BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS

THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES FOR 2008

Ann
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I am a few months late posting this, but, as I am an ardent fan of Rock-n-Roll, I did not want to let it get by me another day, and that is the announcement of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 2008 inductees. The awards ceremony will take place on March 10, 2008, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.

 Of particular note, is the songwriting team of Kenny Gamble  (lyricist) and Leon Huff (keyboardist) who are finally getting their just due. Their Afro-American rock-n-roll “Philly Sound” is a noted cornerstone of the foundation of rock and roll music. These two greats have put hard work into writing songs for more than 45 years, having written so many hits sung by the likes of The O’Jays, McFadden and Whitehead, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, Lou Rawls, Wilson Pickett, and so many others. Their most well-known hits are “Close The Door”, “Love Train”, and “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”, to name just a few. Their music covers many genres:  jazz, rhythym and blues, gospel,  soul. It is high time that these giants in the world of song-writing are being accorded the recognition for all the tremendous contributions they have given the world of music.  

Mr. Gamble and Mr. Huff will be presented the newly named “Artemet Ertegun Award” (formerly the non-performer category) in recognition of these legendary producers.

The following is the press release from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame article on this year’s inductees.

Congratulations to them all.

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THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME ANNOUNCES ITS INDUCTEES FOR 2008

December 13, 2007—New York—The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation today announced its inductees for 2008. The inductees will be honored at a ceremony on March 10, 2008, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. 

“The 2008 inductees are trailblazers – all unique and influential in their genres,” said Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation President and CEO Joel Peresman. “From poetry to pop, these five acts demonstrate the rich diversity of rock and roll itself.  We are proud to honor these artists and celebrate their contribution to rock and roll’s place in our culture.”

The performer inductees are:

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame also announced the induction of Little Walter in its sideman category, and the newly named “Ahmet Ertegun Award” (formerly the non-performer category) will be presented to legendary producers, Gamble & Huff. 

The 2008 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performer inductees were chosen by the 600 voters of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. Artists are eligible for inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twenty-five years after their first recording is released.

In addition to being honored at the March ceremony, each inducted artist is commemorated at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland Ohio, which serves as a monument to rock and roll’s impact on our culture.  There, this year’s inductees will be honored – along with previous year’s inductees and hundreds of other artists – with exhibits, video and interactive presentations and programs that serve to tell the story of modern music.  The Hall of Fame itself will include artifacts from this year’s inductees, a multi-media presentation with highlights from each artist’s career and their signatures permanently engraved in the glass walls of the Hall of Fame. 

Presenters and performers at the induction will be announced at a later date.  The induction ceremony will again air live on VH1 Classic on March 10, 2008. 

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For more information, please contact Kate Ottenberg, Sunshine, Sachs & Associates at 212 691 2800.

More about the inductees:

With the 1966 release of In My Life by Judy Collins, containing Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” and “Dress Rehearsal Rag,” Cohen became a folk rock icon of the singer songwriter movement. Already an acclaimed poet and novelist in his native Canada, Cohen moved to New York in 1967 and released his classic album Songs of Leonard Cohen on Columbia Records. Its music launched Leonard Cohen into the highest and most influential echelon of songwriters. Cohen’s elegiac work is widely used in film and covered by artists from Jeff Buckley to Bono to Bob Dylan to R.E.M. As Kurt Cobain said, “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld so I can sigh eternally.”

One of the most successful British Invasion bands of the Sixties, The Dave Clark Five topped the UK charts in 1965 with their iconic pop song “Glad All Over.” Thundering production set the DC5 apart.  Their slick melodic sensibility masked their boom factor: The DC5 were the loudest group in the U.K. until the advent of The Who. Drummer, songwriter and manager Dave Clark provided a perfect foundation for Mike Smith’s soulful vocals. Reaching the Top Forty 17 times in just three years, with more appearances on the Ed Sullivan show than the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, the DC5 were an enormous pop phenomenon before disbanding in 1970. The Dave Clark Five have sold more than 50 million records worldwide to date.

Doors opened wide for Madonna Louise Ciccone in 1982, after five years as a singer and dancer on New York City’s competitive club circuit. She signed with Sire Records (her label for the next 14 years) where her idiosyncratic persona exploded onto turntables, dance floors and airwaves and captured the imagination of the first generation of MTV viewers. She went on to become the top female star of the 1980s with seven #1 hits, three #1 albums and seventeen top ten hits in that decade. In addition to molding her public image, Madonna is a meticulous studio craftsperson and completely uninhibited stage performer. From her first #1, 1984’s “Like A Virgin” (produced by Nile Rogers of Chic) to her most recent two year Confessions campaign, Madonna remains one of the most ferociously original artists in music today.

Over the course of his career, John Mellencamp has become a symbol of the hopes, struggles and passions of America’s heartland. As a songwriter, many of his efforts have transcended “hit” status (“Hurts So Good,” “Pink Houses,” “I Need A Lover”) and have entered the cultural vernacular. Mellencamp’s musical heart is in his ballads and rock numbers rooted in late 50s and early 60s rock and roll. His music describes the American experience; the hopes and fears of the common everyman.  As co-founder of Farm Aid, Indiana’s favorite son gives voice to issues that might otherwise be ignored, from our disappearing farmlands to the role of race and class in America.

From Seattle, The Ventures defined instrumental guitar rock in the 1960s. Their hits bookended the decade, from 1960’s “Walk Don’t Run” to 1969’s “Hawaii Five-O.” Nokie Edwards’ twang-guitar and the crisp rhythm of Don Wilson, bassist Bob Bogle and drummer Mel Taylor gave every Ventures album their trademark bent note sound. Long admired by other bands like the Beatles (and especially George Harrison), Stephen Stills, Joe Walsh, Aerosmith, and others, the Ventures hit the Billboard chart nearly three dozen times in the 1960s. The transparent stereo mixes enabled guitarists to isolate and learn every riff, an idea that fueled 1965’s essential instruction LP Play Guitar With the Ventures. Founders of surf rock, the Ventures inspired a classic line of Mosrite guitars and have maintained a flourishing touring and recording career for decades, especially in Europe and Japan.

Little Walter (May 1, 1930 – February 15, 1968) Although Little Walter might not have been the first person to amplify the harmonica, his pioneering use of the microphone helped establish the modern blues harmonica.  With a mike clasped to his harp, Little Walter created echoing, moaning, hornlike sounds that redefined the capabilities of the instrument.  Walter Jacobs had fourteen top ten hits on the R&B charts in the 1950’s including two number #1 songs “Juke” and “My Babe.” Little Walter toured and recorded extensively with blues great Muddy Waters in the 1950’s.  He also recorded with Jimmy Rogers, Memphis Minnie, Otis Rush and Bo Diddley.  Little Walter’s influence was pervasive, especially in England where the next generation of harp players such as Mick Jagger listened to his records over and over.

Songwriters-producers and record label owners Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff made Philadelphia the soul capitol in the 1970’s.  Gamble and Huff’s label Philadelphia International had a stable of artists that included the O’Jays, McFadden & Whitehead, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Lou Rawls and Dee Dee Sharp. Their records featured the duo’s trademark sound:  lush string orchestrations, a powerful rhythm section and a disco beat.  They also worked with Dusty Springfield, Wilson Pickett, and Jerry Butler among others.  In 1990, Gamble and Huff won a Grammy for best R&B song, awarded for Simply Red’s cover of the Blue Notes’ 1972 hit “If You Don’t Know Me By Know.” And in 1999, they won the Grammy Trustees Award.


 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleeveland, Ohio, at sunset.


Rock and Roll Hall of Fame  showing Lake Erie in the foreground.

RELATED LINKS: 

ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME:

http://www.rockhall.com/pressroom/2008-inductee-announcement

 ALSO:

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UPDATE, 3-11-2008:


MADONNA SHOCKS, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE PAYS TRIBUTE AT ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME CEREMONY
NEW YORK — As Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies go, Monday night’s didn’t seem to promise much controversy, like Van Halen’s induction last year or the Sex Pistols’sthe year before that, unless you consider the induction of dance-pop icon Madonna into the hallowed hall to be scandalous.

And apart from a handful of Eliot Spitzer quips, the evening — which also saw the inductions of John Mellencamp, Leonard Cohen, the Ventures, the Dave Clark Five, Little Walter and ’70s hitmakers Gamble and Huff — didn’t have much controversy either. That is, until Madonna opened her mouth.

After an innuendo-filled introduction from Justin Timberlake (during which he lauded Madonna for her “shapely body of work” and for how she’s “always been a woman on top” who “fully enjoys that position”), the sinewy singer ascended the stage and thanked seemingly everyone who helped shape her career, from her earliest dancing teachers to the critics who have blasted her over the years, and told her she was “talentless, that I was chubby, that I couldn’t sing, that I was a one-hit wonder — they helped me too, because they made me question myself and they pushed me to be better, and I am grateful for their resistance.”

Then, Madonna clarified a story Timberlake told during his introduction. He’d recalled getting an injection of vitamin B12 in the butt from Madonna during recording sessions for her new album. Timberlake said that, during the sessions, he started feeling ill. That’s when Madonna proceeded “to pull a Ziploc bag of B12 syringes out [of her purse].” He said she then instructed him to “Drop ’em.”

“I don’t know what you say to that, so I immediately dropped my pants,” he said. “She gave me a shot in my a– and looks at me and says, ‘Nice top shelf.’ That was one of the greatest days of my life.”

Madonna, however, remembered the incident slightly differently. “Everything he said is basically true, but I didn’t say ‘Drop ’em.’ I said, ‘Pull your pants down.’ I like to be accurate because you know I am a control freak.”

After quoting from the Talmud, she called Timberlake — who’d said, “She became the biggest name on the planet the old-fashioned way: She earned it” — a “f—er.” Moments later, she blurted out the word “mother—-er” for no discernable reason.

Those words served as a fitting preamble for the punk-paced covers of Madonna songs from a leathery and topless Iggy Pop, who, along with the Stooges, paid tribute to the singer with covers of “Burning Up” and “Ray of Light,” during which Pop tossed out an F-bomb. At one point during that performance, the cameras panned to a horrified-looking Clive Davis.

After Pop hobbled offstage, Billy Joel — there to induct his pal John “You’ll Always Be the Cougar to Me” Mellencamp — spit out a string of obscenities too, eliciting laughter from an audience that included Chevy Chase, Michael J. Fox, Meg Ryan and even Princess Firyal of Jordan.

The night got off to a much slower start, by comparison. After some opening remarks from Rolling Stone founder and Rock Hall chairman Jann Wenner, legendary R&B singer Patti LaBelle stirred the decked-to-then-nines audience with a towering rendition of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” which was written and produced by inductees Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.

“You’ve been touching the world with your music for so many years,” LaBelle exclaimed, honoring the team responsible for ’70s-era soul hits from Lou Rawls, the O’Jays, Jerry Butler and many others. “You’ve touched my life. You’ve done a wonderful thing. Keep on touching, brothers.”

Also inducted — posthumously — was legendary blues harmonica player Little Walter, who died in 1968; he joined the hall in its sidemen category, as he was a frequent collaborator of Muddy Waters’. Ben Harper said of Walter, who helped pioneer the use of electronic distortion, that “he defined an instrument, he defined a sound, he defined a genre.”

Surf-rock icons the Ventures were inducted next, and followed up the honor by performing two of their biggest hits, “Walk, Don’t Run” and the theme from “Hawaii Five-O.” John Fogerty, who introduced the Ventures, praised the band for having recorded 250 albums over the course of their career. “Nowadays, some of us would be happy to sell 250 records,” he joked, making a reference to the dire state of the music industry.

A pink shirt-sporting Lou Reed strutted onstage to induct revered songwriter Leonard Cohen. His often disjointed tribute to Cohen included a recitation of the genius musician’s lyrics — printed out on at least 30 pages Reed pulled from his pocket. “We’re so lucky to be alive at the same time Leonard Cohen is,” Reed noted, before Damien Rice delivered a rendition of Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” “This is a very unlikely occasion for me,” Cohen, wearing a black tux, admitted. “It is not a distinction that I coveted or even dared dream about. So, I’m reminded of a prophetic statement of [music critic and longstanding Bruce Springsteen manager] Jon Landau in the early ’70s. He said, ‘I have seen the future of rock and roll and it is not Leonard Cohen.’ “

After Madonna’s induction and Joel’s hilarious introductory speech, Mellencamp — sounding like he’d just downed a shot of molten steel — emerged to claim that “nobody put themselves behind the eight-ball more than I did.” He spoke of having surgery when he was just six weeks old, explaining that doctors had worried he’d be paralyzed below the neck. The 56-year-old rocker said he never knew of the surgery until his teen years, when a classmate asked him about the scar behind his neck. “I’m lucky to be standing here for any number of reasons,” he said, after snuffing out a cigarette as he mounted the stage.

Last came ’60s popsters the Dave Clark Five, whose singer, Mike Smith, died just two weeks ago. Clark admitted it was a bittersweet time for the English group. “We wanted it to be the five of us here, but we know he’s smiling down on us, knowing he’s a hall of famer,” Clark said, adding that he’s absolutely delighted that his band’s being inducted into the “American” rock hall.

Actor Tom Hanks inducted the band, and told stories about first seeing them on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Finally, Joan Jett, Fogerty and Mellencamp capped off the long night, playing the group’s “Bits and Pieces” and “Glad All Over.”

This report is provided by MTV News

MADONNA, MELLENCAMP, LEONARD COHEN HONORED: http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/03/11/madonna-mellencamp-cohen-honored-at-emotional-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-induction/

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