Category Archives: Music Calendar

Today: The late Sara Carter was born in 1898 – 115 years ago

July 21, 2013 Hallgeir

Sara Carter (with banjo)

Sara Carter (July 21, 1898 – January 8, 1979) was an American Country music musician. Known for her deep and distinctive singing voice, she was the lead singer on most of the recordings of the historic Carter Family act in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Carter Family:

The Carter Family was a traditional American folk music group that recorded between 1927 and 1956. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, Southern Gospel, pop and rock musicians as well as on the U.S. folk revival of the 1960s. They were the first vocal group to become country music stars. Their recordings of such songs as “Wabash Cannonball”, “Can the Circle Be Unbroken”, “Wildwood Flower” and “Keep On the Sunny Side” made them country standards.

BBC Documentary on Country Music – here is 15 glorious minutes about The Carter Family:

The original group consisted of Alvin Pleasant “A.P.” Delaney Carter (1891–1960), his wife Sara Dougherty Carter (1898–1979), and his sister-in-law Maybelle Addington Carter (1909–1978). Maybelle was married to A.P.’s brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and was also Sara’s first cousin. All three were born and raised in southwestern Virginia, where they were immersed in the tight harmonies of mountain gospel music and shape note singing.

This is an excerpt from the upcoming music documentary The Winding Stream – The Carters, the Cashes and the Course of Country Music (we were participating in the funding of this kickstarter project). It tells the story of how A.P. Carter met his future wife Sara while selling fruit trees in the hills of southwest Virginia:

Throughout the group’s career, Sara Carter sang lead vocals; Maybelle sang harmony and accompanied the group instrumentally; on some songs A.P. did not perform at all but at times sang harmony and background vocals and once in a while, lead vocal. Maybelle’s distinctive guitar playing style became a hallmark of the group.

Legacy:

The Carter Family was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970 and were given the nickname “The First Family of Country Music”.
In 1988, the Carter Family was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and received its Award for the song “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”.
In 1993, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp honoring A.P., Sara, and Maybelle.
In 2001, the group was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor.
In 2005, the group received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mother Maybelle & Sara Carter – While The Band Plays Dixie:

Album of the day:

Other July-21:

Continue reading Today: The late Sara Carter was born in 1898 – 115 years ago →

Bob Dylan, Music Calendar, Sound

Today: Bob Dylan released Like A Rolling Stone in 1965

July 20, 2013 Hallgeir 4 Comments

“This is about growing up, this is about discovering what is going on around you, realizing that life isn’t all you’ve been told. So now you’re without a home, you’re on your own, complete unknown, like a rolling stone. That’s a liberating thing. This is a song about liberation.”
— Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone magazine (Greil Marcus – Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (book))

“The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody had kicked open the door to your mind” – Bruce Springsteen (Jan 1988)

“When I heard Like a Rolling Stone, I wanted to quit the music business because I felt: ‘If this wins and it does what it’s supposed to do, I don’t need to do anything else.'”
– Frank Zappa (1965 )

The first time I really listened to “Like A Rolling Stone”, I felt I entered a parallel universe.. a place of intense beauty.. a place filled with this wonderful blues-fueled rock music… and a spellbinding ..organ! I had never heard anything like it.. anything this good..

That was the day I understood that there is bad music, good music, great music & then there is Bob Dylan. He plays in another league. His musical universe is still as beautiful now as it was first time I flew into it.. “Like A Rolling Stone” still sounds as fresh as it did the first time I listened ~25 years ago. (Egil, Johannasvisions)

Like A Rolling Stone:

Everything is changed now from before. Last spring I guess I was going to quit singing. I was very drained and the way things were going it was a very draggy situation – I mean, when you do Everybody Loves You For Your Black Eye and meanwhile the back of your head is caving in. Anyway, I was playing a lot of songs I didn’t want to play. I was singing words I didn’t really want to sing. I don’t mean words like “God” and “mother” and “president” and “suicide” and “meat cleaver”. I mean simple little words like “if” and “hope” and “you”.

But Like A Rolling Stone changed it all; I didn’t care any more after that about writing books or poems or whatever. I mean it was something that I myself could dig.

It’s very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don’t dig you. It’s also very deadly entertainment-wise. Contrary to what some scary people think, I don’t play with a band now for any kind of propaganda-type or commercial-type reasons. It’s just that my songs are pictures and the band makes the sound of the pictures.
-Bob Dylan (to Nat Hentoff – March 1966)

Like A Rolling Stones (Live at London’s Albert Hall, May, 1966):

“Like A Rolling Stone” was recorded @ the second “Highway 61 Revisited” recording sessions on June 16 – 1965, produced by Tom Wilson.

“The voice is infinitely nuanced — at times almost an authoritarian monotone (not unlike Ginsberg reading “Howl”), at times compassionate, tragic (the voice of Jacques-Louis David in his painting of Marat) — but also angry, vengeful, gleeful, ironic, weary, spectral, haranguing.

And it would sound this way in ancient Greek or contemporary Russian. There is so much desire and so much power in this voice, translated into a sensitivity that enables it to detect tiny vibrations…”
— Michael Pisaro (composer)

“Like a Rolling Stone” is a 1965 song by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Its confrontational lyrics originate in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England. After the lyrics were heavily edited, “Like a Rolling Stone” was recorded a few weeks later as part of the sessions for the forthcoming album Highway 61 Revisited.

During a difficult two-day pre-production, Dylan struggled to find the essence of the song, which was demoed without success in 3/4 time. A breakthrough was made when it was tried in a rock music format, and rookie session musician Al Kooper improvised the organ riff for which the track is known.

However, Columbia Records was unhappy with both the song’s length at over six minutes and its heavy electric sound, and was hesitant to release it. It was only when a month later a copy was leaked to a new popular music club and heard by influential DJs that the song was put out as a single. Although radio stations were reluctant to play such a long track, “Like a Rolling Stone” reached number two in the US charts and became a worldwide hit. (Wikipedia)

In 2004 Rolling Stone magazine placed the song at number one on its list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”

Like A Rolling Stone, Manchester 1966:

Other 20 July:

Continue reading Today: Bob Dylan released Like A Rolling Stone in 1965 →

Elvis Presley, Memphis, Music Calendar, Rock'n Roll

Today: Elvis Presley released “That’s All Right” in 1954 – 59 years ago

July 19, 2013 Egil 1 Comment

In 2004, Elvis Presley’s “That’s All Right Mama” and Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” both celebrated their 50th anniversaries. Rolling Stone Magazine felt that Presley’s song was the first rock and roll recording. At the time Presley recorded the song, Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle & Roll”, later covered by Haley, was already at the top of the Billboard R&B charts. The Guardian felt that while there were rock’n’roll records before Presley’s, his recording was the moment when all the strands came together in “perfect embodiment”. (wikipedia)

“A lot of people seem to think I started this business, but rock ‘n’ roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people. Let’s face it; I can’t sing it like Fats Domino can. I know that. But I always liked that kind of music.”
~Elvis Presley

Wikipedia:

B-side	“Blue Moon of Kentucky”
Released	19 July 1954
Format	7″ single
Recorded	5 July 1954
Genre	Rockabilly
Length	1:57
Label	Sun
Writer(s)	Arthur Crudup
Producer	Sam Phillips

“That’s All Right” is the name of the first commercial single released by Elvis Presley, written and originally performed by blues singer Arthur Crudup. Presley’s version was recorded on 5 July 1954, and released on 19 July 1954 with “Blue Moon of Kentucky” as the B-side. It is #112 on the 2004 Rolling Stone magazine list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

Arthur Crudup – That’s All Right (original version):

The song was written by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, and originally recorded by him in Chicago on 6 September 1946, as “That’s All Right”. It was released as a single on RCA Victor 20-2205, but was less successful than some of Crudup’s previous recordings. In early March 1949, the song was re-released under the title, “That’s All Right, Mama” (RCA Victor 50-0000), which was issued as RCA’s first rhythm and blues record on their new 45 rpm single format, on bright orange vinyl.

Elvis Presley’s version was recorded in July 1954, and released with “Blue Moon of Kentucky” as the B-side. Its catalogue number was Sun 209. The label reads “That’s All Right” (omitting “Mama” from the original title), and names the performers as Elvis Presley,Scotty and Bill. Arthur Crudup was credited as the composer on the label of Presley’s single, but Crudup had to wait until the 1960s when he received an estimated $60,000 in back royalties. Crudup used lines in his song that had been present in earlier blues recordings, including Blind Lemon Jefferson’s 1926 song That Black Snake Moan”.

Live @ NBC Studio’s 1968:

During an uneventful recording session at Sun Studios on the evening of July 5, 1954, Presley, Moore, and Black were taking a break between recordings when Presley started fooling around with an up-tempo version of Arthur Crudup’s song “That’s All Right, Mama”. Black began joining in on his upright bass, and soon they were joined by Moore on guitar. Producer Sam Phillips, taken aback by this sudden upbeat atmosphere, asked the three of them to start again so he could record it.

Black’s bass and guitars from Presley and Moore provided the instrumentation. The recording contains no drums or additional instruments. The song was produced in the style of a “live” recording (all parts performed at once and recorded on a single track). The following evening the trio recorded “Blue Moon of Kentucky” in a similar style, and it was selected as the B-side to “That’s All Right”.

Upon finishing the recording session, according to Scotty Moore, Bill Black remarked, “Damn. Get that on the radio and they’ll run us out of town.”

Sam Phillips gave copies of the record to local disc jockeys Dewey Phillips (no relation) of WHBQ, Uncle Richard of WMPS, and Sleepy Eyed John Lepley of WHHM. On July 7, 1954, Dewey Phillips played “That’s All Right” on his popular radio show “Red, Hot & Blue”.

Interest in the record was so intense that Dewey reportedly played the record 14 times and received over 40 telephone calls. Presley was persuaded to go to the station for an on-air interview that night.

“That’s All Right” was officially released on July 19, 1954, and sold around 20,000 copies. This number was not enough to chart nationally, but the single reached number four on the local Memphis charts.

Live – That’s The Way It Is (1970):

Album of the day – Sunrise:

Other July 19:

Continue reading Today: Elvis Presley released “That’s All Right” in 1954 – 59 years ago →

Great albums, Music Calendar, Neil Young

Today: Neil Young released “On The Beach” in 1974 – 39 years ago

July 16, 2013 Egil

“Good album. One side of it particularly—the side with ‘Ambulance Blues’, ‘Motion Pictures’ and ‘On the Beach’ — it’s out there. It’s a great take.”
~Neil Young

The second in Neil’s ditch trilogy, On the Beach was also disavowed by Young and unreleased on CD until 2003. It is weirder but sharper than Time Fades Away, with harrowing lows and amazing highs, including the off-the-cuff, eight-minute folk jam “Ambulance Blues.”
~rollingstone.com

Walk on:

From Wikipedia:

Released	July 16, 1974
Recorded	November 30, 1973 – April 7, 1974Arrow Ranch, Woodside, California;Sunset Sound Recorders,Hollywood
Genre	Rock, folk rock, blues rock
Length	39:40
Label	Reprise
Producer	Neil Young, David Briggs (tracks 1 4), Mark Harman (tracks 2 3 5), Al Schmitt (tracks 6 7 8)

On the Beach is the fifth studio album by Neil Young, released in 1974. It was unavailable on compact disc until it was released as a HDCD-encoded remastered version on August 19, 2003 as part of his Archives Digital Masterpiece Series.

Recorded after (but released before) Tonight’s the Night, On the Beach shares some of that album’s bleakness and crude production—which came as a shock to fans and critics alike, as this was the long-awaited studio follow-up to the commercially and critically successful Harvest—but also included hints pointing towards a more subtle outlook, particularly on the opener, “Walk On”.

While the original Rolling Stone review described it as “One of the most despairing albums of the decade”, later critics such as Allmusic’s William Ruhlmann used the benefit of hindsight to conclude that Young “[w]as saying goodbye to despair, not being overwhelmed by it”. The despair of Tonight’s the Night, communicated through intentional underproduction and lyrical pessimism, gives way to a more polished album that is still pessimistic but to a lesser degree.

Much like Tonight’s the Night, On the Beach was not a commercial success at the time of its release but over time attained a high regard from fans and critics alike. The album was recorded in a haphazard manner, with Young utilizing a variety of session musicians, and often changing their instruments while offering only bare-bones arrangements for them to follow (in a similar style to Tonight’s the Night). He also would opt for rough, monitor mixes of songs rather than a more polished sound, alienating his sound engineers in the process.

On the Beach:

The world is turnin’,
I hope it don’t turn away,
The world is turnin’,
I hope it don’t turn away.
All my pictures are fallin’
from the wall where
I placed them yesterday.
The world is turnin’,
I hope it don’t turn away.

[The best song on the album…] Ambulance Blues:

“Ambulance Blues” closes the album. The melody ‘unintentionally’ quotes Bert Jansch’s “Needle of Death”. In a 1992 interview for the French “Guitare & Claviers” magazine, Young discussed Jansch’ influence:

“As for acoustic guitar, Bert Jansch is on the same level as Jimi (Hendrix). That first record of his is epic. It came from England, and I was especially taken by “Needle of Death”, such a beautiful and angry song. That guy was so good. And years later, on On the Beach, I wrote the melody of “Ambulance Blues” by styling the guitar part completely on “Do You Hear Me Now?”. I wasn’t even aware of it, and someone else drew my attention to it.”

The song explores Young’s feelings about his critics, Richard Nixon and the state of CSNY. The line “You’re all just pissing in the wind” was a direct quote from Young’s manager regarding the inactivity of the quartet.

Ambulance Blues:

Track Listing:

All songs written by Neil Young.

Side one

“Walk On” – 2:42
“See the Sky About to Rain” – 5:02
“Revolution Blues” – 4:03
“For the Turnstiles” – 3:15
“Vampire Blues” – 4:14

Side two

“On the Beach” – 6:59
“Motion Pictures” – 4:23
“Ambulance Blues” – 8:56

–

The real engine of the album’s brilliance, though, is the trio of slow, long, lonely hotel room folk songs that closes out the album, peaking with Neil’s “Desolation Row”, “Ambulance Blues.”
~Rob Mitchum (pitchfork.com)

Personnel:

Neil Young – guitar on 1 3 5 6 7 8, vocal, Wurlitzer electric piano on 2, banjo on 4, harmonica on 7 8
Ben Keith – slide guitar on 1, vocal on 1 4, steel guitar on 2, Dobro on 4, Wurlitzer electric piano on 3, organ on 5, hand drums on 6, bass on 7 8
Tim Drummond – bass on 2 5 6, percussion on 5
Ralph Molina – drums on 1 5 6, vocal on 1, hand drums on 7 8

Additional personnel

Billy Talbot – bass on 1
Levon Helm – drums on 2 3
Joe Yankee – harp on 2, electric tambourine on 8
David Crosby – guitar on 3
Rick Danko – bass on 3
George Whitsell – guitar on 5
Graham Nash – Wurlitzer electric piano on 6
Rusty Kershaw – slide guitar on 7, fiddle on 8

–

..On the Beach was savage and, ultimately, triumphant. “I’m a vampire, babe,” Young sang, and he proceeded to take bites out of various subjects: threatening the lives of the stars who lived in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon (“Revolution Blues”); answering back to Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose “Sweet Home Alabama” had taken him to task for his criticisms of the South in “Southern Man” and “Alabama” (“Walk On”); and rejecting the critics (“Ambulance Blues”). But the barbs were mixed with humor and even affection, as Young seemed to be emerging from the grief and self-abuse that had plagued him for two years. But the album was so spare and under-produced, its lyrics so harrowing, that it was easy to miss Young’s conclusion: he was saying goodbye to despair, not being overwhelmed by it.
~William Ruhlmann (allmusic.com)

Complete album @ youtube:

Album @ spotify:

Other July 16:

Continue reading Today: Neil Young released “On The Beach” in 1974 – 39 years ago →

Music Calendar

Today: The late Ian Curtis was born in 1956

July 15, 2013 Hallgeir

Ian Kevin Curtis (15 July 1956 – 18 May 1980) was an English musician, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the post-punk band Joy Division. Joy Division released their debut album, Unknown Pleasures, in 1979 and recorded their follow-up, Closer, in 1980.

Curtis, who suffered from epilepsy and depression, committed suicide on 18 May 1980, on the eve of Joy Division’s first North American tour, resulting in the band’s dissolution and the subsequent formation of New Order.

Curtis was known for his bass-baritone voice, dance style and songwriting filled with imagery of desolation, emptiness and alienation.

Joy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. Originally named Warsaw, the band primarily consisted of Ian Curtis (vocals and occasional guitar), Bernard Sumner (guitar and keyboards), Peter Hook (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Stephen Morris (drums and percussion).

Here’s a brilliant documentary on Joy Division and Ian Curtis (it says Ita Sub, but there’s no subtitles):

I always thought their music was sombre, even sad, but these days I can hear a kind optimism or eagerness in the songs. Great to hear them again. They certainly made a big impression on me in my formative years as a music nerd.

Love Will Tear Us Apart: