The Deep Ellum district in downtown Dallas started out as a African-American commercial area in Dallas. In the early part of the last century it was known as a hotbed of blues and jazz. Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lead Belly worked there as street musicians.
And apparently, during an era of segregation, it was a place, where black and white musicians played together before integrated audiences. A 10-minute 1985 documentary by Alan Govenar features folks who were there talking about those times. (The documentary disappeared from YouTube since I first posted this. but you can rent it for 99 cents HERE, and below is a trailer:)
But outside of Dallas, fans of blues, country and rockabilly might best know Deep Ellum from a great American tune that celebrates the neighborhood as a red light district, a place where you can find redheads who "never give a man a chance"; where you have to keep your money in your shoes and where police officers expect $15 bribes. A sinful place where preachers lay their Bibles down and good gals become hardened.
It's been covered by Les Paul, Doc Watson, Harmonica Frank Floyd, Red Allen & Frank Wakefield, Rory Gallagher, Hot Rise, The Asylum Street Spankers, And apparently Jimmie Dale Gilmore could see Deep Ellum from a DC-9 at night.
Most versions of the song are called "Deep Elem Blues" or "Deep Elm Blues" (which actually makes sense because "Ellum" came from Elm Street in Dallas. Most the singers who recorded this song were white.
But the song started out as an ode to a wild place in Georgia called Black Bottom. Here's a 1927 version by a group called The Georgia Crackers.
In the early '30s a Texas group called The Shelton Brothers changed the locale of this song to Deep Ellum.
Country singer Hank Thompson did a rocking version in the late '60s.
Jerry Lee Lewis also recorded it in the '50s.
But probably the most popular version in recent decades was done by the unplugged version of The Grateful Dead.
Sunday, Sept. 4, 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
Pills by Chesterfield Kings
Kill Zone by James Arthur's Manhunt
It's Mighty Crazy by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
I Wanna Be Your Busyman by The Fadeaways
Somethin' Else by The Flamin' Groovies
Follow Me Home by The Mystery Lights
I'm Your Man by Muck & The Mires
Yeah! by The Cynics
Obeah Man by Meet Your Death
A Public Execution by Mouse
Wax Dummy by John Spencer Blues Explosion
Wild Snakes by The Thick 'Uns
King's Highway Sulphur City
Juicy Lucy by LoveStruck
Backstreet Girl by Social Distortion
Nest of The Cuckoo Bird by The Cramps
Timothy by The Buoys
Modern Woman by Johnny Dowd
Quick Joey Small by Kasenetz-Katz Super Circus
Head Holes by Lonesome Shack
LABOR DAY SET
Plenty Tuff and Union Made by The Waco. Brothers
Working at Working by Wayne Hancock
Big Boss Man by Jimmy Reed How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live by The Del-Lords
Don't Look Now by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Working Man by Bo Diddley
Mr. President Have Pity on the Working Man by Randy Newman
Gelatinous Cube by Thee Oh Sees
Alien Agenda by Alien Space Kitchen Joan of Arc by The Melvins
Baby's Going Underground by Helium
Adios Amigo by Dan Penn & Donnie Fritts
September Song by Lou Reed
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, Sept. 2, 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
Amos Moses by Dale Watson
She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft) by Jerry Reed
Drugstore Rock 'n' Roll by Janis Martin
Killed THem Both by Wayne Hancock
I Ain't Never by Headcat
I'm Going to Memphis by Paul Burch
Drinkin' Wine and Staring at the Phone by Dave Insley
Tall Tall Trees by Roger Miller
100% Pure Fool by The Derailers
Get a Load of This by R. Cumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders
I Am My Own Grandpa by Asylum Street Spankers
I'm the Only Hell My Mama EverRaised by Johnny Paycheck
The Breeze by Banditos
Marijuana by Reverend Horton Heat
Honey You Had Me Fooled by Defibulators
Walk Right In by Otis Taylor featuring Guy Davis and Corey Harris
Fishing Blues by Jim Kweskin & Geoff Muldaur
Buglight by The Flat Five
Western Trek by The Legendary Stardust Cowboy
Strangers by San Antonio Kid
Elvis is Haunting My Bathroom by The Royal Hounds
She Still Comes Around by Jerry Lee Lewis
The Way I Walk by Ruby Dee & The Snake Handlers
Country Singer's Prayer by Buck Owens
Shadow My Baby by Ray Condo & His Richochets
Banjo Lovin' Hound Dog by Johnny Banjo
Hard Times by The Bubbadinos
Cow Cow Yicky Yicky Yay by Clothesline Revival
Tell Me a Swamp Story by Tony Joe White
Back in My Day by The Handsome Family
Summer Wages by David Bromberg
Jack O Diamonds by P.W. Long & Reelfoot
Blind Willie McTell by The Band CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
Cartoonist and old-time music enthusiast Robert Crumb turned 73 this week. Last year around this time in honor of his birthday I posted a bunch of songs by Crumb, most of them with his Cheap Suit Serenaders. (Check that out HERE.)
This year I'm posting original -- or at least older -- versions of songs recorded by Crumb & The Cheap Suit Serenaders.
So happy birthday, Mr. Crumb!
Crumb and the band based "Get a Load of This" -- one of their best-known tunes from the early '70s -- on Charley Jordan's "Keep it Clean." Crumb and the lads added some modern references -- "Bowling for Dollars," "pink burritos" etc. -- and, for reasons unclear to me, they changed Coca Cola to R.C. Cola. But you still hear a lot of the original in Crumb's version.
Here is one the better known songs that Crumb and band covered. "Singing in the Bathtub" was written by Herb Magidson and Ned Washington, It first was performed by Winnie Lightner in the 1929 movie Show of Shows. British Music Hall vet Gracie Fields recorded it around the same time, (I think I know now where Singing Sadie got her shtick.)
Here's one Crumb got from this amazing old string band from Texas led by mandolinist Coley Jones.
Crumb picked up this entendre-laden masterpiece from Harry Roy and His Orchestra.
Get a load of -- and try to keep track of -- the twisted family trees presented in these songs.
Let's start with this Spoke Jones soap opera send-up in the 1940s: "None but the Lonely Heart (A Soaperetta)"
Reverend Beat-Man, Supreme Commander and President for Life of Switzerland's Voodoo Rhythm Records, describes an even more convoluted -- and degenerate -- family in "I See the Light" from his album Surreal Folk Blues Gospel Trash Vol. 2
Finally, here's the grandfather of all such songs, as performed by Louis Marshall "Grandpa" Jones .
Originally recorded by Oscar and Lorenzo in 1947, the song, according to this item in Ancestry.com actually is based on a true story originally published in the early 1880s.
(According to Ancestry.com, I am Reverend Beat-Man's great grand step niece twice-removed.)
Sunday, Aug. 28, 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
Elephant Man by Meet Your Death
Coitus Interuptus (From a Priest) by The Devils
The Hunter by The Gospel Truth
On the Run by The Cynics
Avaler La Couleuvre by Thee Verduns
Cheap Thrills by Ruben & The Jets
World Ain't Round by Musk
Busload of Faith by Lou Reed
Baby Please Don't Go by The Amboy Dukes
Kill Zone by James Arthur's Manhunt
Ain't You Hungry by James Leg
WIthered Hand by Thee Oh Sees
Swimmin' in the Quicksand by JD Pinkus & Nik Turner
Falling In by GØGGS
When the Levee Breaks by Mojo Nixon & The Toadliquors
Whiskey Ate My Brain by Johnny Dowd
Venice with Girls by The Fall
My Dear Watson by Thee Headcoats
Sunglasses After Dark by Archie & The Bunkers
When the Lights Go Out by The Black Keys
Blank Reflection by Nots
25th Floor/High on Rebellion by Patti Smith
Junior Barnes by King Khan & The Shrines
Morning After Blues by Andre Williams
Retreat by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Old Man Mose by Pierre Omer's Swing Revue
Heaven by Talking Heads
God's Comic by Elvis Costello
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, Aug. 26, 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
Let it Roll by Dinosaur Truckers
There Stands the Glass by Van Morrison
Bosco Stomp by The Cajun Playboys
I'm Not Drunk Enough by Rex Hobart & The Misery Boys
Booze is Good by Dan Whitaker & The Sidebenders
Bloody Mary Morning by Willie Nelson
Bashful Rascal by June Carter
Dirt Queen by Country Trailer
Do as You Are Told by Martha Fields
White Lightning by The Waco Brothers
Train Kept Rollin' by The Royal Hounds
Get it on Down the Line by Danny Barnes
Lyin' to You Lying with Me by Kyle Martin
Just Tell Her I Loved Her by Joe Swank & The Zen Pirates
I Don't Know by Dex Romweber
The Toad Lickers by Thomas Dolby with Imogene Heap
When I Steal by Ruby Dee & The Snakehandlers
Psycho by Eddie Noack
The John Birch Society by The Chad Mitchell Trio
Eight Piece Box by Southern Culture on the Skids
Angel Along the Tracks by The Dirt Daubers
Old Fashioned Love by The Western Flyers
Poison in Your Heart by Laura Cantrell
She Left Anyway by Jim Jones
What's Money by George Jones
Diamond Joe by Jim Kweskin & Geoff Muldaur
Comet Ride by Ricky Skaggs
Underneath the Falls by The Handsome Family
Rain Crow by Tony Joe White
Touch of Evil by Tom Russell
It's Our Home by Joe West CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Aug. 26, 2016 Indulge me in belaboring the obvious for a moment: Memphis, Tennessee, is an important city in rock ’n’roll. But that didn’t stop with Elvis, Sun Records, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, Al Green, Stax Records, or Chuck Berry’s uncle writing messages on the wall.
Memphis is still an important city for rock. For years it’s been home to a vibrant “underground” rock scene, thanks largely to Goner Records (the store and the label), an associated festival called Gonerfest (coming up in late September), and bands including The Reatards, The Oblivians, and all of their offshoots.
My favorite group to emerge from this Memphis stew in recent months isNots, an all-female punk band whose screaming new album Cosmetic is a wild delight.
Fronted by singer Natalie Hoffman, this is basically a guitar group — except they’ve got a keyboard player, Alexandra Eastburn, whose fearsome synthesized blips, bloops, wiggles, and squiggles remind me of Allen Ravenstine, the keyboard maniac of early Pere Ubu.
This is the most urgent-sounding music I’ve heard in a long time. Though it’s not always easy to understand the lyrics, it’s impossible to escape the intensity of the sound. Drummer Charlotte Watson deserves much of the credit for this. For the first few seconds of “Rat King” and “Cold Line,” she almost sounds like a hopped-up surf-band drummer ready to explode.
Nots really stretch out on a couple of tracks on Cosmetic. The five-and-a-half-minute title song begins with what might be described as a distorted blues riff. It starts off slow, but about three minutes in, the pace suddenly takes off and becomes a frenzied race to the finish.
Even better is the seven-minute closing song “Entertain Me.” In a recent interview with Stereogum, Hoffman said the lyrics deal with “the grotesque horror show going on in American politics and how they are portrayed — the rise of Trump, the reality-TV-like nature of American news, the almost-forced compliance of the viewer. ...” Indeed, this is entertainment!
Cosmetic will be available September 9.
Gøggsby Gøggs. A lot of people are referring to this as Ty Segall’s latest band, but actually it’s a collaboration among Segall, Chris Shaw of Ex-Cult — a Memphis band of which Nots’ Hoffman was a member — and Charles Moothart from Fuzz, another Segall group. Shaw handles lead vocals — he’s a shouter more than a singer — while Segall concentrates on guitar, though he and drummer Moothart switch instruments on a few tracks.
It’s hard to tell what you’re going to get with each new release from the prolific, restless Segall — the Stooges-like craziness of Slaughterhouse, mellow introspection like Sleeper, or the soul-tinged, almost-poppy fare like Manipulator. Gøggs is closer to Slaughterhouse, or whatever Segall was up to when he raged at High Mayhem in Santa Fe a few years ago. It’s loud, rough, raw, and noisy. And yet it’s a friendly-sounding assault — it’s the sheer fun Segall, Shaw, and Moothart seem to be having as they pound out these 10 tunes.
Highlights here include the harsh, hard-hitting “Assassinate the Doctor” (perhaps inspired by “Fearless Doctor Killers,” Mudhoney’s protest against “pro-life” violence); the riff-heavy garage-punker “Smoke the Wurm”; and “Final Notice,” which features insane screaming and, like the Nots’ record, is driven by crazy keyboards.
* Swing Cremona byPierre Omer’s Swing Review. Omer used to be in a Swiss group called The Dead Brothers, who billed themselves as a “funeral band.” And indeed, there was something spooky and a little morbid about that group. But Omer’s latest band is much more upbeat.
This music is closer in sound to groups like the Squirrel Nut Zippers. They play a little hot jazz, a little vaudeville, a hint of calypso, a whiff of klezmer, and more than a touch of Weimar Republic decadence. It’s a four-piece band (guitar, stand-up bass, drums, and trumpet). But it sounds much bigger than it is.
Probably my favorite song here is “International Man of Mystery,” which makes me wish that Cab Calloway would return from the dead to sing in it and that Max Fleischer would come back and do a cartoon for it. Omer’s music spans the globe. He plays a “Russian Lullaby,” goes tropical with “Coconut Island” — try to listen to this all the way through without hearing Leon Redbone singing along — and strips “Misirlou” of any trace of surf music, taking the song back to its Middle Eastern roots (the way Dick Dale discovered it).
And speaking of Max Fleischer, the famed animator did a Betty Boop cartoon of “Mysterious Mose,” which is a variation of another song on Omer’s album, “Ol’ Man Mose.” That song, attributed to Louis Armstrong, has a rich history. A 1938 version of the song by Patricia Norman with the Eddie Duchin Orchestra is notorious for featuring the repeated use of a certain dirty word — in the refrain that goes “Mose kicked the bucket ...” Omer resists the temptation to work blue, however, so you can safely play his version for the children.
* San Antonio Kid by San Antonio Kid. This is a German group that has a strange obsession with the American Southwest. SAK plays an alluring, moody, noirish spaghetti-Western style of country rock. (Maybe we should coin a new category: sauerkraut Western?) There’s lots of twang and reverb and dreamy melodies packed into this 34-minute, eight-song record.
The whistling that opens the song “Strangers” sounds straight out of Clint Eastwood’s A Fistful of Dollars. San Antonio Kid reminds me a little of Calexico — without the marimbas and trumpet. And the harmonica on “Same Old Sound II” has echoes of Call of the West-era Wall of Voodoo.
We only hail the hero from whom we got our name We're not sure what he did but he's our hero just the same from "The John Birch Society" by Michael Brown
Seventy one years ago today, just days after the end of World War II, a group of Chinese communists captured then killed a 27-year-old American Baptist missionary -- who also was working for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services -- named John Birch.
Birch, who spoke fluent Mandarin, had been sent, along with a group of Chinese Nationalist and American officers to accept the surrender of a Japanese base in eastern China.
According to a review in the Wall Street Journal review of the biography John Birch: A Life by Terry Lautz (2016, Oxford University Press) Richard Bernstein talked about Birch's career in China:
Birch bravely spent weeks and months at a time behind enemy lines helping to select targets for American bombers. After the Japanese surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, he was sent on a mission to scout territories in eastern China being evacuated by the Japanese. There, he and his men ran into a detachment of Communist guerrillas who, after a heated verbal exchange, shot and killed Birch. The date was Aug. 25, 1945.
He was a missionary. He was an officer in the OSS. But one thing John Birch never was: a member of The John Birch Society.
In this book review, Bernstein wrote about what happened to Birch's name after his death:
As a devout Christian, Birch would have found Communist values and practices deeply objectionable, but he didn’t live to witness Communist rule in China and was never an anti-communist fanatic. Yet in 1958, Robert H.W. Welch Jr., a wealthy candy manufacturer, founded the John Birch Society, seizing on the notion that the noble American war hero Birch was the first victim of a war declared against America and Christian civilization by the international Communist conspiracy. This was a war aided and abetted, in Welch’s post-McCarthyite view, by a coterie of highly placed American traitors. Dwight Eisenhower, he wrote, was “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy ... his untimely death [was] followed by his involuntary enlistment in a paranoid club that reduced a cause that might otherwise have gained his sympathy to a jokey kind of historical footnote.
Indeed, in the world of popular music you only hear Birch's name in a couple of jokey songs -- jokey folkie songs -- from the early 1960s.
Those songs are below. But remember when listening to them that the John Birch Society is not John Birch.
First there's "The John Birch Society," as performed by The Chad Mitchell Trio.
Then there is Bob Dylan's "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues."
Ironically, this song proved that paranoia was not the exclusive property of the Birchers. Dylan was going to sing this on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1963,
Dylan had auditioned “John Birch” days earlier and had run through it for Ed Sullivan himself without any concern being raised. But during dress rehearsal on the day of the show, an executive from the CBS Standards and Practices department informed the show’s producers that they could not allow Dylan to go forward singing “John Birch.” While many of the song’s lyrics about hunting down “reds” were merely humorous ... others that equated the John Birch Society’s views with those of Adolf Hitler raised the fear of a defamation lawsuit in the minds of CBS’s lawyers.
Dylan refused to alter the lyrics or play another song. So he gave up his chance to appear on Ed Sullivan. Sullivan himself later denounced the idiotic decision by the CBS suits.
