Category Archives: Music et al

Birthdays, Music of the 60s

Bernard Alfred Jack Nitzsche

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Bernard Alfred Jack Nitzsche

Arranger/composer/producer
April 22, 1937 — August 25, 2000

Jack NitzscheJack Nitzsche – “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (Opening Theme)” 

Bernard Alfred Jack Nitzsche

Jack Nitzsche

Jack Nitzsche. Where have we heard that name? Album cover readers know that they saw the name regularly on the album credits. As my father sometimes joked, “He’s like horseshit. He’s everywhere.”

What I gradually realized was that Jack Nitzsche was associated with many of my favorite albums.

Born Bernard Alfred Nitzsche in Chicago, he grew up in Michigan, and moved to California as a teenager. Like many people who have moved to California, Nietzsche hoped to become an entertainer. A saxophonist specifically.

Needles and Pins

Bernard Alfred Jack NitzscheHis story is familiar. When the saxophone school didn’t worked out, he found a job at Specialty Records copying music scores. While doing that he met Sonny Bono who was chief of A & R there. Their friendship led to songwriting. You’ll likely recognize an early hit:

Bernard Alfred Jack Nitzsche

The Lonely Surfer

He had a minor hit on his own with “The Lonely Surfer” in 1963. It’s a pretty good song!

Bernard Alfred Jack Nitzsche

Phil Spector

In the meantime, Nitzsche met and started working with Phil Spector and eventually helped create the Wall of Sound while working with session musicians famously known as the Wrecking Crew.

If you’ve ever heard  “River Deep, Mountain High” by Ike and Tina Turner you’ve heard Nitzshe. Bob Lind’s “Elusive Butterfly“? Nitzshe.  Darlene Love? May have been Nitzsche.

Rolling Stones and more

In 1964, he met the Rolling Stones. When you hear “Paint It, Black” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together” or “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”? Nitzsche.

Buffalo Springfield’s “Expecting to Fly”? Nitzsche.

Do you like Lesley Gore? Jackie DeShannon? The Righteous Brothers? Beach Boys? Searchers? Rip Cords? Bobby Vee?  Tim Buckley? Gary Lewis and the Playboys? The Monkeys? The Ventures? James Gang? Graham Parker? Willy DeVille?

It may have been Jack Nitzsche’s handiwork. Sometimes producing. Sometimes keyboards.

You say you want more?

Neil Young and Crazy Horse, solo or together.

Performance

Bernard Alfred Jack NitzscheAnd that’s just some of the music. He also worked on movie music. Here is a partial list:

  • He won an Oscar for Best Song with “Up Where We Belong” co-written with his wife Buffy St Marie and Will Jennings from Officer and a Gentleman.
  • Performance which stared Mick Jagger
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  • Hardcore
  • The Razor’s Edge
  • Starman
  • The Exorcist
  • Breathless
  • 9 1/2 Weeks

Poor Health

His health deteriorated in the mid-90s and his career followed.  He died on August 25, 2000.

REM wrote “2JN” in his memory.

Bernard Alfred Jack Nitzsche

Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Bassist Tommy Shannon

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Bassist Tommy Shannon

April 18, 1946

Happy birthday to you!

It was while listening to Johnny Winter‘s Progressive Blues Experiment album (oh that first cut–“Rollin’ and Tumblin'” with Johnny’s slide, Uncle John Turner’s drums, and Tommy Shannon’s bass!) and reading its cover that I first saw Tommy’s name.

Bassist Tommy Shannon

Woodstock Music and Art Fair

That August weekend’s hunger, time, work obligation, soaking rain, and car concerns sent me home from Woodstock on Sunday and I missed bands I’d come to see. Johnny Winter was one of them and hearing that set today makes me wish there were time machines.

Before I continue, let me thank Donna Johnston who wrote the bio notes from Tommy Shannon’s site. Click thru for the complete story. It’s a long and interesting one.

Tommy Shannon was born on April 18, 1946 in Tucson, AZ, but grew up in west Texas. Like many musicians’ stories, he played in various bands during high school.

After high school, he moved to Dallas and there met Uncle John Turner. Turner eventually became drummer for young Johnny Winter and one night Tommy went to hear his friend play. The visit became an invitation by Johnny to Tommy to join the band.

Never much into the blues, Winter immersed Shannon via a vast record collection. According to Shannon, ““After I … listened to all that stuff, all the way back to the beginning, when I picked up my bass and started playing the blues, it was just the most natural thing I’d ever done”

Bassist Tommy ShannonBassist Tommy Shannon

They recorded Progressive Blues Experiment in 1967, released it in 1968, and played Woodstock in 1969.

Sidelined

After Johnny Winter formed a new band, Tommy and Uncle John continued with other musicians. The musician’s life offers many opportunities and for Tommy Shannon some of those opportunities forced the legal system to deny Shannon any interaction music scene. At one point he was a bricklayer.

In 1980, Fortune smiled on Tommy Shannon and old Texas friend Stevie Ray Vaughan invited Shannon to join Vaughan’s Double Trouble band. He did and life was good again.

Bassist Tommy Shannon

Too good for his own good

Both Tommy Shannon and Stevie Ray Vaughan sought help.

Again Donna Johnston, “The story of Tommy’s time with Stevie is well known: the musical highs of sold-out concerts all over the world (including that magical Carnegie Hall gig), [NYT article] the multiple Grammys, the gold and platinum records…and then the personal lows of drug and alcohol addiction, which eventually led the two best friends to enter rehab facilities on the same day in October, 1986.”

They emerged healthy again, but Fortune frowned this time. On August 27, 1990 after a performance with Eric Clapton, Vaughan’s helicopter crashed killing him and other members of Clapton’s group. [NYT article]

Bassist Tommy Shannon

Arc Angels

Bassist Tommy Shannon
Shannon w Arc Angels

Tommy Shannon and the other members of Double Trouble wandered musically after Vaughan’s death, but in 1992 he and others briefly formed the Arc Angels and released the highly-acclaimed eponymous Arc Angel album.

Here they are on the Letterman Show, June 9, 1992. Bassist Tommy Shannon

Nearly Stoned

Tommy thought he would replace Bill Wyman as the Rolling Stones bassist, but that didn’t happen.

The band Storyville was next.

After that breakup, Double Trouble re-formed and continued to give us great music.

Bassist Tommy Shannon

Tommy Shannon Blues Band

Bassist Tommy Shannon

Nowadays, Tommy can be heard regularly with his Tommy Shannon Blues Band at Antone’s in Austin. His band mates are Tommy Taylor and David Holt.

Many happy returns Tommy Shannon!

Bassist Tommy Shannon
Anniversary, LSD

Albert Hofmann Changed Things

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Albert Hofmann Changed Things

April 16, 1943

Jason Falkner performed this instrumental cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds YouTube link

Albert Hofmann Changed Things

Not April 19

Today is not April 19, aka Bicycle Day, the day in 1943 when Albert Hofmann deliberately ingested lysergic acid diethylamide and decided to ride his bicycle home to relax and recover.

Albert Hofmann Changed Things

Albert Hofmann

Albert Hofmann was born on January 11, 1906 in Baden, Switzerland.  He attended the University of Zürich and graduated in 1929 with a doctorate in medicinal chemistry.

Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland hired him for a program that was developing methods for synthesizing compounds found in medicinal plants. It was there that Hofmann stumbled upon LSD-25 (the 25th such derivative tested) in 1938.

Albert Hofmann Changed Things

Set aside

He put it aside for five years until on April 16, 1943 when Hofman accidentally consumed LSD-25 and experienced  unusual sensations and hallucinations.

In his notes, he related the experience: “Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant, intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.”

He came to the conclusion that it could be of significant use in psychiatric treatment and spent years investigating LSD’s hallucinogenic properties. He disapproved of the casual recreational use of LSD.

Albert Hofmann Changed Things

Problem Child

Albert Hofmann Changed ThingsHofmann did believe that in addition to LSD’s possible psychiatric uses, it could also be used in spiritual contexts. He proposed those ideas in his book LSD, mein Sorgenkind (LSD: My Problem Child, 1980).

The following is a brief video where he discusses his surprise at discovering an alternate reality in which the world transmits through our senses (acting like an aerial) and our consciousness acts like a TV screen.

Albert Hofmann Changed Things

Long legacy

Hofmann died of a heart attack on April 29, 2008, but even today, the idea of using LSD as more than a recreational compound–using it for therapeutic use–is still a  fringe part of scientific research.

Albert Hofmann Changed Things