over50music.com

Sad to hear about Bob Bogle of The Ventures. Some of my earliest recording sessions were with The Ventures and Mel Taylor’s solo albums. More at my blog if you are interested.

I was saddened, but not particularly surprised to hear about Phil’s fate.

I had worked many times with Phil in the 60s and 70s, first with The Righteous Brothers and then with John Lennon and Leonard Cohen. There may have been a few other sessions thrown in here and there, but I don’t recall the artists names.

I, like many others, knew Phil from his music of the late fifties and early 60s. I first met him when he was scouting The Righteous Brothers. I was playing guitar for Bill and Bob and we were performing at the Red Velvet on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles. The place was packed and everyone knew Phil was coming to scout the Brothers and we were all pretty excited. Phil and his entourage came in with a lot of commotion.
It was quite a show, both on and off stage. It must have all worked because Phil signed the Brothers and the rest is history.

When “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” came out all of us who knew The Righteous Brothers and their earlier music were extremely disappointed. Hah, what did we know! I do remember Bill telling me how grueling the vocal sessions were. Being young and naive I didn’t know at the time what making records was all about. I did work for Phil on some of the Righteous Brothers’ album cuts. Of course, for the hits Phil was using the well-known “A players”, the “Wrecking Crew”. As Bill started producing more and more he was using many of those same players, so I got to work with them, and that was an added thrill. At about this time stories of Phil’s eccentric behavior started coming to my attention.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pittsburgh, 1966. (All names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.)

When I was sixteen — still young enough to be silly, but old enough to have my first boyfriend – I had an eclectic group of friends from the neighborhood. We were the oddballs. The ones who didn’t quite fit in with the “popular” girls. So in the way that oddballs do, we decided that we were the “rebels”, the nonconformists. Our particular brand of nonconformism conformed to certain conventions. We smoked “ciggy-poohs” and they had to be Marlboros. (This was pre-marijuana). We wore jeans, exclusively when we weren’t at school. We teased our hair. We swore. We wore lipstick and eyeliner. We experimented with beer, but admittedly, I was never any good at that particular skill. We thought we knew all about boys and we shared what little we did know. All of this made us a rather tight-knit gaggle of girls.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know how I found this or even why I was looking for something on youtube but that’s how it always starts….ya know? I mean… I came across this video clip and I swear I have watched it at least a half dozen times every day since I found it. Its a song by a female country artist that had a huge hit with it in the early 1950’s….if your ears have not yet been blessed by this voice, her name is Goldie Hill. This was an answer song written for “Don’t Let the Stars Get In Your Eyes”. I love it…..you will too!

Here’s a picture of Ms. Goldie from back in the day….

Here’s the clip that’s been in heavy rotation lately….

Read the rest of this entry »

Go to Source