At the height of Motown’s pow­ers in the 1960s they were set­ting trends, not chas­ing them, but even that record com­pa­ny fell under the spell of the British Inva­sion. Sure, the juke­box R’n’B sin­gles that made their way across the Atlantic were in the DNA of The Bea­t­les, Rolling Stones, and the Who, but in the mid’60’s the label decid­ed they need­ed a beat group of their own. That’s how one of the weird­est tales of pop music unfold­ed, and would have stayed a tiny foot­note if it weren’t for the future fame of two of the Mynah Birds’ mem­bers: funk over­lord Rick James and folk-rock­er-noise­mak­er Neil Young.

Yes, for a brief peri­od of time they were in the same band togeth­er in Toron­to, Cana­da, part of an explod­ing beat group scene that was most­ly all white. “I was an authen­tic R&B singer liv­ing in a city where white musi­cians were striv­ing to play authen­tic R&B,” Rick James wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy quot­ed in Bandsplaining’s above video. “That added to my sta­tus. It also got me laid.”

James Ambrose John­son Jr., had been in Cana­da for two years already, hav­ing escaped the Viet­nam draft by flee­ing north in 1964. Saved from a bar brawl by future mem­bers of The Band, Lev­on Helm and Garth Hud­son, he entered the music scene and adopt­ed the name Ricky Matthews, as a way to hide his iden­ti­ty. The Mynah Birds began in 1964 and even put out a sin­gle on Colum­bia that went nowhere. They tried (and failed) again in 1965, with an ever-chang­ing line-up. Ricky Matthews though, remained the dynam­ic lead singer.

Enter Neil Young. As Rick James tells it, he was look­ing to change their sound and he saw Neil Young play­ing in a cof­fee­house and asked him to join. (James’ rec­ol­lec­tion is in the above video.) How­ev­er, Kevin Plum­mer in the Toron­toist has a dif­fer­ent ver­sion:

One day—most like­ly in the fall of 1965, but some say in ear­ly 1966—Young was walk­ing down Yorkville Avenue with an amp on his shoul­der. As he passed, Palmer struck up a con­ver­sa­tion. The Mynah Birds were, once again, with­out a lead gui­tarist, so he asked Young to join—despite the fact that Young only owned the twelve-string acoustic. “I had to eat,” Young is quot­ed in John Einarson’s Neil Young: Don’t Be Denied (Quar­ry Press, 1992). “I need­ed a job and it seemed like a good thing to do. I still liked play­ing and I liked Bruce so I went along. There was no pres­sure on me. It was the first time that I was in a band where I wasn’t call­ing the shots.”

As Young and James were soon to share a base­ment apart­ment and a whole lot of drugs, the par­tic­i­pants can be for­giv­en for their hazy mem­o­ries.

The video also con­flates their sven­gali (John Craig Eaton, a depart­ment store heir who bankrolled the band and gave them rehearsal space) with their man­ag­er (folk singer and fan Mor­ley Shel­man). Whether it was Eaton, Shel­man, or just luck, with­in two months of hav­ing Young in the band, and a rep­u­ta­tion for wild, amphet­a­mine-dri­ven concerts—the band had signed a sev­en-year con­tract with Motown, the first most­ly-white act to do so.

Neil Young remem­bered the first album ses­sions in an inter­view with Cameron Crowe:

We went in and record­ed five or six nights, and if we need­ed some­thing, or if they thought we weren’t strong enough, a cou­ple of Motown singers would just walk right in. And they’d Motown us! A cou­ple of ’em would be right there, and they’d sing the part. They’d just appear and we’d all do it togeth­er. If some­body wasn’t con­fi­dent or didn’t have it, they didn’t say, ‘Well, let’s work on this.’ Some guy would just come in who had it. Then every­body was groov­ing. And an amaz­ing thing happened—we sound­ed hot. And all of a sud­den it was Motown. That’s why all those records sound­ed like that.

Rick James was wor­ried about enter­ing the States and being arrest­ed for avoid­ing the draft. But in Detroit he was safe. It was when he returned that the trou­ble began—he dis­cov­ered that Shel­man had appar­ent­ly spent their advance on a fan­cy new motor­bike and a not-so-fan­cy hero­in habit. A fight broke out and Shel­man retal­i­at­ed by rat­ting James out. James turned him­self in to the Amer­i­can author­i­ties and the Mynah Birds’ career—at least the James/Young version—ended. Only four of the tracks record­ed for the album were ever released, two at the time as a sin­gle, the oth­er two in 2006 as part of a Rhi­no Records Motown ret­ro­spec­tive. More are rumored to exist but they remain hid­den away in a vault at best, destroyed at worst.

Young would move to Cal­i­for­nia soon after and join Buf­fa­lo Spring­field. James, once out of jail, would make his way back into the record­ing indus­try, iron­i­cal­ly return­ing to Motown. Band mem­bers Goldy McJohn and Nick St. Nicholas would form Step­pen­wolf. And through it all, James and Young remained friends.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing the Bass Play­ing Style of Motown’s Icon­ic Bassist James Jamer­son: “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough,” “For Once in My Life” & More

Catch Ste­vie Won­der, Ages 12–16, in His Ear­li­est TV Per­for­mances

Neil Young Releas­es a Nev­er-Before-Heard Ver­sion of His 1979 Clas­sic, “Pow­derfin­ger”: Stream It Online

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

When did the first rooftop con­cert hap­pen? Prob­a­bly not long after con­struc­tion of the first rooftop. How could ear­ly humans resist such an oppor­tu­ni­ty to project sound over the heads of a crowd? But if we’re talk­ing about a Rooftop Con­cert, we’re talk­ing about a spe­cial genre of gig defined by The Bea­t­les’ farewell rooftop show in Lon­don on Jan­u­ary 30, 1969. Since that his­toric moment, each time musi­cians take to a rooftop, they inevitably face com­par­isons with the Fab Four, even if their rooftop con­cert hap­pened first.

Before Paul McCart­ney sang “You’ve been play­ing on the roofs again” in an impro­vised “Get Back” in Lon­don, Jef­fer­son Air­plane “per­formed on a New York City rooftop in 1968,” writes Rajesh Kumar Jha at The Cit­i­zen.

“The con­text for the con­cert was pro­vid­ed by events like the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Kennedy and Mar­tin Luther King, and the accel­er­at­ing Viet­nam War.” The affair was orga­nized by Jean-Luc Godard, who “want­ed to film the rad­i­cal mood of the times under his 1 AM. Project, for which the Air­plane were best suit­ed.”

Grace Slick opened “The House at Pooneil Cor­ners” by shout­ing from the roof, “Hel­lo, New York! Wake up, you fuc&ers! Free music! Nice songs! Free love!” They made it 7 min­utes into a set before the police broke it up and made arrests. Godard end­ed up aban­don­ing the film, leav­ing it to D.A. Pen­nebak­er to fin­ish and release it as 1 P.M. Can we cred­it Godard for the rooftop con­cert as a thing? Or did he steal it from an even ear­li­er antecedent, Brazil­ian singer Rober­to Car­los, nick­named “the Elvis Pres­ley of Brazil”? Car­los staged a rooftop con­cert liv­ing room set below for his song “Quan­do” in 1967.

Who­ev­er invent­ed the rooftop con­cert, by the time U2 did it on an L.A. rooftop — legal­ly — play­ing “Where the Streets Have No Name” to kick off the Joshua Tree tour, the trick had become old hat. Acknowl­edg­ing their debt, Bono joked in an inter­view, “it’s not the first time we’ve ripped off the Bea­t­les.” Lit­tle did he know, per­haps, that they were also rip­ping off Jef­fer­son Air­plane, who them­selves were only imi­ta­tions, when it came to rooftop con­certs, of “the Frank Sina­tra of Latin Amer­i­ca.” Rober­to Car­los might be lip synch­ing, and seem­ing­ly sans audi­ence in his appear­ance on a São Paulo rooftop, but we must admit he set a styl­ish stan­dard for the genre of the rooftop con­cert all his own, two years before the Bea­t­les made it theirs.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Dick Clark Intro­duces Jef­fer­son Air­plane & the Sounds of Psy­che­del­ic San Fran­cis­co to Amer­i­ca: Yes Par­ents, You Should Be Afraid (1967)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

To me Robert Johnson’s influ­ence — he was like a comet or a mete­or that came along and, BOOM, sud­den­ly he raised the ante, sud­den­ly you just had to aim that much high­er. 

As Kei­th Richards tells it, the first time he met Bri­an Jones, the two “went around to his apart­ment crash-pad,” where all Jones had was “a chair, a record play­er, and a few records, one of which was Robert John­son.” Jones put on the record, and the moment changed Richards’ life. He wasn’t so much inter­est­ed in the dev­il at the cross­roads. The first ques­tion he asked — “Who’s that?” — was fol­lowed by, “Yeah, but who’s the oth­er guy play­ing with him? That, too, was Robert John­son, play­ing rhythm with his thumb while bend­ing and slid­ing with his fin­gers, the fan­cy gui­tar work that earned him the envy of fel­low blues­men, and led to the rumor his skills came from hell.

“One of the sta­ples of Johnson’s style is his abil­i­ty to sound at times like two gui­tar play­ers,” writes Andy Ale­dort at Gui­tar World, “com­bin­ing dri­ving rhythms on the low­er strings with melod­ic fig­ures with the high­er strings.” Like every oth­er British gui­tarist of his gen­er­a­tion, Richards was enchant­ed. “I’ve nev­er heard any­body before or since use the form and bend it quite so much to make it work for him­self…. The gui­tar play­ing — it was almost like lis­ten­ing to Bach. You know, you think you’re get­ting a han­dle on play­ing the blues, and then you hear Robert John­son….”

The leg­endary blues­man became not only Richards’ hero, but also his teacher. “We all felt there was a cer­tain gap in our edu­ca­tion,” he tells The Guardian, “so we all scram­bled back to the 20s and 30s to fig­ure out how Char­lie Pat­ton did this, or Robert John­son, who, after all, was and still prob­a­bly is the supre­mo.”

Fig­ur­ing out what John­son did still con­sumes his biggest fans. Since his record­ings were inten­tion­al­ly sped up, inter­preters of his music must make their best guess­es about his tun­ings, which “can be bro­ken down into four cat­e­gories: stan­dard tun­ing, open G, open D and drop D,” Ale­dort notes. (There are oth­er argu­ments for alter­nate tun­ings.) Richards fre­quent­ly used open tun­ings like John­son’s before he learned 5‑string open G from Ry Cood­er, on songs, for exam­ple, like “Street Fight­ing Man.” At the top, he gives us his inter­pre­ta­tion of John­son’s “32–20 Blues,” in stan­dard tun­ing.

And just above, Keef offers a brief les­son on how to play the blues, mum­bling and growl­ing over a 12-bar vamp. The music took him over, he says, “it’s just some­thing you’ve got to do. You have no choice. I mean, we had oth­er things to do and every­thing, but once you got bit­ten by the bug, you had to find out how it’s done, and every three min­utes of sound­bite would be like an edu­ca­tion.”

What did their blues heroes think of the Stones? The band nev­er got to meet Robert John­son, of course, but he might have been appre­cia­tive. “I got the chance to sit around with Mud­dy Waters and Bob­by Wom­ack,” says Kei­th, “and they just want­ed to share ideas.” John­son didn’t leave much behind to learn from, but his keen­est stu­dents found exact­ly what they need­ed in his few haunt­ing record­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kei­th Richards Demon­strates His Famous 5‑String Tech­nique (Used on Clas­sic Stones Songs Like “Start Me Up,” “Honky Tonk Women” & More)

Cov­er­ing Robert Johnson’s Blues Became a Rite of Rock ‘n’ Roll Pas­sage: Hear Cov­ers by The Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton, Howl­in’ Wolf, Lucin­da Williams & More

Robert John­son Final­ly Gets an Obit­u­ary in The New York Times 81 Years After His Death

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Image via Ebay

The big, stand-up dou­ble bass or “bull fid­dle,” as it’s been called, dates to the 15th cen­tu­ry. The design has evolved, but its four strings and EADG tun­ing have remained stan­dard fea­tures of bass­es for sev­er­al hun­dred years of clas­si­cal and, lat­er, jazz, coun­try, and ear­ly rock and roll. Its boom­ing tone and unwieldy size notwith­stand­ing, the ven­er­a­ble instru­ment is a mem­ber of the vio­lin fam­i­ly. So, when did the four-string bass become a bass gui­tar?

Leo Fender’s 1951 Pre­ci­sion Bass is fre­quent­ly cit­ed as the first — “such a spe­cial instru­ment,” writes the Fend­er com­pa­ny, that “if Clarence Leo Fend­er were to be remem­bered for noth­ing else, sure­ly it would be the Pre­ci­sion — an instru­ment — indeed a whole new kind of instru­ment — that sim­ply did­n’t exist before he invent­ed it.”

Pri­or to Fender’s inno­va­tion, it was thought that the ear­li­est exam­ples of elec­tric bass­es were stand-up mod­els like Regal’s Elec­tri­fied Dou­ble Bass and Rickenbacker’s Elec­tro-Bass-Viol, both dat­ing from 1936.

Image via Ebay

But as his­to­ri­an and writer Peter Blecha found out, the first elec­tric bass gui­tar actu­al­ly appeared that same year, invent­ed in ‘36 by “musician/instructor/basement tin­ker­er” Paul H. Tut­marc, “a pio­neer in elec­tric pick­up design who mar­ket­ed a line of elec­tric lap­steel gui­tars under the Audiovox brand out of the unlike­ly town of Seat­tle.” Through­out the thir­ties and for­ties, notes Gui­tar World, Tut­marc “made a num­ber of gui­tars and ampli­fiers under the Audiovox brand.” In 1935, he invent­ed a “New Type Bull Fid­dle,” an elec­tric stand-up bass. The Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer announced it at the time as good news for the “poor bass-fid­dler… who has to lug his big bull-fid­dle home” at the end of the night.

The fol­low­ing year, Tut­marc com­bined his instru­ment-mak­ing skills into the world’s first bass gui­tar, the Audiovox 736 Elec­tric Bass Fid­dle, a true orig­i­nal and a “rad­i­cal design break­through,” Blecha writes. Tutmarc’s instru­ment solved the bassist’s prob­lems of being inaudi­ble in a big band set­ting and being bare­ly able to car­ry one’s instru­ment to and from a gig. The 736 did not catch on out­side Seat­tle, but it did get out a lot around the city.

Tut­marc “gave the bass to his wife Lor­raine, who used it while per­form­ing with the Tut­marc fam­i­ly band. [He] also sold copies to var­i­ous gospel, Hawai­ian, and coun­try play­ers.” (The bass cost around $65, or $1,150 today, with a sep­a­rate amp that sold for $95.) Now, there are only three known Audiovox 736s in exis­tence: one held by a pri­vate col­lec­tor, anoth­er at Seattle’s Muse­um of Pop Cul­ture, and a third auc­tioned a few years ago on Ebay for $23,000.

Did Leo Fend­er see one of Tut­mar­c’s cre­ations when he invent­ed the first tru­ly mass-mar­ket elec­tric bass gui­tar? Per­haps, but it hard­ly mat­ters. It was Fender’s instru­ment that would catch on — for good — fif­teen years after the Audiovox 736, and it was Tutmarc’s fate to be large­ly for­got­ten by musi­cal his­to­ry, “des­tined to remain obscure,” Blecha writes, “to the extent that, in the wake of Leo Fender’s Pre­ci­sion Bass… the very exis­tence of a pre­vi­ous elec­tric fret­ted bass (played hor­i­zon­tal­ly) was effec­tive­ly for­got­ten.” See an intro­duc­tion and demon­stra­tion of the first bass gui­tar just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Behold the First Elec­tric Gui­tar: The 1931 “Fry­ing Pan”

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

Visu­al­iz­ing the Bass Play­ing Style of Motown’s Icon­ic Bassist James Jamer­son: “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough,” “For Once in My Life” & More

Leg­endary Stu­dio Musi­cian Car­ol Kaye Presents 150 Free Tips for Prac­tic­ing & Play­ing the Bass

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

If you’re a sea­soned bass play­er, the diver­si­ty of bass sounds in the “Bass Sounds” videos here will hard­ly sur­prise you. Most oth­er peo­ple — includ­ing many musi­cians — have lit­tle under­stand­ing of the range of the bass, an instru­ment thought to just hold down the low end. Yes, it does do that, but it doesn’t always do it with bass fre­quen­cies. Bass tones and over­tones fall any­where in the range of 40hz — a low rum­ble more felt than heard — to a snap­py 4000hz, the high-midrange fre­quen­cy of snare drums and gui­tars.

That’s a lot of son­ic ter­ri­to­ry for an instru­ment to explore. It includes the sound of Paul McCartney’s Hofn­er Vio­lin Bass on “Pen­ny Lane,” a “bass-heavy tone with almost no mids or tre­ble,” Joel McIv­er writes at Mus­i­cRad­er; the smooth top end of Jaco Pas­to­ri­ous’ home­made fret­less Fend­er Jazz bass; and the buz­z­saw pow­er chords of Lem­my Kilmister’s Rick­en­backer 4001, which he played with midrange turned to 11 and bass con­trols com­plete­ly off.

Of course, ampli­fiers and effects make all the dif­fer­ence in famous bassists’ tones, but it starts at the fin­gers, the body, the pick­ups, and the frets, as bass play­er Bart Soeters demon­strates with a series of clas­sic, mod­ern, and obscure bass gui­tars, accom­pa­nied by the music of Joris Holtack­ers. Bass­es here include such rec­og­niz­able shapes as the Hofn­er, with its cham­bered body and f‑holes, the Fend­er Jazz and Pre­ci­sion bass­es, and the Gib­son SG. They also include unusu­al or unique instru­ments like the NS Design Bass­cel­lo and Soeters’ own Adamovic FBC sig­na­ture bass.

Boomy, woody, even reedy — bass gui­tars can rum­ble and they can croon. They can be imi­tat­ed by an elec­tric cel­lo — as Soeters demon­strates in the fol­low-up Bass Sounds II video at the top — make love­ly acoustic thumps, and gen­er­al­ly sound as per­cus­sive or melod­ic as you like. Will edu­cat­ing oth­ers about the range of bass gui­tar tones change unfor­tu­nate stereo­types about bass play­ers (demon­strat­ed below via inter­pre­tive dance and spo­ken word by The Kids in the Hall’s Kevin McDon­ald and Bruce McCul­loch)? Only time will tell. But it can cer­tain­ly  sharp­en the music appre­ci­a­tion skills of musi­cians and non-musi­cians alike. See all the dif­fer­ent bass­es list­ed on the Bass Sounds YouTube pages here and here.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Some of the Most Pow­er­ful Bass Gui­tar Solos Ever: Ged­dy Lee, Flea, Boot­sy Collins, John Dea­con & More

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Bass-Smash­ing Pho­to on the Clash’s Lon­don Call­ing

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In the 1980s, avant-garde com­pos­er, gui­tarist Glenn Bran­ca began writ­ing sym­phonies for elec­tric gui­tars — dozens of them, all play­ing at once, cre­at­ing unprece­dent­ed psy­choa­coustic effects — some­times beau­ti­ful har­mo­ny, some­times unset­tling dis­so­nance — that reduced Bran­ca him­self to tears. “I remem­ber one rehearsal where I actu­al­ly had to stop and cry,” he once said. “I could not believe that I was get­ting this sound.” Bran­ca brought togeth­er hun­dreds of elec­tric gui­tarists and per­cus­sion­ists, but he nev­er real­ized his ambi­tion of bring­ing togeth­er 2,000 gui­tarists at once in Paris for cel­e­bra­tions of the year 2000, set­tling for 100.

These num­bers pale next to the largest gui­tar ensem­ble on record, 6,346 peo­ple in Poland in 2009. In 2018, the year of Branca’s death, anoth­er record attempt saw 457 gui­tarists come togeth­er in Can­ber­ra, Aus­tralia to play AC/DC’s “High­way to Hell.” Not exact­ly Branca’s cup of tea, but he prob­a­bly had some hand in the inspi­ra­tion, if only indi­rect­ly. Stand­ing amidst those hun­dreds of ring­ing gui­tars while they banged out the song’s famed open­ing chords sure­ly made many an Angus Young devo­tee cry that day.

What, then, would it feel like to stand amidst the cacoph­o­ny of 1000 musi­cians — drum­mers, gui­tarists, bassists, and singers — bash­ing out a cov­er of Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly”? Assem­bled in 2015 in Italy, the Rockin’1000 was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a one-off project to accom­plish “four mir­a­cles,” notes the project’s site: “find one thou­sand musi­cians, get them to play simul­ta­ne­ous­ly of the biggest Rock show ever, col­lect enough mon­ey to make it real, con­vince the Foo Fight­ers to play a gig in Cese­na.” (You can see their impas­sioned plea to Dave Grohl at the video’s end.)

After accom­plish­ing their goals “with a bang” (the Foo Fight­ers lat­er played a 3‑hour con­cert ded­i­cat­ed to the project), the core team decid­ed to get “the biggest Rock Band on Earth” back togeth­er for an entire con­cert the fol­low­ing year: “17 songs played all togeth­er at Manuzzi Sta­di­um.” The full show has been released on CD and vinyl, but I’d haz­ard that music writ­ten for four peo­ple and played by 1000 doesn’t sound quite as inter­est­ing on record as in per­son, where the sheer mas­sive­ness might make lis­ten­ers weep. As the band­lead­ers them­selves admit, “with­out an audi­ence, who’s been a part of the whole process, Rockin’1000 wouldn’t make sense.”

They’ve per­formed for audi­ences, in var­i­ous con­fig­u­ra­tions, every year since their found­ing until 2020. See them here play Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” and David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel.” If you sing or play a rock instru­ment, you can sign up to be a part of Rockin’1000’s next gig, in Paris, in May 2022, here.

With a band com­posed of 1000 peo­ple, the musi­cians are also the audi­ence, and the musi­cians can be any­one. What sep­a­rates Rockin’1000 from some oth­er cel­e­bra­tions of pop­u­lar music is that it does posi­tion itself as a road to fame and for­tune or a way to meet celebri­ties. “No rank­ings, no prizes, no win­ners, no losers,” they write: “every­one can be part of this, either an audi­ence or a mem­ber of ‘the biggest Rock Band on Earth.’ No bar­ri­ers here, all emo­tions are equal, same inten­si­ty.” But what emo­tions do we expe­ri­ence as a vir­tu­al audi­ence of the Biggest Band on Earth?

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch a Tow­er­ing Orches­tral Trib­ute to Kate Bush: A 40th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion of Her First Sin­gle, “Wuther­ing Heights”

Foo Fight­ers Per­form “Back in Black” with AC/DC’s Bri­an John­son: When Live Music Returns

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness