LAUNCH.COM of YAHOO reviews by Joe Viglione

Bobby Hebb Biography
http://launch.yahoo.com/ar-307749-bio--Bobby-Hebb



Bobby Hebb made his stage debut on his third birthday, July 26, 1941, when tap dancer Hal Hebb introduced his little brother to show business at The Bijou Theater. This was an appearance on The Jerry Jackson Revue of 1942 even though it was 1941, "that was how Jerry, a big man in vaudeville in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, did things" noted the singer. Harold Hebb was nine years of age at the time and the young brothers worked quite a few nightclubs before Bobby Hebb entered first grade. Nashville establishments like The Hollywood Palm, Eva Thompson Jones Dance Studio, The Paradise Club, and the basement bar in Prentice Alley as well as the aforementioned Bijou Theater found Bobby and Hal dancing and singing tunes like "Lady B. Good," "Let's Do the Boogie Woogie," "Lay That Pistol Down Babe," and other titles that were popular at that time. Hebb's father, William Hebb, played trombone and guitar, his mother, Ovalla Hebb, played piano and guitar, while his grandfather was a chef/cook on the Dixie Flyer, an express train on the L&N -- Louisville & Nashville railroad. Brother Harold Hebb would eventually join Excello recording artists the Marigolds, documented in Jay Warner's biography of singer Johnny Bragg, the book Just Walkin' in the Rain; while Bobby Hebb, with so much musical influence and inspiration, would go on to pen hundreds upon hundreds of tunes, among them, BMI's number 25 most played song on their website in 2000, the classic "Sunny." Georgie Fame and Cher, charted with the title in England, but it was the Bobby Hebb original which reached the highest on charts in Europe and America. Covers by Frank Sinatra with Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder, Frankie Valli, Nancy Wilson, the Four Tops, Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield, and so many others, insured the song would reach audiences outside of those who heard and continue to hear it on Top 40 and "oldies" stations. But the song reached out beyond Top 40, climbing the country and R&B charts as well. Kal Rudman calls this a rare industry "hat trick" in the liner notes on the 1966 Phillips' album, but what no one could predict is how the song would find versions by Boney M. and Yambu bringing it to dance clubs, while jazz musicians explored the nuances of this amazing composition in their world. Hebb himself, in 2001, has performed the title with the Kubato Power Jazz Unit and Michael Shea Trio, the latter band featuring Thomas Hebb, Bobby's nephew, on bass. Noted author James Isaacs, whose liner note essays appear in some of the Sinatra boxed sets, provided a list of jazz musicians who have covered Hebb's signature tune: guitarist Pat Martino, singers Ernestine Anderson, Bill Henderson, Anita O'Day, organist Joey DeFrancesco, drummer Don Houge, pianists Joe Bonner and Hampton Hawes, trumpeter/flugelhornist Marvin Stamm, alto saxophonist Sonny Criss, and guitarist Stanley Jordan, among others. Bobby Hebb's influence goes far beyond "Sunny." When he joined Roy Acuff's Smokey Mountain Boys around 1952 in Nashville, he was one of the first African American artists to perform on The Grand Ole Opry before Charley Pride. Hebb moved to Chicago in 1954: "I wanted to play some music, and I wanted to advance my career, I didn't find the jazz I was looking for, but I ran into a lot of blues...I worked with Bo Diddley, maybe on an early Ellis McDaniels album." The song was "Diddly Diddly Diddly Daddy" with the Moonglows and Little Walter, recorded at Leonard Chess' studio in the back of his record shop on Cottage Grove Ave, "Leonard was the engineer," Hebb noted while telling this part of his rich history. Hebb joined the navy in 1955, playing the trumpet: "I learned West Coast jazz in the navy." The navy band was the USS Pine Island Pirates and they played "the whole time we were on board," including Hong Kong, performing for Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Sooong Mel-llng) at an event. The band got to meet Chiang Kai-shek as well. Around 1958 Bobby Hebb tracked "Night Train to Memphis," a song written by Owen Bradley for Roy Acuff's Smokey Mountain Boys. The tune was re-released in 1998 on a Warner Bros. box set, From Where I Stand, which also included "A Satisfied Mind" from the 1966 Sunny album. After that Hebb worked with Dr. John and left Nashville for New York. Disc jockey John "R" Richbourg, owner of Rich Records, which had released "Night Train to Memphis," got Hebb a gig at Sylvia Robinson's Blue Morocco Club. "I went for two weeks and stayed two years. The first two weeks I opened up with a Bobby Blue Bland song "Farther on Up the Road." The band playing behind me was Jimmy Castor, later on Bernard Purdie had just come to New York from Baltimore with Jewel Page." Hebb eventually replaced Mickey in Sylvia Robinson's group Mickey & Sylvia, who originally hit with "Love Is Strange." The duo became Bobby & Sylvia after Mickey left for Paris. After Bobby & Sylvia, Hebb was represented by Buster Newman, the man who "got "Sunny" happening in a lot of different ways." All the publishers they went to turned the song down! Newman's partner was Lloyd Greenfield, who managed Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, adding to his roster Bobby Hebb. While other groups in 1966 like Remains and the Ronnie Spector-less Ronettes opened for the Beatles, Bobby Hebb was headlining the tour with the Beatles, a fact that seems to have gotten lost in the overwhelming history of the Fab Four. After this, Hebb met comedian/composer Sandy Baron and the two got busy writing a Broadway show that never made it to Broadway. However, two of the songs -- "A Natural Man" and a tune they were writing about Marvin Gaye, "His Song Shall Be Sung" -- were picked up by Lou Rawls and released on MGM. "A Natural Man" the pair had actually rejected from their Broadway play. The original title of the song was "Natural Resource," but they doctored it up and gave it a different groove after Sandy Baron got Rawls interested in what became a huge hit for him. In 2001, the song will be the title track of a best-of Universal released on Lou Rawls. Sadly, Baron passed away in 2001, the year that saw the release of Roof Music's 16-track compilation of artists covering "Sunny," and interest in Europe for the song and the man who wrote and sang the definitive version. On July 28, 2001, two days after Hebb's 63rd birthday, this writer phoned Bernard Purdie at The House of Blues in Cambridge, MA, where Pretty Purdie was performing that night with Masters of Groove and for the first time in over three decades, Bobby Hebb and Bernard Purdie spoke on the phone and got to see each other at the show that evening. Bobby Hebb performed in June of 2001 at the opening of the Martini & Rossi 100 Years photo exhibit in Boston, shortly after graduating mini-med school. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
Written by Joe Viglione


Mark Farner biography
http://launch.yahoo.com/ar-315229-bio--Mark-Farner

Mark Farner
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Mark Farner is the heart and soul of the band Grand Funk Railroad, having written and/or sung their most famous songs from the majority of their '70s hits: "I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)," "Bad Time," "Footstompin' Music," "Rock & Roll Soul," the number one remake of the Little Eva classic "The Loco-Motion" ( which is everything creatively that a remake should be), a cover of "Some Kind of Wonderful," along with a multitude of well-known album tracks, including "Hooked on Love," "Mean Mistreater," "Heartbreaker," to riveting versions of the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" and Traffic's "Feelin' Allright." He was born in Flint, MI, in 1948, the second-oldest of four children, to Betty and Delton Farner. His first recorded work of note was with Terry Knight & the Pack on Lucky Eleven Records, distributed by Cameo/Parkway. In an interview on Visual Radio-Television taped August 31, 2001, at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut, Farner reminisced when he was shown a copy of Monumental Funk. "This is a bootleg...it's Pack music...Otis Ellis who owned Lucky Eleven Records...who did the deal with Cameo/Parkway...he always had the 'Michigan bankroll' with the rubber band around it, put the hundred dollar bills on the outside and have about 50 or 60 one-dollar bills on the inside, just a big wad. This is an album that they put out...the old manager Jim Atherton that managed the Pack was in cahoots with him on this. Jim's my friend today and I don't begrudge that those guys tried to make some money off us. At the time, we hated their guts, but now bygones are bygones, friends are friends, love always finds it's way back to the heart even though you may be temporarily disliking someone. If you really love 'em you'll be back together with 'em, you know?" The authorized biography of Mark Farner, From Grand Funk to Grace, was published in 2002 by Collectors Guide Publishing in Canada. As Farner said it has "the facts, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." Of his biographer, Beatles Undercover author Kristofer Engelhardt, Farner says "He's thorough...a very thorough guy. He should've been a P.I." The first 200 pages cover Farner's life from the loss of his father at age nine to how he developed as a musician. There are details on his marriages, his children and grandchildren, work with Terry Knight during their time together in the Pack, as well as Knight's management of the group and the eventual split and lawsuit. In a very bold move for a biography, Farner's views on politics, religion, and his philosophy on life in general -- which his biographer said are "more to the right than Ted Nugent" -- give a very sharp picture of an individual who is passionate about his ideals, a man who sticks to his guns. Engelhardt spoke with All Media Guide in February of 2002 and stated: "The man is definitely a dichotomy. But he is a very good soul at heart." The man who has stood on-stage in front of millions is completely charming when you stand in his presence, not the imposing larger than life image one might expect from the guy who fronted a group which, next to the Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Aerosmith, and the Doors, is one of America's most important and influential popular bands. Before an August 2001 performance, Farner, along with younger brother Rick Farner, and current members of the Mark Farner Band gathered together to pray, joining hands with their road manager and dedicating their performance with a loud "All for Jesus." Farner's stage presence in 2001 was as on target and powerful as when he appeared at the Boston Garden with Grand Funk Railroad in the '70s, and with other versions of the Mark Farner Band on the road in the '80s and '90s. In the book, Engelhardt said the song "I'm Your Captain" "could just as well have been an unknowing plea from Mark to be closer to home and released from the oppression of Terry Knight." But it could also be viewed as an anthem of the bandleader as his manager, ghosts from the past, and bandmembers push the ship this way and that. Grand Funk Railroad has had reunions, but band business gets complex as time marches on. Grand Funk without Farner is like Creedence Clearwater Revisited, which has the guitarist from the Cars but no John Fogerty. "All the king's horses and all the king's men"...somehow it's just not the same. Don Brewer and Mel Schacher were part of Flint in 1978 but choose to use the name Grand Funk touring in the new millennium (as they are two-thirds of the corporation). Even with the name, they do not have the marquee value of the original singer. In the 1990s, Farner created Lismark Communications with former Freedom Reader editor Steve Lisuk, re-releasing his solo Atlantic albums and some of his critically acclaimed Christian music on his own imprint, LisMark Records. They also have the rights to the aforementioned Flint album released by Craig Frost, Mel Schacher, and Don Brewer with performances by Todd Rundgren and Frank Zappa. They are keeping the legacy alive by re-releasing as much music pertinent to Farner's career as possible. His 2002 CD single, "Red, White and Blue," features a version of "Closer to Home" with brother Rick Farner and the singer on acoustic guitars. Lismark also has a set of discs of the Pack and Mark Farner rarities that are companion pieces to the Capitol Records Grand Funk box set. Farner's vision is what the public has come to expect when they see Grand Funk Railroad in performance, and the trio's legacy goes beyond their selling out Shea Stadium quicker than the Beatles or the mammoth billboard that adorned Manhattan. When you consider that Farner's band gave a platform to legendary blues artist Freddie King during the height of their fame, bringing him to an audience who may never have known his music and immortalizing him in the song "We're an American Band" (the number one hit credited only to drummer Brewer), it is easy to see their influence was far greater than the critics of the day ever cared to admit. "We're an American Band" is a song that never would have charted or sounded as it does without Farner's intro and the catalog established by his unique singing and passionate songwriting. Wet Willie, Humble Pie, and Mott the Hoople were also groups who benefited by performing with the enormously popular GFR, while many a garage band cut their chops on the bar chords of "Heartbreaker" or attempted to discover the musical nuances of "I'm Your Captain." The man who was one of the biggest selling rock artists of the '70s has his own webpage, www.markfarner.com, which continues to spread the gospel of his music and his faith. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
Written by Joe Viglione

TOMMY JAMES on LAUNCH

A NIGHT IN BIG CITY

http://launch.yahoo.com/read/review/12145439


A Night In The Big City Review12/18/2004 3:28 AM, AMGThis is an ambitious project by songsmith Tommy James featuring 11 songs and ten tracks of dialogue linking them together. Concept albums are tough -- a great example of a successful marriage of music and dialogue on CD being The Wizard Of Oz soundtrack. When Lou Reed released Berlin in 1973, the RCA label touted it as a "film for the ear." It was a soap opera set to music, a downer version of the "rock opera" format the Who launched with Tommy. In order to grab the listener, a storyline must be as compelling as the music. The narrative on A Night in Big City is confusing, but the music is among Tommy James' best solo work. This audio-movie has the smart pop Tommy James is known for, suspended by an unnecessary story thread. A natural evolution from his Christian of the World phase (which included the hit "Draggin' the Line"), the song "Baby Tonight" is vintage Tommy James with modern sounds. But it's necessary to get up and hit "next" on the CD player to skip the interruption and get to the next song, "Give It All," another hook-laden tune with James' great vocals and guitar work. It's nice to see he's still working with arranger and co-producer Jimmy "Wiz" Wisner (keyboards, synths, strings), who worked on the Christian of the World album. "Give It All" segues nicely into a revision of "I Think We're Alone Now," a very sparse, very cool "new wave" version. "Who Do You Love is ethereal Tommy James music, very nice indeed. James then picks up a chick for a ride in his limo, tuning his radio in to hear the single from this CD, "Megamation Man." This is a Ray Davies kind of "20th Century Man" that comes during the century after, a solid tune. "Madd Blue" is unique solo TJ. Unlike his Roulette discs without the Shondells, this is downright psychotic, sounding like Boris Karloff meets Richard O'Brien from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In the comic book accompanying this disc -- which features a "3D" cover a la Chuck Negron's The Long Road Back -- Willoughby, the crazed maître d', attempts to explain the night's show. "Blue Bird" begins in a Tiny Tim-ish '40s style (which Mama Cass Elliot embraced so well -- this song would've been perfect for her). "Angels and Strangers," written by James and Glen Wyka, has a great hook that is classic Tommy James, a bit of "Crimson and Clover's riff speeded up a tad. James is in excellent voice on this disc. "Tighter, Tighter" -- the hit he wrote for Alive 'n Kickin' (which became Brooklyn Dreams and appeared on Donna Summer's "Heaven Knows") -- is different than the version James re-recorded for his Fantasy Records debut in 1976. Co-produced by his old friends Ritchie Cordell and Kenny Laguna of "Mony Mony" fame, the Fantasy version is dreamier. This is more up-tempo and rocking. The band gets into a limo and ends up in a nightclub that burned down in 1937 -- some kind of script right out of Quantum Leap (not as much fun as the music, although it sounds good in theory). The final track, "In Slow Motion," is reminiscent of "Crystal Blue Persuasion." Despite the flaws in this endeavor, it is music that radio desperately needs. Maybe a new script for what comes between these songs upon re-release is in order, for without the interruptions, A Night in Big City is a classy effort. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide