How Good It Is

The first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame went through many configurations, but it was the combination of Dub Jones, Carl Gardner, Cornell Gunter, and Billy Guy that scored most of the biggest hits for this group. This week we take a closer look at three of them.

Happy New Year!

The group in 1961: Dub Jones, Carl Gardner, Cornell Gunter, Billy Guy. This was the configuration that was inducted into the Rock Hall.

While they're often mistaken for a doo-wop group, The Coasters were actually a rhythm-and-blues vocal group, whose greatest successes came when they were teamed with the composers Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, and when they had humorous material to work with.They made such an impression on other artists that it was a small wonder when, in 1987, they became the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Yeah, I know I'm kinda splitting hairs, here: the previous year was all individuals plus the Everly Brothers. But I'm sticking by this assessment.)

One of the posters for the movie, which inspired the Coasters' song (but the song isn't based on the movie). This ain't a bad place to be, if you're Gary Cooper.

Their peak years, chart-wise, were between 1958 and 1960, when all of their Top 40 singles were released. In today's episode we talk about three of them: Yakety Yak, Charlie Brown, and Along Came Jones. After these three came two more: Poison Ivy and Little Egypt, which were more clever than funny.

There have been numerous configurations of the group since the first day, so you could argue that the one in the photo above, which is responsible for most of the hits, was the magic bullet. Through many personnel changes, The Coasters never quite reached the same level of success.

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Happy New Year, HGII fans!

It was 1975 and David Bowie's professional life was in some turmoil. He was in the middle of breaking a contract with his manager, and he was still trying to deal with the way his life had changed since "Space Oddity" became a hit a few years earlier. With the help of his new friend John Lennon (who advised him to get rid of the manager), he took a riff that his guitarist was noodling around with for another song, and turned it into his first #1 hit in the US.

Lennon and Bowie backstage at the Grammy Awards, 1975.

In a BBC interview recorded only a couple of days before he died, Lennon said that David Bowie had a vast repertoire of talent, and it was interesting to see him do most of his song composition right there in the studio. "He goes in with, like four words and a few guys, and starts laying down this stuff, and he has virtually nothing, he's making it up in the studio."

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Oh, and as promised, here's the clip of Bowie on Soul Train:

https://youtu.be/Kcoju5QP5iM

In 1975, David Bowie was a known element in the rock world, but he still hadn't cracked the Top Ten in the US. Then, with a little inspiration from John Lennon and a little venom toward his former manager, Bowie came up with the tune that cemented his place in the Rock and Roll firmament.

I can see my old house from here!

Most people who know me personally know that I'm originally from New York, but it's not because I have an accent, because I don't.

Well, I DO have an accent of sorts, but it's tough to suss out that I'm from the NY metro area. Most people think I'm from the Downstate region of New York, like Poughkeepsie or Newburgh. But the fact is, I'm from a small town on the north shore of Long Island called Kings Park. When I was a small child, Kings Park had a huge mental hospital plunked down in its center, and most of the 5000-odd people who lived in that town, worked at the hospital. Nowadays the hospital is closed, the grounds are long-abandoned, and the town population is close to 20,000.

This here is a "hint".

But for all that, Kings Park and its nearby cousin, Smithtown, manage to have a connection to a couple of Christmas songs. Kings Park was the center of a nationwide news story back in 2013 regarding the song "Silent Night", and as for Smithtown...well, you'll just have to listen to see what Smithtown has to do with any Christmas song.

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Smithtown, New York is a collection of hamlets on the north shore of Long Island. I always had trouble explaining to people where it is ("Go to Commack and turn left."), but despite this, Smithtown has an interesting connection to two rather disparate Christmas songs.

This was the "goddess" label that Elektra Records used on the 45 in Columbia. Look! Boobies!

It was the Summer of Love, and as Johnny Rivers sang, everybody kept on playin' Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Everybody, that is, except for the fans of an underground band playing the clubs in Los Angeles, who kept calling the local radio stations and requesting a song from that band's debut album. Eventually Elektra Records put out a shorter version of that seven-minute song, and before long it was climbing the charts nationwide, spending three weeks in the #1 slot in July of 1967. The self-titled album itself couldn't break Sgt. Pepper's hold on the Billboard's Albums chart, but being #2 to The Beatles is pretty respectable, nonetheless.

The Doors got their name from the title of an Aldous Huxley book called The Doors of Perception, which in turn came from a William Blake quotation:  "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

Today's show is a little bit on the short side, coming in at just over 10 minutes, and I think it's because I'm talking so damn fast. I shouldn't drink so much tea right before recording the show.

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In the Summer of Love, an obscure club band from the LA area climbs the charts to become one of the big hits that year. It wasn't The Doors' first single, but it was absolutely their first hit and their signature song.

It was the biggest album of 1982, and the title track was the last Top Ten single to come from it. That's seven singles out of nine tracks total.

Michael Jackson wanted to top not only the success, but the ambition of his previous album, Off The Wall, and I think we can all agree that he more than succeeded. Thriller remains the largest-selling album of all time.

What! you say, bigger than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? Bigger than Dark Side of the Moon? Bigger than Bat Out of Hell? Yes, indeed. As of this week, the top 15 all-time sellers are:

Artist

Album Title

Year

Sales (in millions)

Michael Jackson

Thriller

1982

66

AC/DC

Back in Black

1980

50

Pink Floyd

The Dark Side of the Moon

1973

45

Meat Loaf

Bat Out of Hell

1977

43

Whitney Houston / Various artists

The Bodyguard Soundtrack

1992

42

Eagles

Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975)

1976

42

Bee Gees / Various artists

Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack

1977

40

Fleetwood Mac

Rumours

1977

40

Shania Twain

Come On Over

1997

39

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin IV

1971

37

Michael Jackson

Bad

1987

35

Alanis Morissette

Jagged Little Pill

1995

33

Celine Dion

Falling into You

1996

32

The Beatles

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

1967

32

Michael Jackson

Dangerous

1991

32

That's THREE albums Jackson has in the all-time Top 15, and Off the Wall isn't even one of them. (It's way down the list, a spot or two below HIStory.)

This was one of the pictures originally considered for the album's cover, which is why they used it for the Special Edition.

Anyway. Today we're looking at the title track, a song that started as "Starlight" and ended with Quincy Jones' wife recruiting Vincent Price to do a little white-boy rap.

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It's the holiday season, and what better way to celebrate than by taking a deep dive into a perennial Halloween favorite? (Hey, Halloween is a holiday too.) It's the story of how a song went from "Starlight" to being the basis of a horror-themed video.