DAY 27.
The Everly Brothers...........A Date With The Everly Brothers (1960)



That 28 minutes just flew by, their close, two-part harmonies I don't think have been rivalled by many stars even to this day.
They were said to have had a big influence on Simon & Garfunkel, The Beach Boys and The Beatles, and I can see that.
The album itself was enjoyable, I liked all of the tracks and you wouldn't have thought there was any sign of the sibling rivalry, that would rear its ugly head in years to come.
All in all a good listen, but not an album I would play too often, so wont be going in my collection.

• Don and Phil's father, Ike, and mother, Margaret, were musicians and the brothers cut their performing teeth alongside their parents in a combo called the Everly Family. The band had a radio show on KMA and KFNF in Shenandoah, Iowa in the 1940s, while touring in the south and the midwest.
• The Everly's cousin, James Best, is an American actor, best known for his starring role as Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane in the CBS television series The Dukes of Hazzard.
• Family friend Chet Atkins helped the Everly Brothers secure their first recording contract with Columbia Records. However their first single, "Keep A' Lovin' Me," flopped and the label dropped them.
• Atkins continued to encourage the brothers, and helped them get a deal with Acuff/Rose as songwriters. Soon afterwards, Wesley Rose introduced them to Archie Bleyer, who was looking for artists for his Cadence Records label. The Everlys signed to Cadence and their first single, "Bye Bye Love," topped the Country charts, and reached #2 on the Pop charts. "Bye Bye Love," had been rejected by 30 other acts (including Elvis Presley), but the Everlys saw potential in the song. The song, written by the husband and wife Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, became the Everly Brothers' first million-seller.
• The Everly brothers toured extensively with Buddy Holly during 1957 and 1958. Phil Everly was one of Holly's pallbearers at his funeral, although Don did not attend.
• The Everlys switched from the Cadence label to Warner Brothers in 1960, for a deal which was reputed to be the first million-dollar contract in music history.
• The Everly Brothers charted 31 singles on the Hot 100, including four #1s: "Wake Up Little Susie," "All I Have to Do Is Dream," "Bird Dog" and "Cathy's Clown." The latter was the first single to top the US and UK charts simultaneously.
• Phil and Don enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in November 1961 for six months as an alternative to being drafted separately for two-year periods in the army.
• The Everly Brothers' career slumped in their home country in the wake of the British Invasion in 1964. However they retained a faithful following in countries including Canada, Australia and Britain. They scored nine Top 40 hits in the UK between 1963 and 1965, including the self-penned "The Price Of Love" and a cover of Mickey and Sylvia's "Love Is Strange."
• The Everly Brothers ended their partnership in 1973 after a gig on July 14, 1973, at Knotts Berry Farm in California, at which Phil smashed his guitar and stormed off the stage.
• Embarking on a solo career, Phil charted three times as a solo artist with the #37 peaking "Who's Gonna Keep Me Warm" being his biggest hit. He also had a Top Ten entry in 1983 on the UK singles chart with "She Means Nothing To Me," a duet with Cliff Richard.
• The brothers reunited in 1983, when they appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, London. The concert spawned a well-received live LP and video.
• Don Everly's daughter, Erin, was married for a short time to Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses. He wrote the song "Sweet Child O' Mine" for her.
• The Everly Brothers were part of the first group of ten artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
• "Wake Up Little Susie" and "Bye Bye Love" were both covered by Simon & Garfunkel, who took the Everlys out as special guests on their 2003-04 reunion tour.

Phil Everly passed away aged 74 of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. According to Phil's wife Patti, his ailment was an effect of a lifetime of smoking cigarettes.

Albert Hammond's 1972 Number Five hit "It Never Rains in Southern California" came from an album of the same name. The album also included a dreamy song he wrote with Mike Hazlewood, which was not released as a single. Phil Everly was the first to cover the song, on his 1973 album "Star Spangled Springer," but it did not become a hit until it was recorded by the Hollies in 1974.........." The Air That I Breathe"
The Everly Brothers' first UK number one was the double A-side "All I Have To Do Is Dream/Claudette", "Claudette" was written by Roy Orbison.

"(Til) I Kissed You" reached number four on the US pop chart in 1959. It reached number two on the UK chart the same year.
The Crickets, who were the backing group on this record, had become friends with The Everly Brothers when they toured together with Buddy Holly in 1957 and 1958. Phil Everly was a pallbearer at the funeral of Buddy Holly in 1959; Don Everly was too distraught to attend.
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• Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Cat Stevens, Roger Daltrey and even Madonna have played an Everly Brothers J-180 live.
•  
• Keith Richards told Guitar Player magazine that the bro’s were a key influence. “I realized that one of the best rhythm guitarists in the world ever is Don Everly, who always used open tuning. Don is the killer rhythm man… the Everly Brothers stuff was so hard, because it was all on acoustic.
• Jimmy Page owns an early black 1962 Gibson Everly Brothers, but he says he has never played it on a recording or live - it is just for home use.

Just catching up: I like Elvis songs, but not always with Elvis singing them. Mind when he died, Johnny Rotten paying him a tribute "Fuckin' good riddance to bad rubbish", and stating he was a good dancer.

Sad story that Miriam Makeba has, and a wee bit different from what has gone before musically (in the list to date).

Really like the Everly Brothers, great songwriters, huge contribution to the music that followed. Even although they had rich voices, the producer used to double track each of them to make the vocals even bulkier.

I'll have to give Jimmy Smith a listen, know nothing about him.
 

Sorry to anyone who may be looking in, but my PC died on me just after I'd uploaded the album cover, I couldn't log in on my other devices as it wouldn't accept what I thought was my password ( it was saved on PC )

A big thank you to Tek who sorted it out for me, unfortunately for anyone who reads this you're stuck with me for a bit longer.

I've put a little bit about Jimmy Smith on my last post, but will listen to the album and post early tomorrow
Cheers

And thanks once again Tek.   

DAY 29..........Muddy Waters At Newport  (1960)



Muddy Waters spent most of the 1950's on the R&B charts with hits like "Rollin and Tumblin" and "Louisiana Blues", but it was not until 1960 that he introduced himself, and live blues to the white mainstream audience.

After seeing his sales begin to dip towards the twilight of the 1950's, Chess Records decided to market its greatest talent as an album based performer, and subsequently brought a tape recorder to Muddy's perfomance at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival.

When he took to the stage that afternoon, Waters was about as unfamiliar with his white audience as they were with his countrified brand of Chicago Boogie. The walloping refrain of " Hoochie Coochie Man" and unvarnished wall of " Baby Please Dont Go" were a stark departure from Dizzie Gillespie's chilled trumpet.

But by the close of the set, Muddy's poweful baritone, James Cotton's crying harmonic, and Otis Spann's barroom piano had the hip kids dancing in the aisles on the show-stopping "Got My Mojo Working."

Looking forward to this one!

arabchanter wrote:

And thanks once again Tek.

No problem at all Mr Chanter.
 

DAY 29..........Muddy Waters At Newport  (1960)



This has got to be one of my favourites so far, what a voice the man had.
Every track was enjoyable, have never been much of a Blues fan, but might just investigate a little further after this album.
Muddy Waters At Newport will be going into my collection.

aters was born McKinley Morganfield in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, in 1915 but grew up in Clarksdale, where his grandmother raised him after his mother died in 1918. His fondness for playing in mud earned him his nickname at an early age. Waters started out on harmonica but by age seventeen he was playing the guitar at parties and fish fries, emulating two blues artists who were extremely popular in the south, Son House and Robert Johnson. “His thick heavy tone, the dark coloration of his voice and his firm almost stolid manner were all clearly derived from House,but the embellishments which he added, the imaginative slide technique and more agile rhythms, were closer to Johnson.

In 1940 Waters moved to St. Louis before playing with Silas Green a year later and returning back to Mississippi. In the early part of the decade he ran a juke house, complete with gambling, moonshine, a jukebox, and live music courtesy of Muddy himself. In the summer of 1941 Alan Lomax came to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress to record various country blues musicians. “He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house,” Waters recalled in Rolling Stone, “and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybody’s records. Man, you don’t know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, ’I can do it, I can do it.’

In 1946 Waters recorded some tunes for Mayo Williams at Columbia but they were never released. Later that year he began recording for Aristocrat, a newly-formed label run by two brothers, Leonard and Phil Chess. In 1947 Waters played guitar with Sunnyland Slim on piano on the cuts “Gypsy Woman” and “Little Anna Mae.” These were also shelved, but in 1948 Waters’s “I Can’t Be Satisfied” and “I Feel Like Going Home” became big and his popularity in clubs began to take off. Soon after, Aristocrat changed their name to Chess and Waters’s signature tune, “Rollirï Stone,” became a smash hit.


When R & B began to die down shortly after, Waters switched back to his older style of country blues. His gig at the Newport Folk Festival in 1960 turned on a whole new generation to Waters’s Delta sound. As English rockers like Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones got hip to the blues, Waters switched back to electric circa 1964. He expressed anger when he realized that members of his own race were turning their backs to the genre while the white kids were showing respect and love for it.

In 1983 Muddy Waters passed away in his sleep. Two years after his death, the city that made Muddy Waters (and vice versa) honored their father by changing the name of 43rd Street to Muddy Waters Drive.

Random facts......
It is stated that this is one of the first live blues albums ever made and it is also said to have influenced artists such as Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, Rolling Stones (i know Keith Richards was a big Muddy Waters fan) and Led Zeppelin because they were all fans of his electric sound. to have that much influence on what should be considered rock music royalty shows how good Muddy was. despite enjoying Muddy Waters electric sound the album cover might seem confusing where Muddy is pictures holding a semi-acoustic guitar, it is because he left the electric guitar he used for the show on stage (fender telecaster) and the photographer was pressing him for a picture so he just borrowed the guitar in the picture from his friend John Lee Hooker, it wasn’t the guitar he performed the show with.

Muddy appeared on “The Last Waltz,” Scorsese’s famed rocumentary/concert of The Band’s final farewell
Muddy, along with bandmates Pinetop Perkins and Bob Margolin, played “Mannish Boy”, but by what Scorsese called “Dumb Luck”, all but one camera was rolling for the song’s entirety, and the moment almost wasn’t recorded at all. The producers then wanted to cut his part, however, since they were running long. The Band’s, Levon Helm, who was also the brainchild behind the Muddy Waters’ Woodstock Album, protested until Scorsese left it in.

“I seen Muddy Waters playing The Last Waltz,” Dr John told ABS in 2013 about that night. “He played ‘Nine Below Zero’ the night before they filmed it too. I saw every so-called badass guitar player with his jaw droopin’ and saggin’… I wish they’d filmed that… And that’s the kind of things I been blessed to see.

”Muddy helped Chuck Berry get his first recording contract
Born in Saint Louis, Berry traveled to Chicago and met with Muddy Waters, who sent him to audition for Chess. Berry came with a country western tune, “Ida Red”, and Chess was sold — except they renamed the song “Maybellene”.Legend has it that Chess saw a Maybelline brand mascera box in the corner of the studio and, with few better options, suggested they name the girl in the song after it, (changing the spelling slightly from the beauty company to avoid a lawsuit). The song was a hit, and Berry went on to almost singlehandedly define Rock n Roll, many of the biggest hits coming from the Chess studio.

Eric Clapton was best man at Muddy’s wedding to Marva Jean Brooks in 1979
"Muddy was there at a time when, really, the music was getting to me. I was really trying to grasp it and make something out of it,” Clapton told NPR, even writing in his book that Muddy was “the father figure I never really had.” In the last decade of Muddy’s life, he and Clapton had become very close. After he met 19 year old Marva, (about seven years after his wife Geneva passed), Mud asked Eric to be his best man.

The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger named his band after Waters' song "Rollin' Stone."

 Muddy was a major influence on Angus Young of AC/DC
.AC/DC’s monster hit “You Shook Me All Night Long” came from the lyrics of Muddy’s “You Shook Me”, which was written by Willie Dixon. (Fun fact: Led Zeppelin also released a cover of “You Shook Me” as track three on their debut album.)“Because we grew up in Australia,” said Young in an interview with Rolling Stone, “to find information about a lot of blues guys I used to go to the library and find the jazz magazines. They didn’t even sell them at the time in news agents and stuff. So I’d go into the library and read all about where these people were playing, like Muddy Waters and Elmore James.”

Muddy Waters - Got My Mojo Workin' (Newport 1960)


 




 

DAY 30.
Bill Evans....Sunday At The Village Vanguard   (1961)


One of the most widely influential pianists of the 1960's and 70's, Bill Evans was a seminal force in jazz who seemed to emerge as a fully formed artist in the late 1950's. A ravishingly lyrical player of tremendous hamonic sophistication, he attained a unique, bell-like tone from the piano, which made his long, flowing lines glow with a blue-flame luminescence.

Well I don't know what to make of that, but not filling me with joy but you never know. 

DAY31.
Ray Charles..........Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music  (1962)



Hard, perhaps to imagine what a jolt this must have been in 1962, a raw and strung out black R&B singer tackling Hank Williams and Don Gibson 18 months before Martin Luther King had a dream. But while the record's shock value has grown blurry in the last five decades, the quality of Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music is still crystal clear from the first, irresistibly swinging bars of opener "Bye Bye Love."

Sounds more like the Ray I like.

Last edited by arabchanter (10/9/2017 12:20 pm)

DAY 32.
Booker T. And The M.G.s......... Green Onions.   (1962)



Every few years in the early days of rock an instrumental slipped through the endless ranks of vocal discs and shot to the top---"Bill Doggett's Honky Tonk" in 1956, or The Champs "Tequila" in 1958 for example. In 1962 it was the turn of "Green Onions" an insinuating organ-guitar blues album that reinvented Jimmy Smith's organ jazz for the pop market, highlighted by taut snatches of guitar. Booker T and the M.G.s were the most soulfur bar band in the whole world.

Liked the single "Green Onions" so this could be quite good.
 

DAY 32.
Booker T. And The M.G.s......... Green Onions.   (1962)



I was left feeling I should have liked this one more than I did, don't get me wrong I liked most of the the tracks, but their versions of "I Got  Woman," "Twist And Shout," and "Stranger On The Shore" I really didn't take to.
It may be because I prefer other peoples take on these tracks as opposed to Booker Ts instrumental versions, so although I enjoyed most of the tracks I wont be adding this one to mycollection.

The Memphis-based quartet Booker T. & the MG's is one of the most important studio bands in the history of American popular music. On their own, the MG's are best known for their 1962 instrumental hit "Green Onions" (Number Three, Pop, Number One, R&B), but the group is remembered more today for its work as the house band at Stax Records, where they played behind a string of hits by heavyweight soul acts including Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and the Staple Singers.The band formed by accident one day in 1962, when seventeen-year-old keyboard player Booker T. Jones was in a Memphis studio waiting for rockabilly singer Billy Lee Riley to arrive to a recording session. He and drummer Al Jackson, bassist Lewie Steinberg and guitarist Steve Cropper began jamming on the melody that would become "Green Onions." Stax Records president Jim Stewart liked the tune so much he decided to record it and put it out as a single. The band needed a name, so Jackson suggested the MG's, for the popular early-sixties sports car. Eventually, MG's came to stand for Memphis Group. The style of the song — a bouncy, organ-driven R&B melody with blasts of trebly, country-rock guitar over a swinging, laid-back bass-and-drums groove — became the signature musical foundation for Southern soul.

As important as their music, Booker T. & the MG's — two black members and two white members — became a symbol of racial integration in the South during the civil rights years. As the individual members began getting session work in other cities, they had less and less time for their work as the MG's, and the group called it quits in 1971. Their final album, released that year, was the aptly named Melting Pot. In 1975, the band had begun work on a reunion album when Al Jackson was shot and killed by a burglar at his home in Memphis. Three years later, Cropper and Dunn backed the Blues Brothers — Saturday Night Live's John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd's semi-serious send-up of an R&B band — for the Number One album Briefcase Full of Blues, which included a cover of the Sam & Dave hit "Soul Man" that reached Number 14 on the Pop chart. The project was so popular that Cropper and Dunn worked with Belushi and Aykroyd on a 1980 film of the same name.

 
 

DAY 33.
Stan Getz And Charlie Bird........ Jazz Samba  (1962)


[img]https://images.creators.co/images/c_limit,q_auto:good,w_710/blhcyy1gnzjvf857yabv/1001-albums-jazz-samba.jpg[/img]




I think they're winning, 'cause I liked this album, I think the trick with jazz is not to listen too intensely and keep it as background at a lower level than you would normally do, that seems to work for me.
I did enjoy "Desinfinado" and "Samba Triste" the latter being written by a Brazilian named Baden Powell, his father was a keen scouting man and named him after the scouts founder.
Bossa Nova it may well be, and although I liked it, it wont be making it's way into my collection.

I thought I'd put this one up, track 2 written by Charlie Bird  "Samba Dees Days" never knew he'd been to Dens.
It's actually pretty good imho.




"I'M A Russian Jew," Stan Getz once told me, "and that's the hardest kind." The guitarist Charlie Byrd was to find out just what he meant.
It was Byrd who introduced Getz to Bossa Nova music and together they made the album Jazz Samba, which included the million-selling "Desafinado" amongst its tracks. The album has over subsequent years also sold a million copies.
Getz remarked later that "Desafinado" had paid to put his children through university. Although done under their joint leadership in 1962, Getz took all the benefits in royalties and the credit for the subsequent Grammy award to himself. Getz's life changed immediately and he was from that point on paid as a superstar."I made the big mistake of doing the date and not talking about any deal," said Byrd. "The next thing I knew I was out. I mean, no artist royalty, none at all. Just leader's scale, plus scale for the arrangements, all of which I wrote. All Stan had to do was come in and play. We had the rhythm section and the idea.
"Typically, as the riches from the album accumulated, Getz had never given a second thought to Byrd's position. In fairness to the tenor player it should be noted that the album had been nominated in two Grammy categories - Record of the Year and Best Jazz Solo Performance.
It won the award in the solo category and since Byrd's solo in the LP version had been excised from the hit single, the award inevitably went to Getz.
Byrd took the matter to court and after much acrimony was finally awarded $50,000 and a share of future royalties from the album.
 



 

Last edited by arabchanter (03/6/2018 6:27 pm)

Stan Getz And Charlie Bird plus Ray Price: dismal, summing up our season to date.

C'mon, arabchanter, I cannae be bothered with the football chat any more, so I'm here to be entertained.

Hope the book ups it's game soon.......

DAY 34.
Ray Price......Night Life  (1962)



Ray Price, I'd rather listen to Vincent Price, deary me.
I know country's renowned for morose songs, but this was, put you on a downer type of morose.
The only saving grace for this album for me was "Wild Side Of Life"  which an old uncle of mine (god rest his soul) used to sing at new year partys when I was a kid, bringing back fond memories.
Sentiment aside this album wont be coming anywhere near my house.

Ray Price (Noble Ray Price), (born Jan. 12, 1926, Perryville, Texas—died Dec. 16, 2013, Mount Pleasant, Texas), American musician who was at the forefront of country music for more than 20 years, scoring several number one hits in two distinct styles: a honky-tonk shuffle that came to be dubbed the “Ray Price beat” and a more sedate, sophisticated sound called “countrypolitan.”

Price attended North Texas Agricultural College with the intention of becoming a veterinarian, but he dropped out to perform full-time.

While his early style was greatly influenced by his friend Hank Williams, the 1956 honky-tonk hit “Crazy Arms” marked Price’s new direction.

A sharp judge of talent, he recruited future stars such as Willie Nelson and Roger Miller to play in his band, the Cherokee Cowboys.

In the mid-1960s, however, Price changed his style again, adopting lush instrumentation and a more-urbane pop sound that produced such hits as “Danny Boy” (1967) and the Grammy Award-winning “For the Good Times” (1970) but alienated some of his country fans.

Price earned his second Grammy, for best country collaboration with vocals, for “Lost Highway,” a duet with Nelson on the collaborative album Last of the Breed (2007).

Price was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996.