Ain't it a shame - Fats Domino has left this Valley of Tears

I must have first heard a Fats Domino record when I was five or so, which means The Big Beat has kept me rocking in my seat (and on my feet, when nobody's looking) for the best part of 60 years...

Fats Domino - ten rays of aural sunshine from a true rock 'n' roll giant

I gave a friend a Fats Domino greatest hits LP for his 20th birthday. I'd been bullying him into appreciating early rock 'n' roll (I was young and determined to spread the gospel). When he unwrapped it and studied the distinctly uncool, unthreatening-looking, fat little black man smiling benignly beside a piano on the cover, his disappointment was evident. "Just give it a listen," I suggested. I was relieved a week later when the birthday boy appeared at my door, raving about the album. (He might have been trying to spare my feelings, but that really would have been a first for him.) I've long ago stopped expecting anyone to share my popular culture enthusiasms, but I still suspect anyone who fails to react positively to The Fat Man's music of being  an anhedonic miserabilist. You don't have to respond to Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent or Carl Perkins - but if your system doesn't flood with endorphins the moment Fats Domino comes on the radio, it probably means you're a bad person. Not that I'm being judgmental or anything. If you've got Sky, and you've hooked it up to broadband, I strongly recommend visiting the Sky Arts catch-up section to download The Big Beat: Fats Domino and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll...

Ten obscure but splendid '50s rock and roll, R&B and soul recordings - and a mystery "popcorn" classic

Can anyone help? First, please listen to this classic piece of what is now apparently known as "popcorn" from 1959...

In 1959, two 18-year olds, Alan Christian and Joe Zellers, wrote a minor key song called "Lonely Moon" and hawked it around... 

Farewell, Chuck Berry - the rock 'n' roll giant who never seemed to understand just how great he was

Let's get the non-musical stuff out of the way first. Several commentators have bemoaned the general lack of fuss about Charles Edward Anderson Berry's passing at the age of 90, compared to the oodles of coverage devoted to David Bowie and Lou Reed, etc. Racism has been cited as a possible cause of what they claim was a lack of recognition while he was alive, and the muted reaction to his death. That's silly. First, you'd have to be in your late '50s to have been aware of Chuck Berry in his glory days - roughly, 1955-65. Most working journalists (especially in TV or radio), and most of their audience, simply aren't old enough to have experienced anything but the faint echoes of Berry's immense influence on popular music... 

Pop concerts this real gone daddy would love to have attended

Taunton? Yes, Taunton. Wherever, I bet it was fun (although I might have given Vince Eager a miss). Cochran, 21 at the time, was to die following a car crash in Chippenham two months later...

The Grønmark Blog list of Great Records from 1961

Half of the tracks featured in my previous post were released in 1961. Not one of them would have got anywhere near the pop charts that year, but, just to convey some sense of what a rich year it was for popular music in America - when the US was supposedly waiting for the Brits to come and save its musical butt - here are just some of the Top 100 US chart hits from 1961 (to be clear, these are all, with a handful of exceptions, songs I've given four or five stars to on my iTunes list - so no rubbish ) :

I've found some more obscure rock 'n' roll, R&B and soul classics on YouTube

I'd just returned from the St. Peter's Acton Green Christmas Fair (my wife's papier-mâché birds had all flown off the shelves), made a cup of tea, and settled down for some TV sport and iPadding (I'm strictly dual-screen these days). There was an image of an old single on Pinterest I'd never heard of, so I called up the number on YouTube. Here is Little Ike with the raucous, Little Richard-tastic "She Can Rock" (1959):

Now, where has that been...

Isolated music tracks are an absolute delight for obsessives - The Band, Beach Boys, ZZ Top, Stones, Beatles...and Linda McCartney!

Farewell, Cynthia Robinson, the lady who ordered us to "get on up, and dance to the music"

She was the trumpet player whose high-pitched, rasping, trumpet-like voice can be heard at the start of one of the most exciting, energy-charged singles ever released - Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music" - and who later yells "all the squares - go home!" And she's the "Cynthia on the throne" referred to by band-leader Sly Stone in the song.

The legendary New Orleans musical giant, Allan Toussaint died this week - here are some of his greatest songs

I was going to write about the great New Orleans R&B, soul and funk performer, producer, studio and record-label owner and songwriter Allen Toussaint, who died earlier this week at the age of 77, but there’s a handsome obituary of him available here in the Daily Telegraph (although I should point out that “Mother-in-Law” was a No. 1 US hit in 1961, not 1970, and that “Here Come the Girls was first released in 1970, not 1979). Toussaint was a self-effacing music industry figure the greatness of whose achievements eventually dawned on me one day in the late ‘70s when I realised how many of my all-time favourite records were largely the product of his multi-faceted musical genius. Here are eight beloved tracks written by - and in some cases produced and played on - by the great man, plus two of his finest productions of other people's songs. Prepare for musical magic:

If Steve Miller isn’t inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, I will be jolly cross

Since its creation in 1983, there have been a total of 321 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Steve Miller isn’t one of them, and yet the following acts have been honoured: Hall & Oates, Heart, Joan Jett, Kiss, Laura Nyro, Rush,  Cat Stevens, U2 and The Young Rascals. Apart from a couple of Laura Nyro tracks, I’d happily go to my grave without hearing anything by any of those acts again. But there are at least a dozen Miller sides I’d be very sorry not to hear on a regular basis between now and clog-popping time, whenever that might be. I’d even go so far as to claim that Miller has made some of the most purely enjoyable records in pop music history. I’m happy to report that he’s one of the nominees this year (along with the likes of Yes (!), The Cars, Chicago, Deep Purple, The Smiths and Chic). If Chic and Steve Miller don’t get the nod, I'll be writing to my MP)  Here’s one excellent reason why Miller should be welcomed into the fold without further delay:

Bo Diddley's "Down Home Special" - why does nobody tell me about these things?

I was reading a book about great guitarists the other day which mentioned a 1956 Bo Diddley number called "Down Home Special". As I'd never heard of it, I called it up on YouTube. It is utterly magnificent. In fact, I knew it well enough to sing along - but I'm almost certain I'd never heard Bo's version, even though he composed it, and even though I'm pretty much au fait with the Great Man's oeuvre. But, then, which version of it do I know so well? The internet isn't much help. Answers on a postcard please. Take a listen:

The first BIG rock 'n' roll song wasn't "Rock Around the Clock" or "Heartbreak Hotel" - it was...

Richie Barrett's "Some Other Guy" (1962) is one of the coolest records ever released

But I have a terrible admission to make...

I salute the mighty organ - the instrument that went from zero to hero in 1960s pop music

Organs became big in 1959 when they featured as lead instrument in three major pop hits – Dave “Baby” Cortez’s chart-topping “The Happy Organ” (not to mention "The Whistling Organ" - now there's a novelty!), “White Silver Sands” by the Bill Black Combo, and Johnny and the Hurricane’s “Red River Rock”. Within a few short years, organs had shaken off their cheerful, vaguely comic “novelty” tag and were all over the pop charts: by the mid-Sixties, they were dead hip.

The ten best Bo Diddley songs not written by Bo Diddley

The odd thing about Bo Diddley's distinctive "shave-and-a-haircut-six-bits" clave rhythm is that he didn't use it that often after his eponymous breakthrough single in 1955. Among my top twenty Diddley tracks it only really appears on three: "Bo Diddley", "Pretty Thing" and "Mona" (musicologists will no doubt tell me it's magically embedded in all the rest, but the hell with them). Nevertheless, for the past 59 years, whenever we hear a record with a rhythm that goes "bom-da-bom-bom...da-bom-bom" we immediately think of the great man.

John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen" - the riff that launched a thousand songs

So farewell then, J.J. Cale – thank you for being so absolutely ridiculously brilliant

The Rolling Stones were sort of okay at Glastonbury – but Keith Richards with a paunch? Really?

That's more like it

Okay, it was… quite interesting. And not too overwhelmingly embarrassing, I suppose. And at least none of them actually pegged out during the performance. Or broke a hip. Or had to have somebody “sit with” them for a bit while they recovered. But Mick Taylor looked a bit non-plussed, Keith Richards now sports one of those unattractive paunches skinny old men tend to acquire, and I did keep wondering whether Sir Mick wasn't going to do himself a mischief jigging around like that at his age. Mainly, it all made me feel horribly old.

The Fulminators revisit Mel Tormé's "Comin' Home Baby" - the coolest song on the planet