WACKY WEDNESDAY: It's 16th Amendment Day!

One hundred and three years ago today, the states of Delaware, Wyoming and my beloved New Mexico voted to ratify the 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the one that gives the federal government authority to impose a personal income tax on its citizens.

Delaware is recognized as the 36th state to ratify -- the one that put it it over the top. I don't know whether Delaware did it before us due to their earlier time zone or whether our state Senate got preoccupied introducing guests in the gallery or the House got detoured by some memorial honoring the city of Pie Town.

Whatever the reason, Delaware got the credit. Or blame if you really hate taxes.

Here are a few songs by American artists honoring the 16th Amendment.

We'll start with bluesman Robert Cray's "1040 Blues'.



Next up is The Man in Black with "After Taxes."



Johnny Paycheck sings about his friends at the Internal Revenue Service.




Here's an assault on taxes from the left -- and a funky one at that -- by Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings



But here's a different kind of message about taxes. In 1942, as the U.S. was fighting World War II, the IRS commissioned Irving Berlin to write a little reminder that paying taxes is patriotic. Here in his song "I Paid My Income Tax Today," comedian Danny Kaye sings lyrics like:

See those bombers in the sky?
Rockefeller helped to build ’em, so did I
I paid my income tax today

Bombs away ...

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, January 31, 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

Puzzlin' Evidence by Talking Heads

Oblivion by Mudhoney

Slow Death by Flamin' Groovies

Sea of Blasphemy by Black Lips

Get Sick by Scratch Buffalo

Violent Shiver by Benjamin Booker

Down the Road by Dead Moon

Heartbreak Hotel by Roky Erikson

Take it Easy, Greasy by Bobby Charles

Hollywood Harlot For Miniature Golf by John Trubee & The Ugly Janitors Of America

 

Highway 666 by Left Wing Fascists

Uranium Rock by The Cramps

That's Your Problem by Mal Thursday & The Cheetahs

Hotdog (Watch Me Eat) by Detroit Cobras

I Want a Hotdog for My Roll by Butterbeans & Susie

Little Sally Tease by The Standells

Baby Don't Tear My Clothes by The Raunch Hands

TV Eye by The Stooges

 

Paul Kanter and Signe Anderson Memorial set

All Songs by Jefferson Airplane

The Other Side of This Life

Chauffeur Blues

The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil

Blues From an Airplane

 

I Just Wanna Make Love to You by Wild Billy Chyldish & CTMF

You Never Had it Better by Electric Prunes

Circles by Ty Segall

The Mystery Trend by Julian Cope

Where the Wild Roses Grow by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Jozo by Sondogo

Tomorrow Night by Tom Jones

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, January 29, 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

Cocaine Blues by Johnny Cash

Rainy Day Woman by Waylon Jennings

Hot Dang by Dale Watson

Whatever Happened to Jesus (and Maybellene) by Terry Allen

What the People Want by Freakwater

Cold by Legendary Shack Shakers

The Sinner by Anthony Leon & The Chain

Run Back to Him by Brent Hoodenpyle

Receiver by Waco Brothers

 

Cherry Bomb by Jimmy & The Mustangs

Busted by Two Tons of Fire

11 Months and 29 Days by Johnny Paycheck

Back Street Affair by Brennen Leigh & Jesse Dayton

Beatin' My Head by Jayke Orvis

Honky Tonk Stardust Cowboy by Bill Hearne

Never No More by The Satellites

High Cotton by Bobby Osborne

 

Dyin' Crapshooter Blues by David Bromberg

Fuck Work by Asylum Street Spankers

Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine by John Prine & Mac Wiseman

Manifold by Charlie Parr

Maybe Mexico by Jerry Jeff Walker

America is a Hard Religion by Robbie Fulks

Lovesick Blues by Artie Hill & The Long Gone Daddies

Wasted Mind by Danny Barnes

 

Life Sentence Blues by Rachel Brooke

Hank Williams' Ghost by Darrell Scott

I'm Coming Home by Cynthia Becker

You'll Never Be Mine Again by Levon Helm

Drinkin' Thing by Gary Stewart

Feel Like Goin' Home by Charlie Rich

CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets

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THROWBACK THURSDAY: You're the Dirty Hack That Shot Your Woman Down

Last night in the Roundhouse news room, after a long day of covering the Legislature,  I was talking to my old friend and fellow newsdog Stuart Dyson and made some reference to a line from "Cocaine Blues" which we both know mainly from Johnny Cash's version on his Folsom Prison album.

Stuart couldn't resist and responded with some other verses from the song. I followed suit as did he, until we'd practically recited the entire song -- albeit not in the correct order. The other reporters in the room, most of which are much younger than Stuart and me, probably just wrote us off as deranged old fools babbling in some secret codger code -- strange talk of  "hop joints," smoking pills, and "dirty hacks" who shoot their women down,

But who cares? It's a great old song. Here's how Johnny sung it:



But -- as longtime Throwback Thursday readers probably figured -- Cash wasn't the first to do this song.

"Cocaine Blues" was written in the late 1940s by a western-sing singer named T.J. "Red" Arnall, who recorded it with his band W. A. Nichol's Western Aces. This version is fairly similar to the one Cash would do 20 years later -- but without Johnny's crazy edge (and without referring to the victim in the song as a "bad bitch.")



But the song even pre-dates Red Arnall. And the murdered woman has a name: Little Sadie.

Yes, "Cocaine Blues" basically is a drug-fired rewrite of  the old murder ballad "Little Sadie." You can hear that in Doc Watson's version.




And there is another murder ballad that shares a lot of elements with "Little Sadie' and "Cocaine Blues" called "Bad Lee Brown" (not to be confused with "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.")

Here's a version from more than 85 years ago by John Dilleshaw, who was in a band called Seven Foot Dilly and His Dill Pickles. (Thanks to Murder Ballad Monday for pointing me to this song.)



In the early '40s Woody Guthrie recorded "Bad Lee Brown" and it sounded a lot more like what would become "Cocaine Blues" -- even though there was no mention of the white powder.



So come on, you gotta listen unto me, lay off that whiskey, and let that cocaine be.


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

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Eat a Hot Dog!

I had this friend named Big Norm back in college. Sometimes he misunderstood lyrics to popular songs. Sometimes I think he did it on purpose. For instance, at the dawn of the disco scourge, Big Norm thought that the spoken refrain of Van McCoy's "Do the Hustle" was "Eat a Hot dog!"

Goofy, I know. But sometimes when I'm craving a good old American frankfurter, deep in my skull I hear Van McCoy's music and Big Norm's voice telling me what to do.

And sometimes I think of some of the great American songs about hot dogs posted below. Except some of these might not actually be about food, per se.

Let's kick it off with a rockabilly classic by one Corky Jones, which was a pseudonym for the one and only Buck Owens. (Back in the '50s, Buck tried to conceal his identity as not to offend his country fans. But by the end of the 80s he re-recorded this song under his own name and made it a title song of one of hi last studio albums.)




In the mid 1920s, Butterbeans & Susie always had hot dogs on their menu.



Bessie Smith had a similar idea a few years later.



Then there was Hasil Adkins



And this song by The Detroit Cobras practically could be the theme song for the American Wiener Institute.