Merry Christmas, dear friends out there in Podland ! It's time once again to courageously wage the War on Christmas with another Big Enchilada Christmas Special. Once again we'll revel in the magic and madness of the season and jingle your bells with some festive rock 'n' roll and beyond.
(Background Music: It Came Upo a Midnight Clear by Beausoleil)
Captain Santa Claus and His Reindeer Space Patrol by Bobby Helms
Hanukkah O Hanukkah / Carol O' The Bells by Unhung Heroes
Hang Your Balls on the Christmas Tree by Kay Martin & Her Body Guards
It's Christmas Time Ebeneezer by The Len Price 3
Christmas in Jail by The Mighty Soul Deacons
The Boner (Christmas version) by Santa Geil and His Red Nosed Pimps
(Background Music: Sleigh Ride by Squirrel Nut Zippers)
Friday, November , 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
Captain Santa Claus and His Reindeer Space Patrol by Bobby Helms
Six Bullets for Christmas by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used to Do by Tom Jones
C'Mon a My House by The Satellites
Hands Off My Whiskey by Kady Bow
Satan and the Saint by The Malpass Brothers
40 Miles to Vegas by Southern Culture on the Skids
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican December 18, 2015
When I first heard about a tribute album in the works for Ted Hawkins, my reaction was, “About damn time!” And when I heard Cold and Bitter Tears: The Songs of Ted Hawkins, my two-word summation was, “Well done.”
Unfortunately, your reaction while reading this might be “Ted who?” So I guess I better give my Ted talk.
Hawkins was a busker — a street musician who did some of his best work singing for tips at Venice Beach. He was born in Mississippi, spent too much time in jail, and had a voice that sounded like a grittier version of Sam Cooke’s. He was discovered and rediscovered a couple of times by show-biz heavies. And he died just months after the release of his first major-label album.
If you believe in signs from the universe, consider this: He died in 1995 on New Year’s Day. Died on New Year’s Day, like Hank Williams and Townes Van Zandt.
Cold and Bitter Tears is mostly populated by alt-country singers, many of them from Texas. Like most tribute albums, most of the songs don’t compare — and shouldn’t be compared — with the original versions. But there are some real gems here.
Gruff-voiced Jon Dee Graham captures the spirit of “Strange Conversation,” while Sunny Sweeney, who I’d never heard before, makes you wonder why “Happy Hour” didn’t hit the country charts. And Shinyribs (Kev Russell of The Gourds) turns “Who Got My Natural Comb?” into a crazy soul rave-up.
Mary Gauthier nails “Sorry You’re Sick,” complete with slinky, swampy guitar. The refrain of this tune, “What do you want from the liquor store/Something sour or something sweet?” is jarring. After promising to do whatever it takes to heal a seriously ailing lover, the answer can be found at a liquor store? But as Gauthier recently told the Los Angeles Times, “There is nothing to me as heartbreaking or compelling as one addict’s compassion for another who is dying of addiction.”
The finest track on this tribute is sung by Hawkins himself.
Judging by the tape hiss, “Great New Year” is from some long-lost homemade recording. It starts off as a typical nostalgic holiday tune, with the singer fantasizing about his family gathering around and the children opening presents just like the old days. But reality starts revealing itself with the singer confessing that this family scene probably won’t happen, and probably didn’t happen even in the good old days. Hawkins wonders if his kids even remember him and sings, “I was cruel, mean and selfish/I didn’t show no fatherly love./Now they’re all with their mother/Giving her all the love.”
It stings. Just like Hawkins’ best tunes.
Here's a video of Shnyribs, Sunny Sweeney, Tim Easton and Randy Weeks doing a live version of a Hawkins song.
And here's Ted himself teaching some European buskers how to busk better
Also recommended: * Brennen Leigh Sings Lefty Frizzell. I’m most familiar with Texas songbird Brennen Leigh by way of a couple of duet albums with male singers — 2014’s excellent Before the World Was Made, which she performed with Noel McKay, and Holdin’ Our Own and Other Country Gold Duets, which she made in 2007 with Austin country crooner Jesse Dayton.
On her new album, Leigh has a silent partner, the late William Orville Frizzell, better known as “Lefty.”
She’s hardly the first to pay homage to this country music titan. Merle Haggard did a tribute album, as did Willie Nelson. This might be the first by a woman, however.
And if you’re familiar with her albums with McKay and Dayton, it should be no surprise that she stuck to a good, clean honky-tonk sound, which suits her sweet, sexy voice as much as it suits Frizzell’s songs.
Leigh covers many of the lofty Lefty’s best-known songs — “Saginaw, Michigan,” “Mom and Dad’s Waltz,” etc. But my favorites are the lesser-known nuggets from the Lefty catalogue, songs like “Run ’Em Off,” “My Baby Is a Tramp,” and “What You Gonna Do, Leroy?”
Interesting fact: Lefty Frizzell served some time in New Mexico. At the age of nineteen he wrote one of his greatest songs, the first song on the Leigh tribute, “I Love You A Thousand Ways,” in 1947, while locked up in the Roswell jail on a statutory rape charge.
“The song was a plaintive apology to his wife, Alice, for his misdeeds,” musician Deke Dickerson wrote in his liner notes for a Frizzell box set on the Bear Family label
And, according to Dickerson, Lefty landed in the pokey only eight days after the fabled UFO crash near Roswell.
This is a live New Orleans concert by former Dead Kennedys frontman Biafra that reportedly was done on a dare.
Teaming up with a rootsy but raucous band (including a horn section), the West Coast punk lord blasts his way through a bunch of Big Easy R & B classics including “Ooh-Poo-Pah-Doo,” “Mother-in-Law” and “Working in a Coal Mine.”
Jello puts his stamp on Rockin’ Sidney’s zydeco anthem, “(Don’t Mess With) My Toot Toot,” does an intense version of “House of the Rising Sun,” and pays tribute to the late Alex Chilton, a New Orleans resident, with “Bangkok.”
My favorites include a properly spooky, near-13-minute version of Dr. John’s hoodoo-soaked masterpiece “I Walk on Guilded Splinters” and a wild romp through “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses),” originally done by John Fred & His Playboy Band.
The whole album is downright insane. And I can’t get enough of it.
Elizabeth Cook does a countrified take on the Kennedys’ signature “Too Drunk to Fuck.” It’s a beautiful thing.
And in another salute to a West Coast punk band, banjo picker Al Scorch does a crazy version of Black Flag's “Six Pack."
There also are songs by Texas honky-tonker Dale Watson, Banditos, Bobby Bare Jr. and a creditable cover of The Pogues’ “If I Should Fall from the Grace of God” by Deer Tick.
The compilation is available as seven 7-inch vinyl records or as digital downloads.
When Leon Redbone released his first album On the Track in 1975, it was
as if he walked out of a time warp from some haunted vaudeville theater. With
his natty white suit, Panama hat and ever-present sunglasses, he looked the part
of a traveling songster from some forgotten era.
And his music seemed familiar, yet, with his sometimes mumbled baritone vocals,
somehow other worldly. He played old blues, jazz, a little country (he was
especially fond of Jimmie Rodgers, an ocassional folk song like "Polly Wolly
Doodle," English music hall tunes, 1920s crooner's material.
His arrangements were subtle, never cutesy. Every time I'd hear a Leon song on
the radio, (yes, for awhile there in the mid '70s they'd actually play him on
the rock stations -- probably because Bob Dylan had said nice things about him
in Rolling Stone.
Earlier this year his website announced that Leon was retiring from recording
and performing due to health reasons. So this might be a good time to pay
tribute to him by taking a look and listen to some of the wonderful songs that I
first heard through him.
Let's start with the title cut of one of Leon's early albums,
Champagne Charlie. The song goes back to the mid 1800s, during the
English music hall era. A singer named George Leybourne wrote the words while
one Alfred Lee wrote the melody. But my favorite version was recorded by
bluesman Blind Blake in 1932.
Here is another Redbone signature tune, which Fats Waller made famous in the 1930s:
This is a Leon favorite, "My Walking Stick," written by Irving Berlin
and recorded by Ethel Merman in 1938:
Here's the title song of Leon's Christmas album, This early version is by
The Andrews Sisters with the Guy Lombardo Orchestra.
And while we're at it, merry Christmas from Leon and Dr. John!
Here's some Yuletide cheer from some of our friends in the animal kingdom.
For this first one I'll give a hat tip to my friend Chuck who recently posted this on Facebook. It may be the scariest Christmas song I've ever heard, (You can learn more about about the album HERE)
I think this one is fake. But the horn section is pretty good.
