Johnny's Records

Johnny's Records Catering to all music lovers out there! Used and New Vinyl for any age! Decals, patches, pins and t shirts...Oh My!

Johnny's Records is a classic rock memorabilia store that opened it's doors in 1975 and still very much alive. Due to the stores elected taste, this store tends to satisfy customers at any age range who enjoys a broad taste of music. Johnny's has everything from pins to jewelry as well as rock band t shirts and unique accessories. We also supply collectors with rare rock and roll posters and print

s that vary from Ronnie Wood to Jerry Garcia. For the customers that come in looking for new tunes we have cassette tapes, CD's and LPs (that are both new and used). Due to the new demand for LP's, we are apart of National Record Store day which supplies re-releases of life changing albums, as well as rare out takes of different artists. We are very friendly and tend to supply your child from infant to old age with rock and roll onsies, such as The Grateful Dead, Bob Marley, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Red Hot CHilli Peppers, Led Zeppelin, Guns and Roses, Johnny Cash and much more.

Are you searching for the white whale? Are you out on the ocean raging against the eternal silence of God, the loneline...
05/31/2026

Are you searching for the white whale? Are you out on the ocean raging against the eternal silence of God, the loneliness of the waves, the mystery of suffering? Do you bang that gong, make the rafters shake, beat those pagan skins so hard that the likes of Jimmy Page are wondering if you will show no quarter? Welcome to the rebel sounds of one John Bonham, drummer superb for the lone lost Zeppelin.
John Henry Bonham was born in Redditch, Worcestershire, England on May 321, 1948. The lad must have been stuck early by the sound of thunder. By the age of five he had put together his own drum kit with spare containers and coffee tins. When he was ten his mom gave him a snare drum. Finally at the age of fifteen his father bought him a complete drum kit. Although he never had drum lessons, he was listening to the sounds of Max Roach Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich.
After graduating school, he went to work with his dad as an apprentice carpenter. In his free time he was playing with local bands. His first professional hiring was with Terry Webb and the Spiders. He bounced around between bands and finally gave up carpentry to make a go as a musician.
He was in A Way of Life and then was convinced to join Robert Plant in the Crawling King Snakes. Then he went back to A Way of Life before rejoining Plant in the Band of Joy. After watching folk singer Tim Rose, well, Mr. Bonham went with him.
Meanwhile, in another part of England, Jimmy Page was blowing out the last hurrah of The Yardbirds. He left and was thinking of taking the name with him. You know, the New Yardbirds. But instead the title Led Zeppelin felt better. He hired Mr. Plant and was thinking of snagging BJ Wilson from Procul Harem. But Robert said, why not hire John Bonham. He brings it home like a bundle of bricks. Jimmy was convinced when he went to see him perform with Tim Rose in July of 1968. Hearing him play, Jimmy thought, yeah, that's the beef.
Robert Plant sent eight telegram to Bonham. Well, not to John directly. Robert thought he had a better chance of reaching Bonham by contacting his local pub Three Men in a Boat in Walsall. The band manager Peter Grant sent forty telegrams. I guess they wanted him. Even though John was also being courted by Chris Farlowe and Joe Cocker, he decided he liked the sound that Led Zeppelin was making.
Okay, you all know the rest. Everyone has at least one Zeppelin album in his or her collection. Despite perpetual roughing up by the critics, the children know what they like. Is there a better band with which to play air guitar? And how about them drums, boys and girls. Those drums just make you jump right out of your skin. A bass player's delight, that's what John Paul Jones has said about Mr. Bonham's playing.
Okay the critics. Yes, the critics. They have criticized Mr. Bonham for being heavy handed. They say he didn't swing. Really? Well, that's what Clapton said in the film Beware Mr. Baker. He was laying down some smoke on John and Keith Moon. You know the rap: Ginger Baker has polyrhythms, African drumming, blah, blah, blah. Listen Eric, there's room for more than one drummer in the life boat. Let's get a couple of other opinions, eh:
Dave Grohl: "John Bonham played the drums like someone who didn't know what was going to happen next—like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff. No one has come close to that since, and I don't think anybody ever will. I think he will forever be the greatest drummer of all time."
Jimmy Page: "One of the marvellous things about John Bonham which made things very easy [for a producer] was that he really knew how to tune his drums, and I tell you what, that was pretty rare in drummers in those days. He really knew how to make the instrument sing, and because of that, he could just get so much volume out of it by just playing with his wrists. It was just an astonishing technique that was sort of pretty holistic if you know what I mean."
You get the point. The man brought it home.

Are you just a little fed up with the ways things are going? Do you think the world is going to hell in a hand basket a...
05/30/2026

Are you just a little fed up with the ways things are going? Do you think the world is going to hell in a hand basket and needs a bit of a make over? Poverty, corruption, the suffering of the marginalized, it's enough to make you scream. Well, that's the way Tom Morello sees it. And he has a guitar that knows how to scream.
Thomas Baptist Morello was born in Harlem on May 30, 1964. His mother Mary Morello was of Italian-Irish descent and worked as a school teacher. His father Ngethe Njoroge hailed from Kenya. He participated in the Mau Mau uprising and became the first Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations. Morello's paternal grandfather Jomo Kenyatta was the first elected president of Kenya. His parents met while attending a pro-democracy rally in Nairobi in August 1963. Discovering she was pregnant, Mary and Ngethe went to New York City and
married.
In the way things get weird, sixteen months later Njoroge declared he wasn't Tom's father and split back to Kenya. Mary took Tom to Libertyville, Illinois, for his formative years.
Like his mom, Tom became interested in radical politics. In his words he was: "the only anarchist in a conservative high school."
He graduated with honors and went on to attend Harvard where he earned his BA in social studies.
After school he moved to LA where he supported himself as an exotic dancer.
"When I graduated from Harvard and moved to Hollywood, I was unemployable. I was literally starving so I had to work menial labor and, at one point, I even worked as an exotic dancer. 'Brick House' (by the Commodores) was my jam! I did bachelorette parties and I'd go down to my boxer shorts. Would I go further? All I can say is thank God it was in the time before YouTube! You could make decent money doing that job – people do what they have to do."
He spent a year working for senator Alan Cranston and that experience completely disillusioned him of the American political scene.
"I never had any real desire to work in politics but if there was any ember burning in me, it was extinguished working in that job because of two things: one of them was the fact that 80 percent of the time I spent with the Senator, he was on the phone asking rich people for money. It just made me understand that the whole business was dirty. He had to compromise his entire being every day. The other was the time a woman phoned up to the office and wanted to complain that there were Mexicans moving into her neighborhood. I said to her, 'Ma'am, you're a damn racist' and she was indignant. I thought I was representing our cause well but I got yelled at for a week by everyone for saying that! I thought to myself that if I'm in a job where I can't call a damn racist a damn racist then it's not for me."
Tom's joined his first band when he was thirteen. Called Nebula, they were a cover band replicating the music of Led Zeppelin and BTO. In 1982 he began studying guitar seriously. After gigging with a few of the prevailing metal bands, he realized he didn't have the discipline or desire to learn how to be a guitar wizard. He had no inclination to play scales eight hours a day so he could sound like Yngwie Malmsteen. Instead he thought he'd approach the guitar like an artist or a deejay. He'd become a craftsman of noise. He worked on combining feedback with special effects to create sound splashes. He might grab a fork to make odd clicking sounds. His heroes were Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads. (He named his eldest son Rhoads and induced Randy into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.)
Okay, you know the rest. Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, Prophets of Rage. The man has played with Springsteen and moves in and out of the E Street Band. His music satisfies a need to imagine the storm that will wash away the corruption and bring a new day of social equality. Hey, there could be worse things. there could be a lot worse things. The man is a marvel and he brings war to your stereo.

Are you feeling like a bloody argument with your mates is a good way to start the day? Do you find yourself moved by st...
05/29/2026

Are you feeling like a bloody argument with your mates is a good way to start the day? Do you find yourself moved by strange forces which allow you to make great works of art and yet, oddly, prevent you from enjoying your sense of creativity? Was your dad a wa**er, a man who never gave you even the time of day? Well, let me introduce you to one Noel Gallagher. I believe you two might have some secrets to share.
Noel Thomas David Gallagher was born on May 29, 1967 in the Longsighted area of Manchester to Irish Catholic parents Peggy and Thomas. He had an older brother Paul and a younger bother Liam. Paul got his own room. Noel and Liam shared a room.
Liam described Noel as the weirdo of the family. He was reclusive and withdrawn and given to day dreaming. He and Paul were regularly beaten ay their alcoholic father. He never sought therapy for this abuse but Noel (and Paul) suffered a stutter for four years. (In both cases it was cured by speech therapy.)
Noel's mom got a legal separation from her husband in 1976. For those of you who know about these things, a legal separation is pretty much worthless. It's not like anyone is really separated. In 1982 Peggy finally left her husband and took the three boys with her. In the words of Noel, "If you don’t get out of here and leave him, I am going to kill him!" Peggy then responded by saying, "Oh Jesus, you can't be doing time for the likes of him."
Both Noel and Liam skipped school a lot. At the age of fourteen Noel was hanging with gangs and received six months probation for robbing a local shop. It was during this probation time he learned guitar. He mentions being heavily influenced by the Smiths and wanting to be like Johnny Marr.
Noel worked for a construction company and was injured when a gas pipe landed on his foot. The company moved him to the storehouse where he would practice guitar. It was during this time he wrote some of the songs that would appear on Definitely Maybe.
At a concert in May 1988 he met the guitarist from Inspiral Carpets. He subsequently became a roadie for the group for the next two years. Upon returning from a tour of the States, Noel found Liam was in a local band called the Rain. Noel joined but asserted he wanted complete control of the band. As he put it:
"Let me write your songs and I'll take you to superstardom, or else you'll rot here in Manchester." Such was his control that his bandmates nicknamed him the Chief.
In May 1993 the band, now called Oasis, went to an open audition put on by Creation Records at King Tut's in Glasgow. Creation founder Alan Mcgee liked what he heard. He took the guys to Sony America who, after a little razzle dazzle bu****it from Noel, gave the band a contract for six LPs. (If you're wondering about the bu****it, Noel told them he had fifty songs ready to go. Okay, he only had six.)
In August of 1994 Oasis put out there first album, Definitely Maybe. It was the fastest selling debut LP in British history and entered the charts at #1.
They toured America but things didn't go as expected. We red, white and blue folk were still grooving on grunge Oasis wasn't getting through. After a bad show in Los Angeles, Noel got into a brawl with Liam and left the band. He spent a little time in San Francisco with a muse of sorts, a young woman who metaphorically talked him off the ledge. Tim Abbot from Creation records tracked Noel down, took him to Las Vegas and something about the slot machines and, no doubt, Cirque du Soleil, convinced him to return to the band.
So onward and upward. Out came What's the Story Morning Glory. Critics roughed it up a bit. Who cares? It was the fastest selling album in British history. Even in the states it got to #4 on the Bill Board hot 200.
Noel and Liam were in the big time. And yes, it completely went to their heads. They indulged in drinking and drugs, fought with fans and the press, cultivated other rock stars as friends, and spent lots of money. Noel bought a bunch of cars and swimming pools. this though he didn't drive and couldn't swim.
In 1997 the put out Be Here Now. The critics thought this album was lazy and fatuous. Nonetheless it sold well. Really well. Noel realized that the sales didn't save the album from sucking. In his usual understated way he said, "Just because you sell lots of records, it doesn't mean to say you're any good. Look at Phil Collins."
Because of his drug usage, Noel began having panic attacks. Like, get me to the hospital panic attacks. Actually, you might consider Be Here Now to be the result of one long drug induced panic attack. So, in his usual can do fashion, Noel got sober in 1998. "I liked drugs, I was good at them. But I'd had panic attacks for about a year and I stopped because I wanted to. After you make the decision, it is quite easy." Good lord, this man blows as hard as Moby Dick.
Okay, you see the pattern. Not the nicest guy in the world. Maybe a bit of unresolved daddy anger at play here. Fighting his brother, fighting the critics, fighting the world. Great music coming from unknown muses, unknown places. How does this happen? It's the way of the world. Tune in, drop out, listen to the music.

New Releases for this week! Get'em While you can!
05/28/2026

New Releases for this week! Get'em While you can!

Some stories, no matter how you slice them, they just end up sad. I don’t know. Maybe being a great songwriter, a revo...
05/28/2026

Some stories, no matter how you slice them, they just end up sad. I don’t know. Maybe being a great songwriter, a revolutionary rock and roller, a man who made the people dance, maybe that is enough. But sometimes you gain the world and lose your soul. Sometimes the past just grabs you and pulls you to the bottom of the abyss.

I love John Florgerty. I love Creedence Clearwater Revival. The sound is so distinctive, the songs have that choogling beat. It’s an odd contradiction. All the members of CCR, they were California boys. But the sound, it reminds you of a southern swamp.

John Cameron Fogerty was born in Berkeley, California on May 28, 1945. He was the third of five boys. Is father Galen set Linotype for the Berkeley Gazette. His mother Lucile taught second grade. For a while John attended a Catholic school which he recalls as being unbelievable harsh. He has written about being ignored when he raised his hand to use the bathroom. Then he’d wet himself and have to sit in damp clothes all day.

When he was nine his parents divorced. John claims they were both alcoholics.

In junior high he and Stu Cook and Doug Clifford formed a band called the Blue Velvets. They did mostly covers of early rock and rollers like Little Richard. A few years later John’s older brother Tom joined the band. They were good enough to be signed by Fantasy records. The executives at the label changed the band’s name to the Golliwogs. They did this without asking permission or even telling the band members. They made seven singles but none of them charted.

In 1966 John got his draft notice. Having no desire to end up in Vietnam, John when down to his local US Army Reserves office and signed up. The clerk doing his paper work was kind enough to back date the paperwork to make it seem as if John had joined prior to receiving his draft notice. He finished his first round of active training in July of 1967. However, he was still liable to be called to active service for the next five years. In an effort to nip that s**t in the bud, John worked out a little bit of crazy. He got arrested for petty theft, he fasted to lose a lot of weight, he placed a syringe in his bed roll. Success. He was discharged in mid 1968.

He returned to his band and they changed the name to Creedence Clearwater Revival. What ho! Where did this name come from? Well, Creedence came form a friend of Tom’s named Credence Newball. They liked the sound. They liked the meaning with its sense of having a creed. Believe it or not Clearwater came from a television commercial for Olympia Beer. In the commercial there were shots of waterfalls and reference to the beer being made with clear water. Revival was chosen to signify the commitment to music after years of struggling and, too, John’s difficulties getting out of the Army Reserves.

They immediately put out two albums: Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bayou Country. John did all the writing. He said he was writing songs to make music for the ears. To do this he was drawing on films he’d seen and Southern Gothic literature. No, Mr. Fogerty had not yet been to the south. He modeled his voice on the singing of Bo Diddley and Howlin’ Wolf.

Now you know this next part. The band put out a handful of wonderful albums. They played sold out shows, filling up arenas and stadiums. You’d hear a Creedence song on the radio while driving in your car and immediately roll down the windows so you could get some fresh air to accompany this happening sound.

But there were rifts in paradise. John wrote the songs. He arranged the music. He was calling the shots. He wanted more money than the other members. They didn’t appreciate this. Furthermore, John was something of a task master. He wanted his music to be perfect. It was hard work. In his words: “You dare not be stoned playing music around me.... When you're working, you're supposed to be working.”

Tom Fogerty was the first member to jump ship. He thought John was slighting him. This feud worked its way into the blood of both men and kept them apart for the rest of their lives. The other three members made one more album Mardi Gras. I bet you don’t remember it. It didn’t sell well.

After the group disbanded, John made several solo albums. But he found himself in an odd position with one of the executives at Fantasy, Mr. Saul Zaentz. Like so many groups in the sixties, when CCR signed their contract, they gave away their publishing rights to Zaentz. In music, the money comes from publishing. (Check out the feud between Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson.). John also believed Mr. Zaentz hide money from him and failed to pay them the royalties they had earned. The other members of the group, including John’s brother Tom, didn’t feel this way. They liked Zaentz—Tom declared he was his best friend. Oh, John didn’t like this.

In 1990 Tom contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion and passed. Never having reconciled, John delivered this statement in the eulogy he gave for Tom: "We wanted to grow up and be musicians. I guess we achieved half of that, becoming rock 'n roll stars. We didn't necessarily grow up.”

In 1993 Creedence was admitted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Still mad about the Zaentz battles, John refused to play with the other members of the band. That’s right. Stu and Doug were there. Tom’s wife had brought an urn with her husband’s ashes. John was having none of it. He played with some session musicians and Bruce Springsteen and Robbie Robertson. The rift remained.

For many years John refused to play CCR music at his concerts because money would go to Zaentz. Indeed, Zaentz sued John. Twice. Once because of a song John wrote called Zanz Kant Danz about a pig that couldn’t dance but would steal your money. Zaentz also sued him for copyright infringement making the bizarre claim that John had stolen from a former song he’d written. John won on the argument that you’d can’t violate a copyright on a song you wrote.

You get the point. The record industry, like many industries in this world, is a nasty place. Money brings out the worst in people. At least sometimes. In John’s case, damn, things went sour. They went so sour he became estranged from his brother and the two guys he had played music with growing up. I’m not judging the man. I have no idea what I would have done in his place. Having your music turned against you, that’s not an easy burden to carry.

The other point is, man, that’s some tasty music. You put it on and you are transported. In the words of Bruce Springsteen: "As a songwriter, only a few did as much in three minutes [as John Fogerty]. He was an Old Testament, shaggy-haired prophet, a fatalist. Funny, too. He was severe, he was precise, he said what he had to say and he got out of there."

So you got troubles. You think you don't quite fit in. You look at the world and everyone seems a little better adjust...
05/27/2026

So you got troubles. You think you don't quite fit in. You look at the world and everyone seems a little better adjusted than you. Your family is weird and you're afraid to let anyone in the door. Your thoughts frighten you and you're careful not to let too many of them out into the open lest they get you in big trouble. You might be wondering what you might do with your life.
Hmmm.....maybe you should consider the life of today's birthday girl Siouxsie Sioux
Susan Janet Ballion--our Ms. Sioux--was born May 27., 1957, in Guy's Hospital in South Wark, England. Her parents met and wed in the Belgian Congo. Her mother Elizabeth was of Scottish and English descent and she worked as a secretary. Her father Marc was Belgian and worked as a bacteriologist. In particular his studies lead him to milk venom from snakes.
The couple returned to England a year before Susan was born. Unfortunately, England wasn't a fruitful place for her dad. He couldn't find work and began drinking. The family, as is the case with many families struggling with an alcoholic member, became isolated. They didn't share in any of the communal atmosphere.
At the age of nine, Susan and a friend of hers were sexually assaulted by a neighbor. Neither her family nor the police took these charges seriously. How do you imagine that worked out for the young girl?
"I grew up having no faith in adults as responsible people. And being the youngest in the family I was isolated – I had no one to confide in. So I invented my own world, my own reality. It was my own way of defending myself – protecting myself from the outside world. The only way I could deal with how to survive was to get some strong armour."
Her father died when Susan was fourteen. This grief gravely affected the young lady and she began losing weight. Finally she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.
Pulling together the broken pieces of her life up to this time, Susan began attending the gay disco scene. She discovered she had a flair for fashion. She began creating glam fe**sh and bo***ge outfits that had a large influence on the burgeoning punk fashion scene. And her intense eye makeup and dark red lipstick, these became influential in the newly forming Goth scene.
In February of 1976 Susan attended her first S*x Pistols concert. She was immediately impressed with the DIY ethos of the situation. Herself and a group of friends began following the Pistols--you know, like Dead heads, only in this case the folks following the Pistols became known as the Bromley Contingent.
S*x Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren put on a 100 Club Punk Festival. Susan decided she would put together a band and apply for a spot--spot that was granted. Her band improvised for twenty minutes during which time Susan sang the Lords Prayer. Believe it or not, this act went over big. Of this show Albertine of the Slits said:
Siouxsie just appeared fully made, fully in control, utterly confident. It totally blew me away. There she was doing something that I dared to dream but she took it and did it and it wiped the rest of the festival for me, that was it. I can't even remember everything else about it except that one performance.
Amazing stuff, eh? Oh, and the name. Siouxsie is pronounced Susie. As for the Sioux part--she said she did that to honor the Sioux Indian tribe. In her words: "I hated cowboys. I still hate cowboys."
The band got a lot of recognition fast. They were invited to appear on Bill Grundy's show with the S*x Pistols in December 1976. That turned into something of a spectacle. Siouxsie was mocking Bill. Bill made a pass at Siouxsie. Steve Jones of the Pistols began cussing--this on prime time television. It became a major scene in the local tabloids. This was something the S*x Pistols enjoyed. It became their MO for all future band appearances.
Siouxsie, however, didn't enjoy this kind of publicity and put distance between herself and the S*x Pistols.
Who can explain the next part? This relatively new DIY band, they record and put out their first album. It was called The Scream. And man, the critics loved it. They thought it was great. Don Watson of NME called it the best debut album of all time.
More albums followed. Each one was incredibly well received. Siouxsie hooked up with other musicians and formed an alternate band called The Creatures. Their music, too, was extraordinarily well received.
So here's the point. Young Susan, man, her life felt hard. An alcoholic dad, a sequestered family, being sexually abused without anyone standing up for her, a sense of being rejected. At the heart of these troubles Susan found Siouxsie. Siouxsie found music. This music is brilliant and radiant and bubbling with mystery. It's not everyday pop. It's music filled with curiosity and odd turns and quirks. Do yourself a favor. Listen to some Siouxsie today.

Okay, boys and girls, can you say mind blowing goodness that grows upon you every time you listen? Can you relax into a...
05/26/2026

Okay, boys and girls, can you say mind blowing goodness that grows upon you every time you listen? Can you relax into a style so expansive that it lifts you beyond the small ways of everyday life and promises to reveal to you the very secrets of the universe? Do you have miles of smiles?
Today is the birthday of Miles Dewey Davis III. Mr. Davis was born to an affluent family in Alton, Illinois on this day in 1926. His mom, Cleota Mae Henry was a music teacher and a violinist. His father Miles Dewey Davis Jr. was a dentist. His family owned a two hundred acre pig farm near Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
In 1927 his family moved to East St. Louis, Illinois. During the depression his father worked long hours to support his family through hard times and this effort resulted in his becoming distant from his three children.
Miles loved music from an early age. His first influences were the blues, big band jazz and gospel. In 1935 he got his first trumpet and began taking weekly lessons from one Elwood Buchanan, a musician and a teacher and the man of whom Miles said was the most important influence in his life. Contrary to prevailing styles, Mr. Buchanan emphasized the use of vibrato and a clear mid range tone. Later in life Mr. Davis would report: "I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like a round voice with not too much tremolo and not too much bass. Just right in the middle. If I can't get that sound I can't play anything."
At age thirteen he began playing in local bands and auditioning in local talent shows. Miles claims a drummer made fun of him for not being able to play a certain musical passage. This inspired Miles to begin learning music theory. He claims to have grabbed any book he could find on the subject and studying it until he couldn't study no more.
In 1944 he got the opportunity to play briefly with the Billy Eckstine band when the trumpeter Buddy Anderson was sick. Thus was Miles able to rub elbows with Charlie Parker who immediately became his idol.
After high school Miles went to Juilliard in NYC. But he was skipping classes to go where the action was, to sit in with the active musicians of the time. By 1945 he dropped out of school because he wanted to play full time. He went to the clubs on 52nd street and was jamming with Coleman Hawkins and Eddie Lockjaw Davis.
Miles had his first recording session on April 24, 1945 with the Herbie Fields band.
The same year he replaced Dizzy Gillespie in the Charlie Parker Quintet. But it seemed like nothing was permanent in that scene. He went on to play with Benny Carter, then Mingus, then Billy Eckstine.
In 1949 he declined an offer from Duke Ellington to join his band, Instead he put together a nine piece band that featured Gerry Mulligan and had arrangements by Gil Evans. They would gather together to seek a new sound beyond what Miles considered to be the overexposure of extended solos in bebop. Miles was seeking an integration of instruments to sound like a single voice.
The next few years Miles was in and out of work, in and out of drugs. He developed a he**in habit that took over his life for some time. He became interested in boxing and boxers and developed the personal style of Sugar Ray Robinson: arrogant and standoffish. Weren't nobody going to tell him what was right nor wrong, what music style was the best.
In 1955 Miles had some polyps removed from his throat. The doctor told him to cool it for a while so his throat could heal. But Miles got in a shouting match with someone and his throat was forever damaged. That accounts for his raspy vocal style the rest of his life.
Miles big break came when he played the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955. His performance was the highlight of the show and brought him to the attention of George Avakian of Columbia records. Mr. Avakian insisted on signing Miles even though the artist still owed five records on his contract with Prestige. Miles and his group did two marathon sessions in May and October of 1956 to satisfy that contract and they made such great albums as Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet, Steamin' with Miles Davis Quintet, Cooking with the Miles Davis Quintet, and Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet.
You all probably know Miles best from his first batch of albums with Columbia: Milestones, Miles ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain, and Quiet Nights.
After this output, and an heavy touring schedule, Miles was exhausted. Though he was he**in free, he still had a fondness for co***ne. He talked about retiring and maybe going to teach at Harvard.
But you know how it is. Things are always fluid. The next thing you know he makes his best known album: Kind of Blue. Do you have this album? You should. It's the one I recommend to everyone who comes to the store looking for their first jazz album. It happens to be the best selling jazz album in history. It's gone five times platinum.
Okay, most of you have some vague idea of Miles. You probably know that after this string of delightful albums, jazz so smooth you can drive it to a nearby star, Miles took up a different direction. He stopped doing ballads and moved into a potent brew of electric sounds. He brought in new musicians like Chick Corea and John McLaughlin. Some fans loved the switch, some fans hated it. Miles himself said the temptation to keep on playing ballads and smooth music, it was too great. Those albums were becoming too easy to make. He had to switch to something else. He had to challenge himself.
That's the theme today, boys and girls. That's the promise we're honoring on Miles' birthday. Are you challenging yourself? Are you taking your talents into uncharted territory? People are always complaining that they're bored, that there's nothing new. Well, that's your job today Make something new.
In later years, when Miles would audition folks for his band, he would challenge them. After listening to them play he would say, Okay, I've heard what you know. Now play for me what you don't know.
Happy birthday, Miles. Let's all go play something we don't know.

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45 Tokeneke Road
Darien, CT
06820

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Monday 10am - 6pm
Tuesday 10am - 6pm
Wednesday 10am - 6pm
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Friday 10am - 6pm
Saturday 10:30am - 6pm
Sunday 12pm - 4:30pm

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+12036550157

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//iconSize: [32, 32], //html: '' }) .bindTooltip(name, { //permanent: true, direction: 'bottom', //offset: L.point(12, 25), //opacity: 0.88, interactive: true }) .bindPopup(name); markersLayer.addLayer(marker); } function getMore() { if (gettingMore) { return; } gettingMore = true; var center = map.getCenter(); $.ajax({ url: "/vicinitysearch", data: { lat: center.lat, lng: center.lng, country: "UNITED STATES" } }) .done(function(data) { var added = 0; data.forEach(function(loc) { if (!locationIds.includes(loc.id)) { var mapLoc = {id:loc.id,lat:loc.latitude,lng:loc.longitude,title:trunc20(loc.name),popupHtml:loc.popupHtml,urlPath:loc.urlPath,pictureUrl:loc.pictureUrl}; locations.push(mapLoc); locationIds.push(loc.id); map._addMarker(mapLoc); added++; } }); }) .always(function() { gettingMore = false; }); } map._clearMarkers = function() { markersLayer.clearLayers(); } }); }, 4000); });