Fifty Years of Music • March, 1973

 Monster month. It's my 18th birthday and I'm counting the days before graduation. It's the spring semester and I still have an English class requirement for graduation and decide to take a literature class with Miss Dunn. A pretty and spunky little redhead is sitting right behind me everyday now in class. Her name is Mary Kit and I love that name as she'll quickly correct anyone that calls her, "Mary."

We are starting to strike up a daily conversation. She quickly works out a routine of leaning forward and talking to me as I don't turn around to attract attention to Miss Dunn, she's reading passages from To Kill a Mockingbird. In fact, I'm hatching a plan that we sit together in the Ethel Pope Auditorium to watch the 1962 movie starring Gregory Peck, as Miss Dunn has planned this as a culminating event to the Harper Lee classic.

Mary Kit's a Junior but I find out soon enough that she's graduating a year early and my fascination is increasing by the day as I can't wait for the few moments before and after English class to have a little face to face conversation with my new friend. Sitting directly behind Mary Kit is her best friend, Valerie and when Miss Dunn breaks us off into small discussion groups, we quickly form our little triangle.

At some point, I find out she's Judge Smith's daughter and I'm thinking, am I way out of my league to ask her out?

Many of the tunes in the playlist this month are all over the radio and the association of meeting Mary Kit and hearing these songs in that spring and summer of 1973 are seared into my brain forever. Pink Floyd's, The Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin's, Houses of the Holy, and the Doobie Brother's, The Captain and Me, playing on KUHL FM. So I'm driving to the southside of town to get gas for .25 cents a gallon, listening to the car radio in my 1957 MGA convertible, and I'm thinking about that girl. 

Amazingly enough, I don't have a picture of that car, but here's a 1961 I found on the Internet that had the same deep green color. I bought mine for $600 my Junior year in high school, and all I wanted in life at the time, was to have a girl in the passenger seat.

From a music standpoint, listening to all the Rock, Folk and R&B from fifty years ago always has it's wonderful surprises. In 1973, I never listened to Tom Waits debut album, Closing Time. I don't have to tell you it's a classic like the car above, as I couldn't get enough of listening to the entire album this past week. It's ironic that I am now listening to digital streaming music made from 50 to 60 year old vinyl records. The early 70's had such fantastic singer-songwriters like Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson who had that early 20th century upright piano playing and singing style that goes with a cold beer sitting in a bar. Raise a glass to Tom Waits and Closing Time!

Lots of little gems here, but I found myself also listening to the Faces, Ooh La La. This would be the Faces last album as Rod Stewart broke up one of the truly great rock 'n' roll bands seeking his own fame and fortune. 

I also gave some extra listening time to Fleetwood Mac's Penguin, as one of my favorite's, Danny Kirwan was fired from the band while on their Bare Trees album tour for his out of control behavior. Bob Welch would suddenly take on a more important central role on Penguin and in a band that had a knack for losing great musicians only to replace them with newer great musicians.

Enjoy my friends, and thanks to Monday Monday's spunky little editor for proofreading this publication every week. It's been 50 years in the making. And, Happy 68th birthday to the Ol' 55 who writes this rag.

Fifty Years of Music • October, 1970

B.B.King's Indianola Mississippi Seed released in October, 1970 is an outstanding album and one of my favorite album covers of all-time. The album begins with "Nobody loves me, but my mother, And she could be jivin` too." I can't remember where I first heard that lyric, but I do remember laughing out loud it was so funny! This was B.B's 18th studio album and he finally gets his mainstream attention due as Producer Bill Szymczyk decided to follow up on the success of the [1969] hit "The Thrill Is Gone" by matching King with a musical all-star cast [including Leon Russell, Carole King, Joe Walsh and Russ Kunkel]. The result was one of King's most critically acclaimed albums and one of the most highly regarded blues crossover albums of all time. Wikipedia

Bob Dylan's New Morning released in October, 1970 was purchased by my friend Bill DeVoe, who I remember invited me over to his house to listen to it. His parents had an old portable turnable with crackling speakers that gave it an older feel like you were listening to an old 78 rpm rather than a 33 1/3 LP. The record player was set up in their dining room that led right into the kitchen. I mention this because we would often make a snack of Oroweat® 'HoneyWheat Berry' toast and would wash it down with a Coke. I had many a snack and meals at that table with Bill and his parents. So my memory of listening to New Morning for the first time is fondly associated with toast, my all-time favorite morning, noon, or night snack. 

This album has the song, If Not For You that I really liked and was happily surprised when George Harrison also recorded it for All Things Must Pass, a month later. 

I was a Johnny come lately to Dylan, and was really impressed that Bill had purchased this album, and as a result started listening to him more and more. I'm kind of disappointed that Bob Dylan has only released two songs from that album on YouTube (If Not For You and The Man In Me) and found one more (Went To See The Gypsy) to include on the playlist this week. So here are the links to the album on Spotify and Amazon Music. It's really worth a complete listen, I suggest in the morning with toast, butter and apricot jam.

New Morning on Spotify

New Morning on Amazon Music

I was never a huge Led Zeppelin fan like so many of my peers, but Led Zeppelin III kind of woke me up that this band was more than just a hard rock band. The folk and blues roots really jump out here and I just loved listening to this whole album the past several weeks. I've said this many times, my blog is just an excuse for me to go back and appreciate all the albums I didn't zero in on when I was young and stupid.

This week's playlist has enough songs for several sits, walks or runs. Two weeks ago, I featured Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection (read here) and have included all the songs again here as I simply love that album! This playlist also includes an outtake that I recommend you hear. It is an early version of Mad Man Across the Water, which in 1971 we all thought was Bernie Taupin's thoughts about Richard Nixon. Bernie Taupin had this to say: Back in the seventies, when people were saying that "Madman Across the Water" was about Richard Nixon, I thought, That is genius. I could never have thought of that. (Wikipedia). I wonder if he's thinking that now about Donald Trump? This version features Mick Ronson on guitar and I think you will enjoy this one.

Also on tap are songs from Arlo Guthrie (see- Arlo Guthrie Retires From Touring: ‘It’s Time to Hang Up the Gone Fishing Sign’), Joan Baez, Genesis, Tom Rush, Don McLean, The Supremes, Tony Bennett, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Pink Floyd, Paul Siebel, The Strawbs, and Frank Zappa. 

Enjoy my friends, stay well, mask up and vote. Eat it up!

September & October 1969, 50 Years of Music

In the past several weeks I have highlighted The Beatles' Abbey Road and Laura Nyro's New York Tendaberry, both released in September of 1969. This week, I focus on other albums released in September and October of that year with an ear to AM Radio. Being fourteen and a white kid from a small farming town, my main exposure to music of the day came from AM stations.

Even though I never purchased a 45 single or album from Motown (until Stevie Wonder in the 70's), I constantly was exposed to pop, soul and R&B by black artists on AM Radio. I didn't realize it at the time, but those tunes sunk in deep in my soul, and as I got older, I began to appreciate them more and more, and don't you know they stand the test of time.

Three of my all-time Motown favorites are featured here with releases by the singing duo of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Tammy died in 1970 at the age of  twenty-four from brain cancer. For me, this was Motown's best singing duo that was cut way too short and as the saying goes, "the good die young." Also got to give a shout out to The Temptations and The Supremes who made an album together in 1969. The Supremes are a very special group in the history of american music as their world wide fame reached across the races and opened up the door for many black artists to perform center stage in any city.

So here's my own TOP 40 (actually now 44) from that period that include some BIG hits and some songs you may have never heard before. Enjoy my friends.

50 Years of Music - January, 1969

In 2019, I will write a monthly feature of music released 50 years ago from that month in 1969.

I'm going to use 1969 in music from Wikipedia as my primary source as you can see by the January list here. If I (or Wikipedia) miss a big album, please feel free to write a comment, and I'm sure I will correct that in a re-edit from that blog.

I also plan to feature an entire album deemed 'great' (by me of course) from a month in 1969. Abbey Road and Crosby, Stills & Nash are just two albums that come to mind.

In January, 1969 I was in Mr. Richard Ziegler's 8th grade homeroom class. During that year, I became President of the Antique Bottle Club and certified nerd. Mr. Ziegler formed the club after his passion for finding and collecting old bottles in the creeks and old dump sites around the central coast of California. I did the same for a couple years and to this day still have boxes of antique bottles that I've carted to every apartment or house that I have ever lived in.

Looking back, I remember one Jr. High dance where a local cover band of high school students performed the song, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida while I watched from the sidelines as kids tried to dance to it. As a side note- the album also titled, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida released in 1968 was the biggest selling album of 1969.

If you follow Monday Monday Music, the real content is listening to the weekly YouTube playlists that I put together. And I thought it was my fantastic writing. No dummy, you just began the last sentence with, "And."

Ok, so one of the keys of life is making the time to do the things YOU want to do. If you've followed me this far, listening to music is one of those magical things of life.

So strike a match, light the incense and get back to a little 1969 in music.