Category: Music

Low Fidelity, High Quality

Louis Armstrong and King OliverBack in December I mentioned the WGBH radio program The Jazz Decades, hosted by Ray Smith. This Sunday’s show featured some noteworthy restored 1920’s recordings that are of particular interest to Smith — King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, with Louis Armstrong.

Smith rhapsodizes at length during the twenty five minutes of the program that are on the audio player, recorded off of my computer’s FM tuner. I fiddled with the dipole antenna for a few moments at the beginning, as will be obvious if you listen.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/APR07/JazzDecadesApr1-07.mp3]

Not being a musician myself, I appreciate these acoustic (non-electrical) recordings more for their historical and technical significance, but Smith’s infectious enthusiasm for the virtuosity of the performances is fun to hear. Note: At one point Smith refers to 1933 when he meant to say 1923.

He Said “Yeh Yeh”

My best buddy Dennis Rogers, the master of all things Pop Culture, has pointed out that this song was co-written by the father of our state’s governor.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/MAR07/YehYeh.mp3]

Laurdine “Pat” Patrick was a saxophonist who played for many years with jazz impresario Sun Ra. He also happened to be the father of Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.

Georgie FamePat Patrick co-wrote “Yeh Yeh”, a 1965 #1 hit in England for British performer Clive Powell, who was given the stage name Georgie Fame by his manager Larry Parnes, who had managed the Beatles for a short time early in their career. In America, “Yeh Yeh” peaked at #21 in Billboard magazine.

The Boston Globe has the whole story about Patrick, and the troubled relationship he had with his father, at this link. Patrick is a smart guy, but he was a bit full of himself when he took office and he got off to a rather shaky start as governor. Once he gets his act together he should do all right.

The Key To Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart

In Sunday’s Boston Globe, James Sullivan commemorates the 40th anniversary of the photo shoot that resulted in the cover to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, by identifying all of the faces in the background. The online version is here, but it doesn’t include a key. The key in the print edition of the paper is small and, in my copy, off-register and nearly illegible.

I’ve made a nice, big key to the list. Click the picture above to see it. It will open a new window or tab, so you can compare it more easily to the list below. The photo is exactly 1024×768 pixels, the most common screen resolution, making it suitable for your computer’s wallpaper, if you don’t mind being unable to find anything on your desktop! Continue reading The Key To Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart

Phil Spector

Phil SpectorPhil Spector’s songs are sometimes thought of as being so pre-Beatles. The old man producer whose orchestrated post-Do-Wop creations couldn’t compete with the fresh, new Fab Four’s guitars.

But Spector was with the Beatles on the plane that brought them to America for the first time (ignoring George’s prior solo trip), and Spector is, in fact, two months younger than John Lennon. And without Brian Wilson’s admiration of Spector there most certainly wouldn’t have been the stunning Pet Sounds.

Who knows when it happened, but Spector almost certainly must have crossed the line from eccentricity to insanity. And now he’s on trial on suspicion of murder, only a week after his ex-wife Ronnie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, eighteen years after receiving the same honor himself.

Here are three Ronettes songs in glorious stereo, presented as a single track, encoded at 256 kbps. The Phil Spector Wall of Sound, taken from a British LP I bought used 25 years ago and have played dozens of times.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/MAR07/Ronettes.mp3]