The Rock & Roll Diner

26/07/2025

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Darlene Love (Singer/actress, RnR Hall of Fame inductee; The Blossoms, Crystals, solo) (84)

Darlene Love, born Darlene Wright on July 26, 1941, in Los Angeles, California, is an American R&B and soul singer and actress, renowned for her powerful voice and work with producer Phil Spector. She began singing in her church choir at age 10 and joined the girl group The Blossoms in 1957 while in high school. With The Blossoms, she provided backing vocals for artists like Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, and The Ronettes, including hits like “Be My Baby” and “Monster Mash.” Love sang lead on “He’s a Rebel” (1962) and “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” (1962), credited to The Crystals, and “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” with Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, but often received no credit due to Spector’s practices. Her solo hits include “(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry” (1963) and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” (1963), a holiday staple performed annually on Late Show with David Letterman from 1986 to 2014.

Love faced challenges in her solo career, working as a maid in the 1980s before a comeback sparked by her holiday performances. She acted in all four Lethal Weapon films as Trish Murtaugh and performed in Broadway shows like Leader of the Pack (1985). Her 2015 album Introducing Darlene Love, produced by Steve Van Zandt, featured songs by Bruce Springsteen and Joan Jett. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011, she was celebrated in the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom (2013). Love won a legal battle against Spector for royalties in 1997. She continues to perform, recently collaborating with Cher on “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” for Cher’s 2023 album Christmas. Married to Alton Allison since 1984, she has three sons and lives in Rockland County, New York.

26/07/2025

Happy Birthday to Mick Jagger who turns 82 today! Photo by Patrik Andersson.

26/07/2025

Happy Birthday to Queen Drummer Roger Taylor who turns 76 today!

26/07/2025

ON THIS DATE (65 YEARS AGO)
July 26, 1960 - Sam Cooke: "Chain Gang" b/w "I Fall In Love Every Day" (RCA Victor 47-7783) 45 single is released in the US.

"Chain Gang" is a song written and recorded by Sam Cooke. It reached #2 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Top R&B charts

This was Cooke's second-biggest American hit, his first single for RCA Victor after leaving Keen Records earlier in 1959, and was also his first top 10 hit since "You Send Me" from 1957, and his second-biggest Pop single.

The song was inspired after a chance meeting with an actual chain-gang of prisoners on a highway, seen while Sam was on tour. According to legend, Cooke and his brother Charles felt sorry for the men and gave them several cartons of ci******es. Cooke was reportedly unsatisfied with the initial recording sessions of this song at RCA Studios in New York in January 1960, and came back three months later to redo some of the vocals to get the effect he wanted.
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Richie Unterberger, allmusic

"Chain Gang" was, other than "You Send Me," Sam Cooke's biggest hit, making #2 in late 1960. Some purist critics have seen this song as a sort of sop to the White pop audience with its orchestration and hammy background vocals, selling Cooke to the masses while his real soul-blues-gospel inclinations were saved for his gutsier records and performances. While "Chain Gang" is undeniably among Cooke's poppier efforts, it's nonetheless a classic pop-soul record, one with a catchy melody that doesn't ignore the singer's gospel and R&B roots. Certainly the most melodramatic elements of the track are the background vocals, in which a chorus grunts "ooh" and "ah" as if they're striking rocks on an actual chain gang, seconded by actual clangs to simulate a pick striking rock. The backing singers also play a strong role in the ultra-catchy chorus, where a bass singer knowingly intones an upwards-sweeping "well don't you know" before Cooke sings about the sound of a chain gang, lilting memorably around the word "gang." When you think about it, the tale of a "Chain Gang" is a most unusual subject for the Top Forty, which usually likes to stick to more feel-good and romantic topics. Crucial to its success was that Cooke did not sing it like a hardened outlaw a la tunes like "I Fought the Law," but almost like an only slightly sad, bouncy observational lament, almost as if he's describing workers in the fields rather than men doing hard time. A little bit of string orchestration adds to the pop factor, and Cooke adds a little pathos on the fadeout with improvised-sounding vocals mimicking the men complaining about how hard their work is and how thirsty they are. For all that, it's an ingratiating and dignified song, masterfully delivered by Cooke, who keeps any underlying silliness that might threaten the song's credibility well in check. Perhaps the most notable cover of "Chain Gang" was done by Otis Redding in 1966, shortly after Cooke's death.

26/07/2025

Billy Joel has dropped a massive 155-song 'And So It Goes' companion album on digital services featuring unreleased recordings and more.

26/07/2025

The two-parter, all the more poignant given the star's health issues, spans nearly five hours.

26/07/2025

Happy 82nd Birthday, Mick Jagger (born July 26, 1943).

26/07/2025

Kate Bush

26/07/2025

System of a Down's Daron Malakian discusses the power of Ozzfest and Ozzy Osbourne's legacy.

26/07/2025

Blood of Eden features Sinead O'Connor and is taken from Peter's sixth album, US, was released in 1992. The album US continued the now well-established Gabri...

26/07/2025

Remembering singer, songwriter Dobie Gray who was born Lawrence Darrow Brown on this date July 26, 1940 in Simonton, TX.

He discovered gospel music through his grandfather, a Baptist minister. In the early 1960s Gray moved to Los Angeles, intending to pursue an acting career while also singing to make money. He recorded for several local labels under the names Leonard Ainsworth, Larry Curtis, and Larry Dennis, before Sonny Bono directed him toward the small independent Stripe Records. They suggested that he record under the name "Dobie Gray", an allusion to the then-popular sitcom "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis".

His first taste of success came in 1963 when his seventh single "Look At Me", on the Cor-Dak label and recorded with bassist Carol Kaye, reached #91 on the Billboard Hot 100. Greater success came in early 1965 when his original recording of "The 'In' Crowd" (recorded later that year as an instrumental by Ramsey Lewis, and also covered in 1965 by Petula Clark) reached #13.

The follow-up, "See You at the Go-Go", recorded with Wrecking Crew members Kaye, Hal Blaine, and Larry Knechtel, also reached the Hot 100, and he issued an album, Dobie Gray Sings for 'In' Crowders That Go 'Go Go,'

In 1972, he won a recording contract with Decca Records (shortly before it became part of MCA) to make an album with producer Mentor Williams—Paul's brother—in Nashville. Williams wrote "Drift Away" which Gray recorded. Released as a single, the song rose to #5 on the US pop chart and remains Dobie Gray's signature song. It placed at #17 in the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1973, sold over 1 million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA on July 5, 1973.

In the mid-1970s, he moved permanently to Nashville and signed for Capricorn Records, writing songs in collaboration with Troy Seals. His last solo hit singles were "If Love Must Go", #78 in 1976, and "You Can Do It", #37 in 1978. He increasingly concentrated on songwriting, writing songs for a variety of artists including Ray Charles, George Jones, Johnny Mathis, Charley Pride, and Don Williams

Gray re-emerged as a recording artist for Capitol Records in the mid-1980s, recording with producer Harold Shedd. In 1997, he released the album "Diamond Cuts", including both new songs and re-recordings of older material.

Gray passed away December 6, 2011 at the age of 71.

26/07/2025