lou Adler had to frantically spend a couple of days copying out sheet music for a bigger group. And Cooke's repertoire for those shows stuck mostly to old standards like "Begin the Beguine", "Ol' Man River", and "I Love You For Sentimental Reasons", with the only new song being "Mary, Mary Lou", a song written by a Catholic priest which had recently been a flop single for Bill Haley: [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, "Mary, Mary Lou"] Cooke didn't put over those old standards with anything like the passion he had dedicated to his gospel and rock and roll recordings, and audiences were largely unimpressed. Cooke gave up for the moment on trying to win over the supper-club audiences and returned to touring on rock and roll package tours, becoming so close with Clyde McPhatter and LaVern Baker on one tour that they seriously considered trying to get their record labels to agree to allow them to record an album of gospel songs together as a trio, although that never worked out. Cooke looked up immensely to McPhatter in particular, and listened attentively as McPhatter explained his views of the world -- ones that were very different to the ones Cooke had grown up with. McPhatter was an outspoken atheist who saw religion as a con, and who also had been a lifelong member of the NAACP and was a vocal supporter of civil rights. Cooke listened closely to what McPhatter had to say, and thought long and hard about it. Cooke was also dealing with lawsuits from Art Rupe at Specialty Records. When Cooke had left Specialty, he'd agreed that Rupe would own the publishing on any future songs he'd written, but he had got round this by crediting "You Send Me" to his brother, L.C. Rupe was incensed, and obviously sued, but he had no hard evidence that Cooke had himself written the song. Indeed, Rupe at one point even tried to turn the tables on Cooke, by getting Lloyd Price's brother Leo, a songwriter himself who had written "Send Me Some Lovin'", to claim that *he* had written "You Send Me", but Leo Price quickly backed down from the claim, and Rupe was left unable to prove anything. It didn't hurt Cooke's case that L.C., while not a talent of his brother's stature, was at least a professional singer and songwriter himself, who was releasing records on Checker Records that sounded very like Sam's work: [Excerpt: L.C. Cooke, "Do You Remember?"] For much of the late 1950s, Sam Cooke seemed to be trying to fit into two worlds simultaneously. He was insistent that he wanted to move into the type of showbusiness that was represented by the Rat Pack -- he cut an album of Billie Holiday songs, and he got rid of Bumps Blackwell as his manager, replacing him with a white man who had previously been Sammy Davis Jr.'s publicist. But on the other hand, he was hanging out with the Central Avenue music scene in LA, with Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Eugene Church, Jesse Belvin, and Alex and Gaynel Hodge. While his aspirations towards Rat Packdom faltered, he carried on having hits -- his own "Only Sixteen" and "Everybody Loves to Cha-Cha-Cha", and he recorded, but didn't release yet, a song that Lou Adler had written with his friend Herb Alpert, and whose lyrics Sam revised, "Wonderful World". Cooke was also starting a relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, Barbara. He'd actually had an affair with her some years earlier, and they'd had a daughter, Linda, who Cooke had initially not acknowledged as his own -- he had many children with other women -- but they got together in 1958, around the time of Cooke's divorce from his first wife. Tragically, that first wife then died in a car crash in 1959 -- Cooke paid her funeral expenses. He was also getting dissatisfied with Keen Records, which had been growing too fast to keep up with its expenses -- Bumps Blackwell, Lou Adler, and Herb Alpert, who had all started at the label with him, all started to move away from it to do other things, and Cooke was sure that Keen weren't paying him the money they owed as fast as they should. He also wanted to help some of his old friends out -- while Cooke was an incredibly selfish man, he was also someone who believed in not leaving anyone behind, so long as they paid him what he thought was the proper respect, and so he started his own record label, with his friends J.W. Alexander and Roy Crain, called SAR Records (standing for Sam, Alex, and Roy), to put out records by his old group The Soul Stirrers, for whom he wrote "Stand By Me, Father", a song inspired by an old gospel song by Charles Tindley, and with a lead sung by Johnnie Taylor, the Sam Cooke soundalike who had replaced Cooke as the group's lead singer: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Stand By Me, Father"] Of course, that became, as we heard a few months back, the basis for Ben E. King's big hit "Stand By Me". Cooke and Alexander had already started up their own publishing company, and were collaborating on songs for other artists, too. They wrote "I Know I'll Always Be In Love With You", which was recorded first by the Hollywood Flames and then by Jackie Wilson: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, "I Know I'll Always Be in Love With You"] And "I'm Alright", which Little Anthony and the Imperials released as a single: [Excerpt: Little Anthony and the Imperials, "I'm Alright"] But while he was working on rock and roll and gospel records, he was also learning to tap-dance for his performances at the exclusive white nightclubs he wanted to play -- though when he played Black venues he didn't include those bits in the act. He did, though, perform seated on a stool in imitation of Perry Como, having decided that if he couldn't match the energetic performances of people like Jackie Wilson (who had been his support act at a run of shows where Wilson had gone down better than Cooke) he would go in a more casual direction. He was also looking to move into the pop market when it came to his records, and he eventually signed up with RCA Records, and specifically with Hugo and Luigi. We've talked about Hugo and Luigi before, a couple of times -- they were the people who had produced Georgia Gibbs' soundalike records that had ripped off Black performers, and we talked about their production of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", though at this point they hadn't yet made that record. They had occasionally produced records that were more R&B flavoured -- they produced "Shout!" for the Isley Brothers, for example -- but they were in general about as bland and middle-of-the-road a duo as one could imagine working in the music industry. The first record that Hugo and Luigi produced for Cooke was a song that the then-unknown Jeff Barry had written, "Teenage Sonata". That record did nothing, and the label were especially annoyed when a recording Cooke had done while he was still at Keen, "Wonderful World", was released on his old label and made the top twenty: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Wonderful World"] Cooke's collaboration with Hugo and Luigi would soon turn into one that bore a strong resemblance to their collaboration with the Isley Brothers -- they would release great singles, but albums that fundamentally misunderstood Cooke's artistry; though some of that misunderstanding may have come from Cooke himself, who never seemed to be sure which direction to go in. Many of the album tracks they released have Cooke sounding unsure of himself, and hesitant, but that's not something that you can say about the first real success that Cooke came out with on RCA, a song he wrote after driving past a group of prisoners working on a chain gang. He'd originally intended that song to be performed by his brother Charles, but he'd half-heartedly played it for Hugo and Luigi when they'd not seen much potential in any of his other recent originals, and they'd decided that that was the hit: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Chain Gang"] That made number two on the charts, becoming his biggest hit since "You Send Me". Meanwhile Cooke was also still recording other artists for SAR -- though by this point Roy Crain had been eased out and SAR now stood for Sam and Alex Records. He got a group of Central Avenue singers including Alex and Gaynel Hodge to sing backing vocals on a song he gave to a friend of his named Johnny Morisette, who was known professionally as "Johnny Two-Voice" because of the way he could sound totally different in his different ranges, but who was known to his acquaintances as "the singing pimp", because of his other occupation: [Excerpt: Johnny Morisette, "I'll Never Come Running Back to You"] They also thought seriously about signing up a young gospel singer they knew called Aretha Franklin, who was such an admirer of Sam's that she would try to copy him -- she changed her brand of cigarettes to match the ones he smoked, and when she saw him on tour reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich -- Cooke was an obsessive reader, especially of history -- she bought her own copy. She never read it, but she thought she should have a copy if Cooke had one. But they decided that Franklin's father, the civil rights leader Rev. C.L. Franklin, was too intimidating, and so it would probably not be a good idea to get involved. The tour on which Franklin saw Cooke read Shirer's book was also the one on which Cooke made his first public stance in favour of civil rights -- that tour, which was one of the big package tours of the time, was meant to play a segregated venue, but the artists hadn't been informed just how segregated it was. While obviously none of them supported segregation, they would mostly accept playing to segregated crowds, because there was no alternative, if at least Black people were allowed in in roughly equal numbers. But in this case, Black people were confined to a tiny proportion of the seats, in areas with extremely restricted views, and both Cooke and Clyde McPhatter refused to go on stage, though the rest of the acts didn't join in their boycott. Cooke's collaboration with Hugo and Luigi remained hit and miss, and produced a few more flop singles, but then Cooke persuaded them to allow him to work in California, with the musicians he'd worked with at Keen, and with René Hall arranging rather than the arrangers they'd employed previously. While the production on Cooke's California sessions was still credited to Hugo and Luigi, Luigi was the only one actually attending those sessions -- Hugo was afraid of flying and wouldn't come out to the West Coast. The first record that came out under this new arrangement was another big hit, "Cupid", which had vocal sound effects supplied by a gospel act Cooke knew, the Sims twins -- Kenneth Sims made the sound of an arrow flying through the air, and Bobbie Sims made the thwacking noise of it hitting a target: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Cupid"] Cooke became RCA's second-biggest artist, at least in terms of singles sales, and had a string of hits like "Twistin' the Night Away", "Another Saturday Night", and "Bring it On Home to Me", though he was finding it difficult to break the album market. He was frustrated that he wasn't having number one records, but Luigi reassured him that that was actually the best position to be in: “We're getting number four, number six on the Billboard charts, and as long as we get that, nobody's gonna bother you. But if you get two or three number ones in a row, then you got no place to go but down. Then you're competition, and they're just going to do everything they can to knock you off.” But Cooke's personal life had started to unravel. After having two daughters, his wife gave birth to a son. Cooke had desperately wanted a male heir, but he didn't bond with his son, Vincent, who he insisted didn't look like him. He became emotionally and physically abusive towards his wife, beating her up on more than one occasion, and while she had been a regular drug user already, her use increased to try to dull the pain of being married to someone who she loved but who was abusing her so appallingly. Things became much, much worse, when the most tragic thing imaginable happened. Cooke had a swim in his private pool and then went out, leaving the cover off. His wife, Barbara, then let the children play outside, thinking that their three-year-old daughter Tracey would be able to look after the baby for a few minutes. Baby Vincent fell into the pool and drowned. Both parents blamed the other, and Sam was devastated at the death of the child he only truly accepted as his son once the child was dead. You can hear some of that devastation in a recording he made a few months later of an old Appalachian folk song: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "The Riddle Song"] Friends worried that Cooke was suicidal, but Cooke held it together, in part because of the intervention of his new manager, Allen Klein. Klein had had a hard life growing up -- his mother had died when he was young, and his father had sent him to an orphanage for a while. Eventually, his father remarried, and young Allen came back to the family home, but his father was still always distant. He grew close to his stepmother, but then she died as well. Klein turned up at Cooke's house two days after the baby's funeral with his own daughter, and insisted on taking Cooke and his surviving children to Disneyland, telling him "You always had your mother and father, but I lost my mother when I was nine months old. You've got two other children. Those two girls need you even more now. You're their only father, and you've got to take care of them." Klein was very similar to Cooke in many ways. He had decided from a very early age that he couldn't trust anyone but himself, and that he had to make his own way in the world. He became hugely ambitious, and wanted to reach the very top. Klein had become an accountant, and gone to work for Joe Fenton, an accountant who specialised in the entertainment industry. One of the first jobs Klein did in his role with Fenton was to assist him with an audit of Dot Records in 1957, called for by the Harry Fox Agency. We've not talked about Harry Fox before, but they're one of the most important organisations in the American music industry -- they're a collection agency like ASCAP or BMI, who collect songwriting royalties for publishing companies and songwriters. But while ASCAP and BMI collect performance royalties -- they collect payments for music played on the radio or TV, or in live performance -- Harry Fox collect the money for mechanical reproduction, the use of songs on records. It's a gigantic organisation, and it has the backing of all the major music publishers. To do this audit, Klein and Fenton had to travel from New York to LA, and as they were being paid by a major entertainment industry organisation, they were put up in the Roosevelt Hotel, where at the time the other guests included Elvis, Claude Rains, and Sidney Poitier. Klein, who had grown up in comparative poverty, couldn't help but be impressed at the money that you could make by working in entertainment. The audit of Dot Records found some serious discrepancies -- they were severely underpaying publishers and songwriters. While they were in LA, Klein and Fenton also audited several other labels, like Liberty, and they found the same thing at all of them. The record labels were systematically conning publishing companies out of money they were owed. Klein immediately realised that if they were doing this to the major publishing companies that Harry Fox represented, they must be doing the same kind of thing to small songwriters and artists, the kind of people who didn't have a huge organisation to back them up. Unfortunately for Klein, soon after he started working for Fenton, he was fired -- he was someone who was chronically unable to get to work on time in the morning, and while he didn't mind working ridiculously long hours, he could not, no matter how hard he tried, get himself into the office for nine in the morning. He was fired after only four months, and Fenton even recommended to the State of New Jersey that they not allow Klein to become a Certified Public Accountant -- a qualification which, as a result, Klein never ended up getting. He set up his own company to perform audits of record companies for performers, and he got lucky by bumping in to someone he'd been at school with -- Don Kirshner. Kirshner agreed to start passing clients Klein's way, and his first client was Ersel Hickey (no relation), the rockabilly singer we briefly discussed in the episode on "Twist and Shout", who had a hit with "Bluebirds Over the Mountain": [Excerpt: Ersel Hickey, "Bluebirds Over the Mountain"] Klein audited Hickey's record label, but was rather surprised to find out that they didn't actually owe Hickey a penny. It turned out that record contracts were written so much in the company's favour that they didn't have to use any dodgy accounting to get out of paying the artists anything. But sometimes, the companies would rip the artists off anyway, if they were particularly unscrupulous. Kirshner had also referred the rockabilly singer/songwriter duo Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen to Klein. Their big hit, "Party Doll", had come out on Roulette Records: [Excerpt: Buddy Knox, "Party Doll"] Klein found out that in the case of Roulette, the label *were* actually not paying the artists what they were contractually owed, largely because Morris Levy didn't like paying people money. After the audit, Levy did actually agree to pay Knox and Bowen what they were owed, but he insisted that he would only pay it over four years, at a rate of seventy dollars a week -- if Klein wanted it any sooner, he'd have to sue, and the money would all be eaten up in lawyers' fees. That was still better than nothing, and Klein made enough from his cut that he was able to buy himself a car. Klein and Levy actually became friends -- the two men were very similar in many ways -- and Klein learned a big lesson from negotiating with him. That lesson was that you take what you can get, because something is better than nothing. If you discover a company owes your client a hundred thousand dollars that your client didn't know about, and they offer you fifty thousand to settle, you take the fifty thousand. Your client still ends up much better off than they would have been, you've not burned any bridges with the company, and you get your cut. And Klein's cut was substantial -- his standard was to take fifty percent of any extra money he got for the artist. And he prided himself on always finding something -- though rarely as much as he would suggest to his clients before getting together with them. One particularly telling anecdote about Klein's attitude is that when he was at Don Kirshner's wedding he went up to Kirshner's friend Bobby Darin and told him he could get him a hundred thousand dollars. Darin signed, but according to Darin's manager, Klein only actually found one underpayment, for ten thousand copies of Darin's hit "Splish Splash" which Atlantic hadn't paid for: [Excerpt: Bobby Darin, "Splish Splash"] However, at the time singles sold for a dollar, Darin was on a five percent royalty, and he only got paid for ninety percent of the records sold (because of a standard clause in contracts at that time to allow for breakages). The result was that Klein found an underpayment of just four hundred and fifty dollars, a little less than the hundred thousand he'd promised the unimpressed Darin. But Klein used the connection to Darin to get a lot more clients, and he did significantly better for some of them. For Lloyd Price, for example, he managed to get an extra sixty thousand dollars from ABC/Paramount, and Price and Klein became lifelong friends. And Price sang Klein's praises to Sam Cooke, who became eager to meet him. He got the chance when Klein started up a new business with a DJ named Jocko Henderson. Henderson was one of the most prominent DJs in Philadelphia, and was very involved in all aspects of the music industry. He had much the same kind of relationship with Scepter Records that Alan Freed had with Chess, and was cut in on most of the label's publishing on its big hits -- rights he would later sell to Klein in order to avoid the kind of investigation that destroyed Freed's career. Henderson had also been the DJ who had first promoted "You Send Me" on the radio, and Cooke owed him a favour. Cooke was also at the time being courted by Scepter Records, who had offered him a job as the Shirelles' writer and producer once Florence Greenberg had split up with Luther Dixon. He'd written them one song, which referenced many of their earlier hits: [Excerpt: The Shirelles, "Only Time Will Tell"] However, Cooke didn't stick with Scepter -- he figured out that Greenberg wasn't interested in him as a writer/producer, but as a singer, and he wasn't going to record for an indie like them when he could work with RCA. But when Henderson and Klein started running a theatre together, putting on R&B shows, those shows obviously featured a lot of Scepter acts like the Shirelles and Dionne Warwick, but they also featured Sam Cooke on the top of the bill, and towards the bottom of the bill were the Valentinos, a band featuring Cooke's touring guitarist, Bobby Womack, who were signed to SAR Records: [Excerpt: The Valentinos, "It's All Over Now"] Klein was absolutely overawed with Cooke's talent when he first saw him on stage, realising straight away that this was one of the major artists of his generation. Whereas most of the time, Klein would push himself forward straight away and try to dominate artists, here he didn't even approach Cooke at all, just chatted to Cooke's road manager and found out what Cooke was like as a person. This is something one sees time and again when it comes to Cooke -- otherwise unflappable people just being absolutely blown away by his charisma, talent, and personality, and behaving towards him in ways that they behaved to nobody else. At the end of the residency, Cooke had approached Klein, having heard good things about him from Price, Henderson, and his road manager. The two had several meetings over the next few months, so Klein could get an idea of what it was that was bothering Cooke about his business arrangements. Eventually, after a few months, Cooke asked Klein for his honest opinion. Klein was blunt. "I think they're treating you like a " -- and here he used the single most offensive anti-Black slur there is -- "and you shouldn't let them." Cooke agreed, and said he wanted Klein to take control of his business arrangements. The first thing Klein did was to get Cooke a big advance from BMI against his future royalties as a songwriter and publisher, giving him seventy-nine thousand dollars up front to ease his immediate cash problems. He then started working on getting Cooke a better recording contract. The first thing he did was go to Columbia records, who he thought would be a better fit for Cooke than RCA were, and with whom Cooke already had a relationship, as he was at that time working with his friend, the boxer Muhammad Ali, on an album that Ali was recording for Columbia: [Excerpt: Muhammad Ali, "The Gang's All Here"] Cooke was very friendly with Ali, and also with Ali's spiritual mentor, the activist Malcolm X, and both men tried to get him to convert to the Nation of Islam. Cooke declined -- while he respected both men, he had less respect for Elijah Mohammed, who he saw as a con artist, and he was becoming increasingly suspicious of religion in general. He did, though, share the Nation of Islam's commitment to Black people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and presenting themselves in a clean-cut way, having the same vision of Black capitalism that many of his contemporaries like James Brown shared. Unfortunately, negotiations with Columbia quickly failed. Klein believed, probably correctly, that record labels didn't have to do anything to sell Sam Cooke's records, and that Cooke was in a unique position as one of the very few artists at that time who could write, perform, and produce hit records without any outside assistance. Klein therefore thought that Cooke deserved a higher royalty rate than the five percent industry standard, and said that Cooke wouldn't sign with anyone for that rate. The problem was that Columbia had most-favoured-nations clauses written into many other artists' contracts. These clauses meant that if any artist signed with Columbia for a higher royalty rate, those other artists would also have to get that royalty rate, so if Cooke got the ten percent that Klein was demanding, a bunch of other performers like Tony Bennett would also have to get the ten percent, and Columbia were simply not willing to do that. So Klein decided that Cooke was going to stay with RCA, but he found a way to make sure that Cooke would get a much better deal from RCA, and in a way which didn't affect any of RCA's own favoured-nations contracts. Klein had had some involvement in filmmaking, and knew that independent production companies were making films without the studios, and just letting the studios distribute them. He also knew that in the music business plenty of songwriters and producers like Leiber and Stoller and Phil Spector owned their own record labels. But up to that point, no performers did, that Klein was aware of, because it was the producers who generally made the records, and the contracts were set up with the assumption that the performer would just do what the producer said. That didn't apply to Sam Cooke, and so Klein didn't see why Cooke couldn't have his own label. Klein set up a new company, called Tracey Records, which was named after Cooke's daughter, and whose president was Cooke's old friend J.W. Alexander. Tracey Records would, supposedly to reduce Cooke's tax burden, be totally owned by Klein, but it would be Cooke's company, and Cooke would be paid in preferred stock in the company, though Cooke would get the bulk of the money -- it would be a mere formality that the company was owned by Klein. While this did indeed have the effect of limiting the amount of tax Cooke had to pay, it also fulfilled a rule that Klein would later state -- "never take twenty percent of an artist's earnings. Instead give them eighty percent of yours". What mattered wasn't the short-term income, but the long-term ownership. And that's what Klein worked out with RCA. Tracey Records would record and manufacture all Cooke's records from that point on, but RCA would have exclusive distribution rights for thirty years, and would pay Tracey a dollar per album. After thirty years, Tracey records would get all the rights to Cooke's recordings back, and in the meantime, Cooke would effectively be on a much higher royalty rate than he'd received before, in return for taking a much larger share of the risk. There were also changes at SAR. Zelda Sands, who basically ran the company for Sam and J.W., was shocked to receive a phone call from Sam and Barbara, telling her to immediately come to Chicago, where Sam was staying while he was on tour. She went up to their hotel room, where Barbara angrily confronted her, saying that she knew that Sam had always been attracted to Zelda -- despite Zelda apparently being one of the few women Cooke met who he never slept with -- and heavily implied that the best way to sort this would be for them to have a threesome. Zelda left and immediately flew back to LA. A few days later, Barbara turned up at the SAR records offices and marched Zelda out at gunpoint. Through all of this turmoil, though, Cooke managed to somehow keep creating music. And indeed he soon came up with the song that would be his most important legacy. J.W. Alexander had given Cooke a copy of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and Cooke had been amazed at "Blowin' in the Wind": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"] But more than being amazed at the song, Cooke was feeling challenged. This was a song that should have been written by a Black man. More than that, it was a song that should have been written by *him*. Black performers needed to be making music about their own situation. He added "Blowin' in the Wind" to his own live set, but he also started thinking about how he could write a song like that himself. As is often the case with Cooke's writing, he took inspiration from another song, this time "Ol' Man River", the song from the musical Showboat that had been made famous by the actor, singer, and most importantly civil rights activist Paul Robeson: [Excerpt: Paul Robeson, "Ol' Man River"] Cooke had recorded his own version of that in 1958, but now in early 1964 he took the general pace, some melodic touches, the mention of the river, and particularly the lines "I'm tired of livin' and scared of dyin'", and used them to create something new. Oddly for a song that would inspire a civil rights anthem -- or possibly just appropriately, in the circumstances, "Ol' Man River" in its original form featured several racial slurs included by the white lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein, and indeed Robeson himself in later live performances changed the very lines that Cooke would later appropriate, changing them as he thought they were too defeatist for a Black activist to sing: [Excerpt: Paul Robeson, "Ol' Man River (alternative lyrics)"] Cooke's song would keep the original sense, in his lines "It's been too hard livin' but I'm afraid to die", but the most important thing was the message -- "a change is gonna come". The session at which he recorded it was to be his last with Luigi, whose contract with RCA was coming to an end, and Cooke knew it had to be something special. Rene Hall came up with an arrangement for a full orchestra, which so overawed Cooke's regular musicians that his drummer found himself too nervous to play on the session. Luckily, Earl Palmer was recording next door, and was persuaded to come and fill in for him. Hall's arrangement starts with an overture played by the whole orchestra: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"] And then each verse features different instrumentation, with the instruments changing at the last line of each verse -- "a change is gonna come". The first verse is dominated by the rhythm section: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"] Then for the second verse, the strings come in, for the third the strings back down and are replaced by horns, and then at the end the whole orchestra swells up behind Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"] Cooke was surprised when Luigi, at the end of the session, told him how much he liked the song, which Cooke thought wouldn't have been to Luigi's taste, as Luigi made simple pop confections, not protest songs. But as Luigi later explained, "But I did like it. It was a serious piece, but still it was him. Some of the other stuff was throwaway, but this was very deep. He was really digging into himself for this one." Cooke was proud of his new record, but also had something of a bad feeling about it, something that was confirmed when he played the record for Bobby Womack, who told him "it sounds like death". Cooke agreed, there was something premonitory about the record, something ominous. Allen Klein, on the other hand, was absolutely ecstatic. The track was intended to be used only as an album track -- they were going in a more R&B direction with Cooke's singles at this point. His previous single was a cover version of Howlin' Wolf's "Little Red Rooster”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Little Red Rooster"] And his next two singles were already recorded -- a secularised version of the old spiritual "Ain't That Good News", and a rewrite of an old Louis Jordan song. Cooke was booked on to the Johnny Carson show, where he was meant to perform both sides of his new single, but Allen Klein was so overwhelmed by "A Change is Gonna Come" that he insisted that Cooke drop "Ain't That Good News" and perform his new song instead. Cooke said that he was meant to be on there to promote his new record. Klein insisted that he was meant to be promoting *himself*, and that the best promotion for himself would be this great song. Cooke then said that the Tonight Show band didn't have all the instruments needed to reproduce the orchestration. Klein said that if RCA wouldn't pay for the additional eighteen musicians, he would pay for them out of his own pocket. Cooke eventually agreed. Unfortunately, there seems to exist no recording of that performance, the only time Cooke would ever perform "A Change is Gonna Come" live, but reports from people who watched it at the time suggest that it made as much of an impact on Black people watching as the Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show two days later made on white America. "A Change is Gonna Come" became a standard of the soul repertoire, recorded by Aretha Franklin: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "A Change is Gonna Come"] Otis Redding: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "A Change is Gonna Come"] The Supremes and more. Cooke licensed it to a compilation album released as a fundraiser for Martin Luther King's campaigning, and when King was shot in 1968, Rosa Parks spent the night crying in her mother's arms, and they listened to "A Change is Gonna Come". She said ”Sam's smooth voice was like medicine to the soul. It was as if Dr. King was speaking directly to me.” After his Tonight Show appearance, Cooke was in the perfect position to move into the real big time. Allen Klein had visited Brian Epstein on RCA's behalf to see if Epstein would sign the Beatles to RCA for a million-dollar advance. Epstein wasn't interested, but he did suggest to Klein that possibly Cooke could open for the Beatles when they toured the US in 1965. And Cooke was genuinely excited about the British Invasion and the possibilities it offered for the younger musicians he was mentoring. When Bobby Womack complained that the Rolling Stones had covered his song "It's All Over Now" and deprived his band of a hit, Cooke explained to Womack first that he'd be making a ton of money from the songwriting royalties, but also that Womack and his brothers were in a perfect position -- they were young men with long hair who played guitars and drums. If the Valentinos jumped on the bandwagon they could make a lot of money from this new style. But Cooke was going to make a lot of money from older styles. He'd been booked into the Copacabana again, and this time he was going to be a smash hit, not the failure he had been the first time. His residency at the club was advertised with a billboard in Times Square, and he came on stage every night to a taped introduction from Sammy Davis Jr.: [Excerpt: Sammy Davis Jr. introducing Sam Cooke] Listening to the live album from that residency and comparing it to the live recordings in front of a Black audience from a year earlier is astonishing proof of Cooke's flexibility as a performer. The live album from the Harlem Square Club in Florida is gritty and gospel-fuelled, while the Copacabana show has Cooke as a smooth crooner in the style of Nat "King" Cole -- still with a soulful edge to his vocals, but completely controlled and relaxed. The repertoire is almost entirely different as well -- other than "Twistin' the Night Away" and a ballad medley that included "You Send Me", the material was a mixture of old standards like "Bill Bailey" and "When I Fall In Love" and new folk protest songs like "If I Had a Hammer" and "Blowin' in the Wind", the song that had inspired "A Change is Gonna Come": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Blowin' in the Wind"] What's astonishing is that both live albums, as different as they are, are equally good performances. Cooke by this point was an artist who could perform in any style, and for any audience, and do it well. In November 1964, Cooke recorded a dance song, “Shake”, and he prepared a shortened edit of “A Change is Gonna Come” to release as its B-side. The single was scheduled for release on December 22nd. Both sides charted, but by the time the single came out, Sam Cooke was dead. And from this point on, the story gets even more depressing and upsetting than it has been. On December the eleventh, 1964, Sam Cooke drove a woman he'd picked up to an out-of the-way motel. According to the woman, he tore off most of her clothes against her will, as well as getting undressed himself, and she was afraid he was going to rape her. When he went to the toilet, she gathered up all of her clothes and ran out, and in her hurry she gathered up his clothes as well. Some of Cooke's friends have suggested that she was in fact known for doing this and stealing men's money, and that Cooke had been carrying a large sum of money which disappeared, but this seems unlikely on the face of it, given that she ran to a phone box and called the police, telling them that she had been kidnapped and didn't know where she was, and could they please help her? Someone else was on the phone at the same time. Bertha Lee Franklin, the motel's manager, was on the phone to the owner of the motel when Sam Cooke found out that his clothes were gone, and the owner heard everything that followed. Cooke turned up at the manager's office naked except for a sports jacket and shoes, drunk, and furious. He demanded to know where the girl was. Franklin told him she didn't know anything about any girl. Cooke broke down the door to the manager's office, believing that she must be hiding in there with his clothes. Franklin grabbed the gun she had to protect herself. Cooke struggled with her, trying to get the gun off her. The gun went off three times. The first bullet went into the ceiling, the next two into Cooke. Cooke's last words were a shocked "Lady, you shot me". Cooke's death shocked everyone, and immediately many of his family and friends started questioning the accepted version of the story. And it has to be said that they had good reason to question it. Several people stood to benefit from Cooke's death -- he was talking about getting a divorce from his wife, who would inherit his money; he was apparently questioning his relationship with Klein, who gained complete ownership of his catalogue after his death, and Klein after all had mob connections in the person of Morris Levy; he had remained friendly with Malcolm X after X's split from the Nation of Islam and it was conceivable that Elijah Muhammad saw Cooke as a threat; while both Elvis and James Brown thought that Cooke setting up his own label had been seen as a threat by RCA, and that *they* had had something to do with it. And you have to understand that while false rape accusations basically never happen -- and I have to emphasise that here, women just *do not* make false rape accusations in any real numbers -- false rape accusations *had* historically been weaponised against Black men in large numbers in the early and mid twentieth century. Almost all lynchings followed a pattern -- a Black man owned a bit of land a white man wanted, a white woman connected to the white man accused the Black man of rape, the Black man was lynched, and his property was sold off at far less than cost to the white man who wanted it. The few lynchings that didn't follow that precise pattern still usually involved an element of sexualising the murdered Black men, as when only a few years earlier Emmett Till, a teenager, had been beaten to death, supposedly for whistling at a white woman. So Cooke's death very much followed the pattern of a lynching. Not exactly -- for a start, the woman he attacked was Black, and so was the woman who shot him -- but it was close enough that it rang alarm bells, completely understandably. But I think we have to set against that Cooke's history of arrogant entitlement to women's bodies, and his history of violence, both against his wife and, more rarely, against strangers who caught him in the wrong mood. Fundamentally, if you read enough about his life and behaviour, the official story just rings absolutely true. He seems like someone who would behave exactly in the way described. Or at least, he seems that way to me. But of course, I didn't know him, and I have never had to live with the threat of murder because of my race. And many people who did know him and have had to live with that threat have a different opinion, and that needs to be respected. The story of Cooke's family after his death is not one from which anyone comes out looking very good. His brother, L.C., pretty much immediately recorded a memorial album and went out on a tribute tour, performing his brother's hits: [Excerpt: L.C. Cooke, "Wonderful World"] Cooke's best friend, J.W. Alexander, also recorded a tribute album. Bertha Franklin sued the family of the man she had killed, because her own life had been ruined and she'd had to go into hiding, thanks to threats from his fans. Cooke's widow, Barbara, married Bobby Womack less than three months after Cooke's death -- and the only reason it wasn't sooner was that Womack had not yet turned twenty-one, and so they were not able to get married without Womack's parents' permission. They married the day after Womack's twenty-first birthday, and Womack was wearing one of Sam's suits at the ceremony. Womack was heard regularly talking about how much he looked like Sam. Two of Cooke's brothers were so incensed at the way that they thought Womack was stepping into their brother's life that they broke Womack's jaw -- and Barbara Cooke pulled a gun on them and tried to shoot them. Luckily for them, Womack had guessed that a confrontation was coming, and had removed the bullets from Barbara's gun, so there would be no more deaths in his mentor's family. Within a few months, Barbara was pregnant, and the baby, when he was born, was named Vincent, the same name as Sam and Barbara's dead son. Five years later, Barbara discovered that Womack had for some time been sexually abusing Linda, her and Sam's oldest child, who was seventeen at the time Barbara discovered this. She kicked Womack out, but Linda sided with Womack and never spoke to her mother again. Linda carried on a consensual relationship with Bobby Womack for some time, and then married Bobby's brother Cecil (or maybe it's pronounced Cee-cil in his case? I've never heard him spoken about), who also became her performing and songwriting partner. They wrote many songs for other artists, as well as having hits themselves as Womack and Womack: [Excerpt: Womack and Womack, "Teardrops"] The duo later changed their names to Zek and Zeriiya Zekkariyas, in recognition of their African heritage. Sam Cooke left behind a complicated legacy. He hurt almost everyone who was ever involved in his life, and yet all of them seem not only to have forgiven him but to have loved him in part because of the things he did that hurt them the most. What effect that has on one's view of his art must in the end be a matter for individual judgement, and I never, ever, want to suggest that great art in any way mitigates appalling personal behaviour. But at the same time, "A Change is Gonna Come" stands as perhaps the most important single record we'll look at in this history, one that marked the entry into the pop mainstream of Black artists making political statements on their own behalf, rather than being spoken for and spoken over by well-meaning white liberals like me. There's no neat conclusion I can come to here, no great lesson that can be learned and no pat answer that will make everything make sense. There's just some transcendent, inspiring, music, a bunch of horribly hurt people, and a young man dying, almost naked, in the most squalid circumstances imaginable.

america tv american new york netflix california history black father chicago las vegas fall state change british dj philadelphia new jersey price african wind touch wolf rev atlantic catholic beatles martin luther king jr gang islam columbia rolling stones west coast elvis rock and roll disneyland hammer shake bob dylan twist billboard djs klein civil rights henderson epstein sims chess luigi levy aretha franklin darin muhammad ali freed malcolm x james brown times square tonight show bmi naacp appalachian keen my god cupid roulette specialty cooke tilt wonderful world sar greenberg rosa parks billie holiday tragically tony bennett sam cooke johnny carson certified public accountants rock music fenton rca hickey hem sidney poitier emmett till smokey robinson stand by me everybody loves nat king cole harry belafonte phil spector dionne warwick womack ascap british invasion isley brothers comets rat pack copacabana cee sammy davis jr mary lou howlin blowin gonna come ed sullivan show herb alpert ben e king showboat stoller scepter cha cha cha bobby womack rca records imperials bobby darin night away jackie wilson brian epstein perry como claude rains bill bailey belafonte leiber robeson shirelles elijah muhammad splish splash louis jordan allen klein if i had lou adler roosevelt hotel kirshner freewheelin mary wells do you remember rupe lion sleeps tonight central avenue lloyd price little anthony oscar hammerstein johnny guitar watson alan freed johnnie taylor twistin zek beguine my guy jeff barry lavern baker shirer peter guralnick don kirshner morris levy another saturday night clyde mcphatter soul stirrers when i fall in love georgia gibbs his garment valentinos harry fox agency harlem square club jesse belvin freewheelin' bob dylan art rupe eugene church

FTLOA CLI "JUST BREATHE"

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2021 59:54

Celebrating our 5th season wooohooo!!! Bobby McFerrin, Rescue, The A Cappellian, Dedication, The Real Group, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, Dixie Hummingbirds, Sam Robson, Sound Stage, Naturally 7 feat Michael Bublé, Sisters, The Martins, Breath of Life Quartet, Discovery Singers, and The A Cappellian

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Episode 28: Gospel Memories - May 8, 2021

gospel alabama memories this mother soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2021 59:21

This Mother's Day salute features music from the Gospel Harmonettes, Soul Stirrers, Bessie Griffin, Helen Robinson Youth Chorus, Gospel Landers, Five Blind Boys of Alabama, Bishop Rance Allen (pictured), and others.

FTLOA CXXXVI "WHAT IF"

rescue breath element vocal singers sam cooke group therapy choral first call anthony brown dennis ross soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 12, 2021 59:58

THIS IS MY 150TH EPISODE OF FOR THE LOVE OF A CAPPELLA !!! A Different Affect, A Special Blend, In Rare Form Vocal Blend, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, The Breath of Life Quartet, David Musonda, Thakoza, In Rare Form Vocal Blend, Anthony Brown and Group Therapy, Dennis Ross and Sent Forth, First Call, The heritage Singers, Che Chin King, 7th Element, Rescue, and The A Cappellian.

Amazing Grace

Song Sung New. Uncovering Cover Versions.

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 14, 2021 35:32

How many times is Amazing Grace sung each year? What year were the lyrics written? Who wrote the melody? Join Stevie Nix as he answers all these questions and more.WARNING: This episode contains traces of slave trader John Newton.Featured artists [in alphabetical order]:Garth BrooksJudy CollinsAni DiFrancoBryan FerryAretha FranklinPenny GoodwinGurrumul Daniel LanoisThe LemonheadsYo-Yo MaElvis PresleyPaul RobesonTim RogersSacred Harp Choir The Soul StirrersSufjan StevensIke & Tina Turner Join Stevie on Spotify. He's just a click away.20 Songs To Play On A Sunday Morning #1

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Episode 18: February 27, 2021

black history month zambia lusaka soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2021 59:14

This episode features a Black History Month set, plus music from the Soul Stirrers, Sallie Martin Singers, Walter Hawkins & Love Center Choir, Salem Travelers (pictured), a 1963 acetate of a cappella male quartet singing from Lusaka, Zambia, and more.

FTLOA CXLVII "SOUNDS OF BLACKNESS"

Southern Songs and Stories

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2021 59:58

Stephen Murphy, Jesse Campbell, Sam Robson (feat: Vade, Fiona Donker), Javon and Jarrard, 3 AM, Take 6, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, Golden Gate Quartet, Aeolians, In One Accord, Resound, Sounds of Blackness, Bobby McFerrin, The A Cappellian, and David Musonda.

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Fire and Water Records: Sam Cooke

Fire and Water Records

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 19, 2021 118:32

Cupid draw back your bow / and let your arrow go / straight to my listener's ears so they can hear this all new episode of Fire and Water Records! In honor of Black History Month, Ryan Daly and special guest Herman Louw shine the spotlight on pioneering singer-songwriter, the King of Soul, Sam Cooke. Tune in as the guys share their favorite Sam Cooke hits (and misses) and discuss the legendary singer's too-brief career ending in his controversial death. What's Ryan's favorite song of all time? What album does he think is perfect? Listen and find out! Track list "You Send Me" "Another Saturday Night" "Cupid" "(What A) Wonderful World" "Only Sixteen" "Get Yourself Another Fool" "Twistin' the Night Away" "A Change is Gonna Come" "Teenage Sonata" "Shake, Rattle and Roll" "Bring It On Home to Me" Additional songs: "One More River to Cross" by The Soul Stirrers; "Meet Me At Mary's Place", "Having a Party", "(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons", "(Don't Fight It) Feel It" (Live), "Bring It On Home to Me" (Live). Let us know what you think! Leave a comment or send an email to: RDalyPodcast@gmail.com. Like the FIRE AND WATER RECORDS Facebook page at: This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK. Visit our WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com/ Follow us on TWITTER – https://twitter.com/FWPodcasts Like our FACEBOOK page – https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Subscribe to FIRE AND WATER RECORDS on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fire-and-water-records/id1458818655 Or subscribe via iTunes as part of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST: http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/the-fire-and-water-podcast/id463855630 Support FIRE AND WATER RECORDS and the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Thanks for listening!

soul water change fire cross track records black history month shake hashtags cupid sam cooke rattle gonna come night away ryan daly twistin what a wonderful world bring it on home me live another saturday night soul stirrers fire and water podcast network fwpodcasts fwpodcastnetwork fire and water podcast rdalypodcast herman louw

The Sonic and Existential Transformation of Amythyst Kiah

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 19, 2021 38:41

When people talk about artists like Aretha Franklin, St. Vincent, Paul Brady and Sam Cooke, they tend to talk about these artists’ best known work, their music that came after their formative years. For Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke, her Columbia Records sides and his time in The Soul Stirrers tend to get glossed over. For the casual fan, who remembers that St. Vincent got her start in The Polyphonic Spree, or that Paul Brady once was known as a Celtic artist? In the years to come, look for a similar phenomenon with Amythyst Kiah. This is not to minimize the work she has already released, which includes two fine records of songs ranging from covers of classics like “Grinnin’ In Your Face” to her own originals like “Fake Plastic Trees”, and of course her award-winning stint in the roots music supergroup Our Native Daughters. Those are all well worth celebrating, but in the long run they just might be considered the prologue to a much larger story. Five or ten years from now, most people that hear the name Amythyst Kiah may likely think of her forthcoming album Wary + Strange as the launching point of her career. Amythyst Kiah performs at the No Contact Concert Series 08/22/20 Thanks to Amythyst Kiah for sharing her time with us, and for being on the show. Thanks to you for dropping by, and I hope you might reach out to someone you know who is a fan of Amythyst Kiah or Our Native Daughters, or who might be, and let them know about this podcast. You can subscribe to the series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, Pandora, NPR One -- most every platform where you can find podcasts. And once you subscribe, it helps even more when you give it a good rating and a review. Spreading awareness by giving this series a top rating, and even more so with a review, will make Southern Songs and Stories and the artists it profiles more likely to be found by more people just like you. Southern Songs and Stories is a part of the podcast lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available here. You can also hear new episodes of this podcast on Bluegrass Planet Radio here. Thanks to Corrie Askew for producing the radio adaptations of this series on public radio WNCW, where we worked with Joshua Meng, who wrote and performed our theme songs. This is Southern Songs and Stories: the music of the South and the artists who make it. - Joe KendrickSongs heard in this episode:“Darlin’ Corey” by Amythyst Kiah from Dig, excerpt“Trouble So Hard” by Amythyst Kiah from Amythyst Kiah & Her Chest Of Glass, excerpt“Black Myself” by Amythyst Kiah from Wary + Strange

Episode 15: Valentines Day Special 02 14 2021 part two

Pacific Street Blues and Americana

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 17, 2021 67:03

21.The Soul Stirrers (feat Johnnie Taylor) / The Love of God 22.Love is Plentiful / Staple Singers 23.I Never Love a Man / Aretha Franklin 24.Johnny Winter / Sweet Love and an EVil WOman 25.Love Ain't My Favorite Word / King Fish 24.I Love You / Asie Payton 25.Ain't No Love, in the Heart of the City / Walter Wolfman Washington 26.Derek & the Dominoes / Why Does Love Got to be So Sad 27.Joe Bonamassa / Too Much Ain't Enough Love 28.Stevie Ray Vaughan / Ain't Gone'N Give Up On Love 29.Bonnie Raitt / I Can't Make You Love Me 30.Led Zeppelin / All of My Love 31.Stevie Van Zandt / Love on the Wrong Side of Town 32.Delbert McClinton / Giving It Up for You Love

love heart valentines day blues pacific no love wrong side you love love ain soul stirrers galusha

Episode 13: January 31, 2021 - part two

Pacific Street Blues and Americana

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2021 79:44

19.Bette Smith / Song for a Friend 20.Joe Bonamassa / I Didn't Think She Would Do It 21.Buddy Guy / Stone Crazy 22.Hector Anchondo / Black Magic Woman 23.New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Riders (feat Alvin Youngblood Hart) / Pony Blues 24.Aretha Franklin / Spirit in the Dark 25.Mahalia Jackson / I'm On My Way 26.The Chosen Gospel Singers (feat Lou Rawls) / No Room in the Hotel 27.The Soul Stirrers (feat Sam Cooke) / One More River 28.Bruce Springsteen / If I Were a Priest 29.The Honeycutters / What's So Funny ABout Peach, Love, & Understanding 30.Matt Cox / July Sun 31.Stephen Monroe / There Was a Time 328.Laura Rain & Caesars / The Deal 33.Kris Lager Band /Ministers of the New Feel Good Funk 34.Indigenous / Things We Do 35.Low Cut Connie / Now You know

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Fuego En La Pista de Baile #13 Especial Sam Cooke - 20 Enero 2021

Podcast de iPop Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2021 68:18

Fuego en la Pista de Baile, los éxitos y las novedades más underground en www.ipopfm.com, cada miércoles de 20 a 21 horas. Hoy estpecial Sam Cooke Tracklist: 1. Sam Cooke - Chain Gang 2. The Soul Stirrers – Jesus Gave Me Water 3. The Soul Stirrers – Joy, Joy, To My Soul. 4. Ray Charles – I got a woman 5. Dale Cook – Lovable 6. Sam Cooke – You Send Me 7. Dale Cook – I’ll running back to you 8. Sam Cooke - Blue Moon 9. Sam Cooke – Only Sixteen 10. Sam Cooke - Wonderful World 11. Sam Cooke- Cupid 12. The Rolling Stones – It’s all over now 13. Aretha Franklin – Good Times 14. Sam Cooke - Twistin’ the Night Away 15. Sam Cooke - Havin’ a party 16. Sam Cooke - Bring It On Home To Me 17. Bob Dylan – Blowing in The Wind 18. Sam Cooke – Blowing in the wind 19. Sam Cooke – You gotta move 20. Sam Cooke – A Change is Gonna Come 21. Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come

change rolling stones bob dylan enero aretha franklin fuego blowing ray charles baile sam cooke pista soul stirrers

The Original Soul Stirrers - Divine Love - 12:4:20, 4.37 PM

The Gospel Greats

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 4, 2020 3:38

Song title: Divine LoveSong by: The Original Soul Stirrers with JJ FarleyPodcast vocals: Gail NoblesPhoto credit: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6253529(Singing)Today's topic is Divine Love from the Original Soul Stirrers with JJ Farley.The Soul Stirrers have been singing for a long time. According to their bio, their career spans over eighty years. They had a major influence on soul, doo top. and Motown, some of the secular music that owed much to gospel. The Soul Stirrers are the ones that brought Sam Cooke into the limelight. But the song "Divine Love" is by the Original Soul Stirrers with JJ Farley. The Label is Malaco Records. Divine Love is a beautiful gospel song. What is divine love? Divine love is when you receive God's love. The lead singing Soul Stirrer mentions in the song that when he was just about to give life up, God stopped and saved his life. So Divine Love is the love of God.(Singing)1 John 4:8 He that liveth not knowers not God; for God is love. I'm Gail Nobles and you're listening to a show about The Gospel Greats.

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Gospel Memories - October 31, 2020

gospel african americans memories rev birds sons james cleveland soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2020 58:25

This episode includes the first known recording by an African-American gospel singer (1924), plus selections by the Sons of the Birds, Mollie Mae Gates, Soul Stirrers, Waldo Singers, Rev. James Cleveland & Charles Fold Singers, and others.

Episode 94: "Stand By Me", by Ben E. King

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 18, 2020 36:35

Episode ninety-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King, and at the later career of the Drifters. 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 "If I Had a Hammer" by Trini López. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This 3-CD set has all Ben E. King's recordings, both solo and with the Drifters, the Crowns, and LaVern Baker, up to 1962. This episode follows on from episode seventy-five, on "There Goes My Baby". I'm not going to recommend a Drifters compilation, because I know of none that actually have only the original hit recordings without any remakes or remixes. The disclaimer in episode seventy-five also applies here -- I may have used an incorrect version of a song here, because of the sloppy way the Drifters' music is packaged. My main resource in putting this episode together was Marv Goldberg's website, and his excellent articles on both the early- and late-period Drifters, Bill Pinkney's later Original Drifters, the Five Crowns, and Ben E. King. Lonely Avenue, a biography of Doc Pomus by Alex Halberstadt, helped me with the information on Pomus. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller's side of the story well. And Bill Millar's book on the Drifters, while it is more a history of 50s vocal group music generally using them as a focus than a biography of the group, contains some interesting material. 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 song that ties together several of the threads we've looked at in previous episodes. We're going to look at a song that had its roots in a gospel song that had been performed by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, that involves the Drifters, Leiber and Stoller, and Phil Spector, and which marks the highpoint of the crossover from gospel to pop audiences that had been started by Ray Charles. We're going to look at "Stand By Me", by Ben E King. [Excerpt: Ben E King, "Stand By Me"] When we left the Drifters, they'd hit a legal problem. When the contracts for the individual members had been sold to George Treadwell, the owner of the Drifters' name, Ben E King's contract had not been sold with the rest. This had meant that while King continued to sing lead on the records, including the first few big hits of this new lineup of Drifters, he wasn't allowed to tour with them, and so they'd had to bring in a soundalike singer, Johnnie Lee Williams, to sing his parts on stage. So there were now five Drifters in the studio, but only four of them in the touring group. That might seem like an unworkable arrangement for any length of time, and so it turned out, but at first this was very successful. Leiber and Stoller continued producing records for this new Drifters lineup, but didn't tend to write for them. They were increasingly tiring of writing to a teenage audience that didn't really share their tastes, and were starting to move into writing for adult stars like Peggy Lee. And so Leiber and Stoller increasingly relied on songs by other writers, and one team they particularly relied on was Pomus and Shuman. You'll remember we've talked about them in association with both the Drifters and Leiber and Stoller previously, and that they'd been the ones who'd discovered the Ben E. King lineup of the Drifters. Doc Pomus was one of the great R&B songwriters of the fifties, but by 1960 he and Mort Shuman, who was thirteen years younger than him, had written a whole string of hits for white performers like Fabian, Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon, and Bobby Darin. A typical example of the stuff they were writing was "Two Fools" for Frankie Avalon: [Excerpt: Frankie Avalon, "Two Fools"] They were one of the hottest teams in the Brill Building, but they still had a sensibility for the R&B music that the Drifters had their roots in, and so they were the perfect writers to provide crossover hits for the group, and that's what they did. They'd already written "If You Cry True Love, True Love" for the group, which had gone to number thirty-three and which had been the only Drifters single on which Williams had taken a lead vocal, and now they wrote a song for King to sing, "This Magic Moment": [Excerpt: Ben E. King and the Drifters, "This Magic Moment"] That made number sixteen on the pop charts. But the next song they wrote for the group was a much bigger success, and a far more personal song. Pomus was paraplegic after having had polio as a child, and either used crutches or a wheelchair to get around. His wife, though, was younger, and was an actor and dancer. On their wedding day, Pomus was unable to dance with her himself, and watched as she danced with a succession of other people. The feeling stayed with him, and a few years later, he turned those thoughts into a set of lyrics, which Shuman then put to music with a vaguely Latin feel, like many of the Drifters' recent hits. The result was a number one record, and one of the all-time classic songs of the rock and roll era: [Excerpt: Ben E. King and the Drifters, "Save the Last Dance For Me"] That song has gone on to be one of the most covered songs of all time, with recordings by Tina Turner, Leonard Cohen, Buck Owens, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Swinging Blue Jeans, Harry Nilsson, and Bruce Willis, among many others. It would be the Drifters' only number one on the pop charts, and it was also Ben E King's last single with the Drifters, after King's manager Lover Patterson came to an agreement with the Drifters' manager George Treadwell that would let King move smoothly into a solo career. There might have been more to it than that, as there seems to have been a lot of negotiation going on around the group's future at this time. There were reports, for example, that King Records were negotiating to buy the Drifters' contract from Atlantic, which would have been interesting -- it's hard to see the group continuing to have success at King, which didn't have Leiber and Stoller, and which put out very different records from Atlantic. But either way, the result was that Ben E. King started performing solo, and indeed by the time "Save the Last Dance" came out, he had already released a couple of solo records. The first of these was not a success, and nor was the second, a duet with LaVern Baker: [Excerpt: Ben E. King and LaVern Baker, "How Often"] But the third was something else. At this point, as a favour to their old friend Lester Sill, Leiber and Stoller were mentoring a kid that Sill thought had promise, named Phil Spector, who we've talked about before in the episode on The Gamblers, but who had now moved over to New York for a time. Spector was staying with Leiber, and would follow him around literally everywhere, claiming that he was so traumatised by his father's death that he couldn't be left alone at any time. Leiber found Spector annoying, but owed Sill a favour, and so kept working with him. And Spector kept pestering Leiber to collaborate with him on some songs. Leiber told Spector, "No, I write with Mike Stoller", to which Spector would reply, "Well, he can write with us too." Leiber explained to him that that wasn't how things worked, and that if there was any collaboration, it would be Leiber and Stoller letting Spector write with them, not Spector graciously allowing Stoller to write with him and Leiber. Spector said that that was what he had meant, of course. Leiber and Stoller reluctantly agreed that Spector could write with them, but then Stoller was unable to turn up to the writing session. Spector persuaded Leiber to go ahead and just write a song with him since Stoller wasn't around. He agreed, and they came up with a song called "Spanish Harlem", to which Stoller later added a prominent instrumental line, for which he didn't claim credit, because he thought that Spector would only whine, and he didn't need the hassle. Or at least, that's the story that normally gets told -- there are people who knew Ritchie Valens who say that the marimba riff on the record, which became the most defining feature of the song, was actually something that Valens had been regularly playing in the months before he died. According to them, Spector, who moved in the same circles as Valens, must have stolen the riff from him. I tend to believe Stoller's version of the story myself, but either way, Leiber, Stoller, and Spector played the song to Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun as a trio, with Stoller on piano, Spector on guitar, and Leiber singing. They agreed it should be on the B-side of the next single by King, though the song was popular enough that the record was soon flipped, and "Spanish Harlem" made the top ten: [Excerpt: Ben E. King, "Spanish Harlem"] But that wasn't even the most important record they made at that session, because after recording it, they decided to record a song that King had written for the Drifters, but which they had turned down. King had brought in the basic idea for the song, and Leiber had helped him finish off the lyric, while Stoller had helped with the music -- the resulting songwriting credit gave fifty percent of the royalties to King, and twenty-five percent each to Leiber and Stoller, as a result. King's song had a long prehistory before he wrote it, and like many early soul songs it had its basis in gospel music. The original source for the song is a spiritual from 1905 by Rev. Charles Albert Tindley, which had been recorded by various people, including Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Stand By Me"] But the proximate influence for the song was a song that Sam Cooke had written for his old group, the Soul Stirrers, the year before, which had in turn been inspired by Tindley's song. The lead vocal on the Soul Stirrers' record was by Johnnie Taylor, a friend of Cooke's who had replaced Cooke in his first group, the Highway QCs, and then replaced him in his second one, because he sounded exactly like Cooke: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Stand By Me, Father"] King idolised Cooke, and was inspired by that record to come up with his own variant on the song. Working with Leiber and Stoller, he carefully crafted his secular adaptation of it, writing a lyric that worked equally well as a gospel song or as a song to a lover, other than the words "darling, darling" in the chorus. The chord sequence they used was a simple adaptation of the standard doo-wop chord changes. On a normal doo-wop song, the chords would go I, minor vi, IV, V, with each chord taking up the same amount of time, like this: [demonstrates on guitar] Stoller took those changes, and made the I and minor vi last two bars each, [demonstrates] then had the IV and V chords both last a bar, then go to two more bars of the I chord. [demonstrates] That bar of IV, bar of V, two bars of I thing is almost what you get at the end of a twelve-bar blues, except there you go V, IV, I, I, rather than IV, V, I, I. So to compare, here's the end of a twelve-bar blues: [demonstrates] And here's what Stoller did again: [demonstrates] So effectively Stoller has taken the two most hackneyed chord sequences in rock and roll music, and hybridised them to turn them into a single new sequence that's instantly recognisable: [demonstrates on guitar] In later years, Leiber always gave Stoller the credit for the song's success, saying that while the lyrics and melody were good, and King's performance exceptional, it was the bass line that Stoller came up with which made the song the success it was. I agree, to a large extent -- but that bassline is largely just following the root notes of the chord sequence that Stoller had written. But it's one of the most immediately recognisable pieces of music of the early sixties: [Excerpt: Ben E. King, "Stand By Me"] The record sounded remarkably original, for something that was made up almost entirely out of repurposed elements from other songs, and it shows more clearly than perhaps any other song that originality doesn't mean creating something entirely ab initio, but can mean taking a fresh look at things that are familiar, and putting just a slight twist on them. In particular, one thing that doesn't get noted enough is just how much of a departure the song was lyrically. People had been reworking gospel ideas into secular ones for years -- we've already looked at Ray Charles doing this, and at Sam Cooke, and there were many other examples, like Little Walter turning "This Train" into "My Babe". But in most cases those songs required wholesale lyrical reworking. "Stand By Me" is different, it brings the lyrical concerns and style of gospel firmly into the secular realm. "If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall, and the mountains should crumble to the sea" is an apocalyptic vision, not "Candy's sweet/And honey too/There's not another quite, quite as sweet as you", which were the lyrics Sam Cooke wrote when he turned a song about how God is wonderful into one about how his girl is loveable. This new type of more gospel-inflected lyric would become very common in the next few years, especially among Black performers. Another building block in the music that would become known as soul had been put in place. The record went to number four on the charts, and it looked like he was headed for a huge career. But the next few singles he released didn't do so well -- he recorded a version of the old standard "Amor" which made number nineteen, and then his next two records topped out at sixty-six and fifty-six. He did get back in the pop top twenty with a song co-written by his wife and Ahmet Ertegun, "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)", which reached number eleven and became an R&B standard: [Excerpt: Ben E. King, "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)"] But as many people did at the time, he tried to move into the more lucrative world of adult supper-club singers, rather than singing R&B. While his version of "I Who Have Nothing" -- a French song that has since become a standard, and whose English lyrics were written for King by Leiber and Stoller -- managed to reach number twenty-nine, everything else did terribly. He sang "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "What Now My Love?" perfectly well, but that wasn't what the audience wanted from him. He made some great records in the later 60s, like "What Is Soul": [Excerpt: Ben E. King "What Is Soul?"] But even teaming up with Solomon Burke, Don Covay, Joe Tex, and Arthur Conley as The Soul Clan didn't help him kickstart his recording career: [Excerpt: The Soul Clan, "Soul Meeting"] He asked to be let go from his contract with Atlantic in 1969, and spent a few years in the early seventies recording for small labels. Meanwhile, the Drifters were continuing without King. After King left, Atlantic started releasing whatever material they had in their vaults, both songs with King's leads and older records from the earlier line-up of Drifters. But they were about to have even more personnel shifts. When they were on tour and got to Mobile, Alabama, Johnny Lee Williams said that he was just going to stay there and not continue on the tour -- he was sick of not getting to sing lead vocals, and he came from Mobile anyway. Williams went on to join a group called the Embraceables, who released this with him singing lead: [Excerpt: The Embraceables, "My Foolish Pride"] That was later rereleased as by The Implaceables, for reasons I've not been able to discover. The Drifters got in a replacement for Williams, James Poindexter, but he turned out to have stage fright, and the group spent several months as a trio, before being joined by new lead singer Rudy Lewis. And then Elsbeary Hobbs, the group's bass singer, was drafted, and the group got in a couple of different singers before settling on Tommy Evans, who had sung with the old versions of the Drifters in the fifties. The new lineup, Rudy Lewis, Charlie Thomas, Dock Green, and Tommy Evans, would be one of the group's longest-lasting lineups, lasting more than a year, and would record hits like "Up On the Roof", by Goffin and King: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Up On the Roof"] But then Dock Green left the group. He and Tommy Evans joined another group -- even though Evans was also still in the Drifters. The Drapers, the group they joined, was managed by Lover Patterson, Ben E. King's manager, and had been given a name that sounded as much like "The Drifters" as possible. As well as Green and Evans, it also had Johnny Moore and Carnation Charlie Hughes, who had been in the same 1956 lineup of the Drifters that Tommy Evans had been in. That lineup of the Drapers released one single that didn't do particularly well: [Excerpt: The Drapers, "(I Know) Your Love Has Gone Away"] The new Drifters lineup, without Dock Green, recorded "On Broadway", a song that Leiber and Stoller had co-written with the Brill Building team of Mann and Weill. The guitar on the record was by Phil Spector -- he was by that point a successful producer, but Leiber and Stoller had bumped into him on the way to the session and invited him to sit in: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "On Broadway"] Tommy Evans then also left the Drifters, and was replaced by Johnny Terry, leaving a lineup of Rudy Lewis, Charlie Thomas, Gene Pearson, and Johnny Terry. But Rudy Lewis, the lead singer of the group since just after King had left, was thinking of going solo, and even released one solo single: [Excerpt: Rudy Lewis, "I've Loved You So Long"] That wasn't a success, but George Treadwell wanted some insurance in case Lewis left, so he got Johnny Moore -- who had been in the group in the fifties and had just left the Drapers -- to join, and for a few months Lewis and Moore traded off leads in the studio. One song that they recorded during 1963, but didn't release, was "Only in America", written for them by Leiber and Stoller. Leiber and Stoller had intended the song to be a sly satire, with Black people singing about the American dream, but Atlantic worried that in the racial climate of 1963, the satire would seem tasteless, so they took the Drifters' backing track and got Jay and the Americans, a white group, to record new vocals, turning it into a straightforward bit of boosterism: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Only in America"] Tragedy struck on the day the Drifters recorded what would be their last US top ten hit, the twenty-first of May 1964. Johnny Moore bumped into Sylvia Vanterpool, of Mickey and Sylvia, and she said "thank God it wasn't you". He didn't know what she was talking about, and she told him that Rudy Lewis had died suddenly earlier that day. The group went into the studio anyway, and recorded the songs that had been scheduled, including one called "I Don't Want To Go On Without You" which took on a new meaning in the circumstances. But the hit from the session was "Under the Boardwalk", with lead vocals from Moore: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Under the Boardwalk"] This version of the group -- Johnny Moore, Charlie Thomas, Gene Pearson, and Johnny Terry, would be the longest-lasting of all the versions of the group managed by George Treadwell, staying together a full two years. But after "Under the Boardwalk", which went to number four, they had no more top ten hits in the US. The best they could do was scrape the top twenty with "Saturday Night at the Movies": [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Saturday Night at the Movies"] There were several more lineup changes, but the big change came in 1967 when George Treadwell died. His wife, Faye, took over the management of the group, and shortly after that, Charlie Thomas -- the person who had been in the group for the longest continuous time, nine years at that point, decided to leave. There were a lot more squabbles and splinter groups, and by 1970 the Drifters' career on Atlantic was over. By this point, there were three different versions of The Drifters. There was a group called The Original Drifters, which had formed in 1958 after the first set of Drifters had been fired, and was originally made up entirely of members of the early-fifties lineups, but which was now a revolving-door group based around Bill Pinkney, the bass singer of the Clyde McPhatter lineup, and stayed that way until Pinkney's death in 2007. Then there was a version of the Drifters that consisted of Dock Green, Charlie Thomas, and Elsbeary Hobbs, the people who had been in Ben E. King's version of the group. Charlie Thomas won the right to use the name in the USA in 1972, and continues touring with his own group there to this day, though no more of that lineup of the Drifters are with him. And then there was a UK-based group, managed by Faye Treadwell, with Johnny Moore as lead singer. That group scored big UK hits when the group moved to the UK in 72, with re-releases of mid-sixties records that had been comparative flops at the time -- "Saturday Night at the Movies", "At the Club", and "Come On Over to My Place" all made the UK top ten in 1972, and Moore's Drifters would have nine more top ten hits with new material in the UK between 1973 and 76. And Ben E. King, meanwhile, had signed again to Atlantic, and had a one-off top ten hit with "Supernatural Thing" in 1975: [Excerpt: Ben E. King, "Supernatural Thing"] But other than that he'd continued to have far less chart success than his vocal talents deserved, and in the eighties he moved to the UK and joined the UK version of the Drifters, singing his old hits on the nostalgia circuit with them, and adding more authenticity to the Johnny Moore lineup of the group. He spent several years like that, until in 1986 his career had a sudden resurgence, when the film Stand By Me came out and his single was used as the theme. On the back of the film's success, the song reentered the top ten, twenty-five years after its initial success, and made number one in the UK. As a result, King became the first person to have hit the top ten in the US in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties -- a remarkable record for someone who had had relatively few hits. A greatest hits collection of King's records made the top twenty in the UK, as well, and King left the Drifters to once again become a solo artist. But this is where we say goodbye to King, and to the Drifters, and to Leiber and Stoller as songwriters. The UK version of the Drifters carried on with Johnny Moore as lead singer until he died in 1998, and up to that point it was reasonable to think of that group as a real version of the Drifters, because Moore had sung with the group on hits in the fifties and sixties, and in the UK in the seventies – roughly eighty percent of records released as by The Drifters had had Moore singing on them. But after Moore's death, it gets very confusing, with the Treadwell family apparently abandoning the trademark and moving back to the US, and then changing their mind, resulting in a series of lawsuits. The current UK version of the Drifters has nobody who was in the group before 2010, and is managed by George and Faye Treadwell's daughter. They still fill medium-sized theatres on large national tours, because their audiences don't seem to care, so long as they can hear people singing "Up On the Roof" and "On Broadway", "There Goes My Baby" and "Save the Last Dance For Me". In total thirty-four different people were members of the Drifters during their time with Atlantic Records. It's the only case I know where a group identity was genuinely bigger than the members, where whoever was involved, somehow they carried on making exceptional records. Leiber and Stoller, meanwhile, will turn up again, once more, next year, as record executives, collaborating with another figure we've seen several times before to run a record label. But this is the last record we'll look at with them as a songwriting team. We've been following their remarkable career since episode fifteen, and they would continue writing great songs for a huge variety of artists, but "Stand By Me" would be the last time they would come up with something that would change the music industry. It was the end of a truly remarkable run, and one which stands as one of the great achievements in twentieth century popular music. And Ben E. King, who was, other than Clyde McPhatter, the only member of the Drifters to ever break away and become a solo success, spent the last twenty-nine years of his life touring as a solo artist off the renewed success of his greatest contribution to music. He died in 2015, but as long as people listen to rock, pop, soul, or R&B, there'll be people listening to "Stand By Me".

united states america god american new york history black movies english uk americans french stand club green alabama train broadway rev atlantic amor mobile cd latin iv rock and roll hammer evans last dance roof bruce willis saturday night true love tina turner leonard cohen cooke tilt ray charles crowns sam cooke rock music atlantic records stand by me jerry lee lewis phil spector spector boardwalk drifters gamblers sill harry nilsson peggy lee ben e king stoller sister rosetta tharpe bobby darin ritchie valens weill shuman treadwell buck owens spanish harlem leiber solomon burke pinkney if i had frankie avalon valens little walter my place brill building goffin bobby rydell johnnie taylor come on over joe tex ahmet ertegun charlie thomas drapers jerry wexler lavern baker king records mike stoller david ritz johnny moore jerry leiber five crowns doc pomus don covay clyde mcphatter soul stirrers my babe up on dock green tilt araiza

Episode 94: “Stand By Me”, by Ben E. King

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 18, 2020

Episode ninety-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King, and at the later career of the Drifters. 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 “If I Had a Hammer” by Trini López. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This 3-CD set has all Ben E. King’s recordings, both solo and with the Drifters, the Crowns, and LaVern Baker, up to 1962. This episode follows on from episode seventy-five, on “There Goes My Baby”. I’m not going to recommend a Drifters compilation, because I know of none that actually have only the original hit recordings without any remakes or remixes. The disclaimer in episode seventy-five also applies here — I may have used an incorrect version of a song here, because of the sloppy way the Drifters’ music is packaged. My main resource in putting this episode together was Marv Goldberg’s website, and his excellent articles on both the early- and late-period Drifters, Bill Pinkney’s later Original Drifters, the Five Crowns, and Ben E. King. Lonely Avenue, a biography of Doc Pomus by Alex Halberstadt, helped me with the information on Pomus. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller’s side of the story well. And Bill Millar’s book on the Drifters, while it is more a history of 50s vocal group music generally using them as a focus than a biography of the group, contains some interesting material. 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 song that ties together several of the threads we’ve looked at in previous episodes. We’re going to look at a song that had its roots in a gospel song that had been performed by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, that involves the Drifters, Leiber and Stoller, and Phil Spector, and which marks the highpoint of the crossover from gospel to pop audiences that had been started by Ray Charles. We’re going to look at “Stand By Me”, by Ben E King. [Excerpt: Ben E King, “Stand By Me”] When we left the Drifters, they’d hit a legal problem. When the contracts for the individual members had been sold to George Treadwell, the owner of the Drifters’ name, Ben E King’s contract had not been sold with the rest. This had meant that while King continued to sing lead on the records, including the first few big hits of this new lineup of Drifters, he wasn’t allowed to tour with them, and so they’d had to bring in a soundalike singer, Johnnie Lee Williams, to sing his parts on stage. So there were now five Drifters in the studio, but only four of them in the touring group. That might seem like an unworkable arrangement for any length of time, and so it turned out, but at first this was very successful. Leiber and Stoller continued producing records for this new Drifters lineup, but didn’t tend to write for them. They were increasingly tiring of writing to a teenage audience that didn’t really share their tastes, and were starting to move into writing for adult stars like Peggy Lee. And so Leiber and Stoller increasingly relied on songs by other writers, and one team they particularly relied on was Pomus and Shuman. You’ll remember we’ve talked about them in association with both the Drifters and Leiber and Stoller previously, and that they’d been the ones who’d discovered the Ben E. King lineup of the Drifters. Doc Pomus was one of the great R&B songwriters of the fifties, but by 1960 he and Mort Shuman, who was thirteen years younger than him, had written a whole string of hits for white performers like Fabian, Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon, and Bobby Darin. A typical example of the stuff they were writing was “Two Fools” for Frankie Avalon: [Excerpt: Frankie Avalon, “Two Fools”] They were one of the hottest teams in the Brill Building, but they still had a sensibility for the R&B music that the Drifters had their roots in, and so they were the perfect writers to provide crossover hits for the group, and that’s what they did. They’d already written “If You Cry True Love, True Love” for the group, which had gone to number thirty-three and which had been the only Drifters single on which Williams had taken a lead vocal, and now they wrote a song for King to sing, “This Magic Moment”: [Excerpt: Ben E. King and the Drifters, “This Magic Moment”] That made number sixteen on the pop charts. But the next song they wrote for the group was a much bigger success, and a far more personal song. Pomus was paraplegic after having had polio as a child, and either used crutches or a wheelchair to get around. His wife, though, was younger, and was an actor and dancer. On their wedding day, Pomus was unable to dance with her himself, and watched as she danced with a succession of other people. The feeling stayed with him, and a few years later, he turned those thoughts into a set of lyrics, which Shuman then put to music with a vaguely Latin feel, like many of the Drifters’ recent hits. The result was a number one record, and one of the all-time classic songs of the rock and roll era: [Excerpt: Ben E. King and the Drifters, “Save the Last Dance For Me”] That song has gone on to be one of the most covered songs of all time, with recordings by Tina Turner, Leonard Cohen, Buck Owens, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Swinging Blue Jeans, Harry Nilsson, and Bruce Willis, among many others. It would be the Drifters’ only number one on the pop charts, and it was also Ben E King’s last single with the Drifters, after King’s manager Lover Patterson came to an agreement with the Drifters’ manager George Treadwell that would let King move smoothly into a solo career. There might have been more to it than that, as there seems to have been a lot of negotiation going on around the group’s future at this time. There were reports, for example, that King Records were negotiating to buy the Drifters’ contract from Atlantic, which would have been interesting — it’s hard to see the group continuing to have success at King, which didn’t have Leiber and Stoller, and which put out very different records from Atlantic. But either way, the result was that Ben E. King started performing solo, and indeed by the time “Save the Last Dance” came out, he had already released a couple of solo records. The first of these was not a success, and nor was the second, a duet with LaVern Baker: [Excerpt: Ben E. King and LaVern Baker, “How Often”] But the third was something else. At this point, as a favour to their old friend Lester Sill, Leiber and Stoller were mentoring a kid that Sill thought had promise, named Phil Spector, who we’ve talked about before in the episode on The Gamblers, but who had now moved over to New York for a time. Spector was staying with Leiber, and would follow him around literally everywhere, claiming that he was so traumatised by his father’s death that he couldn’t be left alone at any time. Leiber found Spector annoying, but owed Sill a favour, and so kept working with him. And Spector kept pestering Leiber to collaborate with him on some songs. Leiber told Spector, “No, I write with Mike Stoller”, to which Spector would reply, “Well, he can write with us too.” Leiber explained to him that that wasn’t how things worked, and that if there was any collaboration, it would be Leiber and Stoller letting Spector write with them, not Spector graciously allowing Stoller to write with him and Leiber. Spector said that that was what he had meant, of course. Leiber and Stoller reluctantly agreed that Spector could write with them, but then Stoller was unable to turn up to the writing session. Spector persuaded Leiber to go ahead and just write a song with him since Stoller wasn’t around. He agreed, and they came up with a song called “Spanish Harlem”, to which Stoller later added a prominent instrumental line, for which he didn’t claim credit, because he thought that Spector would only whine, and he didn’t need the hassle. Or at least, that’s the story that normally gets told — there are people who knew Ritchie Valens who say that the marimba riff on the record, which became the most defining feature of the song, was actually something that Valens had been regularly playing in the months before he died. According to them, Spector, who moved in the same circles as Valens, must have stolen the riff from him. I tend to believe Stoller’s version of the story myself, but either way, Leiber, Stoller, and Spector played the song to Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun as a trio, with Stoller on piano, Spector on guitar, and Leiber singing. They agreed it should be on the B-side of the next single by King, though the song was popular enough that the record was soon flipped, and “Spanish Harlem” made the top ten: [Excerpt: Ben E. King, “Spanish Harlem”] But that wasn’t even the most important record they made at that session, because after recording it, they decided to record a song that King had written for the Drifters, but which they had turned down. King had brought in the basic idea for the song, and Leiber had helped him finish off the lyric, while Stoller had helped with the music — the resulting songwriting credit gave fifty percent of the royalties to King, and twenty-five percent each to Leiber and Stoller, as a result. King’s song had a long prehistory before he wrote it, and like many early soul songs it had its basis in gospel music. The original source for the song is a spiritual from 1905 by Rev. Charles Albert Tindley, which had been recorded by various people, including Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “Stand By Me”] But the proximate influence for the song was a song that Sam Cooke had written for his old group, the Soul Stirrers, the year before, which had in turn been inspired by Tindley’s song. The lead vocal on the Soul Stirrers’ record was by Johnnie Taylor, a friend of Cooke’s who had replaced Cooke in his first group, the Highway QCs, and then replaced him in his second one, because he sounded exactly like Cooke: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, “Stand By Me, Father”] King idolised Cooke, and was inspired by that record to come up with his own variant on the song. Working with Leiber and Stoller, he carefully crafted his secular adaptation of it, writing a lyric that worked equally well as a gospel song or as a song to a lover, other than the words “darling, darling” in the chorus. The chord sequence they used was a simple adaptation of the standard doo-wop chord changes. On a normal doo-wop song, the chords would go I, minor vi, IV, V, with each chord taking up the same amount of time, like this: [demonstrates on guitar] Stoller took those changes, and made the I and minor vi last two bars each, [demonstrates] then had the IV and V chords both last a bar, then go to two more bars of the I chord. [demonstrates] That bar of IV, bar of V, two bars of I thing is almost what you get at the end of a twelve-bar blues, except there you go V, IV, I, I, rather than IV, V, I, I. So to compare, here’s the end of a twelve-bar blues: [demonstrates] And here’s what Stoller did again: [demonstrates] So effectively Stoller has taken the two most hackneyed chord sequences in rock and roll music, and hybridised them to turn them into a single new sequence that’s instantly recognisable: [demonstrates on guitar] In later years, Leiber always gave Stoller the credit for the song’s success, saying that while the lyrics and melody were good, and King’s performance exceptional, it was the bass line that Stoller came up with which made the song the success it was. I agree, to a large extent — but that bassline is largely just following the root notes of the chord sequence that Stoller had written. But it’s one of the most immediately recognisable pieces of music of the early sixties: [Excerpt: Ben E. King, “Stand By Me”] The record sounded remarkably original, for something that was made up almost entirely out of repurposed elements from other songs, and it shows more clearly than perhaps any other song that originality doesn’t mean creating something entirely ab initio, but can mean taking a fresh look at things that are familiar, and putting just a slight twist on them. In particular, one thing that doesn’t get noted enough is just how much of a departure the song was lyrically. People had been reworking gospel ideas into secular ones for years — we’ve already looked at Ray Charles doing this, and at Sam Cooke, and there were many other examples, like Little Walter turning “This Train” into “My Babe”. But in most cases those songs required wholesale lyrical reworking. “Stand By Me” is different, it brings the lyrical concerns and style of gospel firmly into the secular realm. “If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall, and the mountains should crumble to the sea” is an apocalyptic vision, not “Candy’s sweet/And honey too/There’s not another quite, quite as sweet as you”, which were the lyrics Sam Cooke wrote when he turned a song about how God is wonderful into one about how his girl is loveable. This new type of more gospel-inflected lyric would become very common in the next few years, especially among Black performers. Another building block in the music that would become known as soul had been put in place. The record went to number four on the charts, and it looked like he was headed for a huge career. But the next few singles he released didn’t do so well — he recorded a version of the old standard “Amor” which made number nineteen, and then his next two records topped out at sixty-six and fifty-six. He did get back in the pop top twenty with a song co-written by his wife and Ahmet Ertegun, “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)”, which reached number eleven and became an R&B standard: [Excerpt: Ben E. King, “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)”] But as many people did at the time, he tried to move into the more lucrative world of adult supper-club singers, rather than singing R&B. While his version of “I Who Have Nothing” — a French song that has since become a standard, and whose English lyrics were written for King by Leiber and Stoller — managed to reach number twenty-nine, everything else did terribly. He sang “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “What Now My Love?” perfectly well, but that wasn’t what the audience wanted from him. He made some great records in the later 60s, like “What Is Soul”: [Excerpt: Ben E. King “What Is Soul?”] But even teaming up with Solomon Burke, Don Covay, Joe Tex, and Arthur Conley as The Soul Clan didn’t help him kickstart his recording career: [Excerpt: The Soul Clan, “Soul Meeting”] He asked to be let go from his contract with Atlantic in 1969, and spent a few years in the early seventies recording for small labels. Meanwhile, the Drifters were continuing without King. After King left, Atlantic started releasing whatever material they had in their vaults, both songs with King’s leads and older records from the earlier line-up of Drifters. But they were about to have even more personnel shifts. When they were on tour and got to Mobile, Alabama, Johnny Lee Williams said that he was just going to stay there and not continue on the tour — he was sick of not getting to sing lead vocals, and he came from Mobile anyway. Williams went on to join a group called the Embraceables, who released this with him singing lead: [Excerpt: The Embraceables, “My Foolish Pride”] That was later rereleased as by The Implaceables, for reasons I’ve not been able to discover. The Drifters got in a replacement for Williams, James Poindexter, but he turned out to have stage fright, and the group spent several months as a trio, before being joined by new lead singer Rudy Lewis. And then Elsbeary Hobbs, the group’s bass singer, was drafted, and the group got in a couple of different singers before settling on Tommy Evans, who had sung with the old versions of the Drifters in the fifties. The new lineup, Rudy Lewis, Charlie Thomas, Dock Green, and Tommy Evans, would be one of the group’s longest-lasting lineups, lasting more than a year, and would record hits like “Up On the Roof”, by Goffin and King: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Up On the Roof”] But then Dock Green left the group. He and Tommy Evans joined another group — even though Evans was also still in the Drifters. The Drapers, the group they joined, was managed by Lover Patterson, Ben E. King’s manager, and had been given a name that sounded as much like “The Drifters” as possible. As well as Green and Evans, it also had Johnny Moore and Carnation Charlie Hughes, who had been in the same 1956 lineup of the Drifters that Tommy Evans had been in. That lineup of the Drapers released one single that didn’t do particularly well: [Excerpt: The Drapers, “(I Know) Your Love Has Gone Away”] The new Drifters lineup, without Dock Green, recorded “On Broadway”, a song that Leiber and Stoller had co-written with the Brill Building team of Mann and Weill. The guitar on the record was by Phil Spector — he was by that point a successful producer, but Leiber and Stoller had bumped into him on the way to the session and invited him to sit in: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “On Broadway”] Tommy Evans then also left the Drifters, and was replaced by Johnny Terry, leaving a lineup of Rudy Lewis, Charlie Thomas, Gene Pearson, and Johnny Terry. But Rudy Lewis, the lead singer of the group since just after King had left, was thinking of going solo, and even released one solo single: [Excerpt: Rudy Lewis, “I’ve Loved You So Long”] That wasn’t a success, but George Treadwell wanted some insurance in case Lewis left, so he got Johnny Moore — who had been in the group in the fifties and had just left the Drapers — to join, and for a few months Lewis and Moore traded off leads in the studio. One song that they recorded during 1963, but didn’t release, was “Only in America”, written for them by Leiber and Stoller. Leiber and Stoller had intended the song to be a sly satire, with Black people singing about the American dream, but Atlantic worried that in the racial climate of 1963, the satire would seem tasteless, so they took the Drifters’ backing track and got Jay and the Americans, a white group, to record new vocals, turning it into a straightforward bit of boosterism: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, “Only in America”] Tragedy struck on the day the Drifters recorded what would be their last US top ten hit, the twenty-first of May 1964. Johnny Moore bumped into Sylvia Vanterpool, of Mickey and Sylvia, and she said “thank God it wasn’t you”. He didn’t know what she was talking about, and she told him that Rudy Lewis had died suddenly earlier that day. The group went into the studio anyway, and recorded the songs that had been scheduled, including one called “I Don’t Want To Go On Without You” which took on a new meaning in the circumstances. But the hit from the session was “Under the Boardwalk”, with lead vocals from Moore: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Under the Boardwalk”] This version of the group — Johnny Moore, Charlie Thomas, Gene Pearson, and Johnny Terry, would be the longest-lasting of all the versions of the group managed by George Treadwell, staying together a full two years. But after “Under the Boardwalk”, which went to number four, they had no more top ten hits in the US. The best they could do was scrape the top twenty with “Saturday Night at the Movies”: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Saturday Night at the Movies”] There were several more lineup changes, but the big change came in 1967 when George Treadwell died. His wife, Faye, took over the management of the group, and shortly after that, Charlie Thomas — the person who had been in the group for the longest continuous time, nine years at that point, decided to leave. There were a lot more squabbles and splinter groups, and by 1970 the Drifters’ career on Atlantic was over. By this point, there were three different versions of The Drifters. There was a group called The Original Drifters, which had formed in 1958 after the first set of Drifters had been fired, and was originally made up entirely of members of the early-fifties lineups, but which was now a revolving-door group based around Bill Pinkney, the bass singer of the Clyde McPhatter lineup, and stayed that way until Pinkney’s death in 2007. Then there was a version of the Drifters that consisted of Dock Green, Charlie Thomas, and Elsbeary Hobbs, the people who had been in Ben E. King’s version of the group. Charlie Thomas won the right to use the name in the USA in 1972, and continues touring with his own group there to this day, though no more of that lineup of the Drifters are with him. And then there was a UK-based group, managed by Faye Treadwell, with Johnny Moore as lead singer. That group scored big UK hits when the group moved to the UK in 72, with re-releases of mid-sixties records that had been comparative flops at the time — “Saturday Night at the Movies”, “At the Club”, and “Come On Over to My Place” all made the UK top ten in 1972, and Moore’s Drifters would have nine more top ten hits with new material in the UK between 1973 and 76. And Ben E. King, meanwhile, had signed again to Atlantic, and had a one-off top ten hit with “Supernatural Thing” in 1975: [Excerpt: Ben E. King, “Supernatural Thing”] But other than that he’d continued to have far less chart success than his vocal talents deserved, and in the eighties he moved to the UK and joined the UK version of the Drifters, singing his old hits on the nostalgia circuit with them, and adding more authenticity to the Johnny Moore lineup of the group. He spent several years like that, until in 1986 his career had a sudden resurgence, when the film Stand By Me came out and his single was used as the theme. On the back of the film’s success, the song reentered the top ten, twenty-five years after its initial success, and made number one in the UK. As a result, King became the first person to have hit the top ten in the US in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties — a remarkable record for someone who had had relatively few hits. A greatest hits collection of King’s records made the top twenty in the UK, as well, and King left the Drifters to once again become a solo artist. But this is where we say goodbye to King, and to the Drifters, and to Leiber and Stoller as songwriters. The UK version of the Drifters carried on with Johnny Moore as lead singer until he died in 1998, and up to that point it was reasonable to think of that group as a real version of the Drifters, because Moore had sung with the group on hits in the fifties and sixties, and in the UK in the seventies – roughly eighty percent of records released as by The Drifters had had Moore singing on them. But after Moore’s death, it gets very confusing, with the Treadwell family apparently abandoning the trademark and moving back to the US, and then changing their mind, resulting in a series of lawsuits. The current UK version of the Drifters has nobody who was in the group before 2010, and is managed by George and Faye Treadwell’s daughter. They still fill medium-sized theatres on large national tours, because their audiences don’t seem to care, so long as they can hear people singing “Up On the Roof” and “On Broadway”, “There Goes My Baby” and “Save the Last Dance For Me”. In total thirty-four different people were members of the Drifters during their time with Atlantic Records. It’s the only case I know where a group identity was genuinely bigger than the members, where whoever was involved, somehow they carried on making exceptional records. Leiber and Stoller, meanwhile, will turn up again, once more, next year, as record executives, collaborating with another figure we’ve seen several times before to run a record label. But this is the last record we’ll look at with them as a songwriting team. We’ve been following their remarkable career since episode fifteen, and they would continue writing great songs for a huge variety of artists, but “Stand By Me” would be the last time they would come up with something that would change the music industry. It was the end of a truly remarkable run, and one which stands as one of the great achievements in twentieth century popular music. And Ben E. King, who was, other than Clyde McPhatter, the only member of the Drifters to ever break away and become a solo success, spent the last twenty-nine years of his life touring as a solo artist off the renewed success of his greatest contribution to music. He died in 2015, but as long as people listen to rock, pop, soul, or R&B, there’ll be people listening to “Stand By Me”.

united states america god american new york history black movies father english uk americans french stand club green alabama train broadway rev atlantic tragedy amor mobile cd latin iv rock and roll hammer evans last dance roof bruce willis saturday night true love tina turner leonard cohen cooke tilt ray charles crowns sam cooke rock music atlantic records stand by me jerry lee lewis phil spector spector boardwalk drifters gamblers sill harry nilsson peggy lee ben e king stoller sister rosetta tharpe bobby darin ritchie valens weill shuman treadwell buck owens spanish harlem leiber solomon burke pinkney if i had frankie avalon valens little walter my place brill building goffin bobby rydell johnnie taylor come on over joe tex drapers ahmet ertegun charlie thomas jerry wexler lavern baker king records mike stoller david ritz johnny moore jerry leiber five crowns doc pomus don covay clyde mcphatter soul stirrers this magic moment my babe up on dock green tilt araiza

Gospel Memories - August 8, 2020

gospel memories rev caravan james moore soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 8, 2020 58:27

This episode features a long set in memory of Leo Coney Jr. (pictured, Violinaires and Gospel Classics), alternate takes of the Soul Stirrers and Caravans, music from Rev. James Moore, Christian Tabernacle Concert Choir, and more.

Episode 4: You're Hot Then You're Cold: Part 1

MobGowski Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 13, 2020 34:08

Episode Notes Part one of our many part series in which we each examine an artist from every decade (60s-2010s, with a little bonus 50s thrown in there). Our artist gets one song that's more popular, one that's underappreciated and/or less listened to. We're very interesting to listen to, as usual. Track List: "Calamity Song" by The Decemberists (The King is Dead, 2011) "You Send Me (Demo)" by Sam Cooke (single, 1957) "I'm On the Firing Line (Version 2)" by Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers (Same Cooke with the Soul Stirrers, 2002) "I Don't Want to Cry" by Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers (Same Cooke with the Soul Stirrers, 2002) "19th Nervous Breakdown" by The Rolling Stones (single, 1966) "Factory Girl" by The Rolling Stones (Beggars Banquet, 1968) "Time of the Season" by The Zombies (Odessey and Oracle, 1968) "Changes" by the The Zombies (Odessey and Oracle, 1968)

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Gospel Memories - June 20, 2020

music gospel memories father's day heavenly father bro joe may soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 20, 2020 60:39

This episode is a salute to our Heavenly Father on this Father's Day weekend. Music from Bro. Joe May, Walter Hawkins (pictured), Grace Singers, Soul Stirrers, Martha Bass, Patterson Singers, Silver Quintette, and others.

FTLOA CXXVI "LORD HELP US STAND"

Howcee Productions Gospel

Play Episode Listen Later May 30, 2020 60:00

Standing is indeed a difficult at times however, standing up for what is right is our God given duty! TAKE 6, NATURALLY 7, 7TH ELEMENT, SOUNDSTAGE, COMMITTED, FAIRFIELD FOUR, MATTHEW KASSILA & NOAH KASUBA, JOVAUN & JERRARD, LEROY SMITH & DIANA FERIA, PJ MORTON JR, ERICA CAMPBELL (OF MARY MARY), SAM COOKE & THE SOUL STIRRERS, L YOUNG, AND SAM ROBSON

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http://journalofgospelmusic.com/reviews-2/look-at-god-darrell-luster-featuring-t

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2020 180:00

Look at God” Darrell Luster featuring the Legends of Quartet 4 Winds Records / Malaco Music Group (release date: February 2020) www.malaco.com By Bob Marovich Bob Marovich is a gospel music historian, author, and radio host. Founder of Journal of Gospel Music blog (formally The Black Gospel Blog) and producer of the Gospel Memories Radio Show. What if Spencer Taylor Jr. of the Highway QCs, Rev. Thomas Spann of the Brooklyn All Stars, Willie Rogers of the Soul Stirrers, JoJo Wallace and Horace Thompson of the Sensational Nightingales, and Cleave Graham of the Pilgrim Jubilees got together to sing? Further, what if they told the story of how hard the gospel highway was in the golden era? That's what you get on “Look at God,” a new composition by Darrell Luster who introduces the song. The gentlemen recall tough times traveling through the Jim Crow South, where they couldn't stay in hotels or eat in restaurants. They sold “millions of records” and “didn't make a dime.” They had “plenty to complain about back then,” notes Spann, but “look at God.” It's a heartwarming ode to the resilience of the human spirit. Check out the video, which features cameo appearances by longtime Malaco engineer Wolf Stevenson, president Tommy Couch Jr., and multi-instrumentalist Ray Braswell Jr.

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FTLOA "For the Love of A Cappella EPS CXIV LITTLE DREAMER

christmas music merry christmas motown christmas music love podcasts soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2020 59:58

On Pointe, Sam Robson, Singing Men of Oakwood College, Breath of Life Quartet, Fairfield Four, Sam Cook and the Soul Stirrers, Rudo, Sounds of Blackness, Aeolians, Aeolians, Anthony Brown and Group Therapy, Jarrard and Javaun, The A Cappellian, 7th Element, Erica Campbell, PJ Morton, and Asante

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Soul Stirrers - Christmas Means Love (Podcast) - 12:18:19, 11.22 PM

CAT BEAR

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2019 2:17

Title: Christmas Means LoveSong by: The Soul StirrersSong written by: Morris DollisonPhoto Credit: Alchetron Free Encyclopedia https://alchetron.comChristmas means love is a song recorded by the Soul Stirrers. It's a 1968 vinyl release and the most beautiful Christmas song that I've ever heard. The song mentions the 12th month and the 25th day A little child was born yes would brighten up our dayAnd I'm so glad that he came to show us what true love isNow I know Christmas means loveBeautiful song! And the Soul Stirrers were a great sounding group singing it. Christmas Means Love is a song written by Morris Dollison.The Soul Stirrers had a quartet style of gospel, and a major influence on soul, doo wop and Motown, some of the secular music that owed much to gospel. I'm Gail Nobles. Have a Merry Christmas.

Episode Sixty: "You Send Me" by Sam Cooke

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2019 41:37

Episode sixty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "You Send Me" by Sam Cooke 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 "Little Darlin'" by The Gladiolas. Also, an announcement -- the book version of the first fifty episodes is now available for purchase. See the show notes, or the previous mini-episode announcing this, for details. ----more---- Resources The Mixcloud is slightly delayed this week. I'll update the post tonight with the link. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick's work, it's an essential book if you're even slightly interested in the subject. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke's music for the beginner. A note on spelling: Sam Cooke was born Sam Cook, the rest of his family all kept the surname Cook, and he only added the "e" from the release of "You Send Me", so for almost all the time covered in this episode he was Cook. I didn't feel the need to mention this in the podcast, as the two names are pronounced identically. I've spelled him as Cooke and everyone else as Cook throughout. Book of the Podcast Remember that there's a book available based on the first fifty episodes of the podcast. You can buy it at this link, which will take you to your preferred online bookstore. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We've talked before about how the music that became known as soul had its roots in gospel music, but today we're going to have a look at the first big star of that music to get his start as a professional gospel singer, rather than as a rhythm and blues singer who included a little bit of gospel feeling. Sam Cooke was, in many ways, the most important black musician of the late fifties and early sixties, and without him it's doubtful whether we would have the genre of soul as we know it today. But when he started out, he was someone who worked exclusively in the gospel field, and within that field he was something of a superstar. He was also someone who, as admirable as he was as a singer, was far less admirable in his behaviour towards other people, especially the women in his life, and while that's something that will come up more in future episodes, it's worth noting here. Cooke started out as a teenager in the 1940s, performing in gospel groups around Chicago, which as we've talked about before was the city where a whole new form of gospel music was being created at that point, spearheaded by Thomas Dorsey. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe were all living and performing in the city during young Sam's formative years, but the biggest influence on him was a group called the Soul Stirrers. The Soul Stirrers had started out in 1926 as a group in what was called the "jubilee" style -- the style that black singers of spiritual music sang in the period before Thomas Dorsey revolutionised gospel music. There are no recordings of the Soul Stirrers in that style, but this is probably the most famous jubilee recording: [Excerpt: The Fisk Jubilee Singers, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"] But as Thomas Dorsey and the musicians around him started to create the music we now think of as gospel, the Soul Stirrers switched styles, and became one of the first -- and best -- gospel quartets in the new style. In the late forties, the Soul Stirrers signed to Specialty Records, one of the first acts to sign to the label, and recorded a series of classic singles led by R.H. Harris, who was regarded by many as the greatest gospel singer of the age: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers feat. R.H. Harris, "In That Awful Hour"] Sam Cooke was one of seven children, the son of Reverend Charles Cook and his wife Annie Mae, and from a very early age the Reverend Cook had been training them as singers -- five of them would perform regularly around churches in the area, under the name The Singing Children. Young Sam was taught religion by his father, but he was also taught that there was no prohibition in the Bible against worldly success. Indeed the Reverend Cook taught him two things that would matter in his life even more than his religion would. The first was that whatever it is you do in life, you try to do it the best you can -- you never do anything by halves, and if a thing's worth doing it's worth doing properly. And the second was that you do whatever is necessary to give yourself the best possible life, and don't worry about who you step on to do it. After spending some time with his family group, Cooke joined a newly-formed gospel group, who had heard him singing the Ink Spots song "If I Didn't Care" to a girl. That group was called the Highway QCs, and a version of the group still exists to this day. Sam Cooke only stayed with them a couple of years, and never recorded with them, but they replaced him with a soundalike singer, Johnnie Taylor, and listening to Taylor's recordings with the group you can get some idea of what they sounded like when Sam was a member: [Excerpt: Johnnie Taylor and the Highway QCs, "I Dreamed That Heaven Was Like This"] The rest of the group were decent singers, but Sam Cooke was absolutely unquestionably the star of the Highway QCs. Creadell Copeland, one of the group's members, later said “All we had to do was stand behind Sam. Our claim to fame was that Sam’s voice was so captivating we didn’t have to do anything else.” The group didn't make a huge amount of money, and they kept talking about going in a pop direction, rather than just singing gospel songs, and Sam was certainly singing a lot of secular music in his own time -- he loved gospel music as much as anyone, but he was also learning from people like Gene Autry or Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and he was slowly developing into a singer who could do absolutely anything with his voice. But his biggest influence was still R.H. Harris of the Soul Stirrers, who was the most important person in the gospel quartet field. This wasn't just because he was the most talented of all the quartet singers -- though he was, and that was certainly part of it -- but because he was the joint leader of a movement to professionalise the gospel quartet movement. (Just as a quick explanation -- in both black gospel, and in the white gospel music euphemistically called "Southern Gospel", the term "quartet" is used for groups which might have five, six, or even more people in them. I'll generally refer to all of these as "groups", because I'm not from the gospel world, but I'll use the term "quartet" when talking about things like the National Quartet Convention, and I may slip between the two interchangeably at times. Just know that if I mention quartets, I'm not just talking about groups with exactly four people in them). Harris worked with a less well known singer called Abraham Battle, and with Charlie Bridges, of another popular group, the Famous Blue Jays: [Excerpt: The Famous Blue Jay Singers, “Praising Jesus Evermore”] Together they founded the National Quartet Convention, which existed to try to take all the young gospel quartets who were springing up all over the place, and most of whom had casual attitudes to their music and their onstage appearance, and teach them how to comport themselves in a manner that the organisation's leaders considered appropriate for a gospel singer. The Highway QCs joined the Convention, of course, and they considered themselves to be disciples, in a sense, of the Soul Stirrers, who they simultaneously considered to be their mentors and thought were jealous of the QCs. It was normal at the time for gospel groups to turn up at each other's shows, and if they were popular enough they would be invited up to sing, and sometimes even take over the show. When the Highway QCs turned up at Soul Stirrers shows, though, the Soul Stirrers would act as if they didn't know them, and would only invite them on to the stage if the audience absolutely insisted, and would then limit their performance to a single song. From the Highway QCs' point of view, the only possible explanation was that the Soul Stirrers were terrified of the competition. A more likely explanation is probably that they were just more interested in putting on their own show than in giving space to some young kids who thought they were the next big thing. On the other hand, to all the younger kids around Chicago, the Highway QCs were clearly the group to beat -- and people like a young singer named Lou Rawls looked up to them as something to aspire to. And soon the QCs found themselves being mentored by R.B. Robinson, one of the Soul Stirrers. Robinson would train them, and help them get better gigs, and the QCs became convinced that they were headed for the big time. But it turned out that behind the scenes, there had been trouble in the Soul Stirrers. Harris had, more and more, come to think of himself as the real star of the group, and quit to go solo. It had looked likely for a while that he would do so, and when Robinson had appeared to be mentoring the QCs, what he was actually doing was training their lead singer, so that when R.H. Harris eventually quit, they would have someone to take his place. The other Highway QCs were heartbroken, but Sam took the advice of his father, the Reverend Cook, who told him "Anytime you can make a step higher, you go higher. Don’t worry about the other fellow. You hold up for other folks, and they’ll take advantage of you." And so, in March 1951, Sam Cooke went into the studio with the Soul Stirrers for his first ever recording session, three months after joining the group. Art Rupe, the head of Specialty Records, was not at all impressed that the group had got a new singer without telling him. Rupe had to admit that Cooke could sing, but his performance on the first few songs, while impressive, was no R.H. Harris: [Excerpt: the Soul Stirrers, "Come, Let Us Go Back to God"] But towards the end of the session, the Soul Stirrers insisted that they should record "Jesus Gave Me Water", a song that had always been a highlight of the Highway QCs' set. Rupe thought that this was ridiculous -- the Pilgrim Travellers had just had a hit with the song, on Specialty, not six months earlier. What could Specialty possibly do with another version of the song so soon afterwards? But the group insisted, and the result was absolutely majestic: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Jesus Gave Me Water"] Rupe lost his misgivings, both about the song and about the singer -- that was clearly going to be the group's next single. The group themselves were still not completely sure about Cooke as their singer -- he was younger than the rest of them, and he didn't have Harris' assurance and professionalism, yet. But they knew they had something with that song, which was released with "Peace in the Valley" on the B-side. That song had been written by Thomas Dorsey fourteen years earlier, but this was the first time it had been released on a record, at least by anyone of any prominence. "Jesus Gave Me Water" was a hit, but the follow-ups were less successful, and meanwhile Art Rupe was starting to see the commercial potential in black styles of music other than gospel. Even though Rupe loved gospel music, he realised when "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" became the biggest hit Specialty had ever had to that point that maybe he should refocus the label away from gospel and towards more secular styles of music. “Jesus Gave Me Water” had consolidated Sam as the lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, but while he was singing gospel, he wasn't living a very godly life. He got married in 1953, but he'd already had at least one child with another woman, who he left with the baby, and he was sleeping around constantly while on the road, and more than once the women involved became pregnant. But Cooke treated women the same way he treated the groups he was in – use them for as long as they've got something you want, and then immediately cast them aside once it became inconvenient. For the next few years, the Soul Stirrers would have one recording session every year, and the group continued touring, but they didn't have any breakout success, even as other Specialty acts like Lloyd Price, Jesse Belvin, and Guitar Slim were all selling hand over fist. The Soul Stirrers were more popular as a live act than as a recording act, and hearing the live recording of them that Bumps Blackwell produced in 1955, it's easy to see why: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Nearer to Thee"] Bumps Blackwell was convinced that Cooke needed to go solo and become a pop singer, and he was more convinced than ever when he produced the Soul Stirrers in the studio for the first time. The reason, actually, was to do with Cooke's laziness. They'd gone into the studio, and it turned out that Cooke hadn't written a song, and they needed one. The rest of the group were upset with him, and he just told them to hand him a Bible. He started flipping through, skimming to find something, and then he said "I got one". He told the guitarist to play a couple of chords, and he started singing -- and the song that came out, improvised off the top of his head, "Touch the Hem of His Garment", was perfect just as it was, and the group quickly cut it: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Touch the Hem of His Garment"] Blackwell knew then that Cooke was a very, very special talent, and he and the rest of the people at Specialty became more and more insistent as 1956 went on that Sam Cooke should become a secular solo performer, rather than performing in a gospel group. The Soul Stirrers were only selling in the low tens of thousands -- a reasonable amount for a gospel group, but hardly the kind of numbers that would make anyone rich. Meanwhile, gospel-inspired performers were having massive hits with gospel songs with a couple of words changed. There's an episode of South Park where they make fun of contemporary Christian music, saying you just have to take a normal song and change the word "Baby" to "Jesus". In the mid-fifties things seemed to be the other way -- people were having hits by taking Gospel songs and changing the word "Jesus" to "baby", or near as damnit. Most famously and blatantly, there was Ray Charles, who did things like take "This Little Light of Mine": [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "This Little Light of Mine"] and turn it into "This Little Girl of Mine: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "This Little Girl of Mine"] But there were a number of other acts doing things that weren't that much less blatant. And so Sam Cooke travelled to New Orleans, to record in Cosimo Matassa's studio with the same musicians who had been responsible for so many rock and roll hits. Or, rather, Dale Cook did. Sam was still a member of the Soul Stirrers at the time, and while he wanted to make himself into a star, he was also concerned that if he recorded secular music under his own name, he would damage his career as a gospel singer, without necessarily getting a better career to replace it. So the decision was made to put the single out under the name "Dale Cook", and maintain a small amount of plausible deniability. If necessary, they could say that Dale was Sam's brother, because it was fairly well known that Sam came from a singing family, and indeed Sam's brother L.C. (whose name was just the initials L.C.) later went on to have some minor success as a singer himself, in a style very like Sam's. As his first secular recording, they decided to record a new version of a gospel song that Cooke had recorded with the Soul Stirrers, "Wonderful": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Wonderful"] One quick rewrite later, and that song became, instead, "Lovable": [Excerpt: Dale Cook, "Lovable"] Around the time of the Dale Cook recording session, Sam's brother L.C. went to Memphis, with his own group, where they appeared at the bottom of the bill for a charity Christmas show in aid of impoverished black youth. The lineup of the show was almost entirely black – people like Ray Charles, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, and so on – but Elvis Presley turned up briefly to come out on stage and wave to the crowd and say a few words – the Colonel wouldn't allow him to perform without getting paid, but did allow him to make an appearance, and he wanted to support the black community in Memphis. Backstage, Elvis was happy to meet all the acts, but when he found out that L.C. was Sam's brother, he spent a full twenty minutes talking to L.C. about how great Sam was, and how much he admired his singing with the Soul Stirrers. Sam was such a distinctive voice that while the single came out as by "Dale Cook", the DJs playing it would often introduce it as being by "Dale Sam Cook", and the Soul Stirrers started to be asked if they were going to sing "Lovable" in their shows. Sam started to have doubts as to whether this move towards a pop style was really a good idea, and remained with the Soul Stirrers for the moment, though it's noticeable that songs like "Mean Old World" could easily be refigured into being secular songs, and have only a minimal amount of religious content: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Mean Old World"] But barely a week after the session that produced “Mean Old World”, Sam was sending Bumps Blackwell demos of new pop songs he'd written, which he thought Blackwell would be interested in producing. Sam Cooke was going to treat the Soul Stirrers the same way he'd treated the Highway QCs. Cooke flew to LA, to meet with Blackwell and with Clifton White, a musician who had been for a long time the guitarist for the Mills Brothers, but who had recently left the band and started working with Blackwell as a session player. White was very unimpressed with Cooke – he thought that the new song Cooke sang to them, "You Send Me", was just him repeating the same thing over and over again. Art Rupe helped them whittle the song choices down to four. Rupe had very particular ideas about what made for a commercial record – for example, that a record had to be exactly two minutes and twenty seconds long – and the final choices for the session were made with Rupe's criteria in mind. The songs chosen were "Summertime", "You Send Me", another song Sam had written called "You Were Made For Me", and "Things You Do to Me", which was written by a young man Bumps Blackwell had just taken on as his assistant, named Sonny Bono. The recording session should have been completely straightforward. Blackwell supervised it, and while the session was in LA, almost everyone there was a veteran New Orleans player – along with Clif White on guitar there was René Hall, a guitarist from New Orleans who had recently quit Billy Ward and the Dominoes, and acted as instrumental arranger; Harold Battiste, a New Orleans saxophone player who Bumps had taken under his wing, and who wasn't playing on the session but ended up writing the vocal arrangements for the backing singers; Earl Palmer, who had just moved to LA from New Orleans and was starting to make a name for himself as a session player there after his years of playing with Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Fats Domino in Cosimo Matassa's studio, and Ted Brinson, the only LA native, on bass -- Brinson was a regular player on Specialty sessions, and also had connections with almost every LA R&B act, to the extent that it was his garage that "Earth Angel" by the Penguins had been recorded in. And on backing vocals were the Lee Gotch singers, a white vocal group who were among the most in-demand vocalists in LA. So this should have been a straightforward session, and it was, until Art Rupe turned up just after they'd recorded "You Send Me": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "You Send Me"] Rupe was horrified that Bumps and Battiste had put white backing vocalists behind Cooke's vocals. They were, in Rupe's view, trying to make Sam Cooke sound like Billy Ward and his Dominoes at best, and like a symphony orchestra at worst. The Billy Ward reference was because René Hall had recently arranged a version of "Stardust" for the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Stardust"] And the new version of "Summertime" had some of the same feel: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Summertime"] If Sam Cooke was going to record for Specialty, he wasn't going to have *white* vocalists backing him. Rupe wanted black music, not something trying to be white -- and the fact that he, a white man, was telling a room full of black musicians what counted as black music, was not lost on Bumps Blackwell. Even worse than the whiteness of the singers, though, was that some of them were women. Rupe and Blackwell had already had one massive falling-out, over "Rip it Up" by Little Richard. When they'd agreed to record that, Blackwell had worked out an arrangement beforehand that Rupe was happy with -- one that was based around piano triplets. But then, when he'd been on the plane to the session, Blackwell had hit upon another idea -- to base the song around a particular drum pattern: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Rip it Up"] Rupe had nearly fired Blackwell over that, and only relented when the record became a massive hit. Now that instead of putting a male black gospel group behind Cooke, as agreed, Blackwell had disobeyed him a second time and put white vocalists, including women, behind him, Rupe decided it was the last straw. Blackwell had to go. He was also convinced that Sam Cooke was only after money, because once Cooke discovered that his solo contract only paid him a third of the royalties that the Soul Stirrers had been getting as a group, he started pushing for a greater share of the money. Rupe didn't like that kind of greed from his artists -- why *should* he pay the artist more than one cent per record sold? But he still owed Blackwell a great deal of money. They eventually came to an agreement -- Blackwell would leave Specialty, and take Sam Cooke, and Cooke's existing recordings with him, since he was so convinced that they were going to be a hit. Rupe would keep the publishing rights to any songs Sam wrote, and would have an option on eight further Sam Cooke recordings in the future, but Cooke and Blackwell were free to take "You Send Me", "Summertime", and the rest to a new label that wanted them for its first release, Keen. While they waited around for Keen to get itself set up, Sam made himself firmly a part of the Central Avenue music scene, hanging around with Gaynel Hodge, Jesse Belvin, Dootsie Williams, Googie Rene, John Dolphin, and everyone else who was part of the LA R&B community. Meanwhile, the Soul Stirrers got Johnnie Taylor, the man who had replaced Sam in the Highway QCs, to replace him in the Stirrers. While Sam was out of the group, for the next few years he would be regularly involved with them, helping them out in recording sessions, producing them, and more. When the single came out, everyone thought that "Summertime" would be the hit, but "You Send Me" quickly found itself all over the airwaves and became massive: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "You Send Me"] Several cover versions came out almost immediately. Sam and Bumps didn't mind the versions by Jesse Belvin: [Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, "You Send Me"] Or Cornell Gunter: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, "You Send Me"] They were friends and colleagues, and good luck to them if they had a hit with the song -- and anyway, they knew that Sam's version was better. What they did object to was the white cover version by Teresa Brewer: [Excerpt: Teresa Brewer, "You Send Me"] Even though her version was less of a soundalike than the other LA R&B versions, it was more offensive to them -- she was even copying Sam's "whoa-oh"s. She was nothing more than a thief, Blackwell argued -- and her version was charting, and made the top ten. Fortunately for them, Sam's version went to number one, on both the R&B and pop charts, despite a catastrophic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which accidentally cut him off half way through a song. But there was still trouble with Art Rupe. Sam was still signed to Rupe's company as a songwriter, and so he'd put "You Send Me" in the name of his brother L.C., so Rupe wouldn't get any royalties. Rupe started legal action against him, and meanwhile, he took a demo Sam had recorded, "I'll Come Running Back To You", and got René Hall and the Lee Gotch singers, the very people whose work on "You Send Me" and "Summertime" he'd despised so much, to record overdubs to make it sound as much like "You Send Me" as possible: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "I'll Come Running Back To You"] And in retaliation for *that* being released, Bumps Blackwell took a song that he'd recorded months earlier with Little Richard, but which still hadn't been released, and got the Specialty duo Don and Dewey to provide instrumental backing for a vocal group called the Valiants, and put it out on Keen: [Excerpt: The Valiants, "Good Golly Miss Molly"] Specialty had to rush-release Little Richard's version to make sure it became the hit -- a blow for them, given that they were trying to dripfeed the public what few Little Richard recordings they had left. As 1957 drew to a close, Sam Cooke was on top of the world. But the seeds of his downfall were already in place. He was upsetting all the right people with his desire to have control of his own career, but he was also hurting a lot of other people along the way -- people who had helped him, like the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers, and especially women. He was about to divorce his first wife, and he had fathered a string of children with different women, all of whom he refused to acknowledge or support. He was taking his father's maxims about only looking after yourself, and applying them to every aspect of life, with no regard to who it hurt. But such was his talent and charm, that even the people he hurt ended up defending him. Over the next couple of times we see Sam Cooke, we'll see him rising to ever greater artistic heights, but we'll also see the damage he caused to himself and to others. Because the story of Sam Cooke gets very, very unpleasant.

christmas jesus christ history chicago babies peace bible gospel care new orleans harris touch valley mine cook robinson elvis rock and roll convention rip djs summertime elvis presley south park penguins backstage colonel keen stardust sixty specialty dorsey cooke ray charles blackwell dewey little richard bumps sam cooke rock music hem dominoes lovable nearer ed sullivan show fats domino mahalia jackson sister rosetta tharpe brinson lou rawls earth angel gene autry sonny bono this little light southern gospel rupe sam cook central avenue lloyd price ink spots rufus thomas johnnie taylor mills brothers billy ward valiants peter guralnick soul stirrers thomas dorsey little darlin' qcs his garment things you do annie mae young sam jesse belvin national quartet convention cosimo matassa lawdy miss clawdy

Episode Sixty: “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke

jesus christ story spiritual amazing grace gospel music hello sunshine maceo soul stirrers

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2019

Episode sixty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke 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 “Little Darlin'” by The Gladiolas. Also, an announcement — the book version of the first fifty episodes is now available for purchase. See the show notes, or the previous mini-episode announcing this, for details. —-more—- Resources The Mixcloud is slightly delayed this week. I’ll update the post tonight with the link. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick’s work, it’s an essential book if you’re even slightly interested in the subject. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke’s music for the beginner. A note on spelling: Sam Cooke was born Sam Cook, the rest of his family all kept the surname Cook, and he only added the “e” from the release of “You Send Me”, so for almost all the time covered in this episode he was Cook. I didn’t feel the need to mention this in the podcast, as the two names are pronounced identically. I’ve spelled him as Cooke and everyone else as Cook throughout. Book of the Podcast Remember that there’s a book available based on the first fifty episodes of the podcast. You can buy it at this link, which will take you to your preferred online bookstore. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We’ve talked before about how the music that became known as soul had its roots in gospel music, but today we’re going to have a look at the first big star of that music to get his start as a professional gospel singer, rather than as a rhythm and blues singer who included a little bit of gospel feeling. Sam Cooke was, in many ways, the most important black musician of the late fifties and early sixties, and without him it’s doubtful whether we would have the genre of soul as we know it today. But when he started out, he was someone who worked exclusively in the gospel field, and within that field he was something of a superstar. He was also someone who, as admirable as he was as a singer, was far less admirable in his behaviour towards other people, especially the women in his life, and while that’s something that will come up more in future episodes, it’s worth noting here. Cooke started out as a teenager in the 1940s, performing in gospel groups around Chicago, which as we’ve talked about before was the city where a whole new form of gospel music was being created at that point, spearheaded by Thomas Dorsey. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe were all living and performing in the city during young Sam’s formative years, but the biggest influence on him was a group called the Soul Stirrers. The Soul Stirrers had started out in 1926 as a group in what was called the “jubilee” style — the style that black singers of spiritual music sang in the period before Thomas Dorsey revolutionised gospel music. There are no recordings of the Soul Stirrers in that style, but this is probably the most famous jubilee recording: [Excerpt: The Fisk Jubilee Singers, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”] But as Thomas Dorsey and the musicians around him started to create the music we now think of as gospel, the Soul Stirrers switched styles, and became one of the first — and best — gospel quartets in the new style. In the late forties, the Soul Stirrers signed to Specialty Records, one of the first acts to sign to the label, and recorded a series of classic singles led by R.H. Harris, who was regarded by many as the greatest gospel singer of the age: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers feat. R.H. Harris, “In That Awful Hour”] Sam Cooke was one of seven children, the son of Reverend Charles Cook and his wife Annie Mae, and from a very early age the Reverend Cook had been training them as singers — five of them would perform regularly around churches in the area, under the name The Singing Children. Young Sam was taught religion by his father, but he was also taught that there was no prohibition in the Bible against worldly success. Indeed the Reverend Cook taught him two things that would matter in his life even more than his religion would. The first was that whatever it is you do in life, you try to do it the best you can — you never do anything by halves, and if a thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing properly. And the second was that you do whatever is necessary to give yourself the best possible life, and don’t worry about who you step on to do it. After spending some time with his family group, Cooke joined a newly-formed gospel group, who had heard him singing the Ink Spots song “If I Didn’t Care” to a girl. That group was called the Highway QCs, and a version of the group still exists to this day. Sam Cooke only stayed with them a couple of years, and never recorded with them, but they replaced him with a soundalike singer, Johnnie Taylor, and listening to Taylor’s recordings with the group you can get some idea of what they sounded like when Sam was a member: [Excerpt: Johnnie Taylor and the Highway QCs, “I Dreamed That Heaven Was Like This”] The rest of the group were decent singers, but Sam Cooke was absolutely unquestionably the star of the Highway QCs. Creadell Copeland, one of the group’s members, later said “All we had to do was stand behind Sam. Our claim to fame was that Sam’s voice was so captivating we didn’t have to do anything else.” The group didn’t make a huge amount of money, and they kept talking about going in a pop direction, rather than just singing gospel songs, and Sam was certainly singing a lot of secular music in his own time — he loved gospel music as much as anyone, but he was also learning from people like Gene Autry or Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and he was slowly developing into a singer who could do absolutely anything with his voice. But his biggest influence was still R.H. Harris of the Soul Stirrers, who was the most important person in the gospel quartet field. This wasn’t just because he was the most talented of all the quartet singers — though he was, and that was certainly part of it — but because he was the joint leader of a movement to professionalise the gospel quartet movement. (Just as a quick explanation — in both black gospel, and in the white gospel music euphemistically called “Southern Gospel”, the term “quartet” is used for groups which might have five, six, or even more people in them. I’ll generally refer to all of these as “groups”, because I’m not from the gospel world, but I’ll use the term “quartet” when talking about things like the National Quartet Convention, and I may slip between the two interchangeably at times. Just know that if I mention quartets, I’m not just talking about groups with exactly four people in them). Harris worked with a less well known singer called Abraham Battle, and with Charlie Bridges, of another popular group, the Famous Blue Jays: [Excerpt: The Famous Blue Jay Singers, “Praising Jesus Evermore”] Together they founded the National Quartet Convention, which existed to try to take all the young gospel quartets who were springing up all over the place, and most of whom had casual attitudes to their music and their onstage appearance, and teach them how to comport themselves in a manner that the organisation’s leaders considered appropriate for a gospel singer. The Highway QCs joined the Convention, of course, and they considered themselves to be disciples, in a sense, of the Soul Stirrers, who they simultaneously considered to be their mentors and thought were jealous of the QCs. It was normal at the time for gospel groups to turn up at each other’s shows, and if they were popular enough they would be invited up to sing, and sometimes even take over the show. When the Highway QCs turned up at Soul Stirrers shows, though, the Soul Stirrers would act as if they didn’t know them, and would only invite them on to the stage if the audience absolutely insisted, and would then limit their performance to a single song. From the Highway QCs’ point of view, the only possible explanation was that the Soul Stirrers were terrified of the competition. A more likely explanation is probably that they were just more interested in putting on their own show than in giving space to some young kids who thought they were the next big thing. On the other hand, to all the younger kids around Chicago, the Highway QCs were clearly the group to beat — and people like a young singer named Lou Rawls looked up to them as something to aspire to. And soon the QCs found themselves being mentored by R.B. Robinson, one of the Soul Stirrers. Robinson would train them, and help them get better gigs, and the QCs became convinced that they were headed for the big time. But it turned out that behind the scenes, there had been trouble in the Soul Stirrers. Harris had, more and more, come to think of himself as the real star of the group, and quit to go solo. It had looked likely for a while that he would do so, and when Robinson had appeared to be mentoring the QCs, what he was actually doing was training their lead singer, so that when R.H. Harris eventually quit, they would have someone to take his place. The other Highway QCs were heartbroken, but Sam took the advice of his father, the Reverend Cook, who told him “Anytime you can make a step higher, you go higher. Don’t worry about the other fellow. You hold up for other folks, and they’ll take advantage of you.” And so, in March 1951, Sam Cooke went into the studio with the Soul Stirrers for his first ever recording session, three months after joining the group. Art Rupe, the head of Specialty Records, was not at all impressed that the group had got a new singer without telling him. Rupe had to admit that Cooke could sing, but his performance on the first few songs, while impressive, was no R.H. Harris: [Excerpt: the Soul Stirrers, “Come, Let Us Go Back to God”] But towards the end of the session, the Soul Stirrers insisted that they should record “Jesus Gave Me Water”, a song that had always been a highlight of the Highway QCs’ set. Rupe thought that this was ridiculous — the Pilgrim Travellers had just had a hit with the song, on Specialty, not six months earlier. What could Specialty possibly do with another version of the song so soon afterwards? But the group insisted, and the result was absolutely majestic: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, “Jesus Gave Me Water”] Rupe lost his misgivings, both about the song and about the singer — that was clearly going to be the group’s next single. The group themselves were still not completely sure about Cooke as their singer — he was younger than the rest of them, and he didn’t have Harris’ assurance and professionalism, yet. But they knew they had something with that song, which was released with “Peace in the Valley” on the B-side. That song had been written by Thomas Dorsey fourteen years earlier, but this was the first time it had been released on a record, at least by anyone of any prominence. “Jesus Gave Me Water” was a hit, but the follow-ups were less successful, and meanwhile Art Rupe was starting to see the commercial potential in black styles of music other than gospel. Even though Rupe loved gospel music, he realised when “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” became the biggest hit Specialty had ever had to that point that maybe he should refocus the label away from gospel and towards more secular styles of music. “Jesus Gave Me Water” had consolidated Sam as the lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, but while he was singing gospel, he wasn’t living a very godly life. He got married in 1953, but he’d already had at least one child with another woman, who he left with the baby, and he was sleeping around constantly while on the road, and more than once the women involved became pregnant. But Cooke treated women the same way he treated the groups he was in – use them for as long as they’ve got something you want, and then immediately cast them aside once it became inconvenient. For the next few years, the Soul Stirrers would have one recording session every year, and the group continued touring, but they didn’t have any breakout success, even as other Specialty acts like Lloyd Price, Jesse Belvin, and Guitar Slim were all selling hand over fist. The Soul Stirrers were more popular as a live act than as a recording act, and hearing the live recording of them that Bumps Blackwell produced in 1955, it’s easy to see why: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Nearer to Thee”] Bumps Blackwell was convinced that Cooke needed to go solo and become a pop singer, and he was more convinced than ever when he produced the Soul Stirrers in the studio for the first time. The reason, actually, was to do with Cooke’s laziness. They’d gone into the studio, and it turned out that Cooke hadn’t written a song, and they needed one. The rest of the group were upset with him, and he just told them to hand him a Bible. He started flipping through, skimming to find something, and then he said “I got one”. He told the guitarist to play a couple of chords, and he started singing — and the song that came out, improvised off the top of his head, “Touch the Hem of His Garment”, was perfect just as it was, and the group quickly cut it: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Touch the Hem of His Garment”] Blackwell knew then that Cooke was a very, very special talent, and he and the rest of the people at Specialty became more and more insistent as 1956 went on that Sam Cooke should become a secular solo performer, rather than performing in a gospel group. The Soul Stirrers were only selling in the low tens of thousands — a reasonable amount for a gospel group, but hardly the kind of numbers that would make anyone rich. Meanwhile, gospel-inspired performers were having massive hits with gospel songs with a couple of words changed. There’s an episode of South Park where they make fun of contemporary Christian music, saying you just have to take a normal song and change the word “Baby” to “Jesus”. In the mid-fifties things seemed to be the other way — people were having hits by taking Gospel songs and changing the word “Jesus” to “baby”, or near as damnit. Most famously and blatantly, there was Ray Charles, who did things like take “This Little Light of Mine”: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “This Little Light of Mine”] and turn it into “This Little Girl of Mine: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “This Little Girl of Mine”] But there were a number of other acts doing things that weren’t that much less blatant. And so Sam Cooke travelled to New Orleans, to record in Cosimo Matassa’s studio with the same musicians who had been responsible for so many rock and roll hits. Or, rather, Dale Cook did. Sam was still a member of the Soul Stirrers at the time, and while he wanted to make himself into a star, he was also concerned that if he recorded secular music under his own name, he would damage his career as a gospel singer, without necessarily getting a better career to replace it. So the decision was made to put the single out under the name “Dale Cook”, and maintain a small amount of plausible deniability. If necessary, they could say that Dale was Sam’s brother, because it was fairly well known that Sam came from a singing family, and indeed Sam’s brother L.C. (whose name was just the initials L.C.) later went on to have some minor success as a singer himself, in a style very like Sam’s. As his first secular recording, they decided to record a new version of a gospel song that Cooke had recorded with the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful”] One quick rewrite later, and that song became, instead, “Lovable”: [Excerpt: Dale Cook, “Lovable”] Around the time of the Dale Cook recording session, Sam’s brother L.C. went to Memphis, with his own group, where they appeared at the bottom of the bill for a charity Christmas show in aid of impoverished black youth. The lineup of the show was almost entirely black – people like Ray Charles, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, and so on – but Elvis Presley turned up briefly to come out on stage and wave to the crowd and say a few words – the Colonel wouldn’t allow him to perform without getting paid, but did allow him to make an appearance, and he wanted to support the black community in Memphis. Backstage, Elvis was happy to meet all the acts, but when he found out that L.C. was Sam’s brother, he spent a full twenty minutes talking to L.C. about how great Sam was, and how much he admired his singing with the Soul Stirrers. Sam was such a distinctive voice that while the single came out as by “Dale Cook”, the DJs playing it would often introduce it as being by “Dale Sam Cook”, and the Soul Stirrers started to be asked if they were going to sing “Lovable” in their shows. Sam started to have doubts as to whether this move towards a pop style was really a good idea, and remained with the Soul Stirrers for the moment, though it’s noticeable that songs like “Mean Old World” could easily be refigured into being secular songs, and have only a minimal amount of religious content: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Mean Old World”] But barely a week after the session that produced “Mean Old World”, Sam was sending Bumps Blackwell demos of new pop songs he’d written, which he thought Blackwell would be interested in producing. Sam Cooke was going to treat the Soul Stirrers the same way he’d treated the Highway QCs. Cooke flew to LA, to meet with Blackwell and with Clifton White, a musician who had been for a long time the guitarist for the Mills Brothers, but who had recently left the band and started working with Blackwell as a session player. White was very unimpressed with Cooke – he thought that the new song Cooke sang to them, “You Send Me”, was just him repeating the same thing over and over again. Art Rupe helped them whittle the song choices down to four. Rupe had very particular ideas about what made for a commercial record – for example, that a record had to be exactly two minutes and twenty seconds long – and the final choices for the session were made with Rupe’s criteria in mind. The songs chosen were “Summertime”, “You Send Me”, another song Sam had written called “You Were Made For Me”, and “Things You Do to Me”, which was written by a young man Bumps Blackwell had just taken on as his assistant, named Sonny Bono. The recording session should have been completely straightforward. Blackwell supervised it, and while the session was in LA, almost everyone there was a veteran New Orleans player – along with Clif White on guitar there was René Hall, a guitarist from New Orleans who had recently quit Billy Ward and the Dominoes, and acted as instrumental arranger; Harold Battiste, a New Orleans saxophone player who Bumps had taken under his wing, and who wasn’t playing on the session but ended up writing the vocal arrangements for the backing singers; Earl Palmer, who had just moved to LA from New Orleans and was starting to make a name for himself as a session player there after his years of playing with Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Fats Domino in Cosimo Matassa’s studio, and Ted Brinson, the only LA native, on bass — Brinson was a regular player on Specialty sessions, and also had connections with almost every LA R&B act, to the extent that it was his garage that “Earth Angel” by the Penguins had been recorded in. And on backing vocals were the Lee Gotch singers, a white vocal group who were among the most in-demand vocalists in LA. So this should have been a straightforward session, and it was, until Art Rupe turned up just after they’d recorded “You Send Me”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Rupe was horrified that Bumps and Battiste had put white backing vocalists behind Cooke’s vocals. They were, in Rupe’s view, trying to make Sam Cooke sound like Billy Ward and his Dominoes at best, and like a symphony orchestra at worst. The Billy Ward reference was because René Hall had recently arranged a version of “Stardust” for the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “Stardust”] And the new version of “Summertime” had some of the same feel: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “Summertime”] If Sam Cooke was going to record for Specialty, he wasn’t going to have *white* vocalists backing him. Rupe wanted black music, not something trying to be white — and the fact that he, a white man, was telling a room full of black musicians what counted as black music, was not lost on Bumps Blackwell. Even worse than the whiteness of the singers, though, was that some of them were women. Rupe and Blackwell had already had one massive falling-out, over “Rip it Up” by Little Richard. When they’d agreed to record that, Blackwell had worked out an arrangement beforehand that Rupe was happy with — one that was based around piano triplets. But then, when he’d been on the plane to the session, Blackwell had hit upon another idea — to base the song around a particular drum pattern: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Rip it Up”] Rupe had nearly fired Blackwell over that, and only relented when the record became a massive hit. Now that instead of putting a male black gospel group behind Cooke, as agreed, Blackwell had disobeyed him a second time and put white vocalists, including women, behind him, Rupe decided it was the last straw. Blackwell had to go. He was also convinced that Sam Cooke was only after money, because once Cooke discovered that his solo contract only paid him a third of the royalties that the Soul Stirrers had been getting as a group, he started pushing for a greater share of the money. Rupe didn’t like that kind of greed from his artists — why *should* he pay the artist more than one cent per record sold? But he still owed Blackwell a great deal of money. They eventually came to an agreement — Blackwell would leave Specialty, and take Sam Cooke, and Cooke’s existing recordings with him, since he was so convinced that they were going to be a hit. Rupe would keep the publishing rights to any songs Sam wrote, and would have an option on eight further Sam Cooke recordings in the future, but Cooke and Blackwell were free to take “You Send Me”, “Summertime”, and the rest to a new label that wanted them for its first release, Keen. While they waited around for Keen to get itself set up, Sam made himself firmly a part of the Central Avenue music scene, hanging around with Gaynel Hodge, Jesse Belvin, Dootsie Williams, Googie Rene, John Dolphin, and everyone else who was part of the LA R&B community. Meanwhile, the Soul Stirrers got Johnnie Taylor, the man who had replaced Sam in the Highway QCs, to replace him in the Stirrers. While Sam was out of the group, for the next few years he would be regularly involved with them, helping them out in recording sessions, producing them, and more. When the single came out, everyone thought that “Summertime” would be the hit, but “You Send Me” quickly found itself all over the airwaves and became massive: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Several cover versions came out almost immediately. Sam and Bumps didn’t mind the versions by Jesse Belvin: [Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, “You Send Me”] Or Cornell Gunter: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, “You Send Me”] They were friends and colleagues, and good luck to them if they had a hit with the song — and anyway, they knew that Sam’s version was better. What they did object to was the white cover version by Teresa Brewer: [Excerpt: Teresa Brewer, “You Send Me”] Even though her version was less of a soundalike than the other LA R&B versions, it was more offensive to them — she was even copying Sam’s “whoa-oh”s. She was nothing more than a thief, Blackwell argued — and her version was charting, and made the top ten. Fortunately for them, Sam’s version went to number one, on both the R&B and pop charts, despite a catastrophic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which accidentally cut him off half way through a song. But there was still trouble with Art Rupe. Sam was still signed to Rupe’s company as a songwriter, and so he’d put “You Send Me” in the name of his brother L.C., so Rupe wouldn’t get any royalties. Rupe started legal action against him, and meanwhile, he took a demo Sam had recorded, “I’ll Come Running Back To You”, and got René Hall and the Lee Gotch singers, the very people whose work on “You Send Me” and “Summertime” he’d despised so much, to record overdubs to make it sound as much like “You Send Me” as possible: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “I’ll Come Running Back To You”] And in retaliation for *that* being released, Bumps Blackwell took a song that he’d recorded months earlier with Little Richard, but which still hadn’t been released, and got the Specialty duo Don and Dewey to provide instrumental backing for a vocal group called the Valiants, and put it out on Keen: [Excerpt: The Valiants, “Good Golly Miss Molly”] Specialty had to rush-release Little Richard’s version to make sure it became the hit — a blow for them, given that they were trying to dripfeed the public what few Little Richard recordings they had left. As 1957 drew to a close, Sam Cooke was on top of the world. But the seeds of his downfall were already in place. He was upsetting all the right people with his desire to have control of his own career, but he was also hurting a lot of other people along the way — people who had helped him, like the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers, and especially women. He was about to divorce his first wife, and he had fathered a string of children with different women, all of whom he refused to acknowledge or support. He was taking his father’s maxims about only looking after yourself, and applying them to every aspect of life, with no regard to who it hurt. But such was his talent and charm, that even the people he hurt ended up defending him. Over the next couple of times we see Sam Cooke, we’ll see him rising to ever greater artistic heights, but we’ll also see the damage he caused to himself and to others. Because the story of Sam Cooke gets very, very unpleasant.

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Story by: Gail NoblesVocals by: Gail NoblesKeyboard player: Gail NoblesPhoto Credit: https://alchetron.com/Maceo-WoodsFree EncyclopediaSometimes the way seems dark. (St. John 8:12) Then spake Jesus again unto them saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.I'm thinking of a song by Maceo Woods. It's called "Hello Sunshine". Maceo Woods has his way of singing it. The Soul Stirrers had their way of singing it, and this is my way.(Singing)Reverend Maceo Woods. Age 87 today. He is a gospel musician and noted organist, who founded, Christian Tabernacle Church. He started his music career in 1954 with the release of Amazing Grace. Hello Sunshine was released in 1970 with Volt Records, and the song placed on the R&B Singles Chart. I'm Gail Nobles and you're listening to The Gospel Greats.

Gloria Gaynor Gives 'Testimony' With Gospel-Roots Groove Music

Soundcheck

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 4, 2019 28:40

New Jersey-born and Grammy Award-winning superstar singer Gloria Gaynor might be best-known for her disco-era hits, but she has deep gospel roots and with her 2019 release, Testimony, she gives powerful voice to these roots. She cites as influences Blind Boys of Alabama, the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, and watching her brothers perform as a gospel quartet (Cross Rhythms Radio.) While she had recorded a Christian music record to go with her 2013 book, We Will Survive: True Stories of Encouragement, Inspiration, and the Power of Song, it is just now in 2019 with Testimony, which was just nominated for a Grammy, that she partnered with producer Chris Stevens (TobyMac, Mandisa) to create a roots-gospel collection of songs. Blues-drenched and spiritual, there are soulful and brass-augmented originals that rely on Gaynor's songwriting interspersed with re-imagined versions of the classic "Amazing Grace" and "Take My Hand, Precious Lord," along with a funk-infused cover of Bob Dylan's "Man Of Peace." Gloria Gaynor sings some of these uplifting songs in-studio. - Caryn Havlik Watch the session here:

#119 See in Truth

Subversive Undercroft

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2019 23:04

To follow Jesus requires that we see the world, and ourselves, in all truth and honesty READING Luke 18:9-14 Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, `God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, `God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." MUSIC Just As I Am, River Pointe Church The God of Abraham Praise, Sean Jackson A Little Talk With Jesus, RH Harris and the Soul Stirrers

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A Few Songs of Old Barrett Singers, Albertina Walker.

Jesus In the Morning

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2019 112:00

The Barrett Sisters are an American gospel trio from Chicago, Illinois. The trio consisted of sisters DeLois Barrett Campbell, Billie Barrett GreenBey and Rodessa Barrett Porter. They have been singing together for more than 40 years. Albertina Walker was an American gospel singer, songwriter, actress, and humanitarian. She was popularly referred to as the "Queen of Gospel Music". These are to just name a few many singers from the old days have gone on to be with the Lord. A lot of the lady singers sounded like men it showed how strong her voice was and people liked it. The list is endless of all the gospel singers. James Cleveland, Shirley Ceasar,and Dorothy Northwood. Edward Hawkins,

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Chapter Twenty Three - A Two-Way Street

Cowbells and Ding Dongs

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2019 26:37

Jody, Grace and Willie attend the memorial for James Earl Green and Phillip Lafayette Gibbs. Listen to "Nearer my God to Thee" by Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers at the close of this chapter. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/cowbellsanddingdongs/support

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Gospel tónlist gömul og ný

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2019 43:00

Tónlistin sem hljómar í þættinum: Nana Mouskouri: In The Upper Room; The Pilgrim Travelers: Mother Bowed; The Soul Stirrers & Sam Cook: Jesus Gave Me Water; Soul Stirrers & Johnny Taylor: God Is Standing By; Famous Ward Singers: Surely God Is Able og How I Got Over; Mahalia Jackson: Walk Over God's Heaven; Swan Silvertones: Mary Don't You Weep; Paul Simon: Loves Me Like A Rock; Harmonizing Four: Wade In The Water; Gospel Hummingbirds: Safety Zone og Step Out.

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Gospel tónlist gömul og ný

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2019

gospel step out soul stirrers how i got over

Gospel tónlist gömul og ný

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2019

gospel step out soul stirrers how i got over

Gospel tónlist gömul og ný

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2019

gospel step out soul stirrers how i got over

FTLOA "For the Love of A Cappella" EPS XCVII YOU'RE GOING TO BE ALRIGHT

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2019 59:20

Soundstage, Maccabeats feat Naturally 7, Rescue, LeRoyal, In Rare Form Vocal Blend, Jarrard & Javaun, 7th Element, The A Cappellian, Straight Company, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, L Young, Take 6, Breath of Life Quartet, Sam Robson, The Sisters, and Bobby McFerrin

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FTLOA "For the Love of A Cappella" EPS LXXXVII CONSIDER THE SPRING TIME

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2019 60:41

Afro Blue, Accent, In Rare Form Vocal Blend, Voctave, Take 6, Naturally 7, Committed, 7th Element, The A Cappellian, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, Vade, and The Real Group

Part 3: Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul

Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2019 34:00

By the mid-20th century, gospel music was a force in America, compelling many sanctified artists to cross over to secular music. The temptations of fortune and fame became strong for many gospel artists. But crossing over could mean betraying the audience that built them up - or worse. This episode tells the stories of musicians such as Sam Cooke and Sister Rosetta Tharpe who had to navigate this complex relationship between sacred and secular music.

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Part 2: Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul

Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2019 24:02

This episode dives deep into the Golden Age of gospel quartets in the mid-20th century. These groups toured across the United States on what's called the gospel highway and charted a course for the rock and soul musicians who would follow them. These groups included The Dixie Hummingbirds, The Pilgrim Travelers, The Golden Gates, The Caravans, and The Soul Stirrers featuring Sam Cooke.

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Part 1: Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul

Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2019 27:58

"Saturday Night and Sunday Morning: The Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul" is a 6-part documentary series that explores the history and influence of gospel music on early rock and roll, soul and R&B music. This first episode examines the history and foundation of Black music beginning with the spirituals that were sung during the time of American slavery, and looks at how that music evolved into gospel music during the early 20th century with the help of innovators such as Thomas Dorsey, who is considered the "father of gospel music".

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FTLOA "For the Love of A Cappella" EPS LXXXV YOU'VE GOT TO MOVE SOMEWHERE

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2019 59:53

I once heard an elderly man say "son...you'll get nowhere fast just standing there...you've got to move somewhere"...well... here to back me up is: Naturally 7, Just 6, Take 6, On Pointe, David Musonda, Bobby McFerrin, African Childrens Choir, Dedication, Singers Unlimited, Afro Blue, Committed, Take 6, Russell Hospedales, and Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers. ENJOY!

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#2303 - Candi Staton

Beale Street Caravan

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 29, 2018 58:22

This week on the program we feature the First Lady of Soul, Candi Staton in a live performance captured at AmericanaFest, and, later in the program, we get to sit down and catch up with her for an in depth interview. Candi received her first record deal as a teenager and spent the formative years of her life touring the gospel circuit in the 1950’s alongside such luminaries as The Soul Stirrers, Mahalia Jackson, and CL Franklin, father of the late Aretha Franklin. 33 Albums and 4 Grammy nominations later, Candi Staton is a proud inductee of the Christian Music Hall of Fame for her brilliant work in the gospel genre. Grammy nominated blues man, Guy Davis, will be with us to deliver an installment of the Blues Hall of Fame, an exploration of the lives of the pioneers and innovators enshrined in the Blues Hall of Fame, here in Memphis, TN, brought to you by the blues Foundation.

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FTLOA "For the Love of A Cappella EPS LVIII "GIVE IT EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT"

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2018 59:57

There's no other greater satisfaction than knowing you've given it your all. In this episode I talked a little bit about my journey. I pray that you're blessed and inspired by it. Enjoy! Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, The Swan Silvertones, L Young, Naturally 7, Rescue, Take 6, Just 6, Pastor Joel Bowman feat The A Cappellian, On Pointe, Kelz (of Naturally 7), King's Heralds, The Gaither Vocal Band, The Martin's, Soundstage, and Babbie Mason feat The A Cappellian.

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FTLOA "For the Love of A Cappella"-FAITH" EPS LI

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2018 60:00

David Maddox, Russell Hospedales (of The King's Heralds) , Sam Robson, David Wesley, Kelz (of Naturally 7), The Fairfield Four, The Gaither Vocal Band, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, Anthony Brown and Group Therapy, Accent, Maccabeats, Take 6, Sound Stage, Ecks and Bullz Feat: Tommy Gervais and Elliott Robinson, The Discovery Singers, and The Ralph Carmichael Singers

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FTLOA "For the Love of A Cappella" Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Special EPS XLI

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2018 58:21

Committed, Ricky Cort (of Naturally 7), Maccabeats and Naturally 7, Carol Mallard (of Sweet Honey and the Rock), Sweet Honey and the Rock, Afro Blue, David Thomas (of Take 6) Take 6, Dr. Mervyn A. Warren, Women of the World, Alvin Chea (of Take 6) Take 6 and Brian McKnight, Sound Stage, Wayde Bryant (of Reflexions), Reflexions, Dr. Mervyn A Warren, the Fairfield Four, Dr. Mervyn A. Warren, Take 6, Vade,and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers

BOBCAST OCT 2017

BOBcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2017 45:39

'They resemble truth more than reality' Eddie McCoy, Holy Spirits Choir, John Lloyd, Susan Orlean, Tom Nichols, David Byrne, Mahalia Jackson, The Orchestra, The Sensational Nightingales, Roger Eno, Steve Aylett, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Cesar 830, Krys Boyd, Biblical Gospel Singers, Thirteeen Moons, The Soul Stirrers, Tito Puente & his Orchestra, TM Juke, The Persuasions, Tosca, Tig Notaro, Mighty Clouds of Joy, Dick Gregory, Virginia Astley, Skyray, The Highway QCs, Sofa Surfers, Werner Herzog

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FTLOA "For the Love of A Cappella"Eps XXIII HAPPY BIRTHDAY SYDNEY

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2017 56:20

On September 8, 1996 the Lord blessed me with a handsome baby boy. Also on September 7, 1977 He also blessed me with a brother. I'll share some miraculous stories of the two. You'll also hear in this amazing episode: On Pointe, Take 6, Traces of Blue, Sisters, Sam Cook and the Soul Stirrers, Jesse Campbell, the Isaacs, Take 6, Accent, Just 6, Idea of North, (Leigha daughter), (Andrew son) Rhonda wife) Naturally 7, the Martins, and On Pointe! Enjoy!!!

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FTLOA "For the Love of A Cappella"- EPS X

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2017 57:25

If you're a lover of hymns, this episode is for you! I even took the time to go over the lyrics to them (so poetic). 3 AM, Reflexions, Committed, Glad, 7th Element, Sam Robson, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, the Fairfield Four, the Breath Life of Life Quartet, Vade, the Fellas, Take 6

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FTLOA "For the Love of A Cappella"-Happy Mother's Day! Episode VI