Evil Church gp4 Guitar Pro Tab is free to download. Tablature file Evil Church opens by means of the Guitar PRO program.

Steel Church gp4 Guitar Pro Tab is free to download. Tablature file Steel Church opens by means of the Guitar PRO program.

6 6 6 -6 6 6 6
There’s a church in the valley
7 -8 8 -8
by the wildwood,
-8 6 -7 7 -8 8 -8 7
no lovelier spot in the dale.
7-7 -6 -6 -7 7
N-o place is so dear
-7 -6 6 7 6
to my chi-ldhood,
-7 -6 6 6 6 6
as the little brown church
-6 -7 7
in the vale.
6 6 -6 6 6
O come to the church
7 -8 8 -8
in the wildwood,
-8 6 -7 7 -8
O come to the church
8 -8 7
in the vale,
7-7 -6 -6 -7 7
n-o spot is so dear
-7 -6 6 7 6
to my chi-ldhood
-7 -6 6 6 6 6
as the little brown church
-6 -7 7
in the vale.

(Lee Oskar Melody Maker)
(Key Of “G”)
Church in the Wildwood

-2 -2 -2 3 -2 -2 -2
There’s a church in the valley

4 -4 5 -4
by the wildwood,

-4 -2 -3 4 -4 5 -4 4
no lovelier spot in the dale.

4-3 3 3 -3 4
N-o place is so dear

-3 3 -2 4 -2
to my chi-ldhood,

-3 3 -2 -2 -2 -2
as the little brown church

3 -3 4
in the vale.

-2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2
come come come come come come come

-2 -2 3 -2 -2
O come to the church

4 -4 5 -4
in the wildwood,

-4 -2 -3 4 -4
O come to the church

5 -4 4
in the vale,

4-3 3 3 -3 4
n-o spot is so dear

-3 3 -2 4 -2
to my chi-ldhood

-3 3 -2 -2 -2 -2
as the little brown church

3 -3 4
in the vale.

By: Donovan
From: “Brother Sun, Sister Moon”
Key: F

-2 -2 2 3 -2 -2 2
If you want your dream to be
-2 -2 2 3 -2 1
Take your time, go slow-ly
-2 -2 2 3 -2 -2 2
Small be-gin-nings, great-er ends
-2 -2 2 3 -2 1
Heart-felt work grows pure-ly
-3 -3 3 -3* -3 -3 3
If you want to live life free
-3 -3 -3 -3* -3 3
Take your time, go slow-ly
-2 -2 2 3 -2 -2 2
Do few things, but do them well
-2 -2 2 3 -2 1
Heart-felt work grows pure-ly
-4 -4 -33 -3* -3* -3 3
Day by day, stone by stone
-3 -3 3 -2 3 1
Build your se-cret slow-ly
-4 -4 -33 -3* -3* -33
Day by day, you’ll grow too
-3 -3 3 -2 3 4
You’ll know heav-en’s glo-ry

Swing it!

6
7
8 8
-8 7

There’s a place, dear to me,

7 8
-8 7 -6 6

Where I’m long-ing to be,

6 7
; 8

With my friends,

8 -9 9 &nb
sp; -9 8 &nbs
p; -8

At the Old Count-ry Church,

6
7 8
8 -8 7

There with Moth-er we went,

7 8
-8
7 -6
6

And our Sun-days, were spent,

6 7
; 8

With my friends,

8 7 -8 &nb
sp; 8 -8 &nbs
p; 7

At the Old Count-ry Church.

4 -3 -2 -2
Take me to church
-2 2 3 -2 3 -2 2 2 -3 4 -3 -3
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
-3 -3 -2 -3 -3 -2 -3 -2 -3 -2 -3 4
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
4 3 3 -2 4 -5 4 3 -2
Offer me that deathless death
4 4, -2 3 3 -2 4 4
Good God, let me give you my life

6    7   8    8   -8  8    7    8   -8 7  -6   6
There’s a place dear to me, where I’m longing to be
6   6   7     7   -8  8   -8 7     -8
With my friends at the old country church
6    7    8 8   -8  8     7   8   -8 7   -6     6
There with mother we went, and our Sundays were spent
6   6     7    7   -8  8    7 -8    7
With our friends at the old country church.

6 7     8    -9  8 -8 7
Precious years of mem-o-ry,
5   8   -8   -8    7   -8 8
Oh what joy they bring to me
6 7  8    7    -8  8  -9
How I long once more to be,
7  -8   8     8   -8  8   7 -8     7
With my friends at the old country church

GET ME TOO THE CHURCH ON TIME
By Lerner & Loewe
From “My Fair Lady”
Key: G

-5 6 -5 5* -5 5* -5 7 7
I’m get-ting mar-ried in the morn-ing!
-5 6 -5 -4 -5 7 -7 -8
Ding dong! The bells are gon-na chime.
-7 -8 -7 7* -7
Pull out the stop-per!
-7 -8 -7 7* -7
Let’s have a whop-per!
-7 -9 -9 -9 -9 -6 -6* 7
But get me to the church on time!
-5 6 -5 5* -5 5* -5 7 7
I got-ta be there in the morn-in’
-5 6 -5 -4 -5 7 -7 -8
Spruced up and look-in’ in me prime.
-7 -8 -7 7* -7
Girls, come and kiss me;
-7 -8 -7 7* -7
Show how you’ll miss me.
-7 -9 -9 -9 -9 -6 -6* 7
But get me to the church on time!

7 -6* 7 6 7 7 -6* 7 -5
If I am danc-in’ Roll up the floor.
7 -6* 7 6 -7 -7 7 -6* 6 -7
If I am whist-lin’ Whewt me out the door!

6 -5 6 -5 5* -5 5* -5 7 7
For I’m get-tin’ mar-ried in the morn-in’
-5 6 -5 -4 -5 7 -7 -8
Ding dong! the bells are gon-na chime.
-7 -8-7 7* -7 -7* -8 8 -8 -7* -8
Kick up a rum-pus But don’t lose the com-pass;
-8 -9 -9 -9 -9 7 -9 -9 -9 -9 7
And get me to the church, Get me to the church,
-8 -9 -9 -9 -8 7 6 7 -7 7
For Gawd’s sake, get me to the church on time!

Church Of The Machine gp4 Guitar Pro Tab is free to download. Tablature file Church Of The Machine opens by means of the Guitar PRO program.

Church Of Noise gp4 Guitar Pro Tab is free to download. Tablature file Church Of Noise opens by means of the Guitar PRO program.

Lady Goes To Church gp3 Guitar Pro Tab is free to download. Tablature file Lady Goes To Church opens by means of the Guitar PRO program.

-3 -3** +3 -3** -3**+2
My lo-vers got hum-our

+3  -1  +2  -2  -2 +2   -3** +3
She’s the gig-gle at a fune-ral

-3    -3   -3 -4 -3 -3** +3 -3** +3
Knows ev-ery bo-dy’s dis-a-pro-val

-2    -1   +2 -2    -2  -3** +3
Should’ve wor-shipped her soo-ner

-3 -3 -3** +3 -3** +3 -3** +2
If the heav-ens ev-er did speak

-2    -1  +2 -2  -2   -3** +3
She’s the la-st true mouth-piece

-3  -3  -4 -3   -3** +3  -3**  -3**+3
Ev-ery Sun-day’s get-ting more ble-ak

+3   +2 +3 +3 -3** -3**+3
Fresh po-i-son each we-ek

-3 -3 -3** +3 +3
We were bo-rn sick

+2  -2**  -3** -3** +3 +3
You heard them say –    it

-3  -3    -3* +3 -3** +3  -3**+3+2
My church of-fers no  –   ab-so-lutes

+2  -2   -1  +2  -2  -2 +2  -3** +3
She tells me wor-ship in the bed-room

+2  -3 -3  -4 – 3 -3**+3  -3**-3** +3
The on-ly hea-ven I’ll be sent to  –

+2 -2   -1  +2 -2  -3** -3** +3
Is when I’m a-lone with you  –

-3-3  -3**+3 +3
I was bo-rn  sick

+3  -3** -3**+3 +3
but  I   lo-ve  it

+2  -3** -3 -3**+3 +3  -1 +2 +3 -3**
Com-mand me to be well a – a – a

-3 -3** +3 -3 +5 -4 +4
a———-a————-

-3    -3** +4 -3
-men  a———

+4 -3 -3** +3 -3** -3 -3**
-men a-  ——–  ———-

2x CHORUS:

+6    -5 +5 +5
Take me to church

+5 +5   -3  – 3  +5  -4  +5 -3   -3  -5   +6   -5  -5
I’ll wor-ship like a dog at the shrine of your lies

-5   -5  +5  -5  -5  +5  -5  +5   -5   +5  -5   +6
I’ll tell you my sins and you can shar-pen your knife

+6 -4  +5  -5   +6    -7    -4   +5  -4  +6  +6
Of-fer me      that death-less death and good god

+6 +5 -4  +5   -5  +6  +6
let me give you my life
——————–chorus end—————————–

-4 +5 -4 +5   -3  -3   -4   +5
If I’m a pagan of the good times

+5  +5  -3  -3 -4  +5
My lo-ver’s the sun-light

+6   -5   +6   -5   +5  -5 +5 -4
Keep the god-des on my si-de

+6  -5 +6   -5  +5 -5  +5 -4
She de-mands a sac-ri-fi-ce

-4    -4   +5   +6
Drain the whole sea

+5  -4    -4    +5 +6
Get some-thing shi-ny

+5    -4   +5 -3  -3  -3  -4   +5
Some-thing mea-ty for the main course

+5   -4 +5   -3   -3   -4  +5
That’s a fine loo-king high horse

+5  -4  +5  -3  -3  -3   -4  +5
We’ve a lot of star-ving faith-ful

+5   -4   +5 +6
That looks ta-sty
That looks ple-nty

+5  -4 +5 -4   +5 -4
This is hun-gry wo-rk

2x Chorus

-3 +4 +4 -3  -3 -3**-3     -3   -4   +5 -3 -3   -3**+3 -3**-3** +3
No ma-sters      or kings when the  ri-tu-al             be-gin-s

+3   -3**+4 -4   -3 -3** +3 -3** -3 +4 +4 -3 -3**
There is no  swee-te-r        in – no – – cen- ce

+2 +3 -3** -3** -3** +3 +3
tha — n   our  gen-tle sin

-3** -3 +4 -4  -4  -4 -4 -3 +6 -5 +6 -5 +5   -4  +5
In the mad-ness and  soil of th-at sa-d earth-ly scene

-3** -3  +4 -4 -3 -3**+3 -3 -3**
On – ly  then I a – – m   hu-man

+3 -3 -3** -3** +3 +3
On-ly then  I  am  clean

2x Chorus

The Separation Of Church And Skate gp4 Guitar Pro Tab is free to download. Tablature file The Separation Of Church And Skate opens by means of the Guitar PRO program.

The Last Day In Church gp4 Guitar Pro Tab is free to download. Tablature file Pedal Pointing 2 opens by means of the Guitar PRO program.

Church On Sunday gp4 Guitar Pro Tab is free to download. Tablature file Church On Sunday opens by means of the Guitar PRO program.

Rock Church gp4 Guitar Pro Tab is free to download. Tablature file Rock Church opens by means of the Guitar PRO program.

Westlife is an Irish pop vocal group formed in Dublin, Ireland in 1998. The group currently consists of members Shane Filan, Mark Feehily, Kian Egan, and Nicky Byrne. Brian McFadden was a memer, until he left in 2004. The group temporarily disbanded in 2012 after 14 years of success and later reunited in 2018.

The group has released twelve studio albums: four as a five-piece and eight as a four-piece. They rose to fame with their debut international self-titled studio album, Westlife (1999). It was followed by Coast to Coast (2000), World of Our Own (2001), Unbreakable – The Greatest Hits Vol. 1 (2002), and Turnaround (2003), which continued the group’s success worldwide. The group released their cover albums Allow Us to Be Frank (2004) and The Love Album (2006) and the studio albums Face to Face (2005) and Back Home (2007). After a hiatus of studio recording for almost one year in 2008, they released the studio albums Where We Are (2009), and Gravity (2010), and the compilation album Greatest Hits (2011). After eight years, the quartet group released their eleventh studio album, Spectrum, in 2019, followed by their twelfth studio album, Wild Dreams, in 2021.

Westlife is the act with the most Number 1 debuts on the UK Singles Chart, with all 14 of their chart-toppers landing there in their first week.[1] They have the most singles certifications for a pop band on the UK number one singles artists chart since The Beatles. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Westlife has been certified for 13.2 million albums, 1.3 million video albums, and 10.6 million singles, with a total of more than 25 million combined sales in the UK.[2][3] They are also currently ranked 19th with the most number-one albums of all time and sixth-highest band in the list.[4] The group has accumulated 14 number-one singles as a lead artist as well as having eight number-one albums in the United Kingdom, making them Ireland’s and non-British act’s (since Elvis Presley) most prolific chart-toppers. In 2012, the Official Charts Company listed Westlife 34th among the biggest-selling singles artist, 16th amongst the biggest selling groups, and 14th with most top ten hits—all the highest for a boy band and a pop group in British music history.[5] They are also the biggest selling album group of the 2000s, and three of their studio albums were part of the 50 fastest-selling albums of all time in the UK.[6]

The group has the most consecutive number-one studio albums in a decade in the UK and Ireland for a band, since the Beatles, and for a pop band and act since ABBA. Also in Ireland, they have 11 number-one albums with a total of 13 top two albums, 16 number-one singles, as well as 34 top-fifty singles. They have sold over 55 million records.[7] and are holders of the following Guinness World Records: first to achieve seven consecutive number-one singles in the UK; most public appearances in 36 hours by a pop group; most singles to debut at number one on the UK chart; and top-selling album group in the United Kingdom in the 21st century.[8][9][10] Westlife is one of the most successful music groups of all time, among the highest-profile acts in 2000s popular culture in most territories worldwide, and one of the few boy bands to have continued success after their commercial peak. On the best-selling boy bands of all time list, they are currently tenth worldwide along with the biggest-selling boy band from Ireland in history globally. They have received numerous accolades including one World Music Award, two Brit Awards, four MTV Awards, and four Record of the Year Awards. As a live act, Westlife has sold 5.5 million concert tickets worldwide from their fourteen concert tours so far. They hold the record for the most shows played at The SSE Arena, Belfast and SSE Arena, Wembley; this makes them the biggest arena act of all-time in the United Kingdom. They sold out Croke Park Stadium in their home country in a record-breaking five minutes.[11] Their fourteenth, and latest concert tour is called The Wild Dreams Tour.

History

Origin: Byrne, Egan, Feehily, Filan and McFadden’s beginnings

Kian Egan, Mark Feehily and Shane Filan, all schoolmates in Summerhill College in Sligo, Ireland, participated in a school production of Grease with fellow Sligo men Derrick Lacey, Graham Keighron, and Michael Garrett. They considered it as the start of Westlife. The sextet formed a pop vocal group called Six as One in 1997, which they later renamed IOYOU. Before this, Egan was part of a punk-rock bands called Skrod, and Pyromania. The group, managed by choreographer Mary McDonagh and two other informal managers, released a single titled “Together Girl Forever” under Sound Records which was written by Feehily and Filan with fellow Irish Those Nervous Animals and The Strong are Lonely band members Padraig Meehan and Daragh Connolly. Another song “Everlasting Love” included in the single was written by Feehily, Keighron, Meehan, and Connolly. There is also an unreleased song called “Good Thing”.[13] McDonagh first encountered Egan as a six-year-old student at her weekly dance classes, and came to know Filan and Feehily in their early teens as they starred in shows such as Oliver! and Godspell for Sligo Fun Company.
Louis Walsh, the manager of fellow Irish boy band Boyzone, came to know the group after Filan’s mother Mae contacted him, but the group failed to secure a BMG record deal with Simon Cowell. Cowell told Walsh: “You are going to have to fire at least three of them. They have great voices, but they are the ugliest band I have ever seen in my life.”[14] Lacey, Keighron, and Garrett were told they would not be part of the new group, and auditions were held in Dublin where Nicky Byrne and Brian McFadden were recruited. McFadden was part of an R&B group called Cartel before this.

The new group, formed on 3 July 1998, was originally named Westside, but as another band was already using that name, the group was renamed Westlife. It was revealed that Walsh was already calling them Westlife before the Westside name came along.[15] In Westlife – Our Story, Byrne revealed that, unlike the others in the group, he was keen to change the name to West High. McFadden also changed the spelling of his name to Bryan to facilitate signing autographs. They managed to secure a major record deal the second time around under BMG with all other record labels competed. They signed a four million pound record deal with RCA Records. Westlife’s first big break came in 1998 when they opened for Boyzone and Backstreet Boys’ concerts in Dublin. Boyzone singer Ronan Keating was brought in to co-manage the group with Walsh. Later, they won a special Smash Hits Roadshow award at that year’s Smash Hits Poll Winners Party. Their first live television performance as a group in Ireland and worldwide was on the Irish TV series and the world’s second longest-running late-night talk show, The Late Late Show that had its broadcast on 13 November 1998. They performed “Flying Without Wings”.[16] The band then released an EP titled Swear It Again afterwards. Both recorded songs under Westside were produced by Steve Mac and written by Mac and Wayne Hector. Cowell chose the debut extended play and single with the guidance of his father, Eric Cowell, who stated then, “I think they will be big”.

International breakthrough, Debut album, Coast to Coast, World of Our Own and super stardom (1999–2002)

In April 1999, the group released their first single, “Swear It Again” which immediately topped the charts in Ireland and in the UK for two weeks. It became the biggest-selling single in a week one by a debut artist.[17][18] On the week of its release and its chart achievement announcement, Cowell’s father Eric died. Their second single, “If I Let You Go” was released in August 1999, which established them as the first boy band to hit the No. 1 with its first two singles.[19] They also performed for billions in 1999 at the Miss World telecast with this song. The third single was the highly acclaimed “Flying Without Wings” (their first ‘Record of the Year’ and their third No. 1 single), released in October the same year, also followed suit. It made them the only the second Irish act and fourth act to debut at No. 1 with their first three singles, B*Witched, Robson and Jerome, and Spice Girls being the other three. “Flying Without Wings” was also included on the soundtrack of the Warner Brothers film, Pokémon: The Movie 2000. Their first album, simply titled Westlife, was released in November 1999 and went to No. 2 in the UK and their first No. 1 in Ireland. The album was the biggest chart dropper on the top 40 in UK music history when, in its 58th week on the charts it leapt from No. 79 to No. 3 before falling to No. 37 the following week.[20] Despite the history, the album successfully managed to peak at No. 1 in Scotland in the year 2001 after premiering at No. 6 at the Scottish Albums Chart in 1999.[21]

In December 1999, a fourth and a double-side single was released, “I Have A Dream”/”Seasons in the Sun”. It knocked Cliff Richard’s “The Millennium Prayer” off the top spot and earned them the 1999 UK Christmas number-one single. It is also their fourth No. 1 single.[22][23] It was the first official No. 1 single music act in the 2000s of UK Singles Chart and also the last official No. 1 single music act in the 1990s decade of UK Singles Chart. They are one of only five acts to achieve four number ones in the UK Singles Chart in one calendar year, the others being Elvis Presley, The Shadows, The Beatles and Spice Girls.[24] The fifth and last single from the album, “Fool Again”, also peaked at No. 1.[25] With this, they broke records of being the only male band to have every singles released from an album to reach No. 1 in the UK and the only male group with most original songs in an album that went straight to No. 1 in the UK with multiple and/or with four original singles. Afterwards, Westlife signed to Arista Records for the North American territory after auditioning for the label’s founder, Clive Davis.[26] Then the group had a promotional tour in the United States for their “Swear It Again” single and peaked at No. 20 in the Billboard Hot 100.[27] An Asian tour followed in support of their debut album before releasing a second album. On 1 July 2000, they were honored as Freemen of the Borough of Sligo.[28]

Coast to Coast, their second album, was released a year later and was their first No. 1 UK album, beating the Spice Girls’ Forever album by a large margin, the said chart battle was widely reported by British media. It became the country’s 4th biggest selling album of 2000.[29][30] This is their second No. 1 album in Ireland. The album was preceded by a duet with Mariah Carey singing “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” and the original song “My Love” (their second Record of the Year award). Both singles reached No. 1 on the UK charts, their sixth and seventh number ones respectively.[31][32] With this, Westlife broke an unexpected record of the most consecutive No. 1 singles in the UK, having their first seven consecutive singles debut at the top by a debuting act and group, and by an act, a group, a male group, a pop act and a pop group in UK and became the fastest number one music act beating Elvis Presley’s previous record of three years versus 23 months of Westlife getting each its first No. 1 singles and second music act to have the longest string of number ones in UK history.[33] However, in December 2000, their eighth and an Ireland and UK exclusive single “What Makes a Man”, only debuted at No. 2.[34] The single “My Love” was controversially used by Central Intelligence Agency as part of a torture program in Afghanistan. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “the music pounded constantly as part of a scheme to assault prisoners’ senses”.[35] They survived the 2000 Mexico City major earthquake and lightning during this time.[36] As the 2000 had ended, Westlife achieved four number one singles in a year for two straight years (1999, 2000) since Elvis Presley (1961, 1962).

Outside the UK and Ireland, they gained chart success with “I Lay My Love on You” and “When You’re Looking Like That”. This time as well, they were included in the top ten earners list of all acts in UK and Ireland and sold over 2.5 million units in Asia Pacific region.[37][38] Also in this year, they launched their first world tour, “Where Dreams Come True Tour”.[18] A recording of a concert from the tour live from Dublin was released on 19 November 2001. Also in the same month and year, Westlife released their third album World of Our Own, their second No. 1 album in the UK and their third No. 1 album in Ireland.

“Uptown Girl” (their first single to be on the List of million-selling singles in the United Kingdom), “Queen of My Heart” and “World of Our Own” were released as singles, all of which peaked at No. 1 in the UK. Those singles are also their eighth, ninth, and tenth number ones respectively.[39][40][41] With their tenth No. 1, they made history by being the shortest music act or band to have ten or double-figures number ones in the UK Singles Chart (2 years and 10 months or 149 weeks) – more than 3 months quicker than The Beatles (165 weeks). “Bop Bop Baby” was also released as a single, but it peaked at No. 5 in the UK. In 2002, Westlife went on their second world tour, the World of Our Own Tour (In The Round). Overall in 2002, IRMA awarded the band plaque about their 1 million units sold in Ireland and ranked seventh as Irish’s millionaires under age 30 with 18 million euros for all of the five members.[42] For every performance each band member will get 228,000 euros, which means the 68 dates raked in 1.55 million euros for them by June 2002. The cash rolled in from sales of their merchandise, while a recent advertising deal with Adidas was worth 488,000 euros to each of them with a total of 3.33 million euros each at the end of the said tour.

Unbreakable, Turnaround, and departure of McFadden (2002–2004)

The group sold more than 12 million records in a span of three years during this time.[44] They released their eleventh UK No. 1 single, “Unbreakable” in 2002.[45] Amidst rumours of a split, Westlife released their first greatest hits album in November that same year titled Unbreakable – The Greatest Hits Vol. 1, which zoomed all the way to No. 1 in the UK and Ireland. Their third No. 1 in the UK and the fourth one in Ireland. Also during that time, Westlife bagged another Guinness World Record for most public appearances by a pop group in a 36-hour period. The band made stop-offs in five different cities (Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, London and Manchester) to promote their then-new album. The release was followed by the double A-side single “Tonight”/”Miss You Nights”, which debuted at No. 3 in the UK and No. 1 in Ireland.[46] At this time, Because Films Inspire made a TV documentary titled “Wild Westlife”, directed by Iain MacDonald and starred the group, featuring their daily life as musicians and their tour experiences. It was aired on BBC Choice.[47] In 2003, Westlife went on their third world tour, The Greatest Hits Tour and was invited to play at the annual Edinburgh Military Tattoo, shrugging off rumours of a split which is what most of the pop bands do after a Greatest Hits album and tour.[48] A recording of a concert from the tour, live from Manchester, was released in November 2003.

Back in September 2003, Westlife released “Hey Whatever”, which peaked at No. 4 in the UK.[49] Their fourth studio album, Turnaround, was then released in November, earning the group another UK No. 1 album, the fourth one. The album is also their fifth No. 1 in Ireland. “Mandy”, was released a week before the album release. The band’s twelfth No. 1 single. Their version won them their third Record of the Year award, in under five years.[50] Their version of “Mandy” is also considered the single with the longest leap to the top (from No. 200 to No. 1) in UK music history.[51] “Obvious” was released as the final single from the album, charting at No. 3.

On 9 March 2004, just three weeks prior to embarking on their fourth world tour, McFadden left the group to spend more time with his family and six months later to release solo music projects.[52] On that day, a press conference was held where all the group’s members were present, each giving emotional individual speeches. McFadden’s final public performance as part of Westlife was at Newcastle upon Tyne’s Powerhouse nightclub on 27 February 2004.[53][54] McFadden attended the first day of the band’s tour date as an audience. The last time the five had reunited in public was when McFadden acted in an Irish reality television show Anonymous where he disguised as a fan in an album signing event of the group in November 2005 and had a broadcast in January 2006. He subsequently began a solo career, and reverted the spelling of his first name back to its original ‘Brian’. McFadden later released more albums and singles, but only with moderate success.

Less than a month after McFadden’s departure, the group kicked off their “Turnaround Tour”.[55] A live version of “Flying Without Wings” from the said tour was released as an official UK download, earning them the first official UK Downloads No. 1.[56] A recording of a concert from the Turnaround Tour, live from Stockholm, Sweden, was released in November 2003.

Face to Face, Back Home, and cover albums (2004–2008)

In September 2004, they performed on the World Music Awards, where they were recognised as the Best Irish Act of that year. They then released a Rat Pack-inspired album and fifth album …Allow Us to Be Frank, which peaked at No. 3. No singles from this album were released in the UK but “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head?”, accompanied with a music video, was released as a digital download in the UK and peaked at No. 4 and as a physical single in other European countries. “Smile” and “Fly Me to the Moon”, both with music videos as well, were released as digital downloads only.

Prior to the release of the …Allow Us to Be Frank album, Westlife scouted for “the perfect fan” to help promote their album.[57] After X Factor-style auditions, they found Joanne Hindley, who recorded “The Way You Look Tonight” with the group.[18] To mark this special collaboration, a special programme was televised, showing auditions and live performances, called She’s The One, presented by Kate Thornton.[58] It also featured a live performance by their fathers with their version of “That’s Life”. Westlife continued to tour Europe as part of their “The Number Ones Tour” which started in early 2005. The tour ranked at number 84 worldwide with top concert tour ticket sales with 191,361.[59] A recording of a concert from the tour, live from Sheffield, was released in November 2005.

By 2004, they sold over 30 million albums already, the biggest live act in UK, and making around £4m each as reported in 2005.[60] In October 2005, Westlife returned with their comeback single, “You Raise Me Up”, which was taken from their sixth album Face to Face, their thirteenth No. 1. On 5 November 2005, both the album and the single were at No. 1 in the UK, at the same time, during the second week of the single. It was the first time that Westlife had held both the top album and the top single position in the same week and the first Irish music act to have such feat.[61][62] This is their fifth No. 1 in the UK and sixth one in Ireland. “You Raise Me Up” was awarded as their fourth Record of the Year in the UK, for 2005. In December of that year, the group released “When You Tell Me That You Love Me”, a duet with Diana Ross, as the second single, and it debuted at its peak position of No. 2.[63] This single marked its fourteenth year since the original Diana Ross version was released and peaked at No. 2, the same chart position in the UK Singles Chart in 1991. Westlife then released a third single, “Amazing”, which debuted at No. 4.[64] After that, Westlife embarked on the “Face to Face Tour”, travelling extensively to the UK, Ireland, Australia and Asia. This tour marked the first time that Westlife travelled to mainland China for a concert.[65][66] The tour ranked the band sixth for the year with a number of performances with 32 shows and recorded 238,718 paid-for attendances.[55] A recording of a concert from the tour, live from Wembley Arena, was released in November 2006. The band was mentioned as part of the names of male groups that peaked in the United Kingdom album sales in 2005 with 45 percent of the market.[67] By this time, they already sold over 36 million records worldwide.

In late 2006, Westlife signed a brand new five-album deal with Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Their seventh album, The Love Album was a compilation concept album which consisted of popular love-song covers. The album outsold other compilation albums by Oasis, The Beatles, and U2 in its first week of release and went straight to No. 1 in both UK and Ireland. It was the top selling album of 2006 in Ireland and Westlife’s seventh and sixth No. 1 album in Ireland and the UK, respectively. Moreover, the only single from The Love Album, “The Rose”, became their 14th UK No. 1 single.

This made Westlife the third act (along with Cliff Richard) in the UK to have the most No. 1 singles, tailing behind Elvis Presley (21) and The Beatles (17). In Ireland, they made it to the second place (tied with The Beatles) to have most number one singles, tailing behind U2 (21). They also returned to the Miss World stage where billions saw the exclusive live performance of The Rose. Westlife then kicked off their eighth world tour, “The Love Tour”, in Perth, Australia.[69] The group then went on to other Australian cities before moving on to South Africa, the UK and Ireland. The tour had a total of £1,031,033 secondary gross sales.[70]

On 5 November 2007, Westlife released their eighth album, Back Home, which contained nine new original songs along with three cover songs. The album debuted at No. 1 on the UK, their seventh No. 1. It was also 2007’s fifth biggest selling album in the UK. This makes them as one of the only five band, with Coldplay, The Prodigy, Stereophonics, and Take That, in UK chart history to claim seven No. 1 albums. With seven of their albums reaching the number one spot from 2000-2007, they attained the fastest accumulation of UK number one albums record in recent history until Taylor Swift’s re-recording release of her album Fearless in 2021.[71] The album was their eighth No. 1 in Ireland. The first single released from the album was “Home”, which peaked at No. 3 in the UK.[72][73] “I’m Already There”, not released as a single, managed to chart in the UK based on downloads alone, following a performance on an episode of The X Factor UK.

On 15 December 2007, they had a two-hour show called The Westlife Show where they performed 10 of their songs, some of which were voted online by fans and some from Back Home. It was hosted by Holly Willoughby.[74] Months later, “Us Against the World” was announced and released as their second single in UK and Ireland. Before the release of the second single, they embarked on the Back Home Tour on 25 February 2008. This tour marked the first time that the group had travelled and performed in New Zealand, performing four sold-out shows in Auckland, Wellington, New Plymouth and Christchurch. Meanwhile, “Something Right” was released as the second single and “Us Against the World” became the third single in Europe and the Asia Pacific region. Both songs performed well on several music charts.

10th anniversary and hiatus (2008–2009)

From 2005 to 2008, Music Week revealed on their website that Westlife was the official third top touring act within the years while they were the seventh top touring act of 2008.[75] On 28 March 2008, after 27 sell-out shows, in the space of 10 years and have sold 250,000 tickets. All four members were presented with a plaque cast of their hands, which can also be seen in the Wembley Square of Fame similar to Hollywood Walk of Fame.[76] Then to mark their tenth year in music, Westlife staged a special 10 Years of Westlife, a sold-out concert at the world’s thirty-third biggest and Europe’s fourth biggest stadium,[77] Croke Park, on 1 June 2008.[78] which Egan described to be a “pop extravaganza”.[79] It was only the second time for an Irish act to headline the stadium after U2.[80] Filan confirmed that a corresponding live concert DVD would be released. The group announced that they would be on hiatus for a year after their Back Home Tour[81] and that there would not be an album release in 2008 as they would be spending more time on the production of their tenth album.[82] As promised, the group’s official website confirmed on 27 September 2008 the release of a DVD on 24 November 2008 entitled 10 Years of Westlife – Live at Croke Park Stadium which went straight to No. 1 on UK, Ireland, South African, Hong Kong and New Zealand Music DVD charts. As the group ended another successful tour, Walsh announced in the show Xpose that 1 July 2008 would be the official start of the longest hiatus of the group. He said that it will be a one-year break, from that day up to 1 July 2009. On 13 December 2008, while on a break, Westlife made an unexpected appearance during that year’s X Factor final where they performed “Flying Without Wings” with runners-up JLS. After the performance, Filan and Byrne were interviewed on The Xtra Factor with Boyzone’s Keating and Stephen Gately. As JLS also performed, “I’m Already There”, Westlife’s version of the song re-entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 63 while a new entry on Ireland Singles Chart at No. 47 due to extensive downloads only. In the last week of January 2009, a DVD entitled The Karaoke Collection was released. This is the first time Sony Music has released an official Karaoke disc for music videos in DVD format. On 27 February 2009 issue of Herald Ireland, Walsh revealed that Cowell had already picked three new songs which he believed would be instant hits. On 18 March 2009, Westlife won the Best Irish Pop Act on the 2009 Meteor Awards for the ninth consecutive time.

Where We Are and Gravity (2009–2010)

Their tenth album, Where We Are, was released on 30 November 2009 in the UK and peaked at No. 2 on both Irish and UK Albums Charts. The lead single, “What About Now”, was released a few weeks earlier on 23 October 2009, with digital downloads being available the day before. The said single peaked at No. 2 on both Irish and UK Singles Charts and ranked No. 85 in the year-end official sales chart.[83] Following that month was the announcement of the Guinness Book of World Records for Westlife as the top selling album group of the 21st century with 10.74 million albums sold in the UK alone.

They were also part of the Haiti charity single in early 2010 with “Everybody Hurts”, which was organised by Cowell.[84] The said single peaked at No. 1 on both Irish and UK Singles Chart. The tour in support of this album was called, “The Where We Are Tour”. The tour entered at number 50 of top concert tour for the third quarter of the year with 241,865 ticket sales.[85] A recording of a concert from the tour, live from London, was released in November 2010. The eleventh album was recorded and processed with songwriter and producer John Shanks in London and Los Angeles and was entirely produced by Shanks.[86] On 14 November 2010, the single “Safe” was released. It debuted on the UK Singles Chart on 21 November at No. 10, giving the group their 25th Top 10 single in the United Kingdom. The new album titled Gravity was released on 22 November 2010.[87] It went to No. 1 in Ireland and No. 3 in the UK. This is their ninth No. 1 in Ireland and this album made Westlife as one of the few musical acts and band and the only pop band to have number one albums in three consecutive decades (1990s, 2000s, 2010s) in their home country.

As the 2000s decade ends with 275 singles reached the No. 1 position on the chart in the UK. Over this period, Westlife were the most successful musical act and group at reaching the top spot with 11 No. 1 singles only from the said decade, top act with most total number of weeks at No. 1 with individual credits and second to most total number of weeks at No. 1 with 14 weeks. Ten out of their fourteen No. 1 singles were released and came from this decade. Westlife is also the second biggest selling music act in the UK of the 21st century. And second from the list of artist from the past decade, 1990s, in UK Albums and Singles Charts. While in 2005, half of the decade, they were the fifth.[88]

Westlife was named the fourth most hard-working music artist and third most hard-working band in the UK by PRS in 2010.[89] Also from the said year Billboard compiled the top international touring acts worldwide, the group ranked 14th with $5,104,109 estimated net take of tour grosses (assuming a typical 34% artist cut after commissions and expenses).[90] In March 2011, they started their eleventh major concert tour, the Gravity Tour. This tour marked the first time the group travelled to Oman, Namibia, Guangzhou and Vietnam for concerts.

Greatest Hits and split (2011–2018)

As of 2011, the group were the longest reigning band and second longest reigning number one music act in the 21st century in UK. On 14 March 2011, Westlife confirmed that they had left Cowell after 13 years and his record label Syco Music after nine years. The group cited Syco’s decision not to release a second single from Gravity as the reason Byrne felt it as another reason of being unloved,

We signed to Simon back in 1998 and he was brilliant, but then came the development of The X Factor and American Idol. Simon became famous himself and his interests went that way rather than on Westlife. We almost felt a little bit unloved with Simon Cowell, if I was to be honest. We had it (full time support) with Simon but he got so busy and would do it at the very last minute and we needed someone who was on it all the time.[91]

On 23 April 2011, Egan’s Twitter account posted a series of tweets saying he was to walk away from the group. He later said his account was hacked and debunked the announcement.[92] After going back to RCA Records full-time for a one-year album contract, they announced their Greatest Hits album to be released on 21 November 2011. It debuted at No. 1 in Ireland and No. 4 in the UK. This is their tenth No. 1 album in Ireland. The first and lead single, “Lighthouse” was released in November 2011. And a follow-up promotional single “Beautiful World” released later. In October 2011, Egan ruled out speculation that McFadden would reunite with them for the new compilation album and its promotion for a television show. Egan said: “All the rumours about Brian re-joining Westlife are untrue. We have been a 4 piece for too long now. We love Brian but it’s not going to be. That includes any TV performances.”[93] With a new compilation album coming out, it was speculated Westlife would be doing a new greatest hits tour. They were scheduled to headline the ChildLine Concert in Dublin on 12 November 2011 and to have another exclusive concert on O2 Blueroom, also in Dublin on 24 November.[94][95]

A UK tour was first officially announced on 18 October 2011, with dates confirmed for May 2012 and it was titled, The Greatest Hits Tour or The Farewell Tour. Stereoboard reported that the tour sold out within minutes.[96] On 19 October 2011, Westlife officially announced they were splitting after an album and a tour.[97]

After 14 years, 26 top ten hits including 14 number one singles, 11 top 5 albums, 7 of which hit the top spot and have collectively sold over 44 million copies around the world, 10 sell out tours and countless memories that we will forever cherish, we today announce our plan to go our separate ways after a Greatest Hits collection this Christmas and a farewell tour next year. The decision is entirely amicable and after spending all of our adult life together so far, we want to have a well-earned break and look at new ventures. We see the Greatest Hits collection and the farewell tour as the perfect way to celebrate our incredible career along with our fans. We are really looking forward to getting out on the tour and seeing our fans one last time.

Over the years, Westlife has become so much more to us than just a band. Westlife are a family. We would like to thank our fans who have been with us on this amazing journey and are part of our family too. We never imagined when we started out in 1998 that 14 years later we would still be recording, touring and having hits together. It has been a dream come true for all of us.

Kian, Mark, Nicky and Shane[98]

During this time, the Official Charts Company compiled the band’s chart history which states that other than their number-ones they had, 25 UK Top 10s, 26 UK Top 40s, 27 UK Top 75s, 20 Weeks at No. 1, 76 Weeks in Top 10, 189 Weeks in Top 40 and 282 Weeks in Top 75 in the UK Singles Chart. While 7 No. 1s, 12 UK Top 10s, Top 40s, Top 75s, 7 Weeks at No. 1, 92 Weeks in Top 10, 189 Weeks in Top 40, and 299 Weeks in Top 75 in the UK Albums Chart.[99] They also had seven number-one albums in eight years, the most number-ones with different albums by a music album act, group, pop group, and male group in the UK Albums Chart in the 2000s and the second most number ones, tied with Rod Stewart, with different albums by a music album act, group, pop group, and male group in the UK clustered per decade since The Beatles in the 1960s and of all time. In Ireland, they have fourteen No. 1 singles and ten No. 1 albums, the most for a pop band and act and male band and act, and Irish band next to U2.

A second statement was issued through their official site, saying the fans were continuing to be the best support system.[100][101] Some fans on social networks described themselves as feeling “devastated” following news of the split.[102][103] People left their messages on Twitter by using #WestlifeForever and #Westlife, it trended on Ireland, Indonesia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Sweden, and the UK. A live stream Q&A happened on 28 October 2011 as a “thank you” to their fans. As part of it, ITV commissioned a one-off music event as they took to the stage to sing some of their greatest hits, it was entitled Westlife: For the Last Time.[104] Another show entitled, The Westlife Show: Live, was broadcast from Studio One of London Studios on the same channel on 1 November 2011.[105] They then had a live guesting on The Late Late Show.[106] They were honored at that time by Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) with four specially commissioned bar stools to mark 49 performances at the venue for over 380,000 fans, selling more tickets than any other act.[107] The band had their final concert on 23 June 2012 at Croke Park Stadium in Ireland. The 82,300 capacity show was sold out in 4 minutes. Due to this popular demand, an extra date was added at Croke Park on 22 June 2012, which also sold out. Combined, there was a total of 187,808 spectators on both nights, exceeding the capacity of the stadium.[108] Their last concert was also screened live in more than 300 cinemas in the United Kingdom,[109] and 200 cinemas worldwide.[110][111] They also released a DVD, which went to number 1 in both UK and Irish chart. In that year they were also declared the 34th top-grossing tour act of the year with earnings of $35.2 million (€27 million). The farewell tour consisted of eight dates in China and 33 in the UK and Ireland; in total, the band sold 489,694 tickets from the tour.[112]

Cowell and some media predicted a possible reunion in the future,[113] but Westlife put an end to that speculation by vowing they would never reunite.[114] Later reports from the Daily Record said there was an “irreparable rift” in the band,[115] but was later denied by a source close to the band saying: “There’s no bad blood in the band, they’re still great pals. But all good things come to an end and they are all keen to do their own thing.”[116] Later, the band also denied it and called the split a “united decision”.[117] However he confessed three months after the split, Byrne said that members of the group fought with one another more and more often in the latter years leading up to the split and he felt that it was the right time to end their time together. A year after Westlife ended, they agreed to all voluntarily wind up Bluenet Ltd, their main entertainment firm, after going their own ways and split €2.3million to €595,500 each except for Filan who missed out any of it as he declared bankruptcy at that time due to property crash problems.[118]

Since the split, the four lads have released albums and singles individually. Filan, with three studio albums and with singles and tours (with support act dates for Lionel Richie) released and a Top 5 hit album in UK. Feehily associated with an independent record label (which he is the co-director) and released albums and singles. He also made it as a supporting act to Mariah Carey and Wet Wet Wet. Egan was voted King of the Jungle on the 2013 series of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity series, released one studio album with singles, was a coach judge on The Voice of Ireland, and was a support act for Boyzone. Byrne released one studio album, joined Strictly Come Dancing, hosted several major Irish television and radio shows, and represented Ireland in Eurovision, which was also his debut solo single.[119]

In 2014, Syco Music said to The Sun: “All the guys are up for it in principle. It’s now just a matter of sorting out all the details, Syco would love Brian to be part of the band again. It’d create the same sort of buzz as when Robbie Williams returned to Take That. But the other lads will need to be convinced because they were always very clear that when Brian left it was for good.”[120] but Egan later tweeted, “Guys I’m sorry to say but I don’t know where these rumours are coming from about a Westlife reunion but it’s untrue. Sorry #westlifeforever.”[121] In 2015,[122] 2016 (On this year, Walsh posted on the band’s social accounts that they will not regroup as of the moment),[123] 2017,[124] Walsh expressed that the four-piece band would reunite. He had been in contact with Ed Sheeran and James Arthur to create songs for the band.[125]

However, on 2016–2017, four years following the split, Filan told Lorraine and other media outlets that while there are currently no plans for a Westlife reunion, he would not rule it out for the future.[126] Byrne expressed in 2017, “Shame this Westlife news is not true. They were always my guilty pleasures.” He also talked about touring with the group: “Who wouldn’t want to do that again? The laugh with the boys and travelling around and seeing all the fans again. It’s nearly six years next summer since we’ve done it so who knows? Maybe in ten years. I’ve spoken to all the lads individually but we’ve never brought up a Westlife reunion, the thing about it is the four of us haven’t been in a room together since Jodi’s [Kian’s wife] mum’s funeral,’ That was the last time we spoke properly as a band, if you want to call it that., I’m sure it will happen but I don’t know when and I don’t know if even we know when the right time will be.”[127] Feehily added, “People have offered us blank cheques to get back together but it’s not about money. There are no plans to reform. The time isn’t now. We all have a lot more that we want to achieve first. It feels way too soon to be honest, a 20th anniversary tour could still happen one day as 2019 is 20 years since we released our first single, while 2021 is 20 years since our first world tour. So you never know”.[128]

On 31 March 2018, it was reported on Allkpop that all of them might guest on a popular Korean musical show Immortal Songs 2 but Filan was the only one who appeared on the show as a judge and a guest performer afterwards.[129] Egan answered that this and other reports were untrue and the rest of the group members sided with Egan’s response after as well.[130] Later they revealed they had been phoned up by Walsh and Cowell every six months since their split. On 23 September 2018, several Irish news outlets started reporting that the group has been signed to Universal Music Group for a new five-year album and tour deal with Virgin EMI Records.

Reunion, Spectrum album, and tour (2018–2021)

On 3 October 2018, the group formally announced that there’ll be new music and a tour coming soon on their official social media accounts like on their newly created Instagram.[133][non-primary source needed] Their reunion story caused huge fan reaction worldwide. According to the reports, they had been preparing for their comeback for the past year of 2017 as Feehily had said on the same year that he hoped to get them all together for a proper catch-up.[134] It was later revealed that Egan and Filan first talked about their reunion when Adele released “Hello” in late 2015.[135] While Byrne raised his concerns about “…where Westlife’s music fits into the current market” and not wanting to be simply a “nostalgia” act.[136] He went on to say, “While we were away, we realised what Westlife really meant to the fans – and to us.”[137] McFadden was not involved in the reformation as he said on an interview with Closer Magazine, “…there’s no reason for me and the boys to stay buddies.” and “For me, it was just a job. I only met the guys when I joined the band and have no regrets about leaving.”[138] Their first live interviews and press conferences as a four-piece in six years were made 20 days later held in Dublin and Belfast where they revealed their plans to stick around longer.[139][140] Days later, it was followed by several radio interviews in Manchester, Ulster, Dublin and Glasgow. Walsh also said in separate interviews that the most important things now are the songs, it will be featured as an introduction to their new sound and added, “I was just waiting for them to decide when. There were record deals on the table, but the icing on the cake was Ed Sheeran writing these amazing songs for them, as well as having Steve Mac, who produced their early songs, on track too.” […] “Sheeran’s input adds a contemporary edge”, “I’ve heard the first two songs and they are just incredible.”[141] Mac and Sheeran have come up with four new tracks for them. One will be a single co-written by Sheeran. Some had been composed since 2016. The duo have co-written recent hits like the most streamed song on Spotify, “Shape of You”, and also “Woman Like Me” by Little Mix, and “Thursday” by Jess Glynne. Mac revealed the band’s signature sound will be back.[142][non-primary source needed] Feehily and Filan added, “We’re not trying to change Westlife’s sound, we’re trying to evolve”, “We need to be a Westlife 2.0, a better version of ourselves. We wanted to come back and recreate Westlife’s sound, but better, and be a better band, and the most important thing about any band is music.”[143] In November 2018, Byrne expressed 2019 will be “one hell of a year”[144][non-primary source needed] On 19 December 2018, Egan and Feehily posted a picture of the group’s first rehearsals together in six years and Egan added that “2019 will be nothing but epic”.[145][non-primary source needed][146][non-primary source needed] A musical and a documentary film about them and their reunion were also reported.

“Hello My Love”,[141] their first single since 2011 was released on 10 January 2019.[147][non-primary source needed] It reached No. 1 in iTunes Store Top Songs in more than fifteen countries that include the United Kingdom and Ireland, reached top 10 in 23 countries, and charted in more than 50 countries only minutes after its release. It was released in four official versions: Original, instrumental, acoustic, and a remix. Their first UK, worldwide television and recorded professional appearance, performance in seven years and of the single was on The Graham Norton Show on 11 January 2019 where it was tagged as “one of the most highly-anticipated TV comebacks of the decade”.[148][149] They also performed the single on the 24th National Television Awards on 22 January 2019 and it was their first live television performance, first The O2 Arena and arena performance together in seven years. Their first Irish performance and television appearance together was in the finals night of Dancing With the Stars Ireland on 24 March 2019. Their first tour and first promotional tour in general and for a single release together outside UK and Ireland in seven years was on Singapore on 29 January 2019 to 1 February 2019.[150][non-primary source needed] It reached number-two in Ireland and Scotland. It was their highest charting on their official singles charts since the band’s “What About Now” single in 2009, ten years ago. The single got its Silver certification four months after its release and its Gold certification seven months after its premiere in the UK. In Ireland, it has a 2× Platinum certification.

The full-length album is released on 15 November 2019. It is in different formats like the CD, digital download, vinyl, and a limited box set edition. Some of the album formats are bundled with their official tour merchandise. It is their eleventh studio album, their first major album to be released in eight years and first studio album in nine years.[151][non-primary source needed] In November 2018, the pre-order links for the upcoming album were released on Amazon Australia,[152] Japan,[153] UK,[154] and HMV.[155] The album is titled Spectrum. The album peaked at number one in Ireland, Scotland, and the UK and was certified as Gold in the UK and as Platinum in Ireland. This is their first number one album in twelve years in the UK and in eight years in Ireland. This is also the fastest selling album in 2019 in Ireland. This is their eighth UK number-one album making them the fifth band (fourth until Coldplay got their eight number-one album week after) to have eight UK number-one albums with the likes of Led Zeppelin, and R.E.M. Overall, they are one of the only ten bands that has had eight number-one albums.[4] It marks their eleventh number-one album in Ireland.

To promote the album before its release, more singles were released like the second one, also by Mac and Sheeran with Fred Again (George Ezra, Prettymuch, Rita Ora), which was called “Better Man”. It was their second number one on the UK Singles Physical Chart and reached number two on the UK Singles Sales Chart and Scottish Singles Chart in 2019. It was also released in orchestral and acoustic versions. The third single, “Dynamite”, was released on 5 July 2019 and was released in three different mixes. The single was their 27th Top 10 hit in Scotland and 29th Top 40 hit in Ireland. The fourth single from the album, “My Blood”, was released on 25 October 2019. “My Blood” ended up peaking at number ninety-six on the UK Singles Chart and at number-six on the Scottish Singles Chart. It also peaked at number forty-six in the Irish Singles Chart.

Since their comeback in 2018, their previous singles “What About Now”, “Queen of My Heart”, “If I Let You Go”, and “My Love” reached the higher Gold certifications in the United Kingdom after ten, seventeen, eighteen, and twenty years of their releases respectively. “Flying Without Wings”, and “World of Our Own” were certified Platinum twenty years after its release. While “When You’re Looking Like That” after twenty years and “The Rose” after thirteen years achieved their Silver certifications since their releases respectively in the same country. Six were certified in 2019, one in 2018, and two in 2020.

On the evening of 17 October 2018, the UK and Ireland dates of their latest tour were announced through Westlife’s social networks and was called The Twenty Tour. A pre-order site of the forthcoming new Westlife album, for both unsigned and limited signed (which was taken down minutes later), from their official store was cited where fans will receive an exclusive pre-sale code for early access tickets to the 2019 tour.[156] Pre-sale tickets were all sold out before the general sale and the event had been described as a “big one”[157] making the original tour dates sold out at the very time of its general sales opening. The tour had twelve original dates and fourteen more dates added on places like Liverpool, Leeds, and Sheffield in less than seven hours due to high demand.[158][159][160][161][162] In their first full print interview as a band in six years, they said: “We will get to everyone eventually.” Egan added, “Every country that wants to see Westlife will see us at some point. We won’t step away from this until we’ve managed to tour the world.”[135] Seventeen additional Asian dates were announced from 21 March 2019 onwards; the tour has a total of fifty-one dates and took place at some of Asia’s and Europe’s largest indoor arenas and stadium. It was their fastest selling tour to date.

The second day of the tour in Croke Park had a live film broadcast in selected cinemas in at least fourteen European countries on 6 July 2019, and in more than 600 cinemas live via satellite in UK and Ireland alone. A delayed broadcast in at least nine Asian countries that include Hong Kong, India, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and in Australia and New Zealand were done from August 2019 as well. They hired the Cirque du Soleil team for the production, stage design, and routines of the tour. A follow-up cinema screenings of the filmed tour date was produced from August 2019 onwards as well in a sing-along version that kick-started in Denmark, Ireland, and UK. This was released in a video album in different formats on 13 March 2020. It reached the number one in UK and Ireland and stayed at the top spot for more than thirty weeks on their official charts.

On 13 September 2019, they announced that they are scheduled to play at Wembley Stadium in London, England and at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork, Ireland, both for the first time, as part of their Stadiums in the Summer Tour, which was later renamed. The tour play dates were moved from 2020, 2021 to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic with most of the original scheduled tour dates were also cancelled.

On 8 February 2021, the band revealed the mutual parting of ways with Virgin EMI Records and details of a new and groundbreaking partnership are imminent.

Wild Dreams (2021–present)

On 17 March 2021, they formally announced through different medias that they signed a new album deal through Warner Music UK and East West Records.

After 514 days since their last get together, they played eight of their songs live together for a BBC Radio 2 event on Ulster Hall, Belfast on 25 August 2021 and was broadcast from 10 September 2021. An estimate of sixty-eight thousand people have applied to be part of the audience that night but an approximate number of only 160 people has been picked due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“Starlight”, the lead single from their twelfth studio album, was released on 14 October 2021. The album, Wild Dreams, was released on 19 November 2021 but was pushed back to 26 November 2021 on 13 October 2021.[163][non-primary source needed] It is in different formats like the CD, digital download, streaming. Some of the album formats are bundled with their official tour merchandise.

On 29 October 2021, new schedule for their renamed fourteenth concert tour, The Wild Dreams Tour, were released. It is comprised of fourteen new dates and venues and eight dates added later. They also announced that their Wembley Stadium date will be streamed live in different cinemas in Europe.

On 17 December 2021, a Westlife concert filmed at London’s Bush Hall Venue and broadcast by Tencent’s WeChat (Weixin) across China’s most popular social media platform had an audience of almost 28 million. It received 160 million likes during the 100 minute stream. It was the first ever livestream concert by the band, and by an international artist in China. This was followed by being the special guest on Backstreet Boys livestream concert on the same said platform on 24 June 2022. The two band’s collaboration of Westlife’s song “My Love” had trended to number-one on the country’s top social media Weibo.[164][165] As of 7 April 2022, according to Official Charts Company, they are currently the fifth biggest-selling albums artist of the 21st century alone in the UK with 12,907,183.

FREE PDF DOWNLOAD OF THE FIRST NOEL PIANO SHEET MUSIC BY ANNA MOLGARD

“The First Noel” (also written “The First Noël” and “The First Nowell”) is a traditional classical English carol, most likely from the 18th century, although possibly earlier. The word Noel comes from the French word Noël meaning Christmas, from the Latin word natalis which translates as birthday”.In its current form, it is of Cornish origin, and it was first published in Carols Ancient and Modern (1823) and Gilbert and Sandys Carols (1833), both of which were edited by William Sandys and arranged, edited and with extra lyrics written by Davies Gilbert for Hymns and Carols of God. Today, it is usually performed in a four-part hymn arrangement by the English composer John Stainer, first published in his Carols, New and Old in 1871. Variations of its theme are included in Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s Carol Symphony.The melody is unusual among English folk melodies in that it consists of one musical phrase repeated twice, followed by a refrain which is a variation on that phrase. All three phrases end on the third of the scale. It is thought to be a version of an earlier melody sung in a church gallery setting “The First O Well”; a conjectural reconstruction of this earlier version can be found in the New Oxford Book of Carols.

Tony Martin is a country music songwriter who has had fifteen number-one hits as a songwriter. Among his compositions are “Third Rock from the Sun” by Joe Diffie, “Just to See You Smile” by Tim McGraw, “You Look Good in My Shirt” by Keith Urban, and “No Place That Far” by Sara Evans.

Martin received a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1986. His degree emphasized journalism and he was a reporter for “The Daily Journal” in Chicago after he graduated from BYU. His song “Baby’s Gotten Good at Goodbye” was recorded by George Strait in 1988. Its success made Martin decide to go to Nashville. When he first moved there he worked as a correspondent for The Tennessean to help support himself and his wife Amethea.

In 2001, Martin signed an exclusive contract with Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

He is the son of another Nashville-connected songwriter Glenn Martin.

Martin is a Latter-day Saint. Among other callings in the LDS Church he has served in the bishopric of a single members branch.

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. He is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style.

As a traveling performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. He participated in only two recording sessions, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937, that produced 29 distinct songs (with 13 surviving alternate takes) recorded by famed Country Music Hall of Fame producer Don Law. These songs, recorded at low fidelity in improvised studios, were the totality of his recorded output. Most were released as 10-inch,  rpm singles from 1937–1938, with a few released after his death. Other than these recordings, very little was known of him during his life outside of the small musical circuit in the Mississippi Delta where he spent most of his life; much of his story has been reconstructed after his death by researchers. Johnson’s poorly documented life and death have given rise to much legend. The one most closely a*sociated with his life is that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads to achieve musical success.

His music had a small, but influential, following during his life and in the two decades after his death. In late 1938 John Hammond sought him out for a concert at Carnegie Hall, From Spirituals to Swing, only to discover that Johnson had died. Brunswick Records, which owned the original recordings, was bought by Columbia Records, where Hammond was employed. Musicologist Alan Lomax went to Mississippi in 1941 to record Johnson, also not knowing of his death. Law, who by then worked for Columbia Records, a*sembled a collection of Johnson’s recordings titled King of the Delta Blues Singers that was released by Columbia in 1961. It is widely credited with finally bringing Johnson’s work to a wider audience. The album would become influential, especially on the nascent British blues movement; Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” Musicians such as Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Robert Plant have cited both Johnson’s lyrics and musicianship as key influences on their own work. Many of Johnson’s songs have been covered over the years, becoming hits for other artists, and his guitar licks and lyrics have been borrowed by many later musicians.

Renewed interest in Johnson’s work and life led to a burst of scholarship starting in the 1960s. Much of what is known about him was reconstructed by researchers such as Gayle Dean Wardlow and Bruce Conforth, especially in their 2019 award-winning biography of Johnson: Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson (Chicago Review Press). Two films, the 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson by John Hammond Jr., and a 1997 documentary, Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl, the Life and Music of Robert Johnson, which included reconstructed scenes with Keb’ Mo’ as Johnson, were attempts to document his life, and demonstrated the difficulties arising from the scant historical record and conflicting oral accounts. Over the years, the significance of Johnson and his music has been recognized by numerous organizations and publications, including the Rock and Roll, Grammy, and Blues Halls of Fame; and the National Recording Preservation Board.

Life and career

Early life

Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, possibly on May 8, 1911,[3] to Julia Major Dodds (born October 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December 1884). Julia was married to Charles Dodds (born February 1865), a relatively prosperous landowner and furniture maker, with whom she had ten children. Charles Dodds had been forced by a lynch mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia left Hazlehurst with baby Robert, but in less than two years she brought the boy to Memphis to live with her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.[4] Robert spent the next 8–9 years growing up in Memphis and attending the Carnes Avenue Colored School where he received lessons in arithmetic, reading, language, music, geography, and physical exercise.[5] It was in Memphis that he acquired his love for, and knowledge of, the blues and popular music. His education and urban context placed him apart from most of his contemporary blues musicians.

Robert rejoined his mother around 1919–1920 after she married an illiterate sharecropper named Will “Dusty” Willis. They originally settled on a plantation in Lucas Township in Crittenden County, Arkansas, but soon moved across the Mississippi River to Commerce in the Mississippi Delta, near Tunica and Robinsonville. They lived on the Abbay & Leatherman Plantation.[6] Julia’s new husband was 24 years her junior. Robert was remembered by some residents as “Little Robert Dusty”,[7] but he was registered at Tunica’s Indian Creek School as Robert Spencer. In the 1920 census, he is listed as Robert Spencer, living in Lucas, Arkansas, with Will and Julia Willis. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927.[8] The quality of his signature on his marriage certificate[9] suggests that he was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. A school friend, Willie Coffee, who was interviewed and filmed in later life, recalled that as a youth Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp.[10] Coffee recalled that Robert was absent for long periods, which suggests that he may have been living and studying in Memphis.[11]

Once Julia informed Robert about his biological father, Robert adopted the surname Johnson, using it on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died in childbirth shortly after.[12] Surviving relatives of Virginia told the blues researcher Robert “Mack” McCormick that this was a divine punishment for Robert’s decision to sing secular songs, known as “selling your soul to the Devil”. McCormick believed that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the settled life of a husband and farmer to become a full-time blues musician.[13]

Around this time, the blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville, where his musical partner Willie Brown lived. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a “little boy” who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist. Soon after, Johnson left Robinsonville for the area around Martinsville, close to his birthplace, possibly searching for his natural father. Here he perfected the guitar style of House and learned other styles from Isaiah “Ike” Zimmerman.[14] Zimmerman was rumored to have learned supernaturally to play guitar by visiting graveyards at midnight.[15] When Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he seemed to have miraculously acquired a guitar technique.[16] House was interviewed at a time when the legend of Johnson’s pact with the devil was well known among blues researchers. He was asked whether he attributed Johnson’s technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.[17]

While living in Martinsville, Johnson fathered a child with Vergie Mae Smith. He married Caletta Craft in May 1931. In 1932, the couple settled for a while in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the Delta, but Johnson soon left for a career as a “walking” or itinerant musician, and Caletta died in early 1933.

Itinerant musician

From 1932 until his death in 1938, Johnson moved frequently between the cities of Memphis and Helena, and the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions of Mississippi and Arkansas.[19][20] On occasion, he traveled much further. The blues musician Johnny Shines accompanied him to Chicago, Texas, New York, Canada, Kentucky, and Indiana.[21] Henry Townsend shared a musical engagement with him in St. Louis.[22] In many places he stayed with members of his large extended family or with female friends.[23] He did not marry again but formed some long-term relationships with women to whom he would return periodically. In other places he stayed with whatever woman he was able to seduce at his performance.[24][25] In each location, Johnson’s hosts were largely ignorant of his life elsewhere. He used different names in different places, employing at least eight distinct surnames.[26]

Biographers have looked for consistency from musicians who knew Johnson in different contexts: Shines, who traveled extensively with him; Robert Lockwood, Jr., who knew him as his mother’s partner; David “Honeyboy” Edwards, whose cousin Willie Mae Powell had a relationship with Johnson.[27] From a mass of partial, conflicting, and inconsistent eyewitness accounts,[28] biographers have attempted to summarize Johnson’s character. “He was well mannered, he was soft spoken, he was indecipherable”.[29] “As for his character, everyone seems to agree that, while he was pleasant and outgoing in public, in private he was reserved and liked to go his own way”.[30] “Musicians who knew Johnson testified that he was a nice guy and fairly average—except, of course, for his musical talent, his weakness for whiskey and women, and his commitment to the road.”[31]

When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Musical a*sociates have said that in live performances Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the day[32] – and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, he had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries later remarked on his interest in jazz and country music. He also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, he would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Shines was 20 when he met Johnson in 1936. He estimated Johnson was maybe a year older than himself (Johnson was actually four years older). Shines is quoted describing Johnson in Samuel Charters’s Robert Johnson:

Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of a peculiar fellow. Robert’d be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody’s business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money’d be coming from all directions. But Robert’d just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn’t see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks. … So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along.

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman about 15 years his senior and the mother of the blues musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. He reputedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases, he was accepted, until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

In 1941, Alan Lomax learned from Muddy Waters that Johnson had performed in the area around Clarksdale, Mississippi.[34] By 1959, the historian Samuel Charters could add only that Will Shade, of the Memphis Jug Band, remembered Johnson had once briefly played with him in West Memphis, Arkansas.[35] In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and New York City.[36] In 1938, Columbia Records producer John H. Hammond, who owned some of Johnson’s records, directed record producer Don Law to seek out Johnson to book him for the first “From Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson’s death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but he played two of Johnson’s records from the stage.

Recording sessions

In Jackson, Mississippi, around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir, who ran a general store and also acted as a talent scout. Speir put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who, as a salesman for the ARC group of labels, introduced Johnson to Don Law to record his first sessions in San Antonio, Texas. The recording session was held on November 23–25, 1936, in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio.[37] In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections and recorded alternate takes for most of them. Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom”, “Sweet Home Chicago”, and “Cross Road Blues”, which later became blues standards. The first to be released was “Terraplane Blues”, backed with “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”, which sold as many as 10,000 copies.[38]

Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session with Don Law in a makeshift studio at the Vitagraph (Warner Bros.) Building,[39] on June 19–20, 1937.[40] Johnson recorded almost half of the 29 songs that make up his entire discography in Dallas and eleven records from this session were released within the following year. Most of Johnson’s “somber and introspective” songs and performances come from his second recording session.[41] Johnson did two takes of most of these songs, and recordings of those takes survived. Because of this, there is more opportunity to compare different performances of a single song by Johnson than for any other blues performer of his era.[42] In contrast to most Delta players, Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78-rpm side.[43]

Death

Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi, of unknown causes. His death was not reported publicly; he merely disappeared from the historical record and it was not until almost 30 years later, when Gayle Dean Wardlow, a Mississippi-based musicologist researching Johnson’s life, found his death certificate, which listed only the date and location, with no official cause of death. No formal autopsy was done; instead, a pro forma examination was done to file the death certificate, and no immediate cause of death was determined. It is likely he had congenital syphilis and it was suspected later by medical professionals that this may have been a contributing factor in his death. However, 30 years of local oral tradition had, like the rest of his life story, built a legend which has filled in gaps in the scant historical record.[44]

Several differing accounts have described the events preceding his death. Johnson had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood. According to one theory, Johnson was murdered by the jealous husband of a woman with whom he had flirted. In an account by the blues musician Sonny Boy Williamson, Johnson had been flirting with a married woman at a dance, and she gave him a bottle of whiskey poisoned by her husband. When Johnson took the bottle, Williamson knocked it out of his hand, admonishing him to never drink from a bottle that he had not personally seen opened. Johnson replied, “Don’t ever knock a bottle out of my hand.” Soon after, he was offered another (poisoned) bottle and accepted it. Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days his condition steadily worsened. Witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain. The musicologist Robert “Mack” McCormick claimed to have tracked down the man who murdered Johnson and to have obtained a confession from him in a personal interview, but he declined to reveal the man’s name.[13]

While strychnine has been suggested as the poison that killed Johnson, at least one scholar has disputed the notion. Tom Graves, in his book Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, relies on expert testimony from toxicologists to argue that strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be disguised, even in strong liquor. Graves also claims that a significant amount of strychnine would have to be consumed in one sitting to be fatal, and that death from the poison would occur within hours, not days.[45]

In their 2019 book Up Jumped the Devil, Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow suggest that the poison was naphthalene, from dissolved mothballs. This was “a common way of poisoning people in the rural South”, but was rarely fatal. However, Johnson had been diagnosed with an ulcer and with esophageal varices, and the poison was sufficient to cause them to hemorrhage. He died after two days of severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and bleeding from the mouth.[46]

The LeFlore County registrar, Cornelia Jordan, years later and after conducting an investigation into Johnson’s death for the state director of vital statistics, R. N. Whitfield, wrote a clarifying note on the back of Johnson’s death certificate:

I talked with the white man on whose place this negro died and I also talked with a negro woman on the place. The plantation owner said the negro man, seemingly about 26 years old, came from Tunica two or three weeks before he died to play banjo at a negro dance given there on the plantation. He stayed in the house with some of the negroes saying he wanted to pick cotton. The white man did not have a doctor for this negro as he had not worked for him. He was buried in a homemade coffin furnished by the county. The plantation owner said it was his opinion that the man died of syphilis.

In 2006, a medical practitioner, David Connell, suggested, on the basis of photographs showing Johnson’s “unnaturally long fingers” and “one bad eye”, that Johnson may have had Marfan syndrome, which could have both affected his guitar playing and contributed to his death due to aortic dissection.

Gravesite

The exact location of Johnson’s grave is officially unknown; three different markers have been erected at possible sites in church cemeteries outside Greenwood.

• Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A one-ton cenotaph in the shape of an obelisk, listing all of Johnson’s song titles, with a central inscription by Peter Guralnick, was placed at this location in 1990, paid for by Columbia Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund.
• In 1990, a small marker with the epitaph “Resting in the Blues” was placed in the cemetery of Payne Chapel, near Quito, Mississippi, by an Atlanta rock group named the Tombstones, after they saw a photograph in Living Blues magazine of an unmarked spot alleged by one of Johnson’s ex-girlfriends to be Johnson’s burial site.
• More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger, in 2000) indicates that the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church, north of Greenwood along Money Road. Through LaVere, Sony Music placed a marker at this site, which bears LaVere’s name as well as Johnson’s. Researchers Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow also concluded this was Johnson’s resting place in their 2019 biography.

John Hammond, Jr., in the documentary The Search for Robert Johnson (1991), suggests that owing to poverty and lack of transportation Johnson is most likely to have been buried in a pauper’s grave (or “potter’s field”) very near where he died.

Devil legend

According to legend, as a young man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Johnson had a tremendous desire to become a great blues musician. One of the legends often told says that Johnson was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. (There are claims for at least a dozen other sites as the location of the crossroads.)[citation needed] There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The Devil played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This story of a deal with the Devil at the crossroads mirrors the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.

Various accounts

This legend was developed over time and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow,[51] Edward Komara[52] and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson’s rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death.[53] Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson’s astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.[citation needed] Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and there were fully two years between House’s observation of Johnson as first a novice and then a master.

Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus[54] and Robert Palmer.[55] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads, by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of the blues musician Tommy Johnson.[56] This story was collected from his musical a*sociate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.[17] One version of Ledell Johnson’s account was published in David Evans’s 1971 biography of Tommy Johnson,[57] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside House’s story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson, by Peter Guralnick.[58]

In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zimmerman of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zimmerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Johnson.

Recent research by the blues scholar Bruce Conforth, in Living Blues magazine, makes the story clearer. Johnson and Ike Zimmerman did practice in a graveyard at night, because it was quiet and no one would disturb them, but it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed: Zimmerman was not from Hazlehurst but nearby Beauregard, and he did not practice in one graveyard, but in several in the area.[60] Johnson spent about a year living with and learning from Zimmerman, who ultimately accompanied Johnson back to the Delta to look after him.

While Dockery, Hazlehurst and Beauregard have each been claimed as the locations of the mythical crossroads, there are also tourist attractions claiming to be “The Crossroads” in both Clarksdale and Memphis.[61] Residents of Rosedale, Mississippi, claim Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the intersection of Highways 1 and 8 in their town, while the 1986 movie Crossroads was filmed in Beulah, Mississippi. The blues historian Steve Cheseborough wrote that it may be impossible to discover the exact location of the mythical crossroads, because “Robert Johnson was a rambling guy”.

Interpretations

Some scholars have argued that the devil in these songs may refer not only to the Christian figure of Satan but also to the trickster god of African origin, Legba, himself a*sociated with crossroads. Folklorist Harry M. Hyatt wrote that, during his research in the South from 1935 to 1939, when African-Americans born in the 19th or early 20th century said they or anyone else had “sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads”, they had a different meaning in mind. Hyatt claimed there was evidence indicating African religious retentions surrounding Legba and the making of a “deal” (not selling the soul in the same sense as in the Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with the so-called devil at the crossroads.

The Blues and the Blues singer has really special powers over women, especially. It is said that the Blues singer could possess women and have any woman they wanted. And so when Robert Johnson came back, having left his community as an apparently mediocre musician, with a clear genius in his guitar style and lyrics, people said he must have sold his soul to the devil. And that fits in with this old African a*sociation with the crossroads where you find wisdom: you go down to the crossroads to learn, and in his case to learn in a Faustian pact, with the devil. You sell your soul to become the greatest musician in history.

This view that the devil in Johnson’s songs is derived from an African deity was disputed by the blues scholar David Evans in an essay published in 1999, “Demythologizing the Blues”:

There are … several serious problems with this crossroads myth. The devil imagery found in the blues is thoroughly familiar from western folklore, and nowhere do blues singers ever mention Legba or any other African deity in their songs or other lore. The actual African music connected with cults of Legba and similar trickster deities sounds nothing like the blues, but rather features polyrhythmic percussion and choral call-and-response singing.

The musicologist Alan Lomax dismissed the myth, stating, “In fact, every blues fiddler, banjo picker, harp blower, piano strummer and guitar framer was, in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the Devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme”.

Musical style

Johnson is considered a master of the blues, particularly of the Delta blues style. Keith Richards, of the Rolling Stones, said in 1990, “You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it”.[67] But according to Elijah Wald, in his book Escaping the Delta, Johnson in his own time was most respected for his ability to play in a wide range of styles, from raw country slide guitar to jazz and pop licks, and for his ability to pick up guitar parts almost instantly upon hearing a song.[68] His first recorded song, “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”, in contrast to the prevailing Delta style of the time, more resembled the style of Chicago or St. Louis, with “a full-fledged, abundantly varied musical arrangement”.[69] The song was part of a cycle of spin-offs and response songs that began with Leroy Carr’s “Mean Mistreater Mama” (1934). According to Wald, it was “the most musically complex in the cycle”[70] and stood apart from most rural blues as a thoroughly composed lyric, rather than an arbitrary collection of more or less unrelated verses.[71] Unusual for a Delta player of the time, a recording exhibits what Johnson could do entirely outside of a blues style. “They’re Red Hot”, from his first recording session, shows that he was also comfortable with an “uptown” swing or ragtime sound similar to that of the Harlem Hamfats, but as Wald remarked, “no record company was heading to Mississippi in search of a down-home Ink Spots … [H]e could undoubtedly have come up with a lot more songs in this style if the producers had wanted them.”

Voice

An important aspect of Johnson’s singing was his use of microtonality. These subtle inflections of pitch help explain why his singing conveys such powerful emotion. Eric Clapton described Johnson’s music as “the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice”. In two takes of “Me and the Devil Blues” he shows a high degree of precision in the complex vocal delivery of the last verse: “The range of tone he can pack into a few lines is astonishing.”[74] The song’s “hip humor and sophistication” is often overlooked. “[G]enerations of blues writers in search of wild Delta primitivism”, wrote Wald, have been inclined to overlook or undervalue aspects that show Johnson as a polished professional performer.[75]

Johnson is also known for using the guitar as “the other vocalist in the song”, a technique later perfected by B.B. King and his personified guitar named Lucille: “In Africa and in Afro-American tradition, there is the tradition of the talking instrument, beginning with the drums … the one-strand and then the six-strings with bottleneck-style performance; it becomes a competing voice … or a complementary voice … in the performance.”

Instrument

Johnson mastered the guitar, being considered today one of the all-time greats on the instrument. His approach was complex and musically advanced. When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson’s music by his bandmate Brian Jones, he asked, “Who is the other guy playing with him?”, not realizing it was Johnson playing one guitar. “I was hearing two guitars, and it took a long time to actually realise he was doing it all by himself”,[77] said Richards, who later stated that “Robert Johnson was like an orchestra all by himself”.[73] “As for his guitar technique, it’s politely reedy but ambitiously eclectic—moving effortlessly from hen-picking and bottleneck slides to a full deck of chucka-chucka rhythm figures.”

Lyrics

In The Story with Dick Gordon, Bill Ferris, of American Public Media, said, “Robert Johnson I think of in the same way I think of the British Romantic poets, Keats and Shelley, who burned out early, who were geniuses at wordsmithing poetry … The Blues, if anything, are deeply sexual. You know, ‘my car doesn’t run, I’m gonna check my oil … ‘if you don’t like my apples, don’t shake my tree’. Every verse has sexuality a*sociated with it.”

Influences

Johnson fused approaches specific to Delta blues to those from the broader music world. The slide guitar work on “Ramblin’ on My Mind” is pure Delta and Johnson’s vocal there has “a touch of … Son House rawness”, but the train imitation on the bridge is not at all typical of Delta blues—it is more like something out of minstrel show music or vaudeville.[78] Johnson did record versions of “Preaching the Blues” and “Walking Blues” in the older bluesman’s vocal and guitar style (House’s chronology has been questioned by Guralnick). As with the first take of “Come On in My Kitchen”, the influence of Skip James is evident in James’s “Devil Got My Woman”, but the lyrics rise to the level of first-rate poetry, and Johnson sings with a strained voice found nowhere else in his recorded output.[79]

The sad, romantic “Love in Vain” successfully blends several of Johnson’s disparate influences. The form, including the wordless last verse, follows Leroy Carr’s last hit “When the Sun Goes Down”; the words of the last sung verse come directly from a song Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded in 1926.[80] Johnson’s last recording, “Milkcow’s Calf Blues” is his most direct tribute to Kokomo Arnold, who wrote “Milkcow Blues” and influenced Johnson’s vocal style.[81]

“From Four Until Late” shows Johnson’s mastery of a blues style not usually a*sociated with the Delta. He croons the lyrics in a manner reminiscent of Lonnie Johnson, and his guitar style is more that of a ragtime-influenced player like Blind Blake.[82] Lonnie Johnson’s influence is even clearer in two other departures from the usual Delta style: “Malted Milk” and “Drunken Hearted Man”. Both copy the arrangement of Lonnie Johnson’s “Life Saver Blues”.[83] The two takes of “Me and the Devil Blues” show the influence of Peetie Wheatstraw, calling into question the interpretation of this piece as “the spontaneous heart-cry of a demon-driven folk artist”.

Legacy

Early recognition and reviews

Famed producer John Hammond was an early advocate of Johnson’s music.[84] Using the pen-name Henry Johnson, he wrote his first article on Robert Johnson for the New Masses magazine in March 1937, around the time of the release of Johnson’s first record. In it, he described Johnson as “the greatest Negro blues singer who has cropped up in recent years … Johnson makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur.”[85] The following year, Hammond hoped to get Johnson to perform at a December 1938 From Spirituals to Swing concert in New York City, as he was unaware that Johnson had died in August.[86] Instead, Hammond played two of his recordings, “Walkin’ Blues” and “Preachin’ Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)”, for the audience and “praised Johnson lavishly from the stage”.[86] Music historian Ted Gioia noted “Here, if only through the medium of recordings, Hammond used his considerable influence at this historic event to advocate a position of preeminence for the late Delta bluesman”.[86] Music educator James Perone also saw that the event “underscored Robert Johnson’s specific importance as a recording artist”.[84] In 1939, Columbia issued a final single, pairing “Preachin’ Blues” with “Love in Vain”.[87]

In 1942, commentary on Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues” and “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” was included in The Jazz Record Book, edited by Charles Edward Smith.[88] The authors described Johnson’s vocals as “imaginative” and “thrilling” and his guitar playing as “exciting as almost anything in the folk blues field”.[88] Music writer Rudi Blesh included a review of Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail” in his 1946 book Shining Trumpets: a History of Jazz. He noted the “personal and creative way” Johnson approached the song’s harmony.[89] Jim Wilson, then a writer for the Detroit Free Press, also mentioned his unconventional use of harmony. In a 1949 review, he compared elements of John Lee Hooker’s recent debut “Boogie Chillen”: “His [Hooker’s] dynamic rhythms and subtle nuances on the guitar and his startling disregard for familiar scale and harmony patterns show similarity to the work of Robert Johnson, who made many fine records in this vein.”[90]

Samuel Charters drew further attention to Johnson in a five-page section in his 1959 book, The Country Blues. He focused on the two Johnson recordings that referred to images of the devil or hell – “Hellhound on My Trail” and “Me and the Devil Blues” – to suggest that Johnson was a deeply troubled individual. Charters also included Johnson’s “Preachin’ Blues” on the album published alongside his book.[91] Columbia Records’ first album of Johnson’s recordings, King of the Delta Blues Singers, was issued two years later.

Musicianship

Johnson is mentioned as one of the Delta artists who was a strong influence on blues singers in post-war styles.[92] However, it is Johnson’s guitar technique that is often identified as his greatest contribution.[93] Blues historian Edward Komara wrote:

The execution of a driving bass beat on a plectrum instrument like the guitar (instead of the piano) is Johnson’s most influential accomplishment … This is the aspect of his music that most changed the Delta blues practice and is most retained in the blues guitar tradition.

This technique has been called a “boogie bass pattern” or “boogie shuffle” and is described as a “fifth–sixth [degrees of a major scale] oscillation above the root chord”.[94] Sometimes, it has been attributed to Johnnie Temple, because he was the first to record a song in 1935 using it.[95] However, Temple confirmed that he had learned the technique from Johnson: “He was the first one I ever heard use it … It was similar to a piano boogie bass [which] I learned from R. L. [Johnson] in ’32 or ’33.”[95] Johnny Shines added: “Some of the things that Robert did with the guitar affected the way everybody played. In the early thirties, boogie was rare on the guitar, something to be heard.”[96] Conforth and Wardlow call it “one of the most important riffs in blues music”[95] and music historian Peter Guralnick believes Johnson “popularized a mode [walking bass style on guitar] which would rapidly become the accepted pattern”.[96] Although author Elijah Wald recognizes Johnson’s contribution in popularizing the innovation, he discounts its importance[97] and adds, “As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure, and very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note”.

Contemporaries

Johnson’s contemporaries, including Johnny Shines, Johnnie Temple, Henry Townsend, Robert Lockwood, Jr., Calvin Frazier, and David “Honeyboy” Edwards were among those who kept his music alive through performing his songs and using his guitar techniques.[99] Fellow Mississippi native Elmore James is the best known and is responsible for popularizing Johnson’s “Dust My Broom”.[100] In 1951, he recast the song as a Chicago-style blues, with electric slide guitar and a backing band.[101] According to blues historian Gerard Herhaft:

Johnson’s influence upon Elmore James’s music always remained powerful: his falsetto voice, almost shrill, and the intensive use of the “walking” bass notes of the boogie-woogie, several pieces of James’ repertoire were borrowed from Johnson (e.g, “Dust My Broom”, “Rambling on My Mind”, and “Crossroads”).

James’ version is identified as “one of the first recorded examples of what was to become the classic Chicago shuffle beat”.The style often a*sociated with Chicago blues was used extensively by Jimmy Reed beginning with his first record “High and Lonesome” in 1953.[104] Sometimes called “the trademark Reed shuffle” (although also a*sociated his second guitarist, Eddie Taylor),[105] it is the figure Johnson used updated for electric guitar.

Blues standards

Several of Johnson’s songs became blues standards, which is used to describe blues songs that have been widely performed and recorded over a period of time and are seen as having a lasting quality.[107][108] Perone notes “That such a relatively high percentage of the songs attributed to him became blues standards also keeps the legacy of Robert Johnson alive.”[94] Those most often identified are “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Dust My Broom”, but also include “Crossroads” and “Stop Breaking Down”.[96][109][110][111][112][113] As with many blues songs, there are melodic and lyrical precedents.[111] While “Sweet Home Chicago” borrows from Kokomo Arnold’s 1933 “Old Original Kokomo Blues”, “Johnson’s lyrics made the song a natural for Chicago bluesmen, and it’s his version that survived in the repertoires of performers like Magic Sam, Robert Lockwood, and Junior Parker”.[114]

In the first decades after Johnsons’ death, these songs, with some variations in the titles and lyrics, were recorded by Tommy McClennan (1939),[115] Walter Davis (1941),[115] Sonny Boy Williamson I (1945),[116] Arthur Crudup (1949),[117] Elmore James (1951–1959), Baby Boy Warren (1954),[118] Roosevelt Sykes (1955),[119] Junior Parker (1958), and Forest City Joe (1959).[120] Pearson and McCulloch believe that “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Dust My Broom” in particular connect Johnson to “the rightful inheritors of his musical ideas—big-city African American artists whose high-powered, electrically amplified blues remain solidly in touch with Johnson’s musical legacy” at the time of Columbia’s first release of a full album of his songs in 1961.[121]

In Jim O’Neal’s statement when Johnson was inducted into the Blues Foundation Blues Hall of Fame, he identified “Hell Hound on My Trail”, “Sweet Home Chicago”, “Dust My Broom”, “Love in Vain”, and “Crossroads” as Johnson’s classic recordings.[122] Over the years, these songs have been individually inducted into the Blues Hall’s “Classic of Blues Recording – Single or Album Track” category.

Rock music

In the mid-1950s, rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry adapted the boogie pattern on guitar for his songs “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Johnny B. Goode”.[100] Author Dave Rubin commented:

his [Berry’s] utilization of the bass-string cut-boogie patterns popularized by Robert Johnson on songs like “Sweet Home Chicago” … subtly altered the swing feel of the boogie blues into a more driving, straight 4/4 meter while still maintaining a limber lilt that is often missing in the countless imitations that followed.

The pattern “became one of the signature figures in early electric guitar-based rock and roll,

such as that of Chuck Berry and the numerous rock musicians of the 1960s who were influenced by Berry”, according to Perone.[124] Although music historian Larry Birnbaum also sees the connection, he wrote that Johnson’s “contributions to the origins of rock ‘n’ roll are negligible”.[125] The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Johnson as an early influence in its first induction ceremony, in 1986, almost a half century after his death. It also included four of his songs it deemed to have shaped the genre: “Sweet Home Chicago”, “Cross Road Blues”, “Hellhound on My Trail”, and “Love in Vain”.[126] Marc Meyers, of the Wall Street Journal, commented, “His ‘Stop Breakin’ Down Blues’ from 1937 is so far ahead of its time that the song could easily have been a rock demo cut in 1954.”[73]

Several rock artists describe Johnson as an influence:

• Eric Clapton – “Robert Johnson to me is the most important blues musician who ever lived”.He recorded several of Johnson’s songs as well as an entire tribute album, Me and Mr. Johnson (2004).Clapton feels that rather than trying to recreate Johnson’s originals, “I was trying to extract as much emotional content from it as I could, while respecting the form at the same time.”
• Bob Dylan – “In about 1964 and ’65, I probably used about five or six of Robert Johnson’s blues song forms, too, unconsciously, but more on the lyrical imagery side of things. If I hadn’t heard the Robert Johnson record when I did, there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that would have been shut down—that I wouldn’t have felt free enough or upraised enough to write. [His] code of language was like nothing I’d heard before or since.”
• Robert Plant – “A lot of English musicians were very fired up by Robert Johnson [to] whom we all owe more or less our existence, I guess, in some way”.^[130] Led Zeppelin recorded “Traveling Riverside Blues” and quoted some of Johnson’s lyrics in “The Lemon Song“.
• Keith Richards – “I’ve never heard anybody before or since use the [blues] form and bend it so much to make it work for himself … he came out with such compelling themes [and] just the way they were treated, apart from the music and the performance, [was appealing].”The Rolling Stones recorded “Love in Vain” and “Stop Breaking Down”.
• Johnny Winter – “Robert Johnson knocked me out—he was a genius. [He and Son House] both were big influences on my acoustic slide playing.”He recorded “Dust My Broom” with additional guitar by Derek Trucks.

Problems of biography

Until the 2019 publication of Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow’s biography, Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson, little of Johnson’s early life was known. Two marriage licenses for Johnson have been located in county records offices. The ages given in these certificates point to different birth dates, but Conforth and Wardlow suggest that Johnson lied about his age in order to obtain a marriage license.[136] Carrie Thompson claimed that her mother, who was also Robert’s mother, remembered his birth date as May 8, 1911. He was not listed among his mother’s children in the 1910 census giving further credence to a 1911 birthdate. Although the 1920 census gives his age as 7, suggesting he was born in 1912 or 1913, the entry showing his attendance at Indian Creek School, in Tunica, Mississippi[when?] listed him as being 14 years old.[citation needed]

Five significant dates from his career are documented: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936, at a recording session in San Antonio, Texas; and Saturday and Sunday, June 19 and 20, 1937, at a recording session in Dallas. His death certificate, discovered in 1968, lists the date and location of his death.[137]

Johnson’s records were admired by record collectors from the time of their first release, and efforts were made to discover his biography, with virtually no success. A relatively full account of Johnson’s brief musical career emerged in the 1960s, largely from accounts by Son House, Johnny Shines, David Honeyboy Edwards and Robert Lockwood. In 1961, the sleeve notes to the album King of the Delta Blues Singers included reminiscences of Don Law who had recorded Johnson in 1936. Law added to the mystique surrounding Johnson, representing him as very young and extraordinarily shy.

The blues researcher Mack McCormick began researching his family background in 1972, but died in 2015 without ever publishing his findings. McCormick’s research eventually became as much a legend as Johnson himself. In 1982, McCormick permitted Peter Guralnick to publish a summary in Living Blues (1982), later reprinted in book form as Searching for Robert Johnson.[58] Later research has sought to confirm this account or to add minor details. A revised summary acknowledging major informants was written by Stephen LaVere for the booklet accompanying Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings box set (1990). The documentary film The Search for Robert Johnson contains accounts by McCormick and Wardlow of what informants have told them: long interviews of David “Honeyboy” Edwards and Johnny Shines and short interviews of surviving friends and family. Another film, Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl: The Life and Music of Robert Johnson,[138] combines documentary segments with recreated scenes featuring Keb’ Mo’ as Johnson with narration by Danny Glover. Shines, Edwards and Robert Lockwood contribute interviews. These published biographical sketches achieve coherent narratives, partly by ignoring reminiscences and hearsay accounts which contradict or conflict with other accounts.

Photographs

Until the 1980s, it was believed that no images of Johnson had survived. However, three images of Johnson were located in 1972 and 1973, in the possession of his half-sister Carrie Thompson. Two of these, known as the “dime-store photo” (December 1937 or January 1938) and the “studio portrait” (summer 1936), were copyrighted by Stephen LaVere (who had obtained them from the Thompson family) in 1986 and 1989, respectively, with an agreement to share any ensuing royalties 50% with the Johnson estate, at that time administered by Thompson. The “dime-store photo” was first published, almost in passing, in an issue of Rolling Stone magazine in 1986, and the studio portrait in a 1989 article by Stephen Calt and Gayle Dean Wardlow in 78 Quarterly.[139] Both were subsequently featured prominently in the printed materials a*sociated with the 1990 CBS box set of the “complete” Johnson recordings, as well as being widely republished since that time. Because Mississippi courts in 1998 determined that Robert Johnson’s heir was Claud Johnson, a son born out of wedlock, the “estate share” of all monies paid to LaVere by CBS and others ended up going to Claud Johnson, and attempts by the heirs of Carrie Thompson to obtain a ruling that the photographs were her personal property and not part of the estate were dismissed.[140][141] In his book Searching for Robert Johnson, Peter Guralnick stated that the blues archivist Mack McCormick showed him a photograph of Johnson with his nephew Louis, taken at the same time as the famous “pinstripe suit” photograph, showing Louis dressed in his United States Navy uniform; this picture, along with the “studio portrait”, were both lent by Carrie Thompson to McCormick in 1972.[140] This photograph has never been made public.

Another photograph, purporting to show Johnson posing with the blues musician Johnny Shines, was published in the November 2008 issue of Vanity Fair magazine.[142] Its authenticity was claimed by the forensic artist Lois Gibson and by Johnson’s estate in 2013,[143] but has been disputed by some music historians, including Elijah Wald, Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow, who considered that the clothing suggests a date after Johnson’s death and that the photograph may have been reversed and retouched. Further, both David “Honeyboy” Edwards and Robert Lockwood failed to identify either man in the photo. Facial recognition software concluded that neither man was Johnson or Shines. Finally, Gibson claimed the photo was from 1933 to 1934 while it is now known that Johnson did not meet Shines until early 1937.[144] In December 2015, a fourth photograph was published, purportedly showing Johnson, his wife Calletta Craft, Estella Coleman, and Robert Lockwood Jr.[145] This photograph was also declared authentic by Lois Gibson, but her identification of Johnson has been dismissed by other facial recognition experts and blues historians. There are a number of glaring errors in this photo: it has been proven that Craft died before Johnson met Coleman, the clothing could not be prior to the late 1940s, the furniture is from the 1950s, the Coca-Cola bottle cannot be from prior to 1950, etc.[146]

A third photograph of Johnson, this time smiling, was published in 2020. It is believed to have been taken in Memphis on the same occasion as the verified photograph of him with a guitar and cigarette (part of the “dime-store” set), and is in the possession of Annye Anderson, Johnson’s step-sister (Anderson is the daughter of Charles Dodds, later Spencer, who was married to Robert’s mother but was not his father). As a child, Anderson grew up in the same family as Johnson and has claimed to have been present, aged 10 or 11, on the occasion the photograph was taken. This photograph was published in Vanity Fair in May 2020, as the cover image for a book, Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson, written by Anderson in collaboration with author Preston Lauterbach,[147] and is considered to be authentic by Johnson scholar Elijah Wald.

Descendants

Johnson left no will. In 1998, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that Claud Johnson, a retired truck driver living in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, was the son of Robert Johnson and his only heir. The court heard that he had been born to Virgie Jane Smith (later Virgie Jane Cain), who had a relationship with Robert Johnson in 1931. The relationship was attested to by a friend, Eula Mae Williams, but other relatives descended from Robert Johnson’s half-sister, Carrie Harris Thompson, contested Claud Johnson’s claim. The effect of the judgment was to allow Claud Johnson to receive over $1 million in royalties.[148] Claud Johnson died, aged 83, on June 30, 2015, leaving six children.

Discography

Eleven 78-rpm records by Johnson were released by Vocalion Records in 1937 and 1938, with additional pressings by ARC budget labels. In 1939, a twelfth was issued posthumously.[150] Johnson’s estate holds the copyrights to his songs.[151] In 1961, Columbia Records released King of the Delta Blues Singers, an album representing the first modern-era release of Johnson’s performances, which started the “re-discovery” of Johnson as blues artist. In 1970, Columbia issued a second volume, King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. II.

The Complete Recordings, a two-disc set, released on August 28, 1990, contains almost everything Johnson recorded, with all 29 recordings, and 12 alternate takes. Another alternate take of “Traveling Riverside Blues” was released by Sony on the CD reissue of King of the Delta Blues Singers. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Johnson’s birth, May 8, 2011, Sony Legacy released Robert Johnson: The Centennial Collection, a re-mastered 2-CD set of all 42 of his recordings[152] and two brief fragments, one of Johnson practicing a guitar figure and the other of Johnson saying, presumably to engineer Don Law, “I wanna go on with our next one myself.”[152] Reviewers commented that the sound quality of the 2011 release was a substantial improvement on the 1990 release.

Awards and recognition

• 1980 – Blues Hall of Fame: performer
• 1986 – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: early influence
• 1990 – Spin magazine: first in its list of “35 Guitar Gods” on the 52nd anniversary of his death
• 1991 – Grammy Award: best historical album (The Complete Recordings)
• 1991 – Blues Music Award: reissue album (The Complete Recordings)
• 1994 – U.S. Postal Service: commemorative stamp
• 1995 – Rock and Roll Hall of Fame “500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll”: “Sweet Home Chicago“, “Cross Road Blues“, “Hellhound on My Trail“, “Love in Vain“
• 1998 – Grammy Hall of Fame: “Cross Road Blues”
• 2000 – Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame: Blues pioneer
• 2003 – National Recording Registry: The Complete Recordings
• 2003 – Rolling Stone‘s David Fricke: fifth on his list of “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”
• 2006 – Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award: performer
• 2008 – Marker No. 29 on the Mississippi Blues Trail at his birthplace in Hazlehurst; also, at his presumed gravesite in Greenwood
• 2010 – Gibson.com: ninth on its list of “Top 50 Guitarists of All Time”
• 2014 – Grammy Hall of Fame: “Sweet Home Chicago
• 2015 – Rolling Stone No. 71 on its list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” (down from No. 5 on its 2003 list chosen by David Fricke)

Free Pdf Download Of O My Father Piano Sheet Music By Andrew Hawryluk

“O My Father” (originally “My Father in Heaven”, also “Invocation, or The Eternal Father and Mother”) is a Latter-day Saint hymn written by Eliza R. Snow, who felt inspired to write the lyrics after Joseph Smith had taught her the principle of heavenly parents. The hymn is significant in terms of Mormon theology in that it is one of the few direct references to a “Heavenly Mother” in materials published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.After discussing pre-mortal existence and a sense of belonging to “a more exalted sphere” in heaven, stanza three reasons that if there is an eternal Father there must also be an eternal Mother:I had learned to call thee Father, Through thy Spirit from on high,But until the key of knowledge Was restored, I knew not why.In the heavens are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare!Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there.Snow wrote “O My Father” as a poem under the title “My Father in Heaven” in October 1845 in Nauvoo, Illinois. The Times and Seasons first published the words on 15 November 1845, more than a year after Joseph Smith, Jr. was killed. The poetry was later set to the music of another Christian hymn, “My Redeemer” by James McGranahan, and included in Latter-day Saint hymnals, including the current one. When a collection of Snow’s poems were published in 1856, this work was placed first in the double-volume set and entitled “Invocation, or The Eternal Father and Mother”.

Free Pdf Download Of The First Noel Piano Sheet Music By Amy Webb

“The First Noel” (also written “The First Noël” and “The First Nowell”) is a traditional classical English carol, most likely from the 18th century, although possibly earlier. The word Noel comes from the French word Noël meaning Christmas, from the Latin word natalis which translates as birthday”.In its current form, it is of Cornish origin, and it was first published in Carols Ancient and Modern (1823) and Gilbert and Sandys Carols (1833), both of which were edited by William Sandys and arranged, edited and with extra lyrics written by Davies Gilbert for Hymns and Carols of God. Today, it is usually performed in a four-part hymn arrangement by the English composer John Stainer, first published in his Carols, New and Old in 1871. Variations of its theme are included in Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s Carol Symphony.The melody is unusual among English folk melodies in that it consists of one musical phrase repeated twice, followed by a refrain which is a variation on that phrase. All three phrases end on the third of the scale. It is thought to be a version of an earlier melody sung in a church gallery setting “The First O Well”; a conjectural reconstruction of this earlier version can be found in the New Oxford Book of Carols.

Faith of our Fathers is an English Catholic hymn, written in 1849 by Frederick William Faber in memory of the Catholic martyrs from the time of the establishment of the Church of England by Henry VIII. Faber wrote two versions of the hymn: with seven stanzas for Ireland and with four for England. The Irish version was sung at hurling matches until the 1960s.In England and Ireland it is usually sung to the traditional tune Sawston; in the U.S. the tune St Catherine by Henri Hemy is more commonly used.

Henry MacGregor “Harry” Woods (November 4, 1896 – January 14, 1970) was a Tin Pan Alley songwriter and pianist, he was a composer of numerous film scores.

[toc]

Early life

Woods was born in North Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Despite the fact that he was born with a deformed left hand (which still had fingers[citation needed]), Woods’ mother, a concert singer, encouraged him to play the piano.

Woods earned his bachelor’s degree at Harvard University, supporting himself by singing in church choirs and giving piano recitals.

Career

After graduation, he settled in Cape Cod and began life as a farmer. Woods was drafted into the army during World War I, and that is when he began cultivating his talent for songwriting. After his discharge, Woods settled in New York City and began his career as a songwriter.

Woods’s first songwriting success came in 1923 with the song “I’m Goin’ South”, written with Abner Silver. It became a hit song in 1924 for Al Jolson. The same year, “Paddlin’ Madelin Home” was published, with words and music by Woods.

By 1926, Woods was an established songwriter on Tin Pan Alley and would become legendary with his new song “When the Red, Red Robin (Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along)”. The song was an instant hit for singers such as “Whispering” Jack Smith and Cliff Edwards. It was Al Jolson, though, who had the most success with his recording of the song. The song was recorded in 1953 by Doris Day and again achieved considerable success on the charts.

In 1929, Woods began contributing songs to Hollywood musicals such as The Vagabond Lover, A Lady’s Morals, Artistic Temper, Aunt Sally, Twentieth Century, Road House, Limelight, It’s Love Again, Merry Go Round of 1938, and She’s For Me. In 1934, he moved to London, where he lived for three years and worked for the British film studio Gaumont British, contributing to the films Jack Ahoy and Evergreen.

While Woods usually wrote both words and music for his songs, he also collaborated with Mort Dixon, Al Sherman, Howard Johnson, Arthur Freed, Rube Bloom and Gus Kahn. Alone, or with his collaborators, he wrote “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover”, “I’m Goin’ South”, “The Clouds Will Soon Roll By”, “Just a Butterfly that’s Caught in the Rain”, “Side by Side”, “My Old Man”, “A Little Kiss Each Morning”, “Heigh-Ho, Everybody, Heigh-Ho”, “Man From the South”, “River Stay ‘way from My Door”, “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain”, “We Just Couldn’t Say Goodbye”, “Just an Echo in the Valley”, “A Little Street Where Old Friends Meet”, “You Ought to See Sally on Sunday”, “Hustlin’ and Bustlin’ for Baby”, “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”, “Try a Little Tenderness”, “I’ll Never Say ‘Never Again’ Again”, “Over My Shoulder”, “Tinkle Tinkle Tinkle”, “When You’ve Got a Little Springtime in Your Heart”, “Midnight, the Stars and You”, and “I Nearly Let Love Go Slipping Through My Fingers”.

Personal life and demise

He and his wife Barbara had three sons: Ralph, John and David. Woods was known for his temper and his drinking.

Around 1945, Woods retired. He and his wife relocated to Phoenix, Arizona.  He died the night of January 14, 1970, after being struck by a car outside his house.

Selected filmography

Wayne Kirkpatrick (born c. 1961) is an American songwriter and musician born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana but now lives in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated from Baton Rouge Magnet High School in 1979. His younger brother is American screenwriter and director Karey Kirkpatrick.

Kirkpatrick has spent most of his career in the background, often providing background vocals, playing guitar, playing keyboards or writing songs for other artists. Writing in Contemporary Christian, Country, and Pop styles, his songs have been recorded by Little Big Town, Faith Hill, Garth Brooks, Babyface, Amy Grant, Joe Cocker, Kathy Mattea, Martina McBride, Wynonna Judd, Trisha Yearwood, Bonnie Raitt, Susan Ashton, Michael W. Smith, Jill Phillips, Michael Crawford, Peter Frampton, Casting Crowns and Eric Clapton, whose version of Kirkpatrick’s “Change the World” won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

At the 24th GMA Dove Awards, Kirkpatrick received the award for Producer of the Year.

In 2005, Kirkpatrick started to produce Little Big Town alongside the group starting with their second album The Road to Here and also the next 2 A Place to Land & The Reason Why. He also co-wrote most of the songs on all 3 albums with the group.

Also in 2005, The Road to Here came out for Little Big Town. Kirkpatrick has writing credit on 12 of the 13 songs. He has solo writing credits on one song, “Looking for the Reason”, with the rest written with him and part/all of the group or with other songwriters. He co-wrote with group members on their highest charting song “Bring It On Home”, which made it to No. 4 on Hot Country 100 songs chart. Kirkpatrick also wrote Little Big Town’s ‘signature’ song, “Boondocks”, which they use as the closing song at every show.

In 2007, Little Big Town and Kirkpatrick went back into the studio to make a new record, A Place to Land. He co-wrote 12 of the 16 tracks on the Deluxe Edition, including the first song that Little Big Town sang together called “Love Profound”.

In 2010, the newest record from Little Big Town, The Reason Why, was released which Kirkpatrick co-produced. The record debuted at No. 1, a first for Little Big Town. He co-wrote 7 of the 12 songs with the group, including the hit “Little White Church”.

Kirkpatrick has said that Karen Fairchild, Jimi Westbrook, Kimberly Schlapman and Philip Sweet have made him feel like the 5th member of the band.

In 2000, Kirkpatrick released a solo project entitled The Maple Room that included “Wrapped Up in You”, a song that would later become a hit for Garth Brooks, and “My Armageddon”, which was originally slated for Brooks’ Garth Brooks in … The Life of Chris Gaines project. Kirkpatrick served as a primary songwriter on that album, along with Gordon Kennedy and Tommy Sims.

Later in 2000, he teamed up with Kennedy and several other songwriters (Phil Madeira and Billy Sprague) to record Coming From Somewhere Else, which was a CD of their own music that had previously been recorded by other artists, including “Change the World”.

Around 2010, Wayne and his brother Karey began working on the musical Something Rotten!.[1] In 2015, they were nominated for a Tony Award for Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre[2] (along with many other awards), while Karey was also nominated for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical with British author John O’Farrell.

James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

Taylor achieved his breakthrough in 1970 with the No. 3 single “Fire and Rain” and had his first No. 1 hit in 1971 with his recording of “You’ve Got a Friend”, written by Carole King in the same year. His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million US copies. Following his 1977 album, JT he has retained a large audience over the decades. Every album that he released from 1977 to 2007 sold over 1 million copies. He enjoyed a resurgence in chart performance during the late 1990s and 2000s, when he recorded some of his most-awarded work (including Hourglass, October Road, and Covers). He achieved his first number-one album in the US in 2015 with his recording Before This World.

He is known for his covers, such as “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)” and “Handy Man”, as well as originals such as “Sweet Baby James”.

Early years

James Vernon Taylor was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where his father, Isaac M. Taylor, worked as a resident physician. His father came from a wealthy family from the South. Aside from having ancestry in Scotland, part of Taylor’s roots are deep in Massachusetts Bay Colony and include Edmund Rice, one of the founders of Sudbury, Massachusetts. His mother, the former Gertrude Woodard (1921–2015), studied singing with Marie Sundelius at the New England Conservatory of Music and was an aspiring opera singer before the couple’s marriage in 1946. James was the second of five children, the others being Alex (1947–1993), Kate (born 1949), Livingston (born 1950), and Hugh (born 1952).

In 1951, his family moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina[10] when Isaac took a job as an a*sistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. They built a house in the Morgan Creek area off the present Morgan Creek Road, which was sparsely populated. James would later say, “Chapel Hill, the Piedmont, the outlying hills, were tranquil, rural, beautiful, but quiet. Thinking of the red soil, the seasons, the way things smelled down there, I feel as though my experience of coming of age there was more a matter of landscape and climate than people.” James attended a public primary school in Chapel Hill. Isaac’s career prospered, but he was frequently away from home on military service at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, or as part of Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica in 1955 and 1956. Isaac Taylor later rose to become dean of the UNC School of Medicine from 1964 to 1971. Beginning in 1953, the Taylors spent summers on Martha’s Vineyard.

James took cello lessons as a child in North Carolina, before learning the guitar in 1960. His guitar style evolved, influenced by hymns, carols, and the music of Woody Guthrie, and his technique derived from his bass clef-oriented cello training and from experimenting on his sister Kate’s keyboards: “My style was a finger-picking style that was meant to be like a piano, as if my thumb were my left hand, and my first, second, and third fingers were my right hand.” Spending summer holidays with his family on Martha’s Vineyard, he met Danny Kortchmar, an aspiring teenage guitarist from Larchmont, New York. The two began listening to and playing blues and folk music together, and Kortchmar felt that Taylor’s singing had a “natural sense of phrasing, every syllable beautifully in time. I knew James had that thing.”[19] Taylor wrote his first song on guitar at 14, and he continued to learn the instrument effortlessly. By the summer of 1963, he and Kortchmar were playing coffeehouses around the Vineyard, billed as “Jamie & Kootch”.

James went to Milton Academy, a preparatory boarding school in Massachusetts in 1961. He faltered during his junior year, feeling uneasy in the high-pressure college prep environment despite having a good scholastic performance. The Milton headmaster would later say, “James was more sensitive and less goal-oriented than most students of his day.” He returned home to North Carolina to finish out the semester at Chapel Hill High School.  There he joined a band formed by his brother Alex called The Corsayers (later The Fabulous Corsairs), playing electric guitar; in 1964, they cut a single in Raleigh that featured James’s song “Cha Cha Blues” on the B-side. Having lost touch with his former school friends in North Carolina, Taylor returned to Milton for his senior year, where he started applying to colleges to complete his education. But he felt part of a “life that [he was] unable to lead”, and he became depressed; he slept 20 hours each day, and his grades collapsed. n late 1965 he committed himself to McLean, a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, where he was treated with chlorpromazine, and where the organized days began to give him a sense of time and structure. As the Vietnam War escalated, Taylor received a psychological rejection from Selective Service System when he appeared before them with two white-suited McLean a*sistants and was uncommunicative. Taylor earned a high school diploma in 1966 from the hospital’s a*sociated Arlington School. He would later view his nine-month stay at McLean as “a lifesaver… like a pardon or like a reprieve,” and both his brother Livingston and sister Kate would later be patients and students there as well. As for his mental health struggles, Taylor would think of them as innate and say: “It’s an inseparable part of my personality that I have these feelings.”

Career

1966–1969: Early career

At Kortchmar’s urging, Taylor checked himself out of McLean and moved to New York City to form a band. They recruited Joel O’Brien, formerly of Kortchmar’s old band King Bees to play drums, and Taylor’s childhood friend Zachary Wiesner (son of noted academic Jerome Wiesner) to play bass. After Taylor rejected the notion of naming the group after him, they called themselves the Flying Machine. They played songs that Taylor had written at and about McLean, such as “Knocking ‘Round the Zoo”, “Don’t Talk Now”, and “The Blues Is Just a Bad Dream”. In some other songs, Taylor romanticized his life, but he was plagued by self-doubt. By summer 1966, they were performing regularly at the high-visibility Night Owl Cafe in Greenwich Village, alongside acts such as the Turtles and Lothar and the Hand People.

Taylor a*sociated with a motley group of people and began using heroin, to Kortchmar’s dismay, and wrote the “Paint It Black”–influenced “Rainy Day Man” to depict his drug experience. In a late 1966 hasty recording session, the group cut a single, Taylor’s “Night Owl”, backed with his “Brighten Your Night with My Day”. Released on Jay Gee Records, a subsidiary of Jubilee Records, it received some radio airplay in the Northeast, but only charted at No. 102 nationally. Other songs had been recorded during the same session, but Jubilee declined to go forward with an album. After a series of poorly-chosen appearances outside New York, culminating with a three-week stay at a failing nightspot in Freeport, Bahamas for which they were never paid, the Flying Machine broke up. (A UK band with the same name emerged in 1969 with the hit song “Smile a Little Smile for Me”. The New York band’s recordings were later released in 1971 as James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine.)

Taylor would later say of this New York period, “I learned a lot about music and too much about drugs.” Indeed, his drug use had developed into full-blown heroin addiction during the final Flying Machine period: “I just fell into it, since it was as easy to get high in the Village as get a drink.” He hung out in Washington Square Park, playing guitar to ward off depression and then passing out, letting runaways and criminals stay at his apartment. Finally out of money and abandoned by his manager, he made a desperate call one night to his father. Isaac Taylor flew to New York and staged a rescue, renting a car and driving all night back to North Carolina with James and his possessions. Taylor spent six months getting treatment and making a tentative recovery; he also required a throat operation to fix vocal cords damaged from singing too harshly.

Taylor decided to try being a solo act with a change of scenery. In late 1967, funded by a small family inheritance, he moved to London, living in various areas: Notting Hill, Belgravia, and Chelsea. After recording some demos in Soho, his friend Kortchmar gave him his next big break. Kortchmar used his a*sociation with the King Bees (who once opened for Peter and Gordon), to connect Taylor to Peter Asher. Asher was A&R head for the Beatles’ newly formed label Apple Records. Taylor gave a demo tape of songs, including “Something in the Way She Moves”, to Asher, who then played the demo for Beatles Paul McCartney and George Harrison. McCartney remembers his first impression: “I just heard his voice and his guitar and I thought he was great … and he came and played live, so it was just like, ‘Wow, he’s great.’” Taylor became the first non-British act signed to Apple, and he credits Asher for “opening the door” to his singing career. Taylor said of Asher, who later became his manager, “I knew from the first time that we met that he was the right person to steer my career. He had this determination in his eye that I had never seen in anybody before.” Living chaotically in various places with various women, Taylor wrote additional material, including “Carolina in My Mind”, and rehearsed with a new backing band. Taylor recorded what would become his first album from July to October 1968, at Trident Studios, at the same time the Beatles were recording The White Album. McCartney and an uncredited George Harrison guested on “Carolina in My Mind”, whose lyric “holy host of others standing around me” referred to the Beatles, and the title phrase of Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves” provided the lyrical starting point for Harrison’s classic “Something”.[ McCartney and Asher brought in arranger Richard Anthony Hewson to add both orchestrations to several of the songs and unusual “link” passages between them; they would receive a mixed reception, at best.

During the recording sessions, Taylor fell back into his drug habit by using heroin and methedrine. He underwent physeptone treatment in a British program, returned to New York and was hospitalized there, and then finally committed himself to the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which emphasized cultural and historical factors in trying to treat difficult psychiatric disorders. Meanwhile, Apple released his debut album, James Taylor, in December 1968 in the UK and February 1969 in the US. Critical reception was generally positive, including a complimentary review in Rolling Stone by Jon Landau, who said that “this album is the coolest breath of fresh air I’ve inhaled in a good long while. It knocks me out.” The record’s commercial potential suffered from Taylor’s inability to promote it because of his hospitalization, and it sold poorly; “Carolina in My Mind” was released as a single but failed to chart in the UK and only reached No. 118 on the U.S. charts.

In July 1969, Taylor headlined a six-night stand at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. On July 20, he performed at the Newport Folk Festival as the last act and was cheered by thousands of fans who stayed in the rain to hear him. Shortly thereafter, he broke both hands and both feet in a motorcycle accident on Martha’s Vineyard and was forced to stop playing for several months. However, while recovering, he continued to write songs and in October 1969 signed a new deal with Warner Bros. Records.

1970–1972: Fame and commercial succes

Once he had recovered, Taylor moved to California, keeping Asher as his manager and record producer. In December 1969, he held the recording sessions for his second album there. Titled Sweet Baby James, and featuring the participation of Carole King, the album was released in February 1970 and was Taylor’s critical and popular triumph, buoyed by the single “Fire and Rain”, a song about both Taylor’s experiences attempting to break his drug habit by undergoing treatment in psychiatric institutions and the suicide of his friend, Suzanne Schnerr. Both the album and the single reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts, with Sweet Baby James selling more than 1.5 million copies in its first year[22] and eventually more than 3 million in the United States alone. Sweet Baby James was received at its time as a folk-rock masterpiece, an album that effectively showcased Taylor’s talents to the mainstream public, marking a direction he would take in following years. It earned several Grammy Award nominations including one for Album of the Year. It went on to be listed at No. 103 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003, with “Fire and Rain” listed as No. 227 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004.

During the time that Sweet Baby James was released, Taylor appeared with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys in a Monte Hellman film, Two-Lane Blacktop. In October 1970, he performed with Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, and the Canadian band Chilliwack at a Vancouver benefit concert that funded Greenpeace’s protests of 1971 nuclear weapons tests by the US Atomic Energy Commission at Amchitka, Alaska; this performance was released in album format in 2009 as Amchitka, The 1970 Concert That Launched Greenpeace. In January 1971, sessions for Taylor’s next album began.

He appeared on The Johnny Cash Show, singing “Sweet Baby James”, “Fire and Rain”, and “Country Road”, on February 17, 1971. His career success at this point and appeal to female fans of various ages piqued tremendous interest in him, prompting a March 1, 1971, Time magazine cover story of him as “the face of new rock”. It compared his strong-but-brooding persona to that of Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff and to The Sorrows of Young Werther, and said, “Taylor’s use of elemental imagery—darkness and sunlight, references to roads traveled and untraveled, to fears spoken and left unsaid—reaches a level both of intimacy and controlled emotion rarely achieved in purely pop music.” One of the writers described his look as “a cowboy Jesus”, to which Taylor later replied, “I thought I was trying to look like George Harrison.” Released in April, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon also gained critical acclaim and contained Taylor’s biggest hit single in the US, a version of Carole King’s new “You’ve Got a Friend” (featuring backing vocals by Joni Mitchell), which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late July. The follow-up single, “Long Ago and Far Away”, also made the Top 40 and reached No. 4 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. The album itself reached No. 2 on the album charts, which would be Taylor’s highest position ever until the release of his 2015 album, Before This World, which went to No. 1 superseding Taylor Swift.

In early 1972, Taylor won his first Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, for “You’ve Got a Friend”; King also won Song of the Year for the same song in that ceremony. The album went on to sell 2.5 million copies in the United States.

November 1972 heralded the release of Taylor’s fourth album, One Man Dog. A concept album primarily recorded in his home recording studio, it featured a cameo by Linda Ronstadt along with Carole King, Carly Simon, and John McLaughlin. The album consisted of eighteen short pieces of music put together. Reception was generally lukewarm and, despite making the Top 10 of the Billboard Album Charts, its overall sales were disappointing. The lead single, “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight”, peaked at No. 14 on the Hot 100, and the follow-up, “One Man Parade”, barely reached the Top 75. Almost simultaneously, Taylor married fellow singer-songwriter Carly Simon on November 3, in a small ceremony at her Murray Hill, Manhattan apartment. A post-concert party following a Taylor performance at Radio City Music Hall turned into a large-scale wedding party, and the Simon-Taylor marriage would find much public attention over the following years. They had two children, Sarah Maria “Sally” Taylor, born January 7, 1974, and Benjamin Simon “Ben” Taylor, born January 22, 1977. During their marriage, the couple would guest on each other’s albums and have two hit singles as duet partners: a cover of Inez & Charlie Foxx’s “Mockingbird” and a cover of The Everly Brothers’ “Devoted to You”.

1973–1976: Career ups and downs

Taylor spent most of 1973 enjoying his new life as a married man and did not return to the recording studio until January 1974, when sessions for his fifth album began. Walking Man was released in June and featured appearances of Paul and Linda McCartney and guitarist David Spinozza. The album was a critical and commercial disaster and was his first album to miss the Top 5 since his contract with Warner. It received poor reviews and sold only 300,000 copies in the United States. The title track failed to appear on the Top 100.

However, James Taylor’s artistic fortunes spiked again in 1975 when the Gold album Gorilla reached No. 6 and provided one of his biggest hit singles, a cover version of Marvin Gaye’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)”, featuring wife Carly on backing vocals and reached No. 5 in America and No. 1 in Canada. On the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, the track also reached the top, and the follow-up single, the feelgood “Mexico”, featuring a guest appearance by Crosby & Nash, also reached the Top 5 of that list. A well-received album, Gorilla showcased Taylor’s electric, lighter side that was evident on Walking Man. However, it was arguably a more consistent and fresher-sounding Taylor, with classics such as “Mexico”, “Wandering” and “Angry Blues”. It also featured a song about his daughter Sally, “Sarah Maria”.

Gorilla was followed in 1976 by In the Pocket, Taylor’s last studio album to be released under Warner Bros. Records. The album found him with many colleagues and friends, including Art Garfunkel, David Crosby, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Wonder (who co-wrote a song with Taylor and contributed a harmonica solo). A melodic album, it was highlighted with the single “Shower the People”, an enduring classic that hit No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart and almost hit the Top 20 of the Pop Charts. However, the album was not well received, reaching No. 16 and being criticized, particularly by Rolling Stone. Still, In The Pocket went on to be certified gold.

With the close of Taylor’s contract with Warner, in November, the label released Greatest Hits, the album that comprised most of his best work between 1970 and 1976. With time, it became his best-selling album ever. It was certified 11× Platinum in the US, earned a Diamond certification by the RIAA, and eventually sold close to 20 million copies worldwide.

1977–1981: Move to Columbia and continued success

In 1977 Taylor signed with Columbia Records. Between March and April, he quickly recorded his first album for the label. JT, released that June, gave Taylor his best reviews since Sweet Baby James, earning a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year in 1978. Peter Herbst of Rolling Stone was particularly favorable to the album, of which he wrote in its August 11, 1977 issue, “JT is the least stiff and by far the most various album Taylor has done. That’s not meant to criticize Taylor’s earlier efforts. … But it’s nice to hear him sounding so healthy.” JT reached No. 4 on the Billboard charts and sold more than 3 million copies in the United States alone. The album’s Triple Platinum status ties it with Sweet Baby James as Taylor’s all-time biggest selling studio album. It was propelled by the successful cover of Jimmy Jones’s and Otis Blackwell’s “Handy Man”, which hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart and reached No. 4 on the Hot 100, earning Taylor another Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his cover version. The song also topped the Canadian charts. The success of the album propelled the release of two further singles; the up-tempo pop “Your Smiling Face”, an enduring live favorite, reached the American Top 20; however, “Honey Don’t Leave L.A.”, which Danny Kortchmar wrote and composed for Taylor, did not enjoy much success, reaching only No. 61.

Back in the forefront of popular music, Taylor guested with Paul Simon on Art Garfunkel’s recording of a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World”, which reached the Top 20 in the U.S. and topped the AC charts in early 1978. After briefly working on Broadway, he took a one-year break, reappearing in the summer of 1979, with the cover-studded Platinum album titled Flag, featuring a Top 30 version of Gerry Goffin’s and Carole King’s “Up on the Roof”. (Two selections from Flag, “Millworker” and “Brother Trucker” were featured on the PBS production of the Broadway musical based on Studs Terkel’s non-fiction book Working, which Terkel himself hosted. Taylor himself appeared in that production as a trucker; he performed “Brother Trucker” in character.) Taylor also appeared on the No Nukes concert in Madison Square Garden, where he made a memorable live performance of “Mockingbird” with his wife Carly. The concert appeared on both the No Nukes album and film.

On December 7, 1980, Taylor had an encounter with Mark David Chapman who would a*sassinate John Lennon just one day later. Taylor told the BBC in 2010: “The guy had sort of pinned me to the wall and was glistening with maniacal sweat and talking some freak speak about what he was going to do and his stuff with how John was interested, and he was going to get in touch with John Lennon. And it was surreal to actually have contact with the guy 24 hours before he shot John.” The next night, Taylor, who lived in a building next-door to Lennon heard the a*sassination occur. Taylor commented: “I heard him shoot—five, just as quick as you could pull the trigger, about five explosions.”

In March 1981, Taylor released the album Dad Loves His Work whose themes concerned his relationship with his father, the course his ancestors had taken, and the effect that he and Simon had on each other. The album was another Platinum success, reaching No. 10 and providing Taylor’s final real hit single in a duet with J. D. Souther, “Her Town Too”, which reached No. 5 on the Adult Contemporary chart and No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100.

1981–1996: Troubled times and new beginnings

Simon announced her separation from Taylor in September 1981 saying, “Our needs are different; it seem impossible to stay together” and their divorce finalized in 1983. Their breakup was highly publicized. At the time, Taylor was living on West End Avenue in Manhattan and on a methadone maintenance program to cure him of his drug addiction.  Over the course of four months starting in September 1983, spurred on in part by the deaths of his friends John Belushi and Dennis Wilson and in part by the desire to be a better father to his children Sally and Ben, he discontinued methadone and overcame his heroin habit.

Taylor had thoughts of retiring by the time he played the Rock in Rio festival in Rio de Janeiro in January 1985. He was encouraged by the nascent democracy in Brazil at the time, buoyed by the positive reception he got from the large crowd and other musicians, and musically energized by the sounds and nature of Brazilian music. “I had … sort of bottomed-out in a drug habit, my marriage with Carly had dissolved, and I had basically been depressed and lost for a while”, he recalled in 1995:

I sort of hit a low spot. I was asked to go down to Rio de Janeiro to play in this festival down there. We put the band together and went down and it was just an amazing response. I played to 300,000 people. They not only knew my music, they knew things about it and were interested in aspects of it that to that point had only interested me. To have that kind of validation right about then was really what I needed. It helped get me back on track.

The song “Only a Dream in Rio” was written in tribute to that night, with lines like I was there that very day and my heart came back alive. The October 1985 album, That’s Why I’m Here, from which that song came, started a series of studio recordings that, while spaced further apart than his previous records, showed a more consistent level of quality and fewer covers, most notably the Buddy Holly song “Everyday”, released as a single reached No. 61. On the album track “Only One”, the backing vocals were performed by an all star duo of Joni Mitchell and Don Henley.

Taylor’s next albums were partially successful; in 1988, he released Never Die Young, highlighted with the charting title track, and in 1991, the platinum New Moon Shine provided Taylor some popular songs with the melancholic “Copperline” and the upbeat “(I’ve Got to) Stop Thinkin’ About That”, both hit singles on Adult Contemporary radio. In the late 1980s, he began touring regularly, especially on the summer amphitheater circuit. His later concerts feature songs spanning his career and are marked by the musicianship of his band and backup singers. The 1993 two-disc Live album captures this, with a highlight being Arnold McCuller’s descants in the codas of “Shower the People” and “I Will Follow”. He provided a guest voice to The Simpsons episode “Deep Space Homer”, and also appeared later on in the series when the family put together a jigsaw puzzle with his face as the missing final piece. In 1995, Taylor performed the role of the Lord in Randy Newman’s Faust.

1997–present: Comeback

In 1997, after six years since his last studio album, Taylor released Hourglass, an introspective album that gave him the best critical reviews in almost twenty years. The album had much of its focus on Taylor’s troubled past and family. “Jump Up Behind Me” paid tribute to his father’s rescue of him after The Flying Machine days, and the long drive from New York City back to his home in Chapel Hill. “Enough To Be on Your Way” was inspired by the alcoholism-related death of his brother Alex earlier in the decade. The themes were also inspired by Taylor and Walker’s divorce, which took place in 1996. Rolling Stone Magazine found that “one of the themes of this record is disbelief”, while Taylor told the magazine that it was “spirituals for agnostics”. Critics embraced the dark themes on the album, and Hourglass was a commercial success, reaching No. 9 on the Billboard 200 (Taylor’s first Top 10 album in sixteen years) and also provided a big adult contemporary hit on “Little More Time With You”. The album also gave Taylor his first Grammy since JT, when he was honored with Best Pop Album in 1998.

Flanked by two greatest hit releases, Taylor’s Platinum-certified October Road appeared in 2002 to a receptive audience. It featured a number of quiet instrumental accompaniments and passages. Overall, it found Taylor in a more peaceful frame of mind; rather than facing a crisis now, Taylor said in an interview that “I thought I’d passed the midpoint of my life when I was 17.” The album appeared in two versions, a single-disc version and a “limited edition” two-disc version which contained three extra songs including a duet with Mark Knopfler, “Sailing to Philadelphia”, which also appeared on Knopfler’s album by the same name. Also in 2002, Taylor teamed with bluegrass musician Alison Krauss in singing “The Boxer” at the Kennedy Center Honors Tribute to Paul Simon. They later recorded the Louvin Brothers duet, “How’s the World Treating You?” In 2004, after he chose not to renew his record contract with Columbia/Sony, he released James Taylor: A Christmas Album with distribution through Hallmark Cards.

Always visibly active in environmental and liberal causes, in October 2004, Taylor joined the Vote for Change tour playing a series of concerts in American swing states. These concerts were organized by MoveOn.org with the goal of mobilizing people to vote for John Kerry and against George W. Bush in that year’s presidential campaign. Taylor’s appearances were joint performances with the Dixie Chicks.

Taylor performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Game 2 of the World Series in Boston on October 24, 2004, on October 25, 2007, both the anthem and “America” for the game on October 24, 2013, and Game 1 on October 23, 2018. He also performed at Game 1 of the 2008 NBA Finals in Boston on June 5, 2008, and at the NHL’s Winter Classic game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Boston Bruins.

In December 2004, he appeared as himself in an episode of The West Wing entitled “A Change Is Gonna Come”. He sang Sam Cooke’s classic “A Change Is Gonna Come” at an event honoring an artist played by Taylor’s wife Caroline. Later on, he appeared on CMT’s Crossroads alongside the Dixie Chicks. In early 2006, MusiCares honored Taylor with performances of his songs by an array of notable musicians. Before a performance by the Dixie Chicks, lead singer Natalie Maines acknowledged that he had always been one of their musical heroes and had, for them, lived up to their once-imagined reputation of him.[64] They performed his song, “Shower the People”, with a surprise appearance by Arnold McCuller, who has sung backing vocals on Taylor’s live tours and albums for many years.

In the fall of 2006, Taylor released a repackaged and slightly different version of his Hallmark Christmas album, now entitled James Taylor at Christmas, and distributed by Columbia/Sony. In 2006, Taylor performed Randy Newman’s song “Our Town” for the Disney animated film Cars. The song was nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for the Best Original Song. On January 1, 2007, Taylor headlined the inaugural concert at the Times Union Center in Albany, New York honoring newly sworn in Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer.

Taylor’s next album, One Man Band was released on CD and DVD in November 2007 on Starbucks’ Hear Music Label, where he joined with Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell. The introspective album grew out of a three-year tour of the United States and Europe called the One Man Band Tour, featuring some of Taylor’s most beloved songs and anecdotes about their creative origins—accompanied solely by the “one man band” of his longtime pianist/keyboardist, Larry Goldings. The digital discrete 5.1 surround sound mix of One Man Band won a TEC Award for best surround sound recording in 2008.

On November 28–30, 2007, Taylor accompanied by his original band and Carole King, headlined a series of six shows at the Troubadour. The appearances marked the 50th anniversary of the venue, where Taylor, King and many others, such as Tom Waits, Neil Diamond, and Elton John, performed early in their music careers. Proceeds from the concert went to benefit the Natural Resources Defense Council, MusiCares, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, a member of America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s Food Bank Network. Parts of the performance shown on CBS Sunday Morning in the December 23, 2007, broadcast showed Taylor alluding to his early drug problems by saying, “I played here a number of times in the 70s, allegedly”. Taylor has used versions of this joke on other occasions, and it appears as part of his One Man Band DVD and tour performances.

In December 2007, James Taylor at Christmas was nominated for a Grammy Award. In January 2008, Taylor recorded approximately 20 songs by others for a new album with a band including Luis Conte, Michael Landau, Lou Marini, Arnold McCuller, Jimmy Johnson, David Lasley, Walt Fowler, Andrea Zonn, Kate Markowitz, Steve Gadd and Larry Goldings. The resulting live-in-studio album, named Covers, was released in September 2008. The album forays into country and soul while being the latest proof that Taylor is a more versatile singer than his best known hits might suggest. The Covers sessions stretched to include “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”, from the musical Oklahoma!, a song that his grandmother had caught him singing over and over at the top of his lungs when he was seven years old. Meanwhile, in summer 2008, Taylor and this band toured 34 North American cities with a tour entitled James Taylor and His Band of Legends. An additional album, called Other Covers, came out in April 2009, containing songs that were recorded during the same sessions as the original Covers but had not been put out to the full public yet.

During October 19–21, 2008, Taylor performed a series of free concerts in five North Carolina cities in support of Barack Obama’s presidential bid.  On Sunday, January 18, 2009, he performed at the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, singing “Shower the People” with John Legend and Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland.  On May 29, 2009, Taylor performed on the final episode of the original 17-year run of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

On September 8, 2009, Taylor made an appearance at the 24th-season premiere block party of The Oprah Winfrey Show on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue.

Taylor appeared briefly in the 2009 movie Funny People, where he played “Carolina in My Mind” for a MySpace corporate event as the opening act for the main character.

On January 1, 2010, Taylor sang the American national anthem at the NHL Winter Classic at Fenway Park, while Daniel Powter sang the Canadian national anthem.

On March 7, 2010, Taylor sang the Beatles’ “In My Life” in tribute to deceased artists at the 82nd Academy Awards.

In March 2010, he commenced the Troubadour Reunion Tour with Carole King and members of his original band, including Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar, and Danny Kortchmar. They played shows in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and North America with the final night being at the Honda Center, in Anaheim, California. The tour was a major commercial success and in some locations found Taylor playing arenas instead of his usual theaters or amphitheaters. Ticket sales amounted to over 700,000 and the tour grossed over $59 million. It was one of the most successful tours of the year.

He appeared in 2011 in the ABC comedy Mr. Sunshine as the ex-husband of the character played by Allison Janney, and he performs a duet of sorts on Leon Russell’s 1970 classic “A Song for You”.

On September 11, 2011, Taylor performed “You Can Close Your Eyes” in New York City at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

On November 22, 2011, Taylor performed “Fire and Rain” with Taylor Swift who was named after him,  at the last concert of her Speak Now World Tour in Madison Square Garden. They also sang Swift’s song, “Fifteen”. Then, on July 2, 2012 Swift appeared as Taylor’s special guest in a concert at Tanglewood.

He was active in support of Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and opened the 2012 Democratic National Convention singing three songs. He performed “America the Beautiful” at the President’s second inauguration.

He appeared on the final of Star Académie, the Quebec version of American Idol, on April 13, 2009.

On April 24, 2013, Taylor performed at the memorial service for slain MIT police officer Sean Collier who was killed by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the men responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing. Taylor was accompanied by the MIT Symphony Orchestra and three MIT a cappella groups while performing his songs “The Water is Wide” and “Shower the People”.

On September 6 and 7, 2013, he performed with the Utah Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the Thirtieth Anniversary O.C. Tanner Gift of Music Gala Concert at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. He called the choir “a national treasure” In addition to the symphony and choir he was backed by some of his touring band pianist Charles Floyd, bassist Jimmy Johnson and percussionist Nick Halley.

After a 45-year wait, James earned his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart with Before This World. The album which was released on June 16 through Concord Records, arrived on top the chart of July 4, 2015, more than 45 years after Taylor arrived on the list with Sweet Baby James (on the March 14, 1970 list). The album launched atop the Billboard 200 with 97,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending June 21, 2015 according to Nielsen Music. Of its start, pure album sales were 96,000 copies sold, Taylor’s best debut week for an album since 2002’s October Road.

Taylor cancelled his 2016 concert in Manila as a protest to the extrajudicial killings of suspects in the Philippine Drug War.

Taylor’s album American Standard was released on February 28, 2020. American Standard debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, making Taylor the first act to earn a top 10 album in each of the last six decades. In May 2020, James Taylor and Jackson Browne cancelled their 2020 tour dates due to the COVID-19 crisis, and rescheduled them to 2021. On November 24, 2020, the album was nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album”.

Family and personal life

Taylor’s four siblings (Alex, Livingston, Hugh, and Kate) have also been musicians with recorded albums. Livingston is still an active musician; Kate was active in the 1970s but did not record another album until 2003; Hugh operates a bed-and-breakfast with his wife, The Outermost Inn in Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard; and Alex died in 1993 on James’s birthday.

Taylor and Carly Simon were married in November 1972. His children with Simon, Sally and Ben, are also musicians. After Taylor and Simon divorced in 1983, he married actress Kathryn Walker on December 14, 1985, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. She had helped him get off heroin, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1996.

On February 18, 2001, at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Boston, Taylor wed for the third time marrying Caroline (“Kim”) Smedvig, the director of public relations and marketing for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. They had begun dating in 1995 when they met as he appeared with John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Part of their relationship was worked into the album October Road, on the songs “On The 4th Of July” and “Caroline I See You”.[90] Following the birth of their twin boys, Rufus and Henry in April 2001, Taylor moved with his family to Lenox, Massachusetts.

Awards and recognition

Grammy Awards

• 1972: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, “You’ve Got a Friend“
• 1977: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, “Handy Man”
• 1998: Best Pop Album, Hourglass
• 2001: Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight”
• 2003: Best Country Collaboration With Vocals, “How’s the World Treating You” with Alison Krauss
• 2006: Grammy Award-sponsored MusiCares Person of the Year. At a black tie ceremony held in Los Angeles, musicians from several eras paid tribute to Taylor by performing his songs, often prefacing them with remarks on his influence on their decisions to become musicians. Artists include Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Taj Mahal, Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Sheryl Crow, India.Arie, the Dixie Chicks, Jerry Douglas, Alison Krauss, and Keith Urban. Paul Simon performed as well, although he was not included in the televised program; Taylor’s brother Livingston appeared on stage as a “backup singer” for the finale, along with Taylor’s twin boys, Rufus and Henry.

Other recognition

• 1995: Honorary doctorate of music from the Berklee College of Music, Boston, 1995.
• 2000: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2000.
• 2000: Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, 2000.
• 2003: The Chapel Hill Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina opened a permanent exhibit dedicated to Taylor. At the same occasion the US-15-501 highway bridge over Morgan Creek, near the site of the Taylor family home and mentioned in Taylor’s song “Copperline”, was named in honor of Taylor.
• 2004: George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, UCLA Spring Sing.
• 2004: Ranked 84th in Rolling Stone’s list of “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”.
• 2009: Honorary Doctorate of Music from Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
• 2009: Inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.
• 2010: Inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame
• 2012: Received the Montréal Jazz Spirit Award
• 2012: Named “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the Ministry of Culture & Communication of France.
• 2014: Emmy Award for The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Presents an Evening with James Taylor
• 2015: Presidential Medal of Freedom
• 2016: Kennedy Center Honors

Les Misérables (/leɪ ˌmɪzəˈrɑːbəl, –blə/, French: [le mizeʁabl(ə)]) is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century.

In the English-speaking world, the novel is usually referred to by its original French title. However, several alternatives have been used, including The Miserables, The Wretched, The Miserable Ones, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, The Victims and The Dispossessed. Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, particularly the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption.

Examining the nature of law and grace, the novel elaborates upon the history of France, the architecture and urban design of Paris, politics, moral philosophy, antimonarchism, justice, religion, and the types and nature of romantic and familial love. Les Misérables has been popularized through numerous adaptations for film, television and the stage, including a musical.

Novel form

Upton Sinclair described the novel as “one of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world”, and remarked that Hugo set forth the purpose of Les Misérables in the Preface:

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.

Towards the end of the novel, Hugo explains the work’s overarching structure:

The book which the reader has before him at this moment is, from one end to the other, in its entirety and details … a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. The starting point: matter, destination: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end.

The novel contains various subplots, but the main thread is the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean, who becomes a force for good in the world but cannot escape his criminal past. The novel is divided into five volumes, each volume divided into several books, and subdivided into chapters, for a total of 48 books and 365 chapters. Each chapter is relatively short, commonly no longer than a few pages.

The novel as a whole is one of the longest ever written, with 655,478 words in the original French. Hugo explained his ambitions for the novel to his Italian publisher:

I don’t know whether it will be read by everyone, but it is meant for everyone. It addresses England as well as Spain, Italy as well as France, Germany as well as Ireland, the republics that harbour slaves as well as empires that have serfs. Social problems go beyond frontiers. Humankind’s wounds, those huge sores that litter the world, do not stop at the blue and red lines drawn on maps. Wherever men go in ignorance or despair, wherever women sell themselves for bread, wherever children lack a book to learn from or a warm hearth, Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: “open up, I am here for you”.

Digressions

More than a quarter of the novel—by one count 955 of 2,783 pages—is devoted to essays that argue a moral point or display Hugo’s encyclopedic knowledge but do not advance the plot, nor even a subplot, a method Hugo used in such other works as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Toilers of the Sea. One biographer noted that “the digressions of genius are easily pardoned”. The topics Hugo addresses include cloistered religious orders, the construction of the Paris sewers, argot, and the street urchins of Paris. The one about convents he titles “Parenthesis” to alert the reader to its irrelevance to the story line.

Hugo devotes another 19 chapters (Volume II, Book I) to an account of—and a meditation on the place in history of—the Battle of Waterloo, the battlefield which Hugo visited in 1861 and where he finished writing the novel. It opens volume 2 with such a change of subject as to seem the beginning of an entirely different work. The fact that this ‘digression’ occupies such a large part of the text demands that it be read in the context of the ‘overarching structure’ discussed above. Hugo draws his own personal conclusions, taking Waterloo to be a pivot-point in history, but definitely not a victory for the forces of reaction.

Waterloo, by cutting short the demolition of European thrones by the sword, had no other effect than to cause the revolutionary work to be continued in another direction. The slashers have finished; it was the turn of the thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to arrest has pursued its march. That sinister victory was vanquished by liberty.

One critic has called this “the spiritual gateway” to the novel, as its chance encounter of Thénardier and Colonel Pontmercy foreshadows so many of the novel’s encounters “blending chance and necessity”, a “confrontation of heroism and villainy”.

Even when not turning to other subjects outside his narrative, Hugo sometimes interrupts the straightforward recitation of events, his voice and control of the story line unconstrained by time and sequence. The novel opens with a statement about the bishop of Digne in 1815 and immediately shifts: “Although these details in no way essentially concern that which we have to tell…” Only after 14 chapters does Hugo pick up the opening thread again, “In the early days of the month of October, 1815…”, to introduce Jean Valjean.

Hugo’s sources

An incident Hugo witnessed in 1829 involved three strangers and a police officer. One of the strangers was a man who had stolen a loaf of bread, similar to Jean Valjean. The officer was taking him to the coach. The thief also saw the mother and daughter playing with each other which would be an inspiration for Fantine and Cosette. Hugo imagined the life of the man in jail and the mother and daughter taken away from each other.

Valjean’s character is loosely based on the life of the ex-convict Eugène François Vidocq. Vidocq became the head of an undercover police unit and later founded France’s first private detective agency. He was also a businessman and was widely noted for his social engagement and philanthropy. Vidocq also inspired Hugo’s “Claude Gueux” and Le Dernier jour d’un condamné (The Last Day of a Condemned Man).

In 1828, Vidocq, already pardoned, saved one of the workers in his paper factory by lifting a heavy cart on his shoulders as Valjean does. Hugo’s description of Valjean rescuing a sailor on the Orion drew almost word for word on a Baron La Roncière’s letter describing such an incident. Hugo used Bienvenu de Miollis (1753–1843), the Bishop of Digne during the time in which Valjean encounters Myriel, as the model for Myriel.

Hugo had used the departure of prisoners from the Bagne of Toulon in one of his early stories, Le Dernier Jour d’un Condamné. He went to Toulon to visit the Bagne in 1839 and took extensive notes, though he did not start writing the book until 1845. On one of the pages of his notes about the prison, he wrote in large block letters a possible name for his hero: “JEAN TRÉJEAN”. When the book was finally written, Tréjean became Valjean.

In 1841, Hugo saved a prostitute from arrest for a*sault. He used a short part of his dialogue with the police when recounting Valjean’s rescue of Fantine in the novel. On 22 February 1846, when he had begun work on the novel, Hugo witnessed the arrest of a bread thief while a duchess and her child watched the scene pitilessly from their coach. He spent several vacations in Montreuil-sur-Mer.

During the 1832 revolt, Hugo walked the streets of Paris, saw the barricades blocking his way at points, and had to take shelter from gunfire. He participated more directly in the 1848 Paris insurrection, helping to smash barricades and suppress both the popular revolt and its monarchist allies.

Victor Hugo drew his inspiration from everything he heard and saw, writing it down in his diary. In December 1846, he witnessed an altercation between an old woman scavenging through rubbish and a street urchin who might have been Gavroche. He also informed himself by personal inspection of the Paris Conciergerie in 1846 and Waterloo in 1861, by gathering information on some industries, and on working-class people’s wages and living standards. He asked his mistresses, Léonie d’Aunet and Juliette Drouet, to tell him about life in convents. He also slipped personal anecdotes into the plot. For instance Marius and Cosette’s wedding night (Part V, Book 6, Chapter 1) takes place on 16 February 1833, which is also the date when Hugo and his lifelong mistress Juliette Drouet made love for the first time.

Plot

Volume I: Fantine

The story begins in 1815 in Digne, as the peasant Jean Valjean, just released from 19 years’ imprisonment in the Bagne of Toulon—five for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family and fourteen more for numerous escape attempts—is turned away by innkeepers because his yellow passport marks him as a former convict. He sleeps on the street, angry and bitter.

Digne’s benevolent Bishop Myriel gives him shelter. At night, Valjean runs off with Myriel’s silverware. When the police capture Valjean, Myriel pretends that he has given the silverware to Valjean and presses him to take two silver candlesticks as well, as if he had forgotten to take them. The police accept his explanation and leave. Myriel tells Valjean that his life has been spared for God, and that he should use money from the silver candlesticks to make an honest man of himself.

Valjean broods over Myriel’s words. When opportunity presents itself, purely out of habit, he steals a 40-sous coin from 12-year-old Petit Gervais and chases the boy away. He quickly repents and searches the city in panic for Gervais. At the same time, his theft is reported to the authorities. Valjean hides as they search for him, because if apprehended he will be returned to the galleys for life as a repeat offender.

Six years pass and Valjean, using the alias Monsieur Madeleine, has become a wealthy factory owner and is appointed mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Walking down the street, he sees a man named Fauchelevent pinned under the wheels of a cart. When no one volunteers to lift the cart, even for pay, he decides to rescue Fauchelevent himself. He crawls underneath the cart, manages to lift it, and frees him. The town’s police inspector, Inspector Javert, who was an adjutant guard at the Bagne of Toulon during Valjean’s incarceration, becomes suspicious of the mayor after witnessing this remarkable feat of strength. He has known only one other man, a convict named Jean Valjean, who could accomplish it.

Years earlier in Paris, a grisette named Fantine was very much in love with Félix Tholomyès. His friends, Listolier, Fameuil, and Blachevelle were also paired with Fantine’s friends Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favourite. The men abandon the women, treating their relationships as youthful amusements. Fantine must draw on her own resources to care for her and Tholomyès’ daughter, Cosette. When Fantine arrives at Montfermeil, she leaves Cosette in the care of the Thénardiers, a corrupt innkeeper and his selfish, cruel wife.

Fantine is unaware that they are abusing her daughter and using her as forced labor for their inn, and continues to try to meet their growing, extortionate and fictitious demands. She is later fired from her job at Jean Valjean’s factory, because of the discovery of her daughter, who was born out of wedlock. Meanwhile, the Thénardiers’ monetary demands continue to grow. In desperation, Fantine sells her hair and two front teeth, and she resorts to prostitution to pay the Thénardiers. Fantine is slowly dying from an unspecified disease.

A dandy named Bamatabois harasses Fantine in the street, and she reacts by striking him. Javert arrests Fantine. She begs to be released so that she can provide for her daughter, but Javert sentences her to six months in prison. Valjean (Mayor Madeleine) intervenes and orders Javert to release her. Javert resists but Valjean prevails. Valjean, feeling responsible because his factory turned her away, promises Fantine that he will bring Cosette to her. He takes her to a hospital.

Javert comes to see Valjean again. Javert admits that after being forced to free Fantine, he reported him as Valjean to the French authorities. He tells Valjean he realizes he was wrong, because the authorities have identified someone else as the real Jean Valjean, have him in custody, and plan to try him the next day. Valjean is torn, but decides to reveal himself to save the innocent man, whose real name is Champmathieu. He travels to attend the trial and there reveals his true identity. Valjean returns to Montreuil to see Fantine, followed by Javert, who confronts him in her hospital room.

After Javert grabs Valjean, Valjean asks for three days to bring Cosette to Fantine, but Javert refuses. Fantine discovers that Cosette is not at the hospital and fretfully asks where she is. Javert orders her to be quiet, and then reveals to her Valjean’s real identity. Weakened by the severity of her illness, she falls back in shock and dies. Valjean goes to Fantine, speaks to her in an inaudible whisper, kisses her hand, and then leaves with Javert. Later, Fantine’s body is unceremoniously thrown into a public grave.

Volume II: Cosette

Valjean escapes, is recaptured, and is sentenced to death. The king commutes his sentence to penal servitude for life. While imprisoned in the Bagne of Toulon, Valjean, at great personal risk, rescues a sailor caught in the ship’s rigging. Spectators call for his release. Valjean fakes his own death by allowing himself to fall into the ocean. Authorities report him dead and his body lost.

Valjean arrives at Montfermeil on Christmas Eve. He finds Cosette fetching water in the woods alone and walks with her to the inn. He orders a meal and observes how the Thénardiers abuse her, while pampering their own daughters Éponine and Azelma, who mistreat Cosette for playing with their doll. Valjean leaves and returns to make Cosette a present of an expensive new doll which, after some hesitation, she happily accepts. Éponine and Azelma are envious. Madame Thénardier is furious with Valjean, while her husband makes light of Valjean’s behaviour, caring only that he pay for his food and lodging.

The next morning, Valjean informs the Thénardiers that he wants to take Cosette with him. Madame Thénardier immediately accepts, while Thénardier pretends to love Cosette and be concerned for her welfare, reluctant to give her up. Valjean pays the Thénardiers 1,500 francs, and he and Cosette leave the inn. Thénardier, hoping to swindle more out of Valjean, runs after them, holding the 1,500 francs, and tells Valjean he wants Cosette back. He informs Valjean that he cannot release Cosette without a note from the child’s mother. Valjean hands Thénardier Fantine’s letter authorizing the bearer to take Cosette. Thénardier then demands that Valjean pay a thousand crowns, but Valjean and Cosette leave. Thénardier regrets that he did not bring his gun and turns back toward home.

Valjean and Cosette flee to Paris. Valjean rents new lodgings at Gorbeau House, where he and Cosette live happily. However, Javert discovers Valjean’s lodgings there a few months later. Valjean takes Cosette and they try to escape from Javert. They soon find shelter in the Petit-Picpus convent with the help of Fauchelevent, the man whom Valjean once rescued from being crushed under a cart and who has become the convent’s gardener. Valjean also becomes a gardener and Cosette becomes a student at the convent school.

Volume III: Marius

Eight years later, the Friends of the ABC, led by Enjolras, are preparing an act of anti-Orléanist civil unrest (i.e. the Paris uprising on 5–6 June 1832, following the death of General Lamarque, the only French leader who had sympathy towards the working class. Lamarque was a victim of a major cholera epidemic that had ravaged the city, particularly its poor neighborhoods, arousing suspicion that the government had been poisoning wells). The Friends of the ABC are joined by the poor of the Cour des miracles, including the Thénardiers’ eldest son Gavroche, who is a street urchin.

One of the students, Marius Pontmercy, has become alienated from his family (especially his royalist grandfather M. Gillenormand) because of his Bonapartism views. After the death of his father, Colonel Georges Pontmercy, Marius discovers a note from him instructing his son to provide help to a sergeant named Thénardier who saved his life at Waterloo—in reality Thénardier was looting corpses and only saved Pontmercy’s life by accident; he had called himself a sergeant under Napoleon to avoid exposing himself as a robber.

At the Luxembourg Garden, Marius falls in love with the now grown and beautiful Cosette. The Thénardiers have also moved to Paris and now live in poverty after losing their inn. They live under the surname “Jondrette” at Gorbeau House (coincidentally, the same building Valjean and Cosette briefly lived in after leaving the Thénardiers’ inn). Marius lives there as well, next door to the Thénardiers.

Éponine, now ragged and emaciated, visits Marius at his apartment to beg for money. To impress him, she tries to prove her literacy by reading aloud from a book and by writing “The Cops Are Here” on a sheet of paper. Marius pities her and gives her some money. After Éponine leaves, Marius observes the “Jondrettes” in their apartment through a crack in the wall. Éponine comes in and announces that a philanthropist and his daughter are arriving to visit them. In order to look poorer, Thénardier puts out the fire and breaks a chair. He also orders Azelma to punch out a window pane, which she does, resulting in cutting her hand (as Thénardier had hoped).

The philanthropist and his daughter enter—actually Valjean and Cosette. Marius immediately recognizes Cosette. After seeing them, Valjean promises them he will return with rent money for them. After he and Cosette leave, Marius asks Éponine to retrieve her address for him. Éponine, who is in love with Marius herself, reluctantly agrees to do so. The Thénardiers have also recognized Valjean and Cosette, and vow their revenge. Thénardier enlists the aid of the Patron-Minette, a well-known and feared gang of murderers and robbers.

Marius overhears Thénardier’s plan and goes to Javert to report the crime. Javert gives Marius two pistols and instructs him to fire one into the air if things get dangerous. Marius returns home and waits for Javert and the police to arrive. Thénardier sends Éponine and Azelma outside to look out for the police. When Valjean returns with rent money, Thénardier, with Patron-Minette, ambushes him and he reveals his real identity to Valjean. Marius recognizes Thénardier as the man who saved his father’s life at Waterloo and is caught in a dilemma.

He tries to find a way to save Valjean while not betraying Thénardier. Valjean denies knowing Thénardier and tells him that they have never met. Valjean tries to escape through a window but is subdued and tied up. Thénardier orders Valjean to pay him 200,000 francs. He also orders Valjean to write a letter to Cosette to return to the apartment, and they would keep her with them until he delivers the money. After Valjean writes the letter and informs Thénardier of his address, Thénardier sends out Mme. Thénardier to get Cosette. Mme. Thénardier comes back alone, and announces the address is a fake.

It is during this time that Valjean manages to free himself. Thénardier decides to kill Valjean. While he and Patron-Minette are about to do so, Marius remembers the scrap of paper that Éponine wrote on earlier. He throws it into the Thénardiers’ apartment through the wall crack. Thénardier reads it and thinks Éponine threw it inside. He, Mme. Thénardier and Patron-Minette try to escape, only to be stopped by Javert.

He arrests all the Thénardiers and Patron-Minette (except Claquesous, who escapes during his transportation to prison, and Montparnasse, who stops to run off with Éponine instead of joining in on the robbery). Valjean manages to escape the scene before Javert sees him.

Volume IV: The Idyll in the Rue Plumet and the Epic in the Rue St. Denis

After Éponine’s release from prison, she finds Marius at “The Field of the Lark” and sadly tells him that she found Cosette’s address. She leads him to Valjean’s and Cosette’s house on Rue Plumet, and Marius watches the house for a few days. He and Cosette then finally meet and declare their love for one another. Thénardier, Patron-Minette and Brujon manage to escape from prison with the aid of Gavroche (a rare case of Gavroche helping his family in their criminal activities). One night, during one of Marius’s visits with Cosette, the six men attempt to raid Valjean’s and Cosette’s house. However, Éponine, who has been sitting by the gates of the house, threatens to scream and awaken the whole neighbourhood if the thieves do not leave. Hearing this, they reluctantly retire. Meanwhile, Cosette informs Marius that she and Valjean will be leaving for England in a week’s time, which greatly troubles the pair.

The next day, Valjean is sitting in the Champ de Mars. He is feeling troubled about seeing Thénardier in the neighbourhood several times. Unexpectedly, a note lands in his lap, which says “Move Out.” He sees a figure running away in the dim light. He goes back to his house, tells Cosette they will be staying at their other house on Rue de l’Homme Arme, and reconfirms to her that they will be moving to England. Marius tries to get permission from M. Gillenormand to marry Cosette. His grandfather seems stern and angry, but has been longing for Marius’s return. When tempers flare, he refuses his a*sent to the marriage, telling Marius to make Cosette his mistress instead. Insulted, Marius leaves.

The following day, the students revolt and erect barricades in the narrow streets of Paris. Gavroche spots Javert and informs Enjolras that Javert is a spy. When Enjolras confronts him about this, he admits his identity and his orders to spy on the students. Enjolras and the other students tie him up to a pole in the Corinth restaurant. Later that evening, Marius goes back to Valjean’s and Cosette’s house on Rue Plumet, but finds the house no longer occupied. He then hears a voice telling him that his friends are waiting for him at the barricade. Distraught to find Cosette gone, he heeds the voice and goes.

When Marius arrives at the barricade, the revolution has already started. When he stoops down to pick up a powder keg, a soldier comes up to shoot Marius. However, a man covers the muzzle of the soldier’s gun with his hand. The soldier fires, fatally wounding the man, while missing Marius. Meanwhile, the soldiers are closing in. Marius climbs to the top of the barricade, holding a torch in one hand, a powder keg in the other, and threatens to the soldiers that he will blow up the barricade. After confirming this, the soldiers retreat from the barricade.

Marius decides to go to the smaller barricade, which he finds empty. As he turns back, the man who took the fatal shot for Marius earlier calls Marius by his name. Marius discovers this man is Éponine, dressed in men’s clothes. As she lies dying on his knees, she confesses that she was the one who told him to go to the barricade, hoping they would die together. She also confesses to saving his life because she wanted to die before he did.

The author also states to the reader that Éponine anonymously threw the note to Valjean. Éponine then tells Marius that she has a letter for him. She also confesses to have obtained the letter the day before, originally not planning to give it to him, but decides to do so in fear he would be angry at her about it in the afterlife. After Marius takes the letter, Éponine then asks him to kiss her on the forehead when she is dead, which he promises to do. With her last breath, she confesses that she was “a little bit in love” with him, and dies.

Marius fulfills her request and goes into a tavern to read the letter. It is written by Cosette. He learns Cosette’s whereabouts and he writes a farewell letter to her. He sends Gavroche to deliver it to her, but Gavroche leaves it with Valjean. Valjean, learning that Cosette’s lover is fighting, is at first relieved, but an hour later, he puts on a National Guard uniform, arms himself with a gun and ammunition, and leaves his home.

Volume V: Jean Valjean

Valjean arrives at the barricade and immediately saves a man’s life. He is still not certain if he wants to protect Marius or kill him. Marius recognizes Valjean at first sight. Enjolras announces that they are almost out of cartridges. When Gavroche goes outside the barricade to collect more ammunition from the dead National Guardsmen, he is shot dead.

Valjean volunteers to execute Javert himself, and Enjolras grants permission. Valjean takes Javert out of sight, and then shoots into the air while letting him go. Marius mistakenly believes that Valjean has killed Javert. As the barricade falls, Valjean carries off the injured and unconscious Marius. All the other students are killed. Valjean escapes through the sewers, carrying Marius’s body. He evades a police patrol, and reaches an exit gate but finds it locked. Thénardier emerges from the darkness. Valjean recognizes Thénardier, but Thénardier does not recognize Valjean. Thinking Valjean a murderer lugging his victim’s corpse, Thénardier offers to open the gate for money. As he searches Valjean and Marius’s pockets, he surreptitiously tears off a piece of Marius’s coat so he can later find out his identity. Thénardier takes the thirty francs he finds, opens the gate, and allows Valjean to leave, expecting Valjean’s emergence from the sewer will distract the police who have been pursuing him.

Upon exiting, Valjean encounters Javert and requests time to return Marius to his family before surrendering to him. Surprisingly Javert agrees, a*suming that Marius will be dead within minutes. After leaving Marius at his grandfather’s house, Valjean asks to be allowed a brief visit to his own home, and Javert agrees. There, Javert tells Valjean he will wait for him in the street, but when Valjean scans the street from the landing window he finds Javert has gone. Javert walks down the street, realizing that he is caught between his strict belief in the law and the mercy Valjean has shown him. He feels he can no longer give Valjean up to the authorities but also cannot ignore his duty to the law. Unable to cope with this dilemma, Javert commits suicide by throwing himself into the Seine.

Marius slowly recovers from his injuries. As he and Cosette make wedding preparations, Valjean endows them with a fortune of nearly 600,000 francs. As their wedding party winds through Paris during Mardi Gras festivities, Valjean is spotted by Thénardier, who then orders Azelma to follow him. After the wedding, Valjean confesses to Marius that he is an ex-convict. Marius is horrified, a*sumes the worst about Valjean’s moral character, and contrives to limit Valjean’s time with Cosette. Valjean accedes to Marius’ judgment and his separation from Cosette. Valjean loses the will to live and retires to his bed.

Thénardier approaches Marius in disguise, but Marius recognizes him. Thénardier attempts to blackmail Marius with what he knows of Valjean, but in doing so, he inadvertently corrects Marius’s misconceptions about Valjean and reveals all of the good he has done. He tries to convince Marius that Valjean is actually a murderer, and presents the piece of coat he tore off as evidence. Stunned, Marius recognizes the fabric as part of his own coat and realizes that it was Valjean who rescued him from the barricade. Marius pulls out a fistful of notes and flings it at Thénardier’s face. He then confronts Thénardier with his crimes and offers him an immense sum to depart and never return. Thénardier accepts the offer, and he and Azelma travel to America where he becomes a slave trader.

As they rush to Valjean’s house, Marius tells Cosette that Valjean saved his life at the barricade. They arrive to find Valjean near death and reconcile with him. Valjean tells Cosette her mother’s story and name. He dies content and is buried beneath a blank slab in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Characters

Major

• Jean Valjean (also known as Monsieur Madeleine, Ultime Fauchelevent, Monsieur Leblanc, and Urbain Fabre) – The protagonist of the novel. Convicted for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s seven starving children and sent to prison for five years, he is paroled from prison nineteen years later (after four unsuccessful escape attempts added twelve years and fighting back during the second escape attempt added two extra years). Rejected by society for being a former convict, he encounters Bishop Myriel, who turns his life around by showing him mercy and encouraging him to become a new man. While sitting and pondering what Bishop Myriel had said, he puts his shoe on a forty-sou piece dropped by a young wanderer. Valjean threatens the boy with his stick when the boy attempts to rouse Valjean from his reverie and recover his money. He tells a passing priest his name, and the name of the boy, and this allows the police to charge him with armed robbery – a sentence that, if he were caught again, would return him to prison for life. He a*sumes a new identity (Monsieur Madeleine) in order to pursue an honest life. He introduces new manufacturing techniques and eventually builds two factories and becomes one of the richest men in the area. By popular acclaim, he is made mayor. He confronts Javert over Fantine’s punishment, turns himself in to the police to save another man from prison for life, and rescues Cosette from the Thénardiers. Discovered by Javert in Paris because of his generosity to the poor, he evades capture for the next several years in a convent. He saves Marius from imprisonment and probable death at the barricade, reveals his true identity to Marius and Cosette after their wedding, and is reunited with them just before his death, having kept his promise to the bishop and to Fantine, the image of whom is the last thing he sees before dying.
• Javert – A fanatic police inspector in pursuit to recapture Valjean. Born in the prisons to a convict father and a fortune teller mother, he renounces both of them and starts working as a guard in the prison, including one stint as the overseer for the chain gang of which Valjean is part (and here witnesses firsthand Valjean’s enormous strength and just what he looks like). Eventually he joins the police force in Montreuil-sur-Mer. He arrests Fantine and comes into conflict with Valjean/Madeleine, who orders him to release Fantine. Valjean dismisses Javert in front of his squad and Javert, seeking revenge, reports to the Police Inspector that he has discovered Jean Valjean. He is told that he must be incorrect, as a man mistakenly believed to be Jean Valjean was just arrested. He requests of M. Madeline that he be dismissed in disgrace, for he cannot be less harsh on himself than on others. When the real Jean Valjean turns himself in, Javert is promoted to the Paris police force where he arrests Valjean and sends him back to prison. After Valjean escapes again, Javert attempts one more arrest in vain. He then almost recaptures Valjean at Gorbeau house when he arrests the Thénardiers and Patron-Minette. Later, while working undercover behind the barricade, his identity is discovered. Valjean pretends to execute Javert, but releases him. When Javert next encounters Valjean emerging from the sewers, he allows him to make a brief visit home and then walks off instead of arresting him. Javert cannot reconcile his devotion to the law with his recognition that the lawful course is immoral. After composing a letter to the prefect of police outlining the squalid conditions that occur in prisons and the abuses that prisoners are subjected to, he takes his own life by jumping into the Seine.
• Fantine – A beautiful Parisian grisette abandoned with a small child by her lover Félix Tholomyès. Fantine leaves her daughter Cosette in the care of the Thénardiers, innkeepers in the village of Montfermeil. Mme. Thénardier spoils her own daughters and abuses Cosette. Fantine finds work at Monsieur Madeleine’s factory. Illiterate, she has others write letters to the Thénardiers on her behalf. A female supervisor discovers that she is an unwed mother and dismisses her. To meet the Thénardiers’ repeated demands for money, she sells her hair and two front teeth, and turns to prostitution. She becomes ill. Valjean learns of her plight when Javert arrests her for attacking a man who called her insulting names and threw snow down her back, and sends her to a hospital. As Javert confronts Valjean in her hospital room, because her illness has made her so weak, she dies of shock after Javert reveals that Valjean is a convict and hasn’t brought her daughter Cosette to her (after the doctor encouraged that incorrect belief that Jean Valjean’s recent absence was because he was bringing her daughter to her).
• Cosette (formally Euphrasie, also known as “the Lark”, Mademoiselle Lanoire, Ursula) – The illegitimate daughter of Fantine and Tholomyès. From approximately the age of three to the age of eight, she is beaten and forced to work as a drudge for the Thénardiers. After her mother Fantine dies, Valjean ransoms Cosette from the Thénardiers and cares for her as if she were his daughter. Nuns in a Paris convent educate her. She grows up to become very beautiful. She falls in love with Marius Pontmercy and marries him near the novel’s conclusion.
• Marius Pontmercy – A young law student loosely a*sociated with the Friends of the ABC. He shares the political principles of his father and has a tempestuous relationship with his royalist grandfather, Monsieur Gillenormand. He falls in love with Cosette and fights on the barricades when he believes Valjean has taken her to London. After he and Cosette marry, he recognizes Thénardier as a swindler and pays him to leave France.
• Éponine (the Jondrette girl) – The Thénardiers’ elder daughter. As a child, she is pampered and spoiled by her parents, but ends up a street urchin when she reaches adolescence. She participates in her father’s crimes and begging schemes to obtain money. She is blindly in love with Marius. At Marius’ request, she finds Valjean and Cosette’s house for him and sadly leads him there. She also prevents her father, Patron-Minette, and Brujon from robbing the house during one of Marius’ visits there to see Cosette. After disguising herself as a boy, she manipulates Marius into going to the barricades, hoping that she and Marius will die there together. Wanting to die before Marius, she reaches out her hand to stop a soldier from shooting at him; she is mortally wounded as the bullet goes through her hand and her back. As she is dying, she confesses all this to Marius, and gives him a letter from Cosette. Her final request to Marius is that once she has passed, he will kiss her on the forehead. He fulfills her request not because of romantic feelings on his part, but out of pity for her hard life.
• Monsieur Thénardier and Madame Thénardier (also known as the Jondrettes, M. Fabantou, M. Thénard. Some translations identify her as the Thenardiess) – Husband and wife, parents of five children: two daughters, Éponine and Azelma, and three sons, Gavroche and two unnamed younger sons. As innkeepers, they abuse Cosette as a child and extort payment from Fantine for her support, until Valjean takes Cosette away. They become bankrupt and relocate under the name Jondrette to a house in Paris called the Gorbeau house, living in the room next to Marius. The husband a*sociates with a criminal group called “the Patron-Minette”, and conspires to rob Valjean until he is thwarted by Marius. Javert arrests the couple. The wife dies in prison. Her husband attempts to blackmail Marius with his knowledge of Valjean’s past, but Marius pays him to leave the country and he becomes a slave trader in the United States.
• Enjolras – The leader of Les Amis de l’ABC (Friends of the ABC) in the Paris uprising. He is passionately committed to republican principles and the idea of progress. He and Grantaire are executed by the National Guards after the barricade falls.
• Gavroche – The unloved middle child and eldest son of the Thénardiers. He lives on his own as a street urchin and sleeps inside an elephant statue outside the Bastille. He briefly takes care of his two younger brothers, unaware they are related to him. He takes part in the barricades and is killed while collecting bullets from dead National Guardsmen.
• Bishop Myriel – The Bishop of Digne (full name Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel, also called Monseigneur Bienvenu) – A kindly old priest promoted to bishop after a chance encounter with Napoleon. After Valjean steals some silver from him, he saves Valjean from being arrested and inspires Valjean to change his ways.
• Grantaire – Grantaire (Also known as “R”) was a student revolutionary with little interest in the cause. He reveres Enjolras, and his admiration is the main reason that Grantaire spends time with Les Amis de l’ABC (Friends of the ABC), despite Enjolras’s occasional scorn for him. Grantaire is often drunk and is unconscious for the majority of the June Rebellion. He and Enjolras are executed by the National Guards after the barricade falls.

Friends of the ABC

A revolutionary student club. In French, the letters “ABC” are pronounced identically to the French word abaissés, “the abased”.

• Bahorel – A dandy and an idler from a peasant background, who is known well around the student cafés of Paris.
• Combeferre – A medical student who is described as representing the philosophy of the revolution.
• Courfeyrac – A law student who is described as the centre of the group of Friends. He is honorable and warm and is Marius’ closest companion.
• Enjolras – The leader of the Friends. A resolute and charismatic youth, devoted to progress.
• Feuilly – An orphaned fan maker and passionate Polonophile who taught himself to read and write. He is the only member of the Friends who is not a student.
• Grantaire – A drunk with little interest in revolution. Despite his pessimism, he eventually declares himself a believer in the Republic, and dies alongside Enjolras.
• Jean Prouvaire (also Jehan) – A Romantic with knowledge of Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and an interest in the Middle Ages.
• Joly – A medical student who has unusual theories about health. He is a hypochondriac and is described as the happiest of the Friends.
• Lesgle (also Lègle, Laigle, L’Aigle [The Eagle] or Bossuet) – The oldest member of the group. Considered notoriously unlucky, Lesgle begins balding at the age of twenty-five. It is Lesgle who introduces Marius to the Friends.

Minor

• Azelma – The younger daughter of the Thénardiers. Like her sister Éponine, she is spoiled as a child, impoverished when older. She abets her father’s failed robbery of Valjean. On Marius and Cosette’s wedding day, she tails Valjean on her father’s orders. She travels to America with her father at the end of the novel.
• Bamatabois – An idler who harasses Fantine. Later a juror at Champmathieu’s trial.
• (Mlle) Baptistine Myriel – Bishop Myriel’s sister. She loves and venerates her brother.
• Blachevelle – A wealthy student in Paris originally from Montauban. He is a friend of Félix Tholomyès and becomes romantically involved with Fantine’s friend Favourite.
• Bougon, Madame (called Ma’am Burgon) – Housekeeper of Gorbeau House.
• Brevet – An ex-convict from Toulon who knew Valjean there; released one year after Valjean. In 1823, he is serving time in the prison in Arras for an unknown crime. He is the first to claim that Champmathieu is really Valjean. He used to wear knitted, checkered suspenders.
• Brujon – A robber and criminal. He participates in crimes with M. Thénardier and the Patron-Minette gang (such as the Gorbeau Robbery and the attempted robbery at the Rue Plumet). The author describes Brujon as being “a sprightly young fellow, very cunning and very adroit, with a flurried and plaintive appearance.”
• Champmathieu – A vagabond who is misidentified as Valjean after being caught stealing apples.
• Chenildieu – A lifer from Toulon. He and Valjean were chain mates for five years. He once tried to unsuccessfully remove his lifer’s brand TFP (“travaux forcés à perpetuité”, “forced labour for life”) by putting his shoulder on a chafing dish full of embers. He is described as a small, wiry but energetic man.
• Cochepaille – Another lifer from Toulon. He used to be a shepherd from the Pyrenees who became a smuggler. He is described as stupid and has a tattoo on his arm, 1 Mars 1815.
• Colonel Georges Pontmercy – Marius’s father and an officer in Napoleon’s army. Wounded at Waterloo, Pontmercy erroneously believes M. Thénardier saved his life. He tells Marius of this great debt. He loves Marius and although M. Gillenormand does not allow him to visit, he continually hid behind a pillar in the church on Sunday so that he could at least look at Marius from a distance. Napoleon made him a baron, but the next regime refused to recognize his barony or his status as a colonel, instead referring to him only as a commandant. The book usually calls him “The colonel”.
• Dahlia – A young grisette in Paris and member of Fantine’s group of seamstress friends along with Favourite and Zéphine. She becomes romantically involved with Félix Tholomyès’ friend Listolier.
• Fameuil – A wealthy student in Paris originally from Limoges. He is a friend of Félix Tholomyès and becomes romantically involved with Fantine’s friend Zéphine.
• Fauchelevent – A failed businessman whom Valjean (as M. Madeleine) saves from being crushed under a carriage. Valjean gets him a position as gardener at a Paris convent, where Fauchelevent later provides sanctuary for Valjean and Cosette and allows Valjean to pose as his brother.
• Favourite – A young grisette in Paris and leader of Fantine’s group of seamstress friends (including Zéphine and Dahlia). She is independent and well versed in the ways of the world and had previously been in England. Although she cannot stand Félix Tholomyès’ friend Blachevelle and is in love with someone else, she endures a relationship with him so she can enjoy the perks of courting a wealthy man.
• Listolier – A wealthy student in Paris originally from Cahors. He is a friend of Félix Tholomyès and becomes romantically involved with Fantine’s friend Dahlia.
• Mabeuf – An elderly churchwarden, friend of Colonel Pontmercy, who after the Colonel’s death befriends his son Marius and helps Marius realize his father loved him. Mabeuf loves plants and books, but sells his books and prints in order to pay for a friend’s medical care. When Mabeuf finds a purse in his yard, he takes it to the police. After selling his last book, he joins the students in the insurrection. He is shot dead raising the flag atop the barricade.
• Mademoiselle Gillenormand – Daughter of M. Gillenormand, with whom she lives. Her late half-sister (M. Gillenormand’s daughter from another marriage), was Marius’ mother.
• Madame Magloire – Domestic servant to Bishop Myriel and his sister.
• Magnon – Former servant of M. Gillenormand and friend of the Thénardiers. She had been receiving child support payments from M. Gillenormand for her two illegitimate sons, who she claimed were fathered by him. When her sons died in an epidemic, she had them replaced with the Thénardiers’ two youngest sons so that she could protect her income. The Thénardiers get a portion of the payments. She is incorrectly arrested for involvement in the Gorbeau robbery.
• Monsieur Gillenormand – Marius’ grandfather. A monarchist, he disagrees sharply with Marius on political issues, and they have several arguments. He attempts to keep Marius from being influenced by his father, Colonel Georges Pontmercy. While in perpetual conflict over ideas, he holds his grandson in affection.
• Mother Innocente (a.k.a. Marguerite de Blemeur) – The prioress of the Petit-Picpus convent.
• Patron-Minette – A quartet of bandits who a*sist in the Thénardiers’ ambush of Valjean at Gorbeau House and the attempted robbery at the Rue Plumet. The gang consists of Montparnasse, Claquesous, Babet, and Gueulemer. Claquesous, who escaped from the carriage transporting him to prison after the Gorbeau Robbery, joins the revolution under the guise of “Le Cabuc” and is executed by Enjolras for firing on civilians.
• Petit Gervais – A travelling Savoyard boy who drops a coin. Valjean, still a man of criminal mind, places his foot on the coin and refuses to return it.
• Sister Simplice – A famously truthful nun who cares for Fantine on her sickbed and lies to Javert to protect Valjean.
• Félix Tholomyès – Fantine’s lover and Cosette’s biological father. A wealthy, self-centered student in Paris originally from Toulouse, he eventually abandons Fantine when their daughter is two years old.
• Toussaint – Valjean and Cosette’s servant in Paris. She has a slight stutter.
• Two little boys – The two unnamed youngest sons of the Thénardiers, whom they send to Magnon to replace her two dead sons. Living on the streets, they encounter Gavroche, who is unaware they are his siblings but treats them like they are his brothers. After Gavroche’s death, they retrieve bread tossed by a bourgeois man to geese in a fountain at the Luxembourg Garden.
• Zéphine – A young grisette in Paris and member of Fantine’s group of seamstress friends along with Favourite and Dahlia. She becomes romantically involved with Félix Tholomyès’ friend Fameuil.

The narrator

Hugo does not give the narrator a name and allows the reader to identify the narrator with the novel’s author. The narrator occasionally injects himself into the narrative or reports facts outside the time of the narrative to emphasize that he is recounting historical events, not entirely fiction. He introduces his recounting of Waterloo with several paragraphs describing the narrator’s recent approach to the battlefield: “Last year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person who is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles …” The narrator describes how “[a]n observer, a dreamer, the author of this book” during the 1832 street fighting was caught in crossfire: “All that he had to protect him from the bullets was the swell of the two half columns which separate the shops; he remained in this delicate situation for nearly half an hour.” At one point he apologizes for intruding—”The author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning himself”—to ask the reader’s understanding when he describes “the Paris of his youth … as though it still existed.” This introduces a meditation on memories of past places that his contemporary readers would recognize as a self-portrait written from exile: “you have left a part of your heart, of your blood, of your soul, in those pavements.” He describes another occasion when a bullet shot “pierced a brass shaving-dish suspended … over a hairdresser’s shop. This pierced shaving-dish was still to be seen in 1848, in the Rue du Contrat-Social, at the corner of the pillars of the market.” As evidence of police double agents at the barricades, he writes: “The author of this book had in his hands, in 1848, the special report on this subject made to the Prefect of Police in 1832.”

Contemporary reception

The appearance of the novel was a highly anticipated event as Victor Hugo was considered one of France’s foremost poets in the middle of the nineteenth century. The New York Times announced its forthcoming publication as early as April 1860. Hugo forbade his publishers from summarizing his story and refused to authorize the publication of excerpts in advance of publication. He instructed them to build on his earlier success and suggested this approach: “What Victor H. did for the Gothic world in Notre-Dame of Paris [The Hunchback of Notre Dame], he accomplishes for the modern world in Les Miserables”. A massive advertising campaign preceded the release of the first two volumes of Les Misérables in Brussels on 30 or 31 March and in Paris on 3 April 1862. The remaining volumes appeared on 15 May 1862.

Critical reactions were wide-ranging and often negative. Some critics found the subject matter immoral, others complained of its excessive sentimentality, and others were disquieted by its apparent sympathy with the revolutionaries. L. Gauthier wrote in Le Monde of 17 August 1862: “One cannot read without an unconquerable disgust all the details Monsieur Hugo gives regarding the successful planning of riots.” The Goncourt brothers judged the novel artificial and disappointing. Flaubert found “neither truth nor greatness” in it. He complained that the characters were crude stereotypes who all “speak very well – but all in the same way”. He deemed it an “infantile” effort and brought an end to Hugo’s career like “the fall of a god”. In a newspaper review, Charles Baudelaire praised Hugo’s success in focusing public attention on social problems, though he believed that such propaganda was the opposite of art. In private he castigated it as “repulsive and inept” (“immonde et inepte”). The Catholic Church placed it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

The work was a commercial success and has been a popular book ever since it was published. Translated the same year it appeared into several foreign languages, including Italian, Greek, and Portuguese, it proved popular not only in France, but across Europe and abroad.

English translations

• Charles E. Wilbour. New York: Carleton Publishing Company, June 1862. The first English translation. The first volume was available for purchase in New York beginning 7 June 1862.[39] Also New York and London: George Routledge and Sons, 1879.
• Lascelles Wraxall. London: Hurst and Blackett, October 1862. The first British translation.
• Translator identified as “A.F.” Richmond, Virginia, 1863. Published by West and Johnston publishers. The Editor’s Preface announces its intention of correcting errors in Wilbour’s translation. It said that some passages “exclusively intended for the French readers of the book” were being omitted, as well as “[a] few scattered sentences reflecting on slavery” because “the absence of a few antislavery paragraphs will hardly be complained of by Southern readers.” Because of paper shortages in wartime, the passages omitted became longer with each successive volume.
• Isabel Florence Hapgood. Published 1887, this translation is available at Project Gutenberg.
• Norman Denny. Folio Press, 1976. A modern British translation later re-published in paperback by Penguin Books, ISBN 0-14-044430-0. The translator explains in an introduction that he has placed two of the novel’s longer digressive passages into appendices and made some minor abridgements in the text.
• Lee Fahnestock and Norman McAfee. Signet Classics. 3 March 1987. An unabridged edition based on the Wilbour translation with its language modernized. Paperback ISBN 0-451-52526-4
• Julie Rose. 2007. Vintage Classics, 3 July 2008. A new translation of the full work, with a detailed biographical sketch of Victor Hugo’s life, a chronology, and notes. ISBN 978-0-09-951113-7
• Christine Donougher. Penguin Classics, 7 November 2013. A new translation of the full work, with a detailed biographical sketch of Victor Hugo’s life, a chronology, and notes. ISBN 978-0141393599

Adaptations

Since its original publication, Les Misérables has been the subject of a large number of adaptations in numerous types of media, such as books, films, musicals, plays and games.

Notable examples of these adaptations include:

• The 1934 film, 4½-hour French version directed by Raymond Bernard and starring Harry Baur, Charles Vanel, Florelle, Josseline Gaël and Jean Servais.
• The 1935 film directed by Richard Boleslawski, starring Fredric March and Charles Laughton, nominated for Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Assistant Director at 8th Academy Awards.
• The 1937 radio adaptation by Orson Welles.
• The 1952 film adaptation directed by Lewis Milestone, starring Michael Rennie and Robert Newton.
• The 1958 film adaptation directed by Jean-Paul Le Chanois, with an international cast starring Jean Gabin, Bernard Blier, and Bourvil. Called “the most memorable film version”, it was filmed in East Germany and was overtly political.
• The 1978 television film adaptation, starring Richard Jordan and Anthony Perkins.
• The 1980 musical, by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg.
• The 1982 film adaptation, directed by Robert Hossein, starring Lino Ventura and Michel Bouquet.
• The 1995 film, by Claude Lelouch, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo
• The 1998 film, starring Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush.
• The 2000 TV miniseries, starring Gérard Depardieu and John Malkovich.
• The 2007 TV anime adaptation, by Studio Nippon Animation.
• The 2012 film of the musical, starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway and Amanda Seyfried.
• A 2018 TV miniseries by Andrew Davies, starring Dominic West, David Oyelowo and Lily Collins.

Sequels

• Laura Kalpakian’s Cosette: The Sequel to Les Misérables was published in 1995. It continues the story of Cosette and Marius, but is more a sequel to the musical than to the original novel.
• In 2001, two French novels by François Cérésa [fr] that continue Hugo’s story appeared: Cosette ou le temps des illusions and Marius ou le fugitif. The former has been published in an English translation. Javert appears as a hero who survived his suicide attempt and becomes religious; Thénardier returns from America; Marius is unjustly imprisoned. The works were the subject of an unsuccessful lawsuit, Société Plon et autres v. Pierre Hugo et autres brought by Hugo’s great-great-grandson.

Sidney Thomas “Tommy” Boyce (September 29, 1939 – November 23, 1994) and Bobby Hart (born Robert Luke Harshman; February 18, 1939) were a prolific American duo of singer-songwriters. In addition to three top-40 hits as artists, the duo is well known for its songwriting for The Monkees.

[toc]

Early years

Hart’s father was a church minister and he himself served in the Army after leaving high school. Upon discharge, he travelled to Los Angeles seeking a career as a singer. Boyce was separately pursuing a career as a singer. After being rejected numerous times, Boyce took his father’s suggestion to write a song called “Be My Guest” for rock and roll star Fats Domino. He waited six hours at Domino’s hotel room to present him with the demo, and got Domino to promise to listen to the song. The song hit No. 8 in the US and No. 11 in the UK, becoming Domino’s biggest hit there in several years, and sold over a million copies.  Boyce also found success as the co-writer, with Curtis Lee, of Lee’s 1961 hits “Pretty Little Angel Eyes” and “Under the Moon of Love”.

Boyce met Hart in 1959, and the following year played guitar on Hart’s single “Girl in the Window”, which flopped, but marked the first time he used the name Bobby Hart, since his manager shortened it to fit the label. Their partnership made a breakthrough with a song recorded by Chubby Checker, “Lazy Elsie Molly”, in 1964. They went on to write hits for Jay & the Americans (“Come a Little Bit Closer”), Paul Revere and the Raiders (“(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone”), and The Leaves (“Words”). The latter two songs provided the Monkees with hit B-sides in 1967. The duo also wrote the theme song of the daytime soap Days of Our Lives. At one point in this period, Hart also co-wrote “Hurt So Bad” for Little Anthony & the Imperials with Teddy Randazzo and his regular songwriting partner, Bobby Weinstein. Boyce co-wrote the song “Hello Pretty Girl”, which was a minor hit for singer Ronnie Dove, with Wes Farrell.

The Monkees

In late 1965, they wrote, produced and performed the soundtrack of the pilot for The Monkees, including singing lead vocals (which were later replaced, once the show was cast). In 1966, despite some conflicts with Don Kirshner, who was the show’s musical supervisor, they were retained in essentially the same role. It was Boyce and Hart who wrote, produced and recorded, accompanied by their backing band, the Candy Store Prophets, backing tracks for a large portion of the first season of The Monkees, and the band’s accompanying debut album.

The Monkees themselves re-recorded their vocals over Boyce and Hart’s when it came time to release the songs, including both “(Theme from) The Monkees” and “Last Train to Clarksville”, the latter being a huge hit. Kirshner suddenly relieved Boyce and Hart as producers, by claiming they were using studio time booked for Monkees songs to record tracks for their own solo project.

After their departure from the Monkees, and the negative publicity that erupted when word got out that the band hadn’t played the instruments on their early records, Boyce and Hart were unsure how the Monkees felt about them personally. Attending one of their concerts, though, the duo were spotted in the audience, and singer Davy Jones invited them onstage to introduce them: “These are the fellows who wrote our great hits — Tommy and Bobby!” Every original Monkees album (except for the Head soundtrack and 1996’s Justus) included Boyce and Hart songs.

Other successes

While working with The Monkees, Boyce and Hart embarked on a successful career as recording artists in their own right, releasing three albums on A&M Records: Test Patterns, I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight, and It’s All Happening on the Inside (released in Canada as Which One’s Boyce and Which One’s Hart?). The duo also had five charting singles; the most well-known of these was “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight”, which reached No. 8 in early 1968. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[4] “Out & About” (#39) and “Alice Long” (#27) were their other Top 40 hits. The duo also performed “I’ll Blow You a Kiss in the Wind” on the television show Bewitched in one of several TV series appearances that included guest spots on The Flying Nun and I Dream of Jeannie (“Jeannie the Hip Hippie”), and all of these shows were produced by Screen Gems, the television subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. In each of the three sitcom guest appearances, their music was featured including two covers (unreleased) they did on The Flying Nun.

Boyce and Hart had filmed video promos for their songs “Out and About” and “Alice Long”.

Boyce and Hart were involved in producing music for Columbia Pictures’ motion pictures during the mid-late 1960s, including two Matt Helm movies (The Ambushers and Murderer’s Row), Winter A-Go-Go and Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows. They also provided the music score for a TV movie called Three’s a Crowd starring Larry Hagman and Jessica Walter. Boyce and Hart did promos for the U.S. Army Reserve and Coca-Cola. This included the creation of two Coca-Cola commercial jingles, one being a powerful psychedelic song, “Wake Up Girl”, while the other was their single “Smilin’” with totally different lyrics.

In 1971 a sitcom named Getting Together appeared on ABC-TV, starring Bobby Sherman and Wes Stern as two struggling songwriters, who were friends of The Partridge Family (and were introduced on their show in the last episode of the show’s first season). The series was reportedly based loosely on Boyce and Hart’s partnership. At this point, they decided to work on various solo projects.

Dolenz, Jones, Boyce, and Hart

In the mid-1970s, Boyce and Hart reunited with Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz, performing the songs Boyce and Hart had written for The Monkees a decade before. Legally prohibited from using the Monkees name, they called themselves Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. The group toured amusement parks and other venues throughout America, Japan and other locations from July 4, 1975, to early 1977, also becoming the first American band to play in Thailand. Signed to Capitol Records by Al Coury, the group released an album of new material in 1976. (A live album was also recorded in Japan, but was not released in the United States until the mid-1990s.) The tours coincided with the syndication of the Monkees TV series, and helped boost sales of Arista’s The Monkees Greatest Hits.

Dolenz, Jones, Boyce and Hart also starred in their own TV special called The Great Golden Hits of the Monkees Show, which appeared in syndication. It featured a medley of other Boyce and Hart songs, as well as the songs they had produced for the Monkees. It did not include any songs from their new album.

Later years

Boyce released an album under the pseudonym Christopher Cloud in 1973. He produced several hit records UK rock n roll revival group Darts including, “Daddy Cool/The Girl Can’t Help It”, “Come Back My Love” and “It’s Raining”. In 1979, he formed his own band, called The Tommy Band, and toured the UK as support for Andrew Matheson (ex-Hollywood Brats). The tour was largely ignored by the public, especially in Middlesbrough where reportedly just one person paid to watch the show. Boyce and Hart reunited during the 1980s resurgence of the Monkees, and performed live.

During that same year, The First Bobby Hart Solo Album was released in Europe on WEA. The group included: Bobby Hart on keyboard and vocals, Victor Vanacore on keyboards, Larry Taylor on bass, Vince Megna on guitar, John Hoke on drums, and “Blue Jay” Patton on saxophone. Five years later, in 1983, Hart was nominated for an Oscar for his song “Over You”, written for the film Tender Mercies.

After a stint living in the UK, Boyce returned to live in Memphis, Tennessee, where he taught songwriting on Beale Street, and Nashville, Tennessee, and later suffered a brain aneurysm. On November 23, 1994, Boyce died by suicide, by gunshot.

According to the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, Boyce and Hart wrote more than 300 songs, and sold more than 42 million records as a partnership.

Discography

Albums

• Test Patterns (A&M LP 126 (Mono)/SP 4126 (Stereo), 1967, US 200)
• I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite? (A&M LP 143/SP 4143, 1968, US 109)
• It’s All Happening On The Inside* (A&M SP 4162, 1969)
• Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart (Capitol ST-11513, 1976)
• Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart – Live in Japan (Capitol/Toshiba-EMI ECS-91018, 1981)
• 16 Rarities (SG Records, 1981 – This is a bootleg of B-sides and oddities)
• The Anthology (A&M Records Australia/Polygram 525 193–2, 1995)

Album Notes

• It’s All Happening on the Inside was released in Canada as Which One’s Boyce & Which One’s Hart?

Singles

Singles notes:

• “L.U.V. (Let Us Vote)” was the official campaign song for the Let Us Vote movement to lower the voting age to 18.
• “P.O. Box 9847” and “I Wanna Be Free” were originally released by The Monkees.
• “You and I” (DJB&H) was later re-recorded and released in 1996 by The Monkees.
• “I’ll Blow You A Kiss In The Wind” was featured on the Bewitched episode “Serena Stops the Show”, aired on February 19, 1970, on which Boyce and Hart appeared as themselves. The episode also features Elizabeth Montgomery’s performance (as Serena) of the song.
• “The Ambushers” and “Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows” are Columbia Pictures movie theme titles.

Tommy Boyce Singles:

• Along Came Linda (1962, US 118)
• I’ll Remember Carol (1962, US 80)
• Have You Had A Change of Heart (1962, US MV 146)
• Sunday, the Day Before Monday (1966, US 132)

Bobby Hart Singles:

• Lovers for the Night (1980, US 110)