DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS

Country Hall of Fame member T om T. Hall's death at 85 in 2021 was by suicide, officials in his native Williamson County, Tennessee, have confirmed to reporters. The cause of death was first reported Wednesday by the website   "Saving Country Music" which followed up on multiple comments posted on a year-end In Memoriam piece and confirmed the cause of death with Williamson County’s...

Marty (1955) is the poignant, simple character study of a lonely, unmarried, lovelorn middle-aged, 34 year old son who works as a Bronx butcher and still lives with his love-smothering mother. By film's end, he and another homely 29 year old Brooklyn schoolteacher and female wallflower are liberated - both are triumphant over their respective limitations. The film's screenwriter Paddy Ch...

Laura Nyro wrote this song - (a tribute to torch singer Helen Merrill) - in 1966, but, it didn’t do much for her at the time. Three years later, when The Fifth Dimension recorded it, it shot to number 1. The radiant lead vocalist, Marilyn McCoo, sang it to her betrothed, Billy Davis Jr., on the various television variety shows of the day, and audiences lapped it up. Nyro, the oddball composer-prod...

"The Cordell Jackson Story" - In Her Own Words And Music In Honor And In Loving Memory Of  Cordell Jackson - The Queen Of Rock and Roll And The Memphis Guitar July 15, 1923 – October 14, 2004 1) A Queen's Tale- A CBS News Segment - 1985  2) Cordell Jackson and The A Bones Live- Featuring Miriam Linna and Billy Miller- 1984 3) Rock and Roll Christmas- 1956 4) The Split - 1983 5 ) At...

"When I was in prison, I knew what it was like to have freedom taken away,” Merle  said. “Freedom is everything. During Vietnam there were all kinds of protests. Here were these [servicemen] going over there and dying for a cause – we don’t even know what it was really all about. And here are these young kids, that were free, bitching about it. There’s something wrong with that and with [disp...

THE ROCK AND ROLL SCORECARD: LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE! https://www.britannica.com/biography/Link-Wray “Rumble” is the first song to implement the innovative use of power chords with distortion.  The unprecedented fuzz guitar tone and undulating tremolo, combined with that controversial title, is the stuff of rock and roll legend.  Even though he is the Founding Father of the rock guitar soun...

1966 was a banner year for The Ford Mustang, Wilson Pickett, and me. I REALLY coveted that car; it was the creme de la creme of style. Sure, I was only 13, and didn’t have my driver’s license, but that car was a teen’s wet dream. I was just starting to be interested in girls, too. Kathy Washkevich lived across the development, and I would sneak out of the house after my parents went to bed and thr...

Even in a city known for its eccentrics, Ernie K-Doe was in another dimension. The New Orleans musician always knew — and said, loudly — that he was special. And for one week in a life of wild ups and downs, he managed to pierce the national consciousness with a chart-topping hit: 1961's " Mother in Law ." The man born Ernest Kador sometimes claimed he wrote "Mother-in-Law&quot...

The sweltering summer of 2023 is almost over, and all over the world folks are digging themselves out from under the epic disasters of the past months. Listening to this psych-soul ditty from 1969, one may be momentarily transported back to a cozier time of blotter acid and beach coolers.  The carefree tone of the record, however, belies the fact that at the same time that he was jamming on this a...

It can be assumed that Hendrix wrote the music for "Angel" as early as 1967, as it first appeared in the form of a demo with the title " L ittle Wing". The song became "Angel" not long after this, when the first recording under the name "Sweet Angel" took place just one month later. The lyrics for "Angel" were written early in 1968,  being complete...

SIX MINUTES FROM THE 1976 FILM "NETWORK" STILL RELEVANT TODAY- James Hohmann Washington Post Ned Beatty, who died June 13, 2021 at the age of 83, appeared in more than 160 movies and television shows, mostly in minor but memorable roles — none more enduring than his bravura performance in “ Network ,” the 1976 film that earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. Beatty was...

“The Pompatus of Love,” a nonsense phrase that Steve Miller cribbed from “The Letter,” a doo-wop song by the Medallions from 1958, entered the popular culture lexicon in 1973, when this Apostle of guitar consistency applied it to spread his Joker gospel, and ascended to Rock n Roll Godhead. It’s been used for the title of a movie starring Jon Cryer, and is included in the writings of Dave Barry, S...

AN UNFILTERED GLIMPSE INTO A GENUINE PRODIGY OF MUSICAL AND  LYRICAL IMAGINATION. THIS DEMO CONTAINS PAUSES AS HENDRIX INVENTS THE SONG AS HE PERFORMS AND RECORDS IT ON HIS HOME TEAC REEL TO REEL RECORDER. A merman is a male version of a mermaid. In this song, Hendrix sings about how he wants to escape the war-torn world and all the horrible things going on (The Vietnam War for instance) and be re...

"RUNNING FROM A SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE" If you are unfamiliar with his 63 year body of work then you may find this statement perplexing. A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without Ernest “ Chubby Checker” Evans is  not a legitimate representative of the genuine Rock and Rhythm and Blues culture it claims to embrace. Period. After "The Twist" became a worldwide phenomenon, solely due to...

Squeeze was unlike any other band, though quintessentially English. They appeared in that “Post-Punk” “Power-Pop” era of the early 80s, and definitely shared some sinister lyrical themes with such contrarian contemporaries as Elvis Costello, but their tunes were always delivered in such a quirkily upbeat style that any ill intent was mitigated.  Also, the themes were just obscure enough, so that I...

What is it about some songs that make them stick in your head like epoxy? This one isn’t even really a song, it’s just a riff (I guess in this it shares that distinction with an earlier SUNNY SONGS episode, Archie Bell’s “Tighten Up”),  and, it’s also got that spoken shout out: “Hey Leroy! Your mama… she callin’ you, man!” Then the cackling laughter, and the bursting into a driving, urgent Latin S...

THE BILLY STEWART DISCOGRAPHY Singles: Chess 1625: "Billy's Blues" / "Billy's Blues" Argo 5256: "Billy's Blues" / "Billy's Blues" Okeh 4-7095: "Baby, You're My Only Love" / "Billy's Heartache" (1957 with Bo Diddley , backed by The "Marquees") Chess 1820: "Reap What You Sow" / "Fat Boy...

1988 was an astounding year: Hope was in the air - I was about to get married, Reagan was departing, and a supergroup was coalescing in Malibu. In ’87 Tom Petty had backed up Bob Dylan on tour, Roy Orbison was being celebrated on national TV in “Black and White”; Jeff Lynne had produced George Harrison’s biggest comeback in a decade, and these 5 men decided to hang, jam, and release their good vib...

There is something so beautifully rendered in this piece of heartbreak I have always identified with. Written by husband and wife Dave Ellingson and Kim Carnes and released in March 1980,  it was the first single from Rogers’ album Gideon .  It's a tough three plus minutes to travel for some because the poetry informs with an unbearable truth for those paying rapt attention. When Kim cries &q...

SUNLIGHT by The Youngbloods (RCA, 1969) I’m a romantic; I admit it. I believe in true love, and the moments of ecstatic togetherness that enable one to transcend all the struggles and grief of life. And, this song reanimates this awakening each time I hear it: by the rolling chords off the nylon string guitar, eliciting the feeling of a fresh breeze of possibility; Jesse Colin Young’s falsetto voi...

My selection for the King of an immortal Rhythm and Blues anthem and character goes to a Duke. Mr. Eugene Dixon became known internationally as Gene Chandler. In 1962 his hymn to Royal Hi Fidelity, "The Duke Of Earl", conquered our imagination and romantic reverie as he conceived an eternal figure sporting a signature cape, top hot and cane. His Dukedom was a "Paradise We Could Shar...

The 60s was a fun and a unique experience. You had to be there to understand. Just talk to any baby boomer who was an adolescent during the 60s and they will tell you how fun and how fortunate they were to grow up in the 1960s. School dances and the dance crazes during that period were something else. I couldn't even begin to write about or even talk about what dances are popular today. I gue...

Ray Benson is a national treasure, whose outfit, Asleep at the Wheel, has been spreading the Texas swing gospel for a long damn time. The album from which this recording derives was my gateway drug into a giddy universe of intoxicating joy.  It came out in 1993, and before that time the name of Bob Wills had reverberated around the corridors of my memory, but with this collection of loving renditi...

This essay is one in a series celebrating deserving artists or albums not included on NPR Music's list of 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women . Nancy Sinatra , the force who brought "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" to life, was never meant to sing the song at all. The late Lee Hazlewood, a songwriter and producer for the likes of Duane Eddy, had written the single and intended...

Preston, the bass player in my garage band THE NERVE recently suggested that this song would be a good one for the band to try. I remembered it fondly and I felt good singing it, and we started to work it into our repertoire. Jimmy Hall, the original lead singer on the track said that the first time Ricky Hirsch, the guitarist for Wet Willie, played him the signature riff, “it felt like a sunny br...