Profiles In Music

Profiles In Music

As everyone else who has a pulse, I love music - many different types and styles of music - rock, jazz, R&B, reggae, soul, folk, spiritual, grunge, new wave, pop, classical, show tunes and sometimes even certain "types" of country, hip hop and rap. This "Profiles In Music" link is intended to provide an eclectic mix/profile of various musical groups, singers and styles. Hope ya enjoy it.

PAGE CONTENTS:

Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)

Buddy Holly

Some Elton John Tidbits

Meatloaf

John Philip Sousa

Irving Berlin

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Born to Run
By Denis Mueller

Thirty years age in September a rumbling came out of New York City. A series of concerts were making a huge noise and rock and roll was about to be energized again. The artist was Bruce Springsteen and the album; they called them albums then, was called "Born to Run". This was soon followed by Springsteen being on the covers of both Time and Newsweek.

Rock and Roll had been relegated to power bands that had forgotten their roots and the E Street band burst on the scene like a supernova. The songs were about getting out and living one's own life the way one chooses. The title song "Born to Run" was an excellent example. With Springsteen's baritone voice booming and the band, and the recording technique of Jon Landau, they revived the wall of sound of Phil Specter.

The music was, and people forget this, a combination of the rhythm of blues of another era and it was beach music as well. But this was beach music out of the shores of the decaying Asbury Park, not the affluent suburbs of Los Angles. The days of the Jersey shore as a resort area were long gone but the music was vital. It was music about hot summer nights spent on the hood of a Dodge "drinking beer in a soft summer rain."

What was important to remember about this music is that it spoke to the everyday experiences of a whole generation. There was an honesty to it that overwhelmed you. The blazing saxophone of the "Big Man" Clarence Clemens recalled the rock 'n roll of the 1950s. It was old time rock not the guitar based sounds of the early 1970s.

I remember seeing the band at a theatre in St. Louis and a friend of mine pointed out that if there was a fight these guys, meaning the band, could take care of it themselves. What I heard first was a lonely trumpet playing the intro to a dark song called "Meeting Across the River." The song delivered the goods. It was about a young man making an unsavory deal.

The concerts themselves were legendary. The energy was fantastic proving that people's art, and that is what rock and roll is, is a very powerful tool in a young person's life. It was a time in America where confidence in American life was being questioning. This is not to say that the
album's music glossed over the savage inequities of American life but it presented things in a way that one was going to have hope anyways. Springsteen has gone on to make better
albums but the kid from Jersey had made it.

When we look back at that album all I can think of is the soaring sounds that the music produced. Bruce has gone on to be a major American figure. He is a decedent in a long line that goes from Woody Guthrie, to Elvis Presley, to Bob Dylan and then to the Boss. I want you to go home, dust off your old album or your new CD and listen to the song "Jungleland." Often historians and commentators of the past forget the cultural importance of art in people's lives. It is what sustains us, and gives us hope, plus it is a gas to listen to. You see tramps like us were born to run.

Copyright 2005 by PENN LLC. All rights reserved. Go ahead and forward this, in its entirety, to others.

Some Elton John Tidbits

Real Name: Reginald Kenneth Dwight Birthday: 03/25/1947

He has played the piano since he was four years old.

In a career spanning five decades, Elton John has sold over 250 million records and has over 50 Top 40 hits.

In 1984 he surprised many by marrying sound engineer Renate Blauel. While the marriage lasted four years, John later maintained that he had realized that he was gay before he married.

Elton John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 1994.

On October 9, 2006, The Walt Disney Company named Elton a Disney Legend, the company's highest honor, for his numerous outstanding contributions to Disney's films and theatrical works

BUDDY HOLLY

Buddy Holly

1936-1959

"We owe it all to Elvis" -- Buddy Holly

From an early age, Charles Hardin Holley showed talent at the guitar, piano and fiddle. After he finished high school, his Western and Bop Band played country music on the radio in Lubbock, Texas and opened for visiting bands.

As Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes, he and his band opened for Elvis Presley in 1956, and he was inspired to try the rock and roll genre. With "That'll Be the Day" Holly began a brilliant rock and roll career that was destined to end tragically.

For two years, Buddy Holly racked up hit after hit, scoring with such classics as "Rave On," "Peggy Sue," and "Oh Boy." In the winter of 1958, after releasing only three albums and in the first year of his marriage to Maria Elena Santiago, he was killed in a plane crash on his way between concerts.

In 1986, Buddy Holly was inducted to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame:

Full name: Charles Hardin Holly
Born: September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas
Died: February 3, 1959, near Mason City, Iowa

Considered one of the fathers of rock 'n roll, Buddy Holly demonstrated his love for music early in his life. As a child, Holly learned to play the violin and the piano. However, he soon discovered a preference for the guitar. Holly's parents, Laurence O. and Ella Holly, continuously supported the young artist in his music ventures. By age 13, Holly and his friend Bob Montgomery were playing a kind of music they called "Western Bop," as well as mainstream country songs which they performed at local clubs.

Holly's first opportunity in the music industry came when a scout for Decca Records saw the duo at a local rock show where they had opened for Bill Haley and the Comets. Decca signed Holly alone to produce a few singles. However, Decca decided Holly wasn't quite ready yet, and they advised him to return to Lubbock and keep working on his music. Holly followed the advice and with the help of some friends formed his own band, The Crickets. Holly was the group's guitarist and vocals. Much of the band's music was produced by Norman Petty's studios in Clovis, New Mexico. Among the themes they recorded, was a lively version of "That'll Be the Day" which caught Decca's attention once again. From that moment on, the group's songs were released on Decca's subsidiary, Brunswick label.

The group's music talent, together with Holly's unique "excited" style of singing made them a success. Songs such as "Maybe Baby," "Oh Boy!" and Holly's solo hit "Peggy Sue" became extremely popular, especially among teenagers.

Holly and the Crickets entered areas of music such as rhythm and blues which until then, had been exclusive to black artists. Once, they were even mistaken for a Black group and booked to perform at the Apollo Theater for a mostly Black audience. Although at first the band was booed, by their third day performing they had become a hit.

The Crickets were also extremely successful abroad. In March of 1958, they toured Great Britain where they became more popular than in the U.S. Latter that same year, Holly met Maria Elena Santiago, a receptionist at a New York city music publishers. Two weeks later, they were married. After a short honeymoon, the couple returned to Lubbock, Holly's home town. Feeling that the Crickets could produce their own music, Holly broke relations with Petty. However, the rest of the group didn't agree, causing Holly to leave the group. Soon afterwards, Holly and Maria Elena moved to New York where he performed with a new group of musicians.

In 1959, as part of a rock show, Holly toured with Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson "The Big Bopper." From performance to performance they rode in buses, which kept breaking down. One day, after a concert in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered a small plane to get to the next town with some extra time to rest. On the morning of February 3rd, the plane carrying Holly, Valens, and Richardson took off from Mason City, Iowa, and crashed after eight miles, killing everyone on board.

Maria was pregnant at the time of Holly's tragic death and miscarried after hearing the news of Buddy's death. Years later she remarried and raised three children. Maria Elena now lives in Texas and is a beautiful, vibrant grandmother who tours the world promoting Buddy's legacy.

Despite a rather short music career, Holly's innovative music style, as well as his enthusiastic and energetic performances, made him one of the most popular singers in music history.

Buddy Holly Tidbits: In 1957, "The Chirping Crickets," the only Buddy Holly album issued during his lifetime, was released. It included the songs "That'll Be The Day," "Not Fade Away" and "Maybe Baby."

Meatloaf

Musician, songwriter

Few would have predicted Marvin Lee Aday would rise from an obscure life as an overweight parking lot attendant to become a Grammy-award winner and movie star. But few musicians can equal his four-octave vocal range, and few actors can claim such an unusual stage name.

At least three tales explain how rocker Aday gained the nickname "Meat Loaf." The first says his father called him "Meat Loaf" from an early age as a joking reference to the boy's substantial girth. The second story relates that he was given the moniker after stepping on his high school football coach's foot. Another -- attributed to Meat Loaf himself -- is that after permitting a friend to drive a Volkswagen over his head, people watching the feat said his brain must be composed of meat loaf.

Whatever the true origin of his nickname, Meat Loaf has gained a reputation matching his size, producing the third most popular album of all time ("Bat Out of Hell") and appearing in dozens of memorable motion pictures, including "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Roadie," "Wayne's World" and "Crazy in Alabama."

More about Marvin Lee Aday:

Meat Loaf grew up in Dallas, Texas, the son of a schoolteacher (she penned a locally popular textbook on Communism) and an alcoholic cop (who happened to be an acquaintance of Jack Ruby). Meat--he earned the nickname early on--got in touch with his theatrical side as a teen and was soon off on his haphazard way, stumbling from misadventure to misadventure, and taking more than his fair share of knocks along the way. (Literally--he's suffered 17 concussions thus far, which provide an oddly effective narrative device.)

He lurched into the middle of the JFK assassination scene, picked up a hitchhiking Charlie Manson, earned a part in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and recorded one of the most successful albums of the '70s, Bat out of Hell. His ample fame inevitably tied to his ample frame, Meat Loaf quickly became something of an amped-up Fatty Arbuckle. Then came the colossal excesses and flop follow-ups, capped by a rebound called--you guessed it--Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell. Yes, it's a familiar framework, but the telling of Meat Loaf's rise, fall, and recovery is never anything less than fresh and absorbing.

"Poor fat marvin can't wear levi's!"a radio advertisement boomed as a 240-pound seventh grader named Marvin Lee Aday shuddered in humiliation. Parents said he was "too fat" to play with their children, and his classmates picked on him, even ganging up to lock him in a storage box. Unflatteringly nicknamed "Meat Loaf" by his alcoholic father, prone to getting concussions (seventeen in all), and drawn to musical theater, no one pegged this misfit kid to become a rock star. That is, until he recorded the third best-selling album of all time.

In “To Hell and Back”, Meat Loaf reveals his amazing story--a rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches life that would rival most fiction. As a boy, he had to face down lowlifes straight out of Deliverance in order to fetch his drunken father out of gutbucket saloons--the same father who would later try to kill him with a butcher knife.

He was at Parkland Hospital when JFK was declared dead, picked up a hitchhiker who happened to be Charles Manson, got recruited for the musical Hair while trying to get a job as a parking attendant, and starred in a movie that became the biggest cult film of all time, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. From there, he collaborated with Jim Steinman to make a record called Bat Out of Hell, which went from being laughed at and rejected by every music executive in the industry to selling more than 28 million copies and launching Meat Loaf into international superstardom. Meat's story would be incredible if it stopped right there. But that's just the beginning.

The heights to which Meat had soared were matched only by the depth of his plunge back into the abyss. In a swirl of devious managers, drugs, lawyers, guns, money, nervous breakdowns (including the psychosomatic loss of his voice), and more lawsuits than he could count, Meat Loaf lost it all. He was bankrupt, his relationship with best friend and collaborator, Jim Steinman, turned ugly, and his wife, having a nervous breakdown of her own, was considering a divorce.

But the hardest-working man in rock and roll would not stay down. Returning to his family he set out with them to conquer the world again, club by club and through word of mouth--a struggle that culminated in a reunion with Steinman, the Grammy Award-winning release of Bat out of Hell II, and a return to the limelight. Meat Loaf's story is--like Meat Loaf himself--larger than life.

Meatloaf Tidbits: in 2003, Meat Loaf, 56, is said by his record company to be recovering from heart surgery after collapsing onstage in England. He was treated for Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, which causes an irregular heartbeat.

J P SOUSA

John Philip Sousa

J.P. "The March King" Sousa and Irving "I Used To Be Israel" Berlin each rose from obscurity to become one of the world's most celebrated musicians. Grateful, each gave something back: music that helps define the USA to this day.

John Philip Sousa's parents were both immigrants--his father from Portugal, and his mother from Bavaria (in modern-day Germany). But Sousa, born in Washington, DC, in 1854, had nothing but music in his blood.

His father, a trombonist in the U.S. Marine Band, taught John Philip music from an early age. By 6, he was giving violin recitals. At 13, he tried to run away to join a circus band. His father would have none of it, though, and enlisted the young rebel in the Marines as an apprentice with the Marine Band. (Enlisted at 13? It's not as bad as it sounds. The Marine Band provides entertainment for the president and the Marine Corps commandant. Its members are professional musicians who serve only with the band.)

By the time he was 26, Sousa was the Marine Band's director, a position he held from 1880 to 1892. Sousa raised the band to world-class standards of performance, with stirring interpretations of traditional marches and his own compositions. Eventually, Sousa formed his own civilian concert band--the Sousa Band--and toured nationally and internationally, achieving icon status as "The March King."

His "Semper Fidelis" (1888) is the official march of the Marine Corps. His "The Washington Post March" (1889) was the defining anthem of a dance craze: the two-step. And America's official march, "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (1896), is still a standard at patriotic events. Sousa did compose in various classical styles, writing 11 operettas and as many waltzes, but he will always be known for his marches. He left posterity 136 to choose from.

Sousa was also known for self-promotion. His public performances were wildly popular, and he openly admitted his intention to give the people what they wanted. But a funny thing happened on the way to 19th-century popularity: Sousa's compositions never stopped being popular. Time has turned his pop tunes into classics. He died on March 6, 1932.

IRVING BERLIN

Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin's life reads even more like a Hollywood screenplay. He was born Israel Baline on May 11, 1888, in Temum, Siberia, the son of a Jewish cantor. Fleeing anti-Semitism in Russia, his family emigrated to the United States and settled in a tenement on New York's Lower East Side.

His father died when he was 8, and Israel found himself out on the streets selling newspapers and singing for spare change. By 16, he was working as a singing waiter in Chinatown. That all changed in 1911 with "Alexander's Ragtime Band," Israel's first big hit--well, not Israel, since he had already taken the name "Irving Berlin."

Many hits followed during a period in which Berlin gave new meaning to the word "prolific." He never learned to read or write music, or even to play the piano properly, but by 1914 he had published 190 songs. His first Broadway musical, Watch Your Step (1914), was a big hit, and Berlin became an international celebrity. Berlin was reminded, though, of the fine line between success and starvation when he lost a fortune in the Depression.

He never stopped working feverishly. He composed nearly 3,000 songs, and his knack for matching catchy tunes with clever lyrics allowed him to write some of the most enduringly popular songs in American history: "Puttin' on the Ritz" (1928), "Cheek to Cheek" (1935), "White Christmas" (1942), and the brief but unforgettable "God Bless America" (1938), written when war was threatening Europe:

God bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her,
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam.
God bless America,
My home sweet home.

Kate Smith delivered the first performance of "God Bless America" over the radio on November 11, 1938. When the song became popular, Berlin signed over the royalties to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America. Today it has become a virtual second national anthem, and near his death Berlin named it the song closest to his heart.

By the time Berlin died in 1989, at the age of 101, he had become a notorious recluse. Even after decades of success, he was prone to depression and regret. But it's appropriate, given America's unique history, that the country's unofficial national anthem was written by a poor Jewish immigrant who had to sing his way out of the slums--and who cherished the country that let him do it.

--Mark Diller

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