Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
And welcome back George Noy here with Harvey Koupernick. As we're talking about the music world. Harvey, the technology, we were talking about the point where it is today with streaming and downloading. Is that better or worse than what it was, let's say in the fifties.
Oh, it's way better because there's kind of a level playing field that has been established where economics aren't determining like the best seats or who can get into the concert. It's available for everybody and if you want, if you want to keep listening to your favorite groups, or if you want to discover new groups. And the disc jockey and the programmers are becoming more important again as they veer away a bit from some of these syndicated, you know,
shows with strict playlists and all that. There's a uniqueness of disc jockeys and people sort of introducing us to new music. But they're also co reliant on the music that comes from the past. But I also think what's going on is we're also seeing the renaissance or the growth of the music documentary. Currently on HBO, they're showing David Bowie's moon Age Daydream, which you know, there's songs like Life on Mars and Starman, or there's a Donna
Summers documentary. I'm currently involved in a documentary about the legendary recording studio gold Star with a terrific director, Christopher Allport. And there's just all kinds of documentaries that truly are going behind the music and giving us, you know, rare clips and also interviews with the witnesses or the principles that are still with us, like your friend Pat Boone at what age eighty eight? Still visible? He still can tell a story, He has incredible recall. I say treasure
and respect these people because they're walking history. And I think the streaming and the downloading and the record stores are still active, and there are things like Record Store Day or National Record Store Day, which I think is twice a year now in Black Friday. People are lining up to buy vinyl and rare cuts and unreleased material.
I think the music business has never been healthier, especially the concert business, although I do think the ticket prices and all the taxes and all the handling phase are really making it kind of price prohibitive for a lot of passionate music fans. But I think the best is yet to come.
I think so too. It is truly remarkable, though, what's been going on? What about the singers when you let the think back of the singers of the old days, the Sinatras, the Bobby Darren's and then the great groups like the Beatles, the Beach Boys and groups like that. Do we have that anymore today?
We do? Although I was talking to this incredible musician named Don Peak, who has played on all the Phil Spector sessions, and he played with the Beach Boys, and from nineteen sixty one to nineteen sixty three he was the guitarist in the Everly Brothers group. Just say that to yourself, the Everly Brothers nineteen sixty one to nineteen
sixty three. And I recorded him yesterday, six years ago, Mike Yes, And I said to him, you know, I was listening to some music with sher singing, and I was listening to some Carol King stuff that Lou Adler produced, and Don Peek said to me, listen a lot of the singers today they're really good, but their music or the recordings are informed or helped by things like auto tuning and the singers back then, thirty forty fifty sixty years ago, they're on two track, three track or four tracks.
They're recording live. There's very little overdubbing, and they didn't have technology that could improve. It's almost like booster shots there could you have to It has to be in the track and move you or it doesn't work. And so the singers back then, when you hear Sinatra, or you hear you hear even Tony Bennett, you realize, boy, these things are ed ames who just left us. Hear you hear a purity in the vocal because it's not crowded a lot by many tracks and samples and other
kind of you know things crowding the action. But you know there's there's room for everybody. But we want the real singers. We we meaning not just me, all of us who pay money to see a show or collect them. We want to be touched by the pure natural timber of somebody's voice. And sometimes I think we're because you have to give people a show. Now on stage, all kinds of dancers smoke bombs and listen. That's part of theatrics. David Bowie, Alice Cooper. People have sort of always done that.
But somehow when you hear a Sinatra, or you hear Assignment and Garfunkel, maybe just with a guitar, something happens where the people are in the room with you instead of across the street from you.
What about the orchestras now, Harvey, the people who knew how to play saxophones and trumpets and stuff like that, Well, are the young kids learning that still?
Well? I have a whole theory that sometimes in lectures I talk about, but I do think either due to budget cuts or something, and I'm only coming from a perspective from the LA City School system, or maybe it's national as well. The music of the arts programs were cut a lot over the last five, ten, fifteen, twenty
twenty five years. There used to be lots of glee clubs and choirs and began even I was in beginning percussion in junior high and my teacher taught you know, Timmy Buro, phil Spector and Andre Previn, you had that lineage. You have these things. I don't know if it exists as much. And the orchestras have sometimes on stage or on record now are being replaced by synthesizers and other equipment kind of emulating. I remember Don Randy, a fantastic
session player, keyboardist, arranger. He's on so many records it's ridiculous, including Bridge or Trouble Water and all the Specter dates. When the first synthesizers arrived, maybe in the late sixties or really all through the seventies, he went to the local Musicians' union out here on Vine Street, Local forty seven, and he said, listen, these synthesizers are going to put arrangers and orchestras out of work. Why don't we kind of come up with something where they could be used
for coding or augmentation. And so he saw the way drum machines kind of came in and replaced a lot of real drummers, although real drummers are still working, and so the orchestras have. If they haven't been reduced, they've been sort of put in the second tier because I'm due to cost on stage and union rules and all that. You still get some groups built tour, maybe with an orchestra or a small combo orchestra, but the orchestra is not a thing of the past. It's just been in a reduced capacity.
The Ed Sullivan show. He made some of the greatest artists. He made Elvis, he made the Beatles.
I mean, well, listen, let me just say something. And I don't want to get into a rock and roll Hall of Fame spiel. Ed Sullivan's not in the rock and roll Hall of Fame. Closed you and I know the impact the vision he had. He treated rock and roll kind of seriously, especially when his show went to color. He let a lot of people introduce their music and and be on shows with m R and comedians and dancers, and the stage sets were great. I'm just so glad.
A lot of the material of Ed Sullivan, the catalog that Sofa is made available digitally, and there's many compilations of the Ed Sullivan Show.
I mean, he was as stiff as a bored as a talent himself, but I mean the group.
I like the fact that he was sort of like a Matre de ator restaurant kind of Yeah. Yeah, there was a robotic stiffness action to him. But listen, he started as a newspaper columnist. He was on the beat. And I sometimes our hosts on TV are so slick with so cut makeup and all kinds of lighting techniques. When you see Ed Sullivan, the action stops because who is this guy that all of a sudden he goes, here are the rolling Stones, here are the Beatles, her
the vanilla fudge. You're spanking our gang, Here are the doors, and all of a sudden he at least him and his staff gave forum to music fifty and sixty years later made it happen. He made it happen, and I think he's one underrated visionary in popular culture.
Are you familiar with Louis Prima?
Are you kidding? I met Keeley Smith.
She was a great singer, well she I saw.
Louis and Keeley as a kid with my parents in Las Vegas, and that was Tina Turner type energy too.
They were Vegas before Sinatra was were They.
Put on a show and it was kind of wild, and she had a great haircut, and he was older than her, but he just carried the action.
And she had that certain look about her, that pouty look.
Come on, And I just think, you know, people like that made impressions. And I was really lucky to see the Buddy Riches and Sammy Davis Junior and a lot of these people as a kid, and I even saw Spike Jones, who no one ever talks about it, and he was marvelous on stage.
The great times. I mean, but would these guys were these people, would they make it today?
I think a lot of them wouldn't even get a record deal.
I mean, I don't think Jimmy Duranty, for example, could make it. He was a singer.
Yes, I think three cord of these people could never even get a meeting with a record company. No, Bob Dylan wouldn't be signed today if you judged him visually on his vocal. I mean, now it's how what's your streaming? If you're verified with your fan club. I understand popularity and TikTok and and just the amount of impressions that follow you and bring magnet people to you. And that's
shadow people too. But I don't think right now, especially with our obsession with youth at record companies, I don't think some of these people would even be able to walk through the door these days.
But you's always drove music because I remember even when old Pat Boom was singing back in those days as a youngster, it was the bobbysock girls that just kept things going. Sinatra and listen.
Part of that is marketing. Part of that was the existing demographic of who buys the product. But I think we've gone a little deeper than that, where the haircut guys, well, Bobby right now was fantastic, but the guys with the haircut some the Bobby soxsers later on, I think they moved to the side. And then the English invasion showed up with those groups and all that. But it's always been a youth driven market, whether it be teen dance
shows or or you know, exposures. You know, in various merchandise stuff, whether it be T shirts or bubble gum, that always exists except right now, Like my friend Gary strobel tonight is seeing Judy Collins at age eighty eight. At age eighty eight, she's doing a concert. I just think that's great that she's out there doing those things and she still has a lot of guests still in the tank. And people want to hear songs, they want to hear singers, they do want to hear all kinds
of other music. So we have there's plenty for everybody. So I think the future is, you know, really bright, but a song or a good tune when when you get exposed to it. Even in a supermarket or a seven to eleven or a restaurant. You stop eating when something you hear shows up from fifty years ago.
And it's good.
And that shows the durability, you know, of the audio as we used what.
Do you hear, Harvey about Tony Bennett? How's she doing?
I know there's I mean, it's sort of well documented, but he's sort of retired and there's you know, he's done his nine most right ninety three. I think has got some medical conditions that are kind of prohibiting him from performing again. But his legacy is intact, and the records he did with Bill Evans on piano or Ralph Sharon, He'll be around, and I will say, people like Lady Gaga and I'd like to see more of this. Lady Gaga on him, did an award winning together, and you know, I remember.
That she was so respectful of him.
Yes, and I remember, and this will speak to your Michigan roots. Forty years ago, when I was a record executive at MCA Records, I made the bold decision to put Tom Petty in the Heartbreakers for them to do a record in an album with Del Shannon Wow from Michigan, and that record did get made, and I had a credit on an Organic Catalyst and now I'm a consulting producer and a Del Shannon documentary. So when the old and the new or the current people embrace the elders,
we get something from that. And I'd like to see that continue where the new people not. You know, Bonnie Rayett used to put blues singers on as her opening acts at her concerts. I'd like to see some of that stuff instead of the usual machinations and all the other game that have to be played.
Did you know an old friend of mine who passed on Russ Reagan?
Are you kidding? Russ Reagan is my mentor. He told me, you.
Know, founded the Beach Boys, he.
Gave them their name. He signed Elton John to MCA Records. He signed the Strawberry.
Alarm clock Neil Diamond.
And I remember Russ and I would have a lunch every six months for thirty years, and I wrote I wrote his I'll call it an obituary. It was really a tribute to him. And his daughter called me crying on the phone, and I'm so aware, and again he should be in the rock and roll Hall of Fame. He said, I was responsible for a billion dollars worth of retail sales of all the people he signed. That's amazing, isn't that amazing?
He was He was a giant. He was as a giant, and he was.
He just and he just had ears. He understood songs, he understood records, he understood he understood trends. And he's the guy in the mid eighties or late eighties gave a speech at the convention and said, they'll come a time one day where you go to a concert and you'll be able to leave with the recording of that concert the same night.
And he was right.
He was right.
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot com for more