Previously I mentioned that my friend Morris had given me a copy of Jerry Lee Lewis’ new CD, Last Man Standing. NPR has started a weekend series on this year’s picks for the National Recording Registry, selected by the Library of Congress, starting with Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.”
Click here to go to the NPR feature. The picture is of Lewis with his third wife, Myra. What was with the pencil? And those sunglasses!
Artie Shaw died a couple of years ago, at a ripe old age, as sharp, cantankerous and opinionated as ever. For no reason other than my eclectic buddy Denro sent me a CD with a couple of Artie Shaw tunes from 1939, let’s listen to both of those tunes. One of them swings, the other does not, but they’re equally good. If you don’t know who that is Artie was sitting with, please get a clue!
Part 4 of the video documentary on the history of New York Top 40 music radio concentrates on WMCA trying, and failing, to fight back against the 50,000-watt signal pattern of WABC.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/NYDJ/NYDJ4.flv 400 300]
Original card provided by Dennis Rogers.
The audio player has two sound clips: Muni’s theme song, an odd instrumental from 1961 called “Grasshopper Jump,” and Muni’s promo for the WABC Beatles Fan Club.
I don’t remember Scott Muni as well as some of the other WABC disk jockeys, because he left the station in 1965. Muni is better known as a pioneer of Rock music on FM radio, but he was memorable on AM as a presence during the initial, wild rush of American Beatlemania.
Scott Muni on WABC, 1965
Not too long before Buddy Holly died, he recorded three, and only three, absolutely delightful songs in glorious sounding stereo. Here they are, transferred for maximum audio fidelity.
Click the picture below to see the entire cover to the January, 1965 issue of a humor magazine called HELP! The Beatles’ movie HELP! wasn’t released until August, 1965, leading one to speculate what possible influence Terry Gilliam’s bit of airbrushed artistic whimsy may have had on the title. Yes, that’s Terry Gilliam the animator, director and Monty Python troupe member who is listed as contributing editor.
HELP! was the brainchild of Harvey Kurtzman. In an earlier posting I have a link to a gallery with one of Kurtzman’s early comic-book stories. Kurtzman is still remembered today as the man who started MAD Magazine. One evening, Gilliam, who had replaced HELP! staffer Gloria Steinem, went to an off-Broadway show that featured a performer named John Cleese. They met and Cleese was talked into performing a photo comic strip for the magazine. Look for that in a future posting. After HELP! folded, Gilliam later caught up with Cleese in London, and then there was something completely different.
