Monday, December 26, 2011
Some apologies for my holiday absence from the blog....
I will be back as soon as I can...I haven't been posting much recently. I am in the middle of a large transfer and reorganization of all of my music to new hard drives and a new system. I finally ditched windows for Mac. Be back soon! Miss you guys!! Happy Holidays!
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Our Gracie.........Dame Gracie Fields Part 1........NEW LINK--02/23/12
Dame Gracie Fields
Dame Gracie Fields, DBE (born Grace Stansfield, 9 January 1898 – 27 September 1979), was an English-born, later Italian-based actress, singer and comedienne and star of both cinema and music hall.
Grace Stansfield was born over a fish and chip shop owned by her grandmother, Sarah Bamford, in Molesworth Street, Rochdale, Lancashire. She made her first stage appearance as a child in 1905, joining children's repertory theatre groups such as 'Haley's Garden of Girls' and the 'Nine Dainty Dots'. Her two sisters, Edith and Betty and brother, Tommy, all went on to appear on stage, but Gracie was the most successful. Her professional debut in variety took place at the Rochdale Hippodrome theatre in 1910 and she soon gave up her job in the local cotton mill, where she was a half-timer, spending half a week in the mill and the other half at school.
She met comedian and impresario Archie Pitt and they began working together. Pitt gave Fields champagne on her 18th birthday, and wrote in an autograph book to her that he would make her a star. Pitt would come to serve as her manager and the two married in 1923 at Clapham Registry Office. Their first revue in 1915 was called Yes I Think So and the two continued to tour Britain together until 1924 in the revue Mr Tower of London, with other reviews including By Request, It's A Bargain and The Show's The Thing.
Archie Pitt was the brother of Bert Aza, founder of the Aza agency, who were responsible for many talents of the day including the actor and comedian Stanley Holloway, who was introduced to Aza by Fields. Fields and Holloway first worked together on her film Sing As We Go in 1934 and the two remained close friends for the rest of their lives.
Fields came to major public notice when Mr Tower of London came to the West End. Her career rapidly accelerated from this point with straight dramatic performances and the beginning of a recording career.
One of her most successful productions was at the Alhambra Theatre in 1925. The show, booked by Sir Oswald Stoll, was a major success and toured for ten years, throughout the UK. She later said "One day I was in Plymouth's palace theatre and the next playing Blackpool!". She made the first of ten appearances in Royal Variety Performances in 1928, following a premiere stint at the London Palladium, gaining a devoted following with a mixture of self-deprecating jokes, comic songs and monologues, as well as cheerful "depression-era" songs all presented in a "no-airs-and-graces" Northern, working class style. She recorded her first record for HMV Because I Love You and My Blue Heaven in 1928.
At one point, Fields was playing three shows a night in London's West End. She appeared in the Pitt production she was working on, with Gerald Du Maurier in the straight play SOS at the Saint James Theatre, with also a cabaret spot at the Cafe De Paris following this.
Fields had a great rapport with her audience, which helped her become one of Britain's highest paid performers, playing to sold out theatre's across the country.
Her most famous song, which became her theme, "Sally," was worked into the title of her first film, Sally in Our Alley (1931), which was a major box office hit. She went on to make several films initially in Britain and later in the United States (for which she was paid a record fee of £200,000 for four films). Regardless, she never enjoyed the process of performing without a live audience, and found the process of film-making boring. She tried to opt out of filming, before director Monty Banks persuaded her otherwise, landing her the lucrative Hollywood deal. Fields demanded that the four films were to be filmed in Britain and not Hollywood, and this was the case.
Ironically, the final few lines of the song "Sally" were written by her husband's mistress, Annie Lipman, and Fields sang this song at nearly every performance she made from 1931 onwards - claiming in later life that she wanted to "Drown blasted Sally with Walter with the aspidistra on top!"
The late 1930s saw her popularity peak and she was given many honours: the Officer of the Venerable Order of St. John (for charity work), the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) (for services to entertainment) in 1938 and the Freedom of the Borough of Rochdale.
She donated her house, "Tower," 20, Frognal Way, Hampstead, London, NW3 6XE (which she had not much cared for and which she had shared with her husband Archie Pitt and his mistress) to a maternity hospital after the marriage broke down. In 1939, she became seriously ill with cervical cancer. The public sent over 250,000 goodwill messages and she retired to her villa on Capri. After she recovered, she recorded a very special 78rpm record simply called Gracie's Thanks, in which she thanks the public for the many cards and letters she received while in hospital. During World War II, she paid for all servicemen/women to travel free on public transport within the boundaries of Rochdale.
Fields also helped Rochdale F.C. in the 1930s when they were struggling to pay fees and buy sports equipment.
In 1933 she set up the Gracie Fields Children's Home and Orphanage at Peacehaven in Sussex for children of those in the theatre profession who could not look after their children. She kept this until 1967, when the home was no longer needed. This was near her own home in Peacehaven, and Fields often visited, with the children all calling her 'Aunty Grace'.
World War II was declared while she was recovering in Capri, and Fields - still very ill after her operation, threw herself into her work and signed up for ENSA headed by her old film producer, Basil Dean. Fields travelled to France to entertain the troops in the midst of air-raids, performing on the backs of open lorries and in war-torn areas. She was the first artist to play behind enemy lines in Berlin.
Following her divorce from Archie Pitt, she married Italian-born film director Monty Banks in March 1940.
However, because Banks remained an Italian citizen and would have been interned in the United Kingdom, she was forced to leave Britain for North America during the war, at the instruction of Winston Churchill, who told her to "Make American Dollars, not British Pounds," which she did in aid of the Navy League and the Spitfire Fund. She and Banks moved to their home in Santa Monica, California. She did occasionally return to England to show she was not indeed a traitor, performing in factories and army camps around the country. After their initial argument, Parliament offered her an official apology.
Although she continued to spend much of her time entertaining troops and otherwise supporting the war effort outside Britain, this led to a fall-off in her popularity at home. She performed many times for Allied troops, travelling as far as New Guinea, where she received an enthusiastic response from Australian personnel. Late 1945 saw her tour the South Pacific Islands.
After the war, Fields continued her career less actively. She began performing in Britain again in 1948 headlining the London Palladium over Eartha Kitt who was also on the bill. The BBC gave her her own Radio Show in 1947 dubbed Our Gracie's Working Party in which 12 towns were visited by Fields, and a live show of music and entertainment was broadcast weekly with Fields compering and performing, and local talents also on the bill. This tour commenced in Rochdale.
In 1951, Fields opened the Festival of Britain celebrations. She proved popular once more, though never regaining the status she enjoyed in the 1930s. She continued recording, but made no more films, moving more towards light classical music as popular tastes changed, often adopting a religious theme. She continued into the new medium of LP records, and recorded new takes of her old favourite songs, as well as new and recent tracks to 'liven things up a bit'.
Monty Banks died in 1950 of a heart attack while travelling on the Orient Express. Two years later Fields married Boris Alperovici, a Romanian radio repairman. She claimed that he was the love of her life, and that she couldn't wait to propose to him. She proposed on Christmas Day in front of friends and family. They married at the Church of St Steffano on Capri in a quiet ceremony before honeymooning in Rome.
She lived on her beloved Isle of Capri for the remainder of her life, at her home La Canzone Del Mare, a swimming and restaurant complex which Field's home overlooked. It was favoured by many Hollywood stars during the 1950s, with regular guests including Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Greta Garbo and Noël Coward.
She began to work less, but still toured the UK under the management of Harold Fielding, manager of top artists of the day such as Tommy Steele and Max Bygraves. Her UK tours proved popular, and in the mid 1960s she performed farewell tours in Australia, Canada and America - the latter performance was recorded and released years later.
In 1956, Fields played Miss Marple in a US TV production of Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced. The production featured Jessica Tandy and Roger Moore, and predates the Margaret Rutherford films by some five years. She also starred in television productions of A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, - for which she won a TV Award, and Mrs 'Aris Goes to Paris, which was remade years later with Angela Lansbury as Mrs Harris, a charwoman in search of a fur coat. (A Chanel dress in Lansbury's case.)
In 1957, her single, "Around the World" peaked at #8 in the UK Singles Chart, with her recording of "Little Donkey" reaching #20 in November 1959.
Fields regularly performed in TV appearances, being the first entertainer to perform on Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium. Fields had two Christmas TV specials in 1960 and 1961, singing her old favourites and new songs in front of a studio audience. 1971 saw A Gift For Gracie, another TV special presented by Fields and Bruce Forsythe. This followed on from her popularity of Jess Yates's Stars on Sunday religious programme, the precursor to Songs of Praise, in which celebrities sang religious hymns and read Bible readings. Fields was the most requested artist on the show.
In 1968, Fields headlined a two week Christmas stint at Yorkshire's prestigious Batley Variety Club. "I was born over a fish and chip shop - I never thought I'd be singing in one!" claimed Fields during the performance recorded by the BBC.
In 1975, her album, The Golden Years, reached #48 in the UK Albums Chart.
In 1978, she opened the Gracie Fields Theatre, located next to Oulder Hill Community School, in her native Rochdale, performing a concert there recorded by the BBC to open the show. Fields appeared in ten Royal Variety Performances from 1928 onwards, her last being in 1978 at the age of 80 when she appeared as a surprise guest in the finale, in which she appeared and sang her theme song, "Sally".
Her final TV appearance came in January 1979 when she appeared in a special octogenarian edition of The Merv Griffin Show in America, in which she sang the song she popularised in America, "The Biggest Aspidistra In The World". Fields was notified by her confidante John Taylor while she was in America that she had the invitation to become a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, to which she replied: "Yes I'll accept, yes I can kneel - but I might need help getting back up, and yes I'll attend - as long as they don't call Boris, Buttons."
Fields' health declined in July 1979, when she contracted pneumonia after performing an open air concert on the Royal Yacht which was docked in Capri's harbour. After a spell in hospital, she seemed to be recovering, but died on 27 September 1979. The press reported she died holding her husband's hand, but in reality he was at their Anacapri home at the time, while Gracie was home with the housekeeper, Irena. She is buried in the non-Catholic cemetery on Capri; the Protestant Cemetery in a white marble tomb. Her coffin was carried by staff from her restaurant. Her husband Boris died in 1984.
The Rochdale Boroughwide Cultural Trust holds the 'Gracie Fields Archive'.
In 2009, Jane Horrocks took the lead in the BBC TV production Gracie!, a drama portraying the life of Fields just before and during World War II and her relationship with Monty Banks (played by Tom Hollander).
Ahh, mostly the daft stuff.....my favourites. :) A few of the pure voice songs as well, though. Not a complete collection by any means....just a nice overview of her massive output of music over the years...I probably risk hellfire and damnation by saying that a little Gracie can go a long way with me, so I tend to lean toward her more humorous selections......ENJOY!
A Feather In His Tyrolean Hat
Biggest Aspidistra In The World ver 2
Bless Them All
Bless This House
Christmas Bells at Eventide
Clogs and Shawls
Count Your Blessings
Crash Bang I Want To Go Home
Eee By Gum
Fall In And Follow The Band
Forever And Ever
Fred Fannakapan (2)
Fred Fannakapan
Goodnight Children Medley
Goodnight My Love
Gracie's Christmas Party
Grandfather's Bagpipes
He Forgot To Come Back
He Wooed Her And Wooed Her
He's Dead But He Wont Lie Down
How Are Things In Gloccamora
I'll get by
The Betrayal
The Biggest Aspidistra In The World
The Bleeding Heart
The Carefree Heart
The Dicky Bird Hop
the Fairy on the xmas tree
Now you know I love the music hall artistes.....the entertainers....Gracie, George Formby...all of 'em. I HAD TO ADD this classic Peter Cook clip of his HATRED of Gracie.............I laughed so hard I thought I'd DIE !!
Monday, December 19, 2011
Jive Connie Jive.....Early Connie Francis 1950-58 NEW LINK--RAPIDSHARE 02-23-12****
Connie Francis
Connie Francis (born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero; December 12, 1938) is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw. Despite several severe interruptions in her career, Francis is still active as a recording and performing artist (as of November 2011).
Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero was born in the Italian Down Neck, or Ironbound, neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, as first child to George Franconero, sr, and Ida Franconero née Ferrari-di Vito, spending her first years in a Brooklyn neighborhood on Utica Avenue/St. Marks Avenue before the family moved to New Jersey.
In her autobiography Who's sorry now?, published in 1984, Francis recalls that she was encouraged by her father, George Franconero, Sr., to appear regularly at talent contests, pageants and other neighborhood festivities from the age of 4 as a singer and accordion player.
Francis attended Newark Arts High School in 1951 and 1952. She and her family moved to Belleville, New Jersey, where she graduated Salutatorian from Belleville High School Class of 1955.
During this time, Francis continued to perform at neighborhood festivities and talent shows (some of which were broadcasted on television), appearing alternately as Concetta Franconero and Connie Franconero. Under the latter name she also appeared on NBC's variety show "Startime Kids" between 1953 and 1955.
During the rehearsals for her appearance on "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts", Francis was advised by Arthur Godfrey himself to change her stage name to Connie Francis for the sake of an easier pronunciation. Godfrey also told her to drop the accordion – advice she gladly followed, for she had begun to hate the large and heavy instrument. Around the same time, Francis took a job as a singer for Demonstration Records. These records were brought to the attention of established singers and/or their management who would subsequently choose or decline to record the song for a professional commercial record.
In 1955, the "Startime Kids" went off air. In May that same year, George Franconero Sr. and Francis' manager George Scheck brought up the cash for a recording session of four songs which they would try to sell to a major record label as Francis' own act. The story goes that every record label she had tried had turned her down, mainly because owing to her job as a demo singer, Francis merely sounded like a copy of other singers of the day like Kitty Kallen or Kay Starr but had not yet developed a distinctive sound of her own.
Finally, even when MGM Records decided to sign a contract with her, it was basically because one track she had recorded, "Freddy", happened to be the name of the son of a company executive, Harry A. Myerson, who thought of this song as a nice birthday gift. Hence, "Freddy" was released as Francis' first single, which would turn out as a commercial failure just as her following eight solo singles.
Despite these failures, Francis was hired to record the vocals for Tuesday Weld "singing" scenes in the 1956 movie "Rock, Rock, Rock", and for Freda Holloway in the 1957 Warner Brothers rock and roll movie "Jamboree".
In the fall of 1957, Francis enjoyed her first chart success with a duet single she had recorded with Marvin Rainwater: "The Majesty of Love", b/w "You, My Darlin' You", peaked at # 93 on Billboard's Hot 100.
But her minor chart success came too late – Francis' recording contract consisted of ten solo singles and one duet single. Even though success finally had seemed to come with "The Majesty of Love", Francis was informed by MGM Records that her contract would be discontinued after her last solo single.
Francis considered a career in medicine and was about to accept a four-year scholarship offered at New York University. At what was to have been her final recording session for MGM on October 2, 1957, she recorded a cover version of the 1923 song "Who's Sorry Now?", written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Francis has said that she recorded it at the persistence of her father, who was convinced it stood a chance of becoming a hit because it was a song adults already knew and that teenagers would dance to if it had a contemporary arrangement.
Francis, who didn't like the song at all and had been arguing about it with her father heatedly, delayed the recording of the three other songs during the session so much, that in her opinion there was no time left on the continuously running recording tape. But her father insisted, and when the recording "Who's Sorry Now?" was finished, there were only a few seconds left on the tape.
The single seemed to go unnoticed like all previous releases – just as Francis had predicted. But on January 1, 1958, the song debuted on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand". By mid-year, over a million copies had been sold, and Francis was suddenly launched into worldwide stardom. In April 1958, "Who's Sorry Now" reached # 1 on the UK Singles Chart and # 4 in the US. For the next four years, Francis was voted the "Best Female Vocalist" by "American Bandstand" viewers.
And we stop the bio here....at "Who's sorry now?".....and so, Connie's early work: 1955-58.
01. Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer -Arthur Godfrey Talent Show 12-20-1950
02. Daddy's Little Girl -Arthur Godfrey Talent Show 12-20-1950
03. The Wheel of Fortune -1952 "battle of the ages" -TV
04. You Belong to Me -1952 "battle of the ages" -TV
05. Freddy 1955
06. Didnt I Love You Enough 1955
07. (Oh Please) Make Him Jealous 1955
08. Goody goodbye 1955
09. Are You Satisfied 1955
10. My Treasure 1955
11. My First Real Love 1956
12. Believe In Me (Credemi) 1956
13. Send for my baby 1956
14. Forgetting 1956
15. I Never Had A Sweetheart 1956
16. Little Blue Wren-1956-dubbed voice for Tuesday Weld "Rock rock rock"
17. Everyone Needs Someone 1956
18. My Sailor Boy 1956
19. No Other One 1957
20. I Leaned On A Man 1957
21. Eighteen 1957
22. Faded Orchid 1957
23.The Majesty Of Love-w/ Marvin Rainwater-1957
24. You, My Darlin' You-w/ Marvin Rainwater-1957
25. You Were Only Fooling (Whille I Was Falling in Love) 1957
26. Who's Sorry Now 1957
27. I'm Beginning to See the Light 1958
28. How Can I Make You Believe in Me 1950s
29. My Sister's Clothes 50s
Lonnie Johnson Part 1...........NEW LINK--RAPIDSHARE--02/23/12****
Lonnie Johnson
Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson (February 8, 1899 – June 16, 1970) was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos. Johnson was not only one of the few black blues musicians invited to be 'guest featured' on a number of jazz recording sessions, he was also one of the only classic 1920's blues artists to have a revived a high-charting career after WWII.
Johnson was born in Orleans Parish, New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in a family of musicians. He studied violin, piano and guitar as a child, and learned to play various other instruments including the mandolin, but concentrated on the guitar throughout his professional career. "There was music all around us," he recalled, "and in my family you'd better play something, even if you just banged on a tin can."
By his late teens, he played guitar and violin in his father's family band at banquets and weddings, alongside his brother James "Steady Roll" Johnson. He also worked with jazz trumpeter Punch Miller in the city's Storyville district.
In 1917, Johnson joined a revue that toured England, returning home in 1919 to find that all of his family, except his brother James, had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic.
He and his brother settled in St. Louis in 1921. The two brothers performed as a duo, and Lonnie also worked on riverboats, working in the orchestras of Charlie Creath and Fate Marable. In 1925 Lonnie married, and his wife Mary soon began to pursue a blues career in her own right, performing as Mary Johnson and pursuing a recording career from 1929–1936. She is not to be confused with the later soul and gospel singer of the same name. As is often the case with early blues artists, information on Mrs Johnson is often contradictory and confusing. Many online sources give her name before marriage as Mary Smith, and state that she began performing in her teens. However, author James Sallis gives her single name as Mary Williams, and states that her interest in writing and performing blues material began when she started helping Lonnie write songs, and developed from there. Curiously enough, the two never recorded together. They had six children before their divorce in 1932.
In 1925, Johnson entered and won a blues contest at the Booker T. Washington Theatre in St. Louis, the prize being a recording contract with Okeh Records. To his regret, he was then tagged as a blues artist, and later found it difficult to be regarded as anything else. He later said, "I guess I would have done anything to get recorded – it just happened to be a blues contest, so I sang the blues." Between 1925 and 1932 he made about 130 recordings for the OKeh label (many were good sellers). He was called to New York to record with the leading blues singers of the day including Victoria Spivey and country blues singer Alger "Texas" Alexander. He also toured with Bessie Smith's T.O.B.A. show.
In December 1927, Johnson recorded in Chicago as a guest artist with Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, paired with banjoist Johnny St. Cyr. He played on the sides "I'm Not Rough", "Savoy Blues", and "Hotter Than That." In 1928 he recorded "Hot and Bothered", "Move Over", and "The Mooche" with Duke Ellington on Okeh records; he also recorded with a group called The Chocolate Dandies. He pioneered the guitar solo on the 1927 track "6/88 Glide" and many of his early recordings showed him playing 12-string guitar solos in a style that influenced such future jazz guitarists as Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, and gave the instrument new meaning as a jazz voice. He excelled in purely instrumental pieces, some of which he recorded with the white jazz guitarist Eddie Lang, whom he teamed up with in 1929. These recordings were among the first in history to feature black and white musicians performing together, but Lang was credited as Blind Willie Dunn to disguise the fact.
Much of Johnson's music featured experimental improvisations that would now be categorised as jazz rather than blues. According to blues historian Gérard Herzhaft, Johnson was "undeniably the creator of the guitar solo played note by note with a pick, which has become the standard in jazz, blues, country, and rock". Johnson's style reached both the Delta bluesmen and urban players who would adapt and develop his one string solos into the modern electric blues style. However, writer Elijah Wald has written that, in the 1920s and 1930s, Johnson was best known as a sophisticated and urbane singer rather than an instrumentalist – "Of the forty ads for his records that appeared in the 'Chicago Defender' between 1926 and 1931, not one even mentioned that he played guitar."
Johnson's compositions often depicted the social conditions confronting urban African Americans ("Racketeers' Blues", "Hard Times Ain't Gone Nowhere", "Fine Booze and Heavy Dues"). In his lyrics he captured the nuances of male-female love relationships in a way that went beyond Tin Pan Alley sentimentalism. His songs displayed an ability to understand the heartaches of others that Johnson saw as the essence of his blues.
After touring with Bessie Smith in 1929, Johnson moved to Chicago, and recorded for Okeh with stride pianist James P. Johnson. However, with the temporary demise of the recording industry in the Great Depression, Johnson was compelled to make a living outside music, working at one point in a steel mill in Peoria, Illinois. In 1932 he moved again to Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived for the rest of the decade. There, he played intermittently with the band of vocalist and singer Putney Dandridge, and performed on radio programs.
By the late 1930s, however, he was recording and performing in Chicago for Decca Records, working with Roosevelt Sykes and Blind John Davis among others. In 1939, during a session for the Bluebird label with pianist Joshua Altheimer, Johnson used an electric guitar for the first time. He recorded 34 tracks for Bluebird over the next five years, including the hits "He's a Jelly Roll Baker" and "In Love Again".
After World War II, Johnson made the transition to rhythm and blues, recording for King Records in Cincinnati, and having a major hit in 1948 with "Tomorrow Night", written by Sam Coslow and Will Grosz. This topped the Billboard "Race Records" chart for 7 weeks, also made # 19 on the pop charts, and had reported sales of three million copies. A blues ballad with piano accompaniment and background singers, the song bore little resemblance to much of Johnson's earlier blues and jazz material. The follow-ups "Pleasing You" and "So Tired" were also major R&B hits.
In 1952 Johnson toured England. Tony Donegan, a British musician who played on the same bill, paid tribute to Johnson by changing his name to Lonnie Donegan.
After returning to the U.S., Johnson moved to Philadelphia. His career had been a roller coaster ride that sometimes took him away from music. In between great musical accomplishments, he had found it necessary to take menial jobs that ranged from working in a steel foundry to mopping floors as a janitor. He gradually dropped out of music again in the 1950s, and took menial janitorial jobs; he was working at Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Hotel in 1959 when WHAT-FM disc jockey Chris Albertson happened upon him and produced a comeback album, for the Prestige Bluesville Records label, Blues by Lonnie Johnson. This was followed by other Prestige albums, including one with former Ellington boss, Elmer Snowden, who had helped Albertson locate Johnson. There followed a Chicago engagement for Johnson at the Playboy Club and this succession of events placed him back on the music scene at a fortuitous time: young audiences were embracing folk music and many veteran performers were stepping out of obscurity. In short order, Lonnie Johnson found himself reunited with Duke Ellington and his orchestra and appearing as special guest at an all-star folk concert, both at Town Hall, New York City City.
In 1961, Johnson was reunited with his old Okeh recording partner, Victoria Spivey, for another Prestige album, Idle Hours, and the two singers performed at Gerdes Folk City. In 1963 he toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival show, with Muddy Waters and others, and recorded an album with Otis Spann in Denmark.
In May 1965, he performed at a club in Toronto before an audience of four people. Two weeks later, his shows at a different club attracted a larger audience and Johnson decided to move to the city. He opened his own club, Home of the Blues, on Toronto's Yorkville Avenue in 1966, but it was a business failure and Johnson was ultimately fired by the man who became owner. Throughout the rest of decade he recorded and played local clubs in Canada as well as embarking on several regional tours.
In March 1969, he was hit by a car while walking on a sidewalk in Toronto. Johnson was seriously injured, suffering a broken hip and kidney injuries. A benefit concert was held on May 4, 1969, featuring two dozen acts, including Ian and Sylvia, John Lee Hooker and Hagood Hardy. Johnson never fully recovered from his injuries and suffered what was described as a stroke in August. He was able to return to the stage for one performance at Massey Hall on February 23, 1970, walking with the aid of a cane to sing a couple of songs with Buddy Guy and receiving a standing ovation. He died on June 16, 1970 and was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Toronto. At the time, Johnson was reported to have been "virtually broke."
In 1993, Smithsonian Folkways released The Complete Folkways Recordings, Johnson's anthology of music on Folkways Records. He had been featured on several compilation blues albums, on Folkways, beginning in the 1960s, but had never released a solo album on the label in his lifetime.
Johnson was posthumously inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 1997.
Lonnie Johnson is featured as a character in the Film Who Do You Love? (2008 film), starring Alessandro Nivola, David Oyelow, Chi McBride and TJ Hassan as Johnson. The film was directed by Jerry Zaks.
Lonnie Johnson's early recordings are the first guitar recordings that display a single-note soloing style with use of string bending and vibrato. While it cannot be proven that this contains the influence of earlier players who did not record, it is the origin of Blues and Rock solo guitar. Johnson's influence is obvious in Django Reinhardt, T-Bone Walker and virtually all electric blues guitar players.
One of Elvis Presley's earliest recordings was Johnson's blues ballad, "Tomorrow Night" written by Sam Coslow and Will Grosz, which was also recorded by LaVern Baker. In 1957, it was also recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis.
In the liner notes for Biograph, Dylan describes his encounters with Johnson in New York City. "I was lucky to meet Lonnie Johnson at the same club I was working and I must say he greatly influenced me. You can hear it in that first record. I mean Corrina, Corrina...that's pretty much Lonnie Johnson. I used to watch him every chance I got and sometimes he'd let me play with him. I think he and Tampa Red and of course Scrapper Blackwell, that's my favorite style of guitar playing." Also, Bob Dylan wrote about the performing method he learned from Robert Johnson in Chronicles, Vol. 1. Dylan thinks Robert Johnson had learned a lot from Lonnie. Also some of Robert's songs are seen as new versions of songs recorded by Lonnie.
And here's part 1...........
A Broken Heart That Never Smiles-
Another Woman Booked Out And Bound To Go-w/ Spencer Williams
Away Down In The Alley Blues-
Baby Please Don't Leave Home No More-
Baby Please Tell Me-
Baby You Don't Know My Mind-
Baby, Will You Please Come Home-
Back-Water Blues-
Ball And Chain Blues-
Be Careful-
Bearcat Blues-
Beautiful But Dumb-
Bed Of Sand-
Bedbug Blues Part 2-
Best Jockey In Town-
Bitin' Fleas Blues-
Black Cat Blues-w/ Helen Humes
Blackbird Blues-w/ Raymond Boyd
Blue Blood Blues- (Blind Willie Dunn's Gin Bottle Four/Eddie Lang)
Blue Ghost Blues (2)-
Blue Ghost Blues-
Blue guitar blues-
Blue guitar blues-
Blue Room Blues-
Blues For Everybody-
Blues For Lonnie-
Blues in G-
Blues In My Soul-
Blues Is Only A Ghost-
Broken Levee Blues-
Bull Frog Moan-
The Bull Frog and the Toad-
NEW LINK--RAPIDSHARE***** 02/23/12
https://rapidshare.com/files/2453678628/lonniejohnson1.zip
Doris Day...post Les Brown Solo recordings 1947-1950 NEW LINK--RAPIDSHARE*** 02-23-12
More early Doris...1947-1950 (more to come -this list is chronological-1947-48)
01. Pete
02. It takes time
03. My Young And Foolish Heart
04. Tell Me, Dream Face, What Am I To You
05. I'm Still Sitting Under The Apple Tree
06. When Tonight Is Just A Memory
07. A Chocolate Sundae On A Saturday Night
08. Just An Old Love Song Of Mine
09. Papa Won't You Dance With Me
10. Say Something Nice About Me Baby
11. That's The Way He Does It
12. Why Should We Both Be Lonely
13. Thoughtless
14. I've Only Myself To Blame
15. It's A Quiet Town (In Crossbone County)
16. It's The Sentimental Thing To Do
17. Confess
18. Love somebody
19. It's Magic
20. It's Magic (b'ast)
21. Put 'Em In A Box (Tie 'Em With A Ribbon)
22. I'm in Love (from 'Romance on the High Seas')
23. I'm In Love (& Buddy Clark)
24. It's You Or No One
25. pretty baby
26. Just Imagine
27. my darling my darling
28. That Certain Party
29. My dream is yours
30. Someone Like You
Several photos of Doris with Kitty Kallen in Central Park ca 1946 (from the Gottlieb jazz photos series)
Friday, December 16, 2011
Beat Girl.....Gillian Hills NEW LINK--RAPIDSHARE 02/23/12*****
Gillian Hills
Gillian Hills (born 5 June 1944) is an actress and singer. She rose to fame as a teenager in the 1960s in the British films Beat Girl and later, Blowup. She also spent a number of years living in France, where she embarked on a singing career as well as starring in a number of French films.
Born in Cairo, Egypt her father was the teacher, traveller, author and adventurer Denis Hills and her mother was Dunia Lesmianowna, daughter of Polish poet Bolesław Leśmian. Gillian Hills spent her early years in France where she was discovered by Roger Vadim who saw her as the new Brigitte Bardot and cast her in a version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
As a teenager, she starred in the classic British film Beat Girl in 1960, the soundtrack for which was among John Barry's earliest. Her co-star on this being a young Adam Faith in his first film role and the British Board of Film Censors ordered cuts be made before they would give an X certificate.
In 1960, she signed to the French Barclay Records label releasing her first EP entitled "Allo Brigitte..ne coupez pas!" and in 1961 appeared at the prestigious Olympia Theatre in Paris on the bill with Johnny Hallyday. She remained with Barclay until 1964 having released both cover and original recordings. In 1965, she signed to the AZ record label run by the radio station Europe 1 and issued an EP which included a cover of the Zombies "Leave Me Be" and her self-penned "Rien N'Est Changé".
At the close of her recording career, she returned to England and film, appearing in Michelangelo Antonioni's first English language film the 1966 classic Blowup starring David Hemmings with whom her character and that of Jane Birkin shared an energetic romp in which all their clothes were gradually removed. This was followed by the film version of the John Osborne play Inadmissible Evidence and the mystery romance Three. Gillian also starred in the classic 1969 adaptation of Alan Garner's novel The Owl Service, as Alison Bradley. Other film appearances followed, most notably her cameo in A Clockwork Orange (1971) in which she played one of two girls picked up in a record shop by Malcolm McDowell's leading character.
In 1975, Hills decided to stop making movies, and she moved to New York to work as an illustrator for various books and magazines.
Gillian Hills now lives in England and is married to Stewart Young, the manager for AC/DC, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Cyndi Lauper, Foreigner, Billy Squier, Scorpions and Zucchero.
Here 'Tis..........
Je Reviens Vers Le Bonheur (Walking Back To Happiness)-
Aimons-Nous w/. Eddie Constantine (Let's Make Love)-
Allons Dans Le Bois (Good Time Baby)-
Avec Toi-
C'est Bien Mieux Comme Ca w/ Les Chaussettes Noires-
C'est Le Garson-
Cha Cha Stop-
Cou-Couche Panier-
En Dansant Le Twist (Mama Said)-
Je Partirai-
Je Viens Quand Tu Veux (Call Me Anytime)-
Jean-Lou-
La Tete A L'Envers (Jingle Bell Rock)-
Le Paradis Pour Toi (A Kookie Little Paradise)-
Les Jolis Coeurs (Kiss 'n' Run)-
Look At Them-
Ma Premiere Cigarette-
Maintenant Il Telephone-
Mon Coeur Est Pret (Don't Treat Me Like A Child)-
Ne Crois Surtout Pas-
Ne T'en Fais Pas-
Oublie,Oublie-La-
Oublie-
Pres De La Cascade w/ Henri Salvador (By A Waterfall)-
Qui A Su-
Rentre Sans Moi (Leave Me Be)-
Rien N'est Change-
Si Tu Veux Que Je Te Dise-
Specialisation (w. Eddie Constantine) (Specialization)-
Tomorrow Is Another Day-
Tu Mens-
Tu Peux-
Tut,Tut,Tut,Tut (Busy Signal)-
Un Petit Baiser (The Kiss)-
Zou Bisou Bisou (Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo)-
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