WACKY WEDNESDAY: The Secret History of White Rap

I'm not talking Vanilla Ice here ...

Decades before before The Sugar Hill Gang -- years before The Last Poets or Gil Scott Heron even -- courageous, (or at least shameless) Caucasians created their own forms of rap music that swept the nation.

Or at least made for some pretty weird novelty records.

The late, lamented Spy Magazine released a hilarious compilation called White Men Can't Wrap, which showcased many of the classics of the genre, some of which are included below.

The collection included liner notes by none other than Irwin Chusid, perhaps the nation's greatest expert on "outsider" music, and a major fan of all sorts of strange and wonderful songs.
Chusid sayeth:

White rap is a centuries-old tradition; the original white rappers were square-dance callers improvising rhymes for Saturday-night barn parties in America's rural backwaters. Like today's rappers, they were seen as debauchers, imperiling the morals of the young. The fiddle was "the instrument of the devil"; church leaders banned it. The callers' freestyle rhymes teased with erotic innuendos ("Duck for the oyster/Dig for the clam/Knock a hole in the old tin can").

The stuff they taught you in the grade-school gymnasium, that cornball mountain music with the do-si-dos - it was all about sex and forbidden behavior! It was the roots of today's white rap culture. Herewith, a tribute." (Thanks to the ever-excellent Music for Maniacs blog for transcribing that for their post about White Men Can't Wrap a few years ago.)

Besides its roots in square-dance calling as Chusid notes, another major manifestation of white rap was "talking blues," Folksingers like woody Guthrie and the young Bob Dylan loved the style and included several talking blues tunes in their repertoires.

But the style goes back at least to the mid-20s. South Carolina entertainer Chris Bouchillon recorded a song called "Talking Blues' in 1926. His song "Born in Hard Luck" is even better.


Hank Williams played his own style of talking blues also, in is guise as Luke the Drifter.



But hillbilly singers were not the only purveyors of white rap. In the late '50s comedian Lenny Bruce made this beatnik-jazz contribution.



By the 1960s, white rap was in full blossom. There were big radio hits like "Big Bad John" by Jimmy Dean, "Old Rivers by Walter Brennan," "Ringo by Lorne Green and "Gallant Men," a patriotic march by Everett McKinley Dirksen, whose day job at the time was minority leader of the U.S. Senate. (I posted a YouTube of that on a previous Wacky Wednesday.)

But the greatest white rapper of them all in the 1960s was not an actor or senator. He was Napoleon XIV (real name: Jerry Samuels)  who recorded this sensitive take on behavioral-health issues called "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" This track actually was a crude form of hip hop, just a guy reciting lyrics over a beat and an ominous siren. Why has Napoleon XIV not been sampled more?



Finally, I know that technically he doesn't qualify for this category, but for his 1967 song "Don't Blame the Children," I believe that Sammy Davis, Jr. should be considered at least an honorary  white rapper.

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Further Adventures in White Rap

Yo, homebodies!

A couple of years ago on a quiet Wacky Wednesday I posted an introduction into the world of White Rap. You can find that masterpiece HERE.

There I quoted Irwin Chusid from his liner notes for the classic 1994 Spy Magazine compilation White Men Can't Wrap.

White rap is a centuries-old tradition; the original white rappers were square-dance callers improvising rhymes for Saturday-night barn parties in America's rural backwaters. Like today's rappers, they were seen as debauchers, imperiling the morals of the young. The fiddle was "the instrument of the devil"; church leaders banned it. The callers' freestyle rhymes teased with erotic innuendos ("Duck for the oyster/Dig for the clam/Knock a hole in the old tin can").  ... it was all about sex and forbidden behavior! It was the roots of today's white rap culture."


Let's start off with the works of three classic rockers who, in the 1980s, proved they were down with the hippity hop.

First there's Rappin' Randy.



Lou Reed declared himself "The Original Wrapper."



And there's no denying that when Brian Wilson raps, he's still a genius. A very stable genius. Paging Dr. Landy!



Just for the heck of it, here's one of the classic old hillbilly "white rap" tunes like Chusid talked about. This song by Seven Foot Dilly & His Dill Pickles is from a cool compilation called The Roots of Rap.



But there is not, nor will there ever be a white rapper greater than the one and only Devastatin' Dave (the Turntable Slave). Here he is with a positive message for the youth.

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: A GOOD THUMPIN'

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 14, 2007

I was prepared to be disappointed by The White Stripes’ new album, Icky Thump.

It’s not just because Jack White somehow turned into a movie-star-dating, model-marrying rock star. It was the music. After four exciting, enchanting, and exuberant albums, the band’s 2005 effort, Get Behind Me Satan, was a frustrating mess that never quite jelled. And White’s subsequent side project, The Raconteurs, was just plain bland.

Oh well, I figured, maybe it was time for The White Stripes to fade away. Four good-to-great albums isn’t a bad run for a band, especially for a duo — a duo! — performing high-charged, Zepped-out covers of old Son House and Robert Johnson tunes. And besides, Jack White will always have that album he produced for Loretta Lynn and those cool hillbilly songs on the Cold Mountain soundtrack. You can’t take those away from him.

So I was just hoping that the new album wouldn’t do any permanent damage to The White Stripes’ memory.

Guess what? As Hazel, would say, Icky Thump is a doozy. Jack and his ex-wife, Meg, have returned to their basic guitar/drum attack. In fact, some songs, like the nasty slide-guitar-driven “Catch Hell Blues,” seem to be a conscious return to the Stripes’ early sound. However, many songs are fortified by touches of instrumental weirdness that show the Whites looking forward.

Jack sounds truly happy to be here, playing his guitar like a maniac and warbling like the reincarnation of Marc Bolan hopped up on trucker crank. Meg is playing drums less like Moe Tucker and more like the Mighty Thor.

On the first song, the title track, I was almost afraid the Stripes were going political by interjecting themselves in the immigration debate. In the middle of lyrics about a “redheaded señorita” in Mexico comes a provocative verse: “White Americans, what?/Nothing better to do?/Why don’t you kick yourself out/You’re an immigrant too.”

Not that I mind political songs, but that wouldn’t seem to be a strength of the Stripes. This verse seems to be an anomaly on this album. People are going to remember the song for the crazy balloon-rubbing guitar noises and the explosive drums. There don’t seem to be other overt political themes unless “St. Andrew (This Battle Is in the Air)” is an oblique reference to Iraq.

I’m having fun spotting subtle salutes to older songs. The hook on “300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues” might remind you of the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider,” while the acoustic guitar chords on “Effect & Cause” is right out of The Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women.”

Did I say something about instrumental weirdness? “Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn” features some Cold Mountain mandolin and droning bagpipes (not to mention Meg’s drums, which make a subliminal suggestion that a Scottish army is about to come down from the hills and pillage the town). That’s immediately followed by “St. Andrew (This Battle Is in the Air),” another bagpipe-and-drum song with Meg reciting some strange prayer (“This battle is in the air/I’m looking upwards/St. Andrew, don’t forsake me”) and White blasting bizarre, electronically altered guitar licks straight out of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

But even this pair of tunes isn’t as delightfully strange as “Conquest,” a twisted cover of an old Patti Page song. Jack and Meg, aided by trumpeter Regulo Aldama, turn the song into an electric bullfight. White pours himself into the melodramatic lyrics, “The hunted became the huntress, the hunter became the prey” (making the final “became” into a five- or six-syllable word). But I think the Frank Zappa-like Munchkins-in-the-dungeon background vocals are my favorite part of the song.

At this writing my favorite song on Icky Thump is “Rag and Bone,” a partly sung but mostly spoken tune in which we find Jack and Meg scavenging for old junk — “a broken trumpet or a telephone ... turntables and gramophones.” It’s not clear if they’re supposed to be cruising yard sales or just going through trash outside peoples’ houses. Whatever the case, a listener wants to be with them. During the song Jack goes into a rap (with Meg responding, “Uh huh,” in agreement) that could almost be interpreted as the band’s philosophy of music as well: “It’s just things that you don’t want, I can use ’em. Meg can use ’em. We’ll do something with ’em. We’ll make something out of ’em. We’ll make some money out of ’em at least.”

I hope they make lots of money and stick around for a long time.

Also recommended:



*Listen My Friends: The Best of Moby Grape. MG is a San Francisco Summer of Love band whose name is spoken with reverence in rock criticdom — or at least without the condescending sneer reserved for other bands of the hippie era. And in truth, the Grape deserves major respect. The group’s first, self-titled album (pictured here) was nothing short of a masterpiece, and the songs “Omaha” and “Hey Grandma” from that album are timeless rockers that still thrill those with ears to hear, while “8:05” is a sweet heartbreaker that ranks with the finest of country rock.

Unfortunately, after that wild creative burst things started falling apart for MG. Part of that was due to singer/guitarist Skip Spence’s descent into schizophrenia.

The follow-up Wow was sprawling and self-consciously artsy but had some great moments. Their subsequent work was almost completely forgettable.

This collection includes six impeccable songs from the first album (including those named above) and some of the better tunes from Wow, including the brilliant “Murder in My Heart for the Judge” and “Can’t Be So Bad,” a rampaging blues number that slows down at the end of every verse for some inexplicable days-of-old-when-knights-were-bold trumpets.

Most of the remaining songs are pretty mediocre except “Sweet Ride (Never Again),” which shows traces of the first album’s spark, and Spence’s “Seeing,” which starts slow and builds into an intense psychedelic workout.

I just wish that Sony/BMG would have instead rereleased Moby Grape and Wow, now available only in overpriced versions on the obscure San Francisco Sound label.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Songs for the Truck Stop

An overflow crowd at a public meeting in Santa Fe showed up to protest a proposed Flying J truck stop off I-25 south of the city.

According to a news story by my Santa Fe New Mexican colleague Justin Horwath, residents of the nearby Rancho Viejo neighborhood claimed the truck stop would bring unwanted traffic, crime and pollution. One guy even warned of the danger of light pollution coming from a 24 truck stop.

In other words, a fairly typical Santa Fe NIMBY battle. I must have covered a million of 'em back when I had the City Hall beat.

But for a lover of vintage country music, there just seems something un-American about attacking a truck stop,

As any serious country music fan knows, a truck stop is a hallowed place, an oasis on the highway, where a pretty waitress will pour you another cup of coffee (for it is the best in the land!)

A truck stop is where the brave men and women who bring the food to our supermarkets, and other goods to our stores can take a shower, grab a burger and a piece of pie and share a little face-to-face conversation with fellow humans to relieve the tedium that white-line brings.

Surely that outweighs a little light pollution.

Whenever someone protests a truck stop, somewhere out on the Lost Highway, the ghost of Big Joe sheds a quiet tear as he drives his Phantom 309 through the shadows.

O.K., I'll stop. Enjoy some classic American truck driver songs. Most of these have been banging around in my head since I read Justin's story,

I first heard "Truck Drivin' Man" done by Buck Owens. But it was written and first recorded back in 1954 by an Alabama-born singer named Terry Fell.

UPDATE 7-8-17: Wow! Just a couple of weeks after I posted this, someone yanked the Terry Fell version off of YouTube. So I guess we'll just have to settle for the Buck Owens cover.



Dave Dudley --  born David Darwin Pedruska in Spencer, Wisc. -- is best known for his truck-driver songs in the 1960s. His best-known song is this hit from 1963.



Red Simpson was a pioneer of the Bakersfield Sound as well as an important purveyor of truck driving songs. "Roll, Truck Roll" is my favorite Simpson tune.



Kitty Wells, one of the giants of 1950s country music, sang a sweet testimonial to truck stop waitresses



Dick Curless, a New Englander who wrote many truck driving songs in the 1960s, did this song about "truck stops with swingin' chicks" in this tune called "Chick Inspector."//



Here's another Red, Woodrow Wilson "Red" Sovine, who made it big with truck driver tunes. He's responsible for the spooky "Big Joe & The Phantom 309." This maudlin little weeper, also a "talking" song -- or maybe you can call it "white rap" -- was even a bigger hit for Sovine. It's about a guy who drives a truck called the "Giddy Up Go."



But this one is my favorite truck driving song of all time. I prefer the version by New Mexico's own Last Mile Ramblers, who performed and recorded it back in the '70s. But a Texan named Doye O'Dell was the first to record "Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves" back in 1952. The song features a hotshot steel guitarist named Speedy West.



You can bet your bottom dollar that I'm going to play a big load of truck driver songs on The Santa Fe Opry Friday night on KSFR.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: A GHOST IN THE ALLEY

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
April 2, 2010

The singer didn’t really sing. He spoke, sometimes almost shouted, the lyrics over a funky bass line and a funky flute.

“You will not be able to stay home, brother/You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out/You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and/Skip out for beer during commercials/Because the revolution will not be televised.”

It was the dawn of the ’70s, and it was like nothing I’d ever heard before. The Black Panthers hijacking a beatnik poetry reading? H. Rap Brown fronting a soul revue? “The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people. ... The revolution will not be televised.”

After years in the shadows — 16 years since his previous studio album, Spirits, which was his first record in 12 years — Gil Scott-Heron is back with more harrowing songs on a new album called I’m New Here.

A decade after “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,” Scott-Heron would be hailed as one of the major harbingers of hip-hop. With “Televised” and songs like “Whitey on the Moon” (“A rat just bit my sister Nell, with whitey on the moon”), Scott-Heron inspired a generation of politically conscious rappers (think Public Enemy, Kool Moe Dee, and KRS-One).

He even had a string of hits that penetrated the R & B charts in the mid- to late-’70s. Some of these, like “Johannesburg,” “Winter in America,” and “Angel Dust,” could sometimes be heard on rock radio, which back then was basically as segregated as a Mississippi country club.

But despite his successes, Scott-Heron didn’t enjoy a life of ease. He spent much of the last couple of decades struggling with drug addiction and the past 10 years or so behind prison walls for drug charges.

I’m New Here, produced by Richard Russell, is harrowing. It’s mostly low-key and somber and almost like an encounter in a dark alley with a ghost. The album kicks off with an autobiographical spoken-word piece, “On Coming From a Broken Home.” It’s a touching tribute to his grandmother, who raised him in Tennessee.

“Lilly Scott was absolutely not your room-service, typecast black grandmother ... and I loved her from the absolute marrow of my bone,” Scott-Heron says over a musical backdrop that sounds like a distant interplanetary transmission of a blaxploitation movie soundtrack. “Women raised me, and I was full-grown before I knew I came from a broken home.”

But the sweet memory ends with the death of Lilly Scott — “and I was scared and hurt and shocked.” The music gets louder, the beat turns harsher, and suddenly Scott-Heron finds himself in an electronic mutation of one of Robert Johnson’s most frightening blues, “Me and the Devil.”

He actually bowdlerizes one of Johnson’s lines. Unlike the venerated bluesman, Scott-Heron doesn’t “beat my woman until I’m satisfied.” He just “sees” his woman until he’s satisfied. I bet the lessons of Lilly Scott had something to do with that little change. But the song is no less intense It’s been made, along with “Your Soul and Mine,” into a cool black-and-white video that might be described as hip-hop noir. You can find it

That’s not the only classic tune Scott-Heron transforms on this album. He takes on Bobby “Blue” Bland’s masterpiece, “I’ll Take Care of You.” Russell provides the otherworldly musical accompaniment featuring a string section on top of the electronica. And Scott-Heron’s voice, which has grown raspier through the years, sounds more like his heyday voice on this song. The old warble, almost suggesting a yodel, is back.

The title song is written by indie singer-songwriter Bill Callahan, who performs under the name Smog. Scott-Heron recites the verses and sings the choruses as a pensive acoustic guitar plays in the background.

One of the strongest selections on I’m New Here is “New York Is Killing Me.” In this original song, Scott-Heron sings a blues melody over persistent hand claps and a clacking rhythm, punctuated by bass drum. At a couple of points, the Harlem Gospel Choir comes in but disappears like a dream figment. “They got eight million people, and I didn’t have a single friend,” he sings.

The album ends with a reprise of “On Coming From a Broken Home,” this time with Scott-Heron expressing sympathy for the families of soldiers who have been killed in battle, as well as those of police, firefighters, construction workers, pilots, and truckers “who have lost their lives but not what their lives stood for.”

I’m New Here is less than 30 minutes long. But it’s one intense half hour.

BLOG BONUS:

Here's that video I mentioned above:

WACKY WEDNESDAY: The Musical Legacy of Randy "Macho Man" Savage

Interesting fact: I used to have this purple T-shirt. I bought it when I saw the

Macho Man wrestle at Tingley Coliseum in Albuquerque circa early '90s.

When some people think of music and "Macho Man," they might be thinking of an old Village People song.

But people who think that are wrong. Instead, they should immediately think of the music of the late great Randy Mario Poffo, better known as Randy "Macho Man" Savage, whose contributions to popular music are not quite as well known as his contributions to professional wrestling.

Or Slim Jims.

But those of us who truly cherish the memory of the Macho Man also appreciate his contributions to music, specifically hip hop. He was a major force in White Rap, as evidenced in songs like this (which is aimed at longtime rival Hulk Hogan)

Here's another:

Here's a tribute, by one Mike Diva, to the wrestling, the music, the Slim Jims of Randy, who died in 2011.

But, surprisingly, Randy had his detractors. One was a radio shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge, who spent many years as Hulk Hogan's leading sycophant, who even let the Hulkster have sex with his wife. 

But that stupid tune does nothing to diminish the glory that was Randy Savage, who was so mighty, British composer honored him with this piece in 1901 -- More than 50 years before Savage was born. And Savage was humbled enough to use it for his entrance music.

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Got Plenty of Lemon, Got Plenty of Wine

Well, it's a good good wine,
 It really make you feel so fine

Today I'm going to salute, and hopefully turn a few people on to one of my favorite lesser-known, under-rated and unsung (actually, it was sung) Frank Zappa songs of all time:

"WPLJ" -- (That's White Port and Lemon Juice for all you squares) -- which was the opening track on The Mother of Invention's 1970 album Burnt Weenie Sandwich.

I was a student at Santa Fe High School when Burnt Weenie first came out and WPLJ immediately became part of the jukebox of my mind the first time I heard it.

It's one of Zappa's over-the-top doo-wop extravaganzas. I almost wonder whether this was an outtake from Cruising with Ruben & The Jets, released just a couple of years before. Burnt Weenie Sandwich ends with another Rubenesque number called "Valerie" (originally recorded by Jackie & The Starlites.)

Let's take a listen, shall we:



Like I say, I loved "WPLJ," from the start. The sheer absurdity of going on and on in praising this low-rent drink always made me laugh. But what really made the tune was the finish, that  crazy Spanish rap by Mother Roy Estrada at the end of the song:

  “The modern-day pachuco refuses to die.”
Ruben Sano:

Por qué no consigues tu . . . tu carnal que nos compre some wine ese, ándale, pinche bato, puto, hombre, no te hagas nalga, hombre . . . (chale!) no seas tan denso, hombre (chale!), ándale, dile, porque no merecer, ándale, pinche vino, más sua . . . más suave es, más . . . más lindo que la chingada, hombre, ándale, pinche bato, hombre, quiere tu carnal, hombre, tu carnal ese, tú, tú sabes, tú sabes esto de la movida, tú sabes la movida, ese, tú sabes cómo es, tú sabes, pinche vino, puta, ándale, pinche bato, cabrón, ándale ... (Transcription from  Zappa Wiki Jawaka) 

To me it sounded like Santa Fe in 1970! I had tons of friends who talked just like that.

By the way, I ran this through Google Translate and came up with the English version:

Why not get your. . . your carnal buy us some wine that, go ahead, click bato, fucking, man, do not get your butt, man. . . (chale!) Do not be so dense, man (chale!), go ahead, tell, because they deserve, go ahead, click wine, more sua. . . softer, more. . . cuter than a bitch, man, go ahead, click bato man wants your carnal man your carnal that, you, you know, you know this from the move, the move you know, that, you know how it is, you you know, fucking wine, whore, go ahead, click bato, bastard, go ahead

I'm sure that's 100 percent correct.

But "WPLJ" was not a Zappa original. He was covering an obscure Salinas, California doo-wop group called The 4 Deuces, who recorded as a B-side in 1956. The song was used in an ad for for Italian Swiss Colony, a company that produced white port.

Here's how that sounded:



But notice, the Deuces don't include the magical Spanish spoken-word performance at the end. I always wondered what inspired Zappa to do that.

Then in 2002, Arhoolie Records released a bitchen compilation called Pachuco Boogie full of Mexican-American hipster jazz between 1948 and 1950, mainly in Los Angeles. A big chunk of the selections, including the title song were by one  Edmundo Martínez Tostado, an El Paso native better known by his stage name: Don Tosti.

Tosti and his group also recorded under the names Don Ramone Sr. y su Orquesta and Cuarteto de Ramon Martinez.

Whatever he called his band, these two songs make me thirsty for some white port and lemon juice and hungry for a burnt weenie sandwich.

I'd say mystery solved.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Walter Brennan's Musical Legacy

Dag nabbit, it's Walter Brennan's birthday! He was born 125 years ago today in Lynn, Mass,

Happy birthday, Walter!

He was one of the country's best -known character actors starting back in the 1930s, winning his first Oscar for his role as Swedish lumberjack Swan Bostrom in a film called Come and Get It. 

He's become best-known for being the crusty sidekick of cowboy heroes like Gary Cooper (The Westerner and others) and  John Wayne (Rio Bravo and others). And I first knew him as Grandpappy Amos in a TV sitcom, The Real McCoys, which ran from 1957 to 1963.

But he also was a recording artist, a pioneer of white rap (or maybe, in Brennan's case, we should call it "clip-clop" music

Here are some of his tunes:



Mel Tillis wrote it, Kenny Rogers made it a hit. But Walter nailed it:



You have to have known that Walter would have at least one maudlin mama song


And this one actually was a huge hit in 1962:

Terrell's Tuneup: 2003 Music in Review

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican, Jan. 2, 2004

Music lovers probably will remember 2003 as the year the big record companies sued hundreds of music fans, including at least one 12-year-old scofflaw who illegally downloaded "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands."

Or the year the FCC decided by a party-line vote that Clear Channel just isn't big enough, and the media giant as well as others, should be allowed to own even more radio stations -- and maybe some newspapers as well.

Or the year The Dixie Chicks became true "alternative country" by not only refusing to fall in line with the official flag-waving Nashville line, but to actually utter discouraging words about a certain fellow Texan.

But somewhere amongst the growing insanity of the music biz there was some fine music in 2003. Sometimes you have to look for it -- in columns like this, on left-of-the-dial radio stations, in corners of the internet unaffiliated with major corporations. Sometimes, to paraphrase an old Tom Waits song, the pursuit is as fun as the arrest.

1) The Electric Version by The New Pornographers. Even though it's winter now, this second album of upbeat, snappy, melodious pop rock from a wild band of Western Canadians remains perfect music for summer night cruising in your mind. What a wonderful world it would be if The Electric Version were blasting from every convertible on the road. True, there's probably not enough of Neko Case, who sings background on most tracks. Still, it's hard not to smile and think of the good things in life while listening to The Electric Version. (Matador Records)

2) Blackberry Belle by The Twilight Singers. As far as 2003 records go, former Afghan Whig Greg Dulli's effort is the dark sinister twin of The Electric Version. On some days, and in some moods, I even prefer it. Dulli draws from the rage of punk rock and the carnal power of soul. It's raw, tumultuous, emotional, sometimes hypnotic, and a little bit evil. "Black out the windows, it's party time." (Birdman)

3) Youth & Young Manhood by Kings of Leon. Clan Followill has the drawls and the mustaches and the hair to conjure Skynyrd comparisons. But Caleb Followill's blooze-rock growls navigate sparse, bouncy, hook-laden guitar rock that sounds a lot like their label mates, The Strokes. Their transgenerational roots consciousness helped make their debut album outshine The Strokes' disappointing sophomore album this year. (RCA)

4) Speaker Boxx/The Love Below by Outkast. Sometimes truly great popular music actually becomes popular. The two Atlanta guys who make up Outkast are intelligent. They're funny. They're funky. And most important, unlike so many thousands of third-rate gangsta rap goons, they're musical. As far as I'm concerned, Outkast is the true heir of George Clinton and Prince. (Arista)

5) Elephant by The White Stripes. Like the huge lumbering beast for which this album is named, you can imagine this music tromping through the jungle ripping tall trees from the ground. And you can imagine it using its trunk to gently take peanuts from the hand of a child. Luckily for singer/guitarist Jack White, Elephant made enough money for him to afford a good lawyer to fight the aggravated assault charges he now faces for allegedly pounding the snot out of another singer in a Detroit bar.

6) Growl by Ray Wylie Hubbard. Forget "Redneck Mother." Hubbard's latest album consists of tough, swampy blues, with the artist showing his underrated prowess on bottleneck guitar while drawling tales of hard living, hard drinking and hard luck from a Texas Zen perspective. (Rounder)

7) The Wind by Warren Zevon. Warren wasn't going to leave us without a proper goodbye. In doing so, he left a worthy coda to his career. While the fact that he basically recorded this on his deathbed adds untold poignancy to this record, The Wind is an album I'd have loved anyway. (Artemis)

8) Rediscovered by Howard Tate. The comeback of the year. Tate, a Philadelphia soul man of the 1960s, disappeared for decades into the netherworld of drugs and despair, cleaned up and became a ghetto preacher. I'm not sure how they convinced him to recording again, but I'm glad they did. Producer Jerry Ragovoy keeps the sound basic -- no yucky synths, no embarrassing pandering to hip-hop. Just good, gritty soul featuring a good horn section and not-too flashy blues guitar. (Private Music)

9) Decoration Day by The Drive-By Truckers. Compared with this group's previous effort, the sprawling double-disc epic Southern Rock Opera, this is a relatively modest effort. Still, Decoration Day helps cement the Truckers' place as true visionaries of redneck rock. They've done more than anyone else to advance the basic Exile on Main Street/Freedom Rock sound, informing it with punk and colored by a literary sensibility. (New West)

10) Fever to Tell by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs In terms of sheer unfettered, sexy, stripped-down rock 'n' roll fun, it's hard to think of a more fulfilling album than Fever to Tell by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Karen O squeals, shouts, cajoles and coos. Repeating the word "tick" in rapid fire, you think she might explode in ecstasy right there in your stereo. (Interscope)

Runners Up
Streetcore by Joe Strummer
Singing Bones by The Handsome Family
Lullaby For Liquid Pig by Lisa Germano
Red Headed Stranger by Carla Bozulich
Sky Dirt Speak Out Truth by Wildsang (more on them in my previous post, below)
Apple O by Deerhoof
Greendale by Neil Young
Truth is Not Fiction by Otis Taylor
The Old Kit Bag by Richard Thompson
Piosenki Toma Waitsa by Kazik Staszewski (an import-only album of Tom Waits songs by Poland's coolest rocker. Watch this column in upcoming weeks for a complete review.)

Blog Exclusive: Extra Categories
Comeback of the Year: Howard Tate.
Runner-up: Al Green
Best "Various Artists" CD: Shout Sister Shout (Rosetta Tharpe tribute)
Soundtrack of the Year: Only the Strong Survive (featuring Jerry Butler, Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes and others)
Runners-up: A Mighty Wind featuring The Folksmen, The New Main Street Singers and Mitch & Mickey
Cold Mountain featuring Alison Krauss, Jack White and others
Reissue of the Year: Heart Food by Judee Sill (Rhino Handmade)
Runners-up: Crazy: The Demo Sessions by Willie Nelson
Amerasia by Terry Allen
Disappointment of the Year: Shootennanny by The Eels
Runner-up Room on Fire by The Strokes

Just What the Free World Needs ... another blog!

Howdy, Steve Terrell from Santa Fe, N.M. here.

My old website recently bit the dust. Dreamwater, the crappy free-web-space "service" I was using somehow deleted my site and won't let me log in. E-mails to their web master bounce back.

So I'm going the blog route. Most the frequently updated material on the old site were my columns in The Santa Fe New Mexican (Terrell's Tune-up, my CD review column; and Roundhouse Round-up, my political column) and playlists for my radio shows on KSFR, Santa Fe Public Radio. (Terrell's Sound World on Sunday nights, The Santa Fe Opry, Friday nights.)

All these things and more will be here.

My employer requires a disclaimer here:

"This site is a personal publication independent of my professional capacity at the Santa Fe New Mexican. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Santa Fe New Mexican or santafenewmexican.com "

So there you have it. Bookmark this page. Tell your friends.

Meanwhile let's catch up on a few things from the time my late great web site croaked:

Playlists

The Santa Fe Opry
Friday, Dec. 19, 2003
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
6 Bullets for Christmas by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
I'll Be Home For Christmas by The Old 97s
East Side Boys by Martin Zeller
Marry Me by The Drive By Truckers
Look at Miss Ohio by Gillian Welch
Little Mama by Ray Wylie Hubbard
A Little Bit Lonesome by Kasey Chambers
Let it Snow by Leon Redbone

Drinkin' Thing/I Get Drunk/She's Actin' Single, I'm Drinkin' Doubles/Backslider's Wine by Gary Stewart
Lovesick Blues Boy by Paul Burch
Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Rex Hobart & The Misery Boys
Mope-along Rides Again by The Band of Blacky Ranchette
Lonely Christmas Call by George Jones

Whatever Your Name Is I Love You by Kell Robertson
Cold Canadian Love by Joe West
Maybe Next Year by Jaime Michaels
Sin Street by Kim & The Cabelleros
Weather Woman by Tom Adler
Who Am I by ThaMuseMeant
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear by Mark Weber & Selsun Blue

Nervous Breakdown by Whiskeytown
Potato's in the Paddy Wagon by The New Main Street Singers
Gift Horse of Mercy by Butch Hancock
Baby, It's Cold Outside by Albert & Gage
Lucy's Tiger Den by Terry Allen
Blue Christmas Lights by Chris Hillman & Herb Pederson
Let it Rain This Christmas by The Bellyachers
Lone Star Christmas by Jerry Faires
Jesus Won't Come Down Your Chimney by Charlie Louvin
Santa Bring My Baby Back to Me by Elvis Presley
CLOSING THEME :Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

The Santa Fe Opry
Friday, Dec. 26, 2003
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Christmas Time WIll Soon Be Gone by Jack White
Seven Months and 39 Days by Hank Williams III
Sold Me Down the River by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
You're Still Standin' There by Steve Earle & Lucinda Williams
That's Not the Issue by Wilco
Rock 'n Roll is a Vicious Game by Ray Wylie Hubbard
My Dearest Darlin' by Doug Sahm
Idumea by Sacred Harp Singers at Liberty Church

You Got the Car by Kasey Chambers
Like a Drug by Garrison Starr
Nashville Radio by Jon Langford
Out of Hand by Gary Stewart
The Bottomless Hole by The Handsome Family
What Makes Bob Holler by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
Jamie by Joe West

Six Days on the Road by Dave Dudley
Truckdrivin' Man by Hylo Brown
Nitro Express by Red Simpson & Junior Brown
Truck Drivin' Cat With Nine Wives by Jim Nesbitt
Wildcat Run by Red Sovine
Semi Truck by Bill Kirchen
Diesel Dazey by Killbilly
Diesel Smoke (Dangerous Curves) by Doye O'Dell
White Line Fever by Merle Haggard
Tombstone Every Mile by Charlie Moore
Six Days on the Road by Rig Rock Deluxe

Jackson by Johnny Cash & June Carter
Last Time I Fell by Paul Burch
Two Things by Roger Wallace
Two More Days by Sid Hillman Quartet
Wayside/Back in Time by Gillian Welch
If You Win You Lose by Kell Robertson
Outfit by Drive By Truckers
The Scarlet Tide by Alison Krauss
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Terrell's Sound World
Sunday, December 21, 2003
The 75th Annual Steve Terrell Christmas Special
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.

Must Be Santa by Brave Combo
Silent Night by Bad Religion
Gloria by Elastica
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree by Beatlemas
Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto by James Brown
Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto by Snoop Doggy Dogg
Santa's Beard by The Beach Boys
Jingle Bells by Johnny Dowd
Deck the Halls by The Klezmonauts
Christmas Island by Leon Redbone

Away in a Manger by Pat Malone
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear by Beausolei
Merry Christmas to You by Billy Joe Shaver
Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon
A Change at Christmas by The Flaming Lips
White Christmas by Otis Redding
Christmas Morning by Loudon Wainwright III

Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies by The Jingle Cats
Monsters Holiday by Bobby "Boris" Picket
Deck the Halls With Parts of Charlie by The Crypt Keeper
St. Stephen's Day Murders by The Chieftains with Elvis Costello
Fairytale of New York by The Pogues with Kirtsy MacColl
Christmas at K-Mart by Root Boy Slim
Jinglecide by The Rockin' Guys
I'll Be Home For Christmas by The Bubbadinos
Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope by Sonic Youth

Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight) by The Ramones
Christmas is Quiet by The Wild Colonials
Old Toy Trains by Roger Miller
Amen by The Impressions
Sawade by Terry Allen
No Vacancy by Marlee MacLeod
Nothing But a Child by Steve Earle with Maria McKee
Silent Night/What Christmas Means by Dion
Star of Wonder by The Roches

and here's last week's Terrell's Tune-up, published in The New Mexican on Dec. 26, 2003 ...

A Cosmic Kind of Rage

As singer for the late lamented Afghan Whigs, Greg Dulli was responsible for some of the most intense and passionate rock ‘n’ roll love songs of the 1990s. This was no wimpy “emo” fare. Dulli and his Cincinnati boys drew from the rage of punk rock and the carnal power of soul (and I don’t mean they sounded like some bar band covering Wilson Picket songs).

He sometimes was ridiculed for it, but Dulli never sang of a souring relationship without making it sound downright mythical. You can easily envision Dulli shouting, “It’s in our hearts, it’s in our heads, it’s in our love, baby, it’s in our bed !” alone on a mountain top as the forces of the cosmos converge in black clouds above him.

And when he was on the prowl for love, Dulli made his desires so overpowering, they could pass for the uncontrollable cravings of a serial killer.

Though the Whigs are no more, Dulli’s still brooding and raging, these days with an outfit called The Twilight Singers, whose latest effort, Blackberry Belle, is raw, tumultuous, emotional, sometimes hypnotic, and a little bit evil. (“Black out the windows, it’s party time,” are the first words he sings on the album.)

In other words, it’s prime Dulli.

Although he uses the Twilight name, Blackberry Belle is much closer in spirit to the Afghan Whigs than it is to the trip-hoppy 2000 album Twilight as Played by The Twilight Singers. There Dulli shared vocal duties with Harold Chichester and Shawn Smith. (Not to knock that album, which has its own sinister charm, with Chichester‘s disturbing falsetto and all.)

But this time it's basically Dulli’s show. “There’s a riot going on inside of me,” he sings on “St. Gregory.” It doesn’t take long for a listener to believe it’s true.

“And I’m gonna crawl,” he sings in “Feathers.” “Not that it matters, nobody bleeds the way I do.”

While Dulli’s guitars is prominent here, keyboards, played by Dulli and others, also are central.

Each song helps build the atmosphere on the album, but there are standouts. The clunky horn section on “Esta Noche” gives the song an earthy power. The swaggering “Decatur Street,” with its boiling clavinet, tough percussion and just a hint of wah-wah guitar shows Dulli’s love for Blaxploitation movie music.

There are a few guest stars on Blackberry Belle. Appolonia Kotero -- yes Prince’s leading lady in Purple Rain -- sings on a couple of tracks. Bluesman Alvin Youngblood Hart plays some lapsteel on “The Killer,” but he’s pretty much buried in the mix.

This isn’t the case though with Mark Lanegan, who sings lead on “Number Nine,” the last song on the album. Lanegan’s deep croon sounds like the Frankenstein monster, pumped up on sweet wine and romantic poetry. With Dulli singing the choruses, the song slowly builds up into a pounding Afghan juggernaut, ending with a female singer (Petra Hayden) doing some soulful wailing in the style of Clare Torry on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky.”

By the end it's hard not to believe that nobody bleeds like Greg Dulli.

(http://www.thetwilightsingers.com)

Also Recommended:

Speakerboxx/The Love Below by Outkast. OK, OK, I realize it’s faintly ridiculous for a 50-year-old white Okie to act like an aficionado of hip hop. And to be honest, not much in the rap universe has excited me since Public Enemy in their early ’90s prime.

But from the first time I heard “Miss Jackson” a couple of years ago, I’ve been a fan of this Atlanta duo. Big Boi and Dre 3000 have a lot going for them They're intelligent. They’re funny. They’re funky. And most important, unlike so many thousands of third-rate gangsta goons, they’re musical. As far as I’m concerned, Outkast is the true heir of George Clinton and Prince.

And despite their great commercial success in the past few years, they’re still down-home enough to include an ad for Big Boi’s pit bull breeding service, Pitfall Kennels, inside their CD booklet.

Speakerboxx/The Love Below basically are two solo albums by Big Boi (Antwan Patton) and Dre 3000 (Andre Benjamin) under the Outkast umbrella. This of course has prompted some talk of an impending breakup, which the group denies. (“We never relaxin’/Outkast is everlasting’/Not clashin’, not at all,” Big Boi explains in the introduction of “The Way You Move.”)

The Love Below actually doesn’t sound much like a rap album. It’s a near seamless mix of hip hop, funky soul and jazz. Like Prince Dre is something of a one-man band, playing guitar and keyboards on most tracks.

Starting out with a little cocktail music, (The super syrupy “Intro,” then the breezy “Love Hater”), Love Below" explores all sorts of musical directions. There’s an acoustic tune, “Take Off Your Cool,” with Norah Jones; There’s some Princely nastiness with “Spread.” here’s a breakneck techno-jazzy version of the Coltrane associated “My Favorite Things.”

But nothing really is better than the big hit, “Hey Ya!” a high-excitement soul rave-up.

My only complaint is that some of Dre’s spoken-word skits and between-song interludes get old after a couple of listens

Speakerboxx also is a first-rate effort. There’s a lot more rapping on this disc with guests like Ludicris and Jay-Z -- not to mention the 110 mph mouth of Big Boi himself.

But there’s lots of actual songs here too, such as the Parliamentesque “Bow Tie”; “The Rooster,” which sounds like it’s built upon a Sly Stone outtake; and the spook-house rock of “Bust.”

Big Boi gets seriously political with “War“ (“Operation Anaconda/ask yourself, was it full of bleeps and blunders?/Did they ever find Osama?”)

Although the solo outings are nothing short of amazing, I hope B.B. and Dre recombine for their next record. Outkast might just be the first important act of the millennium.


swt

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Keep Popping Your Weasel

 

Pop? Goes me?

Back when I was a "musician," in the early 1980s, I used to do this schtick between songs. I'd warn the audience about the "secret drug lyrics" in the beloved children's song -- you guessed it -- "Pop! Goes the Weasel."

In a phony stern voice, in which I tried to sound like a weird cross between Jack Webb, Paul Harvey and Sonny Bono (from that weird anti-marijuana movie they made us watch at Santa Fe Mid High -- I'd recite the lyrics that threatened our children.

"Around around the mulberry bush" I'd say, usually using air quotes for those last two words.

"The monkey, meaning the monkey on your back, chased The Weasel, who apparently is some sort of drug dealer or pimp,

"The monkey thought it all was good fun"  Again, dripping with sarcasm.

Then I'd jab an imaginary hypodermic into my left arm.

"Pop goes the weasel," I'd say, half singing the line.

But wait, there's more!

"A penny for a spool of thread," I'd say,  again with the air quotes, as if I'm explaining drug lingo. Then my voice would turn ominous: "A penny for a needle,

"That's the way the money goes ..."

Then again the fake jab"

"Pop goes the weasel," with my sing-song voice drifting off as if from some dope stupor.

Yep, it all was good fun. Fortunately there are no known recordings of me doing that.

"Pop! Goes the Weasel," probably my favorite song with an exclamation point in the title, has a long history, documented in a 2022 article in American Songwriter by Jake Uitti.

1937 sheet music

Pop! Goes the Weasel” is a traditional English-language nursery rhyme and singing game. It’s become so popular and stood the test of time when it comes to the enjoyment of young children, that the melody is often used in Jack-in-the-box toys to this day.

While there are many different versions of the rhyme today, in England, where the song originated, most understand the basic verse to be:

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,

Half a pound of treacle.

That’s the way the money goes,

Pop! Goes the weasel.

Tuppenny rice? Treacle? Them Brits sure have some weird food. (Uitti explained, "Tuppenny rice is cheap starch and treacle is a cheap sweetener. Doesn't make it sound any less disgusting.)

In many early versions the "mulberry bush" was a "cobbler's bench." And, instead of the "penny for a spool of thread" part, some versions have this refrain:

Up and down the City Road,

In and out the Eagle,

That’s the way the money goes,

Pop! Goes the weasel.

The Eagle Tavern supposedly was a swinging joint in London that's still around today. The webpage for The Eagle at the Know Your London site even includes an interpretation of the lyrics:

One explanation is that the word ‘weasel’ was slang for a tailor’s iron and the word ‘pop’ was slang for pawning goods. The lyrics basically allude to pawning items in order to gain money for alcohol and loose-living. They date from the 1850s. Another explanation claims that ‘weasel’ refers to a purse made of weasel-skin, which opened and closed with a snap or ‘pop’. The ‘popping of the weasel’ in the song, therefore, refers to the opening of the purse, and consequent spending of money. 

That's kind of like my old drug dealer interpretation.

In 1852 there was a dance craze in England. They didn't yet know the Twist or the Funky Chicken, but all the cool Brits were doing the "Pop! Goes the Weasel." 

In a Library of Congress Performing Arts Blog blog post in 2016, Sharon McKinley wrote of sheet music from 1856 she had found. "What I found amusing was that it had exhaustive dance directions printed on the last page," McKinley wrote.

She also talks about earlier sheet music from 1853, which also had dance instructions and said "the dance has been `lately introduced at Her Majesty’s and Nobilities balls' in England ..."

Again from McKinley:

By the time the rhyme and tune arrived on [American] shores, I’m sure the origin of the text had already been lost. The words developed in various ways here, as they did back in England. From an English nonsense rhyme with any number of verses, it turned into an American blackface minstrel song with equally nonsensical verses. We own a few different arrangements of this version. Charley Twiggs’s 1855 song includes what seem to be the “standard” minstrel show verses, with the addition of a few more verses with topical political overtones.

Uitti's article lists several versions of the lyrics. I like these he found in autobiographical novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder's autobiographical Pioneer Girl, which Wilder wrote for her daughter in 1930.

All around the cobbler’s bench,

The monkey chased the weasel.

The preacher kissed the cobbler’s wife—

Pop! goes the weasel!

Early recordings are hard to find. Here's an instrumental version by British-born, French-named American violinist Charles D'Almaine. The usually reliable Discogs dates the record to 1904, though whoever posted it on Archives.org says it's from 1909. D'Almaine's version includes some nice Irish reels.

Naturally The Three Stooges were fans of the song. In their 1934 short Punch Drunks,  Curley goes wild -- and apparently gets supernatural strength -- every time he hears the song. Here's the climax of that exciting Stooge adventure.

Bill Haley & The Comets in 1952 did a rock 'n' roll version of a Weasel variant called "Stop Beatin' Around the Mulberry Bush" which had been recorded a couple of decades earlier by Les Brown, Tommy Dorsey and others. It's different words to a different melody (basically the kiddy song "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush", but close your eyes and you'll see a monkey chasing the weasel:)

The ever-cool Anthony Newley in 1963 performed this swinging version of Weasel, using the British lyrics, in 1963:

The Beatles recorded this instrumental for the BBC radio show Pop Go The Beatles in 1963:

In the early '90s, the forgotten white rap group 3rd Base brought "Weasel" into the hip-hop universe. Supposedly the Weasel in this version was 3rd Base's arch rival Vanilla Ice, who was depicted in this video by Henry Rollins:

And finally, Andy Kaufman in the '70s used to lipsych to a record of the song by something called The Crown Records Studio Group:

Check out Alan Sherman's parody of "Pop! Goes The Weasel" on this early Wacky Wednesday post

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

TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: SKELETONS IN AMERICA'S MUSICAL CLOSET

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
July 21, 2006

I’ve just stumbled across a weird little corner of the Internet that’s twisted my honky head off, causing me to re-examine some of my long-cherished attitudes about music.

I’ve always argued that music has been a positive force in our culture. I believe that rock ’n’ roll played a role in ending segregation, cutting short the carnage in Vietnam, and tearing down the Berlin Wall; that Woody Guthrie’s guitar killed fascists; that somewhere in heaven Louie Armstrong still blows his trumpet, standing on a corner beside a celestial Jimmie Rodgers singing “Blue Yodel No. 9” for all the assembled saints.


During the past couple of years I’ve written in this very column about songs pertaining to issues such as the death penalty and Mexican immigration, offering the theory that the songs of America reflect a more compassionate and humanistic vision than the modern political rhetoric concerning those topics.

However, there’s a cache of musical weirdities from about 100 years ago that makes that theory seem naive and Pollyanna-ish. Spending time downloading songs in an innocuous-sounding section of the Internet Audio Archive called 78RPMs forces you to consider an era in which music was used as a tool of oppression.

This “collection of 78 rpm records released in the early part of the 20th century contributed by Archive users” includes several recording artists you should have heard of — such as Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, Enrico Caruso — and early recordings of songs that are revered cornerstones of American music: “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “Ain’t We Got Fun?,” “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” and other chestnuts.

But there are also weird and even frightening recordings to be uncovered here — some funny, some strangely beautiful, and some outright despicable stuff -- what was referred to at the time as “coon songs.”

Yes, it’s what you think it is. These are recordings from around the turn of the 20th century that stereotyped African American life. They were popular until around the time of World War I. And yes, they’re as bad as you think they are. I’ve always known these tunes were out there. But actually listening to them in their original form and realizing how popular they were with mainstream America is a startling revelation.

Coon songs were born out of blackface minstrel acts, an art form that goes back to pre-Civil War times. With the rise of the recording industry in the late 1800s, coon songs were a popular genre. An advertisement for singer Arthur Collins in a Victor Records catalog from that era says, “The charm of this special kind of art seems to have a never-ending appeal for the American public.” The Internet Audio Archive has some examples of Collins’ work. He recorded a version of one of the most notorious of these songs, “All Coons Look Alike to Me.”

Collins also performed on “A Possum Supper at the Darktown Church,” which consists mainly of dialogue in an incomprehensible, phony dialect The supposed love of eating possum was a preoccupation of the coon songsters. “Carve Dat Possum” by Peerless Quartet with Harry C. Browne (dated 1917) is a more musical number. “The possum meat am good to eat/you always find it good and sweet,” Browne sings. The chorus — “Carve dat possum, carve dat possum, chillun” — is majestic in a troubling way, a prototype for the soundtrack of Disney’s Song of the South.

But there’s nothing quite like “The Whistling Coon.” I found two versions: the original 1896 cylinder recording by George W. Johnson, the author of the song (which unfortunately is so scratchy and lo-fi it’s barely listenable), and a much clearer 1911 version by Billy Murray.


The song is about “a colored individual” who doesn’t talk much and always whistles. Well, OK, the image of the simple, easygoing black man with musical proclivities is just a little racist, but then the song gets uglier as the singer describes the whistler’s appearance strictly within the confines of racist cartoon images (which Robert Crumb later would sardonically appropriate).

“Oh he’s got a pair of lips like a pound of liver split and a nose like an Indian rubber shoe. ... He’s an independent, free and easy, fat and greasy ham with a cranium like a big baboon.”

What’s truly shocking is that Murray doesn’t sound hateful. There’s no peckerwood sneer like that found in 1960s Ku Klux Klan records by “Johnny Reb” or “James Crow.” Murray sounds almost loving as he sings the gentle, catchy melody — the way you might sing about the antics of a favorite dog.

But, in the last verse, when “a fella hit him with a brick upon the mouth,” the singer doesn’t seem to condemn the attacker — or even explain the attack. All we know is that the singer is impressed that the man just keeps whistling, even though “his face swelled like a big balloon.”

It’s tempting to dismiss this as ignorant but ultimately harmless humor. However, as Richard Crawford observes in his book America’s Musical Life, these songs emerged during “a time when black Americans felt increasingly under political siege, with racial segregation established as law in the South and lynching on the increase.”

Indeed, in 1915, toward the end of the golden age of the coon song, the Ku Klux Klan would officially begin its second act, and the movie Birth of a Nation would reinforce white America’s fear of the black man.

It’s significant that the namesake of the “Jim Crow” laws was a character out of minstrelry — credited to Thomas Dartmouth Rice and made famous in the 1836 song “Jump Jim Crow.” But even more puzzling is the fact that Johnson, the man who wrote “The Whistling Coon,” was a former slave who became one of the pioneer African American recording artists of the 1890s.

Johnson wasn’t alone. “All Coons Look Alike to Me” was written by Ernest Hogan, another black songwriter of the era. He got famous for the song, but reportedly said on his deathbed he regretted ever writing it. (The song was published in 1896 by M. Witmark & Sons, the same company that would publish Bob Dylan’s early music in the 1960s.)

As Crawford explains in American Musical Life, “Any African American who worked in show business was faced with the conflict between pleasing an audience and knowing that many standard crowd-pleasing devices reinforced the racial divide.”

Johnson, Hogan, and others were carrying on a tradition that began earlier in the 19th century with minstrelry. Though it started with white performers in blackface parodying the music and dialect of black slaves, beginning about 1855, black singers donning the blackface mask of burnt cork joined in.

Minstrelry, according to author and jazz critic Stanley Crouch, was on its way out by the end of the Civil War.

But the coming of black performers ironically revitalized the art form. “They came and reinforced the bars on their cages,” Crouch said in an interview on the DVD of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, a 2000 film that takes a hard look at minstrelry, coon songs, and other racist images of African Americans in American culture.

If there is a bright side to this ugly period, it’s the fact that it served as fertilizer for good, serious American art.

Scott Joplin, the father of ragtime, started out as a minstrel. W.C. Handy, the bandleader whose “St. Louis Blues” introduced the blues to mainstream America in 1914, started out in a black minstrel show. Handy said his most famous song was a love story, told “in the humorous spirit of bygone coon songs.”

As tempting as it is to assign coon songs and minstrelry to a shameful footnote of American musical history, some say the spirit lives on. Music writer Nick Tosches wrote in his book Country, “Years later, the Rolling Stones gave us a new sort of minstrelry. It was minstrelry without blackface, but minstrelry just the same.” And in Lee’s Bamboozled, fictional hip-hop troupe The Mau Maus are just as ignorant and stereotypical as the shuffling coon singers of centuries past.

Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields said of gangsta rap in a 2004 interview with Salon.com, “I think it’s shocking that we’re not allowed to play coon songs anymore, but people, both white and black, behave in more vicious caricatures of African Americans than they had in the 19th century. It’s grotesque. Presumably it’s just a character, and that person doesn’t actually talk that way, but that accent, that vocal presentation, would not have been out of place in the Christy Minstrels. In fact, it would probably have been considered too tasteless for the Christy Minstrels.”

Some say we should suppress coon songs, metaphorically burn this music like right-wingers torching the Dixie Chicks. But I say listen to these songs and shake your head. Then watch Bamboozled and listen to Howlin’ Wolf’s defiant musical commentary, “Coon on the Moon”:

“You know they call us coons/Say we don’t have no sense/You gonna wake up one morning/And the old coon gonna be the president.”

Other fun songs in the 78s archive:

* “My Little Bimbo Down on the Bamboo Isle” sung by Frank Crumit (1920). A shipwreck never sounded so sexy. “But by heck there never was a wreck like the wreck she made of me/For all she wore was a great big Zulu smile.”

* “O’Brien Is Tryin’ to Learn to Talk Hawaiian” by Horace Wright (1917) A twofer for ethnic humor, this one is sung in a phony brogue with that cool slack-key guitar that was sweeping the nation back then.

* “Navajo” by The Columbia Band with Billy Murray (1903) written by Egbert Van Alstyne and Harry Williams for a Broadway play called Nancy Brown. There’s a tom-tom beat at the very beginning, but not much else “Indian” about this tune. It’s about a guy in love with a Navajo woman. At least, unlike that other Murray song, nobody hits her in the face with a brick.

* “I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am” by Harry Champion (1911) Yes, this song was around way before Herman’s Hermits. Champion, born William Crump, was an English music-hall star known for singing cockney songs. In this version, he still marries the widow next door, but the second verse is not same as the first.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: SOUL FOR SALE

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
September 7, 2007

I’m one of a lot of people — middle-aged white people, to be exact — who don’t really like a lot of hip-hop music but love Public Enemy.

Part of it has to be PE’s lyrics and themes, which are socially conscious, politically charged, and free of gangsta idiocy. But an important part of it that’s not as obvious is the actual music. Public Enemy's music is laced with good old-fashioned soul. No, you’re not going to mistake a PE song for one by Wilson Pickett. But listen closely, and you’ll realize that without Wicked Pickett or James Brown or Sly or George Clinton, there wouldn’t be a Public Enemy.

This became especially obvious to me when I saw the group last month at the Santa Fe Muzik Festival (with its excellent band, called The baNNed, which includes Santa Fe resident Brian Hardgroove on bass). And it’s obvious on PE’s new album, How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul??? Public Enemy isn’t just a rap group. It’s a part of the soul-music tradition.

You hear it in the Memphis-style horns that punctuate the cool, funky “Harder Than You Think.” You hear it in the steady beat and the chants of “Soul power!” in the title song. And you feel it in one of the recurring themes of this album — that mainstream, corporate music and pop culture are turning us into an empty, soulless people or at least a grim reflection of a heartless era. As Chuck D says in “Black Is Back”: “It started with your baby on Similac/Don’t get me started/Get it up to speed/Gettin’ back your soul/Is what you need.”

Of course, this talk of no substance and soulless culture brings up the question of Flavor Flav and his insipid TV reality shows. There was a lot of eye-rolling among old-time PE fans at the Santa Fe performance when Flav was on stage plugging his Comedy Central roast.

Two of Flav’s solo tunes on this album don’t have much going for them. But Flav redeems himself nobly with “Bridge of Pain,” a cold-eyed account of a lonely ride on a corrections-systems bus to a jail on Rikers Island in New York. This might be the best thing he’s done since “911 Is a Joke.”

PE’s got little good to say about gangsta rap. “Damn, our interviews were better than some of them acts,” Chuck D boasts on “The Long and Whining Road,” and then he laments, “Seen a nation reduce ‘Fight the Power’ to ‘Gin and Juice.’”

In “Sex, Drugs, and Violence,” PE is joined by a children’s chorus (singing, “We like those gangsta rhymes/Just make sure they don’t corrupt our minds”) and old-schooler KRS-One to tell the stories of the murders of Tupac and Jam Master Jay, laying the blame at the door of hard gangster attitudes. Meanwhile “See Something, Say Something” is an argument against the self-destructive “anti-snitch” movement, which advocates black people never cooperate with police.

But there’s a little surprise in the song “Amerikan Gangster.” The folks Chuck D is talking about here aren’t the Bloods and Crips but the people running the government.

There are a couple of fun diversions on the album.

“The Long and Whining Road” is a clever history of Public Enemy told largely using Bob Dylan song and album titles (it also name-checks Prince, Tom Petty, and Johnny Cash — not to mention the Beatles tune that inspired this song’s title). Employing the chords of “All Along the Watchtower,” Chuck D subtly pleads the case that he’s up there in the Hall of Immortals with Mr. Zimmerman. He also talks about his love of protest songs, so it only makes sense that a classic protest tune, P.F. Sloan’s “Eve of Destruction,” would get the Public Enemy treatment.
The folk-rock trappings are shorn, leaving only the harsh apocalyptic core of the song.

The production of How You Sell Soul is not nearly as urgent as PE’s early works. “The Enemy Battle Hymn of the Public,” for example, with its slick background chorus, seems a little overproduced. But this album still has a lot for us to chew on, musically and intellectually.

Twenty years strong, and Public Enemy still has lots of soul to sell to those with ears to hear.

Also noted:

* Planet Earth by Prince. Back in the ’80s, a Prince song got Tipper Gore so upset she started an organization that Frank Zappa dubbed “The Mothers of Prevention,” resulting in congressional hearings and a national scare about “porn rock.” But the title song of Prince’s latest album sounds like he’s auditioning for the soundtrack to the next Al Gore movie.

Planet Earth isn’t a bad album, but it definitely lacks the sense of danger of Prince’s classic stuff and isn’t even as strong as his recent albums 3121 and Musicology.

Basically, there are too many “quiet-storm” ballads and not nearly enough James Brown/P-Funk soul workouts here. Where’s Maceo Parker and Candy Dulfer, who have graced his last couple of albums? Is there even a sax on Planet Earth?

There should be more tracks like “Chelsea Rodgers,” which features Sheila E. on percussion. And there aren’t nearly enough crazy guitar showcases. The song “Guitar,” a tasty little stomper that’s easily the highlight of this record, comes closest; and “Lion of Judah” and the song “Planet Earth” end with worthy but too-short guitar solos.

You can’t give up on Prince. I just hope his next album isn’t as Earthbound.

Workin’ Man’s Blues. Stan Rosen joins me at 10 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 9, for Terrell’s Sound World’s annual post-Labor Day show, on KSFR-FM 90.7 and simulcasting on KSFQ-FM 101.1 FM. Songs about workers and the labor movement.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: In Praise of American Epic

Will Shade with The Memphis Jug Band

OK, my advice to you is to quit reading this blog post and go sit yourself in front of your TV -- or your iPad or whatever you use for a TV these days -- and start watching the PBS series American Epic. 

It's a 3-part series about American roots music in the early 20th Century, co-produced by Jack White and T-Bone Burnett and narrated by Robert Redford. There is lots of rare footage and photos, a soundtrack full of spooky old country, blues and folk classics and interviews with living musicians -- Charlie Musselwhite, Taj Mahal, Willie Nelson etc. -- talking about how this music enriched their lives.

Episode 1 of the series is already available. "The Big Bang" focuses on two great acts from the 1920s, The Carter Family and The Memphis Jug Band, discovered by Ralph Peer, the Columbia Records A&R man who traveled the south seeking recording artists, black and white, to appeal to rural audiences.  (You can watch on your computer HERE.)

Below is a trailer for the series, followed by some songs that are featured in that first episode.





Here's Jimmie Rodgers, foreshadowing MTV by 50 years or so,



Here are Maybelle and Sara Carter reunited on The Johnny Cash Show in 1970. Johnny says it's their first time performing together in 27 years (though actually they'd recorded together in 1963 and did a bunch of shows together in the '60s.)



I love whoever decided to film this song by Whistler's Jug Band way back when.


In American Epic, the rapper Nas compares jug band music with gangsta rap. “These guys are talking about carrying guns, shooting something, protecting their honor, chasing after some woman who’s done them dirty. It didn’t start with hip-hop. It started a long time ago. It started with America.”

Here's The Memphis Jug Band singing about what Kinky Friedman calls "Peruvian Marching Powder."



And here's American Epic: The Soundtrack on Spotify. But listen to it after you watch the show!