I'm guessing more than I've documented and more than we can know from published sources. A graphic representation would probably look like a dense picture produced by an overactive child using a Spirograph (if you remember that drawing toy).
So well-written, Ellen! I loved the points of reference. I had no idea just how close together those landmark albums had been released! And, I'm not sure I was aware of quite the amount of "cross-pollination" of the players on each album!
Such a great choice of videos, too, highlighting the three ladies (all known for their guitar-playing from one song or era to another) but, here, all sitting at the piano!
What strikes me, too, is trying to hear these songs as they must've been heard, for their first times back then. Like, kudos to Jac Holzman for hearing a hit in Carly's song! Easy to hear it in retrospect after the hundreds of times we've all heard it over the decades, but what a generally "non-standard" sounding song to make a call on that as a hit on first hearing! But, that's why he was the exec!
And, at the piano for their songs, Carole and Joni....such wildly different talents! Joni and her jazz-influenced touches, and, at times, melody structure (I've always called Joni the west coast Laura Nyro!), and Carole, with her "proper" pop songwriting style with her Brill Bldg pedigree!
Thanks for those kind words, Brad, and you make some really important observations here.
These singer-songwriters might have been most at home on one instrument, the piano or guitar, but knew how to play the other, and in some cases more (e.g., the ukelele for Joni). Which meant they knew music structure at a fundamental and gut level, as well as how to tell other musicians what they wanted or heard in their head -- and we can't forget that a lot of rock musicians did not read music (like our friend Todd R).
I was shocked at how close all those albums came out too. It was like a deluge, and British music journalist David Hepworth has written an entire book on it, including the causes, called Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded. I'm sure you saw a lot of the repercussions of that from your vantage point as a DJ. But what a glorious time for us then, and what a legacy we get to enjoy now.
Jac Holzman is such an interesting part of this story -- so glad you picked up on how perceptive he was. Clive Davis rejected Carly, reportedly thinking she was just another New York Jewish Barbra Streisand wannabe. Jac's staff likewise told him Carly's song was too complex and wordy and wouldn't get radio play. But the song was a confessional of her own life and resonant with what was happening in the culture, and he really got that. Jac has a very interesting background, having started up Elektra in his dorm room and I'd like to write about him at some point.
But thanks for your comment, which hit on a lot of things I hoped people would get from this!!!
I'd like to see a Holzman piece. As for Carly, there may be some elitist story, there, between Clive Davis and Carly's dad, the Simon of .....and Schuster Publishers, as I'm sure you know. I've not heard anything, but all of this was in NYC at the time, and it'd be easy to imagine the Schuster dad and Clive meeting at cocktail parties, and maybe an early Clive book got snubbed.....who knows?😁👍
I want to write more on the industry, so he's now on the list.
The snub is a possibility, or a higher bid on a silent auction, or a bigger donation to a college or foundation or fundraiser. Carly wasn't there, just her demo, so she can't tell us!
I once stood in a house on a lake ringed by very elite homes staring at the fireplace with the owner and one of his business partners. I kid you not, the partner said, "My fireplace is bigger than yours."
That night at dinner the host got him back, and made everyone at the table uncomfortable, talking about how he makes love to his wife all night. No one said anything. House rules -- you don't call the host on his b.s. when he's showing you who's top dog.
I've never forgotten that, especially being the only woman at the table and, for once, utterly speechless.
Love it! I love the three C's of the 70s: Carole, Carly, & the Carpenters! Ok, I know the third doesn't really count but as half of the brother/sister duo, Karen Carpenter had THE emotional voice of the era. Her interpretations of songs came from the heart and the gut. She also DID sing one of Carole's songs: "It's Going to Take Some time." Would have loved to hear her sing some Carly (or Joni, Joan, or Judy!)
I love Karen Carpenter too and agree about her voice. She just has to open her mouth and I well up. There was such musical and emotional purity there -- not a false note or emotion. She is admired by a lot of famous singers. "It's Going to Take Some Time" -- can her version ever be topped? I would have loved to hear her do the others' songs as well. I'll cover the Carpenters -- maybe a series on family bands and duos, as that's quite an interesting dynamic and has produced some extraordinary music.
Nice piece. A great Elephant’s Memory reference. My wife grew up up across the street from The Collin’s in Denver and used to play with Holly. She said Judy would pop in occasionally.
Thanks, Daniel. And that's a cool connection to have! Judy talked in her book Cravings about going back to Denver a lot, and about family. She seems close to them.
You are able to cover so much rock and folk history in each of your posts, it's truly remarkable. I never comes off as clif-notesy or summarizing. I want to pick your brain in terms of process and how you organize your posts, do you have pages of notes and a hundred open browser tabs and books with earmarks?
Thanks so much, Steve. I appreciate that as I do aim to make it fun and inspiring, not a snoozy history lesson.
I aim to use only authoritative sources for quotes and key facts, and have already accumulated quite a few autobiographies, biographies, and music histories, mostly picking them up in secondhand or used bookshops and sections. I'll also see if there are youtube videos or documentaries that have interviews with the artist or people with firsthand knowledge, and may get quotes and facts from those.
I look for a fun or interesting story or fact to build the post around and quirky quotes to use. This post was supposed to be about Linda Ronstadt because I loved the story about her as a tension reliever, and thought I'd add the other relationships between the singer-songwriters to that as further illustration, but it kept growing and growing until I decided to do Linda separately.
If I'm in doubt about something -- is is true or what exactly happened, because sometimes sources have different versions -- I'll try to fact-check by doing a search for articles or interviews to confirm or clarify. That doesn't happen too often. I use wikipedia for dates and bio info because I've found it's usually right, and search youtube for the best video to embed. Choosing videos is my favorite part.
So with this post, I probably had 10 tabs open, used several books I had on these artists, and notes I already had from the previous posts on them. I looked specifically for live performances from that time period.
The bottom line is, I'm driven by my own desire to figure out what happened. It's like a really interesting mystery to me about people and music that mean a lot to me from when I was growing up. Who were they? What really happened? What's funny, charming, interesting, inspiring about it?
Ellen, have you heard the podcast, "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs"? It's on many podcast services, but the Spotify one (I think) includes more song segments due to not having to worry about rights issues. It's extremely detailed and thorough, and reminds me a bit of what you do.
Thought I'd mention it, in case you were unaware of it. Be warned - it will become a major time suck!
Thanks very much for telling me about that, Steve. I wasn't aware of it and will add it to my sources. I see that he's put out two books that go up to 1962, and on the podcast he's up to 1968. It's great that he puts up the transcript as I find listening to podcasts too slow as a way to get information (time suck, as you say, whereas videos can be sped up) and transcripts will allow me to easily quote and cite him. Looks very useful in terms of a lot of background and detailed info!
Great! So many cross-connections. . .
I'm guessing more than I've documented and more than we can know from published sources. A graphic representation would probably look like a dense picture produced by an overactive child using a Spirograph (if you remember that drawing toy).
So well-written, Ellen! I loved the points of reference. I had no idea just how close together those landmark albums had been released! And, I'm not sure I was aware of quite the amount of "cross-pollination" of the players on each album!
Such a great choice of videos, too, highlighting the three ladies (all known for their guitar-playing from one song or era to another) but, here, all sitting at the piano!
What strikes me, too, is trying to hear these songs as they must've been heard, for their first times back then. Like, kudos to Jac Holzman for hearing a hit in Carly's song! Easy to hear it in retrospect after the hundreds of times we've all heard it over the decades, but what a generally "non-standard" sounding song to make a call on that as a hit on first hearing! But, that's why he was the exec!
And, at the piano for their songs, Carole and Joni....such wildly different talents! Joni and her jazz-influenced touches, and, at times, melody structure (I've always called Joni the west coast Laura Nyro!), and Carole, with her "proper" pop songwriting style with her Brill Bldg pedigree!
Really tremendous.....thanks, Ellen!
Thanks for those kind words, Brad, and you make some really important observations here.
These singer-songwriters might have been most at home on one instrument, the piano or guitar, but knew how to play the other, and in some cases more (e.g., the ukelele for Joni). Which meant they knew music structure at a fundamental and gut level, as well as how to tell other musicians what they wanted or heard in their head -- and we can't forget that a lot of rock musicians did not read music (like our friend Todd R).
I was shocked at how close all those albums came out too. It was like a deluge, and British music journalist David Hepworth has written an entire book on it, including the causes, called Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded. I'm sure you saw a lot of the repercussions of that from your vantage point as a DJ. But what a glorious time for us then, and what a legacy we get to enjoy now.
Jac Holzman is such an interesting part of this story -- so glad you picked up on how perceptive he was. Clive Davis rejected Carly, reportedly thinking she was just another New York Jewish Barbra Streisand wannabe. Jac's staff likewise told him Carly's song was too complex and wordy and wouldn't get radio play. But the song was a confessional of her own life and resonant with what was happening in the culture, and he really got that. Jac has a very interesting background, having started up Elektra in his dorm room and I'd like to write about him at some point.
But thanks for your comment, which hit on a lot of things I hoped people would get from this!!!
I'd like to see a Holzman piece. As for Carly, there may be some elitist story, there, between Clive Davis and Carly's dad, the Simon of .....and Schuster Publishers, as I'm sure you know. I've not heard anything, but all of this was in NYC at the time, and it'd be easy to imagine the Schuster dad and Clive meeting at cocktail parties, and maybe an early Clive book got snubbed.....who knows?😁👍
I want to write more on the industry, so he's now on the list.
The snub is a possibility, or a higher bid on a silent auction, or a bigger donation to a college or foundation or fundraiser. Carly wasn't there, just her demo, so she can't tell us!
I once stood in a house on a lake ringed by very elite homes staring at the fireplace with the owner and one of his business partners. I kid you not, the partner said, "My fireplace is bigger than yours."
That night at dinner the host got him back, and made everyone at the table uncomfortable, talking about how he makes love to his wife all night. No one said anything. House rules -- you don't call the host on his b.s. when he's showing you who's top dog.
I've never forgotten that, especially being the only woman at the table and, for once, utterly speechless.
Love it! I love the three C's of the 70s: Carole, Carly, & the Carpenters! Ok, I know the third doesn't really count but as half of the brother/sister duo, Karen Carpenter had THE emotional voice of the era. Her interpretations of songs came from the heart and the gut. She also DID sing one of Carole's songs: "It's Going to Take Some time." Would have loved to hear her sing some Carly (or Joni, Joan, or Judy!)
I love Karen Carpenter too and agree about her voice. She just has to open her mouth and I well up. There was such musical and emotional purity there -- not a false note or emotion. She is admired by a lot of famous singers. "It's Going to Take Some Time" -- can her version ever be topped? I would have loved to hear her do the others' songs as well. I'll cover the Carpenters -- maybe a series on family bands and duos, as that's quite an interesting dynamic and has produced some extraordinary music.
Nice piece. A great Elephant’s Memory reference. My wife grew up up across the street from The Collin’s in Denver and used to play with Holly. She said Judy would pop in occasionally.
Thanks, Daniel. And that's a cool connection to have! Judy talked in her book Cravings about going back to Denver a lot, and about family. She seems close to them.
More great stories of the pop and rock and roll women I grew up listening to. Fond memories, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it, Paul.
Thanks for transporting me back to the Age of Aquarius again and again. Mythical times.
Yes, mythical and magic.
You are able to cover so much rock and folk history in each of your posts, it's truly remarkable. I never comes off as clif-notesy or summarizing. I want to pick your brain in terms of process and how you organize your posts, do you have pages of notes and a hundred open browser tabs and books with earmarks?
Thanks so much, Steve. I appreciate that as I do aim to make it fun and inspiring, not a snoozy history lesson.
I aim to use only authoritative sources for quotes and key facts, and have already accumulated quite a few autobiographies, biographies, and music histories, mostly picking them up in secondhand or used bookshops and sections. I'll also see if there are youtube videos or documentaries that have interviews with the artist or people with firsthand knowledge, and may get quotes and facts from those.
I look for a fun or interesting story or fact to build the post around and quirky quotes to use. This post was supposed to be about Linda Ronstadt because I loved the story about her as a tension reliever, and thought I'd add the other relationships between the singer-songwriters to that as further illustration, but it kept growing and growing until I decided to do Linda separately.
If I'm in doubt about something -- is is true or what exactly happened, because sometimes sources have different versions -- I'll try to fact-check by doing a search for articles or interviews to confirm or clarify. That doesn't happen too often. I use wikipedia for dates and bio info because I've found it's usually right, and search youtube for the best video to embed. Choosing videos is my favorite part.
So with this post, I probably had 10 tabs open, used several books I had on these artists, and notes I already had from the previous posts on them. I looked specifically for live performances from that time period.
The bottom line is, I'm driven by my own desire to figure out what happened. It's like a really interesting mystery to me about people and music that mean a lot to me from when I was growing up. Who were they? What really happened? What's funny, charming, interesting, inspiring about it?
I hope that helps!
Ellen, have you heard the podcast, "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs"? It's on many podcast services, but the Spotify one (I think) includes more song segments due to not having to worry about rights issues. It's extremely detailed and thorough, and reminds me a bit of what you do.
Thought I'd mention it, in case you were unaware of it. Be warned - it will become a major time suck!
Thanks very much for telling me about that, Steve. I wasn't aware of it and will add it to my sources. I see that he's put out two books that go up to 1962, and on the podcast he's up to 1968. It's great that he puts up the transcript as I find listening to podcasts too slow as a way to get information (time suck, as you say, whereas videos can be sped up) and transcripts will allow me to easily quote and cite him. Looks very useful in terms of a lot of background and detailed info!