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Celebrating David Bowie – His Birthday, His New Single and His Rock and Roll Legacy
Any kid that grew up in the 1970s with dreams of becoming the next guitar hero had to start somewhere – usually playing a cheap acoustic model and trying to master the Mel Bay chord chart. The exciting part came when your slightly more advanced friends – and fellow budding guitarists – passed along a few iconic rock and roll licks: the opening riff to Chuck Berry’s "Johnny B. Goode," the bassline to Deep Purple’s "Smoke on the Water" and that ringing D chord hammer-on flourish in David Bowie’s "Ziggy Stardust." These were the ones that you played endlessly, and especially enthusiastically if the song happened to come on the radio.
David Bowie, who opened his first U.S. tour in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 22, 1972, marks another milestone today with his first new release in a decade, "Where are We Now?," as he also celebrates his 66th birthday. The song's title gave me pause, prompting me to wonder where rock and roll would be without David Bowie.
For decades, Bowie's music has challenged and captivated fans and critics alike. Sending bold messages ...
The Rock Hall Presents An Interview with Devon Allman
Although guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Devon Allman shares a surname that will ring familiar to rock and roll fans, Devon has cultivated a sound all his own. He's mindful of his family's storied musical legacy and the contributions of other venerable rock pioneers, but also has an ear for what's next. The son of Allman Brothers Band founding member, vocalist and key player Gregg Allman, and nephew of virtuoso guitarist Duane Allman, Devon records and performs in blues-rock outfits Honeytribe and Royal Southern Brotherhood. Earlier this year, Devon wrapped recording sessions for his solo debut, Turquoise, scheduled for release in February 2013, and is currently on tour in the United States. Recently, Devon visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and took time to share his thoughts on being an Allman, his influences both old and new (and familial), making music on his own terms, highlights of the Museum's collection and ...
Spotlight Exhibit: Chuck Berry Collection at the Library + Archives
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and Case Western Reserve University will honor rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry during the 17th annual American Music Masters® (AMM) series this October. Roll Over Beethoven: The Life and Music of Chuck Berry, a weeklong celebration beginning October 22 and culminating with a special tribute concert on October 27, will tell the story of one of the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. As part of the celebration, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s Library and Archives has created a spotlight exhibit illustrating both essential and lesser known details about Berry’s life and career through materials such as concert posters, photographs, books, and audio and video of live performances – from his start with Johnnie “B. Goode” Johnson in the Sir John Trio in 1952 to his resurgence in the 1970s.
The exhibit contains 14 items from the ...
Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll: "Summertime Blues"
A lot of rock and roll, and especially Sun-label rockabilly, has liquor on its breath. Eddie Cochran – born in Minnesota, a California transplant at age 12 and a teenager until almost the end of the 1950s – never got ruder than a soda-pop belch, musically speaking. His recordings convey youthful good times without the dark undertow of his southern contemporaries. "Summertime Blues" was a B-side, but not for long. Written by Cochran and manager Jerry Capeheart, it's a concise masterpiece: a protest song without rancor, pointedly funny and propulsive. Cochran's teenage frustration will never be out of date. Ten years after being the biggest hit of a tragically short career, "Summertime Blues" survived a lysergic distortion by Blue Cheer to enter the Top 20 all over again. Two years after that, in 1970, the Who was almost as successful with their version, a longtime concert favorite. Eddie Cochran released only one album during his lifetime, which was abruptly cut short ...
Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll: "Uncle John's Band"
The Grateful Dead capped the Sixties with Live/Dead, a double-album that confirmed them as masters of acid-improv. But the spring of 1970 found the group's sound radically redirected on Workingman's Dead. Breezy harmonies and beer-soaked ballads replaced the previous blend of liquid noodling and lysergic lyrics, and no song illustrated the change more succinctly than the opening track, "Uncle John's Band." Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter recalled the song's origins in a 1991 interview with Grateful Dead historian Blair Jackson. According to Garcia, "At that time I was listening to records of the Bulgarian Women's Choir and also this Greek-Macedonian music, and on one of those records there was a... little turn of melody that was so lovely... I thought, 'Gee, if I could get this into a song it would be so great.' So, I stole it." Eventually, Hunter received a tape of the band's finished arrangement. "I played it over and over [and] kept hearing the words 'God damn, Uncle John's mad'... and it took a while for that to turn into 'Come hear Uncle John's Band,' and that's one of those little things where the ...
Record Store Day 2012
Anyone remember when there were so many record stores that you could bounce from one to the other, either to find exactly what you wanted or perhaps get that one album a little bit cheaper? Well, I do. Growing up in the woods in Daphne, Alabama, there was no place nearby to purchase records, so when rock and roll took off, I had a dilemma.
Fortunately, in the summer of 1957, my Mama started letting me ride the Greyhound bus to Mobile by myself to go to the movies once a week. I mowed lawns to finance these escapades, which required $5 for each trip. Expenditures were for the bus, the movies, lunch and – the pièce de résistance – my quest to find that one 45 RPM record that I couldn't live without.
My destinations on these missions were primarily Rutz Music and Jessie French. These two prominent stores sold instruments and sheet music, but, more important, they each had a record section with listening booths. Do you know how long it might take to pick out one hit single, which cost 99 cents? About two delightful hours.
I would cart untold numbers of LPs and 45s into ...
Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll: "The Message"
Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler) didn't want to make "The Message." His emcees, the Furious Five, apart from Melle Mel (Melvin Glover), thought it was a bad idea. But when this grim slice of urban journalism hit in the summer of 1982, it was as inevitable as Woody Guthrie once had been: It was politics taken to the streets. Until "The Message," rap had been largely celebratory music, reflecting its block-party roots. When Sugar Hill Records eminence Sylvia Robinson pushed for "The Message" – ultimately a collaboration between Glover and studio percussionist Duke Bootee (Ed Fletcher) – the others balked: who wanted to take their problems to the dance floor? Still, the song took off, reaching an audience that had once dismissed rap as idle boasting, countering such notions with lead rapper Melle Mel's repeated, weary conclusion: It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under. For all its success, though, the song had its ...
Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll: "Louie Louie"
The most notorious song in rock and roll history has been recorded hundreds of times: by surfers (the Beach Boys, the Pyramids), punks (the Stooges, Black Flag), British rockers (the Kinks, the Troggs) and marching bands (U.S.C. Trojans, Rice University Marching Owls). During the first half of the 1960s, it was probably played at more live events than the National Anthem. R&B artist Richard Berry (who sang lead on The Coasters' "Riot In Cell Block No. 9") wrote and recorded "Louie Louie" in 1956.The record came out a year later, was a West Coast hit, and died a natural death. A few years later after the Tacoma, Washington-based Wailers recorded it, "Louie Louie" entered the set lists of various Northwest bands. One was Portland, Oregon's Kingsmen, who recorded the song in 1963. What the Kingsmen thought was a rehearsal run-through was the performance issued on 45. That might explain singer Jack Ely's garbled reading. People heard in the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" what they wanted to hear – a song that just had to be dirty. Radio stations banned it, and sweaty- palmed juveniles made up their own lewd lyrics. Even the U.S. government ...
