Podcasts about Uncle Dave Macon

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Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2024 23:46

MURFREESBORO, TN - Roots Rendezvous, presented by Uncle Dave Macon Days, will take place at Hop Springs in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on September 6 and 7, 2024. Longtime organiz

Back Porch Bluegrass - 30-07-2024

Back Porch Bluegrass

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2024 58:43

This episode of Back Porch Bluegrass features music from 1927 right through to 2023, with lots of great tunes in between. Uncle Dave Macon, the Bluegrass Album Band, Starlett & Big John Talley, John Reischman & the Jaybirds, Jane Germain & Ian Simpson, the Stanley Brothers – some fine selections here.

bluegrass back porch stanley brothers uncle dave macon jaybirds ian simpson john reischman

THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS PRESENT: THE SUNNY SIDE OF MY STREET with THE "MIGHTY MEZ" - SONGS TO MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD - EPISODE #46: WAY DOWN THE OLD PLANK ROAD by Uncle Dave Macon (Vocalion, 1926)

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Play Episode Play 39 sec Highlight Listen Later Feb 19, 2024 5:27

The earth shifted for me when I heard Uncle Dave Macon for the first time. This was when the Harry Smith Anthology was released on CD in 1997. The energy of this man, swingin' his claw hammer banjo and elating me with his infectious humor, brought the sepia-toned 19th century to boisterous life, and I was smitten. I began listening to, and reading, as much as I could get my hands on, and although the “Dixie Dewdrop” died the year before I was born, he was kinetically alive for me, lifting me out of whatever funk I happened to have been in, into a realm of pure joy. What an inspiration for an aging aspirant: He was discovered by accident by Marcus Loew of the Loews Theatre chain at the age of 50, and elevated to the heights of radio stardom on the Grand Old Opry, and national recording acclaim. How fortunate that these technologies, though in their infancy, were around to document the power of this entertainment fireball.He was a beloved amateur (in the truest sense of the word), who had simply enjoyed entertaining customers along his freight hauling mule line. This exemplifies Joseph Campbell's assertion that if you just follow your bliss, everything will flow from that. This was simply how he lived, and as one of his band members attested: “all day long, from morning til midnight, it was a show.” And, what a show it was!

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Crossroad Blues (3/3) Robert Johnson - L'enquête

Un Dernier Disque avant la fin du monde

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 28, 2023 62:29

Mais il y a une histoire qui s'est également poursuivie, celle de Robert Johnson. En effet, l'album King of the Delta Blues Singers a déclenché une recherche d'informations sur Johnson au sein de la communauté des spécialistes et musiciens blancs du blues, et des gens comme Al Wilson de Canned Heat, Gayle Dean Wardlow, Paul Oliver, Peter Guralnick, Steve LaVere et Mack McCormick ont commencé à enquêter sur la vie de Johnson et à écrire des articles et des livres à son sujet. PLAYLIST Robert Johnson, "Cross Road Blues" Uncle Dave Macon, "Death of John Henry" Willie Brown, "M&O Blues" Jimmie Rodgers, "Waiting for a Train" Lonnie Johnson et Louis Armstrong, "Hotter Than That" Charlie Patton, "You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die" Son House, "Preaching the Blues" Johnnie Temple, "Lead Pencil Blues" Robert Jr Lockwood, "Steady Rollin' Man" Robert Johnson, "They're Red Hot" Robert Johnson, "Sweet Home Chicago" Kokomo Arnold, "Old Original Kokomo Blues". Robert Johnson, "Come on In My Kitchen" Robert Johnson, "Love in Vain"

Back Porch Bluegrass - 04-07-2023

Back Porch Bluegrass

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 4, 2023 58:33

Bluegrass from my shelves. Something here for all tastes – contemporary bluegrass from Midnight Skyracer, old-time from Uncle Dave Macon, classic bluegrass from the Bluegrass Album Band, Rickie Simpkins, the Osborne Brothers, Jim Hurst, the Grascals, Dan Tyminski – a great line-up! There's a song from Ralph Stanley I and Ralph Stanley II, and more besides. Enjoy!

bluegrass back porch dan tyminski uncle dave macon grascals

Episode 166: “Crossroads” by Cream

The Good Neighbor Get Together

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2023

Episode 166 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Crossroads", Cream, the myth of Robert Johnson, and whether white men can sing the blues. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-eight-minute bonus episode available, on “Tip-Toe Thru' the Tulips" by Tiny Tim. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I talk about an interview with Clapton from 1967, I meant 1968. I mention a Graham Bond live recording from 1953, and of course meant 1963. I say Paul Jones was on vocals in the Powerhouse sessions. Steve Winwood was on vocals, and Jones was on harmonica. Resources As I say at the end, the main resource you need to get if you enjoyed this episode is Brother Robert by Annye Anderson, Robert Johnson's stepsister. There are three Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Cream, Robert Johnson, John Mayall, and Graham Bond excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here -- one, two, three. This article on Mack McCormick gives a fuller explanation of the problems with his research and behaviour. The other books I used for the Robert Johnson sections were McCormick's Biography of a Phantom; Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson, by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow; Searching for Robert Johnson by Peter Guralnick; and Escaping the Delta by Elijah Wald. I can recommend all of these subject to the caveats at the end of the episode. The information on the history and prehistory of the Delta blues mostly comes from Before Elvis by Larry Birnbaum, with some coming from Charley Patton by John Fahey. The information on Cream comes mostly from Cream: How Eric Clapton Took the World by Storm by Dave Thompson. I also used Ginger Baker: Hellraiser by Ginger Baker and Ginette Baker, Mr Showbiz by Stephen Dando-Collins, Motherless Child by Paul Scott, and Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. The best collection of Cream's work is the four-CD set Those Were the Days, which contains every track the group ever released while they were together (though only the stereo mixes of the albums, and a couple of tracks are in slightly different edits from the originals). You can get Johnson's music on many budget compilation records, as it's in the public domain in the EU, but the double CD collection produced by Steve LaVere for Sony in 2011 is, despite the problems that come from it being associated with LaVere, far and away the best option -- the remasters have a clarity that's worlds ahead of even the 1990s CD version it replaced. And for a good single-CD introduction to the Delta blues musicians and songsters who were Johnson's peers and inspirations, Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson, compiled by Elijah Wald as a companion to his book on Johnson, can't be beaten, and contains many of the tracks excerpted in this episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start, a quick note that this episode contains discussion of racism, drug addiction, and early death. There's also a brief mention of death in childbirth and infant mortality. It's been a while since we looked at the British blues movement, and at the blues in general, so some of you may find some of what follows familiar, as we're going to look at some things we've talked about previously, but from a different angle. In 1968, the Bonzo Dog Band, a comedy musical band that have been described as the missing link between the Beatles and the Monty Python team, released a track called "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?": [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Band, "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?"] That track was mocking a discussion that was very prominent in Britain's music magazines around that time. 1968 saw the rise of a *lot* of British bands who started out as blues bands, though many of them went on to different styles of music -- Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, Chicken Shack and others were all becoming popular among the kind of people who read the music magazines, and so the question was being asked -- can white men sing the blues? Of course, the answer to that question was obvious. After all, white men *invented* the blues. Before we get any further at all, I have to make clear that I do *not* mean that white people created blues music. But "the blues" as a category, and particularly the idea of it as a music made largely by solo male performers playing guitar... that was created and shaped by the actions of white male record executives. There is no consensus as to when or how the blues as a genre started -- as we often say in this podcast "there is no first anything", but like every genre it seems to have come from multiple sources. In the case of the blues, there's probably some influence from African music by way of field chants sung by enslaved people, possibly some influence from Arabic music as well, definitely some influence from the Irish and British folk songs that by the late nineteenth century were developing into what we now call country music, a lot from ragtime, and a lot of influence from vaudeville and minstrel songs -- which in turn themselves were all very influenced by all those other things. Probably the first published composition to show any real influence of the blues is from 1904, a ragtime piano piece by James Chapman and Leroy Smith, "One O' Them Things": [Excerpt: "One O' Them Things"] That's not very recognisable as a blues piece yet, but it is more-or-less a twelve-bar blues. But the blues developed, and it developed as a result of a series of commercial waves. The first of these came in 1914, with the success of W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues", which when it was recorded by the Victor Military Band for a phonograph cylinder became what is generally considered the first blues record proper: [Excerpt: The Victor Military Band, "Memphis Blues"] The famous dancers Vernon and Irene Castle came up with a dance, the foxtrot -- which Vernon Castle later admitted was largely inspired by Black dancers -- to be danced to the "Memphis Blues", and the foxtrot soon overtook the tango, which the Castles had introduced to the US the previous year, to become the most popular dance in America for the best part of three decades. And with that came an explosion in blues in the Handy style, cranked out by every music publisher. While the blues was a style largely created by Black performers and writers, the segregated nature of the American music industry at the time meant that most vocal performances of these early blues that were captured on record were by white performers, Black vocalists at this time only rarely getting the chance to record. The first blues record with a Black vocalist is also technically the first British blues record. A group of Black musicians, apparently mostly American but led by a Jamaican pianist, played at Ciro's Club in London, and recorded many tracks in Britain, under a name which I'm not going to say in full -- it started with Ciro's Club, and continued alliteratively with another word starting with C, a slur for Black people. In 1917 they recorded a vocal version of "St. Louis Blues", another W.C. Handy composition: [Excerpt: Ciro's Club C**n Orchestra, "St. Louis Blues"] The first American Black blues vocal didn't come until two years later, when Bert Williams, a Black minstrel-show performer who like many Black performers of his era performed in blackface even though he was Black, recorded “I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,” [Excerpt: Bert Williams, "I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,”] But it wasn't until 1920 that the second, bigger, wave of popularity started for the blues, and this time it started with the first record of a Black *woman* singing the blues -- Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] You can hear the difference between that and anything we've heard up to that point -- that's the first record that anyone from our perspective, a hundred and three years later, would listen to and say that it bore any resemblance to what we think of as the blues -- so much so that many places still credit it as the first ever blues record. And there's a reason for that. "Crazy Blues" was one of those records that separates the music industry into before and after, like "Rock Around the Clock", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", Sgt Pepper, or "Rapper's Delight". It sold seventy-five thousand copies in its first month -- a massive number by the standards of 1920 -- and purportedly went on to sell over a million copies. Sales figures and market analysis weren't really a thing in the same way in 1920, but even so it became very obvious that "Crazy Blues" was a big hit, and that unlike pretty much any other previous records, it was a big hit among Black listeners, which meant that there was a market for music aimed at Black people that was going untapped. Soon all the major record labels were setting up subsidiaries devoted to what they called "race music", music made by and for Black people. And this sees the birth of what is now known as "classic blues", but at the time (and for decades after) was just what people thought of when they thought of "the blues" as a genre. This was music primarily sung by female vaudeville artists backed by jazz bands, people like Ma Rainey (whose earliest recordings featured Louis Armstrong in her backing band): [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider Blues"] And Bessie Smith, the "Empress of the Blues", who had a massive career in the 1920s before the Great Depression caused many of these "race record" labels to fold, but who carried on performing well into the 1930s -- her last recording was in 1933, produced by John Hammond, with a backing band including Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Give Me a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer"] It wouldn't be until several years after the boom started by Mamie Smith that any record companies turned to recording Black men singing the blues accompanied by guitar or banjo. The first record of this type is probably "Norfolk Blues" by Reese DuPree from 1924: [Excerpt: Reese DuPree, "Norfolk Blues"] And there were occasional other records of this type, like "Airy Man Blues" by Papa Charlie Jackson, who was advertised as the “only man living who sings, self-accompanied, for Blues records.” [Excerpt: Papa Charlie Jackson, "Airy Man Blues"] But contrary to the way these are seen today, at the time they weren't seen as being in some way "authentic", or "folk music". Indeed, there are many quotes from folk-music collectors of the time (sadly all of them using so many slurs that it's impossible for me to accurately quote them) saying that when people sang the blues, that wasn't authentic Black folk music at all but an adulteration from commercial music -- they'd clearly, according to these folk-music scholars, learned the blues style from records and sheet music rather than as part of an oral tradition. Most of these performers were people who recorded blues as part of a wider range of material, like Blind Blake, who recorded some blues music but whose best work was his ragtime guitar instrumentals: [Excerpt: Blind Blake, "Southern Rag"] But it was when Blind Lemon Jefferson started recording for Paramount records in 1926 that the image of the blues as we now think of it took shape. His first record, "Got the Blues", was a massive success: [Excerpt: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Got the Blues"] And this resulted in many labels, especially Paramount, signing up pretty much every Black man with a guitar they could find in the hopes of finding another Blind Lemon Jefferson. But the thing is, this generation of people making blues records, and the generation that followed them, didn't think of themselves as "blues singers" or "bluesmen". They were songsters. Songsters were entertainers, and their job was to sing and play whatever the audiences would want to hear. That included the blues, of course, but it also included... well, every song anyone would want to hear. They'd perform old folk songs, vaudeville songs, songs that they'd heard on the radio or the jukebox -- whatever the audience wanted. Robert Johnson, for example, was known to particularly love playing polka music, and also adored the records of Jimmie Rodgers, the first country music superstar. In 1941, when Alan Lomax first recorded Muddy Waters, he asked Waters what kind of songs he normally played in performances, and he was given a list that included "Home on the Range", Gene Autry's "I've Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle", and Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". We have few recordings of these people performing this kind of song though. One of the few we have is Big Bill Broonzy, who was just about the only artist of this type not to get pigeonholed as just a blues singer, even though blues is what made him famous, and who later in his career managed to record songs like the Tin Pan Alley standard "The Glory of Love": [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "The Glory of Love"] But for the most part, the image we have of the blues comes down to one man, Arthur Laibley, a sales manager for the Wisconsin Chair Company. The Wisconsin Chair Company was, as the name would suggest, a company that started out making wooden chairs, but it had branched out into other forms of wooden furniture -- including, for a brief time, large wooden phonographs. And, like several other manufacturers, like the Radio Corporation of America -- RCA -- and the Gramophone Company, which became EMI, they realised that if they were going to sell the hardware it made sense to sell the software as well, and had started up Paramount Records, which bought up a small label, Black Swan, and soon became the biggest manufacturer of records for the Black market, putting out roughly a quarter of all "race records" released between 1922 and 1932. At first, most of these were produced by a Black talent scout, J. Mayo Williams, who had been the first person to record Ma Rainey, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, but in 1927 Williams left Paramount, and the job of supervising sessions went to Arthur Laibley, though according to some sources a lot of the actual production work was done by Aletha Dickerson, Williams' former assistant, who was almost certainly the first Black woman to be what we would now think of as a record producer. Williams had been interested in recording all kinds of music by Black performers, but when Laibley got a solo Black man into the studio, what he wanted more than anything was for him to record the blues, ideally in a style as close as possible to that of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Laibley didn't have a very hands-on approach to recording -- indeed Paramount had very little concern about the quality of their product anyway, and Paramount's records are notorious for having been put out on poor-quality shellac and recorded badly -- and he only occasionally made actual suggestions as to what kind of songs his performers should write -- for example he asked Son House to write something that sounded like Blind Lemon Jefferson, which led to House writing and recording "Mississippi County Farm Blues", which steals the tune of Jefferson's "See That My Grave is Kept Clean": [Excerpt: Son House, "Mississippi County Farm Blues"] When Skip James wanted to record a cover of James Wiggins' "Forty-Four Blues", Laibley suggested that instead he should do a song about a different gun, and so James recorded "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues"] And Laibley also suggested that James write a song about the Depression, which led to one of the greatest blues records ever, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues"] These musicians knew that they were getting paid only for issued sides, and that Laibley wanted only blues from them, and so that's what they gave him. Even when it was a performer like Charlie Patton. (Incidentally, for those reading this as a transcript rather than listening to it, Patton's name is more usually spelled ending in ey, but as far as I can tell ie was his preferred spelling and that's what I'm using). Charlie Patton was best known as an entertainer, first and foremost -- someone who would do song-and-dance routines, joke around, play guitar behind his head. He was a clown on stage, so much so that when Son House finally heard some of Patton's records, in the mid-sixties, decades after the fact, he was astonished that Patton could actually play well. Even though House had been in the room when some of the records were made, his memory of Patton was of someone who acted the fool on stage. That's definitely not the impression you get from the Charlie Patton on record: [Excerpt: Charlie Patton, "Poor Me"] Patton is, as far as can be discerned, the person who was most influential in creating the music that became called the "Delta blues". Not a lot is known about Patton's life, but he was almost certainly the half-brother of the Chatmon brothers, who made hundreds of records, most notably as members of the Mississippi Sheiks: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Sheiks, "Sitting on Top of the World"] In the 1890s, Patton's family moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi, and he lived in and around that county until his death in 1934. Patton learned to play guitar from a musician called Henry Sloan, and then Patton became a mentor figure to a *lot* of other musicians in and around the plantation on which his family lived. Some of the musicians who grew up in the immediate area around Patton included Tommy Johnson: [Excerpt: Tommy Johnson, "Big Road Blues"] Pops Staples: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken"] Robert Johnson: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Crossroads"] Willie Brown, a musician who didn't record much, but who played a lot with Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson and who we just heard Johnson sing about: [Excerpt: Willie Brown, "M&O Blues"] And Chester Burnett, who went on to become known as Howlin' Wolf, and whose vocal style was equally inspired by Patton and by the country star Jimmie Rodgers: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightnin'"] Once Patton started his own recording career for Paramount, he also started working as a talent scout for them, and it was him who brought Son House to Paramount. Soon after the Depression hit, Paramount stopped recording, and so from 1930 through 1934 Patton didn't make any records. He was tracked down by an A&R man in January 1934 and recorded one final session: [Excerpt, Charlie Patton, "34 Blues"] But he died of heart failure two months later. But his influence spread through his proteges, and they themselves influenced other musicians from the area who came along a little after, like Robert Lockwood and Muddy Waters. This music -- or that portion of it that was considered worth recording by white record producers, only a tiny, unrepresentative, portion of their vast performing repertoires -- became known as the Delta Blues, and when some of these musicians moved to Chicago and started performing with electric instruments, it became Chicago Blues. And as far as people like John Mayall in Britain were concerned, Delta and Chicago Blues *were* the blues: [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "It Ain't Right"] John Mayall was one of the first of the British blues obsessives, and for a long time thought of himself as the only one. While we've looked before at the growth of the London blues scene, Mayall wasn't from London -- he was born in Macclesfield and grew up in Cheadle Hulme, both relatively well-off suburbs of Manchester, and after being conscripted and doing two years in the Army, he had become an art student at Manchester College of Art, what is now Manchester Metropolitan University. Mayall had been a blues fan from the late 1940s, writing off to the US to order records that hadn't been released in the UK, and by most accounts by the late fifties he'd put together the biggest blues collection in Britain by quite some way. Not only that, but he had one of the earliest home tape recorders, and every night he would record radio stations from Continental Europe which were broadcasting for American service personnel, so he'd amassed mountains of recordings, often unlabelled, of obscure blues records that nobody else in the UK knew about. He was also an accomplished pianist and guitar player, and in 1956 he and his drummer friend Peter Ward had put together a band called the Powerhouse Four (the other two members rotated on a regular basis) mostly to play lunchtime jazz sessions at the art college. Mayall also started putting on jam sessions at a youth club in Wythenshawe, where he met another drummer named Hughie Flint. Over the late fifties and into the early sixties, Mayall more or less by himself built up a small blues scene in Manchester. The Manchester blues scene was so enthusiastic, in fact, that when the American Folk Blues Festival, an annual European tour which initially featured Willie Dixon, Memhis Slim, T-Bone Walker, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and John Lee Hooker, first toured Europe, the only UK date it played was at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, and people like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jimmy Page had to travel up from London to see it. But still, the number of blues fans in Manchester, while proportionally large, was objectively small enough that Mayall was captivated by an article in Melody Maker which talked about Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies' new band Blues Incorporated and how it was playing electric blues, the same music he was making in Manchester. He later talked about how the article had made him think that maybe now people would know what he was talking about. He started travelling down to London to play gigs for the London blues scene, and inviting Korner up to Manchester to play shows there. Soon Mayall had moved down to London. Korner introduced Mayall to Davey Graham, the great folk guitarist, with whom Korner had recently recorded as a duo: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, "3/4 AD"] Mayall and Graham performed together as a duo for a while, but Graham was a natural solo artist if ever there was one. Slowly Mayall put a band together in London. On drums was his old friend Peter Ward, who'd moved down from Manchester with him. On bass was John McVie, who at the time knew nothing about blues -- he'd been playing in a Shadows-style instrumental group -- but Mayall gave him a stack of blues records to listen to to get the feeling. And on guitar was Bernie Watson, who had previously played with Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. In late 1963, Mike Vernon, a blues fan who had previously published a Yardbirds fanzine, got a job working for Decca records, and immediately started signing his favourite acts from the London blues circuit. The first act he signed was John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and they recorded a single, "Crawling up a Hill": [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "Crawling up a Hill (45 version)"] Mayall later called that a "clumsy, half-witted attempt at autobiographical comment", and it sold only five hundred copies. It would be the only record the Bluesbreakers would make with Watson, who soon left the band to be replaced by Roger Dean (not the same Roger Dean who later went on to design prog rock album covers). The second group to be signed by Mike Vernon to Decca was the Graham Bond Organisation. We've talked about the Graham Bond Organisation in passing several times, but not for a while and not in any great detail, so it's worth pulling everything we've said about them so far together and going through it in a little more detail. The Graham Bond Organisation, like the Rolling Stones, grew out of Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. As we heard in the episode on "I Wanna Be Your Man" a couple of years ago, Blues Incorporated had been started by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, and at the time we're joining them in 1962 featured a drummer called Charlie Watts, a pianist called Dave Stevens, and saxophone player Dick Heckstall-Smith, as well as frequent guest performers like a singer who called himself Mike Jagger, and another one, Roderick Stewart. That group finally found themselves the perfect bass player when Dick Heckstall-Smith put together a one-off group of jazz players to play an event at Cambridge University. At the gig, a little Scottish man came up to the group and told them he played bass and asked if he could sit in. They told him to bring along his instrument to their second set, that night, and he did actually bring along a double bass. Their bluff having been called, they decided to play the most complicated, difficult, piece they knew in order to throw the kid off -- the drummer, a trad jazz player named Ginger Baker, didn't like performing with random sit-in guests -- but astonishingly he turned out to be really good. Heckstall-Smith took down the bass player's name and phone number and invited him to a jam session with Blues Incorporated. After that jam session, Jack Bruce quickly became the group's full-time bass player. Bruce had started out as a classical cellist, but had switched to the double bass inspired by Bach, who he referred to as "the guv'nor of all bass players". His playing up to this point had mostly been in trad jazz bands, and he knew nothing of the blues, but he quickly got the hang of the genre. Bruce's first show with Blues Incorporated was a BBC recording: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, "Hoochie Coochie Man (BBC session)"] According to at least one source it was not being asked to take part in that session that made young Mike Jagger decide there was no future for him with Blues Incorporated and to spend more time with his other group, the Rollin' Stones. Soon after, Charlie Watts would join him, for almost the opposite reason -- Watts didn't want to be in a band that was getting as big as Blues Incorporated were. They were starting to do more BBC sessions and get more gigs, and having to join the Musicians' Union. That seemed like a lot of work. Far better to join a band like the Rollin' Stones that wasn't going anywhere. Because of Watts' decision to give up on potential stardom to become a Rollin' Stone, they needed a new drummer, and luckily the best drummer on the scene was available. But then the best drummer on the scene was *always* available. Ginger Baker had first played with Dick Heckstall-Smith several years earlier, in a trad group called the Storyville Jazzmen. There Baker had become obsessed with the New Orleans jazz drummer Baby Dodds, who had played with Louis Armstrong in the 1920s. Sadly because of 1920s recording technology, he hadn't been able to play a full kit on the recordings with Armstrong, being limited to percussion on just a woodblock, but you can hear his drumming style much better in this version of "At the Jazz Band Ball" from 1947, with Mugsy Spanier, Jack Teagarden, Cyrus St. Clair and Hank Duncan: [Excerpt: "At the Jazz Band Ball"] Baker had taken Dobbs' style and run with it, and had quickly become known as the single best player, bar none, on the London jazz scene -- he'd become an accomplished player in multiple styles, and was also fluent in reading music and arranging. He'd also, though, become known as the single person on the entire scene who was most difficult to get along with. He resigned from his first band onstage, shouting "You can stick your band up your arse", after the band's leader had had enough of him incorporating bebop influences into their trad style. Another time, when touring with Diz Disley's band, he was dumped in Germany with no money and no way to get home, because the band were so sick of him. Sometimes this was because of his temper and his unwillingness to suffer fools -- and he saw everyone else he ever met as a fool -- and sometimes it was because of his own rigorous musical ideas. He wanted to play music *his* way, and wouldn't listen to anyone who told him different. Both of these things got worse after he fell under the influence of a man named Phil Seaman, one of the only drummers that Baker respected at all. Seaman introduced Baker to African drumming, and Baker started incorporating complex polyrhythms into his playing as a result. Seaman also though introduced Baker to heroin, and while being a heroin addict in the UK in the 1960s was not as difficult as it later became -- both heroin and cocaine were available on prescription to registered addicts, and Baker got both, which meant that many of the problems that come from criminalisation of these drugs didn't affect addicts in the same way -- but it still did not, by all accounts, make him an easier person to get along with. But he *was* a fantastic drummer. As Dick Heckstall-Smith said "With the advent of Ginger, the classic Blues Incorporated line-up, one which I think could not be bettered, was set" But Alexis Korner decided that the group could be bettered, and he had some backers within the band. One of the other bands on the scene was the Don Rendell Quintet, a group that played soul jazz -- that style of jazz that bridged modern jazz and R&B, the kind of music that Ray Charles and Herbie Hancock played: [Excerpt: The Don Rendell Quintet, "Manumission"] The Don Rendell Quintet included a fantastic multi-instrumentalist, Graham Bond, who doubled on keyboards and saxophone, and Bond had been playing occasional experimental gigs with the Johnny Burch Octet -- a group led by another member of the Rendell Quartet featuring Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, Baker, and a few other musicians, doing wholly-improvised music. Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, and Baker all enjoyed playing with Bond, and when Korner decided to bring him into the band, they were all very keen. But Cyril Davies, the co-leader of the band with Korner, was furious at the idea. Davies wanted to play strict Chicago and Delta blues, and had no truck with other forms of music like R&B and jazz. To his mind it was bad enough that they had a sax player. But the idea that they would bring in Bond, who played sax and... *Hammond* organ? Well, that was practically blasphemy. Davies quit the group at the mere suggestion. Bond was soon in the band, and he, Bruce, and Baker were playing together a *lot*. As well as performing with Blues Incorporated, they continued playing in the Johnny Burch Octet, and they also started performing as the Graham Bond Trio. Sometimes the Graham Bond Trio would be Blues Incorporated's opening act, and on more than one occasion the Graham Bond Trio, Blues Incorporated, and the Johnny Burch Octet all had gigs in different parts of London on the same night and they'd have to frantically get from one to the other. The Graham Bond Trio also had fans in Manchester, thanks to the local blues scene there and their connection with Blues Incorporated, and one night in February 1963 the trio played a gig there. They realised afterwards that by playing as a trio they'd made £70, when they were lucky to make £20 from a gig with Blues Incorporated or the Octet, because there were so many members in those bands. Bond wanted to make real money, and at the next rehearsal of Blues Incorporated he announced to Korner that he, Bruce, and Baker were quitting the band -- which was news to Bruce and Baker, who he hadn't bothered consulting. Baker, indeed, was in the toilet when the announcement was made and came out to find it a done deal. He was going to kick up a fuss and say he hadn't been consulted, but Korner's reaction sealed the deal. As Baker later said "‘he said “it's really good you're doing this thing with Graham, and I wish you the best of luck” and all that. And it was a bit difficult to turn round and say, “Well, I don't really want to leave the band, you know.”'" The Graham Bond Trio struggled at first to get the gigs they were expecting, but that started to change when in April 1963 they became the Graham Bond Quartet, with the addition of virtuoso guitarist John McLaughlin. The Quartet soon became one of the hottest bands on the London R&B scene, and when Duffy Power, a Larry Parnes teen idol who wanted to move into R&B, asked his record label to get him a good R&B band to back him on a Beatles cover, it was the Graham Bond Quartet who obliged: [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "I Saw Her Standing There"] The Quartet also backed Power on a package tour with other Parnes acts, but they were also still performing their own blend of hard jazz and blues, as can be heard in this recording of the group live in June 1953: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Quartet, "Ho Ho Country Kicking Blues (Live at Klooks Kleek)"] But that lineup of the group didn't last very long. According to the way Baker told the story, he fired McLaughlin from the group, after being irritated by McLaughlin complaining about something on a day when Baker was out of cocaine and in no mood to hear anyone else's complaints. As Baker said "We lost a great guitar player and I lost a good friend." But the Trio soon became a Quartet again, as Dick Heckstall-Smith, who Baker had wanted in the band from the start, joined on saxophone to replace McLaughlin's guitar. But they were no longer called the Graham Bond Quartet. Partly because Heckstall-Smith joining allowed Bond to concentrate just on his keyboard playing, but one suspects partly to protect against any future lineup changes, the group were now The Graham Bond ORGANisation -- emphasis on the organ. The new lineup of the group got signed to Decca by Vernon, and were soon recording their first single, "Long Tall Shorty": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Long Tall Shorty"] They recorded a few other songs which made their way onto an EP and an R&B compilation, and toured intensively in early 1964, as well as backing up Power on his follow-up to "I Saw Her Standing There", his version of "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "Parchman Farm"] They also appeared in a film, just like the Beatles, though it was possibly not quite as artistically successful as "A Hard Day's Night": [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat trailer] Gonks Go Beat is one of the most bizarre films of the sixties. It's a far-future remake of Romeo and Juliet. where the two star-crossed lovers are from opposing countries -- Beatland and Ballad Isle -- who only communicate once a year in an annual song contest which acts as their version of a war, and is overseen by "Mr. A&R", played by Frank Thornton, who would later star in Are You Being Served? Carry On star Kenneth Connor is sent by aliens to try to bring peace to the two warring countries, on pain of exile to Planet Gonk, a planet inhabited solely by Gonks (a kind of novelty toy for which there was a short-lived craze then). Along the way Connor encounters such luminaries of British light entertainment as Terry Scott and Arthur Mullard, as well as musical performances by Lulu, the Nashville Teens, and of course the Graham Bond Organisation, whose performance gets them a telling-off from a teacher: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat!] The group as a group only performed one song in this cinematic masterpiece, but Baker also made an appearance in a "drum battle" sequence where eight drummers played together: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat drum battle] The other drummers in that scene included, as well as some lesser-known players, Andy White who had played on the single version of "Love Me Do", Bobby Graham, who played on hits by the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five, and Ronnie Verrell, who did the drumming for Animal in the Muppet Show. Also in summer 1964, the group performed at the Fourth National Jazz & Blues Festival in Richmond -- the festival co-founded by Chris Barber that would evolve into the Reading Festival. The Yardbirds were on the bill, and at the end of their set they invited Bond, Baker, Bruce, Georgie Fame, and Mike Vernon onto the stage with them, making that the first time that Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce were all on stage together. Soon after that, the Graham Bond Organisation got a new manager, Robert Stigwood. Things hadn't been working out for them at Decca, and Stigwood soon got the group signed to EMI, and became their producer as well. Their first single under Stigwood's management was a cover version of the theme tune to the Debbie Reynolds film "Tammy". While that film had given Tamla records its name, the song was hardly an R&B classic: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Tammy"] That record didn't chart, but Stigwood put the group out on the road as part of the disastrous Chuck Berry tour we heard about in the episode on "All You Need is Love", which led to the bankruptcy of Robert Stigwood Associates. The Organisation moved over to Stigwood's new company, the Robert Stigwood Organisation, and Stigwood continued to be the credited producer of their records, though after the "Tammy" disaster they decided they were going to take charge themselves of the actual music. Their first album, The Sound of 65, was recorded in a single three-hour session, and they mostly ran through their standard set -- a mixture of the same songs everyone else on the circuit was playing, like "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Got My Mojo Working", and "Wade in the Water", and originals like Bruce's "Train Time": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Train Time"] Through 1965 they kept working. They released a non-album single, "Lease on Love", which is generally considered to be the first pop record to feature a Mellotron: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Lease on Love"] and Bond and Baker also backed another Stigwood act, Winston G, on his debut single: [Excerpt: Winston G, "Please Don't Say"] But the group were developing severe tensions. Bruce and Baker had started out friendly, but by this time they hated each other. Bruce said he couldn't hear his own playing over Baker's loud drumming, Baker thought that Bruce was far too fussy a player and should try to play simpler lines. They'd both try to throw each other during performances, altering arrangements on the fly and playing things that would trip the other player up. And *neither* of them were particularly keen on Bond's new love of the Mellotron, which was all over their second album, giving it a distinctly proto-prog feel at times: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Baby Can it Be True?"] Eventually at a gig in Golders Green, Baker started throwing drumsticks at Bruce's head while Bruce was trying to play a bass solo. Bruce retaliated by throwing his bass at Baker, and then jumping on him and starting a fistfight which had to be broken up by the venue security. Baker fired Bruce from the band, but Bruce kept turning up to gigs anyway, arguing that Baker had no right to sack him as it was a democracy. Baker always claimed that in fact Bond had wanted to sack Bruce but hadn't wanted to get his hands dirty, and insisted that Baker do it, but neither Bond nor Heckstall-Smith objected when Bruce turned up for the next couple of gigs. So Baker took matters into his own hands, He pulled out a knife and told Bruce "If you show up at one more gig, this is going in you." Within days, Bruce was playing with John Mayall, whose Bluesbreakers had gone through some lineup changes by this point. Roger Dean had only played with the Bluesbreakers for a short time before Mayall had replaced him. Mayall had not been impressed with Eric Clapton's playing with the Yardbirds at first -- even though graffiti saying "Clapton is God" was already starting to appear around London -- but he had been *very* impressed with Clapton's playing on "Got to Hurry", the B-side to "For Your Love": [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Got to Hurry"] When he discovered that Clapton had quit the band, he sprang into action and quickly recruited him to replace Dean. Clapton knew he had made the right choice when a month after he'd joined, the group got the word that Bob Dylan had been so impressed with Mayall's single "Crawling up a Hill" -- the one that nobody liked, not even Mayall himself -- that he wanted to jam with Mayall and his band in the studio. Clapton of course went along: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Bluesbreakers, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] That was, of course, the session we've talked about in the Velvet Underground episode and elsewhere of which little other than that survives, and which Nico attended. At this point, Mayall didn't have a record contract, his experience recording with Mike Vernon having been no more successful than the Bond group's had been. But soon he got a one-off deal -- as a solo artist, not with the Bluesbreakers -- with Immediate Records. Clapton was the only member of the group to play on the single, which was produced by Immediate's house producer Jimmy Page: [Excerpt: John Mayall, "I'm Your Witchdoctor"] Page was impressed enough with Clapton's playing that he invited him round to Page's house to jam together. But what Clapton didn't know was that Page was taping their jam sessions, and that he handed those tapes over to Immediate Records -- whether he was forced to by his contract with the label or whether that had been his plan all along depends on whose story you believe, but Clapton never truly forgave him. Page and Clapton's guitar-only jams had overdubs by Bill Wyman, Ian Stewart, and drummer Chris Winter, and have been endlessly repackaged on blues compilations ever since: [Excerpt: Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, "Draggin' My Tail"] But Mayall was having problems with John McVie, who had started to drink too much, and as soon as he found out that Jack Bruce was sacked by the Graham Bond Organisation, Mayall got in touch with Bruce and got him to join the band in McVie's place. Everyone was agreed that this lineup of the band -- Mayall, Clapton, Bruce, and Hughie Flint -- was going places: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Jack Bruce, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] Unfortunately, it wasn't going to last long. Clapton, while he thought that Bruce was the greatest bass player he'd ever worked with, had other plans. He was going to leave the country and travel the world as a peripatetic busker. He was off on his travels, never to return. Luckily, Mayall had someone even better waiting in the wings. A young man had, according to Mayall, "kept coming down to all the gigs and saying, “Hey, what are you doing with him?” – referring to whichever guitarist was onstage that night – “I'm much better than he is. Why don't you let me play guitar for you?” He got really quite nasty about it, so finally, I let him sit in. And he was brilliant." Peter Green was probably the best blues guitarist in London at that time, but this lineup of the Bluesbreakers only lasted a handful of gigs -- Clapton discovered that busking in Greece wasn't as much fun as being called God in London, and came back very soon after he'd left. Mayall had told him that he could have his old job back when he got back, and so Green was out and Clapton was back in. And soon the Bluesbreakers' revolving door revolved again. Manfred Mann had just had a big hit with "If You Gotta Go, Go Now", the same song we heard Dylan playing earlier: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] But their guitarist, Mike Vickers, had quit. Tom McGuinness, their bass player, had taken the opportunity to switch back to guitar -- the instrument he'd played in his first band with his friend Eric Clapton -- but that left them short a bass player. Manfred Mann were essentially the same kind of band as the Graham Bond Organisation -- a Hammond-led group of virtuoso multi-instrumentalists who played everything from hardcore Delta blues to complex modern jazz -- but unlike the Bond group they also had a string of massive pop hits, and so made a lot more money. The combination was irresistible to Bruce, and he joined the band just before they recorded an EP of jazz instrumental versions of recent hits: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] Bruce had also been encouraged by Robert Stigwood to do a solo project, and so at the same time as he joined Manfred Mann, he also put out a solo single, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'" [Excerpt: Jack Bruce, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'"] But of course, the reason Bruce had joined Manfred Mann was that they were having pop hits as well as playing jazz, and soon they did just that, with Bruce playing on their number one hit "Pretty Flamingo": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Pretty Flamingo"] So John McVie was back in the Bluesbreakers, promising to keep his drinking under control. Mike Vernon still thought that Mayall had potential, but the people at Decca didn't agree, so Vernon got Mayall and Clapton -- but not the other band members -- to record a single for a small indie label he ran as a side project: [Excerpt: John Mayall and Eric Clapton, "Bernard Jenkins"] That label normally only released records in print runs of ninety-nine copies, because once you hit a hundred copies you had to pay tax on them, but there was so much demand for that single that they ended up pressing up five hundred copies, making it the label's biggest seller ever. Vernon eventually convinced the heads at Decca that the Bluesbreakers could be truly big, and so he got the OK to record the album that would generally be considered the greatest British blues album of all time -- Blues Breakers, also known as the Beano album because of Clapton reading a copy of the British kids' comic The Beano in the group photo on the front. [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Ramblin' On My Mind"] The album was a mixture of originals by Mayall and the standard repertoire of every blues or R&B band on the circuit -- songs like "Parchman Farm" and "What'd I Say" -- but what made the album unique was Clapton's guitar tone. Much to the chagrin of Vernon, and of engineer Gus Dudgeon, Clapton insisted on playing at the same volume that he would on stage. Vernon later said of Dudgeon "I can remember seeing his face the very first time Clapton plugged into the Marshall stack and turned it up and started playing at the sort of volume he was going to play. You could almost see Gus's eyes meet over the middle of his nose, and it was almost like he was just going to fall over from the sheer power of it all. But after an enormous amount of fiddling around and moving amps around, we got a sound that worked." [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Hideaway"] But by the time the album cane out. Clapton was no longer with the Bluesbreakers. The Graham Bond Organisation had struggled on for a while after Bruce's departure. They brought in a trumpet player, Mike Falana, and even had a hit record -- or at least, the B-side of a hit record. The Who had just put out a hit single, "Substitute", on Robert Stigwood's record label, Reaction: [Excerpt: The Who, "Substitute"] But, as you'll hear in episode 183, they had moved to Reaction Records after a falling out with their previous label, and with Shel Talmy their previous producer. The problem was, when "Substitute" was released, it had as its B-side a song called "Circles" (also known as "Instant Party -- it's been released under both names). They'd recorded an earlier version of the song for Talmy, and just as "Substitute" was starting to chart, Talmy got an injunction against the record and it had to be pulled. Reaction couldn't afford to lose the big hit record they'd spent money promoting, so they needed to put it out with a new B-side. But the Who hadn't got any unreleased recordings. But the Graham Bond Organisation had, and indeed they had an unreleased *instrumental*. So "Waltz For a Pig" became the B-side to a top-five single, credited to The Who Orchestra: [Excerpt: The Who Orchestra, "Waltz For a Pig"] That record provided the catalyst for the formation of Cream, because Ginger Baker had written the song, and got £1,350 for it, which he used to buy a new car. Baker had, for some time, been wanting to get out of the Graham Bond Organisation. He was trying to get off heroin -- though he would make many efforts to get clean over the decades, with little success -- while Bond was starting to use it far more heavily, and was also using acid and getting heavily into mysticism, which Baker despised. Baker may have had the idea for what he did next from an article in one of the music papers. John Entwistle of the Who would often tell a story about an article in Melody Maker -- though I've not been able to track down the article itself to get the full details -- in which musicians were asked to name which of their peers they'd put into a "super-group". He didn't remember the full details, but he did remember that the consensus choice had had Eric Clapton on lead guitar, himself on bass, and Ginger Baker on drums. As he said later "I don't remember who else was voted in, but a few months later, the Cream came along, and I did wonder if somebody was maybe believing too much of their own press". Incidentally, like The Buffalo Springfield and The Pink Floyd, Cream, the band we are about to meet, had releases both with and without the definite article, and Eric Clapton at least seems always to talk about them as "the Cream" even decades later, but they're primarily known as just Cream these days. Baker, having had enough of the Bond group, decided to drive up to Oxford to see Clapton playing with the Bluesbreakers. Clapton invited him to sit in for a couple of songs, and by all accounts the band sounded far better than they had previously. Clapton and Baker could obviously play well together, and Baker offered Clapton a lift back to London in his new car, and on the drive back asked Clapton if he wanted to form a new band. Clapton was as impressed by Baker's financial skills as he was by his musicianship. He said later "Musicians didn't have cars. You all got in a van." Clearly a musician who was *actually driving a new car he owned* was going places. He agreed to Baker's plan. But of course they needed a bass player, and Clapton thought he had the perfect solution -- "What about Jack?" Clapton knew that Bruce had been a member of the Graham Bond Organisation, but didn't know why he'd left the band -- he wasn't particularly clued in to what the wider music scene was doing, and all he knew was that Bruce had played with both him and Baker, and that he was the best bass player he'd ever played with. And Bruce *was* arguably the best bass player in London at that point, and he was starting to pick up session work as well as his work with Manfred Mann. For example it's him playing on the theme tune to "After The Fox" with Peter Sellers, the Hollies, and the song's composer Burt Bacharach: [Excerpt: The Hollies with Peter Sellers, "After the Fox"] Clapton was insistent. Baker's idea was that the band should be the best musicians around. That meant they needed the *best* musicians around, not the second best. If Jack Bruce wasn't joining, Eric Clapton wasn't joining either. Baker very reluctantly agreed, and went round to see Bruce the next day -- according to Baker it was in a spirit of generosity and giving Bruce one more chance, while according to Bruce he came round to eat humble pie and beg for forgiveness. Either way, Bruce agreed to join the band. The three met up for a rehearsal at Baker's home, and immediately Bruce and Baker started fighting, but also immediately they realised that they were great at playing together -- so great that they named themselves the Cream, as they were the cream of musicians on the scene. They knew they had something, but they didn't know what. At first they considered making their performances into Dada projects, inspired by the early-twentieth-century art movement. They liked a band that had just started to make waves, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band -- who had originally been called the Bonzo Dog Dada Band -- and they bought some props with the vague idea of using them on stage in the same way the Bonzos did. But as they played together they realised that they needed to do something different from that. At first, they thought they needed a fourth member -- a keyboard player. Graham Bond's name was brought up, but Clapton vetoed him. Clapton wanted Steve Winwood, the keyboard player and vocalist with the Spencer Davis Group. Indeed, Winwood was present at what was originally intended to be the first recording session the trio would play. Joe Boyd had asked Eric Clapton to round up a bunch of players to record some filler tracks for an Elektra blues compilation, and Clapton had asked Bruce and Baker to join him, Paul Jones on vocals, Winwood on Hammond and Clapton's friend Ben Palmer on piano for the session. Indeed, given that none of the original trio were keen on singing, that Paul Jones was just about to leave Manfred Mann, and that we know Clapton wanted Winwood in the band, one has to wonder if Clapton at least half-intended for this to be the eventual lineup of the band. If he did, that plan was foiled by Baker's refusal to take part in the session. Instead, this one-off band, named The Powerhouse, featured Pete York, the drummer from the Spencer Davis Group, on the session, which produced the first recording of Clapton playing on the Robert Johnson song originally titled "Cross Road Blues" but now generally better known just as "Crossroads": [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] We talked about Robert Johnson a little back in episode ninety-seven, but other than Bob Dylan, who was inspired by his lyrics, we had seen very little influence from Johnson up to this point, but he's going to be a major influence on rock guitar for the next few years, so we should talk about him a little here. It's often said that nobody knew anything about Robert Johnson, that he was almost a phantom other than his records which existed outside of any context as artefacts of their own. That's... not really the case. Johnson had died a little less than thirty years earlier, at only twenty-seven years old. Most of his half-siblings and step-siblings were alive, as were his son, his stepson, and dozens of musicians he'd played with over the years, women he'd had affairs with, and other assorted friends and relatives. What people mean is that information about Johnson's life was not yet known by people they consider important -- which is to say white blues scholars and musicians. Indeed, almost everything people like that -- people like *me* -- know of the facts of Johnson's life has only become known to us in the last four years. If, as some people had expected, I'd started this series with an episode on Johnson, I'd have had to redo the whole thing because of the information that's made its way to the public since then. But here's what was known -- or thought -- by white blues scholars in 1966. Johnson was, according to them, a field hand from somewhere in Mississippi, who played the guitar in between working on the cotton fields. He had done two recording sessions, in 1936 and 1937. One song from his first session, "Terraplane Blues", had been a very minor hit by blues standards: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Terraplane Blues"] That had sold well -- nobody knows how well, but maybe as many as ten thousand copies, and it was certainly a record people knew in 1937 if they liked the Delta blues, but ten thousand copies total is nowhere near the sales of really successful records, and none of the follow-ups had sold anything like that much -- many of them had sold in the hundreds rather than the thousands. As Elijah Wald, one of Johnson's biographers put it "knowing about Johnson and Muddy Waters but not about Leroy Carr or Dinah Washington was like knowing about, say, the Sir Douglas Quintet but not knowing about the Beatles" -- though *I* would add that the Sir Douglas Quintet were much bigger during the sixties than Johnson was during his lifetime. One of the few white people who had noticed Johnson's existence at all was John Hammond, and he'd written a brief review of Johnson's first two singles under a pseudonym in a Communist newspaper. I'm going to quote it here, but the word he used to talk about Black people was considered correct then but isn't now, so I'll substitute Black for that word: "Before closing we cannot help but call your attention to the greatest [Black] blues singer who has cropped up in recent years, Robert Johnson. Recording them in deepest Mississippi, Vocalion has certainly done right by us and by the tunes "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" and "Terraplane Blues", to name only two of the four sides already released, sung to his own guitar accompaniment. Johnson makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur" Hammond had tried to get Johnson to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts we talked about in the very first episodes of the podcast, but he'd discovered that he'd died shortly before. He got Big Bill Broonzy instead, and played a couple of Johnson's records from a record player on the stage. Hammond introduced those recordings with a speech: "It is tragic that an American audience could not have been found seven or eight years ago for a concert of this kind. Bessie Smith was still at the height of her career and Joe Smith, probably the greatest trumpet player America ever knew, would still have been around to play obbligatos for her...dozens of other artists could have been there in the flesh. But that audience as well as this one would not have been able to hear Robert Johnson sing and play the blues on his guitar, for at that time Johnson was just an unknown hand on a Robinsonville, Mississippi plantation. Robert Johnson was going to be the big surprise of the evening for this audience at Carnegie Hall. I know him only from his Vocalion blues records and from the tall, exciting tales the recording engineers and supervisors used to bring about him from the improvised studios in Dallas and San Antonio. I don't believe Johnson had ever worked as a professional musician anywhere, and it still knocks me over when I think of how lucky it is that a talent like his ever found its way onto phonograph records. We will have to be content with playing two of his records, the old "Walkin' Blues" and the new, unreleased, "Preachin' Blues", because Robert Johnson died last week at the precise moment when Vocalion scouts finally reached him and told him that he was booked to appear at Carnegie Hall on December 23. He was in his middle twenties and nobody seems to know what caused his death." And that was, for the most part, the end of Robert Johnson's impact on the culture for a generation. The Lomaxes went down to Clarksdale, Mississippi a couple of years later -- reports vary as to whether this was to see if they could find Johnson, who they were unaware was dead, or to find information out about him, and they did end up recording a young singer named Muddy Waters for the Library of Congress, including Waters' rendition of "32-20 Blues", Johnson's reworking of Skip James' "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "32-20 Blues"] But Johnson's records remained unavailable after their initial release until 1959, when the blues scholar Samuel Charters published the book The Country Blues, which was the first book-length treatment ever of Delta blues. Sixteen years later Charters said "I shouldn't have written The Country Blues when I did; since I really didn't know enough, but I felt I couldn't afford to wait. So The Country Blues was two things. It was a romanticization of certain aspects of black life in an effort to force the white society to reconsider some of its racial attitudes, and on the other hand it was a cry for help. I wanted hundreds of people to go out and interview the surviving blues artists. I wanted people to record them and document their lives, their environment, and their music, not only so that their story would be preserved but also so they'd get a little money and a little recognition in their last years." Charters talked about Johnson in the book, as one of the performers who played "minor roles in the story of the blues", and said that almost nothing was known about his life. He talked about how he had been poisoned by his common-law wife, about how his records were recorded in a pool hall, and said "The finest of Robert Johnson's blues have a brooding sense of torment and despair. The blues has become a personified figure of despondency." Along with Charters' book came a compilation album of the same name, and that included the first ever reissue of one of Johnson's tracks, "Preaching Blues": [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Preaching Blues"] Two years later, John Hammond, who had remained an ardent fan of Johnson, had Columbia put out the King of the Delta Blues Singers album. At the time no white blues scholars knew what Johnson looked like and they had no photos of him, so a generic painting of a poor-looking Black man with a guitar was used for the cover. The liner note to King of the Delta Blues Singers talked about how Johnson was seventeen or eighteen when he made his recordings, how he was "dead before he reached his twenty-first birthday, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend", how he had "seldom, if ever, been away from the plantation in Robinsville, Mississippi, where he was born and raised", and how he had had such stage fright that when he was asked to play in front of other musicians, he'd turned to face a wall so he couldn't see them. And that would be all that any of the members of the Powerhouse would know about Johnson. Maybe they'd also heard the rumours that were starting to spread that Johnson had got his guitar-playing skills by selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads at midnight, but that would have been all they knew when they recorded their filler track for Elektra: [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] Either way, the Powerhouse lineup only lasted for that one session -- the group eventually decided that a simple trio would be best for the music they wanted to play. Clapton had seen Buddy Guy touring with just a bass player and drummer a year earlier, and had liked the idea of the freedom that gave him as a guitarist. The group soon took on Robert Stigwood as a manager, which caused more arguments between Bruce and Baker. Bruce was convinced that if they were doing an all-for-one one-for-all thing they should also manage themselves, but Baker pointed out that that was a daft idea when they could get one of the biggest managers in the country to look after them. A bigger argument, which almost killed the group before it started, happened when Baker told journalist Chris Welch of the Melody Maker about their plans. In an echo of the way that he and Bruce had been resigned from Blues Incorporated without being consulted, now with no discussion Manfred Mann and John Mayall were reading in the papers that their band members were quitting before those members had bothered to mention it. Mayall was furious, especially since the album Clapton had played on hadn't yet come out. Clapton was supposed to work a month's notice while Mayall found another guitarist, but Mayall spent two weeks begging Peter Green to rejoin the band. Green was less than eager -- after all, he'd been fired pretty much straight away earlier -- but Mayall eventually persuaded him. The second he did, Mayall turned round to Clapton and told him he didn't have to work the rest of his notice -- he'd found another guitar player and Clapton was fired: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, "Dust My Blues"] Manfred Mann meanwhile took on the Beatles' friend Klaus Voorman to replace Bruce. Voorman would remain with the band until the end, and like Green was for Mayall, Voorman was in some ways a better fit for Manfred Mann than Bruce was. In particular he could double on flute, as he did for example on their hit version of Bob Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann "The Mighty Quinn"] The new group, The Cream, were of course signed in the UK to Stigwood's Reaction label. Other than the Who, who only stuck around for one album, Reaction was not a very successful label. Its biggest signing was a former keyboard player for Screaming Lord Sutch, who recorded for them under the names Paul Dean and Oscar, but who later became known as Paul Nicholas and had a successful career in musical theatre and sitcom. Nicholas never had any hits for Reaction, but he did release one interesting record, in 1967: [Excerpt: Oscar, "Over the Wall We Go"] That was one of the earliest songwriting attempts by a young man who had recently named himself David Bowie. Now the group were public, they started inviting journalists to their rehearsals, which were mostly spent trying to combine their disparate musical influences --

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Dixie Dewdrop: The Uncle Dave Macon Story w/ Michael Doubler

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2023 66:10

Join us as we sit at the table with Michael Doubler to discuss his book “Dixie Dewdrop,” the amazing story of his great grandfather, Uncle Dave Macon. As one of the earliest performers on WSM radio in Nashville, Uncle Dave became the Grand Ole Opry's first superstar. His old-time music and energetic stage shows made him a national sensation and fueled a thirty-year run as one of America's most beloved entertainers. Known as the “Dixie Dewdrop” Uncle Dave Macon learned the banjo from musicians passing through his parents' Nashville hotel. After playing local shows in Middle Tennessee for decades, a big break led Macon to Vaudeville, the earliest of his two hundred-plus recordings and eventually to national stardom. Uncle Dave—clad in his trademark plug hat and gates-ajar collar—soon became the face of the Opry itself with his spirited singing, humor, and array of banjo picking styles. For the rest of his life, he defied age to tour and record prolifically, manage his business affairs, and mentor up-and-coming musicians. The Good Neighbor Get Together is the podcast of Country Music Pride https://countrymusicpride.com https://thegoodneighborgettogether.com Get a copy of Michael's book here: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p083655 Clifton Hicks online banjo lessons: https://www.banjoheritage.com Clifton Hicks Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cliftonhicks

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Topics: Current News about an Uncle Dave Macon Days Related Event This Saturday, The Impact Fee and Vanderbilt Denied from Building 48-Bed Hospital in Murfreesboro

Aquarium Drunkard - SIDECAR (TRANSMISSIONS) - Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 16, 2023 41:10

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Transmissions :: Elkhorn

Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2023 77:48

This week on Transmissions, Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner, the psychedelic folk duo Elkhorn. Their new album, On the Universe In All Directions, finds Jesse once again at his familiar 12-string acoustic guitar, but instead of Drew joining with his trademark Telecaster, he's moved over to vibraphone and drums for this outing. Have no fear: the familiar Elkhorn magic is here in spades, but in brand new ways. The songs were born out of collaboration with New York consciousness group Psychedelic Sangha, and as JJ Toth puts it in his excellent liner notes, the sounds traverse “the valleys between fried cosmic psychedelia and American Primitive… splitting the difference between Popol Vuh's devotional drift and the outer reaches of deep-cut classic rock while constantly keeping one foot in the river of the Ever-Weird America; call it Six Degrees of Uncle Dave Macon.” From Buddhism to Fahey, from time slips to Aquarium Drunkard itself, this conversation unfolds and wanders, we hope you enjoy it. Support Aquarium Drunkard on Patreon. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Next week on Transmissions? The incredible Vashti Bunyan, who joins us to discuss her vivid and deep book Wayward.

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Uncle Dave Macon History

history grand ole opry uncle dave macon

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2023 49:01

Uncle Dave Macon History with historian Gloria Christy. On this day, 71-years ago, the famous Grand Ole Opry star passed away (March 22, 1952). In this program, we learn how t

The things rock made us wear

Word Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 21, 2022 62:38

Army greatcoats, plastic trousers, cowboy boots, scoop-neck t-shirts with bell sleeves … the list of laughable clobber and accessories we briefly thought were acceptable because rock stars wore them is delightfully long and shameful.Also in the crosshairs this week …… the rudest line the Beatles ever wrote. … Randy Newman – ‘the poet of the unworthy thought'.… do bands with comic lyrics get the credit they deserve?… a double Stackwaddy: real or invented Christmas singles.… falling though a wormhole in time into a copy of the NME from February 1969: “The age of Supergroups! – set band members will be a thing of the past” – Klaus Voormann.… “These days no two of us are on the same stream.” What we learn from discovering music separately. … Dead Eyes: the Tom Hanks' comment that sparked a three-series podcast.… why scat-singing brings us out in hives.… the magic of Seinfeld – ‘four shallow self-obsessed people' in a world where there's ‘no growing and no hugging'.… why you should listen to Joachim Cooder' Over That Road I'm Bound: The Songs of Uncle Dave Macon.… and what birthday guest John Innes learnt from re-listening to his entire music collection in chronological order – and the bands he decided to abandon.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, alongside a whole heap of extra and exclusive content, benefits and rewards: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The things rock made us wear

Word In Your Ear

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 21, 2022 62:38

Army greatcoats, plastic trousers, cowboy boots, scoop-neck t-shirts with bell sleeves … the list of laughable clobber and accessories we briefly thought were acceptable because rock stars wore them is delightfully long and shameful.Also in the crosshairs this week …… the rudest line the Beatles ever wrote. … Randy Newman – ‘the poet of the unworthy thought'.… do bands with comic lyrics get the credit they deserve?… a double Stackwaddy: real or invented Christmas singles.… falling though a wormhole in time into a copy of the NME from February 1969: “The age of Supergroups! – set band members will be a thing of the past” – Klaus Voormann.… “These days no two of us are on the same stream.” What we learn from discovering music separately. … Dead Eyes: the Tom Hanks' comment that sparked a three-series podcast.… why scat-singing brings us out in hives.… the magic of Seinfeld – ‘four shallow self-obsessed people' in a world where there's ‘no growing and no hugging'.… why you should listen to Joachim Cooder' Over That Road I'm Bound: The Songs of Uncle Dave Macon.… and what birthday guest John Innes learnt from re-listening to his entire music collection in chronological order – and the bands he decided to abandon.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, alongside a whole heap of extra and exclusive content, benefits and rewards: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

christmas rock army beatles wear acast tom hanks seinfeld made us randy newman nme supergroups word podcast dead eyes klaus voormann uncle dave macon joachim cooder

The things rock made us wear

Word In Your Ear

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 21, 2022 62:38

Army greatcoats, plastic trousers, cowboy boots, scoop-neck t-shirts with bell sleeves … the list of laughable clobber and accessories we briefly thought were acceptable because rock stars wore them is delightfully long and shameful.Also in the crosshairs this week …… the rudest line the Beatles ever wrote. … Randy Newman – ‘the poet of the unworthy thought'.… do bands with comic lyrics get the credit they deserve?… a double Stackwaddy: real or invented Christmas singles.… falling though a wormhole in time into a copy of the NME from February 1969: “The age of Supergroups! – set band members will be a thing of the past” – Klaus Voormann.… “These days no two of us are on the same stream.” What we learn from discovering music separately. … Dead Eyes: the Tom Hanks' comment that sparked a three-series podcast.… why scat-singing brings us out in hives.… the magic of Seinfeld – ‘four shallow self-obsessed people' in a world where there's ‘no growing and no hugging'.… why you should listen to Joachim Cooder' Over That Road I'm Bound: The Songs of Uncle Dave Macon.… and what birthday guest John Innes learnt from re-listening to his entire music collection in chronological order – and the bands he decided to abandon.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world, alongside a whole heap of extra and exclusive content, benefits and rewards: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Jug Band Music

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2022 6:03

When a friend recently asked us what song has the longest association with The Flood, we had to stop and think. Several old-timers are still in the band's repertoire. The Carter Family-inspired “Solid Gone,” for instance, has been in our collective consciousness all along, going way back to when David Peyton and Charlie Bowen were just a modest little duo in 1973. Uncle Dave Macon's “Way Downtown” has legs too; we have tapes from 1975 on which Charlie and Dave are doing that one with Roger Samples and Joe Dobbs the first time the new configuration began calling itself “The 1937 Flood.”Regularly Reborn SongBut the longest-lived Floodified tune that we have the most fun with — the one that has a rebirth with every new incarnation of the band — is the hokum classic “Jug Band Music,” which, as reported here earlier, we started doing in 1976.We learned the tune from a 1960s recording by our heroes, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. And they learned it from a 1934 recording by everybody's heroes, The Memphis Jug Band, headed up by the legendary Will Shade. Not unlike The Flood itself, the Memphis Jug Band didn't like to easily categorize its music, recording a wild mixture of ballads, dance tunes, knock-about novelty numbers, blues and even their own special take on pop tunes of their day.This particular tune Kweskin called simply "Jug Band Music," but when it was originally recorded on Nov. 8, 1934, and released on Vocalion and Okeh, Shade called his composition “Jug Band Quartette.” Jug Band CrazeAmong hokum performers to spring up in Memphis in the 1920s, the Memphis Jug Band was the most recorded, releasing more than 100 sides between 1927 and 1934 (rivaled only by another long-time Flood favorite, Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, incidenally). The jug band craze started in Louisville around 1905. By 1910 there were a number of bands active in that area, including string bands and jazz groups that added a jug player just to cash in on the craze. In 1925, Will Shade first heard the records of a Louisville jug band called the Dixieland Jug Blowers. He quickly convinced a local Memphis musician called "Lionhouse" to switch from blowing an empty whiskey bottle to a gallon jug, added Tee Wee Blackman on guitar and Ben Ramey and the Memphis Jug Band was born. Shade played guitar, harmonica and "bullfiddle" (a stand up bass made from a garbage can, a broom handle and a string). It was a loose-knit outfit with a constantly changing membership.Sounds So Sweet…They have a good five or six years, but by the mid 1930s, Memphis was in decline. Known as the "murder capital of the world," it was rife with corruption. Local politicians tried to combat the problems by closing down the gambling houses and brothels. That crackdown also signaled the end of the jug band era, because it removed many of the venues where that rowdy music had thrived. For that reason, when Shade and the guys trouped to Chicago in November 1934, they probably knew it was to be their last recording session. It was at that moment that this beloved jug band anthem was recorded, their celebratory lyrics a elegiac tribute to themselves, to their fellow musicians, and, most of all, to the music that even now sounds “so sweet … hard to beat.”Our Take on the TuneEvery configuration of The Flood, from 1976 to the present, has done its own variation of this happy song, each one, in its way, a loving tribute to our heroes. (As reported here earlier, the song was even central to our video debut on YouTube back in 2008.)This latest rendition, recorded at a recent gig, offers wonderful solos and fills by everyone in the band. Even the grins and winks seem to come through in the audio. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

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Protobilly: The Vaudeville Roots of Country Music

Let It Roll

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 20, 2022 61:07

Host Nate Wilcox asks Henry about the genesis of the CD compilation and the roots of country music in 19th century American music.Have a question or a suggestion for a topic or person for Nate to interview? Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Twitter.Follow us on Facebook.Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts.

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Country Grande Ole Opry 2

My Good Ole Country

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2021 63:36

So many requests for more Grande Ole Opry so what the heck,,,,here ya have it. The original artists like Deford Bailey, Uncle Dave Macon along with Ernest Tubb , Bill Monroe , Little Jimmy Dickens, Porter and Dolly and so many of my Grande Ole Opry friends. You're gonna love ❤️ love ❤️ love ❤️ 'em. Be sure to share.

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Uncle Dave Macon Days Moving To HOP SPRINGS

moving springs uncle dave macon

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2021 52:24

Uncle Dave Macon Days Moving To HOP SPRINGS as told by historian Gloria Christy and HOP Springs CEO and Co-Owner Mark Jones.

Nothing But The Blues #678

Nothing But The Blues

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2021 60:15

The Nobby Reed Project (Baby's Back In Town); Steve Freund (Hey Big Bill); Billy Boy Arnold(San Antonio Blues); Lindsay Beaver and Brad Stivers (Somebody Else Will); Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell (Barrelhouse Woman No. 2) Richard Ray Farrell (Mean Mistreater); Big Daddy Wilson (Hard Time Blues); Freddie Roulette (Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven); Lurrie Bell (Nobody Wants To Lose); The Carolina Buddies (Otto Wood The Bandit); Uncle Dave Macon and Sam McGhee (Late Last Night When Willie Came Home); Eddie C. Campbell (I'm Just Your Fool); Albert King (Bluesman); The Voodoo Sheiks (Spirit); Mojo Blues Band (Curley Head Woman) Jimmy "T99" Nelson (Come On).

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Joachim Cooder (Songs from the Second Floor)

WYCE's Community Connection (*conversations concerning issues of importance in West Michigan)

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2021 20:49

Joachim Cooder joins us to discuss his new album Over That Road I'm Bound - The Songs of Uncle Dave Macon. He also performs the songs ‘All In Down & Out' and ‘Come Along Buddy' exclusively for WYCE. Special thanks to Nonesuch Records and Leslie Rouffe at Songlines Music. www.joachimcooder.com www.nonesuch.com WYCE is an independent, commercial-free, community radio station serving the communities of Grand Rapids, West Michigan, & beyond. Broadcasting on-air programming at 88.1fm, and reaching out to the world through online streaming. Dedicated to providing an eclectic blend of under-represented music. Listener-sponsored, volunteer-powered. http://www.wyce.org WYCE is a proud service of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center. http://www.grcmc.org

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JPR Live Session: Joachim Cooder

JPR Live Sessions

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2021 32:59

An array mbira is certainly not the first choice for most performers, but in the hands of Joachim Cooder, it has become a remarkable musical tool full of color and nuance. On his new album Over That Road I'm Bound, Cooder sets old folk tunes of Uncle Dave Macon in an all new way.

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JPR Live Session: Joachim Cooder

JPR Live Sessions

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2021 32:59

An array mbira is certainly not the first choice for most performers, but in the hands of Joachim Cooder, it has become a remarkable musical tool full of color and nuance. On his new album Over That Road I'm Bound, Cooder sets old folk tunes of Uncle Dave Macon in an all new way.

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Rock's Backpages Ep.95: Tony Russell on old-time country music + Phil Everly audio + Bunny Wailer R.I.P.

Rock N Roll Pantheon

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2021 69:38

In this episode we welcome the great blues & country writer Tony Russell, who talks about his new Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records — and the joys of the original Americana sound from the '20s to the '40s. Tony also talks us through his writing career from the late '60s to the present, with a particular nod to a 1972 Cream piece about B.B. King.The focus on the "Old-Time" country of Fiddlin' John Carson & Uncle Dave Macon carries through to discussion of those compelling revivalists Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, big faves of the RBP crew — and then to clips we hear from a 1983 audio interview with Phil Everly of peerless country-pop harmonists the Everly Brothers. Phil talks about the strained relationship with brother Don and the prospect of the Everlys reunion that happened in the fall of that year.For those less smitten by Appalachia and "high lonesome" close-harmony singing, there are heartfelt farewells to roots reggae icon Bunny Wailer & trad-jazzer turned "Father of British R&B" Chris Barber, both of whom were lost to the music world last week. There's effusive appreciation of the Wailers co-founder's classic 1976 solo debut Blackheart Man, while RBP's co-founder Martin Colyer pitches in with reminiscences of his uncle Ken's bandmate Barber.Mark talks us through his highlights from recent additions to the RBP Library, including the great Derek Taylor holding forth on the Stones' drug bust in 1967 and the recently-departed Chick Corea discussing his Return To Forever group with Zoo World's John Swenson in 1974. Barney namechecks a Kandia Crazy Horse hymn to the L.A. Canyons from 2009 and Jasper rounds things off with remarks on Danger Mouse's Rome project, from 2011, and London MC Sway's 2006 album This is My Demo.Many thanks to special guest Tony Russell, whose new book Rural Rhythm is published by OUP and available now.Pieces discussed: Charlie Poole, Uncle Dave Macon, B.B. King, Gillian Welch, Gillian Welch, Phil Everly, Bunny Wailer, The Wailers, Chris Barber, Chris Barber, Ben Webster, Peter Green, Curtis Mayfield, Roky Erickson, Rolling Stones, Chick Corea, The Time, L.L. Cool J, L.A. Canyons, Dave Edmunds, Valerie June, Sway and Danger Mouse.

E95: Tony Russell on old-time country music + Phil Everly audio + Bunny Wailer R.I.P.

Rock's Backpages

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2021 69:38

In this episode we welcome the great blues & country writer Tony Russell, who talks about his new Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records — and the joys of the original Americana sound from the '20s to the '40s. Tony also talks us through his writing career from the late '60s to the present, with a particular nod to a 1972 Cream piece about B.B. King.The focus on the "Old-Time" country of Fiddlin' John Carson & Uncle Dave Macon carries through to discussion of those compelling revivalists Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, big faves of the RBP crew — and then to clips we hear from a 1983 audio interview with Phil Everly of peerless country-pop harmonists the Everly Brothers. Phil talks about the strained relationship with brother Don and the prospect of the Everlys reunion that happened in the fall of that year.For those less smitten by Appalachia and "high lonesome" close-harmony singing, there are heartfelt farewells to roots reggae icon Bunny Wailer & trad-jazzer turned "Father of British R&B" Chris Barber, both of whom were lost to the music world last week. There's effusive appreciation of the Wailers co-founder's classic 1976 solo debut Blackheart Man, while RBP's co-founder Martin Colyer pitches in with reminiscences of his uncle Ken's bandmate Barber.Mark talks us through his highlights from recent additions to the RBP Library, including the great Derek Taylor holding forth on the Stones' drug bust in 1967 and the recently-departed Chick Corea discussing his Return To Forever group with Zoo World's John Swenson in 1974. Barney namechecks a Kandia Crazy Horse hymn to the L.A. Canyons from 2009 and Jasper rounds things off with remarks on Danger Mouse's Rome project, from 2011, and London MC Sway's 2006 album This is My Demo.Many thanks to special guest Tony Russell, whose new book Rural Rhythm is published by OUP and available now. Pieces discussed: Charlie Poole, Uncle Dave Macon, B.B. King, Gillian Welch, Gillian Welch, Phil Everly, Bunny Wailer, The Wailers, Chris Barber, Chris Barber, Ben Webster, Peter Green, Curtis Mayfield, Roky Erickson, Rolling Stones, Chick Corea, The Time, L.L. Cool J, L.A. Canyons, Dave Edmunds, Valerie June, Sway and Danger Mouse.

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E95: Tony Russell on old-time country music + Phil Everly audio + Bunny Wailer R.I.P.

Rock's Backpages

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2021 70:08

In this episode we welcome the great blues & country writer Tony Russell, who talks about his new Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records — and the joys of the original Americana sound from the '20s to the '40s. Tony also talks us through his writing career from the late '60s to the present, with a particular nod to a 1972 Cream piece about B.B. King. The focus on the "Old-Time" country of Fiddlin' John Carson & Uncle Dave Macon carries through to discussion of those compelling revivalists Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, big faves of the RBP crew — and then to clips we hear from a 1983 audio interview with Phil Everly of peerless country-pop harmonists the Everly Brothers. Phil talks about the strained relationship with brother Don and the prospect of the Everlys reunion that happened in the fall of that year. For those less smitten by Appalachia and "high lonesome" close-harmony singing, there are heartfelt farewells to roots reggae icon Bunny Wailer & trad-jazzer turned "Father of British R&B" Chris Barber, both of whom were lost to the music world last week. There's effusive appreciation of the Wailers co-founder's classic 1976 solo debut Blackheart Man, while RBP's co-founder Martin Colyer pitches in with reminiscences of his uncle Ken's bandmate Barber. Mark talks us through his highlights from recent additions to the RBP Library, including the great Derek Taylor holding forth on the Stones' drug bust in 1967 and the recently-departed Chick Corea discussing his Return To Forever group with Zoo World's John Swenson in 1974. Barney namechecks a Kandia Crazy Horse hymn to the L.A. Canyons from 2009 and Jasper rounds things off with remarks on Danger Mouse's Rome project, from 2011, and London MC Sway's 2006 album This is My Demo. Many thanks to special guest Tony Russell, whose new book Rural Rhythm is published by OUP and available now. Pieces discussed: Charlie Poole, Uncle Dave Macon, B.B. King, Gillian Welch, Gillian Welch, Phil Everly, Bunny Wailer, The Wailers, Chris Barber, Chris Barber, Ben Webster, Peter Green, Curtis Mayfield, Roky Erickson, Rolling Stones, Chick Corea, The Time, L.L. Cool J, L.A. Canyons, Dave Edmunds, Valerie June, Sway and Danger Mouse.

Rock's Backpages Ep.95: Tony Russell on old-time country music + Phil Everly audio + Bunny Wailer R.I.P.

Rock N Roll Pantheon

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2021 70:38

In this episode we welcome the great blues & country writer Tony Russell, who talks about his new Rural Rhythm: The Story of Old-Time Country Music in 78 Records — and the joys of the original Americana sound from the '20s to the '40s. Tony also talks us through his writing career from the late '60s to the present, with a particular nod to a 1972 Cream piece about B.B. King. The focus on the "Old-Time" country of Fiddlin' John Carson & Uncle Dave Macon carries through to discussion of those compelling revivalists Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, big faves of the RBP crew — and then to clips we hear from a 1983 audio interview with Phil Everly of peerless country-pop harmonists the Everly Brothers. Phil talks about the strained relationship with brother Don and the prospect of the Everlys reunion that happened in the fall of that year. For those less smitten by Appalachia and "high lonesome" close-harmony singing, there are heartfelt farewells to roots reggae icon Bunny Wailer & trad-jazzer turned "Father of British R&B" Chris Barber, both of whom were lost to the music world last week. There's effusive appreciation of the Wailers co-founder's classic 1976 solo debut Blackheart Man, while RBP's co-founder Martin Colyer pitches in with reminiscences of his uncle Ken's bandmate Barber. Mark talks us through his highlights from recent additions to the RBP Library, including the great Derek Taylor holding forth on the Stones' drug bust in 1967 and the recently-departed Chick Corea discussing his Return To Forever group with Zoo World's John Swenson in 1974. Barney namechecks a Kandia Crazy Horse hymn to the L.A. Canyons from 2009 and Jasper rounds things off with remarks on Danger Mouse's Rome project, from 2011, and London MC Sway's 2006 album This is My Demo. Many thanks to special guest Tony Russell, whose new book Rural Rhythm is published by OUP and available now. Pieces discussed: Charlie Poole, Uncle Dave Macon, B.B. King, Gillian Welch, Gillian Welch, Phil Everly, Bunny Wailer, The Wailers, Chris Barber, Chris Barber, Ben Webster, Peter Green, Curtis Mayfield, Roky Erickson, Rolling Stones, Chick Corea, The Time, L.L. Cool J, L.A. Canyons, Dave Edmunds, Valerie June, Sway and Danger Mouse.

Joachim Cooder

Tales from the Cobblestones

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 2, 2021 71:55

Today's guest is the talented Joachim Cooder. Joachim comes from a musical family. Growing up in LA, his father would compose music for all sorts of LA artist and score many Hollywood films. Joachim was surrounded By art, music and Rhythm. He would gravitate to the drums and an African instrument called the "MBIRA" an instrument you play with your thumbs. Joachim's life has always been about music. Now stepping into the forefront with his whole new style and approach, the classic blending of the old with the new. His new album is called "Over That Road I'm Bound" An album inspired by an American folk icon named "Uncle Dave Macon" a Voadeville superstar. Joachims album is a delight with guest appearances by his Artist/singer wife, Juliette Commagere and his slick banjo playing father. Inspired by his daughters love for the old time music...Joachim and his family blend the perfect mix for morning time chillness with a side of introspection. Put the album on and let the good vibes roll. Thanks to my friend Hans Hagen for the lead on this super cool up and coming artist, and if you hear him on the radio...get used to it. His music is just what the word needs right now. I caught up with Joachim as he called in from his LA chateau...Please enjoy my conversation with the great and talented... MR. Joachim Cooder Music: Xylophone Sounds-Indo Jazz Coffin Nails-MF Doom Uncle Dave Macon-Cumberland Mountain Deer Race Sister Christian-Juliette Commagere Over That Road I'm Bound-Joachim Cooder Come along Buddy-Joachim Cooder Morning Blues-Joachim Cooder Roots Train-Junior Murvin Three Cool Cats-The Coasters

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Joachim Cooder plus Daniel Tashian

The String

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2021 58:56

Joachim Cooder has pursued his musical life as drummer, percussionist and family man, staying near and working regularly with his father, blues/roots guitarist Ry Cooder and his songwriting wife, among other scattered projects. In recent years though, his writing/composing side has fully emerged, and his debut on Nonesuch Records 'Over That Road I'm Bound,' featuring modern interpretations of Uncle Dave Macon songs, was one of the most unique and beguiling albums of 2020. We speak from his Los Angeles home. Also, Nashville writer/producer Daniel Tashian talks about his generation-spanning collaboration with the legendary Burt Bacharach.

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Sateli 3 - Músicas del Terruño: Nicolás Rodríguez "Parus"/Joachim Cooder - 03/02/21

Sateli 3

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2021 59:57

Sintonía: "Amanecer" - Parus Combinamos dos discos del 2020 que comparten el mismo olor a tierra mojada, el mismo paisajismo asilvestrado, la misma poesía fluída y natural: "Natura" - Parus; "Over That Road I´m Bound To Go" - Joachim Cooder; "Look Alive" - Parus; "When Ruben Comes to Town" - Joachim Cooder; "Las Islas Afortunadas" - Parus; "Rabbit In The Pea Patch" - Joachim Cooder; "¡¡ Hay una rana en la bota !!" - Parus; "Tell Her To Come Back Home" - Joachim Cooder; "Equinoccio" - Parus; "Morning Blues" - Joachim Cooder; "La siesta" - Parus; "Come Along Buddy" - Joachim Cooder y "El tardío" - Parus Todas las piezas instrumentales extraídas del álbum "Natura" de Parus, autoeditado en el 2020 (parus.bandcamp.com) Todas las canciones extraídas del álbum "Over That Road I´m Bound; The Songs of Uncle Dave Macon", de Joachim Cooder; editado por Nonesuch Records en el 2020. Escuchar audio

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Como lo oyes - Canciones Secretas - 21/01/21

Como lo oyes

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2021 58:59

Antojos. Caprichos del destino. Las canciones que nos estaban esperando. Al final siempre sale el sol. Bueno, siempre, no. Nos morimos y luego viene el epitafio: “Ahí os quedáis”, “Fue un placer”. Mientras tanto “Stay Bright!”… Tenemos pendiente un programa dedicado a Roy Harper para que los amantes de The Kinks, Bowie o Pink Floyd flipen. Ahora Andrew Bird ha grabado un disco de canciones favoritas y entre ellas “Andalucía” de John Cale, así que escuchémosla en voz de su amo. El hijo de Ry Cooder ha extraído del limbo unas canciones muy secretas del tío Uncle Dave Macon. Más temas para darnos el gustazo de Radiohead, Rachael Yamagata, Elva, Daughter o del olvidado Thomas Jefferson Kaye. DISCO 1 LINDA THOMPSON/Teddy Thompson Stay Bright (1) DISCO 2 ROY HARPER One Of Those Days In England (Cara 1 Corte 1) DISCO 3 JOACHIM COODER Tell Her To Come Back Home (5) DISCO 4 DANNY O’KEEFE The Road (5) DISCO 5 JOHN CALE Andalucía (Cara 1 Corte 4) DISCO 6 RACHAEL YAMAGATA Worn Me Down (3) DISCO 7 RADIOHEAD No Surprises (10) DISCO 8 TEN FÉ Echo Park (5) DISCO 9 COCO HAMES This House Ain’t A Home (9) DISCO 10 PREFAB SPROUT Billy (6) DISCO 11 TIFT MERRITT In The Way (10) DISCO 12 ELVA Tailwind (2) DISCO 13 THOMAS JEFFERSON KAYE Tough Enough (13) DISCO 14 DAUGHTER How (4) DISCO 15 MICHAEL RAULT Pyramid Scheme (7) Escuchar audio

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Best of Soundcheck 2020, Part 2

Soundcheck

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2020 31:14

Revisit spectral electronic songs by L.A. producer Katie Gately (in-studio) and old-time American music from singer, fiddler, banjo player, and scholar Jake Blount, performed remotely. Also, listen to Malian singer, songwriter, guitarist and actress Fatoumata Diawara, recorded in the Before Times, with her full band, in-studio. Then, there's percussionist and songwriter Joachim Cooder and his arrangements of proto-country tunes by Uncle Dave Macon, played on electric thumb piano, joined by his dad, guitarist Ry Cooder. Plus, the aggressive and melodic instrumental music from the Welsh astrophysicist, coder, and guitarist Gwenifer Raymond, who adapts the “American Primitive” style for "old weird Wales." Set list: Katie Gately – "Waltz"Jake Blount - "Roustabout"Fatoumata Diawara – "Nterini"Joachim Cooder – "Oh Lovin’ Babe"Gwenifer Raymond – "Hell For Certain"

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Podcast 307: Joachim Cooder

The Fretboard Journal Guitar Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2020 41:48

We make a rare exception on this week's Fretboard Journal Podcast and talk to a drummer! Percussionist / singer-songwriter Joachim Cooder joins us to talk about his new album, Over that Road I'm Bound: The Songs of Uncle Dave Macon. It's a captivating collection of Macon songs performed on a rather unlikely instrument, the electric mbira. Joachim is also joined by his dad, Ry Cooder, on the banjo; Rayna Gellert on fiddle, Juliette Commagere on vocals; and Sam Gendel on bass-guitar hybrid. During our chat, we hear about Joachim's first exposure to the music of Uncle Dave Macon as a kid, his own daughter's infatuation with this material, the versatility of the electric mbira, his pedal board of choice and a lot more. Whether or not you're a fan of Macon's decades-old original recordings, we can't recommend this new album enough. This episode is sponsored by Mono Cases and Folkway Music. Links: https://www.joachimcooder.com/ https://www.arraymbira.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baEljguE2hI Get a gift subscription to the Fretboard Journal magazine and help support independent publishing.

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Joachim Cooder Revamps Proto-Country Tunes For Electric Thumb Piano

Soundcheck

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2020 43:38

Percussionist and songwriter Joachim Cooder rearranges traditional music made popular by songster and banjo player Uncle Dave Macon in the early 20th century (or so) for the completely unexpected and inventive choice of electric mbira (thumb piano.) These re-composed and re-worked tunes, much-admired by multiple generations of Cooders, get stunning makeovers for his debut record, Over That Road I’m Bound. For this Soundcheck Podcast, Joachim Cooder performs these tunes in new duo versions for mbira and electronics with his dad, Ry Cooder, who plays a guitar-like instrument - all remotely from California. -s Caryn Havlik

Joachim Cooder, and Tanya Sparke on why we sing

The Music Show

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2020 54:06

The devastating impact of COVID-19 on choirs makes it as important as ever to sing again. And Joachim Cooder's mbira tribute to Uncle Dave Macon.

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#20-44: Election Special 2020

Sing Out! Radio Magazine

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2020 58:30

Election Day is just around the corner, and as they keep saying: “It may be the most important in the history of our Republic!” On this week’s show, we present some timely and classic music about the electoral process and the issues at hand. We'll present music from Ry Cooder, Carla Ulbrich, Uncle Dave Macon, Len Seligman, Jesse Palidofsky and many more. It’s time to VOTE … this week on The Sing Out! Radio Magazine. Episode #20-44: Election Special 2020 Host: Tom Druckenmiller Artist/”Song”/CD/Label Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways Curt Bouterse / “Nixon's Farewell” / Nixon's Farewell / Eagle's Whistle Joel Raphael / “One Vote, One Name” / Respect and Protect Our Right to Vote / Self Produced Greg Brown / “Freak Flag” / Freak Flag / Yep Roc Old New England / “Present Clinton's Hornpipe-High C's-Kiss the Cook-President Garfield's Hornpipe / Old New England / Great Meadow Ry Cooder / “Take Your Hands Off It” / Election Special / Nonesuch Carla Ulbrich & Lauren Mayer / “Stand Up and Act” / CD Single / Romantic Devil Carla Ulbrich / “Things That I Trust More Than You” / Inside Jokes / Romantic Devil John McCutcheon / “Sheltered in Place” / Cabin Fever / Appalsongs Curt Bouterse / “Obama” / Nixon's Farewell / Eagle's Whistle Uncle Dave Macon / “Farm Relief” / Classic Sides / JSP Pete Seeger / “I'm A-Lookin' For A Home” / That's Why We're Marching / Smithsonian Folkways Adam Hurt & Beth Williams Hartness / “Obama's March to the White House” / Fine Times at Our House / Ubiquitone Len Seligman / “Our Turn Now” / Our Turn Now / Self Produced Michael & Nell / “Election Year Rag” / CD Single / Self Produced Jim Childress with Uncle Henry's Favorites / “Romney's Retreat” / Free Union / Self Produced Jesse Palidofsky / “America the Beautiful” / CD Single / Azalea City Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways

Episode 491: Dire Straits' 'Brothers In Arms' at 35 and New Music From Joachim Cooder

Discologist

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 9, 2020 90:03

Thirty-five years ago, Brothers In Arms took over the airwaves with some pop perfection and a generation-defining video for the song “Money For Nothing.” But there is much more to this classic than money for nothing and chicks (or whatever gender norm you find yourself attracted to!) for free. After four albums of pub-shaking rock n’ roll, Mark Knopfler and crew hit upon Dire Straits perfect form and delivered a timeless collection of songs that transcended the band's previous work and cemented their legacy in music history. PLUS! On Over That Road I’m Bound, multi-instrumentalist Joachim Cooder has reworked the songs of country progenitor Uncle Dave Macon and the result is a heady sonic adventure that you’re not going to want to miss out on.Love this show? Let us know by supporting us. Quick. Easy. Makes you feel good.https://supporter.acast.com/Discologist See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Toma uno - Palabra de Willie - 04/10/20

Toma uno

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2020 58:49

El pasado martes moría el tejano de Lubbock Mac Davis. A partir de la mitad de los 60 se le empezó a reconocer como compositor, firmando temas como "Within My Memory" (Glen Campbell) o "Somethin's Burnin" (Kenny Rogers & The First Edition). Pero, además, fue el autor de "A Little Less Conversation" y sobre todo de "In The Ghetto" para el especial de televisión de Elvis Presley del 68. En un principio, Mac Davis tituló “In The Ghetto” como "The Vicious Circle" y se la presentó a Sammy Davis Jr. en un estudio junto a otros miembros de la comunidad negra. Su propio compositor la grabó de esta forma con la que hemos abierto hoy nuestro tiempo de radio después del tremendo éxito de Elvis en 1969. Sin embargo, la versión original no salió a la luz hasta aparecer en un recopilatorio de 1991 titulado Golden Throats, cuando el artista tejano ya tenía una seria consideración en el terreno del country. Mac Davis era un nativo de la tejana ciudad de Lubbock, que comenzó su carrera artística sin demasiado éxito a comienzos de los años 60. Pasaría después a ejercer de ejecutivo discográfico, un trabajo que le llevó a Los Angeles, donde comenzaría a ejercer de compositor. Como solista, dejó éxitos como "Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me", "Stop and Smell the Roses" y de manera muy especial "Texas In My Rear View Mirror", de tintes autobiográficos. Willie Nelson vuelve a dar ejemplo y recupera "Vote 'Em Out", una canción que exhorta a utilizar la herramienta más poderosa que cualquier ciudadano libre tiene a su disposición: el voto. Y como recuerda, es sagrado y pone el poder en manos de la gente. Está escrita junto a su viejo amigo Buddy Cannon y en ella se encuentra acompañado de Lukas y Micah, animando a sus conciudadanos a que ejerzan su derecho en el Election Day 2020 de Noviembre en Estados Unidos. El arma más grande que tenemos Se llama urna. Así que si no te gusta quién está ahí Vota para echarlo… Palabra de Willie. Terry McBride es de la tejana Austin, hijo de Dale McBride, en cuya banda estuvo tocando, y fue líder de McBride & the Ride, una excelente banda de la primera mitad de los 90 en el terreno del country. Tras disolverse, pasó a ser uno de los compositores más solicitados, especialmente por Brooks & Dunn. Ahora ha decidido grabar en solitario y dar continuidad al EP Hotels & Highways que publicó hace tres años inspirado por los honky-tonks y las salas de baile. Se trata del álbum Rebels & Angels, cuyo tema central lo ha compuesto junto a Chris Stapleton y ha contado, además, con la voz de Patty Loveless, a quien echamos de menos como protagonista de alguna nueva aventura sonora desde hace demasiado tiempo. Terry McBride fue el bajista de Delbert McClinton y, más tarde, trabajó con Lee Roy Parnell y Rosie Flores. Nunca se había puesto al frente de una banda hasta que llegó a Nashville. Su talento como cantante y compositor llamó la atención de Tony Brown, presidente de MCA Nashville y en Junio de 1989, durante la celebración de la desaparecida Fan Fair en Nashville, se creó McBride & The Ride como trío. Debutaron al año siguiente y con su segundo disco, Sacred Ground, del 92 lograron sus mayores éxitos, incluso el segundo puesto de las listas con la canción que les dio título. En TOMA UNO tenemos el compromiso no escrito de compartir pasado, presente y buena parte del futuro de la Americana. Esa es una de las razones por la que estamos anticipando The Highway Kind, el nuevo álbum de la Josh Abbott Band que saldrá al mercado a mediados de noviembre. Desde que se formaron en la Texas Tech University de Lubbock, han pasado a convertirse en una de los más sólidos pilares de la Red Dirt music gracias a canciones en las que su líder refleja situaciones reales y cotidianas que casi siempre tienen que ver con su propia vida. “The Highway Kind” como canción es una de las favoritas de las emisoras tejanas en estas fechas. The Band Of Heathens han sido una de las formaciones más activas en estos tiempos de pandemia. El resultado de su casi frenética actividad se resume ahora en Stranger, un último álbum que aborda el temor existencial de estos momentos con referencias a Albert Camus o a Robert Heinlein. Un tema tan sobresaliente como “Asheville Nashville Austin” ensalza la magia de la carretera en todo su esplendor a través de un tema de medio tiempo convertido casi en un himno sobre los espacios abiertos y los buenos tiempos. Otra de las bandas que ha aprovechado el aislamiento para crear nuevas propuestas sonoras es Drive-By Truckers, que publicará a mediados de diciembre por sorpresa un nuevo álbum, The New OK, aunque está ahora disponible para descarga digital. Una vez más la banda de Athens, en Georgia, ha canalizado sus frustraciones que ya manifestaban en su disco de enero, The Unraveling, y han hecho una selección de las canciones que habían grabado en Memphis los Sun Studios de Memphis en el otoño de 2018, añadiendo un par de temas recién compuesto por Patterson Hood y la inesperada versión de un tema de los Ramones como "The KKK Took My Baby Away", manteniendo esa postura desafiante ante la depresión. “Sarah’s Flame” es una de las deliciosas canciones que ha compuesto Mike Cooley y que nos recuerdan que pudimos haber visto a banda la pasada primavera en nuestro país, pero la Covid-19 lo impidió. Joachim Cooder es un californiano de Santa Monica que también debe soportar el “peso de la púrpura” al ser hijo del legendario Ry Cooder. Joachim, un multi-instrumentista centrado especialmente en la percusión tiene una larga andadura que le han encontrado con nombres de la talla de Mavis Staples, Buena Vista Social Club o Dr. John, entre otros. Ayer mismo, se publicó el tercero de sus discos en solitario, Over That Road I'm Bound: The Songs of Uncle Dave Macon, dedicado a las canciones de Uncle Dave Macon, una figura esencial en el desarrollo de la música de raíces norteamericana, a caballo entre el final del siglo XIX y los primeros años del XX. Uncle Dave Macon, conocido como "Dixie Dewdrop", era un banjista de Tennessee convertido en un pionero seminal, a la altura de Jimmie Rodgers. De hecho, cuando Ralph Peer realizó las famosas sesiones de Bristol, él ya había grabado más de 100 canciones. Fue la primera gran estrella del Grand Ole Opry y eso que comenzó su carrera profesional cuando ya tenía 50 años. Joachim Cooder ha utilizado las tonadas de Uncle Dave Macon como punto de partida, jugando con las letras y reelaborando melodías para su instrumento favorito, la mbira. Originalmente es un instrumento africano que los esclavos llevaron a América y que se suele considerar antecesor del piano. “Come Along Buddy” es una melodía creada por Uncle Dave Macon en 1930, descubierta medio siglo después por Stephen Wade en un acetato de prueba en casa de la familia Macon. Steve Earle compuso una canción como “Times Like These” hace cuatro años manifestando su ansiedad por los tiempos covulsos que se avecinaban, pero recordando que siempre puede haber esperanza a pesar de lo sombrío del presente. "Times Like These" se lanzó en principio como una pieza acústica, pero con motivo de la celebración del último Record Store Day se ha publicado una versión grabada durante las sesiones de su último álbum, Ghost Of West Virginia, realizadas en los Electric Ladyland Studios y en la que Steve Earle está acompañado por los Dukes. Se publicó en single de vinilo el 7 pulgadas siendo una edición limitada a 1300 copias. The Mastersons siguen creciendo como propuesta alternativa y respondiendo a la complejidad de la situación actual. A primeros de año publicaban No Time For Love Songs, un disco con el que volvían a poner el foco en sus propuestas como pareja, contando con la producción de su buen amigo Shooter Jennings. Algunas de las canciones grabadas por entonces quedaron fuera de aquel disco porque parecían precisar su propio espacio. La llegada de la pandemia cambió los planes de un calendario lleno de conciertos y aislados en su casa se motivaron para dedicarse a esos nuevos temas con mayor crudeza que su álbum anterior. El próximo 16 de este mes de octubre, se edita el nuevo EP de los Mastersons, Red, White & I Love You Too. Son cinco canciones que miran de frente al dilema moral sobre qué quiere ser Estados Unidos como nación. “Sensitive Souls” es un buen ejemplo de este Red, White & I Love You Too, que ha sido grabado en el estudio casero de la pareja con el apoyo de Jeff Hill, compañero en los Dukes, en las mezclas. Canciones como “A Change Is Gonna Come” pudieron costarle la vida a Sam Cooke. Fue uno de los primeros que se implicó en la industria musical, formando su propia editora y su sello discográfico Su activismo político se fue acentuando según iba ampliando su fama, no olvidando sus raíces. Su implicación en la defensa de los derechos sociales y en contra del racismo le ganó serios enemigos. “A Change Is Gonna Come” fue compuesta por Sam Cooke después de hablar para los manifestantes que habían protagonizado una sentada en Durham, en el estado de Carolina del Norte, en mayo de 1963. Es evidente que el artista de Clarksdale, en Mississippi, estaba influido por “Blowin' In The Wind” de Bob Dylan, una canción que le gustaba mucho y que, incluso, llegó a grabar. Siempre es reconfortante escuchar una canción como esta, que acaba de ser actualizada por Gary Clark Jr., Brandi Carlile y John Leventhal como un mensaje de esperanza para estos tiempos. Es evidente que la música es un nexo de unión entre distintas generaciones y las hermanas Rebecca y Megan Lovell, que forman Larkin Poe, lo dejan claro en su nueva apuesta sonora, Kindred Spirits, que se va a editar el 20 de noviembre a través de su propio sello Tricki-Woo Records. Se trata de un disco de versiones con guiños a Elton John, Neil Young, The Allman Brothers Band, e incluso los Moody Blues. Kindred Spirits expresa su admiración profunda y agradecimiento por artistas que marcaron el camino en épocas precedentes. De hecho, Larkin Poe, nativas de Calhoun, en Georgia, ya había iniciado hace cinco años una serie de YouTube dedicada a rendir homenaje a sus héroes musicales. "Nights In White Satin" es una de las canciones elegidas. Originalmente formó parte de un álbum coral y emblemático como fue Days Of Future Passed de los británicos Moody Blues. Escuchar audio

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Old Plank Reel (TOTW)

Banjo Hangout Newest 100 Clawhammer and Old-Time Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2020

This is the one of the versions for the old-time Tune of the Week, differing from the famous Uncle Dave Macon song. My arrangement comes from Erich Schroeder (BHO's vrteach). I wish he was still active here and I really enjoyed learning a tune from his recording. The title, as we learn in the discussion thread, is probably not the real one. But if it were to be, I'm reminded of Old Sacramento where you walk on the historic old plank road as you visit the shops and museums and go on the old Delta King steamboat on the Sacramento River. At least, I nostalgically hope we can still do that....

reel plank totw sacramento river uncle dave macon old sacramento delta king

Old Plank Reel (TOTW)

Banjo Hangout Top 100 Clawhammer and Old-Time Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2020

This is the one of the versions for the old-time Tune of the Week, differing from the famous Uncle Dave Macon song. My arrangement comes from Erich Schroeder (BHO's vrteach). I wish he was still active here and I really enjoyed learning a tune from his recording. The title, as we learn in the discussion thread, is probably not the real one. But if it were to be, I'm reminded of Old Sacramento where you walk on the historic old plank road as you visit the shops and museums and go on the old Delta King steamboat on the Sacramento River. At least, I nostalgically hope we can still do that....

reel plank totw sacramento river uncle dave macon old sacramento delta king

Old Plank Reel (TOTW)

Banjo Hangout Top 100 Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2020

This is the one of the versions for the old-time Tune of the Week, differing from the famous Uncle Dave Macon song. My arrangement comes from Erich Schroeder (BHO's vrteach). I wish he was still active here and I really enjoyed learning a tune from his recording. The title, as we learn in the discussion thread, is probably not the real one. But if it were to be, I'm reminded of Old Sacramento where you walk on the historic old plank road as you visit the shops and museums and go on the old Delta King steamboat on the Sacramento River. At least, I nostalgically hope we can still do that....

reel plank totw sacramento river uncle dave macon old sacramento delta king

Old Plank Reel (TOTW)

Banjo Hangout Newest 100 Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2020

This is the one of the versions for the old-time Tune of the Week, differing from the famous Uncle Dave Macon song. My arrangement comes from Erich Schroeder (BHO's vrteach). I wish he was still active here and I really enjoyed learning a tune from his recording. The title, as we learn in the discussion thread, is probably not the real one. But if it were to be, I'm reminded of Old Sacramento where you walk on the historic old plank road as you visit the shops and museums and go on the old Delta King steamboat on the Sacramento River. At least, I nostalgically hope we can still do that....

reel plank totw sacramento river uncle dave macon old sacramento delta king

Old Plank Reel (TOTW)

Banjo Hangout Top 100 Old Time Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2020

This is the one of the versions for the old-time Tune of the Week, differing from the famous Uncle Dave Macon song. My arrangement comes from Erich Schroeder (BHO's vrteach). I wish he was still active here and I really enjoyed learning a tune from his recording. The title, as we learn in the discussion thread, is probably not the real one. But if it were to be, I'm reminded of Old Sacramento where you walk on the historic old plank road as you visit the shops and museums and go on the old Delta King steamboat on the Sacramento River. At least, I nostalgically hope we can still do that....

reel plank totw sacramento river uncle dave macon old sacramento delta king

One Hell of a Ride

Moonshine, Murder, & Mayhem

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2020 36:33

Episode 11: One Hell of a Ride You guessed it. Uncle Dave Macon knew where the best was made. Even Portner Wagnor knew. And Al Capone. They all wanted what Cooper Melton was supplying. My investigation keeps leading me back to Short Mountain. This location is offering me more answers and information than anywhere else. Answers flowing just like the spring not too far from the Distillery’s property. In this episode, I sit down with Ricky Estes, a real moonshiner, Cannon County native, literally born of the Short Mountain hills. when Billy Kaufman, owner of Short Mountain Distillery, told me to interview Ricky. I’ve been eager to pick his brain. But, what I ended up finding out was way more than I ever imagined. In this conversation, we start just like every other--with the story of Slim. Interview: Ricky Estes, Moonshiner Voiceovers: Micheal Licciardi / Jinny Ryan / Bryanna Licciardi Music: The Whole Other - Beyond the Lows / Uncle Dave Macon - Cannon County Hills Mixing / Mastering: Nyquist Audio Editor: Bryanna Licciardi Join Us: https://tinyurl.com/s248yv4

ride slim distilleries one hell uncle dave macon

Night at the Opry & Ryman

Deeper Roots Radio Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2020 118:32

All live recordings this week, all from the Grand Ole Opry and the Ryman Auditorium. From its early years in a modest Insurance Building as the WSM Barn Dance, the Grand Ole Opry, for all its staid tradition, has become the capitol of country music. Selectively provincial from early on, it brought together country, gospel, and bluegrass radio listeners well into the Golden Age of Country. Deeper Roots digs into the dusty digital archives for recordings from those times in this week’s show plus brings you some new sounds that have grown from the early seeds sown by Uncle Dave Macon, Roy Acuff and George Hay. We’ve got Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, and the Oak Ridge Quartet filling time alongside the Old Crow Medicine Show and Rhonda Vincent. Join in the revelry!

live radio roots tradition golden age americana bluegrass grand ole opry hank williams opry ryman ryman auditorium bill monroe old crow medicine show selectively rhonda vincent roy acuff deeper roots uncle dave macon george hay

Episode 48: “Rock With the Caveman” by Tommy Steele

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2019

Welcome to episode forty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This one looks at “Rock With the Caveman” by Tommy Steele, and the birth of the British rock and roll industry. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a bonus episode available. This one’s on “The Death of Rock and Roll” by the Maddox Brothers and Rose, in which we look at a country group some say invented rock & roll, and how they reacted badly to it —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This double-CD set contains all Steele’s rock and roll material, plus a selection of songs from the musicals he appeared in later. This MP3 compilation, meanwhile, contains a huge number of skiffle records and early British attempts at rock and roll, including Steele’s. Much of the music is not very good, but I can’t imagine a better way of getting an understanding of the roots of British rock. Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Billy Bragg’s Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I’ve read on music at all, and covers Steele from the skiffle perspective. Fings Ain’t What They Used T’Be: The Life of Lionel Bart by David & Caroline Stafford gave me a lot of information on Steel’s songwriting partner. Steele’s autobiography, Bermondsey Boy, covers his childhood and early stardom. I am not 100% convinced of its accuracy, but it’s an entertaining book, and if nothing else probably gives a good idea of the mental atmosphere in the poor parts of South London in the war and immediate post-war years. And George Melly’s Revolt Into Style was one of the first books to take British pop culture seriously, and puts Steele into a wider context of British pop, both music and art. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let’s talk a little bit about the Piltdown Man. Piltdown Man was an early example of a hominid — a missing link between the apes and humans. Its skull was discovered in 1912 in Piltdown, East Sussex, by the eminent archaeologist Charles Dawson, and for years was considered one of the most important pieces of evidence in the story of human evolution. And then, in 1953, it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax, and not even a particularly good one. Someone had just taken the jaw of an orang-utan and the top part of a human skull, and filed down the orang-utan teeth, and then stained the bones to make them look old. It was almost certainly the work of Dawson himself, who seems to have spent his entire life making fraudulent discoveries. Dawson had died decades earlier, and the full extent of his fraud wasn’t even confirmed until 2003. Sometimes researching the history of rock and roll can be a lot like that. You can find a story repeated in numerous apparently reliable books, and then find out that it’s all based on the inaccurate testimony of a single individual. The story never happened. It was just something someone made up. [Excerpt: “Rock With the Caveman”, Tommy Steele and the Steelmen] We talked a little while ago about the skiffle movement, and the first British guitar-based pop music. Today, we’re going to look at the dawn of British rock and roll. Now, there’s an important thing to note about the first wave of British rock and roll, and that is that it was, essentially, a music that had no roots in the culture. It was an imitation of American music, without any of the ties to social issues that made the American music so interesting. Britain in the 1950s was a very different place to the one it is today, or to America. It was ethnically extremely homogeneous, as the waves of immigration that have so improved the country had only just started. And while few people travelled much outside their own immediate areas, it was culturally more homogeneous as well, as Britain, unlike America, had a national media rather than a local one. In Britain, someone could become known throughout the country before they’d played their second gig, if they got the right media exposure. And so British rock and roll started out at the point that American rock and roll was only just starting to get to — a clean-cut version of the music, with little black influence or sexuality left in it, designed from the outset to be a part of mainstream showbusiness aimed at teenagers, not music for an underclass or a racial or sexual minority. Britain’s first rock and roll star put out his first record in November 1956, and by November 1957 he was appearing on the Royal Variety Show, with Mario Lanza, Bob Monkhouse, and Vera Lynn. That is, fundamentally, what early British rock and roll was. Keep that in mind for the rest of the story, as we look at how a young sailor from a dirt-poor family became Britain’s first teen idol. To tell that story, we first have to discuss the career of the Vipers Skiffle Group. That was the group’s full name, and they were just about the most important British group of the mid-fifties, even though they were never as commercially successful as some of the acts we’ve looked at. The name of the Vipers Skiffle Group was actually the first drug reference in British pop music. They took the name from the autobiography of the American jazz clarinettist Mezz Mezzrow — a man who was better known in the jazz community as a dope dealer than as a musician; so much so that “Mezz” itself became slang for marijuana, while “viper” became the name for dope smokers, as you can hear in this recording by Stuff Smith, in which he sings that he “dreamed about a reefer five foot long/Mighty Mezz but not too strong”. [Excerpt: Stuff Smith, “You’se a Viper”] So when Wally Whyton, Johnny Booker, and Jean Van Den Bosch formed a guitar trio, they chose that name, even though as it turned out none of them actually smoked dope. They just thought it sounded cool. They started performing at a cafe called the 2is (two as in the numeral, I as in the letter), and started to build up something of a reputation — to the point that Lonnie Donegan started nicking their material. Whyton had taken an old sea shanty, “Sail Away Ladies”, popularised by the country banjo player Uncle Dave Macon, and rewritten it substantially, turning it into “Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O”. Donegan copyrighted Whyton’s song as soon as he heard it, and rushed out his version of it, but the Vipers put out their own version too, and the two chased each other up the charts. Donegan’s charted higher, but the Vipers ended up at a respectable number ten: [Excerpt: The Vipers, “Don’t You Rock Me, Daddy-O”] That recording was on Parlophone records, and was produced by a young producer who normally did comedy and novelty records, named George Martin. We’ll be hearing more about him later on. But at the time we’re talking about, the Vipers had not yet gained a recording contract, and they were still playing the 2is. Occasionally, they would be joined on stage by a young acquaintance named Thomas Hicks. Hicks was a merchant seaman, and was away at sea most of the time, and so was never a full part of the group, but even though he didn’t care much for skiffle — he was a country and western fan first and foremost — he played guitar, and in Britain in 1955 and 56, if you played guitar, you played skiffle. Hicks had come from an absolutely dirt-poor background. Three of his siblings had died at cruelly young ages, and young Thomas himself had had several brushes with ill health, which meant that while he was a voracious reader he had lacked formal education. He had wanted to be a performer from a very early age, and had developed a routine that he used to do around the pubs in his early teens, in which he would mime to a record by Danny Kaye, “Knock on Wood”: [Excerpt: Danny Kaye, “Knock on Wood”] But at age fifteen he had joined the Merchant Navy. This isn’t the same thing as the Royal Navy, but rather is the group of commercial shipping companies that provide non-military shipping, and Hicks worked as wait staff on a cruise ship making regular trips to America. On an early trip, he fell in love with the music of Hank Williams, who would remain a favourite of his for the rest of his life, and he particularly loved the song “Kaw-Liga”: [Excerpt: Hank Williams, “Kaw-Liga”] Hicks replaced his old party piece of miming to Danny Kaye with a new one of singing “Kaw-Liga”, with accompaniment from anyone he could persuade to play guitar for him. Eventually one of his crewmates taught him how to play the song himself, and he started performing with pick-up groups, singing Hank Williams songs, whenever he was on shore leave in the UK. And when he couldn’t get a paid gig he’d head to the 2is and sing with the Vipers. But then came the event that changed his life. Young Tommy Hicks, with his love of country music, was delighted when on shore leave in 1955 to see an advert for a touring show based on the Grand Ole Opry, in Norfolk Virginia, where he happened to be. Of course he went along, and there he saw something that made a huge impression. One of the acts in the middle of the bill was a young man who wore horn-rimmed glasses. Tommy still remembers the details to this day. The young man came out and did a three-song set. The first song was a standard country song, but the second one was something else; something that hit like a bolt of lightning: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Peggy Sue”] That song was young Thomas Hicks’ introduction to the new music called rock and roll, and nothing would ever be the same for him ever again after seeing Buddy Holly sing “Peggy Sue”. By February 1956 he had finished working on the cruise ships, and was performing rock and roll in London, the very first British rock and roller. Except… There’s a reason why we’re covering Tommy Steele *before* Buddy Holly, the man who he claims as his inspiration. Buddy Holly *did* perform with a Grand Ole Opry tour. But it didn’t tour until May 1956, three months after Thomas Hicks quit his job on the cruise ships, and about a year after the time Tommy claims to have seen him. That tour only hit Oklahoma, which is landlocked, and didn’t visit Norfolk Virginia. According to various timelines put together by people like the Buddy Holly Centre in Lubbock Texas, Holly didn’t perform outside Lubbock until that tour, and that’s the only time he did perform outside West Texas until 1957. Also, Buddy Holly didn’t meet Peggy Sue Gerron, the woman who gave the song its name, until 1956, and the song doesn’t seem to have been written until 1957. So whatever it was that introduced young Tommy Hicks to the wonders of rock and roll, it wasn’t seeing Buddy Holly sing “Peggy Sue” in Norfolk Virginia in 1955. But that’s the story that’s in his autobiography, and that’s the story that’s in every other source I’ve seen on the subject, because they’re all just repeating what he said, on the assumption that he’d remember something like that, something which was so important in his life and future career. Remember what I said at the beginning, about rock and roll history being like dealing with Piltdown Man? Yeah. There are a lot of inaccuracies in the life story of Thomas Hicks, who became famous under the name Tommy Steele. Anything I tell you about him is based on information he put out, and that information is not always the truth, so be warned. For example, when he started his career, he claimed he’d worked his way up on the cruise ships to being a gymnastics instructor — something that the shipping federation denied to the press. You find a lot of that kind of thing when you dig into Steele’s stories. In fact, by the time Hicks started performing, there had already been at least one British rock and roll record made. He wasn’t bringing something new that he’d discovered in America at all. “Rock Around the Clock”, the Bill Haley film, had played in UK cinemas at around the time of Hicks’ supposed epiphany, and it had inspired a modern jazz drummer, Tony Crombie, to form Tony Crombie and the Rockets and record a Bill Haley soundalike called “Teach You To Rock”: [Excerpt: Tony Crombie and the Rockets, “Teach You To Rock”] However, Crombie was not teen idol material — a serious jazz drummer in his thirties, he soon went back to playing bebop, and has largely been written out of British rock history since, in favour of Tommy Steele as the first British rock and roller. Thomas Hicks the merchant seaman became Tommy Steele the pop idol as a result of a chance meeting. Hicks went to a party with a friend, and the host was a man called Lionel Bart, who was celebrating because he’d just sold his first song, to the bandleader Bill Cotton. No recording of that song seems to exist, but the lyrics to the song — a lament about the way that old-style cafes were being replaced by upscale coffee bars — are quoted in a biography of Bart: “Oh for a cup of tea, instead of a cuppuchini/What would it mean to me, just one little cup so teeny!/You ask for some char and they reckon you’re barmy/Ask for a banger, they’ll give you salami/Oh for the liquid they served in the Army/Just a cup of tea!” Heartrending stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. But Bart was proud of the twenty-five guineas the song had earned him, and so he was having a party. Bart was at the centre of a Bohemian crowd in Soho, and the party was held at a squat where Bart, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, spent most of his time. At that squat at various times around this period lived, among others, the playwright John Antrobus, the actor Shirley Eaton, who would later become famous as the woman painted gold in the beginning of Goldfinger, and the great folk guitarist Davey Graham, who would later become famous for his instrumental, “Angi”: [Excerpt: Davey Graham, “Angi”] We’ll hear more about Graham in future episodes. Another inhabitant of the squat was Mike Pratt, a guitarist and pianist who would later turn to acting and become famous as Jeff Randall in the fantasy detective series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Hicks, Bart, and Pratt started collaborating on songs together — Hicks would bring in a basic idea, and then Bart would write the lyrics and Pratt the music. They also performed as The Cavemen, though Bart soon tired of playing washboard and stuck to writing. The Cavemen became a floating group of musicians, centred around Hicks and Pratt, and with various Vipers and other skifflers pulled in as and when they were available. The various skiffle musicians looked down on Hicks, because of his tendency to want to play “Heartbreak Hotel” or “Blue Suede Shoes” rather than “Bring a Little Water Sylvie” or “Rock Island Line”, but a gig was a gig, and they had to admit that Hicks seemed to go down well with the young women in the audience. Two minor music industry people, Bill Varley and Roy Tuvey, agreed to manage Hicks, but they decided that they needed someone involved who would be able to publicise Hicks, so they invited John Kennedy, a PR man from New Zealand, to come to the 2is to see him. Hicks wasn’t actually playing the 2is the night in question – it was the Vipers, who were just on the verge of getting signed and recording their first single: [Excerpt: The Vipers Skiffle Group, “Ain’t You Glad?”] While Hicks wasn’t scheduled to play, at the request of Varley and Tuvey he jumped on stage when the Vipers took a break, and sang a song that he, Bart, and Pratt had written, called “Rock With the Caveman”. Kennedy was impressed. He was impressed enough, in fact, that he brought in a friend, Larry Parnes, who would go on to become the most important manager in British rock and roll in the fifties and early sixties. Kennedy, Parnes, and Hicks cut Varley and Tuvey out altogether — to the extent that neither of them are even mentioned in the version of this story in Tommy Steele’s autobiography. Hicks was renamed Tommy Steele, in a nod to his paternal grandfather Thomas Stil-Hicks (the Stil in that name is spelled either Stil or Stijl, depending on which source you believe) and Parnes would go on to name a whole host of further rock stars in a similar manner — Duffy Power, Johnny Gentle, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde. They had everything except a record contract, but that was why Kennedy was there. Kennedy rented a big house, and hired a load of showgirls, models, and sex workers to turn up for a party and bring their boyfriends. They were to dress nicely, talk in fake posh accents, and if anyone asked who they were they were to give fake double-barrelled names. He then called the press and said it was “the first high society rock and roll show” and that the girls were all debutantes. The story made the newspapers, and got Steele national attention. Steele was signed by Decca records, where Hugh Mendl, the producer of “Rock Island Line”, was so eager to sign him that he didn’t check if any studios were free for his audition, and so Britain’s first homegrown rock idol auditioned for his record contract in the gents’ toilets. A bunch of slumming jazz musicians, including Dave Lee, the pianist with the Dankworth band, and the legendary saxophone player Ronnie Scott, were brought in to record “Rock With the Caveman”: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Rock With the Caveman”] The single went to number thirteen. Tommy Steele was now a bona fide rock and roll star, at least in the UK. The next record, “Elevator Rock”, didn’t do so well, however: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Elevator Rock”] That failed to chart, so Steele’s producers went for the well-worn trick in British record making of simply copying a US hit. Guy Mitchell had just released “Singing the Blues”: [Excerpt: Guy Mitchell, “Singing the Blues”] That was actually a cover version of a recording by Marty Robbins from earlier in the year, but Mitchell’s version was the one that became the big hit. And Steele was brought into the studio to record a soundalike version, and hopefully get it out before Mitchell’s version hit the charts. Steele’s version has an identical arrangement and sound to Mitchell’s, except that Steele sings it in an incredibly mannered Elvis impression: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Singing the Blues”] Now, to twenty-first century ears, Steele’s version is clearly inferior. But here was the birth of something particularly English — and indeed something particularly London — in rock and roll music. The overly mannered, music-hall inspired, Cockneyfied impression of an American singing style. On Steele’s subsequent tour, a nine-year old kid called David Jones, who would later change his name to Bowie, went to see him and came away inspired to become a rock and roll star. And we can hear in this performance the roots of Bowie’s own London take on Elvis, as we can also hear a style that would be taken up by Anthony Newley, Ray Davies, and many more masters of Cockney archness. I don’t think “Singing the Blues” is a particularly good record compared to Mitchell’s, but it is a prototype for something that would become good, and it deserves recognition for that. Mitchell’s version got out first, and went to the top of the charts, with Steele’s following close behind, but then for one week Mitchell’s record label had a minor distribution problem, and Steele took over the top spot, before Mitchell’s record returned to number one the next week. Tommy Steele had become the first British rock and roll singer to get to number one in the UK charts. It would be the only time he would do so, but it was enough. He was a bona fide teen idol. He was so big, in fact, that even his brother, Colin Hicks, became a minor rock and roll star himself off the back of his brother’s success: [Excerpt: Colin Hicks and the Cabin Boys, “Hollering and Screaming”] The drummer on that record, Jimmy Nicol, later had his fifteen minutes of fame when Ringo Starr got tonsilitis just before a tour of Australia, and for a few shows Nicol got to be a substitute Beatle. Very soon, Tommy Steele moved on into light entertainment. First he moved into films — starting with “The Tommy Steele Story”, a film based on his life, for which he, Bart, and Pratt wrote all twelve of the songs in a week to meet the deadline, and then he went into stage musicals. Within a year, he had given up on rock and roll altogether. But rock and roll hadn’t *quite* given up on him. While Steele was appearing in stage musicals, one was also written about him — a hurtful parody of his life, which he claimed later he’d wanted to sue over. In Expresso Bongo, a satire of the British music industry, Steele was parodied as “Bongo Herbert”, who rises to fame with no talent whatsoever. That stage musical was then rewritten for a film version, with the satire taken out of it, so it was a straight rags-to-riches story. It was made into a vehicle for another singer who had been a regular at the 2is, and whose backing band was made up of former members of the Vipers Skiffle Group: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard, “Love” (from Expresso Bongo)] We’ll talk about both Cliff Richard and the Shadows in future episodes though… Tommy Steele would go on to become something of a national treasure, working on stage with Gene Kelly and on screen with Fred Astaire, writing several books, having a minor artistic career as a sculptor, and touring constantly in pantomimes and musicals. At age eighty-two he still tours every year, performing as Scrooge in a stage musical version of A Christmas Carol. His 1950s hits remain popular enough in the UK that a compilation of them went to number twenty-two in the charts in 2009. He may not leave a large body of rock and roll work, but without him, there would be no British rock and roll industry as we know it, and the rest of this history would be very different.

america love american death history world australia english uk rock pr british new zealand nashville oklahoma blues britain roots cd wood singing shadows elvis rock and roll steel knock clock bob dylan bart rockets christmas carol elvis presley soho screaming steele hicks stil excerpt tom petty pratt scrooge george harrison ringo starr mixcloud south london viper west texas communist party lubbock beatle rock music goldfinger royal navy caveman bohemian buddy holly radicals grand ole opry john kennedy roy orbison david jones gene kelly hank williams fred astaire vipers george martin billy bragg cliff richard cavemen cockney everly brothers heartbreak hotel east sussex weavers decca jeff lynne dave lee danny kaye sam phillips bill haley ray davies chet atkins varley daddy o ronnie scott donegan marty robbins lubbock texas norfolk virginia peggy sue vera lynn bob moore rock around parlophone blue suede shoes mezz stijl anthony newley piltdown man mario lanza piltdown merchant navy hollering bob monkhouse parnes lonnie donegan lionel bart tommy steele uncle dave macon guy mitchell mike pratt tommy hicks american rock and roll monument records marty wilde stuff smith thomas hicks fred foster jeff randall dankworth cabin boys heartrending jimmy nicol davey graham sail away ladies rockers how skiffle changed nashville a team

Episode 48: "Rock With the Caveman" by Tommy Steele

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2019 32:02

Welcome to episode forty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This one looks at "Rock With the Caveman" by Tommy Steele, and the birth of the British rock and roll industry. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a bonus episode available. This one's on "The Death of Rock and Roll" by the Maddox Brothers and Rose, in which we look at a country group some say invented rock & roll, and how they reacted badly to it ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This double-CD set contains all Steele's rock and roll material, plus a selection of songs from the musicals he appeared in later. This MP3 compilation, meanwhile, contains a huge number of skiffle records and early British attempts at rock and roll, including Steele's. Much of the music is not very good, but I can't imagine a better way of getting an understanding of the roots of British rock. Pete Frame's The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Billy Bragg's Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I've read on music at all, and covers Steele from the skiffle perspective. Fings Ain't What They Used T'Be: The Life of Lionel Bart by David & Caroline Stafford gave me a lot of information on Steel's songwriting partner. Steele's autobiography, Bermondsey Boy, covers his childhood and early stardom. I am not 100% convinced of its accuracy, but it's an entertaining book, and if nothing else probably gives a good idea of the mental atmosphere in the poor parts of South London in the war and immediate post-war years. And George Melly's Revolt Into Style was one of the first books to take British pop culture seriously, and puts Steele into a wider context of British pop, both music and art. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let's talk a little bit about the Piltdown Man. Piltdown Man was an early example of a hominid -- a missing link between the apes and humans. Its skull was discovered in 1912 in Piltdown, East Sussex, by the eminent archaeologist Charles Dawson, and for years was considered one of the most important pieces of evidence in the story of human evolution. And then, in 1953, it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax, and not even a particularly good one. Someone had just taken the jaw of an orang-utan and the top part of a human skull, and filed down the orang-utan teeth, and then stained the bones to make them look old. It was almost certainly the work of Dawson himself, who seems to have spent his entire life making fraudulent discoveries. Dawson had died decades earlier, and the full extent of his fraud wasn't even confirmed until 2003. Sometimes researching the history of rock and roll can be a lot like that. You can find a story repeated in numerous apparently reliable books, and then find out that it's all based on the inaccurate testimony of a single individual. The story never happened. It was just something someone made up. [Excerpt: "Rock With the Caveman", Tommy Steele and the Steelmen] We talked a little while ago about the skiffle movement, and the first British guitar-based pop music. Today, we're going to look at the dawn of British rock and roll. Now, there's an important thing to note about the first wave of British rock and roll, and that is that it was, essentially, a music that had no roots in the culture. It was an imitation of American music, without any of the ties to social issues that made the American music so interesting. Britain in the 1950s was a very different place to the one it is today, or to America. It was ethnically extremely homogeneous, as the waves of immigration that have so improved the country had only just started. And while few people travelled much outside their own immediate areas, it was culturally more homogeneous as well, as Britain, unlike America, had a national media rather than a local one. In Britain, someone could become known throughout the country before they'd played their second gig, if they got the right media exposure. And so British rock and roll started out at the point that American rock and roll was only just starting to get to -- a clean-cut version of the music, with little black influence or sexuality left in it, designed from the outset to be a part of mainstream showbusiness aimed at teenagers, not music for an underclass or a racial or sexual minority. Britain's first rock and roll star put out his first record in November 1956, and by November 1957 he was appearing on the Royal Variety Show, with Mario Lanza, Bob Monkhouse, and Vera Lynn. That is, fundamentally, what early British rock and roll was. Keep that in mind for the rest of the story, as we look at how a young sailor from a dirt-poor family became Britain's first teen idol. To tell that story, we first have to discuss the career of the Vipers Skiffle Group. That was the group's full name, and they were just about the most important British group of the mid-fifties, even though they were never as commercially successful as some of the acts we've looked at. The name of the Vipers Skiffle Group was actually the first drug reference in British pop music. They took the name from the autobiography of the American jazz clarinettist Mezz Mezzrow -- a man who was better known in the jazz community as a dope dealer than as a musician; so much so that "Mezz" itself became slang for marijuana, while "viper" became the name for dope smokers, as you can hear in this recording by Stuff Smith, in which he sings that he "dreamed about a reefer five foot long/Mighty Mezz but not too strong". [Excerpt: Stuff Smith, "You'se a Viper"] So when Wally Whyton, Johnny Booker, and Jean Van Den Bosch formed a guitar trio, they chose that name, even though as it turned out none of them actually smoked dope. They just thought it sounded cool. They started performing at a cafe called the 2is (two as in the numeral, I as in the letter), and started to build up something of a reputation -- to the point that Lonnie Donegan started nicking their material. Whyton had taken an old sea shanty, "Sail Away Ladies", popularised by the country banjo player Uncle Dave Macon, and rewritten it substantially, turning it into "Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O". Donegan copyrighted Whyton's song as soon as he heard it, and rushed out his version of it, but the Vipers put out their own version too, and the two chased each other up the charts. Donegan's charted higher, but the Vipers ended up at a respectable number ten: [Excerpt: The Vipers, "Don't You Rock Me, Daddy-O"] That recording was on Parlophone records, and was produced by a young producer who normally did comedy and novelty records, named George Martin. We'll be hearing more about him later on. But at the time we're talking about, the Vipers had not yet gained a recording contract, and they were still playing the 2is. Occasionally, they would be joined on stage by a young acquaintance named Thomas Hicks. Hicks was a merchant seaman, and was away at sea most of the time, and so was never a full part of the group, but even though he didn't care much for skiffle -- he was a country and western fan first and foremost -- he played guitar, and in Britain in 1955 and 56, if you played guitar, you played skiffle. Hicks had come from an absolutely dirt-poor background. Three of his siblings had died at cruelly young ages, and young Thomas himself had had several brushes with ill health, which meant that while he was a voracious reader he had lacked formal education. He had wanted to be a performer from a very early age, and had developed a routine that he used to do around the pubs in his early teens, in which he would mime to a record by Danny Kaye, "Knock on Wood": [Excerpt: Danny Kaye, "Knock on Wood"] But at age fifteen he had joined the Merchant Navy. This isn't the same thing as the Royal Navy, but rather is the group of commercial shipping companies that provide non-military shipping, and Hicks worked as wait staff on a cruise ship making regular trips to America. On an early trip, he fell in love with the music of Hank Williams, who would remain a favourite of his for the rest of his life, and he particularly loved the song "Kaw-Liga": [Excerpt: Hank Williams, "Kaw-Liga"] Hicks replaced his old party piece of miming to Danny Kaye with a new one of singing "Kaw-Liga", with accompaniment from anyone he could persuade to play guitar for him. Eventually one of his crewmates taught him how to play the song himself, and he started performing with pick-up groups, singing Hank Williams songs, whenever he was on shore leave in the UK. And when he couldn't get a paid gig he'd head to the 2is and sing with the Vipers. But then came the event that changed his life. Young Tommy Hicks, with his love of country music, was delighted when on shore leave in 1955 to see an advert for a touring show based on the Grand Ole Opry, in Norfolk Virginia, where he happened to be. Of course he went along, and there he saw something that made a huge impression. One of the acts in the middle of the bill was a young man who wore horn-rimmed glasses. Tommy still remembers the details to this day. The young man came out and did a three-song set. The first song was a standard country song, but the second one was something else; something that hit like a bolt of lightning: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Peggy Sue"] That song was young Thomas Hicks' introduction to the new music called rock and roll, and nothing would ever be the same for him ever again after seeing Buddy Holly sing "Peggy Sue". By February 1956 he had finished working on the cruise ships, and was performing rock and roll in London, the very first British rock and roller. Except... There's a reason why we're covering Tommy Steele *before* Buddy Holly, the man who he claims as his inspiration. Buddy Holly *did* perform with a Grand Ole Opry tour. But it didn't tour until May 1956, three months after Thomas Hicks quit his job on the cruise ships, and about a year after the time Tommy claims to have seen him. That tour only hit Oklahoma, which is landlocked, and didn't visit Norfolk Virginia. According to various timelines put together by people like the Buddy Holly Centre in Lubbock Texas, Holly didn't perform outside Lubbock until that tour, and that's the only time he did perform outside West Texas until 1957. Also, Buddy Holly didn't meet Peggy Sue Gerron, the woman who gave the song its name, until 1956, and the song doesn't seem to have been written until 1957. So whatever it was that introduced young Tommy Hicks to the wonders of rock and roll, it wasn't seeing Buddy Holly sing "Peggy Sue" in Norfolk Virginia in 1955. But that's the story that's in his autobiography, and that's the story that's in every other source I've seen on the subject, because they're all just repeating what he said, on the assumption that he'd remember something like that, something which was so important in his life and future career. Remember what I said at the beginning, about rock and roll history being like dealing with Piltdown Man? Yeah. There are a lot of inaccuracies in the life story of Thomas Hicks, who became famous under the name Tommy Steele. Anything I tell you about him is based on information he put out, and that information is not always the truth, so be warned. For example, when he started his career, he claimed he'd worked his way up on the cruise ships to being a gymnastics instructor -- something that the shipping federation denied to the press. You find a lot of that kind of thing when you dig into Steele's stories. In fact, by the time Hicks started performing, there had already been at least one British rock and roll record made. He wasn't bringing something new that he'd discovered in America at all. "Rock Around the Clock", the Bill Haley film, had played in UK cinemas at around the time of Hicks' supposed epiphany, and it had inspired a modern jazz drummer, Tony Crombie, to form Tony Crombie and the Rockets and record a Bill Haley soundalike called "Teach You To Rock": [Excerpt: Tony Crombie and the Rockets, "Teach You To Rock"] However, Crombie was not teen idol material -- a serious jazz drummer in his thirties, he soon went back to playing bebop, and has largely been written out of British rock history since, in favour of Tommy Steele as the first British rock and roller. Thomas Hicks the merchant seaman became Tommy Steele the pop idol as a result of a chance meeting. Hicks went to a party with a friend, and the host was a man called Lionel Bart, who was celebrating because he'd just sold his first song, to the bandleader Bill Cotton. No recording of that song seems to exist, but the lyrics to the song -- a lament about the way that old-style cafes were being replaced by upscale coffee bars -- are quoted in a biography of Bart: "Oh for a cup of tea, instead of a cuppuchini/What would it mean to me, just one little cup so teeny!/You ask for some char and they reckon you're barmy/Ask for a banger, they'll give you salami/Oh for the liquid they served in the Army/Just a cup of tea!" Heartrending stuff, I'm sure you'll agree. But Bart was proud of the twenty-five guineas the song had earned him, and so he was having a party. Bart was at the centre of a Bohemian crowd in Soho, and the party was held at a squat where Bart, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, spent most of his time. At that squat at various times around this period lived, among others, the playwright John Antrobus, the actor Shirley Eaton, who would later become famous as the woman painted gold in the beginning of Goldfinger, and the great folk guitarist Davey Graham, who would later become famous for his instrumental, “Angi”: [Excerpt: Davey Graham, “Angi”] We'll hear more about Graham in future episodes. Another inhabitant of the squat was Mike Pratt, a guitarist and pianist who would later turn to acting and become famous as Jeff Randall in the fantasy detective series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Hicks, Bart, and Pratt started collaborating on songs together -- Hicks would bring in a basic idea, and then Bart would write the lyrics and Pratt the music. They also performed as The Cavemen, though Bart soon tired of playing washboard and stuck to writing. The Cavemen became a floating group of musicians, centred around Hicks and Pratt, and with various Vipers and other skifflers pulled in as and when they were available. The various skiffle musicians looked down on Hicks, because of his tendency to want to play "Heartbreak Hotel" or "Blue Suede Shoes" rather than "Bring a Little Water Sylvie" or "Rock Island Line", but a gig was a gig, and they had to admit that Hicks seemed to go down well with the young women in the audience. Two minor music industry people, Bill Varley and Roy Tuvey, agreed to manage Hicks, but they decided that they needed someone involved who would be able to publicise Hicks, so they invited John Kennedy, a PR man from New Zealand, to come to the 2is to see him. Hicks wasn't actually playing the 2is the night in question – it was the Vipers, who were just on the verge of getting signed and recording their first single: [Excerpt: The Vipers Skiffle Group, “Ain't You Glad?”] While Hicks wasn't scheduled to play, at the request of Varley and Tuvey he jumped on stage when the Vipers took a break, and sang a song that he, Bart, and Pratt had written, called "Rock With the Caveman". Kennedy was impressed. He was impressed enough, in fact, that he brought in a friend, Larry Parnes, who would go on to become the most important manager in British rock and roll in the fifties and early sixties. Kennedy, Parnes, and Hicks cut Varley and Tuvey out altogether -- to the extent that neither of them are even mentioned in the version of this story in Tommy Steele's autobiography. Hicks was renamed Tommy Steele, in a nod to his paternal grandfather Thomas Stil-Hicks (the Stil in that name is spelled either Stil or Stijl, depending on which source you believe) and Parnes would go on to name a whole host of further rock stars in a similar manner -- Duffy Power, Johnny Gentle, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde. They had everything except a record contract, but that was why Kennedy was there. Kennedy rented a big house, and hired a load of showgirls, models, and sex workers to turn up for a party and bring their boyfriends. They were to dress nicely, talk in fake posh accents, and if anyone asked who they were they were to give fake double-barrelled names. He then called the press and said it was "the first high society rock and roll show" and that the girls were all debutantes. The story made the newspapers, and got Steele national attention. Steele was signed by Decca records, where Hugh Mendl, the producer of "Rock Island Line", was so eager to sign him that he didn't check if any studios were free for his audition, and so Britain's first homegrown rock idol auditioned for his record contract in the gents' toilets. A bunch of slumming jazz musicians, including Dave Lee, the pianist with the Dankworth band, and the legendary saxophone player Ronnie Scott, were brought in to record "Rock With the Caveman": [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, "Rock With the Caveman"] The single went to number thirteen. Tommy Steele was now a bona fide rock and roll star, at least in the UK. The next record, "Elevator Rock", didn't do so well, however: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, "Elevator Rock"] That failed to chart, so Steele's producers went for the well-worn trick in British record making of simply copying a US hit. Guy Mitchell had just released "Singing the Blues": [Excerpt: Guy Mitchell, "Singing the Blues"] That was actually a cover version of a recording by Marty Robbins from earlier in the year, but Mitchell's version was the one that became the big hit. And Steele was brought into the studio to record a soundalike version, and hopefully get it out before Mitchell's version hit the charts. Steele's version has an identical arrangement and sound to Mitchell's, except that Steele sings it in an incredibly mannered Elvis impression: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, "Singing the Blues"] Now, to twenty-first century ears, Steele's version is clearly inferior. But here was the birth of something particularly English -- and indeed something particularly London -- in rock and roll music. The overly mannered, music-hall inspired, Cockneyfied impression of an American singing style. On Steele's subsequent tour, a nine-year old kid called David Jones, who would later change his name to Bowie, went to see him and came away inspired to become a rock and roll star. And we can hear in this performance the roots of Bowie's own London take on Elvis, as we can also hear a style that would be taken up by Anthony Newley, Ray Davies, and many more masters of Cockney archness. I don't think "Singing the Blues" is a particularly good record compared to Mitchell's, but it is a prototype for something that would become good, and it deserves recognition for that. Mitchell's version got out first, and went to the top of the charts, with Steele's following close behind, but then for one week Mitchell's record label had a minor distribution problem, and Steele took over the top spot, before Mitchell's record returned to number one the next week. Tommy Steele had become the first British rock and roll singer to get to number one in the UK charts. It would be the only time he would do so, but it was enough. He was a bona fide teen idol. He was so big, in fact, that even his brother, Colin Hicks, became a minor rock and roll star himself off the back of his brother's success: [Excerpt: Colin Hicks and the Cabin Boys, "Hollering and Screaming"] The drummer on that record, Jimmy Nicol, later had his fifteen minutes of fame when Ringo Starr got tonsilitis just before a tour of Australia, and for a few shows Nicol got to be a substitute Beatle. Very soon, Tommy Steele moved on into light entertainment. First he moved into films -- starting with "The Tommy Steele Story", a film based on his life, for which he, Bart, and Pratt wrote all twelve of the songs in a week to meet the deadline, and then he went into stage musicals. Within a year, he had given up on rock and roll altogether. But rock and roll hadn't *quite* given up on him. While Steele was appearing in stage musicals, one was also written about him -- a hurtful parody of his life, which he claimed later he'd wanted to sue over. In Expresso Bongo, a satire of the British music industry, Steele was parodied as "Bongo Herbert", who rises to fame with no talent whatsoever. That stage musical was then rewritten for a film version, with the satire taken out of it, so it was a straight rags-to-riches story. It was made into a vehicle for another singer who had been a regular at the 2is, and whose backing band was made up of former members of the Vipers Skiffle Group: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard, "Love" (from Expresso Bongo)] We'll talk about both Cliff Richard and the Shadows in future episodes though... Tommy Steele would go on to become something of a national treasure, working on stage with Gene Kelly and on screen with Fred Astaire, writing several books, having a minor artistic career as a sculptor, and touring constantly in pantomimes and musicals. At age eighty-two he still tours every year, performing as Scrooge in a stage musical version of A Christmas Carol. His 1950s hits remain popular enough in the UK that a compilation of them went to number twenty-two in the charts in 2009. He may not leave a large body of rock and roll work, but without him, there would be no British rock and roll industry as we know it, and the rest of this history would be very different.

america love american death history world australia english uk rock pr british new zealand oklahoma blues britain roots cd singing shadows elvis rock and roll steel knock clock bart rockets christmas carol soho steele hicks stil pratt scrooge ringo starr mixcloud south london west texas communist party lubbock beatle rock music goldfinger royal navy caveman bohemian buddy holly radicals grand ole opry john kennedy david jones gene kelly hank williams fred astaire vipers george martin billy bragg cliff richard cavemen cockney heartbreak hotel east sussex decca dave lee danny kaye bill haley ray davies varley ronnie scott donegan marty robbins peggy sue lubbock texas norfolk virginia vera lynn rock around parlophone blue suede shoes mezz stijl anthony newley piltdown man mario lanza piltdown merchant navy hollering bob monkhouse parnes lonnie donegan lionel bart tommy steele uncle dave macon mike pratt tommy hicks marty wilde stuff smith jeff randall dankworth cabin boys heartrending jimmy nicol davey graham sail away ladies rockers how skiffle changed

Episode 48: “Rock With the Caveman” by Tommy Steele

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Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2019

Welcome to episode forty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This one looks at “Rock With the Caveman” by Tommy Steele, and the birth of the British rock and roll industry. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a bonus episode available. This one’s on “The Death of Rock and Roll” by the Maddox Brothers and Rose, in which we look at a country group some say invented rock & roll, and how they reacted badly to it —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This double-CD set contains all Steele’s rock and roll material, plus a selection of songs from the musicals he appeared in later. This MP3 compilation, meanwhile, contains a huge number of skiffle records and early British attempts at rock and roll, including Steele’s. Much of the music is not very good, but I can’t imagine a better way of getting an understanding of the roots of British rock. Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Billy Bragg’s Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I’ve read on music at all, and covers Steele from the skiffle perspective. Fings Ain’t What They Used T’Be: The Life of Lionel Bart by David & Caroline Stafford gave me a lot of information on Steel’s songwriting partner. Steele’s autobiography, Bermondsey Boy, covers his childhood and early stardom. I am not 100% convinced of its accuracy, but it’s an entertaining book, and if nothing else probably gives a good idea of the mental atmosphere in the poor parts of South London in the war and immediate post-war years. And George Melly’s Revolt Into Style was one of the first books to take British pop culture seriously, and puts Steele into a wider context of British pop, both music and art. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let’s talk a little bit about the Piltdown Man. Piltdown Man was an early example of a hominid — a missing link between the apes and humans. Its skull was discovered in 1912 in Piltdown, East Sussex, by the eminent archaeologist Charles Dawson, and for years was considered one of the most important pieces of evidence in the story of human evolution. And then, in 1953, it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax, and not even a particularly good one. Someone had just taken the jaw of an orang-utan and the top part of a human skull, and filed down the orang-utan teeth, and then stained the bones to make them look old. It was almost certainly the work of Dawson himself, who seems to have spent his entire life making fraudulent discoveries. Dawson had died decades earlier, and the full extent of his fraud wasn’t even confirmed until 2003. Sometimes researching the history of rock and roll can be a lot like that. You can find a story repeated in numerous apparently reliable books, and then find out that it’s all based on the inaccurate testimony of a single individual. The story never happened. It was just something someone made up. [Excerpt: “Rock With the Caveman”, Tommy Steele and the Steelmen] We talked a little while ago about the skiffle movement, and the first British guitar-based pop music. Today, we’re going to look at the dawn of British rock and roll. Now, there’s an important thing to note about the first wave of British rock and roll, and that is that it was, essentially, a music that had no roots in the culture. It was an imitation of American music, without any of the ties to social issues that made the American music so interesting. Britain in the 1950s was a very different place to the one it is today, or to America. It was ethnically extremely homogeneous, as the waves of immigration that have so improved the country had only just started. And while few people travelled much outside their own immediate areas, it was culturally more homogeneous as well, as Britain, unlike America, had a national media rather than a local one. In Britain, someone could become known throughout the country before they’d played their second gig, if they got the right media exposure. And so British rock and roll started out at the point that American rock and roll was only just starting to get to — a clean-cut version of the music, with little black influence or sexuality left in it, designed from the outset to be a part of mainstream showbusiness aimed at teenagers, not music for an underclass or a racial or sexual minority. Britain’s first rock and roll star put out his first record in November 1956, and by November 1957 he was appearing on the Royal Variety Show, with Mario Lanza, Bob Monkhouse, and Vera Lynn. That is, fundamentally, what early British rock and roll was. Keep that in mind for the rest of the story, as we look at how a young sailor from a dirt-poor family became Britain’s first teen idol. To tell that story, we first have to discuss the career of the Vipers Skiffle Group. That was the group’s full name, and they were just about the most important British group of the mid-fifties, even though they were never as commercially successful as some of the acts we’ve looked at. The name of the Vipers Skiffle Group was actually the first drug reference in British pop music. They took the name from the autobiography of the American jazz clarinettist Mezz Mezzrow — a man who was better known in the jazz community as a dope dealer than as a musician; so much so that “Mezz” itself became slang for marijuana, while “viper” became the name for dope smokers, as you can hear in this recording by Stuff Smith, in which he sings that he “dreamed about a reefer five foot long/Mighty Mezz but not too strong”. [Excerpt: Stuff Smith, “You’se a Viper”] So when Wally Whyton, Johnny Booker, and Jean Van Den Bosch formed a guitar trio, they chose that name, even though as it turned out none of them actually smoked dope. They just thought it sounded cool. They started performing at a cafe called the 2is (two as in the numeral, I as in the letter), and started to build up something of a reputation — to the point that Lonnie Donegan started nicking their material. Whyton had taken an old sea shanty, “Sail Away Ladies”, popularised by the country banjo player Uncle Dave Macon, and rewritten it substantially, turning it into “Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O”. Donegan copyrighted Whyton’s song as soon as he heard it, and rushed out his version of it, but the Vipers put out their own version too, and the two chased each other up the charts. Donegan’s charted higher, but the Vipers ended up at a respectable number ten: [Excerpt: The Vipers, “Don’t You Rock Me, Daddy-O”] That recording was on Parlophone records, and was produced by a young producer who normally did comedy and novelty records, named George Martin. We’ll be hearing more about him later on. But at the time we’re talking about, the Vipers had not yet gained a recording contract, and they were still playing the 2is. Occasionally, they would be joined on stage by a young acquaintance named Thomas Hicks. Hicks was a merchant seaman, and was away at sea most of the time, and so was never a full part of the group, but even though he didn’t care much for skiffle — he was a country and western fan first and foremost — he played guitar, and in Britain in 1955 and 56, if you played guitar, you played skiffle. Hicks had come from an absolutely dirt-poor background. Three of his siblings had died at cruelly young ages, and young Thomas himself had had several brushes with ill health, which meant that while he was a voracious reader he had lacked formal education. He had wanted to be a performer from a very early age, and had developed a routine that he used to do around the pubs in his early teens, in which he would mime to a record by Danny Kaye, “Knock on Wood”: [Excerpt: Danny Kaye, “Knock on Wood”] But at age fifteen he had joined the Merchant Navy. This isn’t the same thing as the Royal Navy, but rather is the group of commercial shipping companies that provide non-military shipping, and Hicks worked as wait staff on a cruise ship making regular trips to America. On an early trip, he fell in love with the music of Hank Williams, who would remain a favourite of his for the rest of his life, and he particularly loved the song “Kaw-Liga”: [Excerpt: Hank Williams, “Kaw-Liga”] Hicks replaced his old party piece of miming to Danny Kaye with a new one of singing “Kaw-Liga”, with accompaniment from anyone he could persuade to play guitar for him. Eventually one of his crewmates taught him how to play the song himself, and he started performing with pick-up groups, singing Hank Williams songs, whenever he was on shore leave in the UK. And when he couldn’t get a paid gig he’d head to the 2is and sing with the Vipers. But then came the event that changed his life. Young Tommy Hicks, with his love of country music, was delighted when on shore leave in 1955 to see an advert for a touring show based on the Grand Ole Opry, in Norfolk Virginia, where he happened to be. Of course he went along, and there he saw something that made a huge impression. One of the acts in the middle of the bill was a young man who wore horn-rimmed glasses. Tommy still remembers the details to this day. The young man came out and did a three-song set. The first song was a standard country song, but the second one was something else; something that hit like a bolt of lightning: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Peggy Sue”] That song was young Thomas Hicks’ introduction to the new music called rock and roll, and nothing would ever be the same for him ever again after seeing Buddy Holly sing “Peggy Sue”. By February 1956 he had finished working on the cruise ships, and was performing rock and roll in London, the very first British rock and roller. Except… There’s a reason why we’re covering Tommy Steele *before* Buddy Holly, the man who he claims as his inspiration. Buddy Holly *did* perform with a Grand Ole Opry tour. But it didn’t tour until May 1956, three months after Thomas Hicks quit his job on the cruise ships, and about a year after the time Tommy claims to have seen him. That tour only hit Oklahoma, which is landlocked, and didn’t visit Norfolk Virginia. According to various timelines put together by people like the Buddy Holly Centre in Lubbock Texas, Holly didn’t perform outside Lubbock until that tour, and that’s the only time he did perform outside West Texas until 1957. Also, Buddy Holly didn’t meet Peggy Sue Gerron, the woman who gave the song its name, until 1956, and the song doesn’t seem to have been written until 1957. So whatever it was that introduced young Tommy Hicks to the wonders of rock and roll, it wasn’t seeing Buddy Holly sing “Peggy Sue” in Norfolk Virginia in 1955. But that’s the story that’s in his autobiography, and that’s the story that’s in every other source I’ve seen on the subject, because they’re all just repeating what he said, on the assumption that he’d remember something like that, something which was so important in his life and future career. Remember what I said at the beginning, about rock and roll history being like dealing with Piltdown Man? Yeah. There are a lot of inaccuracies in the life story of Thomas Hicks, who became famous under the name Tommy Steele. Anything I tell you about him is based on information he put out, and that information is not always the truth, so be warned. For example, when he started his career, he claimed he’d worked his way up on the cruise ships to being a gymnastics instructor — something that the shipping federation denied to the press. You find a lot of that kind of thing when you dig into Steele’s stories. In fact, by the time Hicks started performing, there had already been at least one British rock and roll record made. He wasn’t bringing something new that he’d discovered in America at all. “Rock Around the Clock”, the Bill Haley film, had played in UK cinemas at around the time of Hicks’ supposed epiphany, and it had inspired a modern jazz drummer, Tony Crombie, to form Tony Crombie and the Rockets and record a Bill Haley soundalike called “Teach You To Rock”: [Excerpt: Tony Crombie and the Rockets, “Teach You To Rock”] However, Crombie was not teen idol material — a serious jazz drummer in his thirties, he soon went back to playing bebop, and has largely been written out of British rock history since, in favour of Tommy Steele as the first British rock and roller. Thomas Hicks the merchant seaman became Tommy Steele the pop idol as a result of a chance meeting. Hicks went to a party with a friend, and the host was a man called Lionel Bart, who was celebrating because he’d just sold his first song, to the bandleader Bill Cotton. No recording of that song seems to exist, but the lyrics to the song — a lament about the way that old-style cafes were being replaced by upscale coffee bars — are quoted in a biography of Bart: “Oh for a cup of tea, instead of a cuppuchini/What would it mean to me, just one little cup so teeny!/You ask for some char and they reckon you’re barmy/Ask for a banger, they’ll give you salami/Oh for the liquid they served in the Army/Just a cup of tea!” Heartrending stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. But Bart was proud of the twenty-five guineas the song had earned him, and so he was having a party. Bart was at the centre of a Bohemian crowd in Soho, and the party was held at a squat where Bart, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, spent most of his time. At that squat at various times around this period lived, among others, the playwright John Antrobus, the actor Shirley Eaton, who would later become famous as the woman painted gold in the beginning of Goldfinger, and the great folk guitarist Davey Graham, who would later become famous for his instrumental, “Angi”: [Excerpt: Davey Graham, “Angi”] We’ll hear more about Graham in future episodes. Another inhabitant of the squat was Mike Pratt, a guitarist and pianist who would later turn to acting and become famous as Jeff Randall in the fantasy detective series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Hicks, Bart, and Pratt started collaborating on songs together — Hicks would bring in a basic idea, and then Bart would write the lyrics and Pratt the music. They also performed as The Cavemen, though Bart soon tired of playing washboard and stuck to writing. The Cavemen became a floating group of musicians, centred around Hicks and Pratt, and with various Vipers and other skifflers pulled in as and when they were available. The various skiffle musicians looked down on Hicks, because of his tendency to want to play “Heartbreak Hotel” or “Blue Suede Shoes” rather than “Bring a Little Water Sylvie” or “Rock Island Line”, but a gig was a gig, and they had to admit that Hicks seemed to go down well with the young women in the audience. Two minor music industry people, Bill Varley and Roy Tuvey, agreed to manage Hicks, but they decided that they needed someone involved who would be able to publicise Hicks, so they invited John Kennedy, a PR man from New Zealand, to come to the 2is to see him. Hicks wasn’t actually playing the 2is the night in question – it was the Vipers, who were just on the verge of getting signed and recording their first single: [Excerpt: The Vipers Skiffle Group, “Ain’t You Glad?”] While Hicks wasn’t scheduled to play, at the request of Varley and Tuvey he jumped on stage when the Vipers took a break, and sang a song that he, Bart, and Pratt had written, called “Rock With the Caveman”. Kennedy was impressed. He was impressed enough, in fact, that he brought in a friend, Larry Parnes, who would go on to become the most important manager in British rock and roll in the fifties and early sixties. Kennedy, Parnes, and Hicks cut Varley and Tuvey out altogether — to the extent that neither of them are even mentioned in the version of this story in Tommy Steele’s autobiography. Hicks was renamed Tommy Steele, in a nod to his paternal grandfather Thomas Stil-Hicks (the Stil in that name is spelled either Stil or Stijl, depending on which source you believe) and Parnes would go on to name a whole host of further rock stars in a similar manner — Duffy Power, Johnny Gentle, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde. They had everything except a record contract, but that was why Kennedy was there. Kennedy rented a big house, and hired a load of showgirls, models, and sex workers to turn up for a party and bring their boyfriends. They were to dress nicely, talk in fake posh accents, and if anyone asked who they were they were to give fake double-barrelled names. He then called the press and said it was “the first high society rock and roll show” and that the girls were all debutantes. The story made the newspapers, and got Steele national attention. Steele was signed by Decca records, where Hugh Mendl, the producer of “Rock Island Line”, was so eager to sign him that he didn’t check if any studios were free for his audition, and so Britain’s first homegrown rock idol auditioned for his record contract in the gents’ toilets. A bunch of slumming jazz musicians, including Dave Lee, the pianist with the Dankworth band, and the legendary saxophone player Ronnie Scott, were brought in to record “Rock With the Caveman”: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Rock With the Caveman”] The single went to number thirteen. Tommy Steele was now a bona fide rock and roll star, at least in the UK. The next record, “Elevator Rock”, didn’t do so well, however: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Elevator Rock”] That failed to chart, so Steele’s producers went for the well-worn trick in British record making of simply copying a US hit. Guy Mitchell had just released “Singing the Blues”: [Excerpt: Guy Mitchell, “Singing the Blues”] That was actually a cover version of a recording by Marty Robbins from earlier in the year, but Mitchell’s version was the one that became the big hit. And Steele was brought into the studio to record a soundalike version, and hopefully get it out before Mitchell’s version hit the charts. Steele’s version has an identical arrangement and sound to Mitchell’s, except that Steele sings it in an incredibly mannered Elvis impression: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Singing the Blues”] Now, to twenty-first century ears, Steele’s version is clearly inferior. But here was the birth of something particularly English — and indeed something particularly London — in rock and roll music. The overly mannered, music-hall inspired, Cockneyfied impression of an American singing style. On Steele’s subsequent tour, a nine-year old kid called David Jones, who would later change his name to Bowie, went to see him and came away inspired to become a rock and roll star. And we can hear in this performance the roots of Bowie’s own London take on Elvis, as we can also hear a style that would be taken up by Anthony Newley, Ray Davies, and many more masters of Cockney archness. I don’t think “Singing the Blues” is a particularly good record compared to Mitchell’s, but it is a prototype for something that would become good, and it deserves recognition for that. Mitchell’s version got out first, and went to the top of the charts, with Steele’s following close behind, but then for one week Mitchell’s record label had a minor distribution problem, and Steele took over the top spot, before Mitchell’s record returned to number one the next week. Tommy Steele had become the first British rock and roll singer to get to number one in the UK charts. It would be the only time he would do so, but it was enough. He was a bona fide teen idol. He was so big, in fact, that even his brother, Colin Hicks, became a minor rock and roll star himself off the back of his brother’s success: [Excerpt: Colin Hicks and the Cabin Boys, “Hollering and Screaming”] The drummer on that record, Jimmy Nicol, later had his fifteen minutes of fame when Ringo Starr got tonsilitis just before a tour of Australia, and for a few shows Nicol got to be a substitute Beatle. Very soon, Tommy Steele moved on into light entertainment. First he moved into films — starting with “The Tommy Steele Story”, a film based on his life, for which he, Bart, and Pratt wrote all twelve of the songs in a week to meet the deadline, and then he went into stage musicals. Within a year, he had given up on rock and roll altogether. But rock and roll hadn’t *quite* given up on him. While Steele was appearing in stage musicals, one was also written about him — a hurtful parody of his life, which he claimed later he’d wanted to sue over. In Expresso Bongo, a satire of the British music industry, Steele was parodied as “Bongo Herbert”, who rises to fame with no talent whatsoever. That stage musical was then rewritten for a film version, with the satire taken out of it, so it was a straight rags-to-riches story. It was made into a vehicle for another singer who had been a regular at the 2is, and whose backing band was made up of former members of the Vipers Skiffle Group: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard, “Love” (from Expresso Bongo)] We’ll talk about both Cliff Richard and the Shadows in future episodes though… Tommy Steele would go on to become something of a national treasure, working on stage with Gene Kelly and on screen with Fred Astaire, writing several books, having a minor artistic career as a sculptor, and touring constantly in pantomimes and musicals. At age eighty-two he still tours every year, performing as Scrooge in a stage musical version of A Christmas Carol. His 1950s hits remain popular enough in the UK that a compilation of them went to number twenty-two in the charts in 2009. He may not leave a large body of rock and roll work, but without him, there would be no British rock and roll industry as we know it, and the rest of this history would be very different.

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abandoned episodes

Daniel K's Let's Plays

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2018 127:17

music by The Barry Sisters, Uncle Dave Macon and The Drones.

Episode 4: Uncle Dave Macon's Collar

Recollections Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 5, 2018 8:14

For decades, Uncle Dave Macon was a star of the Grande Ole Opry. What can his collar tell us about old-time and country music cultures in the early twentieth century?

collar uncle dave uncle dave macon

OHR Presents: The Hogslop String Band

Ozark Highlands Radio

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2018 58:59

Ozark Highlands Radio is a weekly radio program that features live music and interviews recorded at Ozark Folk Center State Park’s beautiful 1,000-seat auditorium in Mountain View, Arkansas. In addition to the music, our “Feature Host” segments take listeners through the Ozark hills with historians, authors, and personalities who explore the people, stories, and history of the Ozark region. This week, high energy neo-traditional oldtime music phenomenon “The Hogslop String Band” recorded live at the Ozark Folk Center State Park. Also, interviews with this rowdy group of pickers. Mark Jones offers an archival recording of a very young Allison Krauss performing the traditional tune “Gardenia Waltz.” Writer, professor, and historian Dr. Brooks Blevins relates the history of black bears in the early Ozark region. The Hogslop String Band is a Nashville based old time string band comprised of four energetic young musicians hailing from Georgia & Tennessee. Featuring Kevin Martin on the fiddle, Gabriel Kelley on guitar, Daniel Binkley on banjo and Casey "Pickle" McBride on the washtub bass, these boys surely raise a ruckus. Upon forming as a pickup square dance band in the summer of 2009, The Hogslop String Band has since become one of the most sought after old time string bands. Known for their outrageous facial hair and a rollicking repertoire heavily based on Georgia and Middle Tennessee fiddle tunes, these boys have provided entertainment for fashion shows, political conventions and whiskey distilleries as well as countless weddings, festivals and soirees. Following in the footsteps of such country music luminaries as Uncle Dave Macon and Gid Tanner, they put on a high energy show easily appreciated by both young and old alike. Despite an unkempt appearance, their undeniable charm is as certain to steal your heart as it will your daughters! http://www.hogslopstringband.com In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator, and country music legacy Mark Jones offers an archival recording of a very young Allison Krauss performing the traditional tune “Gardenia Waltz,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives. From his series entitled “Back in the Hills,” writer, professor, and historian Dr. Brooks Blevins relates the history of black bears in the early Ozark regions of Arkansas & Missouri.

writer nashville missouri arkansas hills vault pickle ozark mcbride mountain view middle tennessee mark jones string band allison krauss uncle dave macon brooks blevins ozark folk center state park

Country Music 1937

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2016 37:58

Artists include: Gene Autry, The Chuck Wagon Gang, Uncle Dave Macon, Roy Acuff, The Carter Family, Patsy Montana and Bob Wills. Songs include: With a Banjo On My Knee, Boots and Saddles, Texas Star, One More River To Cross, I Saw Your Face In the Moon and Hello Stranger.

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Banjo Legends

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2013 41:51

Early banjo masters, including: Vess Ossman, Fred Van Epps, Harry Reser, Molly O Day, Uncle Dave Macon, Gus Cannon and Earl Scruggs. Songs include: I'm Going Home On the Morning Train, Doin My Time, Maple Leaf Rag and Can You Blame a Colored Man?.

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Leftovers # 15

Bringing Art and Technology Together - Inspire. Create. Evolve.

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 2, 2013 41:12

Records left off of previous podcasts. Music inclues: I'm a Happy Go Lucky Cowboy, K.C. Moan, Schubert's Impromptu #2, We've Got a Parrot At Our House, Whoop Em Up, Cindy and Harlem Nocturne. Performers include: Ray Noble, Eilene Joyce, Collins & Harlin, Smokey Dawson, Ben Webster and Uncle Dave Macon.

music jazz records classical leftovers performers moan ben webster ray noble uncle dave macon harlem nocturne centruy

BATT Podcast 3: Necole Pynn

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2013

batt_003_necole.mp3 batt_003_necole.oggIn this podcast, we interrogate Necole and the group on a BATT Conference, the Hierarchy of Creatitivy, mention TED's Hole in the Wall, Innovation Washing, and more. Mentioned in this podcast: Kathryn's Creativity Workshop at Tweet Speak Symiosys Real World Laboratory Arts and Cultural Alliance of Central Florida Taylor's Hierarchy of Creativity Engineering Creativity Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud Stephen Pressfield National Novel Writing Month Taylor's Hierarchy of Creativity Expressive Creativity Technical Creativity Inventive Creativity Innovative Creativity Emergent Creativity Inspiration: The 39 Steps at the 2013 Orlando Fringe Festival (Facebook) Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival Urban ReThink BarCampOrlando, May 18th, 2013 Music: Old Dam Tucker by Uncle Dave Macon Follow us: Necole Pynn @neekono Hire Kathryn on LinkedIn @KathrynLNeel Ryan Price @liberatr

The Bopst Show: Tantalizing Fragrance (Episode 231)

RVANews

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 18, 2013

Listen[audio:http://media.rvanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/25-The-Bopst-Show_-_Tantalizing-Fragrance-Epiosde-231_.mp3|titles=The Bopst Show -- Tantalizing Fragrance -- Episode 231]SubscribeiTunes: The Bopst show podcastEverything else: The Bopst show podcastDownloadThe Bopst Show -- Tantalizing Fragrance -- Episode 231— ∮∮∮ —Title: The Bopst Show: "Tantalizing Fragrance (Episode 231)"Rating: PG-13 (Adult Situations & Language) Intent: To squeeze the simpleton…Random Richmond Diversion: About 30% of health care providers in Virginia use the database to check patients' prescription drug records to determine whether they are abusing the system.Random USA Diversion: Fox is going to give you the factsRandom World Diversion: He’s going to be questioned later on by investigators, within the next couple of hoursRandom Image: I can’t breath Random Music Blog: Music For HumansRandom Bopst Show: The Bopst Show: “The Black American (Episode 164)So good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2oua7nITx4Construction Date: Sunday March 17th, 2013Equipment: Mac G5, Free Audio Editor & Recorder Software from Audacity, Frontier US-122 USB Audio/MIDI Interface, Shure SM57 MicrophonePosted: Monday March 18th, 2013Artists and Groups in order of appearance: Paul Weston & Jeffery Bearman (Bopst/Sun Ra Mix), Juggy Murray Jones, The Heroine Sheiks, Michael Eingorn, James Blood Ulmer, Uncle Dave Macon & The Fruit Jar Drinkers, Commercial Break, The Slits, Weirdos, Cal Tjader & Eddie Palmieri, FJ McMahonLiner Notes“And on a personal note – a little girl grows up in Jim Crow Birmingham – the most segregated big city in America – her parents can’t take her to a movie theater or a restaurant – but they make her believe that even though she can’t have a hamburger at the Woolworth’s lunch counter – she can be President of the United States and she becomes the Secretary of State. Yes, America has a way of making the impossible seem inevitable in retrospect. But of course it has never been inevitable – it has taken leadership, courage and an unwavering faith in our values.   Condi RiceHere are some shows I’m hustling at Balliceaux this week...NEXT NEW SHOW: 03/25/13    ***New show times***. The Bopst Show airs Sundays, 11PM and Tuesdays, 6PM (EST-USA) on KAOS Radio Austin.Until Next Time:Stay clean,BOPSTHo there, reader of RSS feeds! Do you ever want to support RVANews in a real and tangible way? Or at least pay a small penance for reading ad-free content? If so, support us on Patreon for a couple bucks a month!

Roots of Bluegrass

artist broadcast uncle dave macon

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 15, 2013 37:52

Bands that influenced the development of bluegrass music. Artists include: Bill Monroe, The Skillet Lickers, Charlie Poole, The Delmore Brothers, Uncle Dave Macon and Ernest Phipps and His Holiness Singers. Songs include: Molly and Tenbrooks, Orange Blossom Special, Buddy Won't You Roll Down the Line, Bright Tomorrow and Hand Me Down My Walking Cane.

music songs roots artists bands bluegrass 1930s bill monroe orange blossom special uncle dave macon charlie poole delmore brothers 78s ernest phipps

Broadcast on 09-Oct-2012

CiTR -- Pacific Pickin'

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 9, 2012 119:23

Artist feature is in honour of Uncle Dave Macon's birthday!

Woodsongs 585: Leroy Troy and Josh Charles��

Woodsongs Vodcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2010 60:53

LEROY TROY is known as "the Tennessee Slicker" and plays Uncle Dave Macon banjo style, otherwise known as clawhammer or frailing. He debuted on the Grand Ole Opry in 1988, dazzled a nationwide audience on the hit TV Show Hee Haw. and was the National Old-Time Banjo Champion in 1996. Troy is an old time banjo master and often plays with the Tennessee Mafia Jugband and Marty Stuart, appearing weekly on The Marty Stuart show on RFD-TV. JOSH CHARLES became a prot�g� of Dr. John at the age of 14, incorporating much of his mentor's style and philosophy into his own musicianship. Josh Charles studied music at NYU, Manhattan School of Music and with the legendary jazz pianist Barry Harris and Dr. John. He moved to New Orleans four days before Hurricane Katrina. In the spring of 2009 Josh released "Healing Time" with all the proceeds going towards rebuilding the city of New Orleans.

music new orleans nyu hurricane katrina grand ole opry manhattan school marty stuart rfd tv bluegrass music josh charles barry harris uncle dave macon

Tennessee