+- Music Discussion (https://www.music-discussion.com)
+-- Forum: Music Discussion (https://www.music-discussion.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: General Music (https://www.music-discussion.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=18)
+--- Thread: Songs People Should Hear (/showthread.php?tid=2032)
Songs People Should Hear - Music Head - 07-12-2009
YouTube - LULU - TO SIR WITH LOVE - BEST SOUND
from wikipedia
"To Sir, with Love" is the theme from the 1967 film To Sir, with Love. The song was written by Don Black and Mark London.
"To Sir, with Love" was initially recorded by Lulu (with The Mindbenders, who also acted in the film). Her single was released in 1967 and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining in the top position for five weeks and earning the number one position for the entire year. "To Sir With Love" also peaked at number nine on the R&B charts [1].
In Lulu's native UK, the song was never released in its own right, instead appearing as the B-side to the 1967 #11 hit "Let's Pretend."
Songs People Should Hear - Music Head - 08-12-2009
YouTube - Bobbie Gentry - Ode To Billy Joe
from wikipedia
"Ode to Billie Joe" is a 1967 song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The single, released in late July, was a number-one hit in the United States, and became a big international seller. The song is ranked #412 on Rolling Stone's list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The recording of "Ode to Billie Joe" generated eight Grammy nominations, including three wins for Gentry and one win for arranger Jimmie Haskell.
This song is a first person narrative that reveals a quasi-Southern Gothic tale in its verses by including the dialog of the narrator's family at dinnertime on the day that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." Throughout the song, the suicide and other tragedies are contrasted against the banality of everyday routine and polite conversation.
In an interview with Bob Harris broadcast by BBC Radio 2 in Bob Harris Country on 16 April 2009, singer Rachel Harrington claimed that Bobbie Gentry originally wrote 11 verses but deleted six because a record producer thought it was too long.
"Ode to Billy Joe" was originally intended as the "B side" of Gentry's first single recording, a blues number called "Mississippi Delta," on Capitol Records. It was originally a seven minute recording with only Gentry's guitar backing the lyrics which told more of the story of what happened to Billie Joe at the Tallahatchie Bridge. After the original version was finished, the label executives realized that this song was the better option for a single release. Thus, they went back into the studio with the string orchestra for backing and cut the song length almost in half. Cutting the length and lyrics provided the song with a mystical allure which left more to the listener's imagination about what really happened to Billie Joe. It also made it more suitable for radio airplay.
The mysteries surrounding the characters in the song created something of a cultural sensation at the time and at least one urban legend. In 1975, Gentry told author Herman Raucher that she hadn't come up with a reason for Billie Joe's suicide when she wrote the song. She has stated in numerous interviews over the years that the focus of the song was not the suicide itself, but the rather matter-of-fact way that the narrator's family was discussing the tragedy over dinner, unaware that Billie Joe might well have been her boyfriend.
A popular speculation at the release of the song in 1967 (unsupported by either the song's lyrics or the culture of that area and time period) was that the narrator and Billie Joe threw their baby (live, stillborn or aborted) off the bridge, and Billie Joe then killed himself out of grief and guilt. This version of events is accentuated in the Sinéad O'Connor version, where a baby is heard to cry at the moment the mystery item is thrown off the bridge. There was also speculation that Billie Joe was black, having a forbidden affair with the white narrator, although the culture of that area, in that time period, made it extremely unlikely that a black man would have had any part in the events described in the song's lyrics (a frog down the narrator's back at a public movie theater, socializing with the narrator's family after church, or being seen together throwing "something" off a bridge in public).
Gentry continually dismissed speculation that the song was autobiographical. At the height of the song's popularity, numerous rumors circulated that she had been questioned by Mississippi police.
The song's popularity proved so enduring that in 1976, nine years after its release, Warner Bros. commissioned author Herman Raucher to adapt it into a novel and screenplay, Ode to Billy Joe (note different spelling). The poster's tagline, which treats the film as being based on actual events and even gives a date of death for Billy (June 3, 1953), led many to believe that the song was based on actual events. In fact, when Raucher met Bobbie Gentry in preparation for writing the novel and screenplay, she confessed that she herself had no idea why Billie Joe killed himself. In Raucher's novel and screenplay, Billy Joe kills himself after a drunken homosexual experience, and the object thrown from the bridge is the narrator's ragdoll.
Billy Joe's story is analyzed in Professor John Howard's history of gay Mississippi entitled Men Like That: A Queer Southern History as an archetype of what Howard calls the "gay suicide myth".
Songs People Should Hear - gryphon - 08-12-2009
The song I would urge people to listen to is by a relatively unknown English singer song writer : Clifford T.Ward The song which I believe is on youtube is called "Home Thoughts From Abroad"
Clifford was like so many others of his time an aspiring singer who fronted a band which lived and gigged in the Kidderminster area of the UK. The band underwent several name changes including Cliff and the Cruisers , Martin Raynor and The Secrets, The Secrets and finally Simon's Secrets. Many of these incarnations released singles but non charted.
Eventually Clifford went solo and produced his first album Singer songwriter for John Peel's Dandelion label here in the UK. Just after this Clifford ( Who was at that time a Teacher ) managed to break into mainstream pop with a single Gaye which reached the upper ends of the UK charts. On the heals of this came the excellent Album " Home Thoughts From Abroad " from which I have nominated the title track.
In a BBC radio 2 poll of the hundred best songs ever "Home thoughts From Abroad" came 5th beating many well known and well regarded tracs
Clifford remains a cut figure here in the UK known only to a few but I hope you will take this introduction to hear an excellent and well crafted song
Songs People Should Hear - Music Head - 09-12-2009
![[Image: P13810VA18T.jpg]](http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/pic200/drP100/P138/P13810VA18T.jpg)
YouTube - Crimson and Clover - Tommy James & The Shondells
from wikipedia
"Crimson and Clover" is a song by Tommy James and the Shondells. It was one of the biggest hits of the 1960s and reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and #1 in Canada in 1969. It dropped from #18 to completely out of the Billboard pop charts in one week, setting a record for the farthest drop out of the charts.
"Crimson and Clover" was completely written and recorded by the duo of Tommy James and Peter Lucia Jr., the Shondells drummer. Lucia played drums and delivered backing vocals, while James played all other instruments and sang the lead vocals.
The song is famous for a unique "wobbly" vocal effect near the end of the song. To produce this effect, Tommy James plugged his microphone into a guitar amplifier, flipped the tremolo switch, and repeatedly sang the line "crimson and clover, over and over". When it was released in November 1968, some listeners thought he was saying "Christmas is over" instead of "crimson and clover.
The song is often incorrectly attributed to The Velvet Underground, Fleetwood Mac, Simon and Garfunkel or The Hollies on P2P networks and lyrics websites. The Velvet Underground instrumental song "Ride Into the Sun" from the Out-take V.U. album uses the same chords. Lou Reed later used the same chords for Sweet Jane on the Velvet Underground's "Loaded" album. The similarities are best heard on the Sweet Jane cover Version by the Cowboy Junkies from the Natural Born Killers Soundtrack.
Songs People Should Hear - Music Head - 10-12-2009
from wikipedia
![[Image: 220px-Royorbisoncolorpic.jpg]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/23/Royorbisoncolorpic.jpg/220px-Royorbisoncolorpic.jpg)
YouTube - Roy Orbison - Pretty Woman from Combo Concert
"Oh, Pretty Woman" is a song, released in 1964, which was a worldwide success for Roy Orbison. Recorded on the Monument Records label in Nashville, Tennessee, it was written by Roy Orbison and Bill Dees. The song spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The best-known guitar performance was by Wayne Moss later of Barefoot Jerry.
Orbison posthumously won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his live recording of the song on his HBO television special Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night. In 1999, the song was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and was named one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it #222 on their list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time."
The lyrics tells the story of a man who sees a pretty woman walking by. He yearns for her and wonders if, as beautiful as she is, she might be lonely like he is. At the last minute, she turns back and joins him.
The title was inspired by Orbison's wife Claudette interrupting a conversation to announce she was going out; when Orbison asked if she was okay for cash, his co-writer Bill Dees interjected "A pretty woman never needs any money."
In 1989, the controversial rap group 2 Live Crew recorded a parody of the Orbison song, using the alternate title "Pretty Woman" for their album Clean As They Wanna Be. The 2 Live Crew sampled the distinctive bassline from the Orbison song, but the romantic lyrics were replaced by talk about a hairy woman and her bald-headed friend and their appeal to the singer, as well as denunciation of a "two-timing woman."
Orbison's publisher, Acuff-Rose Music sued 2 Live Crew on the basis that the fair use doctrine did not permit reuse of their copyrighted material for profit. The case, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decided in 2 Live Crew's favor, greatly expanding the doctrine of fair use and extending its protections to parodies created for profit. It is considered a seminal fair use decision.
Songs People Should Hear - gryphon - 10-12-2009
Outstanding Choice !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Songs People Should Hear - CMB1888 - 10-12-2009
Agreed - It was one of my grandad's records that I played ad infinitum when I was a kid and I still love it, cheesy as it is.
Songs People Should Hear - Music Head - 11-12-2009
![[Image: 106875.jpg]](http://www.singerpictures.com/images/pic/s/shelley-fabares/106875.jpg)
MP3DL Player
from wikipedia
"Johnny Angel" is a song written by Lyn Duddy and Lee Pockriss and recorded by Shelley Fabares. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 7, 1962, during a 15-week run on the chart. The song is an expression of a teenage girl's romantic longing for a boy who doesn't know she exists, to the point where she declines other boys' propositions for dates because she'd rather concentrate on the boy she loves. The song premiered on an episode of Fabares' sitcom, The Donna Reed Show, and was released on Columbia Pictures' Colpix Records label. The song also has a sequel song entitled "Johnny Loves Me" (which tells the story of how the girl won Johnny's heart). The song had previously been recorded by Georgia Lee on the Decca label.
Darlene Love and her group, the Blossoms, sang backup vocals on the track. Fabares is quoted in The Billboard Book of Number One Singles by Fred Bronson as saying she was intimidated by Love's group and their "beautiful" voices and was terrified at the prospect of becoming a recording artist, as she did not consider herself a singer.
Although Fabares' career as a singer came to an end (though her career as an actress stayed strong for three decades) within a few years of "Johnny Angel" after she was unable to come up with another Top 20 hit, the song has become an oldies radio airplay favorite. The Carpenters covered "Johnny Angel" in 1973 as part of a medley of oldies on side two of their album Now and Then.
Songs People Should Hear - Music Head - 12-12-2009
I know I just did Roy. I couldn't help it. Just too beautiful. In the right (wrong) mood it can literaly do what the title implies to me.
YouTube - Roy Orbison - Crying
from wikipedia
"Crying" is a rock and roll ballad written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson and sung by Orbison.
The song was released as a 45rpm single by Monument Records in July 1961 and went to No. 2 on the Billboard pop music charts.
The song contains "a vivid combination of hurtful romantic longing combined with near operatic vocals". It is remarkable in that Roy Orbison begins singing the climactic, final note slightly flat, sliding up by the end of the note to just under the correct pitch. That this was done for effect and this was confirmed in a live performance, Live at Austin City Limits, as well as on the 1987 re-recording from the album In Dreams: The Greatest Hits, on which he sang that note perfectly on key.
The song also appears on Orbison's 1962 album with the title Crying and his 1989 posthumous album A Black & White Night Live from the 1988 HBO television special.
In 1987, Orbison rerecorded the song as a duet with k.d. lang as part of the soundtrack for the motion picture, Hiding Out. Their collaboration won the Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. The duet version was a minor chart hit for the two, peaking at #42 on the Hot Country Singles chart. Rebekah Del Rio performed an a cappella Spanish language version of the song, entitled "Llorando" in the 2001 David Lynch film Mulholland Dr.; critics have described this sequence as the most powerful in the movie. The song had also previously been used on the soundtrack for the 1997 cult film Gummo, directed by Harmony Korine, in which two of the central characters even discuss the song at length.
In 2002, "Crying" was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it #69 on their list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
Carrie Underwood performed the song on the TV Talent show, American Idol (Season 4). She later went on to win the show, and is now a successful country music artist. Emily Vinette performed this song in the Top 10 episode of Canadian Idol's third season. Vinette was voted off the next night. Ashley Coulter performed the song in the top 6 episode of season 4. She was also voted off the next night. The winner of Australian Idol Damien Leith also performed the song, in 2006.
In a 2006 poll for a Channel 5 program Britain's Favourite Break-up Songs, "Crying" was voted 13th.
Songs People Should Hear - Robi83 - 12-12-2009
Just come in...
Kraftwerk - Computer Love
James Bond official themes : Diamonds are forever, For your eyes only
Gábor Presser - La Baletta, Adagio electriko