Music Record Shop Weekly

Welcome to the weekly feature (look for it every Friday) called MusicRecordShop Weekly.  

Instead of the usual new releases and some hard to find vinyl that we inform you about, this week Mark has gone crazy and is having a "Kick Off The Summer Memorial Day Sale!"  Do some online LP shopping this weekend and have your records delivered right to your door!

Musicology 101

Let's have a little fun, so here are some rock and roll nuggets so you can win at music trivia games and become a top musicologist!

Scotland's hard-rock group Nazareth recorded a tune called "Love Hurts" as a B-side filler, never intending it to be a hit. Record buyers felt differently and the single rose to #8 in the US and #15 in the UK. One count revealed that over 42 different artists have recorded the song, including The Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison.

James Brown, Bill Haley, Ike Turner and B.B. King all started their music careers as disc jockeys.

Dave Clark turned down his initial appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show because he'd never heard of it. It was only after the band got to America and performed on the program, did he learn how big the Sullivan show was in the US.

Although they are mostly remembered for accompanying Elvis Presley on over 360 songs, The Jordanaires also sang back-up on 30,000 other recordings.

When Paul McCartney and John Lennon first played "She Loves You" for Paul's dad, he said "That's very nice son, but there's enough of these Americanisms around. Couldn't you sing "She loves you, yes, yes, yes!" The duo collapsed in a fit of laughter.

Vee Jay Records was the most successful Black owned and operated record company before Motown. The firm was founded in 1953 by Vivian Carter (the "Vee") and her husband, James Bracken (the "Jay").

Brian Jones, the original lead guitarist of The Rolling Stones, is said to have fathered six illegitimate children before his untimely death on July 3rd, 1969.

The Mothers Of Invention are believed to have released the first double album with 'Freak Out!' in early 1967.

In 1962, Gene Pitney recorded "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" for the movie of the same name, starring John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. Although the song reached #4 on the Billboard singles chart, it was never included in the film.

When the Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th, 1964, producers received over 50,000 applications for the 728 seats in the TV studio.

Alan Gordon, the co-writer of The Turtles' hit "Happy Together" said that he wrote the melody to the song based on an open string pattern used by a bandmate to tune his guitar.

Chip Taylor is the stage name of American songwriter James Wesley Voight, brother of actor Jon Voight and uncle of actress Angelina Jolie. Besides writing The Troggs' hit "Wild Thing", he also penned "Angel of the Morning", by both Merrilee Rush and Juice Newton as well as "I Can Make It With You" by The Pozo Seco Singers and many other hit records.