Arthur Conley with a musical question...
Do you like good musicNot to put too fine a point on it, but... yes. Yes, we DO. We've gone on about sweet soul music before, like this:
That sweet soul music
Just as long as it's swingin'
Oh yeah, oh yeah
Fast forward to 1960. I was now 15 and living in Washington, D.C. I'll choose the James Brown single on the left as an example of the revelation that came upon me beginning sometime around 1959 and culminated in 1960. That revelation was Black Radio and the R&B music featured there… which was unlike anything I had ever heard before (sorta: see Fats Domino, above). I'd go into my room at night and listen to my crackly, staticky AM radio, marveling at the music I heard… music that was Unobtanium in my white-bread, lily-white suburban world. Once again, consider the times… you simply did NOT find James Brown, Lloyd Price, or Ray Charles in the "hits" bin at Woolworths back in the day… that day being 1958 - 1960… at least not in suburbia. I would have had to journey into Southeast Washington to get that music in my hands back then and since I was only 15 and without a driver's license, that was out of the question. My parents simply wouldn't go there… literally… but the music was on the radio, the radio was in my room, and it was ON every single night. It was an education like no other.And elsewhere, as well, but the linked post is worth reading, if only for the comments. But as I said... not to put too fine a point on it...
I picked berries and mowed lawns as a kid, and my parents forced me to put the money in the bank for school clothes. I told my parents I wanted to buy a radio that had FM stereo. This was the summer of 1969, and I heard about FM from a friend. There was only a couple stations that I remember on the air, but it didn't matter, I only wanted to listen to one station. They were the opposite of top 40 AM, and the music was album oriented. They even played whole albums after 10pm.
ReplyDeleteI have fond memories of sitting with my aging mother who's only enjoyment was sitting in her recliner listening to that old radio I bought 20 years before. The radio lasted another five years after she died, and then just went poof one day. It had a great sound, with two speakers built-in. Not a big radio, but a big tuning dial. Kids today don't realize how big radio was. There was no APP, it was the era of the big knobs :-)
What a great tale, KINK. I'm getting to that point in life when anyone sez "kids today" I do a reflexive eye-roll. You're oh-so-right: radio was VERY big back in the late '60s and early '70s. And then MTV came along and fucked everything up.
DeleteGod, I may have commented on this topic before, but I used to have an old Zenith--remember the large woman's cosmetic luggage sized hard plastic (?) cordovan-colored one with a huge anodized circular gold dial and in the center a huge tuning bi-spoke tuning "spear" with a central knob and large cone-shaped tuning and vol knobs on lower left and right aside from the dial and a segmented cordovan plastic carrying strap on top?--and I would (circa 56-62) listen at night to Randy's Record shop at WLAC in Galletin, Tenn, or WDIA in Memphis or KAAY Little Rock or KOMA in Okla City or WOAI in San Antonio Also the Lou Dean show WRVA in Richmond, Va Also "Daddio Dayle's Jazz Patio" out of WBBM (?) in Chicago. I would skip across country twisting the tuning knobs on Fri & Sat nights until 1 or 2 am listening to one helluva different world. Then I went to LSU in Fall, 62 and ended up at an all-black James Brown concert across the river by mistake with two buddies drunk on Gin, but that's another story...
ReplyDeleteI think this is the first time you've mentioned the Zenith. My Ol' Man had one of those multi-band Hallicrafters when we lived overseas I was a (younger) kid. I "inherited" that radio when we moved back to the States and got a teevee in 1958... but I don't remember what happened to it after that. As for Clear Channel radio and "skips"... why the HELL was it so hard to get ANYTHING on the radio in West Texas? I mean, except for mariachi music.
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DeleteWasn't Wolf-Man Jack still broadcasting R&B from that 100,000-watt monster across the river over from Del Rio in Cuidad Acuna? Hell, we could hear him clear up in the Midwest in the late 50s clear as a bell (in the days before he became a parody of himself on tv.)
Johnny Hallyday did a french version (the only true music) "La seule vrai musique" crier - shout! :-)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix2PL6TTwxw
Oh, that was freakin' BRILLIANT! Who ever produced that version got ir right... right down to the horn charts. (And L'Académie française went ballistic with each and every "Oh Yeah!")
DeleteI can't believe Hallyday still tours. He must be at least your age. He retired once, but France wanted all his money so he high-tailed it to Switzerland, and then LA to keep it in the black (the hazards of living in a communist country). He was in Dallas in May, but I missed it. The Académie probably spit their milk out when I forgot my feminine 'e' on Vraie :-)
DeleteHe must be at least your age.
DeleteYeah, I stopped touring a couple o' years ago. ;-)
Like Virgil I had an old Zenith (smaller, older, wooden cabinet) and from 1954-58 listened faithfully almost every night to WLAC and the show sponsored by Randy's Record store in Gallatin which is only about 25 miles on out Gallatin Pike (US 31) from where I lived in the Inglewood section of East Nashville. (I later worked at a college in Gallatin for almost 30 years and passed the old Randy's building almost every day at lunch and Wood's big home itself was just across 31 from the college.)
ReplyDeleteGene Nobles and Hoss Allen are the DJs I remember most and they played R & B stuff by Jimmy Reed, Fats Domino, etc. and advertised products aimed at black audiences -- I remember the Royal Crown hair dressing ads specifically. The station was clear channel, 50,000 watts, and the signal could be picked up all over the place, certainly all over the south east--I remember getting it TX when we moved there in '58. The shows at first were probably meant to serve black audiences but gradually white kids began to tune in. Most of my friends listened to the station and it was always on the car radio in Jimmy's blue '54 Chevy convertible when we were cruising around at night.
To answer the question posed in the song, yes I do like good music, sweet soul music. Like you said in the post, this music was "an education like no other."
You've mentioned the Randy's Record show before, Dan, and I never get tired of hearing about that. I also wish I had your memory; I can't... for the life of me... remember the call letters of any of the stations I listened to in my early teens. Unlike you, however, I was on the outside in that my friends all thought I was weird when I went on about the things I'd heard on the radio. My new set of friends when we moved from the East Coast to California in 1960 were more open-minded, however. Or mebbe the times had changed just enough by that time.
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