Zero to 180 – Three Minute Magic
The Pleasant Valley Boys were considered country music’s first “A Team” of session players, whose services were highly sought by two of the top country artists in Nashville between 1947 and 1948 at the very dawn of that city’s ascendance as one of the world’s great recording capitals. When you
George Barnes recorded a boss guitar instrumental – “Spooky” – that should be part of everyone’s Halloween soundtrack: “Spooky” by George Barnes (1962) Billboard conferred three stars (“moderate sales potential) upon this B-side, as well as its A-side “Trainsville,” in their June 23, 1962 edition. Exactly fifty years later, in 2012, someone would
I met John Simson around the time Zero to 180 had first hung out a shingle and was grappling with its mission and scope. After explaining the website’s concept to Simson, I remember asking if he might suggest any overlooked songs worthy of celebration. Much later, I would learn the
July 2020 Update: Click here for the latest info One of Zero to 180’s earliest pieces (from 2012) concerned itself with documenting the earliest recording of a melodica (i.e., keyboard version of a harmonica), and 1966* seems to be year to beat in this regard, with the composer, Steve Reich,
This past week I had the chance to reread Keith Richards’ 2010 memoir, Life, and somehow I only just now learned that keyboardist Ian McLagan was part of The New Barbarians, a rather unlikely musical aggregation that brought together Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Bobby Keys, and McLagan, with legendary instrumentalists,
“At the start of 1969, [David Bowie] wrote ‘Space Oddity,’ a song that punctured the global mission for the Apollo moon mission,” Peter Doggett observed in his Introduction to 2011’s The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s — an analysis of Bowie’s songwriting, chronologically speaking, throughout
Dave Dudley’s earliest recordings go back to King Records, interestingly — six sides altogether, with three written by Dudley and one co-written with Louis Innis. Dudley would record for a handful of small labels before being signed to Mercury in the wake of “Six Days on the Road” and its
Just as Louis Jordan’s pairing of jump blues with country-style steel guitar might have been seen as a radical move in 1947, Buddy Emmons‘ decision to feature his masterful steel guitar stylings within a modern jazz context was considered equally bold in 1963 when Mercury released groundbreaking album, Steel Guitar
I have a transcription LP of a Ralph Emery radio show from 1971, with Glen Campbell as the featured guest, in which Emery announced the song in the following playful manner: Emery: The Ralph Emery Show rolls along. Here’s Tom T. Hall, and uh, hey, I think you’re gonna —
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