Even though I’ve already done numerous installments for this recurrent feature, many of the 365 dates remain to be explored. Let’s take a look at some of the events on January 23 in rock & roll history.
1956: Cleveland, Ohio banned rock & roll fans under the age of 18 from dancing in public unless accompanied by an adult, after the Ohio police had re-introduced a law dating back to 1931. Music bans rarely work, and there was no way young people could be kept away from rock & roll. Ironically, 27 years later, the very same city saw the founding of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The times they are a-changin’.
1965:Petula Clark hit no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with Downtown, the first female singer from the U.K. to reach the top of the U.S. chart since Vera Lynn in 1952. The tune, which peaked at no. 2 in the U.K., was written by Tony Hatch, who also produced it for Clark. The song’s recording session on October 16, 1964 at Pye Studios in London was attended by a popular studio guitarist. His name: Jimmy Page. That same year, his session work also included As Tears Go By (Marianne Faithfull), Heart Of Stone (The Rolling Stones) and Baby, Please Don’t Go (Them), among others.
1969:The Beatles were working at Abbey Road Studios as part of the Get Back/Let It Be sessions. They spent a great deal of time on Get Back, recording an impressive 43 takes of the Paul McCartney tune, none of which was officially released. Their efforts eventually would pay off during their rooftop concert. And, yes, they passed the audition!
1971:George Harrison reached no. 1 on the Official Singles Chart in the U.K. with My Sweet Lord, becoming the first former member of The Beatles to top the charts as a solo artist. The tune appeared on All Things Must Pass, Harrison’s first solo album following the band’s breakup. My Sweet Lord peaked at no. 1 in many other countries as well, including the U.S., Canada and Australia. It also made Harrison the first and only ex-Beatle to find himself embroiled in major copyright infringement litigation. The lawsuit alleged My Sweet Lord plagiarized He’s So Fine, a tune Ronnie Mack had written for The Chiffons, giving them a no. 1 single in the U.S. in 1963. In September 1976, a New York judge ruled that Harrison had “subconsciously copied” Mack’s tune. Subsequent litigation over damages dragged on until 1998.
1976:David Bowie released his 10th studio album Station To Station. It became his highest-charting record in the U.S. during the ’70s, climbing to no. 3 on the Billboard 200. The record also catapulted the Thin White Duke into the top 10 in various other countries, including the U.K. (no. 5), Australia (no. 8), The Netherlands (no. 3), Norway (no. 8) and New Zealand (no. 9). In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked Station To Station at no. 324 on their list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Here’s the closer Wild Is The Wind, which like all tracks was written by Bowie.
1978:Terry Kath, best known as a founding member of Chicago, accidentally shot himself dead. Following a party, he started playing around with guns, held a pistol he thought was empty to his temple and pulled the trigger. The freak accident happened only a few days prior to what would have been his 32nd birthday. Referring to Kath, Jimi Hendrix reportedly once told Chicago’s saxophone player Walter Parazaider that “your guitar player is better than me.” Regardless whether Hendrix meant it or not, there’s no question that Kath was an ace guitarist. Here’s I Don’t Want Your Money, which was co-written by him and Robert Lamm, and appeared on Chicago’s third studio album Chicago III from January 1971.
Sources: Wikipedia, This Day in Music.com, The Beatles Bible, YouTube
Some of my favorite singer-songwriters from the 1960s through the 2000s
The singer-songwriter category is very broad, depending on how you define it, spanning different music genres, including folk, rock, country and pop. According to Wikipedia, singer-songwriters are artists who write, compose and perform their own music, oftentimes solo with just a guitar or piano. All Music adds that although early rock & roll artists like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly wrote and sang their own songs, the term singer-songwriter “refers to the legions of performers that followed Bob Dylan in the late 60s and early 70s.” You could make the same observation about blues pioneers like Lead Belly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker and Lightnin’ Hopkins.
Based on the above definition, artists who write and perform songs as part of a band are not singer-songwriters. Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger would be popular examples in this context. While I’ve seen Elton John being mentioned as a singer-songwriter, to me he’s not, at least not in the strict sense. While he has written the music to his songs and performed them, he has relied on Bernie Taupin for the lyrics. By comparison, the other big pop piano man of our time, Billy Joel, has written the music and lyrics for pretty much all of his songs, so he fits the category.
With the singer-songwriter definition being out of the way, let’s get to some of my favorite artists in that category. I’d like to tackle this chronologically, starting with the 60s and Bob Dylan. The Times They Are A-Changin’ is the title track from his third studio album, which appeared in January 1964. According to Songfacts, the tune “became an anthem for frustrated youth,” expressing anti-establishment sentiments and reflecting the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Songfacts also quotes Dylan from the liner notes of his Biograph box set compilation album from November 1985: “I wanted to write a big song, some kind of theme song, with short, concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. This is definitely a song with a purpose. I knew exactly what I wanted to say and who I wanted to say it to.” Sadly, the song has taken on new relevance in present-day America, especially over the past couple of years.
Next up: Donovan and Sunshine Superman, one of my longtime favorite ’60s tunes. The song is the title track of Donovan’s third album released in August 1966 in the U.S. It did not come out in the U.K. due a contractual dispute between British label Pye Records and U.S. label Epic Records. This also impacted the release of Donovan’s fourth album Mellow Yellow, which like Sunshine Superman appeared in the U.S. only. After the labels had worked out their issue, Pye Records released a compilation from both records in the U.K. in June 1967 under the title of Sunshine Superman.
Jumping to the ’70s, here’s Fire And Rain by James Taylor. Apart from his cover of the Carole King tune You’ve Got A Friend, the opener of his second album Sweet Baby James from February 1970 is my favorite Taylor song. It became his first big hit in the U.S., peaking at no. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Songfacts quotes Taylor from a 1972 interview with Rolling Stone, during which he explained how the song came about: “The first verse is about my reactions to the death of a friend [Susie Schnerr, “Suzanne”]. The second verse is about my arrival in this country [the U.S.] with a monkey on my back, and there Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and the time was at hand when I had to do it. And the third verse of that song refers to my recuperation in Austin Riggs [from drug addiction] which lasted about five months.” Wow, certainly a lot of stuff packed in one song!
In November 1970, Cat Stevens (nowadays known as Yusuf/Cat Stevens) released Tea For The Tillerman, his fourth studio album. One of my favorite tunes from that record is Father And Son. According to Songfacts, while Stevens made up the story about a son wanting to join the Russian Revolution and his dad pleading with him to stay home to work on the farm, the lyrics were inspired by Stevens’ lonely childhood and differences of opinion between him and his father about his chosen path to become a professional musician.
I already mentioned Carole King, one of my favorite singer-songwriters of all time – in fact, make that one of my all-time favorite music artists! Sometimes one forgets that before becoming a recording artist and performer, King had a close to 10-year career writing songs for other artists, together her then-husband Gerry Goffin. More than two-dozen of these tunes entered the charts, and various became hits. Examples include Chains (The Cookies, later covered by The Beatles on their debut record), The Loco-Motion (Little Eva), One Fine Day (The Chiffons) and Pleasant Valley Sunday (The Monkees). King composed the music for these tunes, while Goffin wrote the lyrics. Then, in February 1971, Carole King released her second solo album Tapestry. Instead of obvious choices like I Feel The Earth Move, It’s Too Late or You’ve Got A Friend, I’d like to highlight Way Over Yonder. Among others, this gem features James Taylor on acoustic guitar and Curtis Amy who plays the amazing tenor saxophone solo. To me, this is as close to perfection as music can get – emotional, beautiful and timeless!
Joni Mitchell is one of those artists I really should know much better than I currently do. In June 1971, her fourth album Blue appeared, which according to Wikipedia is widely regarded by music critics as one of the greatest records of all time. Here’s This Flight Tonight. If you don’t know Mitchell’s original, yet the melody and the lyrics somehow sound familiar, you’ve probably heard the cover by Scottish hard rock band Nazareth. I certainly have, since they scored a no. 1 hit with it in Germany in 1973. The song also charted in the U.K. (no. 11), U.S. (no. 177) and Canada (no. 27).
More frequent visitors of the blog won’t be surprised about my next choice: Neil Young. Wait a moment, some might think, based on what I wrote in my clever introduction, should he be in the list? After all, he has been affiliated with bands like Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and he continues to perform frequently with Crazy Horse. Well, in addition to these bands, Young has done plenty of solo work, plus Crazy Horse is his backing band. At the core, there’s no doubt to me that Young nicely fits the singer-songwriter definition. Here’s The Needle And The Damage Done, one of Young’s finest songs first recorded for Harvest, his fourth studio album from February 1972. The tune was inspired by the death of Young’s friend and former Crazy Horse bandmate Danny Whitten from heroin addiction. With the U.S. battling a horrific opioid addiction crisis, eerily, the song’s lyrics remain as relevant today as they were more than 45 years ago.
While with the explosion of the singer-songwriter category in the late ’60s and 70s I could go on featuring artists from that time period, I also would like to least touch on more recent decades. In the ’80s, Suzanne Vega emerged as one of the most popular artists in the category. At the time, I frequently listened to her second album Solitude Standing from April 1987 – yes, it’s the one with Tom’s Diner. While that song represents cinematic-type storytelling at its best and perfectly describes the New York morning rush, I’ve become a bit tired of the tune due to over-exposure. Interestingly though, it wasn’t much of a chart success at the time, unlike Luka, the track I’m featuring here, which became Vega’s biggest hit. The song’s upbeat melody is in marked contrast to the lyrics addressing the horrible subject of child abuse.
When it comes to ’90s singer-songwriters, one name that comes to mind is Alanis Morissette. In June 1995, the Canadian artist released her third studio album Jagged Little Pill, which became her first record that appeared worldwide and catapulted her to international stardom. The album became a chart topper in 13 countries, including Canada, the U.K. and the U.S., and is one of the highest-selling records of all time, exceeding more than 33 million copies worldwide. It won five Grammy Awards including Album of the Year. Here’s the record’s second single Hand In My Pocket, a nice rock tune Morissette co-wrote with Glen Ballard who also produced the album.
The last artist I’d like to highlight in this post is English singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse. During her career, which was tragically cut short in July 2011 when she died from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, Winehouse only released two albums. Her acclaimed second record Back To Black from October 2007 won Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2007 Grammy Awards. With close to 3.6 million units sold in the U.K. alone, Back To Black became the U.K.’s second best-selling album of the 21st century; worldwide sales exceeded 12 million. Here’s the opener Rehab, which also was released separately as the album’s lead single. The lyrics describe Winehouse’s refusal to attend rehab for alcoholism following her management team’s suggestion. The tune has a nice soul vibe and like many of her other songs has a retro feel.
