JeansMusicBlog

'Gentleman' Jim died 43 years ago in an airplane crash.

I wasn't 'into' country music at the time but understood/knew he was a real star. Had a pleasant voice to listen to.
Later on I did buy a few of his records.

Here is his 65 LP The Jim Reeves Way.
Nice songs like In The Misty Moonlight and Bolandse Nooientjie & Ek Verlang Na Jou both sung in South-African.

Look in the comment (and comment..).

Cars, cars, cars.....
Here's the second part of this serie.

Fantastic car songs like Dolan, 'Ramblin' Jimmy - Hot Rod Race, Sound - Drag Race (From High school Ceasar), Vincent, Gene & Blue Caps - Race With The Devil, Brenston, Jackie ah Delta Cats - Rocket '88', Norvus, Nervous - Transfusion and as a bonus a James Dean 1955 Interview !
You can see in the comment the complete tracklist (and more..).

Was yesterday writing about cars.
The last track on this (first !) album gives the pure wonderful sound of Mike Young's 1960 Chevrolet Exotica Impala !

Other titles are Dee, Ronnie - Action Packed, Duals - Stick Shift, Vincent, Gene - Cruisin', Berry, Chuck - Maybellene, Shore, Dinah - See The USA in Your Chevrolet (advertisement), Collins Kids - Hot Rod.

Well, you know where to look ...

I saw somewhere on the net a poll about cars in the fifties.
Question : what car did you had at the time ?
Well we had a Chevy like the one below, a two doors Chevrolet Impala Bel Air. Only difference is we had a blue one.

Remember the first time I drove in it (had to deliver on a 'students house' some eggs and some milk) and had to turn to the left in a busy street.... Ah that was a problem with such a big car, so I turned the next street to the right, did that another two times and I could go straight on (wasn't I clever ??).....
Remember how proud I was showing it to my at the time girlfriend Elly de Man.
Remember how nice she looked from the back (I mean the car ...). Don't you agree ?
Remember how I went in my last schoolyear to school with that car. Ah no-one had such a beauty.
Remember it could drive about a 150 miles an hour (or so) and well I did of course.
Remember it needed a lot of gasoline .....
Remember ......
But all good things come to an end.
The night before we went on holiday to the beach there was some lad who wasn't that careful and stroke against 12 cars in our street including ours. Although the car itself looked quite good it still was total-loss. It was too costly to repair the automatic gear of the engine. Must have somewhere some b/w pictures of that accident.
From time to time I think about buying such a car again....

Starting tomorrow there will be on my BLog a 4 piece story (...) about cars.
You can even hear the sound of that great Chevrolet Bel Air Impala yourself !!

Just a few weeks and it's 30 years ago Elvis 'the king' died.
I suppose there will be a lot of BLoggers who will remember that day in their own way.
I plan to make a short serie of Elvis. Here's my first contribution. Here it all started.

In Memphis a local boy liked music, played a little guitar. Rocorded in Sam Phillips studio on July 18, 1953 'My Happiness & That's When Your Heartaches Begin' and gave that acetate recording to his mother as an extra birthday present.
Performed on stage as a beginner. But everyone was immediately in love with the guy, especially the girls. Performed in the open air on several occasions but his breakthrough came in the Lousiana Hayride in 1955.
On this picture you see on the left Scotty Moore, in the middle 'gentleman' Jim Reeves and on the right Elvis.

Today I present The Complete Louisiana Hayride Archives (although I have a few more ...), a narrated 100 minutes of listening pleasure.
So quickly move, as always, to my personal 'archives' : the comment section.

Listened last night to some Bob Dylan records. One of my favorites is his 1970 'country' 2-LP Selfportrait. I know most pro's consider this as one of his worst but I like his musical choice and style on this LP.

Search my BLog for more Bob Dylan (like his XM Radio shows which starts again in about 6 weeks....). Just a hint Dylans first recording session ? on 2006 dec 28.

Amelia Earhart 7/24/1897 - 7/2/1937.
So she was born 110 years ago (hardly can believe 1897, first thought I made a typing mistake...) and died at the young age of just almost 40 !!!
American aviator and the first woman to fly alone over the Atlantic.
See my post Amelia Earhart on date january 11 and my offer of the LP Plainsong ft Ian Matthews which is all about her.

On the left you see a picture of her I found on Wikipedia_Amelia Earhart and underneath is the so appropriate text 'Earhart is widely regarded as a feminist icon'. So true, so true.

Chuck Jackson was born July 22 (although other sources mention june 22 or even july 27), 1937 in Latta, South Carolina and was raised in Pittsburg.

He's relatively forgotten today, and his brand of uptown soul is dismissed by the relatively vocal clique of critics who prefer their soul deep and down-home. But Chuck Jackson was a regular visitor to the R&B charts (and an occasional one to the pop listings) in the early '60s with such early pop-soul concoctions as I Don't Want to Cry, Any Day Now and Tell Him I'm Not Home. His records were very much of a piece with New York pop/rock-soul production, with cheeky brass, sweeping strings, and female backup vocalists. Those production trills make his work sound dated to some listeners, and his hoarse, emotional vocals weren't as subtle or commanding as peers like Ben E King or Wilson Pickett. On its own terms, though, his best work is quite good, whether you prefer pop to soul or vice versa.

On the right a videoclip on which Chuck Jackson sings at an Burt Bacharach special, 1965.
He performs the Burt Bacharach song Any day now, which later on became a huge hit by Elvis Presley.
But Chuck performed the original and in my opinion the best version !!
Note Burt Bacharach playing the organ himself !

Jackson sang with one of the best doo wop groups, the Dell-Vikings, for a while in the late '50s (although he doesn't appear on their hit singles). Spotted by Scepter Records while performing with Jackie Wilson's Revue, he started recording for the label in 1961. As was the case with labelmates Dionne Warwick and the Shirelles, Jackson's early-'60s arrangements blended pop, R&B, and New York-session professionalism. Like Warwick, Jackson was one of the first singers to successfully record Bacharach-David material; one of his best singles, I Keep Forgettin (1962), was written and produced by Leiber-Stoller. Jackson had some success with some duets with Maxine Brown in the mid-'60s, but he left Wand in 1967 for Motown, at the urging of Smokey Robinson. Jackson was (perhaps understandably) lost in the shuffle during his four years at Motown, and he's barely been heard from since, although he remains a favorite on England's "Northern soul" scene and Belgium's "Popcorn" scene.

I offer you a 'Greatest hits' LP.
Though this LP only features a dozen tracks it more than makes up in quality what it lacks in quantity. Starting with the brilliantly bittersweet Any Day Now, this album features many of Jackson's definitive tracks, including singles like I Don't Want to Cry, a slightly more hopeful song, as well as his rendition of Since I Don't Have You, which remains one of the best uses of his emotionally powerful voice. Along with the melancholy strain that runs through most of Jackson's songs, there's also plenty of playfulness and drama, both exemplified on I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near) and Hand It Over. Chuck Jackson worked with some of the best songwriters of the early '60s and he does justice to Bacharach and David's thrilling I Wake Up Crying and The Breaking Point, as well as Goffin & King's Drifters-esque Make the Night a Little Longer and Tell Him I'm Not Home.

If you like my offer why not buy the following great 2 LP's on 1 CD issue's.
KENT CDKEND 107 (1993) which contains I Don't Want To Cry (1961) & Any Day Now (1963) or KENT CDKEND 110 (1994) which contains Encore (1963) & Mr Everything (1965).

Look in the comment for the LP and the video.

EDIT 2007_october_01.
Sadly the original Youtube video isn't available anymore but you can still get it via the comments...
EDIT 2008_february_12.
This great video is viewable again...... (as well as in the comments...)

Like in every sport there's every year improvement in material and so on.
For instance in ice-speed-skating the Dutch introduced about 10 years ago a new skate, the so called slap shoe. So the Dutch women did won almost every tournament instead of the, at the time, 'unbeatable' German Gunda Niemann (by the way, in my opinion a great sportswoman). A year later everyone used this skate which improves the speed with 2%.
Famous Prof. Dr. Jacob Pennie from Football Union Intelligence explains together with his associate Prof. Dr. Harco de Boer in this video how the Dutch soccer team will win every match from now on.

It's obvious the Dutch will be the next world champion providing this info doesn't leak to the other nation coaches. So please keep this to yourself .... :-)
I placed in the comment a Rapidshare download-link to this video.

Bobby Fuller (October 22, 1942 – July 18, 1966) was an American rock singer and guitarist best known for his classic "I Fought the Law".

At a time when the British invasion and folk rock were culturally dominant, Fuller stuck to Buddy Holly's style of classic rock and roll with Tex Mex flourishes.
His recordings reveal the influence of Eddie Cochran, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Little Richard and the Everly Brothers in cover recordings and original compositions, as well as instrumental surf guitar. Less well known was Fuller's ability to emulate the reverb-laden surf guitar sounds of Dick Dale and the Ventures.
His first Top 40 hit was "Let Her Dance" written by Bobby Fuller. His second hit "I Fought the Law" hit #4 on Billboard and was written by Sonny Curtis, a former member of Holly's group The Crickets, and recorded by the line-up of the Fuller brothers, James Reese on guitar and Dalton Powell on drums. His third Top 40 hit was the Buddy Holly cover song "Love's Made a Fool of You".


Just after "I Fought The Law" became a top ten hit, Bobby Fuller was found dead in a parked automobile near his Los Angeles home. The police considered the death an apparent suicide, however many people still believe Fuller was murdered. He was found with multiple wounds all over his body and covered in gasoline leading many to speculate that the perpetrators fled before they could set the car on fire. He is buried in the Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. Dead at age 23, Fuller barely outlived his idol, Holly, who died at 22.

It would be too easy to offer one of his many Greatest hits compilations.
Instead I post the above less known 1966er LP Celebrity night at PJ's where Bobby performed on the famous Sunset Strip before an audience of (in those days) hot Film and TV stars like Sally Field (see the back of the included sleeves).
So go to the comment where I also placed a link to the video itself. By the way, it's a version with a jailhouse set from From Hullaballoo.

Hé Svinx this clip was played on the Veronica reunion contest ! Remember ?

November 11 last year I posted a story about the Dutch Star Sisters in Concert. I offered a LP on which they were bringing back the WWII years. Also on 18 february this year I did a little issue about them as Stars on 45.

Yesterdays post about The Andrews Sisters brings me back again to the Star Sisters.

Here's a little Youtube video of the Star Sisters in Concert. Isn't it nice to see all the sleeve pictures who were included in my original post can be seen here 'alive' ?
So if you like this little video you know where to look on my BLog... Have fun !
And if you didn't watch this video you missed a lot about the remembrance of those times of the fourties !!

I have all (or at least the majority of) the clips I posted in the past.
I consider to post them if there is a need to. I'll see that in the comments.
And because you seem to just 'download' I placed a Rapidshare link in the comment to this 9MB avi clip !

Retiring and having a lot of spare time ? After just two weeks : no. I'll tell ya later how busy I am. My succeeder (better said 'the organisation') doesn't seem to do very well. Hard to stay on the 'outside'..... Gladly my (... not anymore ? ...) assistant Henny will today accompany one of my (Turkish) disabled patients for the fourth (...) time to the University hospital where she would be treated. They said they nowadays don't see these persons treated in a general practice anymore but I am sad treatment in a hospital takes too much time (discussing/protocol and so on ....). It's soooo difficult to say I'm not involved anymore and to let things go on.......
Well you come to me because of the music and you are not interested in my 'diary'...

Have some time now to search the internet and found this very interesting 2CD.
Have a lot of this kind of old radio recordings. Sadly, but understandable, in a very low quality.
If I remember well this kind of commercial broadcasts lasted 15 or 30 minutes. In Europe we listened to them later on by the AFN (American Forces Network Europe).

If you wanna go back into time (way back into time ....) write your remarks in the comment section ...

The King of Rock 'n' Roll had this week fifty years ago 9 previous UK hits before finally reaching the peak position #01 with All shook up !
No one could predict at the time it was just his first UK number one which would end with his 18th number one in 2002 ! So Elvis Presley was about 45 years present in the UK charts.
The weeks before UK skiffle man Lonnie Donegan was #01 with the great Puttin' On The Style / Gamblin' Man and after 7 weeks in the charts Elvis' position was taken over by Paul Anka with his nice teen pop song Diana.

Position #01 and volume 01 sounds almost the same..... After retiring from my job this is my first real new post marking the start of a new beginning !
It was quite easy why to pick Elvis for this post.
One can argue about the importance of any artist but to me Elvis was the most influential. I have a huge amount of his (unofficial) albums, complete recording sessions and so on.
I still did buy about 10 years ago that terrific 50CD box at $500. Every two weeks a new CD was delivered by mail.... One can never have enough of the man ! I can listen a whole evening to him without getting bored.

I dedicate this to my little (not anymore..) sister Elizabeth....
At the time we quarreled a lot. I was a Cliff Richard fan, she an Elvis fan.
Me : He can't sing, he even makes mistakes like in Fame and fortune. Listen to this song carefully at 1.15 .....
My brains must be quite good 'cause I still remember our quarrel after 50 years. Dear sister, time heals all wounds .... (....but I'm right ....).

Look in the comment for a link to my vinyl of Elvis' Golden Records (still no volume number ....... but a lot followed !).

I suppose most (or all ??) of my visitors just come to me because of the music they can 'download'. Am I right ?
I mean it's a bit disappointing I just noticed there was this last week no (indeed : none !!!) comment about my retiring.
I suppose that will be the same to the people I dealt with all those years.

As I wrote a lot of months ago people are 'selfish'. I'm glad I'm the opposite. Have now for over 45 years done enough (back) to the community/society.

Last night I slept for the first time in about 15 years 8 hours in a row. What a privilege.... My neighbours told me they saw today less stress in my eyes.....

Last week I indeed slept a lot. Four hours sleep, five hours up, six hours sleep, eight hours up, three hours sleep, six hours up.
You watch something like 'ER' ???? Nice to watch but you don't understand 'the pressure' when you have their responsability in real life ........

Yesterday I did a little bicycle tour. Just 5 miles. I needed oxygen......
I'm so priviliged to live in the country side. Today I was busy in my 'private garden'. We turned down 6 big trees to make more 'space'. There are enough trees left to sit in the shade.
So this 256 feet high 'Google Earth' overview of my property isn't correct anymore ....

This evening I was busy writing letters to a lot of firms I dealt with. Saying thanks by helping me all those years. So I'm still quite busy.
Well you are not interested in this bla bla. But this BLog is my diary !!

Listened this evening to some nice songs by Emmylou Harris, Dion di Mucci and Troy Shondell.
I promise I will post at the end of this week some music again ! Suggestions ?

Haven't slept last night because of the forthcoming hours.
After having worked for 45 years it's finally all over.
Today was the last day I was in charge, felt the responsibility.
In my opinion 'responsibility' is the keyword in everyone's life.
Well... last day..., not really. Yesterday was my last day and I had to do 'my things' all alone, without any help. This morning I didn't 'work'. Just fixing the last personal and legal things ending with the signing of the official certificate's at the notary.

No celebration, no party.
One starts anonym and in my opinion one has to leave like an ano in any job !
I never understood why there has to be (to some people....) a party at the end of a working career (or even before when someone leaves after, let's say, just 10 years....).
Don't you just (have to) do what you were educated for ? Note : and for certain paid by your community ! Your education and by so also your 'status' is paid by your community, it's not just your merit !
I've done my best for the people who were my responsabilty and although we all understood we had differences regarding race/color/religion/sex and so on we respected each other and we could get along very well.
The political leaders (pfff....) seems to make the differences, not the people.
In my opinion it should be just the way around. Despite the differences we can get along very well. I did with 'my people' and they certainly did with me !
I honestly am very grateful/thankful to 'my people' !!!!!!!!!

Hope I have done right to the (just a rough guess) 20.000 people who have gone through my hands in all those years. I certainly must have made mistakes but I'm glad I didn't made fatal mistakes.

I'm just a simple man (as I say in my profile) regarding my back ground and I'm proud of that. I really consider 62-Nash, Johnny - Deep in the heart of Harlem appropriate to me. Only difference is it really is possible to get out of 'your' ghetto speaking of 'status/money'. But in my heart I will always belong to 'my roots'.

Here are some pictures of this, to me very emotional, day.


On the left a front picture from where I worked the last 17 years.

On the right my so loyal, fine, trustworthy, beautiful assistant (I can better say co-worker !!!) Hennie. I owe her soooo much ! We worked together for about 30 years and went through only a few bad days when things didn't worked out as we planned but the rest were just good days.
I can't remember when she was ill. Maybe two days in all those years. Trustworthy ! Thank you, it was more than a pleasure !!!!!!!! You're my girl !!!!
We both say we didn't had a job to do, we had a vocation. So true !
For the first time in 30 years Hennie called my by my real Christian name. I felt so honoroud !
I hope you will have a pleasant time with my succeeder but even more with your husband René and your fine family like your mother (and I'll always remember your deceased fine father), Marian, Mike jr & Barbara, Babette, Mattias and your friends Ronald or 'Dixie' and others we had so much fun with in person or on the phone.

Also my thanks go to Pauline and Ann who were always so loyal to 'our people'. Even in dark times when there were problems.... I understand this is quite 'vague' to my readers but Pauline and Ann will understand and that's what most important to me.

How silly it may be to the people who know me my thanks also go to my (ex-)wife Agnes.


My son is taking my last personal belongings in his car. He stayed the rest of this day beside me. At the end we had a simple but very fine Chinese dinner.
The next picture shows on the left my advisor. He did very well. Thank you Gert. On the right the person who will be in charge of 'my stuff' from now on. I wish him and his employees a sincere 'good luck'.


The moment of moments for me. On 2007_07_03 at 11.53 I sign my withdrawal.