Music Project Week 3: 1964

The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!!!  1964 is the start of the British Invasion.  Soul, R&B, Rock & Roll had filtered over to England and the white boys and girls over there took it to heart.

But first, a reminder of what is going on the world.  The US is still recovering from the assassination of Kennedy.  The Warren Commission is convened and determines that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Oswald, of course, was killed by Jack Ruby.  Controversy surrounds those events to this day.  Dr. Strangelove, My Fair Lady, and Mary Poppins are in the theaters. And three civil rights workers are murdered in Mississippi.  The US Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing US military activity in Vietnam after North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin were alleged to have attacked US destroyers without provocation.  It is questionable if those attacks ever happened. The resolution was used by Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to justify the US actions in Vietnam.

Ok, back to the British Invasion.  1964 saw The Animals, The Kinks, The Dave Clarke Five, Dusty Springfield, The Zombies, Manfred Mann, The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones, and, of course, The Beatles either make their debut or hit the american airwaves for the first time.  It really was an explosion of white, English kids usurping the race music of the US and starting to evolve it.

Given the invasion and the impact on American culture and music there really is nowhere else to start than the Beatles and their landmark appearances on the Ed Sullivan show.  Television was becoming increasing important in the popularity of music acts.  If Elvis got a boost from TV, the Beatles got a rocket launch.

First, of course, they had to arrive:  Video Link

This one gives you some interesting context around the arrival and performance.  It was a big deal.  Video Link

February 9, 1964.  Time magazine calls it the single-most important night of American Television history and one of the 80 days that changed the world.  Unfortunately, the Ed Sullivan Shows with the Beatles are not available to link.  So, two days later was their first US concert, held in Washington DC.

Beatles or Stones?  The eternal question.  Looking at all these old videos it's fascinating to see how different their personas were at this young age.  The Beatles were so alive and fun and even goofy.  Charismatic, charming, funny, they ooozed a pop sensibility.  The Rolling Stones were about attitude. They wanted to look cool and be cool. Swagger.  At this time, the Rolling Stones were still pretty much 5 white boys from england doing blues songs.  Jagger is more James Brown than John Lennon.  These first two vids are from that same TAMI show we saw James Brown perform at.

You really don't need to watch the whole video of the next one.  Jump ahead to the 6 minute mark when Mike Douglas is introducing the band and chatting with them.  These guys do not have that easy charm of the Beatles...and that's exactly how they want it.  If the Mike Douglas's of the world like them...they aren't doing it right.

Let's start it off with the single that started the Beatles hit parade in the US and signaled the beginning of the invasion just as loudly as Paul Revere did back in...oh forget it..what a horrible metaphor that has probably been done a bajillion times before me....

1) "I Want to Hold Your Hand" -  The Beatles

Rolling Stone describes their 16th Greatest Song of All-Time:

As a young, struggling beat group, playing grueling gigs at grubby bars, the Beatles had an in-joke to cheer themselves up: declaring that they were going "to the toppermost of the poppermost." By 1963, they meant it enough to issue an ultimatum. "We said to [manager] Brian Epstein, 'We're not going to America till we've got a Number One record,'" Paul McCartney said. So he and John Lennon went to the home of the parents of Jane Asher, McCartney's girlfriend, where — "one on one, eyeball to eyeball," as Lennon put it — they wrote "I Want to Hold Your Hand," an irresistibly erotic come-on framed as a chaste, bashful request. The lightning-bolt energy of their collaboration ran through the band's performance, taped October 17th, 1963. It lunges out of the speakers with a rhythm so tricky that the first wave of bands to cover the song often couldn't figure it out; Lennon and McCartney constantly switch between unison and harmonies, both of them snapping and whooping like they own the melody. Every element of the song is a hook, from Lennon's Chuck Berry riffing to George Harrison's string-snapping guitar fills to the quartet's syncopated hand claps. With advance orders at a million copies, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was released in the U.K. in late November, and promptly bumped the band's own "She Loves You" from the top of the charts.

After 15-year-old Marsha Albert convinced a Washington, D.C., DJ to seek out an imported copy of the single, it quickly became a hit on the few American stations that managed to score a copy. Rush-released in America the day after Christmas, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" hit Number One in the States on February 1st, 1964. When the bandmates got the news in Paris, during a three-week stand there, they partied all night. The single was certified gold two days later, and four days after that, the Beatles landed in New York the way they'd wanted: toppermost of the poppermost.



2) "House of the Rising Sun" - The Animals

rateyourmusic writes:

The Animals were five rough-hewn blokes from Newcastle, an industrial city in Northern England even more marginal to the London pop scene than the Merseybeat scene made famous by the Beatles.  Before the Animals version came along, the most well-known cover version of the old folk standard, The House of the Rising Sun, was a cover version recorded by Bob Dylan on his eponymous debut album.  When Bob Dylan first heard the Animals version of The House of the Rising Sun on his car radio in 1964, he reportedly jumped out of his car seat, immediately recognizing that his version of the song had been rendered obsolete.  Dylan's suspicions were further reinforced when, during a tour of England in early 1965, he realized he could not play House of the Rising Sun without being accused of stealing from the Animals.  (Ironically, Dylan had borrowed his arrangement of the song from Dave Van Ronk, but preempted Van Ronk in getting the song recorded.  Van Ronk had originally learned the song from an Alan Lomax field recording, but Dylan still borrowed chord sequences and bass notes from Van Ronk's arrangement.)   

With their bluesy organ-dominated remake of a favorite tune among American folkies, the Animals had unintentionally invented folk rock, a year before either Dylan "went electric" or the Byrds recording of Mr. Tambourine Man.  In fact, Dylan viewed the organ sound as so crucial to the impact of the Animals cover of House of the Rising Son that he eventually decided to add more electric organ to his own recordings, a factor which heavily influenced Dylan's classic trifecta of mid-60s albums: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde On Blonde. 


3) Time is on My Side - Rolling Stones

allmusic describes the song:

"Time Is On My Side" was the first really big American hit for the Rolling Stones, reaching #6 at the end of 1964. Like most of their early recordings, it was a cover, this one of a single by the great New Orleans soul singer Irma Thomas. But the Rolling Stones did make it their own, with a reinterpretation that was more substantial, and substantially different from the original, than most of their early covers. The song starts -- at least, the most familiar version of it starts (more on this later) -- with a piercing, memorable drawn-out bluesy guitar lick, both spiritual in its arch and raunchy. Like more early Rolling Stones than is acknowledged, "Time Is On My Side" is quite the slow ballad, but one which has a lot of insouciant blues-soul, particularly in Mick Jagger's drawn-out, drawling delivery. The band give Jagger underrated support with vocal harmonies in the early parts of the verse (when the title's sung), and especially in the bridge, where the band almost taunts the lover of the song with repeated chants of "you'll come running back." The implicit gospel influences of the song come to the surface in the instrumental break, where Jagger practically gives a spoken sermon over more of (presumably Keith Richards's) stinging blues guitar licks. The drawn-out tension of the song -- suitable for a song boasting that in time, however long it takes, the girl will come back to the singer -- is ably amplified by the several repetitions of the title phrase at the end, building the intensity of the song's cockiness.

4) Don't Worry Baby - The Beach Boys

Don't Worry Baby first appeared as the B-side to "I Get Around" which became a hit for the Beach Boys in 1964, but Don't Worry Baby was the one that signaled a shift for the Beach Boys from the happy surf music to one reflecting the demons that had begun to surface in their genius/disturbed songwriter Brian Wilson

Rateyourmusic says:

The A-side, I Get Around, is a classic statement of the Beach Boys formula of sun, sand, surf, girls, and cars, but not necessarily anything groundbreaking.  By contrast, the B-side, Don't Worry Baby, is also ostensibly about sun, sand, surf, girls, and cars, but somehow achieves a level of emotional poignancy that it completely transcends that formula.   

Like many musicians, Brian Wilson had the classic insecurity that he would be blindsided by new trends that would turn him into a has-been overnight.  As I already mentioned in an earlier entry, Brian Wilson had that epiphany borne out of insecurity when he pulled over to the side of the road to listen to the Ronettes, Be My Baby.  Don't Worry Baby was Brian Wilson's attempt to write a sequel to Be My Baby that would attract the attention of the Ronettes, but Phil Spector wasn't interested.  Instead, Wilson transformed the song into a male analogue to Be My Baby, dramatizing masculine insecurity in a surfer's Wall of Sound epic that makes you completely forget that the lyrics are merely about a guy facing the prospect of losing his car in a bet.  If the A-side is all about Mike Love's directive "Brian, don't fuck with the formula," then the B-side is all about Brian finally getting the courage to fuck with that formula.  Without Don't Worry Baby, Brian Wilson wouldn't have gone on to make Pet Sounds or Smile, and a lot of post-1990s indie pop would not be mining the Beach Boys for inspiration. 

As Pitchfork says of their 14th greatest song of the 60's:

We've all been there. Shooting our mouths off about our cars until, finally, it's time to put up or shut up. We hope that nothing goes wrong, but there's so much that could. We'd be sunk, really, if it weren't for the encouragement of that special girl. With her love riding shotgun, suddenly the makeshift drag strip at the abandoned drive-in theater doesn't seem quite so forboding.
OK, so maybe the appeal of this one has nothing to do with the specifics of the story, but surely we can all relate to the idea of support, how knowing that someone cares for you regardless of what happens gives you strength to do great things. And the music is such a perfect accompaniment to this theme, so damn cozy and warm, a tender respite from the stressful reality of the main narrative. It's that night in bed with your lover before the big day, that night you wish could last forever.


5)The Girl From Impanema - Stan Getz with Astrud Gilberto

Allmusic says of the album:

One of the biggest-selling jazz albums of all time, not to mention bossa nova's finest moment, Getz/Gilberto trumped Jazz Samba by bringing two of bossa nova's greatest innovators -- guitarist/singer João Gilberto and composer/pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim -- to New York to record with Stan Getz. The results were magic. Ever since Jazz Samba, the jazz marketplace had been flooded with bossa nova albums, and the overexposure was beginning to make the music seem like a fad. Getz/Gilberto made bossa nova a permanent part of the jazz landscape not just with its unassailable beauty, but with one of the biggest smash hit singles in jazz history -- "The Girl From Ipanema," a Jobim classic sung by João's wife, Astrud Gilberto, who had never performed outside of her own home prior to the recording session.

Pitchfork calls it the 63rd best song of the 60's:


While the titular object of desire is described as walking "like a samba," the breezy wisp of a song she saunters through has become synonymous with bossa nova, which emphasizes subtle melodic phrasing over dance-oriented cadence. Bossa nova pioneer Tom Jobim's bittersweet ode to the unattainable allure of youthful beauty turned the still-young Brazilian genre into a household name in the United States. Astrud Gilberto's dreamy lilt and João Gilberto's succint flecks of guitar describe the mesmerizing syncopation of rolling hips, while Getz blows his sax as sweetly as any drug-crazed wife-beater ever did.

6) "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" - Solomon Burke

Allmusic says this about Solomon Burke, an artist who continues to release wonderful records into the 2000's, including the phenomenal Don't Give Up on Me:

While Solomon Burke never made a major impact upon the pop audience -- he never, in fact, had a Top 20 hit -- he was an important early soul pioneer. On his '60s singles for Atlantic, he brought a country influence into R&B, with emotional phrasing and intricately constructed, melodic ballads and midtempo songs. At the same time, he was surrounded with sophisticated "uptown" arrangements and was provided with much of his material by his producers, particularly Bert Berns. The combination of gospel, pop, country, and production polish was basic to the recipe of early soul. While Burke wasn't the only one pursuing this path, not many others did so as successfully. And he, like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, was an important influence upon the Rolling Stones, who covered Burke's "Cry to Me" and "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" on their early albums.


7) "You Really Got Me" - The Kinks

ratemusic says:

The first single by the Kinks, a cover version of Little Richard's Long Tall Sally, had little to distinguish it from the Beatles version of the same song, while the B-side was rather derivative Merseybeat.  The Kinks did not finally find a sound of their own until their third single, You Really Got Me.  Ray Davies was trying to work out the chords for Louie Louie when he came up with a riff based on chords structured around a perfect fifth, what heavy metal and punk guitarists now call "power chords."  Ray's brother Dave then built upon Ray's innovative opening riff by slicing the speaker cone of his amplifier with a razor and poking it with a pin.  Then, for the final ingredient, session pianist Arthur Greencastle comes in with a keyboard vamp so insistent it could practically drill into your skull.  The only Beatles influence that the Kinks retained was the slow build-up to a screaming chorus, inspired by the Beatles remake of Twist and Shout, but this time the Davies brothers outdid their inspiration.  With a combination of power chord riffing and distorted guitar soloing, the Kinks laid out a blueprint for dozens of hard rock and heavy metal bands to come. 

As Rolling Stone says of their 80th greatest song of all time:

Convinced that the band's previous two singles had flopped because they were too pristine, the Kinks went into the studio in the summer of 1964 to record this deliberately raw rave-up, written by Ray Davies on the piano in his parents' living room. But the original recording still felt too shiny, and the band had to borrow 200 pounds to cover the cost of another session. Seventeen-year-old guitarist Dave Davies took a razor to the speaker cone on his amp to get the desired dirty sound for that immortal, blistering riff. "The song came out of a working-class environment," Dave recalled. "People fighting for something." A month later, the proto-heavy-metal song went straight to the top of the British charts.


Hard Days Night - The Beatles
8) Hard Days Night
9)Can't Buy Me Love
10)If I Fell

We'll listen to 3 songs from the Hard Days Night album from the Beatles.  They continue to evolve rapidly and their enormous output is extraordinary.  So much material recorded in 2 short years and the growth during that time is simply amazing.

Allmusic describes the album this way:

Considering the quality of the original material on With the Beatles, it shouldn't have been a surprise that Lennon & McCartney decided to devote their third album to all-original material. Nevertheless, that decision still impresses, not only because the album is so strong, but because it was written and recorded at a time when the Beatles were constantly touring, giving regular BBC concerts, appearing on television and releasing non-LP singles and EPs, as well as filming their first motion picture. In that context, the achievement of A Hard Day's Night is all the more astounding. Not only was the record the de facto soundtrack for their movie, not only was it filled with nothing but Lennon-McCartney originals, but it found the Beatles truly coming into their own as a band by performing a uniformly excellent set of songs. All of the disparate influences on their first two albums had coalesced into a bright, joyous, original sound filled with ringing guitars and irresistible melodies. They had certainly found their musical voice before, but A Hard Day's Night is where it became mythical. In just a few years, they made more adventurous and accomplished albums, but this is the sound of Beatlemania in all of its giddy glory -- for better and for worse, this is the definitive Beatles album, the one every group throughout the ages has used as a blueprint. Listening to the album, it's easy to see why. Decades after its original release, A Hard Day's Night's punchy blend of propulsive rhythms, jangly guitars, and infectious, singalong melodies is remarkably fresh. There's something intrinsically exciting in the sound of the album itself, something to keep the record vital years after it was recorded. Even more impressive are the songs themselves. Not only are the melodies forceful and memorable, but Lennon and McCartney have found a number of variations to their basic Merseybeat style, from the brash "Can't Buy Me Love" and "Any Time at All," through the gentle "If I Fell," to the tough folk-rock of "I'll Cry Instead." It's possible to hear both songwriters develop their own distinctive voices on the album, but overall, A Hard Day's Night stands as a testament to their collaborative powers -- never again did they write together so well or so easily, choosing to pursue their own routes. John and Paul must have known how strong the material is -- they threw the pleasant trifle "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" to George and didn't give anything to Ringo to sing. That may have been a little selfish, but it hardly hurts the album, since everything on the record is performed with genuine glee and excitement. It's the pinnacle of their early years.


11) A Change is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke

It's an unfortunate case of having to leave so much good music out of these lists that we haven't had any Sam Cooke yet.  He is right up there with Ray Charles as a seminal figure in creating soul music.  A Change is Gonna Come transcends any genre classification. It's great.

Pitchfork tells us about their 3rd Greatest Song of the '60's.

Filtered through a vessel of honest hurt, message and moment meet modern gospel. Suffering from the recent death of his 18-month old son Vincent and troubled by the omnipotent specter of racism, Cooke caught the unsteady temperament of a nation. Struck by Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind", the Mississippi native detected the folk movement's crucial sense of understanding; they "may not sound as good but they people believe them more," he once said. Sam Cooke sounds pretty great on "A Change Is Gonna Come". 

After Martin Luther King was assassinated, Rosa Parks listened to "A Change Is Gonna Come" for comfort. The spiritual synergy between King's preaching and the song's painful vignettes is powerful. Both are battered, bruised but vigorous. Rene Hall's classic arrangement, bolstered by French horns, timpani, and a flowering orchestra is pure Hollywood magic but Cooke subverts the Disneyland pomp with anguished realism: "It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die/ 'Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky." "A Change Is Gonna Come" was released as part of a single only after Cooke's murky murder. He never felt its rapturous reception. Yet, as long as change aches for resolution, the song will stand. 

PLAYLIST

Playlist is on Subsonic Again:  Music Project Week 3

 http://junkbelly.subsonic.org/share/ZTmjP

Music Project Week 2 : 1963

1963.  Big year in music.  Bob Dylan makes his mark and Beatlemania begins.  Wow.  Before we dive into that, let's make sure everyone understands what it is we're doing here.  I'm basically looking through the years to find important, influential and great music.  I have to leave a lot of things out, for the purpose of keeping things moving at a reasonable pace.  Just because we stopped talking about Elvis in 1956 doesn't mean he disappeared from the music scene. Not true, but for all of Elvis' tremendous popularity and cultural presence (he made a ton of movies), his musical influence really started to wane.  By all means, go back and listen to his music. A tremendous singer.

Similarly, whenever you approach a subject chronologically and you are talking about an evolution (in art or thought or anything really) it's always attractive to try and identify clear transitions.  The "First to xxxxx" or the "Last to ever xxxxx" etc.  Rarely, if ever, is that easily identified or even exist.  Influences are tricky things and it is entirely possible for 2 people to "invent" the same thing.  There is also definitional ambiguity.  First punk band?  I don't know, define punk music for me.  Transitions are gradual.  I will try to stay away from ascribing precedence as much as possible, hoping to convey general trends and the swirling nature of artistic influences.

Having said all that, 1963 is still a bit of a landmark.  Folk music takes off in the US and eventually filters back to the UK and Beatlemania explodes everywhere.  Ok, that's not exactly true.  1963 saw the Beatles conquer their homeland UK, and December 1963 finally saw the release of their first US single "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."  In February 1964 the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and by April they had the top 5 selling singles in the US.  Never before, and never since, has one band dominated popular music in the same way. We'll have plenty of time to talk in depth about the Beatles as we progress through the 60's, but it's remarkable to note at this point that all the great music we'll be listening to from them was created in only 7 years. They broke up in 1969 (officially 1970, but it was over before then).  Remarkable.  We're just getting started with them.

Before we get to the music though, we need some historical context.  In August 1963 there was the landmark "March on Washington" civil rights rally at which Martin Luther King gave his memorable "I have a dream" speech.  Just 3 months later in Dallas President Kennedy was assassinated.  By the end of the year, the US had assigned over 15,000 "military advisors" to South Vietnam.  That "innocence"  of the 50's we talked about last week is definitely is over. The music is just starting to reflect that (see Dylan, Bob).

On to the music.

Motown is really starting to find it's groove.  Here is the vaunted "Wall of Sound" Motown came to be identified with.  Production to the max. Full orchestra, background singers, layers of sound.  Everyone from the Beach Boys to the Beatles were influenced by this new studio production.

1) "Be My Baby" - Ronettes

Pitchfork calls it the 6th greatest song of the 60's:

What makes it soar, punch holes in hearts as well as walls, is the lead vocal by Ronnie Bennett. Bennett's voice was a little raw, unlike Darlene Love or Diana Ross, and her kittenish performance that strains slightly at the chorus transmutes the slightly sappy lyrics into possibly the best pop song of all time.

Rolling Stone has it as the 22nd best song of all-time:

Phil Spector rehearsed this song with Ronnie Bennett (the only Ronette to sing on it) for weeks, but that didn't stop him from doing 42 takes before he was satisfied. Aided by a full orchestra (as well as a young Cher, who sang backup vocals), Spector created a lush, echo-laden sound that was the Rosetta stone for studio pioneers such as the Beatles and Brian Wilson, who calls this his favorite song. "The things Phil was doing were crazy and exhausting," said Larry Levine, Spector's engineer. "But that's not the sign of a nut. That's genius."

Video Link

We're going to be looking at albums for the rest of this year, as the singles are less important than the body of work and what it meant to music.

2) Live at the Apollo - James Brown 

Allmusic says:

The affirmative screams and cries of the audience are something you've never experienced unless you've seen the Brown Revue in a Black theater. If you have, I need not say more; if you haven't, suffice to say that this should be one of the very first records you ever own.

Rolling Stone calls it the 25th greatest album of all time:

Perhaps the greatest live album ever recorded. From the breathless buildup of the spoken intro through terse, sweat-soaked early hits such as "Try Me" and "Think" into 11 minutes of the raw ballad "Lost Someone," climaxing with a frenzied nine-song medley and ending with "Night Train," Live at the Apollo is pure, uncut soul. And it almost didn't happen. James Brown defied King Records label boss Syd Nathan's opposition to a live album by arranging to record a show himself – on October 24th, 1962, the last date in a run at Harlem's historic Apollo Theater. His intuition proved correct: Live at the Apollo – the first of four albums Brown recorded there – charted for 66 weeks.

"The Hardest Working Man in Show-busines", Mr. James Brown.  James Brown was funk, soul and theater wrapped up into a powerhouse performer.  The Apollo theater is/was the premier music hall for black performers in the Harlem neighborhood of New York.

I'm going to link two videos both from the same performance in 1964. This was famous TAMI show which included James Brown, Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, and the Rolling Stones (among others).  The Stones followed James Brown and Keith Richards called that one of the biggest mistakes in the bands history.  You never follow JB.  For lazy people you can just watch the first video as it shows the closing song of his act that night.  The second video is longer and shows his full performance.  The man sells it. If you only watch the short one, keep in mind that he's already killed 'em for about 15 minutes before his finale. The frenzy is full on .

"Night Train" Only - Video Link

Full Performance - Video Link

So let's talk just a second about popular music in 1963 and what Bob Dylan did.  Almost all the songs we've listened to up to this point have been about boy meets girl or boy wants girl or girl wants boy back or some variation on that theme. While Bob wrote some songs about relationships, what Dylan brought was something different.  Rolling Stone says this about his Freewheelin' album of 1963: On Dylan's second album, the poetry and articulate fury of his lyrics and the simple, compelling melodies in songs like "Masters of War" and "Blowin' in the Wind" transformed American songwriting. Not bad for a guy who had just turned 22. 

Dylan was an angry poet.  The beauty of his songs is the timelessness of the message.  There is just enough ambiguity for the song to mean something to everyone at every time.  But you really do have to try and listen to the lyrics....which is not something I always do.  Dylan is an artist I'm still learning to appreciate. I'm trying to think of it more as musical poetry.


3) The Freewheelin Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan

According to Wikipedia:

Whereas his debut album Bob Dylan had contained only two original songs, Freewheelin' represented the beginning of Dylan's writing contemporary words to traditional melodies. Eleven of the thirteen songs on the album are Dylan's original compositions. The album opens with "Blowin' in the Wind", which became an anthem of the 1960s, and an international hit for folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary soon after the release of Freewheelin'. The album featured several other songs which came to be regarded as amongst Dylan's best compositions and classics of the 1960s folk scene: "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right".

Dylan's lyrics embraced stories taken from the headlines about civil rights and he articulated anxieties about the fear of nuclear warfare. Balancing this political material were love songs, sometimes bitter and accusatory, and material that features surreal humor. Freewheelin' showcased Dylan's songwriting talent for the first time, propelling him to national and international fame. The success of the album and Dylan's subsequent recognition led to his being named as "Spokesman of a Generation", a label Dylan repudiated.

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan reached number 22 in the United States (eventually going platinum), and became a number-one hit in the United Kingdom in 1964. In 2003, the album was ranked number 97 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2002, Freewheelin' was one of the first 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.

Going into detail about the powerful "Masters of War" Allmusic says:

This blistering, acerbic protest song against war profiteers exposed Dylan's heightened moral sensibility and established him as the most venomous folksinger around. It was a scary time: the cold war was in full swing and the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the United States and Soviet Union to the verge of nuclear disaster. President Eisenhower had warned of the dangers of the military industrial complex, and desperate times called for desperate songs. Here Dylan took off the gloves to deliver a most extreme anti-militarist protest. Through a timeless modal folk melody (borrowed from the English folk song "Nottamun Town") grafted onto a minimalist acoustic guitar strum, Dylan exuded a raw primal howl of moral violation against those who "build the big bombs." The singer can "see through" their masks of propriety and moral superiority, and shows them up for the cowardly, power-mongering, money-grabbing hypocrites they are. The righteous anger is about as extreme as it can get: the masters are equated to Judas Iscariot; they make people afraid of bringing children into the world. In one verse Dylan deals with the counterarguments likely to be heard from the enemy: that he's too young and ignorant and has no right to speak out of turn. He dispels the criticisms with a swift stroke: "there's one thing I know/even Jesus would never/forgive what you do." The final verse concludes with a wicked curse, "I hope that you'll die/and your death'll come soon," and ends with the singer standing over their grave 'til he's sure that they're dead. Dylan had, even at this early stage, mastered the art of the "finger pointing" song. This was not folk music for mamby-pambies.

Here's Pearl Jam performing the song on the Letterman Show. Video Link

The next song we're going to hear is Blowin' in the Wind.  From a youtube intro:

Although it has been described as a protest song, it poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war and freedom. The refrain "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind" has been described[by whom?] as "impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind".

In 1999, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, it was ranked #14 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

The is for the song as performed by Peter, Paul and Mary.  Dylan was an upstart in the folk scene at this point, and he gained his "street cred" if you will by established folk stars like Peter, Paul and Mary covering his songs.  Their version is just wonderful; the three part harmonies are beautiful.   Jeff, Mike and Sheila Frantz sang this song a lot on our car trips and our move across the US in 1976.  Looking back, my mom was probably a folkie, hippie, beatnik at heart.  The answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind..... Video Link

And here we go.  Time to Meet the Beatles.  The Beatles are going to dominate this Music Project for about the next 7 years.  They were and are the most important band in popular music.  In 1963 their second release "Please, Please, Me" became a hit.  They rushed into the studio to make a full album and banged out their first album in one day.

4) "Please, Please Me" - The Beatles

As Allmusic says:

Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely because of its intense origins. As the songs rush past, it's easy to get wrapped up in the sound of the record itself without realizing how the album effectively summarizes the band's eclectic influences. Naturally, the influences shine through their covers, all of which are unconventional and illustrate the group's superior taste. There's a love of girl groups, vocal harmonies, sophisticated popcraft, schmaltz, R&B, and hard-driving rock & roll, which is enough to make Please Please Me impressive, but what makes it astonishing is how these elements converge in the originals. "I Saw Here Standing There" is one of their best rockers, yet it has surprising harmonies and melodic progressions. "Misery" and "There's a Place" grow out of the girl group tradition without being tied to it. A few of their originals, such as "Do You Want to Know a Secret" and the pleasantly light "P.S. I Love You," have dated slightly, but endearingly so, since they're infused with cheerful innocence and enthusiasm. And there is an innocence to Please Please Me. the Beatles may have played notoriously rough dives in Hamburg, but the only way you could tell that on their first album was how the constant gigging turned the group into a tight, professional band that could run through their set list at the drop of a hat with boundless energy. It's no surprise that Lennon had shouted himself hoarse by the end of the session, barely getting through "Twist and Shout," the most famous single take in rock history. He simply got caught up in the music, just like generations of listeners did.


5) "With the Beatles" - The Beatles

Here's the thing, after that first album was such a success and they exploded in the UK, they were right back in the studio to record a follow up album, With the Beatles and it was released in November of the same year. Amazing.  Both releases were UK only though.  Later, material from both albums were combined on Meet the Beatles for US release....but that's not until 1964. Two great albums in the same year. The second one a clear progression from the first. Amazing.

Here's what Rolling Stone has to say about With the Beatles, number 6 on their greatest albums of all time:

 The Beatles' debut, Please Please Me, was famously cut in a single day. It's tougher follow-up, however, came together in seven sessions over four months amid the group's cyclonic British success. While fashion photographer Robert Freeman's iconic cover shot captured four sober young men in chic black turtlenecks, the music inside couldn't be any more bracing, jubilant, or sexy. References to home and happy reunions pepper "It Won't Be Long," "All My Loving," and five other Lennon-McCartney originals in addition to George Harrison's admonitory debut, "Don't Bother Me." And once the Beatles covered Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" and Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got a Hold on Me," they stayed covered.


Watch some videos from the first year of Beatlemania in the UK.   The first is from a performance at the Royal Variety Show (in front of the Queen) on Nov 4, 1963 (3 weeks before Kennedy's assassination).  It's not too long, but if you want to skip ahead, go to the 4:30 mark to see John's introduction to Twist and Shout...classic. Video Link

Second video is the first real taste of the frenzy that is "Beatlemania!!"  This is still in the UK, but the freakish response has already begun. Video Link

So the Playlist for the week is up on Subsonic.  Look in the Playlists for  "Music Project 2: 1963" Or follow the link below. Not quite as much variety this time, but I thought it was important to get a feel for early Beatles and Dylan as they both are going to play prominent parts in the next few years.

The playlist has James Brown, Bob Dylan and the Beatles as talked about above.  I've also included a song by the Impressions that charted.  We'll be seeing more of them and their lead singer Curtis Mayfield becomes a prime mover in the early 70's soul scene.  I've also added our first song by the Beach Boys.  Surf music was a huge craze at this time in the US and the Beach Boys were the most popular act.  We're going to be seeing a lot more of them over the next few years.  Also, Little Stevie Wonder makes his first appearance.  He hits the charts for the first time with Fingerprints.  12 years old at the time.

LISTEN TO PLAYLIST HERE

 http://junkbelly.subsonic.org/share/zgfqJ

Music Project 1955-1962

First a disclaimer.  I'm not an expert and some of the stuff I say will be wrong and much of it is pilfered from the internet...which has also been known to be wrong. Occasionally.

Second, I'm skipping a lot of good stuff.  It's very difficult to wade through all the great music and just pick out a few tracks from each year.  Having to choose between my favorites and others that might be more "important" or more obscure is not easy.  I've tried to strike a balance between them all, keeping in mind that the big goal is to give Shea and Will some perspective on who and how music has evolved over the last 60 years.  I was hoping to get some historical context inserted, but it's a bit overwhelming.  We might try to work in some documentaries as we go along to help fill that void.  It will be especially important for the next few weeks (1963-1970) as the happenings around the world politically, culturally, sociologically, demographically and chemically (heh) will be reflected in the music.  Hopefully we can touch on that.  It's difficult to appreciate some of the music without knowing why it was so important or revolutionary.

For now though we are in the innocence of the late 50's and early 60's.  Innocent except for the racism....no way around that.  And music was at the forefront of the racial tension. Rock and Roll, at it's beginning, was, at it's core, an evolution of race music.

The plan is for everyone to read through the post each week (or so), watch the videos and then listen to the songs in order on the playlist (location to be determined later).  Please try to really listen to the songs. Don't surf or play games while your listening.  Every song that I choose was either a hit, or was influential or important in the evolution of music (or I just think it's really cool).  See if you can hear why that is.  Then post a comment on the blog talking about what what you just read, watched, and listened to.  We're not looking for anything in particular, just impression you had.

Let's get started.  I'm including some videos that should help to put the songs into some sort of context.  It's going to be important to keep certain things in mind as we move through time. The world was changing rapidly from the late 50's through today.  What might seem normal or boring today may have been groundbreaking and scary at the time.....which brings us to Little Richard, who must have been terrifying to middle-america, white parents...

1) "Tutti Frutti" - Little Richard ; 1955

No one person invented Rock & Roll.  But one person that has to be on the short-list of prominent early contributors would be Little Richard.

In the first of many stories of studio serendipity, the recording of "Tutti Frutti" was a bit of a fluke.  According to History.com

"Tutti frutti, good booty..." was the way the version went that Little Richard was accustomed to performing in his club act, and from there it got into lyrical territory that would demand censorship even by today's standards. It was during a lunch break from his first-ever recording session that Little Richard went to the piano and banged that filthy tune out for producer Bumps Blackwell, who was extremely unhappy with the results of the session so far. As Blackwell would later tell it, "He hits that piano, dididididididididi...and starts to sing, 'Awop-bop-a-Loo-Mop a-good Goddam...' and I said 'Wow! That's what I want from you Richard. That's a hit!'" But first, the song's racy lyrics had to be reworked for there to be any chance of the song being deemed acceptable by the conservative American audience of the 1950s.

 An aspiring local songwriter by the name of Dorothy La Bostrie was quickly summoned to the Dew Drop Inn to come up with new lyrics for the un-recordable original, and by the time they all returned from lunch, the "Tutti frutti, all rooty" with which we are now familiar was written down alongside lyrics about two gals named Sue and Daisy. In the last 15 minutes of that historic recording session on September 14, 1955, "Tutti Frutti" was recorded, and Little Richard's claim to have been present at the birth of rock and roll was secured.

It's difficult to watch the video without noticing the racial makeup of the "performers" vs the audience.  It is impossible to discuss the evolution of rock music without discussing race and this will be the first glimpse into that story.

 



2) "Heartbreak Hotel" - Elvis Presley : 1956

The King.  Elvis was made for the new Rock & Roll, and was especially made for this new thing called Television.  It was a perfect storm.

"Heartbreak Hotel" was a departure for Elvis; it didn't sound like his previous records. Sam Phillips, his producer at Sun Records, famously called it a "morbid mess."  Elvis, however, was convinced it would be a hit.  Released in January 1956, the song coincided with Elvis' first appearances on network television.  In April he performed the song on the Milton Berle Show.  Two weeks later it was Elvis' fist number 1 hit.

3)  "Rumble" - Link Wray : 1958

Music is played by instruments.  Yep, that's a big "duh", but as we move through time, we're going to find that the sounds of the instruments are going to have a big effect on the direction the music takes.  This brings us to Link Wray's "Rumble."

From Rolling Stone:

When Link Wray released the thrilling, ominous "Rumble" in 1958, it became one of the only instrumentals ever to be banned from radio play – for fear that it might incite gang violence. By stabbing his amplifier's speaker cone with a pencil, Wray created the distorted, overdriven sound that would reverberate through metal, punk and grunge. Wray, who proudly claimed Shawnee Indian ancestry and lost a lung to tuberculosis, was the archetypal leather-clad badass, and his song titles alone – "Slinky," "The Black Widow" – convey the force and menace of his playing. "He was fucking insane," said the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach. "I would listen to 'Some Kinda Nut,' over and over. It sounded like he was strangling the guitar – like it was screaming for help." When Wray died in 2005, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen both performed "Rumble" onstage in tribute. "If it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble,'" said Pete Townshend, "I would have never picked up a guitar."



4) "Johnny B. Goode" - Chuck Berry : 1958

According to some smart dude:

The 1950s economic boom increased both buying power and leisure time, and, for the first time in American culture, the identification of young people as a unique group with unique tastes and interests. It is a measure of Chuck Berry’s genius that, as an African-American, he was able to write songs and craft a stage presence that could cross ethnic and experiential boundaries and achieve massive popularity with white “teenagers”.

The song Johnny B. Goode is a classic example of the 12-bar blues harmonic form, and uses that chord progression throughout. However, Berry experiments with the lyrics, avoiding the blues AAB poetic structure, in favor of a “through-composed” text for each verse in his narrative. Note the way that all the parts (the guitar solo, Berry’s vocal, the piano accompaniment, as well as the 2/4 bass part and drumming) play a percussive role—in this piece, everyone is thinking “rhythm.”

Though the breadth of Chuck Berry's contribution to the nascent style of rock 'n' roll is very great (guitar as focal instrument, singer writing his own songs, the general "teenage"-oriented topics of the songs and their remarkable "hooks"), for our purposes his manipulation of melodic/rhythmic interaction in his vocal and guitar parts are particularly interesting. Beginning with his (overdubbed) rhythm and lead guitars, the first sound heard on the track, the driving 8th notes of both the guitar solo (possibly the most famous guitar solo in rock's first decade) and his opening verse transform the melody into another powerful layer of rhythm. Moreover, the contrast between the steady, pounding 8th notes of the guitar solo and of the opening vocal phrase ("Deep down in Louisiana...") in the verse, and the stop-and-start call-and-response between voice and guitar in the chorus, serve to focus the listener's attention on the text, and most particularly on the shout-along/sing-along chorus: "Go, go Johnny go!". Berry built upon blues and gospel vocalists' attention to the rhythmic power and attention created by the singing voice, and made his choppy 8th-note guitar an equal contributor in the new rhythmic fields of rock 'n' roll.

Make sure you watch the vid up through the guitar solo.

5)  "What'd I Say" - Ray Charles : 1959

Everybody knows I'm in a Soul music phase at the moment.  There is no bigger figure in early soul music than the Genius, Ray Charles (apologies to Sam Cooke). Listed number 10 on Rolling Stones 500 greatest songs of all-time, "What'd I Say" is vintage Charles.  Taking his gospel music and adding secular lyrics, the track became Charles' first top 10 single and convinced the record producers that there was money to be made.

Borrowing from the Rolling Stone write-up:

he man they called "The Genius" literally wrote "What'd I Say" in front of an audience, in late 1958 or early '59. He and his crack R&B orchestra, newly supplemented by a female vocal group, the Raelettes, were playing a marathon dance show in a small town near Pittsburgh. When Charles ran out of repertoire late in the second set, he kicked into an uphill bass-note arpeggio on the piano, told the band to follow along and instructed the Raelettes, "Whatever I say, just repeat after me." Afterward, Charles said, dancers rushed up to him and asked, "Where can I buy that record?"

"What'd I Say" may not have been much of a song — a handful of short, unconnected verses, the chorus and that bridge — when Charles cut it on February 18th, 1959, at Atlantic's New York studio. (The six-and-a-half-minute rave-up was masterfully edited and re-sequenced by the label's visionary engineer, Tom Dowd, from an even longer studio performance.) But out of necessity, that night on the bandstand Charles had turned to the black gospel experience he knew so well, the shared, mounting ecstasy of call-and-response. "Church was simple," he said in his autobiography Brother Ray. "Preacher sang or recited, and the congregation sang right back at him."

That is exactly how Charles recorded "What'd I Say," with a torrid secular spin heightened by the metallic attack of his Wurlitzer electric piano. Charles' grunt-'n'-groan exchanges with the Raelettes were the closest you could get to the sound of orgasm on Top 40 radio during the Eisenhower era. Forty-five years later, they still give sweet release.

Make sure you watch the vid all the way to where the Raelettes come out....you'll understand that last paragraph a little better.

6) "So What" - Miles Davis  :  1959

What we call "Rock Music" is really a melting pot of all sorts of music.  Blues, Soul, R&B, Gospel, Country & Western...the list is virtually endless.  Jazz is unquestionably an important part of the mix.  Miles Davis' Kind of Blue along with John Coltrane's Love Supreme are the two jazz albums every rock fan should listen to.

According to npr:

The best-selling jazz record of all time is a universally acknowledged masterpiece, revered as much by rock and classical music fans as by jazz lovers. The album is Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.

Kind of Blue brought together seven now-legendary musicians in the prime of their careers: tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb and, of course, trumpeter Miles Davis.

Davis and his cool, measured trumpet style had been attracting attention in the jazz world since the mid-1940s. By 1958, at age 32, Davis was an international jazz star whose playing set the standard for jazz musicians of the day.

And just as younger artists looked to Davis for guidance and inspiration, he looked to them for raw, new talent and innovative musical ideas. In the mid-1950s, Davis discovered gold in the subtle sounds of 25-year-old pianist Bill Evans, whom he recruited into his late-1950s sextet. Evans would prove an essential contributor to the Kind of Blue sessions.

Even before Kind of Blue, Davis was experimenting with "modal" jazz, keeping the background of a tune simple while soloists played a melody over one or two "modes," or scales, instead of busy chord progressions — the usual harmonic foundation of jazz.

In addition, Evans introduced Davis to classical composers, such as Béla Bartók and Maurice Ravel, who used modalities in their compositions. Davis also drew on his knowledge of the modal qualities in the blues.

With Evans, Davis worked up a few basic compositional sketches, and when the musicians arrived at the studio on March 2, 1959, they were given the outlines. Davis wanted to capture the musicians' spontaneity — and he wanted to capture it on the first take.

Ashley Kahn, author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, says that the resulting recording possesses an almost spiritual quality as the musicians — particularly Coltrane — seemed to take a reverent approach to the composition.

To the musicians who recorded it, Kind of Blue was just another session when it was released in August 1959. But the disc was quickly recognized by the jazz community as a classic. Jazz musicians were startled by the truly different sound on an album that laid out a clear roadmap for further modal explorations.

"So What" became the tune, the one that every musician — not just the practitioners of jazz — simply had to know. The other tracks also quickly became standards, and the individual solos throughout the record continue to inspire musicians to this day.

Musicians from all genres perform, record and study the album's songs, and the influence of the songs on culture beyond music continues to grow. Drummer Cobb says it all comes down to simplicity — the reason Kind of Blue has remained so successful for so long. And because of its inherent balance, historian Dan Morgenstern adds, the album never wears out its welcome.

Watch the vid long enough just to recognize that Miles may have been the coolest dude ever.

7) "Shakin all Over" - Johnny Kidd & the Pirates  : 1960

Borrowing straight from a great list on rateyourmusic:

The most groundbreaking rock 'n' roll single from England to predate the British Invasion, Shakin' All Over by Johnny Kidd & the Pirates has lustful lyrics and suggestive guitar riffing still influential enough today that I'm certain Jack White must have ripped it off for "I'm Shakin'" from his latest album.  Better yet, the Pirates are exceedingly influential on the later development of American and British rock, because the Pirates minus Kidd are technically the first "power trio," a format that many assume didn't arrive until Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.   During the 1950s and the pre-Beatles era, the dominant rock 'n' roll band format focused more on keyboards and saxophone, with guitar playing a secondary role.  Buddy Holly & the Crickets pioneered the band format of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, and drums, but that format didn't get fully institutionalized until the Beatles came along.  The Pirates, by contrast, took the two guitars-bass-drums format and got rid of the rhythm guitar as so much fluff.  That's why Johnny Kidd and the Pirates proved to be very influential with later generations of British rockers, including the Who (who covered "Shakin' All Over" on their Live at Leeds LP) and Led Zeppelin (who played "Shakin' All Over" in rehearsals), who both structured themselves according to the dynamic frontman + power trio format that Kidd originated.
Aside from Adam Ant, Johnny Kidd also anticipated pirate chic earlier than anybody else by about four decades.  So the next time you celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day, hoist a bottle of rum for the late, lamented Johnny Kidd.  It's the least ye could do, ye scurvy dogs.

The video isn't the original (Obviously), but it shows how some of these songs really do translate.  Poor Wanda Jackson doesn't have the pipes anymore, so just focus on the killer band and Jack White.  Great performance...and if you watch to the end you'll see Dave thinks the same.

8) "Apache" - The Shadows  :  1960

While "Apache" was a hit in the UK (hit #1 on the charts), the song is on the list for what it will mean many years down the road when we talk about the birth of hip hop. But let's hear the original in it's context.  

The Shadows were the backup band to Cliff Richard, the biggest rock star in the UK before the Beatles came along, although the Beatles mainly viewed Richard as a cautionary tale, because his records never found success in America.  In their own right, the Shadows were a strong guitar-driven instrumental combo, who had their first UK #1 hit with Apache.  The Beatles used to play Apache and other Shadows instrumentals during their early Hamburg club dates, a debt they acknowledged in the title of the instrumental "Cry for a Shadow."  If only the Beatles had covered "Apache," the song wouldn't have been that influential, but in 1973, a studio-only group called the Incredible Bongo Band recorded a cover version of Apache that later hip hop DJ's coveted for its drum breaks.  Early rap group, the Sugar Hill Gang, recorded a cover version in 1981 with some vocals, and the song became cemented in hip hop history as a b-boy anthem. 

The video (watch up to about the 5 minute mark, unless you want to watch more).

9) "Got My Mojo Workin'" - Muddy Waters  :  1960

From allmusic:  For many back in the early '60s, this was their first exposure to live recorded blues, and it's still pretty damn impressive some 40-plus years down the line. Muddy, with a band featuring Otis Spann, James Cotton, and guitarist Pat Hare, lays it down tough and cool with a set that literally had 'em dancing in the aisles by the set closer, a rippling version of "Got My Mojo Working," reprised again in a short encore version. A great breakthrough moment in blues history, where the jazz audience opened its ears and embraced Chicago blues. This album was in print almost continuously on vinyl for 20-plus years.

When we start getting into the Rolling Stones and other blues-based bands, you'll hear the influence.  The video is of the same performance.  The band is top notch and Muddy starts to work the crowd toward the end.

 10) "Shop Around" - The Miracles  :  1960

Time for Motown to get some play.  We'll be revisiting Motown again and again.  Berry Gordy and Phil Specter created a studio and sound and process for creating hit music.  You did it their way.  Known eventually for his "Wall of Sound" production techniques, this first really big hit was before that had really materialized.  I tend to think of Motown as Heavily Produced Pop/Soul music.  Ensembles were also the rule.  Lead singer and a backing group from the Miracles to the Supremes to the Jackson 5 (and many others).  The harmonies were part of the sound Spector was shooting for.

Motown had hit singles before Shop Around, most notably Barrett Strong's Money, but this was the record that kicked the Tamla-Motown hit machine into high gear.  Kneejerk R&B purists might insist that original "Detroit version" of Shop Around is superior, but Berry Gordy made a better version of Shop Around for national airplay by making the tempo more upbeat, tightening the harmonies while emphasizing Smokey Robinson's tenor, and smoothing out the juke joint sax solo from the Detroit original.  Gordy used assembly line procedures that mirrored Detroit's auto industry to make R&B more radio-friendly for pop crossover audiences, but the Motown assembly line did not finally achieve its full potential until Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Shop Around gave Motown its first million seller.  Despite the sweetening that Gordy added to the national version of Shop Around, the lyrical content, which centered on a mother advising her son to sample as much milk as he can before he buys a whole cow, was still quite culturally subversive in 1960, although it did implicitly uphold the sexual double standard.

11) "Green Onions" - Booker T. and the MG's  : 1962

We'll finish off week 1 with what I consider the start of Southern Soul.  Soul music had fairly strong regional sounds. Chicago, Philadephia and eventually Memphis and Muscle Shoals making up the Southern Soul sound.  More raw and groovin' than the north, the rhythm sections of both studios were stars.  Booker T. and the MG's not only defined the sound of Stax records in Memphis, but they epitomized the magic as well.  One of the most racially divided cities in the US at the time, Stax records became a melting pot of music.  At the time, a racially integrated band was pretty unusual, and oh man were these guys tight.  One of the meanest grooves of all time.