“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” is a song written by Bennie Benjamin, Gloria Caldwell and Sol Marcus for the jazz singer and pianist Nina Simone, who first recorded it in 1964. Nina Simone’s orchestrated downtempo rendition appears on her 1964 album “Broadway-Blues-Ballads”. The beginnings of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” came with composer and arranger Horace Ott, who came up with the melody and chorus lyric line after a temporary falling out with his girlfriend (and wife-to-be), Gloria Caldwell. He then brought it to writing partners Bennie Benjamin and Sol Marcus to complete. However, when it came time for songwriting credits, rules of the time prevented BMI writers (Ott) from officially collaborating with ASCAP members (the other two), so Ott instead listed Caldwell’s name on the credits.
“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” has been covered by many artists, most notably by The Animals, whose blues rock version of the song became a transatlantic hit in 1965.
The Animals’ lead singer Eric Burdon would later say of the song, “It was never considered pop material, but it somehow got passed on to us and we fell in love with it immediately.” In a 2010 interview with Eric Burdon, he said: “I’ve really been misunderstood. By my mom, my dad, school teachers, a couple of the women that I married. I’ve been misunderstood all of my life.”
The Animals sped up the tempo and made prominent use of a guitar and organ riff that was picked out and expanded from an element that originally appeared in the Simone recording’s outro. In Animals concerts at the time, the group maintained the recorded arrangement, but Burdon sometimes slowed the vocal line down to an almost spoken part, recapturing a bit of the Simone flavor.
This single was ranked by Rolling Stone at #322 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
(Admin Note: That’s a playlist of the complete album. Yes, yes we do have that the ability to make that work! It’s more complicated than it looks, but that should work on all browsers that support YouTube.)
Pretzel Logic is the third studio album by Steely Dan, released on February 20, 1974 by ABC Records. It was written by principal band members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.
They recorded the album at The Village Recorder in West Los Angeles with producer Gary Katz. It was the last album to feature the full five-member band of Becker, Fagen, Denny Dias, Skunk Baxter, and Jim Hodder. Although on this recording, drummer Hodder appeared on vocals only. It also featured significant contributions from many prominent Los Angeles–based studio musicians.
The album was a commercial and critical success upon its release. Its hit single “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” helped restore Steely Dan’s radio presence after the disappointing performance of their 1973 album Countdown to Ecstasy. Pretzel Logic was reissued on CD in 1987 and remastered in 1999 to retrospective acclaim from critics.
It was produced by Gary Katz and written primarily by Walter Becker and bandleader Donald Fagen, who also sang and played keyboard. The album marked the beginning of Becker and Fagen’s roles as Steely Dan’s principal members.
They enlisted prominent Los Angeles–based studio musicians to record Pretzel Logic, but used them only for occasional overdubs. Steely Dan’s Jeff “Skunk” Baxter played pedal steel guitar and hand drums.
Steely Dan often incorporated jazz into their music during the 1970s. Baxter’s guitar playing drew on jazz and rock and roll influences. On Duke Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-oo”, he imitates a ragtime mute-trombone solo.
Certain songs incorporate additional instrumentation, including exotic percussion, violin sections, bells, and horns. Music critic Robert Christgau wrote that the solos are “functional rather than personal or expressive, locked into the workings of the music”
This is from Johnny Winter’s fifth studio album, and his first since “Johnny Winter And” almost three years earlier. It was released by Columbia Records in 1973. Many of the songs on the album have a more rock-oriented power trio sound, with Randy Jo Hobbs, formerly of the McCoys, on bass. He also gets some help from Rick Derringer—a former McCoy as well—on electric, pedal steel, and click guitars; Todd “Hello It’s Me” Rundgren on keyboards; Mark “Moogy” Klingman (later of Rundgren’s Utopia) on piano; and Jeremy Steig on flute.
The Winter brothers, Johnny and Edgar, were born in the mid-1940s in Beaumont, Texas, hometown of The Big Bopper and Blind Willie Johnson, and both attended special education classes in high school. Edgar, a musical child prodigy, mastered a plethora of instruments, while Johnny—the elder brother by two years—focused on the guitar, mandolin, and harmonica.
Johnny recorded his first single at 15, and released his first LP in 1968, after Columbia Record execs caught the Fillmore East gig that same year at which Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper invited Winter on stage to jam. Within a year he was playing Woodstock, and recording on and off with brother Edgar, and by 1970 he was incorporating rock into his blues. He was sidetracked for several years by a bad heroin habit, but cleaned up his act just in time to record 1973’s Still Alive and Well
The fast and furious “Still Alive and Well” opens with Winter saying, “I’m hungry, let’s do this fucker,” at which point his guitar takes over. Meanwhile he sings like a survivor:
Did you ever take a look to see who is left around
Everyone I thought was cool is six feet underground
And even throws a joke at his own expense into the chorus:
I’m still alive and well, still alive and well
Every now and then I know it’s kind of hard to tell
But I’m still alive and well
He plays a pair of flabbergasting solos, and barks and screams, and I’ll be damned if this isn’t the best song about doing junk and living to tell about it since Dion’s great “Your Own Backyard.”
“Puff, the Magic Dragon” (or “Puff”) is a song written by Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow, and made popular by Yarrow’s group Peter, Paul and Mary in a 1963 recording. The lyrics for “Puff, the Magic Dragon” are based on a 1959 poem by Leonard Lipton, then a 19-year-old Cornell University student. Lipton was inspired by an Ogden Nash poem titled “Custard the Dragon”, about a “realio, trulio little pet dragon”.
The lyrics tell a story of the ageless dragon Puff and his playmate, Jackie Paper, a little boy who grows up and loses interest in the imaginary adventures of childhood and leaves Puff to be with himself. (The line “A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys” is generally thought to imply only that “little Jackie Paper” grew up.) The story of the song takes place “by the sea” in the fictional land of “Honalee”.
Lipton was friends with Peter Yarrow’s housemate when they were all students at Cornell. He used Yarrow’s typewriter to get the poem out of his head. He then forgot about it until years later, when a friend called and told him Yarrow was looking for him, to give him credit for the lyrics. On making contact Yarrow gave Lipton half the songwriting credit, and he still gets royalties from the song.
In an effort to be gender-neutral, Yarrow now sings the line “A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys” as “A dragon lives forever, but not so girls and boys.” The original poem also had a verse that did not make it into the song. In it, Puff found another child and played with him after returning. Neither Yarrow nor Lipton remembers the verse in any detail, and the paper that was left in Yarrow’s typewriter in 1958 has since been lost.
In 1961, Peter Yarrow joined Paul Stookey and Mary Travers to form Peter, Paul and Mary. The group incorporated the song into their live performances before recording it in 1962.
After the song’s initial success, speculation arose — as early as a 1964 article in Newsweek — that the song contained veiled references to smoking marijuana. The word “paper” in the name of Puff’s human friend (Jackie Paper) was said to be a reference to rolling papers, and the word “dragon” was interpreted as “draggin’,” i.e. inhaling smoke; similarly, the name “Puff” was alleged to be a reference to taking a “puff” on a joint. The supposition was claimed to be common knowledge in a letter by a member of the public to The New York Times in 1984.
The authors of the song have repeatedly rejected this interpretation and have strongly and consistently denied that they intended any references to drug use. Leonard Lipton has stated “Puff the Magic Dragon is not about drugs.” Peter Yarrow has frequently explained that the song is about the hardships of growing older and has no relationship to drug-taking. He has also said of the song that it “never had any meaning other than the obvious one” and is about the “loss of innocence in children”, and dismissed the suggestion of association with drugs as “sloppy research”.
In 1976, Yarrow’s bandmate Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary also upheld the song’s innocence. He recorded a version of the song at the Sydney Opera House in March 1976, in which he set up a fictitious trial scene. The Prosecutor accused the song of being about marijuana, but Puff and Jackie protested. The judge finally left the case to the jury (the Opera House audience) and said if they will sing along with the song, it would be acquitted. The audience joined in with Stookey, and at the end of their sing-along, the judge declared: “case dismissed.”
Ed. Note: Again, but this time for personal reasons, I feel compelled to inform you that, though Mary has passed away, both Peter and Paul (Noel) regularly still perform, often at very reasonable prices. They both have a number of tour dates (together and solo) in 2018 and some scheduled tour dates in 2019.
“Joy to the World” was written by Hoyt Axton, and made famous by the band Three Dog Night. The song is also popularly known by its opening lyric, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog”. The song, which has been described by members of Three Dog Night as a “kid’s song” and a “silly song”, topped the main singles charts in North America, was certified gold by the RIAA.
Some of the words are nonsensical. Axton wanted to persuade his record producers to record a new melody he had written and the producers asked him to sing any words to the tune. A member of Three Dog Night said that the original lyrics to the song were “Jeremiah was a prophet” but “no one liked that”.
When Hoyt Axton performed the song to the group, two of the three main vocalists – Danny Hutton and Cory Wells – rejected the song, but Chuck Negron felt that the band needed a “silly song” to help bring the band back together as a working unit. Negron also felt that the song “wasn’t even close to our best record, but it might have been one of our most honest.”
Unlike most Three Dog Night songs recorded at that point, instead of having just the three main vocalists singing harmony, the song was recorded with all seven members of the band singing. Drummer Floyd Sneed sings the deep lyric “I wanna tell you” towards the end of the song.
Ed. Note: I got to see Three Dog Night as a VIP back in 2011 or 2012. They were still rocking and putting on an energetic show, after all those years. If you’re curious, they’re still touring and still making music. Use your favorite search engine, as they’re on tour right now and are playing small venues with very reasonable ticket prices.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked Jefferson Airplane’s version No. 274 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Written by The Great Society guitarist Darby Slick after realizing his girlfriend had left him, and first performed by that band, which included his then-sister-in-law Grace Slick on vocals, the song made little impact outside of the club circuit in the Bay Area.
The song was released in 1966 as a single with the B-side another Darby Slick composition titled “Free Advice” on the North Beach subsidiary of Autumn Records, and received minimal circulation outside of San Francisco.
San Francisco in the mid-’60s was the epicenter of free love, but Darby Slick saw a downside to this ethos, as it could lead to jealousy and disconnect. This song champions loyalty and monogamy, as the singer implores us to find that one true love that will nurture us and get us through the tough times.
When Grace Slick departed to join Jefferson Airplane, she took this song with her, bringing it to the Surrealistic Pillow sessions, along with her own composition “White Rabbit”. Subsequently, the Airplane’s more ferocious rock and roll version became the band’s first and biggest success; the single by Jefferson Airplane scored at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Jefferson Airplane’s first hit song, “Somebody To Love” was also one of the first big hits to come out of the US West Coast counterculture scene. Over the next few years, musicians flocked to the San Francisco Bay Area to be part of this scene. The original version of this song that Grace Slick sang with The Great Society is more subdued.
With Jefferson Airplane she sounds far more accusatory and menacing when she belts out lines like “Your mind is so full of red” and “Your friends, baby, they treat you like a guest.”
“Somebody to Love” was also a track on their influential album released in February 1967, Surrealistic Pillow. The lyrics are in the second person, with each two-line verse setting a scene of alienation and despair, and the chorus repeating the title of the song, with slight variations such as: “… / Don’t you need somebody to love? / Wouldn’t you love somebody to love? / …” Like the album on which it appeared, this song was instrumental in publicizing the existence of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture to the rest of the United States.
The story is of a man who meets the woman he believes is the love of his life in the lobby of the Commodore Hotel (which exists, it is in Linden TN about 140 miles east of Memphis) and immediately makes a lifelong commitment to her, promising her the storied house on the edge of town with the white picket fence, but in the end she leaves him crying in his beer.
The narrator is telling his story to a bartender, about how much he loved her and how badly he misses her. Then, one at a time, other guys in the bar start adding to his story, until he realizes they’d all been scammed by the same girl.
In the end, they’re all singing in harmony about the “Dixie Chicken” and having a wistful but hearty laugh about all being part of this well-populated men’s club.
The Mississippi Sheiks consisted mainly of members of the Chatmon family, from Bolton, Mississippi, who were well known in the Mississippi Delta. The father of the family, Henderson Chatmon, had been a “musicianer” (someone with good technical ability on his or her instrument, adept at sight-reading written music) during slavery times, and his children carried on the musical spirit. Their most famous member (although not a permanent member) was Armenter Chatmon, better known as Bo Carter, who managed a successful solo career as well as playing with the Sheiks, which may have contributed to their success. Their last recording session as the Mississippi Sheiks was in 1936. Carter made a few more sessions on his own, but by 1938 he too was dropped. When the band dissolved, the Chatmon brothers gave up music and returned to farming.
Their 1930 blues single “Sitting on Top of the World” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or artistically significant”
The title line of “Sitting on Top of the World” is similar to a well-known popular song of the 1920s, “I’m Sitting on Top of the World”, written by Ray Henderson, Sam Lewis and Joe Young (popularised by Al Jolson in 1926).
Al Jolson Sings I'm Sitting On Top Of The World
However the two songs are distinct, both musically and lyrically. Similarities have also been noted that “Sitting on Top of the World” was derived from an earlier song by Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, “You Got To Reap What You Sow” (1929). Tampa Red used the same melody in his version from the same year.
Tampa Red You Got To Reap What You Sow (1929)
In May 1930, Charlie Patton recorded a version of the song (with altered lyrics) called “Some Summer Day” During the next few years renditions of “Sitting on Top of the World” were recorded by a number of artists: the Two Poor Boys, Doc Watson, Big Bill Broonzy, Sam Collins, Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies, and Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys. After Milton Brown recorded it for Bluebird Records the song became a staple in the repertoire of western swing bands.
Nazz (also known as The Nazz) was formed in Philadelphia in 1967 by guitarist Todd Rundgren and bassist Carson Van Osten. Rundgren wrote virtually all of the group’s original material. Drummer Thom Mooney and vocalist/keyboardist Robert “Stewkey” Antoni joined before their first concert, opening for the Doors in 1967. Admittedly based a on a riff inspired by The Who’s “Can’t Explain” (1964), proceedings get underway with Stewkey’s organ and first generation Rhodes followed quickly by Todd’s acid fuzz guitar, amply supported by Carson VanOsten’s rolling bass and Thom Mooney’s drums and bongos.
Nazz took its name from the Yardbirds’ song “The Nazz Are Blue.”
The Yardbirds - The Nazz Are Blue
In Phoenix, Arizona, another band called Nazz was formed at about the same time that Nazz was formed in Philadelphia. This group released only one single before moving to Los Angeles and renaming themselves Alice Cooper.
I like the idea of being open and sharing as much information as is needed, while still respecting people’s privacy. I’m not sure if I’m going to do these on a regular basis, but I figured I’d do this one and see how it went and what sort of reactions it got.
First, the site is now officially 1 month old! That’s right, we’ve been at this for a whole month. Time flies when you’re having fun! Here’s our first article:
In the past month, we’ve about 1,200 visitors and displayed 3,700 pages to you, our guests. That’s actually fantastic growth and shows that there’s quite a bit of interest in the subject.
We’ve added a forum, where you can get help or offer to help other people in their quest to keep the stories alive. There’s more to come on this front, and the goal is to facilitate collaboration within our little community.
If you haven’t already done so, now would be an excellent time to go ahead and register for the site. Registration is painless and you can use any ol’ information you want in the fields – though a real email address is required. Registration also automatically signs you up as a participant in our forum. After some testing, there’s some hope of adding more features to that – but it’s chock-full of features already.
We take your personal information pretty damned seriously. If you’ve missed it, then you may wish to see this notice. We have an obligation to keep your data private and secure, and that’s a priority.
Our most popular page was a user contributed forum post. You can see it here and it was posted by user 65n85tunes. We’d like to take a moment to thank them for their contribution and it’s great to discover new music, the history behind it, and another chapter in the history of the music we all love.
To date, we’ve published some 30 articles (with 3 additional meta articles), 13 forum topics with 22 replies, and have 8 registered users.
If you’re not interested in joining us, but would like to receive notifications when there’s an article posted (every day, at about 16:30 Eastern), then you can sign up for notifications on your right. Just insert any old valid email address and whatever name you’d like the software to call you, and then check your junk/spam folder to confirm the email address really belongs to you.
To avoid spamming people, we use the double-confirmation method and you’ll have to click a link to show the software that the email address really belongs to you. We do our best to be good Netizins and it is a hassle, but we’re willing to do it. If you have trouble confirming your email, let us know and we’ll help you out.
So, here’s to a good first month and to many more months of keeping the music alive.
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