Zero to 180 – Three Minute Magic
Browsing Nina Simone‘s early single releases on Bethlehem Records — Gus Wildi‘s jazz label, whose control and eventual ownership would ultimately be given over to Syd Nathan of King Records — my eyes are immediately drawn to the instrumental B-side, “African Mailman,” a fairly radical and oblique song title for
As George Lipsitz points out in the introduction to Johnny Otis‘s memoir Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue, Otis was a central organizing figure in the Los Angeles rhythm & blues scene of the late 1940s and early 1950s — thus, a shrewd move on Syd Nathan’s
Musical fight! Compare the opening sequence of these two songs, and note how the second one (from 1972) closely mirrors the first one released the year before: “Music for Gong Gong” [1971] – vs. – “Horns of Paradise” [1972] “Music for Gong Gong” was selected as the A-side of the
In the inevitable Beatles vs. Stones (straw man) debate, I intensely resent having to pick sides, since the very idea of one without the other is laughable at best. Nevertheless, this lifelong Beatles fan takes a certain fiendish thrill in devoting an entire blog post to those albums in which
All these years I’ve naively assumed “I Shall Sing” to be a Judy Mowatt early reggae original (and 1974 Jamaican chart-topper, according to this Los Angeles Times piece from 1986). And yet that same Times piece makes clear, Judy Mowatt was taking her musical inspiration from Miriam Makeba (not Art
I discovered another musical coincidence recently — two albums with similarly-constructed titles released the same year by two hip and influential songwriter-producer-arrangers: Poet, Fool or Bum by Lee Hazlewood -vs.- Hobos, Heroes & Street Corner Clowns by Don Nix, both from 1973. On his one and only album for Capitol,
David Allan Coe, intriguingly, merits four full paragraphs in Neil A. Hamilton‘s history of The 1970s — here are two of them: “Born in Ohio, Coe spent part of his youth in reform school and, in the 1960s, served time in the Ohio State Penitentiary. Here was a man to whom
Remember the Las Vegas Roulette record with the “multi-groove“ in which the tonearm stylus randomly selects (at least, in theory) one of 38 separate grooves – one for each slot on the roulette wheel – so as to allow partygoers the ability to play roulette from the comfort of home? That’s
As I was finalizing my recent Bill Doggett piece, I was trying to confirm the “four million” sales figure that is so often attributed (Wikipedia) to his 1956 smash hit, “Honky Tonk” – an extraordinary number for an instrumental, especially in the mid-50s. Ultimately, I was impelled to wield the
Thanks to Harry Hawks‘ biographical portrait of master percussionist (& sometime vocalist) Uzziah ‘Sticky‘ Thompson for Reggae Collector’s Artists Hall of Fame, we learn that (1) ‘Sticky’ gets a shout-out in the intro to Baba Brooks’ “Girls Town Ska” from 1965 [Q: “Hey Sticks, where you going tonight?” A: “I’m
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