sixstr stories: The First Year

Posted on April 18, 2011 by sixstrstories

Today, April 18, 2011, is the first birthday of this blog.

Thanks to my amazing daughter and her familiarity with WordPress, sixstr stories came to life as I sat next to her on her couch in her Somerville, MA apartment. I watched in awe as she casually zipped through the whole registration/pick-a-password/”What do you want to call it, Dad?” process on her laptop until she said: “There you go. You’ve got a blog!”

Since then, I’ve written 86 posts (many with a link to an audio track), received 116 comments and tallied 4,427 views. My busiest day was May 18, 2010 with 84 views.

The whole experience has been fantastic. The process of researching and then writing about this wonderful world of music that is such a big part of my life and then sending it out onto the world wide web for all of you to read (and listen to) has been more challenging, rewarding and fun than I’d ever imagined it would be. Though I must say, I don’t know what I was imagining when I told my daughter: “I’m thinking about starting a blog.”

I do know that the rewards and the fun have been because of all of the comments, feedback and responses I’ve gotten from all of you, my readers.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

So, here I go.

My motto – “Good music doesn’t get old” – remains the same as I step into the second year.

I look forward to your good company as I continue this journey.

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Merseyside, Part 1

Posted on April 17, 2011 by sixstrstories

    It started as an idea, casually tossed out in a conversation between three friends with a shared passion.

    “Hey, we should get together sometime and play some Beatles’ songs.”

    “Yeah!”

    But, they were two singer/guitarists and a drummer.

   “I know a guy who plays bass and sings,” one of the singer/guitarists said. “Want me to give him a call?”

   “Sure.”

   The first get-together was on December 12, 1990: Bob Squires (guitar & vocals), Eric Sinclair (guitar & vocals), Les Harris, Jr. (drums & vocals) and Andy Inzenga (bass guitar & vocals). As they played that day, it sounded good: “Please Please Me,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” “A  Hard Day’s Night.” They got together again on December 28. This was fun. They were having a great time together, singing and playing this incredible music and starting to sound really good.

   It was so much fun, they decided to keep at it.

   Through January and February of 1991, they rehearsed often, building up a repertoire. By March, they had a name: “Merseyside.” According to several books about the Beatles, the word, in the 1960s, referred to an area in Northern England that bordered the Mersey River and included the city of Liverpool. For Bob, Eric, Les and Andy, the name fit three criteria: it was one word, obviously-but-not-blatantly Beatle-ish and it had a letter near the middle that could be extended down when printed on the head of a bass drum like the original Fab Four did with the “T” in Beatles.

    Merseyside performed for the first time on the afternoon of Monday, April 8 in the gymnasium of the Exeter (NH) Area Junior High School. The next day, Tuesday, April 9, they gave an evening concert down the street in the Assembly Hall at Phillips Exeter Academy.

    From then until their last gig on February 12, 1994, at Dover (NH) High School, Merseyside played throughout the New Hampshire seacoast (in Exeter at the IOKA Theatre, the Loaf & Ladle Restaurant and for PEA’s Summer School; in Portsmouth at Market Square Day, the Pressroom and Rosa’s Restaurant; in Dover at the Cochecho Arts Festival and the Firehouse Restaurant) and mountains (Waterville Valley, Gunstock and Attitash), with occasional visits down into Massachusetts (Newburyport and Cape Cod), once each to Maine and Connecticut (the night club “Boppers” in Hartford), and a most-important and memorable trip to South Fallsburg, NY for the Good Day Sunshine 1992 “Beatles Weekend Getaway” at the Pines Resort Hotel.

     During that weekend in South Fallsburg, besides being the featured “house band,” Merseyside performed one evening as the back-up band for special guest Tony Sheridan. Tony was the British singer who the Beatles played back-up for on a 1961 recording session in Hamburg, Germany that produced rocking versions of “When The Saints Go Marching In,” “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “My Bonnie.” 

    Along the way, towards the end of their run, Merseyside directly inspired the formation of two other “Beatles Bands” that continue performing to this day: Beatle Juice (originally led by Brad Delp, lead singer for the mega-popular Rock band Boston) and All Together Now.

    From the start, Merseyside’s main goal was to accurately reproduce the recorded music of the Beatles live, on stage, and to fulfill to their audience, and themselves, the promise of a splendid time guaranteed for all.

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This Historic Month In Music: “Louie Louie”

Posted on April 16, 2011 by sixstrstories

Through the walls of the dressing room, he could hear the band.

It was summer, 1955. Richard Berry was the featured singer that night at the Harmony Park Ballroom in Anaheim, California. The band was Ricky Rillera and The Rhythm Rockers, led by brothers Bobby and Barry Rillera. As the band played the first set without him, warming up the crowd, Richard relaxed and waited backstage.

The repeated rhythm of the introduction of this one number caught his attention: duh duh duh.. duh duh. It stuck in his head, gave the songwriter in him an idea. Richard picked up the handiest piece of paper, a crumpled bag, and jotted down a couple of lines.

Later, he asked the Rillera brothers what the song was with that great intro. “That was ‘El Loco Cha Cha’ by Rene Touzet.”

Richard Berry (born April 11, 1935, Extension, LA) was an accomplished R&B singer with a strong and versatile voice. He was capable of doing a frantic, Little Richard-style lead, switch to a deep, Muddy Waters-style Blues growl and then turn in a smooth and soulful performance on a slow ballad. He’d had hit records as a member of The Flairs, with The Robins on their classic “Riot In Cell Block #9,” and with Etta James on her hit “The Wallflower.”

As a songwriter, Richard knew how to follow a moment of inspiration and how to remain open to influence by other songwriters. “El Loco Cha Cha” had provided the riff, the basic rhythm, to build his new song on. “Havana Moon,” the Chuck Berry song that served as the B-side to Chuck’s 1956 single “You Can’t Catch Me,” and the Johnny Mercer/Harold Arlen 1940’s-era standard “One For My Baby (and One More for the Road)” served as melodic and lyrical inspiration.

When the new song was done, Richard took it to a recording session with his band, The Pharoahs. In April of 1956, at Hollywood Recorders on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA, Richard Berry and The Pharoahs recorded four songs: “You Are My Sunshine,” “Somewhere There’s A Rainbow,” “Sweet Sugar You” and the new one: “Louie Louie.”

In April of 1957, “Louie Louie” was released on a Flip Records single as the B-side to “You Are My Sunshine.” When “Louie Louie” started getting more attention and airplay, it was re-released as the A-side of a single with “Rock Rock Rock” on the back.

In April of 1963, two popular Northwest Rock & Roll bands: Paul Revere & The Raiders and The Kingsmen, went into the studios of Northwest Recorders in Portland, OR and each recorded their version of “Louie Louie.”

In late 1963/early 1964, “Louie Louie” b/w “Haunted Castle” by The Kingsmen had reached #1 on the Cashbox chart and held the #2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for six weeks in a row. 

Dave Marsh, author of “Louie Louie: The History & Mythology of the World’s Most Famous Rock ‘n’ Roll Song; Including the Full Details of Its Torture & Persecution at the Hands of the Kingsmen, J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I., & a Cast of Millions; & Introducing for the First Time Anywhere, the Actual Dirty Lyrics”  and the liner notes to the CD compilation “Love That Louie: The Louie Louie Files,” wrote: “‘Louie, Louie’ is either the essence of Rock ‘n’ Roll or definitive proof that no such essence ever could exist – unless it’s both of those at once.”

Information for this post was drawn from the two sources by Dave Marsh as listed above and The All Music Guide to Rock.

P.S.: According to the website www.louielouie.net , Monday, April 11, 2011, was International Louie Louie Day. I wish I’d known!

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The Day Before Yesterday In Music History: Lightnin’ Hopkins

Posted on March 17, 2011 by sixstrstories

Sam Hopkins was born in Centerville, Texas on March 15, 1912.

Having two older brothers, John Henry and Joel, who played the Blues, Sam had learned enough on the guitar to be able to play and sing at local suppers and social functions when he was still a teenager. In 1920, he even had the chance to meet and play with the now-legendary Texas Blues singer/guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson.

A few years later, Sam started accompanying the singer/lyricist Texas Alexander around Houston. This relationship continued off and on through the 1930s and into the 1940s when, in 1946, they were playing on Dowling Street in Houston and caught the ear of Aladdin Records talent scout Lola Anne Cullum. She arranged for Sam, without Texas, to travel with her to Los Angeles, CA for a recording session.

At the studio, Mrs. Cullum decided to pair Sam with pianist/singer Wilson “Thunder” Smith. When the recording engineer heard Sam picking out his rapid-fire Blues licks behind Smith, he christened him “Lightnin'” and the name stuck.

Singer/guitarist Lightnin’ Hopkins, with Thunder Smith helping out on piano, cut his first  record on November 9, 1946. Entitled “Katie May,” it sold well enough around Texas for Lightnin’ to return to California and record his second hit: “Short Haired Woman.” 

Lightnin’ Hopkins went on to become one of the greatest, most prolific and most popular of all of the Texas Country Blues musicians. His career as a singer, guitarist, songwriter and performing artist stretched into the 1980s.

My favorite Lightnin’ Hopkins album, and one of my most favorite albums by any Blues artist, is the Smithsonian/Folkways CD simply entitled “Lightnin’ Hopkins.”

Recorded with a single microphone on January 16, 1959 in Hopkins’ one-room apartment at 2803 Hadley St., in Houston, Texas by musicologist Sam Charters, the album contains a mere ten songs. But those ten songs, those ten, naked and unvarnished performances “arguably capture the essence of Lightnin’ Hopkins better than any of his other recordings.” (Thom Owens, All Music Guide to the Blues) In the liner notes for the 1990 CD of the album, Sam Charters says that over the years, when “asked if there was some way to describe the Country Blues… the easiest way I could think of was to play this album.”

When released in 1959, the album introduced Lighnin’ and his music to a whole new audience and brought his recording and performing career to heights he’d never known. The album also played a major part in sparking the Blues revival of the late-1950’s/early-1960’s.    

Very Highly Recommended.

Sam “Lightnin'” Hopkins passed away on January 30, 1982 in Houston, Texas.

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This Historic Day… My Mother

Posted on March 8, 2011 by sixstrstories

Avis Louise Foss Sinclair, my Mother, was born on this day, March 8, in the year 1914.

She was the daughter of George P. and Stella Foss and grew up in Center Strafford, NH. In 1932, she graduated from Austin Cate Academy, Center Strafford’s high school, where she played cello in the school orchestra and center for the girl’s basketball team. In 1936, she graduated from the Exeter (NH) Hospital Training School for Nurses.

In May of 1941, she married my Father, Francis M. Sinclair, in Exeter, NH.

My Mother was very supportive of my musical endeavors, even in my junior high and early high school years when I played the drums. (It has been said that the mother of a young rock & roll drummer deserves sainthood.) When I became a performing singer/guitarist/songwriter, my Mother and my Father would often come to my gigs, especially when I used to play on Sunday afternoons, outside, at Applecrest Farms in Hampton Falls, NH.

One of my Mother’s favorite songs of mine was “The Ladies of Fairburn.” I recorded and released “Ladies” on my first full-length, cassette-tape album, “Anytime,” in 1988.

Around that time, an Exeter-based AM radio station started a weekend-mornings Folk music show, with a DJ named Rick Parry. I’d listened to Rick through high school when he was on WBCN-FM, out of Boston. Rick was a big supporter of all of the Seacoast NH Folk musicians, readily giving them airplay and promoting up-coming gigs.

When I told my Mother about the radio show and that they had a copy of “Anytime,” and that the DJ took requests from listeners, that’s all she needed to know. She started to call the station on a weekly basis and request “The Ladies of Fairburn” and Rick always played it, even after he figured out who she was. This went on for many months.

So, in honor of her birthday, here it is.

“The Ladies of Fairburn” – words, music, guitar and vocals by Eric Sinclair

The violist is Anne Black.

My Mother passed away on August 5, 2001.

Miss her.

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The First Jazz Record

Posted on March 4, 2011 by sixstrstories

Since one of you asked, and it’s in the public domain, here it is!

“Livery Stable Blues” by The Original Dixieland Jass Band

The Original Dixieland Jass Band first recorded for Columbia Records on January 30, 1917. The two sides: “Darktown Strutter’s Ball” and “Indiana” were not released at that time. The group recorded for Victor Records on February 26, 1917 and that record: “Livery Stable Blues” b/w “Dixie Jass Band One Step” was released in May. It was a huge hit and helped to launch the Jazz Age.

Members of the ODJB were: Nick LaRocca on Cornet; Edwin Edwards on Trombone; Larry Shields on Clarinet; Henry Ragas on Piano; Tony Sbarbaro on Drums.

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Hey There! Remember Me?

Posted on February 27, 2011 by sixstrstories

From the end of January, through February, up to now, things have been kind of crazy.

Teaching, life, snow = crazy.

So many Historic Days In Music have gone by in the past five weeks without my having commemorated them, that… well, I feel bad, but it’s not ’cause I’ve been slackin’ off.

I do, however, have a list of what I missed.

Birthdays: 1/25/1938 – Blues singer Etta James; 2/8/1899 – Blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson; two incredible singer/songwriter/pianists: 2/9/1942 – Carole King & 2/21/1933 – Nina Simone; 2/25/1943 – George Harrison.

Events: 2/3/1959 – The Day The Music Died (Buddy Holly, Clearlake, Iowa); 2/9/1964 – The Beatles’ American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show (I still don’t understand why they did “Till There Was You” as their second song!?); 2/11/1964 – The Beatles at Washington Colliseum, Washington, D.C.; 2/25/1848: Stephen Foster’s “Oh! Susanna” published; 2/26/1917: “Livery Stable Blues” as recorded by the Original Dixieland Jass Band = the first Jazz record.

That’s quite the list. (“Wait’ll next year!”)

I’ll try to do better in the days ahead.

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Sam & Janis

Posted on January 24, 2011 by sixstrstories

“Darling, you – oo-oo-ooo send me. I know you – oo-oo-ooo send me. Darling, you – oo-oo-oo send me. Honest you do, honest you do, honest you do. Whoa – oh – oh-oh-oh-oh.”

Can you hear the voice?

That “sophisticated, crystalline” voice with the “remarkable spiritual resonance”? (Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide to Rock)

The voice belongs to Sam Cooke and the song quoted was “You Send Me,” his first and only #1 hit record, released in 1957. Besides singing it, he also wrote it.

He went on to write and record a string of fabulous songs including: “Chain Gang,” “Cupid,” “Twistin’ The Night Away,” “Having A Party” and “Bring It On Home To Me.”

Sam Cooke was born Samuel Cook on January 22, 1931 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He was the fourth child of the Reverend Charles and Annie May Cook. He made his first record as a member of The Soul Stirrers in 1951. From 1957, when he started recording as a secular “pop” singer, until his murder on December 11, 1964, Sam’s voice became recognized as “one of the most indelible and influential sounds ever captured on record.” (Joseph F. Laredo, liner notes to Sam Cooke: Greatest Hits on RCA Records)

I couldn’t agree more.

Now try this one.

“Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin’ for a train, when I’m feelin’ nearly faded as my jeans. Bobby thumbed a diesel down, just before it rained. He wrote a song on the way into New Orleans.”

Can you hear that voice?

Many adjectives have been used to describe it, none of which would be used in reference to Sam Cooke’s voice. But then Sam was never called “the greatest white female Rock singer of the 1960s.” (Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide to Rock)

That title belongs to Janis Joplin.

The song quoted above was “Me And Bobby McGee,” penned by Kris Krisofferson. Janis’ version was released as a single in 1971 and became a posthumous #1 hit.

Born on January 19, 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas, her father, Seth Joplin, described her as “one of the first revolutionary youth.” It couldn’t have been easy to be a revolutionary youth in Port Arthur, Texas in the late-1950s and early-60s. After several years of singing in Texas bars, she travelled to San Francisco, CA, in 1966 and became lead singer for the band Big Brother and the Holding Company.

She and the band played at the Monterey (California) International Pop Festival in the summer of 1967, a year before they released their first album. Her rendition of  Big Mama Thornton’s “Ball and Chain” is featured in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary film Monterey Pop, and is, in my humble opinion, one of the all-time greatest rock performances on film. Janis is devastatingly mesmerizing. Very Highly Recommended.

Janis Joplin passed away unexpectedly on October 4, 1970 in Los Angeles, CA.

Sam & Janis.

Two of my most favorite singers. Incredible voices silenced far too soon.

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This Historic Day In Music: Elvis Presley

Posted on January 8, 2011 by sixstrstories

Elvis.

Where did your mind go when you read that word?

Mine went to shiny, combed-back, thick black hair. I heard a low, rumbling, twang-tinged voice saying: “Thank you. Thank you very much.” I pictured a young man (with that hair), dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and black necktie, standing at a microphone, eyes closed, expression intense, his right hand in the middle of a downstrum on a leather-encased, dreadnaught acoustic guitar that is being slightly pushed into the mike stand by the forward thrust of his hips.

I heard a voice, singing: “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog…”

Elvis Aron Presley.

The King.

January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977.

On that dash, he changed the world.

Elvis.

Where did your mind go when you read that word?

For a bit more about Elvis, go to the Archives for July 2010 and check out my post of July 5, the anniversary of the day he recorded “That’s All Right (Mama).”

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This Historic Day In Music: Elizabeth Cotten

Posted on January 5, 2011 by sixstrstories

She’d forgotten that she could play the guitar.

She hadn’t played since she was a teenager, back home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; since she’d gotten married to Frank and given birth to Lillie, her one and only. And in all the years since, her life filled with keeping house, raising her daughter, working at job after job cleaning and cooking and taking care of the children in other people’s homes, moving back and forth from Chapel Hill to Washington, D.C. to New York, divorcing Frank and finally settling in D.C. with Lillie and her family, it is no wonder she’d had no time for playing the guitar.

But after a chance encounter in the toy department of a Washington, D.C. store where she was employed, Elizabeth had gone to work one day a week in the music-filled home of Charles and Ruth Seeger. Seeing the Seeger’s teenage children, Mike and Peggy, learning to play guitar and banjo and hearing Mrs. Seeger giving piano lessons, Elizabeth decided to start playing again.

Borrowing Peggy’s guitar, she started trying to resurrect the tunes and songs that she’d written and learned back in Chapel Hill. Gradually, bit by bit, the music and her abilities came back to her and the Seegers took notice. Peggy got Elizabeth to teach her her dazzling style of fingerpicking. Mike, with his fascination for capturing music on tape, started recording Elizabeth’s music.

All of this started in the early 1950’s when Elizabeth, born January 5, 1895, was in her 50’s. So when Folkways Records released her Mike Seeger-recorded debut album, Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar, in 1958, her 63 years made her quite a bit older than the average Folk musician just bursting onto the scene. But just like any musician with a new album, she started performing: first at small coffeehouses and schools around Washington, D.C. and then in the early 1960’s at larger concerts and festivals, including  the Newport Folk Festival in 1964.

Her songs, especially “Freight Train” which she wrote at the age of 12, and her unique fingerpicking style (soon dubbed “Cotten picking”) quickly spread and became popular around the world. Her performing and recording career lasted into the 1980’s. She became one of the most influential guitarists of the Folk era and her guitar style is used by performers and recording artists to this day who are looking for a sound that is at once gentle, propulsive, expressive, melodic and capable of providing all the accompaniment a vocal could need.

In 1983, Arhoolie Records released an album of live recordings taken from the late 1970’s to the early 1980’s. Entitled Elizabeth Cotten – Live!, it was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in 1984. It is an utterly charming and amazing record of her songs, stories and inimitable guitar playing. Very Highly Recommended.

Elizabeth Cotten passed away in Syracuse, NY, on June 29, 1987.

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