TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, May 30, 2021
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres

Foggy Notion by Velvet Underground

All I'm Saying by Alien Space Kitchen

You Ain't Me by Reigning Sound

Nail My Dick to the Wall by The Toy Trucks

Sick to the Bone by Laino & The Broken Seeds

My Pal the Tortoise by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282

5 Anos de Aca by Rolando Bruno y Su Orquesta Midi

Set Me Free Rosalie by Los Lobos

Where is the Moon by Southern Culture on the Skids

Pig Ears by The Barbarellatones 

That's Alright With Me by The Knoxville Girls

Taco Dreamin' by KevBev

If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me, Kill Me by Hickoids

The Flame That Killed John Wayne by The Mekons

Look Down That Lonesome Road by Roy & The Devil's Motorcycle

Something's in the Air by Honshu Wolves

Happy Birthday Bob! 

Everything's Broken by Bob Dylan

Gotta Serve Somebody by Shirley Caesar 

Those Fabulous '60s by National Lampoon

Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) by Willie Nelson & Calexico

Royal Jelly by Dewey Cox

Blind Willie McTell by Bob Dylan

A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission) by Simon & Garfunkel

(Background Music: Mr. Tamborine Man by Duane Eddy)

Help Me Scrape the Mucous from My Brain by Ween

No Confidence by Simon Stokes

Big Boss Man by Tony Joe White

Bad Trick by Ray Wylie Hubbard

Poor Ellen Smith by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

Down in the Willow Gardens by The Everly Brothers

Charlie James by Peter Case

Tile We Meet Again by Peter Stampfel

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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WACKY WEDNESDAY: The Musical Legacy of Marion Robert Morrison

 One hundred fourteen years ago, May 26, 1907, in Winterset, Iowa, Marion Robertson Morrison was born.

You may know him as "John Wayne" king of the cowboy movies.

Though he died of cancer in 1979, Marion was in the news because of his embrace of white supremacy in an old Playboy interview. His political conservatism was no secret. Hell, he publicly supported Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s and for awhile was a member of the John Birch Society.

This post is to re-fight that battle. This is a music blog, so if you want to argue politics, take it to Twitter. 

John Wayne made a major contribution to rock 'n' roll when Buddy Holly and fellow Crickt Jerry Allison picked up the Duke's catch phrase from his 1956 movie The Searchers. You might have heard this before:

Some John Wayne movies themselves had very bitchen songs. Here are a few of them, starting off with "My Rifle, My Pony and Me" featuring Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson (from Rio Bravo, 1959.) 

I don't think Walter Brennan is really playing harmonica here.

Johnny Horton found the bonanza gold with this theme from North to Alaska (1960)

Also in 1960, John Wayne starred as Davy Crocket in The Alamo, which had this song by Marty Robbins:

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) is my favorite John Wayne movie. I also love the song of the same title, performed by Gene Pitney and written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The song didn't actually appear in the movie, but Pitney says Paramount Pictures paid for the recording.

To conclude, The Mekons did a song in the 1990s celebrating, in their own peculiar way, the legacy of Marion Robert Morrison:

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, May 23, 2021
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres

The Holygram's Song (Back From the Shadows Again) by Firesign Theatre

Let's Do it Again by The Reigning Sound

Fast (2300 AD) by The Ghost Wolves

Roll With Me by The Devils

Spells and Magic by Laino

The Trip by The Rockin' Guys

La Bondad y La Maldad by Electric Shit with Walter Daniels

Call Me by Southern Culture on the Skids

Wade in Bloody Water by The Grannies

Basketball Bender by KevBev

Black Cat by Black Pumas

The Motor City is Burning by John Lee Hooker

Justine Alright by The Sadies with Heavy Trash

Down to the Bone by Legendary Shack Shakers

Hoodoo by Johnny Dowd

No Tellin' When by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band

Albuquerque by Dave Alvin

Memo from Turner by Mick Jagger

Pow Wow Highway 89 by Roy & The Devil's Motorcycle

Sticky Hulks by Thee Oh Sees

Miss Misery by Jocephus & The George Jonestown Massacre with Ruyter Suys & Greg Martin 

Take It Back by Dinosaur Jr.

Mustache Queen by The Barbarellatones

The Loneliest Clown by Robbie Quine 

Gator Gator by The Krayolas

Dallas Seen the Last of Me by Joe "King" Carrasco

Pronto Un Doctor by Rolando Bruno y Su Orquesta Midi

Chosen Few by Dropkick Murpheys

I Won't Lie by Tom Jones

Swing Low Sweet Chariot by Homer Henderson

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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Want to keep the party going after I sign off at midnight?
Go to The Big Enchilada Podcast which has hours and hours of music like this. CLICK HERE

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THROWBACK THURSDAY: Blue Jean Baby Queens

She's Venus in blue jeans... 

On this day in 1873, 148 years ago, German-American businessman Levi Strauss and Jacob C. Davis, a Lithuania-born tailor working in Reno, Nevada, filed for a patent for a type of trousers that would become "an icon of American culture, and quite possibly the world’s most popular article of clothing."

Blue jeans.

As explained in Smithsonian Magazine: 

It all started in 1871, when tailor Jacob Davis of Reno, Nevada, had a problem. The pants he was making for miners weren’t tough enough to stand up to the conditions in local mines; among other issues, the pockets and button fly were constantly being torn. “A miner’s wife came up to Davis and asked him to come up with pants that could withstand some abuse,” says curator Nancy Davis (no relation), from the American History Museum. Davis looked at the metal fasteners he used on harnesses and other objects. “At that time, he came up with the riveted trousers.”

As local miners snapped up the overalls he made with rivet-strengthened stress points and durable “duck cloth,” a type of canvas, Davis realized he needed to protect his idea. “He had to rush, due to the fact that these worked really well,” says Nancy Davis. “He realized he had something.” Lacking the money to file documents, he turned to Levi Strauss, a German immigrant who had recently opened a branch of his family’s dry-goods store in San Francisco, and the two took out a patent on a pair of pants strengthened with rivets.

... In the latter half of the 20th century—decades after Strauss’ death in 1902—blue jeans achieved widespread cultural significance. “They really come to their apex in the 60s and 70s,” Davis says. “The interesting thing is that this particular type of pants, the blue jeans, have become international,” she adds. “It’s what people think of. When they think of America, they think of blue jeans.”

In the 1950s, blue jeans became a symbol of tough-guy cool.

"James Dean’s costume department in Rebel Without a Cause, for example, used denim to mark out their leading man as a smoldering icon of youthful rebellion," wrote Tristan Kennedy in Vice a couple of years ago.

And naturally that smoldering  image of youth rebellion leaked over into rock 'n' roll.

Rockabilly wizard Gene Vincent had at least two songs that mentioned blue jeans in the title. The first was "Blue Jean Bop" from 1956:

Then  in 1957 came Gene's "Red Blue Jeans and a Ponytail":

But you didn't have to be a hard boppin' rockabilly to dig the denim. One teen-idol schmaltz peddler, Jimmy Clanton linked this style of trousers to Roman goddesses:

Neil Diamond knew the appeal of Jacob W. Davis' fashion innovation:

So did David Bowie:

The country music world also produced songs about blue jeans. Here Mel McDaniels celebrates unrestrained gawking at the buttocks of denim-clad hillbilly gals:

And all Conway Twitty wanted to do was get into the jeans of a rich faux-cowgirl

WACKY WEDNESDAY: The Stupid Pleasures of Nepo-Rock ('60s Edition)

 

Often in small-town politics, success comes not from what you know or even who you know. It's who you're related to. And sometimes that's the case in the rock 'n' roll biz. 

Nepotism isn't all that rampant in the world of rock. But back in the 1960s there were several acts that definitely benefitted from having famous parents. (Not that this phenomenon stopped 50 years. Think Jakob Dylan, Julian Lennon, Wilson-Phillips, Dweezil Zappa, Miley Cyrus, Shooter Jennings, etc.) While much the music made by the children of famous entertainers is pretty bad, some actually is quite good. 

Here are several examples of what we'll call Nepo-Rock, mostly from the 1960s, when I was in elementary school and junior high.

Let's start with Dino, Desi and Billy. Dino was the son of Dean Martin while Desi was the son of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, thus making him the inspiration for Little Ricky on I Love Lucy. Billy Hinsche isn't the spawn of famous folks. (And he's the only one who continued a career in music, going on to become a touring member of The Beach Boys. And his sister Annie married Carl Wilson, which I guess was another form of nepotism.)  

Here's DD&B's first and biggest hit, a watered-down mutation of "Louie Louie":

Here is the son of comedic great Jerry Lewis, though I'm not sure that the French consider Gary Lewis to be a genius. With his band The Playboys (not to be confused with Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys or John Fred & His Playboy Band).

Full disclosure: I saw Gary Lewis & The Playboys live at Wedgewood amusement park in Oklahoma City back when they hot. (But I liked Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs,  who I saw at Springlake amusement park around the same time, much better.)

Gary's biggest hit, of course, was "This Diamond Ring." But he had several successful singles, and the one below, "Save Your Heart for Me," was a cheesy delight:

Noel Harrison was the son of actor Rex Harrison. I hardly ever heard Noel on the radio, but he was a frequent guest on TV variety show in the mid '60s Around the same time that daddy Rex was delighting children and talking to the animals as Doctor Doolittle, young Noel was singing pensive tunes such as "The Windmills of Your Mind" and this one, a tragic cautionary tale for wayward youth:

While Dino, Desi and Gary were pretty lame, and Noel Harrison was kind of interesting, there is one celebrity child who stood out. Being the daughter of Frank Sinatra -- who in. addition to being one of the world's most famous singer also ran a record company (Reprise) -- certainly didn't hurt her career. But I believe Nancy Sinatra would have made it anyway with her talent, charisma, sex appeal and her not-so-secret weapon of producer, songwriter and collaborator Lee Hazelwood.

I've already blogged not too long ago about Nancy's biggest hit, but here's one I've always liked a little more. Not only is it the best, "get-away-from-me-you-creep-or-my-boyfriend-will-beat-the-crap-out-of-you" song this side of The Angels' "My Boyfriend's Back," it's also got that great out-of-nowhere psychedelic freakout in the middle:

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Making Honey in the Lion's Head

Listening recently to Surrounded by Time, the latest album by Tom Jones, I was struck by the Welch belter's version of a favorite old folk song that's been recorded by many artists old and new: "Samson and Delilah." Now ol' Tom decades ago recorded another song about a lady named Delilah, but this new one, produced by Ethan Johns and Mark Woodward, sounds like battered olold shaman telling a Bible story from the world of dreams.

I always assumed that "Samson" was written by the Reverend Gary Davis, who recorded it in the 1950s. But according to music historian Elijah Wald, the song goes back much further. Wald says the tune can be traced to "Wasn’t that a Witness for My Lord,” which he says is "a sort of musical compendium of Bible stories, which included three verses about Samson, two of which are close to what Davis sang." This song was mentioned in a 1909 article about  African American spirituals by sociologist Howard Odum.

And a few decades before Davis told of Samson bare-handedly slaying a lion who'd "killed a man with his paws," there were at least three versions recorded in the late 1920s by three men: Blind Willie Johnson in Dallas, Rev. T.E. Weems in Atlanta and Rev. T.T. Rose in Chicago.

All three were clearly based on the same source, though each performer had edited the lyric somewhat differently to fit a three-minute 78 rpm disc. I guessed the source must have been a published broadside (a printed song sheet with lyrics but no music), and eventually found a copy of that broadside in John Lomax’s papers at the University of Texas.

So let's have a listen to these various "Samson and Delilahs, shall we?

Here's Blind Willie Johnson:

This is how Rev. Weems saw that momentous haircut:

What do you say, Rev. Rose?

Rev. Gary Davis spread the word of Samson to a new generation of folkies and rockers. (Strange fact I just made up: The little girl with Rev.Davis pictured in the video grew up to be Courtney Love!)

The Staple Singers knew a great soul gospel tune when they heard it:

Surely the most famous version of the Samson saga was by The Grateful Dead:

One of my favorite takes was by The Blasters in the early '80s. Singing background vocals were The Jordanairres, Elvis’ old gospel-flavored background group:

Finally, Tom Jones takes Samson into a strange dimension:

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

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, May 2, 2021
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres

The Great Banana Hoax by The Electric Prunes

He Looks Like a Psycho by The Electric Mess

Diddy Wah Diddy by Captain Beefheart

Funky But Chic by David Johansen

You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover by Bo Diddley

Hooky Wooky by Lou Reed

All Too Much by Stan Ridgway

White Hat by Joe "King" Carrasco

Call Me by Southern Culture on the Skids

A 5 Anos de Aca by Rolando Bruno

That's Alright with Me by Knoxville Girls

Fanny Pack by The Barbarellatones

No Suden Moves by Dengue Fever

Wonderlust King by Gogol Bordello

Livin' for the City by The Dirtbombs

Mystic Eyes by Them

The Girl Can't Help It by Little Richard

Happy Birthday Link Wray 

Run Through the Jungle by Link Wray

Red Riding Hood and the Wolf by Bunker Hill with Link Wray

Rumble by Link Wray

Flat Foot Floozy by NRBQ

Devil Whistle Don't Sing by The Devils with Mark Lanegan

I Ain't by Dinosaur Jr.

Bloody Mary Morning by Willie Nelson

Tangled Web by Harvey McLaughlin

Piss on the Fire by Churchwood

A Lion in the Jungle by Carl Perkins

Samson and Delilah by Tom Jones

Summer Wages by David Bromberg

Lucky Day by Tom Waits

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page


     Want to keep the party going after I sign off at midnight?
Go to The Big Enchilada Podcast which has hours and hours of music like this. CLICK HERE

Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast CLICK HERE

FOLK REMEDY Playlist

Sunday, May 2, 2021
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
8 am to 10 am  Sundays Mountain Time
Substitute Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM

Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist :

May Day by Jack Hardy

I Truly Understand That You Love Another Man by Carolina Chocolate Drops

Poor Ellen Smith by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

Moses by John Davis

Gospel Tain by Silver Leaf Quartet

I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole by Blind Willie Johnson

Denomination Blues by Washington Phillips 

I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground by Bascom Lamar Lunsford

Lucky and Alone by Rachel Brooke

Willie Nelson Belated Birthday Tribute 

Permanently Lonely by Willie Nelson

Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain by Sally Timms & Jon Langford

I Still Can't Believe You're Gone by Kelly Hogan
Opportunity to Cry by Tom Jones

Sad Songs and Waltzes by Keith Whitley

Bloody Mary Morning by Kinky Friedman with Willie Nelson

Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground by Johnny Bush

Hello Walls by Faron Young 

Something to Think About by Willie Nelson & Ray Price

I Wants My Lulu by Welling & McGhee

Cocaine by Dick Justice

Insane Crazy Blues by Charlie Burse & The Memphis Jug Band

When I Was a Cowboy by Peter Case

I Remember You by Peter Stampfel

Home on the Rage by Nick Shoulders

Long Violent History by Tyler Childers

Coal Miner's Blues by Hazel & Alice

I Wanna Hotdog for My Roll by Butterbeans & Susie

Never Did No Wanderin' by The Folksmen 

Potato's in the Paddy Wagon by The New Main Street Singers

A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow by Mitch & Mickey

A Mighty Wind by The Folksmen, The New Main Street Singers and Mitch & Mickey

Wild Bill Jones by Eva Davis

Bad Man Napper by Lee Green

Original Stack O'Lee Blues by Long Cleve Reed & Little Harvey Hill

Pilgrim by Steve Earle & Del McCoury Band

Bye Bye Blues by Hoosier Hot Shots