Sunday, March , 2022 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Delta Cats: Ike Turner, left, with Jackie Brenston
Happy birthday rock 'n' roll!
On this day, March 3, 1951, at Memphis Recording Service -- later renamed "Sun Studios," a band called Ike Turner & His Rhythm Kings, featuring a singer named Jackie Brenston from Clarksdale, Mississippi recorded a little jump blues tune called "Rocket 88."
And what a song it was.
Writing in Time Magazine in 2004, Jamaican-born journalist Christopher John Farley said of "Rocket 88":
Rocket 88 was brash and it was sexy; it took elements of the blues, hammered them with rhythm and attitude and electric guitar, and reimagined black music into something new. If the blues seemed to give voice to old wisdom, this new music seemed full of youthful notions. If the blues was about squeezing cathartic joy out of the bad times, this new music was about letting the good times roll. If the blues was about earthly troubles, the rock that Turner's crew created seemed to shout that the sky was now the limit. And if anyone had ever thought before that black music was just for black people, Rocket 88 undercut that tall tale — the beat was too big, the lyrics too inviting, the melody too winning, the volume too loud, for the song to be taken as anything but an invitation for all who heard it, black or white or brown or whatever, to join the party.
Sun Studios licensed the song to Chicago's Chess Records. But instead of crediting the single to Turner and his band, Chess released it under the name "Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats." This had to have pissed off Ike Turner to the max.
Besides Turner's pounding piano, Brentson's joyful vocals and 17-year-old Raymond Hill's wild tenor sax, many "Rocket 88" fans also cite Willie Kizart's distorted electric guitar as a factor that made the song so unique.
Talking to Rolling Stonein 1986, Sun king Sam Phillips said,:
"... when Ike and them were coming up to do the session, the bass amplifier fell off the car. And when we got in the studio, the woofer had burst; the cone had burst. So I stuck the newspaper and some sack paper in it, and that’s where we got that sound."
Many scholars dispute that "Rocket 88" is the very first rock 'n' roll song. Other candidates include Roy Brown's "Good Rockin' Tonight," or Goree Carter's proto-Chuck Berry "Rock Awhile" or Sister Rosetta Tharpe's "Strange Things Happening Every Day" or other tunes.
We'll leave that debate to grumbling academics. But even if it wasn't the first rock 'n' roll song, there's no denying "Rocket 88" is a wild joy.
Here's the song that made us all fall in love:
So why aren't we more familiar with Jackie Brenston? Not long after "Rocket 88," the singer left Turner's band to try a solo career. He never received much success, but Brenston, who died in 1979, left behind some pretty cool tunes. Here are a few of them, starting with one called "Leo the Louse":
This one is "Tuckered Out"
And from Jackie's short-lived career as a restaurant critic, (I know, I know) here's "Fat Meat is Greasy"
Sunday, February 27, 2022 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
The Flame That Killed John Wayne by The Mekons
Al Capone's Syphallytic Fever Dream by King Khan Unlimited
Oofty Goofty (Wild Man of Borneo) by King Salami & The Cumberland 3
They never had a radio hit, they never made the cover of the Rolling Stone, they've somehow eluded the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame (though I'd argue that several inductees in recent years are just as lame, if not worse).
But since the mid 1960s, the traveling musical troupe known as Up With People has traveled the world, including, probably, a high school auditorium near you spreading their weird, clean-cut cheer and saccharine platitudes. They played not one, not two but five goddamn Super Bowl halftime shows between the mid '70s and mid '80s. They've performed for presidents and foreign leaders.
There have been more than 22,000 members from more than a hundred countries.
Dazzled yet?
And yet some people -- including former member, actress Glenn Close -- have compared Up With People with religious cults. And in fact, the group sprang from an "alternative" religious movement called Moral Rearmament. (Close's parents belonged to that group, and Glenn spent her teenage years and early 20s under its spell.)
Up With People was started by a Moral Rearmament member from Arizona named J. Blanton Belk, According to a 2012 story from Inside Tucson Business:
During the turbulent 1960s, a prevalent scene in the U.S. was one of hippies occupying university presidents offices. It was a time of demonstrations, around the world from the University of California in Berkeley to the Sorbonne in Paris, and to San Marcus University in Lima, Peru.
Belk was at a point in his life when he was ready to take on a big challenge. He gathered student leaders from half a dozen universities challenging them to find a “positive voice” as an alternative to what he regarded as the negativism of the times.
Chances are you've probably heard Up With People's self-titled theme song, the one that goes "Up up with people, you meet 'em wherever you go ..." -- and possibly you even agree with the song's sentiment "If more people were for people" the world would be a better place. And maybe you remember one of their better known songs, "What Color is God's Skin?"
But I'd be willing to be bet that you probably haven't heard many of the other 300 songs or so written for Up With People over the past 50-whatever years. Well, that's what this blog is for.
Let's start with one written and sung by a young Glenn Close, "Run and Catch the Wind" (no relation to the similarly-titled Donovan song from that era.) And check out the endorsements from John Wayne, Pat Boone and Walt Disney on the album cover!
Here's one from Up With People's snazzy orange sweater period, "Where the Roads Come Together":
Up With People Get funky with this 1970 tune called "Man's Gotta Go Somewhere":
Finally, here's "Stand Up Now," a fairly recent one (2012) that has an anti-bullying message:
So I hope you agree with me that UP WITH PEOPLE KICKS ASS!
Sunday, February 20, 2022 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
He Looks Like a Psycho by The Electric Mess
Farewell, OK by Elvis Costello & The Imposters
You Gotta Love Love by The Fleshtones
Shake Your Hips by Slim Harpo
Cake by Sam Snitchy
I'd Rather Hide Deep In The Backwoods by The Blues Against Youth
Dancing With Mr. D. by The Rolling Stones
Devil Whistle Don't Sing by The Devils with Mark Lannegan
Ain't Afraid of Dying by Bigdumbhick
Frankenstein by Pierced Arrows
Troubled Times by Thee Headcoats
Thorns by Night Beats
(I Got) a Good 'Un by John Lee Hooker
Rick Ross by Johnny Dowd
Wash My Bones by Hipbone Slim & The Knee Tremblers
Closure by Sleeve Cannon
Los Canarios by Rudy de Anda
Can O' Pop by Steve Poltz
DALLAS GOOD TRIBUTE
American Pageant by The Sadies with Jon Langford
Husbands and Wives by John Doe & The Sadies
She's a Bag of Potato Chips by Andre Williams & The Sadies
Justine Alright by The Sadies with Heavy Trash
The 3-B by The Sadies
The House of The Rising Sun by Nina Simone
Sinner Man by Esquerita
Noon Balloon to Rangoon by Nervous Norvus
Is the Season for New Incarnations by Brigid Dawson & The Mothers Network
Tennessee Blues by Bobby Charles
Tell Me by Honshu Wolves
Arms of Salvation by San Antonio Kid
Hell Yeah by Neil Diamond
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
