(56) BUDDY KNOX : AN INTELLECTUAL and A GENTLEMAN : FROM THE WES BRYAN - MY LIFE IN MUSIC ARCHIVES

POST (56) BUDDY KNOX : AN INTELLECTUAL and A GENTLEMAN from the WES BRYAN - MY LIFE IN MUSIC ARCHIVES

October 24, 2007  

Now friends, I've gone off on a tangent about Elvis returning to the United States, at a time when I was on the Buddy Knox tour. It was great to be there when Elvis got off the train, to be part of the party at Graceland TM, and to be considered an actual friend of Elvis' Presley and a few of his friends, people who made it happen for him.

But I want to tell you nothing made me prouder than to be associated with a Rockabilly Superstar like Buddy professionally. When Buddy said "You're coming on the road with me," he was including me in on the road to success.

 

As I said on an earlier post about the plane crash that killed the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and Buddy Holly, Buddy Knox and I were forced to confront our own mortality because of it. We were grateful to have a tour that was the top of the line with a plush tour bus and a caravan of cars. We had bookings in fine dinner clubs and the best of venues to perform. They had been on buses that broke down and were only trying to make up travel time taking that plane. Jerry Lee Lewis' tour bus was a gray painted school bus, hardly plush at all, despite his success with "Great Balls of Fire."

We shared driving a car and hotel and motel rooms along the way, while the musicians lived out of the tour bus. It could be grueling, but Buddy and I, and the musicians we traveled with lived clean. We didn't do speed to stay awake, but relied on our youthful energy and zeal for entertaining. Despite the obvious stress he always treated the musicians in his band with kindness and courtesy.

Before it was all over we toured in 47 of the fifty states, skipping Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah - because the Mormons (now the Latter Day Saints) objected to Rock and Roll. We would tour for about two years, using New York City for our breaks, sharing hotel rooms along the way and in New York.
 

Buddy performed "Party Doll," "Hula Love," and a number of other songs that he had hits with. He liked to go on first, then sit back and enjoy the show. Between his performance and mine, the band played. We got people up and dancing and everyone had a great time of it.

 

Buddy Knox was an intellectual, a gentleman, and more than all that, a decent human being. He treated people from all walks of life the same and his generous spirit was always evident. He tended to leave big tips.

Sometimes he and I would walk into a diner and the waitresses would ask us if we were the Everly Brothers. (We didn't look like brothers, but brothers as singing duos were popular then.)

Buddy would say "Have you heard of Buddy Knox?"

The waitresses would say something like "Yea, He has Party Doll!"

Buddy would introduce himself, and then play a couple numbers for the whole diner, which thrilled everyone. He signed autographs and he still left big tips.

Rockin Country Style Discography - BUDDY KNOX
 

RCS DISCOGRAPHY - BUDDY KNOX
 

Link above to Buddy Knox's official site. (His great son Michael is behind this site.)

Rockabilly Hall of Fame on Buddy Knox

ROCKABILLY HALL OF FAME - BUDDY KNOX PAGE - UPDATED

Living closely as we had to, Buddy Knox and I became close friends on tour. When he married my father and I attended. I was in his wedding party. I am so proud to have known Buddy Knox. He truly was one of the good guys in Rock and Roll!

 

When Buddy was dying in 1999, he said to his son Michael, "Don't let them forget me." Michael promised.

I promise too Buddy.

CHET ATKINS TRIVIA : CHET PLAYED ON EVERLY BROTHERS RECORDS AS WELL AS ELVIS' HEARTBREK HOTEL

CHET ATKINS!

ROCK N ROLL HALL OF FAME - CHET ATKINS INDUCTEE

When it was cut, Chet played on Heartbreak Hotel on RCA, no it wasn't The Blue Moon Boys group or Scotty Moore...

According to the Rock Hall bio, "As a studio musician, he appeared on records by Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and countless country musicians. Atkins thumb-and-fingerpicking style influenced George Harrison, Duane Eddy, the Ventures, Eddie Cochran, Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler, as well as innumerable country pickers. Even the likes of Ted Nugent has credited Atkins with inspiring him to take up the instrument. ‘’I think he influenced everybody who picked up a guitar,’’ said Duane Eddy."

MISTERGUITAR - CHET ATKINS OFFICIAL

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE EVERLY BROTHERS : A DOCUMENTARY

PHIL EVERLY - THE EVERLY BROTHERS on the HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME and EVERLY FAMILY FAN SITE

ARTICLE ON THEIR STAR from THE HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME  link

EVERLY BROTHERS NET - A FAN SITE  link (Phil spoke at the induction of BUDDY HOLLY TO THE HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME.

Phil Everly, as many of you know, passed away a few days ago.  In his honor, we're running some of our archived posts about Phil and Don Everly, the Kings of Harmony!

WE INTERRUPT THIS ELVIS CELEBRATION TO HONOR PHIL EVERLY!

Elvis wouldn't mind at all!



Reading around the subject, Don has said that he always thought he would go first.

Here is a link to one of our long time favorite sites on the Internet, one we respect and that is the result of long hours of volunteer work.  Rockin Country Style DISCOGRAPHY!

RCS DISCOGRAPHY - THE EVERLYS

"HARMONY" EXPLAINED BY ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANICCA

BRITANICCA HARMONY link

"Harmony, in music, the sound of two or more notes heard simultaneously. In practice, this broad definition can also include some instances of notes sounded one after the other. If the consecutively sounded notes call to mind the notes of a familiar chord (a group of notes sounded together), the ear creates its own simultaneity in the same way that the eye perceives movement in a motion picture. In such cases the ear perceives the harmony that would result if the notes had sounded together. In a narrower sense, harmony refers to the extensively developed system of chords and the ... "  (If you subscribe to the encyclopedia there are another 10,000 words or so to define the word!)

We're bringing this up because HARMONY was an important aspect to the music of the early to mid 1960's.   Think BACKGROUND SINGERS. Think Everly Brothers,  Righteous Brothers, The Beach Boys, The Mamas and the Papas, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young...

(436) JOHNNY TILLOTSON POETRY IN MOTION MAE AXTON

I met Johnny when I was writing songs with Mae Axton. (Out of that collaboration I wrote "Apache Pearl" with Mae.)

He was also friends with Phil and Don Everly.

Little known is that Johnny is the singer for "The Mary Tyler Moore" TV show theme song.

JOHNNY TILLOTSON OFFICIAL SITE  (It's terrific!)

  One of several songs Johnny had out in 1965!  In 1960 his hit "Poetry In Motion" was one of my favorites.

(385) THE EVERLY BROTHERS ON SHINDIG : LINK NOW TO EVERLY NET

This segment begins with the Everly Brothers performing "Wake Up Little Suzy" (a provocative song lyric for the time) and also includes James Brown.

We've posted several times over the years on the Everly Brothers (you can use that search feature to find archived posts) and we're linking to EVERLY NET which has some of the latest on the performances of Phil and Don, who've been working with other musical greats such as Paul Simon and a benefit for Habitat for Humanity.

QUOTE FROM "LIFE" BY KEITH RICHARDS with JAMES FOX

KEITH RICHARDS "LIFE"
pages 766-767 Large Print version (Don't you just love that?!)

"Eventually I played with almost all the survivors among my childhood heroes, like JAMES BURTON, the EVERLYS, THE CRICKETS, MERLE HAGGARD, JOHN LEE HOOKER and GEORGE JONES, with whom I recorded "Say It's Not You." The award I was proud of was when Mick (Jagger) and I were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992, because it was signed by Sammy Cahn on his deathbed. It took me years to appreciate just how great was the art of Tin Pan Alley writing - I used to dismiss it or it went straight through me. But when I became a songwriter I could appreciate the construction and the skill of those guys..."

KEITH RICHARDS with JAMES FOX
Little, Brown, and Company
C 2010 by Mindless Records, LLC

(188) DIVERSITY ON THE CHARTS and COVER TUNES YESTERDAY AND TODAY

So far you've seen the diversity of hit records on the charts in the early 1960's, 1960-1961 (and we'll be heading for 1962 in the near future).

Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Novelty Tunes, an emerging surf music sound, harmonies that the Everly Brothers performed as well as opera-inspired songs like Elvis' "It's Now or Never," and so many other sounds, including the "Girl Groups" of Motown are represented on those charts as big sellers.

Because we live in 2008 and know about the history of Rock and Roll from the long view, we know that it's a matter of a couple years before what's been termed "The British Invasion" though in our opinion there was an American Invasion of Britian first. American artists like Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran toured England, Buddy Knox and I almost got there, and it's well known that the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and so many other British originated bands that come along into fame mid to late 1960's are inspired by those early Rock and Rollers. Many of the hits of the late 1950's to early 1960's have become classics that have been recorded "Covered" time and time again.

Christine and I are really fascinated by what's been happening as some of the most famous Rock and Rollers are aging, and beginning to look to "standards" from the 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's. Linda Ronstadt's been doing it, Rod Stewart's been doing it... mining the classics from the Big Band Sound.

So before we go on with our Wes Bryan narrative, we're going to take a bit of a departure here on Wes Bryan -My Life in Music and we're going to post some of those "Oldies" and their "Covers."

We'll be depending on YouTube of course, and we want to thank again all those contributors that make a history of music oriented blog like ours more interesting.

(144) PHIL AND DON EVERLY 1961 - THE HITS GO ON

Here's a YouTube presentation of Phil and Don Everly doing one of their recently older hit as well as the newer "Cathy's Clown."




Click on the Everly Brothers Links to the left to learn more about them or search this blog with their name to read what we've posted on the brothers already.

And don't forget about the RCS Discography for the Everly Brothers NEW LINK MARCH 2011 above!

(56) BUDDY KNOX : AN INTELLECTUAL and A GENTLEMAN

Now friends, I've gone off on a tangent about Elvis returning to the United States, at a time when I was on the Buddy Knox tour. It was great to be there when Elvis got off the train, to be part of the party at Graceland TM, and to be considered an actual friend of Elvis' Presley and a few of his friends, people who made it happen for him.

But I want to tell you nothing made me prouder than to be associated with a Rockabilly Superstar like Buddy professionally. When Buddy said "You're coming on the road with me," he was including me in on the road to success.

 

As I said on an earlier post about the plane crash that killed the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and Buddy Holly, Buddy Knox and I were forced to confront our own mortality because of it. We were grateful to have a tour that was the top of the line with a plush tour bus and a caravan of cars. We had bookings in fine dinner clubs and the best of venues to perform. They had been on buses that broke down and were only trying to make up travel time taking that plane. Jerry Lee Lewis' tour bus was a gray painted school bus, hardly plush at all, despite his success with "Great Balls of Fire."

We shared driving a car and hotel and motel rooms along the way, while the musicians lived out of the tour bus. It could be grueling, but Buddy and I, and the musicians we traveled with lived clean. We didn't do speed to stay awake, but relied on our youthful energy and zeal for entertaining. Despite the obvious stress he always treated the musicians in his band with kindness and courtesy.

Before it was all over we toured in 47 of the fifty states, skipping Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah - because the Mormons (now the Latter Day Saints) objected to Rock and Roll. We would tour for about two years, using New York City for our breaks, sharing hotel rooms along the way and in New York.

Buddy performed "Party Doll," "Hula Love," and a number of other songs that he had hits with. He liked to go on first, then sit back and enjoy the show. Between his performance and mine, the band played. We got people up and dancing and everyone had a great time of it.

 

Buddy Knox was an intellectual, a gentleman, and more than all that, a decent human being. He treated people from all walks of life the same and his generous spirit was always evident. He tended to leave big tips.

Sometimes he and I would walk into a diner and the waitresses would ask us if we were the Everly Brothers. (We didn't look like brothers, but brothers as singing duos were popular then.)

Buddy would say "Have you heard of Buddy Knox?"

The waitresses would say something like "Yea, He has Party Doll!"

Buddy would introduce himself, and then play a couple numbers for the whole diner, which thrilled everyone. He signed autographs and he still left big tips.

Rockin Country Style Discography - BUDDY KNOX

RCS DISCOGRAPHY - BUDDY KNOX - UPDATED
 

Link above to Buddy Knox's official site. (His great son Michael is behind this site.)

Rockabilly Hall of Fame on Buddy Knox

ROCKABILLY HALL OF FAME - BUDDY KNOX PAGE - UPDATED

Living closely as we had to, Buddy Knox and I became close friends on tour. When he married my father and I attended. I was in his wedding party. I am so proud to have known Buddy Knox. He truly was one of the good guys in Rock and Roll!

 

When Buddy was dying in 1999, he said to his son Michael, "Don't let them forget me." Michael promised.

I promise too Buddy.