1959: Sitting all alone in his New York apartment, Buddy Holly turns on a tape recorder, picks up his acoustic guitar, and makes what will be his final recordings. After his death, the recordings are discovered, taken into a studio, and overdubbed with other musicians. Today, we know them as the Buddy Holly songs: “Crying, Waiting, Hoping,”“That’s What They Say,”“What to Do," "That Makes It Tough," and “Peggy Sue Got Married.” 
We're all about the history of rock & roll at BoomtownAmerica.com!
Every week, we present “ROCK REMEMBERED,” where we take a deep dive into the hidden history of rock & roll, the stories behind the artists and songs that changed the world. Join host, “Boomtown Bill” Cross each Wednesday at 7 pm (Eastern) with an encore broadcast on Saturday at noon (Eastern).
Join us this Saturday as we explore the music and careers of two talented songwriter/producers/performers, "The Story of Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart!"
While a great many rock bands follow in the mold of Mick Jagger & the Rolling Stones or Freddie Mercury & Queen where one member primarily handles the lead vocals, some of rock’s most successful acts actually feature multiple lead singers.
(Yes, we know Keith Richards racked up a lead vocal or two – same with Benjamin Orr in the Cars, but Mick and Rick Ocasek handled more than 90% of the lead vocal duties for their respective groups.)
Here’s a list of successful groups that shared lead vocal duty. Who have we missed?
- ABBA
- Association
- Beach Boys
- Beatles
- Bee Gees
- Buffalo Springfield
- Cream
- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
- Eagles
- Fleetwood Mac
- Grateful Dead
- Jefferson Airplane/Starship
- Mamas & Papas
- Monkees
- Moody Blues
- Move
- 10CC
- Three Dog Night
- Traveling Wilburys
- Who (While Roger Daltry handled most lead vocals, quite a few songs also feature parts where Pete Townsend takes the lead; plus, each album featured one or two songs where John Entwistle sang lead and, every once and awhile, there was a lead vocal part for Keith Moon.)
Remember when all the girls were trying to look like grannies?
Now, many of you ARE grannies!
No, really. Researchers have found that temperature can affect weight loss. That means keep your house set at, say 65 degrees at night may actually encourage your body to burn more fat!
The Life & Times of Howdy Doody – Part 2
It wasn’t all smiles and squirting seltzer bottles. There were plenty of show biz squabbles behind the scenes of The Howdy Doody Show. And the first (and most important) took place barely six months into the show’s 13-year run! We’ll also tell you how a puppet was killed by a mouse.
As the first year of The Howdy Doody Show wore on, the man pulling the strings, puppeteer Frank Paris, grew to feel he was being cheated out his fair share of the royalties being generated by the bumper crop of Howdy Doody merchandise that had begun to appear. Thinking he had real leverage, Paris took his puppet and stormed out of the NBC studios in the spring of 1948, only hours before that day’s live telecast was to take place.
The show’s writers quickly created a crazy scenario where the kids were told that Howdy had left suddenly on a whirlwind tour of the U.S. to campaign for President of the Children of the United States (1948 was an election year). During each thrice-weekly show, he would phone in a report from the road (Buffalo Bob had always provided Howdy’s voice). So the kids could still hear, if not see, their favorite TV star.
(Frank Paris' original Howdy puppet)
After a few days, Howdy dropped the big bombshell. He revealed that he had decided to get some plastic surgery (and really, what TV star hasn’t?). In reality, puppeteer Velma Dawson was being paid $2,000 to create a new Howdy puppet. After a huge publicity build-up, her design was unveiled on June 8, 1948. Dawson’s Howdy is the face we all remember – the face that graced NBC’s test pattern (remember those?) for years.
By the end of June 1948, public demand for Howdy Doody was so great that NBC was broadcasting Howdy Doody Time, Monday through Friday from 5:30 to 6:00 pm.
For 8 years, it remained there until June, 1956 when huge ratings from ABC’s first season of The Mickey Mouse Club forced NBC to move the show to Saturday mornings. There, it ran from 10:00 to 10:30 am until it went off the air with an hour-long final episode on Saturday, September 24, 1960.
Along the way, Howdy Doody became the first show to be regularly broadcast in color. In those days, NBC was owned by RCA Victor. That company was manufacturing television sets and really wanted to stimulate sales of their new and expensive color sets. Just as Milton Berle had sold a lot of black & white TV’s back in the day, Howdy and the gang are given credit for helping the nation convert to color TV as we moved toward the 60’s.
When it comes to colorful, nothing was more colorful in network television than the amazingly large cast of Puppet-Americans and other creatures who populated Doodyville. We’ll take a look at them next time.