Hardly a soul exists in a developed country that hasn’t heard some Steve Lukather guitar playing at one time or another, and many have no awareness that what they’re listening to is his playing. He worked in the late 70s and 80s mostly as a session player for too many names to list but two of the big ones are Cher and Michael Jackson. He also got together with his session player buddies to form a band called Toto. Since 1989 he has also put out a variety of solo work. More recently, he’s been a part of Ringo’s all star band

I have listed this post as incomplete, because I have listened to a rather small amount of Toto’s catalogue, only 2 of their 14 studio albums. I found out about Toto while working at a grocery store. I would hear Hold the Line on the store radio and liked it. I later looked it up and that was the first time I heard the name Toto. I believe I’ve heard Rosanna on those “hits of the 80s” type CDs being advertised on TV in the 90s. In 2012 I found out that some guy called Steve Lukather was going to be playing a Joe Satriani’s G3 that year. My reaction was, “Who the hell is that?” So that actually got me to check out his solo records starting with 2008’s Ever-changing Times. Since then I have been meaning to give Toto a chance and only did so about half a year ago. I also recently finished reading Lukather’s book, so some of the information here is coming from that. He likes to go buy Luke as a result of knowing too many Steves like Steve Porcaro for example, so I’ll refer to him as Luke from here on.

What I remember from the book is that during the 70s Luke had a little high school band going. He did a little bit of session work, but somewhere along the way he got picked up by Boz Scaggs to be his touring guitarist not long after he was out of high school. He ended up doing two solos on Scaggs’s eighth studio album, Down Two Then Left.

This is a very Lukather-esque solo that works as a good representation of his style.

This was a one take solo that helped establish his session player career. Word tended to make its way around the music community of L.A. when something like that was down. I honestly prefer the A Clue solo to this one. It was also not long after that the his session player buddies decided to form Toto with him.

I’ve been thinking about how odd a band Toto is. All of the musicians in the band are really, really good but at the same time there’s a complete lack of the coolness factor in their music. They are a group of music nerds doing really great music but nobody is going to think you’re one of the cool kids (or cool, uhh, older guy) if they hear you listening to Toto. Some true rocker types might even put you down for it. So anyway, let’s start with:

The typical Toto approach was shared vocal duties, and Luke takes the lead on this one. I honestly find the sound of his voice to be quite good. He’s a baritone and no legendary singer, but he’s got a pleasant, natural tone to his voice. That’s actually Cheryl Lynn singing the “Georgy porgy” chorus. In this video you might also notice how dorky the members of Toto look. Totally not cool at all. Jeff Porcaro, the drummer, could play some drums but those glasses look so terrible. Anyway, Luke is bringing some nice slide guitar at 2:00 with an oddly-placed solo in the middle of the song.

Not surprisingly, this song started as a piano song, and Luke added that complementary guitar riff on top of the piano foundation. This is an excellent example of the kind of thing Luke (probably most members of Toto as well) did. He has an excellent ability to add a complementary guitar track that enhances a song and makes it even better. Some of Luke’s best work is not his soloing or lead guitar, but his additions to what end up being rather full mixes with a lot of instruments doing a lot of work.

Again, he’s singing on this one, and I find his voice quite pleasant. I love those two notes he plays in the transition from the softer sections to the rockin’ part (1:57).

After a pretty successful first album based off the success of “Hold the Line,” they decided to go for more rock credibility with their next effort, Hydra.

There’s a short transition solo at 1:20 and a much longer solo found at 2:19. He nailed it on both of them, and then there’s another sort of solo squeezed in there during the transitional section at 3:08 and outro soloing to take us home at 4:04. All well done.

I don’t have a solo to point you to here, but what I love about his song is his complementary rhythm playing that starts at 0:40 and repeats several times throughout the song. I’m assuming this was another Hold the Line type piano song that he added guitar on top of.

Yes, that famous song. Luke got to sing the verse and the higher stuff was done by Bobby Kimball, the tenor. The hardest rockin’ parts of the song are created by Luke’s guitar and makes the song more complex and interesting than the piano pop ditty it is in most places. He starts soloing at 3:13 and does the outro solo thing later on.

My knowledge of Toto stops there.

I do know the Luke is the one playing rhythm guitar and bass on MJ’s Beat It. He also contributed guitar work and solos to 80s/90s hits like (Solo at 2:17):

In 1989 Luke released his first solo album. I recall reading about how he got shafted as far as it being released in the USA. So he didn’t really have much success with it. The first two tracks might have had some radio success. The first one features an unlisted Eddie Van Halen in there. I’m not sure what he did on the track.

I haven’t listened to 1994’s Candyman much, but I enjoyed his 1997 release entitled Luke.

Songs like this reveal Luke is more than just a guitar player. He really did a great job on the lyrics and vocals here. I really like the continuous vocal drops during the chorus that mimic a slide guitar or other instrument that goes between the notes. His solo here does not disappoint either (3:16).

In 2003 he released a Christmas album called Santamental. Which features a lot of guests, so it’s listed as Steve Lukather and Friends. One of those guests is Eddie Van Halen on the first track.

After an instrumental presentation of the song, there’s a long soloing section featuring alternating solos between Luke and Eddie for a total of 6. This is probably the coolest and craziest version of Joy to the World you’ll ever hear.

I’m including this song, because it’s actually a modern, original Christmas song that perfectly mimics that traditional Christmas feel. Honestly, I thought it was a traditional Christmas song until I read in his book that he wrote it with help from a friend.

In 2008 he released Ever-Changing Times. Overall it is a good collection of rock songs and ballads, but I can’t choose a song that really stands out.

In 2010 he released All’s Well That Ends Well, which is a similarly excellent piece of work.

Again, Luke brings it as more than just a guitar player but as a singer and lyricist as well. He also got excellent keyboard work done. That additional guitar track at 0:46 was a brilliant addition. He starts a solo at 2:43 and just kills it. Another great solo in a great song.

He’s got himself a nice little riff going on this one with some masterful soloing starting at 2:56.

Finally, his solo career stops in 2013 at this point with an album simply named Transition. This guy puts out great stuff now and this is another overall great effort. The nine-track album starts off with 3 negative songs. The first two are about all the hate spewed on the internet by keyboard warriors, and the third about getting divorced. It’s followed up by a song called Right the Wrong and then the title track, Transition. There are then two positive songs and a love song written by a friend who gave him permission to use it. Finally, it ends on an instrumental cover of Charlie Chaplin’s Smile. I leave you with the opening track.

I kept my coverage of the solo albums pretty brief. I’m sure I left out some great work and great solos, and really, I would recommend checking out the full albums from 2008 to 2013 if you like a wide variety music with excellent musicianship. If you know more about Toto than me, you can contribute some Toto songs and moments I haven’t heard yet.

Hits: 8

The specific origins of “Irene” are unclear. Lead Belly was singing a version of the song as early as 1908, which he claimed to have learned from his uncles Terell and Bob.

“Irene” has pretty accurately been reported to have been written in about 1888 by a man from Dayton, Ohio named Gussie L. Davis. It was picked up by the minstrel shows who traveled the country. It was probably sung in Shreveport where Lead Belly’s uncle, who was a musical man himself, brought it home.

Changing old songs into new ones was something Lead Belly may have picked up during the many years he spent in prison. Over the course of nearly 25 years, he served four different sentences: two for assault, one for attempted homicide and one for murder. This gave him lots of time to listen to, and learn, the music of older inmates.

While made widely known by Lead Belly, this song was also a major hit for a group called The Weavers, featuring a young Pete Seeger. Seeger says Lead Belly must have made a few changes to the original tune.

He changed everything he ever sung. I’ve seen in a book the words with a completely different tune printed way back in the 19th century, but not the exact same words, just the chorus and maybe the first verse. He added verses, and he completely changed the tune.

This single first reached the Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart on June 30, 1950 and lasted 25 weeks on the chart, peaking at #1 for 13 weeks. Although generally faithful, the Weavers chose to omit some of Lead Belly’s more controversial lyrics, leading Time magazine to label it a “dehydrated” and “prettied up” version of the original.  Due to the recording’s popularity, however, The Weavers’ lyrics are the ones generally used today. Billboard ranked this version as the No. 1 song of 1950.

Often cited as a major influence on the history of Folk, Country, and even the Blues, the song has been covered by other artists such as Mississippi John Hurt, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Ry Cooder, Ernest Tubb and Red Foley, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Dr. John, and Tom Waits, and many others. Here’s a version by Eric Clapton:

Hits: 49

In addition to seeing the start of the career of one of the most influential artists of Rock, it is humorous to see the attitudes of Huw Wheldon interviewing them. A snapshot of a time when music and society were starting to change.

The second song they play, “the Cotton Song”, is an old ‘slave’ song which is a predecessor of the Blues. Page was already starting his love of the Blues before he knew where it would take him.  Here’s a version by The Lighttown Skiffle Group.

Skiffle is a style of 1920s and 1930s jazz deriving from blues, ragtime, and folk music, using both improvised and conventional instruments. It migrated to Europe as a kind of folk music with a blues or jazz flavor that was popular in the 1950s, played by a small group and often incorporating improvised instruments such as washboards. Improvised jug bands playing blues and jazz were common across the American South in the early decades of the 20th century. They used instruments such as the washboard, jugs, washtub bass, cigar-box fiddle, musical saw and comb-and-paper kazoos, as well as more conventional instruments, such as acoustic guitar and banjo.

The first British recordings of skiffle were carried out by Kenneth Colyer’s new band in 1954. Kenneth Colyer was an English jazz trumpeter and cornetist, devoted to New Orleans jazz. His band was also known for skiffle interludes. It was the release by Decca Records of two skiffle tracks by Chris Barber’s Jazz Band that transformed the fortunes of skiffle in late 1955. Barber was an English jazz musician, best known as a bandleader and trombonist. As well as scoring a UK top twenty traditional jazz hit, he helped the careers of many musicians. One of which was Lonnie Donegan, whose appearances with Barber triggered the skiffle craze of the mid-1950s and who had his first transatlantic hit, “Rock Island Line”, while with Chris Barber’s band. His providing an audience for Donegan and, later, Alexis Korner makes Barber a significant figure in the British rhythm and blues and “beat boom” of the 1960s.

Lonnie Donegan’s fast-tempo version of Lead Belly’s “Rock Island Line” was a major hit in 1956, featuring a washboard (but not a tea-chest bass), with “John Henry” on the B-side.

It was the success of this single and the lack of a need for expensive instruments or high levels of musicianship that set off the British skiffle craze. Skiffle played a major part in beginning the careers of later eminent jazz, pop, blues, folk and rock musicians and has been seen as a critical stepping stone to the second British folk revival, blues boom and British Invasion of the US popular music scene. Liverpool skiffle group The Quarrymen playing their first full show in 1957: John Lennon is centre stage.

It has been estimated that in the late 1950s, there were 30,000–50,000 skiffle groups in Britain. Sales of guitars grew rapidly, and other musicians were able to perform on improvised bass and percussion in venues such as church halls and cafes and in the flourishing coffee bars of Soho, London, like the 2i’s Coffee Bar, the Cat’s Whisker and nightspots like Coconut Grove and Churchill’s, without having to aspire to musical perfection or virtuosity. A large number of British musicians began their careers playing skiffle in this period, and some became leading figures in their respective fields. These included leading Northern Irish musician Van Morrison and British blues pioneer Alexis Korner, as well as Ronnie Wood, Alex Harvey and Mick Jagger; folk musicians Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Ashley Hutchings; rock musicians Roger Daltrey, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Robin Trower and David Gilmour; and popular beat-music successes Graham Nash and Allan Clarke of the Hollies. Most notably, the Beatles developed from John Lennon’s skiffle group the Quarrymen. Similarly, the Bee Gees developed from Barry Gibb’s skiffle group the Rattlesnakes.

Jimmy Page’s career started with his rather simple form of playing and, as they say, the rest is history. Six years after this appearance on television, Jimmy was interviewed in June 1963 by Royston Ellis in Guernsey, Channel Islands. He had given up the idea of becoming a biological researcher and his destiny was in sight.

Hits: 304

As much as this song is an example of the great “Girl Groups” tracks released in the 1960’s, the history of this particular song has as much to do about the people involved. Who actually sang the song and how Phil Spector was involved makes this rather involved. Let’s see if we can sort this out.

Musicians on this track include Barney Kessel and Tommy Tedesco on guitar, Larry Knechtel and Leon Russell on piano, and Steve Douglas on saxophone. Douglas was also the contractor for the session, meaning he assembled the musicians. According to Douglas, his sax solo on this song was one of his favorites, but Phil Spector was going to put vocals over it. Douglas convinced him to leave it alone, and it became one of the most famous saxophone solos of the era.

Let’s start with Phil Spector who, at 21 years old, was quickly becoming a major influence in the way records were being produced. This record was one of his initial starts in what was to become famously known as the “Wall Of Sound” technique. Multi-track recording, and stereo, was a way to record different instruments and vocals separately and combine them later into a final track, and was on its beginnings to become the norm for producers. Spector, and incidentally Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, didn’t care much for this technique. They both prefered the sound of mono recording to have the full sound come from both speakers to embellish it. Spector recorded this song at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, packing all the musicians into a room that measured just 19 x 24 feet. Spector was meticulous about microphone placement, especially when it came to the drums. He recorded the song in mono, which meant that every instrument was coming out of both speakers at full force, eschewing the nuance of stereo for the power of a single track.

Spector wasn’t big on editing or post-production, so he spent a lot of his studio time having the musicians run through the track before he would roll tape. Typically, he would have the guitarists play for a while while he worked out the song, then bring in pianos, bass, and drums. Vocals were recorded in an echo chamber located behind the control room at Gold Star.

Add in the personality of Phil Spector to the mix and his “dictatorship” of how he used and controlled the groups he recorded, the story of his life (he was convicted of the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson and is currently in prison) makes it remarkable he was able to accomplish as much as he did. He would frequently use a group name, change who the members were, and release records that made it hard to know who sang which one. That leads us to the next part of this records history.

This song was written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector. Barry and Greenwich (later married and divorced) had written several other hits, including (but not only) “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, “Then He Kissed Me”, “Be My Baby”, “Chapel of Love”, and “River Deep -- Mountain High” (also written with Phil Spector); “Leader of the Pack” (written with Shadow Morton); and “Sugar, Sugar”. They also recorded songs as a duo known as The Raindrops, as well as a version of this song.

The song was composed over two days in Spector’s office in New York. The refrain of “Da Doo Ron Ron” came from nonsense syllables they stuck in as filler for lyrics later, but it was exactly what Phil Spector was looking for, since he didn’t want a cerebral lyric getting in the way of his massive production and the tidy boy-meets-girl story line. The rhymes of the opening lines, “I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still … Somebody told me that his name was Bill” was inspired by Bill Walsh, a friend of Spector who happened to visit Spector while the three were writing the song. Sonny Bono, who was also a record producer at the time and was hanging out at the sessions, recalls Spector asking if the song was “dumb enough,” meaning is was accessible to the teenagers who were the target audience. Spector knew he had a hit with this one, telling Bono on playback, “That’s solid gold coming out of that speaker.”

The Crystals were one of the legendary girl groups in music history despite their short career, 1961-1964, and the different line-ups that recorded under the group name. The original Crystals were signed to Phil Spector’s Phillies label during 1961. Barbara Alston, Mary Thomas, Delores Kenniebrew, Patsy Wright, and Mema Girard formed the group in Brooklyn where they came to the attention of Spector. They quickly produced two top 20 hits, “There’s No Other (Like My Baby)” and “Uptown.” The Crystals regrouped in 1963 without Mary Thomas and added Dolores “La La” Brooks as lead singer. Meanwhile in California, The Blossoms with Darlene Love also came to the attention of Phil Spector. When it became inconvenient to bring The Crystals to California for a recording session, he used The Blossoms to fill in. The result was the number one hit “He’s A Rebel” and “He’s Sure The Boy I’m Gonna Marry” with the lead vocal by Darlene Love. Upon closer examination, however, it turns out that (as mentioned) “He’s a Rebel” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” weren’t sung by the real Crystals at all, while two other songs (i.e., “Tonight I Met the Boy I’m Gonna Marry” and “Look in My Eyes”) are generally credited not to the Crystals but to Darlene Love in the case of the first song and the Chantels (a pioneering girl group that had no connection whatsoever with Phil Spector), in the second. Neither song is listed in any Crystals’ discography found, but it’s likely they recorded their own, little known, versions of both. And that likely lets you know just how difficult untangling the true facts can be.

As for “Da Doo Ron Ron”, who actually sang the lead vocals is contested and even the subject of a lawsuit. Darlene Love, who was featured in the 2013 documentary “20 Feet From Stardom”, has said that she was the lead singer on this song, which was recorded at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles. Love sang lead on The Crystals’ previous hits “He’s A Rebel” and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” because Phil Spector called in her group The Blossoms to record those songs when The Crystals couldn’t make it to Los Angeles. The songs were still credited to The Crystals, and Love claims that she expected her own single release to follow.

Love has given various accounts of her side of the story, telling Katie Couric that she sang lead on “Da Doo Ron Ron,” but backing off that claim in later interviews, saying that her lead vocals were wiped out and replaced by Crystals lead singer Dolores “La La” Brooks in retaliation by Spector when she asked him for an artist’s contract. When the movie “20 Feet From Stardom” -- which featured Love -- was released in 2013, The New York Times ran a story about the film that claimed Love sang lead on the song. Two weeks later, they ran a correction, stating: “While she did sing, it was as backup, not as the lead.”

Whether she appeared on the song at all is in dispute. The person who can best answer that question is Phil Spector, but since he was in jail when “20 Feet From Stardom” was released, journalists couldn’t use him to fact check Love’s claims. La La Brooks, however, has her own account, which includes a phone call Spector made to his wife, Rachelle, who married him while his trial was going on. Brooks’ friend, Roger L. Chemel, provided an account with a photo of Brooks, Rachelle Spector, and Art Cohen (Brooks’ manager), taken where this conversation took place. Here’s the account:

On August 27, 2012, La La Brooks and Art Cohen, La La’s manager, met with Rachelle Spector after an attendance at the David Letterman Show in New York City. As the three of them joined to have dinner together at a local restaurant, Phil Spector called his wife Rachelle from the prison where he is incarcerated. La La recalls telling Rachelle to say “hi” to Phil. After the conclusion of this telephone call, La La Brooks explained the situation with Darlene Love claiming to have sung the original track of “Da Doo Ron Ron.”

Rachelle Spector tells La La Brooks and Art Cohen that she was flying back to California on August 28, 2012; and that she would explain the situation to Phil Spector. Rachelle Spector flies back to California for her allowed once a month visit on that date, and Rachelle explains to Phil what Darlene Love is saying. Phil Spector tells his wife that Darlene Love did not record a track of DDRR; that Darlene Love never sang background; and that Darlene Love was never a Crystal. Phil told Rachelle that he thought Darlene Love’s voice was too mature and gospely for DDRR and never considered Darlene at all for the song. Rachelle called La La Brooks that day and told her what she found out from Phil Spector.

In an interview with La La Brooks by Songfacts, she talked about recording this song:

When I went to the studio to do ‘Da Doo Ron Ron,’ Phil had taught me the song. When I walked in the studio, all the musicians were there, and after they finished putting down the track, I sat there for hours. Me and Cher went out to get something to eat. We come back, they’re still putting down the track. All of the sudden, when the track is finished, Phil says, ‘La La, go in the booth and put down the song now.’ I went in there, put down the song. I had trouble with (singing) ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ I had trouble with that because he liked my ending, because it was my ending in my head, and he said, ‘I want that again.’ I had to double it, and it was hard for me to double it, because I couldn’t get together with the ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,’ and then (in lower voice), ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ It was confusing. He said, ‘La La, try it again.’ And that’s how we recorded it.

La La Brooks also recalled the recording of the song to Mojo magazine November 2011:

I sang Da Doo Ron Ron over and over. Phil was sort of a perfectionist with that one. And I remember being pooped in the studio (laughs). I wanted to run out that door so fast but he kept going over and over. Thirty, 40 takes. I would say, “When are you gonna get it, you know?”

To best sum this all up, Michael H. Little put it well:

In closing, I will reiterate; trying to untangle the incestuous threads that tied the recording histories of the girl groups of the early sixties together is an exercise in frustration, if not outright futility. Producers used band names and considered band members interchangeable, so that I’m still not convinced, for example, that the Crystals ever recorded a version of Darlene Love’s “Today I Met the Boy I’m Gonna Marry.” Lala Brooks recorded a version; could this be the one credited to the Crystals? I don’t know. What I do know is that in a world where “He’s a Rebel” is still credited as a Crystals’ song, anything is possible. Me, I think the Crystals deserve a hallowed place in the rock pantheon for “Then He Kissed Me” alone. It makes me swoon, and not many songs can do that. As for the rest, I’ll let the serious rock historians ferret out the truth. I simply don’t have the patience.

In 2004, the Crystals’ song was ranked number 114 on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. It was, however, removed from the same list in the 2010 update, being the highest-ranked of the 27 songs that were removed. It was listed at number 528 by Q Magazine in their list of “The 1001 Best Songs Ever”, published in 2003. Berlin Media listed the song at number 43 on their list of “The 100 Best Singles of All Time” list published in 1998. It was also recognized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the “500 Songs That Shaped Rock”. Billboard named the song #55 on their list of “100 Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time”. The song has been recorded by many, including but not limited to, Mike Love of the Beach Boys (as well as The Beach Boys themselves), Bette Midler, The Searchers, and bootlegged studio recordings by Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones.

Hits: 52

Let’s start with the earliest known recording of the song:

The song was first recorded in the field by US musicologists John and Alan Lomax in December 1933, performed a cappella by the convict James “Iron Head” Baker, with R.D. Allen and Will Crosby singing back up, at Central State Farm, Sugar Land, Texas (a State prison farm). Baker was 63 years old at the time of the recording.

Alan Lomax travelled with his father, John A. Lomax on field recording trips during the 30s, collecting folk songs and tunes from various states in the USA. They collected songs for the Library of Congress Archive. Until that time, John Lomax had been an administrator at a college, and had collected cowboy songs, as a hobby. As a result of the Depression and economic crash of the 30s, John Lomax became jobless, and started collecting folk songs and related material on a full-time basis. In 1934, John Lomax became honorary consultant and head of the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song. By the time Alan was 23 years old he was assistant director of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library. After special service in World War II, Alan became the Director of Folk Music for Decca Records. A notated version was published in 1934 in the Lomaxes book “American Ballads and Folk Songs”. It was recorded commercially in New York in April 1939 for the Musicraft Records label by Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter. Musicraft issued the recording in 1939 as part of a 78rpm five-disc album entitled “Negro Sinful Songs sung by Lead Belly”.

While Lead Belly’s 1939 recording was also performed a cappella (with hand claps in place of hammer blows), most subsequent versions added guitar accompaniment. These include folk-style recordings in 1964 by Odetta (as a medley with “Looky Yonder”, with staccato guitar strums in place of hand claps), and Alan Lomax himself.

Odetta Holmes was an important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. I was unable to locate her recording of this song.

The only recording by Alan Lomax of himself covering this song I could locate is here, unless you have a Spotify account.

In 1968 Manfred Mann released a version of the song, arranged for a band, with the title and lyrics changed to “Big Betty”, on their LP “Mighty Garvey!”. It is definitely “updated” for the RocknRoll audience of the time.

“Black Betty”, in one version or another, has been covered by many artists over the years. From Sir Tom Jones (yes, the one that sang “It’s Not Unusual” and “What’s New Pussycat”) to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Spiderbait, Meatloaf, Melvins, ZZ Top, and Ministry. Of course one of the most known recent versions was made popular by Ram Jam in 1977.

To go down the rabbit hole a little deeper, Bill Bartlett (guitarist for Ram Jam)  was originally in the group Lemon Pipers who had the one hit wonder “Green Tambourine”.

Hits: 212

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

As you can see from our previous entries, the guitar riff has been a major part of music history. By the time the 1970s rolled along, all those influences had resulted in people being more willing to explore the music and to do so without boundaries.

And, they killed it. Yup… They’ll tell you dirty rotten lies, but they killed it. They killed the guitar riff.

This is where it died. It was horrible!

The murderers are a band called King Crimson. The genre they’d create would become known as “Progressive Rock.” They no longer thought in terms of a guitar riff. They thought with fancy terms such as ‘motif’ and ‘phrases.’

Now, to be fair, those could be considered guitar riffs. However, the new genre didn’t rely on the old ways and explored the new ways. They changed their artistic direction and that genre split off and much of it doesn’t have any guitar riffs at all.

Don’t believe me? Hell, let’s just have a listen of their song In the Court of the Crimson King from their album by the same title:

Hear the operatic influence? In ten minutes, when you think back to that song -- you will almost certainly not be thinking about the guitar driving the song, providing the simple overtone and compelling you to dance.

Crimson King is a bunch of murderers, is what they are!

Go on… I’ll wait… Go back and listen to it again. I told you that they murdered it! But, thankfully, it not only didn’t stay dead -- it even lived on in a genre they pioneered.

Ever hear of a band called Queen? Think carefully, ’cause when you remember those songs you might just be remembering some guitar riffs.

Here, listen to Fat Bottom Girls by Queen:

That’s right -- it kicks in at just about the 30 second mark. The riff had risen from the dead in Prog Rock. The 80s would murder the hell out of it again and with a different set of suspects. But King Crimson marks the first time the guitar riff had been really murdered and it spawned a whole horrible genre called Progressive Rock.

Hits: 4

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Last week, we spoke of distortion and how that was achieved -- by cramming a thumb through a speaker to recreate their crappy regular equipment. Well, that wasn’t the only way. The Kinks’ guitarist would cut his speakers, the Who would have a go at it, and even Led Zeppelin would take distortion to new levels.

Along the way, a man named Tony Iommi lost some fingers in an industrial accident and that changed his playing style -- and he added distortion to it.

Who is he? Just some guy. You might know him from Black Sabbath? Why not give this a listen:

That’s Black Sabbath doing their title track, Black Sabbath. What’s the riff in that one? Well, it starts right off with it. Those very first notes are really the start of the Heavy Metal genre as we know it today.

They had, for the most part, mastered the art of distortion and studio executives and producers no longer feared the sound. Previously, they had tried (usually) tried to get a clean tone from the guitar, with just a few exceptions such as those mentioned above.

This song came out in the mid-1960s and became a bit of a rebel song. It wasn’t one of the rebel songs that you’d hear from people who stayed home and protested the war, this was the song that went into battle with the Vietcong, and did so on fairly new devices that had been made smaller by the invention of the transistor.

This was a song for the angry youth. This was the song that sparked imaginations -- both good and bad. A goodly portion of the populace felt that it was Satan incarnate and, as we listen to the song, it’s probably easy to see why -- and the band’s name doesn’t really help change minds. Other people felt that this was the soundtrack to their lives. Just those few notes are often referred to as, “The Satanic notes!” Adults were not amused!

This music inspired and gave angst-filled teens something to latch onto during a very confusing era. Though the song originally came from over the water, it was quite appreciated by Americans and would inspire many of them to become musicians as well.

At the same time, people were legitimately frightened to meet the band and actually thought that the notes were satanic and were a way of casting spells on people. It is, however, one of the hallmark guitar riffs and has influenced a great deal of other music.

By now, our fourth installment, you should be able to recognize the riff. It’s those few simple notes. They’re simple, rhythmic, compelling, and are what you take with you when you listen to the song again in your head. As you can see, they change with the times. Sometimes, they even change within the same song!

I’d not go so far as to say that the music makes the changes to society, but I’d say there’s strong correlation between the guitar riff and history. Let’s examine some more next week?

Hits: 17

Running just 1:38 this is the shortest song ever to hit #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. But “Stay” is exactly as long as it needs to be. It’s fast and grimy and irresistible, firing off hooks in all directions and then ending as soon as it started. Despite it’s brevity, it still tells a story and while Williams sang the first part of this song, the soaring falsetto that overtakes him was group member Shane Gaston. That section is a huge part of the song’s success and lends itself well to falsetto singers.

This was written by Williams in 1953 when he was 15 years old at his home in Lancaster, South Carolina. He had a beautiful 15-year-old girl over, but it was 10 O’clock at night, and he tried to convince her to stay. He lost the argument, but as he was to relate years later, “Like a flood, the words just came to me.” Her parents were very strict about her curfew, so Williams could only watch as her brother picked her up and drove off.

In 1960, the song was put on a demo by Williams and his band, the Zodiacs. Maurice Williams’ first experience with music was in the church, where his mother and sister both performed. By the time he was six, Williams was performing regularly there. With his childhood friend Earl Gainey, Williams formed the gospel group the Junior Harmonizers. As rock and roll and doo-wop became their primary interest, the Junior Harmonizers changed their name to the Royal Charms. Williams finished high school and while on the road with the band, their station wagon broke down in Bluefield, West Virginia. The band came across a British-built Ford car known as the Zodiac and changed their name. Shortly thereafter, Henry Gaston replaced Earl Gainey.

In the spring of 1959, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs performed at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. Around that time, the group split and reformed. The members were Williams, Gaston, Wiley Bennett, and Charles Thomas. Later, Little Willie Morrow and Albert Hill were added. One month later, in the early summer of 1959, the band recorded in a Quonset Hut on Shakespeare Road in Columbia. The recording engineer, Homer Fesperman, recorded several tracks that the band had hoped would fetch them a hit. One of the last tracks that they recorded that day was “Stay”.

The group barely dented the Billboard Hot 100 after “Stay”. Their only other entries were “Come Along” (#83) and “Here In My Heart” (#86), both in 1961. The only other hit for Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs was the Williams-written song “Little Darlin'” which was a #11 hit on the R&B chart in 1957, but did not break into the Billboard Hot 100‘s Top 40. However, when it was covered by the Canadian group the Diamonds, it moved up to #2. That recording also capitalized on a falsetto hook and a bass-spoken verse, an oft used feature of Doo-Wop at the time.

There have been numerous covers, including versions by The Four Seasons, Jackson Browne (a much longer version), and The Hollies. “Stay” was also featured in 1978 movie “Dirty Dancing”, which also increased the song’s popularity.

The Four Seasons version was first released on their June 1963 album “The 4 Seasons Sing Ain’t That a Shame and 11 Others”; it was later released as a single in December 1963. Vee Jay originally released it as the B-side of “Peanuts” in December, but when disc jockeys started to “turn the single over” to play “Stay” on the air, the record company superseded the single with a new one with “Stay” as the A-side and “Goodnight My Love” as the new B-side. It peaked at number 16 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in April.

In August 1963, the song was released by the Hollies on their debut album “Stay With The Hollies”, and then took it to number eight in the UK Singles Chart. Their version is slightly longer, adding a guitar solo, and wastes no time getting started.

A version of the song with revised lyrics is the last track on Jackson Browne’s 1977 album “Running on Empty”. The song, which follows on the heels of Browne’s “The Load-Out” begs the audience to stay for an encore and includes an extensive playout. It includes backing contributions from David Lindley and Rosemary Butler. Browne, Butler and Lindley each contribute a similar verse in turn in ascending vocal ranges. It was released as a single and reached number 20 in the U.S. as well as number 12 in the UK.

Maurice Williams continued recording, touring, and releasing music through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. He is still active in the music industry, residing in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2010. He also made several performances for the PBS “Doo Wop 50” show series in 2001.

Hits: 86

Part 1
Part 2

Last week, we examined Johnny B. Goode and how that turned the world of music upside down and how it accompanied the changes in society and we even discussed how Americana influenced the world.

It was about that same time, the year was 1958 and this was just a couple of months later, that Link Wray released an instrumental known as Rumble.

If you examine the late 1950s, you’ll notice that we generally considered Johnny B. Goode to be, well, good. Rumble? Not so much.

Now, rock takes on an attitude. How much attitude? Well, it’s an instrumental. Go ahead, give it a listen:

There, you find just a few short chords and some bitchin’ solos. That’s all there is to it, right?

Of course not… If that was all there was to it, it’d not be on the list!

No, they banned that. Yup… It was banned by some stations in the United States. They banned that from radio! It was also one of the first songs to feature power chords, distortion, and made use of feedback. It’s from there that we’ve gained our association of those three traits as being ‘dark.’

This song sounded unlike anything else that had been heard at the time and it became associated with the gang culture that permeated the 1950s. As the title may indicate, it was pretty well associated with a rumble, or a fight between rival gangs that involved multiple people.

This is also notable because the way to get distortion back then was to simply poke holes in the speakers. Link Wray jammed a thumb through the speakers, much to the dismay of the studio that recorded the work.

Either way, this sound would come to be associated with the rock you know and love. It didn’t have the wide appeal of Johnny B. Goode, but it did have the notoriety of being banned from the airwaves and only being an instrumental.

The banning? Well, that only helped its popularity among the kind of people that the song was meant to speak to. It had initially been a live jam and the audience loved it so much that they made the band repeat it four times in a single night.

It should be noted that it wasn’t banned in every radio market, just some of them. The reasons for banning it usually were summed up as they believed the song prompted and glorified juvenile delinquency and that was just not something America was ready for in 1958!

But, the story of rock moves on and many have since given the song much acclaim. Those are the same tones you’re already intimately familiar with and that riff has since gone on to be mimicked and used for a variety of tasks. We will see you next week with our next installment of the history of Rock and Roll by way of the guitar riff.

Hits: 29

On “Led Zeppelin III” the track was credited “Traditional: Arranged by Page and Plant”. For their version Jimmy Page adapted the song from a version by American Fred Gerlach, included on his 1962 album “Twelve-String Guitar” for Folkways Records. Their version followed Gerlach’s very closely for the first two verses (arrival of friends, arrival of the protagonist’s brother), but the lyrics for the second half of the song, detailing the arrival of his sister and her failed attempt to save him, are written by Plant, albeit bearing some similarities to other versions.

Both Gerlach and Page/Plant may very well have been aware and influenced by a 1939 version of the song, then called “Gallis Pole”, recorded by Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter). That version also included some spoken narrative describing the events.

The earliest recording of the song, called “Gallows Tree”, was released in 1920 by Bentley Ball. The only version I could locate to hear it is on a site named Hype Machine .

Many other variants have been done, often by other names and by many artists. Judy Collins recorded “Anathea” throughout 1963 and is thematically similar to the Hungarian “Feher Anna” version of the same ballad. Bob Dylan recorded a thematically similar “Seven Curses” in 1963, during the sessions for his “Freewheelin'” album. The song tells a similar story, but from the point of view of the condemned’s daughter. However, it takes a little darker turn when the judge says “Gold will never free your father, his price might be you instead”. Turns out the judge was even more of a sleaze as she discovers the next morning, after paying the price with her body, her father was hanged anyway.

The list of versions and inspired variants is much too long to list them all here. To hear many others, 64 to be precise, here is a playlist:

Hits: 24