All You Need Is LOVE DVD Box Set-Release May 2008

[yerblues1968]

All You Need Is LOVE - The Story of Popular Music
Tony Palmer's Legendary Classic
DVD Box Set $39.99 - Coming in May 2008

Featuring:

Agnes de Mille
Al Jolson
Alexis Korner
Alice Cooper
Allan Williams
Aretha Franklin
Arlo Guthrie
Art Tatum
Artie Shaw
B.B. King
Baker-Gurvitz Army
Benny Goodman
Bessie Smith
Bill Anderson
Bill Graham
Bill Haley
Bill Wyman
Billie Holiday
Bing Crosby
Black Oak Arkansas
Bo Diddley
Bob Fosse
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Bob Wills
Brian Epstein
Bud Freeman
Buddy Rich
Cab Calloway
Carl Perkins
Charles Aznavour
Charles Coburn
Charles Mingus
Charlie Parker
Chick Corea
Christies Ethiopian Serenaders
Chubby Checker
Chuck Berry
Clara Bow
Cliff Richard
Clive Davis
Clyde McPhatter
Conway Twilty
Count Basie
Country Joe McDonald
Cream
Danny La Rue
Dave Brubeck
David Bowie
Derek Taylor
Dick Vance
Dizzy Gillespie
Donovan
Doug Kershaw
Duke Ellington
Dusty Springfield
E. Y. Harburg
Earl Fatha Hines
Edith Piaf
Electric Light Orchestra
Elton John
Elvis Presley
Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Eric Burdon
Eric Clapton
Ernest Tubb
Eubie Blake
Everly Brothers
Flanagan and Allen
Fletcher Henderson
Florrie Forde
Frank Sinatra
Frank Zappa
Galt MacDermott
Gary Glitter
Gene Krupa
Gene Vincent
George Gershwin
George Harrison
George Martin
George Shearing
Ginger Baker
Glen Campbell
Glynis Johns
Guy Lombardo
Harold Prince
Harry James
Harry Lauder
Helen Reddy
Hoagy Carmichael
Houston Grand Opera and the music of Scott Joplin
Ian Carr
Ike and Tina Turner
Irving Berlin
Irving Caesar
Jack Bruce
Jack Good
James Brown
James Simmons
Janis Joplin
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Wexler
Jethro Tull
Jimi Hendrix
Jimmie Driftwood
Jimmie Rodgers
Joan Baez
John Lennon
John Lewis
Johnnie Ray
Joseph Papp
Joy of Cooking
Judy Garland
Keith Moon
Ken Russell
Kid Ory
Kiss
Labelle
Lawrence Welk
Leadbelly
Leon Rosselson
Leonard Cohen
LeRoi Jones
Lester Bangs
Liberace
Lightnin' Hopkins
Lionel Bart
Lionel Hampton
Little Richard
Little Tich
Lonnie Donegan
Lorenz Hart
Louis Armstrong
Mae West
Mamas and the Papas
Manfred Mann
Marie and Donny Osmond
Marie Kendall
Marlene Dietrich
Maurice Chevalier
Memphis Slim
Michael John Bowen
Mick Jagger
Mighty Joe Young
Mike Gibbs
Mike Oldfield
Miles Davis
Minnie Pearl
Monica Mason
Mrs Shufflewick
Muddy Waters
Murray the K
Oscar Hammerstein Jnr.
Pat Boone
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney and Wings
Paul Whiteman
Perry Como
Pete Seeger
Peter Rudge
Peter, Paul and Mary
Pink Floyd
Ravi Shankar
Ray Charles
Rev. Jack Wyrtzen
Richard Rodgers
Ringo Starr
Roger McGuinn
Roosevelt Sykes
Rouben Mamoulian
Roxy Music
Roy Acuff
Roy Rogers
Rudi Blesh
Rudy Vallee
Rufus Thomas
Ruth Etting
Sam Phillips
Son House
Stephen Sondheim
Stevie Wonder
Stomu Yamash'ta
Tangerine Dream
Terry Dene
Terry Waldo
Tex Ritter
The Andrews Sisters
The Beach Boys
The Beatles
The Bee Gees
The Byrds
The Carter Family
The Doors
The Dutch Swing College Band
The Lefevres Family
The Platters
The Rolling Stones
The Supremes
The Who
Tina Turner
Tom O'Horgan
Tommy Dorsey
Tommy Steele
Vera Lynn
Victoria Spivey
Webb Pierce
William Hammerstein
William Ivey and Stars of the Grand Ole Opry
Willie 'The Lion' Smith
Wilson Pickett
Woody Guthrie
Woody Herman

Episode One
Introductory Program

Popular music is an essential part of our daily lives. Yet we know comparatively little about it – where it came from, how it developed, how it has influenced or been influence by social change. Today, the popular music industry controls billions of dollars; it has a greater revenue than the combined efforts of the cinema, theater, sport, and all the other entertainment industries put together. Yet the industry depends, ultimately, on the creative talents of a group of remarkable individuals. The story of popular music, therefore, is a story of the struggle by these individuals to survive the demands of this gigantic industry.

This introductory episode explains some of the aims and ambitions of this 17 part spectacular entertainment.

Episode Two
God's Children

It is generally assumed that American popular music comes from the coastal regions of Africa; that the slaves brought drums to the United States; that jazz originated, somehow, in New Orleans; that the blues developed in the Mississippi Delta, and later became the cornerstone of everything from rock n roll to ragtime. All of these assumptions are untrue, and this episode with seek to uncover the real story – in Africa, on the edge of the Sahara; in Austria and the Salzkammergut; in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas; in New Orleans and in Texas.

Episode Three
I Can Hypnotise Dis Nation (Ragtime)

Thanks to the hit movie, “The Sting”, everyone reckons they know about Ragtime. But do they? This Episode includes the oldest known piece of film (1898) showing what the cakewalk was really like. Also extracts from The Royal Ballet production based on Scott Joplin’s music, “Elite Syncopations”. Also extracts staged by the Houston Grand Opera of Joplin’s only surviving opera, “Treemonisha”. There is also rare early film of Irving Berlin (Alexander’s Ragtime Band) as well as film of Joplin’s birthplace and of the madhouse where he died. Although reference is made to other early ragtime composers, this episode is essentially the story of Scott Joplin – an extraordinary tragedy of failure, frustration, pride, of the black man’s struggle to achieve for himself a proper place in American society.

Episode Four
Jungle Music (Jazz)

Jazz is not a black music, nor a white music. Nor is it structureless improvisation. Nor did it originate in New Orleans. As created at the turn of the century throughout the American South, it had a quite specific and limited meaning. Its form was strict, as were the morals and musical principles which guided its early exponents. This film will seek to examine the origins of jazz, and show how these were exploited and eventually lost by greed. Jazz is a story of apartheid in music in which a unique blend of white musical discipline and black sensibility was comprised and laid waste.

Episode Five
Who's That Comin'? (The Blues)

Blues is a word you have to think about before it can be understood. Contrary to popular belief, blues – as a form of music – does not appear until 1910 or so, that is after ragtime and jazz. Blues is not, therefore, the cornerstone of popular music. Rather, it has become an emotional response, through music to a variety of oppressive social conditions.

The Episode begins in the Delta of Mississippi and follow the progress of itinerant blues musicians to the steel mills and automobile factories of Chicago; from harmonica and fiddle, to electric guitar and fashionable nightclub. Finally, the Episode shows how blues phrases and harmonies were stolen by white rock n rollers in need of a new gimmick.

Episode Six
Rude Songs (Vaudeville and Music Hall)

Music Hall, as a description, means exactly what it says. A hall, usually at the back of a tavern or pub, in which music was performed by local entertainers for financial gain. It is thus the earliest example of a popular music industry. In a sense, through all its manifestations, music hall or vaudeville or variety has remained true to this original description. Thus, the film begins and ends in Las Vegas (with Judy Garland), a palace of varieties to end all palaces of variety. En route, we travel via London’s Palace Theater, the Palladium and the Windmill.

Episode Seven
Always Chasin' Rainbows (Tin Pan Alley)

Tin Pan Alley existed to make money. IT organized and rationalized an embryonic music industry for the mutual benefit of these who did the organizing.
Tin Pan Alley brought to popular music a collective sense of purpose. Songs were no longer the creative prerogative of a few gifted, composers. They could be written to order, in ten minutes, for all combinations of instruments and voices. Its organization included pluggers, copyists, demonstrators and arrangers. Songs were written by committee, by number, and by role. There were “product”, and the greater the “product”, the greater the profit.

Episode Eight
Diamonds As Big As the Ritz (The Musical)

This is a story of how a remarkable and very different number of theatrical elements were welded together into something also remarkable and very different called “the musical”. From operetta, vaudeville, variety, burlesque, revue and most importantly British music hall, came “the musical”. But it did not come about by accident. It was the deliberate and conscious achievement of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein (who wrote, among others, “Showboat” and “Oklahoma”) and the director Rouben Mamoulian. Against considerable opposition, both critical and commercial, they created a new art form which was unique and yet familiar.

Episode Nine
Swing That Music! (Swing)

For most of its history, popular music has rarely been that which most people like Jazz, for instance, has always been a minority interest. But in the era which was dominated by swing, the music and its popularity were equally matched. White musicians became bored with the asinine popular music they were expected to play, music pumped out by Tin Pan Alley, and tried to emulate the style and freedom of their black counterparts. Most of them were too intelligent as musicians to indulge in mere imitation. What they created was the first white music based on black music which was not stolen from black music.

Episode Ten
Good Times (Rhythm and Blues)

In the late forties, white record companies labeled commercial black music “race music”. Eventually, Jerry Wexler, then working at Billboard magazine as a reporter, thought of the phrase, “rhythm and blues” and it caught on. Before long, numerous other descriptions appeared – Motown, the Philadelphia Sound, Soul – but all had in common that the music expressed the rising aspirations of the ghetto.

Meanwhile, a curious imitation of black gospel appeared called white gospel. And among those who loved the sound were two remarkable men; one a record producer, Sam Phillips, who wanted to create a sound which had the discipline of white gospel but with the abandon of black rhythm and blues; the other was Elvis Presley.

Episode Eleven
Making Moonshine (Country Music)

Country music was, originally, home-made music. It described the births, marriages and deaths that happened in every community. It celebrated love, just as it bemoaned the ill-fortune that came to every man. It was music with which all felt they could identify. As such, it occupied a unique place in white culture. The music was not manufactured, as in Tin Pan Alley, nor sophisticated, and this episode describes the process by which this change came about.

Finally, we will be backstage at the Grand Ole Opry during one of its regular nationwide broadcasts, with a blessing to finish from Grand Ole Gospel Time.

Episode Twelve
Go Down, Moses! (Folk "War Songs")

After Nashville had raped American country music, it might seem that the folk traditions this music embodied had been lost. Not so, because these traditions had a purpose other than to entertain. We shall see how folk music used popular melodies to spell out unpopular themes, how during the American War of Independence filthy words were penned against the British Crown, but all to the tune of ‘God Save The King’. The same happened during the American Civil War – different words, depending on whether you were from the North or the South but to the same tune.

Song has been used by such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, Peter Seeger and Leonard Cohen as a passionate weapon for peace. The effect these singers managed to achieve in the sixties was one of the stronger causes of the American defeat in Vietnam.

Episode Thirteen
Hail! Hail! Rock n Roll (Rock n Roll)

The story of rock n roll begins and ends in Memphis, Tennessee, in the tiny studio of record producer Sam Phillips. He tells of how he discovered Elvis Presley and of the struggle he had to get Presley accepted. It was not the overnight success story that is popularly believed. Before long, however, Presley came to symbolize the spirit of an entire generation. How did this happen, and why? Or was it the product of Sam Phillips’ imagination and Presley’s stage presence?

Episode Fourteen
Mighty Good (The Beatles)

“They were very scruffy” recounts Allan Williams, the Beatles’ first manager, as he describes the Beatles’ early escapades in Hamburg and Liverpool Soon Brian Epstein appeared on the scene, although he didn’t like the sound the Beatles made. Nor did any record producer, and even George Martin now admits that he never believed they would make worldwide hit song writers. There was a cost, of course, which eventually had to paid for this extraordinary euphoria. But, at the time, no-one seemed to care.

Episode Fifteen
All Along the Watchtower (Sour Rock)
The sixties began, according to Eric Burdon as “a party”. “The aim of all of us, Hendrix, The Who, The Stones” Burdon goes on, “was to ball every chick in sight”. Unfortunately, the party went sour. After the death of Epstein, the Beatles quarreled and split up. Jagger was arrested. Drugs became fashionable. The swinging sixties tore itself apart in an orgy of self-congratulation and self-indulgence.

Episode Sixteen
Whatever Gets You Through The Night (Glitter Rock)

This Episode takes place almost entirely on stage; fans are always seen from the performer’s point of view. Thus, we begin to feel and experience first hand the pressures being put upon various individuals by the music industry. We are backstage with David Bowie as he makes himself up for a performance. We watch Alice Cooper ritualistically smashing up a doll, while the fans shriek for more and more. We are with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull as he prepares to face a screaming crowd. We watch Eric Clapton before drugs, during drugs and after drugs. We are on stage with Keith Emerson as he hurls his electric organ as the audience...

Episode Seventeen
Imagine (New Directions)

The film opens at a pop festival. Drug-smoking is very much in evidence. “These fellows will answer to God” says the Rev Jack Wyrtzen, “for all the pollution and evil they have spread around the world.” “The thing about rock n roll” says Lester Bangs, “is that it is totally about adolescence, and about consumerism brought in the highest degree”. In fact, as the film begins to point out, neither of these extreme points of view is true. Tangerine Dream perform religious music in Coventry Cathedral. Stomu Yamash’ta, a spectacular Japanese percussionist, clearly has nothing to do with adolescence: and no-one could describe Mike Oldfield as the product of consumerism.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=81CQ63SKM9Y

www.allyouneedislovedvd.com/

[yerblues1968]

Lennon Inspired Series

Rick McGinnis/Metro News

May 14, 2008 07:00

“You doing anything useful these days?” These were the words that inspired documentary director Tony Palmer to spend two years of his life, travelling all over the world, to make All You Need Is Love, a 17-part series on the history of popular music that’s only now arriving on DVD this week, 30 years after it first aired on television.

The words were spoken by John Lennon, an old friend of Palmer’s. “I can still hear his voice saying that,” he says over the telephone, recalling the struggles to make the series. Palmer — a veteran director who’s made films about classical music in addition to 200 Motels, the cult classic feature starring Frank Zappa — ended up capturing dozens of musical giants at their most candid, painting a first-hand eyewitness account of the evolution of jazz, blues and pop music over the course of a long century only three-quarters finished.

“When I look at the swing episode, that was the only long interview Artie Shaw ever gave. Bing Crosby — gone within a few years. Cab Calloway, gone. Frank Sinatra, gone. Benny Goodman, gone. I was really desperate to get around these guys because I knew they had extraordinary stories to tell, and I wanted to get there before they weren’t there to tell them.”

I saw the series when it aired in Canada, for the first time, on TVO, and it ended up being a major inspiration for my decision to become a music critic when I left college. Even at the time, though, I knew something was missing from the final episode, which speculated on the future of pop music, and appointed as its heir apparent ... Mike Oldfield. His 1973 prog rock opus Tubular Bells remains huge, though it’s very much a period piece now, especially when you consider what was happening literally on the doorstep of Palmer’s editing suite.

“We were aware — we’d had the Sex Pistols running in all directions in London, and I begged EMI and Polygram to put off the finishing of the series so that we could include some of that, but they wouldn’t allow me to. They said, ‘You’ve spent quite enough money anyway and we don’t know any of this stuff.It’s vulgar.’

“So I had my knuckles rapped, was told to finish it and go away. In retrospect,” he says, “it was a terrible mistake and we knew it at the time, but it wasn’t our money. We couldn’t do anything about it really.”

The series arrives on DVD with its 17 episodes cleaned up and formatted for widescreen televisions, but without any bonus features, a shortcoming Palmer blames on the producers’ penny-pinching.

“If I’ve been tempted to commit murder it’s this — the film was jointly financed by EMI and Polygram. And some moron in EMI junked all the outtakes. We sat there filming, for example, two hours of our interview with Hoagy Carmichael. And you can’t use all of that, so you use five or 10 minutes. And the rest, this idiot at EMI threw away. Can you believe it?” he asks. “This moron was actually on the same plane as us yesterday afternoon coming over to New York. I thought, shall I kill him now? And I thought I’m much too old for that. But I know he was the guy who signed it off.”

www.metronews.ca/halifax/entertainment/article/53167

[yerblues1968]

'ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE' FINALLY ARRIVES IN U.S.

'All You Need Is Love,' a 17-hour celebration of American music and its offspring, hits L.A.


By Randy Lewis,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 3, 2008


British documentary maker Tony Palmer called his 17-hour TV series exploring the origins of American popular music “All You Need Is Love,” because John Lennon told him it would make a great title. But in the three decades since he made it, it's become evident to Palmer that he could justifiably have named it "Nick of Time."

The series will be shown in its entirety for the first time in the U.S. this weekend, marathon style, at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood as part of the Mods & Rockers Film Festival. It's broken down into chapters on various facets of popular music, such as jazz, blues, swing, Tin Pan Alley, country, the Beatles and music that was fresh when Palmer was filming it in 1975 and 1976, glitter and progressive rock.

"For the swing episode, I just made a list: Who would be great to get? Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway," Palmer said from Las Vegas earlier this week while attending a Beatles fan festival. "Then it just became a matter of tracking them down. It became like a military campaign.

"But what I couldn't possibly have known then is that within a very short period of time many of these people would be dead," he said. "So these were the last and most substantial interviews a lot of these artists gave."

The list of Palmer's interviewees is remarkable. Naturally, there is an episode on the Beatles featuring interviews with members of the Fab Four as well as another highlighting such key '60s rock figures as the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and the Who.

But the greatest treasure might be his footage of figures who were tremendously influential but far less celebrated: Hoagy Carmichael, E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, Eubie Blake, Muddy Waters, Tina Turner, Buddy Rich, Ernest Tubb, Bo Diddley. Palmer also used rare film performances or interviews with George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Charlie Parker and dozens more.

Those were the un- or under-sung musical heroes Lennon urged Palmer to document -- "He told me I should make it my mission," Palmer recalls -- when the two randomly bumped into each other one day in New York in 1974. Palmer had previously made “All My Loving,” a film about the '60s rock scene in England that Lennon and Paul McCartney had admired.

"Take the stuff with Muddy Waters," he said. "Of course I knew who he was, not the least because Mick Jagger never stopped talking about him -- probably out of guilt. But I just couldn't find him. Then we were in Chicago filming something else and in the Tribune I saw a little ad for a gig with Muddy Waters, and eventually I spoke to him on the phone.

"He said, 'Sure, come on down.' So we went down to this pokey little club on the west side. . . . I thought we must have gotten there on the wrong night, because nobody was there. It would be wrong to say there were more people in our crew than were there in the club, but it sure felt that way.

"At that time, a lot of those people had been, if not forgotten, overlooked, and their careers were in the doldrums," he said. "When I went to interview Jerry Lee Lewis in Las Vegas, he was performing not on a stage or even on a riser, but in the entrance to the Holiday Inn. He was on one side of the room and people were checking in on the other."

Because he found so many influential musicians who had been taken for granted at home, Palmer was "disappointed but not surprised" that "All You Need Is Love" has aired in England, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong and Canada but never from beginning to end in the U.S.

Revisiting the series 30-plus years later while supervising the remastering for the DVD, Palmer said there were things he'd change if he could. For one, he'd originally wanted to add an 18th hour as punk rock was starting to explode in England. But his financiers thought 17 hours was plenty, he said, "and the money men didn't really understand punk anyway."

"The basic thing we got right, what emerged as a theme, is something that kept occurring in whatever aspect of music we were looking at: It began as a simple expression with someone strumming a guitar or twanging a bow, to express what people were feeling about the circumstances in which they live. Then they discover 'Gosh, there's an audience for this; people want it.' That brings in the businessmen, who realize there is money to be made, and soon the original expression has been totally emasculated. And it happened over and over and over again."

Since “All You Need Is Love” came out on DVD in May, he said, "the most interesting reaction in the U.S. is that in the reviews, 1 in 3, and that's not an exaggeration, say that this really should be distributed to all high schools as a primer in the origins of our music. That's enormously flattering and makes me think maybe we didn't do such a bad job after all."

[e-mail]

www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-love3-2008jul03,0,5417805.story