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| Vocal Groups! | |
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| Topic Started: Sep 20 2008, 06:36 PM (668 Views) | |
| mort bakaprevski | Jul 22 2009, 12:38 PM Post #31 |
Soony Roony!
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JG, did you get the recording I sent you via email??? If so, any comments??? |
| “You’ve got to take the bitter with the sour.” | |
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| JazzGuyy | Jul 22 2009, 01:22 PM Post #32 |
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I haven't had time to listen to it and won't until tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. |
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| rr79315 | Jul 22 2009, 03:28 PM Post #33 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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The Skyliners with Jimmy Beaumont are still performing and sounding great. Janet Vogel, the female singer hitting that incredible note at the end of Since I Don't Have You committed suicide in the late 70's or early 80's. Today the female singer is Donna Groom. And a very talented lady she is. If you ever watched any of the PBS DOO WOP specials done in Pittsburgh she is often on tv as a back up singer. I try to catch the act a couple of times a year. Once I even saw them at Virginia Beach while I was on vacation. They wowed the audience there as they do everywhere. One of my favorites is Comes Love. Another good Pittsburgh group is the Holidays. They had a Pittsburgh hit in the early 60's, Miss You , which is very good. Check it out if you can. |
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| mort bakaprevski | Jul 24 2009, 10:55 AM Post #34 |
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Soony Roony!
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Ran across the following somewhere?? It's Andy Williams reminiscing about performing as one of the Williams Bros. with Kay Thompson: During the war, I had been singing in a group called "Four Hits and a Miss." It used to be "Six Hits and a Miss," but two of the "Hits" went into the Army. I was 15 or 16, and had been in singing groups all my life; M-G-M needed some background chorus vocals, so I got a call. There were a lot of legit singers around, but Kay wanted pop singers. I'm on the soundtrack for "On the Atcheson, Topeka and the Santa Fe" in The Harvey Girls - I still remember every note of that arrangement and "Be a Ladies Man" in Good News. My brothers came home after the war, and we were ready to work as the Williams Brothers again. Kay was about to leave the studio and put an act together. My brothers, Kay, and I ended up rehearsing with [M-G-M choreographer] Bob Alton for about six months, and we finally opened at El Rancho in Las Vegas. There were no microphones, so we all got up on ladders and hung mikes from the beams. No one had ever thought of that; now, of course, that's the way it's done. We were there two weeks, and it was a huge success. We moved on to Lake Tahoe to work this little, teeny place. Kay had done orchestrations for 40 pieces, as if the M-G-M orchestra would be there. The place only seated 80 people! So we get there, and there's a seven-piece band. Half the guys couldn't read music ... only comic books. We'd do the song, the band would kind of follow us, and then play "ta-da" at the end of the number. Two thugs named Russian Louie Strauss and Sir Abe Chapman ran the place. One time, Kay invited these guys for tea. It was a hot August day, and they asked if they could take off their jackets; Kay said yes, so they did, and they each had two guns strapped over their shoulders! Right after our two-week booking, Russian Louie and Sir Abe drove Kay to the airport, then went back and shot their other partner dead right there in the lobby. I think Russian Louie Strauss is buried somewhere out in the desert; it was a rough group. Our next job was at the brand new Flamingo Hotel in Vegas - and there was Bugsy Siegel! It's hard to imagine there wasn't an act like us before, because there have been so many since. Up to that time, everyone just sang around a microphone, and when the song was over, the singers would raise their arms. That's about all there was to it. What Kay and Bob Alton put together was like a mini-musical revue. Kay was just different, that's all. She wrote wonderful songs, she could arrange, she could play the piano beautifully, she could stage numbers. And could she sing! The greatest. She taught me more about singing and show business than anyone else in the world. |
| “You’ve got to take the bitter with the sour.” | |
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| mort bakaprevski | Aug 2 2009, 10:27 AM Post #35 |
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Soony Roony!
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Bobby McFerrin & the Pentatonic Scale: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/01/bobby-mcferrin-hacks.html Fabulous!!! |
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| mort bakaprevski | Sep 11 2009, 07:10 AM Post #36 |
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Soony Roony!
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Much ado about Auto-Tune a product which allows ANY singer to sing in tune. Products like this have been around for a number of years now & can do some amazing things (I had a friend of mine move some learning tracks down a whole tone with no notable distortion): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574404851699655282.html |
| “You’ve got to take the bitter with the sour.” | |
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| JazzGuyy | Sep 11 2009, 11:51 AM Post #37 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Well, they've been processing singers at least since the 1950s, probably earlier for some effects. The modern technology just does easier, faster and better. My own preference is for the real thing. As someone who couldn't carry a tune with a forklift, it is nice to know though that even I could be made to sound almost decent. |
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| mort bakaprevski | Sep 16 2009, 07:32 PM Post #38 |
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Soony Roony!
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Anybody here (besides me) old enough to remember The Weavers??? We were having a discussion, on another site, about the song, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (also sometimes known as "Wimoweh"). Someone mentioned Robert John... so someone else countered with The Tokens. Well, of course, another person chimed in that The Kingston Trio had recorded it before The Tokens... and we finally got back to The Weavers in 1952 (turns out there were even earlier recordings than that). I never really cared a heckuva lot for The Weavers... & it had nothing to do with their politics. They just sang so sloppily... & seemed to be proud of that fact. They were hard-core folkies and, as such, seemed to feel that balance & blend were something to be shunned like the plague. Everyone sing out, enthusiastically, at the top of your lungs & if you occasionally duplicated a note someone else was singing, who cares?? Kind of a sing around the campfire approach. Hell, I'll bet they asked the audience to join in with them at their concerts. Sheeesh, I don't have to pay good money to hear myself sing. I have to listen to that crap every time I take a shower!! |
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| mort bakaprevski | Sep 17 2009, 03:26 PM Post #39 |
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Soony Roony!
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Mmmmmm, looks like I AM the only guy around here old enough to remember The Weavers. Well, here they are, in all of their glory (albeit 25 years after their heyday): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkb2MFLU4pE&feature=related Loved the critic who once covered one of Seeger's concerts. Don't remember the quote exactly, but close enough. Seeger accompanied himself on one song by chopping wood with an axe. The critic said, "Predictably, the chips fell everywhere!" Edited by mort bakaprevski, Sep 17 2009, 04:12 PM.
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| panzer the great & terrible | Sep 17 2009, 05:44 PM Post #40 |
Mouth Breather
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Oh, I know about the Weavers all right, but like you never much cared for them. I have a history in the Civil Rights movement and the antiwar protests that followed, so I ran into Seeger, and he was so smug and self-righteous that I couldn't stand him. That's the trouble with the left: they're always trying to outcool each other. The one-upmanship is endless, and Seeger had it down. He wasn't above pulling rank to jump a line either. If you're an elitist, you're not really a leftist, are you? His brother Mike was a better musician and his sister Peggy a better person -- I liked her when I met her, and she was a Weaver, wasn't she?. As you say, the Weavers didn't rehearse a lot and just sang out, which would have been more fun for them than for the audience if we in the audience hadn't known so little about music. I didn't really start to get with it until I took piano in my thirties, and I still learn new stuff every day. That's the fun of music: unless you narrow your boundries, it's an endless subject; and to be fair, The Weavers turned a lot of people on to folk music, and more authentic folk musicians are fascinating. |
| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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| mort bakaprevski | Sep 18 2009, 03:28 PM Post #41 |
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Soony Roony!
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Well, I'm not surprised. What's the old cliche?? Somethin' like "politics makes strange bedfellows." Many years ago, my lady friend went to a demonstration on "women's right to choose." She seemed a bit down when she returned. I asked why & she said that while there were some at the demo who were truly motivated by the cause... there was also a large contingent that just seemed to enjoy having confrontations with others. At any rate.... Mike & Peggy were 1/2 siblings to Pete. Peggy, as far as I know, was never a member of The Weavers. Gotta admit my tastes in folk music were pretty Wonder Bread. I liked The Kingston Trio because, although none of them had an outstanding solo voice, their vocal blend was terrific (particularly when Dave Guard sang bass). I loved listening to Peter, Paul & Mary because they were one of the first "folk" groups that extensively utilized Travis Picking; a style of playing the guitar that was first made famous by Merle Travis. I'm not sure what you mean by "authentic" folk musicians. You mean like Sonny Terry? Sheeesh, I hope you don't mean Woody Guthrie. Always held a grudge against that guy for composing the all-time boring song; "This Land is Your Land." Not sure what comes in 2nd place... but it might be "Mack, the Knife." |
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| mort bakaprevski | Oct 7 2009, 05:03 PM Post #42 |
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Soony Roony!
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Hey, here's The Tokens doing a bit on a School House Rock episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb93OZXpFd0&feature=related Cool!! |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Nov 18 2009, 12:55 PM Post #43 |
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Mouth Breather
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I would say that authentic folk musicians are best defined by what they aren't, as in "from NYC or Boston." Bonnie Raitt and John Hammond just aren't folk musicians -- their approach is too sophisticated. I would include California as well, but Jesse Fuller was from the Bay Area and he qualifies if anybody does. As a general rule though this state's high school population tends to rigid conformity, and that's deadly to folk tradition. Even Greeks don't act Greek in California by the time they're second generation. |
| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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2:58 AM Nov 26
