Tag Archives: Woodstock Birthdays

Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius

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Saxophonist Fred Lipsius

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius

Born November 19, 1943
Woodstock alum with Blood, Sweat and Tears
Many happy returns

 

Fred Lipsius

Fred was born in the Bronx, NYC and began playing the clarinet when he was 9.

From a 2014 staxshed.com interview:

I’m the only musician in my family. I’m the middle child of three kids. One of my mother’s brothers played piano, but not professionally, and one of my Dad’s brothers played too, but he just read piano sheet music. So I sort of felt like the ‘ugly duckling’ (the ‘different’ one, who chose to be a ‘musician’) out of everyone in my family. I was always deeply moved by music as far as I can remember. It’s always been a very pure thing for me. When I was about seven I saw Louis Armstrong and his band on TV. I didn’t really know what jazz was at that time but I told my mom that I want to do that.

In public school, all of the 4th graders took a music test to see which of us had talent in that area. I passed the test and was put into a special music class in my 5th and 6th grades. I played clarinet and was basically the worst clarinetist of about 20 kids. I only practiced 20 minutes a day (this included putting the clarinet together with cork grease and taking it apart and swabbing it)! Back then, I was more interested in playing basketball. But in the 6th grade, for some reason, I improved and became first or second in my class. I bought a few Benny Goodman records and was able to copy just a few of his licks by ear, although I really didn’t have much of an ear back then. My ear did develop into my teens, from listening to and transcribing solos of my favorite jazz players (mostly saxophone and piano). My favorite alto players were Bird, Sonny Stitt and CannonbalI. I also listened to Rollins and Coltrane on tenor. I still have a copy of all the solos and licks I transcribed. They’re now in a big loose leaf book, neatly re-copied. I show this book to my private students at Berklee to encourage them to do some work like I did.

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius

More

From his site and his label’s sites:

[He began to play] “…alto and tenor saxophones in Junior High School, and piano at Music and Art High School in Manhattan. He continued his studies at Berklee School of Music (1961-62), and then went on the road. Fred Lipsius was the original saxophonist, arranger and conductor with Blood, Sweat & Tears (1967-71). He also doubled on keyboards. While with the band, he won nine Gold Records plus a Grammy Award for his arrangement of “Spinning Wheel” and a Grammy for ‘Album of the Year’ as a BS&T band member. Fred also arranged and co-arranged, respectively, the hit singles “Hi-De-Ho” and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.” He brought the “jazz” element to the band and the public with his arrangements and solos on sax and piano. In both the Downbeat and Playboy jazz polls he placed in the top ten of the alto sax category. Rock and Roll history books credit him as the first saxophonist to mix jazz and rock styles in his solos.

Fred has composed, arranged and produced radio and TV commercials, including 2 CBS TV logos & themes introducing the season’s upcoming shows. In the spring of 1982, he toured with Simon and Garfunkel in Japan and Europe, and was a featured soloist. Fred has authored seven books/CDs on jazz improvisation and jazz reading, published throughout the world. Other published works of his include small combo and big band jazz/fusion arrangements.

He has performed with jazz greats Cannonball Adderley, Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, Eddie Gomez, Al Foster, George Mraz, Larry Willis, Randy Brecker, Rodney Jones, plus a number of prominent Berklee College of Music faculty such as Herb Pomeroy, Alan Dawson, Ray Santisi, and Donald Brown. He has written music for and performed on over 30 CDs as both a leader and sideman.

In 2020, Fred retired from Berklee College of Music in Boston after teaching full-time for 35 years.

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius

Spinning Wheel

If you’ve ever visited the Museum at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, then “Spinning Wheel”  will sound familiar. Here is an 2004 interview with him.

Fred’s recent projects include new music, original computer art, and his book, “The Tree With Many Colors”, which contains insights about the giving and receiving of love… the purpose of life.

In 2020, Fred retired from Berklee College of Music in Boston after teaching full-time for 35 years.

Click for more including about his digital art >>> his site

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius
Birthdays, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Guitarist Neil Percival Young

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Guitarist Neil Percival Young

Here’s to you
Neil Young
…and here’s to you, too, the Neil Young

Happy Birthday

November 12,  1945

I didn’t know I’d encountered Neil Young when I first heard “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing.” It was late July 1966 and New York’s WOR-FM had changed formats to playing rock music. Due to a DJ union issue, the station at first simply had songs and commercials. No DJ chatter. Good and bad. I preferred music to chatter: good. I also wanted to know the names of songs I’d never heard before: bad. And who was this guy Clancy I kept hearing about?

Hey who’s that stomping all over my face?

Where’s that silhouette I’m trying to trace?

Who’s putting sponge in the bells I once rung?

And taking my gypsy before she’s begun?

What I’d later discovered was the Buffalo Springfield and by extension, Neil Percival Young.

Guitarist Neil Percival Young

Neil Young

I didn’t know who this Buffalo Springfield was, but I like them and all their three of their albums. I was also disappointed when they broke up. By then I knew the names of its members and was delighted to find out that Neil Young had released a solo album

Guitarist Neil Percival Young

To this day, Neil himself  is not happy with the album’s production. The explanation I’d heard was that he did not like his singing voice and deliberately had it buried in the mix. Later, when he became successful, the tracks were remixed with his voice more prominent.

It made no difference to me. I loved the album despite it lyrical density. Unlike Dylan, I could understand the lyrics, but like Dylan they I could not translate them.

But the music went inside me and reached great places. He has continued to do so for another half century years and counting. His solo work, expansive and growing, compares to anyone.

Guitarist Neil Percival Young

World Record

Neil Young released “World Record” on November 18, 2022, his 43rd studio album. The album was produced by Young and Rick Rubin

Long May You Run

Anyone would have a pretty good argument if they said that the Neil Young was the most important musician to come out of the 1960’s counter-culture. Of course there is Nobel Laureate  Bob Dylan’s immeasurable contributions and his continued influence. but overall, Neil Young has stayed closer to the roots of those 60s, while Dylan’s musical journey has taken him many more places.

It’s not a competition.

Truly, Neil, Long May You Run!

Guitarist Neil Percival Young

Neil Young Archives

NYA contains the complete archives of Neil Young. The site is designed for a chronological exploration of artist output including music, books, films, & videos and is available via subscription.

Guitarist Neil Percival Young
Birthdays, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Older Brother Tom Fogerty

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Older Brother Tom Fogerty

November 9, 1941 – September 6, 1990

Older Brother Tom Fogerty

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty could certainly write hits:

  • Green River
  • Fortunate Son
  • Born on the Bayou
  • Proud Mary
  • Who’ll Stop the Rain
  • Bad Moon Rising
  • Lookin’ Out My Back door
  • Down on the Corner
  • Have You Ever Seen the Rain
  • Up Around the Bend

…and many many more. At a time when so-called underground FM radio station bands were making concept albums, CCR stuck with the older format churning out albums full of songs that typically stayed within AM radio’s strictures of under 4 minutes and more often under three minutes.

Unfortunately, John’s success overshadowed the artistic hopes of the other band members like his older brother, Tom.

Older Brother Tom Fogerty

Background

Tom Fogerty was born in Berkeley, California.  He formed a band, Spider Webb and the Insects, that Del-Fi Records signed in 1959.  Spider Webb only recorded one song for the label, “Lyda Jane,” but it was never released and the group broke up shortly thereafter.

Tom joined John’s band, the Blue Velvets, in 1960. The Blue Velvets had limited local success in the San Francisco Bay area.

The four signed with Fantasy Records in 1964. There they were briefly the Visions, the Golliwogs,  and finally, in late 1967, Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Older Brother Tom Fogerty

Stardom

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That elusive success suddenly exploded upon them: between July 1968 and December 1970, Creedence released six albums and top 10 hit after hit. The band was more a back up for John than a collaboration. Tom, the original front singer and whose own compositions were hardly included in the band’s albums, led to his leaving the band in 1971.

Post Creedence

Solo

He signed a solo deal with Fantasy in 1972 and released the first of his solo albums, Tom Fogerty, in 1972.  His other albums were:

ExcaliburTomFogerty.jpg

ZephyrNational.jpg

MyopiaLP.jpg

DealItOut.jpg

Ruby band

According to Wikipedia, Ruby was an American rock band that between 1976 and 1984 recorded three albums, Ruby, Rock & Roll Madness and Precious Gems.

Personnel were:

  • Tom Fogerty – guitar, harmonica, vocals
  • Randy Oda – guitar, keyboards, vocals
  • Anthony Davis – bass, vocals
  • Bobby Cochran – drums, percussions, vocals

Albums:

TOM FOGERTY & RUBY - RUNNING BACK TO ME.wmv - YouTube

Ruby – Rock & Roll Madness (1980, Vinyl) - Discogs

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With Randy Oda
  • Sidekicks  (released posthumously in 1992) Tom Fogerty Randy Oda 1988 Sidekicks 1992 Album Cover.jpg
Best of…

Fogerty, Tom - Very Best of Tom Fogerty - Amazon.com Music

None had any of the commercial success that CCR had. CCR itself broken up by 1972, many say due to John’s continued insistence that all band-related issues be his to decide.

Health

Tom moved to Scottsdale, Arizona in the ‘80s. He underwent back surgery, but an unscreened blood transfusion infected him with the AIDS virus. It led to his death, officially of tuberculosis, on Sept. 6, 1990.

He was 48. The LA Times obituary had 116 words. The NY Times had 93. A search of the Rolling Stone Magazine site revealed no obituary.

Older Brother Tom Fogerty

Retrospective

In a July 18, 2014 interview in Uncut, band bassist Stu Cook  said, “Tom had put up with a lot of shit from John. I think Tom was expecting John to say, ‘OK, now we’ve achieved our goals, why don’t you start singing a few of the songs?’ Tom had a great voice, kinda like Ritchie Valens. Tom would have done a damn good job on ‘La Bamba’. But John didn’t want him to sing it, in case we had a hit with it. He didn’t want Tom to succeed.”

The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. One of the most infamous inductions of any band in the Hall’s history. According to The History of Tom Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival from the Ultimate Classic Rock site:  When Creedence Clearwater Revival was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…Tom Fogerty’s widow brought his ashes in an urn. John, however, refused to share the stage with his former bandmates.

The feud between the remaining three band mates (though obviously “mates” is not the word to use) continues.

Older Brother Tom Fogerty

Here Stands the Clown

Here stands the clown
Spotlight currents all around
We don’t see that that clown is me
Here stands the clown

Here stands the fool
Locomotion layin’ down the rules
We don’t see that that fool is me
Here stands the fool

Here stands the man
Close the book he made with his own hands
We don’t see that that man is me
Here stands the man

Older Brother Tom Fogerty