Podcast appearances and mentions of tommy sands

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2024 58:42

Episode 309, My Favorite Albums, samples a dozen LPs that were Sam Waldron's favorites when he was young. Performers include Tommy Sands, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, The Platters, Mel Torme, Tony Bennett, and The Beatles.... Read More The post Episode 309, My Favorite Albums appeared first on Sam Waldron.

“JAN STERLING: STAR OF THE MONTH” (029)

From Beneath the Hollywood Sign

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2024 31:49

EPISODE 29 - “Jan Sterling: Old Hollywood Star of the Month” - 04/01/2024 Our “Star of the Month” is the fabulous JAN STERLING, who was married to our March “Star of the Month,” PAUL DOUGLAS. Blonde, beautiful, and often deadly on screen, Sterling started in theatre, but made a name for herself portraying tough dames, femme fatales, and sexy seductresses in films such as “Caged,” “Ace In the Hole” and “The High and the Mighty.” However, her upbringing was quite different from these wayward women she played so convincingly; she was actually from a very wealthy and prominent family. She had a stellar career, but many heartbreaks off camera. This week, we discuss the life and career of this most memorable lady. SHOW NOTES: Sources: Jan Sterling: Everything You Need To Know (2014), by Billy Vasquez; The Encyclopedia of Film Actors (2003), by Barry Monush; The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema (1983), by Ann Lloyd and Graham Fuller; Quinlan's Illustrated Registry of Film Stars (1986), by David Quinlan; “Jan Sterling, 82, Blonde Actress Who Made Film Noir A Specialty” Obituary, March 29, 2004, The New York Times; IMDBPro.com; Wikipedia.com; Movies Mentioned: Tycoon (1947), starring John Wayne, Laaine Day, and Anthony Quinn; Johnny Belinda (1948), starring Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres, and Agnes Moorhead; Caged (1950), starring Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorhead, and Faye Emerson; Appointment With Danger (1950), starring Robert Walker and Joan Leslie; The Mating Season (1950), starring Gene Tierney, John Lund, and Thelma Ritter; Ace In The Hole (1951), starring Kirk Douglas; Rhubarb (1951), starring Ray Miland; Flesh and Fury (1952), starring Tony Curtis; Sky Full of Moon (1952), starring Split Second (1953), starring Stephen McNally; Pony Express (1953), starring Charlton Heston and Rhonda Fleming; The Vanquished (1953), starring John Payne and Coleen Gray; Alaska Seas (1954), starring Robert Ryan; The High and the Mighty (19543), starring John Wayne, Robert Stack, Claire Trevor, and Laraine Day; Woman's Prison (1955), starring Ida Lupino, Pyllis Thaxter, Audrey Totter, and Howard Duff; Female on the Beach (1955), starring Joan Crawford and Jeff Chandler; The Harder They Fall (1956), starring Humphrey Bogart and Rod Steiger; 1984 (1956), starring Edmond O'Brien and Michael Redgrave; The Female Animal (1958), starring Hedy Lamar, Jane Powell, and George Nader; Kathy O (1958), starring Dan Duryea and Patty McCormick; High School Confidential (1958), starring Russ Tamblyn and Mamie Van Doren; Love In A Goldfish Bowl (1961), staring Fabian, Tommy Sands, and Majel Barrett; The Incident (1967), Starring Martin Sheen, Beau Bridges, and Tony Musante; The Minx (1969), starring Robert Roden and Shirley Parker; First Monday in October (1981), Starring Walter Matthau and Jill Clayburgh; --------------------------------- http://www.airwavemedia.com Please contact sales@advertisecast.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tommy Sands is moderating a session at the Summer School

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Episode 272, Sing Boy Sing

songs sing do right tommy sands

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2023 56:42

Episode 272, Sing Boy Sing, focuses on Tommy Sands' 1958 motion picture and what it did for his career. Songs include Your Daddy Wants to Do Right, Soda Pop Pop, Blue Ribbon Baby, Teenage Crush,... Read More The post Episode 272, Sing Boy Sing appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show! 6.21.23

Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show!

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 26, 2023 243:40

239. Go man, GO! Join the Aztec Werewolf, DJ Del Villarreal as we begin to get excited for your big Rockabilly Summer! Enjoy NEW music from Snakebite, The Hicksville Bombers, Sirocco Bros. with Holly Anne, The Hub Caps, Isaac Webb Trio, Spuny Boys, The Hicks Men, Lean Canteen, Nicholas Campbell, The Barnestormers, Marcel Bontempi, Ray Black & The Flying Carpets and MORE! As always, a huge assortment of fabulous vintage tunes from Sonny Burgess, Jerry Cole & The Spacemen, Bob Luman, Tommy Sands, Warner Mack, The Everly Brothers, Nervous Norvus, Benny Joy, Pat Cupp, The Keil Isles, Dale Hawkins and, of course, PLENTY MORE! A fun "bowling" song set in honor of my first DJ gig at the Bowlero Lanes & Lounge this Thursday night. Hot rod action and plenty of hot requests for all the good rockin' boys & girls on DJ Del Villarreal's "Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show!" -good to the last bop!™Please follow on FaceBook, Instagram & Twitter!

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Down Extra: Tommy Sands

The County Measure

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 17, 2023 4:56

Singer and songwriter Tommy Sands takes a measure of his county and introduces his new song "Down Today"

singer tommy sands

Episode 218, “Songs About Dreams,”

dreams songs frank sinatra performers doris day patsy cline pat boone bobby darin chet atkins tommy sands

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2022 57:56

Episode 218, “Songs About Dreams,” includes 20 recordings of songs about dreams and dreaming. Performers include Frank Sinatra, Tommy Sands, Doris Day, Hank Locklin, Chet Atkins, Patsy Cline, Bobby Darin, and Pat Boone. 45... Read More The post Episode 218, “Songs About Dreams,” appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Episode 187: Come To The Sunshine 195 - Al Capps

Come To The Sunshine

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2022 117:21

In an episode first aired on May 2, 2022: DJ Andrew Sandoval explores the vast studio world of songwriter/producer/arranger, Al Capps. Capps was a mainstay of the Los Angeles session scene and worked on as many records as more well-known figures like Hal Blaine, but his talents ranged even further: from vocals, to co-writing hits like "She's Just My Style" and arranging songs for nearly a hundred artists in the 1960's alone.On this episode, Sandoval spins selections from Capps' work with The Gas Company; Gary Lewis & The Playboys; The Bantams; Them; London Phogg; Lesley Gore; Beethoven Soul; Brian Hyland, Don Scardino; Bobby Vee & The Strangers; The Morning Glories; Dino, Desi & Billy; The Lennon Sisters; Peter Courtney; The Surprise Package; The Everly Brothers; The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band; Pat Shannon; Sparks; Jesse Lopez; The Vogues; The First Edition; Frankie Randall; The Doodletown Pipers; The Blackwell Manner; Joey Paige; Bob & Kit; Thomas & Richard Frost; Fargo; The Roosters; Freddy Cannon; Shiny Brothers; Danny Hutton; Tommy Sands; The Committee; The Green Beans; Davy Jones; The Congregation; Belland & Somerville; The Honeys and the Fault Line.

Episode 211, “More Favorite 50s Music,”

music frank sinatra elvis presley performers sam cooke brenda lee percy faith tommy sands

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2022 57:59

Episode 211, “More Favorite 50s Music,” presents 20 of Sam Waldron's favorite recordings from the decade when he became a teenager. Performers include Frank Sinatra, Tommy Sands, Brenda Lee, Percy Faith, Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley,... Read More The post Episode 211, “More Favorite 50s Music,” appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Nancy Sinatra

Let's Talk To Lucy

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2022 24:25

In this three part episode, Lucy speaks with a 24 year old Nancy Sinatra and her husband at the time, Tommy Sands, about how they met and eventually married. Let's Talk To Lucy is produced by SiriusXM. Click here for a special SiriusXM subscription offer!https://www.siriusxm.com/offers/lets-talk-to-lucy

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Find Your Sparkle with Jen and guests Tara Antler & King Gabriel

Find Your Sparkle with Jennifer A Stewart, Professional Speaker, Transformation Guide & Trainer

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2022 75:57

Join me and my guests Tara Antler and King Gabriel for Find Your Sparkle with Jen to be inspired, influenced and impacted! This couple is so full of wonderful energy, you'll feel their positivity! We had a great conversation and shared a small part of their story and how they have reached and touched millions of people globally while sharing the stage with some of the greats. Tune in for inspiration and to put a smile on your face and a great start to your weekend! Please share - you never know who needs to hear this and let's face it, we can all use a little more sparkle and things to make us smile! The ripple effect is huge! Originally aired on CIOE 97.5FM this episode includes a bonus segment of goodness! Tara Antler is the Co-founder of the Academy of Light with her husband, where they empower Families, Light-Workers, Leaders and Business Owners to consciously create thriving, aligned and purpose-led lives! As an Intuitive Healer and Soul Coach since 2002, Tara has soulfully worked with over 15, 000 clients one-on-one to clear the "ick and stick" of life, connect to the highest self, and create a life that beautifully flowing and abundant! Tara has shared her wisdom teachings to over 20 million on various stages around the world and was a mentor in The Coaching Movie "LEAP" with John Gray, Jack Canfield & Marci Shimoff. She is a published author of "The Healing Manual" and has successfully built several healing businesses in Canada and online. Tara has trained as a Holistic Health Care Practitioner, Sound Healer, Theta Healer, Reiki Master and Yoga Teacher. A full-circle healer-highlight was giving Louise Hay of Hay House an intuitive healing session while she visited Toronto! Tara has been mastering meditation and yoga since she was 14! A practice her and her husband use daily as they navigate being soulful parents to their 5 year young daughter and 3 year young twin boys! King Gabriel is a world renowned Spiritual Teacher, successful Healing Practitioner, and best selling Author of the Novel " A Journey of Riches". He's known for having performed successful healings in many countries on His global journeys including multiple remissions of extreme cases of disease, and healing demonstrations for the Northern Irish heads of Government. He has delivered discourses, workshops and lectures to crowds of up to 26 million on Spirituality and Meditation, shared the stage with many of the Great Spiritual Leaders and Influential Figures of this generation including Rev. Michael Beckwith of the Agape International Spiritual Center (also in "The Secret" - the movie), Lisa Nichols, Iyanla Vanzant, John Gray, Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder, Siedah Garrett, Will I am and The Black eyed Peas, Steve Harvey, Rob Schneider and Bryan Callen, The Johnstons of Ireland, Tommy Sands and many Others. In His own words He states His Mission as such; "I help People to make the impossible dream possible!" He guides Others toward the complete awareness of the amazing wellspring of creative energy that is already within Them and seeking to be expressed as Their Lives. Social media links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascension_academy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/lightascensioncollective

Episode 187, “Rock & Roll Ala Carte,”

rock rock and roll champs elvis presley performers carte buddy holly robert parker gene vincent belmonts pearl bailey tommy sands

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 27, 2021 58:02

Episode 187, “Rock & Roll Ala Carte,” presents 22 rock-and-roll recordings from the 1950s. Performers include The Champs, Dion and the Belmonts, Elvis Presley, Robert Parker, Pearl Bailey, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly, Tommy Sands, Brenda... Read More The post Episode 187, “Rock & Roll Ala Carte,” appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Episode 141: Vietnam War: The Music – Brothers In Arms

Danny Lane's Music Museum

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2021 117:32

I'm Danny Lane, the curator of The Music Museum. This exhibit is called The Vietnam War: The Music. Our mission here at the Music Museum is to support all Vietnam Veterans and those who serve the United States, then and now. The title, Brothers In Arms, is chosen to recognize the military participation and sacrifices of Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan as our allies during the war. It's all about the brotherhood and the music. We thank you all for your service. - - - -Early-on, in Vietnam, soldiers turned to music as a lifeline to the home front they'd promised to defend. Rock & roll (R&R) really became rest & relaxation (R&R) for the troops. It was this music that got you through another day, another day closer to going home. Music was a big part of a soldier's down time that centered within the hooches of Vietnam. The music that was popular during the Vietnam War was, and is still, therapy. There are songs you can remember, and then there are songs you REALLY remember. Many of these songs will have a special meaning for you. A place, a brother, a time gone by. This program is for you, the Vietnam Vets, who will never forget. - - - - This episode contains the Big & Rich song, The 8th of November which tells the tale of Niles Harris, a soldier in the 173rd Airborne Brigade of the United States Army during Operation Hump in South Vietnam on November 8, 1965. - - - -Our goal with The Vietnam War: The Music is to honor the fallen and the survivors with the music that got them through “just one more day”. - - - -For your service and your sacrifice, this is The Vietnam War: The Music. - - -This episode is called “Brothers In Arms” - - -- - - Join the conversation on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008232395712 - - - or by email at dannymemorylane@gmail.com - - - - You'll hear:1) Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits2) A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan3) Semper Fi by Trace Adkins4) Okie From Muskogee by Merle Haggard & The Strangers5) The Man Who Couldn't Cry by Loudon Wainwright III6) The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel7) I Once Was a Soldier by Garth Porter8) When The Master Calls The Roll by Rosanne Cash (w/ Rodney Crowell, Amy Helm, Kris Kristofferson, John Prine and Tony Joe White)9) One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) by Mick Hucknall (lead singer of Simply Red)10) In My Life by Judy Collins11) 500 Miles Away From Home by The Kingston Trio12) If the Sun Comes Up by Trace Adkins13) Who Knows Where the Time Goes? by Fairport Convention14) I Was Only 19 (A Walk in the Light Green) by John Schumann and The Vagabond Crew15) Puff (The Magic Dragon) by Peter, Paul And Mary16) Lean On Me by Bill Withers17) Ring Of Fire by Eric Burdon & The Animals18) Living Legend by The Highwaymen (Nelson/Cash/Jennings/Kristofferson)19) 8th of November by Big & Rich [duo composed of Big Kenny and John Rich]20) Forever Young by Bob Dylan21) After the War by Wes Carr & Lance Corporal Elizabeth Smith22) Arlington by Trace Adkins23) Born in the U.S.A. [Live] (Springsteen on Broadway) by Bruce Springsteen24) He Was My Brother by Simon & Garfunkel25) Where Have All The Flowers Gone by Dolores Keane, Tommy Sands & Vedran Smailovic

Lesley Mitchell-Clarke - Strange Tales from Past Lives...

Everything Imaginable

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 19, 2021 120:36

ABOUT... Lesley Mitchell-Clarke and LIGHTWORK HYPNOSIS Lesley Mitchell-Clarke is a consulting hypnotist, graduate of The Ontario Hypnosis Centre, member of The National Guild of Hypnotists with a special certification in Past Life Regression. Lesley and her hypnosis clinic, LIGHTWORK HYPNOSIS are also focused on the use of hypnosis for the positive improvement of all issues pertaining to artists of all disciplines (actors, dancers, visual artists, writers, musicians, vocalists, etc.) and the unique demands that they deal with in their daily lives and careers. Lesley Mitchell-Clarke is uniquely qualified to work with artists, as there is hardly an area of show business in which she has not worked. For some time, she has been a familiar name in the realm of media relations, promotion and production of musical and theatrical events, as well as arts journalism. For the past eighteen years she has been based in New York City and Toronto, specializing in jazz specific music publicity. In addition to her work as a media consultant, she has also worked in virtually all phases of the entertainment business, beginning as a ten year old principal actress with the Los Angeles area “Sherman Oaks Children's Repertory Theatre” – along with classmate, Melanie Griffith. Born into a show business family, Lesley's late father, Whitey Mitchell, was a veteran jazz bassist and Emmy Award winning comedy writer and producer, and her Uncle was the late jazz bass legend, Red Mitchell. In the scope of her own career, she has worked as a busy singer/dancer, and traveled with a number of name acts, including Mitzi Gaynor, Tommy Sands, Fabian and Robert Goulet, and has appeared in numerous television shows, features and TV Movies, including “Queer as Folk”, “The Jeffersons”, “Happy Days”, “Laverne and Shirley” and “Divorce Court.” After touring the Orient extensively with her own musical group, “Main Squeeze”, Lesley owned and operated a recording studio in Los Angeles where many jazz projects and much of the vocal work for Hanna-Barbara Cartoons was recorded. Lesley has also worked in production on NBC's “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson”, “The Hollywood Squares” and “The Midnight Special” as well as numerous productions for Merv Griffin, Dick Clark, Bob Hope, Mark Goodson and Chuck Barris. Throughout her career as a publicist, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke has also been busy as an arts and music writer, contributing to publications such as L.A. Jazz Scene, Hot House – Florida and New York, The Manhattan Mirror, The Whole Note, TheLiveMusicReport, CODA and Jazz Canadiana.com, as well as penning a number of CD liner notes, including a set for Freddy Cole's recording, To the Ends of the Earth (Fantasy Records). Lesley was an associate, and later an account executive with the highly regarded New York City public relations firm, Third Floor Media (founded by Helene Greece). During her tenure there (as well as independently) she handled a variety of accounts for many major recording labels including projects for Concord Records, Atlantic, Sharp-Nine, GRP, Koch, Brownstone, DRG, RCA Victor/BMG, Nonesuch Records, Telarc, Columbia, and most of Warner Bros. jazz, covering both international CD promotions, tours and “live” performances. A few of the major jazz artists with whom she has worked directly include Marian McPartland, Joshua Redman (for whom she was involved in a landmark endorsement hook-up between fashion giant DKNY and Redman), Marian McPartland, Barbara Carroll, Janis Siegel (of The Manhattan Transfer), Blossom Dearie, Fred Hersch, Larry Goldings, Brad Mehldau, Wallace Roney, Jeanie Bryson, Terence Blanchard, Kevin Mahogany, Cyrus Chestnut, Ray Anderson and Helen Merrill. While at Third Floor Media, she was also the on-going publicist for the world famous jazz venue, “The Village Vanguard”, and helped orchestrate the memorable media event celebrating the historic club's 60th anniversary. Other major projects included acting for several years as the New York press representative for The Montreal Jazz Festival, The Beacon Theatre/New Audiences Concert Series, The Playboy Jazz Festival, national publicity for the “Harmon Learn to Listen Program, featuring Wynton Marsalis”, and numerous events in conjunction with John Schreiber's Office (JVC/Festival) and the “The Jazz Times Convention”. After her successful stint with Third Floor Media, Lesley began her own New York based media consultancy, and for the past ten years has developed a reputation as one of the most effective music-specialized publicists working today. Some of the artists whom she has represented include the late Susannah McCorkle, Jackie & Roy, Blossom Dearie, Winard Harper, Giacomo Gates, Catherine Dupuis, Helen Merrill, Peter Leitch, Billy Drummond, Lee Rittenauer, David Benoit, Javon Jackson, Janis Siegel, Daryl Sherman, Kitty Margolis, John Alcorn, Susie Arioli, The Distillery Jazz Festival, The Markham International Jazz Festival, The Toronto JVC Jazz Festival, Emilie-Claire Barlow, Dave Young, Lenny Solomon, Remi Balduc, Bernard Primeau, Daniel Barnes, Steve Amirault, Karen Plato, Oliver Jones, “Cadence”, Sarah Jerrom, Jean Beaudet, Nehring/Koller & Braid, Michel Mele, multi-Grammy nominee Mark Murphy and the recent Festival events, “The Toronto Summer Chamber Music Festival”, and the hugely successful “Art of Jazz Celebration 2007”, for which she was the Associate Producer. Lesley Mitchell-Clarke currently resides in Toronto, and has continued to work with artists both locally and throughout the United States, Japan and Europe – now expanding her work to include Hypnosis. She also continues to write for various arts related publications in addition to working as an actor. She has recently appeared in commercials for McDonalds, “Miller Light”, “Bounce”, and in the television show, “Queer as Folk” as well as the award-winning feature film, “Pay in Full”, written and directed by award-winning actor, Walter Alza and the short film “Clive Houston, We Have a Problem” (Winner – Best Foreign Film – Nevada Film Festival 2010). Continuing and upcoming projects for Lesley Mitchell-Clarke include the expansion of her hypnosis clinic, Lightwork Hypnosis, to include international past-life regression workshops and monthly podcasts (available through lightworkhypnosis.com) which will feature in-depth interviews with some of the most interesting and controversial figures in the areas of metaphysics, spirituality and paranormal phenomena. Lesley continues to contribute to “e-Jazz News” as a writer and video commentator, and regularly hosts a weekly entertainment round-up, “On the Scene”, which airs every Thursday morning on CKLN FM 88.1 (ckln.fm) as part of “The Jazz Bungie”. Lesley has been married for twenty years to the world-renowned, award-winning Canadian jazz drummer and Member of the Order of Canada, Terry Clarke. They have two teenage sons, Kristopher and Kyle.

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From Darkness to Light. Nancy Sinatra, on dealing with Tommy Sands' drug abuse, the death of her husband Hugh Lambert and the loss of her dad, Frank Sinatra.

The Joe Jackson Interviews

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2021 18:09

From 2000-2007 I did a series of interviews with people who had gone through dark periods in their lives, survived and in some cases had epiphanies. I hoped these interviews would help illuminate the lives of readers. In 2020, when COVID-19 began to shadow the world, I put the best of these interviews in an eBook called From Darkness to Light. This interview, which isn't in the book, has Nancy Sinatra, whose music I have loved since I was a child, refect on hits like 'These Boots Are Made For Walking,' 'Sugar Town' - "did your dad know it was a drugs song!" - and darker times involving Tommy Sands abuse of prescription drugs, the loss of her second husband Hugh, to cancer, and the death of her dad

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Episode 177, “Favorite 50s,”

performers buddy holly pat boone marty robbins kingston trio skeeter davis tommy sands

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 3, 2021 58:02

Episode 177, “Favorite 50s,” features 21 of Sam Waldron's favorite music from the 1950s. Performers include Pat Boone, The Four Preps, Skeeter Davis, Marty Robbins, Tommy Sands, Buddy Holly, Betty Ann Blake, The Kingston Trio,... Read More The post Episode 177, “Favorite 50s,” appeared first on Sam Waldron.

TPOE 204: Clare Sands

The Point of Everything

Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2021 31:00

Cork-born fiddler, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Clare Sands has recently released the second of her four-part series Tírdreacha agus Fuaimdreacha (Landscapes and Soundscapes). The song itself is called ‘Abair Liom do Rúin (Tell Me Your Secrets)' and features Steve Cooney and Tommy Sands. The first part was 'Carry My Song', featuring Susan O'Neill. Clare talks about the origins of the project, the making of ‘Abair Liom do Rúin' in particular, including the video which was filmed in freezing conditions up a mountain in Donegal, her musical journey and lots more. Outro music: Clare Sands - '‘Abair Liom do Rúin'

cork sands donegal soundscapes tommy sands

Episode 32: Forgiveness (Part 3)

Music For The New Revolution

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2021 64:32

The 32nd episode of the "Music For The New Revolution" podcast, produced by David Heitler-Klevans and Rodney Whittenberg, features more music and discussion related to the topic of forgiveness. Musical artists include David Roth, Anne Hills, Tom Paxton, Bob Gibson, Giuseppe Verdi, Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Tommy Sands, Fred Small, Acoustic Blender, Justin Solonynka, Palatine, Rodney Whittenberg, and The Who, plus an interview (with music) with John Flynn. You can hear the complete interview with John Flynn here: https://soundcloud.com/mftnr/john-flynn-full-interview Songs include: 1. David Roth: That Kind of Grace (by David Roth/Anne Hills) 2. Tom Paxton, Anne Hills & Bob Gibson: Let the Band Play Dixie (by Bob Gibson/Dave North) 3. "V'Ho Ingannato, Colpevole Fui" from "Rigoletto" (by Verdi) 4. Tommy Sands: There Were Roses 5. John Flynn: Two Wolves 6. Fred Small: Hills of Ayalon 7. Acoustic Blender: Even You (by Justin Solonynka) 8. Palatine: Love (by Rodney Whitttenberg)

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Clare Sands- amhrán úr eisithe aici

Bladhaire - RTÉ

Play Episode Listen Later May 14, 2021 7:23

'abair liom do rúin' amhrán úr le Clare Sands, Steve Cooney agus Tommy Sands

sands aici amhr tommy sands

Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show! 4.21.21

Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show!

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 184:28

31. We gotta whole lotta rockin' going on in here... just for you! Experience the finest in both old school 50's rock n' roll as well as the latest in kool kat rockin' sounds! Your pal, the Aztec Werewolf™, DJ Del Villarreal, is serving up a big batch of rockabilly on a Wednesday night including fresh cuts from Willie Barry & The California Hot Shots, Texas T & The Shine Runners, Darrel Higham, Kyle Eldridge & The Kentucky Cowhands, The Wenzdaze, Betty Sue & The Hot Dots, Geoffrey Miller, Trevor Lake & Sarah Mai! Balance the latest with some of the GREATEST -hear classics from Freddy Fender, Tommy Sands, Marvin Rainwater, Jimmy & Johnny, Buddy Knox, The Champs, Glen Glenn, Vince Everett, Sleepy LaBeef & Webb Pierce to boot! Come for the rockin', stay for the rollin'! Dig a bonus TIKI-BILLY set and say Happy 74th Birthday to Iggy Pop in the Wednesday nite edition of "Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show!" -seriously rockin'!™

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Episode 2053: #20-53: Farewell 2020

Sing Out! Radio Magazine

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 30, 2020 58:30

2020 has been a year like no other. Everyone is glad to see 2021 arrive. For this week’s program, we celebrate the coming new year in a traditional fashion with serious and silly songs about the occasion. We’ll hear Peter and Lou Berryman, Mary Harris, Tommy Sands, Waterson-Carthy, Skinner & T'witch, Kate Taylor and many more. Let’s all celebrate the passage of time … this week on The Sing Out! Radio Magazine. Episode #20-53: Farewell 2020 Host: Tom Druckenmiller Artist/”Song”/CD/Label Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways Anthony Newett / “When the Saints Go Marching In” / Strut / Rittenhouse Lou & Peter Berryman / “New New Year Year” / Just One Angel v2.0 / Yellow Tail Nowell Sing We Clear / “Carol for the New Year” / Hail Smiling Morn / Golden Hind Reid Jamieson / “This Could Be the Year” / Songs fo a Winter's Night / Self Produced Amanda Anne Platt & the Honeycutters / “(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding” / Christmas on a Greyhound Bus / Organic Various / “First Day of the Year” / The Gathering / Sycamore Road Mary Harris / “Happy New Year Blues” / Where Will You Be On Christmas Day / Dust-to-Digital Skinner & T'witch / “The Drinking Song” / The Bells of Christmas / Self Produced The Yellow Room Gang / “Happy New Day” / Happy New Day / Yellow Room Anthony Newett / “Oh Dem Golden Slippers” / Strut / Rittenhouse Loreena McKennitt / “The Mummer's Dance” / Live in Paris and Toronto / QR Tommy Sands / “Whiter Shade of Pale” / An Irish Christmas with Tommy Sands / Green Linnet Waterson-Carthy / “New Year Carol-Residue” / Holy Heathems amd the Green Man / Topic Denise Jordan Finley / “Dona Nobis Pacem” / Solstice / Dome Island Margot Krimmel & Beth Leachman-Gadbaw / “Song of Peace” / Icy December / Whitebirds Kate Taylor / “Auld Lang Syne” / Auld Lang Syne / Front Door Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways

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Babes In Toyland

Medfield College Film Society

Play Episode Play 17 sec Highlight Listen Later Dec 20, 2020 91:53

In this our first Christmas Special we watch the 1961 Disney studio extravaganza Babes In Toyland, directed by Jack Donohue and starring Ray Bolger, Annette Funicello, Tommy Sands, and a who's who of Disney studio talent from the time. Join us as we bravely navigate the Forbidden Forest of this wild and wacky spectacle, just be sure to bring along proper protection lest you sink into the sea....Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @medfieldfilm for the latest updates.

disney christmas special babes in toyland annette funicello forbidden forest ray bolger tommy sands

Copperplate Time 335

Copperplate Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 15, 2020 88:28

Copperplate Time 335 presented by Alan O'Leary www.copperplatemailorder.com 1. Bothy Band: Green Groves/Flowers of Red Hill. 1975 2. Trian: The Little Man With the Brown Shoes/Duck’s in a Row/ The Butterfly Reel/Pauline Conneely’s. Trian 2 3. Noel Hill & Tony Linnane: Old Tipperary/Down the Back Lane. Geantrai 4. John Doyle: The Rambler From Clare. The Path of Stones 5. The Teetotalers: Greenfields of Woodford/The Nightingale/ The Castle. The Burren Backroom Series 6. Urnua: Sporting Galway/The White Plains/Threadneedle Reel. Urnua 7. Eilis Kennedy: Petticoat Whalers So Ends This Day 8. Tommy Peoples: Ban Chnoic Eireann O/Trip to Durrow. Tommy Peoples 9. Paddy Carty & Mick O’Connor: Paddy Kelly’s/Mullingar Lea. Sha 34017 10. Paddy Keenan: Colonel Fraser/My Love in in America. Paddy Keenan 11. Terence O’Flaherty: Return to Camden Town. Download 12. Maeve Donnelly & Tony McManus: Return to Camden Town/The Girl Who Broke My Heart. Flames on the Banks 13. Gerry Diver/Christy Moore: Fulham Broadway. Speech Project 14. Tommy Sands: Every County on the Land. Fair Play to You All15. Kevin Burke: Ballydesmond Polkas. Sligo Made 16. The Outside Track: Sweet Lover of Mine. Rise Up 17. John Wynne & John McEvoy: Pr1de of the West/Kilglass Lake. Pride of the West 18. Joni Mitchell: In France They Kiss on Mainstreet. Shadows & Light 19. Sandy Denny: Late November. I’ve Always Kept A Unicorn 20. Bothy Band: Green Groves/Flowers of Red Hill. 1975v

america land west mine banks castle stones butterflies flames main street reels joni mitchell sha fair play mcmanus flutes red hill danu banjos jigs fiddles camden town sandy denny kevin burke accordions polkas trian ceili tommy sands paddy kelly durrow copperplate tommy peoples

Cavebabble 273: The 2020 Masked Babblers Road Trip Part One

Cavebabble Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2020 69:35

The Cavebabblers don masks, pack their own food, and head off on a multi-state, socially-distanced road trip. Part one highlights include giant sculptures, fossil beds, extreme storm damage, high train trestle hiking, and the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk. Join us! This episode is brought to you by Star Trek Is Real. Song Clips: 1) Road Trip by Sons of Zion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqpXHmPICf0 2) Technology Song (The Robot Dance) by Rockin’ English https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R3dZ01Px_8 3) Statue by Tommy Sands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzwvh9cG9bM 4) Mark Twain by the Kingston Trio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5QuCyMMrO0 5) Crossing State Lines by Redd Byrdd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxVAOdLcb1w 6) Sasquatch by Ice Cube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7lOmfQPHN0 7) Stop the Car by Fatherson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2ghwOLUnVo 8) Star Trek: TOS Bridge Background Ambience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnU2qn6-hz4&t=318s 9) Fossilization by Science Rap Academy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpRWq-CgXHU 10) No Vacancy by OneRepublic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXiuVQ-GgA4 11) Baby's Building a Tower Into Space by Adventure Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVgOC3ZicGQ 12) Standing in a Field by Pybus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE4bn628-9c 13) Motel 6 by Cub https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie4zlmjkgmU 14) Take a Walk by Passion Pit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZX6Q-Bj_xg 15) After the Storm Blows Through by Maddie & Tae https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge6d6UUxk3M 16) The Gnome Song by Ian Gott https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ2ATiz8_jY 17) Bird Song by Have Fun Teaching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLjMhZuqKqo 18) I'm From Minnesota (The Minnesota Anthem) by Alex Frecon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H31bBU4EL44 19) Fly Away by TheFatRat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubgFZnja_HE 20) Lake Superior by Song of the Lakes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41ibjT9qEJg

Tommy Sands Interview

Dying to Live

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2020 56:38

Tommy Sands has been described by respected Sing Out! magazine as "The most powerful songwriter in Ireland if not the rest of the world."

ireland sing out tommy sands

The Garden Party" Radio Show Songwriter Series # 7 - "The Songs of Pete Seeger"

Thursday Americana Blues Country and Folk Show with Ian Boyle and John Jenkins on Vintage Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2020 60:01

The Garden Party" Radio Show Songwriter Series # 7 - "The Songs of Pete Seeger" Playlist · John Gorka - The Water Is Wide" · Bruce Cockburn - Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season) · Dolores Keane, Tommy Sands & Vedran Smailovic - Where Have All the Flowers Gone · Billy Bragg – My Father’s Mansion · Greg Brown - Sailing Down My Golden River · Kim Harris and the Magpies - Those Three Are on My Mind · Nanci Griffiths - If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song) · Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome · Casey Neil – Old Father Hudson – Sailing Down Dirt Stream · Anne Hills – I Come and Stand at Every Door · Larry Long and Pete Seeger – Well May The World Go

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Vietnam War: The Music - S. 2 / E. 6 – Brothers In Arms

Danny Lane's Music Museum

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 31, 2020 117:32

I’m Danny Lane, the curator of The Music Museum. This exhibit is called The Vietnam War: The Music. Our mission here at the Music Museum is to support all Vietnam Veterans and those who serve the United States, then and now. The title, Brothers In Arms, is chosen to recognize the military participation and sacrifices of Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan as our allies during the war. It’s all about the brotherhood and the music. We thank you all for your service. - - - - Early-on, in Vietnam, soldiers turned to music as a lifeline to the home front they’d promised to defend. Rock & roll (R&R) really became rest & relaxation (R&R) for the troops. It was this music that got you through another day, another day closer to going home. Music was a big part of a soldier’s down time that centered within the hooches of Vietnam. The music that was popular during the Vietnam War was, and is still, therapy. There are songs you can remember, and then there are songs you REALLY remember. Many of these songs will have a special meaning for you. A place, a brother, a time gone by. This program is for you, the Vietnam Vets, who will never forget. - - - - This episode contains the Big & Rich song, The 8th of November which tells the tale of Niles Harris, a soldier in the 173rd Airborne Brigade of the United States Army during Operation Hump in South Vietnam on November 8, 1965. - - - - Our goal with The Vietnam War: The Music is to honor the fallen and the survivors with the music that got them through “just one more day”. - - - - For your service and your sacrifice, this is The Vietnam War: The Music. - - - This episode is called “Brothers In Arms” - - - - - - Join the conversation on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008232395712 - - - or by email at dannymemorylane@gmail.com - - - - You’ll hear: 1) Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits 2) A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan 3) Semper Fi by Trace Adkins 4) Okie From Muskogee by Merle Haggard & The Strangers 5) The Man Who Couldn't Cry by Loudon Wainwright III 6) The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel 7) I Once Was a Soldier by Garth Porter 8) When The Master Calls The Roll by Rosanne Cash (w/ Rodney Crowell, Amy Helm, Kris Kristofferson, John Prine and Tony Joe White) 9) One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later) by Mick Hucknall (lead singer of Simply Red) 10) In My Life by Judy Collins 11) 500 Miles Away From Home by The Kingston Trio 12) If the Sun Comes Up by Trace Adkins 13) Who Knows Where the Time Goes? by Fairport Convention 14) I Was Only 19 (A Walk in the Light Green) by John Schumann and The Vagabond Crew 15) Puff (The Magic Dragon) by Peter, Paul And Mary 16) Lean On Me by Bill Withers 17) Ring Of Fire by Eric Burdon & The Animals 18) Living Legend by The Highwaymen (Nelson/Cash/Jennings/Kristofferson) 19) 8th of November by Big & Rich [duo composed of Big Kenny and John Rich] 20) Forever Young by Bob Dylan 21) After the War by Wes Carr & Lance Corporal Elizabeth Smith 22) Arlington by Trace Adkins 23) Born in the U.S.A. [Live] (Springsteen on Broadway) by Bruce Springsteen 24) He Was My Brother by Simon & Garfunkel 25) Where Have All The Flowers Gone by Dolores Keane, Tommy Sands & Vedran Smailovic

Discussion with Tommy Sands

This Week with David Rovics

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2020 63:14

From my living room in Portland, Oregon, I spent the hour talking with my friend Tommy Sands in Rostrevor, County Down, in Ireland. There were a few technical glitches with the connection, but mostly it worked, and we talked about current events in Ireland, the US, and elsewhere, and various little anecdotes from Tommy's very interesting life and times as a global traveler from a part of the world that was, for many decades, a hot spot for global news coverage.

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Episode 12: Corona Virus/Covid-19 (Part 1)

Music For The New Revolution

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2020 66:44

The 12th episode of the "Music For The New Revolution" podcast features music and discussion about the current health crisis around the Corona Virus (Covid-19). Don't worry: we followed social distancing rules - David & Rodney recorded this podcast from their respective locations via Zoom! Musical artists include Peter Alsop, Kim & Reggie Harris, Mister Cumbia, Grace Morrison, Monika Ryan, Tommy Sands & Pete Seeger, Stuart Stotts, and John Toso, as well as the Bee Gees, Eric Carmen, The Georgia Satellites, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, Ben Lee, Peggy Lee, Tom Lehrer, John Lennon, Pavement, and The Police. Please consider supporting this podcast on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/musicforthenewrevolution

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Muhammad Al-Hussaini: A higher quality of disagreement.

Guardians Of The Flame Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2020 64:47

Sheikh Dr Muhammad Al-Hussaini came to the attention of many when in 2015 he chose to defend in court the Pentecostal pastor Rev Jim McConnell from Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle, Belfast’s biggest church. McConnell had preached a sermon where he categorised Islam as “heathen” and “satanic” and a “doctrine spawned in hell”. Yet Muhammad defended the pastor and developed a friendship with him. In court he defended McConnell’s right to free-speech. Muhammad is a Muslim from London with not only a love for Irish folk music but a commitment to building relationships of peace with Christians and Jews and those of other faiths from his own. Over the years he has visited Rostrevor a number of times and has become a strong friend of ours. One of Muhammad’s firm convictions is that we should not seek a bland peace between faiths. Rather we should be able to rigorously debate and defend our differences in a way that does not demonise but builds understanding through authentic dialogue. He calls this a “higher quality of disagreement”. This phrase has become one of the key back bones to a series of events at the centre Jonny leads called An Cuan. These events have been convened by Tommy Sands, Jonny Clark and www.artsawonder.com a local community arts and reconciliation initiative.

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Tommy Sands

Guardians Of The Flame Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2020 79:49

Tommy Sands is one of Ireland’s most well known folk singers. He has played both with some of the biggest names in music around the world and has also spent time teaching prisoners to write songs. Tommy is also a peace activist and has been an important voice for reconciliation in Northern Ireland since the 1970’s. Many of his songs are calls for peace, like “There were Roses”, and the song he wrote with Pete Seeger “The Music of Healing”. Tommy and his wife and I and a small collective in our village have also been involved in the last 5 years in pursuing a “higher quality of disagreement” among religious leaders and political leaders in Ireland. Tommy has a voice of kindness and magnanimity, but one that is also passionate to include those who are left out in society. It’s a privilege to interview him for this podcast, the video of which can also be watched on our Guardians Of The Flame YouTube channel. Tommy’s book and music can be ordered through his website tommysands.com including his brilliant latest cd “Fair Play To You All”. ** We’re grateful for all of your support through Patreon and by rating or reviewing these podcasts on iTunes or wherever you listen to them. We’re also hugely grateful to the Community Relations Council of Northern Ireland for their support of this season of podcasts.

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Babes in Toyland (feat. Corinne Elena) | #10

Disney+Podcast+

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2020 61:22

We've got a very special guest this week -- actor and roommate extraordinaire, Corinne Elena! They join us to discuss 1961's Academy Award Nominated musical acid trip of a movie, Babes in Toyland!Join Sam, Arden, and Corinne as they delve into the wild costume design, try to figure out if Mother Goose is a sex traitor, and *sigh* as always, navigate problematic depictions of race.Thank you to Solomon Swerling for developing our podcast art, and to Harvey Trisdale for the use of their song "Corners" off their self-titled EP. Harvey Trisdale: https://spoti.fi/35RF9pnSubscribe and tell your friends!Find us on Twitter & IG at: @DisneyPod PlusSam is on Twitter at: @WhoopingKaufSam is on IG at: @WhoopingKauf23Arden is on Twitter & IG at: @ardenjurskisCorinne is on Twitter at: @corinneelenaCorinne is on Instagram at: @seawitch.jpg

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Windy City Irish Radio - February 5, 2020

Windy City Irish Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2020 65:29

Tune in this week for lots of brand new music from across the pond as the lads spin tracks from Dublin's All Folk'd Up and Black Bank Folk, a new song from the latest Van Morrison (Official) release Three Cords and the Truth and from Hozier's newest Wasteland Baby! There's also some great tunes and song from our very own Pauline Conneely, NYC rockers The Prodigals, The High Kings in advance of their two soon-to-be-sold-out shows at the IAHC, Dervish with Imelda May, Adam Agee & Jon Sousa, songwriter extroidanaire Tommy Sands and the late great Ronnie Drew. Tune in to Windy City Irish Radio each and every Wednesday from 8PM - 9PM on WSBC 1240AM or catch our podcast here www.windycityirishradio.com

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Episode 62: “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 22, 2019

Episode sixty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley, and at his relationships with Colonel Tom Parker, Leiber and Stoller, his band members, and the film industry. 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 Santa Claus is Back in Town, also by Elvis, which ties in more than most to this episode. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller’s side of the story well. There are many, many books about Elvis Presley out there, but the one I’m using as my major resource for information on him, and which has guided my views as to the kind of person he was, is Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick, generally considered the best biography of him. The Colonel by Alanna Nash is a little more tabloidy than those two, but is the only full-length biography I know of of Colonel Tom Parker. This box set contains all the recordings, including outtakes, for Elvis’ 1950s films, while this one contains just the finished versions of every record he made in the fifties. And Jailhouse Rock itself is well worth watching. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Colonel Tom Parker, from the very first, had wanted Elvis to move into films. Indeed, even before he met Elvis, he had tried grooming the other stars he’d managed — and non-stars like Tommy Sands — for film roles. In particular, he wanted to work with Hal Wallis at MGM, who had become something of an idee fixe for him after the first time he saw a film being made and was told that Wallis was the man in charge of it all. In particular, Parker was interested in film as a mass medium that nonetheless required people to pay. While Elvis had become famous by taking advantage of television’s newfound ubiquity, Colonel Parker didn’t like the idea that people could just watch Elvis for free. If they could watch him for nothing in their own home, why would they pay to see his shows, or pay for his records? But the cinema was different. People paid to go to the cinema, and you could get millions of people paying money to see the same performance. For the Colonel, that was the key — a way to maximise paying customers. Even if you made more money from the TV than from the cinema in the short term, cultivating a paying audience was clearly the best thing to do in the medium term. And so, from late 1956, Elvis’ career had started to be focussed on films, which were themselves focussed on his music. His first film, a Western originally titled The Reno Brothers, had been intended to have him in a small part, trying to be a straight actor, without any singing at all, and that was how Elvis had been persuaded to do it. Instead, at the last minute, four songs had been added to the film, and it had been retitled from The Reno Brothers to Love Me Tender. Elvis’ part — which was originally a relatively minor part — had been beefed up, though in terms of actual plot involvement he was still not the main star, and the film became an uneasy compromise between being a serious Western drama and a rock and roll vehicle, not really managing to do either well. The film after that, “Loving You”, had been different: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Loving You”] That one had been a more straight ahead rock and roll film — it was basically a fictionalised version of Elvis’ own life to that point, with him playing Deke Rivers, a singer who is discovered by the manager of a fading country star. The manager in this case is a woman, and she also becomes the love interest in the film, but the broad outlines are about what you’d expect from a fictionalised biopic — Elvis was clearly playing himself. But the soundtrack to “Loving You” had been a huge improvement on the soundtrack to “Love Me Tender”, and had included some of Elvis’ very best songs, including a title song written for him by Leiber and Stoller. The pair had been called on almost straight away after their “Hound Dog” had become a hit for Elvis, to see if they had any more songs for him. At the time, they hadn’t been hugely impressed by Elvis’ version of “Hound Dog”, and so rather than give him anything new, they suggested he record a song they had written for the duo Willy and Ruth: [Excerpt: Willy and Ruth, “Love Me”] That song had been written as a parody of country songs, and they hadn’t taken it seriously at all, but there had been all sorts of cover versions of it, by everyone from Georgia Gibbs to Hank Snow’s son Jimmie Rodgers Snow. None of them had been hits, but the song obviously had some commercial potential. So Leiber and Stoller suggested that Elvis try it, and they were very impressed with his performance of the song, which unlike them he *did* take seriously: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Love Me”] From that point on, they had a certain amount of respect for Elvis as a performer, and so they were happy to write “Loving You” for the film. But at this point they still hadn’t even met him, and regarded him as, in their words, “an idiot savant” — someone who just happened to have a marketable talent, rather than an actual artist like the people they worked with. But Elvis was so impressed with the songs that Leiber and Stoller were writing that they soon got the call to write more songs for his next film. The original plan was that they were to write all of the songs for the film, but there was a snag. They’d been flown back to New York from LA, and they had a suite at an expensive hotel, and Miles Davis and Count Basie and Thelonius Monk all had gigs in the city that week, and there were a few good plays on at the theatre, and they had some friends who wanted to take them out for meals, and… well, there’s a lot of stuff to do in New York that’s more interesting than work. Eventually, Jean Aberbach from Hill and Range publishing came round to see them in their hotel suite, and ask them where his songs were. They told him he would have them soon, and he replied that he knew he would, because he wasn’t going to let them leave until he did. He pushed the sofa in front of the door so they couldn’t get out, and went to sleep on it. In the next five hours, Leiber and Stoller wrote four songs together, which was just about enough for the film, which was padded out with two other songs by other writers — both of them co-written by Aaron Schroeder. There was “Don’t Leave Me Now”, which had been recorded but not used for “Loving You”, but which had still already appeared on that film’s soundtrack album, and a new ballad called “Young and Beautiful”. But neither of those songs were particularly strong, and so it was the Leiber and Stoller songs that would be the musical spine of the film — the credits at the beginning of the film said “songs mostly by Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber”, clearly showing that they knew which songs it was that people would actually care about. It was only in April 1957 that Leiber and Stoller actually met the man who had already had hits with two of their songs and used a third as the title song for one of his films. Coincidentally, they met him in Radio Recorders Annex, the same studio where five years earlier they had recorded the original version of “Hound Dog” with Big Mama Thornton. They went in not knowing what to expect, but were struck, in order, by three different things. The first was that Elvis was extremely physically beautiful, far more so in person than in photos. The second was how shy and quiet he was — but how these things actually gave him an extra presence. And the third was how much he knew about R&B music, and how much he loved it. Leiber and Stoller had believed themselves to be the only white people of their own generation to really know or care about R&B or the blues, and here was someone enthusing to them about B.B. King, Big Bill Broonzy, and Arthur Crudup, and also about their own songs. He particularly liked one they’d written for Ray Charles, “The Snow is Falling”: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “The Snow is Falling”] He ended up sitting at the piano playing a four-handed blues with Mike Stoller. The three men were getting on well enough that even though Leiber and Stoller had only intended to visit the sessions for a short while to meet Elvis, they ended up essentially producing the session — Leiber was in the control room, and would show Elvis how he wanted the songs to be phrased, while Stoller was on the studio floor, working with the musicians, and playing piano on one track. The two were particularly impressed by Elvis’ determination in the studio. They were having to record multiple versions of almost every song, because the plot of the film would have Elvis’ character, Vince Everett, learning songs, trying them out in different arrangements, trying different vocal styles on them, and so on. As well as recording the songs properly, the way he’d like to sing them, Elvis had to do tentative versions, versions with wrong notes, and so forth. And Elvis happily worked, take after take, to get all these different versions of the songs done exactly right. In fact, he ended up not just singing on the tracks, but playing bass on one of them. Up until these sessions, Bill Black had been playing double bass on all Elvis’ sessions — the double bass was the standard bass instrument in country music, and had become so in rockabilly as well. But around this time it became clear that the new Fender bass guitars, which had been introduced to the market a couple of years earlier and had quickly taken off in the jazz and blues worlds, were going to become the standard instrument for studio work for everyone. Black was far from being the most accomplished musician in the world — what he brought to Elvis’ sessions was more about his enthusiasm and attitude than his ability to play — and the switch to the bass guitar was an uncomfortable one. If you don’t know, a double bass is played standing up, like a cello, and has no frets, while a bass guitar is played like a guitar. They’re very different instruments, and Black had trouble switching from one to the other. He was also getting annoyed with the whole Presley organisation. Tom Parker was determined to isolate Elvis from anyone else in the business, including his band members. And not only that, Bill and Scotty were on what they both considered was a miserably low salary. So when Bill messed up the intro to “(You’re So Square) Baby, I Don’t Care” repeatedly, he threw the bass across the room and stormed out of the session. Elvis just picked up the bass and played the part himself, and it’s him you can hear playing it on the finished record, doing a rather decent job of it: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care”] While Bill had left the session, it didn’t stop him appearing in the film — “Jailhouse Rock” featured Scotty, Bill, and D.J., miming their instruments. They didn’t have any lines — they weren’t members of the Screen Actors’ Guild, so they couldn’t — but they appeared throughout the last half of the film, as did Mike Stoller on the piano. It was actually meant to be Jerry Leiber miming the piano parts — someone from the film studio had come into the recording studio while they were making the records, and had said that Leiber looked like a piano player. Elvis had said that no, it was Stoller who was the piano player, and the filmmaker had said it didn’t matter — Leiber looked like a piano player, and so if he wanted to be in the film miming the piano parts he could. Leiber agreed, but then on the day he was meant to go into the studio, he developed a terrible toothache. He called up Stoller and said “I can’t go, you go instead”. Stoller pointed out that they were expecting Leiber, and Leiber told him that they wouldn’t know the difference anyway. So Stoller went along, and the only thing he was told was that he would have to shave off his goatee beard, as it would be a scene-stealer and distract people from Elvis. So Mike Stoller was there with Scotty, Bill, and D.J. as they filmed most of what is generally considered to be Elvis’ best film. The film almost got stopped before it was started, though. The first thing to be filmed was the big dance sequence to one of the songs Leiber and Stoller had written, “Jailhouse Rock”: [excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Jailhouse Rock”] That was going to be the centrepiece of the whole film, and the dance sequence involved dozens of men dressed as convicts. Some have argued that the song and the sequence were inspired by the bit in The Girl Can’t Help It in which a parody of rock and roll is sung by a group dressed as convicts. There might even be some truth to that as far as the version in the film goes, as the film has extra orchestration and an intro section added which isn’t on the record, and which doesn’t really fit very well. Compare the film version of “Jailhouse Rock”: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Jailhouse Rock”, film version] With “Rock Around the Rockpile”: [Excerpt: “Jerri Jordan”, “Rock Around the Rockpile”] But the thing is, that’s only a partial explanation. The song itself is clearly in a long line of Leiber and Stoller songs about the judicial system, like “Framed”: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Framed”] and “Riot in Cell Block #9”: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Riot in Cell Block #9”] It also contains a lot of the humour that Leiber and Stoller were noted for. Many comedians have made fun of this section: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Jailhouse Rock”] and pointed out the homoerotic implications of those lines. Given Leiber and Stoller’s other work, I think it’s fairly clear they were perfectly aware of those implications — and given that this is a film that also features shots of Elvis shirtless, tied up, being whipped by another man, I suspect they weren’t the only ones who were dropping little coded hints to gay fans at that time. But, as I said, the dance sequence nearly ended the film — and nearly ended Elvis’ singing career along with it. Elvis had some trouble learning to dance with a choreographed troupe, at first — he was a natural mover, and not used to the way trained dancers moved. Luckily, the choreographer, Alex Romero, came up with a solution to that problem. He got Elvis to just perform in front of him, miming to his own records, moving like he would on stage. Romero then took Elvis’ normal stage movements and worked them into the dance routine, choreographing it so it still worked with the large dance troupe, but Elvis was able to move in ways that were comfortable for him. (The claim on Wikipedia that Elvis himself choreographed the dance sequence is absolutely mythical, incidentally. It was Alex Romero.) That solved the immediate problem, but there was a larger problem when, on the first day of shooting, Elvis hit his mouth and dislodged a crown. Elvis insisted that it had gone into his chest. At first, people thought he was being overly dramatic, but after a few more takes of bits of the sequence, they noticed a whistling sound when he was breathing. He had inhaled his crown. It required major surgery to remove the crown from his lung, and to do it they had to separate his vocal cords to get into his lungs. This was a weird case of life imitating art, as a crucial plot point in the film was Elvis’ character having to have throat surgery and worrying whether he would be able to sing again. Fortunately, just as in the film, he made a full recovery and was able to carry on. The film itself was surprisingly good, given the depths to which Elvis would sink in some of his later films. Elvis plays a very unsympathetic character, with a chip on his shoulder after being imprisoned after accidentally killing a man in a bar fight, who (of course) becomes a famous singer. It’s no cinematic masterpiece, but it’s a very decent film of its type. The film sadly had a tragic coda — just days after the film finished shooting, Judy Tyler, Elvis’ love interest in the film, died in a car accident. As a result, Elvis refused to ever watch the film in full — he couldn’t bear to. But in the short term, the film’s main effect was to draw Elvis and Mike Stoller closer together. As Stoller was on the set all the time, he had a chance to get close to Elvis, and at one point they were having a game of pool, and one of the songs Leiber and Stoller had written for the Drifters came on: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Ruby Baby”] Elvis started singing along, and asking Stoller how he and Leiber wrote so many great songs together. But then, a few minutes later, Elvis was dragged out of the room, and came back in telling Stoller that he had to leave — the Colonel didn’t want Elvis hanging round with people who were in the music industry, unless those people worked for the Colonel. Indeed, at one point around this time, the Colonel tried to become Leiber and Stoller’s manager. He sent them blank pieces of paper for them to sign, with a promise that he would fill out the rest later and give them a very good deal. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their response was not one I could repeat on a podcast that isn’t in the adult section. But Elvis had still taken to Leiber and Stoller. He started calling them his “good luck charms”, and decided that he wanted them at every recording session. The Colonel agreed to have them involved in everything. For the moment. But Leiber and Stoller weren’t dependent on Elvis and the Colonel. During 1957, while they were working with Elvis, they also wrote hits for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, “Dancin'”] Ruth Brown: [Excerpt: Ruth Brown, “Lucky Lips”] The Drifters: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Fools Fall in Love”] And of course those Coasters records we looked at a few weeks ago — and will be looking at again in a month or so. And that independence was bothering people in the Colonel’s group of business people. In particular, Freddy Bienstock, who worked at Hill and Range and controlled what songs Elvis performed, became apoplectic when the duo gave the song “Don’t” directly to Elvis: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Don’t”] Stoller explained to Bienstock that the song had been commissioned directly *by* Elvis. Elvis had said, “I want you to write a real pretty ballad for me,” they’d gone away and written him a real pretty ballad, he’d liked it, what was the problem? The problem, Bienstock explained, was that you don’t just give songs to Elvis. There was no contract for the song. What if they couldn’t come to a contract agreement, but Elvis wanted to record the song anyway? What if all the money ended up just going to Leiber and Stoller because they refused to cut Hill and Range, Elvis, and the Colonel in on the royalties? That wasn’t a problem, they said. They’d written songs for Elvis before. They knew the drill. They assumed that the contract would be the same one they always had to sign when writing for Elvis. Bienstock insisted that none of that mattered. You brought the song to Bienstock, or to Jean Aberbach. If they liked it for Elvis, *then* they got the contracts sorted, and *then* Elvis got to hear it. That was the way things worked around here. You don’t just go bringing Elvis a song. That was going behind the Colonel’s back, and the Colonel didn’t like people going behind his back. As far as Leiber and Stoller were concerned, they weren’t going behind anyone’s back. So by September 1957, when Jailhouse Rock came out, things were a lot more precarious for Elvis than they looked from the outside. The Colonel had weakened the bonds between him and his backing musicians, by insisting that they get paid a small salary rather than a percentage; he had control over what songs Elvis could sing; Sam Phillips was no longer in the picture; and so Leiber and Stoller were the only people involved in Elvis’ life who had any real independence — everyone at Hill and Range, the film studios, and RCA was involved in a complex network of kickbacks which meant that they all stood or fell together with the Colonel. If the Colonel could just get those good luck charms out of Elvis’ life again, he’d be all set to make sure Elvis’ career was run exactly as he wanted it. And as luck would have it, Elvis was going to become eligible for the draft in January 1958. All the Colonel had to do was wait a few months…

Episode 62: "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 22, 2019 31:22

Episode sixty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley, and at his relationships with Colonel Tom Parker, Leiber and Stoller, his band members, and the film industry. 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 Santa Claus is Back in Town, also by Elvis, which ties in more than most to this episode. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller's side of the story well. There are many, many books about Elvis Presley out there, but the one I'm using as my major resource for information on him, and which has guided my views as to the kind of person he was, is Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick, generally considered the best biography of him. The Colonel by Alanna Nash is a little more tabloidy than those two, but is the only full-length biography I know of of Colonel Tom Parker. This box set contains all the recordings, including outtakes, for Elvis' 1950s films, while this one contains just the finished versions of every record he made in the fifties. And Jailhouse Rock itself is well worth watching. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Colonel Tom Parker, from the very first, had wanted Elvis to move into films. Indeed, even before he met Elvis, he had tried grooming the other stars he'd managed -- and non-stars like Tommy Sands -- for film roles. In particular, he wanted to work with Hal Wallis at MGM, who had become something of an idee fixe for him after the first time he saw a film being made and was told that Wallis was the man in charge of it all. In particular, Parker was interested in film as a mass medium that nonetheless required people to pay. While Elvis had become famous by taking advantage of television's newfound ubiquity, Colonel Parker didn't like the idea that people could just watch Elvis for free. If they could watch him for nothing in their own home, why would they pay to see his shows, or pay for his records? But the cinema was different. People paid to go to the cinema, and you could get millions of people paying money to see the same performance. For the Colonel, that was the key -- a way to maximise paying customers. Even if you made more money from the TV than from the cinema in the short term, cultivating a paying audience was clearly the best thing to do in the medium term. And so, from late 1956, Elvis' career had started to be focussed on films, which were themselves focussed on his music. His first film, a Western originally titled The Reno Brothers, had been intended to have him in a small part, trying to be a straight actor, without any singing at all, and that was how Elvis had been persuaded to do it. Instead, at the last minute, four songs had been added to the film, and it had been retitled from The Reno Brothers to Love Me Tender. Elvis' part -- which was originally a relatively minor part -- had been beefed up, though in terms of actual plot involvement he was still not the main star, and the film became an uneasy compromise between being a serious Western drama and a rock and roll vehicle, not really managing to do either well. The film after that, "Loving You", had been different: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Loving You"] That one had been a more straight ahead rock and roll film -- it was basically a fictionalised version of Elvis' own life to that point, with him playing Deke Rivers, a singer who is discovered by the manager of a fading country star. The manager in this case is a woman, and she also becomes the love interest in the film, but the broad outlines are about what you'd expect from a fictionalised biopic -- Elvis was clearly playing himself. But the soundtrack to "Loving You" had been a huge improvement on the soundtrack to "Love Me Tender", and had included some of Elvis' very best songs, including a title song written for him by Leiber and Stoller. The pair had been called on almost straight away after their "Hound Dog" had become a hit for Elvis, to see if they had any more songs for him. At the time, they hadn't been hugely impressed by Elvis' version of "Hound Dog", and so rather than give him anything new, they suggested he record a song they had written for the duo Willy and Ruth: [Excerpt: Willy and Ruth, "Love Me"] That song had been written as a parody of country songs, and they hadn't taken it seriously at all, but there had been all sorts of cover versions of it, by everyone from Georgia Gibbs to Hank Snow's son Jimmie Rodgers Snow. None of them had been hits, but the song obviously had some commercial potential. So Leiber and Stoller suggested that Elvis try it, and they were very impressed with his performance of the song, which unlike them he *did* take seriously: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Love Me"] From that point on, they had a certain amount of respect for Elvis as a performer, and so they were happy to write "Loving You" for the film. But at this point they still hadn't even met him, and regarded him as, in their words, "an idiot savant" -- someone who just happened to have a marketable talent, rather than an actual artist like the people they worked with. But Elvis was so impressed with the songs that Leiber and Stoller were writing that they soon got the call to write more songs for his next film. The original plan was that they were to write all of the songs for the film, but there was a snag. They'd been flown back to New York from LA, and they had a suite at an expensive hotel, and Miles Davis and Count Basie and Thelonius Monk all had gigs in the city that week, and there were a few good plays on at the theatre, and they had some friends who wanted to take them out for meals, and... well, there's a lot of stuff to do in New York that's more interesting than work. Eventually, Jean Aberbach from Hill and Range publishing came round to see them in their hotel suite, and ask them where his songs were. They told him he would have them soon, and he replied that he knew he would, because he wasn't going to let them leave until he did. He pushed the sofa in front of the door so they couldn't get out, and went to sleep on it. In the next five hours, Leiber and Stoller wrote four songs together, which was just about enough for the film, which was padded out with two other songs by other writers -- both of them co-written by Aaron Schroeder. There was "Don't Leave Me Now", which had been recorded but not used for "Loving You", but which had still already appeared on that film's soundtrack album, and a new ballad called "Young and Beautiful". But neither of those songs were particularly strong, and so it was the Leiber and Stoller songs that would be the musical spine of the film -- the credits at the beginning of the film said "songs mostly by Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber", clearly showing that they knew which songs it was that people would actually care about. It was only in April 1957 that Leiber and Stoller actually met the man who had already had hits with two of their songs and used a third as the title song for one of his films. Coincidentally, they met him in Radio Recorders Annex, the same studio where five years earlier they had recorded the original version of "Hound Dog" with Big Mama Thornton. They went in not knowing what to expect, but were struck, in order, by three different things. The first was that Elvis was extremely physically beautiful, far more so in person than in photos. The second was how shy and quiet he was -- but how these things actually gave him an extra presence. And the third was how much he knew about R&B music, and how much he loved it. Leiber and Stoller had believed themselves to be the only white people of their own generation to really know or care about R&B or the blues, and here was someone enthusing to them about B.B. King, Big Bill Broonzy, and Arthur Crudup, and also about their own songs. He particularly liked one they'd written for Ray Charles, "The Snow is Falling": [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "The Snow is Falling"] He ended up sitting at the piano playing a four-handed blues with Mike Stoller. The three men were getting on well enough that even though Leiber and Stoller had only intended to visit the sessions for a short while to meet Elvis, they ended up essentially producing the session -- Leiber was in the control room, and would show Elvis how he wanted the songs to be phrased, while Stoller was on the studio floor, working with the musicians, and playing piano on one track. The two were particularly impressed by Elvis' determination in the studio. They were having to record multiple versions of almost every song, because the plot of the film would have Elvis' character, Vince Everett, learning songs, trying them out in different arrangements, trying different vocal styles on them, and so on. As well as recording the songs properly, the way he'd like to sing them, Elvis had to do tentative versions, versions with wrong notes, and so forth. And Elvis happily worked, take after take, to get all these different versions of the songs done exactly right. In fact, he ended up not just singing on the tracks, but playing bass on one of them. Up until these sessions, Bill Black had been playing double bass on all Elvis' sessions -- the double bass was the standard bass instrument in country music, and had become so in rockabilly as well. But around this time it became clear that the new Fender bass guitars, which had been introduced to the market a couple of years earlier and had quickly taken off in the jazz and blues worlds, were going to become the standard instrument for studio work for everyone. Black was far from being the most accomplished musician in the world -- what he brought to Elvis' sessions was more about his enthusiasm and attitude than his ability to play -- and the switch to the bass guitar was an uncomfortable one. If you don't know, a double bass is played standing up, like a cello, and has no frets, while a bass guitar is played like a guitar. They're very different instruments, and Black had trouble switching from one to the other. He was also getting annoyed with the whole Presley organisation. Tom Parker was determined to isolate Elvis from anyone else in the business, including his band members. And not only that, Bill and Scotty were on what they both considered was a miserably low salary. So when Bill messed up the intro to "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" repeatedly, he threw the bass across the room and stormed out of the session. Elvis just picked up the bass and played the part himself, and it's him you can hear playing it on the finished record, doing a rather decent job of it: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care"] While Bill had left the session, it didn't stop him appearing in the film -- "Jailhouse Rock" featured Scotty, Bill, and D.J., miming their instruments. They didn't have any lines -- they weren't members of the Screen Actors' Guild, so they couldn't -- but they appeared throughout the last half of the film, as did Mike Stoller on the piano. It was actually meant to be Jerry Leiber miming the piano parts -- someone from the film studio had come into the recording studio while they were making the records, and had said that Leiber looked like a piano player. Elvis had said that no, it was Stoller who was the piano player, and the filmmaker had said it didn't matter -- Leiber looked like a piano player, and so if he wanted to be in the film miming the piano parts he could. Leiber agreed, but then on the day he was meant to go into the studio, he developed a terrible toothache. He called up Stoller and said "I can't go, you go instead". Stoller pointed out that they were expecting Leiber, and Leiber told him that they wouldn't know the difference anyway. So Stoller went along, and the only thing he was told was that he would have to shave off his goatee beard, as it would be a scene-stealer and distract people from Elvis. So Mike Stoller was there with Scotty, Bill, and D.J. as they filmed most of what is generally considered to be Elvis' best film. The film almost got stopped before it was started, though. The first thing to be filmed was the big dance sequence to one of the songs Leiber and Stoller had written, "Jailhouse Rock": [excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Jailhouse Rock"] That was going to be the centrepiece of the whole film, and the dance sequence involved dozens of men dressed as convicts. Some have argued that the song and the sequence were inspired by the bit in The Girl Can't Help It in which a parody of rock and roll is sung by a group dressed as convicts. There might even be some truth to that as far as the version in the film goes, as the film has extra orchestration and an intro section added which isn't on the record, and which doesn't really fit very well. Compare the film version of "Jailhouse Rock": [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Jailhouse Rock", film version] With "Rock Around the Rockpile": [Excerpt: "Jerri Jordan", "Rock Around the Rockpile"] But the thing is, that's only a partial explanation. The song itself is clearly in a long line of Leiber and Stoller songs about the judicial system, like "Framed": [Excerpt: The Robins, "Framed"] and "Riot in Cell Block #9": [Excerpt: The Robins, "Riot in Cell Block #9"] It also contains a lot of the humour that Leiber and Stoller were noted for. Many comedians have made fun of this section: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Jailhouse Rock"] and pointed out the homoerotic implications of those lines. Given Leiber and Stoller's other work, I think it's fairly clear they were perfectly aware of those implications -- and given that this is a film that also features shots of Elvis shirtless, tied up, being whipped by another man, I suspect they weren't the only ones who were dropping little coded hints to gay fans at that time. But, as I said, the dance sequence nearly ended the film -- and nearly ended Elvis' singing career along with it. Elvis had some trouble learning to dance with a choreographed troupe, at first -- he was a natural mover, and not used to the way trained dancers moved. Luckily, the choreographer, Alex Romero, came up with a solution to that problem. He got Elvis to just perform in front of him, miming to his own records, moving like he would on stage. Romero then took Elvis' normal stage movements and worked them into the dance routine, choreographing it so it still worked with the large dance troupe, but Elvis was able to move in ways that were comfortable for him. (The claim on Wikipedia that Elvis himself choreographed the dance sequence is absolutely mythical, incidentally. It was Alex Romero.) That solved the immediate problem, but there was a larger problem when, on the first day of shooting, Elvis hit his mouth and dislodged a crown. Elvis insisted that it had gone into his chest. At first, people thought he was being overly dramatic, but after a few more takes of bits of the sequence, they noticed a whistling sound when he was breathing. He had inhaled his crown. It required major surgery to remove the crown from his lung, and to do it they had to separate his vocal cords to get into his lungs. This was a weird case of life imitating art, as a crucial plot point in the film was Elvis' character having to have throat surgery and worrying whether he would be able to sing again. Fortunately, just as in the film, he made a full recovery and was able to carry on. The film itself was surprisingly good, given the depths to which Elvis would sink in some of his later films. Elvis plays a very unsympathetic character, with a chip on his shoulder after being imprisoned after accidentally killing a man in a bar fight, who (of course) becomes a famous singer. It's no cinematic masterpiece, but it's a very decent film of its type. The film sadly had a tragic coda -- just days after the film finished shooting, Judy Tyler, Elvis' love interest in the film, died in a car accident. As a result, Elvis refused to ever watch the film in full -- he couldn't bear to. But in the short term, the film's main effect was to draw Elvis and Mike Stoller closer together. As Stoller was on the set all the time, he had a chance to get close to Elvis, and at one point they were having a game of pool, and one of the songs Leiber and Stoller had written for the Drifters came on: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Ruby Baby"] Elvis started singing along, and asking Stoller how he and Leiber wrote so many great songs together. But then, a few minutes later, Elvis was dragged out of the room, and came back in telling Stoller that he had to leave -- the Colonel didn't want Elvis hanging round with people who were in the music industry, unless those people worked for the Colonel. Indeed, at one point around this time, the Colonel tried to become Leiber and Stoller's manager. He sent them blank pieces of paper for them to sign, with a promise that he would fill out the rest later and give them a very good deal. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their response was not one I could repeat on a podcast that isn't in the adult section. But Elvis had still taken to Leiber and Stoller. He started calling them his "good luck charms", and decided that he wanted them at every recording session. The Colonel agreed to have them involved in everything. For the moment. But Leiber and Stoller weren't dependent on Elvis and the Colonel. During 1957, while they were working with Elvis, they also wrote hits for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, "Dancin'"] Ruth Brown: [Excerpt: Ruth Brown, "Lucky Lips"] The Drifters: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Fools Fall in Love"] And of course those Coasters records we looked at a few weeks ago -- and will be looking at again in a month or so. And that independence was bothering people in the Colonel's group of business people. In particular, Freddy Bienstock, who worked at Hill and Range and controlled what songs Elvis performed, became apoplectic when the duo gave the song "Don't" directly to Elvis: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Don't"] Stoller explained to Bienstock that the song had been commissioned directly *by* Elvis. Elvis had said, "I want you to write a real pretty ballad for me," they'd gone away and written him a real pretty ballad, he'd liked it, what was the problem? The problem, Bienstock explained, was that you don't just give songs to Elvis. There was no contract for the song. What if they couldn't come to a contract agreement, but Elvis wanted to record the song anyway? What if all the money ended up just going to Leiber and Stoller because they refused to cut Hill and Range, Elvis, and the Colonel in on the royalties? That wasn't a problem, they said. They'd written songs for Elvis before. They knew the drill. They assumed that the contract would be the same one they always had to sign when writing for Elvis. Bienstock insisted that none of that mattered. You brought the song to Bienstock, or to Jean Aberbach. If they liked it for Elvis, *then* they got the contracts sorted, and *then* Elvis got to hear it. That was the way things worked around here. You don't just go bringing Elvis a song. That was going behind the Colonel's back, and the Colonel didn't like people going behind his back. As far as Leiber and Stoller were concerned, they weren't going behind anyone's back. So by September 1957, when Jailhouse Rock came out, things were a lot more precarious for Elvis than they looked from the outside. The Colonel had weakened the bonds between him and his backing musicians, by insisting that they get paid a small salary rather than a percentage; he had control over what songs Elvis could sing; Sam Phillips was no longer in the picture; and so Leiber and Stoller were the only people involved in Elvis' life who had any real independence -- everyone at Hill and Range, the film studios, and RCA was involved in a complex network of kickbacks which meant that they all stood or fell together with the Colonel. If the Colonel could just get those good luck charms out of Elvis' life again, he'd be all set to make sure Elvis' career was run exactly as he wanted it. And as luck would have it, Elvis was going to become eligible for the draft in January 1958. All the Colonel had to do was wait a few months...

Episode 62: “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley

Irish and Celtic Music Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 22, 2019

Episode sixty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley, and at his relationships with Colonel Tom Parker, Leiber and Stoller, his band members, and the film industry. 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 Santa Claus is Back in Town, also by Elvis, which ties in more than most to this episode. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller’s side of the story well. There are many, many books about Elvis Presley out there, but the one I’m using as my major resource for information on him, and which has guided my views as to the kind of person he was, is Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick, generally considered the best biography of him. The Colonel by Alanna Nash is a little more tabloidy than those two, but is the only full-length biography I know of of Colonel Tom Parker. This box set contains all the recordings, including outtakes, for Elvis’ 1950s films, while this one contains just the finished versions of every record he made in the fifties. And Jailhouse Rock itself is well worth watching. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Colonel Tom Parker, from the very first, had wanted Elvis to move into films. Indeed, even before he met Elvis, he had tried grooming the other stars he’d managed — and non-stars like Tommy Sands — for film roles. In particular, he wanted to work with Hal Wallis at MGM, who had become something of an idee fixe for him after the first time he saw a film being made and was told that Wallis was the man in charge of it all. In particular, Parker was interested in film as a mass medium that nonetheless required people to pay. While Elvis had become famous by taking advantage of television’s newfound ubiquity, Colonel Parker didn’t like the idea that people could just watch Elvis for free. If they could watch him for nothing in their own home, why would they pay to see his shows, or pay for his records? But the cinema was different. People paid to go to the cinema, and you could get millions of people paying money to see the same performance. For the Colonel, that was the key — a way to maximise paying customers. Even if you made more money from the TV than from the cinema in the short term, cultivating a paying audience was clearly the best thing to do in the medium term. And so, from late 1956, Elvis’ career had started to be focussed on films, which were themselves focussed on his music. His first film, a Western originally titled The Reno Brothers, had been intended to have him in a small part, trying to be a straight actor, without any singing at all, and that was how Elvis had been persuaded to do it. Instead, at the last minute, four songs had been added to the film, and it had been retitled from The Reno Brothers to Love Me Tender. Elvis’ part — which was originally a relatively minor part — had been beefed up, though in terms of actual plot involvement he was still not the main star, and the film became an uneasy compromise between being a serious Western drama and a rock and roll vehicle, not really managing to do either well. The film after that, “Loving You”, had been different: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Loving You”] That one had been a more straight ahead rock and roll film — it was basically a fictionalised version of Elvis’ own life to that point, with him playing Deke Rivers, a singer who is discovered by the manager of a fading country star. The manager in this case is a woman, and she also becomes the love interest in the film, but the broad outlines are about what you’d expect from a fictionalised biopic — Elvis was clearly playing himself. But the soundtrack to “Loving You” had been a huge improvement on the soundtrack to “Love Me Tender”, and had included some of Elvis’ very best songs, including a title song written for him by Leiber and Stoller. The pair had been called on almost straight away after their “Hound Dog” had become a hit for Elvis, to see if they had any more songs for him. At the time, they hadn’t been hugely impressed by Elvis’ version of “Hound Dog”, and so rather than give him anything new, they suggested he record a song they had written for the duo Willy and Ruth: [Excerpt: Willy and Ruth, “Love Me”] That song had been written as a parody of country songs, and they hadn’t taken it seriously at all, but there had been all sorts of cover versions of it, by everyone from Georgia Gibbs to Hank Snow’s son Jimmie Rodgers Snow. None of them had been hits, but the song obviously had some commercial potential. So Leiber and Stoller suggested that Elvis try it, and they were very impressed with his performance of the song, which unlike them he *did* take seriously: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Love Me”] From that point on, they had a certain amount of respect for Elvis as a performer, and so they were happy to write “Loving You” for the film. But at this point they still hadn’t even met him, and regarded him as, in their words, “an idiot savant” — someone who just happened to have a marketable talent, rather than an actual artist like the people they worked with. But Elvis was so impressed with the songs that Leiber and Stoller were writing that they soon got the call to write more songs for his next film. The original plan was that they were to write all of the songs for the film, but there was a snag. They’d been flown back to New York from LA, and they had a suite at an expensive hotel, and Miles Davis and Count Basie and Thelonius Monk all had gigs in the city that week, and there were a few good plays on at the theatre, and they had some friends who wanted to take them out for meals, and… well, there’s a lot of stuff to do in New York that’s more interesting than work. Eventually, Jean Aberbach from Hill and Range publishing came round to see them in their hotel suite, and ask them where his songs were. They told him he would have them soon, and he replied that he knew he would, because he wasn’t going to let them leave until he did. He pushed the sofa in front of the door so they couldn’t get out, and went to sleep on it. In the next five hours, Leiber and Stoller wrote four songs together, which was just about enough for the film, which was padded out with two other songs by other writers — both of them co-written by Aaron Schroeder. There was “Don’t Leave Me Now”, which had been recorded but not used for “Loving You”, but which had still already appeared on that film’s soundtrack album, and a new ballad called “Young and Beautiful”. But neither of those songs were particularly strong, and so it was the Leiber and Stoller songs that would be the musical spine of the film — the credits at the beginning of the film said “songs mostly by Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber”, clearly showing that they knew which songs it was that people would actually care about. It was only in April 1957 that Leiber and Stoller actually met the man who had already had hits with two of their songs and used a third as the title song for one of his films. Coincidentally, they met him in Radio Recorders Annex, the same studio where five years earlier they had recorded the original version of “Hound Dog” with Big Mama Thornton. They went in not knowing what to expect, but were struck, in order, by three different things. The first was that Elvis was extremely physically beautiful, far more so in person than in photos. The second was how shy and quiet he was — but how these things actually gave him an extra presence. And the third was how much he knew about R&B music, and how much he loved it. Leiber and Stoller had believed themselves to be the only white people of their own generation to really know or care about R&B or the blues, and here was someone enthusing to them about B.B. King, Big Bill Broonzy, and Arthur Crudup, and also about their own songs. He particularly liked one they’d written for Ray Charles, “The Snow is Falling”: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “The Snow is Falling”] He ended up sitting at the piano playing a four-handed blues with Mike Stoller. The three men were getting on well enough that even though Leiber and Stoller had only intended to visit the sessions for a short while to meet Elvis, they ended up essentially producing the session — Leiber was in the control room, and would show Elvis how he wanted the songs to be phrased, while Stoller was on the studio floor, working with the musicians, and playing piano on one track. The two were particularly impressed by Elvis’ determination in the studio. They were having to record multiple versions of almost every song, because the plot of the film would have Elvis’ character, Vince Everett, learning songs, trying them out in different arrangements, trying different vocal styles on them, and so on. As well as recording the songs properly, the way he’d like to sing them, Elvis had to do tentative versions, versions with wrong notes, and so forth. And Elvis happily worked, take after take, to get all these different versions of the songs done exactly right. In fact, he ended up not just singing on the tracks, but playing bass on one of them. Up until these sessions, Bill Black had been playing double bass on all Elvis’ sessions — the double bass was the standard bass instrument in country music, and had become so in rockabilly as well. But around this time it became clear that the new Fender bass guitars, which had been introduced to the market a couple of years earlier and had quickly taken off in the jazz and blues worlds, were going to become the standard instrument for studio work for everyone. Black was far from being the most accomplished musician in the world — what he brought to Elvis’ sessions was more about his enthusiasm and attitude than his ability to play — and the switch to the bass guitar was an uncomfortable one. If you don’t know, a double bass is played standing up, like a cello, and has no frets, while a bass guitar is played like a guitar. They’re very different instruments, and Black had trouble switching from one to the other. He was also getting annoyed with the whole Presley organisation. Tom Parker was determined to isolate Elvis from anyone else in the business, including his band members. And not only that, Bill and Scotty were on what they both considered was a miserably low salary. So when Bill messed up the intro to “(You’re So Square) Baby, I Don’t Care” repeatedly, he threw the bass across the room and stormed out of the session. Elvis just picked up the bass and played the part himself, and it’s him you can hear playing it on the finished record, doing a rather decent job of it: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care”] While Bill had left the session, it didn’t stop him appearing in the film — “Jailhouse Rock” featured Scotty, Bill, and D.J., miming their instruments. They didn’t have any lines — they weren’t members of the Screen Actors’ Guild, so they couldn’t — but they appeared throughout the last half of the film, as did Mike Stoller on the piano. It was actually meant to be Jerry Leiber miming the piano parts — someone from the film studio had come into the recording studio while they were making the records, and had said that Leiber looked like a piano player. Elvis had said that no, it was Stoller who was the piano player, and the filmmaker had said it didn’t matter — Leiber looked like a piano player, and so if he wanted to be in the film miming the piano parts he could. Leiber agreed, but then on the day he was meant to go into the studio, he developed a terrible toothache. He called up Stoller and said “I can’t go, you go instead”. Stoller pointed out that they were expecting Leiber, and Leiber told him that they wouldn’t know the difference anyway. So Stoller went along, and the only thing he was told was that he would have to shave off his goatee beard, as it would be a scene-stealer and distract people from Elvis. So Mike Stoller was there with Scotty, Bill, and D.J. as they filmed most of what is generally considered to be Elvis’ best film. The film almost got stopped before it was started, though. The first thing to be filmed was the big dance sequence to one of the songs Leiber and Stoller had written, “Jailhouse Rock”: [excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Jailhouse Rock”] That was going to be the centrepiece of the whole film, and the dance sequence involved dozens of men dressed as convicts. Some have argued that the song and the sequence were inspired by the bit in The Girl Can’t Help It in which a parody of rock and roll is sung by a group dressed as convicts. There might even be some truth to that as far as the version in the film goes, as the film has extra orchestration and an intro section added which isn’t on the record, and which doesn’t really fit very well. Compare the film version of “Jailhouse Rock”: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Jailhouse Rock”, film version] With “Rock Around the Rockpile”: [Excerpt: “Jerri Jordan”, “Rock Around the Rockpile”] But the thing is, that’s only a partial explanation. The song itself is clearly in a long line of Leiber and Stoller songs about the judicial system, like “Framed”: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Framed”] and “Riot in Cell Block #9”: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Riot in Cell Block #9”] It also contains a lot of the humour that Leiber and Stoller were noted for. Many comedians have made fun of this section: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Jailhouse Rock”] and pointed out the homoerotic implications of those lines. Given Leiber and Stoller’s other work, I think it’s fairly clear they were perfectly aware of those implications — and given that this is a film that also features shots of Elvis shirtless, tied up, being whipped by another man, I suspect they weren’t the only ones who were dropping little coded hints to gay fans at that time. But, as I said, the dance sequence nearly ended the film — and nearly ended Elvis’ singing career along with it. Elvis had some trouble learning to dance with a choreographed troupe, at first — he was a natural mover, and not used to the way trained dancers moved. Luckily, the choreographer, Alex Romero, came up with a solution to that problem. He got Elvis to just perform in front of him, miming to his own records, moving like he would on stage. Romero then took Elvis’ normal stage movements and worked them into the dance routine, choreographing it so it still worked with the large dance troupe, but Elvis was able to move in ways that were comfortable for him. (The claim on Wikipedia that Elvis himself choreographed the dance sequence is absolutely mythical, incidentally. It was Alex Romero.) That solved the immediate problem, but there was a larger problem when, on the first day of shooting, Elvis hit his mouth and dislodged a crown. Elvis insisted that it had gone into his chest. At first, people thought he was being overly dramatic, but after a few more takes of bits of the sequence, they noticed a whistling sound when he was breathing. He had inhaled his crown. It required major surgery to remove the crown from his lung, and to do it they had to separate his vocal cords to get into his lungs. This was a weird case of life imitating art, as a crucial plot point in the film was Elvis’ character having to have throat surgery and worrying whether he would be able to sing again. Fortunately, just as in the film, he made a full recovery and was able to carry on. The film itself was surprisingly good, given the depths to which Elvis would sink in some of his later films. Elvis plays a very unsympathetic character, with a chip on his shoulder after being imprisoned after accidentally killing a man in a bar fight, who (of course) becomes a famous singer. It’s no cinematic masterpiece, but it’s a very decent film of its type. The film sadly had a tragic coda — just days after the film finished shooting, Judy Tyler, Elvis’ love interest in the film, died in a car accident. As a result, Elvis refused to ever watch the film in full — he couldn’t bear to. But in the short term, the film’s main effect was to draw Elvis and Mike Stoller closer together. As Stoller was on the set all the time, he had a chance to get close to Elvis, and at one point they were having a game of pool, and one of the songs Leiber and Stoller had written for the Drifters came on: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Ruby Baby”] Elvis started singing along, and asking Stoller how he and Leiber wrote so many great songs together. But then, a few minutes later, Elvis was dragged out of the room, and came back in telling Stoller that he had to leave — the Colonel didn’t want Elvis hanging round with people who were in the music industry, unless those people worked for the Colonel. Indeed, at one point around this time, the Colonel tried to become Leiber and Stoller’s manager. He sent them blank pieces of paper for them to sign, with a promise that he would fill out the rest later and give them a very good deal. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their response was not one I could repeat on a podcast that isn’t in the adult section. But Elvis had still taken to Leiber and Stoller. He started calling them his “good luck charms”, and decided that he wanted them at every recording session. The Colonel agreed to have them involved in everything. For the moment. But Leiber and Stoller weren’t dependent on Elvis and the Colonel. During 1957, while they were working with Elvis, they also wrote hits for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, “Dancin'”] Ruth Brown: [Excerpt: Ruth Brown, “Lucky Lips”] The Drifters: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Fools Fall in Love”] And of course those Coasters records we looked at a few weeks ago — and will be looking at again in a month or so. And that independence was bothering people in the Colonel’s group of business people. In particular, Freddy Bienstock, who worked at Hill and Range and controlled what songs Elvis performed, became apoplectic when the duo gave the song “Don’t” directly to Elvis: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Don’t”] Stoller explained to Bienstock that the song had been commissioned directly *by* Elvis. Elvis had said, “I want you to write a real pretty ballad for me,” they’d gone away and written him a real pretty ballad, he’d liked it, what was the problem? The problem, Bienstock explained, was that you don’t just give songs to Elvis. There was no contract for the song. What if they couldn’t come to a contract agreement, but Elvis wanted to record the song anyway? What if all the money ended up just going to Leiber and Stoller because they refused to cut Hill and Range, Elvis, and the Colonel in on the royalties? That wasn’t a problem, they said. They’d written songs for Elvis before. They knew the drill. They assumed that the contract would be the same one they always had to sign when writing for Elvis. Bienstock insisted that none of that mattered. You brought the song to Bienstock, or to Jean Aberbach. If they liked it for Elvis, *then* they got the contracts sorted, and *then* Elvis got to hear it. That was the way things worked around here. You don’t just go bringing Elvis a song. That was going behind the Colonel’s back, and the Colonel didn’t like people going behind his back. As far as Leiber and Stoller were concerned, they weren’t going behind anyone’s back. So by September 1957, when Jailhouse Rock came out, things were a lot more precarious for Elvis than they looked from the outside. The Colonel had weakened the bonds between him and his backing musicians, by insisting that they get paid a small salary rather than a percentage; he had control over what songs Elvis could sing; Sam Phillips was no longer in the picture; and so Leiber and Stoller were the only people involved in Elvis’ life who had any real independence — everyone at Hill and Range, the film studios, and RCA was involved in a complex network of kickbacks which meant that they all stood or fell together with the Colonel. If the Colonel could just get those good luck charms out of Elvis’ life again, he’d be all set to make sure Elvis’ career was run exactly as he wanted it. And as luck would have it, Elvis was going to become eligible for the draft in January 1958. All the Colonel had to do was wait a few months…

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Celtic Christmas Cheer #440

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2019 62:53

Merry Christmas from the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast lots of Celtic Christmas culture and cheer. Eira, Heather Dale, Peat in the Creel, Marc Gunn, Natalie MacMaster, Donnell Leahy, Alexander James Adams, A Shamrock in Kudzu, The Wee Heavies, Jil Chambless, Ed Miller, Scooter Muse, Spencer & Beane, The Selkie Girls, Sarah Marie Mullen , Susan Toman, Farsan, Aizle & Riognach Connolly, Tommy Sands I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, please share the show with ONE friend. The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast is dedicated to growing our community and helping the incredible artists who so generously share their music. If you find music you love, buy their albums, shirts, and songbooks, follow them on Spotify, see their shows, and drop them an email to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. Remember also to Subscribe to the Celtic Music Magazine. Every week, I'll send you a few cool bits of Celtic music news. It's a quick and easy way to plug yourself into more great Celtic culture. Plus, you'll get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free, just for signing up today. VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20 With the new year comes a new votes in the Celtic Top 20. This is our way of finding the best songs and artists each year. Just list the show number, and the name of as many bands in the episode as you like. Your vote helps me create next year's Best Celtic music of 2019 episode. Vote Now! THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC 0:05 - "Taladh Chriosda" by Eira from Glen Tidings Pronunciation: Tall-uck Crees-da 3:25 - MERRY CHRISTMAS 4:06 - "O Come All Ye Faithful" by Heather Dale from Spark 8:25 - "Merry Christmas Jig, Masters of the Hall, All Around the Holly Tree" by Peat in the Creel from Winter 12:50 - "Slainte Mhaith Christmas" by Marc Gunn from Single 14:52 - "Ding Dong Merrily On High" by Natalie MacMaster/Donnell Leahy from A Celtic Family Christmas 18:06 - CELTIC CHRISTMAS FEEDBACK 23:32 - "Wintertide" by Alexander James Adams from Wintertide 29:21 - "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen w/The Lamplighter's Jig" by A Shamrock in Kudzu from Kudzu for Christmas 31:14 - "Court of a King" by The Wee Heavies from A Christmas Minding 34:35 - "Christmas Card" by Jil Chambless, Ed Miller and Scooter Muse from Nollaig Chridheil / Songs of the Christmas Season 35:48 - "Blessed Be That Maid Mairie" by Spencer & Beane from On Christmas Day in the Morning 39:03 - CELTIC PODCAST NEWS 41:15 - "Upon a Winter's Night" by The Selkie Girls from Winter Lore: Songs of Celtic Christmas 44:44 - "Good King Wenceslas" by Sarah Marie Mullen from In the Moon of Wintertime 47:22 - "The Sussex Carol" by Susan Toman from Angels on High 50:31 - "A' Mhisg A Chuir An Nollaig" by Farsan from Farsan Pronunciation: A-Vishk a cur an knoll-ig 54:16 - "The Wexford Carol" by Aizle & Riognach Connolly from The Wexford Carol 58:49 - CLOSING - NOLLAIG SHONA DAOIBH 1:00:00 - "Slainte Mhaith/The Cat in the Attic" by Tommy Sands from To Shorten the Winter - An Irish Christmas The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather. To subscribe, go to Apple Podcasts or to our website where you can become a Patron of the Podcast for as little as $1 per episode. Promote Celtic culture through music at http://celticmusicpodcast.com/. CELTIC PODCAST NEWS * Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. My name is Marc Gunn. I am a Celtic musician and podcaster. This show is dedicated to the indie Celtic musicians. I want to ask you to support these artists. Share the show with your friends. And find more episodes at celticmusicpodcast.com. You can also support this podcast on Patreon. If you enjoy this episode makes sure you subscribe to the Celtic Christmas Podcast. You’ll get over 50 episodes of Christmas music by Celtic musicians. Find more Celtic Christmas music, including podcasts, videos, Spotify playlists, Celtic Christmas song lyrics, and even some free downloads. Stephen Conroy’s Celtic Playlists TRAVEL WITH CELTIC INVASION VACATIONS Every year, I take a small group of Celtic music fans on the relaxing adventure of a lifetime. We don't see everything. Instead, we stay in one area. We get to know the region through it's culture, history, and legends. You can join us with an auditory and visual adventure through podcasts and videos. Join the invasion at http://celticinvasion.com/ THANK YOU PATRONS OF THE PODCAST!Because of Your kind and generous support, this show comes out every week and has done so since 2014. You can pledge a dollar or more per episode and cap how much you want to spend each month over on Patreon. Your generosity funds the creation, promotion and production of the show. It allows us to attract new listeners and to help our community grow. Plus, you get to hear episodes before regular listeners. When we hit a milestone, you get an extra-long episode. We are super close to getting a two-hour instrumental special. I want to thank our Patrons of the Podcast: You can become a generous Patron of the Podcast at http://patreon.com/celticpodcast. I WANT YOUR FEEDBACK What are you doing today while listening to the podcast? You can send a written comment along with a picture of what you're doing while listening. Email a voicemail message to celticpodcast@gmail.com James Slaven emailed a photo last year: "I’ve very much enjoyed the holiday music! The main podcast’s Christmas was a great cherry on top. Listened while baking Busha Bread (my great-grandmother’s recipe) for family holidays. Keep it up!" Brian Stuepfert of Sacramento, California emailed a photo: "Training for a marathon with celtic and Irish music in my ears." Neill McShea emailed: "Hey man, Just got back from a trip to Asia so I hadn’t actually heard any of the recent podcast. Nice job on the track titles! Sounded like a true Gaeligor!" Thanks also to Neill for helping with my Gaelic pronunciation on many of the recent episodes of the podcasts. Michael Vitagliano emailed: "Hey Mark! My wife and I are listening to episode 430 while driving from Galway to Dublin. It’s our last couple of days on the Emerald Isle and one stop is definitely going to be Cobblestone in Dublin for some amazing live trad tunes. One thing I’ve been surprised about being over here is the lack of cd shops. Back in the States we stream everything, but I understand why artists over here don’t want to be on services like Spotify. We’re going to explore Claddagh Records tomorrow and I’m optimistic we’ll find a pretty solid selection. I don’t know how much more work it is for you, but to include album links in the episodes would definitely help us in finding the artist and knowing which album to purchase. Just throwing that out there. Love the podcast, we’ve been binging it these past two weeks here in Ireland. It’s definitely made the experience that much more special." Joseph Rosenthal emailed: "Hey Marc! I've been listening for about 2 months now and love hearing the diverse styles of Celtic music and helps me expand my knowledge on artists. I was going to email a favorite local Celtic group I listen to religiously during the Maryland Renaissance Festival called The Hooligans, but I'm unsure if you've played them already since you and they've been around for a couple years. Is there a condensed archive of Artists you have shared on your Podcast available? Keep up the good work! And good on you for imploring that no hate comes to your podcast! I like the focus on the positivity!" #celticchristmas #irishchristmas #scottishchristmas

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MHFS 275

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2019 123:26

PODCAST: 24 Nov 2019 01 They’ll Be Waiting – John Campbell Munro – The Kelly Collection 02 George Collins – Cordelia’s Dad – Comet 03 Going Down To The Wasteland – Jon Boden – Rose In June 04 Mule Skinner Blues – David Grisman – Dawg Duos 05 Polly On The Shore – Bella & Polly – Bella & Polly 06 Glossop Road – Harp and a Monkey – The Victorians 07 Inse Gall – Willie Campbell & Band – Dileab: A Legacy 08 Paddy’s Lamentation – Will Finn & Rosie Calvert – Beneath This Place 09 The Battle Of Cable Street – Man The Lifeboats – When The Bell Rings 10 The Dark Eyed Gypsy – Lankum – The Livelong Day 11 Up A Lazy River – Duck Baker – When You Wore A Tulip 12 The Moving On Song – The Wicca Men – Albion’s Darkness 13 Rufford Park Poachers – Ewan McLennan – Borrowed Songs 14 Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood – Daria Kulesh – Earthly Delights 15 Nana Was A Suffragette – Lizzy Hardingham – Dusk 16 Bear Creak – Lankum – The Livelong Day 17 The Rambling Irishman – Harry Brazil – Travellers 18 Seven Bonnie Gypsies – Jon Boden – Rose In June 19 Fields Of Gold – Flossie Malavialle – Live – June 2018 20 Widnes Bound – Stanley Accrington – Home Banker 21 Paddy And The Judge – Tommy Sands – Fair Play To You All 22 Ode To Europe – Tommy Sands – Fair Play To You All 23 Love And War – Track Dogs – Fire On The Rails 24 Wassail Song – Various – Flash Company/25 Years Of Fellside Records 26 Gortvale Rock – Cathal Haydn – Hooked On Banjo

O Come All Ye Faithful #52

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2019 58:38

Spread the Christmas Cheer. Listen. Share. Subscribe. CelticChristmasPodcast.com. Celtic Christmas music from Farsan, The Jig Is Up!, Alexander James Adams, Peat in the Creel, Aizle & Riognach Connolly, A Shamrock in Kudzu, The Wee Heavies, Spencer & Beane, The Selkie Girls, Sarah Marie Mullen, Jil Chambless, Ed Miller, Scooter Muse, Susan Toman, Eira, Heather Dale, Natalie MacMaster, Donnell Leahy, Tommy Sands Welcome to the Celtic Christmas Podcast. My name is Marc Gunn. I am a Celtic musician and host also of the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast and the Pub Songs Podcast. My goal is to introduce you to Celtic musicians who are making and sharing Christmas music. This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of our Patrons. Sign up on Patreon to bring more episodes to your ears every November and December leading up to Christmas. YOUR CELTIC CHRISTMAS MUSIC THIS WEEK 0:02 - "A' Mhisg A Chuir An Nollaig" by Farsan from Farsan ( A-Vishk a cur an knoll-ig) 3:47 - WELCOME 4:25 - "The Holiday Slides" by The Jig Is Up! from A Penny for the Wren 8:11 - "Wintertide" by Alexander James Adams from Wintertide 13:56 - "Merry Christmas Jig, Masters in this Hall, All Around the Holly Tree" by Peat in the Creel from Winter 18:22 - "The Wexford Carol" by Aizle & Riognach Connolly from The Wexford Carol 22:52 - "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen w/ The Lamplighter's Jig" by A Shamrock in Kudzu from Kudzu for Christmas 24:46 - "Court of a King" by The Wee Heavies from A Christmas Minding 28:07 - "Blessed Be That Maid Mairie" by Spencer & Beane from On Christmas Day in the Morning 31:22 - CELTIC CHRISTMAS NEWS ** If you enjoy this podcast, you might also enjoy our Celtic Christmas playlist on Spotify. I can only play podsafe music here. So there is a more robust list of Celtic Christmas music on our 2019 Spotify playlist. ** If you find a song in this show that you love, you can find out more about the artist by visiting the shownotes at CelticChristmasPodcast.com. I list the show times and URLs for each artist in the notes. ** The Celtic Christmas Podcast comes out in November and December of each year. And it is now supported by our generous Patrons on Patreon. Your kind and generous pledge to this show pays for the creation, production, and promotion of the podcast. It allows me to share Christmas Cheer through Celtic culture and music. Here’s how it works. Follow the link to our Patreon page. Pick how much you want to pledge from 1 of 6 tiers. You could get physical CDs, Christmas gifts, and an exclusive Christmas Song Henger podcast to find more about the artists in the show. Make your pledge per episode. Remember. I only plan to release 1-2 episodes during the months of November or December. Cap how much you want to spend each month. Relax and enjoy Christmas music from the Celts 33:19 - "Upon a Winter's Night" by The Selkie Girls from Winter Lore: Songs of Celtic Christmas 36:49 - "Good King Wenceslas" by Sarah Marie Mullen from In the Moon of Wintertime 39:27 - "Christmas Card" by Jil Chambless, Ed Miller and Scooter Muse from Nollaig Chridheil / Songs of the Christmas Season 40:32 - "The Sussex Carol" by Susan Toman from Angels on High 43:42 - "Taladh Chriosda" by Eira from Glen Tidings (chal-lad chris-da) 47:40 - "O Come All Ye Faithful" by Heather Dale from Spark 51:24 - "Ding Dong Merrily On High" by Natalie MacMaster|Donnell Leahy from A Celtic Family Christmas 54:37 If you enjoyed this show, please LIKE and SHARE this episode. If you found a song you loved in this show, follow the link in the shownotes to support the artists who support this podcast. Buy their music and merch, subscribe to their newsletters, and tell a friend about the great music you found. Finally, subscribe to the Celtic Music Magazine. This is the official newsletter of the Celtic Christmas Podcast and the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast. It is free to subscribe, and you'll get an inside look into the latest Celtic podcast news. Sign up today, and you can download 34 Celtic MP3s for FREE! 55:53 - “Slainte Mhaith / The Cat In the Attic” by Tommy Sands from To Shorten the Winter - An Irish Christmas This show is brought to you by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather. Promote Celtic culture through Christmas music at CelticChristmasPodcast.com. Nollaig Shona Daoibh! #celticchristmas #celticchristmasmusic #ocomeallyefaithful

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Episode 52: “Twenty Flight Rock”, by Eddie Cochran

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 14, 2019

Episode fifty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Twenty Flight Rock” by Eddie Cochran, and at the first great rock and roll film 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 “Teen-Age Crush” by Tommy Sands. —-more—- Resources There are several books available on Cochran, but for this episode I mostly relied on Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis. I’ll be using others as well in forthcoming episodes. While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran’s music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. And as always there’s a Mixcloud with the full versions of all the songs featured in today’s episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript To tell the story of rock music, it’s important to tell the story of the music’s impact on other media. Rock and roll was a cultural phenomenon that affected almost everything, and it affected TV, film, clothing and more. So today, we’re going to look at how a film made the career of one of the greats of rock and roll music: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Twenty Flight Rock”] Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, though in later life he would always claim to be an Okie rather than from Albert Lea. His parents were from Oklahoma, they moved to Minnesota shortly before Eddie was born, and they moved back to Oklahoma City when he was small, moved back again to Minnesota, and then moved off to California with the rest of the Okies. Cochran was a staggeringly precocious guitarist. On the road trip to California from Albert Lea, he had held his guitar on his lap for the entire journey, referring to it as his best friend. And once he hit California he quickly struck up a musical relationship with two friends — Guybo Smith, who played bass, and Chuck Foreman, who played steel guitar. The three of them got hold of a couple of tape recorders, which allowed them not only to record themselves, but to experiment with overdubbing in the style of Les Paul. Some of those recordings have seen release in recent years, and they’re quite astonishing: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Chuck Foreman, “Rockin’ It”] Cochran plays all the guitars on that (except the steel guitar, which is Foreman) and he was only fourteen years old at the time. He played with several groups who were playing the Okie Western Swing and proto-rockabilly that was popular in California at the time, and eventually hooked up with a singer from Mississippi who was born Garland Perry, but who changed his name to Hank Cochran, allowing the duo to perform under the name “the Cochran Brothers”. The Cochran Brothers soon got a record deal. When they started out, they were doing pure country music, and their first single was a Louvin Brothers style close harmony song, about Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams: [Excerpt: The Cochran Brothers, “Two Blue Singing Stars”] But while Hank was perfectly happy making this kind of music, Eddie was getting more and more interested in the new rock and roll music that was starting to become popular, and the two of them eventually split up over actual musical differences. Hank Cochran would go on to have a long and successful career in the country industry, but Eddie was floundering. He knew that this new music was what he should be playing, and he was one of the best guitarists around, but he wasn’t sure how to become a rock and roller, or even if he wanted to be a singer at all, rather than just a guitar player. He hooked up with Jerry Capehart, a singer and songwriter who the Cochran Brothers had earlier backed on a single: [Excerpt: Jerry Capehart and the Cochran Brothers, “Walkin’ Stick Boogie”] The two of them started writing songs together, and Eddie also started playing as a session musician. He played on dozens of sessions in the mid-fifties, mostly uncredited, and scholars are still trying to establish a full list of the records he played on. But while he was doing this, he still hadn’t got himself a record contract, other than for a single record on an independent label: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Skinny Jim”] Cochran was in the studio recording demos for consideration by record labels when Boris Petroff, a B-movie director who was a friend of Cochran’s collaborator Jerry Capehart, dropped in. Petroff decided that Cochran had the looks to be a film star, and right there offered him a part in a film that was being made under the working title Do-Re-Mi. Quite how Petroff had the ability to give Cochran a part in a film he wasn’t working on, I don’t know, but he did, and the offer was a genuine one, as Cochran confirmed the next day. There were many, many, rock and roll films made in the 1950s, and most of them were utterly terrible. It says something about the genre as a whole when I tell you that Elvis’ early films, which are not widely regarded as cinematic masterpieces, are among the very best rock and roll films of the decade. The 1950s were the tipping point for television ownership in both the US and the UK, but while TV was quickly becoming a mass medium, cinema-going was still at levels that would stagger people today — *everyone* went to the cinema. And when you went to the cinema, you didn’t go just to see one film. There’d be a main film, a shorter film called a B-movie that lasted maybe an hour, and short features like cartoons and newsreels. That meant that there was a much greater appetite for cheap films that could be used to fill out a programme, despite their total lack of quality. This is where, for example, all the films that appear in Mystery Science Theater 3000 come from, or many of them. And these B-movies would be made in a matter of weeks, or even days, and so would quickly be turned round to cash in on whatever trend was happening right at that minute. And so between 1956 and 1958 there were several dozen films, with titles like “Rock! Rock! Rock!”, “Don’t Knock The Rock” and so on. [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, “Don’t Knock the Rock”] In every case, these films were sold entirely on the basis of the musical performances therein, with little or no effort to sell them as narratives, even though they all had plots of sorts. They were just excuses to get footage of as many different hit acts as possible into the cinemas, ideally before their songs dropped off the charts. (Many of them also contained non-hit acts, like Teddy Randazzo, who seemed to appear in all of them despite never having a single make the top fifty. Randazzo did, though, go on to write a number of classic hits for other artists). Very few of the rock and roll films of the fifties were even watchable at all. We talked in the episode on “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” about the film “Rock! Rock! Rock!” which Chuck Berry appeared in — that was actually towards the more watchable end of these films, terrible as it was. The film that Cochran was signed to appear in, which was soon renamed The Girl Can’t Help It, is different. There are plenty of points at which the action stops for a musical performance, but there is an actual plot, and actual dialogue and acting. While the film isn’t a masterpiece or anything like that, it is a proper film. And it’s made by a proper studio. While, for example, Rock! Rock! Rock! was made by a fly-by-night company called Vanguard Productions, The Girl Can’t Help It was made by Twentieth Century Fox. And it was made in both colour and Cinemascope. The budget for Rock! Rock! Rock! was seventy-five thousand dollars compared to the 1.3 million dollars spent on The Girl Can’t Help It. [Excerpt: Little Richard, “The Girl Can’t Help It”] Indeed, it seems to be as much an attempt to cash in on a Billy Wilder film as it is an attempt to cash in on rock and roll. The previous year, The Seven-Year Itch had been a big hit, with Tom Ewell playing an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Marilyn Monroe. The film had been a massive success (and it’s responsible for the famous scene with Monroe on the air grate, which is still homaged and parodied to this day) and so the decision was taken to cast Tom Ewell as an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Jayne Mansfield doing her usual act of being a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Just as the film was attempting to sell itself on the back of a more successful hit film, the story also bears a certain amount of resemblance to one by someone else. The playwright Garson Kanin had been inspired in 1955 by the tales of the jukebox wars — he’d discovered that most of the jukeboxes in the country were being run by the Mafia, and that which records got stocked and played depended very much on who would do favours for the various gangsters involved. Gangsters would often destroy rivals’ jukeboxes, and threaten bar owners if they were getting their jukeboxes from the wrong set of mobsters. Kanin took this idea and turned it into a novella, Do-Re-Mi, about a helpless schlub who teams up with a gangster named “Fatso” to enter the record business, and on the way more or less accidentally makes a young woman into a singing star. Do-Re-Mi later became a moderately successful stage musical, which introduced the song “Make Someone Happy”. [Excerpt: Doris Day, “Make Someone Happy”] Meanwhile the plot of The Girl Can’t Help It has a helpless schlub team up with a mobster named “Fats”, and the two of them working together to make the mobster’s young girlfriend into a singing star. I’ve seen varying accounts as to why The Girl Can’t Help It was renamed from Do-Re-Mi and wasn’t credited as being based on Kanin’s novella. Some say that the film was made without the rights having been acquired, and changed to the point that Kanin wouldn’t sue. Others say that Twentieth Century Fox acquired the rights perfectly legally, but that the director, Frank Tashlin changed the script around so much that Kanin asked that his credit be removed, because it was now so different from his novella that he could probably resell the rights at some future point. The latter seems fairly likely to me, given that Tashlin’s next film, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, which also starred Jayne Mansfield, contained almost nothing from the play on which it was based. Indeed, the original play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was by the author of the original play on which The Seven-Year Itch was based. The playwright had been so annoyed at the way in which his vision had been messed with for the screen that he wrote Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? as a satire about the way the film industry changes writers’ work, and Mansfield was cast in the play. When Tashlin wanted Mansfield to star in The Girl Can’t Help It but she was contractually obliged to appear in the play, Fox decided the easiest thing to do was just to buy up the rights to the play and relieve Mansfield of her obligation so she could star in The Girl Can’t Help It. They then, once The Girl Can’t Help It finished, got Frank Tashlin to write a totally new film with the title Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, keeping only the title and Mansfield’s character. While The Girl Can’t Help It has a reputation for satirising rock and roll, it actually pulls its punches to a surprising extent. For example, there’s a pivotal scene where the main mobster character, Fats, calls our hero after seeing Eddie Cochran on TV: [excerpt: dialogue from “The Girl Can’t Help It”] Note the wording there, and what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that Cochran can’t sing, merely that he “ain’t got a trained voice”. The whole point of this scene is to set up that Jerry Jordan, Mansfield’s character, could become a rock and roll star even though she can’t sing at all, and yet when dealing with a real rock and roll star they are careful to be more ambiguous. Because, of course, the main thing that sold the film was the appearance of multiple rock and roll stars — although “stars” is possibly overstating it for many of those present in the film. One thing it shared with most of the exploitation films was a rather slapdash attitude to which musicians the film would actually feature. And so it has the genuinely big rock and roll stars of the time Little Richard, the Platters, and Fats Domino, the one-hit wonder Gene Vincent (but what a one hit to have), and a bunch of… less well-known people, like the Treniers — a jump band who’d been around since the forties and never really made a major impact, or Eddie Fontaine (about whom the less said the better), or the ubiquitous Teddy Randazzo, performing here with an accordion accompaniment. [Excerpt: Teddy Randazzo and the Three Chuckles, “Cinnamon Sinner”] And Cochran was to be one of those lesser-known acts, so he and Capehart had to find a song that might be suitable for him to perform in the film. Very quickly they decided on a song called “Twenty Flight Rock”, written by a songwriter called Nelda Fairchild. There has been a lot of controversy as to who actually contributed what to the song, which is copyrighted in the names of both Fairchild and Cochran. Fairchild always claimed that she wrote the whole thing entirely by herself, and that Cochran got his co-writing credit for performing the demo, while Cochran’s surviving relatives are equally emphatic in their claims that he was an equal contributor as a songwriter. We will almost certainly never know the truth. Cochran is credited as the co-writer of several other hit songs, usually with Capehart, but never as the sole writer of a hit. Fairchild, meanwhile, was a professional songwriter, but pieces like “Freddie the Little Fir Tree” don’t especially sound like the work of the same person who wrote “Twenty Flight Rock”. As both credited writers are now dead, the best we can do is use our own judgment, and my personal judgment is that Cochran probably contributed at least something to the song’s writing. The original version of “Twenty Flight Rock”, as featured in the film, was little more than a demo — it featured Cochran on guitar, Guybo Smith on double bass, and Capehart slapping a cardboard box to add percussion. Cochran later recorded a more fully-arranged version of the song, which came out after the film, but the extra elements, notably the backing vocals, added little to the simplistic original: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Twenty Flight Rock”] It was that simpler version that appeared in the film, and which took its place alongside several other classic tracks in the film’s soundtrack. The film was originally intended to have a theme tune recorded by Fats Domino, who appeared in the film performing his hit “Blue Monday”, but when Bobby Troup mentioned this to Art Rupe, Rupe suggested that Little Richard would be a more energetic star to perform the song (and I’m sure this was entirely because of his belief that Richard would be the better talent, and nothing to do with Rupe owning Richard’s label, but not Domino’s). As a result, Domino’s role in the film was cut down to a single song, while Richard ended up doing three — the title song, written by Troup, “Ready Teddy” by John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell, and “She’s Got It”. We’ve mentioned before that John Marascalco’s writing credits sometimes seem to be slightly exaggerated, and “She’s Got It” is one record that tends to bear that out. Listen to “She’s Got It”, which has Marascalco as the sole credited writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “She’s Got It”] And now listen to “I Got It”, an earlier record by Richard, which has Little Richard credited as the sole writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “I Got It”] Hmm… The Girl Can’t Help It was rather poorly reviewed in America. In France it was a different story. There’s a pervasive legend that the people of France revere Jerry Lewis as a genius. This is nonsense. But the grain of truth in it is that Cahiers du Cinema, the most important film magazine in France by a long way — the magazine for which Godard, Truffaut, and others wrote, and which popularised the concept of auteur theory, absolutely loved Frank Tashlin. In 1957, Tashlin was the only director to get two films on their top ten films of the year list — The Girl Can’t Help It at number eight, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter at number two. The other eight films on the list were directed by Chaplin, Fellini, Hitchcock, Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang and Sidney Lumet. Tashlin directed several films starring Jerry Lewis, and those films, like Tashlin’s other work, got a significant amount of praise in the magazine. And that’s where that legend actually comes from, though Cahiers did also give some more guarded praise to some of the films Lewis directed himself later. Tashlin wasn’t actually that good a director, but what he did have is a visual style that came from a different area of filmmaking than most of his competitors. Tashlin had started out as a cartoon director, working on Warner Brothers cartoons. He wasn’t one of the better directors for Warners, and didn’t direct any of the classics people remember from the studio — he mostly made forgettable Porky Pig shorts. But this meant he had an animator’s sense for a visual gag, and thus gave his films a unique look. For advocates of auteur theory, that was enough to push him into the top ranks. And so The Girl Can’t Help It became a classic film, and Cochran got a great deal of attention, and a record deal. According to Si Waronker, the head of Liberty Records, Eddie Cochran getting signed to the label had nothing to do with him being cast in The Girl Can’t Help It, and Waronker had no idea the film was being made when Cochran got signed. This seems implausible, to say the least. Johnny Olenn, Abbey Lincoln and Julie London, three other Liberty Records artists, appeared in the film — and London was by some way Liberty’s biggest star. Not only that, but London’s husband, Bobby Troup, wrote the theme song and was musical director for the film. But whether or not Cochran was signed on account of his film appearance, “Twenty Flight Rock” wasn’t immediately released as a single. Indeed, by the time it came out Cochran had already appeared in another film, in which he had backed Mamie Van Doren — another Marilyn Monroe imitator in the same vein as Mansfield — on several songs, as well as having a small role and a featured song himself. Oddly, when that film, Untamed Youth, came out, Cochran’s backing on Van Doren’s recordings had been replaced by different instrumentalists. But he still appears on the EP that was released of the songs, including this one, which Cochran co-wrote with Capehart: [Excerpt: Mamie Van Doren, “Ooh Ba La Baby”] It had originally been planned to release “Twenty Flight Rock” as Cochran’s first single on Liberty, to coincide with the film’s release but then it was put back for several months, as Si Waronker wanted Cochran to release “Sitting in the Balcony” instead. That song had been written and originally recorded by John D Loudermilk: [Excerpt: John D Loudermilk, “Sitting in the Balcony”] Waronker had wanted to release Loudermilk’s record, but he hadn’t been able to get the rights, so he decided to get Cochran to record a note-for-note cover version and release that instead: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Sitting in the Balcony”] Cochran was not particularly happy with that record, though he was happy enough once the record started selling in comparatively vast quantities, spurred by his appearance in The Girl Can’t Help It, and reached number eighteen in the charts. The problem was that Cochran and Waronker had fundamentally different ideas about what Cochran actually was as an artist. Cochran thought of himself primarily as a guitarist — and the guitar solo on “Sittin’ in the Balcony” was the one thing about Cochran’s record which distinguished it from Loudermilk’s original — and also as a rock and roller. Waronker, on the other hand, was convinced that someone with Cochran’s good looks and masculine voice could easily be another Pat Boone. Liberty was fundamentally not geared towards making rock and roll records. Its other artists included the Hollywood composer Lionel Newman, the torch singer Julie London, and a little later novelty acts like the Chipmunks — the three Chipmunks, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, being named after Al Bennett, Si Waronker, and Theodore Keep, the three men in charge of the label. And their attempts to force Cochran into the mould of a light-entertainment crooner produced a completely forgettable debut album, Singin’ to My Baby, which has little of the rock and roll excitement that would characterise Cochran’s better work. (And a warning for anyone who decides to go out and listen to that album anyway — one of the few tracks on there that *is* in Cochran’s rock and roll style is a song called “Mean When I’m Mad”, which is one of the most misogynist things I have heard, and I’ve heard quite a lot — it’s basically an outright rape threat. So if that’s something that will upset you, please steer clear of Cochran’s first album, while knowing you’re missing little artistically.) “Twenty Flight Rock” was eventually released as a single, in its remade version, in November 1957, almost a year after The Girl Can’t Help It came out. Unsurprisingly, coming out so late after the film, it didn’t chart, and it would be a while yet before Cochran would have his biggest hit. But just because it didn’t chart, doesn’t mean it didn’t make an impression. There’s one story, more than any other, that sums up the impact both of “The Girl Can’t Help It” and of “Twenty Flight Rock” itself. In July 1957, a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, led by a teenager called John Lennon, played a village fete in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool. After the show, they were introduced to a young boy named Paul McCartney by a mutual friend. Lennon and McCartney hit it off, but the thing that persuaded Lennon to offer McCartney a place in the group was when McCartney demonstrated that he knew all the words to “Twenty Flight Rock”. Lennon wasn’t great at remembering lyrics, and was impressed enough by this that he decided that this new kid needed to be in the group. [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, “Twenty Flight Rock”] That’s the impact that The Girl Can’t Help It had, and the impact that “Twenty Flight Rock” had. But Eddie Cochran’s career was just starting, and we’ll see more of him in future episodes…

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Episode 52: "Twenty Flight Rock", by Eddie Cochran

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 14, 2019 35:39

Episode fifty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Twenty Flight Rock" by Eddie Cochran, and at the first great rock and roll film 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 "Teen-Age Crush" by Tommy Sands. ----more---- Resources There are several books available on Cochran, but for this episode I mostly relied on Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis. I'll be using others as well in forthcoming episodes. While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran's music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. And as always there's a Mixcloud with the full versions of all the songs featured in today's episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript To tell the story of rock music, it's important to tell the story of the music's impact on other media. Rock and roll was a cultural phenomenon that affected almost everything, and it affected TV, film, clothing and more. So today, we're going to look at how a film made the career of one of the greats of rock and roll music: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Twenty Flight Rock"] Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, though in later life he would always claim to be an Okie rather than from Albert Lea. His parents were from Oklahoma, they moved to Minnesota shortly before Eddie was born, and they moved back to Oklahoma City when he was small, moved back again to Minnesota, and then moved off to California with the rest of the Okies. Cochran was a staggeringly precocious guitarist. On the road trip to California from Albert Lea, he had held his guitar on his lap for the entire journey, referring to it as his best friend. And once he hit California he quickly struck up a musical relationship with two friends -- Guybo Smith, who played bass, and Chuck Foreman, who played steel guitar. The three of them got hold of a couple of tape recorders, which allowed them not only to record themselves, but to experiment with overdubbing in the style of Les Paul. Some of those recordings have seen release in recent years, and they're quite astonishing: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Chuck Foreman, "Rockin' It"] Cochran plays all the guitars on that (except the steel guitar, which is Foreman) and he was only fourteen years old at the time. He played with several groups who were playing the Okie Western Swing and proto-rockabilly that was popular in California at the time, and eventually hooked up with a singer from Mississippi who was born Garland Perry, but who changed his name to Hank Cochran, allowing the duo to perform under the name "the Cochran Brothers". The Cochran Brothers soon got a record deal. When they started out, they were doing pure country music, and their first single was a Louvin Brothers style close harmony song, about Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams: [Excerpt: The Cochran Brothers, "Two Blue Singing Stars"] But while Hank was perfectly happy making this kind of music, Eddie was getting more and more interested in the new rock and roll music that was starting to become popular, and the two of them eventually split up over actual musical differences. Hank Cochran would go on to have a long and successful career in the country industry, but Eddie was floundering. He knew that this new music was what he should be playing, and he was one of the best guitarists around, but he wasn't sure how to become a rock and roller, or even if he wanted to be a singer at all, rather than just a guitar player. He hooked up with Jerry Capehart, a singer and songwriter who the Cochran Brothers had earlier backed on a single: [Excerpt: Jerry Capehart and the Cochran Brothers, "Walkin' Stick Boogie"] The two of them started writing songs together, and Eddie also started playing as a session musician. He played on dozens of sessions in the mid-fifties, mostly uncredited, and scholars are still trying to establish a full list of the records he played on. But while he was doing this, he still hadn't got himself a record contract, other than for a single record on an independent label: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Skinny Jim"] Cochran was in the studio recording demos for consideration by record labels when Boris Petroff, a B-movie director who was a friend of Cochran's collaborator Jerry Capehart, dropped in. Petroff decided that Cochran had the looks to be a film star, and right there offered him a part in a film that was being made under the working title Do-Re-Mi. Quite how Petroff had the ability to give Cochran a part in a film he wasn't working on, I don't know, but he did, and the offer was a genuine one, as Cochran confirmed the next day. There were many, many, rock and roll films made in the 1950s, and most of them were utterly terrible. It says something about the genre as a whole when I tell you that Elvis' early films, which are not widely regarded as cinematic masterpieces, are among the very best rock and roll films of the decade. The 1950s were the tipping point for television ownership in both the US and the UK, but while TV was quickly becoming a mass medium, cinema-going was still at levels that would stagger people today -- *everyone* went to the cinema. And when you went to the cinema, you didn't go just to see one film. There'd be a main film, a shorter film called a B-movie that lasted maybe an hour, and short features like cartoons and newsreels. That meant that there was a much greater appetite for cheap films that could be used to fill out a programme, despite their total lack of quality. This is where, for example, all the films that appear in Mystery Science Theater 3000 come from, or many of them. And these B-movies would be made in a matter of weeks, or even days, and so would quickly be turned round to cash in on whatever trend was happening right at that minute. And so between 1956 and 1958 there were several dozen films, with titles like "Rock! Rock! Rock!", "Don't Knock The Rock" and so on. [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, “Don't Knock the Rock”] In every case, these films were sold entirely on the basis of the musical performances therein, with little or no effort to sell them as narratives, even though they all had plots of sorts. They were just excuses to get footage of as many different hit acts as possible into the cinemas, ideally before their songs dropped off the charts. (Many of them also contained non-hit acts, like Teddy Randazzo, who seemed to appear in all of them despite never having a single make the top fifty. Randazzo did, though, go on to write a number of classic hits for other artists). Very few of the rock and roll films of the fifties were even watchable at all. We talked in the episode on "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" about the film "Rock! Rock! Rock!" which Chuck Berry appeared in -- that was actually towards the more watchable end of these films, terrible as it was. The film that Cochran was signed to appear in, which was soon renamed The Girl Can't Help It, is different. There are plenty of points at which the action stops for a musical performance, but there is an actual plot, and actual dialogue and acting. While the film isn't a masterpiece or anything like that, it is a proper film. And it's made by a proper studio. While, for example, Rock! Rock! Rock! was made by a fly-by-night company called Vanguard Productions, The Girl Can't Help It was made by Twentieth Century Fox. And it was made in both colour and Cinemascope. The budget for Rock! Rock! Rock! was seventy-five thousand dollars compared to the 1.3 million dollars spent on The Girl Can't Help It. [Excerpt: Little Richard, “The Girl Can't Help It”] Indeed, it seems to be as much an attempt to cash in on a Billy Wilder film as it is an attempt to cash in on rock and roll. The previous year, The Seven-Year Itch had been a big hit, with Tom Ewell playing an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Marilyn Monroe. The film had been a massive success (and it's responsible for the famous scene with Monroe on the air grate, which is still homaged and parodied to this day) and so the decision was taken to cast Tom Ewell as an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Jayne Mansfield doing her usual act of being a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Just as the film was attempting to sell itself on the back of a more successful hit film, the story also bears a certain amount of resemblance to one by someone else. The playwright Garson Kanin had been inspired in 1955 by the tales of the jukebox wars -- he'd discovered that most of the jukeboxes in the country were being run by the Mafia, and that which records got stocked and played depended very much on who would do favours for the various gangsters involved. Gangsters would often destroy rivals' jukeboxes, and threaten bar owners if they were getting their jukeboxes from the wrong set of mobsters. Kanin took this idea and turned it into a novella, Do-Re-Mi, about a helpless schlub who teams up with a gangster named "Fatso" to enter the record business, and on the way more or less accidentally makes a young woman into a singing star. Do-Re-Mi later became a moderately successful stage musical, which introduced the song "Make Someone Happy". [Excerpt: Doris Day, “Make Someone Happy”] Meanwhile the plot of The Girl Can't Help It has a helpless schlub team up with a mobster named "Fats", and the two of them working together to make the mobster's young girlfriend into a singing star. I've seen varying accounts as to why The Girl Can't Help It was renamed from Do-Re-Mi and wasn't credited as being based on Kanin's novella. Some say that the film was made without the rights having been acquired, and changed to the point that Kanin wouldn't sue. Others say that Twentieth Century Fox acquired the rights perfectly legally, but that the director, Frank Tashlin changed the script around so much that Kanin asked that his credit be removed, because it was now so different from his novella that he could probably resell the rights at some future point. The latter seems fairly likely to me, given that Tashlin's next film, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, which also starred Jayne Mansfield, contained almost nothing from the play on which it was based. Indeed, the original play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was by the author of the original play on which The Seven-Year Itch was based. The playwright had been so annoyed at the way in which his vision had been messed with for the screen that he wrote Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? as a satire about the way the film industry changes writers' work, and Mansfield was cast in the play. When Tashlin wanted Mansfield to star in The Girl Can't Help It but she was contractually obliged to appear in the play, Fox decided the easiest thing to do was just to buy up the rights to the play and relieve Mansfield of her obligation so she could star in The Girl Can't Help It. They then, once The Girl Can't Help It finished, got Frank Tashlin to write a totally new film with the title Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, keeping only the title and Mansfield's character. While The Girl Can't Help It has a reputation for satirising rock and roll, it actually pulls its punches to a surprising extent. For example, there's a pivotal scene where the main mobster character, Fats, calls our hero after seeing Eddie Cochran on TV: [excerpt: dialogue from "The Girl Can't Help It"] Note the wording there, and what he doesn't say. He doesn't say that Cochran can't sing, merely that he "ain't got a trained voice". The whole point of this scene is to set up that Jerry Jordan, Mansfield's character, could become a rock and roll star even though she can't sing at all, and yet when dealing with a real rock and roll star they are careful to be more ambiguous. Because, of course, the main thing that sold the film was the appearance of multiple rock and roll stars -- although "stars" is possibly overstating it for many of those present in the film. One thing it shared with most of the exploitation films was a rather slapdash attitude to which musicians the film would actually feature. And so it has the genuinely big rock and roll stars of the time Little Richard, the Platters, and Fats Domino, the one-hit wonder Gene Vincent (but what a one hit to have), and a bunch of… less well-known people, like the Treniers -- a jump band who'd been around since the forties and never really made a major impact, or Eddie Fontaine (about whom the less said the better), or the ubiquitous Teddy Randazzo, performing here with an accordion accompaniment. [Excerpt: Teddy Randazzo and the Three Chuckles, “Cinnamon Sinner”] And Cochran was to be one of those lesser-known acts, so he and Capehart had to find a song that might be suitable for him to perform in the film. Very quickly they decided on a song called "Twenty Flight Rock", written by a songwriter called Nelda Fairchild. There has been a lot of controversy as to who actually contributed what to the song, which is copyrighted in the names of both Fairchild and Cochran. Fairchild always claimed that she wrote the whole thing entirely by herself, and that Cochran got his co-writing credit for performing the demo, while Cochran's surviving relatives are equally emphatic in their claims that he was an equal contributor as a songwriter. We will almost certainly never know the truth. Cochran is credited as the co-writer of several other hit songs, usually with Capehart, but never as the sole writer of a hit. Fairchild, meanwhile, was a professional songwriter, but pieces like "Freddie the Little Fir Tree" don't especially sound like the work of the same person who wrote "Twenty Flight Rock". As both credited writers are now dead, the best we can do is use our own judgment, and my personal judgment is that Cochran probably contributed at least something to the song's writing. The original version of "Twenty Flight Rock", as featured in the film, was little more than a demo -- it featured Cochran on guitar, Guybo Smith on double bass, and Capehart slapping a cardboard box to add percussion. Cochran later recorded a more fully-arranged version of the song, which came out after the film, but the extra elements, notably the backing vocals, added little to the simplistic original: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Twenty Flight Rock"] It was that simpler version that appeared in the film, and which took its place alongside several other classic tracks in the film's soundtrack. The film was originally intended to have a theme tune recorded by Fats Domino, who appeared in the film performing his hit "Blue Monday", but when Bobby Troup mentioned this to Art Rupe, Rupe suggested that Little Richard would be a more energetic star to perform the song (and I'm sure this was entirely because of his belief that Richard would be the better talent, and nothing to do with Rupe owning Richard's label, but not Domino's). As a result, Domino's role in the film was cut down to a single song, while Richard ended up doing three -- the title song, written by Troup, "Ready Teddy" by John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell, and "She's Got It". We've mentioned before that John Marascalco's writing credits sometimes seem to be slightly exaggerated, and “She's Got It” is one record that tends to bear that out. Listen to “She's Got It”, which has Marascalco as the sole credited writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “She's Got It”] And now listen to “I Got It”, an earlier record by Richard, which has Little Richard credited as the sole writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “I Got It”] Hmm… The Girl Can't Help It was rather poorly reviewed in America. In France it was a different story. There's a pervasive legend that the people of France revere Jerry Lewis as a genius. This is nonsense. But the grain of truth in it is that Cahiers du Cinema, the most important film magazine in France by a long way -- the magazine for which Godard, Truffaut, and others wrote, and which popularised the concept of auteur theory, absolutely loved Frank Tashlin. In 1957, Tashlin was the only director to get two films on their top ten films of the year list -- The Girl Can't Help It at number eight, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter at number two. The other eight films on the list were directed by Chaplin, Fellini, Hitchcock, Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang and Sidney Lumet. Tashlin directed several films starring Jerry Lewis, and those films, like Tashlin's other work, got a significant amount of praise in the magazine. And that's where that legend actually comes from, though Cahiers did also give some more guarded praise to some of the films Lewis directed himself later. Tashlin wasn't actually that good a director, but what he did have is a visual style that came from a different area of filmmaking than most of his competitors. Tashlin had started out as a cartoon director, working on Warner Brothers cartoons. He wasn't one of the better directors for Warners, and didn't direct any of the classics people remember from the studio -- he mostly made forgettable Porky Pig shorts. But this meant he had an animator's sense for a visual gag, and thus gave his films a unique look. For advocates of auteur theory, that was enough to push him into the top ranks. And so The Girl Can't Help It became a classic film, and Cochran got a great deal of attention, and a record deal. According to Si Waronker, the head of Liberty Records, Eddie Cochran getting signed to the label had nothing to do with him being cast in The Girl Can't Help It, and Waronker had no idea the film was being made when Cochran got signed. This seems implausible, to say the least. Johnny Olenn, Abbey Lincoln and Julie London, three other Liberty Records artists, appeared in the film -- and London was by some way Liberty's biggest star. Not only that, but London's husband, Bobby Troup, wrote the theme song and was musical director for the film. But whether or not Cochran was signed on account of his film appearance, "Twenty Flight Rock" wasn't immediately released as a single. Indeed, by the time it came out Cochran had already appeared in another film, in which he had backed Mamie Van Doren -- another Marilyn Monroe imitator in the same vein as Mansfield -- on several songs, as well as having a small role and a featured song himself. Oddly, when that film, Untamed Youth, came out, Cochran's backing on Van Doren's recordings had been replaced by different instrumentalists. But he still appears on the EP that was released of the songs, including this one, which Cochran co-wrote with Capehart: [Excerpt: Mamie Van Doren, "Ooh Ba La Baby"] It had originally been planned to release "Twenty Flight Rock" as Cochran's first single on Liberty, to coincide with the film's release but then it was put back for several months, as Si Waronker wanted Cochran to release "Sitting in the Balcony" instead. That song had been written and originally recorded by John D Loudermilk: [Excerpt: John D Loudermilk, "Sitting in the Balcony"] Waronker had wanted to release Loudermilk's record, but he hadn't been able to get the rights, so he decided to get Cochran to record a note-for-note cover version and release that instead: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, "Sitting in the Balcony"] Cochran was not particularly happy with that record, though he was happy enough once the record started selling in comparatively vast quantities, spurred by his appearance in The Girl Can't Help It, and reached number eighteen in the charts. The problem was that Cochran and Waronker had fundamentally different ideas about what Cochran actually was as an artist. Cochran thought of himself primarily as a guitarist -- and the guitar solo on "Sittin' in the Balcony" was the one thing about Cochran's record which distinguished it from Loudermilk's original -- and also as a rock and roller. Waronker, on the other hand, was convinced that someone with Cochran's good looks and masculine voice could easily be another Pat Boone. Liberty was fundamentally not geared towards making rock and roll records. Its other artists included the Hollywood composer Lionel Newman, the torch singer Julie London, and a little later novelty acts like the Chipmunks -- the three Chipmunks, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, being named after Al Bennett, Si Waronker, and Theodore Keep, the three men in charge of the label. And their attempts to force Cochran into the mould of a light-entertainment crooner produced a completely forgettable debut album, Singin' to My Baby, which has little of the rock and roll excitement that would characterise Cochran's better work. (And a warning for anyone who decides to go out and listen to that album anyway -- one of the few tracks on there that *is* in Cochran's rock and roll style is a song called "Mean When I'm Mad", which is one of the most misogynist things I have heard, and I've heard quite a lot -- it's basically an outright rape threat. So if that's something that will upset you, please steer clear of Cochran's first album, while knowing you're missing little artistically.) “Twenty Flight Rock” was eventually released as a single, in its remade version, in November 1957, almost a year after The Girl Can't Help It came out. Unsurprisingly, coming out so late after the film, it didn't chart, and it would be a while yet before Cochran would have his biggest hit. But just because it didn't chart, doesn't mean it didn't make an impression. There's one story, more than any other, that sums up the impact both of "The Girl Can't Help It" and of "Twenty Flight Rock" itself. In July 1957, a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, led by a teenager called John Lennon, played a village fete in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool. After the show, they were introduced to a young boy named Paul McCartney by a mutual friend. Lennon and McCartney hit it off, but the thing that persuaded Lennon to offer McCartney a place in the group was when McCartney demonstrated that he knew all the words to "Twenty Flight Rock". Lennon wasn't great at remembering lyrics, and was impressed enough by this that he decided that this new kid needed to be in the group. [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, “Twenty Flight Rock”] That's the impact that The Girl Can't Help It had, and the impact that "Twenty Flight Rock" had. But Eddie Cochran's career was just starting, and we'll see more of him in future episodes...

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Episode 52: “Twenty Flight Rock”, by Eddie Cochran

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 14, 2019

Episode fifty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Twenty Flight Rock” by Eddie Cochran, and at the first great rock and roll film 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 “Teen-Age Crush” by Tommy Sands. —-more—- Resources There are several books available on Cochran, but for this episode I mostly relied on Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran: Rock and Roll Revolutionaries by John Collis. I’ll be using others as well in forthcoming episodes. While there are dozens of compilations of Cochran’s music available, many of them are flawed in one way or another (including the Real Gone Music four-CD set, which is what I would normally recommend). This one is probably the best you can get for Cochran novices. And as always there’s a Mixcloud with the full versions of all the songs featured in today’s episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript To tell the story of rock music, it’s important to tell the story of the music’s impact on other media. Rock and roll was a cultural phenomenon that affected almost everything, and it affected TV, film, clothing and more. So today, we’re going to look at how a film made the career of one of the greats of rock and roll music: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Twenty Flight Rock”] Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, though in later life he would always claim to be an Okie rather than from Albert Lea. His parents were from Oklahoma, they moved to Minnesota shortly before Eddie was born, and they moved back to Oklahoma City when he was small, moved back again to Minnesota, and then moved off to California with the rest of the Okies. Cochran was a staggeringly precocious guitarist. On the road trip to California from Albert Lea, he had held his guitar on his lap for the entire journey, referring to it as his best friend. And once he hit California he quickly struck up a musical relationship with two friends — Guybo Smith, who played bass, and Chuck Foreman, who played steel guitar. The three of them got hold of a couple of tape recorders, which allowed them not only to record themselves, but to experiment with overdubbing in the style of Les Paul. Some of those recordings have seen release in recent years, and they’re quite astonishing: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and Chuck Foreman, “Rockin’ It”] Cochran plays all the guitars on that (except the steel guitar, which is Foreman) and he was only fourteen years old at the time. He played with several groups who were playing the Okie Western Swing and proto-rockabilly that was popular in California at the time, and eventually hooked up with a singer from Mississippi who was born Garland Perry, but who changed his name to Hank Cochran, allowing the duo to perform under the name “the Cochran Brothers”. The Cochran Brothers soon got a record deal. When they started out, they were doing pure country music, and their first single was a Louvin Brothers style close harmony song, about Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams: [Excerpt: The Cochran Brothers, “Two Blue Singing Stars”] But while Hank was perfectly happy making this kind of music, Eddie was getting more and more interested in the new rock and roll music that was starting to become popular, and the two of them eventually split up over actual musical differences. Hank Cochran would go on to have a long and successful career in the country industry, but Eddie was floundering. He knew that this new music was what he should be playing, and he was one of the best guitarists around, but he wasn’t sure how to become a rock and roller, or even if he wanted to be a singer at all, rather than just a guitar player. He hooked up with Jerry Capehart, a singer and songwriter who the Cochran Brothers had earlier backed on a single: [Excerpt: Jerry Capehart and the Cochran Brothers, “Walkin’ Stick Boogie”] The two of them started writing songs together, and Eddie also started playing as a session musician. He played on dozens of sessions in the mid-fifties, mostly uncredited, and scholars are still trying to establish a full list of the records he played on. But while he was doing this, he still hadn’t got himself a record contract, other than for a single record on an independent label: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Skinny Jim”] Cochran was in the studio recording demos for consideration by record labels when Boris Petroff, a B-movie director who was a friend of Cochran’s collaborator Jerry Capehart, dropped in. Petroff decided that Cochran had the looks to be a film star, and right there offered him a part in a film that was being made under the working title Do-Re-Mi. Quite how Petroff had the ability to give Cochran a part in a film he wasn’t working on, I don’t know, but he did, and the offer was a genuine one, as Cochran confirmed the next day. There were many, many, rock and roll films made in the 1950s, and most of them were utterly terrible. It says something about the genre as a whole when I tell you that Elvis’ early films, which are not widely regarded as cinematic masterpieces, are among the very best rock and roll films of the decade. The 1950s were the tipping point for television ownership in both the US and the UK, but while TV was quickly becoming a mass medium, cinema-going was still at levels that would stagger people today — *everyone* went to the cinema. And when you went to the cinema, you didn’t go just to see one film. There’d be a main film, a shorter film called a B-movie that lasted maybe an hour, and short features like cartoons and newsreels. That meant that there was a much greater appetite for cheap films that could be used to fill out a programme, despite their total lack of quality. This is where, for example, all the films that appear in Mystery Science Theater 3000 come from, or many of them. And these B-movies would be made in a matter of weeks, or even days, and so would quickly be turned round to cash in on whatever trend was happening right at that minute. And so between 1956 and 1958 there were several dozen films, with titles like “Rock! Rock! Rock!”, “Don’t Knock The Rock” and so on. [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, “Don’t Knock the Rock”] In every case, these films were sold entirely on the basis of the musical performances therein, with little or no effort to sell them as narratives, even though they all had plots of sorts. They were just excuses to get footage of as many different hit acts as possible into the cinemas, ideally before their songs dropped off the charts. (Many of them also contained non-hit acts, like Teddy Randazzo, who seemed to appear in all of them despite never having a single make the top fifty. Randazzo did, though, go on to write a number of classic hits for other artists). Very few of the rock and roll films of the fifties were even watchable at all. We talked in the episode on “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” about the film “Rock! Rock! Rock!” which Chuck Berry appeared in — that was actually towards the more watchable end of these films, terrible as it was. The film that Cochran was signed to appear in, which was soon renamed The Girl Can’t Help It, is different. There are plenty of points at which the action stops for a musical performance, but there is an actual plot, and actual dialogue and acting. While the film isn’t a masterpiece or anything like that, it is a proper film. And it’s made by a proper studio. While, for example, Rock! Rock! Rock! was made by a fly-by-night company called Vanguard Productions, The Girl Can’t Help It was made by Twentieth Century Fox. And it was made in both colour and Cinemascope. The budget for Rock! Rock! Rock! was seventy-five thousand dollars compared to the 1.3 million dollars spent on The Girl Can’t Help It. [Excerpt: Little Richard, “The Girl Can’t Help It”] Indeed, it seems to be as much an attempt to cash in on a Billy Wilder film as it is an attempt to cash in on rock and roll. The previous year, The Seven-Year Itch had been a big hit, with Tom Ewell playing an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Marilyn Monroe. The film had been a massive success (and it’s responsible for the famous scene with Monroe on the air grate, which is still homaged and parodied to this day) and so the decision was taken to cast Tom Ewell as an unassuming middle-aged man who becomes worryingly attracted to a much younger woman, played by Jayne Mansfield doing her usual act of being a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Just as the film was attempting to sell itself on the back of a more successful hit film, the story also bears a certain amount of resemblance to one by someone else. The playwright Garson Kanin had been inspired in 1955 by the tales of the jukebox wars — he’d discovered that most of the jukeboxes in the country were being run by the Mafia, and that which records got stocked and played depended very much on who would do favours for the various gangsters involved. Gangsters would often destroy rivals’ jukeboxes, and threaten bar owners if they were getting their jukeboxes from the wrong set of mobsters. Kanin took this idea and turned it into a novella, Do-Re-Mi, about a helpless schlub who teams up with a gangster named “Fatso” to enter the record business, and on the way more or less accidentally makes a young woman into a singing star. Do-Re-Mi later became a moderately successful stage musical, which introduced the song “Make Someone Happy”. [Excerpt: Doris Day, “Make Someone Happy”] Meanwhile the plot of The Girl Can’t Help It has a helpless schlub team up with a mobster named “Fats”, and the two of them working together to make the mobster’s young girlfriend into a singing star. I’ve seen varying accounts as to why The Girl Can’t Help It was renamed from Do-Re-Mi and wasn’t credited as being based on Kanin’s novella. Some say that the film was made without the rights having been acquired, and changed to the point that Kanin wouldn’t sue. Others say that Twentieth Century Fox acquired the rights perfectly legally, but that the director, Frank Tashlin changed the script around so much that Kanin asked that his credit be removed, because it was now so different from his novella that he could probably resell the rights at some future point. The latter seems fairly likely to me, given that Tashlin’s next film, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, which also starred Jayne Mansfield, contained almost nothing from the play on which it was based. Indeed, the original play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? was by the author of the original play on which The Seven-Year Itch was based. The playwright had been so annoyed at the way in which his vision had been messed with for the screen that he wrote Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? as a satire about the way the film industry changes writers’ work, and Mansfield was cast in the play. When Tashlin wanted Mansfield to star in The Girl Can’t Help It but she was contractually obliged to appear in the play, Fox decided the easiest thing to do was just to buy up the rights to the play and relieve Mansfield of her obligation so she could star in The Girl Can’t Help It. They then, once The Girl Can’t Help It finished, got Frank Tashlin to write a totally new film with the title Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, keeping only the title and Mansfield’s character. While The Girl Can’t Help It has a reputation for satirising rock and roll, it actually pulls its punches to a surprising extent. For example, there’s a pivotal scene where the main mobster character, Fats, calls our hero after seeing Eddie Cochran on TV: [excerpt: dialogue from “The Girl Can’t Help It”] Note the wording there, and what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that Cochran can’t sing, merely that he “ain’t got a trained voice”. The whole point of this scene is to set up that Jerry Jordan, Mansfield’s character, could become a rock and roll star even though she can’t sing at all, and yet when dealing with a real rock and roll star they are careful to be more ambiguous. Because, of course, the main thing that sold the film was the appearance of multiple rock and roll stars — although “stars” is possibly overstating it for many of those present in the film. One thing it shared with most of the exploitation films was a rather slapdash attitude to which musicians the film would actually feature. And so it has the genuinely big rock and roll stars of the time Little Richard, the Platters, and Fats Domino, the one-hit wonder Gene Vincent (but what a one hit to have), and a bunch of… less well-known people, like the Treniers — a jump band who’d been around since the forties and never really made a major impact, or Eddie Fontaine (about whom the less said the better), or the ubiquitous Teddy Randazzo, performing here with an accordion accompaniment. [Excerpt: Teddy Randazzo and the Three Chuckles, “Cinnamon Sinner”] And Cochran was to be one of those lesser-known acts, so he and Capehart had to find a song that might be suitable for him to perform in the film. Very quickly they decided on a song called “Twenty Flight Rock”, written by a songwriter called Nelda Fairchild. There has been a lot of controversy as to who actually contributed what to the song, which is copyrighted in the names of both Fairchild and Cochran. Fairchild always claimed that she wrote the whole thing entirely by herself, and that Cochran got his co-writing credit for performing the demo, while Cochran’s surviving relatives are equally emphatic in their claims that he was an equal contributor as a songwriter. We will almost certainly never know the truth. Cochran is credited as the co-writer of several other hit songs, usually with Capehart, but never as the sole writer of a hit. Fairchild, meanwhile, was a professional songwriter, but pieces like “Freddie the Little Fir Tree” don’t especially sound like the work of the same person who wrote “Twenty Flight Rock”. As both credited writers are now dead, the best we can do is use our own judgment, and my personal judgment is that Cochran probably contributed at least something to the song’s writing. The original version of “Twenty Flight Rock”, as featured in the film, was little more than a demo — it featured Cochran on guitar, Guybo Smith on double bass, and Capehart slapping a cardboard box to add percussion. Cochran later recorded a more fully-arranged version of the song, which came out after the film, but the extra elements, notably the backing vocals, added little to the simplistic original: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Twenty Flight Rock”] It was that simpler version that appeared in the film, and which took its place alongside several other classic tracks in the film’s soundtrack. The film was originally intended to have a theme tune recorded by Fats Domino, who appeared in the film performing his hit “Blue Monday”, but when Bobby Troup mentioned this to Art Rupe, Rupe suggested that Little Richard would be a more energetic star to perform the song (and I’m sure this was entirely because of his belief that Richard would be the better talent, and nothing to do with Rupe owning Richard’s label, but not Domino’s). As a result, Domino’s role in the film was cut down to a single song, while Richard ended up doing three — the title song, written by Troup, “Ready Teddy” by John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell, and “She’s Got It”. We’ve mentioned before that John Marascalco’s writing credits sometimes seem to be slightly exaggerated, and “She’s Got It” is one record that tends to bear that out. Listen to “She’s Got It”, which has Marascalco as the sole credited writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “She’s Got It”] And now listen to “I Got It”, an earlier record by Richard, which has Little Richard credited as the sole writer: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “I Got It”] Hmm… The Girl Can’t Help It was rather poorly reviewed in America. In France it was a different story. There’s a pervasive legend that the people of France revere Jerry Lewis as a genius. This is nonsense. But the grain of truth in it is that Cahiers du Cinema, the most important film magazine in France by a long way — the magazine for which Godard, Truffaut, and others wrote, and which popularised the concept of auteur theory, absolutely loved Frank Tashlin. In 1957, Tashlin was the only director to get two films on their top ten films of the year list — The Girl Can’t Help It at number eight, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter at number two. The other eight films on the list were directed by Chaplin, Fellini, Hitchcock, Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang and Sidney Lumet. Tashlin directed several films starring Jerry Lewis, and those films, like Tashlin’s other work, got a significant amount of praise in the magazine. And that’s where that legend actually comes from, though Cahiers did also give some more guarded praise to some of the films Lewis directed himself later. Tashlin wasn’t actually that good a director, but what he did have is a visual style that came from a different area of filmmaking than most of his competitors. Tashlin had started out as a cartoon director, working on Warner Brothers cartoons. He wasn’t one of the better directors for Warners, and didn’t direct any of the classics people remember from the studio — he mostly made forgettable Porky Pig shorts. But this meant he had an animator’s sense for a visual gag, and thus gave his films a unique look. For advocates of auteur theory, that was enough to push him into the top ranks. And so The Girl Can’t Help It became a classic film, and Cochran got a great deal of attention, and a record deal. According to Si Waronker, the head of Liberty Records, Eddie Cochran getting signed to the label had nothing to do with him being cast in The Girl Can’t Help It, and Waronker had no idea the film was being made when Cochran got signed. This seems implausible, to say the least. Johnny Olenn, Abbey Lincoln and Julie London, three other Liberty Records artists, appeared in the film — and London was by some way Liberty’s biggest star. Not only that, but London’s husband, Bobby Troup, wrote the theme song and was musical director for the film. But whether or not Cochran was signed on account of his film appearance, “Twenty Flight Rock” wasn’t immediately released as a single. Indeed, by the time it came out Cochran had already appeared in another film, in which he had backed Mamie Van Doren — another Marilyn Monroe imitator in the same vein as Mansfield — on several songs, as well as having a small role and a featured song himself. Oddly, when that film, Untamed Youth, came out, Cochran’s backing on Van Doren’s recordings had been replaced by different instrumentalists. But he still appears on the EP that was released of the songs, including this one, which Cochran co-wrote with Capehart: [Excerpt: Mamie Van Doren, “Ooh Ba La Baby”] It had originally been planned to release “Twenty Flight Rock” as Cochran’s first single on Liberty, to coincide with the film’s release but then it was put back for several months, as Si Waronker wanted Cochran to release “Sitting in the Balcony” instead. That song had been written and originally recorded by John D Loudermilk: [Excerpt: John D Loudermilk, “Sitting in the Balcony”] Waronker had wanted to release Loudermilk’s record, but he hadn’t been able to get the rights, so he decided to get Cochran to record a note-for-note cover version and release that instead: [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran, “Sitting in the Balcony”] Cochran was not particularly happy with that record, though he was happy enough once the record started selling in comparatively vast quantities, spurred by his appearance in The Girl Can’t Help It, and reached number eighteen in the charts. The problem was that Cochran and Waronker had fundamentally different ideas about what Cochran actually was as an artist. Cochran thought of himself primarily as a guitarist — and the guitar solo on “Sittin’ in the Balcony” was the one thing about Cochran’s record which distinguished it from Loudermilk’s original — and also as a rock and roller. Waronker, on the other hand, was convinced that someone with Cochran’s good looks and masculine voice could easily be another Pat Boone. Liberty was fundamentally not geared towards making rock and roll records. Its other artists included the Hollywood composer Lionel Newman, the torch singer Julie London, and a little later novelty acts like the Chipmunks — the three Chipmunks, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, being named after Al Bennett, Si Waronker, and Theodore Keep, the three men in charge of the label. And their attempts to force Cochran into the mould of a light-entertainment crooner produced a completely forgettable debut album, Singin’ to My Baby, which has little of the rock and roll excitement that would characterise Cochran’s better work. (And a warning for anyone who decides to go out and listen to that album anyway — one of the few tracks on there that *is* in Cochran’s rock and roll style is a song called “Mean When I’m Mad”, which is one of the most misogynist things I have heard, and I’ve heard quite a lot — it’s basically an outright rape threat. So if that’s something that will upset you, please steer clear of Cochran’s first album, while knowing you’re missing little artistically.) “Twenty Flight Rock” was eventually released as a single, in its remade version, in November 1957, almost a year after The Girl Can’t Help It came out. Unsurprisingly, coming out so late after the film, it didn’t chart, and it would be a while yet before Cochran would have his biggest hit. But just because it didn’t chart, doesn’t mean it didn’t make an impression. There’s one story, more than any other, that sums up the impact both of “The Girl Can’t Help It” and of “Twenty Flight Rock” itself. In July 1957, a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, led by a teenager called John Lennon, played a village fete in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool. After the show, they were introduced to a young boy named Paul McCartney by a mutual friend. Lennon and McCartney hit it off, but the thing that persuaded Lennon to offer McCartney a place in the group was when McCartney demonstrated that he knew all the words to “Twenty Flight Rock”. Lennon wasn’t great at remembering lyrics, and was impressed enough by this that he decided that this new kid needed to be in the group. [Excerpt: Paul McCartney, “Twenty Flight Rock”] That’s the impact that The Girl Can’t Help It had, and the impact that “Twenty Flight Rock” had. But Eddie Cochran’s career was just starting, and we’ll see more of him in future episodes…

america tv california history hollywood uk rock france minnesota nashville oklahoma flight mississippi cd cinema sitting liverpool elvis twenty rock and roll mafia knock bob dylan john lennon paul mccartney mad elvis presley oklahoma city domino marilyn monroe gangsters hitchcock warner brothers rockin tom petty george harrison mansfield mccartney fats mixcloud little richard chuck berry chaplin foreman rock music blue monday cochran chipmunks balcony walkin jerry lewis singin billy wilder ingmar bergman roy orbison platters fellini comets mystery science theater sidney lumet godard fritz lang truffaut fairchild sittin cahiers les paul everly brothers pat boone fats domino weavers okie jeff lynne my baby randazzo sam phillips porky pig chet atkins loudermilk twentieth century fox jayne mansfield fatso warners seven year itch nicholas ray eddie cochran abbey lincoln cinemascope jimmie rodgers troup do re mi bob moore help it vandoren rupe gene vincent julie london kanin capehart quarrymen louvin brothers bunuel chuck foreman albert lea okies i got it girl can rock and roller monument records frank tashlin tommy sands bobby troup woolton mamie van doren fred foster garson kanin tom ewell art rupe nashville a team waronker skinny jim

Lesley Mitchell-Clarke Hypnotherapist, Author, Artist & Experiencer is in the STUDIO!! This is MY ALIEN LIFE!

My Alien Life

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2019 67:31

Lesley Mitchell-Clarke is a consulting hypnotist, graduate of The Ontario Hypnosis Centre, member of The National Guild of Hypnotists with a special certification in Past Life Regression. Tonight we talk about regression hypnotherapy, abduction and discuss her new book, co-authored with Wes Roberts, Intersections: A True Story of Extraterrestrial Contact Lesley and her hypnosis clinic, LIGHTWORK HYPNOSIS are also focused on the use of hypnosis for the positive improvement of all issues pertaining to artists of all disciplines(actors, dancers, visual artists, writers, musicians, vocalists, etc.) and the unique demands that they deal with in their daily lives and careers. Lesley Mitchell-Clarke is uniquely qualified to work with artists, as there is hardly an area of show business in which she has not worked. For some time, she has been a familiar name in the realm of media relations, promotion and production of musical and theatrical events, as well as arts journalism. For the past eighteen years she has been based in New York City and Toronto, specializing in jazz specific music publicity. In addition to her work as a media consultant, she has also worked in virtually all phases of the entertainment business, beginning as a ten year old principal actress with the Los Angeles area “Sherman Oaks Children’s Repertory Theatre” – along with classmate, Melanie Griffith. Born into a show business family, Lesley’s late father, Whitey Mitchell, was a veteran jazz bassist and Emmy Award winning comedy writer and producer, and her Uncle was the late jazz bass legend, Red Mitchell. In the scope of her own career, she has worked as a busy singer/dancer, and traveled with a number of name acts, including Mitzi Gaynor, Tommy Sands, Fabian and Robert Goulet, and has appeared in numerous television shows, features and TV Movies, including “Queer as Folk”, “The Jeffersons”, “Happy Days”, “Laverne and Shirley” and “Divorce Court.” Lesley's website http://www.lightworkhypnosis.com/index.html You can find my website at www.myalienlifepodcast.com and our latest downloads are always at iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher at podbean.com and everywhere else fine podcasts are found…...and please follow me and like me on Facebook and Twitter... "my alien life" is written and produced for broadcast at Studio 254 in the Northern Rocky Mountains.. The music you've heard tonight is produced and created by ELEON. ELEON is changing the face of New Age with what can only be describes as "Epic Chill" on Heart Dance Record's first Electronic release. You can find all ELEON’s work online at HEART DANCE records, Facebook... Thank YOU for listening to tonight's amazing podcast. I am Cameron Brauer and this is my alien life...!!

Windy City Irish Radio - April 3, 2019

Windy City Irish Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2019 61:54

'Twas an historic day in Chicago politics yesterday as we welcome in a brand new mayor and several new alderman. With the election now over, we can say farewell to the nasty political ads blaring on the television, the multitude of mailings clogging our mailbox and the constant politicking going on throughout our streets and neighborhoods. Until next year at least. Tune in to Windy City Irish Radio and listen as the boys dedicate the show to songs of political protest on both sides of the pond. With tracks from Flogging Molly, Christy Moore, Rory Gallagher, The Tossers, Damien Dempsey, U2, Mavis Staples with Glen Hansard, Kevin Flynn & The Avondale Ramblers, Tommy Sands with Dolores Keane, The Chieftains with the The Decemberists, Pete Seeger, and The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, your toes are sure to be tapping while your blood might be boiling and a smile is sure to cross your face at some point too. It's politics, the good, the bad and the mostly ugly. Join us every Wednesday from 8PM - 9PM on WSBC 1240AM and check out this week's podcast here at www.windycityirishradio.com

Tommy Sands

Best of Vinny Hurrell

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2019 14:02

Folk singer and peace campaigner Tommy Sands reflects on a crossroads that he faced in his early twenties, growing up in a musical family, dealing with grief and offers advice to his younger self.

folk tommy sands

Episode 57, “Georgia Gibbs Tommy Sands

sands tommy sands georgia gibbs

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2019 57:16

Show 57, “Georgia Gibbs Tommy Sands,” focuses on two energetic entertainers from the mid-century. Nine songs by Sands include “Ring My Phone,” “Sing Boy Sing,” “Soda Pop Pop,” “Teenage Crush,” and “Blue Ribbon Baby.” Nine... Read More The post Episode 57, “Georgia Gibbs Tommy Sands appeared first on Sam Waldron.

TradPod Episode 003 - A Christmassy TradPod

TradPod

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2018 22:10

A Christmassy edition of TradPod featuring festive songs and tunes from Cherish the Ladies, Tommy Sands, Cara Dillon & The McCalmans! Merry Christmas Everyone!

ladies christmassy merry christmas everyone cara dillon tommy sands

052 - Fiddlers Green

Tenx9

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2018 51:05

A bumper crop from Rostrevor July 22 2018 - five great stories on LOVE: Jenn Clark on a much-missed grandmother; Jonny Clark & his parenting skills; Louise Nealon & the milkman who knows all; Sean Mullin who knows not to pick fight with his wife on the way to pre-natal class & a musical story to finish from Tommy Sands.

green fiddlers tommy sands sean mullin jonny clark

052 - Fiddlers Green

Tenx9

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2018 51:05

A bumper crop from Rostrevor July 22 2018 - five great stories on LOVE: Jenn Clark on a much-missed grandmother; Jonny Clark & his parenting skills; Louise Nealon & the milkman who knows all; Sean Mullin who knows not to pick fight with his wife on the way to pre-natal class & a musical story to finish from Tommy Sands.

green fiddlers tommy sands sean mullin jonny clark

Episode 14- 1950s Rock & Roll

rock johnny cash performers fats little richard 1950s brenda lee bill haley frankie avalon tommy sands

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2018 57:22

Show 14, “1950s Rock&Roll,” contains 16 recordings by iconic rock stars of the ‘50s. Performers include Little Richard, Johnny Cash, The El Dorados, Frankie Avalon, Tommy Sands, Brenda Lee, Buddy Knox, Bill Haley, and Fats... Read More The post Episode 14- 1950s Rock & Roll appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Rockabilly N Blues Radio Hour 04-03-17/ New Chuck Berry & more!

Rockabilly & Blues Radio Hour

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2017 58:58

We hear a NEW track from Chuck Berry's upcoming release on Dualtone as well as a few select tunes from his catalog. Chuck Berry passed away March 18th, 2017 at 90 years old but leaves behing a lifetime of great music that we will always support. We also pay tribute with some choice Chuck covers Buck Owens, Dion, Tommy Sands, Ernest Tubb, Jerry Lee Lewis and Rockpile. Plus, we spin new tunes from Celine Lee and Mike Teardrop Trio and rockers from Dale Watson, Carl Perkins, JD McPherson, Brian Setzer Orchestra, Jake Penrod and more! Intro Voice Over- Rob "Cool Daddy" Dempsey Intro Music Bed: Brian Setzer- "Rockabilly Blues" Carl Perkins- "Lonely Heart" Dale Watson & The Jordanaires- "In The Jailhouse Now" Buck Owens & His Buckaroos- "Johnny B. Goode" Dion- "Nadine" Chuck Berry- "Jaguar & Thunderbird" JD McPherson- "Dimes For Nickels" Brian Setzer Orchestra- "Drive Like Lightning (Crash Like Thunder)" Ernest Tubb- "Thirty Days" Jerry Lee Lewis- "Promised Land" Chuck Berry- "Everyday We Rock & Roll" Jake Calypso & His Red Hot- "Rock 'n' Roll Train" Jake Penrod- "Lovesick Blues" Tommy Sands- "Maybellene" Rockpile- "Oh What A Thrill" Chuck Berry- "Viva Viva Rock & Roll" Chuck Berry- "Big Boys" Mike Teardrop Trio- "Hangin' Around" Celine Lee- "Sayonara Sucka" Harmonica Sam & The Domestic Bumblebees- "Big Door" Darrel Higham & Jittery Jack- "You Can't Touch" Outro Music Bed: Chuck Berry- "Chuckwalk"

chuck berry jerry lee lewis rockabilly carl perkins buck owens johnny b goode brian setzer rockpile jd mcpherson dale watson ernest tubb brian setzer orchestra tommy sands blues radio

Dick Dale part 4 and more!

Rockabilly & Blues Radio Hour

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2015 58:57

Guitar legend Dick Dale joins us once more to talk about some things that are the most dear to him...his wife Lana and talking to people one on one after a show. Plus, we hear from Pokey LaFarge, Dion, Tommy Sands, Si Cranstoun and more! Intro Voice Over- Rob "Cool Daddy" Dempsey Tommy Sands- "The Worrying Kind" Si Cranstoun- "Coupe De Ville" Dick Dale Interview Dick Dale segment 1 (music bed- "Caravan") "Ring Of Fire" Dick Dale segment 2 (music bed- "Unknown Territory") "Stop Teasing" Dick Dale segment 3 (music bed- "Third Rock From The Sun") "Hava Nagila" music bed- "Let's Go Trippin'" "Grudge Run" Dick Dale segment 4 (music bed- "Esperanza") "You Are My Sunshine" Pokey LaFarge- "Actin' A Fool" Dave Phillips & The Hot Rod Gang- "Tainted Love" Dion- Flim Flam :60 Album Review with Connor Rocket- Jai Malano- Rocket Girl Nico Duportal & His Rhythm Dudes- "She Knows How"

guitar rockabilly album reviews dick dale pokey lafarge tommy sands

Windy City Irish Radio - April 15, 2015

Windy City Irish Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2015 60:36

On April 25th, The Irish American Hall of Fame inducts nine new members at a black-tie gala at the Irish American Heritage Center. Tonight, in part two of a three-part series in honor of this year's class of inductees, Tim and Mike kick up their heels and honor actor/director/singer/dancer and entertainer extraordinaire Gene Kelly, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas Founder Mother Frances Warde, and the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and founder of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins, MD, PhD. Tune in for music from Mr. Kelly and Dr. Collins themselves as well as from The Chieftains with Elvis Costello, ANÚNA, and Sting, Tommy Sands, Bruce Springsteen, Mary Black, Poi Dog Pondering and, in advance of her big show as part of the Salon Concerts Chicago, Liz Carroll. Join Mike Shevlin and Tim Taylor each Wednesday night from 8pm to 9pm on WSBC 1240 AM and WCFJ 1470 AM or on our website at www.windycityirishradio.com.

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Mike Harding Folk Show 58

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 2, 2014 102:40

PODCAST: 02 Feb 2014 01 - Marrow Bones - Steeleye Span - Ten Man Mop or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again 02 - To The Beggin’ I Will Go - Old Blind Dogs - The World’s Room 03 - Down Where The Drunkards Roll - Los Lobos - Beat The Retreat (Songs of Richard Thompson) 04 - Little Musgrave - Nic Jones - Ballads and Songs 05 - El Grillo (The Cricket) - Butch Baldassari / Robin Bullock / John Reischman - Travellers 06 - The Special Way - Mic and Susie Darling - The Special Way 07 - Sullivan’s John - Pecker Dunne - The Very Best of Pecker Dunne 08 - The Island -Dolores Keane - The Best of Dolores Keane 09 - Shule Agra - Swan Arcade - Full Circle 10 - Fumes and Faith - Luke Jackson - Fumes and Faith 11 - Walking in the Footsteps of Giants - Harp and a Monkey - Harp and a Monkey 12 - The Biscuits of Bull Lane - The Young Uns - Never Forget 13 - Rainy Night in Soho - Mary McPartlan - The Holland Handkerchief 14 - William Taylor - The Cecil Sharp Centenary Collective - As I Cycled Out on a May Morning 15 - Joe Bane's / Gypsy Princess - Jack Talty and Cormac Begley - Na Fir Bolg 16 - Pete Gets the Last Word - Pete Seeger - Sowing the Seeds - The Tenth Anniversary Album 17 - What Did You Learn In School Today? - Pete Seeger - A Link in the Chain 18 - Talkin’ Union Blues - Pete Seeger - Pete Seeger’s Greatest Hits 19 - The Ghost of Tom Joad - Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen - Sowing the Seeds - The Tenth Anniversary Album 20 - Funeral Song - Pete Seeger - unreleased 21 - Where Have All The Flowers Gone? - Tommy Sands / Dolores Keane / Vedran Smailović - Sowing the Seeds - The Tenth Anniversary Album

Mike Harding Folk Show 46

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2013 101:09

PODCAST: 10 Nov 2013 01 - Remembrance Day - Mark Knopfler 02 - It’s A Long Way to Tipperary - The Scots Pals - Far, Far, From Ypres 03 - Will You Go To Flanders - June Tabor 04 - Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag - The Scots Pals - Far, Far, From Ypres 05 - Bloody War - Jimmy Yates' Boll Weevils 05 - Christmas 1914 - Artisan 06 - His Mate - Christopher Farries 07 - Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire - Joe Solo 08 - The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - The Clockwork Dolls 09 - And Jesus Wept - Reg Meuross 10 - Market Day in Guernica - Katie Melua 11 - The Peat Bog Soldiers - Swan Arcade 12 - Lili Marlene - Dolores Keane 13 - Nightingales and Bombers - Live Recording - RAF Bomber Command At War 14 - Coming In On A Wing And A Prayer - Derek Brimstone 15 - The D-Day Dodgers - Hamish Imlach 16 - Hill of Little Shoes - Coope, Boyes and Simpson 17 - The Ghost Army of Korea - Ewan MacColl 18 - There Were Roses - John Whelan 19 - Zeebrugge F.O.B. - Fred Smith 20 - The Old Man's Song - The Ian Campbell Folk Group 21 - Anthem For Doomed Youth - Gordon Lorenz - We Will Remember Them 22 - Where Have All The Flowers Gone - Tommy Sands & Dolores Keane 23 - The Kohima Poem - Vera Lynn - We Will Remember Them 24 - The Battle Of The Somme - The Albion Band

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Mike Harding Folk Show 12

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 18, 2013 89:04

PODCAST: 17 Mar 2013 Sig - Doon Reel - Frankie Lane 01 - Ride The Peace Train - Jackie Macaulay02 - Between the Jigs and the Reels (poem) - Moya Cannon03 - Na Cannabháin Bhána / Hardiman the Fiddler - The McCarthy Sisters04 - My Heart's Tonight in Ireland - Andy Irvine05 - Every County on the Island - Tommy Sands06 - I Wish I Had Someone To Love Me - Cathie Ryan07 - The Lonesome Road to Dingle - Niamh Ní Charra08 - Down by the Liffeyside (poem) - Gerry Brady (The Beggermen)*09 - Sweet Thames, Flow Softly - Christy Moore10 - You Are My Sunshine (& more!) - We Banjo 311 - Nothing To Show (For It All) - Dolores Keane12 - The Fiddler of Dooney(W B Yeats) - Fergal Keane13 - The Spiral Set - Nollaig & Mairréad Casey and Máire Ní Chathasaigh14 - The Sky Road - Jimmy McCarthy15 - In Praise of John Magee - Boys of the Lough16 - Song for Ireland - Dick Gaughan17 - If I Was A Blackbird - Eleanor Shanley18 - Off To California / The Home Ruler - Tom Cussen and Tony Howley19 - The Homes of Donegal - Paul Brady20 - The Wild Rover - The Dubliners Sig - Doon Reel - Frankie Lane *=no website available

music song boys ireland island roots homes folk reels acoustic harding my heart bh fiddler donegal in praise dingle dubliners hardiman jigs lough christy moore you are my sunshine nollaig paul brady lonesome road wild rover fergal keane andy irvine mike harding tommy sands we banjo john magee dick gaughan cathie ryan

Showcase Number 31

writer passage john walsh alice taylor tommy sands

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2013

On this months showcase we highlight 2 programmes from our series 'The Writer's Passage' the first featuring Tommy Sands from his book 'The Songman' and secondly Alice Taylor from her book 'To School Through The Fields' that Alice in a photograph we took of her at her homeplace looking back across the fields though which she travelled. We also have poetry from John Walsh and music from Colum Sands and Ursula Connolly.

Podcasts.ie Showcase No. 18

podcasts irish alan murphy tommy sands

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 6, 2011

Our latest Irish podcasting showcase features music from Tommy Sands and Michele Ann Kelly with readings by Jack Harte, Steve Dunford and Alan Murphy presented as usual bu Jho Harris

The Writer’s Passage Episode 6: Tommy Sands

writer irish passage newry tommy sands

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2011

In the sixth episode of The Writer's Passage our series on 10 great Irish books we travel to Newry, in the foothills of the Mourne Mountains, and take in some of the spots mentioned in his book The Songman with Tommy Sands.

Showcase No. 10

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2011

Our 10th Irish podcasting showcase brings music Ursula Connolly and Tommy Sands with poetry Padraig J Daly and a reading by Ann Chambers' from "Eleanor: Duchess of Desmond".

irish tommy sands

Celtic Christmas Music with Cleveland Celtic Podcast #24

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2010 69:55

Celtic Christmas music from the Cleveland Celtic Podcast featuring Tommy Sands, The Elders, Eileen Ivers, Brigid's Cross, Sheri O"Meara, Ellery Klein & Ryan Lacey, Iona, Seven Nations, Coyote Run, Rose And Thistle Band, Fleur Mainville, The Barra MacNeils, Cherish The Ladies, Matt and Shannon Heaton, Cherish The Ladies. "Like The First Time It's Christmas Time" by Tommy Sands from Too Shorten The Winter "Elders Christmas Song" by The Elders from Christmas "Christmas Day" by The Elders from Special Internet Release "Reels: Christmas Eve/Oiche Nollag/High Road to Linton" by Eileen Ivers from An Nollaig: An Irish Christmas "The Holly Tree" by Eileen Ivers from An Nollaig: An Irish Christmas "More Than a Day" by Brigid's Cross from Noel - A BC Christmas "The Lambs on the Green Hills" by Sheri O'Meara, Locklin Road & Friends from Christmas Light "Step Into Christmas! a Holiday Performance Medley' by Ellery Klein & Ryan Lacey from Kick Into the Beat: Modern Irish Dance Music (Vol. II) "Carol Of The Bells" by Seven Nations from Christmas EP "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" by Seven Nations from Christmas EP "I Saw 3 Ships Come Sailing In/3 Little Boats/Chistmas Day Ida Moarnin'/Christmas Reel" by Iona from Mid Winter Light "Haul Brothers, Haul!" by Coyote Run from Tend The Fire "The Cherry Tree Carol" by Rose And Thistle Band from Celtic Christmas "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas/Jingle Bells" by Fleur Mainville from Fleurries "Christmas Together" by The Barra MacNeils from Christmas Album II "Ding Dong Merrily On High - The Cordal Jig - Old Apples In Winter - Con Cassidy's" by Cherish The Ladies from On Christmas Night "Gartan Mother's Lullaby" by Matt and Shannon Heaton from Maternity Leave EP "Silent Night" by Cherish The Ladies from On Christmas Night Holiday Picks at the Cleveland Celtic Podcast Website Please consider donating to the Cleveland Celtic Podcast. The show is free to both bands and listeners and is completely non-profit. However, there is some cost incurred to produce the show. For just $5.00, less than half the cost of a CD, you can help keep the Cleveland Celtic Podcast online! Thank you!

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Celtic Christmas Special, Part 1 #21 with Irish & Celtic Music Podcast

Irish and Celtic Music Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2010 63:23

Celtic Christmas Special, Part 1 from the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast. Music from Eileen Ivers, Banshee in the Kitchen, Tommy Sands, Wicked Tinkers, Locklin Road, Stonecircle, Damh The Bard, Lunasa, Marc Gunn, Nancy Daily Green, Angus Mohr & Friends, Fred Gosbee, Jiggernaut, Iona. www.celticmusicpodcast.com Sponsor: Celtic Invasion Vacations Wouldn't it be amazing to walk among the rolling green hills of Ireland? Picture the texture of standing stones, the sounds of Irish fiddle, and the wet taste of Guinness on your lips and you're just now beginning to understand the magic of each Celtic Invasion of Ireland. The next trip is scheduled for June 13-20, 2011. Find all the details when you visit the website at www.celticinvasion.com . Notes: Celtic MP3s Music Magazine, Providing the best independent Celtic music online since 2000. Become a Member of the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast! I want to thank all the new and current Members of the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. Your donations and support are always appreciated. If you would like to become a member, for just $20 a year, you will get free access to Song Henge, my exclusive archive of free Celtic music. Visit songhenge.com for details. Please Rate the New Celtic Christmas Music iMix News about Marc's daughter on Facebook Celtic Christmas Podcast Celtic Music CD Store for Celtic Christmas music and Celtic music Buy Irish and Celtic Music Podcast T-Shirts and Swag The podcast has a new voicemail number. Call 678-CELT-POD. That's 678-235-8763 and leave a voicemail comment. This Week "The Wexford Carol" by Eileen Ivers from An Nollaig: An Irish Christmas "Jeanette-Isabella Set" by Banshee in the Kitchen from Invite the Light "Like the First Time It's Christmas Time" by Tommy Sands from To Shorten the Winter "Angels We Have Heard On High" by Wicked Tinkers from Slainte Happy Holidays "Lambs on the Green Hills" by Locklin Road from Christmas Light "Third Carol for Christmas" by Stonecircle from Winter Sky "The Winter King" by Damh The Bard from Spirit of Albion "Feabhra = An Erc'h War An Enezeg (Snow On The Island)/Brenda Stubbert's/Thunderhead" by Lunasa from The Story So Far "Celtic Christmas Elf Conscription Song" by Marc Gunn from Celtic Christmas Elf Conscription Song "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" by Nancy Daily Green from Celebrating Christmas Yore "Ukrainian Bell Carol" by Angus Mohr & Friends from A Christmas Pageant "Waiting for the Snow" by Fred Gosbee from The Ballad of Cappy John & Other Songs of Coastal Maine "Midwinter" by Jiggernaut from The Well "I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In/Three Little Boats Went Out to Sea/Christmas Day Isa Moarnin/Christmas Eve Reel" by Iona from Mid-Winter Light Find out more about the artists in this show at www.celticmusicpodcast.com. While you're there, subscribe to our Celtic MP3s Music Magazine and visit the link for our Celtic Music CD Store. Please support the artists who support this podcast: buy their CDs, see their shows, and drop them an email to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. PROMO - Slice of Sci Fi

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Celtic Christmas #95: Tommy Sands, Eileen Ivers, Banshee in the Kitchen

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2010 63:18

Celtic Christmas Special, Part 1. Music from Eileen Ivers, Banshee in the Kitchen, Tommy Sands, Wicked Tinkers, Locklin Road, Stonecircle, Damh The Bard, Lunasa, Marc Gunn, Nancy Daily Green, Angus Mohr & Friends, Fred Gosbee, Jiggernaut, Iona. www.celticmusicpodcast.com Sponsor: Celtic Invasion Vacations Wouldn't it be amazing to walk among the rolling greenhills of Ireland? Picture the texture of standingstones, the sounds of Irish fiddle, and the wet tasteof Guinness on your lips and you're just now beginning tounderstand the magic of each Celtic Invasion of Ireland.The next trip is scheduled for June 13-20, 2011.Find all the details when you visit thewebsite at www.celticinvasion.com . Notes: Celtic MP3s Music Magazine, Providing the best independent Celtic music online since 2000. Become a Member of the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast!I want to thank all the new and current Members of the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. Your donations and support are always appreciated. If you would like to become a member, for just $20 a year, you will get free access to Song Henge, my exclusive archive of free Celtic music. Visit songhenge.com for details. Please Rate the New Celtic Christmas Music iMix News about Marc's daughter on Facebook Celtic Christmas Podcast Celtic Music CD Store for Celtic Christmas music and Celtic music Buy Irish and Celtic Music Podcast T-Shirts and Swag The podcast has a new voicemail number. Call 678-CELT-POD. That's 678-235-8763 and leave a voicemail comment. This Week "The Wexford Carol" by Eileen Iversfrom An Nollaig: An Irish Christmas "Jeanette-Isabella Set" by Banshee in the Kitchenfrom Invite the Light "Like the First Time It's Christmas Time" by Tommy Sandsfrom To Shorten the Winter "Angels We Have Heard On High" by Wicked Tinkersfrom Slainte Happy Holidays "Lambs on the Green Hills" by Locklin Roadfrom Christmas Light "Third Carol for Christmas" by Stonecirclefrom Winter Sky "The Winter King" by Damh The Bardfrom Spirit of Albion "Feabhra = An Erc'h War An Enezeg (Snow On The Island)/Brenda Stubbert's/Thunderhead" by Lunasafrom The Story So Far "Celtic Christmas Elf Conscription Song" by Marc Gunnfrom Celtic Christmas Elf Conscription Song "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" by Nancy Daily Greenfrom Celebrating Christmas Yore "Ukrainian Bell Carol" by Angus Mohr & Friendsfrom A Christmas Pageant "Waiting for the Snow" by Fred Gosbeefrom The Ballad of Cappy John & Other Songs of Coastal Maine "Midwinter" by Jiggernautfrom The Well Find out more about the artists in this show at www.celticmusicpodcast.com. While you're there, subscribe to our Celtic MP3s Music Magazine and visit the link for our Celtic Music CD Store. Please support the artists who support this podcast: buy their CDs, see their shows, and drop them an email to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. PROMO - Slice of Sci Fi "I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In/Three Little Boats Went Out to Sea/Christmas Day Isa Moarnin/Christmas Eve Reel" by Ionafrom Mid-Winter Light

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#7 Celtic Christmas Music with Cleveland Celtic Podcast -

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2009 60:29

Celtic Christmas music from the 2007 Celtic Christmas Special of the Cleveland Celtic Podcast. Music from Tommy Sands, Brigid's Cross, The Elders, The Ennis Sisters, Brobdignagian Bards, Darby O'Gill, Golden Bough, Claymore, Coyote Run, Mediaeval Baebes, Tread, Matt and Shannon Heaton, Seven Nations. "A Christmas Story" by Darby O'Gill from Irish Christmas Rollick "Hearts of Love" by by Tommy Sands from To Shorten the Winter "What Child is This" by Seven Nations "Silent Night" by Seven Nations from Digital Release "The Littlest Angel" by Brigid's Cross from Noel, A BC Christmas "Thank God for Santa Claus" by The Elders from Christmas EP "Christmas Angel" by The Ennis Sisters from Christmas on Ennis Road "Wexford Carol" by Matt and Shannon Heaton from Fine Winter's Night "Carol of the Bells" by by Brobdignagian Bards from Christmas in Brobdingnag "The Wren Song" by Darby O'Gill from Irish Christmas Rollick "To Drive the Cold Winter Away" by Golden Bough from Christmas in a Foreign Land "In From the Cold" by Claymore from Every Bottle Dry "Haul, Brothers Haul" by Coyote Run from Tend the Fire "The Holly and the Ivy" by Mediaeval Baebes from Mistletoe and Wine "Traditional Set" by Tread from Live at Matt Malloy's "Fine Winter's Night" by Matt and Shannon Heaton from Fine Winter's Night "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Seven Nations from Digital Release

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#2 Celtic Christmas Music with Cleveland Celtic Podcast -