The Magnificent Goldberg

I agree with you on all those points. And Ike did admit, in his autobio, that he hit Tina, though he tried to tone it down. But Tina was not your garden-variety victim, either. There is a gap between the two accounts, but both had an interest - if you like, a "showbiz" interest - in widening that gap. Yes. MG

Seems to be. My friend is in the book business (in Britain, but it's probably not so different in US). He was complaining last evening that he's been rushed off his feet. It seems only a few years ago that people were complaining that people weren't reading... But, over here anyway, retailers of all sorts are already complaining that they're having a lousy Christmas. I don't believe them all that much. Plenty of people on the street, I think. But perhaps they're not buying. I read a few days ago that there's a big percentage of Britons who are still paying off their credit card debts from LAST Christmas. MG

Well, that's interesting. Thanks Bruce! Something to put on my next order for Hiroshi. Any idea of the yen price? MG

Yes, better than "The Stinger". But it may be that the Spider Man comics had better art work to start off with. I'm no afficionado. Great sleeve, but completely disconnected from the music. MG

Jakie Ivory never made another album like "Soul discovery", not with Willis Jackson, and certainly not with Jr Walker. "Jacks" is a pretty standard, solid type of album of a black R&B band live with an appreciative audience. As a document of that nature, it's valuable. "Laying in the cut" has a different band, a lot more enthusiasm, and some tracks that do approach the "over the top" kind of playing that made Ivory's reputation. But basically, its a pub band. I like 'em. I play 'em. I enjoy 'em. But it's still a pub band. MG

Looks like the lingo is not English, nor even American, but Jargon. MG

Well, the order came today - by FedEx, as I wanted, even though I had only been charged USPS rate. And Customs didn't stop it. So that's a real nice Christmas present to myself. MG

I got one today from 2015, warning of my impending DOOM! Ooohhhh! My stomach 'erts!!!! MG

As expected, Mosaic have confirmed that they are going to mail out replacement copies of disc V. But they obviously can't say when this early in the game. MG

in case anyone else needs to look it up "cor" means "oh my god" (?), hadn't seen it before and now MG uses it on several threads Don't think it's quite as strong as that - though actually, I don't know how stron "oh my god" is in American. MG

... continued after super-fast delivery of local cards in freezing cold So it seems very much as if Holly's records were primarily aimed at the white market and The Crickets' at the black market. The ruse seems to have had some effect - only one Holly single ("Peggy Sue") got into the R&B charts, but three Crickets singles; "That'll be the day" (#2), "Oh boy" (#13) & "Maybe baby" (#4). It's interesting that "Maybe baby" was a bigger R&B hit than "Oh boy" - the reverse was true in the pop charts. So, as far as Buddy Holly was concerned, it looks as if this "tendency towards 'legitimacy'" was always part of the business plan. I think Holly was a bit of an exception and, perhaps, a bad example to use. I think you're right in perceiving a "legitimation" trend going on. But I wonder whether it wasn't yet another example of regional style coming through - in this case, the region being New York. Because I don't see that kind of thing happening in early sixties Memphis - the Stax and Hi (and the Ike & Tina Turner) singles from this period don't show any evidence of "legitimation". Nor do the records that were coming out of New Orleans by people like Lee Dorsey, Jessie Hill, Chris Kenner, the Showmen, and Ernie K Doe. And Bobby Bland's singles show no evidence of it, though it wasn't until "Turn on your love light", in 1961, that he had a top 40 hit. Actually, thinking about it, I guess this is the real division between what we over here refer to as "Northern Soul" and "Southern Soul" - though the definitions are a bit flexible and get flexed to support whatever argument is being made "There goes my baby" was the crucial single for the development of "Northern Soul", but not, I think, of "Southern Soul". And looking at that over a time frame, I think it's probably true to say that Southern Soul took a bit longer to "cross over" and didn't really start to do so until 1960 (though there may be some earlier exceptions I haven't picked up on a cursory shufti). MG

MG, I came to this music slightly after the fact (Like so many millions here, I tuned in after seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in early '64, got a transister radio for my birthday later that year, and it stayed attached to my ear through 1972), but the general tendency was that the companies were tailoring their black artists in those days for Pop radio play that would be acceptable to adults, there was a crackdown on the wilder stuff that brought about the downfall of Alan Freed with the Payola scandal. There was (and continues to be), of course, Payola going on for other types of Pop records, but the enforcement of the prosecution was very selective, pointed toward removing the "unsafe" tendencies from radio and from youth's ears. Musical McCarthyism. Also, it needs to be remembered that rock and roll was not really considered more than a passing fad at the time, and they really thought they were killing it once for all. Even as late as the 60's, Barry Gordy would get his most successful acts to play the dinner club circuit, singing adult pop standards, to expand and extend their careers. There are recordings of several Motown groups (Supremes, Temptations, Four Tops, Marvin Gaye) doing this type of music. In fact, Marvin Gaye longed for this type of recognition early in his career. Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, they all were pushed down this path. Little Willie John being taken down that path was the standard misguided modus operandi of the day, not an anomaly. Compare the final, heavily produced recordings of Buddy Holly to the rockabilly he did with the Crickets for another picture of this tendency towards "legitimacy". "There Goes My Baby" is such an important record in the history of music, and a large part of that is that it figured out how to make something soulful and moving and meaningful out of the heavy production, to actually enhance the record with it rather than ruining the record with it. Actually Motown was a good bit different to the other indies in the sixties. Berry Gordy's business plan was definitely and explicitly to aim his product at the white teenage market, which was not to say to ignore the black market - he thought he could have both, and did. That's why early Motown singles had "The sound of young America" on the label and sleeve. Then later, he went for the Vegas stuff (as the target audience grew older?) Charlie Gillette wrote an interesting piece on Buddy Holly on the tenth anniversary of his death, noting the difference between the records with Buddy Holly on the label and those with The Crickets on the label. What wasn't apparent over here, because they all came out on the same label, was that Buddy Holly's singles were on Coral, the Crickets were on Brunswick - which was an R&B label. And the Crickets' singles were a good deal tougher than Holly's. Russian off Later. MG

If you wanna talk "real" hits, anything that broke the Top 40 but didn't crack the Top 20 would probably considered a "minor" hit. Anything that peaked below #40 was probably a regional hit with a little bit of national exposure, a non-hit record by an artist who had enough of a following for their records to get played/sol often enough to get noticed, but not in masssive quantity, or something like that. Making The Hot 100 was certainly better than not making it, but I guarantee you that an artist whose records regularly peaked in the lower reaches thereof was not going to be seen as "widely popular". Also, before Soundscan, the Billboard charts were compiled by a formula that included reported sales and airplay. So there was plenty of "wiggle room" for industry manipulations, room which I'm sure did not go unused. In other words, if you put out a record that made a little bit of noise in one or two "important" places, you could probably crack the Hot 100, and that would be ammo for your promo people to maybe stir up some more momentum and bump it up a few notches, etc. But if The People just weren't into it, you'd only reach a certain point. Simialarly, if you put out stuff that enough people liked & bought, and it got a little bit of airplay, you could get on the charts. But if The Industry didn't want to assist you, again you would peak in the lower reaches and that would be that. Of course, considering all the records that were being made back then, just being in a position to crack the Hot 100 was a sign that you were "in the game", if only on the fringes. But still... Thanks a lot! This really shows that Einstein was right! Perception does depend on where you are. Over here, I relied on the US top 100 which, from 1960, I used to see in a record shop on Bond Street where there was a pretty blonde girl who was happy to let me listen to jazz albums I wouldn't buy at lunchtime, because I bought loads of R&B singles. This was a single sheet of the Cash Box chart, not Billboard, and why the shop actually had it every week, I can't begin to imagine, because they didn't import singles. But that was my buying guide since the US R&B charts weren't available here in any shape or form - in fact, we didn't know there was such a thing as an R&B chart until a few years later. So, in that context, it seemed that if it was there at all, it was as big as a top 30 hit in Britain (given the population difference). And everything on the British top 30 was getting radio exposure. Of course, it was as fixed as the US charts were, but I know from conversations with people I chatted to behind counters, that a lot of it was fixed by personal idiosyncrasy, rather than industry machinations, which also existed. MG

Well, although my grandmother used to call Cliff Richard her boyfriend (in Russian), everyone I knew thought that those guys - and several others like Marty Wilde, Norman Pride and several others with similar invented names tht I forget at present, and who were managed by the same bloke, whose name I've also forgotten - were crap. But we recognised the difference between their 1958 and 1959 records; we just put it down to the BBC (and rival network ITV). And one of the things that may not be apparent over there was how short the period was when they were making the type of record you're referring to before they were "taken in hand", as it were. Some later B sides harked back to the earlier style, if you could call it that. But the thing was, those singers were really doing no more than imitating Americans as well as they could. I don't think there was a British missing link between Holly/Berry etc and the Beatles in the sense I think you mean it. Though I wasn't in Liverpool then, I was in London. In London, there was a bunch of pub bands who got better and got more into Blues, R&B & Soul in the period 1960-1962. I have the impression that the Beatles went more or less straight from American R&R to their thing, while London bands like the Stones, Manfred Mann, Yardbirds etc hung around doing better and better imitations of US black music of different types and THEN developed their styles. I wasn't there, so I can't be sure, but I think the Beatles wouldn't have been so original had they had the same sort of development as the London bands. (I'm not saying the Beatles weren't aware of or indeed affected a bit by early sixties American black music. They were, but it just doesn't seem to have been central to their ideas in the way it was to the Stones, say. I get a strong feeling that it was just another element that went towards the ultimate creation.) MG

MG

But Spoon IS great! Those albums he made with Ben Webster, Groove Holmes, Teddy Edwards.... Call it Trampoline. MG

So, AP eventually got it right. They must have been reading this thread MG

Cor. MG

Well, they'll be standards like "Night of the living baseheads", won't they? (Tell me they will.) MG

I don't want to upset people, but there are some posts on the blues forum saying that: Tina's autobio is one side of a messy divorce; between the two of them, Tina was thought to be the more dangerous to be around; and one of his subsequent wives was saying the same thing as Tina. So, who really knows? What's clear is that: on stage, together, they were incredible! Ike's impact on Blues, R&B, Rock & Roll and even Jazz in Memphis (think Hank Crawford, Phineas and Calvin Newborn all in his band, George Coleman's big break, also) made him one of the most important figures in the black music of the post war period. MG

I didn't know this one featured Stanley Turrentine until Dan Gould let me know. Wow! What a session! And LIVE and shoutin! And that was just me Wham, bam, thank you Dan! (Bet all the girls tell you that ) I'd been meaning to explore some of Chris Albertson's productions for Riverside in the early sixties, so, with some gracious advice from Chris, I got these: I'm really very pleased with them all. They weren't all unknown quantities for me, as I've got some Jim Robinson with George Lewis. But they're four beautiful albums. And that Elmer Snowden! Phew, his solo on "Deep river" took my breath away! Thanks so much Chris! A great haul to get just before Christmas! MG

Well, my order last week from the Concord sale came in today - pretty damn quick! All of those above are items from my long list of Fantasy stuff to get. Oh, and I can only get ten in one post, so the rest are in the next. MG

That Slate has got this bang to rights. Everyone has been having fun with this one for a little while - and will continue to do so for a little while longer. It's driven out of the headlines the story of the guy who won 11 million quid ($22 m) on the lottery a couple of weeks ago and his wife hasn't seen him since. Or the money. And I think that is MUCH more difficult to manage than pseudosuicide, because you have to act immediately with almost no time to think out a proper plan. MG

Over here, they do. There's usually a limitation in the policy to say they don't if the suicide is within a certain number of years of the start of the policy - can't remember whether it's two or five years. MG

Fourth dry, COLD, day. Sun is off and on. I don't mind. I've got my new bunch of stuff from the Concord sale to keep me warm. MG