Podcasts about Stills

Hope you're not sick of turkey! Because on this week's Loudini Rock & Roll Circus we present 9 of the most disappointing albums in rock history... real rock & roll turkeys   #boston #peterframpton #fleetwoodmac   Fleetwood Mac; Tusk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusk_(album)   Boston; Third Stage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Stage   Crosby Stills Nash & Young https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream_(Crosby,_Stills,_Nash_%26_Young_album)   Heart;Bebe Le Strange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9b%C3%A9_le_Strange   Billy Joel; The Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_(Billy_Joel_album)   Motely Crue; Theater of Pain   Areosmith; Draw The Line   Queen; A Day A The Races   Peter Frampton; I'm in You   Topics Discussed: What we did this week: Loudini: Appendage, The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe, The Beatles are #1, (discuss apply new technology to classic music), santa claus is coming to town Mr Pittsburgh: surgery lily: rage of the stage, date to the tree tops (acme, PA), reference: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/disappointing-albums-classic-rock-artists/   New & Notable:   Kevin: Ace Monroe; Summer Heat https://www.acemonroe.com Loudini:  Robert Jon & The Wreck; Hold On https://robertjonandthewreck.com/ Lily: Wes Cage; The Wolf     This Day In Music https://www.thisdayinmusic.com   top40weekly.com   Viewer's Comments   Offer:   Get a FREE EP HERE: http://LouLombardiMusic.com if  you love great guitar driven rock from the 70s, 80s, 90s and even  today, you will want to get my EP "The Bad Years". Get your copy while  supplies last!

C.V.'s 10 to Check Out PodcastCurtis and Aaron Vaughn came up with the idea for this podcast. The concept for this podcast is to give information and opinions about ten songs each month that may fly under the radar for most listeners of music. Also, we will play a snippet of each song and ask the listener to comment to us through one of our social media outlets so we can get different opinions on what you think about these songs and what they mean to you. The opinions of the music selected are only the opinions of Aaron and Curtis and may not reflect what the artist had in mind. They believe that is the beauty of music. It can mean so many different things to so many different people.  In short, Curtis came up with this quote to describe the show: “Sharing the joy of music in hopes of bringing back old memories or helping listeners discover unfamiliar artists, bands, or songs that they might want to look further into. At the same time, helping out Veterans and their families with donations along the way."Songs for this month are:1. Crazy Mary (Remastered) - Pearl Jam2. Crazy Mary - Victoria Williams3. Jesus Is Just Alright - Stryper4. Jesus Is Just Alright - The Doobie Brothers5. Shooting Star - Tesla6. Shooting Star - Bad Company7. Carry On - Huntsmen8. Carry On - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young9. Piece of My Heart - Rough Cutt10. Piece of My Heart - Big Brother & The Holding Company & Janis Joplin11. With a Little Help from My Friends - The Ullman Boys12. With a Little Help From My Friends  - The BeatlesOur email is cvs10tocheckout@gmail.comClick on the the link below and sign up for a paid Buzzsprout plan and get a $20 Amazon gift card!https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1660801We are always promoting Veterans' charities, so contact us if you want to discuss donating to the charity of your choice or partnering with us to sponsor our show and giving to Veterans and their families through that avenue.Please listen to the full songs of the artists discussed in the podcast on your favorite streaming services to help them out.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/cvs10tocheckout)Support the showSupport the show

Holiday season is here! Tug and Kathryn are getting ready for a string of parties and they discuss what wine to bring along. Sparkling is always a festive choice. Prosecco isn't the only bubbly in Italy - there are other spumantes from all over the country! Kathryn explains how she chooses the perfect bottle to share. The couple recounts the recent Thanksgiving week at home with the kids. Tug is inspired by some vinyl. Kathryn is still high on bus travel. The Wine of the Week is the L'Archetipo ‘Susumante' Rosato Brut, Puglia, Italy 2021. Follow us on Instagram @thelongfinish @esterswine @kathrynweilcoker @tugcoker @larchetipowines @indygobus L'architepo Wines www.larchetipo.it Deja Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9j%C3%A0_Vu_(Crosby,_Stills,_Nash_%26_Young_album)

芥末章鱼想插话的朋友来插话群入口：------欢迎听芥末章鱼想插话的朋友来插话群玩儿------垫乐：Helpless - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu------------------------------------------------------------录音之前得知顾主播被打开的想象力已取得成果，发节目这会儿他应该在上班的路上。取得成果之前的最后一步是等待背景调查报告，于是这期我们一边聊聊背调一边等着顾主播在新环境里的新故事。内容未必每个人都感兴趣，但是歌好听。

Tríos históricos o tan maravillosos como desconocidos. Una nueva serie para este programa. Los tríos básicos del rock tan insuperables como Jimi Hendrix Experience o Cream, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Traffic o Crosby, Stills & Nash, Nirvana, Bee Gees o Thin Lizzy o The Police. Y del género “americana” como Trio (Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt y Dolly Parton), America, Souther Hillman Furay Band, Dixie Chicks, Howdy Moon, Bailen o Tres Chicas o del soul o rhythm and blues como The Supremes, Isley Jasper & Isley o Guy. El gran Trio Mocotó o Y ¿qué fue del Trío la La Lá y qué les pasó a Trébol? DISCO 1 EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER Peter Gunn DISCO 2 THE POLICE Every Breath You Take DISCO 3 ORLEANS You’ve Been Runnin’ DISCO 4 DIXIE CHICKS Cowboy Take Me Away DISCO 5 NIRVANA Lithium DISCO 6 JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE Hey Joe DISCO 7 THIN LIZZY The Boys Are Back In Town DISCO 8 TRES CHICAS Drop Me Down DISCO 9 SOUTHER HILLMAN FURAY BAND Trouble In paradise DISCO 10 MCGUINN HILLMAN & CLARK Long Long Time DISCO 11 CAMEO Word Up DISCO 12 BEE GEES More Than A Woman DISCO 13 TRÍO MOCOTÓ De Hoje Não passa) Escuchar audio

Before he was deemed “the Glue” by his castmates at Saturday Night Live, Phil Hartman worked as a rock ‘n roll roadie and a graphic designer. He created album covers for the bands Poco and America, as well as the logo for Crosby, Stills & Nash. He did those things as a card-carrying member of the peace and love movement. A movement that was infamously disrupted by the Manson family, a ragtag group of hippies gone evil that just so happened to include one of his former friends from high school. A friend who would later attempt to assassinate an American president. A friend who helped steer sunny California into an age of darkness. A darkness that, for Phil Hartman, led to secrets, blackmail, guns, and ultimately, a murder-suicide. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including suicide. If you're thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. To see the complete list of contributors, visit disgracelandpod.com/badlands. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Support our Advertising Partners: Prize Picks: Prizepicks.com/badlands Code: Badlands Factor: factormeals.com/badlands50 Code: Badlands50 Nutrisense :nutrisense.com/badlands Rocket Money: rocketmoney.com/badlands Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A veces, cuando escucho una entrevista en la radio, intento ponerme en el lugar del entrevistado según van cayendo preguntas más bien estúpidas, cuando no malintencionadas. Al final, desisto de ello y pienso que, de haber sido yo, les habría mandado a hacer puñetas más pronto que inmediatamente. No entiendo ese afán de querer que los futbolistas hablen si, cuando los tienes delante, eres incapaz de sacarles verdadero partido. Min. 01 Seg. 45 - Intro Min. 08 Seg. 57 - ¿Cómo te va la vida en Madrid? Min. 15 Seg. 17 - No me gusta jugar de nueve Min. 21 Seg. 14 - Apostar trae mala suerte Min. 26 Seg. 42 - La Champions no es igual que la liga Min. 33 Seg. 20 - El que venga te puede quitar el puesto Min. 41 Seg. 03 - Varias preguntas para pillar Min. 46 Seg. 04 - Los peligros de la Play Min. 50 Seg. 13 - Dos titulares muy jugosos Min. 55 Seg. 06 - Los principios intercambiables del Duque Min. 66 Seg. 00 - Despedida Joni Mitchell (Sydney 23/03/1983) Woodstock Coyote For Free Both Sides Now Chinese Cafe > Unchained Melody Amelia A Case Of You (You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care Help Me You Turn Me On, I'm A Radio Song For Sharon Crosby, Stills & Nash - Woodstock (New York 29-30/10/2009)

Atrapats en aquesta espiral autodestructiva que s'est

Atrapats en aquesta espiral autodestructiva que s'est

On this week's show, we... spin fresh tracks by Sleater-Kinney & Hurray for the Riff Raff  spend quality with new records from The Mountain Goats, The Gaslight Anthem, A. Savage & Mayer Hawthorne  wish a very happy birthday to Andy Partridge & Neil Young  All this & much, much less! Debts No Honest Man Can Pay started in 2003 at WHFR-FM (Dearborn, MI), moved to WGWG-FM (Boiling Springs, NC) in 2006 & Plaza Midwood Community Radio (Charlotte, NC) in 2012, with a brief pit-stop at WLFM-FM (Appleton, WI) in 2004.ys

Oscar Mukherjee er en uhyre aktiv musiker. For nylig udsendte hans band, The Mukherjee Development, albummet ”Should I Dance For You?” – samtidig er 27-årige Oscar aktiv i bluesbandet Pay Day. Det begyndte med, at POV Mediano Musics Jan Eriksen hørte rygtet om en forrygende liveband. Så lyttede han til deres nu to album, gik til en koncert, som han forlod nærmest begejstret. Det lød som, hvis alt det bedste fra westcoast rock, sydstatsrock og britisk indierock blev forenet. Og nu er Oscar gæst i en den nyeste POVcast. Som i øvrigt ifølge SoundCloud er POV Mediano Musics podcast nr. 270. Det skal med, at omkring 50 af dem er Tanja Brinks musikalske julekalendere fra 2019 og -20. Som det fremgår af efternavnet, har Oscar Mukherjee indiske rødder - og han tilbragte de første år af sit liv i San Francisco. En opvækst der har sat sine tydelige spor i hans musik. Samtalen er ikke gammel, før kunstnere som Tom Petty, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix og Creedence Clearwater Revival bliver nævnt. Netop flyttet til Danmark begyndte Oscar at opsøge bluesklubben Mojo i København. ”Vi flyttede hertil, da jeg var omkring 14-15 år. Min far spurgte, om man måtte have en dreng, der var yngre end 18 år med ind på Mojo, det måtte han godt, bare ingen alkohol. Det var op på scenen med det samme og spille med i så mange jamsessions som muligt. Jeg var derinde altid.” Oscar Mukherjee spiller stadig sin egen version af The Blues i Pay Day. The Mukherjee Development spiller i en stil, der i mangel af bedre kan beskrives som en blanding af roots, americana, alt-country. Pejlemærker kunne være kunstnere som Coldplay, John Prine, Kurt Vile, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, The War Against Drugs og Jonah Blacksmith, hvor Søren Bigum (guitarer) og Søren Poulsen (trommer) fra Mukherjee Development også er medlemmer. De øvrige medlemmer er Henrik Poulsen, bas, og Jacob Holm, guitar. Vi taler om Oscars opvækst i San Francisco, om kulturel appropriation - at spille bluesmusik, når man ikke har rødder blandt sorte i de amerikanske sydstater. Om forholdet til det gamle hjemland. USA, hvor “I used to want to be American/I take that back now tenfold," som Oscar synger i en sang. Om den procesorienterede tilgang til musikken i The Mukherjee Development. Om arbejdet med at skabe sin egen musik i en stil, hvor melodi og sammenspil er omdrejningspunktet. Om den subtile, selvironiske humor, bl.a. i titelnummeret på det nye album, Should I Dance For You?” om hende til festen, man ikke kan tage sig sammen til at kontakte. Det er en selvironisk ”anti-popsang. Det er lidt demonstrativt sumpet, det tøffer og sumper omkring. Det er alt andet end et traditionelt dansenummer.” Og så er der dem, der har hjulpet med på vejen, bl.a. Poul Krebs, som Oscar kalder sin mentor. Han har bl.a. hjulpet i forbindelse med et skriveophold i Texas. "Der er mange ting at takke Poul for. For fire-fem år siden var jeg med ham ude at spille på en turne, hvor han gav mig lejlighed til at spille. Det var en kæmpe hjælp at stå på scenen med ham. I forbindelse med min EP "Sentimental Sleep" hjalp han mig i kontakt med nogle musikere. Det er rart, at der nogen højere op i hierakiet, der rækker hånden ud, og det minder en om, at man skal huske at gøre det samme." Hør meget mere i denne POVcast.

Oscar Mukherjee er en uhyre aktiv musiker. For nylig udsendte hans band, The Mukherjee Development, albummet ”Should I Dance For You?” – samtidig er 27-årige Oscar aktiv i bluesbandet Pay Day. Det begyndte med, at POV Mediano Musics Jan Eriksen hørte rygtet om en forrygende liveband. Så lyttede han til deres nu to album, gik til en koncert, som han forlod nærmest begejstret. Det lød som, hvis alt det bedste fra westcoast rock, sydstatsrock og britisk indierock blev forenet. Og nu er Oscar gæst i en den nyeste POVcast. Som i øvrigt ifølge SoundCloud er POV Mediano Musics podcast nr. 270. Det skal med, at omkring 50 af dem er Tanja Brinks musikalske julekalendere fra 2019 og -20. Som det fremgår af efternavnet, har Oscar Mukherjee indiske rødder - og han tilbragte de første år af sit liv i San Francisco. En opvækst der har sat sine tydelige spor i hans musik. Samtalen er ikke gammel, før kunstnere som Tom Petty, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix og Creedence Clearwater Revival bliver nævnt. Netop flyttet til Danmark begyndte Oscar at opsøge bluesklubben Mojo i København. ”Vi flyttede hertil, da jeg var omkring 14-15 år. Min far spurgte, om man måtte have en dreng, der var yngre end 18 år med ind på Mojo, det måtte han godt, bare ingen alkohol. Det var op på scenen med det samme og spille med i så mange jamsessions som muligt. Jeg var derinde altid.” Oscar Mukherjee spiller stadig sin egen version af The Blues i Pay Day. The Mukherjee Development spiller i en stil, der i mangel af bedre kan beskrives som en blanding af roots, americana, alt-country. Pejlemærker kunne være kunstnere som Coldplay, John Prine, Kurt Vile, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, The War Against Drugs og Jonah Blacksmith, hvor Søren Bigum (guitarer) og Søren Poulsen (trommer) fra Mukherjee Development også er medlemmer. De øvrige medlemmer er Henrik Poulsen, bas, og Jacob Holm, guitar. Vi taler om Oscars opvækst i San Francisco, om kulturel appropriation - at spille bluesmusik, når man ikke har rødder blandt sorte i de amerikanske sydstater. Om forholdet til det gamle hjemland. USA, hvor “I used to want to be American/I take that back now tenfold," som Oscar synger i en sang. Om den procesorienterede tilgang til musikken i The Mukherjee Development. Om arbejdet med at skabe sin egen musik i en stil, hvor melodi og sammenspil er omdrejningspunktet. Om den subtile, selvironiske humor, bl.a. i titelnummeret på det nye album, Should I Dance For You?” om hende til festen, man ikke kan tage sig sammen til at kontakte. Det er en selvironisk ”anti-popsang. Det er lidt demonstrativt sumpet, det tøffer og sumper omkring. Det er alt andet end et traditionelt dansenummer.” Og så er der dem, der har hjulpet med på vejen, bl.a. Poul Krebs, som Oscar kalder sin mentor. Han har bl.a. hjulpet i forbindelse med et skriveophold i Texas. "Der er mange ting at takke Poul for. For fire-fem år siden var jeg med ham ude at spille på en turne, hvor han gav mig lejlighed til at spille. Det var en kæmpe hjælp at stå på scenen med ham. I forbindelse med min EP "Sentimental Sleep" hjalp han mig i kontakt med nogle musikere. Det er rart, at der nogen højere op i hierakiet, der rækker hånden ud, og det minder en om, at man skal huske at gøre det samme." Hør meget mere i denne POVcast.

When it comes to longevity, there are few musical careers that equal Graham Nash.  The British-American singer-songwriter was a founding member of the Hollies, and folk-rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young.   He has a variety of nominations and awards under his belt, and almost six decades into his career is visiting New Zealand's shores on his worldwide solo tour.  Nash told Mike Hosking that he's still passionate about performing, and that music as a form of communication is incredibly important to him.  He said that he and his audiences are enjoying these shows, and he hopes that kiwi audiences will enjoy them just as much.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode we welcome the great Kate Simon, who Zooms in from New York City to answer our questions about her stellar career and the new edition of Rebel Music, her book of classic reggae portraits. Kate talks about the formative moments that made her a music photographer, plus the 1972 move to London that brought her into the pages of Disc & Music Echo and Sounds. Her hosts quiz her about her timeless shots of David Bowie, Rod Stewart and the Clash before we hear of her first trip to Jamaica in 1976 and the start of her long association with Bob Marley and his fellow Wailers. We also learn more about Kate's friendships with Sounds colleagues such as Jonh Ingham, Vivien Goldman and art director Dave Fudger. After hearing about Kate's return to her native soil and her '80s work for The Face – as well as her personal preferences as a photographer — we switch coasts to California in order to mark the imminent 80th birthday of Joni Mitchell. Clips from Dave Zimmer's 1983 audio with the First Lady of Laurel Canyon – with her wry observations about Messrs. Crosby, Stills and Nash – prompt more general thoughts on her peerless music from Blue to Hejira to Night Ride Home. With Mark sipping the last of the summer wine in his beloved Crete, Jasper concludes matters with quotes from — and reflections on — newly-added library pieces about Miles Davis, Rod Stewart and Steve Reich... not to mention a priceless Billy Eckstine reminiscence of gigging with John Coltrane. Many thanks to special guest Kate Simon. The new edition of Rebel Music: Bob Marley and Roots Reggae is published by Genesis Publications. Pieces discussed: Kate Simon interviewed by Paul Gorman, Reggae: Black punks on 'erb, Richard Hell, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell audio, The Seeds, Miles Davis, Rod Stewart, Billy Eckstine, Steve Reich, Queen Latifah and Michael Kiwanuka.

Christina Perri - A Thousand Years (Remix) Hanson - I Will Come To You Lonestar - Amazed Glenn Mederios - Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You Rita Coolige - Words James Taylor - Fire ANd Rain Crosby, Stills & Nash - Wasted On The Way Sheryl Crow - Strong Enough Evanesence - My Immortal Patty Smyth & Don Henley - Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough Robbie Robertson - What About Now Mandy Moore - Cry

Neil Young's second solo album, 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, marked the first time he made an album with Crazy Horse as his backing band. Created in a rush of musical output from Young, concurrent with his work with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, it set the stage for the type of sound Young wanted to make as a solo artist: stripped back, without any fancy studio-created bells and whistles. Three of the songs on that album were written while Young had a fever from the flu, and one of them, “Cinnamon Girl,” led to Young earning the nickname “The Godfather of Grunge” decades later when bands like Nirvana embraced the the innovative way he downtuned his guitar. But who is the subject of this gritty, hypnotic tune? Find out in this episode of Behind The Song. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hem reunit per a tu un munt de veus hipn

Hem reunit per a tu un munt de veus hipn

Set aside some time for this doozy of an episode! It could have happened anytime, anywhere. But our guest's story takes place in Santa Barbara, California from 1980 to 1983. Four short years thatsaw a giant leap forward in the development of West Coast surfing, design, performance and image. It was set off by a rare combination of individuals, innovation and illumination,against a backdrop of some of the best seasons of surf in two decades. Some have called this California's Halcyon Days.Our Guest Jimmy Metyko, from Houston, Texas, has maintained a multi-faceted, successful career path in fields of photography, art, graphic design, fashion design, brand creation, development and marketing by the application of one simple strategy: staying ahead of the curve. And in some cases, even designing the curve.His recently released book, Shaping Surf History, by Rizzoli Publishing, is out now and it documents a very special time and place in surfing. It is the Stuff of legend and lore. He documents the rise of a quiet and unassuming surfing savant, his mentor and shaper, a sudden arrival of a world Champion and a crew of surfers that would go on to shape the future of surfing. I am of course talking about Tom Curren, Al Merrick, Shaun Tomson and the Santa Barbara surf scene. Jimmy Metyko is our guest on this episode. For more information on JImmy Metyko's work you can go to https://www.jimmymetykodesign.com orfollow him on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/jimmymetyko.gallery/To find out where you can puchase Shaping Surf HIstory you can go to: https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847873562 The Swell Season Podcast is recorded by The NewsStand Studio at Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan and is distributed by The Swell Season Surf Radio Network. www.swellseasonsurfradio.com Music: Artis: Crosb, Stills, Nash and YoungSong: Long May You RunAlbum: Long May You Run

We answer questions about Bert Sommer, whether Al was the actual Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man, choosing songs for the Steve Stills side of SuperSession, and about writing with Dan Penn. After each answer, Nilly the Dog adds a dogged comment of her own.

Mit Crosby, Stills und Nash entstand Ende der 1960er Jahre eine echte Supergroup. Alle Musiker waren bereits vorher Teil bekannter Rockbands gewesen. 1970 kam dann zum ersten Mal auch noch der "Godfather of Grunge", Neil Young, dazu. Dass eine Band sofort nach ihrer Gründung erfolgreich ist, kommt nicht so oft vor. Normalerweise müssen neu gegründete Bands sich erstmal beweisen, Material schreiben und ganz viel auf Tour gehen. Bei Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young war das etwas anders. Die Mitglieder der Bands waren allesamt vor der Gründung der Supergroup mit anderen Bands schon sehr erfolgreich gewesen. David Crosby war Mitglied der legendären Band "The Byrds", die wir vor allem von dem Kulthit "Mr. Tambourine Man" kennen. Stephen Stills – um bei der korrekten Reihenfolge zu bleiben – war schon mit der Band "Buffalo Springfield" und dem Antikriegssong "For What It's Worth" sehr erfolgreich gewesen, bei dem auch Neil Young schon mit dabei war. Graham Nash war seit 1962 Sänger und Gitarrist der Band "The Hollies". Darum war es auch kein Wunder, dass die vier mit ihrem ersten gemeinsamen Album "Déjà Vu" (Crosby, Stills und Nash hatten zu dritt 1969 schon ein erstes Album veröffentlicht) direkt erfolgreich waren. In Deutschland, der Schweiz und England erreichte die Platte Goldstatus, in den USA sogar siebenfach Platin. Dass das Album so erfolgreich geworden ist, hat den vier Musikern mit Sicherheit auch sehr gutgetan, da einige von ihnen zu der Zeit persönlich schwere Zeiten durchgemacht haben. Für David Crosby war es "die schlimmste Zeit seines Lebens", erklärt SWR1 Musikredakteur Stephan Fahrig im Podcast, denn Crosby hatte gerade seine Freundin bei einem Autounfall verloren. Sänger Graham Nash hatte sich einigermaßen frisch von Joni Mitchell getrennt und auch Graham Nash hatte gerade eine Trennung hinter sich. Mit Crosby, Stills, Nash und Young waren vier sehr, sehr starke Charaktere zusammengekommen, bei denen großer Streit bei der Produktion und viele Spannungen schon fast vorprogrammiert waren. Aber es hat gut funktioniert, erklärt unser ehemaliger SWR1 Musikkollege Christian Pfarr im Podcast. Das lag auch daran, dass die Musiker sich einander viele Freiräume gelassen haben und nur sehr selten alle zusammen im Studio waren, um gemeinsam Songs aufzunehmen. Die verschiedenen Musiker steuerten unterschiedliche Songs zum Album bei und holten sich für die Gesangs- oder Gitarrenparts immer nur die jeweiligen Musiker dazu, die gerade gebraucht worden sind. So ist es auch passiert, dass Neil Young zum Beispiel bei vielen Songs gar nicht zu hören ist – weder an der Gitarre, bei den Vocals oder am Keyboard. __________ Über diese Songs vom Album "Déjà Vu" wird im Podcast gesprochen (04:45) – "Carry On" (08:59) – "Déjà Vu" (15:13) – "Teach Your Children" (17:01) – "Woodstock" (21:03) – "Our House" (25:40) – "Helpless" __________ Über diese Songs wird außerdem im Podcast gesprochen (19:51) – "Woodstock" von Joni Mitchell __________ Shownotes: Graham Nash im Interview bei Howard Stern über den Song "Woodstock": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKlk_Z_JYg8 Interview mit Graham Nash über die Arbeit an "Déjà Vu": https://reverb.com/news/making-deja-vu-and-the-early-days-of-csn-an-interview-with-graham-nash Youtube-Kanal von Crosby, Stills & Nash: https://www.youtube.com/@crosbystillsandnash9397 __________ Ihr wollt mehr Podcasts wie diesen? Abonniert die SWR1 Meilensteine! Fragen, Kritik, Anregungen? Schreibt uns an: meilensteine@swr.de

Label: Atlantic 2820Year: 1971Condition: M-Last Price: $12.00. Not currently available for sale.What a surprisingly great single! The A side is Stills at his power-poppy best with an absolutely great top 40 hit (though it didn't actually make it there), and the B side is a funky-country-bluesy-Hendrixy workout that's irresistable! Shows how much great stuff you can fit on a little 45 when you really try. :-) The A side, incidentally, features Nils Lofgren and Eric Clapton joining Stills on guitars. Note: This beautiful copy comes in a vintage Atlantic Records factory sleeve. The record has pristine Mint Audio and Labels!

Finally: a fashion podcast that covers 2012-2013 Bar/Bat Mitzvah fashion. Join Sol (@solthompson) and Michael (@_smithstagram) as they're joined by Clara Perlmutter (@tinyjewishgirl) to talk about all things fashion.  Tap in to hear discussion on Clara's obsession with John Cena, dressing up as Smeagol (it's scary good), Sugar Lipz, Westchester, NY, having enough closet space, painted jeans, places to thrift, shopping with your mom, being Jewish, parasocial relationships, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash!We hope you enjoy listening as much as we did having Clara on as a guest - don't forget to join the discord and follow us over on instagram!Lots of love!SolMessage us with Business Inquiries at pairofkingspod@gmail.com Links: Instagram: instagram.com/pairofkingspod TikTok: tiktok.com/@pairofkingspod Twitter/X: twitter.com/pairofkingspod Sol's Instagram: instagram.com/solthompson Michael's Instagram: instagram.com/_smithstagram Michael's TikTok: tiktok.com/@smithstagram

3:27:17 – Frank in New Jersey, plus the Other Side. Topics include: Nash, Kate Nash, Nashville, THE ALBUM SUPER CARROTY PERFORMED BY NASH, Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH), Longmont Potion Castle – Nash, Crosby, Stills & Nash – Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Graham Nash, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, FM – BlackNoise, Nash the Slash, The Adventures of Pluto […]

  3:27:17 – Frank in New Jersey, plus the Other Side. Topics include: Nash, Kate Nash, Nashville, THE ALBUM SUPER CARROTY PERFORMED BY NASH, Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH), Longmont Potion Castle – Nash, Crosby, Stills & Nash – Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Graham Nash, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, FM – BlackNoise, Nash the Slash, The Adventures of […]

We greatly appreciate you tuning into this podcast. If we can pray for you in anyway please email us at rayreynoldsrap@gmail.com. If you are interested in a deeper, richer study of the Bible please download the FREE study guides available for a limited time. We also encourage you to sign up for a FREE Bible course for a comprehensive study of the entire Bible. The ministry of Reynolds Rap is meant to bring a message of inspiration and encouragement. Our hope it will bless you to find your calling and inspire you to engage in your own distinctive and personal ministry.  Our goal is to help mentor, coach, and motivate you.  We will do this through sharing Scriptures, Bible studies, blogs, podcasts, and LIVE videos.  Our website has many tools to help you in your walk with God to maintain an authentic Christian life (www.rayreynoldsrap.com). This podcast is partially sponsored by Peachtree Press LLC (www.peachtreepress.org), Getting To Know Your Bible (www.gettingtoknowyourbible.com), the Summerdale Church of Christ (www.summerdalechurch.org), and the Reclaiming Hope Ministry (www.reclaiminghopeministry.com). You are loved.Dr. Ray Reynolds

Here is the playlist for the 10/09 episode of the Seventh House. Enjoy!John McLaughlin- Gaza CityErik Norlander- Astrology PreludeThe Police- Invisible SunKate Bush- How to Turn InvisibleWendy & Lisa- InvisibleQueen- Invisible ManUnitopia- Something InvisibleBruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers- InvisibleVulfpeck- El ChepeChristina Booth- Sail on, Sister GenevieveCrosby, Stills and Nash- GuinnevereDave Kerzmer- GenevieveTrevor Rabin- PushYes- Shoot High, Aim Low (the tradition continues...)Southern Empire- When You ReturnThe Emerald Dawn- A Moment in TimeThe Fearless Flyers- SwampersLevel 42- Children SayNick D'Virgilio- Childhood's EndLens- Childhood's EndMelanie Mau and Martin Schnella- My Dear ChildrenIona- Children of TimePeter Gabriel- This is HomeSteven Wilson- StaircaseShineback- Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed

In this episode, Mike Tuchscherer sits down with Ryan Stills to discuss the fascinating intersection of veganism and athletics. The conversation delves into the world of veganism and its impact on sports performance. Tune in as they explore the benefits, challenges, and personal experiences of pursuing a plant-based lifestyle while striving for athletic excellence. Whether you're an athlete looking to optimize your nutrition or simply curious about the vegan lifestyle, this podcast episode offers valuable insights and inspiration.

22. Robert Plant & Alison Krause / Gone, Gone, Gone 23. John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen . When Will I Be Loved24. The Everly Brothers / On the Wings of a Nightingale (Paul McCartney) 25. Don Everly / Omaha26. Matt Cox / Polyurethane 27. Simon & Garfunkel w/ The Everly Brothers / Bye Bye Love 28. Paul Simon w/ The Everly Brothers / Graceland 29. Warren Zevon w/ Phil Everly / Werewolves of London 30. Crosby, Stills, Nash / You Don't Have to Cry 31. The Hollies / The Air That I Breathe32. The Everly Brothers / I've Been Wrong Before [2 Yanks in England]33. Nazareth / Love Hurts34. Status Quo / The Price of Love 35. REM / (All I Have to Do is) Dream36. Norah Jones & Billie Joe Armstrong [Foreverly] / Down in the Willow Garden37. The Chapin Sisters [A Date with the Everly Brothers] / Cathy's Clown38. Bonnie Prince Billy (Will Oldham) & Dawn McCarthy [What the Brothers Sang] / Devoted to You 

How does it feel to live with chronic illnesses? To manage the pain and the everyday tasks while dealing with the physical, emotional, and mental impacts? It's a journey that our guest, Jacinda, also known as Virgo Beauty, knows all too well. Diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at a tender age of five, life threw a curveball at her in 2016 when she experienced a severe flare-up that left her bedridden. Today, she lives with RA and the rare Stills disease, navigating the labyrinth of chronic illnesses with courage and resilience.We follow Jacinda's arduous journey, immersing ourselves in her daily battles and victories. She unravels her health regimen - balancing medications, lifestyle changes, and the endless search for the right doctor. She opens her Spoonie toolkit for us, revealing the little aids that help her navigate her day - hand sanitizers, ginger candies for motion sickness, and more. But it's not just about the physical battle; Jacinda's story is also about the mental and emotional warfare of living with a chronic illness. In our candid conversation, Jacinda speaks of her support system's crucial role in managing her mental health. She shares her daily affirmations and meditation rituals that keep her spirits high. We delve into the essence of authenticity and vulnerability in managing chronic illnesses, discussing how important it is to stay true to oneself while battling such conditions. Join us on this journey of strength, resilience, and hope as we delve into the world of chronic illnesses with Jacinda.https://instagram.com/virgobeautyxo?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== Support the showWebsite: https://myspooniesisters.com/Support:https://www.etsy.com/shop/MySpoonieSisters

October 1, 2023Join us as we explore the music, legacy, and influences of the Everly Brothers. Perhaps the most interesting discovery for me was how Phil and Don's music crossed over to significantly influence so many genres and artists including British popular music including covers by The Beatles, The Who, and The Hollies (Graham Nash); Folk Music including covers by Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan; the formation of Country Rock including covers by Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young, The Byrds, Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris, and Crosby, Stills, and (Graham) Nash; and modern rock with covers by Allison Krause & Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin), The Chapin Sisters, Bonnie Prince BIlly & Dawn McCarthy, and Norah Jones & Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day). 1. Nicole Hart and Anni Piper / Walk Right Back2. Dr. John / Let 'Em In3. Rockpile / Poor Jenny4. Sting / Jock the Welder5. James Taylor & Alison Kraus. So How's the World Treating You (Atkins & B. Bryant) 6. Charlie Louvin / More Than a Name on the Wall (2010) 7. Kitty Wells/ Thou Shan't Steal [Don Everly penned]8. Chet Atkins / Rocky Top9. Roy Orbison / Claudette10. Phil and Jason Everly / Rave On 11. Mary Chapin Carpenter / Wishing12. Johnny Cash, Roseanna Cash, The Everly Brothers / Ballad of a Teenage Queen 13. Elvis Presley / Mess O'Blues 14. Linda Ronstadt / When Will I Be Loved15. Bob Dylan / Let It Be Me 16. The Beatles / So How Come (No One Loves Me)17. The Who / A Man with Money 18. Neil Young / I Wonder If I Care19. Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen (The Byrds) / Problems20. Gram Parsons w/ Emmylou Harris (The Byrds, Flying Burrito Bros, Keith Richards) /  Brand New Heartache 21. Emmylou Harris w/ Don Everly / Every time You Leave

C.V.'s 10 to Check Out PodcastCurtis and Aaron Vaughn came up with the idea for this podcast. The concept for this podcast is to give information and opinions about ten songs each month that may fly under the radar for most listeners of music. Also, we will play a snippet of each song and ask the listener to comment to us through one of our social media outlets so we can get different opinions on what you think about these songs and what they mean to you. The opinions of the music selected are only the opinions of Aaron and Curtis and may not reflect what the artist had in mind. They believe that is the beauty of music. It can mean so many different things to so many different people.  In short, Curtis came up with this quote to describe the show: “Sharing the joy of music in hopes of bringing back old memories or helping listeners discover unfamiliar artists, bands, or songs that they might want to look further into. At the same time, helping out Veterans and their families with donations along the way."Songs for this month are:1. Teach Your Children (Live) - Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young2. Silent Lucidity - Queensryche3. Footstompin' Music (Live) - Grand Funk Railroad4. A Boy Named Sue (Live at San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, CA - February 1969) - Johnny Cash5. Music Man (Live) - REO Speedwagon6. Monkey Wrench (Live in Melbourne, 2000) - Foo Fighters7. Simple Man (Live at The Fox Theatre/1976) - Lynyrd Skynyrd8. The Ghost of Tom Joad (Live) - Rise Against9. Closer to the Heart (Live in Manchester, 1980) - Rush10. When the Children Cry (Live at the Ritz, New York, NY, 2/2/1988) - White Lion11. The Interest of Time - DawesOur email is cvs10tocheckout@gmail.comClick on the the link below and sign up for a paid Buzzsprout plan and get a $20 Amazon gift card!https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1660801We are always promoting Veterans' charities, so contact us if you want to discuss donating to the charity of your choice or partnering with us to sponsor our show and giving to Veterans and their families through that avenue.Please listen to the full songs of the artists discussed in the podcast on your favorite streaming services to help them out.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/cvs10tocheckout)Support the show

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