Tag: music

B is for Big Daddy

I found a link that goes to some Big Daddy songs, including all of Sgt. Pepper.

There was a music group called Big Daddy. Perhaps more than one group. The one I’m talking about had this particular shtick, which you can read about here and here, which was that, basically, the group allegedly toured Southeast Asia in 1959, got stuck there, and were finally rescued in 1983. They heard the modern music and hated it, and so decided to “fix” it by recording the newer songs in the ways familiar to them.

Charles Hill put together a nice discography. Pop culture writer Mark Evanier has been a booster of the group.

The first album, which I own on vinyl, was BIG DADDY, aka What Really Happened To The Band Of ’59 (1983), which featured:

I Write The Songs, the Barry Manilow song actually written by Bruce Johnston, “Evoking Danny and the Juniors”
Star Wars. “Duane Eddy sits in with the Ventures”
Whip It. The Devo song is “Truly a standing-on-the-corner song for once”
Hotel California. “The stranger in town [in this Eagles’ tune] seems to be Del Shannon.”
Eye Of The Tiger

Album #2 was MEANWHILE…BACK IN THE STATES (1985) and featured:

Dancing In The Dark (Springsteen).
I Just Called To Say I Love You (Wonder)
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – “The Duchess of Earl gets her say”

CUTTING THEIR OWN GROOVE (1991 CD), which is actually available for MP3 download on Amazon for $10; preview the 15 songs.

But my favorite is SGT. PEPPER’S, a 1992 CD that I own:

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – Chaz thinks it’s rooted in the Coasters’ Poison Ivy. It’s DEFINITELY the Coasters.
With A Little Help From My Friends – “Billy Shears unmasked as Johnny Mathis,” specifically Chances Are.
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds – “Goodness, gracious, great tangerine dreams;” Jerry Lee Lewis’ Great Balls of Fire.
Getting Better – “At least as good as cherry pie”.
Fixing A Hole – Dion’s “The Wanderer, updated”.
She’s Leaving Home – “She’s so young, and we’re so old”.
Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite – “Last seen stopped at the top of a Ferris wheel” at Palisades Park.
Within You Without You – “On the whole, word jazz is preferable to sitars”; I can practically see the beatnik with his goatee and shades
When I’m Sixty-Four – “And playing dominoes for sixty minutes at a stretch”
Lovely Rita – “The name of his latest flame” (Elvis)
Good Morning, Good Morning – “Instruments? What instruments?”
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
A Day In The Life – “That’ll be the day” – or more specifically the Buddy Holly songs Rave On and, on the bridge, Every Day.

Big Daddy – With A Little Help From My Friends
Found at abmp3 search engine

I found the link HERE that goes to some Big Daddy songs, including all of Sgt. Pepper. It’s from that source I was able to create the doohickey above.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

Song: Hot Fun in the Summertime

A song from the summer of 1969, Hot Fun in the Summertime by Sly & Family Stone entered the Billboard charts on August 9, remained there for 16 weeks, and got up to #2 for two weeks, blocked from the top spot by the Temptations’ Can’t Get Next To You.

It also entered the soul charts on August 23, and got up to #3.

In a clever bit of marketing, the first time this song appeared on an album was the greatest hits collection. Unless you owned the singles, and you wanted this song, Everybody is a Star, and Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), you needed to buy the LP. And so I did.

The song.

A religious experience.

Martha Reeves Turns 70

The Vandellas are now her sisters: Lois, who joined in 1968, and Delphine, who joined in the mid- 1980s.

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas performed at an Alive at Five concert last month in Albany; I didn’t go, having family obligations. Otherwise, I would have, for sure.

The Times Union newspaper wrote an interesting pre-concert piece about Martha and Vandellas touring in the first Motown Review in 1962, and dealing with segregation.

“We stopped at a few gas stations where they said, ‘No, don’t come in here.’ The first time I ever saw a shotgun face-to-face was at one of those places. The man said, ‘Get back on that bus.’ And he came to the bus with a shotgun and said, ‘Don’t another one of you step on this property.’ I tell you, we learned how to go in the woods.”

She laughs about it now, 49 years later. “We served as, basically, Freedom Riders,” she says, referring to civil rights activists who challenged segregation in the South. “That was not our intent, because when we sat at lunch counters we weren’t trying to protest. We were hungry people, trying to get some nourishment.”

“It didn’t happen. They’d say, ‘No, go to the back door.’ I remember being served cold hot chocolate and cold hot dogs. We ate them gladly. … It was rough, but people received our music everywhere we went. When we got back to Detroit after three months, we knew that our records would be in the charts, and they were.”

There were two great Vandellas songs that rank among the best summer songs EVER:
(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave and Dancing in the Street.

But I was always partial to this Smokey Robinson-penned tune: No More Tearstained Make Up. Also from that Watchout! album (which I own), the hit Jimmy Mack.

The Vandellas are now her sisters: Lois, who joined in 1968, and Delphine, who joined in the mid-1980s. But the songs sound the same, Reeves says. I always thought the group, and especially Martha, was underappreciated.

Song: Expressway to Your Heart

Do you know what it is? It’s HOT. It’s especially sticky in our home office, which has this tiny desk fan only.

So I think I need to take a respite from blogging one day of the week, usually the Christian Sabbath. But I don’t want to leave you TOTALLY bereft. I’l pick a video that means summer to me, once a week from now through Labor Day weekend.

Today’s pick is Expressway to Your Heart by the Soul Survivors, described as a “garage-rock band from New York and Philadephia.” The record, on the Crimson label – no, I never heard of it either – was released in the summer of 1967. It debuted on the Billboard charts on September 2 and stayed there for 15 weeks, getting as high as number 4.

version
version in stereo
live version, backed by Hall & Oates in Philadelphia, on October 23, 2009

I’m always a sucker for a good musical bottom.

Z is for (Led) Zeppelin 1969

The Dixon composition was so similar that Led Zeppelin reached a settlement with Dixon over the royalties for the song, and credited Dixon as the writer when this appeared on Led Zeppelin’s How The West Was Won live DVD

I have such mixed feelings about the band Led Zeppelin.


Their eponymous first album I loved. I recall quite clearly the day I first heard it. It was a sunny and warm day in late May or early June 1969, when I was 16.

I was riding a borrowed bicycle and was riding over from the First Ward to the South Side of Binghamton, NY, along with my very good friend Carol, to visit friends. The bike had hand breaks, which I had never had on any of my bikes; one “broke” by putting one’s foot back. Got down Front Street without having to slow down, but crossing the bridge, I was gaining on Carol, and couldn’t stop, so I put my foot to the ground to slow down, flipped the bike, and crashed to the ground. I got a nasty gash on my right forearm. Carol said, “Are you OK?” and I lied, “Sure.” And that’s when I learned about hand breaks.

We rode the rest of the way, talked with our friends, had some food, and someone played that LZ album. I was immediately entranced by the opening chords of Good Times, Bad Times.

Then my friend Lois noticed the gash on my right forearm, just above the elbow, and she, Carol and Karen started removing gravel from the abrasion. It hurt, a lot actually, and left a scar that remained until the vitiligo obliterated it only a couple years ago. But it didn’t matter, because I’m really enjoying this music. My first favorite song was Communications Breakdown.

When I bought the album shortly therafter, I noticed it had two songs by the blues legend Willie Dixon, You Shook Me and I Can’t Quit You Baby, and attributed as such. The biggest deception was the 3:30 running time for How Many More Times, which was more like 8:30, apparently a trick to try to get radio stations to play it.


Led Zeppelin II was even more entertaining, but ultimately it became problematic for me. The first song, Whole Lotta Love was attributed to the band, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. But I discovered a few years later that it bore a distinct similarity to You Need Love as performed by Muddy Waters, which was a song written by Willie Dixon. As described here, the Small Faces had nicked the song even before Zeppelin.

“Another blues classic on Led Zeppelin II became famous as The Lemon Song. Derived directly from Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor”, there is also the infamous quote about squeezing lemons that comes from Robert Johnson’s “Traveling Riverside Blues.” Chester Burnett, a.k.a. Howlin’ Wolf, received no credit for The Lemon Song. In the early ’70s, Arc Music sued Led Zeppelin for copyright infringement. The suit was settled out of court.

But the most egregious theft, I thought, was Bring It On Home. As described here: This was influenced by a song of the same name recorded by Blues great Sonny Boy Williamson and written by Willie Dixon. The Dixon composition was so similar that Led Zeppelin reached a settlement with Dixon over the royalties for the song, and credited Dixon as the writer when this appeared on Led Zeppelin’s How The West Was Won live DVD. Plant’s beginning vocal even imitates Williamson’s.

I just don’t understand the need for misattribution. Yet, which album did I ultimately buy on CD? You guessed it: LZ II.

I have other Zeppelin albums, but that’s enough for now, except for this
Republican congressman quoting the group on the floor of Congress. Oy.

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