FROM OUR ARCHIVES POST (197) WHAT'D WE DO WITHOUT THOSE BLUE SUEDE SHOES ? CARL PERKINS and ELVIS PRESLEY

Carl Perkins' Rockabilly "Blue Suede Shoes," is so associated with Elvis Presley but Carl was first with it and the song was covered again and again, a true classic in its own time.

Here's a YouTube presentation of Carl singing "Blue Suede Shoes."

And here's one of many videos featuring Elvis Presley singing probably the song most associated with him other than "Hound Dog"...


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FRANK SINATRA Quote on Friendship

"A friend is never an imposition." - Frank Sinatra

FROM OUR ARCHIVES : (158) THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS : TREMENDOUS HARMONIES

Probably no other duo on earth has ever had the sound of the tremendous harmonies of Bobby Hatfield (who went to that Big Jam session in heaven himself in 2003) and Bill Medley (who is still performing!). Their music was not just harmonious, it was romantic - heartbreaking sometimes.

The Righteous Brothers were not brothers at all, but brother acts and a brotherly unity (even a fraternity unity like Elvis and his entourage and closest friends) were popular then. Phil and Don Everly were the prime example but the Smothers Brothers were also out there honing their country music and comedy. (Some people used to think Buddy Knox and I were brothers when we toured, even though we looked nothing like each other.)

Now, if you'll use the search feature of this Google blog you can see that we've posted on the brothers before in the Phil Spector -Wall of Sound blog. Here is more information on the Brothers... and more music to listen to...
The Righteous Brothers own official web site. RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS OFFICIAL

Christine here... This is one of my very favorite heartbreaker songs of all time. "Just Once In My Life..."Seems to me I've felt this way - more than once!

 video replaced February 2013

FRIENDS ARE LIKE THE STARS ...

You can't always see them ... but you know they're always there!

ANY VIDEO OF ERSEL HICKEY PERFORMING? HOW ABOUT WES BRYAN ?

Here's a challenge to anyone who uses YouTube or other Internet video sharing sites! We would love to find footage of Ersel Hickey performing and post it! We would love to find footage of Wes performing as well.

And by the way, we know that there must be footage somewhere. Wes performed on Ed Sullivan, Dick Clark's American Band Stand (twice), the Jack Paar show, and many other regional shows in Baltimore, Cleveland, and throughout the south, as well as on shows in Los Angeles.  And he appeared live on the pier in Santa Monica.

Wes performed with Ersel Hickey in stage shows in the state of New York.  He also performed with Buddy Knox on his tour in the late 1950's in 48 states and some of you may have photos taken of Wes and Buddy from that tour.

Unfortunately many archival collections are organized by the show headliners, and over time what has been preserved is often the early careers of people such as Elvis Presley, people who became much more famous. I've enjoyed watching a number of Dick Clark American Bandstand videos all the way through at the Paley Center for the Media, including those commercials that seem so much more dated than the music,  but they don't have a full collection.  I contacted the Ed Sullivan collection but got no reply.

If you know of local repositories of film or related materials in your park of the United States please let us know!

Christine

(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.

(427) BILLY LEE RILEY : SUN RECORDS PROTEGEE

Wes' cousin Dean reminded us that BILLY LEE RILEY passed away in August of 2009. We went through our archives to see what we'd posted on Billy before, and saw that the links needed to be updated.

See post (183)!

Like Elvis, Billy Lee Riley started out on that local label that became one of the most famous small labels in Rock-A-Billy and Early Rock and Roll : SUN. But here's a song Billy recorded in 1965. If you go right to the YouTube site you can read what the video poster wrote about Billy - all good.

ELVIS ABOUT THE TIME I MET HIM

This popular publicity photo of Elvis is one of my favorites.

(409) BMI TYPE DATABASES CAN BE WRONG

The ASCAP and BMI type songwriter databases, which help you find out who owns the intellectual properties to a song, can be wrong.

The reasons why are easy to explain.

When a songwriter sells his or her portion of the earnings on a song or leaves their portion in an inheritance to another person, someone who never wrote a song in their life can appear on the songwriter portion. A original partnership of two can appear to be a team of twelve. IT'S NOT REALLY A SONGWRITER'S DATABASE. It's a song OWNERSHIP database, about accounting.

Sometimes publishers sell part of their rights to a song to another publisher so more than one publisher may be involved.

A songwriter, artist, or publisher, who is registered with ASCAP or BMI is always locatable, should you want to use their song and pay them what you owe.

You simply contact the organization, tell them what song, and they contact the songwriter. Or if the songwriter has sold all their work or moved their work to another database/organization, they may have the address or be willing to forward for you.

FROM OUR ARCHIVES (286) FRANKIE AVALON : YOU'RE ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS

FROM OUR ARCHIVES (286) FRANKIE AVALON : YOU'RE ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS


Frankie came out with a Christmas album in 1962, after acting in a film called Panic In The Year Zero, a war picture. This smooth romantic song was one of the songs he recorded for the album along with classics. Frankie and his wife have eight children and are still together after all these years.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR Quotation on Friendship

"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion." - Simone de Beauvoir

(402) DICK KLEINER "THE RECORD SHOP" : DICKS PICKS

Dick Kleiner mentioned me and a couple of my records in his nationally-syndicated column, called. "The Record Shop" which began in 1953. I don't think I ever met Dick, but I know that his column appeared in dozens of small newspapers around the country. I believe he went on to write Hollywood journalism. I haven't been able to find out too much about him but like so many others who influenced my life in good ways, I wish I had a way to find him and say hello and Thanks!

THANK YOU TO MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Just want to say "THANK YOU" to all of you who have been supportive of my efforts these last few years.
It means a lot to me. Wes

(399) STRICTLY OFF THE RECORD : SALT LAKE TRIBUNE REVIEW :

Some newspapers used pictures of me supplied by United Artists and other's went without. Here's one that the Salt Lake City Tribune Review published with one of my publicity photos. Christine and me found this one in a newspaper database. My father was the person on the family who kept scrapbooks of my career when I was too busy on the road to keep track.

VETERANS DAY

(398) MEDIA HOLLYWOOD STYLE : HEDDA HOPPER

Who better to move their careers to writing about Hollywood than a once very pretty young woman who came to Hollywood from a small town in Pennsylvania to act herself?

We're linking to a Biography.com which has a comprehensive biography of Hedda, who made films from 1916-1940 and then hosted Playhouse type TV shows in the 1950's.

By the time I got to Hollywood I knew Hedda was a respected and feared personality, known for feuding with her counterpart Louella Parsons. Both probably made and broke the careers of a number of Hollywood personalities but I had nothing to fear. She was in her seventies when I met her and kept an office not far from where I would once set up my own.

"In 1937, the Esquire Feature Syndicate was looking for a Hollywood columnist and found one in Hopper. Untried, her column was sold to 13 papers and a career was launched... When the column began appearing in the prestigious Los Angeles Times, her status shot upward and her power grew. Her column appeared in 85 metropolitan papers, 3000 small-town dailies, and 2000 weeklies. When she replaced John Chapman at The New York Daily News, she picked up an additional audience of 5,750,000 daily and 7,500,000 on Sunday. She appeared on weekly radio shows and wrote two best sellers: From Under My Hat and The Whole Truth and Nothing But."

IT WAS GREAT MEETING AND GETTING TO KNOW

It was great meeting and getting to know some of the artists who were covered in these magazines. As a teenager I ate up the stories in magazines like these. But once I was a star myself, I learned that some writers made up sensational stories without even talking to the artist and some publishers published anyway.

Debbie Reynolds was just in the news because she put some of her Hollywood memorabilia collection up for auction, including some dresses that Marilyn Monroe wore in her films that earned Debbie millions.

(279) BOBBY PICKETT MONSTER MASH 1962 : FROM OUR ARCHIVES

Monster Mash was a hit and became a Halloween Classic, and while you can make a great living as a successful songwriter, and the residuals can come in for years on a "one hit wonder," Bobby's novelty song has kept ringing the cash registers for the last 47 years.

(MAKE THAT 49 YEARS in 2011!)

I remember how happy we all were for Bobby when this song hit! Wes Bryan

I'm over here doing the "Transylvania Twist" since I'm related to Vlad the Impaler!

Christine Trzyna

video replaced October 2012

A HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM WES BRYAN and HIS FAMILY

(397) MEDIA IN THE LATE 1950'S and EARLY 1960'S : SYNDICATED COLUMNISTS

Christine and I watch the e-Bay auctions to see if anything is for sale under the Wes Bryan category that I don't own or haven't seen in years or don't know about and once in a while I'm surprised. Once in a while a magazine comes up for sale that I know there was an article - or a mention - in.

In the 1950's and early 1960's there were a few important and powerful writers - columnists - who were syndicated, which means that whatever they wrote was printed in small newspapers that couldn't afford their own music critic, all about the same time. These articles went over the wire to reach news rooms where local journalists worked, and typesetters made the article fit.

Some of these writers did mention me and my colleagues in their columns, and recently some of these columns have started appearing on databases that make it easier to research than cranking the old microfilm.

We're going to blog about a few of them.