THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, June 30, 2017
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
Big Balls in Cowtown by Don Walser
I'm the Only Hell (Mama Ever Raised) by Johnny Paycheck
Cowboy Boots by The Backsliders
Girl on the Billboard by Del Reeves
Gotta Get Up Every Morning by Junior Brown
Poor Rambler by Sturgill Simpson
Daddy Was a Badass by Jesse Dayton
A Week Before the Fourth of July by Boris McCutcheon
Fourth of July by Dave Alvin

American Epic Set
Mama's Angel Child by Jack White
On the Road Again by The Memphis Jug Band
Ragged But Right by Riley Puckett
Three Nights in a Barroom by Wade Mainer
Louis Collins by Mississippi John Hurt
Last Kind Words by Christine Pizzuti
Mal Hombre by Lydia Mendoza
Killer Diller Blues by Alabama Shakes

Cheap Motels by Southern Culture on the Skids
A Six Pack to Go by Leon Russell
Delete and Fast Forward by Willie Nelson
Don't Cheat in Our Hometown by Ricky Skaggs
Back Street Affair by Webb Pierce
Trophy Girl by Bobby Bare
Girl at the End of the Bar by The Waco Brothers
I Love You, Baby (And I Hate Myself) by Uncle Dave & The Waco Brothers
Worried Mind by Johnny Dowd

Truck Stop by Marty Stuart with Emmylou Harris
Write Your Own Songs by Dale Watson & Ray Benson
Bottom Dollar by Panama Red
I Left My Car at Maria's by Joe West
I Changed the Locks by Lucinda Williams
Selfishness in Man by George Jones
I Love You a Thousand Ways by Lefty Frizzell
Country Bumpkin by Cal Smith
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets


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TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: To Sing Those American Tunes

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
June 30, 2017

Back during the height of Watergate, Paul Simon sang, “We come in the age’s most uncertain hour to sing an American tune.” 

We’ve had lots of uncertain hours since then, and I still find strength in those American tunes, the old creaky blues, gospel, hillbilly, jug-band records, those crazy songs of joy, wry humor, and simple wisdom sung by people living in severe poverty in isolated regions, in an era of harsh injustice and racial apartheid. 

I find comfort in those weird musical stories of horrible murders, of hopping trains, of hopeless drunks finding the Lord, of spooky old pines where the sun never shines, of carefree ducks diving into rivers of whiskey.

So during this uncertain, tense, and violent era I was heartened in recent weeks when PBS presented American Epic, its excellent documentary series about the dawn of the American recording industry in the mid-1920s, when record companies sent talent scouts to scour the hills, hollers, and honky-tonks of the South to find musicians that the folks in rural America could relate to. 

The series, directed by British filmmaker Bernard MacMahon and narrated by Robert Redford, focuses on a handful of greats like the Carter Family, Mississippi John Hurt (a sweet, gentle spirit who is one of my major musical heroes), blues pioneer Charlie Patton, and South Carolina gospel singer and preacher Elder J.E. Burch — whose parishioners included the young Dizzy Gillespie. 

American Epic features three episodes of musical history, plus one called “The American Epic Sessions,” which consists of performances of (mostly) old songs by contemporary artists including Alabama Shakes, Taj Mahal, Los Lobos, Beck, Willie Nelson with the late Merle Haggard, and more. These tunes were recorded on an old pulley-driven Western Electric Scully lathe, the kind that the record companies hauled around to record the immortals in the ’20s and ’30s. Throughout “Sessions,” the directors show a near cargo-cult fascination with this Rube Goldberg-like device.

Though the South is the main focus of American Epic, there are also excursions into the West. There is a segment on Tejano music queen Lydia Mendoza and a trip to Hawaii, where we hear the story of Joseph Kekuku, the man who invented the steel guitar. 

And there is a segment on Hopi music, telling the story of how racist religious nuts in Congress sought to ban the tribe’s Snake Dance, calling the Hopi religion “a weird cult” after unauthorized film footage of the dance — which had been attended years before in Arizona by President Theodore Roosevelt — leaked out. In response, a group of Hopi religious leaders went to Washington, D.C., in 1926 to perform the Snake Dance for a crowd of dignitaries on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. They also recorded several songs for RCA Victor.


Being a jug-band fanatic, my favorite segment deals with the Memphis Jug Band, led by Will Shade. At one point the rapper Nas talks about the similarities between hip-hop and jug-band music. “These guys are talking about carrying guns, shooting something, protecting their honor, chasing after some woman who’s done them dirty.” Nas, backed by an acoustic band led by Jack White, performs a version of the Memphis Jug Band’s “On the Road Again” in the “Sessions” episode.

Sony has released nine American Epic albums, including a single-disc soundtrack of the artists covered, a five-disc box set, a “Sessions” soundtrack by modern musicians, and several for individual artists and genres. Critic Robert Christgau recently joked — was he joking? — that “American Epic is a Sony plot to poach/rescue the American folk music franchise from the Smithsonian and the great Harry Smith.”

Most of this music is available on other compilations. Here are some other great American roots-music collections:

Harry Smith

* Anthology of American Folk Music. The fabulously eccentric Harry Smith compiled this collection in 1952 from old 78 rpm records in his personal collection. The 84 songs — blues, hillbilly, Cajun, gospel — originally were recorded between 1927 and 1932. Among the artists included are Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Patton, the Carter Family, Dock Boggs, Blind Willie Johnson, Rev. J.M. Gates, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Uncle Dave Macon. Keep in mind, the anthology came about in 1952, back when only a few academics and the most obsessive record collectors knew who any of these people were.

* The Bristol Sessions. The first episode of American Epic tells the story of RCA talent scout Ralph Peer setting up a makeshift recording studio in an old furniture store in Bristol, Tennessee, in 1927 and striking gold. Among those he attracted to Bristol were the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. Also among the Bristol bunch were West Virginia bard Blind Alfred Reed, Ernest Stoneman, and the Tenneva Ramblers, whose song “The Longest Train I Ever Saw” would in subsequent years be handed back and forth among black bluesmen and white hillbilly and bluegrass singers under various titles (“In the Pines,” “Black Girl”). It would re-emerge in the 1990s as Nirvana’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” (There are a few versions of this collection available ranging from a single disc to a five-disc box.)


* Ruckus Juice & Chitlins: The Great Jug Bands. This is a set of two CDs (sold separately) of classic jug-band recordings from Yazoo Records. The collection includes seminal acts like the Memphis Jug Band, Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Earl McDonald’s Original Louisville Jug Band, Whistler & His Jug Band, and more. (Vol. 2 can be found HERE)

* My Rough and Rowdy Ways: Badman Ballads & Hellraising Songs, Classic Recordings From the 1920s and ’30s. This is my second-favorite two-disc collection from Yazoo. The subtitle says it all. It’s a bunch of great hellraising blues and hillbilly songs about sex, booze, drugs (Dick Justice’s “Cocaine” kicks off Vol. 2), gambling, and murderers — from Stack-O-Lee to Billy the Kid to the psycho who killed Pretty Polly.

I did a quick Throwback Thursday blog post on American Epic a few weeks ago, including a few videos. You can see that HERE. 

Here are some more videos, starting with The Memphis Jug Band



Here's Dick Justice's take on the same subject



Was Donald Trump thinking about Lydia Mendoza's classic song when he spoke of "bad hombres" crossing our borders?



This song by The Alabama Shakes is one of my favorites from American Epic Sessions

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Laid Around, Stayed Around This Old Town Too Long

UPDATED 

This week on Throwback Thursday I'm going to look into a great old country song that's been covered so many times by so so many great singers, many folks have forgotten -- if indeed they ever knew -- who did it originally.

And yes, I'm among them. I had to look it up before I learned that the song originally was recorded in 1959 by a singer named Billy Grammer.

Billy who?

According to The AllMusic Guide, Grammer was a pretty accomplished dude.

He was one of 13 children born to a coal-mining family in downstate Benton, Illinois. Despite a youthful interest in science and engineering, the young Grammer often played fiddle, guitar, or mandolin at local gatherings, accompanying his father or performing solo. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and worked as an apprentice toolmaker. But after discharge, work was scarce for an eager young musician. When Grammer heard about an opportunity with Connie Gay's Radio Ranch, he hitchhiked to Arlington, Virginia; auditioned; and made the cut. Two years later, he made his recording debut. In 1955, Gay suggested to Jimmy Dean that Grammer join his television show. During his years on The Jimmy Dean Show, Grammer was a sideman in several bands, including those of Clyde Moody, Grandpa Jones, and Hawkshaw Hawkins.

And according to the New York Times:

Mr. Grammer also designed and produced flat-top acoustic guitars under his own name through a company he started in the 1960s. He donated his first model to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1969, and in 2004 Sotheby’s sold an abalone inlay acoustic model played by Johnny Cash for $131,200.

And here's something weird. On May 15, 1972, Grammer and his band, The Travel On Boys played at the George Wallace rally in a Laurel, Maryland shopping center when Arthur Bremmer shot and critically wounded Wallace, leaving the former Alabama governor in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

But enough talk, let's get on with the music. Here's a live version of "Gotta Travel On" by Billy Grammer.



The first version I ever heard of "Gotta Travel On was on sausage baron Jimmy Dean's 1961 album Big Bad John and Other Fabulous Songs and Tales.



Bill Monroe was a fan of the song. It was on his 1962 album My All Time Country Favorites.



Jerry Lee & Linda Gail Lewis made it rock.



And more recently, in 2013, French rocker Rev. Tom Frost did a "graveyard blues" cover of the song on his Bloody Works album




UPDATE 9:30 pm 6-29-17
A reader, Tom from New Jersey, informed me about a blog, Chimesfreedom, that has far more information on this wonderful song.

First of all, "Gotta Travel On" has very similar predecessors recorded years before Billy Grammer's hit. Here's one called "Police and High Sheriff Come Ridin' Down" from 1927 by bluesman Ollis Martin.



Chimesfreedom points out that the song we've come to know as "Gotta Travel On" was copyrighted in 1959 by  Paul Clayton, Larry Ehrlich, David Lazar, and Tom Six. Clayton was active in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the '60s.

But the blog also says "The three latter names listed as writers were pseudonyms for members of The Weavers.  Ehrlich was a pseudonym for Lee Hays, Six was a pseudonym for Fred Hellerman, and Lazar was a pseudonym for Pete Seeger."

Now I'm not certain that's true that Lazar was a pseudonym for Seeger. According to a 2002 obituary for David Lazar in the Washington Post, Lazar, who was best known as a diplomat:

 had some early success as a lyricist. He helped write words for popular tunes that included "Gotta Travel On," which was recorded by Pete Seeger, The Kingston Trio, Bob Dylan and countless others. ... 

During his youth in Chicago, Mr. Lazar liked to hang out in blues, folk and jazz clubs. He heard Pete Seeger in the 1950s and was among a small group, including Paul Clayton, that helped Seeger write new lyrics to the tune later recorded as "Gotta Travel On." 

But apparently Seeger was involved at some level. What rich irony that a troubadour for George Wallace got famous on a song written by a bunch of coffee house folkies who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era.

God Bless America!

Plus Chimesfreedom linked to another blog that reminded me that Neil Young & Crazy Horse did this song on their Americana album.




For more deep dives into songs, check out The Stephen W. Terrell Web Log Songbook

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Happy Birthday Mel Brooks!

Mel Brooks, center, as Gov. William J. Lepetomane in Blazing Saddles, 1974

Mel Brooks, the comic force behind some of the funniest movies of the '70s, turns 91 today.

Happy birthday, Mel!

Though he's basically known as a comedian, writer, director, producer and actor, Brooks also had an ear for music. The songs in his movies helped make them memorable

To celebrate his birthday this Wacky Wednesday here are some of the best songs from his films.

Let's start with this scene in Blazing Saddles featuring Madeline Kahn as the Marlene Dietrich-like Lili von Shtup singing a ditty called "I'm Tired."



In Young Frankenstein Gene Wilder as Dr. Frankenstein and Peter  Boyle as his monster teamed up for a rendition of "Puttin' on the Ritz."



Robin Hood: Men in Tights was one of Brooks' later movies (1993.) Here  Cary Elwes as Robin Hood serenades Maid Marian (Amy Yasbeck) with "The Night is Young and You're So Beautiful," a song Dean Martin recorded a few decades before.



Brooks himself sings the theme of his 1977 Hitchcock spoof High Anxiety in a hotel lounge. He wrote the song too.

But music-wise I don't believe Brooks ever topped this glorious anthem from his 1968 film The Producers.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, June 25, 2017
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Occidental Front by Black Lips
Girl Happy by Elvis Presley
The Point is Overflowing by Left Lane Cruiser
Crybabies Go Home by The Ghost Wolves
I'm Not Like Everyone Else by The Rockin' Guys
Bikini Girls With Machine Guns by The Cramps
The Grace by The Molting Vultures
I Shot All the Birds by The Blind Shake
Truck Stop by Suzi Quatro

Voodoo Priestess by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Walk on Guilded Splinters by Jello Biafra & The New Orleans Raunch and Soul All-Stars
The Lucky Ones by Mudhoney
That's When I Reach for My Revolver by Mission of Burma

Demon in Profile by Afghan Whigs
Heathen Child by Grinderman
Every Girl Deserves a Song by The Electric Mess
Skintrade by The Mekons
Almost a God by Movie Star Junkies
No Rocks on Mars by The Vagoos
You Never Had It Better by The Electric Prunes
Hap Hap Happy Heart by Pamela Lucia
Time Can Do So Much by Negativland

Burning Love by The Residents
Days of Being Wild by ... and You Will Know Us by The Trail of Dead
The Thing That Should Not Be by Primus
Falling by Xiu Xiu
I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound by Dion
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, June 23, 2017
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

Move it on Over by George Thorogood

In the Jailhouse by The Grevious Angels

Hotdog That Made Him Mad by Wanda Jackson

If You Play With My Mind by Cornell Hurd

Lonesome 7-7203 by Hawkshaw Hankins

Bottom Below by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs

3-Pecker Goat by Jesse Dayton

Punk Rockin' Honky Tonk Girl by The Blue Chieftains

This is How It Ends by Steve Earle

White Trash by Fred Eaglesmith

The Love In by Ben Colder

Broken Halos by Chris Stapleton 

Armistice Day by The Yawpers

Visionland by The Banditos

Fourteen Rivers, Fourteen Floods by Beck

Dolores by Eddie Noack

Hucklebuck by The Riptones 

Good Morning Judge by Louis Innis & His Stringbusters

Foldin' Bed by Whistler's Jug Band

TRUCK DRIVIN' SET 

Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves by The Last Mile Ramblers

How Fast Them Trucks Can Go by Claude Gray

Truck Drivers Blues by Cliff Brown

Give Me 40 Acres by The Willis Brothers

Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man by The Byrds

UFOs Big Rigs and BBQ by Mojo Nixon & The World Famous Blue Jays
Highway Cafe by Kinky Friedman & The Texas Jewboys
Truck Drivin' Man by Terry Fell
Mama Hated Diesels by Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen

A Tombstone Every Mile by Dick Curless
Diesel Daisy by Killbilly
Truck Stop Hooker by Stinky Joe McCoy
Giddy Up Go by Red Sovine
Truck Stops and Pretty Girls by Jim & Jesse
Six Days on the Road by Rig Rock Deluxe (Dale Watson, Rosie Flores, Wayne Hancock, Toni Price, Kim Richie, Jon Langford, with Lou Whitney & The Skeletons)

CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets


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Listen to the Truck Drivin' Set below

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Songs for the Truck Stop

An overflow crowd at a public meeting in Santa Fe showed up to protest a proposed Flying J truck stop off I-25 south of the city.

According to a news story by my Santa Fe New Mexican colleague Justin Horwath, residents of the nearby Rancho Viejo neighborhood claimed the truck stop would bring unwanted traffic, crime and pollution. One guy even warned of the danger of light pollution coming from a 24 truck stop.

In other words, a fairly typical Santa Fe NIMBY battle. I must have covered a million of 'em back when I had the City Hall beat.

But for a lover of vintage country music, there just seems something un-American about attacking a truck stop,

As any serious country music fan knows, a truck stop is a hallowed place, an oasis on the highway, where a pretty waitress will pour you another cup of coffee (for it is the best in the land!)

A truck stop is where the brave men and women who bring the food to our supermarkets, and other goods to our stores can take a shower, grab a burger and a piece of pie and share a little face-to-face conversation with fellow humans to relieve the tedium that white-line brings.

Surely that outweighs a little light pollution.

Whenever someone protests a truck stop, somewhere out on the Lost Highway, the ghost of Big Joe sheds a quiet tear as he drives his Phantom 309 through the shadows.

O.K., I'll stop. Enjoy some classic American truck driver songs. Most of these have been banging around in my head since I read Justin's story,

I first heard "Truck Drivin' Man" done by Buck Owens. But it was written and first recorded back in 1954 by an Alabama-born singer named Terry Fell.

UPDATE 7-8-17: Wow! Just a couple of weeks after I posted this, someone yanked the Terry Fell version off of YouTube. So I guess we'll just have to settle for the Buck Owens cover.



Dave Dudley --  born David Darwin Pedruska in Spencer, Wisc. -- is best known for his truck-driver songs in the 1960s. His best-known song is this hit from 1963.



Red Simpson was a pioneer of the Bakersfield Sound as well as an important purveyor of truck driving songs. "Roll, Truck Roll" is my favorite Simpson tune.



Kitty Wells, one of the giants of 1950s country music, sang a sweet testimonial to truck stop waitresses



Dick Curless, a New Englander who wrote many truck driving songs in the 1960s, did this song about "truck stops with swingin' chicks" in this tune called "Chick Inspector."//



Here's another Red, Woodrow Wilson "Red" Sovine, who made it big with truck driver tunes. He's responsible for the spooky "Big Joe & The Phantom 309." This maudlin little weeper, also a "talking" song -- or maybe you can call it "white rap" -- was even a bigger hit for Sovine. It's about a guy who drives a truck called the "Giddy Up Go."



But this one is my favorite truck driving song of all time. I prefer the version by New Mexico's own Last Mile Ramblers, who performed and recorded it back in the '70s. But a Texan named Doye O'Dell was the first to record "Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves" back in 1952. The song features a hotshot steel guitarist named Speedy West.



You can bet your bottom dollar that I'm going to play a big load of truck driver songs on The Santa Fe Opry Friday night on KSFR.