In celebration of Prue’s birthday, here is an item from The New Yorker during her first few months in the Big Apple. The author took a rather bemused tone regarding the proceedings. I heard from Prue today and she’s okay, avoiding Covid in Spain.
When I was a little kid, up to the time when the Beatles arrived in America, and beyond, the first three Peter, Paul & Mary albums were played a lot at home. They were my first popular musical reference point.
Listening to those old mono LP’s this week for the first time in years, I’m struck by how depressing they all are! Even “Puff the Magic Dragon” is sad. I guess “If I Had a Hammer” is supposed to be the happy song?
Many of the songs are weighed down by allusions to Biblical times. This one, from the second album, is filled with despair. It’s based on a tune from sometime in the 1800’s.
This reminds me of John Lennon making fun of protest songs in the 1965 Beatles fan club Christmas record, with Ringo tossing in a River Jordan dig for good measure. Later on, John was of course big on protest songs himself.
This must be the first time I have ever significantly revised my view of some of the music that I grew up with. “Rock and Roll Music” is the only bouncy and fun Peter Paul & Mary record that comes to mind. But I think its message rings hollow, serving not to knock those other artists, but to point out just how good they were.
Barbara was my Art History instructor in college. My love of Flemish Renaissance painting came from one of Barbara’s courses. American Art was her only class I wasn’t able to take, due to a scheduling conflict, but my best buddy Denro took that one. Barbara is presently enjoying life in Miami Beach.
In 1964 The Jackie Gleason Show on CBS originated from Miami Beach. The opening of Goldfinger in 1964 features the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel.
Also in 1964, the second appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show happened at the Deauville Hotel on Miami Beach. Unlike the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, where The Late Show With Stephen Colbert is based, the Deauville has fallen on hard times.
After all these years, the only thing left about the Deauville with any resonance is its significance in Beatles history. The latest on the status of the hotel is at this link.
In 1982 I bought a British import 12-inch 45 reissue of the Beatles’ first Parlophone single, “Love Me Do.” Side 1 has the take with Andy White on drums. It was mastered from the original tape, and to me it sounds fab and gear.
Side 2 is the take with Ringo on drums, and it was mastered by necessity from a 1962 Parlophone 45. Compared to the first side it sounds like you’re playing it on speakers while wearing headphones that aren’t plugged in. It’s all explained here, in exhaustively delightful detail. Or is it delightfully exhaustive detail?
I first heard Chris Barber’s recording of Sidney Bechet’s “Petite Fleur” about 40 years ago on a favorite LP of mine, “Roots of British Rock.”
Hugh Laurie, who I know from “Blackadder,” but you may know from “House,” talks about, and with, Chris Barber.
This is a little Paul McCartney ditty…
… that Barber recorded. It’s on another favorite LP.
An important name, but not widely known, in Sixties British music, has passed away. Hilton Valentine’s guitar on “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals, released in America on August 8, 1964, is unmistakable from the first note.
The thing about the British Invasion is there wouldn’t have been one without England having a lot of bands ready for export, following the Beatles in jumping across the pond. Many acts, like the Animals and Hollies, formed in 1962. The Springfields, with Dusty, were on the American charts with “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” in 1962, before the Beatles released “Love Me Do” in the UK.
