Quotes (CUT AND PAsTED).
Robert J. Boyne
"We had gone through ‘Too Much’ a couple of times: I had the solo down
and
it was in a strange key for a guitar. Elvis thought he could do it
better
and when we did it again, I got lost, but we didn't stop playing.
We didn't have multi-tracking and as we couldn't re-do a solo, I kept
going
and somehow managed to come out as I was supposed to do. When Elvis
heard
the playback, he turned to me with a little smirk and said "You're
gonna
have to live with that for the rest of your life". He really liked
that
take and he didn't just choose it to annoy me"
D.J. Fontana
recalls working on Elvis Presley's 1968 comeback special:
"The stage wasn't very big. It looks bigger on television than it
was.
They were having trouble with the cameras and the lights as the
hardware was
reflecting in the cameras. Bones Howe said "Those drums are in the
way,
they are right in the middle of everything, what can we do?" And I
said
"Get rid of them. I'll play the back of a guitar case. Who cares?"
I’d
done it before because that sound on ‘All Shook Up’ is the back of a
guitar
case"
Jerry Allison
" Norman Petty was an excellent engineer with a good studio and good
equipment. I just played one drum on Peggy Sue and Norman switched it
back
and forth out of the echo chamber. He raised the volume and dropped
it
back. Even on CD it still holds up. We tried to get different sounds
from
the regular kit - we didn't have any exotic percussion instruments. I
had a
basic set of Premier drums, one mounted tom-tom, a snare drum and bass
drum,
one crash symbol and one rise symbol.
I played the snare drum for the tom-tom sound on Peggy Sue but a
cardboard
box sounded good on Not Fade Away and You’re So Square and a couple of
other
things. On Everyday I patted my knees. Buddy was playing guitar and
I was
keeping the rhythm, so we recorded it like that. Never set a finger
on the
drums, never moved. Being lazy I guess"
Lonnie Donegan
“ I spoke to Buddy Holly about his solid electric Fender and his new
amplifier and he had a strange style, a fingering electric style. The
only
fingering you could see in Europe at that time was Spanish or
classical.
Buddy was a one-man orchestra and so was the drummer, he was a one-man
percussion unit, and the bass player had the most perfectly hit bass
sounds
filling the hall.
The three of them were so efficient. English drummers were very
wooden, a
lot of them still are, and this guy was flowing and you never knew
what he
was going to play from bar to bar. He had a wonderful full sound as
if he
were playing three drum kits at once. I asked him what style it was
and he
said "I guess it's Texas drumming". That sounded funny at the time
but I
found out later that there was a Texas style, which had a
semi-military
sound to it"
Bob Hewitt
"Clyde Otis asked me to do a demo for Elvis. We kept playing ‘Don’t
You
Think It's Time’ in different keys until we found one where I sounded
like
Elvis, the band sounded like Elvis's recording band, and a vocal group
of
sounded like the Jordannaires. That way, when Elvis heard it, he
would more
or less hear himself doing it, and it worked: Elvis recorded the song"
Johnny Tillotson
"Doc and Mort were playing me demo after demo. They may have been
doing it
too fast because I passed on a couple of good songs including ‘Can’t
Get
Used To Losing You’
Neil Sedaka
"I met Connie Francis through my music publisher and I had an
appointment to
play her my newer songs. As she had had a big hit with ‘Who’s Sorry
Now’, I
played her all my ballads but she turned them all down. At the very
last
minute, I decided to play ‘Stupid Cupid’ which was very different from
her
normal style and she chose it
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Robert J.
--
Robert J. Boyne.Sutton Group West Coast Realty.North Vancouver/British Columbia.Cell. 604-644-6973.
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" I have the good sense to know that unheard songs are often sweeter".
Email - a-great...@shaw.ca
Home page - http://www.realtor-lower-mainland.com
Robert J. Boyne
Jack Scott
"A friend of mine with long sideburns who looked like Zorro had a
nickname
of Greaseball and I used it in a song about a fist fight. The record
company made me change it because they thought I was slandering the
Spanish
and the Italians. I went to the bathroom and I didn't know how I was
going
to change it as I had Greaseball firmly in mind. There was some
graffiti
there that said ’ Leroy was here’ and that sounded good to me. We
used the
same lyric and just called it ‘Leroy’
Johnny Meeks
"I was in Roustabout with Elvis and I'll bet you never saw me. I'm a
part
of the band but all eyes are on Elvis. He was like that in real life.
You
could be standing right next to Elvis but everybody would be looking
at him.
He had more charisma than anyone I know"
Paul Evans
"To get song to Elvis, you either had to be in New York City or
Nashville.
Here in New York, you would have to go to Hill and Range, a big
company
which controlled the music that Elvis would record. I knew the people
and I
went up and played ‘ I Gotta Know’ for them. I was very excited when
I
heard that Elvis had cut the song and I was dying for it to come out,
then I
got a call to go over and see the publisher.
Even though Elvis had cut the song, they didn't know if he would
release it,
and so they wanted to cut it with this new kid, Fabian. I got angry
and
said ‘ Absolutely not’ as I didn't want anything in the way of Elvis.
I was
surprised that they had asked my permission as normally, publishers
would
just do it. It would have been on that first session with ’Turn Me
Loose’
but it worked out okay as the Presley record did very well for me"
Brian Hyland
"Ginny Come Lately was originally called Johnny Come Lately and it had
been
pitched to Connie Francis. She didn't like it and the songwriters got
it
back from the publisher as they had only given him a certain time to
get a
record on it. They changed it to Ginny Come Lately and I got a lot of
fan
letters from girls called Ginny”
Doc Pomus
"Save The Last Dance For Me was written especially for the Drifters
but the
record company wasn't that enthusiastic about the song and I started
rehearsing it with Jimmy Clanton. It was going to be his next record
until
we got a call from Atlantic to say that it was going to be the
Drifters’
next record. It was going to be the B-side of ‘ Nobody But Me’ which
we had
also written, and we figured that it would be very cool to have both
sides
of a Drifters single. I had to tell Jimmy Clanton that we couldn't do
the
song but we gave him ‘Go Jimmy Go’ which had been written as Go Bobby
Go for
Bobby Rydell. He wasn't too disappointed as he still ended up with a
hit”
Ronnie Hawkins
"Eddie was a real nice cat, took care of business, looked good and had
a lot
of common sense. Gene, was a little wild, a heavy boozer who did lots
of
crazy things. Their money, like mine, was being handled by Norm
Riley. He
made the deals with Larry Parnes and Jack Good. Later on, he got
himself
checked into a mental institution and said he couldn't remember where
the
money was. We never got our money so he got away with it"
Jack Good
"Eddie used to call me Watson - in fact, Sharon Sheeley still does.
He knew
of Sherlock Holmes through the Basil Rathbone films. He thought of
himself
as Holmes and me as the bumbling, British old Colonel type. He gave
me some
grey leather gloves which he signed ‘ To Watson, with love, Holmes’.
Off
stage, he wore very casual, American clothes. He was a sportsman and
he
told me that he was very fond of hunting, shooting and fishing. I
thought
he was going to be a hick because he came from Oklahoma, but he was a
real
gentleman"
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