Stand By Me.

There we are – the lads! Someone told me that a certain section of middle class people don't like using the word 'lad' any more. I mean I think it's one of the oldest words to join the English language and now they're . . .

Anyway there we are above; me and my brudder; his birthday was on Sunday and from that day (not long before that photo was taken) to this there is something I won't forgive him for – happy birthday and all that but, you know!! We have to draw lines in the sand sometimes.

Let me tell you.

I have always been very keen on sound recording. I did the mix on my film sOUNDz that I learned from my old pal Giles who did it on my film The Scroll about 25 years ago (hope you still read this Giles?) - although he had to do it with actual magstock which means physically cutting and splicing - and I've mixed my CDs, songs etc. 

On my recent song Prima Donna I used eleven tracks and to get a certain sound I wanted I used two tracks for the banjo solo in the middle. A reviewer said that they thought 'the steel guitar solo was amazing' when it was a banjo.

Many years ago I kind of manufactured my own echo chamber with my Grundig double track reel to reel tape recorder.

The one with the 'green light' as Paul McCartney says.

I worked on the motor bikes at the time and I would get my pals to record various songs - I remember the line of post office motor bikes outside the house - I did this (the echo chamber) by playing a famous record and getting them to sing along with it but recording them quite low so as to cut the sound out of the original record in the background.

Then I would get them to do it again and I'd line the tape up to start nearly in the same place - a nano second behind (literally) and it would produce an echo effect; this was for timing, by the way.

Some of the guys were quite good and some not so good but the reverb (yes I got to find out it was reverb or a slight delay) made it all sound better.

But when my brudder, whose birthday it was on Sunday, sang . . ..

Well it wasn't that he couldn't sing, as I'm sure he can but . . .

Let me just say that one of my favourite songs over the years has been Stand By Me, by Ben E. King – or Ben E Fred, as we used to call him.

Ben E. King wrote the song – the tune and the lyric – and took it along to two great song writers Leiber and Stoller – the greatest - they wrote some of Elvis's early songs and songs for The Drifters and groups like that in fact I think they worked in the famous Brill Building in New York.

When Ben E. King took the song to the two guys they really liked it and put the bass line on to it – you know: derm derm, dum-dum, derm derm, dum-dum. derm derm. dum-dum, derm derm . .

You know it – yes you do!!!!

And they took equal shares of the writing royalties so Ben lost two thirds of the royalties and they won the other two thirds for a bass line. But Ben E. King lived on that, sent his kids to college, paid his hospitals bills etc for the rest of his life.

All on that one song.

The thing is he could have taken it to some of the crooks that were about then so maybe he did the right thing and maybe they did good for him. And I know that sounds very American but sometimes their phraseology sounds better – you ain't hear nothin' yet!

See what I mean.

So let's get back to my brud!

I would sing maybe the Buddy Holly, Bobby Vee type songs as I sang in the same key as those giants. In fact I remember going through the motions of learning a song and recording it in about an hour – like the big boys did and boy wasn't I in a fantasy world!

I learned and recorded Please Don't Ask About Barbara and what a terrible song it turned out to be – but I never really went in to pop music after all.

My pal sang a Billy Fury song quite well and I sang More Than I Can Say and someone heard it – one of the lads who had a proper echo chamber – invited me over to his gaff and I sang More Than I Can Say onto his tape recorder. 

He could still have that recording, as far as I know, and be selling it on the pirate market but . .. who the bloody hell would want to buy my stuff . .. . . . hang on we've missed the point, the culmination of this little tale.

One day my brother sang Stand By Me and when I played it back I couldn't hear the tune that poor old Ben had written.

It's a wonderful song and every time I hear it now, or think about it I hear my brother's version, my brud's tune. My brud whose birthday was on Sunday.

Let's hope that if he had a party and if they had a sing along or a karaoke machine that he didn't sing Stand By Me because poor old B.E.K. would be spinning in his grave.

Yes Ben died a few years ago and I hope he rests in peace . . . unless?????

as we are today 

- I had to obliterate a photo bomber from the back ground

Buddy Holly, Norman Petty and PAYOLA in The King of Clovis.

I recently finished a book about Buddy Holly and his one time manager Norman Petty called The King of Clovis by Frank Blanas.

I suppose most people, who like pop music, have heard of Buddy Holly but I'm not sure if they realise just how good he was at singing, playing the guitar and what a brilliant songwriter he was. 

If you listen to early Beatles stuff you will know just how influential he was and still is.

I have almost every track he ever recorded and then some; I don't have access to them all the time as some of the stuff is on vinyl but I find new sessions all the time as he filled in some of the time in Norman Petty's studio in Clovis, NM.

It is said that he was a session guitarist there but no – he was world famous when he played on a few sessions as a favour.

I have always known about Norman Petty and what he did with Buddy Holly – he was his producer and a great producer he was; maybe the best.

Among the titles I have are recordings of That'll Be The Day and Maybe Baby, both recorded before Buddy Holly met Norman Petty. 

The songs were written by Buddy; he used a few names to credit his writing – Charles Hardin Holly was his full name and he used variations of those names but one name he never used as a songwriter was Norman Petty.

But when he re-recorded the two songs mentioned above at Norman's recording studio in Clovis, NM, there was another writer added to Buddy's name and that was Norman Petty.

Like every other Buddy Holly fan I thought Petty ripped Buddy Holly off by putting his name on the record as one of the songwriters and in a way that's what he did.

But in another way he gave Buddy and The Crickets free studio time – also to lots of other acts, groups of bands.

Acts usually have to pay for studio time for their recordings; there is no fairy godmother who pays for it and what usually happens (or should I say happened back then) is that the act is given studio credit, then an advance and then maybe salary which usually meant that they were so confused that they didn't know who owned what, how much they were worth or even where they were in the world – or where they were on the planet, as people say now.

I have always known about producers adding their name to get song writing royalties as I remember someone being interviewed on the radio taking a song to the band leader Billy Cotton and when it was published the sheet music had Billy Cotton's name on it too.

When the songwriter asked about this Cotton replied 'that's show business, son.'

One time Elvis Presley let the cat out of the bag when his name was added as a songwriter to the great song Don't Be Cruel. He was asked, when being interviewed, how he'd written the song and he revealed that he didn't write it at all. So his name was never put on a song he didn't write again.

Another thing Buddy Holly fans knew he was almost broke when he died in the plane crash and only toured to pay the rent. 

We were told, and it was confirmed by his Widowed Bride** that Petty wouldn't let them have any money even though Buddy had begged him and was in tears well . . . you have to be careful who you believe.

I have heard Buddy's widow say that but it wasn't in the book.

There were other reasons Petty didn't pay Buddy and that was that he, Petty, hadn't been paid by the record company in the first place.

In the fifties there was such a thing called PAYOLA; this was a bribe to a deejay by record companies, managers and the rest of them. It was a huge business and trailblazers and pioneers of rock'n'roll, such as Alan Freed, went to gaol for it.

Norman Petty wouldn't pay PAYOLA and that is why Buddy didn't have any real big hits in that last year of his life – nobody was playing his records.

PAYLOLA didn't really catch on in the UK to the same extent but the mob didn't operate here as they did in America.

Another thing happened in Buddy's life when he went to New York – staying in the Edison Hotel, which I stayed on one day – he asked a girl at the record company for a date; by the time the date was over Buddy had proposed and been accepted.

This woman was the first member of the Yoko Ono, Linda (I bagged a Beatle) Eastman trio who broke up great groups; she was the one who came between Buddy and Norman Petty and Buddy and The Crickets. And that is the full story.

A lot of this is my speculation of course but it's all there in this book. All 534 pages, 9 inches by 12 inches and weighing in at about 8 pound and almost impossible to read in bed.

A must for a real Buddy Holly and The Crickets fan but also to anybody who is a fan of pop music.

** I can't remember if I cried

When I read about his widowed bride

But something touched me deep inside

The day the music died.

Don McLean - American Pie.

Prima Donna

Just a happy new year with this post and to introduce you to my new song.
Here it is Prima Donna – maybe you would like to comment on YouTube
or give it a 'like' as one of your first deeds of 2016.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3TYC1Z3F0Q