Allee Willis Blog

02Apr 2015

“The D”/ Allee Willis Loves Detroit update: Steadily motoring….

02Apr 2015

“The D”/ Allee Willis Loves Detroit update: Steadily motoring….

I know, I know… It’s been pathetically long since my last update. That might be because of the 20-hour-days-minimum-six-days-a-week schedule those of us working on the Detroit record, video, and filmhave been adhering to, handstitching everything together as if we were Betsy Ross making that flag. There have been great, jubilant days…

…as well as days that make you want to roll onto the freeway and pray an 18 wheeler puts you out of your misery….

But that’s the life of an independent 99%-self funded artist and I wouldn’t change anything for the world. Well, I WOULD love someone to dunk me into a big ol’ vat of Lincolns…

Old photo I know… If you can’t tell by the lack of wrinkles on my face you can certainly tell by it being the last time I ever wore a dress. But aside from that I leave each day totally uplifted by the spirit pouring out of the footage and sounds leaping off the record. Wish I could leak a teeeeeny tiny sample but let’s just say that no other city has had a song that sounded so insanely jubilant and looked quite so unique.

I don’t wanna let too much cat outta the bag until we premiere the record and video in Detroit this SEPTEMBER. Now that the year-long jotting down of logs has ended the video’s about 60% finished. In the meantime we’ve also begun interviewing some of my esteemed friends and colleagues for Allee Willis Loves Detroit, the film. The bounty includes this young Detroiter:

…and this young man who gave me my big break by having me write for his group, Earth, Wind & Fire:

The celeb list in the film is long because people have a lot to say about Detroit (and apparently me). This includes many Color Purple people and a stunning array of Grammy, Emmy, Tony, Academy Award, and Pulitzer Prize winners, a smattering of whom we’ve filmed so far including RuPaul, Ricki Lake, Bruce Vilanch, Lesley Ann Warren, Marsha Norman, and Luenell with a whole slew yet to come.

Not to say that the finish line of the feature film is in sight but we are crawling towards it with skinned knees, blisters on our fingers and faith in our hearts!

As for “The D”, the record is about 95% done. Just in need of us moving out of my home studio – not to berate my little studio which back in the day James Brown called one of the best and funkiest sounding in LA – but so we have a shot at mixing in more opportune acoustic conditions so the 40 basses, 35 guitars and over 5000 singers don’t make everything too wobbly sounding as they bounce off the heads of Sammy Davis Jr., Groove On Brother, and other soulful onlookers here at Willis Wonderland.

We’ve also been putting together a marketing deck so we can raise real money to get “The D”/ Allee Willis Loves Detroit finally on the road. As all of us normally peer through artists’ eyes we had no idea what we were doing here and this took some months of concentration not to mention putting any further record, video or documentary editing on hold.

If you know of any deep pocket persons or company/institutions that should see our lovely and provocative marketing deck please let me know. And to drop a few coins of your own in the tank you can always go here.

In the meantime, go on wit yo bad self, Detroit!

03Oct 2014

Spectacular live show, retired Motown stars, NPR, and Tavis Smily in an afro

03Oct 2014

Spectacular live show, retired Motown stars, NPR, and Tavis Smily in an afro

All around it was a very good SEPTEMBER week here at Willis Wonderland LA as well as Willis W in Detroit.

Yes I know there is a Willis Street in almost every major city in the country. But this particular one is not only the exact spot my parents first met when they lived kitty corner from each in Detroit oh so may years ago, but it’s also the street that was taken over to make way for this intersection below, in a housing complex started by retired Motown singers and where we sang one of the sing-alongs for “The D” record and videos.

As the reliably magic day – the 21st of September – approached, NPR did a great story on the timelessness of my very first hit, “September”, co-written with Al McKay and Maurice White. Professors of Musicology even broke it down for analysis as to why it is so eternally happy and a song that will literally never end.

0It’s been decades now that every weekend I receive at least 5 videos of the song played at someone’s wedding or drunken karaoke spree or there’s a bar mitzvah boy spinning around his blond dream girl, anywhere and everywhere happiness is the intention. And indeed THAT makes me very happy!

Then I had literally one if the greatest days of my life in Detroit on THE BaDeYa 21st of September when I performed my very sold out “BaDeYa, Detroit!” show, featuring a 15 piece band put together from musicians and singers we discovered at the sing-alongs and while filming the feature-length-exceedingly-hybrid-documentary, Allee Willis Loves Detroit.

The show/party also included dancers from Mosaic Youth Theatre Of Detroit, one of “The D”/ Allee Willis Loves Detroit’s beneficiaries, spinning car tires over their heads, choreographed videographers leaping over drums on cymbal crashes and organ sweeps, as well as the obligatory obsessive amount of junk food I subsist on.

And then how much better does it get when you get Tavis Smily in an Afro (attempting to) shake his booty to ’September”’s sister, “Boogie Wonderland”, on Dancing With The Stars, all in the same week?! Though he sported one of those chopped down naturals when a good footlong Billy Preston was called for.

I have been blessed with a wonderful (albeit challenging) life and am living my creative (albeit money challenged) dream right now and I thank all of you who made it possible! Remember to throw some gas money in the tank please.

BaDeYa!

21May 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ the Day – A zillion trillion PHOTOS from my sold out Super Ball Bounce Back Review concerts!!

21May 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ the Day – A zillion trillion PHOTOS from my sold out Super Ball Bounce Back Review concerts!!

.

On May 8 and 9, 2012 I had one of the greatest experiences of my career performing my Super Ball Bounce Back Review at King King in Hollywood. It not only was only the second and third performances I’d done since jumping off the stage in the middle of my own show in 1974, but was an attempted – and I’m happy to say TOTALLY TRIUMPHANT – comeback after one of the worst experiences of my career seven months before when 90% of the technology my first attempted comeback show was dependent on failed. But I knew that I had to get back up and practice what I preach: From some of the worst situations come the greatest miracles and I had proven to myself time and time again that, if nothing else, I was someone who had the courage to make lemonade out of big, fat lemons.

So I’m happy to report that I have risen from the ashes and had two of the greatest nights of my life bouncing back as a performer in a major way. I can’t thank everyone who came enough. And I can’t thank everyone who worked with me on the show enough.

So I leave you with a whole lotta photos from both nights, videos to come and a big, loud Badeya-say-do-you-remember there never has to be a cloudy day as long as you have sunshine inside. ENOY THE SHOW!!

27Feb 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch ‘O The Day – Oscar-Winning LPs

27Feb 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch ‘O The Day – Oscar-Winning LPs

And now, the Oscar for Best Motion Picture…. goes to… The Artist!

As I hunkered down to watch the Oscars yesterday, the first time I had ever watched it alone due to pressing deadlines on my end, I remembered the last time I sat down to watch a global event unfold on TV. It was when Carmageddon was predicted when the 405 freeway had to close for a day in LA last summer. I thought about it a few days before and decided to go through my vast collection of digital images of bad album covers and match them to the demolition/construction events as they occurred in real time. Last night, as soon as I saw Mila Jovovich be the first star to walk down the red carpet…

…I realized I could take the same approach to the Oscars as Carmageddon as the stars continued to arrive:

I pride myself on being a daredevil artist, ready to field any creative challenge thrown down in seconds. So as the Oscars were announced, I gave myself between the time the presenter walked on stage til the moment the winner was announced to scan through close to 5000 images and pick the appropriate stinker LP cover for each category. Here then are The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch Oscar winners, in the order I posted them but starting with the after party and final award, and ending with the stars arriving earlier in the day:

Have fun at the after parties!:

Best Motion Picture:

Best Actress:

Best Actor:

Best Director:

Best Animated Film:

Best Original Screenplay:

Best Original Song:

Best Original Score:

The inevitable speech by the head of the Academy:

Best Supporting Actor:

Best Special Effects:

Best Sound Mixing:

Best Supporting Actress:

Best Foreign Film:

Best Makeup:

Best Costume Design:

Sasha Baron Cohen wasn’t the only one who arrived carrying something:

The actors are looking especially fabulous:

Fashions continue to astound:

The stars are in exquisite fashions:

Congratulations to all the Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch Oscar winners!

06Dec 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – A GLEEful Pre-Christmas Saturday Night

06Dec 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – A GLEEful Pre-Christmas Saturday Night

Anyone who knows me knows that despite writing songs that have sold over 50 million copies and being obsessed with music since I can remember I rarely go to concerts. I hate waiting in line, being trapped in a row once you sit down, being blocked by someone’s head or worse yet dancing body, and I certainly don’t want to hear someone in my immediate proximity singing along who I didn’t pop down multiple clams to see. So it’s a really rare occurrence to get me to actually go out and see something. But I’ve been working with Storm Lee…

…he ex of X-Factor and very currently one of the amazing singers on Glee, so I knew I had to haul my ass out to this concert.

What an unbelievable night!! Organized by Storm as a fundraiser for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, all of the behind-the-scenes Glee singers sang their favorite Christmas carols or holiday oriented songs. Although I wish they sang selections from this album…

…or maybe this one…

… – oooh, that makes me hungry – though not as hungry as this one…

… the Glee singers’ killer voices, all unique from each other, made for quite a gift from Santa!

It was a night of complete joy, and even included a special appearance by Glee cast member, Amber Riley.

And unbeknownst to me, the keyboard player/leader of the band was Chris Price, who worked with me on my first appearance in 37 years as well as my Soup to Nuts Party Mix show a couple of months ago.

No rest for the weary, bright and early the next morning, a Sunday no less, Storm and I went to work on my new show, a newly realized iteration of the technologically-train-wrecked Soup to Nuts.

We were very much in the holiday spirt and full of GLEE.

21Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – R.I.P. Alex Steinweiss

21Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – R.I.P. Alex Steinweiss

Alex Steinweiss passed away last Sunday. Even if you don’t know his name there’s no way you don’t know his work. Steinweiss literally invented the album cover. Before the 1930’s, records came in brown paper sleeves. At 23, he was hired by Columbia Records and suggested that the music be accompanied by poster art. Thus began the singlemost prolific and influential record jacket design career the world has ever known. Not only did Steinweiss give life to the record industry but he made the burgeoning Atomic Age visible to the public, creating the first wave of freeform design that designers still ride today.

Everything Steinweiss did burst with color. You could hear the music without listening to it just by looking at one of his covers. He was as great at what he did as it gets. His style is still imitated, though I’ve never seen anyone nail it like Steinweiss, who makes even the most successful designer of modern graphics look like a copycat.

And those aren’t even his most famous covers. But it gives you an idea of the rhythmic and lyrical style that still influences modern design today. This was the first time this stuff was being done. Just look at the Google image search page for an overview crash course.

I was lucky enough to have a piece of art in an album cover show at the Robert Berman Gallery in LA a few years ago that featured hundreds of Steinweiss’ LPs. It was a tribute show to him with a wide variety of artists designing their own album covers.

.

One of my favorite Steinweiss covers was Porgy and Bess. When I was (co)writing The Color purple musical, I listened to that soundtrack a lot. MP3s of course but that record cover was still in my head as I saw it so much as a kid. I hadn’t been a musical theater aficionado before I got the Color Purple gig. To bone up, I started listening to every theater soundtrack I could get my hands on, especially studying Black musicals. Hearing Porgy and Bess again was what put the genre over the top for me and made me excited about writing a musical myself.

.

Here’s Steinweiss’ cover:

.

And here’s my Color Purple-tinged take on Steinweiss for the gallery show:

.

My piece not only interpreted my musical but commented on the fact that both Porgy and Purple were two of the very, very few all Black musicals on Broadway ever, and that one of those was (co)written by me. That’s a lot to stuff into a piece which was at times torturous to design. I could feel the incredible artistic journey I took making it once I stood back and saw it hanging on the wall. Especially with hundreds of actual Steinweisses, not to mention the man himself, only feet away.

.

I got to meet Steinweiss too, which was a THRILL. I know we took photos together but I can’t find them for the life of me. So I’ll settle for being thankful for the life of Alex Steinweiss. His artistic influence on me was MASSIVE. Without him, all there was was the record. With Steinweiss, came story and concept and full expression of the artist and art form, without which I would die. R.I. P. Mr. Steinweiss.

.

16Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Carmageddon Celebration On AWMOK Facebook Page Right Now!

16Jul 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Carmageddon Celebration On AWMOK Facebook Page Right Now!

In a salute to Carmageddon, I’m posting one cheesy transportation-related LP Cover on Facebook for every hour the 405 freeway is shut down in LA this weekend. This is the makings of an extraordinary cheese platter, served one morsel at a time, rivaled only by the Camembert created as local newscasters babble on as if LA is undergoing a lobotomy. If you’re on Facebook, drive directly to http://www.facebook.com/AWMoK or my profile page, http://www.facebook.com/alleewillis. All captions are welcome, the best of which will be used in my Kitsch O’ The Day blog on Monday, which will feature all 53 slices of LP cheese that honor the reopening of my least favorite freeway in LA, the 405.

A smattering of the covers featured so far:

01-riding-in-the-car-singing-songs-to-jesus

Happy weekend!

24Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Xavier Cugat Cork

24Oct 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Xavier Cugat Cork

Revered as much for his marriage to cuchi-cuchi girl, Charo, as for his spreading the gospel of bouncy Latin music and rhythm, Xavier Cugat led the band at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel and toney resorts around the world with his signature batons, one of which was real and the other of which was his pet Chihuahua. Cugat was a multimedia artist before his time, a musician, painter, cartoonist, movie star, business man and ladies man, husband of five steamy women, including the lead singer of his orchestra at its height, Abbe Lane.

Legendary enough to be mentioned in the third scene of A Streetcar Named Desire, his name frequently sprinkled throughout I Love Lucy, and even a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor named after him in an episode of The Simpsons, “Xavier Nougat”, Cugat brought such exuberance and flair to a performance that his signature Tango, Rhumba and Merenge rhythms will forever be recognized, as will his self portrait caricatures.

You gotta love a guy who leads a band with a Chihuahua…

… and marries this:

Cugat was a happy man.

And I’m toasting him today.

21Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 1, September 21, 2010

21Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 1, September 21, 2010

People always ask me what my favorite song I’ve written is. I hate to favor any of the babies but pound for pound I’d have to shout “September”! I think it’s an eternally uplifting song. It makes people HAPPY, not just with a capital H but ALL CAPS!! I write a lot of happy songs but even perennial foot tappers like “Neutron Dance” and “Boogie Wonderland” don’t inspire the immediate mood shift that “September” does. I’ve never been in a room where people’s toes didn’t start tapping or heads start bobbing as soon as it comes on. I’ve never been to a Bar Mitzvah or wedding where it wasn’t played, including Beyonce and Jay-Z’s, where I wasn’t but learned from US Weekly that that’s what they danced their first dance to. And they didn’t even get married in September.

Without question, the original Earth Wind & Fire version is and will always be my favorite.

With EWF founder and lead singer, Maurice White, and EWF guitarist, Al McKay, I started writing “September” the first day we met, in the summer of 1978. It was actually written as the third song in a trilogy that Maurice and Al had already created, EWF’s “Sing a Song” and The Emotions’ “Best of My Love”, two of my favorite Pop Soul records of all time.

Although most of the music to “September” was completed that first day, it actually took a couple months to finalize the lyric, during which time I was also working with Maurice on all but two songs that became their (thankfully) legendary crossover album, I Am.

I used to be hung up that the “September” lyric was a little sing-songy, not the most intelligent I’d written. But seeing the effect it has on people I’m happy I took Maurice’s advice: Never let a lyric get in the way of the groove. If a lyric isn’t grammatically correct or even if it’s nonsensical – like the key words in the “September” chorus, “Ba-de-ya” – don’t replace it with something that is. If you marry the lyric to the music just right, the meaning will come across in the feel. I have no doubt that the love expressed in the chorus of “September” comes across even better with this nonsensical phrase than it would have had we merely filled those syllables with “I love you”.

The first time I ever went on YouTube just months after it launched in 2005, there were already tons of versions of the song there. Over the years I’ve watched “September” videos multiple like rabbits, some good but mostly a little on the lame side – Bad bar bands, jazz bands, marching bands, people in their living rooms, bathrooms, underwear, at auditions, dance classes, birthday parties, on lawns, mountaintops, in line dances, in lines at stores, playing solo bass, drum, keyboard and guitar parts, making animations and short films with it, in all varieties of languages, styles and quality.

Most songwriters are tortured when they hear cheesy versions of their work. As the Grand Master of Kitsch however, I LOVE it. I love that something I’ve created inspires someone to perform it despite an apparent lack of talent or rhythm. If it makes them happy it makes me happy.

And, trust me, this is a song that’s still making me happy. In one of my YouTube searches I stumbled onto Pomplamoose, a band that completely deconstructed the song and did it so distinctively I suggested we work together. The resulting “Jungle Animal” song, video and game went live TODAY.

But back to “September”… 1978 wasn’t the first time I placed my bet on a song that glorified September. Four years earlier, my first and only album, Childstar, came out on Epic Records. It contained the first 10 songs I ever wrote. The tune the label thought had the most single potential was called “What Kind of Shoes Does September Wear?”.

Although my career didn’t get off to the running start I had hoped it would then, I’d have to say that, in retrospect, September did, indeed, have some very nice shoes!

A few nights ago I went back on YouTube to see if any new versions of “September” had been done. To my astonishment, it was like the song had In vitro and gave birth to enough versions that if I played one a day for a year I would never run out. So I made it a goal to chronicle the madness. From this day forth, the 21^st of September, the date in the opening line of the song, until the 21^st of September, 2011, I shall feature one (brilliant, alarming, innovative, ridiculous) version of the song a day.

So here now, I offer you the most definitive version of all, the Godhead, “SEPTEMBER” by EARTH, WIND & FIRE on this, the 21st day of September, 2010, the first of 365 days of September. It pretty much goes downhill from here…

Badeya!

09Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ the Day – “Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites” LP and Rosh Hashanah Dinner at Street

09Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ the Day – “Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites” LP and Rosh Hashanah Dinner at Street

.

Connie-Francis-Sings-Jewish-Favorites-LP_3037

When I was young, “Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites” spun on the hi-fi every Jewish holiday. I loved Connie F., especially for her song “Teddy”, a lesser-known Francis spin but one of the first songs where I noticed how important a sweeping melody could be to a record. As a kid, music was like religion to me. Whereas RELIGION always felt so serious. So the fact that there was a Pop influence infiltrating the holidays in the Willis household was of great comfort to me. That Connie Francis was Italian and so far away from being Jewish did not deter me at all. The first paragraph of the liner notes was good enough for me:

Connie-Francis-Sings-Jewish-Favorites-LP_3041

I wish that all it took these days to satisfy and amaze everyone was an impeccable Jewish accent.

Connie-Francis-Sings-Jewish-Favorites-LP_3039

I only knew a few of the songs Connie chose to sing and am not quite sure how the “Anniversary Song” got in there but back then it was rumored she was dating Bobby Darin so I was fine with whatever she wanted to sing.

Last night I was hitting Jewish high notes myself when I partook in the Rosh Hashanah feast at Street restaurant, my favorite haunt be it Jewish holiday or not. I came dressed for the occasion.

Just as Connie Francis wasn’t on the playlist at every Jewish household during the holidays, Rosh Hashana at Street wasn’t the usual latkes and macaroons fare either. Although my favorite, Gefilte Fish, wasn’t on the menu Matzoh Ball Soup was. It was seriously THE BEST Matzoh Ball Soup I have ever tasted.

We also had Whitefish Salad with Apples, Celery and Bagel Chips. Though I never liked whitefish as much as I liked Connie Francis.

The killer food of the night was the Brisket.

It was served with carrots, onion and fresh herbs and Noodle Kugel.

Sorry for the blurry photo. I was too excited to eat once I realized the kugel was topped with Sugar Frosted Flakes. The Feniger-tweaked food slid down the throat of this Chosen Person faster than freshly skimmed schmaltz.

When I went to pay for the meal I realized that some of my accessories may have been slightly inappropriate for the evening.

I cannot attest to being the world’s greatest practicing Jew but I’m always happy to honor the holidays in above manner. And I would hope that “Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites” would always be on the menu.