Sunday, September 17, 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
Right Hand Man by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Ookami Otoko by Horror Deluxe
Girls on Bikes by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Back in the late '60s, the hippies with their long hair and marijuana inspired
Jack Webb to try to warn the nation of the dangers of peace and love and their threatening new music on Dragnet. In the' 70s and '80s, punk rock
inspired overwrought television episodes trying to shock Mr. Marvin
Middleclass about the unhealthy phenomenon destroying the nation's youth.
Actually on sitcoms, punk-rock generally was treated as weird but essentially
harmless fun for the kids. The humor came not only from the
stereotypical Mohawks and slam dancing, but from the squares' reactions to
it.
This was the case with case with Don Rickles in CPO Sharkey. A 1978
episode titled "Punk Rock Sharkey" actually featured The Dickies. This video
of the band's song "Hideous" features clips from that show:
On WKRP in Cincinnati, in a 1978 episode there's a British punk band
called Scum of the Earth (which featured musician/actor Michael Des
Barres) dress all spiffy, but that's only a guise. Under those 3-piece suits
there are rascally punk-rock hearts who like to spray their audiences with
fire extinguishers, much to the dismay of Mr. Carlson, who prefers Benny
Goodman, and Andy, who yearns for Crosby, Stills & Nash:
But on television dramas, things got serious.
Punk rock became a backdrop for murderous violence and destruction.
On CHiPs, for instance, a band called Pain, in a 1982 episode called "Battle
of the Bands" thinks it's funny to throw an electric bass off a rooftop
causing traffic mayhem. (I was sympathetic though, because one band member is
named "Potatohead"!)
All the way up to 1987 -- long after the heyday of actual punk rock -- an ABC After School Special called "The Day My Kid Went Punk" warned of the danger of "Punk
Syndrome," which apparently is even worse than the Woke Mind Virus! Here, a
meek, soft-spoken high school orchestra nerd transforms himself into a punk
rocker to try to win the heart of a cute blonde girl in the orchestra. Here's
an abbreviated version of that episode:
But perhaps the craziest punk rock depiction of all time was on
Quincy ME, that Jack Klugman vehicle about the crime-solving
medical examiner. In one episode called “Next Stop, Nowhere,” a kid
is stabbed to death at a punk rock show and Quincy is convinced that the evil
music was at least partially to blame. “Whoever killed that boy was
listening to words that literally cried out for blood,” he says at one point
during the episode. Here are some clips from this infamous episode:
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
(All songs by Hank, except where noted)
