March 25, 2011

1931 - Hal Kemp and his orchestra recorded Whistles, with Skinnay Ennis. No sign of Whistles anywhere on the 'net, but lots of Hal and Skinnay. For the uninitiated, Hal Kemp was a jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, bandleader, composer, and arranger. He was born in Marion, Alabama and died in Madera, California following an auto accident. His major recordings were There's a Small Hotel, This Year's Kisses, Where or When, When I'm With You, Got a Date With an Angel, and Three Little Fishes. Skinnay Ennis was an American singer and bandleader who met Hal Kemp in 1927 while both were attending college at the University of North Carolina. Kemp picked Ennis to play drums in his campus band, the Carolina Club Orchestra, and when Kemp left UNC to form a professional jazz band later that year Ennis went with him. Kemp also encouraged him to sing. His singing style was shy and breathless and proved a perfect match for the unique style of sweet dance music that Kemp's orchestra came to play by the mid-1930s. He quickly became popular with female audiences and was soon the band's biggest star. And this, dear reader, was one of their most popular and enduring hits, from the 1933 movie, 42nd Street, You're Getting To Be A Habit With Me.

1960 - Roy Orbison created his own style of music, his writing of songs a little left of centre in their construction, his voice immaculate to the core. This is the day as a new decade got underway, that he recorded one of his best, one of his most famous, and one of the most loved, Only the Lonely. Here is the original version, in a rare clip showing Roy without his glasses and looking a little uncomfortable. The second is a tribute night to Roy, with back-up from the liks of Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Jackson Brown and many more, 27 years later, in 1987.

1961 - A year after Roy's big hit, and Elvis Presley performed a live show in Pearl Harbour and didn't perform live again until 1969. The show raised $62,000 for the U.S.S. Arizona memorial fund. Just listen to Elvis introduce his band of pure-breed, rock'n'roll maverick pioneers at that very show, exactly half a century ago today. This is Elvis, March 24, 1961, in Pearl Harbour.

1967 - This is the very day that The Who made their US début at Murray The K’s shows at the Brooklyn Fox Theatre, New York. They performed for ten consecutive days, and the vibe no doubt helped boost sales and their live reputation to the point that their record, Happy Jack, became their first US chart single, reaching number 24. So...let's have a look at Happy Jack, then. What were they on, do you think? Some rock histprians think The Who were the third part f the British rock trinity, the other two being The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. What do you think about that?

1968 - This is supposedly the night, March 25, of the final, and I think 58th episode of The Monkees TV show. Now I could be wrong, but I think this is Tim Buckley singing Song To The Siren on that very final show, and introduced by Mickey Dolenz. Can any of our American readers out there possibly confirm this?

1974 - This is the day Barbra Streisand began recording the album, Butterfly. In a 1992 interview with Larry King, Streisand cited Butterfly as the least favorite of her albums. The genre diversity of popular music today was demonstrated by Van Halen five years after that when they released their album, Van Halen II. On March 25, 1985, Prince won an Oscar for Best Original Score for the soundtrack for his movie, Purple Rain. Would love to show you Prince videos but he has disallowed it. And don't you just know it, six years after that, in 1991, Michael Jackson escorted Madonna to the Oscars...or was it the other way 'round? And how did that odd coupling happen, anyway, or was it such an odd coupling.