TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, May 22, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
The Sky is a Poisonous Garden by Concrete Blonde
Eve Future by The Mekons
Debaser by The Pixies
Freedom by J. Mascis & The Fog
Panthers by Wilco
Cosmic Highway by Les Claypool

Johnny Gillette by Simon Stokes
Love to Burn by Neil Young & Crazy Horse
My Little Problem by The Replacements with Johnette Napolitano
People Who Died by The Jim Carrol Band
Sex With the Devil by Anne Magnuson

Puzzlin' Evidence by The Talking Heads
Under the Waves by Heavy Trash
Don't Step on the Grass by Steppenwolf
You Are What You Is by Frank Zappa
Detachable Penis by King Missile
Touch Sensitive by The Fall
South Street by The Orlons

Back on the Chain Gang by The Pretenders
Isis by Bob Dylan
We Both Go Down Together by The Decemberists
Here Come the Choppers by Loudon Wainwright III
Poison by Susan James
The House Where Nobody Lives by Tom Waits
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, May 20, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Now Webcasting
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
Georgia Hard by Robbie Fulks
Blame the Vain by Dwight Yoakam
I Thought I'd Die by Karen Hudson
Dirty Little Town (Too Late For Prayer) by Jay Ruffin
Jamie Was A Boozer by Joe West
Blood, Sweat & Murder by Scott H. Biram
Cat Squirrel by John Schooley
I Ain't Got Nobody by Emmett Miller
Jimmy Martin Set
All Songs by Jimmy Martin except where noted
Grand Old Opry Song
I'm Sittin' on Top of the World
Hold Whatcha Got
My Walkin' Shoes
Tennessee by The Last Mile Ramblers
Save It Save
Losin' You (Might Be the Best Thing Yet)
Will the Circle Be Unbroken by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band & Guests (Jimmy Martin plays guitar)

Charlie Poole set
All Songs by Charlie Poole except where noted
Shootin' Creek
Moving Day by Arthur Collins
It's Moving Day
He Rambled
If the River Was Whiskey
May I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, Mister
May I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, Mister by Hank Thompson
Can I Sleep in Your Arms by Willie Nelson
Goodbye Booze

All Go Hungry Hash House by Norman Blake
Hank and Fred by Loudon Wainwright III
The Other Side of Town by John Prine
You Wouldn't Know Love by Billy Joe Shaver
Summer Wages by David Bromberg
Baby Mine by Michelle Shocked
Take Me by George Jones
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

OH HAVE YOU SEEN THE MUFFLER MAN?

My daughter Molly sent me this link to this site devoted to the strange phenomenon of The Muffler Man, the fiberglass giant that appears in scattered places throughout this great land of ours.

There's even mention here of the Lumberjack at Central and Louisiana in Albuquerque near my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, the May Cafe.

This is part of the amazing Roadside America site, where it's easy to get lost for hours.

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: THE WORLD OF CHARLIE POOLE

As published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
May 20, 2005

So you thought country music was invented in 1927 when Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family recorded for Ralph Peer in Bristol, Tenn.? So you thought that Hank Williams was the original drunken driver on the Lost Highway and that Waylon and Willie were the original country outlaws?

Then get yourself familiar with Charlie Poole, a North Carolina banjo man whose unjustly short musical career and helped build the foundation for country music and whose short tragic life -- his drunken indulgences, his scrapes with the law -- became an early blueprint for rock ‘n’ roll excess.

Though scattered Poole compilations have been available through the years, Columbia Legacy this week released a three-disc Charlie Poole box set, You Ain’t Talkin’ To Me: Charlie Poole and The Roots of Country Music, with a classic R. Crumb cover and impressive liner notes by Hank Sapoznik, (a klezmer musician as well as author and scholar.)

But this 72-song box isn’t just a collection of Poole recordings. While Disc One is all Charlie, the subsequent discs include Poole tunes along with versions that preceded those recordings, and/or later versions by those who followed Poole. There’s even a song by a guy who bought Poole’s banjo when Charlie needed the cash in 1930. (This was Preston Young, who, with Buster Carter, recorded their version of “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” years before Flatt & Scruggs.) In other words, you can hear what inspired him as well as who he inspired. It’s a glimpse of Poole’s entire musical word.

So who is this Charlie Poole character?

Born in 1892 in Eden, N.C., Poole was a mill worker, a bootlegger and a baseball player. According to Sapoznik, Poole’s three-finger banjo style developed from a baseball injury -- a drunken Poole made a bet that he could catch a ball without a glove no matter how hard it was thrown. He ended up breaking his fingers.

Poole began playing a self-made banjo fashioned from a gourd at the age of eight. He eventually was able to afford a proper store-bought banjo with his profits from running an illegal moonshine still.

In the early to mid 20s, Poole’s band The North Carolina Ramblers did their share of rambling. They gigged out west in Montana and as far north as Canada. Poole and company traveled to New York in 1925 -- two years before the Bristol sessions -- where they got a contract with Columbia Records. From that original recording session that July, Poole had his first 78 rpm hit : “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues” backed with “Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister.”

“Deal” went on to become a Flatt & Scruggs bluegrass classic. “Sleep in Your Barn,” which has the basic melody of “Red River Valley” is a hobo song later recorded by bluegrass great Mac Wiseman and honky-tonk titan Hank Thompson. Country-western songwriter Hank Cochran refashioned it into a romantic ballad, “Can I Sleep in Your Arms.” which Willie Nelson included in his landmark Red Headed Stranger.

Sapoznik‘s description of Poole‘s live performances reads like something that would make Howlin’ Wolf or even Jerry Lee Lewis jealous: “By all reports, a Poole show was something to see. Punctuating sly twists on familiar songs with his rat-a-tat picking style, Poole would leap over chairs, turn cartwheels, clog dance on his hands, and shake up audiences with repertoire that was just as surprising. Typical sets would careen from prim, cautionary heart songs to a ditty usually reserved for bawdy house anterooms to fiddle tunes to over-the-top renditions of popular songs, before drawing to a close with a contemplative hymn.”

Indeed, Poole was no purist. He put his stamp on hoary old folk songs as well as Tin Pan Alley pop hits. He could sing historical ballads like “White House Blues” ( a remarkably un-mournful account of the assassination of President McKinley), maudlin sentimental tunes like “Husband and Wife Were Angry One Night” (in which a little girl pleads with her parents not to divorce), funny tunes like “The Hungry Hash House” and “The Man Who Rode a Mule Around the World,” drinking songs like “If the River Was Whiskey” and a call for temperance called “Goodbye Booze,” (which unfortunately Poole didn’t heed.)

And Poole took “coon songs” -- minstrel show novelty songs that made fun of Black people -- and scrubbed them of their racial overtones.

One such case was “It’s Moving Day.” Originally recorded in 1906 by Arthur Collins, it’s a “comically” take on a poor Black getting evicted by a landlord. But when Poole recorded it in 1930, evictions were commonplace for all races. Poole retains the song’s gentle humor, but shucks all of Collins’ shuck-and-jive.

Sapoznik’s description of Poole shouting down talkative audience members (“Did you people come here to talk or to listen?”) reminds one of a volatile scene from Elvis Presley’s movie Jailhouse Rock.

And in a description in the liner notes of a barroom bust by a Rorer descendant, Poole makes 50 Cent look like a wimp.

“One of the officers nabbed Poole. ‘Consider yourself under arrest,’ he told him. Never having been one to run from a fight, Poole replied, ‘Consider, hell!’ and came down across the officer’s head with his banjo, the instrument neck hanging down his front like a necktie. Another policeman pulled a revolver on Poole, who grabbed it as the two wrestled across the floor. The officer managed to get the barrel of the pistol in Charlie’s ear but as he pulled the trigger to kill him, Poole shoved the gun away so that it went off near his mouth. The explosion chipped his front teeth and left his lips bloodied and badly burned.”

The Depression killed Poole’s music career and booze killed Poole. He lost his recording contract by 1931. He died later that year, following a three-month booze spree, which Sapoznik says began as a celebration of an offer to appear in a Hollywood film.

The life and music of Charlie Poole seems like a worthy subject for a film.

TAG! I'M IT!

Marlee MacLeod, bless her heart, sent me this little musical questionnaire game of tag. I've got to answer some seemingly harmless questions about music on my blog, then forward it to five other blogsters, who are obligated by some secret Code of the Web to post their answers and pass it on to five other blogsters. Kind of like a chain letter I guess, though the promise of riches and happiness and the threat of ruin and humiliation are only implied.

Check out Marlee's answers at her blog.

The last CD I bought was: I think I might be forgetting something I picked up in some bargain bin somewhere, but the last ones I remember were the new re-issue of Don't Slander Me by Roky Erickson and Sonic Youth's Sonic Nurse, which I bought on the same day. I think this was after I won The Q People, A Tribute to NRBQ on E-bay.

Song playing right now: "Some Humans Ain't Human" by John Prine. (On shuffle mode right now are Prine's Fair & Square, Georgia Hard by Robbie Fulks and The Appalachians (Companion to the Public Television Series.)

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
1) "Rag Doll" by The Four Seasons
2) "Freddy's Dead" by Curtis Mayfield
3) "It Is No Secret What God Can Do" by Elvis Presley
4 ) "Georgia Lee" by Tom Waits
5) "All Apologies" by Nirvana
5 and a half) "Touch of Evil" by Tom Russell


Five people to whom I'm passing the baton (and who I hope forgive me):

1) Mike at The Unruly Servant
2) Ken at New Mexiken
3) Mary at Tua's Corner
4) Julia at Julia Goldberg's Blog
5) Tom at The Donegal Express