Category: Music

was born in Peru, Indiana, on this date in 1891. The following is from the web site for the PBS series American Masters:

“Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.”

“Night and Day,” “I Get A Kick Out of You,” “You’re the Top,” “Begin the Beguine,” “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” — some of the cleverest, funniest, and most romantic songs ever written came from the pen of Cole Porter. He was unmatched as a tunesmith, and his Broadway musicals — from “Kiss Me Kate” and “Anything Goes” to “Silk Stockings” and “Can Can” — set the standards of style and wit to which today’s composers and lyricists aspire.

Night and Day was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. Listen to the NPR report on the great Cole Porter song [Real Audio].

was born on this date in 1915. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as Les Paul.

The name Les Paul is synonymous with the electric guitar. As a player, inventor and recording artist, Paul has been an innovator from the early years of his life. Born Lester William Polfus in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Paul built his first crystal radio at age nine – which was about the time he first picked up a guitar. By age 13 he was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist and working diligently on sound-related inventions. In 1941, Paul built his first solid-body electric guitar, and he continued to make refinements to his prototype throughout the decade. He also worked on refining the technology of sound, developing revolutionary engineering techniques such as close miking, echo delay and multitracking. All the while he busied himself as a bandleader who could play both jazz and country music.

His career as a musician nearly came to an end in 1948, when a near-fatal car accident shattered his right arm and elbow. However, he instructed the surgeons to set his arm at an angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar. Paul subsequently made his mark as a jazz-pop musician extraordinaire, recording as a duo with his wife, singer Colleen Summers (a.k.a. Mary Ford). Their biggest hits included “How High the Moon” (1951) and “Vaya Con Dios” (1953), both reaching #1. The recordings of Les Paul and Mary Ford are noteworthy for Paul’s pioneering use of overdubbing – i.e., layering guitar parts one atop another, a technique also referred to as multitracking or “sound on sound” recording. The results were bright, bubbly and a little otherworldly – just the sort of music you might expect from an inventor with an ear for the future.

In 1952, Les Paul introduced the first eight-track tape recorder (designed by Paul and marketed by Ampex) and, more significantly for the future of rock and roll, launched the solid-body electric guitar that bears his name. Built and marketed by Gibson, with continuous advances and refinements from Paul in such areas as low-impedance pickup technology, the Les Paul guitar became a staple instrument among discerning rock guitarists. This list of musicians associated with the Gibson Les Paul include Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Duane Allman and Mike Bloomfield. Over the ensuing decades, Paul himself has remained active, cutting a Grammy-winning album of instrumental duets with Chet Atkins, Chester and Lester in 1977, performing at New York jazz clubs, and continuing to indulge his inventor’s curiosity in a basement workshop at his home in Mahwah, New Jersey.

of Peter, Paul & Mary is 66 today. It was Peter who wrote “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

was born on this date in 1909. Goodman was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who thought that music might be a way out of poverty. His older brothers were given a tuba and a trombone but — just 10 — Benjamin was given a clarinet. He learned to play at a synagogue and then with a Jane Hull House band. By 16, he was in the Ben Pollack Orchestra; by 19, Goodman was making solo recordings.

In 1934, Goodman put together his own band and they played on a live NBC radio program “Let’s Dance” during the late hours in New York. It was not until the band played before a live audience at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles that it found its fans — because of the time difference, the Goodman band that was on so late in the east was heard during prime dancing time on the west coast. (It’s a good scene in the 1955 film The Benny Goodman Story.) Some date the beginning of the Swing Era to that August 21, 1935, appearance in Los Angeles.

On January 16, 1938, Goodman brought jazz to Carnegie Hall. This great concert was recorded (with one microphone), but the original disk was lost. In 1950, Goodman discovered a copy in a closet. It quickly became a best-selling record and the CD is an absolute essential.

But NewMexiKen’s favorite Benny Goodman appearance was on December 30, 1966, at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. That’s because I was there.

is 59 today. Fogerty was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 with Creedence Clearwater Revival.

“In 1968, I always used to say that I wanted to make records they would still play on the radio in ten years,” John Fogerty, former leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival, said on the eve of their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In retrospect, Fogerty got all he wished for and more. Three decades later, Creedence’s songs – including “Proud Mary,” “Born on the Bayou,” “Bad Moon Rising,” and “Green River” – endure as timeless rock and roll classics. Under Fogerty’s tutelage, Creedence Clearwater Revival defined the spirit and sound of rock and roll as authentically as any American group ever has.

CCR’s cover of “I Heard It Through the Grape Vine” isn’t too bad either.

In his great book The Heart of Rock & Soul, Dave Marsh tells us:

Creedence Clearwater started out in the late fifties as just another Northern California high school band, formed by Fogerty, his brother Tom, and a couple of friends, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford. (They were called, among other things, the Blue Velvets and the Golliwogs.) They got a chance at recording for Fantasy, basically a jazz label, only because it happened to be in the neighborhood and the boys had found jobs in the warehouse. They got the kind of record deal you’d expect from that situation, one in which the label not only didn’t have to pay much in royalties but also controlled their song publishing rights.

Somewhere along the way, out of their own avarice and some bad judgment, Creedence was convinced to invest its royalties in an offshore banking tax dodge. Several Fantasy executives also poured money into the scam. Unfortunately, the bank they chose was a Bahamian shell called the Castle Bank, which went down in one of the great financial swindles of the century, leaving Creedence short more than $3 million and with huge overdue payments to the IRS (which stepped in for its bite once the scheme crashed).

Bitter, John Fogerty sued everybody including Fantasy. For the best part of a decade, he litigated but made no music. Meantime, his songs and records continued to generate huge income for Fantasy (which took its profits and produced, among other things, the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).

Fogerty was still pissed when he finally made another record, Centerfield, in 1985. The final track on each side was an unmistakable slug at Fantasy owner Saul Zaentz: “Mr. Greed” and “Zanz Kant Danz.” Zaentz, apparently feeling as vindictive as Fogerty, sued for libel, asking $142 million damages, then charged Fogerty with infringing on a Fantasy copyright-“Run Through the Jungle.”

Centerfield‘s first track, and its first single, was “The Old Man Down the Road.” Everybody who heard it remarked on its amazing similarity to “Run Through the Jungle.” And so Fantasy sued Fogerty for royalties plus damages for plagiarizing his own song!

Amazingly enough, the case actually went to trial and in the fall of 1988, John Fogerty spent two days on the witness stand with a guitar on his lap, explaining “swamp rock” and its limitations to a jury. Pressed about the similarity between the two songs, he finally snapped, “Yeah, I did use that half-step. What do you want me to do, get an inoculation?”

Even if Fantasy did, the jury didn’t. They acquitted him in early November 1988, and, having proven his skills in running through the modern jungle, John Fogerty went back to making his new record. Which he vowed would sound not approximately but exactly like Creedence.

************

Well, I spent some time in the mudville nine, watchin’ it from the bench;
You know I took some lumps when the mighty casey struck out.
So say hey willie, tell ty cobb and joe dimaggio;
Don’t say “it ain’t so”, you know the time is now.

Oh, put me in, coach – I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, coach – I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be centerfield.

was born on this date in 1926. If you do not own the Davis album Kind of Blue, you should purchase it immediately. As Stephen Thomas Erlewine tells us at the All Music Guide,

Kind of Blue isn’t merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it’s an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence. … It may be a stretch to say that if you don’t like Kind of Blue, you don’t like jazz — but it’s hard to imagine it as anything other than a cornerstone of any jazz collection.

Kind of Blue was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. Listen to their report here.

was born in Duluth, Minnesota, on this date 63 years ago. That’s Bob Dylan, of course.

From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

Bob Dylan is the pre-eminent poet/lyricist and songwriter of his time. He re-energized the folk-music genre, brought a new lyrical depth to rock and roll when he went electric, and bridged the worlds of rock and country by recording in Nashville. As much as he’s played the role of renegade throughout his career, Dylan has also kept the rock and roll community mindful of its roots by returning often to them. With his songs, Dylan has provided a running commentary on a restless age. His biting, imagistic and often cryptic lyrics served to capture and define the mood of a generation. For this, he’s been elevated to the role of spokesmen – and yet the elusive and reclusive Dylan won’t even admit to being a poet. “I don’t call myself a poet because I don’t like the word,” he has said.

From the All Music Guide entry by Stephen Thomas Erlewine:

Bob Dylan’s influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notions that in order to perform, a singer had to have a conventionally good voice, thereby redefining the role of vocalist in popular music. As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock and country-rock. And that just touches on the tip of his achievements. Dylan’s force was evident during his height of popularity in the ’60s — the Beatles’ shift toward introspective songwriting in the mid-’60s never would have happened without him — but his influence echoed throughout several subsequent generations. Many of his songs became popular standards, and his best albums were undisputed classics of the rock & roll canon. Dylan’s influence throughout folk music was equally powerful, and he marks a pivotal turning point in its 20th century evolution, signifying when the genre moved away from traditional songs and toward personal songwriting. Even when his sales declined in the ’80s and ’90s, Dylan’s presence was calculable.

was born on this date in 1950 (later Steveland Morris). As Little Stevie Wonder he first recorded for Motown as a 12-year-old; his “Fingertips (Pt. II)” was the first live recording to ever reach number one. Stevie Wonder’s greatest achievements however, began with the album Talking Book (1972), one of just seven albums to be part of the NPR 100. (Listen to the NPR report here [Real Audio].) Steve Huey tells us about Wonder’s best albums at the All Music Guide —

The result, Talking Book, was released in late 1972 and made him a superstar. Song for song one of the strongest R&B albums ever released, Talking Book also perfected Wonder’s spacy, futuristic experiments with electronics, and was hailed as a magnificently realized masterpiece. Wonder topped the charts with the gutsy, driving funk classic “Superstition” and the mellow, jazzy ballad “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” which went on to become a pop standard; those two songs went on to win three Grammys between them. Amazingly, Wonder only upped the ante with his next album, 1973’s Innervisions, a concept album about the state of contemporary society that ranks with Gaye’s What’s Going On as a pinnacle of socially conscious R&B.

*****

Finally released in 1976, Songs in the Key of Life was a sprawling two-LP-plus-one-EP set that found Wonder at his most ambitious and expansive. Some critics called it brilliant but prone to excess and indulgence, while others hailed it as his greatest masterpiece and the culmination of his career; in the end, they were probably both right. “Sir Duke,” an ebullient tribute to music in general and Duke Ellington in particular, and the funky “I Wish” both went to number one pop and R&B; the hit “Isn’t She Lovely,” a paean to Wonder’s daughter, became something of a standard, and “Pastime Paradise” was later sampled for the backbone of Coolio’s rap smash “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Not surprisingly, Songs in the Key of Life won a Grammy for Album of the Year; in hindsight, though, it marked the end of a remarkable explosion of creativity and of Wonder’s artistic prime.

would have been 63 today. But, as everyone knows, Ritchie Valens died in a plane crash on February 3, 1959, along with Buddy Holly and “The Big Bopper,” J.P. Richardson. Valens was 17.

In the course of his short life, Ritchie Valens left a lasting impact on rock and roll with the classic rocker “La Bamba.” A high-energy reworking of an old Mexican wedding song, its driving simplicity foreshadowed garage-rock, frat-rock and punk-rock. Ironically, “La Bamba” was the B-side of “Donna,” a paean to Valens’ girlfriend that rose to #2 on Billboard’s singles chart. “La Bamba” also charted, peaking at #22. This double-sided smash is one of the greatest rock and roll singles of the Fifties.

Or so says the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

La Bamba was one of the NPR 100. Listen to story [Real Audio].

Steve Winwood is 56 today. He was 15 when he recorded “Gimme Some Lovin” with the Spencer Davis Group.

was born on this date in 1888. The following is from the Irving Berlin Music Company web pages

Born Israel Beilin in a Russian Jewish shtetl in 1888, he died as Irving Berlin in his adopted homeland of New York, New York, USA, in 1989. Songwriter, performer, theatre owner, music publisher, soldier and patriot, he defined Jerome Kern’s famous maxim: “Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music.” Berlin wrote over 1200 songs, including “White Christmas,” “Easter Parade,” “Always,” “Blue Skies,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and “God Bless America.” He wrote the scores to more than a dozen Broadway musicals, including Annie Get Your Gun, and provided songs for dozens of Hollywood movie musicals. Among his many awards and accolades were the Academy Award for “White Christmas,” a Congressional Gold Medal, a special Tony Award and commemoration on a 2002 U.S. postage stamp.

The Library of Congress has a page on the composition of God Bless America.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Robert Johnson was born on this date in 1911.

Though he recorded only 29 songs in his brief career – 22 of which appeared on 78 rpm singles released on the Vocalion label, including his first and most popular, “Terraplane Blues” – Johnson nonetheless altered the course of American music. In the words of biographer Stephen C. LaVere, “Robert Johnson is the most influential bluesman of all time and the person most responsible for the shape popular music has taken in the last five decades.” Such classics as “Cross Road Blues,” “Love In Vain” and “Sweet Home Chicago” are the bedrock upon which modern blues and rock and roll were built.

Or, as Eric Clapton put it in the liner notes to the Johnson boxed-set, “Robert Johnson to me is the most important blues musician who ever lived….I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice, really.”

Eric Hilliard Nelson, that is, Rick Nelson, would have been 64 today. (He died in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1985.)

I went to a Garden Party
To reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories
and play our songs again.

When I got to the Garden Party
They all knew my name
But no one recognized me
I didn’t look the same.

But it’s all right now.
I learned my lesson well.
You see you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself.

Rick Nelson, “Garden Party” (1971)

Rick/Ricky Nelson’s Official Website

Toni Tennille is 64 today. Not sure about the Captain.

Don Rickles is 78 today.

two guys who ought to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Link Wray was 75 Sunday. Cub Koda begins his essay about Wray for the All Music Guide:

Link Wray may never get into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but his contribution to the language of rockin’ guitar would still be a major one, even if he had never walked into another studio after cutting “Rumble.” Quite simply, Link Wray invented the power chord, the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarists. Listen to any of the tracks he recorded between that landmark instrumental in 1958 through his Swan recordings in the early 1960s and you’ll hear the blueprints for heavy metal, thrash, you name it. Though rock historians always like to draw a nice, clean line between the distorted electric guitar work that fuels early blues records to the late-’60s Hendrix-Clapton-Beck-Page-Townshend mob, with no stops in between, a quick spin of any of the sides Link recorded during his golden decade punches holes in that theory right quick. If a direct line from a black blues musician crankin’ up his amp and playing with a ton of violence and aggression can be traced to a young, white guy doing a mutated form of same, the line points straight to Link Wray, no contest. Pete Townshend summed it up for more guitarists than he probably realized when he said, “He is the king; if it hadn’t been for Link Wray and ‘Rumble,’ I would have never picked up a guitar.”

To continue reading what Koda has to to say about Wray, go to the All Music Guide and search on Link Wray. (Direct link seemingly not possible.)

Dick Dale is 67 today. Steve Huey begins his essay about Wray for the All Music Guide:

Dick Dale wasn’t nicknamed “King of the Surf Guitar” for nothing: he pretty much invented the style single-handedly, and no matter who copied or expanded upon his blueprint, he remained the fieriest, most technically gifted musician the genre ever produced. Dale’s pioneering use of Middle Eastern and Eastern European melodies (learned organically through his familial heritage) was among the first in any genre of American popular music, and predated the teaching of such “exotic” scales in guitar-shredder academies by two decades. The breakneck speed of his single-note staccato picking technique was unrivalled until it entered the repertoires of metal virtuosos like Eddie Van Halen, and his wild showmanship made an enormous impression on the young Jimi Hendrix. But those aren’t the only reasons Dale was once called the father of heavy metal. Working closely with the Fender company, Dale continually pushed the limits of electric amplification technology, helping to develop new equipment that was capable of producing the thick, clearly defined tones he heard in his head, at the previously undreamed-of volumes he demanded. He also pioneered the use of portable reverb effects, creating a signature sonic texture for surf instrumentals. And, if all that weren’t enough, Dale managed to redefine his instrument while essentially playing it upside-down and backwards — he switched sides in order to play left-handed, but without re-stringing it (as Hendrix later did).

To continue reading what Huey has to to say about Dale, go to the All Music Guide.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Duane Eddy was 66 April 26.