Tag Archives: Music et al

Eric Burdon Animals House Rising Sun

Eric Burdon Animals House Rising Sun

On my docent tours at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, I play pieces of several old rock and roll songs. Guests recognize some of the tunes, some guests need more time.

The intro to the Animals’ House of the Rising Sun is recognized immediately nearly ever time!

One of the goals of my tours is to more accurately present the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Clear up that “Woodstock haze.”

A common misconceptions is that the 400,000 there were a bunch of hippies. Using a picture I took the Saturday of the festival, I half-kiddingly point out that the majority of young people there were “white kids getting sunburned.”

Eric Burdon Animals House Rising Sun
photo by J Shelley

Guests typically chuckle and I add, “Look at the rest of the pictures and find the hippies. Find tie-dyed clothing.” Picture perusal yields little of either.

Eric Burdon Animals House Rising Sun

#1

On September 5, 1964 “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. They had recorded it on May 18 and released it in the UK in June and in the US in August. At 2:58, the song barely made it under the AM radio de rigueur  3 minute limit.

Animals House of the Rising Sun

British Blues Invasion

When songs by British invaders like the Rolling Stones and the Animals started playing on American radio airwaves, many teenagers loved their gritty soulful feel. Little did we innocent and naive white segregated American teenagers realize, as the Stones and Animals did, that the songs were American.

Animals House of the Rising Sun

Not Hello Dolly

“House of the Rising Sun” is such an example. The song’s origins may go as far back as the 1700s. The classic American bluesman, Leadbelly, recorded two versions in the mid-1940s.

As with many musical genres, the Animals adapted the song’s story to their own way by changing the viewpoint from that of a woman to that of a son whose father is satisfied only when he is drunk.

This was not She Loves You, Hello Dolly, Everybody Loves Somebody, or any other of 1964’s #1 songs. Its intensity and darkness set it apart.

You can find more about the song’s history via a American Blues Scene link. That, for example, the earliest recording was by Tom Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster in 1933!

Eric Burdon Animals House Rising Sun

John Berg Columbia Art Director

John Berg Columbia Art Director

January 12,  1932 – October 11, 2015

John Berg Columbia Art Director

Artists create their works and certainly deserve full credit for those works, but sometimes it takes someone else’s inspiration to select or choose the work and put it into the pubic’s eye.

Artists often need art directors

John Berg Columbia Art Director

John Berg was that second person. He was an art director at Columbia Records and commissioned or selected the art that graced the album covers.

According to a Rolling Stone magazine article, “Berg worked on over 5,000 records during his 25-year tenure at Columbia, earning Grammys for his work on Dylan’s 1967 Greatest Hits collection, Barbra Streisand’s The Barbra Streisand Album, Chicago’s Chicago X and Thelonious Monk’s Underground.”

The article went on to say that, “Berg’s innovative covers were as much a product of his own artistic sensibilities as they were indicative of his eye for talent. As art director at Columbia, and later creative director and a vice president by the time he retired in 1985, he commissioned works by noted contemporary designers, illustrators and photographers like Richard Avedon, Paul Davis, Milton Glaser, Edward Sorel, Tomi Ungerer, Jerry Schatzberg and W. Eugene Smith.”

John Berg Columbia Art Director

Early career

According to the Cooper Union alumni site, “John Berg…was born in Brooklyn January 12, 1932.  He attended Erasmus Hall High School. He drew cartoons for the school newspaper. He attended The Cooper Union School of Art where he graduated in 1953.  After earning his degree, he worked for Doyle Dane Bernbach and Esquire. John Berg was responsible for the design of many popular album covers while he served as the vice president of Art and Design at CBS Records. Berg joined Columbia Records in 1961 as art director of packaging, after working for Gray Advertising, Esquire Magazine, Horizon Magazine, and others.

John Berg Columbia Art Director

Don’t dis the director

Not without a sense of humor mixed with a touch of vengeance, Berg designed the cover for an posthumous album by the conductor George Szell. Berg felt put upon and treated poorly by the famed Szell. Berg searched photograph after photograph before deciding upon the right cover for Szell’s recording with the Cleveland Orchestra of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.  Appropriate for the album if not for the conductor’s face.

John Berg Columbia Art Director

John Berg

The Waxpoetic site put together a (very) partial collection of Berg’s most famous covers. Follow this link.

I didn’t even know I knew this guy and I bet the same is true for you.

John Berg Columbia Art Director

Berg died on October 11, 2015. NYT obituary

John Berg Columbia Art Director