It's St. Patrick's Day, or as
The Onion
calls it "The Reinforcin' O' The Stereotypes."
Here are a few appropriately wacky Irish tunes for you.
Let's start with "The Night That Pat Murphy Died."
Erin go brawl! (Believe it or not, these guys are German!)
Here's "Brian O'Linn," courtesy of Seamus Ennis. (Folks who used to see me
perform back in the '80s might realize I performed my own weird adaptation of
this song. I changed it to "Barney O'Linn" just so I could add the
chorus "Listen here Barney and spare me your blarney / You bought the first
round but I bought the last 10 ..."
Here's "Captain Kelly's Kitchen" by The Dropkick Murphys
And it wouldn't be St. Patrick's Day in the Terrell household with some
Pogues!
Dominic Chianese, who played Corrado "Junior" Soprano in The Sopranos was
born this day, February 24, 1931in New York City.
Happy birthday, Uncle Junior!
Though mostly known as an actor, serious Soprano fans know Chianese is a
talented singer as well. Before his success in acting he also knocked around
New York bars and coffee houses. He was master of ceremonies on open mike
night at Gerdes Folk City in Greenwich Village.
In the below scene from The Sopranos, Uncle Junior showed off his vocal
talent:
Here's a little song from Chianese that Mafia movie fans should recognize
Here's a duet with Raul Malo of The Mavericks
To conclude, here's Chianese singing an Elvis/Hank Snow song.
I owe this Wacky Wednesday post to a veteran rock 'n' roll disc jockey and
Facebook friend of mine known as
Truly Judy. She recently posted a 1963 Top 40 list from a Kentucky radio station, WKLO
that contained a couple of songs that I'd been thinking of lately that
basically were soulful renditions of children's songs. I'd often thought of
these two together, and realized they were pre-Beatles early '60s numbers. But
not until I saw that chart did I realize they were popular during the same
week in January 1963.
Here's the higher ranking tune at Number 5 -- at least in Louisville that week
-- by a guy called Johnny Thunder (not to be confused with
Johnny Thunders!). Listen, then go take a bath!
And coming in at Number 14 -- at least in Louisville that week -- was
"Zip-a-Dee-Doo -Dah" by Bob E. Soxx & The Blue Jeans, who sound far more
hip than Uncle Remus did in Song of the South.
But Thunder and Soxx weren't the only R&B singers to take a children's
story or nursery rhyme into the realm of rock 'n' roll.
Here are The Coasters goosing Mother Goose.
And here's LaVern Baker with an ode to a couple of characters from
Alice in Wonderland.
O.K., dear friends, it's been a few years, so it's time to amuse and delight you again with some wonderful, wacky mash-ups. One thing all of the following videos have n common is that they're all from the same guy, one Bill McClintock. I didn't set out to do that. I don't know anything about the guy. Don't know where he lives, how old he is, his political leanings, his favorite card games, anything.
But when I started looking around in YouTube for some cool mash-ups a few days ago, somehow the best ones were by McClintock. They're not only funny, they're seamless.
This one's got some troubling undertones. I mean, what if Slipknot mated with The Spice Girls?
And what if Rick James joined The Clash?
My only problem with this one is that the title had me anticipating an appearance by Marie's brother.
And I regret that there never was a real collaboration between Pantera and The Marvelettes.
More fun with mash-ups from this blog HEREandHERE.
Today, January 13, 2021, is National Stephen Foster Memorial Day, honoring the great American songwriter of the mid 1800s, who died on this day by his own hand in 1864 at the age of 37.
It's also Wacky Wednesday here on Stephen W. Terrell's (Music) Web Log, so let's look at the funny side of Foster.
Foster himself indeed had his funny side. After all, he's the guy who penned lyrics like, "It rained all night the day I left / The weather it was dry." But even his most beautiful and dreamy songs have been parodied, mutated and dementized through the years. In fact, folks of My Generation -- and generations before -- probably were introduced to Foster's music via short performances of parts of his famous tunes in comedies and cartoons.
Way back in 1930, in their movie Animal Crackers, The Marx Brothers did a quick a capela performance of "My Old Kentucky Home."
None other than Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny did a version of "Oh! Susana," adapting the lyrics to fit the plot of Mr. Fudd searching for gold to help the U.S. war effort in 1942. (Check out how different Elmer looks!)
Spike Jones & His City Slickers did a full-blown version of Foster's "Camptown Races."
And Stan Freberg rocked Foster up. My favorite part is about the "one-eyed cat peepin' at Old Dog Tray."
For an earlier tribute to Stephen Foster
CLICK HERE.
On this day, December 30 in 1928, a child named Elias McDaniel was born in
McComb, Mississippi. He would grow up to be a member of the Valencia County
Sheriff's Reserves, an
honorary citizen of Santa Fe,
and, oh yeah, a true founding father of rock 'n' roll, known to the world as Bo
Diddley.
Thirty three years later in New York City a boy named Sean Patrick Hannity was
born. He grew up to be one of the nation's most successful right-wing
blowhards and unofficial advisors of outgoing President Donald J. Trump, the
loser of last month's presidential election.
Hannity and Diddley born on the same day. This proves astrology is
real!
I've met both of these birthday boys. In 1985 I interviewed Deputy Diddley
when he came to Santa Fe to play Club West. The day of the show Mayor Louis
Montano -- at my urging -- had Diddley come to his office to be honored with a
certificate naming him an honorary citizen of our city. That was a momentous
day!
Then in 2004, at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, while waking
around the convention center one afternoon I stumbled across "Radio Row,"
where radio reporters were working. There at a desk was Hannity doing a live
broadcast. I was surprised to see him at a Democratic convention and stood
there slack-jawed for a couple of moments. Hannity looked up at me, obviously
irritated. "Can I help you with something?" he said.
That wasn't as momentous as meeting Bo Diddley.
In honor of the senior birthday boy, here are a couple of tunes celebrating
the man amongst men.
Sorry, I couldn't find any songs honoring Sean Hannity. [OOOPS! See update below]
First, Warren Zevon covering a Diddley hit:
Here's Roky Erikson with The Nervebreakers, mutating one of Diddley's hits
The Jesus and Mary Chain proclaimed that "Bo Diddley is Jesus." I'd have loved
to have seen Diddley's face if or when he ever heard this.
And here's Diddley himself, doing one of my favorite songs from his latter-day
catalogue.
UPDATE: My Washington correspondent and Beltway Insider Chuck pointed this Hannity song by the Gregory Brothers (featuring Blondie. And what's Weird Al doing in this photo?)
On Dec. 9, 1922, John Elroy Sanford was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He grew
up to be known by another name, Redd Foxx. But he didn't forget the surname of
his birth. Probably more people know him from the hit sitcom
Sanford & Son
than his previous decades as a raunchy "party records" comic. (His character's
name, Fred Sanford, also happened to be the name of his father and his older
brother.)
Although he's far better known as a comedian, Foxx also was a singer. When he
was just a 13-year-old kid, according to
his website, Fox
"supported himself by playing the washboard in a band."
Soon he began his career as a stand-up comedian on the Chitlin Circuit. To put
it mildly, he wasn't afraid to "play blue." By the mid 1950s his nightclub
career led to a recording career, with Foxx creating an avalanche of "party
albums" that sold admirably, despite the fact that none of his records ever
had any chance of actual radio play.
But even before that, Foxx recorded five R&B singles for Savoy Records.
Here's one from 1946, a tune titled "Fine Jelly Blues."
He also sang with bands like the Kenny Watts Hot Five. (Pianist Watt with
Kenny Watts & His Brooklyn Buddies backed Foxx on his Savoy
singles.)
This one's called "Shame on You" from 1947.
Foxx recorded some more R&B singles in the mid '50s. Here's "It's
Fun To Be Living In The Crazy House," from 1957.
As Fred Sanford, Foxx often sang on his TV show. This one, "All of Me"
is a duet with Scatman Crothers.
Today, November 25, 2020, would have been the 174th birthday of radical
prohibitionist
Carrie Nation.
Happy birthday, Carrie.
Mrs. Nation -- who
also was known as "Carry Nation,"
in case you think I'm guilty of a typo -- became famous for leading attacks on
saloons in which she and her followers used axes to smash up these dens of
inequity. She showed thatLizzie Borden wasn't the only 19th Century woman to "take an ax."
According to
History.com, Nation described her June 6. 1900 raid on a saloon in Kiowa, Kansas:
“I ran behind the bar, smashed the mirror and all the bottles under it;
picked up the cash register, threw it down; then broke the faucets of the
refrigerator, opened the door and cut the rubber tubes that conducted the
beer,” she recalled. “I threw over the slot machine…and got from it a
sharp piece of iron with which I opened the bungs of the beer kegs, and
opened the faucets of the barrels, and then the beers flew in every
direction and I was completely saturated.”
She seems nice ...
As is the case of many American fanatics, Nation was inspired by The Bible and
direct messages from God. In
her own Bible,
she wrote the word "smashing" besides this inspirational passage (Jeremiah
1:10):
"See, I have this day set thee over the nation and over the kingdoms, to
root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build,
and to plant."
She was either the John Brown of her time, or the
Eric Rudolph, depending on your point of view.
Nation's dream of national alcohol prohibition came true in 1919. We all know
how that worked out...
But this is a music blog, so to honor Carrie or Carry or whoever she was, here
are some songs inspired by the temperance movement.
Let's start with "The Lips That Touch Liquor Will Never Touch Mine," with a
melody by George T. Evans and words by Sam Booth. Unfortunately this 2016
recording bythe Women's Choir at Concordia College only includes the first
verse.
This temperance tune, recorded in 1916 by singer/evangelist Homer Rodeheaver "Molly and the Baby Don't You Know" was about wives and children who suffered from an alcoholic husband and father.
Along those lines is "Father's a Drunkard and Mother is Dead," written in 1866 by one Mrs. E.A. Parkhurst. This recording is by Cincinnati's University Singers on an album released in 1997.
I couldn't do a post about temperance songs without including this Kinks klassic:
And I can't help but wonder how Mrs. Nation would feel about her name being used by a fictitious rock 'n' roll band in a notorious outrageously sleazy movie, Beyond the Valley of The Dolls. Ladies and gentlemens I present The Carrie Nations!
Yesterday, Tuesday Nov. 10, 2020, would have been the 80th birthday of
graveyard rocker and titular head of the
Official Monster Raving Loony Party
David Edward Sutch. That's Screaming Lord Sutch to you.
Sutch, who took his own life in 1999, was, along with another screamer, Jay
Hawkins, an early pioneer of mixing horror with rock 'n' roll. His early
singles were produced by British iconoclast Joe Meek. According to
Discogs, the Lord's very first single, in 1961, was a cover of Little Richard's
"Good Golly Miss Molly." But he became far better known for songs like "She's
Fallen In Love With The Monster Man," "Monster In Black Tights," "Murder in
the Graveyard" and his best known song, "Jack the Ripper."
Spurred by his fame in the U.K., Sutch launched his first campaign for British
Parliament in 1963, under the banner of something called the National Teenage
Party. He didn't win any of those races. Then in 1982, Sutch and Alan "Howling Laud" Hope created
the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, still active today. The party's official motto is "Vote Insanity." Some might argue that the U.S. Republican Party has coopted Official Monster Raving Loony Party values in that respect. But I won't go there.)
Sutch didn't win any elections as a OMRLP candidate. Obviously a victim of voter fraud by the Deep State. That's probably a good thing. But still, for those with ears to hear, Screamin' Lord Sutch's music lives on.
Here's one of his classic monster raving loony tunes,"All Black and Hairy":
Apparently the Lord had a deep desire to become Dracula's son-in-law.
Here's an early
rock and blues classics, "Honey, Hush," performed by an early Sutch on French television in the '60s:
A bevy of late '60s British rock royalty -- John Bonham, Jeff Beck, Nicky
Hopkins and Noel Redding -- joined the good Lord on his 1970 "comeback" album,
Lord Sutch & Heavy Friends. The critics raved: "The album is
regarded as a kind of Plan 9 from Outer Space of rock LPs: it's bad,
but endearingly so ... " proclaimed
Allmusic. "Many Led Zeppelin fans -- who bought this album when it was released
on the heels of the first two Zep records -- have never forgiven Page for it."
Aw, what do they know?
And here's the song that made us all fall in love, "Jack the Ripper," live in '65:
Just a few days before Halloween, it's a good time to celebrate a
ghoulishly catchy singalong written by the late Roky Erikson: "I Walked With a
Zombie."
The song comes from Roky's classic horror era, when he was cranking out titles
like "Bloody Hammer," "If You Have Ghosts" and "Don't Shake Me, Lucifer."
(Although the original 1981 copy of The Evil One by Roky Erikson &
The Aliens -- a cassette tape recording of my pal Alec's LP -- didn't have the
song, subsequent CD releases do.
The title of the song comes from
a 1943 movie directed by Jacques Tourneur for RKO. It's the tale of a nurse who "is hired
to care for the wife of a sugar plantation owner, who has been acting
strangely, on a Caribbean island." It's basically a rewrite of Charlotte
Bronte's 1847 novel
Jane Eyre. except it's set in the Caribbean. And it's got zombies.
Here's the trailer for the movie:
Getting back to Roky's song, as I said above, this tune is a singalong. The
lyrics are simple:
I walked with a zombie
I walked with a zombie
I walked with a zombie last night
It's so simple, other musicians found it easy to cover. Here are a few of
those, starting with Jack Oblivian, who's leading some kind of zombie uprising
on the streets of Memphis:
Mike Edison (The Raunch Hands, Edison Rocket Train, etc.) also walked with a zombie:
As did Cheetah Chrome, with the band Dead City, whose singer, Joe Dias, took a few little liberties with the lyrics:
I hated the first cover of "Zombie" I heard. This was by R.E.M. for the 1990 Roky tribute album, Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye. Onenthing that pissed me off was when Michael went into a corny Boris Karloff imitation in one of the latter verses. When I reviewed the album for Terrell's Tune-up, I wrote something to the effect of "Michael Stipe never walked with no zombie. But Roky Erikson did."
O.K., last Throwback Thursday I did a post in honor of of
an infamous criminal, so this week, on Wacky Wednesday let's honor a legendary lawman, the late
great Buford Pusser.
The corruption-busting sheriff was the hero of the film series Walking Tall. Here's what the New York Times said about him in his 1974 obituary:
Mr. Puser, elected sheriff of McNairy County in 1964, immediately
started a crime‐busting clean‐up of gambling, prostitution and
moonshining in the county. Often he personally smashed up gambling
equipment, using a pick‐ax.
There were at least seven attempts on Mr. Pusser's life, including one
in 1967 when he and his wife Pauline were driving along a country road
near the town of New Hope. Their car was sprayed with 30‐caliber
bullets, and Mrs. Pusser was killed.
... In addition to being shot at, Mr. Passer was knifed, beaten several
times and, once, thrown from a window. He often related in kind, and in
some quarters he was criticized for being too tough a law enforcement
officer, tending, as one Tennessee newspaper put it, “to overkill in the
pursuit of justice.”
He died in a traffic accident at the age of 36.
Not only did he inspire the movie but also several songs.
In fact, country singer Eddie Bond recorded a bunch of Buford songs, many of
which are compiled on the 1973 album pictured above. Here a couple of those
songs:
No bear was a match for Buford, according to Eddie Bond.
Another country singer named Dave Hall recorded this Buford tribute:
A band called State Line Mob (which also is the name of the criminal
organization Pusser fought) did this tune in 2008:
The Drive-By Truckers did not one, not two, but three Buford songs on their
their 2004 album (and my favorite DBT album), The Dirty South.
These include
"The Boys from Alabama,"
"Cottonseed" and, my favorite, "The Buford Stick," sung from the perspective of a good old
boy sick of the sheriff "shutting down our stills and whores."
Jimmy Buffet sang about
a drunken altercation with Sheriff Pusser in his 1999 song "Semi-True Story." The inebriated Buffet had made the mistake
of climbing on top of Pusser's car in a hotel parking lot in Nashville.
A walking tall sheriff and a big Cadillac
And me and golf shoes on the hood making tracks
This daring young singer was under attack
And Buford himself, when not busting up moonshine stills, wrestling bears, or beating up Jimmy Buffet , was a recording artist himself. Here's his two-part song "It Happened In
Tennessee," released by a Stax Records (!) subsidiary. It was written and
produced by Wayne Jackson.
As I've written before, I'm very thankful that nobody was recording me that fateful night back in the late '90s, when I basically cleared out an after-hours party at Burt's Tiki Lounge in Albuquerque with my stunning karaoke rendition of "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma."
Still, I get a weird kick from watching bad karaoke videos.
So here are a few just to make your Wednesday a little wackier. (And links to more at the bottom of the page.)
To begin, I'm not sure what's going on in this one:
Had Elvis been alive in 2010, he'd have killed this guy
This version of The Champs' "Tequila" took some real talent.
Sixty-eight years ago tomorrow, Paul Reubens, best known as his
famous/infamous character Pee-wee Herman, was born.
Back in the mid-to-late '80s you could find me and my daughter, then barely
out of toddlerhood, glued to the tube every Saturday morning watching
Pee-wee's Playhouse. At first I tried to say this was for my daughter's
benefit.
But before long I realized that I was far more hooked than she ever was.
Yes, I realize that today Pee-wee is "problematic" (God, I hate that word!)
and that by celebrating him here I'm opening myself up for some weapons-grade
finger-wagging from social media scolds.
The cold, hard facts: Police in Florida arrested Reubens for jerking off in a
porno theater in 1991 -- which is why Playhouse was cancelled. And
about a decade later, he was arrested
after police in Los Angeles, investigating actor Jeffrey Jones in a child
pornography, raided Reuben's home in 2001 and confiscated photos from his
collection of vintage "erotica and kitsch art." He was charged with
misdemeanor of possessing child pornography, but later the charge was reduced.
A judge sentenced him to three years probation.
But today on this blog let's have a musical celebration of the Pee-wee we knew
all those decades ago.
First here's the song I usually heard about halfway through my first cup of
coffee nearly every Saturday for a few years in the '80s.
The music is by
Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh and the vocals by Cyndi Lauper.
Here is Pee-wee's famous interpretive dance to The Champs' "Tequila" in the 1985 classic film Pee-wee's Big Adventure.
A couple of years later Pee-wee sang this Trashmen hit in the comedy Back to the Beach starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon.
Finally, here's an early hip-hop tribute by Joeski Love. And take note, the most noticeable dancer here, the guy in orange, is none other than Ice T!
Earlier this week, (Monday Aug. 17), American poet, publisher, true-crime author (The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion) and founding Fug Ed Sanders turned 80 years old.
Happy birthday, Ed!
For this Wacky Wednesday celebration I'm going to look (mostly) at Sanders' brief but hilarious solo music career from his post-Fugs years/
Let's start with the tragic story of a hippybilly boy, which might have been the first solo
Sanders song I ever heard. It's from his first album, Sanders' Truckstop, and features musical hotshots David Bromberg, Bill Keith (from Jim Kweskin's Jug Band) and guitarist Patrick Sky as members of Sanders' backup band.
What's not to love about a yodeling robot who loves Dolly Parton?
Many fans of Alvin, Simon and Theodore never realized that the Chipmunks had a
spiritual side. Sanders knew!
But I believe that Sanders' greatest musical character was a guy who was
kickin' hippies' asses and raising Hell long before Jerry Jeff Walker's
"Redneck Mother," and was reekin' atcha even before Frank Zappa's "Lonesome
Cowboy Burt." I speak, of course of the legendary Johnny Pissoff, that rootin'
tootin', gun totin', homophobic, racist, sexist Johnny Pissoff!
We first encounter Johnny when Sanders still was with The Fugs in a song
called "Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel" from their 1968 album, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest.
And just a year later, on Sanders' Truckstop, Pissoff rode again, in a song called -- for reasons I'm not sure of -- "The Iliad." It might make you hungry for lemon PIE.
So whatever became of Johnny? I heard a rumor that he's currently a deputy undersecretary of Donald Trump's Agriculture Departent.
Today, August 5, would have been 59th birthday of stand-up comedian and singer of funny country songs, Tim Wilson.
Happy birthday, Tim!
Wilson who died in 2014, was born in Columbus, Georgia. His early dreams involved a musical career. As he told Country Standard Timein 2000:
I moved to Atlanta in 1983 to be a songwriter, but there wasn't anybody knockin' my door down to put 'em on records. Probably cuz I was writing syrupy girl songs that nobody wanted to hear. And one night I was taking this girl that I worked with home, and I passed this comedy club, and I thought 'What the hell's that?' I saw they had an open mic night on Tuesday, and I started going there, performing there and never came back.
I put the guitar up till about '89, when I started writing comedy songs with Pinkard and Bowden. We did about seven or eight of 'em together. Then, I started accumulating so many of 'em, my wife told me I ought to put it in my act. I never wanted to put a guitar in my act cuz I didn't wanna be a 'guitar act.' But people liked it. Now when I do an hour gig, it's about 40 minutes of stand up and the rest music.
If you were writing a screenplay for a James Bond movie, you could come up with a far worse idea for a villain than the gorgeous daughter of a brutal, authoritarian Eurasian dictator who fancied herself an international pop star, but whose real job was running a major extortion and money-laundering operation.
But this is no spy thriller. It's the real-life story of Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Islam Karinova, the late dictator of the great nation of Uzbekistan.
She once was considered a probably successor to her brutal, corrupt father. But Gulnara's life turned into a horror show back in 2014, when, following a feud with daddy, was put under house arrest. The old despot's death in 2016 didn't help her.
In December 2017 a jury sentenced Gulnara 2017 to 10 years in prison on corruption charges.
And just last March, Uzbekistan's Supreme Court announced she'd been convicted of a slew of new charges of extortion, money laundering, misappropriating the property of others, and financial and other crimes. Before that conviction she reportedly sent a letter to the Uzbek government offering to return nearly $700 million to her country's treasury in exchange for dismissal of the charges. That didn't work.
And there, according to a 2012 profile in the Daily Beast, Gurnara/Googoosha "is viewed as a `robber baron' by the majority of Uzbeks and is considered `the single most-hated person in the country.' "
Here are some samples of Googoosha's music from her happier days.
This one is a duet with the great French actor Gerard Depardieu:
Speaking of duets, what do Googoosha and Willie Nelson have in common? They've both done duets with Willie Nelson!
Here in the good old USA probably the closest thing to Googoosha we currently have is a young lady who dabbled in her own brand of pablum pop before her daddy started running for president. To Tiffany Trump's credit, she didn't try to use her daddy's presidency to promote her musical career and she's never been implicated in an international money laundering schemes.
And to daddy's credit, he didn't place Tiffany under house arrest after she recently posted a black square in support of justice for George Floyd on Instagram.
Just imagine a cheese-pop super group of Googoosha and Tiffany after Ms. Karinova gets out of prison. Thanks to my brother Jack for introducing me to the magic of Googoosha. He met her in person years before her fall.
MTV was pretty vapid, even in its 1980s heyday. But one constant bright spot back during the Reagan era was Julie Brown, a comedian and actor.
The first time I ever saw her was a hilarious "man-on-the-street" -- or more accurately "man-on-the-beach" interview segment in which a bikini-clad Julie approached guys saying, "Do you think I'm pretty? Could you give me $20?"
Julie also wrote and recorded hilarious songs that became videos ripe for MTV -- and appropriate for Wacky Wednesday.
Julie as Lady Liberty
Some clarification may be in order here. Back in the 80s, MTV was crawling with Julie Browns. There also was the Welch-born "Downtown" Julie Brown, who hosted something called club MTV and was known for her catchphrase, "Wubba Wubba Wubba." I'm talking about the one born Julie Ann Brown in Van Nuys, Calif. in 1959, the host of MTV's Just Say Julie.
(And to be sure, this isn't about Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown whose 2018 series blew open the case against pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.)
Here are some of my favorite Julie tunes, starting with this classic, "Trapped in the Body of a White Girl."
"My father's out of Harvard, my brother's out of Yale, well the guy I took home last night just got out of jail."
"Girl Fight Tonight"!
Of course in real life, Julie was a redhead. At least most of the time.
Though this 1984 parody of teenage death songs (you know, "Teen Angel," "Tell Laura I Love Her," "Last Kiss," "Leader of the Pack" etc.) undoubtedly was Julie's best-known song, let's just say it didn't age very well after Columbine and all the other school shootings that have plagued the country in the past two decades plus.
Still I always chuckle at the line "Stop it, Debbie, you're embarrassing me!"
Barris: Game show giant, CIA assassin, singer/songwriter
Chuck Barris, ascended master of the TV game show would have been 91 today.
Happy birthday, Chuck.
If you recognize his name, it's probably because of his role as host of one of his craziest creations, The Gong Show -- a strange talent show that I loved a zillion times more than American Idol, America's Got Talent and Dancing With the Stars put together. Barris hosted the original version of the show from its debut in 1976 through 1980.
By the time that first gong struck, Barris, who was born in Philadelphia, already had several game shows under his belt, including The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game -- not to mention noble flops like The Family Game, The Game Game and How's Your Mother-in-Law none of which I've ever seen.)
He's also an author. In 1984 he published his own “unauthorized autobiography” titled Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, in which he claimed he'd worked secretly as a CIA contract assassin during the years he was making his game shows. (Nearly 20 years later it was made into a movie directed by George Clooney and starring Sam Rockwell.)
The agency flatly denied that Barris had ever worked for them in any capacity, calling the claim "ridiculous.". A game-show blog (!) called BuzzerBlog, in its 2017 obituary for Barris claims that the late host had confessed as much in a 1984 appearance on the Today Show. I couldn't find any clip of that, but I did find a 2010 interview with the Television Academy Foundation in which Barris is still acting coy about his supposed time with the CIA.
But for the purpose of this music blog, Chuck's music career is what we're celebrating today.
He had a band called The Chuck Barris Syndicate in the '60s. Here's a 1968 tune called "Donnie."
Here's a much snazzier number from 1980 called "Sometimes It Just Don't Pay To Get Up" credited to Chuck Barris & The Hollywood Cowboys Orchestra.
Barris, however, started out writing songs for others. Here's one from 1962 called "Summertime Guy" by Eddie Rambeau.
But by far the best-known Barris song was an ode to an amusement park that was a major hit for Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon. I like this version by The Ramones.
So let's strike the gong in memory of Chuck Barris.
