Tag Archives: Memphis

Memphis, Music Calendar, Soul, Stax

Today: The late Donald “Duck” Dunn was born in 1941 – 71 years ago

As the bassist for Booker T. & the MG’s, Donald “Duck” Dunn became, like James Jamerson at Motown, the man who provided a groove for an entire generation to dance to. In Dunn’s case it was the legendary Memphis record label Stax/Volt, where he laid down basslines for soul stars such as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Albert King, helping to create one of the largest bodies of soul and R&B music that exists.
~Steve Kurutz (allmusic.com)

Short intro:

Booker T & the MG’s – green onions:

From Wikipedia:

Birth name Donald Dunn
Also known as Duck
Born November 24, 1941
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Died May 13, 2012 (aged 70)
Tokyo, Japan
Genres Rock, soul, rhythm and blues
Occupations Songwriter, producer, actor
Instruments Bass guitar
Years active 1960–2012
Associated acts Otis Redding, Booker T & the MG’s, Albert King, Mar-Keys,The Blues Brothers, Sam and Dave
Website duckdunn.com

Donald “Duck” Dunn (November 24, 1941 – May 13, 2012) was an American bass guitarist, session musician, record producer, and songwriter. Dunn was notable for his 1960s recordings with Booker T. & the M.G.’s and as a session bassist for Stax Records, which specialized in blues and gospel-infused southern soul which became known as Memphis Soul. At Stax, Dunn played on thousands of records including hits by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, and many others. Dunn also performed on recordings with The Blues Brothers, Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Isaac Hayes, Levon Helm, Neil Young, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Wilson Pickett, Guy Sebastian, Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Roy Buchanan, Steely Dan, Tinsley Ellis and Arthur Conley.

Booker T. & The MG’s – Time Is Tight (Live, 1970):

Dunn played himself in the 1980 feature The Blues Brothers, where he famously uttered the line, “We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline!”

Awards:

  • In 1992, Dunn was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Booker T & the MG’s.
  • In 2007 Dunn and several Booker T & the MG’s members (Lewie Steinberg, Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, and Barbara Jackson, the widow of Al Jackson) were given a “Lifetime Achievement” Grammy award for their contributions to popular music.

 

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Memphis, Music Calendar, Soul, Stax

Today: Dan Penn is 71

At the dark end of the street
That’s where we always meet
Hiding in shadows where we don’t belong
Livin in darkness to hide a wrong
You and me
At the dark end of the street
You and me

Dan Penn was an important player in the development of the “Southern Soul scene” in Memphis in the early 60’s.

Here he performs one of the greatest soul songs ever, which he wrote together with Chips Moman in 1966:

Dark End of The Street:

I also need to include the best version of this fantastic song – James Carr:

From Wikipedia:

Dan Penn (born Wallace Daniel Pennington, 16 November 1941) is an American singer, musician, songwriter, and record producer who co-wrote many soul hits of the 1960s including “Dark End Of The Street” and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” with Chips Moman as well as “Out Of Left Field” and “Cry Like a Baby” with Spooner Oldham. Penn also produced many hits including “The Letter” by The Box Tops. Though considered to be one of the great white soul singers of his generation, Penn has released relatively few records featuring his own vocals and musicianship preferring the relative anonymity of songwriting and producing.

I’m Your Puppet (Penn/Spooner Oldham):

Steve Kurutz (allmusic.com):
Songwriter/producer Dan Penn has been a quiet force behind Southern soul music for over thirty years. Always moving just out of view of the limelight, Penn has produced and written hits for the Box Tops, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin and Ronnie Milsap, among others.
Originally from Vernon, Alabama, Penn began his career as a performer, leading several white R&B bands around the Muscle Shoals area. Achieving early success by selling a hit song to Conway Twitty (“Is a Bluebird Blue?”), the songwriter eventually moved to Memphis, joining producer Chips Moman at his American Studios. Together the two, along with Penn’s writing partner, organist Spooner Oldham, wrote and/or produced several hits for the Box Tops, such as “The Letter” and “Cry Like a Baby,” throughout the late ’60s.
…read more over @ allmusic.com

Album of the day:

Do Right Man (1994):


From allmusic.com (Chris Nickson):
If James Brown is Soul Brother Number One, you can make a very credible case for Dan Penn being number two. The Alabama native has had a hand in writing a fair number of classic soul songs, and here he commits his versions of them to tape for the first time, recording, of course, in Muscle Shoals, with their fabulous house band, and a horn section including former Memphis Horn member Wayne Jackson. It’s a tall order Penn sets himself, offering himself up for comparison with greats like James Carr, Aretha Franklin, and James and Bobby Purify, who have sung his songs — and that’s just the start of the list. However, he comes out very well, beginning with a quiet take on”The Dark End of the Street,” coming across like a note to a secret lover, rather than a cry of pain.
…read more – allmusic.com 

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Great albums, Music Calendar, Van Morrison

Today: Van Morrison released “His Band and the Street Choir” in 1970 – 42 years ago

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 Morrison is still a brooder–“Why did you leave America?” he asks over and over on the final cut, and though I’m not exactly sure what he’s talking about, that sounds like a good all-purpose question/accusation to me–but not an obsessive one, and this is another half-step away from the acoustic late-night misery of Astral Weeks. As befits hits, “Domino” and especially “Blue Money” are more celebratory if no more joyous than anything on Moondance, showing off his loose, allusive white r&b at its most immediate. And while half of side two is comparatively humdrum, I play it anyway. A
~Robert Christgau (Consumer guide)

Street Choir – Van Morrison Live at Montreux 1974:

From Wikipedia:

Released 15 November 1970
Recorded March–July 1970, at the A&R Recording Studios, New York City
Genre Folk rock, R&B, blues
Length 41:40
Label Warner Bros.
Producer Van Morrison

His Band and the Street Choir (also referred to as Street Choir) is the fourth solo album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. It was released on 15 November 1970 by Warner Bros. Records. Originally titled Virgo’s Fool, Street Choir was renamed by Warner Bros. without Morrison’s consent. Recording began in early 1970 with a demo session in a small church in Woodstock, New York. Morrison booked the A&R Studios on 46th Street in New York City in the second quarter of 1970 to produce two sessions of songs that were released on His Band and the Street Choir.

Domino (Midnight Special TV-show, 1977):

Reviewers praised the music of both sessions for its free, relaxed sound, but the lyrics were considered to be simple compared with those of his previous work. Morrison had intended to record the album a cappella with only vocal backing by a vocal group he called the Street Choir, but the songs released on the album that included the choir also featured a backing band. Morrison was dissatisfied with additional vocalists to the original quintet that made up the choir, and these changes and others have led him to regard Street Choir poorly in later years.

“His Band and the Street Choir is a free album. It was recorded with minimal over-dubbing and was obviously intended to show the other side of Moondance. And if it has a flaw it is that, like Moondance, it is too much what it set out to be. A few more numbers with a gravity of ‘Street Choir’ would have made this album as close to perfect as anyone could have stood.”
~John Landau

His Band and the Street Choir was as well received as Morrison’s previous album, Moondance. Street Choir peaked at number 32 on the Billboard 200 and number 18 on the UK Album Chart. It owes its success mainly to the US Top Ten single “Domino”, which was released before the album and surpassed Morrison’s 1967 hit, “Brown Eyed Girl”. As of 2010, “Domino” remains the most successful single of Morrison’s solo career. Two other singles were released from the album, “Blue Money” and “Call Me Up in Dreamland”; although less successful, they still managed to reach the Billboard Hot 100.

I’ve been working (From Van Morrison in Ireland, 1979 in Dublin and Belfast):

Tracks:

All songs written by Van Morrison.

Side one

  1. “Domino”  – 3:06
  2. “Crazy Face”  – 2:56
  3. “Give Me a Kiss (Just One Sweet Kiss)”  – 2:30
  4. “I’ve Been Working”  – 3:25
  5. “Call Me Up in Dreamland”  – 3:52
  6. “I’ll Be Your Lover, Too”  – 3:57

Side two

  1. “Blue Money”  – 3:40
  2. “Virgo Clowns”  – 4:10
  3. “Gypsy Queen”  – 3:16
  4. “Sweet Jannie”  – 2:11
  5. “If I Ever Needed Someone”  – 3:45
  6. “Street Choir”  – 4:43

Jason Ankeny (allmusic.com):
After the brilliant one-two punch of Astral Weeks and Moondance, His Band and the Street Choir bringsVan Morrison back down to earth, both literally and figuratively. While neither as innovative nor as edgy as its predecessors, His Band and the Street Choir also lacks their overt mysticism; at heart, the album is simply Morrison’s valentine to the R&B that inspired him, resulting in the muscular and joyous tribute “Domino” as well as the bouncy “Blue Money” and “Call Me Up in Dreamland.”

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Music Calendar, Rock'n Roll, Sun

Today: “Great Balls of Fire” was recorded in 1957 – 55 years ago

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Well kiss me baba, woo-oooooo….it feels good
Hold me baba
I want to love you like a lover should
Your fine, so kind
I got this world that your mine mine mine mine-ine

From Wikipedia:

Released November 11, 1957
Recorded October 8, 1957, Sun Studio, Memphis, Tennessee
Genre Rock and roll, Rockabilly, Country
Label Sun 281
Writer(s) Otis Blackwell (under the pseudonym Jack Hammer)

“Great Balls of Fire” is a 1957 song recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis on Sun Records and featured in the 1957 movie Jamboree. It was written by Otis Blackwell (under the pseudonym Jack Hammer). The Jerry Lee Lewis 1957 recording was ranked as the 96th greatest song ever by Rolling Stone. The song is in AABA form.

From Rollingstone.com (500 greatest songs):
With Lewis pounding the piano and leering, “Great Balls of Fire” was full of Southern Baptist hellfire turned into a near-blasphemous ode to pure lust. Lewis, a Bible-college dropout and cousin to Jimmy Swaggart, refused to sing it at first and got into a theological argument with Phillips that concluded with Lewis asking, “How can the devil save souls?” But as the session wore on and the liquor kept flowing, Lewis’ mood changed considerably — on bootleg tapes he can be heard saying, “I would like to eat a little pussy if I had some.” Goodness gracious, great balls of fire, indeed.

From allmusic.com – Cub Koda:
Written by African-American songwriter Otis Blackwell under the pseudonym of Jack Hammer, this was Jerry Lee Lewis’ third release and second consecutive hit. There are only two instruments on this recording, Lewis’ piano and J.M. Van Eaton’s drumming, with the echo from the Sun studios working as a third instrument. The song is over in a little more than a minute and a half and yet is perfectly realized with probably Jerry Lee’s best solo to recommend it and a vocal that borders on lascivious. You can do many things with “Great Balls of Fire” but most covers stick damn close to the original Jerry Lee strut and arrangement, so perfectly realized and empathetically played.

The song is best known for Jerry Lee Lewis’s original recording, which was recorded in the Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, on October 8, 1957, and released as a 45rpm single on Sun 281 in November 1957.

The song title is derived from a Southern expression, which some Christians consider blasphemous, that refers to the Pentecost’s defining moment when the Holy Spirit manifested itself as “cloven tongues as of fire” and the Apostles spoke in tongues.

and another (newer) version:

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Blues, Music Calendar

Today: The late Albert Collins was born in 1932 – 80 years ago

From Wikipedia:

Born October 1, 1932
Leona, Texas, United States
Died November 24, 1993 (aged 61)
Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Genres Blues, blues rock
Occupations Musician, songwriter
Instruments Guitar, vocals, harmonica
Years active 1952–1993
Labels Alligator

Albert Collins (October 1, 1932 – November 24, 1993) was an American electric blues guitarist and singer (and occasional harmonica player) whose recording career began in the 1960s in Houston and whose fame eventually took him to stages across North America, Europe, Japan and Australia. He had many nicknames, such as “The Ice Man”, “The Master of the Telecaster” and “The Razor Blade”.

From allmusic.com – Richard Skelly:

Albert Collins, “The Master of the Telecaster,” “The Iceman,” and “The Razor Blade” was robbed of his best years as a blues performer by a bout with liver cancer that ended with his premature death on November 24, 1993. He was just 61 years old. The highly influential, totally original Collins, like the late John Campbell, was on the cusp of a much wider worldwide following via his deal with Virgin Records’ Pointblank subsidiary. However, unlike Campbell, Collins had performed for many more years, in obscurity, before finally finding a following in the mid-’80s.
…read more @ allmusic.com 

Iceman:

 

Album of the day – Ice Pickin’ (1978):

From allmusic – Thom Owens:
Ice Pickin’ is the album that brought Albert Collins directly back into the limelight, and for good reason, too. The record captures the wild, unrestrained side of his playing that had never quite been documented before. Though his singing doesn’t quite have the fire or power of his playing, the album doesn’t suffer at all because of that — he simply burns throughout the album.
….read more over @ allmusic.com

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