Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, WA Home Inspector (King of the House)

There was this country fiddle tune called "Ida Red". Bluegrass bands still perform it today. The lyrics change, depending on the vocalist, but the refrain should be the same -- "Ida Red, Ida Red, I'm a plum fool about Ida Red." The most famous versions of the country song were by Roy Acuff and Bob Wills. Berry said that he first heard the country song on the radio when he was a youngster living in St Louis.

As Berry worked on his music, he modified that old song Ida Red and gave it a new title--Ida May--to better fit his style. Berry met Muddy Waters, a famous blues performer, and Muddy pulled some strings and arranged a recording date for Berry at Chess records. Leonard Chess, the owner of the label, wanted Ida May released as a single. But he did not like the name. It had to be changed! Berry says he quickly came up with a new name -- Maybellene -- and that name came from the name of a cow he read about in grade school.

The track was recorded and it became Berry's first hit. Here is an old video of Chuck Berry performing Maybellene. After the video, I will tell you the rest of the story of Maybellene. 

Leonard Chess knew how to make a hit. He also knew Alan Freed, the famous east coast white deejay who was breaking the new, somewhat scandalous, R&B music to American teenagers. Chess made a deal with Freed. Freed would receive one third of the songwriting credits and royalties for the song Maybellene. The catch -- Freed would plug it and make it a hit on his show. A song that made it on Freed's show would become a hit nationally. The plan worked and, of course, Maybellene was a catchy song too. In fact, Maybellene ended up being one of the top songs of 1955. Berry's career was underway and he was to eventually become a musical icon. Other artists, including Johnny Rivers, first gained fame by re-recording Chuck Berry's innovative songs. Even the Beatles performed Chuck Berry music in their formative years. In the 1980's, Berry went to court and a judge returned to him the writing credit, and hence the royalties, for the song Maybellene.

If you are interested in music history, a  sample of Ida Red is provided below. Again, this is the song that Chuck Berry says led to his writing Maybellene. Frankly, I think the two are very different from one another, but history is history and I am not going to argue with Chuck Berry about the inspiration for his music.

For more "Stories Behind the Music" click on the guitar

Steven L. Smith

Every once in awhile there is a problem within a problem. The main problem is obvious, but the secondary problem might be even more dangerous. In the home below, obviously the wiring was in need of an upgrade. It was a 100 year old home with knob and tube wiring in place and fuses. That was the main problem.

The issue below was even a more immediate safety concern. This panel for 240 volt water heater power was located in the bathroom, right beside the toilet. It was about 3' off the floor. A kid could not only easily, but perhaps we could say "likely" reach out and open the cover. And, on this panel, when the cover was opened all of the wires were exposed. With a modern circuit breaker panel, if everything is in place, you can peak inside to look at or flip breakers but nothing is exposed.

This was an accident waiting to happen.

Steven L. Smith

 If one wishes to remain objective and factual, this was the case: The parents of white teens were not enthralled with the idea of their kids being captivated by this loud, bawdy and, in some cases, sensuous or sexy music that was early R&B.

 There were a few radio deejays around the country, the most famous being Alan Freed on the east coast, who played the race music and also promoted dances where teens could gather to see the hottest acts -- virtually all of those acts being African American.

 There was a pivotal moment in the evolution of rock. It was April 1955. An established New Orleans R&B performer, Fats Domino, put out a single called Ain't It A Shame. This song was huge from the start, but only on the R&B charts, where it entered at #1.

Meanwhile, a shrewd promoter at Dot Records was trying to devise a way to sell more race music to white kids, without too much parental resistance. He came up with a brilliant idea that can be described in two words -- Pat Boone. Pat Boone was a good-looking kid. He was preppy, clean-cut, white. He could take popular race music tunes and make them appealing to parents. Parents would let their kids listen to his music. Using that philosophy, Dot took Boone's recording of  Ain't It a Shame all the way to #1 on the pop charts. They mixed the basic sound of Fats with a big band. Boone's homogenized hit created such excitement that it drew extra attention to Fat's R&B version so that also shot to #10 on the pop charts.

 Boone did a few other homogenized versions of R&B songs, most significantly a cover of Little Richard's Tutti Frutti. Some might wonder if the R&B artists resented Boone and his success achieved the result of their hard work. Fats Domino did not. Domino was  performing years later and he found out that Pat Boone was in the audience. He had Pat come on stage for a duet of Ain't It A Shame. Fats, also, pointed to a big diamond ring on his finger and said: "This man bought me that ring by recording his version of that song."

 Pat Boone, you might say, was vanilla frosting on the rock n' roll music of that day. Like it or not, he is a performer who helped bring the sound of rock into the mainstream by making it more acceptable to the parents of American teenagers. And, for sure, all rock n' roll performers, including the Beatles, owe a debt to Fats, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and many of the early African American R&B performers.

For more "Stories Behind the Music" click on the guitar

Steven L. Smith

Enter Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. Barry Sadler was a member of the "elite" U.S. Army fighting force known as the Green Berets. The Green Berets were the special forces, trained in combat and hand to hand. Sadler said they were "America's best." They had a mystique about them. Sadler had originally been in the Air Force but wanted to ratchet up the action. He joined the army and volunteered to be a paratrooper in Vietnam. The army decided he was courageous and that he would be a good fit with the special forces. 

Sadler had done a tour of Vietnam, with the special forces, and he had been wounded. While recuperating in a military hospital, state-side, he composed military songs and played guitar. He sang his compositions to other wounded soldiers. One day a TV crew was filming at the hospital. They filmed Sadler singing one of his songs -- The Ballad of the Green Berets.

The TV station aired the segment, it created a sensation and RCA picked up the song. They recorded it, with professional background musicians, and it shot to number one. People, who wanted to believe in the honor of the Vietnam war, saw this as a great patriotic message. It stayed in the top ten for nine weeks. At the end of the year, it charted as the top song of 1966. He beat the Beatles in the USA. The song was even featured in the soundtrack of a John Wayne movie, The Green Berets. Take a look at the video of Barry Sadler on national television, then I will tell you the rest of his story.

 Sadler never achieved another big hit. He released a couple other military tunes, but they failed to catch on. His one big tune was, a person might say, the biggest selling "novelty" song ever recorded in the USA. Sadler, riding on the fame of that song, went on the USO tour for awhile and, after active duty, he went to Nashville to record but he would never again repeat his success in music.

In the years that followed, Sadler had success as the writer of a series of adventure novels. The plot took place in ancient history -- featuring a Roman soldier who was a mercenary. Sadler wrote twenty-two such books and they sold. In the 1970's, he pled guilty to, and served time for, second-degree manslaughter after shooting a man who threatened him. He had thought the other man had a gun but the man did not. The tides were changing and things were not going well for Sadler.

In 1983, he moved to Central America. What he was doing there is disputed. Some say he was training and selling arms to the Nicaraguan contras, others believe he was just living there. In 1988 Sadler was returning to a hilltop home that he had established in Guatemala. As he was riding in a taxi, he received a gunshot to the head. People had speculated that it was a killing related to his life in Central America, or it was an armed robbery attempt. As a result of having read this post, I had a call from Robert Brown, executive editor of Soldier of Fortune magazine. Sadler was a columnist for that magazine and Soldier of Fortune paid to have him transported back home to the USA after the shooting. Robert Brown, who told me that he knows the details of the shooting, said that Sadler's shooting was accidental and involved Barry's own gun. Brown said it was not a robbery or an assassination. Regardless, Sadler passed away, heart failure, at his mother's home in 1989.This man, who had worked to conquer the pop music charts, died 23 years after his greatest achievement -- a number one hit song.

People, my age and older, remember the music of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, but few individuals know the rest of his story. If asked they probably think he is alive, older and working as a mechanic or an executive somewhere. Truth is, despite patriotism, fame and early success, his life was an American tragedy.

For more "Stories Behind the Music" click on the guitar

Steven L. Smith

Youngest son Ricky, who grew up in front of North American television viewers, had a life that went beyond being the perfect son on the show. He was courting a girl and he wanted to impress her, which seems like it should not have been so hard to do being the TV star Ricky Nelson and all. Regardless, it was not going well in the romance department. It was 1957 and as he drove down Laurel Canyon with his heart throb, Elvis came on the radio. His date began to swoon, not over Ricky, but at the Elvis tune. Ricky knew of only one way to get the attention of this fickle music lover. He said: "By the way, I am going to be cutting a record soon." She laughed at him. He took her home.

When Ricky got home himself, he looked up his dad. If anyone could make it happen, it would be Ozzie Nelson. Ozzie listened to his son and thought that the idea of Ricky singing made lots of sense. In fact, it was a great idea--join in the excitement over this new rock n' roll music craze.  Use the national stage to turn Ricky into a star. Dad knew that Ricky was no musical wonder and only had fair pipes. Ozzie, being a musician, realized that if he put a great band behind the boy -- which he did -- Ricky could make some hits. Ozzie was right. It ends up that, of the solo male artists of the early rock era, Ricky Nelson and his rockabilly style was right behind Elvis as a hit-maker. If you are my age, you probably remember many of those songs. This performance below was his first single, you will see his family in the audience if you watch it. You might call it a song for a girl.

If you are old enough to remember the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, you will remember that most weeks they would end the sitcom about five minutes early. Then Ozzie or Harriet would introduce Ricky and his latest musical offering. What a great way this was to create a hit record. It was a classic case of cross-promotion. Exposure of one medium was good for the other.

Oh, if you wonder what ever happened to the girl in this story, Ricky said that a year or so later, after he was a recording star, she came by the house. She sat in the car while a mutual friend knocked on the Nelson's door. The friend said that the girl really needed to see Ricky. Ricky went outside to the car and she complained that he never called, he never spoke to her. She missed him and wanted to get together. Rick  said: "Okay, I will call you sometime." He never did.

That was one girl, who found out early in life, that Rick Nelson really was a travelin' man.

Note: In my radio days I met Rick twice and MC'd his act twice. I really liked the last hit he ever recorded prior to his death -- Garden Party.

For more "Stories Behind the Music" click on the guitar

Steven L. Smith

At this home, the builder knew about the concept but put the bollard in the wrong position. The furnace is well-protected but the water heater is a wide open target. Sometimes one bollard will protect both but, when that is the case, it has to be carefully located so a car moving toward either appliance would first hit the bollard.

The typical fix here is installing a second bollard in front of the water heater.

Steven L. Smith

The recording session was in New York City. The album would be called Getz/Gilberto. The producer wanted a hook to make it more popular with the U.S. audience so he decided that they should have a song with English lyrics. They wanted a female vocalist.

Astrud, the wife of Joao, was present in the studio. She was hanging out, watching and had no music or singing experience. She was the only one of the Brazilians who spoke English. They wanted to see how the song might sound, so they asked her to sing the lyrics. Her innocent, hesitant vocal is what they were looking for. At first they planned on it being a working track and they would replace it with another vocalist. Ends up, they liked it so well that they kept it. The song became a huge hit, rising to number five on the pop charts. In fact, the album became the biggest selling jazz album ever. There have been bigger selling jazz albums since then, in the past 40 years, but it is still right up there. Getz/Gilberto is considered to be an influential album that helped introduce South American music to the English-speaking world. Here is a video of Astrud performing a version of that song, not exactly as it was on the album, but close.

 Astrud Gilberto had a singing career and recorded a number of albums.  Her daughter, Bebel Gilberto, is a potent force in world music today.

For more "Stories Behind the Music" click on the guitar

Steven L. Smith

This recording, even almost 50 years after it was recorded, is compelling today. At least I can still listen to it as the coincidences unfold. It compares the lives, circumstances and similarities between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy -- who had been assassinated not long before this recording was released.

This recording made it to #2 on the country charts and into the top 50 on the pop charts. The words, and the vocal recording, were by veteran radio and TV man Buddy Starcher. For most of his career he worked in Florida. Dated as this recording may be, give it a listen and see if you don't find the premise quite compelling. This was probably the first patriotic novelty song that used patriotic music as the backdrop for the words.

Steven L. Smith

The first hit for Leiber and Stoller ended up being one of the all time classics of rock n' roll. The song was originally released in 1952, named K.C. Lovin. It flopped. However an artist named Wilbert Harrison picked it up and it became a huge hit in 1959. It is amazing to me, but a good quality video of this little know artist, performing that song, is available at youtube.

While Wilbert Harrison performed the definitive version of that song, those four guys from Liverpool heard it performed by Little Richard. Kansas City was such an important song in the development of the Beatles, and in influencing their musical direction, that they recorded it 1964. With that recording, and the songs overall success, Kansas City became one of the standards of rock n' roll music.

For more "Stories Behind the Music" click on the guitar

Steven L. Smith