Motown, named in honor of hometown Detroit’s nickname “The Motor City”, was incorporated on January 12, 1959 as Tamla Records. Arguably the most significant player in the racial integration of popular music, it was the first record label owned by an African American, Berry Gordy, Jr. Its elite crossover success banished the idea of “race records” through a distinctively smooth blend of R&B and pop – the emphasis being on pop. Motown eschewed the raw soul of contemporaries such as Stax. Many of Motown’s flagship artists, raised in the Detroit projects, were given an extensive polish in the areas of grooming, etiquette and choreography. Acts were advised to behave like royalty. Their sophistication proved a ticket to a wider audience and ultimately cemented black music into mainstream culture. The label crafted such an instantly recognizable sound that “Motown” rose above mere label into a style unto itself – which Gordy dubbed “The Sound of Young America”. The lush, elaborate instrumentation of the Funk Brothers and the gifted Brill Building-esque team of songwriters, such as Holland-Dozier-Holland, conjuring gem after gem with assembly-line precision were invaluable weapons in Motown’s pop arsenal. Motown’s triumphs put the Detroit, Michigan business on the map and made it the most powerful independent in the recording industry. The Motown sound was ubiquitous throughout the 60s, consistently strong in the face of stiff competition from the British Invasion.

Berry Gordy, Jr. got his start as a songsmith for the Motor City’s Jackie Wilson but soon realized that the more lucrative end of the business was in producing and retaining royalties. Fellow songwriter Billy Davis and Gordy’s sisters, Gwen and Anna, started Anna Records and hoped to install Berry as company president. Instead Gordy struck out on his own with an $800 family loan and founded Tamla (after then-hit song “Tammy”) . His first signed act was The Matadors. He renamed them The Miracles and lead singer (and soon major Motown songwriter) Smokey Robinson became vice president of the fledgling label. Gordy purchased a former photography studio and converted it into Hitsville U.S.A, Motown’s headquarters until a 1968 expansion, then the 1972 corporation-wide migration to Los Angeles. Tamla-Motown’s earliest hits were Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want)”, The Miracle’s “Shop Around” – Motown’s first million-seller – and The Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman”.

Motown exploded in the next decade. From 1961 to 1971, the label had 110 Top Ten hits with signature artists Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross & The Supremes, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Martha & the Vandellas, Gladys Knight and the Jackson 5. Many of these young artists conquered the international pop world through an annual package tour, the Motortown Revue. “The Sound of Young America” became world famous shorthand for the coveted, youthful American lifestyle.

At the dawn of the 70s, Motown gradually broke away from their established formulas. Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder took greater artistic control of their own music, infusing songs with their unique personalities and shattering the Motown blueprint with full length masterpieces. Motown also diversified, joining the film industry to promote multi-faceted diva Diana Ross. During the course of the decade, while still successful through newer acts Rick James and The Commodores, Motown became less of the force it had been during its golden age. It remained an independent label until 1988 when Berry Gordy sold it to MCA. Today, Motown is yet another business under the Universal Music Group umbrella.

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“Fingertips” by Little Stevie Wonder
The Four Tops - “Reach Out I’ll Be There”
The Temptations - “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg”
Michael Jackson’s audition for Motown

Classic Motown.com
Motown Historical Museum
Motown Memories on soulwalking.co.uk
NPR: Motown, Not the Same Old Songs
PBS Guide to Motown
Motown-Related Labels

Some bands inspire cultures all their own, giving rise to specific vernaculars, styles, and behavior. In the 60s, there were Beatlemaniacs. Insane Clown Posse, albeit on a smaller scale, has Juggalos. But perhaps no other band in history has inspired a following the way that the Grateful Dead has. The Dead toured consistently from 1965 until July 9, 1995, allowing for generations of people to become a part of the scene, to become super-fans, to become Deadheads. The Dead propagated this culture in a variety of ways: They changed up their set list/song selection each night, and because their catalog is so vast, it became a special occasion when covers and rarities from their songbook were played. Due to the band’s improvisational nature, each time a song was performed, it was different from the prior time it was played. Over time, this led songs to undergo an evolutionary process where the current incarnation might sound radically different from the first time it was performed. This constant variety in live shows spawned a desire in fans to travel to different places to see the band. The Dead also fostered an environment of peacefulness and love (and drugs), making attending shows a more friendly, communal experience than most rock concerts. There’s a certain code that Deadheads abide by, one that encourages sharing and kindness. Even in the years since Jerry Garcia’s death, the community promoted by the Dead possesses an irresistible appeal for legions of fans. The remaining members of the band continue to tour and fill stadiums with Deadheads, and younger fans who wish they could have been around for the days when the Grateful Dead toured the country.

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Carol Morrison Orledge from Wilmington, DE remembers her introduction to the Dead
Patrick from Lakewood, NJ remembers a special Dead show
Catherine Costanzo from Fort Wahington, PA recalls becoming a Deadhead
Ralph from Yardley, PA remembers an atypical Dead show
“Dawn of the Deadheads” by David Gans
You Know Your’re A Deadhead When…

By the late 50s, “American Bandstand” emerged as a formative teenage TV experience, a nationwide sock hop uniting kids obsessed with a new phenomenon - rock ‘n’ roll. It debuted in 1952 on WFIL in Philadelphia with host Bob Horn. This local incarnation was dubbed simply “Bandstand”. Dick Clark took over hosting duties in 1956, deftly establishing the format we remember today: popular teenage regulars – soon celebs in their own right - dancing to Top 40 singles; at least one musical act appearing in person to lip-synch their latest single, and the memorable “Rate a Record” segment, which popularized the phrase “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.” With Clark in place as its eternally youthful host, the series rapidly took off. ABC picked it up for national broadcast and launched a weekday schedule on August 5, 1957. Clark’s path towards “media mogul” had begun. The show shifted from weekdays to Saturday afternoons in 1963, and then the following year, production permanently relocated from Philadelphia to entertainment capital Los Angeles. Its theme song went through a variety of permutations as well – starting with Artie Shaw’s “High Society” to Charles Albertine’s “Bandstand Boogie” performed by Les Elgart to Barry Manilow’s definitive rendition, which remained the “Bandstand” theme from 1977 until its cancellation in 1989. The show’s effect in terms of promoting rock ‘n’ roll music and extending its culture among teenagers is incalculable. It inspired several similar long-running music programs, such as Soul Train and Top of the Pops. Although the program aired for nearly 40 years, many argue its heyday was in the years before rock ‘n’ roll became just plain rock.

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History of American Bandstand
Dick Clark
Today in Bandstand History

Part 1 of Dick Clark and “American Bandstand” Remembered
Gene Vincent - “Dance the Bop”
Chuck Berry - “Sweet Little 16″
American Breed - Bend Me Shape Me
Linda Ronstadt - “You’re No Good”
Blondie - “Heart of Glass” and “Rip Her to Shreds”
Prince - “I Wanna Be Your Lover”
PIL - “Careering” and “Poptones”

885 Blog:
Daily Dose for August 2, 2007
XPN’s Jay Goldman, Director of Engineering on “American Bandstand”
Remember This: It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it
Remember This: It Came From Philly: The Retro Edition

By 1952 Les Paul was not only the most popular guitar player in America, he was also a leading innovator in guitar and electronics design. He had been experimenting with electric guitars since the early 1940’s. He had once mounted a guitar string on a railroad tie to confirm his belief that a solid body guitar would maximize sustain, and he had incorporated a mini-railroad rail-a 4″x4″ piece of pine-into the body of a homemade solid body electric guitar he nicknamed “The Log.” It was with the design of “The Log” where the Les Paul guitar begins.

Les Paul began his collaboration with the Gibson Guitar Corporation in 1950 when after the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the music market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson Guitar president Ted McCarty brought guitarist Les Paul into the company as a consultant. He had hand-built the solid-body prototype called “The Log”, a design widely considered the first solid-body Spanish guitar ever built, as opposed to the “Hawaiian”, or lap-steel guitar. Although numerous other prototypes and limited-production solid-body models by other makers have since surfaced, it is known that in 1945-1946, Les Paul had approached Gibson with “The Log” prototype, but his solid body design was rejected.

The Gibson company then worked on a new design incorporating some of Paul’s suggestions in the early fifties, and presented it to him to try. He was impressed enough to sign a contract for what became the “Les Paul” model (originally only in a “gold top” version), and agreed never to be seen playing in public, or be photographed with, anything other than a Gibson guitar. That persisted until 1961, when Gibson changed the design without Paul’s knowledge. He said he first saw the “new” Gibson Les Paul in a music store window, and disliked it. Though his contract required him to pose with the guitar, he said it was not “his” instrument, and asked Gibson to remove his name from the headstock. Gibson renamed the guitar the “SG”, and it also became one of the company’s best sellers. It has been said that Les had ended his endorsement contract with Gibson because he was going through a divorce, and didn’t want his wife to get all of his endorsement money. Later, Paul resumed his relationship with Gibson, and endorses the instrument even today (though his personal Gibson Les Pauls are much modified by him - Paul always uses his own self-wound pickups on his guitars). To this day, the Gibson Les Paul guitar is used all over the world, both by novice and professional guitarists.

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Smithsonian Institute Tribute to Les Paul
The Les Paul Story

Elvis Presley’s first Ed Sullivan appearance on September 9, 1956 was seen by an estimated 55-60 million viewers. During his second appearance on the show, Presley only had to shake his legs to get screams from the audience, which a preoccupied Sullivan did not notice him doing when stood next to the singer. Elvis’s inspired performances as well as his growing reputation for hip shaking and sensual gyrations convinced CBS’s censors that The Ed Sullivan Show should film him only above the waist during his third and final appearance on January 6, 1957. On this final Sullivan show, Elvis performed “Hound Dog,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Love Me Tender,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Too Much,” “When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again” and “Peace In The Valley.” After the show went off without incident, Ed Sullivan proclaimed him, “A real decent fine boy.” Sullivan, in his unique style, further thanked Elvis by adding, “We’ve never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we’ve had with you…You’re thoroughly all right.” This was the last time Elvis would appear live on American television. For years people have wondered why Elvis was censored during his third appearance on Sullivan’s show. The simplest and most likely explanation is that Sullivan received negative criticism about Elvis’ earlier appearances. Another, more outrageous explanation was offered by a former director of The Ed Sullivan Show, who said that during his second appearance, Elvis put a cardboard tube down the front of his trousers and manipulated it to make the studio audience scream. To avoid a repeated occurrence of that behavior, Sullivan supposedly insisted on the above-the-waist coverage for Elvis’ final appearance. None of these explanations offers any real insight into Sullivan’s motivations but all add to the folklore surrounding this event, thereby enhancing Elvis’ image as a notorious rock ‘n’ roller.
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Elvis Presley Enterprises
Elvis Gospel Service

Its first few seconds remain among the most thrilling of any live album.

“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” … a raucous crowd of inmates explode into hoots and hollers followed by the first immortal lines of “Folsom Prison Blues”…

The dawn of 1968 marked a rebirth in the personal and professional life of Johnny Cash. Cash was a newlywed, finally married to soul mate June Carter. With her support, he was freeing himself of a crippling drug addiction. Then, on January 13, 1968, he recorded his iconic live album, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. The corrections circuit was already an established part of Cash’s tours prior to 1968, and he sensed it would provide the ideal setting for a live album. Cash’s label, Columbia Records, disliked the idea of a prison record but, teamed with producer Bob Johnston, the project gained momentum. Cash’s electrifying presence was matched note for note by the tight musicianship of his longtime band the Tennessee Three. Throughout the concert, Cash’s empathy with the prisoners was palpable. The audience reacted to his every line – cheering, howling and mourning. Cash articulated regret and isolation as though he was one of them. The album’s final song, “Greystone Chapel”, was, in fact, written by an inmate, Glen Sherley. The live recording reinvented “Folsom Prison Blues”. It was one of Cash’s first songs, composed on his first guitar while in the Air Force during the Korean War, and it became his second single. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison went Gold, and the live version of “Folsom Prison Blues” hit #1 on the country charts – more than a decade after the studio version. It also marked Cash’s crossover, climbing to #32 on the pop charts, earning Cash a mainstream following. “I’ve always thought it ironic that it was a prison concert,” he observed, “with me and the convicts getting along just as fellow rebels, outsiders and miscreants should. That pumped up my marketability to the point where ABC thought I was respectable enough to have a weekly network TV show.” This album was, of course, just one of the many highlights in Cash’s storied career. Johnny Cash’s music has been lost and found a dizzying number of times by record buyers. But the experience of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison has less to do with the charts or sales and everything to do with what he shared with forgotten men.

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NPR: Inside Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison
Folsom Prison Blues, Virginia Quarterly Review
Salon.com feature on Live at Folsom Prison
Johnny Cash on AllMusic.com
VH-1 Bio

Where would rock and roll – or any recorded music – be without the invention of the tinfoil cylinder phonograph in 1877?

Thomas Edison announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877 and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (it was patented on February 19, 1878 as US Patent 200,521).

Edison’s early phonographs recorded onto a tinfoil sheet phonograph cylinder using an up-down (”hill-and-dale”) motion of the stylus. The tinfoil sheet was wrapped around a grooved cylinder, and the sound was recorded as indentations into the foil. Edison’s early patents show that he also considered the idea that sound could be recorded as a spiral onto a disc, but Edison concentrated his efforts on cylinders, since the groove on the outside of a rotating cylinder provides a constant velocity to the stylus in the groove, which Edison considered more “scientifically correct”.

Edison’s patent specified that the audio recording was embossed, and it was not until 1886 that vertically modulated engraved recordings using wax coated cylinders were patented by Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter. They named their version the Graphophone. Emile Berliner patented his Gramophone in 1887. The Gramophone involved a system of recording using a lateral (back and forth) movement of the stylus as it traced a spiral onto a zinc disc coated with a compound of beeswax in a solution of benzine. The zinc disc was immersed in a bath of chromic acid; this etched the groove into the disc where the stylus had removed the coating, after which the recording could be played.

In May 1889, the first “phonograph parlor” opened in San Francisco. Customers would sit at a desk where they could speak through a tube, and order a selection for one nickel. Through a separate tube connected to a cylinder phonograph in the room below, the selection would then be played. By the mid-1890s, most American cities had at least one phonograph parlor. By 1890, record manufacturers had begun using a rudimentary duplication process to mass-produce their product. While the live performers recorded the master phonograph, up to ten tubes led to blank cylinders in other phonographs. Until this development, each record had to be custom-made. Before long, a more advanced pantograph-based process made it possible to simultaneously produce 150 copies of each record.

Links:
The History of the Edison Cylinder Phonograph
Edison Invents The Phonograph

By 1969, Jimi Hendrix was at his peak. His reputation as a live performer in the years since his infamous Monterey Pop appearance was incomparable. He signed on to headline the three day Woodstock music festival – billed above significant contemporaries The Who, Santana, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and the Jefferson Airplane. Pegged as the festival’s main attraction, his band’s $18,000 fee was the highest of the Woodstock lineup, and the group was scheduled to close the event on Sunday night. However, due to enormous delays resulting from inclement weather and assorted logistical snafus, Hendrix did not take the stage until early Monday morning. By then, the audience – once the half a million strong “Woodstock Nation” – had dwindled to 180,000 hanging on to catch a glimpse of Hendrix. Introduced as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Hendrix corrected this to Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, and commenced the longest and most memorable set of his career. Despite lingering technical difficulties, Hendrix delivered a historic performance. The climax of the set was his tripped out, dischordant, darkly impressionistic improv “Star Spangled Banner”. His rendition split public opinion in an already deeply divided time. Viewed by some as an anti-American travesty, others embraced it as an eloquent statement on the U.S.’s ongoing state of unrest. Hendrix was later taken to task on “The Dick Cavett Show”. Hendrix defended his performance by saying, “I thought it was beautiful,” and he was greeted with applause from the studio audience. Woodstock was not the first time Hendrix played the “Star Spangled Banner” live. In fact, it was a setlist staple from late 1968 through 1970. However, his August 18, 1969 version was a defining moment in his career as well as Woodstock and, ultimately, of the decade.
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The Jimi Hendrix Encyclopedia
Definitive Woodstock website

885 Blog:
Byron Mellinger, Wyomissing, PA recalls Hendrix at Woodstock
George Paterson of Lincroft, NJ remembers Woodstock’s last moments

“And in the end / the love you make / is equal to the love you take” – so go the lyrics to the last song on Abbey Road, the final album recorded by the Beatles during their time together. Although Abbey Road was the last record they made together in the summer of 1969, it wasn’t the final release of new music by the band. That honor would fall on Let It Be, the re-mixed (by Phil Spector) version of the group’s “back to basics” Get Back sessions from early ’69, which were finally released amid the band’s dissolution in May 1970. Here’s how Get Back and other factors contributed to the demise of the greatest band of the rock era:

The Beatles final live performance was on the rooftop of the Apple building in London, on January 30, 1969, the next-to-last day of the difficult sessions for what eventually became the Let it Be. While the band was playing, the local police were called because of complaints about the noise. Although the group was simply asked to end their performance, the band members later remarked in the Anthology video that they were disappointed they were not arrested – pointing out that the police hauling the band members off in handcuffs would have been “an appropriate ending” for the film.
The Beatles recorded Abbey Road in the summer of 1969. The completion of the song “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” for the album on August 20th was the last time all four Beatles were together in the same studio.

John Lennon announced his departure to the rest of the group on September 20th, but agreed that no announcement was to be publicly made until a number of legal matters were resolved. Much of the business disagreements the band had can be traced back to their decision to hire New York attorney Allen Klein as their first manager after the death of Brian Epstein. While Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Star all wanted Klein, Paul McCartney pusehd for the father of his then girlfriend Lee Eastman. All past Beatles decisions had been unanimous, but this time the four could not agree. Lennon, Harrison and Starr felt the Eastmans would put McCartney’s interests before those of the group. In 1971, it was discovered that Klein, who had been appointed manager, had stolen £5 million from The Beatles’ holdings. Years later, during the Anthology interviews, McCartney said of this time, “Looking back, I can understand why they would feel that he [Lee Eastman] was biased for me and against them.” Other issues getting in the way included the constant inclusion of Yoko Ono at Lennon’s side during all recording sessions and meetings, and the frustration that Harrison was having with his backlog of songs and little space to fit them onto Beatles albums.

In March 1970, the Get Back session tapes were given to Phil Spector, who had produced Lennon’s solo single “Instant Karma!”. Spector’s wall-of-sound production values went against the original intent of the record, which had been to record a stripped-down live performance. McCartney was deeply dissatisfied with Spector’s treatment of “The Long and Winding Road” and unsuccessfully attempted to halt release of Spector’s version of the song.

On April 10, 1970, McCartney broke the facade and publicly announced his departure from the Beatles, signalling the end of the group. The world was stunned and – whether deliberate or not – the media circus surrounding the band’s dissolution proved to be beneficial to market McCartney, which was released a week later. Advance copies sent to the press included a Q & A package containing questions McCartney could – and probably would – have been asked about the Beatles’ break-up and their future; he gave a strong impression of his views, but stated that he did not know whether the group’s break-up would be temporary or permanent.

On May 8, 1970, the Spector-produced version of Get Back was released Let It Be, followed by the documentary film of the same name. The Beatles’ partnership was finally dissolved in 1975. Ultimately, personal interests grew stronger than collective interests and animosity made it impossible for both group and individual pursuits to mutually coexist contemporaneously.

Although there were sporadic collaborative recording efforts among the band members, all four Beatles never fully and simultaneously collaborated as a recording or performing group ever again. After Lennon’s death in 1980, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr reconvened for Harrison’s “All Those Years Ago.” The trio reunited as The Beatles for the Anthology project in 1994; using the two unfinished Lennon demos “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love” for what would be the last two songs under The Beatles name.

Beatles – Free as a Bird
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Beatles – Rain
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Rolling Stone is an American based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics and popular culture and is published biweekly. Founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner (who is still editor and publisher) and music critic Ralph J. Gleason, it embraced and reported on the hippy counterculture during the late 1960s and 1970s. Its rise to fame was synchronous with such bands and artists as the Grateful Dead, Beatles, Doors, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. While its focus on music and the recording industry was primary, the celebratory causes of the day were also stamped upon its pages. The Vietnam War, Environmentalism, Feminism, Abortion and Gay Rights were among the many causes embraced by the left-leaning journal. In the very first edition of the magazine, Wenner wrote that Rolling Stone “is not just about the music, but about the things and attitudes that music embraces.” This has become the de facto motto of the magazine. In its earliest versions, Rolling Stone published a box by its letters section which invited readers who felt that they were qualified to write for the magazine, to send in their work. This drew in many of Rolling Stone’s most illustrious writers in its earlier days, from Greil Marcus who would go on to edit its reviews section and still contributes regularly today, to Lester Bangs who famously sent an obscenity-filled essay to the editors before getting hired. The magazine was so popular during the 70s that a song parodying popular success, “Cover of the Rolling Stone” by Dr Hook & the Medicine Show, became a hit single. In an ironic pique of art imitating life, Dr. Hook himself graced the cover, in March of 1973, issue 131. By the 1980s, Rolling Stone had become somewhat more institutionalized, monetized and adopted ideas (e.g., employee drug testing) shunned by the early culture of the magazine’s founders. The entire publishing operation was moved to NY to be closer to the advertising and financial industry centers. It is still owned by Wenner Media, the company created by founder Jann Wenner after buying out his original partner.

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Official Rolling Stone website
Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Read Me?