DAY48.
Jerry Lee Lewis........Live At The Star Club, Hamburg   (1965)




Well that takes the biscuit so far in "the best live album ever" stakes, of which we have had quite a few wouldbe's and couldbe's already and we're only on album 48!

For me the raw energy and electric perfomance, although not being able to take you there, makes you wish to god you were there, from the opening bars of "Mean Woman Blues" through to "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" this album keeps giving.

This album is going into my collection, and I recommend giving it a listen

I'm sure you wont be dissapointed.

• Lewis attended a fundamentalist Bible school in Texas. He was eventually expelled, but has been quoted as calling rock & roll the Devil's music.


• He made his first public appearance at 14, sitting in with a local country & western band.


• Lewis' rock direction was suggested to him when he auditioned for Sun Records in 1956. The company had just lost Elvis Presley to RCA and needed a replacement.


• Lewis' got his nickname "The Killer" when he was in high school.


• He developed a rowdy reputation, famous for kicking out his piano bench and playing the keys with his feet. He learned early on that this was a sure way to stir up a crowd.


• In December 1957, Lewis made a big career mistake. He married 13-year-old Myra Gale Brown, who was the daughter of his cousin, J.W. Brown (also his bass player). She was his third wife. The marriage survived for 14 years, but Lewis' career faded as he was denounced by religious leaders across the US. He has been married six times.


• In 1968, Lewis was in a rock musical called Catch My Soul (a version of Shakespeare's Othello). This was made into a movie without him.


• His cousin is TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. His sister, Linda Gail Lewis, also released solo recordings in the late '60s and early '70s.


• He was among the first 10 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.


• In 1986, he checked into The Betty Ford Clinic because he was addicted to painkillers. Lewis almost died in 1981 as a result of ulcers caused by alcohol, amphetamines and barbiturates.


• Lewis lore states that he once set fire to his piano in a successful effort to upstage Chuck Berry. A variation of the story goes like this:

On package tours, Lewis insisted upon being the last performer - Always. When Chuck Berry wanted to go on last at their only show together because he was, as he said, the bigger star at the time, this caused a problem. After some serious contention, with Jerry insisting HE was the bigger star, and besides that (being as confirmed a racist as the South could produce at the time) he certainly wasn't going to give up top billing to a black man, the show's producers forced Jerry Lee to accept the arrangement or forfeit his share of the proceeds. During the last song, "Great Balls Of Fire," Jerry Lee poured lighter fluid on the top cover of the piano and lit it, continuing to play until it became impossible, after he finished he walked offstage and as he passed by Chuck, who was waiting in the wings, said, "Top that, n---er!" Much of this incident was sanitized for the movie, and Quaid as Lewis said "Top that, Star!"


• His eight-year-old brother Elmo was killed by a drunken driver when Jerry Lee was three.


• In 1984, Lewis' fifth wife died of a drug overdose when she apparently mistook his methadone for sleeping pills.


• He personified rockabilly, which is a fusion of rock and hillbilly music, and an early sub-genre of rock
.

• In 1973, his son Jerry Lee Jr. was killed in a car accident in Mississippi. His only other son, Steven Allen, died in a 1962 drowning.


Jerry Lee Lewis has an unusual hobby: he collects antique fountain pens.


Asked whether he ever fought a teacher, he said: ''Yes, I was strangling him by his necktie. I was swinging on it. He was weakening, losing his breath.

•  
• ''His career collapsed when Britain recoiled in horror at the revelation that his wife Myra was just 13 years old - and his first cousin - when the 22-year-old Lewis made his first visit to the United Kingdom.

 The knock damaged his career, and sent him careening into several more relationships, some of which ended in allegations of violence.

 However, Lewis now vows that his seventh wife Judith, the ex-wife of teen bride Myra's brother, is the one for him.

 There was also the celebrated incident in November 1976 at Graceland, Elvis' Memphis mansion. Lewis showed up at the front gate in the middle of the night, and when the guard wouldn't let him drive in, he reportedly began waving a pistol. "Elvis had called and asked me to come over," he insists. "Of course I was drunk as a skunk. I was so loaded that when I tried to roll the window down in that Lincoln I rolled the seat all the way back. So I threw a champagne bottle out the window, and boy, there were six squad cars, surroundin' me. The next' day Elvis drove out to my house and waited around for me for three hours. I was off somewhere, still drunk." Lewis' intense feeling of rivalry with Presley is no secret, but when he talks about that night, the missed meeting the next day and the calls he swears he continued to receive from Elvis, he seems genuinely pained. They never saw each other again.Many people believe that of the two, Lewis is the greater talent. Lewis, for one, is firmly convinced that if it hadn't been for the scandal involving Myra, he would have become "the biggest thing going."

•  
• Some boy right enough, probably loads more tales to be told, but canny stay up all night.
•  
• 
  

Last edited by arabchanter (27/9/2017 12:12 am)

DAY 49.
The Sonics...Here Are The Sonics  (1965)




"The Sonics weren't great musicians" said Buck Ormsby, the guy who signed them to Etiquette Records, " but they had this magic thing"

With their 1965 debut album, the Tacoma,WA,  five-piece managed to distill just about everything that was going on musically at the time, from the "British Invasion" scene to the rock 'n' roll sounds of Little Richard, with a ferocious energy and wildness that predates punk by more than a decade.

The idea of a "garage band" was not exactly new before The Sonics, but it was clear from debut single "The Witch" that The Sonics were going to shake things up.

Little wonder the groups name was inspired by the local Boing factory and their own jet-like sound.

Never heard of them, but usually dont mind this type of music.

 

arabchanter wrote:

Arabnophobia wrote:

arabchanter wrote:

DAY 7.
songs for swingin' lovers!  (1956)
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Songsforswinginlovers.jpg]

This will be added to my collection, Sinatra as the suave, debonair, laid back crooner we all remember him as.
But it would all be wasted without Riddle's glorious scoring. Legend has it his unsurpassable arrangement for "I've Got You Under My Skin,"  hurriedly completed the night before the session, was greeted with spontaneous applause by the musicians who played it on January 12, 1956.


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Old meets new... start at the beginning...
 

Cheers bud sounds interesting, but will have to listen to it in the mornin', as I'm off to my scratcher now, wont last the 54 minutes



 

 





An education for sure. Sorry bud, posted without reading so thought it was just a free for all.

I was trying to give a flavour mixing of completely different styles and ages as i saw Frank Sinatra and remembered this mix.

I used to dj and had great times in the house mixing my parents' & grandparents' old and ancient vinyl with latest styles, some of which extreme on my Techics  1210s.

Hiphop with old classics, even bagpipes bands and old pop etc with  house, techno, drum & bass, jungle, hardcore, electronica, industrial, breakbeat, trance, psychedelic trance, garage, electro and even gabba.

Sacrilegious behaviour to some, entertaining and a unique merge to others.

DAY 49.
The Sonics.......Here Are The Sonics   (1965)



This one was right up my street, I like many genres of music but would have to say at a push, this is without a doubt my favourite type.

I just love the raw, unbridled energy that the Sonics transmit in this album.

This album will be getting added to my collection.

This was my favourite track, performed live at the Forum in 2015




There probably has never been a greater example of rock’n’roll revisionism than the current respect accorded to the Sonics. Cult heroes may come and go, but the Sonics’ ascension to become the quintessential garage rock band of all time is truly remarkable.

Unlike, say, the Stooges or the Velvet Underground, there was really no awareness of the Sonics, outside of their native Pacific Northwest, until the late 1980s. Slowly but surely, the bands distinctive brand of noise has percolated up through generations of rock fans to almost enter the mainstream.For instance, in the past few years, the Sonics’ paint-peeling take on Richard Berry’s ‘Have Love Will Travel’ has been a regular fixture of television ads the world over.

There’s a simple reason why the Sonics strike such a chord. Theirs is likely the sharpest definition of garage rock that has ever existed. The rough-hewn quintet from blue-collar Tacoma, Washington drew from the implicit rawness of the 50s heroes like Little Richard and Jerry Lee, revved it up with post-British Invasion attitude, threw in the Northwest’s own unique translation of R&B energy, and in the process arrived at a sound that is the very essence of what rock should be: rock’n’roll boiled down to its very nub.

The core of the Sonics were the Parypa brothers, Larry on guitar and Andy on bass, who founded the group in the late 1950s. Like every other neophyte rock’n’roll combo in the Northwest, they looked up to local bigwigs the Wailers for inspiration. The embryonic group mutated through different personnel until singer and keyboardist Jerry Roslie entered the fray in late 1963, bringing along his school pals Rob Lind on sax and Bob Bennett on drums.

Within months of this new line-up coming together, a drastic change occurred. Together as a band, the Sonics amped up their sound to a cruder, rougher style, in an almost subconscious attempt to distil the furious energy that beat at the heart of the rock’n’roll and R&B they so enjoyed.

Headquartered at teen hotspot The Red Carpet in the Tacoma suburb of Lakewood, where the Sonics regularly jammed the joint, it wasn’t long before Buck Ormsby of the Wailers grabbed the quintet for the Wailers’ own Etiquette label. A first attempt to harness their fury in the recording studio left the group non-plussed, but when ‘The Witch’ was released in November 1964, it quickly began to get heavy airplay, capturing the imagination of teens around Puget Sound and beyond.No-one had heard rock quite that visceral on the radio in recent memory.

The follow-up, ‘Psycho’, was recorded in the spring at Kearney Barton’s famed Seattle facility, and was another Roslie-penned hamburger-throated opus. It became as big a hit with audiences and radio around the Northwest as ‘The Witch’, and both tunes rocked the airwaves well into the summer of 1965. The Sonics’ fiery template was firmly established by these first two singles, along with the fabulous sequels ‘Boss Hoss’ and ‘Shot Down’, and the entire contents of the album “Here Are The Sonics” - surely one of the most uncompromising debuts in rock history.

Rather than pad out the record with the expected hits of the day, the band filled the grooves with choice interpretations of rock’n’roll and R&B classics, all laden with their patented trademarks – searing, abrasive guitar tones, guttural vocals and pounding, unrelenting drums. And Roslie displayed a very real knack for writing – and screaming - ear-catching originals such as the classic ‘Strychnine’.

Throughout most of 1965, the Sonics wreaked havoc on audiences the length and breadth of the Northwest and beyond, and simultaneously upped the ante of the entire region’s music scene. Most remarkably, the bands dynamism even effected a change upon their mentors the Wailers, whose post-Sonics recordings very clearly bore signs of their former apprentices’ influence.

October of 1965 saw the release of a fourth Etiquette single, perhaps the most ferocious to date: ‘Cinderella’/ ‘Louie Louie’ was a double-whammy of epic proportions. It was accompanied by the Sonics’ second album, “Boom”, recorded at the lo-fi Wiley/Griffith studio in Tacoma but nevertheless continuing in the same full-blooded vein as previous releases.Word had seeped out to other parts of the country about this wild young combo, and Sonics releases were getting a lot of interest from radio stations in markets as far away as Pittsburgh and Florida. This led the group to question Etiquette’s efficiency, and miscommunication between band and label ultimately meant that the Sonics decided to part ways with Ormsby in the spring of 1966.

Waiting in the wings was Jerry Dennon, whose well-distributed Jerden imprint had most of the Northwest’s talent under contract. Dennon romanced the band with the possibility of national success.At first, the Sonics’ Jerden singles acted as a natural progression from their no-holds-barred Etiquette sides, and the initial single, ‘You’ve Got Your Head On Backwards’, a Brit-styled pounder sung by Lind, was a strong seller in the autumn of 1966. At Dennon’s behest, the group traveled to Gold Star in Los Angeles for the sessions that would become their third and final album, “Introducing.”

In retrospect, the sides the group cut there are certainly far better than is generally acknowledged, and including screamers such as ‘High Time’ and ‘Like No Other Man’. But the Sonics never really recaptured in Hollywood the pure unadulterated magic that their Etiquette sessions had in abundance, something reflected by the diminishing sales of their later Jerden releases.From there on, it seemed all downhill. The combo continued for another year, making their first and only trip back east, but the military was at the door, and once they had finished with their education, various band members began to drop out in 1967 or, like Roslie, just quit unexpectedly.

The single ‘Lost Love’ was their last rocking effort but in truth, there didn’t seem to be a place for Sonics-style dementia in the face of flower power. In a cruel twist of fate, a faceless Holiday Inn lounge act inherited the band’s good name, and watered it down well into the next decade.However, the legend of Tacoma’s once-raging rock machine began to gather moss after collectors outside the Northwest happened across the amazing Etiquette records, and began theorising in magazines such as Creem in the mid-1970s as to what kind of band could have created such a noise.

Shortly afterwards, a renewed energy resurfaced in rock’n’roll that correlated exactly with the emotions that the Sonics had espoused a decade before: punk rock. The resourceful Ormsby had hung onto the band’s vintage masters, and began to reissue them in an attempt to keep the band’s memory alive. He eventually struck a deal with Big Beat for a comprehensive anthology of the Sonics’ Etiquette material, which was released in 1993 as “Psycho-Sonic”

.Fast forward to the late 2000s. “Psycho-Sonic”, now remastered after the discovery of ear-blasting first-generation tapes, is one of the best-selling items in the entire Ace Records catalogue, in the process turning a couple of generations onto the band’s savage sound. The best of the Sonics’ Jerden sides, including unissued material, is included on the exhaustive Big Beat series “Northwest Battle Of The Bands”. And in an unprecedented and exciting turn of events, the Sonics have recently reformed around the core of Jerry, Larry and Rob to dish out some long-overdue authentic Sonics rock’n’roll, delighting fans around the world in the process.





 

DAY 50.
Bob Dylan....... Bringing It All Back Home   (1965)




Dylan, always value for money imho, and no change here.

From the opening bars of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" on what is commonly known as the electric side, to the beautiful "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" on the acoustic side, 47:12 of absolute pleasure.

F*** the "Newport Folk Festival" purists, this game changing album will be going into my collection.  

On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in black jeans, black boots, and a black leather jacket, carrying a Fender Stratocaster in place of his familiar acoustic guitar. The crowd shifted restlessly as he tested his tuning and was joined by a quintet of backing musicians. Then the band crashed into a raw Chicago boogie and, straining to be heard over the loudest music ever to hit Newport, he snarled his opening line: “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more!”What happened next is obscured by a maelstrom of conflicting impressions: The New York Times reported that Dylan “was roundly booed by folk-song purists, who considered this innovation the worst sort of heresy.” In some stories Pete Seeger, the gentle giant of the folk scene, tried to cut the sound cables with an axe. Some people were dancing, some were crying, many were dismayed and angry, many were cheering, many were overwhelmed by the ferocious shock of the music or astounded by the negative reactions.

As if challenging the doubters, Dylan roared into “Like a Rolling Stone,” his new radio hit, each chorus confronting them with the question: “How does it feel?” The audience roared back its mixed feelings, and after only three songs he left the stage. The crowd was screaming louder than ever—some with anger at Dylan’s betrayal, thousands more because they had come to see their idol and he had barely performed. Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul, and Mary, tried to quiet them, but it was impossible. Finally, Dylan reappeared with a borrowed acoustic guitar and bid Newport a stark farewell: “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue….”Dylan at Newport is remembered as a pioneering artist defying the rules and damn the consequences. Supporters of new musical trends ever since—punk, rap, hip-hop, electronica—have compared their critics to the dull folkies who didn’t understand the times were a-changing, and a complex choice by a complex artist in a complex time became a parable: the prophet of the new era going his own way despite the jeering rejection of his old fans. He challenged the establishment: “Something is happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” He defined his own transformation: “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” He drew a line between himself and those who tried to claim him: “I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants me to be just like them.” And he warned those wary of following new paths: “He not busy being born is busy dying.”

A little bit about "SHB" and Dylan around about that time,

• This song skips from one cultural reference to the next. It touches on social discontent ("Twenty years of schoolin'/And they put you on the day shift"), drug busts ("The phone's tapped anyway/Maggie says that many say/They must bust in early May/Orders from the D.A."), violent policing witnessed at civil rights protests ("Better stay away from those/That carry around a fire hose") and the fight against authority ("Don't follow leaders/Watch the parkin' meters").


• The lyrics resemble a stream of consciousness, a writing technique championed by beat poets such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, both of whom were a major influence on Dylan. Musically, Dylan told the LA Times the song was inspired by Chuck Berry: "It's from Chuck Berry, a bit of "Too Much Monkey Business" and some of the scat songs of the forties."


• John Lennon was apparently so captivated by this song, he worried he would never be able to write anything that could compete with it.


• Musicians continue to allude to this song today. Jet named their 2003 breakthrough album Get Born after the song's lyric "Ah get born, keep warm." Radiohead alluded to the track on the album, OK Computer, which features a song titled "Subterranean Homesick Blues" The Gaslight Anthem's song, "Angry Johnny and the Radio" includes the lines "I'm still here singin' thinking about the government" and "Are you hidin' in a basement mixin' up the medicine?" both of which are referring to the opening lyrics to "Subterranean Homesick Blues": "Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine/I'm on the pavement thinkin' about the Government." Artists to have covered this song, meanwhile, include Red Hot Chili Peppers, Harry Nilsson and Glenn Campbell.


• The American radical (some would say terrorist) group, the Weathermen, got their name from the lyric, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" (the lyric was also the title of their manifesto). The group, also known as the Weather Underground, had a left-wing agenda, opposing the Vietnam War and other American military actions with militant actions of their own.


• This was Dylan's first ever Top 40 hit, peaking at #39 on the US chart.



• The promotional clip for this song is arguably one of the most famous music videos of all time. Shot in 1965 as part of the documentary Don't Look Back (chronicling his tour of England), it features Dylan standing in an alley behind the Savoy Hotel in London. He is holding cue cards, which he flips through as the song progresses. On the cards are select phrases from the song's lyrics, often with purposeful misspellings. These cue cards were written by Dylan along with the folk singer Donovan, the musician Bob Neuwirthand, and the beat poet Allen Ginsberg (these latter two can be seen in the actual video, standing just behind Dylan).


This video has been spoofed countless times - notable parodies include Weird Al Yankovic's video for the song "BOB" INXS' "Mediate," and Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade's "Buzzards of Green Hill."


• Bringing It All Back Home is Bob Dylan's fifth album. The record is divided into an electric and an acoustic side. This introduction of electronic instruments lead to Dylan becoming increasingly alienated from the folk community. Furthermore, the album saw Dylan withdraw from protest songs to instead write on more abstract, personal issues.


• The Beastie Boys borrowed the lyrics "20 years of schooling and they put you on the day shift" for their 2011 track "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win"

• He was secretly married for six years to Carol Dennis, one of his backup singers. They had a daughter together.


• He was married to his first wife, Sara, from 1965-1977. In the divorce, she got half the royalties to the songs Dylan wrote while they were married, some of which were about her.


• He broke several vertebrae in his neck when he crashed his motorcycle in 1966. It kept him from recording for a while and prompted rumors that he was brain damaged or dead.



• Dylan would often make biblical allusions in his lyrics. Two examples:

In "Long Time Gone," the line "I know I ain't no prophet/And I ain't no prophet's son" reflects Amos 7:14 ("I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son").

In "Let me Die in My Footsteps," the line "There's been rumors of war and wars that have been" reflects Matthew 24:6 ("And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars").



• He had a cat named Rollin' Stone.



• In 1960, Dylan was paid 50 dollars to play harmonica on a Harry Belafonte album.



• He has recorded under several pseudonyms, including Bob Landy, Robert Milkwood Thomas, and Blind Boy Grunt.



• He was raised Jewish, but became a born-again Christian in the late '70s.



• Dylan and his first wife Sara are the parents of film director Jesse Dylan and musician Jakob Dylan, the lead singer and songwriter of The Wallflowers. Bob Dylan later married his longtime backup singer Carolyn Dennis. Jesse's wife Susan Traylor and Jakob's wife Paige Dylan are both actresses.



• Dylan: "I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet."



• Martin Scorsese's PBS documentary No Way Home made a strong case that Bob Dylan was the most influential songwriter of the 20th Century. Whether one accepts that opinion or not, there's ample evidence he was among the most prolific. Remarkably, in just three years, Dylan wrote six classic albums of great original songs.


Freewheelin' was released May 27, 1963; Times They Are A-Changin' on January 13, 1964; Another Side of Bob Dylan seven months later on August 8 1964; Bringing It All Back Home on March 22 1965; Highway 61 Revisited five months later on August 30, 1965; and Blonde On Blonde eight months later on May 16, 1966. What other famous songwriter has created such a wealth of brilliant songs in such a short period of time?

•  

DAY 51.
Otis Redding.......Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul    (1965)





The world of music has thrown up it's fair share of scoundrels, cheats, and downright swine, and often seen them prosper in a degree out of proportion to their worth, making the tragedy of Otis Redding's short life especially sharp. Less than three years after this breakthrough record, on December 10,1967, his plane crashed into Lake Monona, Wisconsin.  (aged 26)

As the son of a minister, gospel was in his blood, yet Otis Blue encompasses soul, R&B, and pop. Recorded at the legendary  Stax Studio in Memphis, Otis Blue featured Booker T. & The MG's, a horn section featuring members of The Mar-Keys and The Memphis Horns and the up-and-coming soon-to-be legend Isaac Hayes on piano.

The whistling at the end of "(Sitting On) The Dock of the Bay" was actually something of a placeholder. Redding whistled through it because they were still working on recording the final lyrics. Sadly, he died before they could get to it. The whistling was then left in and the song became the first posthumous No. 1 hit in America.

Never really listened to Otis Redding much, apart from the obvious.

 

DAY 51.
Otis Redding.......Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul    (1965)




A really good listen, such a shame he was taken away so early, who knows how far he could have went.
The talent and that strong soulful voice were undeniably there plus he seemed to have a good business brain.
Anyway it was an enjoyable experience, but as I can't afford to buy all the albums I like in this book I have to draw the line somewhere, so this album won't be going into my collection.
To be honest I really didn't enjoy "Satisfaction" at all, I much prefer the Stones singing it, but my favourite version is the one below by Devo.




Redding was born on September 9, 1941 in Dawson, Georgia. He was the fourth of six children, and the first son, of Otis Redding, Sr., and Fannie Mae Redding. His father was a sharecropper and later worked at Robins Air Force Base, near Macon, Georgia, and also occasionally preached at local churches. When Redding was three, the family moved to Tindall Heights, a predominantly African-American public housing project in Macon. As a young child, Redding sang in the Vineville Baptist Church choir and learned guitar and piano. Every Sunday, he earned $6 by performing gospel songs for Macon radio station WIBB.


At age 15, Redding left school to help financially support his family. His father had contracted tuberculosis and was often hospitalized, leaving his mother as the family’s primary income earner.

• He got his break when, as chauffeur and gofer for Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers, he asked the Stax producer and engineer if he could record a song when the Pinetoppers were finished. The result was his first R&B hit, "These Arms of Mine."


• He recorded with Stax Records, a Soul label in Memphis that had a string of hits in the late '60s. The house band, known as Booker T. and The MGs, played the instruments on his songs. Other famous Stax artists include Isaac Hayes, Albert King and Wilson Picket. Redding's debut album, Pain in My Heart, was released in early 1964 on Stax's Volt label.


• Redding owned a 200+ acre ranch in Georgia called "The Big O Ranch," complete with hogs and cattle. The "Big O" took it's name from Redding's nickname, and was home to Redding's herd of horses, which he told an interviewer in 1967 that he loved as much as music. Redding was also an avid hunter, who liked to hunt on horseback.


• Sam Cooke was one of Redding's inspirations. Redding recorded several of Cooke's songs, including "Shake" and "A Change is Gonna Come," and adapted his signature version of "Try A Little Tenderness" from a version he heard on Sam Cooke at the Copa. Redding listened to the album so often that he literally wore the grooves out, and had to purchase another copy.


• Redding was the first Soul artist with a large white audience. His success with white audiences was due in part to his willingness to risk performing in venues that had featured few soul artists, such as the Whisky A-Go-Go and the Fillmore West. Redding also toured Europe, performing in London, Paris and Stockholm, at a time when few soul artists toured outside the US. Redding's performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, his last live performance, was a groundbreaking crossover success; he was the best-known soul act featured at the festival.


• Redding was so popular in England that he ended Elvis Presley's eight-year reign as "world's best male vocalist" on Melody Maker's annual pop poll in 1967, when readers voted Redding to the position. When Redding arrived in England for a 1967 tour, he was greeted by The Beatles' personal limo.


• Redding often said that if he left the US, he'd live in England. He counted among his best friends the Animals' Eric Burdon.


• Shortly before his death, Redding begun acting as manager and producer for his close friend Arthur Conley, recording Conley on his biggest hit, "Sweet Soul Music."

Otis Redding died December 10, 1967, when a plane carrying him and his backing band the Bar-Kays crashed into Lake Monona, near Madison, Wisconsin. Only Ben Cauley (trumpet player for the Bar-Kays) survived the crash - Redding's body was found the day after the crash, still strapped into his plane seat.

Pallbearers at Redding's funeral included fellow soul legends Solomon Burke, Don Covay, Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave), Joe Simon, Percy Sledge, Johnnie Taylor, and Joe Tex.

There's an official monument to the crash in a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building, located just a few blocks from the State Capitol at the following address: Monona Terrace, 1 John Nolen Drive, Madison, WI 53.

“Sittin’ on The Dock of the Bay” was released in January 1968. It became Redding’s only single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and the first posthumous number-one single in U.S. chart history. It sold approximately four million copies worldwide and received more than eight million airplays.

DAY 52.
The Beach Boys.........The Beach Boys Today!   (1965)



Despite containing what is easily the worst track in this entire book, this is the perfect Beach Boys LP, split evenly between carefree boy meets girl pop and dramatic ballads inspired by Phil Spector's girl groups.

Even arguing that it is better than "Pet Sounds" is a cinch, with a bit of practice.......there is none of the self pity that weighs heavily on the latter.

Even though it was recorded shortly after Brian Wilson had broken down while on tour, exhausted by his relentless schedule, Today opens with one of the most exuberant songs the band ever recorded, After a muted first couple of verses of  "Do You Wanna Dance" Brian turns the volume up for the first chorus and the sixties starts swinging.

"the worst track in the entire book"  well I've listened to some honking tracks already in this book, so it must really awful, be interesting to find out which one it is  (opinion and all that)

Couldn't agree more, with you.

Good to have you back on board, hope you had a good holiday.

The shit track on the album is the last one, spoken word stuff. An excerpt from an interview.

But like you say, ac, there have been worse on previous albums.

Not a Beach Boys fan either.

DAY 53.
John Coltrane........A Love Supreme    (1965)




"A Love Supreme" pulls of the rare trick of being utterly compromising yet completely accessible, as he speaks in tongues on tenor and soprano sax, his now legendary fab four rumbled beneath him, as a journey through awakening, understanding, and spiritual enlightenment, it's damn near perfect.


I hoped I'd seen the back of this lot, even writing that bit above was pissing me off,
"talking in tongues on tenor and soprano sax," f'kn really.
Four tracks just under 33 minutes this isn't going work out well, I'd bargain.

 

DAY 54.
B.B. King.......................Live At The Regal   (1965)


 




It couldn't have been easy to learn how to play the electric guitar growing up in a town with no electricity, but by the time B.B. King reached Chicago via Indianola, or Mississippi, to play the Regal Theatre he had spent 39 years trying.

Taking the stage that night with more than 20 charted singles under his wide belt, a notorious Gibson guitar named Lucille strapped on his back, and an army of women dangling from the balconies, one might say he had pulled it off.

A wee bit of triv,

Lucille

Back in the '50s, BB was performing in Twist, Arkansas when a fire broke out, caused by two guys brawling. BB evacuated the building instantly, but still jumped back to save his guitar. He later learned that the guys fought over a girl named Lucille. As a reminder to himself to never ever fight over women, he named the guitar after that gal - Lucille."Lucille got her name in a nothing town by the name of Twist, Arkansas. We were playing some club, and some guys were fightin' and they knocked over a kerosene barrel and burned the place down. I almost got killed going back in to save my guitar, and when I found out the fight was over a gal named Lucille, I named my guitar that to tell me to keep her close and treat her right," BB said.

Last edited by arabchanter (03/6/2018 6:38 pm)

Can you no' just tear the jazz pages out the book, arabchanter?

And I see you are buying some of these albums after listening: is this on vinyl, and if so, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.

Enjoyed the wee listen to BB King, know a lot of that stuff anyway. The true King of Blues.

On another note, I also read the blurbs you are writing on each artist, I know it's mostly copy and paste, but I wouldn't see it otherwise: some interesting information.