And of course, there are many many, books on almost every band of the mid to late sixties to even have a minor hit.īut the period from 1958 through 1964 is generally summed up by “and there were some whitebread nonentities like Fabian and Frankie Avalon”.

There is book after book about the major stars of the early rock and roll era - while you won’t find much out there on a lot of truly important artists, you can find out enough about Elvis and Ray Charles and Johnny Cash and Little Richard and Chuck Berry and the rest - these are all romantic figures of legend, the Titans who were defeated in the Titanomachy that was the mid-sixties Beat boom.

We’re currently in a patch of rock and roll history that is ludicrously undocumented. This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. I also referred to the liner notes of this CD, which contains most of the Shirelles tracks worth owning. Girl Groups by John Clemente contains potted biographies of many groups of the era.Īnd Here Comes The Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin goes into some detail about Scepter Records. The following books were also of some use:Ī Natural Woman is Carole King’s autobiography.Īlways Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson is a good overview of the whole scene. There are no biographies of the Shirelles in print, so I’ve used a variety of sources, including the articles on the Shirelles and Luther Dixon at This Is My Story. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at and Īs always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Tom Dooley” by the Kingston Trio.

Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Download file | Play in new window | Recorded on July 10, 2020Įpisode eighty-nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” by the Shirelles, and at the beginnings of the Brill Building sound.

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