Although Scott Shannon is stepping away from his microphone over at WCBS-FM on December 16th, he has made it very clear that he will continue to program and host the station he started nearly twenty years ago, The True Oldies Channel, as well as his syndicated program “America’s Greatest Hits.” (He just won’t be getting up at 3:15 am anymore to do them!!! Lol)
Sean Ross, who does the weekly Ross On Radio column, brings us up to speed on modern day True Oldies … and then looks back to his initial review from 2004 …
Pretty cool stuff!
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FH Reader Scott Paton sent us this very moving piece on Warren Zevon’s last appearance on The David Letterman Show …
The Night Warren Zevon Left the ‘Late Show’ Building - The Ringer
ZZ TOP ROUND OUT MASSIVE 2022 TOUR, ALBUM AND BOURBON RELEASES WITH LAS VEGAS RESIDENCY AT THE VENETIAN DECEMBER 3 – 10
Tickets NOW On Sale
ZZ Top are headed back to Las Vegas for five shows at the Venetian Theater, December 3, 4, 7, 9, 10. The December dates at the casino top their year of unprecedented touring.
The group’s great roadshow supports the most recent album, RAW, the companion to the hugely successful Grammy-nominated feature documentary That Little Ol’ Band From Texas, as seen on NETFLIX and on DVD.
ZZ Top’s RAW Whisky Tour also coincides with their activities in the spirits world with their recently released “super smooth” Tres Hombres Bourbon released along with 2021’s Tres Hombres Texas Whisky, launched in partnership with Balcones Distilling.
2022 ZZ Top Raw Whisky Tour dates:
Nov 3 - Hattiesburg, MS - The Lawn at Lake Terrace
Nov 4 - Huntsville, AL - Mark C. Smith Concert Hall
Nov 7 - Paducah, KY - Luther F. Carson Four Rivers Center
Nov 9 - Hiawassee, GA - Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds/Anderson Music Hall
Nov 11 - Daytona Beach, FL - Peabody Auditorium
Nov 13 - Pompano Beach, FL - Pompano Beach Amphitheatre
Dec 2 - Scottsdale, AZ - Talking Stick Resort
Dec 3 - Las Vegas, NV - The Venetian Theater
Dec 4 - Las Vegas, NV - The Venetian Theater
Dec 7 - Las Vegas, NV - The Venetian Theater
Dec 9 - Las Vegas, NV - The Venetian Theater
Dec 10 - Las Vegas, NV - The Venetian Theater
More info here: www.zztop.com
And for all you survey collectors out there, check out this announcement from long-time FH Reader Jack Levin …
Due to a recent large survey purchase, I was able to put together a collection of complete years 1964, 1965, 1966 & 1971, from WLS.
The 60's surveys are unbelievably clean.
Jack
Interested? Drop us a line and we’ll hook you guys up! (kk)
The Decades Channel has been running non-stop episodes of "The Fugitive" all weekend long, one of my all-time favorite shows.
It all wraps up early Monday Morning with the two-part finale ... but I can't believe very many people will be watching at 4 and 5 am Eastern to see it! (Seems like that's a back-to-back episode you'd want to run during prime viewing time!!!) kk
More on Springsteen’s appearance on The Howard Stern Show here …
https://www.noise11.com/news/bruce-springsteen-explains-why-he-sold-his-catalogue-20221102
The Weird Al Yankovic biopic started streaming last Friday (November 4th) and I’m still dying to see it … and trying to figure HOW to do so!!!
It’s streaming exclusively on the ROKU Network … and I’ve yet to learn how to access it … so if anybody out there can give us some guidance, it would be much appreciated. (We’ve been waiting for this one to come out for quite some time now!) kk
The New Colony Six will be performing at the Annual Holiday Tree Lighting Ceremony in Elk Grove Village this year, the Friday after Thanksgiving, November 25th, from 4 pm – 5:30 pm …
https://www.linkedin.com/events/6994396902385496064/about/
Wait, you forgot the big sound of Dodge City, 10 year old's chart ahead of the trend!
Love that extra lead at #1! A tie at #8!!! (WHY???)
Of course, MOST of these had big ties to the WLS Silver Dollar Survey ... well, not #35 by the new singing sensation.
In a month, #70 would be #1 and my legendary life with the band was solidified.
Don't worry, Chuck Buell, I would soon be recording "No Milk Today" as an exclusive off KIMN Denver.
Clark Besch
24/7 Christmas Music has started on Chicago radio.
Here's a suggestion for the programmers …
Let's boycott "All I Want For Christmas Is You" this year and give Brenda Lee her first #1 in 62 years.
Ed #1
Hi, Kent!
Found this while going through my huge list of Biondi-related websites.
I'd forgotten about it, as it's from 14 years ago. An old ham radio
friend, who lives in the Chicago, area sent this in to the KAAY blog back in
2008.
Aside: I DID look like Bob Stroud in that picture! ;-)
http://kaay1090.blogspot.com/2008/12/dick-biondi-more.html
Mike
And Our FH Buddy Harvery Kubernik tells us …
An upcoming four-part SHOWTIME Documentary Films series, SPECTOR, which premieres on Sunday, November 6th at 9:00 p.m. and will be broadcast during Winter, 2022, examines enigmatic record producer, songwriter and music publisher, Phil Spector.
SPECTOR is executive produced by Oscar-nominated producer Jonathan Chinn, TINA, and Oscar-winning producer Simon Chinn, Searching for Sugar Man, and Oscar-winning director James Marsh, Man on Wire. It’s produced by Lightbox from directors Sheena M. Joyce and Don Argott, Framing John Delorean.
Spector (Official Series Site) Watch on Showtime
As a teenager in L.A. in the 1950s, Phil Spector was glued to the sounds of the radio dial. He relished Patti Page singing "I Went to Your Wedding" and the Chordettes' "Born To Be With You." He soon discovered "Work With Me Annie" on a bus ride through the City of the Angels. His life changed when he heard songs like "Sixty Minute Man" and "Treasure Of love" on the great R&B station KGFJ from DJ Hunter Hancock.
In 1957, Spector, along with his future Teddy Bears bandmate Marshall Lieb, appeared on the local KTLA-TV program Rocket to Stardom, sponsored by salesman Bob Yaekel, who used to hawk Oldsmobiles during the broadcast from his showroom. The duo sang “In the Still of the Night.” Spector then formed and recorded with the Phil Harvey Band.
The "signature Phil Spector sound" really has its roots in the loud instrumental live music guitarist Harvey Philip Spector played around the Los Angeles area in 1959, after his graduation from Fairfax High School in 1957. Most of the time, his group would integrate sax player Steve Douglas, guitarist Elliot Ingber, who learned ninth chords from Phil's fingers, and was later an original member of the Mothers of Invention, bassist Larry Taylor, and for years a member of Canned Heat, and Mel Taylor, on drums, who most people know from his decades with the Ventures.
Reverb was part of the general room tone of the venues that informed Spector’ audio explorations. The influence of The Rainbow Roller Rink, The El Monte Legion Stadium, and the Pan Pacific Bowling Alley, next to the Kosher Puppy, around the corner from the Fairfax area apartment he shared with his widowed mother Bertha and sister Shirley. His father Ben was an ironworker in Brooklyn, who had taken his own life when Phil was nine years old.
In the May 31, 1975, issue of the now defunct Melody Maker, I published an interview with Spector, culled from a series of interviews in Hollywood at the Sherwood Oaks Experimental College, inside his own Beverly Hills mansion, and Gold Star and A&M studio visits where he was producing Dion, and singer, Jerri Bo Keno.
At the College action-packed question and answer seminar, Spector responds to an inquiry on how he got started.
I was a young aspiring guitar player. I played on some of Big Mama Thornton’s records. I always wanted to be a producer. There’s an old story I’ve told before. ‘OK. Let’s play baseball. You be the pitcher, you’re the catcher, and you’re the batter. Spector, you be the producer.’ I was always into that.
Dave Bartholomew, Sam Phillips - I wanted to know about the people behind the scenes. The guy who played the solo n ‘Rock Around the Clock.’ The tape echo sound. These things interested me. They were exciting.
I played on records before I made ‘em. I worked with Leiber and Stoller. Anyway, the only way you get into the record business is to make a record. I believed in individual distribution, which nobody did at the time. You can’t do that today. The big companies will eat you up and spit you out.
We made a lot of records, played on sessions by the Drifters, the guitar on ‘On Broadway,’ ‘Lavender Blue,’ and, ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him,’ the first one. That was the one I was gonna kick ass with. I was part of the group the Teddy Bears. We did The Perry Como Show.
-- Phil Spector
“Phil studied guitar with Howard Roberts. I knew Phil in the late fifties, with his friend, Michael Spencer,” waxed guitarist/arranger and record producer, Don Peake. “We used to meet at a house on Highland Avenue, and they would play ‘Wonderful,’ the two of them in unison, and Phil would take a solo. Phil was a pretty good jazz guitarist. May I point out to you [that], if you listen to his recording with the Teddy Bears on ‘To Know Him Is to Love Him,’ when that bridge goes off to the planet Mars and changes key, that’s the stamp of a jazz musician.”
The Phil Harvey Band in 1959, followed his Teddy Bears group tenure, and were together for only a month and a half. They dressed in western trench coats from the 1800's, Dusters, right out of the then current TV show, The Untouchables. Their sound was twangy and echo-laden. The repertoire featured instrumentals: "Bumpershoot," "Guitar Boogie Shuffle," Lonnie Donegan's "Rock Island Line" and sometimes an uptempo version of "It's Wonderful."
“I like to have all the musicians there at once,” revealed Spector in 1975 on his method of recording. “I get everything on one track that I need. I put everything on 24 tracks just to see if it’s plugged in. The finished track never ends up on more than one track.
“I record in a strange way. I haven’t changed. I go from the basic track and put it onto 24. Then I have one track and 23 open. That’s the difference between having 24 filled or 19 filled. Which means, I can get 23 string players and overdub them 10 times and have 200 strings then I put them on one track.
“My engineer was scared to death to work with me. When I record, I put everything on tape echo, everything. My engineer said, ‘You’re out of your mind.’ Do you know Ray Conniff uses more tape echo than I ever used in my life? That’s a fact.
“I record basic tracks and then put it all onto one track or maybe two. Then I condense. I put my voices on.
“I’ve used Barney Kessel all the time for the last ten years. Terry Gibbs on vibes … everybody. The better the talent is around you, the better the people you have working with you, the more concerned, the better you’re gonna come off as a producer, like a teacher in a class.
“The musicians I have never outdo me. I’m not in competition with them. I’m in complete accord with them. You need the ability so you hire the best. I have the creativity. I know what I want.
“I don’t wear a ‘Back to Mono’ button for no reason at all. I believe in it. I can make quad, it’s easy.”
Last decade I interviewed Gary Stewart, avid record collector and former executive at Apple iTUNES who did music supervision and initiated licensing for the company. I asked him about Phil Spector and Brian Wilson.
“To me, Brian Wilson and Phil Spector are very different but connected in a way. Phil Spector did something better than anybody. It’s not just ‘The Wall of Sound,’ which is terrific, and not heard on a lot of other pop records, but the ‘Wall of Sound’ turned these records about love, or lost love or those topics like they were the most important thing in the world. Phil’s defining characteristic to me is he turned these things into a matter of life and death than anybody else during that era.
“The titles of his records, whether it be ‘Uptown’ or ‘He’s A Rebel,’ did tap in to the teen identity. Even in ‘River Deep, Mountain High,’ the stakes are higher than they would be. In lesser hands they probably would be big hits but they wouldn’t be as good and they wouldn’t be as lasting. It seems Phil treated this like ‘Art’ with a capitol A.
“He did two things ...
“He had success in that area and a lot of the singers on Philles International were black and he didn’t try and hide it and he didn’t lead for convention either.
“Here is my revelation about the session players on the Spector records, and also regarding Brian Wilson’s recordings. All of these people were great musicians and key to those records and almost none of those people were artists. Or interested in being artists. They were just doing a gig. If it was for love, it was probably in a genre like jazz, where they couldn’t make enough money. And I have a theory that some of the best art comes where there is a commercial pressure. At least at that point.
“Something either burns long like Bob Dylan or the Velvet Underground or bright. There’s some that do both. And the Phil Spector and early Beach Boys’ records they found something, they expressed something, other people connected with it and then they were on to the next thing.
“In the case of Spector and Wilson, there is also the influence of Los Angeles on them and their music. It’s weird ... I don’t think of Phil Spector or Brian Wilson as Los Angeles artists. They went international. And factually I know everything about them was so L.A. When I think of L.A., I think of the Doors, Love, Grass Roots, the Troubadour, the sort of live music scene, the L.A. garage rock bands like the Standells or the Leaves. And with Spector and Wilson, we’re talking about two things that were largely studio creations.”
One afternoon in 1977, I did an interview with Spector inside his home with Robert Hilburn, the former pop music critic of The Los Angeles Times.
Spector spoke in reverence about songwriter Doc Pomus, who co-wrote "Save The Last Dance For Me" with Mort Shuman that Phil did with Ike & Tina Turner. Pomus had given Spector a helping hand early in his career, even getting young Phil into an Elvis Presley RCA studio session.
When Pomus died in 1991, Spector sat shiva with his family. “Here's a person, who happens to be a songwriter, and is in a wheelchair, and writes 'Save The Last Dance For Me,'” marveled Phil. "My graduating theme," [at Fairfax High School] Spector related to me in his Beverly Hills mansion in 1977, “was 'Daring To Be Different.' The moment I dared to, they called me different.’
"I always thought I knew what the kids wanted to hear. They were frustrated, uptight," Phil continued, " I would say no different from me when I was in school. I had a rebellious attitude. I was for the underdog. I was concerned that they were as misunderstood as I was.
“When you see a Kubrick movie, you tell me how many names you immediately remember in the cast. One, two? It's the same with Fellini, and that's what I wanted to do when I directed a recording. Singers are instruments. They are tools to be worked with.
We quizzed Phil about his recording techniques, the Beatles and John Lennon.
“It was very easy to work with John Lennon. There was no problem working with him. I think he is one of the greatest singers in music. I honestly believe that. I feel the same way about Paul (McCartney) as a singer. They are in a league with few others. I don’t feel the same way about George (Harrison) or Ringo (Starr). John and Paul are great rock and roll singers.”
Phil discussed the Crystals’ "Then He Kissed Me." "That was an experimental record. John (Lennon) told me the Beatles got the idea to use a 12-string guitar (Barney Kessel played) from that record. But I thought it was too spaced out. I was against it coming out. I was gonna can it."
I interviewed keyboardist/arranger and author Don Randi in 2010.
“Phil and [arranger] Jack Nitzsche always knew great songs. The songs always told a story. The songs in themselves were films. And, especially in Phil’s case, he knew how to write them and how to produce them. And in Brian Wilson’s case, Brian always knew where he was going with it. He may have not known at the beginning, but after a while he had an idea and he developed it. We were there to help him develop it. Jack was a great translator for Phil.
“You know what kills me, every time I hear Jack’s ‘The Lonely Surfer.’ I’m on it. It still gives me chills because it’s a great song. Jack wrote a great song. I didn’t hear it until the day we went in. You know, we never rehearsed. (laughs). The composition. He went to Westlake School of Music. I’ll tell you what gripped me was his brilliance. You gotta remember, there was brilliance without Phil. There was Phil and there was stuff you did on your own. And people forget about that. And, as great as it was, we were making up parts half the time. With Jack, Phil was able to go to Jack and he would translate what Phil wanted. There was camaraderie. You got to remember we all were together. Jack Nitzsche, Phil Spector, myself and Sonny Bono, who Jack knew from the late ‘50s at Specialty.
“I like mono but not quite a ‘Back to Mono’ guy. I still like the old LP’s and I still play them. For the simple reason that unfortunately when they do these things, they have a tendency to digitize everything where they clean it up so much that you lose the character of the song itself. You lose the room ambience. My God, if a guitar player squeaks on a note leave it! But they can get it out today so they choose to do that. If a singer took a breath before he or she sang a note, I used to love to hear that. It was part of the record. And they don’t do that anymore.”
One of our Forgotten Hits Website pays homage to the talents of Phil Spector.
Written and assembled by FH Reader Steve Knuettel, you can find the whole thing here: https://fhphilspector.blogspot.com/
Tomorrow's Coast To Coast 1972 Surveys Sweeps takes us into Connecticut ...
Hope to see you there! (kk)
