A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs

Episode one hundred and thirty-one of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Hear a Symphony” by the Supremes, and is the start of a three-episode look at Motown in 1965. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Rescue Me” by Fontella Bass. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode one hundred and thirty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan, and the controversy over Dylan going electric, Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Hold What You've Got" by Joe Tex. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum A couple of times I refer to “CBS”. Dylan's label in the US was Columbia Records, a subsidiary of CBS Inc, but in the rest of the world the label traded as “CBS Records”. I should probably have used “Columbia” throughout... Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Dylan. Much of the information in this episode comes from Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by Elijah Wald, which is recommended, as all Wald's books are. I’ve used these books for all the episodes involving Dylan: Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I’ve also used Robert Shelton’s No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. The New Yorker article by Nat Hentoff I talk about is here. And for the information about the writing of "Like a Rolling Stone", I relied on yet another book by Heylin, All the Madmen. Dylan's albums up to 1967 can all be found in their original mono mixes on this box set. And Dylan's performances at Newport from 1963 through 1965 are on this DVD. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There's a story that everyone tells about Bob Dylan in 1965, the story that has entered into legend. It's the story that you'll see in most of the biographies of him, and in all those coffee-table histories of rock music put out by glossy music magazines. Bob Dylan, in this story, was part of the square, boring, folk scene until he plugged in an electric guitar and just blew the minds of all those squares, who immediately ostracised him forever for being a Judas and betraying their traditionalist acoustic music, but he was just too cool and too much of a rebel to be bound by their rules, man. Pete Seeger even got an axe and tried to cut his way through the cables of the amplifiers, he was so offended by the desecration of the Newport Folk Festival. And like all these stories, it's an oversimplification but there's an element of truth to it too. So today, we're going to look at what actually happened when Dylan went electric. We're going to look at what led to him going electric, and at the truth behind the legend of Seeger's axe. And we're going to look at the masterpiece at the centre of it all, a record that changed rock songwriting forever. We're going to look at Bob Dylan and "Like a Rolling Stone": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] While we've seen Dylan turn up in all sorts of episodes -- most recently the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man", the last time we looked at him in detail was in the episode on "Blowin' in the Wind", and when we left him there he had just recorded his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but it had not yet been released. As we'll see, Dylan was always an artist who moved on very quickly from what he'd been doing before, and that had started as early as that album. While his first album, produced by John Hammond, had been made up almost entirely of traditional songs and songs he'd learned from Dave van Ronk or Eric von Schmidt, with only two originals, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan had started out being produced by Hammond, but as Hammond and Dylan's manager Albert Grossman had come to find it difficult to work together, the last few tracks had been produced by Tom Wilson. We've mentioned Wilson briefly a couple of times already, but to reiterate, Wilson was a Black Harvard graduate and political conservative whose background was in jazz and who had no knowledge of or love for folk music. But Wilson saw two things in Dylan -- the undeniable power of his lyrics, and his vocals, which Wilson compared to Ray Charles. Wilson wanted to move Dylan towards working with a backing band, and this was something that Dylan was interested in doing, but his first experiment with that, with John Hammond, hadn't been a particular success. Dylan had recorded a single backed with a band -- "Mixed-Up Confusion", backed with "Corrina, Corrina", a version of an old song that had been recorded by both Bob Wills and Big Joe Turner, but had recently been brought back to the public mind by a version Phil Spector had produc

Episode 129 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, and how they went from being a moderately successful beat group to being the only serious rivals to the Beatles. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eleven-minute bonus episode available, on "I'll Never Find Another You" by the Seekers. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Two resources that I’ve used for this and all future Stones episodes — The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. When in doubt, the version of the narrative I've chosen to use is the one from Davis' book. I’ve also used Andrew Loog Oldham’s autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards’ Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. Sympathy for the Devil: The Birth of the Rolling Stones and the Death of Brian Jones by Paul Trynka is, as the title might suggest, essentially special pleading for Jones. It's as well-researched and well-written as a pro-Jones book can be, and is worth reading for balance, though I find it unconvincing. This web page seems to have the most accurate details of the precise dates of sessions and gigs. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones’ singles up to 1971, including every Stones track I excerpt in this episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today, we're going to look at one of the most important riffs in rock and roll history -- the record that turned the distorted guitar riff into the defining feature of the genre, even though the man who played that riff never liked it. We're going to look at a record that took the social protest of the folk-rock movement, aligned it with the misogyny its singer had found in many blues songs, and turned it into the most powerful expression of male adolescent frustration ever recorded to that point. We're going to look at "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Satisfaction"] A note before we start this -- this episode deals with violence against women, and with rape. If you're likely to be upset hearing about those things, you might want to either skip this episode, or read the transcript on the website first. The relevant section comes right at the end of the episode, so you can also listen through to the point where I give another warning, without missing any of the rest of the episode. Another point I should make here -- most of the great sixties groups have very accurate biographies written about them. The Stones, even more than the Beatles, have kept a surprising amount of control over their public image, with the result that the only sources about them are either rather sanitised things made with their co-operation, or rather tabloidy things whose information mostly comes from people who are holding a grudge or have a particular agenda. I believe that everything in this episode is the most likely of the various competing narratives, but if you check out the books I used, which are listed on the blog post associated with this episode, you'll see that there are several different tellings of almost every bit of this story. So bear that in mind as you're listening. I've done my best. Anyway, on with the episode. When we left the Rolling Stones, they were at the very start of their recording career, having just released their first big hit single, a version of "I Wanna Be Your Man", which had been written for them by Lennon and McCartney. The day after they first appeared on Top of the Pops, they were back in the recording studio, but not to record for themselves. The five Stones, plus Ian Stewart, were being paid two pounds a head by their manager/producer Andrew Oldham to be someone else's backing group. Oldham was producing a version of "To Know Him is to Love Him", the first hit by his idol Phil Spector, for a new singer he was managing named Cleo Sylvester: [Excerpt: Cleo, "To Know Him is to Love Him"] In a further emulation of Spector, the B-side was a throwaway instrumental. Credited to "the Andrew Oldham Orchestra", and with Mike Leander supervising, the song's title, "There Are But Five Rolling Stones", gave away who the performers actually were: [Excerpt: The Andrew Oldham Orchestra, "There Are But Five Rolling Stones"] At this point, the Stones were still not writing their own material, but Oldham had already seen the writing o

Episode one hundred and twenty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Mr. Tambourine Man” by the Byrds, and the start of LA folk-rock. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

This week’s episode looks at "Ticket to Ride", the making of the Beatles' second film, and the influence of Bob Dylan on the Beatles' work and lives. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "The Game of Love" by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Beatles. I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them, but the ones I specifically referred to while writing this episode were: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For material on the making of the film, I referred to Getting Away With It by Steven Soderbergh, a book which is in part a lengthy set of conversations between Soderbergh and Richard Lester. Sadly the only way to legally get the original mix of "Ticket to Ride" is this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but the 1987 remix is widely available on the CD issue of the Help! soundtrack. The film is available on DVD. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript When we last looked at the Beatles, they had just achieved their American success, and had appeared in their first film, A Hard Day's Night. Today, we're going to look at the massive artistic growth that happened to them between late 1964 and mid 1965, the making of their second film, Help!, the influence, both artistic and personal, of Bob Dylan on the group, and their introduction both to studio experimentation and to cannabis. We're going to look at "Ticket to Ride": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Ticket to Ride"] 1964 was a tremendously busy year for the Beatles. After they'd finished making A Hard Day's Night, but even before it was released, they had gone on yet another tour, playing Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand, though without Ringo for much of the tour -- Ringo had to have his tonsils removed, and so for the first eight shows of the tour he was replaced by session drummer Jimmy Nicol, the former drummer with Colin Hicks and his Cabin Boys, who had played on several cheap soundalike records of Beatles songs. Nicol was a competent drummer, though very different in style from Ringo, and he found his temporary moment of celebrity hugely upsetting -- he later described it as the worst thing to ever happen to him, and ended up declaring bankruptcy only nine months after touring with the group. Nicol is now a recluse, and hasn't spoken to anyone about his time with the Beatles in more than thirty years. After Ringo returned to the group and the film came out they went back into the studio, only two months after the release of their third album, to start work on their fourth. They recorded four songs in two sessions before departing on their first full US tour. Those songs included two cover versions -- a version of "Mr. Moonlight" by Doctor Feelgood and the Interns that appeared on the album, and a version of Little Willie John's "Leave My Kitten Alone" that didn't see release until 1995 -- and two originals written mostly or entirely by John Lennon, "Baby's In Black", and "I'm a Loser": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I'm a Loser"] "I'm a Loser" was an early sign of an influence that had particularly changed Lennon's attitude to songwriting -- that of Bob Dylan. Dylan had been on the group's radar for some time -- Paul McCartney in the Anthology book seems to have a confused memory of seeing Madhouse on Castle Street, the TV play Dylan had appeared in in January 1963 -- but early 1964 had seen him rise in prominence to the point that he was a major star, not just an obscure folk singer. And Lennon had paid particular attention to what he was doing with his lyrics. We've already seen that Lennon had been writing surreal poetry for years, but at this point in his life he still thought of his songwriting and his poetry as separate. As he would later put it "I had a sort of professional songwriter's attitude to writing pop songs; we would turn out a certain style of song for a single, and we would do a certain style of thing for this and the other thing. I'd have a separate songwriting John Lennon who wrote songs for the meat market, and I didn't consider them (the lyrics or anything) to have any depth at all." This shouldn't be taken as Lennon saying that the early Beatles songs were lacking in quality, or tha

Episode 126 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “For Your Love”, the Yardbirds, and the beginnings of heavy rock and the guitar hero. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on “A Lover’s Concerto” by the Toys. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021. Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast. If you want to get those, and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com/andrewhickey to sign up for a dollar a month or more. Click below for the transcript. (more…)

This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021. Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast. If you want to get those, and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com/andrewhickey to sign up for a dollar a month or more. Click below for the transcript. (more…)

This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021. Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast. If you want to get those, and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com/andrewhickey to sign up for a dollar a month or more. Click below for the transcript. Today, we're going to look at a record that, like the record we looked at in the main podcast this week, has connections to Kim Fowley and to the Beach Boys, who covered it just as they did "Moon Dawg". But we're going to look at it as a way to say goodbye to Gaynel Hodge, who has appeared in so many of our previous episodes. Hodge played piano on "Alley Oop", which we've done a bonus podcast on before, and which is also very briefly discussed in this week's main episode, and while I was writing that, I heard from a Twitter follower that he had died. We've already covered all the records we're going to look at in which he had a major involvement, so today we're going to look at another one on which he was just a session musician. This one is actually from 1962, when we're still in 1960 in the main podcast, but it's not jumping so far ahead that it's unreasonable, and I wanted to tip my hat to him with the last record he played on which I was planning on discussing -- if you remember the Patreon episode on "Little Bitty Pretty One", I said we'd be looking at Thurston Harris' backing group when we got to 1962. So today, let's look at "Papa Oom Mow Mow" by the Rivingtons: [Excerpt: The Rivingtons, "Papa Oom Mow Mow"] The history of the Rivingtons is a convoluted one, as the story of so many vocal groups is. They started out as a group called the Lamplighters, who were formed by Willie Ray Rockwell, who had been an original member of the Hollywood Flames. The first lineup of the Lamplighters also included Leon Hughes, who left before they started recording, to *join* the Hollywood Flames (Hughes of course later went on to join the Coasters). Hughes was replaced by Thurston Harris, and they made their first recordings for Federal records, with Ralph Bass and Johnny Otis. "Be-Bop Wino", their second single and the most impressive of these early recordings, was by a lineup of Rockwell, Harris, Al Frazier, and Matt Nelson: [Excerpt: The Lamplighters, "Be Bop Wino"] They also recorded backing Jimmie Witherspoon: [Excerpt: Jimmie Witherspoon and the Lamplighters, "Sad Life"] Various changes happened in the lineup, as people fell out with each other, got jailed for non-payment of child support, or just generally became too difficult to work with. For a while, the group became made up of Al Frazier, Carl White, Sonny Harris, and Matthew Nelson, and were recording, still for Federal, as the Tenderfoots: [Excerpt: The Tenderfoots, "Kissing Bug"] After four unsuccessful singles, Thurston Harris rejoined the group, and they became the Lamplighters again, recording a few more singles, starting with "Don't Make it So Good": [Excerpt: The Lamplighters, "Don't Make It So Good"] Then they decided to fire Harris again, as he was extremely unreliable. They took on a new singer, Rocky Wilson -- the lineup now was Al Frazier, Carl White, Sonny Harris, and Rocky Wilson. This lineup's first recording was backing, of all people, Paul Anka, on his first ever recording, a session paid for by Anka's father: [Excerpt: Paul Anka, "I Confess"] Lester Sill renamed the group The Sharps, and they started making records under that name, like "Six Months, Three Weeks, Two Days, One Hour": [Excerpt: The Sharps, "Six Months, Three Weeks, Two Days, One Hour"] They also backed their old bandmate Thurston Harris on his big hit "Little Bitty Pretty One": [Excerpt: Thurston Harris, "Little Bitty Pretty One"] Lester Sill started getting them backing vocal jobs -- it's them on "Rebel Rouser" by Duane Eddy: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Rebel Rouser"] They briefly renamed themselves the Crenshaws, and released a record of the old standard "Moonlight in Vermont", this was a Kim Fowley production, and their first work with him: [Excerpt: The Crenshaws, "Moonlight in Vermont"] They then renamed themselves the Rivingtons -- still with a lineup of Frazier, White, Harris, and Wilson, and Kim Fowley got them to start recording novelty songs, with the normal group of people that Fowley used on novelty records, like Gary Paxton and Gaynel Hodge. Their first record, "Papa Oom Mow Mow", made the top fifty on the charts: [Excerpt: The Rivingtons, "Papa Oom Mow Mow"] There followed a variety of records with similar backing vocals, of which my favourite is the Coasters-flavoured "Kickapoo Joy Juice": [Excerpt: The Rivingtons, "Kickapoo Joy Juice"] But the only one to have any success at all was "The Bird's the Word", which went to number fifty-two on the charts, and was their only R&B hit, making number twenty-seven on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: The Rivingtons, "The Bird's The Word"] Shortly after that, their songs moved from the world of LA R&B groups into the world of surf music,

This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021. Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast. If you want to get those, and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com/andrewhickey to sign up for a dollar a month or more. Click below for the transcript. (more…)

Episode 125 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Here Comes the Night", Them, the early career of Van Morrison, and the continuing success of Bert Berns. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Dirty Water" by the Standells. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I’ve created a Mixcloud playlist, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. I've used two biographies of Van Morrison. Van Morrison: Into the Music by Ritchie Yorke is so sycophantic towards Morrison that the word "hagiography" would be, if anything, an understatement. Van Morrison: No Surrender by Johnny Rogan, on the other hand, is the kind of book that talks in the introduction about how the author has had to avoid discussing certain topics because of legal threats from the subject. I also used information from the liner notes to The Complete Them 1964-1967, which as the title suggests is a collection of all the recordings the group made while Van Morrison was in the band. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to take a look at a band whose lead singer, sadly, is more controversial now than he was at the period we're looking at. I would normally not want to explicitly talk about current events upfront at the start of an episode, but Van Morrison has been in the headlines in the last few weeks for promoting dangerous conspiracy theories about covid, and has also been accused of perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes with a recent single. So I would like to take this opportunity just to say that no positive comments I make about the Van Morrison of 1965 in this episode should be taken as any kind of approval of the Van Morrison of 2021 -- and this should also be taken as read for one of the similarly-controversial subjects of next week's episode... Anyway, that aside, today we're going to take a look at the first classic rock and roll records made by a band from Northern Ireland, and at the links between the British R&B scene and the American Brill Building. We're going to look at Van Morrison, Bert Berns, and "Here Comes the Night" by Them: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] When we last looked at Bert Berns, he was just starting to gain some prominence in the East Coast recording scene with his productions for artists like Solomon Burke and the Isley Brothers. We've also, though it wasn't always made explicit, come across several of his productions when talking about other artists -- when Leiber and Stoller stopped working for Atlantic, Berns took over production of their artists, as well as all the other recordings he was making, and so many of the mid-sixties Drifters records we looked at in the episode on "Stand By Me" were Berns productions. But while he was producing soul classics in New York, Berns was also becoming aware of the new music coming from the United Kingdom -- in early 1963 he started receiving large royalty cheques for a cover version of his song "Twist and Shout" by some English band he'd never heard of. He decided that there was a market here for his songs, and made a trip to the UK, where he linked up with Dick Rowe at Decca. While most of the money Berns had been making from "Twist and Shout" had been from the Beatles' version, a big chunk of it had also come from Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, the band that Rowe had signed to Decca instead of the Beatles. After the Beatles became big, the Tremeloes used the Beatles' arrangement of "Twist and Shout", which had been released on an album and an EP but not a single, and had a top ten hit with their own version of it: [Excerpt: Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, "Twist and Shout"] Rowe was someone who kept an eye on the American market, and saw that Berns was a great source of potential hits. He brought Berns over to the UK, and linked him up with Larry Page, the manager who gave Rowe an endless supply of teen idols, and with Phil Solomon, an Irish manager who had been the publicist for the crooner Ruby Murray, and had recently brought Rowe the group The Bachelors, who had had a string of hits like "Charmaine": [Excerpt: The Bachelors, "Charmaine"] Page, Solomon, and Rowe were currently trying to promote something called "Brum Beat", as a Birmingham rival to Mersey beat, and so all the acts Berns worked with were from Birmingham. The most notable of these acts was one called Gerry Levene and the Avengers. Berns wrote and produced the B-side of that group's only si

This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021. Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast. If you want to get those, and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com/andrewhickey to sign up for a dollar a month or more. Click below for the transcript. (more…)

This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021. Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast. If you want to get those, and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com/andrewhickey to sign up for a dollar a month or more. Click below for the transcript. (more…)

This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021. Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast. If you want to get those, and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com/andrewhickey to sign up for a dollar a month or more. Click below for the transcript. In this week's main episode, we're taking our first trip to Jamaica, and having our first look at ska music. But of course, ska wasn't the only music to come out of the Caribbean, and calypso music had already had a great impact on the wider music world. Today we're going to look at a major R&B hit from 1963 that had its roots in a calypso song from decades earlier. We're going to look at the career of the great Trinidadian Calypsonian Roaring Lion, and the tragic story of Jimmy Soul, and "If You Wanna Be Happy": [Excerpt: Jimmy Soul, "If You Wanna Be Happy"] Jimmy Soul started his career as a gospel singer, but was signed to SPQR Records with a specific mandate -- sometimes Frank Guida, the producer for Gary "US" Bonds' hits, would come up with something that Bonds didn't want to record. When that happened, Soul got to sing them instead. This meant that Soul would often get saddled with novelty songs, like his first hit, "Twistin' Matilda", which managed to make number twenty-two in the charts: [Excerpt: Jimmy Soul, "Twistin' Matilda"] That was originally a Calypso song from the 1930s, and had been a hit for Harry Belafonte a few years earlier, in a non-Twist version. Soul recorded a follow-up, “When Matilda Comes Back”, but that had no success: [Excerpt: Jimmy Soul, “When Matilda Comes Back”] So they tried to repeat the formula, with was another 1930s calypso song that Bonds had rejected, this time a remake of a song from 1933, originally written and performed by the great Calypsonian Roaring Lion. Roaring Lion was one of the most important Calypsonians of the pre-war era, and wrote many classics of the genre, including his paeans to other singers like "The Four Mills Brothers": [Excerpt: Roaring Lion, "The Four Mills Brothers"] and "Bing Crosby": [Excerpt: Roaring Lion, "Bing Crosby"] Those of you who know Van Dyke Parks' album of calypso covers, Discover America, will probably recognise both those songs. "Ugly Woman" was another song by Roaring Lion, and it advised men to marry ugly women rather than beautiful ones, because an ugly woman was more likely to stay with her husband: [Excerpt: Roaring Lion, "Ugly Woman"] History does not relate what Mrs. Lion thought of that advice. Jimmy Soul's version, retitled "If You Wanna Be Happy", credited three writers along with Roaring Lion -- Frank Guida, Carmella Guida, and Joseph Royster -- though the song has very little difference from the original: [Excerpt: Jimmy Soul, "If You Wanna Be Happy"] The main difference between Soul's record and the original was a brief dialogue at the end, presumably included to give the other writers some reason for their credit: [Excerpt: Jimmy Soul, "If You Wanna Be Happy"] That dialogue was largely inspired by Bo Diddley's earlier "Say Man": [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Say Man"] "If You Wanna Be Happy" made number one on the Billboard charts, and made the top forty in the UK, where it was also covered by an instrumental group, Peter B's Looners: [Excerpt: Peter B's Looners, "If You Wanna Be Happy"] That group, with the addition of vocalists Beryl Marsden and Rod Stewart, would later morph into Shotgun Express, before the guitarist and drummer went on to form a blues band, and we'll be hearing more about Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood in a year or so. While "If You Wanna Be Happy" made number one, the follow-up was less successful, and I'm not going to excerpt it here. I did excerpt Wynonie Harris' "Bloodshot Eyes" in the main podcast, and had to think long and hard about including a song that trivialised domestic abuse the way that song does, but Jimmy Soul's next single, "Treat 'Em Tough", goes much further. It is essentially the same tune as "If You Wanna Be Happy", but rather than the dated but arguably humorous misogyny of advocating marrying an ugly woman, which is pretty much par for the course for 1930s humour, it just flat-out advocates beating up women to keep them in line. I won't excerpt that, and I don't suggest you seek it out. It's a quite vile record. That only went to number one hundred and eight, and Soul never had another hit, and joined the army. He became a drug addict, and died in prison in 1988, aged forty-seven. Roaring Lion had a rather happier ending, dying in 1999, aged ninety-one, after sixty-five successful years in the music business.

Transcript About a year ago I did a pledge week, to encourage people to back me on Patreon. This seemed relatively successful, so I'm going to do it again. For those who don't know, the podcast is supported by listeners pledging money on the crowdfunding site Patreon. Listeners can give $1 a month or more, and I use that to fund the project. They also get various other bonus things, like the ability to send me private messages, free copies of my books for those on higher tiers, and so on. Some of those bonuses haven't been that frequent in the last few months, as between the pandemic, various things in my personal life and health, and the disruption caused by a false DMCA claim, this has been the single most difficult six months of my life to date, as you can probably tell from the disrupted schedule recently, though I'm now trying to get back on track with everything. But one bonus they always get, and have for two years, is a ten-minute or so extra podcast along with every regular episode. Anyone backing the Patreon at a dollar a month or more gets access to those as they come out, plus to the ninety or so old ones I've already done. So this week, like last year, I'm going to give everyone a taste of what the backers get -- every day for a week I'm going to upload an old Patreon bonus episode, in the hope that some of you like what you hear enough to sign up for the Patreon. However, I want to make something very clear -- I only want you to sign up *if you can afford to*. New signups mean I can afford to do this podcast without having to add advertising and so on, but I know that a lot of people are having financial problems right now. If you have enough money after looking after yourself and your family, and after any charitable giving and so on to actual important causes, that you feel able to throw a dollar a month to someone talking about music, great. If you don't, then please don't feel obliged, and the podcast will continue to be free. The next proper episode of the podcast, on "Here Comes the Night" by Them, will be up in a day or two -- I'm recording it right after I upload this and the first of the Pledge Week episodes, which will be on "If You Wanna Be Happy" by Jimmy Soul, and it'll be up as soon as it's edited. In the meantime, enjoy the free bonuses.

Episode 124 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “People Get Ready”, the Impressions, and the early career of Curtis Mayfield. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on “I’m Henry VIII I Am” by Herman’s Hermits. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode 123 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", the Righteous Brothers, Shindig! and "blue-eyed soul". Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum I say the music in the bridge drops down to “just the bass”. Obviously there is also a celeste on that section. Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of Righteous Brothers songs. A lot of resources were used for this episode. Time of My Life: A Righteous Brother's Memoir is Bill Medley's autobiography. Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson is a good overview of the Brill Building scene, and I used it for bits about how Mann and Weil wrote their songs. I’ve referred to two biographies of Spector in this episode, Phil Spector: Out of His Head by Richard Williams and He’s a Rebel by Mark Ribkowsky. This two-CD set contains all of the Righteous Brothers recordings excerpted here, all their hits, and a selection of Medley and Hatfield's solo work. It would be an absolutely definitive set, except for the Spector-era tracks being in stereo. There are many compilations available with some of the hits Spector produced, but I recommend getting Back to Mono, a four-CD overview of his career containing all the major singles put out by Philles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to look at a record that according to BMI is the most-played song of the twentieth century on American radio, and continued to be the most played song for the first two decades of the twenty-first as well, a record that was arguably the artistic highpoint of Phil Spector's career, and certainly the commercial highpoint for everyone involved. We're going to look at "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" by the Righteous Brothers: [Excerpt: The Righteous Brothers, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"] In this episode we're going to take one of our first looks at an American act who owed their success to TV. We've seen these before, of course -- we've talked in passing about Ricky Nelson, and there was an episode on Chubby Checker -- but there have been relatively few. But as we pass into the mid-sixties, and television becomes an even more important part of the culture, we'll see more of this. In 1964, ABC TV had a problem. Two years before, they'd started a prime-time folk TV show called Hootenanny: [Excerpt: Jack Linkletter introducing Hootenanny] That programme was the source of some controversy -- it blacklisted Pete Seeger and a few other Communist folk musicians, and while Seeger himself argued against a boycott, other musicians were enraged, in part because the term Hootenanny had been popularised by Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and other Communist musicians. As a result, several of the top names in the folk scene, like Joan Baez and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, refused to appear on the show. But plenty of performers did appear on the show, usually those at the poppier end of the spectrum, like the New Christie Minstrels: [Excerpt: The New Christie Minstrels, "This Train (live on Hootenanny)"] That lineup of the New Christie Minstrels featured, among others, Barry McGuire, Gene Clark, and Larry Ramos, all of whom we should be seeing in future episodes. But that in itself says something about the programme's problems, because in 1964, the music industry changed drastically. Suddenly, folk music was out, and rock music was in. Half the younger musicians who appeared on Hootenanny -- like those three, but also John Sebastian, John Phillips, Cass Elliot, and others -- all decided they were going to give up singing mass harmony versions of "Go Tell it on the Mountain" accompanied by banjo, and instead they were going to get themselves some electric guitars. And the audience, likewise, decided that they'd rather see the Beatles and the Stones and the Dave Clark Five than the New Christie Minstrels, the Limeliters, and the Chad Mitchell Trio, if that was all the same to the TV companies. And so ABC needed a new prime-time music variety show, and they needed it in a hurry. But there was a problem -- when the music industry is shifting dramatically and all of a sudden it's revolving around a style of music that is based on a whole other continent, what do you do to make a TV show featuring that music? Well, you turn to Jack Good, of course. For those of you who haven't listened to all the earlier episodes, Jack Good had basically invented rock and roll TV, and he'd invented it in the UK, at a time when rock and roll was

Episode 122 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is a double-length (over an hour) look at “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke, at Cooke's political and artistic growth, and at the circumstances around his death. This one has a long list of content warnings at the beginning of the episode, for good reason... Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "My Guy" by Mary Wells. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. For this episode, he also did the re-edit of the closing theme. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of songs by one artist. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick’s work, it’s an essential book if you’re even slightly interested in the subject. Information on Allen Klein comes from Fred Goodman's book on Klein. The Netflix documentary I mention can be found here. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke’s music for the beginner, and the only one to contain recordings from all four labels (Specialty, Keen, RCA, and Tracey) he recorded for. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start this episode, a brief acknowledgement -- Lloyd Price plays a minor role in this story, and I heard as I was in the middle of writing it that he had died on May the third, aged eighty-eight. Price was one of the great pioneers of rock and roll -- I first looked at him more than a hundred episodes ago, back in episode twelve -- and he continued performing live right up until the start of the coronavirus outbreak in March last year. He'll be missed. Today we're going to look at one of the great soul protest records of all time, a record that was the high point in the career of its singer and songwriter, and which became a great anthem of the Civil Rights movement. But we're also going to look at the dark side of its creator, and the events that led to his untimely death. More than most episodes of the podcast, this requires a content warning. Indeed, it requires more than just content warnings. Those warnings are necessary -- this episode will deal with not only a murder, but also sexual violence, racialised violence, spousal abuse, child sexual abuse, drug use and the death of a child, as well as being about a song which is in itself about the racism that pervaded American society in the 1960s as it does today. This is a story from which absolutely nobody comes out well, which features very few decent human beings, and which I find truly unpleasant to write about. But there is something else that I want to say, before getting into the episode -- more than any other episode I have done, and I think more than any other episode that I am *going* to do, this is an episode where my position as a white British man born fourteen years after Sam Cooke's death might mean that my perspective is flawed in ways that might actually make it impossible for me to tell the story properly, and in ways that might mean that my telling of the story is doing a grave, racialised, injustice. Were this song and this story not so important to the ongoing narrative, I would simply avoid telling it altogether, but there is simply no way for me to avoid it and tell the rest of the story without doing equally grave injustices. So I will say this upfront. There are two narratives about Sam Cooke's death -- the official one, and a more conspiratorial one. Everything I know about the case tells me that the official account is the one that is actually correct, and *as far as I can tell*, I have good reason for thinking that way. But here's the thing. The other narrative is one that is held by a lot of people who knew Cooke, and they claim that the reason their narrative is not the officially-accepted one is because of racism. I do not think that is the case myself. In fact, all the facts I have seen about the case lead to the conclusion that the official narrative is correct. But I am deeply, deeply, uncomfortable with saying that. Because I have an obligation to be honest, but I also have an obligation not to talk over Black people about their experiences of racism. So what I want to say now, before even starting the episode, is this. Listen to what I have to say, by all means, but then watch the Netflix documentary Remastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke, and *listen* to what the people saying otherwise have to say. I can only give my own perspective, and my perspective is far more likely to be flawed here than in any other episode of this podcast. I am truly uncomfortable writing and recording this episode, and were this any other record at all, I would have just skipp

Episode one hundred and twenty-one of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “The Leader of the Pack", the rise and fall of Red Bird Records, and the end of the death disc trend. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "California Sun" by the Rivieras. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I used a different Shangri-Las compilation for this episode, but Myrmidons of Melodrama is generally considered the best collection of their work, and while it's been out of print for a while it's coincidentally getting reissued tomorrow. Two of my major sources for this episode were actually the liner notes for two CDs I used -- Sophisticated Boom-Boom: The Shadow Morton Story contains a good selection of Morton's work (though oddly not "Leader of the Pack", his single most famous record), while The Red Bird Story is an excellent three-CD set of the best work put out on the label and its subsidiaries. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller’s side of the story well, while I cross-checked their telling of the story of the meeting that ended Red Bird with The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun by Robert Greenfield. And most of the biographical information about the group came from this thesis. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to look at one of the great death discs of all time -- a record that was the epitome of the genre, and one that rendered it more or less defunct, because nothing was ever going to top that record. We're also going to look at the career of a group that are often called the quintessential girl group, but who despised the term, and at how the Mafia shut down a great record label. We're going to look at "Leader of the Pack" by the Shangri-Las: [Excerpt: The Shangri-Las, "Leader of the Pack"] To tell the story of the Shangri-Las, we need to return for the last time to Leiber and Stoller. After their time at Atlantic, working with the Drifters and the Coasters, the duo had had a falling out with the Ertegun brothers and Jerry Wexler over what they considered to be unpaid royalties, and spent a couple of years less successfully working at United Artists, but they'd got the urge to start up their own label again, like the one they'd run in the fifties, Spark Records. Their main reason for doing this was financial -- while they'd produced most of the hit records they'd written, the only actual money they made from any of them came from the songwriting royalties they got, which came to about two cents per record, split between them. As Leiber put it, "After a while, we got to thinking, why should we settle for two cents when we could have our own record and get twenty-one cents?" They started a label called Tiger Records, and their first release was by Tippie and the Clovers -- one of two groups that had formed around ex-members of the classic doo-wop group the Clovers when they'd split a couple of years earlier. Leiber and Stoller wrote and produced it, but the record went nowhere: [Excerpt: Tippie and the Clovers, "Bossa Nova Baby"] The record wasn't a dead loss though -- a couple of months afterwards, Elvis recorded a soundalike cover version. Elvis wasn't allowed to work directly with Leiber and Stoller any more, because Colonel Parker saw them as a threat to his domination of Elvis, but he still liked their material and would record it. Elvis' version featured in the film Fun In Acapulco, and made the top twenty: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Bossa Nova Baby"] So they were still making hits, but still making only their two cents a record -- less, actually, because Elvis always took a cut of any song he recorded. After Tippie and the Clovers' record flopped, Leiber and Stoller put their label on hold. A year later, they started another label, Daisy, and announced it with a blaze of publicity. They signed writing and production deals with Barry and Greenwich, Bacharach and David, Robert Bateman, and more, and were going to write and produce stuff themselves as well. The first record on Daisy Records, "Big Bad World" by Cathy Saint, seemed like a likely winner: [Excerpt, Cathy Saint, "Big Bad World"] It might have been a success, except that it came out the week that Kennedy was killed, and the radio stations dropped anything remotely upbeat. Daisy only put out four singles in total, because the Kennedy assassination stalled its momentum c

This week's episode, the first on the new host, looks at "A Hard Day's Night", and the making of the film that would define music cinema for decades to come. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Tobacco Road" by the Nashville Teens. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I have created a Mixcloud playlist containing every song heard in this episode (though not the Goon Show, Bridge Over the River Wye, or A Show Called Fred recordings, all of which would take up half an hour each) I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them, but the ones I specifically referred to while writing this episode were: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For material on the making of the film, I referred to A Hard Day's Night by Ray Morton, and Getting Away With It by Steven Soderbergh, a book which is in part a lengthy set of conversations between Soderbergh and Richard Lester. Information on the Goons came from various sources, but mostly from The Goon Show Companion by Roger Wilmut and Jimmy Grafton. A Hard Day's Night is available on DVD, while the music is of course on this album. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today, we're going to look at a song that has one of the most striking opening chords of any song ever recorded, the title song to a film that was described on its release as "the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals", and which captured the Beatles at the height of their early success. We're going to look at how Beatlemania hit America, and at how the Beatles went from being merely a very popular pop group to being a cultural phenomenon that changed the world. And most importantly, we're going to look at how they changed how music is portrayed on screen forever. We're going to look at "A Hard Day's Night": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "A Hard Day's Night"] The sixteenth of January, 1964, seemed at first to be the first misstep in the Beatles' career. After their run of Christmas shows, they'd travelled to Paris to play the Olympia -- the same venue where, a little over two years earlier, John and Paul had seen Vince Taylor play and tried unsuccessfully to blag their own way on to the stage.  This time, they were topping the bill, for the first of eighteen nights in a row -- or at least they were equally billed with Sylvie Vartan and Trini Lopez, with none of the promotional material actually saying who was highest billed. But they went down something like a lead balloon, with the audience, mostly made up of VIPs there for opening night, not responding to them, and with their amps failing three times during the show (George Harrison apparently suspected sabotage). It was the first time in almost three years that they'd faced an unappreciative audience, and they were apparently despondent after the show. They were despondent, at least, until they got a telegram after the show, giving them the good news -- "I Want To Hold Your Hand" had jumped up forty-three places on the Cashbox chart. They were number one in America. It was already planned, of course, that they would be going to the US in February to make three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, but now they knew they were big over there. After that, the shows in Paris became somewhat easier for the group, and while the press for the first night was fairly awful, once they started playing to their own audiences rather than VIPs they won the French crowds over as well as any other audience they'd had. While they were in France, they also made what would be their only studio recordings outside London. They'd been asked by the German branch of EMI to record German-language versions of "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand", as at the time it was felt that they didn't have much chance of selling in Germany with English-language recordings. While in the studio, they also recorded a song of Paul's, which became their next single -- the first to only feature a single voice: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Can't Buy Me Love"] But while Paul took the lead on that single, John was dominating in the writing for the duo, who were also working on writing their next album while they were in Paris. That album would be their first to consist entirely of original songs, and the only one to

A quick admin note about why the podcast has changed hosts. Click through for the transcript. Transcript This is a brief admin podcast to explain why a new episode of the podcast won't be up for a few days, why the podcast wasn't available for a couple of days, and also why some of you might have seen all the old episodes turn up again in your podcast app. On Monday, i woke up to find that the Recording Industry Association of America had made a DMCA complaint against episode 112, the episode on "She Loves You", claiming that it violated copyright law. Now, of course, the podcast does not violate copyright law -- everything I do is within fair use rules for the US and fair dealing rules for the EU and UK -- but the DMCA is a stupid law that says that as soon as a complaint is received the host company has to take down a file until a counterclaim is made. I'd expected this kind of thing to happen sooner or later -- while I stay clearly within the bounds of copyright law, the RIAA is known for sending bogus takedown notices, and I have always been willing to reedit episodes as soon as a complaint was made, just to avoid hassle. It's something I factored into my plans, as a tiny podcaster doing a music history podcast. So it would have been fair if podbean had taken down that single episode -- and I did an edited version removing all the music clips, so it could be restored. But instead of taking down that one episode, they took down the entire podcast, and refused to put it back online even though I'd reedited the one episode complained about. They also refused to answer my emails, kept replying to my tweets on the subject and deleting the replies when other people pointed out the absurdity of what they were saying, and eventually became actively abusive. It took two days of social media pressure for them to reverse their decision and put the podcast back, but obviously I can't keep using them. So I have migrated the podcast to wordpress.com . The feed has already migrated here, and over the next few days I'll be sorting out the website and getting the domain redirected. Wordpress, unlike most hosting companies, takes freedom of speech seriously, and rejects invalid DMCA claims -- and when it does receive a valid one it only takes down the infringing file, not the entire site.  Dealing with Podbean's incompetence and buffoonery has taken two full days -- the days I had planned to spend recording and editing the next podcast episode -- and I am going to have to spend more time getting the new website into shape, because images and formatting from old posts have been lost in the import. I also have a family commitment this weekend, so I won't be able to get the new episode recorded until Sunday night -- hopefully it will be up on Monday or Tuesday, and then I'll be back to a regular posting schedule, all else being well. Anyway, everything is pretty much sorted now, but I would advise that anyone who worries that their podcast might receive a bogus or malicious DMCA complaint use literally any podcast host in the world except Podbean, unless you really enjoy having your blood pressure raised to dangerously high levels. For the next couple of days things might look a little shoddy on the website and so on, until things are totally sorted, so bear with me.  Thanks for listening.

Episode one hundred and nineteen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks, and the song that first took distorted guitar to number one. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “G.T.O.” by Ronny and the Daytonas. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode 118 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Do-Wah-Diddy-Diddy” by Manfred Mann, and how a jazz group with a blues singer had one of the biggest bubblegum pop hits of the sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Walk on By” by Dionne Warwick. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode one hundred and seventeen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Don’t Worry Baby” by the Beach Boys, and how the years 1963 and 1964 saw a radical evolution in the sound and subject matter of the Beach Boys’ work. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “You’re No Good” by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode one hundred and sixteen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Where Did Our Love Go?” by the Supremes, and how the “no-hit Supremes” became the biggest girl group in history. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “She’s Not There” by the Zombies. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode one hundred and fifteen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals, at the way the US and UK music scenes were influencing each other in 1964, and at the fraught question of attribution when reworking older songs. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Memphis” by Johnny Rivers. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

This week’s episode looks at “My Boy Lollipop” and the origins of ska music. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “If You Wanna Be Happy” by Jimmy Soul. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

This week’s episode looks at “Needles and Pins”, and the story of the second-greatest band to come out of Liverpool in the sixties, The Searchers. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a sixteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Farmer John” by Don and Dewey. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

This week’s episode looks at “She Loves You”, the Beatles in 1963, and the start of Beatlemania in the UK. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Glad All Over” by the Dave Clark Five. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode one hundred and eleven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Heat Wave” by Martha and the Vandellas, and the beginnings of Holland-Dozier-Holland. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “My Boyfriend’s Back” by the Angels. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode 110 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Be My Baby”, and at the career of the Ronettes and Ronnie Spector.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Little Saint Nick” by the Beach Boys. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

I just heard the sad news that Gerry Marsden, of Gerry and the Pacemakers, has died today aged seventy-eight. As the latest episode of the podcast is late due to personal issues, I thought I’d make this available to the general public – this is a ten-minute Patreon bonus episode I did back in October, on Gerry and the Pacemakers, so it’s here as a little tribute. He’ll be missed. (more…)

Episode one hundred and nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, the UK folk scene and the civil rights movement. Those of you who get angry at me whenever I say anything that acknowledges the existence of racism may want to skip this one. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by the Crystals. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

The third in the occasional series of ten-minute looks at topics in the news during the time we’re looking at covers the Kennedy assassination. Click through for the transcript: (more…)

Episode 107 of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs looks at “Surf City” and the career of Jan and Dean, including a Pop Symphony, accidental conspiracy to kidnap, and a career that both started and ended with attempts to get out of being drafted. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Hey Little Cobra” by the Rip Chords. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode 106 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen, and the story of how a band that had already split up accidentally had one of the biggest hits of the sixties and sparked a two-year FBI investigation. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “It’s My Party” by Lesley Gore. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode 105 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Green Onions”, and how a company started by a Western Swing fiddle player ended up making the most important soul records of the sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “He’s So Fine” by the Chiffons. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode 104 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “He’s a Rebel”, and how a song recorded by the Blossoms was released under the name of the Crystals. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

This month’s ten-minute extra bonus episode on news events at the time we’re looking at is on the Profumo Affair, and how a sex scandal transformed Britain. Click through to the full post to read a transcript. (more…)

Episode one hundred and three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Hitch-Hike” by Marvin Gaye, and the early career of one of Motown’s defining artists. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Any Other Way” by Jackie Shane. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode one hundred and two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Twist and Shout” by the Isley Brothers, and the early career of Bert Berns. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “How Do You Do It?” by Gerry and the Pacemakers. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode 101 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is the first one of the podcast's third year. This one looks at "Telstar" by the Tornados, and the tragic life of Joe Meek, Britain's first great pop auteur. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Apologies for the lateness of this one -- my two-week break got extended when my computer broke down. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Wipe Out" by the Surfaris. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.  Most of the information here comes from The Legendary Joe Meek: The Telstar Man by John Repsch. Some bits come from Clem Cattini: My Life Through the Eye of a Tornado. This compilation contains most of the important singles Meek produced, with the notable exceptions of the Tornados' singles. This, meanwhile, contains the early records he engineered before going into production. This is probably the best compilation of the Tornados' music available. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the third year of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, and welcome to the future! Although for this particular future we're actually going backwards a couple of months. This episode and the next one are both about records that were released a little before "Love Me Do", which the most recent episode covered, and that's something I should point out -- the podcast is never going to be absolutely chronological, and in this case it made sense to tell that story before these ones. Before we start this episode, I need to give warnings for a whole lot of different things, because we're looking at one of the most tragic stories we'll see during the course of this podcast. This story contains discussion of occultism, severe mental illness, legalised homophobia,  an unsolved probably homophobic murder, and a murder-suicide. I am going to try to deal with all those subjects as sensitively as possible, but if you might become distressed by hearing about those things, you might want to skip this episode, or at least read the transcript before listening. I also want to make something very clear right now -- this episode deals with a mentally ill man who commits a murder. He did not commit that murder *because* he was mentally ill. Mental illness is far more likely to make someone the victim of a crime than the perpetrator, and I have known many, many people who have had the same symptoms but who have not committed such awful acts. It is impossible to talk about the events in this episode without the risk of increasing stigma for mentally ill people, but I hope by saying this I can reduce that risk at least somewhat. Today we're going to look at the first British rock and roll record to make number one in the USA, and at the career of the first independent record producer and engineer in Britain. We're going to look at the sad life and tragic end of Joe Meek, and at "Telstar" by the Tornados: [Excerpt: The Tornados, "Telstar"] Joe Meek is someone who has become something of a legend among music lovers, and he's someone whose music is more talked about than listened to. People talk about him as a genius, but rather fewer of them explain what it was that he did that was so impressive. This is partly because, more than much of the music of the era, it requires context to appreciate. Meek was a producer above all else -- he had no real knowledge of music, and had no ear for singers. What Meek did know was sounds, and how to achieve sounds in the recording studio that could not be achieved anywhere else. Meek had, from a very young age, been fascinated by the possibilities of both sound and electronics. He had experimented with both as a child, and when he'd moved to London he'd quickly found himself jobs where he could make use of that -- he'd started out as a TV repairman, but quickly moved on to working at IBC, one of the few independent studios in existence. There he was given the job of assistant engineer on a Radio Luxembourg show that was recorded live in theatres up and down the country -- he had to plug in all the mics and so on. He soon moved on to editing the tape recordings, and then to working the controls himself. As well as being main engineer on the radio show, though, he was also still an assistant engineer in the studio for music sessions, and for a long time that was all he was doing. However, he kept trying to get more involved in recording the music, and eventually to shut him up the studio boss gave him the chance to be the main engineer at a session -

This is the first of a new monthly feature that will run alongside the main podcast — once a month I’ll be doing a ten-minute bonus episode looking at non-music news from the time we’re covering in the podcast. These can be skipped if you’re only interested in the music, but add valuable context about the culture in which those records were made. This month’s is on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Year three of the podcast starts in a few days’ time, with “Telstar”. Click through for the episode transcript: (more…)

This week there are two episodes of the podcast going up, both of them longer than normal. This one, episode one hundred, is the hundredth-episode special and is an hour and a half long. It looks at the early career of the Beatles, and at the three recordings of “Love Me Do”. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Deltones. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

This week there are two episiodes of the podcast going up, both of them longer than normal. This one, episode ninety-nine, is on “Surfin’ Safari” by the Beach Boys, and the group’s roots in LA, and is fifty minutes long. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Deltones. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode ninety-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I’ve Just Fallen For Someone” by Adam Faith, and is our final look at the pre-Beatles British pop scene. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “San Francisco Bay Blues” by Jesse Fuller. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode ninety-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Song To Woody” by Bob Dylan, and at the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Sherry” by the Four Seasons. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode ninety-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “The Loco-Motion” by Little Eva, and how a demo by Carole King’s babysitter became one of the biggest hits of the sixties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Duke of Earl” by Gene Chandler. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

Episode ninety-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You Better Move On”, and the sad story of Arthur Alexander. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Mother-In-Law” by Ernie K-Doe. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)