Bloggerhythms

I know there have been too many reruns on Bloggerhythms lately, but I'm posting another one today due to the sad passing of the legendary Dolly Parton at age 80 after an unfortunate battle with cancer. This post first appeared here on October 15, 2013. Too many celebrated musicians have said goodbye to us lately. In 1987 three great female talents formed a vocal ensemble for the ages. In a true collaboration, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt blended their voices together perfectly to record the award winning  Trio , producing beautiful, Appalachian style, three-part harmonies in the process. They created the kind of music you envision hearing in Parton's Smoky Mountains on 1940's AM radio, back when banjoes, dobroes, fiddles, and acoustic instruments ruled, back when the music was still called country and western and before it became a huge, more urban-centered business. Harris, Parton, and Ronstadt worked together without considering their own egos and t...

Among the seemingly endless number of songs Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote together is "I'm Into Something Good." As usual, during their songwriting partnership she wrote the music and he wrote the lyrics. "Something Good" was first released in 1964 by Earl-Jean McCrea who only used her hyphenated first name on the record. McCrea was also a member of The Cookies, a girl group who earlier had R&B and crossover successes with "Don't Say Nothin' Bad (About My Baby)" and "Chains." (The latter was later covered by The Beatles on their full-length, debut LP, Please Please Me. ) Both of these Cookies' hits were also written by Goffin and King. Earl-Jean's version was a pop-rhythm and blues single that only reached #38 on the Hot 100. The 45 rpm was arranged by King and produced by Goffin. ...

Lexxi Raine is a young, talented, pop-rock, singer-songwriter originally from Buffalo, NY who now resides in Manchester, England. Raine is currently engaged to a man who proposed to her even though he's aware the love of his life wrote an entire EP about the breakup of an earlier relationship that includes a song about murdering her ex-boyfriend. Despite that, she promised the entire staff here at Bloggerhythms (me) that the ex is perfectly fine and he doesn't have to worry about taking his last breath any time soon. Here's how Raine describes her recently released EP, The Grief Case , on her Bandcamp page :  " Grieving the end of a relationship is messy and never a straight line. Some days you’re angry, other days you’re numb, and sometimes you still convince yourself he’s coming back. My new EP, The Grief Case , lives inside that turbulence. Each song is its own chapter in the 6 stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargain...

It's conceivable that many people are sick of Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" because it's played incessantly every holiday season. While it's not my favorite Christmas song I've actually grown to like it more as I got older. I guess it's because this now mature classic rock fan has mellowed. Even though few young people today know Lee outside of her Christmas classic she's among the more popular American recording artists of all time, having sold over one hundred million records around the world. Billboard named her the Top Female Artist of the 1960s. With her song "I'm Sorry" (1960) she became only the second woman to ever hit #1 on the Hot 100. (Connie Francis was first with "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" in 1960.) Her perennial Christmas chestnut is the lead track on Lee's first album of seasonal tunes, simply titled Merry Christmas . The star recorded "Rocki...

Here's an old post from ten years ago. It's been significantly revised and republished today as a new Almost Hits entry along with its original comments. The Supremes roared out of Detroit in 1963 with the classic Motown sound that young people all over America craved. It began their reign as the most successful female group of all time, a crown they held for decades. Unfortunately, The Spice Girls (ugh!) eventually sold more records and stole their throne. Signed by Berry Gordy in 1961, the trio made seven earlier attempts to have a hit, but until "When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes" reached number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 near the end of 1963 - just a few weeks ahead of the British Invasion - they had little success. After that, Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard and Diana Ross were off to the races. Over the next few years, they placed twelve #1 singles on the Hot 100. "Lovelight" had the vibrant accessi...

Sadly, Brian Wilson has passed away. In only eight days he would have turned 83. He was born only two days after Paul McCartney, so maybe there is something to astrology after all. After The Beatles, the California band and Terry Kath era Chicago were always either number two or three on my list of musical loves. It often depended on my mood. My introduction to The Beach Boys was during the Summer of 1965. It will be sixty years ago next month when I heard "California Girls" for the very first time. It was among the first five records I ever bought with my own money. I've always loved vocal harmonies and nobody was better at creating them than The Beach Boys. To me, that fun, summer single was the most astounding piece of music I had ever heard at the time. I remember it well because it gave me goosebumps. Below this video is an old post I wrote in 2018 about my love for the band. It was originally titled In Defense of The Beach Boy...

Although credited to Ringo Starr there should be no argument that the drummer's new country influenced album is a true collaboration with Joseph Henry "T-Bone" Burnett who produced it and wrote or co-wrote nine of its eleven songs. Look Up is a very nice set of tunes that Starr mostly sings in a laid-back style where he always sounds the most comfortable. He also plays drums on every track. Each song has its merits. Without disrupting the mood "Rosetta" is the only arrangement on which the Liverpool legend and his sidemen work up a sweat. Perhaps that's due to the presence of his brother-in-law - rocker and Eagle - Joe Walsh. The rest will easily appeal to Nashville's country establishment where most of the album was recorded. The first single and hands-down standout is "Time on My Hands," a breakup song that Starr sings without any vocal support or multi-tracking. H...

Because CDs possess a greater amount of space for music than other physical formats the people marketing them - be it the artist, the record company, or both - too often load their releases with unnecessary filler. I guess their thinking is, "Hey, we've got a lot of extra space available so there's no longer a need to keep the lesser tracks in a vault somewhere for possible use later. Let's just put it all out there." Because of this, CDs often play too long. Mostly, I don't need to hear an artist's unfinished demos or alternate takes they don't like but hope that we do. Most of the time there's a reason they landed on the cutting room floor. On the other hand, Portrait of a Legend 1951 - 1964 is an astounding thirty song compilation spanning Sam Cooke's entire career. The CD is over seventy-nine minutes long - meaning almost every available byte is used - and because all of the songs are worthy and wonderfull...

It's Opening Day once again, and the Phillies are pursuing their third World Series championship, so it's time for a little baseball related music.   The appeal of Baseball's Greatest Hits (1989) lies almost exclusively with hardcore baseball fans and those who like to bask in its history. It's an interesting and informative artifact but not something a listener would routinely pop in his CD player (if you still have one) on a regular basis because it's a collection of novelty songs that are mostly really, really old. The album has twenty-two tracks that are predominantly songs but it also includes a handful of spoken word radio broadcasts and comedy bits. Among the latter are museum pieces such as Abbott & Costello's famous "Whose On First" (1945), "Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speech" (1939), and "Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'Round The World" (1951). Also featured is actor and vaudeville star DeWolf Hopper who rec...

I probably should have paid more attention to the late Harry Nilsson a long time ago because he was one of the more eclectic artists to ever establish himself on the pop and rock music scene. If you're like me and have mostly known Nilsson through his songs that were played on the radio a great introduction to his work is All Time Greatest Hits , a five-star compilation by the dynamic composer and singer.   If you never dig deeply into his catalog, this twenty-song release is a must have. Nilsson had eight top 40 hits, most notably "Everybody's Talkin'" (#6 on the Hot 100) in 1969 and " Without You ," a Badfinger composition he covered in 1972 for his only #1 single. Even if you're not a fan of Nilsson's music, what's indisputable is how wide-ranging his records were. When I listen to this collection I immediately think of The Beatles'  White Album , a set where they jumped from genre to genre over the ...

When I vacationed in Hawaii in 2009 I discovered that the islands' music was one way the formerly independent kingdom celebrated their unique heritage. When scanning the car radio dial it was easy to find stations that programmed nothing but Hawaiian music, and some of them were broadcasting entirely in the fiftieth state's native language. While in Honolulu I discovered Grammy winner Henry Kapono who's been one of Hawaii's most loved musical icons for decades. Known almost exclusively in the 50th state, Kapono is a versatile musician and singer-songwriter who helps to keep his beloved culture alive while exploring mainstream pop-rock and many other genres over his long career. In 2006 Kapono recorded a rock album while singing all of the songs in the island's indigenous tongue on The Wild Hawaiian . On other occasions he's played acoustic folk-rock and straight-ahead pop music, almost all of it in English. For many yea...

Today we're going to discuss an almost totally forgotten hit record along with a little bit of related Billboard chart history. The inspiration for this post came about while sorting through some extremely old 45s that I didn't remember I owned. I've had "He's Got The Whole World (In His Hands)" by Laurie London - a rare, popular, gospel hit - in my record collection since my childhood, even though it wasn't really mine. The single belonged to either my mother or my grandmother who lived with us. I played it once in awhile because I was always allowed free access to their records, and it was eventually absorbed into my collection. Despite the name, teenager Laurie London (born January 19, 1944) was a boy singer who - at age thirteen - became a one-hit wonder in his native UK and in America the following year. Information about London is sparse. Details vary depending on the particular website you're reading, but according to Wik...

In 2022 I wrote a blog post on The Rolling Stones' Blue & Lonesome as part of Bloggerhythms' Last Albums series. Then Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and their friends ruined the whole thing by by releasing Hackney Diamonds two years ago. Despite that, I'm taking my chances that 76 year old James Taylor won't let me down too and release another album, even though that might not be such a bad thing. In 2020, Taylor released a set of tunes from the Great American Songbook, and it's a good one.  American Standard is a fourteen track record of cover tunes from the man who is often credited with jump-starting the entire 70s singer-songwriter movement. Taylor is no stranger to covers. Even though he's a songwriter of great importance he's recorded many singles written by others, most notably, Carole King's "You've Got A Friend," his only Billboard #1 hit from very early in his career. He also charted with "How S...

Back in the mid-60s when I first listened to top 40 radio I considered The Mamas and The Papas the greatest vocal group I ever heard. I never tire of listening to "California Dreamin'," "Dedicated to the One I Love," "Twelve Thirty," "I Call Your Name," and a lot of their other wonderful songs. Cass Elliot  (born Ellen Naomi Cohen in 1941) was my favorite female singer for a long time, so I was immediately interested in My Mama, Cass , the new memoir written by her daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugell. The star's life story is told in the first half of the book and the more interesting chapters are found there. The second half is mostly about Elliot-Kugell's life and how her mother's early death from a heart attack in 1974 at age thirty-two when the author was only seven years old (She's now fifty-six) affects her life even today. Elliot's family tree is discussed, so are her formative years as a sing...

Among my earliest memories of listening to music for adults were playing my Mom's 78 RPM records on my portable record player. Even when I was eight years old I thought a lot of her music sounded cheesy and dated, but I took a liking to her Glenn Miller, Harry James, Bing Crosby and Al Jolson records. Miller and James sparked any interest in jazz that I have today, and we all know that Crosby was - and continues to be - a legend, especially at Christmastime. On the other hand, many people are only aware of Jolson as the star of  The Jazz Singer , the first partially talking, feature-length movie with synchronized speech, way back in 1927. My mother told me that Jolson was a massive multi-media star. He dominated the American music scene from World War One into the early 1930s. To this day I can't tell you why I liked him so much way back when, and the fact that I still do could be nothing more than ...

I didn't plan to post anything about  James McCartney 's new single and video, "Primrose Hill" because so many blogs and websites have written about it already, and I really don't have anything new to add. That said, I'm too big of a Beatles fan to let this opportunity pass me by, and I've had a request to write about it. "Primrose Hill" is the latest song released by the younger McCartney - son of Linda McCartney and the prolific and still relevant James Paul McCartney, ex-Beatle and musician extraordinaire - but it's the first one he's composed with Sean Ono Lennon , son of Yoko Ono and Paul's late and equally creative songwriting partner, John Lennon. That is what makes this new track an event even before hearing it. The song is named after a park in the high-end Regent's Park section of London, England. On his official Instagram account  James McCartney posted, "I had a vison a...

This post first appeared here eleven Decembers ago, and since we're all looking to add a little class to our holidays I'm rerunning it now. Enjoy the humor and have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Singer-comedian Yogi Yorgesson's real name was Harry Stewart (1908 – 1956). Yorgesson was simply a persona the latter used to release over forty songs for Capitol Records beginning in 1949. Stewart was originally a radio announcer in the late 1920s in Tacoma, Washington where he invented an act featuring Yorgesson in the mid-30s. Stewart later took his shtick to night clubs where the Swedish character evolved over the years. Finally - in 1948 - Stewart became a singer and recorded two songs under the Yorgesson name. When the sides proved successful Capitol Records picked up his contract and the following year they released "I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas" with "Yingle Bells...

I don't know where to begin. "Over The Rainbow" is my favorite song from The Wizard Of Oz - my all-time favorite movie. As a child I fell in love with the film, the music, even Judy Garland as Dorothy. Many decades later I feel the same way about this masterwork of fantasy films. Beginning in 1956, and for many years afterward, the 1939 classic was shown on TV every year with gargantuan ratings, and in this era before home video and streaming were available I had to watch it on network TV every year. I believed that Garland's performance of "Over The Rainbow" was so wonderful that I never wanted to hear anyone else sing it. Cover versions just never rang true, and I've often said a law should be passed preventing anyone else from ever singing it. Immunity will only be given to Israel  Kamakawiwo'ole  (better known as Iz) for his Hawaiian folk version performed solo on a ukulele. "Over the Rainbow" was writt...

It has been written here several times before about the love-hate relationship I have with the Carpenters , the brother and sister duo who achieved great commercial success in the 1970s. While I recognized the rare beauty of Karen Carpenter's voice I also lamented the outright dreck the duo often recorded - especially "Sing," a children's song originally featured on  Sesame Street .   It didn't complement their more sophisticated work at all - hits such as "Superstar," and album tracks like "A Song For You," and "This Masquerade," both composed by Leon Russell. The young siblings greatest moment came when they woke up and realized they were making music during what would eventually become the first great era of classic rock. The result was their #7 hit, "Goodbye To Love," released off of their finest album, A Song For You in 1972. According to the DVD documentary,  Close To You: Remembering The Carp...

Among the more unusual recording careers a pop star ever experienced belongs to Tony Burrows (born April,14, 1942), a British singer who was a member of six different bands in the late 60s and early 70s. In America, five of them were one-hit wonders that fell into either the novelty or bubblegum sub-genres of pop-rock music. Some of them weren't even real bands, just studio concoctions organized simply to promote a composer's song. In 1967, The Flower Pot Men had their only hit in Britain with a song that had a pronounced, psychedelic, post-Pet Sounds, Beach Boys vibe. "Let's Go To San Francisco" reached #4 in Burrows' native land but that was before he joined the group. So, while this doesn't personally give him the distinction of being part of a sixth one-hit wonder, it's another outfit he was involved with that became infamous for having only one hit. The record never charted in America. Later, Burrows became a session singe...