TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, September, 2005
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
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
Goin' on Down to the BBQ by Drywall
You You You! by Kevin Coyne & The Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Beautiful World by Devo
Hot Dog by The Detroit Cobras
Steal that Car by Alice Cooper
Gatorade by Heavy Trash
Something Broken in the Promised Land by Wayne Kramer
The Idiot Bastard Son by The Mothers of Invention

Treat Her Right by Los Straightjackets starring Mark Lindsay
King of the Rodeo by Kings of Leon
Already Gone by Tarbox Ramblers
Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat by Bob Dylan
The Bleeding Heart Show by The New Pornographers
Maps by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Tony Rome by Nancy Sinatra

NIGHT TRAIN TO NASHVILLE SEGMENT
Nashville Jumps by Cecil Grant
Boogie Woogie Jockey by Jimmy Sweeney
Anna by Arthur Alexander
Dr. Feel-Good by Dr. Feelgood & The Interns
Just Walkin' in the Rain by The Prisonaires
I'm Free (The Prisoner's Song) by Johnny Bragg
You Better Change by Hal & Jean
Sunny by Bobby Hebb
Just Sittin' Here Drinkin' by Christine Kittrell
Next to Me by Clyde McPhatter
She Can Rock by Little Ike

Poppy Nogood & The Phantom Band by Terry Riley
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

ON THE BOOKS

My sneak preview at an advance copy of Gov. Bill Richardson's autobiography Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life can be found HERE


If You want to pre-order on Amazon.com, it'll cost you you $17.13.

But a word to bargain hunters: You might want to wait, because these poltiical autobiographies have a pretty short shelf life. You can hardcover copies of John Kerry's 2003 page-turner, A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America on Amazon for as low as 51 cents.

CHECK OUT GUITAR GEORGE, HE KNOWS ALL THE CHORDS

Rock critic J.D. Considine had some interesting comments about President Bush's infamous guitar phot op (taken with a guitar that Nashville hat Mark Wills gave him as New Orleans was sinking.)

Sayeth Considine:

"What bugs me about the photo, however, is that it gets described as showing the president “playing guitar,” when at best he’s only posing, trying to look like he’s a-pickin’. How do I know? Just look at his left hand. Like many a duff guitarist, he’s formed the hand shape for an open-G chord — except that instead of having his fingers in place to play G (third fret on the lower E string) and B (second fret on the A string), he’s a fret off, at G-sharp and C. His little finger may be adding an A (fifth fret on the upper E string), but it’s hard to be certain. In any case, were he actually to strum that guitar, the result would be utter dischord, revealing him as someone who doesn’t know diddley about guitar. Instead, he poses quietly, and only instrument geeks like me notice."

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, September 23, 2005
Webcasting on KSFR
Santa Fe, NM
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos
I Hung it Up by Junior Brown
Roly Poly by Asleep at the Wheel with the Dixie Chicks
Brand New Heartache by Chris & Herb
Bloody Mary Morning by Willie Nelson
Cryin' Drunk by The Old 97s
The 12th of Never by Marti Brom
Walk That Lonesome Valley by Porter Wagoner

Prison on Route 41 by Iron and Wine & Calexico
On the Sly by The Waco Brothers
Money Like Water by Kevin Koyne & The Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Black Soul Choir by 16 Horsepower
What Did the Deep Sea Say by Dave Alvin
Cowgirl Hall of Fame by Joe West
Between Lust and Watching TV by Cal Smith
I'm Going to the City by Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists

Cry Like a Baby by Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham
Dark End of the Street by Frank Black
Kiss Her Once For Me by Delbert McClinton
The Outsider by Rodney Crowell
All Dried Up by Jon Nolan
Keep Your Hat on Jenny by Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez
All You Rounders Better Lie Down by Clothesline Revival with Fred Fox Lee

Rain Keeps a Fallin' by Josh Lederman y Los Diablos
Acequia by Boris McCutcheon
Cornbread Nation by Tim O'Brien
Some Human's Ain't Human by John Prine
Love is Like a Butterfly by Dolly Parton
Wilderness by Peter Case
Afternoon by Eleni Mandell
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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

TERRELL'S TUNEUP: TAKE THAT NIGHT TRAIN TO NASHVILLE

A version of this appeared in The Santa Fe New Mexican
Sept. 23, 2005
Nashville streets like 16th Avenue and “Lower Broad” (Broadway, that is, home of Tootsie‘s Orchid Lounge and just half a block away from the Ryman Auditorium) have been immortalized in song. But there’s another road in Nashville that nurtured a lesser known but amazingly vital world of music: Jefferson Street.

The Jefferson Street district, up to the 1970s, was an thriving business area for Nashville’s Black population. Among those thriving businesses, naturally were nightclubs where jazz, blues, R&B and soul music filled the air.


The musicians and the songs that roared on Jefferson Street in the mid 20th Century make up the core of the project known as Night Train to Nashville, Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970. The two-disc first volume was released last year -- and won a Grammy for best historical recording. The two-disc Volume Two was released just last week and it’s equally tasty.

While the Nashville R&B artists were undeniably exuberant, judging by the Night Train series, they were more derivative than original. On Volume Two for instance Little Ike’s “She Can Rock” sounds disturbingly similar to Little Richard. Roscoe Shelton’s “Strain in My Heart” is in the early soul style of Solomon Burke and Bobby “Blue Bland.” Johnny Jones & The King Casuals -- which at one point included a young Jimi Hendrix -- do an admirable take on the Stax-Volt sound with their 1967 instrumental “Soul Poppin’” (produced by Stax man William Bell), while you can hear mucho Motown in songs like Jimmy Church’s “Right on Time” or “That’s My Man” by Marion James.

Helen Foster covered the 1952 Jo Stafford hit “You Belong to Me” (“See the pyramids along the Nile/Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle …”) for the R&B market. The song was co-written by country bandleader Pee Wee King.

On the other hand, Volume Two contains songs recorded in Nashville (and some recorded elsewhere by Nashville singers) that later were big hits for others.

There’s a tune that Elvis Presley would later knock out of the park: Bernard Hardison‘s “Too Much.” (Volume One had Arthur Gunter’s pre-Presley “Baby Let’s Play House.”)

Night Train Volume Two includes Christine Kittrell’s gritty “I’m a Woman” (Peggy Lee had the hit); “Little Darlin’” by The Gladiolas, a South Carolina group who recorded this in Nashville before it became the signature tune for Canadian doo-woppers The Diamonds; and Freddy North’s “She’s All I Got” (co written by Gary “U.S.” Bonds and Jerry “Swamp Dogg” Williams), which later became a hit for country star Johnny Paycheck.

And Nashville was the home to a brooding soul man named Arthur Alexander, whose style didn’t seem to copy anyone. His song “Anna” (included on Volume One) became famous when The Beatles covered it. On this volume, Alexander sings a haunting ballad from 1962 called “Soldier of Love,” with the chorus “Lay down your arms and surrender to me …”

There are a couple of tracks here of R&B stars who came to Nashville to record with the famous C&W session musicians -- the boys who made the noise on 16th Avenue. Esther Phillips soulful voice cuts right through the strings and white-bread chorus of “Release Me” (a song previously covered by both Ray Price and Kitty Wells). Even better is Clyde McPhatter’s “Next to Me,” whose tenor soars over the gospel-style piano.

Among the standouts on Volume Two are Johnny Bragg’s “I’m Free (The Prisoner’s Song)” an autobiographical tale in which, following a spoken introduction that sounds straight out of a ’50s news reel, Bragg tells how he was “servin’ 99 in the penitentiary/but the governor came along and set me free.

Indeed, Bragg’s story is similar to that of Leadbelly, who in 1934 charmed Gov. O.K. Allen of Louisiana into releasing him early. (And some say the same scenario played out a few years before with Leadbelly and a Texas governor.)

According to the African American Registry web site, Bragg was serving six (!) 99-year sentences for rape when Tennessee Gov. Frank Clement heard him sing and commuted his sentence in 1959. Can you imagine the political poop storm Bill Richardson -- or any contemporary governor -- would face if he released a convicted rapist because he liked the guy’s music?

Bragg later went on to lead a group called The Prisonaires, who recorded for Sun Records. “I’m Free” is a home recording that sounds like a spiritual in which Bragg is accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. By the last he’s singing in a striking falsetto.

But I think my favorite song here is two minutes and 22 seconds of pure pleasure from 1963 called “You Better Change” by a duo called Hal & Jean. The song, sung by Hal Gilbert, is a basic take-off on Ray Charles’ “What I Say.”

What makes the song is the over-miked Jean Gilbert, who provides humorous asides (“you talkin’ through your head …”) and has one fo the sexiest giggles ever recorded in human history.

Basically this whole collection, like last year’s first volume, is one big sexy giggle.

Night Train on the radio: I’ll be playing songs from the Night Train to Nashville collections Sunday on Terrell’s Sound World, 10 p.m. to midnight Sunday on KSFR 90.7 FM (and streaming live on www.ksfr.org) (The Night Train segment will start at 11 p.m.)

Speaking of KSFR, the annual fall fundraiser starts in October. Get your checkbooks ready, because Santa Fe’s public radio station won’t last without the support of the Santa Fe public. And who else is going to play the crazy stuff I review in this column?