Showing posts with label Booker T. & the M.G.'s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Booker T. & the M.G.'s. Show all posts

Monday, January 23, 2023

Booker T. & The MG's

Left to Right - Booker T. Jones, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Steve Cropper, and Al Jackson Jr.
 
I had the pleasure to see Booker T. Jones perform just last Saturday with his current band at the Edmonds Center for the Arts in Edmonds, Washington. The show is titled, Booker T: Note by Note - 60 Years of "Green Onions" and STAX Hits.

The show was fantastic! My wife and I went with her daughter Abby and husband Spencer. This is just another example of how powerful the music of the 1960's is spanning the generations and living 60 years on. Let me tell you, Booker T. never disappoints, surrounding himself with younger musicians, including his son Teddy on electric guitar, a top notch rhythm section to replicate the MG's sound, and three wonderful singers to relive the Stax records hits.

My seat, second row center. I could feel the bass and drum kit hit my chest.

I was so excited to hear Booker T. play his Hammond B3 organ with cabinet Leslie speakers (positioned left and right on stage). Many players prefer to play the Hammond through a rotating speaker cabinet known as a Leslie speaker, and named after its inventor Donald J. Leslie. The typical Leslie system is an integrated speaker/amplifier combination in which sound is emitted by a rotating horn over a stationary treble compression driver, and a rotating baffle beneath a stationary bass woofer. This creates a characteristic sound because of the constantly changing pitch shifts that result from the Doppler effect created by the moving sound sources. (Wikipedia)

Note- The godfather of the Hammond B3 is Jimmy Smith who greatly influenced Booker T. and a generation of R&B musicians as Smith is responsible for creating the link between jazz and 1960's soul music. 

Note2- Friend Ron Zieman had a Hammond C3 with Leslie cabinet speaker and I just loved to hear that whirring organ sound!


Booker T. Jones with his Hammond B3 organ and Leslie speaker

Here's a little background on Booker T. & The MG's formed in 1962 by Booker T. Jones and Steve Cropper.

In the early 1960's, The band is part of a group of house session musicians at Stax Records in Memphis. They would also be one of the first integrated bands to play live at gigs all over the country. These four guys are musician's musicians who would be idolized by more famous and wealthy artists all over the world.

Booker T. Jones, born November 12, 1944 (78) in Memphis, Tennessee. Jones was musically a child prodigy, playing the oboe, saxophone, trombone, double bass, and piano at school and organ at church. Jones attended Booker T. Washington High School.

Jones's entry into professional music came at the age of 16, when he played baritone saxophone on Satellite (soon to be Stax) Records' first hit, "Cause I Love You", by Carla and Rufus Thomas. Willie Mitchell hired Jones for his band, in which Jones started on sax and later moved to bass. It was here that he met Al Jackson Jr., whom he brought to Stax.

While hanging around the Satellite Record Shop run by Estelle Axton, co-owner of Satellite Records with her brother Jim Stewart, Jones met record clerk Steve Cropper. Besides Jones on organ and Cropper on guitar, Booker T. and the MGs featured Lewie Steinberg on bass guitar and Al Jackson Jr. on drums (Donald "Duck" Dunn eventually replacing Steinberg on bass in 1965). While still in high school, Jones co-wrote the group's classic instrumental "Green Onions", which was a massive hit in 1962. (Wikipedia)

Steve Cropper, born October 21, 1941 (age 81) in Dora Missouri, but most importantly moved to Memphis, Tennessee at age 9. In Memphis, Cropper was exposed to black church music saying it, "Blew me away" and motivated him to purchase his first guitar at 14. Rolling Stone has ranked Steve Cropper as the 36th greatest guitar player on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Players.

Donald "Duck" Dunn, born November 24, 1941 in Memphis, Tennessee. Dunn a boyhood friend of Cropper started playing bass as Cropper started playing guitar with other friends and formed bands in high school. The two would be signed to local Stax Records and became part of the house band and helped form the "Stax sound" in the 1960's. Duck Dunn is ranked number 40 on Bass Player magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Bass Players of All Time." He died in his sleep in 2012 after playing a gig in Japan with Steve Cropper. 

Albert J. Jackson Jr., born November 27, 1935 in Memphis, Tennessee. Jackson's father, Al Jackson Sr., led a jazz/swing dance band in Memphis, Tennessee. The young Jackson started drumming at an early age and began playing on stage with his father's band in 1940, at the age of five (Wikipedia). By 14, Al Jackson had established himself as an exceptional drummer and was called, "The Human Timekeeper." Sadly, Al Jackson Jr. was murdered in 1975 in a mysterious home robbery that had connections to his estranged wife at the time.

In the early 60's instrumental "surf" bands were quite popular with bands like the Chantays (Pipeline) and The Surfaris (Wipe Out) generating big hit singles. On the R&B side, Stax records started having big hits with singers like Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Albert King, Johnnie Taylor, Eddie Floyd, the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett, Delaney & Bonnie and many others. Backing many of these sessions were a tight group of young musicians that would soon create a new mainstream of cross-over instrumental R&B.

In the summer of 1962, 17-year-old keyboardist Booker T. Jones, 20-year-old guitarist Steve Cropper, and two seasoned players, bassist Lewie Steinberg and drummer Al Jackson Jr. (the latter making his debut with the company) were in the Memphis studio to back the former Sun Records star Billy Lee Riley. During downtime, the four started playing around with a bluesy organ riff. Jim Stewart, the president of Stax Records, was in the control booth. He liked what he heard, and he recorded it. Cropper remembered a riff that Jones had come up with weeks earlier, and before long they had a second track.

Stewart wanted to release the single with the first track, "Behave Yourself", as the A-side and the second track as the B-side. Cropper and radio disc jockeys thought otherwise; soon, Stax released Booker T. & the M.G.'s' "Green Onions" backed with "Behave Yourself". In conversation with BBC Radio 2's Johnnie Walker, on his show broadcast on September 7, 2008, Cropper recalled that the record became an instant success when DJ Reuben Washington, at Memphis radio station WLOK, played it four times in succession, before the track or even the band had a name. For the rest of the day, people were calling in to the station, asking if the record was out yet.

The single went to number 1 on the US Billboard R&B chart and number 3 on the pop chart. It sold over one million copies and was certified a gold disc.

Now in all the years since I first heard Green Onions as a seven year old on AM radio, I have never heard anyone say they didn't like Booker T. & The MG's. Everybody loves Booker T. & The MG's. Like instrumental surfer music, The MG's R&B instrumentals never seem to tire with the public.

I've also never purchased a instrumental surfer album, or Booker T. & The MG's album. Why? I'm not the first to say that their songs are so strong individually but seem a little boxed in an album. It seems for my taste, the individual songs work better as singles or play well within a mixtape or playlist rather than a connected album. 

I hope you enjoy this playlist of 60+ songs of the group going back to that first big hit in 1962. Once I put the playlist together, I found myself going to a song and then skipping down to something else. In any event, I now have a playlist of their tunes that I will tap into for years to come as songs I will use in future playlists. BTW, my favorite Booker T. & The MG's song is Time is Tight.

Enjoy this wonderful band and their timeless instrumentals my friends.

Monday, June 13, 2022

Under The Influence • Songs of 1960-1962

Songs of 1949-19511952-19551956-19591960-1962

The Beatles at the Indra Club, Hamburg,  August 17, 1960. L-R: John Lennon, George Harrison, Pete Best, Paul McCartney, and Stuart Sutcliffe.

Songs of 1960-1962  concludes my mini-series Under The Influence. This series is based on my primary source, Wikipedia and their organization of music through the years. What I found interesting about Wikipedia's (Year) In Music entries is their succinct 'Events' highlights. Then, new albums released are listed alphabetically for the entire year, until 1963.

In 1963, Wikipedia entries go from a yearly album overview, to a month to month breakdown of mostly all popular albums from that month in time. As it turns out, rock 'n' roll is a lot bigger deal than the short-lived fad that many in the short-minded establishment predicted would quickly fade away.

In 1964, popular music just explodes with The Beatles coming to America and the The British Invasion.

On January 28th, 2019, I started my Fifty Years in Music • (Month and Year) Series starting with January, 1969. I noticed in going back to find that first post of the series, that I actually had skipped several months along the way. I will correct that, and at some point will have a Monday Monday Music™ historical record of the music that has influenced my life, and probably yours, since 1949.

My long-term game plan will be to have two concurrent 'Way Back' series– my current Fifty Years in Music that will cover the 1970's, and starting in 2023– Sixty Years of Music to cover every month and year of the 1960's, starting in 1963. 

••••••••••

No regrets.

Now one of the things I have mentally done over the years in the reflection of my life, is that I play the game, What If...

I've gone back to the fall of 1973 when I started college and started planning my life as a future teacher. My plan at the time was to become a special education teacher. I did that, and then I went on to become a general education elementary teacher, I did that, and so forth...

But, I did have an alternate plan of becoming a History major and teaching History at high school as it was my favorite subject in all of school. In my recent shoulda coulda reflections, that would have included a minor in English, but at 18 years of age, writing something more than a school assignment was something that I was never going to do. Later at San Diego State, I had to pay other students to type my assignments that required a typed finished product. 

So as a pretext here, I'm writing (typing on my laptop from the home row) about music every week that often goes back in history to the second half of the 20th century. 

Never say never.

••••••••••

1960 through 1962  is still about Elvis, but the King is already transitioning to ballads as many rock 'n' roll bands are forming in England and America and preparing for their own ascent to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, if not the rock 'n' roll throne.

In putting the playlist together, I was amazed at how many electric guitar instrumentals were huge Billboard 100 hits creating the whole surf music craze of the early 1960's. I think the public had just fallen in love with the electric guitar and you could see how every kid interested in playing music, simply had to have one.

Note- All dates and timeline descriptions below in italic are from Wikipedia. What I have done in this cut and copy exercise is to only include the interesting and influential stuff (from my perspective) from 1960-62. I have also interjected some (mostly sarcastic) commentary of my own in regular text.

1960 in Music

  • January – Stuart Sutcliffe joins the Liverpool band Johnny and the Moondogs and suggests they change their name to the Beatals; after several variations this settles on The Beatles in August. Stu was quite the looker, no doubt the best looking and coolest BEATAL starting out.
  • January 14 – Elvis Presley is promoted to Sergeant in the United States Army. Really.
  • January 25 – The National Association of Broadcasters in the United States reacts to the payola scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys accepting money for playing particular records. The music business has always been such a slimy business.
  • March 5 – Elvis Presley returns home from serving in the U.S. Army in Germany, having stopped off on March 2 at Glasgow Prestwick Airport, his only time in the U.K. Really, with all those #1's in the U.K. I would have thought he played there.
  • April 4 – RCA Victor Records announces that it will release all pop singles in mono and stereo simultaneously, the first record company to do so. Elvis Presley's single "Stuck on You" is RCA's first mono/stereo release.
  • April 17 – Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent and Cochran's girlfriend Sharon Sheeley are injured in a car accident near Chippenham in England. Cochran dies in a hospital in Bath, Somerset, from severe brain injuries. Police officer David Harman, who attends the incident, starts learning to play the guitar using Cochran's impounded Gretsch, later becoming professional musician Dave Dee. I've never heard the last part of that story.
  • April 20 – Elvis Presley returns to Hollywood for the first time since coming home from Germany to film G.I. Blues. Bring on those "B" slock movies.
  • May 2 – The Drifters' Ben E. King leaves the group and signs a solo record contract with ATCO Records.
  • May 20–28 – The Beatles, as the Silver Beetles (uncredited), play their first ever tour, as a backing group for Johnny Gentle on a tour of Scotland. The lineup comprises John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Tommy Moore.
  • July – The Shadows' instrumental 'Apache' is released in the U.K. I Love that song!
  • August 17 – The Beatles make their debut under this name in Hamburg, Germany, beginning a 48-night residency at the Indra club. The band at the time comprises John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stu Sutcliffe on bass and Pete Best on drums. (see photo above, credit to The Beatles Bible.)
  • The last 78 rpm records are released in the U.S. and the U.K.
  • English rock musician Ritchie Blackmore's musical career begins.
  • 14-year-old Neil Young founds The Jades with Ken Koblun. Neil loved The Shadows and playing Apache, not to mention his affinity for surf-style guitar.

1961 in Music

  • January 15 – Motown Records signs The Supremes. Have you ever heard of anyone not liking the Supremes? It's like someone saying, "I don't like pizza."
  • February 9 – The Beatles at The Cavern Club: The Beatles, at this juncture John, Paul, George and Pete, perform under this name at The Cavern Club for the first time following their December return to Liverpool from Hamburg. Beginning with this lunchtime session, the group would go on to make almost 300 appearances here in total. Practice, practice, practice.
  • February 12 – The Miracles' "Shop Around" becomes Motown's first million-selling single. Smokey Robinson's influence is off the charts.
  • February 13 – Frank Sinatra forms his own record label, Reprise Records, which will later release recordings by The Beach Boys, Ella Fitzgerald, The Kinks and Jimi Hendrix. Frank knew his way around a recording studio. Frank was very business savvy, like reading the script and not making "B" movies.
  • The 3rd Annual Grammy Awards are held in Los Angeles, hosted by actor Lloyd Bridges. Lloyd must have had a great agent! Ray Charles wins the most awards with four. Ray's on fire! Bob Newhart's The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart wins Album of the Year, Percy Faith's version of the "theme from A Summer Place" wins Record of the Year and Ernest Gold's "Theme from Exodus" wins Song of the Year. Newhart also wins Best New Artist. Really, Percy Faith? Love Bob Newhart who was the young part of that older generation tradition of being a lifetime comic and actor on TV.
  • June 14 – Patsy Cline is hospitalized as a result of a head-on car collision. While she is in hospital, the song "I Fall to Pieces" becomes a big Country/Pop crossover hit for her. Bigger news coming...
  • June–July – Stu Sutcliffe leaves The Beatles to resume his art studies in Hamburg. Man, who's gonna play bass now?
  • July 17 – Billboard magazine first publishes an "Easy Listening" chart, listing songs that the magazine determines are not rock & roll records. The first #1 song on this chart is "The Boll Weevil Song" by Brook Benton. This chart will be renamed a number of times, becoming the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart. The kids are driving the bus now.
  • October 17 – Former schoolfriends Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, later of The Rolling Stones, meet each other again by chance on Dartford railway station in Kent, England, on the way to their respective colleges and discover their mutual taste for rock and roll. Turns out, the whole universe is a series of random events.
  • November 9 – The Beatles at The Cavern Club: Future manager Brian Epstein first sees The Beatles. A huge part of The Beatles early success.
  • December 8 – The Beach Boys release their debut 45rpm single: "Surfin'"/"Luau" on the small California label Candix Records. If you love The Beach Boys, you have to read David Marks' book, 'The Lost Beach Boy.'
  • December 9 – The Beatles play their first gig in the south of England, at Aldershot. Due to an advertising failure, only 18 people turn up. In the early hours of the following morning they play an impromptu set at a London club. You mean Facebook screwed up back then too.
  • The Country Music Association (CMA) creates the Country Music Hall of Fame and inducts, Jimmie Rodgers, Fred Rose and Hank Williams as the first three members.
1962 in Music
  • January 1 – The Beatles and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes both audition at Decca Records in London which has the option of signing one group only. The Beatles are rejected, mainly as they come from Liverpool and the others are Dagenham-based, nearer London. Decca will come to regret that decision.
  • January 5 – The first album on which The Beatles play, My Bonnie, credited to "Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers" (recorded last June in Hamburg and produced by Bert Kaempfert), is released by Polydor.
  • January 24 – Brian Epstein signs on to manage The Beatles. Good move lads.
  • March 19 – Bob Dylan releases his debut album, Bob Dylan, in the United States, featuring mostly folk standards. The New Folk Movement gets their superstar.
  • April 7 – Mick Jagger and Keith Richards meet Brian Jones at The Ealing Club, a blues club in London. What if Brian Jones had lived past 1969? It sure would have made things even more interesting with their very interesting band.
  • April 10 – Former Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe dies from cerebral paralysis caused by a brain hemorrhage in Hamburg, Germany. The good die young.
  • April 12 – A recording is made of Bob Dylan's concert at the Town Hall, in New York City by Columbia Records. (Columbia eventually release the recording of "Tomorrow is a Long Time" from this concert.)
  • April 24 – Bob Dylan begins recording The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in New York. Look out world.
  • May 29 – The 4th Annual Grammy Awards are held in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Henry Mancini wins the most awards with five, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year for his song "Moon River". Judy Garland's Judy at Carnegie Hall wins Album of the Year, while Peter Nero wins Best New Artist. The old guard will run the Grammy's for years to come and mostly be out of touch with the changing culture.
  • June 6 – The Beatles play their first session at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London.
  • June 19 – The film version of the musical The Music Man is released to theaters by Warner Bros. "Ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City."
  • August 2 – Robert Allen Zimmerman legally changes his name to Bob Dylan in the New York Supreme Court. Bob has repeatedly said that he did not take his name from Dylan Thomas. His quote, " I have done more for Dylan Thomas than he's ever has done for me."
  • August 16 – The Beatles fire drummer Pete Best and replace him with Ringo Starr. Single best decision the lads ever make as a band.
  • August 17 – 'Instrumental Telstar,' written and produced by Joe Meek for English band The Tornados, is released in the UK. The song will eventually be the first song by a British group ever to reach the top spot on the Billboard Top 100 in the United States, proving to be a precursor to the British Invasion.
  • August 18 – The Beatles play their first live engagement with the line-up of John, Paul, George and Ringo, at Hulme Hall, Port Sunlight on the Wirral Peninsula.
  • August 20 – Albert Grossman becomes Bob Dylan's manager. Colonel Tom Parker with a beard?
  • August 23 – John Lennon marries Cynthia Powell in an unpublicized register office ceremony at Mount Pleasant, Liverpool. She would not be treated well by John.
  • September 21 – New Musical Express, the British music magazine, publishes a story about two 13-year-old schoolgirls, Sue and Mary, releasing a disc on Decca and adds "A Liverpool group, The Beatles, have recorded 'Love Me Do' for Parlophone Records, set for October 5 release."
  • September 22 – Bob Dylan appears for the first time at Carnegie Hall in New York City as part of a hootenanny including the first public performance of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". I've heard live 1963 and 64 recordings of Hard Rain and they are extremely powerful, I got chills the first time I heard these live recordings just a few years ago.
  • September 23 – Opening concert at the New York Philharmonic's new home, Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, conducted by Leonard Bernstein and broadcast live on television across the United States by NBC. The opening work, Aaron Copland's specially commissioned Connotations, sends "shock waves through the world of music".
  • October 5 – The Beatles' first single in their own right, "Love Me Do"/"P.S. I Love You", is released in the UK on EMI's Parlophone label. Look out world!
  • October 17 – The Beatles make their first televised appearance, on Granada television's local news programme People and Places.
  • October 20 – Peter, Paul and Mary's self-titled debut album reaches No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Like a Hard Day's Night, I found this album in my grandfather's 'Columbia House Record Club' collection in his stereo console after he died and snatched it to be part of my new record collection in 1967.
  • Joan Baez has all of her first three albums on the Billboard charts, on their way to Gold status. I was not a fan of Joan Baez as a young person, but have grown to admire her life-long activism and singing. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Baez is a great example to anyone in how to take care of yourself over the years.
  • Two Pete Seeger classic songs reach the Billboard pop charts:"Where Have All the Flowers Gone" recorded by The Kingston Trio reaches No. 21. "If I Had a Hammer", recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, reaches No. 10. Pete is such an influence to kick-starting the new folk movement and bringing folk music into U.S. classrooms across America. 
  • The first American Folk Blues Festival, initiated by German promoters, tours Europe; artists include Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and T-Bone Walker. Its only UK date, 21 October at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, is influential on the British R&B scene, with the audience including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones with Jimmy Page, Paul Jones, John Mayall and other musicians, and with a second show filmed and shown on Independent Television. Sad to learn years later that American Blues and Jazz treasures had to go to Europe to get the recognition they deserved. In a large sense Europe is like a boomerang for American music, where we put it out there, it's appreciated and absorbed by European fans who in turn bring it back around to American audiences. 

Monday, January 11, 2021

Fifty Years of Music • January, 1971

1969 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser Station Wagon

"Well it's been fifty years somewhere." 
–Anonymous

As we roll into 2021, I'm going to keep the monthly feature of going back to reconnect with music released 50 years ago from the current month, and so that takes us to January, 1971. Here's a quick timeline of events and a special automobile.

  • Jan. 1- The last cigarette commercials on U.S. television and radio were broadcast, and tobacco manufacturers spent $1,250,000 for the farewell advertising prior to the ban that went into effect at midnight. The last commercial was a 60-second ad for Virginia Slims that was run by the Philip Morris company at 11:59 during a break on The Tonight Show on NBC. The company had bought the last pre-midnight ads on the late night talk shows of all three networks, with ads for Marlboro on CBS on The Merv Griffin Show and for Benson & Hedges on ABC on The Dick Cavett Show.
  • Jan. 5 - Former world heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston was found dead in his Las Vegas home, after having last been heard from a week earlier. A coroner determined that Liston had probably died on December 30 after falling while alone. The date was arrived at based on the number of newspapers and milk that had been delivered to his home but not picked up.
  • Jan. 12 - The landmark television sitcom All in the Family premiered on CBS at 9:30 in the evening, opposite the ABC and NBC made-for-TV movies.
  • Jan. 25 -The murder trial of serial killer Charles Manson and three of his "Manson Family" followers ended with the jury returning guilty verdicts against all four. Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins were convicted of seven counts of first degree murder in the Tate–LaBianca murders of August 9 and 10, 1969, and Leslie Van Houten was found guilty of the five murders committed on August 9.
  • Jan. 30 - The UCLA Bruins college basketball team began a winning streak of 88 consecutive games, defeating UC-Santa Barbara 74-61, seven days after losing to the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, 89-82. Ironically, Notre Dame would end the streak, defeating UCLA 71-70 on January 19, 1974.
  • Jan. 31 - Apollo 14, carrying astronauts Alan B. Shepard, Jr., Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell on the first manned lunar mission since the failure of Apollo 13, lifted off from Cape Kennedy. 
    From January 1971, Wikipedia

That puts me at almost sixteen with still just a Driver's Permit behind the wheel of the family station wagon with either mom or dad. Here the car pictured above from a Google search is the spitting image of how our Vista Cruiser looked in 1971. I couldn't wait until my birthday in March to take my driver's test, and captain 'the big boat' by myself.

My lasting memories of the ol' wagon are: the smell of cigarettes embedded in the green vinyl seats as my mom had banned my dad from smoking in the house; sitting in the second row bench seat and looking up through the progressively designed tinted top and sides sun roof windows; and, telling friend Bill DeVoe a story while driving- looking at him instead of the road, Bill yelling, "look out!" and then me swerving like the tour guide on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland to avoid rear-ending a car waiting to make a left turn- I made a hard right, narrowly missing the car, and corrected with a hard left to avoid the sidewalk curb, and a then a moderate right back to center in the road, and continued on the way to my house. Bill just looked at me and said, "You lucky bastard."

The playlist this week brought back memories too. Janis Joplin had just died in October, 1970 from a heroin overdose at the tender age of twenty-seven. At fifteen, I remember thinking, how does someone die at twenty-seven when not in a war, or car accident? Her album, Pearl was released in January, 1971 that went #1 on the Billboard 200 for nine weeks. Me and Bobby McGee also went to #1 as a single from Pearl as her cover of this Kris Kristofferson song brought him into the spotlight.
Nantucket Sleighride from the band Mountain was also released in January, 1971 but it missed me because my friend and next door neighbor Ron Zieman had moved back to New York the previous summer. Ron was a big Mountain fan and I know I would have been blasted in the confines of Ron's bedroom to the sounds of Nantucket Sleighride. Sadly, Mountain's big man Leslie West who played lead guitar and vocals just pasted away on December 23, 2020. Recently, Ron and I connected on the phone to talk about West and his talented bandmate (Cream and Mountain Producer), Felix Pappalardi, who was shot and killed by his wife Gail Collins in 1983. 

'Fifty years of Music' is a great exercise for me to rediscover musicians and bands who I was not exposed to back in the day. Ian (or Iain) Matthews is a perfect example of somebody who I have heard of mainly through his band Matthews Southern Comfort, but really haven't heard his music. That is now changing as I started listing to his second solo album, released in January, 1971, If You Saw Thro' My Eyes. As I was listening to the album, I kept saying to myself, "Why do I not know this guy?" If you like folk/Americana, you're going to want to dive into Iain Matthews.


Lastly, The Point! a children's story and album by Harry Nilsson is a long time favorite of mine. As a bonus, I've included the entire one hour and fourteen minute adaption of the story as its available as a YouTube video! You can watch it, only if you first listen to my playlist (just kidding, kinda). The Point, an animated adaptation of the story, first aired February 2, 1971, and was the first animated special ever to air in prime time on US television; it appeared on the ABC television network as an ABC Movie of the Week. The film was directed by Fred Wolf and produced by Murakami-Wolf Films in association with Nilsson House Music. YouTube


Stay well my friends and mask-up!


The Point, 1971 Animated Movie 
Story Narrated by Harry's friend, Ringo Starr

Note - There is a slight glitch in this video as it starts at almost the end?
With your cursor, simply move the red 'Time' bar left back to the beginning at 0:00. 

Monday, May 27, 2019

May 1969, Wow! 50 Years of Music


Earlier this month, I began to work on my now monthly feature of albums released 50 years ago in the month I post the blog. When I first looked at the Wikipedia 1969 in Music #May list I just said, "Wow!"

Here is a representative group of 50 songs from this monster month of albums released in May, 1969. Enjoy my friends!