GEEZER'S MUSIC THREAD

Uhm . . . OK . . . sure, you bet . . .

There was another record called: "The Pied Piper"

As i've said many times here, i was raised by my grandparents. My grandfather worked for the railroad for 44 years, and we lived next to the tracks. When i was a small boy, he emptied the two bedrooms upstairs, one at a time, and stripped and refinished all the woodwork. The western bedroom looked in the direction from which the trains came into town. The sound of the train as it slowed down for the bridge a half a mile west was haunting as it echoed in that empty room. Hank's line about "the midnight train is winding low" always reminded me of that sound. Although i had heard the song before, it became associated in my mind with that sound.

I forgot to say I've got a thing about trains ever since my momma used to take me to see the railyards in the early 1950's, I swear i can still smell the smoky steam from dozens of locos..

This song was recorded by Tony Bennett in 1951! And he is still going strong!!!

Beau Brummels - Laugh, Laugh 1964

Along with their other hit Just a Little, they made for good listening in 1965 JPB.
Factoid: Their early recordings were produced by Sly Stewart(Family Stone)

I'm going to post that song, as it was the first 45 i ever bought, even though i was well into my teens by then (i bought the album Rubber Soul not long after. That lead singer really badly needs an orthodontist.

My brother had the "Introducing" album pictured above. He listened to it constantly. He's 8 years older than me, but this is one of the first bands I "knew" as a child.

When i was just a teen, i thought we were listening to the greatest music ever made, and on one occasion i said: "I'll never forget this music, i'll listen to it as long as i live!" About 20 years later, i heard "Just a little" on the radio, and was just going crazy trying to remember the name of the group. At about the time i remembered the Beau Brummels, i remembered my callow declaration of two decades earlier.

I just discovered that that vid for "Just a Little" won't imbed. Here's another performance:

This is a recording of the Carter Family made in 1927. When i was a child, you would still hear their early recordings on the radio, and they would be on juke boxes in some places, where the juke boxes still played 78s. The Carter Family had a very important impact on what was then called Hillbilly Music. (When combined with Cowboy Music, you got your basic country and western, a name i expect it was thought would have a wider appeal.) Nowadays, Hillbilly Music is called Old-Time Music or Bluegrass, so as to be less offensive. Of course, to be accurate, it ought to be called Old Timey Music, because that's how the mountain folks said in the day, and probably still do.

My mom got them to play this song for me on my sixth birthday. On radio KRDU, Dinuba, CA, Johnny Banks the DJ.

"Rock Around the Clock" was written in 1952, but not recorded until 1954, by an Italian-American group. Often called the first rock and roll song, it was not that by a long shot. But Bill Hayley and the Comets recorded it in 1956, and a motion picture by the same name came out that year. Some Rock historians credit Hayley with bringing rock and roll into the mainstream.

Here's the 1956 recording by Bill Hayley and the Comets:

Maybe you meant The Blackboard Jungle...then maybe not.
But I'll pass along a story my parents told me.
When they went to see the movie in Buenos Aires Argentina the teens rioted in the theater and my parents hurried home in disbelief.
The song was played over the opening credits and the movie helped it to the #1 position.

Rock Around the Clock at IMDB--yeah, Blackboard Jungle, that too.

When I first heard Bill Hailey's Rock Around and See Ya Later songs, I considered that they were just novelty tunes, since I didn't know rock and roll existed. Then, when somebody with a transistor radio had Rock n Roll Waltz playing on the school bus, I heard the song described as rock and roll. It had a sound that I felt I was not supposed to like. It was intended for a black audience, it seemed to me. I felt I was not a racist, but in this instance, it seemed like it was forbidden for me to embrace rock music. The feeling only lasted a few days. My brother asked my mom if he could listen to Lucky Lager Dance Time. That is when I discovered Little Richard, Fats, Elvis and the rest.

When I'd been in England during the summer holidays from 1963 onwards, I always liked to go to one of the music shows in Bournemouth.
But mostly, it just were more or less unknown bands, playing in pubs and cellar bars, like the The Mark Four, which I heard a couple of times.

In 1966, I'd saved enough money to go to a really big show. The Stones were too expensive, thus I decided to go to Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich and The Walker Brothers plus some more supporting groups.

One was The Creation, before known as The Mark Four. Eddie Phillips was the first playing his electric guitar with a violin bow (Jimmy Page later did such a lot better)

Although England didn't seem to have much going for it the way of pop music or rock and roll prior to the Beatles, there were a few gems. Johnny Kidd and the Pirates had very modest success in the 1950s and -60s . . . and one big hit. Their influence was much more important than their chart success. This song was so innovative, their record company didn't recognize it. Many three-man power bands were inspired by this song, and The Who performed it at Leeds, so that it appeared on the influential Live at Leeds album. Alas, Johnny and crew were not to get either credit or much money. (The Who acknowledged them on the liner notes of Live at Leeds, but that was about it.) They hit number one on the UK charts with this in 1960.