Sunday, March 13, 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
I'm Gonna Dig Up Howlin' Wolf by Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper
Master picker Norman Blake, whose talents on guitar, dobro, mandolin, fiddle,
and banjo as well as his Tennessee-soaked vocals have amazed and delighted
country and bluegrass fans for decades, turns 84 today!
Happy birthday, Norman.
Even if you don't recognize his name, if you're a fan of the
O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, or the classic 1972 hillbilly
collaboration Will the Circle Be Unbroken -- or certain seminal records
by the likes of Johnny Cash, John Hartford, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson,
Steve Earle and others -- you have heard the music of Norman Blake. (I
probably first heard him on Dylan's Nashville Skyline.)
Blake was born in 1938 in Chattanooga. According to a 2003 article in
Vintage Guitar:
His career started when he left school at age 16 to be a professional
musician. Early jobs included playing fiddle, dobro, and mandolin in
country dance bands before a short stint in the Army. After serving,
Norman worked with June Carter, then Johnny Cash when Cash’s regular dobro
player couldn’t make a session. He stayed with Cash’s band for over 10
years.
Here is what I believe is Blake's finest moment with Cash. His dobro shines,
though Cash's crazed vocal track almost makes you worry that he's going to go
off the rails and start murdering his band.
Blake began his "solo" recording career (often sharing credits with his wife
Nancy and other collaborators) in the early 1970s. Here are a couple of tunes
from Norman or Nancy:
This is a favorite from 2001, Blake's version of an Uncle Dave Macon song,
"All Go Hungry Hash House":
I looked for, but couldn't find a Youtube of Norman's "Precious Memories
(Was a Song I Used to Hear)," which was written by our mutual friend and Santa
Fe picker Jerry Faires. But here's that song on Spotify (I know, I know
...) by Norman & Nancy:
But this is my favorite Norman Blake song of all time, "Last Train from Poor
Valley":
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
