David Hepworth - The Secret History of Entertainment

ENGLISHMEN WERE THE GODFATHERS OF AMERICAN ROOTS MUSIC ENGLISHMEN WERE THE GODFATHERS OF AMERICAN ROOTS MUSIC Don Law was born in comfortable circumstances in London in 1902. He sang with the London Choral Society. Young enough to escape conscription in the First World War, he packed his bag in 1923 and emigrated to the United States where he sold etchings in New York and ranched sheep in Alabama before becoming first a bookkeeper and then a talent scout for the American Record Corporation in Dallas, Texas. In those days the northern-based companies were looking for interesting performers in the emergent blues and country fields and would set up their recording equipment in southern hotel rooms, where they would make acetates, buying all rights in exchange for a fistful of dollars. This Englishman was in charge at a session during Thanksgiving week 1936 in the Gunther Hotel in San Antonio, Texas when one young artist came in, sat facing the corner and played his entire repertoire of blues songs. The young artist was Robert Johnson and the songs recorded that day, ‘Crossroads’, ‘Me & The Devil’, ‘Hellhound On My Trail’ and others, announced the blues equivalent of a Miles Davis or Mozart. Law went on to have one of the most successful A&R careers in country music, working with everyone from Johnny Cash down. But neither he nor his subsequent boss at Columbia, ‘Uncle Art’ Satherley, made much distinction between blues, hillbilly and other forms of southern music. Arthur Satherley was born in Bristol in 1889. He emigrated to America in his twenties and found work in a Wisconsin furniture factory that made cabinets for record players. Moving into the record business, which was starting to flourish in the prosperous years following the War, he graduated to spotting and recording talent such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Alberta Hunter and King Oliver before becoming hugely successful producing Bob Wills and Gene Autry. According to Donald Clarke’s book The Rise & Fall Of Popular Music, ‘Satherley loved American rural music and regarded all of it as country music, whether white or black, but according to the institutionalised racism of the era it had to be divided into “race” and “hillbilly” music.’ Both Law and Satherley were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in later years.

WHICH ONE’S PINK? WHICH ONE’S PINK? The name Pink Floyd may nowadays be associated with psychedelia and the pulsing colours of liquid light shows, but it owes its origins to a very different tradition. Floyd founder Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett put together the names of two completely unconnected and very obscure bluesmen, Pinkney Anderson and Floyd Council, to make a name for his band. The two men, who both laboured in obscurity in the Carolinas and died in the 1970s, never played together and were never featured on an album together, but for the foreseeable future their names remain yoked in the public imagination.

BROWN M&MS AND OTHER ROCK STARS’ RIDERS

DELIA SMITH MADE THE LET IT BLEED CAKE

CHANGING SEX IN SHOW BUSINESS

‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ IS STILL IN COPYRIGHT

SOME OF THE BEST LINES ARE MADE UP ON THE SPOT

JACK NICHOLSON GREW UP THINKING HIS MOTHER WAS HIS SISTER

THE TRAGIC LIFE AND LONG DEATH OF JACKIE WILSON

THERE’S ONLY ONE MANCUNIAN IN FRASIER (AND IT’S NOT DAPHNE MOON)

KEVIN COSTNER MADE NICK LOWE A MILLIONAIRE

MADONNA CO-WROTE A HIT WITH A DEAD MAN

HARRISON FORD HAS THE RUNS

BRUNO BROOKES, BOB HARRIS AND 35,000 RECORDS

FARGO IS NOT A TRUE STORY – BUT THIS IS

THE ROLLING STONES ACTUALLY HAD SIX MEMBERS

THE WORLD’S ONLY CELEBRITY DOG

THE HISTORY OF FUCK AND THE MOVIES

ICI ON PARLE HIP HOP

RICHARD GERE OWES HIS CAREER TO JOHN TRAVOLTA

WORKING TITLES

THE LONESOME DEATHS OF FRANKIE HOWERD AND BENNY HILL

THE TERRIBLE EARLY LIFE OF RAY CHARLES

THE AMAZING STORY OF ‘BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY’

LITERARY ANCESTORS

I’D KNOW THAT SCREAM ANYWHERE

THOSE AREN’T JULIA ROBERTS’S LEGS ON THE PRETTY WOMAN POSTER

THEY KNEW IT WAS DIRTY BUT THEY DIDN’T KNOW HOW

NOBODY LAUGHS IN THE SIMPSONS

THE NUDES IN THE DISNEY CARTOONS

CHOLLY ATKINS IS THE TRUE FATHER OF MODERN POP

ICI ON PARLE HOLLYWOOD

THE KENNY G PAT METHENY SPAT

A BAD DAY TO DIE

WHY ELVIS NEVER TOURED OUTSIDE THE USA

THE LOST WORDS OF STAR TREK

SORRY, BUT THEY NEVER SAID IT

DYNASTY

SHIRLEY MACLAINE AND WARREN BEATTY ARE SISTER AND BROTHER

WHO WAS ‘YOU’RE SO VAIN’ ABOUT?

HIT MOVIES ARE DECIDED IN THE FIRST WEEKEND

BOB DYLAN’S SECRET SECOND WIFE

THE MOST CONNECTED ACTORS

THE FACE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND RIFFS

HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITHOUT HAVING A HIT

THE SIMPSONS AND THE GROENINGS

WHEN THE BBC CLOSED FOR BATHTIME

DOWN ON HIS LUCK, SINATRA PLAYS BLACKPOOL

THE OSCARS REHEARSAL

AMERICA DOESN’T GET BRITISH COMEDY

PEOPLE WHO COULDN’T LEARN LINES

ROCK STARS WHO SERVED THEIR COUNTRY

THE ALBUMS PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS…

NOBODY THOUGHT THE WALKMAN WOULD WORK

THE FOUR TOPS’ FIFTY-YEAR CAREER

MOM IN A BOX

HOW TO RENT A SUPERSTAR

JUMPING THE SHARK

RHYMING SLANG

THEY DIED WITH THEIR SLAP ON

GOT THEM ALT.NEO BREAKBEAT HANDBAG LOUNGECORE BLUES

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

The expression ‘anorak’ has become the standard way of describing any individual – generally a male one – who takes an excessive interest in minutiae.

But why ‘anorak’?

In the 1960s, during the heyday of pirate radio in the UK, devotees of the stations would take pleasure trips out into the North Sea to photograph the boats from which they broadcast. These radio fans were instantly identifiable by the brand new weatherproof gear they had purchased for their voyage. Hence ‘anorak’ became the noun to describe anyone with the kind of chemical imbalance that would lead them to undertake that kind of expedition for no reason beyond the satisfaction of their own curiosity. Or, indeed, to know any of the stories that follow.

The Secret History of Entertainment is a collection of stories that not a lot of people know, stories that explain something of how the entertainment business functions and why some huge and familiar things are the way they are. It touches on the strange lives of stars, the exotic language of the business, the unimaginable wealth of the few, and the hard, complicated struggles of the many. It encompasses huge triumph, utter tragedy and some farce. It deals with everything from why there are no laughs in The Simpsons to the economics of hiring The Rolling Stones for your birthday party.

It started life as a feature in Word magazine in 2003. This in turn grew out of a conversation in the pub. It was the sort of conversation where people who know too much about nothing very important swap entertainment anecdotage to keep each other amused. If there were two people there who hadn’t heard the story before, it went in. This book has been put together in the same spirit. If you know it all already, then bully for you. After you with the anorak.

Every Monday if he’s in the UK, or Tuesday if he’s in the US, Elton John buys three copies of the major new record releases, one for each of his homes in Atlanta, Windsor and the South of France.

On 5 March 1951, while on their way down Highway 61 to a recording session in Memphis, touring R&B band Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm lost an amplifier off the roof of their Oldsmobile. At the session, producer Sam Phillips attempted to repair the damaged speaker cone with a piece of cardboard. The resulting distorted sound, the musical equivalent of a folded piece of cardboard jammed in bicycle spokes, became the key element of ‘Rocket 88’, the Jackie Brenston side cut at that session which is now widely regarded as the first rock and roll record.