Ed Ward

Fame Studios And The Road To Nashville Songwriting Glory

Ed Ward — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:35:00 +0000

Wallace Daniel Pennington grew up singing. His father played guitar and his mother played piano, and by the age of 9, the young man had a guitar of his own. The family attended church on Sunday and Wednesday each week, and to this day, Dan Penn says he remembers the entire Methodist congregation belting out hymns.

As his family's only boy, Penn got his own room, and in it was a little green radio he used to smuggle beneath the sheets at night so he could listen to WLAC from Chicago.

Arctic Records: Drafting A Blueprint For The Philly Sound

Ed Ward — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:06:00 +0000

Arctic Records opened for business late in 1964. The label was the brainchild of Jimmy Bishop, the program director of WDAS — at the time Philadelphia's No. 1 black radio station. If that sounds like a conflict of interest, you don't know much about the music business in Philadelphia back then. Besides, it didn't help Arctic's first single, "Happiest Girl in the World" by the Tiffanys, three local teenagers who sang backup in various studios.

Jerry Lee Lewis: Live, Singing As If Life Depended On It

Ed Ward — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:29:00 +0000

It was April 4, 1964, and Jerry Lee Lewis had officially bottomed out. He hadn't charted a record in years, and now, on tour in England and Germany, he was getting paid so little that he couldn't afford to bring his own musicians. Instead, he was forced to use pickup bands in England, and then, when he arrived in Hamburg, a British band called the Nashville Teens was waiting for him. The venue was the Star Club, where The Beatles, who had just leaped into stardom in America, had played not long before.

Johnny Cash's Columbia Catalog Out Now — As A 64-Disc Box Set

Ed Ward — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:07:00 +0000

In 1955, John R. Cash was a sometime auto mechanic, sometime appliance salesman who liked to play the guitar and sing, mostly gospel songs. The "R" in his name didn't stand for anything — and, in fact, he'd been named J.R. at birth and had to come up with "John" when he joined the Air Force. He'd spend the rest of his life reinventing himself.

At first, though, what he wanted to do was make a record. So John and his two-piece band went to Memphis to record for Sun Records.

The Moving Sidewalks: Where The British Invasion Met Texas Blues

Ed Ward — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:26:00 +0000

There must be something in the water — or the beer — in Texas that caused the huge eruption of garage bands and psychedelic bands in the mid-1960s, because there sure were a lot of them, and their records on obscure labels have kept collectors busy for decades. Most of them were amateurs, but the Coachmen, who came together around 1964, were different.

Billy Gibbons had grown up in Houston as the son of top society orchestra leader Fred Gibbons, and had watched his father deal with getting and playing jobs, and with musicians.