by Kevin Burton Texas has its outsized pretentions, but California for most of a century was considered the American promised land. This was reflected throughout popular culture, including in music. So there is no shortage of songs we could use to represent the Golden State in our summer rock and roll road trip …
Tag Archives: 60s music
Motown’s Move To LA Stifled The Magic
by Kevin Burton There is more than a little irony in the 1971 Jackson 5 song “Going Back To Indiana.” That makes for an easy choice to make Indiana a destination for our summer rock and roll road trip, Coast to Coast. For Coast to Coast we are talking rock and roll history, …
A New Beatles Song? We’ll Take It!
by Kevin Burton From a beloved uncle or a dear friend who has passed away, you find a previously unknown letter. How precious is that? It’s a piece of that person that you never had, at a time when you thought there would be no more glimpses into their being. Would you not …
What’s Stranger Than Fiction, AND Truth?
by Kevin Burton All the cool band names are taken. Trust me. Record label names too. When last we gathered, I spun a fictional account based ever so loosely goosely on a true story. It was about a band called the Palindromes that made it big in Bermuda. The true part of …
Love Is Growing New And She’s Still The One
by Kevin Burton Found a lyric last week that is so cool, I want to use it to tell my happy Valentine’s Day story. This is what happens when my usual Tuneful Tuesday post coincides with Valentine’s Day. The song “Still The One” went to number five for Orleans in 1976. It’s …
Continue reading “Love Is Growing New And She’s Still The One”
Legendary Composer Bacharach Dead At 94
by Kevin Burton You know Burt Bacharach, even when it’s not Burt Bacharach. Bacharach died Wednesday at home in Los Angeles of natural causes, according to his publicist, Tina Brausam. The Kansas City-born composer had an unmistakable sound, especially in his work with longtime writing partner, lyricist Hal David. The New …
Still Singing, Petula Clark Turns 90
by Kevin Burton Did you know Petula Clark has a new single? Well, it’s her birthday today so let’s help her celebrate. That’s 90 candles on the cake today for Petula, if you’re counting. She was born on this day in 1932 in Ewell, England. That’s 68 million records sold, if you’re doing …
Songwriter Cynthia Weil Turns 82
by Kevin Burton Happy 82nd birthday to a great American songwriter you may not know much about, Cynthia Weil. If her name doesn’t ring a bell, her music sure will. She and her husband Barry Mann formed one of the most important songwriting teams of the 60s. They were contemporaries of writers you …
Drift Away: The Healing Power Of Music
by Kevin Burton Let me be clear: the beat, the rock and roll beat, does not free one’s soul. But in the secular sense it sure frees something. And that’s the heart of the great 1973 song “Drift Away.” Lawrence Darrow Brown was born in Simonton, Texas on this day in 1940. …
Mining For Radio Gold In Canada
by Kevin Burton The things we don’t say, can’t say, the things we won’t see and refuse to feel, these are the ghosts that inhabit a great 1971 song. I speak of “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot. The orchestration is good but it never gets in the way of …
Page 7 