Monday, May 9 would have been the 102nd birthday of the greatest country singer to ever come down from the Great White North.
I''m talking of course about Nova Scotia-born clarence Eugene Snow, better known as Hank Snow, whose love for Jimmie Rodgers and early country music helped him escape a life of poverty and an abusive childhood home.
Snow by the mid 1930s established himself as a country radio star and recording artist in Canada, signing up with RCA Canada.
He started being noticed by American country fans. In 1945 he took the plunge and moved to Nashville and eventually joined the Grand Old Opry.
And it didn't take long before he became recognized as one of country music's great.
Snow died in 1999. But his music lives on, so let's enjoy some of Snow's classic tunes, starting with his first single, "The Prisoned Cowboy," released in Canada in 1936.
Here's a song that Elvis later recorded. (Early in Elvis' career he was managed by Snow and Col. Parker. The evil colonel would squeeze Snow out of that picture. Ain't show biz grand?)
Here's the hit:
This song, along with "I'm Movin' On," became Snow's signature songs.
Finally, here's the greatest song about squids in the history of country music. Snow didn't write "The Squid Jiggin' Ground" -- a Canadian named Arthur Scammell did back in the late '20s. But snow was no stranger to this world. He actually worked on fishing boats for several years in his youth.
Trouble ahead, lady in ... orange! This John Legend song never stood a chance against the power that is Amanda:
I understand this guy is banned from Boston Red Sox games. He should call this "Sour Caroline."
[Update, Sept. 2020: Looks like this one has been yanked from Youtube. Here's a substitute:]
Here's Bob & Bev covering A System of the Down. They've got a couple of hundred of these karaoke clips on their YouTube Channel. where their motto is "it's all about having fun, not perfection!!!" And by God, they do look like they're having fun!
Finally, here's a bad "Bad to the Bone" performed by ... The Hamburglar?
Sunday, May 8, 2016 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
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Motherly Love by The Mothers of Invention
Mother by John Lennon
Automatic Schmuck by The Hives
Today Sometimes by The Come n' Go
Black Sheep by The Woggles
Down in the Basement by The Gears
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child by Prince
Six Long Weeks by The A-Bones
Zombie Outbreak by Alien Space Kitchen
Rainbow Jackson by Bayou City Beach Party
I Like it Small by Mudhoney
Nowheria by Bungalow Bums
Psych-Out With Me by The Monsters
12 Steps by The Gobshites
Out of This World by Detroit Cobras
Mama's Baby, Daddy's Maybe by Swamp Dogg
White Trash Girl / Throw it In the Trash Can of Love / You Need a Great Big Woman by Candye Kane
Raise the Hammer by Sulphur City
The Tracks by Becky Lee & Drunkfoot
My Dark Heart by The Bonnevilles
How High the Moon by Dex & Crash
California Tuffy by Geraldine Fibbers
Please Don't Go Topless Mother by Troy Hess
Easy Rider by Big Brother & The Holding Company
The Hand Don't Fit the Glove by Miriam
The Community of Hope by PJ Harvey
I Am Fire/ These Sticks by Afghan Whigs
Muriel by Eleni Mandell
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, May 6, 2016 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 :
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose by Little Jimmy Dickens Sister's Coming Home/ Down at the Corner Beer Joint by Willie Nelson
Do What I Can to Get By by The Supersuckers Coricidin Bottle by Ray Wylie Hubbard
Somebody Settles Down by The Blues Against Youth
Take Me Back to Tulsa by Pine Valley Cosmonauts with The Meat Purveyors
Her Love Rubbed Off by Carl Perkins
Bears in Them Woods by Nancy Apple
Hesitation Blues by Old Crow Medicine Show
Brace for Impact (Live a Little) by Sturgil Simpson
Time Heals by The Gear Daddies
Wish I Didn't Like Whiskey by Mike Cullison
Luck, Texas by Alice Wallace
Only a Dream by Beth Lee & The Breakups
If I Should Fall from the Grace of God by Deertick
Ridin' with O'Hanlon by R.B. Morris
I Got News for You by Michael Hearne & Shake Russell
It's Not My Baby and I Ain't Gonna Rock It by Rudy Grayzell
Rushing Around by Roy Acuff
Gunter Hotel Blues by Paul Burch
I Am, Therefore I Drink by Jim Stringer
Lonesome Low by Al Scorch
I Just Lost My Mind by Rex Hobart & The Misery Boys
Rain Crow by Tony Joe White
Alabama by Night by Robbie Fulks
Sold American by Kinky Friedman & The Texas Jewboys
If I Go Crazy by Peter Case
Love in Ruins by Jim Lauderdale
Are the Good Times Really Over by John Doe & The Sadies
Mothers Day is next Sunday. So here's one for those of us whose mothers are gone.
"Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" is a stirring song, a "Negro spiritual" going back to the days to the days of slavery, the days when babies would be taken from their mothers to be sold to different plantations.
In his book Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals, author A.C. Jones, begins a section about this song, with a quote from a former slave named Harriet Jacobs talking about this horrifying practice:
One of these sale days, I saw a mother and seven children on the auction block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave trader, and their mother was bought by [another] man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the slave trader to tell here where he intended to take them; this he refused to do….[for] he would sell them one by one whenever he could command the highest price. I met that mother on the street and her wild haggard face lives today in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish and exclaimed, “Gone! All Gone! Why don’t God kill me?” I had no words wherewith to comfort her. Instances of this kind are of daily, yea, of hourly occurrence.
Jones wrote, "To announce in a song that a life event made one feel `like a motherless child' was to equate the pain associated with that event with the extreme torment occasioned by the `daily, yea, hourly' occurrence of mother-child separation."
Jones also argued that "Motherless Child" is the most important songs passed on by the slaves. "... it is probably not coincidental that it is one of a handful of African American folksongs that has survived sufficiently well to make itself known to those with little or no familiarity with specific songs in the spirituals tradition."
The earliest known performances of "Motherless Child" were in the 1870s by the Fisk Jubilee Singers of Nashville, Tenn. I couldn't find any of those on Youtube (video cameras were plain crappy back then) but here are some of my favorite versions of this song.
Marian Anderson gave it an operatic treatment. This might be her 1945 version.
Mahalia Jackson did a medley of "Motherless Child" with "Summertime."
Skip ahead to 1969 where Richie Havens kicked off the Woodstock festival with this, which he re-titled "Freedom."
El Chicano did it as a jazzy instrumental in 1970.
And just last week my daughter alerted me to this version by the late Prince (with Larry Graham on bass!) As much as I love Mahalia and Richie, this will be be the version I'll always remember.
Note from Oct. 11, 2018: This keeps getting yanked off of YouTube. It'll probably get taken off again, but it always seems to rise again.
Producer, songwriter and extremely wondrous one-hit wonder Jerry Samuels turned 78 yesterday. Happy birthday Napoleon!
Samuels amazed and delighted a whole generation of misfit kids like me back in 1966 when -- under his nom de goon -- he released his greatest (and of course only) hit "They're Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Haa!"
It was a tuneless dirge, a proto-hip-hop number if there eve was one, featuring an instrumental track consisting only of pounding drums and sirens (more than 20 years before Public Enemy!)
We were too young and guileless back then to realize that the 'funny farm" wasn't actually funny in rel life, so we just embraced the craziness.
Though Napoleon seems to be retired, Samuels is still kicking. He runs a talent agency in the Philadelphia area, where you can book magicians, clowns, hula dancers, one-man bands, ventriloquists, bagpipers and more.
Most people who know Napoleon XIV for "They're Coming to Take Me Away." But he made an entire album of loony bin classics. Here are some of them.
I have this strange vision of Napoleon XIV abducting an entire high school marching band and forcing them to perform "Marching Off to Bedlam."
One of his finest, "The Nuts in My Family Tree"
I hear a little "96 Tears" in this one.
"I Live in a Split Level Head" is even crazier than "Take Me Away."
And just for those who missed out on the song that touched a touched generation ...
I did a Wacky Wednesday earlier this year featuring songs about insanity (including "Aaaaah-aah Yawa em Ekat ot Gnimoc Re'yeht," a backwards version of the above song.) You can find that HERE
UPDATE: 5-5-16 10:31 pm
I got a nice email today from Tom Wilk, a reader and music writer in New Jersey. He actually interviewed Jerry Samuels, I paste Tom's email here with his permission:
Hi Steve, Saw your post on Napoleon XIV and it prompted some memories. I was 10 when I purchased "They're Coming to Take Me Away" as a single in 1966. I always remember it sounded great on an AM radio and that the flip side was the song played backwards. Around 1982, I got to interview Jerry at his home in Northeast Philadelphia. At the time, I was a reporter at The Gloucester County Times in Woodbury, N.J. It's now the South Jersey Times. I had interviewed Dr. Demento the year in Santa Monica and he told me that Napoleon XIV was actually Jerry Samuels. One of Jerry's side businesses at the time was he made roach clips in the shape of a G clef. I remember him telling me that the cops confiscated one of his roach clips but couldn't figure out how it worked so he wasn't charged. He also told me of a formula of how to weigh an ounce of a pot. It was the same as a combination of coins (quarters and dimes, I think. I have forgotten the exact number). Jerry also gave me a copy of a privately produced single he recorded called "I Owe a Lot to Iowa Pot" b/w "Who Are You to Tell Me Not to Smoke Marijuana." Jerry also was a songwriter. He wrote "The Shelter of Your Arms," a Top 20 hit for Sammy Davis Jr. in 1964. I wrote a feature story about him but the paper decided not to run it because of the marijuana references. I may have still have a copy of the story in my basement. I know I still have the "I Owe a Lot to Iowa Pot." That song is also on YouTube.
Indeed it is, Tom. And now it's on this blog too. Thanks for your email.
Sunday, May 1, 2016 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
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
May Day by Jack Hardy
Keep Movin' by Freddy Cannon & The Gears
No Fun by Iggy Pop
Destino Venus by Horror Deluxe
Alien Agenda by Alien Space Kitchen
Conjure Child by Tony Joe White
Poor Poor Pitiful Me by Waren Zevon
Venice with Girls by The Fall
Ride a White Swan by T Rex
How are USA by Peelander-Z
Bitch Slap Attack by Lovestruck
Funeral in These Streets by Scratch Buffalo
No Cops by The Night Beats
Sticky Hulks by Thee Oh Sees
Diamond Man by Lonesome Shack
The Strip Polka by The Andrews Sisters
Black Dog Blues by Bette Stuy
Incarceration Casarole by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
What Now? By Andre Williams
Voodoo Music by J.B. Lenoir
Every Woman Needs a Working Man by Johnny Rawls
Don't Mess with My Toot Toot by Jello Biafra & The New Orleans Raunch and Soul All-Stars
King's Highway by Sulphur City
Black Shiny Beast by Buick MacKane
Wave Goodbye by Ty Segall
Isabelle by San Antonio Kid
Way Down in the Hole by Compulsive Gamblers
Time by Prince
Volare by Drifting Mines
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Monday, May 9 would have been the 102nd birthday of the greatest country singer to ever come down from the Great White North.
