Category: Music
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Marie/Maria/Mary
Beautiful names celebrated in song. Elvis Presley, Marie's the Name of His Latest FlameBob Dylan, Absolutely Sweet Marie By the way, this certified Dylanologist can attest that in the first line it is 'railroad GAUGE,' not 'railroad gate.' 'Gauge' is a measure of the width of the track; that's what our boy can't jump.Bachelors, Marie…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Duane Allman
Duane Allman died 40 years ago today when he crashed his Harley Sportster. Here he is playing slide guitar with Delaney and Bonnie. And here he is in One Way Out a couple of months before his death.
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kerouac’s Favorite Song
Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac (St. Martin's 1998), p. 324: One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts &…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Pattie Boyd as Muse
A musician needs a muse. George Harrison and Eric Clapton found her in Pattie Boyd. Here are five of the best known songs that she is said to have inspired. If you don't love at least four of these five, you need a major soul adjustment. SomethingIsn't it a Pity?Wonderful TonightLayla (The best part starts…
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‘Surely’
A device of literary bluster. When one is unsure about something, or sure about what one has no right to be sure about, one writes 'surely.' Example: "Vallicella links to Dinah Washington here. But surely Peggy Lee's version is better. A voice like no other, and the little piano break at 1:13 is exquisite." I…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Midnight and Other Hours of the Day
Benny Goodman, One O'Clock JumpLovin' Spoonful, Six O'Clock Maria Muldaur, Midnight at the OasisEric Clapton, After MidnightThelonious Monk, Round MidnightJack Kerouac, Old Angel MidnightHeadswim, Old Angel MidnightPatsy Cline, Walkin' After MidnightRolling Stones, Midnight GamblerAllman Bros., Midnight RamblerB. B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Etta James, Midnight HourThe Vogues, Five O'Clock WorldBlind Boy Fuller, Ten O'Clock…
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So Long September
We cannot let the embers of September die without the accompaniment of Dinah Washington's version of September in the Rain.
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Days of the Week
Melina Merkouri, Never on SundayMamas and Papas, Monday, MondayRolling Stones, Ruby TuesdaySimon and Garfunkel, Wednesday Morning 3 AMDonovan, Jersey ThursdayEasybeats, Friday on My MindSam Cooke, Another Saturday Night Bonus cut: Jerry Lee Lewis, Lonely Weekend
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Why Typos Don’t Matter and the Musical Watershed That Was the ‘Fifties
An old friend from college, who has a Masters in English, regularly sends me stuff like this which I have no trouble understanding: I trust that you ahve emelreis of going pacles with your presnts in cars before the days when the shapr devide came and deliniated clearly the music that our presnts like and the…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Two From ’56
Guy Mitchell, Singin' the Blues. This is the same guy/Guy who had a hit with Heartaches by the Numbers three years later. Gogi Grant, The Wayward Wind.
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Four Black Barbara’s
Barbara George, I Know. A cute ditty from late 1961, 'I Know' made the Billboard Hot 100 #3 spot in the U.S. George counts as a one-hit wonder at least on one definition of the term. She left the music business by the end of the '60s and died in 2006. Barbara Lynn, You'll Lose a…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Outer Space
1960's psychedelia explored inner space, but there were a few songs from the '60s about outer space themes. Telstar, an instrumental by the British band, The Tornados, 1962, was presumably in celebration of Telstar, the first communications satellite which also got high up in '62. (Telstar the song made it to the #1 slot on both the…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Songs of Color
Here is a sampling, starting with the determinable and proceeding to some determinates: Donovan and Joan Baez, ColorsRy Cooder, Yellow Roses. A beautiful song. Give it a chance.Bobby Darin, 18 Yellow Roses. Never could understand why this tune is almost never played on the oldies stations.Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze. For all you benighted qualia deniers…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Hard Times
I got me a bad case of the Standard and Poor's AA+ downgrade blues. B. B. King, Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out Ray Charles, Busted Eric Clapton, Goin' Down Slow Woody Guthrie, Hard Travelin' Bob Dylan, Song to Woody Bob Dylan, In My Time of Dyin'
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse succumbed to the curse of 27 today. Why is 27 such an auspicious age for a quick exit from life's freeway? My guess is that at 27 one is still too young fully to appreciate the ravages to the body of life in the fast lane but is old enough to have done…