Friday, October 31, 2014

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST


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Friday, October 31, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist below:


Check out some of my recently archived radio shows at Radio Free America

Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page 

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Thursday, October 30, 2014

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: Songs of the Vanishing Hitchhiker

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
October 31, 2014




“A strange voice drew me to the graveyard. I stood in the dark and watched the shadows wave.”

That line, which opens the final verse of Dickey Lee’s 1965 hit “Laurie (Strange Things Happen),” was one of the first songs to ever truly spook me. When I first heard it at the age of 11, it creeped me out purely because of the tale it told and — what was then — its surprise ending.

Laurie’s story was new to me at the time, but even back in 1965 it wasn't a new story. The plot is a basic variation of what’s known as a “vanishing hitchhiker” tale, a term popularized by folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand in The Vanishing Hitchhiker, his 1981 book of urban legends. The basic tale of regular folks encountering friendly — if sometimes odd or bewildered — characters who turn out to be ghosts has roots that go back centuries and is found in many cultures.

Under different names the spirit of Laurie has haunted many songs. In honor of Halloween, let’s take a look at some of them.

First, there’s "Laurie." In case you weren’t around back in ’65 or if you were in an asylum that didn’t allow radios, the song tells the story of starry-eyed Dickey meeting a girl — an angel of a girl — at a dance. He’s falling in love as he walks her home. But when he asks if he can see her again, Laurie asks for his sweater, saying she’s cold. He obliges. He gets a kiss good night at her door, but as he’s leaving, he remembers his sweater.

This is when it starts to get creepy.

Laurie’s dad answers the door and informs Dickey that he wasn't with Laurie. He assumes the young Romeo is pulling a cruel prank. Laurie died on her birthday, a year ago that day. Dickey follows a strange voice to the cemetery, where he finds his sweater, “lying there upon her grave.”

As Brunvand and other scholars have said, these vanishing-hitchhiker stories are ancient. There are many similarities between “Laurie” and an old British folk song, “The Suffolk Miracle,” a variation of which appeared as early as 1689 in London, though it’s probably much older. (Instead of a sweater on a grave, the 17th-century song ends with a handkerchief on a corpse’s head.)

Back to 1965. Just a couple of months after Lee’s graveyard adventure hit the charts, a bluegrass band called Country Gentlemen released a song about Laurie’s country cousin, Mary — “Bringing Mary Home.”

The singer sees a little girl in the middle of a lonely road on a dark and stormy night. He stops and the girl gets into the back of the car and introduces herself. The narrator drops a big clue: “There was something strange about her. Her face was deathly white.”

He drives her home, but when he gets out to open the door for her (remember, this is a Country Gentleman), the little hitchhiker has vanished. Mary’s mom comes out, and unlike Laurie’s dad, she understands. She patiently explains that her daughter died in a car wreck exactly 13 years ago. “Thank you for your trouble, the kindness you have shown, you’re the 13th one that’s been here bringing Mary home.”

“Mary” was covered by several bluegrass and country artists. One was Red Sovine, whose specialty was truck-driver tales. In 1967, he recorded a classic that was a twist on the vanishing-hitchhiker mode.

In “Big Joe and the Phantom 309,” Sovine’s narrator is a hitchhiker who gets a ride from a big, friendly truck driver. He yaks with Big Joe most of the night until the trucker stops and drops him off in front of a truck stop. Joe tosses the hitchhiker a dime and says, “Have yourself a hot cup on Big Joe.”

But once inside the truck stop, the happy-go-lucky narrator says, “Big Joe set me up,” and the place goes silent. The waiter explains that Big Joe died in a wreck about 10 years before, jackknifing the Phantom 309 to save a busload of kids. And he lets the hitchhiker keep the dime as a memento of the weird incident.

I've known this song for years, ever since I first heard The Last Mile Ramblers play it at New Mexico’s Golden Inn in the mid-1970s. But I didn't realize until recently that, except for the supernatural aspect, “Big Joe and the Phantom 309” is based on a true story.

A Sept. 14, 2014, article in the New Hampshire Union Leader tells of that state’s town of Troy honoring John William “Pete” Trudelle, the real-life Big Joe, by installing a monument in his memory in the town common.

“On Jan. 29, 1963, he was driving a tanker truck carrying 4,600 gallons of gasoline from Boston to Keene,” the article says. “Along his route in Saugus, Massachusetts, he drove the truck into a bridge abutment to avoid hitting a school bus that was parked in the road under the bridge. ... His act saved six children and the bus driver.”

Last month, “Big Joe and the Phantom 309” was played at the ceremony in Troy for Trudelle.

In the ’70s, Big Joe became a more familiar figure in a tune by outlaw country warrior David Allan Coe. In his song “The Ride,” Coe sings of a hitchhiker, thumbing to Nashville with his guitar on his back, who gets picked up by the “half-drunk and hollow-eyed” ghost of Hank Williams, who drives “an antique Cadillac.”

The “ghost-white pale” driver has some professional advice for the young buck: “If you’re big star bound, let me warn ya its a long, hard ride.”

Skip ahead to the mid-1980s, and Big Joe changes from a truck driver to a Marine in Vietnam. “Camouflage,” from Stan Ridgway’s first solo album, The Big Heat, is a war story. The narrator is a young Marine who gets separated from the rest of his company. He’s alone and the enemy is nearby, and a big Marine named Camouflage appears to help.

Next thing you know, he’s swatting bullets with his bare hands and “pullin’ a big palm tree right up out of the ground and swattin’ those Charlies with it from here to kingdom come.” The narrator gets back to camp and tells everyone about his helper, but a medic tells him that Camouflage died the night before. Been there all week. The medic even shows him the body.

“But before he went, he said, ‘Semper fi,’ and said his only wish was to save a young Marine caught in a barrage. So here, take his dog tag, son. I know he’d want you to have it now.”

Leaving a token — Camouflage’s dog tag, Big Joe’s dime — is a frequent motif in vanishing-hitchhiker stories. For us mortal listeners, the hitchhiker has left a token in the form of these amazing and spooky songs.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker on video

Happy birthday, Laurie!



Glad that Mary made it home



Big Joe set me up!



Are you sure Hank done it that way?



This was a very strange Marine.



And just for the hell of it ...

Beyond The Monster Mash: A Handy Guide to Halloween Music

Hosting a Halloween party and don't know what to play?  Here's some suggestions.

Greatest  all-around Rock 'n' Roll Spookmeisters:  Roky Erikson. Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Screaming Lord Sutch, The Cramps, Alice Cooper, (especially his early stuff), Rob Zombie, Angry Johnny & The Killbillies.

Best album to use when greeting trick or treaters at your door: Blood by Stan Ridgway & Pietra Wextun. (This is instrumetnal music that's a hundred times creepier than your typical "haunted house" soundtracks.

Best Vampire Song: "Bloodletting" by Concrete Blonde

Best Werewolf Song: Warren Zevon would rise from the dead and  rip my lungs out, Jim, if I didn't say "Werewolves of London" (though "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" by The Cramps is up there too.)

Best Ghost Song: "Ghostriders in the Sky" (So many artists have done this one I did a Tune-up column on it a few years ago. My favorites still are the versions by Lorne Greene and New Mexico's own Last Mile Ramblers.

Best Frankenstein song: "Frankenstein Conquers the World" by Daniel Johnston & Jad Fair. Honorable Mention: "Frankenstein Meets the Beatles" by Dickie Goodman.

Best Satan Songs: Tie: "Satan's Bride" Gregg Turner and "I Lost My Baby to a Satan Cult" by Stephen W. Terrell. (The Devil loves cheesy self-promotion. See video and Soundcloud post at bottom of this post)

Best Country spook song besides "Ghost Riders": "Long Black Veil" written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin,  originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell and later recorded by The Band, Johnny Cash and many others. Honorable Mention: "(It Was a) Monster's Holiday" by Buck Owens.

Best Classic Blues Halloween song: "Haunted House Blues" by Bessie Smith

Best Halloween Jazz Vocal: "Halloween Spooks" by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross

Best Voodoo Rock : Gris-Gris by Dr. John, The Night Tripper (1968). Honorable mention: "Papa Legba" by The Talking Heads from True Stories. (Seek out the version with Pops Staples on vocals.)

Classic Halloween albums from this Century: Mondo Zombie Bugaloo by The Fleshtones, Southern Culture on the Skids and Los Straitjackets; Zombified by Southern Culture on the Skids; Rob Zombie presents Captain Clegg & The Night Creatures (haunted honky-tonk performed by Texas country singer Jesse Dayton); Buy a Gun, Get a Free Guitar by Deadbolt (an earlier version of this album was called "Voodoo Moonshiner"); Garage Monsters: The Best of the Garagepunk Hideout Vol. 9.



My own (free!) online Halloween contributions: On my monthly Big Enchilada podcasts, I've been doing annual Spooktaculars since 2008. Find them all HERE And for users of Spotify, check out my Halloween Spook Rock playlist.




Here's the latest Big Enchilada Spooktacular



And here's some other Satanic madness


Monday, October 27, 2014

The Spookiest Song Ever

In this season of Halloween, there's much debate about what is the spookiest song ever recorded.

It certainly ain't "The Monster Mash."

I believe in my heart that honor belongs to The Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes For You.” This is a ‘50s classic that I first heard as a very young child.

Its ghostly but gorgeous melody and the harmonies are nothing short of otherworldly. But even more strange are the do-wop nonsense syllables that sound like jungle chants Are they saying Beelzebub at the end of every line in the verses? Or are they just singing "she-bop she-bop" ? You decide.

Back in 1994 when reviewing Rhino Records' first Doo-Wop Box, Here's what I said about this song:

... one night last winter I was driving alone on a rainy night, listening, for reasons I don't remember, to an oldies station, which happened to play "I Only Have Eyes for You" by The Flamingos.

There's a strumming of three guitar chords, followed by the steady beat of a piano. Singer [Nate Nelson] comes in singing effortlessly, "My love must be a kind of blind love/I can't see anyone but you," as if he's got to justify what he has to say.

Then the group responds with unintelligible, almost discordant syllables, like some kind of eerie voodoo chant. All this before Hunt starts the first verse, invoking celestial bodies.

By the end of the song, all five Flamingos are gushing the beautiful melody, the falsetto going nuts as if possessed by the loa of high register. It almost seems that the group is having the aural equivalent of a simultaneous orgasm, right there in the echo chamber.

But way before the song got to this point on that rainy Santa Fe night, I was transported into the past, reliving a buried memory of being a 5-year-old kid, listening to a radio late at night to a sound that was alluring and forbidding at the same time ...

The official Flamingos web site describes how the arrangement for this song came to be:

 [Singer and guitarist Terry Johnson] lamented to Nate Nelson about what to do with the song, to which Nate suggested incorporating the Russian anthem “Song of the Volga Boatmen.” Nate, whose nickname was “lips,” was known for his snide jokes and wry sense of humor. Terry disregarded the remark and went back to his room at the Cecil [a hotel in Harlem] to try to figure out an arrangement on his guitar. Laying in his bed with the guitar across his body, he fell asleep. “By the time I awoke,” Terry recalls, “God had given me the arrangement in a dream.” A few chords Terry had been strumming before he dosed off, a bass-line variation of the “Volga Boatmen” song and an ethereal vocal background idea came together quickly after Terry had woken his colleagues to muster for an impromptu rehearsal. The evolution of Terry’s arrangement of “I Only Have Eyes For You” was at first met with ridicule from the other Flamingos, then mild reluctance from the record label, but shortly after release, the record began to garner airplay in Philly. If any other recording by any other artist had been claimed to come from God, in a dream, the story would likely be quickly dismissed. Listening to The Flamingos’ version of “I Only Have Eyes For You,” its origin almost seems obvious.

As for the songwriters, "I Only Have Eyes for You" was written by the team of Harry Warren and Al Dubin, who are best known for Broadway show tunes. The two also are responsible for "Lullaby of Broadway" and “We’re In the Money.”

Warren also wrote “That’s Amore,”  “Chattanooga Choo Choo,”  “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” (with Johnny Mercer) and, for television, “The Legend of Wyatt Earp.”

Dubin, back in the 1920s,wrote "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."

Wherever it came from, "I Only Have Eyes For You," as performed by The Flamingos still gives me the shivers.


Sunday, October 26, 2014

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

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Sunday, October 25, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below

Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Friday, October 24, 2014

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST


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Friday, October 24, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist below:


Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page 

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Monday, October 20, 2014

BEYOND BORDERS PLAYLIST


Monday, October 20, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell Substituting for Susan Ohori
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below:

Babalu Music! by Desi Arnaz
Break the Spell by Gogol Bordello
Rock El Casbah by Rachid Taha
Galbi by Ofra Haza
Harlem Shuffle by The 5.6.7.8's
Ma Cherie by Omar Konate

Afours Afours by Tinariwen
The Rats by Growling Tiger
Pretty Thing by Nightlosers
Awungilobolele by Udokotela Shange Namajaha
Antory Peça by Cankisou

I Speak Fula by Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba
I Speak Fula (Bonus Track Version)
Siki, Siki Baba by Kočani Orkestar
Dum Maro Dum by Asha Bhosle & Usha Iyer
Material Girl by Petty Booka
Aijö by Värttinä
Some Say the Divil Is Dead by Wolfe Tones
Belt of the Celts
Fun Tashlikh by The Klezmatics

Fraulein by Bobby Helms
Made In Japan by Buck Owens
Where Has My Country Gone? By Ondar with Willie Nelson
Pastures of Plenty by Cedar Hill Refugees with Dave Evans
The Burden by Terry Allen
Kaw-Liga by Silver Sand
Dirt in the Ground by Yehu Yaron

Confusion, Pt. 1 &2 by Fela Kuti

I Wanna See You Bellydance by Red Elvises
Family Busines by Dengue Fever
Landing Cocek by Söndörgő
Idiot from Here by Kult
Medley: Buke E Kripe Ne / Vater Tone / Kalaxhojne by 3 Mustaphas 3
Bat macumba by Os Mutantes

Black Heart Man by Bunny Wailer



Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

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Sunday, October 19, 2014

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

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Sunday, October 19, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below




Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Just in Time for Halloween, a Podcast That Dripped Blood!


THE BIG ENCHILADA






Boo! Welcome to the 7th Annual Big Enchilada Spooktacular! Believe it or not, I've been scaring the pants off unsuspecting podlubbers since October 2008. Once again I present a casket full of spook 'n' roll. And as a special treat, this show has several cuts from the new GaragePunk Hideout compilation Countdown to a Breakdown.

 SUBSCRIBE TO ALL GARAGEPUNK PIRATE RADIO PODCASTS |

Here's the playlist:
(Background Music: Quentin's Theme by Charles Randolph Grean Sounde)
Where is the Werewolf by WolfWolf
Night of The Monsters by The Barbarellatones
The Night of The Vampire by Roky Erikson & The Aliens
Whistlin' Past the Graveyard by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Voodoo Bones by Dale Ducktail
She's Fallen in Love with the Monster Man by Screamin' Lord Sutch

(Background Music: Dr. Caligari's Gruselkabinett by The Vampires of Dartmoore)
Teenage Werewolf by The Monsters
Vampire Lover by The TexReys
Don't Go In the Woods by Teenage Frankenstein
In League With Satan by Black-Eyed Vermillion & The Goddamn Gallows
Boneyard by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor by The Big Bopper

(Background Music: El Vampiro by Los Vampiranos)
Haunted House by Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs
Dracula a Go-Go by The Fleshtones
Invisible Man by Trailer Crash
Teenage Maniac by The Spooklights
Hanging Johnny by Rev. Tom Frost
Swamp Witch by Deadbolt
(Background Music: Quentin's Theme by Charles Randolph Grean Sounde)

Play it below:



Check out my other Big Enchilada Spooktaculars HERE

Friday, October 17, 2014

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST


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Friday, October 17, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist below:




Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page 

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Exciting News About KSFR

UPDATE: 10 am 10-20-14 Looks like I spoke too soon about this when I was gushing on about this Friday. There are still a few bugs in the system with Radio Free America. Somehow, both of my shows this weekend failed to get archived onto my page there, Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

Here's the original post:

Are you one of those people who say they'd love to listen to my radio shows but can't stay up that late?

Well, you no longer have that excuse.

KSFR has hooked up with Radio Free America, an online service based here in Santa Fe, that archives all our shows for two weeks. We're the second radio station to get on board, KUNM being the first. Hopefully more stations across this great land will join up.

My page can be found HERE. At this writing, there's only one show, last Sunday's Terrell's Sound World, is there -- and it's a good one if I say so myself. However, that should change tonight when I do The Santa Fe Opry (10 pm Mountain Time)

And, if you tool around on the KSFR page at RFA, click on "View All of KSFR's Archived Shows" and you'll find my last two weeks worth under Sunday and Friday.

KSFR has long archived all of its news and talk shows. However, because of the evil Digital Millennium Copyright Act, there are legal complications when it comes to archiving music. (Please don't grill me on this. Somehow websites like Mixcloud get around this somehow.)

Anywho, you also can listen to all of KSFR's shows live.

xxxxxxxx

Speaking of tonight's Santa Fe Opry, the honchos of KSFR have given me lots of bitchen premiums to give away as part of the ongoing KSFR pledge drive. There will be CDs by Johnny Cash and Willie Nelso and tickets to Joe West's Theater of Death and Ryan Adams' upcoming show in Albuquerque. Tune in!

Bobby's World

Back in 2008. Joe West produced The Ballad of Don Clavio, a strange but wondrous album by singer/ poet / visual artist and longtime La Cienega potter Bobby Brodsky. The album was a lo-fi affair consisting of music, sound collage, telephone messages, poetry, and insane rants.

Brodsky died two years ago at the age of 60. But his art lives on in a new book, Bobby’s World written and compiled by his sister Bette Brodsky. It features 100 color – vivid color! – reproductions of Bobby’s drawings, which are even more crazy than his music.

He was like a manic version of Daniel Johnston, drawing strange pictures of animals, real and imagined (a dog with the body of a Cheshire cat appears in several), jungle critters, dragons, ducks, several naked girls, Wizard of Oz characters, critters that look like Sendak’s wild things, Santa Claus, cars, pyramids UFOs … Plus plenty of photos of Bobby and his family and his pottery; hand scrawled poems and lyrics from some of his favorite rock ‘n’ roll songs. 

Collectively they tell a wild of a soul amazed by life itself.


Bette Brodsky will be signing copies of Bobby’s World 6 pm Tuesday Oct, 21 at the Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo St. Joe West will be playing music there, and he tells me they will be selling copies of The Ballad of Don Clavio as well.

Read Paul Weideman's story about Bobby's World (and check out more Brodsky art) in today's Pasatiempo. And check my review of Joe West's Theater of Death songs on this here blog. 

Thursday, October 16, 2014

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Bill Hearne Rides Again

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
October 17, 2014



Back in the mid-1970s, probably before I was quite 21, my pals and I crawled into a hopping little honky- tonk way on the south end of Cerrillos Road called the Bourbon & Blues. At least, it was considered way south back in those days. Playing that night was a couple — a blind couple — from deep in the heart of Texas. Nobody I knew had ever heard of them before that night. But somehow they packed the place. They played a lot of country classics, a bunch of Jerry Jeff Walker songs. The dude in the thick glasses and Hoss Cartwright-sized cowboy hat flat-picked his guitar with unassuming grace, while his wife’s piano sounded like something from some archetypal Old West saloon. The beer flowed that night at the B&B, and the dance floor was no place for claustrophobics. I believe everyone left the place that night a fan of Bill and Bonnie Hearne.

In 1979, the Hearnes moved from Texas to Red River, where they made a living playing for ski crowds. After more than a decade there, they moved to Santa Fe and quickly became a fixture. Now Bill Hearne is the undisputed king of country music in Santa Fe. He’s releasing a new CD, All That’s Real, which, like most of his recordings, I can’t listen to without drifting back to that first appearance at the Bourbon & Blues. Bonnie, who has been retired for several years due to medical problems, even sings on a couple of songs.

All That’s Real is co-produced by Bill Hearne and Don Richmond, a master of many stringed instruments who lives in Alamosa, Colo., but has many musical cronies in Northern New Mexico. Numerous area pickers and singers perform on it, as well as some notable Texans, including piano man Earl Poole Ball (best known as Johnny Cash’s piano player, though he also played on the Byrds’ landmark country-rock album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo), and Jerry Jeff Walker, who sings his own “Dust on My Boots” with Hearne.

Hearne never has claimed to be a songwriter, but he’s got a knack for taking others’ material and making those songs his own. On the new record, he draws from some familiar sources: Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett (Hearne has shared the stage in Santa Fe with Lovett, a fan of Bill and Bonnie since he was a kid), Delbert McClinton, and Gordon Lightfoot.

There are so many highlights here, it’s hard to know where to start. The album starts with a Clark gem called “Rita Ballou” (“Hill country honky-tonkin’ Rita Ballou/Every beer joint in town has played the fool for you …”). Both McClinton numbers — “Ruby Louise” and “Real Good Itch” — are among the best on the album, both having a roadhouse rock ’n’ roll edge. Bonnie Hearne sings harmonies on “Real Good Itch” as well as “One of These Days,” a tune best known for Emmylou Harris’ version. I wouldn’t have complained had Bonnie sung lead on that one.

My very favorite Hearne songs have always been the hard-core honky-tonkers. On All That’s Real, he does a crackerjack cover of a true touchstone of the genre, “City Lights,” which was written by “Whispering” Bill Anderson but is most associated with Ray Price.

When I saw that this album had a version of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire,” my first thought was that this might not be the best tune for Hearne to tackle. Fortunately, though, he sings it with soul. The song is aided by Richmond’s pedal steel and Taos rocker Jimmy Stadler’s organ and piano. All That’s Real makes me proud the Hearnes made Santa Fe their home and nostalgic for the glory days of the Bourbon & Blues.

The official CD release party for this album is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Oct. 28 at La Fonda, where Richmond joins Hearne onstage. If you can’t wait, Hearne plays Saturday, Oct. 18, at the Cowgirl BBQ; Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 20 and 21, and Oct. 27 at La Fonda; and back at the Cowgirl for a solo happy-hour gig on Oct. 24.

Also recommended:

* Joe West’s Theater of Death. If West only concentrated on writing, performing, and recording his songs, he’d still be pretty darn remarkable. For well over a decade he’s been my favorite singer/songwriter from these parts.

But West’s spirit is a restless one. In recent years he has expanded his game, slipping the surly bonds of genre and medium, experimenting with time-traveling trans-vestite rock opera, avant-garde radio, and, of late, the stage. Last spring he created a dramatic ensemble called Theater of Death and performed a series of dark, one-act plays at Madrid’s Engine House Theatre. This shouldn’t be a surprise, considering that West started out in the theater years before he became a professional musician.

And now, with a group of musical conspirators, he has recorded an eight-song extended-play album of tunes from that show.

Three of the selections are titled “Zombie Jam.” They’re sinister-sounding instrumentals — mostly blues and spook-house jazz — the first of which includes some bursts of sound collage and fake newscasts. A song called “La Llorona” has Busy McCarroll singing in Spanish and “Rien Rien” features Lori Ottino singing in French. And there’s a phony radio ad for snake-oil patent medicine.

A couple are soon-to-be-classic West songs. “Dysfunction” offers a sardonic ray of hope for folks rising from bad life circumstances. “Night on the Town” is a sweet tune about an elderly couple celebrating their wedding anniversary. (“Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1952,” he sings.)

This EP will be sold at the upcoming performances of the new Theater of Death production, “The Absinthe Plays.” These are on Oct. 24 through Oct. 26, Oct. 30 through Nov. 2, and Nov. 7 through Nov. 9 at the Engine House Theatre, 2846 N.M. 14 in Madrid. The show starts at 8 p.m. except on Sundays, when curtain time is 3 p.m. Tickets are $20.

And if you want to see the show and support KSFR at the same time, listen to the Santa Fe Opry tomorrow night (KSFR, 101.1 FM, at 10 pm)

VIDEO TIME!

Here's Bill Hearne playing with Robert Earle Keen back in 2011. *The song doesn't start until about a minute and 45 seconds into it.)


And here's some Joe Wet & The Santa Fe Revue singing an old favorite, "Are You Still My Girl" at the Outpost in Albuquerque in 2012.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST


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Sunday, October 12, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below


Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Friday, October 10, 2014

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST


Santa Fe Opry Facebook Banner

Friday, October 10, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist below:






Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page 

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Junior Brown Says "Better Call Saul"



Those of us Santa Fe folks who went to school with a hippie kid named Jamie Brown in the late '60s never thought he'd end up getting national publicity for hawking the services of a crooked lawyer.

But that's what happening with Jamie right now, Under his better-known stage name, Junior Brown, our old classmate was chosen to sing the theme song of Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off, scheduled to debut on AMC next February.

And it's a cool song too. Listen below:



My favorite line in the song is  “Shopping at a Wal-Mart short just a couple of beans/ There’s a George Foreman grill down the back of your blue jeans.”

No, I don't think it's autobiographical. The lyrics were written by show creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould.

JB playing his guit-steel at a Thirsty Ear Festival
After finding that out after hearing the song, I was surprised that Brown himself didn't write the words. The twisted humor is consistent with Junior classics like "My Wife Thinks You're Dead" and his newer tunes like "The Phantom of the Opry."

Though he's been Junior Brown for more than 20 years now, touring the country, appearing on TV shows like Austin City Limits, Saturday Night Live and even SpongeBob Squarepants, Santa Fe got to know his music first in his psychedelic band Humble Harvey and later, in the early '70s with the honky-tonkin' Last Mile Ramblers.

So I wish him well with this video, And I hope he never needs to call Saul.




Sunday, October 05, 2014

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

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Sunday, October 5, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below
Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

Friday, October 03, 2014

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST


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Friday, October 3, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist below:






Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page 

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

Thursday, October 02, 2014

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: The Raw Gospel of Designer Records

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
October, 2014





On his 1968 “comeback special” on NBC, Elvis Presley made the following observation:

“I’d like to talk a little about music. Very little. ... I like a lot of the new groups, you know. The Beatles and ‘the beards’ and the whoever. But I really like a lot of the new music. But a lot of ... rock ’n’ roll music is basically gospel or rhythm and blues. Or it sprang from that.”

Elvis said it. I believe it. That settles it.

The blues and R & B connection to rock ’n’ roll is widely acknowledged, but the influence of gospel often gets overlooked. And that’s despite the church roots of major rock and soul icons like Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Solomon Burke, and The Staples Singers.

I believe the problem is that way too many people who consider themselves rockers aren’t acquainted with the joys of old-time gospel music. They hear the word gospel and they think of that sappy excuse for music that passes as contemporary gospel, not realizing that this vanilla dreck is to real gospel what Coldplay is to Iggy & The Stooges, what Rascal Flatts is to Hank Williams, what Kenny G is to John Coltrane.

There is a brand-new collection of exciting, shouting, holy spirit-raising, fire-and-brimstone-testifying gospel music — the kind Elvis was talking about — that I’ve been enjoying immensely in recent weeks. It’s called The Soul of Designer Records, and it features 101 songs on four compact discs packaged to resemble an old 33 rpm album.

You won’t find any big stars of the genre here. No Mahalia Jackson or Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Rev. James Cleveland or The Blind Boys of Alabama or any other state. But even though you’ve probably never heard of The Dynamic Hughes Singers, The Mighty Blytheville Aires, The Fantastic Alphonzo Thomas, or The Christian All Stars of Akron, Ohio, that doesn’t mean these obscure tracks lack power.

Designer Records, which operated in Memphis in the 1960s and ’70s under the ownership of J.C. “Style” Wooten, was pretty much an under-the-radar operation that specialized in black gospel. Wooten would charge a group a relatively modest fee ($469.50 was the advertised price in the late 1960s) to cut a few songs.

“He’d bring those groups in there, they’d come in from Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis, all over the place,” said Roland Janes, interviewed in the box set’s liner notes. Janes was the owner of Sonic Studios, which recorded all of Designer’s records in the company’s early days. (He also played guitar on early hits by Jerry Lee Lewis and Billy Lee Riley.) “Every weekend we’d cut maybe five different groups.[Wooten would] cut four songs on each group, he’d put a single out, and then he’d hold one in the can. ... They’d pay him a little bit at a time; then when they had enough to press a record, [Wooten would] press the record, give ’em X number of copies, then when they needed more, they’d buy ’em from him.”
The Fantastic Gospel Travelers

The weekend was the busiest time because so many of the singers had to work during the week.

As Janes said, “See, these gospel guys, man, they’re doing it for the love of what they’re doing. They used to get in their cars — maybe two or three car loads of ’em, say from Detroit — and they’d come down south, and they’d work here all Friday night and Saturday and Sunday. ... While they was here, they’d do a recording session and they’d play a bunch of different churches and take up the love offerings and everything. They just did it for the love of it; that’s what it boiled down to.”

Yes, love is the key here. And it’s hard not to love these songs back.

Take “Clean up Your Life” by the Jackson Trumpeteers. Were they from Jackson, Mississippi, or were they a family named Jackson? The liner notes offer no clue. All I know is that they were a vocal group led by a high-voiced singer and backed mostly by an electric guitar, organ, and drums. This is a fast-tempo tune with the singer warning against being a “playboy” and living in sin.

The Gospel Songbirds, a group from Mississippi led by a tenor named Andrew Cheairs, remind me of another gospel group from that state, The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, which was led by Archie Brownlee. (Cheairs, however, is backed by no “boys” at all. It’s a female quartet.) The Songbirds’ “Tone the Bells Easy” is a slow burner that allows Cheairs to work himself into a sanctified frenzy, as Brownlee was known to do.

Alberta Powell has two songs — “Trusted” and “The Same God” — both of which prove that the line between gospel music and the blues is thin. The Rev. Leon Hamner’s infectious, stomping “I’ve Got the Love of Jesus,” punctuated by the Cincinnati preacher’s throat-shredding screams, will make a listener feel like shouting, “Hamner time!”

Meanwhile, the guitar on George Shields’ “God’s Word Will Never Pass Away” makes me wonder whether Ry Cooder studied this guy’s picking style.

Style Wooten
The headlines of the day work themselves into one of the songs: “Viet Nam” by The Dynamic Hughes Singers. The song basically is an emotional prayer for the soldiers fighting that war. But at one point, lead singer Jerry Hughes shouts, “No more segregation in this land!”

The music of the day seeps in too. While most of the album proves Elvis’ point that gospel is the root of rock ’n’ roll, other tracks show the influence of rock on gospel. For instance, the minor-key “Do Yourself a Favor” by Souls of Solomon, a group from Buffalo, New York, starts out with a throbbing bass that sounds straight out of The Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and has an electric guitar that sounds like a venomous snake about to strike.

This collection can be seen as a big love offering. Constituting somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of Designer’s catalog, The Soul of Designer Records is a galaxy of great American musical treasures most of us never knew we had.



Enjoy a couple of gospel videos from groups included in this box set:

This song by The Magnificent Soul Survivors is in this collection.



This isn't a Designer record, but it's Andrew Cheairs & The Gospel Songbirds from around the same era.



And if you like this stuff, you should seek out:

* Fire in My Bones: Raw, Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel, 1944-2007
This May Be My Last Time Singing : Raw African-American Gospel on 45RPM 1957-1982
* Screaming Gospel Holy Rollers (I have Volumes 1 and 2. There's also one called Screaming Gospel Holy Rollers: Hop Skip and Jump, which I haven't heard yet.)
* The Hurricane That Hit Atlanta by Rev. Johnny L. Hurricane Jones
* The Great 1955 Shrine Concert

New GaragePunk Hideout Compilation in Two Years


The GaragePunk Hideout has just released its 10th compilation of crazed sounds Countdown to a Breakdown. There are 33 (!) raging songs, an hour and 23 minutes of rough and rowdy rock 'n' roll, for a mere $7 bucks, surely one of the better musical deals you're going to find on the Internet.

Right now it's only available on Bandcamp (a download joint of which I'm growing increasingly fond)  though within days it should be on iTunes, Amazon and other places where quality MP3s are sold.

I already was familiar with a couple of tunes here. The title song, by Viki Vortex & The Cumshots appears on a recent Big Enchilada podcast episode, Family Fun Night.  And then there's "Get Outta Dallas" by Mal Thursday and The Cheetahs, a bitchen song about the JFK assassination, which also appeared on the Conspiracy a Go-Go compilation last year. (Mal is a fellow GaragePunk Pirate Radio podbuster, whose shows can be found HERE.)

A couple of the bands that have songs on Countdown to a Breakdown -- The Mobbs and Audio Kings of The Third World -- have different songs on the latest Big Enchilada, Dance Hall of the Dark Dimension.

But I'm not familiar with the vast majority of the maniacs making noise on this compilation. But I'm having a great time getting familiar with them. You'll be hearing many of them on upcoming Terrell's Sound World shows on KSFR and future Big Enchilada episodes.

You can listen to the darn thing on the widget below. But do yourself and buy it.


TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

  Sunday, March 17, 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM  Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Te...