Category: Music

Recordings about Recording the Beatles

Not too long ago, I posted an item about the fascinating work in electronic music by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The Bob Moog Foundation has an excellent article called MoogHistory Unveiled: Brian Kehew Explores 1965 R.A. Moog Co. Electronic Music Workshop.

Brian Kehew is the co-author with Kevin Ryan of the book RTB: Recording the Beatles. Interviews with Kehew and Ryan about the book can be heard on Musicians Radio…

[audio:http://www.musiciansradio.com/podcasts/mrshow_55.mp3 |titles=Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan on Musicians Radio]

… and seen on Electronic Musician.

[flv:http://emusician.com/videos/interviews/Rec_the_Beatles_Interview.flv http://www.dograt.com/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/RTBeatles.jpg 480 360]

Pet Octopus

If Robbie Leff keeps pointing out videos like this fantastic Petula-Beatles mash-up, I won’t have to think up any more ideas for blog posts!

The official Beatles mash-up is, of course, the Love CD, which has me thinking of the infamous Beachles mash-up of Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper that resulted in a cease-and-desist order for its creator from Capitol/EMI.

By the old Miller stream

More vis Mitch Miller, compliments of Denro:

This the 1st song from the 1st “Sing Along With Mitch” album, from 1958. The odd thing, which I didn’t realize, is that the album contains several WW II era songs!!! He knew his audience — so he did songs from their childhood, their parents’ era and their own adulthood! “Don’t Fence Me In” and “Bell Bottom Trousers” are on there, alongside “The Old Mill Stream” and “Silvery Moon”.

This was how Miller started the sing-a-long craze? But it’s such a sad song! How sad is it? It’s “Snoopy with a root beer” sad!

Frank’s hot dogs

Recently I posted a couple of items about Mitch Miller. It’s been said that the low point of Frank Sinatra’s recording career was towards the end of his contract with Columbia, when Miller had him record Mama Will Bark. Cactus Lizzie wrote to say…

WCBS New York is doing “the dog days of summer” today on-air. They mentioned “Mama will Bark” and said it was available for review on their web site. There’s a write-up of it here at this link below, and the video which they took from YouTube.

http://wcbsfm.radio.com/2010/08/12/mama-will-bark/#more-14660

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRNRaMToK1g

Follow-up: Denro saw Cactus Lizzie’s comment about the flip side, “I’m A Fool to Want You”, and he says…

Here’s a link to the 1951 version. Mitch may have made him record “Mama” but he also let him record and release this song — co-written by Sinatra himself (one of the few). By the way, Mitch remembers Frank being okay with recording it at the time. He seems to be having some fun with it and even gets a good last line in. It’s no better or worse that some of the stuff that Perry Como or Rosemary Clooney were doing during the same period. The worst part was probably having Dagmar try and do the vocal, in retrospect an early TV flash-in-the pan. That’s the real novelty part. Then again, it’s still pretty poor!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEQm–gWvfA

Bosstown radio

Over the past four years I’ve tracked some of the Boston radio scene events, including:

  • Classical music station WCRB switching frequencies
  • Steve LeVeille let go by WBZ, then brought back by listener demand
  • End of WBCN as on-air station
  • Departure of Barnes Newberry from WUMB
  • WGBH buying WCRB

Deaths:

  • WBZ talk show host Paul Sullivan
  • WBZ legend Larry Glick
  • WGBH Jazz Decades host Ray Smith

The Internet has had a huge effect on the radio industry, of course. Something I didn’t like for a long time was the Web player that the CBS network was using. I don’t know when CBS hooked up with Radio.com to update the player, but I think the results are excellent, despite a couple of pop-ups that have caused Firefox to crash.

The CBS station WODS — Oldies 103 in Boston — is still the best place to catch The Beatle Years and Beatle Brunch. You’ll find them on the WODS podcast page.