Legendary Guitarist Duane Eddy passed away on April 30th. His death was announced on Wednesday, May 1st … he was 86 years old.
Between 1958 and 1963, Eddy placed sixteen songs in The National Top 40, including The Top Ten Hits “Rebel Rouser” (#6, 1958), “Forty Miles Of Bad Road” (#5, 1959), “Because They’re Young” (#3, 1960) and “Dance With The Guitar Man” (#9, 1962.) He was inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1994.
His song “Because They’re Young” was the theme song to the film of the same name … Eddy also acted in the picture, as he did in “A Thunder Of Drums” and “The Wild Westeners.”
Although his version of “Peter Gunn” wasn’t the highest charting version (it peaked at #23 in 1960), it was a song long-associated with his career. Eddy recorded a new version with British rockers The Art Of Noise in 1986 that went to #50.
His style was very distinctive … and he influenced countless wanna-be guitarists thru the decades. (When BJ Thomas recorded his 1972 hit “Rock And Roll Lullaby,” producers said that they need to find somebody who could “sound like Duane Eddy” for the guitar solo break … to which someone ELSE said, “Why don’t we just get Duane Eddy?” … which is exactly what they did.
Billboard remembers Duane Eddy's Biggest Hot 100 Hits ...
Also passing away this week was Richard Tandy of The Electric Light Orchestra. Although he wasn’t a founding member, Tandy came over after Jeff Lynne, Roy Wood and Bev Bevan all decided to leave The Move (of which Tandy was also a member) and try something new in the way of “orchestral rock.” He joined ELO in 1973 and played keyboards for the band through 1986. (Remaining tight, he also appeared on a couple of Jeff Lynne’s solo albums.) Tandy was 76. (kk)
Elton John has written another book, this time about his farewell tour, titled “Farewell Yellow Brick Road: Memories Of My Life On Tour.” It is due to be released in September.
The tour was the most successful tour in history, grossing $939.1 million (or just under a billion dollars, spread out over five years and 328 dates … and Elton shares his most memorable moments from his jaunt around the world.
>>>Check out Johnny Cash and Tony Joe White, having a WHOLE lotta fun singing Tony’s big Top Ten Hit from 1969, “Polk Salad Annie” (kk)
kk …
I Think Johnny Will Be Trading In His Polk Salad For Bread & Water.
Folsom Prison or San Quentin?
FB
Harvey Kubernik had the opportunity to interview Johnny Cash in 1975 … and on the anniversary of Bob Dylan taping his appearance on Cash’s program, sent us this to share …
55 Years Ago: Bob Dylan Is Taped with Johnny Cash for The Johnny Cash Show
By Harvey Kubernik
© 2015 and 2024
During the late ‘60s Johnny Cash was a box office attraction, selling concert tickets, appearing on national television and now entrenched in the spotlight partially owing to the commercial success of his Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison long player giving him increased visibility on the pop and rock music charts.
Granada, a UK TV channel then broadcast a documentary Johnny Cash, The Man, His World, His Music that garnered crucial US television along with print media attention. The Granada program, directed by Robert Elfstrom, triggered ABC-TV stateside to offer Cash an hour-long pilot as a summer replacement for their Saturday night variety show, The Hollywood Palace.
In June, 1969, Columbia Records released Johnny Cash at San Quentin, produced by Bob Johnston, which yielded the LP’s smash country and pop hit single “A Boy Named Sue.” It convinced ABC, who then picked the option on the Cash TV show up for a full season.
“I would say there were many things that likely would not have happened were it not for [manager] Saul Holiff’s influence on Johnny's career, but the San Quentin show and Johnny's television show are both ones that undoubtedly can be credited to Saul's vision for Johnny,” observed author Julie Chadwick who penned The Man Who Carried Cash - Saul Holiff, Johnny Cash and the Making of an American Icon (Dundurn Press).
“On the television front, there are dozens of letters that go back more than a decade in which he continually pitched the idea of getting Johnny on TV, which finally bore fruit when a Canadian named Stan Jacobson decided to do a CBC special on Johnny in 1967, which many regard as the predecessor to his television series.”
A veteran of The Wayne and Shuster Show for several seasons, Jacobson had been a writer for Country Hoedown and writer/producer of the program Music Hop. In 1966, he wrote and directed the Battle of Britain documentary for the Canadian Broadcasting Company series Telescope, and in 1967, The Legend of Johnny Cash. During 1970-1971 Jacobson helmed the debut of the prime time Cash ABC-TV slot.
Bill Carruthers directed year 1969. He had previously directed both The Soupy Sales Show on station WXYZ-TV in Detroit and the Ernie Kovacs game show Take a Good Look, for ABC-TV. Carruthers subsequently directed The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game.
“My dad was the executive producer and director for the first year. It was his show,” stressed Byl Carruthers, then Billy, the son of Bill Carruthers, who was a guitarist/songwriter in the root’s music duo, Café R&B.
“The first show was a mindblower, as we all know, and the first season surprised ABC enough to pick it up. The sets were cheap, ‘cause they had no money. The production issues they faced retro-fitting the Ryman Auditorium were immense,” recollected guitarist/songwriter Carruthers.
“For that year of pre-production and production, my dad and John were close. He showered my dad with gifts (among them a 1932 Martin Guitar, and a Civil War Colt Pistol - John had a pair of them with consecutive numbers. He gave my father one, and he kept one, so they'd each have one as symbol of their relationship.”
The Johnny Cash Show debuted in June of 1969. Programs were done at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, which back then was home to the Grand Ole Opry, 1943-1974. Bill Walker was the musical director and arranger. June Carter Cash and the Carter Family, Carl Perkins, the Statler Brothers, and the Tennessee Three were screen regulars.
Among the Cash-invited performers: Louis Armstrong, Bill Monroe, Dusty Springfield, Judy Collins, The Monkees, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stevie Wonder, Tony Joe White, Homer & Jethro, the Everly Brothers, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Derek and The Dominos, Roger Miller, Faron Young, Charley Pride, Loretta Lynn, Marty Robbins, Mickey Newbury, Neil Diamond, Conway Twitty, Tammy Wynette, Bob Dylan, Waylon Jennings, George Jones and Doug Kershaw.
Dylan taped his episode on May 1, 1969, and it was broadcast on June 1st.
“Dylan called my dad, before he and his staff left for Nashville,” reminisced Byl Carruthers.
“I had gone to work with my dad that day. He had an overall deal with Screen Gems at the time and had an office on their lot. He had said we were going to get lunch, and then his assistant beckoned him back to the office, saying it was important!
“Two full hours went by, and I had to wait. When he got off the phone, he came out and said that he had just gotten off the phone with Bob Dylan. I asked him what he was calling about, and he said that Johnny wanted Dylan to do the show. Johnny really wanted Bob to do the first episode and told Bob that he would be in good hands with my dad, and he wouldn't have to do anything he didn't want to. My dad said Bob was ‘feeling him out’ on the phone.
“My dad was very cool about letting me hang when the musicians were there, and yes, I got to fetch coffee and stuff for Bob Dylan, in the hour or so before the taping...
“I distinctly remember Dylan having two very sedate western-style two-piece suits laid out, and he saying to my dad ‘Bill, which one of these do you think would be best?’ A few minutes later, my dad said to the assistant director, ‘I can't believe Bob asked me what he should wear!’”
In his review of The Johnny Cash Show in the June 12, 1969 issue of Great Speckled Bird, the counterculture underground newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia, Gene Guerrero reviewed the ABC-TV/Screen Gems initial broadcast.
“TV CASHES IN. OCCASIONALLY, television gives the viewer a glimpse of its potential as a creative medium. Usually, as with the Smothers Brothers Show, it is a fleeting glimpse before the owners of the public airways get uptight or commercialism subverts the creativity. With the inauguration of the Johnny Cash Show, country music has finally made it to network television. One can only hope and pray that it will take a couple of seasons before these corrupting influences set in.
“Dylan sang a couple of songs off his new album including 'Girl From the North Country' which he sings with Cash. In a non-contrived way Dylan and Cash singing together reminds you of two kids practicing for their first recital. In this time of super-slick entertainers, that's very refreshing.”
On August 16, 1975, forty miles from Los Angeles, California, I interviewed Johnny for the now defunct Melody Maker inside the Royal Inn Hotel in Anaheim.
In my 1975 Melody Maker interview with Cash, I asked him about Bob Dylan.
"I became aware of Bob Dylan when the Freewheelin' album came out in 1963,” Johnny recalled.
“I thought he was one of the best country singers I had ever heard. I always felt a lot in common with him. I knew a lot about him before we had ever met. I knew he had heard and listened to country music. I heard a lot of inflections from country artists I was familiar with. I was in Las Vegas in '63 and '64 and wrote him a letter telling him how much I liked his work. I got a letter back and we developed a correspondence.
"We finally met at Newport in 1964. It was like we were two old friends. There was none of this standing back, trying to figure each other out. He's unique and original.
“I keep lookin' around as we pass the middle of the 70s and I don't see anybody come close to Bob Dylan. I respect him. Dylan is a few years younger than I am, but we share a bond that hasn't diminished. I get inspiration from him."
As a teenager, in the very late fifties, Dylan, birth name Robert Allen Zimmerman, hitchhiked from Hibbing, Minnesota, to Duluth to see Cash and the Tennessee Two (Marshall Grant bass and Luther Perkins guitar) play at the Duluth Amphitheater.
On February 6, 2015, Bob Dylan was honored at the 25th anniversary MusiCares 2015 Person of the Year Gala at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles.
In his stage remarks, Dylan praised Cash.
"Johnny Cash recorded some of my songs early on, too. I met him about '63, when he was all skin and bones. He traveled long, he traveled hard, but he was a hero of mine. I heard many of his songs growing up. I knew them better than I knew my own. 'Big River,' 'I Walk the Line.' 'How High's the Water, Mama?’ I wrote 'It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)' with that song reverberating inside my head.
"Johnny was an intense character, and he saw that people were putting me down [for] playing electric music. And he posted letters to magazines, scolding people, telling them to 'shut up and let him sing.' In Johnny Cash's world of hardcore Southern drama, that kind of thing didn't exist. Nobody told anybody what to sing or what not to sing."
Drummer and friend Jim Keltner on November 19, 1979 invited Knack drummer Bruce Gary and I to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Southern California to attend Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming tour. Jim was in the band. I was reviewing the concert for Melody Maker.
I had a very brief backstage encounter with. Dylan. He inquired about Phil Spector. I told him I had recently done an interview with Spector for Melody Maker. Phil talked about R&B vocalists, also listing “Dion, John, Paul, Elvis, Bobby Darin, and Johnny Cash as great singers.”
Dylan then removed his sunglasses. He has blue eyes like Eva Marie Saint, Charles Bukowski, and Kris Kristofferson. Bob offered a firm handshake, and smiled, “Johnny Cash is a friend of mine.”
In Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan writes “Johnny Cash sounds like he’s at the edge of fire, or in the deep snow, or in a ghostly forest, the coolness of conscious obvious strength, full tilt and vibrant with danger … Johnny’s voice was so big, it made the world grow small…”
In the 2009 book A Heartbeat And A Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears, written by author Antonino D’Ambrosio, Cash business music associate Johnny Western disclosed to D’Ambrosio in an interview witnessing a Dylan and Cash exchange where Dylan admitted, “Man, I didn’t just dig you; I breathed you.”
In November, 1961, Cash had stuck his head inside the Columbia Records studio when talent scout/A&R man John Hammond was producing Dylan’s debut album, Bob Dylan.
“Dylan was also grateful that Cash would constantly endorse his talents to skeptical Columbia Records executives,” Antonino underscored to me in a 2009 interview, “after the initial weak sales of his first platter, some calling it ‘Hammond’s Folly.’”
Cash’s variety show TV program, along with his successful Folsom Prison and San Quentin albums ushered in today's acceptance of country music artists on television.
"One reason country music has expanded the way it has is that we haven't let ourselves become locked into any category. We do what we feel,” reinforced Cash.
“I like to go into the studio with my own musicians and record my own songs,” Johnny reminded me in our encounter. “I’m open to other songwriters. I like to do things different in my career.”
However, Johnny said that TV obligations of his ABC-TV series hampered his creativity.
“It cut down on my touring, it became too confining. We stayed in Nashville for two-thirds of the time. I really didn’t enjoy it all that much. If it was kept loose and spontaneous it could have been great. But we had to do the same song every eight or ten times before they would accept it. The show lost its feel and honesty. Consequently, I lost a lot of interest in it.”
In September, 2006, a 2-disc DVD set of The Best of the Johnny Cash Show, hosted by Kris Kristofferson, was distributed by CMV/Columbia Legacy, a division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
>>>They added the August 3, 2024, at Toyota Oakdale Theatre, Wallingford, CT, that Shelley told us about, which had previously been missing from their official tour poster. Hmm … I wonder if that’s the show SHE’S going to!?!?! (kk)
Hmmm ... I received notice of this concert before it was announced, so YES! As a matter of fact, I will be going to this one.
Shelley
Also from Shelley ...
I don't think I've seen these before ... a hell of a steal for somebody.
The "A Hard Day's Night" bubble gum card series was cool because they kind of had that sepia-tone look to them.
I bought ALL The Beatles cards back then ... as I recall, there were a couple of series of black and white cards, then the HDN set, and then a couple of sets in full color, which were just AWESOME!!! Mine, too, are long gone. (kk)
Here is more on the history of these cards ...
https://herohabit.com/a-history-of-beatles-trading-cards/
And, speaking of our FH Buddy Timmy, I just HAD to share this ultra cool shot that he sent me ...
Camco Drums?!?!? Never even heard of 'em!!!
But they did have at least ONE notorious client ...
And one more from Harvey Kubernik …
Hi kk …
If any of your readers happen to be in West Hollywood the first week of May, try and check out "The Canyon of Dreams" exhibit.
"The Canyon of Dreams" Photography Exhibit Opens Monday, May 6th, at the Morrison Hotel in West Hollywood. Select photographs on public view in both LA and NYC starting Monday, May 6, feature photographic contributions from renowned artists such as Henry Diltz, Joel Bernstein, Art Kane, Thomas Monaster and Ethan Russell.
"The Canyon of Dreams" is a celebration of creative minds and voices not to be slept on or forgotten in this unique retelling of Laurel Canyon’s distinct sound, style and resplendent ideals.
Morrison Hotel Gallery
116 Prince Street, Second Floor, New York, NY, 10012
212-941-8770
Morrison Hotel Gallery
Sunset Marquis Hotel
1200 Alta Loma, Rd, West Hollywood, CA 90069
310-881-6025
Some of these regional images were exhibited in my 2009 book "Canyon of Dreams," which featured a Foreword by Ray Manzarek and an Afterword by Lou Adler.
Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon
Paperback
by Harvey Kubernik(Author)
"A lavishly illustrated insider’s look at 80 years of music and culture in Laurel Canyon -- a ZIP code with its own playlist. Sonny & Cher, the Doors, the Monkees, the Byrds, Love, Buffalo Springfield, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; the Eagles, Bobby Womack, Carole King, and others cultivated their immortal sounds in this L.A.-based musical fraternity. Written by a long-time Canyon resident who knows them all, Canyon of Dreams traces the history of the community and its enduring legacy. Taking a deeply personal approach, it uses a multiple-voice narration based on exclusive interviews with the area’s musical elite. Because of their close connection with Kubernik, some of these stars are speaking openly for the first time."
Harvey’s “Canyon Of Dreams” is a coffee table book that ranks amongst the greatest and most beautifully illustrated coffee table books of all time … a genuine keepsake of a time and place like no other. Just seeing this posting made me flip thru it again! (kk)
OK, I didn't see THAT one coming!!!
I’m not sure I'm ready to sit here and tell you that it’s worth $300 bucks … but if you get the chance to pick it up cheaper, do yourself a favor and grab a copy. (Believe it or not, I actually found a used copy listed for sale online for $2340!!! So I guess it's safe to say it's held in pretty high regard!)
If you DO happen to find a more reasonably-priced copy, I think you’ll find yourself referring back to it time and time again to once again enjoy all its splendor. (kk)
[or if not, I’ll sell you MY copy for $2 Grand!!!]
Speaking of up for sale, LA’s oldest record store, The Record Collector, is up on the market for just under five million dollars. (NOTE: That price does NOT include its inventory of over 500,000 pieces)
The Record Collector first opened its doors in 1974 and has been a steady fixture now for fifty years. Owner Sandy Chase feels it’s time for someone else to take it thru its next fifty.
The Record Collector only sells vinyl … and never got into the CD phase.
If you’ve got an extra five mill that you don’t know what to do with, here is the official real estate listing …
https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/7809-Melrose-Ave-Los-Angeles-CA/31481947/
… but remember that just gets you an empty store front … you’ll have to shell out extra if you actually want to have vinyl records to sell.
(My guess is that this business will be on the market for a long, long time!) kk
60 YEARS AGO TODAY:
5/3/64 – Gerry and the Pacemakers make their US television debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Also appearing tonight is Little Stevie Wonder.
