Category Archives: Music et al

Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Family Stone Cynthia Robinson

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Family Stone Cynthia Robinson

Remembering Cynthia Robinson

January 12, 1944 – November 23, 2015

Cynthia Robinson was born in Sacramento, California. She played brass instruments in her high school marching band and was an original member of Sly Stone’s short-lived band The Stoners.

After that group broke up, she stayed with  him as part of the Family Stone.

According to the Family Stone home page,  he career included “Playing with P-Funk maestro George Clinton, Larry Graham, Prince, and Sinbad’s Aruba Summer Soul Festival with fellow S & TFS members, Rose Stone, Jerry Martini, Larry Graham & Graham Central Station.  In 2006, she along with the Original Family Stone members performed at the Grammy Awards in an All Star assembled band paying tribute to Sly & The Family Stone.

Family Stone Cynthia Robinson

Cynthia

Family Stone Cynthia Robinson

She is the only female, African-American trumpet player ever to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

In 2006, she began playing with the Family Stone which included her daughter , Sylvette Phunne Robinson, also known as Phunne Stone.  She and her daughter sang lead vocals on “Do Yo Dance,” a single released by the group the summer of 2015.

When asked in 2011 what she thought the future held for the band and her, she responded, “As long as we all stay healthy, it’s going to be a motha’! I love these guys…and girl. And we all care about each other off the stage. When we’re in our separate cities and our separate homes. We still care about each other.” Robinson died of cancer in Carmichael, California at the age of 71.

Family Stone Cynthia Robinson

Woodstock

It does not get much better than the classic “I Want to Take You Higher” from the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Cynthia is prominently featured:

From the Rolling Stone magazine obit : When news of Robinson’s death broke, Questlove penned a loving tribute to her, calling her music’s original “hypeman” in an Instagram post. “She wasn’t just a screaming cheerleading foil to Sly and Freddie [Stone]’s gospel vocals; she was a kick ass trumpet player,” he wrote. “A crucial intricate part of Sly Stone’s utopian vision of MLK’s America: Sly and the Family Stone were brothers and cousins, friends and enemies, black and white, male and female. saint and sinner. … Cynthia’s role in music history isn’t celebrated enough.”

Family Stone Cynthia Robinson
Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Sha Na Na Dennis Greene

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Sha Na Na Dennis Greene

Remembering Dennis Greene

January 11, 1949 – September 5, 2015

Sha Na Na Dennis Greene
Dennis Greene, top row, fourth from left.

Frederick “Dennis” Greene, born in Manhattan, was a founding member of Sha Na Na and later became a movie studio executive and then a law professor.  While at Columbia University, he and the other  classmates formed an a cappella group called the Columbia Kingsmen.

Because there already was a well-known band called the Kingsmen (they sang the infamous “Louie, Louie“) they changed their name to Sha Na Na after the nonsense lyrics in the Coasters hit song, “Get a Job.”

None of them realized the distance that idea would travel.

Sha Na Na Dennis Greene

Dennis Greene

He sang with Sha Na Na at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. After receiving widespread exposure from Woodstock the movie and the album in 1970, the rock group became an overnight success. For the next three years, Mr. Greene attended classes on weekdays and toured on weekends. He graduated from Columbia with a B.A. in English in 1972.

He was in the movie Grease as well as in the group’s television series, “Sha Na Na.” The variety show aired from 1978 to 1981.

Sha Na Na Dennis Greene

Columbia Pictures

After 15 years with the group Greene left Sha Na Na to pursue a master’s degree at Harvard and a law degree at Yale. According to his NY Times obituary, Greene said, “Being a rock star was never something that was particularly interesting to me… It was a great job. I loved the singing part. The byproducts, unfortunately, were exhausting travel and the ongoing-forever politics of being in a business controlled by young adults.”

He went on to become vice president of production and features at Columbia Pictures, where he worked on Spike Lee’s “School Daze,” and later became president of Lenox/Greene Films.

Greene eventually settled in law. He worked as a professor at multiple universities, including University of Dayton, Florida A & M University, and Ohio State University.

Dennis Greene died on September 5, 2015. His obituary appeared in the New York Times.

Columbia College

Here is the link to a Sept/Oct 2008  Columbia College article entitled ” Sha Na Na and the Invention of the Fifties” By George J. Leonard ’67, ’68 GSAS, ’72 GSAS and Robert A. Leonard ’70, ’73 GSAS, ’82 GSAS.

Sha Na Na Dennis Greene
Music et al, Music of the 60s

Music Producer Jerry Wexler

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Music Producer Jerry Wexler

Remembering Jerry Wexler
January 10, 1917 – August 15, 2008

Music Producer Jerry Wexler

Music Producer Jerry Wexler

Beginnings

Jerry Wexler is another of those names we saw on record labels and album covers. Not the musician; not the writer; but a common  presence.

Jerry was born in the Bronx on January 10, 1917. He briefly attended  the City College of New York, then enrolled at Kansas State University  before again dropping out of college.

He joined the army and following his military service, he finished his degree in Journalism at Kansas State.

Music Producer Jerry Wexler

Billboard magazine

Wexler got his start in music as a journalist for Billboard magazine. He is credited with coining the term “Rhythm and Blues” for music  previously labeled “Race Records.”

Music Producer Jerry Wexler
Atlantic Records

Wexler joined Atlantic Records as a partner in 1953 and quickly became Ahmet Ertegun’s close friend.  With Ertegun, he helped forge Atlantic’s success, producing artists like Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, and The Drifters.

For the first time in American music history, the average white kid could easily hear music previously isolated to the fringe or covered by an average white band.

Jerry Wexler also produced LaVern Baker, Big Joe Turner, Solomon Burke, Dr. John, Wilson Pickett, and Aretha Franklin. He helped Aretha Franklin adjust her unsuccessful sound at Columbia Records and sent her to  Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, Jimmy Johnson, and David Hood’s  Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. The collaboration brought fame and financial success to both.

To Warner Bros. Records

Wexler left Atlantic Records in 1975 to work for Warner Bros. Records. He signed Dire Straits, Etta James, and the B-52s among others before leaving to work on a freelance basis.

It was as a freelance producer that Wexler recorded Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming album at Muscle Shoals. The single, “Gotta Serve Somebody” from that album won a Grammy award in 1980.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Among his thankful words, he said, ““We were making rhythm and blues music–black music by black musicians for black adult buyers perpetrated by white Jewish and Turkish entrepreneurs.”

More bass

He famously said, when asked what he would like inscribed on his tombstone, “Two words: ‘More bass.'”

Jerry Wexler died at his home in Sarasota, Florida, on August 15, 2008.

His tombstone has his name, the years of his birth and death, and the words: HE CHANGED THE WORLD.

Jerry Wexler

Below is a 2002 Interview by John Sutton-Smith with Wexler.

Atlantic Records site

The Telegraph obit

Music Producer Jerry Wexler