From CharlieB.
With V-Man the IV would have Chatham Artillery Punch in it. I think he's been imbibing too much of that shit as it is with his last two posts on the greatest rock 'n' roll song ever. He first picks "Hey Jude", a song that I was sick of about two months after they released it. I was in the Western Pacific on an all expenses paid tour on an LST courtesy of the US Gummint. I got to hear Filipino bands playing it as nauseum. I got to hear it on juke boxes in Japan ad nauseum. Now I get to hear it in elevators ad nauseum. Beatles as Muzak.
Then he picks Dueling Banjos. Dude! That's bluegrass. It ain't rock 'n' roll. I gave him some suggestions in his comments.
Posted by denny at June 18, 2007 12:26 PM
I read that last night and thought, 'Wha? Hey Jude?" I had to think on it as to who I'd say I liked best and then again who my husband would like best. And its funny because I'd JUST posted on how he and I live on different planets. that 6 year differential my spouse and I have is BIG when it comes to music. He's all about Led Zepplin. I still run to REM.
Posted by: Bou on June 18, 2007 02:41 PMEveryone knows that the best r&r song ever was "American Pie"
Posted by: Alan on June 18, 2007 05:40 PMgreatest R&R song..........
The problem with most of you young whippersnappers trying to pick the greatest, is real Rock & roll was gone long before you were born. To find the best you gotta go back to the early days with original rhythm & blues, delta blues , chicago blues & rock-a-billy crossover of black R&B songs by white boys who sounded black.
As for the British explosion,the fact is most of the early British music by the Rolling Stones,Animals, even the early Beatles was copied or recorded in collusion with the earlier black artists who first recorded & wrote this music. The British were well grounded in the roots of R&R & give full credit to where it originated from.
Anything later is like todays dimocratic party , just an empty shell of once was. REM, Beatles, Motown not hardly , not even close, just a pale reflection of what once was.
As to which or what was the greatest.......Way to many to make a definitive selection, that is what was so great about the beginning .....far too much to chose just one & if you thought you found it , here come another & another & another. Will there ever be another Sun records?
Posted by: dudley1 on June 18, 2007 07:28 PMI like dueling banjos but it definitely ain't rock & roll.
Posted by: Richard on June 18, 2007 10:34 PMThis post brings to mind a reminiscence:
Chess Records, Chicago.
Chess Records was the great American blues record company. I did my Sound Engineering course work there (and also an internship).
There is a story we heard there, perhaps even true, that when Brian Jones first saw Keith Richards, he started talking to him because he noticed he was carrying a copy of Chess LP-1427, "The Best of Muddy Waters." Jones wanted to find out where he got it.
When they formed a band, they named it after one of Muddy Waters' songs, "Rollin' Stone."
The Rolling Stones later came to Chicago to pay homage to the company by recording much of their album "The Rolling Stones Now!" at the Chess Ter Mar studios.
The late '60s were banner years for Chess, which makes the decline and fall of Chess Records hard to understand.
In 1968, Billy Davis, the producer responsible for much of the soul music output, left to join an advertising agency as music director, and Leonard Chess, the creative force behind the company became more and more involved in the Chicago radio station he owned, WVON ("The Voice of the Negro").
When Billy Davis left, much of the cohesion in the creative staff was lost and many other producers and songwriters left. Ralph Bass stayed, but most of the talent was gone.
In 1969, Leonard and Phil Chess sold Chess to General Recorded Tape (GRT) for 6 million dollars plus 20 thousand shares in GRT stock.
In October 1969, the company suffered a devastating blow when Leonard Chess died. Quality output declined, and by the summer of 1972, the Chess Chicago offices were almost empty, the distribution company and pressing plants had been closed, and only the Chess Ter Mar studio was operating with a few employees.
By the summer of 1975, GRT was dismantling what was left of Chess. In August 1975, with all of the GRT record operations closed down, what remained of Chess Records, was sold to New Jersey-based All Platinum Records. Although originally intended to be run as an active label, shortage of capital reduced the great Chess Records to a reissue label.
When the Chess building in Chicago was sold, the new owners brought in dumpsters and chain saws and destroyed 250,000 records that had been abandoned there.
It's sad to think of all that great music; Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Bo Diddley, Etta James and Muddy Waters being hauled away to a landfill.
Even though the records were destroyed, the master tapes survived and are now the property of MCA, which has re-released much of the Chess material during the 1980s and 1990s.
My, my my ........
Posted by: DanS. on June 18, 2007 11:33 PMDanS....
I see you know the roots of R&B & R&R......You ain`t no spring chicken either. I did not mention Chess records in my first post as Sun records was the first to give many of the artists you mentioned their start, in fact Sun was know as the black recording company until Sam Phillips went on his search for a white singer who could sing black R&B for the white market.
While Sun is famous for the discovery of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis & Johnny Cash plus a host of others, it is largely forgotten
except by traditional R&B, Delta blues , Chicago blues & West Texas blues fans originally they were the base for the black recording artists.
I still have a collection of traditional artists such as Mississippi Fred McDowell,Son House,Lighting Hopkins,Bukka White, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Howling Wolf,Doctor Ross & others who I listen to while traveling.
Anyway DanS...Great followup to my comments , thanks..... it brought back many memories.
Excellant followup post to my comment DanS.... It brought back a lot of memories of my youth.
Posted by: dudley1 on June 19, 2007 07:24 AMDudley1:
Here's a little anecdote from SouthSide Chicago circa maybe 1971(???) ...
As our neighborhood changed over from mostly white to black (I'm white), a rather large and ostentatious Negro w/ a large smile made an offer to the lady who ran the local candy store.
She took the money and moved away and that rather large man paid us kids 50-cents/Hour to help dismantle the interior and blacken all the windows. It was a mystery as to what he was up to.
A few months later, when a door had been left open, we snuck inside to see an array of dazzling studio recording equipment. before we got the bum's rush outside, we were introduced to the rather large man we had worked for ...
His name was Willie Dixon.
Posted by: DanS. on June 19, 2007 12:33 PMDanS.....
You met Willy Dixon!....My hats off to you, the man literally created the Chicago Blues sound. The artists who recorded his songs & worked with him are legends in their own right but credit Willy with being the inspiration;
Sonny Boy Williamson,Otis Rush, Bo Diddley,Little Walter,Lowell Fulson,Robert Nighthawk, Walter Horton, Muddy Waters.....Latter day artists;The Kinks, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Koko Taylor & many more.
For a poor southern boy from Mississippi who went north to Chicago & was quite an amateur boxer he touched many lifes in the music industry & inspired many to greatness......You won`t see many like him anytime soon.
Posted by: dudley1 on June 19, 2007 08:14 PMAMEN, Dud!
As Chicago kids, we kept hearing variations on this phrase:
"Shit, Man! This is MUSIC! White man gonna eat it up"!
There were lyrics; there was honest-sentiment; there was authentic & unique attempts at supporting a point-of-view through MUSIC ........ and it worked to perfection!
But, unfortunately, it was called the "blues" ... or "R&B"
Some of the VERY BEST MEMORIES of my ENTIRE life was when Irish singers who were stopping over from Dublin going on To God-knows-Where & would share drinks with what I called the 'blues-guys'.
I have some snippets of tape (open-reel, Quad-inch tape) with the like of Junior Wells & Buddy Guy trying to get on the same wavelength and then doing
so!
Indeed, we are in COMPLETE agreement on one thing:
What passes for rock these days is but a shallow imitation of almost any Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of what once went on almost everywhere in any decent (dare-I-say-it!) 'juke-joint'.
Innovation!
Revelation-of-Self!
Reflection, humor & truth.
In short, a message from the inner-person in 3-chord 4/4-time.
And this on anyhing that could make a consistent (or at least, tunable) noise.
In short, music not from the head, nor mind, nor heart, nor toes nor talent: MUSIC from the Soul!
Posted by: DanS. on June 19, 2007 11:53 PM