Blog: Geezer Music Club

Robert Goulet certainly fit the crooner mold in many ways, with his smooth baritone singing voice and looks and style that made ladies swoon, but unlike many he didn't have a history as a band singer and he also wasn't a huge recording star. Although he sold a lot of albums, his highest charting single - "My Love Forgive Me" - is probably less remembered than songs that more directly reflected his Broadway heritage, like "Come Back To Me, My Love," "The Impossible Dream," and his signature song from Camelot, "If Ever I Would [...]

It's been over a month since our last post featuring a slideshow . As I spelled out in that one, my bloghost (WordPress) seems to have cut down on the size of the pictures in the style of slideshow I was using, so I was trying a different type. That worked out okay but I think today I'll go back to the old style, even though the pictures still look too small - but maybe that's just me. The subject matter is a series of ultra-realistic sculptures created by a talented artist named [...]

I've said before that I’ve never really intended for the GMC to be a consistent source for obituaries, but we've often marked the passing of people we've featured in previous posts. That would apply to film critic and writer Roger Ebert, who was spotlighted a couple of years ago in a piece titled Roger Ebert's Amazing Memory . Ebert died Thursday at age 70. ( Chicago Sun-Times ) As before, I've reactivated the music on that post and have also included a new video below.

We seem to be on a roll lately with British performers but I thought we could try one more - or three more, to be accurate. Today's piece is about the Kaye Sisters, a trio that had some good-charting records for a period of several years beginning in the 1950s but is pretty much forgotten now. And even if you do remember them, did you know that the membe rs of the trio were not related and that none were named Kaye? But in all fairness, Sheila Jones, Shan Palmer, and Carol Young didn't really claim to be [...]

Glenn Miller had a lot of fans in his heyday. Probably still does for that matter, even though he's been gone for a long time. But how many of those fans were so dedicated to his musical style that they'd end up leading their own band built around the Miller sound? That's what British trumpeter and bandleader Syd Lawrence did, so you could probably make a pretty good case for him being Glenn Miller's biggest fan - on at least one of them. A native of Chester, England, Syd Lawrence grew up enjoying the music of [...]

Apparently it didn't make a big splash in the national news, but a gentleman we featured a while back in a GMC post titled Rock And Roll Pioneer Hardrock Gunter passed away recently - at least according to what's posted on his namesake website . On Friday, March 15, 2013, “Rock” passed away from complications from pneumonia. He was 88. Family and friends would like to thank all of Rock's supporters over the years. He will be remembered as a great musician, keen storyteller, [...]

The most improbable recording star of the 1960s had to have been Walter Brennan. By then he was in his sixties and had already enjoyed a long acting career that included winning three Oscars and later starring on TV, but he turned out to be surprisingly popular with record buyers too. Of course, he didn't exactly sing on those records, but he was still entertaining in his own way. As Western (or sometime Southern) as he seemed to be in most of his roles, Walter Andrew Brennan was as Boston-Irish as they come, born and raised [...]

A long time before today's stars made genre-crossing a common practice, singer/songwriter Marion Worth made her mark as both a pop singer and a country music performer. Mostly remembered now for "Shake Me I Rattle (Squeeze Me I Cry)," for a period that began in the late 1950s and continued for more than a decade she was one of the most popular performers around, singing the kind of music that appealed to fans in both camps. While growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, young Mary Ann Ward studied piano and guitar, and by the time she began [...]

You would be hard-pressed to find a greater connection between a song and a performer than the one shared by the late Etta James and her classic "At Last." The song earned her a special Grammy Hall Of Fame award, and the feisty singer fiercely fought for her right to perform it even as her health deteriorated in her later years. But it might surprise you to hear that it was not a big seller for her originally. On the other hand, it was a huge hit for the guy who'd introduced it a couple of decades earlier - [...]

Over its seven years of life the GMC has featured a lot of performers who have continued to entertain fans well into their golden years. Today's spotlight falls on one of the most respected singers around. Now in her eighties, Helen Merrill can look back on a long and fulfilling career as one of the best of the great jazz singers. A New York native, she began life as Jelena Ana Milcetic, the daughter of Croatian immigrants. Still just a young teenager when she began singing professionally in clubs during the latter years of World War [...]

Although he died well over three decades ago, it would be difficult to find someone who isn't pretty familiar with Elvis Presley and his music. One reason for his continuing fame might be the countless impersonators we've been exposed to through the years, and I'm not just talking about those who often flock to Las Vegas or Memphis for special events. It's been estimated that there are thousands of faux Presleys performing worldwide - one of them was even elected mayor of a small town not too far from where I live. But here's something you [...]

In a recent piece titled The Mystery Of Dardanelle , I mentioned that the featured artist had teamed up with jazz guitarist Tal Farlow in the early years of her career. Farlow's story is a good one too. Admired by his contemporaries as well as legions of loyal fans, he even lent his name to a model of Gibson guitar. But the artist known as 'the octopus' (for the way his long fingers roamed over his guitar) was also notoriously reclusive, and that might have kept him from reaching the level of stardom his talent [...]

It's been a while since our last Fantastic Foursome, and I've picked a lively Hank Williams tune for this one. Although he was actually from Alabama, one of his best-known songs - "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)" - was based on the music of Southern Louisiana and named for an iconic dish from the region. But even though he's given credit for writing the song, some sources say he had a little help from a contemporary, Moon Mullican, and also that the melody for it came from an old Cajun song. In any case, his 1952 record topped the country [...]

I've never really intended for the GMC to be a consistent source for obituaries of musical artists. In fact, there are a lot that don't show up here. But I do try to mark the passing of those performers who have been featured on earlier posts, and I also note some of those who haven't been spotlighted but might be future candidates. The former would apply to country singer Claude King, and the latter to songbird Fran Warren, both of whom died in the past week or so. Claude King, who died in Shreveport, Lousiana, [...]

You won't hear much about her now, but at one time a quiet and respectable lady from Mississippi was one of the most talented jazz artists around. Over a career that lasted for more than a half-century, she played piano and vibes - and sang a little too - under the exotic-sounding name Dardanelle, years before many of today's stars made performing under a single name a common practice. But there does seem to be some confusion about her identity - not just her mysterious stage persona, but her real name too. Although everyone agrees that [...]

I was sorry to read about the passing of R&B singer Jewel Akens, who succumbed to complications from back surgery a few days ago in Inglewood, California. Although he's most remembered for his big 1965 hit "The Birds And The Bees," he had a long career that included both performing and producing, and it lasted almost up until his death. The Houston-born singer first began gaining musical experience in the same way as many of his contemporaries - by singing in the church choir. But he was also influenced by the sounds he heard coming for [...]

One of the things I enjoy about reading biographies of entertainment legends is learning about the less famous people whose lives revolved around the stars, like the guy I ran across in a book about Dean Martin. An accomplished saxophonist who'd gotten his start in the early big band era, Dick Stabile was the musical director for Martin and Lewis at the height of their fame as a comedy team, and for many years also backed up Dino on some of his best records. Along the way he found time to have a pretty good career as a bandleader. [...]

I've written before about how common it was in the early days for rockabilly stars to come from the ranks of country music veterans, but it wasn't always that way. In at least one case, a guy who was one of the best of the breed seemed to arrive as a natural-born rocker - and he's still doing it, sixty years later. Now in his eighties and still active, Albert Austin 'Sonny' Burgess originally came out of Arkansas in the mid-1950s, determined to take Memphis by storm. By then he'd already put in a few [...]

It would be difficult to find a song with a more unusual history of success than the swing era classic, "And The Angels Sing." Originating as an instrumental with a Jewish klezmer-style segment, it would later have lyrics added and become a hit record for a famous big band, while at the same time turning into a signature song for both a vocalist and a trumpeter. It would also be the inspiration for a Hollywood musical that - oddly enough - did not include the song. Trumpeter Ziggy Elman (b. Harry Aaron [...]

Now that March has arrived, I wanted to do a slideshow with bright and colorful pictures that would herald the approach of Spring, but I got sidetracked by something. The slideshow widget used by WordPress (the GMC host) has either changed or my memory is worse than I thought, because no matter what size pictures I use, they end up appearing too small on the final product. Each picture is shrunk and surrounded by lots of empty black space. I looked back at previous posts with slideshows, and they all seem smaller than I remembered  too. ( Here's [...]