Podcasts about things you do

Episode 142: Things You Do at 18 Should Not Be Repeated at 40…And Aliens! (The World's End 2013)Welcome back friends to another midlife crisis Episode of the Not Funny Guys Present's: Off the Reels, the internets #1 podcast on Public libraries with books on the history and alcohol. This is episode 142 of the internets most talked about movie podcast and Today we're taking an adventure back to a simpler time, a time when we could still drink 12 pints in a single evening. Today we're talking about 2012 Film, The World's End. A Film that teaches you why you can't do a pub crawl at 40 and actually drink 12 pints. We are your favorite Ne'er-do-wells the Not Funny Guys, I am your host Casey “The World's End”, i'm joined by my two co-host the other members of the Not Funny Guys, Dr. Jon “The Hot Fuzz”, & Eric “The Shaun of the Dead” and together we are the Not Funny Guys. Gentlemen it's that time again, that time when we meet up and discuss who has the best taste in film, it's time…TO….BE…..NOT FUNNY!!!!!!Next Week: Little Women (2019)Follow us, like us, comment, share and MORE!!!Questions?Email us at: NotFunnyGuys.OffTheReels@gmail.comFollow us on TikTok: @notfunnyguys1Follow us on YouTube: @notfunnyguyspodcastFollow us on Instagram: @not_funny_guys_presents Follow us on Twitter: @NotFunnyGuysPodFollow us on BlueSky: @The Not Funny GuysWant to chat?Casey:Twitter @vash_maxwellLetterbox @vashmaxwellBluesky: @caseyfranklinJon:Letterbox: @esoteric_evansInstagram @esoteric_by_designSubstack: estoericbydesign.substack.comEric:Letterbox: @eklyInstagram: @hothoney_comics Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dave and Milt explore the top 10 Billboard hits of December 8, 1990. They critique and analyze tracks from icons like Madonna, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and more obscure artists like Stevie B. The duo also delve into music history, dissecting samples and the origins of notable tracks. The episode features a fun limerick quiz on songs with 'time' in the title and leads to surprising conclusions about the week's biggest hits. A particularly contentious discussion wraps up with Dave and Milt differing on the final rankings, culminating in an unexpected verdict for the week's music quality.   Topics   01:31 Listener Feedback and Shoutouts 12:28 Top 10 Songs of December 8th, 1990 19:52 Madonna's 'Justify My Love' 30:29 Suzanne Vega's 'Tom's Diner' Remix 39:10 UB40's 'The Way You Do the Things You Do' 42:23 Debating the Merits of Cover Songs 43:45 Rodent Troubles and Heroic Deeds 46:43 Nostalgia and Music Trivia 47:56 Wilson Phillips and Music Royalties 53:15 Groove is in the Heart: A Deep Dive 01:04:16 Mariah Carey's Ballads and Yacht Rock 01:20:19 A Heartfelt Tribute 01:21:29 The Ballad Rule 01:22:10 Karaoke and Iconic Songs 01:24:03 Tattoo Mishaps 01:26:19 Bette Midler's Ballads 01:32:23 Whitney Houston's Evolution 01:41:42 The Postman Song 01:44:24 Recap and Reflections 01:58:30 Final Thoughts and Fun  

TWS News 1: Simple Advice – 00:26 The Animal You Worship Like – 2:46 Jingle Contest Promo – 7:12 TWS News 2: Tipping – 11:12 Worst Non-Serious Marriage Fight – 15:37 TWS News 3: Caffeine Intake – 22:26 Random Acts of Audio: Skillet/Wicked Mashup – 26:00 TikTok Theology: Kelly K on God’s Will – 28:26 Jingle Contest Promo – 31:37 Flashback Friday – 34:20 Rock Report: Hoda Kotb’s Retirement – 37:55 The Things You Do for Your Kid – 40:19 Good News Giddy Up – 45:22 You can join our Wally Show Poddies Facebook group at www.facebook.com/groups/WallyShowPoddies

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth Interview with the Legendary Marie Osmond About Harvey's guests: Today's special guest, Marie Osmond, is a superstar who's been dazzling audiences since she was 3 years old, as the only daughter in the legendary Osmond family.   At the age of 12, she recorded her first solo album “Paper Roses”, making her the youngest female to reach the #1 spot on TWO Billboard charts.  She was also the youngest female to co-host a television show, “Donny & Marie”, with her brother, Donny Osmond, which is one of the most popular and beloved TV variety shows of all time.   She's a multiple gold and platinum selling recording artist, with 12 solo albums and numerous Billboard chart-topping singles including “Paper Roses”, “In My Own Little Corner of the World”, “Who's Sorry Now”, “There's No Stopping Your Heart”, “Read My Lips”, and her iconic duets, not only with Donny, but “You're Still New to Me” and “Sweet Life” with Paul Davis, “It Wasn't Love Before” with Lee Greenwood, “The Way You Do the Things You Do” with Tom Jones, and, of course, “Meet me in Montana” with Dan Seals, which won the 1986 CMA Award for Duo of the Year.   Our guest has hosted numerous TV talk shows, she's had her own radio show, she's starred on Broadway in “The King and I”, and did national tours of “The King and I” and “The Sound of Music”, she's written THREE New York Times Bestselling books, she's starred in THREE Lifetime movies, she ran her own company for 25 years designing and sculpting the most beautiful dolls in the world, and her long running show with her brother Donny in Las Vegas won the award for the #1 Best Show for THREE years in a row.   Our guest is also a renowned philanthropist.  She co-founded the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, raising over 9 billion dollars and helping over 12 million children in local hospitals every year.    In 2018 she received “The Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service”.   She's currently on a North American concert tour playing to sold-out audiences and getting rave reviews.   And her latest album, entitled, “Unexpected”, debuted at #1 on Billboard's Classical Crossover chart, and has re-entered Billboard's Top Ten a staggering 29 times.   And I can't resist adding that our guest was the FIRST celebrity Barbie doll created by The Mattel Toy Company.   For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ To see more about Marie Osmond, go to:https://www.marieosmond.com/ https://www.facebook.com/marieosmondhttps://www.instagram.com/marieosmond/ http://twitter.com/marieosmondhttps://www.youtube.com/marieosmondvevohttps://www.pinterest.com/MarieOsmondOfficial/https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005288/ #MarieOsmond   #harveybrownstoneinterviews

Welcome back to Dem Vinyl Boyz, where we're about to embark on a musical journey through the soulful harmonies of the legendary Temptations and their iconic album, "The Temptations Sing Smokey." Released in 1965, "The Temptations Sing Smokey" is a testament to the golden era of Motown and the incredible vocal talents of this iconic group. The album is a tribute to the genius of Smokey Robinson, a fellow Motown artist, and a songwriting maestro. "The Temptations Sing Smokey" is more than just an album; it's a love letter to the soul. With tracks like "My Girl," "The Way You Do the Things You Do," and "You've Really Got a Hold on Me," it's a collection of timeless classics that continue to melt hearts and move feet. The Temptations, known for their impeccable harmonies and slick choreography, brought Smokey Robinson's songs to life with an energy and style that was uniquely their own. This album captures the essence of Motown and the spirit of an era that's synonymous with soulful, smooth melodies. The impact of "The Temptations Sing Smokey" was immense. It elevated the group's status within the Motown family and solidified their place in music history. The album's timeless tracks remain fixtures in the soundtrack of life, from weddings to movies. As we place the needle on this vinyl masterpiece, we invite you to join us on a journey through the harmonious and melodious world of "The Temptations Sing Smokey." We'll explore the Temptations' contribution to the Motown legacy, the enduring charm of the album, and the love and soul that continue to flow from their music. So, get ready to be serenaded by the timeless tunes of "The Temptations Sing Smokey" on this episode of Dem Vinyl Boyz.

-It's a Football Facts Monday….what does Bill have on his mind today?-Also, SONG OF THE DAY (sponsored by Sartor Hamann Jewelers): "The Way You Do the Things You Do" - The Temptations (1964)Show sponsored by GANA TRUCKINGAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Don't miss out on this dope interview with the legendary Gina Thompson!

10:00 PM | Pearl & The Oysters | Read the Room (feat. Laetitia Sadier) 10:02 PM | The Monkees | Mr. Webster10:04 PM | The New Pornographers | Angelcover 10:09 PM | Lael Neale | Faster Than the Medicine 10:13 PM | The Enfields | I'm for Things You Do 10:15 PM | The Hillbilly Moon Explosion | My Love for Evermore (feat. Mark 'Sparky' Philips) 10:20 PM | Grand Funk Railroad | I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home) 10:30 PM | Those Pretty Wrongs | Always the Rainbow10:36 PM | Bruiser and Bicycle | 1000 Engines 10:43 PM | boygenius | Satanist 10:48 PM | The Rolling Stones | Beast of Burden 10:53 PM | Jeff Beck | Shapes of Things (vocals - Rod Stewart)

Þórður Snær Júlíusson, ritstjóri Heimildarinnar, fór yfir stöðuna í deilu Eflingar og Samtaka atvinnulífsins, forstjóralaun voru rædd og eins staða flugfélagsins Play. Arthúr Björgvin Bollason fjallaði í Berlínarspjalli um skiptar skoðanir Þjóðverja um stuðning ríkisins við Úkraínu og hvort Þýskaland eigi frekar að beita sér fyrir því að koma á friðarviðræðum milli stríðandi fylkinga. Arthúr Björgvin sagði einni frá fimmtu árstíðinni - karnival-tímanum sem nú er haldinn hátíðlegur í borgum Þýskalands. Rósa Magnúsdóttir, prófessor í sagnfræði við Háskóla Íslands, þekki vel til stöðu mála í Rússlandi og rússneskrar sögu. Hún segir að það hafi heldur dregið úr stuðningi við innrásina og Vladimír Pútín Rússlandsforseta heima fyrir en vegna hertra laga þorfi fólk lítið að tjá sig opinberlega. Tónlist: The Way You Do the Things You Do ? The Temptations, I get along without you very well - Except sometimes - Nina Simone, Viva Colonia - Höhner, Why must your love well be so dry - Nina Simone. Umsjón: Björn Þór Sigbjörnsson og Guðrún Hálfdánardóttir.

Þórður Snær Júlíusson, ritstjóri Heimildarinnar, fór yfir stöðuna í deilu Eflingar og Samtaka atvinnulífsins, forstjóralaun voru rædd og eins staða flugfélagsins Play. Arthúr Björgvin Bollason fjallaði í Berlínarspjalli um skiptar skoðanir Þjóðverja um stuðning ríkisins við Úkraínu og hvort Þýskaland eigi frekar að beita sér fyrir því að koma á friðarviðræðum milli stríðandi fylkinga. Arthúr Björgvin sagði einni frá fimmtu árstíðinni - karnival-tímanum sem nú er haldinn hátíðlegur í borgum Þýskalands. Rósa Magnúsdóttir, prófessor í sagnfræði við Háskóla Íslands, þekki vel til stöðu mála í Rússlandi og rússneskrar sögu. Hún segir að það hafi heldur dregið úr stuðningi við innrásina og Vladimír Pútín Rússlandsforseta heima fyrir en vegna hertra laga þorfi fólk lítið að tjá sig opinberlega. Tónlist: The Way You Do the Things You Do ? The Temptations, I get along without you very well - Except sometimes - Nina Simone, Viva Colonia - Höhner, Why must your love well be so dry - Nina Simone. Umsjón: Björn Þór Sigbjörnsson og Guðrún Hálfdánardóttir.

WISCONSIN MUSIC PODCAST AMPLIFYING WISCONSIN MUSIC   Episode 96 Tim O'Grady Jr. Tim is an independent, singer-songwriter from rural Southern Wisconsin. He is described by Marc Gratz of Midwest Music and Musings podcast as being “as genuine and humble as the songs he writes. His music speaks to the realities of Midwestern life, because that is the life he lives, the life he knows. He just so happens to be a talented singer-songwriter who can bring those stories to life.” He has opened for several national and international touring artists and performed at venues like Summerfest (Milwaukee, WI), Bratfest (Madison, WI) The Room (Clinton, WI), Backroom Lounge (Riverton, IL), Roadside Bar & Grill (Nashville, TN) and hundreds more along the way. Tim's live shows are a blend of well-written originals, traditional country from just about every decade and a dash of classic rock. Examples of artists covered are Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, George Jones, George Strait, Alan Jackson, Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam, Cody Jinks, Tyler Childers, Colter Wall, Pink Floyd, The Eagles and many more. All of which are performed with Tim's smooth, classic vocals and skillful guitar picking. His singles “Have a Beer”, “Christmas at the Tavern” and “All the Things You Do” have received airplay and recognition in several countries including the United States, Canada, France, United Kingdom and Australia. All three of these songs are on his debut album, The Dollar Man, along with eight more tracks. You can find Tim's music on all digital platforms and at www.timogradyjr.com.   Website: http://www.timogradyjr.com   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/timogradyjrmusic   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timogradyjrofficial/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOHMzt6ySaXIWsM6vDhXs-Q   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5SKA8rELzZ4qGRma1dJ11e?si=9rm_CzeVRSeYy61CQwWpYA   ReverbNation: https://www.reverbnation.com/timogradyjr

Teacher Rule #18: “Never predict a student's future.” Chigger goes back 53 years to a torrid day in tenth grade when his English teacher told a story on herself. Thanks for listening. C'mon wid it!   MUSIC: Intro: “Yice Hole!” by CHIGGERTICKY   Outro: “Graymont Avenue” by CHIGGERTICKY including a seven-second snippet of “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” performed by THE TEMPTATIONS (Eddie Kendricks, lead vocal), composed by Smokey Robinson & Bobby Rogers

The New Album From The San Francisco Native Does A Great Job In Delivering Another Great Project. RATE: 9.5/10 Favorites: Private Vault, 5.0 Chronicles, Extra Of Um, I'm Him, Things You Do, Don't Check Me, Still Boomin, Another Day Pt.2, For Tonight, Larry's Diner, Breakfast In Monaco, Spaceships & Orange Juice, In My Pockets, Brand New Machinery, Appreciate It All Least Favorite: I'll Make Time Keep On Craving My Lil Junkies

1. Toco. - Bom Motivo. S – Tone Inc. 2022 Version.2. Lucky Sun. - Morning View.3.. Brian Auger's Oblivion Express Ft Savannah Auger. - Finally Found You Out.4.. Kuma. - Niffty Teddy.5. The Tibbs. - Ball & Chain. Instrumental.6. Jean Carne, Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad. - Black Rainbows.7. B.Bravo. - Midnight Rider.8. Michael Rault. - Neither Love Nor Money.9. James Alexander Bright. - Float.10. The Soultrend Orchestra Ft Alan Scafardi. - Outstanding.11. Fusion Funk Foundation. - Love & Emotion.12. Vito Lalinga Ft Nikaleo & Vi Mode Inc Project. - Betty.13. Tommy Stewart. - Bump & Hustle Music.14. Lostinwhite. - The Authority Of Love.15. The Jazzhunters. - Sunset Boulevard.16. DJ. Day. - A Place To Go.17. Natural Lateral. - Rendez Rio.18. Daniel Villarreal. - Ofelia.19. The Lo Greco Brothers. - Funquero.20. Ransel. - Islands.21. Nikitch & Kuna Maze. - Engatinhar. Instrumental.22. Belladonna. - Brazilian Beat.23. The Good Maurice. - Arapaima.24. Moodorama. - Viama. Short'n Funky Remix.25. Modaji. - Things You Do 4 Me. Kaidi Tatham Remix.26. Soul Quality Quartet. - Aphotic Marauder.

TODAY, nearly thirty years later, I know just how right Porky was. I am a perfectionist, and my quest for perfection has been the source of some of my happiest productions, some of my worst headaches, and a certain gurgling racket in my stomach that is, I suppose, the flourish announcing an incipient ulcer.     Perfectionism is, according to my old friend Mark Dorset, a characteristic of one of the two basic styles of human endeavor. These styles are, according to Mark, “movin' on” and “stayin' put.” Mark ought to know, I suppose. He has been trying for most of his adult life to describe how, and figure out why, people do the things they do. (Perhaps you have in your library How Come You Do the Things You Do?—the book derived from Mark's public television series of the same name, an analytical tour de force that rambles across a vast range of human endeavor, from cathedral-building to bartending; or perhaps you have on your coffee table Wit, Grace, and Style: Recognizing the Best of Human Endeavor from Its Artifacts, a book filled with beautiful photographs and epigrammatic snippets of text, now in its fourth revised edition, which, employed as a coffee-table object, is as important an element in modern interior decorating as Picasso's drawing of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.)     Mr. Summers carried the movin' on style to the point of drifting. Obviously, I work in the stayin' put style. Here I am, still in Babbington, trying to maintain a crumbling building against decay, against time, still rowing the waters of Bolotomy Bay that I rowed when I was a boy, still walking the streets I walked as a boy, retracing my steps in my memory, still in love with the woman I fell in love with when I was sixteen. Those who stay put, Mark says, are usually perfectionists. We're the ones who will hold on to a leaky old boat in the belief that someday we'll get the old tub fixed up just the way she ought to be. We're the ones who would gladly spend the second half of life in leisurely reconsideration of the first. We like our journeys short. We prefer having the end in sight when we set out, and that keeps us close to home and makes us shy of fog. We often have only one really big idea in an entire lifetime; if it arrives early, we're likely to spend a lifetime working on it, trying to get it right, trying to fill in all the details, fill every gap, stuff every crack. This idea may come to define us so completely that we are able to work up numberless metaphorical variations on it, find that it reaches every nook and cranny of our life as the KlamKleen dust did, find that it flavors the whole of ourselves, as the flavor of clam appears in every spoonful of a good clam chowder, find that we try to incorporate every experience in the expression of this idea, as a clam (a paragon of stayin' put behavior if there ever was one) draws into its siphon just about anything that will fit and tries to turn it into clam, a form of being that must seem, to a clam, perfection itself.WHEN MR. SUMMERS ARRIVED, I explained that I wanted to run through the new procedures with the Tars before the actual meeting began.     “I think it would help make the meeting run smoother if they knew what to do before we asked them to do it,” I said.     Mr. Summers looked down at me and squinted, in a manner that was becoming familiar, examining my expression for any sign of humorous intent.     “You do understand that the first meeting was, well, just the first meeting, don't you?” he asked. “We had to start somewhere.”     “Aye, sir,” I said. “I know that, but I want the meeting to be perfect.” I stood a little straighter and said with new pride: “I'm a perfectionist.”     “Well, Peter,” said Mr. Summers. “Perfection is something we poor mortals shall never see, I'm afraid.”     “But,” I said, “I figure that if we just try to make each meeting a little better—”     “Oh, no,” he said. “Not that. Not ‘Every day, in every way.'”     “‘Every day, in every way'?” I said.     “Yes,” said Mr. Summers.     “‘Every day, in every way' what?” I asked.     Another of those squints.     “‘We're getting better and better,'” said Mr. Summers.     “That's the idea!” I said.     He twitched, then shuddered as if he had been hit by a Ping-Pong ball from a toy bazooka gun.     “That was my father's motto,” he said. “He used to say it when he came to the breakfast table in the morning. He'd pound himself on the chest or pound me on the shoulder or squeeze my mother—she was quite a plump armful, my mother—and he'd say, ‘Every day, in every way, we're getting better and better.'”     “Maybe we should use it as the Tars motto,” I said. “What do you think?”     “I thought the motto was ‘Onward, ever onward.'”     “Oh, sure. But I can just rewrite that part and then retype it all and it will look just as if that was always—”     “No, Peter,” said Mr. Summers. “You know what the poet says, don't you?”     “Well—” I said, unsure which of the poet's sayings Mr. Summers might have in mind. “The poet” was a device my father sometimes used, so I recognized it at once. “The poet” might not be a poet at all. My father's saying, “You know what the poet says, don't you?” was a way of introducing something he didn't want to be quoted as having said, like “Don't fart into a tailwind,” or something the author of which he didn't know.     “‘The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on,'” Mr. Summers said. “‘Nor all your piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line.' That's what the poet says.”     “Well, it's really not that hard,” I said. “It's a nuisance, but—”     “No, Peter,” he said.     “But it would give a Tar something to cling to in rough seas.”     “No, Peter.”     “Aye, sir.”In Topical Guide 220, Mark Dorset considers Projects: The Quest for Perfection in Them and Poetry: Finding Wisdom in from this episode.Have you missed an episode or two or several?You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you've missed.You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.You'll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It's a pdf document. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

Dr. Samantha Joel with Luvze talks about how your partner's commitments make you more invested Episode 1177: The Things You Do for Me: How Your Partner's Investments Make You More Committed by Dr. Samantha Joel of Luvze Luvze was founded on the premise that relationships are a central part of life and that our understanding of relationships benefits from research and scientific evidence. They also believe this information is most beneficial when presented in an engaging and entertaining fashion. They take research findings from the fields of psychology, family studies, sociology, communication, evolutionary biology, and others, and put them in a format that you can use. The original post is located here: https://www.luvze.com/the-things-you-do-for-me-how-your-partners-investments-make/  BeachBound is a one stop travel shop that is redefining travel, as customers can book worldwide beach vacations including flights, hotels, transfers and excursions in one place. Visit Beachbound.com to book your next beach vacation Visit Me Online at OLDPodcast.com Interested in advertising on the show? Visit https://www.advertisecast.com/OptimalRelationshipsDailyMarriageParenting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

Savannah Arroyo: How To Motivate Yourself To Do the Things You Do and Getting To Your Goal Meet Savannah Arroyo, founder at The Networth Nurse, co-founder at Willow investment Group and a full-time Registered Nurse in Los Angeles, California. Savannah is also a real estate investor and invests primarily in value-add multifamily syndications. Working as a Registered Nurse has taught her how to thrive in a fast paced, interdisciplinary team of medical professionals then, later on, was immediately drawn to multifamily syndications due to the many similarities to her career in nursing. As per Savannah, syndicating in a real estate investment requires great attention to detail, the ability to problem solve and the highest level of communication.   What You Will Discover:  [03:27] Shares what made her enter the real estate world  [04:50] Savannah’s first purchase and her experience with the investment she made [07:45] Talks about her second deal which was real estate syndication [14:49] Savannah’s drive to the things she does, her motivation and goals [21:44] Knowing what you want to be able to establish the life you want to live [23:36] Provides tips on how she balances her time between family and work [24:45] Savannah mentions that she stopped drinking and her switching to a healthier lifestyle [31:15] Savannah’s most recent engagement related to real estate and her potential appearance in Nashville Relevant Links:  Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/savannah-arroyo-063ab3106/ Website: https://thenetworthnurse.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Networth-Nurse-103921808196277 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWd-RdXmvfL1yCp5ddK40mA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenetworthnurse/ Linktree: www.linktree.com/thenetworthnurse   #podcast

ntro: DMX-How's It Goin Down Verse of the Day: Drake- U With Me? My Week in a R&B song: Pip Millet- Love the Things You Do "J what you been on?" Ravyn Lenae ft. Smino- Spice Readings: The Alchemist {106-116}

The Things You Do for Love

***Riddim 02*** 01. Joe Gibbs & The Professionals - Chapter Three 02. Brother Culture - Chant Dem Down (Dub) 03. Macka B - Dub It Like Tubbys 04. Gentleman's Dub Club - Light the Fuse 05. Brother Culture - Dreadlocks Thing Dub 06. Dr. Ring Ding - Copper and Zinc 07. Thievery Corporation, Racquel Jones - Road Block (feat. Racquel Jones) (Thievery Remix) 08. Dub Addiction - Cambodia (Full Edit) 09. MATO - Da Funk Dub 10. Jstar, DJ's Choice - Warrior (feat. Dark Angel) 11. Hempress Sativa, A'Nubia & Simonese Iyata - Top Rank Queens 12. Mattiel - Guns of Brixton (Rub a Dub Style' Pt.2) 13. Chronixx - Here Comes Trouble 14. Ondubground - Jugglin (feat. Green Cross) 15. Collie Buddz - One Love is Action (feat. Nattali Rize) 16. Echo Minott / DJ Air Afrique - Mash It Again 17. Ancient Astronauts - All of the Things You Do (with Tippa Irie)

On This Episode: The crew talks about the 'Friend Zone', team bonding + much more. Also: We are joined in-studio by J Champ to discuss hip-hop and technology. Featured Music: XB Valentine "No Drama" Sahy "Things You Do" J Champ "Menace Til I'm Finished" Ominous The Monster "Eliza's Son"

1- SINTONIA MR. HURRICANE BAND 2- TEABAG BLUES – COREY HARRYS (03:59) 3- RUN SINNER RUN – GUY DAVIS (03:38) 4- ST. LOUIS BLUES – BIG MAMA ( 04:40) 5- BIG MAMA´S DOOR – ALVIN YOUNGBLOOD HART (03:51) 6- YOU DON´T KNOW NOTHIN´ABOUT LOVE – MARCIA BALL (04:44) 7- THINGS YOU DO – FRANK FROST (02:33) 8- THE THRILL IS GONE – B.B. KING (05:24) 9- THE TRUTH HURTS – KENNY NEAL (04:28) 10- ALL OF YOUR LOVE – MAGIC SAM (03:49) 11- LITTLE WING – OH WELL (04:57)

1- SINTONIA MR. HURRICANE BAND 2- TEABAG BLUES – COREY HARRYS (03:59) 3- RUN SINNER RUN – GUY DAVIS (03:38) 4- ST. LOUIS BLUES – BIG MAMA ( 04:40) 5- BIG MAMA´S DOOR – ALVIN YOUNGBLOOD HART (03:51) 6- YOU DON´T KNOW NOTHIN´ABOUT LOVE – MARCIA BALL (04:44) 7- THINGS YOU DO – FRANK FROST (02:33) 8- THE THRILL IS GONE – B.B. KING (05:24) 9- THE TRUTH HURTS – KENNY NEAL (04:28) 10- ALL OF YOUR LOVE – MAGIC SAM (03:49) 11- LITTLE WING – OH WELL (04:57)

Mentioned in the Episode Attachment styles: secure, ambivalent, anxious & disorganized  https://www.amazon.com/Why-You-Do-Things-Relationships/dp/1591454204/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=why+you+do+the+things+you+do&qid=1583114076&sr=8-1 Complete listener's survey: https://forms.gle/YrS63k4QVznYF2Rv7 #20 Why You Do the Things You Do  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/20-lovejones-why-you-do-the-things-you-do/id1479303676?i=1000464526627      

Ashley's information: Instagram: @wittynicki | Facebook: Ashley Necole | Youtube: WittyNicki Mentioned In the Episode  You Alone are God by Myron Butler 1 John 4:7-8  Jeremiah 1:8  1 Corinthians 13: 4-7  Episode 20: Why You Do the Things You Do  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/20-lovejones-why-you-do-the-things-you-do/id1479303676?i=1000464526627 Episode 21: Celibacy https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/21-celibacy-with-shelbyindia/id1479303676?i=1000465124927 Complete listener's survey  https://forms.gle/q2SKBkZWRdyvGBFG7 email questions and comments to mentallywholepod@gmail.com   

My next guest is Dr. Richard Pfau. He came to understand human behavior the long way.   He started in the "hard sciences" at the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and studied engineering at Johns Hopkins. He spent several years with the U.S. Naval Engineering Experiment Station helping to silence submarines and other ships. He got his bachelors in psychology from the University of Baltimore, graduating summa cum laude by the way, and went on to the Peace Corps in Nepal. That experience led to him to a PhD in science education from the University of Pittsburgh. Then more work in Nepal and 11 years in Africa plus teaching at the University of Connecticut and private consulting as a human resource development specialist. He has been around the block.   Rich's many years of work and research have been aimed directly at understanding human behavior and have culminated in his new book "Your Behavior - Understanding and Changing the Things You Do."    In this episode we talk about how you can: analyze your behavior and change it if you want to understand why others behave the way they do see how your perceptions direct your behavior get more control of your life More about Rich and his work at: https://richardpfau.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardpfau/

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

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

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

“Entrepreneurship is tough… So you better have a bloody good reason for doing it that's beyond the money. You gotta find your purpose, because otherwise you will throw in the towel.” -Dov Baron   Jay says this is one of his favorite episodes to date--here he chats with Dov Baron, a powerhouse coach, best-selling author and speaker.  They cover: why every entrepreneur needs to be pissing people off, how to create a purpose-driven culture (even if you're a solopreneur), navigating entrepreneurial shame, identifying the rational lies in our decision making, benefiting from massive setbacks, and so much more.....   Visit https://jayrooke.com/078-Dov-Baron/  for resources and show notes.    Check out my website: https://jayrooke.com/     Follow me on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TribeCreator/   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayrooke/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JayRooke    Episode Highlights: 01:08 Why Be A Purpose-Driven Entrepreneur 08:48 How to Find Your Purpose 13:17 Who’s the Enemy? 19:25 Shame 28:06 Remember This When You Fall 33:01 Growth vs Evolution 40:58 Get Up and Do Something Mindless and Categorize the Things You Do 48:58 Get a Team!

Groove On Air Vol 120 Tracklist: 01. Ancient Astronauts - All of the Things You Do (with Tippa Irie) 02. Alias - Opus Ashamed 03. Art Of Tones - A Comfort Zone 04. The Herbaliser - Submarine 05. Mr. Oizo - Rythme Plat 06. OG BLACK & GUAYO - Bugutu (CULISUELTA BASS SDJ) 07. yossi fine & ben aylon - Hu Alla - Amir Pery Remix V2 08. Tracey Thorn - Sister 09. F a t b a c k - Mr. Bassman (Pied Piper 12 Inched Breakage) 10. Luke Vibert - Combination Reggae Dancing 11. Rodney Hunter - No Stoppin 12. Khruangbin - Maria También 13. A Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick It (The Owl Remake) 14. Al Green - Here I Am (Dj Snatch edit)

Groove On Air Vol 120 Tracklist: 01. Ancient Astronauts - All of the Things You Do (with Tippa Irie) 02. Alias - Opus Ashamed 03. Art Of Tones - A Comfort Zone 04. The Herbaliser - Submarine 05. Mr. Oizo - Rythme Plat 06. OG BLACK & GUAYO - Bugutu (CULISUELTA BASS SDJ) 07. yossi fine & ben aylon - Hu Alla - Amir Pery Remix V2 08. Tracey Thorn - Sister 09. F a t b a c k - Mr. Bassman (Pied Piper 12 Inched Breakage) 10. Luke Vibert - Combination Reggae Dancing 11. Rodney Hunter - No Stoppin 12. Khruangbin - Maria También 13. A Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick It (The Owl Remake) 14. Al Green - Here I Am (Dj Snatch edit)

The Temptations es una banda estadounidense formada en Detroit, Estados Unidos. Este grupo vocal estadounidense está considerado uno de los más exitosos en la historia de la música.1?2? Ha vendido decenas de millones de álbumes? y es famoso por ser una de las formaciones más relevantes de Motown Records. Su repertorio incluye una gran variedad de géneros: R&B, doo-wop, funk, disco, soul, The Temptations fue el Primer grupo de Motown que ganó un Grammy. Seis Temptations: Dennis Edwards, Melvin Franklin, Eddie Kendricks, David Ruffin, Otis Williams y Paul Williams entraron en el prestigioso Rock and Roll Hall of Fame en 1989. Algunos de sus clásicos son: “My Girl", "War", "Ain't Too Proud to Beg", "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" o “The Way You Do the Things You Do"

Songwriters Hall of Fame and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Smokey Robinson talks about his Motown legacy and his string of timeless hits, including “Shop Around,” “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” “My Guy,” “The Way You Do The Things You Do,” “Cruisin’,” and more! PART ONE Scott and Paul chat about Pearl Snap Studios and share the behind-the-scenes details of how the Smokey interview came about. PART TWO -  8:07 mark Scott and Paul sit down with Smokey to get the inside scoop on the first song he ever wrote; how his love of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers gave him his identity; the songwriting advice from Berry Gordy that changed his life; which song he calls his international songwriting anthem; the collaborator he referred to as his "music mountain;" the hit he wrote onstage; the tragic story behind his most personal song; the artists he had in mind when he wrote "Shop Around" and "Being with You;" which of his hits took less than 30 minutes to write - and which one took five years! ABOUT SMOKEY ROBINSON Ranked in the Top 5 of Rolling Stone magazine’s Greatest Songwriters of All Time, Smokey Robinson is an American Musical Icon. Practically synonymous with the legendary Motown Records, Robinson wrote most of the hits associated with his own group, The Miracles, including “Shop Around,” “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me,” “Going to a Go-Go,” “Ooo Baby Baby,” “The Tracks of My Tears,” “I Second That Emotion,” “Baby, Baby Don’t Cry,” and “The Tears of a Clown.” Beyond writing for himself, Smokey penned a long list of hits for other Motown artists, including “You Beat Me to the Punch” and “My Guy” for Mary Wells; “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” “My Girl,” and “Get Ready” for The Temptations, “Don’t Mess with Bill” and “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game” for The Marvelettes; and “I’ll Be Doggone” and “Ain’t That Peculiar” for Marvin Gaye. In later years, Smokey launched a successful solo career, scoring self-penned hits with “Baby That’s Backatcha,” “Quiet Storm,” “Cruisin’,” and “Being With You.” The Grammy-winning songwriter, producer, and performer was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He is a National Medal of Arts Recipient and a Kennedy Center Honoree. Smokey has additionally been honored with the Library of Congress’ Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the Soul Train Heritage Award, the BET Lifetime Achievement Award, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and countless other honors. Five of his songs are on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s list of 500 Songs That Shaped Rock & Roll, and five have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Four of his compositions can be found among Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The long list of other artists who’ve drawn from the Smokey Robinson songbook includes The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, The Supremes, The Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, George Benson, D’Angelo , Ne-Yo, and more.

Tracklist: 1) Spaceships - Elujay [@elujayimprl] 2) The Things You Do (feat. Russell Ferrante) - Moonchild [@thisismoonchild] 3) Breakfast (feat. Fleur Earth) - Miles Bonny [@milesbonny] 4) Amorous - Jesse Boykins III [@jesseboykinsiii] 5) Submotion - Singularis [@singularismusic] 6) Till It's Done (Tutu) - D'Angelo & The Vanguard [@dangelomusicofficial] 7) The Law (feat. Mac Miller & Rapsody) - Ab-Soul [@ab-soulofficial] 8) Glow - Kreaem [@kreaem] 9) One Device, One Method, One Thing - Tall Black Guy [@tallblackguyproductions] 10) All Bad (feat. Mereba) - JID [@jidsv] 11) Trouble - Omar Apollo [@omarapollo] 12) Sippin - Kreaem 13) Stop Trying To Be God - Travis Scott [@travisscott-2] 14) Get You - Kreaem 15) Twelve - Abhi//Dijon [@abhidijon] 16) Navy Blue - Hasani

NOTE: My apologies for the bad audio on my end during the phone zone. Some technical difficulties may occur during recording. Unfortunately, this time it wasn't caught in early enough to remove the issue.For this show, @latashakmason and I speak about the official launch of her book Zana the Brave. We’re in the phone zone with Qin Mobley, the illustrator of the book and the book editor, Monique N. Matthews. In the 2nd half of the show, we focus on the book’s subject matter of bullying. We have a conversation with Youngstown City School District social worker, Cynthia Pincham-Little and the Executive Director of Trumball Family Fitness, Paulette Edingon. To get in touch with the illustrator and book editor, you can reach out to them below:Qin Mobley - IG: @moniquenmatthews / (e) mnmathews@rocketmail.comMonique N. Matthews - https://www.qpideros.com/ IG: @qin_mobArtists’ songs on the show is Cherri V w/ “Things You Do” (@cherrivoncelle), Lil Shady w/ “Momma” (@lil_shady_330) and D’Luckz w/ “My Way” (@dluckzofficial).GCOM radio can be located on Lyfeblood.com, Facebook, Youtube, iTunes and GoogleplayMusic provided by: Chilled CowRemember the Music Lyfe feature on lyfeblood.com. This will allow artists to share their music projects with their fanbase and be properly compensated for it. Come check lyfeblood.com for more info.If you're an artist that wants to submit music, please submit 2 songs, 2 JPGs (large size), an artist bio to submissions@lyfeblood.com.Even if you’re not an artist, lyfeblood.com can serve you. Join lyfeblood.com, be a lyfer, practice dollar power and find financial independence with your member network!#lyfeblood #gcomradio #musiclyfe #globalcommunity #dollarpower #soundcloud #itunes #googleplay #youtube #entertainment #music #hiphop #randb #entertainment #zanathebrave #bullying #schools #children #schoolshooting

Knowing what you want is a question which plagues much of life. It underpins many modern day anxieties that we carry about bubbling beneath the surface. On the surface, the idea of “wanting” can appear selfish and a slave to a never ending list of grass is greener desires. But there is a deeper insight that we can gain. And in this episode we move the question along from "do you actually know what you want?” to the more subtle questions that I believe we're actually asking: "do you truly know what brings you joy and contentment? Are you actually living a life that reflects those things?" The Thing is Not the Thing I know some amazing musicians who dreamed of making a living pursuing music full time. They were fortunate enough to be able to do it. Literally living their dream. But after a while they burned out. Things didn't feel quite like they imagined. They make very good money touring the country, playing function gigs and corporate events. This is what they wanted, and yet it left them wanting. Something was out of whack for them. What they thought was the thing wasn't actually the thing. “I want to win the lottery” There are many people who want to win the lottery. Most of us would be pretty happy with it I guess. But it's not really winning the lottery that we want. It's what winning the lottery would make possible for us. This might sound like semantics but there is an important difference, which does matter. A musician might think she wants to make a full time living from her music. But that's the lottery level. The important question to ask herself is why. What would making a living from music make possible? Many of us don't go to that level, and we just assume that the thing we want is the thing we want. But really it could be the freedom to create, to travel, to explore different places while touring, to write music in different styles and with different people. And actually, in pursuing the thing that makes this possible, we are actually closing the door on the thing we truly want deep down. It's the same with many different things: Become a doctor (because I want to make my parents proud) Start an online business (because I want to do something that matters with my life) Get married and have kids (because I want to fit in with society) Be rich and famous (because I don't want to have to worry about anything anymore) Become president (because I want everyone to love me) Our underlying wants often have little or nothing to do with the way we choose to pursue them. And yet we place all our hope and belief in the appearance level. Being or doing these things are not going to ensure the deeper want is met. But understanding what your deeper want is (and recognise those more dysfunctional motives), will enable you to live more at peace with yourself and able to create a life that reflects a much more positive set of values and desires. In this episode we explore how to determine what you actually want, and unpack the following: Why Not to Listen to Those Who Assume They Know What You Want How to Follow to Your Inner-Compass When and How to React to the Things You Do and Don't Want in the Examples of Other People How to Hatch a Plan to Live a Life that Reflects Your Deep Wants Over to You Do you know what you want your life to look like and reflect? How do you keep from getting distracted by all the competing things, trying to get you to desire other stuff? Please leave your response in the comments below. Support the Podcast and get bonus extras:

Welcome to a very special mix for this month’s podcast. It’s all my own stuff from dsev music. I just decided that with the 9 year anniversary of the first DSEV Music release it was time to do a special mix. This is the first dsev music mix and I hope you guys enjoy it. Remember,” I’m a producer and sensitive about my shit!” ( A subtle shout out to Ms. Badu…listen and you will know) Tracklist: 01. Sacrifice - Original [dsev 30] coming soon 02. My Love - Souldub [dsev 28] 03. What A Day - Original [dsev 29] coming soon 04. Heaven’s Groove - [dsev 26] 05. Baby Girl - [dsev 31] coming soon 06. Funky Thing -[dsev 20] 07. House You - [dsev 21] 08. Come On Feet [dsev 31] coming soon 09. 1961 - [dsev 25] 10. Every Day - Flowz Groove [dsev 27] 11. Praise - [dsev 25] 12. Gotta Go - [dsev 22] 13. Kick It - [dsev 24] 14. Something’s Got Me - [dsev 26] 15. Baby Don’t Leave - [dsev 26] 16. Like A Lady - [dsev 24] 17. Things You Do - [dsev 22] 18. Shake Your Thing - [dsev 24] 19. Traffic - [dsev 25] 20. Mr. President - Flowzalicious Dub [dsev 22] 21. Saxy Groove - [dsev 21] 22. Soulful - [dsev 20] 23. Nevermore - [dsev 25] 24. Come To Me - [dsev 25]

--{ War on the Meek by Gov. Control Freak: "A Few Thoughts Regarding Persuasion, Should the Government Be into Modification Of Your Behaviour, The Essence of You, Which is Personality, The Things You Do, This Leads to Societies Regimented, Led by Obsessionals, Generally Demented, Who Never, Of Course, Follow the Rules, Special Privileges Means Rules are for Fools, And Fools We are for Being Obedient, As We Move in a Herd, Peer Pressure Expedient, Yet Deep in Our Minds We Truly Know, We Should Tell Control-Freaks Where to Go" © Alan Watt }-- Illusion of "Democracy" and Voting - British Parliament, Privy (Private) Cabinet, Round Table Societies - U.S. Congress on British Model - Unelected Appointees - EU Amalgamation Done in Secret. Internet to Collect Your Data and Personality Profile - Information Wars, Provocateurs and Leaders Provided for Sheeple - Data Mining in Forums, "Scraping" to Collect Personal Details for Marketers. Government into Behaviour Modification, Use of Social Approval and Disapproval - "War on Smoking", Meanwhile Daily Aerial Spraying. Tiananmen Square Massacre - Obama Sells C-130s to China - Farce of Nobel "Peace" Prize - Search for Those "Anti-Government"- Darpa Sleuthing Out "Disloyal" Troops for "Intervention" (Pre-Arrest) - Fines for Unlocked Cars - Civil to Criminal Infractions - Gov. into Your Home for Inspection and Monitoring - Training through Culture Industry and Schooling - Soviet System for Robots (Not Humans). Total North American Integration - African Trading Bloc. (See http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com for article links.) *Title/Poem and Dialogue Copyrighted Alan Watt - Oct. 12, 2010 (Exempting Music, Literary Quotes, and Callers' Comments)

The Famines!Vue Wave 26: The FaminesThe Famines explain why it took them so long to play a showBed Tracks:Glenn BrancaLesson, No. 1 for Electric GuitarLesson, No. 1CocoRosieBy Your SideLa Maison de Mon ReveCANFather Cannot YellMonster MovieFamines Songs:Gimme Some NumbersLive in StudioJuly 14, 2008The Rumour Mill has a Name and a FaceLive in StudioJuly 14, 2008I Like Some of the Things You Do2 x 7"IndependentTWA Flight 553Live in StudioJuly 14, 2008