In 1965, Gerry & the Pacemakers, who came to America as part of rock and roll’s British Invasion, released “I’ll Be There.”
On the Billboard chart in the states the single peaked at #17 and In Canada it shot all the way up to #1.
Elvis also recorded “I’ll Be There” as Mama Cass.
But it was first recorded and written by Bobby Darin in 1960.
Darin would have been 88 on Tuesday.
From 7S Management, an artist management company out of Denver:
At an early age Darin developed rheumatic fever which damaged the valves of his heart. He was a frail and sickly boy, and normal stickball in the streets or roughhousing with other kids his age was just not possible for him. One day he overheard the family Doctor say to Polly (his mother) that “even with the best medical treatment and luck the boy probably won’t live to see age 20.” Friends and family later theorized that this medical revelation was what fueled the brash, arrogant and intensely driven Darin to never suffer fools gladly or to waste a single moment.
Darin died in December 1973 at age 37 from complications following heart surgery. He was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and is also a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
BONUS
Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein does the introduction…
Following her mother’s 1905 death, Anna Jarvis of West Virginia conceived of Mother’s Day as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children.
After gaining financial backing from a Philadelphia department store owner named John Wanamaker, in May 1908 she organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration at a Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia. That same day also saw thousands of people attend a Mother’s Day event at one of Wanamaker’s retail stores in Philadelphia.
Following the success of her first Mother’s Day, Jarvis—who remained unmarried and childless her whole life—resolved to see her holiday added to the national calendar. Arguing that American holidays were biased toward male achievements, she started a massive letter writing campaign to newspapers and prominent politicians urging the adoption of a special day honoring motherhood.
By 1912 many states, towns and churches had adopted Mother’s Day as an annual holiday, and Jarvis had established the Mother’s Day International Association to help promote her cause. Her persistence paid off in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure officially establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.
This week, a musical Mother’s Day card. Lets get started.
From 1987, the late Glen Campbell sings with country star Steve Wariner. The song title comes from a William Ross Wallace poem in 1865.
Woman, how divine your mission, Here upon our natal sod; Keep—oh, keep the young heart open Always to the breath of God! All true trophies of the ages Are from mother-love impearled, For the hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world.
Legendary guitarist Duane Eddy died of cancer this week. He was 86.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame describes Eddy as “The rock and roll guitar god who invented twang. Duane Eddy is a guitar hero. His five-year run of thrashing guitar will always be remembered for its dogged refusal to be watered down and its influence on the likes of George Harrison, Bruce Springsteen and Creedence Clearwater Revival.”
Eddy had 15 top-40 singles throughout the late ’50s and early ’60s. His breakthrough was the 1958 instrumental track “ReBel Rouser,” which peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became his first Gold record. He told the AP: “It was a good title, and it was the rockest rock ‘n’ roll sound. It was different for the time.”
“I had a distinctive sound that people could recognize, and I stuck pretty much with that. I’m not one of the best technical players by any means; I just sell the best,” he told the Associated Press in a 1986 interview. “A lot of guys are more skillful than I am with the guitar. A lot of it is over my head. But some of it is not what I want to hear out of the guitar.”
An instrumentalist, Eddy said, “One of my biggest contributions to the music business is not singing.”
Eddy had another hit with “Peter Gunn” that Henry Mancini composed for the TV series of the same name. The theme gained renewed popularity in 1986 when Eddy re-recorded it with Art of Noise The synthesizer-heavy remake reached the Top Ten and also won a Grammy.
Eddy was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2008.
This past Sunday the newest inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced. They included Kool & the Gang whose honor comes 60 years after the band’s formation in New Jersey, and 55 years after its self-titled debut album.
Robert “Kool” Bell is happy to explain why Kool & the Gang, an R&B band with several pop hits, belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Speaking to Billboard via Zoom bell said, “I did 48 shows with Van Halen, 10 shows with Kid Rock, opened for the Dave Matthews Band, Elton John, Rod Stewart. I also worked with Foreigner…If you’re gonna call it a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame then, yeah, I guess you could say that I feel like a rock n’ roller.”
The group traveled all across the music spectrum, starting out as a jazz band, then becoming less jazzy and more top 40 funk and soul, and finally primarily pop.
As you watch this clip from “The Midnight Special” note that Robert “Kool” Bell on bass is sadly the last surviving original member.
The highlight of this performance: Robert “Spike” Mickens’ flugelhorn solo.
This undated photo shows members of the Allman Brothers Band, from left, Dickey Betts, Duane Allman, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks, Gregg Allman and Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson, eating at the H&H Restaurant in downtown Macon, Ga. Guitar legend Betts co-founded the Allman Brothers Band and wrote their biggest hit, “Ramblin’ Man.” Photo: The Macon Telegraph via AP, File
In ’72 the (TV) networks were figuring out that there were some untapped markets late at night. There were people up after 11:30, particularly on weekends. Younger people, single people, couples without kids, married people who’d put their toddlers to bed. Somewhat unexpectedly, the first sign of a change in network weather was live rock and roll, and the instigator was ABC In Concert, a 90-minute show of live rock and roll.
ABC In Concert debuted with two highly-promoted shows on November 24 and December 8, 1972. Both 90-minute episodes were selected from a 16-hour live event at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY, in Long Island. The Hofstra concert had been held on November 2, 1972, and featured eight acts.
In Concert became a bi-weekly series in January 1973.
“Right now, we have more artists than we know what to do with,” producer Don Kirshner’s music director Wally Gold told The Washington Post late in 1972. “We pay them scale to appear, which is way below what they usually get for a concert, but they know that the publicity is well worth it. So everyone wants to be on. We’re getting hundreds of calls. At first, we had to beg the artists to appear. Now they’re begging us.”
The Allman Brothers Band had been breaking out just as their leader Duane Allman died in October, 1971. Their subsequent album Eat A Peach (released on Capricorn in February 1972) was a monster hit, and the Allmans were a bigger concert attraction than ever. The band played a brand new song–“Ramblin’ Man”–that hadn’t even been released yet. On the crawl, they dedicated the show to (bass player) Berry Oakley, who had just died. Hofstra had been his last performance.
With a resume that’s a mile long, Herbie Hancock, who turned 86 today, is and almost always was, a musical genius. Hancock performed a Mozart piano concerto with the famed Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was only 11 at the time. His teenage influences were Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans.
At that tender young age, Hancock had, not one, but two passions. Besides music, Hancock was fascinated with electronic science, so he pursued a double major in music and electrical engineering at Grinnell College.
The legendary trumpet player Donald Byrd discovered the 20-year old Hancock in 1960. Three years later, Hancock made his debut album. That same year, he got a phone call that cemented his place in music history. On the other end of the line was another musician destined for stardom asking Hancock to join his quintet: Miles Davis.
Hancock stayed with Davis until 1968 and in the 70’s, Hancock dove head first into electronic synthesized jazz funk and even crossed over into the pop charts.
The versatile Hancock has written for movies and television. Since 1991, he has been the Distinguished Artist in Residence at Jazz Aspen Snowmass in Colorado; a non-profit organization devoted to the preservation and performance of jazz and American music. Hancock also serves as Institute Chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, the foremost international organization devoted to the development of jazz performance and education worldwide.
In 1962 Hancock wrote ‘Watermelon Man” for his debut album, then re-wrote it in 1973, infusing a funk sound utilizing modern synthesizers.
“I remember the cry of the watermelon man making the rounds through the back streets and alleys of Chicago,” said Hancock. “The wheels of his wagon beat out the rhythm on the cobblestones.”
The tune is a a standard, and has been recorded more than 200 times.
In 1963 Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” single couldn’t crack the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #121.
But his debut album, “Takin’ Off” that included “Watermelon Man” was an immediate success.
Beyoncé last week released a new country album. Its created controversy. And I don’t understand.
Black artists shouldn’t be doing country music has been the reaction of some critics. The claim is obviously ridiculous, but it has opened the door for liberal commentators like Tressie McMillan Cottom of the NYT Times:
“Just by being Black, a woman, popular and impervious to country music’s gatekeepers, Beyoncé has made a political album. Doubting Beyoncé’s country bona fides is like insisting that the realest Americans can only be found in small-town diners. It is a convenient shorthand for dismissing people you would rather not think about.”
More from entertainment journalist Njera Perkins:
The resistance to Beyoncé’s country music foray has revived an age-old narrative in which some people seem to have forgotten that the genre, dubbed “hillbilly music,” actually has veryBlack roots tracing back to 17th-century slave ships.
However, for far too long, gatekeepers of the music industry have tried to convince the world otherwise, yet still exploiting the styles, sounds, and stories coined by Black creators. “I think it’s more than just an image of country music — it’s been sold as the story of country music,” singer-songwriter Yola told Rolling Stone In 2020. “This myth that won’t die of it being ‘the white man’s blues’ is both a good origin story and kind of erases a lot of what else went into making that origin.”
Thanks to the Beyoncé effect, the country music industry is experiencing an awakening of Black artists’ collective contributions to it. So far, the pinnacle moment has increased listenership for country music.
The daring act of turning a discrediting experience into a watershed moment for country music exemplifies Beyoncé’s role as a ruthless cultural innovator.
Black artists need not record country music? Someone either forgot to tell Kool & the Gang that, or the band just ignored such thinking.
Long before “Celebration” and “Ladies Night” Kool & the Gang began their career doing jazz, funk, and soul.
This week’s oldie certainly doesn’t possess the magnitude of Beyoncé’s earth-rattling album, but I find it interesting because of Kool & the Gang’s selection and interpretation.
Jimmy Webb wrote this song after he got the idea driving along the Kansas-Oklahoma border when he saw a lonesome telephone lineman working atop a telephone pole.
“No, I never worked for the phone company. I’m a songwriter. I feel that you should know something about what you’re doing and you should have an image, and I have a very specific image of a guy I saw working up on the wires out in the Oklahoma panhandle one time with a telephone in his hand talking to somebody. And this exquisite aesthetic balance of all these telephone poles just decreasing in size as they got further and further away from the viewer – that being me – and as I passed him, he began to diminish in size. The country is so flat, it was like this one quick snapshot of this guy rigged up on a pole with this telephone in his hand. And this song came about, really, from wondering what that was like, what it would be like to be working up on a telephone pole and what would you be talking about? Was he talking to his girlfriend? Probably just doing one of those checks where they called up and said, ‘Mile marker 46,’ you know. ‘Everything’s working so far.’
In 2019 New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author Dylan Jones wrote:
The punchline—the sucker punch—of “Wichita Lineman,” the line in the song that resonates so much, the line that contains one of the most exquisite romantic couplets in the history of song—“And I need you more than want you / and I want you for all time”—could be many people’s perfect summation of love, although some, including writer Michael Hann, think it’s something sadder and perhaps more profound. “It is need, more than want, that defines the narrator’s relationship; if they need their lover more than wanting them, then naturally they will want them for all time. The couplet encompasses the fear that those who have been in relationships do sometimes struggle with: good God, what happens to me if I am left alone?” Hann is certainly right when he says that it’s a heart-stopping line, and no matter how many hundreds of times you hear it, no matter what it means to you, it never loses its ability to shock and confound.
Glen Campbell’s 1968 hit peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Then in 1971 Kool and the Gang released a live album recorded at the old Sex Machine nightclub in Philadelphia. No lyrics here. Just a jazzy instrumental. How dare they.
This year Kool & the Gang celebrates its 60th anniversary in the music business.
In February, Beyonce became the first Black woman to top Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart with her single “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM.”
Her RENAISSANCE sequel,Act II: COWBOY CARTER is out today, March 29. “My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist’s race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant.”
Since she first dabbled in country music with “Daddy Lessons” in 2016, the icon has received consistent backlash about whether she belongs in the genre. That same year, audiences campaigned for a boycott against the Country Music Awards for her performance of the track alongside The Chicks. Eight years later, the conversation returns as radio listeners question if her music should air on country stations.
Last week the Recording Academy announced 10 recordings are to be inducted to the distinguished Grammy Hall of Fame as part of its 2024 inductee class and in celebration of its 50th anniversary this year.
This year’s GRAMMY Hall of Fame additions include Charley Pride’s 1971 hit “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.”
By 1987, Pride achieved more than 50 Top 10 hits on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart, with 30 peaking at No. 1 — including “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.”
Pride passed away from COVID-19 complications in 2020.
Full list of 2024 GRAMMY Hall Of Fame Inducted Recordings:
3 FEET HIGH AND RISING De La Soul Tommy Boy (1989) (Album) Inducted: 2024
Another legendary band is getting ready to say goodbye.
Jeff Lynne’s ELO is set to embark on “The Over and Out Tour” that’s being billed as the band’s final road show.
The 27-date North American tour will kick off in Palm Desert, CA on August 24 and travel across North America to cities such as New York and Chicago (United Center, September 27, 2024). No WI date is scheduled.
Lynne’s North American tour in 2019 got nice reviews:
“A brilliant catalog returns to U.S. stages and gives the strings-starved people what they want. The ELO catalog speaks for itself… and it was a glorious thing to behold… in a 19-song set that reprised the closest thing to truly Beatle-level pop the 1970s had to offer.” – Variety
“Jeff Lynne’s ELO prove that spacy pop rock is still a livin’ thing… one of the most flawless and visually stunning arena shows I’ve seen in a long time. Complete with monstrous lights, lasers and the mandatory ELO spaceship hovering behind the band on video screens, the show was as grand and engrossing as a blockbuster movie — a ’70s blockbuster movie, that is.” – LA Weekly
“For all the gifted musicians that helped achieve Lynne’s perfectionist vision, ELO was always his creation, a neon-hued Frankenstein’s monster built from bits of early rock-and-roll, symphonic themes, Beatles harmonies, and disco beats. All of those pieces came together flawlessly… played to perfection.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jeff Lynne was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame last year and the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.
VetsAid 2023, North Island Credit Union Amphitheater in Chula Vista, CA, Nov. 12, 2023…
Rolling Stone has published its list of the 100 best Beatle solo songs.
Music journalist Rob Sheffield, the author of the 2017 book Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World, compiled the list. In Rolling Stone he writes:
When the Beatles broke up in 1970, they figured it was the end of the story. But they got that wrong. Over 50 years later, John, Paul, George, and Ringo are more influential, famous, beloved than ever. That means the world is finally catching up with one of the weirdest chapters in the Beatles’ saga: their solo music. All four Fabs kept making music, on their own eccentric terms. All four dropped classic albums. All four released total garbage. The solo Beatles story is a gloriously messy, crazed, chaotic world of its own.
Some of these songs are legendary tunes sung around the world at weddings and parties. Some are buried treasures only the most hardcore Beatlemaniacs know.
Keep in mind: this is NOT a list of their greatest hits. These songs aren’t here because of commercial success, radio airplay, sales or popularity. The only thing that matters is the level of Beatle magic. That means some incredibly famous hits didn’t make the cut.
With that in mind, dig into Sheffield’s mind as to what he chose as the best Beatle solo song. Any idea? Odds are you’re probably wrong.
Let’s unlock Sheffield’s Top Ten.
Coming in at #2 is Lennon’s 1970 track “God,” which is described as the “most ferocious performance of his lifetime, or practically anyone’s.”
Harrison’s “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” comes in at #3, followed by Ringo’s “It Don’t Come Easy” at #4 and Lennon’s “Mind Games” at #5.
Rounding out the top 10 are: McCartney & Wings’ “Band on the Run” at #6, Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity” at #7, McCartney’s “Too Many People” at #8, Lennon’s “Imagine” at #9 and Harrison’s “Pure Smokey” at #10.
I would have incorrectly guessed “Imagine.”
Sheffield’s #1?
A Paul McCartney classic.
Sheffield writes McCartney “wrote his most soulful, passionate, unforgettable love song for Linda, in the aftermath of The Beatles break-up,” adding the 1970 tune “captures the moment when their romance was just beginning.”
The couple married in 1969 and were together for 29 years until Linda’s death in 1998.
Singer-songwriter Eric Carmen, frontman of the band the Raspberries who went on to achieve success with songs such as “All By Myself” and “Hungry Eyes,” died this week. He was 74.
A cause of death was not given.
Formed in 1970, the Raspberries were known for their matching suits at a time when most bands had abandoned them.
“Almost every band had hair down to their waist and beards and ripped jeans and they looked like a bunch of hippies, and I wanted to get as far away from that as I could,” Carmen said in 2017.
The Raspberries’ second album, “Fresh,” released in 1972, would be their highest charting, hitting No. 36 and featuring two Top 40 hits, “I Wanna Be With You” and “Let’s Pretend.”
This Just In... From Franklin, WI 