Category: Music

Happy 30th Birthday to the Compact Disc!

Born to Run CD
Although I did eventually buy some Billy Joel CDs, this Springsteen CD was in my first CD purchase.

On October 1 in 1982, the first commercial compact disc was released, as was the first commercial CD player. The first CD released that day was released in Japan and it was Billy Joel’s 1978 album 52nd Street.

Although that day saw the first commercial release, the joint work of Sony and Philips created the new music format several years earlier before the technology became commercially available.

Partly because of a high price tag on the new technology, cassette tapes remained more popular than CDs until the late 1980s. But the CD format eventually took over.

The CD changed the way we listen to music.  It featured longer playing times than record albums all in a compact size.

The CD also featured what many thought was a better sound than other formats, although that issue is still debated. The CD format is still very popular, and digital sales did not surpass CD sales until 2015.

Whatever the future holds, take a moment to salute the CD format.  It originally gave us great music listening experiences through the 1980s, the 1990s, and into the current century.  And I do miss CD stores.

In tribute, lets go back to someone plopping down the big bucks thirty years ago and buying that first CD and turning it on to hear that first song, “Big Shot”. . .

My personal encounter with CDs was still a few years away on that October day in 1982. I recall hearing music on a friend’s CD player for one of the first times years later, around 1986. And I got my first player a few years later. At that time, I made my first CD purchase of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run.

What was your first CD?

Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Harvest Moon Will Smile, Shine On All the While

    shine on harvest moon roy rogers The Harvest Moon is the full moon that falls closest to the autumnal equinox and gained its name because in the days before electricity, the moon aided farmers harvesting when the sun was not up. What mainly distinguishes the Harvest Moon from other moons is that this time of year there is less time between successive moonrises than usual.

    For more information on the Harvest Moon and its special appearance, check out the EarthSky website. If you prefer a video explanation, check out this video:

    The Harvest Moon is also responsible for inspiring a classic Tin Pan Alley song from the early 1900s. There is some dispute about the song’s authors, but “Shine On, Harvest Moon” was originally credited to the couple of Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, who were married at the time they wrote the song but later divorced. Both Bayes and Norworth had other successes, including that Norworth wrote the lyrics to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” but during their lives they were probably most famous for “Shine On, Harvest Moon.”

    The song has been performed by a number of artists on TV and in film, including an appearance in the 1944 film Shine On, Harvest Moon, as well as on an episode of The Mickey Mouse Club by a young Britney Spears. Johnny Cash sang it with Emmylou Harris on TV too. My favorite performance, though, is by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who always lit up the screen during one of their musical performances. Check out Laurel & Hardy singing “Shine On, Harvest Moon” below from the film The Flying Deuces (1939).

    Here is wishing you a good weekend as the Harvest Moon shines down on you.

    Will you check out the Harvest Moon this weekend? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    • Buddy Holly Disguised His Voice in Falsetto on “Don’t Cha Know”

    dont cha know buddy holly

    More than fifty years ago on September 30, 1958, Buddy Holly produced a record in New York for an unknown singer named Lou Giordano, according to Larry Lehmer’s book The Day the Music Died (p. 41). The B-side of the record was a song written by Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers called “Don’t Cha Know.”

    According to Roger White’s book on the Everly Brothers, Walk Right Back, during the recording, Everly and Holly sang backup.  But they sang falsetto because they could not afford female singers.  Also, because the two singers were under contract with another record company, they did not want anyone to recognize their voices.

    Give it a listen. Can you recognize the voices of Buddy Holly and Phil Everly?

    The A-side of the Giordano record was a song written by Holly called “Stay Close to Me.” Holly never recorded the song himself, and below is Giordano’s version on YouTube.

    Also here is an interesting cover of “Stay Close to Me” by a guy named Ritchie Mars, who plays it a little like Holly might have. Check it out.

    Lou Giordano (Lou Jordan)

    Giordano had a modest hit with the Holly-produced single, but it did not launch a successful singing career for him. A few websites confuse Giordano with a younger music producer with the same name.  The Lou Giordano that Buddy Holly produced changed his performing name to “Lou Jordan” after Holly died.

    Giordano had a wonderful voice and the songs he recorded lead one to wonder why he did not become more popular than he did.  In 1961, Giordano (as “Lou Jordan”) recorded the record “Paradise for Two / Close Your Eyes” backed by the doo wop group The Chaperones.  In 1963, he released another single “Just to Look at You” with the B-side “My Baby.”[See comment below from Giordano’s nephew noting that Giordano passed away in December 1969.]

    Giordano’s daughter noted in an article that Holly changed the singer’s life. Another website notes a mystery about the location of Beltone Studios, where the record was made.

    Still, Giordano’s small body of recorded music gives us a little insight into another question. It tells us something about the work that Holly might have done as a producer of other artists were he still around today.

    What do you think of Holly’s falsetto? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Glen Hansard’s Tiny Desk Concert

    Earlier this summer, NPR featured Glen Hansard in its Tiny Desk Concert series, where you get Hansard alone with his guitar up close. Hansard, who recently released his first solo CD after recording with The Frames and with Markéta Irglová, has a great voice that comes through in this acoustic set. Of course, you may know him from his role in the charming film Once (2006) with Irglová.

    So check out this set of Hansard and his guitar, where he plays the songs: “Love Don’t Leave Me Waiting,” “Bird Of Sorrow,” “Come Away To The Water,” “Lucia,” and “The Song Of Good Hope.”

    Hansard’s new CD — Rhythm and Repose (2012) — features four of the songs he plays above.

    What do you think of Hansard’s tiny desk concert? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    • The Body of Gram Parsons and The Streets of Baltimore

    gram parsons
    On September 19, 1973, singer-songwriter Gram Parsons died from too much morphine and tequila in Room 8 of a motel room in California. It was not the end for Parsons, or at least his body, which then went on an odd journey.

    Parsons’ Body

    Before Parsons’s death, Parsons and his road manager Phil Kaufman made a pact.  They agreed that for whichever one of them died first, the other would take the friend’s body to Joshua Tree National Park, where they would cremate the body.

    So, after Parsons’s death, Kaufman and Michael Martin, a roadie, then stole the body and coffin.  They took the coffin while it had been en route to a burial in Louisiana.

    Kaufman and Martin then drove the body to Joshua Tree National Park.  There, they poured gasoline on the coffin and set it on fire with a match.

    But Gasoline is not enough to cremate a body, so some of Parsons’s body survived the burning.  After Kaufman and Martin were arrested, the charred remains of Parsons were buried in New Orleans.

    Because at the time stealing a body was not a crime in California, Kaufman and Martin were fined for stealing property: the coffin. Today, though, one may still pay respect to Parsons at Joshua Tree.

    Grand Theft Parsons

    The story of the body theft was told in the movie Grand Theft Parsons (2003), starring Johnny Knoxville. It has been awhile since I saw the film, but I remember being a bit disappointed by it.

    The story’s focus on the few days seemed stretched out for a movie. And maybe I was disappointed that the movie did not tell us more about the most interesting person related to the story: Gram Parsons.

    Rotten Tomatoes has a 44% critics rating and 53% audience rating for Grand Theft Parsons. But I suspect other fans, like me, will still want to see the film.

    “Streets of Baltimore”

    I do not know whether or not Parsons would be unhappy that his remains are in New Orleans. But one of his classic songs, “Streets of Baltimore,” is about a another journey and going some place you do not want to be.

    In “Streets of Baltimore,” the singer recounts leaving Tennessee on the train for Baltimore because his love wants to live in the city.  He gets a factory job and walks the streets with her.  But he soon realizes she loves the city lights more than she loves him.

    So in the end, the singer takes the train back to Tennessee alone: “Now I’m a going back on that same train that brought me here before / While my baby walks the streets of Baltimore.”

    There is little video footage of Parsons, but check out this rare grainy recording of him singing with Emmylou Harris.

    It is sad that there is so little video footage of Gram Parsons. Not only did he predate the music video era, but much of his fame came after his short life ended. So, he was never a regular on television.

    Even in this grainy black and white video of “Streets of Baltimore,” you can still tell he is a superstar, though.  And wherever his ashes and remains are, his music resides in our souls.

    What is your favorite Gram Parsons song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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