Music Trivia

So as I was downloading all those songs from the Internet onto my IPod as I mentioned in my previous post, I came across some stuff that I had never heard of before.  I like to think of myself as a bit of a master of knowing the most useless stuff possible, trivial stuff, especially when it comes to movies and baseball.  I'm a sponge for that kind of data, so when I started noticing the trivial info about the music industry, I had to write some of it down, lest I forgot.  I'd like to share some of this info with all y'all.  Now I realize that what's new to me may not be new to others.  For instance, I just assume everybody knows about Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best being part of The Beatles before they became THE BEATLES.  But maybe there are people who don't know about them and need someone like me to write about it.  I also know that a lot of people might not care about what I found.  To them I say, stop reading.  This post is purely about information that I want to hold on to.  If you're not interested, read one of my movie reviews.  Anyways, here are some of the things that made me say, out loud, "I didn't know that!".

Boz Scaggs is a contemporary Pop/Rock musician who had a number of hits on the Billboard Hot 100 through the years including "Lowdown" and "Lido Shuffle".  He actually won a Grammy Award in 1976 for Best R&B Song "Lowdown".  Well, before becoming famous in his own right, he was a member of The Steve Miller Band.  Turns out Boggs and Miller went to the same prep school in Dallas back in 1959.  Scaggs joined Miller's band at the time, called The Marksmen, but eventually went their separate ways.  The late 1960's brought them back together, reuniting as members of The Steve Miller Band.  Scaggs was part of the band for their first two albums which included the hit single "Living In The USA".

Paul Rodgers has widely been considered one of the greatest rock voices of the last 40 years.  He was the face, the voice, the reason to listen to Bad Company.  They had numerous hits in the 70's and 80's including "Can't Get Enough", "Feel Like Makin' Love", "Bad Company" and "Rock N Roll Fantasy" just to name a few.  Many big bands that followed Bad Company have cited Paul Rodgers as a major influence, including The Black Crowes and Guns N Roses.  What I didn't know was that he was also the lead singer of the band Free, who had a massive hit in 1970 with "All Right Now".  I always knew of the band because of that song, one that I like to sing out loud often, but had no idea that it was Paul Rodgers' voice I was singing along with.  Reading up a little more on Rodgers, I found out he and one Jimmy Page started a band in the early 80's called The Firm.  They only made two albums but had a couple of number one songs on the Mainstream Rock charts.  Rodgers went on to sing with Brian May and Roger Taylor for some live Queen shows in the early to mid 2000's.

Just about everyone knows about the incestuous nature in the band Fleetwood Mac.  Lindsay Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie...everybody was sleeping with everybody.  What I didn't know was that Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks had their own band before they joined Fleetwood Mac.  The story goes Mick Fleetwood, the founder of Fleetwood Mac, needed a new guitar player after one of the originals left the band.  Fleetwood was at the Sound City recording studios (recently made famous in Dave Grohl's documentary "Sound City") when he heard Buckingham record some stuff.  He thought he'd be perfect for his band and approached him to join up.  Buckingham said he would only join Fleetwood's band if he could bring his girlfriend along with him.  His girlfriend, of course, was Stevie Nicks, and the rest is rock n roll history.  Fleetwood Mac had recorded 10 albums between 1968 and 1974.  Starting in 1975, when Buckingham and Nicks joined the band, they won a Grammy and have had four number one albums!

John Sebastian was an Adult Contemporary singer in the late 1970's that had a huge hit with "Welcome Back", the song used for the theme on TV's Welcome Back, Kotter.  I thought he was a one hit wonder, a name that nobody knew of before or after.  How dumb did I feel when I realized he was the lead sing of The Lovin' Spoonful!!  The Freakin' Lovin' Spoonful!!  They were a huge band in the 60's, churning out hits like "Do You Believe In Magic?", "Daydream" and one of my favourite songs, "Summer In The City".  Yeah, one hit wonder my ass!

The band Boston came out with one of the most successful debut albums of all time in 1976.  Laced with hit after hit such as "More Than A Feeling", "Piece Of Mind", "Foreplay/Long Time" and "Rock N Roll Band", the album went on to become one of the best selling discs ever.  What amazed me is the leader of the band, writer/guitarist Tom Scholz, recorded the whole thing in his basement!!  Scholz played every note of every instrument, even before a band was formed.  When he was done, he got his friend Brad Delp to lay down vocals.  Scholz shopped the finished product to every record label in town.  Epic finally signed them, but told Scholz to re-record the songs, with a real band, in a studio.  Scholz re-recorded a few things, not many, but still did it on his own...in his basement!!  One of the biggest bands of the late 1970's was really just one dude playing all the instruments on his own.  Crazy!

One of my all-time favourite funky R&B song was written and performed by the late great Isaac Hayes.  "The Theme From Shaft" gets me going every time I hear it.  I knew Hayes was an accomplished songwriter, but I had no idea to what extent.  In the mid-60's, Hayes teamed up with David Porter at Stax Records and the duo became one of the most prolific songwriting teams in the history of music!  They composed over 200 songs together, most of them hits, some of them huge hits.  Here's a list of just some of the songs Isaac Hayes had a hand in creating:  "Hold On, I'm Comin'", "You Don't Know Like I Know", "I Thank You", "Soul Sister, Brown Sugar" and "Soul Man" by Same And Dave; "I Got To Love Somebody's Baby" and "I Had A Dream" by Johnnie Taylor; "Let Me Be Good To You" by Carla Thomas.

I have been a fan of The Blues Brothers ever since I first saw them on Saturday Night Live.  I've seen their movie about a thousand times and could pretty much quote every word.  I have a number of their CD's (Best of, Live at, etc.) and I've always enjoyed hearing John Belushi say "Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn" at the end of their rendition of "Soul Man".  Little did I know how important Steve Cropper was to R&B and Blues music of the 1960's and 70's.  Cropper played with all the legends, including Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave and Booker T..  He had a hand in creating some of the biggest soul hits ever; "Mr. Pitiful", "In The Midnight Hour", "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay" and "Knock On Wood", a soul song that became a mega disco hit for Amii Stewart in 1979.  Steve Cropper is still considered one of the most important guitarist in the world of soul music.


I have more stories and trivia, but I'll have to save some for another post.......