To mangle a quote from Edgard Varèse (or was it Frank Zappa? Ruben
Sano?), the 21st Century Mash-Up refuses to die!
Here's a small sampling of Youtube mash-ups to amaze and delight, a sweet
reminder that no matter what musical styles and genres you prefer, it always
can be combined with something ridiculous or disturbing to create something
even more ridiculous or disturbing.
Let the music bring us together!
Let's start with a little fun in Acapulco with this little monstrosity
from Shahar Varshal featuring Elvis, Queen, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flo Rida and Gnarls Barkley.
Let's Rage Against the Bee Gees with this William Maranci mash-up:
What if Ozzie Osbourne had a little funk in his trunk? If Earth, Wind &
Fire rode the Crazy Train? DJ Cummerbund has the answer!
Remember when The B-52s met Slayer? Mash-up master Bill McClintock
does:
Finally, this battle royale (from 2003!) features a Canned Heat classic
aided by Blondie, The Jackson 5, Metallica, The White Stripes Devo, and
Credence Clearwater Revival. It's by a Youotuber called "TWENTYTHREEAD," who
composes "music for TV Commercials and film and create videos graphics for
corporate in-store installations and events."
More fun with mash-ups from this blog, HERE, HEREandHERE.
And for you true nerds out there who are curious about how mash-ups are made, here's a Facebook video from Bill McClintock showing how he created "Raining Lobsters."
In these troubled times, it's extremely important to embrace our most cherished Christmas traditions. Such as celebrities who have no business singing crooning corny Christmas songs.
In case you forgot, here's what a Golden Throat is, ere is how I've explained it before:
Back in the '80s and '90s, when Rhino Records was actually a cool label, they released a series of albums called Golden Throats. These nutball compilations featured movie and TV stars, sports heroes and every stripe of cheesy celebrity singing ham-fisted versions of songs they had no business singing. Pop tunes, rock 'n' roll hits, country song, whatever. Nothing was sacred and nothing was safe from the Golden Throats.
Because of the exposure from the Rhino series, some of these unintentionally hilarious songsters became notorious and ironically hip. Think William Shatner -- the Elvis of the Golden Throats! -- and his over-the-top renditions of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Mr. Tambourine Man."
So let's start off this Golden Throat Christmas Special with this turkey from Walter Brennan:
Christmas on the Ponderosa was always special when Pa Cartwright started to sing
What's Christmas without David Hasselhoff?
Et tu, Seth?
And let's go home for the holidays with the always poignant William Shatner, aided and abetted here by ... Billy Gibbons???????
Merry Christmas! And find more Golden Throat action
HERE,
HERE,HEREand HERE
According to Billboard, his commercial, which debuted during the 2009 Superbowl, also featured rapper Will I. Am, is "the only piece of recorded music history that features the writers of `Visions of Johanna' and `My Humps,' with the latter rapping all over the Planet Waves cut `Forever Young.' The ensuing Super Bowl ad attempts to float the similarities between the two artists, mostly in that they both wear cool sunglasses. Doing it all for the Pepsi."
And unlike Michael Jackson, Dylan didn't even have to catch his hair on fire to do it.
But this hardly was the only t.v. commercial Dylan licensed his songs for or actually appeared in ads for Victoria's Secret, Chrysler, Apple iPods, Chobani yogurt, Google, his own brand of whiskey called Heaven's Door, and probably others I'm forgetting.
And he's not alone.
The world of rock 'n' roll tends to look down at rockers prostituting their pure art for the filthy lucre of the corporate world. In the '80s, John Fogerty preached that sermon in his song "Soda Pop", as did Neil Young in "This Note's for You." I also remember, around this era, Paul Simon on Late Night With David Letterman talking about Simon & Garfunkel being approached by Midas Muffler execs pitching an ad in which "The Sounds of Silence" would be changed to "The Sounds of Midas."
Paul & Artie didn't bite. But Dylan and many others took big bites out of the corporate apple.
Back in the mid '80s, Lou Reed tried hard to make Honda motor scooters look
tough. Anthony DeCurtis wrote in his
2017 biography of Reed, wrote:
That Reed, a serious motorcycle aficionado, would not have been caught
dead riding a scooter in real life seemed beside the point. At times, he
could be defensive about the ad—“Who else could make a scooter hip?” he
challenged one journalist. But he also cited more pragmatic reasons for
his decision, and mentioned Andy Warhol, an early mentor of the Velvet
Underground, as a model for his thinking. “I can’t live in an ivory tower
like people would like me to,” Reed said. “I used to watch Andy do
something for TV Guide or Absolut Vodka … When our equipment broke, that’s
how it got replaced. We didn’t turn around and tell Andy we can’t touch
that money because it came from doing a commercial.
But
Open Culture in 2013 said "The spot made a huge splash on Madison Avenue. Its influence
could be seen all over the next generation of commercials. But it didn’t sell
many scooters."
The piece quotes ad man and author Randall Rothenberg's book
Where the Suckers Moon: The Life and Death of an Advertising
Campaign: “For all its impact on the advertising industry the Lou Reed commercial did
little for Honda. Young Americans had little interest in scooters, no matter
how hip they were made out to be.”
But Lou wasn't alone, shilling for Honda in the 80s. Check out Devo's
contribution:
And Iggy Pop apparently had a lust for auto insurance
But it didn't start in the '80s.
The only disappointing thing about The Rolling Stones when I saw them
play in Austin last month is that they didn't perform their classic Rice
Krispies jingle from the mid '60s:
And in 1967, the same year as The Who Sell Out, The Who actually sold out!
On this day 130 years ago, a child of German immigrants was born in Lexington, Missouri. Carl Stalling would grow up to become undoubtedly the greatest creator of cartoon music in the history of film.
... the visionary behind the kaleidoscopic music beating at the heart of the classic cartoons produced under the aegis of Warner Bros. Studios during the middle of the 20th century. Frenzied and impassioned, his work broke new ground by following the visual trajectory of the on-screen action instead of the accepted rules of composition; the result -- a technique not anchored in conventional senses of time, rhythm, or thematic development -- was unprecedented in its extremism, as melody, style, and form crashed together in a glorious pile-up of sound and image. A maverick whose reach extended from pop to jazz to classical and beyond, Stalling's revolutionary cut-and-paste compositions remain a clear forerunner of the experimental music created in his wake -- in fact, it could easily be argued that he succeeded in introducing entire generations of young cartoon fanatics to the music of the avant-garde.
... Working with Warner's 50-piece orchestra under the direction of conductor Milt Franklyn, Stalling scored each cartoon in about three hours at a staggering rate of at least one a week, absorbing the influences of current pop hits, classical symphonies, and the like, and then quoting whatever seemed to fit ...
And, according to The Stephen W. Terrell (Music Web Log) "It's hard to imagine the music of Spike Jones or Frank Zappa without Carl Stalling." (Steve Terrell 2021)
Stalling learned to play piano at the age of six. By the time he was 12, he started a career as a pianist at silent movie theaters. (Silent movies depended on live musicians for their "soundtracks." I remember my grandmother telling me that as a girl in Oklahoma City she had a big crush on a clarinet player who worked in the band at her local silent movie joint. She called him "Clarinetti," but that's a whole other topic.)
But before silent movies had the opportunity to die, Stalling's career took an upward turn when, working at the Isis Movie Theater in Kansas City, he met a young filmmaker named Walt Disney who admired his work.
In 1969 interviews, (compiled and published in 1971, a year before Stalling's death) the composer told Michael Barrier, Milton Gray, and Bill Spicer that he met Disney in the early 1920s:
He used to come to the Isis Theater, where I played the organ and had my own orchestra. This was music to accompany silent movies, and I played the whole afternoon and evening. When I wasn't at the organ, I'd be conducting, or playing the piano and conducting. I had a pianist for a number of years, and then I just conducted. Walt was making short commercials at that time, and he'd have us run them for him. We got acquainted, and I had him make several song films. The End of a Perfect Day, showing a sunset…Victor Herbert's A Kiss in the Dark. The words would come on one at a time, with the music. This was before sound, of course.
Like Disney before him, Stalling, in the late 1920s, left Kansas City for Hollywood. He scored a couple of Mickey Mouse shorts for Disney. But probably his most memorable work there was his music for Disney's Silly Symphonies series. The first of these (1929) was called The Skeleton Dance. From that same interview:
The Skeleton Dance goes way back to my kid days. When I was eight or ten years old, I saw an ad in The American Boy magazine of a dancing skeleton, and I got my dad to give me a quarter so I could send for it. It turned out to be a pasteboard cut-out of a loose-jointed skeleton, slung over a six-foot cord under the arm pits. It would "dance" when kids pulled and jerked at each end of the string.
Listen to Stalling's music and shake your bones!
Stalling left full-time employment Disney Studios in 1931 to freelance for Disney and other studios. In 1936 he was hired by Warner Brothers, where he'd work for the next 20-plus years. Here's a medley of some of his early work there:
Here's one especially appropriate for Wacky Wednesday, "Porky in Wackyland" (from 1938, along with "Dough for the Do Do" from 1949.)
If you play this one backwards you'll hear a sinister voice saying "Elmer Fudd sucks cocks in Hell!"
It almost being Halloween, what better time for some sweet, creepy calliope
music from the founder of the Church of Satan?
Anton Szandor LaVey died Oct. 29, 1997 -- so we're just two days away from the
24th anniversary of that strange and mournful day.
Born Howard Stanton Levey in Chicago in 1930 (Really? What kind of Satanic
priest is named "Howard"?!?!?), shortly after he was born, his family moved to
the San Francisco Bay area. LaVey claimed he left high school to join the
circus -- first as a roustabout, then later as a calliope player.
In 1966 he founded the Church of Satan, appointing himself as high priest.
LaVey presented Satanism not as the practice of evil or as the worship of
an actual Antichrist but as a kind of ethical egoism. According to LaVey,
traditional religions were fundamentally hypocritical and dangerously
inhibited the physical tendencies and emotional needs that were vital to
human life. He claimed that his brand of Satanism was inspired by his
having noticed as a teenager that the men he saw at church on Sunday,
praying to God for absolution, were the same ones he had seen at burlesque
shows on Saturday night. LaVey’s Satanism was in fact atheistic: the
opposition between God and Satan represented for him the struggle between
hypocrisy and repression on the one hand and indulgence and liberation on
the other. LaVey was also not a nihilist: he instructed his followers to
obey the law, and he taught that indulgence in pleasure could be
beneficial only if it did not harm others.
But he always was a showman. And during his life, in addition to the books he
wrote about Satanic philosophy, LaVey recorded three albums: The Satanic Mass, Satan Takes a Holiday, and Strange Music (which later was released with a slightly different tracklist as The Devil Speaks (& Plays).
As the Allmusic Guide says, "... like any good horror movie, LaVey and his music do indeed haunt and, for some, delight."
So let's start out with LaVey's delightful version of "Harlem Nocturn." This is from
the 1993 documentary, Anton Szandor LaVey - Speak of the Devil. Here he also talks about his loving relationship with the calliope.
Lavey loved those gypsy love songs
A happy little ditty called "Gloomy Sunday." (Vocals by his wife, Blanche
Barton. I actually wish he'd chosen
Singing Sadie.)
Say the name "Freddie & The Dreamers" and Americans of a certain age (read: old) reflexively will start moving their arms and legs in a quasi-jumping-jack style and singing in a bad British accent, "I'm telling you now, I'm telling you right away ... " or, "It's the thing to do, kids will envy you / Do the Freddie ..."
And this, Freddie and band have gone down in history as a two-hit wonder.
But this British invasion band, which put Manchester on the rock 'n' roll map two decades before The Fall, recorded more than 20 singles and several albums between 1963 and 1968, when the original group disbanded.
Freddie Garrity died in 2006 at the age of 69.
So this Wacky Wednesday we celebrate Freddie's less celebrated songs.
I remember seeing this one on Shindig in the mid '60s:
I remember this minor Freddie hit very fondly. I always thought it was The Dreamers' strongest tune, even though it wasn't nearly as popular as "Do the Freddie":
The first time I actually paid attention to this song was a version by The Hentchmen, with
guest Jack White, about 20 years ago. "Some Other Guy" is a Lieber and Stoller tune originally recorded by American R&B singer named Richie Barrett in 1962. Soon after that it was recorded by a British band called The Big Three, after which it became a frequent cover by Mersy Beat/British Invasion groups, including a little combo of Fab Moptops, who frequently played it on stage.
As "Some Other Guy" shows, Freddie was hardly averse to doing cover songs. For instance here's a Stephen Foster tune:
And like Sun Ra, Freddie & The Dreamers even did an album of Disney songs. This one's super:
Les Claypool, the bass-plucking force behind Primus and many lesser-known
bands (Sausage, Holy Mackerel, The Fearless Flying Frog Brigade and others) turns 58 today.
Happy birthday, Les. I remember when I was your age.
Unless you were completely deaf to early '90s "alternative" rock, you
already know that Primus was one of the most unique acts of the era -- a
"power trio" (I bet Claypool hates that label!) that centered around
the bass rather than guitar. And speaking of labels, Primus often was lumped
into the "punk-funk" category along with the more popular but vastly inferior
Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Besides Claypool's crazy talent (and guitarist Larry LaLonde and drummer
Tim Alexander werent exactly slouches either) the main thing that set Primus
apart was their humor and sense of absurdity.
So on this Wacky Wednesday, I present some of the wackiest Primus tunes.
The first song that drew me to Primus was the celebration of a murderous
hillbilly called "My Name is Mud.":
On this song, Primus pays tribute to one of the finest members of the rodent kingdom, a big brown beaver:
One of my favorite Primus tunes is "Fisticuffs." Here's a live version from 2013:
Although Primus is associated with punk and funk, they've also been known to do amazing covers of country songs. Back in the '90s, they recorded a wondrous version of Jerry Reed's "Amos Moses". More recently (2003) they recorded and made a bitchen video for this Charlie Daniels classic:
One of Claypool's most recent projects is his work with son of the Walrus Sean Lennon. Here's a tune from 2016, a touching tribute to a boy and his chimp:
Happy birthday, Les! Your name is never Mud on this blog.
When I think of songs about the Vietnam war, the first one that comes to my
mind Country Joe & The Fish's
"I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag," However, for anyone who was out of diapers in 1966, the best known Vietnam song probably is "The Ballad of the Green Berets"
by Sgt. Barry Sadler (a New Mexico native, born in Carlsbad in 1940). For some weird reason, Sgt. Barry's song got tons more
commercial radio play than Country Joe's.
Encyclopedia Brittanica
says Sadler's patriotic song with the military beat and bugles "reached No. 1
on the Billboard Top 100 chart in late February [1966] and stayed there
for five weeks, going on to sell more than nine million records. The album
sold some two million copies and hit No.1 on Billboard’s best-selling albums
chart in early April."
Though it was more corny than a field in Nebraska, I believe part of the
appeal of Sadler's song was that the singer knew what he was singing about.
Unlike John Wayne, who later starred in a spectacularly bad movie called
The Green Berets (the soundtrack of which used a choral arrangement of the song), Sadler
was no poser. He was a real combat veteran, a medic with the Green Berets who was nearly lost a
leg after he stepped on a punji stick booby trap the year before he
became a recording star.
Look ma, no beret!
He released one other album in 1966 called The A-Team, then the next year he dropped the "Sgt." from his stage name and released another album, Back Home, in which he posed in civilian attire (with no beret!) and contained songs not dealing with warfare.
But "Green Berets" was such a colossal hit, all of Sadler's subsequent musical efforts paled and failed in comparison. The public was quickly turning against the war and Sadler's songs that followed seemed like faint echoes of the one song of his we know.
After his music career stiffed, Sadler turned to writing. Starting in 1977, he wrote more than 30 adventure novels, most of which were part of a series called Casca: The Eternal Mercenary. (Casca was the Roman soldier who speared Jesus on the cross. The Son of God wasn't amused, so he cursed Casca to live and fight wars until the Second Coming. (Other authors took over the series after Sadler died.)
Sadler's life became more troubled in the late '70s, as this 1989 Los Angeles Times story shows. He'd basically become a major lush and a womanizer. In 1978, while living in Nashville, Sadler shot and killed a wanna-be country singer named Lee Emerson Bellamy. The dead man was the ex-boyfriend of a woman with whom Sadler was having an affair. Bellamy allegedly was stalking and harassing the woman.
During a confrontation in his girlfriend's apartment parking lot, Sadler shot Bellamy, who'd reached for his pocket. Sadler thought he was pulling a gun, but in reality he was reaching for his car key. Sadler pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to four to five years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. However, according to the Times, "The judge later reduced the sentence to 30 days with two years’ probation. Sadler got off after 22 days on good behavior."
After all, silver wings upon his chest ...
In the early '80s, Sadler moved to Central America, where he wrote some of his Casca books. He also allegedly got involved with mercenaries, ran guns and trained the Contras for Nicaragua's civil war. (The Times article says, "The people who claim to know Sadler best say he nurtured the mercenary image only to sell books."
Almost exactly 33 years ago, on September 7, 1988, Sadler was shot in the head in Guatemala City. According to Brittanica, "Witnesses and the police said he accidentally shot himself. Others claimed he was the victim of a robbery or assassination attempt." He was brought back to the U.S., where he died in November 1989.
Even though it's hard for people my age to have avoided "The Ballad of the Green Berets," only the most die-hard Sgt. Barry fans know the rest of his musical repertoir. His follow-up was a song called "The A-Team," which, disappointingly, has nothing to do with Mr. T. (And for reasons best known to RCA Records, was not on the album of the same name.)
Here's the B-Side of "The A-Team"
Sgt. Barry loved the women. He undoubtedly was thinking of some Hotlips Houlihan -- or several -- when he wrote this song.
Here's another tear-jerker from the Sarge
Finally here's one of Sgt. Barry's non-military tunes
Next only to The Banana Splits and possibly GWAR, The Village People are America's most beloved costume band. As Hillary Clinton would say, it takes The Village People to raise a child.
(No, I never get tired of that joke.)
Although this flamboyant disco ensemble hasn't had any hit songs since their
late-'70s glory daze, their biggest hit, 1978's "YMCA" is known to practically everyone. Hell, they even play it at Trump rallies. To a lesser extent, VP songs like "Macho Man," "In the Navy" and "San Francisco" still ring a few bells in the national consciousness.
But beyond those songs, practically all of The Village Peoples' joyous repertoire has sunk beneath our wisdom like a stone. But Hell's bells, the group produced five studio between 1977 and 1980, and a few more after that. So let's dive into the lesser-known material of this disco powerhouse, shall we?
Here the boys expressing their support for law-enforcement with a song called
"Hot Cop."
On this one, the Villagers praise Fire Island. According to the website
FireIsland.com, "A
weekend on Fire Island gets you back to nature. With all the biking, hiking,
swimming, surfing, beach volleyball, kayaking, and tennis, you can finally
break free of that monotonous gym routine." And according to the
testimony of one happy visitor, it's the "Best place on earth! Grew up in Ocean Bay Park. Still
remember crawling around in diapers ..."
They even shared a Bible story:
I've always liked this little gem, "My Roommate":
At the end of the Me Decade, the group asked an important question: Are you "Ready for the '80s"? Sadly, I don't think The Village People were.
It never got much radio play, but here is a latter-day Village People tune circa 1985, a song about a favorite
hobby of millions, "Sex Over the Phone" (There's a new lead singer here: Ray Stephens, not to be confused with this guy):
It's been nearly six years since I blogged about the twisted world of
song-poems on a Wacky Wednesday.
Well, friend, that's too long!
Today I'm going to feature some examples of actual musicians, some of whom you
might have even heard of, who have covered some classic song poems.
Their love is obvious.
But first, I know many of you who somehow missed
my post in 2015 might be scratching your head, or other parts of your body wondering
"What in tarnation is a `song-poem' ?"
Quoting again from the brilliant, if crazed, now out of print compilation
called I'm Just the Other Woman,which I reviewed in
The New Mexican back in 2001.
You've seen those ads in the back of supermarket tabloids, detective
mags, movie rags and girlie books: “Song Poems Wanted. Your poems turned
into songs by professional musicians. Send immediately for FREE evaluation
...
Of course, its a scam. It's been going on for years — a century by some
reports.
You send in your poem and the company sends you back a glowing
evaluation. Your song has true hit potential. Now all you need to do is
send in $100 (or whatever the going rate is these days) and your poem will
be put to music and recorded in an actual recording studio by some of the
nations top session musicians.
... Theres always the implication that this recording will be sent around
to the top A&R people at major record companies. And of course you'll
get a few copies of the record to show your friends; in fact some
song-poem companies actually have put out compilations.
The liner notes also point out that "this sleazy little corner of the music
industry has attracted a subculture of fans who collect and groove on the
strangest and most unintentionally funny song-poems they can unearth."
Here I'll spotlight the work on some members of that subculture who have
performed song-poems. And each of those tunes will be followed by the
original.
Let's start with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's version of "Beat of the
Traps," which appeared on their outtakes compilation Mo' Width.
Somehow Spencer's version sprang from this tune sung -- or shouted -- by the Pavarotti of the Song-Poem, Rodd Keith. The Allmusic review of Spencer's album said the Blues Explosion's take is "never as weird as the original, hard as it tries. "
Iconic iconoclast R. Stevie Moore included John Trubee's "A Blind Man's Penis" (originally titled "Peace and Love") as part of a medley with a couple of other classic American songs.
Trubee, who for decades has created wild music, usually under the name "John Trubee & The Ugly Janitors of America" wrote the lyrics in the '70s as a young man (was a teenager at the time) and paid some fee for a song-poem company to write the melody and record it. The country-fried singer is Ramsey Kearney, a monster of song poem vocals. Here's the original that made us all fall in love:
Texas singer Gretchen Phillips made a few changes to one of the greatest song poems in human history. Note, despite the title listed for this video, the correct title is "Gretchen Phillips Says Yes."
And here's the original disco version, about an actual president, sung by the amazing Gene Marshall:
Today is the birthday of a famous accordion player named
Yankovic.
No, I'm not talking about Weird Al. I'm talking about "America's Polka King,"
Frankie Yankovic, who was born on this day in 1915 in Davis, West Virginia,
where his parents worked in a lumber camp.
The Yankovic family moved to Cleveland when Frankie was but a small lad. There
he became immersed in Slovenian-style polka. According to his obituary in the
Chicago Tribune:
After learning to play button accordion from one of the Slovenian
boarders in his parents' Cleveland home, Mr. Yankovic got a squeezebox of
his own as a teenager and made a name for himself in the region by his
early 20s.
In 1943, he left to fight in World War II, where he served in the 1st
Infantry Division at the Battle of the Bulge. The battle proved nearly
fatal for Mr. Yankovic and his musical career when he emerged with
frost-bitten hands and feet.
"It was a dreadful experience," he said in a 1995 interview. "My limbs
were frozen. In Oxford, England, the doctors said they were going to have
to amputate my hands and legs. I told them, `No way. I'd rather die.' What
good would I be, an accordionist, with no fingers?
"But you know what happened? The gangrene started going away; it started
clearing up. Then the doctors told me there was an accordion in the
hospital that I could try practicing on, if I wanted to. So that became my
therapy."
Frankie died in 1998 at the age of 83
Here is "Just Because," Frankie's first national hit. Elvis Presley recorded
this song during his Sun Records period. But Frankie first released it in
1948. (Actually it goes back to the late 1920s when a band called Nelstone's Hawaiians recorded it.)
Here's one called "Tick Tock Polka":
Frankie sings "Julida Polka":
And no, Frankie was not related to Weird Al -- though the parodist has often
joked that his parents bought him an accordion as a child because "there
should be at least one more accordion-playing Yankovic in the world." The two
famous Yankovics combined forces in 1986:
I'm not sure what this video is, but the song is a polka classic by Frankie
Yankovic
Today would have been the 111th birthday of William Hanna, who, with partner
Joseph Barbera, was part of an animation team that produced some of the most
memorable cartoon characters of my childhood. And he was born in what was then
New Mexico Territory in the town of Melrose.
Hanna died in 2001 at the age of 90 (while Barbera died in 2006 at the age of
95.) How did they live so long? Maybe a steady diet of pic-a-nic baskets, Boo
Boo!
It's true, as was the case of a lot of cartoons of their era, that the
Hanna-Barbera cartoons suffered from poor quality, especially compared with
the Disney, Warner Brothers and Fleischer cartoons of preceding decades.
But as I said above, so many of the characters Hanna and Barbera created are
immortal. And many of their theme songs still are stuck in my skull.
Here are a few of those, starting with ol' Huck:
Here's one greater than the average theme song
Ya like westerns?
Here's a song my cat, Little Darrell Terrell loves the best, though he insists that he's the top cat around here:
And finally, this one probably is the best known Hanna-Barbera theme. I can't help myself but I'm using the B-52s' version, which was used in that horrible live-action Flintstones movie from the '90s. They were a band that never was afraid of being cartoonish:
Have a Yabba Dabba Doo birthday in the Great Beyond, Mr. Hanna!
On this day, June 30, in 1953, the very first Chevrolet Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan. This new American sports car was a major success. Though some generations of the 'Vette have been badged "Sting Ray" or "Stingray," Corvettes are still being made today -- which means the Corvette is a few months older than me!
The new car quickly won a place in pop culture. It was the car in which Martin Milner and George Maharis drove around the country in the tv show Route 66 in the early 1960s. (Chevrolet, of course, was a sponsor.)
And the Corvette inspired many songs in American music. Let's hear some, shall we?
The earliest song about Corvettes I've come across was from 1958, "Corvette"
by The Corvettes (not to be confused with the all-girl pop-punk band, Nikki
& The Corvettes):
In 1963 Chevrolet decided to call the second generation of Corvettes the
"Sting Ray." The Beach Boys celebrated this the same year with "Shut Down,"
which was about a drag race between "my fuel injected Stingray" and a
"Superstock Dodge."
I'm pretty sure that Chevrolet would have been less enthusiastic about this
tragic 1964 teenage death song by Beach Boys pals Jan & Dean about about another teenage drag race involving a
Sting Ray. (Two years later, Jan Berry would crash his Sting Ray into a parked car on Whittier Boulevard not far from the actual Dead Man's Curve in Los Angeles. He lived, but suffered severe head injuries.)
In the 1980s, George Jones sang the praises of the Corvette -- or was it a long-lost girlfriend?) with "The One I Loved Back Then (The Corvette Song)"
But the best-known song about a Corvette has to be that one by Prince:
Yes, I know that the Beat Movement of the 1950s and early '60s produced lots
of important art, literature, poetry and music, from Ginsberg to Kerouac to
Charlie Parker. True American giants, all.
But I'm also enamored by the weird pseudo "culture" of phony beatniks, the
dumb-ass beat stereotypes personified by Maynard G. Krebs, portrayed by Bob
Denver on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. While Maynard became the face
of the Beats to mainstream America (i.e. The Squares), there also was a spate
of "beatnik" novelty songs that parodied the slang, the bongos, the espresso
and the non-conformity of the beatniks.
So enough squak, Dad, let's dig some crazy music!
You might have never heard this 1959 single, but punk-rock pioneer Richard Hell did and used it to create a punk-rock classic. "The Beat Generation" is by Bob McFadden and Dor. "Dor," (which is
"Rod" spelled backwards) actually was poet Rod McKuen in his pre-Listen to the Warm
days.
Here's a lady named Barbara Evans who has a "Beatnik Daddy":
Sex bomb Mamie Van Doren did this put-down song in 1959. She also starred in a
1959 movie of the same name, which also had appearances by Louis Armstrong and
Vampira!).
Even Perry Como, who was as far from hip as humanly possible, got in on the phony beatnik action:
In 1960, a band called The Untouchables told the musical tale of Benny the
Beatnik:
Another legendary pseudo beatnik was Bill, as immortalized in 1962 by Richard
Pine
It's a little early for Christmas, but I'd slide down the chimney for Patsy
Raye:
Edd Byrnes' character "Kookie" from the tv series 77 Sunset Strip wasn't
really a beatnik. But after 1959's "Kooky's Mad Pad," I bet Bob Denver and the
Dobie Gillis braintrust wishes they would have cashed in with some
Mayard G. Krebs records:
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:
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:
In Monroeville, Alabama on this day in 1926 Nelle Harper Lee was born. She grew up to become one of the best known and most respected novelists of the 20th Century, mainly due to some book about mockingbirds.
So in honor of Ms. Lee, who died in 2016, here's a musical mocking bird salute!
First here's a well-known tune by Inez & Charlie Foxx, a brother and sister team from North Carolina, who released this in 1963, three years after Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird.
Fans of The Three Stooges or Heckle & Jeckle should recognize this next one. "Listen to the Mockingbird, composed in 1855 with lyrics by Septimus Winner (under the pseudonym "Alice Hawthorne") and music by Richard Milburn, was a pop smash during the American Civil War.
Zooming ahead to the late 1980s, the duo House of Freaks did this song on their wonderful album Tantilla.
Country singer Pam Tillis twisted the title of Lee's famous book in 1995 for this sweet song of barroom violence:
Finally, here's a version of the Inez & Charlie hit performed in 1968 by Dusty Springfield and Jimi Hendrix (I'm not kidding!) on British TV.
It's been more than a year since I dedicated a Wacky Wednesday to the Golden Throats.
Well, friend, that's too long!
What's a "Golden Throat?" you might ask. As I've said before:
Back in the '80s and '90s, when Rhino Records was actually a cool label,
they released a series of albums called Golden Throats. These nutball
compilations featured movie and TV stars, sports heroes and every stripe
of cheesy celebrity singing ham-fisted versions of songs they had no
business singing. Pop tunes, rock 'n' roll hits, country song, whatever.
Nothing was sacred and nothing was safe from the Golden Throats.
Because of the exposure from the Rhino series, some of these
unintentionally hilarious songsters became notorious and ironically hip.
Think William Shatner -- the Elvis of the Golden Throats! -- and his
over-the-top renditions of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Mr.
Tambourine Man."
So, let's start today with Mamie Van Doren dissing the beatniks, as only Mamie could:
Another singing blonde bombshell of the mid 20th Century was Jayne
Mansfield. Although her vocal talent wasn't her best-known attribute, it
might not be fair to label her as a "Golden Throat." She was a classically
trained violinist and pianist and she actually could sing.
Jack Nicholson sings "La Vie En Rose" in the 2003 movie Something's Gotta
Give."
Super model -- but not so super singer -- Naomi Campbell meets T Rex
Finally, here are William Frawley and Vivian Vance -- who portrayed the beloved Fred &
Ethel Mertz in I Love Lucy -- as OG Golden Throats in 1953. (Sorry, the person who posted this doesn't allow embeds. You have to click on "Watch on YouTube" in lower right corner.)
Happy National Tater Day! Here's a holiday that deserves more attention --
as well as more butter and sour cream.
National Tater Day has been celebrated since before the civil war according to
holidayscalendar.com.
This holiday was first celebrated as simple Tater Day in Benton, Kentucky
in 1843. It was originally a celebration of the spring season, and
participants would come together to trade sweet potato “slips.” Potato
slips at the time are what farmers called the slips that were used to grow
potatoes. Eventually, this holiday morphed into one of the oldest
continuous trade days in the entire U.S. On this day, participants would
buy and sell livestock, tobacco, livestock, and yes, even potato slips.
Over the years, this holiday also featured parades, floats, clowns,
marching bands, and even vintage cars.
Oh to be a clown in a Tater Day parade!
Important note: Don't get National Tater Day confused with National Potato Day, Aug. 19. Play it safe. Celebrate both!
But to honor this noble tradition on this music blog, let's celebrate
National Tater Day in song. Here's Dede Sharp with a tuberous tune from my
youth. (It also can be played on National Gravy Day, if there is one.)
Around the same time in the early 60s, Joey Dee & The Starliters shared their recipe for "Hot Pastrami and Mashed Potatoes."
Here's Fats Waller with "All That Meat and No Potatoes." This culinary
crime had Fats singing, "I'm steamin'. I'm really screamin'. ..."
Devo loved their taters.
Tater Day in Kentucky originally was in honor of the sweet potato, which
Kevin "Shinyribs" Russell calls "my favorite root vegetable."
The late New Mexico state Senator John Pinto used to sing a Navajo Potato
song on the Senate floor at least once a year.
And I've been know to sing my own potato song
So Happy National Tater Day. Hope your party will never be a dud!
