Music
May 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson
When Ronnie White (of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles) brought Steveland Morris over to the Motown offices in Detroit in 1961, Berry Gordy was at first unimpressed. After Morris sang the Miracles’ “Lonely Guy” and performed on piano, harmonica and bongo, Gordy signed the 11-year-old boy to his label. According to Nelson George’s Where Did Our Love Go?, “Berry, in one of his more inspired name changes, decided [Morris] would
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May 11, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I learn via Twitter that the video below featured this past Wednesday on the Tonight Show has gone viral. BuzzFeed explains: “Pumpcast News” is a Tonight Show sketch in which actor Tim Stack, posing as the anchor of a (fake) news show aired at gas station pumps, starts to talk directly to the unsuspecting gas station patrons. While usually the intention of the sketch is to frighten and shock normal
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May 8, 2013 — Steven Hayward
David Tucker, my sometimes colleague out at the Ashbrook Center, is one of America’s underrated writers and thinkers, chiefly because he toils away most of the time out of view on the arcana of counter-terrorism and intelligence work at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, such as can be seen in his book Illuminating the Dark Arts of War: Terrorism, Sabotage, and Subversion in Homeland Security and the New
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April 29, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Country singer George Jones died this past Friday at the age of 81. I think the consensus is that Jones was the best country singer of the era. You can certainly hear his influence in just about every younger country artist worth listening to. Jon Pareles gives Jones his due in the New York Times obit “His life was a country song.” Pareles renders a fine appreciation of Jones’s life
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April 28, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In my tribute to Ella Fitzgerald on her birthday last week, I mentioned mentioned that, after he sold the Verve label, Norman Granz founded the Pablo label to continue recording Ella. To test the market for a new label, Granz put together an all-star concert featuring Ella and the Count Basie Band at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in June 1972 that was to be recorded and released (unsuccessfully, with
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April 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Today is the anniversary of the birth of Ella Fitzgerald, the First Lady of Song. The lady was a remarkable artist. Each period of her long career is rewarding, though she deepened her art as she got older. She excelled in a wide variety of material and in every musical setting. There is an emotional reserve or detachment in her singing, but there is also joy and an irrepressible sense
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April 22, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Singer/songwriter Richie Havens died today at the age of 72. Havens grew up in Brooklyn singing with a choir in church and with doo wop groups on street corners. He crossed the river to figure out how to make a go of it in Greenwich Village as a performer until he signed a recording contract with Verve. In 1967 Havens seemed to materialize out of nowhere with Mixed Bag, a
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April 17, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In my high school class those of us who followed pop music obsessively knew we had discovered someone special in Laura Nyro. We prided ourselves in being able to recognize her hand in the covers of her songs on the radio. We were blown away by Eli and The Thirteenth Confession when it was released in 1968, and it’s still sounding good after all these years. We thought that, along
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April 6, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Like Elvis Presley and Ray Charles, Merle Haggard is a singer in whose voice one can hear all the strands of American popular music. Today is his birthday and we want to salute him while he is still around to win fans and influence people. A few years back the Los Angeles Times published a terrific profile of Haggard by Times music critic Robert Hilburn (the profile is no longer
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April 2, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Emmylou Harris celebrates her birthday today. I’m a latecomer to Emmylou’s artistry, having discovered her indirectly through my love for the music of the 1960′s group the Byrds. The Byrds brought brilliant Beatles-inspired vocal harmonies and jangly 12-string electric guitar to the music of Bob Dylan and their own superb compositions. In one version of the group, country-rock flameout Gram Parsons briefly took center stage and hijacked their groundbreaking 1968
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March 23, 2013 — Steven Hayward
It’s been a while since I inflicted my dubious throwback enthusiasm for progressive rock on indulgent Power Line readers, but I somehow came across the video below of Francis Dunnery, with whom I’m totally unfamiliar though I gather he has a following, performing a live cover of “Back in NYC,” a neglected tune from the B-side of the old Genesis classic album “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.” (The terrific
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March 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
There are a few torch songs that lament the coming of Spring. This time of year, if you’re tuned to one of the right stations, you may well find yourself listening to Ella Fitzgerald’s unforgettable rendition of “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.” The song is a buried treasure on Ella’s 1961 quartet-backed jazz set Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! (I love the Amazon review that rates it
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March 10, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So this isn’t an official Power Line event, but this Wednesday I’m helping to host a concert in Paso Robles with Story Road, which is best described as an “upbeat Celtic jam band” that features two members of the better known Molly’s Revenge backing up the vocals of Colleen Raney. Long story, but my wife knows the musicians, and when she heard they were passing our way with a night
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March 3, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Shawn Colvin is on a sort of double dynamite tour with Mary-Chapin Carpenter, but she settles in for three nights at the Dakota Jazz Club and Restaurant performing solo in downtown Minneapolis this Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. She is a brilliant singer/songwriter/interpreter who achieved stardom with the Grammy-winning pop hit “Sunny Came Home” on A Few Small Repairs in 1997. I don’t think anything eclipses her first three recordings beginning
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February 14, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Produced by Thom Bell and Stan Watson, written by William Hart and Thom Bell, “La-La (Means I Love You)” is a classic of Philly soul, vintage 1968, and a memorable hit for the Delfonics. What a beautiful pop song. I don’t think they make ‘em like this anymore. Hart sang the shimmering falsetto lead on the hit single. He’s had to drop it down a notch or two over the
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January 30, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Last night we made it to Dakota Jazz Club and Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis for the first of Peter Asher’s two nights at the club performing his show A Musical Memoir of the 60s and Beyond. The show returns tonight at 7:00 p.m. and tickets are still available. Last year we went to the show on a lark and were blown away by Peter’s incredibly entertaining musical review of times
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January 26, 2013 — Scott Johnson
This past January we decided on the spur of the moment to head over to the Dakota Jazz Club and Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis for the first of Peter Asher’s two nights at the club. Arriving with no expectations, we loved Asher’s show. Asher returns to the Dakota for two shows, next Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. This year we’re bringing along several friends for Tuesday night’s show; we hope they
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