Zero to 180 – Three Minute Magic
LINK to PART ONE King’s Pop Dalliances in Billboard‘s Hot 100 1965 – 1973 = The James Brown Era Q – How many prominent musical artists of James Brown‘s stature have recorded for two different labels simultaneously? Just for fun, go ahead and pose that question to the internet, and notice how
Dave Penny‘s opening observation in the liner notes to Doin’ The Tennessee Wig Walk — the 26-song compilation taken from Bonnie Lou‘s King years — reminds me of Roy Lanham‘s similar quandary of being too jazz for country and vice versa: Too pop to be embraced by the country community
1955 was a pivotal year for The Charms. On October 29th, the vocal harmony group had performed on stage at Carnegie Hall, as part of Lou Krefetz‘s “Top Ten Rhythm and Blues Show” — “the first time that the sacred precincts of Carnegie Hall [will] have resounded to the rhythms
The steel guitar, it needs to be said, was the “special sauce” in early country music of the 1940s and ‘50s. From the soaring glissando and celestial, ringing harmonics to the scorching, breakneck single-note runs and big stacked chords, whose warm, electrified sound (uniquely) spanned the audio spectrum, the steel
This chronology of recordings issued on King Records and its associated labels documents the various Latin-American musical influences on King’s collective output, beginning in the late 1940s. .While Latin sounds have never been a driving force at King, it is nevertheless surprising to see the range of Latin musical styles
From Wax of Stacks — David Bottoms‘ expansive history of Cincinnati’s record labels including, most prominently, King — we learn that recording engineer Lee Hazen generously provided the author a copy of an audio recording of a meeting that had been convened at King Records‘ Cincinnati headquarters by its founder/owner,
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
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