Tuesday, December 19, 2023
Friday, December 15, 2023
Thursday, December 14, 2023
Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Monday, December 11, 2023
Friday, December 8, 2023
Thursday, December 7, 2023
Wednesday, December 6, 2023
Tuesday, December 5, 2023
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Thursday, June 8, 2023
`New Masses' Magazine 's 1947 Review Of `Peoples Songs' Magazine Revisited
In his review of the late 1940s U.S. protest folk music magazine, People's Songs, that was published in the April 29, 1947 issue of New Masses magazine, Sidney Finkelstein wrote the following about the late 1940s U.S. pop music scene and the aims of People's Songs magazine:
"Tin-Pan Alley has sunk to its lowest depths. Not even the occasional inspirations of fresh melody...can be found now. Instead, hack musicians are desperately stealing from...mountain tunes and blues, rearranging and copying their own output of the Twenties and Thirties. The very censorship of words and standardization of tune which the song-publishing industry has forced upon the art has ended up drying up the source out of which even its own fresh material came.
"People's Songs aims at giving popular music back to the people. It does this by bringing to light folk songs of quality, and the fine, meaningful poetry that accompanied them; by encouraging new stanzas of contemporary significance, and new variations on the tunes.
"It aims at making popular music mean something to people, and most important, at restoring their creative participation in the making of music...It should be supported by all who are interested in combatting the slow death that has spread throughout popular music..."
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Were Some Early 1960s Melodies Copyrighted By Dylan Created By Other Folks?
If you check out some of the "Bob Dylan" songbooks that were first published in the early 1960s, you'll notice that the authorship of the "words and MUSIC" of the songs included in the songbooks are claimed by "Bob Dylan" and copyrighted by Dylan and his publisher. Yet as Micharel Gray noted in his 2006 book, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia:
"In Patrick Humphries' 1984 interview with the Clancys, Paddy [Clancy] suddenly offers this...story about Dylan..: `You want to know where Dylan got his stuff? There was a little folk club here in London, down in the basement; we sang in it one night...Anyway, Al Grossman paid somebody and gave them a tape-recorder, and every folk-singer that went up there was taped, and Bob Dylan got all those tapes...' And Liam [Clancy] agrees with this, adding: `Yes, and the tune of `Farewell] [a song Dylan copyrighted in 1963 and is included in his official songbooks]...whoever was singing harmony was closer to the mike than the guy singing melody, and when [Dylan] wrote his version, he wrote it to the harmony not the melody line.'
"...The songs he probably took specifically from hearing the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performing live are: the traditional `Brennan on the Moor,' which becme his `Rambling Gambling Willie' [copyrighted 1962]..' the traditional `The Parting Glass', which mutated into `Restless Farewell'...and the...tune Dominic Behan used for his song `The Patriot Game', which the Clancys sang and from which Dylan...created `With God On Our Side.'
In response to a 1976 query about Dylan's use of the melody of Dominic Behan's "The Patriot Game" song from the late 1950s for Dylan's early 1964 recording of "With God On Our Side," Dominic Behan wrote the following in a January 31, 1976 letter from Happendon, Douglas in Lanark, Scotland:
"Thank you for the interest you are showing in my song, `The Patriot Game". Some years ago I tried to get Dylan to settle the matter as one artist to another. I rang him at an hotel in London where he had been living then. Dylan's reaction was that I didn't have the resources to take any legal action against him, and he therefore replied, `Get lost, bum! The songs I write make other people's attempts at art good.'
"Mr. Dylan was, of course, correct in his view of my financial state. I couldn't take him to court, and, my publishers in America, `The Richmond Organisation', think the whole matter too costly and not worth the candle.
"I wrote the song (words and music) on the 1st January, 1957, after Feargal O'Hanlon had been shot dead the night previously.
"Thanks very much for your interest, though, when dealing with folk as ruthless as Mr. Dylan, I doubt if you and the other honest people around can do a lot of good.
"Thanks anyway and best wishes,
"Dominic Behan."
Sunday, May 21, 2023
`Sing-Out' Magazine Editor Irwin Silber's Take on Bob Shelton/Dylan Revisited
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| `NY Times' Establishment Folk Music Critic Bob Shelton with Bob Dylan in 1964. |
In an interview, that was published in Richie Unterberger's 2002 Turn! Turn! Turn! book, former 1960s Sing Out! magazine editor Irwin Silber recalled why he was concerned about the artistic and political direction Bob Dylan was moving after 1964 and characterized the U.S. Establishment's New York Times's then-folk music critic, Bob Shelton, in the following way:
"My biggest concern was not with electricity...but with what Dylan was saying and doing about moving away from his political songs. In fact, even saying, well, he just used that for a while in order to get a break and all that kind of...and that's what distressed me more than anything else.
"...He combined a great artistic feel with a political sense that was poetic, that moved people. And now, to find him turning his back on it, at a time when...the civil rights movement is at its height, the beginning of the protest against the Vietnam War, and so on...And the left--the new left...was developing a whole new sense of politics. And to have Dylan deliberately, consciously, moving away from it at that time.--Well, I reall felt bad about that..."
"Bob Shelton was a funny figure in all this...The folk boom unfolded, and he was already in place at the New York Times...There was an arrogance to the way in which he appointed himself, and which everybody had to relate to because after all it's the New York Times, as sort of the definitive judge when it came to what was good, what was bad, and all those kinds of things.
"And his judgments weren't always very sound. I think he had a tendency to follow the crowd, to look for things that would make him stand out. I know for sure that he was not above working hand in glove with record producers and promoters in relation to their material, their acts and so on...
"...He then began to operate as a political judge, too...He was critical of people like me and the activists and so on, who were taking what he considered a far-left position in our militant opposition to the war...He used his position in terms of succumbing to influence, not being particularly well qualified to write what he was writing about, and to the political side of it...."
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| 1960s `Sing Out!' Magazine Editor Irwin Silber with U.S. Movement Folksinger Barbara Dane |
Friday, May 19, 2023
Post-1981 Rock Concert Ticket Price Hikes Revisited
As Sean Kay recalled in his 2017 book Rockin' The Free World: How The Rock & Roll Revolution Changed America And The World:
"..The price of concert tickets (often channeled through corporations like Live Nation and Ticketmaster) went up. By 2012, the average concert ticket price had increased abour 400 percent since 1981. This far outpaced the 150 percent increase in overall consumer price inflation."
The same book also indicated how the ownership of the corporate media radio stations which air rock music in the USA became more monopolized by only a few corporate media conglomerates--after Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs [SIPA] Professor and Columbia University SIPA's Institute of Global Politics Director Hillary Clinton's husband--Bill Clinton--signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996:
"By 2012 only 6 national corporations owned 90 percent of media outlets. The Future of Music Coalition found in 2006 that the top 4 radio station owners had almost half the listeners and the top 10 almost two-thirds of listeners in the United States. Local or regional ownership had declined by one-third between 1975 and 2005. The Future of Music Coalition concluded that `...radio consolidation has no demonstrated benefit for the public.'...
"This consolidation trend results from President Bill Clinton signing the...Telecommunications Act of 1996...Large companies--many with direct interest in controlling what programming aired--bought out regional and smaller market stations...The Future of Music Coalition shows advertising revenue increased from 12 percent market share for the top 4 companies in 1993 to 50 percent market share for the top 4 companies in 2004 while playlists from commonly owned stations in the same format overlapped up to 97 percent. For example, Clear Channel (now iHeart Radio), the Future of Music Coalition showed, `multiplied its stations holdings by a factor of 30, going from 40 stations to 1,200 within 5 years of the Telecom Act.'...
"Common Cause found that between 1997 and 2005, 8 of the nation's largest communications companies and 3 of their trade groups had spent more than $400 million on political contributions and lobbying in Washington..."
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
Wednesday, April 19, 2023
Friday, April 14, 2023
Steve Chapple & Reebee Garofalo's `Rock`N' Roll Is Here To Pay' Book Revisited: Part 4
In their 1977 book, Rock'N'Roll Is Here To Pay: The History and Politics of the Music, Steve Chapple & Reebee Garofalo recalled the pre-1977 history and politics of the U.S. corporate rock music industry in the following way:
"The critical effect of rock music was lost...The music became separated from the political ferment that had provided it with its critical edge...in the...sixties...
"...The potential for cooptation of rock music had always been present...Economically rock music has never posed a problem for the capitalist organization of the economy. Whether in the form of a record, a tape, a concert ticket, or a booking agency fee, rock music was a packaged commodity...
"Most political `censorship' of record artists is self-censorship...It has been estimated that at least 50 superstars make more than a million dollars [equal to around $4.9 million in 2023] each year [in late 1970s]. The money puts the musician in a qualitatively different position than most of his audience...
"Some of the highest paid musicians become sophisticated corporate investors. Bob Dylan owns oil stock, for instance, and Neil Young owns a string of shopping centers. His ventures are managed by Segal, Rubenstein & Gordon, Los Angeles financial counselors...Top stars, the Rolling Stones being a particularly spectacular example, have become part of the standard bourgeois jet set...
"At this point it should be evident that the vast majority of rock music does little to challenge...the basis of American society--production for private profit...For now, of course, rock'n'roll is here to pay. It is a packaged commodity which enriches a few monopoly corporations..."
Saturday, April 8, 2023
Steve Chapple & Reebee Garofalo's `Rock'N'Roll Is Here To Pay' Book Revisited: Part 3
"Shortly after their introduction to America in 1964, the Beatles re-released such classics as `Roll Over Beethoven' by Chuck Berry, `Twist and Shout' by Isley Brothers, Barrett Strong's `Money', the Shirelles' `Boys', `Long Tall Sally' by Little Richard. Similarly, the Animals brought back Ray Charles's `Hit the Road Jack' (written by Mayfield) and Sam Cooke's `Shake'. The Rolling Stones did Rufus Thomas's `Walking the Dog,' `Hitchhike' by Marvin Gaye, a number of Chuck Berry tunes including `Carol', `Talking About You', and `Around and Around'...
"...The Beatles along with the dozens of other English groups that quickly followed them were...more marketable than the black artists they imitated....Black acts in general showed a sharp decline on the singles chart from an all-time high of 42 percent in 1962 to 22 percent in 1966...On the album charts, only 3 of the Top 50 LPs for the year 1964 and 1965 were by black artists...Virtually the only black music on white radio, during this period, was produced out of Motown...It is hard to imagine Eric Clapton being...criticized for playing blues guitar if he were not making millions off his music, while the bluesmen whose licks he copied are starving to death...
"In the early sixties women became a recognized trend in rock'n'roll for the first time. Female vocal groups...began to hit the top of the charts. In addition to the Orlons, the Crystals, the Sensations, the Chiffons, the Essex, the Ronnettes, and the Jaynettes, there were the Shangri-Las and the Dixie Cups, and the Motown groups--the Marvelettes, the Supremes, and Martha and the Vandellas...
"...The female vocal groups were pushed from the charts...when the Beatles crashed onto the scene in 1964-65...The...popularity of the Beatles was the single greatest force responsible for the decline of women on the charts in the mid-sixties...In 1969, one of the great years for hard rock, there were fewer women on the year-end single charts than at any time since World War II. The situation for both women album and singles artists was even worse than it had been at the end of 1966, during the height of the British invasion..."
Monday, April 3, 2023
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Steve Chapple & Reebee Garofalo's `Rock'N'Roll Is Here To Pay' Book Revisited: Part 2
In their 1977 book, Rock'N'Roll Is Here To Pay: The History and Politics of the Music, Steve Chapple & Reebee Garofalo characterized and recalled the pre-1977 history and politics of Rolling Stone magazine and the U.S. corporate rock music industry in the following way:
"Rolling Stone...plays down or ignores any political movements outside of the two party system or not backed by some sector of American business...The magazine could not be as large...as it is without the large volume of music industry advertising it carries...The record companies are linked in with big business in the United States. There are no indications from the parent firms, the separate power of the record divisions within the parent firms, or `youth' businesses like Rolling Stone that any of them will be responsible for, or support, fundamental political change in the United States...
"Big Mama Thornton recorded `Hound Dog' three years before Elvis Presley, and according to her the song sold over 2 million copies. But as to her royalties she says, `I got one check for $500 and I never seen another.' Presley also recorded `That's All Right,' written by Arthur `Big Boy' Crudup. Though the song was a big hit for Presley, Crudup was reputed to have received nothing more than an appreciative plaque from Presley and his manager.
"Another tactic used against black music was `cover versions' of black hits...The Beatles' version of `Twist and Shout' and `Roll Over Beethoven'...cam several years after the originals, but reproduce them note for note with identical vocal style and arrangement...In the 1950s covers were used by major companies to recover the inroads r&b made into the white audience of the time...
"Several dozen songs were...covered by the majors in the early years of rock'n'roll. RCA began by covering `Kokomo' by Gene and Eunice with a version by Perry Como. Columbia covered the same song with a version by Tony Bennett...Mercury's Crew Cuts...did a cover of the Chords' `Sh'Boom' (originally on Atlantic's Cat label) that became the fifth best-selling pop song of 1954. They pillaged the r&b list after `Sh' Boom; covering hits like Nappy Brown's `Don't Be Angry' (Savoy), the Charms' `Gum Drop (Deluxe), and the Penguins' `Earth Angel.' Mercury's Georgia Gibbs covered Etta James's `Wallflower' with a cleaned up version called `Dance with Me Henry.'...Decca used the McGuire Sisters (on their Coral subsidiary) to cover the Moonglow's `Sincerely' (Chess) and made it the #7 best-selling pop song in 1955, along with their cover of Joe Turner's `Shake, Rattle, and Roll.'
"Pat Boone...built his reputation...by covering black rhythm and blues tunes. His label, Dot, was the most successful company at the practice. Boone recorded `Ain't That A Shame' (Fats Domino), `i Almost Lost My Mind' (The Harptones) and `Tutti-Frutti' (Little Richard), among others."
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Steve Chapple & Reebee Garofalo's `Rock'N'Roll Is Here To Pay' Book Revisited: Part 1
In their 1977 book, Rock'N'Roll Is Here To Pay: The History and Politics of the Music, Steve Chapple & Reebee Garofalo characterized the pre-1977 history and politics of the U.S. corporate rock music industry in the following way:
"...The music industry is racist...and many of the political forces that are exerted on blacks outside the business are duplicated within it...It is important to look at the unfolding of that racism within the history of the industry...
"...The music business, the record companies and radio stations, are integrated into a much larger framework of other businesses, sources of finance capital, and the general network of the business system which has an interest--a real, material interest--in reproducing and reinforcing the status quo...
"...In many cases record companies are owned by some of the most obviously reactionary and militarist corporations in the United States...
"Three major record companies...are politically indistinguisable from their parent firms: RCA, CBS, and ABC. RCA and CBS have long been part of a business establishment that supports both major political parties on a regular basis...
"...Most directors at CBS and RCA supported the [Vietnam] war when it was backed by Republicans and Democrats under the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations...
"...During the Vietnam War buildup RCA had annual Defense Department contracts averaging $300 million, and still got some $243 million in DOD business in 1974.
"During the 1960s CBS president Frank Stanton...was chairman of the board of the Rand Corporation, the Air Force-funded think tank that has done extensive secret research for the military on subjects as diverse as counterinsurgency warfare techniques, effectiveness of prisoner interrogation methods, and police surveillance uses of cable television...Stanton was head of the committee that annually reviewed the activities of the U.S. Information Agency, a CIA-funded propaganda operation overseas, and he was chairman of Radio Free Europe, another propaganda outlets, financed through the CIA...
"Given their ties into big and bigger business, no progressive political initiative will be coming from the parent firms of the record companies..."