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@ThatOneDude going down a Thursday AM rap hole...Thanks.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpxsyL30Urk&feature=emb_logo
It's a fun rabbit hole. Maybe I'll bust out some Talib Kweli later.
going down a Thursday AM rap hole...Thanks.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpxsyL30Urk&feature=emb_logo
Dave's Song of the Day
I Will Follow – U2
Thursday song of the day: Today’s song was written about the singer’s mother.
In the late 80s, U2 got overly serious and pretentious, but in 1980 they were still fresh and new. The band released its first album, Boy, in October 1980 and included was a song called I Will Follow. Lead singer Bono wrote the lyrics about the love a mother has for her children, inspired by his own mother, who had died when he was 14 years old.
For the recording, guitarist The Edge came up with a simple repeated riff, and underneath was a glockenspiel and the sound of bottles breaking to give it a chaotic sound. The single was first released in the band’s native Ireland but was not released in the United States until 1981. It gathered only minor attention at that time, placing at #20 on the Mainstream Rock chart, but failed to crack the overall Billboard Hot 100.
A few years later, U2 were established stars, and the song was included on their live album Under a Blood Red Sky. In August 1983, a live version of I Will Follow from that album was released in the United States. This time the song managed to land on the Hot 100, placing at #81.
At the time of its first release, a music video was made for I Will Follow. It was a pretty low-budget affair, with the very young-looking band simply performing the song in front of Boy’s album cover. The green screen technology was a bit rough at the time, so there are noticeable outlines around the band members.
View: https://youtu.be/BTa71Y5Dtxo
Video
View: https://youtu.be/-sLzV00gNUo
Live version from Under a Blood Red Sky, 1983
View: https://youtu.be/bLyYcGxQRms
Tomorrow: Wherever my heart leads me
I Will Follow – U2
Thursday song of the day: Today’s song was written about the singer’s mother.
In the late 80s, U2 got overly serious and pretentious, but in 1980 they were still fresh and new. The band released its first album, Boy, in October 1980 and included was a song called I Will Follow. Lead singer Bono wrote the lyrics about the love a mother has for her children, inspired by his own mother, who had died when he was 14 years old.
For the recording, guitarist The Edge came up with a simple repeated riff, and underneath was a glockenspiel and the sound of bottles breaking to give it a chaotic sound. The single was first released in the band’s native Ireland but was not released in the United States until 1981. It gathered only minor attention at that time, placing at #20 on the Mainstream Rock chart, but failed to crack the overall Billboard Hot 100.
A few years later, U2 were established stars, and the song was included on their live album Under a Blood Red Sky. In August 1983, a live version of I Will Follow from that album was released in the United States. This time the song managed to land on the Hot 100, placing at #81.
At the time of its first release, a music video was made for I Will Follow. It was a pretty low-budget affair, with the very young-looking band simply performing the song in front of Boy’s album cover. The green screen technology was a bit rough at the time, so there are noticeable outlines around the band members.
View: https://youtu.be/BTa71Y5Dtxo
Video
View: https://youtu.be/-sLzV00gNUo
Live version from Under a Blood Red Sky, 1983
View: https://youtu.be/bLyYcGxQRms
Tomorrow: Wherever my heart leads me
Dave's Song of the Day
Baby the Rain Must Fall
Friday song of the day: Today’s song was the theme for a Steve McQueen movie.
Glenn Yarbrough was in the successful folk group The Limeliters in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but left for a solo career in 1963. He released a few singles in 1964, but they didn’t chart. Then he was hired to sing the theme song for the motion picture Baby the Rain Must Fall, starring Steve McQueen and Lee Remick. The theme song for the film was written by Elmer Bernstein and Ernie Sheldon.
Yarbrough’s performance of Baby the Rain Must Fall was used over the opening title sequence, and also in the trailer for the film. The musical backing was arranged and conducted by David Gates, who later went on to lead the soft-rock group Bread, who had several hits in the 1970s.
The record was released as a single in January 1965 to coincide with the release of the movie. It proved popular, reaching #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #12 on the overall Billboard Hot 100 chart. Yarbrough had another song, It’s Gonna Be Fine, chart at #54 on the Hot 100 later in 1965, but after that never again charted.
View: https://youtu.be/IoidePq4szw
Movie Trailer
View: https://youtu.be/iS4IbInAk8I
Tomorrow: Would you be my companion
Baby the Rain Must Fall
Friday song of the day: Today’s song was the theme for a Steve McQueen movie.
Glenn Yarbrough was in the successful folk group The Limeliters in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but left for a solo career in 1963. He released a few singles in 1964, but they didn’t chart. Then he was hired to sing the theme song for the motion picture Baby the Rain Must Fall, starring Steve McQueen and Lee Remick. The theme song for the film was written by Elmer Bernstein and Ernie Sheldon.
Yarbrough’s performance of Baby the Rain Must Fall was used over the opening title sequence, and also in the trailer for the film. The musical backing was arranged and conducted by David Gates, who later went on to lead the soft-rock group Bread, who had several hits in the 1970s.
The record was released as a single in January 1965 to coincide with the release of the movie. It proved popular, reaching #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #12 on the overall Billboard Hot 100 chart. Yarbrough had another song, It’s Gonna Be Fine, chart at #54 on the Hot 100 later in 1965, but after that never again charted.
View: https://youtu.be/IoidePq4szw
Movie Trailer
View: https://youtu.be/iS4IbInAk8I
Tomorrow: Would you be my companion
Dave's Song of the Day
There’s Never Been Any Reason – Head East
Saturday song of the day: Today’s song was self-published and sent to radio stations.
Head East formed in Illinois in 1969, but by the mid-1970s they had not attracted any major label interest. They eventually decided to do things on their own and self-financed their first album. They created their own record label, Pyramid Records, and in 1974 released Flat as a Pancake themselves, pressing 5,000 vinyl copies and 500 8-track tapes. They sent some of the records to radio stations and concert promoters in the Midwest, hoping it would get some airplay.
The tactic worked, with all copies of the album sold and the song There’s Never Been Any Reason getting heavy airplay in St. Louis and Kansas City and becoming a regional hit. This resulted in the band being signed to A&M Records, which re-released the Flat as a Pancake album in 1975 and releasing the song as a single, using the shorter title Never Been Any Reason. With a major-label release, Never Been Any Reason got nationwide attention. While it only placed at #68 on the Billboard Hot 100, it has remained very popular on classic rock radio over the years and is Head East’s best-known song.
View: https://youtu.be/hI8Vg53nuF4
Tomorrow: And if I got real close I’d burn
There’s Never Been Any Reason – Head East
Saturday song of the day: Today’s song was self-published and sent to radio stations.
Head East formed in Illinois in 1969, but by the mid-1970s they had not attracted any major label interest. They eventually decided to do things on their own and self-financed their first album. They created their own record label, Pyramid Records, and in 1974 released Flat as a Pancake themselves, pressing 5,000 vinyl copies and 500 8-track tapes. They sent some of the records to radio stations and concert promoters in the Midwest, hoping it would get some airplay.
The tactic worked, with all copies of the album sold and the song There’s Never Been Any Reason getting heavy airplay in St. Louis and Kansas City and becoming a regional hit. This resulted in the band being signed to A&M Records, which re-released the Flat as a Pancake album in 1975 and releasing the song as a single, using the shorter title Never Been Any Reason. With a major-label release, Never Been Any Reason got nationwide attention. While it only placed at #68 on the Billboard Hot 100, it has remained very popular on classic rock radio over the years and is Head East’s best-known song.
View: https://youtu.be/hI8Vg53nuF4
Tomorrow: And if I got real close I’d burn
Dave's Song of the Day
Ebony Eyes – Bob Welch
Sunday song of the day: Today’s song is by a former member of Fleetwood Mac.
Bob Welch was in Fleetwood Mac from 1971 through 1974. At the time, the band was moderately successful, but tensions within the band and with its management caused Welch to leave before Fleetwood Mac’s huge commercial breakthrough. After Welch departed Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined the group and their music took a different direction, which resulted in multi-Platinum sales.
Welch pursued a solo career, and his first solo album, 1977’s French Kiss, yielded a #8 hit with Sentimental Lady, a re-recording of a song Welch had written for Fleetwood Mac’s 1972 album Bare Trees. The follow-up single was a more recent Welch composition, Ebony Eyes, which told of the singer’s instant attraction to a girl he had just seen – focusing, of course, on her eyes. Ebony Eyes featured future star Juice Newton singing backup and had more of a disco-fied arrangement than Welch’s previous work. It was released as a single in January 1978 and was another hit for Welch, landing at #14 on the Billboard Hot 100.
He had three more Top 40 records in the late 1970s before his career started to fade and he had problems with drug addiction in the 1980s.
View: https://youtu.be/xvuccbcCcsI
Tomorrow: I run outta money and luck
Ebony Eyes – Bob Welch
Sunday song of the day: Today’s song is by a former member of Fleetwood Mac.
Bob Welch was in Fleetwood Mac from 1971 through 1974. At the time, the band was moderately successful, but tensions within the band and with its management caused Welch to leave before Fleetwood Mac’s huge commercial breakthrough. After Welch departed Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined the group and their music took a different direction, which resulted in multi-Platinum sales.
Welch pursued a solo career, and his first solo album, 1977’s French Kiss, yielded a #8 hit with Sentimental Lady, a re-recording of a song Welch had written for Fleetwood Mac’s 1972 album Bare Trees. The follow-up single was a more recent Welch composition, Ebony Eyes, which told of the singer’s instant attraction to a girl he had just seen – focusing, of course, on her eyes. Ebony Eyes featured future star Juice Newton singing backup and had more of a disco-fied arrangement than Welch’s previous work. It was released as a single in January 1978 and was another hit for Welch, landing at #14 on the Billboard Hot 100.
He had three more Top 40 records in the late 1970s before his career started to fade and he had problems with drug addiction in the 1980s.
View: https://youtu.be/xvuccbcCcsI
Tomorrow: I run outta money and luck
Dave's Song of the Day
Guitar Man – Jerry Reed
Monday song of the day: The singer and songwriter of today’s song played guitar on not just one, but two Elvis Presley cover versions.
Younger audiences might know Jerry Reed better from his movie appearances in such films as Smokey and the Bandit and The Waterboy, but before he got into acting, he was quite a successful country music artist. Born Jerry Reed Hubbard, he began his music career as Jerry Reed in the late 1950s.
He released several singles, but none hit the Country music charts until 1967, when Guitar Man, from the album The Unbelievable Guitar and Voice of Jerry Reed. The single was released in February 1967 and told the story of a guitar player struggling to find a paying gig. It placed at #53 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. This was hardly a big hit, but it was a start.
In particular, the song got the notice of Elvis Presley’s management, and it was decided that Elvis would record a cover for the soundtrack album for his upcoming film Clambake. Elvis tried to record it but was not satisfied with the guitar tracks that his session musicians produced. After that, he suggested that they just hire “that redneck picker who’s on the original tune,” so they brought in Jerry Reed to play guitar on the Elvis cover of his song. The recording session went well, and Reed laid down a guitar track that Elvis liked. It turned out that the session musicians could not duplicate Reed’s guitar sound from the original recording because he had used an odd tuning. Jerry later explained, “’I never thought of myself as a Nashville recording musician. ‘Cause I was a stylist. I could only play my stuff. And I wasn’t worth a damn playing all that other stuff. See, I had my own tuning, and they were trying to record Guitar Man, and they couldn’t make it feel like my record. And I forget if it was Pete Drake or Charlie McCoy or Chip Young – one of those musicians said, ‘Well, these guitar players in here are playing with straight picks, and, you know, Reed plays with his fingers’. So they called me, and I went down, and I hooked up that electric gut string, tuned the B-string up a whole tone, and I toned the low E-string down a whole tone, so I could bar straight across, and as soon as we hit the intro, you could see Elvis’ eyes light up. He knew we had it.”
Once the session was over, Reed was approached by Presley’s management. Normally, before Colonel Parker would allow Elvis to record a cover of someone else’s song, he made sure that they had arranged to secure the rights to the song at a bargain price. Most songwriters gave in and agreed to the deal, with the notion that even vastly reduced royalties for an Elvis record would be better than the nothing they would get if Elvis did not record their music. But the team slipped up in this case and didn’t get the rights before the recording session. With the song already recorded and Presley pleased with the result – and the album already set for release the next month – Reed was more than ready to walk away from the deal and refused anything other than his full royalties as the songwriter. Elvis’s team eventually gave in and agreed to pay Reed his fair share.
The Clambake album was released in October 1967, and the Elvis Presley single of Guitar Man was released in January 1968. It was not one of his bigger hits, placing only at #43 on the Billboard Hot 100. Still, it was a nice payday for Jerry Reed.
Elvis died in 1977, and in 1981 RCA Records released the Guitar Man album, a collection of songs in which existing Presley vocal tracks were remixed over music re-recorded with more modern arrangements. For the album’s title track, instead of the acoustic guitar from his 1967 cover, the 1981 version of Guitar Man featured electric guitars, again played by Jerry Reed. The remix was again released as a single and placed at #1 on the Country chart and #28 on the Hot 100.
Jerry Reed, 1967
View: https://youtu.be/icIdtzvfP1w
Elvis Presley, 1967
View: https://youtu.be/RGniRTwuOVM
Elvis Presley, 1981
View: https://youtu.be/HGlAr8PRtLM
Tomorrow: Then he’ll make you cry
Guitar Man – Jerry Reed
Monday song of the day: The singer and songwriter of today’s song played guitar on not just one, but two Elvis Presley cover versions.
Younger audiences might know Jerry Reed better from his movie appearances in such films as Smokey and the Bandit and The Waterboy, but before he got into acting, he was quite a successful country music artist. Born Jerry Reed Hubbard, he began his music career as Jerry Reed in the late 1950s.
He released several singles, but none hit the Country music charts until 1967, when Guitar Man, from the album The Unbelievable Guitar and Voice of Jerry Reed. The single was released in February 1967 and told the story of a guitar player struggling to find a paying gig. It placed at #53 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. This was hardly a big hit, but it was a start.
In particular, the song got the notice of Elvis Presley’s management, and it was decided that Elvis would record a cover for the soundtrack album for his upcoming film Clambake. Elvis tried to record it but was not satisfied with the guitar tracks that his session musicians produced. After that, he suggested that they just hire “that redneck picker who’s on the original tune,” so they brought in Jerry Reed to play guitar on the Elvis cover of his song. The recording session went well, and Reed laid down a guitar track that Elvis liked. It turned out that the session musicians could not duplicate Reed’s guitar sound from the original recording because he had used an odd tuning. Jerry later explained, “’I never thought of myself as a Nashville recording musician. ‘Cause I was a stylist. I could only play my stuff. And I wasn’t worth a damn playing all that other stuff. See, I had my own tuning, and they were trying to record Guitar Man, and they couldn’t make it feel like my record. And I forget if it was Pete Drake or Charlie McCoy or Chip Young – one of those musicians said, ‘Well, these guitar players in here are playing with straight picks, and, you know, Reed plays with his fingers’. So they called me, and I went down, and I hooked up that electric gut string, tuned the B-string up a whole tone, and I toned the low E-string down a whole tone, so I could bar straight across, and as soon as we hit the intro, you could see Elvis’ eyes light up. He knew we had it.”
Once the session was over, Reed was approached by Presley’s management. Normally, before Colonel Parker would allow Elvis to record a cover of someone else’s song, he made sure that they had arranged to secure the rights to the song at a bargain price. Most songwriters gave in and agreed to the deal, with the notion that even vastly reduced royalties for an Elvis record would be better than the nothing they would get if Elvis did not record their music. But the team slipped up in this case and didn’t get the rights before the recording session. With the song already recorded and Presley pleased with the result – and the album already set for release the next month – Reed was more than ready to walk away from the deal and refused anything other than his full royalties as the songwriter. Elvis’s team eventually gave in and agreed to pay Reed his fair share.
The Clambake album was released in October 1967, and the Elvis Presley single of Guitar Man was released in January 1968. It was not one of his bigger hits, placing only at #43 on the Billboard Hot 100. Still, it was a nice payday for Jerry Reed.
Elvis died in 1977, and in 1981 RCA Records released the Guitar Man album, a collection of songs in which existing Presley vocal tracks were remixed over music re-recorded with more modern arrangements. For the album’s title track, instead of the acoustic guitar from his 1967 cover, the 1981 version of Guitar Man featured electric guitars, again played by Jerry Reed. The remix was again released as a single and placed at #1 on the Country chart and #28 on the Hot 100.
Jerry Reed, 1967
View: https://youtu.be/icIdtzvfP1w
Elvis Presley, 1967
View: https://youtu.be/RGniRTwuOVM
Elvis Presley, 1981
View: https://youtu.be/HGlAr8PRtLM
Tomorrow: Then he’ll make you cry
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