Ersel Hickey Bluebirds Over The Mountain (CD)

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catalog number: BCD15676
weight in Kg 0.115

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1-CD with 20-page booklet, 25 tracks. Playing time approx. 51 mns. Everyone remembers Ersel... more

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Ersel Hickey: Bluebirds Over The Mountain (CD)

1-CD with 20-page booklet, 25 tracks. Playing time approx. 51 mns.

Everyone remembers Ersel for one song and one photo, but there's much more, as this 25 song retrospective reveals. There's not only a rare alternate take of Bluebirds issued only in Canada, but great rock 'n' roll sides like Goin' Down That Road, Stardust Brought Me You, and You Never Can Tell. This retrospective includes all the Epic and Kapp recordings from 1957 to 1960.

Sit back, friends, this is a strange story. Let's start with the famous photo. Everyone knows that photo. It was taken by a photographer in Buffalo, upstate New York, who specialised in strippers and exotic dancers. After the photo session, he held the neg up to his darkroom light and exclaimed, "Wow!" It was more a sculpture than a photo, the first rock 'n' roll sculpture. perfect in its contours and symmetry.

Ersel Hickey held it up to the darkroom light and said, "Ugh!" He used a standard head-and-shoulders shot from the same session for his early publicity photos. Twenty years later, photo archivist Michael Ochs was trawling through the Columbia Records archives when he found Ersel in what is now the most famous pose in rock 'n' roll. `Rolling Stone' used it on a cover, and Ochs put it on the front of his book 'Rock Archives'.

Since then it's been on t-shirts, postcards and Christ knows what else, giving Ersel a measure of reflected glory that amuses and bemuses him. More people know his silhouette than know him. Ersel was from upstate New York. He was born in Brighton, just outside Rochester, on June 27, 1934, one of a family of eight.

His mother was from Kingston, Ontario — just across the lake; his father was a dancer in vaudeville who had settled in Rochester before Ersel was born. His mother and father had danced together in vaudeville, but Ersel's dad. who had been working for the WPA, died when he was four. His sister was an exotic dancer. She was killed in a car wreck when he was fifteen, but her photographer was Gene LaVerne in Buffalo, who later took the photo of Ersel.

Growing up, Ersel's idol was Hank Snow, but when he won a talent contest in Middletown in 1950 he was singing like Johnnie Ray. He didn't have a band in high school and didn't play much locally, but his brother Bill bankrolled a private recording that appeared on a tiny Rochester label, Fine Records, around 1955. Ersel's defining moment, though, came on the night he wrote Bluebirds Over The Mountain. He called Bill at 2:30 in the morning and sang it for him; Bill flipped.

Everyone liked Ersel's song, but the problem was getting it to someone who could help him. He got off the bus in Buffalo on the way to stay with his aunt, looked across the street and saw Gene LaVerne's Studio of the Stars, and he remembered that LaVerne had helped his sister so he went in to see him.

LaVerne put Ersel in touch with Mike Corda who was a songwriter and personal manager. Corda had managed Enzio Stuarti, placing him with Epic Records, and as a musician he had played with the original cast of Cole Porter's 'Kiss Me Kate'. Corda thought Bluebirds had some potential so he paid for a demo session at the National Studio in New York and brought in Jimmy Mitchell (later the staff guitarist on `Sesame Street') to play lead guitar. Corda himself played bass to keep ...

Article properties: Ersel Hickey: Bluebirds Over The Mountain (CD)

Interpret: Ersel Hickey
Album titlle: Bluebirds Over The Mountain (CD)
Genre Rock'n'Roll
Label Bear Family Records
Preiscode AH
Artikelart CD
EAN: 4000127156761
weight in Kg 0.115

Hickey, Ersel - Bluebirds Over The Mountain (CD) CD 1
01	Bluebirds Over The Mountain (US version)	Ersel Hickey
02	Hangin' Around	Ersel Hickey
03	You Never Can Tell	Ersel Hickey
04	The Wedding	Ersel Hickey
05	Lover's Land	Ersel Hickey
06	Goin' Down That Road	Ersel Hickey
07	Love In Bloom	Ersel Hickey
08	Another Wasted Day	Ersel Hickey
09	You Threw A Dart	Ersel Hickey
10	Shame On Me	Ersel Hickey
11	What Do You Want?	Ersel Hickey
12	Stardust Brought Me You (2)	Ersel Hickey
13	Due Time (incomplete)	Ersel Hickey
14	A Mighty Square Love Affair	Ersel Hickey
15	Teardrops At Dawn	Ersel Hickey
16	Magical Love	Ersel Hickey
17	I Guess You Could Call It Love	Ersel Hickey
18	Lips Of Roses	Ersel Hickey
19	What Have You Done To Me?	Ersel Hickey
20	Stardust Brought Me You (1)	Ersel Hickey
21	Roll On Little River (unknown)	Ersel Hickey
22	Don't Be Afraid Of Love	Ersel Hickey
23	People Gotta Talk	Ersel Hickey
24	I Can't Love Another	Ersel Hickey
25	Bluebirds Over The Mountain (CAN version)	Ersel Hickey

Ersel Hickey It's a strange world when you're a musician, but you're better known for... more

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"Ersel Hickey"

Ersel Hickey

It's a strange world when you're a musician, but you're better known for your photo than your music. That's how it was with Ersel Hickey. His famous full-length shot was a piece of rock 'n' roll sculpture…perfect in its symmetry from the coiff at the top to the guitar held like a machine gun to the splayed legs with gusseted brothel-creeper shoes. He was born in Brighton, just outside Rochester, New York, on June 27, 1934, one of a family of eight. His mother and father had danced together in vaudeville. His sister was an exotic dancer who was killed in a car wreck when he was fifteen, but her photographer was Gene LaVerne in Buffalo, who later took the photo of Ersel. Growing up, Ersel idolized Hank Snow, but he didn't have a band in high school and didn't play much locally.

His brother, Bill, bankrolled a private recording that appeared on a tiny Rochester label, Fine Records, around 1955. Then, one night, Ersel wrote Bluebirds Over The Mountain. Everyone he sang it for said it was a hit, and the photographer, Gene LaVerne, put him in touch with former Broadway musician Mike Corda, who was managing stars like Enzio Stuarti and Mickey Rooney. Corda had placed Stuarti with Epic Records, and got Ersel on the label. Bluebirds created sufficient buzz for Epic to persist. Producer Joe Sherman brought Ersel to New York to record at the Columbia studio in a converted church on 30th Street.

Sherman was an accomplished writer and musician (he'd been musical director for Tony Bennett and the Ames Brothers and had written Graduation Day for the Rover Boys and Ramblin' Rose for Nat King Cole), but recognized that Ersel needed to keep it simple. With that in mind, he recruited Billy Mure to play the fiery lead guitar on Goin' Down That Road. Good as it was, it was already too late for anything as delightfully underproduced. Ersel continued in the business until 1985, and co-wrote the Serendipity Singers' hit, Don't Let The Rain Come Down. He also profited from many revivals of Bluebirds Over The Mountain, and enjoyed a late-blooming career as a rockabilly revivalist. He was booked into the Hemsby Festival in 2003, but had to cancel because of cancer surgery that resulted in bladder removal. He died on July 9, 2004.

Ersel Hickey Bluebirds Over The Mountain
Read more at: https://www.bear-family.de/detail/index/sArticle/404479
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