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The Return of the Desert Island Jukebox Draft - Drop in a quarter (1 Viewer)

Early Rock and Roll Roots

Rd 11: Fever by Little Willie John (1956)

B side: Letter from my Darling

Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock was perhaps the officially recognized start of rock and roll. It wasn't the first rock song or rock hit but for various reasons, it tends to get the most credit. Bill himself was born in Detroit but moved away during the Depression when he was just 4.  Little Willie John had the opposite and more typical Detroit journey. He was born in Arkansas and moved up to Detroit at the age of 4. He got his musical start singing in gospel groups and was the first person to record Fever, scoring a crossover hit, landing as high as 24 on the pop charts and topping the R&B charts. 

In the 60s, Little Willie John became involved with the Civil RIghts Movement as he held benefit concerts to help fund the NAACP.  He believed, "as entertainers, we can no longer sit and wait for the Sammy Davis' and Harry Belafonte's to raise all of the money." Despite his good intentions, boyish good looks and diminutive size (that's him on the right), he was a hell raiser. He constantly found himself in trouble and boasted a notoriously hot temper. The singer had multiple arrests for drugs, assaults and grand larceny. His drinking and temper finally caught up with him. He was dropped by his label in 1963 and then came a fateful weekend in Seattle. 

Long popular in the Pacific Northwest due to his years of touring through the region’s R&B rooms including Portland’s Cotton Club, Olympia’s Evergreen Ballroom, and Seattle’s Eagles Auditorium, John arrived in the fall of 1964 with a troubled mind. A diminutive (5' 4'') man with a titanic temper, he’d recently skipped bail in Miami, Florida, after assaulting a man with a broken bottle in August and his self-destructive ways continued at the Magic Inn gig. We don’t know how his Friday night performance went, but an old local pal, musician Little Bill Engelhart, has recalled that John was already “way drunk” onstage that Saturday night of October 17th -- he was so inebriated that Engelhart wisely passed on an offer to go out and party with the R&B star after the gig.

John carried on though, heading out with his chauffer/valet/runnin’ buddy to have a few drinks at a notoriously wild after-hours nitespot, the Birdland (2203 E Madison Street). Once there, John jumped up on stage to sing a few tunes with the house band, and eventually left to party on with a couple local women. On Sunday their festivities moved over to an illicit after-hours den in a Central Area house (918 23rd Avenue), where a brawl erupted. After the singer was punched in the mouth by a huge (6’ 2” / 200 pound) ex-con railroad worker named Kenneth Roundtree, he responded by stabbing his attacker with a knife.
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https://www.historylink.org/File/8414

He was convicted of manslaugher and sent to the maximum security penitentiary in Walla Walla where he would split his time between entertaining the inmates and brawling with the guards. In 1968, he would die in prison of pneumonia at the age of 30. Little Willie John ran hot in everything he did. Fever.  

 
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Hmmmm, I've always heard of Rocket 88 as being the first rock and roll song.

I looked up those Seattle locations since I knew Birdland, for instance, no longer existed.  It's a Safeway now.  :(  

 
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mphtrilogy said:
Grabbing this one now as this is not a favorite category of mine and I usually steer clear of the genre so don't have a big list, but this is a clear top movie for me regardless of category so happy to slot it here.

Winner of the following Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay making it only the third film in history to accomplish that feat.

Silence of the Lambs - 1991 - Horror
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Are you high?

You are not where you think you are.

 
krista4 said:
Hmmmm, I've always heard of Rocket 88 as being the first rock and roll song.

I looked up those Seattle locations since I knew Birdland, for instance, no longer existed.  It's a Safeway now.  :(  
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There are several songs that get co-credits for the first rock song. Most of them are songs that have disappeared from cultural awareness. Rock Around the Clock is a song that is still very recognizable today. So it's one of those history being written by the winners situations. It's definitely not the actual first rock song. 

 
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krista4 said:
Hmmmm, I've always heard of Rocket 88 as being the first rock and roll song.

I looked up those Seattle locations since I knew Birdland, for instance, no longer existed.  It's a Safeway now.  :(  
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Sounds like it collapsed in a snow storm in '64. Little Willie John outlived The Birdland. 

 
Ilov80s said:
Sounds like it collapsed in a snow storm in '64. Little Willie John outlived The Birdland. 
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Yeah, I read that - so weird since we rarely have snow.  In a different part of the same history site, they say about '64-'65:  "Through the autumn of 1964 and into the first week of January, Seattle was rinsed repeatedly by alternating snowfall and rainfall. On January 6, 1965, a Times writer predicted "Years from now they will be telling tales about the past 27 days or so as the winter of the big snow here." Well they have not. The snow of 1964-1965 was like a prizefighter with a jab but no hook. It was not a knockout big one. There was too much rain."

 
11.08 - Authority Song b/w Pink Houses (acoustic) - John Mellencamp (1983)

Mellencamp was born two years after the Boss and 700 miles west of NJ.  The then John Cougar namechecked Springsteen in one of his earliest recordings.  Mellencamp has gone on to have a long, illustrious career with his work on Farm Aid and a fine string of late career albums that's arguably more consistent than Springsteen's. 

But I'm going back to prime Mellencamp with his tight jeans and long bangs.  "Authority Song" is an update of "I Fought the Law" with a rockin rhythm section and some minimalist 2-3 note guitar solos.  It's a great jukebox song that makes me want to strut around the pool table. The B-side is a nice acoustic version of one of Mellencamp's signature songs "Pink Houses". 

 
Eephus said:
We can resume the draft order starting with 12.01 in the AM.  That's pick 12.01, not 12:01 AM.

Anybody with outstanding picks is an autoskip.
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That's me. I ought to be able to post my pick somewhere in the 7:30-8:30 AM ET range.

 
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Ilov80s said:
Maybe. I was using it as a guide to crafting a class that I would like to pitch to teach someday as an elective on the history of Detroit through music so this was kind of a double project for me. I could always just draft some things but I literally had the whole draft planned and through lines for almost everything. I might just rather work on the class. It’s my own fault for not reading the rules close enough and just jumping in because it’s an idea I’ve had percolating since I taught the History of Rock and Roll class for a year and this seemed like a fun way to delve into it and something to keep me on schedule. Though we probably won’t even have in person school for another year anyway so what’s the rush. 
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It's a cool idea either way especially considering you want to teach it to a class. Whether you end up going through w it in here or not I think it would be interesting to see the finished project. 

 
Eephus said:
I have three rounds to figure out how the frequency function works in Google Sheets
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the mode function will give you the most common, not sure how to get the 3 most common other than sort and count. I am sure someone her does though.

 
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Eephus said:
Anybody with outstanding picks is an autoskip.
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Here is where we stand on that as of right now:

@Val Rannous needs picks 8 to 11. He is on permaskip and will post picks when he can.

@PIK95 needs picks 7 to 11. He is on permaskip until he tells us otherwise and said he may be able to post picks tonight.

@Long Ball Larry has not posted a round 11 pick. May be waiting to pair it with round 12 due to his theme. 

@Pitchfork has not posted a round 11 pick.

Everyone else is caught up. 

 
Binky The Doormat said:
I read eephus's, your's, LBL's posts and still didn't follow it.

so I'm just waiting for someone here to tell me what to do - it's the American way.  
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Three years will be chosen based on frequency of prior picks.  You will declare a favorite year.

Then you will engage in a hot-dog eating contest.  The number of hot dogs you consume in the number of seconds indicated by your favored year will be your base score.

Your base score will then be divided by 0.07.  This will be your adjusted score.

Your adjusted score will then be multiplied by your BMI and divided by the number of letters in your childhood street name plus the number in your favorite color (only primary and secondary colors eligible for selection).

Once this number is calculated, Eephus will then pull a number out of his ###, and that will be the year we get to choose from.

This really isn't that difficult.

 
krista4 said:
Three years will be chosen based on frequency of prior picks.  You will declare a favorite year.

Then you will engage in a hot-dog eating contest.  The number of hot dogs you consume in the number of seconds indicated by your favored year will be your base score.

Your base score will then be divided by 0.07.  This will be your adjusted score.

Your adjusted score will then be multiplied by your BMI and divided by the number of letters in your childhood street name plus the number in your favorite color (only primary and secondary colors eligible for selection).

Once this number is calculated, Eephus will then pull a number out of his ###, and that will be the year we get to choose from.

This really isn't that difficult.
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where do the preliminary tiers come into play?

 
krista4 said:
Three years will be chosen based on frequency of prior picks.  You will declare a favorite year.

Then you will engage in a hot-dog eating contest.  The number of hot dogs you consume in the number of seconds indicated by your favored year will be your base score.

Your base score will then be divided by 0.07.  This will be your adjusted score.

Your adjusted score will then be multiplied by your BMI and divided by the number of letters in your childhood street name plus the number in your favorite color (only primary and secondary colors eligible for selection).

Once this number is calculated, Eephus will then pull a number out of his ###, and that will be the year we get to choose from.

This really isn't that difficult.
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Not enough dice

 
Eephus said:
We can resume the draft order starting with 12.01 in the AM.  That's pick 12.01, not 12:01 AM.

Anybody with outstanding picks is an autoskip.
Click to expand...
If you want to do a clock again, I think making it from 10 am est to 10 pm est should be considered. I think we should move to two a days with no clock cause it's been challenging to move this along, or at least open the chamber, although that is work. There has been lots of time outs or people on long extended clocks, and not everyone knows or remembers who is on skip.  People seem more busy now, and maybe doing a couple picks a day without a clock would be easier for everyone. 

 
One of the legends about how James Brown became such a good dancer was that he spent a tour opening for Little Willie John. His goal was to steal the shows from John but he learned quickly that he would never do it by just singing. 

 
simey said:
If you want to do a clock again, I think making it from 10 am est to 10 pm est should be considered. I think we should move to two a days with no clock cause it's been challenging to move this along, or at least open the chamber, although that is work. There has been lots of time outs or people on long extended clocks, and not everyone knows or remembers who is on skip.  People seem more busy now, and maybe doing a couple picks a day without a clock would be easier for everyone. 
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I agree with this.  I think the chamber would be too difficult to keep up on.  I know I'm not participating in the running of this draft as I did the last one, as honestly that just exhausted and frustrated me.  Even just keeping up the draft order with all the skips requires a lot of work from people (not me) who didn't really sign up for that.  Two a days seem so much easier in that regard.

 
Ilov80s said:
One of the legends about how James Brown became such a good dancer was that he spent a tour opening for Little Willie John. His goal was to steal the shows from John but he learned quickly that he would never do it by just singing. 
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I've drafted Willie's sister Mable a few times in the past. Talented family.

 
simey said:
If you want to do a clock again, I think making it from 10 am est to 10 pm est should be considered. I think we should move to two a days with no clock cause it's been challenging to move this along, or at least open the chamber, although that is work. There has been lots of time outs or people on long extended clocks, and not everyone knows or remembers who is on skip.  People seem more busy now, and maybe doing a couple picks a day without a clock would be easier for everyone. 
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Let's see how it goes on Monday.  I'm sure we'll get to two a days eventually which means Free Plays rolls will switch from every five to every six rounds.

I'm also OK w/ the 12 hour time window.  Please skip me if I come up in the AM because I'm on West Coast hours.

 
krista4 said:
I agree with this.  I think the chamber would be too difficult to keep up on.  I know I'm not participating in the running of this draft as I did the last one, as honestly that just exhausted and frustrated me.  Even just keeping up the draft order with all the skips requires a lot of work from people (not me) who didn't really sign up for that.  Two a days seem so much easier in that regard.
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3ITC.  We can do this. :towelwave:

 
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