TERRELL'S TUNE-UP: The Ones That Got Away Last Year

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
Jan. 6, 2017

As is the case every year, there was a lot more noteworthy music released in 2016 than I was able to write about in this column. Here are a few worthwhile albums released last year:

* The Commandments According to SCAC by Slim Cessna’s Auto Club. I’m a relative newcomer to the Slim Cessna cult. I didn’t get indoctrinated into the laws and customs of this Denver band until 2010, when I received the blessings of their stunning album Unentitled. I’ve been waiting five years for a follow-up and was beginning to lose faith. But then, like a thief in the night, a new album appeared in September — and it didn’t reach my ears until a few weeks ago.

This album — 10 rocking, roots-driven songs titled “Commandment 1,” “Commandment 2,” etc. — like their best work, is a deep dive into the myth and spirituality of Cessna and band. As Slim sings on “Commandment 1, “I have earned, earned the privilege/The privilege of complaint/My indignant voice is maturing/From a percussive cough/Thanks to you and the death’s-head moths/Into a maturing rage.”

It’s not exactly clear what this means, but like the other “commandments,” it suggests inner struggles unfolding in an inhospitable world. In “Commandment 6,” the narrator is a horse, forced to jump off a diving board at some carnival sideshow. But in the Cessna universe, even a horse has spiritual yearnings: “I will be a new Greek myth/Archimedes’ Pegasus /Could a horse be a saint?”

My favorite track here, at least for the moment, is “Commandment 5,” which opens to the beat of tom-toms and what sounds almost, but not quite, like Native American chants, and then turns into an urgent rhythm with lyrics about a frantic car ride and gunplay. “Cock your arms and blindly throw the spent shell,” is the oft-repeated refrain.

In all honesty, I’m just beginning to digest the mysteries of Commandments. This could take years.

▼ Carrboro by Dex Romweber. Sturdy and dependable, Romweber has once again has made a top-
rate album with memorable songs that rock and delight.

Recording this time as a solo artist (as opposed to The Dex Romweber Duo, as he did on his previous three albums with Bloodshot Records), Romweber proves his versatility with pretty ballads that show off his crooner chops (the gorgeous opening song, “I Had a Dream,” is probably the best example); piano blues (“Tomorrow’s Taking Baby Away” and “Tell Me Why I Do”); crazy surfy instrumentals (“Midnight at Vic’s,” “Nightride”); and country/rockabilly romps (“Lonesome Train,”  “Knock Knock (Who’s That Knockin’ on My Coffin Lid Door),” and “I Don’t Know”). Meanwhile, the intense, minor-key “Where Do You Roam” could almost be mistaken for a Nick Cave dirge.

And, as he’s prone to do, Romweber plays a couple of standards in nonstandard ways. “My Funny Valentine” becomes an electric organ-led rocker with surf drums. And, accompanied by what almost sounds like a player piano, he performs Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” like a mad scientist would. I can’t help but smile.

* Rain Crow by Tony Joe White. To hijack a Game of Thrones catchphrase, the swamp is dark and full of terrors. And few, if any, musicians tell these tales as convincingly as Tony Joe does.

“Tell me a swamp story, not like the ones on TV,” White sings in his wizened baritone. “I want to hear about the old saw mill, where the woman went crazy.”

This album is full of stories of bad winds, children of the hoodoo, hoochie women, backwoods bayou crossroads, love gone wrong, and hungry gators. Just about every song here has a laid-back — and swampy — groove embellished with subtle psychedelic guitars.

Since his late-’60s “Polk Salad Annie” heyday, Tony Joe has only grown leaner, meaner, and spookier.


* Gon’ Boogaloo  by C.W. Stoneking. Sometimes I think Stoneking is the Australian reincarnation of Emmett Miller, that great yodeling American minstrel-show/hokum master who recorded “Lovesick Blues” years before Hank Williams did. His latest album does nothing to dispel that suspicion.

Armed with his National guitar, bow tie, and a hot little band, Stoneking conjures up images of secret after-hours vaudeville shows. The lo-fi recording adds to Stoneking’s antiquated aura.

Besides the title song, which sounds like Hank Ballard fronting a rockabilly band, the best tracks here are “The Zombie,” a calypso-flavored dance tune, and the simply lovely “On a Desert Isle.”

* Lords & Ladies by The Upper Crust and The Grannies. This is a split album by a hard-rocking Boston band that dress up like 18th-century powdered-wigged fops and an insane San Francisco punk group that costume themselves like a nightmare version of your grandmother’s bridge club. The two groups toured together last year, which must have been quite a spectacle.

I’ll admit upfront that I’m biased — I’ve been a Grannies fan for a few years now — so when I got this CD I went straight to the Grannies’ section.

Those last five songs are five strong kicks in the teeth, which I mean in the nicest possible way. It’s furious filth that makes you want to joyfully smash things. That’s especially true for the last track, “Skylab," the musical equivalent of being struck by a hunk of burning debris falling from space.

The only disappointing thing about the Grannies here is that there are only five songs. The Upper Crust play a more ragged version of an AC/DC inspired sound on their allotted songs — all live recordings. They ain’t bad. but they ain’t The Grannies. I’d trade the Crusts’ five songs for five more Grannies tunes any day.

The gators won't get these Grannies

Video Time!

Though this live on the radio SCAC video is labeled "4th Commandment," it's actually the 5th.



Here's Dex Romweber singing "Trouble of the World."



Tony Joe White singing "Hoochie Woman" live on the radio



Here's C.W. Stoneking doing my favorite tune from the new album



Make way for The Grannies. Watch out for flying space debris!



And here is The Upper Crust

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Still Clutching her Poor Frozen Shears

As a rock 'n' roller in the 1950s, Bobby Darin wasn't quite convincing. And his "folk-rock" period of the mid '60s was pretty useless as well, as far as I'm concerned.

But in the late '50s and early '60s, Bobby Darrin was a mighty mighty man when he threw himself into the world of big band swing and Sinatra-style pop.

"Mack the Knife," recorded in 1959, of course is the the greatest Bobby Darin song of all time. How could you not love a snazzy, jazzy song about a serial killer co-written by a blacklisted playwrite? (The original German lyrics were by Bertolt Brech with music by Kurt Weill for their musical, Three Penny Opera.)

But the second greatest Bobby Darin song was another one he took from the theater: "Artifical Flowers."

It was from from a Broadway musical called Tenderloin by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick -- who would become famous for another musical, Fiddler on the Roof.

Tenderloin, which debuted in 1960 was about a crusading minister in 1890s New York, and this song tells of the need for some serious crusading. Poor Little Annie, an orphan like that other little Annie, makes a pretty crummy living making pathetic fake flowers to sell on the street.

With paper and shears, with some wire and wax/She made up each tulip and mum/As snowflakes drifted into her tenement room/Her baby little fingers grew numb. ... They found little Annie all covered in ice/Still clutching her poor frozen shears/Amidst all the blossoms she had fashioned by hand/And watered with all her young tears. 

But like "Mack the Knife," Darin turned "Flowers" into an upbeat swing that belied the horrible, melodramatic story and the hideous fate of poor little Annie.

Let Bobby tell this story:



Here is how the song sounded in the actual musical. Actor Ron Husmann sings it. But it don't mean a thing because it ain't got no swing!



Tenderloin was based on a book by muckraking journalist Samuel Hopkins Adam -- a fictionalized story of the battles in the 1890s between the Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst and New York's corrupt Tammany Hall.

But the story of "Artificial Flowers" came from a much older source. It's based on a Hans Christian Anderson short story from 1845: "The Little Match Girl."

Like Little Annie, the impoverished match girl has to sell her product -- matches -- out in the cold streets. And like our sad heroine of "Artificial Flowers," she ends up freezing to death. But unlike Annie, the Little Match Girl is not an orphan. She has a cruel father who forces her to sell the stupid matches and a kindly, but dead, grandmother who comes to her in visions.

Here's a modern re-telling of this heart-wrenching tale:



Surprisingly "Artificial Flowers" has scarely been covered. Austin country singer Cornell Hurd does a great western-swing influenced version on his 2003 album, Live at Jovita's: Don't Quit Your Night Job. (Which unfortunately I can't find on YouTube, Spotify or anywhere else on the Weird Wide Web.)

And a British synth-pop group from the 1990s called The Beautiful South did a mopey version. Look for that HERE -- if you feel you must.

But here's a song that represents the natural evolution of "Artificial Flowers," sure to bring you to tears.

Actually, besides the similar title, I don't think this song has anything to do with poor little Annie. But the video is pretty bitchen.



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

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Korla Pandit's Universal Language of Music

Kolorized Korla

I stumbled on this unique musician via Phil Hendrie's Twitter feed on Christmas Eve tweet:

"Was on @KTLA in the late forties, Saturday nights. Whoever got stoned in those days tuned in religiously"

And there was a cover of a Christmas album that Phil re-tweeted featuring a blue background and black-and-white photo of a mysterious turbanned man sitting at an organ looking as if he were lost on some astral plane.

The artist's name was  Korla Pandit and a quick round of Googling made it obvious why stoners in the '40s and '50s must have loved this guy.

From the Korla Pandit website:

Korla Pandit was TV's first "talking head", except, per mentor Klaus Landsberg's direction, he didn't even talk! Instead he just gazed dreamily into the camera, and into the hearts and imaginations of millions upon millions of viewers over the years, when television was in its infancy and people were captivated by this Mesmerist and his "Universal Language of Music".

Orchids & moonlight, unchained melodies, worshippers from under the water, India's One & Only Song, themes magnetic, played a thousand different ways, all embodied the spiritual and spirited performances of a handsome young man in a turban, a music-box Sabu, he of Indian origin, foreign to American music audiences, foreign to American TV audiences, foreign and yet not foreign at all.

But Korla wasn't from India at all. He hailed from St. Louis, where he was born John Roland Redd. After a frustrating time trying to start a music career, he moved to Los Angeles in 1939 where he began performng as a "Latin" artist called "Juan Rolando."

With the encouragement of his wife, he changed into Korla Pundit, a musical mystic from New Delhi. And by 1949 he got his own program, Korla Pandit's Adventures In Music on KTLA TV.

Korla played his "music of the Exotic East" along with a blend of waltzes, tangos, cha-cha-cha's and other tunes of the 40's and 50's, with even an occasional classic such as "Claire de Lune" or "The Swan" thrown in for good measure. Korla was known for playing both his favorite instruments - the Hammond organ and piano - simultaneously, working the piano with his right hand and the organ on his left. 

Korla died in 1998 at the age of 77. But through the magic of YouTube, his "musical gems from near and far" live on.

Contemplate this:



More than a decade before Dick Dale made "Miserlou" his signature song, Pandit was basking in its mysteries.



Here's one called "Trance Dance."



And here's a sexy Turkish Dance.



And what do you know? There's a documentary on Korla. It aired in October on KOCE, the PBS station in Los Angeles. Supposedly it's suppose to air on other PBS stations early this year.

Korla - Trailer from Appleberry Pictures on Vimeo.

The Cramps dug Korla. Maybe he inspired the introdiction to this classic video

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, Dec. 30, 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 Ain't Gonna Hang Around by Southern Culture on the Skids
Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed by Kinky Friedman & The Texas Jewboys
Kentucky Blues by David Bromberg
Big White Pickup by Jim Terr
Commandment 7 by Slim Cessna's Auto Club
Train Wreckers by Scott H. Biram
I Ain't Drunk by Whitey Morgan & The 78s
Fishin' Forever by Mose McCormack
New Year's Eve at the Gates of Hell by Ray Wylie Hubbard

Wild Wild Lover by Legendary Shack Shakers
Ain't No Bars in Heaven by T. Tex Edwards & The Swingin' Kornflake Killers
Man Up by Nikki Lane
Fruit of the Vine by Nancy Apple
Wrong Side of His Heart by Rosie Flores
Dirty House Blues by Wayne Hancock
The Girl I Sawed in Half by Paul Burch
Mean Mean Woman by Ruby Dee & The Snakehandlers
Woody Guthrie's New Year's Flood by Stan Ridgway

I Do What I Can to Get By by The Supersuckers
Pills I Took by Hank III
Four Years of Chances by Margo Price
Sea Stories by Sturgill SImpson
Nobody to Blame by Chris Stapleton
Rusty Cage by Johnny Cash
Blue Ridge Cabin Home by John McEuen
Whiskey Trail by Los Lobos
Ain't Doing Nobody No Good by Tony Joe White

Hearts and Bones by Paul Simon
Fare Thee Well Carolina Gals by Robbie Fulks
'Tis Sweet to Be Remembered by Mac Wiseman & Allison Krauss
Trouble in Mind by Merle Haggard
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets


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THROWBACK THURSDAY: These Are People Who Died

2016 was a terrible bummer of a year in so many ways. If only for the number of great musicians who passed on, this would be one of the cruelest years I can remember.

Here are some songs from my favorites who breathed their last in 2016. Rest in peace all of you

(Caution: It might take a bit for this page to load. Be patient. And hope that none of our favorites croak by the time you reach the end ...)

Long John Hunter
(January 4)



Red Simpson
(January 8)



David Bowie
(January 10)



Blowfly (Clarence Reid)
(January 17)



Dan Hicks.
(Feb. 6)
I guess it was his time to go. But I miss him.



Steve Young
(March 17)



Merle Haggard
(April 6)
Hey, Hag. It was fun.



Prince
(April 21)



Lonnie Mack
(April 21)
Yes, the great Memphis blues/rock guitarist died the same day as Prince. (John Eskow at Counterpunch had some observations about that.) Here's a clip from a 1980s local Cleveland TV show featuring Lonnie playing with host Scott Newell



Billy Paul
(April 24)
Soulman Billy was something of a one-hit wonder. But what a hit!



Candye Kane
(May 6)



Guy Clark
(May 17)



Ralph Stanley
(June 23)



Scotty Moore
(June 28)
He was best known for being Elvis Presley's guitarist in the '50s. This is an Elvis song from a Scotty Moore solo record.



Alan Vega
(July 16)



Buckwheat Zydeco (Stanley Dural, Jr.)
(Sept. 24)



Jean Shepard
(Sept, 25)



Oscar Brand
(September 30)



Bobby Vee
(Oct. 24)
Lord, Mr. Ford, this is one of those crazy Scopitone videos!

Leonard Cohen
(Nov. 7)



Leon Russell
(Nov. 13)



Billy Miller
(Nov. 14)


Mose Allison
(Nov. 15)



Sharon Jones
(Nov. 18)



Keith Emerson (March 11) & Greg Lake (Dec.7)

OK, I'm not a big prog-rock, but losing two thirds of ELP in one year is a big deal. Plus I always loved this song. I saw them do it live on the Brain Salad Surgery tour in the mid '70s and it's still the loudest damned concert I ever saw.