[00:00:16] - Kate
Hello, and welcome to The Gale Hill Radio Hour.
This is Kate Jones here again with Sheldon Zoldan, the researcher and writer behind Song of the Day, a project of music-related stories and tributes to artists and other important figures in the music industry who passed away in 2023.
Welcome back to the show, Sheldon!
[00:00:42] - Sheldon
Thank you.
[00:00:43] - Kate
It’s good to have you here.
[00:00:45] - Sheldon:
It’s good to be here.
[00:00:47] - Kate:
In the last episode, you shared 20 of the music greats who died in 2023. There are many more. Are you ready to do the rest of them now?
[00:00:56] - Sheldon:
I’m ready. Are you ready for #1?
[00:00:59.300] - Kate:
Absolutely.
[00:01:00] - Sheldon:
She was in the right place at the right time. The first time’s the charm. Cliches describe Astrud Gilberto.
Gilberto had never made a record before she recorded “Girl From Ipanema” in 1964. The song became a worldwide hit, popularized the bossa nova in the United States believed to be the second most recorded song ever, only behind “Yesterday” and played at the 2016 opening of the Olympics in Brazil.
Gilberto died June 5 in Philadelphia. She was 83.
Gilberto wasn’t a novice singer when she made the recording. She often sang with her husband, João Gilberto, in Brazil.
João was in New York to record songs with saxophonist Stan Getz when Gilberto was asked to sing on “Girl From Ipenema.” The producer liked her voice so much she ended up singing the entire song.
JoVo and Astrud divorced in 1964. She lived in the U.S. the rest of her life.
Antonio Carlos Jobim wrote the music to the song and Vinicus de Moraes wrote the Portuguese lyrics in 1962. Norman Gimbel wrote the English lyrics. He also wrote the song “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” and the theme to the television show “Happy Days.”
Gilberto played second fiddle to the girl who was from Ipanema. Jobim and Moraes were inspired to write the song after watching an 18-year-old girl, nicknamed Helo, walking to the beach daily.
Moraes called a press conference in 1965 revealing who the song was about. Helo did some acting, modeling and was sued when she created a clothing store called Girl from Ipanema.
The song reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965.
[00:03:35] - Sheldon
Tony Bennett was an American icon for so long that it gets lost in the fog of history that his birth name is Anthony Dominick Benedetto.
It’s also forgotten that Bennett rebuilt his career after he crashed and burned, unable to compete against the psychedelic 1960s and overcome a drug habit.
Bennett died July 21 in New York City. He openly shared his seven-year battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. He was 96.
Bennett started his career as Joe Barl, but Bob Hope, who asked him to be his opening act, changed it to Tony Bennett.
He became a star in the 1950s. “Because of You,” in 1951, reached number one on the pop charts and stayed there for 10 weeks.
His star faded by 1965. He found cocaine, and the IRS found him. A cocaine overdose and near-death experience sobered him up.
His son took over as his manager in 1979 and directed him back to the Great American Songbook. It worked. He became a national treasure.
“I Left My Heart In San Francisco,” was Bennett’s signature song. He recorded it in 1962. George C. Cory, Jr. wrote the music and Douglass Cross wrote the lyrics in 1954.
They wrote it for opera singer Claramae Turner, but she never recorded it. Bennett’s pianist Ralph Sharon rediscovered the song several after stuffing it in his shirt drawer.
When he showed it to Bennett, they thought it would be the perfect song to sing at their next stop, the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.
It was a hit, and he never stopped singing it.
[00:05:53] - Sheldon
The words New York City and banjo are the farthest thing from congruent.
New York City is known for its sophistication, for Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera. The banjo conjures up hillbillies playing bluegrass music in the hills of North Carolina and Virginia.
Roger Sprung changed that perception in New York City through his banjo playing. He was known as the godfather of progressive bluegrass and helped usher in New York’s mid-century folk scene.
Sprung died in Newtown, Connecticut on July 22. He was 92.
Sprung grew up in New York City. He fell in love with folk music when he was a teenager, after seeing folk groups play in Washington Square.
He taught himself to play the guitar and then a five-string banjo. He began traveling to North Carolina and Virginia to bluegrass festivals.
He imported what he learned from those festivals, playing at Greenwich Village clubs. His style became known as “newgrass.”
“An argument could be made that Roger Sprung was the first progressive five-string banjoist,” said Johnny Baier when Sprung was inducted into the American Banjo Hall of Fame. “While his contemporaries in bluegrass were experimenting in swing in the 1940s and ’50s, Sprung was expanding the acceptable banjo repertoire to include — in addition to swing — ragtime, pop and classical styles as well.”
Our Song of the Day is an English folk song from the 17th or 18th century. It’s a story about an encounter between a lady and a soldier. Sprung isn’t the only folkie to sing it.
A fun fact: Banjo player and comedian Steve Martin owns one of Sprung’s five-string banjos.
[00:08:16] - Sheldon
Randy Meisner soared with the Eagles; he just didn’t stay long in flight. Meisner was a square peg in a round rock ’n’ roll hole. He co-founded one of the most successful bands ever, yet he hated the spotlight.
Meisner died July 26 in Los Angeles from complications of COPD. He was 77.
Meisner spent his life playing in rock bands, but his tenures rarely ended happily.
He left Poco after a dispute. He quit Ricky Nelson’s Stone Mountain Canyon band and returned to Nebraska.
He rejoined Nelson and one gig led to another until he was backing Linda Ronstadt with future Eagles Glenn Frey, Don Henley and Bernie Leadon. They formed the Eagles in 1971.
Meisner, in countless interviews, recalled the band had fun in the early days. Then fame, fortune and egos followed. The lifestyle was too exhausting for a shy introvert.
Meisner was an integral part of the band. He wrote several songs and sang lead on others, but outside the spotlight.
He was the main songwriter for our Song of the Day. It reached number four on the Billboard Top 40 chart, one of four Eagles songs not sung by Henley or Frey that made the charts.
The end for him came in 1977, when he got into an altercation with Frey at the end of a concert because he refused to sing “Take It To The Limit” during the encore. He said he had the flu and was exhausted.
He quit the Eagles at the end of the tour and only played with them one more time, when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
[00:10:24] - Sheldon
Sinead O’Conner will be remembered more for her actions and her critics’ reactions than for her music. She was not shy about speaking her mind, even when it got her in trouble.
O’Conner died July 26 in London. No cause was given. She was 56.
O’Conner was 26, one of the most popular singers in the world, when her career came crashing down in the U.S.
O’Conner was the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” on October 3, 1992. She was scheduled to sing two songs. The first went off as rehearsed, the second not so much.
The shaved-headed O’Conner sang “War,” by Bob Marley, a cappella style. The goal was to put a focus on child abuse.
She was supposed to hold up a picture of a child at the end of the song. All went well in dress-rehearsal, all went wrong with her live performance. When she finished the song, she held up a picture of the Pope, tore it into pieces and uttered “fight the real enemy.”
The audience went silent, the phones at NBC did the opposite.
Radio stations boycotted her music. She was booed at a concert at Madison Square Garden.
She recorded music until her death, but she never regained her popularity in the U.S.
She didn’t write our Song of the Day. Prince wrote it in 1984, but he didn’t record it, so he gave it to his band Family. They never released and it was forgotten until O’Conner’s manager suggested she record it.
She loved it and recorded it in 1990. The public loved it too. It reached number one in 17 countries, including four weeks in the U.S.
[00:12:36] - Sheldon
David LaFlamme’s embers burned brightest in San Francisco during the psychedelic era. His group, It’s a Beautiful Day, played with some of the biggest Bay area acts, but it never received the national recognition others did.
LaFlamme died August 6 from complications caused by Parkinson’s disease. He was 82.
LaFlamme started playing the violin when he was 5. He became a concert violinist for the Utah Symphony Orchestra.
He moved to San Francisco in 1962. He formed It’s a Beautiful Day with his first wife in 1967. LaFlamme played the electric violin.
The group released its first album, “It’s a Beautiful Day,” in 1969. The album lost steam at 47 on Billboard’s 200 album chart. The second album, “Marrying Maiden,” did better, reaching 28.
“White Bird,” from the group’s first album, was popular on FM radio stations. The song ran just over 6 minutes, making it too long to play on AM stations. A 3-minute version never caught on. The best it could do was 118 on Billboard’s Bubbling Under the Hot 100.
LaFlamme and his future wife wrote “White Bird” in Seattle in 1967. In a 2011 interview, he said the band was stuck in Seattle with not enough money to leave, and they were holed up in an attic of a rundown house.
They had a little window to look out.“The lyrics of the song tell what we were observing as we looked out that window,” LaFlamme told the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat.
“When you have lyrics that go, ‘The leaves blow across the long black road to the darkened sky,’ that’s exactly what we were seeing.”
[00:14:058] - Sheldon
You are correct, if you think our Song of the Day sounds more like something you would hear during an aerobics session. DJ Casper put it together for his nephew to use during his aerobics classes at a Bally’s gym. The song caught on and became a worldwide hit.
Casper died August 7 in his beloved Chicago. No cause of death was given, but in a 2016 interview he said he was diagnosed with liver and kidney cancer. He was 57.
Casper’s real name was William Perry Jr. He was born and raised in Chicago. He got his name Casper because he wore all white when he worked as a DJ and looked like the friendly ghost.
He wrote the song in 1996. “Cha Cha Slide” was simple to follow. The instructor barked out the instructions, “move to the left, move to the right, slide.” The dance was the cha cha with a slide.
The class became so popular Casper decided to add music. He made his own recording in 1998.
It caught on not just in Chicago. Dance clubs began playing it. It still is a staple at weddings and celebrations.
NPR’s obituary quotes him from a 2018 interview with WTTW in Chicago. "I really didn't expect the ‘Cha Cha Slide’ to do what it did,” he said. “Everything hit all at once, Universal Records contacted me, they wanted me to go on a tour and it started getting real crazy."
The song reached number 83 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and stayed there for a month, but it was more popular in other parts of the world. The song reached number one in England in March 2004.
[00:17:13] - Sheldon
Sixto Rodriguez’s death would have gone unnoticed in the United States had it not been for the Oscar-winning documentary “Searching for Sugar Man.”
The documentary told the story of the singer-songwriter’s most unusual road map that took him from disappointment to obscurity to rediscovery.
Rodriguez died August 8. He was 81.
Rodriguez grew up in Detroit. He was an admirer of Bob Dylan. He recorded his first single in 1967 and then two albums in the first two years of the 1970s. Radio stations ignored them.
Rodriguez quit the music business, except for sometimes playing in bars, and became a working stiff. He went back to school and graduated with a philosophy degree. He unsuccessfully ran for several offices.
A strange thing was happening while he was living the life of a laborer. His music was being discovered in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. He toured Australia in 1979 and 1981.
He didn’t learn he was a cult figure in South Africa until his daughter, in 1997, discovered a website honoring him. He ended up playing sold out concerts there.
Then came the documentary, in 2012, about how two South African men went looking to find this mysterious man who was rumored to have committed suicide on stage. They found him in Detroit; so did American audiences.
Our Song of the Day, “Sugar Man,” gave him his nickname. It was the first song on his first album.
The song is about drugs. “Sugar Man,” is the dealer. The song reminds people that the “sugar man” is not your friend. It was banned in South Africa because of the subject.
[00:19:29] - Sheldon
Never has one Canadian caused so many Americans so much angst by writing a song about a historical event.
Robbie Robertson was with the influential group The Band when he wrote “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” in 1969. The song still touches a nerve with its meaning.
Robertson died August 9 in Los Angeles after a long illness. He was 80 years old.
Robertson’s music career can be divided into four phases. He was only 16 when he became a member of Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks.
The Hawks left Hawkins and eventually backed up Bob Dylan on his first electric tour.
The Hawks morphed into The Band in 1968, recorded several hit albums and grew into one of the most respected bands of that era.
Robertson went solo after The Band broke up in 1976, as well as producing other musicians.
He then turned to the movies. He became director Martin Scorsese’s go-to music man. He wrote the music for some of the director’s biggest hits. He scored “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which came out last fall.
Our Song of the Day is cinematic. It’s also controversial because it’s from the viewpoint of a Confederate soldier as the Civil War ended.
He had the music, but he needed a lyric. He remembered when the father of the group’s only non-Canadian band member, Levon Helm, who was from Arkansas, told him “Don’t worry, the South is going to rise again.”
Robertson knew very little about the Civil War and had to do research at the library. The result was “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
Joan Baez popularized it when she recorded it in 1971. It reached number three on Billboard’s Hot 100.
[00:21:53] - Sheldon
Pop music success wasn’t enough for Ray Hildebrand. So, Hildebrand, who was half of the hit “Hey Paula,” walked away from pop music and became one of the early artists playing contemporary Christian music.
Hildebrand died August 18 in Kansas City. He died from dementia, according to the New York Times. He was 82.
Hildebrand was attending Howard Payne University when he wrote and recorded “Hey Paula,” with fellow student Jill Jackson. He wrote the song for a friend whose girlfriend was named Paula. Another friend suggested he add the response from the girl he was singing to.
Hildebrand and Jackson sang the song on a local radio show and people liked it, so they did a professional recording. They also changed their professional names from Jill and Ray to Paul and Paula.
The song was more than a regional hit, it became number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 and stayed there for the month of February 1963.
They had a few more Top 40 hits but by 1965 their popularity was waning, and Ray had had enough of the traveling and pop star life. He began reading the Bible and returning to his Christian roots.
His songs were considered some of the first contemporary Christian music. “Say I Do” was recorded by several singers. Ray Price’s version reached number 29 on the country chart in 1975.
He traveled the country with Paul Land performing Christian music and comedy. He became involved with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and wrote eight of their camp theme songs.
He and Jill Jackson remained friends and performed together in 2021 at a show in Nashville.
[00:24:08] - Sheldon
The name might not be familiar, but songs he wrote, sang and produced are.
Bob Feldman was part of a three-person song factory, some they wrote for others and some they kept for themselves, as the group the Strangeloves.
Feldman died August 23. No cause of death was given. He was 83. His son is actor Corey Feldman.
Feldman grew up in Brooklyn in a Jewish orthodox family. He studied for a while to be a cantor, but rock and roll won out.
He was high school classmates with Neil Sedaka. He sang with Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand in the all-city choir.
He started writing songs with a neighbor, Jerry Goldstein in the late 1950s. Richard Gottehrer joined them in 1962.
They wrote “My Boyfriend’s Back,” in 1963 and it became a number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for the Angels.
They took the attitude of if you can’t beat them, join them, when the British invasion arrived. They created the Strangeloves. They said they were from Australia and grew up on a sheep farm.
They had three top 40 hits, “Night Time, number 30, “Cara-Lin, number 39 and “I Want Candy,” number 11.
They either wrote the Song of the Day about an exotic dancer they saw at the 1964 World’s Fair or a character in the 1958 novel “Candy,” by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg. Take your pick.
Several groups revived the song over the years, including the Bow Wow Wow’s version that reached number 62 on the Hot 100 in 1982.
The trio disbanded the group, but didn’t stop writing and producing. They produced the McCoys’ number one hit “Hang on Sloopy.”
[00:26:28] - Sheldon
Jimmy Buffett went from beach bum to billionaire during his five decades of playing music. Buffett released 56 albums, but he was known as much for his business acumen as he was for his songs.
Buffett died September 1 in Sag Harbor, New York from Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare skin cancer. He was 76.
Buffett grew up on the Gulf coast loving music and the sea. He bounced around New Orleans and Nashville, without success. His first album, recorded in 1970, sold 324 copies.
He changed record companies, and each new album did better than the previous. Then came “Margaritaville” in 1977. The single reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, his best-selling single. More importantly, it would be the foundation of his business empire.
He got the idea for the song while drinking margaritas at a bar in Austin, Texas at the end of his tour. He started writing it while stuck in a traffic jam on the Seven Mile Bridge while heading back to Key West.
The song touched a nerve for a generation dreaming of leaving the rat race for a tropical lifestyle. He got the idea of creating a business when his lyrics were becoming fodder for cheap souvenirs.
A T-shirt shop grew into restaurants, resorts and senior citizen communities. He became a pilot and an author, with three best-selling novels.
It didn’t matter that his albums barely charted anymore, he became legendary thanks to the million or so Parrot Heads who attended his annual summer concert tours and how he turned Margaritaville from a song to a lifestyle, to a billion-dollar business.
[00:28:40] - Sheldon
Steve Harwell’s legacy was tarnished with alcohol-fueled outbursts and hate-filled rants during the final years of his life. The events forced him to retire as frontman for Smash Mouth, the group he co-founded.
Harwell died September 4 in Boise, Idaho from liver failure, according to his manager. He was 56.
Harwell began as a rapper in the group F.O.S, but changed course and co-founded Smash Mouth in 1994.
The group had a hit in 1997 with “Walkin on the Sun,” but it was “All Star,” from their second album, that brought them immortality. Guitarist Greg Camp wrote it after record executives said they needed a song that would be a good single.
Camp wrote it for fans who sent in letters telling the band how they were being bullied.
It reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1999. It became more famous when it was played over the opening credits of “Shrek” in 2001.
The band put out more albums during the 2000s, but not with the same success.
Meanwhile, Harwell’s life began to spin out of control. His six-month-old son died in 2001. He battled alcoholism and in 2013 was diagnosed with serious heart problems and Wernicke encephalopathy, which affects memory and speech.
He became erratic during concerts, sometimes swearing at audience members. He collapsed on stage during a concert in 2016.
His final outburst came during a show in Bethel, New York, in 2021 when he looked intoxicated, slurred his words, threatened audience members and is said to have given the Nazi salute.
He retired soon after, blaming mental and physical issues.
[00:30:58] - Sheldon
Gary Wright took an unconventional path to become a pop star. His was a crooked highway instead of a straight shot to stardom.
Wright died September 4 in Palos Verde Estates, California. He suffered from Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease for about six years, according to his son. He was 80.
Wright was a child actor during the days of early television. He was 11 when he sang and danced for two years in “Fanny” on Broadway.
He left acting and singing for college. His plan was to be a doctor.
Wright spent one year in medical school before going to West Germany to study psychology. That was short-lived and he started playing in bands. He was “discovered” in 1967 while playing in Oslo and was invited to join a band in England that would become Spooky Tooth.
The band met with mixed success. He became a solo artist in 1970. Meeting George Harrison changed his life.
Harrison gave him the book “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda, and took him to India. The book and visit turned him into a fan of Eastern philosophy.
He got the idea for “Dream Weaver” after reading a poem called “God! God! God!” One of the lines talks about mind-weaving dreams. Wright wrote dream weaving down in his journal, thinking it might make a good song title. He wrote the song in an hour.
The recording had no guitars, only keyboards, synthesizers and drums. It reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975. His follow-up, “Love Is Alive,” also reached number two.
[00:33:14] - Sheldon
Charlie Robison was such an ornery, stubborn Texan, it’s hard to believe death took him.
Robison wasn’t well known unless you were from Texas. He was one of the leaders of Texas country music at the beginning of the 21st century, following in the footsteps of Willie Nelson and others.
Robison died September 10 in a San Antonio hospital from cardiac arrest and other complications. He was 59.
Robison fell in love with “Texas music” when he was a child, and his parents would take him to dance halls.
He got his musical start in Austin in the 1990s, after he quit school after a football injury. He said never went to a single class, but he drank plenty of beer. He talked his brother, also a musician, into quitting, too.
He recorded his first album, “Bandera,” named after his hometown, in 1995. It got him a record deal, but it turned sour when he wouldn’t move to Nashville.
He fought against recording songs radio stations would play. He wouldn’t promote songs he did record.
He gained his audience with his live performances.
Robison married Emily Erwin, a member of the Dixie Chicks, now the Chicks. The marriage lasted nine years.
Robison announced in 2018 that he was retiring because he couldn’t sing after a botched throat operation. He did make a comeback four years later.
The Song of the Day, “New Years Day,” landed on his 2004 album “Good Times.” The album charted at 52 on Billboard’s country album list.
It’s a song of reflection.
“It captures the bittersweet emotions that come with the start of a new year, as we bid farewell to the old,” according to oldtimemusic.com.
[00:35:31] - Sheldon
Katherine Anderson Schaffner spent a decade making hits with the Marvelettes, then she walked away from music, never second-guessing her decision.
Schaffner died September 20 in Detroit of congestive heart failure. She was 79.
Schaffner was in high school in 1960 when she and four friends formed the Cansinyettes, a humorous names that sounded like “they can’t sing yet.” They could sing well enough to finish fourth in a talent contest where the record company that would become Motown gave the top five finishers an audition.
The group was the only one of the five to be signed by Barry Gordy Jr. He changed their name to the Marvelettes.
It didn’t take them long to have a hit. In 1961, they recorded “Please Mr. Postman.” Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, Brian Holland and Robert Bateman are credited with writing the song.
In today’s vernacular, the song went viral. It was Motown’s first million-selling single and first Motown song to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It stayed on the Billboard best-seller list for 23 weeks.
They had other hits during the 1960s, including “Don’t Mess With Bill,” "Beechwood 4-5789," “Playboy” and “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game.”
Schaffner quit the music business in 1970, when the Marvelettes disbanded. She moved to Las Vegas with her husband but later returned to Detroit where she counseled troubled youth, helped put together a musical about the history of Motown and successfully fought a legal battle to get back control of the Marvelettes name from a promoter who bought it from Motown.
The Marvelettes helped bring Motown fame, but they were shunned by Motown and not invited to the 25th and 50th anniversaries of the record label.
[00:37:59] - Sheldon
The Association, the group Terry Kirkman co-founded in 1965, filled the airwaves with hit after hit in the late 1960s, but Kirkman will always be remembered for our Song of the Day.
He laughed about it during a 2015 interview with blogger Bo White.
“My whole name for 45 years was “I would like you to meet Terry. He wrote ‘Cherish.’ That was my whole name. I was telling somebody, ‘Wait a minute, after all this time. I’m just going to shorten my name to Cherish.’"
Kirkman died September 23 from congestive heart failure. He was 83.
Kirkman and Jules Alexander formed the Association. The group had trouble finding a recording label because executives didn’t know what to make of their sound. They eventually found a backer and their first album, “Along Comes Mary,” became a hit.
The Association never could corral the approval of rock critics. Their appearance at the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival didn’t help. They were the opening act and opened with a high-school level comedy skit, according to Kirkman’s New York Times obit.
“I think that was one of the worst mistakes that we ever, ever, ever, ever did,” he said in White’s blog interview.
Kirkman thinks they would have been taken seriously if they had played their new anti-Vietnam war song “Requiem for the Masses.”
"Requiem" barely cracked Billboard’s Hot 100, but our Song of the Day was the Association's first number one hit.
Kirkman, in a 2015 interview with the website The College Crowd Digs Me, said he wrote “Cherish” in about 30 minutes. He started it while watching the 11 o’clock news and finished into during Johnny Carson’s monologue.
[00:40:18] - Sheldon
Dwight Twilley reached for the stars but never quite grabbed on. He was little more than a one-hit-wonder who was known as one of the fathers of power pop.
Twilley died October 18 in Tulsa, Oklahoma several days after having a stroke while driving his vehicle and then crashing into a tree. He was 72.
Twilley got his start in his hometown of Tulsa when he was a teen. He and his band partner, Phil Seymour, met waiting in line at a movie theater to see the Beatles’ “A Hard Days Night.”
They formed the Dwight Twilley Band and remained partners until the band broke up in 1978.
Twilley did the songwriting for the group. He shared vocals with Seymour.
The Beatles had a big influence on his music. He added a rockabilly flare when the group moved to Memphis.
Our Song of the Day, "I'm on Fire," was their debut single in 1975. It rose to number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100, but the group couldn’t take advantage of their surprise hit.
Their first album didn’t come out almost a year later thanks to internal problems with the company they had a recording contract with. By then, the momentum was gone. The album only reached 138 on Billboard’s album chart.
The next album did a little better, reaching number 70, and a year later the group disbanded. Twilley took his act solo; he had one hit, “Girls,” which rose to number 16 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 1984.
[00:42:25] - Sheldon
Rudolph Isley is remembered for being the flamboyant dresser of the Isley Brothers, but clothes didn’t make the man, music did.
Rudolph was one of the three original Isley Brothers. He remained part of the act for 32 years, until leaving to become a Christian minister.
Rudolph died October 11 from an apparent heart attack in his suburban Chicago home. He was 84.
The brothers honed their craft singing in the church choir in Cincinnati. Rudolph moved to New York with his brothers Kelly and Ronnie when they were teenagers.
Rudolph’s obit reads as much as an obit for the group as for him. He was an integral part of the band, but he usually wasn’t the lead singer, and even though he received writing credits on most of the songs, he wasn’t the lead contributor.
The Isley Brothers had their first hit, “Shout” in 1959. They joined Motown but didn’t have the success that some other Motown groups had.
They were more successful after starting their own record label. They mixed funk and rock along with some soul. It worked, every album they released between 1973 and 1981 went gold.
Rudolph’s wardrobe became funkier, too. He wore furs and carried a bejeweled cane.
He left the group in 1989 to become a Christian minister. He sued his brother Ronald, claiming Ronald tried to trademark the group under only his name.
Rudolph received a co-writing credit for Our Song of the Day, "It's Your Thing." It was the first hit they wrote and produced.
The brothers released it in 1969 and it went to number two on the Billboard Hot 100.
[00:44:41.850] - Sheldon
Who needs Social Security when you have “Mr. Big Stuff”?
Jean Knight often told her audiences how her best-known-song gave her financial security.
“All I have to do is sit home and wait for the mailman,” she said.
Knight died November 22 in Tampa, Florida. She was 80.
Knight was born Jean Caliste in New Orleans. She said Knight was easier to pronounce.
She started singing in her cousin’s bar after graduating high school and spent most of her career as a New Orleans artist who toured mostly in the South.
Her short time in the spotlight came thanks to “Mr. Big Stuff.” Joseph Broussard, Ralph Williams and Carroll Washington wrote it. Knight recorded it in 1970 and it was released the following year.
She sang the song with sass and attitude, which was fitting because the lyrics warn Mr. Big Stuff that just because he wears nice clothes and has a fine car, he’s never going to break her heart. She’d rather be with a poor man than with him.
The song almost never got released. Stax Records buried it with other songs that Knight’s producer sent to the Memphis record company, but when the producer released one of the songs on his own and it became an R&B hit, Stax dug out “Mr. Big Stuff.”
The song immediately became big stuff. It reached number one on Billboard’s Soul Single chart and number two on the Hot 100 chart.
Knight, who went on to get a nursing degree, would never have another hit. She scored one other song on Billboard’ Hot 100, “My Toot Toot,” which reached number 50 in 1985.
[00:46:55] - Sheldon
Shane McGowan didn’t have the luck of the Irish, even though he was Irish through and through. Irish history and Irish current events influenced his lyrics and music.
The frontman and main songwriter for the Irish group the Pogues died of pneumonia November 25 in Dublin, Ireland. He was 65.
McGowan lived a life of addiction. He said his drinking started when he was five, when his uncle would bring home to him two bottles of Guinness every night. He added hard drugs as an adult.
McGowan loved to read and write as a child. His New York Times obituary quotes McGowan telling his biographer, “I was good at writing. I can write, I can spell, I can make it flow. And when I mixed it up with music, it was perfect."
He co-founded the Pogues in 1982, mixing punk rock with traditional Irish music. He was the face of the band for nine years until he was kicked out because of his drug use and drinking. He returned to the Pogues in 2001 and remained until they disbanded in 2018.
He was never a picture of good health. He was infamous for his bad teeth. He had a nine-hour procedure to replace all his teeth in 2015. That same year, he fell and broke his pelvis and survived pneumonia. He used a wheelchair the rest of his life.
McGowan wrote our Song of the Day, "Fairytale of New York,” in 1985. It would be another two years and several iterations later before the Pogues recorded it. The song, about a couple's conversation around Christmas, has become one of the United Kingdom's most popular Christmastime songs.
[00:49:09] - Sheldon
Denny Laine co-founded the Moody Blues but left before it became one of the most successful bands of the early rock era. He didn’t make the same mistake twice.
He helped put together Wings, Paul McCartney’s first band after the Beatles broke up, in 1971. He never left until the group disbanded 10 years later. He was Watson to McCartney’s Sherlock Holmes.
Laine died December 5 in Naples, Florida from interstitial lung disease. He was 79.
He changed his name from Brian Frederick Hines to Denny Laine because it sounded more like a rock musician. Laine came from his sister’s favorite singer, Frankie Laine.
He helped form the Moody Blues when he was 20. Laine was the lead singer of their first hit, “Go Now,” in 1964. He left in 1966, after the band moved in a different musical direction.
He bounced around as a solo artist and in a few forgettable bands before joining Wings. Laine did a little bit of everything with the band. Sometimes, Wings became a trio – only Paul, Linda and Laine recorded the “Band on the Run” album in Lagos, Nigeria - as musicians came and went. He quit in 1981 after McCartney stopped touring.
Laine co-wrote “Mull of Kintyre” with McCartney in the early 1970s, but they didn’t record it until 1977. The song is about the area of Scotland where McCartney had a farm.
The single became Wings’ biggest hit in England. It sold more than 2 million copies and is the fourth best-selling single of all time in Great Britain.
The song was released around Christmas and remains a popular song to play around the holidays.
[00:51:31.550] - Sheldon
Laura Lynch wasn’t made for country music even though she helped found one of the most successful country bands ever. She left the Dixie Chicks, now the Chicks, after two albums and before they gained international success.
Lynch died December 22 on a Texas highway when the truck she was driving was struck head on. She was 65.
Lynch started the band with sisters Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire and Robin Lynn Macy in 1989. Lynch sang and played the upright bass. Strayer and Maguire, still in high school and college, played the fiddle. Macy was a schoolteacher and guitarist.
They got the idea for their name while driving to an audition and Little Feat’s “Dixie Chicken” came on the radio. They slowly evolved from a bluegrass band to a country band.
Lynch left the band in 1995. The sisters said she had been thinking about quitting for a year because she wanted to spend more time with her daughter. Lynch said she didn’t resign but was voted out of the band.
Lynch quit playing music. She got married and raised her daughter. She worked as a public relations officer with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, according to the New York Times obituary. She started oil painting.
The Song of the Day, “Pink Toenails,” was released on the group’s 2000 “Fly” album.
“Pink Toenails” was inspired by the personal experiences of the Dixie Chicks members, according to oldtimemusic.com. "They wanted to shed light on the struggles people face in conforming to societal norms, and the importance of embracing one’s true self.”
The song was never released as a single.
[00:53:46] - Sheldon
Tommy Smothers was best known for his comic banter with his brother Dick, but Tommy was an accomplished musician. He and his brother began as a serious musical act that morphed into one of 20th century’s most successful comedy teams.
Tommy Smothers died December 26 in Santa Rosa, California of lung cancer. He was 86.
Tommy was two years older than his brother. Their father died in a Japanese POW camp. In high school, he was a state champion gymnast on the parallel bars.
The brothers started as folk singers, but when they realized they didn’t know enough folk tunes they used comedy bits to extend the songs.
They hit it big in 1959, turning what was supposed to be a two-week booking at the Purple Onion in San Francisco into 36 weeks. They became popular guests on talk and variety shows.
In 1967, CBS gave them the deadly Sunday night time slot against NBC’s number-one-rated “Bonanza.” CBS never thought “The Smother Brothers Comedy Hour” would survive, let alone surpass “Bonanza,” but it did.
Tommy might have played the dumb brother, but he was the brains behind the show. It attracted a young audience who appreciated the counterculture characters, anti-war message and rock bands.
Tommy spent much of the time fighting the censors and bad-mouthing CBS. The network abruptly canceled the show near the end of the third season.
Tommy and his brother Dick continued their act over the years. Part of the act included Tommy doing yo-yo tricks. They would play our Song of the Day, "Yo-Yo Man," during the routine.
Marty Cooper and Rich Cuhna wrote it in 1969.
A fun fact: Tommy played guitar during John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s recording of “Give Peace a Chance,” recorded in a Montreal hotel room in 1969.
[00:56:14] - Kate
Thank you so much, Sheldon! As always, these tributes are fascinating synopses of the lives and careers of those who made music we love. So thank you so much.
[00:56:30] - Sheldon
You’re quite welcome. It’s always a pleasure talking to you, and I wish I could remember everything I wrote!
[00:56:39.470] - Kate
Anyway, this is Kate Jones with The Gale Hill Radio Hour. Until next time, thanks for joining us. And if you haven’t done so yet, please check out Part 1 for the first of Sheldon’s 2023 tributes and share these episodes with your music-loving friends channel.
