O/T The Music Thread

All of life's necessities in one convenient case.  Well done.

lol, showing off the new Ray-Bans my brother bought me for Xmas.

Crap. I lost an imaginative post where we were going to pick up Chi. And his kids… you guys just imagine what I posted and we’ll roll with it…

Another great clip of the legendary sidemen.  I will defer to you on the A Team -- Grady Martin I know, but the other guys, while I surely know their handiwork, I was not familiar with their names until now.  Really, the Nashville version of The Wrecking Crew, and every bit as talented.  Loved the old clip of Patsy Cline performing with them.  Brenda Lee is another one I love.  The Everlys are in my Top Ten all-time of rock-era acts.  With your love of and knowledge of the Nashville scene, I assume you've made a pilgrimage or two.  If not, the tours of Studio B, where these guys did much of their recording, is well-worth a visit.  And the obvious Ryman Auditorium and Country Music Hall of Fame -- one of the great HOFs, better than Cleveland, right up there with Springfield and just a tad below Cooperstown.

One of the things I learned later in the 60s was how much of the music we loved leaned so heavily on anonymous (to us) musicians recording at Gold Star in LA and Stax in Memphis and Motown in Detroit and Studio B in Nashville and Sigma Sound in Philly.  Maybe 100 musicians drove most of the recording industry.  Stax essentially had Booker T and the MGs (Booker T Jones, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and Al Jackson) as the house band, along with Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter contributing heavily as well.  These are the guys you hear backing everything done by Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Rufus and Carla Thomas and countless others.  The studio was in an old movie theater in downtown Memphis -- a few blocks from the sacred Sun Studios -- and it was run as a family affair by brother and sister Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton (the name Stax came from the first two letters of their surnames.)  Unlike other studios that were heavily unionized and very much on the clock, Stax had a come-as-you-are and stay as long as you want philosophy.  It was a very early example of racially integrated businesses in Memphis, and was pointedly spared during the 1968 riots in Memphis.  You can tour it to this day, as you can at Sun, and they alone are worth the trip.

The Motown Studios were almost like a religious experience.  I've been there multiple times, and every time I learn something new.  The house band there was The Funk Brothers -- names not known to most people, but again they were on every single hit churned out by The Supremes, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, the Marvelettes, Junior Walker and countless others.  The studios consist of several modest houses next to each other, with the main office at what used to be 2648 Grand Boulevard and is now Berry Gordy Jr. Boulevard.  It's strictly a museum these days -- when Gordy moved things to LA in the early 70s it ripped the heart out of the company -- but it's like a shrine to some of the greatest music every produced in the US.  "The Sound Of Young America" it said on the label, and for sure it was.  I saw an interview with Ashford and Simpson in which they were told to show up at the Motown Studios, and upon entering the address they told the receptionist that they were looking for "the main office."  They were shocked that that little cottage was it.

Sigma Sound was where all the Philly International music -- O'Jays, Spinners, Stylistics, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Delfonics, Trammps, Barry White -- recorded, as well as Lou Rawls, David Bowie and Todd Rundgren, among others.  The house band there was called MFSB -- allegedly an acronym for Mother Father Sister Brother -- which had several hits, including most famously "TSOP" (The Sound of Philadelphia, aka the theme for "Soul Train," 90 minutes across the tracks of your mind brought to you by Afro Sheen and the complete line of Afro Sheen products.  And now here's your host, Don Cornelius.)  To the people who were in MFSB, it actually stood for "Mother Effin SOB" either in reference to the high quality of the musicians or the tight-fisted practices of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, who ran the place with an iron fist almost at Berry Gordy levels.  I could ramble all day on that place.  Anytime you have a couple of spare weeks.

I'm ready for my second Daiquiri, so I'll end it here.  Desousa, if you read this far, let me know if you used Demarara sugar in your simple syrup for Daiquiris (I capitalize drink names because I have such respect for them.)  I did on the advice of one of my favorite local bartenders, and it was definitely worth it.

Inger, I'll match for whiteness any day. In high school, I grew my hair long and ended up with a couple nicknames, Johnny Winter and Bad Bob, the latter being a character from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxqWN9x4mwg

Beautiful! Any girl would be jealous of those luscious locks!