Everybody Loves Me

I Wanna Be Where You Are

Light My Fire

Many happy returns to one of my favorite vocalist, guitarist and composer  Jose Feliciano!

“Everybody Loves Me” and “I Wanna Be Where You Are”  (The Michael Jackson hit) are two of my favorite Feliciano recordings. Both are from his tenure at Motown Records. Another favorite is, of course, the 1968 cover tune that brought Mr. Feliciano to prominence — The Doors’ “Light My Fire.

Born September 10, 1945 I feel that Jose Feliciano is one of the most unsung musicians of our time!

Just hoping everyone is having a great summer.  It has gone so fast and my vacation is still pending: will be traveling in about three weeks.

Regular posts will be appearing again in September.

Also, I just wanted you all to know that EOINA has finally been optimized for both IOS and Android Mobile so you can always check in during your travels.

Musically Yours,

Related articles

• iOS and Android Growing 10 Times Faster Than The Web (intomobile.com)

Denise Allen was born July 16, 1939 in Mississippi. Read a great Biography at this link. while listening to Miss LaSalle’s rendition of “Down Home Blues.”

Rosetta Stone LeNoire (August 8, 1911 – March 17, 2002) and Jester Joseph Hairston (July 9, 1901 – January 18, 2000)

70s?

1981

If you still don’t know who Jester Harrison is please read this fairly comprehensive summary of Dr. Hariston’s adult life from WIKI of all places   . Then, what follows,  is an obituary from the University of Mass at Amherst’s Chronicle Staff to give you additional  information on the life of this great man!

Happy Birthday Doctor Harrison! We love you and miss you.

Early life
Hairston was born in Belews Creek, a rural community on the border of Stokes, Forsyth, Rockingham and Guilford counties in North Carolina. His grandparents had been slaves. At an early age he and his family moved to Homestead, Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh, where he graduated from high school in 1919. Hairston, who gave up studies at Massachusetts Agriculture College in the 1920s, went on to graduate from Tufts University in 1928 and studied music at the Juilliard School. Hairston pledged Kappa_Alpha_Psi (Chi Chapter) in 1925. He worked as a choir conductor in the early stages of his career. His work with choirs on Broadway eventually led to his singing and acting in plays, films, radio programs, and television shows. In 1937 was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild.

Career
Hairston wrote the song “Mary’s Boy Child” in 1956, possibly the only popular Christmas song written by an African-American. He also wrote the song “Amen”, which he dubbed for the Sidney Poitier film Lilies of the Field (1963). He arranged traditional “Negro spirituals”. Most of Hairston’s film work was in the field of composing, arranging, and choral conducting. Hairston also acted in over 20 films, mostly in small roles, some of which were uncredited. Among the films he appeared in were bit parts in some of the early Tarzan movies, St. Louis Blues (1958), The Alamo (1960), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) and Being John Malkovich (1999).

Hairston appeared on The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show. He had been in the radio program that was the basis for the TV show. He also played the role of Wildcat (1974–1975) on the show That’s My Mama. In his senior years he appeared in the show Amen as Rolly Forbes (1986–1991).^[1] His last television appearance was in 1993 on an episode of Family Matters, a sitcom. Hairston also played the role of “King Moses” on radio for the Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall show “Bold Venture.”

In his later years, Hairston served as a cultural ambassador for American music, traveling to numerous countries with choral groups that he had assembled. In 1985 he took the Jester Hairston Chorale, a multi-racial group, to sing in the People’s Republic of China, at a time when foreign visitors were still quite rare in that country. (WIKI)

——————–

Alumnus Jester Hairston Dies at 98: Actor-Composer Helped Preserve Negro Spirituals – by Chronicle staff
January 28, 2000

Jester Hairston, who gave up studies at Massachusetts Agriculture College in the 1920s before going on to a career than spanned movies, television, radio, composing, arranging and choral conducting, died Jan. 18 in Los Angeles. He was 98.

Best known in recent years for playing Rollie Forbes on the NBC sitcom “Amen” in the 1980s, Hairston’s earlier acting roles including long-running parts on the radio and television versions of “Amos ‘n’ Andy” as well as bit parts in Tarzan films.

Although many of his early acting jobs portrayed less than flattering images of blacks, Hairston never apologized for playing racial stereotypes. “We had a hard time then fighting for dignity,” he said years later. “We had no power. We had to take it, and because we took it the young people today have opportunities.”

Opportunities also expanded for Hairston during his acting career. His films credits included “The Alamo,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “Lady Sings the Blues,” “The Last Tycoon” and “Lilies of the Valley,” for which he composed the song “Amen.”

That song, which he dubbed for Sidney Poitier in the movie, reflected Hairston’s lifelong dedication to preserving old Negro spirituals. He was a sought-after choral director who organized Hollywood’s first integrated choir and composed more than 300 spirituals.

Even in his 90s, Hairston continued to conduct choirs, crisscrossing the world as a goodwill ambassador for the U.S. State Department.

The grandson of a slave, he was born in Belews Creek, N.C., but grew up in the Homestead section of Pittsburgh, where generations of his family worked in the steel mills. Through a scholarship from his Baptist church, he enrolled at Mass Aggie in 1920 to study Landscape Architecture.

At MAC, he briefly quarterbacked the freshman football team and also sang in the glee club as well as several area choirs. He dropped out for several years when his money ran out, returning to school after a woman impressed by his singing offered to finance his education in music. He enrolled at Tufts University and graduated in 1929.

Making his way to New York, he met Hall Johnson, a popular conductor of Negro spirituals who hired Hairston as his assistant. It was Johnson who taught Hairston to respect the Negro spiritual. Shedding his Boston accent, Hairston dedicated himself to preserving the music of the slaves and memorializing the conditions that gave birth to it.

Later in his life, when working with students at college workshops, Hairston would tell them, “You can’t sing legato when the master’s beatin’ you across your back.”

When Warner Brothers bought the Johnson show “Green Pastures” in 1935, the conductor and Hairston began their film careers. Hairston’s big break came in 1936, when Russian-born composer and conductor Dmitri Tiomkin asked him to conduct the choir in the film “Lost Horizon,” which won an Oscar for best score. That began a 20-year collaboration with Tiomkin, who inspired him to form the first integrated choir used in films, including “Red River,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” and “Land of the Pharaohs.”

Although he never completed his studies at MAC, Hairston maintained strong ties with the University. In 1972, he was awarded an honorary doctorate. Twenty years later at age 91, he returned to campus again to receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Department of Music and Dance.

Born on July 2, 1939, Paul Williams would have been aged 73 years old today had he lived and not passed on August 17, 1973.  This Temptation was a big part of my growing up and sang lead of some of my favorite Tempts tracks on the fabulous Cloud Nine LP.  Rest In Peace Paul and many thanks for your musical legacy.

This is Paul’s cover of the fabulous soul classic “Hey Girl.” Check out the original on OSML.

  And here is  Paul’s lead on the Temptations’  “Don’t Let Him Take Your Love From Me.”

“The song is the center; the song is the key. If you don’t have a good song you don’t have anything by my value.” ~ Carole King

“I may not like the lyrics of some contemporary songs because they tend to repeat the same phrase over and over and over.” ~ Carole King

“Tapestry was the album in which it came together. Tapestry was really a collection of songs that I was doing demos of.” ~ Carole King

On the way home from dinner Sunday evening, this song was on Sirius “The Bridge” and  it made me smile. Automatically I sang along — amazed that I recalled all of the words to this Carole King classic.

King’s smash “Tapestry” LP helped  get me through college.

If you are not a boomer and don’t know this LP  I suggest you give it a listen asap. Guaranteed if you love REAL music you will love this award wining set.

Isn’t amazing how King still performs this song in all of her fabulosity in this 2005 performance of  the 1971 track?

Happy Monday!

Related articles

• Carole King Retires

  ---

• Carol King’s Natural Style (And How To Get It)

  ---

• Carole King’s A Natural Woman: A Memoir wins over reviewers

  ---

Born June 18, 1942 — Let’s take a trip through the decades with Paul in celebration. Enjoy.

Paul McCartney, 1952 (SOURCE)

At the Cavern Club, 1962 Live

High, High, High, 1972

Take It Away, 1982 Performance Video

My Love, 1992 Live

Hello, Goodbye, 2002 Live

Abbey Road Medley, 2012 Live

Related articles

• PETA Sends Paul McCartney A Birthday Greeting

  ---

• Madame Tussauds Unveils Beatles Waxworks In Honor Of McCartney’s 70th

  ---

• Sir Paul McCartney interview: ‘The Queen is fabulous, I’ve got a lot of time for her’

  ---

Born June 4, 1961, Eldra Patrick DeBarge is the talented singer, composer and pianist from the uber talented (yet dysfunctional IMHO)  DeBarge Family.

El, even though you were a no-show twice for me,  I thank you for your musical legacy and wish you many happy returns of the day. Just please show up next time I buy a ticket to see you in concert! A third chance is all I am going for

Hugs and all be best to you and your loved ones!

Robin Hugh Gibb, CBE (22 December 1949 – 20 May 2012)

By Ben Sisaro | Published in NY Times |5/20/2012

Robin Gibb, one of the three singing brothers of the Bee Gees, the long-running Anglo-Australian pop group whose chirping falsettos and hook-laden disco hits like “Jive Talkin’ ” and “You Should Be Dancing” shot them to worldwide fame in the 1970s, died on Sunday in London. He was 62 and lived in Thame, Oxfordshire, England.

The cause was complications of cancer and intestinal surgery, his family said in a statement.

Mr. Gibb had been hospitalized for intestinal problems several times in the last two years. Cancer had spread from his colon to his liver, and in the weeks before his death he had pneumonia and for a while was in a coma.

Mr. Gibb was the second Bee Gee and third Gibb brother to die. His fraternal twin and fellow Bee Gee, Maurice Gibb, died of complications of a twisted intestine in 2003 at 53. The youngest brother, Andy, who had a successful solo career, was 30 when he died of heart failure, in 1988.

With brilliant smiles, polished funk and adenoidal close harmonies, the Bee Gees — Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb — were disco’s ambassadors to Middle America in the 1970s, embodying the peacocked look of the time in their open-chested leisure suits and gold medallions.

They sold well over 100 million albums and had six consecutive No. 1 singles from 1977 to 1979. They were also inextricably tied to the disco era’s defining movie, “Saturday Night Fever,” a showcase for their music that included the hit “Stayin’ Alive,” its propulsive beat in step with the strut of the film’s star, John Travolta.

But the group, whose first record came out in 1963, had a history that preceded its disco hits, starting with upbeat ditties inspired by the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, then with lachrymose ballads like “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”

Barry, the oldest brother, was the dominant Bee Gee for most of the group’s existence. But the lead singer for many of the early hits was Robin, whose breaking voice, gaunt frame and gloomy eyes were well suited to convey adolescent fragility. “I Started a Joke” (with the second line, “Which started the whole world crying”), “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” “Massachusetts” and other heavy-hearted songs brought the Bee Gees to the top of the charts as one of the British Invasion’s most musically conservative groups.

“While other guys, like Ray Davies of the Kinks, were writing about social problems, we were writing about emotions,” Robin Gibb told a British newspaper last year. “They were something boys didn’t write about then because it was seen as a bit soft. But people love songs that melt your heart.”

Robin Hugh Gibb and his twin, Maurice, were born on Dec. 22, 1949, on the Isle of Man, a British dependency in the Irish Sea. (Barry was born there in 1946.) The boys largely grew up in Manchester, England, where the family lived on the edge of poverty. Their father, Hugh, a drummer and bandleader, encouraged his sons to sing. Their mother, Barbara, was also a singer.

According to Bee Gees lore, the boys’ first performance was sometime in the mid-1950s, and unplanned. They had been scheduled to perform as a lip-synching act at a movie theater in Manchester when the record broke, forcing them to sing for real.

The family moved to Australia in 1958, and before long the brothers, performing as the Bee Gees — for Brothers Gibb — began scoring local hits and appearing on television. They left for London in early 1967 and within weeks had signed with Robert Stigwood, the impresario who guided them in their peak years.

The band’s first single in Britain, “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” was released in April 1967 and reached the Top 20.

In performance, Robin and Maurice usually played second fiddle to Barry, and Robin’s taciturn manner was part of his public persona. On “The Barry Gibb Talk Show,” a recurring skit on “Saturday Night Live,” Barry, played by Jimmy Fallon, would repeatedly ask Robin, played by Justin Timberlake, if he had anything to add to his talks with congressmen and Supreme Court justices. “No,” Robin would reply softly. “No, I don’t.”

But in private Robin was far from dull. He and his wife, Dwina Murphy, who survives him, lived in a 12th-century former monastery in Oxfordshire that he had restored and filled with statues of Buddha and suits of armor. In Miami, his mansion was open to celebrities and politicians like Tony Blair.

Robin briefly left the group in 1969 and tried out a solo career. After he rejoined his brothers, they scored their first No. 1 in the United States with “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” in 1971. But with harder rock taking over, the Bee Gees’ popularity ebbed, reaching bottom in 1974 with a series of supper-club gigs in England to pay off tax debts.

At that point their label, Atlantic, sent the brothers to Miami for musical experimentation. There, with the 1975 album “Main Course,” they reinvented the Bee Gees’ sound with Latin and funk rhythms, electronic keyboards and vocals that owed a debt to Philadelphia soul. It brought the band its first hits in years: “Nights on Broadway” and “Jive Talkin’,” which went to No. 1.

From there it moved further toward disco. The soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever,” in 1977 — with “You Should Be Dancing,” “How Deep Is Your Love?,” “Stayin’ Alive” and “Night Fever,” all No. 1’s — became the biggest-selling album ever. (It was overtaken by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in 1984.)

For many listeners, the Gibbs were the face of disco. Even “Sesame Street” got caught up in the trend, with Robin singing on the disco-themed album “Sesame Street Fever.” It went gold.

The Bee Gees’ 1979 album, “Spirits Having Flown,” produced three more No. 1 singles, “Too Much Heaven,” “Tragedy” and “Love You Inside Out.” Then, in 1980, the band filed a $200 million lawsuit against Mr. Stigwood, saying he had swindled them out of royalties. Mr. Stigwood countersued for defamation and breach of contract. They settled out of court and publicly reconciled.

In the ’80s the band’s popularity waned in the United States but remained strong abroad. Robin released three solo albums, with limited success. The Bee Gees returned with some moderate hits in the late 1990s and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. With his brothers, Mr. Gibb won six Grammys.

In addition to his wife and his brother Barry, Robin Gibb is survived by his sons, Spencer and Robin-John, known as R J; his daughters, Melissa and Snow; a sister, Lesley; and his mother. An earlier marriage, to Molly Hullis, ended in divorce.

Mr. Gibb had recently been working on a classical piece, “The Titanic Requiem,” with Robin-John. It had its premiere in London on April 10, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, but Robin was too ill to attend.

Despite the Bee Gees’ close association with disco, the Gibb brothers had long insisted that they had no stake in the genre. They had simply written songs that suited their voices and caught their fancy, they said.

“We always thought we were writing R&B grooves, what they called blue-eyed soul,” Robin said in 2010. “We never heard the word disco; we just wrote groove songs we could harmonize strongly to, and with great melodies.”

“The fact you could dance to them,” he added, “we never thought about.”

LaDonna Adrian Gaines (December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012)

By JON PARELES
Published: May 17, 2012 in the  NY TIMES

Donna Summer, the multimillion-selling singer and songwriter whose hits captured both the giddy hedonism of the 1970s disco era and the feisty female solidarity of the early 1980s, died on Thursday at her home in Naples, Fla. She was 63.

The cause was lung cancer, her publicist, Brian Edwards, said.

With her doe eyes, cascade of hair and sinuous dance moves, Ms. Summer became the queen of disco — the music’s glamorous public face — as well as an idol with a substantial gay following. Her voice, airy and ethereal or brightly assertive, sailed over dance floors and leapt from radios from the mid-’70s well into the ’80s.

She riffled through styles as diverse as funk, electronica, rock and torch song as she piled up 14 Top 10 singles in the United States, among them “Love to Love You Baby,” “Bad Girls,” “Hot Stuff,” “Last Dance” and “She Works Hard for the Money.” In the late ’70s she had three double albums in a row that reached No. 1, and each sold more than a million copies.

Her combination of a church-rooted voice and up-to-the-minute dance beats was a template for 1970s disco, and, with her producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, she pioneered electronic dance music with the synthesizer pulse of “I Feel Love” in 1977, a sound that pervades 21st-century pop. Her own recordings have been sampled by, among others, Beyoncé, the Pet Shop Boys, Justice and Nas.

Ms. Summer won Grammy Awards for dance music, R&B, rock and gospel. Her recorded catalog spans the orgasmic moans of her first hit, “Love to Love You Baby,” the streetwalker chronicle of “Bad Girls,” the feminist moxie of “She Works Hard for the Money” and the religious devotion of “Forgive Me,” a gospel song that earned her another Grammy.

Through it all, Ms. Summer’s voice held on to an optimistic spirit and a determination to flourish. She garnered loyal fans. In 2009 she performed in Oslo at the concert honoring the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Obama.

On Thursday, the president released a statement, saying, “Her voice was unforgettable, and the music industry has lost a legend far too soon.”

Jon Landau, the chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, also issued a statement — an unusual one in which he said it was unfortunate that the hall had never inducted her.

“There is absolutely no doubt that the extraordinary Donna Summer belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Mr. Landau wrote. “Regrettably, despite being nominated on a number of occasions, our voting group has failed to recognize her — an error I can only hope is finally and permanently rectified next year.”

LaDonna Adrian Gaines was born Dec. 31, 1948, in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, one of seven children. She grew up singing in church and decided in her teens to make music her career. In the late 1960s she joined the Munich company of the rock musical “Hair” and relocated to Germany, where she became fluent in German and worked as a studio vocalist, in musical theater and briefly as a member of the Viennese Folk Opera. She married an Austrian actor, Hellmuth Sommer, in 1972, and after they divorced she kept his name but changed the spelling. She had already recorded her first single under the name Donna Gaines, an unsuccessful remake in 1971 of the Jaynetts’ “Sally Go ’Round the Roses.”

Her work as a backup singer brought her to the attention of Mr. Moroder and Mr. Bellotte. Her 1974 debut album with them, “Lady of the Night,” was released only in Europe. But with “Love to Love You Baby” in 1975, Ms. Summer became a sensation. She said she recorded that song’s breathy, moaning vocals lying on her back on the studio floor with the lights out, thinking about how Marilyn Monroe might coo its words.

Donna takes home her AMA's in 1979.

The American label Casablanca signed her after hearing the song in its initial European version, titled “Love to Love You,” and asked her to extend it for disco play. The resulting 17-minute single contains more than 20 simulated orgasms and became an international hit, reaching No. 2 on the American pop chart. Ms. Summer quickly released two more albums, “A Love Trilogy” and “Four Seasons of Love,” a concept album tracing a romance over the course of a year.

But she was increasingly uncomfortable being promoted as a sex goddess. “I’m not just sex, sex, sex,” she told Ebony magazine in 1977. “I would never want to be a one-dimensional person like that.”

She became so depressed that in late 1976 she attempted suicide, she wrote in her 2003 autobiography, “Ordinary Girl: The Journey,” written with Marc Eliot. She began taking medication for depression and seeking consolation in religion, becoming a born-again Christian in 1979.

“I Remember Yesterday,” one of two albums Ms. Summer released in 1977, revolved around the concept of mixing disco with the sounds of previous decades. But it was a song representing the future, “I Feel Love,” that would make the most impact. Its all-electronic arrangement was a startling new sound for a pop song, and its contrast of human voice versus synthetic backdrop would echo through countless club hits in its wake.

Ms. Summer was still demonstrating her versatility. She followed up with an orchestral album, “Once Upon a Time,” a set of songs telling a Cinderella story, and then a live album in 1978, “Live and More,” which yielded a hit with a version of “MacArthur Park.” That was the first of four No. 1 singles she would have in a year, followed by “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls” and a duet with Barbra Streisand, “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough).” Ms. Summer won her first Grammy Award — for best R&B vocal performance, female —with “Last Dance,” a song by Paul Jabara. It was introduced on the soundtrack to the 1978 movie “Thank God It’s Friday” and has ended many a wedding party ever since.

Disco as a fad was peaking, and Ms. Summer strove to outlast it. Her 1979 double album, “Bad Girls,” put some rock guitar into songs like “Hot Stuff”; it won a Grammy for best rock vocal performance, female. Her first collection of hits, “On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes 1 and 2,” also reached No. 1 in 1979, and the newly recorded title song was a Top 10 single.

Another hit from 1979, “Heaven Knows,” reached No. 4 on the pop chart, with personal repercussions. Ms. Summer recorded it with the group Brooklyn Dreams, and she married its lead singer, Bruce Sudano, in 1980. He survives her, along with three daughters — Brooklyn Sudano, Amanda Sudano and Mimi Dohler — and four grandchildren. She is also survived by a brother, Ricky Gaines, and four sisters: Dara Bernard, Mary Ellen Bernard, Linda Gaines and Jeanette Yancey.

“On the Radio” was Ms. Summer’s last album for Casablanca. As disco receded, she moved to Geffen Records, seeking to hold her broader pop audience. She tried new wave rock on “The Wanderer” in 1981, then switched to the R&B produced by Quincy Jones for “Donna Summer” in 1982. But she would reach her 1980s commercial peak with “She Works Hard for the Money” in 1983, collaborating with the producer Michael Omartian. It was her last Top 10 album, and amid its gleaming pop productions it included “He’s a Rebel,” an indirect Christian rock song — “He’s a rebel, written up in the lamb’s book of life” — that won a Grammy for best inspirational performance.

Ms. Summer’s career waned in the mid-1980s. Pop fans paid little attention to two albums from that period, “Cats Without Claws” and “All Systems Go,” and she alienated gay fans when she was quoted as having described AIDS as divine punishment for an immoral lifestyle. Though she repeatedly denied making that statement, many gay listeners boycotted her music, and by the time she had reconciled with gay organizations, her hitmaking streak was broken. Her last Top 10 hit, “This Time I Know It’s for Real,” was in 1989.

But she continued to record and perform. She and Mr. Sudano moved to Nashville (they maintained homes there and in Florida) and wrote songs together, including a No. 1 country single for Dolly Parton, “Starting Over Again.” A 1997 remix of a song Ms. Summer recorded in 1992 with Mr. Moroder, “Carry On,” won her the first Grammy given for best dance music. Well into the 2000s, she continued to appear on the dance-music charts: three songs from her last studio album, “Crayons,” in 2008, reached No. 1 on that chart, as did her final single, “To Paris With Love,” in 2010.

“This music will always be with us,” Ms. Summer told The New York Times in 2003. “I mean, whether they call it disco music or hip-hop or bebop or flip-flop, whatever they’re going to call it, I think music to dance to will always be with us.”

Related articles

• Donna Summer: career milestones of the Disco Queen

  ---

• Donna Summer, RIP

  ---

• Showbiz: Disco diva Donna Summer dies aged 63 after cancer battle

  ---

Chuck Brown "The Godfather of Go-Go"(August 22, 1936 – May 16, 2012)

Published in the Washington Post
Chris Richards, Updated: Wednesday, May 16, 4:42 PM

Related articles

• Chuck Brown, RIP: Some Go-Go Music from the Gone-Gone Godfather [VIDEO]

  ---

• Chuck Brown, pioneer of ‘go-go’ funk music, dies – CBS News

  ---

• R.I.P. to our DC Pioneer and Legend!! We Love You Chuck!!!

  ---

Raphael Saadiq is at the forefront in keeping classic old school music before the youth oriented masses in the 21st Century and I love him for that! It is remarkable that he does this considering he wasn’t even born when some of those great Motown classics, he emulates so well, were topping the charts in the early Sixties.

I am a huge fan and thank Ray-Ray for sharing his talents and keeping the old school music alive for this Boomer! Many Happy Returns of the day Raphael!

Raphael Saadiq (born Charles Ray Wiggins, May 14, 1966) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, guitarist, and record producer. Saadiq has been a standard bearer for “old school” R&B since his early days as a member of the multiplatinum group Tony! Toni! Toné! He also produced songs of such artists as TLC, Joss Stone, D’Angelo, Mary J. Blige, and John Legend. (SOURCE: WIKI)

Related articles

• Raphael Saadiq Named One of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People(allhiphop.com)

  ---

• New Joint: “They Don’t Know You” x Raphael Saadiq (feat. Common & Ledisi) (audio-gumbo.com)

Johnnt Maestro (5/7/1939 - 3/24/2010) AP Photo/John Spoltore

The sweet tenor of Mr. Johnny Maestro belonged to two popular groups — first The Crests of the Doo-Wop era and secondly The Brooklyn Bridge.

The Crests, formed in 1956, was one of the first integrated groups in a segregated era. Maestro’s beautiful tenor lead the group’s first big hit “16 Candles.” The track went #2 Pop and #4 R&B in 1959!

In 1960 Maestro left the group to go solo,  forming and leading the 11 piece “Brooklyn Bridge.”  In 1969 “Bridge” had a #3 Billboard pop hit with “The Worse That Could Happen.” This song showcased Johnny’s soulful tenor that never left him.

I never got to see either of his groups perform live but I did watch all of Mr. Maestro’s performances on the PBS Classic Oldies Specials of late. His performances were just tremendous! His voice never left as you can hear in the second YouTube clip below.

Maestro lost his battle with cancer on 3/24/2010 — another music legend gone too soon of late. R.I.P

(2007 performance of 16 Candles)

(The Worst That could Happen/Little Bitty Pretty One)