This week on CBS Sunday Morning, Anthony Mason interviewed Pete Townshend, who opened up about his childhood, the criminal charges that almost ended his career, and his relationship with Roger Daltrey. It was a very incisive interview with the Who musician that among other things, saw Townshend contemplating how his own very troubled childhood inspired the rock opera Tommy.
Although I had already heard the story about how Townshend adopted his trademark windmill style of guitar playing from a misunderstanding about The Rolling Stones, it is such a great story that it is always worth hearing him tell it again. [Update: Unfortunately, the video is no longer available for embedding.]
What do you think of the interview? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Although I have never been a big follower George Strait‘s career, like most fans of country music, I am surprised by how many songs of his I know. And I cannot dispute that he is a country music legend. Because of all that, I was sad to hear that he recently announced at a press conference that he is beginning his final tour, the “The Cowboy Rides Away Tour,” which will end in 2014. But he does not rule out making appearances after this tour ends. At the beginning of the press conference, several country music stars paid tribute to Strait.
So we wish Strait good luck as he embarks on this final tour. One of my favorite songs he recorded was a duet he did with Alan Jackson, “Murder on Music Row,” from the Latest Greatest Straitest Hits (2000) CD. The song laments the Nashville trend toward pop and away from traditional country music. Certainly, after Strait rides off into the sunset, there will be even less country music coming out of Nashville.
[2024 Update: George Strait did eventually tour again.]
Although that day saw the first commercial release, the joint work of Sony and Philips created the new music format several years earlier before the technology became commercially available.
Partly because of a high price tag on the new technology, cassette tapes remained more popular than CDs until the late 1980s. But the CD format eventually took over.
The CD changed the way we listen to music. It featured longer playing times than record albums all in a compact size.
The CD also featured what many thought was a better sound than other formats, although that issue is still debated. The CD format is still very popular, and digital sales did not surpass CD sales until 2015.
Whatever the future holds, take a moment to salute the CD format. It originally gave us great music listening experiences through the 1980s, the 1990s, and into the current century. And I do miss CD stores.
In tribute, lets go back to someone plopping down the big bucks thirty years ago and buying that first CD and turning it on to hear that first song, “Big Shot”. . .
My personal encounter with CDs was still a few years away on that October day in 1982. I recall hearing music on a friend’s CD player for one of the first times years later, around 1986. And I got my first player a few years later. At that time, I made my first CD purchase of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run.
The Harvest Moon is the full moon that falls closest to the autumnal equinox and gained its name because in the days before electricity, the moon aided farmers harvesting when the sun was not up. What mainly distinguishes the Harvest Moon from other moons is that this time of year there is less time between successive moonrises than usual.
For more information on the Harvest Moon and its special appearance, check out the EarthSky website. If you prefer a video explanation, check out this video:
The Harvest Moon is also responsible for inspiring a classic Tin Pan Alley song from the early 1900s. There is some dispute about the song’s authors, but “Shine On, Harvest Moon” was originally credited to the couple of Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, who were married at the time they wrote the song but later divorced. Both Bayes and Norworth had other successes, including that Norworth wrote the lyrics to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” but during their lives they were probably most famous for “Shine On, Harvest Moon.”
The song has been performed by a number of artists on TV and in film, including an appearance in the 1944 film Shine On, Harvest Moon, as well as on an episode of The Mickey Mouse Club by a young Britney Spears. Johnny Cash sang it with Emmylou Harris on TV too. My favorite performance, though, is by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who always lit up the screen during one of their musical performances. Check out Laurel & Hardy singing “Shine On, Harvest Moon” below from the film The Flying Deuces (1939).
Here is wishing you a good weekend as the Harvest Moon shines down on you.
Will you check out the Harvest Moon this weekend? Leave your two cents in the comments.
More than fifty years ago on September 30, 1958, Buddy Holly produced a record in New York for an unknown singer named Lou Giordano, according to Larry Lehmer’s book The Day the Music Died (p. 41). The B-side of the record was a song written by Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers called “Don’t Cha Know.”
According to Roger White’s book on the Everly Brothers, Walk Right Back, during the recording, Everly and Holly sang backup. But they sang falsetto because they could not afford female singers. Also, because the two singers were under contract with another record company, they did not want anyone to recognize their voices.
Give it a listen. Can you recognize the voices of Buddy Holly and Phil Everly?
The A-side of the Giordano record was a song written by Holly called “Stay Close to Me.” Holly never recorded the song himself, and below is Giordano’s version on YouTube.
Also here is an interesting cover of “Stay Close to Me” by a guy named Ritchie Mars, who plays it a little like Holly might have. Check it out.
Lou Giordano (Lou Jordan)
Giordano had a modest hit with the Holly-produced single, but it did not launch a successful singing career for him. A few websites confuse Giordano with a younger music producer with the same name. The Lou Giordano that Buddy Holly produced changed his performing name to “Lou Jordan” after Holly died.
Giordano had a wonderful voice and the songs he recorded lead one to wonder why he did not become more popular than he did. In 1961, Giordano (as “Lou Jordan”) recorded the record “Paradise for Two / Close Your Eyes” backed by the doo wop group The Chaperones. In 1963, he released another single “Just to Look at You” with the B-side “My Baby.”[See comment below from Giordano’s nephew noting that Giordano passed away in December 1969.]
Still, Giordano’s small body of recorded music gives us a little insight into another question. It tells us something about the work that Holly might have done as a producer of other artists were he still around today.
What do you think of Holly’s falsetto? Leave your two cents in the comments.
This week on CBS Sunday Morning, Anthony Mason interviewed Pete Townshend, who opened up about his childhood, the criminal charges that almost ended his career, and his relationship with Roger Daltrey. It was a very incisive interview with the Who musician that among other things, saw Townshend contemplating how his own very troubled childhood inspired the rock opera Tommy.
