In 1970, Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh composed the song Box of Rain for his father who was dying of cancer. He asked band lyricist Robert Hunter to put words to the song so he could sing it to his father before he died. Hunter has said he understood how Lesh wanted to aid and comfort his father with this song, and immediately after hearing the music the lyrics wrote itself "as fast as the pen could pull." Lesh would sing this song to his father in his hospital bed in his final days. Box of Rain is the first song on American Beauty, the band's fifth album, and it was sung by Lesh on the album and in concert. This was the first song that the group released with Lesh on lead vocals. The Grateful Dead first performed this song in an emotional acoustic set at Fillmore East in New York City on September 17th, 1970, and they didn't perform it again until late 1972. The song was played on and off, and eventually retired for 13 years - over 750 shows - until it was revived in 1985 leaving stunned fans in tears. Usually the song was preceded with the crowd chanting "we want Phil." On July 9th, 1995, one month before the death of Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia, the eclectic rock band of 30 years played their unintentional final concert at Chicago's Soldier Field. The band played Box of Rain for their second encore at that show - it was the last song the band ever played.
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In 1925, Empress of the Blues Bessie Smith famously recorded St. Louis Blues - the classic recording featured Louis Armstrong on cornet. The W.C. Handy song was one of the earliest blues songs to become a popular hit, and it had been recorded several times before Bessie Smith's version. Over the years it has been recorded by many artists from Glen Miller to Stevie Wonder - who won 2 Grammy's for his 1999 recording. The song was written in 1914, and it originally appeared in the Charlie Chaplin film The Star Boarder that year. In 1917, singer and actress Ethel Waters was the first known to perform the song in public. In 1929, Bessie Smith's supreme 1925 cover of the song was memorialized in the 2-reel short film St. Louis Blues - her only film appearance. That same year, Louis Armstrong recorded the song with his popular Louis Armstrong Orchestra. Both Bessie Smith's original recording and Louis Armstrong's 1929 recording of St. Louis Blues have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The St. Louis NHL team, the St Louis Blues, got their name from the forever popular blues song - which is played at the beginning of every game. During the National Anthem at every home game, as the song finishes with "and the home of the brave", the crowd shouts out "and the home of the blues." In the 1920's, Bessie Smith was the highest-paid black entertainer in America, yet after her death her grave sat unmarked for 33 years until a headstone was placed there by Janis Joplin in 1970. View the full 1929 St. Louis Blues film HERE. In 1929, Fats Waller first recorded his early jazz and swing standard Ain't Misbehavin'. The song was written along with Harry Brooks and lyricist Andy Raza, and it was introduced in the 1929 off-Broadway revue Connie's Hot Chocolates. The show was so successful it was moved from Harlem to the Hudson Theatre on Broadway, where it was billed simply as Hot Chocolates. The Broadway run of the popular all-black revue featured Louis Armstrong's Broadway debut as the orchestra director. Armstrong, who was well-known at the time, would steal the show when he stepped out of the orchestra pit to play a trumpet solo on stage for the show's reprise of this song. Fats Waller personally taught Armstrong the song. Louis Armstrong was one of several successful recordings of Ain't Misbehavin' in 1929, and it would become his all-time best selling record. Armstrong eventually would leave the show, personally selecting Cab Calloway to replace him as orchestra director. After leaving the show, Armstrong and Waller were regular performers at Connie's Inn in Harlem. The nightclub, like it's rival Cotton Club, were known for featuring black musicians performing for a whites-only audience. In 2013, Alicia Keys performed Ain't Misbehavin' in the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Great Gatsby. In 1961, beloved Japanese singer and actor Kyu Sakamoto topped the charts in Japan with his hit song Ue O Muite Aruko. The song would become an international hit, and one of the best selling songs of all-time. In 1962, British Pye Records executive Louis Benjamin heard the song while in Japan, and he enlisted the band Kenny Ball & his Jazzmen to record the song as an instrumental. Benjamin re-named the song Sukiyaki - named after his favorite Japanese meal. The song hit #10 on the UK charts. The following year a US disc jockey who had heard the song obtained the original Sakamoto version, which he began to play on the radio using the title Sukiyaki. The song became so popular that Capital Records obtained the US rights and released an American pressing of the song - it soon topped the US Hot 100 and the Adult Contemporary charts, staying at #1 for several weeks. In 1963, US country singer Clyde Beavers released a less successful first version with English lyrics. FFW to 1981 - the song was back on the US Charts again when disco group A Taste of Honey released a version with their own alternate lyrics, hitting #3 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the Adult Contemporary. The song charted again in the US in 1994 when R&B group 4 P.M. hit #5 on the Top 40 with their version of the song. Sukiyaki is the only American #1 hit song ever with Japanese lyrics, or recorded by a Japanese singer. In 1985, rapper Slick Rick famously borrowed the first verse of the song in the chorus of his classic hit La-Di-Da-Di, featuring Doug E. Fresh. The song had originally been recorded with a sample from the A Taste of Honey cover, but the sample wasn't cleared so the part was crudely sung on the officially released single. The day before Slick Rick officially released La-Di-Da-Di, 43-year old Kyu Sakamoto was one of 520 people that died in the tragic August 12th crash of Japan Air Lines flight 123. Four people survived the crash - it was the deadliest airplane crash in history. |
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