1959 - Lloyd Price had his first big hit in 1952, with Lawdy Miss Clawdy, but he went off track for a while, and although he continued to release records, none hit the spot like his first. Until, that is, he began to refine that New Orleans back-beat and then he achieved a series of national and international hits. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. His first real global breakthrough record, Personality, was released today in 1959. New Orleans legend, and the man who put the roll into rock, Fats Domino, is a sideman session player on this recording. One of the big songs of my childhood, Personality from Lloyd Price...great voice...soul pop, I'd call his music.
1964 - John Lennon's In His Own Write, was a collection of funny poems and drawings, published in the U.S. 47 years ago today. Here we have Lennon discussing the book in Sweden 1964 while Paul, George, and Ringo take the piss in a way they could only do.
1968 - It was 1968 when Dustin Hoffman starred in a breakthrough movie, The Graduate, and this was the day that Simon & Garfunkel released the theme song to the movie, and the song was entitled Mrs. Robinson. Sounds of Silence also featured in the movie, also a Paul Simon song. This is a brilliant movie, that captures succinctly, the hypocrisy of middle class society...catch the seduction scene and a bunch of other stuff from the movie.
1969 - This was the night that superstar Jose Feliciano hosted his TV special, and his guests that night included Glen Campbell, Dionne Warwick, Andy Williams, and Burt Bacharach - not a bad lineup in anybody's language. The vid is a big disjointed, but it still gives the feeling of the show that night.
1976 - This was the day, as he travelled by train from Russia to Poland, that David Bowie was detained because he had nazi books. The books were for research on a project he was doing at the time. And what was Bowie doing musically? Looking very German, as you can see from the following two absolute gem videos; first up the 1976 Vancouver PreTour Rehearsals, and after that another rehearsal, both totally bootlegged.
1980 - In yesterday's *MUSICBACKTRACK* you would have read and watched the piece on the opening of Studio 54 in New York. Three years later, but not quite to the day, the super club shut its doors, and that was 31 years ago today.
2001 - Cable channel A&E aired Live By Request in which the Bee Gees performed many of their hit songs. This following performance was taken straight from on the day it aired!!! This IS Maurice Gibb's final performance before his death in 2003. First up is How Deep Is Your Love, followed by You Should Be Dancing.
2003 - Showing no signs of slowing down, Iggy Pop reunited with the Stooges for the first time in decades, today, on the closing night of California’s Coachella Festival. Other performers included the White Stripes, the Hives, Primal Scream, Blur, Hot Hot Heat, the Libertines and Queens of the Stone Age. Not a bad little lineup, eh?
SPECIAL TRIBUTE TO PHOEBE SNOW:
Phoebe Snow, the New Jersey songstress whose hit Poetry Man made her a star in 1975, died Tuesday, of complications caused by a January 2010 brain hemorrhage. Snow, 58, was a patient at the JFK Hartwyck at Oak Tree branch of JFK Medical Center, according to a hospital spokesman.
Snow, who was raised in Teaneck, went from amateur-night obscurity to stardom with her Top-5 jazzy-pop hit Poetry Man. The single showcased Snow's gift for vocal range and emotional depth, yet subsequent releases never attained the heights of her first hit.
"She had her greatest success when she was young, but like a lot of situations, she was just as good if not better later on," said Glen Burtnik, a North Brunswick-raised musician who collaborated with Snow and became her friend.
Snow's voice also was heard on the theme song for The Cosby Show spinoff, A Different World, and she often was a guest on the Howard Stern radio show. Along the way, she made a few stops in the former Club Bene in Sayreville.
But much of Snow's time was spent caring for her daughter, Valerie, who was born with severe brain damage the same year Poetry Man was released. Valerie died in 2007 at age 31.
"I've lived with her for 23 years, and she definitely translates thoughts into feelings," said Snow of her daughter to the Home News Tribune in 1999. "She's very open. It hits you at a gut level because she's very open and so beautiful." Snow was dedicated to her daughter.
"It's sad because Phoebe never heard her daughter talk," said Burtnik, who now lives in Asbury Park. "Valerie never spoke. I was around her and she was a very sweet soul and very loving, and she was Phoebe's cause. Phoebe had this incredible voice, this God-given voice, and then her daughter had no voice. It was tragic."
