While I am saving one of best for my last post on Saturday, there are a few more women who deserve mention for having some Boogie Woogie chops on the keyboard.
Dorothy Donegan is perhaps the greatest Blues/Jazz pianist you have never heard.
Cleo Brown’s brother Everett played with Pinetop Smith (“Pine Tops Boogie”) and taught her some piano licks.
Doña Oxford can hold her own, even when backing the great, Albert Lee.
Mary Lou Williams is regarded as one of the best Jazz pianists of all time.
Deanna Bogart does it all, singer, composer and plays a killer sax as well.
Stephanie Trick plays “Suitcase Blues” from a name I mentioned in my first post, Hersal Thomas.
Hazel Scott was one of the stars of the club I mentioned in the first post, Café Society.
Lil Hardin Armstrong was another artist of many talents. Besides being King Oliver’s pianist and married (1924-31) to Louis Armstrong (his second of four wife’s), she composed the music for several songs; “Bad Boy” was a hit for the Jive Bombers and covered by Ringo Starr, “Just for a Thrill” was covered by the Ink Spots and Ray Charles.
Caroline Dahl is a San Francisco based musician. She has released four Boogie Woogie CD’s and is still touring the world and spreading the Boogie Woogie gospel.
Brenda Lee was just 14 years old when the above song “Sweet Nothin’s” was recorded and released in 1959. It peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending December 26, 1959 and #12 on The Hot R&B Sides for the week ending April 11, 1960. It was her first big hit song on the Hot 100.
Brenda Lee (Brenda Mae Tarpley) was born December 11, 1944. She grew up in a very poor family living in 3 room houses and sharing a bed with two siblings. She won her first talent contest at age 5, her father died at age 8 and by age 10 she was supporting her family financially.
Her debut was a cover of Hank Williams 1952 song “Jambalaya” recorded and released in 1956 and just 11 years old (not 9 as the record shows). She really gave the song a fresh and upbeat feel.
By this time Brenda toured with the Country Stars of the day and she had looked up to Patsy Cline as a ‘big sister’ until her untimely death in 1963 at age 30.
Lee would chart her first song in 1957 at just 12 years old. She was billed as a Rockabilly singer. By definition I’d have to say it was not Rockabilly, she recorded of that style but with an orchestra and a chorus on this song. Lee would soon be backed by the Nashville A-Team with musicians such as Bob Moore, Buddy Harmon, Ray Edenton, Hank Garland, Grady Martin, Floyd Cramer, and Boots Randolph. Not your typical Rockabilly three or four piece band. Truth is they did not know how to categorize her.
Whatever the genre it is her incredibly strong vocals and singing style that would blow anyone away and make no mistake, she could really rock-out. Brenda Lee is quite simply-phenomenal. You have to see this video clip (below) of her singing “One Step at a Time“. The song was written by Hugh Ashley and of note the talented session musician (writer, arranger and more) Al Caiola played guitar on the record. Think of any singer or musicians that had a hit in the 1950’s and 60’s from Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways” to Tony Bennett or Mahalia Jackson. And he played on a hundred or more songs.
At age 12 she had reached #43 on Billboard with “One Step at a Time” in 1957 and it went to #24 on the Country chart.
Her performance of the song “Dynamite” in 1957 earned her the nickname “Little Miss Dynamite” that has followed her throughout her 70 plus year career. At 4′ 9″ Lee has never been one to be pushed around, even from such an early age. Brenda’s Producer Paul Cohen moved on as they were banging heads over which songs she would record. Her Sound Engineer and sometimes piano player Owen Bradley would step in.
Lee’s first #1 hit was ‘technically’ “I Want to be Wanted”, released in 1960. But it was actually the B side “I’m Sorry” that got on the attention. The song, unlike other B side smash hits like “Hound Dog” by Elvis Presley, was not re-released as an A side (except in the UK). The chart rankings were not really designed to handle the B side as a bigger hit than the A side. Not that it would solve this dilemma but the concept of a double A side would not come along until 1965. “I Want to be Wanted” has a sort of ‘adjusted’ chart position at #14.
Brenda Lee was still just a child but had actually been worried about her songs not charting that well, so now at the ripe old age of 15 she finally had a #1 hit. She was the youngest female ever to do so at the time only to be edged out (by a few months) by Little Peggy March (age 15 years and 50 days) when her song “I Will Follow Him” reached #1 on April 27, 1963. That Billboard record still holds today.
Brenda Lee would have to wait 63 years for her next #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 when “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” topped the chart in 2023 and then again on Jan. 6, 2024. Released in 1958 when she was 13 years old with that incredible voice. The song did not chart until 1960, reaching #14. The record has sold over 15 million copies and it’s the fourth most downloaded Christmas song.
To my knowledge she is the only recording artist to have once held the record for the youngest female to reach #1 and now the oldest when she was age 79 (and 26 days). She also held the record until 2000 for the youngest person to have a hit record on the Country Chart with the songs I mentioned above “One Step at a Time” and “Jambalaya” (1957), at 12 years old.
Brenda married Ronnie Shacklett on April 24, 1963, they were both 18 years old. To my knowledge they are still quite happy together and live in Nashville. They had two daughter’s and have several grandchildren.
She has placed 90 songs on Billboard and is the fourth most charting artist of the 20th Century behind; The Beatles, Elvis, and Ray Charles. To date she has sold an estimated 100 million records worldwide. She has been inducted into the Country Music, Rock and Roll and Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Nominated three times, Brenda did not get one with one of her songs, but in 2009 she was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Lee is a versatile artist, in 1966 she and Pete Fountain released an album called For the First Time, it contains several great cover songs such as “Basin Street Blues“.
By 1970 she had moved back to the Country charts almost exclusively. In 1973 she was the first to cover “Nobody Wins” by Kris Kristofferson. With that song she hit #1 in Canada and #5 in the US.
Brenda Lee has had 62 of her original songs covered, none of which she wrote. She has covered over 300 songs. There may be more but she has one co-writing song credit that I am aware of for “The Kind of Fool Love Makes” released by Wynonna in 1997.
Brenda is the first one to record the song “Always On My Mind” in 1971 and not released until June of 1972 and charted #45 on the US Country Chart, #40 in Canada. It was actually first released as a single by Gwen McCrae in 1972. The song is written by Johnny Christopher, Wayne Carson and Mark James. “Always On My Mind” became a hit for the first time for Elvis late in 1972, then Willie Nelson in 1982 and The Pet Shop Boys in 1987.
Last month I posted about “Radar Love” by Golden Earring. The clip below is the Brenda Lee song “Coming on Strong” that is referenced in the lyrics. Brenda released it in 1966 and hit #11 on the Hot 100. It was written by Country singer/songwriter Little David Wilkins.
One of Prince’s hit songs from 1984 was “Purple Rain”, now considered a classic. It spent just two weeks at #2 on The Hot 100 behind Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”. I think history feels a bit differently about these two songs now. “Purple Rain” is #18 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It’s also on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Charts, eh?
There are 160 versions of “Purple Rain”, the most recent was released by Dolly Parton in November of 2023.
Also in 1984, Bruce Springsteen’s highest ranking Hot 100 single “Dancing in the Dark” peaked at #2 for four weeks, three of them, interestingly behind “When Doves Fly” by Prince that was his first #1. That Prince song ranked a bit farther down the list at #37 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and it too is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
Speaking of the 500 Greatest Songs list, there are two of the (#2 Billboard) songs I mentioned earlier; “What’s Going On” is ranked at #6 and “Like a Rolling Stone is ranked at #4.
This will wrap up the series on songs that perhaps should have been #1 but make very memorable #2’s. There are at least a dozen more songs I skipped over from the time the Hot 100 began and just up to this song and 1984. For example, Lennon’s “Woman” and Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” I thought were #1 songs.
For this series on No. 2 I want to give a big thank-you to Top 40 Weekly, an excellent and very accurate resource for charts and as always I make use of https://secondhandsongs.com/.
This is a live recording from 1978 of “Sweet Blindness” written and recorded by Laura Nyro (1968).
This clip is a lot of fun, the great Frank Sinatra singing with The 5th Dimension on one of his TV specials in 1968. “Sweet Blindness”. Marilyn McCoo and Florence LaRue were pure gold.
The 5th Dimension would cover a total of six Laura Nyro songs and have big hits between 1968 and 1970 as “Wedding Bell Blues” hit #1, “Stoned Soul Picnic” reached #3, “Sweet Blindness” #13, , “Blowing Away” #21 and “Save the Country” #27.
I do recall a high school friend had the 1970 album Stoney Endby Barbra Streisand and it would have been around 1976 or so that I read the liner notes (because that’s what one might do in ancient times) and saw her name. Not that the name meant anything to me at the time but I had also seen her name as the songwriter for “Eli’s Coming” on the hit song by Three Dog Night from 1969. Just a point of personal trivia, our now 12 year old Quaker Parrot is named Eli, after the song of course.
It wasn’t until 1994 when I really discovered Laura Nyro. We are coming up on the 30th anniversary of the passing of my father and father-in-law during the same week in February of that year. At the end of the month we were blessed with our second daughter. So during this time there was some introspection going on. A song I had always liked was the Blood, Sweat & Tears version of “And When I Die”.
And when I die and when I’m gone There’ll be one child born In this world, carry on, to carry on
Well I could not have found a more appropriate song for the circumstances. Thinking about the lyrics, the words, led me to take a closer look at Laura Nyro and her writing. I was able to find a brief pause in what was otherwise a chaotic time and much more since from her songs. Her voice was full of emotion and her range was very impressive. I was quite sad when I learned of her passing just three years later in April of 1997.
“When I Die” written and recorded by Laura Nyro in 1967.
Blood, Sweat and Tears with “When I Die” (1968). A teenaged Laura had sold the song to Peter, Paul and Mary who were the first to record and release the song in 1966.
Laura was only 17 years old when she wrote “And When I Die” and it was her very first complete song. There was clearly an old soul already full of wisdom to be able to write such a song, at any age. It is the only one of her 43 songs that have been covered that she did not originally record herself. Her first single that she recorded and released at age 18 is “Wedding Bell Blues”, it is on her debut album More Than a New Discovery (1967).
We need to remember how exceptional it was for a young woman to release an album of her own songs. Certainly there is what I would call a latent appreciation out there for Laura. I won’t refer to her as an ‘unknown’ but during her time she did not sell a lot of albums nor did she chart any singles. As noted there were some significant covers of her songs but in truth if you are not the singer of the song, people don’t pay a lot of attention to the songwriter.
Let me give some examples of some of the greatest female singer/songwriters in history. Billie Holiday was 18 when her first single was released but for any song she had written/co-written it would be in her early 30’s for her first album. The trail blazing Carole King released her first single in 1958 at age 17, focused on songwriting her first album was released when she was 28. In the 1960’s Dolly Parton had written singles released by other artists at age 19 and her first album was at age 20. Nina Simone was in her mid twenties for her own songs to appear on her albums, as was Peggy Lee. Joni Mitchell wrote all her own songs and was in her mid 20’s for her first releases. Aretha Franklin was not as prolific a songwriter but did write a couple of her top ten hits such as “Think”(1968), again she was in her twenties. These are all legendary artists but also exceedingly rare.
Later would come names such as Kate Bush, who at age 19 in 1978 was the first female ever in the UK to have a #1 self written song. Then we would have Adel and Taylor Swift for example with self written releases before age 20. I am perhaps belaboring the point but I just want get across the scarcity of such a person as Laura Nyro.
“You Don’t Love Me When I Cry” written and released by Laura Nyro in 1969. If you seek a person who put their heart and soul into a song, one need look no further. With 43 of her songs being covered amounting to hundreds of versions I still feel she is underappreciated.
Here is a song for which I cannot find a cover version, why I have no idea.
‘I am the Blues” Laura Nyro from 1976
“Sweet Dream Fade” was among several songs she had written and recorded (1994/5) while she was in treatment for Ovarian Cancer.
The album Angel in the Dark was released in 2001, four years after her passing. The album also contains some incredible cover versions of songs that were of influence to her such as “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” and “Let It Be Me“. While her early work gets the most attention I think songs like these prove her skills as a singer/songwriter did not fade.
I have referenced Diane Warren many times. Often she just writes great songs, they were shopped around and some happened to be first recorded by a male voice. She also co-wrote may great songs with men, such as Tina Turners “Don’t Turn Around” with Albert Hammond. But today I focus on her solo writing efforts in an attempt to find that purpose written song for a man to sing.
Her song “Some Hearts” was first recorded by Marshal Crenshaw in 1989 but she wrote it for Belinda Carlisle and it was never used. “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” she wrote with Celine Dion in mind, but it was recorded by Aerosmith. Diane wrote “Blue Eyes Blue” for the movie Runaway Bride (1999) and it was recorded by Eric Clapton who described it as “Soft” and “girls like”. I can’t find a reference that tells me she knew who would sing “Blue Eyes Blue” when she wrote it.
She has said that she writes for herself first. Often with songs that are requested for movies, “the brief” or synopsis is typically looking for “girls songs” I guess for “boys songs”‘ they looked to Bob Dylan. There are several other songs she wrote for movies not knowing the gender of the eventual singer, such as “I Could Not Ask for More” for Message in a Bottle that ended up being done by Edwin McCain.
Of her other songs that were first recorded by men such as Clive Griffin, El DeBarge, Tom Jones, Dion and many more, I can’t find much evidence one way or another that she wrote for a man, a woman or it didn’t matter at the time.
However, I am certain that “Don’t Take Away My Heaven” sung by Aaron Neville fits my qualifications.
In the songwriting business it’s a tough way to make a living, to be one of the more successful is even harder. To do what Diane Warren has done as a woman is truly unique. That’s not meant as a “Gee, she’s done so well for a girl” remark. It’s a reality of the business that she has been able to rise above.
As with many songwriters, she can actually sing quite well. However, if you are as good as she is at writing, you sometimes can make a lot more money and you don’t have to go out on tour to do it. Diane released her first album in 2021, aptly called “The Cave” which is the name she has given her office and songwriting home since 1985. You can check out her YouTube Channel here.
Mostly Music Covers 