FRANK SINATRA 
The first single by the Piltdown Men was “Brontosaurus Stomp” b/w “Mac Donald’s Cave”, and the band had the good fortune to release the song just as America’s first prime-time animated television show, The Flintstones was being launched, almost exactly 50 years ago today. “Brontosaurus Stomp” made it to #75 on the U. S. charts, and “Mac Donald’s Cave” did even better in Britain, reaching #14, despite having competition from a Top 20 version of “Ol’ Mac Donald” in a completely different style that was recorded by Frank Sinatra, of all people. (Those fancy singers do love their nursery rhymes: Barbra Streisand put “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” on her debut album, The Barbra Streisand Album). (October 2010) * * * Following his huge hit songs “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea”, Bobby Darin had record-breaking appearances at the Copacabana and was starting to give Frank Sinatra a run for his money as America’s favorite song stylist. (June 2011) * * * The impact of this one Elvis recording can hardly be overstated. “Heartbreak Hotel” was one of the biggest influences on John Lennon that inexorably led to the formation of the Beatles. In a quote given in Wikipedia, John Lennon speaks of his feelings about the song: “When I first heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, I could hardly make out what was being said. It was just the experience of hearing it and having my hair stand on end. We’d never heard American voices singing like that. They always sung like [Frank] Sinatra or enunciate very well. Suddenly, there’s this hillbilly hiccuping on tape echo and all this bluesy stuff going on. And we didn’t know what Elvis was singing about. . . . It took us a long time to work out what was going on. To us, it just sounded like a noise that was great.”
(June 2013/1)
* * *
Bill Cosby – who, due to having the same name as the famous comedian Bill Cosby, began to go by the name Casey Cosby – was fortunate to have acquired an accordion complete with eight weeks of lessons from a traveling salesman. He jumped at the chance to become a musician and eventually became one of the leading accordionists in the nation, recording four albums of classical accordion music. He won the U.S. accordion championship five years in a row and also was judged best at his instrument in a 1967 competition at UCLA that was sponsored by Frank Sinatra.
(October 2013)
* * *
Glen Campbell quickly became highly sought after as a guitarist and played for a wide variety of artists in the 1960’s; Wikipedia lists recordings by Bobby Darin, Rick Nelson, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, the Monkees, Nancy Sinatra, Merle Haggard, Jan & Dean, Elvis Presley, and Frank Sinatra.
(February 2015)
* * *
For some reason, over the years the 1970’s have gotten a reputation as a poor decade for music. (So do the 1950’s, for that matter, even though that is where rock and roll came from). It certainly cannot be because everything sounded the same. Most of the British Invasion bands were still active. The top American acts were still going strong as well – Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, the Beach Boys, the Band, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, etc. – and major stars who arrived in the 1970’s include Elton John, Michael Jackson, Queen, ABBA, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Prince, James Taylor, and Tom Petty. Anyone who says they are a music fan has to be able to find someone, and probably several someones on that list that they like a lot. (December 2016) |