I was never a big Beatles fan, but (like I've said on here before) liked John Lennon songs. 'It Won't Be Long' is a great song, always liked it, and of course I do enjoy this album. Probably around the time this was released, or thereabouts, the Dave Clark Five were my favourite band. Doubt they'll be in the 1001 top album book.

Things are maybe looking up!

PatReilly wrote:

I was never a big Beatles fan, but (like I've said on here before) liked John Lennon songs. 'It Won't Be Long' is a great song, always liked it, and of course I do enjoy this album. Probably around the time this was released, or thereabouts, the Dave Clark Five were my favourite band. Doubt they'll be in the 1001 top album book.

Things are maybe looking up!

The Dave Clark Five were ok, I also liked The Beatles,  but I was more of a Stones man myself.
Was lucky enough to see them at the Apollo in Glasgow in '76, superb!

I bet it used to piss you right off when them zombies were singing,  "we've got Joey Garner" ......Sacrilege.
 

DAY 35.
The Beatles...... With The Beatles  (1963)



I was brought up listening to The Beatles, my older brother was mad for them, he had all the singles/albums and even went to see them at The Caird Hall  in 1963.
Years later he confided in me that, although he really did like The Beatles it made it a lot easier with the girls which was an added bonus.

"With The Beatles" was a great listen, you can't beat their harmonies and the covers were done brilliantly imho.

"With The Beatles" will be getting added to my collection as, even though I was only five when it came out, the songs still evoke great memories from my childhood.

Friday 22nd November, 1963 is still remembered by many, who lived through it as the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Earlier on that eventful day, Parlophone had released the Beatles' second album.
With The Beatles carried on where Please Please Me had left off, melding more Lennon-McCartney originals with further highlights from their stage set.
It also included the song-writing debut of their twenty-year old, Lead Guitarist, George Harrison.
While the majority of their debut album had been completed in one day, The Beatles had to record their second release in-between other engagements that included, concert tours, numerous radio and TV performances (including the prestigious Sunday Night At The London Palladium) and their first international tour to Sweden.
It was around this time that the term "Beatlemania" was first coined and this was very much in evidence when they took part in that year's Royal Variety Performance in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.
If that wasn't enough they also had to write, record and promote three new 45's all of which reached the no.1 spot in the UK charts.None of the tracks from With The Beatles was released as a single in the UK and the distinctive black and white cover shot by Robert Freeman also broke new ground for a pop album.
With The Beatles shot to No. 1 in the Britain replacing Please Please Me and remained there for 21 of the 51 weeks it spent in the Top Twenty.
Like Please Please Me it didn't receive a US release until 1987 but the cover shot was used on their debut album for Capitol Records "Meet The Beatles" - which also included nine of the tracks from the British release plus three other songs including their first US hit - "I Want To Hold Your Hand".
 

arabchanter wrote:

DAY 36.
Bob Dylan......The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan    (1963)



While folk music throughout the 1950's and '60s was often a mainstay of American popular culture, no one quite typified the tensions of the time as well as Bob Dylan. And "the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" in particular did much to cement his reputation as a singer-songwriter of near perfect skill, gifted with a poets eye for detail, narrative and humour.

Looking at the tracklist on the cover I think I'm going to like this.

 
Was a favourite of mine for  years . Not sure I'd pop it in my collection now - too much of its time maybe?

Don't get me wrong though, still a good album, just not a great one for me

The albums are starting to get really good now.

That Dylan album is brilliant.

"Girl From The North Country" a favourite of mine.

PatReilly wrote:

It's all about opinions, but I see Dylan as a songwriter contributing to the likes of Bryan Ferry, Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix, The Black Crowes or Johnny Cash. Never liked his singing himself.

Even Scotland's JSD Band covered his songs better than the originals.

I dont mind Dylan, but legend has it when visiting Woody Guthrie in hospital, he played a few songs for him, and was told "Kid, don't worry about writing songs; work on your singing."

DAY 37.
Phil Spector.........A Christmas Gift For You   (1963)



This album was enjoyable, but as I'm more into Halloween and have most of the tracks on compilations, I wont be putting this in my collection.

Phil Spector was found guilty of the killing of aspiring actress Lana Clarkson in 2003- a woman he’d only known for a few hours before the brutal murder in his home.

But who the hell is Phil Spector, anyway?

This trial’s been played out over the past years, and the fleet of massive wigs have been interesting, but to most younger people, Spector is little more than a pasty old freakshow taking up TV time.

There’s no historical reference. What they may not realize is that, despite his ridiculous appearance and obvious lunatic mentality, Spector is a crucial piece of the tapestry of music history.Spector- accompanied by his trademark “Wall of Sound-” was responsible for countless hits throughout the ’60s and ’70s.

Until he arrived on the music scene in 1958, rock songs often involved no more than a drummer, a guitarist and a bass player performing into a single microphone. But Spector wasn’t having that at all. The man who compared himself to both Mozart and Shakespeare brought dozens of players into the studio, creating an orchestra of guitars, percussion, keyboards, horns, voices and other instruments with the goal of crating “little symphonies for the kids.” Massive, luxurious arrangements, overdubbed vocals, multiple lead guitars and so on were par for the Spector course, which all took place in the non-digital era of four-track tape recorders.

Session guitarist Carol Kaye worked with him throughout the ’60s, and recalled people being packed shoulder-to-shoulder into a studio for a recording session that produced the 1966 Ike and Tina Turner classic, River Deep-Mountain High.“There were so many players crammed into the studio that it’s a wonder that he got any kind of sound,” said Kaye, who also played guitar for Spector on the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’, the song cited by BMI as the most played in the history of US radio.

“He said to me he had the sound in his head that he wanted to create,” said veteran engineer Larry Levine, who worked with Spector in1962. His perfect pitch and knack for a melody made him an A-list producer at a very young age. He was only 21 when he co-founded his label, which paved the way for high-charting tracks including Then He Kissed Me by the Crystals, The Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody, Instant Karma and Imagine by John Lennon, and Be My Baby by The Ronettes, whose lead singer married Spector.

In 1990, Ronnie Spector told NPR that their songs were love letters.“We always rehearsed them alone,” Ronnie Spector says. “So we had this romance between my singing and him teaching me. It was like the best feeling in the world. It was like, ‘Mmm!'”

Spector was anything but a casual cassanova, however. He was controlling and endlessly insecure, refusing to let her wear shoes in the house for fear she would run away. He bought a glass-lidded coffin in which he threatened to display her if she left him. His psychosis wasn’t limited to the home, either. Always a domineering figure, Spector had a reputation for being eccentric and intimidating, and worst of all, he had a passionate love for guns.

Spector’s gun obsession came very early in his career, when a traumatic incident changed his sense of security forever. While on tour with his first act, The Teddy Bears, the 18 year-old Spector was confronted in a men’s urinal. The short, frail Phil was beaten and urinated on by four street toughs, an incident so traumatic to Spector that from then on he kept a bodyguard and a gun by his side

By the 1970s, however, Spector’s career was in shambles. His mounting obsession with guns was a symptom of outright depression, and there are numerous accounts of Spector threatening his artists with firearms. In 1973, during sessions for John Lennon’s oldies covers album Rock And Roll, Spector was a drunk, verbally abusive mess, constantly threatening Lennon and the studio crew. Samples from this infamous session can be heard on Lennon’s Anthology box set. During these sessions, Spector waved a handgun around, eventually shooting it into the air. The volatile producer then disappeared with the session tapes, which took Lennon months to retrieve. 

Six years later, in 1979, Spector forced punk legends The Ramones, at gunpoint, to play the same opening guitar chord repeatedly for eight solid hours. He mixed it into the song Rock And Roll High School over and over, until he got it just the way he imagined it.

He produced the Beatles’ final proper studio realease, Let It Be, and Paul McCartney hated it, according to most accounts. Not only that, but he stated that what Spector did to the song The Long And Winding Road led to the conflict that eventually broke the group up.

Spector continued to spiral downward, going into seclusion. His further attempts at recording with other musicians ended in bickering feuds, and his image wasn’t helped much at his induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1989. Spector arrived with three bodyguards, all with their hands on their guns. He gave a long, rambling and mostly incoherent acceptance speech before proceeding to fall off the stage. 

Time Europe reported in 1999 that Phil’s mentality had withered to the point where he walked around his estate in Alhambra, CA every day, in complete darkness, wearing nothing but a Batman costume. While that may sound like fourteen shades of awesome on the first pass, the thought of a senior citizen actually doing that is pretty goddamned creepy.
Insanity and insecurity ran in Spector’s family as well. His older sister was institutionalized, and his father committed suicide when he was 9. Spector’s first hit was actually inspired by the inscription on his father’s grave: “To Know Him Is to Love Him.”

Despite the magic Spector produced in the studio, however, nothing can redeem this tragic episode in Spector’s life. His musical legacy will be forever overshadowed by the murder conviction.

 

DAY 38.
Sam Cooke..........Live At The Harlem Square Club  (1963)



Enjoyable and worth a listen, he certainly had the crowd eating out of his hand.
I'm glad I listened to it, but I have all the songs that I like of his on various other albums, so wont be adding this to my collection.

Sam Cooke was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1931 to Charles and Annie May Cook. According to biographer Peter Guralnick, Cooke added the "e" to his last name on the advice of his business partner/musical adviser Bumps Blackwell, who thought the extra "E" was classier. Several of Sam Cooke's siblings followed suit, adding the "e" to their names as well. Marvin Gaye also bought the vowel.

Cooke's father moved the family to Chicago during the Depression. Charles Cook, a pastor, encouraged Sam and his siblings' singing talents, and by 1939, Cooke and his siblings had formed a gospel group, the Singing Children.

Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Cooke gained acclaim as a member of gospel harmony groups, including the Highway Q.C.s and the Soul Stirrers. At the time, the Soul Stirrers were considered the most respected gospel singing group in the US.

Cooke released his first pop single, "Lovable," in 1956. "Lovable" was released under the name "Dale Cooke," as Cooke feared a backlash from Gospel fans who did not look fondly upon Gospel singers recording secular songs. However, Cooke's unique vocal style gave him away, and he was soon dropped by both the Soul Stirrers and their record label, Specialty.

In 1957, Cooke released his best known song, " You Send Me" on Keen Records.

"You Send Me" spent three weeks at the #1 spot on the Billboard pop chart.

Dissatisfied with the Keen label, Cooke moved to RCA in 1961. Many of his most popular songs, including "Chain Gang," "Sad Mood," "Bring it on Home to Me," "Another Saturday Night" and "Twistin' the Night Away" were recorded during his time at RCA

.A shrewd businessman, in 1961, Cooke began his own record label, SAR Records. An excellent talent scout, Cooke signed The Valentinos and Johnnie Taylor to SAR. The Valentinos featured Bobby Womack on guitar and vocals. Cooke also formed a music publishing house and management firm.

Despite his desire to appeal to white audiences, Cooke embraced the civil rights movement, recording Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind" soon after it was released. According to his biographer Daniel Wolff, Cooke composed and recorded "A Change Is Gonna Come" as a response to "Blowin' in the Wind," and in doing wrote what is often referred to as the definitive song of the civil rights movement.


On December 11, 1964, Cooke was shot to death at the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles, California.

Bertha Franklin, the hotel's manager, told police that she shot and killed Cooke in self-defense after he attacked her.

Cooke's body was found in Franklin's apartment-office; the singer was wearing only a sport coat and shoes. Cooke's death was ultimately ruled justifiable homicide.
Cooke's funeral was held in Chicago at A.R Leak Funeral Home. Thousands of fans lined up over four city blocks for his viewing. Cooke was buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.


Several of Cooke's songs were released posthumously, including "Shake," the B-side of which was "A Change Is Gonna Come." Both sides of "Shake"/ "A Change Is Gonna Come" charted.

After Cooke's death, his protégé, soul guitarist/singer Bobby Womack, wed Cooke's widow, Barbara Campbell. Cooke's daughter, Linda, later married Cecil Womack, Bobby Womack's brother.

Phil Spector 7/10

Sam Cooke 8/10

Charlie Mingus 2/10.

The girl Spector murdered was a fine actress in the 'eighties: check out Barbarian Queen 

DAY 39.
Charles Mingus......The Black Saint And The Lady Sinner  (1963)




Skipped my way through this one on you tube, this is the type of jazz that makes my ears bleed.
Charlie boy and that Thelonious bloke, con men the pair of them, and they say that actually write this stuff, bollocks!  get the boys in a studio and all play at the same time, out of key and without any structure and we'll call it "trad jazz" or "free jazz" or "straight ahead jazz" or the best one yet "avant -gard jazz" the hipsters will think they're cool and pretend they like, and understand it, ha ha money for old rope.


You'll have probably guessed this album's no' comin' anyplace  near meh hoose.

Underneath the video on you tube were some comments I'd like to share, they tend to remind me why I don't like this style of jazz.

I love how in a lot of Mingus music, his brass has mutes that make it sound almost like people are yelling at times, its a really unique sound, and I've really only heard Mingus pull it off the best.

I come from the extreme metal world and this music is just... nightmarish. In a good way, in fact. It just plays some very vicious tricks on my brain, and I just can't get enough of it. Very painful music indeed, like a grenade, that never stops piercing through whatever it encounters. 

I was high last night and this put me in a completely different universe.

This is a Jazz symphony, the instrumentation is a mix of classical music and jazz, best record ever made in my opinion. The genius musical level here can't be matched in rock&roll or jazz, only in classical music.

I don't even know where to start. This album is so intense, so emotional. You experience the full spectrum of emotion here. What a journey. However, I got high once (my second and last time being high, I wouldn't recommend it) and this took on a completely different quality. It was so sublime, so beautiful and so perfect and I am sure that I cried when it ended. I felt as though the sound was in my very being, in my soul and I did not know how that was possible. Mingus truly was a genius and I aspire to be able to create this kind of beauty myself one day. Sober: 9/10. Stoned: 11/10 (I can't actually rate it because it was not an experience that I can describe adequately in words).

This...Is gut wrenching, bleeding palms, fever raving, ball and chain steaming in the ice, brown bloodstains on a rusty Stanley knife, fucking beautiful terror. If chainsaw wielding Jesus ever catches me, this will buy my ticket home to the bottom of the river where the bones live. This is the closest I'll ever come to holiness, if the devil, or boredom, or the ancient stains on my coffee cup don't get me first.

At Berklee we always said this should be required listening!!!

Unaduterared, up their own arses, codswallop imho.

 

Sorry PC playing up again.
Will post in the morning.

DAY 40
James Brown..... Live At The Apollo   (1963)



Agree with Pat, some energy getting pummped out of my speakers there!

Studio albums have there place, but a good live album can almost transport you there.

I did enjoy Sam Cooke's live one the other day, but this one imho, is head and shoulders above it.

This one will be added to my collection.


James Brown’s name was actually supposed to be Joseph, but it accidentally got reversed on his birth certificate
.He was electrocuted for four minutes as a kid.Part of the James Brown lore is that he was stillborn and that his aunt breathed life into him. It made him believe that he was invincible. In another childhood anecdote, a pre-adolescent Brown was leaning against an air compressor at the gas station where his dad worked when a short circuit sent an electric current through him—singing his hair and melting his shoes to his feet. He became a legend in the neighborhood as the kid that couldn’t be killed.

James Brown pretended to be Little Richard in performances.
When Little Richard had his hit “Tutti Frutti,” he went to Los Angeles, leaving several weeks of commitments open around the South. They shared the same agent, so James Brown filled in as Little Richard. At a show in Alabama they knew it wasn’t him, and chanted, “We want Richard!” Brown rose to the challenge, doing backflips around the stage until they no longer cared that he was an impostor. He stole “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” from a woman.
Betty Jean Newsome, a woman he had met at the Apollo, was traveling with him when he heard her singing a song she had come up with. Brown took it, added some words, and put it out under his own name: “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” She had to take him to court to get a songwriting credit. She said, “God don’t like ugly and he sure don’t go along with thieves!” It wouldn’t be the only time Brown would be accused of theft: J.C. Davis, a saxophonist, confronted Brown about stealing his song “Night Train.” Davis said that Brown said the song would be released under his name, but when he found out that it wasn’t, he drove down to Tampa, where Brown was, and confronted him with a gun. He got kicked out of the group.  He started gunfights in the club.
Often at Club 15 in Macon, Georgia, Brown would get into brawls with other men, often over women. He went after soul singer Joe Tex after Tex did a performance making fun of Brown’s cape act. In the melee, seven people got shot, but the injured parties were given $100 each and told not to create any more trouble. Money!He was physically abusive and a philanderer.
Brown learned a lot from watching his own father physically abuse his mother, and repeated the same actions with the women in his life. He would often court women who sang with him, and would abuse them until they couldn’t take it anymore. In one of the more egregious instances, he allegedly hit one of them, Tammi Terrell, with a hammer.

His racial politics were, um, complicated.
The movie largely sidesteps a lot of James Brown’s politics. He supported then-vice-president Hubert Humphrey during his presidential campaign, only to turn around and perform at Richard Nixon’s inauguration. He was friendly with the notoriously racist Strom Thurmond, but also performed at civil-rights events. He released “America Is My Home,” which many black leaders read as critical of black power and the anti-war movement, only to release “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” soon afterward. He was an individualist at heart, and while he recognized the need to fight for equal rights, he didn’t like the idea of something being “given” to you. In a way, he preferred a separatist America, where blacks fended for themselves by creating their own institutions of support.

  He climbed up a 300-foot radio tower in Ciudad Acuña just across the Rio Grande in Mexico.
You know, for fun.  He performed in The Blues Brothers with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
Dan Aykroyd’s performance as his manager Ben Bart in Get on Up has double significance, because James Brown performed with Aykroyd in the 1980 musical as a church leader who guides the way for the two protagonists. He would later also appear in 1985’s Rocky IV, singing the super patriotic, “Living in America,”
  He had a lavish funeral for his dog Poojie.
The family poodle Poojie died when the maid accidentally swung the door open too quickly and cracked the dog’s head. Brown buried the dog in a white casket and held a funeral at his house in Augusta.

  He had a special obsession with Elvis.


In the '60s and '70s, he regularly topped the R&B charts, and although he never had a #1 Pop hit, he charted 96 songs on the Hot 100, second only to Elvis.
He constantly compared himself to Elvis Presley, who Brown felt was the only other artist comparable to him in his lifetime. When he heard that Elvis died, he received a private viewing of the body where he cried over it, saying, “Elvis, you rat. I’m not number two no more …”
  His relationship with Adrienne Lois Rodriguez was insane.
They met on the set of the TV show Solid Gold, on which Rodriguez worked as a hairstylist. Brown told Sharpton to get her number. The two fell in love, got married (she would be Brown’s third wife), and had a tumultuous relationship: They were both addicted to PCP; she called the cops on him a number of times for domestic violence; she once stabbed a woman in the butt who she thought was sleeping with Brown; she set his clothes on fire; she allegedly put PCP into his creamed corn. In 1996, she died after undergoing liposuction owing to a combination of PCP and prescription medications.

  He kept performing even though he was dying.
Brown kept up a rigorous tour schedule well into his 70s. His trumpeter Hollie Farris remembered they were doing a show in South America when the doctor gave him shots, put a catheter in him, only to take it out, do a one-and-a-half-hour show, and then come back and put the catheter back in. In another, performance in tibilisi, Georgia Brown performed in a swimming facility with the stage at the edge of the pool. Brown jumped into the pool at the climax of “Sex Machine” and had to be fished out by his bandmates. He got back onstage and finished the song.

When James Brown died, his coffin was 24 karat gold.