Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 4-29-24

In their autobiography Hound Dog, songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller tell of one time when they were at Jerry’s apartment. Jerry was in the kitchen while Mike was trying out ideas on the piano. Jerry called out to him “Take out the papers and the trash!” Immediately, Mike responded “Or you don’t get no spending cash.” Ten minutes later, the duo finished writing a rock and roll classic. The Coasters took the song, “Yakety Yak,” to number one.

The late Carl Gardner of The Coasters and The Robins was born on this date in 1928. A few of those groups’ songs with Gardner on lead are featured on today’s playlist.

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Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 9-20-22

Today’s playlist celebrates the September 20 birthdays of The Avalanches’ Robbie Chater, Thompson Twins’ Alannah Currie, Was (Not Was)’s Sweet Pea Atkinson, The Beautiful South’s Dave Hemingway, Gogi Grant, Sophia Loren, The Feeling’s Dan Gillespie Sales, and Sin With Sebastian; the September 21 birthdays of Oasis’s Liam Gallagher, The Horrors’ Faris Badwin, Glasvegas’s James Allan, The Chordettes’ Janet Ertel, Mew’s Jonas Bjerre, Faith Hill, Wale, and Swing Out Sister’s Corinne Drewery; and we remember the 21st night of September.

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Girl Power! Forty Of The Best Girl Group Songs

The girl group sound was a genre of pop music that flourished on the charts between 1958 and 1966. Most records that fall into this category were made by all-female trios or quartets. However, some girl group hits were performed by solo women, and some by groups that featured a cisgender male. Per girl-groups.com, more than 750 girl groups cracked the US or UK charts between 1960 and 1966.

Tunes du Jour commemorates International Women’s Day with a playlist of forty of the best examples of the girl group sound.


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Throwback Thursday – The Hits of 1958

On March 28, 1958, 19-year-old Eddie Cochran recorded a song he co-wrote with his manager, Jerry Capeheart, called “Summertime Blues.” It was intended to be the b-side of a single whose a-side, “Love Again,” was written by 17-year-old Sharon Steely, who soon became Cochran’s girlfriend. Liberty Records released the 45 with “Summertime Blues” as the a-side. Five months after he recorded it, Cochran had his first U.S. top ten single. In the fall of 1958, the record became a hit in England.

Besides singing and co-writing the song, Cochran produced it. His talents didn’t stop there. He could play piano, drums, bass and guitar, the latter of which he played on records by two dozen other acts.

Cochran’s popularity overseas led to a hugely successful tour of England in the spring of 1960, culminating on April 16 with a performance at the Hippodrome Theater in Bristol. On his way to the airport after the show, Cochran got into a cab with Steely, who was now his fiancée, his tour manager, Patrick Thompkins, and fellow performer Gene Vincent. The taxi driver was speeding on a dark and winding street. The car blew a tire and the driver lost control of the vehicle, crashing it into a lamppost. Cochran put himself over his fiancée to protect her and ended up being thrown from the car. Suffering a severe head injury, he was brought to the hospital. The following afternoon he was pronounced dead. He was just 21 years old.

Eddie Cochran’s time with us was far too short, but his legacy lives on. “Summertime Blues” is an undeniable rock and roll classic, covered by many artists of different genres, including The Who, Alan Jackson, Blue Cheer, The Beach Boys, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and Olivia Newton-John. Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody” was later recorded by Sex Pistols, and his “Twenty Flight Rock” was played by a teenage Paul McCartney at his audition for a teenage John Lennon to let McCartney join Lennon’s band, The Quarreymen.

Today is Throwback Thursday, and Tunes du Jour revisits some of the hits of 1958, kicking off with Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues.”


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Inspired By John Waters

Today’s playlist is inspired by John Waters – director, screenwriter, author, actor, journalist, hero. As today is his 69th birthday, I compiled this collection of songs that have been in his movies, songs he’s written about, and songs by folks who have been in his movies.

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