Sunday, September 10, 2023 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
Pressure Drop by The Clash
Jumpin Jack Off by Thee Retail Simps
Walking With Frankie by Eilen Jewell
Waiting for the World by City of My Death
Nga Nga by Ebo Taylor
Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White by The Grawks
Mathis James Reed, better known in this world as Jimmy Reed, would have been 98 years old today. However, he died at the age of 50 back in 1976 at the age of 50.
Happy birthday, Boss Man!
Reed, who like so many of his generation of blues singers migrated from Mississipoi to Chicago, left behind an amazing catalogue of songs, some of the most recognizable blues tunes this side of Muddy Waters.
He began recording on the Chicago-based label Vee Jay in 1953 (Hey, they had The Beatles for a short time!) Encyclopedia Brittanica --not usually my first go-to blues history source --described his tunes:
"They almost invariably featured the same basic, unadorned rural boogie-shuffle rhythm accompanied by his thickly drawled "mush-mouth: vocals and high, simply phrased harmonica solos."
Much of his success can be credited to his friend Eddie Taylor, who played on most of his sessions, and his wife, Mama Reed, who wrote many of his songs and even sat behind him in the studio reciting his lyrics into his forgetful ear as he sang. His hits appealed to blacks and whites. Many of his blues songs were even adopted by white R&B groups during the early 60’s. He was the first of the Chicago electric bluesmen to break through to the pop/rock market. Reed had fourteen hits for Vee Jay on the R&B charts between 1955 and 1966.
Among those who have covered Reed tunes are Elvis Presley, Count Basie, Willie Nelson, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Grateful Dead, Waylon Jennings Sonny James and scores of others.
But nobody sounded like mush-moth Jimmy!
Here are a few of my favorite Reed songs.
Honest, I do love this one:
And if you don't love Jimmy Reed I'm going to ask you to Hush:
I'm amazed no insurance company never tried to use this one in a comercial:
But my favorite has always been Big Boss Man. I always have imagined some bone-weary Egyptian slave defiantly shouting this into the air while working on some pyramid.
Today is Robert Crumb's 80th birthday! I've saluted Crumb's musical career a
couple of times on his birthday on a couple of previous Wacky Wednesdays (CLICK HERE
and
HERE), so today let's do something different.
I was reminded recently of a song I first heard done by Crumb and His Cheap
Suit Serenaders many decades ago. It was Harry Roy's "Pussy," sometimes known
as "My Girl's Pussy" from back in 1931. And that reminded me how,
despite all the moral outrages over music through, well since the recording
industry began, smutty songs have been part of American life.
Makes me proud to be an American!
First let's look at a tune by Gov. Jimmie Davis, years before he became
Louisiana's chief executive. Though he's far better known for his signature
song "You Are My Sunshine,"
The late Nick Tosches wrote of Davis in his book
Country: The Biggest Music in America (1977): "He sang a country music that drew heavily from the blues
of the deep South, more heavily even than that of his idol, Jimmie Rodgers."
Here's a tune describing the interactions between a pussy and a cock:
Here's a classic by Butterbeans & Susie (Jodie and Susie Edwards), which
received frequent airplay on the KUNM blues show back when I was at the
University of New Mexico in the early '70s:
O.K., this one, "Shave 'em Dry" by Lucille Bogan, which opens with the
notorious rhyme, "I got nipples on my titties big as the end of my thumb / I
got somethin' 'tween my legs 'll make a dead man come" is perhaps the
raunchiest tune in the American songbook. But it doesn't really count because
it never was publicly released in her lifetime.
Bogan, under the name of "Bessie Jackson," recorded "Shave," (which had been
done previously by Ma Rainey as well as Papa Charlie Jackson) in the mid
'30s (I've seen it listed as 1933, 1934 as well as1935). But Melotone Records
released a relatively mild version (no reference to nipples, etc.) in 1935.
According to Dick Spotwood's liner notes to Columbia Legacy's 2004 CD, Shave ’Em Dry: The Best of Lucille Bogan:
Bogan made two triple-X rated pieces for her own amusement and that of
others in the studio. `Shave `em Dry' and `Til the Cows Come Home' were
surreptitiously entered in the [American Record Corporation] recording
book as trial recordings with no indication of their contents. A few
pressings were made for studio workers and friends and the masters
destroyed. Until recently, no copies were known to have survived.
The dirty version started appearing on blues compilations inn the early 1990s.
But even though there were no available versions back in the early '70s, I
remember hearing about the song when I was in high school. You can hear it
now:
But now let's get back to that song that Crumb taught us:
And, like I said above, something recently reminded me of this classic. It was when I watched the movie Babylon a couple of weeks ago. Actress Li Jun Li sings a reimagined lesbian version (with the help of soundtrack composer Justin Hurwitz.)
Later in the film a snatch (sorry) of the original Harry Roy version can be heard.
But Babylon wasn't the first time the song has appeared in a drama in recent ears. Here's Michael Zegen as Bugsy Siegel in Boardwalk Empire in 2014
Sunday, August 27 , 2023 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
Star Collector by The Monkees
Bloody Mary by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Bigger and Better by The Fleshtones
Ain't No Pussy by Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons
Out Of Our Tree by The Wailers
Without You by The Grawks
Rocky by Butthole Surfers
Love by Country Joe & The Fish
John Henry by Snakefarm
Dreaming Party by Degurutieni
Drop Dead Gorgeous by Knoxville Girls
Leaning On The Everlasting Arm by Rev. Gatemouth Moore and His Gospel Singers
Like A Chicken by WITCH
Streets Of Lusaka by WITCH
Black Rat by Big Mama Thornton
On Trial by The Fugitives
Fire Walk With Me by Archie & The Bunkers
Huboon Stomp by Devo
Bad She Gone Voodoo by Chief Fuzzer
I'm In With) The Out Crowd by The A-Bones
Banned in Boston by Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs
Waking The Lion by Iriebellion
Torn Curtain by Television
Cosmic Queries by Willis Earl Beal
So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad) by The Everly Brothers
Through It All by Lady Wray
You Were A Friend of Mine by Eilen Jewell
Murder's Crossed my Mind by Desdemona Finch
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
All instrumental "bed" music on this show is by Dave Del Monte & The Cross Country Boys
Saturday, August 26, 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Saturdays Mountain Time Substitute Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist:
Earth Died Screaming by Tom Waits
Masquerade by Willis Earl Beal
Love Is Like Gravity by Pere Ubu
Chimelong by Danger Cutterhead
Pinky's Dream by David Lynch with Karen O
13th Floor City by Degurutieni
Dropout Boogie by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
Heartbreak Hotel by The Residents
That's When Your Heartaches Begin by James Chance & Pill Factory
Draygo's Guilt by The Fall
Stuttering Wind by Johnny Dowd
I Gotta Get A Fake I.D. by Barnes & Barnes
Evil Alligator Man by Jad Fair
Pyschoticbumpschool by Bootsy Collins
Nude Sexuality in the Afternoon by John Trubee & The Ugly Janitors Of America
