The Skipper
As long as I’m talking about Nashville buddies who have wonderful blogs, allow me to introduce you to Skip Adams! Skip Adams and I go waaaaay back. When I first moved to Naples, Florida, back in...
View ArticleThe Times They Are A-Changin’
Come gather ’round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You’ll be drenched to the bone If your time to you Is worth savin’ Then you better...
View ArticleThe Monkees Were Cool Then and Still Are Today!
Many folks in the late 1960s slammed the Monkees because the band was formed for a TV show, obviously patterned after the Hard Day’s Night-era Beatles. They were snidely called The Pre-Fab Four and...
View ArticleThese Hits Missed!
Growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, kids were suddenly the buyers of popular music. AM radio (which at that time was really the only kind on the airwaves) was playing lots of music aimed at kids and...
View ArticleThe Beatles Flunk An Audition
At the end of the last Beatles public performance, held on the roof of their Apple Corps building on January 30, 1969, John Lennon remarked, “I’d like to thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves...
View ArticleYa Gotta Start Somewhere!
Here are some amusing videos from YouTube for your weekend edification and enjoyment. The first shows a musical young man originally from Baltimore, Frank Zappa, on the Steve Allen Show in 1963. Frank...
View ArticleJim’s Acoustic Guitar Gizmo!
A few years ago, I came up with an idea to keep an acoustic guitar’s strap from falling off the endpin pickup jack. I called this little thing my Gizmo. There is a problem with acoustic guitars fitted...
View ArticleLily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
The festival was over, the boys were all plannin’ for a fall The cabaret was quiet except for the drillin’ in the wall The curfew had been lifted and the gamblin’ wheel shut down Anyone with any sense...
View ArticleAlways Missed . . .
Charles Hardin Holley Born September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas. Died February 3, 1959, outside Clear Lake, Iowa.
View ArticleMemphis Blues Again by the Dead
Somebody stop me, for God’s sake!!! Two posts in one day! In my last post, I referenced one of my favorite Dylan tunes: Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again. Is there any wonder that...
View ArticleMurphy Inspects . . .
Murphy inspects my 1966 Fender Tremolux amp in its custom JD Newell cabinet with two Weber 12A125A speakers; the amp has been at Don Oliver’s studio for a couple of years and returned last evening....
View ArticleHard Time Killing Floor Blues
Perhaps the scariest three minutes of music ever recorded were by Nehemiah “Skip” James in 1931, in Grafton, Wisconsin, for the old Paramount blues label. Here’s the original recording of Skip James’...
View ArticleFun With Fender; or, The Saga of Rex O’Saurus
My friends and I sometimes get carried away on Facebook, but we have a lot of fun doing it. This afternoon, I saw on Shorpy.com an 1898 photo of a government scientist looking at an enormous radio...
View ArticleHe Had A Hammer . . .
Very sorry to hear of the passing of Pete Seegar at the age of 94. Hearing Mr. Seeger back in the 1950s, I learned that music can have the power to persuade, to provoke, to humiliate, to change....
View ArticleDreaming of Fenders
On this 50th anniversary of the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, it’s appropriate to discuss one aspect their impact on American kids: The desire to play rock-and-roll music themselves! The...
View ArticleA great instrument instructs the player . . .
One of my more unusual guitars is a Hallmark Barris Kustom from Bob Shade. This guitar is shaped and painted to replicate custom-hotrod-builder George Barris’ personal crest. Barris, a buddy of Shade,...
View ArticleNacho nails it
Anyone who’s read my eclectic blog knows my love and reverence for Leo Fender and his creations. Here’s the story of a gentleman who shares that and uses it to make the world a better place. Tragic but...
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