From "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs/Episode 6: The Ink Spots — 'That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.'" I'm immensely enjoying this podcast, so I recommend starting with "Episode 1: 'Flying Home' by the Benny Goodman Sextet."
There is so much detail to the story — the story of rock music — and I've simply pulled out one sample passage that's both really interesting and demonstrative of the level of detail to be found. I love that the podcaster, Andrew Hickey, gives us a complete transcript. It's nice for people who want to share things on line and start conversations, as I'm doing here.
One of her favourite drinks was embalming fluid and grape juice (just in case anyone was considering doing this, please don’t. It’s really not a good idea, at all, even a little bit. Don’t drink embalming fluid.) According to Jerry Leiber she had razor scars all over her face. She was a very, very, intimidating person.
At the very least, she didn’t fit into neat boxes. But you see, all that stuff I just said… *that* is putting her into a box — the caricature angry, aggressive, black woman. And that was a box she never liked to be put in either, but which she was put in by other people. What I just said, you’ll notice, is all about what other people thought of her, and that’s not always what she thought of herself....
And while she is uniformly described as “masculine-looking” (whatever *that* means), she put it rather differently, saying “I don’t go out on stage trying to look pretty. I was born pretty.”...
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Of course, you can find the podcast in whatever app you use for podcasts. I've been listening on Spotify.
Thank you. Love this kind of stuff.
From their start the Mills Brothers used to imitate muted horn and woodwind sections just using their voices and hands. Amazing talents.
Here's them using only their voices and a guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0ngRaUyXvE
About the caricature - interesting. I didn't read into it "angry, aggressive black woman." I read into it, "Holy smokes, she sounds tough as nails." I find this interesting because usually I'm a pretty good approximation of the zeitgeist, and in this case apparently I'm not! Huzzah, perhaps my dreaded intrinsic bias is not so pronounced as one might think!
Beyond that - this sounds like a podcast to check out. How fascinating, how determined people can be to create despite formidable obstacles!!
it's interesting (to me) how the availible technology affects (determines?) the sound you create.
Tube Amps are Sh*tty, and FULL of distortion.... Which turns out, to sound Great
Reverb? Don't get me started on reverb
heck, if it wasn't for climate change (little ice age) leading to "stunted and slowed tree growth, resulting in unusually dense wood".. No one would be talking about Stradivarius
Great find Prof!
Listening now...
Note to the commenter I deleted: If you have off-topic material, go back to the last open thread. Don't hijack the new post.
@ Wilbur
From the linked podcast:
"The Mills Brothers had actually started out not so differently from the coffee pot groups — they entered a talent contest, and John Mills had lost the kazoo he was going to play. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and imitated a trumpet, and the brothers decided that they were going to start imitating brass instruments with their voices. And they got good at it...."
That is, the coffee pot groups predated the Mills Brothers.
In the podcast, you hear the music at that point, followed by:
"There is no instrument on there other than a single acoustic guitar, believe it or not. They’re imitating trumpets, a tuba, and a trombone with their voices, and they’d listen to instrumental musicians and copy their voicings. This is something that a lot of vocal groups have continued to do, but no-one has done it better than the Mills Brothers."
"How fascinating, how determined people can be to create despite formidable obstacles!!"
There are *so* many stories that fit that description.
Thanks for the Link! Very interesting site, although his putting in Benny Goodman, struck me as very weird. Yes, Goodman had some black musicans but so did the other bands, and Goodman wasn't R&R. Its like talking about the French Impressionists and starting with Rembrandt.
Even more absurdly we're told later on, that R&R is about "white crowding out blacks" and "men crowding out women". LOL! yeah, all those great women arrangers, guitarists, songwriters, and drummers. We'd hear more about them, except the patriarchy shut them down. Is it ever possible for people write about women in an honest manner?
What a great website, just checked it out. Thank you.
I know I'm gonna spend way too many hours there.
We just finished watching the documentary "Count Me In", the history of rock drummers.
Highly recommend it. And the movie "Whiplash" if you have yet to see it.
"LOL! yeah, all those great women arrangers, guitarists, songwriters, and drummers"
A few songwriters, but yeah, lol. it's pretty uneven--girl singers and boy instrumentalists/writers/singers.
Why is that. Hmmm. Must be the patriarchy.
"Very interesting site, although his putting in Benny Goodman, struck me as very weird. Yes, Goodman had some black musicans but so did the other bands, and Goodman wasn't R&R. Its like talking about the French Impressionists and starting with Rembrandt."
Listen to the podcast and get back to me. The first 10 or so podcasts are about precursors to rock and roll and he always explains -- in detail -- why what he is talking about is relevant to the evolution.
Just to focus on race (from the first episode, linked in the post):
"And importantly, Goodman was one of the first band leaders to lead an integrated band during the segregation era. His small groups started with a trio of Goodman himself (white and Jewish) on clarinet, white drummer Gene Krupa, and black pianist Teddy Wilson. This integration, like the recruitment of Fletcher Henderson for the arrangements, was the idea of John Hammond, Goodman’s brother-in-law. Hammond was an immensely privileged and wealthy man — his mother was a Vanderbilt, and his uncle on his father’s side was the US Ambassador to Spain — who had decided to use his immense wealth in the service of two goals. The first of those was racial integration, and the second of them was to promote what would now be called “roots” or Americana music — pre-bop jazz, folk, blues, and gospel..."
There's also relevant stuff in Episode 1 about Ilinois Jacquet and sax playing and Charlie Christian and the electric guitar.
"Its like talking about the French Impressionists and starting with Rembrandt."
But what if you were talking about the evolution of painting and trying to explain how impressionism happened and you were going to talk about the subject for 500 hours? You probably would start with Rembrandt! Those brushstrokes — whoever thought showing the brushstrokes was good?
Maybe you'd start with cave paintings.
This podcast sounds right up my alley. I love music and have a particular fascination with the history of American music as it moved from individual performances to recording, then radio and mass distribution. It is changing again with streaming and it will be interesting for that change thur music itself. Thanks for this!
So very glad to find out about this podcast! Glad, also, that he's starting with the precursors. I'm pretty early in the series, but he does a good job so far of pointing out how black music is at the root of so much American music. I'll be interested in how he treats country music, as much an outsider music as jazz and blues, and just as discomfiting to polite society.
This is one of my favorite podcasts - I listen to it when I'm running. I'm current, so I alternate with several other music podcasts. I find music podcasts easy to listen to when I run as I can easily fill in the gaps caused by loud trucks, drop-outs, etc.
The other music podcast I like is the Political Beats podcast by National Review. What's nice about that one is there is NO Politics - it's people from all political stripes just talking about their favorite artist. You don't have to start at the beginning for that one (although I'd recommend it, just because the production values have gotten better). I like that this is a common meeting place - a mediating structure, as sociologist Peter Berger would say.
The one annoying thing about Hickey is that he's very woke, constantly issuing trigger warnings, etc. Sort of like what you noted about the "aggressive" woman stereotype. I can't take listening to him for more than two podcasts at a time due to this. Still, he may be the best out there.
"Tube Amps are Sh*tty, and FULL of distortion...."
Only if you overdrive them, which is the first thing a lot rockers and blues guitarists did. One of my favorite stories is of Dave Davies cutting holes in the speaker of his amp to get the distortion he wanted for "You Really Got Me." Apparently, Roy Buchanan did the same thing on another occasion. But jazz guys like Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell played clean, and they played through tube amps.
I used to be in a ukulele band. We used other instruments cuz all-ukulele all the time is boring. One song was "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue". I sang it through a toilet paper tube to make it sound like a 1920s recording.
Thanks, Ann. I've subscribed via podcast addict and downloaded the first dozen or so eps. Looking forward to listening.
I like benny Goodman and have several hours of his music. Id never realized the Hammond connection.
Hammond is a pretty interesting guy in his own right. There's a good documentary of him that I saw years ship and was never able to find again.
Maybe someone here knows?
John Henry
Re, John Hammond: "There's a good documentary of him that I saw years ship and was never able to find again."
https://vimeo.com/187169049
I remember a tribute on PBS to Goodman from the late 70s, and one of the high points was when George Benson came out to play Seven Come Eleven with him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfNljvp_CnI
Two more comments
Many today tend to dismiss big band music in general and Goodman in particular as "old people's music" or "grampa music"
But at the peak of his fame, 1939,Goodman was only 30 years old. Most of the fans were teenagers and 20 somethings.
Older folks of that day had the same complaints that our parents had about our music in the 60s and 70s and some of us had about the music or kids listened to in the 80 and 90s.
Second comment, a great book that may go well with the podcast series us "the twisted roots of rock and roll" by Nick Tosches. He doesn't start with swing, as you said "maybe you'd start with cave paintings" he does, figuratively. He traces the roots back to 1600s England and the music the early settlers brought with them
John Henry
“ The one annoying thing about Hickey is that he's very woke, constantly issuing trigger warnings, etc. Sort of like what you noted about the "aggressive" woman stereotype. I can't take listening to him for more than two podcasts at a time due to this. Still, he may be the best out there.”
I think it’s a gentle, intelligent form of wokeness that works very well. I appreciate it.
And he does include lower class white people in his sensitivity. Listen to the episode on “Jambalaya,” how he talks about Cajun people.
Maybe he puts all that woke stuff in there as an inoculation against our Leftist friends.
Because if it's not in there, they'll come after him. Or anyone else who does not overtly pledge fealty to their creed. Especially in such a compendium on the last 100 years of popular music.
The Personal is Political.
Two items -
First, yes, I appreciate your response and mostly agree with your observation, "I think it’s a gentle, intelligent form of wokeness that works very well. I appreciate it." I especially appreciate his intolerance of domestic abuse - I was a kid in the 60s and was appalled by songs like He Hit Me (and it felt like a kiss). Carole King properly disavowed any involvement with that song. And yet, you get a passage like this from Episode 121:
And this is something that needs to be emphasised at this point — we’ve looked quite a bit at what are termed “girl groups” in recent months, but it’s important to note that that wasn’t what they were called at the time — they were just vocal groups, rock and roll singers, just like any other rock and roll singers. The distinction between “girl groups” and doo-wop singers — and the distinction between both of those and rock music more generally — is something that was imposed in the seventies, mostly by male music journalists, as part of a process of revisionist history which retroactively defined rock and roll as music made by white male singer-instrumentalists.
From here: https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-121-the-leader-of-the-pack-by-the-shangri-las/#more-746
I was a subscriber to Rolling Stone throughout the 70s and my recollection was not that male music journalists were trying to redefine "rock and roll as music made by white male singer-instrumentalists," as they were trying to emphasize particular segments of the genre to promote overlooked segments. But I may be mistaken.
The second thing I wanted to mention is how much I also appreciate Bari Weiss' podcast "Honestly." You were the one that brought it to my attention with your post on the NYC dog walker - Thank you!
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