July 21, 2018

In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed Beach Boys’ co-founder Al Jardine for my “House Call” column on growing up in wave-less Ohio (go here). His family moved around quite a bit, since his father was an expert in designing large-scale blueprints for the military. Eventually, the Jardines wound up living near LAX in Hawthorne, Ca., where Al met Brian Wilson. In high school, they talked over burgers at an A&W Root Beer stand about starting a band. But then Al moved again to Michigan for a year. When his family, Al and Brian picked up where they left off. The rest, as they say, is history. [Photo above of Al Jardine courtesy of Al Jardine]

Here’s one of the first songs they learned as a group, basing their vocal arrangement on the recording by the Four Freshmen…

Here’s Wouldn’t It Be Nice in 2016 with Brian, Al and Matt Jardine, Al’s son, singing lead…

SiriusXM. This coming Thursday (July 26), I’ll be on SiriusXM’s Feedback (Ch. 106) with co-hosts Nik Carter and Lori Majewski to break down America’s Horse With No Name, the subject of my recent “Anatomy of a Song” column in the WSJ. I’ll also be running through the history of folk-rock in the 1960s and early ’70s. You can catch me from 9 to 10 a.m. (EST). Here’s the song we’ll be covering…

Eydie Gormé. Following my recent post on Eydie Gormé, I ran across a clip of her singing another one of those roof-raisers, this one from 1975…