Summary of Lenny Kaye's Lightning Striking

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The Arena on Euclid, Ohio, on March 21, 1950, was the site of the Moondog Coronation Ball, hosted by WJW disc jockey Alan Freed. The bill promised a raucous time, but most of the performers were between or awaiting hits. Freed played records supplied by Leo Mintz, whose Record Rendezvous has been recycling used jukebox 78s since 1939.

#2 The Dominoes were a group of musicians that were handpicked by Billy Williams to be in his band. They had a secular conversion from the gospel song Have Mercy Jesus. Clyde McPhatter was the voice of the Dominoes, and he quit the group to lead the Drifters in 1955.

#3 The Moondog Maytime Ball was held three nights at the Arena, accompanied by fifty extra police officers. Two years later, Freed was on his way to New York City, WINS, television, movies, and holidays at the Paramount.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822536340

IRB Media

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Insights on Lenny Kaye's Lightning Striking

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Arena on Euclid, Ohio, on March 21, 1950, was the site of the Moondog Coronation Ball, hosted by WJW disc jockey Alan Freed. The bill promised a raucous time, but most of the performers were between or awaiting hits. Freed played records supplied by Leo Mintz, whose Record Rendezvous has been recycling used jukebox 78s since 1939.

#2

The Dominoes were a group of musicians that were handpicked by Billy Williams to be in his band. They had a secular conversion from the gospel song Have Mercy Jesus. Clyde McPhatter was the voice of the Dominoes, and he quit the group to lead the Drifters in 1955.

#3

The Moondog Maytime Ball was held three nights at the Arena, accompanied by fifty extra police officers. Two years later, Freed was on his way to New York City, WINS, television, movies, and holidays at the Paramount.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Levi was the one who chose to sing in front of the microphone. He was a good ballad singer, and the woman at the front desk of the Memphis Recording Service thought he was cute.

#2

In the first month of 1954, the boy came back to cut another acetate. He was more plaintive on I’ll Never Stand in Your Way, a pop hit for Joni James, his guitar jangling slightly out of tune. He was trying to impress.

#3

The engineer-producer-studio owner was given a demo by a song plugger in Nashville, and he couldn’t get the song out of his head. He called the boy into Sun Studios and recorded him. Levi didn’t bring anything to the song, but the engineer-producer-studio owner could sense his eagerness to please and displease.

#4

The band went into Sun’s studio and started playing ballads. Levi leaned toward Because songs, but he didn’t understand the more complex reasons behind his need. The engineer-producer-studio owner told them to keep going.

#5

The sound of electricity was what made Sam’s record sound so unique. It was the sound of Elvis’s voice, which had come easy to him, sometimes too easily.

#6

In 1950, Sam Phillips started a record label to put out one of his first discoveries, Joe Hill Louis. The venture may have come undone in a matter of weeks, but Sam liked to stop by Dewey’s broadcasts from the magazine floor of the Hotel Chisca at the corner of Linden and Main in the wee hours.

#7

The music was around, and had been for a while, ripe for the picking. Best-selling vocalists ruled the pop charts, and they removed offensive elements of arrangement and suggestiveness. They covered the original inspiration, hits once removed.

#8

Sam was looking for a two-way street that crossed the color line, and he found it in the form of Elvis Presley. He was a black man who could transmit black music to a white audience.

#9

Sam Phillips loved sound. He was a listener, first and foremost, hoping to hear something he’d never heard before. He built the future home of Sun himself, putting up the acoustic tiles and the angular ceiling, bouncing and damping reflections off the walls and floor.

#10

Sam was drawn to oddball characters, such as Harmonica Frank, who blew his harp out the side of his mouth or his nose, and Doctor Isaiah Ross with a boogie vengeance. Sun in its first years was all about the boogie.

#11

Phillips recorded many different kinds of music, but he was especially good at recording race records. He made Yiddish records if there was a market for them, but there wasn’t, so he recorded race records, rebranded rhythm and blues by Jerry Wexler in 1948 when he was