THE NEW CHRISTY MINSTRELS : WE NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS

To those of you who stayed home yesterday to have family holiday and waited till today for the hustle bustle of shopping.

The New Christy Minstrels circa 1966 - a project of Lou Christy, who we've blogged about before!

THANKSGIVING

Meez has provided us free Avatars for years and
we take this Thanksgiving moment to thank them!

PETER PAUL AND MARY : LIGHT ONE CANDLE

NATIONAL INVENTORS HALL OF FAME INFO LINK - ARE YOU AN INVENTOR?

USPTO GOV : NATIONAL INVENTORS HALL OF FAME


WHAT IS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY?

It is imagination made real. It is the ownership of dream, an idea, an improvement, an emotion that we can touch, see, hear, and feel. It is an asset just like your home, your car, or your bank account.

Just like other kinds of property, intellectual property needs to be protected from unauthorized use.

(486) LES PAUL CHASING SOUND : AMERICAN MASTERS DVD : DOCUMENTARY : LES PAUL AND MARY FORD

"Musician. Inventor. Architect of Rock N Roll... NOT JUST THE INVENTOR OF THE HARD BODIED ELECTRIC GUITAR BUT, a pioneer in RECORDING TECHNIQUES..."



LES PAUL CHASING SOUND - An American Masters CD, presents an impressive line up of music stars give their thumbs up to Les Paul... Including Bonnie Raitt, Tony Bennett, Jeff Beck, Merle Haggard, ... Waukesha Wisconsin, Chicago, New York, Hollywood.... NATIONAL INVENTORS HALL OF FAME!

LINK TO NATIONAL INVENTORS HALL OF FAME

and the LES PAUL FOUNDATION ORG

(485) DION : ABRAHAM MARTIN AND JOHN (DICK HOLLER SONGWRITER) ON THE SMOTHER'S BROTHERS TV SHOW

So proud of Dion, known for his early Rock and Roll hit "Run Around Sue," when he hit the charts in 1968 with this song, "Abraham, Martin, and John," a song written by Dick Holler.  It's become a classic tribute to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and President John F. Kennedy.


Link to DION DI MUCCI : OFFICIAL

 "Music Critics say he is the only first-generation rock and roll artist who  has remained creative and relevant through the decades. In 1958 He had three top-forty hits. In 2007 He was nominated for a Grammy. His last three albums have some of his best work.

Dion and his music represent a special time and place . . .  a moment when a song could mean so much and a singer could sum up what it means to be young, in love and on top of the world.

A street poet and singer of extraordinary versatility, range and resonance, Dion defined Rock 'n' Roll for a generation."

Use the Google Search feature embedded in this blog to pull up past posts on Dion as well as the Smothers Brothers!

HERE IS THE SONGWRITERS VERSION:

FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATON OF JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY

FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY

LINK TO JFK PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY here! if you're interested in what the library has to say about it.

(484) MERLE TRAVIS : A FIXTURE AT AMERICAN MUSIC AND SONGWRITER FOR TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD

I met Merle Travis, the country western singer who they called a "guitar picker" and who came from the South - Kentucky,  when he came into American Music, the big song publishing house I worked for as a staff writer for several years when I first moved to Los Angeles!  I grew up in North Carolina and Oregon listening to Country music and never lost my enthusiasm for it.  Merle wrote songs and played on sessions for demos and became a fixture there.  Great man!

So many artists who went into performance careers have worked making demos, Bobby Darin, as I recently mentioned, made demos in the recording studios in the Brill Building, in New York City.  Glen Campbell made demos in Los Angeles, some for American Music.  I made demos while at American Music and also I made demo's for Pat Boone's company, Cooga- Mooga! 

Demo records of songs with hit potential were send out - sometimes hand delivered by people like me - to the recording artists that the writer had in mind for their listen.  Sometimes they piled up in a corner and months went by before one got a listen, so that personal connection was important.

 

DISCOGS PAGE FOR MERLE TRAVIS link

SIXTEEN TONS : A CLASSIC SONG WRITTEN BY MERLE TRAVIS : WHICH DO YOU PREFER?

TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD
BOBBY DARIN
ERIC BURDEN(OF THE ANIMALS)
THE PLATTERS

or maybe LEANN RIMES  ?

VETERANS DAY

(483) BOBBY DARIN : FROM MOTOWN TO FOLK SONGS

Back in July of this year, we posted on Bobby Darin on Motown Records, where he tried on the popular Motown Sound.  Well, Bobby was challenged to find his niche in music by the mid sixties. He was challenged by changing times and the influence of Bob Dylan to cover songs that were more folk or political.  It was particularly difficult to pick and choose because he was so diverse in his talent.

I first met an ambitious Bobby in New York City in the Brill Building, introduced by Neil Sendaka, where he was making his rent by singing on demo records for song writers.  He was also writing songs of his own.  He was in the perfect spot to discover or write a hit song, and he did soon after we me with his recording of  Splish Splash.

Bobby was able to change his singing style enough to be hired to make a good many of those demos and I suspect that somewhere there is a treasure trove of them that he made - and some of them maybe you wouldn't know right away you were listening to Bobby. 

This challenge of being true to yourself, or what you're really good at, and being out of sync with the changing times, it's happened to the best of us. It happens in the music business every few, maybe every several years that music changes enough that you might get left behind, and 1966 is right about when you found the British Invasion with the Rolling Stones making the Beatles look tame - and in San Francisco, a new sound, the beginning of a Psychedelic drug fueled sound, typified by the Grateful Dead - and Peter Paul and Mary who are sticking to their folk music - while Bob Dylan is identified as a protest singer but doesn't want to be identified that way - and Bobby Darin - out of a whole group of young men who had vibrant carriers beginning in the 1950's, trying to figure out which way to go. 

Give it enough time though, and you become known as a CLASSIC.
Linking to his official site:  BOBBY DARIN NET - OFFICIAL - INCLUDING LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Bobby gets the most airplay over time for Mac The Knife, with Splish Splash clearly thought of as the 1950's.

(482) PLACES TO GO THINGS TO DO : BEN FRANKS DINER

CHARLES PHOENIX ON BEN FRANKS DINER link

IN OUR PLACES TO GO THINGS TO DO posts, we wrote about the Palamino for  mostly Country Music (post 335 on Marty Robins and Jerry Lee Lewis), the Red Velvet - one of the few clubs Elvis used to go to and where P.J. Proby performed (post 334), and the dinner club, Ciro's, known for the Rat Pack, but also Johnny Rivers before The Whisky.  Post 333 was about Trino Lopez.  Post 336 Ciros.  We've recently updated the videos and links for these posts from 2010.

All of these  clubs were performance spaces.

One of my hangouts for just having coffee, talking, hanging out, was Ben Franks Diner.  It was a good place to meet with friends, co-workers, and people I wanted to do business with, on the Sunset Strip, which has been active with entertainment for more than half a century.

Here's a link with a good picture. 

EXCERPT: "Today, forty five years later the classic coffee shop structure still stands. But about decade or so ago Ben became Mel when Ben Frank’s quietly closed and morphed into a trendy retro diner called Mel’s Diner. I wonder if they have Liver and Onions on the menu."

EVOLUTION OF DANCE BY JUDSON LAIPLLY STARTS WITH ELVIS PRESLEY AND CHUCK BERRY

WES BRYAN - MY LIFE IN MUSIC: RIGHTS INFORMATION

Though it most often goes without saying, and we post a notice like this one in our Pages, once in a while we post a notice like this one in our posts.  We want to reminds readers that the original content of this blog is Copyright Wes Bryan and Christine Trzyna with all rights reserved including Internet and International Rights.

We are linking to a good many web sites, favoring the official web sites of various famous and important musical artists as well as reference sites and music videos. If we link to your site or a video you uploaded and you don't want us to reference it, please let us know and we'll take down the link. The content of other people's sites remains their own.

We also appreciate hearing about any link that is down or video that has been removed from its source, such as YouTube!

Thank you for your consideration and courtesy!

Christine Trzyna  and Wes Bryan

WILMA ASKINAS Quote on Friendship

“A friend is someone who sees through you and still enjoys the view.”  - Wilma Askinas