With my 16th round Pick, scwf's Creeping Death, proudly selects in the “Piano/Keyboard” category, “The Killer” - Jerry Lee Lewis
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Is there an early rock & roller who has a crazier reputation than the Killer, Jerry Lee Lewis? His exploits as a piano-thumping egocentric wild man with an unquenchable thirst for living have become the fodder for numerous biographies, film documentaries, and a full-length Hollywood movie. Certainly few other artists came to the party with more ego and talent than he and lived to tell the tale. And certainly even fewer could successfully channel that energy into their music and prosper doing it as well as Jerry Lee. When he broke on the national scene in 1957 with his classic "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," he was every parents' worst nightmare perfectly realized: a long, blonde-haired Southerner who played the piano and sang with uncontrolled fury and abandon, while simultaneously reveling in his own sexuality. He was rock & roll's first great wild man and also rock & roll's first great eclectic. Ignoring all manner of musical boundaries is something that has not only allowed his music to have wide variety, but to survive the fads and fashions as well. Whether singing a melancholy country ballad, a lowdown blues, or a blazing rocker, Lewis' wholesale commitment to the moment brings forth performances that are totally grounded in his personality and all singularly of one piece. Like the recordings of
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Hank Williams, Louis Armstrong, and few others, Jerry Lee's early recorded work is one of the most amazing collections of American music in existence.
He was born to Elmo and Mamie Lewis on September 29, 1935. Though the family was dirt poor, there was enough money to be had to purchase a third-hand upright piano for the family's country shack in Ferriday, LA. Sharing piano lessons with his two cousins, Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Lee Swaggart, a ten-year old Jerry Lee Lewis showed remarkable aptitude toward the instrument. A visit from piano-playing older cousin Carl McVoy unlocked the secrets to the boogie-woogie styles he was hearing on the radio and across the tracks at Haney's Big House, owned by his uncle, Lee Calhoun, and catering to blacks exclusively. Lewis mixed that up with gospel and country and started coming up with his own style. He even mixed genres in the way he syncopated his rhythms on the piano; his left hand generally played a rock-solid boogie pattern while his right played the high keys with much flamboyant filigree and showiness, equal parts gospel fervor and Liberace showmanship. By the time he was 14, by all family accounts, he was as good as he was ever going to get. Lewis was already ready for prime time.
With the release of his first single, the road beckoned and it was here that Lewis' lasting stage persona was developed. Discouraged because he couldn't dance around the stage strumming a guitar like Carl Perkins, he stood up in mid-song, kicked back the piano stool and, as Perkins has so saliently pointed out, "a new Jerry Lee Lewis was born." This new-found stage confidence was not lost on Sam Phillips. While he loved the music of Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, he saw neither artist as a true contender to Elvis' throne; with Lewis he thought he had a real shot. For the first time in his very parsimonious life, Sam Phillips threw every dime of promotional capital he had into Lewis' next single, and the gamble paid off a million times over. "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" went to number one on the country and the R&B charts, and was only held out of the top spot on the pop charts by Debbie Reynolds' "Tammy." Suddenly Lewis was the hottest, newest, most exciting rock & roller out there. His television appearances and stage shows were legendary for their manic energy, and his competitive nature to outdo anyone else on the bill led to the story about how he once set his piano on fire at set's end to make it impossible for Chuck Berry to follow his act. Nobody messed with the Killer.
With box sets and compilations, documentaries, a bio flick, and his induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame all celebrating his legacy, Lewis still continued to record and tour, delivering work that vacillated from tepid to absolutely inspired. While his influence will continue to loom large until there's no one left to play rock & roll piano anymore, the plain truth is that there's only one Jerry Lee Lewis and American music will never see another like him.
Sly and Robbie are one of reggae's most prolific and long lasting production teams. The rhythm section of drummerLowell Dunbar (nicknamed Sly after Sly Stone, one of his favorite musicians) and bass guitarist Robert Shakespeare started working together in the mid 1970s, after having established themselves separately on the Jamaicanmusic scene. They are humorously also sometimes referred to as Sly Drumbar and Robbie Basspeare. For example, the sleeve notes of Black Uhuru's Red album credit drums and syndrums to Sly Drumbar and bass guitar to Robert "Robbie" Basspeare.
Sly and Robbie may well be the most prolific recording artists ever. One estimate is that they have played on or produced some 200,000 songs [1], considering that some of their riddims such as "Revolution" have been used on over 100 songs.
They changed the face of reggae several times: in 1976, they introduced a harder beat called "Rockers", which quickly replaced the then prevalent "One drop" style, then introduced the "rub a dub" sound in the early 1980s. Sly and Robbie were important in developing the trend towards computer assisted music and programming in the mid 1980s
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"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
I don't know if he was saying it in the same vein, but Bono has stated on a few occasions that U2, as a group, were horrendous musicians when they started.
Gilmour has more talent in his pinky...........he's being modest!
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
Bump. Really looking forward to sharing my next pick!
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
In the SONG category, there are so many songs to choose from. Songs that make you weep, songs that make you smile, songs that fill you with so many emotions, but I have to go with my all-time favourite song. A song that in my opinion created entire genre's of music. The first time someone had ever thought of the concept of "tape loops."
The very first song recorded on the Beatles Revolver album, but the final track.
Tomorrow Never Knows
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Who is in charge of this product and why haven't they been fired yet?
In the category of USA WestFooFighter15 would like to draftGreen Day.
"I realize that I recently drafted Beastie Boys under USA West category but I actually meant to put them under USA East. I am however very excited to ad Green Day to my fantasy roster. They are a band that I have always enjoyed, and was very thrilled to see them available in these late rounds."
In the category of Wildcard SingerFooFighter15 would like to draftRonnie Van Zant
"At the age of 16, Ronnie Van Zant was approached by the Band called Us. They needed a lead singer for their Rhythm and Blues Band. "US" was a local favorite that had competed in "Battle of the Bands" Contests. Another such band was called the Mods, which catered to the then rampant British Invasion and featured a young man named Allen Collins. Ronnie Van Zant was also influenced by a new long-hair band called The Rolling Stones. The high-energy music of The Rolling Stones and the Southern influences of Shorty Medlocke had created a dream in the young Ronnie Van Zant."
With my penultimate pick in the draft, troutman's K-Tel Sound Explosion selects in the album category, ELECTRIC LADYLAND, by The Jimi Hendrix Experience:
"If I don't meet you no more in this world, then I'll meet you in the next one, and don't be late, don't be late".
This one melts my mind. I wonder what direction he was headed next - we get a hint with the songs he was developing for First Rays of the New Rising Sun. I think he would have moved from blues to experimental jazz fusion.
Jimi Hendrix's third and final album with the original Experience found him taking his funk and psychedelic sounds to the absolute limit. The result was not only one of the best rock albums of the era, but also Hendrix's original musical vision at its absolute apex. When revisionist rock critics refer to him as the maker of a generation's mightiest dope music, this is the album they're referring to.
But Electric Ladyland is so much more than just background music for chemical intake. Kudos to engineer Eddie Kramer (who supervised the remastering of the original two-track stereo masters for this 1997 reissue on MCA) for taking Hendrix's visions of a soundscape behind his music and giving it all context, experimenting with odd mic techniques, echo, backward tape, flanging, and chorusing, all new techniques at the time, at least the way they're used here. What Hendrix sonically achieved on this record expanded the concept of what could be gotten out of a modern recording studio in much the same manner as Phil Spector had done a decade before with his Wall of Sound. As an album this influential (and as far as influencing a generation of players and beyond, this was his ultimate statement for many), the highlights speak for themselves: "Crosstown Traffic," his reinterpretation of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," the spacy "1983...(A Merman I Should Turn to Be)," and "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)," a landmark in Hendrix's playing. With this double set (now on one compact disc), Hendrix once again pushed the concept album to new horizons.
Written and recorded as a single, "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" is, in hindsight, one of Jimi Hendrix's more interesting records of his early career. A wildly imaginative, psychedelic lyric is the basis here, but musically it's even more striking. The main instrument is harpsichord, and, performed by Hendrix, it is turned from a chamber instrument into a rock rhythm instrument; and his performance on the keyboard — his only official recording credit — is quite interesting. A wah-wah guitar and some odd string arrangement touches offset this.
The dreamy song "Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)," taken from the concept album Electric Ladyland, is Hendrix's ode to the women who inspired him. Though often referred to as groupies, Hendrix preferred the term "Electric Ladies" and dedicated his album to them. Later Hendrix would dub his recording studio Electric Lady. A more soulful ballad than his usual hard, blues-rock affairs, Hendrix sings a high falsetto harmony with himself on the "magic carpet ride" of a song. Not dissimilar in structure and tone to his better-known and well-loved "Little Wing," there's a dreamlike quality to Hendrix's fluid and always excellent playing, matching his evocative lyrics that refer to angels and flying. It's crystal clear what he's putting across and he does it in just about two minutes.
"Crosstown Traffic" is an example of Jimi Hendrix's ability to write and perform a conventional pop song, albeit with some unusual effects. The lyric is an extended simile that criticizes an obtuse woman who is "just like crosstown traffic, so hard to get through to you." The song has a bouncy tune and a catchy chorus, and would be an ordinary, pleasant pop tune except for the elaborate arrangement and production, which finds Hendrix playing a kazoo to double some of the guitar parts and singing through a Pultec filter.
A great slice of blues/ psychedelia, "Gypsy Eyes" is based on a standard, ancient blues field holler, with Jimi Hendrix creating some great synergy between his vocal and the lead guitar riff. In fact, the song is loaded with a collection of riffs, and Hendrix neatly compiles them together in one song. Utilizing the recording studio as an instrument, Hendrix's overdubbing technique reaches an early peak here, as the multiple guitar parts swirl around each other in spectacular fashion. In addition, the flanging/phasing effects are also a part of the arrangement, and by proxy the song itself.
"Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" is both one of Jimi Hendrix's best-known and influential songs and, at the same time, one of his most confusing, with the title being rendered several different ways. There are two similarly named tracks listed on the Jimi Hendrix Experience's third album, Electric Ladyland, "Voodoo Chile," a 15-minute recording that took up most of the first side of the first disc on the original double-LP release, and "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," a five-plus-minute song that ends the album. That's right, the first one is spelled "Chile" with an "e," and the second "Child" with a "d." This is the way Hendrix himself spelled the titles in his handwritten credits for the album, which were reproduced in the CD booklet of the 1997 reissue. Both tracks feature what is essentially the same composition musically, a blues progression with a chorus in which Hendrix declares himself to be a voodoo chile (or child).
For me, though, Electric Ladyland is far more than just an album. Over time, it has become an invigorating life force, one that courses through my veins with regularity. It represents hope and purpose and inspiration, and is a bittersweet reminder of that brilliant flashing comet known as James Marshall Hendrix.
Eddie Kramer, who was Hendrix's engineer for "Electric Ladyland," picks the master tapes apart, explains Jimi's techniques, singles out interesting sounds and tracks, and talks about the process of making the album. His remembrances are augented by those of surviving Jimi Hendrix Experience members Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles, keyboardist Steve Winwood, bassist Jack Casady (all of whom played on the album), Hendrix's manager Chas Chandler, and a few (very few) interview clips with Hendrix from the time of the recording.
With my 17th round Pick, scwf's Creeping Death is extremey proud to select in the “Wildcard Singer” category, Miss Etta James
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Few R&B singers have endured tragic travails on the monumental level that Etta James has and remain on earth to talk about it. The lady's no shrinking violet; her autobiography, Rage to Survive, describes her past (including numerous drug addictions) in sordid detail.
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But her personal problems have seldom affected her singing. James has hung in there from the age of R&B and doo wop in the mid-'50s through soul's late-'60s heyday and right up into the '90s and 2000s (where her 1994 disc Mystery Lady paid loving jazz-based tribute to one of her idols, Billie Holiday). Etta James' voice has deepened over the years, coarsened more than a little, but still conveys remarkable passion and pain.
Jamesetta Hawkins was a child gospel prodigy, singing in her Los Angeles Baptist church choir (and over the radio) when she was only five years old under the tutelage of Professor James Earle Hines. She moved to San Francisco in 1950, soon teaming with two other girls to form a singing group. When she was 14, bandleader Johnny Otis gave the trio an audition. He particularly dug their answer song to Hank Ballard & the Midnighters' "Work With Me Annie."
Against her mother's wishes, the young singer embarked for L.A. to record "Roll With Me Henry" with the Otis band and vocalist Richard Berry in 1954 for Modern Records. Otis inverted her first name to devise her stage handle and dubbed her vocal group the Peaches (also Etta's nickname). "Roll With Me Henry," renamed "The Wallflower" when some radio programmers objected to the original title's connotations, topped the R&B charts in 1955. The Peaches dropped from the tree shortly thereafter, but Etta James kept on singing for Modern throughout much of the decade (often under the supervision of saxist Maxwell Davis). "Good Rockin' Daddy" also did quite well for her later in 1955, but deserving follow-ups such as "W-O-M-A-N" and "Tough Lover" (the latter a torrid rocker cut in New Orleans with Lee Allen on sax) failed to catch on.
James landed at Chicago's Chess Records in 1960, signing with their Argo subsidiary. Immediately, her recording career kicked into high gear; not only did a pair of duets with her then-boyfriend (Moonglows lead singer Harvey Fuqua) chart, her own sides (beginning with the tortured ballad "All I Could Do Was Cry") chased each other up the R&B lists as well. Leonard Chess viewed James as a classy ballad singer with pop crossover potential, backing her with lush violin orchestrations for 1961's luscious "At Last" and "Trust in Me." But James' rougher side wasn't forsaken — the gospel-charged "Something's Got a Hold on Me" in 1962, a kinetic 1963 live LP (Etta James Rocks the House) cut at Nashville's New Era Club, and a blues-soaked 1966 duet with childhood pal Sugar Pie De Santo, "In the Basement," ensured that.
Although Chess hosted its own killer house band, James traveled to Rick Hall's Fame studios in Muscle Shoals in 1967 and emerged with one of her all-time classics. "Tell Mama" was a searing slice of upbeat Southern soul that contrasted markedly with another standout from the same sessions, the spine-chilling ballad "I'd Rather Go Blind." Despite the death of Leonard Chess, Etta James remained at the label into 1975, experimenting toward the end with a more rock-based approach.
With the 17th round pick in the draft, Hanna Sniper's EC and the G-String Band, selects in the "Instrumental Soloist", from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, Hank Marvin
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Brian Robson Rankin (born 28 October 1941), Newcastle upon Tyne, known by the stage name Hank B. Marvin, is an English guitarist, lead guitarist for The Shadows. The group, which primarily performed instrumentals, was formed as a backing band for singer Cliff Richard. Marvin has a distinctive guitar sound and appearance, primarily using a clean sound with very high reverb and vibrato giving a dreamy effect.
Marvin was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. As a child, he played the banjo and the piano. Hearing one of Buddy Holly's songs made him switch to the guitar, although he occasionally played both instruments on recordings. At 16, he traveled with his Rutherford Grammar School friend Bruce Welch to London, where he met Johnny Foster, Cliff Richard's manager, at The 2i's Coffee Bar ("two eyes") in Soho.
Foster was looking for a guitarist for Richard's upcoming tour of the U.K., and Marvin agreed to join as long as there was also a place for Welch. Foster had actually been looking for guitarist Tony Sheridan at the Two 2i's, but by chance he encountered Marvin. Marvin and Welch joined the Drifters, as Cliff Richard's group was then known, and began their careers as professional guitar players.
They met Cliff Richard for the first time at a nearby Soho tailor's shop, where Richard was having a fitting for a pink stage jacket, and had their first rehearsal with him at his parents' home in Cheshunt.
Riders In The Sky
Apache
Pipeline
__________________ 2018 OHL CHAMPIONS
2022 OHL CHAMPIONS
An appropriate bump given the state of the draft and a recent pick.
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
