I'm in the mood for some musical bloodlust ... in the folk tradition.
Here's a handful of proud old traditional songs that deal in senseless violence, mayhem, misogyny and murder.
Songs that make you proud to be an American.
Let's start out with "Wild Bill Jones" as performed by a gent named Frank Proffitt, a Tennessee banjo picker who is credited with popularizing another great murder ballad, "Tom Dooley."
Bluesman King Solomon Hill sings "Whoopee Blues," a grim little threat to a woman who done him wrong.
"Tell me you been gone all day, that you may make whoopee all night; / I'm gonna take my razor and cut your late hours / You wouldn't think I'd be servin' you right ..."Devil's got 90,000 women, he just need one more..."
"Delia's Gone" is normally associated with Johnny Cash. But the song goes back at least to 1900, when 14-year-old Delia Green was murdered by her 15-year-old boyfriend in Savannah, Georgia. This is a calypso version by Bahama-born Blake Alphonso Higgs, also known as "Bind Blake' (Not to be confused with the American Arthur "Blind" Blake.)
And this is one that I know best by The Everly Brothers and, later, Peter Case. But like the others here, "Down in the Willow Garden" goes back much further. One weird little "folk process" things about this song: In many versions, including the one below by Charlie Monroe, the singer says he had a bottle of burgandy wine. But in others, like The Everlys' it's "burglar's wine." Somehow that seems more evil and mysterious.
This next one goes back centuries to the British Isles. It's the tale of a psyhotic killer, a baby murder infact. This grim little tale sometimes is called "Lamkin" sometimes Lambkin' and numerous variations thereof. Sometimes the villain is a stone mason who was stiffed for payment by some nobel. Lankin takes revenge on helpless members of the rich guy's family, aided by a "false nurse." The most memorable lyrics; "We will pinch him, we will break him, we will stab him with a pin ..."
When I first heard back in the '70s, it was "Long Lankin" and was performed by the British folk rock band Steeleye Span. This is a 2004 performance by Steeleye.
Sunday, May 15, 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
Rock a Go Go by Alien Space Kitchen
My Family by Jay Reatard
Want Some by Sex Hogs II
Pedigree Scum by Demented Are Go
Mama Look at Sis by The Oblivians
Baby Let's Play House by Arthur Gunter
Erotica Laguna Lagurna by The Bonnevilles
Can't Find Pleasure by Thee Mighty Caesars
The Land of Milk and Pony/ Move Your Arse by A Pony Named Olga
Facebook Troll / No Xmas for John Quay by The Fall
Treat Her Right by The Bluebonnets
Around and Around by The Flamin' Groovies
Rat's Nest by The Gories
Pockets by Sulphur City
Yes I'm Down by Coachwhips
Burn to Breath by Night Beats
Lexicon Devil by The Germs
Hang On by The Gears
Duct Tape Love by HeWhoCannotBeNamed
The Got the Rock in My Underpants by Lightning Beat Man
She's My Witch by The Monsters
Rambling Man by San Antonio Kid
Dirty Traveler by Lonesome Shack
You Can't Judge a Book By the Cover by The Sonics
Red Riding Hood by Bunker Hill with Link Wray
Got Blood in My Rhythm by The Blues Against Youth
It Came From Beyond by The Barbarellatones
When Doves Cry by Patti Smith
Gett Off by Prince
I Wanna Go Back to Detroit City by Andre Williams
Sean Gibley by King Khan & The Shrines
Enigma by Bettye Stuy
Innocent When You Dream by Tom Waits CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, May 13, 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
I Can't Help It If I'm Still in Love with You by Hank Williams
Guacamole by Augie Meyers with Freddy Fender
East Bound and Down by Jerry Reed
Building Our Own Prison by The Waco Brothers
Everything Must Go by Dave Insley
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican May 13, 2016 Once again Robbie Fulks has graced this troubled land with a seemingly subdued, but actually powerful acoustic album.
Like 2013’s Gone Away Backward, Fulks’ new Upland Stories took me a few plays and more than a couple of weeks before the full impact whacked me over the head. Both albums sound nice and pretty from the get-go — Fulks’ voice has never sounded sweeter and his guitar-picking keeps getting better. But it’s the lyrics that, at least in my case, had to sit with me awhile before they sneaked up on me.
Several of the songs here were inspired by James Agee, who documented the lives of Depression-era Southern sharecroppers in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). The opening song, “Alabama at Night,” for instance, is about Agee’s trip to the South in 1936. (“The old men at the roadhouse weren’t too polite to stare. ...The camera ’round my neck drew suspicious eyes to me/We were not there to talk, we were only there to see.”)
More pointed is the stark “America Is a Hard Religion,” on which Fulks is accompanied only by banjo and, in the refrain, a fiddle. “Sent to a savage land, mother knows not why/Plant a seed in rocky soil and perhaps to die,” he sings.
In a recent interview with The Bluegrass Situation, Fulks cautioned against drawing exact comparisons between modern poverty and the lives of 1930s sharecroppers. But still, he explains, the song “articulates the harsh life and mind-set of a resourceless person whose body hurts from work, who sacrifices children to war, who can’t hope to change his or her prospects, who takes pleasure in a fantasy of being happier after death, and whose stoic complaints are a sort of art form.”
As he sings in the song, “America is a hard religion. Not just anyone can enter/America is a hard religion. Some never do surrender.”
Not everything on Upland Stories is so heavy. There is sweet, if understated, humor in “Aunt Peg’s New Old Man,” a celebration of an elderly relative finding a new beau. “Katy Kay” is a devilish hillbilly love song that probably would have fit in on earlier, funnier Fulks albums. Here he confesses, “When I see a pretty girl weeping, I run to her and fix it. When I see a pretty girl smiling, I run for the nearest exit.” The song “Sarah Jane” is another love song, this one featuring a melody and fingerpicking evocation of Mississippi John Hurt.
But let’s get back to the heaviness. One of the saddest songs here is Fulks’ cover of Merle Kilgore’s nostalgic “Baby Rocked Her Dolly,” the story of an elderly man in an “old folks” home who spends his time reliving sweet memories of his children, who he rarely hears from these days, as youngsters.
There is nothing sweet or nostalgic about “Never Come Home,” inspired by an Anton Chekhov story, which tells of a dying man who returns to his old family home and immediately regrets it.
“I had scarcely laid my bag down when my misjudgment hit me square/I was welcomed like a guilty prisoner, old grievances fouled the air.” He feels nothing but contempt for a bunch of religious relatives who come to visit, and he silently seethes as he hears family members getting drunk and bad-mouthing him. It’s clear he’s going to die in helpless bitterness. “This land is run down and ragged. I should have never come home.”
Hard religion and hard truths. Upland Stories is bursting with both. It’s heartening how Robbie Fulks continues to grow as an artist.
Also recommended
* A Sailor’s Guide to Earth by Sturgill Simpson. After his breakthrough album, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, Simpson had to have been under incredible pressure to produce another equally amazing CD. I’m not quite sure whether he’s done that. Metamodern Sounds took traditional honky-tonk/outlaw country and put it through a psychedelic filter. And it worked, thanks mostly to Simpson’s sincere delivery.
Wisely, he didn’t attempt to create "Metamodern Sounds Volume II". While there are scattered psychedelic touches on A Sailor’s Guide, this is a whole new animal. It’s a concept album, a collection of songs dealing with being a new father — that would be Simpson — advising his newborn son on how to navigate the metaphorical stormy seas of this planet.
Sturgill saved the worst for the first.
The first couple of songs on the album prevent me from giving A Sailor’s Guide an unqualified squeal of approval. The first half of “Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)” goes for baroque, sweetened with strings that come off pretentious in a Moody Blues kind of way.
The good news is that on the second half, Simpson’s new pals, the Dap-Kings (yes, Sharon Jones’ band) turn the song into a soul workout. But the strings slither back on the next song, “Breaker’s Roar,” and that initially made me wonder if the whole project was going to be a Kentucky-fried Days of Future Past.
Fortunately not. On the next track, “Keep It Between the Lines,” not only do the Dap-Kings’ horns sound funky, the steel guitar solo is downright cosmic. This song might be one of the finest fusions of country and soul since Al Green sang Kris Kristofferson’s “For the Good Times.”
And there are plenty of tasty tracks here. “Oh Sarah” is a fervent love song that’s perfect for Simpson’s voice; there’s a cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom” that’s closer to Muscle Shoals than Seattle; and a rocking five-minute “Ball of Confusion”-type protest song, called “Call to Arms,” decrying endless war and idiocy. (“Nobody is lookin’ up to care about a drone/All too busy lookin’ down at our phone.”)
Hopefully Sturgill will continue his experimentation, keeping his feet on the ground and his head in what Patti Smith called the “sea of possibilities.”
Enjoy some videos! First a couple of live versions of Upland Stories songs from Fulks
And here are a couple of new Sturgil videos
(10-15-16 I just noticed that the original Sturgill video I posted here got zapped, probably by Russian hackers. So I'll try this one.)
