Podcasts about whatcha gonna do

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 9, 2020 10:33

Hey it’s Arroe. This is Play It Forward. A look at the unexpected changes endured by entertainers, writers, camera people and all others affected but not infected by the global invasion of the Coronavirus. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward. Episode 130 with Corey from Pablo Cruise Just like every other band in the world, Pablo Cruise was forced to either cancel or postpone their tour. Yep, the COVID-19 pandemic. Right away Corey and company made the decision to do something the downtime. It was the perfect time to finally write something new. You know Pablo Cruise A Place In The Sun, Whatcha Gonna Do? and Love Will Find a Way. Now they’ve got a new one titled Breathe. Not only is the video an avenue of love, peace and togetherness but the song’s lyrics perfectly in tune with what everybody’s talking about. Therapists to the Dali Lama invite everyone to just breathe… That’s Play It Forward. You can listen to the full conversations with these artists on three different podcasts. Like Its Live, Unplugged and Totally Uncut and View from the Writing Instrument found on all digital platforms.

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Truth Lies Shenanigans Episode 53: Spotlight: Musician Dustin Moore; Trump's New Proud Boys; Supreme Court on Gay Marriage

Truth Lies Shenanigans™

Play Episode Play 30 sec Highlight Listen Later Oct 8, 2020 59:13

PROUD BOYS, PROUD BOYS! WHATCHA GONNA DO? WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN MR. SULU CALLS ON YOU??? The TLS Wednesday Hump Day Crew is back at it tonight, this time featuring our spotlight guest, multi-instrumentalist Dustin Moore of Moore Sound Recording, who will be giving us the ins and outs of the music /recording industry. The Gents and I will also be discussing , and Today's episode...Nio will be featuring our Spotlight guest, multi-instrumentalist Dustin Moore of Moore Sound Recording, who will be giving us the ins and outs of the music/recording industry.Hot Topics... Liz-E Gives the latest news on Trump's Rona White House and also talking Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito's issues with same-sex marriage rightsRobB George Takei's call to arms to the LGBTQ community regarding The #ProudBoys hashtag. Be a part of the show!!!... Watch our LIVE shows Sundays 4pmET and Wednesdays 8pmET on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope... @TLSLiveShow or www.TruthLiesShenanigans.com.Copyright © 2020 Truth Lies Shenanigans™ On TLS we often cover complex and difficult topics. The thoughts, comments and opinions shared on this show are for entertainment purposes only and not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. For an accurate diagnosis of a mental health disorder, you should seek an evaluation from a qualified mental health professional. If you are feeling suicidal, thinking about hurting yourself, or are concerned that someone you know may be in danger of hurting himself or herself, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK(8255), the Suicide Hotline: 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433), or Crisis Services Canada: 1-833-456-4566 which are staffed by certified crisis response professionals, or call 911.

Play It Forward Episode 130 With Corey Lerios From Pablo Cruise

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 8, 2020 10:33

Hey it’s Arroe. This is Play It Forward. A look at the unexpected changes endured by entertainers, writers, camera people and all others affected but not infected by the global invasion of the Coronavirus. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward. Episode 130 with Corey from Pablo Cruise Just like every other band in the world, Pablo Cruise was forced to either cancel or postpone their tour. Yep, the COVID-19 pandemic. Right away Corey and company made the decision to do something the downtime. It was the perfect time to finally write something new. You know Pablo Cruise A Place In The Sun, Whatcha Gonna Do? and Love Will Find a Way. Now they’ve got a new one titled Breathe. Not only is the video an avenue of love, peace and togetherness but the song’s lyrics perfectly in tune with what everybody’s talking about. Therapists to the Dali Lama invite everyone to just breathe… That’s Play It Forward. You can listen to the full conversations with these artists on three different podcasts. Like Its Live, Unplugged and Totally Uncut and View from the Writing Instrument found on all digital platforms.

covid-19 coronavirus real therapists breathe unplugged dali lama play it forward love will find pablo cruise whatcha gonna do like its live

Play It Forward Episode 130 With Corey Lerios From Pablo Cruise

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 8, 2020 10:33

Hey it’s Arroe. This is Play It Forward. A look at the unexpected changes endured by entertainers, writers, camera people and all others affected but not infected by the global invasion of the Coronavirus. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward. Episode 130 with Corey from Pablo Cruise Just like every other band in the world, Pablo Cruise was forced to either cancel or postpone their tour. Yep, the COVID-19 pandemic. Right away Corey and company made the decision to do something the downtime. It was the perfect time to finally write something new. You know Pablo Cruise A Place In The Sun, Whatcha Gonna Do? and Love Will Find a Way. Now they’ve got a new one titled Breathe. Not only is the video an avenue of love, peace and togetherness but the song’s lyrics perfectly in tune with what everybody’s talking about. Therapists to the Dali Lama invite everyone to just breathe… That’s Play It Forward. You can listen to the full conversations with these artists on three different podcasts. Like Its Live, Unplugged and Totally Uncut and View from the Writing Instrument found on all digital platforms.

covid-19 coronavirus real therapists breathe unplugged dali lama play it forward love will find pablo cruise whatcha gonna do like its live

Play It Forward Episode 130 With Corey Lerios From Pablo Cruise

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 8, 2020 10:33

Hey it’s Arroe. This is Play It Forward. A look at the unexpected changes endured by entertainers, writers, camera people and all others affected but not infected by the global invasion of the Coronavirus. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward. Episode 130 with Corey from Pablo Cruise Just like every other band in the world, Pablo Cruise was forced to either cancel or postpone their tour. Yep, the COVID-19 pandemic. Right away Corey and company made the decision to do something the downtime. It was the perfect time to finally write something new. You know Pablo Cruise A Place In The Sun, Whatcha Gonna Do? and Love Will Find a Way. Now they’ve got a new one titled Breathe. Not only is the video an avenue of love, peace and togetherness but the song’s lyrics perfectly in tune with what everybody’s talking about. Therapists to the Dali Lama invite everyone to just breathe… That’s Play It Forward. You can listen to the full conversations with these artists on three different podcasts. Like Its Live, Unplugged and Totally Uncut and View from the Writing Instrument found on all digital platforms.

covid-19 coronavirus real therapists breathe unplugged dali lama play it forward love will find pablo cruise whatcha gonna do like its live

Islas de Robinson - "Juntos a solas" - 10/08/20

Islas de Robinson

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2020 59:07

Esta semana en Islas de Robinson seguimos repasando y rastreando clásicos mayúsculos. Entre 1970 y 1971, sensaciones veraniegas con alta carga melódica y emocional. Suenan: EMITT RHODES - "SOMEBODY MADE FOR ME" ("EMMIT RHODES", 1970) / GERRY RAFFERTY - "SO BAD THINKING" (SINGLE 1971) / JOHN KILLIGREW - "HEY MOCKINGBIRD" ("KILLIGREW", 1971) / PETE DELLO AND FRIENDS - "IT'S WHAT YOU'VE GOT" ("INTO YOUR EARS", 1971) / COLIN HARE - "JUST LIKE ME" ("MARCH HARE", 1971) / JOHN PHILLIPS - "DOWN THE BEACH" ("JOHN, THE WOLFKING OF L.A.", 1970) / MICHAEL NESMITH & THE FIRST NATIONAL BAND - "JOANNE" ("MAGNETIC SOUTH", 1970) / BOBBIE GENTRY - "BUT I CAN'T GET BACK" ("PATCHWORK", 1971) / DENNY DOHERTY - "GOT A FEELIN'" ("WHATCHA GONNA DO", 1971) / DAVE MASON - "CAN'T STOP WORRYING, CAN'T STOP LOVING" ("ALONE TOGETHER", 1970) / GENE CLARK - "ONE IN A HUNDRED" ("WHITE LIGHT", 1971) / RON ELLIOTT - "DEEP RIVER RUNS BLUE" ("THE CANDLESTICKMAKER", 1970) / VAN MORRISON - "INTO THE MYSTIC" ("MOONDANCE", 1970) / THE BEACH BOYS - "FOREVER" ("SUNFLOWER", 1970) / COLIN BLUNSTONE - "HER SONG" ("ONE YEAR", 1971) / Escuchar audio

rock radio single forever pop robinson one year juntos beach boys escuchar sunflowers van morrison solas patchwork roboto islas alone together white lights dave mason john phillips moondance michael nesmith gerry rafferty programas de rne bobbie gentry colin blunstone gene clark just like me march hare whatcha gonna do into the mystic her song first national band ron elliott

Episode 91: "The Twist" by Chubby Checker

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2020 36:22

Episode ninety-one of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "The Twist" by Chubby Checker, and how the biggest hit single ever had its roots in hard R&B. 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 "Viens Danser le Twist" by Johnny Hallyday, a cover of a Chubby Checker record that became the first number one for France's biggest rock star. 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/ Also, people have asked me to start selling podcast merchandise, so you can now buy T-shirts from https://500-songs.teemill.com/. That store will be updated semi-regularly. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Much of the information in this episode comes from The Twist: The Story of the Song and Dance That Changed the World by Jim Dawson. This collection of Hank Ballard's fifties singles is absolutely essential for any lover of R&B. And this four-CD box set contains all Chubby Checker's pre-1962 recordings, plus a selection of other Twist hits from 1961 and 62, including recordings by Johnny Hallyday, Bill Haley, Vince Taylor, and others. 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 look at a record that achieved a feat that's unique in American history. It is the only non-Christmas-themed record -- ever -- to go to number one on the Billboard pop charts, drop off, and go back to number one again later. It's a record that, a year after it went to number one for the first time, started a craze that would encompass everyone from teenagers in Philadelphia to the first lady of the United States. We're going to look at Chubby Checker, and at "the Twist", and how a B-side by a washed-up R&B group became the most successful record in chart history: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker, "The Twist"] One of the groups that have been a perennial background player in our story so far has been Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. We talked about them most in the episode on "The Wallflower", which was based on their hit "Work With Me Annie", and they've cropped up in passing in a number of other places, most recently in the episode on Jackie Wilson. By 1958, though they were largely a forgotten group. Their style had been rooted in the LA R&B sound that had been pioneered by Johnny Otis, and which we talked so much about in the first year or so of this podcast. That style had been repeatedly swept away by the newer sounds that had come out of Memphis, Chicago, and New York, and they were yesterday's news. They hadn't had a hit in three years, and they were worried they were going to be dropped by their record label. But they were still a popular live act, and they were touring regularly, and in Florida (some sources say they were in Tampa, others Miami) they happened to play on the same bill as a gospel group called the Sensational Nightingales, who were one of the best gospel acts on the circuit: [Excerpt: The Sensational Nightingales, "Morning Train"] The Sensational Nightingales had a song, and they were looking for a group to sing it. They couldn't sing it themselves -- it was a secular song, and they were a gospel group -- but they knew that it could be a success if someone did. The song was called "The Twist", and it was based around a common expression from R&B songs that was usually used to mean a generic dance, though it would sometimes be used as a euphemism for sexual activity. There was, though, a specific dance move that was known as the twist, which was a sort of thrusting, grinding move. (It's difficult to get details of exactly what that move involved these days, as it wasn't a formalised thing at all). Twisting wasn't a whole dance itself, it was a movement that people included in other dances. Twisting in this sense had been mentioned in several songs. For example, in one of Etta James' sequels to "The Wallflower", she had sung: [Excerpt: Etta James, "Good Rockin' Daddy"] There had been a lot of songs with lines like that, over the years, and the Sensational Nightingales had written a whole song along those lines. They'd first taken it to Joe Cook, of Little Joe and the Thrillers, who had had a recent pop hit with "Peanuts": [Excerpt: Little Joe and the Thrillers, "Peanuts"] But the Sensational Nightingales were remembering an older song, "Let's Do the Slop", that had been an R&B hit for the group in 1954: [Excerpt: Little Joe and the Thrillers, "Let's Do the Slop"] That song was very similar to the one by the Nightingales', which suggested that Little Joe might be the right person to do their song, but when Little Joe demoed it, he was dissuaded from releasing it by his record label, Okeh, because they thought it sounded too dirty. So instead the Nightingales decided to offer the song to the Midnighters. Hank Ballard listened to the song and liked it, but he thought the melody needed tightening up. The song as the Sensational Nightingales sang it was a fifteen-bar blues, and fifteen bars is an awkward, uncommercial, number. So he and the Midnighters' guitarist Cal Green took the song that the Nightingales sang, and fit the lyrics to a pre-existing twelve-bar melody. The melody they used was one they'd used previously -- on a song called "Is Your Love For Real?": [Excerpt: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, "Is Your Love For Real?"] But this was one of those songs whose melody had a long ancestry. "Is Your Love For Real?" had been inspired by a track by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, "Whatcha Gonna Do?": [Excerpt, Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, "Whatcha Gonna Do?"] That song is credited as having been written by Ahmet Ertegun, but listening to the gospel song "Whatcha Gonna Do?" by the Radio Four, from a year or so earlier, shows a certain amount of influence, shall we say, on the later song: [Excerpt: The Radio Four, "Whatcha Gonna Do?"] Incidentally, it took more work than it should to track down that song, simply because it's impossible to persuade search engines that a search for The Radio Four, the almost-unknown fifties gospel group, is not a search for Radio Four, the popular BBC radio station. Initially Ballard and Green took that melody and the twist lyrics, and set them to a Jimmy Reed style blues beat, but by the time they took the song into the studio, in November 1958, they'd changed it for a more straightforward beat, and added the intro they'd previously used on the song "Tore Up Over You": [Excerpt: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, "Tore Up Over You"] They apparently also changed the lyrics significantly -- there exists an earlier demo of the song, recorded as a demo for VeeJay when Ballard wasn't sure that Syd Nathan would renew his contract, with very different, more sexually suggestive, lyrics, which are apparently those that were used in the Sensational Nightingales' version. Either way, the finished song didn't credit the Nightingales, or Green – who ended up in prison for two years for marijuana possession around this time, and missed out on almost all of this story – or any of the writers of the songs that Ballard lifted from. It was released, with Ballard as the sole credited writer, as the B-side of a ballad called "Teardrops on Your Letter", but DJs flipped the single, and this went to number sixteen on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, "The Twist"] And that should have been the end of the matter, and seemed like it would be, for a whole year. "The Twist" was recorded in late 1958, came out in very early 1959, and was just one of many minor R&B hits the Midnighters had. But then a confluence of events made that minor R&B hit into a major craze. The first of these events was that Ballard and the Midnighters released another dance-themed song, "Finger-Poppin' Time", which became a much bigger hit for them, thanks in part to an appearance on Dick Clark's TV show American Bandstand: [Excerpt: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, "Finger-Poppin' Time"] The success of that saw "The Twist" start to become a minor hit again, and it made the lower reaches of the chart. The second event was also to do with Dick Clark. American Bandstand was at the time the biggest music show on TV -- at the time it ran for ninety minutes every weekday afternoon, and it was shown live, with a studio audience consisting almost entirely of white teenagers. Clark was very aware of what had happened to Alan Freed when Freed had shown Frankie Lymon dancing with a white girl on his show, and wasn't going to repeat Freed's mistakes. But Clark knew that most of the things that would become cool were coming from black kids, and so there were several regulars in the audience who Clark knew went to black clubs and learned the latest dance moves. Clark would then get those teenagers to demonstrate those moves, while pretending they'd invented them themselves. Several minor dance crazes had started this way, and in 1960 Clark noticed what he thought might become another one. To understand the dance that became the Twist, we have to go back to the late thirties, and to episode four of this podcast, the one on "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie". If you can remember that episode, we talked there about a dance that was performed in the Savoy Ballroom in New York in the late thirties, called the Lindy Hop. There were two parts of the Lindy Hop. One of those was a relatively formalised dance, with the partners holding each other, swinging each other around, and so on. That part of the dance was later adopted by white people, and renamed the jitterbug. But there was another part of the dance, known as the breakaway, where the two dancers would separate and show off their own individual moves before coming back together. That would often involve twisting in the old sense, along with a lot of other movements. The breakaway part of the Lindy Hop was never really taken up by white culture, but it continued in black clubs. And these teenagers had copied the breakaway, as performed by black dancers, and they showed it to Clark, but they called the whole dance "the Twist", possibly because of Ballard's record. Clark thought it had the potential to become something he could promote through his TV shows, at least if they toned down the more overtly sexual aspects. But he needed a record to go with it. Now, there are several stories about why Clark didn't ask Hank Ballard and the Midnighters on to the show. Some say that they were simply busy elsewhere on tour and couldn't make the trip back, others that Clark wanted someone less threatening -- by which it's generally considered he meant less obviously black, though the artist he settled on is himself black, and that argument gets into a lot of things about colourism about which it's not my place to speak as a white British man. Others say that he wanted someone younger, others that he was worried about the adult nature of Ballard's act, and yet others that he just wanted a performer with whom he had a financial link -- Clark was one of the more obviously corrupt people in the music industry, and would regularly promote records with which he had some sort of financial interest. Possibly all of these were involved. Either way, rather than getting Hank Ballard and the Midnighters onto his shows to perform "The Twist", even as it had entered the Hot One Hundred at the lower reaches, Clark decided to get someone to remake the record. He asked Cameo-Parkway, a label based in Philadelphia, the city from which Clark's show was broadcast, and which was often willing to do "favours" for Clark, if they could do a remake of the record. This was pretty much a guaranteed hit for the label -- Clark was the single most powerful person in the music industry at this point, and if he plugged an artist they were going to be a success -- and so of course they said yes, despite the label normally being a novelty label, rather than dealing in rock and roll or R&B. They even had the perfect singer for the job. Ernest Evans was eighteen years old, and had repeatedly tried and failed to get Cameo-Parkway interested in him as a singer, but things had recently changed for him. Clark had wanted to do an audio Christmas card for his friends -- a single with "Jingle Bells" sung in the style of various different singers. Evans had told the people at Cameo-Parkway he could do impressions of different singers, and so they'd asked him to record it. That recording was a private one, but Evans later did a rerecording of the song as a duet with Bobby Rydell, including the same impressions of Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, and the Chipmunks that he'd done on Clark's private copy, so you can hear what it sounded like: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker and Bobby Rydell, "Jingle Bell Imitations"] It was that Fats Domino imitation, in particular, that gave Evans his stage name. Dick Clark's wife Barbara was there when he was doing the recording, and she called him "Chubby Checker", as a play on "Fats Domino". Clark was impressed enough with the record that Cameo-Parkway decided to have the newly-named Chubby Checker make a record in the same style for the public, and his version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in that style, renamed "The Class" made number thirty-eight on the charts thanks to promotion from Clark: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker, "The Class"] Two more singles in that vein followed, "Whole Lotta Laughin'" and "Dancing Dinosaur", but neither was a success. But Checker was someone known to Clark, someone unthreatening, someone on a label with financial connections to Clark, and someone who could do decent impressions. So when Clark wanted a record that sounded exactly like Hank Ballard and the Midnighters singing "The Twist", it was easy enough for Checker to do a Ballard impression: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker, "The Twist"] Clark got Checker to perform that on The Dick Clark Show -- a different show from Bandstand, but one with a similar audience size -- and to demonstrate the toned-down version of the dance that would be just about acceptable to the television audience. This version of the dance basically consisted of miming towelling your buttocks while stubbing out a cigarette with your foot, and was simple enough that anyone could do it. Checker's version of "The Twist" went to number one, as a result of Clark constantly plugging it on his TV shows. It was so close to Ballard's version that when Ballard first heard it on the radio, he was convinced it was his own record. The only differences were that Checker's drummer plays more on the cymbals, and that Checker's saxophone player plays all the way through the song, rather than just playing a solo -- and King Records quickly got a saxophone player in to the studio to overdub an identical part on Ballard's track and reissue it, to make it sound more like the soundalike. Ballard's version of the song ended up going to number twenty-eight on the pop charts on Checker's coattails. And that should, by all rights, have been the end of the Twist. Checker recorded a series of follow-up hits over the next few months, all of them covers of older R&B songs about dances -- a version of "The Hucklebuck", a quick cover of Don Covay's "Pony Time", released only a few months before, which became Checker's second number one, and "Dance the Mess Around". All of these were hits, and it seemed like Chubby Checker would be associated with dances in general, rather than with the Twist in particular. In summer 1961 he did have a second Twist hit, with "Let's Twist Again" -- singing "let's twist again, like we did last summer", a year on from "The Twist": [Excerpt: Chubby Checker, "Let's Twist Again"] That was written by the two owners of Cameo-Parkway, who had parallel careers as writers of novelty songs -- their first big hit had been Elvis' "Teddy Bear". But over the few months after "Let's Twist Again", Checker was back to non-Twist dance songs. But then the Twist craze proper started, and it started because of Joey Dee and the Starliters. Joey DiNicola was a classmate of the Shirelles, and when the Shirelles had their first hits, they'd told DiNicola that he should meet up with Florence Greenberg. His group had a rotating lineup, at one point including guitarist Joe Pesci, who would later become famous as an actor rather than as a musician, but the core membership was a trio of vocalists -- Joey Dee, David Brigati, and Larry Vernieri, all of whom would take lead vocals. They were one of the few interracial bands of the time, and the music they performed was a stripped-down version of R&B, with an organ as the dominant instrument -- the kind of thing that would later get known as garage rock or frat rock. Greenberg signed the Starliters to Scepter Records, and they released a couple of singles on Scepter, produced and written like much of the material on Scepter by Luther Dixon: [Excerpt: Joey Dee and the Starliters, "Shimmy Baby"] Neither of their singles on Scepter was particularly successful, but they became a popular live act around New Jersey, and got occasional gigs at venues in New York. They played a three-day weekend at a seedy working-class Mafia-owned bar called the Peppermint Lounge, in Manhattan. Their shows there were so successful that they got a residency there, and became the house band. Soon the tiny venue -- which had a capacity of about two hundred people -- was packed, largely with the band's fans from New Jersey -- the legal drinking age in New Jersey was twenty-one, while in New York it was eighteen, so a lot of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds from New Jersey would make the journey. As Joey Dee and the Starliters were just playing covers of chart hits for dancing, of course they played "The Twist" and "Let's Twist Again", and of course these audiences would dance the Twist to them. But that was happening in a million dingy bars and clubs up and down the country, with nobody caring. The idea that anyone would care about a tiny, dingy, bad-smelling bar and the cover band that played it was a nonsense. Until it wasn't. Because the owners of the Peppermint Lounge decided that they wanted a little publicity for their club, and they hired a publicist, who in turn got in touch with a company called Celebrity Services. What Celebrity Services did was, for a fee, they would get some minor celebrity or other to go to a venue and have a drink or a meal, and they would let the gossip columnists know about it, so the venue would then get a mention in the newspapers. Normally this would be one or two passing mentions, and nothing further would happen. But this time it did. A couple of mentions in the society columns somehow intrigued enough people that some more celebrities started dropping in. The club was quite close to Broadway, and so a few of the stars of Broadway started popping in to see what the fuss was about. And then more stars started popping in to see what the other stars had been popping in for. Noel Coward started cruising the venue looking for rough trade, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Tallulah Bankhead were regulars, Norman Mailer danced the Twist with the granddaughter of Lord Beaverbrook, and Tennessee Williams and even Greta Garbo turned up, all to either dance to Joey Dee and the Starliters or to watch the younger people dancing to them. There were even rumours, which turned out to be false, that Jackie Kennedy had gone to the Peppermint Lounge – though she did apparently enjoy dancing the Twist herself. The Peppermint Lounge became a sensation, and the stories all focussed on the dance these people were doing. "The Twist" reentered the charts, eighteen months after it had first come out, and Morris Levy sprang into action. Levy wanted a piece of this new Twist thing, and since he didn't have Chubby Checker, he was going to get the next best thing. He signed Joey Dee and the Starliters to Roulette Records, and got Henry Glover in to produce them. Henry Glover is a figure who we really didn't mention as much as we should have in the first fifty or so episodes of the podcast. He'd played trumpet with Lucky Millinder, and he'd produced most of the artists on King Records in the late forties and fifties, including Wynonie Harris, Bill Doggett, and James Brown. He'd produced Little Willie John's version of "Fever", and wrote "Drown in My Own Tears", which had become a hit for Ray Charles. Glover had also produced Hank Ballard's original version of "The Twist", and now he was assigned to write a Twist song for Joey Dee and the Starliters. His song, "Peppermint Twist", became their first single on Roulette: [Excerpt: Joey Dee and the Starliters, "Peppermint Twist"] "Peppermint Twist" went to number one, and Chubby Checker's version of "The Twist" went back to number one, becoming the only record ever to do so during the rock and roll era. In fact, Checker's record, on its reentry, became so popular that as recently as 2018 Billboard listed it as the *all-time* number one record on the Hot One Hundred. The Twist was a massive sensation, but it had moved first from working-class black adults, to working-class white teenagers, to young middle-class white adults, and now to middle-aged and elderly rich white people who thought it was the latest "in" thing. And so, of course, it stopped being the cool in thing with the teenagers, almost straight away. If you're young and rebellious, you don't want to be doing the same thing that your grandmother's favourite film star from when she was a girl is doing. But it took a while for that disinterest on the part of the teenagers to filter through to the media, and in the meantime there were thousands of Twist cash-in records. There was a version of "Waltzin' Matilda" remade as "Twistin' Matilda", the Chipmunks recorded "The Alvin Twist". The Dovells, a group on Cameo Parkway who had had a hit with "The Bristol Stomp", recorded "Bristol Twistin' Annie", which managed to be a sequel not only to "The Twist", but to their own "The Bristol Stomp" and to Hank Ballard's earlier "Annie" recordings: [Excerpt: The Dovells, "Bristol Twistin' Annie"] There were Twist records by Bill Haley, Neil Sedaka, Duane Eddy... almost all of these were terrible records, although we will, in a future episode, look at one actually good Twist single. The Twist craze proper started in November 1961, and by December there were already two films out in the cinemas. Hey! Let's Twist! starred Joey Dee and the Starliters in a film which portrayed the Peppermint Lounge as a family-run Italian restaurant rather than a Mafia-run bar, and featured Joe Pesci in a cameo that was his first film role. Twist Around the Clock starred Chubby Checker and took a whole week to make. As well as Checker, it featured Dion, and the Marcels, trying desperately to have another hit after "Blue Moon": [Excerpt: The Marcels, "Merry Twistmas”] Twist Around The Clock was an easy film to make because Sam Kurtzman, who produced it, had produced several rock films in the fifties, including Rock Around the Clock. He got the writer of that film to retype his script over a weekend, so it talked about twisting instead of rocking, and starred Chubby Checker instead of Bill Haley. As Kurtzman had also made Bill Haley's second film, Don't Knock The Rock, so Checker's second film became Don't Knock the Twist. Checker also appeared in a British film, It's Trad, Dad!, which we talked about last week. That was a cheap trad jazz cash-in, but at the last minute they decided to rework it so it included Twist music as well as trad, so the director, Richard Lester, flew to the USA for a couple of days to film Checker and a couple of other artists miming to their records, which was then intercut with footage of British teenagers dancing, to make it look like they were dancing to Checker. Of course, the Twist craze couldn't last forever, but Chubby Checker managed a good few years of making dance-craze singles, and he married Catharina Lodders, who had been Miss World 1962, in 1964. Rather amazingly for a marriage between a rock star and a beauty queen, they remain married to this day, nearly sixty years later. Checker's last big hit came in 1965, by which point the British Invasion had taken over the American charts so comprehensively that Checker was recording "Do the Freddie", a song about the dance that Freddie Garrity of Freddie and the Dreamers did on stage: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker, "Do the Freddie"] In recent decades, Checker has been very bitter about his status. He's continued a career of sorts, even scoring a novelty hit in the late eighties with a hip-hop remake of "The Twist" with The Fat Boys, but for a long time his most successful records were unavailable. Cameo-Parkway was bought in the late sixties by Allen Klein, a music industry executive we'll be hearing more of, more or less as a tax writeoff, and between 1975 and 2005 there was no legal way to get any of the recordings on that label, as they went out of print and weren't issued on CD, so Checker didn't get the royalties he could have been getting from thirty years of nostalgia compilation albums. Recent interviews show that Checker is convinced he is the victim of an attempt to erase him from rock and roll history, and believes he deserves equal prominence with Elvis and the Beatles. He believes his lack of recognition is down to racism, as he married a white woman, and has protested outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at his lack of induction. Whatever one's view of the artistic merits of his work, it's sad that someone so successful now feels so overlooked. But the Twist fad, once it died, left three real legacies. One was a song we'll be looking at in a few months, and the other two came from Joey Dee and the Starliters. The Young Rascals, a group who had a series of hits from 1965 to 1970, started out as the instrumentalists in the 1964 lineup of Joey Dee and the Starliters before breaking out to become their own band, and a trio called Ronnie and the Relatives made their first appearances at the Peppermint Lounge, singing backing vocals and dancing behind the Starliters. They later changed their name to The Ronettes, and we'll be hearing more from them later. The Twist was the last great fad of the pre-Beatles sixties. That it left so little of a cultural mark says a lot about the changes that were to come, and which would sweep away all memory of the previous few years...

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Episode 91: “The Twist” by Chubby Checker

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2020

Episode ninety-one of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “The Twist” by Chubby Checker, and how the biggest hit single ever had its roots in hard R&B. 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 “Viens Danser le Twist” by Johnny Hallyday, a cover of a Chubby Checker record that became the first number one for France’s biggest rock star. 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/ Also, people have asked me to start selling podcast merchandise, so you can now buy T-shirts from https://500-songs.teemill.com/. That store will be updated semi-regularly. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Much of the information in this episode comes from The Twist: The Story of the Song and Dance That Changed the World by Jim Dawson. This collection of Hank Ballard’s fifties singles is absolutely essential for any lover of R&B. And this four-CD box set contains all Chubby Checker’s pre-1962 recordings, plus a selection of other Twist hits from 1961 and 62, including recordings by Johnny Hallyday, Bill Haley, Vince Taylor, and others. 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 look at a record that achieved a feat that’s unique in American history. It is the only non-Christmas-themed record — ever — to go to number one on the Billboard pop charts, drop off, and go back to number one again later. It’s a record that, a year after it went to number one for the first time, started a craze that would encompass everyone from teenagers in Philadelphia to the first lady of the United States. We’re going to look at Chubby Checker, and at “the Twist”, and how a B-side by a washed-up R&B group became the most successful record in chart history: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker, “The Twist”] One of the groups that have been a perennial background player in our story so far has been Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. We talked about them most in the episode on “The Wallflower”, which was based on their hit “Work With Me Annie”, and they’ve cropped up in passing in a number of other places, most recently in the episode on Jackie Wilson. By 1958, though they were largely a forgotten group. Their style had been rooted in the LA R&B sound that had been pioneered by Johnny Otis, and which we talked so much about in the first year or so of this podcast. That style had been repeatedly swept away by the newer sounds that had come out of Memphis, Chicago, and New York, and they were yesterday’s news. They hadn’t had a hit in three years, and they were worried they were going to be dropped by their record label. But they were still a popular live act, and they were touring regularly, and in Florida (some sources say they were in Tampa, others Miami) they happened to play on the same bill as a gospel group called the Sensational Nightingales, who were one of the best gospel acts on the circuit: [Excerpt: The Sensational Nightingales, “Morning Train”] The Sensational Nightingales had a song, and they were looking for a group to sing it. They couldn’t sing it themselves — it was a secular song, and they were a gospel group — but they knew that it could be a success if someone did. The song was called “The Twist”, and it was based around a common expression from R&B songs that was usually used to mean a generic dance, though it would sometimes be used as a euphemism for sexual activity. There was, though, a specific dance move that was known as the twist, which was a sort of thrusting, grinding move. (It’s difficult to get details of exactly what that move involved these days, as it wasn’t a formalised thing at all). Twisting wasn’t a whole dance itself, it was a movement that people included in other dances. Twisting in this sense had been mentioned in several songs. For example, in one of Etta James’ sequels to “The Wallflower”, she had sung: [Excerpt: Etta James, “Good Rockin’ Daddy”] There had been a lot of songs with lines like that, over the years, and the Sensational Nightingales had written a whole song along those lines. They’d first taken it to Joe Cook, of Little Joe and the Thrillers, who had had a recent pop hit with “Peanuts”: [Excerpt: Little Joe and the Thrillers, “Peanuts”] But the Sensational Nightingales were remembering an older song, “Let’s Do the Slop”, that had been an R&B hit for the group in 1954: [Excerpt: Little Joe and the Thrillers, “Let’s Do the Slop”] That song was very similar to the one by the Nightingales’, which suggested that Little Joe might be the right person to do their song, but when Little Joe demoed it, he was dissuaded from releasing it by his record label, Okeh, because they thought it sounded too dirty. So instead the Nightingales decided to offer the song to the Midnighters. Hank Ballard listened to the song and liked it, but he thought the melody needed tightening up. The song as the Sensational Nightingales sang it was a fifteen-bar blues, and fifteen bars is an awkward, uncommercial, number. So he and the Midnighters’ guitarist Cal Green took the song that the Nightingales sang, and fit the lyrics to a pre-existing twelve-bar melody. The melody they used was one they’d used previously — on a song called “Is Your Love For Real?”: [Excerpt: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, “Is Your Love For Real?”] But this was one of those songs whose melody had a long ancestry. “Is Your Love For Real?” had been inspired by a track by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, “Whatcha Gonna Do?”: [Excerpt, Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, “Whatcha Gonna Do?”] That song is credited as having been written by Ahmet Ertegun, but listening to the gospel song “Whatcha Gonna Do?” by the Radio Four, from a year or so earlier, shows a certain amount of influence, shall we say, on the later song: [Excerpt: The Radio Four, “Whatcha Gonna Do?”] Incidentally, it took more work than it should to track down that song, simply because it’s impossible to persuade search engines that a search for The Radio Four, the almost-unknown fifties gospel group, is not a search for Radio Four, the popular BBC radio station. Initially Ballard and Green took that melody and the twist lyrics, and set them to a Jimmy Reed style blues beat, but by the time they took the song into the studio, in November 1958, they’d changed it for a more straightforward beat, and added the intro they’d previously used on the song “Tore Up Over You”: [Excerpt: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, “Tore Up Over You”] They apparently also changed the lyrics significantly — there exists an earlier demo of the song, recorded as a demo for VeeJay when Ballard wasn’t sure that Syd Nathan would renew his contract, with very different, more sexually suggestive, lyrics, which are apparently those that were used in the Sensational Nightingales’ version. Either way, the finished song didn’t credit the Nightingales, or Green – who ended up in prison for two years for marijuana possession around this time, and missed out on almost all of this story – or any of the writers of the songs that Ballard lifted from. It was released, with Ballard as the sole credited writer, as the B-side of a ballad called “Teardrops on Your Letter”, but DJs flipped the single, and this went to number sixteen on the R&B chart: [Excerpt: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, “The Twist”] And that should have been the end of the matter, and seemed like it would be, for a whole year. “The Twist” was recorded in late 1958, came out in very early 1959, and was just one of many minor R&B hits the Midnighters had. But then a confluence of events made that minor R&B hit into a major craze. The first of these events was that Ballard and the Midnighters released another dance-themed song, “Finger-Poppin’ Time”, which became a much bigger hit for them, thanks in part to an appearance on Dick Clark’s TV show American Bandstand: [Excerpt: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, “Finger-Poppin’ Time”] The success of that saw “The Twist” start to become a minor hit again, and it made the lower reaches of the chart. The second event was also to do with Dick Clark. American Bandstand was at the time the biggest music show on TV — at the time it ran for ninety minutes every weekday afternoon, and it was shown live, with a studio audience consisting almost entirely of white teenagers. Clark was very aware of what had happened to Alan Freed when Freed had shown Frankie Lymon dancing with a white girl on his show, and wasn’t going to repeat Freed’s mistakes. But Clark knew that most of the things that would become cool were coming from black kids, and so there were several regulars in the audience who Clark knew went to black clubs and learned the latest dance moves. Clark would then get those teenagers to demonstrate those moves, while pretending they’d invented them themselves. Several minor dance crazes had started this way, and in 1960 Clark noticed what he thought might become another one. To understand the dance that became the Twist, we have to go back to the late thirties, and to episode four of this podcast, the one on “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie”. If you can remember that episode, we talked there about a dance that was performed in the Savoy Ballroom in New York in the late thirties, called the Lindy Hop. There were two parts of the Lindy Hop. One of those was a relatively formalised dance, with the partners holding each other, swinging each other around, and so on. That part of the dance was later adopted by white people, and renamed the jitterbug. But there was another part of the dance, known as the breakaway, where the two dancers would separate and show off their own individual moves before coming back together. That would often involve twisting in the old sense, along with a lot of other movements. The breakaway part of the Lindy Hop was never really taken up by white culture, but it continued in black clubs. And these teenagers had copied the breakaway, as performed by black dancers, and they showed it to Clark, but they called the whole dance “the Twist”, possibly because of Ballard’s record. Clark thought it had the potential to become something he could promote through his TV shows, at least if they toned down the more overtly sexual aspects. But he needed a record to go with it. Now, there are several stories about why Clark didn’t ask Hank Ballard and the Midnighters on to the show. Some say that they were simply busy elsewhere on tour and couldn’t make the trip back, others that Clark wanted someone less threatening — by which it’s generally considered he meant less obviously black, though the artist he settled on is himself black, and that argument gets into a lot of things about colourism about which it’s not my place to speak as a white British man. Others say that he wanted someone younger, others that he was worried about the adult nature of Ballard’s act, and yet others that he just wanted a performer with whom he had a financial link — Clark was one of the more obviously corrupt people in the music industry, and would regularly promote records with which he had some sort of financial interest. Possibly all of these were involved. Either way, rather than getting Hank Ballard and the Midnighters onto his shows to perform “The Twist”, even as it had entered the Hot One Hundred at the lower reaches, Clark decided to get someone to remake the record. He asked Cameo-Parkway, a label based in Philadelphia, the city from which Clark’s show was broadcast, and which was often willing to do “favours” for Clark, if they could do a remake of the record. This was pretty much a guaranteed hit for the label — Clark was the single most powerful person in the music industry at this point, and if he plugged an artist they were going to be a success — and so of course they said yes, despite the label normally being a novelty label, rather than dealing in rock and roll or R&B. They even had the perfect singer for the job. Ernest Evans was eighteen years old, and had repeatedly tried and failed to get Cameo-Parkway interested in him as a singer, but things had recently changed for him. Clark had wanted to do an audio Christmas card for his friends — a single with “Jingle Bells” sung in the style of various different singers. Evans had told the people at Cameo-Parkway he could do impressions of different singers, and so they’d asked him to record it. That recording was a private one, but Evans later did a rerecording of the song as a duet with Bobby Rydell, including the same impressions of Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, and the Chipmunks that he’d done on Clark’s private copy, so you can hear what it sounded like: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker and Bobby Rydell, “Jingle Bell Imitations”] It was that Fats Domino imitation, in particular, that gave Evans his stage name. Dick Clark’s wife Barbara was there when he was doing the recording, and she called him “Chubby Checker”, as a play on “Fats Domino”. Clark was impressed enough with the record that Cameo-Parkway decided to have the newly-named Chubby Checker make a record in the same style for the public, and his version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in that style, renamed “The Class” made number thirty-eight on the charts thanks to promotion from Clark: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker, “The Class”] Two more singles in that vein followed, “Whole Lotta Laughin'” and “Dancing Dinosaur”, but neither was a success. But Checker was someone known to Clark, someone unthreatening, someone on a label with financial connections to Clark, and someone who could do decent impressions. So when Clark wanted a record that sounded exactly like Hank Ballard and the Midnighters singing “The Twist”, it was easy enough for Checker to do a Ballard impression: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker, “The Twist”] Clark got Checker to perform that on The Dick Clark Show — a different show from Bandstand, but one with a similar audience size — and to demonstrate the toned-down version of the dance that would be just about acceptable to the television audience. This version of the dance basically consisted of miming towelling your buttocks while stubbing out a cigarette with your foot, and was simple enough that anyone could do it. Checker’s version of “The Twist” went to number one, as a result of Clark constantly plugging it on his TV shows. It was so close to Ballard’s version that when Ballard first heard it on the radio, he was convinced it was his own record. The only differences were that Checker’s drummer plays more on the cymbals, and that Checker’s saxophone player plays all the way through the song, rather than just playing a solo — and King Records quickly got a saxophone player in to the studio to overdub an identical part on Ballard’s track and reissue it, to make it sound more like the soundalike. Ballard’s version of the song ended up going to number twenty-eight on the pop charts on Checker’s coattails. And that should, by all rights, have been the end of the Twist. Checker recorded a series of follow-up hits over the next few months, all of them covers of older R&B songs about dances — a version of “The Hucklebuck”, a quick cover of Don Covay’s “Pony Time”, released only a few months before, which became Checker’s second number one, and “Dance the Mess Around”. All of these were hits, and it seemed like Chubby Checker would be associated with dances in general, rather than with the Twist in particular. In summer 1961 he did have a second Twist hit, with “Let’s Twist Again” — singing “let’s twist again, like we did last summer”, a year on from “The Twist”: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker, “Let’s Twist Again”] That was written by the two owners of Cameo-Parkway, who had parallel careers as writers of novelty songs — their first big hit had been Elvis’ “Teddy Bear”. But over the few months after “Let’s Twist Again”, Checker was back to non-Twist dance songs. But then the Twist craze proper started, and it started because of Joey Dee and the Starliters. Joey DiNicola was a classmate of the Shirelles, and when the Shirelles had their first hits, they’d told DiNicola that he should meet up with Florence Greenberg. His group had a rotating lineup, at one point including guitarist Joe Pesci, who would later become famous as an actor rather than as a musician, but the core membership was a trio of vocalists — Joey Dee, David Brigati, and Larry Vernieri, all of whom would take lead vocals. They were one of the few interracial bands of the time, and the music they performed was a stripped-down version of R&B, with an organ as the dominant instrument — the kind of thing that would later get known as garage rock or frat rock. Greenberg signed the Starliters to Scepter Records, and they released a couple of singles on Scepter, produced and written like much of the material on Scepter by Luther Dixon: [Excerpt: Joey Dee and the Starliters, “Shimmy Baby”] Neither of their singles on Scepter was particularly successful, but they became a popular live act around New Jersey, and got occasional gigs at venues in New York. They played a three-day weekend at a seedy working-class Mafia-owned bar called the Peppermint Lounge, in Manhattan. Their shows there were so successful that they got a residency there, and became the house band. Soon the tiny venue — which had a capacity of about two hundred people — was packed, largely with the band’s fans from New Jersey — the legal drinking age in New Jersey was twenty-one, while in New York it was eighteen, so a lot of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds from New Jersey would make the journey. As Joey Dee and the Starliters were just playing covers of chart hits for dancing, of course they played “The Twist” and “Let’s Twist Again”, and of course these audiences would dance the Twist to them. But that was happening in a million dingy bars and clubs up and down the country, with nobody caring. The idea that anyone would care about a tiny, dingy, bad-smelling bar and the cover band that played it was a nonsense. Until it wasn’t. Because the owners of the Peppermint Lounge decided that they wanted a little publicity for their club, and they hired a publicist, who in turn got in touch with a company called Celebrity Services. What Celebrity Services did was, for a fee, they would get some minor celebrity or other to go to a venue and have a drink or a meal, and they would let the gossip columnists know about it, so the venue would then get a mention in the newspapers. Normally this would be one or two passing mentions, and nothing further would happen. But this time it did. A couple of mentions in the society columns somehow intrigued enough people that some more celebrities started dropping in. The club was quite close to Broadway, and so a few of the stars of Broadway started popping in to see what the fuss was about. And then more stars started popping in to see what the other stars had been popping in for. Noel Coward started cruising the venue looking for rough trade, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Tallulah Bankhead were regulars, Norman Mailer danced the Twist with the granddaughter of Lord Beaverbrook, and Tennessee Williams and even Greta Garbo turned up, all to either dance to Joey Dee and the Starliters or to watch the younger people dancing to them. There were even rumours, which turned out to be false, that Jackie Kennedy had gone to the Peppermint Lounge – though she did apparently enjoy dancing the Twist herself. The Peppermint Lounge became a sensation, and the stories all focussed on the dance these people were doing. “The Twist” reentered the charts, eighteen months after it had first come out, and Morris Levy sprang into action. Levy wanted a piece of this new Twist thing, and since he didn’t have Chubby Checker, he was going to get the next best thing. He signed Joey Dee and the Starliters to Roulette Records, and got Henry Glover in to produce them. Henry Glover is a figure who we really didn’t mention as much as we should have in the first fifty or so episodes of the podcast. He’d played trumpet with Lucky Millinder, and he’d produced most of the artists on King Records in the late forties and fifties, including Wynonie Harris, Bill Doggett, and James Brown. He’d produced Little Willie John’s version of “Fever”, and wrote “Drown in My Own Tears”, which had become a hit for Ray Charles. Glover had also produced Hank Ballard’s original version of “The Twist”, and now he was assigned to write a Twist song for Joey Dee and the Starliters. His song, “Peppermint Twist”, became their first single on Roulette: [Excerpt: Joey Dee and the Starliters, “Peppermint Twist”] “Peppermint Twist” went to number one, and Chubby Checker’s version of “The Twist” went back to number one, becoming the only record ever to do so during the rock and roll era. In fact, Checker’s record, on its reentry, became so popular that as recently as 2018 Billboard listed it as the *all-time* number one record on the Hot One Hundred. The Twist was a massive sensation, but it had moved first from working-class black adults, to working-class white teenagers, to young middle-class white adults, and now to middle-aged and elderly rich white people who thought it was the latest “in” thing. And so, of course, it stopped being the cool in thing with the teenagers, almost straight away. If you’re young and rebellious, you don’t want to be doing the same thing that your grandmother’s favourite film star from when she was a girl is doing. But it took a while for that disinterest on the part of the teenagers to filter through to the media, and in the meantime there were thousands of Twist cash-in records. There was a version of “Waltzin’ Matilda” remade as “Twistin’ Matilda”, the Chipmunks recorded “The Alvin Twist”. The Dovells, a group on Cameo Parkway who had had a hit with “The Bristol Stomp”, recorded “Bristol Twistin’ Annie”, which managed to be a sequel not only to “The Twist”, but to their own “The Bristol Stomp” and to Hank Ballard’s earlier “Annie” recordings: [Excerpt: The Dovells, “Bristol Twistin’ Annie”] There were Twist records by Bill Haley, Neil Sedaka, Duane Eddy… almost all of these were terrible records, although we will, in a future episode, look at one actually good Twist single. The Twist craze proper started in November 1961, and by December there were already two films out in the cinemas. Hey! Let’s Twist! starred Joey Dee and the Starliters in a film which portrayed the Peppermint Lounge as a family-run Italian restaurant rather than a Mafia-run bar, and featured Joe Pesci in a cameo that was his first film role. Twist Around the Clock starred Chubby Checker and took a whole week to make. As well as Checker, it featured Dion, and the Marcels, trying desperately to have another hit after “Blue Moon”: [Excerpt: The Marcels, “Merry Twistmas”] Twist Around The Clock was an easy film to make because Sam Kurtzman, who produced it, had produced several rock films in the fifties, including Rock Around the Clock. He got the writer of that film to retype his script over a weekend, so it talked about twisting instead of rocking, and starred Chubby Checker instead of Bill Haley. As Kurtzman had also made Bill Haley’s second film, Don’t Knock The Rock, so Checker’s second film became Don’t Knock the Twist. Checker also appeared in a British film, It’s Trad, Dad!, which we talked about last week. That was a cheap trad jazz cash-in, but at the last minute they decided to rework it so it included Twist music as well as trad, so the director, Richard Lester, flew to the USA for a couple of days to film Checker and a couple of other artists miming to their records, which was then intercut with footage of British teenagers dancing, to make it look like they were dancing to Checker. Of course, the Twist craze couldn’t last forever, but Chubby Checker managed a good few years of making dance-craze singles, and he married Catharina Lodders, who had been Miss World 1962, in 1964. Rather amazingly for a marriage between a rock star and a beauty queen, they remain married to this day, nearly sixty years later. Checker’s last big hit came in 1965, by which point the British Invasion had taken over the American charts so comprehensively that Checker was recording “Do the Freddie”, a song about the dance that Freddie Garrity of Freddie and the Dreamers did on stage: [Excerpt: Chubby Checker, “Do the Freddie”] In recent decades, Checker has been very bitter about his status. He’s continued a career of sorts, even scoring a novelty hit in the late eighties with a hip-hop remake of “The Twist” with The Fat Boys, but for a long time his most successful records were unavailable. Cameo-Parkway was bought in the late sixties by Allen Klein, a music industry executive we’ll be hearing more of, more or less as a tax writeoff, and between 1975 and 2005 there was no legal way to get any of the recordings on that label, as they went out of print and weren’t issued on CD, so Checker didn’t get the royalties he could have been getting from thirty years of nostalgia compilation albums. Recent interviews show that Checker is convinced he is the victim of an attempt to erase him from rock and roll history, and believes he deserves equal prominence with Elvis and the Beatles. He believes his lack of recognition is down to racism, as he married a white woman, and has protested outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at his lack of induction. Whatever one’s view of the artistic merits of his work, it’s sad that someone so successful now feels so overlooked. But the Twist fad, once it died, left three real legacies. One was a song we’ll be looking at in a few months, and the other two came from Joey Dee and the Starliters. The Young Rascals, a group who had a series of hits from 1965 to 1970, started out as the instrumentalists in the 1964 lineup of Joey Dee and the Starliters before breaking out to become their own band, and a trio called Ronnie and the Relatives made their first appearances at the Peppermint Lounge, singing backing vocals and dancing behind the Starliters. They later changed their name to The Ronettes, and we’ll be hearing more from them later. The Twist was the last great fad of the pre-Beatles sixties. That it left so little of a cultural mark says a lot about the changes that were to come, and which would sweep away all memory of the previous few years…

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4 . Special Guest: David Peck talks about diversifying your portfolio with Wrestling Cards

Luka Nation Network

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2020 78:41

Whatcha Gonna Do when the Lukas, Tigers and Brons Podcast runs wild on you? To all you “Hulkamaniacs” out there- this Episode is one you simply cannot miss! And anyone else who is thinking about diversifying your sports card portfolio and adding some wrestling cards- look no further. Forget Harley Race.. Our Special Guest David Peck is The Real “King” of wrestling cards- with a collection that does not have a close second!! So- Eat your vitamins and say your prayers and listen to this podcast!!! Wooooo!! David Peck Instagram @1982wrestlingallstars Twitter @ dpeck100 Timestamps: 4:20 - David Peck Intro 4:40 - Mike Tyson Rookie Card 8:45 - Understanding historic rookie cards 11:00 - Mike Tyson Punch Out 12:00 - Getting into Wrestling Cards 16:00 - Origin story & drunk bidding on Ebay 18:30 - Stumbling upon Andre The Giant 23:30 - How many graded Wrestling Cards are there? 27:25 - Grading Andre the Giant cards 28:45 - Arbitrage Opportunity 29:45 - Wrestling History 36:00 - Position bias explained 39:45 - PSA / BGS crossover advice 40:45 - What to buy 51:00 - Cards like stocks 58:30 - Perception 115:00 - Controversy creates cash If you read to the bottom, please subscribe and leave feedback. We're here to serve and bring you the best available guests and information and your feedback and support is our oxygen.

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Episode 77: “Brand New Cadillac” by Vince Taylor and the Playboys

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 7, 2020

Episode seventy-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Brand New Cadillac” by Vince Taylor and the Playboys, and the sad career of rock music’s first acid casualty. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers have two bonus podcasts this week. There’s a haf-hour Q&A episode, where I answer backers’ questions, and a ten-minute bonus episode on “The Hippy Hippy Shake” by Chan Romero. 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—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are several books available on Vince Taylor, including an autobiography, but sadly these are all in French, a language I don’t speak past schoolboy level, so I can’t say if they’re any good. The main resources I used for this episode were the liner notes for this compilation CD of Taylor’s best material, this archived copy of a twenty-year-old homepage by a friend of Taylor’s, this blogged history of Taylor and the Playboys, and this Radio 4 documentary on Taylor. But *all* of these were riddled with errors, and I used dozens of other resources to try to straighten out the facts — everything from a genealogy website to interviews with Tony Sheridan to the out-of-print autobiography of Joe Barbera. No doubt this episode still has errors in it, but I am fairly confident that it has fewer errors than anything else in English about Taylor on the Internet. Errata I say that Gene Vincent also appeared on Oh Boy! — in fact he didn’t appear on UK TV until Parnes’ next show, Boy Meets Girls, which would mean Taylor was definitely the originator of that style. A major clanger — I say that Sheridan recorded “Why” while he was working on “Oh Boy!” — in fact this wasn’t recorded until later — *with the Beatles* as his backing band. I should have known that one, but it slipped my mind and I trusted my source, wrongly. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript On the twenty-first of May 1965, at the Savoy Hotel in London, there was a party which would have two major effects on the history of rock and roll music, one which would be felt almost immediately, and one whose full ramifications wouldn’t be seen for almost a decade. Bob Dylan was on the European tour which is chronicled in the film “Don’t Look Back”, and he’d just spent a week in Portugal. He’d come back to the UK, and the next day he was planning to film his first ever televised concert. That plan was put on hold. Dylan was rushed to hospital the day after the party, with what was claimed to be food poisoning but has often been rumoured to be something else. He spent the next week in bed, back at the Savoy, attended by a private nurse, and during that time he wrote what he called “a long piece of vomit around twenty pages long”. From that “long piece of vomit” he later extracted the lyrics to what became “Like a Rolling Stone”. But Dylan wasn’t the only one who came out of that party feeling funny. Vince Taylor, a minor British rock and roller who’d never had much success over here but was big in France, was also there. There are no euphemisms about what it was that happened to him. He had dropped acid at the party, for the first time, and had liked it so much he’d immediately spent two hundred pounds on buying all the acid he could from the person who’d given it to him. The next day, Taylor was meant to be playing a showcase gig. His brother-in-law, Joe Barbera of Hanna Barbera, owned a record label, and was considering signing Taylor. It could be the start of a comeback for him. Instead, it was the end of his career, and the start of a legend: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, “Brand New Cadillac”] There are two problems with telling the story of Vince Taylor. One is that he was a compulsive liar, who would make up claims like that he was related to Tenzing Norgay, the Nepalese mountaineer who was one of the two men who first climbed Everest, or that he was an airline pilot as a teenager. The other is that nobody who has written about Taylor has bothered to do even the most cursory fact-checking For example, if you read any online articles about Vince Taylor at all, you see the same story about his upbringing — he was born Brian Holden in the UK, he emigrated to New Jersey with his family in the forties, and then his sister Sheila met Joe Barbera, the co-creator of the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Sheila married him in 1955 and moved with him to Los Angeles — and so the rest of the family also moved there, and Brian went to Hollywood High School. Barbera decided to manage his brother-in-law, bring him over to London to check out the British music scene, and get him a record deal. There’s just… a bit of a problem with this story. Sheila did marry Joe Barbera, but not until the mid 1960s. Her first marriage, in 1947, was to Joe Singer, and it was Singer, not Barbera, who was Taylor’s first manager. That kind of inaccuracy appears all over the story of Vince Taylor So, what we actually know is that Brian Maurice Holden — or Maurice Brian Holden, even his birth name seems to be disputed — was born in Isleworth Middlesex, and moved to New Jersey when he was seven, with his family, emigrating on the Mauretania, and that he came back to London in his late teens. While there was a real Hollywood High School, which Ricky Nelson among others had attended, I suspect it’s as likely that Holden decided to just tell people that was where he’d been to school, because “Hollywood High School” would sound impressive to British people. And sounding impressive to British people was what Brian Holden had decided to base his career on. He claimed to an acquaintance, shortly after he returned to the UK, that he’d heard a Tommy Steele record while he was in the US, and had thought “If this is rock and roll in England, we’ll take them by storm!” [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Rock With the Caveman”] Holden had been playing American Legion shows and similar small venues in the US, and when his brother-in-law Joe Singer came over to Britain on a business trip, Holden decided to tag along, and Singer became Holden’s manager. Holden had three great advantages over British stars like Steele. He had spent long enough in America that he could tell people that he was American and they would believe him. In Britain in the 1950s, there were so few Americans that just being from that country was enough to make you a novelty, and Holden milked that for all it was worth, even though his accent, from the few bits of interviews I’ve heard with him, was pure London. He was also much, much better looking than almost all the British rock and roll stars. Because of rationing and general poverty in the UK in the forties and fifties as a result of the war, the British fifties teenage generation were on the whole rather scrawny, pasty-looking, and undernourished, with bad complexions, bad teeth, and a general haggardness that meant that even teen idols like Dickie Pride, Tommy Steele, or Marty Wilde were not, by modern standards, at all good looking. Brian Holden, on the other hand, had film-star good looks. He had a chiselled jaw, thick black hair combed into a quiff, and a dazzling smile showing Hollywood-perfect teeth. I am the farthest thing there is from a judge of male beauty, but of all the fifties rock and roll stars, the only one who was better looking than him was Elvis, and even Elvis had to grow into his good looks, while Holden, even when he came to the UK aged eighteen, looked like a cross between James Dean and Rock Hudson. And finally, he had a real sense of what rock and roll was, in a way that almost none of the British musicians did. He knew, in particular, what a rockabilly record should sound like. He did have one tiny drawback, though — he couldn’t sing in tune, or keep time. But nobody except the unfortunate musicians who ended up backing him saw that as a particular problem. Being unable to sing was a minor matter. He had presence, and he was going to be a star. Everyone knew it. He started performing at the 2Is, and he put together a band which had a rather fluid membership that to start with featured Tony Meehan, a drummer who had been in the Vipers Skiffle Group and would later join the Shadows, but by the time he got a record deal consisted of four of the regular musicians from the 2is — Tony Sheridan on lead guitar, Tony Harvey on rhythm, Licorice Locking on bass and Brian Bennett on drums. He also got himself a new name, and once again there seems to be some doubt as to how the name was chosen. Everyone seems agreed that “Taylor” was suggested by his sister Sheila, after the actor Robert Taylor. But there are three different plausible stories for how he became Vince. The first is that he named himself after Vince Everett, Elvis’ character in Jailhouse Rock. The second is that he was named after Gene Vincent. And the third is that he took the name from a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes, which had a logo with the Latin motto “in hoc signo vinces” — that last word spelled the same way as “Vinces”. And while I’ve never seen this suggestion made anywhere else, there is also the coincidence that both Licorice Locking and Tony Sheridan had been playing, with Jimmy Nicol, in the Vagabonds, the backing band for one of Larry Parnes’ teen idol acts, Vince Eager, who had made one EP before the Vagabonds had split from him: [Excerpt: Vince Eager, “Yea Yea”] So it may be that the similarity of names was in someone’s mind as well. Taylor and his band, named the Playboys, made a huge impression at the 2is, and they were soon signed to Parlophone Records, and in November 1958 they released their first single. Both sides of the single were cover versions of relatively obscure releases on Sun records. The B-side was a cover version of “I Like Love”, which had been written by Jack Clement for Roy Orbison, while the A-side, “Right Behind You Baby” was written by Charlie Rich and originally recorded by Ray Smith: [Excerpt: Ray Smith, “Right Behind You Baby”] Taylor’s version was the closest thing to an American rockabilly record that had been made in Britain to that point. While the vocal was still nothing special, and the recording techniques in British studios created a more polite sound than their American equivalents, the performance is bursting with energy: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor, “Right Behind You Baby”] It’s Sheridan, though, who really makes the record — he plays a twenty-four bar guitar solo that is absolute light years ahead of anything else that was being done in Britain. Here, for example, is “Guitar Boogie Shuffle”, an instrumental hit from Britain’s top rock and roll guitarist of the time, Bert Weedon: [Excerpt: Bert Weedon, “Guitar Boogie Shuffle”] As you can hear, that’s a perfectly good guitar instrumental, very pleasant, very well played. Now listen to Tony Sheridan’s guitar solo on “Right Behind You Baby”: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor, “Right Behind You Baby”] That’s clearly not as technically skilled as Weedon, but it’s also infinitely more exciting, and it’s more exciting than anything that was being made by any other British musicians at the time. Jack Good certainly thought so. While “Right Behind You Baby” wasn’t a hit, it was enough to get Vince on to Oh Boy!, and it was because of his Oh Boy! performances that Vince switched to the look he would keep for the rest of his career — black leather trousers, a black leather jacket, a black shirt with the top few buttons undone, showing his chest and the medallion he always wore, and black leather gloves. It was a look very similar to that which Gene Vincent also adopted for his performances on Oh Boy! — before that, Vincent had been dressing in a distinctly less memorable style — and I’ve seen differing accounts as to which act took on the style first, though both made it their own. Taylor was memorable enough in this getup that when, in the early seventies, another faded rocker who had been known as Shane Fenton made a comeback as a glam-rocker under the name Alvin Stardust, he copied Taylor’s dress exactly. But Good was unimpressed with Taylor’s performance — and very impressed with Sheridan’s. Sheridan was asked to join the Oh Boy! house band, as well as performing under his own name as Tony Sheridan and the Wreckers. He found himself playing on such less-than-classics as “Happy Organ” by Cherry Wainer: [Excerpt: Cherry Wainer, “The Happy Organ”] He also released his own solo record, “Why”: [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan, “Why”] But Sheridan’s biggest impact on popular music wouldn’t come along for another few years… Losing the most innovative guitarist in the British music industry should have been a death-blow to Taylor’s career, but he managed to find the only other guitarist in Britain at that time who might be considered up to Sheridan’s standard, Joe Moretti — who Taylor nicknamed Scotty Moretti, partly because Moretti was Scottish, but mostly because it would make his name similar to that of Scotty Moore, Elvis’ guitarist, and Taylor could shout out “take it, Scotty!” on the solos. While Sheridan’s style was to play frantic Chuck Berry-style licks, Moretti was a more controlled guitarist, but just as inventive, and he had a particular knack for coming up with riffs. And he showed that knack on Taylor’s next single, the first to be credited to Vince Taylor and the Playboys, rather than just to Vince Taylor. The A-side of that single was rather poor — a cover version of Johnny Ace’s “Pledging My Love”, which was done no favours by Taylor’s vocal: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, “Pledging My Love”] But it was the B-side that was to become a classic. From the stories told by the band members, it seems that everyone knew that that song — one written by Taylor, who otherwise barely ever wrote songs, preferring to perform cover versions — was something special. But the song mentioned two different brand names, Cadillac and Ford, and the BBC at that time had a ban on playing any music which mentioned a brand name at all. So “Brand New Cadillac” became a B-side, but it’s undoubtedly the most thrilling B-side by a British performer of the fifties, and arguably the only true fifties rock and roll classic by a British artist. “Move It” by Cliff Richard had been a good record by British standards — “Brand New Cadillac” was a great record by any standards: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, “Brand New Cadillac”] Unfortunately, because “Pledging My Love” was the A-side, the record sold almost nothing, and didn’t make the charts. After two flops in a row, Parlophone dropped Vince Taylor and the Playboys, and Taylor went back to performing at the 2Is with whatever random collection of musicians he could get together. Brian Bennett and Licorice Locking, meanwhile, went on to join Marty Wilde’s band the Wildcats, and scored an immediate hit with Wilde’s rather decent cover version of Dion and the Belmonts’ “Teenager in Love”: [Excerpt: Marty Wilde and the Wildcats, “Teenager in Love”] Moretti, Locking, and Bennett will all turn up in our story in future episodes. Taylor’s career seemed to be over before it had really begun, but then he got a second chance. Palette Records was a small label, based in Belgium, which was starting operations in Britain. They didn’t have any big stars, but they had signed Janis Martin, who we talked about back in episode forty, and in August 1960 they put out her single “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow Love”: [Excerpt: Janis Martin, “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow Love”] And at the same time, they put out a new single by Vince Taylor, with a new lineup of Playboys. The A-side was a fairly uninspired ballad called “I’ll Be Your Hero”, very much in the style of Elvis’ film songs, but they soon switched to promoting the flip side, “Jet Black Machine”, which was much more in Taylor’s style. It wasn’t up to the standards of “Brand New Cadillac”, but it was still far more exciting than most of the records that were being made in the UK at the time: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, “Jet Black Machine”] That seemed like it would be a turning point in Taylor’s career — according to one source I’ve read, it made the top twenty on the NME charts, though I haven’t been able to check those charts myself, and given how unreliable literally everything I’ve read about Taylor is, I don’t entirely trust that. But it was definitely more successful than his two previous singles, and the new lineup of Playboys were booked on a package tour of acts from the 2Is. Things seemed like they were about to start going Taylor’s way. But Taylor had always been a little erratic, and he started to get almost pathologically jealous. He would phone his girlfriend up every night before going on stage, and if she didn’t answer he’d skip the show, to drive to her house and find out what she was doing. And in November 1960, just before the start of the tour, he skipped out on the tour altogether and headed back to visit his family in the States. The band carried on without him, and became the backing group for Duffy Power, one of the many acts managed by Larry Parnes. Power desperately wanted to be a blues singer, but he was pushed into recording cover versions of American hits, like this one, which came out shortly after the Playboys joined him: [Excerpt: Duffy Power, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”] The Playboys continued to back Power until June 1960, when they had a gig in Guildford, and a remarkable coincidence happened. They were unloading their equipment at the 2Is, to drive to Guildford with it, when Taylor walked round the corner. He’d just got back from the USA and happened to be passing, and they invited him along for the drive to the show. He came with them, and then Duffy Power, who was almost as unreliable as Taylor, didn’t turn up for the show. They invited Taylor to perform in his place, and he did, and blew the audience away. Power eventually turned up half-way through the show, got angry, punched the drummer in the face during the interval, and drove off again. The drummer got two stitches, and then they finished the show. Taylor was back with the Playboys, and Duffy Power was out, and so the next month when Power was booked for some shows in Paris, on a bill with Vince Eager and Wee Willie Harris, Taylor took his place there, too. France was about as far behind Britain in rock and roll terms as Britain was behind America, and no-one had ever seen anything like Vince Taylor. Taylor and the Playboys got signed to a French label, Barclay Records, and they became huge stars — Taylor did indeed get himself a brand new Cadillac, a pink one just like Elvis had. Taylor got nicknamed “le diable noir” — the black Devil — for his demonic stage presence, and he inspired riots regularly with his shows. A review of one of his performances at that time may be of interest to some listeners: “The atmosphere is like many a night club, but the teenagers stand round the dancing floor which you use as a stage. They jump on a woman with gold trousers and a hand microphone and then hit a man when he says “go away.” A group follows, and so do others, playing ‘Apache’ worse than many other bands. When the singer joins the band, the leather jacket fiends who are the audience, join in dancing and banging tables with chairs. The singers have to go one better than the audience, so they lie on the floor, or jump on a passing drummer, or kiss a guitar, and then hit the man playing it. The crowd enjoy this and many stand on chairs to see the fun, and soon the audience are all singing and shouting like one man, but he didn’t mind. Vince (Ron, Ron) Taylor finally appeared and joined the fun, and in the end he had so much fun that he had to rest. But in spite of this it had been a wonderful show, lovely show…lovely.” That was written by a young man from Liverpool named Paul McCartney, who was visiting Paris with his friend John Lennon for Lennon’s twenty-first birthday. The two attended one of Taylor’s shows there, and McCartney sent that review back to run in Mersey Beat, a local music paper. Lennon and McCartney also met Taylor, with whom they had a mutual friend, Tony Sheridan, and tried to blag their way onto the show themselves, but got turned down. While they were in Paris, they also got their hair cut in a new style, to copy the style that was fashionable among Parisian bohemians. When they got back to Liverpool everyone laughed at their new mop-top hairdos… Taylor kept making records while he was in Paris, mostly cover versions of American hits. Probably the best is his version of Chuck Willis’ “Whatcha Gonna Do?”: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor et ses Play-Boys, “Watcha Gonna Do (When Your Baby Leaves You)?”] But while Taylor was now a big star, his behaviour was becoming ever more erratic, not helped by the amphetamines he was taking to keep himself going during shows. The group quit en masse in November 1962, but he persuaded them back so they could play a two-week residency at the Star Club in Hamburg, before a group from Liverpool called the Beatles took over for Christmas. But Taylor only lasted four days of that two-week residency. Just before midnight on the fifth night, just before they were about to go on, he phoned his girlfriend in Paris, got no answer, decided she was out cheating on him, and flew off to Paris instead of playing the show. He phoned the club’s manager the next day to apologise and say he’d be back for that night’s show, but Horst Fascher, the manager, wasn’t as forgiving of Taylor as most promoters had been, and said that he’d shoot Taylor dead if he ever saw him again. The residency was cancelled, and the Playboys had to sell their mohair suits to Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers to pay for their fare back to Paris. For the next few years, Taylor put out a series of fairly poor records with different backing groups, often singing sickly French-language ballads with orchestral backings. He tried gimmicks like changing from his black leather costume into a white leather one, but nothing seemed to work. His money was running out, but then he had one more opportunity to hit the big time again. Bobby Woodman, the drummer from the second lineup of the Playboys, had been playing with Johnny Hallyday, France’s biggest rock and roll star, under the stage name Bobbie Clarke, but then Hallyday was drafted and his band needed work. They got together with Taylor, and as Vince Taylor and the Bobbie Clarke Noise they recorded an EP of blues and rock covers that included a version of the Arthur Crudup song made famous by Elvis, “My Baby Left Me”. It was a quite extraordinary record, his best since “Brand New Cadillac” seven years earlier: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Bobbie Clarke Noise, “My Baby Left Me”] They played the Paris Olympia again, this time supporting the Rolling Stones. Vince Taylor was on his way to the top again. And they had the prospect of an American record deal — Taylor’s sister Sheila had married Joe Barbera, and he’d started up a new label and was interested in signing Taylor. They arranged a showcase gig for him, and everyone thought this could be the big time. But before that, he had to make a quick trip to the UK. The group were owed money by a business associate there, and so Taylor went over to collect the money, and while he was there he went to Bob Dylan’s party, and dropped acid for the first time. And that was the end of Vince Taylor’s career. One of the things that goes completely unreported about the British teen idols of the fifties is that for whatever reason, and I can’t know for sure, there was a very high incidence of severe mental illness among them — an astonishingly high incidence given how few of them there were. Terry Dene was invalided out of the Army with mental health problems shortly after he was drafted. Duffy Power attempted suicide in the early sixties, and had recurrent mental health problems for many years. And Dickie Pride, who his peers thought was the most talented of the lot, ended up dead aged twenty-seven, after having spent time in a psychiatric hospital and suffering so badly he was lobotomised. Vince Taylor was the one whose mental problems have had the most publicity, but much of that has made his illness seem somehow glamorous or entertaining, so I want to emphasise that it was anything but. I spent several years working on a psychiatric ward, and have seen enough people with the same condition that Taylor had that I have no sense of humour about this subject at all. The rest of this podcast is about a man who was suffering horribly. Taylor had always been unstable — he had been paranoid and controlling, he had a tendency to make up lies about himself and act as if he believed them, and he led a chaotic lifestyle. And while normally LSD is safe even if taken relatively often, Taylor’s first acid trip was the last straw for his fragile mental health. He turned up at the showcase gig unshaven, clutching a bottle of Mateus wine, and announced to everyone that he was Mateus, the new Jesus, the son of God. When asked if he had the band’s money, he pulled out a hundred and fifty francs and set fire to it, ranting about how Jesus had turfed the money-lenders out of the temple. An ambulance was called, and the band did the show without him. They had a gig the next day, and Taylor turned up clean-shaven, smartly dressed, and seemingly normal. He apologised for his behaviour the night before, saying he’d “felt a bit strange” but was better now. But when they got to the club and he saw the sign saying “Vince Taylor and the Bobbie Clarke Noise”, he crossed “Vince Taylor” out, and wrote “Mateus” in a felt pen. During the show, instead of singing, he walked through the crowd, anointing them with water. He spent the next decade in and out of hospital, occasionally touring and recording, but often unable to work. But while he was unwell, “Brand New Cadillac” found a new audience. Indeed, it found several audiences. The Hep Stars, a band from Sweden who featured a pre-ABBA Benny Andersson, had a number one hit in Sweden with their reworking of it, just titled “Cadillac”, in 1965, just a month before Taylor’s breakdown: [Excerpt: Hep Stars, “Cadillac”] In 1971, Mungo Jerry reworked the song as “Baby Jump”, which went to number one in the UK, though they didn’t credit Taylor: [Excerpt: Mungo Jerry, “Baby Jump”] And in 1979, the Clash recorded a version of it for their classic double-album London Calling: [Excerpt: The Clash, “Brand New Cadillac”] Shortly after recording that, Joe Strummer of the Clash met up with Taylor, who spent five hours explaining to Strummer how the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were trying to kill him with poisoned chocolate cake. Taylor at that time was still making music, and trying to latch on to whatever the latest trend was, as in his 1982 single “Space Invaders”, inspired by the arcade game: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor, “Space Invaders”] But the new music he was making was almost an irrelevance — by this point he had become a legend in the British music industry, not for who he was in 1982, but for who he was in 1958, and he has had songs written about him by people as diverse as Adam Ant and Van Morrison. But his biggest influence came in the years immediately after his breakdown. Between 1966 and 1972, Taylor spent much of his time in London, severely mentally ill, but trying to have some kind of social life based on his past glories, reminding people that he had once been a star. One of the people he got to know in London in the mid-sixties was a young musician named David Jones. Jones was fascinated by Taylor, even though he’d never liked his music — Jones’ brother was schizophrenic, and he was worried that he would end up like his brother. Jones also wanted to be a rock and roll star, and had some mildly messianic ideas of his own. So a rock and roll star who thought he was Jesus — although he sometimes thought he was an alien, rather than Jesus, and sometimes claimed that Jesus *was* an alien — and who was clearly severely mentally ill, had a fascination for him. He talked later about not having been able to decide whether he was seeing Taylor as an example to follow or a cautionary tale, and about how he’d sat with Taylor outside Charing Cross Station while Taylor had used a magnifying glass and a map of Europe to show him all the sites where aliens were going to land. Several years later, after changing his name to David Bowie, Jones remembered the story of Vince Taylor, the rock and roll star who thought he was an alien messiah, and turned it into the story of Ziggy Stardust: [Excerpt: David Bowie, “Ziggy Stardust”] In 1983, Taylor retired to Switzerland with his new wife Nathalie. He changed his name back to Brian Holden, and while he would play the occasional gig, he tried as best he could to forget his past, and seems to have recovered somewhat from his mental illness. In 1991 he was diagnosed with cancer, and died of it three months later. Shortly before he died, he told a friend “If I die, you can tell them that the only period in my life where I was really happy was my life in Switzerland”.

christmas united states america god love jesus christ american history english europe power hollywood uk internet los angeles france england british americans french european radio devil new jersey army nashville losing bbc sun portugal states sweden britain beatles switzerland cd singer shadows rolling stones liverpool latin scottish elvis belgium rock and roll clash teenagers mount everest david bowie hamburg bob dylan john lennon playboy paul mccartney lsd elvis presley scotty steele windsor wilde tom petty goin cadillac paris olympics duchess wildcats parisian george harrison apache sheridan tilt mateus mccartney chuck berry james dean van morrison rock music locking vagabonds caveman savoy roy orbison david jones hanna barbera ziggy stardust nme american legion space invaders nepalese adam ant moretti barbera johnny hallyday cliff richard uk tv joe strummer everly brothers guildford rock hudson weavers move it jeff lynne robert taylor wreckers sam phillips chet atkins ricky nelson jailhouse rock bob moore johnny ace tenzing norgay gene vincent parlophone mungo jerry weedon charlie rich belmonts pall mall hallyday savoy hotel brian bennett star club strummer scotty moore ron taylor merseybeat vince taylor vinces parnes whatcha gonna do tommy steele tony sheridan mauretania alvin stardust monument records marty wilde hollywood high school parlophone records brand new cadillac rebel rousers jack clement fred foster janis martin brian holden arthur crudup joe barbera jimmy nicol my baby left me nashville a team tilt araiza

Episode 77: “Brand New Cadillac” by Vince Taylor and the Playboys

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 7, 2020

Episode seventy-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Brand New Cadillac” by Vince Taylor and the Playboys, and the sad career of rock music’s first acid casualty. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers have two bonus podcasts this week. There’s a haf-hour Q&A episode, where I answer backers’ questions, and a ten-minute bonus episode on “The Hippy Hippy Shake” by Chan Romero. 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—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are several books available on Vince Taylor, including an autobiography, but sadly these are all in French, a language I don’t speak past schoolboy level, so I can’t say if they’re any good. The main resources I used for this episode were the liner notes for this compilation CD of Taylor’s best material, this archived copy of a twenty-year-old homepage by a friend of Taylor’s, this blogged history of Taylor and the Playboys, and this Radio 4 documentary on Taylor. But *all* of these were riddled with errors, and I used dozens of other resources to try to straighten out the facts — everything from a genealogy website to interviews with Tony Sheridan to the out-of-print autobiography of Joe Barbera. No doubt this episode still has errors in it, but I am fairly confident that it has fewer errors than anything else in English about Taylor on the Internet. Errata I say that Gene Vincent also appeared on Oh Boy! — in fact he didn’t appear on UK TV until Parnes’ next show, Boy Meets Girls, which would mean Taylor was definitely the originator of that style. A major clanger — I say that Sheridan recorded “Why” while he was working on “Oh Boy!” — in fact this wasn’t recorded until later — *with the Beatles* as his backing band. I should have known that one, but it slipped my mind and I trusted my source, wrongly. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript On the twenty-first of May 1965, at the Savoy Hotel in London, there was a party which would have two major effects on the history of rock and roll music, one which would be felt almost immediately, and one whose full ramifications wouldn’t be seen for almost a decade. Bob Dylan was on the European tour which is chronicled in the film “Don’t Look Back”, and he’d just spent a week in Portugal. He’d come back to the UK, and the next day he was planning to film his first ever televised concert. That plan was put on hold. Dylan was rushed to hospital the day after the party, with what was claimed to be food poisoning but has often been rumoured to be something else. He spent the next week in bed, back at the Savoy, attended by a private nurse, and during that time he wrote what he called “a long piece of vomit around twenty pages long”. From that “long piece of vomit” he later extracted the lyrics to what became “Like a Rolling Stone”. But Dylan wasn’t the only one who came out of that party feeling funny. Vince Taylor, a minor British rock and roller who’d never had much success over here but was big in France, was also there. There are no euphemisms about what it was that happened to him. He had dropped acid at the party, for the first time, and had liked it so much he’d immediately spent two hundred pounds on buying all the acid he could from the person who’d given it to him. The next day, Taylor was meant to be playing a showcase gig. His brother-in-law, Joe Barbera of Hanna Barbera, owned a record label, and was considering signing Taylor. It could be the start of a comeback for him. Instead, it was the end of his career, and the start of a legend: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, “Brand New Cadillac”] There are two problems with telling the story of Vince Taylor. One is that he was a compulsive liar, who would make up claims like that he was related to Tenzing Norgay, the Nepalese mountaineer who was one of the two men who first climbed Everest, or that he was an airline pilot as a teenager. The other is that nobody who has written about Taylor has bothered to do even the most cursory fact-checking For example, if you read any online articles about Vince Taylor at all, you see the same story about his upbringing — he was born Brian Holden in the UK, he emigrated to New Jersey with his family in the forties, and then his sister Sheila met Joe Barbera, the co-creator of the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Sheila married him in 1955 and moved with him to Los Angeles — and so the rest of the family also moved there, and Brian went to Hollywood High School. Barbera decided to manage his brother-in-law, bring him over to London to check out the British music scene, and get him a record deal. There’s just… a bit of a problem with this story. Sheila did marry Joe Barbera, but not until the mid 1960s. Her first marriage, in 1947, was to Joe Singer, and it was Singer, not Barbera, who was Taylor’s first manager. That kind of inaccuracy appears all over the story of Vince Taylor So, what we actually know is that Brian Maurice Holden — or Maurice Brian Holden, even his birth name seems to be disputed — was born in Isleworth Middlesex, and moved to New Jersey when he was seven, with his family, emigrating on the Mauretania, and that he came back to London in his late teens. While there was a real Hollywood High School, which Ricky Nelson among others had attended, I suspect it’s as likely that Holden decided to just tell people that was where he’d been to school, because “Hollywood High School” would sound impressive to British people. And sounding impressive to British people was what Brian Holden had decided to base his career on. He claimed to an acquaintance, shortly after he returned to the UK, that he’d heard a Tommy Steele record while he was in the US, and had thought “If this is rock and roll in England, we’ll take them by storm!” [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Rock With the Caveman”] Holden had been playing American Legion shows and similar small venues in the US, and when his brother-in-law Joe Singer came over to Britain on a business trip, Holden decided to tag along, and Singer became Holden’s manager. Holden had three great advantages over British stars like Steele. He had spent long enough in America that he could tell people that he was American and they would believe him. In Britain in the 1950s, there were so few Americans that just being from that country was enough to make you a novelty, and Holden milked that for all it was worth, even though his accent, from the few bits of interviews I’ve heard with him, was pure London. He was also much, much better looking than almost all the British rock and roll stars. Because of rationing and general poverty in the UK in the forties and fifties as a result of the war, the British fifties teenage generation were on the whole rather scrawny, pasty-looking, and undernourished, with bad complexions, bad teeth, and a general haggardness that meant that even teen idols like Dickie Pride, Tommy Steele, or Marty Wilde were not, by modern standards, at all good looking. Brian Holden, on the other hand, had film-star good looks. He had a chiselled jaw, thick black hair combed into a quiff, and a dazzling smile showing Hollywood-perfect teeth. I am the farthest thing there is from a judge of male beauty, but of all the fifties rock and roll stars, the only one who was better looking than him was Elvis, and even Elvis had to grow into his good looks, while Holden, even when he came to the UK aged eighteen, looked like a cross between James Dean and Rock Hudson. And finally, he had a real sense of what rock and roll was, in a way that almost none of the British musicians did. He knew, in particular, what a rockabilly record should sound like. He did have one tiny drawback, though — he couldn’t sing in tune, or keep time. But nobody except the unfortunate musicians who ended up backing him saw that as a particular problem. Being unable to sing was a minor matter. He had presence, and he was going to be a star. Everyone knew it. He started performing at the 2Is, and he put together a band which had a rather fluid membership that to start with featured Tony Meehan, a drummer who had been in the Vipers Skiffle Group and would later join the Shadows, but by the time he got a record deal consisted of four of the regular musicians from the 2is — Tony Sheridan on lead guitar, Tony Harvey on rhythm, Licorice Locking on bass and Brian Bennett on drums. He also got himself a new name, and once again there seems to be some doubt as to how the name was chosen. Everyone seems agreed that “Taylor” was suggested by his sister Sheila, after the actor Robert Taylor. But there are three different plausible stories for how he became Vince. The first is that he named himself after Vince Everett, Elvis’ character in Jailhouse Rock. The second is that he was named after Gene Vincent. And the third is that he took the name from a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes, which had a logo with the Latin motto “in hoc signo vinces” — that last word spelled the same way as “Vinces”. And while I’ve never seen this suggestion made anywhere else, there is also the coincidence that both Licorice Locking and Tony Sheridan had been playing, with Jimmy Nicol, in the Vagabonds, the backing band for one of Larry Parnes’ teen idol acts, Vince Eager, who had made one EP before the Vagabonds had split from him: [Excerpt: Vince Eager, “Yea Yea”] So it may be that the similarity of names was in someone’s mind as well. Taylor and his band, named the Playboys, made a huge impression at the 2is, and they were soon signed to Parlophone Records, and in November 1958 they released their first single. Both sides of the single were cover versions of relatively obscure releases on Sun records. The B-side was a cover version of “I Like Love”, which had been written by Jack Clement for Roy Orbison, while the A-side, “Right Behind You Baby” was written by Charlie Rich and originally recorded by Ray Smith: [Excerpt: Ray Smith, “Right Behind You Baby”] Taylor’s version was the closest thing to an American rockabilly record that had been made in Britain to that point. While the vocal was still nothing special, and the recording techniques in British studios created a more polite sound than their American equivalents, the performance is bursting with energy: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor, “Right Behind You Baby”] It’s Sheridan, though, who really makes the record — he plays a twenty-four bar guitar solo that is absolute light years ahead of anything else that was being done in Britain. Here, for example, is “Guitar Boogie Shuffle”, an instrumental hit from Britain’s top rock and roll guitarist of the time, Bert Weedon: [Excerpt: Bert Weedon, “Guitar Boogie Shuffle”] As you can hear, that’s a perfectly good guitar instrumental, very pleasant, very well played. Now listen to Tony Sheridan’s guitar solo on “Right Behind You Baby”: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor, “Right Behind You Baby”] That’s clearly not as technically skilled as Weedon, but it’s also infinitely more exciting, and it’s more exciting than anything that was being made by any other British musicians at the time. Jack Good certainly thought so. While “Right Behind You Baby” wasn’t a hit, it was enough to get Vince on to Oh Boy!, and it was because of his Oh Boy! performances that Vince switched to the look he would keep for the rest of his career — black leather trousers, a black leather jacket, a black shirt with the top few buttons undone, showing his chest and the medallion he always wore, and black leather gloves. It was a look very similar to that which Gene Vincent also adopted for his performances on Oh Boy! — before that, Vincent had been dressing in a distinctly less memorable style — and I’ve seen differing accounts as to which act took on the style first, though both made it their own. Taylor was memorable enough in this getup that when, in the early seventies, another faded rocker who had been known as Shane Fenton made a comeback as a glam-rocker under the name Alvin Stardust, he copied Taylor’s dress exactly. But Good was unimpressed with Taylor’s performance — and very impressed with Sheridan’s. Sheridan was asked to join the Oh Boy! house band, as well as performing under his own name as Tony Sheridan and the Wreckers. He found himself playing on such less-than-classics as “Happy Organ” by Cherry Wainer: [Excerpt: Cherry Wainer, “The Happy Organ”] He also released his own solo record, “Why”: [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan, “Why”] But Sheridan’s biggest impact on popular music wouldn’t come along for another few years… Losing the most innovative guitarist in the British music industry should have been a death-blow to Taylor’s career, but he managed to find the only other guitarist in Britain at that time who might be considered up to Sheridan’s standard, Joe Moretti — who Taylor nicknamed Scotty Moretti, partly because Moretti was Scottish, but mostly because it would make his name similar to that of Scotty Moore, Elvis’ guitarist, and Taylor could shout out “take it, Scotty!” on the solos. While Sheridan’s style was to play frantic Chuck Berry-style licks, Moretti was a more controlled guitarist, but just as inventive, and he had a particular knack for coming up with riffs. And he showed that knack on Taylor’s next single, the first to be credited to Vince Taylor and the Playboys, rather than just to Vince Taylor. The A-side of that single was rather poor — a cover version of Johnny Ace’s “Pledging My Love”, which was done no favours by Taylor’s vocal: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, “Pledging My Love”] But it was the B-side that was to become a classic. From the stories told by the band members, it seems that everyone knew that that song — one written by Taylor, who otherwise barely ever wrote songs, preferring to perform cover versions — was something special. But the song mentioned two different brand names, Cadillac and Ford, and the BBC at that time had a ban on playing any music which mentioned a brand name at all. So “Brand New Cadillac” became a B-side, but it’s undoubtedly the most thrilling B-side by a British performer of the fifties, and arguably the only true fifties rock and roll classic by a British artist. “Move It” by Cliff Richard had been a good record by British standards — “Brand New Cadillac” was a great record by any standards: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, “Brand New Cadillac”] Unfortunately, because “Pledging My Love” was the A-side, the record sold almost nothing, and didn’t make the charts. After two flops in a row, Parlophone dropped Vince Taylor and the Playboys, and Taylor went back to performing at the 2Is with whatever random collection of musicians he could get together. Brian Bennett and Licorice Locking, meanwhile, went on to join Marty Wilde’s band the Wildcats, and scored an immediate hit with Wilde’s rather decent cover version of Dion and the Belmonts’ “Teenager in Love”: [Excerpt: Marty Wilde and the Wildcats, “Teenager in Love”] Moretti, Locking, and Bennett will all turn up in our story in future episodes. Taylor’s career seemed to be over before it had really begun, but then he got a second chance. Palette Records was a small label, based in Belgium, which was starting operations in Britain. They didn’t have any big stars, but they had signed Janis Martin, who we talked about back in episode forty, and in August 1960 they put out her single “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow Love”: [Excerpt: Janis Martin, “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow Love”] And at the same time, they put out a new single by Vince Taylor, with a new lineup of Playboys. The A-side was a fairly uninspired ballad called “I’ll Be Your Hero”, very much in the style of Elvis’ film songs, but they soon switched to promoting the flip side, “Jet Black Machine”, which was much more in Taylor’s style. It wasn’t up to the standards of “Brand New Cadillac”, but it was still far more exciting than most of the records that were being made in the UK at the time: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, “Jet Black Machine”] That seemed like it would be a turning point in Taylor’s career — according to one source I’ve read, it made the top twenty on the NME charts, though I haven’t been able to check those charts myself, and given how unreliable literally everything I’ve read about Taylor is, I don’t entirely trust that. But it was definitely more successful than his two previous singles, and the new lineup of Playboys were booked on a package tour of acts from the 2Is. Things seemed like they were about to start going Taylor’s way. But Taylor had always been a little erratic, and he started to get almost pathologically jealous. He would phone his girlfriend up every night before going on stage, and if she didn’t answer he’d skip the show, to drive to her house and find out what she was doing. And in November 1960, just before the start of the tour, he skipped out on the tour altogether and headed back to visit his family in the States. The band carried on without him, and became the backing group for Duffy Power, one of the many acts managed by Larry Parnes. Power desperately wanted to be a blues singer, but he was pushed into recording cover versions of American hits, like this one, which came out shortly after the Playboys joined him: [Excerpt: Duffy Power, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”] The Playboys continued to back Power until June 1960, when they had a gig in Guildford, and a remarkable coincidence happened. They were unloading their equipment at the 2Is, to drive to Guildford with it, when Taylor walked round the corner. He’d just got back from the USA and happened to be passing, and they invited him along for the drive to the show. He came with them, and then Duffy Power, who was almost as unreliable as Taylor, didn’t turn up for the show. They invited Taylor to perform in his place, and he did, and blew the audience away. Power eventually turned up half-way through the show, got angry, punched the drummer in the face during the interval, and drove off again. The drummer got two stitches, and then they finished the show. Taylor was back with the Playboys, and Duffy Power was out, and so the next month when Power was booked for some shows in Paris, on a bill with Vince Eager and Wee Willie Harris, Taylor took his place there, too. France was about as far behind Britain in rock and roll terms as Britain was behind America, and no-one had ever seen anything like Vince Taylor. Taylor and the Playboys got signed to a French label, Barclay Records, and they became huge stars — Taylor did indeed get himself a brand new Cadillac, a pink one just like Elvis had. Taylor got nicknamed “le diable noir” — the black Devil — for his demonic stage presence, and he inspired riots regularly with his shows. A review of one of his performances at that time may be of interest to some listeners: “The atmosphere is like many a night club, but the teenagers stand round the dancing floor which you use as a stage. They jump on a woman with gold trousers and a hand microphone and then hit a man when he says “go away.” A group follows, and so do others, playing ‘Apache’ worse than many other bands. When the singer joins the band, the leather jacket fiends who are the audience, join in dancing and banging tables with chairs. The singers have to go one better than the audience, so they lie on the floor, or jump on a passing drummer, or kiss a guitar, and then hit the man playing it. The crowd enjoy this and many stand on chairs to see the fun, and soon the audience are all singing and shouting like one man, but he didn’t mind. Vince (Ron, Ron) Taylor finally appeared and joined the fun, and in the end he had so much fun that he had to rest. But in spite of this it had been a wonderful show, lovely show…lovely.” That was written by a young man from Liverpool named Paul McCartney, who was visiting Paris with his friend John Lennon for Lennon’s twenty-first birthday. The two attended one of Taylor’s shows there, and McCartney sent that review back to run in Mersey Beat, a local music paper. Lennon and McCartney also met Taylor, with whom they had a mutual friend, Tony Sheridan, and tried to blag their way onto the show themselves, but got turned down. While they were in Paris, they also got their hair cut in a new style, to copy the style that was fashionable among Parisian bohemians. When they got back to Liverpool everyone laughed at their new mop-top hairdos… Taylor kept making records while he was in Paris, mostly cover versions of American hits. Probably the best is his version of Chuck Willis’ “Whatcha Gonna Do?”: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor et ses Play-Boys, “Watcha Gonna Do (When Your Baby Leaves You)?”] But while Taylor was now a big star, his behaviour was becoming ever more erratic, not helped by the amphetamines he was taking to keep himself going during shows. The group quit en masse in November 1962, but he persuaded them back so they could play a two-week residency at the Star Club in Hamburg, before a group from Liverpool called the Beatles took over for Christmas. But Taylor only lasted four days of that two-week residency. Just before midnight on the fifth night, just before they were about to go on, he phoned his girlfriend in Paris, got no answer, decided she was out cheating on him, and flew off to Paris instead of playing the show. He phoned the club’s manager the next day to apologise and say he’d be back for that night’s show, but Horst Fascher, the manager, wasn’t as forgiving of Taylor as most promoters had been, and said that he’d shoot Taylor dead if he ever saw him again. The residency was cancelled, and the Playboys had to sell their mohair suits to Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers to pay for their fare back to Paris. For the next few years, Taylor put out a series of fairly poor records with different backing groups, often singing sickly French-language ballads with orchestral backings. He tried gimmicks like changing from his black leather costume into a white leather one, but nothing seemed to work. His money was running out, but then he had one more opportunity to hit the big time again. Bobby Woodman, the drummer from the second lineup of the Playboys, had been playing with Johnny Hallyday, France’s biggest rock and roll star, under the stage name Bobbie Clarke, but then Hallyday was drafted and his band needed work. They got together with Taylor, and as Vince Taylor and the Bobbie Clarke Noise they recorded an EP of blues and rock covers that included a version of the Arthur Crudup song made famous by Elvis, “My Baby Left Me”. It was a quite extraordinary record, his best since “Brand New Cadillac” seven years earlier: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Bobbie Clarke Noise, “My Baby Left Me”] They played the Paris Olympia again, this time supporting the Rolling Stones. Vince Taylor was on his way to the top again. And they had the prospect of an American record deal — Taylor’s sister Sheila had married Joe Barbera, and he’d started up a new label and was interested in signing Taylor. They arranged a showcase gig for him, and everyone thought this could be the big time. But before that, he had to make a quick trip to the UK. The group were owed money by a business associate there, and so Taylor went over to collect the money, and while he was there he went to Bob Dylan’s party, and dropped acid for the first time. And that was the end of Vince Taylor’s career. One of the things that goes completely unreported about the British teen idols of the fifties is that for whatever reason, and I can’t know for sure, there was a very high incidence of severe mental illness among them — an astonishingly high incidence given how few of them there were. Terry Dene was invalided out of the Army with mental health problems shortly after he was drafted. Duffy Power attempted suicide in the early sixties, and had recurrent mental health problems for many years. And Dickie Pride, who his peers thought was the most talented of the lot, ended up dead aged twenty-seven, after having spent time in a psychiatric hospital and suffering so badly he was lobotomised. Vince Taylor was the one whose mental problems have had the most publicity, but much of that has made his illness seem somehow glamorous or entertaining, so I want to emphasise that it was anything but. I spent several years working on a psychiatric ward, and have seen enough people with the same condition that Taylor had that I have no sense of humour about this subject at all. The rest of this podcast is about a man who was suffering horribly. Taylor had always been unstable — he had been paranoid and controlling, he had a tendency to make up lies about himself and act as if he believed them, and he led a chaotic lifestyle. And while normally LSD is safe even if taken relatively often, Taylor’s first acid trip was the last straw for his fragile mental health. He turned up at the showcase gig unshaven, clutching a bottle of Mateus wine, and announced to everyone that he was Mateus, the new Jesus, the son of God. When asked if he had the band’s money, he pulled out a hundred and fifty francs and set fire to it, ranting about how Jesus had turfed the money-lenders out of the temple. An ambulance was called, and the band did the show without him. They had a gig the next day, and Taylor turned up clean-shaven, smartly dressed, and seemingly normal. He apologised for his behaviour the night before, saying he’d “felt a bit strange” but was better now. But when they got to the club and he saw the sign saying “Vince Taylor and the Bobbie Clarke Noise”, he crossed “Vince Taylor” out, and wrote “Mateus” in a felt pen. During the show, instead of singing, he walked through the crowd, anointing them with water. He spent the next decade in and out of hospital, occasionally touring and recording, but often unable to work. But while he was unwell, “Brand New Cadillac” found a new audience. Indeed, it found several audiences. The Hep Stars, a band from Sweden who featured a pre-ABBA Benny Andersson, had a number one hit in Sweden with their reworking of it, just titled “Cadillac”, in 1965, just a month before Taylor’s breakdown: [Excerpt: Hep Stars, “Cadillac”] In 1971, Mungo Jerry reworked the song as “Baby Jump”, which went to number one in the UK, though they didn’t credit Taylor: [Excerpt: Mungo Jerry, “Baby Jump”] And in 1979, the Clash recorded a version of it for their classic double-album London Calling: [Excerpt: The Clash, “Brand New Cadillac”] Shortly after recording that, Joe Strummer of the Clash met up with Taylor, who spent five hours explaining to Strummer how the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were trying to kill him with poisoned chocolate cake. Taylor at that time was still making music, and trying to latch on to whatever the latest trend was, as in his 1982 single “Space Invaders”, inspired by the arcade game: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor, “Space Invaders”] But the new music he was making was almost an irrelevance — by this point he had become a legend in the British music industry, not for who he was in 1982, but for who he was in 1958, and he has had songs written about him by people as diverse as Adam Ant and Van Morrison. But his biggest influence came in the years immediately after his breakdown. Between 1966 and 1972, Taylor spent much of his time in London, severely mentally ill, but trying to have some kind of social life based on his past glories, reminding people that he had once been a star. One of the people he got to know in London in the mid-sixties was a young musician named David Jones. Jones was fascinated by Taylor, even though he’d never liked his music — Jones’ brother was schizophrenic, and he was worried that he would end up like his brother. Jones also wanted to be a rock and roll star, and had some mildly messianic ideas of his own. So a rock and roll star who thought he was Jesus — although he sometimes thought he was an alien, rather than Jesus, and sometimes claimed that Jesus *was* an alien — and who was clearly severely mentally ill, had a fascination for him. He talked later about not having been able to decide whether he was seeing Taylor as an example to follow or a cautionary tale, and about how he’d sat with Taylor outside Charing Cross Station while Taylor had used a magnifying glass and a map of Europe to show him all the sites where aliens were going to land. Several years later, after changing his name to David Bowie, Jones remembered the story of Vince Taylor, the rock and roll star who thought he was an alien messiah, and turned it into the story of Ziggy Stardust: [Excerpt: David Bowie, “Ziggy Stardust”] In 1983, Taylor retired to Switzerland with his new wife Nathalie. He changed his name back to Brian Holden, and while he would play the occasional gig, he tried as best he could to forget his past, and seems to have recovered somewhat from his mental illness. In 1991 he was diagnosed with cancer, and died of it three months later. Shortly before he died, he told a friend “If I die, you can tell them that the only period in my life where I was really happy was my life in Switzerland”.

christmas united states america god love jesus christ american history english europe power hollywood uk internet los angeles france england british americans french european radio devil new jersey army losing bbc sun portugal states sweden britain beatles switzerland cd singer shadows rolling stones liverpool latin scottish elvis belgium rock and roll clash teenagers mount everest david bowie hamburg bob dylan john lennon playboy paul mccartney lsd scotty steele windsor wilde goin cadillac paris olympics duchess wildcats parisian apache sheridan tilt mateus mccartney chuck berry james dean van morrison rock music locking vagabonds caveman savoy roy orbison david jones hanna barbera ziggy stardust nme american legion space invaders nepalese adam ant moretti barbera johnny hallyday cliff richard uk tv joe strummer guildford rock hudson move it robert taylor wreckers ricky nelson jailhouse rock johnny ace tenzing norgay gene vincent parlophone mungo jerry weedon charlie rich belmonts pall mall hallyday savoy hotel brian bennett star club strummer scotty moore ron taylor merseybeat vince taylor vinces parnes whatcha gonna do tommy steele tony sheridan mauretania alvin stardust marty wilde hollywood high school brand new cadillac jack clement janis martin brian holden arthur crudup joe barbera jimmy nicol my baby left me tilt araiza

Episode 77: "Brand New Cadillac" by Vince Taylor and the Playboys

Something for the Weekend

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 7, 2020 44:03

Episode seventy-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Brand New Cadillac" by Vince Taylor and the Playboys, and the sad career of rock music's first acid casualty. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers have two bonus podcasts this week. There's a haf-hour Q&A episode, where I answer backers' questions, and a ten-minute bonus episode on "The Hippy Hippy Shake" by Chan Romero. 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---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are several books available on Vince Taylor, including an autobiography, but sadly these are all in French, a language I don't speak past schoolboy level, so I can't say if they're any good. The main resources I used for this episode were the liner notes for this compilation CD of Taylor's best material, this archived copy of a twenty-year-old homepage by a friend of Taylor's, this blogged history of Taylor and the Playboys, and this Radio 4 documentary on Taylor. But *all* of these were riddled with errors, and I used dozens of other resources to try to straighten out the facts -- everything from a genealogy website to interviews with Tony Sheridan to the out-of-print autobiography of Joe Barbera. No doubt this episode still has errors in it, but I am fairly confident that it has fewer errors than anything else in English about Taylor on the Internet. Errata I say that Gene Vincent also appeared on Oh Boy! -- in fact he didn't appear on UK TV until Parnes' next show, Boy Meets Girls, which would mean Taylor was definitely the originator of that style. A major clanger -- I say that Sheridan recorded "Why" while he was working on "Oh Boy!" -- in fact this wasn't recorded until later -- *with the Beatles* as his backing band. I should have known that one, but it slipped my mind and I trusted my source, wrongly. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript On the twenty-first of May 1965, at the Savoy Hotel in London, there was a party which would have two major effects on the history of rock and roll music, one which would be felt almost immediately, and one whose full ramifications wouldn't be seen for almost a decade. Bob Dylan was on the European tour which is chronicled in the film "Don't Look Back", and he'd just spent a week in Portugal. He'd come back to the UK, and the next day he was planning to film his first ever televised concert. That plan was put on hold. Dylan was rushed to hospital the day after the party, with what was claimed to be food poisoning but has often been rumoured to be something else. He spent the next week in bed, back at the Savoy, attended by a private nurse, and during that time he wrote what he called "a long piece of vomit around twenty pages long". From that "long piece of vomit" he later extracted the lyrics to what became "Like a Rolling Stone". But Dylan wasn't the only one who came out of that party feeling funny. Vince Taylor, a minor British rock and roller who'd never had much success over here but was big in France, was also there. There are no euphemisms about what it was that happened to him. He had dropped acid at the party, for the first time, and had liked it so much he'd immediately spent two hundred pounds on buying all the acid he could from the person who'd given it to him. The next day, Taylor was meant to be playing a showcase gig. His brother-in-law, Joe Barbera of Hanna Barbera, owned a record label, and was considering signing Taylor. It could be the start of a comeback for him. Instead, it was the end of his career, and the start of a legend: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, "Brand New Cadillac"] There are two problems with telling the story of Vince Taylor. One is that he was a compulsive liar, who would make up claims like that he was related to Tenzing Norgay, the Nepalese mountaineer who was one of the two men who first climbed Everest, or that he was an airline pilot as a teenager. The other is that nobody who has written about Taylor has bothered to do even the most cursory fact-checking For example, if you read any online articles about Vince Taylor at all, you see the same story about his upbringing -- he was born Brian Holden in the UK, he emigrated to New Jersey with his family in the forties, and then his sister Sheila met Joe Barbera, the co-creator of the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Sheila married him in 1955 and moved with him to Los Angeles -- and so the rest of the family also moved there, and Brian went to Hollywood High School. Barbera decided to manage his brother-in-law, bring him over to London to check out the British music scene, and get him a record deal. There's just... a bit of a problem with this story. Sheila did marry Joe Barbera, but not until the mid 1960s. Her first marriage, in 1947, was to Joe Singer, and it was Singer, not Barbera, who was Taylor's first manager. That kind of inaccuracy appears all over the story of Vince Taylor So, what we actually know is that Brian Maurice Holden -- or Maurice Brian Holden, even his birth name seems to be disputed -- was born in Isleworth Middlesex, and moved to New Jersey when he was seven, with his family, emigrating on the Mauretania, and that he came back to London in his late teens. While there was a real Hollywood High School, which Ricky Nelson among others had attended, I suspect it's as likely that Holden decided to just tell people that was where he'd been to school, because "Hollywood High School" would sound impressive to British people. And sounding impressive to British people was what Brian Holden had decided to base his career on. He claimed to an acquaintance, shortly after he returned to the UK, that he'd heard a Tommy Steele record while he was in the US, and had thought "If this is rock and roll in England, we'll take them by storm!" [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, "Rock With the Caveman"] Holden had been playing American Legion shows and similar small venues in the US, and when his brother-in-law Joe Singer came over to Britain on a business trip, Holden decided to tag along, and Singer became Holden's manager. Holden had three great advantages over British stars like Steele. He had spent long enough in America that he could tell people that he was American and they would believe him. In Britain in the 1950s, there were so few Americans that just being from that country was enough to make you a novelty, and Holden milked that for all it was worth, even though his accent, from the few bits of interviews I've heard with him, was pure London. He was also much, much better looking than almost all the British rock and roll stars. Because of rationing and general poverty in the UK in the forties and fifties as a result of the war, the British fifties teenage generation were on the whole rather scrawny, pasty-looking, and undernourished, with bad complexions, bad teeth, and a general haggardness that meant that even teen idols like Dickie Pride, Tommy Steele, or Marty Wilde were not, by modern standards, at all good looking. Brian Holden, on the other hand, had film-star good looks. He had a chiselled jaw, thick black hair combed into a quiff, and a dazzling smile showing Hollywood-perfect teeth. I am the farthest thing there is from a judge of male beauty, but of all the fifties rock and roll stars, the only one who was better looking than him was Elvis, and even Elvis had to grow into his good looks, while Holden, even when he came to the UK aged eighteen, looked like a cross between James Dean and Rock Hudson. And finally, he had a real sense of what rock and roll was, in a way that almost none of the British musicians did. He knew, in particular, what a rockabilly record should sound like. He did have one tiny drawback, though -- he couldn't sing in tune, or keep time. But nobody except the unfortunate musicians who ended up backing him saw that as a particular problem. Being unable to sing was a minor matter. He had presence, and he was going to be a star. Everyone knew it. He started performing at the 2Is, and he put together a band which had a rather fluid membership that to start with featured Tony Meehan, a drummer who had been in the Vipers Skiffle Group and would later join the Shadows, but by the time he got a record deal consisted of four of the regular musicians from the 2is -- Tony Sheridan on lead guitar, Tony Harvey on rhythm, Licorice Locking on bass and Brian Bennett on drums. He also got himself a new name, and once again there seems to be some doubt as to how the name was chosen. Everyone seems agreed that "Taylor" was suggested by his sister Sheila, after the actor Robert Taylor. But there are three different plausible stories for how he became Vince. The first is that he named himself after Vince Everett, Elvis' character in Jailhouse Rock. The second is that he was named after Gene Vincent. And the third is that he took the name from a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes, which had a logo with the Latin motto "in hoc signo vinces" -- that last word spelled the same way as "Vinces". And while I've never seen this suggestion made anywhere else, there is also the coincidence that both Licorice Locking and Tony Sheridan had been playing, with Jimmy Nicol, in the Vagabonds, the backing band for one of Larry Parnes' teen idol acts, Vince Eager, who had made one EP before the Vagabonds had split from him: [Excerpt: Vince Eager, "Yea Yea"] So it may be that the similarity of names was in someone's mind as well. Taylor and his band, named the Playboys, made a huge impression at the 2is, and they were soon signed to Parlophone Records, and in November 1958 they released their first single. Both sides of the single were cover versions of relatively obscure releases on Sun records. The B-side was a cover version of "I Like Love", which had been written by Jack Clement for Roy Orbison, while the A-side, "Right Behind You Baby" was written by Charlie Rich and originally recorded by Ray Smith: [Excerpt: Ray Smith, "Right Behind You Baby"] Taylor's version was the closest thing to an American rockabilly record that had been made in Britain to that point. While the vocal was still nothing special, and the recording techniques in British studios created a more polite sound than their American equivalents, the performance is bursting with energy: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor, "Right Behind You Baby"] It's Sheridan, though, who really makes the record -- he plays a twenty-four bar guitar solo that is absolute light years ahead of anything else that was being done in Britain. Here, for example, is "Guitar Boogie Shuffle", an instrumental hit from Britain's top rock and roll guitarist of the time, Bert Weedon: [Excerpt: Bert Weedon, "Guitar Boogie Shuffle"] As you can hear, that's a perfectly good guitar instrumental, very pleasant, very well played. Now listen to Tony Sheridan's guitar solo on "Right Behind You Baby": [Excerpt: Vince Taylor, "Right Behind You Baby"] That's clearly not as technically skilled as Weedon, but it's also infinitely more exciting, and it's more exciting than anything that was being made by any other British musicians at the time. Jack Good certainly thought so. While "Right Behind You Baby" wasn't a hit, it was enough to get Vince on to Oh Boy!, and it was because of his Oh Boy! performances that Vince switched to the look he would keep for the rest of his career -- black leather trousers, a black leather jacket, a black shirt with the top few buttons undone, showing his chest and the medallion he always wore, and black leather gloves. It was a look very similar to that which Gene Vincent also adopted for his performances on Oh Boy! -- before that, Vincent had been dressing in a distinctly less memorable style -- and I've seen differing accounts as to which act took on the style first, though both made it their own. Taylor was memorable enough in this getup that when, in the early seventies, another faded rocker who had been known as Shane Fenton made a comeback as a glam-rocker under the name Alvin Stardust, he copied Taylor's dress exactly. But Good was unimpressed with Taylor's performance -- and very impressed with Sheridan's. Sheridan was asked to join the Oh Boy! house band, as well as performing under his own name as Tony Sheridan and the Wreckers. He found himself playing on such less-than-classics as "Happy Organ" by Cherry Wainer: [Excerpt: Cherry Wainer, "The Happy Organ"] He also released his own solo record, "Why": [Excerpt: Tony Sheridan, "Why"] But Sheridan's biggest impact on popular music wouldn't come along for another few years... Losing the most innovative guitarist in the British music industry should have been a death-blow to Taylor's career, but he managed to find the only other guitarist in Britain at that time who might be considered up to Sheridan's standard, Joe Moretti -- who Taylor nicknamed Scotty Moretti, partly because Moretti was Scottish, but mostly because it would make his name similar to that of Scotty Moore, Elvis' guitarist, and Taylor could shout out "take it, Scotty!" on the solos. While Sheridan's style was to play frantic Chuck Berry-style licks, Moretti was a more controlled guitarist, but just as inventive, and he had a particular knack for coming up with riffs. And he showed that knack on Taylor's next single, the first to be credited to Vince Taylor and the Playboys, rather than just to Vince Taylor. The A-side of that single was rather poor -- a cover version of Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love", which was done no favours by Taylor's vocal: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, "Pledging My Love"] But it was the B-side that was to become a classic. From the stories told by the band members, it seems that everyone knew that that song -- one written by Taylor, who otherwise barely ever wrote songs, preferring to perform cover versions -- was something special. But the song mentioned two different brand names, Cadillac and Ford, and the BBC at that time had a ban on playing any music which mentioned a brand name at all. So "Brand New Cadillac" became a B-side, but it's undoubtedly the most thrilling B-side by a British performer of the fifties, and arguably the only true fifties rock and roll classic by a British artist. "Move It" by Cliff Richard had been a good record by British standards -- "Brand New Cadillac" was a great record by any standards: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, "Brand New Cadillac"] Unfortunately, because "Pledging My Love" was the A-side, the record sold almost nothing, and didn't make the charts. After two flops in a row, Parlophone dropped Vince Taylor and the Playboys, and Taylor went back to performing at the 2Is with whatever random collection of musicians he could get together. Brian Bennett and Licorice Locking, meanwhile, went on to join Marty Wilde's band the Wildcats, and scored an immediate hit with Wilde's rather decent cover version of Dion and the Belmonts' "Teenager in Love": [Excerpt: Marty Wilde and the Wildcats, "Teenager in Love"] Moretti, Locking, and Bennett will all turn up in our story in future episodes. Taylor's career seemed to be over before it had really begun, but then he got a second chance. Palette Records was a small label, based in Belgium, which was starting operations in Britain. They didn't have any big stars, but they had signed Janis Martin, who we talked about back in episode forty, and in August 1960 they put out her single "Here Today and Gone Tomorrow Love": [Excerpt: Janis Martin, "Here Today and Gone Tomorrow Love"] And at the same time, they put out a new single by Vince Taylor, with a new lineup of Playboys. The A-side was a fairly uninspired ballad called "I'll Be Your Hero", very much in the style of Elvis' film songs, but they soon switched to promoting the flip side, "Jet Black Machine", which was much more in Taylor's style. It wasn't up to the standards of "Brand New Cadillac", but it was still far more exciting than most of the records that were being made in the UK at the time: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Playboys, "Jet Black Machine"] That seemed like it would be a turning point in Taylor's career -- according to one source I've read, it made the top twenty on the NME charts, though I haven't been able to check those charts myself, and given how unreliable literally everything I've read about Taylor is, I don't entirely trust that. But it was definitely more successful than his two previous singles, and the new lineup of Playboys were booked on a package tour of acts from the 2Is. Things seemed like they were about to start going Taylor's way. But Taylor had always been a little erratic, and he started to get almost pathologically jealous. He would phone his girlfriend up every night before going on stage, and if she didn't answer he'd skip the show, to drive to her house and find out what she was doing. And in November 1960, just before the start of the tour, he skipped out on the tour altogether and headed back to visit his family in the States. The band carried on without him, and became the backing group for Duffy Power, one of the many acts managed by Larry Parnes. Power desperately wanted to be a blues singer, but he was pushed into recording cover versions of American hits, like this one, which came out shortly after the Playboys joined him: [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"] The Playboys continued to back Power until June 1960, when they had a gig in Guildford, and a remarkable coincidence happened. They were unloading their equipment at the 2Is, to drive to Guildford with it, when Taylor walked round the corner. He'd just got back from the USA and happened to be passing, and they invited him along for the drive to the show. He came with them, and then Duffy Power, who was almost as unreliable as Taylor, didn't turn up for the show. They invited Taylor to perform in his place, and he did, and blew the audience away. Power eventually turned up half-way through the show, got angry, punched the drummer in the face during the interval, and drove off again. The drummer got two stitches, and then they finished the show. Taylor was back with the Playboys, and Duffy Power was out, and so the next month when Power was booked for some shows in Paris, on a bill with Vince Eager and Wee Willie Harris, Taylor took his place there, too. France was about as far behind Britain in rock and roll terms as Britain was behind America, and no-one had ever seen anything like Vince Taylor. Taylor and the Playboys got signed to a French label, Barclay Records, and they became huge stars -- Taylor did indeed get himself a brand new Cadillac, a pink one just like Elvis had. Taylor got nicknamed "le diable noir" -- the black Devil -- for his demonic stage presence, and he inspired riots regularly with his shows. A review of one of his performances at that time may be of interest to some listeners: "The atmosphere is like many a night club, but the teenagers stand round the dancing floor which you use as a stage. They jump on a woman with gold trousers and a hand microphone and then hit a man when he says "go away." A group follows, and so do others, playing 'Apache' worse than many other bands. When the singer joins the band, the leather jacket fiends who are the audience, join in dancing and banging tables with chairs. The singers have to go one better than the audience, so they lie on the floor, or jump on a passing drummer, or kiss a guitar, and then hit the man playing it. The crowd enjoy this and many stand on chairs to see the fun, and soon the audience are all singing and shouting like one man, but he didn't mind. Vince (Ron, Ron) Taylor finally appeared and joined the fun, and in the end he had so much fun that he had to rest. But in spite of this it had been a wonderful show, lovely show...lovely." That was written by a young man from Liverpool named Paul McCartney, who was visiting Paris with his friend John Lennon for Lennon's twenty-first birthday. The two attended one of Taylor's shows there, and McCartney sent that review back to run in Mersey Beat, a local music paper. Lennon and McCartney also met Taylor, with whom they had a mutual friend, Tony Sheridan, and tried to blag their way onto the show themselves, but got turned down. While they were in Paris, they also got their hair cut in a new style, to copy the style that was fashionable among Parisian bohemians. When they got back to Liverpool everyone laughed at their new mop-top hairdos... Taylor kept making records while he was in Paris, mostly cover versions of American hits. Probably the best is his version of Chuck Willis' "Whatcha Gonna Do?": [Excerpt: Vince Taylor et ses Play-Boys, "Watcha Gonna Do (When Your Baby Leaves You)?"] But while Taylor was now a big star, his behaviour was becoming ever more erratic, not helped by the amphetamines he was taking to keep himself going during shows. The group quit en masse in November 1962, but he persuaded them back so they could play a two-week residency at the Star Club in Hamburg, before a group from Liverpool called the Beatles took over for Christmas. But Taylor only lasted four days of that two-week residency. Just before midnight on the fifth night, just before they were about to go on, he phoned his girlfriend in Paris, got no answer, decided she was out cheating on him, and flew off to Paris instead of playing the show. He phoned the club's manager the next day to apologise and say he'd be back for that night's show, but Horst Fascher, the manager, wasn't as forgiving of Taylor as most promoters had been, and said that he'd shoot Taylor dead if he ever saw him again. The residency was cancelled, and the Playboys had to sell their mohair suits to Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers to pay for their fare back to Paris. For the next few years, Taylor put out a series of fairly poor records with different backing groups, often singing sickly French-language ballads with orchestral backings. He tried gimmicks like changing from his black leather costume into a white leather one, but nothing seemed to work. His money was running out, but then he had one more opportunity to hit the big time again. Bobby Woodman, the drummer from the second lineup of the Playboys, had been playing with Johnny Hallyday, France's biggest rock and roll star, under the stage name Bobbie Clarke, but then Hallyday was drafted and his band needed work. They got together with Taylor, and as Vince Taylor and the Bobbie Clarke Noise they recorded an EP of blues and rock covers that included a version of the Arthur Crudup song made famous by Elvis, "My Baby Left Me". It was a quite extraordinary record, his best since "Brand New Cadillac" seven years earlier: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor and the Bobbie Clarke Noise, "My Baby Left Me"] They played the Paris Olympia again, this time supporting the Rolling Stones. Vince Taylor was on his way to the top again. And they had the prospect of an American record deal -- Taylor's sister Sheila had married Joe Barbera, and he'd started up a new label and was interested in signing Taylor. They arranged a showcase gig for him, and everyone thought this could be the big time. But before that, he had to make a quick trip to the UK. The group were owed money by a business associate there, and so Taylor went over to collect the money, and while he was there he went to Bob Dylan's party, and dropped acid for the first time. And that was the end of Vince Taylor's career. One of the things that goes completely unreported about the British teen idols of the fifties is that for whatever reason, and I can't know for sure, there was a very high incidence of severe mental illness among them -- an astonishingly high incidence given how few of them there were. Terry Dene was invalided out of the Army with mental health problems shortly after he was drafted. Duffy Power attempted suicide in the early sixties, and had recurrent mental health problems for many years. And Dickie Pride, who his peers thought was the most talented of the lot, ended up dead aged twenty-seven, after having spent time in a psychiatric hospital and suffering so badly he was lobotomised. Vince Taylor was the one whose mental problems have had the most publicity, but much of that has made his illness seem somehow glamorous or entertaining, so I want to emphasise that it was anything but. I spent several years working on a psychiatric ward, and have seen enough people with the same condition that Taylor had that I have no sense of humour about this subject at all. The rest of this podcast is about a man who was suffering horribly. Taylor had always been unstable -- he had been paranoid and controlling, he had a tendency to make up lies about himself and act as if he believed them, and he led a chaotic lifestyle. And while normally LSD is safe even if taken relatively often, Taylor's first acid trip was the last straw for his fragile mental health. He turned up at the showcase gig unshaven, clutching a bottle of Mateus wine, and announced to everyone that he was Mateus, the new Jesus, the son of God. When asked if he had the band's money, he pulled out a hundred and fifty francs and set fire to it, ranting about how Jesus had turfed the money-lenders out of the temple. An ambulance was called, and the band did the show without him. They had a gig the next day, and Taylor turned up clean-shaven, smartly dressed, and seemingly normal. He apologised for his behaviour the night before, saying he'd "felt a bit strange" but was better now. But when they got to the club and he saw the sign saying "Vince Taylor and the Bobbie Clarke Noise", he crossed "Vince Taylor" out, and wrote "Mateus" in a felt pen. During the show, instead of singing, he walked through the crowd, anointing them with water. He spent the next decade in and out of hospital, occasionally touring and recording, but often unable to work. But while he was unwell, "Brand New Cadillac" found a new audience. Indeed, it found several audiences. The Hep Stars, a band from Sweden who featured a pre-ABBA Benny Andersson, had a number one hit in Sweden with their reworking of it, just titled "Cadillac", in 1965, just a month before Taylor's breakdown: [Excerpt: Hep Stars, "Cadillac"] In 1971, Mungo Jerry reworked the song as "Baby Jump", which went to number one in the UK, though they didn't credit Taylor: [Excerpt: Mungo Jerry, "Baby Jump"] And in 1979, the Clash recorded a version of it for their classic double-album London Calling: [Excerpt: The Clash, "Brand New Cadillac"] Shortly after recording that, Joe Strummer of the Clash met up with Taylor, who spent five hours explaining to Strummer how the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were trying to kill him with poisoned chocolate cake. Taylor at that time was still making music, and trying to latch on to whatever the latest trend was, as in his 1982 single "Space Invaders", inspired by the arcade game: [Excerpt: Vince Taylor, "Space Invaders"] But the new music he was making was almost an irrelevance -- by this point he had become a legend in the British music industry, not for who he was in 1982, but for who he was in 1958, and he has had songs written about him by people as diverse as Adam Ant and Van Morrison. But his biggest influence came in the years immediately after his breakdown. Between 1966 and 1972, Taylor spent much of his time in London, severely mentally ill, but trying to have some kind of social life based on his past glories, reminding people that he had once been a star. One of the people he got to know in London in the mid-sixties was a young musician named David Jones. Jones was fascinated by Taylor, even though he'd never liked his music -- Jones' brother was schizophrenic, and he was worried that he would end up like his brother. Jones also wanted to be a rock and roll star, and had some mildly messianic ideas of his own. So a rock and roll star who thought he was Jesus -- although he sometimes thought he was an alien, rather than Jesus, and sometimes claimed that Jesus *was* an alien -- and who was clearly severely mentally ill, had a fascination for him. He talked later about not having been able to decide whether he was seeing Taylor as an example to follow or a cautionary tale, and about how he'd sat with Taylor outside Charing Cross Station while Taylor had used a magnifying glass and a map of Europe to show him all the sites where aliens were going to land. Several years later, after changing his name to David Bowie, Jones remembered the story of Vince Taylor, the rock and roll star who thought he was an alien messiah, and turned it into the story of Ziggy Stardust: [Excerpt: David Bowie, "Ziggy Stardust"] In 1983, Taylor retired to Switzerland with his new wife Nathalie. He changed his name back to Brian Holden, and while he would play the occasional gig, he tried as best he could to forget his past, and seems to have recovered somewhat from his mental illness. In 1991 he was diagnosed with cancer, and died of it three months later. Shortly before he died, he told a friend "If I die, you can tell them that the only period in my life where I was really happy was my life in Switzerland".

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House Delights - 16

Mark Ryman's Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2020 57:16

Stay Safe. Stay Home and listen to this funky, soulful, disco-inspired, stylish house mix. TRACKLIST: 1. Choices – “Less Is More” 2. Mark Funk & Danny Cruz – “Superlovin’” 3. Alan Dixon – “Whatcha Gonna Do” 4. T. Williams ft Kelli-Leigh – “The Remedy” 5. Jimpster – “One” 6. Masaki Morii & Aaron Gray – “Sweetah” 7. Babert – “I Can’t Be You” 8. Vincent Caira – “12 Inches” 9. Dennis Cruz – “To Burn” 10. Michael Kiwanuka – “You Ain’t The Problem” (Claptone Remix)

choices tracklist remedy stay safe stay home delights inches michael kiwanuka jimpster less is more dennis cruz mark funk kelli leigh alan dixon babert danny cruz whatcha gonna do aaron gray claptone remix to burn

Episode 67

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 31, 2020

This weeks tracklist:01. Sunset City - Feels so right (Art of Tones '1982' extended mix)02. Brian SNR - Hot Shot (Yam Who? remix)03. Crush Club, Nicki B & The Vagabond - My man04. Soul Avengerz & Odyssey Inc - Just can't live without you05. Micky More & Andy Tee ft Angela Johnson - Time06. Oliver Dollar & Daniel Steinberg - Testified (Scan 7 the way of the 7 extended mix)07. Ricky Morrison & Brian Lucas - Uplifted (Sure Shot club vocal mix)08. Groove Junkies, Reelsoul & Tertulien Thomas - You can't hide (Groove 'N' Soul Vs DJ Spen retro Vox)09. Qubiko - Cosmo Pop10. David Penn & Roland Clark - The Power11. Qubiko - Disco Musique12. HOSH & 1979 ft Jalja - Midnight13. Orlando Voorn - In Da Jungle (Elliot Fitch extended mix)14. Ashibah - Devotion (Extended mix)15. Angelo Ferreri - Dance with me16. Sharam Jey - Your Body (Sammy Deuce mix)17. Mark Funk & Danny Cruz - Strawberry18. Deetron - Photon (Gerd Janson DJ version)19. Sunkids & Chance - Rescue Me (Joey Negro's in full swing mix)20. Odyssey Inc. - Whatcha Gonna Do 21. Fiorious - Future Romance (Mighty Mouse extended mix)22. Happy Clappers - I Believe (The Cube Guys mix - David Penn re-edit)23. Oliver Dollar & Seven David Jr. - Soundcheck

art vox tones soundcheck david penn hosh micky more reelsoul andy tee oliver dollar groove junkies odyssey inc mark funk soul avengerz whatcha gonna do crush club sunkids nicki b

Episode 67

Something for the Weekend

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 31, 2020

This weeks tracklist:01. Sunset City - Feels so right (Art of Tones '1982' extended mix)02. Brian SNR - Hot Shot (Yam Who? remix)03. Crush Club, Nicki B & The Vagabond - My man04. Soul Avengerz & Odyssey Inc - Just can't live without you05. Micky More & Andy Tee ft Angela Johnson - Time06. Oliver Dollar & Daniel Steinberg - Testified (Scan 7 the way of the 7 extended mix)07. Ricky Morrison & Brian Lucas - Uplifted (Sure Shot club vocal mix)08. Groove Junkies, Reelsoul & Tertulien Thomas - You can't hide (Groove 'N' Soul Vs DJ Spen retro Vox)09. Qubiko - Cosmo Pop10. David Penn & Roland Clark - The Power11. Qubiko - Disco Musique12. HOSH & 1979 ft Jalja - Midnight13. Orlando Voorn - In Da Jungle (Elliot Fitch extended mix)14. Ashibah - Devotion (Extended mix)15. Angelo Ferreri - Dance with me16. Sharam Jey - Your Body (Sammy Deuce mix)17. Mark Funk & Danny Cruz - Strawberry18. Deetron - Photon (Gerd Janson DJ version)19. Sunkids & Chance - Rescue Me (Joey Negro's in full swing mix)20. Odyssey Inc. - Whatcha Gonna Do 21. Fiorious - Future Romance (Mighty Mouse extended mix)22. Happy Clappers - I Believe (The Cube Guys mix - David Penn re-edit)23. Oliver Dollar & Seven David Jr. - Soundcheck

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Episode #553 - House Nation

Globalization Music Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 29, 2020 45:12

House Nation Wednesdays Track List: 1 - Adri Block - Get Up & Down 2 - Odyssey Inc. - Whatcha Gonna Do 3 - Coqui Selection - I'll House You 4 - Diplo & SIDEPIECE - On My Mind 5 - Mayka, Cheesecake Boys - U Want It 6 - Crazibiza - Soul Cool 7 - OFFAIAH - Soldier 8 - House Of Prayers - Let's Play House 9 - Black Blood - Take It Easy Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/djfrankievazquezpodcast/

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Dj Roman Dizel - Sexton live 03.01.20 A

DJ ROMAN DIZEL

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 12, 2020 60:02

01 2 Sides Of Soul - Hot for Your Love (Original Mix) 02 Luke Welsh - Tempo (Original Mix) 03 The Cube Guys - Plastic Dreams (Cubed Remix 2020) 04 Spooner Street & Rio Dela Duna - Take It Slow 05 Danny House & Rez Ekbatan - Chico Ya 06 KIZĒ - Alone (Extended Mix) 07 Geom - Bleeding in Love (Costa Mee Remix) 08 Last Midnight Train - Look Me (Original Mix) 09 AURIq, ZYQS - Follow Me (Original Club Mix) 10 Davide Mazzilli - Movin Around (Original Mix) 11 Jackers Revenge, Lissat - Voulez Vous (Original Mix) 12 Fly & Sasha Fashion - High Off You (Original Mix) 13 Yves V & Ilkay Sencan, Emie - Not So Bad (Extended Mix) 14 Vee Brondi, Steve Williams & Moreno, Orne - La Varela (Extended Mix) 15 Odyssey Inc. - Whatcha Gonna Do

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Dj Roman Dizel - Sexton live 03.01.20 A

DJ ROMAN DIZEL

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 12, 2020 60:02

01 2 Sides Of Soul - Hot for Your Love (Original Mix) 02 Luke Welsh - Tempo (Original Mix) 03 The Cube Guys - Plastic Dreams (Cubed Remix 2020) 04 Spooner Street & Rio Dela Duna - Take It Slow 05 Danny House & Rez Ekbatan - Chico Ya 06 KIZĒ - Alone (Extended Mix) 07 Geom - Bleeding in Love (Costa Mee Remix) 08 Last Midnight Train - Look Me (Original Mix) 09 AURIq, ZYQS - Follow Me (Original Club Mix) 10 Davide Mazzilli - Movin Around (Original Mix) 11 Jackers Revenge, Lissat - Voulez Vous (Original Mix) 12 Fly & Sasha Fashion - High Off You (Original Mix) 13 Yves V & Ilkay Sencan, Emie - Not So Bad (Extended Mix) 14 Vee Brondi, Steve Williams & Moreno, Orne - La Varela (Extended Mix) 15 Odyssey Inc. - Whatcha Gonna Do

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A brief message from Clint

Whatcha Gonna Do? The Hulk Hogan Movie Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 17, 2019 4:05

A brief message from Clint Carroll of the “Whatcha Gonna Do?” podcast getting you ready for next week’s Christmas episode. Follow us on Twitter @WGDPod Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/WGDPod Email us at WGDPod@gmail.com Check out our draft drawing video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc-nYmghcYQ Check out our recommendations list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TVswqyZHn-FOOmDAKNFp9dr6sTw4rcrb4Igcs1hB0uQ/edit?usp=sharing Check out our Instagram page at instagram.com/WGDPod Outro music: “Dangerous Drug” by Magnolia Brown Normal Theme music: “Find My Way” by Magnolia Brown “Old Bidness” music provided by Polyester Robot. Like and follow Polyester Robot on Facebook: Polyester Robot (Facebook) Recommendations music provided by Len Binning. Check out Len’s YouTube show “Len and Jim Take Over” (link) Follow Magnolia Brown on Facebook (facebook.com/MagnoliaBrownJams) and Reverb Nation (ReverbNation.com/MagnoliaBrownJams)

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Last Action Podcast - Bad Boys

Last Action Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2019 50:00

Whatcha Gonna Do?

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David Jenkins - Episode 751

CooperTalk

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2019 56:08

Steve Cooper talks with musician David Jenkins. David is best known for being a singer/songwriter and guitarist for the band Pablo Cruise. Pablo Cruise was formed in 1973, and released eight studio albums over the next decade, during which time five singles, including Love Will Find a Way and Whatcha Gonna Do, reached the top 25 of the Billboard Hot 100. From 1975 to 1983 the band recorded eight studio albums including two that went platinum. They also appeared on shows such as Dick Clark's American Bandstand, The Merv Griffin Show and the Dinah Shore Hour and in 1979 they broke Elvis Presley's attendance record at the Sahara Tahoe in Lake Tahoe and became the first rock band to grace the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.

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PRO WRASSLIN REFLECTION PRESENTS - THE PRO WRESTLING SPOTLIGHT EPISODE 2: HULK HOGAN

HACKERHAMIN

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 21, 2019 92:09

It's time to "Hulk Up" with a brand new "Spotlight" on perhaps the most iconic figure in the history of pro wrestling.... Hulk Hogan!!! Your executive producer Big Ray is here to give you his thoughts on the career of the Hulkster as well as breaking down his favorite five Hogan matches! Are these matches your favorite Hulkamania induced bouts?! Say your prayers, eat your vitamins and tune in to find out! WHATCHA GONNA DO?!!! WHEN HULKAMANIA, HAMIN MEDIA AND THE PRO WRASSLIN' REFLECTION RUN WILD ON YOU?!!! BROTHER!!!!

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Two Cents Radio: Episode #223 – Whatcha Gonna Do?

Two Cents Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2019 91:11

Rob lectures Nico on his impending legal trouble to kick off an extra-gloomy edition of TCR. Other topics include: excessive government regulation, the miniseries Chernobyl,… The post Two Cents Radio: Episode #223 – Whatcha Gonna Do? appeared first on Too Many Thoughts.

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Two Cents Radio: Episode #223 – Whatcha Gonna Do?

Reality TV Podcast - Survivor Podcast - Amazing Race Podcast - Big Brother Podcast - RFF Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2019 91:11

Rob lectures Nico on his impending legal trouble to kick off an extra-gloomy edition of TCR. Other topics include: excessive government regulation, the miniseries Chernobyl,… The post Two Cents Radio: Episode #223 – Whatcha Gonna Do? appeared first on Too Many Thoughts.

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2019 Mid Winter Electro Mix :: Pops+Electro House Mix (^^)

HappyPartyMixes!(^_^)b

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2019 71:51

1.Speechless . . . Robin Schulz ft. Erika Sirola 2.Whatcha Gonna Do . . . KENTO 3.Got Habits [Leon Lour Remix] . . . Two Can 4.Sweet But Psycho [Morgan Page Remix] . . . Ava Max 5.thank u, next [RudeLies Remix] . . . Ariana Grande 6.Woman Like Me [Dan Judge & Jordan King Remix] . . . Little Mix ft. Nicki Minaj 7.Walking On A Dream [Sonic Motivation Remix] . . . Empire Of The Sun 8.Baby [Country Club Martini Crew Remix] . . . Clean Bandit ft. Martina And The Diamonds & Luis Fonsi 9.Move Along [Corrupt Remix] . . . The All American Rejects 10.Feels Good . . . Marc Kiss, SAWO, & Crystal Rock 11.Can't Have [Yoshy Wizer Remix] . . . EMMA WAHLIN 12.Shut Up [Safety First! Remix] . . . Black Eyed Peas 13.Make Me Do [MOWE Remix] . . . Fais 14.Oh Babe . . . Thomas Newson & Jack Note 15.Shallow [Keepin It Heale Remix] . . . Bradley Cooper & Lady Gaga 16.1999 [Alphalove Remix] . . . Charli XCX & Troye Sivan 17.Move (Time To Get Loose) [Joe Stone Remix] . . . Young Romantic 18.Ruin My Life [Futose Remix] . . . Zara Larsson 19.No Drama [Finlay C Remix] . . . James Hype & Craig David 20.Just Got Paid [Spike Kuribo Remix] . . . Sigala, Ella Eyre, & Meghan Trainor ft. French Montana 21.This Time I Know It's For Real . . . Le Boeuf ft. Nadia Gattas

Bluesmoose 1422-08-2019

Blues Music (Blues moose radio)

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2019 60:52

Eric Clapton – Blues before sunrise - From The Cradle 1994 Susan Tedeschi – The Feeling Misic Brings –Live From Austin Tx 2004 Umberto Porcaro & Roller Coaster – Blonde Brunettes And redheads –Burn the Day Away 2006 Monster Mike Welch – Masters Of War –adding Insight To Injury 2004 Memo Gonzales & The Bluescasters – It’s Been Awile –big Time in Big D 2003 Mark Guitar Miller – Goin’ down by The River –Whatcha Gonna Do! 2009 Stevie ray Vaughan And double Trouble – Chanche It –Soul to Soul 1985 Lonnie Mack – Cincinnati jail –Attack Of The killer V 1990 Andrew Brown – It’s Your Fault Big Brown’s Blues Disc 1 2007 Kenny Wayne shepherd & B.B. King - The Thrill is Gone –!0 days out: Blues from The Backroads 2007

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Ice Cold Beer | BEB 355

Black-Eyed N Blues

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2019 140:00

Playlist: Dean Shot, Tiger Man, Junior Watson, That’s What You Do To Me, The Cherry Bluestorms, As Above So Below, Vanessa Collier, Honey Up, Regina Bonelli, Nothing I Can’t Handle, The Little Red Rooster Blues Band, Thrift Shop Rubbers, Bloodest Saxophone feat Jai Malano, Don’t Do It, Jason Robert, Mr. Bell, Amanda Fish, Not Again, Heather Newman, Burn Me Alive, Lindsay Beaver, Too Cold To Cry, Ben Rice, The One That Got Away, James Buddy Rogers, All I Need, Danny Lynn Wilson, Middle Class Blues, Willa Vincitore, Bite Me, Seth Rosenbloom, Palace Of The King, Benny Turner and Cash McCall, Money, The Trevor B. Power Band, I Wrote It Down, The Dee Miller Band, Midnight In Harlem, Vin Mott, Ice Cold Beer, Monster Mike Welch, She Makes Time, John Nemeth, Three Times A Fool, Little Charlie And Organ Grinder Swing, Receita De Samba, Sugar Ray & The Bluetones, Noontime Bell, The Nick Moss Band feat. Dennis Gruenling, Note On The Door, Joe Moss, Green Eyes, Jason Ricci, Mr. Satan, Rick Estrin & The Nightcats, The Blues Ain’t Going Nowhere, Ina Forsman, Whatcha Gonna Do, Chris O’Leary, Heartbreak Waiting To Happen, Randy Casey, Six Feet Of Rain, Slam Allen, Feel These Blues, Mojomatics, Soy Baby Many Thanks To: We here at the Black-Eyed & Blues Show would like to thank all the PR and radio people that get us music including Frank Roszak, Rick Lusher ,Doug Deutsch Publicity Services,American Showplace Music, Alive Natural Sounds, Ruf Records, Vizztone Records,Blind Pig Records,Delta Groove Records, Electro-Groove Records,Betsie Brown, Blind Raccoon Records, BratGirl Media, Mark Pucci Media and all of the Blues Societies both in the U.S. and abroad. All of you help make this show as good as it is weekly. We are proud to play your artists.Thank you all very much! https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id502316055

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Season 2 Episode 15: TKACHUKAMANIA RUNS WILD!

Third Line Plug Senscast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2019 57:42

WHATCHA GONNA DO...WHEN TKACHUKAMANIA RUNS WILD!!! The guys are back for another episode of the Third Line Plug Senscast! Listen as they discuss the weekly news cycle and games as well as Taylor discusses about Taggart and Torrens bringing their live show to Vancouver Island and Tim talks more about his experence with Tales of Vesperia! Avalanche 2 v Senators 5 Senators 4 v Hurricanes 1 Senators 2 v Blues 3

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Season 2 Episode 7: BathTime for the Tkachukamaniacs

Third Line Plug Senscast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2018 72:45

WHATCHA GONNA DO! WHEN TKACHUKAMANIACS HAVE A BATHTIME!!!! The guys are back again to discuss the news of the week as well as the three games. Listen as Tim gives his thoughts on Pokemon Lets Go, Taylor gives a rundown on his hectic week, and they both discuss the debut of "Drake The Snake" aka "BathTime" aka Drake Batherson Sens 1 v Panthers 5 Red Wings 1 v Sens 2 Pens 4 v Sens 6

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Season 2 Episode 2: TKACHUKAMANIA!

Third Line Plug Senscast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 16, 2018 60:47

WHATCHA GONNA DO...WHEN THE THIRD LINE PLUG SENSCAST RUNS WILD ON YOU!!!!!!! Tim and Taylor are back again for another episode; The guys discuss the news of the week as well as three games including the debut of "The Real American" Brady Tkachuk! Sens 3 Bruins 6 Flyers 7 Sens 4 Kings 1 Sens 5

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Episode 114: Hulk Hogan's 1989 - 1990

Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2018 159:16

Bruce and Conrad have covered the Mega Powers exploding and Zeus, but what about the rest of Hogan's 1989? Learn more about the script for No Holds Barred, how Hogan taking a dump saved the movie, how the movie nearly didn't make theaters, and all about the Rumble, Survivor Series, and SummerSlam matches that year with fun sidebars on Honky, Schiavone, Bad News, and Sherri. When we get to 1990 you won't believe what Bruce was suggesting but Vince shut down, why Vince shut it down, hear a hilarious Pat Patterson quote, why the switch to Warrior, Hogan's attitude at the time, why Hogan was taking time off, who was against the switch, background on Tenta, something Bruce always thought was funny about Tenta, the reason Tugboat wasn't at ringside at SummerSlam, why the letter campaign from Tugboat for Hulk was done, why SummerSlam 90 wasn't a clean finish, and much more. WHATCHA GONNA DO when Something to Wrestle runs wild on you?! (Oh and "always believe in yourself!") Tonight until midnight (8/10) is your LAST CHANCE to save $20 when you pre-order Starrcast featuring the Roast of Bruce Prichard, the Monday Night War Debate with Bruce & Eric, and 20 other shows! Until midnight tonight you can watch it all live and on-demand for just $79 at FITE.tv/starrcast -- but hurry, offer ends tonight at midnight EST! Want more content? Want the shows early and ad free? Support us on Patreon! patreon.com/SomethingToWrestle New York, San Antonio, Winston Salem, LA, Scotland, Ireland, England, and Phoenix on sale now: www.BrucePrichard.com Ask a question about SummerSlam 1998 next week: facebook.com/SomethingToWrestle or twitter.com/PrichardShow Tees are at BrucePrichard.com and everything else is at BoxOfGimmicks.com Save Yourself Some Money: www.SaveWithBruce.com Take your manhood to the max by trying Ageless Male Max and get your first 30-day bottle FREE – just pay shipping and handling - when you text the word “SLAM” to 79 79 79 Get your first three meals free at BlueApron.com/wrestling Get a free hat with your new awesome shorts at birddogs.com and use promo code WRESTLE

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The Grounded Podcast 57: Joe Welkie and Atif Myers

ben stiller greenberg dick clark david jenkins love will find pablo cruise whatcha gonna do

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2018 97:15

Jeff welcomes back Joe Welkie and Atif Myers because the boys had so much fun on the last episode. The boys talk about Hannah Gadsby's “Nanette” and the recent influx of “empowering comedy” fueled by “clapter” and good points. Jeff plays some clips from Nanette and a classic comedy special… The Boyz do a round of Whatcha Gonna Do's and learn alot about each other. Go see Joe's show Dating is Hard if you live in the LA area. Follow Joe and Atif: Insta: joewelkie Insta: atifmyers www.atifmyers.com Leave 5 Star reviews and share this podcast to your friends! Follow Jeff: www.jeffzenisek.com for shows! Facebook.com/jeffzenisek Twitter/insta/Snapchat: JeffZenisek Get on Jeff's YouTube channel, there is going to be some exciting new things there soon! Emails (Whatcha Gonna Dos, You Cannot Be Seriouses, Poll Ideas, Ask for Advice): Jeff@groundedpodcast.com Come to Jeff's new monthly show Wine Box at Oeno Vino in Los Angeles Instagram: wineboxshow

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Episode 144 - David Jenkins of Pablo Cruise

The Hustle

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 6, 2018 76:24

This week it's frontman for THE quintessential "yacht rock" band Pablo Cruise. These days that type of 70s rock has been given that yacht rock label, but back in the day Pablo Cruise just recorded great breezy songs that reminded you of warm nights in the sun and sounded great on the radio. They racked up a bunch of hits between '77 and '81 like "Love Will Find a Way" and "Whatcha Gonna Do" before eventually calling it quits. Thanks to the never-ending thirst for their sunny sound, Pablo Cruise remain a popular live draw to this day. David also works closely with his wife, the excellent singer-songwriter Jaime Kyle. In this chat we learn about where the name of the band came from, what Dick Clark is like when the cameras are off and what former guests he knows well. Also, I need you to help me clarify whether or not Ben Stiller wore a Pablo Cruise shirt in the movie Greenberg. Enjoy! https://www.pablocruise.com/

Proper Propaganda Ep. 131, "Big Trump in Little Gyna"

PROPER PROPAGANDA w/Ennis da Mennis

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2017 59:04

TRACKLIST “Wake Me Up” Remy Ma feat. Lil’ Kim “on & on” Ezri “Don’t Shoot” Blakface “Knockturnal” Talib Kweli Interlude: “Should Hillary Be Impeached?” BG: “Jay Dee 50” by J Dilla “Ridin” Rapsody feat. GQ “Movin It” Beatnick & K-Salaam feat. Tech N9ne & Wreckonize “Sold the Soul” Blu & Exile “History Has Its Eyes On You” John Legend “Whatcha Gonna Do” Jayo Felony feat. Method Man & DMX “Every Single Day” The Dogg Pound feat. Snoop Dogg “Officer” The Pharcyde Interlude: Michael Che “Freedom or Death” Poor Righteous Teachers “Listen to the DJ” Z Trip “Hippychick” Soho “My 1st Song” Jay-Z

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Episode 13 - No Holds Barred (Whatcha Gonna Do Podcast Swap)

Rock Talk: A Guide to the Films of Dwayne Johnson

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2017 50:15

Wait, this isn’t a Dwayne Johnson movie..? YOU BET YOUR SWEET JOCK-ASS IT ISN’T. We did a podswap for Halloween with the guys over at Whatcha Gonna Do, the podcast that puts Hulk Hogan movies under the microscope. We take a look at the Hulkster’s 1989 cinematic masterpiece “No Holds Barred” – they examine Rocky’s “Walking Tall”. And MY GAWD, we have questions. This single movie features a conference room full of scattered office chairs, a man telling a woman to “take a leak”, and a grown man pooping his pants. AND THAT’S JUST IN THE FIRST 20 MINUTES! Also!! Justin Lin is back, baby!! The Rock meets Stan Lee!! Even big tough football boys like Moana!! Check out Whatcha Gonna Do on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Grounded Podcast 47

snapchat grounded hp whatcha gonna do

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 27, 2017 57:22

Jeff does another classic solo episode to deliver some anger because this podcast is recorded over the course of an entire day and a half because Jeff runs into constant issues, for the second time this week his fancy HP printer fails to do what he wanted to do (quickly print a thing without a 3 hour ordeal). Jeff is also very frustrated to find that he got a poor review that also indirectly immasculated him for driving a minivan and having amazing long hair. Jeff has several things to discuss in the You Cannot Be Serious Segment. Jeff had some positive things happen for him, he got a commercial agent, a couple of last minute spots at the comedy clubs in town, got hit on by a homeless drifter looking for a place to stay after the show. Jeff discusses a few simple halloween costumes for dudes to do and still look like you tried. Some of his classic go-to costumes Jeff also goes down a masquerade ball rabbit hole and figures out that masquerade balls were just parties that existed before the invention of the gloryhole. Then Jeff comes up with a romantic comedy that involves two men meeting at a gloryhole and becoming soul mates. Send in stuff for the podcast: Whatcha Gonna Do? Ask for Advice Twitter Poll ideas You Cannot Be Serious Email: Jeff@groundedpodcast.com Insta, Snapchat, Twitter: JeffZenisek | GroundedPodcast

Episode 12.5 - Live From New York, It's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

Rock Talk: A Guide to the Films of Dwayne Johnson

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2017 22:40

LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON!! From “Bambi” to a Chicago-style monologue, DJ really illustrates what’s so magical about America’s longest-running TV comedy institution. Charlie and Jordan scrubbed through 20-plus years of sketches and monologues to bring you the best of DJ on Saturday Night Live. If you guys like clips, then HOO BOY this is your episode. PLUS: Next week, we’re crossing over with the guys at Whatcha Gonna Do, the podcast that puts Hulk Hogan’s movie career under the microscope. You could call them our podcast soulmates. They’ll be looking at “Walking Tall”, and we’ll bring you an episode about the Hulkster’s “No Holds Barred”. CAN YOU SMELL WHAT THE HULKSTER IS COOKIN’, BROTHER??

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Episode 12 - Central Intelligence

Rock Talk: A Guide to the Films of Dwayne Johnson

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2017 52:01

THE JABRONIS ARE BACK – AND THEY DON’T LIKE BULLIES. Rock Talk returns from a week off to break down what is perhaps the best comedy entry in the Johnson canon. (Johnson cannon might be my favorite new euphemism.) Jordan and Charlie discuss 2016’s Central Intelligence, a movie that answers some of life’s most puzzling questions like: What would Dwayne Johnson look like as a chubby, brace-faced 17-year old? Why is Jason Bateman so good at playing total douches? Are Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson the Devito/Schwarzenegger duo of our time? PLUS, WE GET TOTAL ROCK BUTT IN THIS MOVIE. Also!! DJ reveals his inspiration for Maui!! Hobbs v. Shaw has a release date!! ‘The Rock Test’ is the best way to protect yourself against workplace sexual harassment!! COMING SOON: A crossover episode with the guys over at the “Whatcha Gonna Do?” podcast. They are our podcast soul mates, taking a look at the short but colorful movie career of Hulk Hogan. In two weeks, we’ll be posting two episodes to the Rock Talk feed. The WGD guys will look at “Walking Tall” while we switch things up and look into the Hulkster’s 1989 masterpiece “No Holds Barred”.

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Episode 13: The Popcorn is Too Damn High (feat. Clint Carroll)

Settle The Score

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 23, 2017 27:07

In this episode of Settle The Score Tommy, Sam, and featured guest Clint Carroll of "Whatcha Gonna Do?" take on some more of the day's hottest topics. We slide over to Clint's areas of expertise, which are movies and Hulk Hogan. Is going to the movies a worthwhile investment? Is professional wrestling actually a sport? Can cats beat up penguins? Where is it cool to sit on a train? We answer these questions and much much more on this week's episode of Settle the Score!

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Episode 13: The Popcorn is Too Damn High (feat. Clint Carroll)

Settle The Score

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2017 27:07

In this episode of Settle The Score Tommy, Sam, and featured guest Clint Carroll of "Whatcha Gonna Do?" take on some more of the day's hottest topics. We slide over to Clint's areas of expertise, which are movies and Hulk Hogan. Is going to the movies a worthwhile investment? Is professional wrestling actually a sport? Can cats beat up penguins? Where is it cool to sit on a train? We answer these questions and much much more on this week's episode of Settle the Score!

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The Grounded Podcast 40

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2017 54:09

Jeff Zenisek comes back for episode 40 with a solo episode to talk about opening for Theo Von in a Casino, his previous casino shows, and to discuss the recent dude who crushed it on The Price is Right by setting a legendary record for Plinko. Jeff gets kicked out of his hotel in the middle of the podcast and had to finish it from his apartment to discuss the recent trend circling the blog circuit about the idea of marrying yourself or "Sologomy". Follow Jeff on EVERYTHING: Instagram: JeffZenisek Twitter: @JeffZenisek Subscribe to the Jeff Zenisek YouTube Channel Play games with Jeff on PS4: DangerZenisek Check www.jeffzenisek.com for tour dates HUGE SUMMER TOUR COMING UP!!! Send emails (Whatcha Gonna Do's, You Cannot Be Serious, ask for advice, etc) Be a true ZENISEK'S ADDICT!!!

The Grounded Podcast 35

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2017 51:15

Jeff does a late night podcast to ramble about Tea, dating apps, having to make a username for dating apps (Jdate in particular). getting a girlfriend and doing LA shit. Jeff went to the LA Zoo for the first time. Jeff talks about his Zoo visit, does a twitter poll to see "What is the worst pet?" Jeff talks a little about the La Brea Tar Pits, which is another LA thing to do that Jeff will check out soon. Jeff tells a few rambling stories about going to the Wave Pool in West Virginia, and having rat and mouse issues in his dorms in college. Send in stuff for the podcast to Whatcha Gonna Do? Twitter Poll ideas You Cannot Be Serious Email: Jeff@groundedpodcast.com Insta, Snapchat, Twitter JeffZenisek GroundedPodcast

The Grounded Podcast 31: JD Short and Brian Ball of The Snappy Hour

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 25, 2017 86:55

Jeff Zenisek welcomes the hosts of The Snappy Hour Podcast (@TheSnappyHour @JDShort and @TheBrianShow) This is part of PODCASTAMANIA with THE SNAPPY HOUR PODCAST. Please subscribe to them Jeff starts the podcast with a West Virginia reminisce session where Jeff and JD talk about going to Star Wars Episode 1 on midnight premiere, and how awful it was. They discuss the Wrong Turn movie and how West Virginia gets a bad rap. Also a few guest YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUSES This is a pretty WHATCHA GONNA DO heavy podcast with some TWITTER POLLS. A few serious questions are to be answered. What is the proper dick pic ettiquette for sending and recieving nudes? Would you make everyone else's dick smaller or just make yours bigger? Drive home in rain? or business luncheon every day. French kiss your dad? or a cow's butthole? Please subscribe and review both podcasts with 5 Stars on iTunes. Follow The Snappy Hour and the hosts: twitter/instagram facebook.com/TheSnappyHour thesnappyhour.com @TheSnappyHour @JDShort @TheBrianShow/ (@The_Brian_Show on twitter) Also don't forget about our hero Jeff Zenisek Twitter/insta/Snapchat JeffZenisek GroundedPodcast www.jeffzenisek.com facebook.com/jeffzenisek facebook.com/jeffzenisekcomedy facebook.com/groundedpodcast Send EMAILS!!! jeff@groundedpodcast.com

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The Grounded Podcast 17: Christina Schriver

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2016 57:34

Jeff has fellow comedian Christina Schriver on the podcast to discuss her first paid road gig in comedy, doing clean shows for people that are not ideal comedy audiences. Jeff shows Christina the amazing underground hip/hop artist Stitches. Jeff also asks Christina a difficult Whatcha Gonna Do? Give the Grounded Podcast your 5-star reviews! Email him: jeff@groundedpodcast.com follow on Twitter, Facebook, Insta, Snapchat, etc. JeffZenisek

The Grounded Podcast 16

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Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2016 48:53

Jeff talks about doing shows for doing shows in south Florida for mostly older crowds, childhood toys. Then Jeff goes down an internet rabbit hole watching clips of old game shows he wanted to be on like Double Dare, Guts, Nick Arcade and Legends of the Hidden Temple. Also Jeff finds a deep dark secret about the host of Double Dare. Then He watches and comments on videos where kids eat shit in the game shows. Also another WHATCHA GONNA DO! Follow Jeff: Snapchat, Insta, Twitter, Facebook, Periscope!!! @JeffZenisek jeffzenisek.com email him: Jeff@groundedpodcast.com

The Grounded Podcast 14

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 25, 2016 46:25

Jeff discusses the greatest Hulk Hogan promo of all time (Wrestlemania 4). Jeff talks about shitty places he has performed that later had a violent crime happen at the venue. Another video clip of Alonzo Hamburger Jones, this one is his joke on why he says hamburger all the time. Jeff tackles a new WHATCHA GONNA DO scenario, with a new Snapchat system. Please rate the show 5 stars on iTunes Email Jeff to ask for advice, send in whatcha gonna do's and ideas for music and video clips: Jeff@groundedpodcast.com Follow Jeff on everything (now also Snapchat) @JeffZenisek

Forever Summer 03

Forever Summer - The Best of Soulful and Beach House

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 7, 2016 60:14

The Sounds of the Sunshine Live Mixed by LXG Playlist: 1. Feels Like Heaven (Remix Instrumental) - Joi Cardwell, Lem Springsteen 2. What I Need (Kenny Carpenter Soul Edge Mix) - Giulio Bonaccio, Stephanie Cooke, Kenny Carpenter 3. Feeling U (Deep Mix) - Sonny Fodera, Yasmin 4. The World To Me (You Are) (Original Mix) - Jonny Montana, Craig Stewart, Dale Nortier, Stephanie Cooke 5. I Get Deep (Danny Coleman's Unreleased Remixes) - Roland Clark, Danny Coleman 6. Love the Way (Original Mix) - Maximilian G, Monica Mira, Raidel 7. Whatcha Gonna Do with My Lovin' (F & B House Mix) - LaShonda Reese, Antonello Ferrari, Aldo Bergamasco 8. Behind The Veil (Jose Carretas & Dj Spen Re Edit) - Tamara Wellons, Jose Carretas, DJ Spen 9. Back Together Again (Richard Earnshaw Vocal Mix)- Tony Momrelle, Chantae Cann, Richard Earnshaw 10. Timmy's Choir (Soulful Mix) - Timmy Vegas 11. Seein You (Saison Remix) - Eli Escobar, Saison

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The Grounded Podcast 10

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 18, 2016 53:07

Jeff offers up creative suggestions for a romantic Valentine's Day. Jeff talks about how Valentine's day has the worst candy of any holiday. And begins to describe his "Chex Mix Theory"Even though he should say "Trail Mix Theory" Jeff Apologizes for his recent email crisis, and then responds to the first LISTENER EMAILS!!!! Jeff talks about his recent road trip to DC and South of the Border. Musical segment with 4 Non Blondes. Jeff discusses what makes a song truly terrible for karaoke. Jeff reveals the twitter of @AmazingNachos who shared a show with him and got higher accolades than him. Send in Whatcha Gonna Do's, Ask for Advice, Brody Adventures, and Songs you want Jeff to talk about. jeff@groundedpodcast.com Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Periscope @JeffZenisek

The Grounded Podcast 09

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2015 49:39

Jeff talks about his experience and disappointment with this years Black Friday as well as the last few years. Hulk Hogan does a poetry reading. Jeff wants the listeners to email him Would You Rather Scenarios for the WHATCHA GONNA DO!!?? segment So Jeff elaborates on a previous WHATCHA GONNA DO to get the ball rolling and inspire the listeners. Jeff talks about a hot new indie rapper Stitches and his ridiculously hilarious music that is all about selling cocaine. Contact the Grounded Podcast for Advice WHATCHA GONNA DO Scenarios Musical segment clips Youtube clips jeff@groundedpodcast.com Follow: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook: @JeffZenisek@GroundedPodcast

The Grounded Podcast 06: Owen Benjamin