American bluegrass duo
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What does it take to become a musical chameleon who commands respect across diverse genres? Daniel Kimbro delivers a masterclass in musical versatility on this episode of Chewing the Gristle.From his beginnings in a family folk band called Mountain Soul to his current status as bassist for Jerry Douglas and session player on Eric Clapton records, Daniel shares the winding path that shaped his musical identity. With disarming honesty, he reveals how growing up surrounded by Stanley Brothers, Sting, and classical music created the perfect foundation for a career that refuses categorization.Daniel takes us deep into the heart of Appalachian musical traditions, particularly the fascinating world of murder ballads – those deceptively cheerful melodies paired with dark narratives. His own songwriting draws from this tradition, including "Loyston," a haunting tale about a town submerged underwater when the Tennessee Valley Authority built dams across the region. The conversation explores how these songs balance historical reality with creative embellishment, creating something both authentic and original.Whether you're a musician seeking to diversify your influences or simply curious about the connections between bluegrass, jazz, and everything in between, this conversation offers rich insights into finding your authentic voice while honoring musical traditions. Check out Daniel's music and keep an eye out for The Woodshed Guitar Experience, where he serves as music director alongside world-class guitarists sharing knowledge in an unusually accessible environment.
From Pound, VA, Brayden Mullins started his music journey at the age of 17 in his bedroom. He drew in-spiration from many artists such as Keith Whitley, The Stanley Brothers and James King. While bluegrass was a main drawing to music for Brayden he also listened to artists such as Pink Floyd, Korn, Alison Krauss and Townes Van Zandt to name a few. The lyrics and stories behind songs is what makes music come alive according to Brayden.Brayden aims to captivate the mind and ear of the audience with his songs. He wants his songs to challenge the thinking of those who hear them and for them to fully understand the message behind what is being said. His debut album “Unfamiliar Writings” fully encompasses this with his 8 originals tracks. These songs have only two instruments (acoustic guitar and fiddle), but they will bring you through the life of those within the songs.
Welcome to Get Up in the Cool: Old Time Music with Cameron DeWhitt and Friends. This week's friends are Annie Staninec and John Kael of Whiskey Deaf! We recorded this last week at my home in Portland, OR. Tunes in this episode: * High Dad in the Morning (0:37) * You Must Come in at the Door (08:51) * No Burdens Pass Through (29:32) * Suwannee River Hoedown (43:47) * Long John Dean (55:41) * Bonus Track: Mule to Ride Visit Whiskey Deaf's website (https://whiskeydeaf.com/) Follow them on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@whiskeydeaf) and on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/whiskeydeaf) Visit Annie Staninec's website (https://anniestaninec.com/) Come see Tradwife Stringband open for Rachel Sumner on February 26th at McMenamins White Eagle Saloon (https://www.etix.com/ticket/p/35725471/rachel-sumner-traveling-light21-portland-mcmenamins-white-eagle-saloon) Follow Tradwife Stringband on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tradwifestringband/) Support Get Up in the Cool on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/getupinthecool) Send Tax Deductible Donations to Get Up in the Cool through Fracture Atlas (https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/get-up-in-the-cool) Sign up at Pitchfork Banjo for my clawhammer instructional series! (https://www.pitchforkbanjo.com/) Schedule a banjo lesson with Cameron (https://www.camerondewhitt.com/banjolessons) Visit Tall Poppy String Band's website (https://www.tallpoppystringband.com/) and follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/tallpoppystringband/)
I'm digging into my LP collection for some of today's selections – Emerson & Waldron, great band from the late-1960's/early 1970's, and the Johnson Mountain Boys, classic bluegrass from the 1980's. Of course we've got some fine offerings from Rhonda Vincent, the Brombies, Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, and the Stanley Brothers. Throw in some picking from Brad Kolodner, the HCBB and Eddie Adcock & Don Reno, and you've got a memorable bluegrass concert.
Virginia (feat. Catie Parker Fedoryka) – Scythian Angel Band – The Stanley Brothers & The Clinch Mountain Boys Smoky Mountain Girl – Old Crow Medicine Show You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go – The Wildmans Favor – 49 Winchester Ain’t No Sleepin’ In This House – Donna Ulisse Honky-Tonked to Death – Junior Sisk & Rambler’s Choice Guitar Town – Steve Earle Keep On the Sunny Side – The Carter Family Walkin' After Midnight – Patsy Cline
Great banjo playing from Jim Mills, wonderful mandolin playing from David Grisman & Sam Bush, with a generous helping of fine picking & singing from the Stanley Brothers, Alison Krauss and lots of others. Pure delight!
On tonight's show, I have Kody Norris of The Kody Norris Show! The talented group, made up of frontman Kody Norris, Josiah Tyree, Mary Rachel Nalley-Norris, and Charlie Lowman, finds themselves with a growing legion of fans craving the comfort that comes from their retro look, but equally craving dynamic instrumentation and thought-provoking lyrics – all of which can be heard throughout their epic new album Rhinestone Revival. “There is a whole chapter of country music that's just kind of faded away,” The Kody Norris Show's frontman once said. “I believe The Kody Norris Show has been instrumental in bringing back some of that nostalgia and some of that classic look that country music and bluegrass music used to have.” The foundations of the electrifying four-piece band can be found within the roots of Kody Norris himself, a once inquisitive youngster from Mountain City, Tennessee who would spend hours sitting in the passenger seat of his Uncle Jack's Chevrolet El Camino listening to the entirety of The Stanley Brothers 16 Greatest Hits tape, wondering if he would ever be able to match the sweet harmonies coming through the speakers. At nine years old, he picked up the mandolin and he never put it down.
This episode of Back Porch Bluegrass features music from 1927 right through to 2023, with lots of great tunes in between. Uncle Dave Macon, the Bluegrass Album Band, Starlett & Big John Talley, John Reischman & the Jaybirds, Jane Germain & Ian Simpson, the Stanley Brothers – some fine selections here.
Locura de banjos en esta nueva edición de Melodías pizarras con tres gemitas, tres, del Bluegrass más pizarro a cargo de The McCormick Bros, Stanley Brothers y Don Reno, Red Smiley And The Tennessee Cutups. Y por si esto fuera poco, también les ofreceremos calypso, mambo, conga, western swing, country boogie, hawaiian, rhythm and blues, country blues y sweet music. A partir de las ocho de la mañana del sábado en la sintonía de Radio 3.Escuchar audio
Cantan como hermanos, pero no lo eran. Como los Bailes Brothers, como los Stanley Brothers, como los Everly Brothers. De algun modo, no obstante, Estos chicos lograron trascender todo eso y lograron cantar como los hermanos que estaban destinados a ser. Cantan como una sola persona. Y lo cantan todo. Podían cantar rumbas y rock and roll y rythm and blues y doo wop y hasta country newgrass. Les iba lo ecléctico mucho antes que Nashville lo aceptara. Cantaban como fuego vivo, crepitante. Johnnie and Jack tendrían que estar en el Salón de la Fama del Country, pero no están. Sin dudas, demasiado radicales para lo que sea que llamen música Country. Se los relegó en favor de Barbara Mandrell y George Strait y Statler Brothers. Obviamente, Johnnie and Jack no son lo bastante Country. Pero lo son, y muchas cosas mas. Están más cerca del rockabilly, del rock and roll, así que tampoco se deben de sentir agraviados. Gene Vincent tampoco está en el Salón de la Fama del Country. Como no lo están Warren Smith o Billy Lee. Los que cantaron: Poison Love - Johnnie & Jack What About You - Jimmy Dickens Standing Room Only - Barbara Mandrell What Do You Think of Her Now - Johnnie & Jack Sweet Gene Vincent - Ian Dury Foolin' Around - Johnnie & Jack I Overlooked an Orchid - Johnnie & Jack The Rhumba Boogie - Hank Snow The Golden Rocket - Hank Snow Uncle Pen - Bill Monroe Hey, Good Lookin' - Hank Williams The Best Strangers - Barbara Mandrell Viva la radio Saludos cordiales El galgo
We had a great concert in my backyard with George Jackson & Brad Kolodner, and I'm featuring their music on this show. I've also got some great tracks from the Travelling McCourys, Barry & Holly Tashian, the Stanley Brothers, and Junior Sisk. High Fidelity get a look in, and there's even an opening track from Australian great Slim Dusty and the Travelling Country Band.
We're on the rundown to Christmas, so we've got Caroline Jones & the Trenwiths doing a Christmas song, bluegrass style (of course!) as well as some classic bluegrass from the Bluegrass Album Band, the Stanley Brothers and the Spinney Brothers. Jeanette Williams, Mike Compton, the Bluegrass Expedition, Leon Morris and High Fidelity also get chance to present some music. Definitely worth tuning in!
THE KODY NORRIS SHOW is one the finest and most entertaining bands in the world of bluegrass just won the SPBGMA ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR as well as the INSTRUMENTAL GROUP OF THE YEAR awards. The band has crafted a performance style that harkens back to Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, the Stanley Brothers, and the Grand Ole Opry … with a bit of Vaudeville thrown in. Always clad in colorful, tailored suits, hats and ornate boots, the band earns its moniker as a “show.” Top notch picking is center stage, but humor and flash are part of the package.WONKY TONK is Kentucky's musical version of hard cider folksinger with a dash of Loretta Lynn, John Prine, Lucinda Williams and Guy Clark. Wonky Tonk was born Jasmine Poole in Cincinnati, but grew up in Northern Kentucky. The story behind her stage name is long and complicated but involves a high school project, a late-night hang-out with friends at Waffle House, and, ultimately, the acquisition of a banjo. Find out the rest of that story on the WoodSongs broadcast. WoodSongs Kid: Alex Davis is a 10 year old banjo picker from Manchester, TN.
VAMPIROS EN LA HABANA: Hijo puta Mariano FRANCIS LAI: Plus fort que nous (instrumental) WEEZER: Undone (The sweater song) LOS ENEMIGOS: Siete mil canciones THE UMBRELLAS: Write it in the sky MOTÖRHEAD: No class MINA: Una casa in cima al mondo RINGO DEATHSTARR: Two girls VAMPIROS EN LA HABANA: Bluesmen del Llobregat KITSCH: Autoviolació THE STANLEY BROTHERS & THE CLINCH MOUNTAIN BOYS: Big Tilda JEANINES: After all ILEGALES: Para siempre ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA: Eldorado finale GIRLS AGAINST BOYS: Billy’s one stop THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS: I can’t remember the dream VAMPIROS EN LA HABANA: Surfin’Llobregat DICK DALE: Surf beat ANOTHER SUNNY DAY: You should all be murdered ALASKA Y DINARAMA: Tormento SUPERDRAG: Señorita LEVITATION ROOM: Pienso en ti THE FIELD MICE: Sensitive +Bukowski +Nan Orriols +L’influx de la queixalada +Els Joves +The Big Bang Theory +Pop Ràpid +West side story
I've been buying bluegrass albums from County Sales (USA) since the mid-1960's, and I've just received another package from them, of albums I ordered from their catalogue. It's always exciting opening such a package, and I thought I'd share that with you this week. Featured performers include Cliff Waldron, the Bluegrass Alliance, Missy Werner, the Country Gentlemen, the Stanley Brothers, fiddler Billy Baker and Ronnie Reno.
Some real stars of the bluegrass music scene are featuring in today's programme. Ricky Skaggs, Mike Compton, Blue Highway, Lou Reid, Dale Ann Bradley and the Goodbye Girls with Molly Tuttle. There's some songs from Darren Beachley, John Bowman, and some classic bluegrass from the Stanley Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs.
Dean Schlabowske ( Chicago / WACO BROTHERS) and Jo Walston (Austin /MEAT PURVEYORS) team up to bring you a Classic Honky Tonk Vibe and Dean's fantastic original material. These fine folks have been bringing Classic Country and New Original Music to your Head, Heart, and Hips for over twenty years. The Spirit of The Stanley Brothers, George Jones, and Rose Maddox is alive and well in their music and you really want to buy their New Album, DEANO and JO. https://deanschlabowskemusic.com/https://www.patreon.com/user?u=81625843
Driven by their message of "radical love," hear how Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg, the husband and wife duo behind the renowned bluegrass band Nefesh Mountain, combat antisemitism within the music industry and beyond. Join us as we delve into their remarkable journey of representing Jewish-American culture, tradition, values, and spirituality through bluegrass and Americana music. The band also treats us to intimate performances from their latest album, "Songs for the Sparrows." *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. ___ Episode Lineup: (0:40) Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg ___ Show Notes: Learn more about: Nefesh Mountain Take our quiz: Jewish American Heritage Month Quiz Test your knowledge of the rich culture and heritage of the Jewish people and their many contributions to our nation! Start now. Read: What is Jewish American Heritage Month? Jewish American Heritage Month Resources Faces of American Jewry Amazing Jewish Americans Listen: 8 of the Best Jewish Podcasts Right Now Sen. Jon Ossoff on Jewish Resilience Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us. __ Transcript of Interview with Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg: Manya Brachear Pashman: Nefesh Mountain arrived on the bluegrass and American music scene in 2014. The husband and wife duo of Eric Lindbergh and Doni Zasloff have since performed in hundreds of synagogues in the United States and around the world, representing Jewish American culture, tradition, values and spirituality in the world of bluegrass. Bluegrass Today magazine has described the duo as what happens when bluegrass and Jewish traditions meet and fall madly in love. In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, Doni and Eric are with us now. Or I should say–we are with Doni and Eric now in their home in northern New Jersey, Doni, Eric, thank you for welcoming “People of the Pod.” Doni Zasloff: Thank you for coming. We're so excited to have you. Eric Lindberg: What a treat. Manya Brachear Pashman: So please share with our listeners how the two of you got together. Did you have individual musical pursuits? Or did you not really find your groove until you were together as a duo. Eric Lindberg: We're both pointing at each other. You tell it. Doni Zasloff: You tell it. Eric Lindberg: Well, we both had individual pursuits. We met playing music in the New York kind of North Jersey area. Years ago, we met back in 2010. And we were playing music in various fashions. And the quick story is that our band is a love story. And we fell in love a few years later, and it became apparent to each of us that we were head over heels crazy about each other. And that we also had all of this stuff that needed to come out that we kind of needed the other person to help kind of embolden our feelings of Americana music and of Jewish life and of culture and all this stuff. So I grew up in Brooklyn. And so much of my life as a kid was part of the synagogue, my after school program, and my camp, and of course, synagogue and I had a Bar Mitzvah and I grew up with this big Jewish life in Brooklyn. But at a certain point, I became kind of just a musician, I didn't know where to put this Jewish side of myself. I went to study jazz in college and all this stuff. So when I met Doni, she kind of brought me back to this feeling of, well, you can be proud of this and you can be excited about it. And you can live a fully Jewish life, you don't have to do it, any which way. You don't have to be a quote unquote, good or bad Jew, which, we hate those terms, but people tend to use them. Even Jewish people, of course, to show how religious or observant they're being at a certain time. So she had this completely unbridled kind of cowgirl way of looking at being wild and Jewish and proud and being yourself. And ultimately, I think that is pretty much the core of our message as a band. But I guess we'll get to that a little bit later. But she brought me back to this place of really just being proud of who I was. And that was the little germ that started this band. And then I brought kind of this musical sensibility in Americana music, with the banjo, and fiddle, and all this stuff. Manya Brachear Pashman: And Doni, how about you? What was your journey? Doni Zasloff: I've always loved all different kinds of music. And I've always been very, as Eric was describing, just having a very strong Jewish spirit. And I think what Eric you know, it's exactly right. When Eric and I fell in love and started to really kind of get real with ourselves and we wanted to kind of express ourselves in the most authentic way. And I think my Jewish spirit and his massive knowledge of all kinds of music, and he just kept throwing CDs into my car–listen to this, listen to this, listen to this. And he just kind of opened my mind and my heart to so many styles of music that I--some of which I loved already, some of which I learned. It was just something about the stars aligning for Eric and I that the music that we started to write from our truest selves in that moment, came out in this Nefesh Mountain kind of a way. And it turns out, it's exactly our truth. And it's exactly the thing that we were looking for, this idea of our relationship, our connection. It is our truth and it's become our whole adventure. Manya Brachear Pashman: And are you talking about the genre of music when you say that the Nefesh Mountain sound, or something else you're referring to? Doni Zasloff: It's not, it's like our language. It's the type of music that we play. It's the stories that we tell, it's the perspective that we have. A lot of people say, you know, where is Nefesh Mountain? Is that a place? And we always say it's a place. We made it up. But it's a place that we kind of, it's like a little dream world, that bubble that Eric and I have sort of dreamt up. Where, you know, it is a little like, the free to be you and me vibes of like, just be yourself. And it's infused with this huge range of musical styles. And Eric brings that to the table. Manya Brachear Pashman: Would you describe your genre or style as bluegrass? Or would you describe it as something else? I call it bluegrass. But what do you call it? Eric Lindberg: That's a great question. Because we're right now kind of, you're catching us in the throes of exploring that. And we have been this whole time. I'm a huge fan of bluegrass music. But when I say that, like that means something to me. And it doesn't necessarily mean the same thing to everybody. Of course, it's a word out there that means different things, like being Jewish means something different to everybody. You know, is it a religion? Is it a culture? And bluegrass has the same kind of thing where there's a purest form of bluegrass, which when you're talking about Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, Stanley Brothers, etc, you know. And then you also have the Bluegrass that I grew up with, which was more of a quote, newgrass thing, and also really just ended up being kind of very fancy folk music with the likes of you know, people like Béla Fleck and Nickel Creek, and Punch Brothers and Sarah Jarosz. All these singer songwriters that are starting to write music with bluegrass instruments, and also improvising on a very high level. So bluegrass has become something that is actually more Americana. So these days, we're kind of using Americana. Manya Brachear Pashman: Talk a little bit about the original purpose of your music, or message that you wanted to convey with your music together. Or the one that's evolved over time, perhaps? Eric Lindberg: Well, the original purpose. I'll say, it was all an accident. You know, we fell in love. That's always an accident. A beautifully happy, you know, accident that is ever evolving and beautiful. We, um...sorry. Manya Brachear Pashman: Stop making lovey dovey eyes at each other. Actually, you can continue, I just wanted our listeners to know. Eric Lindberg: No, no. It's a big story. We fell in love. Your question was…say it again. Manya Brachear Pashman: You talked about wanting to be authentic, wanting to express yourselves originally. But has that purpose or intended message of your music evolved over time? Eric Lindberg: Yes, it has evolved and the purpose in the beginning, I noticed something when we first started making this music. As a fan of course, Americana, bluegrass, all this stuff. I noticed that so many artists could go out and sing songs about, about Jesus, about Christianity, about their spirituality. And it's not necessarily called religious or overtly Christian, or anything. It's just Americana. Because they are kind of synonymous. And the fact that gospel music is kind of at the core and like in the bedrock of what has laid the foundation for Americana music, it goes without saying. So any secular artists can go out there and kind of be themselves in all of that. If they want to sing a gospel tune, well, let's do Will the Circle Be Unbroken, everyone will love it, you know, even though it's a gospel song. Or even songs that we've kind of turned on their ear a little bit like Wayfaring Stranger or Down to the River to Pray, I Fly Away, gospel songs that we love. So this was our answer to that– we're gonna bring a sense of Jewish spirituality to the Americana table. And our first records, or really our first record. And then a little bit into the second dealt with some of our liturgy with some of the prayers that we had grown up singing, which, for us, meant a lot. Songs, like Henei Mah Tov, which is a whole song about how great it is to have friends and be together and, you know, celebrate each other's uniqueness and beauty. To songs like, Oseh Shalom, prayer for peace, or something like that. Through the years, we found a new purpose. And we've also, you know, been a band through a very trying time in this country. You know, no matter what side of the political fence you're on, it's been, we're all living in a world where we pretty much don't agree. And it's kind of de facto, now, that we don't agree, and we're gonna fight. And unless you see exactly eye to eye with me, I'm your enemy. And we have now kind of taken a stance, we're not politicians by any stretch. But Doni has kind of created this term that I love, and it's called radical love, which is to, regardless of our backgrounds, regardless of, our opinion on this, that, or the other, we are going to look at people in the eye and embrace them, and to put love out, because that's what the world is clearly lacking. And it's definitely a kind of hippie sentiment, peace and love, man. But we're fighting all the same things now that everyone was in the 60s, that everyone was in the 70s and 80s. And before that, and probably beyond. And we're challenged with the same issues. We're challenged with racism, antisemitism, a lack of empathy and diversity in neighborhoods and school systems and in cities and the world is still, we want to be happy. So we pretend that it's better than it is sometimes, but it's not great for so many people. And it is a Jewish ideal that I grew up with, this idea of Tikkun Olam, to make the world a little bit better. That's what we want to do through our music. Manya Brachear Pashman: Do you feel like you have had opportunities to share and communicate that radical love? Are you getting through to people? Doni Zasloff: I think every time we get on a stage that is, in front of anyone really, whether it's a Jewish crowd in front of us, or whether it's a you know, a secular, diverse crowd of people, we don't know what their backgrounds are, we really are kind of stepping into a space where we are putting out this radical love. And I think that we have been blessed with an amazing response to it. People are skeptical about a lot of things. There are Jewish communities that were very skeptical about the banjo and very skeptical about the bluegrass thing. The amount of people that come up to us at a synagogue and say, I thought I hated bluegrass. I had no interest in bluegrass, I love it. Or I thought I was gonna hate you guys. Like I didn't understand what you guys were all about. But it turns out I really love it. So we're getting a lot of love wherever we go, which is kind of why no matter what's going on, we just keep doing it because, you know, we've also had responses from people of all backgrounds just hugging us, thanking us for sharing this, you know, culture with them. People have come up to me crying like thank you I, I've never met anybody Jewish, I just didn't know, I didn't know. I think that music is so powerful, that it can break down so many walls and just shift people's ideas. And so I do think that the response to our radical love has been great. It's not easy, it's a little scary sometimes. It's not always been embraced. There are a lot of bluegrass festivals that wouldn't put us on their stages, because they don't want a Jewish band up there. They don't know what their crowd's gonna think or how that would affect their bottom line, or I don't know. Manya Brachear Pashman: Do they come right out and say that? Doni Zasloff: Pretty much, yeah, we've definitely gotten that feedback. It's hard to hear, as you can imagine, it's painful. But it's the truth, that there is antisemitism everywhere. Eric Lindberg: Yeah, it used to be–we've been a band since about late 2014. And now, we're knee deep in 2023. And in the beginning stages maybe I was more naive. And I used to kind of think, because, again, the bluegrass world I had in my head was that of progressive music. But I will say that there is a flaw in the bluegrass world and some of the people who want to keep bluegrass being a certain way. And that explains part of our, you know, we will always play bluegrass. So it's not that we won't depart from the genre, but are exploring other areas as well, because we've had clear cut answers of: No, you will never be on this radio station. No, you will not be at this bluegrass festival. We don't have room for people that preach Jewish things. Which is not what we do at all. We have a big show, I think we're a good band. We've done a lot. I'm proud of what we've done. You know, if the answer was no, because we don't believe you're good enough, then that'd be one thing. But the answer is clearly a Jewish issue. It's a tough thing to live with. So a little bit of me is, it's one of those things you hope as a little kid growing up, who loves music, who is crying and dancing and laughing and learning it and loving it. And it's the most exciting thing in your life, you hope that when you grow up, that it's not going to turn around and kind of kick you in the ass. And you're not going to see some of the dark underbelly of the world that you love. And unfortunately, some of that has happened. At the same time, I've gotten to play with my heroes, our heroes, Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas and Bryan Sutton. The people, the people that I've loved as musicians have all been the most beautiful, like creatures on planet Earth. They are very much beloved to us and our family. Manya Brachear Pashman: I'm not totally surprised. We love bluegrass as a family. But my kids do call it Jesus music occasionally. And we make sojourns to bluegrass jam sessions. There's one in Little Silver, New Jersey once a month that we've made the sojourn to at the little Methodist church there in town and I sing along with I Saw the Light. My eight year old wants to play the banjo, that's the musical instrument he has settled on to learn. That's why you guys stand out so much is that you have given to us, a sense of belonging. That like we belong in this world too, we belong in those seats as well. And so I'm not surprised that you have experienced that, but my heart is breaking a little as you talk. Eric Lindberg: And I want to add that there's nothing wrong at all with bluegrass music, with celebrating Christianity and that spirituality, at all. And I just want to be really clear, because that's the music that I love. And I'll sing along with those songs, too. I love those songs. And it's not, as Doni was saying before, it's not like we haven't, we're playing a lot where there are folks that are saying yes, that are embracing us. But there is something about, you know, when you're Jewish, and when you get that kind of feedback, because it speaks more to antisemitism than I think the musical world or the culture that we live around us in, in this country. I hope that I am being clear in that, the music is beautiful, and the heritage is beautiful. And we're not saying we should be like, we love bluegrass culture, bluegrass music, Americana culture, all that stuff. We love our Jewish culture. And we only want to do right by both sides of that equation, you know, make sure that they're balanced and treated with love. Doni Zasloff: But just like the world, there is, a little bit of a, not a little bit. I mean, the antisemitism that we're seeing, right now, in this country, it's everywhere, including what Eric was talking about. It doesn't just go away. We were at a big conference, and somebody came up to me, and I tell this story a lot, this guy came over to me in a big cowboy hat. And he just looked at me and he said, Why do you have to be here? Why do you have to play this music? Eric Lindberg: He actually said, you actually don't belong. Doni Zasloff: Y'all don't belong here. This Jewish thing, just basically, get out. And I remember just like, taking a deep breath, walking outside, I think I cried a little bit. I think I called my dad. You know, I was just like, What am I doing here? Like, this is nuts. You know, but then I walked back in and I'm getting, hugs and like, a lot of love. So, you know, this is part of being outwardly Jewish, I think right now. Like, it's just kind of what happens. Eric Lindberg: And that's the phrase that we haven't, we haven't said yet, because it seems like kind of a strange thing, to be outwardly Jewish. What does that mean? And I didn't grow up in a world where, where people did this, you know, and it kind of boils down to, there's a decision that we have to make that I had to make, and Doni, as musicians that are we going to be a band that is just about the music. And largely we are, actually we want to make good music first and foremost. And we also want to be a band that is, we live in this world, and we are seeing a rise in antisemitism, and we are scared about it. It troubles us and it makes my blood pressure rise and it's terrifying. And if we don't say anything about it, if we're not outwardly Jewish, if we're not openly wearing the star on our chest, you know, so to speak, or on our shoulders. I don't think we're doing ourselves a service. I think we're hiding behind something. For better or worse we're openly going out there and talking about this stuff all the time, because, you know, it won't get better if we don't. Manya Brachear Pashman: You have recorded three albums, you're getting ready to release a fourth. Is that correct? Eric Lindberg: Yeah, we actually have four albums out. One is a live one that we kind of snuck out at the end of 2021. Okay. But yeah, there's four that you can stream or buy or any of that stuff, and we have some new music coming out that we're really excited about. Manya Brachear Pashman: If you could talk a little bit about the inspiration behind those albums, because I know that they tell stories. And I'm curious if you could, you could share with our listeners. Eric Lindberg: “Songs for the Sparrows” is the most personal and adventurous recording that we've done, it was a huge undertaking. But maybe Doni, you want to tell them a little bit about the inspiration behind that record. Doni Zasloff: That record was inspired by a trip that Eric and I took with our older kids and my mother. My mom did all of this research about our family history, in Eastern Europe, and found all of this information and was able to locate the town that our families we're from. And so we did this big roots trip. It turns out I'm from Ukraine, I thought I was from Poland, but now it's Ukraine. And so we went on this trip, and we saw the town that my family was from and then we saw the forest outside of this town where some of my ancestors, we believe, were shot. We saw so many things, this trip really kind of just rocked us. I mean, it's everything that we've learned about. But to go there and to see it, it's not in a book, it's not in black and white. It's there and to see that the history was kind of almost trying to be erased, in modern times. It was hiding, we had to dig it up to even know that it had happened. Eric Lindberg: Literally hiding like we'd get there, we were in Lviv, this is of course before current day, this is back in 2018. And we were in this kind of great shopping area and parking lot and our tour guide had to say, you know, this was a cemetery. This was one of our flea markets. It was like a flea market and it was like what's going on? And there's vibrant life happening but at the same time, no one was… Doni Zasloff: Everything was destroyed, everything, you know, everything hundreds and hundreds of synagogues. I mean almost all of our ancestors, you know, this is where it all was at. But anyway, so we were on this trip. And while we were there I posted a picture on Facebook saying you know I'm on this roots trip. And then one of Eric's cousins like a distant cousin Reuvain, who had also done a lot of research on his family history, started sending email after email to Eric saying, Eric Eric, you are from six hours south of Lviv, you are from the Carpathian Mountains, that's where our family is from, you should go. So we turn the bus around, we ended up going six hours south to the Carpathian Mountains, so that we could see where Eric's family was from the next day. Eric Lindberg: And just like you thought your family was from Poland, I thought my family's from Austria-Hungary. But in '91, the borders all shifted. And so my grandma grew up, you know, grandma, where we from, she spoke a little Hungarian and, and Yiddish too. It was always Austria-Hungary. That's where we were from. And now of course, it's present day Ukraine. Doni Zasloff: Right, so we take this six hour drive south, and through the help of Reuvain, were able to find the cemetery where Eric's great grandfather was buried. Hours of looking, and we finally get there, and it had been destroyed. But somebody actually was trying to restore it. But it was little bits and pieces of stones everywhere. But at least it was kind of marked as something. So we went in there and looked for hours, we spent hours trying to find a little evidence of something with his great-grandfather's name on it. We never found anything. But there was a moment when we were walking around the cemetery that we looked up and saw all of these little birds flying above us, these tiny little sparrows. And there was just something that kind of was very breathtaking about the whole experience and kind of weird. We went through this whole trip, kind of taking it all in. It was a very emotional as you can imagine, like, just very intense trip. We got home and we're trying to like process it six weeks after we returned home was the tree of life shooting in Pittsburgh. So it was like, you know, part of our brains would like you know, that was the past that when it happened over there, this was a terrible thing. It happened over there. Then suddenly we come home and it's happening here. And there's this hate and there's this violence and so it was just like all swirling in our heads and we just kept thinking we have to do something we have to like we just felt compelled to make Now we'll basically or to do something, we didn't know what it was gonna be, we just had to write. But then we kept coming back to that moment with the bird with the sparrows, when we were walking around the cemetery. And Eric and I had this thought, well, maybe those sparrows were our ancestors. And maybe the and then the sparrow, maybe the sparrow. And we learned that sparrows live all over the world. They're small and mighty, and they live and their sparrows everywhere, there's sparrows outside of this house, there are sparrows in Ukraine, there's sparrows everywhere. So the sparrow has become, you know, became a symbol or a totem for anyone who has been discriminated against and hated for just being themselves. You know, whether it's our ancestors, or anyone, right now who's just not being accepted for the person that they were born to be. Manya Brachear Pashman: Unbelievable. I want to ask you about your upbringing. And I know Eric grew up in Brooklyn, but where did you grow up? Did you have a bat mitzvah? What's your spiritual journey? Doni Zasloff: I was born in New York. And then I lived a little bit in Boston and then I grew up in DC in the DC area and then Philadelphia and then I moved to New York so it's been you know, East Coasty. So I grew up going to Jewish camps and Jewish schools and I had this very intense connection to my Jewish spirituality. Like, I hated it, I loved it, I challenged it. It was like, I needed it. I didn't want it, you know, it was but I was in it. You know, I had this relationship with my Jewish identity. Even as a little kid, like a little girl, I remember, I wrapped to fill in when I you know, in a Jewish Day School setting, and like the rabbis were like, you know, angry at me, you know, things like that. Like, I was just like, really rebellious in my relationship with my Jewish self and going to Jewish schools and things like that. So I don't know, I felt like a Jewish cowgirl really my whole life. Manya Brachear Pashman: You have a film crew that has been shadowing you for quite a while now. Six months. And tell us a little bit about “We Sing Nonetheless.” Which is the title of an upcoming documentary. Eric Lindberg: Yeah, it's really exciting. We met this awesome gentleman, Adam, up in Boston, we were playing a show, I believe that was at his synagogue. But we were, you know, it was just after the show, and I'm like, kind of sweaty, over by the merch or something, and I just start talking to this guy. And he's like, I'm a documentary filmmaker. Little did I know, he's an Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker, and his last project, Dawnland with the--Upstander Project is the name of the organization. And we became really kind of fast friends, so much in common. And we just kind of started texting a little and throwing around some, could this work.I'm kinda like, there's gonna be a documentary about us? I mean, what we do is really important, but I kind of forget that we're the ones that do it sometimes. And I'm like, You're gonna follow us around and, and do this thing. And he was serious about it. And it's turned into, it's happening. It's a project. It's gonna be a movie. And the working title is We Sing Nonetheless, which is borrowed from one of our lyrics. It's from this song called Tree of Life. It's a bigger story, because we wrote it the day of the Pittsburgh shooting. But the refrain in that song is this lyric, but we sing nonetheless. Despite this pain that we've gone through with everything we've talked about with the sparrows and all this stuff, we sing nonetheless. And it's a lyric that we of course, we love, we wrote it. But when Adam came to us and said, that could be a theme. I was kind of blown away, because that's kind of one of the core messages of the band, which is that, despite history, and what history tells us and what we've learned, we are here, so we have to sing, we have to make that choice to sing. Doni Zasloff: And it's so Jewish. I mean, it's just such a Jewish like, that's what we do. So it just feels –actually he came up with the title. And I just burst out crying. I was just like, oh, yeah, that's kind of, that's just how my life has been. It's just always that, you know. Manya Brachear Pashman: I want to talk about one of my favorite songs of yours, and one of the most calming: tell us about the inspiration behind Evermore (Hashkiveinu), which is another song off your album Song For the Sparrows. Doni Zasloff: Oh, yeah. I love the gosh, every song's like another one of our babies but the song that we wrote called, Hashkiveinu, the Hashkiveinu prayer that was inspired. Eric started writing that, I think because I was having a hard time sleeping. And I think you wrote that one to try to help me get through the night. Eric Lindberg: Yeah. Doni Zasloff: When I was like, I just have a hard, sometimes I just can't, not sometimes, most times. Eric Lindberg: Still some days you're just like, I didn't sleep. That's actually a great one to bring up because it's based on this ancient prayer, Hashkiveinu. It's based on this ancient idea. And then when really reading the text and we looked through a lot of different translations and it's just beautiful that we would you know, that moment at night before sleep, first of all, we all have it's universal. And the idea that these angels come and like take us to this land and like golden shores and all this kind of like cool imagery. Doni Zasloff: [singing, acapella] Shelter, oh shelter as night... Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg: [singing, acapella] Shelter, oh shelter as night settles in Lay us down beside tranquil shores So we can dream of the wings That'll bring us home again For now, and evеrmore Eric Lindberg: Something like that. Manya Brachear Pashman: Beautiful. Eric Lindberg: Yeah, I mean, but that's our task. You know, sometimes if we are looking at a song from a prayer, I'm glad you brought it up because, while we're not like, the word religious can mean something different to everybody, but these prayers are based in also our culture and our heritage. And it's all one if you're living a Jewish life, and I think that this is one of these beautiful, poetic, whimsical, magical prayers, that is, that is a part of our culture that we're super proud of. And we kind of wrote this folk song around it, about being able to get yourself to sleep, despite the day you've had. Manya Brachear Pashman: Beautiful. Would you mind closing us out with another song? Doni Zasloff: [guitar playing] This song's called Where Oh Where, it was intended to be a song of hope, inspired by nature. And it's a response to all of the not so great things that we're seeing around us, to try to comfort ourselves really. But it's called Where Oh Where. Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg: [singing, with guitar] Where oh where are the sweetest songs Of Miriam and her daughters? They were sung beside the seas and tides So still must be out on the waters Still on the waters Where oh where is the wisdom Sung by the many before us? She was there inside the tree of life So still must reside in the forest Still in the forest Yai da dai da dai dum dai dai Dum dai ya da dum dai Ya da dai da dai dum dai dai Dum dai ya da dum dai Where oh where is the innocence From our first days in Eden? They used to rest their heads on the flowerbeds So still must be there in the gardens Still in the gardens Yai da dai da dai dum dai dai Dum dai ya da dum dai Ya da dai da dai dum dai dai Dum dai ya da dum dai Where oh where's the forgiveness From the age of the flood so long ago? Under all the rain the earth remained So it's still in the fields and the meadows In the fields and the meadows Yai da dai da dai dum dai dai Dum dai ya da dum dai Ya da dai da dai dum dai dai Dum dai ya da dum dai Where oh where's our compassion Is it somewhere we can discover? It's never too far, it's right where you are It's always been in the arms of each other Manya Brachear Pashman: Thank you so much. Eric Lindberg: Sure thing. Manya Brachear Pashman: It's been a jam-packed Jewish American Heritage Month here on People of the Pod: we kicked off with AJC CEO Ted Deutch, popped into the kitchen with Busy in Brooklyn food blogger and cookbook author Chanie Apfelbaum, and last week, we heard from from Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. Thank you for joining us to close out the month with Nefesh Mountain. Tune in later this week for our sit-down with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
This is the story of a song's evolution from ragtime composition to folk song, then from blues to bluegrass.We begin in 1900. Danish-born American violinist/composer Jens Bodewalt Lampe, inspired by Scott Joplin's hot new “Maple Leaf Rag,” composed his own syncopated piece, which he called “Creole Belles,” published in Detroit by Whitney-Warner.A child prodigy (he became the first chair violinist for the Minneapolis Symphony when he was just 16), Lampe was exploring this exciting new type of music. What later came to be called “ragtime” was at the time variously described as “cakewalk,” “march” or “two-step” music.Lampe's “Creole Belles” was a hit, performed widely by pianists, ragtime bands, brass bands and military bands. In 1902, when John Phillip Sousa championed this piece by recording it, Lampe became one of the country's best-known ragtime composers, second only to his hero, Joplin.The Evolution Begins with The FiddlersLampe's work had one of the most amazing cultural cross-pollinations in music history.The catchy melody of the second section or strain of “Creole Belles” first was picked up by fiddlers, who also adopted alternative names for their newly borrowed tune, including “Back Up and Push,” “Rubber Dolly” and “Rubber Dolly Rag.”Then came the string bands. The tune was so popular with them, in fact, that most Appalachian bands that were recording in the 1920s and ‘30s released some version of it. Under the title “Back Up and Push,” the song was recorded twice in mid-1929, just days apart. It was waxed in Richmond, Indiana, by a little-known group called The Augusta Trio, then in Atlanta by a fiddle band with the unlikely name of “The Georgia Organ Grinders.”Five years later, the better-known Gid Tanner and The Skillet Lickers did the song in San Antonio for Bluebird.Meanwhile, the earliest version in which the tune was called “Rubber Dolly Rag” was recorded by Uncle Bud Landress for Victor, also in Atlanta, in November 1929. The song broke out of the hillbilly genre with a 1931 Columbia Records release by Perry Bechtel and His Boys. (Bechtel, a virtuoso guitarist and tenor banjoist, called it “Little Rubber Dolly.”)Footnote: In 1926 banjoist Charlie Poole and his North Carolina Ramblers used the same melody for “Goodbye Booze,” itself based on a 1901 novelty vaudeville number by Jean Constant Havez.The Blues and FolkMeanwhile, the melody was ready for yet another evolutionary turn.Beloved blues guitarist and singer Mississippi John Hurt, who in the early 1920s often collaborated with fiddler Willie Narmour, brought Lampe's original title back to the forefront by adding lyrics, calling it “My Creole Belle” and giving it a smoother new rhythm. Hurt sang:My Creole Belle, I love her wellMy darling baby, my Creole BelleWhen the stars shine, I'll call her mineMy darling baby, my Creole Belle.Known for playing square dance and ragtime music during the same period that he was recording early blues for Okey Records, Hurt's interest in different musical styles meant the melody was heard by a much wider audience. (Incidentally, Hurt also used essentially the same tune for his “Richland Woman.”) Subsequently, Woody Guthrie and other folkies were to record it as “My Creole Belle.”Swing (Western and Otherwise)Soon Western swing bands and Texas-style fiddlers popularized four or five versions of the tune with characteristic dance rhythms.And in 1939, Ella Fitzgerald and The King Sisters each released "Wubba Dolly" with novelty vocals. Bluegrass and BeyondWhen bluegrass and early rock developed, each genre gave the song still more new treatments. For Bluebird, for instance, Bill Monroe recorded an instrumental version in 1940.Fiddler Tommy Jackson brought out his take in 1951, followed by The Stanley Brothers and then by …. well, by everybody.Finally, there were rock renditions. Curiously, for example, 10 years after Bill Black died, the Bill Black Combo still was touring, and the group charted as late as 1975 with “Back Up and Push” on its World's Greatest Honky Tonk Band album.Our Take on the TuneDanny Cox learned his version of the song from a recording by his hero Chet Atkins on the 1965 More of That Guitar Country album. This Flood track was recorded at a recent gig at Sal's Speakeasy in Ashland, Ky.Here you'll hear Dan and harmonicat Sam St. Clair trading choruses on the tune as we call folks back to the bandstand to begin our second set. By the way, The Flood will be back at Sal's next week. We're playing Saturday, April 22, from 6 to 9, and, as a special treat, our dear friend, Floodster Emerita Michelle Hoge, will be back as the evening's guest artist. Come on out and party with us! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com
This week represents one decade since the seven Stanley brothers helped launch the CBD industry from Colorado. Per proclamation by Governor Jared Polis in 2020, following the unfortunate passing of Charlotte Figi, April 7th is officially 'Charlotte Figi Day' in Colorado. Charlotte's Web Inc., the market leader in CBD products, today unveils its "Charlotte Figi Family Grant Program" as an annual initiative to honor the historic legacy of Charlotte, the little girl who suffered from seizures due to Dravet Syndrome, and her story that helped to change CBD access for millions around the world. Lori speaks with Charlotte's mother, Paige Figi, about her extaordinary journey. To keep up with the latest in the produce industry, be sure to follow The Produce Moms on all of your favorite platforms, including our blog, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok accounts. You can also watch The Produce Moms Podcast here.
Jesse Stanley, the Co-Founder of Charlotte's Web and CEO of Stanley Brothers USA, shares his journey of starting and scaling a company in the then-little-known industry of CBD – with his six brothers! In 2013, the world was introduced to the Stanley Brothers' mission when CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta featured the life-changing story of a brave little girl, Charlotte Figi, who struggled with catastrophic epilepsy. The broadcast became the tipping point CBD as Charlotte's story challenged public perception, changed laws, ignited research, and accelerated the CBD industry both in the United States and across the world. Jesse is clearly guided by the benefits of what he has brought to market. He's taken an idea that he believed filled a need and turned it into an excellent business with products that are awesome. You are going to love hearing all about his journey, his new partnership with Major League Baseball and all of the stories and lessons. This episode is filled with so much inspiration and takeaways you won't want to miss! On this episode of #TheKaraGoldinShow. Enjoying this episode of #TheKaraGoldinShow? Let me know by clicking on the links below and sending me a quick shout-out on social. Or reach out to me at karagoldin@gmail.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/karagoldin/ https://www.instagram.com/karagoldin/ https://twitter.com/karagoldin https://www.facebook.com/KaraGoldin/ Check out our website to view this episode's show notes: https://karagoldin.com/podcast/370 To learn more about Jesse Stanley, Charlotte's Web and Stanley Brothers USA: https://www.instagram.com/stanleybrothers/ https://twitter.com/charlottesweb https://www.facebook.com/CharlottesWebCBD/ https://www.instagram.com/charlotteswebcbd/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessemstanley/ https://www.charlottesweb.com/
This week we have some ‘old-time' music from the New Lost City Ramblers, some instrumentals from the Stanley Brothers, Chad Manning and Bill Keith, and some great songs from Alison Krauss, Sally Jones, Walden Dahl, Boone Creek, NZ's Pipi Pickers and American Drive. A lot to enjoy, right here on FreeFM.
John plays some Sam Kelly and the Lost Boys, Jim Murray, Stanley Brothers, and done his bit for the RSPB. And did he mention Will and Jen?
This week I'm playing ‘favourites' – of mine! Of course, I could never fit all my favourite performers on just one show, but this is a start. The Dreadful Snakes, Joe Mullins, Sawmill Road (Mark Miracle), Laurie Lewis, the Stanley Brothers, Claire Lynch, Mike Compton, High Fidelity, Ricky Skaggs, plus a host of others. Enjoy them with me.
Welcome to The Green Rush, a podcast about the intersection of cannabis, the capital markets, and culture. On a weekly basis, hosts Anne Donohoe and Nick Opich of KCSA Strategic Communications speak with the business leaders, financial experts, cultural icons, legislators, and generally interesting people moving the cannabis and psychedelics industries forward. Very few companies in this space need no introduction - and Charlotte's Web - is one of them. Today Anne and guest host Phil Carlson speak with two of the seven Stanley brothers, Jesse and Joel, both pioneers in CBD - and who's CBD-rich hemp genetics changed marijuana history. Their strain, named for Charlotte Figi, a young girl who lived with as many as 300 epileptic seizures a day and who was the feature of the groundbreaking 2013 piece by CNN's Sajjay Gupta called “Weed.” Through the use of the hemp genetics developed by the Stanley Brothers, Figi experienced an immediate reduction in her epileptic seizures down to just two or three per month. She became some of the most prominent figures in the legalization movement before sadly passing away in 2020 at the age of 13. In this episode, Anne and Phil talk to the brothers about the history of Charlotte's Web, what it's like working with so much of their family, and their insights into what's next for the company. So sit back and enjoy our conversation with Jesse and Joel Stanley, co-founders of Charlotte's Web. Links and mentions in the show https://www.charlottesweb.com/ Links to the guest's company and social media accounts Charlotte's Web Twitter: https://twitter.com/charlottesweb Charlotte's Web Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CharlottesWebCBD/ Charlotte's Web Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charlotteswebcbd/ Jesse Stanley's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessemstanley/ Joel Stanley's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-stanley-2885116b/ Show Credits: This episode was hosted by Anne Donohoe and Phil Carlson of KCSA Strategic Communications. Special thanks to our Program Director Shea Gunther. You can learn more about how KCSA Cannabis can help your cannabiz by visiting www.kcsa-cannabis.com or emailing greenrush@kcsa.com. You can also connect with us via our social channels: Twitter: @The_GreenRush Instagram: @thegreenrush_podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thegreenrushpodcast/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGreenRushPodcast/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuEQkvdjpUnPyhF59wxseqw?disable_polymer=true
This show is mostly about the fiddle. Some great tunes, and a couple of songs about players. Australia's Slim Dusty kicks off with some sweet fiddle playing from Colleen Trenwith, and others featured are the great Kenny Baker. Glen Duncan with Longview, Bill Monroe, Rhonda Vincent, Michael Cleveland, Flatt & Scruggs with Paul Warren, upcoming star Aynsley Porchak with Carolina Blue from ETSU, the HCBB, and that show stopper, ‘Orange Blossom Special' from Chubby Anthony and the Stanley Brothers.
Some classic bluegrass here, from the first generation of bluegrassers including Bill Monroe, Mac Wiseman, Jim & Jesse and my old favourites, the Stanley Brothers, with some tributes to these pioneers from more recent performers.
Jochen Markhorst is a key member of the ring of Dylanologists who help the rest of us know about the references, influences, and ideas found in Dylan's work. In hundreds of blog posts and 15 books he's shared an impressive ability to put Bob's work into context of other music, literature, poetry, and art. He joins us to share some of his findings and thoughts on Cold Irons Bound from his book: Time Out Of Mind - The Rising of an Old Master. He tells us about the songs origin with Drummer David Kemper, he lines the song borrows from Ralph Stanley and The Stanley Brothers, and more. Following his presentation, is a Q&A with Jochen on this song and they way he approaches Dylan's work. An extended version of this interview - with about 15 extra minutes of Q&A - and a video version - is available to Plus Premium Members at FreakMusic.Club. or our Substack. For as little as $8/mo you get extended versions of our podcast episodes, video versions, and many more benefits. Right now, new Annual Members get a copy of Jochen's Time Out Of Mind Book. LINKS: BOOKS:Time Out Of Mind - The Rising of an Old Master (Amazon) 15 Titles from Jochen Markhorst (Includes Blood On The Track, Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, Mississippi, Desolation Row, Crossing The Rubicon, and many more. BLOG POSTS Cold Irons Bound (Pt.1 - Pt.2 - Pt.3 - Pt.4 - Pt.5 - Pt.6) More Writing at Untold Dylan FREE WEEKLY BOB DYLAN NEWSLETTER "Seven Days" is our weekly email that give you all the biggest Dylan news, links, new releases, books, podcasts and more - in a simple prioritized list every Sunday. Sign up for free at: clck.it/7days
“The boy with the hundred year old voice” Dr. Ralph Stanley grew up in the hills of Southwest Virginia during the Great Depression. He and his brother Carter were heavily inspired by The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and Bill Monroe, who The Stanley Brothers would feud with decades later. Radio was king, and The Stanley Brothers became a household name throughout Appalachia by merciless appearances. Hear the story of how this farmhand persisted through waves of personal and career hardships, always staying true and believing in the old-time country music he played until becoming the international patriarch of traditional mountain music. Support THIS Independent Program: Join the Patreon Send a one-time donation through Venmo or PayPal — Follow American Songcatcher | Instagram | TikTok Credits: Nicholas Edward Williams - Production, Editing, Recording and Distribution Ryan Eastridge - Writing Source Credits: Musical Holdouts CMT.com The Stanley Brothers' Story 1969 Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times Appalshop Clinch Mountain Echo Ralph Stanley Museum Arts.Gov --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/americansongcatcher/support
After last week's interview with Alan & Julia Rhodes of the HCBB, I thought I'd just play some regular bluegrass this week, featuring such artists as Caroline Jones, Jeremy Stephens, the Stanley Brothers, Carolina Blue, the Gibson Brothers and lots more. What's not to like?
This show features a couple of tunes from Roland White, who passed away in April 2022. I also talk about the celebration of Matariki in NZ, (the Māori New Year; and of course, there's some great music from The All-Girl Boys, Scott Brannon, Seldom Scene, the Stanley Brothers and others.
This episode is brought to you SoGlo Guitar Gallery & SoGlo Custom Guitars, located at 509 Gloucester St. in downtown Brunswick, Georgia. Episode 37 features the show's first centenarian, Raymond Strickland. Joining him is Tyler Hayes, a Waycross singer-songwriter turned pastor. Raymond, once a full-time pastor himself, is also a music maker, still playing a mean harmonica at 100 years old! Raymond and Tyler speak about their history in both pastoring and music. With Tyler on guitar and Raymond on harmonica, they come together to play some original music along with a Stanley Brothers classic, Rank Stranger. https://www.sogloguitargallery.com https://www.facebook.com/SoGloGuitarGallery/?ref=page_internal https://www.patreon.com/somethinginthewater https://somethinginthewater.captivate.fm somethinginthewaterpodcast@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/somethinginthewaterpodcast/ https://www.instagram.com/somethinginthewaterpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/cautionlightmedia/
Joel Stanley and the Birth of the CBD Industry Episode Resources:Host: Jonathan MillerGuest: Joel StanleyBlog: Hemp Legally SpeakingHemp Industry questions covered in this episode: Who was Charlotte Fygi, and what role did she play in the development of the hemp and CBD industries? When did medical marijuana pioneers, the Stanley Brothers, hit on the idea that hemp could be a solution both for ailing children as well as promoting wellness in healthy adults? What was behind the Stanleys' decision to take Charlotte's Web public, and how should we assess the progress? What's on the immediate horizon for the Stanleys in the health and wellness space?
Moonlight Mile are an American Alt-Country Bluegrass Rock band formed in Sandy Hook, Kentucky in 2021. The band was formed by guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Jonathan Pennington and dobroist Shane Johnson. Their music is inspired by a wide variety of artists and musical styles—from The Rolling Stones to the Stanley Brothers, and are proudly and intentionally a reality check for mainstream country and fedora-wearing folk country hipster posers alike. We're so excited to have them on our stage!
2022 says hello as a stranger, but it will go out an acquaintance, hopefully as a pal and not a nemesis. This episode plays Dylan songs & those of fellow travelers featuring strangers & looks expectantly to the new year. In "20 Pounds of Headlines," we round up news from the world of Bob Dylan, which includes speculation about what Bootleg Series we may see released in 2022. In "Who Did It Better?" we ask you to tell us who did "Rank Stranger" better: The Stanley Brothers or Bob Dylan? Be sure to go to our Twitter page @RainTrains to vote!
This week we feature bluegrass legend Larry Sparks. We will be talking with Larry about his time spent with the Stanley Brothers and Ralph Stanley. We also talk with Larry about leaving Ralph Stanley to start his own band and about his guitar playing, his singing and his latest gospel recording.
In 1922 Charlie Lawson took his entire family out to buy new outfits as a Christmas surprise to take a new Christmas portrait. However, come Christmas morning Charlie would brutally murder every member of the family except one. And then the Stanley Brothers wrote a weird ass song about it. - The Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AlmostPod The Website: almostpod.com Instagram: instagram.com/almostpod Facebook: facebook.com/almostpod Twitter: twitter.com/AlmostATCpod - Please rate and review us wherever you're listening, we love those 5 stars almost as much as we love champagne. - If you have any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, or corrections, you can email us at almostpod@gmail.com !! - Intro by the amazing Rux Ton: https://www.facebook.com/rukkuston - Logo by Sloane of The Sophisticated Crayon: https://www.instagram.com/thesophisticatedcrayon/
This week we talk with Gary Reid. In addition to writing the "Notes & Queries" column in the magazine, Gary is one of the leading experts on the Stanley Brothers and their music. We talk to Gary about his history with the Stanley Brothers music and his one-man play A Life of Sorrow—The Life and Times of Carter Stanley.
Sources:wikipedia.orgGreensboro.comaetv.commurderpedia.orgcriminal podcast
This week's podcast features George Shuffler's youngest brother, Ron Shuffler. Ron, a master bass player himself, will be talking about George's guitar and bass playing and telling stories about the days when George performed and recorded with the Stanley Brothers.
Episode one hundred and thirty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Papa's Got a Brand New Bag” by James Brown, and at how Brown went from a minor doo-wop artist to the pioneer of funk. 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 "I'm a Fool" by Dino, Desi, and Billy. 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/ NB an early version of this was uploaded, in which I said "episode 136" rather than 137 and "flattened ninth" at one point rather than "ninth". I've fixed that in a new upload, which is otherwise unchanged. Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I relied mostly on fur books for this episode. James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, by James Brown with Bruce Tucker, is a celebrity autobiography with all that that entails, but a more interesting read than many. Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for the Real James Brown, by James McBride is a more discursive, gonzo journalism piece, and well worth a read. Black and Proud: The Life of James Brown by Geoff Brown is a more traditional objective biography. And Douglas Wolk's 33 1/3 book on Live at the Apollo is a fascinating, detailed, look at that album. This box set is the best collection of Brown's work there is, but is out of print. This two-CD set has all the essential hits. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Introduction, the opening of Live at the Apollo. "So now, ladies and gentlemen, it is star time. Are you ready for star time? [Audience cheers, and gives out another cheer with each musical sting sting] Thank you, and thank you very kindly. It is indeed a great pleasure to present to you in this particular time, national and international known as the hardest working man in showbusiness, Man that sing "I'll Go Crazy"! [sting] "Try Me" [sting] "You've Got the Power" [sting] "Think" [sting], "If You Want Me" [sting] "I Don't Mind" [sting] "Bewildered" [sting] million-dollar seller "Lost Someone" [sting], the very latest release, "Night Train" [sting] Let's everybody "Shout and Shimmy" [sting] Mr. Dynamite, the amazing Mr. Please Please himself, the star of the show, James Brown and the Famous Flames"] In 1951, the composer John Cage entered an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. An anechoic chamber is a room that's been completely soundproofed, so no sound can get in from the outside world, and in which the walls, floor, and ceiling are designed to absorb any sounds that are made. It's as close as a human being can get to experiencing total silence. When Cage entered it, he expected that to be what he heard -- just total silence. Instead, he heard two noises, a high-pitched one and a low one. Cage was confused by this -- why hadn't he heard the silence? The engineer in charge of the chamber explained to him that what he was hearing was himself -- the high-pitched noise was Cage's nervous system, and the low-pitched one was his circulatory system. Cage later said about this, "Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music." The experience inspired him to write his most famous piece, 4'33, in which a performer attempts not to make any sound for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The piece is usually described as being four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence, but it actually isn't -- the whole point is that there is no silence, and that the audience is meant to listen to the ambient noise and appreciate that noise as music. Here is where I would normally excerpt the piece, but of course for 4'33 to have its full effect, one has to listen to the whole thing. But I can excerpt another piece Cage wrote. Because on October the twenty-fourth 1962 he wrote a sequel to 4'33, a piece he titled 0'00, but which is sometimes credited as "4'33 no. 2". He later reworked the piece, but the original score, which is dedicated to two avant-garde Japanese composers, Toshi Ichiyanagi and his estranged wife Yoko Ono, reads as follows: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action." Now, as it happens, we have a recording of someone else performing Cage's piece, as written, on the day it was written, though neither performer nor composer were aware that that was what was happening. But I'm sure everyone can agree that this recording from October the 24th, 1962, is a disciplined action performed with maximum amplification and no feedback: [Excerpt: James Brown, "Night Train" (Live at the Apollo version)] When we left James Brown, almost a hundred episodes ago, he had just had his first R&B number one, with "Try Me", and had performed for the first time at the venue with which he would become most associated, the Harlem Apollo, and had reconnected with the mother he hadn't seen since he was a small child. But at that point, in 1958, he was still just the lead singer of a doo-wop group, one of many, and there was nothing in his shows or his records to indicate that he was going to become anything more than that, nothing to distinguish him from King Records labelmates like Hank Ballard, who made great records, put on a great live show, and are still remembered more than sixty years later, but mostly as a footnote. Today we're going to look at the process that led James Brown from being a peer of Ballard or Little Willie John to being arguably the single most influential musician of the second half of the twentieth century. Much of that influence is outside rock music, narrowly defined, but the records we're going to look at this time and in the next episode on Brown are records without which the entire sonic landscape of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries would be unimaginably different. And that process started in 1958, shortly after the release of "Try Me" in October that year, with two big changes to Brown's organisation. The first was that this was -- at least according to Brown -- when he first started working with Universal Attractions, a booking agency run by a man named Ben Bart, who before starting his own company had spent much of the 1940s working for Moe Gale, the owner of the Savoy Ballroom and manager of the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and many of the other acts we looked at in the very first episodes of this podcast. Bart had started his own agency in 1945, and had taken the Ink Spots with him, though they'd returned to Gale a few years later, and he'd been responsible for managing the career of the Ravens, one of the first bird groups: [Excerpt: The Ravens, "Rock Me All Night Long"] In the fifties, Bart had become closely associated with King Records, the label to which Brown and the Famous Flames were signed. A quick aside here -- Brown's early records were released on Federal Records, and later they switched to being released on King, but Federal was a subsidiary label for King, and in the same way that I don't distinguish between Checker and Chess, Tamla and Motown, or Phillips and Sun, I'll just refer to King throughout. Bart and Universal Attractions handled bookings for almost every big R&B act signed by King, including Tiny Bradshaw, Little Willie John, the "5" Royales, and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. According to some sources, the Famous Flames signed with Universal Attractions at the same time they signed with King Records, and Bart's family even say it was Bart who discovered them and got them signed to King in the first place. Other sources say they didn't sign with Universal until after they'd proved themselves on the charts. But everyone seems agreed that 1958 was when Bart started making Brown a priority and taking an active interest in his career. Within a few years, Bart would have left Universal, handing the company over to his son and a business partner, to devote himself full-time to managing Brown, with whom he developed an almost father-son relationship. With Bart behind them, the Famous Flames started getting better gigs, and a much higher profile on the chitlin circuit. But around this time there was another change that would have an even more profound effect. Up to this point, the Famous Flames had been like almost every other vocal group playing the chitlin' circuit, in that they hadn't had their own backing musicians. There were exceptions, but in general vocal groups would perform with the same backing band as every other act on a bill -- either a single backing band playing for a whole package tour, or a house band at the venue they were playing at who would perform with every act that played that venue. There would often be a single instrumentalist with the group, usually a guitarist or piano player, who would act as musical director to make sure that the random assortment of musicians they were going to perform with knew the material. This was, for the most part, how the Famous Flames had always performed, though they had on occasion also performed their own backing in the early days. But now they got their own backing band, centred on J.C. Davis as sax player and bandleader, Bobby Roach on guitar, Nat Kendrick on drums, and Bernard Odum on bass. Musicians would come and go, but this was the core original lineup of what became the James Brown Band. Other musicians who played with them in the late fifties were horn players Alfred Corley and Roscoe Patrick, guitarist Les Buie, and bass player Hubert Perry, while keyboard duties would be taken on by Fats Gonder, although James Brown and Bobby Byrd would both sometimes play keyboards on stage. At this point, as well, the lineup of the Famous Flames became more or less stable. As we discussed in the previous episode on Brown, the original lineup of the Famous Flames had left en masse when it became clear that they were going to be promoted as James Brown and the Famous Flames, with Brown getting more money, rather than as a group. Brown had taken on another vocal group, who had previously been Little Richard's backing vocalists, but shortly after "Try Me" had come out, but before they'd seen any money from it, that group had got into an argument with Brown over money he owed them. He dropped them, and they went off to record unsuccessfully as the Fabulous Flames on a tiny label, though the records they made, like "Do You Remember", are quite good examples of their type: [Excerpt: The Fabulous Flames, "Do You Remember?"] Brown pulled together a new lineup of Famous Flames, featuring two of the originals. Johnny Terry had already returned to the group earlier, and stayed when Brown sacked the rest of the second lineup of Flames, and they added Lloyd Bennett and Bobby Stallworth. And making his second return to the group was Bobby Byrd, who had left with the other original members, joined again briefly, and then left again. Oddly, the first commercial success that Brown had after these lineup changes was not with the Famous Flames, or even under his own name. Rather, it was under the name of his drummer, Nat Kendrick. Brown had always seen himself, not primarily as a singer, but as a band leader and arranger. He was always a jazz fan first and foremost, and he'd grown up in the era of the big bands, and musicians he'd admired growing up like Lionel Hampton and Louis Jordan had always recorded instrumentals as well as vocal selections, and Brown saw himself very much in that tradition. Even though he couldn't read music, he could play several instruments, and he could communicate his arrangement ideas, and he wanted to show off the fact that he was one of the few R&B musicians with his own tight band. The story goes that Syd Nathan, the owner of King Records, didn't like the idea, because he thought that the R&B audience at this point only wanted vocal tracks, and also because Brown's band had previously released an instrumental which hadn't sold. Now, this is a definite pattern in the story of James Brown -- it seems that at every point in Brown's career for the first decade, Brown would come up with an idea that would have immense commercial value, Nathan would say it was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard, Brown would do it anyway, and Nathan would later admit that he was wrong. This is such a pattern -- it apparently happened with "Please Please Please", Brown's first hit, *and* "Try Me", Brown's first R&B number one, and we'll see it happen again later in this episode -- that one tends to suspect that maybe these stories were sometimes made up after the fact, especially since Syd Nathan somehow managed to run a successful record label for over twenty years, putting out some of the best R&B and country records from everyone from Moon Mullican to Wynonie Harris, the Stanley Brothers to Little Willie John, while if these stories are to be believed he was consistently making the most boneheaded, egregious, uncommercial decisions imaginable. But in this case, it seems to be at least mostly true, as rather than being released on King Records as by James Brown, "(Do the) Mashed Potatoes" was released on Dade Records as by Nat Kendrick and the Swans, with the DJ Carlton Coleman shouting vocals over Brown's so it wouldn't be obvious Brown was breaking his contract: [Excerpt: Nat Kendrick and the Swans, "(Do the)" Mashed Potatoes"] That made the R&B top ten, and I've seen reports that Brown and his band even toured briefly as Nat Kendrick and the Swans, before Syd Nathan realised his mistake, and started allowing instrumentals to be released under the name "James Brown presents HIS BAND", starting with a cover of Bill Doggett's "Hold It": [Excerpt: James Brown Presents HIS BAND, "Hold It"] After the Nat Kendrick record gave Brown's band an instrumental success, the Famous Flames also came back from another mini dry spell for hits, with the first top twenty R&B hit for the new lineup, "I'll Go Crazy", which was followed shortly afterwards by their first pop top forty hit, "Think!": [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, "Think!"] The success of "Think!" is at least in part down to Bobby Byrd, who would from this point on be Brown's major collaborator and (often uncredited) co-writer and co-producer until the mid-seventies. After leaving the Flames, and before rejoining them, Byrd had toured for a while with his own group, but had then gone to work for King Records at the request of Brown. King Records' pressing plant had equipment that sometimes produced less-than-ideal pressings of records, and Brown had asked Byrd to take a job there performing quality control, making sure that Brown's records didn't skip. While working there, Byrd also worked as a song doctor. His job was to take songs that had been sent in as demos, and rework them in the style of some of the label's popular artists, to make them more suitable, changing a song so it might fit the style of the "5" Royales or Little Willie John or whoever, and Byrd had done this for "Think", which had originally been recorded by the "5" Royales, whose leader, Lowman Pauling, had written it: [Excerpt: The "5" Royales, "Think"] Byrd had reworked the song to fit Brown's style and persona. It's notable for example that the Royales sing "How much of all your happiness have I really claimed?/How many tears have you cried for which I was to blame?/Darlin', I can't remember which was my fault/I tried so hard to please you—at least that's what I thought.” But in Brown's version this becomes “How much of your happiness can I really claim?/How many tears have you shed for which you was to blame?/Darlin', I can't remember just what is wrong/I tried so hard to please you—at least that's what I thought.” [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, "Think"] In Brown's version, nothing is his fault, he's trying to persuade an unreasonable woman who has some problem he doesn't even understand, but she needs to think about it and she'll see that he's right, while in the Royales' version they're acknowledging that they're at fault, that they've done wrong, but they didn't *only* do wrong and maybe she should think about that too. It's only a couple of words' difference, but it changes the whole tenor of the song. "Think" would become the Famous Flames' first top forty hit on the pop charts, reaching number thirty-three. It went top ten on the R&B charts, and between 1959 and 1963 Brown and the Flames would have fifteen top-thirty R&B hits, going from being a minor doo-wop group that had had a few big hits to being consistent hit-makers, who were not yet household names, but who had a consistent sound that could be guaranteed to make the R&B charts, and who put on what was regarded as the best live show of any R&B band in the world. This was partly down to the type of discipline that Brown imposed on his band. Many band-leaders in the R&B world would impose fines on their band members, and Johnny Terry suggested that Brown do the same thing. As Bobby Byrd put it, "Many band leaders do it but it was Johnny's idea to start it with us and we were all for it ‘cos we didn't want to miss nothing. We wanted to be immaculate, clothes-wise, routine-wise and everything. Originally, the fines was only between James and us, The Famous Flames, but then James carried it over into the whole troupe. It was still a good idea because anybody joining The James Brown Revue had to know that they couldn't be messing up, and anyway, all the fines went into a pot for the parties we had." But Brown went much further with these fines than any other band leader, and would also impose them arbitrarily, and it became part of his reputation that he was the strictest disciplinarian in rhythm and blues music. One thing that became legendary among musicians was the way that he would impose fines while on stage. If a band member missed a note, or a dance step, or missed a cue, or had improperly polished shoes, Brown would, while looking at them, briefly make a flashing gesture with his hand, spreading his fingers out for a fraction of a second. To the audience, it looked like just part of Brown's dance routine, but the musician knew he had just been fined five dollars. Multiple flashes meant multiples of five dollars fined. Brown also developed a whole series of other signals to the band, which they had to learn, To quote Bobby Byrd again: "James didn't want anybody else to know what we was doing, so he had numbers and certain screams and spins. There was a certain spin he'd do and if he didn't do the complete spin you'd know it was time to go over here. Certain screams would instigate chord changes, but mostly it was numbers. James would call out football numbers, that's where we got that from. Thirty-nine — Sixteen —Fourteen — Two — Five — Three — Ninety-eight, that kind of thing. Number thirty-nine was always the change into ‘Please, Please, Please'. Sixteen is into a scream and an immediate change, not bam-bam but straight into something else. If he spins around and calls thirty-six, that means we're going back to the top again. And the forty-two, OK, we're going to do this verse and then bow out, we're leaving now. It was amazing." This, or something like this, is a fairly standard technique among more autocratic band leaders, a way of allowing the band as a whole to become a live compositional or improvisational tool for their leader, and Frank Zappa, for example, had a similar system. It requires the players to subordinate themselves utterly to the whim of the band leader, but also requires a band leader who knows the precise strengths and weaknesses of every band member and how they are likely to respond to a cue. When it works well, it can be devastatingly effective, and it was for Brown's live show. The Famous Flames shows soon became a full-on revue, with other artists joining the bill and performing with Brown's band. From the late 1950s on, Brown would always include a female singer. The first of these was Sugar Pie DeSanto, a blues singer who had been discovered (and given her stage name) by Johnny Otis, but DeSanto soon left Brown's band and went on to solo success on Chess records, with hits like "Soulful Dress": [Excerpt: Sugar Pie DeSanto, "Soulful Dress"] After DeSanto left, she was replaced by Bea Ford, the former wife of the soul singer Joe Tex, with whom Brown had an aggressive rivalry and mutual loathing. Ford and Brown recorded together, cutting tracks like "You Got the Power": [Excerpt: James Brown and Bea Ford, "You Got the Power"] However, Brown and Ford soon fell out, and Brown actually wrote to Tex asking if he wanted his wife back. Tex's response was to record this: [Excerpt: Joe Tex, "You Keep Her"] Ford's replacement was Yvonne Fair, who had briefly replaced Jackie Landry in the Chantels for touring purposes when Landry had quit touring to have a baby. Fair would stay with Brown for a couple of years, and would release a number of singles written and produced for her by Brown, including one which Brown would later rerecord himself with some success: [Excerpt: Yvonne Fair, "I Found You"] Fair would eventually leave the band after getting pregnant with a child by Brown, who tended to sleep with the female singers in his band. The last shows she played with him were the shows that would catapult Brown into the next level of stardom. Brown had been convinced for a long time that his live shows had an energy that his records didn't, and that people would buy a record of one of them. Syd Nathan, as usual, disagreed. In his view the market for R&B albums was small, and only consisted of people who wanted collections of hit singles they could play in one place. Nobody would buy a James Brown live album. So Brown decided to take matters into his own hands. He decided to book a run of shows at the Apollo Theatre, and record them, paying for the recordings with his own money. This was a week-long engagement, with shows running all day every day -- Brown and his band would play five shows a day, and Brown would wear a different suit for every show. This was in October 1962, the month that we've already established as the month the sixties started -- the month the Beatles released their first single, the Beach Boys released their first record outside the US, and the first Bond film came out, all on the same day at the beginning of the month. By the end of October, when Brown appeared at the Apollo, the Cuban Missile Crisis was at its height, and there were several points during the run where it looked like the world itself might not last until November 62. Douglas Wolk has written an entire book on the live album that resulted, which claims to be a recording of the midnight performance from October the twenty-fourth, though it seems like it was actually compiled from multiple performances. The album only records the headline performance, but Wolk describes what a full show by the James Brown Revue at the Apollo was like in October 1962, and the following description is indebted to his book, which I'll link in the show notes. The show would start with the "James Brown Orchestra" -- the backing band. They would play a set of instrumentals, and a group of dancers called the Brownies would join them: [Excerpt: James Brown Presents His Band, "Night Flying"] At various points during the set, Brown himself would join the band for a song or two, playing keyboards or drums. After the band's instrumental set, the Valentinos would take the stage for a few songs. This was before they'd been taken on by Sam Cooke, who would take them under his wing very soon after these shows, but the Valentinos were already recording artists in their own right, and had recently released "Lookin' For a Love": [Excerpt: The Valentinos, "Lookin' For a Love"] Next up would be Yvonne Fair, now visibly pregnant with her boss' child, to sing her few numbers: [Excerpt: Yvonne Fair, "You Can Make it if You Try"] Freddie King was on next, another artist for the King family of labels who'd had a run of R&B hits the previous year, promoting his new single "I'm On My Way to Atlanta": [Excerpt: Freddie King, "I'm on My Way to Atlanta"] After King came Solomon Burke, who had been signed to Atlantic earlier that year and just started having hits, and was the new hot thing on the scene, but not yet the massive star he became: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me"] After Burke came a change of pace -- the vaudeville comedian Pigmeat Markham would take the stage and perform a couple of comedy sketches. We actually know exactly how these went, as Brown wasn't the only one recording a live album there that week, and Markham's album "The World's Greatest Clown" was a result of these shows and released on Chess Records: [Excerpt: Pigmeat Markham, "Go Ahead and Sing"] And after Markham would come the main event. Fats Gonder, the band's organist, would give the introduction we heard at the beginning of the episode -- and backstage, Danny Ray, who had been taken on as James Brown's valet that very week (according to Wolk -- I've seen other sources saying he'd joined Brown's organisation in 1960), was listening closely. He would soon go on to take over the role of MC, and would introduce Brown in much the same way as Gonder had at every show until Brown's death forty-four years later. The live album is an astonishing tour de force, showing Brown and his band generating a level of excitement that few bands then or now could hope to equal. It's even more astonishing when you realise two things. The first is that this was *before* any of the hits that most people now associate with the name James Brown -- before "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "Sex Machine", or "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" or "Say it Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud" or "Funky Drummer" or "Get Up Offa That Thing". It's still an *unformed* James Brown, only six years into a fifty-year career, and still without most of what made him famous. The other thing is, as Wolk notes, if you listen to any live bootleg recordings from this time, the microphone distorts all the time, because Brown is singing so loud. Here, the vocal tone is clean, because Brown knew he was being recorded. This is the sound of James Brown restraining himself: [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, "Night Train" (Live at the Apollo version)] The album was released a few months later, and proved Syd Nathan's judgement utterly, utterly, wrong. It became the thirty-second biggest selling album of 1963 -- an amazing achievement given that it was released on a small independent label that dealt almost exclusively in singles, and which had no real presence in the pop market. The album spent sixty-six weeks on the album charts, making number two on the charts -- the pop album charts, not R&B charts. There wasn't an R&B albums chart until 1965, and Live at the Apollo basically forced Billboard to create one, and more or less single-handedly created the R&B albums market. It was such a popular album in 1963 that DJs took to playing the whole album -- breaking for commercials as they turned the side over, but otherwise not interrupting it. It turned Brown from merely a relatively big R&B star into a megastar. But oddly, given this astonishing level of success, Brown's singles in 1963 were slightly less successful than they had been in the previous few years -- possibly partly because he decided to record a few versions of old standards, changing direction as he had for much of his career. Johnny Terry quit the Famous Flames, to join the Drifters, becoming part of the lineup that recorded "Under the Boardwalk" and "Saturday Night at the Movies". Brown also recorded a second live album, Pure Dynamite!, which is generally considered a little lacklustre in comparison to the Apollo album. There were other changes to the lineup as well as Terry leaving. Brown wanted to hire a new drummer, Melvin Parker, who agreed to join the band, but only if Brown took on his sax-playing brother, Maceo, along with him. Maceo soon became one of the most prominent musicians in Brown's band, and his distinctive saxophone playing is all over many of Brown's biggest hits. The first big hit that the Parkers played on was released as by James Brown and his Orchestra, rather than James Brown and the Famous Flames, and was a landmark in Brown's evolution as a musician: [Excerpt: James Brown and his Orchestra, "Out of Sight"] The Famous Flames did sing on the B-side of that, a song called "Maybe the Last Time", which was ripped off from the same Pops Staples song that the Rolling Stones later ripped off for their own hit single. But that would be the last time Brown would use them in the studio -- from that point on, the Famous Flames were purely a live act, although Bobby Byrd, but not the other members, would continue to sing on the records. The reason it was credited to James Brown, rather than to James Brown and the Famous Flames, is that "Out of Sight" was released on Smash Records, to which Brown -- but not the Flames -- had signed a little while earlier. Brown had become sick of what he saw as King Records' incompetence, and had found what he and his advisors thought was a loophole in his contract. Brown had been signed to King Records under a personal services contract as a singer, not under a musician contract as a musician, and so they believed that he could sign to Smash, a subsidiary of Mercury, as a musician. He did, and he made what he thought of as a fresh start on his new label by recording "Caldonia", a cover of a song by his idol Louis Jordan: [Excerpt: James Brown and his Orchestra, "Caldonia"] Understandably, King Records sued on the reasonable grounds that Brown was signed to them as a singer, and they got an injunction to stop him recording for Smash -- but by the time the injunction came through, Brown had already released two albums and three singles for the label. The injunction prevented Brown from recording any new material for the rest of 1964, though both labels continued to release stockpiled material during that time. While he was unable to record new material, October 1964 saw Brown's biggest opportunity to cross over to a white audience -- the TAMI Show: [Excerpt: James Brown, "Out of Sight (TAMI show live)"] We've mentioned the TAMI show a couple of times in previous episodes, but didn't go into it in much detail. It was a filmed concert which featured Jan and Dean, the Barbarians, Lesley Gore, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, Marvin Gaye, the Miracles, the Supremes, and, as the two top acts, James Brown and the Rolling Stones. Rather oddly, the point of the TAMI Show wasn't the music as such. Rather it was intended as a demonstration of a technical process. Before videotape became cheap and a standard, it was difficult to record TV shows for later broadcast, for distribution to other countries, or for archive. The way they used to be recorded was a process known as telerecording in the UK and kinescoping in the US, and that was about as crude as it's possible to get -- you'd get a film camera, point it at a TV showing the programme you wanted to record, and film the TV screen. There was specialist equipment to do this, but that was all it actually did. Almost all surviving TV from the fifties and sixties -- and even some from the seventies -- was preserved by this method rather than by videotape. Even after videotape started being used to make the programmes, there were differing standards and tapes were expensive, so if you were making a programme in the UK and wanted a copy for US broadcast, or vice versa, you'd make a telerecording. But what if you wanted to make a TV show that you could also show on cinema screens? If you're filming a TV screen, and then you project that film onto a big screen, you get a blurry, low-resolution, mess -- or at least you did with the 525-line TV screens that were used in the US at the time. So a company named Electronovision came into the picture, for those rare times when you wanted to do something using video cameras that would be shown at the cinema. Rather than shoot in 525-line resolution, their cameras shot in 819-line resolution -- super high definition for the time, but capable of being recorded onto standard videotape with appropriate modifications for the equipment. But that meant that when you kinescoped the production, it was nearly twice the resolution that a standard US TV broadcast would be, and so it didn't look terrible when shown in a cinema. The owner of the Electronovision process had had a hit with a cinema release of a performance by Richard Burton as Hamlet, and he needed a follow-up, and decided that another filmed live performance would be the best way to make use of his process -- TV cameras were much more useful for capturing live performances than film cameras, for a variety of dull technical reasons, and so this was one of the few areas where Electronovision might actually be useful. And so Bill Roden, one of the heads of Electronovision, turned to a TV director named Steve Binder, who was working at the time on the Steve Allen show, one of the big variety shows, second only to Ed Sullivan, and who would soon go on to direct Hullaballoo. Roden asked Binder to make a concert film, shot on video, which would be released on the big screen by American International Pictures (the same organisation with which David Crosby's father worked so often). Binder had contacts with West Coast record labels, and particularly with Lou Adler's organisation, which managed Jan and Dean. He also had been in touch with a promoter who was putting on a package tour of British musicians. So they decided that their next demonstration of the capabilities of the equipment would be a show featuring performers from "all over the world", as the theme song put it -- by which they meant all over the continental United States plus two major British cities. For those acts who didn't have their own bands -- or whose bands needed augmenting -- there was an orchestra, centred around members of the Wrecking Crew, conducted by Jack Nitzsche, and the Blossoms were on hand to provide backing vocals where required. Jan and Dean would host the show and sing the theme song. James Brown had had less pop success than any of the other artists on the show except for the Barbarians, who are now best-known for their appearances on the Nuggets collection of relatively obscure garage rock singles, and whose biggest hit, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" only went to number fifty-five on the charts: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?"] The Barbarians were being touted as the American equivalent of the Rolling Stones, but the general cultural moment of the time can be summed up by that line "You're either a girl or you come from Liverpool" -- which was where the Rolling Stones came from. Or at least, it was where Americans seemed to think they came from given both that song, and the theme song of the TAMI show, written by P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri, which sang about “the Rolling Stones from Liverpool”, and also referred to Brown as "the king of the blues": [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "Here They Come From All Over The World"] But other than the Barbarians, the TAMI show was one of the few places in which all the major pop music movements of the late fifties and early sixties could be found in one place -- there was the Merseybeat of Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Dakotas, already past their commercial peak but not yet realising it, the fifties rock of Chuck Berry, who actually ended up performing one song with Gerry and the Pacemakers: [Excerpt: Chuck Berry and Gerry and the Pacemakers: "Maybellene"] And there was the Brill Building pop of Lesley Gore, the British R&B of the Rolling Stones right at the point of their breakthrough, the vocal surf music of the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, and three of the most important Motown acts, with Brown the other representative of soul on the bill. But the billing was a sore point. James Brown's manager insisted that he should be the headliner of the show, and indeed by some accounts the Rolling Stones also thought that they should probably not try to follow him -- though other accounts say that the Stones were equally insistent that they *must* be the headliners. It was a difficult decision, because Brown was much less well known, but it was eventually decided that the Rolling Stones would go on last. Most people talking about the event, including most of those involved with the production, have since stated that this was a mistake, because nobody could follow James Brown, though in interviews Mick Jagger has always insisted that the Stones didn't have to follow Brown, as there was a recording break between acts and they weren't even playing to the same audience -- though others have disputed that quite vigorously. But what absolutely everyone has agreed is that Brown gave the performance of a lifetime, and that it was miraculously captured by the cameras. I say its capture was miraculous because every other act had done a full rehearsal for the TV cameras, and had had a full shot-by-shot plan worked out by Binder beforehand. But according to Steve Binder -- though all the accounts of the show are contradictory -- Brown refused to do a rehearsal -- so even though he had by far the most complex and choreographed performance of the event, Binder and his camera crew had to make decisions by pure instinct, rather than by having an actual plan they'd worked out in advance of what shots to use. This is one of the rare times when I wish this was a video series rather than a podcast, because the visuals are a huge part of this performance -- Brown is a whirlwind of activity, moving all over the stage in a similar way to Jackie Wilson, one of his big influences, and doing an astonishing gliding dance step in which he stands on one leg and moves sideways almost as if on wheels. The full performance is easily findable online, and is well worth seeking out. But still, just hearing the music and the audience's reaction can give some insight: [Excerpt: James Brown, "Out of Sight" (TAMI Show)] The Rolling Stones apparently watched the show in horror, unable to imagine following that -- though when they did, the audience response was fine: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Around and Around"] Incidentally, Chuck Berry must have been quite pleased with his payday from the TAMI Show, given that as well as his own performance the Stones did one of his songs, as did Gerry and the Pacemakers, as we heard earlier, and the Beach Boys did "Surfin' USA" for which he had won sole songwriting credit. After the TAMI Show, Mick Jagger would completely change his attitude to performing, and would spend the rest of his career trying to imitate Brown's performing style. He was unsuccessful in this, but still came close enough that he's still regarded as one of the great frontmen, nearly sixty years later. Brown kept performing, and his labels kept releasing material, but he was still not allowed to record, until in early 1965 a court reached a ruling -- yes, Brown wasn't signed as a musician to King Records, so he was perfectly within his rights to record with Smash Records. As an instrumentalist. But Brown *was* signed to King Records as a singer, so he was obliged to record vocal tracks for them, and only for them. So until his contract with Smash lapsed, he had to record twice as much material -- he had to keep recording instrumentals, playing piano or organ, for Smash, while recording vocal tracks for King Records. His first new record, released as by "James Brown" rather than the earlier billings of "James Brown and his Orchestra" or "James Brown and the Famous Flames", was for King, and was almost a remake of "Out of Sight", his hit for Smash Records. But even so, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" was a major step forward, and is often cited as the first true funk record. This is largely because of the presence of a new guitarist in Brown's band. Jimmy Nolen had started out as a violin player, but like many musicians in the 1950s he had been massively influenced by T-Bone Walker, and had switched to playing guitar. He was discovered as a guitarist by the bluesman Jimmy Wilson, who had had a minor hit with "Tin Pan Alley": [Excerpt: Jimmy Wilson, "Tin Pan Alley"] Wilson had brought Nolen to LA, where he'd soon parted from Wilson and started working with a whole variety of bandleaders. His first recording came with Monte Easter on Aladdin Records: [Excerpt: Monte Easter, "Blues in the Evening"] After working with Easter, he started recording with Chuck Higgins, and also started recording by himself. At this point, Nolen was just one of many West Coast blues guitarists with a similar style, influenced by T-Bone Walker -- he was competing with Pete "Guitar" Lewis, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and Guitar Slim, and wasn't yet quite as good as any of them. But he was still making some influential records. His version of "After Hours", for example, released under his own name on Federal Records, was a big influence on Roy Buchanan, who would record several versions of the standard based on Nolen's arrangement: [Excerpt: Jimmy Nolen, "After Hours"] Nolen had released records on many labels, but his most important early association came from records he made but didn't release. In the mid-fifties, Johnny Otis produced a couple of tracks by Nolen, for Otis' Dig Records label, but they weren't released until decades later: [Excerpt: Jimmy Nolen, "Jimmy's Jive"] But when Otis had a falling out with his longtime guitar player Pete "Guitar" Lewis, who was one of the best players in LA but who was increasingly becoming unreliable due to his alcoholism, Otis hired Nolen to replace him. It's Nolen who's playing on most of the best-known recordings Otis made in the late fifties, like "Casting My Spell": [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Casting My Spell"] And of course Otis' biggest hit "Willie and the Hand Jive": [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Willie and the Hand Jive"] Nolen left Otis after a few years, and spent the early sixties mostly playing in scratch bands backing blues singers, and not recording. It was during this time that Nolen developed the style that would revolutionise music. The style he developed was unique in several different ways. The first was in Nolen's choice of chords. We talked last week about how Pete Townshend's guitar playing became based on simplifying chords and only playing power chords. Nolen went the other way -- while his voicings often only included two or three notes, he was also often using very complex chords with *more* notes than a standard chord. As we discussed last week, in most popular music, the chords are based around either major or minor triads -- the first, third, and fifth notes of a scale, so you have an E major chord, which is the notes E, G sharp, and B: [Excerpt: E major chord] It's also fairly common to have what are called seventh chords, which are actually a triad with an added flattened seventh, so an E7 chord would be the notes E, G sharp, B, and D: [Excerpt: E7 chord] But Nolen built his style around dominant ninth chords, often just called ninth chords. Dominant ninth chords are mostly thought of as jazz chords because they're mildly dissonant. They consist of the first, third, fifth, flattened seventh, *and* ninth of a scale, so an E9 would be the notes E, G sharp, B, D, and F sharp: [Excerpt: E9 chord] Another way of looking at that is that you're playing both a major chord *and* at the same time a minor chord that starts on the fifth note, so an E major and B minor chord at the same time: [Demonstrates Emajor, B minor, E9] It's not completely unknown for pop songs to use ninth chords, but it's very rare. Probably the most prominent example came from a couple of years after the period we're talking about, when in mid-1967 Bobby Gentry basically built the whole song "Ode to Billie Joe" around a D9 chord, barely ever moving off it: [Excerpt: Bobby Gentry, "Ode to Billie Joe"] That shows the kind of thing that ninth chords are useful for -- because they have so many notes in them, you can just keep hammering on the same chord for a long time, and the melody can go wherever it wants and will fit over it. The record we're looking at, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", actually has three chords in it -- it's basically a twelve-bar blues, like "Out of Sight" was, just with these ninth chords sometimes used instead of more conventional chords -- but as Brown's style got more experimental in future years, he would often build songs with no chord changes at all, just with Nolen playing a single ninth chord throughout. There's a possibly-apocryphal story, told in a few different ways, but the gist of which is that when auditioning Nolen's replacement many years later, Brown asked "Can you play an E ninth chord?" "Yes, of course" came the reply. "But can you play an E ninth chord *all night*?" The reason Brown asked this, if he did, is that playing like Nolen is *extremely* physically demanding. Because the other thing about Nolen's style is that he was an extremely percussive player. In his years backing blues musicians, he'd had to play with many different drummers, and knew they weren't always reliable timekeepers. So he'd started playing like a drummer himself, developing a technique called chicken-scratching, based on the Bo Diddley style he'd played with Otis, where he'd often play rapid, consistent, semiquaver chords, keeping the time himself so the drummer didn't have to. Other times he'd just play single, jagged-sounding, chords to accentuate the beat. He used guitars with single-coil pickups and turned the treble up and got rid of all the midrange, so the sound would cut through no matter what. As well as playing full-voiced chords, he'd also sometimes mute all the strings while he strummed, giving a percussive scratching sound rather than letting the strings ring. In short, the sound he got was this: [Excerpt: James Brown, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag"] And that is the sound that became funk guitar. If you listen to Jimmy Nolen's playing on "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", that guitar sound -- chicken scratched ninth chords -- is what every funk guitarist after him based their style on. It's not Nolen's guitar playing in its actual final form -- that wouldn't come until he started using wah wah pedals, which weren't mass produced until early 1967 -- but it's very clear when listening to the track that this is the birth of funk. The original studio recording of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" actually sounds odd if you listen to it now -- it's slower than the single, and lasts almost seven minutes: [Excerpt: James Brown "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (parts 1, 2, and 3)"] But for release as a single, it was sped up a semitone, a ton of reverb was added, and it was edited down to just a few seconds over two minutes. The result was an obvious hit single: [Excerpt: James Brown, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag"] Or at least, it was an obvious hit single to everyone except Syd Nathan, who as you'll have already predicted by now didn't like the song. Indeed according to Brown, he was so disgusted with the record that he threw his acetate copy of it onto the floor. But Brown got his way, and the single came out, and it became the biggest hit of Brown's career up to that point, not only giving him his first R&B number one since "Try Me" seven years earlier, but also crossing over to the pop charts in a way he hadn't before. He'd had the odd top thirty or even top twenty pop single in the past, but now he was in the top ten, and getting noticed by the music business establishment in a way he hadn't earlier. Brown's audience went from being medium-sized crowds of almost exclusively Black people with the occasional white face, to a much larger, more integrated, audience. Indeed, at the Grammys the next year, while the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Phil Spector and the whole Motown stable were overlooked in favour of the big winners for that year Roger Miller, Herb Alpert, and the Anita Kerr Singers, even an organisation with its finger so notoriously off the pulse of the music industry as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which presents the Grammys, couldn't fail to find the pulse of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", and gave Brown the Grammy for Best Rhythm and Blues record, beating out the other nominees "In the Midnight Hour", "My Girl", "Shotgun" by Junior Walker, and "Shake" by Sam Cooke. From this point on, Syd Nathan would no longer argue with James Brown as to which of his records would be released. After nine years of being the hardest working man in showbusiness, James Brown had now become the Godfather of Soul, and his real career had just begun.
We were able to meet with Pretend Friend - a local bluegrass band who is unlike any other. With Grant Boesen on guitar and lead vocals, Brody Wellman on bass, and Evan Ogborn on the mandolin this trio has been described as "rockgrass," "new high lonesome," and "if Robert Plant and the Stanley Brothers had a baby."The guys walked us through how the band was formed, where they came up with the name, and gave us some interesting trivia about their personal lives you will not hear anywhere else. Join us for this extra long episode that was extra fun just for you!Pretend Friend was also our first ever Wichita Podcast Jam! We are starting a new segment called Wichita Podcast Jams where we are bringing on local bands and musicians to play intimate jams just for you. Find us on YouTube for all the jams!Follow/Like Us!Website - https://www.wichitapodcast.com/Wichita Podcast Jams - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5-HvQ16Chb5FzfXBeXuOMAFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/WichitaPodcastTwitter - https://twitter.com/WichitaPodcastInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/wichitapodcast/Email - wichitapodcast@gmail.comTheme music by Emily Hahn - @emilyhahnmusic on Instagram. Find her music on Spotify, Apple Music, and anywhere you can stream music!© Wichita Podcast LLC 2022
The Gloves Are Off. Gonna Get Wild. Deep State trying to take down President Trump before Team Trump can take down the Deep State. SpyGate Endgame Approaches. No middle ground. Jon Voight says "This Is War." We review President Dwight Eisenhower's foreboding warnings about the "potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power" in America. Yes -- Ike Knew the Deep State. The dangers to our liberties and democratic processes. On this theme, Trump Advisor Stephen Miller takes on the insufferable Chris Wallace. Bureaucratic barnacles undermining the Executive Branch. Six Ways From Sunday. Somehow or other, the US Constitution must prevail. For all the marbles now. James Madison on Human Nature. Nunes on the Ukraine Origins of SpyGate. Giuliani in the ring. Soundtrack for the Indiana Jones "face-melt" scene. Wake Me Up When September Ends. Inevitabile. With Listener Calls & Music via Green Day, America, Giorgia and Eros Ramazzotti. Sacred Song from the Stanley Brothers. Over In the Gloryland. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A Time For Vengeance. The Mandate for Deep State Scalps per the Biggest Political Scandal in American History. President Trump is now questioning the origins of SpyGate, wondering how the "phony and fraudulent investigation" actually began. We sense the implicit determination herein, and are expecting important lessons to be learned for "future generations." Reporter John Solomon is ready to go to the top, asking "what did Barack Obama know" about his administration's seditious conspiracy scheme against Trump. Judge Jeanine Pirro wants answers, and wants to see people behind bars. We review the supremely devious "frame" tactics of the Six Ways From Sunday crowd. But let's not overlook their paper trails -- and let's remember how incompetent these people are. We're getting perilously close to CIA John Brennan, who now says he's received "bad information" in the Mueller Denouement. Might Devin Nunes have a criminal referral ready to go on Brennan? Meanwhile, British Spy Christopher Steele literally runs away from reporters this week in the UK. Hey, we've got a runner! Plus, we sample President Trump's statements about closing the border and cutting off aid to Central America. Also, Lucy Flores, a young Democrat politician from Nevada, offers a vivid narrative on the incredible creepiness of Joe Biden. Woah -- can Biden survive this one? Coda: Quite possibly Earth's finest composition. Brandy. With Listener Calls & Music via Looking Glass, Todd Rundgren, the Alexandrov Ensemble and The Beatles. Sacred Song from the Stanley Brothers. Precious Memories. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley were only 17 years old when they recorded Second Generation Bluegrass. Both went on to be country megastars – until Whitley died of alcohol poisoning at 34. Bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs joins us to explain how two teenagers managed to perfectly replicate the bygone sound of the Stanley Brothers – and share his final moments with Keith.
The Chastened Establishment. The NYT's David Brooks offers a forlorn plea to keep "chastened members of establishments" in power in America. Brooks helpfully points out that some Beltway think tanks have been acknowledging "past mistakes" and are even making amends by hosting conferences about the plight of the "working class." Therefore, says Brooks, people like Brooks himself deserve to be kept in power. But for our part, we respond with a big "No Thanks" to all that. Meanwhile, we listen to a high octane Joe diGenova go full scorched earth against incompetent Republicans who have botched their congressional oversight duties. Will the SpyGaters skate? Goodlatte and Gowdy are embarassments, says diGenova, who goes on to describe the importance of Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. We outline the latest round of attacks on Whitaker, along with our hopes that he can withstand the inevitable Deep State storm. Plus, the unpopular John Kasich threatens to run in 2020. The best they've got? Seeking "peace of mind" in the ongoing human comedy. Coda: Dan Bongino talks about "suffering" in politics. With Listener Calls & Music via Boston and Sigrid. Sacred Song from the Stanley Brothers and Doc Watson. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week folks me and Cleo are playin' songs by Lester and Earl and the Stanley Brothers, Ralph and Carter. The songs we've picked out are from the late 40s to the early 50s when both these groups were popular on the radio. There's some really good old time bluegrass here folks so come on in and enjoy!
Everyone's talking about it, so why shouldn't we?! CBD! We start with Stoner Moments, touching back on a few past episodes this time. Then we head into the history and basic science of CBD aka Cannabidiol, the sister-cousin of THC. This includes how CBD works with our bodies, who should use CBD, what to expect when medicating with CBD rich or CBD dominant strains, how to identify CBD (TEST IT!) and a little politics to round it out. The Stanley Brothers are the poster boys of Medical Marijuana ...whether I like it or not, and Charlotte's Web is the lady behind them, making it happen. But she's not the only option!! There are so many unique and varied CBD laden strains being discovered and bred every day. And most importantly, we learn that CBD is not the miracle that so many wish it to be, and yet, it is. In the Safety we talk about hemp wick and why you should be using it! My favorite? Humboldt Traders, naturally. More details on our GLASS GIVEAWAY!! Comment to win! thespliffpotcast.com/potcasts on Facebook, Twitter, Google and Instagram or... Call me! (209) 86-SPLIFF (209) 867-7543 Oh, and that formula? Was 0.8! 0.877 in fact. So the equation for expected THC is: %THCA(0.877)=Expected %THC Music with many thanks to: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/Blues_Sampler/Slow_Burn
Episode 5 of the Archives features excerpts from a workshop on Appalachian balladry by Elizabeth Laprelle and Anna Roberts-Gevalt of the duo Anna & Elizabeth, conducted in the Old Town School's Maurer Hall on September 28, 2015. Links to music referenced in this episode: - Roscoe Holcomb demonstrating traditional Appalachian ballad singing style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoJkndLVcqM - Example of Scottish sacred singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3MzZgPBL3Q - Example of American sacred singing (lined-out hymnody): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-f9OFNsagY - Example of sacred harp singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWQDl6cyj2Y - "Lonesome Night" by the Stanley Brothers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg_ViHZwuqY Recordings featured in this episode: - “Glory of Love” as performed by Big Bill Broonzy at Circle Pines Center, Mich., 1950s
Is Cannabis Kosher? Very spirited interview with Saul Kaye, a licensed pharmacist, entrepreneur and medical cannabis advocate! In our discussion we talk about some of the great projects he is a founder of including SUBS start-up Beit Shemesh CoWorking Space as well as his personal story from becoming a pharmacist in Australia and moving to Israel. We dig into medical cannabis and my story with giving cannabis to my son who suffers from seizures. We talk about the state of cannabis in Israel and if the Gedolim would ever permit marijuana for recreational use. Name: Saul Kaye Position: Pharmacist and cannabis advocate and entrepreneur CoWorking Space Beit Shemesh: http://www.subs-hub.com/ (SUBS (Start Up Beit Shemesh)) Cannabis Business Conference: http://www.canna-tech.co/ (Canna-Tech) LinkedIn: https://il.linkedin.com/pub/saul-kaye/7/422/280 (Saul on LinkedIn) https://frumentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Saul-Kaye.jpg () People & Companies Mentioned In This Episode: https://il.linkedin.com/in/urischechterman (Uri Schechterman) http://www.nesmobile.com (NES Mobile) https://www.wework.com/ (WeWork) (10 Billion Valuation) Chevrat Chashmal https://il.linkedin.com/in/cliftonflack (Clifton Flack) Charlotte’s Web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte's_web_(cannabis) (Charlotte Figi, born October 18, 2006 (age 8), whose story has led to her being described as “the girl who is changing medical marijuana laws across America.”) http://www.amarimed.com/ABOUTUS/DrShackelford/tabid/58/Default.aspx (Dr. Shackelford ) https://twitter.com/thestanleybros (The Stanley Brothers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Mechoulam (Dr Raphael Mechoulam)