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Post by jk on Jun 9, 2020 15:08:15 GMT
How about this one from Clarence "Frogman" Henry - "Ain't Got No Home" from 1956. The song was covered by Buddy Holly, The Band, and The New York Dolls!
I have The Band's wonderful version on Moondog Matinee. The Frogman nails it though.
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Post by Kapitan on Jun 9, 2020 16:24:22 GMT
In 1936, blues legend Robert Johnson recorded "They're Red Hot," a song that strayed from most of his material by being more a dance tune than a real blues. Even the chord progression screams pop: I-vi-ii-V (I).
The original, as was the case of all of Johnson's music, was just him.
Here is a 1999 version by guitar wizard Ritchie Kotzen in which he show serious jazz chops in the solo. It's closer to how I imagine an ideal version of the song would go, fleshed out with a band.
Eric Clapton treated it similarly in his 2004 version, with a bigger (crack) band including Billy Preston on keys, Steve Gadd on drums, and Nathan East on bass, Jeff Portnoy on harmonica, and Doyle Bramhall joining Clapton on guitar. (Slide guitar solo is Bramhall.)
It has also been recorded by several other musicians ranging from the almost comical, sped-up version by the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the initially painfully slow version by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.
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Post by lonelysummer on Jun 9, 2020 19:32:15 GMT
How about this one from Clarence "Frogman" Henry - "Ain't Got No Home" from 1956. The song was covered by Buddy Holly, The Band, and The New York Dolls!
Yup, ,that's the one that gave him his name...and I would write more, but i'm being attacked by a house cat!
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Post by jk on Jun 10, 2020 12:26:32 GMT
As a brief diversion, these are two views of how things were between the end of "classic" rock and roll and the arrival of The Beatles. Some would call that period "the doldrum years". I couldn't agree less. First Lemmy, outspoken as always: "Rock’n’roll sounded like music from another planet. The first time around, we had people like Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis--all them people. And they were gone within two years. Chuck Berry was in jail. Jerry Lee’s career had been destroyed by the British press. Elvis was in the f***ing army. ... And then we got Bobby Rydell and all them c***s. It took us a couple of years to get rid of them, then the Beatles showed up. That was all right." And this is from Dave Marsh's book about the song "Louie Louie": "[R]ock faltered and 'died' in 1959 and 1960. You probably know the autopsy findings: Elvis went into the Army, Chuck Berry was sent to jail, Little Richard sent himself back to church, Jerry Lee Lewis was banned for marrying his 13-year-old cousin, the plane carrying Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper went down, and (perhaps most damaging of all) Alan Freed and a host of other deejays were ruined in the payola scandal. So the Big Beat ceased to dominate the airwaves--until 1964, when the Beatles and the blessed British Invasion arrived. "It didn't happen that way. Don't take my word for it. Ask Berry Gordy and the gang at Motown. Ask the Beach Boys. Ask the Four Seasons. ... The facts are right there in the charts. The post-plane-crash hits of 1959-1963 included 'Stagger Lee,' 'Kansas City,' 'Only the Lonely,' 'Quarter to Three,' 'Heat Wave,' 'What'd I Say,' 'Da Doo Ron Ron,' 'The Wanderer,' 'Shout,' 'Party Lights,' 'He's So Fine,' 'Duke of Earl,' 'Stay,' 'Surfin' U.S.A.,' 'Blue Moon,' 'Hit the Road, Jack,' 'Do You Love Me,' 'Green Onions,' 'Wipe Out,' 'The Loco-Motion' . . . and that's without dipping below the Top 10 or including any posthumous smashes for Buddy and his brethren, or any of the absentee best-sellers copped by Elvis and Chuck and Richard or, for that matter, any disc whose tempo is less than indisputably rockin'. In places like Motown or the Pacific Northwest, beat music still kicked hard as ever."
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Post by lonelysummer on Jun 11, 2020 19:46:48 GMT
As a brief diversion, these are two views of how things were between the end of "classic" rock and roll and the arrival of The Beatles. Some would call that period "the doldrum years". I couldn't agree less. First Lemmy, outspoken as always: "Rock’n’roll sounded like music from another planet. The first time around, we had people like Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis--all them people. And they were gone within two years. Chuck Berry was in jail. Jerry Lee’s career had been destroyed by the British press. Elvis was in the f***ing army. ... And then we got Bobby Rydell and all them c***s. It took us a couple of years to get rid of them, then the Beatles showed up. That was all right." And this is from Dave Marsh's book about the song "Louie Louie": "[R]ock faltered and 'died' in 1959 and 1960. You probably know the autopsy findings: Elvis went into the Army, Chuck Berry was sent to jail, Little Richard sent himself back to church, Jerry Lee Lewis was banned for marrying his 13-year-old cousin, the plane carrying Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper went down, and (perhaps most damaging of all) Alan Freed and a host of other deejays were ruined in the payola scandal. So the Big Beat ceased to dominate the airwaves--until 1964, when the Beatles and the blessed British Invasion arrived. "It didn't happen that way. Don't take my word for it. Ask Berry Gordy and the gang at Motown. Ask the Beach Boys. Ask the Four Seasons. ... The facts are right there in the charts. The post-plane-crash hits of 1959-1963 included 'Stagger Lee,' 'Kansas City,' 'Only the Lonely,' 'Quarter to Three,' 'Heat Wave,' 'What'd I Say,' 'Da Doo Ron Ron,' 'The Wanderer,' 'Shout,' 'Party Lights,' 'He's So Fine,' 'Duke of Earl,' 'Stay,' 'Surfin' U.S.A.,' 'Blue Moon,' 'Hit the Road, Jack,' 'Do You Love Me,' 'Green Onions,' 'Wipe Out,' 'The Loco-Motion' . . . and that's without dipping below the Top 10 or including any posthumous smashes for Buddy and his brethren, or any of the absentee best-sellers copped by Elvis and Chuck and Richard or, for that matter, any disc whose tempo is less than indisputably rockin'. In places like Motown or the Pacific Northwest, beat music still kicked hard as ever." Yeah, Lemmy's take on things was the party line for many years. I subscribed to that as a teen, because it's what I was told, but it turns out, that period had many, many great pop, soul, and rock and roll records. The Everlys were having hits right up till 62 or 63 - oh, and that's another "party line" that I had to find out on my own was wrong. You're supposed to love everything the Evs recorded at Cadence, and hate the Warner Bros years. Fact is, I LOVE those early 60's WB records - Cathy's Clown, So Sad, Lucille, That's Old Fashioned, Temptation, Walk Right Back, Crying in the Rain, Made to Love - I love the bigger production sound, I love that they weren't content to just stay with one sound. I think a lot of people have come around on early 60's Elvis, too - no, he wasn't the rebel rocker any more, although he could still do that when he wanted to - I Feel So Bad, Little Sister, A Mess of Blues; but man! Listen to what an amazing ballad singer he had become. That may have been the peak of his vocal powers. And Marsh is right about the Pacific Northwest. You would never know rock and roll had died by listening to the stuff coming out of the NW - great records like Tall Cool One by the Wailers, David's Mood by Dave Lewis, Like Long Hair by Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Ventures records.
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Post by jk on Jun 12, 2020 11:29:55 GMT
Yeah, Lemmy's take on things was the party line for many years. I subscribed to that as a teen, because it's what I was told, but it turns out, that period had many, many great pop, soul, and rock and roll records. The Everlys were having hits right up till 62 or 63 - oh, and that's another "party line" that I had to find out on my own was wrong. You're supposed to love everything the Evs recorded at Cadence, and hate the Warner Bros years. Fact is, I LOVE those early 60's WB records - Cathy's Clown, So Sad, Lucille, That's Old Fashioned, Temptation, Walk Right Back, Crying in the Rain, Made to Love - I love the bigger production sound, I love that they weren't content to just stay with one sound. I think a lot of people have come around on early 60's Elvis, too - no, he wasn't the rebel rocker any more, although he could still do that when he wanted to - I Feel So Bad, Little Sister, A Mess of Blues; but man! Listen to what an amazing ballad singer he had become. That may have been the peak of his vocal powers. And Marsh is right about the Pacific Northwest. You would never know rock and roll had died by listening to the stuff coming out of the NW - great records like Tall Cool One by the Wailers, David's Mood by Dave Lewis, Like Long Hair by Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Ventures records. Ooohh! The ones marked in bold are massive favourites of mine. "Temptation" is one of those wonderfully strange, slightly spooky early '60s songs. It scared the life out of me when I first heard it one evening as a pre-teen... And in my view Elvis never kicked harder than in "Little Sister"--what a powerhouse of a song! And "A Mess of Blues" used to be in my now-defunct band's repertoire. As for the Northwest, my favourite band from there is The Sonics, Tacoma's wild boys, whose own savage take on "Louie Louie" has been described as so underdeveloped that it still has gills and fins: I was holidaying on an island off the West African coast a few years back when to my astonishment I bumped into someone wearing a Sonics T-shirt! He said he'd seen them in NL not long before and they were as good as ever. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sonics
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Post by jk on Jun 13, 2020 8:54:54 GMT
Now this is a thread I can really warm to! Being a "Louie Louie" freak, I bought The Fabulous Wailers At The Castle (1961) to get a whiff of this seminal garage band in a live setting. Besides being an extraordinary document, it brings together some amazing talents who are all but forgotten today, most notably "teenage belter" Gail Harris and vocalist Rockin' Robin Roberts, who like the composer Borodin was a chemist by trade! Roberts' ad-libbed shriek before the solo in their then newly rocked-up version of "Louie Louie" ("Okay, let's give it to 'em, right now!") has passed into legend thanks to The Kingsmen's hit version. RIP the entire original Wailers, not least Rockin' Robin, who was killed aged 27 in a car crash. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockin%27_Robin_Roberts
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jun 13, 2020 14:11:02 GMT
How about this guy? Trivia question...Which Beach Boys' album has two covers by the same artist? 15 Big Ones - "Palisades Park" and "Tallahassie Lassie" by Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon!
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Post by jk on Jun 13, 2020 20:42:23 GMT
lonelysummer mentioned "Temptation" by the Everlys. And here it is. Imagine hearing this for the first time as a kid fading in and out on a late night radio station in the dark:
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Post by jk on Jun 15, 2020 11:46:34 GMT
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Post by Kapitan on Jun 15, 2020 12:01:52 GMT
That's a great one, jk. Orbison unquestionably has one of the greatest voices in rock and roll / pop music history. I don't think he gets nearly the popular credit he deserves.
And it just slips in for the topic's "pre-Beach Boys years" criterion ... barely! Just a matter of months. But whatever counts, counts.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jun 15, 2020 12:14:08 GMT
And, some early Jan & Dean:
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Post by lonelysummer on Jun 15, 2020 20:42:42 GMT
Yeah, Lemmy's take on things was the party line for many years. I subscribed to that as a teen, because it's what I was told, but it turns out, that period had many, many great pop, soul, and rock and roll records. The Everlys were having hits right up till 62 or 63 - oh, and that's another "party line" that I had to find out on my own was wrong. You're supposed to love everything the Evs recorded at Cadence, and hate the Warner Bros years. Fact is, I LOVE those early 60's WB records - Cathy's Clown, So Sad, Lucille, That's Old Fashioned, Temptation, Walk Right Back, Crying in the Rain, Made to Love - I love the bigger production sound, I love that they weren't content to just stay with one sound. I think a lot of people have come around on early 60's Elvis, too - no, he wasn't the rebel rocker any more, although he could still do that when he wanted to - I Feel So Bad, Little Sister, A Mess of Blues; but man! Listen to what an amazing ballad singer he had become. That may have been the peak of his vocal powers. And Marsh is right about the Pacific Northwest. You would never know rock and roll had died by listening to the stuff coming out of the NW - great records like Tall Cool One by the Wailers, David's Mood by Dave Lewis, Like Long Hair by Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Ventures records. Ooohh! The ones marked in bold are massive favourites of mine. "Temptation" is one of those wonderfully strange, slightly spooky early '60s songs. It scared the life out of me when I first heard it one evening as a pre-teen... And in my view Elvis never kicked harder than in "Little Sister"--what a powerhouse of a song! And "A Mess of Blues" used to be in my now-defunct band's repertoire. As for the Northwest, my favourite band from there is The Sonics, Tacoma's wild boys, whose own savage take on "Louie Louie" has been described as so underdeveloped that it still has gills and fins: I was holidaying on an island off the West African coast a few years back when to my astonishment I bumped into someone wearing a Sonics T-shirt! He said he'd seen them in NL not long before and they were as good as ever. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sonics I saw one of the Sonics reunion concerts a few years ago in Tacoma, and i gotta tell you, that was the loudest FUCKING concert i've ever been to! (apologies to Fletcher from Whiplash, lol). Saw the Wailers many times in their final years; still hard to accept that i will never see Rich, Kent, and Buck on stage again.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jun 15, 2020 22:25:38 GMT
When Elvis performed "Little Sister" with "Get Back" in the early 1970's, he and the band cooked! Jerry Scheff from L.A. Woman fame on bass:
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Post by jk on Jun 16, 2020 9:12:19 GMT
I saw one of the Sonics reunion concerts a few years ago in Tacoma, and i gotta tell you, that was the loudest FUCKING concert i've ever been to! (apologies to Fletcher from Whiplash, lol). Saw the Wailers many times in their final years; still hard to accept that i will never see Rich, Kent, and Buck on stage again. Gotta love The Sonics! Yes, sadly all gone. You lucky fellow, seeing them in the flesh. I guess Robin (one of the great unsung heroes of pop) wasn't with them by then. I see Gail Harris was still going strong in 2017: jivetimerecords.com/northwest/gayle-harris/
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