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5 episodes with young rascals
3 episodes with young rascals
2 episodes with young rascals
2 episodes with young rascals
2 episodes with young rascals
2 episodes with young rascals
2 episodes with young rascals
2 episodes with young rascals
7 episodes with young rascals
The Young Rascals were one of the early groups which would define the genre of "blue eyed soul." For a period of two to three years, this group would generate hit after hit. Their third album, Groovin', would close out the era in which they were known as “The Young Rascals,” because follow-up albums would see them using simply the name "The Rascals." Felix Cavaliere was a classically trained pianist, and joined a band called the Starliters, where he met David Brigati and his younger brother Eddie. Cavaliere convinced Eddie Brigati and guitarist Gene Cornish to leave the Starliters and form a band, recruiting jazz drummer Dino Danilli to flesh out the band. They called themselves "Them" until they found out that a group out of the UK was already using that name (Van Morrison's band). They settled on "The Young Rascals" when comedian Soupy Sales used them as his back-up band when he toured the college circuit in 1965.Much of this album is a collection of singles rather than a cohesive piece of music. Eight of the eleven songs are either A-side or B-side single releases.The Rascals moved into a more psychedelic direction after this album, and they would be largely done by the early 70's. They were early inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, receiving that honor in 1997.Bruce presents this soulful album for this week's podcast.Groovin'This signature song from the group almost didn't make it as a single. Atlantic Records pushed back on this track because it was very different from the sound of their other songs, having a more Latin influence. The inspiration for the lyrics was Cavaliere's girlfriend Adrienne Buccheri. He only got to see her on Sundays because he was so occupied with the group, music, and touring on other days. You Better RunMany listeners who grew up in the 80's will be more familiar with Pat Benatar's cover of this song than the Young Rascals' original. It was released a year before the album as a single, in May 1966. The song has more of a garage band feel than other songs on the album.A Girl Like YouThis is the lead-off song for the album, and went to number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Upbeat, feel good, this is the opening song of new love. It starts off subdued with piano and vocals, then builds into the horns and percussion. If You KnewThis song was released as the B-side to the single "I've Been Lonely Too Long" from their previous album called Collections. It is the only song on the album to be listed as written by all member of the band. Most songs were written by Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Mrs. Robinson by Simon and Garfunkel (from the motion picture “The Graduate”) Dustin Hoffman's got his breakthrough role in this coming of age film. STAFF PICKS:Green Tambourine by the Lemon PipersRob leads off the staff picks with the best known song from a short-lived Ohio band. Unfortunately the success of this song would cause the record company to pigeonhole the group into doing more songs in the psychedelic genre. The group was unenthusiastic about this direction, and would leave the label in 1969, dissolving shortly thereafter.Sunshine of Your Love by CreamLynch brings us a signature song from the original supergroup. The song arose out of a bass riff that Jack Bruce created after seeing Jimi Hendrix for the first time. Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton take turns with vocals while Ginger Baker utilizes a tribal beat on percussion.I Can See for Miles by The WhoWayne features the only single from the Who album “The Who Sell Out.“ Although it went to number 9 on the US charts, guitarist and writer Pete Townshend expected it to do much better. The Who made use of the studio as an instrument on this heavier, psychedelic song, using techniques similar to the Beach Boys and the Beatles at the time.I Second That Emotion by Smokey Robinson & the MiraclesBruce closes out the staff picks with a song that originated from a trip Smokey Robinson and Al Cleveland took to a Detroit department store in search of a gift for Robinson's wife Claudette. When Robinson told the salesman of a set of pearls, "I sure hope she likes them," Cleveland accidentally said "I second that emotion," rather than "I second that motion." The two laughed about it and wrote this song which would go to number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967. INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:Hip Hug-Her by Booker T. & the M.G.'sWe close out with a funky instrumental which was on the charts at the time. Thanks for listening to “What the Riff?!?” NOTE: To adjust the loudness of the music or voices, you may adjust the balance on your device. VOICES are stronger in the LEFT channel, and MUSIC is stronger on the RIGHT channel.Please follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/whattheriffpodcast/, and message or email us with what you'd like to hear, what you think of the show, and any rock-worthy memes we can share.Of course we'd love for you to rate the show in your podcast platform!**NOTE: What the Riff?!? does not own the rights to any of these songs and we neither sell, nor profit from them. We share them so you can learn about them and purchase them for your own collections.
Discover who wrote most of the Rascals songs. Find out what ex lead singer and founder Felix Cavaliere is doing now and learn all about one of the greatest bands of the '60s. Felix Cavaliere is a celebrated musician, songwriter, and vocalist, widely regarded as a pioneer of blue-eyed soul. Born in Pelham, New York, Cavaliere was introduced to music at an early age, taking classical piano lessons under his mother's encouragement. While initially drawn to classical music, he soon discovered his passion for rhythm and blues, inspired by legends like Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye. Cavaliere pursued pre-med studies at Syracuse University but found himself increasingly immersed in music, forming his first band, The Escorts, while still in college. His decision to follow his musical aspirations led him to New York City's thriving music scene in the early 1960s. In 1965, Cavaliere co-founded The Rascals (originally called The Young Rascals) with Eddie Brigati, Gene Cornish, and Dino Danelli. The group became synonymous with the era's evolving rock and soul movement, producing a string of iconic hits that combined soulful melodies with socially conscious lyrics. Cavaliere's distinctive voice and masterful Hammond organ playing defined hits like "Good Lovin'," which topped the charts in 1966, followed by enduring classics like "Groovin'," "A Beautiful Morning," and "People Got to Be Free." The latter, inspired by the civil rights movement, became an anthem for unity and social justice. As the principal songwriter for The Rascals, Felix played a crucial role in shaping the band's innovative sound, which bridged the gap between rock and R&B. The Rascals enjoyed commercial success, releasing six gold albums and earning a devoted following. However, internal tensions and changing musical landscapes led to the band's breakup in the early 1970s. After The Rascals disbanded, Cavaliere embarked on a solo career, releasing several albums throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His solo work, including tracks like "Only a Lonely Heart Sees," reflected his evolving artistry, blending soulful ballads with pop-rock influences. Felix also collaborated with numerous artists, including Todd Rundgren and Steve Cropper, further solidifying his reputation as a versatile and respected musician. In 1997, Cavaliere and his fellow Rascals were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, cementing their place in music history. The band reunited in 2013 for a critically acclaimed multimedia concert series, Once Upon a Dream, produced by Steven Van Zandt. The reunion celebrated their groundbreaking legacy and brought their music to a new generation of fans. Beyond his achievements with The Rascals, Cavaliere remains an active performer and advocate for music education. He continues to tour, sharing his timeless songs with audiences worldwide. Cavaliere's influence on rock and soul endures, with his groundbreaking contributions inspiring countless artists and fans. Today Felix Cavaliere calls Nashville home base, where he is constantly collaborating and writing new material. He's also finishing his memoir and has an active tour schedule with Felix Cavaliere's Rascals. To learn more about Felix and his music, head for his website To request a guest to be interviewed on the show, head to my website and send me a message.
Send us a textOn this episode, Tom and Bert discuss their TOP 10 of the Greatest Make Out Songs of the decades (1950's-1960's) also with a sampling of the songs.From "Our Day will Come" by Ruby and the Romantics (1:05); to "Cupid" by Sam Cooke (2:55); "Since I fell for You" by Lenny Welch (3:30); To "Hey Girl" by Freddie Scott (6:52); then "Under The Boardwalk" by the Drifters (7:20); they keep things rolling. Then some "classics" like "Louie, Louie" by the Kingsmen (12:00); Mel Carter's "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me" (15:06); and The Rolling Stones "Satisfaction" (17:00);We continue on with these and many other hit songs that set the mood for the "Make Out" songs genre like "These Boots are made for Walking" by Nancy SInatra (31:41); " Groovin' " by the Young Rascals (37:54); "Everlasting Love" by Robert Knight (42:30); and "The Stripper" by David Rose (54:50); to close out the podcast.Enjoy the show!You can email us at reeldealzmoviesandmusic@gmail.com or visit our Facebook page, Reel Dealz Podcast: Movies & Music Thru The Decades to leave comments and/or TEXT us at 843-855-1704 as well.
Pink Floyd's Catalog Sale: A New EraIn this episode of the Deadhead Cannabis Show, Larry Michigan explores the rich history of the Grateful Dead's music, focusing on a specific concert from 1980. He discusses the significance of various songs, including 'Iko Iko' and 'Me and Bobby McGee', while also reflecting on the impact of Chris Christopherson's songwriting. The conversation shifts to current events in the music and cannabis industries, including Pink Floyd's catalog sale and the ongoing challenges faced by the hemp industry. Larry emphasizes the importance of medical marijuana legalization and shares insights on how cannabis enhances the music experience. He concludes with personal strain recommendations and highlights record sales in legal marijuana states. TakeawaysThe Grateful Dead's acoustic sets were a significant part of their live performances.Audience tapes capture the energy of live shows better than soundboard recordings.Chris Christopherson's 'Me and Bobby McGee' remains a classic, showcasing the intersection of music and storytelling.Pink Floyd's recent catalog sale reflects the changing dynamics in the music industry.The Betty Boards represent a pivotal moment in Grateful Dead tape trading history.The hemp industry faces legal challenges that could impact small businesses.A majority of chronic pain patients support the legalization of medical marijuana.Cannabis enhances the enjoyment of music, as confirmed by recent studies.Record sales in legal marijuana states are reaching new heights, indicating a thriving market.Personal strain recommendations can enhance the cannabis experience for users. Chapters00:00Introduction and Context of the Grateful Dead's Music04:50Exploring 'Iko Iko' and Audience Tapes10:42The Significance of 'Monkey and the Engineer'15:24Remembering Chris Christopherson and 'Me and Bobby McGee'22:31Pink Floyd's Catalog Sale to Sony Music28:15The Mystery of the Betty Boards54:16Current Issues in the Hemp Industry01:08:10Support for Medical Marijuana Legalization01:15:50The Impact of Marijuana on Music Enjoyment01:21:09Record Sales in Legal Marijuana States01:25:53Strain Recommendations and Personal Experiences Grateful DeadOctober 7, 1980 (44 years ago)Warfield TheaterSan Francisco, CAGrateful Dead Live at Warfield Theater on 1980-10-07 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Part of 23 show run in late September to the end of October, 1980 split between the Warfield (September 27th – October 14th) and Radio City Music Hall in NYC (October 22 – 31st) Each show opened with an acoustic set followed by two full electric sets. These were the last shows where the Dead played acoustic sets. Songs from all of these concerts were pulled for the two related Dead double album releases, Reckoning (acoustic music, released April 1, 1981- the Band's sixth live album and 17th overall) and Dead Set (electric music, released August 26, 1981, the Band's seventh live album and 18th overall). Today's episode is broken up into three acoustic numbers from this show and then three electric numbers. INTRO: Iko Iko Track #1 0:00 – 1:37 "Iko Iko" (/ˈaɪkoʊˈaɪkoʊ/) is a much-coveredNew Orleans song that tells of a parade collision between two tribes of Mardi Gras Indians and the traditional confrontation. The song, under the original title "Jock-A-Mo", was written and released in 1953 as a single by James "Sugar Boy" Crawford and his Cane Cutters but it failed to make the charts. The song first became popular in 1965 by the girl groupthe Dixie Cups, who scored an international hit with "Iko Iko" released in March, 1965. In 1967, as part of a lawsuit settlement between Crawford and the Dixie Cups, the trio were given part songwriting credit for the song. A permanent part of the Dead's repertoire since first played in May, 1977 in St. Louis, almost by accident out of and back into a Not Fade Away. The intro, one verse and back to NFA. Overtime, became a tune that was not frequently played, usually once, maybe twice, a tour, but whenever it was played it created a party atmosphere out of whatever the mood had been prior to its playing. Perfect song for Jerry with the call and response chorus that everyone joined in on. The song that “fastened my seatbelt on the bus” when I saw it for the first time at my second show ever in Syracuse in 1982 with good buddy Mikey. Once you hear it live, you are always looking for it at future shows. I love this song as do many Deadheads. But getting to hear it played acoustically is a real treat and a great way to open this “hometown” show. Jerry played it right up until the end. Played: 185 timesFirst: May 15, 1977 at St. Louis Arena, St. Louis, MO, USALast: July 5, 1995 at Riverport Amphitheatre, Maryland Heights, MO, USA SHOW No. 1: Monkey And The Engineer Track #4 0:48 – 2:25 Jesse Fuller tune Jesse Fuller (March 12, 1896 – January 29, 1976) was an American one-man band musician, best known for his song "San Francisco Bay Blues". Starting in the 1950's after a number of non-music related jobs, Fuller began to compose songs, many of them based on his experiences on the railroads, and also reworked older pieces, playing them in his syncopated style. His one-man band act began when he had difficulty finding reliable musicians to work with: hence, he became known as "The Lone Cat". Starting locally, in clubs and bars in San Francisco and across the bay in Oakland and Berkeley, Fuller became more widely known when he performed on television in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles. In 1958, at the age of 62, he recorded an album, released by Good Time Jazz Records.[3] Fuller's instruments included 6-string guitar (an instrument which he had abandoned before the beginning of his one-man band career), 12-string guitar, harmonica, kazoo, cymbal (high-hat) and fotdella. He could play several instruments simultaneously, particularly with the use of a headpiece to hold a harmonica, kazoo, and microphone. In the summer of 1959 he was playing in the Exodus Gallery Bar in Denver. Bob Dylan spent several weeks in Denver that summer, and picked up his technique of playing the harmonica by using a neck-brace from Fuller.[ Monkey And The Engineer was played by the pre-Dead group Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions in 1964. The song was performed by the Grateful Dead in acoustic sets in 1969, 1970, 1980 and 1981. Also performed by Bob Weir with Kingfish. A fun tune that is perfect for kids as well. Good one to get them hooked into the Dead on! Played: 38 timesFirst: December 19, 1969 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USALast: February 12, 1989 at Great Western Forum, Inglewood, CA, USA MUSIC NEWS: Intro Music: Me and Bobby McGee Kris Kristofferson - Me And Bobby McGee (1979) (youtube.com) 0:00 – 1:27 "Me and Bobby McGee" is a song written by American singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson and originally performed by Roger Miller. Fred Foster shares the writing credit, as Kristofferson wrote the song based on a suggestion from Foster.[1] Foster had a bit of a crush on Barbara "Bobbie" McKee who was a secretary on Nashville's music row. When he pitched the title to Kristofferson, he misheard the name as "Me and Bobby McGee," and the name stuck. Kristofferson found inspiration for his lyrics from a film, 'La Strada,' by Fellini, and a scene where Anthony Quinn is going around on this motorcycle and Giulietta Masina is the feeble-minded girl with him, playing the trombone. He got to the point where he couldn't put up with her anymore and left her by the side of the road while she was sleeping," Kristofferson said. A posthumously released version by Janis Joplin topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971, making the song the second posthumously released No. 1 single in U.S. chart history after "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding. Gordon Lightfoot released a version that reached number 1 on the Canadian country charts in 1970. Jerry Lee Lewis released a version that was number 1 on the country charts in December 1971/January 1972 as the "B" side of "Would You Take Another Chance on Me". Billboard ranked Joplin's version as the No. 11 song for 1971. Janis Joplin recorded the song for inclusion on her Pearl album only a few days before her death in October 1970. Singer Bob Neuwirth taught it to her while Kristofferson was in Peru filming The Last Movie with Dennis Hopper.[5] Kristofferson did not know she had recorded the song until after her death. The first time he heard her recording of it was the day after she died.[6]Record World called it a "perfect matching of performer and material."[7] Joplin's version topped the charts to become her only number one single; her version was later ranked No. 148 on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2002, the 1971 version of the song by Janis Joplin on Columbia Records was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The song is the story of two drifters, the narrator and Bobby McGee. The pair hitch a ride from a truck driver and sing as they drive through the American South before making their way westward. They visit California and then part ways, with the song's narrator expressing sadness afterwards. Due to the singer's name never being mentioned and the name "Bobby" being gender-neutral (especially in America), the song has been recorded by both male and female singers with only minor differences in the lyrical content. Me And Bobby McGee was first performed by the Grateful Dead in November 1970. It was then played well over 100 times through to October 1974. The song returned to the repertoire for three performances in 1981 after which it was dropped for good. Sung by Weir. RIP Kris Kristofferson Kris Kristofferson, the iconic country music singer-songwriter and accomplished Hollywood actor, passed away peacefully at his home in Maui, Hawaii, at the age of 88. The family has not disclosed the cause of death. It was confirmed that Kristofferson was surrounded by loved ones during his final moments. In a statement, the family shared: "It is with a heavy heart that we share the news our husband/father/grandfather, Kris Kristofferson, passed away peacefully on Saturday, Sept. 28 at home. We're all so blessed for our time with him. Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he's smiling down at us all." Tributes poured in from across the entertainment world and fans as the news of Kris Kristofferson's death spread. Barbra Streisand, his co-star in A Star Is Born, praised him as a "special” and “charming" in a post on X. Dolly Parton, who collaborated with Kristofferson, shared on X, "What a great loss. I will always love you, Dolly." Kristofferson's career was nothing short of extraordinary. He achieved stardom as both a country music artist and a successful actor. Throughout his prolific career, Kristofferson earned numerous accolades. These include three Grammy Awards and an induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004. Additionally, he was nominated for an Academy Award in 1985 for Best Original Song for Songwriter. In 1971, Janis Joplin, who had dated Kristofferson, had a number one hit with "Me and Bobby McGee" from her posthumous album Pearl. It stayed on the number-one spot on the charts for weeks. In 2021, after releasing his final album, The Cedar Creek Sessions, in 2016, Kristofferson announced his retirement from music. His legacy as a musician, actor, and cultural icon leaves a profound impact on both industries. He is survived by his wife, Lisa, his children, and his grandchildren. Pink Floyd sells song rights (Rolling Stone Magazine) After years of in-fighting and near-agreements, Pink Floyd have finally reached a deal to sell the rights to their recorded music catalog to Sony Music, according to the Financial Times.The deal is reported to be worth around $400 million and also includes the rights to the band's name and likenesses. That means, along with gaining full control over Pink Floyd's music, Sony will have the crucial rights for most things Pink Floyd-related, from merch to movies. A rep for Sony Music declined to comment. A source confirmed the veracity of the details to Rolling Stone. In an interview with Rolling Stone in August, Gilmour confirmed that the band was “in discussion” about a potential catalog sale, with the guitarist adding he was tired of the continued in-fighting and “veto system” that has resulted in animosity and delayed reissues over petty issues like liner notes. “To be rid of the decision-making and the arguments that are involved with keeping it going is my dream,” Gilmour said of a catalog sale. “If things were different… and I am not interested in that from a financial standpoint. I'm only interested in it from getting out of the mud bath that it has been for quite a while.” With the Sony deal in place, the label — and not the band — will now bear the responsibility for the next Pink Floyd release, a 50th-anniversary edition of Wish You Were Here that is expected to arrive in 2025. The Sony deal comes 18 months after Pink Floyd made traction on a $500 million agreement to sell their music, only for more bickering between band mates to make the deal “basically dead,” as sources told Variety in March 2023. The Sony deal only includes Pink Floyd's recorded music catalog, which allows for the band to keep its largely Waters-penned publishing catalog and retain ownership of now-apropos lyrics like “Money/It's a crime/Share it fairly, but don't take a slice of my pie” and “We call it riding the gravy train.” What happened to the Betty Boards In May 1986, a storage auction took place in California's Marin County that would altogether change the nature of Grateful Dead tape trading, the group's distribution of its live recordings and, ultimately, the Dead's place in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. An advertisement in a local paper drew in a few dozen curious parties anticipating the range of memorabilia and household items that typically become available through the auction of lockers that had fallen into arrears due to lack of payments. Among the items up for auction that day were hundreds of reel-to-reel soundboard tapes of the Grateful Dead originally recorded by Betty Cantor-Jackson during a golden age between 1971-80. The Betty Boards, as copies of these recordings became known, eventually found their way into the collections of longstanding Deadheads and newbies alike, ending some aspects of a tape-trading hierarchy by which certain individuals lorded over their collections, denying access to those who were unfamiliar with the secret handshake. The appearance and subsequent dissemination of these recordings became a source of fascination and speculation for Deadheads in 1986 and the questions have only compounded over the years: How did the tapes fall into the auction? Who won them? How and why were they initially distributed? Are there more recordings that have yet to make it into circulation? And jumping ahead to the present, where are those tapes today? Just what has become of the Bettys? What can be said with certainty is that a new cache of tapes has been unearthed and a plan is underway by Dark Star Orchestra guitarist Rob Eaton, who has painstakingly restored many of the boards, to complete the job and then facilitate their return to the band. Eaton hopes that a series of official releases might follow that will also yield a small royalty to the woman who recorded the reels and then lost them due to her own financial hardship, even if Deadheads owe her a debt of gratitude. Before the auction, before the boards, there was Betty. Betty Cantor was still in her teens when she began setting up mics and helping to record sound at San Francisco venues— first at the Avalon Ballroom and then, the Carousel (the latter during the Grateful Dead's brief stab at venue management in 1968). She worked alongside Bob Matthews, initially assisting with setups during the recording of the Dead's Anthem of the Sun. A true pioneer, as a woman staking her claim in a patriarchal business, she partnered with Matthews into the early 1970s to produce and engineer live multi- track recordings (she had a hand or two in Live/Dead) as well as studio efforts (Aoxomoxoa and Workingman's Dead). While she worked for other artists during this period, she maintained a close relationship with the Grateful Dead, catalyzed by her marriage to crew member Rex Jackson, who would die a few years later in an auto accident. (The philanthropic Rex Foundation is named in his honor.) “My late husband started recording on the road when he was on the equipment crew,” Cantor Jackson explains. “He and I purchased our own gear and tape. I recorded whenever I could get to the gigs. I recorded the Grateful Dead frequently when they were at home venues, I recorded any and all Jerry Garcia Band gigs I could get to for years, in all its configurations, as well as other bands I liked whenever I could. In those days, bands were cool and happy about me getting a feed. Rex was killed in a car accident in ‘76. In ‘77 and ‘78, I was put on Grateful Dead road crew salary, taping and handling Bobby's stage setup.” She later began a romantic relationship with Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland but, after that ended, she sensed that she had been frozen out. “Brent and I split up after a few years, with the last year spent in the studio working on his solo project. This put me in the category of the dreaded ‘ex.' I didn't think that could apply to me, but he was a band member. Everyone was paranoid of me being around, so I no longer had access to my studio or the vault.” Trying times followed. In 1986, she found herself in a dire financial predicament and forced out of her home. “All my things were moved to storage facilities. Unable to foot the bill at the storage center, Cantor-Jackson forfeited the rights to her worldly possessions. She remembers contacting the Grateful Dead office to inform them of the situation, but the group took no action, resulting in a public auction of Cantor-Jackson's personal assets, which included more than 1,000 reel-to-reel tapes—mostly Grateful Dead recordings, along with performances by Legion of Mary, Kingfish, Jerry Garcia Band, Old and In The Way, the Keith and Donna Band, and New Riders of The Purple Sage. The majority of the 1,000-plus reels that have come to be known as the Betty Boards were acquired by three principals, none of whom were fervid Deadheads at the time. The first of these individuals set his tapes aside in a storage locker where they remain to this day. A second, who was more interested in the road cases that held the tapes, left them to rot in his barn for a decade. The final party was a couple with a particular interest in progressive rock, who nonetheless held an appreciation for the performances captured on tape. So while some tapes unquestionably were scattered to the wind, following the four- hour event and a second auction for a final lot of tapes held a few weeks later, the three prime bidders each held hundreds of reels. While two of the winning bidders had no plans for the tapes, within a few months the couple decided that they would place the music in circulation. This was our way of getting new material into circulation and also breaking the hierarchy of those collectors who held on to prime shows for themselves. Initially, we started transferring the tapes to VHS Hi-Fi on our own, but soon realized what a daunting task this was going to be. So we reached out to one of our trading buddies who we knew had connections in the Dead trading community. From there, he gathered together what was later to become known as the ‘Unindicted Co-conspirators,' who put in a massive archiving effort to back up the tapes and distribute them.” The individual they selected as their point person was Ken Genetti, a friend and longtime Deadhead. “I went into their house, and I opened up this closet and they had all the stuff arranged on a shelf in order,” Genetti reflects. “For me, it was like King Tut's tomb. I knew immediately what they had when I looked in there. The first thing I saw was Port Chester, N.Y., Feb. 18, 1971, an incredible show which was Mickey [Hart]'s last concert for many years and I said, ‘You've got to be kidding me!' Then I saw Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, Calif., ‘73, my favorite concert I ever went to. I pulled it out and I went, ‘Holy shit!'” They explain: “We had sought to keep the operation as low key as possible because of the potential for a backlash. It wasn't until someone contacted the Grateful Dead office and offered them a copy of the tapes that we knew it was only a matter of time before we would be hearing from their lawyers. When we did hear from them, there was a bit of back and forth between their lawyers and our lawyer, but the bottom line was we had purchased the tapes legally and owned them but didn't own the rights to the music contained on them. Therefore, we could not sell the music on them, which was never our intent anyway. That pretty much left us at a stalemate and, not wanting to stir up any more issues with the Grateful Dead office, is also why we avoided re-digitizing the tapes.” In late 1995, Eaton received a call from a high-school teacher who had purchased one of the lots predominantly for the road cases that held the tapes. The teacher now hoped to sell the reels and wanted Eaton to assess them. In a cluttered barn, Eaton discovered a grimy, mold-infested collection. This might have been the end of the story, but the Betty Boards have proven to be the gift that keeps on giving. The teacher never found a buyer for the tapes—his asking price was a million dollars—and two years ago, facing monetary struggles and fearing that that the bank might foreclose on his home, he contacted Eaton once again to see if he would be willing to take custody of the tapes. The teacher also explained that he had discovered another 50 reels while cleaning out the barn. Emboldened by success with this latest batch, Eaton set a new goal for himself: “I had this dream to try to reclaim all of this music and archive it properly so that it's there for generations to come in the best possible form.” Emboldened by success with this latest batch, Eaton set a new goal for himself: “I had this dream to try to reclaim all of this music and archive it properly so that it's there for generations to come in the best possible form.” So through a chain of contacts, he eventually located the couple. While completing his work on the couple's reels, Eaton began researching the original auction, hoping to identify the third individual who had purchased the Bettys. He eventually found him, and in January 2014, the pair entered into discussions about this final batch of tapes, which Eaton hopes to restore. What then? Eaton has a plan that he already has set in motion. “What I'd love to see done—in a perfect world—is I think all the tapes need to go back to the vault,” he says. “I think the people that have purchased these tapes should be compensated. I don't think we're talking huge sums of money but enough to make them relinquish the tapes back to the Grateful Dead. They should be part of the collection. Another thing that's important is if these tapes do get back to the vault, Betty should get her production royalty on anything that gets released, which is completely reasonable. Those were her tapes; those weren't the Dead's tapes. I'd love to see Betty get her due.” SHOW No. 2: Heaven Help The Fool Track #6 1:30 – 3:10Heaven Help the Fool is the second solo album by Grateful Deadrhythm guitaristBob Weir, released in 1978. It was recorded during time off from touring, in the summer of 1977, while Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart recovered from injuries sustained in a vehicular accident. Weir returned to the studio with Keith Olsen, having recorded Terrapin Station with the producer earlier in the year. Several well-known studio musicians were hired for the project, including widely used session player Waddy Wachtel and Toto members David Paich and Mike Porcaro. Only "Salt Lake City" and the title track were played live by the Grateful Dead, the former in its namesake location on February 21, 1995,[1] and the latter in an instrumental arrangement during their 1980 acoustic sets.[2] Despite this, Weir has continued to consistently play tracks from the album with other bands of his, including RatDog and Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros. "Bombs Away" was released as a single and peaked at number 70 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming his only solo song to make the chart.[3] The album itself stalled at number 69, one spot behind his previous album, Ace. The title track was written by Bobby and John Barlow. While a staple at Bob shows with the Midnights, Rob Wasserman, Rat Dog, Wolf Bros., etc., the Dead only played it during these Warfield/Radio City and only as an instrumental arrangement. Played: 17 timesFirst: September 29, 1980 at The Warfield, San Francisco, CA, USALast: October 31, 1980 at Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY, USA Now the electric tunes from today's show: SHOW No. 3: Cold, Rain & Snow Track #10 0:00 – 1:30 "Rain and Snow", also known as "Cold Rain and Snow" (Roud 3634),[1] is an American folksong and in some variants a murder ballad.[2] The song first appeared in print in Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp's 1917 compilation English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, which relates that it was collected from Mrs. Tom Rice in Big Laurel, North Carolina in 1916. The melody is pentatonic. Campbell and Sharp's version collected only a single verse: Lord, I married me a wife,She gave me trouble all my life,Made me work in the cold rain and snow.Rain and snow, rain and snow,Made me work in the cold rain and snow. In 1965, Dillard Chandler recorded a graphic murder ballad version of the song that ends with the wife being shot by the husband. According to the liner notes on Chandler's album, Chandler learned the song from Berzilla Wallin, who said that the song related to a murder that had occurred in Madison County, North Carolina: Well, I learned it from an old lady which says she was at the hanging of – which was supposed to be the hanging, but they didn't hang him. They give him 99 long years for the killing of his wife... I heard the song from her in 1911. She was in her 50s at that time. It did happen in her girlhood... when she was a young girl... She lived right here around in Madison County. It happened here between Marshall and Burnsville; that's where they did their hanging at that time – at Burnsville, North Carolina. That's all I know, except they didn't hang the man.'[2] Subsequent performances have elaborated a variety of additional verses and variants beyond the single verse presented by Campbell and Sharp. Several verses consistently appear. Some sources for lyrics that appear in some later versions may be from Dock Boggs's 1927 song "Sugar Baby" (Roud 5731),[1] another lament of a henpecked husband, which may have contributed a line about "red apple juice".[4] A British folksong, The Sporting Bachelors (Roud 5556),[1] contains similar themes, but was collected in the 1950s.[2][5] Earlier possible precursors include a series of broadside ballads on the general subject of "Woeful Marriage"; one frequently reprinted nineteenth-century example begins with the words "On Monday night I married a wife", (Roud 1692).[1][6] These British antecedents mostly share common themes and inspirations; the song originated in the local tradition of Big Laurel, Madison County, and relate to a nameless murderer who committed the crime at some time between the end of the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century. A recent origin is also suggested by the relatively limited number of variations on the tune; most performances use the Campbell-Sharp melody as written.[2] Despite the apparent violence of the lyrics, women feature prominently in the oral tradition of the song. It was collected from "Mrs. Tom Rice", and sung by Berzilla Wallin, who learned it from "an old lady" who remembered the murder trial the song was about. The song is closely associated with the Grateful Dead; a studio version appeared on their first album The Grateful Dead (1967), and the song was a standard part of the Dead's repertoire throughout their career. They would often open with the song, or perform it early in the first set.[2] Unlike Chandler's recording, in the Dead's version of the lyrics the husband generally laments his mistreatment at his greedy wife's hands, but does not kill her. The lyrics from the Grateful Dead's version were adapted from an earlier recording by Obray Ramsey. Played: 249 timesFirst: May 5, 1965 at Magoo's Pizza Parlor, Menlo Park, CA, USALast: June 19, 1995 at Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ, USA MJ NEWS: Hemp Industry Advocates Ask Court To Halt California's Ban On Products With Any ‘Detectable Amount' Of THC Amid Legal Challenge2. Most Pain Patients And Doctors Support Legalizing Medical Marijuana And Having Insurance Companies Cover The Cost, AMA Study Shows3. Marijuana Enhances Enjoyment Of Music, New Study Finds, Confirming What Every Stoner Already Knows4. Six U.S. States Report Setting New Monthly Marijuana Sales Records M.J. Strains: Blackwater – an indica marijuana strain made by crossing Mendo Purps with San Fernando Valley OG Kush. The strain offers effects that start out mellow but will eventually melt down through your entire body for a classic head to toe euphoric high. A sweet grape aroma that blends well with subtle undertones of lemon and pine. MMJ uses include for relieving symptoms associated with chronic pain, appetite loss and MS. Recommended for late night consumption as it can cause mental cloudiness and detract from productivity. NYSD – this classic strain is sativa leaning, created by Soma Seeds in Amsterdam, a staple for stoners since its inception in 1997. Its name is inspired by the tragic events in NYC on September 11, 2001. It is a product of crossbreeding Mexican sativa and Afghani landrace strains. Has a unique aroma and taste that sets it apart from the crowd. Pure Gas - a hybrid cross of E85 and OG Kush. The parent strains are carefully chosen for their complex terpene profiles and effects. The OG Kush is known for its lemon-pine-fuel taste and an aroma of fuel, skunk, and spice. Additionally, its high-THC content provides a potentially heavy-hitting experience that shines through in the Pure Gas strain. As far as THC level in Pure Gas, it is one of our higher testers and definitely a high-potency strain. Smoking Pure Gas might bring effects similar to that of the OG Kush. The strain may be a creeper, meaning its effects may sneak up on you, so we recommend trying a little at a time, especially if you're new to smoking. Users may experience a deep body relaxation and cerebral high. The strain is definitely one that might activate your munchies, so make sure you have your favorite snack on hand. The overall effects of the Pure Gas strain might make it perfect for a movie night with friends, pre-dinner smoke sessions, and just hanging out. For users who suffer from appetite loss, the strain may help stimulate your hunger. SHOW No. 4: Loser Track #12 4:13 – 6:13 David Dodd: The song seems covered in the Americana dust of so many songs from this period of Hunter's and Garcia's songwriting partnership. Abilene, whether in Texas or Kansas, is a dusty cowtown—at the time in which the song seems to be set, the cattle outnumbered the human inhabitants by a factor of tens. It's easy to see the scene Hunter so casually sets, of a broken-down gambler in a saloon, with a dirt street outside full of armed cowpokes. Appearing, as it does, on Garcia, the song seems to pair naturally with the other gambling song on the album, “Deal.” It could be sung by the same character on a different day, in fact. And it fits in, as I mentioned, with a whole suite of songs that might be set in the same generic America of the late 19th or early 20th centuries: “Brown-Eyed Women,” “Jack Straw,” “Mister Charlie,” “Tennessee Jed,” “Cumberland Blues,” “Candyman,” and others, as well as certain selected covers, such as “Me and My Uncle,” and “El Paso.” Those songs share certain motifs, and among them are the various accoutrements of a gambler's trade, whether dice or cards. Money plays a role—and, in the case of “Loser,” the particular money mentioned helps place the song chronologically. Gold dollar coins were minted from 1849 (the Gold Rush!) to 1889. They were tiny little coins. I have one, and it is amazingly small—between 13 and 15 mm in diameter. “All that I am asking for is ten gold dollars…” C'mon! They're tiny little things. In fact, originally, the line was “one gold dollar,” but that changed at some point to the “ten” The crowning glory of the song, as in many other Garcia/Hunter compositions, is the bridge.The song culminates in this cry of hopefulness: “Last fair deal in the country, Sweet Susie, last fair deal in the town. Put your gold money where your love is, baby, before you let my deal go down—go down.” (It's noted that “Sweet Susie” was dropped at some point, but then, occasionally, brought back. I think it was an optional decoration to the line. Alex Allan, in his Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder site, notes that “Sweet Susie” rarely appears after 1972, but that it's sung in performances in 1974 and 1979.) Almost always played as a first set Jerry ballad. This version might have been the high point of this show. So nicely played and sung by Jerry. Played: 353First: February 18, 1971 at Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY, USALast: June 28, 1995 at the Palace of Auburn Hills, MI OUTRO: Good Lovin' Track #27 3:25 – 5:04 "Good Lovin'" is a song written by Rudy Clark and Arthur Resnick that was a #1 hit single for the Young Rascals in 1966. The song was first recorded by Lemme B. Good (stage name of singer Limmie Snell) in March 1965 and written by Rudy Clark. The following month it was recorded with different lyrics by R&B artists The Olympics, produced by Jerry Ragovoy; this version reached #81 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart. The tale has been told that Rascal Felix Cavaliere heard The Olympics' recording on a New York City radio station and the group added it to their concert repertoire, using the same lyrics and virtually the same arrangement as The Olympics' version. Co-producer Tom Dowd captured this live feel on their 1966 recording, even though the group did not think the performance held together well. "Good Lovin'" rose to the top of the Billboard Pop Singles chart in the spring of 1966 and represented the Young Rascals' first real hit. "Good Lovin'" is one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, and was ranked #333 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.[4] Writer Dave Marsh placed it at #108 in his 1989 book The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made, saying it is "the greatest example ever of a remake surpassing the quality of an original without changing a thing about the arrangement." A popular version was by the Grateful Dead, who made it a workhorse of their concert rotation, appearing almost every year from 1969 on.[6] It was sung in their early years during the 1960s and early 1970s by Ron "Pigpen" McKernan and later by Bob Weir. The Weir rendition was recorded for the group's 1978 Shakedown Street album and came in for a good amount of criticism: Rolling Stone said it "feature[d] aimless ensemble work and vocals that Bob Weir should never have attempted."[7] On November 11, 1978, the Grateful Dead performed it on Saturday Night Live. Typically, at least by the time I started seeing them, usually played as a second set closer or late in the second set. As good buddy AWell always said, “if they play Good Lovin, everyone leaves with a smile on their face.” Can't argue with that. Played: 442First: May 5, 1965 at Magoo's Pizza Parlor, Menlo Park, CA, USALast: June 28, 1995 at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Auburn Hills, MI, USA Easy fast on Yom Kippur .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast
Felix Cavaliere is an American singer, songwriter, and keyboardist best known as a founding member and lead vocalist of The Rascals (originally known as The Young Rascals). Born on November 29, 1942, in Pelham, New York, Cavaliere became a key figure in the 1960s blue-eyed soul movement. With The Rascals, he co-wrote and performed hits like "Good Lovin'," "Groovin'," and "People Got to Be Free." Known for his soulful voice and Hammond organ skills, Cavaliere has continued to perform and record as a solo artist and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Join @thebuzzknight for the award-winning singer, songwriter Felix Cavaliere. He was part of the Young Rascals known for so many hits that were the soundtrack of a generation. Songs like Groovin, Good Lovin, People got to be Free and so many more were part of Felix's career. He is still vibrant today, touring and creating new music. For suggestions or comments write Buzz@buzzknightmedia.com. Find Buzz on Twitter @thebuzzknight and Instagram @takinawalkpodcast. Like this show? Leave us a review here. ReviewSupport the show: https://takinawalk.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen to an interview with rock and roll legend Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals. Vocalist, organist and songwriter Felix Cavaliere confounded Rascals in 1965. Originally known as The Young Rascals, the band would go on to chart 9 top 20 Billboard singles, including three number 1 hits. Today, The Rascals are considered one of the defining American rock bands of the 1960s. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, and Cavaliere was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2009. The Rascals will be performing at the Brown County Music Center in September.
Listen to an interview with rock and roll legend Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals. Vocalist, organist and songwriter Felix Cavaliere confounded Rascals in 1965. Originally known as The Young Rascals, the band would go on to chart 9 top 20 Billboard singles, including three number 1 hits. Today, The Rascals are considered one of the defining American rock bands of the 1960s. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, and Cavaliere was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2009. The Rascals will be performing at the Brown County Music Center in September.
Back in the 1960s, Country and Pop singer Conway Twitty recorded a song entitled “It's Only Make Believe.” Now, while that song was about a dating couple, the title seems to apply to the world in which we live today. What is real? What is fake? What is pure propaganda? What is hidden from view, and who is hiding it? As the group, the Young Rascals sang in a song, “How can I be sure, in a world that's constantly changing?” Bob helps you dig to the truth and be discerning. Now, do you believe in this ministry? If you do, you can keep us on the air as a radio program and podcast by visiting our website, https://truth2ponder.com/support. You can also mail a check payable to Ancient Word Radio, P.O. Box 510, Chilhowie, VA 24319. Thank you in advance for your faithfulness to this ministry. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/truth-to-ponder/support
Una selección de canciones para hacerte viajar o acompañarte en tu travesía.Playlist;ARTHUR LEE and LOVE “Five string serenade”THE BYRDS “Changing heart”NEIL YOUNG “Cowgirl in the sand”BIG STAR “For you”THE YOUNG RASCALS “Sueño”THE RATIONALS “Ha ha” TONY JOE WHITE “Willie and Laura Mae Joens”J.J. CALE “Sensitive kind”DENGUE FEVER “One thousand tears of a Tarantula”GUAY! “Todo esto es para ti”Escuchar audio
Tema: Peter Criss – Out Of Controll, 1980 Out of Control är ett soloalbum utgivet av den före detta Kiss-medlemmen Peter Criss i september 1980. De flesta låtarna är skrivna av Peter Criss tillsammans med sin vän och låtskrivarkollega Stan Penridge. För produktionen stod David Wolfert och Peter Criss. Albumet spelades in vid RCA Recording Studios i New York mellan mars och juli månad 1980. Den enda singeln från albumet, "By Myself", misslyckades med att ta sig in på listorna. Albumet innehåller ett dolt bonusspår av en cover av "As Time Goes By". Albumet innehöll också en cover på låten "You Better Run" av The Young Rascals. Samtalet fokuserar på låtarnas kvalitet, avsnittet avslutas med en sammanfattning av skivan. Som vanligt blir det samtal om annat Kiss relaterat under färden... Gäst Daniel Westman Detta har vi pratat om: Peter Criss
An interview with Liberty DeVitto, drummer for The Slim Kings, about their new song, "Better Than This," a tribute to the music of The Rascals. He talks about his favorite Rascals music, the influence of drummer Dino Danelli, how The Slim Kings decided to do this new project, how his playing has evolved, and more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Acabo de recibir lo nuevo de los londinenses The Jazz Defenders. Recordamos la bienvenida callejera de Jorge Drexler a la primavera. Rod Stewart ha vuelto a grabar temas clásicos estándar del american book junto al televisivo productor y pianista Jools Holland. Escuchamos lo nuevo de la añorada Valerie Carter junto a los hermanos Faragher y también la recordamos cantando con Christopher Cross. Y Aretha canta a The Doobie Brothers. Pronto se cumplirán 30 años de mi entrevista con JJ Cales en Los Ángeles. ¿Recordáis a Linda Jones o a Bobby Bland o a Cookie Jackson? DISCO 1 THE JAZZ DEFENDERS Meanderthal (ESCA) DISCO 2 ROD STEWART WITH JOOLS HOLLAND Almost Like Being In Love (Cara B Corte 6) DISCO 3 JORGE DREXLER Las Transeúntes (3) DISCO 4 THE YOUNG RASCALS I’m So Happy Now (3) DISCO 5 VALERIE CARTER & FARAGHER BROS Never Get Your Love Behind Me (ESCA) DISCO 6 CHRISTOPHER CROSS & Valerie Carter Spinning (3)DISCO 7 ARETHA FRANKLIN What a Fool Believes (YATCH SOUL - 12) DISCO 8 JAMIE LIDELL How Did I Live Before Your Love (6) DISCO 9 COOKIE JACKSON Your Good Girl's Gonna Be Bad (BEYOND THE CLOSED DOORS - 15) DISCO 10 BOBBY BLAND Two Steps From The Blues (1) DISCO 11 WAS NOT WAS It’s A Miracle (2) DISCO 12 JJ CALE Nobody But You (Cara 2 Corte 4) DISCO 13 LINDA JONES If Only (We Had Met Sooner) (YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT! - 21)Escuchar audio
In this episode of LEGENDS Podcast by All Day Vinyl, host Scott Dudelson interviews Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Felix Cavaliere, singer of the classic 1960's band The (Young) Rascals. With a decorated history that includes induction into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame, Musicians Hall of Fame and Grammy Hall of Fame, Cavaliere dives deep into his musical career and shares anecdotes surrounding some of the most important moments in early Rock and Roll History including the recording of "Good Lovin" & "Groovin," the writing of "People Gotta Be Free," (a song Springsteen called the defining of his generation), changing the bands name from 'Rascals' to 'Young Rascals' and finally back to 'Rascals,' The Beatles Shea Stadium concert & Cavaliere's vivid recollections working in the Atlantic Records studio. Cavaliere is a true LEGEND and his life and music made a profound impact on rock and roll history. Follow @alldayvinyl on Instagram and please like and subscribe after you watch this video.
Felix is known for his amazing work as the leader of the band The Young Rascals known for many hits such as "Good Lovin", "Groovin" , "People Got to be Free" and "A Beautiful Morning."Support the show: https://takinawalk.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Felix Cavaliere co-founded The Young Rascals in 1965. As singer/songwriter/keyboardist, they had nine Top 20 hits from 1966-1968. Throughout the years, Felix has released several solo albums, launched a band called Treasure, and recorded several releases with Steve Cropper. You'll find him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame and tapped for numerous other awards, too. Multi-award winning program director Ray White caught up with Felix in September 2023 to talk about the early years with The Young Rascals, playing the Hammond B-3, a highlight of touring with the Rascals, his most cherished music award and insights on his new album - Then and Now. In our showcase segment we continue our "Back from the 60's" theme featuring the lastest from The Beatles, Paul McCartney -whose most recent album is McCartney III, Ringo Starr - who just released his Rewind Forward EP and Dolly Parton, a 2022 inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame whose brand new album is Rockstar. Featuring the lastest from many of your favorite legendary bands and performers on Classic Artists Today!
#felixcavaliere #therascals #thenandnow Felix's website: https://www.felixcavalieremusic.com/ Felix's new album: https://www.felixcavalieremusic.com/store The message has always been to stand for peace, love, and happiness. For legendary singer songwriter, FELIX CAVALIERE, making people feel good is primary to his illustrious 50-year career that includes the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriter Hall of Fame, Vocal Group Hall of Fame, and Grammy Hall of Fame. Few artists can claim they defined a generation; FELIX CAVALIERE continues to remind us to keep listening for the world's beauty. In 1965, FELIX CAVALIERE formed the ‘Young Rascals' with Dino Danelli, Eddie Brigati, and Gene Cornish. That October, they caught the attention of promoter/manager Sid Bernstein with their high-energy set at Long Island's elite club, Barge. Signed to Atlantic Records, and now called The Rascals, the mega-hit “Good Lovin'” struck No. 1 in February 1966. They followed suit with a string of hits like “I've Been Lonely Too Long,” “Groovin'(No. 1 in 1967), “How Can I Be Sure,” “A Girl Like You,” “A Beautiful Morning,” and “People Got to Be Free” (No. 1 in 1968). Felix released his self-titled debut album with Todd Rundgren at the producer's helm. His follow-up albums were Destiny (1974), Castles in the Air (1979) (Castle in the Air produced another Top 40 hit – “Only a Heart Sees” reached No. 2), Dreams in Motion (1994) and in 2008 he collaborated with Stax guitar legend, Steve Cropper, on the Grammy-nominated Nudge it Up a Notch and again in 2010 with Midnight Flyer. FELIX CAVALIERE calls Nashville home base, where he is constantly collaborating and writing new material. He's also finishing his memoir and has an active tour schedule with Felix Cavaliere's Rascals. His new album… “Then and Now” is available everywhere you get your music. 00:00 Intro 02:25 Interview
"You're the cat on the date!" Mark talked about session mindset with Hall Blaine, vocal arranging for the Fairfield Four, a Meat Puppets session in Pheonix, how to play the right bass note, why your headphones matter, and how to rock online sessions. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: https://MixMasterBundle.com My guest today is Mark Prentice, a Grammy-winning Record Producer, studio musician, music director, and hit songwriter. His versatile and exhaustive music industry resume includes recording and performance credits with renowned County Artists as well as various Internationally known Pop, R&B, and Rock-n-Roll Artists, including: Elvis Costello, John Fogarty, Jonathan Cain, Desmond Child, The Fairfield Four, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, BJ Thomas, Frankie Miller, Delbert McClinton, Ricky Skaggs, Olivia Newton-John, Amy Grant, Vince Gill, Johnny Cash, Don McLean, Crystal Gayle, Kevin Griffin (Better Than Ezra), Jennifer Nettles, Michael McDonald, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt, Bruce Hornsby, Felix Cavaliere, The Young Rascals, Charley Pride, Allison Morer, Sam Moore, Billy Preston, Ben E. King, Michelle Wright, Jennifer Hanson, John Oates, Pat Boone, Patti Page, Lady Antebellum, Rodney Atkins, Chuck Wicks, Paulette Carlson, Bruce Cockburn, Holly Williams, Bo Diddley, Mitch Ryder, others. I met Mark in the past couple years through mutual friends who gather to talk about music, life, and what the hell just happened to music and the world recently, and when I was invited to the annual Christmas party and saw how Mark could sit at the piano and play any song just by thinking about how should probably go I knew I was in the company of some serious musical talent. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com https://lewitt.link/rockstars https://www.Spectra1964.com https://MacSales.com/rockstars https://iZotope.com use code ROCK10 to get 10% off any individual plugin https://www.adam-audio.com https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy https://www.thetoyboxstudio.com/ Listen to this guest's discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Bdoweo1QEdVyVgujuNUEJ?si=918f4c2d24e54c8d If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: https://RSRockstars.com/421
EPISODE 94: Butterflies symbolize change, hope andtransformation. They also represent pure joy. Through all his musical journeys, Felix Cavaliere has never lost that same delight. It wasn't the structured, precise sounds his piano teacher taught him so long ago – for Cavaliere, one of the founders of GRAMMY winning and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees The Rascals - he can still recall the moment he heard rock and roll for the first time. Ensconced by its loose, soulful sound, Cavaliere still infuses that same enthusiasm when he's talking about a language beyond words: music. His work has never been bolder as it is in his new album “Then And Now.” With No. 1 songs like “Good Lovin'”, “Groovin'”, “A Beautiful Morning”, “I've Been Lonely Too Long”, “People Got To Be Free” and “How Can I Be Sure”, The Rascals are considered the best ‘blue-eyed soul' group to come out of the 1960s. For Cavaliere, The King of Blue-Eyed Soul©, making people feel good is fundamental to his illustrious career that includes the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriter Hall of Fame, Vocal Group Hall of Fame, Grammy Hall of Fame and Musicians Hall of Fame. felixcavalieremusic.comContact us: makingsoundpodcast.comFollow on Instagram: @makingsoundpodcastFollow on Threads: @jannkloseJoin our Facebook GroupPlease support the show with a donation, thank you for listening!
Host Bill Donohue welcomes former NFL player, author and sports commentator Jerry Kramer to the show. Kramer starred for the Green Bay Packers from 1958 to 1968, playing most of his 11-season career under the Hall of Fame head coach Vince Lombardi. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018 and recently penned a new book with co-author Bob Fox, Run to Win: My Packers Life from Lombardi to Canton. Later Bill talks with Rock-and-Roll Hall of Famer Felix Cavaliere of the Young Rascals.
Peace, love, and happiness is the creative force for legendary singer songwriter, FELIX CAVALIERE. Making people feel good is what he has done for over 50-years. Felix career has led him to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriter Hall of Fame, Vocal Group Hall of Fame, and Grammy Hall of Fame. Few artists can claim they defined a generation; FELIX CAVALIERE continues to remind us to keep listening for the world's beauty. As a classically trained pianist, born in Pelham, New York, Felix idolized Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, and Sam Cooke. Early in 1965, FELIX CAVALIERE formed the ‘Young Rascals' with Dino Danelli, Eddie Brigati, and Gene Cornish. Their mega hit “Good Lovin'” struck No. 1 in February 1966. They followed suit with a string of hits like “I've Been Lonely Too Long,” “Groovin' (No. 1 in 1967), “How Can I Be Sure,” “A Girl Like You,” “A Beautiful Morning,” and “People Got to Be Free” (No. 1 in 1968). The Rascals are considered the best ‘blue-eyed soul' group to come out of the 1960s, as well as one of the groups with the most record sales. FELIX CAVALIERE calls Nashville home base, where he is constantly collaborating and writing new material. He's also finishing his memoir and has an active tour schedule with FELIX CAVALIERE'S RASCALS. New Record - Then & Now ( new record) - felixcavalieremusic.com Book - Memoirs of a Rascal - Amazon.com
#911 - Alan Chez The Alan Chez Interview is featured on The Paul Leslie Hour. Are you here? Look, I'm just checkin'. I ask because I like the peace of mind. It's good to let you know that you're tuned in to The Paul Leslie Hour. This is the show that keeps on going, with interviews with some of the great creators of our time. We've got an interview from the archives with Alan Chez, sometimes called Al Chez. So let me explain what you're about to hear. This is an interview with trumpet and flugelhorn player Alan Chez. He was a member of Paul Shaffer's CBS Orchestra starting in 1997. From there he started his own band: Al Chez and the Brothers of Funk Big Band. Alan Chez has also toured with Bon Jovi, Robert Cray, Tower of Power, Young Rascals, Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Maynard Ferguson, Eric Clapton, Dave Edmunds Band, Ben E. King, Sam & Dave as well as many other artists and bands. Quite a resume, huh? As we roll into 20 years of these interviews, we want to encourage you and kindly ask you to please subscribe to Paul Leslie's YouTube channel. It's a big deal to us as we're trying to grow the channel. It's fast and free and lots of fun. Won't you do it please? Well, we gotta start the interview portion. Let's hear what your host Paul Leslie and Al Chez had to say. In fact, how about we listen together?
A founding member of The Rascals (AKA The Young Rascals), Felix is an inductee of the Songwriters, Rock and Roll, Hammond, Hit Parade, and Musicians halls of fame. Playing organ and piano with The Rascals, he frequently collaborated with bandmate Eddie Brigati to write some of the band's most successful songs, such as “How Can I Be Sure?,” “I've Been Too Lonely Too Long,” “A Beautiful Morning,” and “Groovin'.” The band had 3 #1 Billboard Hot 100 hits including “Good Lovin',” a song that the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame has included on its list of the 500 songs that shaped Rock & Roll. Their Civil Rights anthem “People Got To Be Free” became their final No. 1 track in both the U.S. and Canada. Felix went on to release six solo albums, be a touring member of Ringo Starr's third All-Starr Band, perform with Billy Joel, record an album with Steve Cropper, and starred in a heralded Broadway musical revue, Once Upon A Dream, in 2013. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Two Minute Songs (more or less) includes The Supremes, The Lumineers, Leon Russell, The Beatles, Shania Twain, Sheryl Crow, Fats Domino, Violine Femmes, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Talking Heads, The Kinks, KC and The Sunshine Band, Bill Haley & The Comets, Carl Perkins, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, The Runaways, Eagles, Elvis Presley, The Young Rascals, The Fix, Mountain and The Beach Boys.
MARIHA CAREY, ENRIQUE IGLESIAS, SHAKIRA, YOUNG RASCALS, ROLLING STONES, THE BEATLES, ABBA, CARPENTERS, RUDY MARQUEZ, ROCIO JURADO, WHITNEY HOUSTON, PRINCE, RIHANA, MADONNA, ARETHA FRANKLIN, HERB ALPERT Y SUS TIJUANA BRASS, EAGLES, U2, KENNY ROGERS,... SEXTETO JUVENTUD, BILLO'S, CELIA CRUZ, WILLIE COLON, EL BOOGALOO, PETE RODRIGUEZ, TOM JONES, VLADIMIR HOROWITZ, DEVO, TRAVOLTA, JAMES BROWN, ELVIS CRESPO, LA MUJER BIONICA, ROBERT CLEMENTS, ALAIN PROST, ROBERTO CARLOS,... VANESSA REDGRAVE, CARLOS FUENTES, REGGIE JACKSON, DIONE WARWICK, TOMMY JAMES, PACO RABANE, HULK, MISION IMPOSIBLE, DIMENSION DESCONOCIDA, NEIL SIMON, ORVITER IV, ANGEL NIETO, MARCO(DE LOS APENINOS A LOS ANDES,... Y MUCHO MAS! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/genteenambiente/support
This week's episode traces the evolution of one of the most beloved songs of the 60s: "Good Lovin'"! (A tune that should have an exclamation mark in the title). Lemme B. Good was the first to pitch woo in spring of 1965 (0:48). Exuberant vocals, crashing piano chords, horny horns & galloping drums will make your heart pitter patter. Rudy Clark wrote the original version's lyrics, but he decided he needed a Cyrano to help him express his true feelings, so he turned to Artie Resnick to overhaul the words. This leads us to the version by The Olympics, which followed hot on the heels of LBG's original (28:11). This one has a more pronounced Latin feel to it, harking back to the garage rock cha-cha's we used to moon over! But what other song does that horn section at 30:00 remind us of? The third's the charm, because The Young Rascals took the song all the way to #1 in 1966 (1:05:14) . Blue-eyed soul! Duet vocals!! Organ solo!!! False ending!!!! All this and a personality profile of the band, courtesy of Flip's Groovy Guide. After all this excitement, we cool it down a bit with our last date: Mary Wells ( 1:48:11 ). Another snappy arrangement by Sonny Sanders, just like her "Satisfaction," which we discussed in Episode 64. Eat your hearts out, Pastronauts!!
De JUANES a LOS DARTS y YOUNG RASCALS. De MADONNA o ROCIO JORADO a PRINCE o PET SHOP BOYS. De CARLOS SANTANA o SINEAD O'CONNOR a GUESS WHO o JACKSOB 5. De JOSE LUIS RODRIGUEZ, WILLIE COLON o VANGELIS, JEAN LUC PONTY a FREDDY MERCURY o MCCARTNEY con STEVIE WONDER,… De “LOS HOMBRES DEL PRESIDENTE”, “AEROPUERTO” o “PRETTY WOMAN”, “EL RETORNO DEL JEDI” a la APARICION DE LA “LAPTOP” o MARIO ANDRETTI, BOCA JUNIOR,… y mucho mas!. TE GARANTIZAMOS UN DOMINGO INOLVIDABLE! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/genteenambiente/support
Episode 164 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "White Light/White Heat" and the career of the Velvet Underground. This is a long one, lasting three hours and twenty minutes. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-three minute bonus episode available, on "Why Don't You Smile Now?" by the Downliners Sect. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I say the Velvet Underground didn't play New York for the rest of the sixties after 1966. They played at least one gig there in 1967, but did generally avoid the city. Also, I refer to Cale and Conrad as the other surviving members of the Theater of Eternal Music. Sadly Conrad died in 2016. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Velvet Underground, and some of the avant-garde pieces excerpted run to six hours or more. I used a lot of resources for this one. Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story by Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga is the best book on the group as a group. I also used Joe Harvard's 33 1/3 book on The Velvet Underground and Nico. Bockris also wrote one of the two biographies of Reed I referred to, Transformer. The other was Lou Reed by Anthony DeCurtis. Information on Cale mostly came from Sedition and Alchemy by Tim Mitchell. Information on Nico came from Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon by Richard Witts. I used Draw a Straight Line and Follow it by Jeremy Grimshaw as my main source for La Monte Young, The Roaring Silence by David Revill for John Cage, and Warhol: A Life as Art by Blake Gopnik for Warhol. I also referred to the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of the 2021 documentary The Velvet Underground. The definitive collection of the Velvet Underground's music is the sadly out-of-print box set Peel Slowly and See, which contains the four albums the group made with Reed in full, plus demos, outtakes, and live recordings. Note that the digital version of the album as sold by Amazon for some reason doesn't include the last disc -- if you want the full box set you have to buy a physical copy. All four studio albums have also been released and rereleased many times over in different configurations with different numbers of CDs at different price points -- I have used the "45th Anniversary Super-Deluxe" versions for this episode, but for most people the standard CD versions will be fine. Sadly there are no good shorter compilation overviews of the group -- they tend to emphasise either the group's "pop" mode or its "avant-garde" mode to the exclusion of the other. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I begin this episode, there are a few things to say. This introductory section is going to be longer than normal because, as you will hear, this episode is also going to be longer than normal. Firstly, I try to warn people about potentially upsetting material in these episodes. But this is the first episode for 1968, and as you will see there is a *profound* increase in the amount of upsetting and disturbing material covered as we go through 1968 and 1969. The story is going to be in a much darker place for the next twenty or thirty episodes. And this episode is no exception. As always, I try to deal with everything as sensitively as possible, but you should be aware that the list of warnings for this one is so long I am very likely to have missed some. Among the topics touched on in this episode are mental illness, drug addiction, gun violence, racism, societal and medical homophobia, medical mistreatment of mental illness, domestic abuse, rape, and more. If you find discussion of any of those subjects upsetting, you might want to read the transcript. Also, I use the term "queer" freely in this episode. In the past I have received some pushback for this, because of a belief among some that "queer" is a slur. The following explanation will seem redundant to many of my listeners, but as with many of the things I discuss in the podcast I am dealing with multiple different audiences with different levels of awareness and understanding of issues, so I'd like to beg those people's indulgence a moment. The term "queer" has certainly been used as a slur in the past, but so have terms like "lesbian", "gay", "homosexual" and others. In all those cases, the term has gone from a term used as a self-identifier, to a slur, to a reclaimed slur, and back again many times. The reason for using that word, specifically, here is because the vast majority of people in this story have sexualities or genders that don't match the societal norms of their times, but used labels for themselves that have shifted in meaning over the years. There are at least two men in the story, for example, who are now dead and referred to themselves as "homosexual", but were in multiple long-term sexually-active relationships with women. Would those men now refer to themselves as "bisexual" or "pansexual" -- terms not in widespread use at the time -- or would they, in the relatively more tolerant society we live in now, only have been in same-gender relationships? We can't know. But in our current context using the word "homosexual" for those men would lead to incorrect assumptions about their behaviour. The labels people use change over time, and the definitions of them blur and shift. I have discussed this issue with many, many, friends who fall under the queer umbrella, and while not all of them are comfortable with "queer" as a personal label because of how it's been used against them in the past, there is near-unanimity from them that it's the correct word to use in this situation. Anyway, now that that rather lengthy set of disclaimers is over, let's get into the story proper, as we look at "White Light, White Heat" by the Velvet Underground: [Excerpt: The Velvet Underground, "White Light, White Heat"] And that look will start with... a disclaimer about length. This episode is going to be a long one. Not as long as episode one hundred and fifty, but almost certainly the longest episode I'll do this year, by some way. And there's a reason for that. One of the questions I've been asked repeatedly over the years about the podcast is why almost all the acts I've covered have been extremely commercially successful ones. "Where are the underground bands? The alternative bands? The little niche acts?" The answer to that is simple. Until the mid-sixties, the idea of an underground or alternative band made no sense at all in rock, pop, rock and roll, R&B, or soul. The idea would have been completely counterintuitive to the vast majority of the people we've discussed in the podcast. Those musics were commercial musics, made by people who wanted to make money and to get the largest audiences possible. That doesn't mean that they had no artistic merit, or that there was no artistic intent behind them, but the artists making that music were *commercial* artists. They knew if they wanted to make another record, they had to sell enough copies of the last record for the record company to make another, and that if they wanted to keep eating, they had to draw enough of an audience to their gigs for promoters to keep booking them. There was no space in this worldview for what we might think of as cult success. If your record only sold a thousand copies, then you had failed in your goal, even if the thousand people who bought your record really loved it. Even less commercially successful artists we've covered to this point, like the Mothers of Invention or Love, were *trying* for commercial success, even if they made the decision not to compromise as much as others do. This started to change a tiny bit in the mid-sixties as the influence of jazz and folk in the US, and the British blues scene, started to be felt in rock music. But this influence, at first, was a one-way thing -- people who had been in the folk and jazz worlds deciding to modify their music to be more commercial. And that was followed by already massively commercial musicians, like the Beatles, taking on some of those influences and bringing their audience with them. But that started to change around the time that "rock" started to differentiate itself from "rock and roll" and "pop", in mid 1967. So in this episode and the next, we're going to look at two bands who in different ways provided a model for how to be an alternative band. Both of them still *wanted* commercial success, but neither achieved it, at least not at first and not in the conventional way. And both, when they started out, went by the name The Warlocks. But we have to take a rather circuitous route to get to this week's band, because we're now properly introducing a strand of music that has been there in the background for a while -- avant-garde art music. So before we go any further, let's have a listen to a thirty-second clip of the most famous piece of avant-garde music ever, and I'll be performing it myself: [Excerpt, Andrew Hickey "4'33 (Cage)"] Obviously that won't give the full effect, you have to listen to the whole piece to get that. That is of course a section of "4'33" by John Cage, a piece of music that is often incorrectly described as being four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence. As I've mentioned before, though, in the episode on "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", it isn't that at all. The whole point of the piece is that there is no such thing as silence, and it's intended to make the listener appreciate all the normal ambient sounds as music, every bit as much as any piece by Bach or Beethoven. John Cage, the composer of "4'33", is possibly the single most influential avant-garde artist of the mid twentieth century, so as we're properly introducing the ideas of avant-garde music into the story here, we need to talk about him a little. Cage was, from an early age, torn between three great vocations, all of which in some fashion would shape his work for decades to come. One of these was architecture, and for a time he intended to become an architect. Another was the religious ministry, and he very seriously considered becoming a minister as a young man, and religion -- though not the religious faith of his youth -- was to be a massive factor in his work as he grew older. He started studying music from an early age, though he never had any facility as a performer -- though he did, when he discovered the work of Grieg, think that might change. He later said “For a while I played nothing else. I even imagined devoting my life to the performance of his works alone, for they did not seem to me to be too difficult, and I loved them.” [Excerpt: Grieg piano concerto in A minor] But he soon realised that he didn't have some of the basic skills that would be required to be a performer -- he never actually thought of himself as very musical -- and so he decided to move into composition, and he later talked about putting his musical limits to good use in being more inventive. From his very first pieces, Cage was trying to expand the definition of what a performance of a piece of music actually was. One of his friends, Harry Hay, who took part in the first documented performance of a piece by Cage, described how Cage's father, an inventor, had "devised a fluorescent light source over which Sample" -- Don Sample, Cage's boyfriend at the time -- "laid a piece of vellum painted with designs in oils. The blankets I was wearing were white, and a sort of lampshade shone coloured patterns onto me. It looked very good. The thing got so hot the designs began to run, but that only made it better.” Apparently the audience for this light show -- one that predated the light shows used by rock bands by a good thirty years -- were not impressed, though that may be more because the Santa Monica Women's Club in the early 1930s was not the vanguard of the avant-garde. Or maybe it was. Certainly the housewives of Santa Monica seemed more willing than one might expect to sign up for another of Cage's ideas. In 1933 he went door to door asking women if they would be interested in signing up to a lecture course from him on modern art and music. He told them that if they signed up for $2.50, he would give them ten lectures, and somewhere between twenty and forty of them signed up, even though, as he said later, “I explained to the housewives that I didn't know anything about either subject but that I was enthusiastic about both of them. I promised to learn faithfully enough about each subject so as to be able to give a talk an hour long each week.” And he did just that, going to the library every day and spending all week preparing an hour-long talk for them. History does not relate whether he ended these lectures by telling the housewives to tell just one friend about them. He said later “I came out of these lectures, with a devotion to the painting of Mondrian, on the one hand, and the music of Schoenberg on the other.” [Excerpt: Schoenberg, "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte"] Schoenberg was one of the two most widely-respected composers in the world at that point, the other being Stravinsky, but the two had very different attitudes to composition. Schoenberg's great innovation was the creation and popularisation of the twelve-tone technique, and I should probably explain that a little before I go any further. Most Western music is based on an eight-note scale -- do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do -- with the eighth note being an octave up from the first. So in the key of C major that would be C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C: [demonstrates] And when you hear notes from that scale, if your ears are accustomed to basically any Western music written before about 1920, or any Western popular music written since then, you expect the melody to lead back to C, and you know to expect that because it only uses those notes -- there are differing intervals between them, some having a tone between them and some having a semitone, and you recognise the pattern. But of course there are other notes between the notes of that scale. There are actually an infinite number of these, but in conventional Western music we only look at a few more -- C# (or D flat), D# (or E flat), F# (or G flat), G# (or A flat) and A# (or B flat). If you add in all those notes you get this: [demonstrates] There's no clear beginning or end, no do for it to come back to. And Schoenberg's great innovation, which he was only starting to promote widely around this time, was to insist that all twelve notes should be equal -- his melodies would use all twelve of the notes the exact same number of times, and so if he used say a B flat, he would have to use all eleven other notes before he used B flat again in the piece. This was a radical new idea, but Schoenberg had only started advancing it after first winning great acclaim for earlier pieces, like his "Three Pieces for Piano", a work which wasn't properly twelve-tone, but did try to do without the idea of having any one note be more important than any other: [Excerpt: Schoenberg, "Three Pieces for Piano"] At this point, that work had only been performed in the US by one performer, Richard Buhlig, and hadn't been released as a recording yet. Cage was so eager to hear it that he'd found Buhlig's phone number and called him, asking him to play the piece, but Buhlig put the phone down on him. Now he was doing these lectures, though, he had to do one on Schoenberg, and he wasn't a competent enough pianist to play Schoenberg's pieces himself, and there were still no recordings of them. Cage hitch-hiked from Santa Monica to LA, where Buhlig lived, to try to get him to come and visit his class and play some of Schoenberg's pieces for them. Buhlig wasn't in, and Cage hung around in his garden hoping for him to come back -- he pulled the leaves off a bough from one of Buhlig's trees, going "He'll come back, he won't come back, he'll come back..." and the leaves said he'd be back. Buhlig arrived back at midnight, and quite understandably told the strange twenty-one-year-old who'd spent twelve hours in his garden pulling the leaves off his trees that no, he would not come to Santa Monica and give a free performance. But he did agree that if Cage brought some of his own compositions he'd give them a look over. Buhlig started giving Cage some proper lessons in composition, although he stressed that he was a performer, not a composer. Around this time Cage wrote his Sonata for Clarinet: [Excerpt: John Cage, "Sonata For Clarinet"] Buhlig suggested that Cage send that to Henry Cowell, the composer we heard about in the episode on "Good Vibrations" who was friends with Lev Termen and who created music by playing the strings inside a piano: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] Cowell offered to take Cage on as an assistant, in return for which Cowell would teach him for a semester, as would Adolph Weiss, a pupil of Schoenberg's. But the goal, which Cowell suggested, was always to have Cage study with Schoenberg himself. Schoenberg at first refused, saying that Cage couldn't afford his price, but eventually took Cage on as a student having been assured that he would devote his entire life to music -- a promise Cage kept. Cage started writing pieces for percussion, something that had been very rare up to that point -- only a handful of composers, most notably Edgard Varese, had written pieces for percussion alone, but Cage was: [Excerpt: John Cage, "Trio"] This is often portrayed as a break from the ideals of his teacher Schoenberg, but in fact there's a clear continuity there, once you see what Cage was taking from Schoenberg. Schoenberg's work is, in some senses, about equality, about all notes being equal. Or to put it another way, it's about fairness. About erasing arbitrary distinctions. What Cage was doing was erasing the arbitrary distinction between the more and less prominent instruments. Why should there be pieces for solo violin or string quartet, but not for multiple percussion players? That said, Schoenberg was not exactly the most encouraging of teachers. When Cage invited Schoenberg to go to a concert of Cage's percussion work, Schoenberg told him he was busy that night. When Cage offered to arrange another concert for a date Schoenberg wasn't busy, the reply came "No, I will not be free at any time". Despite this, Cage later said “Schoenberg was a magnificent teacher, who always gave the impression that he was putting us in touch with musical principles,” and said "I literally worshipped him" -- a strong statement from someone who took religious matters as seriously as Cage. Cage was so devoted to Schoenberg's music that when a concert of music by Stravinsky was promoted as "music of the world's greatest living composer", Cage stormed into the promoter's office angrily, confronting the promoter and making it very clear that such things should not be said in the city where Schoenberg lived. Schoenberg clearly didn't think much of Cage's attempts at composition, thinking -- correctly -- that Cage had no ear for harmony. And his reportedly aggressive and confrontational teaching style didn't sit well with Cage -- though it seems very similar to a lot of the teaching techniques of the Zen masters he would later go on to respect. The two eventually parted ways, although Cage always spoke highly of Schoenberg. Schoenberg later gave Cage a compliment of sorts, when asked if any of his students had gone on to do anything interesting. At first he replied that none had, but then he mentioned Cage and said “Of course he's not a composer, but an inventor—of genius.” Cage was at this point very worried if there was any point to being a composer at all. He said later “I'd read Cowell's New Musical Resources and . . . The Theory of Rhythm. I had also read Chavez's Towards a New Music. Both works gave me the feeling that everything that was possible in music had already happened. So I thought I could never compose socially important music. Only if I could invent something new, then would I be useful to society. But that seemed unlikely then.” [Excerpt: John Cage, "Totem Ancestor"] Part of the solution came when he was asked to compose music for an abstract animation by the filmmaker Oskar Fischinger, and also to work as Fischinger's assistant when making the film. He was fascinated by the stop-motion process, and by the results of the film, which he described as "a beautiful film in which these squares, triangles and circles and other things moved and changed colour.” But more than that he was overwhelmed by a comment by Fischinger, who told him “Everything in the world has its own spirit, and this spirit becomes audible by setting it into vibration.” Cage later said “That set me on fire. He started me on a path of exploration of the world around me which has never stopped—of hitting and stretching and scraping and rubbing everything.” Cage now took his ideas further. His compositions for percussion had been about, if you like, giving the underdog a chance -- percussion was always in the background, why should it not be in the spotlight? Now he realised that there were other things getting excluded in conventional music -- the sounds that we characterise as noise. Why should composers work to exclude those sounds, but work to *include* other sounds? Surely that was... well, a little unfair? Eventually this would lead to pieces like his 1952 piece "Water Music", later expanded and retitled "Water Walk", which can be heard here in his 1959 appearance on the TV show "I've Got a Secret". It's a piece for, amongst other things, a flowerpot full of flowers, a bathtub, a watering can, a pipe, a duck call, a blender full of ice cubes, and five unplugged radios: [Excerpt: John Cage "Water Walk"] As he was now avoiding pitch and harmony as organising principles for his music, he turned to time. But note -- not to rhythm. He said “There's none of this boom, boom, boom, business in my music . . . a measure is taken as a strict measure of time—not a one two three four—which I fill with various sounds.” He came up with a system he referred to as “micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure,” what we would now call fractals, though that word hadn't yet been invented, where the structure of the whole piece was reflected in the smallest part of it. For a time he started moving away from the term music, preferring to refer to the "art of noise" or to "organised sound" -- though he later received a telegram from Edgard Varese, one of his musical heroes and one of the few other people writing works purely for percussion, asking him not to use that phrase, which Varese used for his own work. After meeting with Varese and his wife, he later became convinced that it was Varese's wife who had initiated the telegram, as she explained to Cage's wife "we didn't want your husband's work confused with my husband's work, any more than you'd want some . . . any artist's work confused with that of a cartoonist.” While there is a humour to Cage's work, I don't really hear much qualitative difference between a Cage piece like the one we just heard and a Varese piece like Ionisation: [Excerpt: Edgard Varese, "Ionisation"] But it was in 1952, the year of "Water Music" that John Cage made his two biggest impacts on the cultural world, though the full force of those impacts wasn't felt for some years. To understand Cage's 1952 work, you first have to understand that he had become heavily influenced by Zen, which at that time was very little known in the Western world. Indeed he had studied with Daisetsu Suzuki, who is credited with introducing Zen to the West, and said later “I didn't study music with just anybody; I studied with Schoenberg, I didn't study Zen with just anybody; I studied with Suzuki. I've always gone, insofar as I could, to the president of the company.” Cage's whole worldview was profoundly affected by Zen, but he was also naturally sympathetic to it, and his work after learning about Zen is mostly a continuation of trends we can already see. In particular, he became convinced that the point of music isn't to communicate anything between two people, rather its point is merely to be experienced. I'm far from an expert on Buddhism, but one way of thinking about its central lessons is that one should experience things as they are, experiencing the thing itself rather than one's thoughts or preconceptions about it. And so at Black Mountain college came Theatre Piece Number 1: [Excerpt: Edith Piaf, "La Vie En Rose" ] In this piece, Cage had set the audience on all sides, so they'd be facing each other. He stood on a stepladder, as colleagues danced in and around the audience, another colleague played the piano, two more took turns to stand on another stepladder to recite poetry, different films and slides were projected, seemingly at random, onto the walls, and the painter Robert Rauschenberg played scratchy Edith Piaf records on a wind-up gramophone. The audience were included in the performance, and it was meant to be experienced as a gestalt, as a whole, to be what we would now call an immersive experience. One of Cage's students around this time was the artist Allan Kaprow, and he would be inspired by Theatre Piece Number 1 to put on several similar events in the late fifties. Those events he called "happenings", because the point of them was that you were meant to experience an event as it was happening rather than bring preconceptions of form and structure to them. Those happenings were the inspiration for events like The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, and the term "happening" became such an integral part of the counterculture that by 1967 there were comedy films being released about them, including one just called The Happening with a title track by the Supremes that made number one: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "The Happening"] Theatre Piece Number 1 was retrospectively considered the first happening, and as such its influence is incalculable. But one part I didn't mention about Theatre Piece Number 1 is that as well as Rauschenberg playing Edith Piaf's records, he also displayed some of his paintings. These paintings were totally white -- at a glance, they looked like blank canvases, but as one inspected them more clearly, it became apparent that Rauschenberg had painted them with white paint, with visible brushstrokes. These paintings, along with a visit to an anechoic chamber in which Cage discovered that even in total silence one can still hear one's own blood and nervous system, so will never experience total silence, were the final key to something Cage had been working towards -- if music had minimised percussion, and excluded noise, how much more had it excluded silence? As Cage said in 1958 “Curiously enough, the twelve-tone system has no zero in it.” And so came 4'33, the piece that we heard an excerpt of near the start of this episode. That piece was the something new he'd been looking for that could be useful to society. It took the sounds the audience could already hear, and without changing them even slightly gave them a new context and made the audience hear them as they were. Simply by saying "this is music", it caused the ambient noise to be perceived as music. This idea, of recontextualising existing material, was one that had already been done in the art world -- Marcel Duchamp, in 1917, had exhibited a urinal as a sculpture titled "Fountain" -- but even Duchamp had talked about his work as "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice". The artist was *raising* the object to art. What Cage was saying was "the object is already art". This was all massively influential to a young painter who had seen Cage give lectures many times, and while at art school had with friends prepared a piano in the same way Cage did for his own experimental compositions, dampening the strings with different objects. [Excerpt: Dana Gillespie, "Andy Warhol (live)"] Duchamp and Rauschenberg were both big influences on Andy Warhol, but he would say in the early sixties "John Cage is really so responsible for so much that's going on," and would for the rest of his life cite Cage as one of the two or three prime influences of his career. Warhol is a difficult figure to discuss, because his work is very intellectual but he was not very articulate -- which is one reason I've led up to him by discussing Cage in such detail, because Cage was always eager to talk at great length about the theoretical basis of his work, while Warhol would say very few words about anything at all. Probably the person who knew him best was his business partner and collaborator Paul Morrissey, and Morrissey's descriptions of Warhol have shaped my own view of his life, but it's very worth noting that Morrissey is an extremely right-wing moralist who wishes to see a Catholic theocracy imposed to do away with the scourges of sexual immorality, drug use, hedonism, and liberalism, so his view of Warhol, a queer drug using progressive whose worldview seems to have been totally opposed to Morrissey's in every way, might be a little distorted. Warhol came from an impoverished background, and so, as many people who grew up poor do, he was, throughout his life, very eager to make money. He studied art at university, and got decent but not exceptional grades -- he was a competent draughtsman, but not a great one, and most importantly as far as success in the art world goes he didn't have what is known as his own "line" -- with most successful artists, you can look at a handful of lines they've drawn and see something of their own personality in it. You couldn't with Warhol. His drawings looked like mediocre imitations of other people's work. Perfectly competent, but nothing that stood out. So Warhol came up with a technique to make his drawings stand out -- blotting. He would do a normal drawing, then go over it with a lot of wet ink. He'd lower a piece of paper on to the wet drawing, and the new paper would soak up the ink, and that second piece of paper would become the finished work. The lines would be fractured and smeared, broken in places where the ink didn't get picked up, and thick in others where it had pooled. With this mechanical process, Warhol had managed to create an individual style, and he became an extremely successful commercial artist. In the early 1950s photography was still seen as a somewhat low-class way of advertising things. If you wanted to sell to a rich audience, you needed to use drawings or paintings. By 1955 Warhol was making about twelve thousand dollars a year -- somewhere close to a hundred and thirty thousand a year in today's money -- drawing shoes for advertisements. He also had a sideline in doing record covers for people like Count Basie: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Seventh Avenue Express"] For most of the 1950s he also tried to put on shows of his more serious artistic work -- often with homoerotic themes -- but to little success. The dominant art style of the time was the abstract expressionism of people like Jackson Pollock, whose art was visceral, emotional, and macho. The term "action paintings" which was coined for the work of people like Pollock, sums it up. This was manly art for manly men having manly emotions and expressing them loudly. It was very male and very straight, and even the gay artists who were prominent at the time tended to be very conformist and look down on anything they considered flamboyant or effeminate. Warhol was a rather effeminate, very reserved man, who strongly disliked showing his emotions, and whose tastes ran firmly to the camp. Camp as an aesthetic of finding joy in the flamboyant or trashy, as opposed to merely a descriptive term for men who behaved in a way considered effeminate, was only just starting to be codified at this time -- it wouldn't really become a fully-formed recognisable thing until Susan Sontag's essay "Notes on Camp" in 1964 -- but of course just because something hasn't been recognised doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and Warhol's aesthetic was always very camp, and in the 1950s in the US that was frowned upon even in gay culture, where the mainstream opinion was that the best way to acceptance was through assimilation. Abstract expressionism was all about expressing the self, and that was something Warhol never wanted to do -- in fact he made some pronouncements at times which suggested he didn't think of himself as *having* a self in the conventional sense. The combination of not wanting to express himself and of wanting to work more efficiently as a commercial artist led to some interesting results. For example, he was commissioned in 1957 to do a cover for an album by Moondog, the blind street musician whose name Alan Freed had once stolen: [Excerpt: Moondog, "Gloving It"] For that cover, Warhol got his mother, Julia Warhola, to just write out the liner notes for the album in her rather ornamental cursive script, and that became the front cover, leading to an award for graphic design going that year to "Andy Warhol's mother". (Incidentally, my copy of the current CD issue of that album, complete with Julia Warhola's cover, is put out by Pickwick Records...) But towards the end of the fifties, the work for commercial artists started to dry up. If you wanted to advertise shoes, now, you just took a photo of the shoes rather than get Andy Warhol to draw a picture of them. The money started to disappear, and Warhol started to panic. If there was no room for him in graphic design any more, he had to make his living in the fine arts, which he'd been totally unsuccessful in. But luckily for Warhol, there was a new movement that was starting to form -- Pop Art. Pop Art started in England, and had originally been intended, at least in part, as a critique of American consumerist capitalism. Pieces like "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?" by Richard Hamilton (who went on to design the Beatles' White Album cover) are collages of found images, almost all from American sources, recontextualised and juxtaposed in interesting ways, so a bodybuilder poses in a room that's taken from an advert in Ladies' Home Journal, while on the wall, instead of a painting, hangs a blown-up cover of a Jack Kirby romance comic. Pop Art changed slightly when it got taken up in America, and there it became something rather different, something closer to Duchamp, taking those found images and displaying them as art with no juxtaposition. Where Richard Hamilton created collage art which *showed* a comic cover by Jack Kirby as a painting in the background, Roy Lichtenstein would take a panel of comic art by Kirby, or Russ Heath or Irv Novick or a dozen other comic artists, and redraw it at the size of a normal painting. So Warhol took Cage's idea that the object is already art, and brought that into painting, starting by doing paintings of Campbell's soup cans, in which he tried as far as possible to make the cans look exactly like actual soup cans. The paintings were controversial, inciting fury in some and laughter in others and causing almost everyone to question whether they were art. Warhol would embrace an aesthetic in which things considered unimportant or trash or pop culture detritus were the greatest art of all. For example pretty much every profile of him written in the mid sixties talks about him obsessively playing "Sally Go Round the Roses", a girl-group single by the one-hit wonders the Jaynettes: [Excerpt: The Jaynettes, "Sally Go Round the Roses"] After his paintings of Campbell's soup cans, and some rather controversial but less commercially successful paintings of photographs of horrors and catastrophes taken from newspapers, Warhol abandoned painting in the conventional sense altogether, instead creating brightly coloured screen prints -- a form of stencilling -- based on photographs of celebrities like Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and, most famously, Marilyn Monroe. That way he could produce images which could be mass-produced, without his active involvement, and which supposedly had none of his personality in them, though of course his personality pervades the work anyway. He put on exhibitions of wooden boxes, silk-screen printed to look exactly like shipping cartons of Brillo pads. Images we see everywhere -- in newspapers, in supermarkets -- were art. And Warhol even briefly formed a band. The Druds were a garage band formed to play at a show at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, the opening night of an exhibition that featured a silkscreen by Warhol of 210 identical bottles of Coca-Cola, as well as paintings by Rauschenberg and others. That opening night featured a happening by Claes Oldenburg, and a performance by Cage -- Cage gave a live lecture while three recordings of his own voice also played. The Druds were also meant to perform, but they fell apart after only a few rehearsals. Some recordings apparently exist, but they don't seem to circulate, but they'd be fascinating to hear as almost the entire band were non-musician artists like Warhol, Jasper Johns, and the sculptor Walter de Maria. Warhol said of the group “It didn't go too well, but if we had just stayed on it it would have been great.” On the other hand, the one actual musician in the group said “It was kind of ridiculous, so I quit after the second rehearsal". That musician was La Monte Young: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Well-Tuned Piano"] That's an excerpt from what is generally considered Young's masterwork, "The Well-Tuned Piano". It's six and a half hours long. If Warhol is a difficult figure to write about, Young is almost impossible. He's a musician with a career stretching sixty years, who is arguably the most influential musician from the classical tradition in that time period. He's generally considered the father of minimalism, and he's also been called by Brian Eno "the daddy of us all" -- without Young you simply *do not* get art rock at all. Without Young there is no Velvet Underground, no David Bowie, no Eno, no New York punk scene, no Yoko Ono. Anywhere that the fine arts or conceptual art have intersected with popular music in the last fifty or more years has been influenced in one way or another by Young's work. BUT... he only rarely publishes his scores. He very, very rarely allows recordings of his work to be released -- there are four recordings on his bandcamp, plus a handful of recordings of his older, published, pieces, and very little else. He doesn't allow his music to be performed live without his supervision. There *are* bootleg recordings of his music, but even those are not easily obtainable -- Young is vigorous in enforcing his copyrights and issues takedown notices against anywhere that hosts them. So other than that handful of legitimately available recordings -- plus a recording by Young's Theater of Eternal Music, the legality of which is still disputed, and an off-air recording of a 1971 radio programme I've managed to track down, the only way to experience Young's music unless you're willing to travel to one of his rare live performances or installations is second-hand, by reading about it. Except that the one book that deals solely with Young and his music is not only a dense and difficult book to read, it's also one that Young vehemently disagreed with and considered extremely inaccurate, to the point he refused to allow permissions to quote his work in the book. Young did apparently prepare a list of corrections for the book, but he wouldn't tell the author what they were without payment. So please assume that anything I say about Young is wrong, but also accept that the short section of this episode about Young has required more work to *try* to get it right than pretty much anything else this year. Young's musical career actually started out in a relatively straightforward manner. He didn't grow up in the most loving of homes -- he's talked about his father beating him as a child because he had been told that young La Monte was clever -- but his father did buy him a saxophone and teach him the rudiments of the instrument, and as a child he was most influenced by the music of the big band saxophone player Jimmy Dorsey: [Excerpt: Jimmy Dorsey, “It's the Dreamer in Me”] The family, who were Mormon farmers, relocated several times in Young's childhood, from Idaho first to California and then to Utah, but everywhere they went La Monte seemed to find musical inspiration, whether from an uncle who had been part of the Kansas City jazz scene, a classmate who was a musical prodigy who had played with Perez Prado in his early teens, or a teacher who took the class to see a performance of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra: [Excerpt: Bartok, "Concerto for Orchestra"] After leaving high school, Young went to Los Angeles City College to study music under Leonard Stein, who had been Schoenberg's assistant when Schoenberg had taught at UCLA, and there he became part of the thriving jazz scene based around Central Avenue, studying and performing with musicians like Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Eric Dolphy -- Young once beat Dolphy in an audition for a place in the City College dance band, and the two would apparently substitute for each other on their regular gigs when one couldn't make it. During this time, Young's musical tastes became much more adventurous. He was a particular fan of the work of John Coltrane, and also got inspired by City of Glass, an album by Stan Kenton that attempted to combine jazz and modern classical music: [Excerpt: Stan Kenton's Innovations Orchestra, "City of Glass: The Structures"] His other major musical discovery in the mid-fifties was one we've talked about on several previous occasions -- the album Music of India, Morning and Evening Ragas by Ali Akhbar Khan: [Excerpt: Ali Akhbar Khan, "Rag Sindhi Bhairavi"] Young's music at this point was becoming increasingly modal, and equally influenced by the blues and Indian music. But he was also becoming interested in serialism. Serialism is an extension and generalisation of twelve-tone music, inspired by mathematical set theory. In serialism, you choose a set of musical elements -- in twelve-tone music that's the twelve notes in the twelve-tone scale, but it can also be a set of tonal relations, a chord, or any other set of elements. You then define all the possible ways you can permute those elements, a defined set of operations you can perform on them -- so you could play a scale forwards, play it backwards, play all the notes in the scale simultaneously, and so on. You then go through all the possible permutations, exactly once, and that's your piece of music. Young was particularly influenced by the works of Anton Webern, one of the earliest serialists: [Excerpt: Anton Webern, "Cantata number 1 for Soprano, Mixed Chorus, and Orchestra"] That piece we just heard, Webern's "Cantata number 1", was the subject of some of the earliest theoretical discussion of serialism, and in particular led to some discussion of the next step on from serialism. If serialism was all about going through every single permutation of a set, what if you *didn't* permute every element? There was a lot of discussion in the late fifties in music-theoretical circles about the idea of invariance. Normally in music, the interesting thing is what gets changed. To use a very simple example, you might change a melody from a major key to a minor one to make it sound sadder. What theorists at this point were starting to discuss is what happens if you leave something the same, but change the surrounding context, so the thing you *don't* vary sounds different because of the changed context. And going further, what if you don't change the context at all, and merely *imply* a changed context? These ideas were some of those which inspired Young's first major work, his Trio For Strings from 1958, a complex, palindromic, serial piece which is now credited as the first work of minimalism, because the notes in it change so infrequently: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "Trio for Strings"] Though I should point out that Young never considers his works truly finished, and constantly rewrites them, and what we just heard is an excerpt from the only recording of the trio ever officially released, which is of the 2015 version. So I can't state for certain how close what we just heard is to the piece he wrote in 1958, except that it sounds very like the written descriptions of it I've read. After writing the Trio For Strings, Young moved to Germany to study with the modernist composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. While studying with Stockhausen, he became interested in the work of John Cage, and started up a correspondence with Cage. On his return to New York he studied with Cage and started writing pieces inspired by Cage, of which the most musical is probably Composition 1960 #7: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "Composition 1960 #7"] The score for that piece is a stave on which is drawn a treble clef, the notes B and F#, and the words "To be held for a long Time". Other of his compositions from 1960 -- which are among the few of his compositions which have been published -- include composition 1960 #10 ("To Bob Morris"), the score for which is just the instruction "Draw a straight line and follow it.", and Piano Piece for David Tudor #1, the score for which reads "Bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water onto the stage for the piano to eat and drink. The performer may then feed the piano or leave it to eat by itself. If the former, the piece is over after the piano has been fed. If the latter, it is over after the piano eats or decides not to". Most of these compositions were performed as part of a loose New York art collective called Fluxus, all of whom were influenced by Cage and the Dadaists. This collective, led by George Maciunas, sometimes involved Cage himself, but also involved people like Henry Flynt, the inventor of conceptual art, who later became a campaigner against art itself, and who also much to Young's bemusement abandoned abstract music in the mid-sixties to form a garage band with Walter de Maria (who had played drums with the Druds): [Excerpt: Henry Flynt and the Insurrections, "I Don't Wanna"] Much of Young's work was performed at Fluxus concerts given in a New York loft belonging to another member of the collective, Yoko Ono, who co-curated the concerts with Young. One of Ono's mid-sixties pieces, her "Four Pieces for Orchestra" is dedicated to Young, and consists of such instructions as "Count all the stars of that night by heart. The piece ends when all the orchestra members finish counting the stars, or when it dawns. This can be done with windows instead of stars." But while these conceptual ideas remained a huge part of Young's thinking, he soon became interested in two other ideas. The first was the idea of just intonation -- tuning instruments and voices to perfect harmonics, rather than using the subtly-off tuning that is used in Western music. I'm sure I've explained that before in a previous episode, but to put it simply when you're tuning an instrument with fixed pitches like a piano, you have a choice -- you can either tune it so that the notes in one key are perfectly in tune with each other, but then when you change key things go very out of tune, or you can choose to make *everything* a tiny bit, almost unnoticeably, out of tune, but equally so. For the last several hundred years, musicians as a community have chosen the latter course, which was among other things promoted by Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, a collection of compositions which shows how the different keys work together: [Excerpt: Bach (Glenn Gould), "The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: Fugue in F-sharp minor, BWV 883"] Young, by contrast, has his own esoteric tuning system, which he uses in his own work The Well-Tuned Piano: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Well-Tuned Piano"] The other idea that Young took on was from Indian music, the idea of the drone. One of the four recordings of Young's music that is available from his Bandcamp, a 1982 recording titled The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath, consists of one hour, thirteen minutes, and fifty-eight seconds of this: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath"] Yes, I have listened to the whole piece. No, nothing else happens. The minimalist composer Terry Riley describes the recording as "a singularly rare contribution that far outshines any other attempts to capture this instrument in recorded media". In 1962, Young started writing pieces based on what he called the "dream chord", a chord consisting of a root, fourth, sharpened fourth, and fifth: [dream chord] That chord had already appeared in his Trio for Strings, but now it would become the focus of much of his work, in pieces like his 1962 piece The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, heard here in a 1982 revision: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer"] That was part of a series of works titled The Four Dreams of China, and Young began to plan an installation work titled Dream House, which would eventually be created, and which currently exists in Tribeca, New York, where it's been in continuous "performance" for thirty years -- and which consists of thirty-two different pure sine wave tones all played continuously, plus purple lighting by Young's wife Marian Zazeela. But as an initial step towards creating this, Young formed a collective called Theatre of Eternal Music, which some of the members -- though never Young himself -- always claim also went by the alternative name The Dream Syndicate. According to John Cale, a member of the group, that name came about because the group tuned their instruments to the 60hz hum of the fridge in Young's apartment, which Cale called "the key of Western civilisation". According to Cale, that meant the fundamental of the chords they played was 10hz, the frequency of alpha waves when dreaming -- hence the name. The group initially consisted of Young, Zazeela, the photographer Billy Name, and percussionist Angus MacLise, but by this recording in 1964 the lineup was Young, Zazeela, MacLise, Tony Conrad and John Cale: [Excerpt: "Cale, Conrad, Maclise, Young, Zazeela - The Dream Syndicate 2 IV 64-4"] That recording, like any others that have leaked by the 1960s version of the Theatre of Eternal Music or Dream Syndicate, is of disputed legality, because Young and Zazeela claim to this day that what the group performed were La Monte Young's compositions, while the other two surviving members, Cale and Conrad, claim that their performances were improvisational collaborations and should be equally credited to all the members, and so there have been lawsuits and countersuits any time anyone has released the recordings. John Cale, the youngest member of the group, was also the only one who wasn't American. He'd been born in Wales in 1942, and had had the kind of childhood that, in retrospect, seems guaranteed to lead to eccentricity. He was the product of a mixed-language marriage -- his father, William, was an English speaker while his mother, Margaret, spoke Welsh, but the couple had moved in on their marriage with Margaret's mother, who insisted that only Welsh could be spoken in her house. William didn't speak Welsh, and while he eventually picked up the basics from spending all his life surrounded by Welsh-speakers, he refused on principle to capitulate to his mother-in-law, and so remained silent in the house. John, meanwhile, grew up a monolingual Welsh speaker, and didn't start to learn English until he went to school when he was seven, and so couldn't speak to his father until then even though they lived together. Young John was extremely unwell for most of his childhood, both physically -- he had bronchial problems for which he had to take a cough mixture that was largely opium to help him sleep at night -- and mentally. He was hospitalised when he was sixteen with what was at first thought to be meningitis, but turned out to be a psychosomatic condition, the result of what he has described as a nervous breakdown. That breakdown is probably connected to the fact that during his teenage years he was sexually assaulted by two adults in positions of authority -- a vicar and a music teacher -- and felt unable to talk to anyone about this. He was, though, a child prodigy and was playing viola with the National Youth Orchestra of Wales from the age of thirteen, and listening to music by Schoenberg, Webern, and Stravinsky. He was so talented a multi-instrumentalist that at school he was the only person other than one of the music teachers and the headmaster who was allowed to use the piano -- which led to a prank on his very last day at school. The headmaster would, on the last day, hit a low G on the piano to cue the assembly to stand up, and Cale had placed a comb on the string, muting it and stopping the note from sounding -- in much the same way that his near-namesake John Cage was "preparing" pianos for his own compositions in the USA. Cale went on to Goldsmith's College to study music and composition, under Humphrey Searle, one of Britain's greatest proponents of serialism who had himself studied under Webern. Cale's main instrument was the viola, but he insisted on also playing pieces written for the violin, because they required more technical skill. For his final exam he chose to play Hindemith's notoriously difficult Viola Sonata: [Excerpt: Hindemith Viola Sonata] While at Goldsmith's, Cale became friendly with Cornelius Cardew, a composer and cellist who had studied with Stockhausen and at the time was a great admirer of and advocate for the works of Cage and Young (though by the mid-seventies Cardew rejected their work as counter-revolutionary bourgeois imperialism). Through Cardew, Cale started to correspond with Cage, and with George Maciunas and other members of Fluxus. In July 1963, just after he'd finished his studies at Goldsmith's, Cale presented a festival there consisting of an afternoon and an evening show. These shows included the first British performances of several works including Cardew's Autumn '60 for Orchestra -- a piece in which the musicians were given blank staves on which to write whatever part they wanted to play, but a separate set of instructions in *how* to play the parts they'd written. Another piece Cale presented in its British premiere at that show was Cage's "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra": [Excerpt: John Cage, "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra"] In the evening show, they performed Two Pieces For String Quartet by George Brecht (in which the musicians polish their instruments with dusters, making scraping sounds as they clean them), and two new pieces by Cale, one of which involved a plant being put on the stage, and then the performer, Robin Page, screaming from the balcony at the plant that it would die, then running down, through the audience, and onto the stage, screaming abuse and threats at the plant. The final piece in the show was a performance by Cale (the first one in Britain) of La Monte Young's "X For Henry Flynt". For this piece, Cale put his hands together and then smashed both his arms onto the keyboard as hard as he could, over and over. After five minutes some of the audience stormed the stage and tried to drag the piano away from him. Cale followed the piano on his knees, continuing to bang the keys, and eventually the audience gave up in defeat and Cale the performer won. After this Cale moved to the USA, to further study composition, this time with Iannis Xenakis, the modernist composer who had also taught Mickey Baker orchestration after Baker left Mickey and Sylvia, and who composed such works as "Orient Occident": [Excerpt: Iannis Xenakis, "Orient Occident"] Cale had been recommended to Xenakis as a student by Aaron Copland, who thought the young man was probably a genius. But Cale's musical ambitions were rather too great for Tanglewood, Massachusetts -- he discovered that the institute had eighty-eight pianos, the same number as there are keys on a piano keyboard, and thought it would be great if for a piece he could take all eighty-eight pianos, put them all on different boats, sail the boats out onto a lake, and have eighty-eight different musicians each play one note on each piano, while the boats sank with the pianos on board. For some reason, Cale wasn't allowed to perform this composition, and instead had to make do with one where he pulled an axe out of a single piano and slammed it down on a table. Hardly the same, I'm sure you'll agree. From Tanglewood, Cale moved on to New York, where he soon became part of the artistic circles surrounding John Cage and La Monte Young. It was at this time that he joined Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, and also took part in a performance with Cage that would get Cale his first television exposure: [Excerpt: John Cale playing Erik Satie's "Vexations" on "I've Got a Secret"] That's Cale playing through "Vexations", a piece by Erik Satie that wasn't published until after Satie's death, and that remained in obscurity until Cage popularised -- if that's the word -- the piece. The piece, which Cage had found while studying Satie's notes, seems to be written as an exercise and has the inscription (in French) "In order to play the motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities." Cage interpreted that, possibly correctly, as an instruction that the piece should be played eight hundred and forty times straight through, and so he put together a performance of the piece, the first one ever, by a group he called the Pocket Theatre Piano Relay Team, which included Cage himself, Cale, Joshua Rifkin, and several other notable musical figures, who took it in turns playing the piece. For that performance, which ended up lasting eighteen hours, there was an entry fee of five dollars, and there was a time-clock in the lobby. Audience members punched in and punched out, and got a refund of five cents for every twenty minutes they'd spent listening to the music. Supposedly, at the end, one audience member yelled "Encore!" A week later, Cale appeared on "I've Got a Secret", a popular game-show in which celebrities tried to guess people's secrets (and which is where that performance of Cage's "Water Walk" we heard earlier comes from): [Excerpt: John Cale on I've Got a Secret] For a while, Cale lived with a friend of La Monte Young's, Terry Jennings, before moving in to a flat with Tony Conrad, one of the other members of the Theatre of Eternal Music. Angus MacLise lived in another flat in the same building. As there was not much money to be made in avant-garde music, Cale also worked in a bookshop -- a job Cage had found him -- and had a sideline in dealing drugs. But rents were so cheap at this time that Cale and Conrad only had to work part-time, and could spend much of their time working on the music they were making with Young. Both were string players -- Conrad violin, Cale viola -- and they soon modified their instruments. Conrad merely attached pickups to his so it could be amplified, but Cale went much further. He filed down the viola's bridge so he could play three strings at once, and he replaced the normal viola strings with thicker, heavier, guitar and mandolin strings. This created a sound so loud that it sounded like a distorted electric guitar -- though in late 1963 and early 1964 there were very few people who even knew what a distorted guitar sounded like. Cale and Conrad were also starting to become interested in rock and roll music, to which neither of them had previously paid much attention, because John Cage's music had taught them to listen for music in sounds they previously dismissed. In particular, Cale became fascinated with the harmonies of the Everly Brothers, hearing in them the same just intonation that Young advocated for: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "All I Have to Do is Dream"] And it was with this newfound interest in rock and roll that Cale and Conrad suddenly found themselves members of a manufactured pop band. The two men had been invited to a party on the Lower East Side, and there they'd been introduced to Terry Phillips of Pickwick Records. Phillips had seen their long hair and asked if they were musicians, so they'd answered "yes". He asked if they were in a band, and they said yes. He asked if that band had a drummer, and again they said yes. By this point they realised that he had assumed they were rock guitarists, rather than experimental avant-garde string players, but they decided to play along and see where this was going. Phillips told them that if they brought along their drummer to Pickwick's studios the next day, he had a job for them. The two of them went along with Walter de Maria, who did play the drums a little in between his conceptual art work, and there they were played a record: [Excerpt: The Primitives, "The Ostrich"] It was explained to them that Pickwick made knock-off records -- soundalikes of big hits, and their own records in the style of those hits, all played by a bunch of session musicians and put out under different band names. This one, by "the Primitives", they thought had a shot at being an actual hit, even though it was a dance-craze song about a dance where one partner lays on the floor and the other stamps on their head. But if it was going to be a hit, they needed an actual band to go out and perform it, backing the singer. How would Cale, Conrad, and de Maria like to be three quarters of the Primitives? It sounded fun, but of course they weren't actually guitarists. But as it turned out, that wasn't going to be a problem. They were told that the guitars on the track had all been tuned to one note -- not even to an open chord, like we talked about Steve Cropper doing last episode, but all the strings to one note. Cale and Conrad were astonished -- that was exactly the kind of thing they'd been doing in their drone experiments with La Monte Young. Who was this person who was independently inventing the most advanced ideas in experimental music but applying them to pop songs? And that was how they met Lou Reed: [Excerpt: The Primitives, "The Ostrich"] Where Cale and Conrad were avant-gardeists who had only just started paying attention to rock and roll music, rock and roll was in Lou Reed's blood, but there were a few striking similarities between him and Cale, even though at a glance their backgrounds could not have seemed more different. Reed had been brought up in a comfortably middle-class home in Long Island, but despised the suburban conformity that surrounded him from a very early age, and by his teens was starting to rebel against it very strongly. According to one classmate “Lou was always more advanced than the rest of us. The drinking age was eighteen back then, so we all started drinking at around sixteen. We were drinking quarts of beer, but Lou was smoking joints. He didn't do that in front of many people, but I knew he was doing it. While we were looking at girls in Playboy, Lou was reading Story of O. He was reading the Marquis de Sade, stuff that I wouldn't even have thought about or known how to find.” But one way in which Reed was a typical teenager of the period was his love for rock and roll, especially doo-wop. He'd got himself a guitar, but only had one lesson -- according to the story he would tell on numerous occasions, he turned up with a copy of "Blue Suede Shoes" and told the teacher he only wanted to know how to play the chords for that, and he'd work out the rest himself. Reed and two schoolfriends, Alan Walters and Phil Harris, put together a doo-wop trio they called The Shades, because they wore sunglasses, and a neighbour introduced them to Bob Shad, who had been an A&R man for Mercury Records and was starting his own new label. He renamed them the Jades and took them into the studio with some of the best New York session players, and at fourteen years old Lou Reed was writing songs and singing them backed by Mickey Baker and King Curtis: [Excerpt: The Jades, "Leave Her For Me"] Sadly the Jades' single was a flop -- the closest it came to success was being played on Murray the K's radio show, but on a day when Murray the K was off ill and someone else was filling in for him, much to Reed's disappointment. Phil Harris, the lead singer of the group, got to record some solo sessions after that, but the Jades split up and it would be several years before Reed made any more records. Partly this was because of Reed's mental health, and here's where things get disputed and rather messy. What we know is that in his late teens, just after he'd gone off to New
The concept to which The Rascals were dedicated was, in Felix Cavaliere's words, "Marvin Gaye's voice, Ray Charles' piano, Jimmy Smith's organ, Phil Spector's production and The Beatles' writing. Put them all together and you've got what I wanted to do." A White Rock band playing Black Soul music was a new idea for Pop in 1965. "The great thing about music in the 1960s was that people were discovering there was no color barrier in the business. We were respected by the Black groups we loved as much as we respected them," noted Cornish. The Rascals' music was dubbed blue-eyed Soul, a term Cavaliere never cared for. "I always hated the label because it created a separation between Black and White music. It was a marketing concept. As soon as you put a drum in music, it's R&B. I wish it wouldn't have been called blue-eyed Soul. My eyes aren't blue."The band's first release for Atlantic was called "I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore" which rose to #52 in the U.S. in 1965, but it was their 1966 effort, "Good Lovin'" that made them Rock 'n' Roll stars. The song quickly rose to the number one spot on Billboard's Hot 100 and went Gold. They followed with two more Top 20 hits, "You Better Run" (#20) and "I've Been Lonely Too Long" (#16) later the same year.The writing was a key component of the band's success, as sixteen of their eighteen chart records were written by Cavaliere alone or in tandem with frequent collaborator Eddie Brigati. As the song writing progressed, social commentary began to show up in the music. The group's growing ambition was reflected in the change from The Young Rascals to simply The Rascals. The word "young" had originally been inserted before the band's name for legal reasons. It seems there was a group named Johnny Pulleo & The Harmonica Rascals who claimed a proprietary interest. "We were embarrassed about that, 'cause we were trying to be a Soul band," said Cornish. "It wasn't The Silver Rascals or The Rockin' Rascals, it was The Young Rascals! And we had to live with it. By the time we got to Groovin', we said, 'Well, enough of this. We are The Rascals.'"A high point for both Cornish and Cavaliere was 1968's #1 hit "People Got To Be Free". "The message in songs like 'People Got To Be Free' is as important now as it ever was," said Gene. It was written in reaction to the King and Kennedy assassinations that year. In fact, Cavaliere had worked for the RFK campaign. "That the song was #1 in places like Berlin and South Africa meant a lot to me," said Felix. Despite the initial resistance to the political nature of the song, it went on to become The Rascals' biggest-selling record. It was also their last #1 hit. The Rascals followed with "A Ray Of Hope" (#24 in 1968), "Heaven" (#39 in 1969), "See" (#27 in 1969) and "Carry Me Back" (#26 in 1969). Two other 1970 releases, "Hold On" (#81) and "Glory Glory" (#71) failed to crack the Top 40, and a song called "Love Me" was a miserable flop when it peaked at #99 during a one week stay on the Hot 100 in the Summer of 1971. The Jazz-tinged experimentation of later albums like "Peaceful World" and "The Island Of Real" (which Cavaliere once called "The best record I ever made") proved less commercial than the group's earlier Garage Band Soul. Management was less than supportive of the new directions the band was headed in and a switch to the Columbia label in 1971 failed to provide the new life they were looking for. Personal frictions were on the rise too, and eventually Brigati and Cornish quit the band. They were replaced with Buzzy Feiten (from The Paul Butterfield Blues Band) and Ann Sutton, who had sung with various Soul and Jazz groups in Philadelphia. By 1972, The Rascals called it quits.In 1974, Cavaliere began his solo career with the release of the album "Felix Cavaliere". Eddie Brigati recorded a solo album with his brother David in 1976. Cornish and Danelli started a new band called
It's early into 2023 and already a Two-Nami in the forecast (2 in a row from Marco Di Maggio)! Beth Riley has a cool deep track from The Beach Boys in her Surf's Up: Beth's Beach Boys Break. We pay tribute to Dino Danelli who passed away on December 15, 2022 with a rocker from The Young Rascals. We drop a coin in the Jammin' James Jukebox for our selection of the week and we hear a great track from The Surfaris from an album celebrating it's 60th anniversary in our Good Time segment. Plus, we've got awesome tunes from Christian Love, S.H.A.R.P. (The Surf Hermits and Angry Red Planet), The Routes, The Immediate Family, Cheap Trick, Amphibian Man, Danny Adlerman & Friends (Jim Babjak and Kurt Reil), The Green Reflectors, Magnatech, The Beach Berserkers, Walter Egan (with Dean Torrence & Stevie Nicks on BGV's, produced by Lindsey Buckingham) and Ichi-Bons! Intro music bed: "Catch A Wave"- The Beach Boys The Routes- "Axe To Grind" S.H.A.R.P.- "That's Not The Goose" Ichi-Bons- "Can't Stop Moanin'" Walter Egan- "The Blonde In The Blue T-Bird" Magnatech- "Amapola" "Good Time" segment: The Surfaris 60th Anniversary of Play (1963 Decca) The Surfaris- "Surfaris Stomp" The Beach Berserkers- "El Guitarrista Fantasma" The Green Reflectors- "Itty Bitty Spacemen" Surf's Up: Beth's Beach Boys Break: The Beach Boys- "Maybe I Don't Know" Follow "Surf's Up: Beth's Beach Boys Break" HERE Danny Adlerman & Friends (Jim Babjak & Kurt Reil)- "Surfin' The Net" RIP Dino Danelli July 23, 1944 - December 15, 2022 The Young Rascals- "Come On Up" Amphibian Man- "Ashes" The Immediate Family- "The Toughest Girl In Town" Two-Nami segment: Marco Di Maggio- "Marco's Boogie" Marco Di Maggio- "Surfandango" Jammin' James Jukebox selection of the week: Jon & The Nightriders- "(I Think I'm) Surfing Japanese" Cheap Trick- "Hello There" Christian Love- "Sum Sum Summer" Outro Music Bed: The Ventures- "Theme From Shaft"
January 4, 2023 In this episode of Knowledge With Homage I talk about the bomb cyclone pineapple express storm rolling through the west coast, fallen electrical lines, the perils of living with no internet, the Damar Hamli story, blood clots, connections of COVID and 5G/EM waves, electronic warfare, alternative COVID treatments, detox, morphic resonance and much more! I also play music by Dr. Octagon, Naked City, The Young Rascals, and Outkast. Better explanation of Morphic Resonance by the guy who thought of it: https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction
Pat & Lisa have a major announcement to pitch some new podcast merch. Please buy it. Do you know what the first Chia pet was? Songs in this episode: “It’s a Beautiful Morning” The Rascals (1968) “Good Lovin” The Rascals (1967) “People Gotta be Free” The (Young) Rascals (1967) “Donald …
Pat & Lisa have a major announcement to pitch some new podcast merch. Please buy it. Do you know what the first Chia pet was? Songs in this episode: “It’s a Beautiful Morning” The Rascals (1968) “Good Lovin” The Rascals (1967) “People Gotta be Free” The (Young) Rascals (1967) “Donald …
The Young Rascals drummer, Dino Dinelli died at 78.
Roger Ashby goes behind the hits of your favourite songs from the 50s, 60s and 70s. Listen to The Roger Ashby Oldies Show anytime on the iHeartRadio app.
En este programa vamos a hablar de uno de los grupos más importantes del rock progresivo y sinfónico que se hacía en la piel de toro. Módulos se formó en Madrid en el año 1969. Sus miembros originales eran Pepe Robles (Guitarra y voz), Tomás Bohórquez (Órgano Hammond y piano), Juan Antonio García Reyzabal (Batería) y Emilio Bueno (Bajo). Editaron cinco álbumes de estudio y varios sencillos, para acabar disolviéndose en 1979. Para ilustrar este programa, traemos su primer álbum de estudio, Realidad, editado en 1970 y algunos singles anteriores. Sus influencias musicales eran muy diversas, Beatles, Vanilla Fudge, The Young Rascals, Bach o Keith Emerson. Módulos quiso perfilarse como un grupo diferente, algo que se vio reflejado en la búsqueda de profesionalidad Este álbum debut destaca por sus pasajes románticos y melancólicos, su cadencia, sus cambios de ritmo, la interacción de todos los instrumentos, los escalofríos que producen algunas notas del Hammond B-3 de Bohórquez y, en general, por esa sensación de que Módulos habían conseguido construir una contundente "muralla de sonido". Desde un primer momento, Módulos quiso perfilarse como un grupo diferente, algo que se vio reflejado en la búsqueda de profesionalidad. Aseguraban ensayar 8 horas diarias. Supieron aprovechar la onda del pop, su gran referencia The Beatles, de los cuales hicieron dos versiones en su primer trabajo, Yesterday y Hello Goodbye, amén de dedicarles un tema propio de nombre 'Beatles', en su último disco de 1979, de nombre Módulos y editado por el sello Mercurio. En 1978, graban para la modesta compañía Mercurio un álbum homónimo, con mayor libertad compositiva, con nueva temática en las letras y algunos pasajes ciertamente experimentales. Tras algunas galas actuando con el nombre de TAO, Módulos comprobaron que su carrera no tendría ya mucha continuidad y se separaron en 1979. En 1999, todos menos Robles (con Pibe Iglesias en su lugar), deciden unirse de nuevo para regrabar temas, hacer algunas galas y aprovechar la ola nostálgica editando el disco Pensado y hecho... en la intimidad (2000), el cual incluye nuevas versiones de viejos éxitos, y 6 temas nuevos. Tras abandonar Módulos, Robles en los 80 montó un efímero dúo con Teddy Bautista, dejando registrado un único disco que vio la luz en 1981, Radioactivo, donde solo hay que destacar su single 'Beatriz', que alcanzó cierta popularidad en las listas de ese año.
WTOP Entertainment Reporter Jason Fraley chats with Rascals founder Felix Cavaliere to mark the 55th anniversary of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band's last single as The Young Rascals before changing its name to The Rascals. They spoke when Cavaliere and co-founder Gene Cornish played The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia in 2018, breaking down hits like "Good Lovin'," "Groovin'" and "A Beautiful Morning." (Theme Music: Scott Buckley's "Clarion")
In early 1966, Batmania was everywhere. This caused a certain (convicted tax evader) concert promoter to ask the question: Can Batman fill Shea Stadium? Adam West and Frank Gorshin were recruited to play their characters as part of a show that also included such musical luminaries as the Young Rascals and the Temptations. However, on June 25, 1966, the answer to the concert promoter's question turned out to be a resounding "No!" The Shea Stadium show has lingered as an oddity on the edges of our podcast's consciousness for some time, and now it's time to do a deep dive on it. Armed with the script for West and Gorshin's borscht-belt skit, and accounts of the show from several different sources, we look at what the show was meant to be, what it ended up being, and whether anyone who attended would have been particularly pleased with the result. Theme version from KLABEC Drummer Read the Script The New York Times looks back on the show Holy Shea Stadium! The Batman, Beatles, and Bob Dylan Connection, by Frank Bals (Medium.com) Batman 66 Shea Stadium, NYC Concert Poster auction (66batman.com message board) Batmania issue 12 (review of the show starts on page 2) Adam West sings "Orange Colored Sky" on Hollywood Palace Mrs. Miller on The Merv Griffin Show Adam West & Frank Gorshin - Interview with the Vampire
Episode one hundred and fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Was Made to Love Her", the early career of Stevie Wonder, and the Detroit riots of 1967. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Groovin'" by the Young Rascals. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've put together a Mixcloud playlist of all the recordings excerpted in this episode. The best value way to get all of Stevie Wonder's early singles is this MP3 collection, which has the original mono single mixes of fifty-five tracks for a very reasonable price. For those who prefer physical media, this is a decent single-CD collection of his early work at a very low price indeed. As well as the general Motown information listed below, I've also referred to Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: The Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder by Mark Ribowsky, which rather astonishingly is the only full-length biography of Wonder, to Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul by Craig Werner, and to Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul by Stuart Cosgrove. For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown. To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. How Sweet It Is by Lamont Dozier and Scott B. Bomar is Dozier's autobiography, while Come and Get These Memories by Brian and Eddie Holland and Dave Thompson is the Holland brothers'. Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life and Music of Legendary Bassist James Jamerson by "Dr Licks" is a mixture of a short biography of the great bass player, and tablature of his most impressive bass parts. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 694 tracks released on Motown singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I begin -- this episode deals with disability and racism, and also deals from the very beginning with sex work and domestic violence. It also has some discussion of police violence and sexual assault. As always I will try to deal with those subjects as non-judgementally and sensitively as possible, but if you worry that anything about those subjects might disturb you, please check the transcript. Calvin Judkins was not a good man. Lula Mae Hardaway thought at first he might be, when he took her in, with her infant son whose father had left before the boy was born. He was someone who seemed, when he played the piano, to be deeply sensitive and emotional, and he even did the decent thing and married her when he got her pregnant. She thought she could save him, even though he was a street hustler and not even very good at it, and thirty years older than her -- she was only nineteen, he was nearly fifty. But she soon discovered that he wasn't interested in being saved, and instead he was interested in hurting her. He became physically and financially abusive, and started pimping her out. Lula would eventually realise that Calvin Judkins was no good, but not until she got pregnant again, shortly after the birth of her second son. Her third son was born premature -- different sources give different numbers for how premature, with some saying four months and others six weeks -- and while he apparently went by Stevland Judkins throughout his early childhood, the name on his birth certificate was apparently Stevland Morris, Lula having decided not to give another child the surname of her abuser, though nobody has ever properly explained where she got the surname "Morris" from. Little Stevland was put in an incubator with an oxygen mask, which saved the tiny child's life but destroyed his sight, giving him a condition called retinopathy of prematurity -- a condition which nowadays can be prevented and cured, but in 1951 was just an unavoidable consequence for some portion of premature babies. Shortly after the family moved from Saginaw to Detroit, Lula kicked Calvin out, and he would remain only a peripheral figure in his children's lives, but one thing he did do was notice young Stevland's interest in music, and on his increasingly infrequent visits to his wife and kids -- visits that usually ended with violence -- he would bring along toy instruments for the young child to play, like a harmonica and a set of bongos. Stevie was a real prodigy, and by the time he was nine he had a collection of real musical instruments, because everyone could see that the kid was something special. A neighbour who owned a piano gave it to Stevie when she moved out and couldn't take it with her. A local Lions Club gave him a drum kit at a party they organised for local blind children, and a barber gave him a chromatic harmonica after seeing him play his toy one. Stevie gave his first professional performance when he was eight. His mother had taken him to a picnic in the park, and there was a band playing, and the little boy got as close to the stage as he could and started dancing wildly. The MC of the show asked the child who he was, and he said "My name is Stevie, and I can sing and play drums", so of course they got the cute kid up on stage behind the drum kit while the band played Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love": [Excerpt: Johnny Ace, "Pledging My Love"] He did well enough that they paid him seventy-five cents -- an enormous amount for a small child at that time -- though he was disappointed afterwards that they hadn't played something faster that would really allow him to show off his drumming skills. After that he would perform semi-regularly at small events, and always ask to be paid in quarters rather than paper money, because he liked the sound of the coins -- one of his party tricks was to be able to tell one coin from another by the sound of them hitting a table. Soon he formed a duo with a neighbourhood friend, John Glover, who was a couple of years older and could play guitar while Stevie sang and played harmonica and bongos. The two were friends, and both accomplished musicians for their age, but that wasn't the only reason Stevie latched on to Glover. Even as young as he was, he knew that Motown was soon going to be the place to be in Detroit if you were a musician, and Glover had an in -- his cousin was Ronnie White of the Miracles. Stevie and John performed as a duo everywhere they could and honed their act, performing particularly at the talent shows which were such an incubator of Black musical talent at the time, and they also at this point seem to have got the attention of Clarence Paul, but it was White who brought the duo to Motown. Stevie and John first played for White and Bobby Rodgers, another of the Miracles, then when they were impressed they took them through the several layers of Motown people who would have to sign off on signing a new act. First they were taken to see Brian Holland, who was a rising star within Motown as "Please Mr. Postman" was just entering the charts. They impressed him with a performance of the Miracles song "Bad Girl": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Bad Girl"] After that, Stevie and John went to see Mickey Stevenson, who was at first sceptical, thinking that a kid so young -- Stevie was only eleven at the time -- must be some kind of novelty act rather than a serious musician. He said later "It was like, what's next, the singing mouse?" But Stevenson was won over by the child's talent. Normally, Stevenson had the power to sign whoever he liked to the label, but given the extra legal complications involved in signing someone under-age, he had to get Berry Gordy's permission. Gordy didn't even like signing teenagers because of all the extra paperwork that would be involved, and he certainly wasn't interested in signing pre-teens. But he came down to the studio to see what Stevie could do, and was amazed, not by his singing -- Gordy didn't think much of that -- but by his instrumental ability. First Stevie played harmonica and bongos as proficiently as an adult professional, and then he made his way around the studio playing on every other instrument in the place -- often only a few notes, but competent on them all. Gordy decided to sign the duo -- and the initial contract was for an act named "Steve and John" -- but it was soon decided to separate them. Glover would be allowed to hang around Motown while he was finishing school, and there would be a place for him when he finished -- he later became a staff songwriter, working on tracks for the Four Tops and the Miracles among others, and he would even later write a number one hit, "You Don't Have to be a Star (to be in My Show)" for Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr -- but they were going to make Stevie a star right now. The man put in charge of that was Clarence Paul. Paul, under his birth name of Clarence Pauling, had started his career in the "5" Royales, a vocal group he formed with his brother Lowman Pauling that had been signed to Apollo Records by Ralph Bass, and later to King Records. Paul seems to have been on at least some of the earliest recordings by the group, so is likely on their first single, "Give Me One More Chance": [Excerpt: The "5" Royales, "Give Me One More Chance"] But Paul was drafted to go and fight in the Korean War, and so wasn't part of the group's string of hit singles, mostly written by his brother Lowman, like "Think", which later became better known in James Brown's cover version, or "Dedicated to the One I Love", later covered by the Shirelles, but in its original version dominated by Lowman's stinging guitar playing: [Excerpt: The "5" Royales, "Dedicated to the One I Love"] After being discharged, Clarence had shortened his name to Clarence Paul, and had started recording for all the usual R&B labels like Roulette and Federal, with little success: [Excerpt: Clarence Paul, "I'm Gonna Love You, Love You Til I Die"] He'd also co-written "I Need Your Lovin'", which had been an R&B hit for Roy Hamilton: [Excerpt: Roy Hamilton, "I Need Your Lovin'"] Paul had recently come to work for Motown – one of the things Berry Gordy did to try to make his label more attractive was to hire the relatives of R&B stars on other labels, in the hopes of getting them to switch to Motown – and he was the new man on the team, not given any of the important work to do. He was working with acts like Henry Lumpkin and the Valladiers, and had also been the producer of "Mind Over Matter", the single the Temptations had released as The Pirates in a desperate attempt to get a hit: [Excerpt: The Pirates, "Mind Over Matter"] Paul was the person you turned to when no-one else was interested, and who would come up with bizarre ideas. A year or so after the time period we're talking about, it was him who produced an album of country music for the Supremes, before they'd had a hit, and came up with "The Man With the Rock and Roll Banjo Band" for them: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "The Man With The Rock and Roll Banjo Band"] So, Paul was the perfect person to give a child -- by this time twelve years old -- who had the triple novelties of being a multi-instrumentalist, a child, and blind. Stevie started spending all his time around the Motown studios, partly because he was eager to learn everything about making records and partly because his home life wasn't particularly great and he wanted to be somewhere else. He earned the affection and irritation, in equal measure, of people at Motown both for his habit of wandering into the middle of sessions because he couldn't see the light that showed that the studio was in use, and for his practical joking. He was a great mimic, and would do things like phoning one of the engineers and imitating Berry Gordy's voice, telling the engineer that Stevie would be coming down, and to give him studio equipment to take home. He'd also astonish women by complimenting them, in detail, on their dresses, having been told in advance what they looked like by an accomplice. But other "jokes" were less welcome -- he would regularly sexually assault women working at Motown, grabbing their breasts or buttocks and then claiming it was an accident because he couldn't see what he was doing. Most of the women he molested still speak of him fondly, and say everybody loved him, and this may even be the case -- and certainly I don't think any of us should be judged too harshly for what we did when we were twelve -- but this kind of thing led to a certain amount of pressure to make Stevie's career worth the extra effort he was causing everyone at Motown. Because Berry Gordy was not impressed with Stevie's vocals, the decision was made to promote him as a jazz instrumentalist, and so Clarence Paul insisted that his first release be an album, rather than doing what everyone would normally do and only put out an album after a hit single. Paul reasoned that there was no way on Earth they were going to be able to get a hit single with a jazz instrumental by a twelve-year-old kid, and eventually persuaded Gordy of the wisdom of this idea. So they started work on The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie, released under his new stagename of Little Stevie Wonder, supposedly a name given to him after Berry Gordy said "That kid's a wonder!", though Mickey Stevenson always said that the name came from a brainstorming session between him and Clarence Paul. The album featured Stevie on harmonica, piano, and organ on different tracks, but on the opening track, "Fingertips", he's playing the bongos that give the track its name: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (studio version)"] The composition of that track is credited to Paul and the arranger Hank Cosby, but Beans Bowles, who played flute on the track, always claimed that he came up with the melody, and it seems quite likely to me that most of the tracks on the album were created more or less as jam sessions -- though Wonder's contributions were all overdubbed later. The album sat in the can for several months -- Berry Gordy was not at all sure of its commercial potential. Instead, he told Paul to go in another direction -- focusing on Wonder's blindness, he decided that what they needed to do was create an association in listeners' minds with Ray Charles, who at this point was at the peak of his commercial power. So back into the studio went Wonder and Paul, to record an album made up almost entirely of Ray Charles covers, titled Tribute to Uncle Ray. (Some sources have the Ray Charles tribute album recorded first -- and given Motown's lax record-keeping at this time it may be impossible to know for sure -- but this is the way round that Mark Ribowsky's biography of Wonder has it). But at Motown's regular quality control meeting it was decided that there wasn't a single on the album, and you didn't release an album like that without having a hit single first. By this point, Clarence Paul was convinced that Berry Gordy was just looking for excuses not to do anything with Wonder -- and there may have been a grain of truth to that. There's some evidence that Gordy was worried that the kid wouldn't be able to sing once his voice broke, and was scared of having another Frankie Lymon on his hands. But the decision was made that rather than put out either of those albums, they would put out a single. The A-side was a song called "I Call it Pretty Music But the Old People Call it the Blues, Part 1", which very much played on Wonder's image as a loveable naive kid: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "I Call it Pretty Music But the Old People Call it the Blues, Part 1"] The B-side, meanwhile, was part two -- a slowed-down, near instrumental, version of the song, reframed as an actual blues, and as a showcase for Wonder's harmonica playing rather than his vocals. The single wasn't a hit, but it made number 101 on the Billboard charts, just missing the Hot One Hundred, which for the debut single of a new artist wasn't too bad, especially for Motown at this point in time, when most of its releases were flopping. That was good enough that Gordy authorised the release of the two albums that they had in the can. The next single, "Little Water Boy", was a rather baffling duet with Clarence Paul, which did nothing at all on the charts. [Excerpt: Clarence Paul and Little Stevie Wonder, "Little Water Boy"] After this came another flop single, written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Janie Bradford, before the record that finally broke Little Stevie Wonder out into the mainstream in a big way. While Wonder hadn't had a hit yet, he was sent out on the first Motortown Revue tour, along with almost every other act on the label. Because he hadn't had a hit, he was supposed to only play one song per show, but nobody had told him how long that song should be. He had quickly become a great live performer, and the audiences were excited to watch him, so when he went into extended harmonica solos rather than quickly finishing the song, the audience would be with him. Clarence Paul, who came along on the tour, would have to motion to the onstage bandleader to stop the music, but the bandleader would know that the audiences were with Stevie, and so would just keep the song going as long as Stevie was playing. Often Paul would have to go on to the stage and shout in Wonder's ear to stop playing -- and often Wonder would ignore him, and have to be physically dragged off stage by Paul, still playing, causing the audience to boo Paul for stopping him from playing. Wonder would complain off-stage that the audience had been enjoying it, and didn't seem to get it into his head that he wasn't the star of the show, that the audiences *were* enjoying him, but were *there* to see the Miracles and Mary Wells and the Marvelettes and Marvin Gaye. This made all the acts who had to go on after him, and who were running late as a result, furious at him -- especially since one aspect of Wonder's blindness was that his circadian rhythms weren't regulated by sunlight in the same way that the sighted members of the tour's were. He would often wake up the entire tour bus by playing his harmonica at two or three in the morning, while they were all trying to sleep. Soon Berry Gordy insisted that Clarence Paul be on stage with Wonder throughout his performance, ready to drag him off stage, so that he wouldn't have to come out onto the stage to do it. But one of the first times he had done this had been on one of the very first Motortown Revue shows, before any of his records had come out. There he'd done a performance of "Fingertips", playing the flute part on harmonica rather than only playing bongos throughout as he had on the studio version -- leaving the percussion to Marvin Gaye, who was playing drums for Wonder's set: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] But he'd extended the song with a little bit of call-and-response vocalising: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] After the long performance ended, Clarence Paul dragged Wonder off-stage and the MC asked the audience to give him a round of applause -- but then Stevie came running back on and carried on playing: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] By this point, though, the musicians had started to change over -- Mary Wells, who was on after Wonder, was using different musicians from his, and some of her players were already on stage. You can hear Joe Swift, who was playing bass for Wells, asking what key he was meant to be playing in: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] Eventually, after six and a half minutes, they got Wonder off stage, but that performance became the two sides of Wonder's next single, with "Fingertips Part 2", the part with the ad lib singing and the false ending, rather than the instrumental part one, being labelled as the side the DJs should play. When it was released, the song started a slow climb up the charts, and by August 1963, three months after it came out, it was at number one -- only the second ever Motown number one, and the first ever live single to get there. Not only that, but Motown released a live album -- Recorded Live, the Twelve-Year-Old Genius (though as many people point out he was thirteen when it was released -- he was twelve when it was recorded though) and that made number one on the albums chart, becoming the first Motown album ever to do so. They followed up "Fingertips" with a similar sounding track, "Workout, Stevie, Workout", which made number thirty-three. After that, his albums -- though not yet his singles -- started to be released as by "Stevie Wonder" with no "Little" -- he'd had a bit of a growth spurt and his voice was breaking, and so marketing him as a child prodigy was not going to work much longer and they needed to transition him into a star with adult potential. In the Motown of 1963 that meant cutting an album of standards, because the belief at the time in Motown was that the future for their entertainers was doing show tunes at the Copacabana. But for some reason the audience who had wanted an R&B harmonica instrumental with call-and-response improvised gospel-influenced yelling was not in the mood for a thirteen year old singing "Put on a Happy Face" and "When You Wish Upon a Star", and especially not when the instrumental tracks were recorded in a key that suited him at age twelve but not thirteen, so he was clearly straining. "Fingertips" being a massive hit also meant Stevie was now near the top of the bill on the Motortown Revue when it went on its second tour. But this actually put him in a precarious position. When he had been down at the bottom of the bill and unknown, nobody expected anything from him, and he was following other minor acts, so when he was surprisingly good the audiences went wild. Now, near the top of the bill, he had to go on after Marvin Gaye, and he was not nearly so impressive in that context. The audiences were polite enough, but not in the raptures he was used to. Although Stevie could still beat Gaye in some circumstances. At Motown staff parties, Berry Gordy would always have a contest where he'd pit two artists against each other to see who could win the crowd over, something he thought instilled a fun and useful competitive spirit in his artists. They'd alternate songs, two songs each, and Gordy would decide on the winner based on audience response. For the 1963 Motown Christmas party, it was Stevie versus Marvin. Wonder went first, with "Workout, Stevie, Workout", and was apparently impressive, but then Gaye topped him with a version of "Hitch-Hike". So Stevie had to top that, and apparently did, with a hugely extended version of "I Call it Pretty Music", reworked in the Ray Charles style he'd used for "Fingertips". So Marvin Gaye had to top that with the final song of the contest, and he did, performing "Stubborn Kind of Fellow": [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow"] And he was great. So great, it turned the crowd against him. They started booing, and someone in the audience shouted "Marvin, you should be ashamed of yourself, taking advantage of a little blind kid!" The crowd got so hostile Berry Gordy had to stop the performance and end the party early. He never had another contest like that again. There were other problems, as well. Wonder had been assigned a tutor, a young man named Ted Hull, who began to take serious control over his life. Hull was legally blind, so could teach Wonder using Braille, but unlike Wonder had some sight -- enough that he was even able to get a drivers' license and a co-pilot license for planes. Hull was put in loco parentis on most of Stevie's tours, and soon became basically inseparable from him, but this caused a lot of problems, not least because Hull was a conservative white man, while almost everyone else at Motown was Black, and Stevie was socially liberal and on the side of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements. Hull started to collaborate on songwriting with Wonder, which most people at Motown were OK with but which now seems like a serious conflict of interest, and he also started calling himself Stevie's "manager" -- which did *not* impress the people at Motown, who had their own conflict of interest because with Stevie, like with all their artists, they were his management company and agents as well as his record label and publishers. Motown grudgingly tolerated Hull, though, mostly because he was someone they could pass Lula Mae Hardaway to to deal with her complaints. Stevie's mother was not very impressed with the way that Motown were handling her son, and would make her opinion known to anyone who would listen. Hull and Hardaway did not get on at all, but he could be relied on to save the Gordy family members from having to deal with her. Wonder was sent over to Europe for Christmas 1963, to perform shows at the Paris Olympia and do some British media appearances. But both his mother and Hull had come along, and their clear dislike for each other was making him stressed. He started to get pains in his throat whenever he sang -- pains which everyone assumed were a stress reaction to the unhealthy atmosphere that happened whenever Hull and his mother were in the same room together, but which later turned out to be throat nodules that required surgery. Because of this, his singing was generally not up to standard, which meant he was moved to a less prominent place on the bill, which in turn led to his mother accusing the Gordy family of being against him and trying to stop him becoming a star. Wonder started to take her side and believe that Motown were conspiring against him, and at one point he even "accidentally" dropped a bottle of wine on Ted Hull's foot, breaking one of his toes, because he saw Hull as part of the enemy that was Motown. Before leaving for those shows, he had recorded the album he later considered the worst of his career. While he was now just plain Stevie on albums, he wasn't for his single releases, or in his first film appearance, where he was still Little Stevie Wonder. Berry Gordy was already trying to get a foot in the door in Hollywood -- by the end of the decade Motown would be moving from Detroit to LA -- and his first real connections there were with American International Pictures, the low-budget film-makers who have come up a lot in connection with the LA scene. AIP were the producers of the successful low-budget series of beach party films, which combined appearances by teen heartthrobs Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello in swimsuits with cameo appearances by old film stars fallen on hard times, and with musical performances by bands like the Bobby Fuller Four. There would be a couple of Motown connections to these films -- most notably, the Supremes would do the theme tune for Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine -- but Muscle Beach Party was to be the first. Most of the music for Muscle Beach Party was written by Brian Wilson, Roger Christian, and Gary Usher, as one might expect for a film about surfing, and was performed by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, the film's major musical guests, with Annette, Frankie, and Donna Loren [pron Lorren] adding vocals, on songs like "Muscle Bustle": [Excerpt: Donna Loren with Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, "Muscle Bustle"] The film followed the formula in every way -- it also had a cameo appearance by Peter Lorre, his last film appearance before his death, and it featured Little Stevie Wonder playing one of the few songs not written by the surf and car writers, a piece of nothing called "Happy Street". Stevie also featured in the follow-up, Bikini Beach, which came out a little under four months later, again doing a single number, "Happy Feelin'". To cash in on his appearances in these films, and having tried releasing albums of Little Stevie as jazz multi-instrumentalist, Ray Charles tribute act, live soulman and Andy Williams-style crooner, they now decided to see if they could sell him as a surf singer. Or at least, as Motown's idea of a surf singer, which meant a lot of songs about the beach and the sea -- mostly old standards like "Red Sails in the Sunset" and "Ebb Tide" -- backed by rather schlocky Wrecking Crew arrangements. And this is as good a place as any to take on one of the bits of disinformation that goes around about Motown. I've addressed this before, but it's worth repeating here in slightly more detail. Carol Kaye, one of the go-to Wrecking Crew bass players, is a known credit thief, and claims to have played on hundreds of records she didn't -- claims which too many people take seriously because she is a genuine pioneer and was for a long time undercredited on many records she *did* play on. In particular, she claims to have played on almost all the classic Motown hits that James Jamerson of the Funk Brothers played on, like the title track for this episode, and she claims this despite evidence including notarised statements from everyone involved in the records, the release of session recordings that show producers talking to the Funk Brothers, and most importantly the evidence of the recordings themselves, which have all the characteristics of the Detroit studio and sound like the Funk Brothers playing, and have absolutely nothing in common, sonically, with the records the Wrecking Crew played on at Gold Star, Western, and other LA studios. The Wrecking Crew *did* play on a lot of Motown records, but with a handful of exceptions, mostly by Brenda Holloway, the records they played on were quickie knock-off album tracks and potboiler albums made to tie in with film or TV work -- soundtracks to TV specials the acts did, and that kind of thing. And in this case, the Wrecking Crew played on the entire Stevie at the Beach album, including the last single to be released as by "Little Stevie Wonder", "Castles in the Sand", which was arranged by Jack Nitzsche: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Castles in the Sand"] Apparently the idea of surfin' Stevie didn't catch on any more than that of swingin' Stevie had earlier. Indeed, throughout 1964 and 65 Motown seem to have had less than no idea what they were doing with Stevie Wonder, and he himself refers to all his recordings from this period as an embarrassment, saving particular scorn for the second single from Stevie at the Beach, "Hey Harmonica Man", possibly because that, unlike most of his other singles around this point, was a minor hit, reaching number twenty-nine on the charts. Motown were still pushing Wonder hard -- he even got an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in May 1964, only the second Motown act to appear on it after the Marvelettes -- but Wonder was getting more and more unhappy with the decisions they were making. He loathed the Stevie at the Beach album -- the records he'd made earlier, while patchy and not things he'd chosen, were at least in some way related to his musical interests. He *did* love jazz, and he *did* love Ray Charles, and he *did* love old standards, and the records were made by his friend Clarence Paul and with the studio musicians he'd grown to know in Detroit. But Stevie at the Beach was something that was imposed on Clarence Paul from above, it was cut with unfamiliar musicians, Stevie thought the films he was appearing in were embarrassing, and he wasn't even having much commercial success, which was the whole point of these compromises. He started to get more rebellious against Paul in the studio, though many of these decisions weren't made by Paul, and he would complain to anyone who would listen that if he was just allowed to do the music he wanted to sing, the way he wanted to sing it, he would have more hits. But for nine months he did basically no singing other than that Ed Sullivan Show appearance -- he had to recover from the operation to remove the throat nodules. When he did return to the studio, the first single he cut remained unreleased, and while some stuff from the archives was released between the start of 1964 and March 1965, the first single he recorded and released after the throat nodules, "Kiss Me Baby", which came out in March, was a complete flop. That single was released to coincide with the first Motown tour of Europe, which we looked at in the episode on "Stop! In the Name of Love", and which was mostly set up to promote the Supremes, but which also featured Martha and the Vandellas, the Miracles, and the Temptations. Even though Stevie had not had a major hit in eighteen months by this point, he was still brought along on the tour, the only solo artist to be included -- at this point Gordy thought that solo artists looked outdated compared to vocal groups, in a world dominated by bands, and so other solo artists like Marvin Gaye weren't invited. This was a sign that Gordy was happier with Stevie than his recent lack of chart success might suggest. One of the main reasons that Gordy had been in two minds about him was that he'd had no idea if Wonder would still be able to sing well after his voice broke. But now, as he was about to turn fifteen, his adult voice had more or less stabilised, and Gordy knew that he was capable of having a long career, if they just gave him the proper material. But for now his job on the tour was to do his couple of hits, smile, and be on the lower rungs of the ladder. But even that was still a prominent place to be given the scaled-down nature of this bill compared to the Motortown Revues. While the tour was in England, for example, Dusty Springfield presented a TV special focusing on all the acts on the tour, and while the Supremes were the main stars, Stevie got to do two songs, and also took part in the finale, a version of "Mickey's Monkey" led by Smokey Robinson but with all the performers joining in, with Wonder getting a harmonica solo: [Excerpt: Smokey Robinson and the Motown acts, "Mickey's Monkey"] Sadly, there was one aspect of the trip to the UK that was extremely upsetting for Wonder. Almost all the media attention he got -- which was relatively little, as he wasn't a Supreme -- was about his blindness, and one reporter in particular convinced him that there was an operation he could have to restore his sight, but that Motown were preventing him from finding out about it in order to keep his gimmick going. He was devastated about this, and then further devastated when Ted Hull finally convinced him that it wasn't true, and that he'd been lied to. Meanwhile other newspapers were reporting that he *could* see, and that he was just feigning blindness to boost his record sales. After the tour, a live recording of Wonder singing the blues standard "High Heeled Sneakers" was released as a single, and barely made the R&B top thirty, and didn't hit the top forty on the pop charts. Stevie's initial contract with Motown was going to expire in the middle of 1966, so there was a year to get him back to a point where he was having the kind of hits that other Motown acts were regularly getting at this point. Otherwise, it looked like his career might end by the time he was sixteen. The B-side to "High Heeled Sneakers" was another duet with Clarence Paul, who dominates the vocal sound for much of it -- a version of Willie Nelson's country classic "Funny How Time Slips Away": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder and Clarence Paul, "Funny How Time Slips Away"] There are a few of these duet records scattered through Wonder's early career -- we'll hear another one a little later -- and they're mostly dismissed as Paul trying to muscle his way into a revival of his own recording career as an artist, and there may be some truth in that. But they're also a natural extension of the way the two of them worked in the studio. Motown didn't have the facilities to give Wonder Braille lyric sheets, and Paul didn't trust him to be able to remember the lyrics, so often when they made a record, Paul would be just off-mic, reciting the lyrics to Wonder fractionally ahead of him singing them. So it was more or less natural that this dynamic would leak out onto records, but not everyone saw it that way. But at the same time, there has been some suggestion that Paul was among those manoeuvring to get rid of Wonder from Motown as soon as his contract was finished -- despite the fact that Wonder was the only act Paul had worked on any big hits for. Either way, Paul and Wonder were starting to chafe at working with each other in the studio, and while Paul remained his on-stage musical director, the opportunity to work on Wonder's singles for what would surely be his last few months at Motown was given to Hank Cosby and Sylvia Moy. Cosby was a saxophone player and staff songwriter who had been working with Wonder and Paul for years -- he'd co-written "Fingertips" and several other tracks -- while Moy was a staff songwriter who was working as an apprentice to Cosby. Basically, at this point, nobody else wanted the job of writing for Wonder, and as Moy was having no luck getting songs cut by any other artists and her career was looking about as dead as Wonder's, they started working together. Wonder was, at this point, full of musical ideas but with absolutely no discipline. He's said in interviews that at this point he was writing a hundred and fifty songs a month, but these were often not full songs -- they were fragments, hooks, or a single verse, or a few lines, which he would pass on to Moy, who would turn his ideas into structured songs that fit the Motown hit template, usually with the assistance of Cosby. Then Cosby would come up with an arrangement, and would co-produce with Mickey Stevenson. The first song they came up with in this manner was a sign of how Wonder was looking outside the world of Motown to the rock music that was starting to dominate the US charts -- but which was itself inspired by Motown music. We heard in the last episode on the Rolling Stones how "Nowhere to Run" by the Vandellas: [Excerpt: Martha and the Vandellas, "Nowhere to Run"] had inspired the Stones' "Satisfaction": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] And Wonder in turn was inspired by "Satisfaction" to come up with his own song -- though again, much of the work making it into an actual finished song was done by Sylvia Moy. They took the four-on-the-floor beat and basic melody of "Satisfaction" and brought it back to Motown, where those things had originated -- though they hadn't originated with Stevie, and this was his first record to sound like a Motown record in the way we think of those things. As a sign of how, despite the way these stories are usually told, the histories of rock and soul were completely and complexly intertwined, that four-on-the-floor beat itself was a conscious attempt by Holland, Dozier, and Holland to appeal to white listeners -- on the grounds that while Black people generally clapped on the backbeat, white people didn't, and so having a four-on-the-floor beat wouldn't throw them off. So Cosby, Moy, and Wonder, in trying to come up with a "Satisfaction" soundalike were Black Motown writers trying to copy a white rock band trying to copy Black Motown writers trying to appeal to a white rock audience. Wonder came up with the basic chorus hook, which was based around a lot of current slang terms he was fond of: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Uptight"] Then Moy, with some assistance from Cosby, filled it out into a full song. Lyrically, it was as close to social comment as Motown had come at this point -- Wonder was, like many of his peers in soul music, interested in the power of popular music to make political statements, and he would become a much more political artist in the next few years, but at this point it's still couched in the acceptable boy-meets-girl romantic love song that Motown specialised in. But in 1965 a story about a boy from the wrong side of the tracks dating a rich girl inevitably raised the idea that the boy and girl might be of different races -- a subject that was very, very, controversial in the mid-sixties. [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Uptight"] "Uptight" made number three on the pop charts and number one on the R&B charts, and saved Stevie Wonder's career. And this is where, for all that I've criticised Motown in this episode, their strategy paid off. Mickey Stevenson talked a lot about how in the early sixties Motown didn't give up on artists -- if someone had potential but was not yet having hits or finding the right approach, they would keep putting out singles in a holding pattern, trying different things and seeing what would work, rather than toss them aside. It had already worked for the Temptations and the Supremes, and now it had worked for Stevie Wonder. He would be the last beneficiary of this policy -- soon things would change, and Motown would become increasingly focused on trying to get the maximum returns out of a small number of stars, rather than building careers for a range of artists -- but it paid off brilliantly for Wonder. "Uptight" was such a reinvention of Wonder's career, sound, and image that many of his fans consider it the real start of his career -- everything before it only counting as prologue. The follow-up, "Nothing's Too Good For My Baby", was an "Uptight" soundalike, and as with Motown soundalike follow-ups in general, it didn't do quite as well, but it still made the top twenty on the pop chart and got to number four on the R&B chart. Stevie Wonder was now safe at Motown, and so he was going to do something no other Motown act had ever done before -- he was going to record a protest song and release it as a single. For about a year he'd been ending his shows with a version of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind", sung as a duet with Clarence Paul, who was still his on stage bandleader even though the two weren't working together in the studio as much. Wonder brought that into the studio, and recorded it with Paul back as the producer, and as his duet partner. Berry Gordy wasn't happy with the choice of single, but Wonder pushed, and Gordy knew that Wonder was on a winning streak and gave in, and so "Blowin' in the Wind" became Stevie Wonder's next single: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder and Clarence Paul, "Blowin' in the Wind"] "Blowin' in the Wind" made the top ten, and number one on the R&B charts, and convinced Gordy that there was some commercial potential in going after the socially aware market, and over the next few years Motown would start putting out more and more political records. Because Motown convention was to have the producer of a hit record produce the next hit for that artist, and keep doing so until they had a flop, Paul was given the opportunity to produce the next single. "A Place in the Sun" was another ambiguously socially-aware song, co-written by the only white writer on Motown staff, Ron Miller, who happened to live in the same building as Stevie's tutor-cum-manager Ted Hull. "A Place in the Sun" was a pleasant enough song, inspired by "A Change is Gonna Come", but with a more watered-down, generic, message of hope, but the record was lifted by Stevie's voice, and again made the top ten. This meant that Paul and Miller, and Miller's writing partner Bryan Mills, got to work on his next two singles -- his 1966 Christmas song "Someday at Christmas", which made number twenty-four, and the ballad "Travellin' Man" which made thirty-two. The downward trajectory with Paul meant that Wonder was soon working with other producers again. Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol cut another Miller and Mills song with him, "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday"] But that was left in the can, as not good enough to release, and Stevie was soon back working with Cosby. The two of them had come up with an instrumental together in late 1966, but had not been able to come up with any words for it, so they played it for Smokey Robinson, who said their instrumental sounded like circus music, and wrote lyrics about a clown: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tears of a Clown"] The Miracles cut that as album filler, but it was released three years later as a single and became the Miracles' only number one hit with Smokey Robinson as lead singer. So Wonder and Cosby definitely still had their commercial touch, even if their renewed collaboration with Moy, who they started working with again, took a while to find a hit. To start with, Wonder returned to the idea of taking inspiration from a hit by a white British group, as he had with "Uptight". This time it was the Beatles, and the track "Michelle", from the Rubber Soul album: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Michelle"] Wonder took the idea of a song with some French lyrics, and a melody with some similarities to the Beatles song, and came up with "My Cherie Amour", which Cosby and Moy finished off. [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "My Cherie Amour"] Gordy wouldn't allow that to be released, saying it was too close to "Michelle" and people would think it was a rip-off, and it stayed in the vaults for several years. Cosby also produced a version of a song Ron Miller had written with Orlando Murden, "For Once in My Life", which pretty much every other Motown act was recording versions of -- the Four Tops, the Temptations, Billy Eckstine, Martha and the Vandellas and Barbra McNair all cut versions of it in 1967, and Gordy wouldn't let Wonder's version be put out either. So they had to return to the drawing board. But in truth, Stevie Wonder was not the biggest thing worrying Berry Gordy at this point. He was dealing with problems in the Supremes, which we'll look at in a future episode -- they were about to get rid of Florence Ballard, and thus possibly destroy one of the biggest acts in the world, but Gordy thought that if they *didn't* get rid of her they would be destroying themselves even more certainly. Not only that, but Gordy was in the midst of a secret affair with Diana Ross, Holland, Dozier, and Holland were getting restless about their contracts, and his producers kept bringing him unlistenable garbage that would never be a hit. Like Norman Whitfield, insisting that this track he'd cut with Marvin Gaye, "I Heard it Through the Grapevine", should be a single. Gordy had put his foot down about that one too, just like he had about "My Cherie Amour", and wouldn't allow it to be released. Meanwhile, many of the smaller acts on the label were starting to feel like they were being ignored by Gordy, and had formed what amounted to a union, having regular meetings at Clarence Paul's house to discuss how they could pressure the label to put the same effort into their careers as into those of the big stars. And the Funk Brothers, the musicians who played on all of Motown's hits, were also getting restless -- they contributed to the arrangements, and they did more for the sound of the records than half the credited producers; why weren't they getting production credits and royalties? Harvey Fuqua had divorced Gordy's sister Gwen, and so became persona non grata at the label and was in the process of leaving Motown, and so was Mickey Stevenson, Gordy's second in command, because Gordy wouldn't give him any stock in the company. And Detroit itself was on edge. The crime rate in the city had started to go up, but even worse, the *perception* of crime was going up. The Detroit News had been running a campaign to whip up fear, which it called its Secret Witness campaign, and running constant headlines about rapes, murders, and muggings. These in turn had led to increased calls for more funds for the police, calls which inevitably contained a strong racial element and at least implicitly linked the perceived rise in crime to the ongoing Civil Rights movement. At this point the police in Detroit were ninety-three percent white, even though Detroit's population was over thirty percent Black. The Mayor and Police Commissioner were trying to bring in some modest reforms, but they weren't going anywhere near fast enough for the Black population who felt harassed and attacked by the police, but were still going too fast for the white people who were being whipped up into a state of terror about supposedly soft-on-crime policies, and for the police who felt under siege and betrayed by the politicians. And this wasn't the only problem affecting the city, and especially affecting Black people. Redlining and underfunded housing projects meant that the large Black population was being crammed into smaller and smaller spaces with fewer local amenities. A few Black people who were lucky enough to become rich -- many of them associated with Motown -- were able to move into majority-white areas, but that was just leading to white flight, and to an increase in racial tensions. The police were on edge after the murder of George Overman Jr, the son of a policeman, and though they arrested the killers that was just another sign that they weren't being shown enough respect. They started organising "blu flu"s -- the police weren't allowed to strike, so they'd claim en masse that they were off sick, as a protest against the supposed soft-on-crime administration. Meanwhile John Sinclair was organising "love-ins", gatherings of hippies at which new bands like the MC5 played, which were being invaded by gangs of bikers who were there to beat up the hippies. And the Detroit auto industry was on its knees -- working conditions had got bad enough that the mostly Black workforce organised a series of wildcat strikes. All in all, Detroit was looking less and less like somewhere that Berry Gordy wanted to stay, and the small LA subsidiary of Motown was rapidly becoming, in his head if nowhere else, the more important part of the company, and its future. He was starting to think that maybe he should leave all these ungrateful people behind in their dangerous city, and move the parts of the operation that actually mattered out to Hollywood. Stevie Wonder was, of course, one of the parts that mattered, but the pressure was on in 1967 to come up with a hit as big as his records from 1965 and early 66, before he'd been sidetracked down the ballad route. The song that was eventually released was one on which Stevie's mother, Lula Mae Hardaway, had a co-writing credit: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] "I Was Made to Love Her" was inspired by Wonder's first love, a girl from the same housing projects as him, and he talked about the song being special to him because it was true, saying it "kind of speaks of my first love to a girl named Angie, who was a very beautiful woman... Actually, she was my third girlfriend but my first love. I used to call Angie up and, like, we would talk and say, 'I love you, I love you,' and we'd talk and we'd both go to sleep on the phone. And this was like from Detroit to California, right? You know, mother said, 'Boy, what you doing - get off the phone!' Boy, I tell you, it was ridiculous." But while it was inspired by her, like with many of the songs from this period, much of the lyric came from Moy -- her mother grew up in Arkansas, and that's why the lyric started "I was born in Little Rock", as *her* inspiration came from stories told by her parents. But truth be told, the lyrics weren't particularly detailed or impressive, just a standard story of young love. Rather what mattered in the record was the music. The song was structured differently from many Motown records, including most of Wonder's earlier ones. Most Motown records had a huge amount of dynamic variation, and a clear demarcation between verse and chorus. Even a record like "Dancing in the Street", which took most of its power from the tension and release caused by spending most of the track on one chord, had the release that came with the line "All we need is music", and could be clearly subdivided into different sections. "I Was Made to Love Her" wasn't like that. There was a tiny section which functioned as a middle eight -- and which cover versions like the one by the Beach Boys later that year tend to cut out, because it disrupts the song's flow: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] But other than that, the song has no verse or chorus, no distinct sections, it's just a series of lyrical couplets over the same four chords, repeating over and over, an incessant groove that could really go on indefinitely: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] This is as close as Motown had come at this point to the new genre of funk, of records that were just staying with one groove throughout. It wasn't a funk record, not yet -- it was still a pop-soul record, But what made it extraordinary was the bass line, and this is why I had to emphasise earlier that this was a record by the Funk Brothers, not the Wrecking Crew, no matter how much some Crew members may claim otherwise. As on most of Cosby's sessions, James Jamerson was given free reign to come up with his own part with little guidance, and what he came up with is extraordinary. This was at a time when rock and pop basslines were becoming a little more mobile, thanks to the influence of Jamerson in Detroit, Brian Wilson in LA, and Paul McCartney in London. But for the most part, even those bass parts had been fairly straightforward technically -- often inventive, but usually just crotchets and quavers, still keeping rhythm along with the drums rather than in dialogue with them, roaming free rhythmically. Jamerson had started to change his approach, inspired by the change in studio equipment. Motown had upgraded to eight-track recording in 1965, and once he'd become aware of the possibilities, and of the greater prominence that his bass parts could have if they were recorded on their own track, Jamerson had become a much busier player. Jamerson was a jazz musician by inclination, and so would have been very aware of John Coltrane's legendary "sheets of sound", in which Coltrane would play fast arpeggios and scales, in clusters of five and seven notes, usually in semiquaver runs (though sometimes in even smaller fractions -- his solo in Miles Davis' "Straight, No Chaser" is mostly semiquavers but has a short passage in hemidemisemiquavers): [Excerpt: Miles Davis, "Straight, No Chaser"] Jamerson started to adapt the "sheets of sound" style to bass playing, treating the bass almost as a jazz solo instrument -- though unlike Coltrane he was also very, very concerned with creating something that people could tap their feet to. Much like James Brown, Jamerson was taking jazz techniques and repurposing them for dance music. The most notable example of that up to this point had been in the Four Tops' "Bernadette", where there are a few scuffling semiquaver runs thrown in, and which is a much more fluid part than most of his playing previously: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Bernadette"] But on "Bernadette", Jamerson had been limited by Holland, Dozier, and Holland, who liked him to improvise but around a framework they created. Cosby, on the other hand, because he had been a Funk Brother himself, was much more aware of the musicians' improvisational abilities, and would largely give them a free hand. This led to a truly remarkable bass part on "I Was Made to Love Her", which is somewhat buried in the single mix, but Marcus Miller did an isolated recreation of the part for the accompanying CD to a book on Jamerson, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and listening to that you can hear just how inventive it is: [Excerpt: Marcus Miller, "I Was Made to Love Her"] This was exciting stuff -- though much less so for the touring musicians who went on the road with the Motown revues while Jamerson largely stayed in Detroit recording. Jamerson's family would later talk about him coming home grumbling because complaints from the touring musicians had been brought to him, and he'd been asked to play less difficult parts so they'd find it easier to replicate them on stage. "I Was Made to Love Her" wouldn't exist without Stevie Wonder, Hank Cosby, Sylvia Moy, or Lula Mae Hardaway, but it's James Jamerson's record through and through: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] It went to number two on the charts, sat between "Light My Fire" at number one, and "All You Need is Love" at number three, with the Beatles song soon to overtake it and make number one itself. But within a few weeks of "I Was Made to Love Her" reaching its chart peak, things in Detroit would change irrevocably. On the 23rd of July, the police busted an illegal drinking den. They thought they were only going to get about twenty-five people there, but there turned out to be a big party on. They tried to arrest seventy-four people, but their wagon wouldn't fit them all in so they had to call reinforcements and make the arrestees wait around til more wagons arrived. A crowd of hundreds gathered while they were waiting. Someone threw a brick at a squad car window, a rumour went round that the police had bayonetted someone, and soon the city was in flames. Riots lasted for days, with people burning down and looting businesses, but what really made the situation bad was the police's overreaction. They basically started shooting at young Black men, using them as target practice, and later claiming they were snipers, arsonists, and looters -- but there were cases like the Algiers Motel incident, where the police raided a motel where several Black men, including the members of the soul group The Dramatics, were hiding out along with a few white women. The police sexually assaulted the women, and then killed three of the men for associating with white women, in what was described as a "lynching with bullets". The policemen in question were later acquitted of all charges. The National Guard were called in, as were Federal troops -- the 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville, the division in which Jimi Hendrix had recently served. After four days of rioting, one of the bloodiest riots in US history was at an end, with forty-three people dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a policeman). Official counts had 1,189 people injured, and over 7,200 arrests, almost all of them of Black people. A lot of the histories written later say that Black-owned businesses were spared during the riots, but that wasn't really the case. For example, Joe's Record Shop, owned by Joe Von Battle, who had put out the first records by C.L. Franklin and his daughter Aretha, was burned down, destroying not only the stock of records for sale but the master tapes of hundreds of recordings of Black artists, many of them unreleased and so now lost forever. John Lee Hooker, one of the artists whose music Von Battle had released, soon put out a song, "The Motor City is Burning", about the events: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] But one business that did remain unburned was Motown, with the Hitsville studio going untouched by flames and unlooted. Motown legend has this being down to the rioters showing respect for the studio that had done so much for Detroit, but it seems likely to have just been luck. Although Motown wasn't completely unscathed -- a National Guard tank fired a shell through the building, leaving a gigantic hole, which Berry Gordy saw as soon as he got back from a business trip he'd been on during the rioting. That was what made Berry Gordy decide once and for all that things needed to change. Motown owned a whole row of houses near the studio, which they used as additional office space and for everything other than the core business of making records. Gordy immediately started to sell them, and move the admin work into temporary rented space. He hadn't announced it yet, and it would be a few years before the move was complete, but from that moment on, the die was cast. Motown was going to leave Detroit and move to Hollywood.
I've done two shows so far on RadioFreeNashville and this is the second show from 3/16/22. It features JD Souther, Hendrix, John Batdorf and Mark Rodney with a really cool pair of tunes, Young Rascals and more. Hope you enjoy and I hope you'll consider donating to RadioFreeNashville.org to keep alternative (non-mainstream) media supported. Tales Vinyl Tells Live on RadioFreeNashville can be heard Wednesdays at 5 PM Central. Give it a listen!
Felix talks with the guys about his new memoir and his ongoing rock and roll career. Felix and the Young Rascals are in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.
This week, Kevin and Niseema talk about ways to recognize and cultivate “Companionship” and “Belonging,” the two themes of the Loneliness Scale questions, (see button below.) Did your parents have companions or feel a sense of belonging in their community or social circle? If not, you may have a high tolerance for isolation and loneliness yourself. Birth order is also a factor: first-born children are often the parent/caregiver's companions while last-born children are often the loneliest, especially in a large family. Hoarding and addictions can be seen as "companions" too: though in reality, both are very isolating, cutting us off from the sense of belonging we crave. It is a paradox!In the second half of the show Kevin and Niseema go through four steps that can help EASE your loneliness: Extend your boundaries, have Action plan, Select an activity, and Expect the best. By practicing these four simple steps anyone can move from a sense of isolation and loneliness to a place of companionship and a feeling of belonging.-----------------------For more information or support contact hosts Kevin O'Donoghue LMHC or Niseema Dyan Diemer SEP at: info@thepositivemindcenter.com, or call 212-757-4488. You can sign up for our weekly newsletter at www.tffpp.org.These are challenging times and we hope this episode served to validate and ease your anxiety about what you may be experiencing. Please feel free to also suggest show ideas to the above email. Thank you for listening,Kevin and Niseemawww.tffpp.orghttps://www.kevinlmhc.comwww.niseema.comwww.thepositivemindcenter.comPRODUCTION CREDITSOpening Music : Another Country, Pure Shadowfax, ShadowfaxBreak Music:" Lonely Too Long." Performed by: The Young Rascals, Written By: Eddie Brigante, Felix Cavaliere, Source: Rhino Atlantic.End Music : TFFPP Theme - Giullian Goiello for The Foundation for Positive PsychologyThe Positive Mind is produced with the help of:Engineering: Geoff BradyProducer: Connie Shannon Website Design and End Music: Giullian GioelloMarketing and PR: Jen Maguire, Maguire PR, jen@maguirepr.com
(INTRO) THEME TO A SUMMER PLACE - Percy Faith and His Orchestra, SUMMER IN THE CITY - The Lovin' Spoonful, SUMMER SAMBA (SO NICE) - Astrid Gilberto, A SUMMER SONG - Chad and Jeremy, HOT FUN IN THE SUMMERTIME - Sly and the Family Stone, THE SUMMER - Yo La Tengo, EVERYTHING IS SUNSHINE - The Hollies, GROOVIN' - The Young Rascals, FOURTH OF JULY - Dave Alvin, MAIS QUE NADA - Sergio Mendes & Brazil 66, LONG HOT SUMMER - The Style Council, HOT CHILD IN THE CITY - Nick Gilder, THAT SUMMER FEELING - Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, PETER GUNN - Duane Eddy, HOW BIZARRE - OMC, CALIFORNIA SUN - The Rivieras, SUNNY AFTERNOON - The Kinks, SUMMERTIME - Ella Fitzgerald/Louis, CRUEL SUMMER - Bananarama, SEE YOU IN SEPTEMBER - The Happenings, THE SHADOW OF YOUR SMILE - Astrud Gilberto, 96 DEGREES IN THE SHADE - Third World, DANCING IN THE STREETS - Martha and the Vandellas, I NEED LOVE - Luka Bloom, SUMMER FLING - K.D. Lang, ISLAND IN THE SUN - Weezer, GIRL FROM IPANEMA - Antonio Carlos Jobim, DON'T WORRY BABY - The Beach Boys, UP ON THE ROOF - The Drifters, I WAS MADE FOR SUNNY DAYS - The Weepies, THE TIDE IS HIGH - Blondie, THE 59TH STREET BRIDGE SONG - Simon & Garfunkel, RIDIN' IN MY CAR - NRBQ, CAN I KICK IT - A Tribe Called Quest, SOUTH WIND OF SUMMER - The Flatlanders, THE SUMMER WIND - Frank Sinatra
How To Play Good Lovin On The SaxophoneGood Lovin' by The Young Rascals is a wonderful song that has stood the test of time.And in the film clip they are wearing VERY strange clothes that I'm sure they are very embarrassed about now….. It is perfectly suited to playing along with on the saxophone – especially for us here with our beginner saxophone lessons.In this saxophone podcast we learn how to play Good Lovin on the Alto saxophone.Good Lovin Saxophone.Good Lovin Saxophone Lesson.Good Lovin Saxophone Lessons.Good Loving saxophone.How To Play Good Lovin on the Saxophone.How To Play Good Lovin On The Alto Saxophone.Good Lovin The Young Rascals.Good Loving by The Young Rascals .The Young Rascals Saxophone Lessons.Online Saxophone Lessons.Beginner Saxophone Lessons.How To Play The Saxophone.How to Play the Sax.:-)At howToPlayTheSax.com we are all about quick wins, tips, hints and suggestions, as well as helping you take your saxophone playing to the next level.And we have some fun along the way.Even if you have never played the saxophone before, we can get you started with learning how to play the saxophone and have you rocking and rolling in no time.The Cheat Sheets inside the Members Area (and the Members Forums) at HowToPlayTheSax.com make learning how to play the saxophone easier too.This is an edited and abbreviated saxophone lesson (actually it's a combination of TWO video saxophone lessons). The full video saxophone lesson for this song inside the Members Area at HowToPlayTheSax.com runs for 44 minutes.Please don't forget to Have Fun, Play Saxophone, Be Awesome and Repeat
Early in 1965, FELIX CAVALIERE formed the ‘Young Rascals' with Dino Danelli, Eddie Brigati, and Gene Cornish. That October, they caught the attention of promoter/manager Sid Bernstein with their high-energy set at Long Island's elite club, Barge. Signed to Atlantic Records, and now called The Rascals, the mega hit “Good Lovin'” struck No. 1 in February 1966. They followed suit with a string of hits like “I've Been Lonely Too Long,” “Groovin'(No. 1 in 1967), “How Can I Be Sure,” “A Girl Like You,” “A Beautiful Morning,” and “People Got to Be Free” (No. 1 in 1968). The Rascals are considered the best ‘blue-eyed soul' group to come out of the 1960s, as well as one of the groups with the most record sales. He is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriter Hall of Fame, Vocal Group Hall of Fame, and Grammy Hall of Fame. FELIX CAVALIERE calls Nashville home base, where he is constantly collaborating and writing new material. He just released his book "Memoir of a Rascal" and has an active tour schedule with FELIX CAVALIERE'S RASCALS. felixcavalieremusic.com
Felix Cavaliere on Breaking it Down with Frank MacKay - Rascals & Young Rascals by Frank MacKay
On this episode of Analog Smile, Sherry speaks with Felix Cavaliere. The message has always been to stand for peace, love, and happiness. For legendary singer songwriter, Felix Cavaliere, making people feel good is primary to his illustrious 50-year career that includes the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriter Hall of Fame, Vocal Group Hall of Fame, and Grammy Hall of Fame. Few artists can claim they defined a generation; Felix Cavaliere continues to remind us to keep listening for the world's beauty. The classically trained pianist, born in Pelham, New York, idolized Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, and Sam Cooke. He embraced the Hammond Organ and pioneered a fresh, rock and roll sound. Upon leaving Syracuse University to form the Escorts, and become a backup musician for Joey Dee and the Starliters and later Sandy Scott, who knew that his legendary next stop would be the beginning of an illustrious hall of fame career. Early in 1965, he formed the ‘Young Rascals' with Dino Danelli, Eddie Brigati, and Gene Cornish. That October, they caught the attention of promoter/manager Sid Bernstein with their high-energy set at Long Island's elite club, Barge. Signed to Atlantic Records, and now called The Rascals, the mega hit “Good Lovin'” struck No. 1 in February 1966. They followed suit with a string of hits like “I've Been Lonely Too Long,” “Groovin'(No. 1 in 1967), “How Can I Be Sure,” “A Girl Like You,” “A Beautiful Morning,” and “People Got to Be Free” (No. 1 in 1968). The Rascals are considered the best ‘blue-eyed soul' group to come out of the 1960s, as well as one of the groups with the most record sales. By the early 70s, The Rascals experimented with more jazz-influenced sounds, and moved to Columbia Records. The Rascals disbanded in 1972. Felix Cavaliere's solo career thrived during this decade. He released his self-titled debut album with Todd Rundgren at the producer helm. His follow-up albums were Destiny (1974), Castles in the Air (1979) (Castle in the Air produced another Top 40 hit – “Only a Heart Sees” reached No. 2), Dreams in Motion (1994) and in 2008 he collaborated with Stax guitar legend, Steve Cropper, on the Grammy-nominated Nudge it Up a Notch and again in 2010 with Midnight Flyer. He calls Nashville home base, where he is constantly collaborating and writing new material. He has an active tour schedule with Felix Cavaliere's Rascals. We chat about his autobiography "Memoir Of A Rascal", living in Nashville, his musical legacy, and much more! Visit his website felixcavalieremusic.com for more details.
Felix Cavaliere is an icon! -He wrote timeless classic songs such as Groovin, It's a Beautiful Morning and People got to be Free. The Young Rascals were the kings of blue eyed soul!- He now has a great book out "Memoir of a Rascal." Listen to Felix who by the way is still touring and kicking ass-tell some great stories about how those songs came to be. Also listen for a classic Laura Nyro story! A must listen for any music fan! Enjoy! FELIX CAVALIEREhttps://www.felixcavalieremusic.com/homeMEMOIR OF A RASCAL : https://www.amazon.com/Felix-Cavaliere-Memoir-Rascal/dp/B09V5ZHZKLLOUIE MAXLOUIE MAX IG: @louiemaxx @grindandpivotWebsite: www.grindandpivot.comFB: Louie MaxTwitter : @grindandpivotPublicity: Moxie Public Relations
Episode 134 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “In the Midnight Hour", the links between Stax, Atlantic, and Detroit, and the career of Wilson Pickett. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Mercy Mercy" by Don Covay. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I say “After Arthur Alexander had moved on to Monument Records” – I meant to say “Dot Records” here, the label that Alexander moved to *before* Monument. I also misspeak at one point and say "keyboard player Chips Moman", when I mean to say "keyboard player Spooner Oldham". This is correct in the transcript/script, I just misread it. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Pickett. The main resource I used for the biographical details of Wilson Pickett was In the Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett. Information about Stax comes primarily from two books: Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax by Rob Bowman, and Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. The episodes of Cocaine and Rhinestones I reference are the ones on Owen Bradley and the Nashville A-Team. And information on the Falcons comes from Marv Goldberg. Pickett's complete Atlantic albums can be found in this excellent ten-CD set. For those who just want the hits, this single-CD compilation is significantly cheaper. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I start, just to say that this episode contains some discussion of domestic abuse, drug use, and abuse of employees by their employer, and one mention of an eating disorder. Also, this episode is much longer than normal, because we've got a lot to fit in. Today we're going to move away from Motown, and have a look at a record recorded in the studios of their great rival Stax records, though not released on that label. But the record we're going to look at is from an artist who was a bridge between the Detroit soul of Motown and the southern soul of Stax, an artist who had a foot in both camps, and whose music helped to define soul while also being closer than that of any other soul man to the music made by the white rock musicians of the period. We're going to look at Stax, and Muscle Shoals, and Atlantic Records, and at Wilson Pickett and "In the Midnight Hour" [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett: "In the Midnight Hour"] Wilson Pickett never really had a chance. His father, Wilson senior, was known in Alabama for making moonshine whisky, and spent time in prison for doing just that -- and his young son was the only person he told the location of his still. Eventually, Wilson senior moved to Detroit to start earning more money, leaving his family at home at first. Wilson junior and his mother moved up to Detroit to be with his father, but they had to leave his older siblings in Alabama, and his mother would shuttle between Michigan and Alabama, trying vainly to look after all her children. Eventually, Wilson's mother got pregnant while she was down in Alabama, which broke up his parents' marriage, and Wilson moved back down to Alabama permanently, to live on a farm with his mother. But he never got on with his mother, who was physically abusive to him -- as he himself would later be to his children, and to his partners, and to his bandmates. The one thing that Wilson did enjoy about his life in Alabama was the gospel music, and he became particularly enamoured of two gospel singers, Archie Brownlee of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Blind Boys, "Will My Jesus Be Waiting?"] And Julius Cheeks of the Sensational Nightingales: [Excerpt: The Sensational Nightingales, "God's World Will Never Pass Away"] Wilson determined to become a gospel singer himself, but he couldn't stand living with his mother in rural Alabama, and decided to move up to be with his father and his father's new girlfriend in Detroit. Once he moved to Detroit, he started attending Northwestern High School, which at the time was also being attended by Norman Whitfield, Florence Ballard, and Melvin Franklin. Pickett also became friendly with Aretha Franklin, though she didn't attend the same school -- she went to school at Northern, with Smokey Robinson -- and he started attending services at New Bethel Church, the church where her father preached. This was partly because Rev. Franklin was one of the most dynamic preachers around, but also because New Bethel Church would regularly feature performances by the most important gospel performers of the time -- Pickett saw the Soul Stirrers perform there, with Sam Cooke singing lead, and of course also saw Aretha singing there. He joined a few gospel groups, first joining one called the Sons of Zion, but he was soon poached by a more successful group, the Violinaires. It was with the Violinaires that he made what is almost certainly his first recording -- a track that was released as a promo single, but never got a wide release at the time: [Excerpt: The Violinaires, "Sign of the Judgement"] The Violinaires were only moderately successful on the gospel circuit, but Pickett was already sure he was destined for bigger things. He had a rivalry with David Ruffin, in particular, constantly mocking Ruffin and saying that he would never amount to anything, while Wilson Pickett was the greatest. But after a while, he realised that gospel wasn't where he was going to make his mark. Partly his change in direction was motivated by financial concern -- he'd physically attacked his father and been kicked out of his home, and he was also married while still a teenager, and had a kid who needed feeding. But also, he was aware of a certain level of hypocrisy among his more religious acquaintances. Aretha Franklin had two kids, aged only sixteen, and her father, the Reverend Franklin, had fathered a child with a twelve-year-old, was having an affair with the gospel singer Clara Ward, and was hanging around blues clubs all the time. Most importantly, he realised that the audiences he was singing to in church on Sunday morning were mostly still drunk from Saturday night. As he later put it "I might as well be singing rock 'n' roll as singing to a drunken audience. I might as well make me some money." And this is where the Falcons came in. The Falcons were a doo-wop group that had been formed by a Black singer, Eddie Floyd, and a white singer, Bob Manardo. They'd both recruited friends, including bass singer Willie Schofield, and after performing locally they'd decided to travel to Chicago to audition for Mercury Records. When they got there, they found that you couldn't audition for Mercury in Chicago, you had to go to New York, but they somehow persuaded the label to sign them anyway -- in part because an integrated group was an unusual thing. They recorded one single for Mercury, produced by Willie Dixon who was moonlighting from Chess: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Baby That's It"] But then Manardo was drafted, and the group's other white member, Tom Shetler, decided to join up along with him. The group went through some other lineup changes, and ended up as Eddie Floyd, Willie Schofield, Mack Rice, guitarist Lance Finnie, and lead singer Joe Stubbs, brother of Levi. The group released several singles on small labels owned by their manager, before having a big hit with "You're So Fine", the record we heard about them recording last episode: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "You're So Fine"] That made number two on the R&B charts and number seventeen on the pop charts. They recorded several follow-ups, including "Just For Your Love", which made number 26 on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Just For Your Love"] To give you some idea of just how interrelated all the different small R&B labels were at this point, that was originally recorded and released on Chess records. But as Roquel Davis was at that point working for Chess, he managed to get the rights to reissue it on Anna Records, the label he co-owned with the Gordy sisters -- and the re-released record was distributed by Gone Records, one of George Goldner's labels. The group also started to tour supporting Marv Johnson. But Willie Schofield was becoming dissatisfied. He'd written "You're So Fine", but he'd only made $500 from what he was told was a million-selling record. He realised that in the music business, the real money was on the business side, not the music side, so while staying in the Falcons he decided he was going to go into management too. He found the artist he was going to manage while he was walking to his car, and heard somebody in one of the buildings he passed singing Elmore James' then-current blues hit "The Sky is Crying": [Excerpt: Elmore James, "The Sky is Crying"] The person he heard singing that song, and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, was of course Wilson Pickett, and Schofield signed him up to a management contract -- and Pickett was eager to sign, knowing that Schofield was a successful performer himself. The intention was at first that Schofield would manage Pickett as a solo performer, but then Joe Stubbs got ideas above his station, and started insisting that the group be called "Joe Stubbs and the Falcons", which put the others' backs up, and soon Stubbs was out of the group. This experience may have been something that his brother later had in mind -- in the late sixties, when Motown started trying to promote groups as Lead Singer and The Group, Levi Stubbs always refused to allow his name to go in front of the Four Tops. So the Falcons were without a lead singer. They tried a few other singers in their circle, including Marvin Gaye, but were turned down. So in desperation, they turned to Pickett. This wasn't a great fit -- the group, other than Schofield, thought that Pickett was "too Black", both in that he had too much gospel in his voice, and literally in that he was darker-skinned than the rest of the group (something that Schofield, as someone who was darker than the rest of the group but less dark than Pickett, took offence at). Pickett, in turn, thought that the Falcons were too poppy, and not really the kind of thing he was at all interested in doing. But they were stuck with each other, and had to make the most of it, even though Pickett's early performances were by all accounts fairly dreadful. He apparently came in in the wrong key on at least one occasion, and another time froze up altogether and couldn't sing. Even when he did sing, and in tune, he had no stage presence, and he later said “I would trip up, fall on the stage and the group would rehearse me in the dressing room after every show. I would get mad, ‘cos I wanted to go out and look at the girls as well! They said, ‘No, you got to rehearse, Oscar.' They called me Oscar. I don't know why they called me Oscar, I didn't like that very much.” Soon, Joe Stubbs was back in the group, and there was talk of the group getting rid of Pickett altogether. But then they went into the studio to record a song that Sam Cooke had written for the group, "Pow! You're in Love". The song had been written for Stubbs to sing, but at the last minute they decided to give Pickett the lead instead: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Pow! You're in Love"] Pickett was now secure as the group's lead singer, but the group weren't having any success with records. They were, though, becoming a phenomenal live act -- so much so that on one tour, where James Brown was the headliner, Brown tried to have the group kicked off the bill, because he felt that Pickett was stealing his thunder. Eventually, the group's manager set up his own record label, Lu Pine Records, which would become best known as the label that released the first record by the Primettes, who later became the Supremes. Lu Pine released the Falcons' single "I Found a Love", after the group's management had first shopped it round to other labels to try to get them to put it out: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "I Found a Love"] That song, based on the old Pentecostal hymn "Yes Lord", was written by Pickett and Schofield, but the group's manager, Robert West, also managed to get his name on the credits. The backing group, the Ohio Untouchables, would later go on to become better known as The Ohio Players. One of the labels that had turned that record down was Atlantic Records, because Jerry Wexler hadn't heard any hit potential in the song. But then the record started to become successful locally, and Wexler realised his mistake. He got Lu Pine to do a distribution deal with Atlantic, giving Atlantic full rights to the record, and it became a top ten R&B hit. But by this point, Pickett was sick of working with the Falcons, and he'd decided to start trying for a solo career. His first solo single was on the small label Correc-Tone, and was co-produced by Robert Bateman, and featured the Funk Brothers as instrumental backing, and the Primettes on vocals. I've seen some claims that the Andantes are on there too, but I can't make them out -- but I can certainly make out the future Supremes: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Let Me Be Your Boy"] That didn't do anything, and Pickett kept recording with the Falcons for a while, as well as putting out his solo records. But then Willie Schofield got drafted, and the group split up. Their manager hired another group, The Fabulous Playboys, to be a new Falcons group, but in 1964 he got shot in a dispute over the management of Mary Wells, and had to give up working in the music industry. Pickett's next single, which he co-wrote with Robert Bateman and Sonny Schofield, was to be the record that changed his career forever. "If You Need Me" once again featured the Funk Brothers and the Andantes, and was recorded for Correc-Tone: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "If You Need Me"] Jerry Wexler was again given the opportunity to put the record out on Atlantic, and once again decided against it. Instead, he offered to buy the song's publishing, and he got Solomon Burke to record it, in a version produced by Bert Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] Burke wasn't fully aware, when he cut that version, that Wilson Pickett, who was his friend, had recorded his own version. He became aware, though, when Double-L Records, a label co-owned by Lloyd Price, bought the Correc-Tone master and released Pickett's version nationally, at the same time as Burke's version came out. The two men were annoyed that they'd been put into unwitting competition, and so started an unofficial nonaggression pact -- every time Burke was brought into a radio station to promote his record, he'd tell the listeners that he was there to promote Wilson Pickett's new single. Meanwhile, when Pickett went to radio stations, he'd take the opportunity to promote the new record he'd written for his good friend Solomon Burke, which the listeners should definitely check out. The result was that both records became hits -- Pickett's scraped the lower reaches of the R&B top thirty, while Burke, as he was the bigger star, made number two on the R&B chart and got into the pop top forty. Pickett followed it up with a soundalike, "It's Too Late", which managed to make the R&B top ten as there was no competition from Burke. At this point, Jerry Wexler realised that he'd twice had the opportunity to release a record with Wilson Pickett singing, twice he'd turned the chance down, and twice the record had become a hit. He realised that it was probably a good idea to sign Pickett directly to Atlantic and avoid missing out. He did check with Pickett if Pickett was annoyed about the Solomon Burke record -- Pickett's response was "I need the bread", and Wilson Pickett was now an Atlantic artist. This was at the point when Atlantic was in something of a commercial slump -- other than the records Bert Berns was producing for the Drifters and Solomon Burke, they were having no hits, and they were regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, rooted in a version of R&B that still showed its roots in jazz, rather than the new sounds that were taking over the industry in the early sixties. But they were still a bigger label than anything else Pickett had recorded for, and he seized the opportunity to move into the big time. To start with, Atlantic teamed Pickett up with someone who seemed like the perfect collaborator -- Don Covay, a soul singer and songwriter who had his roots in hard R&B and gospel music but had written hits for people like Chubby Checker. The two got together and recorded a song they wrote together, "I'm Gonna Cry (Cry Baby)": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "I'm Gonna Cry (Cry Baby)"] That did nothing commercially -- and gallingly for Pickett, on the same day, Atlantic released a single Covay had written for himself, "Mercy Mercy", and that ended up going to number one on the R&B chart and making the pop top forty. As "I'm Gonna Cry" didn't work out, Atlantic decided to try to change tack, and paired Pickett with their established hitmaker Bert Berns, and a duet partner, Tami Lyn, for what Pickett would later describe as "one of the weirdest sessions on me I ever heard in my life", a duet on a Mann and Weil song, "Come Home Baby": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett and Tami Lyn, "Come Home Baby"] Pickett later said of that track, "it didn't sell two records", but while it wasn't a hit, it was very popular among musicians -- a few months later Mick Jagger would produce a cover version of it on Immediate Records, with Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, and the Georgie Fame brass section backing a couple of unknown singers: [Excerpt: Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, "Come Home Baby"] Sadly for Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, that didn't get past being issued as a promotional record, and never made it to the shops. Meanwhile, Pickett went out on tour again, substituting on a package tour for Clyde McPhatter, who had to drop out when his sister died. Also on the tour was Pickett's old bandmate from the Falcons, Mack Rice, now performing as Sir Mack Rice, who was promoting a single he'd just released on a small label, which had been produced by Andre Williams. The song had originally been called "Mustang Mama", but Aretha Franklin had suggested he call it "Mustang Sally" instead: [Excerpt: Sir Mack Rice, "Mustang Sally"] Pickett took note of the song, though he didn't record it just yet -- and in the meantime, the song was picked up by the white rock group The Young Rascals, who released their version as the B-side of their number one hit, "Good Lovin'": [Excerpt: The Young Rascals, "Mustang Sally"] Atlantic's problems with having hits weren't only problems with records they made themselves -- they were also having trouble getting any big hits with Stax records. As we discussed in the episode on "Green Onions", Stax were being distributed by Atlantic, and in 1963 they'd had a minor hit with "These Arms of Mine" by Otis Redding: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "These Arms of Mine"] But throughout 1964, while the label had some R&B success with its established stars, it had no real major breakout hits, and it seemed to be floundering a bit -- it wasn't doing as badly as Atlantic itself, but it wasn't doing wonderfully. It wasn't until the end of the year when the label hit on what would become its defining sound, when for the first time Redding collaborated with Stax studio guitarist and producer Steve Cropper on a song: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Mr. Pitiful"] That record would point the way towards Redding's great artistic triumphs of the next couple of years, which we'll look at in a future episode. But it also pointed the way towards a possible future sound for Atlantic. Atlantic had signed a soul duo, Sam & Dave, who were wonderful live performers but who had so far not managed to translate those live performances to record. Jerry Wexler thought that perhaps Steve Cropper could help them do that, and made a suggestion to Jim Stewart at Stax -- Atlantic would loan out Sam & Dave to the label. They'd remain signed to Atlantic, but make their records at Stax studios, and they'd be released as Stax records. Their first single for Stax, "A Place Nobody Can Find", was produced by Cropper, and was written by Stax songwriter Dave Porter: [Excerpt: Sam and Dave, "A Place Nobody Can Find"] That wasn't a hit, but soon Porter would start collaborating with another songwriter, Isaac Hayes, and would write a string of hits for the duo. But in order to formalise the loan-out of Sam and Dave, Atlantic also wanted to formalise their arrangement with Stax. Previously they'd operated on a handshake basis -- Wexler and Stewart had a mutual respect, and they simply agreed that Stax would give Atlantic the option to distribute their stuff. But now they entered into a formal, long-term contract, and for a nominal sum of one dollar, Jim Stewart gave Atlantic the distribution rights to all past Stax records and to all future records they released for the next few years. Or at least, Stewart *thought* that the agreement he was making was formalising the distribution agreement. What the contract actually said -- and Stewart never bothered to have this checked over by an entertainment lawyer, because he trusted Wexler -- was that Stax would, for the sum of one dollar, give Atlantic *permanent ownership* of all their records, in return. The precise wording was "You hereby sell, assign and transfer to us, our successors or assigns, absolutely and forever and without any limitations or restrictions whatever, not specifically set forth herein, the entire right, title and interest in and to each of such masters and to each of the performances embodied thereon." Jerry Wexler would later insist that he had no idea that particular clause was in the contract, and that it had been slipped in there by the lawyers. Jim Stewart still thought of himself as the owner of an independent record label, but without realising it he'd effectively become an employee of Atlantic. Atlantic started to take advantage of this new arrangement by sending other artists down to Memphis to record with the Stax musicians. Unlike Sam and Dave, these would still be released as Atlantic records rather than Stax ones, and Jerry Wexler and Atlantic's engineer Tom Dowd would be involved in the production, but the records would be made by the Stax team. The first artist to benefit from this new arrangement was Wilson Pickett, who had been wanting to work at Stax for a while, being a big fan of Otis Redding in particular. Pickett was teamed up with Steve Cropper, and together they wrote the song that would define Pickett's career. The seeds of "In the Midnight Hour" come from two earlier recordings. One is a line from his record with the Falcons, "I Found a Love": [Excerpt: The Falcons, "I Found a Love"] The other is a line from a record that Clyde McPhatter had made with Billy Ward and the Dominoes back in 1951: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Do Something For Me"] Those lines about a "midnight hour" and "love come tumbling down" were turned into the song that would make Pickett's name, but exactly who did what has been the cause of some disagreement. The official story is that Steve Cropper took those lines and worked with Pickett to write the song, as a straight collaboration. Most of the time, though, Pickett would claim that he'd written the song entirely by himself, and that Cropper had stolen the credit for that and their other credited collaborations. But other times he would admit "He worked with me quite a bit on that one". Floyd Newman, a regular horn player at Stax, would back up Pickett, saying "Every artist that came in here, they'd have their songs all together, but when they leave they had to give up a piece of it, to a certain person. But this person, you couldn't be mad at him, because he didn't own Stax, Jim Stewart owned Stax. And this guy was doing what Jim Stewart told him to do, so you can't be mad at him." But on the other hand, Willie Schofield, who collaborated with Pickett on "I Found a Love", said of writing that "Pickett didn't have any chord pattern. He had a couple of lyrics. I'm working with him, giving him the chord change, the feel of it. Then we're going in the studio and I've gotta show the band how to play it because we didn't have arrangers. That's part of the songwriting. But he didn't understand. He felt he wrote the lyrics so that's it." Given that Cropper didn't take the writing credit on several other records he participated in, that he did have a consistent pattern of making classic hit records, that "In the Midnight Hour" is stylistically utterly different from Pickett's earlier work but very similar to songs like "Mr. Pitiful" cowritten by Cropper, and Pickett's longstanding habit of being dismissive of anyone else's contributions to his success, I think the most likely version of events is that Cropper did have a lot to do with how the song came together, and probably deserves his credit, but we'll never know for sure exactly what went on in their collaboration. Whoever wrote it, "In the Midnight Hour" became one of the all-time classics of soul: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] But another factor in making the record a success -- and in helping reinvent the Stax sound -- was actually Jerry Wexler. Wexler had started attending sessions at the Stax studios, and was astonished by how different the recording process was in the South. And Wexler had his own input into the session that produced "In the Midnight Hour". His main suggestion was that rather than play the complicated part that Cropper had come up with, the guitarist should simplify, and just play chords along with Al Jackson's snare drum. Wexler was enthusing about a new dance craze called the Jerk, which had recently been the subject of a hit record by a group called the Larks: [Excerpt: The Larks, "The Jerk"] The Jerk, as Wexler demonstrated it to the bemused musicians, involved accenting the second and fourth beats of the bar, and delaying them very slightly. And this happened to fit very well with the Stax studio sound. The Stax studio was a large room, with quite a lot of reverb, and the musicians played together without using headphones, listening to the room sound. Because of this, to stay in time, Steve Cropper had started taking his cue not just from the sound, but from watching Al Jackson's left hand going to the snare drum. This had led to him playing when he saw Jackson's hand go down on the two and four, rather than when the sound of the snare drum reached his ears -- a tiny, fraction-of-a-second, anticipation of the beat, before everyone would get back in sync on the one of the next bar, as Jackson hit the kick drum. This had in turn evolved into the whole group playing the backbeat with a fractional delay, hitting it a tiny bit late -- as if you're listening to the echo of those beats rather than to the beat itself. If anyone other than utterly exceptional musicians had tried this, it would have ended up as a car crash, but Jackson was one of the best timekeepers in the business, and many musicians would say that at this point in time Steve Cropper was *the* best rhythm guitarist in the world, so instead it gave the performances just enough sense of looseness to make them exciting. This slight delayed backbeat was something the musicians had naturally fallen into doing, but it fit so well with Wexler's conception of the Jerk that they started deliberately exaggerating it -- still only delaying the backbeat minutely, but enough to give the record a very different sound from anything that was out there: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] That delayed backbeat sound would become the signature sound of Stax for the next several years, and you will hear it on the run of classic singles they would put out for the next few years by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Booker T. and the MGs, Eddie Floyd and others. The sound of that beat is given extra emphasis by the utter simplicity of Al Jackson's playing. Jackson had a minimalist drum kit, but played it even more minimally -- other than the occasional fill, he never hit his tom at all, just using the kick drum, snare, and hi-hat -- and the hi-hat was not even miced, with any hi-hat on the actual records just being the result of leakage from the other mics. But that simplicity gave the Stax records a power that almost no other records from the period had: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] "In the Midnight Hour" made number one on the R&B charts, and made number twenty-one on the pop charts, instantly turning Pickett from an also-ran into one of the major stars of soul music. The follow-up, a soundalike called "Don't Fight It", also made the top five on the R&B charts. At his next session, Pickett was reunited with his old bandmate Eddie Floyd. Floyd would soon go on to have his own hits at Stax, most notably with "Knock on Wood", but at this point he was working as a staff songwriter at Stax, coming up with songs like "Comfort Me" for Carla Thomas: [Excerpt: Carla Thomas, "Comfort Me"] Floyd had teamed up with Steve Cropper, and they'd been... shall we say, "inspired"... by a hit for the Marvelettes, "Beechwood 45789", written by Marvin Gaye, Gwen Gordy and Mickey Stevenson: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Beechwood 45789"] Cropper and Floyd had come up with their own song, "634-5789", which Pickett recorded, and which became an even bigger hit than "In the Midnight Hour", making number thirteen on the pop charts as well as being Pickett's second R&B number one: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "634-5789"] At the same session, they cut another single. This one was inspired by an old gospel song, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do", recorded by Sister Rosetta Tharpe among others: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do"] The song was rewritten by Floyd, Cropper, and Pickett, and was also a moderate R&B hit, though nowhere as big as "634-5789": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do"] That would be the last single that Pickett recorded at Stax, though -- though the reasoning has never been quite clear. Pickett was, to put it as mildly as possible, a difficult man to work with, and he seems to have had some kind of falling out with Jim Stewart -- though Stewart always said that the problem was actually that Pickett didn't get on with the musicians. But the musicians disagree, saying they had a good working relationship -- Pickett was often an awful person, but only when drunk, and he was always sober in the studio. It seems likely, actually, that Pickett's move away from the Stax studios was more to do with someone else -- Pickett's friend Don Covay was another Atlantic artist recording at Stax, and Pickett had travelled down with him when Covay had recorded "See Saw" there: [Excerpt: Don Covay, "See Saw"] Everyone involved agreed that Covay was an eccentric personality, and that he rubbed Jim Stewart up the wrong way. There is also a feeling among some that Stewart started to resent the way Stax's sound was being used for Atlantic artists, like he was "giving away" hits, even though Stax's company got the publishing on the songs Cropper was co-writing, and he was being paid for the studio time. Either way, after that session, Atlantic didn't send any of its artists down to Stax, other than Sam & Dave, who Stax regarded as their own artists. Pickett would never again record at Stax, and possibly coincidentally once he stopped writing songs with Steve Cropper he would also never again have a major hit record with a self-penned song. But Jerry Wexler still wanted to keep working in Southern studios, and with Southern musicians, and so he took Pickett to FAME studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. We looked, back in the episode on Arthur Alexander, at the start of FAME studios, but after Arthur Alexander had moved on to Monument Records, Rick Hall had turned FAME into a home for R&B singers looking for crossover success. While Stax employed both Black and white musicians, FAME studios had an all-white rhythm section, with a background in country music, but that had turned out to be absolutely perfect for performers like the soul singer Joe Tex, who had himself started out in country before switching to soul, and who recorded classics like "Hold What You Got" at the studio: [Excerpt: Joe Tex, "Hold What You Got"] That had been released on FAME's record label, and Jerry Wexler had been impressed and had told Rick Hall to call him the next time he thought he had a hit. When Hall did call Wexler, Wexler was annoyed -- Hall phoned him in the middle of a party. But Hall was insistent. "You said to call you next time I've got a hit, and this is a number one". Wexler relented and listened to the record down the phone. This is what he heard: [Excerpt: Percy Sledge, "When a Man Loves a Woman"] Atlantic snapped up "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge, and it went to number one on the pop charts -- the first record from any of the Southern soul studios to do so. In Wexler's eyes, FAME was now the new Stax. Wexler had a bit of culture shock when working at FAME, as it was totally unlike anything he'd experienced before. The records he'd been involved with in New York had been mostly recorded by slumming jazz musicians, very technical players who would read the music from charts, and Stax had had Steve Cropper as de facto musical director, leading the musicians and working out their parts with them. By contrast, the process used at FAME, and at most of the other studios in what Charles Hughes describes as the "country-soul triangle" of Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and Nashville, was the process that had been developed by Owen Bradley and the Nashville A-Team in Nashville (and for a fuller description of this, see the excellent episodes on Bradley and the A-Team in the great country music podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones). The musicians would hear a play through of the song by its writer, or a demo, would note down the chord sequences using the Nashville number system rather than a more detailed score, do a single run-through to get the balance right, and then record. Very few songs required a second take. For Pickett's first session at FAME, and most subsequent ones, the FAME rhythm section of keyboard player Spooner Oldham, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, bass player Junior Lowe and drummer Roger Hawkins was augmented with a few other players -- Memphis guitarists Chips Moman and Tommy Cogbill, and the horn section who'd played on Pickett's Stax records, moonlighting. And for the first track they recorded there, Wexler wanted them to do something that would become a signature trick for Pickett over the next couple of years -- record a soul cover version of a rock cover version of a soul record. Wexler's thinking was that the best way for Pickett to cross over to a white audience was to do songs that were familiar to them from white pop cover versions, but songs that had originated in Pickett's soul style. At the time, as well, the hard backbeat sound on Pickett's hits was one that was more associated with white rock music than with soul, as was the emphasis on rhythm guitar. To modern ears, Pickett's records are almost the definition of soul music, but at the time they were absolutely considered crossover records. And so in the coming months Pickett would record cover versions of Don Covay's "Mercy Mercy", Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", and Irma Thomas' "Time is on My Side", all of which had been previously covered by the Rolling Stones -- and two of which had their publishing owned by Atlantic's publishing subsidiary. For this single, though, he was recording a song which had started out as a gospel-inspired dance song by the R&B singer Chris Kenner: [Excerpt: Chris Kenner, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] That had been a minor hit towards the bottom end of the Hot One Hundred, but it had been taken up by a lot of other musicians, and become one of those songs everyone did as album filler -- Rufus Thomas had done a version at Stax, for example. But then a Chicano garage band called Cannibal and the Headhunters started performing it live, and their singer forgot the lyrics and just started singing "na na na na", giving the song a chorus it hadn't had in its original version. Their version, a fake-live studio recording, made the top thirty: [Excerpt: Cannibal and the Headhunters, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] Pickett's version was drastically rearranged, and included a guitar riff that Chips Moman had come up with, some new lyrics that Pickett introduced, and a bass intro that Jerry Wexler came up with, a run of semiquavers that Junior Lowe found very difficult to play. The musicians spent so long working on that intro that Pickett got annoyed and decided to take charge. He yelled "Come on! One-two-three!" and the horn players, with the kind of intuition that comes from working together for years, hit a chord in unison. He yelled "One-two-three!" again, and they hit another chord, and Lowe went into the bass part. They'd found their intro. They ran through that opening one more time, then recorded a take: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] At this time, FAME was still recording live onto a single-track tape, and so all the mistakes were caught on tape with no opportunity to fix anything, like when all but one of the horn players forget to come in on the first line of one verse: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] But that kind of mistake only added to the feel of the track, which became Pickett's biggest hit yet -- his third number one on the R&B chart, and his first pop top ten. As the formula of recording a soul cover version of a rock cover version of a soul song had clearly worked, the next single Pickett recorded was "Mustang Sally", which as we saw had originally been an R&B record by Pickett's friend Mack Rice, before being covered by the Young Rascals. Pickett's version, though, became the definitive version: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] But it very nearly wasn't. That was recorded in a single take, and the musicians went into the control room to listen to it -- and the metal capstan on the tape machine flew off while it was rewinding. The tape was cut into dozens of tiny fragments, which the machine threw all over the room in all directions. Everyone was horrified, and Pickett, who was already known for his horrific temper, looked as if he might actually kill someone. Tom Dowd, Atlantic's genius engineer who had been a physicist on the Manhattan Project while still a teenager, wasn't going to let something as minor as that stop him. He told everyone to take a break for half an hour, gathered up all the randomly-thrown bits of tape, and spliced them back together. The completed recording apparently has forty splices in it, which would mean an average of a splice every four seconds. Have a listen to this thirty-second segment and see if you can hear any at all: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] That segment has the one part where I *think* I can hear one splice in the whole track, a place where the rhythm hiccups very slightly -- and that might well just be the drummer trying a fill that didn't quite come off. "Mustang Sally" was another pop top thirty hit, and Wexler's crossover strategy seemed to have been proved right -- so much so that Pickett was now playing pretty much all-white bills. He played, for example, at Murray the K's last ever revue at the Brooklyn Paramount, where the other artists on the bill were Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the Young Rascals, Al Kooper's Blues Project, Cream, and the Who. Pickett found the Who extremely unprofessional, with their use of smoke bombs and smashing their instruments, but they eventually became friendly. Pickett's next single was his version of "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", the Solomon Burke song that the Rolling Stones had also covered, and that was a minor hit, but his next few records after that didn't do particularly well. He did though have a big hit with his cover version of a song by a group called Dyke and the Blazers. Pickett's version of "Funky Broadway" took him to the pop top ten: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Funky Broadway"] It did something else, as well. You may have noticed that two of the bands on that Paramount bill were groups that get called "blue-eyed soul". "Soul" had originally been a term used for music made by Black people, but increasingly the term was being used by white people for their music, just as rock and roll and rhythm and blues before it had been picked up on by white musicians. And so as in those cases, Black musicians were moving away from the term -- though it would never be abandoned completely -- and towards a new slang term, "funk". And Pickett was the first person to get a song with "funk" in the title onto the pop charts. But that would be the last recording Pickett would do at FAME for a couple of years. As with Stax, Pickett was moved away by Atlantic because of problems with another artist, this time to do with a session with Aretha Franklin that went horribly wrong, which we'll look at in a future episode. From this point on, Pickett would record at American Sound Studios in Memphis, a studio owned and run by Chips Moman, who had played on many of Pickett's records. Again, Pickett was playing with an all-white house band, but brought in a couple of Black musicians -- the saxophone player King Curtis, and Pickett's new touring guitarist, Bobby Womack, who had had a rough few years, being largely ostracised from the music community because of his relationship with Sam Cooke's widow. Womack wrote what might be Pickett's finest song, a song called "I'm in Love" which is a masterpiece of metrical simplicity disguised as complexity -- you could write it all down as being in straight four-four, but the pulse shifts and implies alternating bars of five and three at points: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "I'm In Love"] Womack's playing on those sessions had two effects, one on music history and one on Pickett. The effect on music history was that he developed a strong working relationship with Reggie Young, the guitarist in the American Sound studio band, and Young and Womack learned each other's styles. Young would later go on to be one of the top country session guitarists, playing on records by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Waylon Jennings and more, and he was using Womack's style of playing -- he said later "I didn't change a thing. I was playing that Womack style on country records, instead of the hillbilly stuff—it changed the whole bed of country music." The other effect, though, was a much more damaging one. Womack introduced Pickett to cocaine, and Pickett -- who was already an aggressive, violent, abusive, man, became much more so. "I'm in Love" went to number four on the R&B charts, but didn't make the pop top forty. The follow-up, a remake of "Stagger Lee", did decently on the pop charts but less well on the R&B charts. Pickett's audiences were diverging, and he was finding it more difficult to make the two come together. But he would still manage it, sporadically, throughout the sixties. One time when he did was in 1968, when he returned to Muscle Shoals and to FAME studios. In a session there, the guitarist was very insistent that Pickett should cut a version of the Beatles' most recent hit. Now obviously, this is a record that's ahead in our timeline, and which will be covered in a future episode, but I imagine that most of you won't find it too much of a spoiler when I tell you that "Hey Jude" by the Beatles was quite a big hit: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude"] What that guitarist had realised was that the tag of the song gave the perfect opportunity for ad-libbing. You all know the tag: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude"] And so on. That would be perfect for a guitar solo, and for Pickett to do some good soul shouting over. Neither Pickett nor Rick Hall were at all keen -- the Beatles record had only just dropped off number one, and it seemed like a ridiculous idea to both of them. But the guitarist kept pressing to do it, and by the time the other musicians returned from their lunch break, he'd convinced Pickett and Hall. The record starts out fairly straightforward: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Hey Jude"] But it's on the tag when it comes to life. Pickett later described recording that part -- “He stood right in front of me, as though he was playing every note I was singing. And he was watching me as I sang, and as I screamed, he was screaming with his guitar.”: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Hey Jude"] That was not Pickett's biggest hit, but it was one of the most influential. It made the career of the guitarist, Duane Allman, who Jerry Wexler insisted on signing to his own contract after that, and as Jimmy Johnson, the rhythm guitarist on the session said, "We realised then that Duane had created southern rock, in that vamp." It was big enough that Wexler pushed Pickett to record a whole series of cover versions of rock songs -- he put out versions of "Hey Joe", "Born to be Wild" and "You Keep Me Hangin' On" -- the latter going back to his old technique of covering a white cover version of a Black record, as his version copied the Vanilla Fudge's arrangement rather than the Supremes' original. But these only had very minor successes -- the most successful of them was his version of "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies. As the sixties turned into the seventies, Pickett continued having some success, but it was more erratic and less consistent. The worlds of Black and white music were drifting apart, and Pickett, who more than most had straddled both worlds, now found himself having success in neither. It didn't help that his cocaine dependency had made him into an egomaniac. At one point in the early seventies, Pickett got a residency in Las Vegas, and was making what by most standards was a great income from it. But he would complain bitterly that he was only playing the small room, not the big one in the same hotel, and that the artist playing the big room was getting better billing than him on the posters. Of course, the artist playing the big room was Elvis Presley, but that didn't matter to Pickett -- he thought he deserved to be at least that big. He was also having regular fights with his record label. Ahmet Ertegun used to tell a story -- and I'm going to repeat it here with one expletive cut out in order to get past Apple's ratings system. In Ertegun's words “Jerry Wexler never liked Crosby, Stills & Nash because they wanted so much freaking artistic autonomy. While we were arguing about this, Wilson Pickett walks in the room and comes up to Jerry and says, ‘Jerry,' and he goes, ‘Wham!' And he puts a pistol on the table. He says, ‘If that [Expletive] Tom Dowd walks into where I'm recording, I'm going to shoot him. And if you walk in, I'm going to shoot you. ‘Oh,' Jerry said. ‘That's okay, Wilson.' Then he walked out. So I said, ‘You want to argue about artistic autonomy?' ” As you can imagine, Atlantic were quite glad to get rid of Pickett when he decided he wanted to move to RCA records, who were finally trying to break into the R&B market. Unfortunately for Pickett, the executive who'd made the decision to sign him soon left the company, and as so often happens when an executive leaves, his pet project becomes the one that everyone's desperate to get rid of. RCA didn't know how to market records to Black audiences, and didn't really try, and Pickett's voice was becoming damaged from all the cocaine use. He spent the seventies, and eighties going from label to label, trying things like going disco, with no success. He also went from woman to woman, beating them up, and went through band members more and more quickly as he attacked them, too. The guitarist Marc Ribot was in Pickett's band for a short time and said, (and here again I'm cutting out an expletive) " You can write about all the extenuating circumstances, and maybe it needs to be put in historical context, but … You know why guys beat women? Because they can. And it's abuse. That's why employers beat employees, when they can. I've worked with black bandleaders and white bandleaders who are respectful, courteous and generous human beings—and then I've worked with Wilson Pickett." He was becoming more and more paranoid. He didn't turn up for his induction in the rock and roll hall of fame, where he was scheduled to perform -- instead he hid in his house, scared to leave. Pickett was repeatedly arrested throughout this time, and into the nineties, spending some time in prison, and then eventually going into rehab in 1997 after being arrested for beating up his latest partner. She dropped the charges, but the police found the cocaine in his possession and charged him with that. After getting out, he apparently mellowed out somewhat and became much easier to get along with -- still often unpleasant, especially after he'd had a drink, which he never gave up, but far less violent and more easy-going than he had been. He also had something of a comeback, sparked by an appearance in the flop film Blues Brothers 2000. He recorded a blues album, It's Harder Now, and also guested on Adlib, the comeback duets album by his old friend Don Covay, singing with him and cowriting on several songs, including "Nine Times a Man": [Excerpt: Don Covay and Wilson Pickett, "Nine Times a Man"] It's Harder Now was a solid blues-based album, in the vein of similar albums from around that time by people like Solomon Burke, and could have led to Pickett having the same kind of late-career resurgence as Johnny Cash. It was nominated for a Grammy, but lost in the category for which it was nominated to Barry White. Pickett was depressed by the loss and just decided to give up making new music, and just played the oldies circuit until 2004, at which point he became too ill to continue. The duet with Covay would be the last time he went into the studio. The story of Pickett's last year or so is a painful one, with squabbles between his partner and his children over his power of attorney while he spent long periods in hospital, suffering from kidney problems caused by his alcoholism, and also at this point from bulimia, diabetes, and more. He was ill enough that he tried to make amends with his children and his ex-wife, and succeeded as well as anyone can in that situation. On the eighteenth of January 2006, two months before his sixty-fifth birthday, his partner took him to get his hair cut and his moustache shaped, so he'd look the way he wanted to look, they ate together at his assisted living facility, and prayed together, and she left around eleven o'clock that night. Shortly thereafter, Pickett had a heart attack and died, alone, some time close to the midnight hour.
Episode 006: Six Feet Deep (Diggin' Up the Daisies Vol. 01) 1. The Rascals - My World (US 1968 - Mono Mix) Classic feel good tune from this New Jersey band that had a string of hits in their early days as The Young Rascals. This is taken from their 1968 pop-psych LP Once Upon a Dream that is strung together with trippy effects and features many highlights. It's an interesting sample to become a rap song, as it doesn't have a strong drum element but the melodic elements are ripe for the picking.2. Eric Burdon & War -Magic Mountain (US 1970 - Mono Mix Radio Edit) This one chord jam is the b-side and twin sister to hit single "Spill the Wine" and features a super punchy bass-heavy groove and classic harmonica intro that became a defining statement once re-imagined as a rap tune. It would also reappear on a "trip-hop" classic later in the next decade.3. The Grass Roots - You and Love are the Same (US 1968) Making a splash with their flower power anthem "Live for Today", this studio project for songwriters Lou Adler and PF Sloan eventually became a real band. This album cut ended up on a volume of 80's sample fodder series Ultimate Breaks and Beats and thus turned into a classic rap tune shortly after. I wonder who was the first person to have the patience to find that pounding little bridge?4. Sly & The Family Stone - Trip Through Your Heart (US 1967) This tune is one of Sly's few overtly psychedelic tunes and is taken from his band's debut that fell on deaf ears. Filled with lyrics aimed to appeal at the hippie crowd and trippy band made sound effects, this tune shows Sly starting to stumble on the formula that would eventually make him successful. 5. The Bubble Gum Machine - I Wonder (US 1968 - Mono Mix) Starting life as the Fabulous Fakes, this band of siblings and local friends changed their name before recording their lone album for Senate. The groove on this one is prime sample material and shows how deep some beat makers were getting into one-off obscurities at the time.6. Mashmakhan - I Know I've Been Wrong (Canada 1970) Surprised with a hit single from their debut album, these Canadians specialized in epic blue-eyed soul heavy on the brass arrangements. This gem features a catchy organ riff that served as inspiration for a classic golden era album cut. After a brief two year stint and follow up album the band called it a day.7. The Rotary Connection - Memory Band (US 1968) Chicago's finest featuring production from the late and great Charles Stepney, the Connection also served as the first creative outlet for young singer Minnie Ripperton, whose soaring vocals can be heard throughout this sparkling tune. The four note sitar melody on the intro would provide inspiration for not one but two classic 90's hip-hop staples.8. Elephants Memory - Mongoose (US 1970) Initially finding success scoring late the late 60's classic Midnight Cowboy, this bad of misfits eventually found success as John Lennon and Yoko Ono's backing band for a spell. In between, they'd cut an album of heavy rock from which this classic breakbeat track is taken.9. Music Machine - Come On In (US 1966 - Mono Mix) Sean Bonniwell lead this band to success with their hit single Talk Talk that was featured on their debut LP along with this groovy number. The intro served as the bridge to a gangster rap classic and shows that beat diggers on the west coast were tuned in to a sightly different frequency when it came to sample fodder.10. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced? (UK 1967 - Mono Mix) To further the last point, this hallmark of music production became source material for both a west coast bohemian rap staple and - if you listen carefully- gangster rap anthem.
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