Let's Get Together and celebrate November's SWEET 16!
Gettin' Together ... All Together Now ...
C'mon people now, smile on your brother ...
And Get Together with Forgotten Hits!
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Insight Into: BOBBY VEE
Our special 2022 Series continues as we throw the spotlight on BOBBY VEE this month, courtesy of interview segments provided by Jeff March and Marti Smiley Childs from their book "Where Have All The Pop Stars Gone, Volume 1" ...
Insights into … Bobby Vee
[38 Billboard Hot 100 singles, 1959 – 1970; one certified RIAA gold]
Bobby Velline, a 15-year-old high school sophomore from Fargo, North Dakota, was excited about going to see one of his favorite groups — Buddy Holly and the Crickets. He had a ticket to see the group perform on February 3, 1959, at the Winter Dance Party in nearby Moorhead, Minnesota. “There weren’t many rock and roll acts that ventured that far out into the prairie,” Bobby explained.
He was stunned upon learning of the plane crash in which Holly and fellow performers Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died, along with pilot Roger Peterson. But when the remaining tour performers — Dion and the Belmonts, the Crickets and Frankie Sardo — pulled into Moorhead, sponsoring radio station KFGO and disc jockey Charlie Boone decided to go on with the show. “They asked for local talent to help fill in the evening,” Bobby said. So he, his brother Bill and two friends in their impromptu band answered the call.
Bobby and his brother Bill Velline in the late 1950s (Courtesy of Bobby Vee)
“It wasn’t like we were trying to start a career or anything. We were just trying to help them get through the night and help people get through this tragedy, ourselves included. We climbed on stage, knees knockin’, and when Charlie said, ‘What’s the name of the band?’ we didn’t have a name, so I quickly replied, ‘The Shadows.’”
Bobby didn’t sing any Buddy Holly tunes that night, although it’s been said that he did. When the newly dubbed Shadows stepped off stage following their 15-minute set, a local talent agent named Bing Bengtssen introduced himself to them. “It hadn’t occurred to us that we could do anything beyond that concert, but he started booking dates for us.” The band soon signed with Soma, a small Minneapolis-based regional label that released the group’s first hit, “Suzie Baby.”
Their improvised performance and that chance encounter marked the beginning of a prolific hit-making career for Bobby, who shortened his stage name to “Vee” and later changed the name of his group to the Strangers — the members of which briefly included a rockin’ piano player who called himself “Elston Gunnn (with a triple “n”) before adopting the name Bob Dylan. After A&R man Snuff Garrett signed Vee to a contract with Liberty Records in the autumn of 1959, Bobby’s course for pop stardom and chart success was set. Years later, Billboard magazine recognized him as “One of the top 10 most consistent chart makers ever.”
Bobby died at age 73 on October 24, 2016, five years after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Insights about Bobby’s classroom versus career dilemma
“I was 16 years old and had a No. 1 record in the upper Midwest,” Bobby recalled. “So I went to my school counselor and told him what was going on, and I really wanted him to talk me out of leaving school. But he said, ‘Wow! A No. 1 record. Man, that’s gotta be exciting.’ And I said, ‘Well, it is, and I’m signing a record contract with a company in Los Angeles.’ He said, ‘That’s great!’ Instead of talking me out of it, he asked, ‘If this whole thing didn’t work, would you come back to school?’ I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ He said, ‘Then let me set you up with some correspondence courses at the college here.’ And he did. So I’d be out there on the road, rockin’ away, and I’d come back to my room and be doing algebra. And that got me through ’60 and ’61, when I was a senior. And my career got so busy that I ended up not finishing. I was a few credits away from getting my high school diploma. But it was a great experience.”
How Bobby became a singer in his brother Bill’s band
“My brother Bill was a great guitar player. He didn’t use a guitar pick. He plucked the strings with his thumbnail and first two fingernails on his right hand, sort of like Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. He pulled on the strings. Nobody sang [in his band in 1958]. They just played the music of all these Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran and Elvis songs, and they would get lost in the music. Bill knew that I sang because we used to go to all the country music shows together that would come through the area, and he would say, ‘Bobby, how’s the bridge go on this?’ And I would sing it to him. And that’s how I became a singer in the band.”
Developing stage presence
“I studied acting for a couple of years with Agnes Moorehead, who played Samantha’s mother, Endora, in the television series Bewitched,. Then I studied with Jeff Corey, who was blacklisted as a communist during the whole McCarthy thing. He was a great instructor. When Jeff was finally able to get back into acting, he turned his class over to Leonard Nimoy, and I studied with Leonard for about a year and a half. I learned a lot in those classes about performing, about singing to the back of the room and gesturing, and those kinds of things that seem phony and foreign until they become part of you, and it’s part of performing.”
Bobby’s three sons performing in his late-career band the Vees
“The Vees started working with me on my shows in 1994, and they’re great players. We always had a lot of music around the house, a lot of musical instruments, but they worked all that stuff out in their own personal sandbox. I wouldn’t want to try to manage that, and I didn’t. And it’s the best band I’ve ever had. And they’re so respectful of the people that we work with, and the other acts that we do shows with. They know the time period, they love the time period, and they’re playing the music the way it’s supposed to be played.”
Bobby Vee in 2000 (Courtesy of Bobby Vee)
The narrative and quotations in this article are excerpted from the book Where Have All the Pop Stars Gone? — Volume 1, by Marti Smiley Childs and Jeff March. This material is copyrighted © 2011 by EditPros LLC and may not be reproduced or redistributed without written permission.
Order your copy here: https://www.editpros.com/WHATPSG_Vol_1.html
Monday, November 14, 2022
1972 Coast-To-Coast Surveys - FLORIDA - November 14th
"I Can See Clearly Now" tops the chart here in Florida just as it did in Connecticut last week.
In fact, you won't find many surprises at all on this week's chart (except maybe for the fact that Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)" is still hanging on at #27. (A little surprising, too, I guess, to see Chuck Berry still playing with his Ding-A-Ling at #20!)
I'm not quite sure what the significance is of their Top 28 ... but they're also listing The Top 20 Albums so once again the impact of album rock can clearly be seen on the AM dial. (Long-time, established AM stations were doing everything they could to stave off the eventual take-over of FM Radio ... and if that meant playing an album cut every so often, so be it!)
Even spinning the dial to come up with a track to feature this week came up empty ... so I guess I'll go with the lone premier, Al Green's latest, "You Ought To Be With Me," new at #21 (but already charting in several other cities that we have previously visited.)
Sunday, November 13, 2022
The Sunday Comments ( 11 - 13 - 22 )
We're going to let Mike Wolstein take over Forgotten Hits here for a bit …
Hi, Kent ...
Friday was Jim Peterik's birthday, so I thought I might send a
"historic" photo, just for fun. It's a screen capture from a
movie I took of Jim entertaining at the Dick Biondi Toy Drive, December 12,
2015, in Bolingbrook.
Jim and members of his group have played at many of those drives; in this
particular scene, Jim is telling the crowd to sing along while he performs "Vehicle."
He'd say "All of you out there, when I point to you, sing the
line 'ba-da bop-ba-daaaa.'"
In this picture, right after he says that to the crowd, he turns to Dick and
says "Dick, don't sing." Dick
was laughing.
Gotta love both of those guys.
See you in Elk Grove?
Mike
I can’t tell you how many of those Toy Drives I attended over the years … probably was at at least a dozen of the same ones YOU were at … but didn’t know you at the time to even say hello. All of our Local Heroes were really good about coming by and helping out to raise money to buy gifts for the kids who couldn’t enjoy Christmas the traditional way because they were either too poor or too sick to do so. I would regularly see Ronnie Rice, Carl Giammarese and Jim Peterik at these things, lending a hand. (Dick would often broadcast live from these various Mall Drives and have them as guests on his radio program.)
By Elk Grove, Mike is referring to the Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony, taking place on Friday, November 25th (the Day After Thanksgiving) in Elk Grove. The New Colony Six will be there providing the entertaining and (if judging by today is any indication) freezing their asses off in doing so.
Incredibly, I have to work that Friday … the first Friday after Thanksgiving I have worked in over THIRTY YEARS!!! But if by some miracle I can get out in time … and it isn’t below zero … I will do my best to stop by. (kk)
And another important reminder …
Tuesday, November 15th, will be Petula Clark's 90th birthday! Still talented as ever. I love that lady!
Mike
And then, of course, there is Jimi Hendrix’s upcoming birthday … which would have been his 80th!!! That happens on November 27th. (kk)
Ft. Campbell, KY, 1962
Gotta squint at this last one!
VERY COOL!
Thanks, Mike! (kk)
More on the Jimi Celebration from Bob Merlis …
BIG WEEK AHEAD CELEBRATING JIMI HENDRIX @80:
BILLY GIBBONS TO PLAY JIMI’S FLYING V ON JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE NEXT THURSDAY FOLLOWED BY RECEPTION FOR JIMI BOOK AT MR MUSICHEAD LA FORUM ALBUM OUT FRIDAY 11/18
HOW JIMI HENDRIX CHANGED TOURING VIDEO HERE NOW
|
||
|
OK, Mike Wolstein’s on a roll here …
So let’s do a couple more!
Hi, Kent -
I may have mentioned this a while back - not sure. But in light of that great Chess story you just ran, I thought I might toss this your way. Sorry if I've already done so, but what the heck.
A fellow with whom I graduated High School, on Chicago's northwest side, shared this story with me many years ago.
His aunt (mother's sister) married Leonard Chess, back in the 50s,
I believe, and they were all quite poor.
My friend and his family lived in an apartment above a paint store about
two blocks from where I grew up. Leonard and my friend's aunt had their wedding
in that apartment.
Fast forward to about 1977. I was at a friend's place, who was a fellow record collector.
I picked a cardboard-covered Chuck Berry EP (extended play) from a stack of
records, because it was a rarity I'd never seen before.
It showed a couple of students walking into the door of their high
school. It looked very familiar, due to the "Old English"
script that was used to carve out the school's name on its façade ... but the
name of the school was blocked out of the photo. I bought it from him,
and after many hours of driving around the Chicago area, I gave
up. I knew that I'd seen that facade before ... I drove past a dozen schools on
the north side, with no luck.
That same night, it dawned on me that I'd forgotten to drive past one school:
the one that I attended for Junior High. The next morning, I drove there, and
had a huge surprise. It was my school, Von Steuben High, on north Kimball Avenue,
in Albany Park. The way I heard it was that it was my friend's aunt who
took the picture, but I'd
have to verify that if I run into him again.
Aside: Von Steuben was the alma mater of Lani Hall, who grew up just down the street
from the school; she was discovered by Sergio Mendes in 1966 … and the rest is
history.
Mike
THIS AND THAT:
>>>"Miserlou" never even made The Top 100, peaking at #102 in Cash Box in early 1963 ... and never charting in Billboard at all! (kk)
"Misirlou" was heavily sampled in the Black Eyed Peas’ 2006 hit "Pump It," which got to #18 on the Hot 100. Does that count? Amazing that a song that was ignored when it came out is now a classic.
Not that it's relevant to anything, but I just noticed that Dick Dale was exactly 10 years older than me ... but way cooler.
Ed #1
From FH Reader Ken Voss …
https://rockcellarmagazine.com/felix-cavaliere-interview-memoir-the-rascals-tour-dates/
There are several great articles in this latest edition of Rock Cellar Magazine …
Behind The Scenes “Revolver” info … a pre-fame memoir by Mike McCartney, Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp concert photos, info on Weird Al (hot again with his new biopic), and more.
You can check the whole thing out here: https://mailchi.mp/rockcellarmagazine/november-2021-issue-now-available-934013?e=f8f75f98ed
Jeff Cook, founding member and lead guitarist of the mega country band Alabama, passed away last Monday (November 7th) at the age of 73.
Alabama crossed over a few times to the pop charts with Top 40 Hits like “Feels So Right” (#20, 1981), “Love In The First Degree” (#15, 1982), “Take Me Down” (#18, 1982) and “The Closer You Get” (#38, 1983) … but had a string of 21 consecutive #1 Hits on Billboard’s Country Singles Chart that ran from 1980 – 1987 (minus a Christmas single released in 1982 and a duet with Lionel Richie, released in 1986.) They had 32 #1 Country Hits in all! Cook also played a mean fiddle on several of their hits (because, after all, if you’re gonna play in Texas, you’ve gotta have a fiddle in the band.)
Happy Friday!
Today we wanted to take the time to wish our dearest friend, Ron Riley, a Happy Birthday!
We also wanted to update everyone who has shown so much love and support to the Riley Documentary. Our film team is neck-deep in the post-production process, with our editors putting more and more of the story together every day.
Although our editors still have a ways to go, our team is so excited to see Ron Riley's story come to life, and cannot wait for everyone to see it!
Thank you for the continued interest in the film … and stay tuned because we have so much in store!
And of course, as Ron would say - Stay out of the trees!
Best,
Francesca, Brad, & the rest of the 'Riley' Documentary Team
Our FH Pal Bob Lind is heading down to The Luna Star Café in Florida for a show in December. (These always sell out quickly)
More information here from Bob himself …
TO MY SOUTH FLORIDA FRIENDS AND FANS …
And friends and fans who may be in South Florida next month.
For those of you who like to plan early:
On Saturday, December 10th, I'll be back at my favorite South Florida venue: The Luna Star Cafe.
You veteran Lind fans know the deal here:
It's a listening room -- a vanishing commodity in America these days. Music is the central focus, not an afterthought.
I hope to see a slew of you there. I can't wait to get my paws on you.
One tip: The food there is great and inexpensive. So I suggest getting there early and having dinner.
But be aware, they don't take credit cards, so bring a mess of cash.
I'll send a reminder closer to the date.
Here are the details:
Saturday, Dec. 10, 2022.
Luna Star Café
775 NE 125th St
N Miami, FL
305-799-7123
LunaStarCafe.com | lunastarcafe@aol.com
Show starts at 8 pm
Tickets: 15 of the wisest dollars you’ll ever spend
Love to all of you,
Bob
Sean Ross has a column this week that you might find interesting …
He has devoted quite considerable amount to ink to his Lost Factor research over the past couple of years – evaluating songs that made the Year-End Top 100 Charts over the years but today receive a minimum amount of airplay.
This week, he explores something called “The Ghost Factor.”
Here … I’ll let HIM explain it …
https://radioinsight.com/ross/244954/the-lost-factor-vs-billboards-ghosted-hits/
(And be sure to click the link within the article that’ll
take you to Pat Kelly’s list!) kk
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)