DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS Rich Buckland and Bill Mesnik

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/bob-dylan-favourite-john-prine-song/#

Bob Dylan is one hell of a wordsmith. His ability to capture the mood of the times in just a handful of well-honed phrases once earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he initially turned down only to begrudgingly accept later down the line. One wonders if he rejected the honour out of fellow feeling for the great John Prine, whose body of work contains some of the finest turns-of-phrase in the 20th-century folk canon. 
Prine always seemed slightly surprised by his own talent. While working as a mailman in Chicago, he began attending open-mic nights at the Fifth Peg. Although initially reluctant to sing himself, John was forced to take to the stage after one performer threw down the gauntlet. On stage, he was modest almost to a fault, seeming to fade into the background. His songs, on the other hand, stood tall and proud, many of which seemed so different from the usual folk balladry coming off stage that he felt embarrassed singing them: “Some were so different that I hesitated to sing them for anybody because I thought I hadn’t heard anything like this before,” he once recalled. “And I thought, ‘Is it because it’s really good, or is it because it’s so awful?’”
Bob Dylan would have agreed with the former. The pair met for the first time in New York. Prine had just been to watch Kris Kristofferson perform in Greenwich Village and ended up tagging along with the singer-songwriter after the show. After making himself comfortable in Carly Simon’s apartment, Prine heard a knock on the door. It was Dylan, fresh from a long hiatus after his motorcycle crash: “We got introduced and pretty soon the guitars came out,” Prine recalled. “I got to singing one of my songs called ‘Far From Me’. My first album was three weeks away from being released and all of a sudden Bob Dylan starts singing along. I’m sitting there thinking, ‘I know all your songs, but how do you know mine!’”
During a conversation with The Huffington Post many years later, Dylan would label Prine’s lyrics “pure Proustian existentialism,” and “Midwestern mind trips to the nth degree.” But it wasn’t just Prine’s capacity as a writer that impressed Dylan. “And he writes beautiful songs,” he continued, expressing his adoration of songs like ‘Sam Stone’, in which Prine sings about a drug-addled Vietnam veteran who eventually dies of an overdose. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Prine was actually drafted into the US Army during the conflict and was inspired to write the song by his fellow soldiers. It was perhaps real-world experience such as this that lent his lyrics such clarity, lyrics that Dylan found intensely moving.

b. Timotea Aurro (a.k.a. Timi Yuro & Mrs Selnick), 4th August 1940, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
d. 30th March 2004, Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
Timi Yuro moved to Los Angeles as a child (she was given the name Rosemary at birth, by her mother Edith).
In the late 50's she was singing in her mother's Italian restaurant.
Timi worked with Johnnie Ray, Phil Spector and Willie Nelson during her career.
Her debut single, 'Hurt' was released in 1961 and reached number four in the pop charts.
Produced by Clyde Otis, the song was a remake of a Roy Hamilton 1954 R & B hit.
The song was later to re-enter the charts via an excellent version by the Soul Group, The Manhattans.

'l Apologise' and Smile' were released in 1962.
Timi had several minor hits during this time, the biggest of which was 'What's a Matter Baby (Is It Hurting You)'.
The song made number 12 in the U.S., and was covered by the Small Faces a few years later as the B-side of their first single.
She recorded throughout the '60s and '70s.
Timi left the Liberty label in 1964.
She recorded for Playboy, in 1975, and in 1981 a reissued 'Hurt' which was a big hit in the Netherlands.
Timi signed to Polydor and, during the late 80's, she recorded an album of songs by Willie Nelson, but soon afterwards her performing career was curtailed by serious illness.
Timi Yuro passed away on the 30th of March 2004. She was 63.

LET ME OFF UPTOWN by GENE KRUPA WITH ANITA O’DAY AND ROY ELDRIDGE
(OKEH, 1941)


This interpretation of this artifact can be as simple, or as complicated as one cares to make it. You can frame it as an anthem of solidarity, or as just another example of cultural appropriation. I choose the former. 


Granted, here you have an all white swing band, led by the theatrically energetic trapster Gene Krupa, featuring the pert suggestiveness of jazz songbird Anita O’Day in her debut at 22 years old - already displaying uncanny timing, and the horn section all genuflecting to the sole black member of the ensemble, the incomparable Roy Eldridge, who effortlessly blows the roof off the joint with his trumpet.


The song celebrates the mythical Shangri-La of Harlem - the place where any aspiring hipster needs to visit to “get groovy”. The rhythm cuts deep, but takes its time to chug and build to an explosive finish by way of Roy’s ascending wails of sound. 


But fundamentally, there is a winking humor to this recording (and “Soundie” video, too) that undergirds a message of brotherhood, and the shared reverence for the music. It hints that we have more in common than what divides us, and advises any non-believers to spend some time “uptown”.

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/marsha-hunt-muse-mick-jagger-marc-bolan/

Although both Marc Bolan and Mick Jagger were philanderers in their own respect, there was one person, in particular, that seemed to captivate them: Marsha Hunt. Hunt is a 1960s icon, a model, singer, actress and novelist, and she had relationships with both the singers of the Rolling Stones and T-Rex.
Hunt had been born in Philadelphia and was raised by her mother, her aunt and her grandmother, who she described as “three strong but very different women”. Eventually, Hunt went to the University of California, Berkeley, where she came face to face with the growing counter-culture movement and joined Jerry Rubin in protests against the Vietnam War in 1964.

In 1966, Hunt moved to London and began a career in music, first as a backing singer in Alexis Korner’s trio. She also had a brief relationship with John Mayall and was, in fact, the inspiration for his songs Marsha’s Mood’ and ‘Brown Sugar’. Shortly after, Hunt married a member of the Canterbury Scene band Soft Machine by the name of Mike Ratledge. However, their relationship soon fell apart.
Throughout the next few years, Hunt defined herself as a London artist. Her old wish to return to the United States quickly diminished, and after briefly playing with Reg Dwight (later to be known as Elton John), she achieved notoriety by starring in the musical Hair as the character Dionne. While Hunt only actually had two lines in the show, her beauty captivated audiences, and she was featured on the poster for the London production and later the recorded LP. Hunt was also the first black model to appear on the front cover of Queen magazine, and a nude photograph of her was also used on the cover of British Vogue....

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/26/phil-ochs-the-doomed-folk-singer-who-woke-up-from-the-american-dream#:~:text=He%20died%20by%20suicide.,of%20his%20conviction%20came%20from.

As a kid in the 1950s, Phil Ochs cut class and spent afternoons at the local movie house. The Searchers and Rebel Without a Cause were two of his favourites. Always a dreamer, Ochs fantasised that one day he could be a stoic cowboy like John Wayne, a teenage rebel like James Dean, or a rockabilly sex symbol like Elvis Presley. He took his early love of Hollywood with him to New York, where he became one of the most celebrated folk singers in the world, culminating in an album that has just turned 50: Greatest Hits, titled with a savage, knowing irony.
Ochs came up in the Greenwich Village folk scene, rattling off songs at a pace that caused Bob Dylan – with whom he had a friendly rivalry – to complain “I just can’t keep up with Phil”. But Ochs couldn’t cross over like Dylan did. His sole hit song There But for Fortune, which reached No 50 in the US and the Top 10 in the UK, was performed by Joan Baez.
The peak of his career took a different form. In 1968, aged 27, Ochs agreed to help organise and perform at the Festival of Life demonstration against the Vietnam war in Chicago’s Grant Park, at the Democratic National Convention. During his performance of I Ain’t Marching Anymore, one of his most acerbic and damning anti-war songs, bursts of fire sparkled throughout the crowd as young men from across America took the song’s message to heart and burned their draft cards. It was a defining moment in Ochs’s life and one of his greatest personal achievements. “This is the highlight of my career,” he told journalist Paul Krassner as he walked off stage. He felt like a Hollywood hero...

I WILL BE THERE by VAN MORRISON (Warner Bros., 1972)


Van is a serious man. Frivolity is not his usual mode. His musical lexicon is expansive, but through every variety of expression, be it blues, jazz, country, or even skiffle, there is a bred in the bone seriousness of purpose that tells you that this gentleman means business. He can make me cry, dream, bop, stomp and shout, but rarely laugh. I will smile the smile of the awakened occasionally, upon receiving the good news, but a belly laugh…? 


This one, though, makes me giggle every time, as I listen to Van swinging along the dockside, like Louie Jordan, shuffling to board the cruiser that’ll take him on your spontaneous vacation together. He’s bein’ spontaneous, baby! All he needs is his his toothbrush, his razor, his overcoat and underwear - and, he won’t miss this chance for the world. 


“I Will Be There” is on the St. Dominic’s Preview album, and come to think of it “Jackie Wilson said: I’m in Heaven When You Smile” on that record is another flaskful of joy juice - two humorous helpings on one platter - what a buffet!