Too many fathers of rock have been lost to the mists of time, so join J.A. Bartlett of the Hits Just Keep On Comin' every Saturday as he reminds us who helped to set the groundwork for the music we love...
What do Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan have in common? They were all discovered by the same prolific talent executive, John Hammond.
In the early 1930s, after dropping out of Yale and writing for the British music publication Melody Maker, Hammond became a freelance record producer, working at Columbia. He brought together Benny Goodman with influential collaborators Charlie Christian, Teddy Wilson, and Lionel Hampton, all of whom played in Goodman's sextet, a racially integrated group in an era when Jim Crow still persisted. He arranged the first recording sessions for Holiday and Basie's band, and in 1938 and '39 organized annual concerts at Carnegie Hall known as "From Spirituals to Swing." The shows presented a wide variety of jazz and blues performers, some of whom had never appeared on a major stage before.
After military service in World War II, Hammond came home to find the Swing Era over, replaced by bebop, which Hammond never embraced. It would be the late 1950s before he rejoined Columbia and signed Seeger, Franklin, and Dylan. Other officials at Columbia were unimpressed with Dylan, and nicknamed him "Hammond's Folly," at least until the hits began. Hammond produced both the original recordings of both Blowin' in the Wind and A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall. Another Hammond project in this period was the reissue of Robert Johnson's legendary recordings from the 1930s. (Hammond had tried to book Johnson for "From Spirituals to Swing," not realizing the bluesman was already dead.) King of the Delta Blues Singers was released in 1961; a second volume followed in 1970. In 1972, Hammond auditioned Springsteen, eventually signing him to a contract. Jazz guitarist George Benson was another Hammond signee. Hammond retired from Columbia in 1975 at age 65, but continued to listen for performers who had it. His last major signing was guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, and he's listed as executive producer of Vaughan's 1983 debut album, Texas Flood.
"I heard no color line in the music," he wrote of his experiences in the 1930s, and he never did. Hammond's intention in organizing "From Spirituals to Swing" was to bring important black artists to the attention of white audiences. He remained a fighter for racial justice throughout his life. By the time he died in 1987, the music business had come a long way from the days when Goodman's racially integrated sextet was not welcome onstage in certain parts of the country.
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Carl Perkins thought Johnny Cash had lost his mind. Cash told Perkins a story from his Air Force days involving a fellow airman who referred to his regulation dress shoes as "blue suede shoes." Then, Cash suggested that would be a good idea for a song. Perkins was stumped. "How can I write a song about shoes?" he asked. But then, inspiration struck. While on tour in Arkansas, Perkins heard a man warn his date not to step on his shoes. Many writers say their best ideas come from overhead bits of conversation, and Perkins couldn't get the man's comment out of his head. That night, he began fooling with a lyric, and later got out of bed to start fooling with a tune. And it wasn't long before an early rock 'n' roll classic was born.
The new movie Cadillac Records is the fictionalized story of the Chicago label Chess Records, and features Beyoncé Knowles as Etta James. R&B aficionados have known Etta's name for a long time, although the majority of people flocking to the megaplexes might not. So who is she? Someone who's been singing from the very beginnings of R&B, and who has influenced a list of performers ranging from Rod Stewart to Christina Aguilera to Beyoncé herself. 


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