Friday, July 3, 2015 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
American Trash by Betty Dylan
Fourth of July by Dave Alvin
Still Sober After All these Beers by Banditos
Lower 48 by The Gourds
Go-Go Truck by The Defibulators
Ballad of the Bellhop by The Dustbowl Revival
The Clams and I by The Dirty Bourbon River Show
A Day at a Time by Dale Watson
(Tom Russell message)
Hair Trigger Heart by Tom Russell
The Outcast by Dave Van Ronk
The Day Bartender by Al Duvall
Chevy Headed West by Jim Stringer
Thirteen Minutes by Earl Brooks
The Girl on Death Row by T. Tex Edwards & Out on Parole
Come Out Come Out by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
Lucky by The Beaumonts
Down on the Corner of Love by Buck Owens
Aim to Please by Palomino Shakedown
Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette) by Phil Harris
Fried Chicken and Gasoline by Southern Culture on the Skids
I'm Barely Hangin' On by Johnny Paycheck
Alice in Hulaland by Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard
I Can Talk to Crows by Chipper Thompson
Hungover Together by The Supersuckers with Kelly Deal
Indoor Fireworks by Elvis Costello
Desert Rose Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen
Worried Mind by Eilen Jewell
Sweet Virginia by The Rolling Stones
Can You Blame the Colored Man by South Memphis String Band
Yesterday, July 1 was the birthday of two great American musicians born in 1899 in Villa Rica, Georgia.
One was a great blues pianist and occasional singer who played with greats like Ma Rainey and Tampa Red. He co-wrote and sang on Red's best-known song. "Tight Like That" -- and he recorded a few sides under his own name, Georgia Tom.
The other was the Father of Gospel Music, credited with, basically, inventing the genre of Black gospel, bringing the passion of the blues to sacred music ... and writing some of the greatest gospel songs ever known. He even coined the term "gospel music." His name was Reverend Thomas A. Dorsey.
Most of you probably realize Georgia Tom and Thomas Dorsey were the same guy,
He was the son of a Baptist preacher and a church organist. Some say he was a child prodigy. At first he adopted the stage name "Barrelhouse Tom" before settling on "Georgia Tom."
By the age of 19, he moved to Chicago, where he knocked around n some local jazz and blues bands before starting his own group, The Wildcat Jazz Band, which backed up Ma Rainey. Tampa Red was a guitarist in that band.
But in the 1920s, Dorsey's life took a turn toward darkness. According to a PBS documentary caled This Far by Faith:
Georgia Tom
At twenty-one, his hectic and unhealthy schedule led to a nervous breakdown. He convalesced back home in Atlanta. There, his mother admonished him to stop playing the blues and serve the Lord. He ignored her and returned to Chicago, playing with Ma Rainey. He married his sweetheart, Nettie Harper. But in 1925, a second breakdown left Dorsey unable to play music.
It should be noted that different accounts have several conflicting dates for these "nervous break downs." According to some sources after the second one he sought the spiritual guidance of a faith healer named Bishop H.H. Haley who, Dorsey told biographer, Michael Harris, extracted a `live serpent' out of Dorsey’s throat.
According to the story, Haley told Dorsey, "There is no reason for you to be looking so poorly and feeling so badly, The Lord has too much work for you to let you die." And he helped convince the young musician to turn away from those Devil blues and dedicated his talents to music for the Lord.
But Dorsey hadn't hit bottom yet. According to This Far by Faith:
After his recovery ... Dorsey committed himself to composing sacred music. However, mainstream churches rejected his songs. Then, in August 1932, Dorsey's life was thrown into crisis when his wife and son died during childbirth. In his grief, he turned to the piano for comfort. The tune he wrote, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord," came, he says, direct from God.
Dorsey started the Dorsey House of Music, an independent music publishing company for Black gospel composers, in 1932. He established the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses, serving as its president for more than 40 years. He would begin an association with Mahalia Jackson, one of the greatest gospel singers of all time
And he sang nothing but gospel music until his death in 1993
So happy birthday, Reverend! Here are a bunch of his songs.
Let's start off with Georgia Tom:
Here is is with a lady called Kansas City Kitty
Here is his most famous song, recorded with his pal Tampa Red
Now on to Dorsey's gospel career. This isn't one of his better known songs, but it's a good one.
Here is Mahalia Jackson singing "(There Will Be) Peace in the Valley," which Dorsey wrote for her in 1937. The song went on to be hits for Red Foley and, later, Elvis Presley. Johnny Cash also did a great version (the first one I ever heard back in the '60s.)
Here is Rev. Dorsey's best known song, performed late in his life
Decades before before The Sugar Hill Gang -- years before The Last Poets or Gil Scott Heron even -- courageous, (or at least shameless) Caucasians created their own forms of rap music that swept the nation.
Or at least made for some pretty weird novelty records.
The late, lamented Spy Magazine released a hilarious compilation called White Men Can't Wrap, which showcased many of the classics of the genre, some of which are included below.
The collection included liner notes by none other than Irwin Chusid, perhaps the nation's greatest expert on "outsider" music, and a major fan of all sorts of strange and wonderful songs.
Chusid sayeth:
White rap is a centuries-old tradition; the original white rappers were square-dance callers improvising rhymes for Saturday-night barn parties in America's rural backwaters. Like today's rappers, they were seen as debauchers, imperiling the morals of the young. The fiddle was "the instrument of the devil"; church leaders banned it. The callers' freestyle rhymes teased with erotic innuendos ("Duck for the oyster/Dig for the clam/Knock a hole in the old tin can"). The stuff they taught you in the grade-school gymnasium, that cornball mountain music with the do-si-dos - it was all about sex and forbidden behavior! It was the roots of today's white rap culture. Herewith, a tribute." (Thanks to the ever-excellent Music for Maniacs blog for transcribing that for their post about White Men Can't Wrap a few years ago.)
Besides its roots in square-dance calling as Chusid notes, another major manifestation of white rap was "talking blues," Folksingers like woody Guthrie and the young Bob Dylan loved the style and included several talking blues tunes in their repertoires.
But the style goes back at least to the mid-20s. South Carolina entertainer Chris Bouchillon recorded a song called "Talking Blues' in 1926. His song "Born in Hard Luck" is even better.
Hank Williams played his own style of talking blues also, in is guise as Luke the Drifter.
But hillbilly singers were not the only purveyors of white rap. In the late '50s comedian Lenny Bruce made this beatnik-jazz contribution.
By the 1960s, white rap was in full blossom. There were big radio hits like "Big Bad John" by Jimmy Dean, "Old Rivers by Walter Brennan," "Ringo by Lorne Green and "Gallant Men," a patriotic march by Everett McKinley Dirksen, whose day job at the time was minority leader of the U.S. Senate. (I posted a YouTube of that on a previous Wacky Wednesday.)
But the greatest white rapper of them all in the 1960s was not an actor or senator. He was Napoleon XIV (real name: Jerry Samuels) who recorded this sensitive take on behavioral-health issues called "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" This track actually was a crude form of hip hop, just a guy reciting lyrics over a beat and an ominous siren. Why has Napoleon XIV not been sampled more?
Finally, I know that technically he doesn't qualify for this category, but for his 1967 song "Don't Blame the Children," I believe that Sammy Davis, Jr. should be considered at least an honorary white rapper.
Welcome to the Redneck Palace, where rednecks, hillbillies, country bumpkins, hicks, white trash and trash of any color are treated like royalty. Enjoy crazy country sounds old and new, the wild sounds I play every Friday night on the Santa Fe Opry on KSFR.
This episode is dedicated to my new friend, Harley in Roger Miller's hometown Erick, Oklahoma. Harley's own Redneck Palace in Erick is pictured above.
UPDATE: July 2: Disappointing news. Tom Russell contacted me yesterday to tell me that he had to cancell Friday's SF Opry appearance because of a scheduling conflict. He did make a short recording, which I'll play on the show, but he won't be in the studio with me.
Singer-songwriter, artist-author Tom Russell, the man who wrote "Gallo de Cielo," "The Sky Above, The Mud Below," "Blue Wing," "Haley's Comet," "The Man From God Knows Where," "The Kid from Spavinaw," "When Sinatra Played Juarez" and way too many more to mention, will be appearing live in the studio on the Santa Fe Opry this Friday, July 3.
Russell, who recently moved to Santa Fe, recently released a double-CD concept album or "folk opera" or 'frontier musical" call The Rose of Roscrea.
And he's got a gig on Tuesday July 14 at the Jean Cocteau Theater. (I'll be sure to ask him about those rumors I just started that he and George R.R. Martin are collaborating on a Game of Thrones episode about cockfighting in Westeros.)
So tune in Friday, 10 p.m. Mountain Time on KSFR. That's 101.1 in Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico and streaming live on the web at www.ksfr.org
Below is a promo video for The Rose of Roscrea.
And here is one of my favorite Russell tunes. That's Eliza Gilkyson on background vocals. (She's on Russell's new album too)
