← Takin' A Walk - Music History with Buzz Knight
Takin' A Walk - Music History with Buzz Knight
"This week in Music History on the "takin ' a walk podcast 4-7
00:21:35
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A
In Mississippi, Yazoo clay keeps secrets.
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B
7,000 bodies out there. Or more.
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A
A forgotten asylum cemetery.
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It was my family's mystery.
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Shame, guilt, propriety. Something keeps it all buried deep. Until it's not. I'm Larison Campbell, and this is under Yazoo Clay. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley season one. Every time I hear about my dad.
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Is, oh, he's a killer.
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B
He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known. At the end of the day, I'm.
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A
Literally a son of a killer.
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B
Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2, starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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A
I'm Buzz Knight, the host of the Take it A Walk podcast. Music history on foot. And we now take a look at the week in music history for the week of April 7th. Over to the music history desk to music fan, entrepreneur, media executive, guitar wizard. See, now, I'm not saying guitar hacked, as I previously said. Guitar wizard Harry Jacobs at the music history desk.
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B
I will use my wizardry at some point right here on this week. I'll play a sold intro at some point. But, yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate the upgrade, right?
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A
The upgrade.
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B
This is. This is a good week. The week of April 7, the building in downtown Los Angeles, Capitol Records Tower, known as the world's largest circular office building, opened up this week in 1956. It's a crazy building. Have you ever been in there? I would imagine on your trips to LA that you probably have.
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Yeah, I think I was in so much of a haze, I forgot. But, yes, I was in there. I saw some of the hallowed halls of Capitol Records, and it's.
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B
It's.
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If the walls could talk, right?
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B
Yeah. It's interesting that I was wondering what was going on in that building these days. And it's still being used by Capitol. It's still their headquarters. Did you know that in the basement of the building there are echo chambers?
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A
I did not know that.
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And that's where they recorded Good Vibrations so they could get all that, you know, the cellos at the beginning and all that stuff. I'm guessing that's where that. That's where that was all done.
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Yeah, that's a good one to maybe go back to, to see if someone would take us through there and kind of walk through. Just as I Was able to walk through some of the places in Nashville that would be a fun episode to record with, you know, someone who knows some of those back stories. Good, good.
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B
Oh, yeah, yeah. The echo chambers in the. In the basement of that building. And I'm glad Capitol's still making use out of it. There's other. Other use in that building, but. But that's still Capital's headquarters.
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There's probably a dispensary in there or something in the bottle.
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B
I would imagine there is, which explains why the. You were in there and there was a haze. This was long before dispensary. So. Yeah, in 75, on April 7th, Richie Blackmore played his final gig with Deep Purple in Paris. He split and then he went to form Rainbow.
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A
Pretty incredible that he was able to do that so seamlessly. Yeah, think about it, right?
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B
Crazy. And. And I, you know, I always liked Rainbow. They were kind of a. I guess you'd call them maybe a tertiary band for classic rock stations. They were, you know, it was never the Doors or, you know, Sticks or Kansas or Foreign or, you know, any of the usual suspects. They were kind of a. Let's go grab something. Man on the Silver Mountain. Or, you know, something. But which. A song, by the way, which I love still man on the Silver Mountain. You like that one?
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A
I like that one. But I'm gonna throw out my favorite from Rainbow. Stone cold.
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B
Yeah. 100%. So don't hold.
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And it. It did not really get cast as it should not have been cast in the quote unquote. Here's another hair band, right?
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Oh, yeah, absolutely.
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Before that.
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Yeah, yeah, it certainly was. 70, 75. So. Right. Yeah.
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Pre.
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Pre. The hair days. Hair band days. In 79, the two day California World Music Music Festival happened at the Coliseum in la. Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Van Halen and a bunch of others. This was. This was Stephen and Joe, the Toxic twins at the height of their madness in 1979.
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This.
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This is, you know, height of drug use, height of craziness, screaming at each other. Might have been even a fist fight at that concert between those two.
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Wouldn't it be amazing if there was some rare footage that was backstage that emerged and turned into a min doc or something like that?
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B
Oh, yeah, little docu series on the fights between Joe and Steven. In 1988, Alice Cooper nearly died of asphyxiation during a concert stunt in Wembley. A rope broke during a hanging illusion and a roadie actually saved him. And they. The show went on, as they say, after that, I would imagine, isn't that, Isn't that just crazy that he would almost choke himself to death and, you know, Rhodey saves him and they keep going.
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Yes, for sure. I didn't know that story actually.
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Yeah, we gotta, we. We haven't played schools out yet. We. We need to finish the show up. Come on.
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I know. Oh, gotta get Alison.
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I gotta do you. Did you ever spend any time with Alice? Over the years? I would imagine he was radio friendly, right? He was a guy who, who was happy to be on, on everyone's radio stations.
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A
But I was fortunate one particular time and it's one of the, the great radio promotions that I was associated with. And it was when I was in Ohio at QFM96 and we had a big affiliation with Ohio State, obviously. And back then the coach of the Ohio State football team happened to be John Cooper. And so we knew that Alice was coming in for a date in the what the heck, you don't know unless you try department.
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Yeah.
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We asked the label if Alice would play along with this bit where we went to this. It was called the Varsity Club. It's probably still there near the Ohio football stadium. And the event we created was Meet Mr. Cooper. And people were of course thinking that John Cooper was stopping by and lo and behold, it was our main man, Alice, who was the Mr. Cooper.
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Yeah, and that's crazy.
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And I'll never forget riding back to the hotel with him in the, the limo. And the fans had brought all sorts of crazy stuff for him as a gift. You know, posters and merch and just this bizarre series of things that they bestowed on Alice at this event. And yeah, we took it all with him, you know, back like as, as we were bringing him back to the hotel. And I remember saying to him, I said, what are you gonna do with all that shit? He said, I'm gonna put it with the rest of the junk somewhere that I'll never see again.
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That's really funny. But you would imagine that if people are gonna do that, they're gonna bring something, you know, and it was the.
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Strangest thing, but he couldn't have been any, any sweeter of a person to deal with. And it was a great promotion, great opportunity to, to meet a legend and would love to, even though I'm not a golfer, would love to meet up with him again. If I was a golfer, it would probably be easy to pull that off, you know.
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Yeah, he's a monster golfer, right? He's, he's, he's big into it. I don't know how he's And I don't play golf, so I don't really. I can't even tell you. So I just know the lower the score, the better. That's about it. April 11th. Did you want to say anything else about Mr. Cooper?
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Mr. Cooper? That's all I was going to say, Mr. Carpenter. Coop.
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Coop. April 11th, International Louie Louie Day. We can't ever know. I don't think anyone actually knows the words 100%. You know, I defy you to find someone walking down the street that knows the words to it word for word. It's Richard Berry's birthday. April 11th, international Louie Lou.
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So you know who made a big deal about that? You remember the Philadelphia radio personality who worked for me for a period at WMGK, John DiBella.
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Oh, yeah, of course.
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John Louie Louis thing into, you know, one of his big morning show promotions, the Louie Louis parade he did back in the day. That might have even been when he was at wmmr. He. That he did that Louie Louis parade. So he. He took off on that and turned it into a spectacle.
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B
That's interesting. I forgot all about that, of course. In John de Bella, April 13, 1967, the stones pierced the Iron Curtain. They played in. In Poland, in Warsaw, Poland. Communist Poland. And it was a big deal back, back then for that to happen as.
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Someone with some Polish ethnicity. Yakimash, what does that mean?
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Little translation, please.
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I don't even know. I'm not even sure.
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All right, we're gonna move on. You could check back with me if you get a definition on that. Also, on April 13, 1985, we are the World topped the Billboard singles charts. This, of course, was the Quincy Jones Michael Jackson Stevie Wonder project. And it was the subject of the greatest night in pop. Great documentary.
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Incredible black. Yep.
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Couple of facts. I don't know if you knew this. I think I'm going to give you one that you don't know, because we watched the documentary and we think we know it all, but I don't think we do. Prince was invited. Did you know that Prince was invited to this?
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I knew that, like in the last few months that it, you know, or right after the release of the doc. Yeah, that came out. Yep.
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You don't know why Prince declined, do you?
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Did it have something to do with Sheila E. He did not. There was competition between him and Michael.
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That's right. That's right. He didn't wanna. He did not want to record with any other singers. He didn't name Michael specifically. We, you know, the assumption is that he did that he did offer them a parting gift, though, which was a guitar solo for the song. Yeah, well, you didn't know it because there's no guitar solo in that song. We Are the World. They declined that. There were two things that were great. We touched on this, you know, months back at one point, the Waylon Jennings thing, when Stevie Wonder had suggested they do a little Swahili. And. And Waylon said, ain't no good old boy ever sung anything in Swahili. And he probably bounced. He did. And then Stevie coaching Bob Dylan, which was caught on tape. So let me ask you this. Speaking of Stevie coaching Bob Dylan, if I can interrupt you, and I had a bet, not even a bet, but an agreement, that you would see the complete unknown, the Timothee Chalamet, Bob Dylan. Have you completed that assignment yet? I ask almost every week.
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Well, there were moments I thought it was never going to happen, and I thought it could possibly lead to the end of my marriage. But eventually, yes, I just did. Recently complete. Watching it.
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B
Did you watch it at home? I never did. Okay. So I was gonna say, would you have gotten. Would it have gotten to the point where you would have said to your wife, I'm going with or without you to go see the movie? Or. Is this what we're talking about? Not that this is a therapy session, but come on, boss. Or, listen, did she not want to go? Do you not want to go? What's. I.
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Neither of us. Neither one of us wanted to go to the movies. And then when it became available inside our home, she didn't want to spring for the $25, thinking that was ridiculous. And I was like, come on. So then when it came down to part of the plan, the cable plan, we then sat down to watch it. That didn't go well either, because the first look at it, we got to about halfway through, and she irately threw up her hands and said, I don't get this. I'm ready for bed. And I was like, well, I'm never going to watch this with you again. I want to see this completed. And then two days later, she said, all right, well, let's watch it and watch it through.
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Did you pick up from where you left off the halfway corner? Do you serve me much?
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Yeah.
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B
Gotcha. So then.
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So then it was a completed mission.
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Completed mission for a complete unknown. All right, well, I'm glad you. I'm sorry for the strife I've caused in your home by forcing you to see that, but, oh, listen, my friend.
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You had nothing to do with It.
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Okay, good.
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Yeah. So aren't you curious of my take?
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Yeah, boy. Please let me. Yes, Puz, what did you think?
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I thought his performance, meaning playing the music, was tremendous. You have to admire the diligence that he brought to that. I thought Edward Burns as Pete Seeger was terrific as well. I thought the woman who played Joan Baez was terrific as well. I didn't like and still don't understand why Susie had to be known as Silly. Is that her name? Oh, yeah, the other name.
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Yeah.
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Apparently in reading about that, Mr. Dylan wanted her name changed to protect her. Her legacy. Because she passed away. Susie did, I think, in mid 2000s. I liked the fact that there was just a lot of, you know, concert footage, if you will. You know, that was part of it. That was the strongest part, the storyline. And specifically hearing him talk. I thought there was a fair amount of a different form of mumbling other than what I would expect of Bob Dylan's mumbling. But now I'm really splitting hairs. The person who played Woody Guthrie reminded me that a Kramer look alike could have played him. But I would say overall it was for me, it was a positive experience. And ultimately for my lovely wife, when she made it through, I think she saw it ultimately a little differently. Appreciated the performance aspect and, you know, I wouldn't say loved it, but liked it.
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Enjoyed it. Fun. Yeah. Enjoyed it.
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Yeah.
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You got to see the song that I was talking about after I first saw the movie, which was the song for Woody, which Dylan put on his first album. The song he actually played for Willie in front of. Or for Woody, rather, in front of. In front of Pete when they were in the hospital.
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That's right. Pretty.
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Pretty moving.
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Oh, yeah, yeah. So, you know, welcome to my world.
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At least. At least one thumbs up from the. From the night. From the buzz night home.
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I think that. One and a half.
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One and a half. Okay.
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Yeah.
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All right. All right.
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I'm glad we got that over with, Harry.
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Yeah, it was every week before we get on the air, I have to ask you, are we doing this? Are we not doing. Did you do it? Did you watch it, talk about it? So now I surprise you. 1993, Springsteen released his second live album. The first one was live 75 to 85. It was that, you know, four album set and then this one, 1993, without the E Street Band. Roy Benton was the only E Street Band member on that album. You know, I saw that tour a bunch of times. I saw it 10 or 12 times. I think I drove to New Jersey And Washington. I did a little Eastern seaboard Bruce trip for that. I. I happen to like that music at that time in that band. The album actually got to number four in the uk. I don't think it did well. He didn't do well with that band here. Yeah.
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And I wish I saw that tour. I remember when you went and. And I was wishy washy ish. I know that's shocking, but I wish I saw him in play, you know, not only that round of shows, I. In retrospect, I wish I saw him play the shows that were the, you know, the Tom Joe shows as well, you know.
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B
Yeah. Tell you two, two quick stories there. At the end of that tour, that 9293 tour is when we kind of knew the band was probably going to get back together. We had some suspicions. I was at the Madison Square Garden concerts the last nights of the tour and. And Clarence came out. Clarence actually came out the night before in at the Meadowlands during Born to Run and played his solo and then 10th Avenue and the place just went. It went crazy. So as a matter of fact, I think the way it went was they played 10th Avenue and Crystal was supposed to play the sax when Clarence wasn't in the band. And when that part in 10th Avenue frees out, you know, the big man joins the band. Clarence comes walking out and it was just. It was thunderous in. In the Meadowlands. And then he stayed for Born to Run and maybe Glory Days and Max came out as well. So a couple nights in a row we got Clarence and Max and then, you know, after that, the next thing you know it was Blood Brothers and. And then it took him till 99 to get everyone together to go back out. But I, I enjoy that band. I enjoy that music. I've. You know, I've always found my way to his music, whatever he's doing. And Jode was great. Chuck Nolan and I went to the Boston show. I've got a piece of artwork that hangs in my house signed from Bruce that night, which I would treasure. Yeah, the Tom Joad thing was great.
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A
Pretty cool. And share the new Bruce news that just recently has broke.
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B
Yeah, there's a new. This is very weird because normally you get word from people that something's coming, you know, there'll be a leak. Hey, I heard from so and so the. I think certainly, you know, that was something I would have expected in this case. But literally out of the blue, a second version of the tracks album or, or a project was coming out. Tracks for those that don't know. It was a project that was released by Bruce and his team of unreleased music. To that point it was, you know, probably four albums, you know, worth of stuff. Now as of the third of january, the first song, or of March rather the first song from what is a six album set tracks Part two is now out there and it's going to be available know through itunes and then you can buy it through Bruce Springsteen.net and get a book and get all kinds of, you know, chotchis like you would from the record store. But yeah, huge Bruce project. A lot of stuff that was unreleased. Actually everything that was unreleased. One of the things for, for Bruce nuts that they were wondering about. And I've got confirmation of this because I saw the song list today. A lot of people were thinking that the full band version of Nebraska would be out and there was a full band version of Nebraska recorded. I've seen all six. It's available on itunes. The music's just not highlighted yet. And, and nothing from Nebraska is not nothing from the album. Probably something from the time maybe with the band, but there's no full version with the band of Nebraska. I would certainly love to have heard that.
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Wow. Okay, thank you for that.
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B
Yeah, and there's that information there. In 1994, Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley announced their separation after nine years of marriage. Christie and Billy have a daughter together. You know that, you know the song that, that Billy did for her.
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Alexa.
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That's right, the Downeys.
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You're Alexa.
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I have to be careful how I say that name because I'm sitting next to the name you just said.
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What place is brought up in that song Where I have spent a lot.
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Of time vacationing the down Easter Alexis Block island was. We're caught up in that song. The song about the. Yeah, I love that song. I, I, I do too. It's great song and, and this girl unfortunately was blessed with Christy Brinkley's body and Billy Joel's face. Love Billy Joel but man, it's a vicious combination for poor you know, you know who. I can't say her name again because I saw my you know what light up. And the last story of the day in 2009, because we're going along here, Phil Spector was convicted of murdering Lana Clarkson in his home four years prior to that. That guy is just a nut case.
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A
Harry, thank you very much for this week in music history. The week of April 7th and it's always great to batted around with you and thanks to all of you for listening to the Taking a Walk podcast. We are available through the iHeart podcast network in Mississippi. Yazoo Clay keeps secrets.
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B
7,000 bodies out there or more.
- [22:44]
A
A forgotten asylum cemetery.
- [22:46]
B
It was my family's mystery.
- [22:49]
A
Shame, guilt, propriety. Something keeps it all buried deep until it's not. I'm Larison Campbell and this is under Yazoo Clay. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [23:08]
B
Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season one. Every time I hear about my dad.
- [23:17]
A
It'S, oh, he's a killer.
- [23:18]
B
He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known. At the end of the day, I'm.
- [23:25]
A
Literally a son of a killer.
- [23:27]
B
Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2, starting April 9 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.