The Biggest Singer in the World

The biggest selling singer in the world is totally unkown in the United States. Robbie Williams is the most successful singer in the world in sales and concert attendance. He is a British singer-songwriter who became the most successful solo artist in history in the UK. His fame and success quickly spread throughout Europe and then the world. He made the Guiness Book of World Records when he announced his 2006 world concert tour and sold 1.6 million tickets in one day.

He is a musical superstar in every continent, except this one. He has tried to break through in the United States market several times and failed. He lives in Los Angeles and says that one advantage is that this is the only country in which he can walk the streets without being mobbed.

While most of his material is contemporary, he has a great love for standards and oldies and loves to include them in his concerts:

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The Late Rodney Dangerfield

Rodney Dangerfield was one of the hardest working comedians I've ever seen. Even after decades of huge success, he would still put a huge amount of effort into each Tonight Show appearance, carefull gathering together dozens of new jokes, rehearsing them in small comedy clubs every night for weeks until he was sure he had them in exactly the right order. He'd also tape each tryout and listen to it over and over till he had perfected the delivery and timing of each line. Viewers may have thought he was doing a bit of his regular nightclub act, not knowing he had carefully crafted the routine just for that one Tonight Show.

Here's a typical Tonight Show appearance:

Jimmy Webb

In the picture above, I'm interviewing the brilliant songwriter Jimmy Webb on a recent PBS show. I asked him about his late 60's hits. The great songwriters wrote songs about great cities like New York, London or Paris, so why did he start writing songs about Phoenix or Galveston, and why write a song about a lineman on a pole in Witchita? He said he just wanted to write about ordinary people in ordinary places feeling extraordinray emotions. He found the perfect voice for this, Glen Campbell and the very touching results of this collaboration can be seen in the video below:

The 50th Anniversary of Motown

You know the Motown sound so well, but maybe you've never actually seen Motown. All of this history was made in one room of a little house in a residential neighborhood in Detroit.

Radio personality and consultant Holland Cooke, who I used to work with at WPRO Providence, often carries a small pocket video camera with him as he travels across America. This has resulted in a wonderful collection of videos on YOU TUBE. Here is one you should look at, it contains some very important musical history. Here is Holland's visit to Motown:

The 1960's TONIGHT SHOW

The Tonight Show of the 1960's had a different look and feel to it. Two reasons -- it was the 1960's and it was still being done out of New York. Here are two video's, first from 1965 and the second from 1967:

An American Idol story.

Here is an amazing video about a very unusual contestant. There are a number of shows produced by the American Idol franchise in both the US and the UK. This is a mini documentary on what happened when a very young contestant debuted on the British version, the day Simon was in a very bad mood:

Del Shannon on next weeks oldies show

Del Shannon's Runaway, one of the greatest recordings of the early 60's often gets lost in the shuffle of oldies, but will be featured next week on the show. Here is Del Shannon live in concert, doing the song 27 years after recording it:

Another Lazy Day

Since we still can't think of anything to write, here's a video to keep you busy. Watch Dean on the couch and wait for the blooper in the middle:

The Mark Simone Blog

The Mark Simone Blog site will begin soon, whenever we get up the energy to actually write something.

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