By Randal C. Hill
Due to a combination of iron and lime, yellow brick roads were fairly common at one time in parts of America. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” became Elton John’s seventh MCA Records studio album. It sold 20...
By Randal C. Hill
For superstar Gladys Knight, recording “Midnight Train to Georgia” was probably like singing poignant lines from a diary. She once said, “I was going through the exact same thing that I was about when recording,...
By Randal C. Hill
Songwriter Alex Harvey has explained that “Delta Dawn” was written about his mother, a Mississippi Delta-born hairdresser living in Brownsville, Tennessee. At 41, she had given herself over to drink after a man who had promised...
By Randal C. Hill
In the summer of 1973, Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s original “Monster Mash” reached the American Top 10 for a second time. Pickett sang lead with a Hollywood band called the Cordials. One evening, while performing the old...
By Randal C. Hill
The once-ubiquitous Andrews sisters – Patty, Maxine and Laverne – premiered “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” in the 1941 Abbott and Costello comedy film “Buck Privates.” For the beloved Minnesota trio, that perky ditty became their twenty-fourth...
By Randal C. Hill
Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” began as “Goin’ Home,” but the poetic perfectionist soon felt that that sounded too ordinary. Thus, he shifted creative gears, restructured the lyrics and came up with “Kodachrome,” which, to him, sounded close...
By Randal C. Hill
Even before he became a successful and respected musician, Gerry Rafferty had developed a loathing for the often-underhanded machinations of the pop-music industry.
Born in 1947 in Paisley, Scotland (near Glasgow), Rafferty came from a working-class family,...
Writer: Randal C. Hill
Inspirations for a hit song can sometimes spring from a most unusual source.
Members of the California septet War hailed from different neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles. Of disparate backgrounds and different ages, the musicians found...
“Imagine a moonless night in the Rockies at 10,000 feet; a meteor went by, its tail stretching across the sky, and burned itself out. It was raining fire in the sky.”
By Noreen Kompanik
The Oak Ridge Boys – the legendary group consisting of William Lee Golden, Duane Allen, Joe Bonsall and Richard Sterban – has been performing on stage together for over 50 years. But the fascinating and unique history...
