Zero to 180 – Three Minute Magic
This full-page ad in Billboard‘s “World of Country Music” special edition gives every indication that 1967 promised to be a break-out year for Molly Bee: Billboard October 28, 1967 The previous year, inside the gatefold sleeve of 1966’s Freak Out – the groundbreaking debut double album by Frank Zappa‘s Mothers
Back when I did the daily commute to Baltimore and my car radio had better reception, I used to enjoy a great community radio station that shares programming with its owner, WXPN, the Philadelphia radio station known for its World Cafe program, and yet operates out of a high school from
Last month’s surprising (and under-reported) research results pertaining to The Beatles’ controversial association with K-Tel, I assumed, had tapped the well of Beatledom dry. So imagine my surprise when Zero to 180 researchers poked at 45Cat’s database with a stick and stumbled upon a treasure trove of curious and, at
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,
I finally got around to learning how to convert VHS into DVD so that I could preserve a rare piece of Ameri-music-ana: a live performance of “Tulsa Trot” by noted western swing outfit, Tex Williams and His Western Caravan, that offers a second startling peek at the unorthodox technique of
Who are/were The Surf Symphony — and why just the one Capitol 45? “Night of the Lions“ The Surf Symphony (1969) Wait! As it turns out, the joke’s on us: This is a “supercharged” instrumental version of the song “Night of the Lions” from Mark Eric‘s A Midsummer’s Day
I once played a sweet little instrumental by James Burton and Ralph Mooney on an all-truck-driving radio show, even though it’s not actually a “trucker tune” — and yet nobody called me out on it, because the song – “Corn Pickin‘ – fit like a glove. Later when I “back-announced”
Interesting to see Kelly Gordon and (especially) Shorty Rogers attempt to muscle in on the hot rod scene with a late 60s concept album — contemporaneously titled, Bug-In! — that pays musical tribute to the hot rod’s off-road counterpart, the dune buggy. Gordon and Rogers splurge on a gatefold album
Thanks to Andy Volk of The Steel Guitar Forum for pointing me to Anne Miller‘s fascinating profile of steel guitarist bandleader Alvino Rey for The Smithsonian in which we learn Rey, as a consultant for Gibson Guitars in the 1930s, helped develop the prototype for the ES-150 (made famous by
Two electric keyboard innovators who helped move popular music forward with their “futuristic” sounds – Billy Preston and Sly Stone – collaborated briefly in a musical partnership that produced this A-side, “Can’t She Tell“: “Can’t She Tell“ Billy Preston (featuring Sly Stone) 1966 Jointly written by Billy Preston and Sly
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