Sunday, April 23, 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Louie, Louie by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
Killer McHann by The Jesus Lizard
He's A Whore by Big Black
Plan B (adopt a lap dancer) by King Automatic
Cuckoo At The World by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282
A poster for the play that landed Mae West in jail "Jane Mast"
was a pen name for West herself
Today, April 19, 2023, is the 96th anniversary of a New York judge sentencing
American icon Mae West to 10 days in jail after she was convicted on charges
of "obscenity and behavior designed to corrupt the morals of youth."
Yes, gentle reader, it's always about protecting the children.
West came up in the world of burlesque prior to her arrival in Hollywood.
As her career struggled, she took the bold step of writing a play in which
she had the starring role of a sex worker. West probably knew
that Sex would be controversial at a time when American culture was coming
under increasing scrutiny and censorship, even though her play was less
about sex and more about the power dynamics between men and women. Despite
being panned by critics, the play was a sensation that drew large
audiences.
Her bawdy 1926 play Sex,
the story of a Montreal prostitute, filled the house for a year before New
York’s deputy police commissioner raided West and her company, charging them
with lewdness and the corrupting of youth. The star spent the night in the
Jefferson Market Courthouse and the tabloids went crazy, and on April 19th,
1927, was sentenced to ten days in jail.
However, Mae spent only eight days in the slammer. She got two days off for
"good behavior," a phrase the star probably found libelous.
Village Preservation goes on:
The court offered to drop the charges if she would close the show, but
West was too savvy an entrepreneur to go quietly. Her instincts told her
that in the business of show, crime pays. She used the opportunity
to ride to the prison in a limousine, report from inside prison that she
was enjoying dining with the prison warden, and let loose to the tabloid
press that she wore silk panties under her prison uniform. And that
was “marketing gold!”
There is contradictory evidence about those silk panties though. According to
PBS, West "later said that the only thing that bothered her about [her jail
time] was that she had to wear cotton underwear."
A year later, West would get busted for yet another bawdy play, one called
The Pleasure Man, which included a scene with (gasp!) drag
queens!
She and the whole cast were
accused of
"unlawfully, wickedly and scandalously, for lucre and gain, produce, present
and exhibit and display the said exhibition, show and entertainment to the
sight and view of divers and many people, all to the great offence of public
decency."
But the trial, which took place in 1930 ended in a hung jury.
I bet Mae liked that!
But the notoriety of her obscenity trials helped launch West's Hollywood
career. Again from Village Preservation:
Due to her newfound notoriety, West, despite being 38 years old at the
time, found herself starting a movie career when Paramount Pictures
offered her a contract at $5000 a week ($80,000 now). What’s more, they
allowed her to re-write her lines in the films... Within three years
she was the second highest paid person in the United States behind only
William Randolph Hearst.
Of course, some watchdogs of public morality still took umbrage to West's
work.
With this record of police raids, indictments, conviction, a fine and
term in the Workhouse on Welfare Island for criminal offense, Mae West was
approached by the moving picture business as a fit subject to introduce
into the wholesome homes of the country and present to the young people of
clean moral families.
There's no panic like a moral panic. And again, we must protect the children!
But this is a music blog, so let's have a musical tribute to one of America's
sexiest jailbirds and public menaces, Miss Mae West:
This one's from 1933 and called "I Like a Guy What Takes His Time." She performed it in her classic 1933 movie She Done Him Wrong:
Also from She Done Him Wrong, this one's called "I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone":
Here's "I Found a New Way to Go to Town," from West's 1933 film I'm No Angel:
Finally, here's "He's a Bad, Bad Man" from the film Goin' to Town (1935):
Sunday, April 16 , 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Roam by The Yayhoos
Gypsy by LoveStruck
Don't Take Your Bad Trip Out on Me by The Electric Mess
I bet a lot of folks my age first heard this song on the Andy Griffith show,
with Andy on guitar and his girlfriend Peggy (Joanna Moore) serenading
Opie.
Here's what I'm talking about:
I can't confirm the rumor that Deputy Barney Fife started his law enforcement
career in the Birmingham jail, where he was fired for brutality. But I find it
suspicious that Andy's version omits any mention of that correctional
facility. Coincidence????!!!??)
But "Down in the Valley," aka
"Birmingham Jail"
and several other titles, has roots that go far deeper than Maybury.
According to the website
Ballad of America, ace American folklorists John and Alan Lomax considered "Valley" to be
a "jailhouse song" because they found it common in prisons. The Lomaxes found
that some of the versions of the song referred to a specific jail and a loved
one on the outside. ("Write me a letter, send it by mail / Send it in care of
the Birmingham jail ...")
John and Alan also considered the song as part of the British courting song
traditions, that still could be found in the Appalachian and Ozark Mountains
throughout the nineteenth century.
From Ballad of America:
In the first half of the twentieth century, "Down in the Valley" was
printed in folk song collections from Missouri, Kentucky, Texas, North
Carolina, and Virginia. More than twenty artists recorded it between 1927
and 1940, spreading its popularity nationwide. Printed and recorded
versions exhibit variations in melody, lyrics, and title, which include
"Birmingham Jail," "Bird in a Cage," "Twenty-One Years," "Down on the
Levee," and "Little Willie's My Darlin'." Inclusion in countless church,
camp, and school songbooks, as well as placement in movies and television,
has rendered "Down in the Valley" one of the best-known American folk
songs.
The first known recording of the song was in 1927 by Tom Darby & Jimmie
Tarlton. Its flip side was another classic lovelorn jailbird song, "Columbus
Stockade Blues." The song was such a hit that Tarlton, according to
BHAM Wiki,
was invited to the ceremony to dedicate the new Birmingham jail at 425 6th
Avenue South in 1937. Of course, this song isn't the only thing that made
this jail
famous.
Tarlton reportedly claimed that he'd written "Birmingham Jail" while in the
slammer for moonshining. I can't swear that's true, but I do hope it is.
Lead Belly supposedly sang the song for Texas Governor Pat Neff at the
Sugarland Penitentiary in 1924. In this version, which he called "Hear
the Wind Blow," he refers to the Birmingham jail, though reportedly in other
versions, the sad narrator's residence is in the Shreveport jail.
The Andrews Sisters took "Down to the Valley" to an audience beyond the
hillbilly and blues markets.
Johnny Cash made it nice and mournful.
Flatt & Scruggs found bluegrass growing in the valley -- though, like Lead
Belly, they called their version "Hear the Wind Blow."
And "Valley" got a little hippiegrass treatment by Jerry Garcia & David
Grisman in the early '90s:
Solomon Burke in the early 1960s turned "Valley" into a soul classic. It one
of the first 45s I ever bought as a child. (Otis Redding
used a similar arrangement.) Here's King Solomon doing a live version at the
Montreux Jazz Festival in 2006.
But besides country, blues, bluegrass, pop and soul, "Down in the Valley" also
made it to the world of opera, courtesy of Kurt Weil and Arnold Sundgaard.
Here's what a layman like myself might call the title song of this
1948 "folk-opera in one act."
Sunday, April 9, 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Hush Money by The Collins Kids
Keep Movin' by Freddy Cannon & The Gears
Can't Find My Mind by The Cramps
The Vampire Dog Of Jesus Christ by Gregg Turner Group
Go Where You Feel the Most Alive by Råttanson
Draggin' The Line by Tommy James & The Shondells
I Smile Through My Tears by Waco Brothers
Murline by Deano & Jo
Peter Cottontail (Take 4) by The Bubbadinos
A Little While by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
The Girl Next Door by T. Tex Edwards & Out On Parole
The Laughing Song by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
Cinderella by The Flesh Eaters
Devils River by Divine Horsemen
The Call of the Wreckin' Ball by The Knitters
Johny Hit And Run Pauline by X
Reckless Rider by The Thick Uns
Trail Of The Lonesome Pine by Laurel & Hardy
Slim Harpo's Heartbeat by Ronny Elliott
Baby Scratch My Back by Slim Harpo
Damned and Doomed by Killer Kin
I'm A Midnight Mover by Wilson Pickett
Chameleon by Sleeve Cannon
I'm Gonna Dig Up Howlin' Wolf by Mojo Nixon
Hoodoo Party by Tabby Thomas
Pinon Lurker by Gluey Brothers
We Went Away by Dion & The Belmonts
Molly and the Old Man by Robbie Fulks
There Is A War by Leonard Cohen
How He Lost Her by Julie Christensen
Winter Song by Loudon Wainwright III
The Kiss by Judee Sill
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
