Philadelphia Magazine is retelling the story of Billy Joel's breakout to stardom in Philadelphia and it's all my fault!
Here’s How Philadelphia Created Billy Joel
The hitmaker, who plays Philly on Friday, tells us all about it.
....Back in 1971, Joel was a no-name 22-year-old from Long Island. In November of that year, he released his first album, Cold Spring Harbor, which got virtually no attention or airplay.
But then one day in 1972, Philly music producer Dennis Wilen, who had launched a live WMMR concert series from Philadelphia’s Sigma Sound Studios, got wind of this singer-pianist named Billy Joel during a visit to New York. Wilen invited Joel to do one of those WMMR live broadcasts....
Joe Fields, a driving force in the jazz music business for over 50 years, passed away on July 12. He was 88 years old.
Fields was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1929 and raised in Brooklyn. In high school he was an accomplished athlete, winning the prestigious New York Journal American Lou Gehrig award. He was also an industrious student, working many jobs during his school years, including selling newspapers, pushing a rack in the Garment District and driving a cab. He played college football at Syracuse and the University of Bridgeport, where he was captain of his team his senior year. While attending Bridgeport, he met and married the woman who would become his wife of 66 years, Joan Nancy Boyd.
After graduating from college, Fields had several business ventures but found his calling in the music business. In the late 1950s, he began selling records to music stores in Brooklyn. Fields was hired by London Records to pick singles for the United States market.
He worked for MGM, Verve, Prestige and Sue Records before becoming the national sales manager at Buddha Records. While at Buddha, Fields started its jazz division, Cobblestone Records. He started his own record label when he acquired Cobblestone from Buddha and renamed it Muse Records.
I had three artists (co-produced with Skip Drinkwater) on Joe's Muse/Cobblestone:
Norman Connors during his Pharoah Sanders period
The Grubbs Brothers aka The Visitors, highly influenced by their cousin John Coltrane
Catalyst, virtuoso players ranging from hard bop to fusion
I am a big consumer of online multimedia and as the editor and publisher of POCHO I regularly embed video and audio files.
The videos I feature are usually served by YouTube and Vimeo, and audio files mostly come from SoundCloud. I've never spent much time contemplating SoundCloud's business model -- I just thought of them as an audio YouTube analog.
Now it turns out SoundCloud is having cash flow problems and may not be around much longer. As far is POCHO is concerned this is no big deal --- creaters gonna create anyhow -- but as a SoundCloud creator myself I need to consider where my audio files will live if SoundCloud shuts down.
Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins grew up in the same city block in London's Squatney District, knowing each other only slightly. David played guitar in a skiffle band, the Creatures; Nigel did the same for the Lovely Lads. The two began jamming together outside tube stations, and eventually, formed their first legitimate band, the Originals, later changed to the New Originals when the East End Originals (now the Regulars) threatened suit.
The New Originals collapsed in 1964 without record company support, but David and Nigel were hired by the legendary Johnny Goodshow Revue and played the Seaside Circuit, gigging after hours at local pubs — and it was in a Southampton tavern, The Bucket (now the Bucket and Pail), that they met and jammed with John "Stumpy" Pepys, then drummer for Leslie Cheswick Soul Explosion (now Les & Mary Cheswick).
When the weather turned cold, the three hooked up with bassist Ronnie Pudding from the Cheap Dates (now Cheapdate) and began working in London as the Thamesmen. They released their debut single on Abbey, Gimme Some Money b/w Cups and Cakes, in late spring 1965. It did not hit the charts immediately.
Meanwhile, the band played extensively in the Benelux nations, particularly Amsterdam's Long-Hair Club, where they met sixteen-year-old keyboard prodigy Jan Van Der Kvelk, who did musical charts for the band and used his Dutch music-biz connections to get them work. Leaving Amsterdam and Van Der Kvelk behind, the band returned to Britain as the Dutchmen and found Gimme Some Money climbing the charts. The band quickly changed their name back to the Thamesmen but the single had peaked and vanished from sight.
During the next eighteen months the group performed under the following names: Rave Breakers, Hellcats, Flamin' Daemons, Shiners, Mondos, the Doppel Gang, the Peoples, Loose Lips, Waffles, Hot Waffles, Silver Service, The Mud Below, and the Tufnel-St. Hubbins Group; personnel included: Nick Wax, Tony Brixton, Dicky Laine, and Denny Upham (keyboards); Jimmy Adams, Geoff Clovington (horns); Julie Scrubbs-Martin, Lhasa Apso (backing vocals); and briefly Little Danny Schindler (vocals, harmonica), later with Shvegman-Hayman-Kvelkman Blues Band featuring Little Danny Schindler (Shvegman, Hayman and Kvelkman signed with CPR Records as Talmud).
Philadelphia Magazine is retelling the story of Billy Joel's breakout to stardom in Philadelphia and it's all my fault!
....Back in 1971, Joel was a no-name 22-year-old from Long Island. In November of that year, he released his first album, Cold Spring Harbor, which got virtually no attention or airplay. But then one day in 1972, Philly music producer Dennis Wilen, who had launched a live WMMR concert series from Philadelphia’s Sigma Sound Studios, got wind of this singer-pianist named Billy Joel during a visit to New York. Wilen invited Joel to do one of those WMMR live broadcasts....
