Podcasts about texas playboys

Bec and Justin discuss their favorites of the many songs Elvis recorded or performed titled after the women and girls they're about by name. From Caroline to Petunia, Marguerita to Marie and Annie to Kathleen, the tunes span the breadth of love, heartbreak and stories of unique musical characters. For Song of the Week, Justin takes the opportunity to jump from Elvis's messy but fun home recording of "San Antonio Rose" to explore a bit of the history behind Bob Wills' iconic western swing hit, examine contemporary perspectives that challenge our ideas of what the boundaries of oldies "country" music were, and how the Texas Playboys' work paved the way for rockabilly and rock and roll. Then Bec celebrates a belated Easter, spotlighting Elvis's heartfelt 1973 cover of Dottie Rambo's "If That Isn't Love," a gospel record all about Jesus's sacrifice, as well as explore a bit of the detail behind the friendship Elvis and Dottie shared and his deep appreciation for the music of her family group, The Rambos.  If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.

Another day, another tough challenge for our host. This week Ben gives it his best shot in a Bob Wills themed fashion contest. Bob Wills, known to have reigned over Tulsa's Cain's Ballroom along with his band The Texas Playboys during the 1930s and '40s, was and remains an influential icon of Western chic style. Hie reputation as a sharp dresser is so strong that this year they introduced a fashion contest during the annual Bob Wills Day celebration at the Oklahoma State Capitol. Ben is far from a ten-galloned fashionisto, but he is a bolo tie lover with a feel for style that can be best described as . . . marginally above average. Will that be enough to win the inaugural Bob WIlls fashion competition? Probably not, but let's find out.  Also on this week's episode, the editors try their best to describe their own fashion styles, and podvents tells Mom where to find the sweetest cruise in town this Mother's Day.

Bob Wills' Texas Playboys were synonymous with Tulsa's Cain's Ballroom through America's Great Depression years, becoming national stars with daily radio broadcasts. Wills died many years ago, but the band's legacy lives on, currently led by Jason Roberts. Roberts and the Texas Playboys band will once again return to Tulsa this week for the annual Bob Wills Birthday Bash. Later in the week the will head to Oklahoma City for Bob Wills Day at the Oklahoma State Capitol. Roberts joins the show this week to talk about his career path that led to this classic role. He is also joined by Texas Playboys manager and music historian Brett Bingham, and the pair of them discuss the larger musical legacy of this classic Western swing act. Also on this week's show, the editors huddle around the warmth of their laptops during this remotely recorded ice week show, and podvents previews a future family outing for our host Ben. You won't want to miss it!

Con B.B. King ft. Luciano Pavarotti, Original Chicago Blues Band, Slim Harpo, Solomon Burke, Billy Preston, The Excitements, Pony Bravo, DeVotchKa, Mike Bahía, Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys, Amaral, Barry B ft Carolina Durante, Amaia, Soleado y Maestro Espada.

1 - By the Waters of Minnetonka - Princess Watahwaso – 19172 - Rainbow on The River - Perry Como with Ted Weeks and his Orchestra – 19363 - Blue River - Prairie Ramblers – 19334 - From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water - Mildred Bailey and her Orchestra – 19365 - I'm Like a Fish Out of Water - Dick Powell with Harry Sosnik and his Orchestra – 19386 - Low Bridge! Everybody Down! - Billy Murray - 19127 - Water Under the Bridge - Elmer Feldkamp with Freddy Martin and his Orchestra – 19348 - Theres Rhythm in the River - Blanche Calloway and her Joy Boys – 19319 - River of Jordan - Fisk University Male Quartet – 191510 - River, Stay 'Way from My Door - Jimmie Noone and his Orchestra – 193111 - Deep Water - Tommy Duncan with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys – 194512 - Cool Water - Vaughn Monroe and Sons of the Pioneers - 194813 - Water Boy (Convict Song) - Paul Robeson – 192614 - Koni Au I Ka Wai (Tasting the Waters) - Alvin Kaleolani with Harry Owens and his Royal Hawaiian Hotel Orchestra – 193715 - Water Faucet (Drip, Drip, Drip) - Jock Carruthers with Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra – 194716 - Dream River - The Revelers – 1928

1 - Snow Deer - Charlie Linville and the Fiddlin' Linvilles – 19462 - Old Crow Boogie - Dick Lewis and his Harlem Rhythm Boys - 19473 - Bumble Bee - The Bubber Johnson Trio – 19514 - Snakes Hips - Original Memphis Five - 19235 - The Fox - Burl Ives – 19456 - Skunk Song - Johnny Messner and his Orchestra - 19417 - Scat Skunk - Blue Lu Barker with Danny Bark – 19398 - Black Rat Swing - Little Son Joe - 19419 - The Kinkajou - Nat Shilkret and The Victor Orchestra – 192710 - Weary Weasel - Abe Lyman's Sharps and Flats - 192811 - Polecat Stomp - Leon Pappy Self and his Blue Ridge Playboys12 - Skunk Hollow Blues - Johnny Hodges and his Orchestra – 193913 - Big Beaver - Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys - 194014 - Big Beaver - Jan Savitt and his Orchestra – 194115 - Bumble Bee Schottische - Whoopee John Wilfahrt - 194816 - Bumble Bee Stomp - Benny Goodman and his Orchestra – 1939

You'll like this week's episode as Cody and Jimbo were honored to visit with Rosetta Wills. Rosetta was born and raised in Pawhuska, and is the daughter of the iconic band leader and king of Western Swing, Bob Wills. Listen in as she shares some great stories of when Bob was courting her mother, and all the times the Texas Playboys played in Pawhuska. Don't miss this one!

Most days we're talking about food and beverage. Today we're talking about baseball. Enter Jack Sanders, an entrepreneur who answers the question “What if the movie Field of Dreams was a person?” We're discussing what it took to build community and a baseball field in his own backyard and the lessons we can learn as restaurateurs about creating raving fans.  For more information on Jack and the Texas Playboys, visit https://texasplayboysbaseball.com/. ____________________________________________________ Full Comp is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time. We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out our other content: Yelp for Restaurants Podcasts Restaurant expert videos & webinars

Route 66—The Main Street of America— the first continuously paved highway linking east and west was the most traveled and well known road in the US for almost fifty years. From Chicago, through the Ozarks, across Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, up the mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, and down into California to the Pacific Ocean. The first road of its kind, it came to represent America's mobility and freedom—inspiring countless stories, songs, and even a TV show.Songwriter Bobby Troup tells the story of his 1946 hit “Get Your Kicks on Route 66.” Mickey Mantle says, “If it hadn't been for US 66 I wouldn't have been a Yankee.” Stirling Silliphant, creator of the TV series “Route 66” talks about the program and its place in American folklore of the 60s.Studs Terkel reads from The Grapes of Wrath about the "Mother Road," and the great 1930s migration along Highway 66. We hear from musicians who recall what life on the road during the 1930s was like for them, including Clarence Love, Woody Guthrie, and Eldin Shamblin, who played guitar for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.We travel the history of the road from its beginnings through caverns and roadside attractions, into tourist traps and bunko joints, through the hard times of the Dust Bowl, Depression and the “Road of Flight,” and into the “Ghost Road” of the 1980s, as the interstates bypass the businesses and roadside attractions of another era.Produced by The Kitchen Sisters and narrated by actor David Selby. The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Nikki Silva & Davia Nelson) with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell. Part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of podcasts created by independent producers.

Today on the program, we're proud to present the story behind the King of Western Swing, Bob Wills. One of the most influential and iconic bandleaders and musicians of the 1930's-1950's, Bob came from a humble life of a poor sharecropping family, and was deeply influenced by old time and breakdown fiddle through his Texas state champion family of fiddlers in his father and uncle. Bob also loved all the turn of the century and 1920's black music, and this confluence of cultures would help him create the craze that became Western swing, and the details of his journey to get there will surprise you.  Story by Brent Davis and Nicholas Edward Williams Support Educational Programming: Join the Patreon Community Send a one-time donation on Venmo or PayPal Follow American Songcatcher: Instagram | TikTok | Facebook Credits: Brent Davis - Research, Writing  Nicholas Edward Williams - Production, research, editing, recording and distribution Homecoming: Reflections on Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, 1915-1973, Charles R. Townsend. Country Music Hall of Fame Authentic Texas OW Mayo The Life and Times of Bob Wills Country Music, an Illustrated History, Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns. Country Music, a PBS documentary by Florentine Films, Ken Burns, director; Dayton Duncan, writer. OK History Life and Times of Bob Wills (TNN) Texas Monthly Birthplace of Western Swing The Country Music Pop-Up Book, by the staff of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The Hag: The Life, Times, and Music of Merle Haggard, Marc Elliot. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/americansongcatcher/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/americansongcatcher/support

The #1 way you can support The Troubadour is by visiting our Patreon page This episode features our interview with The Texas Trio, comprised of Kyle Park, John Michael Whitby & Jason Roberts. Kyle has been a guest on the podcast several times but it was our first time getting to visit with Jason Roberts and John Michael Withby (JMW).  Both are very accomplished musicians in their own right.  Jason and JMW both played with Asleep At The Wheel for earlier in their careers.  Currently, Jason is fronting the famed Bob's Wills Texas Playboys and JMW has been playing keys in Country Music Icon George Strait's Ace in the Hole Band for 19 years now.  Sounds like Jason will even be doing some dates with the Ace in the Hole Band as well before long! Their new self-titled album was just released on Friday, May 17th, 2024 and you can check it out HERE! Enjoy the episode! We're also excited to say that we are now an affiliate for Sweetwater.  So, the next time you need any new strings, picks, microphones, recording gear, etc. make sure to use this link!

Dave Alexander's musical journey is a tapestry woven with accolades, collaborations, and a deep-rooted love for Texas music. From his early days as a Western Swing enthusiast to his status as a revered multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Dave has left an indelible mark on the music scene.Starting with the formation of "The Legends of Western Swing," Dave surrounded himself with musical luminaries, including former members of Bob Wills' Texas Playboys. This collaboration laid the foundation for a career marked by unforgettable performances and enduring musical partnerships.His talent caught the attention of the industry, leading to a prestigious role as the "House Band" for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, where he forged lasting connections with country and Western Swing icons like George Strait, Willie Nelson, and Lyle Lovett.Throughout his career, Dave has amassed a treasure trove of awards and accolades, including Grammy nominations and multiple Will Rogers Awards from the Academy Of Western Artists. He has been honored with inductions into several Hall of Fames, including the Texas Western Swing Hall Of Fame and the Oklahoma Country Music Hall Of Fame.Dave's musical journey is not just about accolades—it's about collaboration and connection. From sharing the stage with music legends to collaborating with a diverse array of artists, including George Strait, Willie Nelson, and Sheryl Crow, Dave's versatility and talent shine through in every performance.As he continues to uphold the rich tradition of Texas music, Dave Alexander's legacy is not just in the awards he's received or the stages he's graced, but in the hearts of fans who have been touched by his music, his passion, and his unwavering dedication to the art form he loves.http://www.davealexander.com/Support the Show.Thanks for listening for more information or to listen to other podcasts or watch YouTube videos click on this link >https://thetroutshow.com/

To Support the Channel:Patreon  https://www.patreon.com/AskZacTip jar:  https://paypal.me/AskZacVenmo @AskZac  Or check out my store for merch  - https://my-store-be0243.creator-spring.com/Eldon Shamblin was Leo Fender's favorite guitarist, playing in his favorite band, Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys. Fender supplied the Playboys with amps and steel guitars but he wanted badly to get his new Spanish guitar, the Broadcaster, in their guitarist's hands. Unfortunately, Eldon had no interest in the plank with strings and politely passed on the offer. A few short years later, Leo was still bent on converting Shamblin, so he had his crew build a one-of-a-kind gold Stratocaster in the summer of 1954, and gifted it to the Playboy guitarist during one of their regular visits to the Fender factory. Eldon at first refused the golden solid body, but Leo convinced him to take it with him and try it on the bandstand. Shamblin soon dropped his hollow-body Gibson and became a lifelong Stratocaster player, using them until his passing on August 4th, 1998. Today we take a look at Eldon Shamblin's importance as a guitarist and arranger for Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys, and the fantastically rare and beautiful golden 1954 Stratocaster that Leo Fender gave him. Photos and video on my sitewww.askzac.com/post/eldon-shamblins-1954-gold-stratocasterPlaylisthttps://open.spotify.com/playlist/1efYMv1CjoK8jpJp7sqS55?si=77fd65af7a7b4568Gear used:2023 Headstrong Lil' King with 12" Eminence GA-SC64 speakerhttps://headstrongamps.com/lil-king-amp1955 Stratocaster built by my old college buddy, B. Paisley, using a mix of old and new parts. Ron Ellis 50/60 middle and neck, Duncan Twang banger in the bridge.https://www.ronellispickups.com/Strings: D'Addario NYXL 10-46Affiliate linkhttps://amzn.to/494qQ1yPick:Pick Boy Small Jazz, Tortoise Shell, 1.00mmEffects: Amp reverb#askzac #eldonshamblin #stratocasterSupport the show

1 - Don't Be Blue, Little Pal - Vaughn Monroe and his Orchestra – 19412 – You're Just My Type – King Oliver and his Orchestra – 19303 - Keep Smilin', Keep Laughin', Be Happy - Joe Thomas with Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra – 1942 [advice column]4 - Keep Smilin', Keep Laughin', Be Happy - The Four King Sisters with Alvino Rey and his Orchestra – 19425 - Keep Cool, Fool - The Ink Spots - 19416 - Don't Worry - Allen Miller and his Orchestra – 19437 - Keep On Churnin' - Wynonie Harris with the Todd Rhodes Orchestra – 1952 8 - Never Trust a Man - Rosalie Allen and The Black River Riders - 19489 - Never Trust a Woman - Red Foley and The Cumberland Valley Boys – 194710 - Don't Tetch It! - Una Mae Carlisle – 194211 - If It Don't Fit (Don't Force It) - Barrel House Annie - 193712 - Keep It Clean - Charley Jordan – 193013 - Keep Young and Beautiful - Abe Lyman and his California Orchestra – 193314 - Shout, Sister, Shout! - Rosetta Tharpe with Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra – 194115 - Don't Call Me Boy - Nappy Lamare with Bob Crosby's Bob Cats – 194016 - I'm Gonna Be Boss From Now On – Jesse Ashlock with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys – 1946

1 - Sangre Son Colora' (Blood Is Always Red) - Olga Guillot con Orquesta Coda - 19482 - Blue Blood Blues - King Oliver with Blind Willie Dunn's Gin Bottle Four - 19293 - Brain Cloudy Blues - Tommy Duncan with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys - 19464 - Child of a Disordered Brain - Earl Hines - 19405 - Jangled Nerves - Fletcher Henderson and his Orchestra - 19366 - Jumpy Nerves - Wingie Manone and his Orchestra - 19397 - Dese Bones A-Gwinna Rise Again - Wally Fowler and The Oak Ridge Quartet - 19468 - Dry Bones - Delta Rhythm Boys - 19409 - Dry Bones - Nappy Lamare and The Bob-o-links with Bob Crosby and his Orchestra - 194010 - Dry Bones - Fats Waller and his Rhythm - 194011 - Eve Cost Adam Just One Bone - Bert Williams - 192012 - Cut Off the Fat, Take Out the Bone - Billy Valentine with Johnny Moore's Three Blazers - 194913 - Biceps, Muscles and Brawn - George Formby - 193714 - Chocolate to the Bone - Frankie (Half-Pint) Jaxon and The Harlem Hamfats - 193715 - If I Only Had a Brain - Sonny Schuyler with Vincent Lopez and his Suave Swing Orchestra - 193916 - Brainstorm - Coon-Sanders Orchestra - 192617 - 'Tain't No Sin to Dance Around in Your Bones - Dick Gardner with George Olsen and His Music - 1929

1 - The Bathtub Ran Over Again - Clifford Wetterau with Joe Haymes Orchestra - 19342 - Rub-a-Dub-Dub - Rex Howard and The Texas Playboys - 19533 - La Baignoire (The Bathtub) - Jean Sablon - 19494 - Dorothy Went to Bathe - The Lion with Gerald Clark and his Original Calypsos - 19475 - Shave and a Haircut-Shampoo - Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye - 19396 - The Old Wooden Tub - Edgar A. Guest - 19227 - Every Tub - King Oliver and his Dixie Syncopators - 19278 - Singin' in the Bathtub - The Four Aces - 19299 - Singin' in the Bathtub - The Radio Imps with Sam Lanin's Dance Orchestra - 192910 - I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right out-a My Hair - Paul Paine and his Society Orchestra - 194911 - Her Bathing Suit Never got Wet - The Andrews Sisters with Vic Schoen and his Orchestra - 194612 - Soap and Water (recorded in Berlin) - Mr. Billy Williams, The Man in the Velvet Suit - 191113 - Bath Tub Blues - Doye O'Dell14 - Hey Bub! Get Out of the Tub - Glen Moore and The Moore Men - 195015 - We Gonna Rub It - Cow Cow Davenport - 192916 - Wash It Clean - Sharkey and his Sharks of Rhythm - 193617 - Bathing in The Sunshine - Alan Green and his Band - 1931

Ray Benson is a national treasure, whose outfit, Asleep at the Wheel, has been spreading the Texas swing gospel for a long damn time. The album from which this recording derives was my gateway drug into a giddy universe of intoxicating joy.  It came out in 1993, and before that time the name of Bob Wills had reverberated around the corridors of my memory, but with this collection of loving renditions of some of his classic hits performed by a line up of Country music's finest practitioners (Marty Stuart, Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett, George Strait, Garth Brooks, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton…the list goes on, including a surprise appearance by Huey Lewis) the barn had been burned down for good.I could have chosen any of the cuts, but “Big Ball's in Cowtown” is my choice because it makes me smile every time I hear it, starting with the title. I'm not a cowboy (not even an Urban one) and I don't dance, but what the hell. I can picture the whole town gettin' dressed up, coming down to the dance hall ready to celebrate life to the outer reaches, and I want to be right there with ‘em.Bob Wills formulated the recipe for a magic potion, mixing country with Jazz, and the world owes him a debt of thanks. Ray Benson has dedicated his life to it, and I'm grateful.

Ameritocracy Goes to Dallas, Part Two: In this episode Troy Edgar meets with Dallas musician and Guitar Center Platinum Room Manager Robbie Gustin.  Robbie's deep connection with music started at a young age. His grandfather was an original member of the Texas Playboys. At his first job as a teenager, he was hired by Kim Davis, Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitarist at his local Dallas music store. Now, a talented recording artist, Robbie's expertise is well respected as the go-to connection for musicians and collectors looking to acquire rare and custom instruments. Robbie's story is one of overcoming unfavorable situations and includes intense topics such as physical and substance abuse. Recovery is a difficult path and Robbie bravely shares how he has found strength and inspiration through creating music and his faith and personal beliefs.  The song featured in this episode is "Stand Up" by Robbie's band Supernova Remnant.  Ameritocracy™ is produced by Prospect House Media and recorded in studio locations in Los Angeles and Washington DC.

The multi-talented Amanda Shires is our guest on Takin A Walk-Music History on foot.She talks about her career influences and her passion for her craft.How the beauty and grace of musician Amanda Shires led her to successMusic is an integral part of human culture. We use it in genres, ways of life, and for many purposes. Music also evokes memories, creates moods, and has the ability to change lives. Actually, music is one of the most influential forces in the world, affecting our minds, our bodies, and even our clothing. It can help you feel a certain way, give you an idea or insight you might not have otherwise considered, and subtly change your mood. Learn more in this conversation as Amanda Shires joins us.Amanda is a singer, songwriter, poet, and fiddle-playing Texan. In addition to her solo career, she performed with Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit and founded The Highwomen, a collaborative effort with Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby.In this episode, Amanda shares about her musical career, the support of her parents, the people she worked with, and how her career has progressed. Listen as she shares tips and insights into success in the entertainment world.Tune in!Key Highlights from the Show;[00:01] Episode intro with Amanda Shires and a chat about her place of residence[03:08] Amanda's flashback on the day she asked his father for her first musical instrument[07:51] Playing with the Texas Playboys band at the age of fifteen[15:28] Other influential people that inspired his musical career[17:25] Amanda's attraction to Leonard Cohen and a union that was never successful[21:03] Where she got the idea of “play like it's your last time.”[23:56] Amanda's first encounter with John Prine[32:16] Know more about Amanda's signature project-the HighWoman band[42:19] Are we expecting another HighWomen album?[44:28] How she operated during the Covid pandemic[48:22] The importance of music, what it does, and why it's so much part of our lives[53:42] Ending the show and call to actionNotable quotesMusic plays a key role in your emotional wellness in times of distress.Gravitate towards real people who have real stories from experience, and you will never go wrong.Connect With Amanda ShiresWebsite: https://amandashiresmusic.com/Wikipedia Profile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_ShiresFacebook: https://web.facebook.com/AmandaShiresMusic/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandapearlshires/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH2bj8PyLGgwEhtr55CUzUwLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The multi-talented Amanda Shires is our guest on Takin A Walk-Music History on foot. She talks about her career influences and her passion for her craft. How the beauty and grace of musician Amanda Shires led her to success Music is an integral part of human culture. We use it in genres, ways of life, and for many purposes. Music also evokes memories, creates moods, and has the ability to change lives. Actually, music is one of the most influential forces in the world, affecting our minds, our bodies, and even our clothing. It can help you feel a certain way, give you an idea or insight you might not have otherwise considered, and subtly change your mood. Learn more in this conversation as Amanda Shires joins us. Amanda is a singer, songwriter, poet, and fiddle-playing Texan. In addition to her solo career, she performed with Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit and founded The Highwomen, a collaborative effort with Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby. In this episode, Amanda shares about her musical career, the support of her parents, the people she worked with, and how her career has progressed. Listen as she shares tips and insights into success in the entertainment world. Tune in! Key Highlights from the Show; [00:01] Episode intro with Amanda Shires and a chat about her place of residence [03:08] Amanda's flashback on the day she asked his father for her first musical instrument [07:51] Playing with the Texas Playboys band at the age of fifteen [15:28] Other influential people that inspired his musical career [17:25] Amanda's attraction to Leonard Cohen and a union that was never successful [21:03] Where she got the idea of “play like it's your last time.” [23:56] Amanda's first encounter with John Prine [32:16] Know more about Amanda's signature project-the HighWoman band [42:19] Are we expecting another HighWomen album? [44:28] How she operated during the Covid pandemic [48:22] The importance of music, what it does, and why it's so much part of our lives [53:42] Ending the show and call to action Notable quotes Music plays a key role in your emotional wellness in times of distress. Gravitate towards real people who have real stories from experience, and you will never go wrong. Connect With Amanda Shires Website: https://amandashiresmusic.com/ Wikipedia Profile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Shires Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/AmandaShiresMusic/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandapearlshires/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH2bj8PyLGgwEhtr55CUzUw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1 - The Devil Ain't Lazy - Tommy Duncan with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys - 0:01:30 - 19472 - Up Popped the Devil - Eddie Stone and His Orchestra;Eddie Stone;Dilliard - 0:06:01 - 19373 - El Diablo Se Aparecio (The Devil Appeared) - Tony Camargo y Orquesta Tino Contreras - 0:08:27 - 19564 - The Devil and the Farmer's Wife - Richard Dyer-Bennett - 0:11:55 - 19455 - Pack Up Your Sins and Go to The Devil - Vincent Lopez and his Hotel Pennsylvania Orchestra - 0:14:20 - 19226 - Devil in The Moon - Leo Reisman and his Orchestra - 0:18:40 - 19357 - Devil May Care - Dick Todd - 0:22:09 - 19408 - Satan Wears a Satin Gown - Frankie Laine with Carl Fischer's Orchestra - 0:26:44 - 19499 - The Devil with The Devil - Johnny Messner and his Music Box Band - 0:29:51 - 193910 - I'm A Lucky Devil - Stuart Allen with the Richard Himber Orchestra - 0:34:02 - 193911 - On the Level You're a Little Devil - Maurice Chevalier - 0:36:33 - 191912 - Burra' el Diablo - Alfredo Sadel y la Orquesta de Ulises Acosta - 0:40:13 - 13 - Let Me Go, Devil - Tex Ritter - 0:44:00 - 195114 - Get Thee Behind Me Satan - Terry Allen with Will Bradley and his Orchestra - 0:46:33 - 194115 - The Devil Is Afraid of Music - Willard Robison with Nat Shilkret and his Orchestra - 0:50:31 - 192816 - Stop Throwin' Rocks at the Devil - Rusty Nichols with Charlie Spivak and his Orchestra - 0:53:51 - 1947

1 - The Weary Traveler (Der müde Bummeler) - Orchestra Zonofon - 19112 - I've Ranged, I've Roamed and I've Travelled - Jimmie Rodgers - 19293 - Traveling Blues - Ted Weems and his Orchestra - 19244 - The Boarding House Bells are Ringing - Carolina Twins - 19285 - Stay a Little Longer - Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys - 19456 - Bell Hop Blues - Al Bernard - 19197 - Shuffle Boogie Bellhop - Tommy Lloyd and The Strollin' Cowboys - 19518 - A Porter's Song to a Chambermaid - Fats Waller and his Rhythm - 19369 - Room Five-Hundred-and-Four - Anne Lenner with the Savoy Hotel Orpheans - 194110 - Second Class Hotel - Jesse Rodgers with El Patio Trio - 193711 - Kanakanui Hotel - Eddie Valencia's Beachcombers - 193512 - She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor - Johnny Messner and his Orchestra - 193913 - The Mountjoy Hotel - William McElligott - 193814 - Commercial Traveler's March - Edison Concert Band - 190115 - Arkansas Traveler - Lee Bedford, Jr. and The Big D Ranch Hands - 194716 - Hawaiian Hotel March - Charles Kama and his Moana Hawaiians - 194017 - There's a Small Hotel - Larry Stewart with Jack Shilkret and his Orchestra - 193618 - There's a Small Hotel - Vincent Lopez and his Suave Swing Orchestra - 1939

Bob Wills was born in Texas, but he and his Texas Playboys became a national sensation when they began playing live shows on KVOO from the legendary Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. Bob's unique style of music blended folk, jazz, hillbilly, and blues to produce the sound we know today as Western Swing. His music is still as popular as ever and it is regularly covered by today's top artists. In this live episode, recorded at Ponyboy in Oklahoma City, Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn are joined by Carolyn Wills, Brett Bingham, John Wooley, and Jeff Moore. Special guest Kyle Dillingham performed “Milk Cow Blues” and “Faded Love” for the crowd.  

From Little Walter to the Steady Rollin' Revue it's another packed edition of the Blues is the Truth. If you like Blues you have definitely come to the roght place! This week's show features tracks from Johnny Mars and the Cold Heart Revue, The Commoners, Elvin Bishops Big Fun Trio, Trainyard Blues Band, Paul Garner Band, Freddie King, Angela Strehli, TBelly, GA 20, Taj Mahal, Eric Bibb, Victor Wainwright and the Wild Roots, 12 Bar Dudes, Magic Slim and the Teardrops, Mississippi MacDonald and the Cotton Mouth kings, Anthony Geraci, Errol Linton, Cecilia and the Candy Kings, Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys, Dennis Siggery and Neil Saddler, Peter Storm and the Cashbox Kings. Hit play and enjoy! Please don't forget to like, review, share and subscribe to the show. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/bluesisthetruth

Explore the life and music of Western Swing pioneer Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. From his early days as the son of a sharecropper to the zenith of his musical career and Hollywood cowboy, Bob lived a full robust life.We also have a great interview with singer/songwriter Season Ammons who tells us about her life, career, and musical inspirations. She closes the show with an new original song called "Finally".

Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, Lee Ross, Ray Price, Johnny Cash, Dean Martin, George Jones, and me.

Amanda Shires is my guest on this week's That's How I Remember It. Amanda is an incredible songwriter and musician. She's an accomplished solo artist, a member of The Highwomen, and has played fiddle with The Texas Playboys, Billy Joe Shaver, Justin Townes Earle, The 400 Unit, and much more. Amanda's incredible last record Take It Like a Man was one of the best of 2022. Here we talk about details in songs, Tom Petty, getting an MFA, the role of nature in her songs, and deliberately making songs that are present and rooted in the now. This was a fantastic talk, huge thanks to Amanda for coming on the show. Please listen and subscribe! 

They say the universe is ever expanding, but the cultural center of the universe is conveniently located closer than you might think. withinpodcast.com Support our show at Support Within The Realm   Our sponsors:  jandjpoolsafety@gmail.com Music: The Right Direction by Shane Ivers Martin Mountain Coffee: Small Batch Roaster for an Artisan Cup of Coffee! Check out Martin Mountain Coffee's signature Within The Realm Blend "Story Teller's Roast!" Contact Us! Facebook: @withintherealm1 Twitter: @realm_within Instagram: within_the_realm contact@withinpodcast.com Want to advertise, sponsor or otherwise support Within The Realm? Visit with us at contact@withinpodcast.com or Support Within The Realm  The Center of the Universe   Welcome to the 101st episode of Within The Realm, I'm your host Steve Garrett. It's a big proposition to get started on the next 100 stories from Within The Realm. Some may wonder, how does a fella have so many tales tucked away in his mind. Folks that know me well, know that I have a million of ‘em and they wish I would hush, at least for a little bit. Well, the good news is that today is not a day I feel inclined to hush, so we'll move forward with our story for today after we hear from the good folks that help me bring you our show. After that I have a story about the center of the universe, it's closer than you might think. (music/Commercials/stinger) Thanks for inviting me back to your podcast listening device. Be sure to check out the show notes in the info on this episode for news about the show & how to contact us. We would love to hear from you. This episode might reveal my roundabout way of dealing with a story. I can't seem to follow a straight line from one end of a story to the next, but hopefully that makes them interesting. I tell stories that come from the place where the Great Plains, the Ozark Mountains and the Indian Territory collide. A lot of people refer to it as “Fly Over Country” and for a lot of folks they do exactly that, Fly over it on their way to more supposedly interesting places. One thing those people don't know is the Center of the Universe lies beneath them as they jet from coast to coast. The Center of the Universe is in Tulsa, just off 1st and Boston. At this location there is a small circle of concrete in a wide spot on a walking path where a person can stand & hear their conversational tone echoed back to them, but then step off of that circle no echo is produced. Folks come from near & far to hear for themselves & leave satisfied they have experienced something weird. There are those that try to explain away the phenomenon, saying it has something to do with the curved concrete seating on either side of the spot constructed several years ago that produces the echo. They can try to explain it with Science, but those that reside Within The Realm know it's a mystery of the ever expanding variety. But the first to point out Oklahoma's centralness to the Cosmos was the great Oklahoma folksinger, songwriter, actor & quantum philosopher Hoyt Axton. You may remember him as the Dad in Gremlins or from his song Della & the Dealer from the 70s. You DO remember him as the songwriter that gave us Never Been To Spain, The Pusher & the one about the Bullfrog named Jeremiah, Joy To The World. Hoyt was often quoted as saying Oklahoma was the cultural center of the universe. Now that always got a laugh from the folks on either coast, thinking about this place as devoid of anything good. After all the bright lights are in New York and LA. On this one, I'm a disciple of the Bard from Duncan, if we push the boundaries out to incorporate all of that place I call Within The Realm, I think I can make a pretty strong argument that Fly Over Country is, in fact, the cultural center of the universe. This part of the world has been settled for some time, but really didn't fill up til late in the game. It was very much a part of that frontier that Fredrick Jackson Turner based his thesis on, the one Professor Greg Jackson reminded us in the last episode went something like “the frontier made America or the Frontier was the most American thing that America ever America'd.” I put it another way, many of those folks were kicked out of every other decent place in the world and came here. This place was diverse, culturally speaking. Just taking that Center of the Universe location in Tulsa as an example, within just a few blocks of that site, you have the Muskogee Tribes Council Oak, the place where the members of that band of Native Americans met and conferred long before Oklahoma was a State. Within Walking distance from there is the Greenwood District, the Black Wall Street, where a vibrant African American community thrived. And of course downtown Tulsa, owing its very existence to those that came here to make a living from what came out of the ground. Many communities in this vast part of the country had similar communities. Not everything was perfect, but strong communities existed in this place. Out of those strong but separate cultures came the Negro Baseball Leagues, Wild West Shows, Kansas City Jazz & Western Swing. Those same communities produced Will Rogers, Walt Disney, Woody Guthrie & Langston Hughes. And as all that was brewing, Railroads funneled people through Kansas City and Route 66, the Mother Road was built right through the Ozarks, Indian Territory and the Great Plains in the 1920s. This was the road that the “Okies” used in their escape to California in the Great Depression. The term Okie, at least to the Californians who saw them as undesireables in their fair State, applied to all those that came through Oklahoma on their exodus to the west, be they from Texas, Arkansas or Missouri. But once it was all said and done 15% of the population of Oklahoma had headed for the jobs in the fields and the cities they hoped awaited them in the Golden State. This was the first great export of the Within The Realm culture. The Okies took with them their culture just as Will Rogers was the number one box-office draw and Walt Disney and the slew of Kansas City animators like Fritz Freeling and Ub Iwerks, were revolutionizing animation. Count Basie was spreading the popularity of the Kansas City style jazz & radio Station KVOO, the Voice of Oklahoma, was broadcasting the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys across the west. But even after the Depression & World War II, folks from this part of the world made an impact everywhere. The folk music trend of the 50s & 60s was greatly influenced by Woody Guthrie, Oklahoman Jimmy Webb penned some of the greatest love songs of the 60s, including Wichita Lineman & By The Time I Get to Phoenix about a lovelorn Okie headed back to Oklahoma. Newscaster Walter Cronkite, science fiction author Robert Heinlein & radio commentator Paul Harvey spread their Fly Over Country sentimentality to their audiences. S. E. Hinton, a young writer from the middle of nowhere wrote “The Outsiders” that influenced generations of young people. Long before Garth Brooks was the biggest thing ever in Country music, Ozarkian Porter Waggoner delivered Dolly Parton to the World and Eric Clapton regularly scoured the Tulsa scene for backing musicians. Leon Russell, the Master of Time and Space, influenced passels of musicians including a young Reginald Kenneth Dwight, who later became known as Elton John. And we're only scratching the surface of what this place has offered to the rest of the world. I haven't even mentioned Cherry Mash, the ICEE or Kool-Aid. So, for those of you who live Within The Realm, you know who you are, there's lots of history and background in this area. It's more than just trivia. It's a part of the fabric of our country, a country that has an outsized impact of the world. The influence of the people of the place even stretches into the depths of space. Remember it was a Kansas farm boy that discovered Pluto & four men from our little region have walked on or orbited the moon, Alan Bean, Edgar Mitchell, Tom Stafford & Ronald Evans. And then for you folks that have never known the pleasures of living in this stretch of country, those of you who wonder what in the world those folks you are flying over might be doing down there. You might be surprised to know how much the music you listen to, the literature you read and content you consume was created right here...or even how the ability to fly over said region was developed here. There's always more to the story here Within The Realm, the Cultural Center of the Universe. Plenty more stories for another 100 or so episodes. (music) Thanks for joining me today on this episode of Within The Realm. If you enjoyed this episode but haven't joined our Facebook group, you can find a link to it in our show notes. Come join the group and share our episode notifications with your friends. It's a great way to help us grow our audience. You can also keep up with the show on our home on the web, withinpodcast.com. You can find a complete archive of shows plus news & other show related items. If you have found value from our show & want to help keep this thing going, check out our support page at withinpodcast.com/support. Thanks in advance! Within The Realm is written & produced by me, Steve Garrett. Our theme music is provided by 5561/2, Join us in another two weeks for a trek Within The Realm. And as always, thanks for listening.

Kris Kristofferson "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)"Esther Phillips "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You"The Yardbirds "New York City Blues"Lucinda Williams "Honey Bee"Willie Nelson "Railroad Lady"Willie Dixon "Big Three Boogie"Elvis Costello "Sulphur to Sugarcane"Jimmy Buffett "Death of an Unpopular Poet"Marty Robbins "A White Sport Coat (And A Pink Carnation)"Lightnin' Hopkins "Sick Feelin' Blues"Lula Reed "Going Back to Mexico"Charlie Parr "Cheap Wine"Eilen Jewell "Walking with Frankie"The Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) "Don't You Make Me High"Sam Cooke "Shake"Buffalo Tom "Sodajerk"Frankie Lee Sims "Lucy Mae Blues"Bonnie "Prince" Billy "Stablemate"Jessie Mae Hemphill "Run Get My Shotgun"The Harlem Hamfats "The Candy Man"Chisel "Red Haired Mary"Hayes Carll "It's a Shame"Precious Bryant "Dark Angel"Joel Paterson "Because"Dinosaur Jr. "Muck"Cleo Brown "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie"Freddie King "Lonesome Whistle Blues"Hank Williams "Settin' the Woods on Fire"David Grubbs "The Thicket"Bee Houston "Break Away"Superchunk "Package Thief"Bob Dylan "Dirt Road Blues"Mississippi Fred McDowell "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning (Remastered)"Billie Holiday "I Loves You, Porgy"The Black Keys "Stack Shot Billy"The Mountain Goats "Downtown Seoul"Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra "Won't You Be My Baby?"Junior Kimbrough "Meet Me in the City"The Wandering "Mr. Spaceman"Les Paul & Mary Ford "I'm Sitting On Top Of The World"The White Stripes "The Nurse"Leo Kottke "Vaseline Machine Gun"Amos Milburn "Please Mr. Johnson"Buddy Holly "Dearest"Johnny Cash "Johnny 99"Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys "Beaumont Rag"John Lee Hooker "Waterfront"Bruce Springsteen "I Ain't Got No Home"the Fox Hunt "Lord, We Get High"

1 - Double or Nothing - Woody Herman and his Orchestra - 19372 - Mirror, Mirror on the Wall - Roy King - 19523 - The Magic Mirror - Dick James with Cyril Stapleton and his Orchestra - 19484 - El Espejo de Tus Ojos (The Mirror of Your Eyes) (Argentina) - Angel Vargas con Angel D'Agostino y su Orquesta Tipica - 19445 - Das Spiegel fon Leben (The Mirror of Life) (Yiddish) - K. Juvelier - 19166 - Mirror Blues - John Sellers - 19457 - Det Indiskrete Spejl (The Indiscrete Mirror) (Denmark) - Warny's Orkester - 19238 - I Double Dare You - Eddie Stone with Isham Jones and his Orchestra - 19379 - Look into the Looking Glass - Claude Casey and the Sagedusters - 194710 - Twin Trouble - Zeke Manners and The Singing Lariateers - 194811 - Midnight Reflection - The Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra - 192812 - Reflections - Ted Fio Rito and his Orchestra - 193713 - Reflections of You - Sunny Clapp and his Band O' Sunshine - 193114 - Twin Blues - Vicksburg Blowers - 192715 - Twin Guitar Special - Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys - 194116 - Reflections in the Water - The Green Brothers Marimba Orchestra - 193317 - Reflections in the Water - Doreen Lundy with Paul Fennelly and his Orchestra - 1948

On this, our third violation podcast, we finally get around to talking about the late, great King of Western Swing: Bob Wills.  While wills didn't invent Western Swing, he was most certainly the most recognizable face of the genre. Wills was a musical melting pot of sorts, combining traditional string music with the horns and phrasing of jazz ad big band music, and tossing in a good dose of Tejano, gospel, and anything else he could find. The result was a truly unique and utterly danceable music.  On top of that, he arranged or wrote some of the most  memorable and often-covered songs in 20th century popular music.Wills' secret was surrounding himself with some pretty hot musicians: Tiny Moore on mandolin, Leon McAauliffe on peddle steel, and the Great Tommy Duncan on vocals (just to name a few). The players, known as the Texas Playboys, delighted  audiences throughout the South and West, and influenced a whole slew on up and coming musicians.  On this episode we each pick three of our favorite Bob Wills performances and discuss why Bob Wills' music is as vital today as it was almost 100 years ago. 

The multi-talented Amanda Shires is our guest on Takin A Walk-Music History on foot.She talks about her career influences and her passion for her craft. Show Notes below:  How the beauty and grace of musician Amanda Shires led her to success Music is an integral part of human culture. We use it in genres, in ways of life, and for a myriad of purposes. Music also evokes memories, creates moods, and has the ability to change lives. Actually, music is one of the most influential forces in the world, affecting our minds, our bodies, and even our clothing. It can help you feel a certain way, give you an idea or insight that you might not have otherwise considered, and subtly change your mood. Learn more in this conversation as Amanda Shires joins us. Amanda is a singer, songwriter, poet, and fiddle-playing Texan. In addition to her solo career, she performs with Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit and founded The Highwomen, a collaborative effort with Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby. In this episode, Amanda shares about her musical career, the support of her parents, the people she worked with, and how her career has progressed. Listen as she shares tips and insights into success in the entertainment world. Tune in! Key Highlights from the Show;[00:01] Episode intro with Amanda Shires and a chat about her place of residence[03:08] Amanda's flashback on the day she asked his father for her first musical instrument[07:51] Playing with the Texas Playboys band at the age of fifteen[15:28] Other influential people that inspired his musical career[17:25] Amanda's attraction to Leonard Cohen and a union that was never successful[21:03] Where she got the idea of “play like it's your last time.”[23:56] Amanda's first encounter with John Prine[32:16] Know more about Amanda's signature project-the HighWoman band[42:19] Are we expecting another HighWomen album?[44:28] How she operated during the covid pandemic[48:22] The importance of music, what it does, and why it's so much part of our lives[53:42] Ending the show and call to action Notable quotesMusic plays a key role in your emotional wellness in times of distress.Gravitate towards real people who have real stories from experience, and you will never go wrong.Connect With Amanda ShiresWebsite: https://amandashiresmusic.com/Wikipedia Profile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_ShiresFacebook: https://web.facebook.com/AmandaShiresMusic/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandapearlshires/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH2bj8PyLGgwEhtr55CUzUw About the Show *****Thank you so much for listening to the TAKIN' A WALK PODCAST SHOW hosted by Buzz Knight! Listen to more honest conversations with a compelling mix of guests ranging from musicians, authors, and insiders with their own stories. Get inspired, motivated, and gain insights, motivated, and tuned up with honest conversations every week that can help you with your own journey. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and be part of this blessed family. Please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with your friends and family!                    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The multi-talented Amanda Shires is our guest on Takin A Walk-Music History on foot. She talks about her career influences and her passion for her craft.  Show Notes below:     How the beauty and grace of musician Amanda Shires led her to success Music is an integral part of human culture. We use it in genres, in ways of life, and for a myriad of purposes. Music also evokes memories, creates moods, and has the ability to change lives. Actually, music is one of the most influential forces in the world, affecting our minds, our bodies, and even our clothing. It can help you feel a certain way, give you an idea or insight that you might not have otherwise considered, and subtly change your mood. Learn more in this conversation as Amanda Shires joins us.   Amanda is a singer, songwriter, poet, and fiddle-playing Texan. In addition to her solo career, she performs with Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit and founded The Highwomen, a collaborative effort with Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby.   In this episode, Amanda shares about her musical career, the support of her parents, the people she worked with, and how her career has progressed. Listen as she shares tips and insights into success in the entertainment world.   Tune in!   Key Highlights from the Show; [00:01] Episode intro with Amanda Shires and a chat about her place of residence [03:08] Amanda's flashback on the day she asked his father for her first musical instrument [07:51] Playing with the Texas Playboys band at the age of fifteen [15:28] Other influential people that inspired his musical career [17:25] Amanda's attraction to Leonard Cohen and a union that was never successful [21:03] Where she got the idea of “play like it's your last time.” [23:56] Amanda's first encounter with John Prine [32:16] Know more about Amanda's signature project-the HighWoman band [42:19] Are we expecting another HighWomen album? [44:28] How she operated during the covid pandemic [48:22] The importance of music, what it does, and why it's so much part of our lives [53:42] Ending the show and call to action   Notable quotes Music plays a key role in your emotional wellness in times of distress. Gravitate towards real people who have real stories from experience, and you will never go wrong. Connect With Amanda Shires Website: https://amandashiresmusic.com/ Wikipedia Profile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Shires Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/AmandaShiresMusic/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandapearlshires/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH2bj8PyLGgwEhtr55CUzUw   About the Show  *****Thank you so much for listening to the TAKIN' A WALK PODCAST SHOW hosted by Buzz Knight!   Listen to more honest conversations with a compelling mix of guests ranging from musicians, authors, and insiders with their own stories. Get inspired, motivated, and gain insights, motivated, and tuned up with honest conversations every week that can help you with your own journey. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and be part of this blessed family.   Please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with your friends and family!                                        

Tom Waits "Get Behind the Mule"Merle Haggard "This Town's Not Big Enough"Fiona Apple "On the Bound"Sebadoh "Pink Moon"Robert Belfour "Black Mattie"New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers "If Blues Was Money"Hank Williams "Long Gone Lomesome Blues"Ruth Brown "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean"Mississippi Fred McDowell "Amazing Grace"Taj Mahal "Statesboro Blues"Dan Penn "The Dark End of the Street"Aretha Franklin "Good to Me As I Am to You"Bonnie "Prince" Billy "Make Worry for Me"Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys "Draggin' The Bow"Mavis Staples "Wrote a Song for Everyone"John R. Miller "Holy Dirt"Built to Spill "Conventional Wisdom"John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers "Have You Heard"Solomon Burke "The Judgement"Steve Earle & The Dukes "Sweet Little '66"Elvis Costello & The Attractions "Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used To Do)?"Magnolia Electric Co. "The Night Shift Lullaby"Lucero "The Last Song"Connie Smith "Over The Next Hill"Cory Branan & Jon Snodgrass "The Corner"Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs "Tank"Matt Woods "Ghosts of the Gospel"Otis Gibbs "Caroline"Billy Joe Shaver "Georgia On A Fast Train"Bob Dylan "If You Ever Go To Houston"Bukka White "Aberdeen Mississippi Blues"Mississippi Fred McDowell "61 Highway"Soltero "The Good Times"Louis Jordan "Junco Partner"Lucinda Williams "Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings"Willie Mae Williams "Don't Want To Go There"The Black Keys "I Got Mine"James Brown "Give It Up Or Turnit a Loose"fIREHOSE "Brave Captain"S.G. Goodman "Teeth Marks"Billie Holiday "Lady Sings the Blues"Superchunk "The Question Is How Fast"Otis Redding "Nobody's Fault But Mine"Drive-By Truckers "Wilder Days"

Adam chats with Jack Sanders, founder of the Texas Playboys and creator of The Long Time, a baseball field and event space on the outskirts of Austin, about some of his influences in the areas of design and architecture, what he loves about the game of baseball, and his approach to captaining the Playboys and taking the field himself. Show Notes: Newbern Baseball Club

Singer-songwriter and fiddle player Amanda Shires opens up about a rough time in her marriage and how she turned to songwriting to process her feelings. Her new solo album is Take it Like a Man. We talk about playing the songs for her husband, Jason Isbell, performing fiddle as a teen with the Texas Playboys, and founding the country supergroup The Highwomen. Shires plays some songs in-studio.

Singer-songwriter and fiddle player Amanda Shires opens up about a rough time in her marriage and how she turned to songwriting to process her feelings. Her new solo album is Take it Like a Man. We talk about playing the songs for her husband, Jason Isbell, performing fiddle as a teen with the Texas Playboys, and founding the country supergroup The Highwomen. Shires plays some songs in-studio.

Twelve Songs returns after a life-induced hiatus with a good interview with Ray Benson from the Austin-based Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel. We talked in the spring when the band was coming to New Orleans to play Jazz Fest, and you can see my story focusing on the band celebrating 50 years in the game with its Half a Hundred Years album and tour. That tour is always going on or soon to restart, so check your local listings because if they aren't coming to town, they'll get there sooner or later. We talk about COVID, which became very real for the band when members of the band were hit hard by it earlier this year. We also talk about his long-time musical friend Willie Nelson, Benson's admiration for his "Pretty Paper," and hear Christmas music by the band, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, The Resentments (on a song by one of my favorites, Jon Dee Graham), and Folk Uke, which features Willie Nelson and Arlo Guthrie's daughters.  

This week we welcome, country music recording legend, Junior Brown! With his unique voice, more unique song writing, and even more unique double necked “Guit-Steel” guitar, there has absolutely never been ANYONE like Junior Brown. He's an American Original. Born in 1952 in Cottonwood, Arizona, Junior Brown showed an affinity for music at an early age when the family moved to a rural area of Indiana near Kirksville. In the following years, Junior began to experience Country music and remembers it as “growing up out of the ground like the crops – it was everywhere; coming out of cars, houses, gas stations and stores like the soundtrack of a story, but Country music programs on TV hadn't really come along much yet; not until the late fifties.” Discovering a guitar in his grandparent's attic, he spent the next several years woodshedding with records and the radio. Junior was also able to tap into music he couldn't hear at home which older, college aged kids were listening to. This was possible due to his father's employment at small campuses throughout the next decade as the family moved twice again. As a young boy he was able to experience the thrill of performing before live audiences, at parties, school functions even singing and playing guitar for five thousand Boy Scouts at an Andrews Air Force Base jamboree; then while still a teenager, getting the chance to sit in with Rock and Roll pioneer, Bo Diddley. Armed with this broad spectrum of influences, he began to develop a storehouse of musical chops. In the early nineties Brown and his band (including wife Tanya Rae) relocated to Texas to the active Austin music scene and landed a weekly gig at the Continental club. Having worked as a sideman for many of the Austin-based acts over the years, Junior was already well familiar with the town. His unique and entertaining combination of singing, songwriting, instrumental and production skills led to a seven record deal with Curb Records that began with “Twelve Shades of Brown” in 1993. He later released two albums on the TelArc label. There were several Grammy nods, a CMA (Country Music Association) award for “My Wife Thinks You're Dead”, movie and repeated TV appearances like Letterman, Conan, Saturday Night Live, Austin City Limits, SpongeBob, X Files, Dukes of Hazzard, Me Myself and Irene, Tresspass, Still Breathing, Blue Collar Comedy Tour 1 and 2, and more recently, Better Call Saul. And there were the Ad Campaigns; The Gap, Lee Jeans and Lipton Tea. As Junior became more well known, he began to collaborate on projects with some of his heroes. These include a duet with Ralph Stanley for which Junior received a Bluegrass Music Association Award (IBMA), a duet and video with Hank Thompson, as well as duets with video and record collaborations with the Beach Boys, George Jones, Leon McAuliffe, Ray Price, Leona Williams, Lynn Morris, Lloyd Green and Doc Watson. He even played guitar for Bob Wills' Texas Playboys in a radio commercial. Junior is currently finishing up recording on his latest album, “Deep In The Heart Of Me”. Release date is slated for Spring 2017. Junior's performance on the promotional song, “Better Call Saul” was recorded and released both as a video on AMC as well as a flexible 33 1/3rd vinyl record included in the show's box set from Season One. Junior, Tanya Rae and the band continue to tear up the highways and no doubt will be appearing in concert near you one of these days. Seeing Junior live is a definite must, so GUIT WITH IT 'cause he's AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL! For more information and tour dates, visit JuniorBrown.com.

Episode one hundred and forty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Hey Joe" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and is the longest episode to date, at over two hours. Patreon backers also have a twenty-two-minute bonus episode available, on "Making Time" by The Creation. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've put together a Mixcloud mix containing all the music excerpted in this episode. For information on the Byrds, I relied mostly on Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, with some information from Chris Hillman's autobiography. Information on Arthur Lee and Love came from Forever Changes: Arthur Lee and the Book of Love by John Einarson, and Arthur Lee: Alone Again Or by Barney Hoskyns. Information on Gary Usher's work with the Surfaris and the Sons of Adam came from The California Sound by Stephen McParland, which can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Information on Jimi Hendrix came from Room Full of Mirrors by Charles R. Cross, Crosstown Traffic by Charles Shaar Murray, and Wild Thing by Philip Norman. Information on the history of "Hey Joe" itself came from all these sources plus Hey Joe: The Unauthorised Biography of a Rock Classic by Marc Shapiro, though note that most of that book is about post-1967 cover versions. Most of the pre-Experience session work by Jimi Hendrix I excerpt in this episode is on this box set of alternate takes and live recordings. And "Hey Joe" can be found on Are You Experienced? Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Just a quick note before we start – this episode deals with a song whose basic subject is a man murdering a woman, and that song also contains references to guns, and in some versions to cocaine use. Some versions excerpted also contain misogynistic slurs. If those things are likely to upset you, please skip this episode, as the whole episode focusses on that song. I would hope it goes without saying that I don't approve of misogyny, intimate partner violence, or murder, and my discussing a song does not mean I condone acts depicted in its lyrics, and the episode itself deals with the writing and recording of the song rather than its subject matter, but it would be impossible to talk about the record without excerpting the song. The normalisation of violence against women in rock music lyrics is a subject I will come back to, but did not have room for in what is already a very long episode. Anyway, on with the show. Let's talk about the folk process, shall we? We've talked before, like in the episodes on "Stagger Lee" and "Ida Red", about how there are some songs that aren't really individual songs in themselves, but are instead collections of related songs that might happen to share a name, or a title, or a story, or a melody, but which might be different in other ways. There are probably more songs that are like this than songs that aren't, and it doesn't just apply to folk songs, although that's where we see it most notably. You only have to look at the way a song like "Hound Dog" changed from the Willie Mae Thornton version to the version by Elvis, which only shared a handful of words with the original. Songs change, and recombine, and everyone who sings them brings something different to them, until they change in ways that nobody could have predicted, like a game of telephone. But there usually remains a core, an archetypal story or idea which remains constant no matter how much the song changes. Like Stagger Lee shooting Billy in a bar over a hat, or Frankie killing her man -- sometimes the man is Al, sometimes he's Johnny, but he always done her wrong. And one of those stories is about a man who shoots his cheating woman with a forty-four, and tries to escape -- sometimes to a town called Jericho, and sometimes to Juarez, Mexico. The first version of this song we have a recording of is by Clarence Ashley, in 1929, a recording of an older folk song that was called, in his version, "Little Sadie": [Excerpt: Clarence Ashley, "Little Sadie"] At some point, somebody seems to have noticed that that song has a slight melodic similarity to another family of songs, the family known as "Cocaine Blues" or "Take a Whiff on Me", which was popular around the same time: [Excerpt: The Memphis Jug Band, "Cocaine Habit Blues"] And so the two songs became combined, and the protagonist of "Little Sadie" now had a reason to kill his woman -- a reason other than her cheating, that is. He had taken a shot of cocaine before shooting her. The first recording of this version, under the name "Cocaine Blues" seems to have been a Western Swing version by W. A. Nichol's Western Aces: [Excerpt: W.A. Nichol's Western Aces, "Cocaine Blues"] Woody Guthrie recorded a version around the same time -- I've seen different dates and so don't know for sure if it was before or after Nichol's version -- and his version had himself credited as songwriter, and included this last verse which doesn't seem to appear on any earlier recordings of the song: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "Cocaine Blues"] That doesn't appear on many later recordings either, but it did clearly influence yet another song -- Mose Allison's classic jazz number "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Mose Allison, "Parchman Farm"] The most famous recordings of the song, though, were by Johnny Cash, who recorded it as both "Cocaine Blues" and as "Transfusion Blues". In Cash's version of the song, the murderer gets sentenced to "ninety-nine years in the Folsom pen", so it made sense that Cash would perform that on his most famous album, the live album of his January 1968 concerts at Folsom Prison, which revitalised his career after several years of limited success: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "Cocaine Blues (live at Folsom Prison)"] While that was Cash's first live recording at a prison, though, it wasn't the first show he played at a prison -- ever since the success of his single "Folsom Prison Blues" he'd been something of a hero to prisoners, and he had been doing shows in prisons for eleven years by the time of that recording. And on one of those shows he had as his support act a man named Billy Roberts, who performed his own song which followed the same broad outlines as "Cocaine Blues" -- a man with a forty-four who goes out to shoot his woman and then escapes to Mexico. Roberts was an obscure folk singer, who never had much success, but who was good with people. He'd been part of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1950s, and at a gig at Gerde's Folk City he'd met a woman named Niela Miller, an aspiring songwriter, and had struck up a relationship with her. Miller only ever wrote one song that got recorded by anyone else, a song called "Mean World Blues" that was recorded by Dave Van Ronk: [Excerpt: Dave Van Ronk, "Mean World Blues"] Now, that's an original song, but it does bear a certain melodic resemblance to another old folk song, one known as "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" or "In the Pines", or sometimes "Black Girl": [Excerpt: Lead Belly, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"] Miller was clearly familiar with the tradition from which "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" comes -- it's a type of folk song where someone asks a question and then someone else answers it, and this repeats, building up a story. This is a very old folk song format, and you hear it for example in "Lord Randall", the song on which Bob Dylan based "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall": [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl, "Lord Randall"] I say she was clearly familiar with it, because the other song she wrote that anyone's heard was based very much around that idea. "Baby Please Don't Go To Town" is a question-and-answer song in precisely that form, but with an unusual chord progression for a folk song. You may remember back in the episode on "Eight Miles High" I talked about the circle of fifths -- a chord progression which either increases or decreases by a fifth for every chord, so it might go C-G-D-A-E [demonstrates] That's a common progression in pop and jazz, but not really so much in folk, but it's the one that Miller had used for "Baby, Please Don't Go to Town", and she'd taught Roberts that song, which she only recorded much later: [Excerpt: Niela Miller, "Baby, Please Don't Go To Town"] After Roberts and Miller broke up, Miller kept playing that melody, but he changed the lyrics. The lyrics he added had several influences. There was that question-and-answer folk-song format, there's the story of "Cocaine Blues" with its protagonist getting a forty-four to shoot his woman down before heading to Mexico, and there's also a country hit from 1953. "Hey, Joe!" was originally recorded by Carl Smith, one of the most popular country singers of the early fifties: [Excerpt: Carl Smith, "Hey Joe!"] That was written by Boudleaux Bryant, a few years before the songs he co-wrote for the Everly Brothers, and became a country number one, staying at the top for eight weeks. It didn't make the pop chart, but a pop cover version of it by Frankie Laine made the top ten in the US: [Excerpt: Frankie Laine, "Hey Joe"] Laine's record did even better in the UK, where it made number one, at a point where Laine was the biggest star in music in Britain -- at the time the UK charts only had a top twelve, and at one point four of the singles in the top twelve were by Laine, including that one. There was also an answer record by Kitty Wells which made the country top ten later that year: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, "Hey Joe"] Oddly, despite it being a very big hit, that "Hey Joe" had almost no further cover versions for twenty years, though it did become part of the Searchers' setlist, and was included on their Live at the Star Club album in 1963, in an arrangement that owed a lot to "What'd I Say": [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Hey Joe"] But that song was clearly on Roberts' mind when, as so many American folk musicians did, he travelled to the UK in the late fifties and became briefly involved in the burgeoning UK folk movement. In particular, he spent some time with a twelve-string guitar player from Edinburgh called Len Partridge, who was also a mentor to Bert Jansch, and who was apparently an extraordinary musician, though I know of no recordings of his work. Partridge helped Roberts finish up the song, though Partridge is about the only person in this story who *didn't* claim a writing credit for it at one time or another, saying that he just helped Roberts out and that Roberts deserved all the credit. The first known recording of the completed song is from 1962, a few years after Roberts had returned to the US, though it didn't surface until decades later: [Excerpt: Billy Roberts, "Hey Joe"] Roberts was performing this song regularly on the folk circuit, and around the time of that recording he also finally got round to registering the copyright, several years after it was written. When Miller heard the song, she was furious, and she later said "Imagine my surprise when I heard Hey Joe by Billy Roberts. There was my tune, my chord progression, my question/answer format. He dropped the bridge that was in my song and changed it enough so that the copyright did not protect me from his plagiarism... I decided not to go through with all the complications of dealing with him. He never contacted me about it or gave me any credit. He knows he committed a morally reprehensible act. He never was man enough to make amends and apologize to me, or to give credit for the inspiration. Dealing with all that was also why I made the decision not to become a professional songwriter. It left a bad taste in my mouth.” Pete Seeger, a friend of Miller's, was outraged by the injustice and offered to testify on her behalf should she decide to take Roberts to court, but she never did. Some time around this point, Roberts also played on that prison bill with Johnny Cash, and what happened next is hard to pin down. I've read several different versions of the story, which change the date and which prison this was in, and none of the details in any story hang together properly -- everything introduces weird inconsistencies and things which just make no sense at all. Something like this basic outline of the story seems to have happened, but the outline itself is weird, and we'll probably never know the truth. Roberts played his set, and one of the songs he played was "Hey Joe", and at some point he got talking to one of the prisoners in the audience, Dino Valenti. We've met Valenti before, in the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man" -- he was a singer/songwriter himself, and would later be the lead singer of Quicksilver Messenger Service, but he's probably best known for having written "Get Together": [Excerpt: Dino Valenti, "Get Together"] As we heard in the "Mr. Tambourine Man" episode, Valenti actually sold off his rights to that song to pay for his bail at one point, but he was in and out of prison several times because of drug busts. At this point, or so the story goes, he was eligible for parole, but he needed to prove he had a possible income when he got out, and one way he wanted to do that was to show that he had written a song that could be a hit he could make money off, but he didn't have such a song. He talked about his predicament with Roberts, who agreed to let him claim to have written "Hey Joe" so he could get out of prison. He did make that claim, and when he got out of prison he continued making the claim, and registered the copyright to "Hey Joe" in his own name -- even though Roberts had already registered it -- and signed a publishing deal for it with Third Story Music, a company owned by Herb Cohen, the future manager of the Mothers of Invention, and Cohen's brother Mutt. Valenti was a popular face on the folk scene, and he played "his" song to many people, but two in particular would influence the way the song would develop, both of them people we've seen relatively recently in episodes of the podcast. One of them, Vince Martin, we'll come back to later, but the other was David Crosby, and so let's talk about him and the Byrds a bit more. Crosby and Valenti had been friends long before the Byrds formed, and indeed we heard in the "Mr. Tambourine Man" episode how the group had named themselves after Valenti's song "Birdses": [Excerpt: Dino Valenti, "Birdses"] And Crosby *loved* "Hey Joe", which he believed was another of Valenti's songs. He'd perform it every chance he got, playing it solo on guitar in an arrangement that other people have compared to Mose Allison. He'd tried to get it on the first two Byrds albums, but had been turned down, mostly because of their manager and uncredited co-producer Jim Dickson, who had strong opinions about it, saying later "Some of the songs that David would bring in from the outside were perfectly valid songs for other people, but did not seem to be compatible with the Byrds' myth. And he may not have liked the Byrds' myth. He fought for 'Hey Joe' and he did it. As long as I could say 'No!' I did, and when I couldn't any more they did it. You had to give him something somewhere. I just wish it was something else... 'Hey Joe' I was bitterly opposed to. A song about a guy who murders his girlfriend in a jealous rage and is on the way to Mexico with a gun in his hand. It was not what I saw as a Byrds song." Indeed, Dickson was so opposed to the song that he would later say “One of the reasons David engineered my getting thrown out was because I would not let Hey Joe be on the Turn! Turn! Turn! album.” Dickson was, though, still working with the band when they got round to recording it. That came during the recording of their Fifth Dimension album, the album which included "Eight Miles High". That album was mostly recorded after the departure of Gene Clark, which was where we left the group at the end of the "Eight Miles High" episode, and the loss of their main songwriter meant that they were struggling for material -- doubly so since they also decided they were going to move away from Dylan covers. This meant that they had to rely on original material from the group's less commercial songwriters, and on a few folk songs, mostly learned from Pete Seeger The album ended up with only eleven songs on it, compared to the twelve that was normal for American albums at that time, and the singles on it after "Eight Miles High" weren't particularly promising as to the group's ability to come up with commercial material. The next single, "5D", a song by Roger McGuinn about the fifth dimension, was a waltz-time song that both Crosby and Chris Hillman were enthused by. It featured organ by Van Dyke Parks, and McGuinn said of the organ part "When he came into the studio I told him to think Bach. He was already thinking Bach before that anyway.": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D"] While the group liked it, though, that didn't make the top forty. The next single did, just about -- a song that McGuinn had written as an attempt at communicating with alien life. He hoped that it would be played on the radio, and that the radio waves would eventually reach aliens, who would hear it and respond: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Spaceman"] The "Fifth Dimension" album did significantly worse, both critically and commercially, than their previous albums, and the group would soon drop Allen Stanton, the producer, in favour of Gary Usher, Brian Wilson's old songwriting partner. But the desperation for material meant that the group agreed to record the song which they still thought at that time had been written by Crosby's friend, though nobody other than Crosby was happy with it, and even Crosby later said "It was a mistake. I shouldn't have done it. Everybody makes mistakes." McGuinn said later "The reason Crosby did lead on 'Hey Joe' was because it was *his* song. He didn't write it but he was responsible for finding it. He'd wanted to do it for years but we would never let him.": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Hey Joe"] Of course, that arrangement is very far from the Mose Allison style version Crosby had been doing previously. And the reason for that can be found in the full version of that McGuinn quote, because the full version continues "He'd wanted to do it for years but we would never let him. Then both Love and The Leaves had a minor hit with it and David got so angry that we had to let him do it. His version wasn't that hot because he wasn't a strong lead vocalist." The arrangement we just heard was the arrangement that by this point almost every group on the Sunset Strip scene was playing. And the reason for that was because of another friend of Crosby's, someone who had been a roadie for the Byrds -- Bryan MacLean. MacLean and Crosby had been very close because they were both from very similar backgrounds -- they were both Hollywood brats with huge egos. MacLean later said "Crosby and I got on perfectly. I didn't understand what everybody was complaining about, because he was just like me!" MacLean was, if anything, from an even more privileged background than Crosby. His father was an architect who'd designed houses for Elizabeth Taylor and Dean Martin, his neighbour when growing up was Frederick Loewe, the composer of My Fair Lady. He learned to swim in Elizabeth Taylor's private pool, and his first girlfriend was Liza Minelli. Another early girlfriend was Jackie DeShannon, the singer-songwriter who did the original version of "Needles and Pins", who he was introduced to by Sharon Sheeley, whose name you will remember from many previous episodes. MacLean had wanted to be an artist until his late teens, when he walked into a shop in Westwood which sometimes sold his paintings, the Sandal Shop, and heard some people singing folk songs there. He decided he wanted to be a folk singer, and soon started performing at the Balladeer, a club which would later be renamed the Troubadour, playing songs like Robert Johnson's "Cross Roads Blues", which had recently become a staple of the folk repertoire after John Hammond put out the King of the Delta Blues Singers album: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Cross Roads Blues"] Reading interviews with people who knew MacLean at the time, the same phrase keeps coming up. John Kay, later the lead singer of Steppenwolf, said "There was a young kid, Bryan MacLean, kind of cocky but nonetheless a nice kid, who hung around Crosby and McGuinn" while Chris Hillman said "He was a pretty good kid but a wee bit cocky." He was a fan of the various musicians who later formed the Byrds, and was also an admirer of a young guitarist on the scene named Ryland Cooder, and of a blues singer on the scene named Taj Mahal. He apparently was briefly in a band with Taj Mahal, called Summer's Children, who as far as I can tell had no connection to the duo that Curt Boettcher later formed of the same name, before Taj Mahal and Cooder formed The Rising Sons, a multi-racial blues band who were for a while the main rivals to the Byrds on the scene. MacLean, though, firmly hitched himself to the Byrds, and particularly to Crosby. He became a roadie on their first tour, and Hillman said "He was a hard-working guy on our behalf. As I recall, he pretty much answered to Crosby and was David's assistant, to put it diplomatically – more like his gofer, in fact." But MacLean wasn't cut out for the hard work that being a roadie required, and after being the Byrds' roadie for about thirty shows, he started making mistakes, and when they went off on their UK tour they decided not to keep employing him. He was heartbroken, but got back into trying his own musical career. He auditioned for the Monkees, unsuccessfully, but shortly after that -- some sources say even the same day as the audition, though that seems a little too neat -- he went to Ben Frank's -- the LA hangout that had actually been namechecked in the open call for Monkees auditions, which said they wanted "Ben Franks types", and there he met Arthur Lee and Johnny Echols. Echols would later remember "He was this gadfly kind of character who knew everybody and was flitting from table to table. He wore striped pants and a scarf, and he had this long, strawberry hair. All the girls loved him. For whatever reason, he came and sat at our table. Of course, Arthur and I were the only two black people there at the time." Lee and Echols were both Black musicians who had been born in Memphis. Lee's birth father, Chester Taylor, had been a cornet player with Jimmie Lunceford, whose Delta Rhythm Boys had had a hit with "The Honeydripper", as we heard way back in the episode on "Rocket '88": [Excerpt: Jimmie Lunceford and the Delta Rhythm Boys, "The Honeydripper"] However, Taylor soon split from Lee's mother, a schoolteacher, and she married Clinton Lee, a stonemason, who doted on his adopted son, and they moved to California. They lived in a relatively prosperous area of LA, a neighbourhood that was almost all white, with a few Asian families, though the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson lived nearby. A year or so after Arthur and his mother moved to LA, so did the Echols family, who had known them in Memphis, and they happened to move only a couple of streets away. Eight year old Arthur Lee reconnected with seven-year-old Johnny Echols, and the two became close friends from that point on. Arthur Lee first started out playing music when his parents were talked into buying him an accordion by a salesman who would go around with a donkey, give kids free donkey rides, and give the parents a sales pitch while they were riding the donkey, He soon gave up on the accordion and persuaded his parents to buy him an organ instead -- he was a spoiled child, by all accounts, with a TV in his bedroom, which was almost unheard of in the late fifties. Johnny Echols had a similar experience which led to his parents buying him a guitar, and the two were growing up in a musical environment generally. They attended Dorsey High School at the same time as both Billy Preston and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, and Ella Fitzgerald and her then-husband, the great jazz bass player Ray Brown, lived in the same apartment building as the Echols family for a while. Ornette Coleman, the free-jazz saxophone player, lived next door to Echols, and Adolphus Jacobs, the guitarist with the Coasters, gave him guitar lessons. Arthur Lee also knew Johnny Otis, who ran a pigeon-breeding club for local children which Arthur would attend. Echols was the one who first suggested that he and Arthur should form a band, and they put together a group to play at a school talent show, performing "Last Night", the instrumental that had been a hit for the Mar-Keys on Stax records: [Excerpt: The Mar-Keys, "Last Night"] They soon became a regular group, naming themselves Arthur Lee and the LAGs -- the LA Group, in imitation of Booker T and the MGs – the Memphis Group. At some point around this time, Lee decided to switch from playing organ to playing guitar. He would say later that this was inspired by seeing Johnny "Guitar" Watson get out of a gold Cadillac, wearing a gold suit, and with gold teeth in his mouth. The LAGs started playing as support acts and backing bands for any blues and soul acts that came through LA, performing with Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Otis, the O'Jays, and more. Arthur and Johnny were both still under-age, and they would pencil in fake moustaches to play the clubs so they'd appear older. In the fifties and early sixties, there were a number of great electric guitar players playing blues on the West Coast -- Johnny "Guitar" Watson, T-Bone Walker, Guitar Slim, and others -- and they would compete with each other not only to play well, but to put on a show, and so there was a whole bag of stage tricks that West Coast R&B guitarists picked up, and Echols learned all of them -- playing his guitar behind his back, playing his guitar with his teeth, playing with his guitar between his legs. As well as playing their own shows, the LAGs also played gigs under other names -- they had a corrupt agent who would book them under the name of whatever Black group had a hit at the time, in the belief that almost nobody knew what popular groups looked like anyway, so they would go out and perform as the Drifters or the Coasters or half a dozen other bands. But Arthur Lee in particular wanted to have success in his own right. He would later say "When I was a little boy I would listen to Nat 'King' Cole and I would look at that purple Capitol Records logo. I wanted to be on Capitol, that was my goal. Later on I used to walk from Dorsey High School all the way up to the Capitol building in Hollywood -- did that many times. I was determined to get a record deal with Capitol, and I did, without the help of a fancy manager or anyone else. I talked to Adam Ross and Jack Levy at Ardmore-Beechwood. I talked to Kim Fowley, and then I talked to Capitol". The record that the LAGs released, though, was not very good, a track called "Rumble-Still-Skins": [Excerpt: The LAGs, "Rumble-Still-Skins"] Lee later said "I was young and very inexperienced and I was testing the record company. I figured if I gave them my worst stuff and they ripped me off I wouldn't get hurt. But it didn't work, and after that I started giving my best, and I've been doing that ever since." The LAGs were dropped by Capitol after one single, and for the next little while Arthur and Johnny did work for smaller labels, usually labels owned by Bob Keane, with Arthur writing and producing and Johnny playing guitar -- though Echols has said more recently that a lot of the songs that were credited to Arthur as sole writer were actually joint compositions. Most of these records were attempts at copying the style of other people. There was "I Been Trying", a Phil Spector soundalike released by Little Ray: [Excerpt: Little Ray, "I Been Trying"] And there were a few attempts at sounding like Curtis Mayfield, like "Slow Jerk" by Ronnie and the Pomona Casuals: [Excerpt: Ronnie and the Pomona Casuals, "Slow Jerk"] and "My Diary" by Rosa Lee Brooks: [Excerpt: Rosa Lee Brooks, "My Diary"] Echols was also playing with a lot of other people, and one of the musicians he was playing with, his old school friend Billy Preston, told him about a recent European tour he'd been on with Little Richard, and the band from Liverpool he'd befriended while he was there who idolised Richard, so when the Beatles hit America, Arthur and Johnny had some small amount of context for them. They soon broke up the LAGs and formed another group, the American Four, with two white musicians, bass player John Fleckenstein and drummer Don Costa. Lee had them wear wigs so they seemed like they had longer hair, and started dressing more eccentrically -- he would soon become known for wearing glasses with one blue lens and one red one, and, as he put it "wearing forty pounds of beads, two coats, three shirts, and wearing two pairs of shoes on one foot". As well as the Beatles, the American Four were inspired by the other British Invasion bands -- Arthur was in the audience for the TAMI show, and quite impressed by Mick Jagger -- and also by the Valentinos, Bobby Womack's group. They tried to get signed to SAR Records, the label owned by Sam Cooke for which the Valentinos recorded, but SAR weren't interested, and they ended up recording for Bob Keane's Del-Fi records, where they cut "Luci Baines", a "Twist and Shout" knock-off with lyrics referencing the daughter of new US President Lyndon Johnson: [Excerpt: The American Four, "Luci Baines"] But that didn't take off any more than the earlier records had. Another American Four track, "Stay Away", was recorded but went unreleased until 2006: [Excerpt: Arthur Lee and the American Four, "Stay Away"] Soon the American Four were changing their sound and name again. This time it was because of two bands who were becoming successful on the Sunset Strip. One was the Byrds, who to Lee's mind were making music like the stuff he heard in his head, and the other was their rivals the Rising Sons, the blues band we mentioned earlier with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. Lee was very impressed by them as an multiracial band making aggressive, loud, guitar music, though he would always make the point when talking about them that they were a blues band, not a rock band, and *he* had the first multiracial rock band. Whatever they were like live though, in their recordings, produced by the Byrds' first producer Terry Melcher, the Rising Sons often had the same garage band folk-punk sound that Lee and Echols would soon make their own: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Take a Giant Step"] But while the Rising Sons recorded a full album's worth of material, only one single was released before they split up, and so the way was clear for Lee and Echols' band, now renamed once again to The Grass Roots, to become the Byrds' new challengers. Lee later said "I named the group The Grass Roots behind a trip, or an album I heard that Malcolm X did, where he said 'the grass roots of the people are out in the street doing something about their problems instead of sitting around talking about it'". After seeing the Rolling Stones and the Byrds live, Lee wanted to get up front and move like Mick Jagger, and not be hindered by playing a guitar he wasn't especially good at -- both the Stones and the Byrds had two guitarists and a frontman who just sang and played hand percussion, and these were the models that Lee was following for the group. He also thought it would be a good idea commercially to get a good-looking white boy up front. So the group got in another guitarist, a white pretty boy who Lee soon fell out with and gave the nickname "Bummer Bob" because he was unpleasant to be around. Those of you who know exactly why Bobby Beausoleil later became famous will probably agree that this was a more than reasonable nickname to give him (and those of you who don't, I'll be dealing with him when we get to 1969). So when Bryan MacLean introduced himself to Lee and Echols, and they found out that not only was he also a good-looking white guitarist, but he was also friends with the entire circle of hipsters who'd been going to Byrds gigs, people like Vito and Franzoni, and he could get a massive crowd of them to come along to gigs for any band he was in and make them the talk of the Sunset Strip scene, he was soon in the Grass Roots, and Bummer Bob was out. The Grass Roots soon had to change their name again, though. In 1965, Jan and Dean recorded their "Folk and Roll" album, which featured "The Universal Coward"... Which I am not going to excerpt again. I only put that pause in to terrify Tilt, who edits these podcasts, and has very strong opinions about that song. But P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri, the songwriters who also performed as the Fantastic Baggies, had come up with a song for that album called "Where Where You When I Needed You?": [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "Where Were You When I Needed You?"] Sloan and Barri decided to cut their own version of that song under a fake band name, and then put together a group of other musicians to tour as that band. They just needed a name, and Lou Adler, the head of Dunhill Records, suggested they call themselves The Grass Roots, and so that's what they did: [Excerpt: The Grass Roots, "Where Were You When I Needed You?"] Echols would later claim that this was deliberate malice on Adler's part -- that Adler had come in to a Grass Roots show drunk, and pretended to be interested in signing them to a contract, mostly to show off to a woman he'd brought with him. Echols and MacLean had spoken to him, not known who he was, and he'd felt disrespected, and Echols claims that he suggested the name to get back at them, and also to capitalise on their local success. The new Grass Roots soon started having hits, and so the old band had to find another name, which they got as a joking reference to a day job Lee had had at one point -- he'd apparently worked in a specialist bra shop, Luv Brassieres, which the rest of the band found hilarious. The Grass Roots became Love. While Arthur Lee was the group's lead singer, Bryan MacLean would often sing harmonies, and would get a song or two to sing live himself. And very early in the group's career, when they were playing a club called Bido Lito's, he started making his big lead spot a version of "Hey Joe", which he'd learned from his old friend David Crosby, and which soon became the highlight of the group's set. Their version was sped up, and included the riff which the Searchers had popularised in their cover version of  "Needles and Pins", the song originally recorded by MacLean's old girlfriend Jackie DeShannon: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Needles and Pins"] That riff is a very simple one to play, and variants of it became very, very, common among the LA bands, most notably on the Byrds' "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better"] The riff was so ubiquitous in the LA scene that in the late eighties Frank Zappa would still cite it as one of his main memories of the scene. I'm going to quote from his autobiography, where he's talking about the differences between the LA scene he was part of and the San Francisco scene he had no time for: "The Byrds were the be-all and end-all of Los Angeles rock then. They were 'It' -- and then a group called Love was 'It.' There were a few 'psychedelic' groups that never really got to be 'It,' but they could still find work and get record deals, including the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Sky Saxon and the Seeds, and the Leaves (noted for their cover version of "Hey, Joe"). When we first went to San Francisco, in the early days of the Family Dog, it seemed that everybody was wearing the same costume, a mixture of Barbary Coast and Old West -- guys with handlebar mustaches, girls in big bustle dresses with feathers in their hair, etc. By contrast, the L.A. costumery was more random and outlandish. Musically, the northern bands had a little more country style. In L.A., it was folk-rock to death. Everything had that" [and here Zappa uses the adjectival form of a four-letter word beginning with 'f' that the main podcast providers don't like you saying on non-adult-rated shows] "D chord down at the bottom of the neck where you wiggle your finger around -- like 'Needles and Pins.'" The reason Zappa describes it that way, and the reason it became so popular, is that if you play that riff in D, the chords are D, Dsus2, and Dsus4 which means you literally only wiggle one finger on your left hand: [demonstrates] And so you get that on just a ton of records from that period, though Love, the Byrds, and the Searchers all actually play the riff on A rather than D: [demonstrates] So that riff became the Big Thing in LA after the Byrds popularised the Searchers sound there, and Love added it to their arrangement of "Hey Joe". In January 1966, the group would record their arrangement of it for their first album, which would come out in March: [Excerpt: Love, "Hey Joe"] But that wouldn't be the first recording of the song, or of Love's arrangement of it – although other than the Byrds' version, it would be the only one to come out of LA with the original Billy Roberts lyrics. Love's performances of the song at Bido Lito's had become the talk of the Sunset Strip scene, and soon every band worth its salt was copying it, and it became one of those songs like "Louie Louie" before it that everyone would play. The first record ever made with the "Hey Joe" melody actually had totally different lyrics. Kim Fowley had the idea of writing a sequel to "Hey Joe", titled "Wanted Dead or Alive", about what happened after Joe shot his woman and went off. He produced the track for The Rogues, a group consisting of Michael Lloyd and Shaun Harris, who later went on to form the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, and Lloyd and Harris were the credited writers: [Excerpt: The Rogues, "Wanted Dead or Alive"] The next version of the song to come out was the first by anyone to be released as "Hey Joe", or at least as "Hey Joe, Where You Gonna Go?", which was how it was titled on its initial release. This was by a band called The Leaves, who were friends of Love, and had picked up on "Hey Joe", and was produced by Nik Venet. It was also the first to have the now-familiar opening line "Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?": [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe Where You Gonna Go?"] Roberts' original lyric, as sung by both Love and the Byrds, had been "where you going with that money in your hand?", and had Joe headed off to *buy* the gun. But as Echols later said “What happened was Bob Lee from The Leaves, who were friends of ours, asked me for the words to 'Hey Joe'. I told him I would have the words the next day. I decided to write totally different lyrics. The words you hear on their record are ones I wrote as a joke. The original words to Hey Joe are ‘Hey Joe, where you going with that money in your hand? Well I'm going downtown to buy me a blue steel .44. When I catch up with that woman, she won't be running round no more.' It never says ‘Hey Joe where you goin' with that gun in your hand.' Those were the words I wrote just because I knew they were going to try and cover the song before we released it. That was kind of a dirty trick that I played on The Leaves, which turned out to be the words that everybody uses.” That first release by the Leaves also contained an extra verse -- a nod to Love's previous name: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe Where You Gonna Go?"] That original recording credited the song as public domain -- apparently Bryan MacLean had refused to tell the Leaves who had written the song, and so they assumed it was traditional. It came out in November 1965, but only as a promo single. Even before the Leaves, though, another band had recorded "Hey Joe", but it didn't get released. The Sons of Adam had started out as a surf group called the Fender IV, who made records like "Malibu Run": [Excerpt: The Fender IV, "Malibu Run"] Kim Fowley had suggested they change their name to the Sons of Adam, and they were another group who were friends with Love -- their drummer, Michael Stuart-Ware, would later go on to join Love, and Arthur Lee wrote the song "Feathered Fish" for them: [Excerpt: Sons of Adam, "Feathered Fish"] But while they were the first to record "Hey Joe", their version has still to this day not been released. Their version was recorded for Decca, with producer Gary Usher, but before it was released, another Decca artist also recorded the song, and the label weren't sure which one to release. And then the label decided to press Usher to record a version with yet another act -- this time with the Surfaris, the surf group who had had a hit with "Wipe Out". Coincidentally, the Surfaris had just changed bass players -- their most recent bass player, Ken Forssi, had quit and joined Love, whose own bass player, John Fleckenstein, had gone off to join the Standells, who would also record a version of “Hey Joe” in 1966. Usher thought that the Sons of Adam were much better musicians than the Surfaris, who he was recording with more or less under protest, but their version, using Love's arrangement and the "gun in your hand" lyrics, became the first version to come out on a major label: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "Hey Joe"] They believed the song was in the public domain, and so the songwriting credits on the record are split between Gary Usher, a W. Hale who nobody has been able to identify, and Tony Cost, a pseudonym for Nik Venet. Usher said later "I got writer's credit on it because I was told, or I assumed at the time, the song was Public Domain; meaning a non-copyrighted song. It had already been cut two or three times, and on each occasion the writing credit had been different. On a traditional song, whoever arranges it, takes the songwriting credit. I may have changed a few words and arranged and produced it, but I certainly did not co-write it." The public domain credit also appeared on the Leaves' second attempt to cut the song, which was actually given a general release, but flopped. But when the Leaves cut the song for a *third* time, still for the same tiny label, Mira, the track became a hit in May 1966, reaching number thirty-one: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe"] And *that* version had what they thought was the correct songwriting credit, to Dino Valenti. Which came as news to Billy Roberts, who had registered the copyright to the song back in 1962 and had no idea that it had become a staple of LA garage rock until he heard his song in the top forty with someone else's name on the credits. He angrily confronted Third Story Music, who agreed to a compromise -- they would stop giving Valenti songwriting royalties and start giving them to Roberts instead, so long as he didn't sue them and let them keep the publishing rights. Roberts was indignant about this -- he deserved all the money, not just half of it -- but he went along with it to avoid a lawsuit he might not win. So Roberts was now the credited songwriter on the versions coming out of the LA scene. But of course, Dino Valenti had been playing "his" song to other people, too. One of those other people was Vince Martin. Martin had been a member of a folk-pop group called the Tarriers, whose members also included the future film star Alan Arkin, and who had had a hit in the 1950s with "Cindy, Oh Cindy": [Excerpt: The Tarriers, "Cindy, Oh Cindy"] But as we heard in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful, he had become a Greenwich Village folkie, in a duo with Fred Neil, and recorded an album with him, "Tear Down the Walls": [Excerpt: Fred Neil and Vince Martin, "Morning Dew"] That song we just heard, "Morning Dew", was another question-and-answer folk song. It was written by the Canadian folk-singer Bonnie Dobson, but after Martin and Neil recorded it, it was picked up on by Martin's friend Tim Rose who stuck his own name on the credits as well, without Dobson's permission, for a version which made the song into a rock standard for which he continued to collect royalties: [Excerpt: Tim Rose, "Morning Dew"] This was something that Rose seems to have made a habit of doing, though to be fair to him it went both ways. We heard about him in the Lovin' Spoonful episode too, when he was in a band named the Big Three with Cass Elliot and her coincidentally-named future husband Jim Hendricks, who recorded this song, with Rose putting new music to the lyrics of the old public domain song "Oh! Susanna": [Excerpt: The Big Three, "The Banjo Song"] The band Shocking Blue used that melody for their 1969 number-one hit "Venus", and didn't give Rose any credit: [Excerpt: Shocking Blue, "Venus"] But another song that Rose picked up from Vince Martin was "Hey Joe". Martin had picked the song up from Valenti, but didn't know who had written it, or who was claiming to have written it, and told Rose he thought it might be an old Appalchian murder ballad or something. Rose took the song and claimed writing credit in his own name -- he would always, for the rest of his life, claim it was an old folk tune he'd heard in Florida, and that he'd rewritten it substantially himself, but no evidence of the song has ever shown up from prior to Roberts' copyright registration, and Rose's version is basically identical to Roberts' in melody and lyrics. But Rose takes his version at a much slower pace, and his version would be the model for the most successful versions going forward, though those other versions would use the lyrics Johnny Echols had rewritten, rather than the ones Rose used: [Excerpt: Tim Rose, "Hey Joe"] Rose's version got heard across the Atlantic as well. And in particular it was heard by Chas Chandler, the bass player of the Animals. Some sources seem to suggest that Chandler first heard the song performed by a group called the Creation, but in a biography I've read of that group they clearly state that they didn't start playing the song until 1967. But however he came across it, when Chandler heard Rose's recording, he knew that the song could be a big hit for someone, but he didn't know who. And then he bumped into Linda Keith, Keith Richards' girlfriend,  who took him to see someone whose guitar we've already heard in this episode: [Excerpt: Rosa Lee Brooks, "My Diary"] The Curtis Mayfield impression on guitar there was, at least according to many sources the first recording session ever played on by a guitarist then calling himself Maurice (or possibly Mo-rees) James. We'll see later in the story that it possibly wasn't his first -- there are conflicting accounts, as there are about a lot of things, and it was recorded either in very early 1964, in which case it was his first, or (as seems more likely, and as I tell the story later) a year later, in which case he'd played on maybe half a dozen tracks in the studio by that point. But it was still a very early one. And by late 1966 that guitarist had reverted to the name by which he was brought up, and was calling himself Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix and Arthur Lee had become close, and Lee would later claim that Hendrix had copied much of Lee's dress style and attitude -- though many of Hendrix's other colleagues and employers, including Little Richard, would make similar claims -- and most of them had an element of truth, as Lee's did. Hendrix was a sponge. But Lee did influence him. Indeed, one of Hendrix's *last* sessions, in March 1970, was guesting on an album by Love: [Excerpt: Love with Jimi Hendrix, "Everlasting First"] Hendrix's name at birth was Johnny Allen Hendrix, which made his father, James Allen Hendrix, known as Al, who was away at war when his son was born, worry that he'd been named after another man who might possibly be the real father, so the family just referred to the child as "Buster" to avoid the issue. When Al Hendrix came back from the war the child was renamed James Marshall Hendrix -- James after Al's first name, Marshall after Al's dead brother -- though the family continued calling him "Buster". Little James Hendrix Junior didn't have anything like a stable home life. Both his parents were alcoholics, and Al Hendrix was frequently convinced that Jimi's mother Lucille was having affairs and became abusive about it. They had six children, four of whom were born disabled, and Jimi was the only one to remain with his parents -- the rest were either fostered or adopted at birth, fostered later on because the parents weren't providing a decent home life, or in one case made a ward of state because the Hendrixes couldn't afford to pay for a life-saving operation for him. The only one that Jimi had any kind of regular contact with was the second brother, Leon, his parents' favourite, who stayed with them for several years before being fostered by a family only a few blocks away. Al and Lucille Hendrix frequently split and reconciled, and while they were ostensibly raising Jimi (and for a  few years Leon), he was shuttled between them and various family members and friends, living sometimes in Seattle where his parents lived and sometimes in Vancouver with his paternal grandmother. He was frequently malnourished, and often survived because friends' families fed him. Al Hendrix was also often physically and emotionally abusive of the son he wasn't sure was his. Jimi grew up introverted, and stuttering, and only a couple of things seemed to bring him out of his shell. One was science fiction -- he always thought that his nickname, Buster, came from Buster Crabbe, the star of the Flash Gordon serials he loved to watch, though in fact he got the nickname even before that interest developed, and he was fascinated with ideas about aliens and UFOs -- and the other was music. Growing up in Seattle in the forties and fifties, most of the music he was exposed to as a child and in his early teens was music made by and for white people -- there wasn't a very large Black community in the area at the time compared to most major American cities, and so there were no prominent R&B stations. As a kid he loved the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, and when he was thirteen Jimi's favourite record was Dean Martin's "Memories are Made of This": [Excerpt: Dean Martin, "Memories are Made of This"] He also, like every teenager, became a fan of rock and roll music. When Elvis played at a local stadium when Jimi was fifteen, he couldn't afford a ticket, but he went and sat on top of a nearby hill and watched the show from the distance. Jimi's first exposure to the blues also came around this time, when his father briefly took in lodgers, Cornell and Ernestine Benson, and Ernestine had a record collection that included records by Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, and Muddy Waters, all of whom Jimi became a big fan of, especially Muddy Waters. The Bensons' most vivid memory of Jimi in later years was him picking up a broom and pretending to play guitar along with these records: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Baby Please Don't Go"] Shortly after this, it would be Ernestine Benson who would get Jimi his very first guitar. By this time Jimi and Al had lost their home and moved into a boarding house, and the owner's son had an acoustic guitar with only one string that he was planning to throw out. When Jimi asked if he could have it instead of it being thrown out, the owner told him he could have it for five dollars. Al Hendrix refused to pay that much for it, but Ernestine Benson bought Jimi the guitar. She said later “He only had one string, but he could really make that string talk.” He started carrying the guitar on his back everywhere he went, in imitation of Sterling Hayden in the western Johnny Guitar, and eventually got some more strings for it and learned to play. He would play it left-handed -- until his father came in. His father had forced him to write with his right hand, and was convinced that left-handedness was the work of the devil, so Jimi would play left-handed while his father was somewhere else, but as soon as Al came in he would flip the guitar the other way up and continue playing the song he had been playing, now right-handed. Jimi's mother died when he was fifteen, after having been ill for a long time with drink-related problems, and Jimi and his brother didn't get to go to the funeral -- depending on who you believe, either Al gave Jimi the bus fare and told him to go by himself and Jimi was too embarrassed to go to the funeral alone on the bus, or Al actually forbade Jimi and Leon from going.  After this, he became even more introverted than he was before, and he also developed a fascination with the idea of angels, convinced his mother now was one. Jimi started to hang around with a friend called Pernell Alexander, who also had a guitar, and they would play along together with Elmore James records. The two also went to see Little Richard and Bill Doggett perform live, and while Jimi was hugely introverted, he did start to build more friendships in the small Seattle music scene, including with Ron Holden, the man we talked about in the episode on "Louie Louie" who introduced that song to Seattle, and who would go on to record with Bruce Johnston for Bob Keane: [Excerpt: Ron Holden, "Gee But I'm Lonesome"] Eventually Ernestine Benson persuaded Al Hendrix to buy Jimi a decent electric guitar on credit -- Al also bought himself a saxophone at the same time, thinking he might play music with his son, but sent it back once the next payment became due. As well as blues and R&B, Jimi was soaking up the guitar instrumentals and garage rock that would soon turn into surf music. The first song he learned to play was "Tall Cool One" by the Fabulous Wailers, the local group who popularised a version of "Louie Louie" based on Holden's one: [Excerpt: The Fabulous Wailers, "Tall Cool One"] As we talked about in the "Louie Louie" episode, the Fabulous Wailers used to play at a venue called the Spanish Castle, and Jimi was a regular in the audience, later writing his song "Spanish Castle Magic" about those shows: [Excerpt: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Spanish Castle Magic"] He was also a big fan of Duane Eddy, and soon learned Eddy's big hits "Forty Miles of Bad Road", "Because They're Young", and "Peter Gunn" -- a song he would return to much later in his life: [Excerpt: Jimi Hendrix, "Peter Gunn/Catastrophe"] His career as a guitarist didn't get off to a great start -- the first night he played with his first band, he was meant to play two sets, but he was fired after the first set, because he was playing in too flashy a manner and showing off too much on stage. His girlfriend suggested that he might want to tone it down a little, but he said "That's not my style".  This would be a common story for the next several years. After that false start, the first real band he was in was the Velvetones, with his friend Pernell Alexander. There were four guitarists, two piano players, horns and drums, and they dressed up with glitter stuck to their pants. They played Duane Eddy songs, old jazz numbers, and "Honky Tonk" by Bill Doggett, which became Hendrix's signature song with the band. [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk"] His father was unsupportive of his music career, and he left his guitar at Alexander's house because he was scared that his dad would smash it if he took it home. At the same time he was with the Velvetones, he was also playing with another band called the Rocking Kings, who got gigs around the Seattle area, including at the Spanish Castle. But as they left school, most of Hendrix's friends were joining the Army, in order to make a steady living, and so did he -- although not entirely by choice. He was arrested, twice, for riding in stolen cars, and he was given a choice -- either go to prison, or sign up for the Army for three years. He chose the latter. At first, the Army seemed to suit him. He was accepted into the 101st Airborne Division, the famous "Screaming Eagles", whose actions at D-Day made them legendary in the US, and he was proud to be a member of the Division. They were based out of Fort Campbell, the base near Clarksville we talked about a couple of episodes ago, and while he was there he met a bass player, Billy Cox, who he started playing with. As Cox and Hendrix were Black, and as Fort Campbell straddled the border between Kentucky and Tennessee, they had to deal with segregation and play to only Black audiences. And Hendrix quickly discovered that Black audiences in the Southern states weren't interested in "Louie Louie", Duane Eddy, and surf music, the stuff he'd been playing in Seattle. He had to instead switch to playing Albert King and Slim Harpo songs, but luckily he loved that music too. He also started singing at this point -- when Hendrix and Cox started playing together, in a trio called the Kasuals, they had no singer, and while Hendrix never liked his own voice, Cox was worse, and so Hendrix was stuck as the singer. The Kasuals started gigging around Clarksville, and occasionally further afield, places like Nashville, where Arthur Alexander would occasionally sit in with them. But Cox was about to leave the Army, and Hendrix had another two and a bit years to go, having enlisted for three years. They couldn't play any further away unless Hendrix got out of the Army, which he was increasingly unhappy in anyway, and so he did the only thing he could -- he pretended to be gay, and got discharged on medical grounds for homosexuality. In later years he would always pretend he'd broken his ankle parachuting from a plane. For the next few years, he would be a full-time guitarist, and spend the periods when he wasn't earning enough money from that leeching off women he lived with, moving from one to another as they got sick of him or ran out of money. The Kasuals expanded their lineup, adding a second guitarist, Alphonso Young, who would show off on stage by playing guitar with his teeth. Hendrix didn't like being upstaged by another guitarist, and quickly learned to do the same. One biography I've used as a source for this says that at this point, Billy Cox played on a session for King Records, for Frank Howard and the Commanders, and brought Hendrix along, but the producer thought that Hendrix's guitar was too frantic and turned his mic off. But other sources say the session Hendrix and Cox played on for the Commanders wasn't until three years later, and the record *sounds* like a 1965 record, not a 1962 one, and his guitar is very audible – and the record isn't on King. But we've not had any music to break up the narration for a little while, and it's a good track (which later became a Northern Soul favourite) so I'll play a section here, as either way it was certainly an early Hendrix session: [Excerpt: Frank Howard and the Commanders, "I'm So Glad"] This illustrates a general problem with Hendrix's life at this point -- he would flit between bands, playing with the same people at multiple points, nobody was taking detailed notes, and later, once he became famous, everyone wanted to exaggerate their own importance in his life, meaning that while the broad outlines of his life are fairly clear, any detail before late 1966 might be hopelessly wrong. But all the time, Hendrix was learning his craft. One story from around this time  sums up both Hendrix's attitude to his playing -- he saw himself almost as much as a scientist as a musician -- and his slightly formal manner of speech.  He challenged the best blues guitarist in Nashville to a guitar duel, and the audience actually laughed at Hendrix's playing, as he was totally outclassed. When asked what he was doing, he replied “I was simply trying to get that B.B. King tone down and my experiment failed.” Bookings for the King Kasuals dried up, and he went to Vancouver, where he spent a couple of months playing in a covers band, Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, whose lead guitarist was Tommy Chong, later to find fame as one half of Cheech and Chong. But he got depressed at how white Vancouver was, and travelled back down south to join a reconfigured King Kasuals, who now had a horn section. The new lineup of King Kasuals were playing the chitlin circuit and had to put on a proper show, and so Hendrix started using all the techniques he'd seen other guitarists on the circuit use -- playing with his teeth like Alphonso Young, the other guitarist in the band, playing with his guitar behind his back like T-Bone Walker, and playing with a fifty-foot cord that allowed him to walk into the crowd and out of the venue, still playing, like Guitar Slim used to. As well as playing with the King Kasuals, he started playing the circuit as a sideman. He got short stints with many of the second-tier acts on the circuit -- people who had had one or two hits, or were crowd-pleasers, but weren't massive stars, like Carla Thomas or Jerry Butler or Slim Harpo. The first really big name he played with was Solomon Burke, who when Hendrix joined his band had just released "Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms)": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms)"] But he lacked discipline. “Five dates would go beautifully,” Burke later said, “and then at the next show, he'd go into this wild stuff that wasn't part of the song. I just couldn't handle it anymore.” Burke traded him to Otis Redding, who was on the same tour, for two horn players, but then Redding fired him a week later and they left him on the side of the road. He played in the backing band for the Marvelettes, on a tour with Curtis Mayfield, who would be another of Hendrix's biggest influences, but he accidentally blew up Mayfield's amp and got sacked. On another tour, Cecil Womack threw Hendrix's guitar off the bus while he slept. In February 1964 he joined the band of the Isley Brothers, and he would watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan with them during his first days with the group. Assuming he hadn't already played the Rosa Lee Brooks session (and I think there's good reason to believe he hadn't), then the first record Hendrix played on was their single "Testify": [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Testify"] While he was with them, he also moonlighted on Don Covay's big hit "Mercy, Mercy": [Excerpt: Don Covay and the Goodtimers, "Mercy Mercy"] After leaving the Isleys, Hendrix joined the minor soul singer Gorgeous George, and on a break from Gorgeous George's tour, in Memphis, he went to Stax studios in the hope of meeting Steve Cropper, one of his idols. When he was told that Cropper was busy in the studio, he waited around all day until Cropper finished, and introduced himself. Hendrix was amazed to discover that Cropper was white -- he'd assumed that he must be Black -- and Cropper was delighted to meet the guitarist who had played on "Mercy Mercy", one of his favourite records. The two spent hours showing each other guitar licks -- Hendrix playing Cropper's right-handed guitar, as he hadn't brought along his own. Shortly after this, he joined Little Richard's band, and once again came into conflict with the star of the show by trying to upstage him. For one show he wore a satin shirt, and after the show Richard screamed at him “I am the only Little Richard! I am the King of Rock and Roll, and I am the only one allowed to be pretty. Take that shirt off!” While he was with Richard, Hendrix played on his "I Don't Know What You've Got, But It's Got Me", which like "Mercy Mercy" was written by Don Covay, who had started out as Richard's chauffeur: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "I Don't Know What You've Got, But It's Got Me"] According to the most likely version of events I've read, it was while he was working for Richard that Hendrix met Rosa Lee Brooks, on New Year's Eve 1964. At this point he was using the name Maurice James, apparently in tribute to the blues guitarist Elmore James, and he used various names, including Jimmy James, for most of his pre-fame performances. Rosa Lee Brooks was an R&B singer who had been mentored by Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and when she met Hendrix she was singing in a girl group who were one of the support acts for Ike & Tina Turner, who Hendrix went to see on his night off. Hendrix met Brooks afterwards, and told her she looked like his mother -- a line he used on a lot of women, but which was true in her case if photos are anything to go by. The two got into a relationship, and were soon talking about becoming a duo like Ike and Tina or Mickey and Sylvia -- "Love is Strange" was one of Hendrix's favourite records. But the only recording they made together was the "My Diary" single. Brooks always claimed that she actually wrote that song, but the label credit is for Arthur Lee, and it sounds like his work to me, albeit him trying hard to write like Curtis Mayfield, just as Hendrix is trying to play like him: [Excerpt: Rosa Lee Brooks, "My Diary"] Brooks and Hendrix had a very intense relationship for a short period. Brooks would later recall Little

Phil and Jake are joined by singer-songwriter Tim Hause to rank volcanoes and the song “American Pie” by Don McLean on the List of Every Damn Thing.Follow Tim on Instagram (@timbillhause) and Twitter (@timBILLhause). Check out his collaboration with brother Dave Hause on the fantastic new record “Blood Harmony” (which you can also find on Spotify & Apple Music). And see them play live near you! If you have something to add to the list, email it to list@everydamnthing.net (or get at us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook). We also have a subreddit!SHOW NOTES: Phil looked up people pronouncing “human” like “yu-man” and apparently it's how people in NYC, Philadelphia and some places in Ireland say it. Phil is from rural California and although he used to live in NYC, he moved there as an adult. This clip features a scientific explanation of how Paul Bunyan and Babe the Big Blue Ox created the Grand Teton mountain range by roughhousing. We discuss a number of volcanic-relevant geographical locations including Mount St. Helens, The Road to Hana, Mount Shasta, Panum Crater, Pompeii, Arenal Volcano and Long Valley Caldera. Dr. Pimple Popper is a dermatologist who makes videos of pimples being popped. Look, the world isn't always that great, this sort of stuff is out there. We briefly discuss a volcano that erupted in the 19th Century, affecting global weather patterns and creating a year without a summer. The eruption in question was that of Mount Tambora in 1815 (the Year Without a Summer was the following year). It's also hypothesized that a similar thing happened in the 6th Century. Joe Vs. the Volcano is a 1990 film by John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck) starring Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan (in multiple roles). It's a fun movie that lost a lot of money. Phil talks about underwater animals that survive from “geothermal” heat, but the real term is "hydrothermal vent". These animals have a whole little ecosystem that doesn't need sunlight. They live in one of the few truly alien environments on Earth. Jake mentions the use of McLean's song in Black Widow, but we can't remember the name of the character Yelena Belova. “The Day the Music Died” is a reference to Feb. 3, 1959, when Buddy Holly, Richie Valens & Big Bopper died in a plane crash.  Jake mentions the 1969 Altamont Free Concert, which is considered one of the end-markers of the 1960s. He incorrectly refers to the killing of a woman at the concert, when in fact it was an eighteen-year-old man (named Meredith) who was stabbed to death. Three other people also died at the concert. Songs we compare “American Pie” to include “Black Betty” by Ram Jam, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by The Byrds, “Cats In the Cradle” by Harry Chapin, “You're So Vain” by Carly Simon, “The First Cut is the Deepest” by Rod Stewart, “Night Moves” by Bob Seager, “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon & Garfunkel, “The Saga Begins” by “Weird Al” Yankovic, “Cherry Pie” by Warrant, “Sweet Potato Pie” by Domino, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” by Dionne Warwick and “Roly Poly” by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. We compare it to a few Billy Joel songs (“We Didn't Start the Fire”, “Piano Man” and “Only the Good Die Young”). There's been an ongoing reassessment of Billy Joel (since about 2009 when this LA times blog defended him). Here's a Vice defense, and here's Jon Gabrus' "High and Mighty" Billy Joel episode. We also discuss Taylor Swift's “All Too Well” and the “American Pie” cover by Madonna. Don McLean's twenty-seven year-old girlfriend is Paris Dylan. She and former NBA player Chris "Birdman" Andersen were both victims of a catfishing scheme a few years ago that's too weird to even explain but here's an honest attempt. Here's the Cocaine & Rhinestones episode on the Louvin Brothers (which talks about blood harmonies). We never say the name of their band, but when we talk about Matt Hock & Dave Walsh we're of course talking about Space Cadet. ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:Hawaii * lava * wolves * hot springs * lava insurance * Bruce Springsteen * Shakira * anti-diarrhea medicine * Pee-Wee Herman * firefighters * the Golden Gate Bridge * songwriting * Waylon Jennings * Boomers * radio edits * ponies * Michael Caine * Mendocino Community College * sociology * The Ramones * Bell Biv Devoe * Reese's Ultimate Peanut Butter Lover's Cup * metatextuality * Howard the Duck * yes-menBelow are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here).TOP TEN: Dolly Parton - person interspecies animal friends - idea sex - idea bicycles - tool Clement Street in San Francisco - location Prince - person It's-It - food Cher - person dogs - animal cats - animal BOTTOM TEN:221. Jon Voight - person222. Hank Williams, Jr - person223. British Royal Family - institution224. Steven Seagal - person225. McRib - food226. death - idea227. war - idea228. cigarettes - drug229. QAnon - idea230. transphobia - ideaTheme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was produced & edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Email us at list@everydamnthing.net. 

Amanda Shires is a creative force of the highest nature. She's a Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and violinist; and after already accomplishing so much in her career, her love of words and poetry compelled her to pursue an MFA in creative writing, which she got from Sewanee University of the South. She's also a painter.In this episode, Maggie and Amanda talk about her approach to songwriting, how she found time to get her MFA while balancing music and family - she and her husband, Grammy winning songwriter and artist Jason Isbell are raising their daughter Mercy while also balancing their respective impressive careers. They also discuss the challenges and rewards of motherhood, and Amanda shares her story of becoming an activist and the moment when she decided to start her own band, The Highwomen.Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and violinist Amanda Shires began her career as a teenager playing fiddle with the Texas Playboys. Through the years, she has toured and recorded with notable artists including John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver, Todd Snider, Shovels and Rope, Gregg Allman, Justin Townes Earle, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, and more. In 2019, Shires formed country supergroup The Highwomen alongside Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby. Her new album, For Christmas, is a collection of mostly original songs that illuminate the wide range of emotions and sentiments that people feel around the holidays.Salute the Songbird is brought to you by Osiris Media. Hosted by Maggie Rose. Produced by Austin Marshall, Maggie Rose, Kirsten Cluthe and Brad Stratton. Music by Maggie Rose. Show logo by Premier Music Group. Graphics by Katherine Boils. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

PART ONEPaul and Scott talk about The Beatles' Get Back documentary from a songwriting perspectivePART TWOOur in-depth interview with Amanda ShiresABOUT AMANDA SHIRESSinger, songwriter, fiddle player, and Americana hero Amanda Shires has released eight albums as a solo artist, in addition to her work as a member of both Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit and the supergroup The Highwomen alongside Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, and Maren Morris. The Grammy winner was named Texas Music magazine's Artist of the Year in 2012, and was named Emerging Artist of the Year for 2017 at the Americana Honors & Awards. The Lone Star State native launched her career playing fiddle with The Texas Playboys before going on to tour with Billy Joe Shaver and others. At Shaver's suggestion, she eventually relocated to Nashville to pursue songwriting. While getting established, she worked as a side musician with Justin Townes Earle before joining Jason Isbell's band, The 400 Unit. Shires and Isbell married in 2013 in a ceremony officiated by past Songcraft guest Todd Snider. Amanda was featured on Luke Combs' 2020 single “Without You,” and is currently getting attention for her unorthodox holiday album called For Christmas, which features nine original songs, a cover of “What Are You Doing New Year's Eve,” and a reworking of “Silent Night” with all new lyrics.  

Today we have a special Broken Record Holiday episode with Nashville singer Amanda Shires. Shires' new holiday album, For Christmas, isn't meant to make you feel merry and bright. Instead it's an acknowledgment of the complicated feelings that can come along with the holidays, like disappointment, longing and maybe a little bit of lust. In addition to her solo career, Amanda Shires plays fiddle and sings in her husband Jason Isbell's band, The 400 Unit. She is also a founding member of the female country supergroup, The Highwomen, with Brandi Carlile. But way before she hit it big in Nashville, Shires played fiddle with the Texas Playboys, the legendary Western swing band started by Bob Will's that she joined when she was just 12 years-old. On today's episode Bruce Headlam talks to Amanda Shires about what inspired her to write a non-traditional Christmas album. Shires also explains how finding out that her Grandfather served decades in Alcatraz raised a ton of questions about her family's history. And she recalls what happened the time she discovered her husband had ripped off one of her lyrics.  Subscribe to Broken Record's YouTube channel to hear all of our interviews:  https://www.youtube.com/brokenrecordpodcast and follow us on Twitter @BrokenRecord You can also check out past episodes here: https://brokenrecordpodcast.com Check out our favorite Amanda Shires songs HERE. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Tex Beneke "The Blues Of The Record Man"Spencer Dickinson "Body (My Only Friend)"MC5 "Ramblin' Rose"Precious Bryant "The Truth"Eilen Jewell "One of Those Days"Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers "Bustin' Loose"Minutemen "I Felt Like a Gringo"Wanda Jackson "Riot in Cell Block Number 9"Waylon Jennings "Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me"Etta Baker "Carolina Breakdown"Bob Dylan "Fixin' to Die (mono version)"Bukka White "Streamline Special"Blind Lemon Jefferson "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"The White Stripes "The Nurse"Neko Case "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man"Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys "Ida Red"Chuck Berry "Havana Moon"Ella Fitzgerald "All Through The Night"Hartman's Heartbreakers "Please, Mr. Moon, Don't Tell on Me"The Ink Spots "Slap That Bass"Guitar Slim "The Things That I Used to Do"The Yardbirds "The Train Kept A-Rollin'"Muddy Waters "Hey Hey"Lucinda Williams "Crescent City"Fats Waller "You're Not the Only Oyster In the Stew"Palace Music "Work Hard / Play Hard"ZZ Top "Just Got Paid"Jason Isbell "Stockholm"Nina Nastasia "You Can Take Your Time"Faces "Miss Judy's Farm"Funkadelic "Friday Night, August 14th"Dr. John "Where Ya At Mule"Eric Clapton and Duane Allman "Mean Old World"Elmore James "Done Somebody Wrong"Blind Willie McTell "Statesboro Blues"Wilson Pickett "Hey Jude"The Allman Brothers Band "Dreams"Coleman Hawkins & his Orchestra "Body and Soul"Isaiah Owens "You Without Sin"Bettye LaVette "Just Say So"Bruce Springsteen "Incident on 57th Street"Drag The River "Fleeting Porch of Tide"Loretta Lynn "This Old House"Roger Miller "I Ain't Coming Home Tonight"Built to Spill "Ripple"

This week we welcome Junior Brown! With his unique voice, more unique song writing, and even more unique double necked “Guit-Steel” guitar, there has absolutely never been ANYONE like Junior Brown. He's an American Original. Born in 1952 in Cottonwood, Arizona, Junior Brown showed an affinity for music at an early age when the family moved to a rural area of Indiana near Kirksville. In the following years, Junior began to experience Country music and remembers it as “growing up out of the ground like the crops – it was everywhere; coming out of cars, houses, gas stations and stores like the soundtrack of a story, but Country music programs on TV hadn't really come along much yet; not until the late fifties.” Discovering a guitar in his grandparent's attic, he spent the next several years woodshedding with records and the radio. Junior was also able to tap into music he couldn't hear at home which older, college aged kids were listening to. This was possible due to his father's employment at small campuses throughout the next decade as the family moved twice again. As a young boy he was able to experience the thrill of performing before live audiences, at parties, school functions even singing and playing guitar for five thousand Boy Scouts at an Andrews Air Force Base jamboree; then while still a teenager, getting the chance to sit in with Rock and Roll pioneer, Bo Diddley. Armed with this broad spectrum of influences, he began to develop a storehouse of musical chops. In the early nineties Brown and his band (including wife Tanya Rae) relocated to Texas to the active Austin music scene and landed a weekly gig at the Continental club. Having worked as a sideman for many of the Austin-based acts over the years, Junior was already well familiar with the town. His unique and entertaining combination of singing, songwriting, instrumental and production skills led to a seven record deal with Curb Records that began with “Twelve Shades of Brown” in 1993. He later released two albums on the TelArc label. There were several Grammy nods, a CMA (Country Music Association) award for “My Wife Thinks You're Dead”, movie and repeated TV appearances like Letterman, Conan, Saturday Night Live, Austin City Limits, SpongeBob, X Files, Dukes of Hazzard, Me Myself and Irene, Tresspass, Still Breathing, Blue Collar Comedy Tour 1 and 2, and more recently, Better Call Saul. And there were the Ad Campaigns; The Gap, Lee Jeans and Lipton Tea. As Junior became more well known, he began to collaborate on projects with some of his heroes. These include a duet with Ralph Stanley for which Junior received a Bluegrass Music Association Award (IBMA), a duet and video with Hank Thompson, as well as duets with video and record collaborations with the Beach Boys, George Jones, Leon McAuliffe, Ray Price, Leona Williams, Lynn Morris, Lloyd Green and Doc Watson. He even played guitar for Bob Wills' Texas Playboys in a radio commercial. Junior is currently finishing up recording on his latest album, “Deep In The Heart Of Me”. Release date is slated for Spring 2017. Junior's performance on the promotional song, “Better Call Saul” was recorded and released both as a video on AMC as well as a flexible 33 1/3rd vinyl record included in the show's box set from Season One. Junior, Tanya Rae and the band continue to tear up the highways and no doubt will be appearing in concert near you one of these days. Seeing Junior live is a definite must, so GUIT WITH IT 'cause he's AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL! For more information and tour dates, visit JuniorBrown.com.

1 - Shoemaker's Holiday - Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra - 1939 2 - Breakin' in a Pair of Shoes - Beatrice Wain with Gene Kardos and his Orchestra - 1936 3 - Take Me Back to My Boots and Saddle - Cliff Weston with Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra - 1935 4 - Patent Leather Boots - Elton Britt with his guitar – 19395 - Boot Heel Drag - Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys – 19506 - Bootin' the Boogie - Christine Chatman and her Orchestra - 1944 7 - The Flat Foot Floogee - Woody Herman and his Orchestra - 1938 8 - Big Foot Jump - Bob Crosby's Bobcats with Bob Zurke on the piano - 1938 9 - I Can't Get My Foot Off the Rail - Tex Ritter - 1947 10 - Hot Foot - Conway's Band with George H. Green on the xylophone - 1920 11 - Keep Off My Shoes - Nora Bayes - 1923 12 - Sand in my shoes - Walther BØdker og hans Orkester 13 - Put My Little Shoes Away - Montana Slim (The Yodeling Cowboy) - 194114 - Sugar Foot Stomp - Bob Crosby and his Orchestra with Yank Lawson on the trumpet - 194215 - Sugar Foot Strut - Jan Savitt and his Top Hatters - 1942 16 - One Foot in Heaven - Vaughn Monroe and his Orchestra - 1941 17 - One Foot in the Groove - Artie Shaw and his Orchestra - 1939 18 - The Middle Toe of the Right Foot - The Weird Circle - 1945 (Radio Drama)19 - Too Hot to Live - Suspense - 1950 (Radio Drama)20 - Sand in My Shoes - Connie Boswell with Victor Young's Orchestra – 194121 - Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet - Woody Guthrie and Cisco Huston - 1945

Justin Townes Earle "Midnight At the Movies"ZZ Top "Francene"Lucinda Williams "Real Love"Albert King "Personal Manager"Precious Bryant "You Can Have My Husband"Ted Hawkins "California Song"The Clash "The Sound of Sinners"Sister Rosetta Tharpe "This Train"Reverend Gary Davis "Blow, Gabriel"Victoria Spivey "Detroit Moan"Ray Price "Crazy Arms"Jerry Lee Lewis "Ballad of Billy Joe"Valerie June "On My Way / Somebody To Love (Acoustic Version)"Jon Snodgrass "Don't Break Her Heart (feat. Stephen Egerton)"Joan Shelley "Brighter Than the Blues"Billie Holiday "Summertime"Maria Muldaur with Tuba Skinny "Delta Bound"Junior Kimbrough & The Soul Blues Boys "All Night Long"Hank Williams "Honky Tonk Blues"Peg Leg Howell and His Gang "Too Tight Blues"Etta Baker "Carolina Breakdown"James McMurtry "Hurricane Party"John Lee Hooker "I'm In the Mood (feat. Bonnie Raitt)"Hezekiah and The House Rockers "Baby, What You Want Me to Do"Roosevelt Sykes "Sister Kelly Blues"Tiny Bradshaw "Walk That Mess"Johnny Cash "Home of the Blues"Superchunk "Why Do You Have to Put a Date on Everything"Various Artists,Joseph "Come on up to the House"Jake Xerxes Fussell "Let Me Lose"Mississippi Fred McDowell "Red Cross Store Blues"The Yas Yas Girl (Merline Johnson) "Want to Woogie Some More"John Lee Hooker "Boogie Chillen"Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys "Bring It On Down to My House, Honey"Merle Haggard & The Strangers "If I Could Be Him"Wynonie Harris "Drinkin' By Myself"Lula Reed "Bump On a Log"Louis Jordan "Blue Light Boogie"Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown "Guitar In My Hand"The Black Keys "Crawling Kingsnake"Charlie Feathers "Can't Hardly Stand It"Eilen Jewell "Shakin' All Over"Bob Dylan "Political World"Bing Crosby "Street of Dreams"Dave Bartholomew "That's How You Got Killed Before"Jessie Mae Hemphill "Run Get My Shotgun"Big Joe Williams "Levee Camp Blues"Steve Earle "Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold"

A member of the Canadian Country Music Hall Of Fame, Joyce Smith was among Canada's very first Female country stars. Over the course of her 60+ year career, she's recorded for Point, Broadland, Royalty and, Decca Records. While in Nashville In 1962, Joyce performed at the Grand Ole Opry and cut what would become her signature song, Leavin' On Your Mind, with the legendary Owen Bradley at the helm and backed by some of the finest musicians in country music history. The song became an immediate radio hit in the USA, selling in excess of 100,000 copies and earned Joyce a CMA nomination for Most Promising New Female Vocalist. Joyce went on to hold a residency at the famed Panther Hall in Fort Worth, Texas and it was there she met Bob Wills and went on to sing with Wills and his Texas Playboys on the Panther stage along with appearances together on a number of syndicated radio programs of the day. By the mid-1960's, Joyce returned to Alberta to raise a family and has remained active in recording and performing ever since.

John Steinbeck called it the “Mother Road.” Songwriter Bobby Troup described it as the route to get your kicks on. And Mickey Mantle said, “If it hadn't been for Highway 66 I never would have been a Yankee.” For the Dust Bowl refugees of the 1930s, for the thousands who migrated after World War II, and for the generations of tourists and vacationers, Route 66 was “the Way West.” Route 66, the first continuously paved highway linking east and west was the most traveled and well known road in America for almost fifty years. From Chicago, it ran through the Ozarks of Missouri, across Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, up the mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, and down into California to the Pacific Ocean. The first road of its kind, it came to represent America's mobility and freedom—inspiring countless stories, songs, and even a TV show. Songwriter Bobby Troup tells the story of his 1946 hit Get Your Kicks on Route 66; Gladys Cutberth, aka Mrs. 66 and members of the old “66 Association” talk about the early years of the road. Mickey Mantle explains “If it hadn't been for US 66 I wouldn't have been a Yankee.” Stirling Silliphant, creator of the TV series “Route 66” talks about the program and its place in American folklore of the 60s. Studs Terkel reads from “The Grapes of Wrath” and comments on the great 1930s migration along Highway 66. We hear from Black and white musicians including Clarence Love, head of Clarence Love and his Orchestra, Woody Guthrie, and Eldin Shamblin, guitar player for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys—who remember life on the road for musicians during the 1930s. We travel the history of the road from its beginnings as “The Main Street of America,” through the “Road of Flight” in the 1930s, to the “Ghost Road” of the 1980s, as the interstates bypass the businesses and road side attractions of another era. Produced by The Kitchen Sisters and narrated by actor David Selby.

According to legend, a young Bob Wills once rode 50 miles on horseback to hear Bessie Smith sing. Throughout his long career, Wills mined the blues for some of his best and most popular numbers. His band, Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys, were by no means strictly a blues band, but the blues was always present in his music. In this episode we take a look at his blues sources and how he interpreted and transformed them to suit his purposes and his audiences. Support the show (https://paypal.me/BFrank53?locale.x=en_US)

22. It's a rockabilly bash with the Aztec Werewolf on a Tuesday night -celebrating the 72nd birthday of rocker Nick Lowe with a big batch of pub-rockin' classics PLUS plenty of his recent collaborations with Los Straitjackets! We don't ever skimp on the vintage rockers either as you'll hear the likes of Gene Vincent, Carl Mann, Ricky Nelson, Buddy Holly, Johnny Powers, Chan Romero & even Bob Will's Texas Playboys in this rollin' episode! Celebrate real rock n' roll with new tracks from  Bailey Dee, the Honkabillies, Geoffrey Miller, Sophie O'Dell, The Southwest Biscuit Company, The Ultrasonics & Austin John... always bringing you the BEST in both vintage & modern rockin' tracks, it's DJ Del Villarreal's "Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show!" -good to the last bop!™ #rockabilly #rock-a-billy #rocknroll #roots #americana #ameripolitan #garage #hillbilly #country #hotrod #djdel #aztecwerewolf #50s #delvillarreal #gokatgo #radio #losstraitjackets #nickelowe #thebasher #pubrock #genevincent #carlmann #rickynelson #buddyholly #johnnypowers #baileydee #geoffreymiller #sophieodell #southwestbiscuitcompany #ultrasonics #austinjohn #chanromero #bobwills #vivalasvegas

In episode 3 of the Ken Burns documentary “Country Music,” a picture was used featuring the stage of the Grand Ole Opry from 1949 which included Ramona Reed. Ramona was working for WSM Radio as Martha White representing the Martha White Flour Company. Hank Williams is seen in the background. Ramona went on to work for WSM during the summer of 1949, performing on a morning radio show each weekday and then appearing on the Grand Ole Opry on Friday and Saturday.Ramona grew up on a farm near Talihina, Oklahoma and by the time she was 15, she was singing for a Saturday morning radio show in McAlester, Oklahoma. She sang on the Grand Ole Opry for the first time when she was 17.After college in Denver, Colorado, and then two years in Nashville, she moved to Dallas, Texas where the Bob Wills Ranch House had just opened. She auditioned for Bob which led to two years of touring and performing with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. She performed at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa many times with Bob Wills and sang with Johnnie Lee Wills at county fairs.Of her many hit songs, she sang and yodeled “I want to be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart” which was produced by Oklahoma’s Tommy Allsup.She was voted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2009. The induction class included Rocky Frisco and Carrie Underwood. The Grand Ole Opry paid tribute to Ramona in 2020 as she celebrated the 70th Anniversary of her time on the Opry while observing her 90th birthday.

In which we compare midcentury Bakersfield to Paris in the 1920s, discuss how to build a music scene, and hear a song sung by a truck. See everyrecordeverrecorded.com for more Bakersfield Sound resources! + George Rich, "Drivin' Away My Blues" + Nathan Judd, "The Answer to the Greenback Dollar" + Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, "Get Along Home, Cindy" + Captain Sacto theme song + Cousin Herb Henson, "You'all Come" + Patsy Cline, "Crazy" + Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, "Act Naturally" + Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, "Love's Gonna Live Here" + Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, "My Heart Skips a Beat" + Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, "Together Again" + Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, "I Don't Care (Just As Long As You Love Me)" + Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, "I've Got a Tiger By the Tail" + "Before You Go" + "Only You (Can Break My Heart)" + "Buckaroo" + "Waitin' In Your Welfare Line" + "Think of Me" + "Open Up Your Heart" + "Where Does the Good Times Go" + "Sam's Place" + "Your Tender Loving Care" + "It Takes People Like You (To Make People Like Me)" + "How Long Will My Baby Be Gone" + "I've Got a Tiger By the Tail" + The Carter Family, "Can the Circle Be Unbroken" + William McEwan, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" + The Silver Leaf Quartette, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" + The Carter Family, "Little Darlin' Pal of Mine" + The Carter Family, "Sad and Lonesome Day" + Lesley Riddle, "One Kind Favor" + Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, "Ain't It Amazing, Gracie" + The Ventures, "Walk, Don't Run" + The Lemon Pipers, "Green Tambourine" + The Maddox Brothers and Rose, "George's Playhouse" + "The Nightingale Song" + "I'll Make Sweet Love to You" + "Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown" + "New Step It Up and Go" + "Philadelphia Lawyer" + Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, "Sugar Moon" + Bud Hobbs, "Louisiana Swing" + Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies, "Takin' Off" + Lefty Frizzell, "If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time" + Bill Woods and His Orange Blossom Playboys, "Have I Got a Chance With You?" + Jean Shepherd and Ferlin Husky, "A Dear John Letter" + Ferlin Husky, "Gone" + Merle Haggard, "Sing a Sad Song" + Merle Haggard, "Swinging Doors" + Bonnie Owens, "Lie a Little" + Merle Haggard, "Today I Started Loving You Again" + Mamie Smith "Crazy Blues" + Saul Ho'opi'i Trio, "Lehua" + Jimmie Rodgers, "Blue Yodel #9" + DeFord Bailey, "John Henry" + Ruth Brown, "Wild Wild Young Men" + Rose Maddox, "Wild Wild Young Men" + Hank Penny, "Bloodshot Eyes" + Wynonie Harris, "Bloodshot Eyes" + Patsy Cline, "Your Cheatin' Heart" + Ray Charles, "Your Cheatin' Heart" + Buck Owens, "Streets of Bakersfield" + Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens, "Streets of Bakersfield" + Antonio Aguilar, "El Ojo de Vidrio" + Woody Guthrie, "Billy the Kid" + Linda Ronstadt, "Palomita de Ojos Negros" + Ernest Tubb, "Thanks a Lot" + Jose Alfredo Jimenez, "El Rey" + The Maddox Brothers and Rose, "Shimmy Shakin' Daddy" + Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, "Don't Be Ashamed of Your Age" + Luis Perez Meza, "Cuando Salgo a Los Campos" + Tommy Collins, "You Better Not Do That" + Wanda Jackson, "I Gotta Know" + Wanda Jackson, "Honey Bop" + Billy Mize, "Who Will Buy the Wine" + Red Simpson, "I'm a Truck" + The Derailers, "The Right Place" + Dale Watson, "I Lie When I Drink" + Dave Alvin, "Black Rose of Texas" + The Mavericks, "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down" + The Flying Burrito Brothers, "Sin City" + JT Kanehira, "Country Music Makes Me So Happy" + Sturgill Simpson, "Life of Sin" + Albion Country Band, "Hanged I Shall Be" + A.L. Lloyd, "The Oxford Tragedy" + Shirley and Dolly Collins, "The Oxford Girl" + Phoebe Smith "Wexport Girl" + Harry Cox, "Ekefield Town" + Marybird McAllister, "The Bloody Miller" + Fields Ward, "The Lexington Murder" + Arthur and Gid Tanner, "The Knoxville Girl" + Fred Ross, "The Waco Girl" + The Outlaws, "Knoxville Girl" + Merle Haggard, "Kern River"

Songwriting couple Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell address a woman's right to choose in a new song 'The Problem" and talk about why they wanted to put it out now ("I understand people who have different beliefs"... but, "if what your neighbors doing isn't affecting you, then you really don't have the right to tell'em to stop doing it"). Bret asks about Jason's appearance in the movie Deadwood and Amanda's time in the Texas Playboys, plus they remember their friend, John Prine.

This week we conclude our two-part feature “It Don't Mean a Thing ...” with a focus on western swing. Western swing was developed in the dancehalls of Texas and, in sharp contrast to old-time stringbands, western swing groups employed many more members, with horn sections and multiple fiddles. These were needed to fill these massive dance halls with music for dancing. We’ll hear classics from The Light Crust Doughboys, Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies and Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. We'll also hear new classics from Deborah Silver, Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel. Boogie woogie fiddles … this week on The Sing Out! Radio Magazine. Episode #20-42: “It Don't Mean a Thing ...”, Pt.2 Host: Tom Druckenmiller Artist/”Song”/CD/Label Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways David Grisman Quintet / “Minor Swing” / The David Grisman Quintet / Kaleidoscope Deborah Silver / “That Old Black Magic” / Glitter & Grits / NTL The Light Crust Doughboys / “Knocky, Knocky” / Okeh Western Swing / CBS Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies / “Sweet Jennie Lee” / Western Swing Kings / Pazzazz Bob Wills & his Texas layboys / “Right or Wrong” / Collection 1935-50 / Acrobat Merle Travis / “The Sheik of Araby” / The Merle Travis Guitar / Raven Lefty Frizzell / “If You Got the Money, I've Got the Time” / Columbia Country Classics Vol 2 / Columbia Texas Troubadours / “Steel Guitar Rag” / Almost to Tulsa / Bear Family Willie Nelson / “Cherokee Maiden” / You Don't Know Me / Lost Highway David Grisman Quintet / “Minor Swing” / The David Grisman Quintet / Kaleidoscope Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers / “Goin' Steady” / Shades of the Past / Sugar Hill Al Goll / “Farewell Blues” / New Reso Gathering / Pinecastle Susie Bogguss / “Straighten Up and Fly Right” / Swing / Compadre Vi Wickham & Paul Anastasio / “Weiser Stomp” / Swinging at the Savoy / Zero Carbon Footprint Asleep at the Wheel / “Take Me Back to Tulsa” / Comin' Right At Ya / United Artists Asleep at the Wheel / “Choo Choo Ch'Boogie” / Swing Time / Sony Merle Travis / “Cannonball Stomp” / The Merle Travis Guitar / Raven Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways

So many thanks to Kadi for her time, vulnerability and storytelling talents this week. You can hear another one of Kadi's stories (about a less than relaxing yoga retreat) here. She also has a  soundcloud ! Check it out to hear her young adult fiction podcast called YA! podcast. You can also check Kadi out @kadi_d on all the socials.I'll See You In My Dreams isn't exclusively a ukulele jam. In fact, it first charted in the 20s! Since then it has been recorded by a virtual who's who (including Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys). That said it's easy to see how Joe Brown's version  from the 2002 Concert for George (Harrison) at Royal Albert Hall in London is a favourite. Though I love Ella Fitzgerald's version, I think Kadi's dead right about how Joe Brown's recording embodies the lightness a loved one's warmly-held memory. And now I won't ever be able to hear it without thinking of the Quran and sheep skin jackets. As always, I'd encourage you to listen to the song before (and even again after) you hear the episode.Make sure you follow The Volume Knob on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or at our website volumeknob.net.And if you have a story about the song that saved your life be sure to send it to me at volumeknobpod@gmail.com.

Known as the King of Western Swing, Wills formed several bands and played radio stations around the South and West until he formed the Texas Playboys in 1934. The Texas Playboys' signature dance-floor style of Western swing encompassed blues, jazz, country, and pop standards. Trent adds, "This is the folk music of the European, Celtic peoples."  It's hard not to be happy when you listen to Bob Wills. Scott, Karl, and Trent dig into his early years, music style, and the influence he had on performers like Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and The Stranger.  Tune in to hear more music and ideas, brought to you by onlinegreatbooks.com. 

“San Antonio Rose” war der größte Hit von Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Der legendäre Country Musiker hat der texanischen Stadt damit ein musikalisches Denkmal gesetzt. 1940  stand der Titel auf Platz 1 der amerikanischen Hitparade. Audiotraveller Henry Barchet sich in San Antonio die Geschichte des Songs erzählen lassen.

Charlie Daniels murió el pasado lunes por la mañana en el Summit Medical Center de Nashville tras sufrir un derrame cerebral. Tenía 83 años. El productor Bob Johnston, que le contrataría para CBS en Nashville, le llevó a la Music City, donde era fácil verle actuar en los más diversos clubs mientras se convirtió en músico de sesión, aunque siempre le dijeron que tocaba demasiado fuerte. Intervino en el Nashville Skyline, New Morning y Self-Portrait de Dylan, aunque nunca estuvo demasiado cerca de las composiciones ni de las posturas personales del genio de Minnesota. Por eso puede incluso extrañar la selección de algunas de las 10 canciones que en 2014 completaron un disco dedicado a versionar canciones del bardo bajo el título de Off the Grid - Doin' It Dylan. Durante una buena parte de los 60 y 70 participó en grabaciones de Marty Robbins, uno de sus favoritos, Michael Martin Murphey, Tanya Tucker, Earl Scruggs y sus amigos del sello Capricorn Records, especialmente la Marshall Tucker Band, Grinderswitch y Elvin Bishop. También estuvo con George Harrison y Ringo Starr en sus primeras grabaciones en solitario y fue miembro de la banda de acompañamiento de Leonard Cohen en sus giras. Incluso llegó a producir a Elephant Mountain y a los Youngbloods. Muy poco antes de cumplir 80 años, Charlie Daniels publicó Nighthawk (algo así como “chotacabras”), un disco acústico en homenaje a los vaqueros. Se trata de una colección de temas de cowboys que siempre quiso grabar sin ningún tipo de instrumentación eléctrica, tal y como pudieran cantarse en cualquier fogata nocturna tras una larga jornada de trabajo. Ávido lector, Charlie Daniels siempre se inclinó por los libros sobre el Oeste. De hecho, el título de este trabajo hacía referencia a la novela de Louis L’Amour de 1962. Night Hawk se convirtió en su último álbum en vida. “(Ghost) Riders In the Sky: A Cowboy Legend” es un tema que Stan Jones escribió en 1948 contando la historia de un cowboy que tiene la visión de ser perseguido por fantasmagóricos vaqueros malditos en el cielo. Uno de ellos le conmina a abandonar sus costumbres o será condenado a unirse a ellos para siempre “tratando de atrapar la manada del diablo por los cielos sin fin”. En 1970 apareció el primer trabajo en solitario, Charlie Daniels, publicado por Capitol. Fue cuando decidió formar la Charlie Daniels Band y empiezan a asentarse los cimientos del llamado Southern rock. Honey In The Rock llegó en 1973 y allí se incluyó el single "Uneasy Rider", que fue su primera aparición en las listas de country. Aquella canción es lo más parecido a un anticipo de las formas de "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". Charlie Daniels tomó el papel de un hippie de pelo largo que sufre un pinchazo y se encuentra en un bar de rednecks donde no es bienvenido. Una situación nada cómoda. Un año más tarde, apareció Fire On The Mountain, su álbum de debut para Epic, su nueva compañía. Con Dickey Betts de los Allman Brothers tocando el dobro, allí estaba "Long Haired Country Boy", toda una sorpresa para la escena de Nashville, donde se celebraba el fumar marihuana por la mañana y emborracharse por la noche. Cuando el single se reeditó en 1980, se suavizó la letra. Trabajando en aquel Fire On The Mountain, Charlie decidió grabar algunas canciones en directo en un auditorio de Nashville. Homenajeando a Tennessee, conocido como "The Volunteer State", la Charlie Daniels Band llamó al concierto "Volunteer Jam" e invitó a viejos amigos como los Allman Brothers o la Marshall Tucker Band. En las primeras ediciones del álbum Fire On The Mountain se incluyó un single con tres de aquellas grabaciones en directo. Aquel show pasó a celebrarse casi cada año y se convirtió en toda una institución. Con la presencia de los más diversos artistas. A finales de 1975 aparecía Nightrider que abría el adictivo “Texas”, una de las más fieras interpretaciones del Western swing tejano, que entendimos como un homenaje de la Charlie Daniels Band a la herencia de Bob Wills y sus Texas Playboys. Hoy estamos dedicando nuestro programa al carismático y controvertido Charlie Daniels, un mocetón nacido en Wilmington, North Carolina, que se trasladó con su familia a Georgia siendo muy pequeño. Alrededor de 1953 formó una banda de bluegrass, The Misty Mountain Boys, y empezó a escribir sus primeras canciones para, un poco más tarde, dedicarse a tocar rock'n'roll y al rhythm'n'blues con los Rockets en Washington D.C. y su área de influencia. En el 59 grabó con ellos "Jaguar", un single instrumental para Epic en Fort Worth, Texas, que les hizo cambiar el nombre precisamente al de Jaguars. Es el que estaba sonando de fondo. Pero al iniciarse los años 60, Charlie Daniels, criado en el country, un amante del del swing, del bluegrass de Benny Martin, y un notable cantante y guitarrista de rock'n'roll, descubrió el jazz, e hizo algunos intentos dentro del estilo que no fructificaron. De vuelta a sus géneros más cercanos, en 1964 compuso "It Hurts Me", que aparecería en la voz de Elvis Presley como cara B de "Kissin' Cousins". Y en el 66 volvió a grabar con los Jaguars. Fue la primera vez que escuchamos su voz en “In The Middle of the Heartache”, un tema compuesto por él y muy propio del llamado soul de los ojos azules de entonces. Fue grabado en Nueva Orleans y se editó en single en 1966. Diez años más tarde, la Charlie Daniels Band abría una etapa especialmente prolífica con grabaciones como High Lonesome, cuyo tema de apertura era “Billy The Kid”, una de sus mejores canciones y en la que contó con George McCorkle de la Marshall Tucker Band haciéndose cargo de la guitarra acústica. En aquellos momentos, sus lanzamientos como grupo fueron también acompañados de distintos volúmenes de Volunteer Jam, que se había convertido en uno de los puntos de encuentro inevitables. Siguiendo con algunos personajes legendarios, Charlie Daniels participó en un proyecto titulado The Legend of Jesse James, grabado en 1979 y publicado al año siguiente que daba continuación a White Mansions, que en 1978 documentaba la vida de los confederados durante la Guerra Civil Americana. Lo curioso es que todas las composiciones eran de Paul Kennerly, por entonces pareja de Emmylou Harris. Daniels intervino en tres cortes, dos de ellos instrumentales. Mientras en aquel proyecto Levon Helm tomaba el papel de Jesse James, Johnny Cash era su hermano Frank y Emmylou Harris su mujer Zerelda, Charlie Daniels representó a Cole Younger, el hermano mayor de los cuatro que formaron parte de la banda desde el comienzo. Bajo ese rol interpretó “Riding with Jesse James”, convertida en una de las curiosidades de su carrera. En el año en que grabó aquella colaboración, 1979, llegó “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”, una canción sobre un duelo de fiddles entre el diablo y un joven inexperto y presuntuoso. Supuso un cambio sustancial para la Charlie Daniels Band. Singles anteriores le habían hecho ganar aceptación en las emisoras de rock, pero los oyentes de country no respondían. Aunque siguieron siendo una de las bandas punteras en el movimiento del rock sureño, rompieron el mercado vaquero con la adaptación de un cuento clásico y la interpretación al fiddle de su líder. Consiguieron dos premios Grammy y el reconocimiento de todos gracias a un tema que en principio no estaba ni tan siquiera incluido en su álbum Million Mile Reflections, que tomo el título recordando que la banda había superado el millón de millas de recorrido en sus giras. Además, en 1980 participó en la película Urban Cowboy y dejó un par de temas en su banda sonora, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia" y "Falling In Love For The Night", aprovechando el éxito para seguir con su Volunteer Jam y editar un nuevo álbum, Full Moon. Aquel disco tuvo como como apertura una de sus canciones legendarias, "The Legend Of Wooley Swamp". Un tema que cuenta la historia de Lucius Clay, un viejo codicioso, más preocupado por el dinero que por los demás. Guardaba todo su dinero en viejos tarros enterrados alrededor de su jardín, que desenterraba durante las noches de verano para recontar su fortuna. Tres jóvenes, conocidos como los Cable Boys, se enteraron del asunto y decidieron ir una noche al pantano de Wooley Swamp y llevarse el dinero. Le encontraron desenterrando los tarros, le golpearon y arrojaron su cuerpo al pantano. Pero según escapaban con el dinero fueron hundiéndose en las arenas movedizas, mientras escuchaban reírse al viejo. En este recorrido por algunos de los momentos más relevantes y curiosos de la larga carrera de Charlie Daniels, no hemos ido a 1989, cuando añadió un tema a Next Of Kin, un thriller protagonizado por Patrick Swayze y Liam Neeson bajo la dirección de John Irvin. Aquella banda sonora nos permitió escuchar 10 canciones inéditas de Gregg Allman junto a Lori Yates, Rodney Crowell, Ricky Van Shelton, Ricky Skaggs, Sweethearts of the Rodeo, George Jones, Duane Eddy y nuestro protagonista de hoy, que aportó “My Sweet Baby’s Gone”. El disco se descatalogó rápidamente y se ha convertido en toda una pieza de coleccionista que hoy hemos querido recuperar. Pero 1990 apareció con mejor disposición y Simple Man estuvo a punto de alcanzar la cima de las listas de country. Era un disco casi conceptual que nos devolvió a un Charlie Daniels pletórico. Tanto, que un año más tarde anunció el regreso de Volunteer Jam. En aquel trabajo había temas tan melancólicos como “Mr. DJ”, donde un camionero pide al disc jockey que pinche una canción para un viejo que está lejos de casa, con mil millas por delante y mil millas por detrás, un dólar en el bolsillo y una mujer en la cabeza. Y aprovecha para recordar a Waylon, Willie, los Oak Ridge Boys Alabama, George Jones y Mickey Gilley, entre otros. Es una buena forma de recordar en la despedida del programa de hoy a Charlie Daniels, que moría el pasado lunes. Escuchar audio

In this episode, Red and Bill talk about all the hits, starting with Rock Around The Clock and finishing up with the story of Crazy Man, Crazy; Bill moves into the Sixties to talk about his foray into Spanish music. Recorded at CFUN/Vancouver 5-31-66 It's hard to put a finger on the first Rock and Roll record but there is no doubt Bill Haley made it happen all over the world. Here was a Country and Western singer playing "Western Swing" much like the music of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. The novel part of Bill Haley's music - its rhythm - was the dominant factor that made Rock and Roll. At Bill's first session with Decca, he recorded "Rock Around the Clock" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll", which were to transform the concept of what popular music could be. "Rock Around the Clock" was featured in a youth-oriented movie called "Blackboard Jungle" and all hell broke loose. This movie and the song "Rock Around the Clock" became the focal points of the young and gave greater thrust to the popularity of this new hybrid of music, "Rock and Roll". In July of 1955 I had just graduated from High School and I was a young, high-voiced, rapid-patter deejay on CJOR/Vancouver. It all came together when a Decca recording landed on my desk. It was Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" and it changed music - and radio - forever. Bill Haley arrived in Vancouver to play the first real Rock and Roll concert at the Kerrisdale Arena in June of 1956. When he arrived in Vancouver for his concert it was sheer bedlam. The show had been sold out for weeks before his arrival. I stepped out on to that stage and felt the electricity in the air immediately. I thanked Jack Cullen for asking me to MC the show and introduced Bill Haley. The screams started just after I said "And now the man you've been waiting for..." I thought the roof was going to be ripped off by the sheer weight of the noise. While Bill Haley played through his set I waited backstage for my first interview with the man who brought it all together. He was an utter surprise to me. He was kind and friendly, he was aware of my nervousness in his presence, but made me feel comfortable instantly. We talked for about an hour, had a few photographs taken together (by renowned Vancouver photographer John McGinnis) and he vanished into the night like so many of the stars I was to meet over the years. I knew then that here was a man of significance in the history of North American music. One of the most fascinating stories from that meeting was his almost prophetic offering to me. Bill said in the midst of the conversation, "Red, we have just about reached the end of our time in the spotlight." I could not understand this thinking; he was at the height of his career and the hits just kept on coming. Yet, he insisted that he and the Comets were about to be overtaken by a young man from Memphis. Haley said, "Red, the next giant of Rock and Roll is going to be Elvis Presley. He's got the looks, the talent and the magic to make him very, very important in the months and years ahead." Bill Haley was right. You know that, I know that, but in that dressing room at the Kerrisdale Arena during that hot Spring night in 1956 standing there with the world's number one Rock and Roll artist, it was hard to conceive of anyone bigger than Bill Haley and the Comets.

In this episode, Bill tells Red how he got started: the origins of the term "rock'n'roll"; his early success, how he managed his money, and how he kept his enthusiasm. Recorded at CFUN/Vancouver 5-31-66 It's hard to put a finger on the first Rock and Roll record but there is no doubt Bill Haley made it happen all over the world. Here was a Country and Western singer playing "Western Swing" much like the music of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. The novel part of Bill Haley's music - its rhythm - was the dominant factor that made Rock and Roll. At Bill's first session with Decca, he recorded "Rock Around the Clock" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll", which were to transform the concept of what popular music could be. "Rock Around the Clock" was featured in a youth-oriented movie called "Blackboard Jungle" and all hell broke loose. This movie and the song "Rock Around the Clock" became the focal points of the young and gave greater thrust to the popularity of this new hybrid of music, "Rock and Roll". In July of 1955 I had just graduated from High School and I was a young, high-voiced, rapid-patter deejay on CJOR/Vancouver. It all came together when a Decca recording landed on my desk. It was Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" and it changed music - and radio - forever. Bill Haley arrived in Vancouver to play the first real Rock and Roll concert at the Kerrisdale Arena in June of 1956. When he arrived in Vancouver for his concert it was sheer bedlam. The show had been sold out for weeks before his arrival. I stepped out on to that stage and felt the electricity in the air immediately. I thanked Jack Cullen for asking me to MC the show and introduced Bill Haley. The screams started just after I said "And now the man you've been waiting for..." I thought the roof was going to be ripped off by the sheer weight of the noise. While Bill Haley played through his set I waited backstage for my first interview with the man who brought it all together. He was an utter surprise to me. He was kind and friendly, he was aware of my nervousness in his presence, but made me feel comfortable instantly. We talked for about an hour, had a few photographs taken together (by renowned Vancouver photographer John McGinnis) and he vanished into the night like so many of the stars I was to meet over the years. I knew then that here was a man of significance in the history of North American music. One of the most fascinating stories from that meeting was his almost prophetic offering to me. Bill said in the midst of the conversation, "Red, we have just about reached the end of our time in the spotlight." I could not understand this thinking; he was at the height of his career and the hits just kept on coming. Yet, he insisted that he and the Comets were about to be overtaken by a young man from Memphis. Haley said, "Red, the next giant of Rock and Roll is going to be Elvis Presley. He's got the looks, the talent and the magic to make him very, very important in the months and years ahead." Bill Haley was right. You know that, I know that, but in that dressing room at the Kerrisdale Arena during that hot Spring night in 1956 standing there with the world's number one Rock and Roll artist, it was hard to conceive of anyone bigger than Bill Haley and the Comets.

In this episode, Bill records two albums in Mexico; the high price of success; touring the Pacific and Europe and its effect on him and the Comets. Recorded at CFUN/Vancouver 5-31-66 It's hard to put a finger on the first Rock and Roll record but there is no doubt Bill Haley made it happen all over the world. Here was a Country and Western singer playing "Western Swing" much like the music of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. The novel part of Bill Haley's music - its rhythm - was the dominant factor that made Rock and Roll. At Bill's first session with Decca, he recorded "Rock Around the Clock" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll", which were to transform the concept of what popular music could be. "Rock Around the Clock" was featured in a youth-oriented movie called "Blackboard Jungle" and all hell broke loose. This movie and the song "Rock Around the Clock" became the focal points of the young and gave greater thrust to the popularity of this new hybrid of music, "Rock and Roll". In July of 1955 I had just graduated from High School and I was a young, high-voiced, rapid-patter deejay on CJOR/Vancouver. It all came together when a Decca recording landed on my desk. It was Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" and it changed music - and radio - forever. Bill Haley arrived in Vancouver to play the first real Rock and Roll concert at the Kerrisdale Arena in June of 1956. When he arrived in Vancouver for his concert it was sheer bedlam. The show had been sold out for weeks before his arrival. I stepped out on to that stage and felt the electricity in the air immediately. I thanked Jack Cullen for asking me to MC the show and introduced Bill Haley. The screams started just after I said "And now the man you've been waiting for..." I thought the roof was going to be ripped off by the sheer weight of the noise. While Bill Haley played through his set I waited backstage for my first interview with the man who brought it all together. He was an utter surprise to me. He was kind and friendly, he was aware of my nervousness in his presence, but made me feel comfortable instantly. We talked for about an hour, had a few photographs taken together (by renowned Vancouver photographer John McGinnis) and he vanished into the night like so many of the stars I was to meet over the years. I knew then that here was a man of significance in the history of North American music. One of the most fascinating stories from that meeting was his almost prophetic offering to me. Bill said in the midst of the conversation, "Red, we have just about reached the end of our time in the spotlight." I could not understand this thinking; he was at the height of his career and the hits just kept on coming. Yet, he insisted that he and the Comets were about to be overtaken by a young man from Memphis. Haley said, "Red, the next giant of Rock and Roll is going to be Elvis Presley. He's got the looks, the talent and the magic to make him very, very important in the months and years ahead." Bill Haley was right. You know that, I know that, but in that dressing room at the Kerrisdale Arena during that hot Spring night in 1956 standing there with the world's number one Rock and Roll artist, it was hard to conceive of anyone bigger than Bill Haley and the Comets.

Tom Waits [00:51] "Romeo Is Bleeding" Blue Valentine Asylum Records 6E-162 1978 Probably should have done some content editing on that last bit, but ah well... so it goes. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys [05:43] "Roly-Poly" Bob Wills Special Harmony HS 11358 1969 Good ol' Tommy Duncan on vocals, with Bob hollerin as he does so well. First recorded in 1946 and reached number three on the charts. Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell [08:21] "Mornin' Glory" Bobbie Gentry & Glen Campbell Captiol Records ST 2928 1968 A classic record featuring a classic duo. The Gentry-penned Mornin' Glory stands out as a winner and was the first single from this album. Eddie Jefferson [11:14] "Psychedelic Sally" Body and Soul Prestige PR 7619 1968 Some very groovy bop from Eddie Jefferson, with James Moody on sax, Dave Burns on trumpet, Barry Harris on piano, Steve Davis on bass and Bill English on drums. The Clean [14:49] "Billy 2" Boodle Boodle Boodle Flying Nun Records FN 003 1981 Track one, side one from easily my most favorite EP ever. Booker T & the M.G.'s [17:16] "Sing a Simple Song" The Booker T. Set Stax Records STS 2009 1969 A mighty fine rendition of the Sly & the Family Stone classic. Gershon Kingsley & Michael Shapiro [19:56] "(excerpt)" Boom! Boom! Crack! Ping! The Sounds of Early America Peter Pan Records 8143 This is what passed for history in the mid-1970s. Did you know that the crew of the Mayflower referred to the Puritans as psalm-singing puke-stockings. Kris Kristofferson [24:00] "Little Girl Lost" Border Lord Monument KZ 31302 1972 Winsome, losesome. Thanks Kris. Bruce Springsteen [28:23] "I'm Goin' Down" Born in the USA Columbia QC 38653 1984 Hout! Pretty fine single that made it to number 9 on the Hot 100 from the multi-platinum Born in the USA. Charlie Byrd [31:51] "Bim Bom" Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros Riverside Records RS 9436 1962 A fine quick little Gilberto number considered to be the first bossa nova song. The Dave Brubeck Quartet [33:40] "Cantiga Nova Swing" Bossa Nova USA Columbia CS 8798 1963 The bossa nova bandwagon continues with this outing from Brubeck and co. Boston [36:27] "Rock & Roll Band" Boston Epic 34188 1976 Woof. Well, I support somewhere someone hasn't heard this highly varnished solipsism. Thin White Rope [40:34] "Waking Up" Bottom Feeders Zippo Records ZANE 005 1987 A fine quirky jerky number from Davis CA's very own Thin White Rope. Belle & Sebastian [43:20s] "Sleep the Clock Around" The Boy with the Arab Strap Matador OLE 311-1 1998 I'd say that was a pretty good follow up to the previous track. Divinyls [48:14] "Boys in Town" Boys in Town Chrysalis SPRO 225 1982 Some early-eighties antipodean angst. Brass Construction [51:05] "Ha Cha Cha" Brass Construction II United Artists Records UA-LA677-G 1976 Hotcha cha funk from Brooklyn. Where is Brass Construction 1, III, IV, 5 and 6? Presumably in a bin somewhere, waiting to be found. Music behind the DJ: "Faded Love" by Buck Owens and his Buckaroos

Episode seventy-nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Sweet Nothin's" by Brenda Lee, and at the career of a performer who started in the 1940s and who was most recently in the top ten only four months ago. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "16 Candles" by the Crests. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/  ----more---- Errata: I say that the A-Team played on “every” rock and roll or country record out of Nashville. This is obviously an exaggeration. It was just an awful lot of the most successful ones. It has also been pointed out to me that the version of "Dynamite" I use in the podcast is actually a later remake by Lee. This is one of the perennial problems with material from this period -- artists would often remake their hits, sticking as closely as possible to the original, and these remakes often get mislabelled on compilation CDs. My apologies. Resources As always, I've put together a Mixcloud playlist of all the songs excerpted in the episode. Most of the information in here comes from Brenda Lee's autobiography, Little Miss Dynamite, though as with every time I rely on an autobiography I've had to check the facts in dozens of other places. And there are many decent, cheap, compilations of Lee's music. This one is as good as any. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript  A couple of months ago, we looked in some detail at the career of Wanda Jackson, and in the second of those episodes we talked about how her career paralleled that of Brenda Lee, but didn't go into much detail about why Lee was important. But Brenda Lee was the biggest solo female star of the sixties, even though her music has largely been ignored by later generations. According to Joel Whitburn, she was the fourth most successful artist in terms of the American singles charts in that whole decade -- just behind the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Ray Charles, and just ahead of the Supremes and the Beach Boys, in that order. Despite the fact that she's almost completely overlooked now, she was a massively important performer -- while membership of the "hall of fame" doesn't mean much in itself, it does say something that so far she is the *only* solo female performer to make both the rock and roll and country music halls of fame. And she's the only performer we've dealt with so far to have a US top ten hit in the last year. So today we're going to have a look at the career of the girl who was known as "Little Miss Dynamite": [Excerpt: Brenda Lee, "Sweet Nothin's"]  Lee's music career started before she was even in school. She started performing when she was five, and by the time she was six she was a professional performer. So by the time she first came to a wider audience, aged ten, she was already a seasoned professional. Her father died when she was very young, and she very quickly became the sole breadwinner of the household. She changed her name from Brenda Tarpley to the catchier Brenda Lee, she started performing on the Peach Blossom Special, a local sub-Opry country radio show, and she got her own radio show. Not only that, her stepfather opened the Brenda Lee Record Shop, where she would broadcast her show every Saturday -- a lot of DJs and musicians performed their shows in record shop windows at that time, as a way of drawing crowds into the shops. All of this was before she turned eleven. One small piece of that radio show still exists on tape -- some interaction between her and her co-host Peanut Faircloth, who was the MC and guitar player for the show -- and who fit well with Brenda, as he was four foot eight, and Brenda never grew any taller than four foot nine. You can hear that when she was talking with Faircloth, she was as incoherent as any child would be: [Excerpt: Brenda Lee and Peanut Faircloth dialogue] But when she sang on the show, she sounded a lot more professional than almost any child vocalist you'll ever hear: [Excerpt: Brenda Lee and Peanut Faircloth, "Jambalaya"] Her big break actually came from *not* doing a show. She was meant to be playing the Peach Blossom Special one night, but she decided that rather than make the thirty dollars she would make from that show, she would go along to see Red Foley perform. Foley was one of the many country music stars who I came very close to including in the first year of this podcast. He was one of the principal architects of the hillbilly boogie style that led to the development of rockabilly, and he was a particular favourite of both Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis -- Elvis' first ever public performance was him singing one of Foley's songs, the ballad "Old Shep". But more typical of Foley's style was his big hit "Sugarfoot Rag": [Excerpt: Red Foley, "Sugarfoot Rag"] Foley had spent a few years in semi-retirement -- his wife had died by suicide a few years earlier, and he had reassessed his priorities a little as a result. But he had recently been tempted back out onto the road as a result of his being offered a chance to host his own TV show, the Ozark Jubilee, which was one of the very first country music shows on television. And the Ozark Jubilee put on tours, and one was coming to Georgia. Peanut Faircloth, who worked with Brenda on her radio show, was the MC for that Ozark Jubilee show, and Brenda's parents persuaded Faircloth to let Brenda meet Foley, in the hopes that meeting him would give Brenda's career a boost. She not only got to meet Foley, but Faircloth managed to get her a spot on the show, singing "Jambalaya". Red Foley said of that performance many years later: "I still get cold chills thinking about the first time I heard that voice. One foot started patting rhythm as though she was stomping out a prairie fire but not another muscle in that little body even as much as twitched. And when she did that trick of breaking her voice, it jarred me out of my trance enough to realize I'd forgotten to get off the stage. There I stood, after 26 years of supposedly learning how to conduct myself in front of an audience, with my mouth open two miles wide and a glassy stare in my eyes." Foley got Brenda to send a demo tape to the producers of the Ozark Jubilee -- that's the tape we heard earlier, of her radio show, which was saved in the Ozark Jubilee's archives, and Brenda immediately became a regular on the show. Foley also got her signed to Decca, the same label he was on, and she went into the studio in Nashville with Owen Bradley, who we've seen before producing Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Johnny Burnette, and Wanda Jackson, though at this point Bradley was only the engineer and pianist on her sessions -- Paul Cohen was the producer. Her first single was released in September 1956, under the name "Little Brenda Lee (9 Years Old)", though in fact she was almost twelve when it came out. It was a version of "Jambalaya", which was always her big showstopper on stage: [Excerpt: Little Brenda Lee (9 Years Old), "Jambalaya"] Neither that nor her follow-up, a novelty Christmas record, were particularly successful, but they were promoted well enough to get her further national TV exposure. It also got her a new manager, though in a way she'd never hoped for or wanted. Her then manager, Lou Black, got her a spot performing at the national country DJs convention in Nashville, where she sang "Jambalaya" backed by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. She went down a storm, but the next night Black died suddenly, of a heart attack. Dub Albritten, Red Foley's manager, was at the convention, and took the opportunity to sign Brenda up immediately. Albritten got her a lot of prestigious bookings -- for example, she became the youngest person ever to headline in Las Vegas, on a bill that also included a version of the Ink Spots -- and she spent the next couple of years touring and making TV appearances. As well as her regular performances on the Ozark Jubilee she was also a frequent guest on the Steve Allen show and an occasional one on Perry Como's. She was put on country package tours with George Jones and Patsy Cline, and on rock and roll tours with Danny & the Juniors, the Chantels, and Mickey & Sylvia. This was the start of a split in the way she was promoted that would last for many more years. Albritten was friends with Colonel Tom Parker, and had a similar carny background -- right down to having, like Parker, run a scam where he put a live bird on a hot plate to make it look like it was dancing, though in his case he'd done it with a duck rather than a chicken. Albritten had managed all sorts of acts -- his first attempt at breaking the music business was when in 1937 he'd helped promote Jesse Owens during Owens' brief attempt to become a jazz vocalist, but he'd later worked with Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and Ernest Tubb before managing Foley. Brenda rapidly became a big star, but one thing she couldn't do was get a hit record. The song "Dynamite" gave her the nickname she'd be known by for the rest of her life, "Little Miss Dynamite", but it wasn't a hit: [Excerpt: Little Brenda Lee, "Dynamite"] And while her second attempt at a Christmas single, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree", didn't chart at all at the time, it's been a perennial hit over the decades since -- in fact its highest position on the charts came in December 2019, sixty-one years after it was released, when it finally reached number two on the charts: [Excerpt: Little Brenda Lee, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"] Part of the problem at the beginning had been that she had clashed with Paul Cohen -- they often disagreed about what songs she should perform. But Cohen eventually left her in the charge of Owen Bradley, who would give her advice about material, but let her choose it herself. While her records weren't having much success in the US, it was a different story in other countries. Albritten tried -- and largely succeeded -- to make her a breakout star in countries other than the US, where there was less competition. She headlined the Paris Olympia, appeared on Oh Boy! in the UK, and inspired the kind of riots in Brazil that normally didn't start to hit until Beatlemania some years later -- and to this day she still has a very substantial Latin American fanbase as a result of Albritten's efforts. But in the US, her rockabilly records were unsuccessful, even as she was a massively popular performer live and on TV. So Bradley decided to take a different tack. While she would continue making rock and roll singles, she was going to do an album of old standards from the 1920s, to be titled "Grandma, What Great Songs You Sang!" But that was no more successful, and it would be from the rockabilly world that Brenda's first big hit would come. Brenda Lee and Red Foley weren't the only acts that Dub Albritten managed. In particular, he managed a rockabilly act named Ronnie Self. Self recorded several rockabilly classics, like "Ain't I'm A Dog": [Excerpt: Ronnie Self, "Ain't I'm A Dog"] Self's biggest success as a performer came with "Bop-A-Lena", a song clearly intended to cash in on "Be-Bop-A-Lula", but ending up sounding more like Don and Dewey -- astonishingly, this record, which some have called "the first punk record" was written by Webb Pierce and Mel Tillis, two of the most establishment country artists around: [Excerpt: Ronnie Self, "Bop-A-Lena"] That made the lower reaches of the Hot One Hundred, but was Self's only hit as a performer. While Self was talented, he was also unstable -- as a child he had once cut down a tree to block the road so the school bus couldn't get to his house, and on another occasion he had attacked one of his teachers with a baseball bat. And that was before he started the boozing and the amphetamines. In later years he did things like blast away an entire shelf of his demos with a shotgun, get into his car and chase people, trying to knock them down, and set fire to all his gold records outside his publisher's office after he tried to play one of them on his record player and discovered it wouldn't play. Nobody was very surprised when he died in 1981, aged only forty-three. But while Self was unsuccessful and unstable, Albritten saw something in him, and kept trying to find ways to build his career up, and after Self's performing career seemed to go absolutely nowhere, he started pushing Self as a songwriter, and Self came up with the song that would change Brenda Lee's career - "Sweet Nothin's": [Excerpt: Brenda Lee, "Sweet Nothin's"] "Sweet Nothin's" became a massive hit, reaching number four on the charts both in the UK and the US in early 1960. After a decade of paying her dues, Brenda Lee was a massive rock and roll star at the ripe old age of fifteen. But she was still living in a trailer park. Because she was a minor, her money was held in trust to stop her being exploited -- but rather too much was being kept back. The court had only allowed her to receive seventy-five dollars a week, which she was supporting her whole family on. That was actually almost dead on the average wage for the time, but it was low enough that apparently there was a period of several weeks where her family were only eating potatoes. Eventually they petitioned the court to allow some of the money to be released -- enough for her to buy a house for her family. Meanwhile, as she was now a hitmaker, she was starting to headline her own tours -- "all-star revues". But there were fewer stars on them than the audience thought. The Hollywood Argyles and Johnny Preston were both genuine stars, but some of the other acts were slightly more dubious. She'd recently got her own backing band, the Casuals, who have often been called Nashville's first rock and roll band. They'd had a few minor local hits that hadn't had much national success, like "My Love Song For You": [Excerpt: The Casuals, "My Love Song For You"] They were led by Buzz Cason, who would go on to a very long career in the music business, doing everything from singing on some Alvin and the Chipmunks records to being a member of Ronnie and the Daytonas to writing the massive hit "Everlasting Love". The British singer Garry Mills had released a song called "Look For A Star" that was starting to get some US airplay: [Excerpt: Garry Mills, "Look For A Star"] Cason had gone into the studio and recorded a soundalike version, under the name Garry Miles, chosen to be as similar to the original as possible. His version made the top twenty and charted higher than the original: [Excerpt: Garry Miles, "Look For A Star"] So on the tours, Garry Miles was a featured act too. Cason would come out in a gold lame jacket with his hair slicked back, and perform as Garry Miles. Then he'd go offstage, brush his hair forward, take off the jacket, put on his glasses, and be one of the Casuals. And then the Casuals would back Brenda Lee after their own set. As far as anyone knew, nobody in the audience seemed to realise that Garry Miles and Buzz Cason were the same person. And at one point, two of the Casuals -- Cason and Richard Williams -- had a minor hit with Hugh Jarrett of the Jordanaires as The Statues, with their version of "Blue Velvet": [Excerpt: The Statues, "Blue Velvet"] And so sometimes The Statues would be on the bill too... But it wasn't the Casuals who Brenda was using in the studio. Instead it was the group of musicians who became known as the core of the Nashville A-Team -- Bob Moore, Buddy Harmon, Ray Edenton, Hank Garland, Grady Martin, Floyd Cramer, and Boots Randolph. Those session players played on every rock and roll or country record to come out of Nashville in the late fifties and early sixties, including most of Elvis' early sixties records, and country hits by Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, George Jones and others. And so it was unsurprising that Brenda's biggest success came, not with rock and roll music, but with the style of country known as the Nashville Sound. The Nashville Sound is a particular style of country music that was popular in the late fifties and early sixties, and Owen Bradley was one of the two producers who created it (Chet Atkins was the other one), and almost all of the records with that sound were played on by the A-Team. It was one of the many attempts over the years to merge country music with current pop music to try to make it more successful. In this case, they got rid of the steel guitars, fiddles, and honky-tonk piano, and added in orchestral strings and vocal choruses. The result was massively popular -- Chet Atkins was once asked what the Nashville Sound was, and he put his hand in his pocket and jingled his change -- but not generally loved by country music purists. Brenda Lee's first number one hit was a classic example of the Nashville Sound -- though it wasn't originally intended that that would be the hit. To follow up "Sweet Nothin's", they released another uptempo song, this time written by Jerry Reed, who would go on to write "Guitar Man" for Elvis, among others: [Excerpt: Brenda Lee, "That's All You Gotta Do"] That went to number six in the charts -- a perfectly successful follow-up to a number four hit record. But as it turned out, the B-side did even better. The B-side was another song written by Ronnie Self -- a short song called "I'm Sorry", which Owen Bradley thought little of. He later said "I thought it kind of monotonous. It was just 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry' over and over". But Brenda liked it, and it was only going to be a B-side. The song was far too short, so in the studio they decided to have her recite the lyrics in the middle of the song, the way the Ink Spots did: [Excerpt: Brenda Lee, "I'm Sorry"] Everyone concerned was astonished when that record overtook its A-side on the charts, and went all the way to number one, even while "That's All You Gotta Do" was also in the top ten. This established a formula for her records for the next few years -- one side would be a rock and roll song, while the other would be a ballad. Both sides would chart -- and in the US, usually the ballads would chart higher, while in other countries, it would tend to be the more uptempo recordings that did better, which led to her getting a very different image in the US, where she quickly became primarily known as an easy listening pop singer and had a Vegas show choreographed and directed by Judy Garland's choreographer, and in Europe, where for example she toured in 1962 on the same bill as Gene Vincent, billed as "the King and Queen of Rock and Roll", performing largely rockabilly music. Those European tours also led to the story which gets repeated most about Brenda Lee, and which she repeats herself at every opportunity, but which seems as far as I can tell to be completely untrue. She regularly claims that after her UK tour with Vincent in 1962, they both went over to tour military bases in Germany, where they met up with Little Richard, and the three of them all went off to play the Star Club in Hamburg together, where the support act was a young band called the Beatles, still with their drummer Pete Best. She says she tried to get her record label interested in them, but they wouldn't listen, and they regretted it a couple of years later. Now, Brenda Lee *did* play the Star Club at some point in 1962, and I haven't been able to find the dates she played it. But the story as she tells it is full of holes. The tour she did with Gene Vincent ended in mid-April, around the same time that the Beatles started playing the Star Club. So far so good. But then Vincent did another UK tour, and didn't head to Germany until the end of May -- he performed on the same bill as the Beatles on their last three nights there. By that time, Lee was back in the USA -- she recorded her hit "It Started All Over Again" in Nashville on May the 18th: [Excerpt: Brenda Lee, "It Started All Over Again"] Little Richard, meanwhile, did play the Star Club with the Beatles, but not until November, and he didn't even start performing rock and roll again until October. Brenda Lee is not mentioned in Mark Lewisohn's utterly exhaustive books on the Beatles except in passing -- Paul McCartney would sometimes sing her hit "Fool #1" on stage with the Beatles, and he went to see her on the Gene Vincent show when they played Birkenhead, because he was a fan of hers -- and if Lewisohn doesn't mention something in his books, it didn't happen. (I've tweeted at Lewisohn to see if he can confirm that she definitely didn't play on the same bill as them, but not had a response before recording this). So Brenda Lee's most often-told story, sadly, seems to be false. The Beatles don't seem to have supported her at the Star Club. Over the next few years, she continued to rack up hits both at home and abroad, but in the latter half of the sixties the hits started to dry up -- her last top twenty pop hit in the US, other than seasonal reissues of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree", was in 1966. But in the seventies, she reinvented herself, without changing her style much, by marketing to the country market, and between 1973 and 1980 she had nine country top ten hits, plus many more in the country top forty. She was helped in this when her old schoolfriend Rita Coolidge married Kris Kristofferson, who wrote her a comeback hit, “Nobody Wins”: [Excerpt: Brenda Lee, “Nobody Wins”] Her career went through another downturn in the eighties as fashions changed in country music like they had in pop and rock, but she reinvented herself again, as a country elder stateswoman, guesting with her old friends Kitty Wells and Loretta Lynn on the closing track on k.d. lang's first solo album Shadowland: [Excerpt: k.d. lang, Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, and Brenda Lee, "Honky Tonk Angels Medley"] While Lee has had the financial and personal ups and downs of everyone in the music business, she seems to be one of the few child stars who came through the experience happily. She married the first person she ever dated, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, and they remain together to this day -- they celebrate their fifty-seventh anniversary this week. She continues to perform occasionally, though not as often as she used to, and she's not gone through any of the dramas with drink and drugs that killed so many of her contemporaries. She seems, from what I can tell, to be genuinely content. Her music continues to turn up in all sorts of odd ways -- Kanye West sampled "Sweet Nothin's" in 2013, on his hit single “Bound 2” – which I'm afraid I can't excerpt here, as the lyrics would jeopardise my iTunes clean rating. And as I mentioned at the start, she had "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" go to number two on the US charts just last December. And at seventy-five years old, there's a good chance she has many more active years left in her. I wish I could end all my episodes anything like as happily.