This was famed director John Boorman's first directorial effort. He also directed "Deliverance" (1972) and "Hope and Glory" (1987) and other major films. If this opening of lads dashing about in a open park and hopping about on a playground reminds anyone of the Beatles and director Richard Lester's "A Hard Day's Night" (1964) from the year before that's probably just what the producers wanted.
The film itself however is more a traditonal romance comedy/drama and should be seen by those who enjoy this era.
From Wikipedia: "Although they perform the off-screen soundtrack music, The Dave Clark Five (unlike The Beatles in their films) do not portray themselves, but appear to be a team of freelance stuntmen/extras led by the saturnine Steve (Dave Clark). Clark had worked as a stuntman on a number of films, which appears to have provided him with a level of cinematic experience and camera-sense rare for a pop-artist of the time.
"Far from being a conventional pop vehicle, the film concerns itself with the frailty of personal relationships, the flimsiness of dreams, and the difficulty of maintaining spontaneity, authenticity and integrity in a stage-managed "society of the spectacle." Boorman's debut offering drew favourable notices from Pauline Kael and Dilys Powell, not least because of the enormous cultural energy of the time (mid-1960s) in which the film was made."
It was released in the USA as "Havin' a Wild Weekend".
It's hot out where a lot of people are right now. The northern latitudes have plenty of extra summer thanks to climate change and those greenhouse gases.
So what better time to get some web-surfing in with a couple of my favorite surf songs of the past? With a bit of choice video to go with it, courtesy of those who post on You Tube. Hope you enjoy. First up is the title track to the original 1966 Bruce Brown documentary, "The Endless Summer" the story of a group of guys who travel the world for a perfect wave.
Next up is what should have been a huge hit from 1963 by The Beach Boys. Oddly enough it was never released as a single from their album "Surfer Girl". ***********************(from Wikipedia "Catch a Wave" is a song written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love for the American rock band, The Beach Boys. It was released on their 1963 album Surfer Girl. This song was recorded on July 14 and 16, 1963. This song is notable for the use of a harp played by Mike Love's sister, Maureen. The lead vocal was originally thought to be Dennis Wilson's, but in actuality, it is that of Mike Love with a heavy cold. ***********Also, the video has a definative look at the sites and sounds and motions of 1960's surf culture.
A very classy and--to me--surprisingly good update mix of one of my favorite pop songs of all time, "Miss" Petula Clark's monster hit from 1964. Hope you enjoy!
Some background, courtesy of Wikipedia.
"Downtown" entered the UK Top 50 dated the week 14 November 1964 ending a virtual two-year UK chart absence for (Petula) Clark; of the ten singles she'd had released in the UK during that period only one: "Chariot", #39 the spring of 1963, had appeared in even the lower charts. "Downtown" rose to #2 that December remaining there for three weeks, kept out of the #1 position by the Beatles' "I Feel Fine". Certified a Gold record for sales in the UK of 500,000, "Downtown" also reached #2 in Ireland and #1 in Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia and South Africa, and was also a hit in Denmark (#2), India (#3), the Netherlands (#3) and Norway (#8).
However "Downtown" had its greatest significance in the reception it was afforded in the US. Warner Bros. A&R man Joe Smith was scouting in London for records with American hit potential, the musical British Invasion of the US then going strong. Smith wanted to release Clark's "Downtown" in the US and when a surprised Hatch asked if Smith didn't consider "Downtown" to be "a very English record" he recalls Smith's reply as: "It's perfect. It's just an observation from outside of America and it's just beautiful and just perfect."[1]
Warner Bros. released "Downtown" in the US in December 1964: the track appeared near the bottom of the national charts the week before Christmas and despite the Christmas season traditionally being the worst time to break a new hit "Downtown" shot up to the Top Ten in five weeks and the next week - 23 January 1965 - was #1. "Downtown" retained that position a further week before being overtaken by the ascendancy of the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". Clark became the first UK female artist to have a US #1 hit during the rock and roll era and the second in the annals of US charted music, Vera Lynn having hit #1 US with "Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart" in 1952. "Downtown" also made Clark the first UK female artist to have a single certified as a Gold record for US sales of one million units. "Downtown" would be the first of fifteen consecutive hits Clark would place in the US Top 40 during a period when she'd have considerably less chart impact in her native UK, there reaching the Top 40 eight times."
Not bad, eh? It's fitting that the song had such an influence in America as it was inspired by songwriter Tony Hatch visiting New York City and walking down Manhattan's busy streets.
The fiirst single from Anne Lennox's 2007 album "Songs of Mass Destruction" The singer, pianist, and humanitarian wrote all the songs on the album.
From Wikipedia: "UK television network Channel 4 aired the world television premiere of the music video exclusively on 22 August 2007. It was also the first video to be premiered on Amazon.com, initially being available for 48 hours only. The track was released as a CD Single and also as a DVD single. It charted at no. 58 on the UK singles chart."
For me, hearing Donovan's music in the 70's from the 60's added further confirmation that I was born in the wrong decade. I didn't always understand this Glasgow-born poet's music (take this song, "Mellow Yellow", for instance) but "the British Bob Dylan" has his share of great songs, including "Hurdy-Gurdy Man", "Catch the Wind", "Sunshine Superman" and many others.
He stopped performing for a long while but apparently is still active here and there these days, and was on tour last year. A most deserving induction in my view and here's a bit of music to celebrate!
In his latest editorial, Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts highlights a new Bruce Springsteen album, "Wrecking Ball" that proves once again why his music has connected with so many progressive-minded and just plain practical people for nearly four decades. From "Born to Run" and "Badlands" to his haunting album "Nebraska" and "Ghost of Tom Joad" albums, and so many other great hits with The E Street Band", he has been on the side of the angels as far as I'm concerned. And as for the music itself, well they don't call him "The Boss" for nothing.
From Mr. Pitts' column:
"...for all the manicured eloquence of the constitutionally mandated report President Obama delivered in January, the new Bruce Springsteen album, "Wrecking Ball," captures more raw emotional truth about the state of the American Dream than any politician ever could.
"These first years of the millennium have been extraordinarily trying, especially for a nation that had passed a quarter century in relative peace. Then came terror. Then came wars. Then came economic meltdown. And in the last, we were galled to find that what had brought us to the brink of ruin was the greed, corruption, mendacity and predatory practices of giant money houses and that we were now required to save them from the consequences of their misdeeds because they were too big to fail.
"Meantime, we failed right, left and sideways, as jobs went away and money grew tight, as horizons receded and hope shriveled down to a wrinkled shell of itself and people who'd never asked for all that much to begin with -- a fair chance to earn their own bread, care for themselves, house themselves -- found their aspirations padlocked behind them, their dreams set out at the curb. In a nation where corporations are people and fetuses are people, actual people could not catch a break, nor even much in the way of empathy.
"It is from the heart of this disconnection, this chasm between America that is and America that ought to be, that Springsteen issues his report."
This Liverpool-born pop and R&B star was 18 years old when she performed this classic, originally done in the USA by soul singer Irma Thomas and later a hit for Tracey Ullman.
Ms. Mardsen's cover of the song was not a big success. She had other hits, though, and sang in several bands, including one called '"Shotgun" with a couple young guys named Rod Stewart and Mick Fleetwood. She toured with the Beatles on one of their last tours in England and earlier paid her dues playing in the Cavern Club in Liverpool and also gigs in the clubs of Hamburg, Germany.
Today, Ms. Mardsen still tours. She released a album this very month with four new songs! I really like this cover so I thought I'd share a bit of "Merseybeat" here!
A 1966 cover by Elvis Presley of a Bob Dylan classic from 1963. Dylan himself called it his favorite alternative version of his song.
From the "Bob Dylan Who's Who" website (expectingrain.com):
"It is hardly necessary to introduce Elvis Aron Presley (Tupelo, Mississippi, 1935 - Memphis, Tennessee, 1977), but the significance of the musical links between Elvis and Bob Dylan is often underestimated. Even though the King's immortal triumphs were as an interpreter, not a songwriter, there is a good case for the view that Dylan's work has rather more in common with Presley's than the Beatles':
it is well known that on his recovery from his 1997 illness Dylan told the world, 'I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon.' Dylan mentions Elvis by name in 'TV Talkin' Song' (on 'Under The Red Sky'), in the line 'Sometimes you gotta do like Elvis did and shoot the damn thing out' (this is a reference to a real incident when the King fired into a TV at his Graceland mansion). The country and blues influences that pervade Presley's early work are also crucial for Bob Dylan, and both artists have made major contributions to the gospel genre.
The list of standards officially covered by both artists includes 'Blue Moon', 'Can't Help Falling In Love', 'A Fool Such As I' and 'Tomorrow Night'. Elvis' discography includes covers of Dylan's 'Tomorrow Is A Long Time', 'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right', 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'I Shall Be Released'.
Here's the connection to the Dylan original from his April 1963 "Town Hall" concert:
I thought this week I would feature a few Elvis songs wither on video or Mp3 that I enjoy that didn't get a lot of airplay or were put into those mediocre movies he began to make around 1962 when producers figured out that you didn't need a good script or a first-rate director to make money on an Elvis feature--you just needed Elvis.
This song was featured in a very "needy" little film called 'Tickle Me" from 1965. It's a lightweight screwball comedy of the kind that we as kids used to watch on the CBS Friday Night movies. (It didn't take long for these films to get from the drive-ins of North America to network television. )
We in the junior set all knew the Elvis films weren't all that good. But we also knew that Elvis had charisma and he seemed confident around beautiful women and always got the girl and beat the bad guys at their own game.
Despite his physical and emotional swagger on the screen, it seems a shame that his manager, the rapacious Col. Tom Parker, steered the real Elvis into so many bad films when it's clear that he had some good acting chops and deserved the same material that was often accorded a Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra.
Instead he got "Tickle Me", "Spinout", "Live a Little, Love a Little" and "Girls, Girls, Girls". All these movies made a brick of money and all of them were made on the cheap. Thank goodness we have them at least for the fans, but thankfully Elvis got off this "drive-in-late show filler" stuff and became a concert singer again in his last few years. Even then he discovered to late he had been shafted out of royalties by the Colonel (who managed by some shady financial legerdemain to get him to accept a lump sum payment) along the way. It's safe to say Parker died a richer man than Elvis.
But the legend will live on, and as one fan said, "he was my kind of good person and he gave lots to his fans, even in movies like this that were increasingly beneath him". 'Nuf said I say. Play it.
Born in Kentucky in 1944, Jackie DeShannon is one of the top pop composers, singers and all-around musicians of her time. Many people remember her for biggest hit, 'What the World Needs Now", written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
Perhaps fewer people know she also first recorded and, according to some sources, co-wrote "Needles and Pins" (a bit hit for her and a bigger hit for The Searchers in 1965). This was her second Top Ten hit, back in 1969.
She also co-wrote and performed the song "Bette Davis Eyes" on a 1974 album. It was later covered by Kim Carnes in 1981 and became a Grammy-winning Number one hit in the USA.
She still performs and records music, releasing an album last year and has perfomed from Los Angeles to London in the past few years.
She was the opening act for The Beatles in their first North American tour in 1964 and later performed with Johnny Cash at the Grand Old Opry in Nashville. (Not bad company, eh?) Her rockabilly roots are on full display in this recording of "Break A Way" which she co-wrote. This trac wasn't released until this greatest hits compilation came out in 1994.
(from Wikipedia) "DeShannon also co-wrote "Break-A-Way", recorded by Irma Thomas in 1964 and by Tracey Ullman in 1983. "Put A Little Love In Your Heart" reached Billboard No. 9 in 1989 as a duet by Annie Lennox & Al Green and was also covered by Dolly Parton in 1993. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and Stevie Nicks had a Top 40 U.S. hit in 1986 with a cover of "Needles and Pins", which DeShannon originally recorded but did not write. A version of "When You Walk in the Room" by Pam Tillis in 1994 topped the country charts. Another recent cover of "When You Walk in the Room" was in 2004 by ex-ABBA vocalist Agnetha Fältskog, both in her comeback album My Colouring Book and as a UK (no. 34) and European (no. 53) hit single. Country rock artist Chris Hillman, one of the original members of The Byrds, also did a cover of "When You Walk in the Room" on his solo 1998 album "Like a Hurricane".
This is one of the best songs on the original "Madness" album released in the USA. Very appropriate for Valentine's Day. I'd like to dedicate this one to Shirley and wish you all some Valentine happiness these coming days.
(Note: "doug's site" does not endorse playing electric musical instruments in swimming pools, chlorinated or otherwise.)
From the ever useful Wikipedia site:
"The original Labi Siffre recording was released as a single in 1971, and reached number 14 in the UK singles chart. It also appeared on his 1972 album Crying Laughing Loving Lying.
"Madness' version was originally issued as a standalone single in 1981 and appeared on their UK number one compilation album Complete Madness the following year, and on many other Madness compilations since. In 1983, it peaked in the US Billboard Magazine chart at #33."
"The video mostly shows band members playing in a white room and standing over a grave. It also features guitarist Chris Foreman and saxophonist Lee Thompson playing their instruments underwater. Foreman appears at the start of the video warning viewers not to attempt the "very dangerous stunt" they are about to see, presumably referring to the swimming pool sequence. Labi Siffre makes a cameo appearance as a violin player."
"Madness' recording was re-issued in 1992, and this time reached #6 in the UK charts."
Bessie Smith (1894-1937) is called "The Empress of the Blues" for many good reasons.
She voice epitomized the blues and its facility to encompass songs of pain and regret. She also could celebrate the joys of pure passion as in tunes like "I'm Wild About That Thing" and "Do Your Duty"
She started out as a street singer in Chattanooga Tennessee at age 12 and in the 1920's her songs sold in the hundreds of thousands. Here's some info on Ms. Smith's career from The New York State University Women's Biography website:
"The major breakthrough for Bessie, and for the recording industry, came in 1923. Mamie Smith in 1920 had recorded "Crazy Blues" in 1920, which sold so well (against all expectations) that Columbia set up a separate division for "race" records. Frank Walker, in charge of the division, had been so impressed years earlier by Bessie’s singing, that he sent the pianist Clarence Williams to bring her to New York .As she arrived, Columbia was on the verge of bankruptcy. Her debut record, "Downhearted Blues" and "Gulf Coast Blues" , sold 780,000 copies in the six months after she recorded the pieces, and helped save Columbia. Over the years she made 160 recordings. At that stage Bessie was receiving an outright $125 per recording; at her height a few years later, she was receiving $2,000/week, and owned her own travelling railway car. During the following ten years she was the foremost recording artist in the world.
"The decline in Bessie’s fortunes from such heights was inevitable at the time. The advent of talking pictures and the radio, on the one hand, severely set back the recording industry, and gave her audience other sources of entertainment. The depression, on the other, struck her industry as well, and reduced the wherewithal of her potential customers.
"In fact, not only her personal but her professional life seemed on the way to a comeback in the years 1936-37. There apparently were major recording sessions and joint appearances in the works with the upcoming leaders of the musical world (Bennie Goodman, the Basie band), perhaps a film was being planned. In addition to this, a critic of the time observed that the "Empress of the Blues" had gone far beyond such limitations, and was "the greatest artist American jazz ever produced", perhaps transcending even the term "jazz".
This is one of her most famous hits, recorded in 1923 near the start of her professional recording career. Her influence is still being celebrated today by the likes of Eric Clapton, Tom Waits, Norah Jones and other gifted musicians.
This film was one of the biggest hits Hollywood put out in 1933, the very teeth of the Great Depression, and the biggest film at the box office for Warner Brothers Studios in that year.
While the story varies little in the way most musicals of the time carry their slender plot-lines, it is still I believe a landmark film. The movie combines a popular and "high-kicking" attitude with the grim realities of a land of opportunity now totally veering toward a place as "tapped out" as any country that any emigrant came to America to get away from.
in this clip Ginger Rogers performs one of the most popular songs of the period. This is the opening sequence of the film, and its important to note that the film audience here is being intentionally mislead--this upbeat production masks a hard reality. The police are on the way to close the theater and seize the costumes and sets of the would-be Broadway production. Even the things that make for frivolous entertainment --uptempo songs that stay in your head long after the show, sexy costumes, romantic love scenes with attractive stars--are not immune to an America with one quarter of its labor force out of work, soup kitchens and hundreds of banks closing from sea to shining sea.
The film opening features Ginger Rogers singing part of the lyrics in "Pig Latin"--an innocent bit of fun she did in rehearsal with the other ladies of the chorus. She later confessed she thought that diversion might get her fired when the producers overheard this clowning about. Instead the musical director, Busby Berkeley, kept that interpretation in the number.
This also features an early use (in sound films at least) of a super camera close-up of the aforementioned star. I'm sure shots of Miss Rogers uncapped choppers had many dentists in the film audience quite engaged by the spectacle.
Not all of the film is so bally-hoo of course, as the last production number "Remember My Forgotten Man", makes clear. (The second production is viewable in the comments section below.) This one--which seemed so remote and distant to me when I first saw it years ago--has a familiar ring to it today. Joan Blondell, a forgotten star of musicals and comedies, delivers some very soulful goods here in a lament fro the lost dignity of soldiers, farmers and industrial workers cast aside by harsh economic conditions. The finale, with an army of "dough-boy" soldiers in retreat from a unseen battlefield, shows the mixed nature of what people wanted from films of this popular caliber---escape, yes, but also a recognition of the struggles facing most people just outside the doors of the local movie house.
No pun intended but I think Enya's best work has a timeless quality. This was her biggest US hit to date, hitting as high as Number 10 on the Billboard Charts in 2000. Many people turned to this song to help come to grips with the jarring emotions engendered by the 9/11 tragedies in New York, Washington and the latter drumbeat to war.
Lyrics: Who can say where the road goes where the day flows - only time And who can say if your love grows as your heart chose - only time
Who can say why your heart sighs as your love flies - only time And who can say why your heart cries when your love lies - only time
Who can say when the roads meet that love might be in your heart
And who can say when the day sleeps if the night keeps all your heart
Night keeps all your heart
Who can say if your love grows as your heart chose - only time And who can say where the road goes where the day flows - only time
This song made it to Number #2 on the British Pop Charts. I heard it recently in a romantic-comedy film made in London called, oddly, "French Film" (2009) . The cover song over the end titles of that film was done by The Rushes, a newer group. This got me wanting to find the original song. For some reason I'd never heard it.
"The Kinks" were well-known in America at this time because of "You Really Got Me" and other hits. However, they were restricted from playing in America for four years due to immigration issues possibly involving some violence between two band members. This song, therefore, never got the airplay it deserved in the USA.
This video (by EastEndMods) features footage and pictures of modern Waterloo Station and scenes of the beautiful Julie Christie and the still-active Terence Stamp from the moody gothic film "Far From the Madding Crowd" from the year before this song was released. Ray Davies of The Kinks considered this version a landmark for the group.
Ray Davies (From Uncut magazine January 2009): "It came to me first as a statement about the death of Merseybeat. But I realized that Waterloo was a very significant place in my life. I was in St. Thomas' Hospital when I was really ill as a child, and I looked out on the river. I went to Waterloo every day to go to college as well. The song was also about being taken to the Festival of Britain with my mum and dad. I remember them taking me by the hand, looking at the big Skylon tower, and saying it symbolized the future. That, and then walking by the Thames with my first wife (Rasa, who left Ray, taking his two daughters, in 1973) and all the other dreams that we had. Her in her brown suede coat that she wore, that was stolen. And also about my sisters, and about the world I wanted them to have. The two characters in the song, Terry and Julie, are to do with the aspirations of my sisters' generation, who grew up during the Second world War and missed out on the '60s. Sometimes when you're writing and you're really on good form, you get into the frame of mind where you think, I can relate to any of these things. It's something I learned at art school-let all the ideas flow out. But if you listen to the words without the music, it's a different thing entirely. The lyrics could be better. But they dovetail with the music perfectly."
One of my favorite Christmas tunes, set to a rockabilly boogie beat by the multi-talented retro rocker Brian Setzer.
The former Stray Cat apparently collapsed on stage in Albuquerque, New Mexico while on tour Tuesday night, so here' s hoping his hospitalization is going well.
Update: Brian was briefly hospitalized in Albuquerque, NM last night after a combination of dehydration, high altitude, and vertigo made him unable to continue his performance at the Isleta Casino after several songs. Brian has completely recovered and will perform tonight at the Dodge Theater in Phoenix, AZ, and will continue with the remainder of the tour uninterrupted.
We don't police things. We're not a security force. We go to concerts to enjoy ourselves and have fun." --Sweet William, Hells Angels Member, 1969.
"When I think about that kid getting murdered at Altamont, I think, it could have been me."--Mick Jagger
From an article by John Burks in a February 1970 issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine, called "Rock and Roll's Worst Day" (December 6, 1969).
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The violence," Keith Richards told the London Evening Standard, "just in front of the stage was incredible. Looking back I don't think it was a good idea to have Hell's Angels there. But we had them at the suggestion of the Grateful Dead. "The trouble is it's a problem for us either way. If you don't have them to work for you as stewards, they come anyway and cause trouble. "But to be fair, out of the whole 300 Angels working as stewards, the vast majority did what they were supposed to do, which was to regulate the crowds as much as possible without causing any trouble. But there were about ten or twenty who were completely out of their minds -- trying to drive their motorcycles through the middle of the crowds.
"Really, the difference between the open air show we held here in Hyde Park and the one there is amazing. I think it illustrates the difference between the two countries. In Hyde Park everybody had a good time, and there was no trouble. You can put half a million young English people together and they won't start killing each other. That's the difference."
******************************
Of course, most of the 300,000 spectators who came to Altamont--a rundown racetrack about forty miles from San Francisco in a large bowl surrounded then by grassy hills of no particular visual allure-- that weekend weren't involved in any violence, and there was no fatalities caused by violence at the major music festival near Woodstock, New York, in the Summer of that turbulent year, 1969. A difference--the major difference--between Woodstock and Altamont was the presence of several chapters of the San Francisco Bay Area "Hell's Angels".
The Hyde Park Concert, a memorial of sorts for founding Stone member Brian Jones who died mysteriously a few months before the "Gimme Shelter" Tour--utilized a British chapter of the biker club. But the American chapter was much more savage. The Stones had seen some rough business at their concerts before--their first band manager, Andrew Oldham, used to try to get people in an uproar by sureprticiously knocking a policeman's hat off to incite other members of the crowd to get rowdy (as if Mick Jagger's star power and theatricality weren't enough.) But even the police in America wanted little as possible to do with these bad asses. Whoever recommended the Angels to "The Stones" or The Grateful Dead group--who ok'ed the presence of the gang as some type of security, then refused to show up after the violence broke out--made a terrible mistake in thinking that a beer-soaked and hard-drug addled bunch of self-proclaimed outlaws with Nazi insignias tat-toed on their bodies-- would mix well with a group of free spirited rock lovers and hippies.
Dozens of people--men and women-- were clubbed and beaten by the Angels and one man, Meredith Hunter , was stabbed to death after he foolishly brandished a long-barreled gun. (A jury in Oakland, California, later determined that the man accused of the killing had acted in self-defense. Two others died after being run over by apparent accident, one man was found drowned in an irrigation ditch.
A later friend of mine, who had hitch-hiked fifty miles to the concert while being all of fifteen, saw the dead man being pulled from the water. Luckily she was far enough away from the stage to not experience the extreme behavior of the Angels.
She is still a major Stones fan, and saw them play on their last US tour when it stopped in the Bay Area.
The last time I drove by the Altamont Pass area there was nothing there but a jagged cluster of giant turbine windmills catching a bit of natural power on the treeless hillsides. You wouldn't anything had ever happened there--all Altamont is a little bit of boring wind-blown nothingness. Were, for many, that it had always been so.
This song came out first in 1958, and had to wait almost forty years to become a top-ten hit for "The High Priestess of Soul" (Reaching Number #5 in Britain after it was used in a television commercial for Chanel.)
I first heard it in 1985, while I was in a hotel packing for a trip home. (It's not often you remember hearing a song for the first time.) It was so good that when I got home I immediately got a album with this beguiling vocal and arrangement.
Nina Simone is a hard artist to categorize---in addition to jazz and blues, she also recorded covers of pop songs like The Animals Number One hit from 1964, "The House of the Rising Sun", The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" and The Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody".
She also recorded social protest songs, African and American folk music, and a multitude of original compositions.
Born in North Carolina, her earliest albums were recorded in New York City, where he began her career despite her mother's objection that she was singing "the devil's music". She was barred from training at the prestigious Curtis Institute because of her race, but was accepted to The Julliard School of Music in New York City in the mid-1950's. Her first albums were not as successful, beyond her cover of a "Porgy and Bess" song, so she sold her rights to many of the songs, including "My Baby Just Cares for Me", a 1928 Harry Warren tune written for a Broadway show called "Whopee". Ironically, the original tune was performed by white comedian and singer Eddie Cantor, who did the song "corked up" (in black-face, in the minstrel tradition offensive to black Americans.)
Like many other African-American artists and intellectuals, Ms. Simone went into voluntary exile to protest racial and other social and foreign policy matters. (First to Barbados and then France in the early Seventies.) She was later to return to America in the 1990's to receive the accolades and awards she richly deserved. She was something of an eccentric performer and had an uneasy relationship with some audiences, some people finding her haughty and regal in bearing. Later in her career she was apparently more friendly and willing to share anecdotes about her life with devoted fans.
Unfortunately, she never received any money directly from the revival of this song because she (or her manager) had sold her royalties for a few thousand dollars in the early 60's.
I love Ms. Simone's vocal here, of course, and the piano bridge in the middle is nothing short of fantastic. The claymation video was produced by Aardman Animations and directed by Peter Lord.
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And here's the lady herself, performing "If You Knew " at Ronnie Scott's in London:
Designed as part of a network television special from 1968, "Movin' With Nancy",this is Ms. Sinatra's foray into the dark, untamed wilderness of southern California. It shows that well-off scions of famous musical clans can survive even a disastrous balloon crash. Here, Nancy Sinatra recreates her famous six-day/seven night "worst-case survival" trek through areas only previously penetrated by Green Beret unit preparing for deployment in Vietnam and some Girl Scout units preparing for weekend door-to-door cookie sales.
The song "Sugartown" was written by her long-time collaborator Lee Hazelwood. It was recently featured in a British television show called "Skins" and the film "500 Days of Summer" (2009) which I reviewed a few blogs back. It was her second big smash on a US music chart--making Number 1 on The Easy Listening Chart and Number 5 on Billboard's Overall Hit list Her first break-out success was in 1966 with "These Boots Are Made for Walkin' ".
I saw this special when it was rerun on "American Movie Classics" television as part of a retro weekend slate of programming and this bit is, for better or worse (depending on how you feel about miniskirts and go-go boots and I'm ok with both in case you wondered) the highlight of the show.
Mary Travers was one of the great folk-singers of the 1960's and beyond. She died today of complications from chemotherapy for her advanced leukemia.
This was the first folk group I was aware of as a kid. I had a crush on this lovely lady before I knew what a crush was! She and her two partners (Noel Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow) were not only into making beautiful music, but in promoting awareness of issues like Civil Rights, an end to the Vietnam War, nuclear arms control, progressive politics and plain tolerance.
I offer these two examples of the music I think made her special. The first one is my favorite of theirs, "If I Had a Hammer", originally written and recorded by folk legend Pete Seeger. It's also one of the most "covered" songs ever.
Peter Yarrow, commenting on his friend's death on the group's official site summed up their contribution this way. "The trio's growth, our creativity, our ability to emerge over the years completely accepting of one another, warts and all, was a miracle...When we performed together, we gave the best to each other and to the audiences who came to hear us."
This trio represented a sound that spoke of a faith that the America of the future would be a more inclusive society. And they also did songs like"Puff, the Magic Dragon", which were plain fun. Their first album, pictured above, was on the Billboard Magazine Top 100 chart for over three years. The group split up in 1971, but reunited a few years later. Mary released five solo albums, but none captured an audience like her work with Peter and Paul.
From Yahoo News:
Their beatnik look — a tall blonde flanked by a pair of goateed guitarists — was a part of their initial appeal. As The New York Times critic Robert Shelton put it not long afterward, "Sex appeal as a keystone for a folk-song group was the idea of the group's manager, Albert Grossman ... who searched for months for `the girl' until he decided on Miss Travers."
The trio mingled their music with liberal politics, both onstage and off. Their version of "If I Had a Hammer" became an anthem for racial equality. Other hits included "Lemon Tree," "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Puff (The Magic Dragon.)"
They were early champions of Dylan and performed his "Blowin' in the Wind" at the August 1963 March on Washington.
And they were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War, managing to stay true to their liberal beliefs while creating music that resonated in the American mainstream.
The group collected five Grammy Awards for their three-part harmony on enduring songs like "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" and "Blowin' in the Wind."
At one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.
It was heady stuff for a trio that had formed in the early 1960s in Greenwich Village, running through simple tunes like "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
Their debut album came out in 1962, and immediately scored a pair of hits with their versions of "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree." The former won them Grammys for best folk recording, and best performance by a vocal group.
"Moving" was the follow-up, including the hit tale of innocence lost, "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" — which reached No. 2 on the charts, and generated since-discounted reports that it was an ode to marijuana.
Album No. 3, "In the Wind," featured three songs by the 22-year-old Dylan. "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "Blowin' in the Wind" both reached the top 10, bringing Dylan's material to a massive audience; the latter shipped 300,000 copies during one two-week period.
This is Mary singing sans Peter and Paul from a 1969 Television Special with Mama Cass Elliot of "The Mamas and the Papas".
