Born on this day 141 years ago, one of the great contributors to the Great American Songbook – Jerome Kern. He was born January 27, 1885.
Jerome Kern was one of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century. He wrote more than 700 songs that were used in over 100 stage works.
Wikipedia states:
A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades. His musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the other musicals of his day, creating the model for later musicals. Although dozens of Kern’s musicals and musical films were hits, only Show Boat is now regularly revived. Songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Many of Kern’s songs have been adapted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes.
Among the songs he wrote were: Look For the Silver Lining, Ol’ Man River, The Last Time I Saw Paris, I Won’t Dance, and All The Things You Are. To celebrate his birthday, I’d like to present some of my favorite Jerome Kern compositions and my favorite versions of them.
First, written for the 1933 musical comedy “Roberta,” here are The Platters with Smoke Gets In Your Eyes:
From the 1936 film Swing Time, here is Frank Sinatra with The Way You Look Tonight:
Again from the 1933 musical comedy Roberta, here are Jane Monheit and Michael Buble’ with I Won’t Dance:
You cannot go wrong with Ella Fitzgerald. Here is Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man:
It was on this day in 1971 that Tamla Records (a division of Motown) released Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. According to many stories, it almost wasn’t released.
From songfacts.com:
According to the book Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves & Demons of Marvin Gaye, Motown head Berry Gordy initially refused to release this song, calling it the “worst record I ever heard in my life.” The song was slipped out by the man in charge while Gordy was on vacation and, of course, he was furious… until he found out the single sold 100,000 copies in the US upon its release. Needless to say, he soon changed his mind about this song.
Although Berry Gordy admits he had reservations about “What’s Going On,” he claims all of the stories surrounding his refusal to release the song are false. He explained to the Wall Street Journal: “For years, people have written that I stood in the way of this song’s release and that Marvin had threatened never to record for me again if I didn’t put it out,” he said. “That must make for great reading, but none of it is true.”
He went on to explain the potential ramifications of the song: “My reason for pushing back on Marvin wasn’t to stop the single, just to determine whether or not this was another one of his wild ideas,” Gordy said. “Motown was about music for all people – white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone. This was a big risk for his image.”
The song was written by songwriter Al Cleveland, Four Tops member Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Marvin Gaye. It was Marvin who added lyrics and worked on the arrangement. Marvin did not want to record the song, he wanted the Originals to record it. However, Benson and Cleveland persuaded Gaye to do it himself.
Songfacts.com says,
Until this song, Gaye rarely participated in the songwriting process. For this album, he took control of the production so he could make a statement as an artist. Motown management was skeptical, but Gaye was an established star and had enough power to pull it off, going so far as to use an orchestra on this track.
The song is one of Motown legend. James Jamerson, the bass player for the Funk Brothers, was apparently drunk when he arrived at the studio. Jamerson could not sit properly in his seat and, according to one of the members of the group, lay on the floor playing his bass riffs.
Fun Fact: At the beginning of the song, there are people chatting. Marvin wanted to give the song a laid back feel, so he, the Funk Brothers and Mel Farr and Lem Barney of the Detroit Lions are the ones having conversation as the song begins.
The song was one of the first Motown songs to make a political statement. Jackson Browne said in a 2008 interview with Rolling Stone: “No one was expecting an anti-war song from him. But it was a moment in time when people were willing to hear it from anybody, if it was heartfelt. And who better than the person who has talked to you about love and desire?”
It was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 1972, but did not win either category. It peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was ranked the fourth greatest song of all time by a 2004 Rolling Stone poll. It was also ranked the 2nd on the Detroit’s 100 Greatest Songs List by the Detroit Free Press.
There was no shortage of possibilities to feature today on Tune Tuesday. Musical birthdays include Bo Diddley (1928), Skeeter Davis (1931), Paul Stookey (1937), Mike Nesmith (1942), Davy Jones (1945), Jeff Lynne (1947), and Ellie Goulding (1986). However, I have decided to focus today on a Hometown Hero.
Born today in 1934 in Coopersville, Michigan – Del Shannon.
Del had hits with Runaway, Keep Searchin’, Little Town Flirt, and in 1963 he actually released the Lennon/McCartney song Love Me Do! After his success with Runaway, he released his second single Hats Off To Larry.
The story goes that while on tour with Dion, Del wrote “Hats Off To Larry” in the dressing room that night. Dion and fellow rock ‘n’ roller Bobby Vee were present at the time.
Songfacts.com says:
The slow intro features Shannon woefully explaining the details of his breakup before he launches into an upbeat rock and roll number, reflecting his joy over his ex’s comeuppance. His label, Bigtop, thought a fast-paced intro would be better to hook listeners, but Shannon was adamant. He recalled to interviewer Ted Yates: “I had to fight for about two hours to get that the way I wanted it. They didn’t want to listen to me. I was just the singer.”
Billy was born outside of Houston, Texas. Music was a part of his life right from the start. His father was an orchestra leader and concert pianist.
When he was five, his mom took him to see Elvis Presley. Two years later, his dad took him to see BB King. Can you imagine the influence those two shows had on him?
In the late 60’s he formed the band Moving Sidewalks. In 1969, he formed ZZ Top by snagging two guys from the band American Blues (Dusty Hill and Frank Beard). They played together for a couple of years and they mastered their “sound,” a sort of bluesy Rock before recording their first album in 1971.
In 2015, he set off on a solo career with the album “Perfectamundo.” He followed that in 2018 with “The Big Bad Blues.” In 2021 he released his third album, “Hardware.”. He has also collaborated with artists like BB King, Jeff Beck, Brooks and Dunn, Kid Rock, and Sammy Hagar.
For Tune Tuesday, I could have picked from so many great ZZ Top songs. However, with Christmas right around the corner, how about a Christmas song from him?
Dig this. Here is Jingle Bell Blues. I just stumbled on it and I thought it was cool!!
Today, we shine the light on another hometown hero. Donaldson Toussaint L’Ouverture Byrd II, better known to the music world as Donald Byrd, was born on this day in 1932.
He was born in Detroit, Michigan. His mother introduced him to jazz music, and his uncle gave him his first trumpet. He attended Cass technical high school. Byrd played in a military band while in the US air force, took a music degree at Wayne State University in Michigan and then studied music education at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. He joined the Jazz Messengers in the mid-1950s. Byrd’s trumpet predecessors in Blakey’s company had already included the graceful, glossy-toned Clifford Brown and the Dizzy Gillespie-influenced Kenny Dorham, but the newcomer with his polished phrasing and luxurious tone was recognised as a technical master equal to both. He was even heralded as the new guiding light in jazz trumpet.
He was prolifically active in the late 1950s, in demand for sessions on the Savoy, Riverside, Fortune, and Blue Note labels. At the end of the decade he was also leading or co-leading his own ensembles. He was mostly operating in the laconically pyrotechnical, blues-inflected hard-bop style.
He formed the Blackbyrds, a soul and funk band, from a pool of his Howard University student. In the early 70’s his music ventured into dancefloor jazz and fusion. In 1973, his album Black Byrd was a million seller and brought Blue Note label more income than it had ever generated from any release before.
In 1975, he released the album Places and Spaces. Allmusic awarded the album with 4 stars and its review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine states: “Boasting sweeping string arrangements, sultry rhythm guitars, rubbery bass, murmuring flügelhorns, and punchy horn charts, the music falls halfway between the cinematic neo-funk of Street Lady and the proto-disco soul of Earth, Wind & Fire.”
In the late 80’s, when I worked at WKSG, Kiss-FM, we had a regular listener who would call and ask for Donald Byrd, even though we were an oldies station. He called every station in town and it wasn’t odd to be listening to another station and hearing him on the air. His name was Joe. He always asked for the same song, “Wind Parade.”
On one occasion, my pal Johnny Molson and I were talking with Joe, and he has some funky jazz playing in the background. We asked him what he was listening to and found out it was Byrd. So we did to him what he did to us, we requested he play Wind Parade. Neither of us had ever heard the song before. I think we were both genuinely interested to hear it.
As the song begins, there is a piano and syncopated cymbal beat. The a guitar riff plays along with the established beat. What Johnny and I did not expect was Joe belting out the words and singing along to the song. I cannot even describe what it sounded like, but John and I immediately collapsed in laughter.
As we laughed at this unexpected solo, the music continued. At some point he stopped singing and asked, “How do you like it, Johnny?” He had barely caught his breath long enough to say, “That’s great, Joe” only to continue laughing more.
And that is how I discovered Donald Byrd. One day, while shopping at a local record store, I couldn’t believe it when I found his greatest hits CD. I picked it up without hesitation and gave it a listen. There is no doubt, he could play the trumpet well, and there were some neat tracks on the CD. It was “Wind Parade” that got the most play. Every time the vocal hit in the song, I could hear Joe singing along!
He passed away in 2013. One obituary said, “Byrd’s real legacy is his contribution to music education in a culture that spawned jazz but then neglected it – a role he pursued from the unique vantage point of having been a leading player in the idiom. His work has been sampled by pop and hip-hop artists including Public Enemy and Ice Cube, and many young musicians at work today owe their education, and the widespread acceptance of their art, to his tireless pursuit of stature and respect for jazz.”
Sam Cooke recorded the song “You Send Me” in June of 1957. It was released in September of that year and would go all the way to #1. The song topped the charts for the first time on this day in 1957. Not bad for a debut single.
Cooke wrote “You Send Me” but gave the writing credit to his younger brother L.C. (who used the original family spelling “Cook”) because he did not want his own publisher to profit from the song. The B-side of the single was a cover of “Summertime.” That was supposed to be the A-side, but radio DJs favored You Send Me and played it instead.
The song almost didn’t get released. Songfacts.com says: Cooke was signed to Specialty Records, which was a gospel label. Cooke’s producer, Bumps Blackwell, brought this to Art Rupe, who owned the label. Rupe objected to the use of the choir on this track and was afraid it was too secular and would alienate the label’s gospel fans. He offered Cooke a release from his contract in exchange for outstanding royalties. The song was passed to the Keen label where it sold over 2 million copies.
Fun Fact: Aretha Franklin recorded a version of the song and it was the B-side to her hit “Think” in 1968.
The song was named as one of the 500 most important rock and roll songs by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1998, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Let’s give a listen to Sam’s only #1 song on the Hot 100:
Normally, I would steer clear of this song, but because it is his birthday, I will feature it today.
Happy 83rd Birthday to Bob Lind!
In 1965, Bob Lind signed a contract with World Pacific Records, which was a division of Liberty Records. It was there that he recorded his composition (and only hit) Elusive Butterfly.
From songfacts.com:
Bob Lind wrote this song, where he sees himself as a butterfly hunter. He is looking for romance, but he finds it as elusive as butterflies are to capture. It turned out to be the only hit for Lind, who did a lot of traveling as a kid and ended up playing folk music around Denver when he flunked out of Western State College. He wrote “Elusive Butterfly” as the sun was coming up after staying up all night. He says the song is about “The magic of the quest, the thrill of searching, even when that which is sought is hard to see.”
One of music’s greatest bass players, Carol Kaye, played on the song. She told songfacts.com:
“It was at Sunset Sound. It was kind of a boring tune. I think it was D-flat or something, and it stays a long time in that chord and then it moves in a funny way to the next chord, it’s like a sidebar phrase or something like that. I missed it and I went to go up to the G-flat or whatever and I missed it and I came right back down. I did a slide up and down. And they stopped and I thought, ‘Uh oh, he caught me.’ He said, ‘Do more of those!’ (laughing) So the slide was born, then. I’d stick that slide in here and there on the records I cut.”
I chuckled when I read her quote calling the song “boring.” When I was at WKSG in Detroit, this song would come up on the play list from time to time. Johnny Molson, who did the evening show before I came on the air, had the best description of the song. He told me that the song “sounds like someone ate a Hallmark card … and threw up.”
Happy Birthday to Johnny, by the way. Who knew he and Bob shared a birthday?
Plagued by drug and alcohol problems, Lind gained a reputation in the business for being “hard to work with.” He eventually left the music business for some time, but his music was recorded by over 200 artists. Those artists include: Cher, Glen Campbell, Dolly Parton, Eric Clapton, The Turtles, Johnny Mathis, Nancy Sinatra, The Four Tops, and Petula Clark!
In 1988, he moved to Florida. He wrote five novels, an award-winning play, and a screenplay, Refuge, which won the Florida Screenwriters’ Competition in 1991. He also worked briefly for the Weekly World News and is credited with co-writing their famous “Bat Boy” story.
I’d say that he should stick to singing, but I’m not really keen on that either… So, Happy Birthday, Bob.
Delbert first hit the stage in 1957 and toured continuously until his last tour in 2018. He is a multi talented musician who can play guitar, harmonica and piano.
For me, it’s hard to put him into one genre of music. He’s probably best known for rock, blues, and country. He’s won four Grammy Awards – in 1992 for Rock Performance by a Duo with Bonnie Raitt; 2002 for Contemporary Blues Album for “Nothing Personal”; 2006 for Best Contemporary Blues Album for “Cost of Living” and in 2020 for Best Traditional Blues Album for Tall, Dark, & Handsome. He has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards as of 2020.
I was having trouble getting the videos to load in my draft, so I hope they show up here. Today I wanted to feature two fantastic cover songs. First, I love his cover of James Brown’s Please, Please, Please:
Next, his cover of Johnny Ace’s Pledging My Love:
He has done so many great songs, but these two are my faves….
Happy 108th birthday to a jazz legend – Dizzy Gillespie!
Dizzy was a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. His accomplishments alone could be the subject of 5-20 blogs. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop.
Gillespie’s trademark trumpet featured a bell which bent upward at a 45-degree angle rather than pointing straight ahead as in the conventional design. According to Gillespie’s autobiography, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused by a couple of dancers falling onto the instrument while it was on a trumpet stand on stage. The constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect. He had the trumpet straightened out the next day, but he could not forget the tone. Gillespie sent a request to the Martin Band Instrument Company to make him a “bent” trumpet from a sketch produced by his wife, Lorraine, and from that time forward played a trumpet with an upturned bell.
The Rough Guide To Jazz describes his style this way: “The whole essence of a Gillespie solo was cliff-hanging suspense: the phrases and the angle of the approach were perpetually varied, breakneck runs were followed by pauses, by huge interval leaps, by long, immensely high notes, by slurs and smears and bluesy phrases; he always took listeners by surprise, always shocking them with a new thought. His lightning reflexes and superb ear meant his instrumental execution matched his thoughts in its power and speed. And he was concerned at all times with swing—even taking the most daring liberties with pulse or beat, his phrases never failed to swing.”
Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis says this about Dizzy: “His playing showcases the importance of intelligence. His rhythmic sophistication was unequaled. He was a master of harmony—and fascinated with studying it. He took in all the music of his youth—from Roy Eldridge to Duke Ellington—and developed a unique style built on complex rhythm and harmony balanced by wit. Gillespie was so quick-minded, he could create an endless flow of ideas at unusually fast tempo. Nobody had ever even considered playing a trumpet that way, let alone had actually tried. All the musicians respected him because, in addition to outplaying everyone, he knew so much and was so generous with that knowledge…”
Dizzy wrote “A Night in Tunisia” in 1942 while he was playing with the Benny Carter Band. Gillespie called the tune “Interlude” and said “some genius decided to call it ‘A Night in Tunisia'”. It would become one of his signature songs of his bebop band. In January 2004, The Recording Academy added the 1946 Victor recording by Gillespie to the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Happy 51st Birthday to Natalie Maines of The Chicks (Formerly the Dixie Chicks).
In 1995, Natalie got her lucky break when she was recruited by the Dixie Chicks to replace their lead singer, Laura Lynch. Things turned around quickly for the band. With Natalie as lead vocalist, the band earned 10 CMA Awards and 13 Grammy Awards.
Their album Wide Open Spaces offered up five singles. All of them were Top 10 and three of them went to number one. The fifth and final single was my favorite from the album – Tonight, The Heartache’s On Me.
It was a song that had been previously recorded in 1994 by Joy Lynn White. The Chicks version sounds so much better. I think the reason for this is the groups amazing harmonies. Their voices blend so nicely. I’m not sure what chord they are hitting when they sing the line, “Bartender, pour the wine …” but there is something about that line that gives me goosebumps. LOL
Happy Birthday, Natalie – the birthday wish is on me.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 