For my last blog of 2019, I'm going back to the 1969 well to celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of my favorite movies of all-time, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, released October 24, 1969.
The film won four Academy Awards: Best Cinematography; Best Original Score for a Motion Picture (not a Musical); Best Music, Song (Burt Bacharach and Hal David for "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"); and Best Original Screenplay. It was also nominated for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Sound. Wikipedia
As kids in high school, my friends and I would reenact favorite scenes over and over as it instantly became our favorite western. The John Wayne torch of the Western had moved over to a new generation of movie fans that would champion new Westerns like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman in 1970.
I think what completes this perfect movie of script, cast and direction is Burt Bacharach's music. The score is a masterpiece that breathes so much life into the action and cinematography. For me the highlight of the soundtrack is the South American Getaway montage with Newman, Redford and Ross robbing banks and avoiding the Bolivian soldiers. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a quality video of the sequence but the audio track is classic Bacharach pop that should just take you back to the 1960's and start your Monday Monday with a little pep in your step.
I'm just an album guy at heart. If I like an artist or band I tend to like more than one song on the album. So it's really about my favorite albums of the year, and the 100 songs I have chosen here are mostly grouped with at least two or more of what I think are premium cuts of songs from the same album.
My favorite song of 2019 is There Goes My Miracle by Bruce Springsteen from his Western Stars album. Bruce once said that with his plain voice and looks he better be a damn good songwriter if he was going to make it in the music business. I think his vocals have actually improved over the years as Bruce works so hard in everything he does. His vocal on There Goes My Miracle got the hairs on the back of my neck to attention the first time I heard the song. I think the song's a masterpiece of writing, arrangement and a simply fantastic vocal that drives the emotion of the song.
Another song that got me literally tinkling with pure joy was Street Song by The Whofrom their just released album, WHO. Street Song is an instant classic in my mind because Pete Townshend throws in a little bit of everything that you would associate with the sound of the band in the 1970's. Roger Daltrey's vocal is outstanding, but the thing that brought tears to my eyes when I first heard it (very loudly in my earphones), was Zak Starkey's (son of Ringo) drumming. Zak doesn't imitate his godfather Keith Moon, but the spirit of Keith just came back like a wave through Zak's drumming! Keith Moon is in fact my favorite drummer of all-time because of his unique double tom-toms sound that just rolls like no other in rock. In the 1970's, you could be in any car with crappy speakers and a song from Who's Nextwould come on the radio and you could hear Keith's drumming just like it was making the car hum down the road.
2019 goes down as the year the 'California Sound' made a comeback. Composers such as Burt Bacharach and Jimmy Webb come to mind that hark back to a time and sound of great songwriting combined in pop with sweeping orchestrations and in rock 'n' roll with great harmony and electric guitars blending with acoustic guitars.
In Western Stars, Bruce embodies Bacharach and Webb and channels Wichita Lineman. In the folk rock documentary, Echo in the Canyon, Jakob Dylan does a similar exploration of groups like The Byrds as the California Sound evolved from beach music to folk rock. Both albums are peppered through my favorites playlist this year.
I have to mention, Dan Auerbach. First for his producing Yola Carter'sWalk Through Fire a vocal tour de force by the young British singer-songwriter. Her song, Lonely the Night takes me back to mid-60's English pop like Dusty Springfield and is a must listen. Second, Dan reunites with Patrick Carney and The Black Keys to make a great rock album also featured here and aptly titled, Let's Rock.
Album making is hard work combined with the talent to pull it off. It's a special magic to write, sing, play, and produce 10 or so songs woven together as an album and out into the world. A good album is a great find, a great album is a treasure for life.
So here's 100 songs I really liked this year and mixed together to represent some good and great albums by some fine rock 'n' rollers and Americana musicians in 2019. Enjoy my friends and here's to more great music in 2020!
It's November 1964 and Petula Clark releases her single Downtown and by January, 1965 it is #1 on the U.S. Billboard charts.
A couple of years ago, I was talking to my mom who recalled 1965 and how she would pile my younger siblings- sister Stephanie, brother Steve, and myself into the car (no seat belts) and drive downtown. During this time, my mom was pregnant with our soon to be little sister Susan, born in May of that year. I loved going downtown with my mom as she would take us in different shops on Broadway or Main Street in Santa Maria, CA. Other times she would just leave us in the car to play while she did an errand, like run into the old W.A. Haslam department store. We would jump from the front seat to the back seat and back and forth, windows down and the car unlocked. It was a different time back then.
My mother would often take us into the Blue Chip Stamps store where she (and sometimes me) had licked and pasted the stamps into paper books, that were saved and accumulated to be later redeemed for merchandise at that store. I remember combing the store and making suggestions to mom for what I would like her to buy. She was way ahead of me as she would save for weeks or months to get that item she had in mind.
What struck me about this conversation so many years later was her fondness for the Petula Clark song Downtown and how it would be playing on the car radio or in the stores as she was shopping. It's a great memory for her to share with me, and last week our family celebrated her 84th birthday in Arroyo Grande, CA after a little shopping there. Mom, here's to you and your lifetime love for shopping in many different downtowns across the United States.
My love for music started around 1964 at age nine with the English invasion of pop, and American radio and television. 1964 is just one year after John F. Kennedy's assassination as our nation was ready for some new positive energy and rock 'n' roll surely delivered that year!
It is during this wave of male dominated bands, that women singers start to shine too. More songs were starting to be written for women. Songs featuring solo female singers, mixed duos, mixed groups featuring a female lead singer, mixed groups, and all female groups were popping up everywhere.
Warwick and Bacharach
One such writing pair that literally created a gateway for women in song were Burt Bacharach and his collaboration with lyricist Hal David. These two composed some of the most beautiful pop songs of the 1960's that most often featured a woman's voice.
I then started thinking about another song writing pair Carole King and then husband, Gerry Goffin that delivered so many hits for many groups in the early-mid 1960's and before King became a superstar singer-songwriter herself in the 1970's.
I then discovered that many of these talented writers worked around Bacharach and David with a host of other songwriting teams at the Brill Building in New York City during this magical time of music.
The Brill Building (built in1931) is an office building located at 1619 Broadway on 49th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, just north of Times Square and further uptown from the historic musical Tin Pan Alley neighborhood. It is famous for housing music industry offices and studios where some of the most popular American songs were written. It is considered to have been the center of the American music industry that dominated the pop charts in the early 1960s. Wikipedia
Laura Nyro
When I started this week's playlist, one of the first woman singer-songwriters that came to mind was Laura Nyro. She's one of those artists where her music is all over 60's radio whether sung by her or groups like The 5th Dimension, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Three Dog Night or Barbara Streisand. And, guess who also worked at the Brill Building, yes Laura Nyro was right there too!
I assume most of us have a great long-term radio memory as we listened and soaked up songs like a sponge. It's amazing when you hear a song after a long absence, the emotions of the past associated with the song comes pouring out. That is how I felt in putting this 60's women's playlist together and I'm thinking there's several here that will do the same for you.
One song that just rings a sponge of tears for me is Bacharach & David's Alfie. I don't know why this song effects me so, but I first heard the Dionne Warwick version on radio that just calls to me from my youth. I read that it's Bacharach's favorite song of all his songs. Alfie has a perfect blending of masterful lyrics and melody that simply pulls the emotions right out of your soul.
What's it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give
Or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind, Alfie
Then I guess it's wise to be cruel
And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie
What will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe there's a heaven above, Alfie
I know there's something much more
Something even non-believers can believe in
I believe in love, Alfie
Without true love we just exist, Alfie
Until you find the love you've missed you're nothing, Alfie
When you walk let your heart lead the way
And you'll find love any day, Alfie
Alfie ...
Enjoy the women and their songs my friends in this exceptional period of songwriting and singing.
My friend Jeff McCarthy posted this wonderful Youtube video of Cilla Black on Facebook, the day after she passed away on August 1st in Spain.
It's always emotional to watch an artist who has recently died and then you watch them on video or film working in their prime. Well, this one got me big time as I've watched this piece several times this past week. Jeff is a huge Beatle fan and I have great memories of friends Jeff and Paul Hobbs playing Beatle songs in their band, Hobbs, McCarthy, Landers and Gooding at the Santa Maria Airport and the Santa Barbara County Fair. My point here is that influence begets influence as it's shared and passed on and on. The Beatles were big fans of Cilla Black and when you put her in Abbey Road Studios with George Martin and Burt Bacharach, you know that some magic was going to result. Alfie, the song was a big hit for Dionne Warwick in the US but also a big hit for Cilla Black in the UK and used in promoting the film, Alfie released
in March of 1966. (I didn't realize this, but Cher's version of the song was actually used in the movie credits roll itself. I don't think I need to comment.)
I will say that both Black's and Warwick's versions of Alfie are classics and propelled the Hal David and Burt Bacharach tune to be one of the most iconic songs of the 1960's.
When George Martin says, "Those opening lines, What's it all about Alfie, I think is one of the nicest things I've ever heard." He is referring to Cilla Black's voice and as Jeff said in his post, "What a song. And what a voice." I couldn't have said it better. And thank you, Jeff for your posts, I hope we can see each other someday again in the future.
Enjoy these two videos of Cilla Black, may she rest in peace.
For my last blog of 2019, I'm going back to the 1969 well to celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of my favorite movies of all-time, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, released October 24, 1969.
I think what completes this perfect movie of script, cast and direction is Burt Bacharach's music. The score is a masterpiece that breathes so much life into the action and cinematography. For me the highlight of the soundtrack is the South American Getaway montage with Newman, Redford and Ross robbing banks and avoiding the Bolivian soldiers. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a quality video of the sequence but the audio track is classic Bacharach pop that should just take you back to the 1960's and start your Monday Monday with a little pep in your step. 
