One hundred twenty-three years ago today Jimmy Durante, the gravel-voiced star of Vaudeville, radio and television and movies, was born in New York City.
This son of talian immigrants was known as a comedian whose trademarks were his beat-up hat and his huge bulbous nose (which he called "the Schnozzola").
But before his career as a comic and an actor, Durante was a musician. According to his bio on the Red Hot Jazz site:
Before Jimmy Durante became one of the most famous and lovable entertainers of the Twentieth Century, he was a hot piano player and bandleader, Durante was greatly influenced by Scott Joplin and had his first success in show business as a Ragtime piano player starting around 1911. He was billed as "Ragtime Jimmy" and played in New York City and Coney Island.
Playing ragtime piano on Coney Island n 1911. Even if I knew nothing else about him, that alone would make me love Jimmy Durante.
He died in 1980, but his ghost still haunts strange corners of YouTube, So let's honor Jimmy on this Wacky Wednesday with some of his wackier tunes.
In 1934, appearing in the movie Palooka, Durante first performed what would become his signature song, "Inka Dinka Doo"
Three decades later, Durante would perform the song on TV with a strange novelty artist of the mid '60s called Mrs. Miller.
Also in the '60s Durante weighed in on the flying saucer phenomenon
He dabbled in patriotic children's music
And he dueted with Louis Armstrong
So goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, and happy birthday, Ragtime Jimmy, wherever you are."
Sunday, February 7, 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
Shake Your Hips by Billy Boy Arnold
Clear Night for Love by The Rockin' Guys
He Looks Like a Psycho by The Electric Mess
Hey Little Girl by The Dead Boys
All by Myself by Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers
Your Haunted Head by Concrete Blonde
Outrun the Law by The Thingz
Heathen Child by Grinderman
Bowie Medley by The Cherry Drops
It Ain't Easy by Javier Escovedo
I Want Answers by The Fleshtones
New Orleans by The Plimsouls with The Fleshtones
Laredo (A Small Dark Something) by Jon Dee Graham
He's Doin' It by The Gories
Poor Poor Pitiful Me by Warren Zevon
Advance Romance by Frank Zappa
Pablo Picasso by Jonathan Richman
Mama Guitar by The Oblivians
I Can Only Give You Everything by King Mud
Mammer Jammer by Don & Dewy
Disease by Dead Cat Stimpy
Matamoros by Afghan Whigs
Sand by OP8
Deep Dark Vanishing Train by Mark Lanegan Band
Don't Call Me Mark Chapman by Julian Cope
It's Not My Time to Go by Dan Hick & The Hot Licks
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, February 5, 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
Worried Man Blues by George Jones
Artificial Flowers by Cornell Hurd Band
Step Right This Way (Baby I'm You Man) by DM Bob & The Deficits
Let's Waste Another Evening by Josh Lederman y Los Diablos
Where's the Dress by Moe Bandy & Joe Stampley
Little Ramona Gone Hillbilly Nuts by BR5-49
We Always Fight When We Drink Gin by Austin Lounge Lizards
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican February 5, 2016
It’s been so long since The Waco Brothers released an album of new material I was beginning to wonder whether the standard-bearers of Bloodshot Records’ “insurgent country” were going the way of the Branch Davidians — without the spectacular finale.
After all, since 2005’s Freedom and Weep, the only albums the group has released are a live record (Waco Express: Live & Kickin’ at Schuba’s Tavern, Chicago) in 2008 and a collaboration with alternative country singer Paul Burch (The Great Chicago Fire) in 2012.
But now the good folks at Bloodshot have given us a double shot of Wacomania. In December came a limited-edition live album called Cabaret Showtime, and set for release later this month is Going Down in History, that long-awaited album of all-new material.
For the uninitiated, The Waco Brothers came to be in the early ’90s, forming in Chicago, where Jon Langford of The Mekons had settled. Most of his current bandmates — including fellow Brits Tracy Dear and Alan “Sprockets” Doughty plus Wisconsin native Dean Schlabowske (aka Deano Waco) — have been in the Waco Brothers since the beginning.
At first they were basically a Langford side project, gigging in Chicago and covering lots of classic country songs (“for free beer,” or so the legend goes).
Langford’s love for country music is sincere. As a Mekon, he helped facilitate the shotgun wedding of punk rock and country music with albums such as Fear and Whiskey and Honky Tonkin’, back in the 1980s.
With The Wacos, he rocked the country far harder than The Mekons ever did while somehow remaining truer to the source material. And then Langford, Schlabowske, and the others started writing all these great songs especially for The Waco Brothers. (Their original tunes are officially credited to the band, so it’s hard to determine who actually wrote what.) And when Chicago’s Bloodshot Records was born in 1994, The Wacos were a natural match. They rightfully remain the label’s flagship band.
The first thing I noticed about Going Down in History is that the band is continuing the path of its last few studio albums, jettisoning many of its overt country touches. Steel guitarist Mark Durante has been gone for years now (and that’s a loss). And to be honest, unlike their earliest albums — To the Last Dead Cowboy and, especially, Cowboy in Flames, which whomped me over the head right off the bat, — it took a few listens for the new one to grow on me. But grow it did. The raw, muscular-but-melodic, roots-informed rock in the end is just hard to resist.
The opening cut, “DIYBYOB,” sung by Schlabowske, contains a clever twist on an old sea dog adage: “Sailors take warning, red eyes in the morning/You can’t kill us, we’re already dead.” There’s a vague reference to national politics, which Deano instantly backs away from (“Move along, there’s nothing here to see”), while the refrain seems to speak of a failed relationship (“DIYBYOB, there’s nothing left ’tween you and me”).
But by the last verse of the song, the singer proudly clings to the punk-rock ethos that still propels him: “On the day after the music died/Can’t take all the credit, but we tried/You can’t cut the power, you can’t turn out the lights/We’ll keep the party goin’ through the night.”
“We Know It” starts off with some foreboding, bluesy noodling but quickly turns into a hard-charging, almost paranoid rant by Langford: “We know it when we see it/We know it when it calls/We know it can’t be good for us/We know we want it all.”
One of the chief delights by Langford here is “Building Our Own Prison,” which takes a souped-up Bo Diddley beat and makes it more chaotic, while Langford sings about “big boxes” ringing the town, donating his shopping list to science, and nailing “my body to the temple door.”
The Wacos do two cover songs on Going Down in History. One is The Small Faces’ “All or Nothing,” which sounds as close to a soul ballad as you’re ever likely to hear from the band. (They dedicate this to Faces’ keyboard man Ian McLagan, a friend of the band, who died in 2014.)
And they end the album with a rocking version of Jon Dee Graham’s “The Orphan’s Song.” At the end of the song they playfully alter the refrain, turning “I will be your brother for the night” into “I’ll be your Waco Brother for tonight.”
Sounds like a deal.
As for Cabaret Showtime, this is a lighter-hearted affair on which The Wacos romp through some of the great country tunes that inspired the group all those years ago: Buck Owens’ “Tiger by the Tail,” Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Wanted Man” (which was actually written by Bob Dylan), and Gram Parsons’ “Ooh Las Vegas” are all here. There’s even a country version of bluesman Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What You Want Me to Do” (which is called “You Got Me Running” here).
My personal favorite on this album is a fairly obscure George Jones song, “Girl at the End of the Bar.” Langford practically spits the lyrics (“She had so many hard knocks/She don’t play the jukebox/She’s lived all those sad songs firsthand”) just before he plays probably the prettiest guitar solos I’ve ever heard him play.
But it’s not all hillbilly hijinks on Cabaret. There are not one but two Waco-ized T. Rex covers (“Debora” and a garagey “20th Century Boy”). And — believe it or not — The Waco Brothers play Pink Floyd! It’s an instrumental called “Interstellar Overdrive,” which appeared on Floyd’s 1967 debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
So no, this album isn’t for country purists. But purists have never been The Wacos’ top demographic target.
Yvonne DeCarlo live in San Pedro
(in her wild, sexy pre-Lily Munster days)
named Mary Ingraham in a response to a request by President Franklin Roosevelt for a program to provide moral support and entertainment for armed services members. (The U.S. would not get directly involved in World War II for another 10 months, but the distant drums of war were getting louder.)
Although the organization was -- and still is -- involved in many activities to help the folks who serve in the military, it's most famous for its Camp Shows -- sending singers, dancers and comedians to entertain the troops at domestic military facilities as well as in war zones.
So today we salute the USO with some videos of some of those performances.
Here's a singer named Frances Lanford (no relation to The Mekons' Jon Langford) singing "I'll Be Seeing You" on the Solomon Islands in 1944. That's Bob Hope introducing her.
Speaking of Bob Hope, in this clip he introduces four singers -- Dick Powell, Yvonne DeCarlo (yikes! She doesn't look monstrous at all here), Dale Evans (without Roy Rogers) and Danny Kaye. They're playing for sailors wose aircraft carrier is being repaired at the San Pedro shipyards during WWII.
This video features footage of the great Al Jolson performing at USO. The audio however is a radio performance of a song called "There'll Never Be Another War." The video begins with Jolson pitching war stamps. He starts singing about a minute and 20 seconds in.
I guess Jolson was wrong about there never being another war.
Jumping ahead to Viet Nam, here's Bob Hope introducing a "canary" named Jan Daley in Long Binh, Viet Nam. (This would have had to have been 1970 or later because she's singing the theme from Love Story.) Here Ms. Daley mercilessly teases some poor soldier (who doesn't seem to be complaining)
