The new Brian Wilson documentary that we told you about a couple of months ago will see theatrical release in November (no official date has been announced yet) and will also feature a brand new song called “Right Where I Belong.” (Wilson and his band, now out on tour, have been recording a “covers” albums of rock and roll tracks that he always liked and felt were inspirational.)
The film played first at The Tribeca Film Festival and should
be available for viewing in theaters as well as video on demand for home
viewing. More details as they become
available. (kk)
Bob Dylan has announced a three year world tour, kicking off
in November (with a show right here in Chicago scheduled for November 3rd
at The Auditorium Theater … they’re still doing shows there?!?! Wow!)
More details as they become available but these are the
announced November dates thus far …
November 2nd –
Milwaukee, Wisconsin - Riverside Theatre
3rd – Chicago, Illinois - Auditorium Theatre
5th – Cleveland, Ohio - Key Bank
State Theatre
6th – Columbus, Ohio - Palace Theatre
7th – Bloomington, Indiana - IU Auditorium
9th – Cincinnati, Ohio - Procter & Gamble
Hall
10th – Knoxville, Tennessee - Knoxville
Auditorium
12th – Louisville, Kentucky - Palace Theatre
13th – Charleston, West Virginia - Municipal
Auditorium
15th – Moon Township, Pennsylvania - Robert
Morris Univ.
16th – Hershey, Pennsylvania - Hershey Theatre
19th – 21st – New York, New York -
Beacon Theatre
23rd – 24th – Port Chester, New York -
Capitol Theatre
26th – Providence, Rhode Island - Providence
Performing Arts Center
27th – Boston, Massachusetts - Wang Theatre
29th – 30th – Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania - The Met
More dates to
follow
Last week we
ran a photo of Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp snapped in New York … and
THIS week we’ve got a brand new song by these two.
“Wasted Days” (which will appear on Mellencamp’s new album, scheduled to be released early next year) is the first official collaboration by these two major artists. (It has a very definite Mellencamp feel to it … but were it not for some of the instrumentation, it could just as easily have been a Springsteen track.)
It’s a
reflective tune about two old guys looking back at their lives … and what’s
left of their future … and both (especially The Boss) really look the part in
this video …
Reportedly, the two team up on a couple of other tracks on the new LP as well … begging the question “Could a Springsteen / Mellencamp tour be in the offering for 2022???” (Man, can you imagine the turn-out for this one!!!) kk
Look for Chris Hillman’s memoir to be issued in paperback and
audio book format nex month. As the
title suggests, Chris has had his fair share of musical success … “Time
Between: My Life As a Byrd, A Burrito
Brother, And Beyond” … Hillman has been on the cutting edge of the music scene
for over seven decades now. His forays
into country music (with The Desert Rose Band, one of my favorites), as well as
time spent with Stephen Stills’ Manassas and his own Southern – Hillman – Furay
Band only helped to build the legend.
Chris was also responsible for helping to launch the careers
of Buffalo Springfield and Emmylou Harris … and recounts his somewhat troubled
relationship with Gram Parsons.
Here is what some of his peers have said
about his book …
“Chris was a true innovator — the man who invented
country rock. Every time the Eagles board their private jet Chris at least paid
for the fuel.” —Tom Petty
“Hillman is a bona fide pioneering godfather to
generations of musical souls who sought inspiration at that divine crossroads
where rock & roll, country, bluegrass, folk, honky tonk, and gospel music
intersect and harmonize. He’s a national treasure.” —Marty Stuart
“This book brought back a lot of great memories: the
humorous origins of The Byrds and subsequent adventures.”—Roger McGuinn
“Chris Hillman [is] the unvarnished gem of every band he
has inhabited. It’s time to applaud his legacy.” —Bernie Taupin
The new edition will become available on October 19th
(with a forward by Dwight Yoakam.) kk
For well over a year now we’ve been telling you about the full-length clips being posted on The Ed Sullivan Show’s YouTube Channel … stuff that hasn’t aired in its entirety in over fifty years.
Best Classic Bands just selected ten classic, high-quality clips that
you may enjoy …
The
Ed Sullivan Show: Pop Music Showcase | Best Classic Bands
Meanwhile, browse around YouTube to discover literally
HUNDRED and HUNDREDS more. (Ed would
have turned 120 years old on Tuesday … which is pretty amazing when one
considers that he already looked 100 years old back in the ‘60’s when he was
bringing us all of this great music!!!)
kk
I was reminded by
your column yesterday about Nancy Faust, who played organ at Comiskey Park. Some of us grads of Roosevelt High in Chicago,
which was also Nancy's alma mater when we were there, would attend Sox games,
back in the 70s, and we'd
congregate near the booth where Nancy played and
yell to her to play our school song ("The Rough Rider Song".) She'd play it and we'd sing along.
Lots of famous
folks came out of our school, like Jon Poulos of The Buckinghams (we were in
gym class together), Shel Silverstein, and George Gobel. Steve Goodman
was there for two years and then moved away to the burbs.
Mike Wolstein
My oldest daughter (a MAJOR Sox fan to this day … I think she
first started going to games when she was around four years old!) used to LOVE
Nancy Faust … I remember going into the booth to visit with her one time and
Nicki buying a “Nancy Faust’s Greatest Hits” cassette, which Nancy happily
signed and then played a request for her at the game. One year she wore a Dr. Seuss / Cat In The
Hat hat as we sat below the organ booth and they beamed her picture up on the jumbotron
television screen.
Nancy was probably one of the best (if not THE best) know
organists in any sports organization … kinda like Wayne Messmer singing The
National Anthem at The Chicago Blackhawks games! (kk)
re: Biondi
Birthday Bash photos …
Hey, at least the head of my bass guitar
got into one of the pics. Ha!
Dean Milano
Unfortunately, we had a VERY limited number of shots to
choose from … couldn’t even include a photo of co-host Scott Mackay because
they didn’t sent me one! (sorry, Scott!) … but I was happy to finally be able to get at least
SOMETHING up there on the site. From
what I’ve heard, a fun night of music for a good cause. Now let’s get this sucker made and out
there!!! (kk)
Hey Kent!
Thanks for posting all the
cool shots from Biondi Blue Horizon! (Bed
Bath & Biondi?) Lol!
Also, I forgot how effing
brilliant Jay Ferguson’s Shakedown Cruise is!
Omg, the template for so many songs that came after it. Thx for
posting with the cool video!
Shake it!
Rock on!!
Jimbo
British Pop Singer Barry Ryan passed away on Wednesday. Originally half of a duo with his brother
Paul, Ryan scored the minor solo hit “Eloise” (#50), WRITTEN by his brother, in
early 1969. (It only went to #86 in
Billboard … nearly a full “top 40” spots apart from its Cash Box peak, in
another one of those chart anomalies.)
However, it DID peak at #2 back home in the UK … and was a #1 Hit in Australia
as well. (Boy, this one never registered
on my radar at all! Lol) kk
Barry Ryan has died. I am not a fan of
"Eloise," but this song is awesome and sounds so much like a song
Badfinger could have done great!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGz2plu04Uw
FH Reader Tom Cuddy
sent us this piece from The New York Times about singer Sue Thompson, who also
passed away last week. (We told you that Sue first began singing on stage at
the age of seven … but didn’t have her first chart hit until she was nearly
forty!)
From funeral home obituary
Sue Thompson, Who Sang of ‘Norman’ and Sad Movies, Dies at 96
She started
out a country singer, but she found fame and pop-chart success in the early
1960s with catchy novelty songs, as well as the occasional ballad.
Neil Genzlinger, NY Times (Sept. 28,
2021)
Sue Thompson, who after more than a decade of
moderate success as a country singer found pop stardom in the early 1960s with
hook-laden novelty hits like “Sad Movies (Make Me Cry)” and “Norman,” died on
Thursday at the home of her daughter and caregiver, Julie Jennings, in Pahrump,
Nev. She was 96. Her son, Greg Penny,
said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
With a
clear, somewhat girlish voice that brought sass to humorous ditties but that
could also be used to good effect on a ballad, Ms. Thompson was part of a wave
of female vocalists, like Connie Francis and Brenda Lee, who had hits in the
late 1950s and early ’60s.
Her breakthrough came when she was paired with
the songwriter John D. Loudermilk, who wrote her
first big hit, “Sad Movies,” a done-me-wrong
tune about a woman who goes to a movie alone when her boyfriend says he has to
work late, only to see him walk in with her best friend on his arm.
The
song cracked the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the fall of 1961, and
before long she was back in the Top 10 with another Loudermilk song, “Norman,”
in which she turned that rather unglamorous male name into an earworm.
(“Norman, Norman my love,” Ms. Thompson cooed in the chorus, surrounding the
name with oohs and hmms.)
Mr. Loudermilk also wrote an elopement
novelty, “James (Hold the Ladder Steady),” which
did moderately well for Ms. Thompson in 1962. That year she also showed what
she could do with a ballad, having modest success with “Have a Good Time,” a
song, by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, Tony Bennett recorded a decade earlier.
The British Invasion soon eclipsed this kind of
light fare, but Ms. Thompson had one more pop success, in 1964, with Mr.
Loudermilk’s “Paper Tiger.”
In 1966 she traveled to Vietnam to entertain the
troops. Because she was accompanied by only a trio, she could go to more remote
bases than bigger U.S.O. acts, exposing her to greater danger.
“Tonight we are at Can Tho, a
huge American air base,” she wrote to her parents. “You can see the fighting
(flashes from guns), hear the mortars, etc.”
“We’re fairly secure most of the time,” she
continued, “but must be aware that things can pop right in our midst.”
The trip left her shaken.
“A heartbreaking — and heartwarming —
experience,” she wrote. “I will never be the same. I saw and learned
unbelievable things.”
Mr. Penny said that his mother was ill for weeks
afterward, and that she long suspected that she had been exposed to Agent Orange.
She underwent a sort of awakening, he said, becoming a vegetarian and
developing an interest in spiritual traditions, Eastern as well as Western.
Despite becoming ill after the first trip, she
went on other tours to entertain troops, including one the next year on which
Mr. Penny, just a boy, accompanied her. They traveled to Japan, Hong Kong, the
Philippines and elsewhere. Vietnam had also been on the itinerary, but that
part of the trip never happened.
“I remember getting the communication while we
were on the road in Okinawa,” Mr. Penny said in a phone interview. “They said
it was just too dangerous.”
When Ms. Thompson returned to
performing stateside, she also returned to country music, releasing a number of
records — including a string recorded with Don Gibson — and leaving behind the little-girl
sound of her hits.
“I don’t want to be ‘itty bitty’ anymore,” she
told The Times of San Mateo, Calif., in 1974. “I want to project love and
convey a more mature sound and a more meaningful message.” Country music, she
said, was a better vehicle for that because “country fans pay more attention to
what is being said in a song.”
Eva Sue McKee (she picked her stage
name out of a phone book) was born on July 19, 1925, in Nevada, Mo. Her father,
Vurl, was a laborer, and her mother, Pearl Ova (Fields) McKee, was a nurse. In
1937, during the Depression, her parents moved to California to escape the Dust
Bowl, settling north of Sacramento. When she was in high school the family
moved again, to San Jose.
As a child Ms. Thompson was entranced by Gene
Autry, and she grew up envisioning herself as a singing cowgirl. Her mother
found her a secondhand guitar for her seventh birthday, and she performed at
every opportunity as she went through high school.
In 1944 she married Tom Gamboa, and while he
fought in World War II, she had their daughter, Ms. Jennings. She also worked
in a defense factory, Mr. Penny said.
Her wartime marriage ended in divorce
in 1947, but her singing career soon began in earnest. Ms. Thompson won a
talent show at a San Jose theater, which led to appearances on local radio and
television programs, including those of Dude Martin, a radio star in the Bay
Area who had a Western swing band, Dude Martin’s Roundup Gang.
In the early 1950s she became the lead vocalist
on a TV show that Mr. Martin had introduced in the Los Angeles market, and she
cut several records with his band, including, in 1952, one of the first
versions of the ballad “You Belong to Me.” Later that year it became a hit for
Jo Stafford, and in the 1960s it was covered by the Duprees.
Ms. Thompson and Mr. Martin married in December
1952, but they divorced a year later, and Ms. Thompson soon married another
Western swing star with his own local TV show, Hank Penny. That marriage ended
in divorce in 1963, but the two continued to perform together occasionally for
decades.
The country records Ms. Thompson made on the
Mercury label in the 1950s never gained much traction, but that changed when
she signed with Hickory early in 1961. “Angel, Angel,” another ballad by the
Bryants, garnered some attention — Billboard compared it to the Brenda Lee hit
“I Want to Be Wanted” — and then came “Sad Movies.”
That breakthrough hit was something of an
accident. In a 2010 interview on the South
Australian radio show “The Doo Wop Corner,” Ms.
Thompson said she recorded it only after another singer had decided not to.
“I inherited the song,” she said, “and I was
really happy and excited when it turned out to be such a hit for me.”
Even before her pop hits Ms.
Thompson was a familiar sight on stages in Nashville and Nevada as well as on
the country fair circuit, and the hits made her even more in demand in Las
Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Reno, Nev., and elsewhere. Gravitating between country and
pop came easily.
“Most popular songs actually are
country-and-western songs with a modern instrumental background,” she told The
Reno Gazette-Journal in 1963.
Ms. Thompson said her favorite among the songs
she recorded was “You Belong to Me.” About a decade ago, when she was in her
80s, Greg Penny, a record producer who has worked with Elton John and other top
stars, recorded her singing the song to a guitar accompaniment. Carmen Kaye,
host of “The Doo Wop Corner,” gave the demo its radio premiere during the 2010
interview, Ms. Thompson still sounding sweet and clear.
Her fourth husband, Ted Serna, whom she had
known in high school and married in 1993, died in 2013. In addition to Ms.
Jennings and Mr. Penny, she is survived by eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Ms. Jennings, in a phone interview, told about a
time when her mother, on tour in Vietnam, asked to visit soldiers in the
infirmary who couldn’t come to her stage show. One badly injured young man,
when introduced to her, said, “I don’t give a darn who’s here; I just want my
mama.” Ms. Thompson sat with him for a long while, asking all about his mother,
helping him conjure good memories.
“Three years later,” Ms. Jennings said, “my
mother was working in Hawaii, and he brought his mother in there and introduced
her to my mom.”
We all know the Foundations' classic "Build Me Up Buttercup" as well as "Baby, Now That I Found You," but their story has always fascinated me. There should be a movie made on this band. They were a bunch of guys who were all musicians from all over Europe, etc., and all worked at a restaurant in a basement and played there, too. They hit with "Baby, Now that I Found You" and Brian Epstein signed them to NEMS, but died, so the deal fell apart. Then they changed lead singers and "Buttercup" became a hit. Two different singers that sounded really close on their hits!! Then it all fell apart in 1970.
Their
story is told in a ton of articles in this 1969 Billboard issue! No
mention of Epstein, surprisingly, but he did sign them to NEMS. Their
writers / managers would not let them record ANY original songs! ALL
talented musicians. I just could not believe when I brought the magazine
back home in ‘69. I was shocked to read so much on this band that
wasn't really important at the time, much. They did tour over 30 states
tho.
Starting
at page 39 below, you can see page after page on this band in BILLBOARD!
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/60s/1969/Billboard%201969-04-26.pdf
Clark
Besch
The Foundations have got to be one of the greatest
Two Hit Wonder bands of all-time … “Baby, Now That I Found You” reaching #8 in
1968 and then “Build Me Up Buttercup” going all the way to #1 (everywhere
except Billboard, of course, where it only peaked at #3) the following
year. Both songs have been in heavy
oldies rotation ever since. (“Baby, Now
That I Found You” was a #1 hit in The UK and “Buttercup peaked at #2. They also had another Top Ten Hit in ’69 across
the pond called “In The Bad, Bad Old Days (Before You Loved Me)” that reached
#8. A rare (for that time) interracial
R&B band with members coming from, as Clark said, all over the globe, they
certainly made their mark on the charts in a very brief time. (I’m confused by the Epstein connection,
however … Brian died on August 27th, 1967 … I remember it clearly
because it was my birthday in my all-time favorite year of music! … but their
first chart hit didn’t come until a good four months later … so SOMEBODY
obviously took over the band for a different label and helped to guide them up
the charts.)
As for this amount of coverage, this had to be some
type of paid publicity spotlight piece for Billboard to devote this large a
section of their magazine to the group.
Very night ‘tho … it certainly got their name out there amongst the industry
big wigs!!!
(And Ray Graffia, Jr. and Ronnie Rice may want to pay
particular attention to Page 87 where a full page ad for The New Colony Six’s
brand new single “I Could Never Lie To You” appears!) kk
And finally, on this date in 1960, “The Flintstones”
debuted on prime time television … a first.
(Fred and Wilma Flintstone also hold the distinction of being the first animated
married couple ever to share a bed together on tv … real-life folks like Rob
and Laura Petrie had to push their beds together in order to conceive
Richie!!! Lol)
