On this day in 1969, Joni Mitchell was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine for the first time. She was featured on the cover again 10 years later. Her first issue with them sold for only 35 cents. Here she is in 1969 performing her hit classic "Chelsea Morning."
1. "Honey" Bobby Goldsboro
I HATE this song! So wimpy, I had to endure it endlessly in the pre-FM car radio days.
And when FM finally hit cars, it was really spotty. Sometimes we had to tune in the AM band just to get reception. Now in '68, I was fully an album guy, my single purchasing days were far behind me. But because of this auto situation, I knew the radio hits. I can sing every lick of this song, it's an insidious number that gets in your head that you can't get out.
But all these years later, every time I hear it, I smile.
Explain that to me! How songs you hate you end up liking decades later.
Note - liking, not loving...
Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.
Herb Abramson’s unexpected return to New York from Germany’s Army Dental Office set all parties off balance. It was April of ’55, and Herb’s marriage to Miriam had sunk off the map, in full flounder. Arriving back in New York with a pregnant German girlfriend had made that utterly clear. Miriam and Herb would be divorcing. Since his return to Atlantic, Miriam spoke to Herb less than zero, in the office or out.
Neither was the rest of Atlantic prepared for the return of “President Herb.” Jerry Wexler sat pat in the second management chair. Jerry was now a share-holder, a music maven, and active producer.
And the company’s business attitude had shifted from two years ago, when it was all R&B everything. Now, expansion had filled the label’s chairs to overflow.
Ahmet’s older brother, Nesuhi Ertegun, had joined the company just three months earlier, there to handle jazz and album production. So those areas were filled, too.
So: What to do with Herb? As Miriam made clear-as-a-Miriam to Ahmet, “He’s your problem.”
Atlantic now hummed along on three cylinders (Jerry, Ahmet, and Nesuhi).
This day in 1971, the album "4 WAY STREET" by Crosby Stills Nash & Young became #1 on the US album charts; their second album to hit #1. It was later certified 4 times platinum. Here they are performing "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," a song that was ranked in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Ah, the weather’s so nice I think we should have class outside today. It’ll give us a chance to observe nature. We’ll touch on Ornithology, draw pictures of Sunshine Superman in a velvet fog, and find out who’s the greatest dancer. Oh yeah, and when we’re done, we’ll crank some Van Halen. Pencils up, playas!!
Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.
Since its beginning moments, Atlantic’s heads had loved the sound of black artists. They signed them, and created their new Atlantic records label to make records just like the records they’d heard on black radio, bought in black record stores, loved more than chicks, and played to death.
Or to put it less reverently, “rhythm and blues” was Atlantic’s total cliché.
Ahmet had even grown adept at creating new songs in that mode. That proved useful to this new label being run by two white guys. (Being a small label, Atlantic hardly got first choice of new songs from the big publishers. Little Atlantic came in maybe next-to-last with publishers when it came to fresh tunes to record, and left-over songs rarely sold.)
So Ahmet (using the spelled-backwards writer name of “Nugetre”) started writing his own R&B tunes for Atlantic’s Clyde McPhatter, Joe Turner, Ben E. King, Ray Charles. And his feel for R&B records made him, as they would say, “hip to the tip.”
Atlantic had moved to floors four and five of a building above Patsy’s Restaurant (234 W. 56th, Mid-town).
Up on Floor Five, Atlantic’s two heads, Ahmet and Herb, held the faith. Hits like hits they’d heard before. Black ones.
