Category Archives: Music et al

Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Santana Bassist David Brown

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Santana Bassist David Brown

Remembering and appreciating
February 15, 1947 – September 4, 2000
Bassist for Santana band: 1967 – 71 and 1974 – 76

Santana Bassist David Brown

Santana Bassist David Brown

Daly City, California

David grew up in Daly City, California.

According to a Ben Fong-Torres piece in Rolling Stone magazine from December 7, 1972,  David Brown, who’d gone to public and private school in San Francisco and played bass at night with Latin jazz bands and at clubs behind touring groups like the Four Tops, was walking up Grant Ave., in North Beach, when he heard some music from a small club. He stepped in, sat in, and was approached by Stan Marcum, who would become Santana’s manager. 

From that same article, David Brown is quoted that early in the band’s development they found that “We didn’t like the music too repetitious, the way Butterfield or other blues bands were playing…so we got into improvisation and we’d find the drums in there more of the time. Eventually, we just sat back and said let them do their thing.

Woodstock

Brown played with  Santana at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969 and on several other dates and albums.

While most of us listen enthralled to Carlos Santana’s lead guitar on Soul Sacrifice (and deservedly so), for David Brown’s birthday celebration, let’s listen to the bass. Pretty good!

Though best known as part of Santana, David Brown also played in Boz Scaggs band on three of Scaggs’s albums: Moments, Boz Scaggs and Band, and My Time.

Here is his credit listing from AllMusic.com

David Brown

Santana Bassist David BrownIn 1998, he was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Santana. All the members of the band speak, except Brown.

David Brown died in 2000 due to liver and kidney failure. Be sure to read the several comments below, especially  Beachdog67’s. A wonderful and personal memory.

Santana Bassist David Brown

Anniversary, Beatles, Music et al

Beatles Meet Washington

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Beatles Meet Washington

February 11, 1964
The Beatles Meet Washington
poster for Washington, DC concert. The first US Beatle concert performance.
Beatles Meet Washington

Snowstorm cancels flight

A snowstorm had cancelled their flight, so the Beatles took a train to Washington DC and made their live concert debut in the US at the Washington Coliseum. Over 350 police surrounded the stage to try and control the 8,000 plus screaming fans. One police officer who found the noise so loud stuck a bullet in each ear as ear plugs. The Beatles had to stop three times and turn Ringo’s drum kit around and re-position their microphones so that they faced a different part of the audience. The set list: ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, ‘From Me to You’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘This Boy’, ‘All My Loving’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, ‘Please Please Me’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, ‘Twist and Shout’, and ‘Long Tall Sally’.

Beatles Meet Washington

George Harrison remembers

George Harrison summed up his experience this way: That night, we were absolutely pelted by the fuckin’ things. They don’t have soft jelly babies there; they have hard jelly beans. To make matters worse, we were on a circular stage, so they hit us from all sides. Imagine waves of rock-hard little bullets raining down on your from the sky. It’s a bit dangerous, you know, ’cause if a jelly bean, travelling about 50 miles an hour through the air, hits you in the eye, you’re finished. You’re blind aren’t you? We’ve never liked people throwing stuff like that. We don’t mind them throwing streamers, but jelly beans are a bit dangerous, you see! Every now and again, one would hit a string on my guitar and plonk off a bad note as I was trying to play. (from The Beatles Off The Record, Keith Badman)

Beatles Meet Washington

Paul McCartney remembers

In 2010, Paul McCartney remembered, We’d seen a lot of British stars come back from America with their tails between their legs. We made a promise to ourselves to not go until we had a No. 1. We were so excited to be madly popular in America, which was to us the Holy Grail because every shred of music we ever loved came from there. It was euphoric, and now we were heading to Washington on the train, which was very glamorous. And to cap it off, there was that beautiful snow. (Washington Post article)

Beatles Meet Washington

John Lennon remembers

John Lennon’s memory of the reception following was a discomforting one: People were sort of touching us as we walked past, that kind of thing. Wherever we went we were supposed to be not normal and we were supposed to put up with all sorts of shit from lord mayors and their wives and be touched and pawed like A Hard Day’s Night only a million more times. At the American Embassy, the British Embassy in Washington, or wherever it was, some bloody animal cut Ringo’s hair, in the middle of… I walked out of that. Swearing at all of them and I just left in the middle of it. (John Lennon, 1970. Lennon Remembers by Jann S Wenner)

You can listen to the whole concert with the YouTube link below:

Today, the concert site looks a bit different than in 1964.

The Beatles Meet Washington

Reference >>> Beatles Bible site

Beatles Meet Washington

Beatles, Music et al, Today in history

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

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Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

February 9, 1964

If February 3, 1959 was the “day the music died,” then five years later, it was reborn.

From the NY Times article, February 9, 1964: Beatlemania creeps in slowly. Collar­less jackets, usually worn Saturday nights on Forty‐second Street, are turning up in the strangest places, like the safe suburbs. Teen‐agers who once considered the G.I. crew‐cut the height of adolescent fashion are letting their locks curl down their necks and over ears and across foreheads. Twenty thousand beatle wigs have been sold.

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

The day the music died

Everyone has milestone dates. Generations share dates. For Don McLean February 3, 1959, the day a plane crash killed Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens, was “The Day the Music Died.” 12 years later, McLean wrote “American Pie.” In it , a 13 year old newsboy remembers that “February made me shiver/with every paper I’d deliver”

For Boomers, shared “where we were” dates are likely: when we found out President Kennedy was killed or later Martin Luther King, Jr, or that same year, Robert Kennedy. Each, like McLean’s, a sad day.

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

The day the music was reborn

February 9, 1964 is at the other end of that spectrum. Rather than the music dying, the music was born.

That was the evening we sat in front of our black and white TV (the only one in our home?) and watched The Beatles inaugural performance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Unless you are a Beatles trivia fan, you may not know that that afternoon the Beatles had recorded Twist And Shout, Please Please Me, and I Want To Hold Your Hand, in front of a different audience than the one that saw their live debut that evening. Ed Sullivan broadcast that set on 23 February on their third appearance. By the 23rd, John, Paul, George and Rich were back home in the UK.

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

“Sorry girls…“

On the evening of February 9, 1964, the Beatles performed “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” which featured the names of the group members superimposed on closeup shots, including the famous “Sorry girls, he’s married” caption on John Lennon, and “She Loves You.” The act that followed Beatles in the broadcast was pre-recorded, rather than having someone perform live on stage amidst the pandemonium that occurred in the studio after the Beatles did their first songs. They returned later in the program to perform “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for US television.

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

How he met the Beatles

How Ed Sullivan’s and the Beatles’ paths crossed is open to some guessing. The most popular story is that Ed Sullivan and his wife happened to be in London’s Heathrow Airport on October 31, 1963 when they encountered thousands of screaming teenagers. (Ironic, I suppose, as he’d have to get used to such happenings in just a few months!)

When he asked what the commotion was all about, he was told that a band called the Beatles  were arriving.

He decided that such popularity was something he’d love to bring to his American show.

Whether that is actually the sequence or not matters not.  By mid-November, Beatles manager Brian Epstein had booked the Beatles.

And like the moon landing, we all remember where we were.

I’d love to see comments about where you were!

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles