December 2011 | Blog Archives
Today in Rock: Patti Smith is Born
Born on December 30, 1946, Patti Smith grew to become a bohemian New York poet and punk rock artiste whose 1975 debut album, Horses, stood in daring, unapologetic contrast to the slick, arena-rock ready production and pretension of the era. Smith's street poetry and her group's garage-band aesthetic formed the foundation on which the later punk rock explosion was predicated. Smith was raised in southern New Jersey, employed in a factory and studied to be a teacher before making the paradigm shift to the art of writing and rock and roll.
When she arrived in New York in 1967, she connected with fellow art-boho misfits, including photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, playwright Sam Sheppard and music scribe Lenny Kaye. She and Kaye brought music and poetry together, giving Smith's poignant perspective a soundscape to build upon. It was the seed for the Patti Smith Group, which formalized their union of poetry and rock with a nearly two-month house gig at CBGB in early 1974. Early on, Smith turned to American record producer and music industry executive Clive Davis.
"When I came to Clive, I was really awkward, arrogant, couldn't really sing. I had pretty clumsy movements," said Smith ...
Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll: "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"
On December 14, 1968, Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" reached Number One on the Billboard charts and stayed there for seven consecutive weeks, carrying it into the new year. "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" is Gaye's essay on salvaging not just a love affair but also the human spirit. With its fretful, self-absorbed vocal, the song distills 400 years of anguish and talking-drum gossip into three minutes and 15 seconds of soul-searching. Producer Norman Whitfield's lovingly detailed music begins with an obsessively reiterated electric piano figure. A simple drum backbeat is followed by rattlesnake tambourine. Then comes chopping guitar and soaring strings. This version of "Grapevine" is memorable even before Gaye opens his mouth. (Gladys Knight and the Pips had an earlier success with the song, Creedence Clearwater Revival a later one.) Whitfield creates a tumult of voices horns, female choruses, echo, bass-drum breakdowns, string arpeggios that serves as a gossiping community, the singer isolated but engulfed within. Gaye protests, but he knows he's trapped.
Listen to and learn the stories behind the Songs That Shaped Rock and ...
20 Essential Rock and Roll Holiday Songs
Below you’ll find a list – presented in no particular order – of my favorite rock and roll holiday songs. This was not an easy list to whittle down to a Top 20, so I encourage you to share the holiday songs that resonate most with you.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! Come to Cleveland!
20. Bobby Vee - "A Not So Merry Christmas"
19. Jack Scott - "There's Trouble Brewin'"
18. Canned Heat and the Chipmunks - "Chipmunk Song"
17. The Penguins - "Jingle Jangle"
16. The Marquees - "Christmas In The Congo"
15. Elvis Presley - "Santa Claus Is Back In Town"
14. The Hepsters - "Rockin' And Rollin' With Santa Claus"
13. The Drifters - "White Christmas"
Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll: "How Soon Is Now?"
The Smiths placed 10 singles in the U.K. Top 20 between 1983 and 1987, yet "How Soon Is Now?" was not among them. Only in the years following the group's breakup did this towering Morrissey-Johnny Marr composition become one of the group's best-loved and most familiar songs. Guitarist Marr kicks it off with shimmering Bo Diddley tremolo chords and builds layer upon layer of echoing six-string sound effects as Morrissey croons his defiance: You shut your mouth/How can you say/I go about things the wrong way/I am human and I need to be loved/Just like everybody else does. Sire Records president Seymour Stein called the nearly seven-minute-long song "the 'Stairway to Heaven' of the Eighties."
Listen to and learn the stories behind the Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's unique app! This app features clips of more than 500 songs, each with cover art, and fascinating artist and recording notes. The searchable list of songs is also divided among decades and artists, so finding and hearing exactly what you want ...
Happy Holidays from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum!
Today in Rock: Billy Gibbons is Born
On December 16, 1949, guitarist Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top was born in Texas. Together with bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard, Gibbons launched ZZ Top, as the group shared a passion for such blues masters as 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Freddie King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. From the beginning, they took a hard-rocking power-trio approach to the blues, cultivating a new audience for it in the Seventies and Eighties with superior musicianship as well as attitude, style and some devilishly funny songs. They have written about fast cars, fishnet stockings, sharp clothes, TV dinners, cheap sunglasses and “tush.”
"Rock and roll was certainly considered for so long… the stepchild that didn't have any place to go and yet at the same time it was probably the underlining current carrier that so many people depended on," said Gibbons in a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame interview. Gibbons translated his love of basic blues, boogie, rock and all things Texas-related into the no-frills approach to songwriting that guided ZZ Top's earliest albums, and evolved into a sound that also embraced a union of Texas blues and Memphis soul. T ...
Today In Rock: Alan Freed is Born
On December 15, 1921, Albert James Freed – the man who famously christened a radical new form of music as "rock 'n' roll" - was born near Johnston, Pennsylvania. Moving to Salem, Ohio, with his family at age 12, Alan (as he was better known) Freed spent his formative years in the Buckeye State, eventually attending Ohio State, where the campus radio station piqued a fascination with radio that would stay with him through all his days. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
By the early 1950s, Freed had settled in to a new DJ position in Cleveland, playing R&B records during a segment sponsored by friend and local record shop owner Leo Mintz, whose inner city store, Record Rendezvous, was selling many records by burgeoning R&B artists. "I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1950, '51, '52," said noted DJ and rock and roll historian Norm N. Nite during the first Hall of Fame Inductions in 1986. "I listened to Alan Freed playing those records on the Moondog show. I knew at that particular time that it was something special that was going on." It was during this time that Freed first ...
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 ...
