THROWBACK THURSDAY: This Train is Bound for Glory

When President Obama gave his farewell speech last week, I was impressed by the fact that the song that played onstage was one of the most powerful and inspirational Bruce Springsteen songs ever written: "The Land of Hope and Dreams."

Even though it was just a recording, it hit me far harder than Obama's speech.

What gives the song its power how it draws from an old American spiritual. Well not that old. It had had to come after the coming of the railroad. The entire second part of the song is a re-write of the song "This Train."

It's generally agreed that the first recorded version was made in 1922 under the title of "Dis Train" by the Florida Normal And Industrial Institute Quartette.



Sister Roseta Tharpe had something of a hit with "This Train in the 1930s. But it the '50s, she recorded it with an electric guitar. Here's a live version from 1964 with blues pianist Otis Spann. (Unfortunately, she's not playing guitar.)



It's one of those songs that found devotees among white hillbillies as well as Black gospel singers. Here are the Delmore Brothers:



The train pulled into Jamaica where Bunny Wailer got on board. This was the closing song on Bunny's Blackheart Man, (still the greatest reggae album ever recorded.)



Jazz priestess Alice Coltrane took the train into the cosmos. To the moon, Alice!

 

But getting back to Springsteen ...

The original song seems to be about who is excluded from the Gospel Train.  Depending on who's singing it, this train don't carry no gamblers or midnight ramblers or liars or crap-shooters or whiskey drinkers. Even Bunny Wailer's train -- while surely having at least one car reserved for ganja smokers -- "only carries the children of Jah."

But Springsteen turns it around and lifts these severe restrictions. The train  in his song is for the rest of us:

This train carries saints and sinners
This train carries losers and winners
This train carries whores and gamblers
This train carries lost souls
I said, this train dreams will not be thwarted
This train faith will be rewarded
This train hear the steel wheels singin'
This train bells of freedom ringin'

This is a message we all may need to hear in the not so distant future. We're all in this together.


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WACKY WEDNESDAY: The Circus is Leaving Town

It's been about 20 years since I've been to a circus, so I can't really say I'm a huge aficionado.

Still, I felt ad last week when I read that The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus was calling it quits. The final show will be in May.

Now I don't want to get into any arguments with animal-rights advocates. You guys won this one. Go preach on another soap box. Shoo!

I have fond memories of the circus. On the night when President Kennedy gave his televised speech about the Cuban missile crisis, Oct. 22, 1962, my grandmother was very upset and to a lesser extenr so was my mom. Pending Doomsday does that to people. I was only 9 years old and wasn't sure what was going on. But the family had tickets to the circus -- probably Ringling Brothers -- and dammit, we were going! So we did. And somehow, watching the spectacular that night I had a feeling that things were going to be OK.

I love circus posters, surreal circus imagery. Yes I love clowns. I love women in skimpy sequined dresses flying through the air with the greatest of ease. even though the circus showed a world of colorful wonderment, there always seemed to be an undercurrent of sadness surrounding the circus -- clowns who secretly wept, acrobats who might be hiding secrets, ringmasters running a circus of crime ...

So here's a musical tribute to a strange and seedy American art form (though the circus didn't originate in these United States and a high number of performers are from other countries.)

Goodbye Greatest Show on Earth!

Here's a pop song from the early '60s, "Goodbye Cruel World" by James Darren



Here's a goofy jug-band circus by Jim Kweskin's and crew



Bruce Springsteen told a cool circus story in his early years.



"When the Circus Comes to Town" is a sad tune tune by Los Lobos



And I would have loved to have seen the circus Tom Waits talks about here,



Finally, Graham Parker sings a classic circus tune called "The Man on the Flying Trapeze."

Goodbye Ringling Brothers ...

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, Jan. 15, 2017
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Goin' Down by Dinosaur Jr.
Goo Goo Muck by The Cramps
Orgasms by The Sex Organs
How to Fake a Lunar Landing by Alien Space KItchen
Too Much of You by Thee Fine Lines
War Going On by Sulphur City
Little Miss Hard of Hearing by The Mobbs
Hard Working Man by Jonah Gold & His Silver Apples
Broken Arms by Mark Sultan

Book of Alpha by Satan & The Deciples 
Starry Eyes by Roky Erikson with Lou Ann Barton
Kremlin Dogs by Gregg Turner
Froggy by The A-Bones
Sunglasses After Dark by Archie & The Bunkers
Tip Toe Through the Tulips by Bernadette Seacrest & Kris Dale
Dragnet for Jesus by Sister Wynona Carr

Cheap Thrills by Ruben & The Jets
You Don't Love Me by The Dustaphonics
Red Sun by Jerry J. Nixon
Let Me Spend the Night by The Devils
Problematic by Hank Haint
Too Much at Steak by Wet Blankets
Whiskey Wagon by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Cock in Pocket by The Stooges
Big Road by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Big Green and Yeller by Seasick Steve

Heaven on Their Minds by Murray Head
Back When Dogs Could Talk by Wayne Kramer
Disciplinary Action by James Chance & The Distortions
Mighty Man by James Legg
(All You Have to Do is) Die by Rev. Tom Frost
Pennyroyal Tea by Nirvana
Before the Next Teardrop Falls by Big John Hamilton
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, Jan. 13, 2017
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
Bears in Them Woods by Nancy Apple
Georgia on a Fast Train by Billy Joe Shaver
I Have a Ball by The Ex-Husbands
Be My Ball and Chain by Brennen Leigh & Noel McKay
I Like You by Southern Culture on the Skids
You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast by Buddy & Julie Miller
Love Must Have Psssed Me By by Rosie Flores with Bobby Vee
To Sam by Mose McCormack
Sputnik Monroe by Otis Gibbs

Carny Folk by The Saucer Men
Sweet Baby of Mine by The Satellites
Railroad of Sin by Sturgil Simpson
Four Years of Chances by Margo Price
It'll Be Me by Janis Martin
This Lonely Bed by The Garnet Hearts
Diesel Drinkin' Daddy by Jason Lee Williams
I Don't Know by Dex Romweber
Inside View by Dale Watson

Stephen Foster Tribute
Nelly Bly by Grandpa Jones
Camptown Races by Spike Jones & His City Slickers
Oh Susana by Ronny Elliott
Hard Times Come Around No More by Kate & Anna McGarrigle
Wildebeest by The Handsome Family

Hard Times by Martha Fields
Get on the Floor by C.W. Stoneking
I Used to Love Her by Washboard Hank
Dancing With the Women at the Bar by Whiskeytown
I'll Stand in Line by Miss Leslie
Deliah by David Bromberg
My Eyes by Tony Gilkyson
Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning by Willie Nelson
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets


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THROWBACK THURSDAY: Celebrating Stephen Foster

One of this nation's greatest songwriters, Stephen Foster, died 153 years ago tomorrow (Friday, Jan. 13, 1864).

His contributions to American song are almost too many to mention.

"Old Kentucky Home"
"Beautiful Dreamer"
"Camptown Races."

If you don't know these songs ... well, just keep reading,

Quoting myself here from  a 2004 Tune-up reviewing a disappointing Foster tribute album, fortified by a couple of other sources:

Though many of Foster’s best-known songs deal with the antebellum South, Foster was born near Pittsburgh, Pa. In 1826. 

He is recognized as America’s first professional songwriter. But despite writing some songs still being sung 150 years later, his final days were spent in poverty, alcoholism and despair. At the age of 37 he committed suicide by slashing his own throat. 

So that would make him the Kurt Cobain of his era. But before that, he was Elvis Presley. 

Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and those who loved them were drawn to the wild and mysterious music called rhythm & blues and mutated it in a new style called rock ‘n’ roll. Likewise, many white musicians in Foster’s era were drawn to the African-American music of their era, turning it into blackface minstrel music. [the tribute album] Beautiful Dreamer’s liner notes describes this music as “the rowdy, racist and first uniquely American form of popular entertainment.” 

Several music historians have noted the sociological similarities between rock and minstrelsy. 

Writer/historian Ken Emerson noted in a PBS documentary on Foster,  "... it goes all the way back to blackface and minstrelsy before the Civil War. And so in a way rock and roll led me to a long, tortuous path to Stephen Foster because that's where really this interplay and intermix of black and white culture that so defines American music to this day really began."

... Foster as a youth ate up the minstrel songs. While his songs were grounded in European styles, the minstrel element is what made Foster’s music unique and powerful. 

Despite his minstrel-show roots and demeaning racial slurs in some of the songs, Foster had the respect of black abolition leader Frederick Douglass. Said Fred:

"Considering the use that has been made of them, that we have allies in the Ethiopian songs... `Old Kentucky Home, and `Uncle Ned,' can make the heart sad as well as merry, and can call forth a tear as well as a smile. They awaken the sympathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish."

And later, W.C. Handy, the “Father of the Blues,” would write, “The well of sorrow from which Negro music is drawn is also a well of mystery....I suspect that Stephen Foster owed something to this well, this mystery, this sorrow.” 

Perhaps Roger Miller said it best in this long out-of-print song. "I think Stephen ws ahead of his time, that's all I've got to say."



And in their song "Wildebeest,” The Handsome Family sang of Foster's lonesome death in a flop-house on the Bowery. (“He smashed his head on the sink in the bitter fever of gin/A wildebeest gone crazy with thirst pulled down as he tried to drink”).

"And the oceans they feed the sky and the sky feeds the earth
And Stephen Foster’s beautiful ghost lay down to feed a song
To feed ten thousand songs echoing cross the wild plains ..."

And finally, The Squirrel Nut Zippers' wonderful tribute "Ghost of Stephen Foster." (Thanks John W. on Google Plus!)

And here's a Spotify list with Foster songs performed by some of my favorite artists, plus a couple of songs about the songwriter.