New Article from Louisville Magazine Rockin the Roadhouse

We have written about the legendary Club 68  (See June 27 2010 for pics and a June 25 2010 request to add  Hyleme George and Obie Slater   )  before and now  in Louisville magazine is a great article that adds a little more to the story . One of the bands that played there from Louisville were the Bitter Seeds see blog for SATURDAY, MAY 12, 2012

Thanks to the writer Jim Higdon author of The Cornbread Mafia 
Below is the link to the magazine . Even better go buy a copy .
Louisville Magazine Article

OF NOTE -"The Wrecking Crew" docu on the unsung heroes of pop records draws makhers to salute pioneering, pop studio-musicians, including drummer, Hal Blaine on 84th birthday

DemoCast TV News: "The Wrecking Crew" docu on the unsung heroes of pop records draws makhers to salute pioneering, pop studio-musicians, including drummer, Hal Blaine on 84th birthday

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Update

There is now a legacy brick in the front of the plaza at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland , Ohio,
Here is the certificate of authenticity .

The bands honored are :
The Bitterseeds
The Monarchs
The Sultans

Here in the blog we have information on all three bands as well as pictures

Del Shannon , Bo Diddley and The Monarchs

Monarch Band Member Memories
(provided by Louis "Dusty" Miller )
"The ( Del Shannon )gig was at the Buechel Armory, hot as Hell in July 1962. Del Shannon wore a long sleeve sweater. Cosmo did sing with the Monarchs and did  "You Got Me Going" with two sax rides.  Del did a third song after  Runaway,and Hats off to Larry. The third song was called "Little Dutch Maid" go  figure on that one. "

Blogger Note : Here is the song  -Del Shannon doing it live , it was  : "Swiss Maid "
 ( Thanks to Leonard Yates for this Info ) " I can add this FYI to the story. The tune Del would have played was The Swiss Maid. It was just being released as his new single (although one of his worst I think). It would make Billboard’s Hot 100 on Sept 15,1962 and peak a few weeks later at #64 for 5 weeks. His previous single was Cry Myself To Sleep which only peaked at #99 in May of '62 although it was good rockin’ single. The follow up to Swiss Maid was Little Town Flirt which charted in late Dec 62 and peaked at #12 in the winter of 1963. It was one of his biggest hits"

Del played lead guitar, the Monarchs switched around and provided a bass guitar player  ( Ernie Donnell ). The dance  was sponsored by  Greg Mason .
Now here are the Traveling Wilburys

Bo Diddley
"Greg Mason also  got The Monarchs  to play with Bo Diddley at the VFW on  Bardstown Road. His rhythm player was a girl named "Boobie Diddley" . She only knew one chord a "G" major, but then Bo played everything in"G" major except Road Runner.
 Bo carried his guitars in a coffin wrapped in blankets. The drummer  had three different colors of drums, red, blue and gold. One of the cymbals had a chunk out of it like somebody took a bite. Somebody stole Greg Mason's hat that night (he always wore a hat) He looked
a wet rat with his hat off. The Monarchs bass player played bass on a couple of
songs while Bo's  bass player did acrobatics on the stage."

Notes from your humble blogger :
I was at the Bo Diddley gig in the audience and the stage was outdoors on the north end of the building . The Bo Diddey group was Bo , Jerome ( the maracas and bass player ) , the female guitar player ( I thought he called her Loma Diddley ) and the Drummer .
What a show !

Jack Sanders , Gene Snyder and Greg Mason 1962

Wayne Mcdonald of the Sultans , The Keyes , The Graduates , Soul Incorporated Interview

Recently , we had a conversation with Wayne McDonald  . Many of you may not know of the very talented singer but you probably have heard him sometime in the past 50 plus years maybe on Mary , Mary as part of the Sultans or as part of the Keyes ( Barbara ) or live in the Graduates or with Soul Inc ( Hope you saw  them at the Louisville zoo on June 23 2012 ).

Wayne is a native Louisvillian born at the old  St Joseph hospital on Eastern Parkway ( not far from the White Castle and the Z Bar )and  grew up in the south end .

In Louisville we were fortunate to be exposed to all types of music and Wayne heard the country music , the blues and that good old hybrid called Rock and Roll as he grew up  .

Wayne attended junior high school at Gottschalk Junior High ( now Iroquois High School ) and it was there that the rock and roll journey began . 

The first group Wayne was with was  the Bitter Seeds and he met Mike Gossett ,who started the band, at Gottschalk . ( Please see the post from Mike Gossett in the previous posts of this blog -Included here is Mike's intro) 
 "The Bitter Seeds were  a band formed in 1958 and there were around Louisville some  well known and popular groups of the time like The Sultans with Tom Cosdon (Cosmo their lead singer), The Carnations, The Trendells, The Monarchs. These groups went on to even cut records, something as a matter of Bitter Seed history never did. Mike  once thought there existed an amateur recording of the group but if there was it never surfaced.   Nevertheless,  The Bitter Seeds did indeed get to as they say “run with the big dogs” meaning they got paid to perform, played a lot of major nightclubs and venues of the time,  got booked with the better named local groups, and even participated in a rock show that included nationally known rock and roll stars ( see the post on The Tokens ), and near the end of our run as a teenage band  were under contract with the local Louisville well known talent booking agency known as SAMBO which was an acronym for Sanders, Allen, Martin Booking Organization (more to follow in future entries to the blog.) .
The Bitter Seeds played the clubs in Lebanon ( please see the post 06/25/10 ) and because they were so young Wayne said that the parents had a bus driver to take the band back and forth to Lebanon .

The Bitter Seeds played other local clubs the Fabulon ( on seventh st road ) ,and the Say When ( on Berry Blvd not far from the intersection with seventh st road ).

Wayne joined the Sultans in 1963 and sang lead on their recording  Mary , Mary ( video on youtube )with the flip  How Far Does A Friendship Go ? on the Jam label .
Wayne is not in the picture but is the lead singer on both sides .

The studios that the Sultans and other groups  recorded were in Nashville and Louisville and were produced by Ray Allen and Hardy Martin.
The next group that Wayne joined was The Keyes a group formed by brothers Tom and Jim Owen . In 1964 they  toured as the opening act for the Shangri La's .
. The following year , 1965,  they had a song out on the JAM label called Barbara . (Wayne is on the right)

The follow up in 1966 was " She's the One "

In 1967 Wayne and his wife Sandy along with Butch Snider (previously the drummer with the Monarchs) formed a group called The Graduates . The group was together for more than 20 years performing around the kentuckiana area .According to Louisvilles Own , they had one recording" Dear Joe " in 1976  and Wayne was not on the recording.

Wayne is still performing and is often  called to perform with Soul Inc  . Please let us know if you would like to know more about Wayne and any other of the Louisville Groups .

Beyond the Music In New Orleans

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/05/156252315/beyond-the-music-in-st-louis-cemetery-no-2

Terrific article on New Orleans Music and Burial Customs . Go to the link and listen to the story .

EnlargePat Jolly/APErnie K-Doe poses outside his Mother-In-Law Lounge during Jazz Fest in New Orleans in 2001. He died a few months later and was buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.

 

There's so much water in, around and underneath New Orleans, that the dead spend eternity in tombs above ground.
Most of the tombs now have a similar design: On top, there's space for a wooden coffin or two, and at the bottom lies a potpourri of decanted family remains. Sooner or later, whoever is up high must vacate and settle lower, making room for the newly dead. That's how families stay together — in a desiccated jumble of grandpas, grandmas, siblings and cousins.
Well, in one of the city's oldest cemeteries, the final resting place of a white, aristocratic New Orleans family is also the eternal home of black musical royalty: an emperor, a king, a consort and a mother-in-law.
From Chitlin' Circuit To Pop Charts
In 1961, Ernie K-Doe managed something that no one from New Orleans had ever done before — not Fats Domino, not Louis Prima, not even Louis Armstrong at that point. K-Doe scored a No. 1 pop hit with a song about his — and apparently a lot of other people's — mother-in-law:

She's the worst person I know
Mother-in-Law, Mother-in-law!
She worries me so
Mother-in-Law, Mother-in-Law!
If she'd leave us alone
We'd have a happy home
Sent from down below
Mother-in-Law. Mother-in-Law!

Written by the New Orleans impresario Allen Toussaint, "Mother-in-Law" is still irresistibly sing-able.
" 'Mother-in-Law' was No. 1 on the R&B charts for five weeks," says Ben Sandmel, who wrote Ernie K-Doe, The R&B Emperor of New Orleans. "It was No. 1 on the pop charts for one week. This is when the black and white music worlds were considered to be very separate. And he went from playing the Chitlin' Circuit and being a local artist to having huge success in a very short time."

EnlargeCourtesy of Rob Florence Antoinette K-Doe (second from the left) stands with friends around a statue of her deceased husband, Ernie, at the St. Louis No. 2 tomb. Antoinette is buried in the tomb, and her mother — Ernie K-Doe's second and favorite mother-in-law, Leola Clark — is shown in the portrait. Clark is buried in the tomb, too.Courtesy of Rob Florence

K-Doe maintained that only three songs would stand the test of time: "Amazing Grace," "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Mother-in-Law," because, as he put it, "There's gonna be mothers-in-law until the end of time."

The singer was just exciting, Sandmel says.
"He was young, he was in great shape ... did all the microphone tricks and the dance moves that had been made famous by James Brown and Jackie Wilson. And he would take whatever material was put in front of him and just sing the hell out of it," he says.
But to most who knew him, Ernie K-Doe had a problem with self-esteem: He had too much of it. He even challenged James Brown to a showdown in New Orleans. Later, K-Doe declared himself "Emperor of the Universe."
St. Louis Cemetery No. 2
Ernie K-Doe never returned to the top of the charts. Instead, he hit bottom, facing alcoholism and homelessness. But in the late 1990s, K-Doe and his wife, Antoinette, opened a club and had a growing cult of young followers.
Then on July 5, 2001, Ernie K-Doe surprised nearly everyone when he died of cancer.
"I was hugging and kissing on Antoinette and doing the typical thing, 'What are you going to do? Where are you going to bury him?' " says Anna Ross, a champion of cemetery preservation in New Orleans, who paid a call on K-Doe's widow when he passed away.
"And she said, well, they have a family cemetery in Erwinville, and he didn't want to be buried there. They have a couple of plots at this cemetery on Airline Highway; he didn't want to be buried there. He really wanted to be buried in St. Louis No. 2, because it was down the street from the bar."

Masahiro Sumori/WikimediaEarl King on stage at the 1997 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. He died a few years after Ernie K-Doe, and now the two share a tomb.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 is prime real estate in New Orleans and dates all the way back to Reconstruction. By happy coincidence, Ross' then-21-year-old daughter had just inherited a family tomb there. So young Heather Twichell offered the K-Does a berth, and Antoinette accepted.
"Then there was this gossip running around town: 'What is this white woman and her daughter and Antoinette doing? They burying a black man in a white man's tomb,' " Ross says. "My daughter thought it was the right thing to do. So we went ahead and had a funeral. People were dancing on top of tombs and vaults around here. It was wild."
The funeral was as grand as the Emperor had hoped. Thousands came to see Ernie K-Doe's services at the city's most regal hall. The second line parade to the cemetery was so long, it shut down the central business district. And sure enough, K-Doe's coffin desegregated the Twichell family tomb.
"He's the one who's made such a great impact on New Orleans ... and our music," Twichell says. "It's a gift."
Ernie's second mother-in-law — Antoinette's mother — joined him in the tomb shortly thereafter. He liked her. A couple of years later, Twichell opened the door again and welcomed a King.

'Those Lonely, Lonely Nights'

Ernie K-Doe may have had a national No. 1 hit, but Earl King was by far the greater artist. By the time of his death — on April 17, 2003 — King had written briefcases full of blues and R&B standards, including this one:

Those lonely, lonely Nights.
There's been some lonely, lonely nights
Oh baby, yes, since you've been gone
Lay my head on my pillow
How I cry all night long
The things you used to say to me
I thought that we would never part
Yes, you know I love you darling
Why did you break my heart?

Johnny Guitar Watson, Robert Palmer and Teena Marie were among the many who recorded Earl King songs. As was Jimi Hendrix. Remember "Come On (Part 1)"?

People see me but they just don't know
What's in my heart and why I love you so
I love ya baby like a miner love gold
So come on baby, let the good times roll

And then there's the Mardi Gras anthem that King wrote for his mother, "Big Chief." If you ever go to New Orleans and don't hear "Big Chief," then you should ask for your money back, because somebody took you to the wrong town.
"I'd rank Earl King at the very top in importance of anybody we ever recorded," says Hammond Scott, who was a co-owner of Blacktop Records and recorded King in his later years. "He was one of the most unique songwriters that came out of New Orleans and that ever will. He was dynamite."

 

Local Louisville Musician Remembers Dick Clark

Link Includes Video and article .

http://www.whas11.com/home/Local-musician-recalls-tour-with-Dick-Clark-148030065.html

Thanks to Wayne Mcdonald for sending and Marvin Maxwell for the interview with WHAS .


 Dick Clark is credited with introducing Rock-n-Roll to mainstream America. He also formed a traveling tour call the Caravan of Stars. 

In the ‘60s, a local group called Soul Inc. got the chance of a lifetime. Marvin Maxwell, owner of Mom’s Music, was the drummer. He said he’ll never forget the phone call he received when he was asked to join the tour while at work. 
“He said, ‘Would you like to go on the road with the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars?’ and I like drew a couple of breaths and said, ‘Well sure. When?’ and they said, ‘Tonight,’" Maxwell said. 
Maxwell quit his job and the band joined the tour. He said they played 30 shows in 30 states in 30 days. He recalled Dick Clark.
“He was a star as much as anybody else in those days or more so. He was the one who got this Rock-n-Roll thing going, but he was a very nice, clean cat. A very nice dude,” Maxwell said. 
Clark died Wednesday from a massive heart attack in Los Angeles. He was 82. 
“I don’t know what the words are, but it's almost a shock that he’s gone because he got so much going for the music industry,” Maxwell said. 
Clark is survived by his wife and three children.

Blogger Comments :


Growing up in Louisville , one did not get to see Dick Clark unless your TV had UHF . That's right , Mr Clark was on WLKY Channel 32 .


 The first commercial UHF TV station in the US, Portland Oregon's KPTV, received its license and went on the air in late 1952. The FCC had authorized the new TV channels 14 through 83 earlier that year, to relieve the crowding that was occurring as commercial television boomed in the post-war period. To receive the new channels, if any were assigned in your area, you would need a converter for your existing TV set (which of course tuned only 2 through 13). Though the TV set manufacturers were pretty quick to make built-in UHF tuners an (extra-cost) option for their sets, it wasn't until 1964 that the FCC required UHF capability in all new TVs, and 1975 before they had to be as easy to use as the VHF tuners. Add-on converter boxes were therefore the common way to get the additional channels for many years.

So , another memory from the past .