It's been nearly three years since Wacky Wednesday shot fish in the Golden Throats barrel.
What's a "Golden Throat?" you might ask. A wise man said once (or twice, now three times):
Back in the '80s and '90s, when Rhino Records was actually a cool label, they released a series of albums called Golden Throats. These nutball compilations featured movie and TV stars, sports heroes and every stripe of cheesy celebrity singing ham-fisted versions of songs they had no business singing. Pop tunes, rock 'n' roll hits, country song, whatever. Nothing was sacred and nothing was safe from the Golden Throats. Because of the exposure from the Rhino series, some of these unintentionally hilarious songsters became notorious and ironically hip. Think William Shatner -- the Elvis of the Golden Throats! -- and his over-the-top renditions of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Mr. Tambourine Man."
I'm not sure any of these reach the Shatner level, but check them out ...
Tina Louise, star of the classic ensemble comedy Gilligan's Island did this one very Gingerly.
At least two Bonanza stars recorded albums. (I was disappointed I never came across any Hoss solo recordings.) But here's the whole Cartwright family making a corny old song even cornier
Remember when Paris Hilton was something? I'm not sure what she was, but one thing she wasn't was a singer (though, in fairness, this isn't that much worse than Rod Stewart's original.)
Here's a classic Golden Throats favorite from Sebastian Cabot, TV's beloved "Mr. French"from the show Family Affairs. I once wrote about this stab at a Dylan song, "Sebastian starts off as if he's nursing the hangover of his life ("Go away from my window!") and ends up sounding like a third rate villain taunting some poor hostage."
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Ouija Board Lies /Garbage Truck by L7
Tonight is the Night by The Goon Matt & Lord Bernardo
Bright Blue Day Haze by Mystic Braves
I Ain't Cryin' by The Darts Hey Joe by Dead Moon
No Anthems by Sleater-Kinney
Ride Away by The Fall
Contagious by Sleeve Cannon
Call the Police by Stephanie McDee
Police Call by Drywall
The Train Kept A-Rollin' by The Yardbirds
Animal by Knoll Allen & The Noble Savages
Short Term Memory Lane by J.J. & The Real Jerks
Mystery Girl by Mondo Topless Wake Up Baby by Sonny Boy Williamson
Long Haired Guys from England by Too Much Joy
Cowboy Bob by Butthole Surfers
Reverso Destructo by Toy Trucks
Bad Reruns by Big Foot Chester
Don't Play It by Kim Gordon
Spring Swells by Thurston Moore
Psy-Ops Dispatch by Thee Oh Sees
Never Did No Wanderin' by The Folksmen
Four Chambered Heart/Marquis Moon by Charlie Pickett
Black Star by Nick Shoulders
In the Dark of Morning by Possessed by Paul James
Detour by Sleepy LaBeef
East Side Boys by Martin Zeller
Some Velvet Morning by Firewater
Goodnight Irene by Tom Waits
That's how most people recognize the song, about a gun-toting guy who's telling a friend he's about to shoot his woman who's recently been seen messing around with another man. Later the cuckholded Joe informs his friend that he indeed shot her and is now about to flee to Mexico.
Guns don't kill people. Jealous maniacs kill people. Often with guns.
But before Hendrix brought new levels of popularity to "Hey Joe," the song had quite a history, jumping from the world of the folkies to the realm of the young, loud and snotty realm of the first-generation garage rockers.
Johnny Cash fans may recognize the basic plot similarities of "Hey Joe" and Cash's "Cocaine Blues," which itself was a black-humor rewrite of the old murder ballad "Little Sadie."
Though some mistakenly have said "Hey Joe" itself is a traditional folk song, and others have claimed a role in writing it, it actually was a folkie from California named Billy Roberts who was the first to sing the basic "Hey Joe" that we know and love and the first to copyright the song in 1962.
But some say Roberts' song was a re-write of his old girlfriend, Niela Miller's song, "Baby Please Don't Go to Town." Miller herself said this in 2004 in a response to a post on a blog dedicated to different versions of "Hey Joe."
Miller said Roberts was her boyfriend for a brief time in the late 1950s. "I was a songwriter and had written a song called 'Baby Please Don’t Go To Town,'" she wrote. "It is copyrighted. He stole it from me, kept the melody and put different words to it. thereby turning it into `Hey Joe.'"
Here's Niela's song
By the mid '60s, "Hey Joe" was bouncing around the Los Angeles rock 'n' roll world. The bridge between the folkies and the rockers probably was Dino Valenti, aka Chet Powers, who's probably best known for being a singer in Quicksilver Messenger Service and the undisputed writer of the peace-and-love classic "Get Together." Valenti's name appears in songwriting credits on many versions of "Hey Joe."
The Leaves recorded the first rock version of "Hey Joe," taking it to the garage in 1965.
And this sparked a whole mess of covers by bands like Love, The Standells. The Music Machine, The Shadows of Knight, The Surfaris. The biggest band before Hendrix to record "Hey Joe" was The Byrds with vocals by David Crosby. According to Roger McQuinn in the 1996 CD release of The Byrd's third album, Fifth Dimension:
The reason Crosby did lead vocal on "Hey Joe" was because it was his song. He didn't write it but he was responsible for finding it. He'd wanted to do it for years but we would never let him. Then both Love and the Leaves had a minor hit with it and David got so angry that we had to let him do it.
In 1969, Wilson Pickett turned it wicked, obviously influenced by the Hendrix version. (That's Duane Allman on guitar here)
Patti Smith also took to Hendrix's slower version, but turned it into an ode to Tania in 1974 on the flip side of her first single, "Piss Factory."
Nick Cave kept Joe alive, covering the song in his 1986 album Kicking Against the Pricks. In the version below, from an episode of Night Music in 1990, with a band including jazz greats Charlie Haden (bass) and Toots Thielemans (harmoinica).
Around the same time, Dead Moon returned it to its Leaves-era urgency
But perhaps it was Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention who had the most fun with the song, twisting it into a biting hippie spoof on their third album, We're Only In It For the Money.
(This post barely scratches the surface of "Hey Joe" covers. So before you start peppering me with "What about the _____ version???" check out this list of covers.)
Sunday, January 19, 2020 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Jesus Christ Twist by Reverend Beat-Man
Robotic Centipede by Mean Motor Scooter
Cherry Red by Ty Segall
Hanged Man by Churchwood
My Friend is a Stooge for the Media Priests by Pere Ubu
Demon Seed by Demented Are Go
Let's Go to Mars by The Ghost Wolves
Turncoat by Imperial Wax
Get Down (and Get Stupid) by The Del-Gators
All Grown Up by Warm Soda
In a Peak State State with You by Rattanson
Schizo MF by Destination Lonely
Hey Gyp by The Orphans
Your Gun by The Hormonauts
Luck by The Manxx
In the Good Old Days When Times Were Bad by Dolly Parton
Down from Dover by Sally Timms & Jon Langford
Jeanie's Afraid of the Dark by Robbie Fulks
Ding Dong Daddy by Nick Shoulders
Kansas City by David Bromberg
Buzz Buzz Buzz by The Blasters
Phone Booth by Robert Cray
Manny's Bones by Los Lobos
Any Sunny Day by Bruce Hendrickson & The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies
Post by Kult
When It Breaks by Possessed by Paul James
Welfare Bread by King Khan & The Shrines
Land of Hopes and Dreams by Bruce Springsteen CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Once again I was honored honored to have been among the dozens of music critics asked to be part of Nashville Scene's annual Country Music Critics' Poll, organized and compiled by longtime music journalist Geoffrey Himes.
In the "Comments" sidebar, Geoff even quoted from part of my dazzling commentary on Tyler Childers, specifically about song "Matthew" (which was on my favorite country album of the year, Country Squire.
Just for the heck of it, here are all my comments I submitted, with some videos and photos inserted . Longtime readers may recognize some serious recycling from 2019 Tune-Up columns:
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Right up there with Sturgill Simpson and Margo Price, Tyler Childers is at the top of my list of favorite country music discoveries in recent years. I became an unapologetic zealot about three-quarters through my first listen of his landmark 2017 album Purgatory. And the good news is that his new album, Country Squire is even better. I especially love the final track, “Matthew,” a fiddle-driven ode to Childers’ brother-in-law, an Iraq war veteran who now works the night shift, guarding “rusty missiles” at the Blue Grass Army Depot near Richmond, Kentucky. The song also is about Matthew’s dad, who raised his young ’uns right “on a little bit of scripture and an acreage of paradise.” The old man’s also a musician, and Childers compares his guitar picking to that of the late bluegrass great Clarence White. Not much really happens in the song. Despite the allusions to missiles and war (and a terrible logging accident that cost Matthew’s father a leg years before), nobody gets killed or hurt during the course of the song. We hear of the family fishing, swapping tales, and telling lies. It’s just a sweet portrait of people Childers obviously loves and a sweet reminder of why I love good country music.
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I’d been aware of Eilen Jewell for a few years before I realized I actually liked her. She’d struck me as a decent, sweet-voiced songbird. You know the type: a waifish coffeehouse queen. I didn’t mind what I’d heard from her, but I didn’t pay her much mind. But then I heard her version of “Shakin’ All Over” from her 2009 album Sea of Tears. Yes, that “Shakin’ All Over”! This cute little singer-songwriter from Idaho was setting herself up for brutal comparisons with OG rockabillies Johnny Kidd &The Pirates, not to mention The Who. But she pulled it off in her own earthy, understated way. It didn’t have the bombast of The Who, but it was obvious the lady had the spirit down in her soul. That was when I started listening seriously to her material and found it alluring. I began looking forward to Jewell’s new releases. A decade later, her album Gypsy is her best so far. I knew it from the first track, the swampy, Tony Joe White-influenced “Crawl” that it would be a contender. Though Jewell’s never pretended to be a thoroughbred country singer, it’s obvious since a few years ago when she did a tasty Loretta Lynn tribute album that she truly loves the hillbilly music. And Gypsy has some of Jewell’s finest hardcore honky-tonk tunes: “You Cared Enough to Lie” (written by potato-state country singer Pinto Bennett) and Eilen’s own “These Blues.”
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I’ve been a fanatical fan of an Arkansas-born singer named Nick Shoulders for — at this writing — several days now. [I wrote this in late December. It's been several weeks now and I'm still a fanatical fan.]I just stumbled across his album Okay, Crawdad in the middle of compiling this Top 10 list. He’s got a wonderful understated sound with echoes of roadhouse country, rockabilly and even a little jug-band music. Shoulder’s voice can be compared to those of Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Paul Burch. And while he doesn’t sing like a bird, he literally whistles like one. He’s my latest and my favorite new discovery of 2019.
xxxxx In recent years I’ve traveled to Austin to visit family for Thanksgiving. Thus, one holiday tradition I’ve come to cherish is Dale Watson’s annual Thanksgiving night show at the Continental Club. If there’s a better, more authentic, harder working and more prolific purveyor of old fashioned honky-tonk music than Watson, I sure haven’t heard of him or her. The Thanksgiving show is always a good-time mish-mash of classic country tunes and Dale’s crowd-pleasing originals with guest spots by Dale’s girlfriend Celine Lee and rockabilly filly Rosie Flores and Dale’s so-cheesy-they’re-beautiful live commercials for Lone Star beer. And, just to add to the “what-is-country” debate, this year the most memorable tune was when Watson’s doghouse bass player Chris Crepps sang a hillbilly version of “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”
[Here's Dale singing "Honky Tonk Man" at the Continental a few days after I saw him last.]
xxxxxxx Speaking of “what is country,” I included All the World’s a Dressing Room, the recent live album by pioneering, always rocking, always hilarious, always filthy Texas cow-punk ensemble The Hickoids in my Top 10 albums, knowing full well that many readers and fellow critics and maybe even The Hickoids themselves would scratch their heads and say, “You call this country?” What can I
say? I’ve been this way for years. Back in the late ‘80s I reviewed an album by The Ramones and compared them with Buck Owens. But what the heck? This Hickoids album not only has the groups’ finest stoned-at-the-jukebox, truckdriver weeper, “Driftwood 40-23” (“ I bought a rubber in a truckstop bathroom /Saw your number scratched above the urinal …” ) as well as a crazy medley of TV themes for Hee-Haw, Green Acres and Petticoat Junction. They’ll never play the Grand Ol’ Opry or win a CMA award. But The Hickoids’ vision of country is insanely fun.
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My thoughts on Sturgill Simpson’s Sound & Fury: I can’t decide whether I hate this album or kind of like it. In one of the later episodes of Ken Burns’ Country Music documentary series, someone — I forget who — makes the point that since early in the history of the genre there’s been a tension among artists who try to stretch the boundaries of country. Be it Jimmie Rodgers recording with Louis Armstrong, Bob Wills incorporating swing jazz, Chet Atkins and Billy Sherrill creating a smooth “countrypolitan” sound, or John Denver and Olivia Newton-John crashing the country charts in the 1970s — the tension has always been there. Now Simpson, an adventurous artist whom I highly respect, would be the first to say that this new album (actually a soundtrack to an anime film) is not country music. It’s a loud sort of rock with screaming guitars and obnoxious synthesizers that sounds closer to prog rock. I’m certainly not opposed to country artists testing the boundaries and trying weird stuff. (As evidence by my inclusion of The Hickoids on this Top 10 poll.) Heck, I remember seeing a Crystal Gayle concert a few decades ago where her keyboardist played a crazy synthesizer on the classic hillbilly hit “Rocky Top,” and it sounded cool. As for Sound & Fury, there are a few catchy tunes here that perhaps I could learn to appreciate. But it’s been a few months now and I haven’t gotten there yet.
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Besides the Ken Burns PBS extravaganza, the best series about country music in 2019 was a podcast called Dolly Parton’s America, produced by hosted by Jad Abumrad, whose father is a Nashville surgeon who treated Dolly at Vanderbilt Hospital after a car wreck a few years ago and remained friends with her through the years. The basic premise of the show is that in a time of division in this nation, Dolly is a great force of unity, appealing to liberals and conservatives, young and old, gays and straights, rural and urban, etc. Abumrad, like his dad, a big Dolly fan, but takes a look at the icon from various angles — how she straddles the great political divide by maintaining a strict neutrality on most political issues to avoid offending potential fans. And you hear plenty of dissident voices — “woke” college students criticizing Parton for not addressing slavery and racism in her songs of the South; right-wingers upset because she didn’t speak up against her 9 to 5 co-stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin for criticizing the current president at a joint appearance at the 2017 Emmy Awards show. But my favorite moment on the podcast is one that doesn’t directly involve Dolly. It’s when Abumrad and his producer delight in hearing the Loretta Lynn song “Fist City” for the first time. That took me back to my wayward youth when I first discovered the song.
[And in case you've never heard "Fist City," brace yourself, Bridget!]

