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Today is the four year anniversary of Bob Dylan’s release of “Murder Most Foul.” Much has been written about the song itself, far more detailed and eloquently than I am capable. The release itself was seismic, completely out of nowhere after eight years without a new album. It wasn’t long after COVID was declared a…
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I take enormous pride in having turned on my kids at a young age to The Marx Brothers. If memory serves, it began with Horse Feathers, featuring Groucho as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the new President of Huxley University. Zeppo is Frank Wagstaff, Groucho’s son, a student at Huxley. Groucho tells him “you are a…
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The concept of the Answer song goes to back to at least the late 1800’s when the Irish ballad “I’ll Take You Home, Kathleen” was written in response to “Barney, Take Me Home Again.” But in poetry, the practice goes back to the late 1500’s when Sir Walter Raleigh, whom I’m told was such a…
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$402. That number has been included for decades in the saga of Bob Dylan, which officially began 62 years ago today when Columbia Records released his debut album Bob Dylan. Its thirteen tracks had been recorded over two days just before Thanksgiving ’61, produced by the legendary John Hammond. Hammond signed Dylan after producing folk…
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Some giants of music were born on this day: Sly Stone, Ry Cooder, Lightnin’ Hopkins, George Avakian, D.J. Fontana, Arif Mardin, and Phil Lesh among them. I’d love to celebrate them all. But there was a Titan I want to remember today, lost on this day in 1959. Billie Holiday named him Pres, the magnificent…
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54 years ago today, Simon and Garfunkel have the #1 single in the US with “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” The composition was spurred by the line “I’ll be your bridge over deep water if you trust in my name,” as sung by Claude Jeter on the Swan Silvertones recording of “Mary Don’t You Weep.” Paul…
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The 80’s wasn’t his decade, though any other artist could have made a career out of the best songs he cut from ’80 to ’89. No matter, it was an uneven time, and live, it was wildly uneven. But on the recommend of Bono that he work with Daniel Lanois, and with a dozen new…
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George Formby isn’t much known in the US though he was a gigantic star in England from the mid-30’s through his passing in 1961. He was born in 1904 in Wigan, Lancashire, just a ways up the road from Liverpool. In his earliest years, he’d been working as a stable boy and part-time jockey. But…
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Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan told the story of Rolling Stones piano legend Ian Stewart playing him the first Delaney & Bonnie album, The Original Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. They were blown away by Leon Russell’s piano playing, especially on the track “Ghetto.” But then Stewart told McLagan that he’d also played the album for…
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Joey Covington, from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is probably best known for his membership in both Jefferson Airplane, replacing Spencer Dryden, and as the first drummer for Hot Tuna. By the mid-60’s, Joey had been drumming for several years, mainly in bands opening local shows for The Rolling Stones, Chad and Jeremy, and The Dave Clark Five…
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