Tag: #MusicMonday

#MusicMondays “Charity Ball” Fanny

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Fanny was an all-female rock group active in the early to mid 1970s. The group was founded by sisters June Millington (guitar) and Jean Millington (bass), who moved from the Philippines to California in the early 1960s.

The Millington sisters joined Wild Honey, an all-female rock band founded by drummer Alice de Buhr. Wild Honey planned to disband after one final open-mic appearance at the Troubadour Club in 1969. However, the secretary of prominent music producer Richard Perry spotted Wild Honey at this gig.

Perry convinced Warner Bros. Records to sign the group to Reprise Records. The label signed Wild Honey without hearing them play, as it regarded them as a novelty act. Prior to recording their first album, the band recruited keyboardist Nickey Barclay. Wild Honey was renamed Fanny for their first album Fanny.

Here is Fanny performing the title cut from their second album Charity Ball on the Sonny & Cher TV show.

As you can see, the members of Fanny were crack musicians. So why didn’t these women get the fame that they deserved for their musicianship? I’ve read comments on their YouTube videos and some blame anti-Asian hate due to the Millington sisters’ Filipino origins.

I think that the reason that Fanny didn’t get the fame and accolades that they deserved is that they were considered a novelty act and people weren’t ready for a hard rocking all-female band. Remember, this was before The Runaways, The Go-Gos, and The Bangles.

Sources:

Charity Ball. (2015). [Video]. Retrieved 7 June 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD9NjN5_nxQ.

Fanny (band) – Wikipedia. En.wikipedia.org. (2021). Retrieved 7 June 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_(band).

PS You can find other videos of Fanny on the Beat Club YouTube channel. Unfortunately, I can’t embed the Beat Club videos in my blog. 😔

#MusicMonday Smith featuring Gayle McCormick “Baby It’s You”

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Gayle McCormick was a singer from St. Louis whose biggest hit was a cover of Burt Bacharach’s Baby It’s You with a group called Smith (not to be confused with The Smiths featuring Morrissey!). Smith broke up after two albums and after that, Gayle released three solo albums

  1. Gayle McCormick, released 1971 on ABC/Dunhill Records
  2. Flesh & Blood, released 1972 on Decca Records
  3. One More Hour, released 1974 on Fantasy Records
Remembering Gayle McCormick

In the mid-1970s, Gayle left the music industry and went home to St. Louis, where she lived a quiet life.

Gayle died of cancer on March 1, 2016 in suburban St. Louis. She was 67 years old.

Gayle’s grave marker in Mt. Lebanon Cemetery, Saint Ann, St. Louis County, Missouri, USA

Many think that Gayle McCormick should have had a longer, more successful music career. What do you think?

Instagram:

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#MusicMonday twin spin: Lean on Me

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The National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) posted this tweet:

Here’s how I responded:

John Legend and Stevie Wonder fête Bill Withers at the 2015 Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

Bill Withers would have cemented his legacy with Lean on Me alone. I’m not a fan of John Legend or Stevie Wonder, but this video gave me the tingles.

And here’s Lean on Me as performed by Bill Withers on the TV series Rollin’ on the River:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw6HeeuvTWo
Lean on Me by Bill Withers

And the shaggy guy introducing Bill Withers? That’s the late Kenny Rogers (d. March 20, 2020)

#MusicMonday – Summertime – Billy Stewart

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Billy Stewart was an R&B singer active in the 1960s.

He met Marvin Gaye through the Rainbows, a Washington, DC vocal group. Bo Diddley has been credited with discovering Stewart in Washington, DC. This led to a recording with Bo Diddley’s label Chess Records.

Amazing: I didn’t know that Marvin Gaye and Bo Diddley had ties to Washington DC.

Here’s Billy Stewart singing what Wikipedia calls his “radical interpretation” of Summertime from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. Forgive the blurriness of this video.

Not sure about the 10-gallon hat and the folks sitting around on hay bales. 🤔

Billy Stewart died in an automobile accident in 1970. He was 32.

Shout-out to the Sunday Kind of Love program on WPFW 89.3 FM for introducing me to Billy Stewart.

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#MusicMonday “I call your name” Johnny Clegg and Savuka

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South African singer Johnny Clegg died on July 16, 2019 of pancreatic cancer. He was 66. He was instrumental in bringing South African music to a broader audience during the apartheid era.

Here is Johnny Clegg performing “I Call Your Name” with his biracial band Savuka in 1988:

Is this cultural appropriation?  We’ve become more sensitive to this issue over the years.  I don’t know how Johnny Clegg was perceived at the end of his life, but 30+ years ago, cultural appropriation didn’t stick to him, as he immersed himself into Zulu culture, to the point that he was called the White Zulu.

 

#MusicMonday Top Ten #Christmas Songs Written by Jews

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The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ—the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity—and what does Irving Berlin do? He de-Christs them both! Easter, he turns into a fashion show [Easter Parade] and Christmas into a holiday about snow [White Christmas].

That quote from Phillip Roth begins Marc Tracy’s article “From ‘Winter Wonderland’ to ‘White Christmas,’ the Top Ten Christmas Songs Written by Jews” in Tablet magazine and quite frankly, I can’t think of a better way to begin this post.

I’ve assembled a playlist of the de-Christed secularized Christmas songs listed in Tracy’s article:

There’s plenty of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra here, but the one video that catches my eye and ear is the video of Mel Tormé and the one, the only Judy Garland singing The Christmas Song (aka Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), which Tormé co-wrote with Bob Wells. Who knew? I didn’t even know that Mel Tormé was Jewish.

If you want to listen to Nat “King” Cole’s iconic rendition of The Christmas Song, visit #MusicMonday Nat “King” Cole “The #Christmas Song”.

Source:

Tracy, M. (2016, December 09). From ‘Winter Wonderland’ to ‘White Christmas,’ the Top Ten Christmas Songs Written by Jews. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/music/22910/have-yourself-a-jewish-little-christmas

#MusicMonday – Nancy LaMott – All Those #Christmas Cliches

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Nancy LaMott was a cabaret singer who broke out into radio and the national and international scene in the 1990s. Plagued by serious illnesses for much of her life, she died from uterine cancer on December 30, 1995, only 17 days before her 44th birthday. Her priest blessed her union with Peter Zapp, a little more than an hour before she died.

According to her father, she sang along with Barbra Streisand records when she was a girl. It shows. Sometimes my husband and I confuse Nancy LaMott for Barbra Streisand when we hear her recordings on WPFW 89.3 FM’s Sunday afternoon program The American Songbook.

It was through The American Songbook that I discovered All Those Christmas Cliches, as sung by Nancy LaMott. It’s wistful and nostalgic and takes me back to childhood and how special Mom made Christmas for us. Even today Christmas lights fill me with happiness and wonderment.

That’s what I long for: All Those Christmas Cliches.

Coming soon: a video playlist of the top 10 Christmas songs written by Jews.

#MusicMonday 5 songs from the 80s That You Might Have Forgot

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The article Ten Songs From the ‘80s That You’ve Probably Forgotten About from PJ Media inspired me to put together this short playlist of five songs from the 80s that you might have forgotten (or else don’t know because you were born later):

Source:

Queen, C. (2018, October 2). Ten Songs From the ’80s That You’ve Probably Forgotten About. Retrieved October 8, 2018, from https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/10-songs-from-the-80s-that-youve-probably-forgotten-about/

#MusicMonday – Taurus – Spirit

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Today’s #MusicMonday feature is the instrumental Taurus by the sixties band Spirit.

Why is this relevant? Notice the riff in Taurus. Does it sound like the beginning of Stairway to Heaven?

Last week, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a jury’s decision that Led Zeppelin did not plagiarize the chords from Spirit’s Taurus. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit that accused Led Zeppelin of stealing portions of “Stairway to Heaven” from “Taurus,” which was written by Randy California (né Randy Wolfe) of the 1990s band Spirit. The dispute stemmed from a passage 45 seconds into “Taurus,” which sounds like the opening guitar tones of “Stairway,” which was released three years after “Taurus.”

I won’t comment on the merits of the lawsuit, but it’s unfair to say “if the other guys were any decent, more people would have heard of em.”  No, no, no.  Spirit was great.  Songs like “Fresh Garbage” and “I Got a Line on You” were fixtures of late 1960s FM radio.

Sources:

C. Clarke [Aus4Aus] (2018, September 29). Great, what a crock! Some of the notes sound the same, but they are completely different. Love Led Zeppelin, if the other guys were any decent, more people would have heard of em.. The Artist is dead, just a Greedy estate rep trying to scam $$$$$$$$$ [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Aus4Aus/status/1045890297241063424.

Dolan, M. (2018, September 28). Court orders new trial over claim that Led Zeppelin stole ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Retrieved September 30, 2018, from http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-zeppelin-copyright-9th-circuit-20180928-story.html

Wolfe, R. (1968). Taurus. On Spirit. Retrieved September 30, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFHLO_2_THg