WACKY WEDNESDAY: Songs from the Rubber Room

If you want to get an accurate portrait of mental health problems and psychiatric institutions, don't go looking at popular songs about the subject.

The following tunes aren't exactly what you'd call enlightened. Most of them are based on cruel stereotypes and weird assumptions about psychological problems.

So if you don't like dark humor, just consider this a historical look at old attitudes.

And please don't call the men with the butterfly nets.

Let's start with a jazzy classic, "Twisted" by Annie Ross, which I first came to by way of Joni Mitchell (whose version on Court & Spark included a cameo from Cheech & Chong.) But I prefer this video of Annie on Playboy's Penthouse backed by Count Basie. 

"Insane Asylum" is a classic blues duet of Willie Dixon and Koko Taylor.



Behold a live performance of my very favorite Alice cooper song: "The Ballad of Dwight Fry."



Here's a song my crony Gregg Turner originally performed with The Angry Samoans, This is a more recent version of "I Lost My Mind."

 

Turner's actually the one who turned me on this next song more than 20 years ago. He said he first heard it done by Elvis Costello. But it was written by country giant Leon Payne, best known for writing "Lost Highway" for Hank Williams. This version is by country singer Eddie Noack.

  

But the major country classic of craziness is Porter Wagoner's somewhat autobiographical "The Rubber Room."

  

On his final studio album, 2007's Wagonmaster, Porter revisited his "rubber room" days with this moving song, "Committed to Parkview," which was written by Johnny Cash.



My favorite madhouse music in the realm of hip hop is The Geto Boys' "My Mind's Playing Tricks on Me."



Bo Diddley is CRAZY!



Finally some of you longtime readers probably expected me to include Napoleon XIV's mid '60s smash "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha" in a blog post about loony-bin songs.

But that's just too predictable. Instead, let's flip out and play the flip-side of that hit record, one I've never hear played on the radio. It's called "Aaaaah-aah Yawa em Ekat ot Gnimoc Re'yeht," which is "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha" played backward. Caution: You might hear the voice of Satan in this early example of backward masking.

 

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, January 17, 2016
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M.
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres

Monkey Song by The Big Bopper

Parchment Farm by Dead Moon

The Lover's Curse by The A-Bombs

Which End is Up by Miriam

Ice Queen by JJ & The Real Jerks

Arthur's Hooked by King Mud

Nerja' sawa (نرجع سوا ) by Mazhot

Don't Tease Me by Question Mark & The Mysterians

Smack My Bitch Up by Richard Cheese

 

I Wish You Would by David Bowie

Starman by Dewy Cox

Blackstar by David Bowie

 

Beaujolais by Javier Escovedo

Call the Police by The Oblivians

Hello Mabel by The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band

 

A Long Journey by Leo Welch

I Got a Razor by Memphis Slim & Willie Dixon

Worn My Body for So Long by T-Model Ford & Gravel Road

Compared to What by Les McCann & Eddie Harris

You Can't Judge a Book by It's Cover by Bo Diddley

Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat by Bob Dylan

One Kind Favor by Canned Heat

 

The Eternal Question by The Grandmothers

Oh No / The Orange County Lumber Truck by The Mothers of Invention

I'm Your Man by Nick Cave

This One's from the Heart by Tom Waits & Crystal Gayle

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

 

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THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

 

Friday, January 15, 2016
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens

Bear Creek Blues by John Prine

Cool Rockin' Loretta by Joe Ely

Wanted Man/DIYBYOB by The Waco Brothers

Bloody Mary Morning by Willie Nelson

Get It On Down the Line by Danny Barnes

Move It by T. Tex Edwards

 

Everything it Takes by Loretta Lynn with Elvis Costello

Honky Tonk Merry Go Round by The Stumbleweeds

Family Man by Robbie Fulks

Roll Truck Roll by Terry Allen

Hot Dog Baby by Hasil Adkins

Honky Tonkin' by The The

Cheap Motel by Southern Culture on the Skids

Number One with a Bullet by Freakwater

 

Let's Do Wrong Tonight by Simon Stokes

Whiskey Drinkin' Women by Cornell Hurd

Jason Fleming by Roger Miller

Sister Kate by Oh Lazarus

Payday by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks

Ruby Are You Mad by The Osborne Brothers

Wine Wine Wine by Dale Watson

High As You Can Be by Asylum Street Spankers

Put Something in the Pot, Boy by The Five Strings

Demon Rum by Legendary Shack Shakers

 

Indoor Fireworks by Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit

That's the Way Love Goes by Merle Haggard

Lord, I’m In Your Care by Grey DeLisle & Murry Hammond

Wreck on the Highway by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with Roy Acuff

Star Motel Blues by Kell Robertson

Jimmy Brown the Newsboy by Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs

Ebony Eyes by Orion

Tell Me Why by Elvis Presley

CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday Mississippi Fred

Fred McDowell, know to the blues and folk worlds as "Mississippi" Fred McDowell (though he was born and he died in Tennessee), had a birthday this week. He would have turned 112 on Tuesday, Jan. 12. (Thanks to Putney on the KUNM Blues Show for reminding us of that fact on his show last night.)

On a 1969 album, McDowell declared, "I do not play no rock 'n' roll." That, of course didn't deter The Rolling Stones from recording McDowell's song "You Got to Move."


But McDowell also did not play no delta blues. Living most of his days in Como, Miss., in the northern part of the state (about 50 miles south of Memphis), he was a purveyor of what is known as the Hill Country blues, a sound later associated with R. L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and Jessie Mae Hemphill.

I like this description on a site called Hill Country Harmonica:


Hill country blues is NOT the stuff that Muddy Waters took to Chicago.  It's the stuff that stayed behind in Mississippi.  This may be why Junior Kimbrough's music sounds sadder, and uses fewer chords, than Muddy's:  because the lives of its creators were more circumscribed.  The hill country elders didn't have the big hits that Muddy, Wolf, Little Walter, B. B. King enjoyed.  They didn't have tour buses.  They didn't play the Regal and the Apollo.  They didn't wear matching suits.  They wore truckers' caps and cowboy boots. They stayed home.  (Actually, an important correction:  R. L. Burnside DID move to Chicago in 1944 and stayed there for about 15 years.  He fled back home to the Mississippi hills after his father, two brothers, and uncle were all murdered in Chicago within the span of one year.  Hill Country bluesmen were the guys for whom the escape-to-the-promised-land thing just didn't work out.)  These men farmed, drove tractors, worked for themselves.

McDowell was old enough to have recorded back in the '20s and early '30s, the era of Robert Johnson, Charley Patton and Son House. But he wasn't. In the '20s, he busked around the streets and Memphis and when he settled down in Como he would play weekend parties and fish fries. But he earned his living as a farmer.


But he didn't record until 1959 when he was "discovered" by Alan Lomax, who released several of his songs on a folk music series on Atlantic Records. A few years later  Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records came calling and recorded more of the singing sharecropper. McDowell became a regular in the folk music revival circuit, playing campuses and coffee houses. he was part of the American Folk Blues Festival tour in Europe, which also featured blues titans like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Slim and others.

In 1969, McDowell recorded an album for Capitol Records, I Do Not Play No Rock 'n' Roll. He played electric guitar and was backed by a pretty rockin' no-rock rhythm section. Some purists hated it. I loved it.

By this time he was attracting the attention of rockers like The Stones and Bonnie Raitt, who recorded a medley of his songs "Write Me a Few of Your Lines" and "Kokomo Me Baby."

McDowell wasn't able to enjoy this recognition for long, however. He died of cancer in Memphis in 1972.

But his music lives on. Here are a few for Fred:



This next one is from the American Folk Blues Festival.



McDowell played gospel as well as blues.



This is a song by the original Sonny Boy Williamson. I first heard it by The Grateful Dead, and later Johnny Winter.



I like Fred's version even better than The Stones' ...

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Marxist Takeover

There aren't very many wackier than the Marx Brothers, And their classic comedies -- and even their not-so-classic comedies -- were filled with music. Here are some of my favorite songs from those movies.

First from the 1939 film At the Circus



A cowboy song from Go West



A classic tune by Groucho as Captain Spaulding from Animal Crackers



Chico and Harpo get down in The Big Store



And decades before the rock 'n' roll versions, Harpo was playing a serious harp rendition of "Blue Moon.' (another one from At the Circus)



UPDATED 9:10 am Thanks to Chuck for pointing out this omission. From Horse Feathers ...