When I was a teenager, I would go to the Brighton Beach Baths, in Brooklyn. There was a band shell, and every afternoon, a band would play. First there was the mambo, and then the cha-cha-cha. We would stand to the side of the band shell, and dance to the music. What memories!
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Phoenix32890
1
Mon 18 Nov, 2013 08:16 am
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Ragman
1
Mon 18 Nov, 2013 08:19 am
@edgarblythe,
'A Fool Such As I' by Jim Reeves
Sometime someone's style makes your mind flood with images that are not about the words but the presentation. This version reminds me of roller-skating rinks in the very early '60s (pre-Beatles).
Now contrast with this the emotions and the images created from the same song done by Elvis:
Now for a third contrasting version, this one I call the 'authentic sound' of the
presentation here (maybe the intended style of the author written by Bill Trader, 1952?):
Anybody remember Charo, Coogie's MUCH younger wife?
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edgarblythe
1
Mon 18 Nov, 2013 12:55 pm
@Ragman,
The earliest version I heard of Now and Then was by Hank Snow, when I was a kid. If an earlier version exists, I have not yet found it.
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edgarblythe
1
Mon 18 Nov, 2013 01:09 pm
The first time I heard Willie's voice, I was a kid in California. I must have been thirteen, maybe fourteen. Certainly no older, because I moved to California before my fifteenth birthday, in December of 1956.
In an interview, I heard Willie talk about when he had that song-writing streak when he dashed off this song and 2 or 3 others. Those 2 or 3 songs he wrote that week or year I forget the exact interval) ... between his making hits of them and others might account for hundreds of millions of dollar sales.
Willie should be at the cornerstone of Song Writing Hall of Fame, (if there were such a place).
Yes..I recall...he could barely get noticed or booked outside of Nashville, if I recall...around 1962?
I had to look that period of his life up in Wiki:
"Nelson moved to Nashville in 1960, but no label signed him. Most of his demos were rejected. Nelson used to frequent Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, a bar that was located near the Grand Ole Opry, which was also frequented by the show stars, as well as another singers and songwriters pursuing a career.
There Nelson met Hank Cochran, a songwriter who worked for the publishing company Pamper Music, which was owned by Ray Price and Hal Smith. Cochran heard Nelson during a jam session with Buddy Emmons and Jimmy Day. Cochran had received a raise of US$50 a week, but instead, he convinced Hal Smith to pay Nelson the money, in order to sign him to Pamper Music.
In Tootsie's they met Faron Young, who decided to record Nelson's song "Hello Walls" after he sang it for him. After Ray Price recorded Nelson's "Night Life", and his previous bassist Johnny Paycheck quit, Nelson joined Price's touring band as a bass player. While playing with Price and the Cherokee Cowboys, his songs became hits for other artists, including "Funny How Time Slips Away" (Billy Walker), "Pretty Paper" (Roy Orbison), and, most famously, "Crazy" by Patsy Cline.
In Tootsie's, Nelson and Cochran met her husband, Charlie Dick. Dick liked a song by Nelson that he had previously heard on the jukebox of the bar. Nelson played later for him a tape of "Crazy", Dick decided to take the record with the demo and play it the same night to Cline. Cline also liked the song, and she decided later to record it. “Crazy” became the biggest jukebox hit of all time"
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edgarblythe
1
Mon 18 Nov, 2013 04:14 pm
Oddly, I have read elsewhere that Patsy Cline did not like Crazy and did not want to record it. Regardless, she is bound to have been fond of it once it was popular. The first record I heard of Night Life was by Rusty Draper and it is my favorite.
Further research about 'Crazy' on Wiki, discloses ... :
With some help from a friend named Oliver English, Nelson wrote the song in early 1961 ; at the time he was a journeyman singer-songwriter who had written several hits for other artists but had not yet had a significant recording of his own. Nelson originally wrote the song for country singer Billy Walker who turned it down for the same reason Roy Drusky turned down "I Fall to Pieces" the previous year - that it was "a girl's song". The song's eventual success helped launch Nelson as a performer as well as a songwriter.
Musically the song is a jazz-pop ballad with country overtones and a complex melody. The lyrics describe the singer's state of bemusement at the singer's own helpless love for the object of his affection.
Patsy Cline version[edit]
Patsy Cline, who was already a country music superstar and working to extend a string of hits, picked it as a follow up to her previous big hit I Fall to Pieces. "Crazy", its complex melody suiting Cline's vocal talent perfectly, was released in late 1961 and immediately became another huge hit for Cline and widened the crossover audience she had established with her prior hits. It spent 21 weeks on the chart and eventually became one of her signature tunes. Cline's version is #85 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.[3]
According to the Ellis Nassour biography Patsy Cline, Nelson, who at that time was known as a struggling songwriter by the name of Hugh Nelson, was a regular at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge on Nashville's Music Row, where he frequented with friends Kris Kristofferson and Roger Miller, both unknown songwriters at that time. Nelson met Cline's husband, Charlie Dick, at the bar one evening and pitched the song to him. Dick took the track home and played it for Cline, who absolutely hated it at first because Nelson's demo "spoke" the lyrics ahead of and behind the beat, about which an annoyed Cline remarked that she ``couldn't sing like that.
However, Cline's producer, Owen Bradley, loved the song and arranged it in the ballad form in which it was later recorded. On Loretta Lynn's album I Remember Patsy Bradley reported that as Patsy was still recovering from a recent automobile accident that nearly took her life, she'd had difficulty reaching the high notes of the song on the original production night due to her broken ribs. So after about four hours of trying, in the days of four songs being recorded in three hours - they called it a night. A week later she came back and recorded the lead vocal we all know in one take.
On the same interview, Loretta remembers the first time Cline performed it at the Grand Ole Opry on crutches, and received three standing ovations. Barbara Mandrell remembers Cline introducing the song to her audiences live in concert saying
All my recent hits have come true in my life. I had a hit out called Tra-La-La Triangle and people thought about me and Gerald and Charlie. I had another hit out called 'I Fall to Pieces' and I was in a car wreck. Now I'm really worried because I have a new hit single out and its called 'Crazy'.
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edgarblythe
1
Mon 18 Nov, 2013 04:32 pm
I saw Willie in the Astrodome one time. On many of his records he sings pretty well and on some not. Honestly, he did not sound all that musical that evening. But when he does a song right, he's pretty darn good.
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edgarblythe
1
Mon 18 Nov, 2013 06:12 pm
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edgarblythe
1
Mon 18 Nov, 2013 08:31 pm
Incidentally, the name of Willie Nelson's guitar is Trigger.
