Wikipedia 2015

As mentioned, Kim Fowley is best known as the man who brought together the early all-female rock band the Runaways.  In 1974 or 1975, he placed an ad in the fanzine Who Put the Bomp looking for women who wanted to start an all-female rock band.  He got zero responses; but eventually, drummer Sandy West and rhythm guitarist Joan Jett introduced themselves to Fowley, and the band was in place by late 1975.  As Fowley recalls (from Wikipedia):  "I didn't put the Runaways together; I had an idea, they had ideas, we all met, there was combustion; and out of five different versions of that group came the five girls who were the ones that people liked."  

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Kim Fowley is the child of two relatively obscure actors; his father Douglas Fowley is a character actor who (as Wikipedia says) "is probably best remembered for his role as the frustrated movie director Roscoe Dexter in Singin' in the Rain (1952)."  As Kim put it, his mother Shelby Payne "was one of the two cigarette girls in The Big Sleep with [Humphrey] Bogart and [Lauren] Bacall". 

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Fleshing out the details (via Wikipedia), Kim Fowley's first venture into music was to become the manager in 1957 for a band called the Sleepwalkers that included Bruce Johnston and drummer Sandy Nelson; future superstar record producer Phil Spector was also occasionally with the band.  Last month I mentioned a band called the Gamblers which released an instrumental in 1961 called "LSD-25"; Johnston and Nelson were both in that band also. 

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The following year (1958), Phil Spector assembled the Teddy Bears (the only vocal group that included Spector as a member); Sandy Nelson was a last-minute addition, with other bandmembers including Marshall Leib and lead singer Annette Kleinbard.  Phil Spector wrote a song for the group called "To Know Him Is to Love Him", based upon an inscription on his father's tombstone, and the song became a Number One hit in December 1958.  As Wikipedia put it:  "At 19 years old, Spector had written, arranged, played, sung, and produced the best-selling record in the country." 

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Terry Fischer, Carol Fischer and Sally Gordon came to the attention of Kim Fowley while they were doing backing vocal work for Mike Post, and he offered to record a single for them; at the time, according to Wikipedia, Fowley was "the in-house producer for Chattahoochee Records", which released the single.  Fowley produced "Popsicles and Icicles" and four other tracks for the band (now known as the Murmaids), each of which served as the "B" side for various releases of the song. 

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In 1972, Kim Fowley recorded some songs by the proto-punk band the Modern Lovers, building on previous recordings that had been produced by John Cale.  As Wikipedia reports:  "These included re-recordings of 'She Cracked', 'Astral Plane', 'I'm Straight', 'Girlfriend' and two versions of 'Roadrunner', as well as the songs 'Walk Up The Street', 'Dance With Me' and the a capella 'Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste'.  [Bandleader Jonathan] Richman also credited James Osterberg (Iggy Pop) as co-writer on 'I Wanna Sleep In Your Arms' as a way of acknowledging that the song borrows a Stooges guitar riff." 

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As reported in Wikipedia:  "In 1973, [Kim] Fowley produced three recordings by Flash Cadillac & the Continental Kids for the film American Graffiti (1973).  These songs were 'At the Hop', 'Louie Louie' and 'She's So Fine'."  Flash Cadillac & the Continental Kids (now known as Flash Cadillac) is a retro-rock band who appeared in the film under the name Herbie and the Heartbeats.  They formed in Boulder, Colorado in 1969 and are still active more than 40 years later. 

"At the Hop" and "She's So Fine" (but not "Louie Louie") are included on the official 1973 soundtrack album, entitled 41 Original Hits from the Soundtrack of American Graffiti, where the songs are presented in the same order that they appeared in the film.  The other 39 songs on the soundtrack album are the original hits by the original artists, having been recorded between 1954 and 1964. 

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As to what comes next, Wikipedia reports:  "The second installment of [Kim Fowley's] autobiography will be called Planet Pain and will cover the years 1970-1994.  The last part of his autobiography was intended to be finished on his deathbed and released posthumously."  

(January 2015/1)

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Much as past UARB the Poppees was the first band signed by Greg Shaw for his original Bomp! Records label, the Crawdaddys was the first band brought in by Shaw for his new 1960's revival label Voxx Records.  The name Voxx is an adaptation of the Vox brand of musical instruments, known in the rock world for their electric organs, amplifiers, and (as Wikipedia says) "a series of innovative but commercially unsuccessful electric guitars and bass guitars".  

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But I was surprised when so many "Crawdaddy" entities came up in the initial Google searches for this post on the Crawdaddys.  A rock music magazine called Crawdaddy! was founded by the important music historian Paul Williams in 1966 (and a different man from the songwriter Paul Williams who is also a sometime actor).  About this publication, Wikipedia says:  "Crawdaddy! was the first U.S. magazine of rock and roll music criticism.  Created in 1966 by college student Paul Williams in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music, Crawdaddy! was self-described as 'the first magazine to take rock and roll seriously'." 

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In June 1963, the Rolling Stones released their debut single, a cover of a Chuck Berry song called "Come On", which reached #21 on the UK charts.  The flip side was Willie Dixon's "I Want to be Loved".  Wikipedia reports about "Come On":  "During the June 6, 2013 concert in Toronto, Canada, as part of the 50 & Counting Tour, Mick Jagger sang a few bars (with Charlie Watts drumming the beat) after mentioning the single being released exactly 50 years ago that day.  It was the first time the song was heard in any capacity during a Rolling Stones concert since 1965." 

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The best history of the Crawdaddys that I have found is at a blog called "The Ché Underground: San Diego's Underground Rock 'n' Roll Scene of the 1980s"; the post on this band is at cheunderground.com/blog/?page_id=1041 .  The story is compellingly told and is well worth reviewing in its entirety, but it goes into considerably more detail than I will write here.  The name of the blog is taken from the Ché Café, which is described in Wikipedia as "a worker co-operative, social center, and live music venue located on the University of California, San Diego campus in La Jolla, California, USA". 

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While this line-up never recorded another album, the Crawdaddys secured their place in the rock firmament with their next two releases (both on Voxx Records):  the single "There She Goes Again" b/w "Why Don't You Smile Now" in early 1980, and an EP called 5 x 4 in August 1980.  For my money, "There She Goes Again" is the one Velvet Underground song (written by Lou Reed) that is tailor-made to be covered by other bands.  There is an obscure cover of "There She Goes Again" by the Electrical Banana in 1967 which is mentioned by Wikipedia; this is not the same band as the Electric Banana that was a pseudonym for the Pretty Things over several years.  However, the only other cover version of "There She Goes Again" that I know of is by R.E.M.; and Peter Buck acknowledges that their recording is inspired by the Crawdaddys version.  "There She Goes Again" is included on the Bomp! Records compilation CD Straight Outta Burbank, and that is where I learned about the song.  The "B" side, "Why Don't You Smile Now" was co-written by Lou Reed and John Cale but pre-dates their involvement with the Velvet Underground; "Why Don't You Smile Now" was originally released on a 1965 single under the name the All-Night Workers. 

(January 2015/2)

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Glen Campbell quickly became highly sought after as a guitarist and played for a wide variety of artists in the 1960's; Wikipedia lists recordings by Bobby Darin, Rick Nelson, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, the Monkees, Nancy Sinatra, Merle Haggard, Jan & Dean, Elvis Presley, and Frank Sinatra. 

Drummer Hal Blaine dubbed the group the Wrecking Crew; Wikipedia says:  "According to Blaine, the name 'The Wrecking Crew' was derived from the impression that he and the younger studio musicians made on the business's older generation, who felt that they were going to wreck the music industry."  Wikipedia lists an almost completely different group of artists in that article (as opposed to those listed above who were backed by Glen Campbell in particular):  "Notable artists employing the Wrecking Crew's talents included Nancy Sinatra, Bobby Vee, the Partridge Family, the Mamas and the Papas, the Carpenters, the 5th Dimension, John Denver, the Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, the Grass Roots, and Nat King Cole."  

The statistics about the Wrecking Crew are staggering, with various members appearing on tens of thousands of recordings.  Hal Blaine is believed to be the most recorded drummer in history, while Tommy Tedesco is said to be the most recorded guitarist.  From Wikipedia:  "Blaine is credited with having played on at least forty U.S. #1 hits and more than 150 Top Ten records."  And their talents were not limited to records; again from Wikipedia:  "Tedesco's credits include the iconic brand-burning accompaniment theme from television's Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, Vic Mizzy's iconic theme from Green Acres, M*A*S*H, Batman, and Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special." 

One of the first successful female session musicians is bass guitarist and guitarist Carol Kaye; she preferred the name "the Clique" to the Wrecking Crew, and she is credited with appearing on 10,000 recordings.  Kaye once commented that at her peak, she was earning more money than the President.  Wikipedia reports:   "Her intense solo bass line, reverberating in quiet moments in [Phil] Spector's production of [Ike and Tina Turner's] 'River Deep, Mountain High', lent drama to the song's 'Wall of Sound' and helped lift the record into the Grammy Hall of Fame."  Her work for Quincy Jones so impressed him that, in his 2001 autobiography Q, he wrote (as quoted in Wikipedia):   ". . . women like . . . Fender bass player Carol Kaye . . . could do anything and leave men in the dust." 

Besides Glen Campbell, several members of the Wrecking Crew went on to great prominence in the music world, among them Mac Rebennack (better known as Dr. John) and Leon Russell.  This time the Wikipedia quote is from one of my own contributions:  "Also, Nino Tempo with his sister Carol (under her stage name April Stevens) had a U.S. #1 hit song in 1963, 'Deep Purple'." 

His old friends from the Wrecking Crew lent a hand on several of his records; for instance (from Wikipedia):  "[Carol Kaye] also came up with the famous intro on Glen Campbell's greatest hit 'Wichita Lineman'."  I have collected numerous albums by Glen Campbell over the years, and they are all first-rate from beginning to end. 

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My final experience in Nashville on that trip was to see a musical play called Hank Williams: The Lost Highway that featured Jason Petty in the title role – he both looked and sounded like the man.  The play was staged at the legendary Ryman Auditorium, the home of The Grand Ole Opry from 1943 through 1974.  Much of the story turned on what Hank Williams should do with his masterpiece "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" that didn't fit in well with his other work in this period.  Ultimately it was released in 1949 as the B-side of his #2 hit "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It"; the song was later covered by numerous recording artists, notably B. J. Thomas, whose cover of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" hit #8 in the Billboard charts in 1966 and led to a re-release of the original song in the same year that just missed the Top 40.  The Hank Williams version of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is ranked 29th among the 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music by the basic cable channel Country Music Television.  Also, as stated in Wikipedia:  "Rolling Stone ranked ['I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry'] #111 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, the oldest song on the list." 

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Like rock and roll, country music presented older music in new forms in the early days, though most of the material was new songs – or at least new to their audiences.  Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers ("The Singing Brakeman") among others are legendary songwriters as well as performers.  Another early country-music legend Roy Acuff is also renowned as the founder in 1942, with Fred Rose (a talent scout and major music-industry figure), of Acuff-Rose Music; as described in Wikipedia:  "Acuff-Rose's honest behavior towards their writers set them apart from other music publishing firms at the time and led them to fame throughout the 50's, 60's, and 70's."  

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As an example, I have previously written of the origin of the Ritchie Valens hit from 1958, "La Bamba".  The 1987 biopic film about Valens also took the name La Bamba, and "La Bamba" as performed in the film by the Chicano rock band Los Lobos became a Number One hit that year.  This song originated in Veracruz (one of the 31 states in Mexico) and was particularly popular at weddings, where the bridge and groom would dance to this music; "La Bamba" might date from as long ago as the 14th Century and is said to have 500 verses.  From Wikipedia:  "[Ritchie] Valens' version of 'La Bamba' is ranked number 354 on Rolling Stone magazine′s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.  It is the only song on the list sung in a language other than English."  

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I started correcting people that the song "Will the Circle be Unbroken" is actually named "Can the Circle be Unbroken".  Eventually I came across the "Will" title so much that I decided that I needed to look it up.  It turns out, according to Wikipedia, that "Can the Circle be Unbroken" was reworked by A. P. Carter from the hymn "Will the Circle be Unbroken?" that dates from 1907. 

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This would be a good time to relate my recent purchase of a one-of-a-kind, three-disc album called Will the Circle be Unbroken (1972).  Unlike nearly all of the other rock and country collaborations that I know about, in this case the rockers hand the keys off to country music legends and let them drive.  Ostensibly (or even technically) a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album, Wikipedia calls the album a "collaboration from many famous bluegrass and country-western players, including Roy Acuff, 'Mother' Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, Pete 'Oswald' Kirby, Norman Blake, Jimmy Martin, and others.  It also introduced fiddler Vassar Clements to a wider audience." 

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At a later date, I decided to look in Wikipedia to see if they had a list of songs that were written by A. P. Carter.  Well, they did, but it was not at all what I expected:  There are only 4 songs on the list.  This was the real story according to the Wikipedia article on A. P. Carter:  "Carter was known for traveling extensively throughout the country and collecting and blending songs, particularly from Appalachian musicians.  Some of the songs became so closely identified with A. P. Carter that he has been popularly, but mistakenly, credited with writing them.  For example, 'Keep on the Sunny Side of Life' was published in 1901 with the words being credited to Ada Blenkhorn and the music credited to Howard Entwisle, and 'The Meeting in the Air' has been published giving credit for music and words to I. G. Martin." 

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Along with the second album, Big Red and Barbacoa by past UARB Hacienda, I got a copy of his debut CD, Brian Olive in a surprise package of 3 albums that Suzy Shaw sent me in one of my Bomp! mailorder orders.  Brian Olive was previously in two rock bands having long Wikipedia articles, the Greenhornes and Soledad Brothers, though there is no article on him individually. 

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As quoted in Wikipedia:  "Rhapsody ranked the album #16 on its Country’s Best Albums of the Decade list:  'Jack White, of the bizarre and bluesy duo the White Stripes, produced this effort to jaw-dropping effect.  Van Lear Rose is a stripped-down effort that isn't afraid to get dirty – both in its dark subject matter and in its raucous, gritty tones.  And as much as this body of work highlights [Loretta] Lynn's down-home vocals (which are as strong as ever), it's White's production that sends her crashing – literally – into the 21st century.  On paper, these two disparate souls have little in common, but the bold excitement of the music proves the two are a match made in heaven.'" 

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On August 26, 2014, Brian Olive appeared on the Daytrotter sessions, a series of short interviews and musical performances out of Rock Island, Illinois.  Wikipedia says of Daytrotter:  "Daytrotter is a website for the recording studio Horseshack, which hosts recording sessions with many popular and typically up-and-coming indie music acts, although it works with local bands in the Illinois area as well.  This innovative music studio was founded in 2006 by Sean Moeller.  The sessions can be compared to that of a radio station's lounge recordings, where musicians passing through the town can record live in the studio.  Due to their tendency to offer an eclectic sampling of music, and their production style, the sessions have been compared to that of the legendary Peel Sessions." 

(February 2015)

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According to Wikipedia, the oldest surviving example of a complete musical composition is the Seikilos Epitaph (shown above).  Lyrics and melody are both given on this stele; even a form of musical notation is provided.  It is believed to date from around 200 A.D. 

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More recently, "Negro spirituals" are a type of work song that was sung among African American slaves; today, they are recognized as a separate genre of music.  Some have become quite famous, and even the likely authorship is known in some cases.  Wikipedia reports that "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was written by Wallis Willis sometime before 1862. 

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Since Richie Havens was about the only musician who had arrived at the 1969 Woodstock festival before the highways became hopelessly jammed, he played for hours.  As he recalls (quoting from Wikipedia):  "I'd already played every song I knew and I was stalling, asking for more guitar and mic, trying to think of something else to play – and then it just came to me . . .  The establishment was foolish enough to give us all this freedom and we used it in every way we could." 

After a remarkably quick guitar tuning, Richie Havens then improvised a song called "Freedom" that was based on the Negro spiritual "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child".  It was this performance that made it into the Woodstock movie.  Bob Dylan has incorporated "Motherless Child" into his songs; Wikipedia lists dozens of others who have also recorded the song in one form or another. 

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I never could come up with a proper count of the total number of songs that Bob Dylan has written; and I certainly wasn't going to try to count up the huge lists that I encountered, from Wikipedia on down.  The Wikipedia category "Bob Dylan songs" has 312 at present, though it is incomplete:  For instance, "I Shall be Free No. 10" from Another Side of Bob Dylan is not on the list, since an article on this song has not yet been written. 

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But solo songwriting is a lonely profession, and success is far from guaranteed.  Bob Dylan's first album, Bob Dylan did not particularly showcase Dylan's songwriting talent; there were only two original songs on the album. and the tunes to both had similarities with his mentor Woody Guthrie's songs.  In fact, says Wikipedia:  "Mitch Miller, Columbia [Records]'s chief of A&R at the time, said U.S. sales totaled about 2,500 copies.  Bob Dylan remains Dylan's only release not to chart at all in the US, though it eventually reached #13 in the UK charts in 1965.  Despite the album's poor performance, financially it was not disastrous because the album was very cheap to record."  Bob Dylan was one of the first Dylan albums that I purchased, and I am astounded that this album never made the charts.  

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A bit of serendipity occurred when Bob Dylan and Joan Baez appeared together at the 1963 Monterey Folk Festival singing a duet of a newly written song, "With God on Our Side" (which would appear on Dylan's next album, The Times They Are A-Changin').  The Festival was in the same month as the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.  Wikipedia states:  "Baez was at the pinnacle of her fame, having appeared on the cover of Time magazine the previous November.  The performance not only gave Dylan and his songs a new prominence, it also marked the beginning of a romantic relationship between Baez and Dylan, the start of what Dylan biographer [Howard] Sounes termed 'one of the most celebrated love affairs of the decade'." 

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Mimi Fariña is Joan Baez's younger sister, and Richard Fariña was originally known as a writer and eventually published an acclaimed novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (1966).  As quoted in Wikipedia, novelist Thomas Pynchon, who served as best man at the wedding of the Fariñas, described the novel as "coming on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch . . . hilarious, chilling, sexy, profound, maniacal, beautiful, and outrageous all at the same time." 

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Bob Dylan was one of many folksingers in the early 1960's who were following in Woody Guthrie's shoes.  From Wikipedia:  "Dylan wrote of Guthrie's repertoire:  'The songs themselves were really beyond category.  They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them.'  After learning of Guthrie's whereabouts, Dylan regularly visited him."  Later on, a number of other performers were heralded as the "new Dylan" – so many that the phrase started to sound like an epithet. 

As quoted in Wikipedia:  "[Woody] Guthrie was tired of the radio overplaying Irving Berlin's 'God Bless America'.  He thought the lyrics were unrealistic and complacent.  Partly inspired by his experiences during a cross-country trip and his distaste for 'God Bless America', he wrote his most famous song, 'This Land is Your Land', in February 1940; it was subtitled:  'God Blessed America for Me'."  And the original song isn't nearly so tame as the best known portion; the fourth and sixth verses (which Woody Guthrie himself sometimes omitted in his performances) are much more strident. 

Wikipedia states:  "Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jerry Garcia, Jay Farrar, Bob Weir, Jeff Tweedy, Bob Childers, and Tom Paxton have acknowledged [Woody] Guthrie as a major influence."  

Also, as reported in Wikipedia:  "[Woody] Guthrie himself had lived in the town of Pampa, Texas, and had witnessed the devastating Black Sunday dust storm of April 14, 1935."  This "black blizzard" was one of the worst dust storms of them all; an estimated 300 million tons of topsoil were displaced during this storm. 

The best known song on the Woody Guthrie album Dust Bowl Ballads is "So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh" (called "Dusty Old Dust" on the album).  The Weavers had a hit with "So Long (It's Been Good to Know Yuh)" in 1951, taking it to #4 on the pop music charts and becoming one of their "staple" songs.  From Wikipedia:  "The repetitive chorus has been described as 'a witty, black retort, utterly negative and apocalyptic'".

Bob Dylan once wrote a poem as a tribute to this folk music giant.  Titled "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie", Dylan recited it once at a concert – specifically, at the Town Hall in New York City on April 12, 1963 according to Wikipedia.  I have it on one of my Dylan bootleg albums, and it is also included in what is probably the biggest bootleg product of all time, the 10-LP box set Ten of Swords (1986).  The first legitimate release is on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 (1991). 

In 1943, Woody Guthrie moved to a house on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, New York.  Despite the fact that his recording career basically ended in 1947, this was his most productive period according to Wikipedia.  He wrote hundreds of songs over this period and worked as long as he was able to hold a pencil. 

Woody Guthrie became an active mentor for folksinger Ramblin' Jack Elliott; because of his deteriorating health from the ravages of Huntington's Disease, Bob Dylan and his own son Arlo Guthrie said that they actually learned about Guthrie's music mostly through Elliott.  Wikipedia says of this:  "When asked about Arlo's claim, Elliott said, 'I was flattered.  Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody.  Woody didn't teach me.  He just said, "If you want to learn something, just steal it — that's the way I learned from Lead Belly."'" 

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Of course, these are all people who are more or less well known.  Other singer-songwriters live in obscurity but still produce their music year after year.  One example is Hasil Adkins, the rockabilly one-man band from rural West Virginia that I have discussed previously.  Once Miriam Linna and Billy Miller of Kicks magazine brought him to a wider audience, launching one of the best reissue record labels in the process (Norton Records), Adkins had some celebrity in the final years of his life.  Wikipedia and Allmusic list 10 studio albums and 6 compilation albums by Hasil Adkins; I'm up to I think 5 albums myself thus far.  If not for Norton, Hasil Adkins would have been almost completely unknown, and that would be a tragedy in my mind.