In 1955 Elvis Presley appeared at a little honky tonk called the B & B Club, in Gobler, MO. Not far from my hometown of Kennett, MO. More information here, including an audio clip with my father who was working at the local radio station. The contract above is between Elvis and Jimmy Haggett, who also worked at KBOA and booked entertainers on the side. If you look closely you’ll see Elvis was to receive 75% of the gate to be paid “after dance.”
I’ve been looking for a project where I could try a video-on-video effect I like. I had some suitable background video from my 24 Hours of Amtrak Hell and this song is one I like. Ideally I would have waited until I was more proficient with the song but I’ll be 68 in a couple of weeks so we go with what we got. (This was easier than I expected, mostly because I used Screenflow instead of iMovie.)
I could practice this a hundred more times and probably not get much better with it. So here it is on two takes recorded to my iPhone.
I recently heard a bluesy/jazzy version of CCR’s Fortunate Son. The uke chords seemed to be within my limited range so I’ve been amusing myself (and our two dogs). This afternoon I took a break to fiddle around with Garageband. This sounds nothing like the cover that got me started. Submitted here for your amusement.
“In the summer of 1966, while a DJ convention was being held in Memphis, Dan Penn and Chips Moman were cheating while playing cards with Florida DJ Don Schroeder,and decided to write the song while on a break. Penn said of the song “We were always wanting to come up with the best cheatin’ song. Ever.” The duo went to the hotel room of Quinton Claunch, another Muscle Shoals alumnus, and founder of Hi Records, to write. Claunch told them, “Boys, you can use my room on one condition, which is that you give me that song for James Carr. They said I had a deal, and they kept their word.” The song, lyrics and all, was written in about thirty minutes.” (Wikipedia)
I first heard this song in the 1991 Alan Parker film The Commitments. It’s been covered by lots and lots of artists (Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Costello, Gregg Allman, Linda Ronstadt, to name a few) but my favorite versions are by Bobby King & Terry Evans and Veronica Klaus.
My recent purge/re-org of photos was productive and satisfying. So I decided to tackle my iTunes music library next. I collected a lot of music in the 60s and 70s. LPs, reel-to-reel, cassettes. After I left radio (no longer “on the air” playing music for others to listen to) I pretty much lost interest in music until the iPod came along in 2001. But I never amassed a giant collection of songs.
As I turned my attention to my iTunes library I discovered I had 800+ titles. Scanning and sampling, it quickly became apparent that I hadn’t listened to some of these songs in years… and probably wouldn’t listen to many of them ever again. The result of ripping and entire LP that included only two or three songs that I liked. Or purchasing an entire “CD” from iTunes. But you don’t delete songs, right? You might listen to them someday. So, just tuck them away in a folder or playlist for that day.
In some manner I can’t explain, keeping those never-gonna-listen-to-them again songs were preventing me from listening to the stuff I liked. So I purged. Down to about 650 songs.
I’m still organizing. Creating playlists, adding ratings, etc. This morning I picked my 100 “favorite” songs (from the 650). Much harder than I expected and certainly a moving target. I’ll keep refining that. The goal will be, I think, to reach a point where any song that comes up in shuffle will prompt me to think/says, “Ooh. I love that song!”
I know what you’re thinking (as does The Amazing Kreskin): Why not subscribe to Spotify or Beats or one of the other streaming services and enjoy ALL the songs. See, that’t the problem for me. I can’t enjoy all the songs. Too many choices. I’m glad those services exist and hope there are more and better ones coming, but I’m gonna concentrate on really listening to and enjoying the music I have.
