Where were you on 5-17-12
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pvd295 — 12 years ago(May 15, 2013 07:10 PM)
I was in my local IHOP with my dad and sister - we had all met there for breakfast. From our booth, I could see the big flat screen TV over the breakfast counter, and saw the streaming headlines under her picture - and reading out loud to my dad and sister (2000who were facing me). My telephone started ringing, texts were coming in (all my friends knew I was a huge Summer fan) and the same with my sister's phone. (I was 48, my sister just shy of 51 - we grew up on her music!). We were both in a state of shock.
Sadly, the young (cute hunky) waiter whom we had didn't know who Summer wasneither did his co-workers. They were all in their 20s, and had no idea who she waspathetic.
"I prefer fantasy over reality TV - like Fox News" - B.Streisand -
3_Beekman_Place — 12 years ago(May 16, 2013 11:35 PM)
Great post! I have noticed this generation doesn't seem to care about anything but the now. I remember as a kid wanting to know who influenced the bands I liked. Led Zeppelin credited the blues and people like Muddy Waters with their sound. Donna always listed Mahalia Jackson as an influence. I remember buying more blues and listening to Mahalia because of that. Sad thing is, this generation only has to scan their phone to find the kind of info we had to spend days or weeks finding!
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HarlowMGM — 12 years ago(May 20, 2013 05:30 PM)
I always hoped she would record a country album when she moved to Nashville, as she had once mentioned (perhaps joking).
I don't think she was totally serious but not really joking either as I could easily see her doing it if the offer came up. She did sing a duet of a country song with Eddie Rabbitt on tv years ago and she was friends with Dottie West (whom I can't believe has been dead 22 years now). I remember reading a review of her stage act in BILLBOARD from circa 1983 and it mentioned that as a gag two of her background singers were dressed as Dolly Parton and Dottie West singing "Stand By Your Man" and I think then Donna led them into singing her song "Woman". Did anybody see this? How long was it part of her act? I believe BB panned it as kind of corny so she might not have kept it long.
Anyway, Donna and her husband did participate in the Nashville music scene on occasion and she sang once at the famous Bluebird cafe there, there's a bit about it in the book written about the cafe. -
WarpedRecord — 12 years ago(May 25, 2013 09:13 PM)
Hi, Harlow: Thanks for the heads-up about the duet with Eddie Rabbit. So sad both Donna and Eddie are gone now.
I had forgotten that Donna wrote "Starting Over Again" (I think of that as a Dolly Parton song), and Donna's pairing with Eddie has slipped my awareness all these years. Thankfully, evidence of Donna's country ability is just a YouTube click away:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRceduoj2cw
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I remember a brief interview on "Entertainment Tonight" when Donna had moved to Nashville and joked (I think) about recording a country album, but I was hoping it was true. She did an excellent job on the rock/new wave-oriented "Wanderer," and it wouldn't be a reach to go country. Tina Turner did it years earlier with "Tina Turns the Country On" (<- great title, eh?), and this album of country/R&B duets is superb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm,_Country_and_Blues
Sadly, this will always be just another "what if" in Donna's career. -
HarlowMGM — 12 years ago(June 19, 2013 11:19 PM)
Yes, country music and rhythm and blues have a lot in common, quite a few songs written for one market were covered by an artist in the other and al5b4so a big hit there. A lot of people think of "The Dark End of the Street" as a soul song but it actually was originally first a country music hit for Archie Campbell(!) and Lorene Mann. And they turned around and did a cover of Aaron Neville's "Tell it Like it Is" that became a country hit. And of course there are the famous cases like Whitney Houston doing "I Will Always Love You" or Barbara Mandrell's multiple covers of soul hits.
Amazing but true Skeeter Davis' classic "The End of the World" was not only a chart topping country, pop, and easy listening record but actually hit the top 5 on the soul chart back in 1963 when it appeared great records were starting to have no borders (unfortunately that didn't last long).
I can easily see Donna singing country songs, she could really do it all. And she was such a good songwriter I think she could have specifically written some country hits had she pursued that arena. -
WarpedRecord — 12 years ago(July 02, 2013 08:23 AM)
Excellent points about Skeeter Davis, Barbara Mandrell and the others. Good music is good music period and if it doesn't fall into easy classification all the better. Soul and country are really like long-long twins of the same mother.
Radio in the '60s and '70s seemed to be a lot more diverse, with any number of artists doing any number of styles, all in the name of Billboard Hot 100 recognition. Then it became increasingly segmented, with more niche stations and charts. At least the euphemistic "black" and "urban" charts have been replaced by the more descriptive "R&B/hip-hop," but radio and the charts these days are still a mess of ghettoization to me. -
williams_kendall — 12 years ago(December 28, 2013 01:33 PM)
The night before I couldn't seem to get enough of listening to "MacArthur Park" over and over again, the next day I get up, go to the library and get on the computer and on yahoo's homepage "Disco Diva Dead at 63". I had the feeling someone had thrown ice water on me.