takin' off

Herbie Hancock started his career on a high note with the sophisticated jazz of this soulful soaring prolegomenon.  Hancock was a child prodigy who performed Mozart at the age of eleven.  During his teens he became enamored with jazz and secured a recording contract with Blue Note Records.  'Takin' Off' was recorded in one session on May 28, 1962 and produced by one of the founders of the label Alfred Lion at the studio of engineer Rudy Van Gelder in  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.   The session featured Hancock on piano with accompaniment by Blue Note heavies  Dexter Gordon on tenor saxophone, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, bassist Butch Warren and Billy Higgins on drums.  'Takin' Off' didn't chart; but it was so well received that Miles Davis asked Hancock to join his Second Great Quintet.  






http://www.herbiehancock.com/






Hancock says: "In reflecting on my childhood, I recalled the cry of the watermelon man making his rounds through the back streets and alleys of Chicago's south side. The wheels of his wagon beat out the rhythm on the cobblestones."







 'Takin' Off' 
full album:



All compositions by Herbie Hancock.

"Watermelon Man" – 7:09
"Three Bags Full" – 5:27
"Empty Pockets" – 6:09
"The Maze" – 6:45
"Driftin'" – 6:58
"Alone and I" – 6:25

full house

Wes Montgomery captured his electrifying live sound for the first time with this spontaneously swinging set and came up with one of his finest albums.  'Full House' came together when the Miles Davis sextet came to San Francisco and Montgomery made arrangements to record with his rhythm section of the Wynton Kelly trio.  Davis objected to the session until Kelly asked him to compensate the trio for the fees that had been offered.  The set was recorded on June 25, 1962 at Tsubo across the bay in Berkeley and produced by Orrin Keepnews with Montgomery on guitar; Johnny Griffin on tenor sax; and the Wynton Kelly trio featuring Kelly on piano; Paul Chambers on bass; and Jimmy Cobb on drums.  The interplay is magical with every member of the group able to take center stage; and, after the experience, the trio would leave Davis to work with Montgomery.   

Griffin looks back:   “I use a lot more space in my playing than when I was 25 or 30 years old. Before, I felt like I was in a rush to play everything possible— I got angry when I had to take a breath. I wanted to keep goin’ all the time. No space—fill it up! I was always motivated to play hard. I got so excited when I played, and I still do. I want to eat up the music, just like a child eating candy. The difference is that today I can back off and control myself.”

Montgomery considers the origin of his technique:   "When I started I bought the whole works. I got a box of picks because I felt sure there would be the right one in there for me. I refused to play unamplified, so I'm sitting in my house playing, you know - happy, but when I used my brand new amplifier I guess I didn't think about the neighbours. Soon they started complaining pretty heavy. But I was enjoying myself because it wasn't noise to me, it was music. But after two months my wife came to the door and asked me would I kindly turn that 'thing' off. Well, 'thing'? It was a guitar and amplifier, you know? So I laid my pick down on the amplifier and just fiddled around with the thumb. I said is that better.? Oh yes, she says, that's better. So I said I'll play like this till I get ready to play out, and then I'll get me a pick. Well, that wasn't easy either because I found out that I had developed the thumb for playing so that when I got ready to work my first job I picked up a pick and I think I must have lost about fifteen of them! I just didn't realize that I had to develop my pick technique, too. So I said 'later' for the pick. I was just playing for my own amusement so it was great. See, I couldn't hear the difference in the sound as it is today, so I figured OK, I'll just use my thumb. Probably a thousand cats are using their thumbs - only they're not in Indianapolis! The more I learnt about it, I found out that less guys were using their thumbs and I began to get a little frightened!"











http://www.wesmontgomery.com/










'Full House' 
full album:



"Full House" (Wes Montgomery) – 9:14
"I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" (Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe) – 3:18
"Blue 'n' Boogie" (Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Paparelli) – 9:31
"Come Rain or Come Shine" (Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen) – 6:49
"S.O.S." (Montgomery) – 4:57
"Born To Be Blue" (Mel Tormé, Robert Wells) – 7:23

surfers' choice

King of the surf guitar Dick Dale started a tidal wave of imitators with the quintessential staccato swell of this trailblazing debut. Dick Dale and his Del-Tones recorded 'Surfers' Choice' live at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa Beach, California with some overdubs added in the studio with producer Jim Monsour. It was originally released on Dale's own Deltone label and was later picked up by Capitol Records.

Dale reveals: "It was in the fifties, not the sixties, like all the magazines say. They don't know the whole true story anyway— they weren't even born! I crack up. I've always been kind of silent about everything, but now that everybody's starting to try to make money off it, I don't want kids to spend money on the wrong thing. You got books out there with all these different kinds of guitars that have nothing to do with the sound that Dick Dale created. The sound is a Stratocaster guitar. It's the solidity of the wood— the thicker the wood, the bigger and purer the sound. It was a Strat. Not the Jaguar, not the Jazzmaster, all these things we created later, for different reasons. Even the reverb—reverb had nothing to do with the surfing sound, and here they got 'em on the cover going 'That's the wet, splashy sound of reverb.' No! We created the reverb because Dick Dale did not have a natural vibrato on his voice. I wanted to sustain my notes while singing. So we copied the Hammond organ, which had a tank in it. We took the tank out, rewired it, and had an outboard reverb! It was for the vocal. Our first album, 'Surfers' Choice', sold over eighty-eight thousand albums—locally! That's like more than four million today. Dick Dale was already established as King of the Surf Guitar, and that album did not have reverb on it. It wasn't even invented!...In the fifties, you couldn't get a license to play in the high schools and junior highs—you could only dance to horn bands. They thought anybody who played guitar was evil. We said, 'You want your kids out in the street or would you rather have them in one big place?' They said, 'They gotta wear ties!' Who the hell ever heard of surfers wearing ties? They finally gave us a permit to reopen the Rendezvous Ballroom, which was a whole city block. Opening night we had seventeen surfers in their bare feet—wearing ties. We had a box of 'em and handed 'em out to keep the city happy. And the surfers would say, 'Man, you're the king!' So that's how the name 'King of the Surf Guitar' came about. Dick Dale has never named anything himself. Dick Dale was strictly a product of the grassroots then, and now boom!—it's happened again. Especially because of 'Pulp Fiction'—that just took it right over the top. Movie's done over one hundred million. I just got a platinum album for it."

'Surfers' Choice' charted at number fifty-nine on the album chart. Dale describes the surf guitar sound: "Well what it is, is the meaning of the sounds of the waves, like the echo and the sounds of the tube and my finger would be in the wall and I could hear it go chhhhhhhhhhh! And I’d take my strings and go weeeeeeer! Up high and then you get that rumble just before you’re going to be flung over, you know right before you’re going to go over the fucking falls and get slammed down, all that rumbling and all that stuff like that they associated the heavy Dick Dale staccato picking tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk on those strings, it sounded like the barrel of a goddamn wave...The rhythm that you get is the same thing. The rhythm in that water – nothing comes close to that. Nothing. The rhythm of a beautiful glassy wave matches the rhythm of playing music on an instrument and not only that, but the ferocity of Mother Nature’s ocean is the same thing when you hear my guitar growl…The ferocity when you just get into a gnarly wave that just wants to chew you up and spit you out – that’s my guitar when it starts getting angry. So I tell people, I’m not a guitar player. I don’t know what an augmented ninth or thirteenth is, and I don’t give a shit. I make my guitar scream with pain or pleasure, and that’s what it does."







http://www.dickdale.com/

"Misirlou"

'Surfers' Choice'

full album:

All tracks composed by Dick Dale; except where indicated

Side 1

"Surf Beat"

"Sloop John B" (Carl Sandburg, Lee Hays)

"Take It Off"

"Night Owl" (Tony Allen)

"Fanny Mae" (Buster Brown)

"Misirlou Twist" (Chaim Tauber, Fred Wise, Milton Leeds, Nicholas Roubanis)

Side 2

"Peppermint Man" (Alonzo Willis)

"Surfing Drums"

"Shake 'n' Stomp"

"Lovey Dovey" (Eddie Curtis, Nuggy)

"Death of a Gremmie"

"Let's Go Trippin'"

bonus tracks

"Del-Tone Rock"

"Jungle Fever"

"Misirlou" (traditional)

"Eight Till' Midnight"

"Lovin' on My Brain"

"A Run For Life"

big girls don't cry

The Four Seasons had their second consecutive number one with this doo-wop drama inspired by a quip from a film noire. 'Big Girls Don't Cry' was composed by the band's chief songwriter Bob Gaudio and their producer, Bob Crewe. Crewe had fallen asleep watching the film 'Slightly Scarlet' and woke up to see John Payne slap Rhonda Fleming. Her response was the title of the song, which he quickly wrote down and went back to sleep. The song was written the next day.

'Big Girls Don't Cry' was produced in a style very similar to their previous single, the number one smash 'Sherry', to capitalize on its success. Lead singer Franki Valli's falsetto gave the band their distinctive sound and propelled 'Big Girls Don't Cry' to the top of the pop chart for five consecutive weeks and the R&B chart for three. Valli considers: "I thought everyone had falsetto. And since I wasn't a schooled singer who studied with anybody, I just thought anybody who had a voice could do anything they wanted with their voice. Not until much later on in life did I realize I had been blessed with an incredible range, and then I saw it from a different perspective."









www.frankievallifourseasons.com













Big girls don't cry)
(Big girls don't cry)
Big girls don't cry-yi-yi (they don't cry)
Big girls come on cry (who said, they don't cry)
My girl said goodbye-yi-yi (my, oh, my)
My girl didn't cry (I wonder why)
(Silly boy) Told my girl we had to break up
(Silly boy) Thought that she would call my bluff
(Silly boy) Then she said to my surprise
Big girls don't cry
Big girls don't cry-yi-yi (they don't cry)
Big girls come on cry (who said, they don't cry)
Baby, I was cruel (I was cruel)
Baby, I'm a fool (I'm such a fool)
(Silly girl) Shame on you, your mama said
(Silly girl) Shame on you, you cried in bed
(Silly girl) Shame on you, you told a lie
Big girls do cry
Big girls don't cry-yi-yi (they don't cry)
Big girls come on cry (that's just an alibi)
Big girls don't cry
Big girls don't cry
Big girls don't cry
Big girls don't cry...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVBvy2cc0Io&feature=related

he's a rebel

The Crystals had their only chart topper with the unconventional romance of this single on which they didn't even perform. Phil Spector heard a demo of the song by the composer Gene Pitney while he was working in A&R at Liberty Records. The song had been offered to the Shirelles; but they opted not to record it because of the anti-establishment theme of the lyrics. He knew the song would be a hit and, when he discovered that Vikki Carr was going to release it as her debut single, he quit his job and quickly recorded his own version at Gold Star Studios for the label he had formed with Lester Still Philles Records. The Crystals  (comprised at different points of singers Barbara Alston, Mary Thomas, Dolores "Dee Dee" Kenniebrew, Myrna Girard, Patricia "Patsy" Wright, and Dolores "LaLa" Brooks) had been the first artist signed to that label; but they were unavailable to record the song because they were touring on the east coast. He recruited the Blossoms - Darlene Love, Famita James, and Gracia Nitzschke to record the song; but credited it to the Crystals and rush released the single.

Blossoms lead singer Darlene Love revealed: "Between 'He's A Rebel' and the Christmas album two years later, The Crystals didn't sing on any of their own records, they just went out on tour to promote them. La La Brooks got to sing lead on the re-recording of 'Da Doo Ron Ron,' but the rest of the vocals were by the Blossoms. Another Crystal, Dee Dee Kenniebrew, got really upset, I remember, but I don't think any of the other girls made much of a fuss. I know it used to irritate Dee Dee when fans would compliment her on how great those records were when she never got to sing on them."

Dee Dee Kenniebrew considers: "The Crystal's first hit in the UK was 'He's A Rebel,' but we didn't sing it. When we rehearsed it we hadn't particularly liked it. Also, we'd already had two hit records in The States, plus an album, yet we still hadn't been paid. Phil Spector probably thought we were giving him too much hassle about money, so he got a studio group to record the song. Unfortunately, our first manager didn't get us a good contract and Spector was able to use the group's name."

'He's A Rebel' spent two weeks at the top of the US pop chart and made it to number nineteen in the UK.  The song kept Gene Pitney's own single 'Only Love Can Break a Heart' from reaching the top spot. 








http://thecrystals.net/
















See the way he walks down the street
Watch the way he shuffles his feet
My, he holds his head up high
When he goes walking by
He's my guy
When he holds my hand, I'm so proud
'Cause he's not just one of the crowd
Why is he always the one
To try the things they've never done?
And just because of that, they say:
"He's a rebel and he'll never ever be any good
He's a rebel 'cause he never ever does what he should"
But just because he doesn't do what everybody else does,
That's no reason why I can't give him all my love
He's always good to me,
Always treats me tenderly
'Cause he's not a rebel, no no no
He's not a rebel, no no no, to me
If they don't like him that way,
They won't like me, I'm sure, today
And I'll be standing right by his side when they say:
"He's a rebel and he'll never ever be any good
He's a rebel 'cause he never ever does what he should"
But just because he doesn't do what everybody else does,
That's no reason why we can't share love
He's always good to me
Good to him, I try to be
'Cause he's not a rebel, no no no
He's not a rebel, no no no, to me
Oh! (he's not a rebel, no no no)
He's not a rebel, no no no

love me do

The Beatles recorded their first single in three different versions with three different drummers. 'Love Me Do' was one of the earliest compositions by the legendary songwriting team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Lennon said: "'Love Me Do' is Paul's song. He wrote it when he was a teenager. Let me think. I might have helped on the middle eight, but I couldn't swear to it. I do know he had the song around, in Hamburg, even, way, way before we were songwriters."

McCartney defers:  "Love Me Do was completely co-written. It might have been my original idea but some of them really were 50-50s, and I think that one was. It was just Lennon and McCartney sitting down without either of us having a particularly original idea. We loved doing it, it was a very interesting thing to try and learn to do, to become songwriters. I think why we eventually got so strong was we wrote so much through our formative period. Love Me Do was our first hit, which ironically is one of the two songs that we control, because when we first signed to EMI they had a publishing company called Ardmore and Beechwood which took the two songs, 'Love Me Do' and 'P.S. I Love You', and in doing a deal somewhere along the way we were able to get them back."

The band had recorded a version of the song during their audition with original drummer Pete Best.  The rest of the band decided to replace Best with Ringo Starr very soon after that.  Starr recalls:  "On my first visit in September we just ran through some tracks for George Martin. We even did 'Please Please Me'. I remember that, because while we were recording it I was playing the bass drum with a maraca in one hand and a tambourine in the other. I think it's because of that that George Martin used Andy White, the 'professional', when we went down a week later to record 'Love Me Do'. The guy was previously booked, anyway, because of Pete Best. George didn't want to take any more chances and I was caught in the middle.   I was devastated that George Martin had his doubts about me. I came down ready to roll and heard, 'We've got a professional drummer.' He has apologised several times since, has old George, but it was devastating - I hated the bugger for years; I still don't let him off the hook!"

'Love Me Do' rose to number seventeen in 1962 on the UK national chart, based mostly on local sales in Liverpool. When it was released in the US two years later during the height of Beatlemania, it went to number one. It also went to number eight in Canada and number one in Australia. Re-released in the UK in 1982, it hit number four. George Harrison remembers:  "There were enough fans of The Beatles around because we were playing all over the Wirral, Cheshire, Manchester and Liverpool. We were quite popular, so the sales were real. First hearing 'Love Me Do' on the radio sent me shivery all over. It was the best buzz of all time. We knew it was going to be on Radio Luxembourg at something like 7.30 on Thursday night. I was in my house in Speke and we all listened in. That was great, but after having got to 17, I don't recall what happened to it. It probably went away and died, but what it meant was that the next time we went to EMI, they were more friendly: 'Oh, hello lads. Come in.'"

Lennon would admit:  "The best thing was it came into the charts in two days and everybody thought it was a fiddle, because our manager's stores sent in these returns and everybody down south though, 'Ah-ha, he's buying them himself or he's just fiddling the charts.' But he wasn't."

McCartney considers:  "In Hamburg we clicked. At the Cavern we clicked. But if you want to know when we 'knew' we'd arrived, it was getting in the charts with Love Me Do. That was the one. It gave us somewhere to go."








http://www.thebeatles.com/
























On June 6, 1962 the band had an audition at EMI studios with Pete Best on drums. This version was first released on 'Anthology 1'.

Love me do with Pete Best by HughesGifford






On September 4, 1962 they did another version at EMI with their new drummer Ringo Starr. This version was used on the earliest releases of the single and can be found on 'Rarities' and 'Past Masters, Volume One'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jltwPrSdF18








On September 11, 1962, the Beatles did another version with session drummer Andy White on drums and Ringo on tambourine. This version appears on their debut album 'Please Please Me'.












live
















Love, love me do.

You know I love you,

I'll always be true,

So please,

Love me do.

Love, love me do.

You know I love you,

I'll always be true,

So please,

Love me do.

Someone to love,

Somebody new.

Someone to love,

Someone like you.

Love, love me do.

You know I love you,

I'll always be true,

So please,

Love me do.

Love, love me do.

You know I love you,

I'll always be true,

So please,

Love me do

green onions

Booker T. & the M.G.s  found success on their own with the guileless grooves of this infectious improvizational instrumental. Keyboardist Booker T. Jones, guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Lewis Steinberg, and drummer Al Jackson, Jr. were the house band at Stax Records. During downtime with one of the many Stax artists for which they provided backup, the band was able to record their own material.

Jones recalls: "That happened as something of an accident. We used the time to record a Blues which we called 'Behave Yourself', and I played it on a Hammond M3 organ. Jim Stewart, the owner, was the engineer and he really liked it and wanted to put it out as a record. We all agreed on that and Jim told us that we needed something to record as a B-side, since we couldn't have a one-sided record. One of the tunes I had been playing on piano we tried on the Hammond organ so that the record would have organ on both sides and that turned out to be 'Green Onions.'"

Written and produced by Jones, Cropper, Steinberg, and Jackson, the single was released with 'Behave Yourself' as the A-side; but radio DJ's preferred the groovier B-side to the down-tempo blues number. It became a local sensation when a Memphis DJ played it four times in a row. The song went to number three on the pop chart and spent four non-consecutive weeks at the top of the R&B chart in September and October of 1962. Seventeen years later it entered the UK charts, eventually peaking at number seven.  It has been covered by many artists and featured in countless films. Jones, who was seventeen at the time it was recorded, explained the title: "Because that is the nastiest thing I can think of and it's something you throw away."







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bpS-cOBK6Q

the loco-motion

The husband and wife songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King had a runaway hit with the crazy rhythms of this dance pop juggernaut...three times in three separate decades.  'The Loco-Motion' was composed at their home while their babysitter Eva Boyd was dancing around with their daughter Lulu.   King exclaimed:  "What you’re doing reminds me of a locomotive!" Goffin quickly came up with the lyrics about a brand new dance and the idea to have Boyd record the demo:  "She would always sing along to the songs we were writing in our little apartment."  King recalls:  "Eva sang, and I sang background with her.  And it was the first in a long line—right up to and including my next album—of demos that become masters."  Boyd says:  "Gerry already thought that it would be a hit with me singing.  So he took it in to them to listen, Al Nevins and Don Kirshner.  And they listened to it, and you know, it just hit ’em."  They found a star; but lost a nanny.  Boyd took on the name Little Eva and the single went on to sell over a million copies, going to number two in the UK and number one in Canada, Norway, the US. It was one of the biggest hits of 1962.








Grand Funk Railroad recorded their hard rocking version after guitarist Mark Farner was caught whistling the tune in the studio.  Todd Rundgren produced the sessions for their album 'Shinin' On' and the single for 'The Loco-Motion' went to number eleven in Germany, seven in Austria, five in Australia, and number one in Canada and the US in 1974. 









Australian soap star Kylie Minogue was given a recording contract after she did an impromptu performance of the song at a Fitzroy Football Club benefit concert. In 1987, 'The Loco-Motion' became her first single and spent seven weeks at the top of the Australian charts; which led to an expanded release around the world.  It hit number ten in Sweden; eight in New Zealand; six in Italy and the Netherlands; five in France; three in Austria, Germany, Norway, and the US; two in Switzerland and the UK; and number one in Belgium, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Peru, South Africa, and on the Eurochart.  






Everybody's doing a brand-new dance, now
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance now
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
My little baby sister can do it with me
It's easier than learning your A-B-C
So come on, come on, do the Loco-motion with me
You gotta swing your hips, now

Come on, baby
Jump up
Jump back
Well, now, I think you've got the knack
Wow, wow

Now that you can do it, let's make a chain, now
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
A chug-a chug-a motion like a railroad train, now
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
Do it nice and easy, now, don't lose control
A little bit of rhythm and a lot of soul

Come on, come on
Do the Loco-motion with me
Ye-ye-ye-yeah

Move around the floor in a Loco-motion
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)
Do it holding hands if you get the notion
(Come on baby, do the Loco-motion)

There's never been a dance that's so easy to do
It even makes you happy when you're feeling blue
So come on, come on, do the Loco-motion with me

(Come one)
You gotta swing your hips, now
(Come one)
That's right (do the Loco-motion)
You're doing fine!
(Come one, do the Loco-motion)
Come on, babe
(Come one, do the Loco-motion)
Hm-hm-hm, jump up
(Come one)
Jump back (do the Loco-motion)
You're looking good
(Come one, do the Loco-motion)
Hm-hm-hm, jump up
(Come one)
Jump back (do the Loco-motion)