Podcasts about You Send Me

In Part 2 of this episode of Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy continues his analysis of the music of Sam Cooke. The Oscar-nominated film One Night in Miami… imagines the conversation between Cooke, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Jim Brown the night in 1964 they gathered to celebrate the soon-to-be Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight victory. Malcolm X challenges Sam Cooke to use his amazing voice to help “the struggle.” Little did he know Cooke had already recorded his civil‑rights masterpiece, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”   In his too-brief career—seven years as a gospel star, then seven more as a chart-conquering superstar—Sam Cooke took a remarkable journey: from the pathbreaking pop of “You Send Me,” to the wistful R&B of “(What a) Wonderful World,” to the yearning romance of “Bring It on Home to Me,” to—of course—the now-legendary “Change Is Gonna Come.” Meet the man who defined what soul music was and could be.   Hit Parade episodes are now split into two parts, released two weeks apart. For the full episode right now, sign up for Slate Plus and you'll also get The Bridge, our Trivia show and bonus deep dive. Click here for more info. Podcast production by Asha Saluja. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Part 2 of this episode of Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy continues his analysis of the music of Sam Cooke. The Oscar-nominated film One Night in Miami… imagines the conversation between Cooke, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Jim Brown the night in 1964 they gathered to celebrate the soon-to-be Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight victory. Malcolm X challenges Sam Cooke to use his amazing voice to help “the struggle.” Little did he know Cooke had already recorded his civil‑rights masterpiece, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”   In his too-brief career—seven years as a gospel star, then seven more as a chart-conquering superstar—Sam Cooke took a remarkable journey: from the pathbreaking pop of “You Send Me,” to the wistful R&B of “(What a) Wonderful World,” to the yearning romance of “Bring It on Home to Me,” to—of course—the now-legendary “Change Is Gonna Come.” Meet the man who defined what soul music was and could be.   Hit Parade episodes are now split into two parts, released two weeks apart. For the full episode right now, sign up for Slate Plus and you'll also get The Bridge, our Trivia show and bonus deep dive. Click here for more info. Podcast production by Asha Saluja. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Part 2 of this episode of Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy continues his analysis of the music of Sam Cooke. The Oscar-nominated film One Night in Miami… imagines the conversation between Cooke, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Jim Brown the night in 1964 they gathered to celebrate the soon-to-be Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight victory. Malcolm X challenges Sam Cooke to use his amazing voice to help “the struggle.” Little did he know Cooke had already recorded his civil‑rights masterpiece, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”   In his too-brief career—seven years as a gospel star, then seven more as a chart-conquering superstar—Sam Cooke took a remarkable journey: from the pathbreaking pop of “You Send Me,” to the wistful R&B of “(What a) Wonderful World,” to the yearning romance of “Bring It on Home to Me,” to—of course—the now-legendary “Change Is Gonna Come.” Meet the man who defined what soul music was and could be.   Hit Parade episodes are now split into two parts, released two weeks apart. For the full episode right now, sign up for Slate Plus and you'll also get The Bridge, our Trivia show and bonus deep dive. Click here for more info. Podcast production by Asha Saluja. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Todo el mundo necesita música y frente al estrés de nuestro tiempo tan convulso un lunes de música relajada con artistas legendarios: Springsteen, Kate Bush, Willie Nelson, Sinead O’Connor, Rod Stewart... Algunas versiones... De Sam Cooke, Elton John, Peter Gabriel, Roberta Flack o The Bluer Nile. Y algún tema oculto... Empezamos con un fragmento bellísimo de la banda original de la serie “This Is Us (Así Somos”) que ya estrena la 5ª temporada. DISCO 1 SIDDARTHA KOSHLA Blip On The Radar (Moonshadow) 6’05 DISCO 2 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Stray Bullet 6’10 DISCO 3 KANDACE SPRINGS Killing Me Softly With His Song 5’17 DISCO 4 BRUCE HORNSBY Madman Across The Water 6’10 DISCO 5 KATE BUSH Rocket Man 5’ DISCO 6 WILLIE NELSON & SINEAD O’CONNOR Don't Give Up 6’59 DISCO 7 THE BLUE NILE Heatwave 6’29 DISCO 8 ROD STEWART The Downtown Lights 6’34 DISCO 9 ROY AYERS & Carla Vaughn You Send Me 8’28 You Send Me 1978 Escuchar audio

Hit The Oscar-nominated film One Night in Miami… imagines the conversation between Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Jim Brown the night in 1964 they gathered to celebrate the soon-to-be Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight victory. Malcolm X challenges Sam Cooke to use his amazing voice to help “the struggle.” Little did he know Cooke had already recorded his civil‑rights masterpiece, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”   In this episode, Chris Molanphy sets the record straight on the man now called the King of Soul. In his too-brief career—seven years as a gospel star, then seven more as a chart-conquering superstar—Sam Cooke took a remarkable journey: from the pathbreaking pop of “You Send Me,” to the wistful R&B of “(What a) Wonderful World,” to the yearning romance of “Bring It on Home to Me,” to—of course—the now-legendary “Change Is Gonna Come.” Meet the man who defined what soul music was and could be.   Hit Parade episodes are now split into two parts, released two weeks apart. For the full episode right now, sign up for Slate Plus and you'll also get The Bridge, our Trivia show and bonus deep dive. Click here for more info. Podcast production by Asha Saluja. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Oscar-nominated film One Night in Miami… imagines the conversation between Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Jim Brown the night in 1964 they gathered to celebrate the soon-to-be Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight victory. Malcolm X challenges Sam Cooke to use his amazing voice to help “the struggle.” Little did he know Cooke had already recorded his civil‑rights masterpiece, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”   In this episode, Chris Molanphy sets the record straight on the man now called the King of Soul. In his too-brief career—seven years as a gospel star, then seven more as a chart-conquering superstar—Sam Cooke took a remarkable journey: from the pathbreaking pop of “You Send Me,” to the wistful R&B of “(What a) Wonderful World,” to the yearning romance of “Bring It on Home to Me,” to—of course—the now-legendary “Change Is Gonna Come.” Meet the man who defined what soul music was and could be.   Hit Parade episodes are now split into two parts, released two weeks apart. For the full episode right now, sign up for Slate Plus and you'll also get The Bridge, our Trivia show and bonus deep dive. Click here for more info. Podcast production by Asha Saluja. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Oscar-nominated film One Night in Miami… imagines the conversation between Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Jim Brown the night in 1964 they gathered to celebrate the soon-to-be Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight victory. Malcolm X challenges Sam Cooke to use his amazing voice to help “the struggle.” Little did he know Cooke had already recorded his civil‑rights masterpiece, “A Change Is Gonna Come.”   In this episode, Chris Molanphy sets the record straight on the man now called the King of Soul. In his too-brief career—seven years as a gospel star, then seven more as a chart-conquering superstar—Sam Cooke took a remarkable journey: from the pathbreaking pop of “You Send Me,” to the wistful R&B of “(What a) Wonderful World,” to the yearning romance of “Bring It on Home to Me,” to—of course—the now-legendary “Change Is Gonna Come.” Meet the man who defined what soul music was and could be.   Hit Parade episodes are now split into two parts, released two weeks apart. For the full episode right now, sign up for Slate Plus and you'll also get The Bridge, our Trivia show and bonus deep dive. Click here for more info. Podcast production by Asha Saluja. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cupid draw back your bow / and let your arrow go / straight to my listener's ears so they can hear this all new episode of Fire and Water Records! In honor of Black History Month, Ryan Daly and special guest Herman Louw shine the spotlight on pioneering singer-songwriter, the King of Soul, Sam Cooke. Tune in as the guys share their favorite Sam Cooke hits (and misses) and discuss the legendary singer's too-brief career ending in his controversial death. What's Ryan's favorite song of all time? What album does he think is perfect? Listen and find out! Track list "You Send Me" "Another Saturday Night" "Cupid" "(What A) Wonderful World" "Only Sixteen" "Get Yourself Another Fool" "Twistin' the Night Away" "A Change is Gonna Come" "Teenage Sonata" "Shake, Rattle and Roll" "Bring It On Home to Me" Additional songs: "One More River to Cross" by The Soul Stirrers; "Meet Me At Mary's Place", "Having a Party", "(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons", "(Don't Fight It) Feel It" (Live), "Bring It On Home to Me" (Live). Let us know what you think! Leave a comment or send an email to: RDalyPodcast@gmail.com. Like the FIRE AND WATER RECORDS Facebook page at: This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK. Visit our WEBSITE: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com/ Follow us on TWITTER – https://twitter.com/FWPodcasts Like our FACEBOOK page – https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Subscribe to FIRE AND WATER RECORDS on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fire-and-water-records/id1458818655 Or subscribe via iTunes as part of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST: http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/the-fire-and-water-podcast/id463855630 Support FIRE AND WATER RECORDS and the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Thanks for listening!

Marc Brillouet vertelt...over de Sam Cooke-klassieker YOU SEND ME © 2020 Daisy Lane & Marc Brillouet

Who can forget Barney on The Andy Griffith Show. His strange way of communicating and body language set him aside as one of this Country's most remembered television stars. The music of Sam Cooke with Basin Street Blues and You Send Me are only two of his gigantic hits.Grady L. talks in more one-liners that are sure to 'hit a funny-bone'. Enjoy!

Story: Vel OmarrInfo from: Vel Omarr's BioSongs by: Vel OmarrTitle Tracks: 1. How Can I Make You Mine 2. Hurry Back Home 3. If I Should Get to Heaven 4. The Power of Your LovePERMISSION to play songs: Vel OmarrPhoto credit: Vel OmarrGood morning everyone! It's time for some good old fashioned love songs. Coming up next Vel Omarr.Vel Omarr, according to his bio, was born in Mississippi Delta. His mother moved to Chicago in search of better things. Vel remained in Mississippi with his grandparents. He attended church on Sundays and recalls traveling to neighboring towns participating in or sometimes observing the "Gospel Fests".At the age of eight, Vel moved to Chicago and reunited with his mother. The first song he heard on the radio as the train pulled into the station was "You Send Me", by Sam Cooke. Vel discovered his love for singing at the age of 14, and upon graduating, he decided to entertain the idea of singing as a way of life. In the early 1970s, Vel boarded a plane bound for Los Angeles to reposition himself, focus, and to pursue his dream as an entertainer. Vel joined the legendary R&B/DooWop group, The Robins, as their second tenor lead singer, for a reunion tour in 1991. In 2003, he joined The Olympics as one of their lead singers and has performed alongside other legendary artists like Little Anthony and the Imperials, The Penguins, The Coasters, Gene Chandler, The Flamingos, Zola Taylor of the Platters, and many more. As a singer in Brenton Woods Sweet Old School Revue, Vel has also opened for and appeared with such legendary greats as James Brown, Etta James, and Little Richard just to name a few. As a solo artist, he released an independently-released CD in 2001 called "Vel Omarr Sings Sam Cooke & More", which was inevitable since nobody can sound like Sam Cooke as well as Omarr. In 2008 he self-released the fantastic LP "How Can I Make You Mine". Two tracks, "Lover's De Ja Vu" "Stay Where You Are" featuring The Legendary Olympics who he is also the lead singer of.Vel Omar is still singing and making music. Though he sings like Sam Cooke and credits him as his influence, Omarr is set to establish himself as an individual artist who just happens to bring back the spirit of Sam Cooke. This morning Mr. Vel Omarr sent me some music for you to hear. I'm going to play a little bit of each song. You might also like to subscribe to Vel's YouTube Channel. Just look up Vel Omarr's "Soul Trilogy" _ Like and Subscribe. And to learn more about him, you can go to his website at Vel-omarr.comLet's begin now with the first song, "How Can I Make You Mine" ...... (music)Vel Omar, How Can I Make You Mine. You can get a copy of that at Amazon.com Also at iTunes, and Spotify. Now, let's hear a little bit of the next song titled "Hurry Back Home" ... (music)Yes, beautiful song. Get your copy today. I'm feeling the spirit of Sam Cooke as if he never left through Vel Omar. Now, lets hear other one of his songs titled "If I Should Get To Heaven". (music)Oh Boy! Vel Omarr, "If I Should Get To Heaven" Get Your copy today!There is one more song by Vel and it's titled "The Power of Your Love" (music)Did you enjoy that? I love all of Vel Omarr's songs. If you would like a copy of his songs, don't forget to go to iTunes, Spotify, or Amazon. I'm Gail Nobles, and you have been listening to the sounds of a new retro. Today's topic - Vel Omar. Goodbye friends!

This week there are two episiodes of the podcast going up, both of them longer than normal. This one, episode ninety-nine, is on "Surfin' Safari" by the Beach Boys, and the group's roots in LA, and is fifty minutes long. 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 "Misirlou" by Dick Dale and the Deltones. 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 No Mixclouds this week, as both episodes have far too many songs by one artist. The mixclouds will be back with episode 101. I used many resources for this episode, most of which will be used in future Beach Boys episodes too. It's difficult to enumerate everything here, because I have been an active member of the Beach Boys fan community for twenty-three years, and have at times just used my accumulated knowledge for this. But the resources I list here are ones I've checked for specific things. Becoming the Beach Boys by James B. Murphy is an in-depth look at the group's early years. Stephen McParland has published many, many books on the California surf and hot-rod music scenes, including several on both the Beach Boys and Gary Usher. The Beach Boys: Inception and Creation is the one I used most here, but I referred to several. His books can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Andrew Doe's Bellagio 10452 site is an invaluable resource. Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys FAQ is a good balance between accuracy and readability. And Philip Lambert's Inside the Music of Brian Wilson is an excellent, though sadly out of print, musicological analysis of Wilson's music from 1962 through 67. The Beach Boys' Morgan recordings and all the outtakes from them can be found on this 2-CD set. The Surfin' Safari album is now in the public domain, and so can be found cheaply, but the best version to get is still the twofer CD with the Surfin' USA album. *But*, those two albums are fairly weak, the Beach Boys in their early years were not really an album band, and you will want to investigate them further. I would recommend, rather than the two albums linked above, starting with this budget-priced three-CD set, which has a surprisingly good selection of their material on it.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today, there are going to be two podcast episodes. This one, episode ninety-nine, will be a normal-length episode, or maybe slightly longer than normal, and episode one hundred, which will follow straight after it, will be a super-length one that's at least three times the normal length of one of these podcasts. I'm releasing them together, because the two episodes really do go together. We've talked recently about how we're getting into the sixties of the popular imagination, and those 1960s began, specifically, in October 1962. That was the month of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which saw the world almost end. It was the month that James Brown released Live at the Apollo -- an album we'll talk about in a few weeks' time. And if you want one specific date that the 1960s started, it was October the fifth, 1962. On that date, a film came out that we mentioned last week -- Doctor No, the first ever James Bond film. It was also the date that two records were released on EMI in Britain. One was a new release by a British band, the other a record originally released a few months earlier in the USA, by an American band. Both bands had previously released records on much smaller labels, to no success other than very locally, but this was their first to be released on a major label, and had a slightly different lineup from those earlier releases. Both bands would influence each other, and go on to be the most successful band from their respective country in the next decade. Both bands would revolutionise popular music. And the two bands would even be filed next to each other alphabetically, both starting "the Bea". In episode one hundred, we're going to look at "Love Me Do" by the Beatles, but right now, in episode ninety-nine, we're going to look at "Surfin' Safari" by the Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surfin' Safari"] Before I start this story properly, I just want to say something -- there are a lot of different accounts of the formation of the Beach Boys, and those accounts are all different. What I've tried to do here is take one plausible account of how the group formed and tell it in a reasonable length of time. If you read the books I link in the show notes, you might find some disagreements about the precise order of some of these events, or some details I've glossed over. This episode is already running long, and I didn't want to get into that stuff, but it's important that I stress that this is just as accurate as I can get in the length of an episode. The Beach Boys really were boys when they made their first records. David Marks, their youngest member, was only thirteen when "Surfin' Safari" came out, and Mike Love, the group's oldest member, was twenty-one.  So, as you might imagine when we're talking about children, the story really starts with the older generation. In particular, we want to start with Hite and Dorinda Morgan. The Morgans were part-time music business people in Los Angeles in the fifties. Hite Morgan owned an industrial flooring company, and that was his main source of income -- putting in floors at warehouses and factories that could withstand the particular stresses that such industrial sites faced. But while that work was hard, it was well-paying and didn't take too much time. The company would take on two or three expensive jobs a year, and for the rest of the year Hite would have the money and time to help his wife with her work as a songwriter. She'd collaborated with Spade Cooley, one of the most famous Western Swing musicians of the forties, and she'd also co-written "Don't Put All Your Dreams in One Basket" for Ray Charles in 1948: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "Don't Put All Your Dreams in One Basket"] Hite and Dorinda's son, Bruce, was also a songwriter, though I've seen some claims that often the songs credited to him were actually written by his mother, who gave him credits in order to encourage him. One of Bruce Morgan's earliest songs was a piece called "Proverb Boogie", which was actually credited under his father's name, and which Louis Jordan retitled to "Heed My Warning" and took a co-writing credit on: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, "Heed My Warning"] Eventually the Morgans also started their own publishing company, and built their own small demo studio, which they used to use to record cheap demos for many other songwriters and performers. The Morgans were only very minor players in the music industry, but they were friendly with many of the big names on the LA R&B scene, and knew people like John Dolphin, Bumps Blackwell, Sam Cooke, and the Hollywood Flames. Bruce Morgan would talk in interviews about Bumps Blackwell calling round to see his father and telling him about this new song "You Send Me" he was going to record with Cooke. But although nobody could have realised it at the time, or for many years later, the Morgans' place in music history would be cemented in 1952, when Hite Morgan, working at his day job, met a man named Murry Wilson, who ran a machine-tool company based in Hawthorne, a small town in southwestern Los Angeles County. It turned out that Wilson, like Dorinda Morgan, was an aspiring songwriter, and Hite Morgan signed him up to their publishing company, Guild Music. Wilson's tastes in music were already becoming old-fashioned even in the very early 1950s, but given the style of music he was working in he was a moderately talented writer. His proudest moment was writing a song called "Two Step Side Step" for the Morgans, which was performed on TV by Lawrence Welk -- Murry gathered the whole family round the television to watch his song being performed.  That song was a moderate success – it was never a hit for anyone, but it was recorded by several country artists, including the rockabilly singer Bonnie Lou, and most interestingly for our purposes by Johnny Lee Wills, Bob Wills' brother: [Excerpt: Johnny Lee Wills, "Two Step Side Step"] Wilson wrote a few other songs for the Morgans, of which the most successful was "Tabarin", which was recorded by the Tangiers -- one of the several names under which the Hollywood Flames performed. Gaynel Hodge would later speak fondly of Murry Wilson, and how he was always bragging about his talented kids: [Excerpt: The Tangiers, "Tabarin"] But as the fifties progressed, the Morgans published fewer and fewer of Wilson's songs, and none of them were hits. But the Morgans and Wilson stayed in touch, and around 1958 he heard from them about an opportunity for one of those talented kids. Dorinda Morgan had written a song called "Chapel of Love" -- not the same song as the famous one by the Dixie Cups -- and Art Laboe had decided that that song would be perfect as the first record for his new label, Original Sound. Laboe was putting together a new group to sing it, called the Hitmakers, which was based around Val Poliuto. Poliuto had been the tenor singer of an integrated vocal group -- two Black members, one white, and one Hispanic -- which had gone by the names The Shadows and The Miracles before dismissing both names as being unlikely to lead to any success and taking the name The Jaguars at the suggestion of, of all people, Stan Freberg, the comedian and voice actor. The Jaguars had never had much commercial success, but they'd recorded a version of "The Way You Look Tonight" which became a classic when Laboe included it on the massively successful "Oldies But Goodies", the first doo-wop nostalgia album: [Excerpt: The Jaguars, "The Way You Look Tonight"] The Jaguars continued for many years, and at one point had Richard Berry guest as an extra vocalist on some of their tracks, but as with so many of the LA vocal groups we've looked at from the fifties, they all had their fingers in multiple pies, and so Poliuto was to be in this new group, along with Bobby Adams of the Calvanes, who had been taught to sing R&B by Cornell Gunter and who had recorded for Dootsie Williams: [Excerpt: The Calvanes, "Crazy Over You"] Those two were to be joined by two other singers, who nobody involved can remember much about except that their first names were Don and Duke, but Art Laboe also wanted a new young singer to sing the lead, and was auditioning singers. Murry Wilson suggested to the Morgans that his young son Brian might be suitable for the role, and he auditioned, but Laboe thought he was too young, and the role went to a singer called Rodney Goodens instead: [Excerpt: The Hitmakers, "Chapel of Love"] So the audition was a failure, but it was a first contact between Brian Wilson and the Morgans, and also introduced Brian to Val Poliuto, from whom he would learn a lot about music for the next few years. Brian was a very sensitive kid, the oldest of three brothers, and someone who seemed to have some difficulty dealing with other people -- possibly because his father was abusive towards him and his brothers, leaving him frightened of many aspects of life. He did, though, share with his father a love of music, and he had a remarkable ear -- singular, as he's deaf in one ear. He had perfect pitch, a great recollection for melodies -- play him something once and it would stay in his brain -- and from a very young age he gravitated towards sweet-sounding music. He particularly loved Glenn Miller's version of "Rhapsody in Blue" as a child: [Excerpt: The Glenn Miller Orchestra, "Rhapsody in Blue"] But his big musical love was a modern harmony group called the Four Freshmen -- a group made up of two brothers, their cousin, and a college friend. Modern harmony is an outdated term, but it basically meant that they were singing chords that went beyond the normal simple triads of most pop music. While there were four, obviously, of the Four Freshmen, they often achieved an effect that would normally be five-part harmony, by having the group members sing all the parts of the chord *except* the root note -- they'd leave the root note to a bass instrument. So while Brian was listening to four singers, he was learning five-part harmonies. The group would also sing their harmonies in unusual inversions -- they'd take one of the notes from the middle of the chord and sing it an octave lower. There was another trick that the Four Freshmen used -- they varied their vocals from equal temperament.  To explain this a little bit -- musical notes are based on frequencies, and the ratio between them matters. If you double the frequency of a note, you get the same note an octave up -- so if you take an A at 440hz, and double the frequency to 880, you get another A, an octave up. If you go down to 220hz, you get the A an octave below. You get all the different notes by multiplying or dividing a note, so A# is A multiplied by a tiny bit more than one, and A flat is A multiplied by a tiny bit less than one. But in the middle ages, this hit a snag -- A#. which is A multiplied by one and a bit, is very very slightly different from B flat, which is B multiplied by 0.9 something. And if you double those, so you go to the A# and B flat the next octave up, the difference between A# and B flat gets bigger. And this means that if you play a melody in the key of C, but then decide you want to play it in the key of B flat, you need to retune your instrument -- or have instruments with separate notes for A# and B flat -- or everything will sound out of tune. It's very very hard to retune some instruments, especially ones like the piano, and also sometimes you want to play in different keys in the same piece. If you're playing a song in C, but it goes into C# in the last chorus to give it a bit of extra momentum, you lose that extra momentum if you stop the song to retune the piano. So a different system was invented, and popularised in the Baroque era, called "equal temperament". In that system, every note is very very slightly out of tune, but those tiny errors cancel out rather than multiply like they do in the old system. You're sort of taking the average of A# and B flat, and calling them the same note. And to most people's ears that sounds good enough, and it means you can have a piano without a thousand keys.  But the Four Freshmen didn't stick to that -- because you don't need to retune your throat to hit different notes (unless you're as bad a singer as me, anyway). They would sing B flat slightly differently than they would sing A#, and so they would get a purer vocal blend, with stronger harmonic overtones than singers who were singing the notes as placed on a piano: [Excerpt: the Four Freshmen, "It's a Blue World"] Please note by the way that I'm taking the fact that they used those non-equal temperaments somewhat on trust -- Ross Barbour of the group said they did in interviews, and he would know, but I have relatively poor pitch so if you listened to that and thought "Hang on, they're all singing dead-on equal tempered concert pitch, what's he talking about?", then that's on him. When Brian heard them singing, he instantly fell for them, and became a major, major fan of their work, especially their falsetto singer Bob Flanigan, whose voice he decided to emulate. He decided that he was going to learn how they got that sound. Every day when he got home from school, he would go to the family's music room, where he had a piano and a record player. He would then play just a second or so of one of their records, and figure out on the piano what notes they were singing in that one second, and duplicating them himself. Then he would learn the next second of the song. He would spend hours every day on this, learning every vocal part, until he had the Four Freshmen's entire repertoire burned into his brain, and could sing all four vocal parts to every song. Indeed, at one point when he was about sixteen -- around the same time as the Art Laboe audition -- Brian decided to go and visit the Four Freshmen's manager, to find out how to form a successful vocal group of his own, and to find out more about the group themselves. After telling the manager that he could sing every part of every one of their songs, the manager challenged him with "The Day Isn't Long Enough", a song that they apparently had trouble with: [Excerpt: The Four Freshmen, "The Day Isn't Long Enough"] And Brian demonstrated every harmony part perfectly. He had a couple of tape recorders at home, and he would experiment with overdubbing his own voice -- recording on one tape recorder, playing it back and singing along while recording on the other. Doing this he could do his own imitations of the Four Freshmen, and even as a teenager he could sound spookily like them: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys [Brian Wilson solo recording released on a Beach Boys CD], "Happy Birthday Four Freshmen"] While Brian shared his love for this kind of sweet music with his father, he also liked the rock and roll music that was making its way onto the radio during his teen years -- though again, he would gravitate towards the sweet vocal harmonies of the Everly Brothers rather than to more raucous music. He shared his love of the Everlys with his cousin Mike Love, whose tastes otherwise went more in the direction of R&B and doo-wop. Unlike Brian and his brothers, Mike attended Dorsey High School, a predominantly Black school, and his tastes were shaped by that -- other graduates of the school include Billy Preston, Eric Dolphy, and Arthur Lee, to give some idea of the kind of atmosphere that Dorsey High had. He loved the Robins, and later the Coasters, and he's been quoted as saying he "worshipped" Johnny Otis -- as did every R&B lover in LA at the time. He would listen to Otis' show on KFOX, and to Huggy Boy on KRKD. His favourite records were things like "Smokey Joe's Cafe" by the Robins, which combined an R&B groove with witty lyrics: [Excerpt: The Robins, "Smokey Joe's Cafe"] He also loved the music of Chuck Berry, a passion he shared with Brian's youngest brother Carl, who also listened to Otis' show and got Brian listening to it. While Mike was most attracted to Berry's witty lyrics, Carl loved the guitar part -- he'd loved string instruments since he was a tiny child, and he and a neighbour, David Marks, started taking guitar lessons from another neighbour, John Maus. Maus had been friends with Ritchie Valens, and had been a pallbearer at Valens' funeral. John was recording at the time with his sister Judy, as the imaginatively-named duo "John & Judy": [Excerpt: John & Judy, "Why This Feeling?"] John and Judy later took on a bass player called Scott Engel, and a few years after that John and Scott changed their surnames to Walker and became two thirds of The Walker Brothers. But at this time, John was still just a local guitar player, and teaching two enthusiastic kids to play guitar. Carl and David learned how to play Chuck Berry licks, and also started to learn some of the guitar instrumentals that were becoming popular at the time. At the same time, Mike would sing with Brian to pass the time, Mike singing in a bass voice while Brian took a high tenor lead. Other times, Brian would test his vocal arranging out by teaching Carl and his mother Audree vocal parts -- Carl got so he could learn parts very quickly, so his big brother wouldn't keep him around all day and he could go out and play. And sometimes their middle brother Dennis would join in -- though he was more interested in going out and having fun at the beach than he was in making music. Brian was interested in nothing *but* making music -- at least once he'd quit the school football team (American football, for those of you like me who parse the word to mean what it does in Britain), after he'd got hurt for the first time. But before he did that, he had managed to hurt someone else -- a much smaller teammate named Alan Jardine, whose leg Brian broke in a game. Despite that, the two became friends, and would occasionally sing together -- like Brian, Alan loved to sing harmonies, and they found that they had an extraordinarily good vocal blend. While Brian mostly sang with his brothers and his cousin, all of whom had a family vocal resemblance, Jardine could sound spookily similar to that family, and especially to Brian. Jardine's voice was a little stronger and more resonant, Brian's a little sweeter, with a fuller falsetto, but they had the kind of vocal similarity one normally only gets in family singers. However,  they didn't start performing together properly, because they had different tastes in music -- while Brian was most interested in the modern jazz harmonies of the Four Freshman, Jardine was a fan of the new folk revival groups, especially the Kingston Trio. Alan had a group called the Tikis when he was at high school, which would play Kingston Trio style material like "The Wreck of the John B", a song that like much of the Kingston Trio's material had been popularised by the Weavers, but which the Trio had recorded for their first album: [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "The Wreck of the John B"] Jardine was inspired by that to write his own song, "The Wreck of the Hesperus", putting Longfellow's poem to music. One of the other Tikis had a tape recorder, and they made a few stabs at recording it. They thought that they sounded pretty good, and they decided to go round to Brian Wilson's house to see if he could help them -- depending on who you ask, they either wanted him to join the band, or knew that his dad had some connection with the music business and wanted to pick his brains. When they turned up, Brian was actually out, but Audree Wilson basically had an open-door policy for local teenagers, and she told the boys about Hite and Dorinda Morgan. The Tikis took their tape to the Morgans, and the Morgans responded politely, saying that they did sound good -- but they sounded like the Kingston Trio, and there were a million groups that sounded like the Kingston Trio. They needed to get an original sound. The Tikis broke up, as Alan went off to Michigan to college. But then a year later, he came back to Hawthorne and enrolled in the same community college that Brian was enrolled in. Meanwhile, the Morgans had got in touch with Gary Winfrey, Alan's Tikis bandmate, and asked him if the Tikis would record a demo of one of Bruce Morgan's songs. As the Tikis no longer existed, Alan and Gary formed a new group along the same lines, and invited Brian to be part of one of these sessions. That group, The Islanders made a couple of attempts at Morgan's song, but nothing worked out. But this brought Brian back to the Morgans' attention -- at this point they'd not seen him in three years. Alan still wanted to record folk music with Brian, and at some point Brian suggested that they get his brother Carl and cousin Mike involved -- and then Brian's mother made him let his other brother Dennis join in.  The group went to see the Morgans, who once again told them that they needed some original material. Dennis piped up that the group had been fooling around with a song about surfing, and while the Morgans had never heard of the sport, they said it would be worth the group's while finishing off the song and coming back to them. At this point, the idea of a song about surfing was something that was only in Dennis' head, though he may have mentioned the idea to Mike at some point. Mike and the Wilsons went home and started working out the song, without Al being involved at this time -- some of the rehearsal recordings we have seem to suggest that they thought Al was a little overbearing and thought of himself as a bit more professional than the others, and they didn't want him in the group at first. While surf music was definitely already a thing, there were very few vocal surf records. Brian and Mike wrote the song together, with Mike writing most of the lyrics and coming up with his own bass vocal line, while Brian wrote the rest of the music: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surfin' (Rehearsal)"] None of the group other than Dennis surfed -- though Mike would later start surfing a little -- and so Dennis provided Mike with some surfing terms that they could add into the song. This led to what would be the first of many, many arguments about songwriting credit among the group, as Dennis claimed that he should get some credit for his contribution, while Mike disagreed: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Surfin' (Rehearsal)”] The credit was eventually assigned to Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Eventually, they finished the song, and decided that they *would* get Al Jardine back into the group after all. When Murry and Audree Wilson went away for a long weekend and left their boys some money for emergencies, the group saw their chance. They took that money, along with some more they borrowed from Al's mother, and rented some instruments -- a drum kit and a stand-up bass. They had a party at the Wilsons' house where they played their new song and a few others, in front of their friends, before going back to the Morgans with their new song completed. For their recording session, they used that stand-up bass, which Al played, along with Carl on an acoustic guitar, giving it that Kingston Trio sound that Al liked. Dennis was the group's drummer, but he wasn't yet very good and instead of drums the record has Brian thumping a dustbin lid as its percussion. As well as being the lead vocalist, Mike Love was meant to be the group's saxophone player, but he never progressed more than honking out a couple of notes, and he doesn't play on the session. The song they came up with was oddly structured -- it had a nine-bar verse and a fourteen-bar chorus, the latter of which was based around a twelve-bar blues, but extended to allow the "surf, surf with me" hook. But other than the unusual bar counts it followed the structure that the group would set up most of their early singles. The song seems at least in part to have been inspired by the song "Bermuda Shorts" by the Delroys, which is a song the group have often cited and would play in their earliest live shows: [Excerpt: The Delroys, "Bermuda Shorts"] They messed around with the structure in various ways in rehearsal, and those can be heard on the rehearsal recordings, but by the time they came into the studio they'd settled on starting with a brief statement of the chorus hook: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surfin'"] It then goes into a verse with Mike singing a tenor lead, with the rest of the group doing block harmonies and then joining him on the last line of the verse: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surfin'"] And then we have Mike switching down into the bass register to sing wordless doo-wop bass during the blues-based chorus, while the rest of the group again sing in block harmony: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surfin'"] That formula would be the one that the Beach Boys would stick with for several singles to follow -- the major change that would be made would be that Brian would soon start singing an independent falsetto line over the top of the choruses, rather than being in the block harmonies.  The single was licensed to Candix Records, along with a B-side written by Bruce Morgan, and it became a minor hit record, reaching number seventy-five on the national charts. But what surprised the group about the record was the name on it. They'd been calling themselves the Pendletones, because there was a brand of thick woollen shirt called Pendletons which was popular among surfers, and which the group wore.  It might also have been intended as a pun on Dick Dale's Deltones, the preeminent surf music group of the time. But Hite Morgan had thought the name didn't work, and they needed something that was more descriptive of the music they were doing. He'd suggested The Surfers, but Russ Regan, a record promoter, had told him there was already a group called the Surfers, and suggested another name. So the first time the Wilsons realised they were now in the Beach Boys was when they saw the record label for the first time. The group started working on follow-ups -- and as they were now performing live shows to promote their records, they switched to using electric guitars when they went into the studio to record some demos in February 1962. By now, Al was playing rhythm guitar, while Brian took over on bass, now playing a bass guitar rather than the double bass Al had played. For that session, as Dennis was still not that great a drummer, Brian decided to bring in a session player, and Dennis stormed out of the studio. However, the session player was apparently flashy and overplayed, and got paid off. Brian persuaded Dennis to come back and take over on drums again, and the session resumed. Val Poliuto was also at the session, in case they needed some keyboards, but he's not audible on any of the tracks they recorded, at least to my ears. The most likely song for a follow-up was another one by Brian and Mike. This one was very much a rewrite of "Surfin'", but this time the verses were a more normal eight bars, and the choruses were a compromise between the standard twelve-bar blues and "Surfin'"s fourteen, landing on an unusual thirteen bars. With the electric guitars the group decided to bring in a Chuck Berry influence, and you can hear a certain similarity to songs like "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" in the rhythm and phrasing: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surfin' Safari [early version]"] Around this time, Brian also wrote another song -- the song he generally describes as being the first song he ever wrote. Presumably, given that he'd already co-written "Surfin'", he means that it was the first song he wrote on his own, words and music. The song was inspired, melodically, by the song "When You Wish Upon A Star" from the Disney film Pinocchio: [Excerpt: Cliff Edwards "When You Wish Upon a Star"] The song came to Brian in the car, and he challenged himself to write the whole thing in his head without going to the piano until he'd finished it. The result was a doo-wop ballad with Four Freshmen-like block harmonies, with lyrics inspired by Brian's then girlfriend Judy Bowles, which they recorded at the same session as that version of “Surfin' Safari”: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surfer Girl [early version]"] At the same session, they also recorded two more songs -- a song by Brian called Judy, and a surf instrumental written by Carl called "Karate". However, shortly after that session, Al left the group. As the group had started playing electric instruments, they'd also started performing songs that were more suitable for those instruments, like "What'd I Say" and "The Twist". Al wasn't a fan of that kind of music, and he wanted to be singing "Tom Dooley" and "Wreck of the John B", not "Come on baby, let's do the Twist". He was also quite keen on completing his university studies -- he was planning on becoming a dentist -- and didn't want to spend time playing tons of small gigs when he could be working towards his degree. This was especially the case since Murry Wilson, who had by this point installed himself as the group's manager, was booking them on all sorts of cheap dates to get them exposure. As far as Al could see, being a Beach Boy was never going to make anyone any real money, and it wasn't worth disrupting his studies to keep playing music that he didn't even particularly like. His place was taken by David Marks, Carl's young friend who lived nearby. Marks was only thirteen when he joined, and apparently it caused raised eyebrows among some of the other musicians who knew the group, because he was so much younger and less experienced than the rest. Unlike Al, he was never much of a singer -- he can hold a tune, and has a pleasant enough voice, but he wasn't the exceptional harmony singer that Al was -- but he was a competent rhythm player, and he and Carl had been jamming together since they'd both got guitars, and knew each other's playing style. However, while Al was gone from the group, he wasn't totally out of the picture, and he remained close enough that he was a part of the first ever Beach Boys spin-off side project a couple of months later. Dorinda Morgan had written a song inspired by the new children's doll, Barbie, that had come out a couple of years before and which, like the Beach Boys, was from Hawthorne. She wanted to put together a studio group to record it, under the name Kenny and the Cadets, and Brian rounded up Carl, Al, Val Poliuto, and his mother Audree, to sing on the record for Mrs Morgan: [Excerpt: Kenny and the Cadets, "Barbie"] But after that, Al Jardine was out of the group for the moment -- though he would be back sooner than anyone expected. Shortly after Al left, the new lineup went into a different studio, Western Studios, to record a new demo. Ostensibly produced by Murry Wilson, the session was actually produced by Brian and his new friend Gary Usher, who took charge in the studio and spent most of his time trying to stop Murry interfering. Gary Usher is someone about whom several books have been written, and who would have a huge influence on West Coast music in the sixties. But at this point he was an aspiring singer, songwriter, and record producer, who had been making records for a few months longer than Brian and was therefore a veteran. He'd put out his first single, "Driven Insane", in March 1961: [Excerpt: Gary Usher, "Driven Insane"] Usher was still far from a success, but he was very good at networking, and had all sorts of minor connections within the music business. As one example, his girlfriend, Sandra Glanz, who performed under the name Ginger Blake, had just written "You Are My Answer" for Carol Connors, who had been the lead singer of the Teddy Bears but was now going solo: [Excerpt: Carol Connors, "You Are My Answer"] Connors, too, would soon become important in vocal surf music, while Ginger would play a significant part in Brian's life. Brian had started writing songs with Gary, and they were in the studio to record some demos by Gary, and some demos by the Beach Boys of songs that Brian and Gary had written together, along with a new version of "Surfin' Safari". Of the two Wilson/Usher songs recorded in the session, one was a slow doo-wop styled ballad called "The Lonely Sea", which would later become an album track, but the song that they were most interested in recording was one called "409", which had been inspired by a new, larger, engine that Chevrolet had introduced for top-of-the-line vehicles. Musically, "409" was another song that followed the "Surfin' Safari" formula, but it was regularised even more, lopping off the extra bar from "Surfin' Safari"'s chorus, and making the verses as well as the choruses into twelve-bar blues. But it still started with the hook, still had Mike sing his tenor lead in the verses, and still had him move to sing a boogie-ish bassline in the chorus while the rest of the group chanted in block harmonies over the top. But it introduced a new lyrical theme to the group -- now, as well as singing about surfing and the beach, they could also sing about cars and car racing -- Love credits this as being one of the main reasons for the group's success in landlocked areas, because while there were many places in the US where you couldn't surf, there was nowhere where people didn't have cars. It's also the earliest Beach Boys song over which there is an ongoing question of credit. For the first thirty years of the song's existence, it was credited solely to Wilson and Usher, but in the early nineties Love won a share of the songwriting credit in a lawsuit in which he won credit on many, many songs he'd not been credited for. Love claims that he came up with the "She's real fine, my 409" hook, and the "giddy up" bass vocal he sang. Usher always claimed that Love had nothing to do with the song, and that Love was always trying to take credit for things he didn't do. It's difficult to tell who was telling the truth, because both obviously had a financial stake in the credit (though Usher was dead by the time of the lawsuit). Usher was always very dismissive of all of the Beach Boys with the exception of Brian, and wouldn't credit them for making any real contributions, Love's name was definitely missed off the credits of a large number of songs to which he did make substantial contributions, including some where he wrote the whole lyric, and the bits of the song Love claims *do* sound like the kind of thing he contributed to other songs which have no credit disputes. On the other hand, Love also overreached in his claims of credit in that lawsuit, claiming to have co-written songs that were written when he wasn't even in the same country as the writers. Where you stand on the question of whether Love deserves that credit usually depends on your views of Wilson, Love and Usher as people, and it's not a question I'm going to get into, but I thought I should acknowledge that the question is there. While "409" was still following the same pattern as the other songs, it's head and shoulders ahead of the Hite Morgan productions both in terms of performance and in terms of the sound. A great deal of that clearly owes to Usher, who was experimenting with things like sound effects, and so "409" starts with a recording that Brian and Usher made of Usher's car driving up and down the street: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "409"] Meanwhile the new version of "Surfin' Safari" was vastly superior to the recording from a couple of months earlier, with changed lyrics and a tighter performance: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surfin' Safari (second version)"] So at the end of the session, the group had a tape of three new songs, and Murry WIlson wanted them to take it somewhere better than Candix Records. He had a contact somewhere much better -- at Capitol Records. He was going to phone Ken Nelson. Or at least, Murry *thought* he had a contact at Capitol. He phoned Ken Nelson and told him "Years ago, you did me a favour, and now I'm doing one for you. My sons have formed a group and you have the chance to sign them!" Now, setting aside the question of whether that would actually count as Murry doing Nelson a favour, there was another problem with this -- Nelson had absolutely no idea who Murry Wilson was, and no recollection of ever doing him a favour. It turned out that the favour he'd done, in Murry's eyes, was recording one of Murry's songs -- except that there's no record of Nelson ever having been involved in a recording of a Murry Wilson song. By this time, Capitol had three A&R people, in charge of different areas. There was Voyle Gilmore, who recorded soft pop -- people like Nat "King" Cole. There was Nelson, who as we've seen in past episodes had some rockabilly experience but was mostly country -- he'd produced Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson, but he was mostly working at this point with people like Buck Owens and the Louvin Brothers, producing some of the best country music ever recorded, but not really doing the kind of thing that the Beach Boys were doing. But the third, and youngest, A&R man was doing precisely the kind of thing the Beach Boys did. That was Nik Venet, who we met back in the episode on "LSD-25", and who was one of the people who had been involved with the very first surf music recordings. Nelson suggested that Murry go and see Venet, and Venet was immediately impressed with the tape Murry played him -- so impressed that he decided to offer the group a contract, and to release "Surfin' Safari" backed with "409", buying the masters from Murry rather than rerecording them. Venet also tried to get the publishing rights for the songs for Beechwood Music, a publishing company owned by Capitol's parent company EMI (and known in the UK as Ardmore & Beechwood) but Gary Usher, who knew a bit about the business, said that he and Brian were going to set up their own publishing companies -- a decision which Murry Wilson screamed at him for, but which made millions of dollars for Brian over the next few years. The single came out, and was a big hit, making number fourteen on the hot one hundred, and "409" as the B-side also scraped the lower reaches of the charts. Venet soon got the group into the studio to record an album to go with the single, with Usher adding extra backing vocals to fill out the harmonies in the absence of Al Jardine. While the Beach Boys were a self-contained group, Venet seems to have brought in his old friend Derry Weaver to add extra guitar, notably on Weaver's song "Moon Dawg": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Moon Dawg"] It's perhaps unsurprising that the Beach Boys recorded that, because not only was it written by Venet's friend, but Venet owned the publishing on the song. The group also recorded "Summertime Blues", which was co-written by Jerry Capehart, a friend of Venet and Weaver's who also may have appeared on the album in some capacity. Both those songs fit the group, but their choice was clearly influenced by factors other than the purely musical, and very soon Brian Wilson would get sick of having his music interfered with by Venet.  The album came out on October 1, and a few days later the single was released in the UK, several months after its release in the US. And on the same day, a British group who *had* signed to have their single published by Ardmore & Beechwood put out their own single on another EMI label. And we're going to look at that in the next episode...

This week there are two episiodes of the podcast going up, both of them longer than normal. This one, episode ninety-nine, is on “Surfin’ Safari” by the Beach Boys, and the group’s roots in LA, and is fifty minutes long. 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 “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Deltones. 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 No Mixclouds this week, as both episodes have far too many songs by one artist. The mixclouds will be back with episode 101. I used many resources for this episode, most of which will be used in future Beach Boys episodes too. It’s difficult to enumerate everything here, because I have been an active member of the Beach Boys fan community for twenty-three years, and have at times just used my accumulated knowledge for this. But the resources I list here are ones I’ve checked for specific things. Becoming the Beach Boys by James B. Murphy is an in-depth look at the group’s early years. Stephen McParland has published many, many books on the California surf and hot-rod music scenes, including several on both the Beach Boys and Gary Usher. The Beach Boys: Inception and Creation is the one I used most here, but I referred to several. His books can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Andrew Doe’s Bellagio 10452 site is an invaluable resource. Jon Stebbins’ The Beach Boys FAQ is a good balance between accuracy and readability. And Philip Lambert’s Inside the Music of Brian Wilson is an excellent, though sadly out of print, musicological analysis of Wilson’s music from 1962 through 67. The Beach Boys’ Morgan recordings and all the outtakes from them can be found on this 2-CD set. The Surfin’ Safari album is now in the public domain, and so can be found cheaply, but the best version to get is still the twofer CD with the Surfin’ USA album. *But*, those two albums are fairly weak, the Beach Boys in their early years were not really an album band, and you will want to investigate them further. I would recommend, rather than the two albums linked above, starting with this budget-priced three-CD set, which has a surprisingly good selection of their material on it.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today, there are going to be two podcast episodes. This one, episode ninety-nine, will be a normal-length episode, or maybe slightly longer than normal, and episode one hundred, which will follow straight after it, will be a super-length one that’s at least three times the normal length of one of these podcasts. I’m releasing them together, because the two episodes really do go together. We’ve talked recently about how we’re getting into the sixties of the popular imagination, and those 1960s began, specifically, in October 1962. That was the month of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which saw the world almost end. It was the month that James Brown released Live at the Apollo — an album we’ll talk about in a few weeks’ time. And if you want one specific date that the 1960s started, it was October the fifth, 1962. On that date, a film came out that we mentioned last week — Doctor No, the first ever James Bond film. It was also the date that two records were released on EMI in Britain. One was a new release by a British band, the other a record originally released a few months earlier in the USA, by an American band. Both bands had previously released records on much smaller labels, to no success other than very locally, but this was their first to be released on a major label, and had a slightly different lineup from those earlier releases. Both bands would influence each other, and go on to be the most successful band from their respective country in the next decade. Both bands would revolutionise popular music. And the two bands would even be filed next to each other alphabetically, both starting “the Bea”. In episode one hundred, we’re going to look at “Love Me Do” by the Beatles, but right now, in episode ninety-nine, we’re going to look at “Surfin’ Safari” by the Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Surfin’ Safari”] Before I start this story properly, I just want to say something — there are a lot of different accounts of the formation of the Beach Boys, and those accounts are all different. What I’ve tried to do here is take one plausible account of how the group formed and tell it in a reasonable length of time. If you read the books I link in the show notes, you might find some disagreements about the precise order of some of these events, or some details I’ve glossed over. This episode is already running long, and I didn’t want to get into that stuff, but it’s important that I stress that this is just as accurate as I can get in the length of an episode. The Beach Boys really were boys when they made their first records. David Marks, their youngest member, was only thirteen when “Surfin’ Safari” came out, and Mike Love, the group’s oldest member, was twenty-one.  So, as you might imagine when we’re talking about children, the story really starts with the older generation. In particular, we want to start with Hite and Dorinda Morgan. The Morgans were part-time music business people in Los Angeles in the fifties. Hite Morgan owned an industrial flooring company, and that was his main source of income — putting in floors at warehouses and factories that could withstand the particular stresses that such industrial sites faced. But while that work was hard, it was well-paying and didn’t take too much time. The company would take on two or three expensive jobs a year, and for the rest of the year Hite would have the money and time to help his wife with her work as a songwriter. She’d collaborated with Spade Cooley, one of the most famous Western Swing musicians of the forties, and she’d also co-written “Don’t Put All Your Dreams in One Basket” for Ray Charles in 1948: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “Don’t Put All Your Dreams in One Basket”] Hite and Dorinda’s son, Bruce, was also a songwriter, though I’ve seen some claims that often the songs credited to him were actually written by his mother, who gave him credits in order to encourage him. One of Bruce Morgan’s earliest songs was a piece called “Proverb Boogie”, which was actually credited under his father’s name, and which Louis Jordan retitled to “Heed My Warning” and took a co-writing credit on: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Heed My Warning”] Eventually the Morgans also started their own publishing company, and built their own small demo studio, which they used to use to record cheap demos for many other songwriters and performers. The Morgans were only very minor players in the music industry, but they were friendly with many of the big names on the LA R&B scene, and knew people like John Dolphin, Bumps Blackwell, Sam Cooke, and the Hollywood Flames. Bruce Morgan would talk in interviews about Bumps Blackwell calling round to see his father and telling him about this new song “You Send Me” he was going to record with Cooke. But although nobody could have realised it at the time, or for many years later, the Morgans’ place in music history would be cemented in 1952, when Hite Morgan, working at his day job, met a man named Murry Wilson, who ran a machine-tool company based in Hawthorne, a small town in southwestern Los Angeles County. It turned out that Wilson, like Dorinda Morgan, was an aspiring songwriter, and Hite Morgan signed him up to their publishing company, Guild Music. Wilson’s tastes in music were already becoming old-fashioned even in the very early 1950s, but given the style of music he was working in he was a moderately talented writer. His proudest moment was writing a song called “Two Step Side Step” for the Morgans, which was performed on TV by Lawrence Welk — Murry gathered the whole family round the television to watch his song being performed.  That song was a moderate success – it was never a hit for anyone, but it was recorded by several country artists, including the rockabilly singer Bonnie Lou, and most interestingly for our purposes by Johnny Lee Wills, Bob Wills’ brother: [Excerpt: Johnny Lee Wills, “Two Step Side Step”] Wilson wrote a few other songs for the Morgans, of which the most successful was “Tabarin”, which was recorded by the Tangiers — one of the several names under which the Hollywood Flames performed. Gaynel Hodge would later speak fondly of Murry Wilson, and how he was always bragging about his talented kids: [Excerpt: The Tangiers, “Tabarin”] But as the fifties progressed, the Morgans published fewer and fewer of Wilson’s songs, and none of them were hits. But the Morgans and Wilson stayed in touch, and around 1958 he heard from them about an opportunity for one of those talented kids. Dorinda Morgan had written a song called “Chapel of Love” — not the same song as the famous one by the Dixie Cups — and Art Laboe had decided that that song would be perfect as the first record for his new label, Original Sound. Laboe was putting together a new group to sing it, called the Hitmakers, which was based around Val Poliuto. Poliuto had been the tenor singer of an integrated vocal group — two Black members, one white, and one Hispanic — which had gone by the names The Shadows and The Miracles before dismissing both names as being unlikely to lead to any success and taking the name The Jaguars at the suggestion of, of all people, Stan Freberg, the comedian and voice actor. The Jaguars had never had much commercial success, but they’d recorded a version of “The Way You Look Tonight” which became a classic when Laboe included it on the massively successful “Oldies But Goodies”, the first doo-wop nostalgia album: [Excerpt: The Jaguars, “The Way You Look Tonight”] The Jaguars continued for many years, and at one point had Richard Berry guest as an extra vocalist on some of their tracks, but as with so many of the LA vocal groups we’ve looked at from the fifties, they all had their fingers in multiple pies, and so Poliuto was to be in this new group, along with Bobby Adams of the Calvanes, who had been taught to sing R&B by Cornell Gunter and who had recorded for Dootsie Williams: [Excerpt: The Calvanes, “Crazy Over You”] Those two were to be joined by two other singers, who nobody involved can remember much about except that their first names were Don and Duke, but Art Laboe also wanted a new young singer to sing the lead, and was auditioning singers. Murry Wilson suggested to the Morgans that his young son Brian might be suitable for the role, and he auditioned, but Laboe thought he was too young, and the role went to a singer called Rodney Goodens instead: [Excerpt: The Hitmakers, “Chapel of Love”] So the audition was a failure, but it was a first contact between Brian Wilson and the Morgans, and also introduced Brian to Val Poliuto, from whom he would learn a lot about music for the next few years. Brian was a very sensitive kid, the oldest of three brothers, and someone who seemed to have some difficulty dealing with other people — possibly because his father was abusive towards him and his brothers, leaving him frightened of many aspects of life. He did, though, share with his father a love of music, and he had a remarkable ear — singular, as he’s deaf in one ear. He had perfect pitch, a great recollection for melodies — play him something once and it would stay in his brain — and from a very young age he gravitated towards sweet-sounding music. He particularly loved Glenn Miller’s version of “Rhapsody in Blue” as a child: [Excerpt: The Glenn Miller Orchestra, “Rhapsody in Blue”] But his big musical love was a modern harmony group called the Four Freshmen — a group made up of two brothers, their cousin, and a college friend. Modern harmony is an outdated term, but it basically meant that they were singing chords that went beyond the normal simple triads of most pop music. While there were four, obviously, of the Four Freshmen, they often achieved an effect that would normally be five-part harmony, by having the group members sing all the parts of the chord *except* the root note — they’d leave the root note to a bass instrument. So while Brian was listening to four singers, he was learning five-part harmonies. The group would also sing their harmonies in unusual inversions — they’d take one of the notes from the middle of the chord and sing it an octave lower. There was another trick that the Four Freshmen used — they varied their vocals from equal temperament.  To explain this a little bit — musical notes are based on frequencies, and the ratio between them matters. If you double the frequency of a note, you get the same note an octave up — so if you take an A at 440hz, and double the frequency to 880, you get another A, an octave up. If you go down to 220hz, you get the A an octave below. You get all the different notes by multiplying or dividing a note, so A# is A multiplied by a tiny bit more than one, and A flat is A multiplied by a tiny bit less than one. But in the middle ages, this hit a snag — A#. which is A multiplied by one and a bit, is very very slightly different from B flat, which is B multiplied by 0.9 something. And if you double those, so you go to the A# and B flat the next octave up, the difference between A# and B flat gets bigger. And this means that if you play a melody in the key of C, but then decide you want to play it in the key of B flat, you need to retune your instrument — or have instruments with separate notes for A# and B flat — or everything will sound out of tune. It’s very very hard to retune some instruments, especially ones like the piano, and also sometimes you want to play in different keys in the same piece. If you’re playing a song in C, but it goes into C# in the last chorus to give it a bit of extra momentum, you lose that extra momentum if you stop the song to retune the piano. So a different system was invented, and popularised in the Baroque era, called “equal temperament”. In that system, every note is very very slightly out of tune, but those tiny errors cancel out rather than multiply like they do in the old system. You’re sort of taking the average of A# and B flat, and calling them the same note. And to most people’s ears that sounds good enough, and it means you can have a piano without a thousand keys.  But the Four Freshmen didn’t stick to that — because you don’t need to retune your throat to hit different notes (unless you’re as bad a singer as me, anyway). They would sing B flat slightly differently than they would sing A#, and so they would get a purer vocal blend, with stronger harmonic overtones than singers who were singing the notes as placed on a piano: [Excerpt: the Four Freshmen, “It’s a Blue World”] Please note by the way that I’m taking the fact that they used those non-equal temperaments somewhat on trust — Ross Barbour of the group said they did in interviews, and he would know, but I have relatively poor pitch so if you listened to that and thought “Hang on, they’re all singing dead-on equal tempered concert pitch, what’s he talking about?”, then that’s on him. When Brian heard them singing, he instantly fell for them, and became a major, major fan of their work, especially their falsetto singer Bob Flanigan, whose voice he decided to emulate. He decided that he was going to learn how they got that sound. Every day when he got home from school, he would go to the family’s music room, where he had a piano and a record player. He would then play just a second or so of one of their records, and figure out on the piano what notes they were singing in that one second, and duplicating them himself. Then he would learn the next second of the song. He would spend hours every day on this, learning every vocal part, until he had the Four Freshmen’s entire repertoire burned into his brain, and could sing all four vocal parts to every song. Indeed, at one point when he was about sixteen — around the same time as the Art Laboe audition — Brian decided to go and visit the Four Freshmen’s manager, to find out how to form a successful vocal group of his own, and to find out more about the group themselves. After telling the manager that he could sing every part of every one of their songs, the manager challenged him with “The Day Isn’t Long Enough”, a song that they apparently had trouble with: [Excerpt: The Four Freshmen, “The Day Isn’t Long Enough”] And Brian demonstrated every harmony part perfectly. He had a couple of tape recorders at home, and he would experiment with overdubbing his own voice — recording on one tape recorder, playing it back and singing along while recording on the other. Doing this he could do his own imitations of the Four Freshmen, and even as a teenager he could sound spookily like them: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys [Brian Wilson solo recording released on a Beach Boys CD], “Happy Birthday Four Freshmen”] While Brian shared his love for this kind of sweet music with his father, he also liked the rock and roll music that was making its way onto the radio during his teen years — though again, he would gravitate towards the sweet vocal harmonies of the Everly Brothers rather than to more raucous music. He shared his love of the Everlys with his cousin Mike Love, whose tastes otherwise went more in the direction of R&B and doo-wop. Unlike Brian and his brothers, Mike attended Dorsey High School, a predominantly Black school, and his tastes were shaped by that — other graduates of the school include Billy Preston, Eric Dolphy, and Arthur Lee, to give some idea of the kind of atmosphere that Dorsey High had. He loved the Robins, and later the Coasters, and he’s been quoted as saying he “worshipped” Johnny Otis — as did every R&B lover in LA at the time. He would listen to Otis’ show on KFOX, and to Huggy Boy on KRKD. His favourite records were things like “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” by the Robins, which combined an R&B groove with witty lyrics: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”] He also loved the music of Chuck Berry, a passion he shared with Brian’s youngest brother Carl, who also listened to Otis’ show and got Brian listening to it. While Mike was most attracted to Berry’s witty lyrics, Carl loved the guitar part — he’d loved string instruments since he was a tiny child, and he and a neighbour, David Marks, started taking guitar lessons from another neighbour, John Maus. Maus had been friends with Ritchie Valens, and had been a pallbearer at Valens’ funeral. John was recording at the time with his sister Judy, as the imaginatively-named duo “John & Judy”: [Excerpt: John & Judy, “Why This Feeling?”] John and Judy later took on a bass player called Scott Engel, and a few years after that John and Scott changed their surnames to Walker and became two thirds of The Walker Brothers. But at this time, John was still just a local guitar player, and teaching two enthusiastic kids to play guitar. Carl and David learned how to play Chuck Berry licks, and also started to learn some of the guitar instrumentals that were becoming popular at the time. At the same time, Mike would sing with Brian to pass the time, Mike singing in a bass voice while Brian took a high tenor lead. Other times, Brian would test his vocal arranging out by teaching Carl and his mother Audree vocal parts — Carl got so he could learn parts very quickly, so his big brother wouldn’t keep him around all day and he could go out and play. And sometimes their middle brother Dennis would join in — though he was more interested in going out and having fun at the beach than he was in making music. Brian was interested in nothing *but* making music — at least once he’d quit the school football team (American football, for those of you like me who parse the word to mean what it does in Britain), after he’d got hurt for the first time. But before he did that, he had managed to hurt someone else — a much smaller teammate named Alan Jardine, whose leg Brian broke in a game. Despite that, the two became friends, and would occasionally sing together — like Brian, Alan loved to sing harmonies, and they found that they had an extraordinarily good vocal blend. While Brian mostly sang with his brothers and his cousin, all of whom had a family vocal resemblance, Jardine could sound spookily similar to that family, and especially to Brian. Jardine’s voice was a little stronger and more resonant, Brian’s a little sweeter, with a fuller falsetto, but they had the kind of vocal similarity one normally only gets in family singers. However,  they didn’t start performing together properly, because they had different tastes in music — while Brian was most interested in the modern jazz harmonies of the Four Freshman, Jardine was a fan of the new folk revival groups, especially the Kingston Trio. Alan had a group called the Tikis when he was at high school, which would play Kingston Trio style material like “The Wreck of the John B”, a song that like much of the Kingston Trio’s material had been popularised by the Weavers, but which the Trio had recorded for their first album: [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, “The Wreck of the John B”] Jardine was inspired by that to write his own song, “The Wreck of the Hesperus”, putting Longfellow’s poem to music. One of the other Tikis had a tape recorder, and they made a few stabs at recording it. They thought that they sounded pretty good, and they decided to go round to Brian Wilson’s house to see if he could help them — depending on who you ask, they either wanted him to join the band, or knew that his dad had some connection with the music business and wanted to pick his brains. When they turned up, Brian was actually out, but Audree Wilson basically had an open-door policy for local teenagers, and she told the boys about Hite and Dorinda Morgan. The Tikis took their tape to the Morgans, and the Morgans responded politely, saying that they did sound good — but they sounded like the Kingston Trio, and there were a million groups that sounded like the Kingston Trio. They needed to get an original sound. The Tikis broke up, as Alan went off to Michigan to college. But then a year later, he came back to Hawthorne and enrolled in the same community college that Brian was enrolled in. Meanwhile, the Morgans had got in touch with Gary Winfrey, Alan’s Tikis bandmate, and asked him if the Tikis would record a demo of one of Bruce Morgan’s songs. As the Tikis no longer existed, Alan and Gary formed a new group along the same lines, and invited Brian to be part of one of these sessions. That group, The Islanders made a couple of attempts at Morgan’s song, but nothing worked out. But this brought Brian back to the Morgans’ attention — at this point they’d not seen him in three years. Alan still wanted to record folk music with Brian, and at some point Brian suggested that they get his brother Carl and cousin Mike involved — and then Brian’s mother made him let his other brother Dennis join in.  The group went to see the Morgans, who once again told them that they needed some original material. Dennis piped up that the group had been fooling around with a song about surfing, and while the Morgans had never heard of the sport, they said it would be worth the group’s while finishing off the song and coming back to them. At this point, the idea of a song about surfing was something that was only in Dennis’ head, though he may have mentioned the idea to Mike at some point. Mike and the Wilsons went home and started working out the song, without Al being involved at this time — some of the rehearsal recordings we have seem to suggest that they thought Al was a little overbearing and thought of himself as a bit more professional than the others, and they didn’t want him in the group at first. While surf music was definitely already a thing, there were very few vocal surf records. Brian and Mike wrote the song together, with Mike writing most of the lyrics and coming up with his own bass vocal line, while Brian wrote the rest of the music: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Surfin’ (Rehearsal)”] None of the group other than Dennis surfed — though Mike would later start surfing a little — and so Dennis provided Mike with some surfing terms that they could add into the song. This led to what would be the first of many, many arguments about songwriting credit among the group, as Dennis claimed that he should get some credit for his contribution, while Mike disagreed: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Surfin’ (Rehearsal)”] The credit was eventually assigned to Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Eventually, they finished the song, and decided that they *would* get Al Jardine back into the group after all. When Murry and Audree Wilson went away for a long weekend and left their boys some money for emergencies, the group saw their chance. They took that money, along with some more they borrowed from Al’s mother, and rented some instruments — a drum kit and a stand-up bass. They had a party at the Wilsons’ house where they played their new song and a few others, in front of their friends, before going back to the Morgans with their new song completed. For their recording session, they used that stand-up bass, which Al played, along with Carl on an acoustic guitar, giving it that Kingston Trio sound that Al liked. Dennis was the group’s drummer, but he wasn’t yet very good and instead of drums the record has Brian thumping a dustbin lid as its percussion. As well as being the lead vocalist, Mike Love was meant to be the group’s saxophone player, but he never progressed more than honking out a couple of notes, and he doesn’t play on the session. The song they came up with was oddly structured — it had a nine-bar verse and a fourteen-bar chorus, the latter of which was based around a twelve-bar blues, but extended to allow the “surf, surf with me” hook. But other than the unusual bar counts it followed the structure that the group would set up most of their early singles. The song seems at least in part to have been inspired by the song “Bermuda Shorts” by the Delroys, which is a song the group have often cited and would play in their earliest live shows: [Excerpt: The Delroys, “Bermuda Shorts”] They messed around with the structure in various ways in rehearsal, and those can be heard on the rehearsal recordings, but by the time they came into the studio they’d settled on starting with a brief statement of the chorus hook: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Surfin'”] It then goes into a verse with Mike singing a tenor lead, with the rest of the group doing block harmonies and then joining him on the last line of the verse: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Surfin'”] And then we have Mike switching down into the bass register to sing wordless doo-wop bass during the blues-based chorus, while the rest of the group again sing in block harmony: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Surfin'”] That formula would be the one that the Beach Boys would stick with for several singles to follow — the major change that would be made would be that Brian would soon start singing an independent falsetto line over the top of the choruses, rather than being in the block harmonies.  The single was licensed to Candix Records, along with a B-side written by Bruce Morgan, and it became a minor hit record, reaching number seventy-five on the national charts. But what surprised the group about the record was the name on it. They’d been calling themselves the Pendletones, because there was a brand of thick woollen shirt called Pendletons which was popular among surfers, and which the group wore.  It might also have been intended as a pun on Dick Dale’s Deltones, the preeminent surf music group of the time. But Hite Morgan had thought the name didn’t work, and they needed something that was more descriptive of the music they were doing. He’d suggested The Surfers, but Russ Regan, a record promoter, had told him there was already a group called the Surfers, and suggested another name. So the first time the Wilsons realised they were now in the Beach Boys was when they saw the record label for the first time. The group started working on follow-ups — and as they were now performing live shows to promote their records, they switched to using electric guitars when they went into the studio to record some demos in February 1962. By now, Al was playing rhythm guitar, while Brian took over on bass, now playing a bass guitar rather than the double bass Al had played. For that session, as Dennis was still not that great a drummer, Brian decided to bring in a session player, and Dennis stormed out of the studio. However, the session player was apparently flashy and overplayed, and got paid off. Brian persuaded Dennis to come back and take over on drums again, and the session resumed. Val Poliuto was also at the session, in case they needed some keyboards, but he’s not audible on any of the tracks they recorded, at least to my ears. The most likely song for a follow-up was another one by Brian and Mike. This one was very much a rewrite of “Surfin'”, but this time the verses were a more normal eight bars, and the choruses were a compromise between the standard twelve-bar blues and “Surfin'”s fourteen, landing on an unusual thirteen bars. With the electric guitars the group decided to bring in a Chuck Berry influence, and you can hear a certain similarity to songs like “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” in the rhythm and phrasing: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Surfin’ Safari [early version]”] Around this time, Brian also wrote another song — the song he generally describes as being the first song he ever wrote. Presumably, given that he’d already co-written “Surfin'”, he means that it was the first song he wrote on his own, words and music. The song was inspired, melodically, by the song “When You Wish Upon A Star” from the Disney film Pinocchio: [Excerpt: Cliff Edwards “When You Wish Upon a Star”] The song came to Brian in the car, and he challenged himself to write the whole thing in his head without going to the piano until he’d finished it. The result was a doo-wop ballad with Four Freshmen-like block harmonies, with lyrics inspired by Brian’s then girlfriend Judy Bowles, which they recorded at the same session as that version of “Surfin’ Safari”: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Surfer Girl [early version]”] At the same session, they also recorded two more songs — a song by Brian called Judy, and a surf instrumental written by Carl called “Karate”. However, shortly after that session, Al left the group. As the group had started playing electric instruments, they’d also started performing songs that were more suitable for those instruments, like “What’d I Say” and “The Twist”. Al wasn’t a fan of that kind of music, and he wanted to be singing “Tom Dooley” and “Wreck of the John B”, not “Come on baby, let’s do the Twist”. He was also quite keen on completing his university studies — he was planning on becoming a dentist — and didn’t want to spend time playing tons of small gigs when he could be working towards his degree. This was especially the case since Murry Wilson, who had by this point installed himself as the group’s manager, was booking them on all sorts of cheap dates to get them exposure. As far as Al could see, being a Beach Boy was never going to make anyone any real money, and it wasn’t worth disrupting his studies to keep playing music that he didn’t even particularly like. His place was taken by David Marks, Carl’s young friend who lived nearby. Marks was only thirteen when he joined, and apparently it caused raised eyebrows among some of the other musicians who knew the group, because he was so much younger and less experienced than the rest. Unlike Al, he was never much of a singer — he can hold a tune, and has a pleasant enough voice, but he wasn’t the exceptional harmony singer that Al was — but he was a competent rhythm player, and he and Carl had been jamming together since they’d both got guitars, and knew each other’s playing style. However, while Al was gone from the group, he wasn’t totally out of the picture, and he remained close enough that he was a part of the first ever Beach Boys spin-off side project a couple of months later. Dorinda Morgan had written a song inspired by the new children’s doll, Barbie, that had come out a couple of years before and which, like the Beach Boys, was from Hawthorne. She wanted to put together a studio group to record it, under the name Kenny and the Cadets, and Brian rounded up Carl, Al, Val Poliuto, and his mother Audree, to sing on the record for Mrs Morgan: [Excerpt: Kenny and the Cadets, “Barbie”] But after that, Al Jardine was out of the group for the moment — though he would be back sooner than anyone expected. Shortly after Al left, the new lineup went into a different studio, Western Studios, to record a new demo. Ostensibly produced by Murry Wilson, the session was actually produced by Brian and his new friend Gary Usher, who took charge in the studio and spent most of his time trying to stop Murry interfering. Gary Usher is someone about whom several books have been written, and who would have a huge influence on West Coast music in the sixties. But at this point he was an aspiring singer, songwriter, and record producer, who had been making records for a few months longer than Brian and was therefore a veteran. He’d put out his first single, “Driven Insane”, in March 1961: [Excerpt: Gary Usher, “Driven Insane”] Usher was still far from a success, but he was very good at networking, and had all sorts of minor connections within the music business. As one example, his girlfriend, Sandra Glanz, who performed under the name Ginger Blake, had just written “You Are My Answer” for Carol Connors, who had been the lead singer of the Teddy Bears but was now going solo: [Excerpt: Carol Connors, “You Are My Answer”] Connors, too, would soon become important in vocal surf music, while Ginger would play a significant part in Brian’s life. Brian had started writing songs with Gary, and they were in the studio to record some demos by Gary, and some demos by the Beach Boys of songs that Brian and Gary had written together, along with a new version of “Surfin’ Safari”. Of the two Wilson/Usher songs recorded in the session, one was a slow doo-wop styled ballad called “The Lonely Sea”, which would later become an album track, but the song that they were most interested in recording was one called “409”, which had been inspired by a new, larger, engine that Chevrolet had introduced for top-of-the-line vehicles. Musically, “409” was another song that followed the “Surfin’ Safari” formula, but it was regularised even more, lopping off the extra bar from “Surfin’ Safari”‘s chorus, and making the verses as well as the choruses into twelve-bar blues. But it still started with the hook, still had Mike sing his tenor lead in the verses, and still had him move to sing a boogie-ish bassline in the chorus while the rest of the group chanted in block harmonies over the top. But it introduced a new lyrical theme to the group — now, as well as singing about surfing and the beach, they could also sing about cars and car racing — Love credits this as being one of the main reasons for the group’s success in landlocked areas, because while there were many places in the US where you couldn’t surf, there was nowhere where people didn’t have cars. It’s also the earliest Beach Boys song over which there is an ongoing question of credit. For the first thirty years of the song’s existence, it was credited solely to Wilson and Usher, but in the early nineties Love won a share of the songwriting credit in a lawsuit in which he won credit on many, many songs he’d not been credited for. Love claims that he came up with the “She’s real fine, my 409” hook, and the “giddy up” bass vocal he sang. Usher always claimed that Love had nothing to do with the song, and that Love was always trying to take credit for things he didn’t do. It’s difficult to tell who was telling the truth, because both obviously had a financial stake in the credit (though Usher was dead by the time of the lawsuit). Usher was always very dismissive of all of the Beach Boys with the exception of Brian, and wouldn’t credit them for making any real contributions, Love’s name was definitely missed off the credits of a large number of songs to which he did make substantial contributions, including some where he wrote the whole lyric, and the bits of the song Love claims *do* sound like the kind of thing he contributed to other songs which have no credit disputes. On the other hand, Love also overreached in his claims of credit in that lawsuit, claiming to have co-written songs that were written when he wasn’t even in the same country as the writers. Where you stand on the question of whether Love deserves that credit usually depends on your views of Wilson, Love and Usher as people, and it’s not a question I’m going to get into, but I thought I should acknowledge that the question is there. While “409” was still following the same pattern as the other songs, it’s head and shoulders ahead of the Hite Morgan productions both in terms of performance and in terms of the sound. A great deal of that clearly owes to Usher, who was experimenting with things like sound effects, and so “409” starts with a recording that Brian and Usher made of Usher’s car driving up and down the street: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “409”] Meanwhile the new version of “Surfin’ Safari” was vastly superior to the recording from a couple of months earlier, with changed lyrics and a tighter performance: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Surfin’ Safari (second version)”] So at the end of the session, the group had a tape of three new songs, and Murry WIlson wanted them to take it somewhere better than Candix Records. He had a contact somewhere much better — at Capitol Records. He was going to phone Ken Nelson. Or at least, Murry *thought* he had a contact at Capitol. He phoned Ken Nelson and told him “Years ago, you did me a favour, and now I’m doing one for you. My sons have formed a group and you have the chance to sign them!” Now, setting aside the question of whether that would actually count as Murry doing Nelson a favour, there was another problem with this — Nelson had absolutely no idea who Murry Wilson was, and no recollection of ever doing him a favour. It turned out that the favour he’d done, in Murry’s eyes, was recording one of Murry’s songs — except that there’s no record of Nelson ever having been involved in a recording of a Murry Wilson song. By this time, Capitol had three A&R people, in charge of different areas. There was Voyle Gilmore, who recorded soft pop — people like Nat “King” Cole. There was Nelson, who as we’ve seen in past episodes had some rockabilly experience but was mostly country — he’d produced Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson, but he was mostly working at this point with people like Buck Owens and the Louvin Brothers, producing some of the best country music ever recorded, but not really doing the kind of thing that the Beach Boys were doing. But the third, and youngest, A&R man was doing precisely the kind of thing the Beach Boys did. That was Nik Venet, who we met back in the episode on “LSD-25”, and who was one of the people who had been involved with the very first surf music recordings. Nelson suggested that Murry go and see Venet, and Venet was immediately impressed with the tape Murry played him — so impressed that he decided to offer the group a contract, and to release “Surfin’ Safari” backed with “409”, buying the masters from Murry rather than rerecording them. Venet also tried to get the publishing rights for the songs for Beechwood Music, a publishing company owned by Capitol’s parent company EMI (and known in the UK as Ardmore & Beechwood) but Gary Usher, who knew a bit about the business, said that he and Brian were going to set up their own publishing companies — a decision which Murry Wilson screamed at him for, but which made millions of dollars for Brian over the next few years. The single came out, and was a big hit, making number fourteen on the hot one hundred, and “409” as the B-side also scraped the lower reaches of the charts. Venet soon got the group into the studio to record an album to go with the single, with Usher adding extra backing vocals to fill out the harmonies in the absence of Al Jardine. While the Beach Boys were a self-contained group, Venet seems to have brought in his old friend Derry Weaver to add extra guitar, notably on Weaver’s song “Moon Dawg”: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Moon Dawg”] It’s perhaps unsurprising that the Beach Boys recorded that, because not only was it written by Venet’s friend, but Venet owned the publishing on the song. The group also recorded “Summertime Blues”, which was co-written by Jerry Capehart, a friend of Venet and Weaver’s who also may have appeared on the album in some capacity. Both those songs fit the group, but their choice was clearly influenced by factors other than the purely musical, and very soon Brian Wilson would get sick of having his music interfered with by Venet.  The album came out on October 1, and a few days later the single was released in the UK, several months after its release in the US. And on the same day, a British group who *had* signed to have their single published by Ardmore & Beechwood put out their own single on another EMI label. And we’re going to look at that in the next episode…

You Send Me by Sam Cooke.

Have you ever wondered how your favorite songs came to be written or how the artists who made them hits rose to fame? The answers to these questions are often surprising and fascinating. Host Frank LaSpina tells the tales through audio highlights from his popular series of Las Vegas stage shows performed by the amazingly talented students of the Musical Arts Scholarship Program. These youngsters are truly the stars of tomorrow! Episode 2: SAM COOKE, who at the time of his bizarre and controversial death was second only to Elvis, in record sales, with such hits as “Cupid”, “You Send Me”, “Wonderful World”, “Twistin' the Night Away” and his civil right anthem “A Change is Gonna Come”.

Dimebag Darrell Abbott was the guitarist of the heavy metal band Pantera. Sam Cooke is considered by many to be the father of modern soul, with hits like “You Send Me” and “A Change is Gonna Come.” What do these two have in common? Almost nothing, except that they were both musical legends in their own time, and they were both tragically killed. Join us this week as we discuss the untimely deaths of these two musical titans and talk out the trash.

Wulfpire Takes you to church with a soulful rendition of ( You Send Me). --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/Wulfpire/message

Episode seventy-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens, and is the first of a two-part story which will conclude next week with an episode on Buddy Holly. 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 “Kansas City” by Wilbert Harrison. 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.   Only one biography of Valens has ever been written — understandably since his public career lasted a matter of months and he died when he was seventeen — but Beverly Mendheim’s book is about as good as one could expect given that. And this CD compiles all three of the posthumous album releases, Valens’ entire musical legacy. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript This is actually going to be part one of a two-part story, which will be continued in next week’s episode. Ritchie Valens died so young that he is nowadays mostly known for his death, but in this episode we’re going to look at why people cared about him at all — the story of the plane crash that took his life will wait for next week’s episode. This week, we’re going to look at his short recording career, and at his most famous record: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “La Bamba”] So far in this podcast, when we’ve looked at race, we’ve mostly dealt with either black or white musicians, along with a few people who are clearly white by the standards of 2020 but might not have been considered so at the time. But there was, in Los Angeles, a whole parallel music culture growing up around Latino teenagers. This subculture only rarely impinged on the consciousness of the wider American public, but without it we would have had no garage rock and no punk, as we know them today. And the first big star, the person around whom that culture coalesced, was Ritchie Valens. Now, I have to stress here that I am at even more of a disadvantage when talking about this subculture than I am when talking about black America. While black culture has been extensively documented in all sorts of other popular culture I’ve consumed, and I’ve studied mid-twentieth-century black American culture to a reasonable extent (though nowhere near enough, of course, that my thoughts on the subject should be taken as authoritative), I have had almost no exposure to the Latino culture of the same time period. And on top of that, there’s an additional problem, which is that I am going to have to refer to quite a few Spanish terms in the course of this episode, and I don’t speak Spanish. While I’m going to try my best with those, I will undoubtedly mangle some things. But that’s sort of appropriate, at least, in the case of Ritchie Valens, because one of the things that people who knew him would say is that he spoke Spanish terribly — while he was a Mexican-American, he was raised in an English-speaking household, and only spoke Spanish as a second language, in which he wasn’t especially fluent. By all accounts, in fact, Valens — who was born Richard Valenzuela, but had his name shortened when he got a record deal — was at least somewhat unpopular among the other Mexican-Americans at his school. Some of this was due to his appearance — he was notably light-skinned for a Mexican-American, and apparently there was a level of colourism among Latino kids in that area at that time, and he was also quite fat — and some was due to his willingness to associate with people of other races, as he had both black and white friends. Valens’ big interest in school was music, especially R&B, and especially the music of Little Richard and Larry Williams, and other people who had recorded for Specialty Records. When he was in high school, he joined a group called the Silhouettes, who had named themselves after a recent hit of that name by the Rays: [Excerpt: The Rays, “Silhouettes”] That song was also the inspiration for another group, a doo-wop group also called the Silhouettes, who had a hit with “Get a Job”. That’s not this group, and they weren’t yet known at the time. These Silhouettes never recorded, and after Valens became famous there were a lot of interviews with various members of the band who disagreed, of course, on who it was who invited Valens into the band, who the leader of the band was, and who had really taught Valens everything he knew about performing, as well as disagreeing on what songs the band performed, and who contributed what to the songs that made Valens famous. The Silhouettes were by modern standards a very big band, having three trumpets, five saxophones, a vibraphone player, a pianist, a drummer, and a couple of singers, as well as Valens on guitar and vocals. They were very unusual for the time in being a mixed-race group — they were mostly Mexican-Americans, but there were also black and Italian members (at a time when Italians weren’t considered fully white by then-prevailing racial standards) and a Japanese-American saxophone player. Their repertoire was apparently largely based around R&B songs, but they would occasionally play Mexican material, usually when requested for a particular event such as a wedding. Valens usually didn’t sing on those songs, because he didn’t speak Spanish, but he was eventually persuaded to sing one song in Spanish, “La Bamba”. “La Bamba” is an old folk song from Veracruz in Mexico, and is an example of a style called son jarocho, [CUT THIS which fuses Mexican and African musical styles]. The earliest known recording of “La Bamba” is from 1939, but there are suggestions it’s been around for centuries: [Excerpt: El Jarocho, “La Bamba”] The song is traditionally sung at weddings, and its origins are fairly obscure. I’ve seen claims that the song has its origins in music made by slaves in Mexico, and that the title is a reference either to the Mbamba tribe from Angola or to a seventeenth-century slave uprising called the Bambarria — but the only references I can find to that uprising talk about how it was an inspiration for the song, and seem to differ on all the other details. As I’ve said before on this podcast, I tend to doubt a lot of stories claiming that various bits of music and folklore have their origin in African traditions kept up by slaves, as the majority of such stories tend to have very little evidence backing them up, and in the case of “La Bamba” I think it’s far more likely that the song, whose lyrics are mostly about a dance, is referring to the Spanish word “bambolear”, which means to sway, swing, or wobble. Which is not to say that there’s no African influence on the song — I’ve talked before about how African music has influenced Central and South American musical forms, and the son jarocho tradition “La Bamba” is a part of is a mixture of Spanish, indigenous, and African styles. But I think it’s safe to say that the song doesn’t have a “ring a ring a roses” style hidden meaning (and, for that matter, nor does ring a ring a roses” in reality) and that it is what it sounds like — a song about a dance, with nonsense lyrics thrown in. When the Silhouettes played the song, they did it more or less the same way everyone else at the time would play it. There are no recordings of the Silhouettes, but they likely based their performance on a successful recording of the song like the version by Hermanos Huesca: [Excerpt: Hermanos Huesca, “La Bamba”] The Silhouettes built up quite a local following, and in January 1958 they played a show that they promoted themselves, in a hall they’d rented out in order to raise money to pay for Valens’ family’s mortgage payment for that month. One of the people who attended the show was a twenty-year-old from the area named Doug Macchia, who vaguely knew a couple of the band members. Macchia was, at the time, employed by Bob Keane. We’ve not mentioned Keane himself before, but we have mentioned one of the labels he owned, Keen Records, which was the label on which he’d released Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Many of the people involved in that record, like guitarist René Hall and drummer Earl Palmer, had worked with many of the Specialty acts that Valens admired, and Keane had started employing them on a regular basis, both on Keen Records and on his new label, Del-Fi. Macchia recorded the Silhouettes at the gig on a portable tape recorder, and took the recording (which is now lost) to Keane, who was impressed enough with Valens, though not with the other members, that he requested that they come to audition for him in his home recording studio. Valens was at first reluctant to go to the audition when Macchia told him about it, and he also delayed the audition, because when Macchia came round Valens was minding the other children at home and had to wait until his mother got back before he could go to the studio. While he was waiting, Macchia helped Valens finish up a song he was working on, which he named after a girl with whom he’d been having some sort of relationship (people differ on whether it was just a crush he had or whether they were in some great doomed romance): [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Donna”] When it came to the audition, Keane was impressed with Valens, not because of his ability, but because of his energy. Keane signed him, and started shaping him into a new style of performer. Valens was not a particularly proficient guitarist. He had a lot of natural skill, and a love of the instrument, but when he first started recording he could only play in a handful of keys. Almost everything he recorded is in the key of D or A, and had only three or four chords. When he recorded one song and needed to drop the key down to D flat, he ended up tuning his guitar down half a step, because he didn’t know the chords in that key — and on another occasion, when he was trying to tell the bass player on a session what part to play, he became frustrated because the part he could hear in his head had a low D, but the bass only goes down as far as a low E. He would rarely play the same song the same way twice, and most of the recordings he completed were pulled together by Bob Keane from multiple takes — the tapes were spliced so much that Stan Ross, the co-owner of Gold Star Studios, described them as “looking like they’d been through World War Fourteen”. Valens would go into the studio with a rough idea for a melody and a few words, and improvise several different variations on the song, and the best bits of each improvisation would be used for the finished recording. According to at least some sources, Bob Keane would shape the actual song during the recording and in the edit, helping Valens finish the lyrics and editing together bits of different performances to make a coherent song out of them. Other sources, including Ross, say that wasn’t the case and that Valens essentially produced his own sessions and wrote all the material himself. I actually lean towards Keane’s claims in this case, because Keane was one of the few record company owners who was himself an accomplished musician, being a fairly respectable jazz clarinettist, and Valens seems to have had a very laissez-faire attitude towards structure. Members of the Silhouettes have talked about Valens’ performances on stage, where he would start out playing, for example, “Jenny Jenny” by Little Richard, but after a few lines, he would start improvising his own new melody and lyrics, which would be different every time. This seems to back up Bob Keane’s claims that Valens would only bring in a four or eight-bar riff and a few lines of lyric and improvise the rest in performances which Keane would shape. The most obvious example of Valens working this way is the song “Ooh My Head”, a song that’s credited as a solo Valens composition. Listen to Valens’ song: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Ooh My Head”] And now compare Little Richard’s earlier “Ooh! My Soul”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Ooh! My Soul!”] You can see that Valens’ song seems to have come from precisely this process, of performing someone else’s song and changing it around until it became something different, though in this case not all that different. Amusingly, Led Zeppelin later did exactly the same thing with Valens’ song, resulting in “Boogie With Stu”: [Excerpt: Led Zeppelin, “Boogie With Stu”] While Little Richard never sued over his song being appropriated by Valens, Bob Keane, who owned the publishing for Valens’ songs, did sue Led Zeppelin for that one, even though they had tried to forestall the possibility of a lawsuit by crediting Valens’ mother as a co-writer. So it seems safe to say that Valens’ music was largely spontaneous, to the extent that even after the recording had gone out, he would change the song dramatically in live performance. Compare, for example, the studio version of “Come On Let’s Go”: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Come On Let’s Go”] With this recording of him performing the song live at his old junior high school after it had already become a hit: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Come On Let’s Go (live at Pacoima Junior High School)”] As you can hear, the basic structure of the song remains the same, but there are huge variations in both the lyrics and the melody. At the time of his audition, Valens still thought of himself as primarily an R&B singer, and he was being referred to as “the Little Richard of the Valley”, but Keane had other ideas. Keane didn’t believe that anyone other than black people could make good R&B music, and while Valens would record R&B songs as album tracks — he’d record both “Bony Moronie” by Larry Williams and “Framed” by the Robins — Keane was more interested in emphasising the Latin sound of Valens’ music. Happily for Keane, Valens’ relatively limited guitar playing skills allowed him to do just that. Most R&B and rock and roll of the time was based on a handful of different chord sequences, of which the most common was the twelve-bar blues. The twelve-bar blues has only three chords in, which are the first, fourth, and fifth chords of the major scale. You play four bars of the first, two bars of the fourth, two more of the first, then one each of the fifth and fourth, and two more of the first, like this: [demonstrates twelve-bar blues on guitar] A lot of Latin music uses those same three chords, just arranged in different ways. For example, there’s what’s known as the I-IV-V-I progression: [demonstrates on guitar] That’s the basis of quite a few Latin songs, and it also became the basis of the first record Valens released, “Come On Let’s Go”: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Come On Let’s Go”] “Come On Let’s Go” was recorded along with its B-side, a cover of “Framed” by the Robins, by Valens at Gold Star studios backed by a group of session musicians who would become regulars on his sessions. The union documents for the sessions are not available, so there’s some question as to exactly who played on which recordings, but they would usually involve Rene Hall, Bill Pitman, and/or Carol Kaye on guitar along with Valens himself, Red Callender or Buddy Clarke on standup bass, Earl Palmer on drums, and Ernie Freeman on piano. Sometimes one of the guitarists would instead play a Danelectro bass — a six-string bass guitar with a unique tone that became a signature of many records made in LA. Many of these musicians would later go on to be important parts of the Wrecking Crew, the informal collective of session musicians who played on a huge number of hit records made in LA in the sixties. “Come On Let’s Go” was a minor hit, reaching number forty-two on the Hot One Hundred. This was enough to prove to Keane that his instincts were right — if he pushed Valens into a Latin rock sound, he could have a big star on his hands. He just needed some more material in that style. And he found the next single by accident, when he heard Valens noodling “La Bamba” on his guitar in the back seat of Keane’s car. Keane insisted that that should be Valens’ next single, but Valens was very hesitant. He considered the song to be an important part of his family’s culture, and didn’t want to be accused of selling out his cultural background for a cheap hit. Keane thought that was ridiculous, though personally I have a lot more sympathy with Valens’ problem. Valens was also worried about his Spanish — he basically didn’t speak Spanish at all, and he originally thought it might be an idea to get his aunt to help him translate the lyrics into English and sing those. But eventually it was decided that he’d just sing it in the original Spanish, and he got his aunt to write down as many of the lyrics as she could remember, and learned them phonetically. While Valens normally could only sing while playing his guitar, this time he recorded the vocal as an overdub, apparently with Bob Keane standing behind him whispering the lyrics to him. The arrangement was very different from any earlier versions of the song, and the result was the first record to successfully meld Latin and rock and roll styles into one coherent whole: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “La Bamba”] For the B-side, Keane wanted something that could be a throwaway, so as not to distract from the A-side, and so he just got the musicians to overdub onto the original demo of “Donna” that Valens had recorded in his basement: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Donna”] As it turned out, “Donna” became the bigger hit — “Donna” reached number two on the charts, while “La Bamba” only reached number twenty-two. But “La Bamba” is the record that became far more influential. “La Bamba” has another three-chord sequence, based around those same three chords, but in yet another order. This one is known as the three-chord trick, and goes I-IV-V-IV, like this: [Demonstrates I-IV-V-IV on guitar] “La Bamba” wasn’t the first rock and roll record to use that pattern — there are only a small number of patterns that one can make out of the same three chords, and in particular Chuck Berry had recorded “Havana Moon” a year earlier, and that song would itself go on to be particularly influential. But “La Bamba” definitely was the one that inspired a *lot* of other records to use the same pattern, and one can hear the distinctly Latin echoes of it in records like “Hang on Sloopy”: [Excerpt: The McCoys, “Hang on Sloopy”] or “Twist and Shout”: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “Twist and Shout”] Between that and the influence of “Havana Moon” on records like “Louie Louie” and “Wild Thing”, the three-chord trick became one of the most important chord sequences in rock music, and “La Bamba” was the first record to make that chord sequence popular, and inspired thousands of garage bands. On the back of the success of “La Bamba” and “Donna”, Valens appeared in the Alan Freed film “Go Johnny Go”, which featured Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, the Flamingos and Jackie Wilson. Valens performed “Ooh My Head”, and also appeared in several scenes of the film, but had no lines, as the musical performers weren’t being paid, as the film was considered to be promotion for them, while anyone who had a line was considered an actor and had to be paid. That film was the last major piece of work that Valens did before he headed off for what would be his last tour, which we’ll talk about next week, when we look at the last recording Buddy Holly released in his lifetime.  

Episode seventy-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens, and is the first of a two-part story which will conclude next week with an episode on Buddy Holly. 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 “Kansas City” by Wilbert Harrison. 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.   Only one biography of Valens has ever been written — understandably since his public career lasted a matter of months and he died when he was seventeen — but Beverly Mendheim’s book is about as good as one could expect given that. And this CD compiles all three of the posthumous album releases, Valens’ entire musical legacy. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript This is actually going to be part one of a two-part story, which will be continued in next week’s episode. Ritchie Valens died so young that he is nowadays mostly known for his death, but in this episode we’re going to look at why people cared about him at all — the story of the plane crash that took his life will wait for next week’s episode. This week, we’re going to look at his short recording career, and at his most famous record: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “La Bamba”] So far in this podcast, when we’ve looked at race, we’ve mostly dealt with either black or white musicians, along with a few people who are clearly white by the standards of 2020 but might not have been considered so at the time. But there was, in Los Angeles, a whole parallel music culture growing up around Latino teenagers. This subculture only rarely impinged on the consciousness of the wider American public, but without it we would have had no garage rock and no punk, as we know them today. And the first big star, the person around whom that culture coalesced, was Ritchie Valens. Now, I have to stress here that I am at even more of a disadvantage when talking about this subculture than I am when talking about black America. While black culture has been extensively documented in all sorts of other popular culture I’ve consumed, and I’ve studied mid-twentieth-century black American culture to a reasonable extent (though nowhere near enough, of course, that my thoughts on the subject should be taken as authoritative), I have had almost no exposure to the Latino culture of the same time period. And on top of that, there’s an additional problem, which is that I am going to have to refer to quite a few Spanish terms in the course of this episode, and I don’t speak Spanish. While I’m going to try my best with those, I will undoubtedly mangle some things. But that’s sort of appropriate, at least, in the case of Ritchie Valens, because one of the things that people who knew him would say is that he spoke Spanish terribly — while he was a Mexican-American, he was raised in an English-speaking household, and only spoke Spanish as a second language, in which he wasn’t especially fluent. By all accounts, in fact, Valens — who was born Richard Valenzuela, but had his name shortened when he got a record deal — was at least somewhat unpopular among the other Mexican-Americans at his school. Some of this was due to his appearance — he was notably light-skinned for a Mexican-American, and apparently there was a level of colourism among Latino kids in that area at that time, and he was also quite fat — and some was due to his willingness to associate with people of other races, as he had both black and white friends. Valens’ big interest in school was music, especially R&B, and especially the music of Little Richard and Larry Williams, and other people who had recorded for Specialty Records. When he was in high school, he joined a group called the Silhouettes, who had named themselves after a recent hit of that name by the Rays: [Excerpt: The Rays, “Silhouettes”] That song was also the inspiration for another group, a doo-wop group also called the Silhouettes, who had a hit with “Get a Job”. That’s not this group, and they weren’t yet known at the time. These Silhouettes never recorded, and after Valens became famous there were a lot of interviews with various members of the band who disagreed, of course, on who it was who invited Valens into the band, who the leader of the band was, and who had really taught Valens everything he knew about performing, as well as disagreeing on what songs the band performed, and who contributed what to the songs that made Valens famous. The Silhouettes were by modern standards a very big band, having three trumpets, five saxophones, a vibraphone player, a pianist, a drummer, and a couple of singers, as well as Valens on guitar and vocals. They were very unusual for the time in being a mixed-race group — they were mostly Mexican-Americans, but there were also black and Italian members (at a time when Italians weren’t considered fully white by then-prevailing racial standards) and a Japanese-American saxophone player. Their repertoire was apparently largely based around R&B songs, but they would occasionally play Mexican material, usually when requested for a particular event such as a wedding. Valens usually didn’t sing on those songs, because he didn’t speak Spanish, but he was eventually persuaded to sing one song in Spanish, “La Bamba”. “La Bamba” is an old folk song from Veracruz in Mexico, and is an example of a style called son jarocho, [CUT THIS which fuses Mexican and African musical styles]. The earliest known recording of “La Bamba” is from 1939, but there are suggestions it’s been around for centuries: [Excerpt: El Jarocho, “La Bamba”] The song is traditionally sung at weddings, and its origins are fairly obscure. I’ve seen claims that the song has its origins in music made by slaves in Mexico, and that the title is a reference either to the Mbamba tribe from Angola or to a seventeenth-century slave uprising called the Bambarria — but the only references I can find to that uprising talk about how it was an inspiration for the song, and seem to differ on all the other details. As I’ve said before on this podcast, I tend to doubt a lot of stories claiming that various bits of music and folklore have their origin in African traditions kept up by slaves, as the majority of such stories tend to have very little evidence backing them up, and in the case of “La Bamba” I think it’s far more likely that the song, whose lyrics are mostly about a dance, is referring to the Spanish word “bambolear”, which means to sway, swing, or wobble. Which is not to say that there’s no African influence on the song — I’ve talked before about how African music has influenced Central and South American musical forms, and the son jarocho tradition “La Bamba” is a part of is a mixture of Spanish, indigenous, and African styles. But I think it’s safe to say that the song doesn’t have a “ring a ring a roses” style hidden meaning (and, for that matter, nor does ring a ring a roses” in reality) and that it is what it sounds like — a song about a dance, with nonsense lyrics thrown in. When the Silhouettes played the song, they did it more or less the same way everyone else at the time would play it. There are no recordings of the Silhouettes, but they likely based their performance on a successful recording of the song like the version by Hermanos Huesca: [Excerpt: Hermanos Huesca, “La Bamba”] The Silhouettes built up quite a local following, and in January 1958 they played a show that they promoted themselves, in a hall they’d rented out in order to raise money to pay for Valens’ family’s mortgage payment for that month. One of the people who attended the show was a twenty-year-old from the area named Doug Macchia, who vaguely knew a couple of the band members. Macchia was, at the time, employed by Bob Keane. We’ve not mentioned Keane himself before, but we have mentioned one of the labels he owned, Keen Records, which was the label on which he’d released Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Many of the people involved in that record, like guitarist René Hall and drummer Earl Palmer, had worked with many of the Specialty acts that Valens admired, and Keane had started employing them on a regular basis, both on Keen Records and on his new label, Del-Fi. Macchia recorded the Silhouettes at the gig on a portable tape recorder, and took the recording (which is now lost) to Keane, who was impressed enough with Valens, though not with the other members, that he requested that they come to audition for him in his home recording studio. Valens was at first reluctant to go to the audition when Macchia told him about it, and he also delayed the audition, because when Macchia came round Valens was minding the other children at home and had to wait until his mother got back before he could go to the studio. While he was waiting, Macchia helped Valens finish up a song he was working on, which he named after a girl with whom he’d been having some sort of relationship (people differ on whether it was just a crush he had or whether they were in some great doomed romance): [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Donna”] When it came to the audition, Keane was impressed with Valens, not because of his ability, but because of his energy. Keane signed him, and started shaping him into a new style of performer. Valens was not a particularly proficient guitarist. He had a lot of natural skill, and a love of the instrument, but when he first started recording he could only play in a handful of keys. Almost everything he recorded is in the key of D or A, and had only three or four chords. When he recorded one song and needed to drop the key down to D flat, he ended up tuning his guitar down half a step, because he didn’t know the chords in that key — and on another occasion, when he was trying to tell the bass player on a session what part to play, he became frustrated because the part he could hear in his head had a low D, but the bass only goes down as far as a low E. He would rarely play the same song the same way twice, and most of the recordings he completed were pulled together by Bob Keane from multiple takes — the tapes were spliced so much that Stan Ross, the co-owner of Gold Star Studios, described them as “looking like they’d been through World War Fourteen”. Valens would go into the studio with a rough idea for a melody and a few words, and improvise several different variations on the song, and the best bits of each improvisation would be used for the finished recording. According to at least some sources, Bob Keane would shape the actual song during the recording and in the edit, helping Valens finish the lyrics and editing together bits of different performances to make a coherent song out of them. Other sources, including Ross, say that wasn’t the case and that Valens essentially produced his own sessions and wrote all the material himself. I actually lean towards Keane’s claims in this case, because Keane was one of the few record company owners who was himself an accomplished musician, being a fairly respectable jazz clarinettist, and Valens seems to have had a very laissez-faire attitude towards structure. Members of the Silhouettes have talked about Valens’ performances on stage, where he would start out playing, for example, “Jenny Jenny” by Little Richard, but after a few lines, he would start improvising his own new melody and lyrics, which would be different every time. This seems to back up Bob Keane’s claims that Valens would only bring in a four or eight-bar riff and a few lines of lyric and improvise the rest in performances which Keane would shape. The most obvious example of Valens working this way is the song “Ooh My Head”, a song that’s credited as a solo Valens composition. Listen to Valens’ song: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Ooh My Head”] And now compare Little Richard’s earlier “Ooh! My Soul”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Ooh! My Soul!”] You can see that Valens’ song seems to have come from precisely this process, of performing someone else’s song and changing it around until it became something different, though in this case not all that different. Amusingly, Led Zeppelin later did exactly the same thing with Valens’ song, resulting in “Boogie With Stu”: [Excerpt: Led Zeppelin, “Boogie With Stu”] While Little Richard never sued over his song being appropriated by Valens, Bob Keane, who owned the publishing for Valens’ songs, did sue Led Zeppelin for that one, even though they had tried to forestall the possibility of a lawsuit by crediting Valens’ mother as a co-writer. So it seems safe to say that Valens’ music was largely spontaneous, to the extent that even after the recording had gone out, he would change the song dramatically in live performance. Compare, for example, the studio version of “Come On Let’s Go”: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Come On Let’s Go”] With this recording of him performing the song live at his old junior high school after it had already become a hit: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Come On Let’s Go (live at Pacoima Junior High School)”] As you can hear, the basic structure of the song remains the same, but there are huge variations in both the lyrics and the melody. At the time of his audition, Valens still thought of himself as primarily an R&B singer, and he was being referred to as “the Little Richard of the Valley”, but Keane had other ideas. Keane didn’t believe that anyone other than black people could make good R&B music, and while Valens would record R&B songs as album tracks — he’d record both “Bony Moronie” by Larry Williams and “Framed” by the Robins — Keane was more interested in emphasising the Latin sound of Valens’ music. Happily for Keane, Valens’ relatively limited guitar playing skills allowed him to do just that. Most R&B and rock and roll of the time was based on a handful of different chord sequences, of which the most common was the twelve-bar blues. The twelve-bar blues has only three chords in, which are the first, fourth, and fifth chords of the major scale. You play four bars of the first, two bars of the fourth, two more of the first, then one each of the fifth and fourth, and two more of the first, like this: [demonstrates twelve-bar blues on guitar] A lot of Latin music uses those same three chords, just arranged in different ways. For example, there’s what’s known as the I-IV-V-I progression: [demonstrates on guitar] That’s the basis of quite a few Latin songs, and it also became the basis of the first record Valens released, “Come On Let’s Go”: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Come On Let’s Go”] “Come On Let’s Go” was recorded along with its B-side, a cover of “Framed” by the Robins, by Valens at Gold Star studios backed by a group of session musicians who would become regulars on his sessions. The union documents for the sessions are not available, so there’s some question as to exactly who played on which recordings, but they would usually involve Rene Hall, Bill Pitman, and/or Carol Kaye on guitar along with Valens himself, Red Callender or Buddy Clarke on standup bass, Earl Palmer on drums, and Ernie Freeman on piano. Sometimes one of the guitarists would instead play a Danelectro bass — a six-string bass guitar with a unique tone that became a signature of many records made in LA. Many of these musicians would later go on to be important parts of the Wrecking Crew, the informal collective of session musicians who played on a huge number of hit records made in LA in the sixties. “Come On Let’s Go” was a minor hit, reaching number forty-two on the Hot One Hundred. This was enough to prove to Keane that his instincts were right — if he pushed Valens into a Latin rock sound, he could have a big star on his hands. He just needed some more material in that style. And he found the next single by accident, when he heard Valens noodling “La Bamba” on his guitar in the back seat of Keane’s car. Keane insisted that that should be Valens’ next single, but Valens was very hesitant. He considered the song to be an important part of his family’s culture, and didn’t want to be accused of selling out his cultural background for a cheap hit. Keane thought that was ridiculous, though personally I have a lot more sympathy with Valens’ problem. Valens was also worried about his Spanish — he basically didn’t speak Spanish at all, and he originally thought it might be an idea to get his aunt to help him translate the lyrics into English and sing those. But eventually it was decided that he’d just sing it in the original Spanish, and he got his aunt to write down as many of the lyrics as she could remember, and learned them phonetically. While Valens normally could only sing while playing his guitar, this time he recorded the vocal as an overdub, apparently with Bob Keane standing behind him whispering the lyrics to him. The arrangement was very different from any earlier versions of the song, and the result was the first record to successfully meld Latin and rock and roll styles into one coherent whole: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “La Bamba”] For the B-side, Keane wanted something that could be a throwaway, so as not to distract from the A-side, and so he just got the musicians to overdub onto the original demo of “Donna” that Valens had recorded in his basement: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, “Donna”] As it turned out, “Donna” became the bigger hit — “Donna” reached number two on the charts, while “La Bamba” only reached number twenty-two. But “La Bamba” is the record that became far more influential. “La Bamba” has another three-chord sequence, based around those same three chords, but in yet another order. This one is known as the three-chord trick, and goes I-IV-V-IV, like this: [Demonstrates I-IV-V-IV on guitar] “La Bamba” wasn’t the first rock and roll record to use that pattern — there are only a small number of patterns that one can make out of the same three chords, and in particular Chuck Berry had recorded “Havana Moon” a year earlier, and that song would itself go on to be particularly influential. But “La Bamba” definitely was the one that inspired a *lot* of other records to use the same pattern, and one can hear the distinctly Latin echoes of it in records like “Hang on Sloopy”: [Excerpt: The McCoys, “Hang on Sloopy”] or “Twist and Shout”: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “Twist and Shout”] Between that and the influence of “Havana Moon” on records like “Louie Louie” and “Wild Thing”, the three-chord trick became one of the most important chord sequences in rock music, and “La Bamba” was the first record to make that chord sequence popular, and inspired thousands of garage bands. On the back of the success of “La Bamba” and “Donna”, Valens appeared in the Alan Freed film “Go Johnny Go”, which featured Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, the Flamingos and Jackie Wilson. Valens performed “Ooh My Head”, and also appeared in several scenes of the film, but had no lines, as the musical performers weren’t being paid, as the film was considered to be promotion for them, while anyone who had a line was considered an actor and had to be paid. That film was the last major piece of work that Valens did before he headed off for what would be his last tour, which we’ll talk about next week, when we look at the last recording Buddy Holly released in his lifetime.  

Episode sixty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke 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 “Little Darlin'” by The Gladiolas. Also, an announcement — the book version of the first fifty episodes is now available for purchase. See the show notes, or the previous mini-episode announcing this, for details. (more…)

Episode sixty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "You Send Me" by Sam Cooke 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 "Little Darlin'" by The Gladiolas. Also, an announcement -- the book version of the first fifty episodes is now available for purchase. See the show notes, or the previous mini-episode announcing this, for details.  ----more---- Resources The Mixcloud is slightly delayed this week. I'll update the post tonight with the link. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick's work, it's an essential book if you're even slightly interested in the subject. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke's music for the beginner. A note on spelling: Sam Cooke was born Sam Cook, the rest of his family all kept the surname Cook, and he only added the "e" from the release of "You Send Me", so for almost all the time covered in this episode he was Cook. I didn't feel the need to mention this in the podcast, as the two names are pronounced identically. I've spelled him as Cooke and everyone else as Cook throughout. Book of the Podcast Remember that there's a book available based on the first fifty episodes of the podcast. You can buy it at this link, which will take you to your preferred online bookstore. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We've talked before about how the music that became known as soul had its roots in gospel music, but today we're going to have a look at the first big star of that music to get his start as a professional gospel singer, rather than as a rhythm and blues singer who included a little bit of gospel feeling. Sam Cooke was, in many ways, the most important black musician of the late fifties and early sixties, and without him it's doubtful whether we would have the genre of soul as we know it today. But when he started out, he was someone who worked exclusively in the gospel field, and within that field he was something of a superstar. He was also someone who, as admirable as he was as a singer, was far less admirable in his behaviour towards other people, especially the women in his life, and while that's something that will come up more in future episodes, it's worth noting here. Cooke started out as a teenager in the 1940s, performing in gospel groups around Chicago, which as we've talked about before was the city where a whole new form of gospel music was being created at that point, spearheaded by Thomas Dorsey. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe were all living and performing in the city during young Sam's formative years, but the biggest influence on him was a group called the Soul Stirrers. The Soul Stirrers had started out in 1926 as a group in what was called the "jubilee" style -- the style that black singers of spiritual music sang in the period before Thomas Dorsey revolutionised gospel music. There are no recordings of the Soul Stirrers in that style, but this is probably the most famous jubilee recording: [Excerpt: The Fisk Jubilee Singers, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"] But as Thomas Dorsey and the musicians around him started to create the music we now think of as gospel, the Soul Stirrers switched styles, and became one of the first -- and best -- gospel quartets in the new style. In the late forties, the Soul Stirrers signed to Specialty Records, one of the first acts to sign to the label, and recorded a series of classic singles led by R.H. Harris, who was regarded by many as the greatest gospel singer of the age: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers feat. R.H. Harris, "In That Awful Hour"] Sam Cooke was one of seven children, the son of Reverend Charles Cook and his wife Annie Mae, and from a very early age the Reverend Cook had been training them as singers -- five of them would perform regularly around churches in the area, under the name The Singing Children. Young Sam was taught religion by his father, but he was also taught that there was no prohibition in the Bible against worldly success. Indeed the Reverend Cook taught him two things that would matter in his life even more than his religion would. The first was that whatever it is you do in life, you try to do it the best you can -- you never do anything by halves, and if a thing's worth doing it's worth doing properly. And the second was that you do whatever is necessary to give yourself the best possible life, and don't worry about who you step on to do it. After spending some time with his family group, Cooke joined a newly-formed gospel group, who had heard him singing the Ink Spots song "If I Didn't Care" to a girl. That group was called the Highway QCs, and a version of the group still exists to this day. Sam Cooke only stayed with them a couple of years, and never recorded with them, but they replaced him with a soundalike singer, Johnnie Taylor, and listening to Taylor's recordings with the group you can get some idea of what they sounded like when Sam was a member: [Excerpt: Johnnie Taylor and the Highway QCs, "I Dreamed That Heaven Was Like This"] The rest of the group were decent singers, but Sam Cooke was absolutely unquestionably the star of the Highway QCs. Creadell Copeland, one of the group's members, later said “All we had to do was stand behind Sam. Our claim to fame was that Sam’s voice was so captivating we didn’t have to do anything else.” The group didn't make a huge amount of money, and they kept talking about going in a pop direction, rather than just singing gospel songs, and Sam was certainly singing a lot of secular music in his own time -- he loved gospel music as much as anyone, but he was also learning from people like Gene Autry or Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and he was slowly developing into a singer who could do absolutely anything with his voice. But his biggest influence was still R.H. Harris of the Soul Stirrers, who was the most important person in the gospel quartet field. This wasn't just because he was the most talented of all the quartet singers -- though he was, and that was certainly part of it -- but because he was the joint leader of a movement to professionalise the gospel quartet movement. (Just as a quick explanation -- in both black gospel, and in the white gospel music euphemistically called "Southern Gospel", the term "quartet" is used for groups which might have five, six, or even more people in them. I'll generally refer to all of these as "groups", because I'm not from the gospel world, but I'll use the term "quartet" when talking about things like the National Quartet Convention, and I may slip between the two interchangeably at times. Just know that if I mention quartets, I'm not just talking about groups with exactly four people in them). Harris worked with a less well known singer called Abraham Battle, and with Charlie Bridges, of another popular group, the Famous Blue Jays: [Excerpt: The Famous Blue Jay Singers, “Praising Jesus Evermore”] Together they founded the National Quartet Convention, which existed to try to take all the young gospel quartets who were springing up all over the place, and most of whom had casual attitudes to their music and their onstage appearance, and teach them how to comport themselves in a manner that the organisation's leaders considered appropriate for a gospel singer. The Highway QCs joined the Convention, of course, and they considered themselves to be disciples, in a sense, of the Soul Stirrers, who they simultaneously considered to be their mentors and thought were jealous of the QCs. It was normal at the time for gospel groups to turn up at each other's shows, and if they were popular enough they would be invited up to sing, and sometimes even take over the show. When the Highway QCs turned up at Soul Stirrers shows, though, the Soul Stirrers would act as if they didn't know them, and would only invite them on to the stage if the audience absolutely insisted, and would then limit their performance to a single song. From the Highway QCs' point of view, the only possible explanation was that the Soul Stirrers were terrified of the competition. A more likely explanation is probably that they were just more interested in putting on their own show than in giving space to some young kids who thought they were the next big thing. On the other hand, to all the younger kids around Chicago, the Highway QCs were clearly the group to beat -- and people like a young singer named Lou Rawls looked up to them as something to aspire to. And soon the QCs found themselves being mentored by R.B. Robinson, one of the Soul Stirrers. Robinson would train them, and help them get better gigs, and the QCs became convinced that they were headed for the big time. But it turned out that behind the scenes, there had been trouble in the Soul Stirrers. Harris had, more and more, come to think of himself as the real star of the group, and quit to go solo. It had looked likely for a while that he would do so, and when Robinson had appeared to be mentoring the QCs, what he was actually doing was training their lead singer, so that when R.H. Harris eventually quit, they would have someone to take his place. The other Highway QCs were heartbroken, but Sam took the advice of his father, the Reverend Cook, who told him "Anytime you can make a step higher, you go higher. Don’t worry about the other fellow. You hold up for other folks, and they’ll take advantage of you." And so, in March 1951, Sam Cooke went into the studio with the Soul Stirrers for his first ever recording session, three months after joining the group. Art Rupe, the head of Specialty Records, was not at all impressed that the group had got a new singer without telling him. Rupe had to admit that Cooke could sing, but his performance on the first few songs, while impressive, was no R.H. Harris: [Excerpt: the Soul Stirrers, "Come, Let Us Go Back to God"] But towards the end of the session, the Soul Stirrers insisted that they should record "Jesus Gave Me Water", a song that had always been a highlight of the Highway QCs' set. Rupe thought that this was ridiculous -- the Pilgrim Travellers had just had a hit with the song, on Specialty, not six months earlier. What could Specialty possibly do with another version of the song so soon afterwards? But the group insisted, and the result was absolutely majestic: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Jesus Gave Me Water"] Rupe lost his misgivings, both about the song and about the singer -- that was clearly going to be the group's next single. The group themselves were still not completely sure about Cooke as their singer -- he was younger than the rest of them, and he didn't have Harris' assurance and professionalism, yet. But they knew they had something with that song, which was released with "Peace in the Valley" on the B-side. That song had been written by Thomas Dorsey fourteen years earlier, but this was the first time it had been released on a record, at least by anyone of any prominence. "Jesus Gave Me Water" was a hit, but the follow-ups were less successful, and meanwhile Art Rupe was starting to see the commercial potential in black styles of music other than gospel. Even though Rupe loved gospel music, he realised when "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" became the biggest hit Specialty had ever had to that point that maybe he should refocus the label away from gospel and towards more secular styles of music. “Jesus Gave Me Water” had consolidated Sam as the lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, but while he was singing gospel, he wasn't living a very godly life. He got married in 1953, but he'd already had at least one child with another woman, who he left with the baby, and he was sleeping around constantly while on the road, and more than once the women involved became pregnant. But Cooke treated women the same way he treated the groups he was in – use them for as long as they've got something you want, and then immediately cast them aside once it became inconvenient. For the next few years, the Soul Stirrers would have one recording session every year, and the group continued touring, but they didn't have any breakout success, even as other Specialty acts like Lloyd Price, Jesse Belvin, and Guitar Slim were all selling hand over fist. The Soul Stirrers were more popular as a live act than as a recording act, and hearing the live recording of them that Bumps Blackwell produced in 1955, it's easy to see why: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Nearer to Thee"] Bumps Blackwell was convinced that Cooke needed to go solo and become a pop singer, and he was more convinced than ever when he produced the Soul Stirrers in the studio for the first time. The reason, actually, was to do with Cooke's laziness. They'd gone into the studio, and it turned out that Cooke hadn't written a song, and they needed one. The rest of the group were upset with him, and he just told them to hand him a Bible. He started flipping through, skimming to find something, and then he said "I got one". He told the guitarist to play a couple of chords, and he started singing -- and the song that came out, improvised off the top of his head, "Touch the Hem of His Garment", was perfect just as it was, and the group quickly cut it: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Touch the Hem of His Garment"] Blackwell knew then that Cooke was a very, very special talent, and he and the rest of the people at Specialty became more and more insistent as 1956 went on that Sam Cooke should become a secular solo performer, rather than performing in a gospel group. The Soul Stirrers were only selling in the low tens of thousands -- a reasonable amount for a gospel group, but hardly the kind of numbers that would make anyone rich. Meanwhile, gospel-inspired performers were having massive hits with gospel songs with a couple of words changed. There's an episode of South Park where they make fun of contemporary Christian music, saying you just have to take a normal song and change the word "Baby" to "Jesus". In the mid-fifties things seemed to be the other way -- people were having hits by taking Gospel songs and changing the word "Jesus" to "baby", or near as damnit. Most famously and blatantly, there was Ray Charles, who did things like take "This Little Light of Mine": [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "This Little Light of Mine"] and turn it into "This Little Girl of Mine: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "This Little Girl of Mine"] But there were a number of other acts doing things that weren't that much less blatant. And so Sam Cooke travelled to New Orleans, to record in Cosimo Matassa's studio with the same musicians who had been responsible for so many rock and roll hits. Or, rather, Dale Cook did. Sam was still a member of the Soul Stirrers at the time, and while he wanted to make himself into a star, he was also concerned that if he recorded secular music under his own name, he would damage his career as a gospel singer, without necessarily getting a better career to replace it. So the decision was made to put the single out under the name "Dale Cook", and maintain a small amount of plausible deniability. If necessary, they could say that Dale was Sam's brother, because it was fairly well known that Sam came from a singing family, and indeed Sam's brother L.C. (whose name was just the initials L.C.) later went on to have some minor success as a singer himself, in a style very like Sam's. As his first secular recording, they decided to record a new version of a gospel song that Cooke had recorded with the Soul Stirrers, "Wonderful": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Wonderful"] One quick rewrite later, and that song became, instead, "Lovable": [Excerpt: Dale Cook, "Lovable"] Around the time of the Dale Cook recording session, Sam's brother L.C. went to Memphis, with his own group, where they appeared at the bottom of the bill for a charity Christmas show in aid of impoverished black youth. The lineup of the show was almost entirely black – people like Ray Charles, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, and so on – but Elvis Presley turned up briefly to come out on stage and wave to the crowd and say a few words – the Colonel wouldn't allow him to perform without getting paid, but did allow him to make an appearance, and he wanted to support the black community in Memphis. Backstage, Elvis was happy to meet all the acts, but when he found out that L.C. was Sam's brother, he spent a full twenty minutes talking to L.C. about how great Sam was, and how much he admired his singing with the Soul Stirrers. Sam was such a distinctive voice that while the single came out as by "Dale Cook", the DJs playing it would often introduce it as being by "Dale Sam Cook", and the Soul Stirrers started to be asked if they were going to sing "Lovable" in their shows. Sam started to have doubts as to whether this move towards a pop style was really a good idea, and remained with the Soul Stirrers for the moment, though it's noticeable that songs like "Mean Old World" could easily be refigured into being secular songs, and have only a minimal amount of religious content: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Mean Old World"] But barely a week after the session that produced “Mean Old World”, Sam was sending Bumps Blackwell demos of new pop songs he'd written, which he thought Blackwell would be interested in producing. Sam Cooke was going to treat the Soul Stirrers the same way he'd treated the Highway QCs. Cooke flew to LA, to meet with Blackwell and with Clifton White, a musician who had been for a long time the guitarist for the Mills Brothers, but who had recently left the band and started working with Blackwell as a session player. White was very unimpressed with Cooke – he thought that the new song Cooke sang to them, "You Send Me", was just him repeating the same thing over and over again. Art Rupe helped them whittle the song choices down to four. Rupe had very particular ideas about what made for a commercial record – for example, that a record had to be exactly two minutes and twenty seconds long – and the final choices for the session were made with Rupe's criteria in mind. The songs chosen were "Summertime", "You Send Me", another song Sam had written called "You Were Made For Me", and "Things You Do to Me", which was written by a young man Bumps Blackwell had just taken on as his assistant, named Sonny Bono. The recording session should have been completely straightforward. Blackwell supervised it, and while the session was in LA, almost everyone there was a veteran New Orleans player – along with Clif White on guitar there was René Hall, a guitarist from New Orleans who had recently quit Billy Ward and the Dominoes, and acted as instrumental arranger; Harold Battiste, a New Orleans saxophone player who Bumps had taken under his wing, and who wasn't playing on the session but ended up writing the vocal arrangements for the backing singers; Earl Palmer, who had just moved to LA from New Orleans and was starting to make a name for himself as a session player there after his years of playing with Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Fats Domino in Cosimo Matassa's studio, and Ted Brinson, the only LA native, on bass -- Brinson was a regular player on Specialty sessions, and also had connections with almost every LA R&B act, to the extent that it was his garage that "Earth Angel" by the Penguins had been recorded in. And on backing vocals were the Lee Gotch singers, a white vocal group who were among the most in-demand vocalists in LA. So this should have been a straightforward session, and it was, until Art Rupe turned up just after they'd recorded "You Send Me": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "You Send Me"] Rupe was horrified that Bumps and Battiste had put white backing vocalists behind Cooke's vocals. They were, in Rupe's view, trying to make Sam Cooke sound like Billy Ward and his Dominoes at best, and like a symphony orchestra at worst. The Billy Ward reference was because René Hall had recently arranged a version of "Stardust" for the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Stardust"] And the new version of "Summertime" had some of the same feel: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Summertime"] If Sam Cooke was going to record for Specialty, he wasn't going to have *white* vocalists backing him. Rupe wanted black music, not something trying to be white -- and the fact that he, a white man, was telling a room full of black musicians what counted as black music, was not lost on Bumps Blackwell. Even worse than the whiteness of the singers, though, was that some of them were women. Rupe and Blackwell had already had one massive falling-out, over "Rip it Up" by Little Richard. When they'd agreed to record that, Blackwell had worked out an arrangement beforehand that Rupe was happy with -- one that was based around piano triplets. But then, when he'd been on the plane to the session, Blackwell had hit upon another idea -- to base the song around a particular drum pattern: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Rip it Up"] Rupe had nearly fired Blackwell over that, and only relented when the record became a massive hit. Now that instead of putting a male black gospel group behind Cooke, as agreed, Blackwell had disobeyed him a second time and put white vocalists, including women, behind him, Rupe decided it was the last straw. Blackwell had to go. He was also convinced that Sam Cooke was only after money, because once Cooke discovered that his solo contract only paid him a third of the royalties that the Soul Stirrers had been getting as a group, he started pushing for a greater share of the money. Rupe didn't like that kind of greed from his artists -- why *should* he pay the artist more than one cent per record sold? But he still owed Blackwell a great deal of money. They eventually came to an agreement -- Blackwell would leave Specialty, and take Sam Cooke, and Cooke's existing recordings with him, since he was so convinced that they were going to be a hit. Rupe would keep the publishing rights to any songs Sam wrote, and would have an option on eight further Sam Cooke recordings in the future, but Cooke and Blackwell were free to take "You Send Me", "Summertime", and the rest to a new label that wanted them for its first release, Keen. While they waited around for Keen to get itself set up, Sam made himself firmly a part of the Central Avenue music scene, hanging around with Gaynel Hodge, Jesse Belvin, Dootsie Williams, Googie Rene, John Dolphin, and everyone else who was part of the LA R&B community. Meanwhile, the Soul Stirrers got Johnnie Taylor, the man who had replaced Sam in the Highway QCs, to replace him in the Stirrers. While Sam was out of the group, for the next few years he would be regularly involved with them, helping them out in recording sessions, producing them, and more. When the single came out, everyone thought that "Summertime" would be the hit, but "You Send Me" quickly found itself all over the airwaves and became massive: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "You Send Me"] Several cover versions came out almost immediately. Sam and Bumps didn't mind the versions by Jesse Belvin: [Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, "You Send Me"] Or Cornell Gunter: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, "You Send Me"] They were friends and colleagues, and good luck to them if they had a hit with the song -- and anyway, they knew that Sam's version was better. What they did object to was the white cover version by Teresa Brewer: [Excerpt: Teresa Brewer, "You Send Me"] Even though her version was less of a soundalike than the other LA R&B versions, it was more offensive to them -- she was even copying Sam's "whoa-oh"s. She was nothing more than a thief, Blackwell argued -- and her version was charting, and made the top ten. Fortunately for them, Sam's version went to number one, on both the R&B and pop charts, despite a catastrophic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which accidentally cut him off half way through a song. But there was still trouble with Art Rupe. Sam was still signed to Rupe's company as a songwriter, and so he'd put "You Send Me" in the name of his brother L.C., so Rupe wouldn't get any royalties. Rupe started legal action against him, and meanwhile, he took a demo Sam had recorded, "I'll Come Running Back To You", and got René Hall and the Lee Gotch singers, the very people whose work on "You Send Me" and "Summertime" he'd despised so much, to record overdubs to make it sound as much like "You Send Me" as possible: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "I'll Come Running Back To You"] And in retaliation for *that* being released, Bumps Blackwell took a song that he'd recorded months earlier with Little Richard, but which still hadn't been released, and got the Specialty duo Don and Dewey to provide instrumental backing for a vocal group called the Valiants, and put it out on Keen: [Excerpt: The Valiants, "Good Golly Miss Molly"] Specialty had to rush-release Little Richard's version to make sure it became the hit -- a blow for them, given that they were trying to dripfeed the public what few Little Richard recordings they had left. As 1957 drew to a close, Sam Cooke was on top of the world. But the seeds of his downfall were already in place. He was upsetting all the right people with his desire to have control of his own career, but he was also hurting a lot of other people along the way -- people who had helped him, like the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers, and especially women. He was about to divorce his first wife, and he had fathered a string of children with different women, all of whom he refused to acknowledge or support. He was taking his father's maxims about only looking after yourself, and applying them to every aspect of life, with no regard to who it hurt. But such was his talent and charm, that even the people he hurt ended up defending him. Over the next couple of times we see Sam Cooke, we'll see him rising to ever greater artistic heights, but we'll also see the damage he caused to himself and to others. Because the story of Sam Cooke gets very, very unpleasant.

Episode sixty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke 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 “Little Darlin'” by The Gladiolas. Also, an announcement — the book version of the first fifty episodes is now available for purchase. See the show notes, or the previous mini-episode announcing this, for details.  —-more—- Resources The Mixcloud is slightly delayed this week. I’ll update the post tonight with the link. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick’s work, it’s an essential book if you’re even slightly interested in the subject. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke’s music for the beginner. A note on spelling: Sam Cooke was born Sam Cook, the rest of his family all kept the surname Cook, and he only added the “e” from the release of “You Send Me”, so for almost all the time covered in this episode he was Cook. I didn’t feel the need to mention this in the podcast, as the two names are pronounced identically. I’ve spelled him as Cooke and everyone else as Cook throughout. Book of the Podcast Remember that there’s a book available based on the first fifty episodes of the podcast. You can buy it at this link, which will take you to your preferred online bookstore. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We’ve talked before about how the music that became known as soul had its roots in gospel music, but today we’re going to have a look at the first big star of that music to get his start as a professional gospel singer, rather than as a rhythm and blues singer who included a little bit of gospel feeling. Sam Cooke was, in many ways, the most important black musician of the late fifties and early sixties, and without him it’s doubtful whether we would have the genre of soul as we know it today. But when he started out, he was someone who worked exclusively in the gospel field, and within that field he was something of a superstar. He was also someone who, as admirable as he was as a singer, was far less admirable in his behaviour towards other people, especially the women in his life, and while that’s something that will come up more in future episodes, it’s worth noting here. Cooke started out as a teenager in the 1940s, performing in gospel groups around Chicago, which as we’ve talked about before was the city where a whole new form of gospel music was being created at that point, spearheaded by Thomas Dorsey. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe were all living and performing in the city during young Sam’s formative years, but the biggest influence on him was a group called the Soul Stirrers. The Soul Stirrers had started out in 1926 as a group in what was called the “jubilee” style — the style that black singers of spiritual music sang in the period before Thomas Dorsey revolutionised gospel music. There are no recordings of the Soul Stirrers in that style, but this is probably the most famous jubilee recording: [Excerpt: The Fisk Jubilee Singers, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”] But as Thomas Dorsey and the musicians around him started to create the music we now think of as gospel, the Soul Stirrers switched styles, and became one of the first — and best — gospel quartets in the new style. In the late forties, the Soul Stirrers signed to Specialty Records, one of the first acts to sign to the label, and recorded a series of classic singles led by R.H. Harris, who was regarded by many as the greatest gospel singer of the age: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers feat. R.H. Harris, “In That Awful Hour”] Sam Cooke was one of seven children, the son of Reverend Charles Cook and his wife Annie Mae, and from a very early age the Reverend Cook had been training them as singers — five of them would perform regularly around churches in the area, under the name The Singing Children. Young Sam was taught religion by his father, but he was also taught that there was no prohibition in the Bible against worldly success. Indeed the Reverend Cook taught him two things that would matter in his life even more than his religion would. The first was that whatever it is you do in life, you try to do it the best you can — you never do anything by halves, and if a thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing properly. And the second was that you do whatever is necessary to give yourself the best possible life, and don’t worry about who you step on to do it. After spending some time with his family group, Cooke joined a newly-formed gospel group, who had heard him singing the Ink Spots song “If I Didn’t Care” to a girl. That group was called the Highway QCs, and a version of the group still exists to this day. Sam Cooke only stayed with them a couple of years, and never recorded with them, but they replaced him with a soundalike singer, Johnnie Taylor, and listening to Taylor’s recordings with the group you can get some idea of what they sounded like when Sam was a member: [Excerpt: Johnnie Taylor and the Highway QCs, “I Dreamed That Heaven Was Like This”] The rest of the group were decent singers, but Sam Cooke was absolutely unquestionably the star of the Highway QCs. Creadell Copeland, one of the group’s members, later said “All we had to do was stand behind Sam. Our claim to fame was that Sam’s voice was so captivating we didn’t have to do anything else.” The group didn’t make a huge amount of money, and they kept talking about going in a pop direction, rather than just singing gospel songs, and Sam was certainly singing a lot of secular music in his own time — he loved gospel music as much as anyone, but he was also learning from people like Gene Autry or Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and he was slowly developing into a singer who could do absolutely anything with his voice. But his biggest influence was still R.H. Harris of the Soul Stirrers, who was the most important person in the gospel quartet field. This wasn’t just because he was the most talented of all the quartet singers — though he was, and that was certainly part of it — but because he was the joint leader of a movement to professionalise the gospel quartet movement. (Just as a quick explanation — in both black gospel, and in the white gospel music euphemistically called “Southern Gospel”, the term “quartet” is used for groups which might have five, six, or even more people in them. I’ll generally refer to all of these as “groups”, because I’m not from the gospel world, but I’ll use the term “quartet” when talking about things like the National Quartet Convention, and I may slip between the two interchangeably at times. Just know that if I mention quartets, I’m not just talking about groups with exactly four people in them). Harris worked with a less well known singer called Abraham Battle, and with Charlie Bridges, of another popular group, the Famous Blue Jays: [Excerpt: The Famous Blue Jay Singers, “Praising Jesus Evermore”] Together they founded the National Quartet Convention, which existed to try to take all the young gospel quartets who were springing up all over the place, and most of whom had casual attitudes to their music and their onstage appearance, and teach them how to comport themselves in a manner that the organisation’s leaders considered appropriate for a gospel singer. The Highway QCs joined the Convention, of course, and they considered themselves to be disciples, in a sense, of the Soul Stirrers, who they simultaneously considered to be their mentors and thought were jealous of the QCs. It was normal at the time for gospel groups to turn up at each other’s shows, and if they were popular enough they would be invited up to sing, and sometimes even take over the show. When the Highway QCs turned up at Soul Stirrers shows, though, the Soul Stirrers would act as if they didn’t know them, and would only invite them on to the stage if the audience absolutely insisted, and would then limit their performance to a single song. From the Highway QCs’ point of view, the only possible explanation was that the Soul Stirrers were terrified of the competition. A more likely explanation is probably that they were just more interested in putting on their own show than in giving space to some young kids who thought they were the next big thing. On the other hand, to all the younger kids around Chicago, the Highway QCs were clearly the group to beat — and people like a young singer named Lou Rawls looked up to them as something to aspire to. And soon the QCs found themselves being mentored by R.B. Robinson, one of the Soul Stirrers. Robinson would train them, and help them get better gigs, and the QCs became convinced that they were headed for the big time. But it turned out that behind the scenes, there had been trouble in the Soul Stirrers. Harris had, more and more, come to think of himself as the real star of the group, and quit to go solo. It had looked likely for a while that he would do so, and when Robinson had appeared to be mentoring the QCs, what he was actually doing was training their lead singer, so that when R.H. Harris eventually quit, they would have someone to take his place. The other Highway QCs were heartbroken, but Sam took the advice of his father, the Reverend Cook, who told him “Anytime you can make a step higher, you go higher. Don’t worry about the other fellow. You hold up for other folks, and they’ll take advantage of you.” And so, in March 1951, Sam Cooke went into the studio with the Soul Stirrers for his first ever recording session, three months after joining the group. Art Rupe, the head of Specialty Records, was not at all impressed that the group had got a new singer without telling him. Rupe had to admit that Cooke could sing, but his performance on the first few songs, while impressive, was no R.H. Harris: [Excerpt: the Soul Stirrers, “Come, Let Us Go Back to God”] But towards the end of the session, the Soul Stirrers insisted that they should record “Jesus Gave Me Water”, a song that had always been a highlight of the Highway QCs’ set. Rupe thought that this was ridiculous — the Pilgrim Travellers had just had a hit with the song, on Specialty, not six months earlier. What could Specialty possibly do with another version of the song so soon afterwards? But the group insisted, and the result was absolutely majestic: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, “Jesus Gave Me Water”] Rupe lost his misgivings, both about the song and about the singer — that was clearly going to be the group’s next single. The group themselves were still not completely sure about Cooke as their singer — he was younger than the rest of them, and he didn’t have Harris’ assurance and professionalism, yet. But they knew they had something with that song, which was released with “Peace in the Valley” on the B-side. That song had been written by Thomas Dorsey fourteen years earlier, but this was the first time it had been released on a record, at least by anyone of any prominence. “Jesus Gave Me Water” was a hit, but the follow-ups were less successful, and meanwhile Art Rupe was starting to see the commercial potential in black styles of music other than gospel. Even though Rupe loved gospel music, he realised when “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” became the biggest hit Specialty had ever had to that point that maybe he should refocus the label away from gospel and towards more secular styles of music. “Jesus Gave Me Water” had consolidated Sam as the lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, but while he was singing gospel, he wasn’t living a very godly life. He got married in 1953, but he’d already had at least one child with another woman, who he left with the baby, and he was sleeping around constantly while on the road, and more than once the women involved became pregnant. But Cooke treated women the same way he treated the groups he was in – use them for as long as they’ve got something you want, and then immediately cast them aside once it became inconvenient. For the next few years, the Soul Stirrers would have one recording session every year, and the group continued touring, but they didn’t have any breakout success, even as other Specialty acts like Lloyd Price, Jesse Belvin, and Guitar Slim were all selling hand over fist. The Soul Stirrers were more popular as a live act than as a recording act, and hearing the live recording of them that Bumps Blackwell produced in 1955, it’s easy to see why: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Nearer to Thee”] Bumps Blackwell was convinced that Cooke needed to go solo and become a pop singer, and he was more convinced than ever when he produced the Soul Stirrers in the studio for the first time. The reason, actually, was to do with Cooke’s laziness. They’d gone into the studio, and it turned out that Cooke hadn’t written a song, and they needed one. The rest of the group were upset with him, and he just told them to hand him a Bible. He started flipping through, skimming to find something, and then he said “I got one”. He told the guitarist to play a couple of chords, and he started singing — and the song that came out, improvised off the top of his head, “Touch the Hem of His Garment”, was perfect just as it was, and the group quickly cut it: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Touch the Hem of His Garment”] Blackwell knew then that Cooke was a very, very special talent, and he and the rest of the people at Specialty became more and more insistent as 1956 went on that Sam Cooke should become a secular solo performer, rather than performing in a gospel group. The Soul Stirrers were only selling in the low tens of thousands — a reasonable amount for a gospel group, but hardly the kind of numbers that would make anyone rich. Meanwhile, gospel-inspired performers were having massive hits with gospel songs with a couple of words changed. There’s an episode of South Park where they make fun of contemporary Christian music, saying you just have to take a normal song and change the word “Baby” to “Jesus”. In the mid-fifties things seemed to be the other way — people were having hits by taking Gospel songs and changing the word “Jesus” to “baby”, or near as damnit. Most famously and blatantly, there was Ray Charles, who did things like take “This Little Light of Mine”: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “This Little Light of Mine”] and turn it into “This Little Girl of Mine: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “This Little Girl of Mine”] But there were a number of other acts doing things that weren’t that much less blatant. And so Sam Cooke travelled to New Orleans, to record in Cosimo Matassa’s studio with the same musicians who had been responsible for so many rock and roll hits. Or, rather, Dale Cook did. Sam was still a member of the Soul Stirrers at the time, and while he wanted to make himself into a star, he was also concerned that if he recorded secular music under his own name, he would damage his career as a gospel singer, without necessarily getting a better career to replace it. So the decision was made to put the single out under the name “Dale Cook”, and maintain a small amount of plausible deniability. If necessary, they could say that Dale was Sam’s brother, because it was fairly well known that Sam came from a singing family, and indeed Sam’s brother L.C. (whose name was just the initials L.C.) later went on to have some minor success as a singer himself, in a style very like Sam’s. As his first secular recording, they decided to record a new version of a gospel song that Cooke had recorded with the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful”] One quick rewrite later, and that song became, instead, “Lovable”: [Excerpt: Dale Cook, “Lovable”] Around the time of the Dale Cook recording session, Sam’s brother L.C. went to Memphis, with his own group, where they appeared at the bottom of the bill for a charity Christmas show in aid of impoverished black youth. The lineup of the show was almost entirely black – people like Ray Charles, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, and so on – but Elvis Presley turned up briefly to come out on stage and wave to the crowd and say a few words – the Colonel wouldn’t allow him to perform without getting paid, but did allow him to make an appearance, and he wanted to support the black community in Memphis. Backstage, Elvis was happy to meet all the acts, but when he found out that L.C. was Sam’s brother, he spent a full twenty minutes talking to L.C. about how great Sam was, and how much he admired his singing with the Soul Stirrers. Sam was such a distinctive voice that while the single came out as by “Dale Cook”, the DJs playing it would often introduce it as being by “Dale Sam Cook”, and the Soul Stirrers started to be asked if they were going to sing “Lovable” in their shows. Sam started to have doubts as to whether this move towards a pop style was really a good idea, and remained with the Soul Stirrers for the moment, though it’s noticeable that songs like “Mean Old World” could easily be refigured into being secular songs, and have only a minimal amount of religious content: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Mean Old World”] But barely a week after the session that produced “Mean Old World”, Sam was sending Bumps Blackwell demos of new pop songs he’d written, which he thought Blackwell would be interested in producing. Sam Cooke was going to treat the Soul Stirrers the same way he’d treated the Highway QCs. Cooke flew to LA, to meet with Blackwell and with Clifton White, a musician who had been for a long time the guitarist for the Mills Brothers, but who had recently left the band and started working with Blackwell as a session player. White was very unimpressed with Cooke – he thought that the new song Cooke sang to them, “You Send Me”, was just him repeating the same thing over and over again. Art Rupe helped them whittle the song choices down to four. Rupe had very particular ideas about what made for a commercial record – for example, that a record had to be exactly two minutes and twenty seconds long – and the final choices for the session were made with Rupe’s criteria in mind. The songs chosen were “Summertime”, “You Send Me”, another song Sam had written called “You Were Made For Me”, and “Things You Do to Me”, which was written by a young man Bumps Blackwell had just taken on as his assistant, named Sonny Bono. The recording session should have been completely straightforward. Blackwell supervised it, and while the session was in LA, almost everyone there was a veteran New Orleans player – along with Clif White on guitar there was René Hall, a guitarist from New Orleans who had recently quit Billy Ward and the Dominoes, and acted as instrumental arranger; Harold Battiste, a New Orleans saxophone player who Bumps had taken under his wing, and who wasn’t playing on the session but ended up writing the vocal arrangements for the backing singers; Earl Palmer, who had just moved to LA from New Orleans and was starting to make a name for himself as a session player there after his years of playing with Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Fats Domino in Cosimo Matassa’s studio, and Ted Brinson, the only LA native, on bass — Brinson was a regular player on Specialty sessions, and also had connections with almost every LA R&B act, to the extent that it was his garage that “Earth Angel” by the Penguins had been recorded in. And on backing vocals were the Lee Gotch singers, a white vocal group who were among the most in-demand vocalists in LA. So this should have been a straightforward session, and it was, until Art Rupe turned up just after they’d recorded “You Send Me”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Rupe was horrified that Bumps and Battiste had put white backing vocalists behind Cooke’s vocals. They were, in Rupe’s view, trying to make Sam Cooke sound like Billy Ward and his Dominoes at best, and like a symphony orchestra at worst. The Billy Ward reference was because René Hall had recently arranged a version of “Stardust” for the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “Stardust”] And the new version of “Summertime” had some of the same feel: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “Summertime”] If Sam Cooke was going to record for Specialty, he wasn’t going to have *white* vocalists backing him. Rupe wanted black music, not something trying to be white — and the fact that he, a white man, was telling a room full of black musicians what counted as black music, was not lost on Bumps Blackwell. Even worse than the whiteness of the singers, though, was that some of them were women. Rupe and Blackwell had already had one massive falling-out, over “Rip it Up” by Little Richard. When they’d agreed to record that, Blackwell had worked out an arrangement beforehand that Rupe was happy with — one that was based around piano triplets. But then, when he’d been on the plane to the session, Blackwell had hit upon another idea — to base the song around a particular drum pattern: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Rip it Up”] Rupe had nearly fired Blackwell over that, and only relented when the record became a massive hit. Now that instead of putting a male black gospel group behind Cooke, as agreed, Blackwell had disobeyed him a second time and put white vocalists, including women, behind him, Rupe decided it was the last straw. Blackwell had to go. He was also convinced that Sam Cooke was only after money, because once Cooke discovered that his solo contract only paid him a third of the royalties that the Soul Stirrers had been getting as a group, he started pushing for a greater share of the money. Rupe didn’t like that kind of greed from his artists — why *should* he pay the artist more than one cent per record sold? But he still owed Blackwell a great deal of money. They eventually came to an agreement — Blackwell would leave Specialty, and take Sam Cooke, and Cooke’s existing recordings with him, since he was so convinced that they were going to be a hit. Rupe would keep the publishing rights to any songs Sam wrote, and would have an option on eight further Sam Cooke recordings in the future, but Cooke and Blackwell were free to take “You Send Me”, “Summertime”, and the rest to a new label that wanted them for its first release, Keen. While they waited around for Keen to get itself set up, Sam made himself firmly a part of the Central Avenue music scene, hanging around with Gaynel Hodge, Jesse Belvin, Dootsie Williams, Googie Rene, John Dolphin, and everyone else who was part of the LA R&B community. Meanwhile, the Soul Stirrers got Johnnie Taylor, the man who had replaced Sam in the Highway QCs, to replace him in the Stirrers. While Sam was out of the group, for the next few years he would be regularly involved with them, helping them out in recording sessions, producing them, and more. When the single came out, everyone thought that “Summertime” would be the hit, but “You Send Me” quickly found itself all over the airwaves and became massive: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Several cover versions came out almost immediately. Sam and Bumps didn’t mind the versions by Jesse Belvin: [Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, “You Send Me”] Or Cornell Gunter: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, “You Send Me”] They were friends and colleagues, and good luck to them if they had a hit with the song — and anyway, they knew that Sam’s version was better. What they did object to was the white cover version by Teresa Brewer: [Excerpt: Teresa Brewer, “You Send Me”] Even though her version was less of a soundalike than the other LA R&B versions, it was more offensive to them — she was even copying Sam’s “whoa-oh”s. She was nothing more than a thief, Blackwell argued — and her version was charting, and made the top ten. Fortunately for them, Sam’s version went to number one, on both the R&B and pop charts, despite a catastrophic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which accidentally cut him off half way through a song. But there was still trouble with Art Rupe. Sam was still signed to Rupe’s company as a songwriter, and so he’d put “You Send Me” in the name of his brother L.C., so Rupe wouldn’t get any royalties. Rupe started legal action against him, and meanwhile, he took a demo Sam had recorded, “I’ll Come Running Back To You”, and got René Hall and the Lee Gotch singers, the very people whose work on “You Send Me” and “Summertime” he’d despised so much, to record overdubs to make it sound as much like “You Send Me” as possible: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “I’ll Come Running Back To You”] And in retaliation for *that* being released, Bumps Blackwell took a song that he’d recorded months earlier with Little Richard, but which still hadn’t been released, and got the Specialty duo Don and Dewey to provide instrumental backing for a vocal group called the Valiants, and put it out on Keen: [Excerpt: The Valiants, “Good Golly Miss Molly”] Specialty had to rush-release Little Richard’s version to make sure it became the hit — a blow for them, given that they were trying to dripfeed the public what few Little Richard recordings they had left. As 1957 drew to a close, Sam Cooke was on top of the world. But the seeds of his downfall were already in place. He was upsetting all the right people with his desire to have control of his own career, but he was also hurting a lot of other people along the way — people who had helped him, like the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers, and especially women. He was about to divorce his first wife, and he had fathered a string of children with different women, all of whom he refused to acknowledge or support. He was taking his father’s maxims about only looking after yourself, and applying them to every aspect of life, with no regard to who it hurt. But such was his talent and charm, that even the people he hurt ended up defending him. Over the next couple of times we see Sam Cooke, we’ll see him rising to ever greater artistic heights, but we’ll also see the damage he caused to himself and to others. Because the story of Sam Cooke gets very, very unpleasant.

Episode sixty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke 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 “Little Darlin'” by The Gladiolas. Also, an announcement — the book version of the first fifty episodes is now available for purchase. See the show notes, or the previous mini-episode announcing this, for details.  —-more—- Resources The Mixcloud is slightly delayed this week. I’ll update the post tonight with the link. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick’s work, it’s an essential book if you’re even slightly interested in the subject. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke’s music for the beginner. A note on spelling: Sam Cooke was born Sam Cook, the rest of his family all kept the surname Cook, and he only added the “e” from the release of “You Send Me”, so for almost all the time covered in this episode he was Cook. I didn’t feel the need to mention this in the podcast, as the two names are pronounced identically. I’ve spelled him as Cooke and everyone else as Cook throughout. Book of the Podcast Remember that there’s a book available based on the first fifty episodes of the podcast. You can buy it at this link, which will take you to your preferred online bookstore. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We’ve talked before about how the music that became known as soul had its roots in gospel music, but today we’re going to have a look at the first big star of that music to get his start as a professional gospel singer, rather than as a rhythm and blues singer who included a little bit of gospel feeling. Sam Cooke was, in many ways, the most important black musician of the late fifties and early sixties, and without him it’s doubtful whether we would have the genre of soul as we know it today. But when he started out, he was someone who worked exclusively in the gospel field, and within that field he was something of a superstar. He was also someone who, as admirable as he was as a singer, was far less admirable in his behaviour towards other people, especially the women in his life, and while that’s something that will come up more in future episodes, it’s worth noting here. Cooke started out as a teenager in the 1940s, performing in gospel groups around Chicago, which as we’ve talked about before was the city where a whole new form of gospel music was being created at that point, spearheaded by Thomas Dorsey. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe were all living and performing in the city during young Sam’s formative years, but the biggest influence on him was a group called the Soul Stirrers. The Soul Stirrers had started out in 1926 as a group in what was called the “jubilee” style — the style that black singers of spiritual music sang in the period before Thomas Dorsey revolutionised gospel music. There are no recordings of the Soul Stirrers in that style, but this is probably the most famous jubilee recording: [Excerpt: The Fisk Jubilee Singers, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”] But as Thomas Dorsey and the musicians around him started to create the music we now think of as gospel, the Soul Stirrers switched styles, and became one of the first — and best — gospel quartets in the new style. In the late forties, the Soul Stirrers signed to Specialty Records, one of the first acts to sign to the label, and recorded a series of classic singles led by R.H. Harris, who was regarded by many as the greatest gospel singer of the age: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers feat. R.H. Harris, “In That Awful Hour”] Sam Cooke was one of seven children, the son of Reverend Charles Cook and his wife Annie Mae, and from a very early age the Reverend Cook had been training them as singers — five of them would perform regularly around churches in the area, under the name The Singing Children. Young Sam was taught religion by his father, but he was also taught that there was no prohibition in the Bible against worldly success. Indeed the Reverend Cook taught him two things that would matter in his life even more than his religion would. The first was that whatever it is you do in life, you try to do it the best you can — you never do anything by halves, and if a thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing properly. And the second was that you do whatever is necessary to give yourself the best possible life, and don’t worry about who you step on to do it. After spending some time with his family group, Cooke joined a newly-formed gospel group, who had heard him singing the Ink Spots song “If I Didn’t Care” to a girl. That group was called the Highway QCs, and a version of the group still exists to this day. Sam Cooke only stayed with them a couple of years, and never recorded with them, but they replaced him with a soundalike singer, Johnnie Taylor, and listening to Taylor’s recordings with the group you can get some idea of what they sounded like when Sam was a member: [Excerpt: Johnnie Taylor and the Highway QCs, “I Dreamed That Heaven Was Like This”] The rest of the group were decent singers, but Sam Cooke was absolutely unquestionably the star of the Highway QCs. Creadell Copeland, one of the group’s members, later said “All we had to do was stand behind Sam. Our claim to fame was that Sam’s voice was so captivating we didn’t have to do anything else.” The group didn’t make a huge amount of money, and they kept talking about going in a pop direction, rather than just singing gospel songs, and Sam was certainly singing a lot of secular music in his own time — he loved gospel music as much as anyone, but he was also learning from people like Gene Autry or Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and he was slowly developing into a singer who could do absolutely anything with his voice. But his biggest influence was still R.H. Harris of the Soul Stirrers, who was the most important person in the gospel quartet field. This wasn’t just because he was the most talented of all the quartet singers — though he was, and that was certainly part of it — but because he was the joint leader of a movement to professionalise the gospel quartet movement. (Just as a quick explanation — in both black gospel, and in the white gospel music euphemistically called “Southern Gospel”, the term “quartet” is used for groups which might have five, six, or even more people in them. I’ll generally refer to all of these as “groups”, because I’m not from the gospel world, but I’ll use the term “quartet” when talking about things like the National Quartet Convention, and I may slip between the two interchangeably at times. Just know that if I mention quartets, I’m not just talking about groups with exactly four people in them). Harris worked with a less well known singer called Abraham Battle, and with Charlie Bridges, of another popular group, the Famous Blue Jays: [Excerpt: The Famous Blue Jay Singers, “Praising Jesus Evermore”] Together they founded the National Quartet Convention, which existed to try to take all the young gospel quartets who were springing up all over the place, and most of whom had casual attitudes to their music and their onstage appearance, and teach them how to comport themselves in a manner that the organisation’s leaders considered appropriate for a gospel singer. The Highway QCs joined the Convention, of course, and they considered themselves to be disciples, in a sense, of the Soul Stirrers, who they simultaneously considered to be their mentors and thought were jealous of the QCs. It was normal at the time for gospel groups to turn up at each other’s shows, and if they were popular enough they would be invited up to sing, and sometimes even take over the show. When the Highway QCs turned up at Soul Stirrers shows, though, the Soul Stirrers would act as if they didn’t know them, and would only invite them on to the stage if the audience absolutely insisted, and would then limit their performance to a single song. From the Highway QCs’ point of view, the only possible explanation was that the Soul Stirrers were terrified of the competition. A more likely explanation is probably that they were just more interested in putting on their own show than in giving space to some young kids who thought they were the next big thing. On the other hand, to all the younger kids around Chicago, the Highway QCs were clearly the group to beat — and people like a young singer named Lou Rawls looked up to them as something to aspire to. And soon the QCs found themselves being mentored by R.B. Robinson, one of the Soul Stirrers. Robinson would train them, and help them get better gigs, and the QCs became convinced that they were headed for the big time. But it turned out that behind the scenes, there had been trouble in the Soul Stirrers. Harris had, more and more, come to think of himself as the real star of the group, and quit to go solo. It had looked likely for a while that he would do so, and when Robinson had appeared to be mentoring the QCs, what he was actually doing was training their lead singer, so that when R.H. Harris eventually quit, they would have someone to take his place. The other Highway QCs were heartbroken, but Sam took the advice of his father, the Reverend Cook, who told him “Anytime you can make a step higher, you go higher. Don’t worry about the other fellow. You hold up for other folks, and they’ll take advantage of you.” And so, in March 1951, Sam Cooke went into the studio with the Soul Stirrers for his first ever recording session, three months after joining the group. Art Rupe, the head of Specialty Records, was not at all impressed that the group had got a new singer without telling him. Rupe had to admit that Cooke could sing, but his performance on the first few songs, while impressive, was no R.H. Harris: [Excerpt: the Soul Stirrers, “Come, Let Us Go Back to God”] But towards the end of the session, the Soul Stirrers insisted that they should record “Jesus Gave Me Water”, a song that had always been a highlight of the Highway QCs’ set. Rupe thought that this was ridiculous — the Pilgrim Travellers had just had a hit with the song, on Specialty, not six months earlier. What could Specialty possibly do with another version of the song so soon afterwards? But the group insisted, and the result was absolutely majestic: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, “Jesus Gave Me Water”] Rupe lost his misgivings, both about the song and about the singer — that was clearly going to be the group’s next single. The group themselves were still not completely sure about Cooke as their singer — he was younger than the rest of them, and he didn’t have Harris’ assurance and professionalism, yet. But they knew they had something with that song, which was released with “Peace in the Valley” on the B-side. That song had been written by Thomas Dorsey fourteen years earlier, but this was the first time it had been released on a record, at least by anyone of any prominence. “Jesus Gave Me Water” was a hit, but the follow-ups were less successful, and meanwhile Art Rupe was starting to see the commercial potential in black styles of music other than gospel. Even though Rupe loved gospel music, he realised when “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” became the biggest hit Specialty had ever had to that point that maybe he should refocus the label away from gospel and towards more secular styles of music. “Jesus Gave Me Water” had consolidated Sam as the lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, but while he was singing gospel, he wasn’t living a very godly life. He got married in 1953, but he’d already had at least one child with another woman, who he left with the baby, and he was sleeping around constantly while on the road, and more than once the women involved became pregnant. But Cooke treated women the same way he treated the groups he was in – use them for as long as they’ve got something you want, and then immediately cast them aside once it became inconvenient. For the next few years, the Soul Stirrers would have one recording session every year, and the group continued touring, but they didn’t have any breakout success, even as other Specialty acts like Lloyd Price, Jesse Belvin, and Guitar Slim were all selling hand over fist. The Soul Stirrers were more popular as a live act than as a recording act, and hearing the live recording of them that Bumps Blackwell produced in 1955, it’s easy to see why: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Nearer to Thee”] Bumps Blackwell was convinced that Cooke needed to go solo and become a pop singer, and he was more convinced than ever when he produced the Soul Stirrers in the studio for the first time. The reason, actually, was to do with Cooke’s laziness. They’d gone into the studio, and it turned out that Cooke hadn’t written a song, and they needed one. The rest of the group were upset with him, and he just told them to hand him a Bible. He started flipping through, skimming to find something, and then he said “I got one”. He told the guitarist to play a couple of chords, and he started singing — and the song that came out, improvised off the top of his head, “Touch the Hem of His Garment”, was perfect just as it was, and the group quickly cut it: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Touch the Hem of His Garment”] Blackwell knew then that Cooke was a very, very special talent, and he and the rest of the people at Specialty became more and more insistent as 1956 went on that Sam Cooke should become a secular solo performer, rather than performing in a gospel group. The Soul Stirrers were only selling in the low tens of thousands — a reasonable amount for a gospel group, but hardly the kind of numbers that would make anyone rich. Meanwhile, gospel-inspired performers were having massive hits with gospel songs with a couple of words changed. There’s an episode of South Park where they make fun of contemporary Christian music, saying you just have to take a normal song and change the word “Baby” to “Jesus”. In the mid-fifties things seemed to be the other way — people were having hits by taking Gospel songs and changing the word “Jesus” to “baby”, or near as damnit. Most famously and blatantly, there was Ray Charles, who did things like take “This Little Light of Mine”: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “This Little Light of Mine”] and turn it into “This Little Girl of Mine: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “This Little Girl of Mine”] But there were a number of other acts doing things that weren’t that much less blatant. And so Sam Cooke travelled to New Orleans, to record in Cosimo Matassa’s studio with the same musicians who had been responsible for so many rock and roll hits. Or, rather, Dale Cook did. Sam was still a member of the Soul Stirrers at the time, and while he wanted to make himself into a star, he was also concerned that if he recorded secular music under his own name, he would damage his career as a gospel singer, without necessarily getting a better career to replace it. So the decision was made to put the single out under the name “Dale Cook”, and maintain a small amount of plausible deniability. If necessary, they could say that Dale was Sam’s brother, because it was fairly well known that Sam came from a singing family, and indeed Sam’s brother L.C. (whose name was just the initials L.C.) later went on to have some minor success as a singer himself, in a style very like Sam’s. As his first secular recording, they decided to record a new version of a gospel song that Cooke had recorded with the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful”] One quick rewrite later, and that song became, instead, “Lovable”: [Excerpt: Dale Cook, “Lovable”] Around the time of the Dale Cook recording session, Sam’s brother L.C. went to Memphis, with his own group, where they appeared at the bottom of the bill for a charity Christmas show in aid of impoverished black youth. The lineup of the show was almost entirely black – people like Ray Charles, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, and so on – but Elvis Presley turned up briefly to come out on stage and wave to the crowd and say a few words – the Colonel wouldn’t allow him to perform without getting paid, but did allow him to make an appearance, and he wanted to support the black community in Memphis. Backstage, Elvis was happy to meet all the acts, but when he found out that L.C. was Sam’s brother, he spent a full twenty minutes talking to L.C. about how great Sam was, and how much he admired his singing with the Soul Stirrers. Sam was such a distinctive voice that while the single came out as by “Dale Cook”, the DJs playing it would often introduce it as being by “Dale Sam Cook”, and the Soul Stirrers started to be asked if they were going to sing “Lovable” in their shows. Sam started to have doubts as to whether this move towards a pop style was really a good idea, and remained with the Soul Stirrers for the moment, though it’s noticeable that songs like “Mean Old World” could easily be refigured into being secular songs, and have only a minimal amount of religious content: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Mean Old World”] But barely a week after the session that produced “Mean Old World”, Sam was sending Bumps Blackwell demos of new pop songs he’d written, which he thought Blackwell would be interested in producing. Sam Cooke was going to treat the Soul Stirrers the same way he’d treated the Highway QCs. Cooke flew to LA, to meet with Blackwell and with Clifton White, a musician who had been for a long time the guitarist for the Mills Brothers, but who had recently left the band and started working with Blackwell as a session player. White was very unimpressed with Cooke – he thought that the new song Cooke sang to them, “You Send Me”, was just him repeating the same thing over and over again. Art Rupe helped them whittle the song choices down to four. Rupe had very particular ideas about what made for a commercial record – for example, that a record had to be exactly two minutes and twenty seconds long – and the final choices for the session were made with Rupe’s criteria in mind. The songs chosen were “Summertime”, “You Send Me”, another song Sam had written called “You Were Made For Me”, and “Things You Do to Me”, which was written by a young man Bumps Blackwell had just taken on as his assistant, named Sonny Bono. The recording session should have been completely straightforward. Blackwell supervised it, and while the session was in LA, almost everyone there was a veteran New Orleans player – along with Clif White on guitar there was René Hall, a guitarist from New Orleans who had recently quit Billy Ward and the Dominoes, and acted as instrumental arranger; Harold Battiste, a New Orleans saxophone player who Bumps had taken under his wing, and who wasn’t playing on the session but ended up writing the vocal arrangements for the backing singers; Earl Palmer, who had just moved to LA from New Orleans and was starting to make a name for himself as a session player there after his years of playing with Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Fats Domino in Cosimo Matassa’s studio, and Ted Brinson, the only LA native, on bass — Brinson was a regular player on Specialty sessions, and also had connections with almost every LA R&B act, to the extent that it was his garage that “Earth Angel” by the Penguins had been recorded in. And on backing vocals were the Lee Gotch singers, a white vocal group who were among the most in-demand vocalists in LA. So this should have been a straightforward session, and it was, until Art Rupe turned up just after they’d recorded “You Send Me”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Rupe was horrified that Bumps and Battiste had put white backing vocalists behind Cooke’s vocals. They were, in Rupe’s view, trying to make Sam Cooke sound like Billy Ward and his Dominoes at best, and like a symphony orchestra at worst. The Billy Ward reference was because René Hall had recently arranged a version of “Stardust” for the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “Stardust”] And the new version of “Summertime” had some of the same feel: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “Summertime”] If Sam Cooke was going to record for Specialty, he wasn’t going to have *white* vocalists backing him. Rupe wanted black music, not something trying to be white — and the fact that he, a white man, was telling a room full of black musicians what counted as black music, was not lost on Bumps Blackwell. Even worse than the whiteness of the singers, though, was that some of them were women. Rupe and Blackwell had already had one massive falling-out, over “Rip it Up” by Little Richard. When they’d agreed to record that, Blackwell had worked out an arrangement beforehand that Rupe was happy with — one that was based around piano triplets. But then, when he’d been on the plane to the session, Blackwell had hit upon another idea — to base the song around a particular drum pattern: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Rip it Up”] Rupe had nearly fired Blackwell over that, and only relented when the record became a massive hit. Now that instead of putting a male black gospel group behind Cooke, as agreed, Blackwell had disobeyed him a second time and put white vocalists, including women, behind him, Rupe decided it was the last straw. Blackwell had to go. He was also convinced that Sam Cooke was only after money, because once Cooke discovered that his solo contract only paid him a third of the royalties that the Soul Stirrers had been getting as a group, he started pushing for a greater share of the money. Rupe didn’t like that kind of greed from his artists — why *should* he pay the artist more than one cent per record sold? But he still owed Blackwell a great deal of money. They eventually came to an agreement — Blackwell would leave Specialty, and take Sam Cooke, and Cooke’s existing recordings with him, since he was so convinced that they were going to be a hit. Rupe would keep the publishing rights to any songs Sam wrote, and would have an option on eight further Sam Cooke recordings in the future, but Cooke and Blackwell were free to take “You Send Me”, “Summertime”, and the rest to a new label that wanted them for its first release, Keen. While they waited around for Keen to get itself set up, Sam made himself firmly a part of the Central Avenue music scene, hanging around with Gaynel Hodge, Jesse Belvin, Dootsie Williams, Googie Rene, John Dolphin, and everyone else who was part of the LA R&B community. Meanwhile, the Soul Stirrers got Johnnie Taylor, the man who had replaced Sam in the Highway QCs, to replace him in the Stirrers. While Sam was out of the group, for the next few years he would be regularly involved with them, helping them out in recording sessions, producing them, and more. When the single came out, everyone thought that “Summertime” would be the hit, but “You Send Me” quickly found itself all over the airwaves and became massive: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Several cover versions came out almost immediately. Sam and Bumps didn’t mind the versions by Jesse Belvin: [Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, “You Send Me”] Or Cornell Gunter: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, “You Send Me”] They were friends and colleagues, and good luck to them if they had a hit with the song — and anyway, they knew that Sam’s version was better. What they did object to was the white cover version by Teresa Brewer: [Excerpt: Teresa Brewer, “You Send Me”] Even though her version was less of a soundalike than the other LA R&B versions, it was more offensive to them — she was even copying Sam’s “whoa-oh”s. She was nothing more than a thief, Blackwell argued — and her version was charting, and made the top ten. Fortunately for them, Sam’s version went to number one, on both the R&B and pop charts, despite a catastrophic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which accidentally cut him off half way through a song. But there was still trouble with Art Rupe. Sam was still signed to Rupe’s company as a songwriter, and so he’d put “You Send Me” in the name of his brother L.C., so Rupe wouldn’t get any royalties. Rupe started legal action against him, and meanwhile, he took a demo Sam had recorded, “I’ll Come Running Back To You”, and got René Hall and the Lee Gotch singers, the very people whose work on “You Send Me” and “Summertime” he’d despised so much, to record overdubs to make it sound as much like “You Send Me” as possible: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “I’ll Come Running Back To You”] And in retaliation for *that* being released, Bumps Blackwell took a song that he’d recorded months earlier with Little Richard, but which still hadn’t been released, and got the Specialty duo Don and Dewey to provide instrumental backing for a vocal group called the Valiants, and put it out on Keen: [Excerpt: The Valiants, “Good Golly Miss Molly”] Specialty had to rush-release Little Richard’s version to make sure it became the hit — a blow for them, given that they were trying to dripfeed the public what few Little Richard recordings they had left. As 1957 drew to a close, Sam Cooke was on top of the world. But the seeds of his downfall were already in place. He was upsetting all the right people with his desire to have control of his own career, but he was also hurting a lot of other people along the way — people who had helped him, like the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers, and especially women. He was about to divorce his first wife, and he had fathered a string of children with different women, all of whom he refused to acknowledge or support. He was taking his father’s maxims about only looking after yourself, and applying them to every aspect of life, with no regard to who it hurt. But such was his talent and charm, that even the people he hurt ended up defending him. Over the next couple of times we see Sam Cooke, we’ll see him rising to ever greater artistic heights, but we’ll also see the damage he caused to himself and to others. Because the story of Sam Cooke gets very, very unpleasant.

Lee is joined by Old Man Seth for three rustic Gen X-fueled rounds of interesting and entertaining trivia. Questions include: What city’s hot bands of the 80s included Green River, The Thrown-Ups, and the Melvins? What is the most widely-spoken first nation language spoken in North America? What seafood is stuffed in your beef when you order carpetbagger steak? Where, in the contiguous 48 American states, will the next solar eclipse first appear? In the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, what is Ferris's sister's name? "You Send Me," "A Change is Going to Come," and "Bring It on Home to Me" a string of hit singles by which soul, gospel and R&B singer that was shot to death in a Los Angeles Hotel Room in December 1964? Chyme is produced in what organ of the body? In the nautical expression “Shiver me timbers!” the word “timbers” originally referred to what? Which American, who won the Gold Medal in Freestyle werestling 100kg division in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, signed with the WWF in 1998 and was named wrestler of the decade for the 2000s? What is the only river that flows both north and south of the Equator? Of which state was 1988 Democratic Presidential Nominee Michael Dukakis the govorner? What 1983 sci-fi adventure film was shot under the working title Blue Harvest to keep fans and journalists away from the set? What Roger Corman movie was shot in 1960 over the course of two days, featuring Jack Nicholson in a bit role? American stage actor Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth, was best known for his performances in what Shakespearen play? In 1851, what did physician, humanitarian, inventor and Floridian John Gorrie win the first American patent for? Special Guest: Seth.

Hace ya unas semanas tratamos brevemente el tema del Soul. Hoy iniciamos una mini serie de programas para abordar un estilo de música que merece mucha más atención de la que le dimos en su momento. Y, como no, nos situamos en la decada de los 60, … otra vez!!! En ese momento, sobre el año 1963, el término “rhytm’n blues” no significaba ni mucho menos lo mismo para los estadounidenses que para los Rolling Stones. Los bluesmen a los que estos idolatraban eran de una generación anterior. En Estados Unidos la urbana e inmaculada “Sherry”, de los Four Seasons, encabezaba la lista de “R&B” a finales de 1962, pese a tratarse de un dudua italoamericano puro y duro, y la razón era muy simple: a los adolescentes negros les gustaba ese sonido tanto como a los blancos. Los Four Seasons de Nueva Jersey, los Impressions de Chicago, los Miracles de Detroit, las Shirelles de Nueva York, todos ellos estaban guisando un estofado posrock’n’roll que daría paso a algo que, más tarde, se llamó SOUL. Si bien el uso de la palabra soul como denominación popular del género no se verificaría hasta la aparición en 1966 de “What is Soul”, el sencillo de Ben E. King, el sonido en sí ya se había introducido en la conciencia del pop en 1957, concretamente el día en que Sam Cooke cambió el espiritual negro por la música profana. Pero fue nuestro amigo Ben E. King el que perfiló con precisión el nuevo estilo. Esto es “What is Soul”. Sam Cooke no fue el primero que adjuró de la iglesia para derretir a las jovencitas: el primer guaperas del góspel de posguerra había sido Sonny Til, el líder de los Orioles, pero Cooke mezclaba como nadie la finura con el rugido del espiritual negro, y cantaba con intensidad y sin esfuerzo. Nació en Clarksdale (Misisipi) en 1931. Cuando tenía nueve años se unió al coro de sus hermanos y hermanas que acompañaban a su padre, pastor baptista, en sus viajes de predicación. Su decisión de abandonar la música religiosa en 1957 cayó muy mal en la feligresía. Así, su primer single “Lovable”, paso sin pena ni gloria y esto le hizo pensar si su decisión había sido acertada. Lo supo cuando publicó su segundo disco “You Send Me”. Éxito instantáneo, el sencillo se aupó al número uno y allí permaneció tres semanas, durante las cuales Cooke se convirtió en ídolo no solo de las chicas negras del Bronx, el público al que en principio se dirigía, sino también de las señoritas judías de Brooklyn. Los éxitos se sucedieron en cascada. Cooke no se explicaba su don: “Me pongo a cantar y me viene solo” declaró en cierta ocasión. Sea como fuese, en todas sus creaciones latía un trasfondo abrasivo que indicaba a las claras que, por mucha cara de bueno que tuviese, más valía no dejarlo a solas con la hermana pequeña de uno. Perfectamente podía haber hecho carrera como delincuente. Era, a un tiempo, ángel y diablo y en su música podemos apreciar al predicador fervoroso y al pecador arrepentido. Pero para todo el mundo era el chico de oro y siempre iba por delante del resto. Tras echar los cimientos de la música soul, fundó su propia discográfica, SAR, con brazo editorial incluido. Eran maniobras prácticamente inauditas en un artista de raza negra. En 1962 la música de Cook adquirió una nueva intensidad, como se aprecia en la cruda “Bring It Home To Me” Y es que, algo estaba cambiando. En ese año, el gobierno de Kennedy había obligado al Comité de Comercio Interestatal a dictar una nueva orden contra la segregación racial en virtud de la cual los pasajeros de los autobuses podían sentarse donde quisieran. Se retiraron de las estaciones los letreros de “blanco” y “negro”, y en los mostradores de las cafeterías se empezó a atender a los clientes con independencia del color de su piel. En septiembre un adolescente llamado James Meredith ganó un pleito y logró que lo admitiesen en la Universidad de Misisipi. Los disturbios subsiguientes se cobraron dos víctimas mortales, pero gracias a la escolta de una guardia armada, Meredith pudo asistir a clase. En la desgarrada “That’s Where It’s At” de 1963, resuenan el orgullo negro y las tribulaciones de la raza aunque, según Bob Stanley, nuestro biógrafo de cabecera, la letra no respondiese tanto al estado de la nación como a la vida del propio Cooke, que por aquel entonces se deshacía en jirones: su esposa Bárbara estaba perdiendo la cabeza por la afición del artista al alcohol y las mujeres, y ese verano, el hijo de ambos, se había ahogado en la piscina de la casa familiar. Una tragedia. Tenía para todo. El día 11 de diciembre de 1964 se lió con quien no debía, una prostituta que huyó con la ropa del cantante mientras él estaba en el baño. Medio desnudo y gritando como un poseso, Cooke asustó tanto a la dueña del motel que la mujer lo mató de un balazo. Nuestras felicitaciones a la asociación del rifle. Su último trabajo fue un sencillo en el que se incluía “A chage is gonna come”, una canción que Cooke compuso después de escuchar el “Blowin in the wind” de Bob Dylan y concluyó que debería escribir algo que reflejase su vida personal y la de sus amigos. La canción es un augurio entreverado de esperanza y optimismo. Es una pena que fuera su epitafio. Si Sam Cooke era la voz del soul, el sello Stax era el molde. Los hermanos Estelle y Jim Stewart fundaron este sello y se instalaron en el ruinoso cine Capitol. El puesto de palomitas de la entrada se convirtió en una tienda de discos llamada Satellite, con cuyos ingresos se sufragaba el estudio de grabación. El hijo de Estelle, Pachy, había estado ensayando con unos chicos del instituto, entre ellos el guitarrista Steve Cropper (apuntad este nombre) y el bajista Donald Dunn, alias “Pato Donald”, que se hacían llamar los Royal Spades y que experimentaban con el country, el R&B y el rockabilly, y que, a fuerza de ensayar, se convirtieron en un grupo conjuntado al máximo, capaz de acompañar a cualquier artista de paso. Y así fue como, un día, se presentó por allí Rufus Thomas, locutor de una emisora local: su hija Carla había compuesto una cancioncilla titulada “Gee Whiz” y quería grabarla. Una vez pasada por el tamiz de los Royal Spades, la canción llegó al top 10. Y es esta… Poco después, un instrumental de una sola nota, sucio y con predominio de metales, titulado “Last Night”, obra de los Royal Spades pero publicado con el nombre los Mar-Keys, llegó nada menos que al número dos. El sello Stax estaba en marcha. Los numerosos éxitos que acumularon en el año 1962 hicieron que el sello Stax se convirtiera en el sonido Memphis y, por ello, se ganó el derecho a colgar un letrero encima de la tienda de discos que rezaba “Souls-ville USA”. Uno de estos éxitos fue, sin lugar a dudas, su famoso “Green Onions”. Los músicos empezaron a demandar el estilo Stax y por el estudio terminó pasando gente como Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Judy Clay, Eddie Floyd y Johnnie Taylor. El sonido Stax no tardó en hacerse más importante que el artista, y el sello se convirtió en el equivalente sureño de la factoría Spector. Pero no estaban solos. La otra discográfica que definió el floreciente género del soul fue la neoyorquina Atlantic Records. Uno de sus fundadores, el Sr. Ertegun, era un gran amante del blues y, justamente, del blues procedía Ray Charles. En sus comienzos Charles era un pianista dotado del don de imitar a sus ídolos: Louis Jordan, Nat King Cole o Charles Brown, pero cuando el Sr. Charles empezó a componer sus propias obras, y la discográfica había sabido esperar pacientemente, todo cambió. Compuso y grabó “I got a woman”, su primer sencillo con el sello que fue número uno de la lista de R&B en enero de 1955. Más tarde, esta canción conocería las versiones unos “desconocidos” tales como Elvis Presley o los Beatles. La bomba Ray Charles estalló en 1959, cuando el hombre compuso, sobre una sencilla pieza, concretamente una antífona, religiosa, de seis minutos de duración y que era mitad revival evangélico, mitad procacidad burdelera. Lo nunca visto!!! La pieza se llamaba, bueno, y se llama… “What’d I Say” Desde ese momento y hasta mediada la década de los 60 rara sería la estrella en ciernes, desde Stevie Wonder a los Searchers, que no citase entre sus influencias a Ray Charles: “el hermano Ray”, “el genio”, “el hermano número uno del soul”… etc. Convencido de sus dotes, el artista picó en otros géneros: primero grabó jazz instrumental; después coqueteó con el country en una revisión del clásico “Georgia on My Mind”, otro número uno en 1.960 En la canción, Ray se enfrenta a dos lealtades encontradas. El sur era su patria, pero en 1960 también era el campo de batalla por los derechos civiles de los negros. Dos años más tarde, Charles grabó un elepé entero con la misma temática. Hacía falta mucho valor para mezclar country y soul, pero también mucha sutileza. A estas alturas, el artista ya había dejado el sello Atlantis para aceptar una jugosa suma de ABC-Paramount. Sin nadie que le parara los pies, el hermano Ray se lanzó de cabeza al “countrypolitan” orquestal y firmó dos de los singles de más éxito en su trayectoria, “I can’t stop loving you” y “You don’t know me” A mediados de la década de 1960 Ray Charles ya había exprimido el truco del country hasta la última gota y perdió tanta credibilidad ante la crítica y los colegas del gremio que al terminar el decenio apenas se hablaba de él. Tal vez una de las estrellas de Atlantis más injustamente infravaloradas fue Bárbara Lewis. Nuestro amigo Bob Stanley, en su libro “La historia del pop moderno” dice de ella: “su voz de jade pulido en “Hello Stranger”, tema con ritmo de shuffle, a caballo entre la música de verbena y la de tocador: morirá feliz el afortunado a quien, siquiera una sola vez en su vida, le canten personalmente esta canción”. Bueno, pues esta es la canción… Pero el mayor fichaje del sello, en todos los sentidos, fue Aretha Franklin. Dueña de una voz capaz de reventar un micrófono a medio kilómetro, Aretha cantaba como una fuerza de la naturaleza. La futura dama del Soul ya había grabado algunos temas para el sello Columbia, pero Ertegun la animó y convenció para cambiar de sello discográfico y en Atlantic echó el resto. Aretha había nacido el 25 de marzo de 1942 en Memphis (Tennessee), y creció en Detroit. Es hija del predicador Clarence LeVaughn Franklin y la cantante de góspel Bárbara Franklin. Su madre abandonó a su familia cuando Aretha era una niña, y poco tiempo después, murió. Su padre vio pronto el talento de Aretha, por lo que quiso que tomara clases de piano, pero ella lo rechazó y prefirió aprender por sí sola con la ayuda de grabaciones. En este tiempo, permanecía en un tour itinerante de góspel, donde uno de los primeros temas que interpretó fue «Precious Lord». Los genios del góspel Clara Ward, James Cleveland y Mahalia Jackson eran íntimos de su familia, por lo que Aretha creció rodeada de ellos. Fue precoz en todos los aspectos de su vida. Con doce años tuvo a su primer hijo, y dos años después tuvo el segundo. Esto que suena es esa primera grabación con su grupo de góspel. Por cierto, ya me diréis si os suena… Cuando Aretha abandonó Columbia para fichar por la compañía discográfica Atlantic Records, el productor Jerry Wexler se propuso sacarle todo el soul que llevaba dentro. El primer single que grabó para Atlantic Records fue «I never loved a man (the way I love you)”. Este tema ha sido avalado por muchos críticos como una de las grandes canciones del soul, y la revista Rolling Stone escribió: «Franklin ha grabado su versión de la maravilla soul, un lamento sobre qué-mal-me-has-tratado, con la Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, unos chicos blancos de Alabama». El single irrumpió en todas las radios, pero aún lo haría con mucha más fuerza “Respect”, versión de la canción que Otis Redding había grabado en 1965 y con la que Aretha se consagraba definitivamente. La canción se grabó en los estudios de Atlantic, en Nueva York, el 14 de febrero de 1967. A la versión original de Redding se le añadió un puente y un solo de saxo, de la mano de King Curtis. El 10 de marzo de 1967 se editaba un álbum en el que Aretha también contribuyó como compositora con varios temas. Destacamos este "Dr. Feelgood (Love Is a Serious Business)". Un precioso blues. Ese mismo año, consiguió dos premios Grammy, siendo la segunda mujer en hacerlo. También en 1967, concretamente el 4 de agosto, editó un nuevo disco del que nos apetece destacar uno de sus temas. Se trata de “Satisfaction”, el éxito de los Rolling. Vamos a oir una versión, grabada en directo, en el Olimpia de Paris en el año 1968. Nos despedimos del programa de hoy y de nuestra admirada Aretha Franklin, ahora si, para siempre, porque como sabeis, Aretha Franklin falleció el pasado día 16 de agosto, a la edad de 76 años en su domicilio de Detroit. No obstante, su larga trayectoria profesional da para muchas más horas de programación, horas que le dedicaremos con muchísimo gusto. Cerramos pues este programa con su gran éxito "Chain of fools", un tema incluido en su disco Lady Soul, editado en 1.968, y con el que volvería a conocer el éxito masivo.

Hace ya unas semanas tratamos brevemente el tema del Soul. Hoy iniciamos una mini serie de programas para abordar un estilo de música que merece mucha más atención de la que le dimos en su momento. Y, como no, nos situamos en la decada de los 60, … otra vez!!! En ese momento, sobre el año 1963, el término “rhytm’n blues” no significaba ni mucho menos lo mismo para los estadounidenses que para los Rolling Stones. Los bluesmen a los que estos idolatraban eran de una generación anterior. En Estados Unidos la urbana e inmaculada “Sherry”, de los Four Seasons, encabezaba la lista de “R&B” a finales de 1962, pese a tratarse de un dudua italoamericano puro y duro, y la razón era muy simple: a los adolescentes negros les gustaba ese sonido tanto como a los blancos. Los Four Seasons de Nueva Jersey, los Impressions de Chicago, los Miracles de Detroit, las Shirelles de Nueva York, todos ellos estaban guisando un estofado posrock’n’roll que daría paso a algo que, más tarde, se llamó SOUL. Si bien el uso de la palabra soul como denominación popular del género no se verificaría hasta la aparición en 1966 de “What is Soul”, el sencillo de Ben E. King, el sonido en sí ya se había introducido en la conciencia del pop en 1957, concretamente el día en que Sam Cooke cambió el espiritual negro por la música profana. Pero fue nuestro amigo Ben E. King el que perfiló con precisión el nuevo estilo. Esto es “What is Soul”. Sam Cooke no fue el primero que adjuró de la iglesia para derretir a las jovencitas: el primer guaperas del góspel de posguerra había sido Sonny Til, el líder de los Orioles, pero Cooke mezclaba como nadie la finura con el rugido del espiritual negro, y cantaba con intensidad y sin esfuerzo. Nació en Clarksdale (Misisipi) en 1931. Cuando tenía nueve años se unió al coro de sus hermanos y hermanas que acompañaban a su padre, pastor baptista, en sus viajes de predicación. Su decisión de abandonar la música religiosa en 1957 cayó muy mal en la feligresía. Así, su primer single “Lovable”, paso sin pena ni gloria y esto le hizo pensar si su decisión había sido acertada. Lo supo cuando publicó su segundo disco “You Send Me”. Éxito instantáneo, el sencillo se aupó al número uno y allí permaneció tres semanas, durante las cuales Cooke se convirtió en ídolo no solo de las chicas negras del Bronx, el público al que en principio se dirigía, sino también de las señoritas judías de Brooklyn. Los éxitos se sucedieron en cascada. Cooke no se explicaba su don: “Me pongo a cantar y me viene solo” declaró en cierta ocasión. Sea como fuese, en todas sus creaciones latía un trasfondo abrasivo que indicaba a las claras que, por mucha cara de bueno que tuviese, más valía no dejarlo a solas con la hermana pequeña de uno. Perfectamente podía haber hecho carrera como delincuente. Era, a un tiempo, ángel y diablo y en su música podemos apreciar al predicador fervoroso y al pecador arrepentido. Pero para todo el mundo era el chico de oro y siempre iba por delante del resto. Tras echar los cimientos de la música soul, fundó su propia discográfica, SAR, con brazo editorial incluido. Eran maniobras prácticamente inauditas en un artista de raza negra. En 1962 la música de Cook adquirió una nueva intensidad, como se aprecia en la cruda “Bring It Home To Me” Y es que, algo estaba cambiando. En ese año, el gobierno de Kennedy había obligado al Comité de Comercio Interestatal a dictar una nueva orden contra la segregación racial en virtud de la cual los pasajeros de los autobuses podían sentarse donde quisieran. Se retiraron de las estaciones los letreros de “blanco” y “negro”, y en los mostradores de las cafeterías se empezó a atender a los clientes con independencia del color de su piel. En septiembre un adolescente llamado James Meredith ganó un pleito y logró que lo admitiesen en la Universidad de Misisipi. Los disturbios subsiguientes se cobraron dos víctimas mortales, pero gracias a la escolta de una guardia armada, Meredith pudo asistir a clase. En la desgarrada “That’s Where It’s At” de 1963, resuenan el orgullo negro y las tribulaciones de la raza aunque, según Bob Stanley, nuestro biógrafo de cabecera, la letra no respondiese tanto al estado de la nación como a la vida del propio Cooke, que por aquel entonces se deshacía en jirones: su esposa Bárbara estaba perdiendo la cabeza por la afición del artista al alcohol y las mujeres, y ese verano, el hijo de ambos, se había ahogado en la piscina de la casa familiar. Una tragedia. Tenía para todo. El día 11 de diciembre de 1964 se lió con quien no debía, una prostituta que huyó con la ropa del cantante mientras él estaba en el baño. Medio desnudo y gritando como un poseso, Cooke asustó tanto a la dueña del motel que la mujer lo mató de un balazo. Nuestras felicitaciones a la asociación del rifle. Su último trabajo fue un sencillo en el que se incluía “A chage is gonna come”, una canción que Cooke compuso después de escuchar el “Blowin in the wind” de Bob Dylan y concluyó que debería escribir algo que reflejase su vida personal y la de sus amigos. La canción es un augurio entreverado de esperanza y optimismo. Es una pena que fuera su epitafio. Si Sam Cooke era la voz del soul, el sello Stax era el molde. Los hermanos Estelle y Jim Stewart fundaron este sello y se instalaron en el ruinoso cine Capitol. El puesto de palomitas de la entrada se convirtió en una tienda de discos llamada Satellite, con cuyos ingresos se sufragaba el estudio de grabación. El hijo de Estelle, Pachy, había estado ensayando con unos chicos del instituto, entre ellos el guitarrista Steve Cropper (apuntad este nombre) y el bajista Donald Dunn, alias “Pato Donald”, que se hacían llamar los Royal Spades y que experimentaban con el country, el R&B y el rockabilly, y que, a fuerza de ensayar, se convirtieron en un grupo conjuntado al máximo, capaz de acompañar a cualquier artista de paso. Y así fue como, un día, se presentó por allí Rufus Thomas, locutor de una emisora local: su hija Carla había compuesto una cancioncilla titulada “Gee Whiz” y quería grabarla. Una vez pasada por el tamiz de los Royal Spades, la canción llegó al top 10. Y es esta… Poco después, un instrumental de una sola nota, sucio y con predominio de metales, titulado “Last Night”, obra de los Royal Spades pero publicado con el nombre los Mar-Keys, llegó nada menos que al número dos. El sello Stax estaba en marcha. Los numerosos éxitos que acumularon en el año 1962 hicieron que el sello Stax se convirtiera en el sonido Memphis y, por ello, se ganó el derecho a colgar un letrero encima de la tienda de discos que rezaba “Souls-ville USA”. Uno de estos éxitos fue, sin lugar a dudas, su famoso “Green Onions”. Los músicos empezaron a demandar el estilo Stax y por el estudio terminó pasando gente como Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Judy Clay, Eddie Floyd y Johnnie Taylor. El sonido Stax no tardó en hacerse más importante que el artista, y el sello se convirtió en el equivalente sureño de la factoría Spector. Pero no estaban solos. La otra discográfica que definió el floreciente género del soul fue la neoyorquina Atlantic Records. Uno de sus fundadores, el Sr. Ertegun, era un gran amante del blues y, justamente, del blues procedía Ray Charles. En sus comienzos Charles era un pianista dotado del don de imitar a sus ídolos: Louis Jordan, Nat King Cole o Charles Brown, pero cuando el Sr. Charles empezó a componer sus propias obras, y la discográfica había sabido esperar pacientemente, todo cambió. Compuso y grabó “I got a woman”, su primer sencillo con el sello que fue número uno de la lista de R&B en enero de 1955. Más tarde, esta canción conocería las versiones unos “desconocidos” tales como Elvis Presley o los Beatles. La bomba Ray Charles estalló en 1959, cuando el hombre compuso, sobre una sencilla pieza, concretamente una antífona, religiosa, de seis minutos de duración y que era mitad revival evangélico, mitad procacidad burdelera. Lo nunca visto!!! La pieza se llamaba, bueno, y se llama… “What’d I Say” Desde ese momento y hasta mediada la década de los 60 rara sería la estrella en ciernes, desde Stevie Wonder a los Searchers, que no citase entre sus influencias a Ray Charles: “el hermano Ray”, “el genio”, “el hermano número uno del soul”… etc. Convencido de sus dotes, el artista picó en otros géneros: primero grabó jazz instrumental; después coqueteó con el country en una revisión del clásico “Georgia on My Mind”, otro número uno en 1.960 En la canción, Ray se enfrenta a dos lealtades encontradas. El sur era su patria, pero en 1960 también era el campo de batalla por los derechos civiles de los negros. Dos años más tarde, Charles grabó un elepé entero con la misma temática. Hacía falta mucho valor para mezclar country y soul, pero también mucha sutileza. A estas alturas, el artista ya había dejado el sello Atlantis para aceptar una jugosa suma de ABC-Paramount. Sin nadie que le parara los pies, el hermano Ray se lanzó de cabeza al “countrypolitan” orquestal y firmó dos de los singles de más éxito en su trayectoria, “I can’t stop loving you” y “You don’t know me” A mediados de la década de 1960 Ray Charles ya había exprimido el truco del country hasta la última gota y perdió tanta credibilidad ante la crítica y los colegas del gremio que al terminar el decenio apenas se hablaba de él. Tal vez una de las estrellas de Atlantis más injustamente infravaloradas fue Bárbara Lewis. Nuestro amigo Bob Stanley, en su libro “La historia del pop moderno” dice de ella: “su voz de jade pulido en “Hello Stranger”, tema con ritmo de shuffle, a caballo entre la música de verbena y la de tocador: morirá feliz el afortunado a quien, siquiera una sola vez en su vida, le canten personalmente esta canción”. Bueno, pues esta es la canción… Pero el mayor fichaje del sello, en todos los sentidos, fue Aretha Franklin. Dueña de una voz capaz de reventar un micrófono a medio kilómetro, Aretha cantaba como una fuerza de la naturaleza. La futura dama del Soul ya había grabado algunos temas para el sello Columbia, pero Ertegun la animó y convenció para cambiar de sello discográfico y en Atlantic echó el resto. Aretha había nacido el 25 de marzo de 1942 en Memphis (Tennessee), y creció en Detroit. Es hija del predicador Clarence LeVaughn Franklin y la cantante de góspel Bárbara Franklin. Su madre abandonó a su familia cuando Aretha era una niña, y poco tiempo después, murió. Su padre vio pronto el talento de Aretha, por lo que quiso que tomara clases de piano, pero ella lo rechazó y prefirió aprender por sí sola con la ayuda de grabaciones. En este tiempo, permanecía en un tour itinerante de góspel, donde uno de los primeros temas que interpretó fue «Precious Lord». Los genios del góspel Clara Ward, James Cleveland y Mahalia Jackson eran íntimos de su familia, por lo que Aretha creció rodeada de ellos. Fue precoz en todos los aspectos de su vida. Con doce años tuvo a su primer hijo, y dos años después tuvo el segundo. Esto que suena es esa primera grabación con su grupo de góspel. Por cierto, ya me diréis si os suena… Cuando Aretha abandonó Columbia para fichar por la compañía discográfica Atlantic Records, el productor Jerry Wexler se propuso sacarle todo el soul que llevaba dentro. El primer single que grabó para Atlantic Records fue «I never loved a man (the way I love you)”. Este tema ha sido avalado por muchos críticos como una de las grandes canciones del soul, y la revista Rolling Stone escribió: «Franklin ha grabado su versión de la maravilla soul, un lamento sobre qué-mal-me-has-tratado, con la Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, unos chicos blancos de Alabama». El single irrumpió en todas las radios, pero aún lo haría con mucha más fuerza “Respect”, versión de la canción que Otis Redding había grabado en 1965 y con la que Aretha se consagraba definitivamente. La canción se grabó en los estudios de Atlantic, en Nueva York, el 14 de febrero de 1967. A la versión original de Redding se le añadió un puente y un solo de saxo, de la mano de King Curtis. El 10 de marzo de 1967 se editaba un álbum en el que Aretha también contribuyó como compositora con varios temas. Destacamos este "Dr. Feelgood (Love Is a Serious Business)". Un precioso blues. Ese mismo año, consiguió dos premios Grammy, siendo la segunda mujer en hacerlo. También en 1967, concretamente el 4 de agosto, editó un nuevo disco del que nos apetece destacar uno de sus temas. Se trata de “Satisfaction”, el éxito de los Rolling. Vamos a oir una versión, grabada en directo, en el Olimpia de Paris en el año 1968. Nos despedimos del programa de hoy y de nuestra admirada Aretha Franklin, ahora si, para siempre, porque como sabeis, Aretha Franklin falleció el pasado día 16 de agosto, a la edad de 76 años en su domicilio de Detroit. No obstante, su larga trayectoria profesional da para muchas más horas de programación, horas que le dedicaremos con muchísimo gusto. Cerramos pues este programa con su gran éxito "Chain of fools", un tema incluido en su disco Lady Soul, editado en 1.968, y con el que volvería a conocer el éxito masivo.

The show opens with audio of the Queen of Soul into her song "You Send Me." Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

We’re watching Mimi’s bridal waltz, lit by the sunset’s golden glow in a retro-opulent ballroom, filled with love. I have a huge lump in my throat. I can’t quite believe we’re here, for this moment, for Michael and Antonia, young lovers who lost touch for years, then found each other again, and somehow found themselves. They seem as filled with joy as it’s possible to be. And I am too, as I look around the table at our closest friends from Denmark who we left a year ago, reunited, as if geography is nothing and the bonds of friendship are everything. I glance out at golden Manhattan across the East River, as I squeeze you on my lap, my little companion, and my depletion is filled up. By this city, this adventure, these people, this wedding, by all this love and by you.There have been obstacles getting here. I needed help with the money. And travel with a kid is hard. I haven’t been able to control everything. Sleep is a battle, with jet lag and adrenalin pushing us further and further out of sync. But amongst logistical headaches, so many moments have been magical, since we left Canberra on last week’s pre-dawn flight. This production is made by Sophie and Astrid Harper, in partnership with Wondery. We’re supported by generous listeners. Dear patreon supporters, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the ongoing support. Story editing by Michelle Webster.Thanks to Michael and Antonia, Steen, Ana, Jim, Anne and the boys, to my biggest nephew Sebastian, and especially to you Astrid, for letting me share your stories. Music from the wedding (invoking Fair Use) That’s Amore by Dean Martin, New York New York by Frank Sinatra, Ave Maria by Bach/Gounod, Get Ready by The Temptations, You Send Me by Sam Cooke, Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper. Ad music from freemusicarchive.org - CC Commercial License: Drop of Water in the Ocean by Broke For Free.Sponsored by Hello Fresh: US listeners, for $30 off your first week of HelloFresh, visit hellofresh.com/accident30 and enter code ACCIDENT30 Thank you kind people supporting us on Patreon! Margaret P. Jones, Trish Perlen, Angela Kim, Emma Burbank, Ellie McHale, Russell Kerrison, Julie Greenhalgh, Rebecca Reid, Kasey Tomkins, Dianne Firth, Anne Staude, Sarah E. Leslie, Adam Coulson, Melanie Ann, Lea Durie, Laura Getson, Bill, Sue Giugni, Maia Bittner, Elizabeth Adcock, Megan O’Brien, Katie Wolgamot, Hannah Lownsbrough, Lilit Asiryan, Laura Madge, Laura Cherry, Bethany White, Paul S Mitchell, Mariele Thadani, Pip Muir and more.If you’d like to chip in a couple of dollars towards each new episode, go to patreon.com/notbyaccident. Go to www.notbyaccident.net to find out more about the series, join the e-newsletter or to get in touch. We’ll be back with the next instalment in about 4 weeks.

松本を中心に活動する男女5人組バンド「金魚注意報」が番組初登場。 ライブ遠征先でのエピソードと、移動中の車で流れた「旅のサウンドトラック」についてお話いただきました。 さらに、3月にリリースされた新作からのナンバーもオンエア。 松本の町を投影した現在進行形のポップをぜひチェックしてください！ 【金魚注意報　プロフィール】 ビキニに海よりはスクール水着にプールが似合う背伸び小洒落ポップバンド。紅一点リーダーである金沢里花子が音楽の中だけでは色気のある女になりたいという願望をきっかけに2016年結成、デュオとして松本を拠点に活動を開始し、現在５人編成。2017年1月には自主制作盤ミニアルバム「水泳局」、今年春にはバンド編成での初ミニアルバム「You Send Me」を発表したばかり。 https://kingyochuiho-kingyochuiho.tumblr.com/ 【ポッドキャスト収録曲】 金魚注意報 - 「くちづけ雨模様」 ※アーティストの御厚意によりポッドキャストエピソード内で曲の一部を試聴できます。 【ライブ情報】 『City Camp vol.1』 4/14（土）長野・松本 Give me little more.　http://givemelittlemore.blogspot.jp/ 開場 18:30 開演 19:00 チャージ* 前売り 1,500円　当日2,000円 LIVE* 金魚注意報 チョコレートタウンオーケストラ BANK DJ* Oshow( music cafe / 夜間飛行 ) riko（MARKING RECORDS） チケットのご予約は* give.melittlemore@gmail.com まで氏名、予約人数をメールしてください。 * * Hickory Sound Excursion　 ヒッコリー・サウンド・エクスカーション FMまつもと（長野県松本市）79.1Mhz 毎週木曜日　夜7時30分オンエア http://se.hickory.jp

A review of Concrete Park Vol. 1 You Send Me published by Dark Horse a sci-fi fantasy adventure written By Erika Alexander With Art by Tony Puryear

Lögin sem Rachelle Ferrell syngur heita Don't Waste Your Time, You Send Me, Prayer Dance og You Don't Know What Love Is. Tríó McCoy Tyner ásamt Michael Brecker flytur lögin Blues Stride, Good Morning Heartache, Impressions, Mellow Mirror, Flying High og Happy Days. Tríó Jacky Terrasson flytur lögin Time After Time, Bye Bye Blackbird, For Once In My Life, What A Difference A Day Makes, My Funny Valentine og I Love Paris.

El SOUL ha formado parte de nuestras vidas de una forma arrolladora, es un estilo que nace allá por los años 60, de la fusión del Godspell, música religiosa que se canta, mejor dicho, se vive, en las iglesias afroamericanas de EEUU, y del R&B. Esta música, tuvo siempre un alto contenido social contra la segregación racial ya que, en sus orígenes fue un movimiento exclusivamente negro. En la actualidad, ese contenido social lo ha heredado el RAP, pero eso será otra historia. Uno de los primeros interpretes que alcanzó la fama mundial en este estilo fue Sam Cooke que con su famoso YOU SEND ME. Llegó al número uno en las listas de R&B y se mantuvo en ese puestos durante nada menos que seis semanas. El 11 de diciembre de 1964, Sam Cooke murió acribillado a balazos por la dueña de un motel (Bertha Franklin) a quien supuestamente intentó atacar mientras iba semidesnudo. Más tarde la mujer declaró que el artista había violado a una muchacha. No se quiso dar mayor revuelo al incidente, por lo que no se inició una investigación formal de lo sucedido (ya que Sam Cooke era un hombre de color), acabando todo en un veredicto de homicidio justificado. Hasta hoy el caso siembra dudas. Esto es América. Memphis fue un punto estratégico de este genero y de allí nos llegaron figuras como Otis Redding. Fue una gran figura del Soul. Su voz podía pasar de ser aterciopelada, como hemos visto en su éxito Sentado en el muelle de la bahía, a ser una voz rasgada, rota y rompedora. Pasaba de las baladas más tiernas a versiones como Satisfaction, que sorprendió agradablemente a los mismos Rolling Stones. Un desgraciado accidente la mañana del 10 de diciembre de 1967 en Lake Monona, en las afueras de Madison (Wisconsin), a sólo tres minutos de su destino, acabó con su vida y con todos los miembros de su banda, al estrellarse su avioneta. Tenía solo 26 años. En fin… Otra estrella del genero. Nada más y nada menos que el Sr. Wilson Pickett, al que ya hemos oído al inicio del programa. Lo oímos ahora en su éxito In the Midnight Hour. No podemos dejar al Sr. Pickett sin mencionar su éxito Everybody Needs Somebody To Love. Pero para Wilson Pichett todo acabó mal. A principios de la década de los 80 tuvo problemas con el alcohol. Esto le valió otros tantos problemas con la ley y terminar varias veces ante los tribunales por conducir ebrio, llevar armas y meterse en peleas. Finalmente acabó ingresando en prisión tras amenazar a alguien con un arma. Alcoholizado y arruinado, en enero de 1992 fue desahuciado de su casa de Nueva Jersey por no pagar el alquiler y en abril de ese mismo año, conduciendo borracho, hiere gravemente a un anciano de 86 años de edad por lo que fue condenado a un año de prisión y cinco de libertad condicional. También será declarado culpable de posesión de drogas. Pickett murió de un infarto al corazón el 19 de enero de 2006, a los 64 años de edad, en Reston, Virginia. Otras estrellas masculinas del Soul: Ray Charles, James Brown, Arthur Alexander, Percly Sledge, y un largo, larguísimo etc. Y no me olvido: Las voces femeninas tuvieron tanta importancia como las masculinas. De hecho, son de mujer las voces que en la actualidad están revitalizando un género que parecía aletargado. Vamos con ellas: La Reina. Aretha Franklin. Nació el 25 de marzo de 1942 en Memphis (Tennessee), y creció en Detroit. Es hija del predicador Clarence LeVaughn Franklin y la cantante de gospel Barbara Franklin. Por cierto, su madre la abandonó cuando era una niña. Su vida no pudo empezar mejor. Sus primeros años en la música estuvieron inmersos en la música gospel y rodeada de voces del jazz como Dinah Washington y Ella Fitzgerald. El martes 20 de enero de 2009 se presentó en el acto de asunción al mando del presidente de los EE.UU., Barack Obama, para cantar el tema "My Country This of Thee”. Según el diario El Pais, Aretha Franklin ha asegurado que se retira en 2017. La estrella del soul, que en marzo cumplió los 75 años, quiere pasar más tiempo con sus nietos. Así sea. Tenemos más: Roberta Flack, Diana Ross y muchas más... Hay que decir que en la actualidad son las voces femeninas las que están dando un giro prometedor a la música Soul, nombres como Adele, Beyonce, Joss Stone, y como no, si la vida le hubiera dado tiempo, Amy Winehouse. Lástima. Y esto ha sido todo por hoy Señoras y Señores, que ustedes lo pasen bien. Les espero a todos la próxima semana. BUENAS VIBRACIONES!!!

El SOUL ha formado parte de nuestras vidas de una forma arrolladora, es un estilo que nace allá por los años 60, de la fusión del Godspell, música religiosa que se canta, mejor dicho, se vive, en las iglesias afroamericanas de EEUU, y del R&B. Esta música, tuvo siempre un alto contenido social contra la segregación racial ya que, en sus orígenes fue un movimiento exclusivamente negro. En la actualidad, ese contenido social lo ha heredado el RAP, pero eso será otra historia. Uno de los primeros interpretes que alcanzó la fama mundial en este estilo fue Sam Cooke que con su famoso YOU SEND ME. Llegó al número uno en las listas de R&B y se mantuvo en ese puestos durante nada menos que seis semanas. El 11 de diciembre de 1964, Sam Cooke murió acribillado a balazos por la dueña de un motel (Bertha Franklin) a quien supuestamente intentó atacar mientras iba semidesnudo. Más tarde la mujer declaró que el artista había violado a una muchacha. No se quiso dar mayor revuelo al incidente, por lo que no se inició una investigación formal de lo sucedido (ya que Sam Cooke era un hombre de color), acabando todo en un veredicto de homicidio justificado. Hasta hoy el caso siembra dudas. Esto es América. Memphis fue un punto estratégico de este genero y de allí nos llegaron figuras como Otis Redding. Fue una gran figura del Soul. Su voz podía pasar de ser aterciopelada, como hemos visto en su éxito Sentado en el muelle de la bahía, a ser una voz rasgada, rota y rompedora. Pasaba de las baladas más tiernas a versiones como Satisfaction, que sorprendió agradablemente a los mismos Rolling Stones. Un desgraciado accidente la mañana del 10 de diciembre de 1967 en Lake Monona, en las afueras de Madison (Wisconsin), a sólo tres minutos de su destino, acabó con su vida y con todos los miembros de su banda, al estrellarse su avioneta. Tenía solo 26 años. En fin… Otra estrella del genero. Nada más y nada menos que el Sr. Wilson Pickett, al que ya hemos oído al inicio del programa. Lo oímos ahora en su éxito In the Midnight Hour. No podemos dejar al Sr. Pickett sin mencionar su éxito Everybody Needs Somebody To Love. Pero para Wilson Pichett todo acabó mal. A principios de la década de los 80 tuvo problemas con el alcohol. Esto le valió otros tantos problemas con la ley y terminar varias veces ante los tribunales por conducir ebrio, llevar armas y meterse en peleas. Finalmente acabó ingresando en prisión tras amenazar a alguien con un arma. Alcoholizado y arruinado, en enero de 1992 fue desahuciado de su casa de Nueva Jersey por no pagar el alquiler y en abril de ese mismo año, conduciendo borracho, hiere gravemente a un anciano de 86 años de edad por lo que fue condenado a un año de prisión y cinco de libertad condicional. También será declarado culpable de posesión de drogas. Pickett murió de un infarto al corazón el 19 de enero de 2006, a los 64 años de edad, en Reston, Virginia. Otras estrellas masculinas del Soul: Ray Charles, James Brown, Arthur Alexander, Percly Sledge, y un largo, larguísimo etc. Y no me olvido: Las voces femeninas tuvieron tanta importancia como las masculinas. De hecho, son de mujer las voces que en la actualidad están revitalizando un género que parecía aletargado. Vamos con ellas: La Reina. Aretha Franklin. Nació el 25 de marzo de 1942 en Memphis (Tennessee), y creció en Detroit. Es hija del predicador Clarence LeVaughn Franklin y la cantante de gospel Barbara Franklin. Por cierto, su madre la abandonó cuando era una niña. Su vida no pudo empezar mejor. Sus primeros años en la música estuvieron inmersos en la música gospel y rodeada de voces del jazz como Dinah Washington y Ella Fitzgerald. El martes 20 de enero de 2009 se presentó en el acto de asunción al mando del presidente de los EE.UU., Barack Obama, para cantar el tema "My Country This of Thee”. Según el diario El Pais, Aretha Franklin ha asegurado que se retira en 2017. La estrella del soul, que en marzo cumplió los 75 años, quiere pasar más tiempo con sus nietos. Así sea. Tenemos más: Roberta Flack, Diana Ross y muchas más... Hay que decir que en la actualidad son las voces femeninas las que están dando un giro prometedor a la música Soul, nombres como Adele, Beyonce, Joss Stone, y como no, si la vida le hubiera dado tiempo, Amy Winehouse. Lástima. Y esto ha sido todo por hoy Señoras y Señores, que ustedes lo pasen bien. Les espero a todos la próxima semana. BUENAS VIBRACIONES!!!

Sam Cooke was a trailblazing song writer and recording artist in the 1950s and 1960s. Cooke helped shape the soul and pop scene with hits like "You Send Me," "Chain Gang" and "Twistin' the Night Away".  Sam started to sing professionally at the age of six. By the time he was in his twenties he was a music superstar.  That all came to a tragic end in December 1964 when Cooke, at age 33, was murdered in a seedy Los Angeles motel. Many questions regarding his death remain unanswered to this day.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.com Song List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1146

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 2434

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1648

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 535

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1641

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1104

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1104

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1088

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1636

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1299

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1244

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1511

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1379

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1511

New Movies Collection Now Available http://oldtimeradiodvd.comSong List, 1-A Sunday Kind Of Love, Four Seasons 1965, 2-I'llKiss Your Teardrops Away,Aladdins 1959, 3-It's So Hard to Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance, 4-Stay Just A Little Bit Longer, Zondiacs 1963, 5-You Send Me, Sam Cooke 1957, 6-In the Still Of The Night, The Drifters, 7-A Teenager In Love, Dion & Belmonts 1959, 8- Doo Wop Memories, The Chaperals, 9-So Much In Love, Thmes 1963, 10-Runaway, Del Shannon 1961, 11-This I Swear, Skylinders 1959, 12-Run To Him, Bobby Vee 1961, 13-A Wonderful Dream, Majors 1961, 14-Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton 1963, 15-It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Kenny Vance 1379