Friday, November 30, 2012
THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST
Friday, Nov. 30, 2012
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
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Look at That Moon by Carl Mann
Nightride by The Legendary Shack Shakers
Lose Your Mind by Wayne Hancock
Looking at the Moon and Wishing on a Star by Charline Arthur
Bachelor Man from El Gaucho by Lucky Tubb
Strut My Stuff by Slim Redman & Donnie Bowshier
Blue Moon of Kentucky by Rev. Beat-Man
Big Dwarf Rodeo by Rev. Horton Heat
Bell Clappin' Mama by Bill Carlisle
The Jukie's Ball by Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks
Merry Christmas Darlin' by James Hand
There Goes the Neighborhood by Kevin Deal
Shout Little Lulie by Ralph Stanley
Tip Your Hat by Marty Stuart with Earl Scruggs & Josh Graves
Backsliders Wine by Gary Stewart
Never Be Your Darling by The Backsliders
Consolidation by Gary Heffern
Hey Little Dreamboat by Rose Maddox
Rhinestone Cowboy by The Frontier Circus
She Still Comes Around by Jerry Lee Lewis
Shotgun by Southern Culture on the Skids
London Homesick Blues by Jerry Jeff Walker
Gettin' Drunk and Fallin' Down by Hank 3
Prison Show Romp by 16 Horsepower
Siste Reis by Ed Pettersen
Old Rub Alcohol Blues by Dock Boggs
I Just Want to Meet the Man by Robbie Fulks
Flower From the Fields of Alabama by Norman Blake
Drinking Champagne by Willie Nelson
Seven Spanish Angels by Ray Charles & Willie Nelson
I Ain't Ever Satisfied by Steve Earle
Skillet Good and Greasy by Sid Hemphill
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
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Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
Thursday, November 29, 2012
TERRELL'S TUNEUP: Some Soul to Warm Your Winter
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Nov. 30, 2012
Bettye LaVette is considered a late bloomer. And, as her new album Thankful N’ Thoughtful shows, she’s still blooming.
She’s been in the show-biz game since the 1960s, but stardom elluded her. By the ’90s, she had established a fan base in Europe and was beginning to amass a cult following in the U.S.
Then in 2005, with the release of I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise (in which she covered songs by Lucinda Williams, SinĂ©ad O’Connor, Dolly Parton, and Joan Armatrading), LaVette finally began receiving the recognition she long deserved.
At the age of 66, she’s a soul star. And she’s not showing any signs of slowing down. Sometimes her voice is full of sex and fire. Sometimes it’s a voice of weary wisdom. It’s a voice that will not be ignored.
LaVette is an interpreter, not a writer. But there’s no question that she puts her own stamp on the songs she covers. And in Thankful N’ Thoughtful, she and producer Craig Street came up with some material for LaVette to transform. Here she performs songs by some of the most venerated veteran songwriters around — Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Neil Young — as well as some surprising new interpretations of tunes by more contemporary artists like The Black Keys and Gnarls Barkley.
The album begins with a swampy take on Dylan’s “Everything Is Broken.” It is one of the best songs on Dylan’s 1989 album Oh Mercy. But LaVette makes it sound as if it were written especially for her. As she does with other songs here, she takes liberties with the lyrics — instead of “broken voices on broken phones,” her “broken voices” are singing “broken songs.” She even sneaks in an obscenity that isn’t in Dylan’s original. And by the end of the track, she’s shouting “Oh Lord! Oh Lord!” pleading in desperation for divine intervention before her whole world breaks.
She turns Young’s “Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere” from a country-rock romp into a soulful meditation on frustration and nostalgic yearning. She does Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” as if it were an Al Green song. And, for the title song, she takes a little-known gem from Sly and The Family Stone’s 1973 album Fresh and turns it into a sacred affirmation.
The best song on this album is so good, there are two versions. I’m talking about “Dirty Old Town,” a tune written by British folk singer Ewan MacColl, but probably better known for its version by The Pogues. (Pixies singer Frank Black did a good rockabilly-tinged version a few years ago, too.) There’s a funky four-minute slow-groove take and an even slower seven-minute version. LaVette recently told The Washington Post that she prefers the long version. “I liked the one that sounded like a funeral dirge, because the song is about a city that’s dying.”
LaVette changed some of the lyrics to make the song about her childhood home of Detroit instead of a town in England. In the second verse, she adds a little crime action. Cats “prowling their beat” as MacColl and The Pogues have it, become cops patrolling in LaVette’s version. And then, “A shot rang out, and that changed it all.” And in the earlier renditions, the singer dreams of taking “A big sharp ax/Shining steel tempered in the fire” and chopping down the dirty old town like “an old dead tree.” But LaVette turns it around, singing that the town took the ax and tried to chop her down.
“But they couldn’t,” she snorts defiantly.
Also recommended:
* Sinner Man: The Lost Session by Esquerita. Perhaps you haven’t heard of Eskew Reeder Jr., better known by his loving cult as “Esquerita.” Like Bettye LaVette, he started out decades ago — the 1950s, in his case — but never got a break from the music industry.
He actually got signed to Capitol Records in the ’50s — allegedly to be Capitol’s answer to Little Richard. But he never caught fire.
Dan Epstein explained it best years ago on eMusic: “A one-eyed, six-and-a-half-foot transvestite who [claimed to have] taught Little Richard how to play piano (and copied Richard’s mile-high pompadour in return), the late Esquerita was simply too ‘out there’ for mass consumption during the Eisenhower era.”
Well, he’s got a point. But I’d argue that Little Richard’s look and sound was just as crazy, and somehow he did make it big in the “I like Ike” days.
With fame and success passing him by, Esquerita’s career went into decline. Reportedly by the ’80s he was working as a parking-lot attendant and at one point was spotted washing car windows for tips in Brooklyn. He died of AIDS in 1986.
Years ago, Norton Records — a label that specializes in wild, primitive rock ’n’ roll rarities — released an Esquerita collection called Vintage Voola. But to my ears, that compilation doesn’t have half the crazed energy of Sinner Man. This new album comes from sessions recorded in New York City in 1966. Esquerita sings and plays piano and organ, sometimes switching back and forth during the course of a song. He’s accompanied only by a drummer, whose name has been lost to history.
The fiery eight-minute title track, which opens the album (there’s also a shorter version later) should be required listening for any student of soul music. Inspired by Nina Simone’s take on the old spiritual, Esquerita pounds the piano as frantically as his drummer pounds the skins. He sings “Running to the Lord/He told me to go on to the devil” like someone who had just had that conversation a few minutes before. And when he sings “Went to the devil/The devil he was waiting,” you can almost smell the brimstone.
This is definitely a case of saving the best for the first. But all the subsequent songs are loaded with fun. Esquerita plays around with some of the standards of the day — “On Broadway,” “C.C. Rider,” and the blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.”
But more interesting are some of the more obscure songs like “Letter Full of Tears,” a song by Gladys Knight & The Pips, and “Leave Me Alone,” recorded by a little-known singer called Baby Washington. Both of the originals are far more sedate and sweetened by strings. Esquerita, with his frantic, bare-boned approach, goes straight to the raw nucleus of these songs.
This is powerful music from an artist who deserved much better out of life.
Enjoy some videos:
Nov. 30, 2012
Bettye LaVette is considered a late bloomer. And, as her new album Thankful N’ Thoughtful shows, she’s still blooming.
She’s been in the show-biz game since the 1960s, but stardom elluded her. By the ’90s, she had established a fan base in Europe and was beginning to amass a cult following in the U.S.
Then in 2005, with the release of I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise (in which she covered songs by Lucinda Williams, SinĂ©ad O’Connor, Dolly Parton, and Joan Armatrading), LaVette finally began receiving the recognition she long deserved.
At the age of 66, she’s a soul star. And she’s not showing any signs of slowing down. Sometimes her voice is full of sex and fire. Sometimes it’s a voice of weary wisdom. It’s a voice that will not be ignored.
LaVette is an interpreter, not a writer. But there’s no question that she puts her own stamp on the songs she covers. And in Thankful N’ Thoughtful, she and producer Craig Street came up with some material for LaVette to transform. Here she performs songs by some of the most venerated veteran songwriters around — Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Neil Young — as well as some surprising new interpretations of tunes by more contemporary artists like The Black Keys and Gnarls Barkley.
The album begins with a swampy take on Dylan’s “Everything Is Broken.” It is one of the best songs on Dylan’s 1989 album Oh Mercy. But LaVette makes it sound as if it were written especially for her. As she does with other songs here, she takes liberties with the lyrics — instead of “broken voices on broken phones,” her “broken voices” are singing “broken songs.” She even sneaks in an obscenity that isn’t in Dylan’s original. And by the end of the track, she’s shouting “Oh Lord! Oh Lord!” pleading in desperation for divine intervention before her whole world breaks.
She turns Young’s “Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere” from a country-rock romp into a soulful meditation on frustration and nostalgic yearning. She does Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” as if it were an Al Green song. And, for the title song, she takes a little-known gem from Sly and The Family Stone’s 1973 album Fresh and turns it into a sacred affirmation.
The best song on this album is so good, there are two versions. I’m talking about “Dirty Old Town,” a tune written by British folk singer Ewan MacColl, but probably better known for its version by The Pogues. (Pixies singer Frank Black did a good rockabilly-tinged version a few years ago, too.) There’s a funky four-minute slow-groove take and an even slower seven-minute version. LaVette recently told The Washington Post that she prefers the long version. “I liked the one that sounded like a funeral dirge, because the song is about a city that’s dying.”
LaVette changed some of the lyrics to make the song about her childhood home of Detroit instead of a town in England. In the second verse, she adds a little crime action. Cats “prowling their beat” as MacColl and The Pogues have it, become cops patrolling in LaVette’s version. And then, “A shot rang out, and that changed it all.” And in the earlier renditions, the singer dreams of taking “A big sharp ax/Shining steel tempered in the fire” and chopping down the dirty old town like “an old dead tree.” But LaVette turns it around, singing that the town took the ax and tried to chop her down.
“But they couldn’t,” she snorts defiantly.
Also recommended:
* Sinner Man: The Lost Session by Esquerita. Perhaps you haven’t heard of Eskew Reeder Jr., better known by his loving cult as “Esquerita.” Like Bettye LaVette, he started out decades ago — the 1950s, in his case — but never got a break from the music industry.
He actually got signed to Capitol Records in the ’50s — allegedly to be Capitol’s answer to Little Richard. But he never caught fire.
Dan Epstein explained it best years ago on eMusic: “A one-eyed, six-and-a-half-foot transvestite who [claimed to have] taught Little Richard how to play piano (and copied Richard’s mile-high pompadour in return), the late Esquerita was simply too ‘out there’ for mass consumption during the Eisenhower era.”
Well, he’s got a point. But I’d argue that Little Richard’s look and sound was just as crazy, and somehow he did make it big in the “I like Ike” days.
With fame and success passing him by, Esquerita’s career went into decline. Reportedly by the ’80s he was working as a parking-lot attendant and at one point was spotted washing car windows for tips in Brooklyn. He died of AIDS in 1986.
Years ago, Norton Records — a label that specializes in wild, primitive rock ’n’ roll rarities — released an Esquerita collection called Vintage Voola. But to my ears, that compilation doesn’t have half the crazed energy of Sinner Man. This new album comes from sessions recorded in New York City in 1966. Esquerita sings and plays piano and organ, sometimes switching back and forth during the course of a song. He’s accompanied only by a drummer, whose name has been lost to history.
The fiery eight-minute title track, which opens the album (there’s also a shorter version later) should be required listening for any student of soul music. Inspired by Nina Simone’s take on the old spiritual, Esquerita pounds the piano as frantically as his drummer pounds the skins. He sings “Running to the Lord/He told me to go on to the devil” like someone who had just had that conversation a few minutes before. And when he sings “Went to the devil/The devil he was waiting,” you can almost smell the brimstone.
This is definitely a case of saving the best for the first. But all the subsequent songs are loaded with fun. Esquerita plays around with some of the standards of the day — “On Broadway,” “C.C. Rider,” and the blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.”
But more interesting are some of the more obscure songs like “Letter Full of Tears,” a song by Gladys Knight & The Pips, and “Leave Me Alone,” recorded by a little-known singer called Baby Washington. Both of the originals are far more sedate and sweetened by strings. Esquerita, with his frantic, bare-boned approach, goes straight to the raw nucleus of these songs.
This is powerful music from an artist who deserved much better out of life.
Enjoy some videos:
Sunday, November 25, 2012
TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST
Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012
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
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Jack Ruby by Camper Van Beethoven
November by The Rockin' Guys
Llevo Un Tigre En Mi Guitar by The Fleshtones
Fire Engine by The Molting Vultures
Alien Frontier by Alien Space Kitchen
Redneck Riviera by The Barbarellatones
White Elephant by The Hentchmen
Young Man Blues by The Who
Sookie Sookie by Steppenwolf
Murder in My Heart for the Judge by Moby Grape
Hunger by The Bama Lamas
Land of The Freak by King Khan & The Shrines
Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out by Esquerita
Sock It to Me Baby by Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels
Try Me One More Time by Demon's Claws
Owed T'Alex by Captain Beefheart
Dog Breath in the Year of the Plague by The Mothers of Invention
The Eternal Question by The Grandmothers
Don't Take Your Bad Trip Out on Me by The Electric Mess
Is it a Dream? by The Figures of Light
Hang a Picture by Thee Oh Sees
Old Folks Boogie by Jack Oblivian
Attrition by Soundgarden
Gypsy by LoveStruck
I'll Make a Bet bvy Nookie Boy
Starry Eyes by Gregg Turner
It'll Chew You Up and Spit You Out by Concrete Blonde
The Slide Song by The Afghan Whigs
The Ugly Band by The Mekons
Heels by Andre Williams
Angel Baby by Alice Bag
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
See the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
FOLK REMEDY PLAYLIST
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Sunday Mountain Time
Guest Host: Steve Terrell (substituting for Tom Adler)
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Gospel Train by Bellview a Capella Choir
I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord by Peerless Four
See How They Done My Lord by Angola Quartet
The Church in the Wildwood by The Carter Family
I'm on My Journey Home by The Alabama Sacred Harp Singers
Backslider's Plea by The Swan Silvertones
God's Mighty Hand by The Rev. Utah Smith
Believe on Me by The Rev. Louis Overstreet
If I Had My Way I'd Tear This Building Down by Blind Willie Johnson
Lazarus by Henry Morrison
One Kind Favor by Hobart Smith
Walkin' Cane Stomp by Kentucky Jug Band
The Razor Ball by Blind Willie McTell
Bad Luck Dice by Clifford Gibson
Moon May Rise in Blood by Blind James Campbell
Runnin' Wild by James Cole's Washboard Four
He Rambled by Charlie Poole
Bottle Up and Go by The Bootlegger's Quartet
Insane Crazy Blues by Memphis Jug Band
The Dozens by Eddie "One String" Jones
Got the Jake Leg Too by The Ray Brothers
Shake Sugaree by Elizabeth Cotton with Brenda Evans
Trouble, I've Had it All My Days by Mississippi John Hurt
Wild Bill Jones by Eva Davis
Beware by Blind Alfred Reed
Trail of the Lonesome Pine by Laurel & Hardy
Booth Killed Lincoln by Bascom Lamar Lunsford
My Four Reasons by Banjo Ikey Robinson
Bad Company by Rev. Gary Davis
Atlanta Bound by Gene Autry
I Ain't Got a Home in This World Anymore by Woody Guthrie
It Ain't Gonna Rain No Moore by Butch Cage & Willie B. Thomas
Bootlegger's Blues by The Memphis String Band
Skip to Ma Lou My Darlin' by Uncle Eck Dunford
You Are My Sunsh\ine by Gov. Jimmie Davis
See the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
Webcasting!
8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Sunday Mountain Time
Guest Host: Steve Terrell (substituting for Tom Adler)
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Gospel Train by Bellview a Capella Choir
I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord by Peerless Four
See How They Done My Lord by Angola Quartet
The Church in the Wildwood by The Carter Family
I'm on My Journey Home by The Alabama Sacred Harp Singers
Backslider's Plea by The Swan Silvertones
God's Mighty Hand by The Rev. Utah Smith
Believe on Me by The Rev. Louis Overstreet
If I Had My Way I'd Tear This Building Down by Blind Willie Johnson
Lazarus by Henry Morrison
One Kind Favor by Hobart Smith
Walkin' Cane Stomp by Kentucky Jug Band
The Razor Ball by Blind Willie McTell
Bad Luck Dice by Clifford Gibson
Moon May Rise in Blood by Blind James Campbell
Runnin' Wild by James Cole's Washboard Four
He Rambled by Charlie Poole
Bottle Up and Go by The Bootlegger's Quartet
Insane Crazy Blues by Memphis Jug Band
The Dozens by Eddie "One String" Jones
Got the Jake Leg Too by The Ray Brothers
Shake Sugaree by Elizabeth Cotton with Brenda Evans
Trouble, I've Had it All My Days by Mississippi John Hurt
Wild Bill Jones by Eva Davis
Beware by Blind Alfred Reed
Trail of the Lonesome Pine by Laurel & Hardy
Booth Killed Lincoln by Bascom Lamar Lunsford
My Four Reasons by Banjo Ikey Robinson
Bad Company by Rev. Gary Davis
Atlanta Bound by Gene Autry
I Ain't Got a Home in This World Anymore by Woody Guthrie
It Ain't Gonna Rain No Moore by Butch Cage & Willie B. Thomas
Bootlegger's Blues by The Memphis String Band
Skip to Ma Lou My Darlin' by Uncle Eck Dunford
You Are My Sunsh\ine by Gov. Jimmie Davis
See the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
Friday, November 23, 2012
THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST
Friday, Nov. 23, 2012
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
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Lincoln Limousine by Jerry Lee Lewis
Lee Harvey by T. Tex Edwards & The Hickoids
Whisperin' in My Ear by The Waco Brothers
Jason Fleming by Neko Case & The Sadies
The Stalker's Song by Pearls Mahone
Night Spots (of the Town) by Roy Acuff
Hard to Be Humble by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs
Ya Ba Da Ba Do (So are You) by George Jones
My Own Kind of Hat by Merle Haggard
Bang Bang by Gov. Jimmie Davis
One Time One Night by Los Lobos
I Was Drunk by Alejandro Escovedo (For info on the Alejandro/David Hidalgo show CLICK HERE)
A Doctor and a Lawyer by Ronny Elliott
Cornbread 'Lasses (And Sassafrass Tea) by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Room to Room by Terry Allen with Lucinda Williams
Cajun Joe by Doug & Rusty Kershaw
Jennie by Angry Johnny
Snake Drive by R.L. Burnside with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Ragz n Bones by The Goddamn Gallows
Swamp Blood by Legendary Shack Shakers
Get Rhythm by James Hand
Old Weakness by Wanda Jackson
Blame it On the Stones by Kris Kristofferson
Bring it With You When You Come by David Bromberg with Levon Helm
Committed to Parkville by Porter Wagoner
Little Maggie by Jimmy Martin
I Don't Want Your Millions, Mister by Greg Brown
Glory Glory Hallelujah by The Rev, Peyton's Big Damn Band
I Need Revival by Kevin Deal
Tall Buildings by Soda Gardoki
Face of a Fighter by Willie Nelson
Thanksgiving by Loudon Wainwright III
Empty Bottle by The Calamity Cubes
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
See the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
This Thanksgiving Season Don't Forget Dolph
I played this song by a California band called The Barbarellatones last Sunday on Terrell's Sound World .
It's a tribute to one of the world's greatest thespians.
Enjoy.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Give Thanks for a New Big Enchilada Podcast!
The Big Enchilada is back bringing you music that's just a little visionary and a whole lot sleazy, just as you podlubbers like. The heart of Episode 54 is a long tribute to the beloved Norton Records, whose Brooklyn, N.Y. warehouse was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. CLICK HERE for more information on how to help Norton. I hope my Norton set here will remind everyone of all the great music this company has given us.
Here's the playlist:
(Background Music: Hijacked by West Hell 5)
Black Mold by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (from WFMU's Free Music Archive)
Dogs and Dolls by LoveStruck
Economy Class Ego Trip by J.J. & The Real Jerks
Blow Out by Scared of Chaka
Run Out of Town by The Ungodly 77s
Tuned In, Turned On by Alvin Robinson
(Background Music: Harlem Nocturne by Kustomized)
NORTON RECORDS SET
I Couldn't Spell !!*@! by Roy Loney & The Young Fresh Fellows
Leave Me Alone by Esquerita
You're Just Another Macaroon by Figures of Light
A Certain Guy by Mary Weiss
The Boo Boo Song by King Coleman
Daddy Rockin' Strong by The Dirtbombs
He Sure Could Hypnotize by The A-Bones
(Background Music: Camel Walk by The Saxons)
areyoutalkintome by Madd Blake & The Stalins
Dateless Losers Club by Sicko
Tonight by The Bezzoommies
I Got Framed by Harry "The Hipster" Gibson
Wild by Skip Jensen
Play it here:
Sunday, November 18, 2012
TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST
Sunday, Nov. 18 , 2012
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
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Economy Class Ego Trip by J.J. & The Real Jerks
Head On by Iggy & The Stooges
Pine Box Ritual by The Guilty Hearts
Dark as a Dungeon by The Tombstones
Daddy Rockin' Strong by The Dirtbombs
Loaded by Scared of Chaka
Howlin' For You by The Black Keys
Saved by Lavern Baker
He Looks Like a Psycho by The Electric Mess
The Wolf Song by LoveStruck
You Twist I Shout by Lydia Lunch
Family Fun Night by Figures of Light
I Don't Want to Live Alone by The Oblivians
This Bad Check Is Going to Stick by Rocket From the Crypt
Baby Doll by Horror Deluxe
Blood Rush to My Head by Dennis Most
Corntaminated by The Hickoids
A Girl Like You by The Mummies
I'm a Record Store Junkie by The Monsters
Mickey's Son and Daughter by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
Stevie's Spanking by Frank Zappa
Dolph Lundgren by The Barberellatones
Cannibal Girls by The Hydes
House of Smoke and Mirrors by The Nevermores
So Nice by The Oh Sees
Don't Mess Up My Baby by The Black Lips
Black Letter Day by Frank Black & The Catholics
I Like My Baby's Pudding by Wynonie Harris
The Pharmacist from Walgreen's by Gregg Turner
Loretta and The Insect World by Giant Sand
Take Good Care of My Baby by Roky Erikson
I Ain't Got You by Omar & The Howlers
Dirty Old Town by Bettye LaVette
On Broadway by Esquerita
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
See the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page and LIKE the darned thing!
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Friday, November 16, 2012
THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST
Friday, Nov. 16, 2012
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
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Let's Go Burn Ole Nashville Down by Mojo Nixon & Jello Biafra
Wild Wild Love by The Legendary Shack Shakers
Too Late for Tequila by DM Bob & Country Jem
Jesus Was a Wino by Lydia Loveless
White Trash by Southern Culture on the Skids
The Wild Man by Hasil Adkins
Jungle Fever by Charlie Feathers
I Hate CDs by The Legendary Stardust Cowboy
Hesitation Boogie by Hardrock Gunter
Wild One by Janis Martin
Don't You Want Me by Moonshine Willie
Devil's Lettuce by Black Eyed Vermillion
Suzie Anna Riverstone by The Imperial Rooster
From This Outlaw to You by Simon Stokes
Deisel Smoke, Dangerous Curves by The Last Mile Ramblers
Life, Love, Death and the Meter Man by Angry Johnny & The Kllbillies
Ruby by Jimmy Martin
Mighty Lonesome Man by James Hand
Drunk, Drunk Again by Billy Brown
What Do You Do When You're Lonesome by Wanda Jackson
Handsome Harry the Hipster by Ronny Elliott
Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphey's Ovaltine? by Harry "The Hipster" Gibson
Gals Don't Mean a Thing by Johnny Bond
Liquor and Whores by The Misery Jackyls
Hen House by Ray Wylie Hubbard
Lonesome Cowboy Burt by Frank Zappa with Jimmy Carl Black
This Ain't Just Another Lust Affair by Mel Street
Sinkin' Down by Scott H. Biram
You Are My Special Angel by Doc Watson
Best of Worst Intentions by Stevie Tombstone
Down by the Banks of the Guadalupe by Jimmie Dale Gilmore
You've Never Been This Far Before by Conway Twitty
Linger. Let Me Linger by The Handsome Family
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
See the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
Thursday, November 15, 2012
TERRELL'S TUNEUP: The Party Still Ain't Over For Wanda
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Nov. 16, 2012
There certainly hasn’t been the big buzz around rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson’s new album, Unfinished Business, that there was surrounding her previous effort, The Party Ain’t Over, which was released nearly two years ago.
There’s debate among Jackson fans about which one is better. Newcomers to the cult of Wanda tend to side with Party, produced by former White Stripe Jack White, while older fans and traditionalists seem to like the new one.
A cynic might say it’s the trendies versus the I-knew-Wanda-when-Wanda-wasn’t-cool crowd.
Despite a few clunkers on the new album, I guess I’d have to side with the latter group. I have to admit that the The Party Ain’t Over is a more exciting record — though, as I said when I reviewed it in 2011, the production is so heavy-handed that it feels more like a White album than it does a Wanda record. Jackson sounds like a side musician on some of the songs, though I still believe that White’s over-the-top technique works on some tracks, especially on the Bob Dylan cover “Thunder on the Mountain.”
Unfinished Business’ producer, Justin Townes Earle (Steve Earle’s baby boy), avoids most of White’s pitfalls. While the album lacks the pizazz of its predecessor, it’s a solid work. And most important, the spotlight is rightfully on Jackson throughout.
The best songs on the new album are those in which Jackson sings the type of tune that made people love her in the first place in the late ’50s and early ’60s.
The first cut is a nice bluesy Freddie King song called “Tore Down.” That’s followed by another tough blues number, “The Graveyard Shift,” written by none other than Steve Earle. Things slow down for the sweet honky-tonk weeper “Am I Even a Memory?” which Jackson sings as a duet with her new producer. And she goes full-throttle honky-tonk with “What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome?” which sounds like a long-lost Ray Price song, though it was written by Justin Earle.
Jackson has always done impressive gospel songs, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that she truly shines on “Two Hands.” The surprise is that a song this joyful was written by the late Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt.
But I did say there were some clunkers?
Jackson’s take on “It’s All Over Now,” a Bobby Womack tune made famous by the Rolling Stones, isn’t bad, but she doesn’t add much to it. “Pushover,” an obscure Etta James tune, sounds like an unconvincing attempt to recreate the girl-group sound from the early ’60s.
Also disappointing is Jackson’s version of “California Stars.” This is one of those unfinished Woody Guthrie songs that Wilco and Billy Bragg worked up for their Mermaid Avenue project in the late ’90s. It’s a beautiful song, but Jackson just doesn’t sound like she’s that interested in it.
But despite these lesser cuts, it’s amazing that a singer in her mid-70s not only sounds so good but so vital.
^
Also recommended:
▼ I’ve Been Meaning to Write by Ronny Elliott. It took the state of Florida a long time to count its ballots, and it took a long time for Tampa hillbilly rocker Elliott to come out with a new album.
Coincidence?
It’s been five years since his last album, Jalopypaint. So I’m glad he finally got around to “writing.”
Like Elliott’s best work, the new record is full of sad, soulful, and frequently nostalgic songs peppered with the singer’s wry humor. Elliott has apparently experienced some heartaches, and that comes out in his music.
“I’ve had a couple of women rip my heart out in the last few years,” Elliott recently blogged. “Friends and strangers like to tell me, ‘Hey, at least you got some songs out of it.’ I don’t need songs. I was happier with a heart.”
But there’s a lot of heart in his new songs — like the opening tune, “My Blood Is Too Red,” a remembrance of a lost love.
“She was some form of magic, mythical child bride/I walked on hot coals to stand by her side/She taught me grand lessons while I was still grievin’/Then she filed applications and talked about leavin’.”
Even better is the dark and bitter “A Doctor and a Lawyer,” which is about “a soulmate who had no soul.” Elliott sings, “She wanted new stories to tell, and she got ’em/She took an old man’s love and made him older/Sleepin’ her way to the bottom.”
Then there’s “Women Leave,” a recitation of a poem — just Elliott’s voice, no musical accompaniment. “History’s built on heartache in a golden age of crime and everything I’ve lost, I bereave,” Elliot says.
He’s always been something of a rock ’n’ roll historian. Elliott recorded storytelling songs about Jerry Lee Lewis, rockabilly Benny Joy, Sid Vicious, Hank Ballard, and bluesman Tampa Red.
Here, in a song titled “Handsome Harry the Hipster,” he tells the tale of piano player and rock ’n’ roll forefather Harry “The Hipster” Gibson.
Born Harry Raab, he was discovered by Fats Waller. In his prime, Gibson played with jazz giants like Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Stan Kenton.
“In the ’40s, Harry began pumpin’ up the rhythm, and tearin’ up the keyboards,” Elliot drawls. “With rollicking songs like ‘Handsome Harry the Hipster’ and ‘Get Your Juices at the Deuces,’ he was bringing hip Manhattan its first taste of rock ’n’ roll.”
But, as Elliott says, after Gibson’s 1947 novelty song, “Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine,” Gibson got blacklisted by the music biz because of the song’s drug references. His drug use in real life added to his decline. He tried to remake himself as a rocker in the 1970s, but his career went nowhere.
Suffering from heart disease, he committed suicide in 1991. It’s obvious that Elliott loved Gibson’s rebel spirit as well as his music but has no illusions about the self-destructive urges that did Gibson in. “Fall down, Harry Hipster, fall down hippie boy/You got the rhythm in your soul, a joint in your pocket, and a square music business to destroy,” Elliott laments in the final chorus.
I hate to spoil a surprise, but the unlisted, hidden track at the end of the album is a rocking cover of the old Brenda Lee hit, “Fool Number One.”
BLOG BONUS: Enjoy some videos. (Watch for Ron Jeremy cameo in this first one.)
Here's an old song in which Ronny Elliott shows his talent as a rock 'n' roll biographer.
And here's Harry "The Hipster" Gibson
Nov. 16, 2012
There certainly hasn’t been the big buzz around rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson’s new album, Unfinished Business, that there was surrounding her previous effort, The Party Ain’t Over, which was released nearly two years ago.
There’s debate among Jackson fans about which one is better. Newcomers to the cult of Wanda tend to side with Party, produced by former White Stripe Jack White, while older fans and traditionalists seem to like the new one.
A cynic might say it’s the trendies versus the I-knew-Wanda-when-Wanda-wasn’t-cool crowd.
Despite a few clunkers on the new album, I guess I’d have to side with the latter group. I have to admit that the The Party Ain’t Over is a more exciting record — though, as I said when I reviewed it in 2011, the production is so heavy-handed that it feels more like a White album than it does a Wanda record. Jackson sounds like a side musician on some of the songs, though I still believe that White’s over-the-top technique works on some tracks, especially on the Bob Dylan cover “Thunder on the Mountain.”
Unfinished Business’ producer, Justin Townes Earle (Steve Earle’s baby boy), avoids most of White’s pitfalls. While the album lacks the pizazz of its predecessor, it’s a solid work. And most important, the spotlight is rightfully on Jackson throughout.
The best songs on the new album are those in which Jackson sings the type of tune that made people love her in the first place in the late ’50s and early ’60s.
The first cut is a nice bluesy Freddie King song called “Tore Down.” That’s followed by another tough blues number, “The Graveyard Shift,” written by none other than Steve Earle. Things slow down for the sweet honky-tonk weeper “Am I Even a Memory?” which Jackson sings as a duet with her new producer. And she goes full-throttle honky-tonk with “What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome?” which sounds like a long-lost Ray Price song, though it was written by Justin Earle.
Jackson has always done impressive gospel songs, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that she truly shines on “Two Hands.” The surprise is that a song this joyful was written by the late Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt.
But I did say there were some clunkers?
Jackson’s take on “It’s All Over Now,” a Bobby Womack tune made famous by the Rolling Stones, isn’t bad, but she doesn’t add much to it. “Pushover,” an obscure Etta James tune, sounds like an unconvincing attempt to recreate the girl-group sound from the early ’60s.
Also disappointing is Jackson’s version of “California Stars.” This is one of those unfinished Woody Guthrie songs that Wilco and Billy Bragg worked up for their Mermaid Avenue project in the late ’90s. It’s a beautiful song, but Jackson just doesn’t sound like she’s that interested in it.
But despite these lesser cuts, it’s amazing that a singer in her mid-70s not only sounds so good but so vital.
^
Also recommended:
▼ I’ve Been Meaning to Write by Ronny Elliott. It took the state of Florida a long time to count its ballots, and it took a long time for Tampa hillbilly rocker Elliott to come out with a new album.
Coincidence?
It’s been five years since his last album, Jalopypaint. So I’m glad he finally got around to “writing.”
Like Elliott’s best work, the new record is full of sad, soulful, and frequently nostalgic songs peppered with the singer’s wry humor. Elliott has apparently experienced some heartaches, and that comes out in his music.
“I’ve had a couple of women rip my heart out in the last few years,” Elliott recently blogged. “Friends and strangers like to tell me, ‘Hey, at least you got some songs out of it.’ I don’t need songs. I was happier with a heart.”
But there’s a lot of heart in his new songs — like the opening tune, “My Blood Is Too Red,” a remembrance of a lost love.
“She was some form of magic, mythical child bride/I walked on hot coals to stand by her side/She taught me grand lessons while I was still grievin’/Then she filed applications and talked about leavin’.”
Even better is the dark and bitter “A Doctor and a Lawyer,” which is about “a soulmate who had no soul.” Elliott sings, “She wanted new stories to tell, and she got ’em/She took an old man’s love and made him older/Sleepin’ her way to the bottom.”
Then there’s “Women Leave,” a recitation of a poem — just Elliott’s voice, no musical accompaniment. “History’s built on heartache in a golden age of crime and everything I’ve lost, I bereave,” Elliot says.
He’s always been something of a rock ’n’ roll historian. Elliott recorded storytelling songs about Jerry Lee Lewis, rockabilly Benny Joy, Sid Vicious, Hank Ballard, and bluesman Tampa Red.
Harry the Hipster at work |
Here, in a song titled “Handsome Harry the Hipster,” he tells the tale of piano player and rock ’n’ roll forefather Harry “The Hipster” Gibson.
Born Harry Raab, he was discovered by Fats Waller. In his prime, Gibson played with jazz giants like Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Stan Kenton.
“In the ’40s, Harry began pumpin’ up the rhythm, and tearin’ up the keyboards,” Elliot drawls. “With rollicking songs like ‘Handsome Harry the Hipster’ and ‘Get Your Juices at the Deuces,’ he was bringing hip Manhattan its first taste of rock ’n’ roll.”
But, as Elliott says, after Gibson’s 1947 novelty song, “Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine,” Gibson got blacklisted by the music biz because of the song’s drug references. His drug use in real life added to his decline. He tried to remake himself as a rocker in the 1970s, but his career went nowhere.
Suffering from heart disease, he committed suicide in 1991. It’s obvious that Elliott loved Gibson’s rebel spirit as well as his music but has no illusions about the self-destructive urges that did Gibson in. “Fall down, Harry Hipster, fall down hippie boy/You got the rhythm in your soul, a joint in your pocket, and a square music business to destroy,” Elliott laments in the final chorus.
I hate to spoil a surprise, but the unlisted, hidden track at the end of the album is a rocking cover of the old Brenda Lee hit, “Fool Number One.”
BLOG BONUS: Enjoy some videos. (Watch for Ron Jeremy cameo in this first one.)
Here's an old song in which Ronny Elliott shows his talent as a rock 'n' roll biographer.
And here's Harry "The Hipster" Gibson
SF Musicians Plan Benefit for Hurricane Sandy Victims
Catfish Hodge |
The show at the Cowgirl BBQ, 319 S. Guadalupe St. in Santa Fe, starts 3 p.m. Sunday and lasts until 11 p.m.
There's no cover, but all donations with go to The Red Cross' Hurricane Sandy Relief .
Performers include Joe West & The Santa Fe Revue; Jono Manson; Catfish Hodge; Todd & The Fox; Jaka; Drastic Andrew & The Cinnamon Girls (doing a Neil Young tribute set); Detroit Lightening (doing a Dylan and the Dead tribute show) and Trio Fiorentino featuring Laurianne Fiorentino.
Jono Manson |
XXXXXX
And speaking of Hurricane Sandy, one victim is one of my favorite record companies in the Universe.
If you've ever listened to Terrell's Sound World and The Big Enchilada podcast, then you've heard a lot of music from Norton. (Hell, I nearly forgot I've played a lot from Norton albums by Charlie Feathers and Hasil Adkins on The Santa Fe Opry too.)
Norton's warehouse in Brooklyn was hit bad by Sandy. (See video below.)
For the first time in Norton's history, we are asking for your help. It has been entirely against our policy and nature to ask anyone for anything, in the entire history of our magazine and label. It hurts us to even suggest that any of you who have supported the label and our artists by purchasing Norton records over the years, to support us over and above with a donation ...
For more information go to Nortonville and to donate go HERE
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Vinyl Listening Sessions
My pal and fellow KSFR DJ David Barsanti (The Twisted Groove), in his guise as the mysterious Spinifex is hosting bi-monthly vinyl listening sessions at the Second Street Brewery. Starting tonight!
"This is not a dance party it's a listening party," he said in an email this morning. "Bring in a vinyl record, relax with a beer and a gatefold and have some fun."
Here's the deal: Spinifex will bring a turntable, and a bunch vinyl records "and a groovy vibe."
This takes place at the original Second Street Brewery (the one on Second Street) every second and fourth Wednesday of the month from 6-9 p.m.
eMUSIC November
* Gumbo Stew by various artists. Yes, it was the cover art that first attracted me to this collection. The cover features a colorized photo of Prince La La in full Afro/Mardi Gras regalia with a couple of his "subjects" in even more colorful clothes.
Prince La La (born Lawrence Nelson) is only one of the New Orleans icons on Gumbo Stew. There's Eddie Bo, Cornell Dupree, a young Dr. John and several others who are even lesser known outside of the world of Crescent City music fanatics.
The album is a compilation of material of the small but influential New Orleans label AFO, started by musicians' musician Harold Battiste. AFO was short for "All For One," the guiding principal of the company, which Battiste started to give local musicians a fairer deal that the national labels. ("All For One" also is the name of a soulful song done here by singer Willie Tee.)
You won't find many big hits here. Apparently another version of the collection contained "I Know (You Don't Love Me No More)" by Barbara George, a song I remember from my youth. For some reason it's not on the album I downloaded from eMusic. But that's just a small mistake. There's plenty to make up for that.
Gumbo Stew kicks off with a breezy, funky jazz instrumental called "Olde Wine" credited tot he AFO Executives. Then the hoodoo starts with "Mojo Hannah" by Tami Lynn, a song covered earlier this year by Andre Williams, who co-wrote it in the early '60s. It's also been covered by Esther Phillips, Aaron Neville and Marvin Gaye, who according to Dan Phillips at the Home of the Groove blog, was the first to record it.
Prince La La's contribution here is "Things Have Changed," an upbeat tune driven by exotic-sounding percussion, piano and flute. Eddie Bo's "Tee Na Na Na Na Nay" takes you right to the Mardi Gras, while Dr. John with keyboardist Ronnie Baron play "My Key Don't Fit," an easy-going number with hints of Dixieland. Meanwhile, gruff-voiced Wallace Johnson name-checks early TV detectives like Peter Gunn and Richard Diamond on "Private Eye."
Some songs sound like they were recorded in the late '60s. These include Alvin Robinson's "Tuned In, Turned On" (co-written by that crafty old Night Tripper, Dr. John) and the funky instrumental "Ignant" by Cornell Dupree.
Definitely the most twisted song on Gumbo Stew is "I Found Out" by Willie Tee. It's a song about a poor guy who meets the love of his life. But when she takes him home to meet her family, he finds his aunt and uncle. "I found out you are my cousin/And now there'll be no more lovin' ..." Willie sings.
There's two other Gumbo Stew albums available on eMusic, More Gumbo Stew and Still Spicy Gumbo Stew. If you're a casual fan New Orleans R&B, these should deepen your appreciation.
* I Bet on Sky by Dinosaur Jr. The 21st century version of Dinosaur Jr is more melodic than it was back in its young days. But the intensity remains.
As has been the case since the band’s early days, J. Mascis is still the indisputable frontman. He wrote and sings most of the songs on Sky — his high-pitched whine still provides the emotional center for Dinosaur Jr., while his trademark stormy guitar solos dominate the proceedings. And yes, Uncle Neil is still a huge influence.
Sound familiar? I reviewed this in Terrell's Tuneup a few weeks ago, along with the latest Mission of Burma album. See that HERE
* Meat and Bone by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Eight years after The Blues Explosion's previous album, this comeback effort is a dandy, stuffed full of the maniacal, irreverent, rompin’-stompin’ sounds that shook the free world back in the ’90s.
All the old intensity is evident on “Black Mold,” the riff-driven first song of the new album. The tune was inspired by Spencer’s discovery of a box of records that had gotten damp and moldy in his basement.
This sound familiar also? I review this in yet another Terrell's Tuneup column. See that one HERE.
PLUS
* "Sweet Jenny Lee" and "St. Louis Blues" by Cab Calloway. I've been nibbling at the Cab Calloway collection The Early Years 1930-1934 for years now. I had a couple of tracks left over at the end of the month, so I nabbed these. I especially like "Sweet Jenny Lee," a song that's also been covered by western-swing giants like Bob Wills and Milton Brown. Willie Nelson did a great version also on his collaboration with Asleep at the Wheel a couple of years ago.
Prince La La (born Lawrence Nelson) is only one of the New Orleans icons on Gumbo Stew. There's Eddie Bo, Cornell Dupree, a young Dr. John and several others who are even lesser known outside of the world of Crescent City music fanatics.
The album is a compilation of material of the small but influential New Orleans label AFO, started by musicians' musician Harold Battiste. AFO was short for "All For One," the guiding principal of the company, which Battiste started to give local musicians a fairer deal that the national labels. ("All For One" also is the name of a soulful song done here by singer Willie Tee.)
You won't find many big hits here. Apparently another version of the collection contained "I Know (You Don't Love Me No More)" by Barbara George, a song I remember from my youth. For some reason it's not on the album I downloaded from eMusic. But that's just a small mistake. There's plenty to make up for that.
Gumbo Stew kicks off with a breezy, funky jazz instrumental called "Olde Wine" credited tot he AFO Executives. Then the hoodoo starts with "Mojo Hannah" by Tami Lynn, a song covered earlier this year by Andre Williams, who co-wrote it in the early '60s. It's also been covered by Esther Phillips, Aaron Neville and Marvin Gaye, who according to Dan Phillips at the Home of the Groove blog, was the first to record it.
Prince La La's contribution here is "Things Have Changed," an upbeat tune driven by exotic-sounding percussion, piano and flute. Eddie Bo's "Tee Na Na Na Na Nay" takes you right to the Mardi Gras, while Dr. John with keyboardist Ronnie Baron play "My Key Don't Fit," an easy-going number with hints of Dixieland. Meanwhile, gruff-voiced Wallace Johnson name-checks early TV detectives like Peter Gunn and Richard Diamond on "Private Eye."
Some songs sound like they were recorded in the late '60s. These include Alvin Robinson's "Tuned In, Turned On" (co-written by that crafty old Night Tripper, Dr. John) and the funky instrumental "Ignant" by Cornell Dupree.
Definitely the most twisted song on Gumbo Stew is "I Found Out" by Willie Tee. It's a song about a poor guy who meets the love of his life. But when she takes him home to meet her family, he finds his aunt and uncle. "I found out you are my cousin/And now there'll be no more lovin' ..." Willie sings.
There's two other Gumbo Stew albums available on eMusic, More Gumbo Stew and Still Spicy Gumbo Stew. If you're a casual fan New Orleans R&B, these should deepen your appreciation.
* I Bet on Sky by Dinosaur Jr. The 21st century version of Dinosaur Jr is more melodic than it was back in its young days. But the intensity remains.
As has been the case since the band’s early days, J. Mascis is still the indisputable frontman. He wrote and sings most of the songs on Sky — his high-pitched whine still provides the emotional center for Dinosaur Jr., while his trademark stormy guitar solos dominate the proceedings. And yes, Uncle Neil is still a huge influence.
Sound familiar? I reviewed this in Terrell's Tuneup a few weeks ago, along with the latest Mission of Burma album. See that HERE
* Meat and Bone by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Eight years after The Blues Explosion's previous album, this comeback effort is a dandy, stuffed full of the maniacal, irreverent, rompin’-stompin’ sounds that shook the free world back in the ’90s.
All the old intensity is evident on “Black Mold,” the riff-driven first song of the new album. The tune was inspired by Spencer’s discovery of a box of records that had gotten damp and moldy in his basement.
This sound familiar also? I review this in yet another Terrell's Tuneup column. See that one HERE.
PLUS
* "Sweet Jenny Lee" and "St. Louis Blues" by Cab Calloway. I've been nibbling at the Cab Calloway collection The Early Years 1930-1934 for years now. I had a couple of tracks left over at the end of the month, so I nabbed these. I especially like "Sweet Jenny Lee," a song that's also been covered by western-swing giants like Bob Wills and Milton Brown. Willie Nelson did a great version also on his collaboration with Asleep at the Wheel a couple of years ago.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST
Sunday, Nov. 11, 2012
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
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
!0 o'Clock by The Malarians
Don't Look Down by LoveStruck
Bow Down and Die by The Allmighty Defenders
Thrift Baby by J.J. & The Real Jerks
Call the Zoo by The A-Bones
Bad Boy by The Headcat
High Class by The Buzzards
Out of Control by Demented Are Go
Wilder Wilder Faster Faster by The Cramps
Bel Air Blues by Drywall
My Baby is a Pole Dancer by The Barbarellatones
Secret Code by The Dirtbombs
Lilly's 11th by The Nevermores
I Wish You Would by The Fleshtones
I'll Follow Her Blues by The Gibson Bros.
Cantina by Pinata Protest
Wine-O Boogie by Don Tosti's Pachuco Boogie Boys
ZAPPA SET
All songs by Frank Zappa unless otherwise noted
Ian Undewood Whips It Out
Titties and Beer
I'm Not Satisfied by The Fall
Harder Than Your Husband (FZ with Jimmy Carl Black)
Brown Moses (with Johnny "Guitar" Watson)
You Are What You Is by The Persuassions
Whipping Post
Nothing Can Bring Me Down by Mondo Topless
The Purple People Eats The Witch Doctor by The Big Bopper
You're Not as Pretty by The Reigning Sound
When The Drugs Kick in by The Del Lords
Yesterday is Here by Bettye LaVette
Muriel by Eleni Mandell
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
See the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Friday, November 09, 2012
THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST
Friday, Nov. 9, 2012
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
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Jimmy's Mule by Jimmy Martin
Eggs of Your Chicken by The Flatlanders
Party Dolls and Wine by Eddie Spaghetti
Goddamn Holy Roll by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs
Road Movie by Zeno Tornado & The Boney Google Brothers
Ants on the Melon by The Gourds
Almost to Tulsa by Junior Brown
Highway Cafe by Kinky Friedman & His Texas Jewboys
The Women Make a Fool Out of Me by Ernest Tubb
Copperhead Road by Steve Earle
Bathwater by The Calamity Cubes
I Just Can't Let You Say Goodbye by Willie Nelson
You Only Kiss Me When You Say Goodbye by Cornell Hurd
My Witness by James Hand
Lazarus by Ray Wylie Hubbard
Mud by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
Tearin' Up the Town by The Stumbleweeds
Geeshie by The Mekons
Ain't No Diesel Trucks in Heaven by Bob Wayne
Thy Will be Done by Slim Cessna's Auto Club
I Wish I Were a Single Girl Again by The Maddox Brothers and Rose
The Pill by Loretta Lynn
Guilty Conscience by Carl Smith
Whiskey Trip by Gary Stewart
Jack and Jill Boogie by Wayne Raney
Get the `L' on Down the Road by Bill Johnson's Louisiana Jug Band
Third Rate Romance by Amazing Rhythm Aces
Your Hearty Laugh by The Defibulators
Always Lift Him Up/ Kanaka Wai Wai by Ry Cooder
California Stars by Wanda Jackson
My Eyes by Tony Gilkyson
I Do Believe by Waylon Jennings
I Feel Like Going Home by Charlie Rich
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
See the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
TERRELL'S TUNEUP: The Present Day Zappa Catalogue Refuses to Die
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Nov. 9 2012
Here’s some good news for all you Frank-o-philes: After being off the shelves for several years, some 60 albums by the Father of Freakout are being rereleased.
Following an ugly legal struggle with Rykodisc, the company that rereleased Frank Zappa’s stuff in the ’90s (have I told you lately how much I hate the music industry?), the Zappa Family Trust has won back the rights to Daddy Frank’s wondrous catalog. And now, Universal Music is rereleasing all this crazy music to a world that doesn’t deserve it.
Don’t go looking for bonus tracks — rarities, demos, unreleased live material, or whatever. Basically, these are straight-up reissues. Most devotees probably already have the bulk of Zappa’s albums. But he was so prolific — nobody but zealots and completists have all of his stuff. Sometimes he would release several albums a year.
I’ve been a Zappa fan since the late ’60s, but there are lots of Zappa albums that somehow passed me by through the years. So this is a good time to catch up.
* Baby Snakes. Originally released in 1983, most the songs were recorded live in New York in 1977 (the one exception is “Baby Snakes,” which had appeared on Sheik Yerbouti).
This record is a soundtrack album for a concert video of the same name. From what we can hear on Baby Snakes, it was a good, if not great, show with a classic lineup that included guitarist Adrian Belew, drummer Terry Bozzio, and keyboardist Tommy Mars.
The inclusion of “Disco Boy,” in which Zappa rips into the disco scene with the same glee he once ripped into hippies, dates the music, but it’s a fun little artifact.
About two thirds of this album consists of three lengthy examples of Zappa’s scatological comedy-rock. There’s a rather rote “Dinah Moe Humm,” in which Zappa zips through the lyrics as if he’s sick of reciting them; “Titties and Beer,” which features a so-stupid-it’s-funny dialogue between Zappa as a biker and Bozzio portraying Satan; and the 11-minute “Punky’s Whips,” which deals with Bozzio’s supposed homoerotic attraction to a now forgotten singer named Punky Meadows (from a now-forgotten band called Angel).
* Thing-Fish. The Allmusic Guide describes this 1984 double album as Zappa’s “most controversial, misunderstood, overlooked album.” And when you’re talking about Zappa, that really is saying something. The songs are from a musical — which never made it to Broadway, for which it was intended — about a bizarre Tuskegee-like experiment by the government that goes awry and ends up turning black people into strange creatures with potato heads, duck bills, and enormous hands.
Ike Willis, who was part of Zappa’s Mothers during this era, performs the spoken-word narration for most of the songs. In the character of “Thing-Fish,” Willis basically does it in the dialect employed by “Kingfish” from Amos ‘n’ Andy.
There’s also a yuppie couple: Harry, who comes out as gay, and Rhonda, a briefcase fetishist. The couple is played by Terry Bozzio and his wife Dale Bozzio, who at the time was fronting the popular Los Angeles New Wave group Missing Persons.
Like the Joe’s Garage saga, the narration often gets in the way of the music — and you’ll probably enjoy Thing-Fish more if you just get lost in the music and don’t try to follow the plot.
It’s an interesting if not crucial latter-day Zappa work. Every now and then a familiar Zappa song pops up. You’ll hear rerecorded songs like “The Torture Never Stops” (here called “The ‘Torchum’ Never Stops”), “You Are What You Is,” “Mudd Club,” “The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing,” and “Ms. Pinky” from Zoot Allures, reimagined here as “Artificial Rhonda.” One redeeming treat is “Brown Moses,” which features vocals by blues/funk great Johnny “Guitar” Watson.
* Uncle Meat: For some reason I never broke down and bought this album when it came out in 1969.
Maybe I spent all my Zappa budget on We’re Only in It for the Money and Cruising With Ruben & The Jets — and before I knew it, there were new Zappa albums like Hot Rats, Burnt Weeny Sandwich, and Weasels Ripped My Flesh to distract a youthful consumer.
Whatever the case, Uncle Meat is a masterpiece. It’s essential Zappa listening.
For 40-plus years I’ve considered We’re Only in It for the Money as the definitive Zappa record, and I’d still be predisposed to choose that one if you put a weasel to my head.
But with Money you have to be careful which version you get (beware of the controversial 1986 version, remixed by Zappa himself, with a new rhythm section and stuck on a CD with the entire Lumpy Gravy album tacked on).
And listening again to Uncle Meat, I realize that this album ranks up there too.
This sprawling work started out a a double LP — supposedly it’s a soundtrack to a very obscure Zappa movie that didn’t get finished until a decade later and exists now on VHS tape. (I don’t think it was ever released in theaters, at least not in this dimension.)
There’s just about everything a Zappa fan could want: snatches of freeform jazz, including “Ian Underwood Whips It Out” and several versions of “King Kong”; contemporary classical interludes; greasy, sleazy Munchkin doo-wop like “Electric Aunt Jemima” and “The Air”; unclassifiable instrumentals like the strangely beautiful “Nine Types of Industrial Pollution”; bizarre spoken dialogue including a short message from the infamous Suzy Creamcheese and an argument between Zappa and drummer Jimmy Carl Black (a former New Mexico resident) complaining about not making enough money; and throwaway renditions of “God Bless America” and “Louie Louie.”
Some of Zappa’s classic tunes are here — the dirgelike “Mr. Green Genes,” in which advice to “eat your greens” somehow evolves into “eat your shoes.” And there’s “Dog Breath in the Year of Plague,” a pachuco love song to a girl who helps the narrator steal hubcaps and stay wasted all the time.
One deadly misstep here: on disc two there’s a 37-minute chunk of dialogue from the movie that messes with the otherwise flawless flow.
(Check out the official Frank Zappa Website. HERE
Hey! I just learned that Frank's son Dweezil will be bringing his "Zappa Plays Zappa" tour to Albuquerque next month. Should be fun.
Nov. 9 2012
Here’s some good news for all you Frank-o-philes: After being off the shelves for several years, some 60 albums by the Father of Freakout are being rereleased.
Following an ugly legal struggle with Rykodisc, the company that rereleased Frank Zappa’s stuff in the ’90s (have I told you lately how much I hate the music industry?), the Zappa Family Trust has won back the rights to Daddy Frank’s wondrous catalog. And now, Universal Music is rereleasing all this crazy music to a world that doesn’t deserve it.
Don’t go looking for bonus tracks — rarities, demos, unreleased live material, or whatever. Basically, these are straight-up reissues. Most devotees probably already have the bulk of Zappa’s albums. But he was so prolific — nobody but zealots and completists have all of his stuff. Sometimes he would release several albums a year.
I’ve been a Zappa fan since the late ’60s, but there are lots of Zappa albums that somehow passed me by through the years. So this is a good time to catch up.
* Baby Snakes. Originally released in 1983, most the songs were recorded live in New York in 1977 (the one exception is “Baby Snakes,” which had appeared on Sheik Yerbouti).
This record is a soundtrack album for a concert video of the same name. From what we can hear on Baby Snakes, it was a good, if not great, show with a classic lineup that included guitarist Adrian Belew, drummer Terry Bozzio, and keyboardist Tommy Mars.
The inclusion of “Disco Boy,” in which Zappa rips into the disco scene with the same glee he once ripped into hippies, dates the music, but it’s a fun little artifact.
About two thirds of this album consists of three lengthy examples of Zappa’s scatological comedy-rock. There’s a rather rote “Dinah Moe Humm,” in which Zappa zips through the lyrics as if he’s sick of reciting them; “Titties and Beer,” which features a so-stupid-it’s-funny dialogue between Zappa as a biker and Bozzio portraying Satan; and the 11-minute “Punky’s Whips,” which deals with Bozzio’s supposed homoerotic attraction to a now forgotten singer named Punky Meadows (from a now-forgotten band called Angel).
* Thing-Fish. The Allmusic Guide describes this 1984 double album as Zappa’s “most controversial, misunderstood, overlooked album.” And when you’re talking about Zappa, that really is saying something. The songs are from a musical — which never made it to Broadway, for which it was intended — about a bizarre Tuskegee-like experiment by the government that goes awry and ends up turning black people into strange creatures with potato heads, duck bills, and enormous hands.
Ike Willis, who was part of Zappa’s Mothers during this era, performs the spoken-word narration for most of the songs. In the character of “Thing-Fish,” Willis basically does it in the dialect employed by “Kingfish” from Amos ‘n’ Andy.
There’s also a yuppie couple: Harry, who comes out as gay, and Rhonda, a briefcase fetishist. The couple is played by Terry Bozzio and his wife Dale Bozzio, who at the time was fronting the popular Los Angeles New Wave group Missing Persons.
Like the Joe’s Garage saga, the narration often gets in the way of the music — and you’ll probably enjoy Thing-Fish more if you just get lost in the music and don’t try to follow the plot.
It’s an interesting if not crucial latter-day Zappa work. Every now and then a familiar Zappa song pops up. You’ll hear rerecorded songs like “The Torture Never Stops” (here called “The ‘Torchum’ Never Stops”), “You Are What You Is,” “Mudd Club,” “The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing,” and “Ms. Pinky” from Zoot Allures, reimagined here as “Artificial Rhonda.” One redeeming treat is “Brown Moses,” which features vocals by blues/funk great Johnny “Guitar” Watson.
* Uncle Meat: For some reason I never broke down and bought this album when it came out in 1969.
Maybe I spent all my Zappa budget on We’re Only in It for the Money and Cruising With Ruben & The Jets — and before I knew it, there were new Zappa albums like Hot Rats, Burnt Weeny Sandwich, and Weasels Ripped My Flesh to distract a youthful consumer.
Whatever the case, Uncle Meat is a masterpiece. It’s essential Zappa listening.
For 40-plus years I’ve considered We’re Only in It for the Money as the definitive Zappa record, and I’d still be predisposed to choose that one if you put a weasel to my head.
But with Money you have to be careful which version you get (beware of the controversial 1986 version, remixed by Zappa himself, with a new rhythm section and stuck on a CD with the entire Lumpy Gravy album tacked on).
And listening again to Uncle Meat, I realize that this album ranks up there too.
This sprawling work started out a a double LP — supposedly it’s a soundtrack to a very obscure Zappa movie that didn’t get finished until a decade later and exists now on VHS tape. (I don’t think it was ever released in theaters, at least not in this dimension.)
The late great Jimmy Carl Black, Albuquerque, 2007 |
Some of Zappa’s classic tunes are here — the dirgelike “Mr. Green Genes,” in which advice to “eat your greens” somehow evolves into “eat your shoes.” And there’s “Dog Breath in the Year of Plague,” a pachuco love song to a girl who helps the narrator steal hubcaps and stay wasted all the time.
One deadly misstep here: on disc two there’s a 37-minute chunk of dialogue from the movie that messes with the otherwise flawless flow.
(Check out the official Frank Zappa Website. HERE
Hey! I just learned that Frank's son Dweezil will be bringing his "Zappa Plays Zappa" tour to Albuquerque next month. Should be fun.
Monday, November 05, 2012
Sunday, November 04, 2012
TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST
Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012
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
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Louie Louie by Iggy Pop
Big Blue Chevy 72 by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
Daisys Up Your Butterfly by The Cramps
Bear Trap by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Screwdriver by The Bellrays
I Am the Lightbulb by Dan Melchior & Das Menace
La la LA by ZzZ
Run Run Run by The Velvet Underground
Dog Breath in the Year of the Plague by The Mothers of Invention
You Can't Judge a Book by It's Cover by Bo Diddley
Hello Mama by Willie West
Angel With Batwings by The Improbables
What a Way to Die by The Pleasure Seekers
Laugh it Me by The Devil Dogs
Eve of Destruction by Gregg Turner
Second Television by Mission of Burma
Blame it on Obama by Andre Williams
The Changeling by The Doors
I Know it All So Well by Dinosaur Jr
The Fevered Dream of Herando DeSoto by Pere Ubu
I'm a Mummy by The Fall
This Sinister Urge by The Fuzztones
Everything's Broken by Bettye LaVette
Black Widow Spider by Dr. John
People Have the Power by Patti Smith
Super Theory of Super Everything by Gogol Bordello
Infected by Simon Stokes & The Heathen Angels
The Kindness of Strangers by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Daddy's Home by Shep & The Limelighters
Waiting at the End of the Road by Geoff Muldaur's Futuristic Ensemble
American Tune by Paul Simon
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
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Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Friday, November 02, 2012
THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST
Friday, Nov. 2, 2012
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
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Graveyard Shift by Wanda Jackson
Long White Cadillac by Janis Martin
Lookout Mountain Girl by David Bromberg with Vince Gill
World Renown by The Riptones
Bye Bye Baby by Halden Wofford & The Hi-Beams
There Ought to Be a Law Against Sunny California by Terry Allen
The Phantom of the Opry by Junior Brown
Daddy Was a Preacher But Mama was a Go Go Girl by Southern Culture on the Skids
Leavin' Amarillo by Billy Joe Shaver
Marie Laveau by Bobby Bare
Drop Us Off at Bob's Place by Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys
Payday Blues by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
That's When I'll Come Back to You by The Jim Kweskin Jug Band
I Truly Understand That You Love Another Man by The Carolina Chocolate Drops
The Wild and Wicked Look in Your Eyes by Ernest Tubb
Sweet Virginia by The Rolling Stones
Favorite Fool by James Hand
One Two Three by Billy Kaundart
Funnel of Love by T. Tex Edwards & The Swingin;'Kornflake Killers
Tall Tall Trees by Roger Miller
We're Livin' on $15 a Week by Chris Darrow
My Go Go Girl by Bozo Darnell
The Green Willow by Peter Rowan
Jack's Red Cheetah by Bob Coltman
Wildness by Trailer Bride
Touch Taven by Elizabeth LaPrelle
Oh These Troubled Times by The Corn Sisters
Lucille by The Beat Farmers
Shakin' the Blues by Robbie & Donna Fulks
Hearts That Can't Be Broken by Ronny Elliott
Same God by The Calamity Cubes
Bufallo Gals by J. Michael Combs
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
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Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
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TERRELL'S TUNEUP: COUNTRY ALBUM OF THE YEAR
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Nov. 2, 2012
Let’s get right to the point: Mighty Lonesome Man by James “Slim” Hand is the best county album of the year. The best basic old-fashioned, honest-to-God heartache and honky-tonk country music of the year. Maybe in the last several years.
Do I make myself clear?
And surprise, surprise — you haven’t heard this on so-called country radio stations. Probably not on many radio stations at all. And chances are, unless you’re from Texas, you haven’t even heard of Hand.
I’d never heard of him until earlier this year, when I went to a show at the Austin Moose Lodge — an official meeting place of the Loyal Order of Moose — during South by Southwest.
While I was watching a young “underground country” band called Hellbound Glory, a guy about my age wearing a cowboy hat and a spiffy Western-cut jacket came up to me and introduced himself. He was working the crowd, greeting individuals before his own impressive set that night. While on stage, he said he wanted to shake the hands of everyone in the audience.
The soft-spoken singer seemed sincere, not smarmy. So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that his new album seems like an old friend. Sounds corny, I know, but I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.
Hand was raised in Tokio, Texas, a tiny town near Waco, the son of a rodeo rider. (Hand himself is a horse trainer by profession.) He has been singing all his life and wrote his first song when he was 15. He recorded several albums on small labels and one, The Truth Will Set You Free, on a major minor label, Rounder, in 2006. That was his first brush with national fame. He even got interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air. In my book, he ought to be a lot more famous.
On Mighty Lonesome Man, Hand is backed by a bunch of impressive Texas musicians — Cindy Cashdollar on steel guitar, Alvin Crow on fiddle, and Earl Poole Ball on piano all make appearances. And on every song, Will Indian plays electric guitar and Speedy Sparks — best known for his work with Doug Sahm and the Texas Tornadoes — plays bass. Sparks was in Hand’s band when I saw him at the Moose Lodge.
But even more impressive are the songs, all originals except for a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Get Rhythm.” The album starts out with the title tune, a nonflinching account of the lonesome life. “I know what it’s like when night starts fallin’/And God above won’t even raise his hand/And I know what sorrow steals when I start crawlin’/And I know ‘cause I’m a mighty lonesome man.”
Another song dealing with the same subject is “Lesson in Depression,” in which Hand sings, “Thanks for droppin’ by, but you don’t need to see/What I do when I get sick and tired of me.”
Many have compared Hand’s music to that of Hank Williams and fellow Texan Lefty Frizzell. But the voice that comes to mind when I hear this song and “Mighty Lonesome Man” is that of the late Gary Stewart, whose hits “Drinkin’ Thing” and “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” were some of the starkest, most moving sounds on country radio in the mid-’70s. Hand’s voice has that haunting Stewart quiver.
“My Witness” has all the marks of a classic honky-tonk weeper. The steel and fiddle set the mood (Bobby Flores plays both on this track). The “witness” is some barroom chippy, while “my judge and jury” is apparently the singer’s wife, sleeping in a house down the street.
Hand has a talent for story songs. “The Drought” is a tale of a farmer watching his land go dry. “I see the tracks of baby quail/Fallen cracks along the trail/And I know like them, the earth will swallow me/But before I give up, I’ll haul water in a coffee cup/From the pits of hell or the deepest darkest sea.”
Then there’s “Old Man Henry,” the tale of another old farmer who refuses to sell his land to the government for a road project. “In his 97th year/Old man Henry had made it clear/They could build their damned highway somewhere else/He wasn’t about to go.” This story doesn’t end happily.
The themes and situations Hand sings about and the simple music with which he conveys them are not groundbreaking or innovative. They are just honest songs that prove that old-school country can still sound fresh and that mighty lonesome men can still make mighty powerful music.
Also recommended:
* Goin’ Down Rockin’: The Last Recordings by Waylon Jennings. Jennings died in 2002. A couple of years before his departure, he recorded a bunch of basic tracks in the home studio of his friend Robby Turner.
These recordings, mostly songs he wrote himself, just feature Jenning’s voice and guitar and Turner’s bass. Nearly 10 years after Jennings’ death, Turner gathered some of Jennings’ old sidemen, including drummer Richie Albright and guitarist/keyboardist Jim “Moose” Brown, to make this album. I was skeptical when I first heard about about this project. It could have turned out cheesy and exploitative. Fortunately, it didn’t.
As the title song suggests, there are some good country rockers here, including the title song, “If My Harley Was Runnin’ ” and “Sad Songs and Waltzes,” which is neither (and it’s also not the Willie Nelson song of the same title). However, “She Was No Good for Me” is indeed a sad song and a waltz. This is one of my favorite songs Jennings did in his later years.
Another latter-day Waylon favorite is “I Do Believe,” originally appearing on a mid-’90s album by the outlaw supergroup The Highwaymen. It’s a moving statement of humanist spiritually that starts out: “In my own way I’m a believer, in my own way right or wrong/I don’t talk too much about it/Something I keep working on.”
Here he rejects the hellfire sermons of a preacher and “voices I can’t hear” while embracing his inner spirit and praising a “loving father, one I never have to fear.”
This album might not stand up to Honky-Tonk Heroes and Lonesome On’ry, and Mean, but it’s a proper, if belated, goodbye from a giant who left us too soon
Nov. 2, 2012
Let’s get right to the point: Mighty Lonesome Man by James “Slim” Hand is the best county album of the year. The best basic old-fashioned, honest-to-God heartache and honky-tonk country music of the year. Maybe in the last several years.
Do I make myself clear?
And surprise, surprise — you haven’t heard this on so-called country radio stations. Probably not on many radio stations at all. And chances are, unless you’re from Texas, you haven’t even heard of Hand.
I’d never heard of him until earlier this year, when I went to a show at the Austin Moose Lodge — an official meeting place of the Loyal Order of Moose — during South by Southwest.
While I was watching a young “underground country” band called Hellbound Glory, a guy about my age wearing a cowboy hat and a spiffy Western-cut jacket came up to me and introduced himself. He was working the crowd, greeting individuals before his own impressive set that night. While on stage, he said he wanted to shake the hands of everyone in the audience.
The soft-spoken singer seemed sincere, not smarmy. So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that his new album seems like an old friend. Sounds corny, I know, but I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.
Hand was raised in Tokio, Texas, a tiny town near Waco, the son of a rodeo rider. (Hand himself is a horse trainer by profession.) He has been singing all his life and wrote his first song when he was 15. He recorded several albums on small labels and one, The Truth Will Set You Free, on a major minor label, Rounder, in 2006. That was his first brush with national fame. He even got interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air. In my book, he ought to be a lot more famous.
Hand at the Moose Lodge |
But even more impressive are the songs, all originals except for a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Get Rhythm.” The album starts out with the title tune, a nonflinching account of the lonesome life. “I know what it’s like when night starts fallin’/And God above won’t even raise his hand/And I know what sorrow steals when I start crawlin’/And I know ‘cause I’m a mighty lonesome man.”
Another song dealing with the same subject is “Lesson in Depression,” in which Hand sings, “Thanks for droppin’ by, but you don’t need to see/What I do when I get sick and tired of me.”
Many have compared Hand’s music to that of Hank Williams and fellow Texan Lefty Frizzell. But the voice that comes to mind when I hear this song and “Mighty Lonesome Man” is that of the late Gary Stewart, whose hits “Drinkin’ Thing” and “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” were some of the starkest, most moving sounds on country radio in the mid-’70s. Hand’s voice has that haunting Stewart quiver.
“My Witness” has all the marks of a classic honky-tonk weeper. The steel and fiddle set the mood (Bobby Flores plays both on this track). The “witness” is some barroom chippy, while “my judge and jury” is apparently the singer’s wife, sleeping in a house down the street.
Hand has a talent for story songs. “The Drought” is a tale of a farmer watching his land go dry. “I see the tracks of baby quail/Fallen cracks along the trail/And I know like them, the earth will swallow me/But before I give up, I’ll haul water in a coffee cup/From the pits of hell or the deepest darkest sea.”
Then there’s “Old Man Henry,” the tale of another old farmer who refuses to sell his land to the government for a road project. “In his 97th year/Old man Henry had made it clear/They could build their damned highway somewhere else/He wasn’t about to go.” This story doesn’t end happily.
The themes and situations Hand sings about and the simple music with which he conveys them are not groundbreaking or innovative. They are just honest songs that prove that old-school country can still sound fresh and that mighty lonesome men can still make mighty powerful music.
Also recommended:
* Goin’ Down Rockin’: The Last Recordings by Waylon Jennings. Jennings died in 2002. A couple of years before his departure, he recorded a bunch of basic tracks in the home studio of his friend Robby Turner.
These recordings, mostly songs he wrote himself, just feature Jenning’s voice and guitar and Turner’s bass. Nearly 10 years after Jennings’ death, Turner gathered some of Jennings’ old sidemen, including drummer Richie Albright and guitarist/keyboardist Jim “Moose” Brown, to make this album. I was skeptical when I first heard about about this project. It could have turned out cheesy and exploitative. Fortunately, it didn’t.
As the title song suggests, there are some good country rockers here, including the title song, “If My Harley Was Runnin’ ” and “Sad Songs and Waltzes,” which is neither (and it’s also not the Willie Nelson song of the same title). However, “She Was No Good for Me” is indeed a sad song and a waltz. This is one of my favorite songs Jennings did in his later years.
Another latter-day Waylon favorite is “I Do Believe,” originally appearing on a mid-’90s album by the outlaw supergroup The Highwaymen. It’s a moving statement of humanist spiritually that starts out: “In my own way I’m a believer, in my own way right or wrong/I don’t talk too much about it/Something I keep working on.”
Here he rejects the hellfire sermons of a preacher and “voices I can’t hear” while embracing his inner spirit and praising a “loving father, one I never have to fear.”
This album might not stand up to Honky-Tonk Heroes and Lonesome On’ry, and Mean, but it’s a proper, if belated, goodbye from a giant who left us too soon
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TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST
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