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How Good It Is

Author: Claude Call

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Each episode, I choose a song from the 50s through the 80s and dive into its history, the story behind the song and other items of interest. Find more stuff at www.howgooditis.com
177 Episodes
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173: Wichita Lineman

173: Wichita Lineman

2024-01-1816:58

By 1968, Glen Campbell had moved from session musician to a star in his own right. His single "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," written by Jimmy Webb, was a huge hit for him. So when Campbell decided he needed another song, he turned back to Webb and asked him for another song. For whatever reason, he asked Webb to make it a song about a specific location. Webb, at that time, was in the business of writing as many songs as possible about his ex, a woman named Susan Horton. (Coincidentally, Jim Holvay was also spending a lot of time writing songs about a woman named Susan, go figure.) Susan Horton was at the heart of "Phoenix" and "MacArthur Park, which had just been released when Campbell came calling again. So he cranked out yet another song ostensibly about Susan. That song was "Wichita Lineman." Now, Webb wasn't as obvious about Susan as Holvay was, but in all of these songs you can hear some sense of loss and longing, so it's pretty clear that he had it bad for her. And between Webb's nearly-finished work and the production values that Campbell and producer/arranger Al De Lory, before long they had a genuine masterpiece on their hands. And honest to god, why haven't I covered this song back when the show was still in single digits? What else haven't I covered that really needs some attention? Drop me an email  at howgoodpodcast@gmail.com! Click here for a transcript of this episode.  Click here to become a Patron of the show. Patrons get a newsletter about 48 times a year, plus a few other goodies from time to time.
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! Today we're looking at three Christmas songs that are born from the anxieties of World War Two. Two of the songs aren't direct references to the war itself, but it clearly informed the subject. Themes of separation and loneliness emerge, and a sense of nostalgia is present throughout. Interestingly, one of the songs was so dark that the lyricist was asked to change the words...twice. For the other two songs, there's a verse that usually goes unsung, though once in awhile we get to hear it. And one song was popular enough with the public that it still holds the Guinness record for most copies of a song sold—and it's not even the original recording! And, as promised: here are the original lyrics to "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." Have yourself a merry little Christmas. It may be your last. Next year we may all be living in the past. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Pop that champagne cork. Next year we may all be living in New York. No good times like the olden days. Happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who were dear to us. Will be near to us no more. But at least we all will be together. If the Lord allows. From now on, we’ll have to muddle through somehow. So have yourself a merry little Christmas now. Happy holidays to ye! Click here to become a Patron of the show. Patrons get a newsletter nearly every Saturday night/Sunday morning, about 48 times a year. Sorry, no transcript this time.
...before we were so rudely interrupted... This is a song that I'm long-overdue in covering, if only because of the backstory it has. It's simultaneously heart-warming and heart-breaking. It's a love letter from lyricist Doc Pomus to his wife. That's not unusual, of course. Many songwriters compose songs dedicated to a loved one. But this one has an extra special twist to it. I shan't spoil it here, though: you'll have to actually listen to the show. So in this episode we'll learn about the genius of Doc Pomus, the genius of Dick Clark, and a little bit about children's television. Click here to support the show as a Patron. Patrons receive a weekly newsletter about 48 times a year.
170: I Fought the Law

170: I Fought the Law

2023-09-2117:30

How many times now have I gone into the backstory with a song and learned that the person who wrote it says something akin to, "Yeah, I knocked that one off in about fifteen minutes." Oftentimes they also think that the song isn't going to amount to very much, which I find kind of funny. But it also supports a working theory I have that it's not always the song itself, but the way it's presented. The Crickets (sans Buddy Holly) and a few others approached it one way, but Bobby Fuller and The Clash looked at it differently, and it paid off for them. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to support the show as a Patron.
169: Tiny Dancer

169: Tiny Dancer

2023-08-1320:34

I don't often play favorites on this show; in fact there have been a couple of songs I genuinely disliked, but I covered them anyway because the story behind them was kind of interesting. And I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify those songs, because I do try to be even-handed. However. I am going to take the time to gush about "Tiny Dancer" just a little bit, because it's one of my favorite songs by Elton John, and it may even be somewhere in my all-time Top Ten, if I took the time to compose such a list. Actually, I've already taken that time, and here's the episode. Before you listen, however, I will note that my wife doesn't really like this song, and I can't convince her to sing along with me on the chorus. Ever. Spoilsport. And, as promised, here's the "Tiny Dancer" clip from the 2000 film Almost Famous: Kate Hudson shoulda been a bigger star. Click here for a transcript of this episode.  Click here to become a Patron of the show.
168: Windy

168: Windy

2023-08-0213:56

The Association was a band that just kind of floundered for awhile. First in was in their early years when they were known as simply The Men, then, in 1966 after their first album did well, the second one did...not so much. Bones Howe Part of the problem, it seemed, is that the band members playing their own instruments was mostly not a good idea. So for their third album, Warner Brothers (which had purchased The Association's label and therefore their contract) brought in a new producer. That producer, Bones Howe, in turn brought in a bunch of session musicians who later became known as The Wrecking Crew. The Insight Out front sleeve. The members themselves also made some changes with regard to their overall sound and the materials that they recorded, and they managed to break away from their Sunshine Pop sound and into a more eclectic feel. Some tracks were psychedelic, some were Baroque, some were folky, and there was even a touch of the Garage Band sound. That third album, titled Insight Out, performed about as well as the first one did and yielded two of their biggest hits.  And in this episode we learn a little about one of those songs. Click here for a transcript of the episode. (The Blubrry player is supposed to provide one now; if you try it let me know how that works for you.) Click here to become a Patron of the show. For your trouble you'll receive a weekly newsletter about 48 times a year (hey, once in awhile I have to take a week off). It's chock full of news, opinions, and the weekly Calendar of This Day in Music History.
167: Without You

167: Without You

2023-07-0619:58

One  of my favorite titles for an album comes from The Animals. They did a bunch of albums up to 1969, then for a year or two there were a couple of compilation albums after they broke up.  But in 1977 the Animals reunited and released a new album, titled Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted. I don't know what made me think of that. Anyway. (heh.) This was one of those episodes where, the more I found, the more there was TO find. And so what I thought would be a relatively short episode clocks in at close to twenty minutes. What a bonus for ye! "Without You" has humble beginnings and a huge, happy ending, except for the composers, Pete Ham and Tom Evans. Although it was a huge hit for Harry Nilsson and later Mariah Carey, neither composer saw much money for it. They, themselves, didn't see much potential in the song, so they buried it in the dead center of the album, at the end of Side 1. Then in 1975, after years of mismanagement and legal squabbles, Ham committed suicide shortly after learning that all of his money had disappeared. Then, in 1983, following a dispute over royalties from the song, which had been in escrow going back to the Apple Records era, Evans also committed suicide. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a Patron of the show. As a Patron, you get access to a weekly newsletter that publishes at least 48 times per year (stuff happens once in awhile, ya know?). You also get occasional goodies like: Giveaways Special videos Bonus Episodes A Sense of Pride for Having Helped Foster an Independent Creator
166: Daydream Believer

166: Daydream Believer

2023-04-1014:02

I think that by now the Monkees have overcome their epithet of "Prefab Four," which I suppose was clever but not especially accurate. At least three of the Monkees were musicians who could act. I'd argue that Micky Dolenz was an actor who could play music. (More on that below.) Having said that, however, he's got one of the best voices of the rock and roll era, so my label comes from the fact that he came from acting rather than from music, as the others did. That they didn't write most of their own music is really of no consequence, given that the pressure for artists to write their own material wasn't really there yet. Similarly, the Monkees were under a tight contract, which made that difficult. Every move they made toward autonomy was met with resistance. In Michael Nesmith's case, it meant some acrimony between him and the label. At any rate, as I mention early in the show, "Daydream Believer" was the Monkees' last Number One hit, but it was only  their second-to-last Top Ten in the United States.  (Their last was 1968's "Valleri," which peaked at #3.) After that, it was the bottom half of the Hot 100 for the band until a brief comeback in 1986. While the  band members had achieved the autonomy they sought, they were also drifting apart as a group. Dolenz had lost interest in drumming, preferring instead to let session musicians take over. Producer Chip Douglas also noted that Dolenz was the weak link musically. He said that Dolenz' work on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. was cobbled together from several takes of the same song. The cancellation of the show and the poor reception of the film Head didn't help either. Finally Peter Tork quit the group by  buying out his contract at the end of 1968. By the time their television special 33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee aired in April 1969, Tork was long gone. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a Patron of the show. As a Patron, you get access to a weekly newsletter that publishes at least 48 times per year (stuff happens once in awhile, ya know?). You also get occasional goodies like: Giveaways Special videos Bonus Episodes A Sense of Pride for Having Helped Foster an Independent Creator
You might remember a few episodes back when I teamed up with Mike Messner. He's the host of the Gordon Lightfoot appreciation podcast Carefree Highway Revisited. Well, Mike is back, and this time around we're talking about Lightfoot's first big American hit, "If You Could Read My Mind." I actually went looking around for the album that I'd first heard this song on, and it turned out that I was exactly correct about its title: This was a four-album box set that came out in 1973, so clearly the folks at Warner Brothers didn't have a lot of hope for the rest of the decade, musically. However, this is a pretty amazing collection. I don't think K-Tel ever put anything like this together. And it's a shame that A) it's never appeared in cassette or CD format; and B) it's not likely to be, considering the nightmare it's got to be to get the rights to them by now. (You can get it on 8-track tape if you're so motivated, according to Discogs.) At any rate, I've actually wanted to cover this song for a long while, but didn't really have enough material for an entire episode, so I was glad to have Mike along for  the ride this time around. Click here to support the show  via Patreon. As a reminder: Patrons of the show get a newsletter in their email box every Sunday, whether there's a new episode or not. So I've been keeping them apprised of what's been happening in the news and in my life. They've been following me through the "medical issue" that I alluded to early in this episode. And they'll be getting something extra-special in the next week or two. This show doesn't have a transcript except for the one provided by the Blubrry player.
To be honest, I didn't really expect both of the musicians I approached this year to be both very open to the idea of an interview and so generous with their time. But I'm definitely glad that they were, especially because you get to benefit from the chats I had with them. And during this holiday season you get two long episodes instead of one semi-long one. Win-win all around! Brandon Walker's "Chinese Food on Christmas" isn't as Baltimore-centric as David DeBoy's song is, but it definitely has its origins in the fact that Brandon is from the Baltimore area, which is estimated to have about 100,000 people of the Jewish faith living here. Baltimore City is just under 600,000 people, so that's a pretty big chunk of matzoh, there. And, of course, he shot the video at several spots in the immediate area: Hunt Valley Towne Centre is a local outdoor shopping mall just north of the city. And yes, they spell it like that. The Senator Theatre is in the northern part of town.  You may recognize it from several John Waters films. The Chinese restaurant (now gone) that appears near the end is in Owings Mills, MD. It's perhaps best known for being where the Baltimore Ravens' training facility is located. And, of course, some of it was shot in his mother's basement. I don't think you can tour that or anything. So anyway, here's my chat with Brandon: And here's the second, fun version of the video, which Brandon posted about  13 years ago: As usual, interview episodes don't have a transcript created by me, but I'm curious to know whether the transcript generator provided by Blubrry gets the job done for you. Click here to become a Patron of the show.  Click here to learn more about OrchKids.
Over the last several years, radio stations have been snapped up by large corporations. Then, as a cost-cutting measure, certain functions have been centralized. One of these has been the stations' playlists, the literal list of songs that a station has in its rotation. This has led to a homogenization of radio stations and it kind of makes them not as much fun to listen to when you travel. That said, there are going to be variations to the playlists depending on requests and local tastes. For instance, Billboard lists the Top Song of 2022 as "Bad Habit" by Steve Lacy, but in Charlotte, North Carolina it comes out as #16 for the year. In Baltimore, there's a Christmas-related song that's a perennial favorite among the locals. However, it gets next to zero airplay anywhere else. And the song's author and performer is fine with that, because he knows that the song is very Baltimore-centric. His name is David DeBoy, and his song is called "Crabs for Christmas." David DeBoy is a local  theater actor, a television and movie performer, a voiceover artist, a motivational speaker, and a generally cool guy. And I'm not saying that because he responded so quickly to my request for an interview. In today's episode we spend some time talking about his career overall and some of the stories connected to "Crabs for Christmas." And I think my opening question may have caught him by surprise. Later this week I'll have another Baltimore-oriented holiday song for you, and a chat with that song's composer and performer. Click here to visit Dave DeBoy's website.  Click here to support this show through Patreon.  (Sorry, no transcripts for interview shows. However, the Blubrry podcast player is now supposed to generate one automatically, so let's see how well that works. )
Such a life I've had lately, what with getting Covid and then getting part of the house renovated...four weeks of a two-week project. And the job isn't even done, but that's not the contractor's fault. (Replacement parts, don'tcha know.) And for some reason it's taking forever to put the kitchen—the whole downstairs, really—back together. Anyway. This episode takes a peek at the song that arguably became the Four Tops' signature hit. The funny thing is, none of the Tops thought it would be a hit. What's more, none of them thought it SHOULD be a single, never mind a hit. But Berry Gordy isn't called "genius" for nothing, and he not only released the single, he made it the lead (and title) track for their fourth album. Reach Out (the album) is definitive Four Tops, and marks the bridge between early 1960s Motown and the sounds they were producing in the second half of the decade. Click here to become a Patron of the show. Click here for a transcript of this episode.
161: Stagger Lee

161: Stagger Lee

2022-09-0818:40

If you haven't been paying attention (and, based on the download statistics, you haven't), I'm part of a second podcast, where I take on more of a support role than as the lead voice. The show is called Words and Movies, in which my partner Sean Gallagher and I choose a pair of films and find the links between them. In an upcoming episode, we discuss a film from 2007 called Honeydripper, starring Danny Glover. There's a scene involving Glover's character and a blind musician played by Keb' Mo', who sings a couple of bars of "Stagger Lee," causing Glover to mutter, "I hate that song." We don't find out why until later in the film, but (spoiler alert) it's because when he was younger, he'd been in an incident similar to the one outlined in the song. The interesting thing here, though, is that the song "Stagger Lee" was always about one man killing another. But when Lloyd Price recorded the song, he recorded two versions: one in which one man kills another over a dice game, and another where they merely get into a fight over a pretty girl. (The second version was for American Bandstand and for radio consumption in more conservative areas of the country.) The experience that Glover's character went through as a younger man appears to be a mashup of both versions of the song. At any rate, "Stagger Lee" as a song has a very rich history, and it turns out to be rooted in a true story. Many times, when doing the research for an episode I reach a point where the more I dig, the more I find myself going in circles. This time, I tapped a rich mine of information, to the point where I found myself having to decide what to keep and what to toss to keep the episode to a reasonable length. Enjoy! Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a Patron of the show.
Pardon my allergies; I've sounded kind of rough for a week or so. There was a lot of throat-clearing to edit out of this one. I can't even blame the Southern Studio on this one; it's the direct result of spending too much time cutting the grass at home. (And THEN I can blame the Southern Studio a little bit, because I went there the next day and it certainly didn't help matters.) How does one spend too much time cutting the grass? By having an electric mower and starting the job with a battery that isn't fully charged, that's how. This is an episode topic I've wanted to return to for a long time, but for some reason I kept procrastinating. But way, way back in Episode 11, I featured a bunch of songs that had mistakes in them which were discovered before the final product was released, but they decided they liked it better that way and ran with it. And today we return to that well for another dip. The tough part with songs like this is curating the best ones to use. Led Zeppelin often left in stray noises because they didn't really care (ringing phones), or because they were actually counting on it (squeaky pedal on Bonham's drum kit). So finding one that was both inadvertent and improved the recording? Absolute Gold, Jerry. Similarly, The Beatles would make an error in rehearsal or elsewhere and decide that that was something they needed to retain/reproduce (e.g. the wine bottle rattling at the end of "Long Long Long"), so those weren't really good candidates. And, of course, you run into a story which is just plain wrong. Yes, Ronnie Van Zant was talking to the board operator when he said "turn it up" while recording"Sweet Home Alabama," but he did not mourn the loss of doughnuts near the end. (What you're hearing is, "Montgomery's got the answer.") At any rate, I finally buckled down and did the necessary research, and I hope you have fun with this one as much as I did. Incidentally, a big shout-out to the newest member of our Wall of Fame. Everyone say hello to Cousin Robert! If you want to join the family, you can click here to become a Patron of the show. Click here for a transcript of this episode.
Screen capture of McCarty during our Zoom-based interview. Jim McCarty is one of the founding members of The Yardbirds, and he's recently published his second book, She Walks in Beauty: My Quest for the Bigger Picture. It's a journey that starts with the death of his wife Lizzie and then jumps back to earlier in his life, as he examines the various things that connect us to parts of the world that are just beyond our reach. I was hooked immediately when I began reading this book, and no doubt you will be too. There's a search for spirituality weaved among stories about his musical career with, and since, the Yardbirds, and how the two occasionally intertwined. You can order the book from this site, or you can check out all the usual outlets (but it's guaranteed to be in stock there). At any rate, because he's living in France and I'm living in Baltimore, he and I communicated via Skype. It was supposed to be Zoom, but he couldn't get it to work. Then I couldn't get it to work. So we bailed out and jumped over to Skype, where my camera wouldn't work but at least we could hear each other. I'm so glad we both persevered, because I think we had a fantastic conversation, and the date of the interview turned out to be important to both of us, for similar reasons. At one point we talk about the Krishna Das cover of "For Your Love", which I gave him a heads-up that I wanted to talk about, and it turns out that he was quite familiar with it, and a little bit more. There's a short clip in the interview but the whole thing is here, and worth a listen. It's probably in my Top Ten all-time tracks: Enjoy! Jim McCarty Official Website Yardbirds Official Website Sarcoma Foundation of America Click here to become a patron of the show.  (Sorry, no transcript for this episode.)
158: Give It Away

158: Give It Away

2022-07-1012:26

When the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik first came out, I'd just left a job working in a record store and was doing some part-time work as a mobile DJ. I had a few regular gigs here and there on Long Island, which is where it's at when you do that sort of thing, because you get to know your crowd and who likes what, etc. Weddings and birthday parties, etc. were just Death on a Triscuit, because you have guests of all different ages, and the old people want to hear one thing, and the young people want to hear something else, and there are always arguments about the volume...feh. I hated doing that stuff. At any rate, I was working in a bar in Franklin Square, NY at this point and this crowd absolutely loved this track. That was a cool bunch, with a lot of that adult alternative stuff. I enjoyed working there except for two things: The equipment was stored in the bar's basement, which meant going outside into the alley out back, going downstairs to get it, dragging it upstairs and setting it up, and having to und0 it all at the end of the night; The setup was on floor level, which meant that any drunk moron could—and sometimes did—crash directly into my stuff. And since I was still playing records sometimes, that made for some audio disasters. I would have stayed longer if I hadn't broken my ankle and moved 30 miles away in the interim (long, long story there). I also liked my boss and he'd throw me other work from time to time. Ah, well. Incidentally, I didn't mention this during the episode but the song has been covered about a dozen times and sampled more than twice that many. In fact, Busta Rhymes' "Break Ya Neck" owes so much to "Give it Away" that all of the musicians who played on "Give it Away" appear on the record's credits as co-writers. (It's not so much a sampling as it is Rhymes inserting the chorus into the song.) Click here for a transcript of the episode. Click here to support the show via Patreon.
This is a show that I made a long while back specifically for the Patreon crowd. Those are the folks who have been supporting the program and helping me to cover some of the hosting and other costs attached to doing the show (e.g. subscriptions, software, etc.). In fact, it was so long ago that the show's logo changed in the interim. I had to re-do the cover art to accommodate the change. (Changing the lettering is easy; the rest of it was more complicated than it should have been. But now I'm just kvetching.) Their money also funded the source materials for this particular episode. As it happens, there's only one place you can get it. And it's only available on LP, though with the LP came the ability to download digital files as well. At any rate, because the LP set was quite expensive, I decided to create the episode as a "Thank You" to those folks. I also knew that I would publish it to everyone else in the future, around this time of year. For those of you who don't know: you can support the show financially at patreon.com/howgooditis. For a mere five bucks a month, you get a weekly newsletter where I share information from around the music world. The newsletter has a couple of Patron Saints, and that newsletter is delivered every single week (OK, there have been a couple of misses, usually due to illness) whether there's an episode or not. So while there haven't been any episodes in several weeks, the Patrons have been seeing newsletters. So anyway: what we have in this super-sized episode is a look at the Golden Record. That's the collection of music curated by scientists and then mastered onto a disc, which was put on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 and blasted off into space. The Voyagers are billions of miles away, and while their discovery by aliens is unlikely (because space is BIG, yo), there's a more-or-less permanent record (heh) of human culture out there in the universe. This episode is a track-by-track view of the Golden Record. You don't hear most of the tracks in their entirety, but you do hear something from every track. It's a fascinating look at what was considered significant enough to represent the entire planet back in 1977.
Hi, folks: I know, the feed has been quiet for awhile. Listen and you'll hear a little bit of the story, and what happens next. (Don't worry, I'm not quitting the show.)
156: Good Lovin’

156: Good Lovin’

2022-04-1713:40

For the last few weeks I've been having some weird troubles with the websites for both this podcast and the other one (wordsandmovies.com, in case you didn't know), especially with the other one. Pages would load slowly on my end, or not at all, which made it very difficult for me to post anything. And in the case of this site, it rendered releasing new episodes nearly (but not completely) impossible. So, after many hours on the phone with my webhost provider—most of them on hold—I finally gave up on them and moved the sites to a new location. A few bumps in the road were expected, and sure enough I got those. But for the most part everything has been going well over the last couple of days, so I took the time to record and post a new episode for you. (And apologies to the Patron crowd; that's the time I usually spend writing the newsletter.) There are still a few glitches here and there, and I'll be ironing those out as best I can. But I think in general we're all back on track. All that said, we're looking at a rather faithful cover of a song that, in turn, was a cover of another recording. However, that first cover was rather different from the original. To find out how different, you'll have to listen to the episode itself. But then, that's why you're here, isn't it. Despite being born in Westchester County, NY, Felix Cavaliere is closely associated with Long Island, enough so that he inducted Vanilla Fudge into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame. Most of Vanilla Fudge is from New Jersey, so there's that. I have to think that it's because both Vanilla Fudge and The Rascals earned a lot of their performing chops in Long Island clubs. At any rate, it was the "live" feel and energy of their performing "Good Lovin'" that the record's producers were hoping to capture when the track was cut, and it's pretty clear that they succeeded, even if Cavaliere and company didn't really like their performance on the record. In fact, they didn't think it would sell very well at all. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a patron of the show.
If you want to get technical about it, Looking Glass was NOT a one-hit wonder. "Brandy" was, to be sure, their biggest hit and the song that most people identify with the band. But "Jimmy Loves Mary-Anne," the opening track from their second album, spent only one week less on the Billboard Hot 100 chart than "Brandy" did. Okay, it peaked at #33 while "Brandy" spent most of its chart life at or near the top, but still. "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" was actually a departure from their usual sound, which was a little more Jersey Shore Rock and Roll. This wound up creating a little trouble for audiences who came to see them expecting to hear an entire evening of "Brandy"-grade music, and it probably contributed to the demise of the band. Founding member Elliot Lurie left the band in 1974 for a solo career, and by the end of the next year the band changed names twice and moved into a power pop/metal sound. That band, called Starz, did have a couple of hits and they do still play from time to time. Lurie, meanwhile, moved into the production and music supervision side of things for awhile, and occasionally returns to live performances. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a patron of the show.
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Comments (1)

Jake

a truly fantastic 10 Minute Podcast about music, trivia, as well as history of hit songs.

Jun 26th
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