Tom Wilkes, R.I.P.
[The Los Angeles Times]
Dennis McLellan: 'Tom Wilkes, a Grammy Award-winning art director and album cover designer whose work included albums for the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Neil Young and other music legends, has died. He was 69. Wilkes was partner in a Long Beach advertising firm when he became art director for the 1967 Monterey International Pop Music Festival for which he created all of the graphics and print materials, including the festival's psychedelic posterthat was printed on foil stock. "In fact, he won an award from Reynolds aluminum for the most creative use of aluminum foil," Fotch said. "He was always very proud of that." Music producer Lou Adler, who produced the landmark music festival with singer John Phillips, said Wilkes "caught the spirit of the time" with his festival graphics. "Most of the artwork in that particular culture was coming out of San Francisco, and what Tom did was he took a San Francisco look, or niche, and made it international," Adler said. "You can see a lot of the posters from that period and say, 'Oh, that's the '60s.' With Tom, it isn't dated. There's a very special look to it." The Monterey pop festival "catapulted" Wilkes' career into the music industry, his daughter said, beginning as art director at A&M Records. During his heyday, Wilkes designed or provided the art direction or graphic design for scores of album covers, including designing the covers for the Rolling Stones' "Beggars Banquet," Neil Young's "Harvest," Eric Clapton's "Eric Clapton," Joe Cocker's "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" and George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh" and "All things Must Pass." As he did with many of the albums, Wilkes also shot the cover photo of Joplin for her 1971 "Pearl" album, which shows the flamboyant singer lounging on a settee. "Their photo session was the night she overdosed," Fotch said'

Surf's Up
[The Smart Set]
Morgan Meis: 'Chet Atkins' "Walk Don't Run," was recorded in 1957. It's a groovy little number. A soft, jazzy drum beat rumbles along beneath a wide-ranging guitar melody backed nicely by a second guitar. In 1960, a young group called The Ventures did a re-make of Chet's song. It was the same song, but it wasn't the same song at all. Musicians talk about creating a new sound or looking for that new sound. They often talk about that new sound in hushed tones, as if they've suddenly crossed over into the realm of the sacred. There's lots of nodding and smiling. Knowing glances replace anything that could be put simply into language.'

George Fullerton, R.I.P.
[The Los Angeles Times]
Randy Lewis: 'George Fullerton, a longtime associate of Leo Fender who played a crucial role in the electric-guitar innovator's extraordinary success through his broad-based skills as a musician, artist and technician, has died. He was 86. While Fender tinkered away, coming up with improvements in guitar design that led to the creation of his revolutionary Telecaster and Stratocaster electric guitars, Fullerton was charged with making those innovations practical for mass production in their Orange County factory that opened in the late 1940s. Nearly 1,000 people were working there when Fender sold it to CBS in 1965. "Leo's domain was the lab: innovation, getting ideas together on the conceptual level. George's domain was the shop," said Richard Smith, curator of the Leo Fender Gallery at the Fullerton Museum Center and author of "Fender: The Sound Heard Round the World." Fullerton "made the machine that threaded the guitar necks. He came up with the neck shaper and all these unique tools they used. If Leo had problems, [Fullerton] needed to solve them." Fullerton's lifelong interest in art allowed him to create sketches of new designs based on his conversations with Fender, whose background was in accounting and electrical engineering.'

Michael Jackson Could Have Used a ‘No’ Man
[Pajamas Media]
Jack Dunphy: 'Michael Jackson's celebrity perhaps eclipsed that of any movie star one could name. One cannot help but suspect that with that very rarest level of celebrity came the flocks of retainers who, so as to maintain their positions within the comforting proximity of the star, were all too willing to acquiesce to any and all bizarre behavior. Of which prescription drug abuse was apparently far from the worst.'

Sam Butera, R.I.P.
[The Los Angeles Times]
Adam Bernstein: 'He was best known for his musical partnership with entertainer Louis Prima. They were a nightclub fixture and appeared on TV and in movies. Prima, nearly 20 years older than Butera, was a composer ("Sing, Sing, Sing"), trumpeter, singer and irrepressible stage performer, a combination of Louis Armstrong and Jerry Lewis. His career was on the wane when he teamed in 1954 with Butera, who a few years earlier had been named the country's outstanding teenage jazz musician by Look magazine. Both men were New Orleans natives of Italian heritage. Backed by a small band called the Witnesses, the Prima-Smith-Butera partnership re-created jazz and pop standards in a dazzlingly inventive array of styles and tempos: swing jazz, "shuffling" upbeat jump blues, Italian tarantellas and Dixieland. Some of their best-known titles included "Just a Gigolo"/"I Ain't Got Nobody" (done as a medley), "Pennies From Heaven," "That Old Black Magic" (which won a Grammy Award), "Jump, Jive an' Wail" and "When You're Smiling."'
Sam Butera: 'Beyond Belief'
[The Las Vegas Sun]
Jerry Fink: 'The music of Prima and Butera resurfaces from time to time, played in film sound tracks an commercials. A Gap commerical in the '90s, featuring “Jump, Jive and Wail” gave Butera’s career a boost. “Louis Prima’s true ace in the hole for 21 years was Sam Butera,” Prima’s widow, Gia Maione, said during a telephone call from her home in Florida. “I don’t care what vocalists were with Louis, his true ace in the hole was Sam Butera. Side by side, Louis and Sam kicked Las Vegas’ butt for 21 years.” Maione joined Prima’s group after Prima and vocalist Keely Smith divorced in 1961. “I really do not believe over all of these years that Sam Butera got the accolades he deserved as a tenor saxophone player,” Maione, 67, said. “I defy anyone to name someone that played better tenor sax that Sam Butera. “From the day I got the job with Louis, before every show every night, emanating from the dressing room you would hear Sam running his scales, running his fingering, making sure his mouthpiece and reed were perfect. He was a technician beyond belief with that instrument, let alone the showman that he was. And you put those two side by side, Prima and Butera, that was it.” She says her husband didn’t get the credit he deserved, either. “Both of them were such great showmen and they had so much fun that people overlooked the skill because they were having too much fun,” she said.'

Sly Saxon, R.I.P.
[The London Daily Telegraph]
'After brief stints in several local outfits he formed The Seeds in 1965 as lead singer and songwriter. The band developed a raw, abrasive sound and began performing at clubs on Sunset Strip, quickly picking up a record deal. The Seeds broke into the American Top 40 with their debut single Pushin' Too Hard, which reached number 36. Though the follow-up – Can't Seem To Make You Mine – stalled at 42, they quickly became the most popular new rock band in Los Angeles, earning $6,000 a night. With their second album, A Web Of Sound, released in late 1966, they embraced the pervasive psychedelic culture, repeating the trick the following year with Future, an attempt to create a hippie soundtrack comparable to The Beatles' Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. ...But he had already found another obsession to replace his fading rock career: The Source Family, a Los Angeles religious cult whose founder, Jim Baker, ran The Source, a fashionable vegetarian restaurant. Baker believed himself to be Ya Ho Wha (Jehovah). Living in a Los Angeles mansion, the cult recorded their own primitive psychedelic music with Saxon. They sold these albums at The Source for $1 each. Baker named Saxon "Sunlight" and from then on he would be known as Sky Sunlight Saxon. The Ya Ho Wha cult moved to Hawaii in 1974 and Saxon remained there, very occasionally issuing mail order-only recordings. ...Finally, in 2002, Saxon emerged again to put together a version of The Seeds and tour Europe and the United States, where his 1960s recordings were in vogue again. In 2006 he recorded the album Transparency in London for Jungle Records. He continued to record and perform in America and Europe, those who encountered him likening him to a man who appeared to have stepped off the Sunset Strip circa 1969.'

Bob Bogle, R.I.P.
[The Los Angeles Times]
Dennis McLellan: 'Renowned for their "big guitar sound," the Ventures first hit the Billboard singles chart in 1960 with “Walk — Don’t Run,” which peaked at No. 2. "That song started a whole new movement in rock 'n' roll," said John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival while inducting the Ventures into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. "The sound of it became 'surf music' and the audacity of it empowered guitarists everywhere." Said Wilson: "Any guitar player would tell you, Bob isthe most unique-sounding guitar player ever. The way he used to do the whammy bar -- that vibrato bar. He kept his little finger on it while he played it all the time. He'd make it sound, like at the end of a chord, Wow-wow. We were the first ones to ever get recognized for doing anything like that. "When you heard him play, you knew it was him." The Ventures returned to the top 10 in 1964 with a new version of "Walk -- Don't Run," "Walk -- Don't Run '64," with Bogle having earlier switched to bass and Edwards to lead guitar. The Ventures' only other top 10 hit was the “Hawaii Five-O” theme, which peaked at No. 4 in 1969. But between 1960 and 1972, the Ventures charted 37 albums in the Billboard top 200. Guitar Player magazine once called the Ventures "the quintessential guitar combo of the pre-Beatles era, [who] influenced not only styles, but also a generation's choice of instruments." "The Ventures, like the Beatles in a way, made an entire generation of people pick up guitars," Howard Kramer, curatorial director at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, told The Times on Tuesday. "But more to the point is they literally instructed you in how to play a guitar."'

Higher and Higher
[Powerline]
Scott Johnson: '[June 9th] is the anniversary of the birth of soul singer Jackie Wilson. Wilson died at age 49 in 1982, eight years after suffering a massive heart attack onstage while performing with the Dick Clark Revue in New Jersey. Though his career was sadly shortened, he made an impact.'

Sinatra vs. 'My Way'
[The Wall Street Journal]
Will Friedwald: 'Frank Sinatra may not have always been the easiest guy in the world to get along with, but he was nothing if not consistent. One attitude that rarely varied was his opinion of "My Way," a song whose 40th anniversary is being heralded with the reissue of the 1969 album. "My Way" was quite possibly the single most popular number from the final act of Sinatra's career. And in concert after concert over a 25-year period, he never hesitated to tell audiences exactly what he thought of it:
-- "I hate this song -- you sing it for eight years, you would hate it too!" (Caesars Palace, 1978)
-- "And of course, the time comes now for the torturous moment -- not for you, but for me." (L.A. Amphitheater, 1979)
-- "I hate this song. I HATE THIS SONG! I got it up to here [with] this God damned song!" (Atlantic City, 1979)
And yet, in many of those same introductions, he told the crowd that the song had been "very good to me -- and singers like me." "My Way" may have reached only No. 27 on the pop single charts (making it to No. 11 as an album), but it helped keep the Chairman on the road in the '70s, '80s and '90s. Sinatra quickly learned that audiences wouldn't let him off the stage until he gave them "My Way." Even when he tried to end a show without it, he was dragged back on to do it as an encore.'

DVDs' Fugitive Music
[The Wall Street Journal]
Joanne Kaufman: 'Devoted fans of particular TV series, those folks who memorize the theme song, who know the most recondite plot particulars and who can recite the dialogue along with the cast, view every episode as sacred text. To see (or hear) any deviation in the DVD is to feel, as Mr. Neyhart put it, "violated." But production companies such as CBS Home Entertainment, while obviously not eager to alienate consumers, are often hobbled by music-rights clearances. Such clearances include everything from the theme song to incidental music or mood music, from a tune coming out of a jukebox or radio in the background to a song played by a band during a scene set in a night club. The process is sometimes sufficiently complicated to mean long delays in bringing such DVDs to market.... It's sometimes sufficiently expensive -- seven figures or more for a season's worth of episodes -- to mean either that a series won't be issued on DVD at all...or will be issued with replacement music.'

Sing, Sing, Sing
[SteynOnline]
Mark Steyn: 'In 1935, [Louis] Prima was a considerably more conventional musician: a working trumpeter around New York who'd put together a combo named after his home town - "Louis Prima and his New Orleans Five" - and opened, sensationally, the Famous Door club on 52nd Street. He did a few movie cameos, too, including one in a 1936 Bing Crosby picture called Rhythm On The Range. Prima and Crosby hit it off - they both liked the ponies and they went to the track together. And supposedly Louis originally wrote "Sing, Sing, Sing" as a hommage à Crosby: "Sing, Bing, Sing." Seriously. [Benny] Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing" started out at about eight minutes, or both sides of a 78. But they were just warming up. By the time they performed it at Carnegie Hall on January 16th 1938 it had growed like Topsy to about 12 minutes. It captured the Goodman machine at its most stellar, before James and Krupa and Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton all left to form their own bands. Ziggy Elman and Gordon Griffin joined James on trumpet, and the resulting live "Sing, Sing, Sing" is infinitely better than the studio recording. But not just because Krupa was pounding to beat the band. After all the usual exhibitionism, Goodman out of the blue tossed it over to his pianist, Jess Stacy. The poor guy was caught on the hop: He usually just played rhythm on "Sing" and kept out of the way. But he rose splendidly to the occasion with an oddly Debussyesque solo: It managed to sum up the evening, swinging but also alluding to the venue's classical inheritance, and it was as subtle and understated as Louis Prima's tune and Jimmy Mundy's arrangement ever got.'

Peggy Lee, All Aglow Again
[New York Sun]
Will Friedwald from 2008: 'Fifty years ago this month, Peggy Lee recorded "Fever." The song was neither her biggest hit nor her own composition, but today it is not just her signature, but one of the most iconic pop records ever made. Now, 50 years later, with a counterintuitiveness Lee would have approved of, her daughter, Nikki Foster, and granddaughter, Holly Foster Wells (working in conjunction with Collectors' Choice Music), are commemorating the golden anniversary of one of the best-known songs of all time by releasing some of the least-known music of Lee's career. Lee (1920-2002) is generally regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of the Great American Songbook, a crucial hit maker of the same vintage as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole. Like most of her contemporaries, Lee started as a big-band vocalist (with Benny Goodman) before becoming a solo headliner. But there were several factors that made her unique: While she might have had less in the way of pure vocal chops than the others of her echelon, she had a greater sympathy for the blues (an unusual talent for a woman of Scandinavian descent from North Dakota) as well as a gift for songwriting equalled by few singers.'
[tip of the fedora to Scott Johnson]

Lee Solters, R.I.P.
[The London Daily Telegraph]
'Lee Solters, who died on May 18 aged 89, was one of the last of the old-school Broadway and Hollywood press agents, representing some of the biggest names in entertainment, including Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, and the Beatles, whose first American tour he handled in 1964. His other clients included Dolly Parton, Paul McCartney and Wings, Led Zeppelin, Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, the Muppets, Mae West and Michael Jackson, although even his image-crafting talents were stretched by Jackson's odd behaviour. One of the last surviving links to a Runyonesque era when publicists would slip items to columnists at 1am over drinks at the landmark Manhattan bar Toots Shor's, Solters was a prominent press agent – or "flack", as the Americans call them – during the years when it was routine to "plant" items about stars in showbusiness columns by such gossip writers as Hedda Hopper and Walter Winchell. Short and balding, Solters was considered a showbiz publicity legend, a confidant to the world's biggest stars throughout a 66-year career. Among other things he claimed to have arranged for bobby-soxer girls to faint for "Frankie" [Sinatra]. Unfailingly cheerful, Solters was likened to everyone's favourite Jewish uncle. One Hollywood columnist recalled seeing him angry only once. That was when – after he had represented Sinatra for 26 years – his daughter stole the singer's account and started her own PR firm. But he also admired her chutzpah. Another Solters gambit was hiring people with the same names as famous critics to write blurbs for Broadway shows, a promotional idea that at the time was seen as more clever than devious.'

Heard, but Not Seen
[The Wall Street Journal]
Terry Teachout: 'The overture to "Gypsy," like most Broadway overtures, was actually written by the two men who orchestrated the show. All Styne did was knock out the tunes. It was Sid Ramin and Robert Ginzler who used them as the raw material out of which they constructed that five-minute chunk of knock-'em-dead fireworks. They also picked and mixed the show's orchestral colors, including the striptease trumpet solo that never fails to bring down the house. Most playgoers know nothing of the process that I just described. Professional orchestrators such as Messrs. Ramin and Ginzler were and are the unsung heroes of the classic Broadway musicals of the prerock era. It was Robert Russell Bennett, not Jerome Kern, who created the orchestral palette of "Show Boat." It was Don Walker, not Jerry Bock, who put flesh on the bones of the songs in "Fiddler on the Roof." The names of these men appeared in small print in the programs of the shows that they scored, just as their work usually went unmentioned by drama critics. Yet their contributions to the language of musical comedy were essential -- and that's where Steven Suskin comes in. He's just written an invaluable book called "The Sound of Broadway Music" (Oxford) that tells how the great Broadway shows got orchestrated, and why it matters.'

Tatum's Art Changed Jazz
[The Wall Street Journal]
Will Friedwald: 'There's a remarkable photo in the booklet accompanying "Art Tatum," the new 10-CD boxed set of rare music by the legendary pianist now out on the Storyville Records label. We see the jazz icon at work, surrounded by three heavyweight keyboardists: Albert Ammons, the boogie-woogie pioneer; Teddy Wilson, a star of the swing era and master of the American songbook; and Hazel Scott, whose specialty was swinging the classics. All three of them are looking over Tatum's shoulder with a look in their eyes that seems to acknowledge that here is a musician who can do -- all by himself -- everything that the three of them can do collectively, who can play more piano than all of them put together, and a great many others besides. Tatum is unchallenged as far as sheer musical density is concerned: He played so many notes in a given performance that just counting them would be difficult, and actually transcribing one of his solos would be next to impossible. Just listening to Tatum at full blast can be overwhelming.'

Ghost Riders In The Sky
[SteynOnline]
Mark Steyn: 'A ghost herd in the sky? Where did that come from? From a guy called Stan Jones - and it was, as they say on the TV movies, based on a true story. Stan was born in 1914 near Douglas, in southeastern Arizona, and by the age of 12 was working at the D Hill Ranch. "I'd been sent out to do a chore," he recalled, "so I saddled up my horse and took off. After I'd finished my work, it was beginning to blow up a storm, and, not having my poncho along, I decided to take an old path up over the mountain, which was between me and the ranch house. I was hoping to beat the rain, 'course. Well, right up on top of the ridge, I met an old, old cowpuncher, sort of a weird old fellow." This was a leathery cuss called Cap Wells, and, without even turning his head to look at young Stan, he said, "Son, look up into the sky and you'll see the red-eyed cows of the devil's herd." And the boy looked up, and, by golly, there they were....'

Music and Money
[The Wall Street Journal]
Ken Emerson: 'In 1888, the music publisher M. Witmark & Sons opened an office near Union Square in New York, not long after the fledgling company had enjoyed success selling sheet music for a song penned by one of the Witmark boys, "President Cleveland's Wedding March." Witmark would go on to play a major role in the commodification of music from the late 19th century to the Depression -- the subject of David Suisman's "Selling Sounds." As the author notes in an epilogue, the Witmark building was just a few doors away from a contemporary bastion of what the commercialization of music wrought: a Virgin Megastore. Now, in an epilogue to his epilogue, Virgin's music emporium will soon become a thing of the past: Like so many other retail music stores of late, it has announced that it is going out of business. The story of "Selling Sounds," then, is especially timely. Mr. Suisman begins his narrative of how things used to be with the emergence in the 1880s and 1890s of that hive of music publishers, Witmark among them, known as Tin Pan Alley. The origin of Tin Pan Alley's name has never been pinned down, and its address was never fixed, either, as it gradually crept uptown from Union Square to 28th and 29th streets and eventually beyond Times Square.'

'Boppin Bob' Jones, R.I.P.
[The Times Of London]
'Look closely at the centre circle of many vinyl albums and you will find the personal mark of the mastering engineer. Some are a “Porky Prime Cut”, other bear the name of “Herbie Jr”, while some of the highest quality releases have the tag “Boppin’ Bob”. The man responsible for those was Bob Jones, an engineer whose remarkable mastering abilities earned him praise from record companies in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. He was also a devoted fan of popular and classical music who, for a short time, ran his own record label. Ted Carroll, the co-founder of Ace, was aware that Jones shared his tastes and standards: “Bob was a big fan of authentic Fifties rock’n’roll. This made him the ideal person to cut records from that era. He understood how the records were meant to sound and he took the greatest care in EQ-ing each master to achieve the best possible results. Bob was a perfectionist and impressed upon us the importance of working from the best possible tape sources, something that we were already very much aware of.”'

Ring's Inner Circle
[The Weekly Standard]
Algis Valiunas: 'Jonathan Carr, an accomplished British journalist and biographer of Gustav Mahler and Helmut Schmidt, has joined his musical and political interests in The Wagner Clan, an excellent family biography that honors the artistic genius and reviles the political venom of Richard Wagner's legacy. An ironclad family rule enjoined that the Master's descendants had to be faithful disciples if they were not to be deemed apostates, and living up to one's heritage was as much an ordeal for some as living it down was to others. To be a Wagner was (and perhaps still is) to belong by birth to the highest reaches of the artistic aristocracy, preserving and transmitting the founder's renown down the generations, through the institution of the Bayreuth Festival, administered by the family and dedicated to his finest works. It was a proud fate and also a sad one, for one could never hope to be more than an epigone, in the service and in the shadow of the patriarch.'

The Lion Sleeps Tonight
[Steyn Online]
Mark Steyn: 'Whether you've heard [Pete] Seeger singing it as "Wimoweh" or Tight Fit's 1982 British Number One of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", you know this tune. Back in New York, the Tokens did as they were told but didn't care for it. "We were embarrassed," said Phil Margo, "and tried to convince Hugo and Luigi not to release it. They said it would be a big record and it was going out." It had an orchestra, a trio of Tokens doing the wimoweh-ing, Jay Siegal's falsetto, an opera singer with a spare half-hour who came in and did a bit of contrapuntal howling. The first time the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson heard it he had to pull off the road he was so overawed. Carole King declared the record a bona fide "motherf---er". It hit Number One at Christmas 1961. ...it is, in fact, very hard not to make a ton of dough from "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Unless, that is, you're a fellow called Solomon Linda. Those words about "the jungle, the mighty jungle" sit so perfectly and indivisibly on those notes they sound like they've belonged to each other for all time. We know the lyric is George Weiss', but where did the tune come from?'

Changing His Tune
[Steyn Online]
Mark Steyn: 'This week marks not only the first hundred days of King Barack's reign and the 30th anniversary of Mrs Thatcher's arrival in Downing Street, but also the 90th birthday of Pete Seeger. The celebrations of Mr Seeger's tenth decade are extensive. If he seems a remote figure from the pop culture back catalogue, not so fast: He played at the Obama inauguration. Which, when you think about it, is quite something. One must congratulate the old banjo-picker on making it to four score and ten, which is a lot older than many "dissenting artists" made it to under the regimes he's admired over the years. Two years ago in The New York Sun, you'll recall, Ron Radosh had a notable scoop: Hold the front page! Stop the presses! Grizzled Leftie Icon Repudiates… Who? Castro? Chavez? Al-Qaeda? Whoa, let’s not rush to judgment. No, the big story was: Grizzled Leftie Icon Repudiates  …Stalin.'

Aquarius
[Steyn Online]
Mark Steyn: 'It was the last Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper to come from a Broadway score. The previous Number One had been Louis Armstrong's version of the title song from Hello, Dolly! five years earlier, and the nearest to repeat the trick since has been "One Night In Bangkok" from Chess, by Tim Rice and Benny and Bjorn, the Abba boys, which got to Number Two. But in between Satch and Murray Head, Hair gave the Hot 100 a bunch of Top Ten hits: the title song (the Cowsills), "Good Morning Starshine" (Oliver), "Easy To Be Hard" (Three Dog Night) and the Fifth Dimension's medley of "Aquarius" and "Let The Sunshine In". Hair had been running at the Biltmore Theatre for a year by the time the Fifth Dimension got a Number One record out of it. It was the first "American Tribal Love-Rock Musical", and as far as its detractors were concerned one was more than enough.'

And here's WHY 'hot young Susan Boyle' wasn't a superstar of the 1980s
[The Other McCain]
Robert Stacy McCain: 'Now, there are always plenty of talented musicians who never make it big, just as there are always relatively untalented performers who soar to inexplicable stardom. So it may be that why Susan Boyle's amazing voice went undiscovered for 25 years needs no explanation. Nevertheless, it is not entirely mysterious.'

Under Their Thumb: How a Nice Boy from Brooklyn Got Mixed up with the Rolling Stones (and Lived to Tell the Tale) by Bill German
[The Sunday Times Of London]
Robert Sandall reviewing: 'This unassuming but highly readable memoir portrays the Rolling Stones over a period that has never much appealed to rock’s literati. When Bill German began producing his fan’s newsletter, Beggars Banquet, in 1978 while he was still at high school in Brooklyn, the Stones’ death-and-glory years were over. The big career-defining moments — Brian Jones’s drowning, the infamous concert at Altamont, the Exile on Main Street album and the orgiastic American tour that followed it — had all happened and been written up. To German’s teenage peers the Stones were yesterday’s news, eclipsed by Pink Floyd and Saturday Night Fever. But still hypnotised by his idols’ “sexuality, sarcasm and rebelliousness”, German gives up his education “to interact with the Stones directly”. He spends the next 17 years following them around the world, usually at his own expense, issuing monthly updates on their exploits to Beggars Banquet’s 3,000 subscribers.'

River Deep, Mountain High, Sentence Long
[Steyn Online]
Mark Steyn: 'Phil Spector, on the other hand, is the dark side of rock weirdness - a reminder that there really are no limits. If you listen to some of those digitally remastered jazz records from the 1920s, they sound fantastic: there was never anything wrong with the recordings, just the limitations of the delivery system - those scratchy 78s. Spector, by contrast, designed his recordings specifically for the limitations of the day - tinny little 1960s transistor radios, on which they sounded spectacular. On CD, on 21st-century players, they sound thin and fake and hollow - and dated.'

The Gospel According To Al Green
[Powerline]
Scott Johnson: 'After reeling off a string of hits unprecedented in Southern soul music history with producer Willie Mitchell between 1971 and 1976, soul singer extraordinaire Al Green took a Little Richard turn. Construing the maniacal assault on him by his girlfriend and her subsequent suicide as signs from God, he bought the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church in Memphis and became an ordained minister. ...man remains something of an enigma.'

Diamonds Are Forever
[Steyn Online]
Mark Steyn: 'It was written in 1971 for Sean Connery's return to the role after what was felt to be George Lazenby's under-performance in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. A few years back, I was driving through the Green Mountains of Vermont late one very starry night when "Diamonds" came on the radio. And, not for the first time, I found myself marveling at the way the lyric captures Ian Fleming’s view of Tiffany Case in just a few lines, the sense of a woman damaged by men.... John Barry’s music with Don Black’s words. I was always interested to know how Don had dug so deep into the character and the situation to be able to distil it so brilliantly. But sometimes the “And then I wrote…” anecdote doesn’t quite go the way you expect it to. “Don’t think of the song as being about a diamond,” Barry advised Black. “Write it as though she’s thinking about a penis.” Oh, well. That works, too....'

All Or Nothing At All
[Steyn Online]
Mark Steyn: 'It wasn't written for Frank. Nothing was written for him back in 1939. Nobody knew who he was. Instead, the publisher Lou Levy called Lawrence into his office and played him a melody he needed a lyric for. Jack liked "a lot of" the tune, as he put it, and asked who the composer was. Levy hesitated. It was the same guy Lawrence had written "Play, Fiddle, Play" with six years earlier: Arthur Altman, his songwriting partner since their days as teenagers in Brooklyn. But they'd had some bust-up over something or other, and Lou Levy wasn't sure Jack would want to get the old team back together. Still, he did like "a lot of" the tune, and the bits he didn't he rewrote. "It had some wonderful key changes, and it had a big, broad melody and a nice range," said Lawrence. "I knew it would be a wonderful song for singers, and I was intrigued and I kept working away at it and I finally came up with this title"'

When He Was 46 it Was a Very Good Year
[The Wall Street Journal]
Will Friedwald: 'In the song "It Was a Very Good Year," the key moments from a man's life flash in front of us like scenes in a movie, organized like vintages of wine. For Ervin Drake, who wrote the words and music, and whose 90th birthday is being celebrated on April 6 at the National Arts Club, the major episodes of his life have all been connected to songs, usually when they were written or recorded for the first time. But in the case of "It Was a Very Good Year," the big moment occurred a few years later. ...in 1965, the songwriter was vacationing in England when another publisher called to congratulate him. "That's a hell of a recording you got there," the man said, but it took a few minutes of questioning before Mr. Drake figured out what he was talking about. A few months earlier, Frank Sinatra had heard the Kingston Trio recording on his car radio. The song fit in perfectly with the mood of melancholy introspection that Sinatra and orchestrator Gordon Jenkins were developing for the album that would become "September of My Years."'

Uriel Jones, R.I.P.
[The London Daily Telegraph]
'Uriel Jones, who died on March 24 aged 74, was one of the drummers with the Funk Brothers, the in-house band of session musicians that created the distinctive Motown sound in the 1960s and early 1970s. Among the hits to which Jones contributed were Gaye's Ain't That Peculiar and I Heard it Through the Grapevine; Ain't No Mountain High Enough (both the version by Gaye and Tammi Terrell in 1967 and Diana Ross's 1970 remake); Cloud Nine by the Temptations (in which he performed alongside "Spider" Webb); I Second That Emotion, by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles; and Stevie Wonder's For Once In My Life.'

Benny Goodman Rides Again
[The Wall Street Journal]
Will Friedwald: 'In 1940, the aspiring lyricist Alan Bergman was 15; he had a family friend who worked for NBC, and he was able to sneak into a rehearsal by Benny Goodman and his Orchestra. "I heard Benny call something called 'Benny Rides Again,' which they were apparently playing for the first time. I just absolutely fell out of my chair! It was the most amazing thing I had ever heard in my life. I had never heard music like that before -- no one had." Mr. Bergman describes the Goodman Orchestra of the early '40s as "Benny's all-time greatest band," and he's not alone in this opinion. To more casual fans, the Goodman band that played the historic Carnegie Hall concert of January 1938 had more sheer star power. But the ensemble of the immediate prewar period was something else again. This is shown in a seven-CD collection of that band's essential recordings, "Classic Columbia and OKeh Benny Goodman Orchestra Sessions 1939-1958" (www.mosaicrecords.com), released just in time for the Benny Goodman Centennial.'

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy
[Steyn Online]
Mark Steyn: 'It was introduced in the 1941 film Buck Privates, starring Abbott & Costello. The execs still weren't persuaded that Abbott & Costello could carry a movie, but then they didn't think the Andrews Sisters, whom they also had under contract, could carry a movie, either. To this day, Patty, Maxene and Laverne remain the biggest-selling female vocal group of all time, but in 1941 most of their big hits (and they had more than Elvis or the Beatles) were still ahead of them. So Universal figured, if you had a singing act that couldn't carry a picture and a comedy act that couldn't carry a picture, maybe if you stuck 'em in the same film, two losers might add up to one winner. Don Raye and Hughie Prince were signed to write the songs, and, as the Andrews gals had liked "Beat Me, Daddy, Eight To The Bar", they started thinking about which variation on a boogie woogie theme might work this time: Drill Me, Sergeant, Eight To The Bar? Jive Me, General, With A Solid War? Camp Me, Colonel, On A Boogie Base? Torture Me, Tojo, With A Bamboo Beat? But in the end they came up with that rare beast - a variation that trumps the original.'

Alan Livingston, R.I.P.
[The Times Of London]
'...he became vice-president in charge of Capitol’s overall creative operations. One of his first acts was to sign Sinatra, whose career was in the doldrums. In particular, he persuaded Sinatra to work with the arranger Nelson Riddle. Their first session together in 1953 produced I’ve Got the World on a String and was followed by Young at Heart. A spectacular comeback followed, and over the next two decades, Riddle worked on some of the most memorable recordings of Sinatra’s long career. In 1956 Livingston left the company to join the National Broadcasting Company as a senior executive but by 1961 he was back at Capitol as its president. Within three years he had on his books the biggest US group in the world at the time, the Beach Boys, as well as the only group that could outstrip them. Brian Epstein discovered the Beatles, and George Martin’s production skills turned them into hit-makers, but Alan Livingston played an equally important part in the story as the record industry mogul who sold the group to the US. As the president of Capitol Records he overruled his senior executives, who had turned down the group, and did a deal with Epstein for the US distribution rights for their recordings. He set out his decision in a press release at the end of 1963: “With their popularity in England and the promotion we’re going to put behind them, I have every reason to believe the Beatles will be just as successful in the United States.”'

Just In Time
[Steyn Online]
Mark Steyn [Song Of The Week #120]: 'Before the Blackberry, before voicemail, before the cellphone, before the answering machine, there was the "answering service". ...In New York, the service I really wanted was Belles Celebrity Answering Service, but, as the name suggests, they only catered to celebrities - and then only by referral. Leonard Bernstein had to be put up for membership by his pal, Adolph Green, as if it were a gentlemen's club in Mayfair. But, if I never got to join the club, I certainly had occasion to call Belles over the years, although I'm not sure I ever spoke to its founder, Mary Printz. She died last month, plugged in to the end, catering to a small group of fiercely loyal clients - Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Stephen Sondheim - who still preferred to say "Call my service" rather than "Fax me on my Wii", or whatever the techno-chappies say. She founded the service in 1956, and shortly afterwards Adolph Green, her client, and his writing partner Betty Comden went round to see the composer Jule Styne. "Here's our next show," Green told him. And then he dropped the phone book on the desk. On the back was a picture of a girl surrounded by telephone wires: a young lady from an answering service. Styne liked the idea.'

And They Could Sing, Too
[The Wall Street Journal]
Terry Teachout: 'What do Fiona Apple, Miley Cyrus and Bruce Springsteen have in common? (No jokes, please.) Answer: They all write their own material. It's so common for today's pop performers to do so that the word "singer-songwriter" was coined to describe the loosely knit genre in which such artists work. Yet these multitalented creatures scarcely existed a half-century ago. Back then some people wrote songs and others sang them, and that -- at least on Broadway and in Hollywood -- was usually that. On the other hand, most of these songwriters did know how to sing -- more or less -- and a surprising number of them left behind recordings of their singing, usually nonprofessional "demo records" that they made to demonstrate their latest efforts to the actors who would be performing them onstage.'

Soundtrack to the Celebration of Lincoln's Bicentennial Year
[The Wall Street Journal]
Barrymore Laurence Scherer: 'Now that Lincoln's Birthday is past and the Presidents Day sales are but a frenetic memory, the activities of the Lincoln Bicentennial year continue to gather steam, with music playing a central part. Abraham Lincoln's 56 years of life coincided not only with the struggle to address the question of slavery, but with a struggle in America's musical development.'

The Land Where The Good Songs Go
[Steyn Online]
Mark Steyn: 'I was startled to see my old sparring partner John McGlinn turn up in the obituaries column last week. He was only 55, and died in Manhattan apparently of a heart attack. He was a marvelous conductor who loved opera and was beloved by opera singers, and could have had a good career, up to his neck in Wagner and Verdi. But he loved musicals - or, more precisely, musical comedies. A lot of the highbrow cats dig Sondheim, West Side Story, Carousel, Porgy And Bess. But John McGlinn was a great musician who loved the frothy stuff, the ditsy musical comedy scores of the teens and twenties, and he believed not in the cut'n'paste approach of current revivals - kick out this song, replace it with that one - but rather that as much as there was a version of Don Giovanni chiseled in stone, so too there were "authentic" versions of 90-year old Broadway shows with the original songs in the original orchestrations with original dialogue over original underscoring, and all in the right order.'

Louie Bellson, R.I.P.
[The London Daily Telegraph]
'Louie Bellson, who died on February 14 aged 84, was the youngest and last of the "great three" showman-drummers in jazz, the others being Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. He was the most diversely talented of the three and, many would argue, the most musically gifted. Duke Ellington pronounced him "not only the world's greatest drummer, but also the world's greatest musician". Bellson's fame rested on his dynamic big-band playing. At various times he sat in the driving seat behind the orchestras of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Duke Ellington and (briefly) Count Basie, not to mention several bands of his own. But he was equally at home with small, informal groups, where he displayed great poise and finesse.'

The Day the Muzak Died
[The American Spectator]
Christopher Orlet: 'Last week it was reported that debt-ridden Muzak Holdings LLC had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This was no doubt a blow to the company's 1,250 employees in Fort Mill, S.C., especially at a time when jobs are scarce. In recent years Muzak has repositioned itself as a leader in "audio architecture," but at a time when businesses are having trouble holding on to their "brick and mortar" architecture, it is easy to see why Muzak is in trouble. Muzak was the brainchild of Major General George Owen Squier, a West Point graduate with a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins. Gen. Squier may have been the most celebrated inventor of his day, had it not been for his contemporaries Thomas Edison and Wilber and Orville Wright. In fact, as one of the founders of the U.S. Air Force, Gen. Squier negotiated with the Wrights to buy the first U.S. Army airplanes. More important, Squier invented the multiplexing process (whereby multiple analog message signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium), was then elected to the National Academy of Science, and had a class of troopships named after him. Still, for all that, he will go down in history as the creator of Muzak.'
Remembering a Soundtrack to Life
[The Wall Street Journal]
Nancy DeWolf Smith: 'There were mixed feelings when Muzak Holdings LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month. Most reactions ranged from surprise (does Muzak still exist?) to snobbish relief (they should have driven a stake through its canned heart long ago). But some of us felt a real pang, as memories flooded in on the wave of news about the possible disappearance of yet another pipeline to the past.'

Great Composers, Lousy Reviews
[Slate]
Jan Swafford: 'Really, this is a lament for a lost era. The great lousy reviews arose because critics and audiences truly cared about music and its future. Critics were sometimes reactionary, boneheaded, and cockamamie, but music mattered to them. If we no longer enjoy the uproars and the withering screeds of yesteryear, it's mainly because people no longer care passionately enough about what they hear in the concert hall to want to murder somebody over it.'
[tip of the fedora to Arts & Letters Daily]

Ain't Misbehavin'
[SteynOnline]
Excerpt from Mark Steyn's A Song For The Season: 'I’m not, generally, a big fan of “black history” or “gay history” or most other forms of identity-group history. There is plain old history, which encompasses all of us however peripherally in its whims and cruelties, and, when one tries to narrow the focus to correct longstanding “marginalizations”, one too often winds up not with scholarship but with smiley-face boosterism. All that said, let me make an exception to my general antipathy and mark the start of February's “African-American History Month” festivities by noting a songwriter who, in his own way, is a part of both African and American history.'

Lux Interior, R.I.P.
[The Times Of London]
'As the lead singer with the Cramps, Lux Interior cut an outlandish figure, even by the standards of modern pop outrage. Pale and gaunt with a fearsome howl of the night about him, his frenziedly deranged stage presence was once memorably described as “half-Elvis, half-werewolf”. His larger than life image was married to a unique sound that transcended punk rock conformity by incorporating a gloriously trashy range of influences from 1950s rockabilly to surf guitar via tasteless monster movie soundtracks to create a style that the singer himself dubbed “psychobilly”. With his wife, the self-styled Poison Ivy, providing a vixenish, ice-cool foil on guitar, the Cramps spawned a host of 1980s imitators. But while a swathe of “psychobilly” and Goth-styled bands successfully copied their sleazy intensity and junk-culture aesthetic, few ever captured the Cramps’ outrageous sense of mutant humour.'
Zombie Fonzie
[Big Hollywood]
Greg Gutfeld: 'When I became editor in chief of Stuff Magazine back in 2000, I made it a goal to abuse the job in a number of ways, and one was to meet people I admired. I made a short list, including only Iggy Pop, Joe Strummer, Mike Patton and the Cramps. Over time, I crossed each one off the list – but the meeting with Lux and Poison was the most gratifying. We drank and talked for hours, about music mostly – but we ended up focusing the conversation on marriage and love. As crazy as their band was, Lux and Poison had been your basic, happily married couple, growing old together in a small, cluttered home. With a cat. They were humble, friendly hosts who kept my wine glass full as the night drifted into hazy babble (mine, mostly).'

Buddy Holly's Still-Living Legacy
[The Wall Street Journal]
Barry Mazor: 'Rock 'n' roll is so linked to the unconstrained energy of youth that it's hard to grasp that anything associated with it could be a half-century behind us. But Feb. 3, 2009, marks the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that took the lives of Richie Valens, the Big Bopper (aka J.P. Richardson) and Buddy Holly -- the event tagged in Don McLean's 1971 hit "American Pie" as "The Day the Music Died." The core songs and sounds of those three young, ill-fated stars have never gone far from public consciousness, but in the case of Buddy Holly, the pop genius killed that day at the age of 22, important parts of his recorded legacy have long been out of circulation, or only been officially released in doctored, distancing "improved" form. That gap has been sweetly filled by two new just-released CD sets from Decca/Universal Music.'

The Man Who Knew The Score
[Vanity Fair]
Bruce Handy: 'As a kid growing up in World War II-era York, John Barry spent every Saturday in one of his father's cinemas, figuring out what made a movie great. As a young musician in 60s London, he became an immortal part of the process, famous for arranging the "James Bond Theme," writing the Goldfinger title song, and scoring more than 90 films, including Midnight Cowboy, Born Free, and Out of Africa. At age 75, after five Oscars, four wives, and a lot of glamour, Barry talks about the magic he made.'
[tip of the fedora to CinemaRetro]

Billy Powell, R.I.P.
[The Times Of London]
'One of the definitive American bands of the 1970s, Lynyrd Skynyrd helped to invent a rambunctious guitar-led style that came to be known as 'southern rock'. But although their most identifiable trademark was the interplay of the band's unusual triple guitar attack, underpinning the sound was the melodic keyboard playing of Billy Powell.'

The Audacity of Bruce Springsteen
[Big Hollywood]
Riley Hunter: 'While I have no doubt Bruce eagerly slurps up Hope, Change and every other empty, saccharine platitude Obama unloads, I can’t help but notice the marketing angle here.  Springsteen debuted Working on a Dream, the first song from the new album of the same name, at a November Obama rally.  With its vapid, generic message of hope and something or other, the song seems like the perfect musical score for the feel-good Obama Movement.  Given the current international Obama psychosis, aligning himself with The Great Man might actually sell more albums than twelve minutes at the Super Bowl, and help keep him relevant─for the moment, anyway─in a congenitally ADD culture. Springsteen has had profitable alliances with social causes before.  In the early 90s when the luster on his flannels began to fade (remember Human Touch and Lucky Town?), Springsteen didn’t emerge from the $2-And-Under cassette bin until he discovered his heartfelt concern for the gay community in 1994’s Streets of Philadelphia.'

Hits And Legends
[SteynOnline]
Mark Steyn: 'Every once in a while in this space we do a medley for Song of the Week - usually they're songs by the same writers, like Comden & Green (Song of the Week #33), or about the same place, like New Orleans (Song of the Week #20), or they at least have a similar mood, like our midnight medley last summer (Song of the Week #96). But the three songs of this week's medley have nothing in common, other than a trio of sixtysomething men who turned up in the obituaries column in recent days: Vincent Ford, William D Zantzinger, and Dave Dee. Did they write this week's numbers? Well, one man is said to have written one of them, although there's a question mark over that. Another man "inspired" one of them, albeit it in the worst possible way. And the third bloke just sang whatever you put in front of him. But between them they set me thinking about authenticity and artifice in pop music.'

Ron Asheton, R.I.P.
[The Times Of London]
'As the guitarist with the Stooges, Ron Asheton helped to shape the sound of punk rock. While the on-stage wildness of the band’s iconic lead singer Iggy Pop grabbed much of the attention, it was Asheton who drove the band’s raw rock’n’roll sound, a curdled late-1960s cocktail of exhilaration, rebellion and boredom, with his relentless and noisy guitar playing.'

Beatle's Unknown "Hard Day's Night" Chord Mystery Solved
[Scientific Blogging]
'It’s the most famous chord in rock 'n' roll, an instantly recognizable twang rolling through the open strings on George Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker. It evokes a Pavlovian response from music fans as they sing along to the refrain that follows: It’s been a hard day’s night / And I’ve been working like a dog. The opening chord to "A Hard Day’s Night" is also famous because, for 40 years, no one quite knew exactly what chord Harrison was playing.'

Another Who's Been Unjustly Forgotten
[The Wall Street Journal]
Doug Ramsey: 'For years, Jack Benny opened his CBS radio and television broadcasts with "Love in Bloom." The comedian's violin butchery of his theme song became a running coast-to-coast Sunday night gag. As a result, the piece became even more famous than Bing Crosby had made it with his hit record in 1934. Generations of listeners and viewers heard Bob Hope close his NBC shows with "Thanks for the Memory," which he introduced in a movie, "The Big Broadcast of 1938." The song was inseparable from Hope's career. Ralph Rainger, the man who wrote those songs, was a pianist and recovering lawyer from Newark, N.J., who also composed such standards as "Easy Living," "If I Should Lose You," "Here Lies Love," "Moanin' Low," "June in January," "Please" and "Blue Hawaii," most often with lyricist Leo Robin.'

The Miserable Life, Death and Immortality of Hank Williams
[American Heritage]
David Rapp: 'In his short but spectacular career in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Williams helped bring country music out of backwoods honky-tonks and into the mainstream. He wrote or cowrote many songs that would become classics, including “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Hey, Good Lookin’,” the rollicking “Move It on Over,” and such wistful ballads as “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You).” He did it all despite uncontrolled alcohol and drug use, that caught up with him fast, depriving the world of a talent that continues to inspire musicians today.'

Why music?
[The Economist]
'“IF MUSIC be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it.” And if not? Well, what exactly is it for? The production and consumption of music is a big part of the economy. The first use to which commercial recording, in the form of Edison’s phonographs, was to bring music to the living rooms and picnic tables of those who could not afford to pay live musicians. Today, people are so surrounded by other people’s music that they take it for granted, but as little as 100 years ago singsongs at home, the choir in the church and fiddlers in the pub were all that most people heard. Other appetites, too, have been sated even to excess by modern business. Food far beyond the simple needs of stomachs, and sex (or at least images of it) far beyond the needs of reproduction, bombard the modern man and woman, and are eagerly consumed. But these excesses are built on obvious appetites. What appetite drives the proliferation of music to the point where the average American teenager spends 1½-2½ hours a day—an eighth of his waking life—listening to it?'
[tip of the fedora to Arts & Letters Daily]

Beethoven and the Illuminati
[Slate]
Jan Swafford: 'In 1779, a composer, writer, teacher, and dreamer named Christian Neefe arrived in Bonn, Germany, to work for the Electoral Court. Neefe (pronounced nay-fuh) was the definition of what Germans call a Schwärmer, a person swarming with rapturous enthusiasms. In particular, he was inflamed with visions of endless human potentials that the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment promised to unleash. Like many progressives of the time, Neefe believed that humanity was finally coming of age. So he had picked the right place to get a job. Bonn was one of the most cultured and enlightened cities in Germany; the court supported a splendid musical and theatrical establishment. Before long in his new post, Neefe found himself mentoring a genius. Meanwhile, in his spare time, he signed on with a plan to, as it were, rule the world. One of Neefe's first students was a sullen, grubby, taciturn 10-year-old keyboard player named Ludwig van Beethoven.'
[tip of the fedora to Arts & Letters Daily]

Clapton: 'Shooting Helps Social Skills'
[contactmusic]
'Rocker ERIC CLAPTON is a fan of shooting trips in the countryside - because the outings help him bond with like-minded people.'
[tip of the fedora to Ace Of Spades]

Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits
[The Wall Street Journal]
Sarah McBride & Ethan Smith: 'After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy. The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.'

Ol' man author
[The New Criterion]
Mark Steyn: 'The famous Hammerstein story is the one where Mrs. Jerome Kern and Mrs. Oscar Hammerstein are attending a luncheon party. Making the introductions, the hostess says, “Mrs. Kern’s husband wrote ‘Ol’ Man River,’” at which point Mrs. Hammerstein interjects: “My husband wrote ‘Ol’ Man River.’ Mrs. Kern’s husband wrote ‘Da-da dee-da.’” Technically correct. But, in fairness to Jerome Kern, he wrote the tune first. In that sense, at least, he enabled the text of “Ol’ Man River”—for without those four notes the phrase would not exist. Mrs. Hammerstein’s somewhat touchy correction of her hostess applies more to his later work with Richard Rodgers. For score after score after score, Oscar Hammerstein sat down at his desk and produced some of the most effervescent song ideas in the American language without a bar of music to inspire him.'

Paradise City Lost
[The American Spectator]
Daniel Flynn: 'In the biggest letdown since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's vault, Guns N' Roses has finally released its long-awaited new album Chinese Democracy. In its first week, it charted at a disappointing three and moved slightly more than a quarter million copies in the U.S. What went wrong?'

The Punk Ethic
[The Social Affiars Unit]
Theodore Dalrymple: 'Although I never listen to pop music - indeed, I have always avoided it, which, because of its ubiquity, is by no means an easy thing to do - I always read obituaries of pop stars in the newspaper. They are one of my windows on the squalor and degradation that is popular culture: the other being a walk in the street. As they grow older, pop stars seem to fall naturally into two groups: those who retire into the life of the squirearchy, the pleasures of whose kind of life they have done so much to destroy for others, and those who die young. Their deaths tell us a lot.'

Cadillac Style
[National Review Online]
Frederica Mathewes-Green reviewing the film Cadillac Records: 'The film tells the story of Chess Records, the Chicago label that brought Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James, and Chuck Berry to fame. Once called “race” performers and confined to southern radio stations, with time these artists’ music crossed the color barrier and eventually the Atlantic. In a late scene, Mick Jagger is unpacking outside Chess studios with his band, and is awed to realize he’s talking to Muddy Waters. Jagger tells Waters the Rolling Stones are named after one of his songs. You can already see that this is a densely populated movie, and the above paragraph lists not half of the represented stars. But Martin conveys the story smoothly, introducing each character and getting him established before bringing the next on stage. They’re more three-dimensional than they might have been, too.'

Meet the New Boss
[New York Post]
Kyle Smith: 'Bruce Springsteen is a man who reaches across the political divide and across the eras, a guy who howls the truth with his electric despair, his stadium-filling voids, his catchy alienation. Nothing is more exciting than spending 45 minutes crawling into and out of the Meadowlands parking snarl to hear Bruce sing about bustin' loose on the open road. Right now, though, the streets aren't burning. The night isn't lonely. It isn't some infested summer in a dead man's town with nothing but boring stories of glory days. A bright new day is percolating across the land. What will Bruce do for material? From now on, as Springsteen foretold when he campaigned for Obama in Cleveland on Nov. 2, there will be, "economic and social justice, America as a positive influence around the world." And the new president is finally going to fulfill "the right of every American to a job, a living wage, to be educated in a decent school, to a life filled with the dignity of work, promise, and the sanctity of home." So: 100% employment and 0% substandard schools? Sounds good for the country but alarming for Springsteen fans.'

Raising the Tone
[Standpoint]
Roger Scruton reviewing Tim Blanning's The Triumph Of Music: Composers, Musicians, and Their Audiences, 1700 To The Present: 'With few worthy exceptions, historians of Western music have treated it as an autonomous art form, developing under the impulse of stylistic innovations for which composers take the principal credit. However, music is a social phenomenon. It brings people together in song and dance; it is a mark of ceremony and religious devotion; and it changes as audiences evolve. Indeed, to speak of "audiences" is already to import a particular social context - that of the concert, in which people sit in silence (or relative silence) while musicians play. The concert was unknown in the ancient world and, as the word itself implies, was originally a concerted effort among musicians, rather than an assembly formed to listen to them. Many of the most important innovations in Western music came about because people made music together, without an audience and without a thought of one. The madrigal and the brass band, the Lutheran hymn and the parlour song developed in such a way. Such thoughts form the inspiration for Tim Blanning's lively and informative social history of Western music. With impressive range and scholarship, Blanning documents the rapid change in status of the musician - from low-grade servant to international superstar.'

The art of the album title
[The Times Of London]
Bob Stanley: 'It's an art form in itself, and one of the toughest tasks in pop. You can spend a year, eighteen months, two years honing a dozen songs for your new album; you think they all sound like hit singles, and yet a pithy, snappy album title still eludes you.'

For Those About to Tread Water, We Salute You
[The Smart Set]
Greg Beato: 'Are you tired of change? Are you fed up with extreme makeovers, disruptive innovation, the constant pressure to extend your product line? In a world overdosing on frantic novelty, are you perfectly happy thinking inside the bun? You may feel guilty about your lack of ambition, your indifference to life coaches, plastic surgeons, the spiritual handymen, and Oprah-certified hucksters who promise you dynamic transformation. You may feel alone, out of step, defective in a world that prizes self-improvement above all else. But at least you still have AC/DC, the patron saints of high-voltage complacency, to believe in.'

Why Country Not Only Survived but Thrived
[The Wall Street Journal]
Barry Mazor: '...the Country Music Association, based in Nashville, is marking its 50th anniversary this month. Today, country music is an exception in the ailing music business, a genre still thriving in tough times. But back in November 1958 it was a commercially endangered species during a pop and rock 'n' roll boom -- and the association has played a key role in the decades since fostering that reversal of fortune.'

The weirdest Beatles track of all may be released, 41 years on
[The London Independent]
'A 14-minute, improvised, experimental track recorded by the Beatles which was considered unworthy of being issued under their name may be released 41 years after its only public performance, Sir Paul McCartney has revealed. "Carnival of Light", which the band laid down in January 1967, features distorted guitars and drum-beats, gargling, church organs, and Sir Paul and John Lennon yelling: "Are you all right?" and "Barcelona!" Although it was performed at an electronic music festival that year, the audience were unaware it was a Beatles track and the band later shelved it, feeling it was too adventurous.'

Bluegrass Apocalypse
[Culture11]
Noah Berlatsky: 'Bluegrass has been transformed from a mostly played-out festival circuit relic into a viable commercial force. But at what cost?'

A Sentry, a Song, a Wartime Hit
[The Wall Street Journal]
Daniel Ford reviewing the book Lili Marlene: 'Only one song can reliably make me weep, and then only when rendered in German, a language I barely understand. Countless troops during World War II -- including those who understood German perfectly well -- felt the same about the poignant love song "Lili Marlene." Apparently Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller are similarly bewitched, because they have produced a book-length work -- and it turns out that the story behind the tune is entirely worth telling.'

10 things you probably didn't know about Pink Floyd
[The Times Of London]
'From his authoritative book on the hugely successful band, Mark Blake distills ten nuggets of trivia to astound the most devoted fan.'

Jerry Reed: US Songwriter who wrote the Elvis hit Guitar Man
[The Times Of London]
'Often called simply 'the Guitar Man' after the title of one of his best-known songs, Jerry Reed made his name as a country singer with hits such as When You're Hot, You're Hot, Lord Mr Ford and Tupelo Mississippi Flash. He was also a successful songwriter and Elvis Presley enjoyed major hits with two of his compositions, Guitar Man and US Male. Reed played on both as part of Presley's backing band and his songs were further covered by Brenda Lee and Johnny Cash among others. Blonde and good-looking in a rugged, all-American way, he also enjoyed a successful career as an actor, landing several major Hollywood roles and appearing most famously alongside Burt Reynolds in the Smokey & The Bandit films.'

This Ole House
[Steyn Online]
Mark Steyn: 'Two decades after he himself met the saints and a century after his birth, "This Ole House" remains the versatile Stuart Hamblen's most enduring legacy - and the only Number One hit written in the presence of a dead body.'

Forget Guitar Hero, it takes a lot to be a pro
[The Times Of London]
Emma Townshend: 'Certainly, people begin learning the guitar for many reasons. Attracting women and being Jimi Hendrix are just two of them, but eventually the guitar’s sheer resistance to being played will wear down the faint of heart. It’s not an instrument for wusses. Tim Brookes, the author of a history of the electric guitar, quotes Ed Gerhard, the finger-style guitarist from New Hampshire: “You start off playing guitar to get chicks and end up talking with middle-aged men about your fingernails.”'

Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops, R.I.P.
[The Times Of London]
'The sound of Motown defined an era, and the voice of Levi Stubbs defined the sound of Motown. As the lead vocalist of the Four Tops on hits such as Reach Out I’ll Be There, I Can’t Help Myself and Baby I Need Your Loving, his soulful baritone placed him alongside the likes of Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder among the most legendary of Motown’s many great singers.'

Why does music so often divide the sexes?
[The Times Of London]
Andrew Smith: 'We all know they exist, but we seldom speak of them: artists whose fanbase skews violently towards one sex, frequently leaving the other irritated or just perplexed. On the men’s side, the Smiths spring to mind as a band whose devotees tend to be male, others being Led Zeppelin, the Fall and geezer’s geezer Neil Young. On the feminine side, scarcely a man on earth professes to understand the appeal of Barry Manilow or his inheritor James Blunt, while mere mention of the name Alanis Morissette has been known to induce hives.'

Ray Lowry, R.I.P.
[The Times of London]
'As Britain’s leading rock’n’roll cartoonist, Ray Lowry’s stylish and witty illustrations, satirical drawings and strips enlivened New Musical Express for much of the 1970s and 1980s. But he will also be remembered as a graphic designer, creating the unforgettable artwork for the Clash’s seminal 1979 album London Calling.'

Neal Hefti, R.I.P.
[The London Daily Telegraph]
'Neal Hefti, who died on Saturday aged 85, was a composer and arranger whose work played a crucial role in the success of two great jazz orchestras, that of Woody Herman in the mid-1940s and of Count Basie from 1950 onwards; he went on to write award-winning scores for Hollywood films and television shows. From the very beginning Hefti seemed to have a natural affinity with the big-band format of brass, saxophone and rhythm sections. At its best, his writing sounds deceptively simple, with neatly interlocking melodic lines, clearly contrasting textures and an unfailing instinct for the swinging phrase.'

You Are My Sunshine
[SteynOnline]
Mark Steyn: '...as we enter the final month of a long election season, it seemed appropriate to offer a political Song of the Week. But it’s striking how few songs there are about electoral politics. ...the absolutely biggest musical success by any American politician has to be the blockbuster theme song of the former Governor of Louisiana, Jimmie Davis: “You Are My Sunshine”.'

Sha Na Na and the Invention of the Fifties
[Columbia College Today]
'Contemporary scholars of American cultural history have begun writing that Sha Na Na's greatest achievement was the invention of a new American era: the "Fifties." The whole notion of how artists can change the way a historical era is viewed, and relatively quickly, is interesting on its own; the fact that Sha Na Na and the College played such a role in this change makes it interesting for all Columbians. Brothers and founding members George J. Leonard...and Robert A. Leonard...the group's first president and gold lame singer, report on the new scholarly interest in Sha Na Na.'

Connie Haines, Big Band Singer, R.I.P.
[The Times Of London]
'One of the most popular big band singers of the 1940s, Connie Haines starred with both the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey orchestras, although as she overlapped with Frank Sinatra in both bands, her contribution to their recorded output has subsequently tended to be overlooked in favour of his.'

SanDisk, Record Companies Plan New Musical Format
[The Wall Street Journal]
Ethan Smith: 'In the latest attempt to shore up sales of music on physical media, SanDisk Corp. and the four major music companies plan to announce Monday a new format called slotMusic. Each unit is to contain an album, plus extras, on a compact memory card that can be played on mobile phones, PCs and some portable MP3 players.'

Why So Serious? How the classical concert took shape
[The New Yorker]
Alex Ross: 'The modern classical-music performance, as audiences have come to know it and sometimes to love it, adheres to a fairly rigid format. Most people are aware that this clockwork routine—reassuringly dependable or drearily predictable, depending on whom you ask—is of recent origin, and that before 1900 concerts assumed a quite different form. It’s always a shock, though, to confront the difference in all its particulars.'

Richard Wright, Pink Floyd Keyboardist, Remembered 01
[The New York Sun]
Obituary: 'Richard Wright, who died yesterday at 65, was a co-founder of Pink Floyd. His brooding yet sometimes jazzy organ licks were an integral part of the band's trademark melancholy sound.'

Shake, Rattle, and Twang
[Culture11]
Cheryl Miller: 'New Country is everything its detractors say: whitewashed, schmaltzy, bland, and homogenized (all insults that were hurled — and still are — at '80s rock). But it's also the only music that caters to the vast "flyover audience" (as a CMT blogger puts it) in America's heartland. You might not find them on the covers of Rolling Stone (and definitely not on Pitchfork), but country music fans constitute a kind of silent majority.'

Atlantic's Jerry Wexler Showed Aretha R-E-S-P-E-C-T
[The Wall Street Journal]
Jim Fusilli: 'As a producer, Wexler made records to capture moments born of preparation and spontaneity. "Jerry would say, 'We all feel good about it tonight, but let's see how we feel in the morning,'" Aretha Franklin told me when we spoke on Saturday afternoon. He coaxed Ms. Franklin to join Atlantic and helped liberate her from Columbia Records, where her career had faltered. In his autobiography, "Rhythm and the Blues," Wexler wrote, "My idea was to make good tracks, use the best players, put Aretha back on piano and let the lady wail."'

Jerry Wexler Remembered
[The Times of London]
'One of the most revered of all American record producers, Jerry Wexler helped to shape the sound of modern black American music. He also produced records by rock acts such as Bob Dylan, Dire Straits and George Michael, and was responsible for signing Led Zeppelin. However, it was his work with seminal black artists such as Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin for which he will be best remembered. After making an early mark by coining the term rhythm and blues while working as a young reporter on the trade magazine Billboard, he joined another music industry giant, Ahmet Ertegun, at Atlantic Records. There he became one of the key architects in the creation of a new, self-confident black music scene, taking elements of blues, r&b and gospel, and adding a thumping backbeat to create the styles that came to be known as soul and funk. He also changed the way that records were produced.'

Sting is at the top of the misheard pop charts poll
[The London Daily Telegraph]
'The lyrics from his 1980 song "When The World Is Running Down" came top of the list. "You make the best of what's still around" is a line regularly misheard as "You make the best homemade stew around." The 56-year-old front man beat pop legends the Beatles, Bee Gees, Queen and David Bowie in an online poll of 2,000 music fans by specialist hearing aid retailer Amlifon. The Beatles also appear twice in the top ten.'

The Rap On Hip-Hop
[The American Spectator]
Mark Gauvreau Judge reviews John McWhorter's All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America: 'Rap, in fact, is about -- to steal a line from Madonna -- striking a pose. It is a pose, as McWhorter notes, of "the upturned middle finger," the angry toe-to-toe facedown, the predatory bully. It has much more to do with 1960s street theater than with any kind of realistic social change.'

CT scans may explain Stradivarius violins' sweet sound
[CBC News]
"Growth rings in the wood used to make Stradivarius violins in the 1700s may hold the explanation for their unparalleled sound, say Dutch scientists".

Louvin Feeling
[The American Spectator]
Christopher Orlet, country music singer/songwriter Charlie Louvin, cigarettes, beer, stories.