Sunday, August 16, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell Webcasting! 101.1 FM email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org Here's the playlist OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
The Claw by Barrence Whitfield
Nightclub by Andre Williams & The Goldstars
Misunderstood by Sons of Hercules
Double O Bum by Gas Huffer
Rimbaud Diddley by Churchwood
I Found Out by Nathaniel Mayer
Fall on You by The Plimsouls
Lucy Baines by The A-Bones
Bittersweet Candy by The Barbarellatones
Vegetables by The Beach Boys
Me and Mr. Jones by Amy Winehouse
Miss Beehive by Howard Tate
No No No by Die Zorros
Blindness by The Fall
The Hink-a-Dink by Chuck E. Weiss
Strobe Light by The B-52s
South Street by The Orlons
Shake Me by Motobunny
It's a Gas by Alfred E. Neuman
Conjuring the King
Heartbreak Hotel by The Cramps
Marie's the Name by Elvis Presley
En El Barrio by El Vez
One Night of Sin by Simon Stokes
Baby Let's Play House by Elvis Presley
Trouble by Danzig
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet by Lisa Marie Presley
Rockabilly Rebel by Orion
Promised Land by Elvis Presley
Queenie Wahine's Papaya by Elvis Presley
Mystery Train by The Band
Jailhouse Rock by Patti Smith
Suspicious Minds by Dwight Yoakam
Little Sister by Elvis Presley
Hound Dog by Big Mama Thornton
Crying in the Chapel by Elvis Presley CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis Like the Terrell's Sound World Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Friday, Aug. 14, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org Here's my playlist : OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
Gettin' High for Jesus by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs
Keep on Truckin' by Hot Tuna
Meat Man by D.M. Bob & The Deficits
Yes Ma'am, He Found Me in a Honky Tonk by Miss Leslie
Have You Heard the Gossip by Charlie Brown Jr.
Banana Puddin' by Southern Culture on the Skids
Knock Off Your Naggin' by Stonewall Jackson
Dixie Flyer by Mose McCormack
Robot Drone by Holly Wood
Losing Faith/ Hey Warden/ Bound for Glory by Audrey Auld
Rock-a-bye Baby Rock by Connie Dycus
My Old Man Boogie by The Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band
Let's Get Wild by Rudy Grayzell
Owls by The Handsome Family
The Other Side of Nowhere by John Prine & Mac Wiseman
$2,000 Navajo Rug by Joe West & The Sinners
The Cat Never Sleeps by Mama Rosin with Hipbone Slim & The Knee-Tremblers
Mr. Garfield by Johnny Cash
White House Blues by Merle Travis
White House Blues by Jadoo
Marie Laveau by Bobby Bare
Monkey on a String by Charlie Poole
Still I'm Travelin' On by The Mississippi Sheiks
LSD by T. Tex Edwards
A Death in the Family by The Malpass Brothers
I Need Somebody Bad Tonight by Rhonda Vincent
My Reasons Why by Blaze Foley
Sin City by Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen
Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues by Elvis Presley
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican August 14, 2015 A few years ago, when rock ’n’ soul shouter Barrence Whitfield first reunited with guitarist Peter Greenberg and bassman Phil Lenker — all original members of The Savages, who tore up the East Coast back in the mid-1980s — my biggest concern was that their excellent comeback album, Savage Kings, might be a one-shot deal.
But since then, Whitfield and his Savages have faithfully released an album every two years, Dig Thy Savage Soul (2013) and now Under a Savage Sky (official release date Aug. 21).
Once again, Whitfield and crew have laid down a record full of high-charged, hopped-up, rough, rowdy and raw tunes that should make you remember why you loved rock ’n’ roll in the first place.
There’s no mistaking this album for anything but a Barrence Whitfield record. It’s got your basic rocking guitar, screaming sax, and soulful shouts from Whitfield. There are musical nods to Little Richard, The Sonics (the immortal Washington state garage giants, with whom Barrence & The Savages toured earlier this year) and soulsters like Don Covay and Otis Redding.
But while the album retains all those elements that Whitfield fans expect, Under the Savage Sky has a harder edge — faster rhythms, louder drums, crunchier guitar — than the group’s previous efforts. As a band, The Savages are still extremely tight. Here they just seem more ferocious.
Barrence live in Santa Fe a few years ago
The core of the album consists of tunes written by Greenberg and fellow New Mexico resident Michael Mooney. (The two played together in a Taos garage band called Manby’s Head, which I haven’t seen in a couple of years.)
Among these are “Angry Hands,” which has a melody similar to Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” and — like “Willie Meehan” on Savage Kings — is about a washed-up boxer; “Incarceration Casserole,” which is about a guy whose wife is locked up in jail — causing him to obsess over who’s going to fix his dinner; and “Adjunct Street,” a slow, minor-key blues that Whitfield sings the hell out of.
Then there’s “Katy Didn’t,” written by Greenberg, Mooney, and Whitfield himself. Starting off with a guitar hook that reminds me of “Kicks” by Paul Revere & The Raiders, the song begins, “She had a hollow leg/Knew how to make me beg/She drank me under the table.”
As usual, Whitfield includes some inspired covers from deep in the bowels of Greenberg’s fabled record collection. “I’m a Full Grown Man,” which was originally called “I’m a Man” when soulman Timmy Willis recorded it decades ago, has sweet echoes of the Stax/Volt sound; “The Wolf Pack” goes all the way back to Kid Thomas (Louis Thomas Watts), who recorded it in 1955; and “I’m a Good Man,” an Eddie Snow song from the ’50s, which sounds like a rewrite of “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”
Under the Savage Sky ends with “Full Moon in the Daylight Sky,” an intense minor-key workout written by Whitfield and Lenker. It is scheduled for release on Aug. 21 but is ready for pre-order on all your favorite online shops.
Also recommended:
* Jamie Was a Boozer: Special Edition by Joe West & The Sinners. Back in 1998, Joe West was living in Austin. I hadn’t met the guy at the time, but I was starting to get familiar with his music. He’d sent me his first album, Trip to Roswell, N.M., which had some good songs on it. But I didn’t officially become a West fan until he sent me his second album, Jamie Was a Boozer.
Backed by a snappy little saloon band called The Sinners (and on some cuts, former True Believer Jon Dee Graham on lap steel), Jamie Was a Boozer was no sophomore slump. The album has been out of print for years, but last month a company called Baby Black Panda released a new version, featuring all 15 of the original songs, plus three previously unreleased live tunes.
I looked up my old review of the original version, which was in a column about several local releases. Enjoy some recycling: OK, officially Joe lives and works in Austin but his Santa Fe ties are legit. His dad, artist Jerry West lives here. And Joe frequently pays tribute to Santa Fe in song, such as “$2000 Navajo Rug,” a sarcastic toast (with an authentic Santa Fe $5 cerveza) to the ricos who keep our cost of living so high.
Jpe West in Santa Fe Railyard Plaza a few weeks ago
Joe has a knack for writing funny tunes — Jim Terr would have killed to have written “Trailer Park Liberal” — but the main strength of this album is a core of songs, some funny, some not, related to alcohol and the abuse thereof. The title song is an unflinching tribute to a friend who drowned in liquor. “The Ballad of Terri McGovern,” about a woman who got drunk and froze to death, is even more startling. “Rehab Girl,” about a guy with a crush on a lady who works at a rehab center, is lighter but it’s got an edge.
I’ll stand by what I wrote, adding that the songs have passed the proverbial test of time.
Well, maybe some of those Santa Fe places that sold “$5 cervezas” are no longer so cheap. Otherwise it doesn’t sound dated at all. And the live bonus tunes, while not on the same level as “Rehab Girl,” fit in well.
So even if you haven’t heard the original album — and in fact, if you’ve never heard Joe West, my advice is to dive in.
Video time!
Here's an Barrence set recorded last November at the Jazz Cafe in London
An editorial cartoon about McKinley's murder, apparently
from some old newspaper in The Republic of Toads
Yesterday for Wacky Wednesday, I featured songs about Watergate in a slightly belated celebration of the anniversary of Nixon's resignation. One of those songs was Tom T. Hall's "Watergate Blues," which I noted has a melody lifted from an old folk song called "White House Blues," which was about the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901,
So why the heck not, for this Throwback Thursday, let's have some variations of that song by some of the cooler artists who have performed it .. plus a couple of tunes about the other more obscure presidential assassination.
McKinley was shot while on vacation in Buffalo, N.Y. by a self-described anarchist named Leon Czolgosz.
According to the Old Weird America blog, which examines songs from Harry Smith's Anthology of AmericanFolk Music:
It seems that the ballad originated with Afro-American “songsters” and, like “Stackalee”, was a kind of proto-Blues with a melody and a verse structure very alike another murder Blues ballad, “Delia’s gone” ... in his book Long Steel Rail, Norm Cohen tells about the writer D.H Lawrence, who used to sing a version of “White House Blues.” A friend of Lawrence recalled that in 1915, as he was singing several Negro Spirituals, he also “…set our brains jingling with an American ballad on the murder of president McKinley with words of brutal jocularity sung to an air of of lilting sweetness …
Brutal jocularity will do it every time.
It's been known by many names. Bascom Lamar Lunsford called his version “Zolgotz.' Ernest Stoneman called it “Road to Whashington” (sic) or “Unlucky Road to Whashington” (double sic)
One of, if not the earliest recorded versions of the song was by North Carolina singer/banjo man Charlie Poole. He did it like this:
Bill Monroe brought "White House Blues" to the world of bluegrass. He did a wondrous version, but this more recent version by Del McCoury may be my favorite.
Did I mention another assassination? President James Garfield was shot and fatally wounded in June 1882. His murder at the hands of Charles Guiteau -- who felt The president owed him some patronage job.
The Field Trip South blog, dedicated to the Southern Folklife Collection has two (sadly way too short) sound clips by Bascom Lamar Lunsford singing two different Garfield assassination songs.
YouTube has one of the songs, "Mr. Garfield," which Lunsford says he first heard in 1903. It's an eight minute murder ballad odyssey.
But I first heard the report of the report of Guiteau's pistol done by Johnny Cash, probably on his TV show in the late '60s.
The second Garfield song also appears on Harry Smith's magical Anthology, recorded in 1927 by Kelly Harrell & The Virginia String Band "Charles Guiteau" is from the jailed assassin's perspective as he awaits his date with the hangman.
According to Bob Waltz in an article in Inside Bluegrass , this song is a "touch-up" song.
... the unknown author simply took the earlier ballad "James A. Rogers" (executed in New York in 1858) and "zipped in" the details of the Garfield case. This is no surprise; the same tune carried at least two other murder/confession ballads, "John T. Williams" and "Ewing Brooks."
Here's Harrell's version:
Nixon was driven from power by what became known as the Watergate scandal.
Watergate, as it turns out, inspired a number of songs in the realms of blues, soul, country and rock, several of which are included here. Some were bitchen tunes by great artists. Some aren't. You decide which is which.
Let's start out with the great Howlin' Wolf. His "Watergate Blues" celebrated Frank Wills, the security guard at the Watergate who discovered the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.
Another "Watergate Blues" is a wry little country tune by Tom T. Hall. But by the last verse the Storyteller gets pretty serious. The melody is lifted from the song "White House Blues" (performed by Charlie Poole, Bill Monroe and others), which was about the assassination of President McKinley
Fred Wesley, best known for his work with James Brown did "Rockin' Funky Watergate" with The New J.B.s
Even better is proto-rapper Gil Scott Heron's caustic "H2O-gate Blues."
I'm not really familiar with bluesman Bobo Jenkins, but his "Watergate Blues" is pretty spooky. Listen closely and at the 1:03 mark you can hear a phone ringing.
Here's an obscure country singer named Les Waldroop applying some Cash-style Chunka chunka to the Watergate saga. It's called "Watergate Bugs." (Update 8-9-2017: The only version currently on Youtube has a second Waldroop song attached.)
This one, by someone called "The Creep" is just plain tacky.
And here is some incisive commentary from sampling pioneer Dicky Goodman.
Do you ever get Dick Nixon mixed up with Billy Jack? Me neither. But this band, appropriately called The Dick Nixons, did.
They say that on a full moon night you can see Nixon's ghost
peering out of a sixth foot window of the Watergate
