Brian Wilson, leader of The Beach Boys, is 81 years old today
Brian Wilson, leader of The Beach Boys, is 81 years old today
Brian Wilson, 2017 tour
Photo by Jeff McEvoy
Brian Wilson is 81 years old today.
Wilson is the leader, lead vocalist, bassist and chief songwriter of the Beach Boys. Besides being their primary composer, he also functioned as the band's main producer and arranger. After signing with Capitol Records in mid-1962, Wilson wrote or co-wrote more than two dozen Top 40 hits for the Beach Boys.
In the mid-1960s, Wilson used his increasingly creative ambitions to compose and produce Pet Sounds, considered one of the greatest albums of all time. The intended follow-up to Pet Sounds — Smile — was cancelled for various reasons, including Wilson's deteriorating mental health.
Wilson's contributions to the Beach Boys diminished and his erratic behavior led to tensions with the band. After years of treatment and recuperation, he began a solo career in 1988. Since then, he has toured for the first time in decades with a new band and released acclaimed albums, including a reworked version of Smile in 2004.
Wilson is an occasional actor and voice actor, having appeared in television shows, films and other artists' music videos. On December 16, 2011, a 50th Anniversary Reunion was announced and Wilson briefly returned to the Beach Boys. He remains a member of the Beach Boys corporation — Brother Records Incorporated — though he still tours as a solo artist.
An autobiography — I Am Brian Wilson — co-written by ghostwriter Ben Greenman, was published in October, 2016. Wilson suffers from auditory hallucinations, and has been formally diagnosed as mildly manic-depressive with schizoaffective disorder that presents itself in the form of disembodied voices.
In recent years, Wilson's mental condition has improved. Although he still experiences auditory hallucinations from time to time, his relationship with his wife and a new regimen of psychiatric care have allowed him to resume his career as a performing musician.
Here, Wilson performs “Smile”
Blonde on Blonde — Bob Dylan’s seventh studio album and a record considered one of the greatest of all time — was released 57 years ago today.
The album was released on June 20, 1966 on Columbia Records, though others argue it was a bit earlier or a bit later. Recording sessions began in New York in October, 1965 with numerous backing musicians, including members of Dylan's live backing band, The Hawks.
Though sessions continued until January, 1966, they yielded only one track that made it onto the final album — "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)."
At producer Bob Johnston's suggestion, Dylan, keyboardist Al Kooper and guitarist Robbie Robertson moved to the CBS studios in Nashville. These sessions, augmented by some of Nashville's top session musicians, were more fruitful, and in February and March all the remaining songs for the album were recorded.
Blonde on Blonde completed the trilogy of rock albums that Dylan recorded in 1965 and 1966, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Blonde on Blonde is considered one of the greatest rock albums of all time. In later years, Dylan said the record had that “wild mercury sound.”
Combining the expertise of Nashville session musicians with a modernist literary sensibility, the album's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, while featuring lyrics one critic called "a unique blend of the visionary and the colloquial." It was one of the first double albums in rock music.
The album peaked at #9 on the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S., where it eventually went double-platinum. It reached #3 in the UK. Blonde on Blonde spawned two singles that were Top 20 hits in the USA: "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" and "I Want You." Two further songs from the recording — "Just Like a Woman" and "Visions of Johanna" — are also considered classics.
Bobby Neuwirth, New York City, 2008
Photo by Frank Beacham
Bobby Neuwirth was born 84 years ago today.
A singer, songwriter, record producer and visual artist, Neuwirth was a mainstay of the early Cambridge, Massachusetts folk scene in the 1960s. He became a friend and associate of Bob Dylan and appears in D.A. Pennebaker's documentary, Dont Look Back, and in Dylan's own romantic fantasy/tour film, Renaldo and Clara.
Neuwirth worked on Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue. With Janis Joplin and poet Michael McClure, he co-wrote the song "Mercedes Benz." He also introduced Kris Kristofferson to Janis Joplin.
Neuwirth died on the evening of May 18, 2022 in Santa Monica. He was 82, and had heart failure prior to his death
Here is a short clip of Neuwirth with Bob Dylan in “Dont Look Back,” 1965
Lionel Richie is 74 years old today.
From 1968, Richie was a member of the Commodores, a musical group signed to Motown Records. He made his solo debut in 1982 with the album, Lionel Richie, and the #1 hit, "Truly."
Raised in Tuskegee, Alabama, Richie grew up on the campus of Tuskegee Institute. His grandfather's house was across the street from the home of the president of the college. His family moved to Joliet, Illinois, where he graduated from Joliet Township High School, East Campus.
A star tennis player in Joliet, he accepted a tennis scholarship to attend Tuskegee Institute, and graduated with a major in economics. After receiving his undergraduate degree from Tuskegee, Richie briefly attended graduate school at Auburn University.
As a student in Tuskegee, Richie formed a succession of R&B groups in the mid-1960s. In 1968, he became a singer and saxophonist with the Commodores. They signed a recording contract with Atlantic Records in 1968 for one record before moving on to Motown Records initially as a support act to The Jackson 5.
The Commodores then became established as a popular soul group. Their first several albums had a danceable, funky sound, as in such tracks as "Machine Gun" and "Brick House."
Over time, Richie wrote and sang more romantic, easy-listening ballads such as "Easy," "Three Times a Lady," "Still" and the tragic breakup ballad, "Sail On."
By the late 1970s, he had begun to accept songwriting commissions from other artists. He composed "Lady" for Kenny Rogers, which hit #1 in 1980, and produced Rogers's album, Share Your Love, the following year.
In 1982, Richie began a solo career. He was replaced as lead singer for The Commodores by Skyler Jett in 1983. His debut album, Lionel Richie, produced a chart-topping single, "Truly," which continued the style of his ballads with the Commodores.
The album hit #3 on the music charts and sold over four million copies. His 1983 follow-up album, Can't Slow Down, sold over twice as many copies, propelling Richie into the first rank of international superstars.
Here, Richie performs “Stuck on You”
Chet Atkins was born 99 years ago today.
Atkins was a guitarist and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, created the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound. It expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans.
Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle Travis, Django Reinhardt, George Barnes, Les Paul and Maybelle Carter, brought him admirers within and outside the country scene, both in the United States and internationally.
Atkins produced records for The Browns, Porter Wagoner, Norma Jean, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Perry Como, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Skeeter Davis, Waylon Jennings and many others.
Born in Luttrell, Tennessee near Clinch Mountain, Atkins’ parents divorced when he was six. After the divorce, he was raised by his mother. He was the youngest of three boys and a girl. He started out on the ukulele, later moving on to the fiddle. At age nine, he traded his brother, Lowell, an old pistol and some chores for a guitar.
He said in his 1974 autobiography, "We were so poor and everybody around us was so poor that it was the forties before anyone even knew there had been a depression." Forced to relocate to Fortson, Georgia to live with his father because of a critical asthma condition, Atkins was a sensitive youth who made music his obsession.
Because of his illness, he was forced to sleep in a straight-back chair in order to breathe comfortably. On those nights, he would play his guitar until he fell asleep holding it, a habit which lasted his whole life.
While living in Fortson, he attended the historic Mountain Hill School. He would return in the 1990s to play a series of charity concerts to save the school from demolition.
A very young Chet, when a guitar-playing friend or relative would come to visit, would put his ear so close to the instrument that it became difficult for that person to play. He became an accomplished guitarist while he was in high school. He would use the restroom in the school to practice, because it gave better acoustics.
Atkins’ first guitar had a nail for a nut and was so bowed that only the first few frets could be used. He later purchased a semi-acoustic electric guitar and amp, but he had to travel many miles to find an electrical outlet since his home had no electricity.
Later in life, he lightheartedly gave himself (along with John Knowles, Tommy Emmanuel, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed and Marcel Dadi) the honorary degree CGP, standing for "Certified Guitar Player."
Atkins did not have a strong style of his own until 1939 when — while still living in Georgia — he heard Merle Travis picking over WLW radio. This early influence dramatically shaped his unique playing style. Whereas Travis's right hand used his index finger for the melody and thumb for bass notes, Atkins expanded his right hand style to include picking with his first three fingers, with the thumb on bass.
After dropping out of high school in 1942, Atkins landed a job at WNOX-AM radio in Knoxville. There he played fiddle and guitar with singer Bill Carlisle and comic Archie Campbell as well as becoming a member of the station's Dixieland Swingsters, a small swing instrumental combo.
After three years, he moved to WLW-AM in Cincinnati, where Merle Travis had formerly worked. Traveling to Chicago, Atkins auditioned for Red Foley, who was leaving his star position on WLS-AM's National Barn Dance to join the Grand Ole Opry. He got the job. Atkins made his first appearance at the Opry in 1946 as a member of Foley's band.
He also recorded a single for Nashville-based Bullet Records that year. That single, "Guitar Blues," was fairly progressive, including as it did, a clarinet solo by Nashville dance band musician Dutch McMillan with Owen Bradley on piano.
While working with a Western band in Denver, Atkins came to the attention of RCA Victor. When Steve Sholes, A&R director of country music at RCA, signed him, his style was suddenly in vogue.
While he hadn't yet had a hit record on RCA Victor, his stature was growing. He began assisting Sholes as a session leader when the New York–based producer needed help organizing Nashville sessions for RCA Victor artists. Atkins's first hit single was "Mr. Sandman," followed by "Silver Bell," which he did as a duet with Hank Snow.
When Sholes took over pop production in 1957 — a result of his success with Elvis Presley — he put Atkins in charge of RCA Victor's Nashville division. With country music record sales declining as rock and roll took over, Atkins and Bob Ferguson took their cue from Owen Bradley and eliminated fiddles and steel guitar as a means of making country singers appeal to pop fans.
This became known as the “Nashville Sound” which Atkins said was a label created by the media attached to a style of recording done during that period to keep country (and their jobs) viable. By the late 1970s, RCA decided to remove Atkins from his producing duties and replace him with younger men. He also felt stifled because the record company would not let him branch into jazz.
In the mid-1970s, he collaborated with one of his influences, Les Paul. Chester & Lester and Guitar Monsters were recorded. Chester & Lester was one of the best-selling recordings of Atkins's career.
Atkins is notable for his broad influence. His love for numerous styles of music can be traced from his early recording of stride-pianist James P. Johnson's "Johnson Rag," all the way to the rock music of Eric Johnson, an invited guest on Atkins's recording sessions. When Atkins attempted to copy Johnson’s "Cliffs of Dover," it led to the creation of a unique arrangement of "Londonderry Air (Danny Boy)."
Atkins continued performing in the 1990s, but his health declined after being diagnosed with cancer in 1996. He died on June 30, 2001, at his home in Nashville at age 77.
Lillian Hellman, dramatist and playwright, was born 118 years ago today.
Hellman's career as a playwright saw many successes on Broadway, including Watch on the Rhine, The Autumn Garden, Toys in the Attic, Another Part of the Forest, The Children's Hour and The Little Foxes.
She adapted her semi-autobiographical play, The Little Foxes, into a screenplay which received an Academy Award nomination in 1942.
Hellman was blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–52. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the American film industry caused a precipitous decline in her income during which time she had to work outside her chosen profession.
Hellman was praised for sacrificing her career by refusing to answer questions by HUAC. However, her denial that she had ever belonged to the Communist Party was doubted by many, including war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, former wife of Ernest Hemingway and literary critic, and Hellman rival, Mary McCarthy.
Hellman was romantically involved with fellow writer and political activist Dashiell Hammett, author of the classic detective novels, The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, who also was blacklisted for thirty years until his death in 1961. The couple never married because Hammett already had a wife.
Hellman's reputation suffered after her veracity was attacked by Mary McCarthy during a 1980 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. Hellman sued McCarthy for libel, and it eventually came out that not only were Hellman's popular memoirs such as, Pentimento, was rife with errors, but that the "Julia" section of Pentimento that was the basis for the Oscar-winning 1977 film likely was a fabrication based on the life of Muriel Gardiner.
Martha Gellhorn joined McCarthy in the attack on Hellman's veracity, showing that Hellman's remembrances of Gellhorn's ex-husband, Ernest Hemingway, and the Spanish Civil War were wrong.
Tagged with the onus of being an unrepentant Stalinist by the staunchly anti-Stalinist McCarthy and others, Hellman remains a divisive figure of American letters.
Jimmy Driftwood at home in Arkansas
Photo by J. Gerald Crawford
Jimmy Driftwood was born 116 years ago today.
Born James Corbitt Morris, Driftwood was a prolific American folk music songwriter and musician, most famous for his songs "The Battle of New Orleans" and "Tennessee Stud." He wrote over 6,000 folk songs — of which more than 300 were recorded by various musicians.
Born in Timbo, Arkansas, his father was the folk singer, Neil Morris. Driftwood learned to play the guitar at a young age on his grandfather's homemade instrument. He used that unique guitar throughout his career and noted that its neck was made from a fence rail, its sides from an old ox yoke and the head and bottom from the headboard of his grandmother's bed. The instrument produced a pleasant, distinctive resonant sound.
Driftwood attended John Brown College in northwest Arkansas and later received a degree in education from Arkansas State Teacher's College. He started writing songs during his teaching career to teach his students history in an entertaining manner.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Driftwood left Arkansas, eventually hitchhiking through the southwestern United States. In Arizona, he entered, and won, a local song contest. In 1936, he married Cleda Johnson, who was one of his former students. He returned to Arkansas to raise a family and resume his teaching career.
During this period of his life, Driftwood wrote hundreds of songs but did not pursue a musical career seriously. He wrote his later famous, "Battle of New Orleans," in 1936 to help a high school class he was teaching become interested in the event.
In the 1950s, he changed his name to Jimmy Driftwood, both publicly and legally. In 1957, a Nashville, Tennessee song publisher learned of Driftwood, auditioned him and signed him to his first record deal.
Driftwood recalled playing some 100 of his songs in one day, of which 20 were chosen to be recorded. Driftwood's first album, Newly Discovered Early American Folk Songs, received good reviews but did not sell particularly well.
"The Battle of New Orleans" was included on the album, but did not conform to the radio standards of the time because of the words "hell" and "damn" in the lyrics. Driftwood said that at the time those words could be preached but not sung in secular contexts for broadcast.
Driftwood was asked to make a shorter censored version of the song for a live radio performance. Singer Johnny Horton, after hearing the song, contacted Driftwood and told him that he wished to record his own version.
Driftwood left Arkansas for Nashville and became popular by his appearances on the Grand Ole Opry and programs including Ozark Jubilee and Louisiana Hayride. He was invited to sing for Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as an example of traditional American music during the leader's visit to the United States. He became a member of the Opry in the 1950s.
The popular peak of Driftwood's career came in 1959 when he had no fewer than six songs on the popular and country music charts, including Johnny Horton's recording of his "The Battle of New Orleans," which remained in first place on the country music singles chart for ten weeks, and atop the popular music chart for six weeks that year.
After Horton's success, Driftwood performed at Carnegie Hall and at major American folk music festivals before returning home to Timbo, Arkansas in 1962. For a time during the 1960s, Driftwood toured the United States and Europe as a separate act with the Preservation Hall New Orleans jazz band.
Back home, he became a folklorist, establishing the Rackensack Folklore Society, an association of local folk singers and musicians, and began performing at the local county fair in Mountain View.
Driftwood helped establish the Ozark Folk Center to preserve Ozark Mountain culture. The Folk Center was later absorbed into the Arkansas State Park system and remains a popular tourist destination.
Driftwood died of a heart attack on July 12, 1998 in Fayetteville, Arkansas at age 91.
Here, he plays a guitar medley on his famous 130 year old guitar
Aruba Glassy Slab
Photo by Najib Gomez