This Historic Day In Music: June 20,1937, The Vitagraph/Warner Brothers Exchange Building, 508 Park Avenue, Dallas, Texas

Posted on June 20, 2012 by sixstrstories

Even though it was a typically hot middle-of-June Texas afternoon and even though the “recording studio” was a third-floor room in a warehouse/office building in downtown Dallas, Robert Johnson had the most productive day of recording in his career.

Johnson cut seventeen sides during this, his fifth recording session for the American Record Corporation. Those seventeen sides included master discs of ten songs and a nearly-identical, alternate-take “safety” disc each of seven of those songs.

His second most productive session was his first: Monday, November 23, 1936 in San Antonio, Texas, when he cut thirteen sides and eight different songs. (See my archived post of November 23, 2010 for more details on that historic day.)

The songs he recorded 75 years ago today (in the order he recorded them) were: “Hell Hound On My Trail,” “Little Queen of Spades,” “Malted Milk,” “Drunken Hearted Man,” “Me and the Devil Blues,” “Stop Breakin’ Down Blues,” “Traveling Riverside Blues,” “Honeymoon Blues,” “Love In Vain Blues” and “Milkcow’s Calf Blues.”

Of these ten songs, many have become standards in the repertoire of countless acoustic Blues musicians and electric Blues/Rock bands including Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones and Keb ‘Mo, to name a very few. “Hell Hound On My Trail” and “Love In Vain Blues” were given special significance when the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame selected them for their list of 500 Songs That Shaped Rock & Roll. 

Here are those two songs. Please take a few minutes and listen to them both. (Got headphones?) These are the original 1937 recordings. Hearing is believing.

Robert Johnson’s recording session on June 20, 1937, in the Vitagraph/Warner Brothers Exchange Building, 508 Park Avenue, Dallas, Texas, was his last. He passed away under mysterious circumstances on August 16, 1938, near Greenwood, Mississippi.

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This Historic Day In Music: Paul McCartney

Posted on June 19, 2012 by sixstrstories

“Eight Days A Week,” “Nowhere Man,” “Hey Jude,” “I Should Have Known Better,” “Blackbird,” “I’ve Just Seen A Face,” “Help,” “Rocky Raccoon.”

As you, my knowledgeable reader, knows; these are all titles of songs recorded by The Beatles.  And, if you were to look each of them up in a Beatles’ songbook, you would find that their (original) publishing company Northern Songs credits them all as having been written by John Lennon & Paul McCartney.

The truth of the matter is that, except at the very beginning, John and Paul did not actually write songs together. As producer George Martin told Lennon  biographer Ray Coleman in 1985: “They never really collaborated. They were always songwriters who helped each other with little bits and pieces. One would have most of a song finished, play it to the other, and he’d say: ‘Well, why don’t you do this?’ That was just about the way their collaboration worked.”

In 1989, author William J. Dowlding wrote Beatlesongs. In his book, Dowlding chronicles every song written and recorded by The Beatles and claims to be “the first attempt to quantify the contributions they (John, Paul, George and Ringo) made.” More specifically, as Dowlding explains in the book’s introduction: “Credit for each song’s creation is apportioned based on all the information that could be amassed.”

For instance, according to Beatlesongs, “Eight Days A Week” is 70% by Paul and 30% by John. “Blackbird” is 95% by Paul and 5% by John. “Nowhere Man,” “I Should Have Known Better” and “Help” are 100% by John. “Rocky Raccoon,” “Hey Jude” and “I’ve Just Seen A Face” are 100% by Paul.

The songs on the list at the beginning of this post have one other thing in common: they are all songs that I use often in my teaching. Year after year, I continue to find that (amazingly and thankfully) they are also songs that budding teenage guitarists are still excited to learn how to play. Among the songs that I most frequently introduce to my students are “Eight Days A Week,” “Blackbird” and “Rocky Raccoon.”

In a recent guitar lesson, after putting the finishing touches on “Blackbird” in preparation for performing the song in an up-coming student concert, a student asked me: “What did guitar students learn how to play before The Beatles?”

As I put the finishing touches on this blog post here in New Hampshire, it is Monday evening, June 18, 2012. Wherever he is in the world, Paul McCartney turned 70 years old today.

Happy Birthday Paul.

Thanks for the songs!

P.S.: Do you, dear reader, have a favorite “Paul song?” Leave a comment!

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With The Help Of Many Friends…

Posted on June 10, 2012 by sixstrstories

Here’s something a bit different from my usual sixstr stories fare.

I was invited to participate in this project back in April by my friend and colleague, Bob Squires and one of his students, Oscar Dupuy d’Angeac. Oscar came up with the idea for this video/musical campus-wide collaboration as a senior project and Bob signed on as his adviser and collaborator. (Lucky Oscar.)

Oscar is the lead singer, the first one you see and hear.

Watch, listen and enjoy.

(That’s me at 1:00.)

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50 Years Ago Yesterday: The Audition At Abbey Road

Posted on June 7, 2012 by sixstrstories

It was 7:00 pm, on Wednesday, June 6, 1962.

The Liverpool rock & roll quartet known as “The Beatles” – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best – were in Studio Two of EMI Studios, 3 Abbey Road, St. John’s Wood, London, England.

The band’s manager, Brian Epstein, after months of hard work and many rejections, had finally secured a live audition for The Beatles with EMI’s Parlaphone Records and producer George Martin. That evening, Martin assigned his assistant, Ron Richards, to initially take charge of the session. Balance engineer Norman Smith and second engineer/tape operator Chris Neal also worked in Studio Two on June 6.

Once a few problems with the band’s guitar amplifiers – equipment described as “duff” by engineer Smith – were fixed, The Beatles ran through a number of songs from their extensive performance repertoire and settled on four songs to be taped. First up was their cover version of “Besame Mucho” (released in 1960 by The Coasters) and then three Lennon & McCartney originals: “Love Me Do,” “P.S. I Love You” and “Ask Me Why.”

During the recording of “Love Me Do,” Smith thought George Martin should be hearing this for himself and sent Neal to “Go down and pick up George from the canteen.” Martin arrived and took over for the rest of the session. 

At the end of the evening, Martin called the four lads up to the control room to listen back to the recordings and “discuss technicalities.”

Norman Smith later recalled: “We gave them a long lecture about their equipment and what would have to be done about it if they were to become recording artists. They didn’t say a word back, not a word. When he finished, George Martin said ‘Look, I’ve just laid into you for quite a time, you haven’t responded. Is there anything you don’t like?’ I remember they all looked at each other for a long while, then George Harrison took a long look at Martin and said ‘Yeah, I don’t like your tie!'”

The Beatles returned to Abbey Road on September 4, 1962, for their first official recording session as Parlophone recording artists under contract with EMI. At George Martin’s request, drummer Pete Best had been replaced. Ringo Starr, “the best drummer in Liverpool,” had joined the band in August.

You know what they say about “the rest…”

All information and quotes for this post were found in two books, both by Mark Lewisohn: The Complete Beatles Chronicle (1992) and The Beatles: Recording Sessions (1988). Very Highly Recommended.

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Pancakes & Vivaldi

Posted on June 3, 2012 by sixstrstories

I don’t know which came first, but ever since the early years of parenthood, Sunday mornings in the Sinclair household have meant two things: pancakes and classical music.

The only connection that I know of between listening to classical music and eating a hearty breakfast (not always pancakes; waffles and french toast every now and then, too) is that I enjoy them both. The music of J.S.Bach and Antonio Vivaldi just seemed more appropriate to Sunday mornings than did the Jazz, ’60’s Rock or the songs of the many “old dead Blues guys” I would have playing on the stereo during the rest of the week for my own listening pleasure as well as in my on-going attempts to educate and enlighten my children.

I probably started this tradition with J.S.Bach’s “Brandenburg Concertos,” since they’re among my favorite classical works and, back in college, I bought a wonderful Nonesuch records 2-LP set of them recorded by Karl Ristenpart conducting the Chamber Orchestra of the Saar.

Over the years, I added Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” (by Itzhak Perlman and the Israel Philharmonic) and Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphonies “No. 93 in D Major” and “No. 94 in G Major” (Leonard Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic) to the playlist. When my young daughter was learning to play the flute and my son, in elementary school, took up the clarinet; a Sony Classics CD of flute and clarinet concertos by W.A. Mozart was given a top spot in the rotation.

Even today, I had Bach’s “Suite No. 4 in D Major, BMV 1069” (as recorded by conductor Raymond Leppard and the English Chamber Orchestra) dancing in the background as I emptied the dishwasher, made the coffee and enjoyed a bowl of my special “enhanced” oatmeal. (No, believe it or not, I don’t always still have pancakes for Sunday breakfast.)

I know that both of my children enjoyed (sometimes, I’m sure, just tolerated) our musical Sunday morning tradition. My son has carried it with him into adulthood.

A few months after he started living and working in Virginia, I received a late-Sunday-morning text message from him.

“Guess what I listened to as I made/ate my breakfast this morning?”

“Hm… Classical music Sunday morning?” I replied.

“4 Seasons, indeed,” came his answer.

“That’s great, big guy. You made my day.”

“Awesome.”

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So Long, Doc

Posted on May 30, 2012 by sixstrstories

Arthel “Doc” Watson died yesterday, Tuesday, May 29, 2012, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was 89 years old.

Doc Watson played acoustic guitar in both the flat-picking and fingerpicking style. Whether you called it Folk or Country or Bluegrass, the music he played and sang was, in my mind, simply the purest Music anyone ever made.

Doc Watson’s Music sparkled. It cascaded from his instrument like a sun-drenched stream of crystal-clear mountain water. Thanks to his dazzling technique and the humble grace that he brought to his performances, the notes of the old-time fiddle tunes he adapted and mastered bubbled, swirled and tumbled off the strings of his guitar like strands of the finest silver and gold.

See and hear for yourself.

That was flat-picking. This next one is played in the fingerpicking style.

There you go.

Doc Watson – March 2, 1923-May 29, 2012.

Long may his music live.

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This Historic Day… My Father

Posted on May 27, 2012 by sixstrstories

Francis Matthew Sinclair, my father, was born on this day, May 27, in the year 1915.

He was the son of Joseph F. and Mary (Winkler) Sinclair and lived almost his entire life in Exeter, NH. He graduated from Exeter High School in 1933.

In May of 1941, he married my mother, Avis Louise Foss, in Exeter, NH.

In 1961, Dad started his own business; collecting and selling wildflowers and ferns. He and my mother operated this business, entitled Francis M. Sinclair Wildflowers, from a property on Newmarket (now Newfields) Road on the outskirts of Exeter. We moved there during the summer of my 8th birthday. I worked with my Dad every summer from high school through college.

Besides his business and his family, my father had two other passions in his life: being a fireman and going ice fishing.

As a firefighter, Dad was an active, long-time member of the Exeter Fire Department, serving as a “call fireman,” attached to Engine #1.

In the winter, the off-season for collecting ferns and widflowers, Dad went ice fishing, in his 8’x8’x7′, hand-made shack, catching smelts whenever the tide was right on the Newmarket River. For many years, once I was deemed old enough by my mother, Dad often took me along.

In the mid-1980’s, Dad retired from the wildflower business. By the early-1990’s, his life of often-demanding physical labor began to take its toll and his ice fishing days became a soon-to-be thing of the past as well.

Inspired by a novel I was reading at the time, “Language In The Blood” (1991) by Kent Nelson and singer/songwriter/guitarist Steve Goodman’s wonderful 1988 waltz, “Old Smoothies,” I set out to chronicle our ice fishing adventures in a song.

In honor of my father’s birthday, here it is.

“Winter Of ’92” – words, music, guitar & vocals by Eric Sinclair

The most valuable lesson I learned from my father, and one for which I am continuously grateful, was the incalculable importance of making your living doing something you love to do.

Dad passed away on January 26, 2000.

Miss him.

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This Historic Day In Music: Bob Dylan

Posted on May 24, 2012 by sixstrstories

Today – May 24, 2012 – is Bob Dylan’s 71st birthday.

Two years ago, in celebration of Bob’s big day, I asked: “What is your favorite Bob Dylan song?”  Many of you posted your answer through the “leave a comment” link below and helped produce a very interesting list.

To get the party started this year, I pose another question for your consideration: “What is your favorite cover version of a Bob Dylan song?”

Since the release of his first album on March 19, 1962, no songwriter has had a greater influence on the world of music than Bob Dylan.

One indication of the breadth and depth of Dylan’s influence could be measured in the vast number of singers and bands who have recorded a cover version of a Bob Dylan song. (It might, however, be easier to add up how many singers and bands have not recorded a cover version of a Bob Dylan song.)

From among the limited number of artists that I know of who have taken on the task, here is a not-so-brief overview.

Probably the most well known covers are those of “Blowing In The Wind” by Peter, Paul & Mary (released as a single in June, 1963, one month after Dylan put out his rendition of the song on his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan); “Mr. Tambourine Man” by The Byrds (in 1965); and “All Along The Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix from his 1968 double album Electric Ladyland.

The Byrds did covers of so many of Bob Dylan’s songs that, in 1995, Columbia Records put out an entire album of them and called it The Byrds Play Dylan. Joan Baez recorded and released an all-Bob album in 1968 entitled Any Day Now.

I know of at least two smaller record companies who went to their roster of artists and enlisted enough of them to record a Bob Dylan song to compile the recordings into a Bob Dylan “tribute album.”

Red House Records released A Nod To Bob in 2001 for Dylan’s 60th birthday and A Nod To Bob 2 in 2011 for his 70th. Telarc Records, a Blues label, put out Blues On Blonde On Blonde in 2003, a compilation of Blues-inflected covers of songs from Dylan’s 1966 double LP Blonde On Blonde.

More than a few individual Bob Dylan songs have been the subject of multiple cover versions by a surprisingly diverse list of artists.

For example, “I Shall Be Released,” written by Bob in 1967, was recorded by The Band in 1968, Joe Cocker in 1969 and Bette Midler in 1973, to name a few. (Dylan did not release his recording of “I Shall Be Released” until 1971.)

Already in 2012, Amnesty International put together a fund-raising collection containing 4 CD’s full of Dylan covers entitled Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan. Bonnie Raitt included two Bob Dylan songs – “Million Miles” and “Standing In The Doorway” from Dylan’s 1997 album Time Out Of Mind – on her outstanding new CD: Slipstream.

Among my favorites (and on my long iPod playlist I call “Covered Dylan”) are the following performances.

“Just Like A Woman” by Richie Havens from his 1967 LP, Mixed Bag.

“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” by Nina Simone from her 1969 LP, To Love Somebody.

“With God On Our Side” by Buddy Miller from his 2004 CD, United Universal House of Prayer.

All of those are very highly recommended and essential listening.

In closing, Rodney Crowell, a highly successful and extremely well regarded songwriter in his own right, shared his feelings (and, I would guess, those of many other songwriters) about Bob Dylan’s songs in the opening line of his song “Beautiful Despair” from his remarkable 2005 CD The Outsider.

“Beautiful despair is hearing Dylan when you’re drunk at 3 a.m. / Knowing that the chances are no matter what you’ll never write like him.”

Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan!

May you stay forever young.

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This Historic Day In Music: “Maybellene”

Posted on May 21, 2012 by sixstrstories

On May 21, 1955, Chuck Berry recorded his song “Maybellene” in the Chicago, Illinois studio of Chess Records.

On May 21, 2010, I wrote and published my first post filled with all the details of this momentous musical event. I hope that you’ll dig into the archives and check it out.

What you won’t find in that post, however, is a way to listen to this classic song.

You can do that from this post.

“Maybellene” was released by Chess Records in July of 1955 as the “A side” of a 7-inch, 45-rpm record (a “single”) with the song, “Wee Wee Hours” on the “B side.” It reached #1 on the Billboard “Rhythm & Blues” chart by August.

Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I can also share with you this video of Chuck Berry performing “Maybellene” live on a French TV show. This was recorded in 1955, 1958 or 1963, depending on which video and/or comment you believe.

As my son used to say: “Wait for it…”

Well, what did you think of that?

“Maybellene” – 57 years young.

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“The Reason I’m Here”

Posted on May 17, 2012 by sixstrstories

Musically, it’s a waltz.

Lyrically, it’s a love song, with two verses, a chorus and a bridge: “I know how it might seem, but you’re still the reason I need to believe.” (As true now as it was then.)

Guitaristically, I play it fingerstyle, in dropped-D tuning and with a capo at the first fret. (I think the instrumental introduction does an especially good job of setting the mood of the song, if I do say so myself.)

I recorded “The Reason I’m Here” in 1988 and placed it as the third track on my first album, Anytime. (See my post of April 1, 2012 for more on Anytime.)

I wrote this song sometime between March, 1985 and April, 1986.

Click on the blue link below to give it a listen!

“The Reason I’m Here” – words, music , guitar & vocals by Eric Sinclair

If you’d like to hear more songs from Anytime, visit my archived posts of April 7, 2012 (“You’re The One”), the previously-mentioned April 1, 2012 post (“Anytime”) and my March 8, 2011 post (“The Ladies of Fairburn”).

And… there are more songs to come!

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