Jason Ringenberg has been hailed as the “Godfather of Americana” with Rolling Stone magazine noting his band Jason and the Scorchers, “singlehandedly re-wrote the history of rock and roll in the South,” the band receiving the Americana Music Associations Lifetime Achievement Award. He’s also delved into the world of children’s music, his PBS mini-program “It’s Farmer Jason” earning him an Emmy.
All that started in Illinois. Ringenberg (11/22/58) grew up in western Illinois where his parents owned a family hog farm. His education would lead him to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where he would form his first bands.
“I truly learned the art of live performance at S.I.U., playing in the bars on the strip and at parties in the dorms, Ringenberg recalls.
“My first foray into the professional music world was a bluegrass band called Gary, Jason and Chico. I played banjo, very poorly, in that outfit which lasted about six months in 1979. In 1980, I formed Shakespeare’s Riot, an early punk rock/cowpunk band doing some originals and covers of the current punk rock and New Wave bands popular at the time,” along with some Dylan, Tom Petty and introducing some of Ringenberg’s original material, including the S.I.U.-influenced “Buckminster Fuller We Need You Now.”
That lineup would last about a year. “The spring of 1981 we formed a rockabilly band called The Catalinas,” he remembers. “We did shows all over Illinois.”
It was the birthday of America, July 4 in 1981 when Jason decided it was time to move to Nashville to pursue his dream of “making a band that could kick American roots music into the modern age!” And Jason and the Scorchers were born. Actually, he first called the band Jason and the Nashville Scorchers, although they dropped Nashville off their name after their first release.
Their ability to combine traditional country music with high-energy punk rock carved out a new music genre which prevailed for nearly two decades through the ‘80s and ‘90s breaking out in 1983 with their debut album Fervor and “Hot Night in Georgia” https://youtu.be/BFsRdiW0ADUsetting the tempo of what to expect from Jason and the Scorchers. They would continue with hits including “Golden Ball and Chain” https://youtu.be/2A658iBAvNw and “Absolutely Sweet Marie” https://youtu.be/p-cF40OWeakamong others.
Jason and the Scorchers hit some roadblocks in the late ‘80s. Their record label took more control of the production of their album Thunder and Fire, steering the band in a different direction. “The songs were more metal-influenced,” the band said. Their fans revolted. That, coupled with band member Perry Baggs being diagnosed with diabetes and unable to continue to tour. “We didn’t break up, we fell apart,” noted band member Warner Hodes. (The band would re-unite in 1993 and continue on for another four years inking a deal with the Walt Disney-funded Mammoth label. They would reunite one more time in 2010 with some new band members in the fold.)
In 1992 Ringenberg went solo, continuing to carve out his place in the alt-country honky-tonk arena.
Ringenberg would take control of his music in Y2K forming his own label Courageous Chicken.
In 2002 Ringenberg would create a children’s music character called Farmer Jason. It initially started out as a project to entertain his young daughters singing about farm animals and the appreciation of nature. It developed into not only a series of children’s albums, but a PBS program “It’s a Farmer Jason” that earned him four Emmy nominations and one win.
In 2017 the U.S. National Park Service invited him to be their Artist-in-Residence at Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park. There he would spend a month hiking the mountains and writing songs.
Returning to Illinois, Ringenberg would turn those songs into the album Stand Tall. “In fact, I got some of my old bandmates together (Tom Miller and Gary Gibula) to record my album in southern Illinois using southern Illinois musicians,” produced by Mike Lescelius at the Misunderstudio in Murphysboro. “That record was one of my most successful solo albums,” he says.
This past year Ringenberg has teamed with Victoria Liedtke from the noise pop group Hey! Hello! on the project More Than Words Can Tell (Judee Bop) in the UK.
In 2002, Courageous Chicken Records released Wildfires and Misfires: Two Decades of Outtakes and Rarities, which contained much previously unreleased material from throughout the band’s history. Ringenberg would release one of his own with Best Tracks and Side Tracks 1979-2007 that included the track “Help, There’s a Fire” from his days with Shakespeare’s Riot.
The Americana Music Association honored Jason and the Scorchers with their Lifetime Achievement Award in the Performance category in 2008.
Regarding Jason and the Scorchers band members, after the first breakup, Warren Hodges moved Los Angeles to work in the video industry. Jeff Johnson moved to Atlanta to work in the auto and motorcycle repair business, Ken Fox would go on to join The Fleshtones and Perry Baggs remained in Nashville working on Christian music projects. Diabetes would take Baggs life in 2012 at the age of 50. Ringenberg and Hodges would reunite earlier this year in a concert in Nashville as a benefit for Jeff Johnson who was felled by a stroke.
Discography
Jason and the Scorchers
1982 Reckless Country Soul (Praxis 003) EP
1983 Fervor (Praxis 6654)
1985 Lost and Found (EMI America 19153)
1986 Still Standing (EMI America 17219)
1989 Thunder and Fire (A&M 5264)
1995 A Blazing Grace (Mammoth 0101)
“Take Me Home, Country Roads” https://youtu.be/h7d7W27yIEE
Soul vocalist Bobby McClure may not be a household name, but his musical legacy in the 1960’s helped launch the careers of Little Milton and Fontella Bass.
Bobby McClure (4/21/42-11/13/92) was born in Chicago, and although his family would move to St. Louis when he was just a child, his career kicked off when he signed with Chess Records back in Chicago.
Like so many soul vocalists, as a youth he sang in church and in gospel groups. Once such group was the Soul Stirrers, then led by Sam Cooke, in the 1950’s.
He would move on into secular music in groups including Bobby and the Vocals, Big Daddy Jenkins and Oliver Sain.
Sain, a well-known St. Louis-based producer/bandleader who was also managing vocalist Fontella Bass, provided the connection for McClure with Chess, first teaming McClure with Bass on “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing” and then his first solo outing with “I’m Not Ashamed” in 1965 both records written and produced by Sain.
“Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing” would launch the career of Fontella Bass as it would reach #5 on the Billboard R&B chart, and cross over to the Hot 100 chart at #33. Their next duet “You’ll Miss Me” charted at #28 on the R&B chart and #91 in the Hot 100 in 1965. McClure would score on his own in 1966 with “Peak of Love” that would hit #16 on the R&B chart and scratched into the Hot 100 at #97.
During the ’60s, McClure had relocated back to Chicago, where he worked with both Otis Clay and Little Milton. In Chicago, McClure would produce a couple more singles in the early ‘70s including for James Vanleer’s Cedric label before heading back to St. Louis where he would once again team with Oliver Sain. He also duetted with Shirley Brown recording a few singles for the Memphis-based Hi label.
McClure moved on from music in the ‘70s, working as an Illinois penitentiary as a corrections officer, but he could never stay away from music long.
He would continue recording some singles in the ‘80s in St. Louis, again teaming with Sain and including two on his own B-Mac label. McClure would move to Los Angeles where he continued to play with others and record. But McClure’s career was cut short on November 13, 1992, when he died at the age of 50 from a stroke following a brain aneurysm.
Discography
1965 Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing b/w Baby, What You Want Me to Do (Checker 1097)
1965 Don’t Jump b/w You’ll Miss Me (When I’m Gone) (Checker 1111)
1965 I’m Not Ashamed b/w I’ll Be True to You (Checker 1130)
1966 Peak of Love b/w You Got Me Baby (Checker 1152)
1967 Baby, You Don’t Love Me b/w Don’t Get Your Signals Crossed (Checker 1169)
1970 Love’s Coming Down on Me b/w Never Let You Get Away (Cedric 3004)
1971 Never Let You Get Away b/w Have a Little Mercy (Cedric/Sedgwick 3002)
1975 I Got a Good Women b/w Begging You Baby (Vanessa 5123)
1975 Sitting in the Park b/w Sitting with Sain (February 11 280)
1976 Doing It Rite on Time b/w She’s Miss Wonderful (Hi 2321)
1976 Was It Something I Said b/w Love Trap (Hi 2307)
1978 To Get What You Got b/w High Heel Shoes (Hi 78512)
1981 You’ve Got the Makings (Part 1) b/w You’ve Got the Makings (Part 2) (B-Mac 001)
1982 Peak of Love (Pt. 1) b/w Peak of Love (Pt. 2) (B-Mac 002)
1987 It Feels So Good b/w You Never Miss Your Water (Edge 005)
1989 I Need a Job b/w Today You Started Leaving Him (And Loving Me) (S.E.D.G. 506)
Over the course of his career, jazz guitarist Nick Colionne hit scored eight #1 hits on the Billboard smooth jazz airplay charts with another nine reaching Top 10 status, and he was the only artist in that category with five #1 hits from a single album with 2016’s The Journey. “Nick achieved contemporary jazz stardom in the early 2000s, and, since that time has been one of the genre’s most dynamic and tireless live performers,” as described at the Seabreeze Jazz Festival. “Nick was known for his wit, charisma and incredible sense of style…Nick was beloved for his compassion and caring nature; he considered his fans, friends, fellow musicians and artists as his extended family.” An internationally known guitarist, Colionne is well known here at home in the western suburbs, for when he’s not out touring in his spare time he’s mentoring children at St. Laurence School in Elgin. As a teen, Colionne honed his performance skills gigging with The Staples Singers, the Impressions, Curtis Mayfield and Natalie Cole. He first emerged on his own in the mid-‘90s, initially with his own self-produced project It’s My Turn (On the Edge). The album got picked up by the west suburban based Lake Shore Jazz of Chicago label, of which he released two more albums during that decade. His breakthrough came in 2003 with Just Come On In which spanned his first hit single “High Flyin’” https://youtu.be/yOWwodfqQBY. His sound added a bright and fresh, urban, upbeat flavor to the smooth jazz genre. Critic Jonathan Widran encapsulated where he went from there. “he has since mastered the art of Keepin’ It Cool (2006), transcended musical boundaries to explore realms where there are No Limits (2008), fired up his thousands of worldwide fans with Feel the Heat (2011), dug deep into his musical soul to share some of his deepest jazz and R&B Influences (2014) and made history with his 2016 collection The Journey by becoming the only artist in the history of the format to score five consecutive #1 singles on the Billboard Smooth Jazz National Airplay and Smooth Jazz Songs charts from a single album.” Continuing, “In 2018, he revealed the secret mindset behind his extraordinary impact. Keeping his incendiary, yet heartfelt mix of jazz, R&B, funk blues and soulful, seductive vocals fresh, funky and innovative every time out, he once again made it a blast Just Being Me.” How does Colionne describe his music? “I feel like a lot of cats try to emulate other players, especially the legendary figures they’ve been inspired by, but I’ve always tried my best to create and cultivate my own vibe,” says Nick “That includes when I play live, because when I’m up there entertaining, I’m there to make it fun and be a bit of a clown at times, too. But I take making music very seriously and do my best to always make my albums flow the way the music does when I’m onstage. I tell the young kids I mentor that instrumental music tells a story, too – you just have to listen closely for the commas, periods and question marks.” Over his lifetime Colionne has received numerous honors including The Wave’s International Instrumental Artist of the Year Award and the 2010 American Smooth Jazz Awards Wayman Tisdale Humanitarian Award for his ongoing commitment to mentoring youth and his work in the community and nationally in support of breast cancer causes. He also received the 1996 Malcom X College Alumnus of the Year Award, having earned his degree there in music. Nick devoted much of his spare time over the past 25 years to mentoring children at St. Laurence K-8 School in Elgin, Illinois. His roles included counseling, teaching music, computer music skills and guitar, and assisting with talent shows and holiday pageants. Sadly, Colionne passed away on January 1, 2022. Saxophonist Mindy Abair commented on Facebook, “We lost a beautiful soul, amazing performer and a good friend this morning. He did so much to bring music education to kids behind the scenes, played his heart out every night on stage, and always was a gentleman on and off stage.” Let’s enjoy Nick one more time https://youtu.be/KDQ384-e0B0 (photo courtesy Gene Steinman Photography)
Discography 1993 It’s My Turn (On the Edge 1000) Re-issued in 1994 by Lake Shore Jazz of Chicago (LSJ-009) 1996 Arrival (Lake Shore Jazz of Chicago LSJ-011) 1999 The Seduction (Chicago Lakeside Jazz CLJ-804) 2003 Just Come On In (Three Keys Music 9102222572) 2006 Keepin It Cool (Narada Jazz 9462373312) 2008 No Limits (Koch KOC 4482) 2014 Influences (Trippin ‘N’ Rhythm TNR 70) 2016 The Journey (Trippin ‘N’ Rhythm TNR 84) 2018 Finger Painting (Trippin ‘N’ Rhythm TNR 96)
One of the most respected and prolific music producers of all time, we’re saddened to learn of the passing of a legend – Quincy Jones. Jones produced Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, the biggest selling album of all time, as well as the “We Are The World” project, the biggest selling single of all time. His work has been honored with 28 Grammy Awards, having been nominated 80 times.
He’s penned some 40 motion picture scores. He’s received a Grammy Legend Award, the Ahmet Ertegun Award entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, the National Medal of Arts Award and the Golden Plate Award by the American Academy of Achievement; to name just a few honors.
It’s difficult to encapsulate the career of Quincy Jones in the short space we have here.
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (3/14/33-11/3/2024) was born in Chicago, growing up in the Rosenwald Court Apartments on the South Side at 46th and Michigan Avenue. Jones was introduced to music by his mother, who always sang religious songs, and by his next-door neighbor, Lucy Jackson. When Jones was five or six, Jackson played stride piano next door, and he would listen through the walls. Lucy recalled that after he heard her one day, she could not get him off her piano. From there, he lived a life in a broken home, his mother battling health issues, divorce and his father re-marrying into a blended family.
His family moved to Seattle in 1943 where his father got a wartime job at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. After the war, the family moved to Seattle, where Jones attended Garfield High School (a school that also yielded Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Lee). In high school, he developed his skills as a trumpeter and arranger. He joined his school band and choir, learning several brass, reed and percussion instruments, and music became his focus.
At 13, he persuaded the trumpeter Clark Terry, who was in Seattle for a month while touring with Count Basie’s band, to give him lessons after the band’s late set and before his school day began.
At age 14, Jones introduced himself to 16-year-old pianist Ray Charles after watching him play at the Black Elks Club. Jones cites Charles as an early inspiration for his own music career, noting that Charles overcame a disability (blindness) to achieve his musical goals. He has credited his father’s sturdy work ethic with giving him the means to proceed and his loving strength with holding the family together. In an article by Paul DeBarros, Jones has said his father had a rhyming motto: “Once a task is just begun, never leave until it’s done. Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.”
His formal music education started out at Seattle University, and then on to the Berklee College of Music in Boston where he started playing in local jazz outfits. He would leave his studies after receiving an offer to tour as a trumpeter, arranger, and pianist with the bandleader Lionel Hampton and embarked on his professional career.
Recognizing he had a gift for arranging music, he would move to New York City and be embraced by the jazz community there where he would start arranging for the likes of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa and others.
Through most of the 1950’s, Jones would tour the world with various orchestras. Towards the end of the decade, he would become musical director for Mercury Records, promoted to vice-president of the label in 1961, becoming the first African American to hold the position.
In the 1960’s Jones would move into the pop music world, producing million-selling singles for Lesley Gore (“It’s My Party,” “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” “You Don’t Own Me”). From that time on he would work with artists ranging from the Brothers Johnson (“Strawberry Letter #23) and George Benson (“Give Me the Night”), from Frank Sinatra (“Come Fly with Me”) and Sarah Vaughan (“Misty”), from disco diva Donna Summer to jazz legend Miles Davis to the post-punk Joy Division and gospel’s Andre Crouch to name a few.
His musical world expanded in 1964 when he composed music for the film The Pawnbroker, the first of nearly 40 major motion picture scores he’d go on to pen. 1985 would mark his debut as a film producer with The Color Purple receiving 11 Oscar nominations that year.
In the mid-‘70s he founded Qwest Productions, producing and arranging albums for artists ranging from Frank Sinatra to Diana Ross. In 1980 he launched Qwest Records, the debut release Give Me the Night by George Benson pulling down three Grammy Awards. It was at Qwest he produced the soundtrack for The Wiz, and in 1982 produced Michael Jackson’s Thriller which would go on to become the biggest selling album in the history of recorded music.
Chicagoans Phil Upchurch and Minnie Riperton can be found on his 1974 album Body Heat (A&M). Upchurch was also responsible for helping connect former Rufust vocalist Minnie Riperton with Quincy Jones. Upchurch sent a tape of Paulette to Quincy and in almost no time landed a singing spot in the group that was about to tour Japan with Jones, an exciting new duo he had just met, George and Louis (The Brothers Johnson). When Jones heard her tape, he was reminded of the days when he worked with vocalist Sarah Vaughan. “Quincy called me ‘Baby Girl’ because I reminded him of Sassy (Sarah Vaughan),” recalled McWilliams. The tour was a huge success with Paulette then working with Quincy, writing some of the lyrics and the featured vocalist on the title track to his 1975 album Mellow Madness (A&M).
Jones would also collaborate with Chicago songwriter Benjamin Wright on James Ingram’s “One Hundred Ways,” pulling down a Grammy in 1981.
His work in the music world doesn’t stop there. In 2010 he co-founded “Playground Sessions,” offering a subscription software that teaches people to play the piano using interactive videos. In 2017 he was founded Qwest TV (www.qwest.tv), one of the first subscription video-on-demand services focusing on jazz and world music genres.
For more on Quincy Jones, we can recommend his own telling of his life with the 2001 The Autobiography of Quincy Jones (Doubleday) or the 2008 autobiography The Complete Quincy Jones (Insight Editions). And for those involved in the music industry, his 2010 Q on Producing: The Soul and Science of Mastering Music (Hal Leonard).
How many of you remember Jackie DeShannon singing Top 10 hits “What the World Needs Now is Love” and “Put a Little Love in Your Heart?” Did you know she was from Batavia, Illinois?
Born Sharon Lee Myers (8/21/44), her family originally lived on a farm in Kentucky. By age six, she was already singing country tunes on a local radio station there. As her mother was originally from Aurora, the family relocated to the western suburbs, moving to Batavia in 1953. Just in eighth grade, Myers hosted her own Saturday morning radio show “Breakfast Melodies” on WMRO in Aurora. On Saturday nights she performed as a vocalist with Don Lee and his Fox Valley Boys square dance band. And made numerous guest appearances on local TV shows including Pee Wee King’s popular “Country and Western Television Show” on Chicago’s CBS-affiliate channel 2.
She attended Batavia High School for two years from 1955-57, but dropped out to pursue a musical career.
As a 16-year-old, Myers first commercial recording was on the Hammond, Indiana-based Mar-Vel label where she was billed as Sherry Lee. Owned by long-time record entrepreneur Harry Glenn, while the label served as an outlet for Myers, it was not a label that would launch a career. Glenn had an unorthodox method of promotion, “personally promoting his releases in a carnival-like manner,” it was noted in bopping.com, “loading his car up with records and traveling from town to town with his set of loudspeakers trying to persuade all those who would listen that his recordings were a must.”
For this first single, Glenn partnered Myers with country singer Shorty Ashford on “I’m Crazy Darling” with the B-side “Baby Honey” (Mar-Vel 903) being her first solo credited side as Sherry Lee, the label noting her as “Miss Country Music.” Take a listen to her first record “Baby Honey” https://youtu.be/NEiaVdjMl9U.
In her early years, the small independent record labels didn’t seem to like her real name, appearing on various releases as Sherry Lee, Jackie Dee and Sharon Lee before finally settling on the stage name she is best known as — Jackie DeShannon.
Her next single “How Wrong I Was” came out on the Gone label, this time as Jackie Dee. By now, there was enough interest in Jackie that Liberty Records sent her to Nashville where she stepped more into a rockabilly style with a tribute to Buddy Holly, titled simply “Buddy.” And while the record proved she was a rocker on par with the likes of Wanda Jackson and Brenda Lee, it was an era where female vocalists were receiving very little airplay from radio programmers.
Yet, the small independent labels still putting out singles by Jackie continued changing her name. Next, she was called Sharon Lee, releasing a single “Kissing Game” b/w “No Deposit No Return” for the Excellent label.
In 1959, the Cincinnati, Ohio-based Fraternity Records called her Jackie Shannon. There, she was teamed with Rusty York and the Cajuns. As both Jackie and Rusty were originally from southern Kentucky, there was a familiar vibe to working together. The single “Just Another Lie” came out in the beginning of 1959 billed as Jackie DeShannon and the Cajuns. However, she only appeared on the A-side, the flip being the instrumental “Cajun Blues” by The Cajuns. That record then was licensed to the Sage label, and then to Dot, which released it in April of that year.
York recalled that time when Jackie was touring with his group. “Man, that girl could sing,” he said in an interview in the book We Wanna Boogie: An Illustrated History of the American Rockabilly Movement. “We’d travel around to these little record hops and dance programs, and she would say she wanted to be a big-name singer,” the book noting she was “still a brunette and decked out in fitted shiny gold slacks, the teenager proved a popular regional attraction.”
One more single came out under the moniker Jackie Shannon, “Lies” b/w “Trouble” on the P.J. label, a small outfit that only issued two singles, one by Jackie and one by York. That single was then licensed to Dot, and re-issued the following year on the Sand label.
After a show in Chicago, Jackie met rockabilly star Eddie Cochran who gave her some advice that changed her life. “He was very encouraging,” she recalled in Finding Her Voice: The Saga of Women in Country Music. “He said, “If you really want to get somewhere, you’ve got to come to California.” And that she did. The connection with Cochran also led to an introduction to his girlfriend, songwriter Sharon Sheeley. That resulted in Jackie and Sheeley forming a songwriting team penning songs for the likes of Brenda Lee, Irma Thomas and The Byrds. She would later go on to enjoy a brief songwriting partnership with Jimmy Page, as well as writing hits like “Come and Stay With Me” for Marianne Faithful, the Kim Carnes’ hit “Betty Davis Eyes” earning her a Grammy in 1982 for Song of the Year.
Connecting with the Edison International label, she finally became Jackie DeShannon. In a 2003 interview, Jackie recalled, “In the beginning when I was making records, radio stations were not playing records by girls. It was suggested I choose a name that could be a boy or a girl. So there you have it.” She became Jackie DeShannon. She recorded two singles for this label.
And at long last, Jackie signed a major label deal with Liberty/Imperial, enjoying a long and successful relationship with the label. Her first single “Lonely Girl” hit the U.S. charts. And her big breaks came in 1964, when she opened a U.S. tour for The Beatles and co-starred in the teen movie Surf Party.
From there her releases kept climbing up the charts, her most popular years 1965-69, with records in the Top 100 surveys through 1980.
