Podcasts about We Three

1. Cool It - Guy Morris & Band2. Muy sabroso (Very Tasty) - Lou Garno Trio3. Look What You Done To Me pt.1&2 (edit) - Sheila Skipworth4. No No No Momerto - Rick & The Entire World5. Funky In The Hole - The Blowflys6. Todos - Nombres7. There´s a Wrinkle in Our Time - 19848. Now Is The Time - Sisters Love9. Warm Daddy´s Choice - River Front Band10. Bring Out Yourself - Emperors Soul 6911. When Love Comes Home - Chet Ivey & His Fabulous Avengers12. Motherless Child - Harmonica Paul13. Something Else (feat. Butch Miles) - Iris Bell Trio14. Backlash - Fats Gaines Orchestra15. Sidewinder - Janet´s We-Three16. Angel Food - The Port Angels17. Wahoo, Wahoo, Wahoo - Wayne CarterEscuchar audio

We Three, a family band from McMinnville, Oregon, auditioned for America's Got Talent Season 13 with a heartfelt song dedicated to their late mother. The emotional performance resonated with the judges and the audience, highlighting the power of music to convey deep emotions. The band's unique sound and the personal connection to their lyrics made them stand out. The judges praised their harmonies and the way they captured the essence of the song. The audition set the stage for their journey on the show and showcased their musical talent and storytelling abilities. In this part of the conversation, the hosts discuss Simon's comments on We Three's audition and the difficulty of bands on AGT. They also talk about Martina McBride as a guest judge and her comparison of We Three to Dire Straits. The hosts review We Three's quarterfinals performance and the contradictory comments from the judges. They also mention the results of the quarterfinals and discuss Simon's controversial comments. In this part of the conversation, the principal themes discussed include Simon's contradictory advice, the elimination of Flau'jae and Human Fountains, the results of the quarterfinals and semifinals, We Three's risky song choice, the judges' choices and Dunkin' Save, Tyra's hosting mishaps, We Three's memorable audition, their placement in the competition, and their comparison to other acts. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Fantasy League 03:38 Reviewing the Audition Performance 21:16 Emotional Impact of the Song 27:07 Judges' Comments and Emotional Response 33:43 Simon's Comment on We Three's Audition 35:01 The Difficulty of Bands on AGT 37:30 Emotional Audition and Simon's Comment 38:19 Tracking Simon's Thumbs Up 39:24 Martina McBride as Guest Judge 42:21 Quarterfinals and Martina McBride's Comparison 44:49 We Three's Quarterfinals Performance 48:40 Martina McBride's Comment on We Three's Performance 50:18 Simon's Contradictory Comments 53:17 Quarterfinals Results 54:25 We Three's Intro Package 55:39 We Three's Quarterfinals Performance 01:01:29 Simon's Controversial Comments 01:09:27 Simon's Contradictory Advice 01:10:09 Flau'jae and Human Fountains Eliminated 01:11:22 Quarterfinals Results 01:13:24 Semi-Finals Performances 01:15:04 We Three's Risky Song Choice 01:17:44 Judges' Choice and Duncan Save 01:18:43 Simon's Disdain for We Three 01:19:59 Tyra's Hosting Mishaps 01:20:57 Unintentional Comedy: We Three's Song Choice 01:25:42 Simon's Contradictory Judging 01:27:34 Mel B's Inconsistent Judging 01:31:01 Tyra's Hosting Mishaps 01:37:07 We Three's Memorable Audition 01:38:56 We Three's Placement in the Competition 01:41:23 We Three Compared to Other Acts Contact Information Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Threads | Email About AGT Time Podcast AGT Time Podcast is a weekly podcast covering the hit NBC talent competition America's Got Talent. The hosts, Cody Patterson & Jay Bock recap each episode during the regular season. We do rewatch older seasons during the offseason, have guest interviews, or review movies. AGT Commenter makes a frequent appearance on the podcast and gives his deep insight into America's Got Talent.  The podcast is typically recorded on Thursday nights and released on Fridays. Riverside.fm We are in the affiliate program for Riverside.fm. If you sign up using this link, then we receive a percentage from your subscription. This really helps us support this podcast.  #AGT #AmericasGotTalent    Goodpods Top 100 Entertainment Indie Podcasts Listen now to AGT Time - America's Got Talent Fancast podcast

We Three

Ian finally got his episode. Here's the second week in a row we talked about Taylor Swift. So that's pretty cool. Will we talk about her next week? Maybe. Maybe not. Also, we talk about golf, react to We Three's "Hell as Well," and, as always, give our opinions on fast food.   Watch on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC2zPM2ylfyQhM3s40rfwq7g Follow us on the socials: @the.recap.podcast

Good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you maybe and welcome to an Extra interview of Final Cut. today I have a a family affair as they are siblings. ladies and gentlemen Bethany Manny and Joshua Humile together are We Three

One of America's Got Talent's most widely known sibling trio We Three's Manny, Bethany & Joshua get vulnerable about the highs and lows of life after the show,  who they truly are as a band, their personal life stories & struggles and where they're headed in the future.

Y seguimos con nuestra particular celebración del trigésimo aniversario de Vertigo, pero esta vez con un versus. Enfrentamos dos obras que, pese a compartir guionista y dibujante, no pueden ser más distintas. Desde dos momentos bien diferenciados de la historia Vertigo nos llegan Flex Mentallo (1996) y We3 (2004), ambas de Grant Morrison y Frank Quitely. Cualquier cosa que haga este dúo de escoceses es una delicia, pero ¿con cuál nos quedaremos? Un click al play y lo vamos averiguando. Sabed, oh-yentes, que entre los años del hundimiento de Atlantis y sus brillantes ciudades, tragadas por los océanos, y los años del nacimiento de los hijos de Aryas, hubo una edad no soñada donde podía escucharse el podcast 292 de ELHDT. Selección musical: 🎶 We Three, de Little Beaver 🎶 Doom Patrol S1 Official Soundtrack _ End Credits, de Clint Mansell y Kevin Kiner

We had the pleasure of interviewing We Three over Zoom video!The group made up of siblings Manny, Joshua and Bethany appeared on America's Got Talent. Since then, they have released three full-length albums and EPs and toured extensively. They also amassed over 200 M streams on Spotify and have exceeded 2.2 M followers on their social media.About We Three:Since releasing their debut album in 2018, Portland's We Three has managed to rack up over 240+ M total song streams,1.3 M followers on TikTok that gathered 30 M likes, and a large dedicated following on social media. This is due, in large part, to the band's unique approach to songwriting, which can be described as an unusual ability to deliver highly relatable songs about mental health, love, and insecurity. The band's frontman Manny Humlie often packages this type of subject matter inside infectious melodies with razor-sharp production.We want to hear from you! Please email Hello@BringinitBackwards.com. www.BringinitBackwards.com#podcast #interview #bringinbackpod #WeThree #AmericasGotTalent #AGT #NewMusic #ZoomListen & Subscribe to BiBhttps://www.bringinitbackwards.com/follow/ Follow our podcast on Instagram and Twitter! https://www.facebook.com/groups/bringinbackpod

Joining us this week is comedian Cavin Eggleston! How are things different for comic book fans now as opposed to back in the day? Is it still nerdy to read comic books? Who will be on the Disney+ Secret Invasion series? What really cool job did Cavin used to have? Who is Flex Mentallo? What books did Cavin teach in his class? What are some issues with The Killing Joke and how did Cavin handle them? What is "We Three" about? What do comic book fans like to do when they're into a book? What is "East of West" about? What happened with Uber? Why doesn't Brett want to read Wikipedia entries for comic book stories? Why doesn't Cavin like the Joker? What happens at the end of The Killing Joke? Why did the school stop teaching Watchmen?  Reading list: Secret Invasion https://amzn.to/41tawms Watchmen https://amzn.to/3GHy9zS Flex Mentallo https://amzn.to/418k1aW The Mighty Thor by Jason Aaron (free on Comixology Unlimited) https://amzn.to/401sNGB https://amzn.to/407BpLy Preacher https://amzn.to/3UHet4T The Boys https://amzn.to/3MMz7ih Grimm Fairy Tales https://amzn.to/418l5vs The Killing Joke https://amzn.to/3MDJNQ7 What's So Funny About Truth Justice and the American Way? https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18911253 Fables https://amzn.to/3zTygoe Criminal https://amzn.to/3mqERDz The Department of Truth https://amzn.to/3GGT0Dx Something is Killing the Children https://amzn.to/3KY38du I Kill Giants https://amzn.to/3GCXon2 We3 by Grant Morrison https://amzn.to/3UwVMkl Wytches by Scott Snyder https://amzn.to/3mxkPr0 Saga https://amzn.to/405DAQ6 East of West (free on Comixology Unlimited) https://amzn.to/3UwVZ77 Uber and Uber Invasion (Kieron Gillen) https://amzn.to/3myZTjk The Wicked and the Devine by Kieron Gillen (free on Comixology Unlimited) https://amzn.to/3mEVPxT Scalped by Jason Aaron https://amzn.to/40fg7fq Punisher by Jason Aaron https://amzn.to/41oB0FU Astonishing X-Men (free on Comixology Unlimited) https://amzn.to/4022kIJ Jonathan Hickman's X-Men (free on Comixology Unlimited) https://amzn.to/3A22buc Watch list: Superman vs the Elite https://amzn.to/3mqrROl Funny TikTok clip: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamjoman/video/7196456380662926634

Cadbury Time 19xx.xx.xx We Three

PODCAST A Special Christmas Presentation for Advent 2022 Tonight we celebrate 2022 and prepare ourselves for a New Year – 2023. In the vast transition of Matthew 2: 12, we wonder in amazement about the Magi who attended Jesus' arrival to earth. In pivotal moments for the Magi, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and… the mad King Herod […] The post We Three…! – Episode 6 appeared first on FHBCatc.

PODCAST A Special Christmas Presentation for Advent 2022 Christmas day has come! Celebrating today with family, friends & faith community, we hope you are filled with Joy, Peace, Hope & Love. These four elements – so vital to humanity, are found interspersed throughout the story. In this 5th of 6 “We Three…!” episodes we consider […] The post We Three…! – Episode 5 appeared first on FHBCatc.

PODCAST A Special Christmas Presentation for Advent 2022 Imagine Christmas Eve for the Magi. Of course advent occurred over 3 years, but just think of their excitement the night before they saw Him – when, outside Jerusalem they turned to the short trek to Bethlehem. In this 4th “We Three…!” episode we consider this night as told by Clementarian, a […] The post We Three…! – Episode 4 appeared first on FHBCatc.

PODCAST A Special Christmas Presentation for Advent 2022 Ever wondered about the eastern visitors in the Christmas story – the Magi, Wisemen, Kings? “We Three…!” is a six-episode creative account of the journey of these ancient visitors as told by Clementarian, a librarian of Persia. We hope you ponder with the wisest of Jesus' birth […] The post We Three…! – Episode 3 appeared first on FHBCatc.

PODCAST A Special Christmas Presentation for Advent 2022 Ever wondered about the eastern visitors in the Christmas story – the Magi, Wisemen, Kings? “We Three…!” is a six-episode creative account of the journey of these ancient visitors as told by Clementarian, a librarian of Persia. We hope you ponder with the wisest of Jesus' birth […] The post We Three…! – Episode 2 appeared first on FHBCatc.

PODCAST A Special Christmas Presentation for Advent 2022 Ever wondered about the eastern visitors in the Christmas story – the Magi, Wisemen, Kings? “We Three…!” is a six-episode creative account of the journey of these ancient visitors as told by Clementarian, a librarian of Persia. We hope you ponder with the wisest of Jesus' birth […] The post We Three…! – Episode 1 appeared first on FHBCatc.

Established artists have found mokuhanga to be an asset to their practice. It is a medium which can be very different to what an artist may currently be focused on. It builds patience, and helps creativity.  Timothy Laurin is an established artist, who has worked in several artistic mediums, such as letterpress, screen printing, glass, intaglio, and mixed media. Tim discovered mokuhanga a few years ago and has decided to pursue the art form. On this episode of The Unfinished Print I speak with artist Timothy Laurin about his discovery of mokuhanga, the rituals of process, memory and contemporary society. We also speak on the matrix of mokuhanga, gallery relationships, and how ones own environment can affect what an artist produces.  Please follow The Unfinished Print and my own print work on Instagram @andrezadoroznyprints Twitter @unfinishedprint, or email me at theunfinishedprint@gmail.com Notes: may contain a hyperlink. Simply click on the highlighted word or phrase. Tim Laurin - Print Collective, Octopus Studio Press,  Instagram , Twitter Georgian Bay - is a large bay off of Lake Huron in Southern, Ontario, Canada. It is known for cottages, fishing, hunting, and beautiful sunsets. It is a part of the Canadian Shield, and was painted by such artists as Tom Thompson (1877-1917). It is about two hours drive from Toronto.  Barrie, Ontario - is a city with a population of 145,000. It was originally populated by the Anishinaabeg People and the Wendant. It was then populated by white settlers in 1828. intaglio printmaking - is a style of printmaking, the opposite of relief printmaking, where scratches made with a burin are made on the plate (copper, zinc, aluminum) and then dipped in acid. Then ink and pigment is rubbed on with a brayer, brushes, etc. More info can be found, here.   washi - is a type of naturally fibrous Japanese paper made for many different types of artistic pursuits. Mokuhanga printmakers use washi, sized and unsized, to produce their woodblock prints. More info from the Japanese Paper Place, can be found, here.  birch plywood - is a hardwood used in various ways, such as furniture building, homes, and woodblock. There are white birch, black birch, and white birch. It can be purchased, as well as other woods, in thin veneer and pasted onto regular plywood, or purchased as birch plywood in many hardware stores.  John Milton Cage Jr. - (1912-1922) was a composer and music theorist who was influenced by Zen Buddhism and Indian philosophy. One of his beliefs was to "free the creative gesture from all intentional subjectivity." Life is chance. More info can be found, here.  representational art - is art which identifies something which exists in real life. Métis - is in reference to a group of Indigenous peoples from Canada. Recognized in 1982 by the Constitutional Act of Canada. Emerging in the Northwest of Canada during the late 18th century, they are the offspring of Indigenous women and European fur traders.  The homeland of the Métis is considered as, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and parts of the Northern United States. More info can be found, here.  kitakata - is a specific type of washi made of Philippine gampi, and sulphite pulp. For bookbinding, and mokuhanga and other types of printmaking.  More info, here.  William Morris - (1834-1896) was a textile maker, poet and artist. He produced over fifty patterns of wallpaper based on the movement of nature. More info from the Victoria & Albert Museum, here.   Arts and Crafts Movement - was an artistic movement as a opposition to the industrial world. the movement originally began in mid-19th Century Britain, moving across Europe and the Atlantic to the America's. More info can be found, here.  Sheridan College - is a college located on three campuses, Brampton, Mississauga, and Oakville in Ontario. It is a practical college with various programs such as business, special effects, television, film, etc. More info can be found, here.  The Japanese Paper Place - is a Japanese paper brick and mortar store located in West Toronto. The Unfinished Print interview with owner Nancy Jacobi, can be found, here. The JPP's website can be found, here.  Early Canadian History - is fraught with colonialism and displacement. There is not enough space to speak on the subject but more information can be found, here through the lens of Indigenous history.  Ojibwe - historically from the Great Lakes Region of Canada and the United States, the Ojibwe fished, and hunted as well as harvested wild rice and participated in the fur trade. More info can be found, here.  The Group of Seven - were a group of landscape painters from Canada. The artists were, Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), A.Y. Jackson  1882–1974), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer  (1885–1969), J.E.H MacDonald (1873–1932), and Frederick Varley (1881–1969). Later, A.J. Casson (1898–1992) was invited to join in 1926, Edwin Holdgate (1892–1977) became a member in 1930, and LeMoine FitzGerald (1890–1956) joined in 1932. While Tom Thomspon (1877–1917), and Emily Carr (1871–1945) were not "official" members it is generally accepted that they were a part of the group without being "officially" a part of the group because of the group relationship with the artists. More info can be found, here.  The Canadian Shield - is exposed rock located throughout North America, Mexico and Greenland.  Robert Motherwell - (1915-1991) was an artist who worked in printmaking and painting. He was a contemporary of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), and Willen de Kooning (1904-1997). More info can be found, here.  Flextools - is a tool brand founded in 1986. The tools are for woodworking, woodcut, and other wood related carving. More information can be found, here.  Daniel Smith Pigments - is a company which makes various types of paints, pigments, and mediums. It was started by Dan Smith in 1976. More info can be found, here.  Winsor & Newton - is a British artist supply company, started in 1832,  which sells artist materials such as pigments, brushes, paper, etc. More info can be found, here.  Holbein - is a pigment company based in Japan, Canada, and the United States. Their pigments are lush and strong. More info, here. Please follow The Unfinished Print and my own print work on Instagram @andrezadoroznyprints Twitter @unfinishedprint, or email me at theunfinishedprint@gmail.com opening and closing credit music - We Three by Cory Weeds, from the album Just Coolin' (2022) © Cellar Live © Popular Wheat Productions logo designed and produced by Douglas Batchelor and André Zadorozny  Disclaimer: Please do not reproduce or use anything from this podcast without shooting me an email and getting my express written or verbal consent. I'm friendly :) Слава Україну If you find any issue with something in the show notes please let me know. ***The opinions expressed by guests in The Unfinished Print podcast are not necessarily those of André Zadorozny and of Popular Wheat Productions.***        

We Three is a sibling trio who got national attention by becoming semi-finalists on season 13 of America's Got Talent. Drummer/keyboardist Joshua Humlie talks about changing the band's name from Humlie Trio to We Three, and how the new name gave them a bigger audience. He opens up about their mother's death and how writing their own personal experiences of that night turned into their song "Heaven's Not Too Far". There's also a good chat about the trio's experience competing on America's Got Talent, and what was going through their heads when an emotional Mel B left the set. Hear why they felt their second album was so heavy and the messages they got across, like "Half Hearted" which went viral on TikTok and is one of their most streamed songs. You can pre-save their new single, Full Time Job, now. All that and more. Enjoy and FROWN LESS. thehodgepodgeproductions@gmail.com instagram.com/iammrdylanhodge Get Dan-O's here: danosseasoning.com Promo Code: HodgePodge Get Raze Energy here: reppsports.com Promo Code: HPP1000 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dylan-hodge/support

i-i takes exploration of art forms within the context of improv seriously. We have two trios which tell surreal stories and improvise poetry. This is a teaser for upcoming SurrealProv podcast/resource on drifting away into the subconscious and letting your natural voice, detail, and inner poetic performer, free. We Three's first improvised poem. With Maggie, Sid, Camila. Suggestion: "Loose"

It's a new year - but no, you do not have to be a new you. However, if you're listening to this podcast, there's a good chance you want your brain to feel a little better this year. So we looked back at every episode from 2021, and pulled out one super useful nugget from each smart guest. It's basically the SparkNotes version of mental health tips...!You can keep up with Mentally Together on Instagram @mentallytogetherpod. Cassidy's Instagram is @cassidyquinntv, and you can watch the video version of each podcast episode at YouTube.com/cassidyquinn.Books recommended by Mentally Together guests: https://bookshop.org/lists/mentally-togetherMentally Together is a creation from Cassidy Quinn in collaboration with Coba.fm.Zoom+Care ZoomCare offers same-day doctor visits—that you can book online or from their app. Support the show (http://www.patreon.com/cassidyquinn)

A podcast for musicians, music lovers, and anyone who loves a good story! In-depth discussions about the music industry & gig life with a variety of musicians & creatives from all over the world!@gigstorieswithmusicpeopleEp. 12 - Greg ErbaGreg has a ton of gigs with many bands under his belt. He's a guitarist-for-hire and also fronts his own band Greg & The Gallows. Some bands he's performed with in the past include The Fulltones, Royal Crown Revue, Leatherwolf, Rye Brothers, Blanco Diablo, Arthur Blythe, We Three, Merchants Of Moonshine, Brad Johnson & Killin' Time, Brian Lynn Jones & The Misfit Cowboys, Brant Vogel & Hellbent, Azteca, Barbed Wire Boys, and Foothill Station. Greg also does a livestream show every week that he started during the Covid lockdown, so check that out!http://www.facebook.com/gregandthegallowshttps://m.facebook.com/The-Fulltones-118856968155656/?ref=bookmarks@erbanatorHost:Evan Mykl Chudnow @evanonthebass @the_spaceminthttps://www.thespacemint.com/http://www.evanonthebass.com/https://gig-stories-music-people.captivate.fm*At the moment I have no sponsors, so if you'd like to support this podcast the best thing is to share it on social media or with someone who might be interested! If you want to go above and beyond that and help ensure more episodes you can also purchase my music at https://evanmykl.bandcamp.com/ or even make a contribution on Venmo @Evan-TheSpacemint any help is very much appreciated!Thank you for listening!

Manny Humlie is 1/3 of the band We Three, whose big claim to fame was a stint on America's Got Talent a few years ago. In the years since AGT, We Three have become a major recording and touring act (pre-COVID, obviously), and Manny and I discuss his sheltered upbringing, which involved him being home schooled for most of his life. We also talk about the role religion and music played in his upbringing, what drives him to learn more about the world, the pain of losing a parent, and what it's like to get married at a young age.  

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Being vulnerable can be really scary. Even just the idea of putting thoughts into a private space, like a journal, can make you feel really exposed. Now imagine taking the thoughts in your journal and sharing them with the world? That's what We Three has made a career of. The sibling band from McMinnville, Oregon, sings about their insecurities, doubts, fears and darkest moments. You might remember them first from their appearance on America's Got Talent in 2018, when they sang Heaven's Not Too Far, a song written from the perspective of their mother, who passed away from cancer a few years ago. Like most songs they've released since then, it's beautiful, heartbreaking, and just very human.Of course, that audition was only the beginning of We Three sharing their vulnerability with the world through their music. Since then, they've opened up about so many more of their emotions and insecurities in song after song, connecting with an audience across the world and spreading the message that we all have struggles but we can get through them. In this episode, we talk to We Three about the stories behind some of their vulnerable lyrics and how it feels to share their deepest feelings with the world. Some of their songs do discuss serious topics, including suicidal ideation. So as always, if you are experiencing some of those feelings yourself, please reach out to a professional for help. You can *always reach The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.Links for We Three:Watch We Three's Dear, Paranoia Virtual ShowAttend (virtually)  the Lines for Life GalaYou can keep up with Mentally Together on Instagram @mentallytogetherpod. Cassidy's Instagram is @cassidyquinntv, and you can watch the video version of each podcast episode at YouTube.com/cassidyquinn.Support the show on Patreon at Patreon.com/cassidyquinn.Books recommended by Mentally Together guests: https://bookshop.org/lists/mentally-togetherMentally Together is a creation from Cassidy Quinn in collaboration with Coba.fm.Instacart - Groceries delivered in as little as 1 hour. Free delivery on your first order over $35.Zoom+Care ZoomCare offers same-day doctor visits—that you can book online or from their app. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show

On this episode of That's The Tea with Alessandra G, the band We Three joins Alessandra for an exclusive segment to chat about their music, fans and life during the quarantine. Be sure to follow We Three on socials to stay up to date with everything they have going on! Their new single "Secrets" is out on JANUARY 22.  Follow We Three: Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/wethreemusic/) Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/artist/5oYuKMBiaAc0W8Gt7FVIjb?si=4HkErdRUSCCrz2-B-u8QRA) Twitter (https://twitter.com/Wethreemusic) Keep up with Alessandra by clicking here (https://linktr.ee/alessandraa.g) ! 

Just Goodbye – Karen Wolfe – 2020 Share My Love – Les Franklin – Share My Love – 2020 Everything You Do Blows My Mind – Raymond Barton feat Yolanda Parker – 2020 Tell Me, Tell Me – Marki Fields – Caught Up – 2020 Come Go With Me – Mon’trell – 2020 Oh Lord What Are You Doing To Me – Jerry Williams aka Swamp Dogg – Forthcoming Soul4Real 45 – 2020 Should I Go Or Should I Stay – Teddy Pendergrass – Forthcoming Shotgun 45 – 2020 You Shouldn't Have Set My Soul On Fire – We Three – Family Groove 45 – 2020 You Came – 98.6 Band – Time Will Tell – 2020 I Never Had It So Good – Gemini Burke Feat Joe Tex II – Sweet Soul Lady – 2020 Make You Feel Good – Press Play 601 – 2020 Lost My Concentration – Pokey Bear – Crown Me – 2020 Incomplete – Carlos Strong – 2020 Make It Better – Alex Harris – 2020 I’m So Tired – Sonny Green – Found, One Soul Singer – 2020 I’ve Got Love For My Baby – The Commands – Big Man 45 – 2020 Lady You Are - Gemini Burke Feat Joe Tex II – Sweet Soul Lady – 2020 No One – D. Folks – 2020 Stay Up (Pastel Remix) – Adeline – 2020 Leaving You For Me – Beat Flippa feat Sir Charles Jones – P.O.Y.T – 2020 Gotcha - Gemini Burke Feat Joe Tex II – Sweet Soul Lady – 2020 A Taste Of Your Love – Andre Lee – 2020 Why – Jay Machine Stovall – Forthcoming Cannonball Records – 2020 Memories - 98.6 Band – Time Will Tell – 2020 Are You Sure - Sonny Green – Found, One Soul Singer – 2020 Break My Heart – David Ruffin – So Soon We Change – Warner Brothers LP – 1979 I Want To Be In Love – Rushing – Forthcoming IZIPHO Soul – 2020 Spend The Nights With Me – Edna Wright – Oops! Here I Go – RCA LP – 1977 Tell Me Why – GG & Company – Thinking About You – 2020 Cry – Monica – New Life – 2020 Fallin For The Same Ol Lie – Front Page Scandal - Family Groove 45 – 2020 Never Gonna Stop – The Regime - Forthcoming IZIPHO Soul – 2020

Episode ninety of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Runaway” by Del Shannon, and at the early use of synthesised sound in rock music. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Blue Moon” by the Marcels. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- A note Almost every version of “Runaway” currently available is in stereo, and the stereo version of the song has a slightly different vocal take to the original mono version. Unfortunately, there appear to be multiple “original mono versions” too. To check that what I’m using here, a mono track available as a bonus on a reissue of the album Runaway With Del Shannon, is actually the hit single version, I downloaded two vinyl rips of the single and one vinyl rip of a mono hits compilation from the sixties that had been uploaded to YouTube. Unfortunately no two copies of the song I could find online would play in synch – they all appear to be mastered at slightly different speeds, possibly due to the varispeeding I talk about in the episode. I’ve gone with the version I did because it’s a clean-sounding mono version, but it may not be exactly what people heard in 1961. Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This one is in two parts because of the number of songs by Del Shannon in the mix. Part one, part two. Only one biography of Del Shannon has ever been written, and that’s out of print and (to judge from the Amazon reviews) not very well written, so I’ve relied again on other sources. Those include the liner notes to this CD, a good selection of Shannon’s work (with the proviso that “Runaway” is in stereo — see above; the articles on Shannon and Max Crook on This Is My Story, the official Del Shannon website,  and the Internet Archive’s cached copy of Max Crook’s old website. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   Transcript Today’s episode is an odd one to write, as just as I put the finishing touches to the script I discovered that Max Crook, the keyboard player at the centre of this story, died less than two weeks ago. The news wasn’t widely reported, and I only discovered this by double-checking a detail and discovering an obituary of him. Crook was one of the great early pioneers of electronic music, and a massive talent, and he’s a big part of the story I’m telling today, so before we go into the story proper I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge his passing, and to regret that it hasn’t been more widely noted. One of the things we’ve not talked about much in this podcast so far is the technology of music. We’ve discussed it a bit — we’ve looked at how things like the change from 78s to 45s affected the music industry, at the transition from recording on discs to recording on tape, at the electrification of the guitar, and at Les Paul’s inventions. But in general, the music we’ve looked at has been made in a fairly straightforward manner — some people with some combination of guitars, bass, piano, drums, and saxophone, and maybe a few string players on the most recent recordings, get together in front of a microphone and sing and play those instruments. But today, we’re going to look at the start of synthesisers being used in rock and roll music. Today we’re going to look at “Runaway” by Del Shannon: [Excerpt: Del Shannon, “Runaway”] Synthesised sound has a far longer pedigree than you might expect. The use of electronics to create music goes back to the invention of the theremin and the ondes martenot in the 1920s, and by the 1930s, people had already started using polyphonic keyboard-based electronic instruments. The Novachord was produced by the Hammond organ company between 1938 and 1942, and was introduced at the World’s Fair in 1939, where Ferdinand Grofe, who we talked about a little in the episode on “Cathy’s Clown”, led a group consisting only of Novachord players in a public performance. The Novachord never achieved mass popularity because of World War II halting its production, but it was still used in a few recordings. One that’s of particular interest to those of us interested in early rock and roll is Slim Gaillard’s “Novachord Boogie”: [Excerpt: Slim Gaillard, “Novachord Boogie”] But also it was used on one of the most famous records of the late thirties. These days, when you hear “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn on documentaries about the second world war, this is the version you hear: [Excerpt: Vera Lynn, “We’ll Meet Again”] But the record that people actually listened to in World War II didn’t have any of that orchestration. It was Lynn accompanied by a single instrument, a Novachord played by Arthur Young, and is notably more interesting and less syrupy: [Excerpt: Vera Lynn with Arthur Young on Novachord, “We’ll Meet Again”] So even in the late thirties, synthesised sounds were making their way on to extremely popular recordings, but it wasn’t until after the war that electronic instruments started getting used in a major way. And the most popular of those instruments was a monophonic keyboard instrument called the clavioline, which was first produced in 1947. The clavioline was mostly used as a novelty element, but it appeared on several hit records. We’re going to devote a whole episode in a few months’ time to a record with the clavioline as lead instrument, but you can hear it on several fifties novelty records, like “Little Red Monkey” by Frank Chacksfield’s Tunesmiths, a UK top ten hit from 1953: [Excerpt: Frank Chacksfield’s Tunesmiths, “Little Red Monkey”] But while the clavioline itself was in use quite widely in the fifties, the first big rock and roll hit with an electronic synthesiser actually used a modified clavioline called a musitron, which was put together by an electronics amateur and keyboard player named Max Crook, from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Crook had built his musitron using a clavioline as a base, but adding parts from TVs, reel-to-reel recorders, and bits of whatever electronic junk he could salvage parts from. He’d started playing electronic instruments in his teens, and had built his own recording studio. Sadly, the early records Crook made are not easily available. The only place I’ve been able to track down copies of his early singles in a digital format is one grey-market CD, which I wasn’t able to obtain in time to include the tracks here and which only seems to be available from one shop in Cornwall. His first band, the White Bucks, released a single, “Get That Fly” backed with “Orny”, on Dot Records, but I can tell you from experience that if you search anywhere online for “White Bucks Orny” you will find… well, not that record, anyway. Even more interestingly, he apparently recorded a version of “Bumble Boogie”, the novelty instrumental that would later become a hit for B. Bumble and the Stingers, with Berry Gordy at some point in the late fifties. Sadly, that too is not generally available. But it wasn’t until he auditioned for Charlie Johnson and the Big Little Show Band that Max Crook met the people who were going to become his most important collaborators. The Big Little Show Band had started as Doug DeMott and The Moonlight Ramblers, a honky-tonk band that played at the Hi-Lo Club in Battle Creek, Michigan. Battle Creek is a company town, midway between Chicago and Detroit, which is most famous as being the headquarters of the Kellogg company, the cereal manufacturer and largest employer there. It’s not somewhere you’d expect great rock and roll to come from, being as it is a dull medium-sized town with little in the way of culture or nightlife. The Hi-Lo Club was a rough place, frequented by hard-working, hard-drinking people, and Doug DeMott had been a hard drinker himself — so hard a drinker, in fact, that he was soon sacked. The group’s rhythm guitarist, Charles Westover, had changed his name to Charlie Johnson and put together a new lineup of the group based around himself and the bass player, Loren Dugger. They got in a new drummer, Dick Parker, and then went through a couple of guitarists before deciding to hire a keyboard player instead. Once they auditioned Crook, with his musitron, which he could clip to the piano and thus provide chordal piano accompaniment while playing a lead melody on his musitron, they knew they had the right player for them. Crook had a friend, a black DJ named Ollie McLaughlin, who had music industry connections, and had been involved in the White Bucks recordings. Crook and Johnson started writing songs and recording demos for McLaughlin, who got Johnson a session with Irving Micahnik and Harry Balk, two record producers who were working with Johnny and the Hurricanes, an instrumental group who’d had a big hit with “Red River Rock” a year or so previously: [Excerpt: Johnny and the Hurricanes, “Red River Rock”] Johnson recorded two songs in New York, without his normal musicians backing him. However, Micahnik and Balk thought that the tracks were too dirgey, and Johnson was singing flat — and listening to them it’s not hard to see why they thought that: [Excerpt: Del Shannon, “The Search”] They told him to go back and come up with some more material that was less dirgey. Two things did come out of the association straight away, though. The first was that Charles Johnson changed his name again, combining a forename he chose to be reminiscent of the Cadillac Coup deVille with a surname he took from an aspiring wrestler he knew, Mark Shannon, to become Del Shannon. The second was that Johnny and the Hurricanes recorded one of Max Crook’s instrumentals, “Mr Lonely”, as a B-side, and you can hear in the Hammond organ part the kind of part that Crook would have been playing on his Musitron: [Excerpt: Johnny and the Hurricanes, “Mr Lonely”] Shannon and Crook recorded a tape of many other songs they were working on for McLaughlin to play to Micahnik and Balk, but they weren’t interested — until they heard a fragment of a song that Shannon and Crook had recorded, and which they’d then mostly taped over. That song, “Runaway”, was the one they wanted. “Runaway” had been an idea that had happened almost by accident. The band had been jamming on stage, and Crook had hit a chord change that Shannon thought sounded interesting — in later tellings of the story, this is always the Am-G chord change that opens the song, but I suspect the actual chord change that caught his ear was the one where they go to an E major chord rather than the expected G or E minor on the line “As our hearts were young”. That’s the only truly unusual chord change in the song. But whatever it was, Shannon liked the changes that Crook was playing — he and Crook would both later talk about how bored he was with the standard doo-wop progression that made up the majority of the songs they were playing at the time — and the band ended up jamming on the new chord sequence for fifteen or twenty minutes before the club owner told them to play something else. The next day, Shannon took his guitar to the carpet shop where he worked, and when there were no customers in, he would play the song to himself and write lyrics. He initially wrote two verses, but decided to scrap one. They performed the song, then titled “My Little Runaway”, that night, and it became a regular part of their set. The crucial element in the song, though, came during that first performance. Shannon said, just before they started, “Max, when I point to you, play something”. And so when Shannon got to the end of the chorus, he pointed, and Crook played this: [Excerpt: Del Shannon, “Runaway”] When they were told that Micahnik and Balk liked the fragment of song that they’d heard, Shannon and Crook recorded a full demo of the song and sent it on to them. The producers weren’t hugely impressed with the finished song, saying they thought it sounded like three songs trying to coexist, and they also didn’t like Shannon’s voice, but they *did* like Crook and the Musitron, and so they invited Crook and Shannon to come to New York to record. The two men drove seven hundred miles in a broken-down car, with their wives, to get from Michigan to New York. It was the middle of winter, the car had no heating, and Shannon smoked while Crook was allergic to tobacco smoke, so they had to keep the windows open. The session they were going to do was a split session — they were going to record two Del Shannon vocal tracks, and two instrumentals by Crook, who was recording under the name “Maximilian” without a surname (though the “Max” in his name was actually short for Maxfield). Crook was definitely the one they were interested in — he rearranged the way the microphones were arranged in the studio, to get the sound he wanted rather than the standard studio sound, and he also had a bag full of gadgets that the studio engineers were fascinated by, for altering the Musitron’s sound. The first single released as by “Maximilian” was “The Snake”, which featured Crook and Shannon’s wives on handclaps, along with an additional clapper who was found on the street and paid forty dollars to come in and clap along: [Excerpt: Maximilian, “The Snake”] After that, the two women got bored and wandered off down Broadway. They eventually found themselves in the audience for a TV game show, Beat the Clock, and Joann Crook ended up a contestant on the show — their husbands didn’t believe them, when they explained later where they’d been, until acquaintances mentioned having seen Joann on TV. Meanwhile, the two men were working on another Maximillian track, and on two Del Shannon tracks, one of which was “Runaway”. They couldn’t afford to stay overnight in New York, so they drove back to Michigan, but when the record company listened to “Runaway”, they discovered that Shannon had been singing flat due to nerves. Shannon had to go back to New York, this time by plane, to rerecord his vocals. According to Crook, even this wasn’t enough, and the engineers eventually had to varispeed his vocals to get them in key with the backing track. I’m not at all sure how this would have worked, as speeding up his vocals would have also meant that he was singing at a different tempo, but that’s what Crook said, and the vocal does have a slightly different quality to it. And Harry Balk backed Crook up, saying “We finally got Del on key, and it sounded great, but it didn’t sound like Del. We mixed it anyhow, and it came out wonderful. When I brought Ollie and Del into my office to hear it, Del had a bit of a fit. He said, ‘Harry, that doesn’t even sound like me!’ I just remember saying, ‘Yeah but Del, nobody knows what the hell you sound like!” Like most great records, “Runaway” was the sum of many parts. Shannon later broke down all the elements that went into the song, saying: “I learned falsetto from The Ink Spots’ ‘We Three,'”: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, and Me)”] “I eventually got hooked on Jimmy Jones’ ‘Handy Man’ in ’59 and would sing that at the Hi-Lo Club.”: [Excerpt: Jimmy Jones, “Handy Man”] “I always had the idea of ‘running away’ somewhere in the back of my mind. ‘I wa-wa-wa-wa-wonder, why…’ I borrowed from Dion & The Belmonts’ ‘I Wonder Why.'” [Excerpt: Dion and the Belmonts, “I Wonder Why”] “The beats you hear in there, ‘…I wonder, bam-bam-bam, I wa-wa…’ I stole from Bobby Darin’s ‘Dream Lover.'” [Excerpt: Bobby Darin, “Dream Lover”] Listening to the song, you can definitely hear all those elements that Shannon identifies in there, but what emerges is something fresh and original, unlike anything else out at the time: [Excerpt: Del Shannon, “Runaway”] “Runaway” went to number one in almost every country that had a chart at the time, and top five in most of the rest. In America, the song it knocked off the top was “Blue Moon” by the Marcels, one of those songs with the doo-wop progression that Shannon had been so bored with. At its peak, it was selling eighty thousand copies a day, and Billboard put it at number three hundred and sixty four on the all-time charts in 2018. It was a massive success, and a game-changer in the music industry. Maximilian’s single, on the other hand, only made the top forty in Argentina. Clearly, Del Shannon was the artist who was going to be worth following, but they did release a few more singles by Maximilian, things like “The Twisting Ghost”: [Excerpt: Maximilian, “The Twisting Ghost”] That made the Canadian top forty, but Maximilian never became a star in his own right. Shannon, on the other hand, recorded a string of hits, though none were as successful as “Runaway”. The most successful was the follow-up, “Hats off to Larry”, which was very much “Runaway part 2”: [Excerpt: Del Shannon, “Hats off to Larry”] But every single he released after that was slightly less successful than the one before. He soon stopped working with Crook, who remained at the Hi-Lo Club with the rest of the band while Shannon toured the country, and without Crook’s Musitron playing his records were far less interesting than his earliest singles, though he did have the distinction of being one of the few singers of this era to write the bulk of his own material. He managed to further sabotage his career by suing Micahnik and Balk, and by 1963 he was largely washed up, though he did do one more thing that would make him at least a footnote in music history for something other than “Runaway”. He was more popular in the UK than in the US, and he even appeared in the film “It’s Trad Dad!”, a cheap cash-in on the trad jazz craze, starring Helen Shapiro and Craig Douglas as teenagers who try to persuade the stuffy adults who hate the young people’s music that the Dukes of Dixieland, Mr. Acker Bilk and the Temperance Seven are not dangerous obscene noises threatening the morals of the nation’s youth. That film also featured Gene Vincent and Chubby Checker along with a lot of British trumpet players, and was the first feature film made by Richard Lester, who we’ll be hearing more about in this story. So Shannon spent a fair amount of time in the UK, and in 1963 he noticed a song by a new British group that was rising up the UK charts and covered it. His version of “From Me to You” only made number seventy-seven on the US charts, but it was still the first version of a Lennon/McCartney song to make the Hot One Hundred: [Excerpt: Del Shannon, “From Me to You”] He made some interesting records in the rest of the sixties, and had the occasional fluke hit, but the music he was making, a unique blend of hard garage rock and soft white doo-wop, was increasingly out of step with the rest of the industry. In the mid and late sixties, his biggest successes came with songwriting and productions for other artists. He wrote “I Go to Pieces” which became a hit for Peter & Gordon: [Excerpt: Peter and Gordon, “I Go to Pieces”] Produced the band Smith in their cover version of “Baby It’s You”, which made the top five: [Excerpt: Smith, “Baby It’s You”] And produced Brian Hyland’s million-selling version of a Curtis Mayfield song that I’m not going to play, because its title used a racial slur against Romani people which most non-Romani people didn’t then regard as a slur, but which is a great record if you can get past that. That Hyland record featured Crook, reunited briefly with Shannon. But over the seventies Shannon seemed increasingly lost, and while he continued to make records, including some good ones made in the UK with production by Dave Edmunds and Jeff Lynne, he was increasingly unwell with alcoholism. He finally got sober in 1978, and managed to have a fluke hit in 1981 with a cover version of Phil Phillips’ “Sea of Love”, produced by Tom Petty and with Petty’s band the Heartbreakers backing him: [Excerpt: Del Shannon, “Sea of Love”] He also came to people’s attention when a rerecorded version of “Runaway” with new lyrics was used as the theme for the TV show Crime Story. In 1989, Del Shannon was working on a comeback album, with Jeff Lynne producing and members of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as backing musicians. The same people had previously worked on Roy Orbison’s last album, which had been his biggest success in decades, and Lynne was gaining a reputation for resuscitating the careers of older musicians. Both Lynne and Petty were fans of Shannon and had worked with him previously, and it seemed likely that he might be able to have a hit with some of the material he was working on. Certainly “Walk Away”, which Shannon co-wrote with Lynne and Petty, sounds like the kind of thing that was getting radio play around that time: [Excerpt: Del Shannon, “Walk Away”] There were even rumours that Lynne and Petty were thinking of inviting Shannon to join the Travelling Wilburys to replace Roy Orbison, though that seems unlikely to me. Unfortunately, by the time the album came out, Shannon was dead. He’d been suffering from depression for decades, and he died of suicide in early 1990, aged fifty-five. His widow later sued the manufacturers of the new wonder drug, Prozac, which he’d been prescribed a couple of weeks earlier, claiming that it caused his death. Max Crook, meanwhile, had become a firefighter and burglar alarm installer, while also pursuing a low-key career in music, mostly making religious music. When Shannon was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Crook volunteered to perform at the ceremony, playing his original Musitron, but his offer was ignored. In later years he would regularly show up at annual celebrations of Shannon, and talk about the music they made together, and play for their fans. He died on July the first this year, aged eighty-three.

The artist, filmmaker, public speaker, academic and activist on his new YA novel We Three, which a polyamorous romantic triad at a summer for a teens. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dan-mcpeake/message

  Episode sixty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Reet Petite” by Jackie Wilson, and features talent contests with too much talent, the prehistory of Motown, a song banned by the BBC, and a possible Mafia hit. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Get a Job” by the Silhouettes. —-more—-  Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   I used three main books to put together the narrative for this one. Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent 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. And Jackie Wilson: Lonely Teardrops by Tony Douglas is the closest thing out there to a definitive biography. There are dozens of compilations of Wilson’s fifties material, as it’s in the public domain, but for around the same price as those you can get this three-CD set which also has his later hits on, so that’s probably the place to start when investigating Wilson’s music. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today, we’re going to have a look at one of the most important people in the history of popular music, and someone we’ll be seeing a lot more of as the series goes on. There are very few people in the world who can be said to have created an entire genre of music, and even fewer who were primarily record company owners rather than musicians, but Berry Gordy Jr was one of them. Gordy didn’t start out, though, as a record executive. When he first got into the music industry, it was as a songwriter, and today we’re going to look at his early songwriting career. But we’re also going to look at a performer who was massively important in his own right, and who was one of the most exciting performers ever to take to the stage — someone who inspired Elvis, Michael Jackson, and James Brown, and who provides one of the key links between fifties R&B and sixties soul: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, “Reet Petite”] I’m afraid that this episode is another case where I have to point you to the disclaimer I did in the early weeks of the show. Jackie Wilson was an admirable musician, but he was in no way an admirable human being, particularly in his treatment of women – he’s been credibly accused of at least one sexual assault, and he fathered many children by many different women, who he abandoned, and was known for having a violent temper. As always, this podcast is not about his reprehensible acts, but about the music, but again, it should not be taken as an endorsement of him as a person when I talk about his artistic talent. Wilson started out as a boxer in his teens, but he quickly decided to move into singing instead. He would regularly perform at talent contests around Detroit, and he was part of a loose association of musicians and singers including Wilson’s cousin Levi Stubbs, the Royals, who would later become Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and the blues singer Little Willie John. They would all perform on the same talent shows and would agree among themselves who was going to win beforehand – Wilson would tell Stubbs “you win this week, I’ll win next week”. On one occasion, Johnny Otis happened to be in the audience, when the Royals, Little Willie John, and Wilson were all on the same bill, and on that particular show Wilson came third. Otis was working as a talent scout for King Records at the time, and tried to get all three acts signed to the label, but for reasons that remain unclear, King decided they only wanted to sign the Royals (though they would sign Little Willie John a couple of years later). As a result, a song that Otis had written for Wilson was recorded instead by the Royals: [The Royals, “Every Beat of My Heart”] Wilson kept performing at the amateur nights for a couple of years, until at the age of seventeen he was signed to Dee Gee Records, a small label co-owned by the jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie. There he cut two singles, under the name Sonny Wilson. Wilson’s favourite song to sing in talent contests was “Danny Boy”, which would remain in his setlists until late in his life, and he would use that song as a way to show off his vocal virtuosity, ornamenting it to the point that the melody would become almost unrecognisable, and so that was, of course, one of the two singles: [Excerpt: Sonny Wilson, “Danny Boy”] Neither single was particularly successful, but Wilson continued performing in nightclubs around Detroit and built up something of a local following. But in 1953 he got a big break, when he auditioned for Billy Ward and his Dominoes. We’ve talked about the Dominoes before, back in the episode on “Money Honey”, but as a bit of a recap, they were the biggest black vocal group of the early fifties, and they were led by Billy Ward, a vocal coach who was not their lead singer. The lead singer in the early fifties was Clyde McPhatter, but McPhatter was getting restless. There are several different stories about how Wilson came to be picked for Ward’s group, but one that sticks out in my mind is one that Ward used to tell, which is that one reason Wilson was picked for the group is that his mother begged Ward, saying that she was scared for the life of her son, as he was getting into trouble on the streets. Certainly, she had every reason to be worried for him – Wilson had recently been stabbed in the chest by a sex worker. But Ward noted that Wilson was a diamond in the rough, and could have a great deal of success with the right amount of polishing. He decided to get Wilson into the group as a replacement for McPhatter, though McPhatter and Wilson were in the group together for a while, as McPhatter served out his notice with the group. Over the next few weeks, Wilson studied what McPhatter was doing, until he was able to take McPhatter’s place. Ward taught him breath control, and became something of a father figure, giving him some discipline for the first time in his life. McPhatter’s were very big shoes to fill, but Wilson soon won the audiences over, both with his vocals and his dancing. While Wilson was not regarded as a good dancer by most of the people who knew him – he couldn’t dance with a partner at all – he had a unique way of moving all his own, which he had learned in the boxing ring, where he’d learned to slide, sidestep, and duck away from other fighters, and to come at them from unexpected angles. He soon became one of the most riveting performers on stage, jumping up, throwing his mic in the air, doing mid-air splits, and completely dominating the stage. As well as teaching him to perform, Ward made one other major change. Up to this point, Wilson had always been known either as Jack or as Sonny. Ward thought that being called Sonny smacked of Uncle Tommery, and decided that from this point on, Wilson’s stage name was going to be Jackie. Wilson was not happy with this at first, but later decided that Ward had been right – though he was still always “Jack” or “Sonny” to those who knew him. Wilson’s first recording with the group as lead singer came just after he turned nineteen, when he went into the studio with them to cut “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down” for King Records — the same label that had turned him down when Johnny Otis had put him forward: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down”] Four months later, they went back into the studio to cut eleven songs in a single day — a mammoth session which really allowed Wilson to show off his vocal versatility. From that session, their version of “Rags to Riches”, which had been a massive hit for Tony Bennett earlier in the year, went to number two on the R&B chart, though it didn’t dent the pop chart: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “Rags to Riches”] But after this, the Dominoes started to have less success in the charts — their records weren’t selling as well as they had been when Clyde McPhatter was the group’s lead singer, and in 1954 they had no hits at all. But in some ways that didn’t really matter — the group weren’t just looking to have success as recording artists, but as live performers, and they got a two-year residency in Las Vegas, supporting Louis Prima and Keely Smith. The group were getting five thousand dollars a week — a massive amount of money in those days — though most of that went to Ward, and Wilson was on a salary of only ninety dollars a week. It was while he was performing in Las Vegas that Wilson first came to the notice of someone who would later become a good friend — Elvis Presley. In 1956 Elvis made his own first trip to perform in Vegas, although he was far, far less successful there than he would be thirteen years later. While he was there, he watched with amazement as Jackie Wilson performed Elvis’ own hit “Don’t Be Cruel” much better than Elvis did himself — and in the famous Million Dollar Quartet tapes, you can hear Elvis raving about Wilson to Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis: [Excerpt: Elvis talking about Jackie Wilson] It’s quite funny listening to those recordings, as the others keep trying to drag Elvis on to other topics of conversation, and Elvis keeps insisting on telling them just how good this singer with Billy Ward and the Dominoes, whose name he hadn’t caught, was. But Vegas wasn’t a good fit for Wilson. He chafed at the discipline of the Dominoes, and at staying in one place all the time. After a couple of years of disappointing record sales, the Dominoes switched labels to Decca, and for the first time Jackie Wilson hit the pop charts as a lead singer, when “St. Therese of the Roses” made number thirteen on the pop charts and number twenty-seven on the hot one hundred: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “St. Therese of the Roses”] Incidentally, over in the UK, where American chart records were often covered for the domestic market by British acts, that was recorded by Malcolm Vaughan, a pop tenor who wanted to be England’s answer to Dean Martin: [Excerpt: Malcolm Vaughan, “St. Therese of the Roses”] That version actually became a massive hit over here, reaching number three, after being banned by the BBC. Yes, you heard that right. That song was banned, because it was “contrary both to Roman Catholic doctrine and to Protestant sentiment”. The ban caused enough controversy that the record sold half a million copies. Vaughan would later go on to have a minor hit with a cover version of another Jackie Wilson record, “To Be Loved”. In 1957, Jackie decided to leave Billy Ward and the Dominoes. It had become apparent that Ward had no bigger ambitions than to keep playing Las Vegas forever, and keep making vast amounts of money without having to travel or work especially hard. Jackie Wilson wanted something more, and he went back to Detroit. At first he was going to join a vocal group that had been performing for a few years, the Four Aims, which featured his cousin Levi Stubbs and another distant relative, Lawrence Payton. Unfortunately, they found that Jackie’s voice didn’t blend well with the group — he sounded, according to Wilson’s first wife Freda, too similar to Stubbs, though I don’t hear that much of a vocal resemblance myself. Either way, the attempt to work together quickly fizzled out, and the Four Tops, as they became, had to find their own success without Jackie Wilson in the group. Around this time, Wilson also became obsessed with the singer Mario Lanza. Lanza was an Italian-American pop singer who sang in a pseudo-operatic style, rather than in the more casual crooning style of contemporaries like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, and Wilson was a huge fan of Lanza’s 1951 film The Great Caruso, in which he played the opera singer Enrico Caruso: [Excerpt: Mario Lanza, “The Loveliest Night of the Year”] Wilson studied Lanza’s performances, and he tried to emulate Lanza’s diction and projection. But at the same time, he was, at heart, an R&B performer, and he also knew that as a black singer in Detroit in the early fifties, R&B was what he needed to do to make money. And making money was what Wilson needed to do more than anything else, and so he got an audition at the Flame Bar, which was owned and run by a local mobster, Al Green. Green was a big name in the local music business — he managed Johnnie Ray, one of the biggest names in white pop music at the time, and also LaVern Baker, who had had a string of R&B hits. Wilson got the audition through his friend Roquel Davis, who went by the name Billy Davis, who was Lawrence Payton’s cousin and had performed with him in an early lineup of the Four Aims. Davis had also written songs for the Four Aims, but more importantly for this purpose, his girlfriend, Gwen Gordy, worked with her sister Anna at the Flame Bar. Through these connections, Wilson got himself a regular spot at the Flame — and he also got to meet Gwen and Anna’s little brother Berry. Berry Gordy Jr was someone who would go on to be one of the most important people in the history of twentieth century music — someone without whom none of the rest of this story would happen. He was as important to the music of the sixties as Sam Phillips was to the fifties, if not more important. Gordy was born, the seventh of eight children, to a poor family in Detroit. As a child, he was taught some of the rudiments of the piano by an uncle, who tried to get him to learn to play in the proper manner — learning scales and arpeggios, and how to read music. But young Berry was easily bored, and soon figured out that if you play the first three notes of an arpeggio together, you can get a simple triad chord. A diversion here, just for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about — an arpeggio is a musical term that literally means “like a harp”, and it’s used for a type of scale where you pick out the individual notes of a chord. You know the sound, even if you don’t know the term. So when you arpeggiate a C major chord, you play the notes C, E, and G, sometimes in multiple octaves: [Demonstrates on guitar] When you play those notes together, that’s a C major chord: [Demonstrates on guitar] Once young Berry Gordy Jr figured out how to play the chords C, F, and G, he was able to start playing boogie-woogie piano by ear. His favourite boogie record was “Hazel Scott’s Boogie Woogie”: [Excerpt: Hazel Scott, “Hazel Scott’s Boogie Woogie”] From an early age, he also became a fan of a particular type of vocal group performance, especially when the singers were singing touching songs about loneliness. He loved “Paper Doll” by the Mills Brothers: [Excerpt: The Mills Brothers, “Paper Doll”] and “We Three” by the Ink Spots: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “We Three”] But in his early years, Gordy was unsure whether he wanted to become a musician, or if instead he wanted to become a boxer like his hero Joe Louis — and in this way his career was paralleling that of Jackie Wilson, though he didn’t know Wilson at the time. He actually had a reasonable amount of success as a boxer, up until a point in 1950 where he saw two posters next to each other. One of them, on top, was advertising a battle of the bands between Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington, while the other was advertising a fight. He noticed two things about the posters. The first was that the bandleaders could work every night and make money, while he knew that boxers would go weeks or months between fights. And the second was that the bandleaders “were about fifty and looked twenty-three”, while the boxers “were about twenty-three and looked fifty”. He knew what he was going to do, and it wasn’t boxing. His attempts at a music career were soon put on the back-burner when he was drafted to fight in the Korean War. After he got out of the military, he had a variety of short-term jobs, but he was regarded by his family more or less as a bum — he never held down a steady job and he was a dreamer who saw himself as becoming a successful songwriter and a millionaire, but had never quite managed to make anything of his dreams. That was, at least, until he met Billy Davis, who at the time was a struggling songwriter like him, but one who had had slightly more success. Davis had managed to persuade Chess Records to sign up the Four Tops, as they were now called, and release a single with Davis credited as the songwriter: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, “Kiss Me Baby”] I say Davis was credited as the songwriter, because that song bears more than a little resemblance to the Ray Charles song from a few years earlier, “Kissa Me Baby”: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “Kissa Me Baby”] But Chess hadn’t really been interested in the Four Tops themselves — they’d instead been interested in Billy Davis as a songwriter, and they quickly used songs he’d written for the Four Tops, and cut them instead with the Moonglows: [Excerpt: The Moonglows, “See Saw”] and the Flamingos: [Excerpt: The Flamingos, “A Kiss From Your Lips”] Neither of those had been a big hit, but the result was that Billy Davis was, in Gordy’s eyes at least, someone with a track record and connections. The two men hit it off musically as well as personally, and they decided that they’d start to collaborate on songs, along with Gordy’s sister Gwen, who was dating Davis. Anything any of them wrote on their own would also get credited to them as a group, and they’d pool whatever they got. And they were going to write songs for Jackie Wilson. Davis tried to get Wilson signed to Chess Records, but they weren’t interested in Wilson’s sound — they wanted a harder blues sound, rather than Wilson’s more soulful sound. But then Al Green took on Wilson’s management, and managed to persuade Bob Thiele at Decca Records, who had just signed Buddy Holly and the Crickets, to sign Wilson — not so much for Wilson’s own talent, though Thiele was impressed by him, but because Green promised that he could also sign LaVern Baker when her contract with Atlantic expired. As it turned out, though, Thiele would never get to sign Baker, as the day before Wilson’s contract was meant to be signed, Al Green died suddenly. More by chutzpah than anything else, Nat Tarnopol, an office boy who had been employed by Green, managed to take over Wilson’s management, just by saying that he was in charge now. He got the contracts signed, and got Wilson signed to Brunswick, the Decca subsidiary that put out rock and roll records. Over the next few years Tarnopol would manage to get himself made a co-owner of Brunswick, by using the leverage he got as Wilson’s manager. The first record Wilson put out as a solo artist was a song that Billy Davis had originally come up with when he was sixteen, inspired by a Louis Jordan song titled “Reet, Petite, and Gone”: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Reet, Petite, and Gone”] Davis and the Gordys reworked his original idea into a new song called “Reet Petite”, which became Wilson’s first solo single since leaving the Dominoes. When Wilson took the song to Dick Jacobs, the arranger assigned to the session, Jacobs was impressed with the song, but became worried — he sat down with Wilson to work out what key to record the song in, and Wilson kept telling him to take it higher, and higher, and higher. Wilson couldn’t demonstrate what he meant during the preparations for the session, as he had laryngitis, but he kept insisting that he should sing it a full octave higher than Jacobs initially suggested. Jacobs went to Bob Thiele, and Thiele said it didn’t really matter, they’d only signed Wilson in order to get LaVern Baker, and just to do what he wanted. Jacobs hired some of the best session players in New York, including Panama Francis on drums and Sam “the Man” Taylor on saxophone, reasoning that if he had the best players around then the record wouldn’t end up too bad, whatever the singer sounded like. I’ll now quote some of Jacobs’ description of the session itself: “I got him behind the microphone and said a silent prayer that this aerial key he’d picked to sing in would be okay, and that this guy was a reasonable approximation of a singer. “Jackie Wilson opened his mouth and out poured what sounded like honey on moonbeams, and it was like the whole room shifted on some weird axis. The musicians, these meat and potatoes pros, stared at each other slack-jawed and goggle-eyed in disbelief; it was as if the purpose of their musical training and woodshedding and lickspitting had been to guide them into this big studio in the Pythian Temple to experience these pure shivering moments of magic. Bob Thiele and I looked at each other and just started laughing, half out of relief and half out of wonder. I never thought crow could taste so sweet.” [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, “Reet Petite”] The record wasn’t a massive hit in the US — it only went to number sixty-two on the pop charts — but it was a much bigger hit in the UK, reaching number six, and over here it became a much-loved classic, so much so that it went to number one for four weeks when it was reissued in 1986. At one show, where he was Dinah Washington’s support act, he rolled his “r” on the title of the song, like he did on the record, and his two front dentures went flying off. He never sang the song live again. “Reet Petite” was the start of a run of songs that Davis and the Gordys wrote for Wilson, most of them big hits and several of them classics. Most notably, there was Wilson’s second solo single, “To Be Loved”. That song was written by Berry Gordy and Davis, after Gordy found out his wife was divorcing him. Gordy went round to his sister Gwen’s house, where Davis also was, and started playing the piano, after Gwen reassured him that even though his wife had left him, he still had the love of his children and his siblings. The result was a gorgeous ballad that went to number seven on the R&B charts and number twenty-two on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, “To Be Loved”] They also wrote what became Wilson’s biggest early it, “Lonely Teardrops”, which went to number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, “Lonely Teardrops”] That had originally been written as a ballad, but was reworked into a more danceable song in the studio. Berry Gordy and Davis hated it when they first heard the finished record, but grew to appreciate it as it became a hit. However, from that point on, they started to take more interest in the production side of Wilson’s recordings, and they developed a routine where Davis and Gordy would rehearse Wilson, with Gordy on the piano, and they’d teach him the song and record a demo, which Jacobs would then use to write the arrangements — Dick Jacobs wasn’t the only arranger on Wilson’s early records, but they soon learned that he was the one who could best capture the sound they wanted. The three men would then supervise in the studio. (Gwen Gordy is also credited as a co-writer on several of the records, but her contributions tend to be played down by the others, and she doesn’t appear to have been involved in the production side. How much of that is her not contributing as much, and how much is just misogyny in how the story is told, is hard to say.) But eventually, they fell out with Nat Tarnopol, after they figured out that Tarnopol was putting songs to which he owned the copyright on the B-sides of all Wilson’s records, so he could get royalties from the sales. Gordy and Davis insisted that they should get to write the songs on both sides of the singles, so that they could get a fair share of the money — especially as they were effectively producing the sessions, without either a credit or royalties. Tarnopol disagreed — as far as he was concerned, Jackie Wilson could be a star with anyone writing his material, and he didn’t need these songwriters. Their days as Jackie Wilson’s hit factory were over. Davis and Gwen Gordy went off to found their own record label, along with Gwen and Berry’s sister Anna. Anna Records, as it was called, didn’t have the most propitious start, with its first single being a Davis and Gwen Gordy song “Hope and Pray”, performed by the Voice Masters: [Excerpt: The Voice Masters, “Hope and Pray”] But it would later put out some much more influential records. Berry, meanwhile, decided to groom another young artist for stardom — he saw a lot of possibilities in a young man called William Robinson, who everyone referred to as Smokey, and his group the Miracles. We’ll pick up on the Gordys and their business ventures in a few months’ time. Jackie Wilson continued having hits for several years, although his career dipped in the early sixties with the British Invasion. He then had a revival in 1967, when he recorded what would end up being his biggest hit, “Higher and Higher”: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, “Higher and Higher”] Wilson continued having occasional hits through to 1970, and remained a popular live artist for years afterwards, but then in 1975, in the middle of performing “Lonely Teardrops”, right after singing the line “my heart is crying”, he clutched his chest and collapsed. At first people thought it was part of the act, but he didn’t get back up. Cornell Gunter of the Coasters gave him mouth to mouth, and possibly saved his life, but some would question whether that was, in retrospect, a bad idea — Wilson was in a coma from which he would never fully recover. For the next eight and a half years, Wilson was institutionalised. There are some people who claim that he gained a little bit of awareness during that time, but by most accounts he was in a persistent vegetative state. At first, the music business rallied round and helped pay for his treatment — there are some reports that Jackie’s old friend Elvis Presley anonymously donated a lot of the money for his medical bills, though these obviously can’t be verified. The Detroit Spinners held a benefit concert for him, and donated $5000 of their own money. Al Green (the singer, not Wilson’s ex-manager) performed at the concert and gave ten thousand dollars, Stevie Wonder gave five thousand, Gladys Knight gave two thousand five hundred, Michael Jackson ten thousand, Richard Pryor twelve hundred. James Brown sent a one thousand dollar cheque, which bounced, but he coughed up the actual money when Jackie’s common-law wife said she was going to tell Jet magazine about the bouncing cheque. Nat Tarnopol and Brunswick Records, on the other hand, gave nothing. In fact, they did worse than nothing — they lied to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, claiming that Wilson hadn’t had any earnings from them in the year prior to his collapse, when he’d been in the studio and was owed regular union rates for recording sessions. If they’d told the truth, his medical bills would have been covered by the insurance, but they weren’t. There are many hypotheses as to why Wilson collapsed on stage that day, including that he used to drink salt water before going on stage to make himself sweat, and that this caused him to have a heart attack due to induced hypertension. But several people close to Wilson believed that his collapse was somehow caused by Nat Tarnopol having him poisoned. Wilson had been due to testify against Tarnopol in front of a grand jury ten days after his collapse, and Tarnopol was very involved with the Mafia — at one point he’d tried to have Carl Davis, who produced “Higher and Higher” killed, and it was only Davis’ friendship with another mobster with ties to Brunswick, Tommy Vastola, that saved him. Johnny Roberts, Wilson’s manager in the seventies and another mobster, actually faked his own death in the eighties and had a funeral, and then reappeared once Tarnopol himself died in 1987, while some of those close to Wilson think it’s no coincidence that Cornell Gunter, who had been there when Wilson collapsed and had always thought there was something strange about it, was murdered himself in 1990, in Las Vegas, by an unknown gunman — though if that murder did have anything to do with Wilson’s collapse, it can’t have been Tarnopol himself who ordered that murder, of course. Jackie Wilson finally died of pneumonia on January 21, 1984, after having been hospitalised since September 29, 1975. He was buried in an unmarked grave, but three years later funds were raised for a headstone, which reads “no more lonely teardrops”.

  Episode sixty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Reet Petite” by Jackie Wilson, and features talent contests with too much talent, the prehistory of Motown, a song banned by the BBC, and a possible Mafia hit. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Get a Job” by the Silhouettes. —-more—-  Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   I used three main books to put together the narrative for this one. Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent 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. And Jackie Wilson: Lonely Teardrops by Tony Douglas is the closest thing out there to a definitive biography. There are dozens of compilations of Wilson’s fifties material, as it’s in the public domain, but for around the same price as those you can get this three-CD set which also has his later hits on, so that’s probably the place to start when investigating Wilson’s music. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today, we’re going to have a look at one of the most important people in the history of popular music, and someone we’ll be seeing a lot more of as the series goes on. There are very few people in the world who can be said to have created an entire genre of music, and even fewer who were primarily record company owners rather than musicians, but Berry Gordy Jr was one of them. Gordy didn’t start out, though, as a record executive. When he first got into the music industry, it was as a songwriter, and today we’re going to look at his early songwriting career. But we’re also going to look at a performer who was massively important in his own right, and who was one of the most exciting performers ever to take to the stage — someone who inspired Elvis, Michael Jackson, and James Brown, and who provides one of the key links between fifties R&B and sixties soul: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, “Reet Petite”] I’m afraid that this episode is another case where I have to point you to the disclaimer I did in the early weeks of the show. Jackie Wilson was an admirable musician, but he was in no way an admirable human being, particularly in his treatment of women – he’s been credibly accused of at least one sexual assault, and he fathered many children by many different women, who he abandoned, and was known for having a violent temper. As always, this podcast is not about his reprehensible acts, but about the music, but again, it should not be taken as an endorsement of him as a person when I talk about his artistic talent. Wilson started out as a boxer in his teens, but he quickly decided to move into singing instead. He would regularly perform at talent contests around Detroit, and he was part of a loose association of musicians and singers including Wilson’s cousin Levi Stubbs, the Royals, who would later become Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and the blues singer Little Willie John. They would all perform on the same talent shows and would agree among themselves who was going to win beforehand – Wilson would tell Stubbs “you win this week, I’ll win next week”. On one occasion, Johnny Otis happened to be in the audience, when the Royals, Little Willie John, and Wilson were all on the same bill, and on that particular show Wilson came third. Otis was working as a talent scout for King Records at the time, and tried to get all three acts signed to the label, but for reasons that remain unclear, King decided they only wanted to sign the Royals (though they would sign Little Willie John a couple of years later). As a result, a song that Otis had written for Wilson was recorded instead by the Royals: [The Royals, “Every Beat of My Heart”] Wilson kept performing at the amateur nights for a couple of years, until at the age of seventeen he was signed to Dee Gee Records, a small label co-owned by the jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie. There he cut two singles, under the name Sonny Wilson. Wilson’s favourite song to sing in talent contests was “Danny Boy”, which would remain in his setlists until late in his life, and he would use that song as a way to show off his vocal virtuosity, ornamenting it to the point that the melody would become almost unrecognisable, and so that was, of course, one of the two singles: [Excerpt: Sonny Wilson, “Danny Boy”] Neither single was particularly successful, but Wilson continued performing in nightclubs around Detroit and built up something of a local following. But in 1953 he got a big break, when he auditioned for Billy Ward and his Dominoes. We’ve talked about the Dominoes before, back in the episode on “Money Honey”, but as a bit of a recap, they were the biggest black vocal group of the early fifties, and they were led by Billy Ward, a vocal coach who was not their lead singer. The lead singer in the early fifties was Clyde McPhatter, but McPhatter was getting restless. There are several different stories about how Wilson came to be picked for Ward’s group, but one that sticks out in my mind is one that Ward used to tell, which is that one reason Wilson was picked for the group is that his mother begged Ward, saying that she was scared for the life of her son, as he was getting into trouble on the streets. Certainly, she had every reason to be worried for him – Wilson had recently been stabbed in the chest by a sex worker. But Ward noted that Wilson was a diamond in the rough, and could have a great deal of success with the right amount of polishing. He decided to get Wilson into the group as a replacement for McPhatter, though McPhatter and Wilson were in the group together for a while, as McPhatter served out his notice with the group. Over the next few weeks, Wilson studied what McPhatter was doing, until he was able to take McPhatter’s place. Ward taught him breath control, and became something of a father figure, giving him some discipline for the first time in his life. McPhatter’s were very big shoes to fill, but Wilson soon won the audiences over, both with his vocals and his dancing. While Wilson was not regarded as a good dancer by most of the people who knew him – he couldn’t dance with a partner at all – he had a unique way of moving all his own, which he had learned in the boxing ring, where he’d learned to slide, sidestep, and duck away from other fighters, and to come at them from unexpected angles. He soon became one of the most riveting performers on stage, jumping up, throwing his mic in the air, doing mid-air splits, and completely dominating the stage. As well as teaching him to perform, Ward made one other major change. Up to this point, Wilson had always been known either as Jack or as Sonny. Ward thought that being called Sonny smacked of Uncle Tommery, and decided that from this point on, Wilson’s stage name was going to be Jackie. Wilson was not happy with this at first, but later decided that Ward had been right – though he was still always “Jack” or “Sonny” to those who knew him. Wilson’s first recording with the group as lead singer came just after he turned nineteen, when he went into the studio with them to cut “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down” for King Records — the same label that had turned him down when Johnny Otis had put him forward: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down”] Four months later, they went back into the studio to cut eleven songs in a single day — a mammoth session which really allowed Wilson to show off his vocal versatility. From that session, their version of “Rags to Riches”, which had been a massive hit for Tony Bennett earlier in the year, went to number two on the R&B chart, though it didn’t dent the pop chart: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “Rags to Riches”] But after this, the Dominoes started to have less success in the charts — their records weren’t selling as well as they had been when Clyde McPhatter was the group’s lead singer, and in 1954 they had no hits at all. But in some ways that didn’t really matter — the group weren’t just looking to have success as recording artists, but as live performers, and they got a two-year residency in Las Vegas, supporting Louis Prima and Keely Smith. The group were getting five thousand dollars a week — a massive amount of money in those days — though most of that went to Ward, and Wilson was on a salary of only ninety dollars a week. It was while he was performing in Las Vegas that Wilson first came to the notice of someone who would later become a good friend — Elvis Presley. In 1956 Elvis made his own first trip to perform in Vegas, although he was far, far less successful there than he would be thirteen years later. While he was there, he watched with amazement as Jackie Wilson performed Elvis’ own hit “Don’t Be Cruel” much better than Elvis did himself — and in the famous Million Dollar Quartet tapes, you can hear Elvis raving about Wilson to Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis: [Excerpt: Elvis talking about Jackie Wilson] It’s quite funny listening to those recordings, as the others keep trying to drag Elvis on to other topics of conversation, and Elvis keeps insisting on telling them just how good this singer with Billy Ward and the Dominoes, whose name he hadn’t caught, was. But Vegas wasn’t a good fit for Wilson. He chafed at the discipline of the Dominoes, and at staying in one place all the time. After a couple of years of disappointing record sales, the Dominoes switched labels to Decca, and for the first time Jackie Wilson hit the pop charts as a lead singer, when “St. Therese of the Roses” made number thirteen on the pop charts and number twenty-seven on the hot one hundred: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “St. Therese of the Roses”] Incidentally, over in the UK, where American chart records were often covered for the domestic market by British acts, that was recorded by Malcolm Vaughan, a pop tenor who wanted to be England’s answer to Dean Martin: [Excerpt: Malcolm Vaughan, “St. Therese of the Roses”] That version actually became a massive hit over here, reaching number three, after being banned by the BBC. Yes, you heard that right. That song was banned, because it was “contrary both to Roman Catholic doctrine and to Protestant sentiment”. The ban caused enough controversy that the record sold half a million copies. Vaughan would later go on to have a minor hit with a cover version of another Jackie Wilson record, “To Be Loved”. In 1957, Jackie decided to leave Billy Ward and the Dominoes. It had become apparent that Ward had no bigger ambitions than to keep playing Las Vegas forever, and keep making vast amounts of money without having to travel or work especially hard. Jackie Wilson wanted something more, and he went back to Detroit. At first he was going to join a vocal group that had been performing for a few years, the Four Aims, which featured his cousin Levi Stubbs and another distant relative, Lawrence Payton. Unfortunately, they found that Jackie’s voice didn’t blend well with the group — he sounded, according to Wilson’s first wife Freda, too similar to Stubbs, though I don’t hear that much of a vocal resemblance myself. Either way, the attempt to work together quickly fizzled out, and the Four Tops, as they became, had to find their own success without Jackie Wilson in the group. Around this time, Wilson also became obsessed with the singer Mario Lanza. Lanza was an Italian-American pop singer who sang in a pseudo-operatic style, rather than in the more casual crooning style of contemporaries like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, and Wilson was a huge fan of Lanza’s 1951 film The Great Caruso, in which he played the opera singer Enrico Caruso: [Excerpt: Mario Lanza, “The Loveliest Night of the Year”] Wilson studied Lanza’s performances, and he tried to emulate Lanza’s diction and projection. But at the same time, he was, at heart, an R&B performer, and he also knew that as a black singer in Detroit in the early fifties, R&B was what he needed to do to make money. And making money was what Wilson needed to do more than anything else, and so he got an audition at the Flame Bar, which was owned and run by a local mobster, Al Green. Green was a big name in the local music business — he managed Johnnie Ray, one of the biggest names in white pop music at the time, and also LaVern Baker, who had had a string of R&B hits. Wilson got the audition through his friend Roquel Davis, who went by the name Billy Davis, who was Lawrence Payton’s cousin and had performed with him in an early lineup of the Four Aims. Davis had also written songs for the Four Aims, but more importantly for this purpose, his girlfriend, Gwen Gordy, worked with her sister Anna at the Flame Bar. Through these connections, Wilson got himself a regular spot at the Flame — and he also got to meet Gwen and Anna’s little brother Berry. Berry Gordy Jr was someone who would go on to be one of the most important people in the history of twentieth century music — someone without whom none of the rest of this story would happen. He was as important to the music of the sixties as Sam Phillips was to the fifties, if not more important. Gordy was born, the seventh of eight children, to a poor family in Detroit. As a child, he was taught some of the rudiments of the piano by an uncle, who tried to get him to learn to play in the proper manner — learning scales and arpeggios, and how to read music. But young Berry was easily bored, and soon figured out that if you play the first three notes of an arpeggio together, you can get a simple triad chord. A diversion here, just for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about — an arpeggio is a musical term that literally means “like a harp”, and it’s used for a type of scale where you pick out the individual notes of a chord. You know the sound, even if you don’t know the term. So when you arpeggiate a C major chord, you play the notes C, E, and G, sometimes in multiple octaves: [Demonstrates on guitar] When you play those notes together, that’s a C major chord: [Demonstrates on guitar] Once young Berry Gordy Jr figured out how to play the chords C, F, and G, he was able to start playing boogie-woogie piano by ear. His favourite boogie record was “Hazel Scott’s Boogie Woogie”: [Excerpt: Hazel Scott, “Hazel Scott’s Boogie Woogie”] From an early age, he also became a fan of a particular type of vocal group performance, especially when the singers were singing touching songs about loneliness. He loved “Paper Doll” by the Mills Brothers: [Excerpt: The Mills Brothers, “Paper Doll”] and “We Three” by the Ink Spots: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, “We Three”] But in his early years, Gordy was unsure whether he wanted to become a musician, or if instead he wanted to become a boxer like his hero Joe Louis — and in this way his career was paralleling that of Jackie Wilson, though he didn’t know Wilson at the time. He actually had a reasonable amount of success as a boxer, up until a point in 1950 where he saw two posters next to each other. One of them, on top, was advertising a battle of the bands between Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington, while the other was advertising a fight. He noticed two things about the posters. The first was that the bandleaders could work every night and make money, while he knew that boxers would go weeks or months between fights. And the second was that the bandleaders “were about fifty and looked twenty-three”, while the boxers “were about twenty-three and looked fifty”. He knew what he was going to do, and it wasn’t boxing. His attempts at a music career were soon put on the back-burner when he was drafted to fight in the Korean War. After he got out of the military, he had a variety of short-term jobs, but he was regarded by his family more or less as a bum — he never held down a steady job and he was a dreamer who saw himself as becoming a successful songwriter and a millionaire, but had never quite managed to make anything of his dreams. That was, at least, until he met Billy Davis, who at the time was a struggling songwriter like him, but one who had had slightly more success. Davis had managed to persuade Chess Records to sign up the Four Tops, as they were now called, and release a single with Davis credited as the songwriter: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, “Kiss Me Baby”] I say Davis was credited as the songwriter, because that song bears more than a little resemblance to the Ray Charles song from a few years earlier, “Kissa Me Baby”: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “Kissa Me Baby”] But Chess hadn’t really been interested in the Four Tops themselves — they’d instead been interested in Billy Davis as a songwriter, and they quickly used songs he’d written for the Four Tops, and cut them instead with the Moonglows: [Excerpt: The Moonglows, “See Saw”] and the Flamingos: [Excerpt: The Flamingos, “A Kiss From Your Lips”] Neither of those had been a big hit, but the result was that Billy Davis was, in Gordy’s eyes at least, someone with a track record and connections. The two men hit it off musically as well as personally, and they decided that they’d start to collaborate on songs, along with Gordy’s sister Gwen, who was dating Davis. Anything any of them wrote on their own would also get credited to them as a group, and they’d pool whatever they got. And they were going to write songs for Jackie Wilson. Davis tried to get Wilson signed to Chess Records, but they weren’t interested in Wilson’s sound — they wanted a harder blues sound, rather than Wilson’s more soulful sound. But then Al Green took on Wilson’s management, and managed to persuade Bob Thiele at Decca Records, who had just signed Buddy Holly and the Crickets, to sign Wilson — not so much for Wilson’s own talent, though Thiele was impressed by him, but because Green promised that he could also sign LaVern Baker when her contract with Atlantic expired. As it turned out, though, Thiele would never get to sign Baker, as the day before Wilson’s contract was meant to be signed, Al Green died suddenly. More by chutzpah than anything else, Nat Tarnopol, an office boy who had been employed by Green, managed to take over Wilson’s management, just by saying that he was in charge now. He got the contracts signed, and got Wilson signed to Brunswick, the Decca subsidiary that put out rock and roll records. Over the next few years Tarnopol would manage to get himself made a co-owner of Brunswick, by using the leverage he got as Wilson’s manager. The first record Wilson put out as a solo artist was a song that Billy Davis had originally come up with when he was sixteen, inspired by a Louis Jordan song titled “Reet, Petite, and Gone”: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Reet, Petite, and Gone”] Davis and the Gordys reworked his original idea into a new song called “Reet Petite”, which became Wilson’s first solo single since leaving the Dominoes. When Wilson took the song to Dick Jacobs, the arranger assigned to the session, Jacobs was impressed with the song, but became worried — he sat down with Wilson to work out what key to record the song in, and Wilson kept telling him to take it higher, and higher, and higher. Wilson couldn’t demonstrate what he meant during the preparations for the session, as he had laryngitis, but he kept insisting that he should sing it a full octave higher than Jacobs initially suggested. Jacobs went to Bob Thiele, and Thiele said it didn’t really matter, they’d only signed Wilson in order to get LaVern Baker, and just to do what he wanted. Jacobs hired some of the best session players in New York, including Panama Francis on drums and Sam “the Man” Taylor on saxophone, reasoning that if he had the best players around then the record wouldn’t end up too bad, whatever the singer sounded like. I’ll now quote some of Jacobs’ description of the session itself: “I got him behind the microphone and said a silent prayer that this aerial key he’d picked to sing in would be okay, and that this guy was a reasonable approximation of a singer. “Jackie Wilson opened his mouth and out poured what sounded like honey on moonbeams, and it was like the whole room shifted on some weird axis. The musicians, these meat and potatoes pros, stared at each other slack-jawed and goggle-eyed in disbelief; it was as if the purpose of their musical training and woodshedding and lickspitting had been to guide them into this big studio in the Pythian Temple to experience these pure shivering moments of magic. Bob Thiele and I looked at each other and just started laughing, half out of relief and half out of wonder. I never thought crow could taste so sweet.” [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, “Reet Petite”] The record wasn’t a massive hit in the US — it only went to number sixty-two on the pop charts — but it was a much bigger hit in the UK, reaching number six, and over here it became a much-loved classic, so much so that it went to number one for four weeks when it was reissued in 1986. At one show, where he was Dinah Washington’s support act, he rolled his “r” on the title of the song, like he did on the record, and his two front dentures went flying off. He never sang the song live again. “Reet Petite” was the start of a run of songs that Davis and the Gordys wrote for Wilson, most of them big hits and several of them classics. Most notably, there was Wilson’s second solo single, “To Be Loved”. That song was written by Berry Gordy and Davis, after Gordy found out his wife was divorcing him. Gordy went round to his sister Gwen’s house, where Davis also was, and started playing the piano, after Gwen reassured him that even though his wife had left him, he still had the love of his children and his siblings. The result was a gorgeous ballad that went to number seven on the R&B charts and number twenty-two on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, “To Be Loved”] They also wrote what became Wilson’s biggest early it, “Lonely Teardrops”, which went to number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, “Lonely Teardrops”] That had originally been written as a ballad, but was reworked into a more danceable song in the studio. Berry Gordy and Davis hated it when they first heard the finished record, but grew to appreciate it as it became a hit. However, from that point on, they started to take more interest in the production side of Wilson’s recordings, and they developed a routine where Davis and Gordy would rehearse Wilson, with Gordy on the piano, and they’d teach him the song and record a demo, which Jacobs would then use to write the arrangements — Dick Jacobs wasn’t the only arranger on Wilson’s early records, but they soon learned that he was the one who could best capture the sound they wanted. The three men would then supervise in the studio. (Gwen Gordy is also credited as a co-writer on several of the records, but her contributions tend to be played down by the others, and she doesn’t appear to have been involved in the production side. How much of that is her not contributing as much, and how much is just misogyny in how the story is told, is hard to say.) But eventually, they fell out with Nat Tarnopol, after they figured out that Tarnopol was putting songs to which he owned the copyright on the B-sides of all Wilson’s records, so he could get royalties from the sales. Gordy and Davis insisted that they should get to write the songs on both sides of the singles, so that they could get a fair share of the money — especially as they were effectively producing the sessions, without either a credit or royalties. Tarnopol disagreed — as far as he was concerned, Jackie Wilson could be a star with anyone writing his material, and he didn’t need these songwriters. Their days as Jackie Wilson’s hit factory were over. Davis and Gwen Gordy went off to found their own record label, along with Gwen and Berry’s sister Anna. Anna Records, as it was called, didn’t have the most propitious start, with its first single being a Davis and Gwen Gordy song “Hope and Pray”, performed by the Voice Masters: [Excerpt: The Voice Masters, “Hope and Pray”] But it would later put out some much more influential records. Berry, meanwhile, decided to groom another young artist for stardom — he saw a lot of possibilities in a young man called William Robinson, who everyone referred to as Smokey, and his group the Miracles. We’ll pick up on the Gordys and their business ventures in a few months’ time. Jackie Wilson continued having hits for several years, although his career dipped in the early sixties with the British Invasion. He then had a revival in 1967, when he recorded what would end up being his biggest hit, “Higher and Higher”: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, “Higher and Higher”] Wilson continued having occasional hits through to 1970, and remained a popular live artist for years afterwards, but then in 1975, in the middle of performing “Lonely Teardrops”, right after singing the line “my heart is crying”, he clutched his chest and collapsed. At first people thought it was part of the act, but he didn’t get back up. Cornell Gunter of the Coasters gave him mouth to mouth, and possibly saved his life, but some would question whether that was, in retrospect, a bad idea — Wilson was in a coma from which he would never fully recover. For the next eight and a half years, Wilson was institutionalised. There are some people who claim that he gained a little bit of awareness during that time, but by most accounts he was in a persistent vegetative state. At first, the music business rallied round and helped pay for his treatment — there are some reports that Jackie’s old friend Elvis Presley anonymously donated a lot of the money for his medical bills, though these obviously can’t be verified. The Detroit Spinners held a benefit concert for him, and donated $5000 of their own money. Al Green (the singer, not Wilson’s ex-manager) performed at the concert and gave ten thousand dollars, Stevie Wonder gave five thousand, Gladys Knight gave two thousand five hundred, Michael Jackson ten thousand, Richard Pryor twelve hundred. James Brown sent a one thousand dollar cheque, which bounced, but he coughed up the actual money when Jackie’s common-law wife said she was going to tell Jet magazine about the bouncing cheque. Nat Tarnopol and Brunswick Records, on the other hand, gave nothing. In fact, they did worse than nothing — they lied to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, claiming that Wilson hadn’t had any earnings from them in the year prior to his collapse, when he’d been in the studio and was owed regular union rates for recording sessions. If they’d told the truth, his medical bills would have been covered by the insurance, but they weren’t. There are many hypotheses as to why Wilson collapsed on stage that day, including that he used to drink salt water before going on stage to make himself sweat, and that this caused him to have a heart attack due to induced hypertension. But several people close to Wilson believed that his collapse was somehow caused by Nat Tarnopol having him poisoned. Wilson had been due to testify against Tarnopol in front of a grand jury ten days after his collapse, and Tarnopol was very involved with the Mafia — at one point he’d tried to have Carl Davis, who produced “Higher and Higher” killed, and it was only Davis’ friendship with another mobster with ties to Brunswick, Tommy Vastola, that saved him. Johnny Roberts, Wilson’s manager in the seventies and another mobster, actually faked his own death in the eighties and had a funeral, and then reappeared once Tarnopol himself died in 1987, while some of those close to Wilson think it’s no coincidence that Cornell Gunter, who had been there when Wilson collapsed and had always thought there was something strange about it, was murdered himself in 1990, in Las Vegas, by an unknown gunman — though if that murder did have anything to do with Wilson’s collapse, it can’t have been Tarnopol himself who ordered that murder, of course. Jackie Wilson finally died of pneumonia on January 21, 1984, after having been hospitalised since September 29, 1975. He was buried in an unmarked grave, but three years later funds were raised for a headstone, which reads “no more lonely teardrops”.

  Episode sixty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Reet Petite" by Jackie Wilson, and features talent contests with too much talent, the prehistory of Motown, a song banned by the BBC, and a possible Mafia hit. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Get a Job" by the Silhouettes. ----more----  Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.   I used three main books to put together the narrative for this one. Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent 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. And Jackie Wilson: Lonely Teardrops by Tony Douglas is the closest thing out there to a definitive biography. There are dozens of compilations of Wilson's fifties material, as it's in the public domain, but for around the same price as those you can get this three-CD set which also has his later hits on, so that's probably the place to start when investigating Wilson's music. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today, we're going to have a look at one of the most important people in the history of popular music, and someone we'll be seeing a lot more of as the series goes on. There are very few people in the world who can be said to have created an entire genre of music, and even fewer who were primarily record company owners rather than musicians, but Berry Gordy Jr was one of them. Gordy didn't start out, though, as a record executive. When he first got into the music industry, it was as a songwriter, and today we're going to look at his early songwriting career. But we're also going to look at a performer who was massively important in his own right, and who was one of the most exciting performers ever to take to the stage -- someone who inspired Elvis, Michael Jackson, and James Brown, and who provides one of the key links between fifties R&B and sixties soul: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, "Reet Petite"] I'm afraid that this episode is another case where I have to point you to the disclaimer I did in the early weeks of the show. Jackie Wilson was an admirable musician, but he was in no way an admirable human being, particularly in his treatment of women – he's been credibly accused of at least one sexual assault, and he fathered many children by many different women, who he abandoned, and was known for having a violent temper. As always, this podcast is not about his reprehensible acts, but about the music, but again, it should not be taken as an endorsement of him as a person when I talk about his artistic talent. Wilson started out as a boxer in his teens, but he quickly decided to move into singing instead. He would regularly perform at talent contests around Detroit, and he was part of a loose association of musicians and singers including Wilson's cousin Levi Stubbs, the Royals, who would later become Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and the blues singer Little Willie John. They would all perform on the same talent shows and would agree among themselves who was going to win beforehand – Wilson would tell Stubbs "you win this week, I'll win next week". On one occasion, Johnny Otis happened to be in the audience, when the Royals, Little Willie John, and Wilson were all on the same bill, and on that particular show Wilson came third. Otis was working as a talent scout for King Records at the time, and tried to get all three acts signed to the label, but for reasons that remain unclear, King decided they only wanted to sign the Royals (though they would sign Little Willie John a couple of years later). As a result, a song that Otis had written for Wilson was recorded instead by the Royals: [The Royals, "Every Beat of My Heart"] Wilson kept performing at the amateur nights for a couple of years, until at the age of seventeen he was signed to Dee Gee Records, a small label co-owned by the jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie. There he cut two singles, under the name Sonny Wilson. Wilson's favourite song to sing in talent contests was "Danny Boy", which would remain in his setlists until late in his life, and he would use that song as a way to show off his vocal virtuosity, ornamenting it to the point that the melody would become almost unrecognisable, and so that was, of course, one of the two singles: [Excerpt: Sonny Wilson, "Danny Boy"] Neither single was particularly successful, but Wilson continued performing in nightclubs around Detroit and built up something of a local following. But in 1953 he got a big break, when he auditioned for Billy Ward and his Dominoes. We've talked about the Dominoes before, back in the episode on "Money Honey", but as a bit of a recap, they were the biggest black vocal group of the early fifties, and they were led by Billy Ward, a vocal coach who was not their lead singer. The lead singer in the early fifties was Clyde McPhatter, but McPhatter was getting restless. There are several different stories about how Wilson came to be picked for Ward's group, but one that sticks out in my mind is one that Ward used to tell, which is that one reason Wilson was picked for the group is that his mother begged Ward, saying that she was scared for the life of her son, as he was getting into trouble on the streets. Certainly, she had every reason to be worried for him – Wilson had recently been stabbed in the chest by a sex worker. But Ward noted that Wilson was a diamond in the rough, and could have a great deal of success with the right amount of polishing. He decided to get Wilson into the group as a replacement for McPhatter, though McPhatter and Wilson were in the group together for a while, as McPhatter served out his notice with the group. Over the next few weeks, Wilson studied what McPhatter was doing, until he was able to take McPhatter's place. Ward taught him breath control, and became something of a father figure, giving him some discipline for the first time in his life. McPhatter's were very big shoes to fill, but Wilson soon won the audiences over, both with his vocals and his dancing. While Wilson was not regarded as a good dancer by most of the people who knew him – he couldn't dance with a partner at all – he had a unique way of moving all his own, which he had learned in the boxing ring, where he'd learned to slide, sidestep, and duck away from other fighters, and to come at them from unexpected angles. He soon became one of the most riveting performers on stage, jumping up, throwing his mic in the air, doing mid-air splits, and completely dominating the stage. As well as teaching him to perform, Ward made one other major change. Up to this point, Wilson had always been known either as Jack or as Sonny. Ward thought that being called Sonny smacked of Uncle Tommery, and decided that from this point on, Wilson's stage name was going to be Jackie. Wilson was not happy with this at first, but later decided that Ward had been right – though he was still always "Jack" or "Sonny" to those who knew him. Wilson's first recording with the group as lead singer came just after he turned nineteen, when he went into the studio with them to cut "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down" for King Records -- the same label that had turned him down when Johnny Otis had put him forward: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down"] Four months later, they went back into the studio to cut eleven songs in a single day -- a mammoth session which really allowed Wilson to show off his vocal versatility. From that session, their version of "Rags to Riches", which had been a massive hit for Tony Bennett earlier in the year, went to number two on the R&B chart, though it didn't dent the pop chart: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Rags to Riches"] But after this, the Dominoes started to have less success in the charts -- their records weren't selling as well as they had been when Clyde McPhatter was the group's lead singer, and in 1954 they had no hits at all. But in some ways that didn't really matter -- the group weren't just looking to have success as recording artists, but as live performers, and they got a two-year residency in Las Vegas, supporting Louis Prima and Keely Smith. The group were getting five thousand dollars a week -- a massive amount of money in those days -- though most of that went to Ward, and Wilson was on a salary of only ninety dollars a week. It was while he was performing in Las Vegas that Wilson first came to the notice of someone who would later become a good friend -- Elvis Presley. In 1956 Elvis made his own first trip to perform in Vegas, although he was far, far less successful there than he would be thirteen years later. While he was there, he watched with amazement as Jackie Wilson performed Elvis' own hit "Don't Be Cruel" much better than Elvis did himself -- and in the famous Million Dollar Quartet tapes, you can hear Elvis raving about Wilson to Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis: [Excerpt: Elvis talking about Jackie Wilson] It's quite funny listening to those recordings, as the others keep trying to drag Elvis on to other topics of conversation, and Elvis keeps insisting on telling them just how good this singer with Billy Ward and the Dominoes, whose name he hadn't caught, was. But Vegas wasn't a good fit for Wilson. He chafed at the discipline of the Dominoes, and at staying in one place all the time. After a couple of years of disappointing record sales, the Dominoes switched labels to Decca, and for the first time Jackie Wilson hit the pop charts as a lead singer, when "St. Therese of the Roses" made number thirteen on the pop charts and number twenty-seven on the hot one hundred: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "St. Therese of the Roses"] Incidentally, over in the UK, where American chart records were often covered for the domestic market by British acts, that was recorded by Malcolm Vaughan, a pop tenor who wanted to be England's answer to Dean Martin: [Excerpt: Malcolm Vaughan, "St. Therese of the Roses"] That version actually became a massive hit over here, reaching number three, after being banned by the BBC. Yes, you heard that right. That song was banned, because it was "contrary both to Roman Catholic doctrine and to Protestant sentiment". The ban caused enough controversy that the record sold half a million copies. Vaughan would later go on to have a minor hit with a cover version of another Jackie Wilson record, "To Be Loved". In 1957, Jackie decided to leave Billy Ward and the Dominoes. It had become apparent that Ward had no bigger ambitions than to keep playing Las Vegas forever, and keep making vast amounts of money without having to travel or work especially hard. Jackie Wilson wanted something more, and he went back to Detroit. At first he was going to join a vocal group that had been performing for a few years, the Four Aims, which featured his cousin Levi Stubbs and another distant relative, Lawrence Payton. Unfortunately, they found that Jackie's voice didn't blend well with the group -- he sounded, according to Wilson's first wife Freda, too similar to Stubbs, though I don't hear that much of a vocal resemblance myself. Either way, the attempt to work together quickly fizzled out, and the Four Tops, as they became, had to find their own success without Jackie Wilson in the group. Around this time, Wilson also became obsessed with the singer Mario Lanza. Lanza was an Italian-American pop singer who sang in a pseudo-operatic style, rather than in the more casual crooning style of contemporaries like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, and Wilson was a huge fan of Lanza's 1951 film The Great Caruso, in which he played the opera singer Enrico Caruso: [Excerpt: Mario Lanza, "The Loveliest Night of the Year"] Wilson studied Lanza's performances, and he tried to emulate Lanza's diction and projection. But at the same time, he was, at heart, an R&B performer, and he also knew that as a black singer in Detroit in the early fifties, R&B was what he needed to do to make money. And making money was what Wilson needed to do more than anything else, and so he got an audition at the Flame Bar, which was owned and run by a local mobster, Al Green. Green was a big name in the local music business -- he managed Johnnie Ray, one of the biggest names in white pop music at the time, and also LaVern Baker, who had had a string of R&B hits. Wilson got the audition through his friend Roquel Davis, who went by the name Billy Davis, who was Lawrence Payton's cousin and had performed with him in an early lineup of the Four Aims. Davis had also written songs for the Four Aims, but more importantly for this purpose, his girlfriend, Gwen Gordy, worked with her sister Anna at the Flame Bar. Through these connections, Wilson got himself a regular spot at the Flame -- and he also got to meet Gwen and Anna's little brother Berry. Berry Gordy Jr was someone who would go on to be one of the most important people in the history of twentieth century music -- someone without whom none of the rest of this story would happen. He was as important to the music of the sixties as Sam Phillips was to the fifties, if not more important. Gordy was born, the seventh of eight children, to a poor family in Detroit. As a child, he was taught some of the rudiments of the piano by an uncle, who tried to get him to learn to play in the proper manner -- learning scales and arpeggios, and how to read music. But young Berry was easily bored, and soon figured out that if you play the first three notes of an arpeggio together, you can get a simple triad chord. A diversion here, just for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about -- an arpeggio is a musical term that literally means "like a harp", and it's used for a type of scale where you pick out the individual notes of a chord. You know the sound, even if you don't know the term. So when you arpeggiate a C major chord, you play the notes C, E, and G, sometimes in multiple octaves: [Demonstrates on guitar] When you play those notes together, that's a C major chord: [Demonstrates on guitar] Once young Berry Gordy Jr figured out how to play the chords C, F, and G, he was able to start playing boogie-woogie piano by ear. His favourite boogie record was "Hazel Scott's Boogie Woogie": [Excerpt: Hazel Scott, "Hazel Scott's Boogie Woogie"] From an early age, he also became a fan of a particular type of vocal group performance, especially when the singers were singing touching songs about loneliness. He loved "Paper Doll" by the Mills Brothers: [Excerpt: The Mills Brothers, "Paper Doll"] and "We Three" by the Ink Spots: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, "We Three"] But in his early years, Gordy was unsure whether he wanted to become a musician, or if instead he wanted to become a boxer like his hero Joe Louis -- and in this way his career was paralleling that of Jackie Wilson, though he didn't know Wilson at the time. He actually had a reasonable amount of success as a boxer, up until a point in 1950 where he saw two posters next to each other. One of them, on top, was advertising a battle of the bands between Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington, while the other was advertising a fight. He noticed two things about the posters. The first was that the bandleaders could work every night and make money, while he knew that boxers would go weeks or months between fights. And the second was that the bandleaders "were about fifty and looked twenty-three", while the boxers "were about twenty-three and looked fifty". He knew what he was going to do, and it wasn't boxing. His attempts at a music career were soon put on the back-burner when he was drafted to fight in the Korean War. After he got out of the military, he had a variety of short-term jobs, but he was regarded by his family more or less as a bum -- he never held down a steady job and he was a dreamer who saw himself as becoming a successful songwriter and a millionaire, but had never quite managed to make anything of his dreams. That was, at least, until he met Billy Davis, who at the time was a struggling songwriter like him, but one who had had slightly more success. Davis had managed to persuade Chess Records to sign up the Four Tops, as they were now called, and release a single with Davis credited as the songwriter: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Kiss Me Baby"] I say Davis was credited as the songwriter, because that song bears more than a little resemblance to the Ray Charles song from a few years earlier, "Kissa Me Baby": [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "Kissa Me Baby"] But Chess hadn't really been interested in the Four Tops themselves -- they'd instead been interested in Billy Davis as a songwriter, and they quickly used songs he'd written for the Four Tops, and cut them instead with the Moonglows: [Excerpt: The Moonglows, "See Saw"] and the Flamingos: [Excerpt: The Flamingos, "A Kiss From Your Lips"] Neither of those had been a big hit, but the result was that Billy Davis was, in Gordy's eyes at least, someone with a track record and connections. The two men hit it off musically as well as personally, and they decided that they'd start to collaborate on songs, along with Gordy's sister Gwen, who was dating Davis. Anything any of them wrote on their own would also get credited to them as a group, and they'd pool whatever they got. And they were going to write songs for Jackie Wilson. Davis tried to get Wilson signed to Chess Records, but they weren't interested in Wilson's sound -- they wanted a harder blues sound, rather than Wilson's more soulful sound. But then Al Green took on Wilson's management, and managed to persuade Bob Thiele at Decca Records, who had just signed Buddy Holly and the Crickets, to sign Wilson -- not so much for Wilson's own talent, though Thiele was impressed by him, but because Green promised that he could also sign LaVern Baker when her contract with Atlantic expired. As it turned out, though, Thiele would never get to sign Baker, as the day before Wilson's contract was meant to be signed, Al Green died suddenly. More by chutzpah than anything else, Nat Tarnopol, an office boy who had been employed by Green, managed to take over Wilson's management, just by saying that he was in charge now. He got the contracts signed, and got Wilson signed to Brunswick, the Decca subsidiary that put out rock and roll records. Over the next few years Tarnopol would manage to get himself made a co-owner of Brunswick, by using the leverage he got as Wilson's manager. The first record Wilson put out as a solo artist was a song that Billy Davis had originally come up with when he was sixteen, inspired by a Louis Jordan song titled "Reet, Petite, and Gone": [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, "Reet, Petite, and Gone"] Davis and the Gordys reworked his original idea into a new song called "Reet Petite", which became Wilson's first solo single since leaving the Dominoes. When Wilson took the song to Dick Jacobs, the arranger assigned to the session, Jacobs was impressed with the song, but became worried -- he sat down with Wilson to work out what key to record the song in, and Wilson kept telling him to take it higher, and higher, and higher. Wilson couldn't demonstrate what he meant during the preparations for the session, as he had laryngitis, but he kept insisting that he should sing it a full octave higher than Jacobs initially suggested. Jacobs went to Bob Thiele, and Thiele said it didn't really matter, they'd only signed Wilson in order to get LaVern Baker, and just to do what he wanted. Jacobs hired some of the best session players in New York, including Panama Francis on drums and Sam "the Man" Taylor on saxophone, reasoning that if he had the best players around then the record wouldn't end up too bad, whatever the singer sounded like. I'll now quote some of Jacobs' description of the session itself: "I got him behind the microphone and said a silent prayer that this aerial key he'd picked to sing in would be okay, and that this guy was a reasonable approximation of a singer. "Jackie Wilson opened his mouth and out poured what sounded like honey on moonbeams, and it was like the whole room shifted on some weird axis. The musicians, these meat and potatoes pros, stared at each other slack-jawed and goggle-eyed in disbelief; it was as if the purpose of their musical training and woodshedding and lickspitting had been to guide them into this big studio in the Pythian Temple to experience these pure shivering moments of magic. Bob Thiele and I looked at each other and just started laughing, half out of relief and half out of wonder. I never thought crow could taste so sweet." [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, "Reet Petite"] The record wasn't a massive hit in the US -- it only went to number sixty-two on the pop charts -- but it was a much bigger hit in the UK, reaching number six, and over here it became a much-loved classic, so much so that it went to number one for four weeks when it was reissued in 1986. At one show, where he was Dinah Washington's support act, he rolled his "r" on the title of the song, like he did on the record, and his two front dentures went flying off. He never sang the song live again. "Reet Petite" was the start of a run of songs that Davis and the Gordys wrote for Wilson, most of them big hits and several of them classics. Most notably, there was Wilson's second solo single, "To Be Loved". That song was written by Berry Gordy and Davis, after Gordy found out his wife was divorcing him. Gordy went round to his sister Gwen's house, where Davis also was, and started playing the piano, after Gwen reassured him that even though his wife had left him, he still had the love of his children and his siblings. The result was a gorgeous ballad that went to number seven on the R&B charts and number twenty-two on the pop charts: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, "To Be Loved"] They also wrote what became Wilson's biggest early it, "Lonely Teardrops", which went to number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, "Lonely Teardrops"] That had originally been written as a ballad, but was reworked into a more danceable song in the studio. Berry Gordy and Davis hated it when they first heard the finished record, but grew to appreciate it as it became a hit. However, from that point on, they started to take more interest in the production side of Wilson's recordings, and they developed a routine where Davis and Gordy would rehearse Wilson, with Gordy on the piano, and they'd teach him the song and record a demo, which Jacobs would then use to write the arrangements -- Dick Jacobs wasn't the only arranger on Wilson's early records, but they soon learned that he was the one who could best capture the sound they wanted. The three men would then supervise in the studio. (Gwen Gordy is also credited as a co-writer on several of the records, but her contributions tend to be played down by the others, and she doesn't appear to have been involved in the production side. How much of that is her not contributing as much, and how much is just misogyny in how the story is told, is hard to say.) But eventually, they fell out with Nat Tarnopol, after they figured out that Tarnopol was putting songs to which he owned the copyright on the B-sides of all Wilson's records, so he could get royalties from the sales. Gordy and Davis insisted that they should get to write the songs on both sides of the singles, so that they could get a fair share of the money -- especially as they were effectively producing the sessions, without either a credit or royalties. Tarnopol disagreed -- as far as he was concerned, Jackie Wilson could be a star with anyone writing his material, and he didn't need these songwriters. Their days as Jackie Wilson's hit factory were over. Davis and Gwen Gordy went off to found their own record label, along with Gwen and Berry's sister Anna. Anna Records, as it was called, didn't have the most propitious start, with its first single being a Davis and Gwen Gordy song "Hope and Pray", performed by the Voice Masters: [Excerpt: The Voice Masters, "Hope and Pray"] But it would later put out some much more influential records. Berry, meanwhile, decided to groom another young artist for stardom -- he saw a lot of possibilities in a young man called William Robinson, who everyone referred to as Smokey, and his group the Miracles. We'll pick up on the Gordys and their business ventures in a few months' time. Jackie Wilson continued having hits for several years, although his career dipped in the early sixties with the British Invasion. He then had a revival in 1967, when he recorded what would end up being his biggest hit, "Higher and Higher": [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, "Higher and Higher"] Wilson continued having occasional hits through to 1970, and remained a popular live artist for years afterwards, but then in 1975, in the middle of performing "Lonely Teardrops", right after singing the line "my heart is crying", he clutched his chest and collapsed. At first people thought it was part of the act, but he didn't get back up. Cornell Gunter of the Coasters gave him mouth to mouth, and possibly saved his life, but some would question whether that was, in retrospect, a bad idea -- Wilson was in a coma from which he would never fully recover. For the next eight and a half years, Wilson was institutionalised. There are some people who claim that he gained a little bit of awareness during that time, but by most accounts he was in a persistent vegetative state. At first, the music business rallied round and helped pay for his treatment -- there are some reports that Jackie's old friend Elvis Presley anonymously donated a lot of the money for his medical bills, though these obviously can't be verified. The Detroit Spinners held a benefit concert for him, and donated $5000 of their own money. Al Green (the singer, not Wilson's ex-manager) performed at the concert and gave ten thousand dollars, Stevie Wonder gave five thousand, Gladys Knight gave two thousand five hundred, Michael Jackson ten thousand, Richard Pryor twelve hundred. James Brown sent a one thousand dollar cheque, which bounced, but he coughed up the actual money when Jackie's common-law wife said she was going to tell Jet magazine about the bouncing cheque. Nat Tarnopol and Brunswick Records, on the other hand, gave nothing. In fact, they did worse than nothing -- they lied to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, claiming that Wilson hadn't had any earnings from them in the year prior to his collapse, when he'd been in the studio and was owed regular union rates for recording sessions. If they'd told the truth, his medical bills would have been covered by the insurance, but they weren't. There are many hypotheses as to why Wilson collapsed on stage that day, including that he used to drink salt water before going on stage to make himself sweat, and that this caused him to have a heart attack due to induced hypertension. But several people close to Wilson believed that his collapse was somehow caused by Nat Tarnopol having him poisoned. Wilson had been due to testify against Tarnopol in front of a grand jury ten days after his collapse, and Tarnopol was very involved with the Mafia -- at one point he'd tried to have Carl Davis, who produced "Higher and Higher" killed, and it was only Davis' friendship with another mobster with ties to Brunswick, Tommy Vastola, that saved him. Johnny Roberts, Wilson's manager in the seventies and another mobster, actually faked his own death in the eighties and had a funeral, and then reappeared once Tarnopol himself died in 1987, while some of those close to Wilson think it's no coincidence that Cornell Gunter, who had been there when Wilson collapsed and had always thought there was something strange about it, was murdered himself in 1990, in Las Vegas, by an unknown gunman -- though if that murder did have anything to do with Wilson's collapse, it can't have been Tarnopol himself who ordered that murder, of course. Jackie Wilson finally died of pneumonia on January 21, 1984, after having been hospitalised since September 29, 1975. He was buried in an unmarked grave, but three years later funds were raised for a headstone, which reads "no more lonely teardrops".

We begin the month of November with a group of 4 Jazz Features that when first issued received dismissive reviews from the esteemed Jazz critics of publications like Down Beat and related magazines, Three of the four this month are now considered classics and essential listening. First up is an album that initially got 2 stars out of 5. This is a superb piano trio date led by still living drum master Roy Haynes. Roy picked the great Paul Chambers on bass but most importantly the leading voice here is piano virtuoso Phineas Newborn Jr. Phineas today is considered along with Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett etc, one of the world's greatest Jazz pianists. His mastery is so evident on this recording and it's his playing that makes this album called "We Three" a classic piano trio date. The chemistry between the three men is amazing and it's like they have played together for years rather than just a few gigs before this recording. The critics were wrong on this one as this music rated 41/2 or 5 stars out of 5! Enjoy it tonight.

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! Week Three of Submissions September and oh boy did we really run with it this time!  This week we are bringing you not one, not two, but three episodes and they’re all about those mysterious creatures known Literary Agents.  Who are they?  What do they do?  How do you summon one?  For this episode, we sat down with Literary Agent Caitlin McDonald to discuss all this and more.  We loved talking with Caitlin and hope that our discussion might remove a bit of the fear and mystery from proccess of querying agents.  Caitlin is with the Donald Maass Literary Agency and you can (and should!) check her out her and her work at: Website: http://maassagency.com/caitlin-mcdonald/ Twitter: @literallycait - https://twitter.com/literallycait/status/1154917792619139073 Tumbler: https://literallycait.tumblr.com/   And be sure to check out new and upcoming releases from some of her clients!   The Resurrectionist of Caligo: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KDWLM3P The Library of the Unwritten: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608277/the-library-of-the-unwritten-by-a-j-hackwith/9781984806376/ In case you’re just joining us, this month is Submissions September on the We Make Books Podcast!  We’re doing seven (7!) episodes this month all about the process of submitting your novel.  We have a lot of awesome discussions lined up and even some special guests.  Here’s what will be coming your way for the month: Week 1 (9/3/2019): Is This Ready For Other People to See?- Submitting Your Manuscript Week 2 (9/10/2019): My Entire Novel in Three Hundred Words - The Dreaded Query Letter Week 3 (9/17/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 1: An Interview with Literary Agent Caitlin McDonald               (9/18/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 2: Interviews with Agented Authors               (9/19/2019): Agents of Literature Part 3: Interviews with Agented Authors Week 4 (9/24/2019):What is Going On Over There? - The Other Side of the Submissions Process Week 5 (9/30/2019): Now I’m Even More Confused – Submissions September Q&A Episode We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writer and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and any stress relief suggestions for Kaelyn while she deals with the Giants’ will-they-won’t-they Eli Manning and Daniel Jones situation. Seriously guys, she can’t do a whole season of this. We hope you enjoy We Make Books!   Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast     Kaelyn (K): Hey everyone, welcome, another episode of the We Make Books podcast, a show about writing, publishing, and everything in between. I'm Kaelyn Considine, I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. Rekka (R): And I'm Rekka and I write Science Fiction and Fantasy as R J Theodore. K: So Week Three, Submissions September. And this week's a doozy. R: We've got a lot of episodes for you this week. K: Yeah, so, what we ended up doing instead of just one episode about agents, we.. you're actually getting three this week. The first one is going to be an interview with an actual literary agent. Caitlin McDonald took some time to talk to us, she was lovely, we had such a great conversation and that's what you're going to be listening to today. Then, we have two more episodes that we're going to be putting out Wednesday and Thursday. R: Yeah, we're just going back to back with this. K: And we talked to six different authors about their process getting an agent... R: They're experience working with them. K: Yeah, cause I think there's... what we're learning, talking to people, there's a lot of mystery around this. R: Yeah. Mmm-hmm. K: Everyone is very uncertain about what agents do, and how you get one. R: And how you're allowed to use them. K: Yes. Yeah, so we had a really great time talking to Caitlin who gave us some really interesting insight and... Yeah, Week Three: Agents. We… Three episodes, because it turns out there's a lot to say about that. R: You know, this is a big part of it for a lot of people. K: Yeah, it's the check mark. It's a huge check mark for a lot of people in this process is: “Get agent." So take a listen, we had a great time talking to Caitlin and hopefully you enjoy the episode. [music] 02:01  Caitlin (C): I’m Caitlin McDonald. I'm a literary agent at Donald Maass literary agency. I represent primarily Science Fiction and Fantasy for adult and young adult, as well as a little bit of nonfiction. I've been in the business for... I think, eight or nine years no? I lost track, but around there. R: So over eight or nine years you've seen it change a little bit, with going, you know, so heavy on digital all of a sudden, and the opportunities for print on demand, opening up smaller publishers… C: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, at my first agency I was involved in a lot of reworking backlist contracts that had no language for digital to kind of, you know, deal with that change that was really becoming a huge deal. That was 2011, so... there was a lot. It was, obviously 2008 was kind of when digital really hit the market—  K: Yeah. R: Right. C: —started to become... um, but like, 2011 was when people really said, "Okay, this isn't going away. This is serious." [Kaelyn and Caitlin talking over each other and laughing.] K: Oh, people will read things off screens! They don't always need the physical book in their hand. C: And it's not going to kill paper! K: No, no not it's not. C: It's a supplement. K: Yeah. So, Caitlin, could you maybe tell us a little about what a literary agent does? Because I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there about, like, "Oh, as soon as I get an agent, that's it, then my book's gonna get signed," or, "I'm never gonna do this unless I get a literary agent." Um, I think a lot of authors who are looking for agents maybe don't always know what the agent will do for them. What their job is, after you sign with them. C: Sure, so there are some things that kind of differ from agent to agent, particularly, there's also differences between if you have an agent who focuses on Non Fiction or, versus Fiction. So, it's always worth having a conversation with an agent and asking this question of them directly if they're offering representation because their answer may vary from what I'm about to describe here. But, at the, you know, the basic level, typically, in addition to most of us these days do editorial. So, I will do at least two rounds on a manuscript before I send it out on submission even after I've acquired it, there's always gonna be at least one round of line editing but usually even before that, I'm doing at least one round of structural edits, areas where I'm saying, "I love this character but strengthen their character arc, you know, make their motivations clearer.” “X Y Z isn't working, let's find a way to fix that.” So, I always make sure that I'm doing editorial before we go out on submission. Obviously, submission is the Big Thing™, that's what everyone gets an agent for, but even after we have that deal in place for you, part of our job is to negotiate it so that it's the best deal it could be, both in terms of the offers but also the contract language. So sometimes there are elements that, you know, authors don't necessarily know or that don't come up in the offer point, so it's not a deal point of how much money you're getting, what sub-rights you're contracting out, but really nitty gritty language in the contract that might be boilerplate between the agency and the publishing house but maybe the publisher recently revised their standard contract, so we have to make sure that the language is still what we agreed to. You know, really little things, we're here to make sure that everything is the best it could possibly be for our authors. And then, also staying on top of everything afterwards as well. Os I don't just well, “Here's your editor, the book deal is signed, it's their problem." I'm still there to make sure that you know, everyone is on target for deadline, that the publisher is delivering on publicity and marketing that they agreed to. That, if there are any concerns coming up, a copyeditor who's making changes that the author doesn't like—I've had that problem before. Anything that, you know, any concerns my author has, any discrepancies, any time issues, all of that, I'm here to kind of be a mediator between my author and the publisher. If an author has a problem with anything, if they have a question they're afraid to ask the editor directly, I'm here to kind of be the difficult person so that the author can maintain their good relationship with the editor. The author should never have to ask a hard question or demand something that is going to seem pushy, because that's my job. I'm the one who gets to be pushy and maybe be the person that the publisher goes, "Ugh, them again." But they'll get to have a good relationship with their author. K: I always really enjoy going through the agent because authors, you know, don't wanna be pushy and they're a little, "Oh, I don't want to step on anyone's toes here," and with the agent it's like, "Okay, let's just figure this out." C: Exactly. We also know what's standard. What's a reasonable request where we can come in and say, "Okay, the publisher's not going to be able to do that but here's a compromise that we can suggest." So we can help mediate a lot of those elements where an author may want something but not know whether it's standard, whether it's something that they should ask for or can ask for, not knowing what is normal. K: Yeah I mean for a lot of authors this is kinda their first foray into publishing and it's overwhelming and it's things that they think they should know already and they really don't. And there's no reason that they should. So, yeah, having and agent, someone that's in your court and able to help you navigate that is so valuable. A lot of people who're going to be listening to this probably do not have an agent already, and they want one. When you're evaluating potential clients to take on. What are you looking for? Obviously a good book is the first major component. But beyond that, is there anything you kind of take into consideration when making decisions on these things? C: Certainly there's an element of understanding how to pitch, clear market identity, knowing that they clearly understand and read within their genre. So, they may... I don't expect them to, you know, know every, have read every book and be as on top of the industry and what's coming out in the next, you know, year, as someone who's in the industry, but I do expect that they read within their genre, that they have comp titles that are relevant, that they show an understanding of what readers are looking for in the sense that they themselves are a reader. So sometimes I'll see queries that come in and describe.. some.. they say, "Oh, this pitch is something that's never been done before," and clearly it has. Then I'm going, "Okay. You definitely don't read this genre at all, and this is probably not a good fit." You need to really make sure you're reading in your genre and demonstrate some understanding of it, because otherwise we will be able to tell. Uh, the other thing that is really helpful is a little bit of that personalization when you're pitching to an agent can just be really helpful. It's not necessary, per se, but I do find it incredibly helpful to show that you know, you've done a little bit of research and it gets me more excited about a project if you know things that I'm specifically looking for. Not just my genre but specific details of things I'm interested in things that I'm looking for that you can cite and say, "Yes, my work has this and I know you want that." Then that can really get me excited about it before I even get to the sample pages and that's a really good way of grabbing an agent's attention. K: You hear that, listeners? Slapping the same thing together and sending it out over and over again is not the best way to get someone's attention, actually doing some research and putting some time into —because that's something we talk about a lot, is this is not an easy process, so if it seems easy to you you're probably not doing it the right way.  R: So one place that folks can find your particular manuscript interests would be on your submissions page? Your submissions guidelines, generally. Um, lightly browse (do not stalk) your twitter, and if the agent is listed on Manuscript Wishlist, which is a website that like, puts together a lot of agents. They can fill out profiles and keep it updated themselves of what they're looking for. That's a couple of places where you can find out, is this agent interested in something I'm writing, and also a lot of agents will have the headers on their social media include the books they've worked on. So if you look at that header photo, it's like a real quick double-check. Is anything.. do I write like anything on here. One, if you haven't read anything on there, stop what you're doing if you're really interested in that agent, and read something that they've worked on. But, it's a quick check, just like, "None of this is anything like what I write, maybe I should look for a different agent, and not waste their time." K: Yeah. Along those lines, one of the questions we had sent along was, "Agents, when they open for queries, this has to do with the alignment of the stars, correct?" C: Absolutely. K: "And the tidal forces of the moon and..." R: "Magic. Lots of magic." K: "And various other natural phenomenon." But when those things happen, what makes you decide like, "Okay, I'm ready to be open for queries again. I'm ready to take on new clients"?
C: I man, I'm sure it's different for every agent. For me, specifically, it really has to do with how much time that I have. How I'm doing with current client manuscripts. Whether I've caught up on all of the queries already in my inbox. That's often something I have to make a really concentrated push, after I close to queries, to then get through all of the ones that are still need to be responded to. Then give myself a little bit of time to get through some manuscripts. I wish I could say that I only open to queries when I've responded to all of the fulls that I've already requested, but that's not the case because then I'd probably never open to queries." K: as an acquisitions editor, I can say the same thing, that I always have a few that I'm still working through but it's like, "But I also need more for the future, so we're gonna open for submissions again." It's hard to balance that. C: Yeah, yeah it is and the work-life balance as well, there's so many elements. Because I think the thing to keep in mind is that most agents aren't reading queries during work hours. They're reading them during their own personal time. Our work hours are dedicated to our clients, editing manuscripts, possibly reading fulls, but for the most part, it is working on our clients and editing the existing manuscripts, going out on submission, making sure everything is up to date. All of the work that is involved with being an agent for our existing clients is pretty much a full time job and finding new clients to add to our list is an important part of our job but it also usually happens outside of the parameters of our forty-fifty hour work week whatever you .. however you define that. I'm often sending queries at ten o'clock at night and that's just how it is. When you have the time for it. K; Yeah. Same thing. I get responses from people that are like, "Uh, were you up this late?" I'm like, "I'm up that late every night. That's when I get my work done!" We talked about this a little you know, when you said what does a literary agent do, but: relationships with authors. Obviously, like, one of your big things is, you're in that person's court. You are their advocate, you are there, making sure that they get the best possible publishing deal, making sure everyone's happy, handling difficult situations for them. But beyond that, your relationship with a writer, what is that like? What do they expect from you? Obviously, it will change depending on how things are happening in their career, but what's your relationship like leading up to a release and then, for example, afterwards? C: This is such a good question because it' actually really important for an author to know what they need about themselves before, if they can. Which is hard to know if you've never had an agent, but if you can try to figure out 'what's important to me?' beforehand, then having that conversation helps you know whether the agent is going to be a good fit for you. Because it really varies for all of my clients. Some of them, you know, I'm in almost constant touch with. Some of them I only head from them when they have a manuscript ready and they send it and it's already revised and they feel like they just... "here it is!" and others are going, "Here are my next... here are one-sentence pitches for my next eight ideas, which one should I do?" "Here's a partial draft." so it really really varies. I've got some authors where I'm working with them on all sorts of different levels of early stages of manuscripts and others that don't come to me until they've got something nearly complete, or at least a full first draft, or a full synopsis, you know, it really really varies. and then the level of contact that they want also varies from author to author there are some who I'm here as you know an emotional support as well as all of the other tasks that my job entails. And then others who are very happy to sort of sit back and only reach out when they actually have a specific publishing question or concern that needs to be addresses. So it really really varies, wildly and it's important to kind of know "how much do I want my agent to be in touch?""Am I more comfortable with email of phone?" "Am I going to be someone who wants to be able to text my agent?" These are the kind of questions that it helps to be able to look a little bit inside and say, "this is.. these are the kinds of communication limits that I want with an agent," and to talk to them about it beforehand and make sure that that's what you're going to be getting from the agent you're looking for. K: Well now, you, I'm sure, in a lot of situations, have to set some boundaries. C: That is true, um, but it.. there often, I find, it's something that is done not necessarily explicitly. I kind of set what I'm comfortable with and if that means I'm not responding to emails that aren't super important on the weekend, then that's just something isn't necessarily discussed beforehand, per se? I know this sounds a little bit contradictory to what I just said, but like R: No but by your responses, you're setting their expectations. C: Exactly. Exactly. K: I know some people that, when they first signed with their agent they're like, "I have this question," and I'm like, "Well go ask your agent then." C: Yes. Exactly. K: "That's what they're there for." "I don't wanna bother them." "That.. I.. you are not bothering them. Other.. you know, you're not calling them at one in the morning having a breakdown about something." That's bothering. Don't do that. C:  Yes, exactly. We're here as a resource so you should always feel comfortable reaching out to your agent about anything that is publishing and work related. That, at least, you should always feel comfortable doing. They might set the parameters of how to do that. Is it okay to just call them ay any time, or do they prefer email? Do they give you their number so you can text them? Depends. I mean, I know many agents prefer not to do that which I think is absolutely a good idea but I'm sure that there are some that are perfectly comfortable with it. So you know, having that conversation beforehand and finding what their preferred system is so that you know whether it's compatible with your preferred system, that's really the key. K: Gotcha. So, we had kind of also talked about this briefly, but one of the other questions we wanted to talk about is, and I'm gonna kinda combine two things here: what catches your eye in query letters, in authors that are querying you, and at the same time, what are some red flags? C: So, what catches my eye, I think'd be a little like what I talked about before, something that really speaks to me personally and actually addresses things that I have specifically said that I'm looking for. Anything that is particularly really unique, like actually finds a way to give me an unexpected twist within the pitch itself. I'm also.. I do really appreciate comp titles that kind of combine, you know, taking two very very disparate comps and combining them to say "here are two things that are nothing alike but if you combined them, that's my book." Then you can get a sense of, "Oh, here is something really new and unique." I once got a query that said it's Jane Austin's Emma meets Dexter. And then.. K: Oh! C: Yeah, and then the plots came out, like, Yes, that makes sense! But getting that, those kind of comp titles, I went, "That is very interesting and I want to learn more." So, you know, it's.. comp titles don't have to be like that but they can be a very interesting way to condense a unique aspect of your book into one creative, short pithy pitch. In terms of red flags, I think it's often a, like I said before, very clear not understanding of their genre or the type of book I'm looking for if they very clearly have misunderstood, not just the genre per se, but something say, comes in and is pretty heavily misogynistic in a certain way or something that just, like, if you check my social media, I'm very clearly not interested in works that are, you know, a certain way, even if they are science fiction or fantasy. And then, also I would say another huge red flag is authors who feel the need to attack other authors or existing books for a genre in their query letter. K: Oh really?
C: that is never good. don't be that person. K: No. C: Yes, I've definitely those books that come in say, "Well, this book was terrible," or "Nothing in YA is good anymore," or, "Twilight was terrible!" K: Oh my god. C: Don't be that person. That's... you know, don't attack other authors in your query. It's not a good look. K: I'm making this face right now because I have read so many query letters and I have never seen that.  C: Really? K: That's like. now see, watch.. cause we're open for submissions now so I'm gonna get like ten of those. Now that I've said that but like, oh my god, wow. I thought I'd seen everything. That's a new one. Okay. R: Actually that comes up on Twitter a lot. I see a lot of agents saying "Please don't do this. You know, don't insult J K Rowling because you think that will make your book sound more intelligent. It doesn't." K: It doesn't and I mean, you know. Come on, Harry Potter. R:  Regardless of whether you like it, it was very successful. An agent wouldn't mind a Harry Potter. C: And it sets yu up as a person who is going to be not someone who plays ball with the industry if you're going to be someone like that then that doesn't send a good message about the type of person you're going to be in terms of how you interact with other authors and publishers. and the fact is other authors: those are your peers, those are your support network. you need other authors because their success is your success. And their blurbs are how you get found and you all have to support each other and so if you're not going to be interested in doing that then you're probably not going to succeed in the book industry. K: I've done a couple things over the years and a question I get a lot is well you guys are like, you know a small independent press, and "yes, we are, it's a lot of fun," "So what about competition from this what about..." It's not like... it's not competition. People, I think. It's not the same as cheering for a sports team. You don't love one team and therefor their failure is other teams' success. People who love and read these genres of books are just going to keep looking for more things to read. So everyone succeeding you know especially in similar veins that you're working in, that's great for you as an author because that means more people might come across your book as a result of that. C: Exactly. K: But it is very interesting when you look at these and you're evaluating if you think you can work with this person. Can I help no only them but like, I need to be successful here. Your author's success is the agent's success but you still have to work within the industry and you still have to be able to put together and sell a book at the end of the day and if you're presenting yourself in a way that's gonna make your agent think "I'm not sure I can do this with this person" that's gonna drive them away.  R: We talk a lot about querying an agent for the first time, creating a new relationship with them, but frequently, especially in genre fiction, book deals are for more than one book. So once you have entered into like the second in a series or the second book that's been optioned as part of the same contract, does your relationship change with the author at all? C: Um, yes, so it's very much, I think, it depends from agent to agent but for me, I'm very much willing to work with authors as early as they have pitch ideas. So they will come to me with, you know, ideas, with early drafts, and I'll be definitely working on things much earlier than I would be than a query. So, obviously, when you query your manuscript should be as close to final as you can possibly make it. You should have already had some beta readers, you should have already done editing, and so at that point the hope is that it will only take a few more rounds with an agent before it's ready to go on submission. Obviously for your second or third book, and books after that, that's necessarily not the case. So yes, I am seeing much earlier drafts. I have worked on books that are completely rewritten from scratch multiple times before going to the publisher ad also part of it is deciding what the next book should be sometimes. So I've had clients where we look at their first book and where it fit in the market place, and their other book ideas, some of which might be very different from the first book, and others might be in between and we say, "okay, how do you want to be positioned in the marketplace as your career? Do you want to be a YA author or do you want to be an adult author? Do you want to be a horror author or do you want to be a fantasy author? If you want to be both that's fine, but if you really feel strongly about one of these things, and you just happen to have one book idea that falls outside that parameter, then maybe we don't so that as the second book, maybe that's the third or fourth. Maybe that's an outlier book." So, figuring out how the author wants to be positioned in the marketplace and making sure that we are following a trajectory that will achieve that is part of what I help them do. K: That's something that I think a lot of people don't realize a lot of agents do is, basically helping the author come up with an identity. And how they're gonna fit into the marketplace, what they want to be known for. Yeah that's really interesting to think about as well. Anything that you wish people knew about literary agents? Any giant misconceptions you frequently come across? You know, obviously the stuff about the bloodletting is all ~true, but the rest of it? C: I think that the big thing I would  just... I really wish to share with people is that I promise we're not scary. It's... We're just people like you. We just love books, like you. I.. when I got to conferences there are so many people who are so scared and I just want to hug them and say, "No, it's okay, I promise.. there's nothing to be scared of." K: Wait, quick qualification. If you run into Caitlin at a conference do not walk up to her and hug her immediately. Ask first. C: Thank you. Fair. Thank you. Yeah, but I also there's just a I feel like there's a I don't wanna say a culture of self-rejection but there is.. I see a lot of self-rejection— K: Oh, yeah, absolutely. C: —on the internet and on social media and people will ask me, "Can I query you?" and I'm going, "Why are you asking me? Just do it. Just do it!" You know, alway always give it a shot and you know, we're just here because we love books and we want to help you succeed. Like we want authors to succeed. We want books to succeed. We're not out here saying no to books because we're up in a castle laughing at all of you. We really really want these books to succeed. We want to see more books that we love. And most of the time, when we reject something, it's with a heavy heart. It's, "I love this pitch but the writing just wasn't quite there yet, but man, I hope they come back to me with another project in a couple of years when they've really honed their skill and improved their writing." You know that's really where we're coming from is, "Not this one, but keep working at it. We're waiting for you to come back next time and really nail it." K: to everyone I hope hearing that is encouraging. I'm encouraged just listening to it and I'm not even querying an agent. Thank you so much for talking to us. This was really a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this conversation. C: Of course, well thank you for having me, it's been great.  K: So, where can people find you on the socials? C: I'm on most social media @literallycait that's c-a-i-t short for Caitlin, and on the Donald Maass website which is MaassAgency.com. R: Alright so is there anything else that you wanna tease for people, books coming out or anything like that? C: Sure I've got a couple really exciting books coming out over the next month or two. We've got The Resurrectionist of Caligo by Wendy Trimboli and Alicia Zaloga, which is very very exciting. Kind of dark Victorian-esque fantasy, which would be great for anyone who's a fan of the podcast Sawbones. If you're into that you'll definitely like this book. And I've also got The Library of the Unwritten, by A J Hackwith, which is K: Yes C: Fabulous Hell based fntasy about books that are unwritten escaping their library and going on walkabout and the librarion having to chase them down it's very fun and if you love books it really explores the concepts of narrative and character and what it means to have those elements and give them agency so it's a really it's a love letter to the concept of writing. It's fabulous. K: That one's on my list, I'm very excited for that one. C: Oh good. K: Okay, so. The take away here: Agents; they're people just like the rest of us. R: At least one is. K: One of them anyway. The rest are in the castle. R: Okay, thank you so much Caitlin, we really appreciate your time. C: Thank you. 31:34 [Music]
R: Thanks, everyone, for joining us for another episode of We Make Books. If you have any questions that you want answered in future episodes or just have questions in general remember you can find us on twitter @WMBcast, same for instagram, or WMBcast.com. If you find value in the content we provide, we would really appreciate your support at patreon.com/WMBcast. If you can't provide financial support, we totally understand, and what you could really do to help us is spread the word about this podcast. You can do that by sharing a particular episode with a friend who can find it useful, or if you leave a rating and review at iTunes, it will feed that algorithm and help other people find our podcast too. Of course you can always retweet our episodes on twitter.  Thank you so much for listening and we will talk to you soon.

Show 85, “The Ink Spots,” traces the story and music of one of the most influential singing groups of the 1940s. Songs include “We Three,” “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” “The Gypsy,” “Java Jive,”... Read More The post Show 85, “The Ink Spots,” appeared first on Sam Waldron.

On this episode, We Three joins Jackson to discuss their Lifeline Tour and debut album. Watch the video here: https://jacksonneillpodcasts.com/we-three-interview-anything-goes-w-jackson-neill-podcast-ep-84/ Follow We Three on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wethreemusic/ Visit their Website: https://wethreemusic.com/home Listen to their Album: https://wethreemusic.com/music Visit the Podcast Website: https://jacksonneillpodcasts.com Follow Jackson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jacksonneill20 Follow Jackson on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacksonneill20/ Become a Member of Jackson's Podcasts and Gain Access to Exclusive Content: https://www.patreon.com/posts/28299823 Anything Goes w/ Jackson Neill is published throughout the week so check back in regularly for new episodes. Check out the Jackson Neill Neill Podcast website for his sports and music podcasts updated throughout the week. 4-2-19

Hosted by Nick & Elizabeth - a PodFix Network Podcast On the show today we have an amazing family band best known for their appearance on America’s Got Talent. Bethany Blanchard, along with brothers Joshua and Manny Humlie stole our hearts when they performed the song “Heaven’s Not Too Far,” and left the judges speechless. Today, We Three, hits the road on a 34 city tour that is definitely coming to a concert venue near you this month or next! For tickets and information on how you can meet the band on their tour, head to wethreemusic.com. Support Fancounters! http://www.fancounters.com http://www.patreon.com/fancounters http://www.twitter.com/fancounterslive https://www.facebook.com/groups/sharpienation/ https://www.teepublic.com/user/fancounters   

This week, we look at the Tabletop Role-Playing Game Dungeons and Dragons. Don't be deterred by the level of geekiness! Come join us as we explore the story of our lives, good vs. evil, and prayer through action! Also, find out Clint's and Steve's musical recommendations! #WelcomeToTheAdventure Media References: Dungeons & Dragon (Tabletop RPG) "The Dragon's Egg" by David A Wells (Book) "Socrates Meets Jesus" by Peter Kreeft (Book) "The Last Battle" by C.S Lewis (Book) Pushwater Band (Musical Artist) We Three (Musical Artist) Johnnyswim (Musical Artist) Penny and Sparrow (Musical Artist) The Civil Wars (Musical Artist) Brother Isaiah(Musical Artist) Josh Garrels (Musical Artist) The Oh Hellos (Musical Artist)

This week we honor one of the greatest drummers in the history of music, Roy Haynes. Originally from Boston, Haynes is one of the last living musicians who performed with all of the following jazz giants: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Sarah Vaughn. If you include other past and current jazz greats it's not a stretch to say that Roy has literally played with everybody. A partial list would include: Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, Sonny Stitt, Lee Konitz, Oliver Nelson, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Stan Getz, McCoy Tyner, Gary Burton, and Pat Metheny. Known for his signature sound, Phil and Jon discuss his cymbals, drums, and tuning and how that became an integral part of the jazz lexicon. They also talk about the first time they heard Roy and how he's been a legitimate influence on virtually every drummer in existence. Before the guys give their favorite Haynes picks they discuss the passing of the great John "Jabo" Starks and their remembrances of his tenure at the Red Bar in Grayton Beach, Florida. Phil picks are: "Sneakin' Around" from Roy Haynes' CD, "We Three" "Snap, Crackle" from Roy Haynes' CD, "Out of the Afternoon" "Satan's Mysterious Feeling" from Roy Haynes' CD, "Hip Ensemble" "Solar" from Pat Metheny's CD, "Question and Answer" Jon's picks are: "My Favorite Things" from John Coltrane's CD, "Live at Newport '63" "Rhythm-a-Ning" from Chick Corea's CD, "Trio Music" "Elucidation" from Gary Burton's CD, "Like Minds" "Now's the Time" from Roy Haynes' CD, "Birds of a Feather" Join us every Monday for brand new, feature episodes and every first and third Thursday for "Accountability Thursday" mini-episodes. You can find us everywhere you listen to your favorite music and podcasts. You can also listen to every episode, manage your subscription, watch all our videos, interact with us on social media, and directly email us at our web site www.drummersweeklygroovecast.com Subscribe today!

>I still can see the red tar paper that wrapped around the sinister-looking house in which we lived—no electricity, no plumbing, no running water…but here is where my siblings and me, ages 7, 9 and 10, were to make memories lasting a lifetime. Contains stories: We Three; Matchbox Mountain; Daddy’s Miracle Shoots; Willie the Groundhog; My Cucumber Doll; ‘Fraidy Cat; The Hole in the Wall; Grandpa, Tell us a Story; A Twist of a Tale.

>I still can see the red tar paper that wrapped around the sinister-looking house in which we lived—no electricity, no plumbing, no running water…but here is where my siblings and me, ages 7, 9 and 10, were to make memories lasting a lifetime. Contains stories: We Three; Matchbox Mountain; Daddy’s Miracle Shoots; Willie the Groundhog; My Cucumber Doll; ‘Fraidy Cat; The Hole in the Wall; Grandpa, Tell us a Story; A Twist of a Tale.

This is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news. To push for the nation's economic transition and industrial upgrading, Chinese leaders have pledged greater commitment to the research and application of science and technology. In a show of unprecedented importance, both President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang addressed an event combining three top-level science conferences attended by 4,000 scientists and science officials. Xi said the central government's commitment is aimed at making China a leading power in science and technology by the middle of the century, or around the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Xi stressed the role of science and technology as bedrock that "the country relies on for its power; enterprises rely on for victories; and people rely on for a better life." The president said that "Great scientific and technological capacity is a must for China to be strong and for people's lives to improve". He is calling for new ideas, designs and strategies in science and technology. Premier Li told the event that China's overall research and development input will keep rising to account for 2.5 percent of its GDP by 2020, from the current 2.1 percent. The conference is calling for more policy reforms to provide incentives for the talent needed in research and innovation. This is Special English. A UN report has lauded Beijing's efforts to battle air pollution but said it needs to do more to meet particulate matter standards. Published by the UN Environment Program, the report is entitled "A Review of Air Pollution Control in Beijing: 1998-2013". In the past 15 years, the number of registered vehicles increased by 300 percent in Beijing and energy consumption rose by 77 percent. The UN Environment Program executive director Achim Steiner remarked in the foreword to the report. He says concentrations of key pollutants decreased remarkably, and Beijing improved air quality even as it maintained fast paced growth. Steiner says Beijing's experience in controlling air pollution against a backdrop of rapid expansion is a story that should be shared with other emerging economies and burgeoning cities. An environment expert from Tsinghua University says the report recognized Beijing's continual efforts to improve air quality; and Beijing's solution was a combination of energy structure optimization, coal-fired emission control and enhanced air quality monitoring. The report also offered some suggestions, including improving city planning and optimizing the layout of city functions. You are listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Australian experts say Australia will have a very meaningful role to play in the healthcare sector in China. HSBC Australia head of commercial banking James Hogan has said there were three key markets Australian businesses were set to benefit from in China, namely food, energy and healthcare. The research at HSBC found that 70 percent of Chinese mainland citizens say that health is their number one biggest concern. Hogan said China's demand for healthcare will certainly increase rapidly over the coming year, as healthcare reform becomes a priority for the Chinese government. He said there were opportunities across the healthcare space in China awaiting Australian investment. Macquarie University health economy center director Dr. Henry Cutler believes any investment within China would have to be long term. Cutler says that obviously, developing relationships with those in China to make sure that services delivered are culturally appropriate is important. He added that dumping in a model from Australia would not work. HSBC noted the recent China-Australia Free Trade Agreement provides Australian medical services and healthcare providers with favorable access to expand into or do business with China. This is Special English. Sixty-six kinds of Chinese medicinal herbs have been added to the European Pharmacopoeia, an authoritative reference work for quality control of medication. Professor Dr. Gerhard Franz is Chairman of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Working Party of the European Pharmacopoeia. He says the event means there are clear quality standards for Chinese herbs exported to Europe, which help the drugs gain wider acceptance in foreign markets. Franz made the remarks at an international conference on the future of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The conference, entitled TCM's future, was held in Hangzhou, the capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. The professor said the herbs have undergone strict examination and discussion, and been approved by all 37 signatory countries. The listed Chinese herbs, including ginseng, account for almost a third of all herbs in the pharmacopoeia. The professor said their goal is to include at least 300 commonly used Chinese herbs. Exports of traditional Chinese drugs have been impeded by misuse and substitutions for similar plants, as well as contamination by heavy metals and microbial insecticides. An official from Zhejiang's health and family planning commission said that due to lack of quality standards, China's traditional medicine industry lags far behind its counterparts in Japan and South Korea in foreign markets. He added that modern technology and concepts must be applied in developing Traditional Chinese Medicine. You are listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. A farmer in central China's Henan Province is seeking 2 million yuan, roughly 300,000 U.S. dollars, in compensation after he was wrongly diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. Fifty-three-year-old Yang Shou-fa was diagnosed with HIV and AIDS during a provincial-wide check in 2004, during which more than 280,000 people were tested. It was not until 2012 that he found out that the result was false. The local disease control center still has samples from 2004, and a retest of Yang's sample came up positive, again. The center says the test equipment did not fail, so someone must have mixed up Yang's blood with an HIV patient. Yang had taken HIV medication from his diagnosis until 2012. He had to attend annual health checks, which only tested the amount of CD4+T cells in his blood. In people with HIV, this is the strongest indicator of HIV progression and the most important indicator of how the immune system is working. Yang's CD4+T cell count was higher than other AIDS patients, but concerns were never raised, as no one doubted the diagnosis. Before Yang was incorrectly diagnosed in 2004, his health had been failing. He had donated blood once and then suffered from repeated fever. When he was told he had AIDS, he was convinced. The local health department is considering compensation for him. You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to newsplusradio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. That's mansuyingyu@cri.com.cn. Now the news continues. Chinese playwright, author and translator Yang Jiang has died at the age of 105. Born in Beijing, Yang studied in Soochow University and then Tsinghua University in the 1930s. She was married to Qian Zhongshu, a household name in China. Qian is best known for his sarcastic novel "Fortress Besieged" that depicted the lives of Chinese intellectuals in the 1930s. He died in 1997. After studying in Britain and France together with Qian, Yang returned and became a foreign language professor at Tsinghua University. She was a literature researcher with Peking University in the 1950s. Fluent in English, French and Spanish, her translations of such classics as Don Quixote and French picaresque novel Gil Blas remain the definitive versions for Chinese readers. Yang also penned numerous plays, novels and essays and is known for her plain but resonant style. Her most popular works include "We Three", a 2003 essay collection recalling her husband and daughter, who died of cancer. The book became an instant hit both in China and overseas. In 2001, Yang and her husband donated all their royalties to Tsinghua University and established a scholarship that has benefited more than 1,000 students. This is Special English. Researchers have confirmed that snow leopards live in areas south and north of Qinghai Lake in Northwest China's Qinghai province. The animals' presence had been rumored but was never proved, as experts have tried to understand the distribution range and habitat selection patterns of the rare big cat. The new finding was released by the Wildlife Conservation Society of China, which did not reveal specific locations, in a bid to protect the snow leopards. It referred to the two locations only as areas A and B. The Wildlife Conservation Society of China says researchers spotted snow leopards in Area A and found evidence of them, which were hours-old footprints, in Area B. Previously, there were reports from herdsmen and other witnesses, but they were unconfirmed. There were no scientific reports supporting the claims. The new findings will offer basic information for people studying snow leopards and attempting to protect them. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has placed the snow leopard on its Red List of Threatened Species as globally endangered. The Wildlife Conservation Society says that so far, China still has the largest population of the animal, known as the "ghost of the mountains". You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. The authorities in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region plan to recruit more than 11,000 teachers from around the country to ease its teacher shortage. The teachers will be recruited for primary and middle schools, high schools, kindergartens and special education schools this year. Of those, 60 percent will work in four prefectures in the southern part of Xinjiang, where a dearth of bilingual teachers poses a challenge for education. The recruits in these areas should be able to speak mandarin and a language of the local minorities. Xinjiang has hired more than 72,000 teachers in the past five years, with around 62,000 of them bilingual. This is Special English. Lhasa, the capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, has passed a law to protect its ancient villages. The law came into effect on June 1. It stipulates principles on ancient village protection and restoration, funds, responsibilities and building a long-term protection mechanism. It also demands a "supervisor mechanism" and encourages volunteer groups to help with protection efforts. Lhasa has around 1,000 villages, which feature unique landscapes and traditions. As the local economy speeds up, many ancient villages have yet to be restored, and the law was enacted to address the issue. The local government says the law will enhance protection efforts for precious cultural resources in Lhasa. This is Special English. （全文见周日微信。）

Suzette McCanny is a theatre actor and a film director specializing in ensemble work. She is currently playing Blaire in We Three by Cue 6 Theatre at The Tarragon Theatre. She has played Josie in The Skriker at the Storefront Theatre by Red One Theatre. The Skriker was included in the Top Ten Indie Productions of 2014 by Toronto's Now Magazine. Other credits include Mistress Ford in Merry Wives of Windsor and Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost for Shakespeare Bash'd and Isabelle in Norman Yeung's Theory directed by Joanne Williams.She played 'Stage Manager' in Play: The Film by Kelly McCormack which won the People's Choice Award at the Canadian Film Festival. Suzette directed her first short film, 99 . 7% (Official Selection of aGliff) in Nov 2013. She directed, edited and starred in a trio of short films that called Triptych Triptych Triptych including The Garfield Appreciation Club, Can't Close a Painted Eye and We Think it Belongs in the Sea; due to hit the 2016 festival circuit. Suzette works to change the way that women see themselves and their contribution to society by telling fresh stories.@suzettemccannywww.suzettemccanny.comWE THREE: http://cue6.ca/Stageworthy:http://www.stageworthypodcast.com Twitter @stageworthyPod Facebook: http://facebook.com/stageworthyPod

Andy Luther is back in part two of our interview with the actor. We discuss his movie roles, triple threats, and working for The Onion. Part one can be found here. Andy tells us stories from his time on the set of Rory’s First Kiss, aka The Dark Knight. Andy is currently in We Three over at the side project theatre company in Chicago. Another recent project is a feature film still in production, Thrill Ride. There’s a touching story behind the making of the movie and a gallery of photos of the scenes that Andy talked about. Noises Off, apple boxes, The Hobbit and other fine subjects to ogle. QUIZ TIME Paul and Andy learn about another Michigander, Sam Raimi. Dig this Sam Raimi cameo in this 80’s film. Sam Raimi’s 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 has appeared in most of his films. “This is my boom stick!” Are you sitting down? Paul wins! Andy & Chris reminisce about Amber Waves and amazing actresses they worked with back in the day. Cherry County Playhouse brought big Hollywood names to Chris & Andy’s home town. Our guest rubs elbows with Gary Sinise. And by “rub elbows,” we mean that he practically knocked him over once back stage. We discuss the Star System from the golden age of Hollywood, Robert Osborne and his appearance on Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast. Andy thinks Gene Kelly is the definition of a triple threat and he cites, Singing in the Rain. Lasco Remodeling & Painting is Andy’s Chicago area business. He hires his fellow actors to help them make a living & teach them an additional trade. Andy recently appeared in a Clickhole video, Man Locks Himself In Hot Car To Prove That Babies And Dogs Are Cowards. Thanks again to Andy Luther for joining us and sharing. Andy can be found through the Paonessa Talent Agency, his amazing agent. Put him in your show, viral video, play or magical lantern. Be sure to contact Paul & Chris by clicking their names. Don’t write them letters, letters are made of trees! Support Montreal Sauce on Patreon

¿Cuáles son las mejores aplicaciones para leer ebooks en dispositivos Android? Hablamos acerca de tres de las mejores aplicaciones para leer en Android, revi sando sus características, puntos fuertes y débiles. Como fondo musical, extractos del disco "We Three" de Roy Haynes con Phineas Newborn Jr. y Paul Chambers (1958).    Contactowww.alaaventura.net/contactofacebook.com/alaaventurapodcastTwitter: @alaaventurajboscomendoza@gmail.com

Amy from Leicester band, We Three and the Death Rattle joined me on the phone to talk about their new 7" single, 'Inpatients/Split Lips' #london #birmingham #radio #leicester

This program continues the 8/3/88 session, with Jimmy Mazzy (banjo/vocals), Fred Lind (cornet), Paul Meymaris (clarinet), John Kafalas (tuba), Don Frothingham (piano), and Stu Grover (drums).  The selections are “You’re Just Pretending,” “We Three,” and “Ole Miss.” Send questions or comments to podcast@kafalas.com.

Click on Title to PlayWednesday's concert at Everett Café, Teachers College, will probably be our last concert for the summer. Looking forward to the fall for more Teachers College gigs and beyond. Dan and I have been performing "House of the Rising Sun" for a few years now. As a trio, with Professor Daniel Wolf Savin on stand-up bass, the song had a great feel. But when we went back to being a duo, the song didn't seem to pack the same decadent punch. Now with the harmonica and a new key (F#m), the song carries full the weight of guilt, sin, and punishment. I'm looking forward to playing it again. That and murder are running themes in our set. Makes for a fun musical evening. The other new number was "In Dreams," an old number brought back into the set with more life and energy. Unrequited love. Another theme.We're usually scheduled to play for an hour. In our previous gig at Everett Café, we had to cut out a few numbers so we wouldn't go over the time limit. Yesterday, though, we played the full set. We hadn't played "It's not Unusual" or "My Prayer" in while. I felt the ghost of Tom Jones singing through me. Dan and I have played "What's so Funny about Peace, Love, and Understanding" about a thousand times. This time, the heat got to me and we had a few false starts. I realized how much I was influenced by the Beatles because I included them on the recording. Enjoy.The set list for tonight's concert was:Ghost Riders in the SkyHouse of the Rising SunAir that I BreatheWhiter Shade of PaleCon Te PartiroVeinte AñosIn DreamsHeavenYou're My WorldDos GardeniasIt's not UnusualMy Prayer'39We ThreeGreenback DollarWhat's so Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding.

Today we find out about the Wisemen. Were there three of them and why did they travel so far to find a new baby? Find out more about The Wisemen at whychristmas?com Planetarium and astronomy software link mentioned in the show: http://stellarium.org/ Theme music: Bryan Duncan and the NehoSoul Band Background music: Download “We Three... The post Day 23 – Lifespring! Advent Calendar “The Wisemen” first appeared on Lifespring! Media.