THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Strange Allure of Moonlight Bay

This is one of those great songs that I used to assume was part of every American's DNA. I'm talking about tunes like "The Man on the Flying Trapeze," "I'll See You in My Dreams,"  "Shine on Harvest Moon" or "I'm in the Mood For Love."

Notice I said "used to assume." Maybe I'm getting old and cynical, but these days I wonder if many people under the age of, say, 40 would even recognize those songs.

Kids these days ...

But I didn't come here to grumble. I came to celebrate one of those great old songs, one that pops in and out of my skull when I least expect it:

"Moonlight Bay"

The song, originally published in 1912, features lyrics written by Edward Madden and music by Percy Wenrich.

So where is Moonlight Bay? I found a Moonlight Bay Resort & Campground in Minnesotta. And there is a Moonlight Bay Resort on Spider Lake in Traverse, Mich. Somehow I think these were named for the song, not the other way around. And why didn't anyone ever write, "We were sailing along on Spider Lake ..." ??

The lyrics to "Moonlight Bay" are below. You probably won't recognize the verse. I suspect most people who know the song are familiar only with the chorus.

Voices hum, crooning over Moonlight Bay
Banjos strum, tuning while the moonbeams play

All alone, unknown they find me
Memories like these remind me
Of the girl I left behind me
Down on Moonlight Bay

Chorus
We were sailing along
On Moonlight Bay
We could hear the voices ringing
They seemed to say:
"You have stolen her heart"
"Now don't go 'way!"
As we sang love's old sweet song
On Moonlight Bay

Candle lights gleaming on the silent shore
Lonely nights, dreaming till we meet once more
Far apart, her heart, is yearning
With a sigh for my returning
With the light of love still burning
As in of days of yore


I'm not 100 percent sure this is the earliest version on record, but the American Quartet, featuring Billy Murray, a huge star in his day, recorded it in 1913.



Skip ahead a little more than 30 years, and we find Bing Crosby singing it with a vocal quartet called
The Charioteers -- a group that started out singing gospel but later branching out in to pop and jazz.
The Charioteers was the studio chorus from on der Bingle's Kraft Music Hall between 1942 and 1946. (A few years later Crosby recorded it with his son Gary in a faux Dixieland style.)



In the 1951 Doris Day vehicle called On Moonlight Bay, leading man Gordon MacRae, following a smug tirade against baseball, gives a harsh review of the song that gave the movie its title. My favorite line is when Bow-tie Daddy tells popcorn muching Doris, "That must have been written by a man with a glass of beer in one hand and a rhyming dictionary in the other."



Speaking of beer, often, epecially in cartoons, "Moonlight Bay" is associated with sentimental drunks. In this Porky Pig clip a bunch of drunken cats serenade. (UPDATE: The original video posted featured drunken fish. That one disappeared from YouTube.)



And in this early '60s British variety show, the comedy team of Morecambe & Wise team up with the Fab Moptops to sing ... you guessed it!



And now we have this guy:




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

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Bye Bye Beware of the Blog

For more than 10 years, WFMU's Beware of the Blog has served as a wellspring of  the weird, the wild and the quirky. It didn't have to be Wednesday for Beware of the Blog to get wacky.

It's part of the New Jersey-based independent public radio station WFMU's web of craziness, and many of the station's DJs have contributed blog posts though through the years. But during its time the blog has taken a life of its own.

But here's the bad news: On July 30, station manager Ken Freedman officially posted that the party is over.

You No Longer Need to Beware of the Blog

After ten fun-filled years, we're packing up shop here at WFMU's Beware of the Blog. Many thanks to the dozens of volunteer authors who put in so much time and love into their posts and articles, and thanks to the commenters and trolls who almost feel like part of our dysfunctional family. 

Damn! Another good thing has done gone on. Freedman doesn't really say why the station is ending the blog, though he mentions the thing hasn't had an administrator in several years.

Also, a recent post on WFMU's Facebook page said, "Social micro posts have killed blogs, more or less, but there is great reading and strange truth to be found on the blog archives. Also lots and lots of links to great audio."

So, thanks Twitter! Perhaps WFMU should start a new feed called "Beware the Tweet."

To commemorate the passing of Beware, I'm just going to post a few links to some of my favorite music posts.

* One of coolest was a post about "Country Fuzz" -- the use of fuzz-tone guitars in the 1960s and '70s. Some of the best-known country stars of that era -- Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, (who sounds outright grungy on this one),  Wanda Jackson -- all went fuzzy for a while back then. Greg G, who posted this credits Nashville cat Grady Martin for inventing fuzztone -- with the help of a malfunctioning channel on the control board --  during a Marty Robbins recording session in 1960.

Here's one of the later examples of country fuzz featuring Webb Pierce:





* Speaking of country music, Greg G. also had a post about songs about them women's libbers burning their bras. I've played "Burn Your Bra, Baby" by Benny Johnson many times on the Santa Fe Opry. But there actually are TWO songs by that title, the other being the one by a ventriloquist named Alex Houston and his dummy, Elmer. It'll be worth your while to read the post, which unveils a woman's bizarre conspiracy claim that Alex Houston hypnotized her into becoming part of a government cocaine smuggling ring. It's not clear what role Elmer played in the conspiracy.

* Beware the Blog regular Bob Purse (a musician I wrote about in my very first Wacky Wednesday last year)  is fond of "vanity records" -- self-financed recordings by amateur singers. This is a recent one by a guy named Scotty Scott. Purse posted both the A-side,  "Chattanooga, Nashville, Battlecreek Trek" (my favorite) and the B-side  "Antique Hunter's Craze." The first song includes some real poetry: "One man gets a job, then his brother gets one, too / Then his Uncle Bob, with or without a shoe."

* Back in 2008 Beware had an entire series of posts about Fake Beatles bands. One of my favorites was the one about The Beagles, a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon about a group of rock 'n' roll canines.

Another post in the Fake Beatles series featured a bunch of advertising jingles for Hoagiefest -- a convenience store's big sale sale on hoagie sandwiches.

So the bad news is that there will be no new posts -- no fake Beatles or weird vanity records or anti-feminist rants -- on Beware of the Blog.

But the good news is that Freedman promised: We will keep every single post up here for all of eternity, and someday, WFMU may resume online publishing. 

And you can still find plenty of crazy sounds over at WFMU's Rock & Soul Ichiban (which has its own 24-hour online stream for rockabilly, soul, R&B, garage, surf and hillbilly music.)

Dave & Phil Alvin meet Mister Kicks

UPDATE: Video embeds fixed

There is no Terrell's Tune-Up this week. But as a consolation prize, please enjoy this new video (actually it's only audio) by Dave & Phil Alvin from their upcoming album, Lost Time, scheduled for a mid September release.

The song is "Mister Kicks," which is one of my favorite old Oscar Brown, Jr. tunes.



And here's Oscar Brown, Jr. doing another one of best songs.

TIED FOR FIRST PLACE!

Not the actual award

I want to thank the good folks who voted in the Santa Fe Reporter Best of Santa Fe Poll for choosing this humble blog as one of the best "Arts, Music or Food" blogs in the city. The Stephen W. Terrell [Music] Web Log was tied with Victor Romero's The Santa Fe V.I.P. for first place.

Arts, music or food. I'm guessing it was those tasty Rice-a-Roni recipes I posted here a few months ago that did the trick.

The Reporter said:

We all probably know the Terrell win is no surprise—he’s a downright local institution and the kind of writer we all aspire to be and is prolific, to say the least. Kudos as well to Victor Romero and his site that basically makes it easier to go out at night. Y’all are both VIPs in the eyes of this town.

All I can say is thanks.

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday Charlie Christian!

Charlie Christian at work

Yesterday, July 29, would have been jazz guitar pioneer Charlie Christian's 99th birthday.

That's a good excuse to re-run an old column I did about Christian, a fellow native Oklahoman.

Read on ...

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
October 26, 2002


This isn’t a record review. It’s a tirade, so get ready.

While listening to the wonderful music in Charlie Christian: The Genius of the Electric Guitar, a four-disc box set and reading the booklet, I got seriously angry.

Charlie Christian was the first great electric guitarist. Ever. He played with Benny Goodman circa 1939 to 1942, the year Christian died of tuberculosis. Virtually all the tracks in the box are by Goodman’s band, which, at least in Christian’s early days, included Lionel Hampton on vibes and Lester Young on sax.

In reading the booklet, I learned Charlie Christian was from Oklahoma City, my hometown. An essay by Les Paul even tells how Charlie sat in with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys in OKC.

What angers me is the fact that I didn’t know that until now. I hadn’t even heard of Christian until my early 20s, probably the first time I read an interview with B.B. King, who worshiped him.

It is inexcusable that no teacher in all those years I went to school in Oklahoma (up to the ninth grade) ever mentioned that one of the true innovators of jazz was from Douglas High School, just across town. No teacher ever mentioned that it was possible for even a poor black kid from OKC to go to the top of his profession, as Charlie Christian did.

Maybe it’s because my worthless history teacher was too busy preaching the virtues of George Wallace and bemoaning the fact that Vietnam War protesters weren’t being tried for treason.

Maybe it’s because Charlie Christian was black. Segregation was dying hard in Oklahoma in the 1960s.

Or maybe it was nothing sinister. It’s probably just that the teachers were too unhip, too thick and culturally crippled even to know that a local kid had grown up to play in Benny Goodman’s band. Still ...

We were never taught about Woody Guthrie in Oklahoma either, which also is a stupid shame, but given the twisted anti-commie paranoia of the day, I can understand that omission far more than I can understand ignoring Charlie Christian.

So Charlie Christian: The Genius of the Electric Guitar isn’t just great music. To me, it’s small reparation for something I was cheated out of as a youngster.