[Vintage-Audio] Re Bob's Danny Davis Thoughts

Sat Jul 19 19:12:51 EDT 2008

Sorry guys! I did not intend for this to post to the list. I guess I better 
clean my shades and pay better attention, heh?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Duane Fischer, W8DBF" <dfischer at usol.com>
To: <w9ran at oneradio.net>; "Vintage home and professional audio equipment 
from 1975 back" <vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2008 3:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Vintage-Audio] Re Bob's Danny Davis Thoughts

> Hi Bob,
>
> I think that you and I are going to have to get out that old Louisville 
> Slugger from decades past and give the somewhat bloated painted plaster 
> piggy bank a swat! Let the chips fly where they may! Use some of those 
> coins on a landline now and then, rather then wait for you to be somewhere 
> in the mobile, the solar flux just right, the winds of Fate blowing in our 
> favor and so forth to communicate! We have much to discuss Robert! 
> Besides, some of it is really none of the business of those nameless ears 
> that may be listening!
>
> One Floyd Cramer album that I have has written on the outside jacket that 
> Floyd got paid something like $150 per hour if his name was mentioned as 
> the piano player on the album and $75 per hour if not. Of course this 
> applies to him doing session work, 'not' his own albums!
>
> I am pulling those numbers out of my memory Bob, and that was read to me 
> many decades ago. Hence, I may not have them right. You know those figures 
> must be from the late sixties or seventies, as by the eighties I am sure 
> they were double that, if not triple!
>
> I wonder how many songs out of the RCA Nashville Studio B did have bits of 
> Morse sneaked into the background? There is the one I mentioned previously 
> by Ray Stevens, "Save Me From Myself". Did I send you the two CD set of 
> the "Best Of" series I put together of Ray Stevens songs? I sent you so 
> darn many Robert, that I would have to check the original file to know!
>
> I want you to know this Bob: I have "NEVER" given, or even made and was 
> paid for, as many albums as I sent to you! It was a huge amount of work, 
> but I wanted you to have some material not available on commercial CDS 
> from some of the great vinyl that I had. I knew that you would play them, 
> enjoy them and protect them.
>
> Do not bother about the song about the Titantic. I am not interested in it 
> Bob. If it had been some unusual or little known song by Ray Stevens, then 
> I would be interested. Thank you just the same.
>
> I was recording different versions of "Amazing Grace" for a Ham friend in 
> Florida. I was positive that I had one done by Folk Artist Joan Baez. 
> Unfortunately my old albums by her were on a label that wore out with less 
> then twenty plays. I think it was Columbia. Never had an album wear out 
> like those did! I could not find the song among anything that I had left.
>
> Finally, the old blind dude discovered that one of those commercial CD 
> cases was a two CD set! Could the world's only totally blind professional 
> Magician/Illusionist get it open? No way! I was considering precisely 
> where to smack the sucker with my late Father's Carpenters hammer when 
> reason took over. Somebody came to the door to deliver some spaghetti that 
> I had ordered, so I had them open it for me! The song was on the second CD 
> alright, but Joan was singing it along with the audience! Not at all what 
> I wanted! I still have not found the version where she does it as a solo 
> and plays the guitar.
>
> Oh Oh! Sounds like bad weather may be moving in, so I better get off line. 
> Later.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Robert Nickels" <w9ran at oneradio.net>
> To: "Vintage home and professional audio equipment from 1975 back" 
> <vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 11:51 PM
> Subject: Re: [Vintage-Audio] Re Bob's Danny Davis Thoughts
>
>
>> Duane Fischer, W8DBF wrote:
>>>
>>> Either my ears deceive me, or it is Floyd Cramer on keyboard! No 
>>> mistaking Floyd or the incomparable Nashville sound!
>> Sorry Duane, I misread this as a statement rather than a question.  But 
>> yes, Floyd Cramer was the "stock" piano player for the Nashville Brass. 
>> Of the two LPs I have, he's credited on one and not on the other, but I 
>> suspect he played on all of them.   As your expert ear would be best able 
>> to detect!
>>>
>>> I got asked last night about Ray Stevens song about the "Titantic". 
>>> Something about a Black boxer Jack Johnson and being denied passage 
>>> because he was black. In this particular case, discrimination worked in 
>>> Mr. Johnson's favor! I have never heard this song, have any of you? When 
>>> did it chart?
>> Well now you're going to have me digging through my Vinyl Archives, also 
>> known as the big shelf of records under the basement stairs before long! 
>> First, it wasn't Ray Stevens, this was the handiwork of a folk singer 
>> named Jaime Brockett.  He rose to cult status in the 1969-early 1970s era 
>> with his debut album, "Remember the Wind and the Rain", which featured 
>> the 13 minute long talking blues number "The Legend of the USS Titanic". 
>> I've read that this was a take-off on an old Leadbelly tune, but I 
>> haven't heard the original if this is the case.  Back in that era, the 
>> main source of pop music in my Nebraska hometown was KOMA, Oklahoma City 
>> that blanketed the midwest with its 50,000 watt signal.   We also 
>> listened to WLS, but it was not as strong, and played more commercials. 
>> But in 1969, tuning around the AM band late at night would produce yet 
>> another rock station, one hailing out of Little Rock Arkansas and truly 
>> something "far out".  This was Beaker Street, an underground radio show 
>> hosted by one Clyde Clifford (who I learned later, as a ham who actually 
>> got in to the DJ business from being a transmitter engineer).   His 
>> trademark sound was a continuous background of weird spacey noises and 
>> sound effects - there would never be any dead air, only the spacey sounds 
>> with Clydes low-key commentary, and the music.  It was so cool - the 
>> first "underground music" program on a commercial AM radio station, and a 
>> 50,000 watt blowtorch at that.  I still have many albums and CDs today 
>> that I first heard and developed a taste for as a result of hearing them 
>> on Beaker Street, and Jaime Brockett was one of them.
>>
>> And what is really wild is Clyde Clifford (who actually had a day job as 
>> a healthcare worker) still does the Beaker Street program on Sunday 
>> nights on an Little Rock FM station and streams it on the internet.  I've 
>> listened, and it is exactly like it was back then.  As he puts it it, 
>> "KAAY was sold into religious servitude and I thought,  this is the last 
>> time I will ever do this" on the night of the final program. 
>> Fortunately, it hasn't quite turned out that way!   Thanks to zillions of 
>> people like me who grew up listening to this unique sound.   If I can get 
>> an electronic version of the Titanic song,  I will burn it to CD for you. 
>> It's quite entertaining, especially in the context of 1969 culture.
>>
>> 73, Bob W9RAN
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>>
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>
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