Over the years, I have seen several high-profile comedians in concert. The first of these was Steve Martin. Steve came to my attention with his appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live in the mid-1970’s. I memorized his comedy routines from his first album Let’s Get Small and would share them with my friends who were also Steve Martin fans. I was happy when I heard the news of a concert appearance on April 7, 1978 in Memphis at the Ellis Auditorium North Hall.
In 1985, I saw a guitarist named Stanley Jordan on the Tonight Show. I was amazed at his technique and the sounds he was able to get out of the guitar. He used a finger tapping technique similar to what you’ve seen Eddie Van Halen do up on the fretboard of the guitar. But he would play a melody, a bass line, and chords all at the same time. Most bands would have as many as three musicians creating these sounds that he was doing by himself on a guitar. I was an instant fan and I soon picked up his first album, Magic Touch. While there were various genres of music on this album, Stanley Jordan was generally considered a jazz musician.
It’s not that often that you get to be at a noteworthy rock and roll performance. I’ve had the opportunity to see a couple of musicians in concert as they were preparing to record live albums. I saw Jimmy Buffett in Memphis on August 1, 1978. This was exactly a week before he started recording concerts that became the double live album You Had To Be There. I also got to see Bob Dylan on November 10, 1994 in Jackson, Tennessee which was exactly a week before he started filming the concerts that became the MTV Unplugged show and album. While I didn’t get to see the shows that were the ones that became part of these historic recordings, I did get a chance to see these artists while they were prepping for these important shows. I felt they would be prepping to be at the top of their game during these shows and I was fortunate to see them at those special times.
George Klein is the first radio DJ whose name I remember knowing. He was a DJ on WHBQ, the most popular AM radio station in the part of the country where I grew up. This was at a time when people listened primarily to AM radios because that was about the only thing around. WHBQ was a pop music station playing top 40 hits. It seemed like Klein was on the radio any time I was listening. He played all the most popular music of the time, introduced the songs that would become hits and seemed to know a lot about the music business. He influenced my musical tastes more than anyone outside of my immediate family. Because he had a television program called Dance Party on WHBQ-TV, he was one of the few DJs that I knew what he looked like.
I grew up listening to comedy albums. I listened to them enough to have some comedian’s routines memorized. It would be hard to not be influenced by some of these routines even when they weren’t the most spiritual stories. Here are three songs that I can site direct influences from comedy routines.
It was spring of 2007 and I was on a business trip in the Cleveland, Ohio area. It was the week before Easter and the weather was warm in Tennessee before we left. It was also warm in Cleveland when we arrived. I had checked the weather before we left Tennessee and I saw that there was a possibility of it getting cool while we were in Cleveland so I took a relatively heavy jacket on the trip. I was traveling with two men named Phillip and Todd. I don’t think either of them had checked the weather before they left home. Phillip had brought a light jacket. Todd was ready for spring and brought no jacket at all and only short sleeve shirts. The weather was warm in Cleveland on Tuesday when we arrived. But we were staying through Thursday and the weather was supposed to get cold before we left.
In January of 1978, my friends and I started getting out on weekends to spend time together. We would occasionally go to the movies, go bowling or visit an arcade. Most of the time, we would ride the streets of our little town in search of girls to talk with. During this time, an 8-track tape player standard equipment in any of the cars where we regularly spent time. While my musical tastes were always a bit more eclectic than my friends, there were a handful of mainstream rock albums that I really loved that became our soundtrack for that time in our lives. These were albums that I completely loved but had no desire to own a copy because I got to hear them enough when we were out on the town. As I entered college, I would finally break down and pick up copies of these albums. By that time, vinyl would become my preferred music format. Some of these would later become staples of my CD collection. All of them are on my iPod right now.
The following list includes the most important of these recordings. I’ve also included a few notes relating to each title. I have also noted the differences in the song order from the album to the 8-track tape. I’ve also noted where some of the songs were split between two tracks. Only people who listened to music on 8-track can appreciate memories of a song fading out in the middle, the loud ka-chunk of the player and the song fading back in.
August 15, 1978 marked the eve of the first anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. This would be the first time I would visit Memphis on August 15 that I remember but this first trip was not to attend an Elvis Candlelight Vigil. I’m sure the Elvis fans gathered there that year just as they had a year before when he died on August 16. But I’m sure whatever observations that Elvis’ faithful fans had that year were probably hampered by a policeman’s strike in Memphis. There were already National Guard troops patrolling the streets of Memphis when the city’s firefighters joined the strike. Add to that the first ever mass influx of tourists to Memphis just to see Graceland. There were no official events planned and I’m sure any attempt at a candlelight vigil was probably not welcome by local officials who had declared a curfew starting at 8 PM to try and curb violence by angry police on the previous nights. It’s amazing that Elvis Week ever took off when its roots were in an environment like this.
I’m not old enough to have been in the group The Beatles but I am old enough to remember them when they were still together. I was almost 2 years old when they arrived in the U.S. for the first time. I was 8 years old when Paul McCartney announced he was leaving the group. Meet the Beatles is one of my all-time favorite albums. They were a large part of the soundtrack of my youth.
As I learned more about the Beatles as a teenager in the 1970’s, I often heard people referred to as “The Fifth Beatle”. There are many articles on the internet that discuss who qualifies as a potential fifth Beatle. This is my list. I don’t claim that it is all inclusive. It has the ones that I feel are most noteworthy and my personal favorites.
In my last post, I talked about my fondness for talent contests. The appeal of a talent show is twofold. I appreciate the hard work that it takes for anyone to get up and put yourself out there for potential ridicule. I am not a professional musician. My music releases are for the most part glorified vanity projects. Anyone can do with their music exactly what I am doing for nearly next to nothing. I know there are many people more talented that I am who are unwilling to release their music because they don’t think their music is good enough. Anyone who is willing to perform live for other people deserves at least a little respect. And the encouragement we can give a budding talent may be just the thing they need to get them to the next level.