Podcasts about Van McCoy

It's not everyday we get a writer with the life and work experience of Charles Kipps to join our crazy podcast, let alone have a therapy session with Sadie and Jeanne.Yes, we talked about everything from Charles producing Aretha Franklin, to our struggles as writers, to Charles' decades of writing experiences ... and he's still selling screenplays to this day! You're not going to want to miss this one ... so much great advice from the legend that is Charles Kipps. (See below for Charles' full bio.)One note of correction: Charles inadvertently stated that Bill Cosby's agent helped him get his first book published, but it was actually Cosby's editor who did. Just wanted to correct that for the record.Resources from this episode: Charles Kipps website—be sure to sign up for his newsletter! Pipeline Podcasts:All OG Pipeline Artists podcasts can be found on pipelineartists.com/listen.YouTube:Watch full (read that as "most ... maybe not any" because Jeanne is tired) episodes on YouTube.Follow us on X:@recklesscr8tive@SadieKDean@jeannevb@pipelineartistsFollow us on IG:@recklesscr8tive@_thesadiedean@jeannevb_@pipelineartistsEnter Pipeline's Contests:Script Pipeline (Screenwriting, TV, First Look, Pitch Contest)Film Pipeline (Short Scripts and Short Films)Book Pipeline (Unpublished and Adaptation)*****Writer/producer Charles Kipps has won an Emmy, Peabody, Humanitas Prize, and Mystery Writers Edgar Award. Among his credits are Exiled: A Law & Order Movie and the 25th Anniversary Columbo special, A Trace of Murder. His film credits include Fat Albert: The Movie as well as independent films Frame of Mind, Zarra's Law, and Anatomy of the Tide. He is currently in preproduction with Someday Sometime, a music driven romantic comedy which he will also direct.Kipps is the author of the Conor Bard Mysteries. The first three titles are Hell's Kitchen Homicide, Crystal Death and Times Square Trouble. The novels chronicle the days and nights of Conor Bard, an NYPD Detective who, while a dedicated cop, considers himself a musician with a day job.  Kipps also wrote two nonfiction books: Cop Without A Badge, which details the exploits of a confidential informant who worked with both local and federal law enforcement; and Out of Focus, which goes behind the scenes of a turbulent year at Columbia Pictures. His new novel is Absolute Threshold, an espionage thriller. It is the first in a series about CIA psychiatrist Harvey Chatham as he combines psychology with spy craft. Kipps received numerous gold records and Broadcast Music awards while writing and producing songs for artists such as Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Melba Moore, and Temptations lead singer David Ruffin for whom he wrote the hit Walk Away From Love. He was a partner in McCoy/Kipps Productions with Van McCoy, whose recording of The Hustle topped the Billboard charts

Dancefloor Memories with Patrick Hawkins, over 60 Minutes of Disco, Soul and Funk Podcast. Classic tracks, Dancefloor fillers from, Kool and the Gang, Odyssey, Crown Heights Affair, RAH Band, Van McCoy, and new tracks from, Richard Sampson, Everis, Crossroads ft Cler, The Tune Of The Week is from Jessie Laine Powell, more classic tracks from Brian Power ft Lewis Sisters, The Jones Girls, Narada Michael Walden and George Benson (Dr Packer Reworking). Just settle down with a long drink and chill or boogie around your kitchen to tracks others would never dream of playing! Spread the word, give me a like and follow my Podcasts. Much Love Pat

Simply Retro by Tin Box pres. Flashback Friday 01. Jody Watley - Don't You Want Me 02. Vanessa Williams - The Right Stuff 03. B.G. The Prince Of Rap - This Beat Is Hot 04. C&C Music Factory - Here We Go 05. Samantha Fox - Naughty Girls (Need Love To) 06. Candi Staton - Young Hearts (Run Free) 07. Van McCoy & The Soul City Symphony - The Hustle 08. Labelle - Lady Marmalade 09. Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water 10. Blue Swede - Hooked On A Feeling 11. Annie Lennox - Walking On Broken Glass 12. Janet Jackson - All 4 U 13. Marc Anthony - I Need To Know 14. Santana ft. Rob Thomas - Smooth 15. Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel - White Lines (Don't Do It) 16. Bomb The Bass - Beat Dis 17. S-Express - Theme From S-Express 18. Harold Faltermeyer - Axel F 19. Prince - 1999 20. Michael Jackson - Thriller 21. Bon Jovi - Bad Medicine 22. Bon Jovi - Living On A Prayer MORE FLASHBACK FRIDAY ▶️ bit.ly/RA_Flashback MORE RETRO MIXTAPES ▶️ bit.ly/RA_Retro reactivateasia.com MORE INFO ON TIN BOX GROUP

National shortbread day.  Entertainment from 1990. New Mexico became 47th state, 1st boxing match was held, George and Martha Washington were married, President elect Franklin Pierce's train crashed on way to his inauguration. Todays birthdays - Tom Mix, Danny Thomas, Loretta Young, Earl Scruggs, Vic Tayback, Van McCoy, Bonnie Franklin, Kathy Sledge, Norman Reedus.  Teddy Roosevelt died.Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard   https://defleppard.com/Mama's little baby love shortnin' bread - The WigglesAnother day in paradis - Phil CollinsWho's lonely now - Highway 101Chapel of love - Dixie CupsBirthday - The BeatlesBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent   https://www.50cent.com/Foggy mountain breakdown - Earl ScruggsAlice TV themeThe Hustle - Van McCoyOne day at a time TV themeWe are family - Sister SledgeExit - In my dreams - Dokken   https://www.dokken.net/  

Disco favorites from artists like Van McCoy, Donna Summer, Meco, The Hues Corporation, Hot Chocolate, The Bee Gees, Vicki Sue Robinson and more! (R)

Chuck Da Fonk is coveting your summer holiday adventures, your travel Instagram photos, and your overall luxurious "Jetsetting" experiences. While Chuck is pretty much enjoying life at home in San Francisco, he uses songs to evoke the feeling of the "Jet Set" - from the New Order title track, to Van McCoy's 1976 disco adventure, "Jetsetting" to cuts from Laurie Anderson's new album about aviator Amelia Earhart. Plenty of new artist discoveries here to enjoy - Claude Fontaine, Nilüfer Yanya, Diogo Strausz, Nic Hanson, and Okay Kaya, Tune into new broadcasts of FSQ, Thursdays from 6 - 8 PM EST / 11 PM - 1 AM GMT. (Friday)For more info & tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/fsq///Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How to outsell your competition without the lowest prices, the best technology, or biggest marketing budget In the 1975, Van McCoy released a hit song and dance called “Do the Hustle”.  The lyrics are very simple and so is today's message.  The lyrics were literally, “Do the hustle”.  The irony is that it's also the […]

Dancefloor Memories with Patrick Hawkins, over 60 Minutes of Disco, Soul and Funk Podcast. Classic tracks, Dancefloor fillers from, Jesse Green, Van McCoy, Patrice Rushen, Total Contrast new tracks from, Brian Power ft Lucita Jules, Sargent Tucker, Shaun LaBelle ft Maysa Stokley, This weeks tune of the week is from George McCrae and Lynda Law, more classic tracks from Gloria Gaynor, Evelyn Thomas, The Four Tops, Sade and Stevie Wonder. Just settle down with a long drink and chill or boogie around your kitchen to tracks others would never dream of playing! Spread the word, give me a like and follow my Podcasts. Much Love Pat

**Chris Stewart's Soulful Etiquette Show Replay On traxfm.org. This Week Chris Featured Soul/Boogie/Reggae/Contemporary Soul From Laticia Carrington, Heatwave, Boris Gardner, One Blodd, Bob Relf, Freda Payne, Wonder 45, Mather, Van McCoy, The Impressions, Nigel Hall & DJ Harrison, Joyce Sims, The Three Degrees & More #originalpirates #soulmusic #contemporarysoul #70smusic #80smusic #disco #reggae Catch Chris Stewart's Soulful Etiquette Show Every Tuesday From 12:00PM UK Time On www.traxfm.org Listen Live Here Via The Trax FM Player: chat.traxfm.org/player/index.html Mixcloud LIVE :mixcloud.com/live/traxfm Free Trax FM Android App: play.google.com/store/apps/det...mradio.ba.a6bcb The Trax FM Facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092342916738 Trax FM Live On Hear This: hearthis.at/k8bdngt4/live Tunerr: tunerr.co/radio/Trax-FM Radio Garden: Trax FM Link: http://radio.garden/listen/trax-fm/IEnsCj55 OnLine Radio Box: onlineradiobox.com/uk/trax/?cs...cs=uk.traxRadio Radio Deck: radiodeck.com/radio/5a09e2de87...7e3370db06d44dc Radio.Net: traxfmlondon.radio.net Stream Radio : streema.com/radios/Trax_FM..The_Originals Live Online Radio: liveonlineradio.net/english/tr...ax-fm-103-3.htm**

For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted , songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the first part of a two-episode look at the song “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”. This week we take a short look at the song’s writers, Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, and the first released version by Gladys Knight and the Pips. In two weeks time we’ll take a longer look at the sixties career of the song’s most famous performer, Marvin Gaye. This episode is quite a light one. That one… won’t be. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode, on “Bend Me Shape Me” by Amen Corner. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources Mixcloud will be up with the next episode. For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown. To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. Motown: The Golden Years is another Motown encyclopaedia. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 693 tracks released on Motown singles. For information on Marvin Gaye, and his relationship with Norman Whitfield, I relied on Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz. I’ve also used information on Whitfield in  Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Troubled Lives and Enduring Soul of the Temptations by Mark Ribowsky, I’ve also referred to interviews with Whitfield and Strong archived at rocksbackpages.com , notably “The Norman Whitfield interview”, John Abbey, Blues & Soul, 1 February 1977 For information about Gladys Knight, I’ve used her autobiography. The best collection of Gladys Knight and the Pips’ music is this 3-CD set, but the best way to hear Motown hits is in the context of other Motown hits. This five-CD box set contains the first five in the Motown Chartbusters series of British compilations. The Pips’ version of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” is on disc 2, while Marvin Gaye’s is on disc 3, which is famously generally considered one of the best single-disc various artists compilations ever. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, a brief note — this episode contains some brief mentions of miscarriage and drug abuse. The history of modern music would be immeasurably different had it not been for one car breakdown. Norman Whitfield spent the first fifteen years of his life in New York, never leaving the city, until his grandmother died. She’d lived in LA, and that was where the funeral was held, and so the Whitfield family got into a car and drove right across the whole continent — two thousand five hundred miles — to attend the old lady’s funeral. And then after the funeral, they turned round and started to drive home again. But they only got as far as Detroit when the car, understandably, gave up the ghost.  Luckily, like many Black families, they had family in Detroit, and Norman’s aunt was not only willing to put the family up for a while, but her husband was able to give Norman’s father a job in his drug store while he saved up enough money to pay for the car to be fixed. But as it happened, the family liked Detroit, and they never did get around to driving back home to New York. Young Norman in particular took to the city’s nightlife, and soon as well as going to school he was working an evening job at a petrol station — but that was only to supplement the money he made as a pool hustler. Young Norman Whitfield was never going to be the kind of person who took a day job, and so along with his pool he started hanging out with musicians — in particular with Popcorn and the Mohawks, a band led by Popcorn Wylie. [Excerpt: Popcorn and the Mohawks, “Shimmy Gully”] Popcorn and the Mohawks were a band of serious jazz musicians, many of whom, including Wylie himself, went on to be members of the Funk Brothers, the team of session players that played on Motown’s hits — though Wylie would depart Motown fairly early after a falling out with Berry Gordy. They were some of the best musicians in Detroit at the time, and Whitfield would tag along with the group and play tambourine, and sometimes other hand percussion instruments. He wasn’t a serious musician at that point, just hanging out with a bunch of people who were, who were a year or two older than him. But he was learning — one thing that everyone says about Norman Whitfield in his youth is that he was someone who would stand on the periphery of every situation, not getting involved, but soaking in everything that the people around him were doing, and learning from them. And soon, he was playing percussion on sessions. At first, this wasn’t for Motown, but everything in the Detroit music scene connected back to the Gordy family in one way or another. In this case, the label was Thelma Records, which was formed by Berry Gordy’s ex-mother-in-law and named after Gordy’s first wife, who he had recently divorced. Of all the great Motown songwriters and producers, Whitfield’s life is the least-documented, to the extent that the chronology of his early career is very vague and contradictory, and Thelma was such a small label there even seems to be some dispute about when it existed — different sources give different dates, and while Whitfield always said he worked for Thelma records, he might have actually been employed by another label owned by the same people, Ge Ge, which might have operated earlier — but by most accounts Whitfield quickly progressed from session tambourine player to songwriter. According to an article on Whitfield from 1977, the first record of one of his songs was “Alone” by Tommy Storm on Thelma Records, but that record seems not to exist — however, some people on a soul message board, discussing this a few years ago, found an interview with a member of a group called The Fabulous Peps which also featured Storm, saying that their record on Ge Ge Records, “This Love I Have For You”, is a rewrite of that song by Don Davis, Thelma’s head of A&R, though the credit on the label for that is just to Davis and Ron Abner, another member of the group: [Excerpt: The Fabulous Peps, “This Love I Have For You”] So that might, or might not, be the first Norman Whitfield song ever to be released. The other song often credited as Whitfield’s first released song is “Answer Me” by Richard Street and the Distants — Street was another member of the Fabulous Peps, but we’ve encountered him and the Distants before when talking about the Temptations — the Distants were the group that Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Al Bryant had been in before forming the Temptations — and indeed Street would much later rejoin his old bandmates in the Temptations, when Whitfield was producing for them. Unlike the Fabulous Peps track, this one was clearly credited to N. Whitfield, so whatever happened with the Storm track, this is almost certainly Whitfield’s first official credit as a songwriter: [Excerpt: Richard Street and the Distants, “Answer Me”] He was soon writing songs for a lot of small labels — most of which appear to have been recorded by the Thelma team and then licensed out — like “I’ve Gotten Over You” by the Sonnettes: [Excerpt: The Sonnettes, “I’ve Gotten Over You”] That was on KO Records, distributed by Scepter, and was a minor local hit — enough to finally bring Whitfield to the attention of Berry Gordy. According to many sources, Whitfield had been hanging around Hitsville for months trying to get a job with the label, but as he told the story in 1977 “Berry Gordy had sent Mickey Stevenson over to see me about signing with the company as an exclusive in-house writer and producer. The first act I was assigned to was Marvin Gaye and he had just started to become popular.” That’s not quite how the story went. According to everyone else, he was constantly hanging around Hitsville, getting himself into sessions and just watching them, and pestering people to let him get involved. Rather than being employed as a writer and producer, he was actually given a job in Motown’s quality control department for fifteen dollars a week, listening to potential records and seeing which ones he thought were hits, and rating them before they went to the regular department meetings for feedback from the truly important people. But he was also allowed to write songs. His first songwriting credit on a Motown record wasn’t Marvin Gaye, as Whitfield would later tell the story, but was in fact for the far less prestigious Mickey Woods — possibly the single least-known artist of Motown’s early years. Woods was a white teenager, the first white male solo artist signed to Motown, who released two novelty teen-pop singles. Whitfield’s first Motown song was the B-side to Woods’ second single, a knock-off of Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” called “They Call Me Cupid”, co-written with Berry Gordy and Brian Holland: [Excerpt: Mickey Woods, “They Call Me Cupid”] Unsurprisingly that didn’t set the world on fire, and Whitfield didn’t get another Motown label credit for thirteen months (though some of his songs for Thelma may have come out in this period). When he did, it was as co-writer with Mickey Stevenson — and, for the first time, sole producer — of the first single for a new singer, Kim Weston: [Excerpt: Kim Weston, “It Should Have Been Me”] As it turned out, that wasn’t a hit, but the flip-side, “Love Me All The Way”, co-written by Stevenson (who was also Weston’s husband) and Barney Ales, did become a minor hit, making the R&B top thirty. After that, Whitfield was on his way. It was only a month later that he wrote his first song for the Temptations, a B-side, “The Further You Look, The Less You See”: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “The Further You Look, The Less You See”] That was co-written with Smokey Robinson, and as we heard in the episode on “My Girl”, both Robinson and Whitfield vied with each other for the job of Temptations writer and producer. As we also heard in that episode, Robinson got the majority of the group’s singles for the next couple of years, but Whitfield would eventually take over from him. Whitfield’s work with the Temptations is probably his most important work as a writer and producer, and the Temptations story is intertwined deeply with this one, but for the most part I’m going to save discussion of Whitfield’s work with the group until we get to 1972, so bear with me if I seem to skim over that — and if I repeat myself in a couple of years when we get there. Whitfield’s first major success, though, was also the first top ten hit for Marvin Gaye, “Pride and Joy”: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “Pride and Joy”] “Pride and Joy” had actually been written and recorded before the Kim Weston and Temptations tracks, and was intended as album filler — it was written during a session by Whitfield, Gaye, and Mickey Stevenson who was also the producer of the track, and recorded in the same session as it was written, with Martha and the Vandellas on backing vocals. The intended hit from the session, “Hitch-Hike”, we covered in the previous episode on Gaye, but that was successful enough that an album, That Stubborn Kinda Fellow, was released, with “Pride and Joy” on it. A few months later Gaye recut his lead vocal, over the same backing track, and the record was released as a single, reaching number ten on the pop charts and number two R&B: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “Pride and Joy”] Whitfield had other successes as well, often as B-sides. “The Girl’s Alright With Me”, the B-side to Smokey Robinson’s hit for the Temptations “I’ll Be In Trouble”, went to number forty on the R&B chart in its own right: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “The Girl’s Alright With Me”] That was co-written with Eddie Holland, and Holland and Whitfield had a minor songwriting partnership at this time, with Holland writing lyrics and Whitfield the music. Eddie Holland even released a Holland and Whitfield collaboration himself during his brief attempt at a singing career — “I Couldn’t Cry if I Wanted To” was a song they wrote for the Temptations, who recorded it but then left it on the shelf for four years, so Holland put out his own version, again as a B-side: [Excerpt: Eddie Holland, “I Couldn’t Cry if I Wanted To”] Whitfield was very much a B-side kind of songwriter and producer at this point — but this could be to his advantage. In January 1963, around the same time as all these other tracks, he cut a filler track with the “no-hit Supremes”, “He Means the World to Me”, which was left on the shelf until they needed a B-side eighteen months later and pulled it out and released it: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “He Means the World to Me”] But the track that that was a B-side to was “Where Did Our Love Go?”, and at the time you could make a lot of money from writing the B-side to a hit that big. Indeed, at first, Whitfield made more money from “Where Did Our Love Go?” than Holland, Dozier, or Holland, because he got a hundred percent of the songwriters’ share for his side of the record, while they had to split their share three ways. Slowly Whitfield moved from being a B-side writer to being an A-side writer. With Eddie Holland he was given a chance at a Temptations A-side for the first time, with “Girl, (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)”: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)”] He also wrote for Jimmy Ruffin, but in 1964 it was with girl groups that Whitfield was doing his best work. With Mickey Stevenson he wrote “Needle in a Haystack” for the Velvettes: [Excerpt: The Velvettes, “Needle in a Haystack”] He wrote their classic followup “He Was Really Sayin' Somethin’” with Stevenson and Eddie Holland, and with Holland he also wrote “Too Many Fish in the Sea” for the Marvelettes: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, “Too Many Fish In The Sea”] By late 1964, Whitfield wasn’t quite in the first rank of Motown songwriter-producers with Holland-Dozier-Holland and Smokey Robinson, but he was in the upper part of the second tier with Mickey Stevenson and Clarence Paul. And by early 1966, as we saw in the episode on “My Girl”, he had achieved what he’d wanted for four years, and become the Temptations’ primary writer and producer. As I said, we’re going to look at Whitfield’s time working with the Temptations later, but in 1966 and 67 they were the act he was most associated with, and in particular, he collaborated with Eddie Holland on three top ten hits for the group in 1966. But as we discussed in the episode on “I Can’t Help Myself”, Holland’s collaborations with Whitfield eventually caused problems for Holland with his other collaborators, when he won the BMI award for writing the most hit songs, depriving his brother and Lamont Dozier of their share of the award because his outside collaborations put him ahead of them. While Whitfield *could* write songs by himself, and had in the past, he was at his best as a collaborator — as well as his writing partnership with Eddie Holland he’d written with Mickey Stevenson, Marvin Gaye, and Janie Bradford. And so when Holland told him he was no longer able to work together, Whitfield started looking for someone else who could write lyrics for him, and he soon found someone: [Excerpt: Barrett Strong, “Money”] Barrett Strong had, of course, been the very first Motown act to have a major national hit, with “Money”, but as we discussed in the episode on that song he had been unable to have a follow-up hit, and had actually gone back to working on an assembly line for a while. But when you’ve had a hit as big as “Money”, working on an assembly line loses what little lustre it has, and Strong soon took himself off to New York and started hanging around the Brill Building, where he hooked up with Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, the writers of such hits as “Save the Last Dance for Me”, “Viva Las Vegas”, “Sweets for My Sweet”, and “A Teenager in Love”.  Pomus and Shuman, according to Strong, signed him to a management contract, and they got him signed to Atlantic’s subsidiary Atco, where he recorded one single, “Seven Sins”, written and produced by the team: [Excerpt: Barrett Strong, “Seven Sins”] That was a flop, and Strong was dropped by the label. He bounced around a few cities before ending up in Chicago, where he signed to VeeJay Records and put out one more single as a performer, “Make Up Your Mind”, which also went nowhere: [Excerpt: Barrett Strong, “Make Up Your Mind”] Strong had co-written that, and as his performing career was now definitively over, he decided to move into songwriting as his main job. He co-wrote “Stay in My Corner” for the Dells, which was a top thirty R&B hit for them on VeeJay in 1965 and in a remade version in 1968 became a number one R&B hit and top ten pop hit for them: [Excerpt: The Dells, “Stay in My Corner”] And on his own he wrote another top thirty R&B hit, “This Heart of Mine”, for the Artistics: [Excerpt: The Artistics, “This Heart of Mine”] He wrote several other songs that had some minor success in 1965 and 66, before moving back to Detroit and hooking up again with his old label, this time coming to them as a songwriter with a track record rather than a one-hit wonder singer. As Strong put it “They were doing my style of music then, they were doing something a little different when I left, but they were doing the more soulful, R&B-style stuff, so I thought I had a place there. So I had an idea I thought I could take back and see if they could do something with it.” That idea was the first song he wrote under his new contract, and it was co-written with Norman Whitfield. It’s difficult to know how Whitfield and Strong started writing together, or much about their writing partnership, even though it was one of the most successful songwriting teams of the era, because neither man was interviewed in any great depth, and there’s almost no long-form writing on either of them. What does seem to have been the case is that both men had been aware of each other in the late fifties, when Strong was a budding R&B star and Whitfield merely a teenager hanging round watching the cool kids. The two may even have written together before — in an example of how the chronology for both Whitfield and Strong seems to make no sense, Whitfield had cowritten a song with Marvin Gaye, “Wherever I Lay My Hat, That’s My Home”, in 1962 — when Strong was supposedly away from Motown — and it had been included as an album track on the That Stubborn Kinda Fellow album: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “Wherever I Lay My Hat, That’s My Home”] The writing on that was originally credited just to Whitfield and Gaye on the labels, but it is now credited to Whitfield, Gaye, and Strong, including with BMI. Similarly Gaye’s 1965 album track “Me and My Lonely Room” — recorded in 1963 but held back – was initially credited to Whitfield alone but is now credited to Whitfield and Strong, in a strange inverse of the way “Money” initially had Strong’s credit but it was later removed. But whether this was an administrative decision made later, or whether Strong had been moonlighting for Motown uncredited in 1962 and collaborated with Whitfield, they hadn’t been a formal writing team in the way Whitfield and Holland had been, and both later seemed to date their collaboration proper as starting in 1966 when Strong returned to Motown — and understandably. The two songs they’d written earlier – if indeed they had – had been album filler, but between 1967 when the first of their new collaborations came out and 1972 when they split up, they wrote twenty-three top forty hits together. Theirs seems to have been a purely business relationship — in the few interviews with Strong he talks about Whitfield as someone he was friendly with, but Whitfield’s comments on Strong seem always to be the kind of very careful comments one would make about someone for whom one has a great deal of professional respect, a great deal of personal dislike, but absolutely no wish to air the dirty laundry behind that dislike, or to burn bridges that don’t need burning. Either way, Whitfield was in need of a songwriting partner when Barrett Strong walked into a Motown rehearsal room, and recognised that Strong’s talents were complementary to his. So he told Strong, straight out, “I’ve had quite a few hit records already. If you write with me, I can guarantee you you’ll make at least a hundred thousand dollars a year” — though he went on to emphasise that that wasn’t a guarantee-guarantee, and would depend on Strong putting the work in. Strong agreed, and the first idea he brought in for his new team earned both of them more than that hundred thousand dollars by itself. Strong had been struck by the common phrase “I heard it through the grapevine”, and started singing that line over some Ray Charles style gospel chords. Norman Whitfield knew a hook when he heard one, and quickly started to build a full song around Strong’s line. Initially, by at least some accounts, they wanted to place the song with the Isley Brothers, who had just signed to Motown and had a hit with the Holland-Dozier-Holland song “This Old Heart of Mine”: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You)”] For whatever reason, the Isley Brothers didn’t record the song, or if they did no copy of the recording has ever surfaced, though it does seem perfectly suited to their gospel-inflected style. The Isleys did, though, record another early Whitfield and Strong song, “That’s the Way Love Is”, which came out in 1967 as a flop single, but would later be covered more successfully by Marvin Gaye: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “That’s the Way Love Is”] Instead, the song was first recorded by the Miracles. And here the story becomes somewhat murky. We have a recording by the Miracles, released on an album two years later, but some have suggested that that version isn’t the same recording they made in 1966 when Whitfield and Strong wrote the song originally: [Excerpt: Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] It certainly sounds to my ears like that is probably the version of the song the group recorded in 66 — it sounds, frankly, like a demo for the later, more famous version. All the main elements are there — notably the main Ray Charles style hook played simultaneously on Hammond organ and electric piano, and the almost skanking rhythm guitar stabs — but Smokey Robinson’s vocal isn’t *quite* passionate enough, the tempo is slightly off, and the drums don’t have the same cavernous rack tom sound that they have in the more famous version. If you weren’t familiar with the eventual hit, it would sound like a classic Motown track, but as it is it’s missing something… [Excerpt: Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] According to at least some sources, that was presented to the quality control team — the team in which Whitfield had started his career, as a potential single, but they dismissed it. It wasn’t a hit, and Berry Gordy said it was one of the worst songs he’d ever heard. But Whitfield knew the song was a hit, and so he went back into the studio and cut a new backing track: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine (backing track only)”] (Incidentally, no official release of the instrumental backing track for “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” exists, and I had to put that one together myself by taking the isolated parts someone had uploaded to youtube and synching them back together in editing software, so if there are some microsecond-level discrepancies between the instruments there, that’s on me, not on the Funk Brothers.) That track was originally intended for the Temptations, with whom Whitfield was making a series of hits at the time, but they never recorded it at the time. Whitfield did produce a version for them as an album track a couple of years later though, so we have an idea how they might have taken the song vocally — though by then David Ruffin had been replaced in the group by Dennis Edwards: [Excerpt: The Temptations, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] But instead of giving the song to the Temptations, Whitfield kept it back for Marvin Gaye, the singer with whom he’d had his first big breakthrough hit and for whom his two previous collaborations with Strong – if collaborations they were – had been written. Gaye and Whitfield didn’t get on very well — indeed, it seems that Whitfield didn’t get on very well with *anyone* — and Gaye would later complain about the occasions when Whitfield produced his records, saying “Norman and I came within a fraction of an inch of fighting. He thought I was a prick because I wasn't about to be intimidated by him. We clashed. He made me sing in keys much higher than I was used to. He had me reaching for notes that caused my throat veins to bulge.” But Gaye sang the song fantastically, and Whitfield was absolutely certain they had a sure-fire hit: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] But once again the quality control department refused to release the track. Indeed, it was Berry Gordy personally who decided, against the wishes of most of the department by all accounts, that instead of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” Gaye’s next single should be a Holland-Dozier-Holland track, “Your Unchanging Love”, a soundalike rewrite of their earlier hit for him, “How Sweet It Is”. “Your Unchanging Love” made the top thirty, but was hardly a massive success. Gordy has later claimed that he always liked “Grapevine” but just thought it was a bit too experimental for Gaye’s image at the time, but reports from others who were there say that what Gordy actually said was “it sucks”. So “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” was left on the shelf, and the first fruit of the new Whitfield/Strong team to actually get released was “Gonna Give Her All the Love I’ve Got”, written for Jimmy Ruffin, the brother of Temptations lead singer David, who had had one big hit, “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” and one medium one, “I’ve Passed This Way Before”, in 1966. Released in 1967, “Gonna Give Her All the Love I’ve Got” became Ruffin’s third and final hit, making number 29: [Excerpt: Jimmy Ruffin, “Gonna Give Her All the Love I’ve Got”] But Whitfield was still certain that “Grapevine” could be a hit. And then in 1967, a few months after he’d shelved Gaye’s version, came the record that changed everything in soul: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, “Respect”] Whitfield was astounded by that record, but also became determined he was going to “out-funk Aretha”, and “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” was going to be the way to do it. And he knew someone who thought she could do just that. Gladys Knight never got on well with Aretha Franklin. According to Knight’s autobiography this was one-sided on Franklin’s part, and Knight was always friendly to Franklin, but it’s also notable that she says the same about several other of the great sixties female soul singers (though not all of them by any means), and there seems to be a general pattern among those singers that they felt threatened by each other and that their own position in the industry was precarious, in a way the male singers usually didn’t. But Knight claimed she always *wished* she got on well with Franklin, because the two had such similar lives. They’d both started out singing gospel as child performers before moving on to the chitlin circuit at an early age, though Knight started her singing career even younger than Franklin did. Knight was only four when she started performing solos in church, and by the age of eight she had won the two thousand dollar top prize on Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour by singing Brahms’ “Lullaby” and the Nat “King” Cole hit “Too Young”: [Excerpt: Nat “King” Cole, “Too Young”] That success inspired her, and she soon formed a vocal group with her brother Bubba, sister Brenda and their cousins William and Eleanor Guest. They named themselves the Pips in honour of a cousin whose nickname that was, and started performing at talent contests in Atlanta Chitlin’ Circuit venues. They soon got a regular gig at one of them, the Peacock, despite them all being pre-teens at the time. The Pips also started touring, and came to the attention of Maurice King, the musical director of the Flame nightclub in Detroit, who became a vocal coach for the group. King got the group signed to Brunswick records, where they released their first single, a song King had written called “Whistle My Love”: [Excerpt: The Pips, “Whistle My Love”] According to Knight that came out in 1955, when she was eleven, but most other sources have it coming out in 1958. The group’s first two singles flopped, and Brenda and Eleanor quit the group, being replaced by another cousin, Edward Patten, and an unrelated singer Langston George, leaving Knight as the only girl in the quintet. While the group weren’t successful on records, they were getting a reputation live and toured on package tours with Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and others. Knight also did some solo performances with a jazz band led by her music teacher, and started dating that band’s sax player, Jimmy Newman. The group’s next recording was much more successful. They went into a makeshift studio owned by a local club owner, Fats Hunter, and recorded what they thought was a demo, a version of the Johnny Otis song “Every Beat of My Heart”: [Excerpt: The Pips, “Every Beat of My Heart (HunTom version)”] The first they knew that Hunter had released that on his own small label was when they heard it on the radio. The record was picked up by VeeJay records, and it ended up going to number one on the R&B charts and number six on the pop charts, but they never saw any royalties from it. It brought them to the attention of another small label, Fury Records, which got them to rerecord the song, and that version *also* made the R&B top twenty and got as high as number forty-five on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Every Beat of My Heart (Fury version)”] However, just because they had a contract with Fury didn’t mean they actually got any more money, and Knight has talked about the label’s ownership being involved with gangsters. That was the first recording to be released as by “Gladys Knight and the Pips”, rather than just The Pips, and they would release a few more singles on Fury, including a second top twenty pop hit, the Don Covay song “Letter Full of Tears”: [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Letter Full of Tears”] But Knight had got married to Newman, who was by now the group’s musical director, after she fell pregnant when she was sixteen and he was twenty. However, that first pregnancy tragically ended in miscarriage, and when she became pregnant again she decided to get off the road to reduce the risk. She spent a couple of years at home, having two children, while the other Pips – minus George who left soon after – continued without her to little success. But her marriage was starting to deteriorate under pressure of Newman’s drug use — they wouldn’t officially divorce until 1972, but they were already feeling the pressure, and would split up sooner rather than later — and Knight  returned to the stage, initially as a solo artist or duetting with Jerry Butler, but soon rejoining the Pips, who by this time were based in New York and working with the choreographer Cholly Atkins to improve their stagecraft. For the next few years the Pips drifted from label to label, scoring one more top forty hit in 1964 with Van McCoy’s “Giving Up”, but generally just getting by like so many other acts on the circuit. Eventually the group ended up moving to Detroit, and hooking up with Motown, where mentors like Cholly Atkins and Maurice King were already working. At first they thought they were taking a step up, but they soon found that they were a lower tier Motown act, considered on a par with the Spinners or the Contours rather than the big acts, and according to Knight they got pulled off an early Motown package tour because Diana Ross, with whom like Franklin Knight had something of a rivalry, thought they were too good on stage and were in danger of overshadowing her. Knight says in her autobiography that they “formed a little club of our own with some of the other malcontents” with Martha Reeves, Marvin Gaye, and someone she refers to as “Ivory Joe Hunter” but I presume she means Ivy Jo Hunter (one of the big problems when dealing with R&B musicians of this era is the number of people with similar names. Ivy Jo Hunter, Joe Hunter, and Ivory Joe Hunter were all R&B musicians for whom keyboard was their primary instrument, and both Ivy Jo and just plain Joe worked for Motown at different points, but Ivory Joe never did) Norman Whitfield was also part of that group of “malcontents”, and he was also the producer of the Pips’ first few singles for Motown, and so when he was looking for someone to outdo Aretha, someone with something to prove, he turned to them. He gave the group the demo tape, and they worked out a vocal arrangement for a radically different version of the song, one inspired by “Respect”: [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”] The third time was the charm, and quality control finally agreed to release “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” as a single. Gladys Knight always claimed it had no promotion, but Norman Whitfield’s persistence had paid off — the single went to number two on the pop charts (kept off the top by “Daydream Believer”), number one on the R&B charts, and became Motown’s biggest-selling single *ever* up until that point. It also got Knight a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female — though the Grammy committee, at least, didn’t think she’d out-Aretha’d Aretha, as “Respect” won the award. And that, sadly, sort of summed up Gladys Knight and the Pips at Motown — they remained not quite the winners in everything. There’s no shame in being at number two behind a classic single like “Daydream Believer”, and certainly no shame in losing the Grammy to Aretha Franklin at her best, but until they left Motown in 1972 and started their run of hits on Buddah records, Gladys Knight and the Pips would always be in other people’s shadow. That even extended to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” when, as we’ll hear in part two of this story, Norman Whitfield’s persistence paid off, Marvin Gaye’s version got released as a single, and *that* became the biggest-selling single on Motown ever, outselling the Pips version and making it forever his song, not theirs. And as a final coda to the story of Gladys Knight and the Pips at Motown, while they were touring off the back of “Grapevine’s” success, the Pips ran into someone they vaguely knew from his time as a musician in the fifties, who was promoting a group he was managing made up of his sons. Knight thought they had something, and got in touch with Motown several times trying to get them to sign the group, but she was ignored. After a few attempts, though, Bobby Taylor of another second-tier Motown group, the Vancouvers, also saw them and got in touch with Motown, and this time they got signed. But that story wasn’t good enough for Motown, and so neither Taylor nor Knight got the credit for discovering the group. Instead when Joe Jackson’s sons’ band made their first album, it was titled Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5. But that, of course, is a story for another time…

Label: Sussex 207Year: 1970Condition: M-Price: $14.00As if the A side of this classic Van-McCoy-produced Philly Soul single weren't great enough, I don't think a lot of soul fans are aware of how delicious the uptempo B side is! So... because it's also one of my personal 5-star records, into the Classic 45s jukebox it goes!

Label: Sussex 207Year: 1970Condition: M-Last Price: $14.00. Not currently available for sale.As if the A side of this classic Van-McCoy-produced Philly Soul single weren't great enough... I don't think a lot of Soul fans are aware of how delicious the uptempo B side is! So... because it's also one of my personal 5-star records, into the Classic 45s jukebox it goes! Note: This beautiful copy has Mint labels, and the vinyl (styrene) looks almost untouched. The A side audio has a hint of wear, grading Near Mint, while the B side ("Dancing") has pristine Mint audio... a real treat!

National shortbread day. Entertainment from 2015. New Mexico became 47th state. President elect Pierce's train crashed on the way to his inauguration, 1st boxing match. Todays birthdays - Tom Mix, Loretta Young, Danny Thomas, Vic Tayback, Earl Scruggs, Bonnie Franklin, Van McCoy, Kathy Sledge, Norman Reedus. Teddy Roosevelt died.

Ce podcast est dédié à Helloween C'est un oiseau !C'est un super héros !C'est un dessinateur de bande dessinée !C'est un Disney !C'est un James Bond ! Non c'est (roulement de tambour) … Condorman !!! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGRdtUTJO6A)El Condor Pacha (oui,oui on parle de Dany De Galaxie Pop lepodcastdedany@gmail.com ) ayant décidé qu'il avait mieux à faire que de participer à “Entre ! Geek, le podcast des oeuvres oubliées mais pas oubliables™”, CausmicBeast (oui je parle de moi à la 3ème personne, jugez moi) a décidé de recruter une fine équipe de podcasteurs pour parler de ce film culte de 1981● Faye Fanel (@Fayefanel sur x) venu du James et faye universe (https://jamesetfaye.fr/ )● Chris et Holly (@ChrisYukigami & @sakadomc sur X) le duo légendaire du podcast Baburu https://podcloud.fr/podcast/baburu● XP78, bible cinématographique (@XP78_ sur X) qui officie sur “On a supprimé les rushs https://jamesetfaye.fr/category/les-podcasts/oaslr/ depuis peu et monteur devant l'éternel (sur l'apéro ciné notamment) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEu3tnlz6X4&list=PLvrppQdon8UX0w0Q36xOSqG8jD2NMZhEK&pp=iAQB Il fallait bien ça pour traiter de ce gros oiseau, tout à la fois film d'agent secret et de super héros https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9AI7Y772ic au menu● L'époque étrange de Disney fin 70 début 80 : Le Trou Noir (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Trou_noir) et sa bande annonce (https://youtu.be/hKYFa9FHEU4?si=VhsGSTWLwekigfZ6)La foire des ténèbres (https://youtu.be/kiVdS7ldGEs?si=wQKrLYie9ETGkLBQ) , la Créature du lac de feu (https://youtu.be/kiVdS7ldGEs?si=wQKrLYie9ETGkLBQ)● Le film Birdman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJfLoE6hanc)● Condorman a t'il un lien avec un Darwin Award (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards) de 1912 où Franz Reichelt (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Reichelt) , inventeur malheureux du manteau parachute, fit la démonstration que comme pour une bonne blague, l'important est la chute.● Le film Kick ass cité comme héritage de la scène emblématique du film Kick Ass (https://youtu.be/XqiykYydywk?si=VXWdxIzWSZbvSu2e) … tant va le superhéros, qu'à la fin, il s'écrase !● Le comics d'un type lambda qui se retrouve sans le vouloir espion : Spy Superb (https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/3010-213/Spy-Superb-1) de Matt Kindt, evidemment il n'est pas scénariste de comics, CausmicBeast avait encore bu.● Les tribulations des auteurs d'espionnages et de leur oeuvres Jean Bruce (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bruce) , papa d'Oss 117, Ian Fleming (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming) , papa de l'espion que tout le monde aimait, Tom Clancy (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy) , papa de Jack “je commence à la CIA, et j'finis président des Etats Unis” Ryan● Pour ceux qui veulent aller plus loin sur Robert Sheckley (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sheckley) , le papa du Prix du Danger (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Prix_du_danger_(nouvelle)) et de son adaptation en 1983 (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Prix_du_danger_(film)) par Yves Boisset (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Boisset) , bizarrement copié par un certain Richard Bachman/Stéphane Roi (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman_(pseudonyme)) …pas taper Faye, pas taper… avec The Governator (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger) en acteur titre (ps : aucun outil Lidl (https://youtu.be/QpJ6Rs44yhc?si=zpGU2B9Cg50nB4b4) n'a été blessé dans l'enregistrement de cette émission). Sans oublier le Temps des retrouvailles (https://argyll.fr/produit/le-temps-des-retrouvailles/) , recueil de nouvelles, disponible dans toute bonne médiathèque ou chez son éditeur (https://argyll.fr/produit/le-temps-des-retrouvailles/) . L'Espion du Dimanche (https://www.livraddict.com/biblio/livre/l-espion-du-dimanche.html) , à l'origine du début, du quart du millième du synopsis de Condorman, étant à ce jour épuisé et non réédité, vous pouvez toujours essayer de trouver ce roman sur les bords de Seine, ou dans les réserves des médiathèques. De même que L'homme Minimum (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoires_de_robots#L'Homme_minimum) , qu'avec un peu de chance, vous pouvez trouver dans ces éditions (https://www.noosfere.org/livres/EditionsLivre.asp?ID_ItemSommaire=22178) .● L'artiste et son modèle, avec Jerry Lewis et Dean Martin (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistes_et_Mod%C3%A8les_(film,_1955))● L'humour des ZAZ, y a t'il un flic(...) et Top Secret (https://www.senscritique.com/liste/top_10_zaz_zucker_abrahams_zucker/57362)● Barbara Carrera dans Jamais plus Jamais… ou Comment Sean Connery se prend une rincée (https://youtu.be/RQyyj3JQPJ8?si=WKNtN8Tz19ikPgNk)● Le Comicsphère (https://comicsphere.fr/episodes/silver-surfer-judgment-day) pointé par XP78 au sujet de John Buscema (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Buscema)● Tout, tout, vous saurez tout sur Oliver Reed (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Reed), Les diables (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Diables_(film,_1971)) les Trois Mousquetaires (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Trois_Mousquetaires_(film,_1973)) et On l'appelait Milady (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_l%27appelait_Milady) , ses frasques (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001657/) et son rôle dans Gladiator (https://youtu.be/veTSSe-ysIk?si=BOlvfFRQqBa8vYY2) … L'accès d'alcool est dangereux pour la santé !!!● Dana Elcar (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Elcar) le patron chauve le plus connu du petit écran et Max la Menace et sa bombe deshabillante (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFa8mWrva4I&pp=ygUTZ2V0IHNtYXJ0IG51ZGUgYm9tYg%3D%3D)● Pierre Arditi et ses doublages (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2L6O6y4O_I&pp=ygUXcGVpZXJyZSBhcmRpdGkgZG91YmxhZ2U%3D) mais aussi Philippe Dumat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1yTWI02H0&pp=ygUOUGhpbGlwcGVfRHVtYXQ%3D) mais aussi à la demande de XP78 cette émission de RFI sur le monde du doublage (https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rfi.fr%2Ffr%2Fpodcasts%2Ftous-les-cin%C3%A9mas-du-monde%2F20230617-%C3%A9mission-sur-le-doublage-des-films-%C3%A9trangers%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR3HhwhmGQ1HBXEptKN8g5esj9c4lUDuyNus89Ri0WivwUIW5PHy8v7Yp1o&h=AT051Tnz67NBQsvHNVXnTthPCujWcbOzZ8YRc8mcQJuEOImLpXKuudqc-F2rX4ZuzSJhOzV0w6JZIqZkjI6SqCp8p4leTFTx3Hmwqr34Nsw5Q2pAkoAyuuZpFGyKxjPa72E)● Au chapitre des films français improbables, Pétrole Pétrole (1981) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWmHMzg3t3s&t=1881s&pp=ygUccGV0cm9sZSBwZXRyb2xlIGZpbG0gY29tcGxldA%3D%3D) où Bernard Blier joue un émir du pétrole (si si ça existe), attention mauvais goût !!!● L'acteur français que tout le monde a vu et a oublié Vernon Dobtcheff (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0229943/)● Le petit moment Wall-E et hello Dolly (https://youtu.be/XU3VihMVdTU?si=w2CsN79vUkRheg5K) par Michael Crawford (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crawford)● Tintin et le lac au requin (https://youtu.be/XU3VihMVdTU?si=w2CsN79vUkRheg5K) contre Condorman : inspiration ?● Si vous avez envie de visiter un des lieux du tournage du film mais aussi celui de la Scoumoune (1973) avec Bebel, le village de Gillette (https://www.nicematin.com/vie-locale/belmondo-a-paye-la-renovation-de-l-eglise-de-ce-village-azureen-apres-un-tournage-des-habitants-veulent-l-honorer-883417) vous attend● Le chef borgne des tueurs russes avec le grand Jean Pierre Kalfon qui a l'oeil et une filmographie sulfureuse, pour lequel vous pourriez avoir le déclic en 1984 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc7ngoGIx7g) (j'dis ça, j'dis rien !).● Le moment de bravoure de la scène de poursuite en porsches noires (https://youtu.be/Z18LpIEA5ys?si=vdZk95ibgYnrgWgz) est elle une inspiration de Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon ? (https://youtu.be/av5pqJaIeCk?si=kQ5_lWivAGcwtKPq)● D'ailleurs nous vous conseillons de revoir la scène de la Condor Mobile contre les grosses porsches noires avec la voix de Faye en fond !!! (si si) et chorégraphié par le grand Rémi Julienne dont voici ci joint un florilège non exhaustif (https://youtu.be/XwjP5-16PP0?si=baPwrt5GISQTDCQc)● En parlant de voitures qui se coupent en deux, voici un podcast qui se plie en quatre pour vous parler de Diabolik et des fumetti ! ) (https://galaxie-pop-la-constellation.lepodcast.fr/entre-geek-5-danger-diabolik)● Suite à une blague nulle de l'hôte du podcast, êtes vous Millenium Condor ou Faucon Millenium (pas taper, pas taper) (https://youtu.be/rD2QiBo7Uxc?si=JBql91VEnIl0vR0j)● Dans le même genre de question incongrues, vous êtes plutôt Louis de Funès (https://youtu.be/8ZVocWZQUB0?si=ktmRtTvK2R_bsmFc) ou Tom Cruise (https://youtu.be/_jfJ9srHCBg?si=9bh3S2vJ_fsSzlrm)● Rendons hommage aux deux mannequins du film Condorman qui font une chute au Ski (merci nanarland de rendre hommage à cette profession dangereuse (https://www.nanarland.com/videos/mannequins?orderBy=alpha&orderWay=asc#liste-videos) .● Si tu vas à Monte Carlo, va y en Coccinelle, hein Choupette (https://youtu.be/EKKxknB-uV8?si=ecfNpdYMAbFwtXMS) , en écoutant Under the Cherry Moon de Prince !!! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwkqXsWPY1k&pp=ygUVdW5kZXIgdGhlIGNoZXJyeSBtb29u)● Si vous aimez “manger des chips, tu entends”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OXAFqcQAfo&pp=ygUVbGEgY2xhc3NlIGFtw6lyaWNhaW5l) , n'hésitez pas à avoir la Classe Américaine ! https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Classe_am%C3%A9ricaine) … mais vous pouvez aussi, pleurer toute les larmes de votre corps en jouant au basket avec Air Bud (https://youtu.be/0cOrwS3Xihw?si=pHagYVOkqW4o8k_E)● Puisqu'on est entre nous, nous vous donnons une partie des secrets de fabrication du Vol de Condorman, mais chuuuuuuuut !!!!! (https://youtu.be/k3xiSiNq59o?si=zVPu-C2BUQtjaHOh)● Mettez votre casque, votre gilet de sauvetage, c'est la dernière scène d'action du film Pew Pew Pew Boum Boum Boum (https://youtu.be/d1dFIn06tyY?si=NmEAKDmPmgsOc-qG) mais avant faites un détour Fashion Faux Pas dans “Hors d'atteinte” 1998 (https://youtu.be/e2MCNKwrKE8?si=GfnvVNmCeIjnn_m4)● Si vous n'aimez pas supprimer les Russes, nous vous rappelons que vous pouvez toutefois écouter “ On a supprimé les rushs” avec entre autres Faye et XP78. (https://jamesetfaye.fr/category/les-podcasts/oaslr/)● Dernières minutes : Arrêtez tout ! le comics Condorman https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=440201 , ainsi que sa novélisation (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1604243.Condorman) , mais aussi ses liens avec Toy Story (https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Condorman) Attendez !!! Vous n'allez pas partir comme ça : Les actualités de nos invités Chris & Holly : un épisode spécial sur Mitsuko Komuro mais aussi toute une année 12 albums, 12 mois sur Baburu https://galaxie-pop-la-constellation.lepodcast.fr/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=baburu au sujet de Tm NetWork (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM_Network) XP78 : On a supprimé les rushs (https://jamesetfaye.fr/category/les-podcasts/oaslr/) Faye Fanel : tout le James et Faye Universe (https://jamesetfaye.fr/) mais aussi et surtout les livres de minuit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYrNt3lQskI) , sans oublier The Masters of Horror Show (https://www.vodio.fr/smartlink.php?id=422) de notre ami Aurélien https://linktr.ee/t31_prod (celui qui aime Les Voyageurs de l'Infini… dont nous avons incidemment fait un podcast -sifflote- (https://galaxie-pop-la-constellation.lepodcast.fr/entre-geek-3-avec-aurelien-de-t31-prod-slash-les-voyageurs-de-linfini) . Faye écrit également pour le site Sueurs Froides (http://sueursfroides.net/) Vous pouvez également écouter un VHS & Canapé (c'est à louer près de chez vous) à cette adresse (https://podcloud.fr/podcast/vhsetcanape/episode/cest-a-louer-pres-de-chez-vous-condorman-2) et XP78 vous conseille de visionner Mad Will, un youtubeur au sujet de Condorman (https://youtu.be/wid5jgvEwCY?si=kSrQ5ZVswPBDN2PL) Les musiques de fin sont● Henri Mancini : Condorman End Title● They Might Be Giants : Istanbul (Not Constantinople) Merci à ma voisine de canapé™ pour les voix additionnelles et Van McCoy pour la petite musique des messages de service (un remède au blues, bien meilleur que le prozac) https://youtu.be/SFzMs2SN--s?si=YxvD9FAZBbLeYvUZ Aucun Dany de chez Galaxie Pop n'a été emprisonné sans son consentement

Welcome to Funky Pearls Radio, where today we're celebrating the life and music of Van McCoy, a true maestro of soul, disco, and R and B.  Born Van Allen Clinton McCoy on January 6, 1940, in Washington, D.C., Van's journey into music began early. A child prodigy on the piano and a singer in the Metropolitan Baptist Church choir, Van's love for music was evident from a young age.  By 12, he was already performing in local shows and writing his own material. Together with his brother Norman Jr. and friends, Van formed the doo-wop group the Starlighters in high school.  Their single 'The Birdland' in 1956 marked their entry into professional music, leading to tours and more recordings. However, the group disbanded as members pursued different paths.  Van's musical aspirations continued as he attended Howard University, but he left academia behind to dive fully into the music world. Moving to Philadelphia, he founded Rock'n Records and released his first single 'Mr. DJ' in 1961.  This caught the attention of Scepter Records, where Van became a staff writer and A&R representative.  The '60s saw Van McCoy's rise as a songwriter, crafting hits like 'Stop the Music' for the Shirelles and working with artists like Chuck Jackson.  His collaborations with various labels and artists like Gladys Knight & The Pips and Chris Bartley highlighted his versatility and keen ear for hits. Van's success continued through the '70s.  He wrote for and produced the Stylistics and released his own albums, including the influential 'Soul Improvisations' in 1972.  But it was in 1975 that Van truly made his mark on the music world with the release of 'Disco Baby' and the global smash hit 'The Hustle'. This song not only topped charts but also won a Grammy, cementing Van's place in disco history.  Despite the fame brought by 'The Hustle', Van remained a versatile musician, working across genres and with various artists.  He wrote and produced for David Ruffin, including the hit 'Walk Away from Love', and worked on projects with Aretha Franklin, Linda Clifford, and Stacy Lattisaw. Tragically, Van McCoy's life and meteoric career were cut short when he died of a heart attack on July 6, 1979, just shy of his 40th birthday.  His passing left a void in the music world, but his legacy lives on. With around 700 song copyrights to his name, Van McCoy's influence stretches far and wide, touching countless artists and music lovers.  As we remember Van McCoy on Funky Pearls Radio, we celebrate not just the hits and the fame, but the spirit of a man whose passion for music knew no bounds. From the soulful harmonies of doo-wop to the vibrant beats of disco, Van McCoy was a true innovator, a musical genius whose melodies continue to resonate in our hearts and on dance floors around the world. Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Today on Funky Pearls Radio, we're delving into the life of David Ruffin, a towering figure in the soul and R&B world, whose voice came to define an era at Motown Records.  Born David Eli Ruffin on January 18, 1941, in Whynot, Mississippi, David's early years in the church choir laid the foundation for his future success. The younger brother of Jimmy Ruffin and cousin to Melvin Franklin of The Temptations, David was surrounded by musical talent from the start.  In his teens, David's foray into professional music began with the gospel group the Dixie Nightingales and continued with the doo-wop group the Voice Masters.  By 1960, he was in Detroit, signing with the Anna label as a solo artist, releasing singles that would mark the beginning of a remarkable journey. David's destiny with The Temptations began in 1964 when he replaced Eldridge Bryant. Initially a background vocalist, David soon emerged as a lead singer on hits like 'My Girl' and 'Ain't Too Proud To Beg', his voice becoming synonymous with the group's success.  However, his time with The Temptations was not without its challenges. By 1968, due to various issues, David was replaced in the group, leading him to embark on a solo career. His first solo hit, 'My Whole World Ended' in 1969, proved that his voice could captivate audiences just as powerfully on its own.  The 1970s saw David collaborate with his brother Jimmy and work with producers like Van McCoy. His album ‘Who I Am' in 1975, featuring the hit ‘Walk Away From Love', marked a high point, resonating with fans on both sides of the Atlantic. The late 1970s and early 1980s were a period of transition for David, with a brief imprisonment for tax evasion and a move to Warner Brothers Records.  His album 'Gentleman Ruffin' in 1980 and the subsequent reunion with Eddie Kendricks in 1982 rekindled memories of their Temptations days. David's collaboration with Kendricks culminated in the album 'Ruffin And Kendrick' in 1987, showcasing their enduring vocal magic.  This period also saw them perform with Hall And Oates at the Apollo and the Live Aid concert, celebrating their legacy in soul music. The early 1990s saw David recording with Ian Levine's Motor City label and touring with Eddie Kendricks and Dennis Edwards. However, this resurgence was cut short by his tragic death on June 1, 1991, in Philadelphia, following complications related to substance abuse.  David Ruffin's legacy in music is monumental. His voice not only defined the sound of The Temptations but also left a lasting impact on soul and R&B. His albums, from 'My Whole World Ended' to 'Ruffin And Kendrick', are testaments to his versatility and enduring appeal. As we reflect on David Ruffin's life and career on Funky Pearls Radio, we remember a man whose voice was as compelling as his life was complex.  His contributions to music continue to resonate, reminding us of the power of a soulful melody and a passionate voice. David Ruffin, a true legend of Motown, remains an unforgettable figure in the annals of soul music.Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Welcome to Funky Pearls Radio's exclusive feature on The Stylistics, the epitome of 'Sweet Soul' in the early Seventies. This Philadelphia-based group, known for their distinctive harmonies and lush production, left an indelible mark on the world of Soul Music.  The Stylistics' journey began with the merging of members from two local groups, The Percussions and The Monarchs, in 1968. The original lineup included Russell Thompkins Jr., James Smith, Airrion Love, James Dunn, and Herbie Murrell.  These young men, hailing from the same high school, brought together a blend of voices that would soon captivate audiences. In 1970, they released 'You're a Big Girl Now' on Sebring Records and AVCO Embassy labels, which became a chart success. This was just the beginning of their rise to fame.  Recognizing their potential, AVCO enlisted the help of Thom Bell, a producer who had worked with The Delfonics. Bell saw something special in lead vocalist Russell Thompkins Jr. and began crafting a sound that would become synonymous with The Stylistics.  Their first collaboration with Thom Bell and lyricist Linda Creed resulted in the classic 'Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)'.  This was followed by a string of hits like 'Betcha by Golly, Wow', 'I'm Stone in Love with You', and 'You Make Me Feel Brand New', showcasing Thompkins' soaring falsetto and the group's harmonious blend.  The Stylistics released their self-titled debut album in 1971, which included hits like 'You Are Everything' and 'People Make the World Go Round'. Their second album, 'Round 2', featured memorable tracks like 'Break Up To Make Up' and 'You'll Never Get To Heaven (If You Break My Heart)'.  By their third album, 'Rockin' Roll Baby', The Stylistics had firmly established themselves as leading voices in Soul Music. Their collaboration with Bell and Creed during the early '70s resulted in some of Soul Music's most enduring songs.  This period is often regarded as the golden era of The Stylistics, with the group enjoying almost constant chart success. However, in 1974, The Stylistics and Thom Bell parted ways, leading to a change in their musical direction.  They worked with producers Hugo and Luigi and Van McCoy, achieving success with songs like 'Hey Girl, Come and Get It'. Their popularity soared in the U.K., with hits like 'Na Na is the Saddest Word' and 'Funky Weekend'.  Despite changes in their U.S. market appeal, The Stylistics continued to release albums and tour. The late '70s and early '80s saw the departure of James Dunn and James Smith, leading to lineup changes. The group briefly joined the TSOP / Philadelphia International label, releasing the album 'Hurry Up This Way Again', which, though a minor R&B hit, gained a cult following.  Throughout the '80s and '90s, The Stylistics continued to release music and perform, although they didn't replicate their earlier chart success. In 2000, Russell Thompkins Jr. left the group, and new members Harold 'Eban' Brown and Van Fields joined, bringing fresh energy to the ensemble.  The group's legacy in Soul Music is undeniable. Their smooth harmonies, romantic lyrics, and Thom Bell's lush production have made their music timeless.  The Stylistics' influence can be heard in the work of many contemporary artists, and their songs remain popular on radio and in the hearts of soul music lovers around the world.  As we celebrate their music on Funky Pearls Radio, we pay homage to a group that not only defined an era but also provided a soundtrack for generations of soul music fans.  The Stylistics' journey from Philadelphia high school talents to international soul icons is a testament to their enduring appeal and musical legacy.Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Episode 170 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Astral Weeks", the early solo career of Van Morrison, and the death of Bert Berns.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-minute bonus episode available, on "Stoned Soul Picnic" by Laura Nyro. 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 At one point I, ridiculously, misspeak the name of Charles Mingus' classic album. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is not about dinner ladies. Also, I say Warren Smith Jr is on "Slim Slow Slider" when I meant to say Richard Davis (Smith is credited in some sources, but I only hear acoustic guitar, bass, and soprano sax on the finished track). Resources As usual, I've created Mixcloud playlists, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. As there are so many Van Morrison songs in this episode, the Mixcloud is split into three parts, one, two, and three. The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. I've used several biographies of Van Morrison. Van Morrison: Into the Music by Ritchie Yorke is so sycophantic towards Morrison that the word “hagiography” would be, if anything, an understatement. Van Morrison: No Surrender by Johnny Rogan, on the other hand, is the kind of book that talks in the introduction about how the author has had to avoid discussing certain topics because of legal threats from the subject. Howard deWitt's Van Morrison: Astral Weeks to Stardom is over-thorough in the way some self-published books are, while Clinton Heylin's Can You Feel the Silence? is probably the best single volume on the artist. Information on Woodstock comes from Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns. Ryan Walsh's Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 is about more than Astral Weeks, but does cover Morrison's period in and around Boston in more detail than anything else. The album Astral Weeks is worth hearing in its entirety. Not all of the music on The Authorized Bang Collection is as listenable, but it's the most complete collection available of everything Morrison recorded for Bang. 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 warning -- this episode contains discussion of organised crime activity, and of sudden death. It also contains excerpts of songs which hint at attraction to underage girls and discuss terminal illness. If those subjects might upset you, you might want to read the transcript rather than listen to the episode. Anyway, on with the show. Van Morrison could have been the co-writer of "Piece of My Heart". Bert Berns was one of the great collaborators in the music business, and almost every hit he ever had was co-written, and he was always on the lookout for new collaborators, and in 1967 he was once again working with Van Morrison, who he'd worked with a couple of years earlier when Morrison was still the lead singer of Them. Towards the beginning of 1967 he had come up with a chorus, but no verse. He had the hook, "Take another little piece of my heart" -- Berns was writing a lot of songs with "heart" in the title at the time -- and wanted Morrison to come up with a verse to go with it. Van Morrison declined. He wasn't interested in writing pop songs, or in collaborating with other writers, and so Berns turned to one of his regular collaborators, Jerry Ragavoy, and it was Ragavoy who added the verses to one of the biggest successes of Berns' career: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] The story of how Van Morrison came to make the album that's often considered his masterpiece is intimately tied up with the story we've been telling in the background for several episodes now, the story of Atlantic Records' sale to Warners, and the story of Bert Berns' departure from Atlantic. For that reason, some parts of the story I'm about to tell will be familiar to those of you who've been paying close attention to the earlier episodes, but as always I'm going to take you from there to somewhere we've never been before. In 1962, Bert Berns was a moderately successful songwriter, who had written or co-written songs for many artists, especially for artists on Atlantic Records. He'd written songs for Atlantic artists like LaVern Baker, and when Atlantic's top pop producers Leiber and Stoller started to distance themselves from the label in the early sixties, he had moved into production as well, writing and producing Solomon Burke's big hit "Cry to Me": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me"] He was the producer and writer or co-writer of most of Burke's hits from that point forward, but at first he was still a freelance producer, and also produced records for Scepter Records, like the Isley Brothers' version of "Twist and Shout", another song he'd co-written, that one with Phil Medley. And as a jobbing songwriter, of course his songs were picked up by other producers, so Leiber and Stoller produced a version of his song "Tell Him" for the Exciters on United Artists: [Excerpt: The Exciters, "Tell Him"] Berns did freelance work for Leiber and Stoller as well as the other people he was working for. For example, when their former protege Phil Spector released his hit version of "Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah", they got Berns to come up with a knockoff arrangement of "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?", released as by Baby Jane and the Rockabyes, with a production credit "Produced by Leiber and Stoller, directed by Bert Berns": [Excerpt: Baby Jane and the Rockabyes, "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?"] And when Leiber and Stoller stopped producing work for United Artists, Berns took over some of the artists they'd been producing for the label, like Marv Johnson, as well as producing his own new artists, like Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, who had been discovered by Berns' friend Jerry Ragovoy, with whom he co-wrote their "Cry Baby": [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, "Cry Baby"] Berns was an inveterate collaborator. He was one of the few people to get co-writing credits with Leiber and Stoller, and he would collaborate seemingly with everyone who spoke to him for five minutes. He would also routinely reuse material, cutting the same songs time and again with different artists, knowing that a song must be a hit for *someone*. One of his closest collaborators was Jerry Wexler, who also became one of his best friends, even though one of their earliest interactions had been when Wexler had supervised Phil Spector's production of Berns' "Twist and Shout" for the Top Notes, a record that Berns had thought had butchered the song. Berns was, in his deepest bones, a record man. Listening to the records that Berns made, there's a strong continuity in everything he does. There's a love there of simplicity -- almost none of his records have more than three chords. He loved Latin sounds and rhythms -- a love he shared with other people working in Brill Building R&B at the time, like Leiber and Stoller and Spector -- and great voices in emotional distress. There's a reason that the records he produced for Solomon Burke were the first R&B records to be labelled "soul". Berns was one of those people for whom feel and commercial success are inextricable. He was an artist -- the records he made were powerfully expressive -- but he was an artist for whom the biggest validation was *getting a hit*. Only a small proportion of the records he made became hits, but enough did that in the early sixties he was a name that could be spoken of in the same breath as Leiber and Stoller, Spector, and Bacharach and David. And Atlantic needed a record man. The only people producing hits for the label at this point were Leiber and Stoller, and they were in the process of stopping doing freelance work and setting up their own label, Red Bird, as we talked about in the episode on the Shangri-Las. And anyway, they wanted more money than they were getting, and Jerry Wexler was never very keen on producers wanting money that could have gone to the record label. Wexler decided to sign Bert Berns up as a staff producer for Atlantic towards the end of 1963, and by May 1964 it was paying off. Atlantic hadn't been having hits, and now Berns had four tracks he wrote and produced for Atlantic on the Hot One Hundred, of which the highest charting was "My Girl Sloopy" by the Vibrations: [Excerpt: The Vibrations, "My Girl Sloopy"] Even higher on the charts though was the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout". That record, indeed, had been successful enough in the UK that Berns had already made exploratory trips to the UK and produced records for Dick Rowe at Decca, a partnership we heard about in the episode on "Here Comes the Night". Berns had made partnerships there which would have vast repercussions for the music industry in both countries, and one of them was with the arranger Mike Leander, who was the uncredited arranger for the Drifters session for "Under the Boardwalk", a song written by Artie Resnick and Kenny Young and produced by Berns, recorded the day after the group's lead singer Rudy Lewis died of an overdose: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Under the Boardwalk"] Berns was making hits on a regular basis by mid-1964, and the income from the label's new success allowed Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers to buy out their other partners -- Ahmet Ertegun's old dentist, who had put up some of the initial money, and Miriam Bienstock, the ex-wife of their initial partner Herb Abramson, who'd got Abramson's share in the company after the divorce, and who was now married to Freddie Bienstock of Hill and Range publishing. Wexler and the Erteguns now owned the whole label. Berns also made regular trips to the UK to keep up his work with British musicians, and in one of those trips, as we heard in the episode on "Here Comes the Night", he produced several tracks for the group Them, including that track, written by Berns: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] And a song written by the group's lead singer Van Morrison, "Gloria": [Excerpt: Them, "Gloria"] But Berns hadn't done much other work with them, because he had a new project. Part of the reason that Wexler and the Erteguns had gained total control of Atlantic was because, in a move pushed primarily by Wexler, they were looking at selling it. They'd already tried to merge with Leiber and Stoller's Red Bird Records, but lost the opportunity after a disastrous meeting, but they were in negotiations with several other labels, negotiations which would take another couple of years to bear fruit. But they weren't planning on getting out of the record business altogether. Whatever deal they made, they'd remain with Atlantic, but they were also planning on starting another label. Bert Berns had seen how successful Leiber and Stoller were with Red Bird, and wanted something similar. Wexler and the Erteguns didn't want to lose their one hit-maker, so they came up with an offer that would benefit all of them. Berns' publishing contract had just ended, so they would set up a new publishing company, WEB IV, named after the initials Wexler, Ertegun, and Berns, and the fact that there were four of them. Berns would own fifty percent of that, and the other three would own the other half. And they were going to start up a new label, with seventeen thousand dollars of the Atlantic partners' money. That label would be called Bang -- for Bert, Ahmet, Neshui, and Gerald -- and would be a separate company from Atlantic, so not affected by any sale. Berns would continue as a staff producer for Atlantic for now, but he'd have "his own" label, which he'd have a proper share in, and whether he was making hits for Atlantic or Bang, his partners would have a share of the profits. The first two records on Bang were "Shake and Jerk" by Billy Lamont, a track that they licensed from elsewhere and which didn't do much, and a more interesting track co-written by Berns. Bob Feldman, Richard Gottehrer, and Jerry Goldstein were Brill Building songwriters who had become known for writing "My Boyfriend's Back", a hit for the Angels, a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Angels, "My Boyfriend's Back"] With the British invasion, the three of them had decided to create their own foreign beat group. As they couldn't do British accents, they pretended to be Australian, and as the Strangeloves -- named after the Stanley Kubrick film Dr  Strangelove -- they released one flop single. They cut another single, a version of "Bo Diddley", but the label they released their initial record through didn't want it. They then took the record to Atlantic, where Jerry Wexler said that they weren't interested in releasing some white men singing "Bo Diddley". But Ahmet Ertegun suggested they bring the track to Bert Berns to see what he thought. Berns pointed out that if they changed the lyrics and melody, but kept the same backing track, they could claim the copyright in the resulting song themselves. He worked with them on a new lyric, inspired by the novel Candy, a satirical pornographic novel co-written by Terry Southern, who had also co-written the screenplay to Dr Strangelove. Berns supervised some guitar overdubs, and the result went to number eleven: [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] Berns had two other songs on the hot one hundred when that charted, too -- Them's version of "Here Comes the Night", and the version of Van McCoy's song "Baby I'm Yours" he'd produced for Barbara Lewis. Three records on the charts on three different labels. But despite the sheer number of charting records he'd had, he'd never had a number one, until the Strangeloves went on tour. Before the tour they'd cut a version of "My Girl Sloopy" for their album -- Berns always liked to reuse material -- and they started performing the song on the tour. The Dave Clark Five, who they were supporting, told them it sounded like a hit and they were going to do their own version when they got home. Feldman, Gottehrer, and Goldstein decided *they* might as well have the hit with it as anyone else. Rather than put it out as a Strangeloves record -- their own record was still rising up the charts, and there's no reason to be your own competition -- they decided to get a group of teenage musicians who supported them on the last date of the tour to sing new vocals to the backing track from the Strangeloves album. The group had been called Rick and the Raiders, but they argued so much that the Strangeloves nicknamed them the Hatfields and the McCoys, and when their version of "My Girl Sloopy", retitled "Hang on Sloopy", came out, it was under the band name The McCoys: [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] Berns was becoming a major success, and with major success in the New York music industry in the 1960s came Mafia involvement. We've talked a fair bit about Morris Levy's connection with the mob in many previous episodes, but mob influence was utterly pervasive throughout the New York part of the industry, and so for example Richard Gottehrer of the Strangeloves used to call Sonny Franzese of the Colombo crime family "Uncle John", they were so close. Franzese was big in the record business too, even after his conviction for bank robbery. Berns, unlike many of the other people in the industry, had no scruples at all about hanging out with Mafiosi. indeed his best friend in the mid sixties was Tommy Eboli, a member of the Genovese crime family who had been in the mob since the twenties, starting out working for "Lucky" Luciano. Berns was not himself a violent man, as far as anyone can tell, but he liked the glamour of hanging out with organised crime figures, and they liked hanging out with someone who was making so many hit records. And so while Leiber and Stoller, for example, ended up selling Red Bird Records to George Goldner for a single dollar in order to get away from the Mafiosi who were slowly muscling in on the label, Berns had no problems at all in keeping his own label going. Indeed, he would soon be doing so without the involvement of Atlantic Records. Berns' final work for Atlantic was in June 1966, when he cut a song he had co-written with Jeff Barry for the Drifters, inspired by the woman who would soon become Atlantic's biggest star: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Aretha"] The way Berns told the story in public, there was no real bad blood between him, Wexler, and the Erteguns -- he'd just decided to go his own way, and he said “I will always be grateful to them for the help they've given me in getting Bang started,” The way Berns' wife would later tell the story, Jerry Wexler had suggested that rather than Berns owning fifty percent of Web IV, they should start to split everything four ways, and she had been horrified by this suggestion, kicked up a stink about it, and Wexler had then said that either Berns needed to buy the other three out, or quit and give them everything, and demanded Berns pay them three hundred thousand dollars. According to other people, Berns decided he wanted one hundred percent control of Web IV, and raised a breach of contract lawsuit against Atlantic, over the usual royalty non-payments that were endemic in the industry at that point. When Atlantic decided to fight the lawsuit rather than settle, Berns' mob friends got involved and threatened to break the legs of Wexler's fourteen-year-old daughter, and the mob ended up with full control of Bang records, while Berns had full control of his publishing company. Given later events, and in particular given the way Wexler talked about Berns until the day he died, with a vitriol that he never used about any of the other people he had business disputes with, it seems likely to me that the latter story is closer to the truth than the former. But most people involved weren't talking about the details of what went on, and so Berns still retained his relationships with many of the people in the business, not least of them Jeff Barry, so when Barry and Ellie Greenwich had a new potential star, it was Berns they thought to bring him to, even though the artist was white and Berns had recently given an interview saying that he wanted to work with more Black artists, because white artists simply didn't have soul. Barry and Greenwich's marriage was breaking up at the time, but they were still working together professionally, as we discussed in the episode on "River Deep, Mountain High", and they had been the main production team at Red Bird. But with Red Bird in terminal decline, they turned elsewhere when they found a potential major star after Greenwich was asked to sing backing vocals on one of his songwriting demos. They'd signed the new songwriter, Neil Diamond, to Leiber and Stoller's company Trio Music at first, but they soon started up their own company, Tallyrand Music, and signed Diamond to that, giving Diamond fifty percent of the company and keeping twenty-five percent each for themselves, and placed one of his songs with Jay and the Americans in 1965: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Sunday and Me"] That record made the top twenty, and had established Diamond as a songwriter, but he was still not a major performer -- he'd released one flop single on Columbia Records before meeting Barry and Greenwich. But they thought he had something, and Bert Berns agreed. Diamond was signed to Bang records, and Berns had a series of pre-production meetings with Barry and Greenwich before they took Diamond into the studio -- Barry and Greenwich were going to produce Diamond for Bang, as they had previously produced tracks for Red Bird, but they were going to shape the records according to Berns' aesthetic. The first single released from Diamond's first session, "Solitary Man", only made number fifty-five, but it was the first thing Diamond had recorded to make the Hot One Hundred at all: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Solitary Man"] The second single, though, was much more Bert Berns' sort of thing -- a three-chord song that sounded like it could have been written by Berns himself, especially after Barry and Greenwich had added the Latin-style horns that Berns loved so much. Indeed according to some sources, Berns did make a songwriting suggestion -- Diamond's song had apparently been called "Money Money", and Berns had thought that was a ridiculous title, and suggested calling it "Cherry Cherry" instead: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry"] That became Diamond's first top ten hit. While Greenwich had been the one who had discovered Diamond, and Barry and Greenwich were the credited producers on all Diamond's records  as a result, Diamond soon found himself collaborating far more with Barry than with Greenwich, so for example the first number one he wrote, for the Monkees rather than himself, ended up having its production just credited to Barry. That record used a backing track recorded in New York by the same set of musicians used on most Bang records, like Al Gorgoni on lead guitar and Russ Savakus on bass: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "I'm a Believer"] Neil Diamond was becoming a solid hit-maker, but he started rubbing up badly against Berns. Berns wanted hits and only hits, and Diamond thought of himself as a serious artist. The crisis came when two songs were under contention for Diamond's next single in late 1967, after he'd had a whole run of hits for the label. The song Diamond wanted to release, "Shilo", was deeply personal to him: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Shilo"] But Bert Berns had other ideas. "Shilo" didn't sound like a hit, and he knew a hit when he heard one. No, the clear next single, the only choice, was "Kentucky Woman": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Kentucky Woman"] But Berns tried to compromise as best he could. Diamond's contract was up for renewal, and you don't want to lose someone who has had, as Diamond had at that point, five top twenty hits in a row, and who was also writing songs like "I'm a Believer" and "Red Red Wine". He told Diamond that he'd let "Shilo" come out as a single if Diamond signed an extension to his contract. Diamond said that not only was he not going to do that, he'd taken legal advice and discovered that there were problems with his contract which let him record for other labels -- the word "exclusive" had been missed out of the text, among other things. He wasn't going to be recording for Bang at all any more. The lawsuits over this would stretch out for a decade, and Diamond would eventually win, but the first few months were very, very difficult for Diamond. When he played the Bitter End, a club in New York, stink bombs were thrown into the audience. The Bitter End's manager was assaulted and severely beaten. Diamond moved his wife and child out of Manhattan, borrowed a gun, and after his last business meeting with Berns was heard talking about how he needed to contact the District Attorney and hire a bodyguard. Of the many threats that were issued against Diamond, though, the least disturbing was probably the threat Berns made to Diamond's career. Berns pointed out to Diamond in no uncertain terms that he didn't need Diamond anyway -- he already had someone he could replace Diamond with, another white male solo singer with a guitar who could churn out guaranteed hits. He had Van Morrison: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] When we left Van Morrison, Them had just split up due to the problems they had been having with their management team. Indeed, the problems Morrison was having with his managers seem curiously similar to the issues that Diamond was having with Bert Berns -- something that could possibly have been a warning sign to everyone involved, if any of them had known the full details of everyone else's situation. Sadly for all of them, none of them did. Them had had some early singles success, notably with the tracks Berns had produced for them, but Morrison's opinion of their second album, Them Again, was less than complimentary, and in general that album is mostly only remembered for the version of Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", which is one of those cover versions that inspires subsequent covers more than the original ever did: [Excerpt: Them, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"] Them had toured the US around the time of the release of that album, but that tour had been a disaster. The group had gained a reputation for incredible live shows, including performances at the Whisky A-Go-Go with the Doors and Captain Beefheart as their support acts, but during the tour Van Morrison had decided that Phil Solomon, the group's manager, was getting too much money -- Morrison had agreed to do the tour on a salary, rather than a percentage, but the tour had been more successful than he'd expected, and Solomon was making a great deal of money off the tour, money that Morrison believed rightfully belonged to him. The group started collecting the money directly from promoters, and got into legal trouble with Solomon as a result. The tour ended with the group having ten thousand dollars that Solomon believed -- quite possibly correctly -- that he was owed. Various gangsters whose acquaintance the group had made offered to have the problem taken care of, but they decided instead to come to a legal agreement -- they would keep the money, and in return Solomon, whose production company the group were signed to, would get to keep all future royalties from the Them tracks. This probably seemed a good idea at the time, when the idea of records earning royalties for sixty or more years into the future seemed ridiculous, but Morrison in particular came to regret the decision bitterly. The group played one final gig when they got back to Belfast, but then split up, though a version of the group led by the bass player Alan Henderson continued performing for a few years to no success. Morrison put together a band that played a handful of gigs under the name Them Again, with little success, but he already had his eyes set on a return to the US. In Morrison's eyes, Bert Berns had been the only person in the music industry who had really understood him, and the two worked well together. He had also fallen in love with an American woman, Janet Planet, and wanted to find some way to be with her. As Morrison said later “I had a couple of other offers but I thought this was the best one, seeing as I wanted to come to America anyway. I can't remember the exact details of the deal. It wasn't really that spectacular, money-wise, I don't think. But it was pretty hard to refuse from the point of view that I really respected Bert as a producer. I'd rather have worked with Bert than some other guy with a bigger record company. From that angle, it was spectacular because Bert was somebody that I wanted to work with.” There's little evidence that Morrison did have other offers -- he was already getting a reputation as someone who it was difficult to work with -- but he and Berns had a mutual respect, and on January the ninth, 1967, he signed a contract with Bang records. That contract has come in for a lot of criticism over the years, but it was actually, *by the standards in operation in the music business in 1967*, a reasonably fair one. The contract provided that, for a $2,500 a year advance, Bang would record twelve sides in the first year, with an option for up to fifty more that year, and options for up to four more years on the same terms. Bang had the full ownership of the masters and the right to do what they wanted with them. According to at least one biographer, Morrison added clauses requiring Bang to actually record the twelve sides a year, and to put out at least three singles and one album per year while the contract was in operation. He also added one other clause which seems telling -- "Company agrees that Company will not make any reference to the name THEM on phonograph records, or in advertising copy in connection with the recording of Artist." Morrison was, at first, extremely happy with Berns. The problems started with their first session: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl (takes 1-6)"] When Morrison had played the songs he was working on for Berns, Berns had remarked that they sounded great with just Morrison and his guitar, so Morrison was surprised when he got into the studio to find the whole standard New York session crew there -- the same group of session players who were playing for everyone from the Monkees to Laura Nyro, from Neil Diamond to the Shangri-Las -- along with the Sweet Inspirations to provide backing vocals. As he described it later "This fellow Bert, he made it the way he wanted to, and I accepted that he was producing it... I'd write a song and bring it into the group and we'd sit there and bash it around and that's all it was -- they weren't playing the songs, they were just playing whatever it was. They'd say 'OK, we got drums so let's put drums on it,' and they weren't thinking about the song, all they were thinking about was putting drums on it... But it was my song, and I had to watch it go down." The first song they cut was "Brown-Eyed Girl", a song which Morrison has said was originally a calypso, and was originally titled "Brown-skinned Girl", though he's differed in interviews as to whether Berns changed the lyric or if he just decided to sing it differently without thinking about it in the session. Berns turned "Brown-Eyed Girl" into a hit single, because that was what he tended to do with songs, and the result sounds a lot like the kind of record that Bang were releasing for Neil Diamond: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] Morrison has, in later years, expressed his distaste for what was done to the song, and in particular he's said that the backing vocal part by the Sweet Inspirations was added by Berns and he disliked it: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] Morrison has been very dismissive of "Brown-Eyed Girl" over the years, but he seems not to have disliked it at the time, and the song itself is one that has stood the test of time, and is often pointed to by other songwriters as a great example of the writer's craft. I remember reading one interview with Randy Newman -- sadly, while I thought it was in Paul Zollo's "Songwriters on Songwriting" I just checked that and it's not, so I can't quote it precisely -- in which he says that he often points to the line "behind the stadium with you" as a perfect piece of writing, because it's such a strangely specific detail that it convinces you that it actually happened, and that means you implicitly believe the rest of the song. Though it should be made very clear here that Morrison has always said, over and over again, that nothing in his songs is based directly on his own experiences, and that they're all products of his imagination and composites of people he's known. This is very important to note before we go any further, because "Brown-Eyed Girl" is one of many songs from this period in Morrison's career which imply that their narrator has an attraction to underage girls -- in this case he remembers "making love in the green grass" in the distant past, while he also says "saw you just the other day, my how you have grown", and that particular combination is not perhaps one that should be dwelt on too closely. But there is of course a very big difference between a songwriter treating a subject as something that is worth thinking about in the course of a song and writing about their own lives, and that can be seen on one of the other songs that Morrison recorded in these sessions, "T.B. Sheets": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "T.B. Sheets"] It seems very unlikely indeed that Van Morrison actually had a lover die of tuberculosis, as the lover in the song does, and while a lot of people seem convinced that it's autobiographical, simply because of the intensity of the performance (Morrison apparently broke down in tears after recording it), nobody has ever found anyone in Morrison's life who fits the story in the song, and he's always ridiculed such suggestions. What is true though is that "T.B. Sheets" is evidence against another claim that Morrison has made in the past - that on these initial sessions the eight songs recorded were meant to be the A and B sides of four singles and there was no plan of making an album. It is simply not plausible at all to suggest that "T.B. Sheets" -- a slow blues about terminal illness, that lasts nearly ten minutes -- was ever intended as a single. It wouldn't have even come close to fitting on one side of a forty-five. It was also presumably at this time that Berns brought up the topic of "Piece of My Heart". When Berns signed Erma Franklin, it was as a way of getting at Jerry Wexler, who had gone from being his closest friend to someone he wasn't on speaking terms with, by signing the sister of his new signing Aretha. Morrison, of course, didn't co-write it -- he'd already decided that he didn't play well with others -- but it's tempting to think about how the song might have been different had Morrison written it. The song in some ways seems a message to Wexler -- haven't you had enough from me already? -- but it's also notable how many songs Berns was writing with the word "heart" in the chorus, given that Berns knew he was on borrowed time from his own heart condition. As an example, around the same time he and Jerry Ragavoy co-wrote "Piece of My Heart", they also co-wrote another song, "Heart Be Still", a flagrant lift from "Peace Be Still" by Aretha Franklin's old mentor Rev. James Cleveland, which they cut with Lorraine Ellison: [Excerpt: Lorraine Ellison, "Heart Be Still"] Berns' heart condition had got much worse as a result of the stress from splitting with Atlantic, and he had started talking about maybe getting open-heart surgery, though that was still very new and experimental. One wonders how he must have felt listening to Morrison singing about watching someone slowly dying. Morrison has since had nothing but negative things to say about the sessions in March 1967, but at the time he seemed happy. He returned to Belfast almost straight away after the sessions, on the understanding that he'd be back in the US if "Brown-Eyed Girl" was a success. He wrote to Janet Planet in San Francisco telling her to listen to the radio -- she'd know if she heard "Brown-Eyed Girl" that he would be back on his way to see her. She soon did hear the song, and he was soon back in the US: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] By August, "Brown-Eyed Girl" had become a substantial hit, making the top ten, and Morrison was back in the States. He was starting to get less happy with Berns though. Bang had put out the eight tracks he'd recorded in March as an album, titled Blowin' Your Mind, and Morrison thought that the crass pseudo-psychedelia of the title, liner notes, and cover was very inappropriate -- Morrison has never been a heavy user of any drugs other than alcohol, and didn't particularly want to be associated with them. He also seems to have not realised that every track he recorded in those initial sessions would be on the album, which many people have called one of the great one-sided albums of all time -- side A, with "Brown-Eyed Girl", "He Ain't Give You None" and the extended "T.B. Sheets" tends to get far more love than side B, with five much lesser songs on it. Berns held a party for Morrison on a cruise around Manhattan, but it didn't go well -- when the performer Tiny Tim tried to get on board, Carmine "Wassel" DeNoia, a mobster friend of Berns' who was Berns' partner in a studio they'd managed to get from Atlantic as part of the settlement when Berns left, was so offended by Tim's long hair and effeminate voice and mannerisms that he threw him overboard into the harbour. DeNoia was meant to be Morrison's manager in the US, working with Berns, but he and Morrison didn't get on at all -- at one point DeNoia smashed Morrison's acoustic guitar over his head, and only later regretted the damage he'd done to a nice guitar. And Morrison and Berns weren't getting on either. Morrison went back into the studio to record four more songs for a follow-up to "Brown-Eyed Girl", but there was again a misunderstanding. Morrison thought he'd been promised that this time he could do his songs the way he wanted, but Berns was just frustrated that he wasn't coming up with another "Brown-Eyed Girl", but was instead coming up with slow songs about trans women. Berns overdubbed party noises and soul backing vocals onto "Madame George", possibly in an attempt to copy the Beach Boys' Party! album with its similar feel, but it was never going to be a "Barbara Ann": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Madame George (Bang version)"] In the end, Berns released one of the filler tracks from Blowin' Your Mind, "Ro Ro Rosey", as the next single, and it flopped. On December the twenty-ninth, Berns had a meeting with Neil Diamond, the meeting after which Diamond decided he needed to get a bodyguard. After that, he had a screaming row over the phone with Van Morrison, which made Berns ill with stress. The next day, he died of a heart attack. Berns' widow Ilene, who had only just given birth to a baby a couple of weeks earlier, would always blame Morrison for pushing her husband over the edge. Neither Van Morrison nor Jerry Wexler went to the funeral, but Neil Diamond did -- he went to try to persuade Ilene to let him out of his contract now Berns was dead. According to Janet Planet later, "We were at the hotel when we learned that Bert had died. We were just mortified, because things had been going really badly, and Van felt really bad, because I guess they'd parted having had some big fight or something... Even though he did love Bert, it was a strange relationship that lived and died in the studio... I remember we didn't go to the funeral, which probably was a mistake... I think [Van] had a really bad feeling about what was going to happen." But Morrison has later mostly talked about the more practical concerns that came up, which were largely the same as the ones Neil Diamond had, saying in 1997 "I'd signed a contract with Bert Berns for management, production, agency and record company,  publishing, the whole lot -- which was professional suicide as any lawyer will tell you now... Then the whole thing blew up. Bert Berns died and I was left broke." This was the same mistake, essentially, that he'd made with Phil Solomon, and in order to get out of it, it turned out he was going to have to do much the same for a third time.  But it was the experience with Berns specifically that traumatised Morrison enough that twenty-five years later he would still be writing songs about it, like "Big Time Operators": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Big Time Operators"] The option to renew Morrison's contracts with Berns' companies came on the ninth of January 1968, less than two weeks after Berns' death. After his death, Berns' share of ownership in his companies had passed to his widow, who was in a quandary. She had two young children, one of whom was only a few weeks old, and she needed an income after their father had died. She was also not well disposed at all towards Morrison, who she blamed for causing her husband's death. By all accounts the amazing thing is that Berns lived as long as he did given his heart condition and the state of medical science at the time, but it's easy to understand her thinking. She wanted nothing to do with Morrison, and wanted to punish him. On the other hand, her late husband's silent partners didn't want to let their cash cow go. And so Morrison came under a huge amount of pressure in very different directions. From one side, Carmine DiNoia was determined to make more money off Morrison, and Morrison has since talked about signing further contracts at this point with a gun literally to his head, and his hotel room being shot up. But on the other side, Ilene Berns wanted to destroy Morrison's career altogether. She found out that Bert Berns hadn't got Morrison the proper work permits and reported him to the immigration authorities. Morrison came very close to being deported, but in the end he managed to escape deportation by marrying Janet Planet. The newly-married couple moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to get away from New York and the mobsters, and to try to figure out the next steps in Morrison's career. Morrison started putting together a band, which he called The Van Morrison Controversy, and working on new songs. One of his earliest connections in Massachusetts was the lead singer of a band called the Hallucinations, who he met in a bar where he was trying to get a gig: [Excerpt: The Hallucinations, "Messin' With the Kid"] The Hallucinations' lead singer was called Peter Wolf, and would much later go on to become well-known as the singer with the J. Geils Band. He and Morrison became acquaintances, and later became closer friends when they realised they had another connection -- Wolf had a late-night radio show under the name Woofa Goofa, and he'd been receiving anonymous requests for obscure blues records from a fan of the show. Morrison had been the one sending in the requests, not realising his acquaintance was the DJ. Before he got his own band together, Morrison actually guested with the Hallucinations at one show they did in May 1968, supporting John Lee Hooker. The Hallucinations had been performing "Gloria" since Them's single had come out, and they invited Morrison to join them to perform it on stage. According to Wolf, Morrison was very drunk and ranted in cod-Japanese for thirty-five minutes, and tried to sing a different song while the band played "Gloria". The audience were apparently unimpressed, even though Wolf shouted at them “Don't you know who this man is? He wrote the song!” But in truth, Morrison was sick of "Gloria" and his earlier work, and was trying to push his music in a new direction. He would later talk about having had an epiphany after hearing one particular track on the radio: [Excerpt: The Band, "I Shall Be Released"] Like almost every musician in 1968, Morrison was hit like a lightning bolt by Music From Big Pink, and he decided that he needed to turn his music in the same direction. He started writing the song "Brand New Day", which would later appear on his album Moondance, inspired by the music on the album. The Van Morrison Controversy started out as a fairly straightforward rock band, with guitarist John Sheldon, bass player Tom Kielbania, and drummer Joey Bebo. Sheldon was a novice, though his first guitar teacher was the singer James Taylor, but the other two were students at Berklee, and very serious musicians. Morrison seems to have had various managers involved in rapid succession in 1968, including one who was himself a mobster, and another who was only known as Frank, but one of these managers advanced enough money that the musicians got paid every gig. These musicians were all interested in kinds of music other than just straight rock music, and as well as rehearsing up Morrison's hits and his new songs, they would also jam with him on songs from all sorts of other genres, particularly jazz and blues. The band worked up the song that would become "Domino" based on Sheldon jamming on a Bo Diddley riff, and another time the group were rehearsing a Grant Green jazz piece, "Lazy Afternoon": [Excerpt: Grant Green, "Lazy Afternoon"] Morrison started messing with the melody, and that became his classic song "Moondance": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Moondance"] No recordings of this electric lineup of the group are known to exist, though the backing musicians remember going to a recording studio called Ace recordings at one point and cutting some demos, which don't seem to circulate. Ace was a small studio which, according to all the published sources I've read, was best known for creating song poems, though it was a minor studio even in the song-poem world. For those who don't know, song poems were essentially a con aimed at wannabe songwriters who knew nothing about the business -- companies would advertise you too could become a successful, rich, songwriter if you sent in your "song poems", because anyone who knew the term "lyric" could be presumed to know too much about the music business to be useful. When people sent in their lyrics, they'd then be charged a fee to have them put out on their very own record -- with tracks made more or less on a conveyor belt with quick head arrangements, sung by session singers who were just handed a lyric sheet and told to get on with it. And thus were created such classics prized by collectors as "I Like Yellow Things", "Jimmy Carter Says 'Yes'", and "Listen Mister Hat". Obviously, for the most part these song poems did not lead to the customers becoming the next Ira Gershwin, but oddly even though Ace recordings is not one of the better-known song poem studios, it seems to have produced an actual hit song poem -- one that I don't think has ever before been identified as such until I made a connection, hence me going on this little tangent. Because in researching this episode I noticed something about its co-owner, Milton Yakus', main claim to fame. He co-wrote the song "Old Cape Cod", and to quote that song's Wikipedia page "The nucleus of the song was a poem written by Boston-area housewife Claire Rothrock, for whom Cape Cod was a favorite vacation spot. "Old Cape Cod" and its derivatives would be Rothrock's sole evident songwriting credit. She brought her poem to Ace Studios, a Boston recording studio owned by Milton Yakus, who adapted the poem into the song's lyrics." And while Yakus had written other songs, including songs for Patti Page who had the hit with "Old Cape Cod", apparently Page recorded that song after Rothrock brought her the demo after a gig, rather than getting it through any formal channels. It sounds to me like the massive hit and classic of the American songbook "Old Cape Cod" started life as a song-poem -- and if you're familiar with the form, it fits the genre perfectly: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Old Cape Cod"] The studio was not the classiest of places, even if you discount the song-poems. Its main source of income was from cutting private records with mobsters' wives and mistresses singing (and dealing with the problems that came along when those records weren't successful) and it also had a sideline in bugging people's cars to see if their spouses were cheating, though Milton Yakus' son Shelly, who got his start at his dad's studio, later became one of the most respected recording engineers in the industry -- and indeed had already worked as assistant engineer on Music From Big Pink. And there was actually another distant connection to Morrison's new favourite band on these sessions. For some reason -- reports differ -- Bebo wasn't considered suitable for the session, and in his place was the one-handed drummer Victor "Moulty" Moulton, who had played with the Barbarians, who'd had a minor hit with "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?"] A later Barbarians single, in early 1966, had featured Moulty telling his life story, punctuated by the kind of three-chord chorus that would have been at home on a Bert Berns single: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Moulty"] But while that record was credited to the Barbarians, Moulton was the only Barbarian on the track, with the instruments and backing vocals instead being provided by Levon and the Hawks. Shortly after the Ace sessions, the Van Morrison Controversy fell apart, though nobody seems to know why. Depending on which musician's story you listen to, either Morrison had a dream that he should get rid of all electric instruments and only use acoustic players, or there was talk of a record deal but the musicians weren't good enough, or the money from the mysterious manager (who may or may not have been the one who was a mobster) ran out. Bebo went back to university, and Sheldon left soon after, though Sheldon would remain in the music business in one form or another. His most prominent credit has been writing a couple of songs for his old friend James Taylor, including the song "Bittersweet" on Taylor's platinum-selling best-of, on which Sheldon also played guitar: [Excerpt: James Taylor, "Bittersweet"] Morrison and Kielbania continued for a while as a duo, with Morrison on acoustic guitar and Kielbania on double bass, but they were making very different music. Morrison's biggest influence at this point, other than The Band, was King Pleasure, a jazz singer who sang in the vocalese style we've talked about before -- the style where singers would sing lyrics to melodies that had previously been improvised by jazz musicians: [Excerpt: King Pleasure, "Moody's Mood for Love"] Morrison and Kielbania soon decided that to make the more improvisatory music they were interested in playing, they wanted another musician who could play solos. They ended up with John Payne, a jazz flute and saxophone player whose biggest inspiration was Charles Lloyd. This new lineup of the Van Morrison Controversy -- acoustic guitar, double bass, and jazz flute -- kept gigging around Boston, though the sound they were creating was hardly what the audiences coming to see the man who'd had that "Brown-Eyed Girl" hit the year before would have expected -- even when they did "Brown-Eyed Girl", as the one live recording of that line-up, made by Peter Wolf, shows: [Excerpt: The Van Morrison Controversy, "Brown-Eyed Girl (live in Boston 1968)"] That new style, with melodic bass underpinning freely extemporising jazz flute and soulful vocals, would become the basis of the album that to this day is usually considered Morrison's best. But before that could happen, there was the matter of the contracts to be sorted out. Warner-Reprise Records were definitely interested. Warners had spent the last few years buying up smaller companies like Atlantic, Autumn Records, and Reprise, and the label was building a reputation as the major label that would give artists the space and funding they needed to make the music they wanted to make. Idiosyncratic artists with difficult reputations (deserved or otherwise), like Neil Young, Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, the Grateful Dead, and Joni Mitchell, had all found homes on the label, which was soon also to start distributing Frank Zappa, the Beach Boys, and Captain Beefheart. A surly artist who wants to make mystical acoustic songs with jazz flute accompaniment was nothing unusual for them, and once Joe Smith, the man who had signed the Grateful Dead, was pointed in Morrison's direction by Andy Wickham, an A&R man working for the label, everyone knew that Morrison would be a perfect fit. But Morrison was still under contract to Bang records and Web IV, and those contracts said, among other things, that any other label that negotiated with Morrison would be held liable for breach of contract. Warners didn't want to show their interest in Morrison, because a major label wanting to sign him would cause Bang to raise the price of buying him out of his contract. Instead they got an independent production company to sign him, with a nod-and-wink understanding that they would then license the records to Warners. The company they chose was Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein, a management company set up by Bob Schwaid, who had previously worked in Warners' publishing department, and record producer Lewis Merenstein. Merenstein came to another demo session at Ace Recordings, where he fell in love with the new music that Morrison was playing, and determined he would do everything in his power to make the record into the masterpiece it deserved to be. He and Morrison were, at least at this point, on exactly the same page, and bonded over their mutual love of King Pleasure. Morrison signed to Schwaid-Merenstein, just as he had with Bert Berns and before him Phil Solomon, for management, record production, and publishing. Schwaid-Merenstein were funded by Warners, and would license any recordings they made to Warners, once the contractual situation had been sorted out. The first thing to do was to negotiate the release from Web IV, the publishing company owned by Ilene Berns. Schwaid negotiated that, and Morrison got released on four conditions -- he had to make a substantial payment to Web IV, if he released a single within a year he had to give Web IV the publishing, any album he released in the next year had to contain at least two songs published by Web IV, and he had to give Web IV at least thirty-six new songs to publish within the next year. The first two conditions were no problem at all -- Warners had the money to buy the contract out, and Merenstein's plans for the first album didn't involve a single anyway. It wouldn't be too much of a hardship to include a couple of Web IV-published tracks on the album -- Morrison had written two songs, "Beside You" and "Madame George", that had already been published and that he was regularly including in his live sets. As for the thirty-six new songs... well, that all depended on what you called a song, didn't it? [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Ring Worm"] Morrison went into a recording studio and recorded thirty-one ostensible songs, most of them lasting one minute to within a few seconds either way, in which he strummed one or two chords and spoke-sang whatever words came into his head -- for example one song, "Here Comes Dumb George", just consists of the words "Here Comes Dumb George" repeated over and over. Some of the 'songs', like "Twist and Shake" and "Hang on Groovy", are parodying Bert Berns' songwriting style; others, like "Waiting for My Royalty Check", "Blowin' Your Nose", and "Nose in Your Blow", are attacks on Bang's business practices. Several of the songs, like "Hold on George", "Here Comes Dumb George", "Dum Dum George", and "Goodbye George" are about a man called George who seems to have come to Boston to try and fail to make a record with Morrison. And “Want a Danish” is about wanting a Danish pastry. But in truth, this description is still making these "songs" sound more coherent than they are. The whole recording is of no musical merit whatsoever, and has absolutely nothing in it which could be considered to have any commercial potential at all. Which is of course the point -- just to show utter contempt to Ilene Berns and her company. The other problem that needed to be solved was Bang Records itself, which was now largely under the control of the mob. That was solved by Joe Smith. As Smith told the story "A friend of mine who knew some people said I could buy the contract for $20,000. I had to meet somebody in a warehouse on the third floor on Ninth Avenue in New York. I walked up there with twenty thousand-dollar bills -- and I was terrified. I was terrified I was going to give them the money, get a belt on the head and still not wind up with the contract. And there were two guys in the room. They looked out of central casting -- a big wide guy and  a tall, thin guy. They were wearing suits and hats and stuff. I said 'I'm here with the money. You got the contract?' I remember I took that contract and ran out the door and jumped from the third floor to the second floor, and almost broke my leg to get on the street, where I could get a cab and put the contract in a safe place back at Warner Brothers." But the problem was solved, and Lewis Merenstein could get to work translating the music he'd heard Morrison playing into a record. He decided that Kielbania and Payne were not suitable for the kind of recording he wanted -- though they were welcome to attend the sessions in case the musicians had any questions about the songs, and thus they would get session pay. Kielbania was, at first, upset by this, but he soon changed his mind when he realised who Merenstein was bringing in to replace him on bass for the session. Richard Davis, the bass player -- who sadly died two months ago as I write this -- would later go on to play on many classic rock records by people like Bruce Springsteen and Laura Nyro, largely as a result of his work for Morrison, but at the time he was known as one of the great jazz bass players, most notably having played on Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch: [Excerpt: Eric Dolphy, "Hat and Beard"] Kielbania could see the wisdom of getting in one of the truly great players for the album, and he was happy to show Davis the parts he'd been playing on the songs live, which Davis could then embellish -- Davis later always denied this, but it's obvious when listening to the live recordings that Kielbania played on before these sessions that Davis is playing very similar lines. Warren Smith Jr, the vibraphone player, had played with great jazz musicians like Charles Mingus and Herbie Mann, as well as backing Lloyd Price, Aretha Franklin, and Janis Joplin. Connie Kay, the drummer, was the drummer for the Modern Jazz Quartet and had also played sessions with everyone from Ruth Brown to Miles Davis. And Jay Berliner, the guitarist, had played on records like Charles Mingus' classic The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady: [Excerpt: Charles Mingus: "Mode D - Trio and Group Dancers, Mode F - Single Solos & Group Dance"] There was also a flute player whose name nobody now remembers. Although all of these musicians were jobbing session musicians -- Berliner came to the first session for the album that became Astral Weeks straight from a session recording a jingle for Pringles potato chips -- they were all very capable of taking a simple song and using it as an opportunity for jazz improvisation. And that was what Merenstein asked them to do. The songs that Morrison was writing were lyrically oblique, but structurally they were very simple -- surprisingly so when one is used to listening to the finished album. Most of the songs were, harmonically, variants of the standard blues and R&B changes that Morrison was used to playing. "Cyprus Avenue" and "The Way Young Lovers Do", for example, are both basically twelve-bar blueses -- neither is *exactly* a standard twelve-bar blues, but both are close enough that they can be considered to fit the form. Other than what Kielbania and Payne showed the musicians, they received no guidance from Morrison, who came in, ran through the songs once for them, and then headed to the vocal booth. None of the musicians had much memory of Morrison at all -- Jay Berliner said “This little guy walks in, past everybody, disappears into the vocal booth, and almost never comes out, even on the playbacks, he stayed in there." While Richard Davis later said “Well, I was with three of my favorite fellas to play with, so that's what made it beautiful. We were not concerned with Van at all, he never spoke to us.” The sound of the basic tracks on Astral Weeks is not the sound of a single auteur, as one might expect given its reputation, it's the sound of extremely good jazz musicians improvising based on the instructions given by Lewis Merenstein, who was trying to capture the feeling he'd got from listening to Morrison's live performances and demos. And because these were extremely good musicians, the album was recorded extremely quickly. In the first session, they cut four songs. Two of those were songs that Morrison was contractually obliged to record because of his agreement with Web IV -- "Beside You" and "Madame George", two songs that Bert Berns had produced, now in radically different versions: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Madame George"] The third song, "Cyprus Avenue", is the song that has caused most controversy over the years, as it's another of the songs that Morrison wrote around this time that relate to a sexual or romantic interest in underage girls. In this case, the reasoning might have been as simple as that the song is a blues, and Morrison may have been thinking about a tradition of lyrics like this in blues songs like "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl". Whatever the cause though, the lyrics have, to put it mildly, not aged well at all: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Cyprus Avenue"] That song would be his standard set-closer for live performances for much of the seventies. For the fourth and final song, though, they chose to record what would become the title track for the album, "Astral Weeks", a song that was a lot more elliptical, and which seems in part to be about Morrison's longing for Janet Planet from afar, but also about memories of childhood, and also one of the first songs to bring in Morrison's fascination with the occult and spirituality,  something that would be a recurring theme throughout his work, as the song was partly inspired by paintings by a friend of Morrison's which suggested to him the concept of astral travel: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] Morrison had a fascination with the idea of astral travel, as he had apparently had several out-of-body experiences as a child, and wanted to find some kind of explanation for them. Most of the songs on the album came, by Morrison's own account, as a kind of automatic writing, coming through him rather than being consciously written, and there's a fascination throughout with, to use the phrase from "Madame George", "childhood visions". The song is also one of the first songs in Morrison's repertoire to deliberately namecheck one of his idols, something else he would do often in future, when he talks about "talking to Huddie Leadbelly". "Astral Weeks" was a song that Morrison had been performing live for some time, and Payne had always enjoyed doing it. Unlike Kielbania he had no compunction about insisting that he was good enough to play on the record, and he eventually persuaded the session flute player to let him borrow his instrument, and Payne was allowed to play on the track: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] Or at least that's how the story is usually told -- Payne is usually credited for playing on "Madame George" too, even though everyone agrees that "Astral Weeks" was the last song of the night, but people's memories can fade over time. Either way, Payne's interplay with Jay Berliner on the guitar became such a strong point of the track that there was no question of bringing the unknown session player back -- Payne was going to be the woodwind player for the rest of the album: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] There was then a six-day break between sessions, during which time Payne and Kielbania went to get initiated into Scientology -- a religion with which Morrison himself would experiment a little over a decade later -- though they soon decided that it wasn't worth the cost of the courses they'd have to take, and gave up on the idea the same week. The next session didn't go so well. Jay Berliner was unavailable, and so Barry Kornfeld, a folkie who played with people like Dave Van Ronk, was brought in to replace him. Kornfeld was perfectly decent in the role, but they'd also brought in a string section, with the idea of recording some of the songs which needed string parts live. But the string players they brought in were incapable of improvising, coming from a classical rather than jazz tradition, and the only track that got used on the finished album was "The Way Young Lovers Do", by far the most conventional song on the album, a three-minute soul ballad structured as a waltz twelve-bar blues, where the strings are essentially playing the same parts that a horn section would play on a record by someone like Solomon Burke: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "The Way Young Lovers Do"] It was decided that any string or horn parts on the rest of the album would just be done as overdubs. It was two weeks before the next and final session for the album, and that featured the return of Jay Berliner on guitar. The session started with "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina", two songs that Morrison had been playing live for some time, and which were cut in relatively quick order.  They then made attempts at two more songs that didn't get very far, "Royalty", and "Going Around With Jesse James", before Morrison, stuck for something to record, pulled out a new lyric he'd never performed live, "Slim Slow Slider". The whole band ran through the song once, but then Merenstein decided to pare the arrangement down to just Morrison, Payne (on soprano sax rather than on flute), and Warren Smith Jr: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Slim Slow Slider"] That track was the only one where, after the recording, Merenstein didn't compliment the performance, remaining silent instead – Payne said “Maybe everyone was just tired, or maybe they were moved by it.” It seems likely it was the latter. The track eventually got chosen as the final track of the album, because Merenstein felt that it didn't fit conceptually with anything else -- and it's definitely a more negative track than the oth

Label: Top and Bottom 411Year: 1971Condition: M-Price: $20.00Two fantastic, rarely-heard sides written and produced by Van McCoy. Note: This beautiful copy has pristine Mint sound. (This scan is a representative image from our archives.)

Edición especial que dedicamos al vibrafonista Mike Mainieri. No escuchamos su discografía en solitario ni sus álbumes junto a la banda Steps Ahead. Repasamos sus colaboraciones junto a artistas como Michael Franks, Eliane Elias, David Sanborn, Bob James, Van McCoy, Will Downing, Marc Antoine, Jun Fukamachi, David Spinozza y Marcus Miller.

Et si la meilleure façon d'entreprendre en 2023, c'était de garder son CDI ? D'entreprendre en "side", pour minimiser les risques ? Cette semaine, zoom sur une nouvelle façon d'entreprendre, la tendance du "side-project". Des salarié·es qui lancent un "side business" en parallèle de leur CDI pour tester leur marché, retrouver du sens, avoir plus d'impact, apprendre de nouvelles compétences ou générer des compléments de revenus... ou pour tester le format entrepreneuriat avant de se jeter dans l'inconnu. Comment négocier avec son employeur pour entreprendre "on the side" ? Comment s'organiser pour combiner salariat et entrepreneuriat ? A-t-on le droit de combiner salariat et entrepreneuriat ? Quel "side business" est compatible avec le salariat ? Quel statut juridique choisir ? Pour nous en parler, je reçois Lou Sernaglia, Chief Marketing Officer chez Abby et également side-entrepreneure. Si tu es salarié·e et si tu as envie de te lancer dans l'aventure du side-business ... ... ou employeur, à la recherche d'idées pour motiver tes salarié·es ? Ou même entrepreneur·e qui a envie de se lancer dans un side project ?

 | You Can't Run From My Love (Radio Edit)  | Kiko Navarro, DJ Pippi, Willie Graff, Angela Johnson | Self-Love (feat. Estelle, Chantay Savage & J. Ivy)  | Terry Hunter | Call Me Back  | Kim Tavar | Cowboys To Girls  | The Sextones | How Happy  | Brooklyn Funk Essentials | I Love The Feeling  | Running Loving Something | Breathe (feat. Arin Ray)  | Dinner Party, Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper & Kamasi Washington | T'Boo (Em-Cee Remix)  | US | Fun Girl  | Terry Harris | Give Me Your Love  | G.C. Cameron | Persevere  | Operation Faith | Love The Way You Love Me  | Damon Dae | Love Hurts  | The Realm feat. H'Atina | Do For You  | Krishawna | What's Wrong  | Reggie Boone | How Things Changed  | I.Khan | Sing Yeah Sing  | Van McCoy  | Let Me So  | Dwayne Scivally | Touch Me Again  | Soul Liberation | Ain't Nothing Wrong (Trying To Get My Money On)  | The Mark Williams | My Baby  | 3TOB | Show And Prove  | 3TOB | Serious  | Omarion | Love Me Right (feat. Sevyn Streeter)  | Omarion | Dimensions  | Jones | Close To Heaven  | King Sis | My Father Wears The Crown (DjSoulBr Radio Remix)  | Bobby Washington | Awake  | Will Nesbit | The Energy  | Lalah Hathaway, Ariza, Kole | Be With You (feat. Kevin Soul)  | Todd Breed | The Way You Touch Me (feat. Destini Shelton)  | Jeffery Smith | Million Dollar Baby  | Crystal Motion | There'll Be Another  | Crystal Motion | All The Love I Need (feat. Cherrelle)  | Roger Hill Music | Baby Will You Love Me  | Major | Forever True  | The Everettes

This week on the 'MOC Old Skool Mix Party', Metro Beatz takes you back with music from Stevie Wonder, Donald Byrd, Van McCoy, Labelle, Heatwave, Kool & The Gang and more!! Listen live every Saturday at 6pm (EST) on mocradio.com

Alan Sorrenti - Figli Delle Stelle - Fred de la House L'été D'anges heureux Chillacapella Dub ( not commercial ) Lisa Stansfield - all around the world Todd Rundgren - hello it's me Sam Brown - stop Tanita Tikaram - twist in my sobriety Van McCoy - now that you're Gone Lobo - I'd Love you to want me Margie Joseph - let's stay together Bloodstone - natural high Sacha Distel - la belle vie - version 1992 Zucchero & Paul Young - senza una donna Glenn Medeiros - nothing's Gonna change my Love for you Turley Richards - you might need somebody Extreme - more than words Jean Shy - I'll belong to you NIalations - I'll take you just as you come

Dancefloor Memories with Patrick Hawkins, 60 Minutes of Disco, Soul and Funk Podcast. Classic tracks, Dancefloor fillers from, Rose Royce, The Bee Gees, Van McCoy, The Isley Brothers new tracks from, Stonebridge, Bella Brown and the Jealous Lovers, The Regime and Stone Paxton, and more classic tracks from Fatback, Quincey Jones, Shakatak and The Average White Band. Just settle down with a long drink and chill or boogie around your kitchen to tracks others would never dream of playing! Spread the word, give me a like and follow my Podcast. Much Love Pat

Welcome to Locked On Disco; another 90 minutes of the best in Nu Disco, edits, remixes and disco classics. This mix features inspiration from Van McCoy, Jean Carn, Archie Bell and the Drells, The Real Thing, Ben E. King, Cissy Houston, Stevie Wonder, One Way featuring Al Hudson and the Soul Partners, Stargard, and George Benson amongst others. Highest quality audio and full track listing also available on Mixcloud.  Bienvenido a Locked On Disco; otros 90 minutos de lo mejor en Nu Disco, edits, remixes y clásicos de disco. Esta mezcla presenta inspiración de Van McCoy, Jean Carn, Archie Bell y Los Drells, The Real Thing, Ben E. King, Cissy Houston, Stevie Wonder, One Way con Al Hudson y Los Soul Partners, Stargard y George Benson, entre otros. El audio de la más alta calidad y la lista completa de canciones también están disponibles en Mixcloud. Mixed with love y mezclado con amor in London/en Londres. XXF* 

Le Chef étoilé du Jour *** The Miracles - Overture ( the miracles of Angels ) Boys Town Gang - Disco kicks Gepy & Gepy - body to body The Bottom Line - that's the way to Go Tata Vega - I just keep thinking about you baby Billy Preston & Syreeta - Go for it John Davis & the Monster Orchestra - ain't that enough for you Space - Prison - album version *** Don Ray - Garden of Love Ray Dahrouge - gonna love ya gonna love ya Van McCoy - love at he first sight

TRUE HOUSE STORIES® W/ MELBA MOORE # 102 Melba Moore began her recording career in 1967, cutting the track "Magic Touch" which was left unreleased until 1986. In later years it became an enormous track on the Northern Soul Scene, eventually leading to Moore performing it live in 2009 at the Baltic Soul Weekender 3 in Germany north of Hamburg. In 1967 she began her performing career as Dionne in the original cast of the musical Hair along with Ronnie Dyson, Paul Jabara and Diane Keaton. In 1975 Melba Moore signed with Buddha Records and released the critically successful R&B album, Peach Melba, which included the minor hit, "I Am His Lady". The following year she scored her first significant hit with the Van McCoy penned “This Is It “, which reached the Billboard Hot 100, the top-20 position on the R&B chart, and top-10 in the UK, becoming her biggest success in that country. In 1976 she scored her third Grammy nomination with the R&B ballad "Lean on Me", which had been recorded originally by Vivian Reed and later by Moore's idol Aretha Franklin who recorded the song as a B-side to her 1971 hit “Spanish Harlem". The song is most notable for Moore's extended long note at the end. In 1983 she re-recorded the song as a tribute to McCoy, who had died four years earlier. Throughout the rest of the 1970s, Moore struggled to match the success of "This Is It" with minor R&B/dance hits. However, her hit 'Pick Me Up, I'll Dance' released in May 1979 produced by McFadden and Whitehead and released on Epic Records did have considerable UK disco success, reaching UK chart position 48, along with a further hit that same year, also produced by McFadden and Whitehead with a cover version of the Bee Gees' hit “You Stepped Ito My Life”, which reached the top 20 on the R&B charts and 47 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1982 Moore signed with Capitol Records and reached the top 5 on the R&B charts with the dance-pop / funk single "Love's Comin' at Ya”, which also hit the top 20 in the UK (on EMI America EA 146) and became a sizable hit in some European countries for its post-disco sound and followed by "Mind Up Tonight", which was another top 40 hit in the UK reaching position number 22. A string of R&B hits followed, including 1983's "Keepin' My Lover Satisfied" and "Love Me Right", 1984's "Livin' for Your Love", 1985's "Read My Lips"—which later won Moore a third Grammy nomination (for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance), making her just the third black artist after Donna Summer and Michael Jackson to be nominated in the rock category—and 1985's "When You Love Me Like This”. Moore has been married once and has a daughter. Melba Moore was engaged in a four-year relationship with television star Clifton Davis during the early 1970s. Davis later admitted that the relationship failed due to his drug abuse and mistreatment of Moore. In September 1974, Moore married record manager and business promoter Charles Huggins. Moore and Huggins divorced after 17 years of marriage in 1991. In 1999, Huggins filed suit against Moore claiming that she had publicly defamed him by stating that he abused her economically. Melba Moore has described herself as a "born-again Catholic” and listen to her share the rest of her story right here on True House Stories.

**Smiffy's A To Z Of Soul Music On www.traxfm.org. This Week Smiffy Features Boogie, Contemporary Soul, 70's & 80's Grooves With The Letters U & V. Cuts From Vaughan Mason, Viola Wills, Van McCoy, Voyage, Vasti Jackson, Urban Blues Project, Uncle Louie, Ultra Nate, Vince Broomfield, Voices Of East Harlem, Visual, DiscoGalatix, Verne VA Allison, Unique, U-Nam, UDM & More #boogie #soul #70sgrooves #80sgrooves #danceclassics #contemporarysoul #raregrooves Listen Live Here Via The Trax FM Player: chat.traxfm.org/player/index.html Mixcloud LIVE :mixcloud.com/live/traxfm Free Trax FM Android App: play.google.com/store/apps/det...mradio.ba.a6bcb The Trax FM Facebook Page : facebook.com/original103.3 Trax FM Live On Hear This: hearthis.at/k8bdngt4/live Tunerr: tunerr.co/radio/Trax-FM Radio Garden: Trax FM Link: http://radio.garden/listen/trax-fm/IEnsCj55 OnLine Radio Box: onlineradiobox.com/uk/trax/?cs...cs=uk.traxRadio Radio Deck: radiodeck.com/radio/5a09e2de87...7e3370db06d44dc Radio.Net: traxfmlondon.radio.net Stream Radio : streema.com/radios/Trax_FM..The_Originals Live Online Radio: liveonlineradio.net/english/tr...ax-fm-103-3.htm

National short bread day. Pop culture from 2015. New Mexico became 47th state, President elect Pierce train wreck on way to inauguration, 1st boxing match. Todays birthdays - Tom Mix, Loretta Young, Danny thomas, Vic Tayback, Earl Scruggs, Bonnie Franklin, Van McCoy, Kathy Sledge, Norman Reedus. Teddy Roosevelt died.

Vous avez vu le film. Vous savez ce qui s'est passé. Maintenant, il est temps d'écouter la musique. Écoutez Funk and Disco Radio, où nous diffusons le meilleur de la musique funk et disco des années 70 et 80 ! Que vous recherchiez des tubes classiques ou des morceaux plus profonds, nous avons quelque chose pour tout le monde. Nos DJ en direct sont prêts à vous faire découvrir le meilleur du disco et du funk grâce à nos listes de lecture sélectionnées avec soin, qui comprennent à la fois des tubes grand public et des joyaux moins connus. Le groove sera au rendez-vous avec des classiques du disco comme "The Hustle" de Van McCoy et des favoris du funk comme "Midnight Star" de The Time. Nous avons même des tubes soul de chanteurs comme Luther Vandross et Aretha Franklin, alors ne manquez pas ça ! Si vous voulez faire une pause après avoir dansé, n'hésitez pas à vous asseoir et à écouter des émissions de radio classiques comme The Midnight Special ou Soul Train. Nous vous ferons remonter le temps, tout en vous faisant bouger les pieds !Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Écoutez Funk and Disco Radio , où nous diffusons le meilleur de la musique funk et disco des années 70 et 80 ! Que vous recherchiez des tubes classiques ou des morceaux plus profonds, nous avons quelque chose pour tout le monde. Nos DJ en direct sont prêts à vous faire découvrir le meilleur du disco et du funk grâce à nos listes de lecture sélectionnées avec soin, qui comprennent à la fois des tubes grand public et des joyaux moins connus. Le groove sera au rendez-vous avec des classiques du disco comme "The Hustle" de Van McCoy et des favoris du funk comme "Midnight Star" de The Time. Nous avons même des tubes soul de chanteurs comme Luther Vandross et Aretha Franklin, alors ne manquez pas ça ! Si vous voulez faire une pause après avoir dansé, n'hésitez pas à vous asseoir et à écouter des émissions de radio classiques comme The Midnight Special ou Soul Train. Nous vous ferons remonter le temps, tout en vous faisant bouger les pieds !Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Escucha el espacio musical para combatir los gérmenes todos los días a las 08:00 y a las 10:00 horas en compañía de Luis Diego Peralta. En este capítulo suena Van McCoy. músico y compositor estadounidense que ha sido reconocido por álbumes como The hustle and the best of y Disco Baby

FUNK FOUNDATION #30 is a tribute to Van McCoy. I know that some of you would think that I must have gone mad to do a disco show…but no worries…Although Van McCoy is best known for his ‘75 mega hit "The Hustle" …prior to becoming disco mega star…. Van McCoy was RnB and Soul artist, musician, producer, arranger, conductor and label owner….with over 700 songs credited to him….going from the 50s all the way to his early-unexpected death in 1979. Van McCoy was born in 1940 in Washington, D.C. Today show is celebration of his life and work…. I will play songs from his releases and his collaborations with artists such as Gladys Knight & the Pips, The Stylistics, Aretha Franklin, Brenda & the Tabulations, The Presidents, David Ruffin, Peaches & Herb, Choice 4, Faith Hope and Charity, Melba Moore, and many more... I will focus on his soulful and groovy side…from soul to funk, RnB and disco-funk…so stay tuned and enjoy the show.

In this difficult time for everyone, I want to create at least something beautiful. Let it be music. Happy listening. ___________________________________________________ В это сложное для всех время хочется создавать хоть что-то красивое. Пускай это будет музыка. Приятного прослушивания. Tracklist: 1. Beyoncé - VIRGO'S GROOVE 2. Lizzo - About Damn Time 3. Austin Millz - Nobody Khan 4. Doja Cat, Crystal Waters - Woman (Max9k Flip) 5. Latto & Mariah Carey ft. DJ Khaled - Big Energy (Remix) 6. Eric Benet Ft. Faith Evans - Georgy Porgy (Tomcio Remix) 7. Dua Lipa - Levitating (Ticklish Reboot) 8. Jennifer Lopez - Play (Tomcio Remix) (Clean) 9. Ticklish - Come On Baby 1999 10. Grover Washington Jr. - Just The Two Of Us (Smochi & Excez Edit) 11. Jack Harlow - First Class (Quinoa Jones Flip) 12. Van McCoy x The Soul City Symphony - The Hustle (Intro Edit) 13. Jeezy ft. Ne-Yo - The Glory 14. One T & Cool T x Bruno Mars - The 24k Magic Key (DJ Yella Blend) 15. Jay-Z ft. Pharrell - Change Clothes (DJ Kasir x Tera Kora 'Boukman Bridge' Edit) 16. Ta-ku, Wafia - Love Somebody (Mr. Carmack Remix) 17. DUCKWRTH feat. Channel Tres - THROWYOASSOUT 18. Willow Smith - Wait a Minute! (DJ Yella Blend) 19. Jarreau Vandal - The Internet 'Girl' (Vandalized Edit) 20. JMSN - LEVY (JUN SHARP TEST) 21. Anderson .Paak feat. Brandy - Jet Black (feat. Brandy) 22. Rihanna - We Found Love (Double A Flip) 23. Last Night In Paris - Missed Calls

What do U2, Rocky, and Ron Jeremy have in common?  They're all featured in this edition of Beyond the Goatee. Throw in Jack White, Patty Smyth, and "The Hustle"... well then, you really have something.  Enjoy the ride!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Label: Motown 1420Year: 1977Condition: MPrice: $35.00From a warehouse find, this is a new, unplayed stock copy. The A side was a mellow hit on the Black Billboard chart, but it's the B side that gets the feet movin' and excitement building today. "Rode By The Place" was re-released on the flip of Ruffin's subsequent single, "You're My Peace Of Mind." That subsequent release is also in high demand among Northern Soul collectors, but it appears to be more common (even though its A side was not as big a hit), and is somewhat less valuable. Take a listen to the mp3 snippet of this Van McCoy production, and you may discover a new favorite! By the way, the A side is edited from a 3:56 album track.

Mark takes on Sharon in Tuesday's edition of PopMaster

Label: Epic 10954Year: 1973Condition: M-Last Price: $20.00. Not currently available for sale.Here's another terrific, rarely heard Van McCoy production. Note: This beautiful copy comes in a vintage Epic Records factory sleeve. Its labels are Mint except for the tiny "x" inked on the A label (see scan). Although the vinyl (styrene) grades below Near Mint, reflecting some light scuffing, the A side audio sounds pristine Mint!

#Choice four you're so right for me # one of the most underrated R&B vocal groups ever# east coast harmony # writer and producer Van McCoy # soulful and moving# respect --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mr-maxxx/support

Let’s go back to 1976 today and have some fun listening to some great random music Van McCoy – Theme from Star Trek Dr. Hook – A Little Bit More Leonard Cohen – Suzanne Jaco Pastorius – Donna Lee Lester Flatt & The Nashville Grass – The Ballad of Jed Clampett Lee Ritenour – Theme […]

We know you couldn't get enough of last week's episode, so come along as we keep calm and carry on with our conversation on commerce, or, to be more clear in category, hiring a developing your current or desired business team.   We know from last week's full court press from Dr. J that in our current climate, each and every enterprise is having to engage with less than ideal conditions when it comes to finding new hires and attempting to develop and train the good folks you already have. With the fog of uncertainty we all seem to find ourselves in these days, we're even seeing more and more people jump ship from their current jobs to new ventures and industries, so are you ready if one of your team leaves you or will there be a leadership vacuum in that loss? (You don't want to end up like Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes did after Teddy Pendergrass split from the group in '76 after a money dispute; it's a hard fall from gold records to slumming it on a 2017 Soul Train Cruise and having to do a wine tasting on the Lido Deck with Peabo Bryson getting top billing)   Not to worry - our boys Sid and Keith are here to save the day and they've got another dynamic duo's decisive dissertation to direct you: Geoff Smart and Randy Street's "Who: A Method for Hiring." (Found where all books are sold and maybe your local library as well. Local libraries - they're not just places for the homeless to sleep or take sink baths; they also have books)   Step One: Prime Your Pipeline. Examine the existing environment in your business by literally taking score: create a scorecard for your company's positions and have your employees, to paraphrase New Orleans rapper Mystikal, "Show me what you workin' with." By actually taking score, you really see who is doing what, who should be doing what and what might not be getting done at all. It's a good day when we get to use "Who" to help answer "What," isn't it?   Step Two: Start the Search. Finding the fit that meets your needs is not going to be fast or easy, especially in this economy. Long story short: whatever you've done in the past probably isn't going to work or apply to current conditions; you've got to up your game and meet the market where it's at now. You're going to have to be out there and every day, you'll be hustlin' (like Rick Ross or Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony - your choice) and doing everything you can to find the best right people: marketing the opening, reaching out for referrals, and communicating the culture for your organization to complete your crew.   Step Three: Improving the Interview. This one's actually incredibly simple: be intentional in your interviewing. Our boys have some primo practical pointers here and putting down anything more in these notes would violate our status as card-carrying members of Team #NoSpoilers.   Step Four: Settle the Score. Yes, our simple scorecards from Step One are back again (like a horror movie villain or Jujubee on seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race ... four times is enough, queen). Using the scorecard helps eliminate the emotionality from the process, which you'll need to find the most excellent employee for the job.   Of course, if you want the first-rate facts and most incomparable intelligence from this week's show, you're going to have to actually listen to the podcast - because, if you haven't learned by now, these show notes are, at best, loosely constructed outlines that occasionally tell you what the episode is actually about amongst a hodge-podge of alliteration, outdated pop cultural references and a surprising amount of facts about the life and career of Teddy Pendergrass - RIP to a real one.    CONNECT WITH THE GUYS RX SPORT FIT CHECKMAT DAPHNE Sexton Lawn & Landscape Keith Glines Sid Sexton SPONSORS  Rick Miller Pro 356 Consulting Johnny Barranco Barranco and Associates

Escucha el espacio musical para combatir los gérmenes todos los días a las 08:00 y a las 10:00 horas en compañía de Luis Diego Peralta. En este capítulo suena el extraordinario músico y compositor Van McCoy, cuyo sencillo musical más conocido es "The hustle" del año 1975. Escucha algunos de sus temas más populares en este podcast.

Baba & Iya Cratediggers and Lorne tha Jazzy Leo celebrate seven years on the air. PLAYLIST 1. People Get Up & Drive That Funky Soul by James Brown [INTRO] 2. Money Is (f. Little Richard) by Quincy Jones 3. Dreaming a Dream by Crown Heights Affair 4. Make Me Believe In You by Patti Jo 5. You're Welcome (f. Bobby Byrd) by Vicki Anderson 6. Super Duper Love by Sugar Billy 7. The Hustle by Van McCoy & The Soul City 8. Kiss by Prince 9. Cool by The Time 10. Reach Out by People Under the Stairs 11. My Vote Will Count (f. Sevyn Streeter) by YelloPain 12. Theme from the Motion Picture "Cleopatra Jones" by Joe Simon & The Mainstreeters [OUTRO] --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jadestonevintagesoul/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jadestonevintagesoul/support

Dancefloor Memories with Patrick Hawkins, 60 Minutes of Disco, Soul and Funk Podcast. Classic tracks, Dancefloor fillers from, Van McCoy, The Jacksons, Arthur Adams, Quincy Jones, Heatwave, brand new tracks from RG ft Casey, Phillip Ramirez, Rozalla, Sargent Tucker, and more classic tracks from Cameo and The S.O.S Band. Just settle down with a long drink and chill or boogie around your kitchen to tracks others would never dream of playing! Spread the word, give me a like and follow my Podcasts. Much Love Pat

BMS: The Seeds of Disco Welcome to the show BMS listeners!This episode traces the steps of the earliest musical elements which would later be known as disco deservedly or otherwise. We will focus on the record labels and global regions creating honest r&b between the periods of 1973 and 1975. This organic growth and production would appeal to society's counter-culture and eventually spin off to a multi-million dollar musical genre.This Episode will feature, Barry White, George McCrea, Carol Douglas, The Hues Corporation, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, and many others.PLAYLIST1. LOVE'S THEME by BARRY WHITE2. KEEP ON TRUCKIN' by EDDIE KENDRICKS3. LOVE TRAIN by O'JAYS4. THE LOVE I LOST by HAROLD MELVIN & THE BLUE NOTES5. LOVE IS THE MESSAGE by MFSB6. ROCK THE BOAT by THE HUE'S CORPORATION7. ROCK YOUR BABY by GEORGE MCCRAE8. DOCTOR'S ORDERS by CAROL DOUGLAS9. NEVER CAN SAY GOOD-BYE by GLORIA GAYNOR10. KUNG FU FIGHTING by CARL DOUGLAS11. GET DOWN TONIGHT by KC & THE SUNSHINE BAND12. FLY ROBIN FLY by SILVER CONVENTION13. LOVE TO LOVE YOU by BABY DONNA SUMMER14. THE HUSTLE by VAN MCCOY

Queen's fourth studio album is the one that would launch them into super stardom and bring them personal financial success as well.  A Night at the Opera got its name from the Marx Brothers film, and many consider it to be the best album Queen ever made.The band lineup was Freddie Mercury on lead vocals, Brian May on guitar, John Deacon on bass, and Roger Taylor on drums.  Backing vocals were performed by May and Taylor - John Deacon was the only band member who didn't sing.The first three Queen albums were produced under a contract that resulted in the band receiving almost none of the money earned by the albums, and the group had to negotiate their way out of the deal with Trident Studios.  A Night at the Opera was quite complex, and rumored to be the most expensive album ever made at the time.  Recording took place in seven different studios on 24-track tape.  June and July of 1975 was devoted to rehearsing and developing new material, and recording was done from August to November.  Unlike many bands, the songwriting was done by all four band members.  Many innovations were used including multitracked vocals, guitar overdubs, and various instruments including the grand piano, a Wurlitzer electric piano, double bass, gongs and timpani - but no synthesizers.  The album name was inspired by the Marx Brother's movie of the same name, which the band watched on VHS during recording sessions.  They would subsequently befriend Groucho Marx, and would again reference a Marx Brothers film with their album "A Day at the Races."  A Night At the Opera would peak at number 4 on the Billboard 200, was the first Queen album to be certified platinum in the U.S., and would be nominated for two Grammy awards. You're My Best FriendThe second single from the album  was the first Queen single to be written by bassist John Deacon, who composed it for his wife while learning to play the piano.  Deacon also played the Wurlitzer electric piano on this single, and overdubbed the bass part afterwards.'39Brian May wrote and sings this deep cut as a sci fi number.  The crew of an exploring ship travels off on a one-year mission, but because of the time dilation effects associated with relativistic speeds they return 100 years later.  Mercury and Taylor sang backing vocals on this track, though Freddie Mercury would sing lead when it was performed in concerts.Love of My LifeFreddie Mercury wrote this track for Mary, and it would be covered by many bands.  This song would also become an anthem during Queen concerts in which the audience sings the song, and the band would play only the instruments from the stage without vocals.  Brian May played the harp, and Mercury played the piano solo.Bohemian RhapsodyA cult classic, this was the first single released from the album, to the chagrin of the record company since it was about twice as long as the typical single at the time.  The vocal arrangements were thought up by Freddie Mercury during recording - on a daily basis.  He wrote down the arrangements in blocks on a phone book.  The song would become a hit during its time, and once again when used in the movie "Wayne's World" in 1992. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Stardust by David Essex (from the motion picture “Stardust")This movie chronicles the rise and fall of Jim MacLaine, an international rock star.  David Essex plays the lead role and sings this song from the film. STAFF PICKS:I Cheat the Hangman by the Doobie BrothersBruce starts off the staff picks with a ghost story.  Guitarist Patrick Simmons wrote and sang lead on this track with inspiration from the short story by Ambrose Bierce entitled "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."  It is about a ghost returning to his home after the Civil War and not realizing he's dead. SOS  by ABBARob's staff pick is a palindrome, both in the song name and the band.  This is the sixth single from ABBA's self-titled third album. ABBA took its name from the first initial of each of the band members.  This single made it to number 15 on the U.S. charts.  S.O.S. would help define ABBA as a pop group.Blue Mist by Mama's PrideWayne brings us a minor-key track from the pride of Saint Louis - Mama's Pride.  The song describes the feelings produced by a break-up.  Mama's Pride was a warm-up act for popular 70's bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers Band, Todd Rundgren, and Alice Cooper.  The group disbanded in 1982, but has done periodic reunions in Saint Louis since 2003. Nights on Broadway by the Bee GeesBrian's track features the Bee Gees just before their launch into falsetto stardom with “Saturday Night Fever.”  This is one of the first songs on which the Bee Gees employed some falsetto vocals, yet it retains a more soulful sound than the hits of the later disco era.   INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:The Hustle by Van McCoyThis disco line dance phenomenon closes out or mid-70's podcast.

Another, and last for a while, trip back to the 80's. Howard Jones, Kate Bush, The Pet Shop Boys, Savage Garden, The Eurythmics, Van McCoy, T'Pau and a few more....... 

Hey Fam so after over 300 pings and plays on various different sites i have decided to upload it for your Aural pleasure or Annoyance Hehe. Enjoy and Keep Positive xx MmP The Paradise Hustle

Hey Fam so after over 300 pings and plays on various different sites i have decided to upload it for your Aural pleasure or Annoyance Hehe. Enjoy and Keep Positive xx MmP The Paradise Hustle