Frank Beacham's Journal

Joe Cocker was born 78 years ago today

Joe Cocker, 2013

Photo by Christoph Köstlin

Joe Cocker was born 78 years ago today.

An English rock and blues singer, Cocker came to popularity in the 1960s, and was known for his gritty voice and idiosyncratic arm movements while performing.

Born at 38 Tasker Road, Crookes, Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, Cocker was the youngest son of a civil servant, Harold Cocker, and his mother, Madge. According to differing family stories, Cocker received his nickname of Joe either from playing a childhood game called "Cowboy Joe," or from a local window cleaner named, Joe.

Cocker's main musical influences growing up were Ray Charles and Lonnie Donegan. His first experience singing in public was at age 12 when his elder brother, Victor, invited him on stage to sing during a gig of his skiffle group.

In 1964, Cocker signed a recording contract as a solo act with Decca and released his first single, a cover of the Beatles' "I'll Cry Instead" (with Big Jim Sullivan and Jimmy Page playing guitars).

Despite extensive promotion from Decca lauding his youth and working class roots, the record was a flop and his recording contract with Decca lapsed at the end of 1964. After Cocker recorded the single, he formed a new group, Joe Cocker's Big Blues.

There is only one known recording of Joe Cocker's and Big Blues on an EP given out by Sheffield College during Rag Week and called Rag Goes Mad at the Mojo. It contained a cover of Curtis Mayfield's "I've Been Trying" and a track of "Saved."

In 1966, after a year-long hiatus from music, Cocker teamed up with Chris Stainton, whom he had met several years before, to form the Grease Band. The band was named after Cocker read an interview with jazz musician Jimmy Smith, where Smith described another musician as "having a lot of grease."

Like the Avengers, Cocker's group mostly played in pubs in and around Sheffield. The Grease Band came to the attention of Denny Cordell, the producer of Procol Harum, the Moody Blues and Georgie Fame.

Cocker recorded the single, "Marjorine," without the Grease Band for Cordell in a London studio. He then moved to London with Chris Stainton and the Grease Band was dissolved. Cordell set Cocker up with a residency at the Marquee Club in London, and a "new" Grease Band was formed with Stainton and keyboardist, Tommy Eyre.

After minor success in the U.S. with the single, "Marjorine," Cocker entered the big time with a groundbreaking rearrangement of "With A Little Help From My Friends," a Beatles cover, which, many years later, was used as the opening theme for The Wonder Years. The recording features lead guitar from Jimmy Page, drumming by BJ Wilson, backing vocals from Sue and Sunny and Tommy Eyre on organ.

The single made the Top Ten on the British charts, remaining there for 13 weeks and eventually reaching #1 on November 9, 1968. It also reached #68 on the U.S. charts. The new touring line-up of Cocker's Grease Band featured Henry McCullough on lead guitar, who would go on to briefly play with McCartney's Wings.

After touring the UK with the Who in autumn 1968 and Gene Pitney and Marmalade in early winter 1969, the Grease Band embarked on their first tour of the U.S. in spring 1969. Cocker's album, With A Little Help From My Friends, was released soon after their arrival and made #35 on the American charts, eventually going gold.

During his U.S. tour, Cocker played at several large festivals, including the Newport Rock Festival and the Denver Pop Festival. In August, 1969, Denny Cordell heard about the planned concert in Woodstock, New York and convinced organizer Artie Kornfeld to book Cocker and the Grease Band for the Woodstock Festival.

The group had to be flown into the festival by helicopter due to the large crowds. They performed several songs, including "Delta Lady," "Something's Comin' On," "Let's Go Get Stoned," "I Shall Be Released" and "With A Little Help from My Friends."

Cocker would later say that the experience was "like an eclipse... it was a very special day." Directly after Woodstock, Cocker released his second album, Joe Cocker!

Impressed by his cover of "With A Little Help From My Friends," Paul McCartney and George Harrison allowed Cocker to use their songs "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" and "Something" for the album. Recorded during a break in touring in the spring and summer, the album reached #11 on the U.S. charts and garnered a second UK hit with the Leon Russell song, "Delta Lady."

Throughout 1969, he was featured on variety TV shows like The Ed Sullivan Show and This Is Tom Jones. Onstage, he exhibited an idiosyncratic physical intensity, flailing his arms and playing air guitar, occasionally giving superfluous cues to his band. At the end of the year, Cocker was unwilling to embark on another U.S. tour, so he dissolved the Grease Band.

Despite Cocker's reluctance to venture out on the road again, an American tour had already been booked so he had to quickly form a new band in order to fulfill his contractual obligations. It proved to be a large group of more than 30 musicians, including pianist and bandleader, Leon Russell, three drummers and backing vocalists, Rita Coolidge and Claudia Lennear.

The new band was christened "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" by Denny Cordell after the Noël Coward song of the same name. His music at this time evolved into a more bluesy type of rock, often compared to that of the Rolling Stones.

During the ensuing Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour (later described by drummer Jim Keltner as "a big, wild party"), Cocker toured 48 cities, recorded a live album and received very positive reviews from Time and Life for his performances.

However, the pace of the tour was exhausting. Russell and Cocker had personal problems and Cocker became depressed and began drinking excessively as the tour wound down in May, 1970.

Meanwhile, he enjoyed several chart entries in the U.S. with "Cry Me a River" and "Feelin' Alright" by Dave Mason. His cover of the Box Tops' hit, "The Letter," which appeared on the live album and film, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, became his first U.S. Top Ten hit.

While performing a concert at Madison Square Garden on September 17, 2014, fellow musician Billy Joel stated that Cocker was "not very well right now." Cocker died from lung cancer on December 22, 2014 in Crawford, Colorado.

The two living Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, were among those who paid tribute to the singer, while Cocker's agent, Barrie Marshall, said that Cocker was "without doubt the greatest rock/soul singer ever to come out of Britain."

Here, Cocker performs “With A Little Help From My Friends” at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in June, 2002

Joe Cocker performs "You Are So Beautiful"

Joe Cocker performs at Woodstock, 1969

Photo by Elliot Landy

Cher is 76 years old today

Sonny and Cher in London at the Hilton Hotel, August 3, 1965

Photo by Douglas Miller

Cher is 76 years old today.

Known for her distinctive contralto singing voice, Cher has worked in various areas of entertainment. She has continuously reinvented both her music and image.

Cher became prominent in 1965 as half of the folk rock husband—wife duo, Sonny & Cher, who popularized a sound that successfully competed with the dominant British Invasion and Motown styles of the era.

From 1965, she had established herself as a solo artist with million-selling singles such as "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves," "Half-Breed" and "Dark Lady," songs with subjects rarely addressed in American popular music.

After the duo's drug-free lifestyle had lost its popular appeal in the United States due to the drug culture of the 1960s, she returned to stardom in the 1970s as a television personality with her shows, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and, Cher — both of which attained immense popularity.

After Cher and Sonny divorced in 1975, Cher experimented with various musical styles, including disco and new wave, before becoming a successful live act in Las Vegas in 1980. In the early 1980s, she made her Broadway debut and starred in the film, Silkwood, which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1983.

In the following years, she starred in films such as Mask, The Witches of Eastwick and Moonstruck, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1988.

Recognized as one of the best-selling music artists of all time, she has sold more than 100 million solo albums and over 40 million records as Sonny & Cher worldwide. She is the only artist to date to have a #1 single on a Billboard chart in each of the past six decades.

Here, Cher in concert in Las Vegas

George Gobel, comedian and actor, was born 103 years ago today

George Gobel, comedian and actor, was born 103 years ago today.

Gobel was the star of his own weekly NBC television show, The George Gobel Show, which ran from 1954 to 1960 (the last season on CBS, alternating with The Jack Benny Program).

Gobel graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago in 1937. He initially pursued an entertainment career as a country music singer, appearing on the National Barn Dance on WLS radio and later on KMOX in St. Louis. After his discharge at the end of World War II, he switched from singing to comedy.

Gobel began a comedy show on NBC in 1954. It showcased his quiet, homespun style of humor — a low-key alternative to what audiences had seen on Milton Berle's shows.

A huge success, the popular series made the crewcut Gobel one of the biggest comedy stars of the 1950s. His guests included Jimmy Stewart, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda and Tennessee Ernie Ford.

The centerpiece of Gobel's comedy show was his monologue about his supposed past situations and experiences, with stories and sketches allegedly about his real-life wife, Alice (nicknamed "Spooky Old Alice" and played by actress Jeff Donnell).

Gobel's hesitant, almost shy delivery and penchant for tangled digressions were the chief sources of comedy, more important than the actual content of the stories. Gobel labeled himself, "Lonesome George," and the nickname stuck for the rest of his career.

The TV show typically included a segment in which Gobel appeared with a guitar, started to sing, then got sidetracked into a story, with the song always left unfinished after fitful starts and stops. It was a comedy approach that prefigured the Smothers Brothers.

He had constructed a special version of the Gibson L-5 archtop guitar featuring diminished dimensions of neck scale and body depth, befitting his own smaller stature. Several dozen of this "L-5CT" or "George Gobel" model were produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He also played the harmonica.

George Gobel died in 1991, shortly after undergoing heart surgery. He was 71.

Here, is a segment of George Gobel on the Tonight Show, with Bob Hope and Dean Martin looking on.

Milt Gabler, innovative record producer, was born 111 years ago today

Commodore Record Shop, 1947

Left to right: Milt Gabler, Herbie Hill, Lou Blum and Jack Crystal

Photo by William Gottlieb

Milt Gabler, innovative record producer, was born 111 years ago today.

Gabler was responsible for many innovations in the recording industry of the 20th century.

Born in Harlem, Gabler, at 15, began working in his father's business, the Commodore Radio Corporation, a radio shop located on East 42nd Street in New York City. By the mid-1930s, Gabler renamed the business the Commodore Music Shop, and it became a focal point for jazz fans and musicians alike.

In 1933, Gabler began buying up unwanted copies of recordings from the record companies and resold them — making him the first person to deal in reissues. He was also the first to sell records by mail order and also the first to credit all the musicians on the recordings.

Gabler started up a specialty label UHCA, (United Hot Clubs of America), in about 1935 to reissue selected 78 r.p.m. sides previously released by other companies. He was able to secure many important jazz records, including the 1931 Joe Venuti-Eddie Lang all star session (from ARC), Bessie Smith's final session (from OKeh), a number of Frank Trumbauer, Bix Beiderbecke and Miff Mole sides (also from OKeh).

These reissues were from the original 78 stampers and were instrumental in spreading the concept of collecting classic performances from the past. A number of Paramount and Gennett sides were dubbed from clean copies and issued on UHCA and the sound was surprisingly good for a dubbing.

In 1937, he opened a new store on 52nd Street, and set up a series of jam sessions in a neighboring club, Jimmy Ryan's. Some of these he began recording, setting up his own record label, Commodore Records. His role as a music producer soon superseded his other activities and he recorded many of the leading jazz artists of the day.

One regular customer, Billie Holiday, found her record company, Columbia, resisting her appeals to release the song, "Strange Fruit," so she offered the song to Gabler.

After getting the necessary permission, he released her recording on Commodore in 1939, boosting her career and issuing what, sixty years on, Time magazine named “Song of the Century.” The success of Commodore Records inevitably led to an offer to join a major record label. He was recruited to work for Decca Records in 1941, leaving his brother-in-law, Jack Crystal, father of Billy Crystal, to run Commodore.

Gabler was soon working with many of the biggest stars of the 1940s, producing a series of hits including Lionel Hampton’s “Flying Home,” Billie Holiday’s “Lover Man” and The Andrews Sisters’ “Rum and Coca-Cola,” as well as being the first to bring Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald together on record.

Put in charge of Decca’s subsidiary label, Coral, he expanded his musical scope — producing hits for Red Foley, The Weavers, Peggy Lee, The Ink Spots and Sammy Davis Jr. In 1946, he produced and co-wrote Louis Jordan’s breakthrough single, "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie," a foretaste of the musical revolution around the corner.

Gabler contributed a further slice of history when he signed Bill Haley and His Comets to Decca Records. He produced their initial recording session in April, 1954, which resulted in two songs. Much of the studio time was focused on recording one song, “13 Women,” presumed more likely to be a hit. This left only ten minutes for the second song, which Gabler recorded with an unusually high sound level after the briefest of sound checks.

"Rock Around The Clock" was recorded in only two takes and changed the face of popular music. Gabler later recalled: "All the tricks I used with Louis Jordan, I used with Bill Haley. The only difference was the way we did the rhythm. On Jordan, we used a perfectly balanced rhythm section from the swing era ... but Bill had the heavy backbeat."

Commodore Records ended in 1954. However, through the late 1950s and 1960s, Gabler continued to guide the direction of Decca, writing songs and producing hit singles including Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry” and albums, including Jesus Christ Superstar.

Gabler also continued to produce all of the Comets' recordings for Decca until they left the label in 1959. He retired from the front line of business activity when MCA consolidated Decca with its other labels and moved the merged MCA Records to Universal City, California in 1971. But he continued to produce reissues and to collect recognition from the recording industry he helped shape. He was asked to return to MCA Records in 1973 to supervise the reissue of MCA's massive back catalog.

Gabler died in 2001 at age 90.

In 2005, Billy Crystal produced a tribute documentary and CD release — both titled, “The Milt Gabler Story.”

Here, Billie Holiday performs the controversial song Milt Gabler first recorded, “Strange Fruit”

Gabler with Bill Haley

Al Aronowitz: Remembering the man who introduced Bob Dylan to the Beatles

Fifty-eight years ago this summer, The Beatles and Bob Dylan met for the first time and smoked a joint together.

The Beatles had just played a concert in Queens on August 28, 1964. Later, at the Delmonico Hotel in Manhattan, they met Bob Dylan, who was introduced by a friend, a reporter named Al Aronowitz.

It was on this day that the Beatles were first introduced to marijuana by Dylan and Aronowitz, who had brought along the joint.

Dylan had assumed The Beatles were well acquainted with the drug, after mishearing the lyrics to “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” He mistakenly thought the line went “… and when I touch you I get high, I get high … ” instead of “I can’t hide, I can’t hide.”

Years later, Aronowitz, who became a personal friend, told me the story and I didn’t believe him — that is until I checked it out and found it to be true.

I tell this, because today Aronowitz would have been 94 years old. He died of cancer in Elizabeth, New Jersey on August 1, 2005 at the age of 77. Aronowitz, to put it lightly, was quite a character.

He was the original manager of The Velvet Underground, getting the band their first gig at a high school auditorium. The Velvet Underground stole Aronowitz's tape recorder and dumped him weeks later when they met Andy Warhol.

Aronowitz also claimed that Dylan wrote the song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” while staying in his home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. That I could never prove.

Back in the 1980s, Aronowitz and I bonded when we began exploring the internet for our work. I got there first, and Al was impressed since he was a technophobe. He wrote this about me in his “The Blacklisted Journalist” column and published it on the net in the mid-1980s:

“I have found a spiritual brother in my journalism-in-exile. By putting his writings on the internet, Frank is doing the same thing I'm doing: addressing the future. In other words, talking to posterity.

I write my pieces as if I'm addressing a friend of mine in cyberspace a thousand years from now. But in Frank, I feel I've found a friend of mine in cyberspace RIGHT NOW! Writing in cyberspace is not the same as chiseling it in stone, but I think stone erodes more easily. I try to write stuff that's going to last and I think Frank does, too,” Al wrote.

“Therefore, it is with great pride and pleasure that I sneak myself the honor of featuring Frank Beacham's page as a pre-eminent link to my own. That's because, in reading his (material), I immediately felt his mind to be linked to my own. In that one essay, Frank Beacham saw things exactly the way I see 'em. Reading only one essay, I immediately felt my brain connected to his brain...it took me only one of his essays to persuade me that Frank's one of my men.”

Above, Al reads at a Beat Generation conference at NYU, 1984

Photo by Frank Beacham

Pete Townshend, guitarist and primary songwriter for The Who, is 77 years old today

Pete Townshend in New York City

Photo by Frank Beacham

Pete Townshend, guitarist and primary songwriter for The Who, is 77 years old today.

An English rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter and author, Townshend also has a solo career. His work with The Who spans more than 40 years, during which time the band grew to be considered one of the most influential of the 1960s and 70s.

Townshend wrote well over 100 songs for The Who’s 11 studio albums, including the concept albums and the rock operas, Tommy and Quadrophenia, plus popular rock and roll radio staples such as Who's Next. He also wrote dozens more songs that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues and tracks on rarities compilations such as Odds & Sods.

He has also written over 100 songs that have appeared on his solo albums, as well as radio jingles and television theme songs.

Although known primarily as a guitarist, he also plays other instruments such as keyboards, banjo, accordion, harmonica, ukulele, mandolin, violin, synthesizer, bass guitar and drums on his own solo albums, several Who albums and as a guest contributor to a wide array of other artists' recordings. He is self-taught on all of the instruments he plays and has never had any formal training.

Townshend has also been a contributor and author of newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, essays, books and scripts, as well as collaborating as a lyricist (and composer) for many other musical acts.

Here Townshend destroys his guitar in a performance...

From the Bible to Oedipus Rex to King Lear, literature has long concerned itself with the difficult relations that sometimes arise between members of different generations.

The Fifth Commandment — "Honor thy father and thy mother that you may have a long life in the land which the Eternal, your God, is giving you" — is perhaps the earliest known acknowledgment of the human potential for intergenerational conflict.

Yet it seems that every generation of humans has faced this dilemma, and perhaps never more so than during the 1960s, when a demographic time bomb loosed the largest generation of teenagers in history upon an unsuspecting world.

With numbers on its side, this generation would set its own terms in the age-old conflict of youth vs. everyone else, and never were those terms more clearly expressed than in the lyrics of "My Generation," the song that The Who’s Pete Townshend wrote on this day in 1965 — 57 years ago. It was his 20th birthday.

Why don’t you all f-fade awayyy (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

And don't try to dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my generation).

As Townshend has told the story, he wrote those lyrics on a train ride from London to Southampton — a train ride necessitated by the towing away of his 1935 Packard hearse from its parking spot in front of his house on Chesham Place, the road between Clarence House and Buckingham Palace.

"One day I came back and it was gone. It turned out that [the Queen Mother] had it moved, because her husband had been buried in a similar vehicle and it reminded her of him. When I went to collect it, they wanted two hundred and fifty quid. I'd only paid thirty for it in the first place."

This was the great indignity that prompted Townshend to pen the immortal lyric, "Hope I die before I get old."

But while that lyric may have perfectly captured a youth’s-eye view of the Generation Gap, a more immediate concern for The Who in the spring of 1965 was whether they could survive their own internal conflicts long enough to record "My Generation."

The Who was famous for infighting even then, and lead singer Roger Daltrey was on his way out in a "You’re fired! You can’t fire me because I quit!" dispute until the runaway success of "My Generation" forced the entire band to reconsider the split.

As it turned out, the song that Pete Townshend wrote on this day in 1965 is what kept The Who together and set them on a course toward becoming one of the most successful rock bands of the era.

Here the Who performing “My Generation” in 1967

Ten best guitar moments with The Who…

Mickey Newbury was born 82 years ago today

Mickey Newbury was born 82 years ago today.

Newbury was a songwriter, a critically acclaimed recording artist and a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. As a teenager, he sang tenor in a moderately successful vocal group, The Embers, which opened for several notable performers, including Sam Cooke and Johnny Cash.

Newbury later moved to Nashville and signed on with the prestigious publishing company, Acuff-Rose Music. Ralph Emery referred to him as the first "hippie-cowboy." Along with Johnny Cash and Roger Miller, Newbury was one of the first to rebel against the conventions of the Nashville music society.

After being disappointed by the production methods used by Felton Jarvis on his debut album, Newbury got himself released from his contract with RCA and signed the first offer he received to comply with his condition that he could either produce his own albums or choose the producer. He went on to record three albums in Wayne Moss's garage-turned-studio just outside of Nashville.

The influence of the production methods can be heard in the albums Waylon Jennings went on to record in the 1970s (with instrumentation highly unconventional for country music) and his poetically sophisticated style of songwriting was influential on Kris Kristofferson.

It was Newbury who convinced Roger Miller to record Kristofferson's "Me & Bobby McGee," which went on to launch Kristofferson as country music's top songwriter. He is also responsible for getting Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark to move to Nashville and pursue careers as songwriters.

In 1974, Newbury moved to a house on the McKenzie River in Oregon. He recorded several albums throughout the 1970s for Elektra and ABC/Hickory, all of them critically praised but financially unsuccessful.

In 1980, he was given the distinction of being the youngest songwriter ever inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Although he spent much of the 1980s retired from performing and recording music, he returned to both recording and touring in the late 1980s before he died, in Springfield, Oregon, following a battle with emphysema on September 29, 2002 at aged 62.

Newbury wrote many songs that would be recorded by singers and songwriters.

They included Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Bill Monroe, Johnny Rodriguez, Hank Snow, Ray Charles, Tony Rice, Jerry Lee Lewis, Tammy Wynette, Ray Price, Don Gibson, Brenda Lee, Charlie Rich, David Allan Coe, Sammi Smith, Joan Baez, Tom Jones, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, John Denver, Kenny Rogers, Steve Von Till, B.B. King, Linda Ronstadt, Dax Riggs and Bobby "Blue" Bland.

Although his songs have been recorded by hundreds of performers from a wide variety of musical genres, he is most remembered for his creation of "An American Trilogy" — a medley that was recorded by many, ranging from symphony orchestras to Elvis Presley. He simultaneously had four Top 10 singles on four different charts in the late 60s.

Eddy Arnold had a #1 Country hit with "Here Comes the Rain, Baby," Andy Williams had a #4 Easy Listening hit with "Sweet Memories" and Kenny Rogers and the First Edition had a #5 Pop/Rock hit with "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)."

Shortly before his death, Newbury was interviewed by John Kruth, who was writing a biography on Townes Van Zandt, where he said: "How many people have listened to my songs and thought, 'He must have a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a pistol in the other.’ Well, I don't. I write my sadness."

Here, Newbury performs his “An American Trilogy”

Big Joe Turner was born 111 years ago today

Big Joe Turner, circa 1960s

Photo by David Redfern

Big Joe Turner was born 111 years ago today.

From Kansas City and known as “The Boss of the Blues,” Turner was a "blues shouter,“ a blues singer capable of singing unamplified with a band. According to the songwriter, Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him."

Although he had his greatest fame during the 1950s with his rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and Roll," Turner's career as a performer endured from the 1920s into the 1980s.

Big Joe Turner (due to his 6-foot, 2-inch, 300-plus pound stature) began singing on street corners for money, quitting school at age fourteen to begin working in Kansas City's nightclubs. He began as a cook and later became a singing bartender.

Turner became known eventually as The Singing Barman, and worked in such venues as The Kingfish Club and The Sunset, where he and his piano playing partner, Pete Johnson, became resident performers. The Sunset was managed by Piney Brown. It featured "separate but equal" facilities for caucasian patrons.

Turner wrote "Piney Brown Blues" in his honor and sang it throughout his entire career. At that time Kansas City nightclubs were subject to frequent raids by the police, but as Turner recounts, "The Boss man would have his bondsmen down at the police station before we got there. We'd walk in, sign our names and walk right out. Then we would cabaret until morning."

His partnership with boogie-woogie pianist Johnson proved fruitful. Together they went to New York City during 1936, where they appeared on a playbill with Benny Goodman. But as Turner recounts, "after our show with Goodman, we auditioned at several places, but New York wasn't ready for us yet, so we headed back to K.C."

Eventually they were witnessed by the talent scout, John H. Hammond, in 1938, who invited them back to New York to appear in one of his "From Spirituals to Swing" concerts at Carnegie Hall, which were instrumental in introducing jazz and blues to a wider American audience.

Due in part to their appearance at Carnegie Hall, Turner and Johnson had a major success with the song "Roll 'Em Pete.” The track, basically a collection of traditional blues lyrics, featured one of the earliest recorded examples of a back beat. In the ensuing years, “Roll ‘Em Pete” was a song which Turner recorded many times, with various combinations of musicians.

During 1939, along with boogie players Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, they began a residency at Café Society, a nightclub in New York City, where they appeared on the same playbill as Billie Holiday and Frank Newton's band.

Besides "Roll 'Em, Pete," Turner's best-known recordings from this period are "Cherry Red," "I Want A Little Girl" and "Wee Baby Blues." "Cherry Red" was recorded during 1939 for the Vocalion label, with Hot Lips Page on trumpet and a full band in attendance.

The next year Turner contracted with Decca and recorded, "Piney Brown Blues," with Johnson on piano accompaniment.

Not all of Turner's Decca recordings teamed him with Johnson — Willie "The Lion" Smith accompanied him on "Careless Love," while Freddie Slack's Trio provided the backing for "Rocks in My Bed" (1941).

During 1941, he went to Los Angeles where he performed in Duke Ellington's revue, Jump for Joy, in Hollywood. He appeared as a singing policeman in a comedy sketch, "He's On The Beat." Los Angeles became his home for a time, and during 1944 he worked in Meade Lux Lewis's Soundies musical movies.

Although he sang on the soundtrack recordings, he was not present for the filming, and his vocals were mouthed by comedian Dudley Dickerson for the camera.

During 1945, Turner and Johnson established their own bar in Los Angeles —The Blue Moon Club. The same year he contracted with National Records, and recorded under Herb Abramson's supervision. His first national R&B success came during 1945 with a version of Saunders King's, "S.K. Blues."

He recorded the songs, "My Gal's A Jockey," and the risqué, "Around The Clock," the same year. Aladdin released his duet with Wynonie Harris on the ribald two-parter, "Battle of the Blues."

Turner remained with National until 1947, but none of his records were great sellers. During 1950, he released the song "Still in the Dark" on Freedom Records.

Turner made many albums, not only with Johnson, but with the pianists Art Tatum and Sammy Price and various small jazz ensembles. He recorded with several recording companies and also performed with the Count Basie Orchestra.

During his career, Turner was part of the transition from big bands to jump blues to rhythm and blues, and finally to rock and roll. Turner was a master of traditional blues verses and at the legendary Kansas City jam sessions. He could swap choruses with instrumental soloists for hours.

During 1951, while performing with the Count Basie Orchestra at Harlem's Apollo Theater as a replacement for Jimmy Rushing, he was spotted by Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegün, who contracted him with their new recording company, Atlantic Records.

Turner recorded a number of successes for them, including the blues standards, "Chains of Love" and "Sweet Sixteen."

Many of his vocals are punctuated with shouts to the band members, as for the songs "Boogie Woogie Country Girl" ("That's a good rockin' band!," "Go ahead, man! Ow! That's just what I need!") and "Honey Hush" (he repeatedly sings "Hi-yo, Silver!," probably in reference to The Treniers singing the phrase for their Lone Ranger parody "Ride, Red, Ride").

Turner's records scored at the top of the R&B charts, although they were sometimes so risqué that some radio stations wouldn’t play them. The songs received much play, however, on jukeboxes and records.

Turner had a great success during 1954 with "Shake, Rattle and Roll." It not only enhanced his career — turning him into a teenage favorite — but it also helped to transform popular music.

During the song, Turner yells at his woman to "get outa that bed, wash yo' face an' hands" and comments that she's "wearin' those dresses, the sun comes shinin' through!, I can't believe my eyes, all that mess belongs to you."

Although the cover version of the song by Bill Haley and His Comets, with the risqué lyrics omitted partially, was a greater success, many listeners sought out Turner's version and were introduced to R&B.

Elvis Presley showed he needed no such introduction. Presley's version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" combined Turner's lyrics with Haley's arrangement, but was not successful as a single.

Suddenly, at the age of 43, Turner was a rock music singer. His follow-ups "Well All Right," "Flip Flop and Fly" (1955), "Hide and Seek," "Morning, Noon and Night" and "The Chicken and the Hawk" were all successful. He performed on the television program Showtime at the Apollo during the mid-1950s, and in the movie, Shake Rattle & Rock,! in 1956.

Turner died in Inglewood, California during November, 1985, at the age of 74 of heart failure, having suffered the earlier effects of arthritis, a stroke and diabetes.

Here, Turner performs “Shake, Rattle and Roll” in 1954

Paul Metsa, the other great folk singer from Minnesota, wrote this about an amazing night hanging out with Guy Clark and Towns Van Zandt...

Guy Clark and Towns Van Zandt

Paul Meetsa, the other great folk singer from Minnesota, wrote this about an amazing night hanging out with Guy Clark and Towns Van Zandt.

“I spent one of the most amazing (if at times harrowing) nights of my life in 1990 or so with the late greats Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. They were in town for a show, and happened into the 5 Corners, where I had a weekly Tuesday night gig (237 consecutive ones I might add.)

They were riding a deep whiskey wave and on a mission from God to find Spider John Koerner. I had met them both briefly before and was delighted to tell them that Spider might be bartending across the street at Palmer's Bar.

Sure enough, John was there and when I got off my gig I walked over for last call. One thing led to another and the four of us found ourselves downtown at the Radisson Hotel with a bottle of whiskey, a few party favors and our guitars.

About 2 a.m., they asked John to play a few songs. Then the guitar started to get passed around — a song each and a pull of whiskey. I'd play a tune of mine about every third go around and let the masters hold sway.

Townes was adamant that there be "no cussing" and after my first tune said, "that ain't nothing but hogwash." Nothing like getting seriously dissed by the Jesus of songwriters.

The next time around, summoning courage from the Cutty Sark, I played my tune Jack Ruby that I had recently finished. After that, Townes said, "now that's better, much better."

The night continued to pick up steam, each song played became this golden link in this beautifully surreal magic chain and as I stumbled onto to Hennepin Avenue to cab it home.

I was so amazed by it all, I wondered if it actually happened. Well it did, and remains one of my sweetest musical memories."

Meredith Willson, composer of The Music Man, was born 120 years ago today

Meredith Willson leads the North Iowa Band Festival parade, June 19, 1962

Photo by Iowa Globe Gazette

Meredith Willson, composer of The Music Man, was born 120 years ago today.

A composer, songwriter, conductor and playwright, Willson wrote three other Broadway musicals, composed symphonies and popular songs. His film scores were twice nominated for Academy Awards.

Born in Mason City, Iowa, Willson attended Frank Damrosch's Institute of Musical Art (later The Juilliard School) in New York City.

A flute and piccolo player, Willson was a member of John Philip Sousa's Band (1921–1923) and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini (1924–1929). He then moved to San Francisco as the concert director for KFRC, the radio station, and then as a musical director for the NBC radio network in Hollywood.

His work in films included composing the score for Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940) (Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score) and arranging music for the score of William Wyler's The Little Foxes (1941), where he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Music Score of a Dramatic Picture.

During World War II, Willson worked for the United States' Armed Forces Radio Service. His work with the AFRS teamed him with George Burns, Gracie Allen and Bill Goodwin. He would work with all three as the bandleader, and a regular character, on the Burns and Allen radio program.

He played a shy man, always trying to get advice on women. His character was dizzy as well — basically a male version of Gracie Allen's character. Returning to network radio after WWII, he created the Talking People, a choral group that spoke in unison while delivering radio commercials.

He also became the musical director for The Big Show, a prestigious comedy-variety program hosted by actress Tallulah Bankhead and featuring some of the world's most respected entertainers. Willson himself became part of one of the show's very few running gags, beginning replies to Bankhead's comments or questions with, "Well, sir, Miss Bankhead...."

Willson wrote the song, "May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You," for the show. Bankhead spoke the lyrics over the music at the end of each show. He also worked on Jack Benny's radio program and hosted his own program in 1949.

For a few years in the early 1950s, Willson was a regular panelist on the Goodson-Todman game show, The Name's the Same.

In 1950, Willson served as Musical Director for The California Story, the Golden State's centennial production at the Hollywood Bowl. Through working on this production, Willson met writer Franklin Lacey, who proved instrumental in developing the story line for a musical Willson had been working on to become known as The Music Man.

His most famous work, The Music Man, premiered on Broadway in 1957, and was adapted twice for film (in 1962 and 2003). He referred to the show as "an Iowan's attempt to pay tribute to his home state." It took Willson some eight years and thirty revisions to complete the musical, for which he wrote more than 40 songs.

His second musical, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, ran on Broadway for 532 performances from 1960 to 1962. It was made into a 1964 motion picture starring Debbie Reynolds. His third Broadway musical was an adaptation of the film, Miracle On 34th Street, called Here's Love (1963). His fourth, last and least successful musical was 1491, which told the story of Columbus's attempts to finance his famous voyage.

Willson died of heart failure in 1984 at the age of 82. He is buried at the Elmwood Saint Joseph Cemetery in Mason City, Iowa.

Today, Paul McCartney, through his MPL Communications company, controls the rights to Willson's song catalog.

Here, Robert Preston performs Willson’s “Ya Got Trouble” from the film, The Music Man