THROWBACK THURSDAY: Hey Annie, It's Hank Ballard's Birthday!

On this day in 1927, a baby named John Henry Kendricks was born in Detroit. He grew up to become an R&B belter named Hank Ballard, who in the early 1950s made some good old fashioned suggestive, scandalous rock 'n' roll, getting most of his well-known tunes banned on radio stations all across the land of the free.

As his page on the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame website says, "His success is a perfect representation of rock and roll appeal—it behaves so bad but it sounds so good."

Happy birthday, Hank.

Ballard died in 2003. But I had the pleasure of interviewing him by phone before a Santa Fe concert in April 1989 and then meeting him backstage before the show at the old Sweeney Convention Center. (I also got to meet Ballard's wife and manager Theresa McNeil, who was killed just a few months later in a hit-and-run crash.)

In that phone interview, Ballard talked to me about the state of music back when he recorded "Work With Me Annie."

"We was still in the Victorian Age," he said with a knowing laugh. "Man, as young as we were, we didn't think we wereb being insulting to anyone. We were just having fun."

But, as I noted in my story, Ballard wasn't claiming complete innocence. "The kids like them risque songs. They still do. ... It was a wonder that we didn't get arrested."

Ballard was born in Detroit, but, as he told me, his family moved to Alabama when he was very young, where he grew up singing in his church choir.

But another huge influence on his music, he told me, was cowboy music. "Gene Autry was my first idol," he said. "I also liked The Sons of the Pioneers. Remember `Cool Water'? Man, I still love it."

Ballard still is best known for this song, which, he told me,  was about an old girlfriend from Louisville, Kentucky. "She's a school teacher in Chicago," he told me in 1989. "She's been doing that for about 25 years. We played a gig over there and she happened to be present. I introduced her as the real Annie and people lined up to get her autograph."

Work with me here:

I guess Annie had to take maternity leave. (Though Ballard insisted that his Kentucky sweetheart did not have his baby.) 

In that 1989 interview, he told me that this next song was a rush job, recorded "at some woman's house in Washington, D.C. during a break in a gig." This version of "Annie Had a Baby" is from the wonderful old show Night Music, from around the same time I saw Ballard at Sweeney Center.

And the third part of Ballard's Annie cycle was an ode to Annie's Aunt Fannie.

"Annie" inspired a lot of 1950s singers, including Etta James, who cleaned up "Work With Me Annie" into a tune called "The Wallflower, which had the refrain, "Dance With Me Henry." Also Buddy Holly expanded on the character of Annie and put her to work on the "Midnight Shift":

And years after the Annie songs, Ballard wrote a little tune about a little dance. His version wasn't the hit one however. That distinction goes to a guy named Ernest Evans who Dick Clark reinvented as Chubby Checker:

And finally, a Ballard tribute from Ronny Elliott. As Ronny said, "I never liked Chubby Checker ..."

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday Tommy Makem

 

On this day 89 years ago, Tommy Makem, who with his pals The Clancy Brothers helped popularize traditional Irish music in the U.S. during the 1950s and '60s, was born in County Armagh in Northern Ireland.

Happy birthday, Bard of Armagh!

Makem, whose parents both were musicians, emigrated to these United States in 1955, first going to Dover, New Hampshire 

According to his obituary in The New York Times:

His uncle took him to New York in 1956 for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, at which he met two of the Clancy brothers, Paddy and Tom. He already knew Liam Clancy, who soon returned from Ireland and joined the group. After one of their first appearances, Pete Seeger, the folk singer, and Alan Lomax, the folklorist and musicologist, encouraged them. Bob Dylan, in the early days of his career, solicited songwriting tips from Mr. Makem.

Tommy, who played banjo, tin whistle and other instruments, began recording with the Clancy boys as a group for Tradition Records. Their first release together was titled The Rising of The Moon: Irish Songs of Rebellion. After an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1961, the group signed with Columbia Records.

Makem left the Clancys in the late '60s to pursue a solo career, but he always was best known as the Clancy Brother who wasn't really a Clancy Brother. In 1975 he teamed up with his old bandmate Liam Clancy to form a duo that lasted 13 years.

He died in 2007 at the age of 74.

So let's get on with the music.

Here's Tommy with the Clancys on Ed Sullivan in 1961:

Here Tommy & The Clancys perform "We Want No Irish Here" at a 1963 White House event for President John F. Kennedy:

Here's Tommy & The Clancy Brothers in 1965 on the very first episode of Pete Seeger's  television show Rainbow Quest on WNJU-TV (Channel 47), a New York City-based UHF station . Tommy sang lead on "Butcher Boy":

Finally, here's Tommy in his later years singing "Four Green Fields."

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Lotsa Musical Birthdays on October 21

October 21 is the birthday of many amazing musical giants of various styles and genres. Happy birthday all!

On this day in 1915 Owen Bradley was born in Westmoreland, Tenn. He became renowned as one of country music's greatest producers in the 1950s and '60s. He was the subject of an episode in the current season of the Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast. And though he's most famous for his behind the scenes work for other artists -  Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline, Bill Monroe, Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty etc. -- Bradley also recorded some songs under his own name. Here's one from 1949 with vocals by Jack Shook and Dottie Dillard:

John Birks Gillespie, better known as "Dizzy," was born in 1917. He was a colossus of be-bop and he did it all with a bent trumpet. Here he is in France in 1971 playing "Night in Tunisia":

Cuban singer Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso, aka Celia Cruz, was born in Havana in 1925. Here she is playing in Zaire in 1974

Derek Bell, best known as the harpist for The Chieftains was born in Belfast in 1935. This is from a solo album called (I'm not kidding!!) Derek Bell Plays With Himself:

Blues rocker Elvin Bishop was born in 1942 in Glendale, California.

Erick Lee Purkhiser was born in 1946. The world later got to know him as Lux Interior of The Cramps. He was the maddest daddy!

Other musicians born on Oct. 21 include country singer Mel Street (1935); British Invader Manfred Mann (1940); soul guitarist Steve Cropper (1941); Beau Brummel singer Ron Elliot (1943 -- not to be confused with Florida rocker Ronny Elliott); weirdo rocker Julian Cope (1957); Queens of the Stone Age singer Nick Oliveri (1971) and singer songwriter Josh Ritter (1976).

Happy birthday all!

A Belated Look at "Summertime"

Since retirement, I enjoy drinking my morning coffee out on the old front porch when the weather is nice and warm.

This morning, after about a half a cup, I came back inside. It was too chilly.

It's Sept. 23 and I think summer time is over. So let's celebrate "Summertime."

This classic song started on Broadway, composed in 1935 by George Gershwin with lyrics by DuBose Heyward, for the musical Porgy and Bess. The lullaby soon became a jazz standard and made its impact in other genres of popular music as well. 

Here's the first recording of it from 1935 featuring soprano Abbie Mitchell on vocals and Gershwin on piano. Abbie's part doesn't start until about 2 minutes in:

Here's the version by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, who did an album of Porgy and Bess songs in 1959:

The very first version I ever heard was Sam Cooke's. And it's still a doozie:

Soul singer Billy Stewart had a hit single with the song in the '60s. Dig the 10-gallon hat here:

Many members of My Generation believe that "Summertime" started with Big Brother & The Holding Company. It didn't, of course, but Big Brother's version was beyond powerful. Here's a 1969 live performance by Janis Joplin after she went solo:

Doc Watson, with his son Merle, took the song to the country:

And more recently, the Swiss band Die Zorros (featuring the unstoppable Reverend Beat-Man) took it to the Bizarro World:  

The cool weather is nice, but don't be a stranger, summertime! I like it best when the livin' is easy!

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

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday, Voodoo Queen

Tomorrow, September 10, is the birthday of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo queen of New Orleans, who was active for most of the 19th Century until her death in 1881. She would have been 220 years old today.

Happy birthday, Queen Marie!

Marie, born a "free woman of color" in New Orleans, started out as a hairdresser. She also served as a nurse, tending to patients during outbreaks of yellow fever and and cholera.

But she became far more famous for her side gig of selling sold magic potions and gris gris (pouches of  herbs, stones, grave dirt and other hoodoo material), telling fortunes and giving advice to spiritual seekers of all stripes.

Marie is said to have had followers among the wealthy elite as well as by poor people. Her funeral is said to have been attended by many prominent whites. And when she died in 1881, the New Orleans Time Picayune editorialized:

All in all Marie Laveau was a most wonderful woman. Doing good for the sake of doing good alone, she obtained no reward, oft times meeting with prejudice and loathing, she was nevertheless contented and did not lag in her work. She always had the cause of the people at heart and was with them in all things. ... While God's sunshine plays around the little tomb where her remains are buried, by the side of her second husband, and her sons and daughters, Marie Laveau's name will not be forgotten in New Orleans.

And, as you'll see below, she inspired many songs.

But first, here's one of my favorite personal shaggy dog stories (or maybe more appropriately a shaggy cat story) from my hitchhiking days.

I paid a visit to that "little tomb" where God's sunshine plays back when I was 21.

It was in the summer of 1975, on my second great hitchhiking adventure. I was going down to Birmingham, Alabama (by way of Arkansas and Kansas City)  to help my friend, Julie move her stuff back to Albuquerque. I decided to stop in New Orleans for a few days. 

There's an old superstition about going to the crypt of Marie and making a red X on the crypt with a brick. For good luck. So on my last day in town I decided to do that, just to get a little good hoodoo going for the last stretch of my trip.

Not the same black cat

So I found the cemetery where she's said to be entombed -- St. Louis Cemetery #1, though some have disputed that Marie actually rests there. There I went looking for her crypt. The rows and rows of big marble crypts all looked alike to me, so I just wandered around for several minutes trying to read the inscriptions on each one. It was very frustrating.

But then I saw the black cat. 

The dang thing literally crossed my path so I decided to follow it. Was he an emissary of Marie? I followed the cat who turned a sharp corner . As I turned I almost bumped into this very tall, thin Black man in some weird, red Sgt. Pepper-like uniform.

“May I help you, sir?” he said in some kind of accent that sounded Caribbean. 

I told him I was looking for the grave of Marie LaVeau. “Right this way,” he said and led me through the graveyard maze. I wondered whether this man might be an incarnation of Baron Samedi, Voodoo loa of the dead.

Whoever he was, he showed me the way to the white marble crypt covered with red Xs. On the ground, conveniently, were lots of pieces of red pieces of bricks. My guide disappeared before I made my X and asked Marie for her blessing for my travels. 

Despite some bumps in the road, I like to think that I've traveled with that blessing ever since. 

As I later wrote in my song "The Vagabond Treasure": 

“Every highway has a demon, and buddy, I’ve met some. / But there are angels who will answer when you’re prayin’ with your thumb …”

I tried to go back to St. Louis Cemetery #1 when I was in New Orleans nearly 40 years later in 2013.

But I didn't get there until a Sunday afternoon and the graveyard was closed. I was leaving town the next day, so I couldn't return to her tomb.

And apparently, a few weeks after that trip, some idiot vandal had spray-painted the crypt, coloring it pink. Shortly thereafte,r The Archdiocese of New Orleans closed St. Louis #1 to visitors except for paid guided tours. I didn't learn of this until I returned to New Orleans in 2019. I went back to the ceremon7 on a weekday during regular business hours. 

I decided against paying for a guided tours when I saw that the tour guide was neither the tall guy the Sgt. Peppers suit nor a black cat. 

But let's get on to the music.

This song, simply known as "Marie Laveau," was recorded in the early1950s by Papa Celestine's New Orleans Band.  It was later covered by Dr. John. 

There was a spate of Marie songs in the 1970s. Holy Modal Rounders celebrated "Voodoo Queen Marie" on their 1975 album Alleged in Their Own Time. The melody here is borrowed from the old fiddle song "Colored Aristocracy" 

Also in the '70s, the  Native American band, Redbone, helped spread the legend of  the "Witch Queen of New Orleans."

And even though it doesn't really have much to do with the historic Marie, Bobby Bare's "Marie LaVeau," written by Shel Silverstein, is a hoot.

Skipping ahead to the 21st Century, the Danish metal band Volbeat (not to be confused with the alt country band from Michigan, The Volebeats) showed that the legends of Marie have spread to Scandinavia. 

And in 2013,  Tété, a Senegalese expatriate living in France, did his own haunting tribute to Marie,

Marie's tomb much like I remember it
(From Wikimedia Commons)

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday, Moe Tucker

 On this day in 1944, a girl named Maureen Ann Tucker was born in Queens, New York. She grew up to become Moe Tucker, the drummer of weird little group called The Velvet Underground,  which didn't sell many records while they were together, but went on to become one of the most influential bands in rock history.

Tucker, who played standing up, is almost always described as a "minimalist" drummer and often a "primitivist." But besides her pounding, she also occasionally took the spotlight, contributing vocals to three Velvets songs. In contrast to main singer Lou Reed's snarl, Tucker's voice was sweet, girlish, almost shy. 

Reed wrote the song "After Hours," but he was quoted saying the tune was "so innocent and pure" that he couldn't possibly sing it. So Moe did:

Another Velvet song featuring Tucker's voice wasn't all that sweet and innocent. In fact Tucker sounds almost sinister here:

Moe's other Velvet Underground vocal number, "I'm Sticking With You," like "After Hours," sounds childlike and innocent, but more playful. And yet when you listen to the actual lyrics, you realize the song actually is darker than you might have thought: "You held up a stagecoach in the rain / And I’m doing the same / Saw you’re hanging from a tree / And I made believe it was me ..."

After the Velvets broke up, Moe released several solo albums. Here's a tune from the early '90s where she sounds like a precursor to the riot grrl movement. (Lou Reed's on guitar here.)

And here Moe sings "Eye of the Hurricane" with Jad Fair of Half Japanese. The song appeared on Half Japanese's 1993 album Fire in the Sky.

Finally, here's another song from Tucker's 1991 album I Spent a Week There the Other Night. She's backed here by ex-bandmates Reed, John Cale and Sterling Morrison, the first time those four recorded together since Cale left the Velvets more than 20 years before.

Happy birthday Ms. Tucker!

THROWBACK THURSDAY: American Bandstand Memories

 

On August 5, 1957 -- which wasn't long before I turned four years old -- the ABC network debuted an afternoon teenage dance show hosted by a clean-cut guy from Philadelphia named Dick Clark.

Known as "America's Oldest Teenager," Clark had been with the show's precursor, "Bandstand," which aired on local TV in Philadelphia. (WFIL, now WPVI). The original show had been around since 1952. Clark came aboard in 1956. When ABC asked local affiliates for suggestions for a an afternoon show, Clark lobbied for "Bandstand" to go national.

According to Clark's obituary (he died in 2012 at the age of 82) in the Los Angeles Times, "Clark and “American Bandstand” not only gave young fans what they wanted, it gave their parents a measure of assurance that this new music craze was not as scruffy or as scary as they feared. Buttoned-down and always upbeat, polite and polished, Clark came across more like an articulate graduate student than a carnival barker."

That obit discusses that first national show:

"...from the no-frills Studio B of WFIL-TV on Market Street in Philadelphia, Clark greeted a national television audience for the first time with the backdrop of a faux record store, a concrete floor and crowd of giddy teens in clean-cut mode: Ties for boys, no slacks for girls and no gum chewing were the rules from the first day."

Indeed Clark's innate square demeanor made for a pretty weird show. Most of the time American Bandstand  simply played current hits and showed teenagers dancing. The guest artists who came to th studio never played live. They just lip-synched.

Clark used “Bandstand” as a springboard for various business schemes. He became an artist manager, a music publisher and had his fingers in record-pressing plants as well as a distribution business. America's Oldest Teenager had partial rights to more than 100 songs and, according to the Los Angeles Times, "had his name on the financial paperwork of more than 30 music-related businesses." 

Those wheelings and dealings led him to testify before Congress during the payola scandal in 1960. Though he testified that he never accepted any money to play records on the show, ABC made him sell off his business holdings that some saw as conflicts of interest.

Here are some videos of American Bandstand through the years:

Here's Jackie Wilson. According to the Internet Movie Data Base, Jackie appeared on Bandstand five times between 1957 and 1965. "Lonely Teardrops" was released in 1958, so I expect this clip was from one of his two appearances on the show that year.

I'm thinking the following clip might just be the only Andre Williams song ever to be played on Bandstand. This version is by James & Bobby Purify (which was the first version I ever heard.) I also like Dick Clark's Dr. Pepper commercial that introduces it, though I wonder if the "Proud Crowd" he mentions was a precursor of the Proud Boys.

Dick Clark, as he shows in this 1967 interview with The Jefferson Airplane, was in tune with the far-out youth of the Swingin' '60s. He asks bassist Jack Cassidy a very insightful question: "If you gave $100,000 to a hippie ..."

American Bandstand lasted until 1989. At the beginning of that decade, he had a 19-year-old Prince on the show:

Also in 1980, there was something Rotten on Bandstand.

But one group you never heard on American Bandstand was The Tandoori Knights (King Khan & Bloodshot Bill, who wouldn't be around until about 20 years after Clark's show went off the air.) Here is the Tandooris' lament about that fact:

THROWBACK THURSDAY: From Sea to Shining Sea

 

On this day in 1893, an English professor at Colorado College sat down and wrote a song about purple mountains, amber waves of grain, spacious skies and shining seas.

And thus did Katharine Lee Bates become a one-hit wonder -- though that one hit, "America the Beautiful," was a doozy. 

Bates, a Massachusetts native born in 1859, never got as famous as Francis Scott Key. But I'm not alone when I say I like her song better.

From the Colorado Virtual Library:

Katharine Lee Bates only spent one summer living in Colorado, but that year she wrote the words to one of the United States’ most famous patriotic songs, “America the Beautiful.” At the time she wrote the song, in 1893, she was living in Colorado Springs teaching English at Colorado College. The words, particularly the phrase “purple mountain majesty,” are said to have been inspired by Bates’ stay in Colorado.

Unless she was thinking of the majestic purple mountains of Massachusetts.

Actually, according to her page at the Songwriters Hall of Fame website, it was one purple mountain in particular that inspired bates to write to the song. It quotes an interview with Bates:

 "It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind. When we left Colorado Springs the four stanzas were penciled in my notebook, together with other memoranda, in verse and prose, of the trip. The Wellesley work soon absorbed time and attention again, the notebook was laid aside, and I do not remember paying heed to these verses until the second summer following, when I copied them out and sent them to The Congregationalist, where they first appeared in print July 4, 1895. The hymn attracted an unexpected amount of attention. It was almost at once set to music by Silas G. Pratt. Other tunes were written for the words and so many requests came to me, with still increasing frequency, that in 1904 I rewrote it, trying to make the phraseology more simple and direct."

"America the Beautiful" in its early days was sung to the tunes of several existing melodies. But the one that stuck was a song by one Samuel A. Ward, a "hymn-tune 'Materna,' previously known as 'O Mother Dear Jerusalem,' which was written in 1888."

No, she wasn't Norman Bates' mom

Bates had graduated in 1880 from Wellesley College in her home state. That was a time in which very few colleges in this great nation were open to women. She later taught at Wellesley.

And though she's best known for this song, Bates also published several books, including books of poetry children's literature. She worked as a New York Times reporter covering the Spanish-American War. She crusaded for various social reforms on behalf of women, immigrants and poor people and worked for attempts to establish the League of Nations, which she told the New York Times was "our one hope of peace on earth."

Bates died in 1929.

I have personal experience with "America the Beautiful." One night back in the early 1980s I was onstage at The Forge performing my regular tacky tunes when I was joined onstage by one of my favorite songwriters Butch Hancock. And guess what song we sang. If I remember correctly we did the first verse, which everybody knows, as well as the verse that begins "O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress ..."

It wasn't some random event. I'd met Butch a couple of times before through our mutual friend, artist Paul Milosevich. Both Butch and country star Tom T. Hall were in town for one of Paul's art openings that afternoon and both had come to hear me at The Forge. 

I wish someone would have recorded that duet with Butch. (And I wish Tom T. would have joined us on the stage.)

So let's see how others have covered "America the Beautiful.

Most of us grew up with versions like this one:

However, I like a less pomp and a lot more soul. Ray Charles in the early '70s made it grand without being grandiose.  (The Sunday morning gospel show on WWOZ in New Orleans usually ends the show with Ray's recording of this.)

Here's a blusier, funkier version by Bobby Rush (with the Curb Collective and Eddie Cotton

And The Dictators put some rock 'n' roll into the song

Anyway, have a great Throwback Thursday and may God shed his grace on thee.

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

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Pass That Bottle to Me

 

Granville Henry McGhee, nicknamed "Stick" or sometimes "Sticks," was in the Army when he heard what Allmusic describes as "a ribald military chant" about the joys of getting drunk off the fruit of the vine. This tune allegedly had a refrain that went  “Drinkin' wine motherfucker, drinkin' wine, goddamn!"  

But Stick, who was the younger brother of bluesman Brownie McGhee, decided to make it more radio friendly and instead of singing "motherfucker," he substituted a nonsense phrase from an older song -- a wonderful example of creative bowdlerization.

McGhee first recorded "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee" in 1947 for the Harlem label. But the song didn't become a hit until 1949 when McGhee signed with Atlantic Records and re-recorded it in 1949. In that second version, McGhee moved the wino action from St. Petersburg to New Orleans.

Here's the original 1947 " 'Petersburg" version credited to "Stick McGhee & His Buddy." (The '49 version was credited to Stick McGhee & His Buddies.")

The mysterious phrase "spo-dee-o-dee" came from a song by that name by Lovin' Sam Theard, a former circus worker from New Orleans who wrote or co-wrote songs including "(I'll Be Glad When You're Dead) You Rascal You" and the Louis Jordan hit "Let The Good Times Roll."   

Not much here in the way of vino in this Theard song, but it's got a similar spirit of wild abandonment as McGhee's tune. (Later Theard would record and perform under the name "Spo-Dee-O-Dee.")

Following McGhee's hit in 1949, several big names recorded the song that same year. It was a natural for jump-blues shaman Wynonie Harris:

Also in 1949, Lionel Hampton brought some good vibes (I sincerely apologize for that) to "Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee":

Besides jazz and R&B artists, the rockabillies became big promotors of the Spo-Dee-O-Dee drink. Here's Johnny Burnette's take:

And here's a guy named Jerry Lee Lewis. I got my first belt of wine spo-dee-o-dee back in the early '70s, with the version the Killer cut with a bevy of British rock stars. But he'd recorded the song before, on his 1966 album Memphis Beat.

One of my favorite latter-day versions is an acoustic version by British folk-rocker Richard Thompson:

Here's where things start getting weird.

Pere Ubu took Spo Dee O Dee to strange galaxies. (Actually, as Ubu fans know, the group is notorious for slapping well-known song titles onto bizarre and seemingly unrelated original songs.)

It's likely that many traditionalists consider Ubu's song to be blasphemous. But come on, you wanna hear some blasphemy? Let me introduce you to a guy named Pat Boone ...

So have some fun, spo-de-o-dee!

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

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday Ramblin' Tommy!

 

Ramblin' Tommy and his little pal Luke McLuke

Happy birthday to a proto-rockabilly (he was more 'billy than rock), radio and television star, comedian, ventriloquist and honest-to-God snake oil peddler.

His name was Tommy Lee Scott, though to fans of hillbilly music know him better as Ramblin' Tommy Scott. Born on June 24, 1917, Tommy lived to the age of 96. He might have made it 100 had he not been fatally injured in a car wreck a little less than eight years ago. 

According to his obituary at MusicRow.com, Scott:

... began his career on local radio in Georgia in 1933. When a medicine-show wagon stopped in Toccoa in 1936, Scott jumped aboard. It was a show that had been launched in 1890 by “Doc” M.F. Chamberlain. When Chamberlain retired, he turned the enterprise and its medicinal formulas over to Scott.

Using music and comedy, Scott sold the liniment Snake Oil, the tonic Vim Herb and the laxatives Herb-O-Lac and Man-O-Ree for decades.

Tommy Scott moved to North Carolina in 1938 to perform on WPTF radio in Raleigh. On WWVA in Wheeling, WV he was billed as“Rambling Scotty” when he fronted Charlie Monroe’s band The Kentucky Pardners. He moved to WSM and its Grand Ole Opry in 1940.

Back in Georgia, Scott became a country TV pioneer with the production of The Ramblin’ Tommy Scott Show in 1948. He later had the syndicated television series Smokey Mountain Jamboree.

In 1949, Scott starred in the movie Trail of the Hawk. Other films he appeared in include Mountain Capers, Hillbilly Harmony and Southern Hayride.

Scott worked ventriloquism into his act, with the help of his wooden partner Luke McLuke, and, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame, did a brief stint as a ventriloquist at the Grand Ole Opry.

He organized his own traveling musical medicine show,  playing songs and selling his dubious medications.  “Doc Scott’s Last Real Old Time Medicine Show” included such stars as Carolina Cotton (the "Yodeling Blonde Bombshell"), future Hee-Haw star Stringbean and bluegrass great Curley Seckler.

And, while this is nothing to celebrate, in his early years Scott did blackface comedy, including a stint with Stringbean in an act called "Stringbean & Peanut."

Here are a few of Ramblin' Tommy's songs that will make you feel better than a heaping dose of Herb-O-Lac.

Let's start out with the classic "She'll Be Coming Around The Mountain":

I first heard "Tennessee" performed by New Mexico's own Last Mile Ramblers in the early '70s:

Now here's some rockabilly, a song called "Rockin' and Rollin'":

Now for a spooky little number called "Graveyard:"

Finally here's Luke McLuke:

Happy birthday, hillbilly medicine man!

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday, Memphis Minnie

 

On this day in 1897 a girl named Lizzie Douglas was born. She went on to become one of the most influential blues singers of the early 20th Century under the name "Memphis Minnie."

And not only did she sing, she played a mean guitar as well.

From the Memphis Music Hall of Fame:

She sang about being “born in Louisiana, raised in Algiers” (a town just across from New Orleans), but that was poetic license. She was actually born in Mississippi, raised in Walls, a small farming community in DeSoto County south of Memphis, according to US Census data uncovered by Dr. Bill Ellis. She learned music early on, getting a guitar for Christmas at the age of 8. She was a wild child, running away from home for the last time at 13, heading for the bright lights of Beale Street, where, as “Kid” Douglas, she quickly made a name for herself with the jug bands and string groups that played on the street and at Memphis’ Church Park. Life was hard for a homeless kid and she grew up fast, earning a reputation for toughness, both personally and musically.

In the early 1920s, the most popular blues performers were Bessie Smith and the other classic blues singers - bejeweled women standing in front of jazz bands singing Tin Pan Alley blues. By contrast, Minnie’s style was far more raw and personal, and it endured long after that first blues craze.

She moved to Chicago in the 30s, and there bested Big Bill Broonzy in a guitar "cutting contest." It was Broonzy's 40th birthday, June 26, 1933. According to this post on the American Blues Scene site:

The prize for the contest was a bottle of gin… and a bottle of whiskey.   The club was packed, standing room only, anticipating the contest.  The booze was flowing freely and everyone was excited.  The crowd buzzed.  Judges picked for the contest were Sleepy John Estes, Richard Jones, and of course, the man in the middle of Chicago blues during that time, Tampa Red.  ...

Tampa Red called Broonzy to the stage.  As soon as he walked up there, it is rumored the crowd cheered for 10 minutes before he even started a song.  He played two songs: “Just a Dream”, one of his personal best, and followed it with “Make my Getaway.”  The crowd roared.  He had done all he could.  Memphis Minnie was up next.  Tampa Red called her to the stage.  Instead of cheers, she was greeted by an eager crowd, who whispered and hushed each other into silence.  She also played two numbers: “Me and My Chauffeur Blues” and “Looking the World Over.”  However, as she finished her first song, the crowd cheered for over 20 minutes. ...

Memphis Minnie had won, just as Broonzy feared.  Estes and Jones approached Minnie, and lifted her onto their shoulders, carrying her around the club.  Big Bill got the last laugh, though.  While the crowd – and Minnie – were busy celebrating the victory, he snatched the bottle of whiskey and drank the whole thing.

Minnie, who had been in poor health for years, died in Memphis following a stroke in  in 1973. She was buried in her home town of Walls, Miss.

One of Minnie's first recordings in 1930 was "Meningitis Blues," a track on which she was accompanied by The Memphis Jug Band.

Perhaps Minnie's best-known songs was "Me and My Chauffeur Blues." 

On this song, "When the Levee Breaks" actually features Minnie's husband Kansas City Joe on vocals. But she wrote the song and plays guitar on it. Led Zeppelin would later seriously mutate this tune.

Here's some "Drunken Barrelhouse Blues":

And here's a little Hoodoo:

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

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

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday John Waters!

 

Today is the 75th birthday of the Pope of Trash, the Prince of Puke, the most venerated Filth Elder alive, John Waters.

It's never easy to explain to those not familiar with this Baltimore filmmaker, just who the man is and why his work deserves the acclaim it's received. Just go over to Youtube and look for interviews with Waters. If you're not a fan within a couple of minutes, maybe just move on.

One thing I've always loved about Waters is his musical tastes. From sickly sweet '50s pop to crazed R&B to all sorts of sonic trash, Waters has a knack of using music that richly enhances the weirdest and most hilarious moments in his films.

So here's a musical tribute for Mr. Waters on his birthday.

In his first feature-length film, Mondo Trasho (1969) Waters used several Little Richard songs, including "Long Tall Sally."

Waters used this jolt of saccharine by Patti Page in a notorious scene involving the incomparable Divine and dog doo doo.

Here's the title track of Waters' 1974 classic Female Trouble, sung by Divine: 

The theme from 1981's  Polyester sung by Tab Hunter (background vocals by Debbie Harry, who co-wrote the song with husband Chris Stein):

Waters' Hairspray (1988) included not one but two songs by Dee Dee Sharp. Here's one of them:

Waters doesn't use a lot of country music in his soundtracks, but he admits he's become a hillbilly music fan in his old age. For a look at Waters-approved country CLICK HERE. He used this song, by Roger Miller soundalike Leroy Pullens in Pecker (1998). 

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Glory of Doo Wop

About a week ago I got in a discussion on Facebook with my friend Max about the magic of doo wop. I sent him a link to an old piece I wrote in 1994 about meeting Gaynel Hodge in Phoenix the night before that year's Lollapalooza (re-published on this blog a mere 17 years ago). 

Afterwards I remembered that just a few months before encountering Gaynel, I'd written a Terrell's Tune-up column about a wonderful Rhino Records box set that collected four CDs worth worth of doo wop classics.

So what the heck? Here's that column, which hasn't been published since its original appearance in the Santa Fe New Mexican's Pasatiempo. I'll insert a few videos and links.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
May 27, 1994

Like most folks my age, I first became cognizant of doo wop music in the late 1960s through such comedy groups as Sha Na Na and Frank Zappa's Ruben and The Jets.

In other words, for years, doo wop seemed like a quaint joke. Ram a lama ding dong. You, know, stuff like that.

But one night last winter I was driving alone on a rainy night, listening, for reasons I don't remember, to an oldies station, which happened to play “I Only Have Eyes for You” by The Flamingos.

There's a strumming of three guitar chords, followed by the steady beat of a piano. Singer Tommy Hunt comes in singing effortlessly,  My love must be a kind of blind love/I can't see anyone but you , as if he's got to justify what he has to say.

Then the group responds with unintelligible, almost discordant syllables, like some kind of eerie voodoo chant. All this before Hunt starts the first verse, invoking celestial bodies.

By the end of the song, all five Flamingos are gushing the beautiful melody, the falsetto going nuts as if possessed by the loa  of high register. It almost seems that the group is having the aural equivalent of a simultaneous orgasm, right there in the echo chamber.

But way before the song got to this point on that rainy Santa Fe night, I was transported into the past, reliving a buried memory of being a 5-year-old kid, listening to a radio late at night to a sound that was alluring and forbidding at the same time, just like Lou Reed's Jenny.

Or just like Paul Simon's “Rene and Georgette Magritte”:

The Penguins, The Moonglows, The Orioles, The Five Satins/The deep, forbidden music they'd be longing for ...

And, as if by magic, just a couple of weeks later Rhino Records announced its new four-disc Doo Wop Box.  

In recent years, with all-oldies radio, recurring '50s revivals and all, much of the mystery and power has been sapped out of this strange and wonderful music.

Therefore, it is best to look at Rhino's Doo Wop Box with the eyes of Rene and Georgette, wide-eyed immigrants entering a new world, where almost every song is an adventure. Even overly familiar tunes,  “16 Candles,” “Only You,” “Earth Angel,” regain some of their magic if listened to in this spirit.

Listening to the four hours-plus of music in this collection, one realizes there are definite traits of the doo wop Universe.

Sometime it seems like a world in which every utterance, every movement is painstakingly planned, every harmony in place. But, then, before your very ears, it will seem to break down into near anarchy, a falsetto screaming like a banshee, the bass man grunting noises that seem to come from deep within the earth.  

There's an underlying religious atmosphere. Although God is rarely mentioned after The Orioles' “Crying in the Chapel.”

But there's all sorts of holy imagery here, “Earth Angel,” “The Book of Love,” “The 10 Commandments of Love,” “Devil or Angel.”

There's also evidence of nature worship. For instance, Dion asks the stars up above why it hurts to be a teen-ager in love.

Doo wop singers tend to give themselves mythic powers. They always are willing to climb the highest mountain and swim the deepest sea.

And sometimes a group almost will prove itself to be superhuman with songs that are downright transcendental.

There's  “My True Story” by a Brooklyn group called The Jive Five. The sad little love story of Earl and Sue might seem lethally corny under any other context. But, when Eugene Pitts wails,  “And you will cry cryyyyyyy cryyyyyyyyy ...” any listener who ever has had his heart ripped out will know this is the real thing.

Then there's “Since I Don't Have You” by The Skyliners, a white group from Pittsburgh. Forget about Axl Rose's limp cover. He's outgunned by Jimmy Beaumont who by the end of the song shouts “You-ooh! You-oooh! You-oooooh!”  like a wounded accuser while Janet Vogel sings a near aria like a siren of the cosmos in the background. [Note from 2021: I'm not sure why The Skyliners, in this 1959 TV appearance are dressed up like they're serenading Marshal Dillon and Miss Kitty at the Longbranch Saloon!]

Despite some self-conscious goofery here and there, the most appealing thing about doo wop is its sincerity. When Johnny Maestro (now there's a rock 'n' roll moniker!) of The Crests sings, “You are the prettiest, loveliest girl I've ever seen,” to his 16-year-old birthday girl, you know he means every word. And because of the forceful way he sings it, a listener will believe Maestro will feel that way about his sweetie for the rest of his life.  

Sometimes simple sincerity seems magical in a jaded world.

xxx

Here's Johnny Maestro & The Crests with their big hit. No Matt Gaetz jokes, please.

Don't worry, Ruben. I still love you

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Pardon My French, It's Chanson D'Amour

 

Just a couple of weeks ago in a Throwback Thursday post about Lawrence Welk, I included a video of Sandi Griffith and a bevy of Welk beauties singing an old pop hit "Chanson D'Amour," cracking wise that "My sources in the Drug Culture community warn that it's NOT SAFE to view when you're stoned!"

I'm such a card!

But in all seriousness, this is about a song that's haunted me since I was a little kid. It seemed so foreign, alluring, with an undercurrent of danger hiding behind false wholesomeness. And the recurring "ra da da da da" is just this side of sinister.

I have a very distant and very vague memory of seeing the song performed on my mom's old black and white tv. I don't know who was singing it. Maybe it was the unforgettable, but largely forgotten Art & Dotty Todd, the first to record "Chanson" in 1958. Their video below did seem to jog some memories. However, for most of my life I assumed the singers were French. 

But that's incorrect. Art & Dotty were American lounge singers. And while the title is French, the song is not from France. Songwriter Wayne Shanklin was born in Joplin, Missouri. "Chanson D'Amour" is as American as French toast.

Here's Art & Dotty's version, introduced by Dick Clark on horseback!

Though the Todds were the first to record "Chanson," a group called The Fontane Sisters, a New Jersey group,  recorded it almost immediately after Art & Dotty. Both were released in March 1958. Here's the Fontanes' version:

By the mid 1960s, the song had been passed around and recorded by many of that era's major monsters of schmaltz: The Lettermen, Sadler & Young, Ray Coniff ... Even The Mills Brothers took a stab at the "Song of Love":

Apparently "Chanson" even made it to ... France. Here's Edith Piaff:

In the mid-'70s, "Chanson" was revived by the retro popsters Manhattan Transfer. The single was big in Europe, though didn't make much of a splash in the U.S., where cynics scoffed, "They're no Art & Dotty!"

I was hoping to uncover some obscure R&B or bluegrass or polka or zydeco or speed metal versions of "Chanson D'Amour" but came up empty-handed. However I did find  this gem by The Muppets!

But hey, R&B, bluegrass, polka, zydeco and speed metal musicians, the song is still there ... hint hint!

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