WACKY WEDNESDAY: Come Back Richard Simmons!

One of the stranger celebrity sagas of  recent years is the "disappearance" or sudden recluse status status of the flamboyant exercise mogul, talk-show stalwart Richard Simmons. In his star-spangled gym shorts, he used to seem to be everywhere, hawking his Deal-a-Meal cards, his Sweatin' to the Oldies videos, his over-the-top personality. 

He was a punchline for countless comics. And a saint to the thousands he helped lose weight and get into shape.

Then suddenly, in early 2014, Richard seemed to drop off the face of the Earth. He stopped showing up to his exercise classes at his Slimmons Studio in Beverly Hills. His TV and radio appearances completely dried up. There were grim speculations that Richard had become some sort of slave to his own housekeeper. That he was transitioning into a woman.

In March 2016 he broke his public silence in a phone interview with Savannah Guthrie on the Today Show saying, "No one is holding me in my house as a hostage. You know, I do what I want to do as I've always done so people should sort of just believe what I have to say because like I'm Richard Simmons!"

Eight months later, he closed Slimmons, which had been open for 40 years. "Truly, you don’t need me to tell you what to do anymore," he wrote in a rambling, emotional Facebook post. "You know. It’s within you. It’s in your heart and it’s been there all along. So get up and get moving!"

Filmmaker and former Daily Show producer Dan Taberski, a friend of Richard's -- who frequently took his classes at Slimmons -- recently began a podcast called Missing Richard Simmons. The first episode is already up. And like Richard himself, it's weird and touching. (Update: Looks like Episode Two also was posted today.)

Though he's never been known as a musician, Richard frequently had a song in his heart. Here are a few he's left us. I hope we hear him singing, and sweating and dealing some meals and being his sweet obnoxious self again sometime soon.

First there's this:

Here is one of Richard's classic Letterman appearances



And finally, here's this inspirational ballad.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Shout Bamalama by Benjamin Booker
It'll Chew You Up and Spit You Out by Concrete Blonde
They're Gonna Get You by Count Five
Love My Lover by The Fleshtones
She Was a Mau Mau by King Salami & The Cumberland 3
It's Lame by Figures of Light
All These Times by Lynx Lynx
Mammer-Jammer by Don & Dewy
What Now My Love by Stan Ridgway

Room 213 by Dead Moon
One Kind Favor by Canned Heat
Weedeye by Churchwood
Sexual Tension by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Rock the Casbah by Richard Cheese
Surface Envy by Sleater-Kinney
Wang Dang Doodle by PJ Harvey
Sit With the Guru by The Strawberry Alarm Clock

Something Weird by Stomachmouths
Stranger by Weird Omens
Smoke 2 Much by Grandpa Death Experience
Certain Appeal by London Souls
Building Models by Skull Control
Drove Up From Pedro by Mike Watt
Silly Putty by Primus

Rag Doll by The Four Seasons
To The Other Woman, I'm the Other Woman by Sandra Phillips
A Man Needs a Woman (A Woman Needs a Man) by ZZ Hill
Walking on a Tightrope by William Bell
Don't Fuck Around With Love by Bernadette Seacrest and Kris Dale
I Can't Stop Loving You by Laura St. Jude
Mysteries of Love by Julee Cruise
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

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, Feb. 17, 2017
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
Big Mouth by Nikki Lane
Drunk Dialer by Miss Leslie
Quit Feelin' Sorry for You by Bill Kirchen
Hurtin' on the Bottle by Margot Price
I Want to Be Loved by Sleepy LaBeef
The Man Who Rode the Mule Around the World by John Schooley
Righteous Ways by Scott H. Biram
Flora by Peter, Paul & Mary

Only a Dream by Beth Lee
Talking to the Dead by Stephanie Hatfield
Who's Gonna Take Your Garbage Out by John Prine with Iris DeMent
My Own Kind of Hat by Rosie Flores
Wild Girl by Katy Moffat
When My Baby Left Me by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
Trouble, Trouble by Shinyribs
You Don't Know My Mind by Roy Moss
You Don't Love Me by Hasil Adkins

The Ballad of Dale & Ray by Dale Watson & Ray Benson
Route 23 by Wayne Hancock
The Road Goes on Forever by Joe Ely
So Long Baby, Goodbye by The Blasters
Blood Red and Goin' Down by Tanya Tucker
Hog Tied Over You by Billy Bacon & The Forbidden Pigs with Candy Kane
I Ain't Gonna Hang Around by Southern Culture on the Skids
Wrong Honky Tonk by Phoebe Legere
Lonesome Hobo by Del McCoury
The Way it Goes by Gillian Welch

Why Me by Kris Kristofferson
It Is No Secret What God Can Do by Elvis Presley
Women of the Night by Ringo Starr
Barely Human by Robbie Fulks
When Two Worlds Collide by Roger Miller
Miracle of Five by Eleni Mandell
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets


Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page
Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE
Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

THROWBACK THURSDAY: I Killed a Man For Flora ...

It's no wonder I love murder ballads so much. Back when I was growing up in the early '60s, they were everywhere -- at least those wonderful folk songs faux folk songs that were sweeping the country and pop charts back then -- "Tom Dooley" by The Kingston Trio, "El Paso" by Marty Robins, "Miller's Cave" by Bobby Bare ...

But there was one brilliant murder ballad I discovered by myself without the help of Top 40 radio. It was on the 1963 Peter, Paul & Mary album, Moving, the track right before "Puff the Magic Dragon."

"Flora" 

It was a fast-paced, minor-key tune about som hapless loser who catches his true love, the Lily of the West, with some funky dude. So the enraged cuckold pulls out a knife and kills this "man of low degree."

The confession:

I stepped up my rival, my dagger in my hand/ I seized him by the collar, and I ordered him to stand / All in my desperation, I stabbed him in his breast / I killed a man for Flora, the Lily of the West!

I was 10 years old when I came across this song. It was about the coolest thing I'd ever heard.

Take a listen yourself.



I didn't know it at the time, but "Flora," often called "Lily of the West had been kicking around the folk revival for a few years. Joan Baez did one of the first recorded versions two years earlier.

But it goes back at last more than a hundred years before that. According to The Traditional Ballad Index compiled by California State University at Fresno folklore program, Flora goes back to at least to 1839.

Sometimes the two-timing temptress was called Mary or Molly. Before the tragic protagonist came from Louisville, he came from England. Some believe the song is Irish in origin.

But other than the details, the basic story remains the same. The guy gets starry-eyed over a beautiful dame, finds her in the company of some other jerk, who he kills. He's tried for murder, goes to prison and yet he still loves the gorgeous Flora.

Here are some other notable versions, starting with a rag-tag take from the early '70s by Bob Dylan.




Fast forward to 1995 and The Chieftains, with Mark Knopfler on vocals, does a slowed down version of the song with a much different melody.



If that melody sounds familiar you might have heard it in another old folk song caleld "Lakes of Pontchartrain." Here's a version of that by Peter Case



Interestingly, a few years after The Chieftains recorded "Lily of the West" with Knopfler, they did a version with Roseanne Cash using the melody I first heard by Peter, Paul & Mary.

You can find that on the Spotify playlist below


For more deep dives into songs, check out The Stephen W. Terrell Web Log Songbook

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Ditties for Dahmer

Twenty five years ago today a jury in Milwaukee, Wisc. found Jeffrey Dahmer sane and guilty of murdering 15 men and boys between 1978 and 1991.

This led to a life sentence for each of those killings.

But Dahmer is infamous not only for murder and rape, but for his habit of  torturing, and dismembering his victims, having sex with their corpses and even eating their body parts.

From The Crime Museum website:

He began killing around one person each week by the summer of 1991. Dahmer was using the idea that he could turn his victims into “zombies” to have youthful submissive sexual partners. He used many different techniques, such as drilling holes into their skull and injecting hydrochloric acid or boiling water into their brains. Soon, residents of Oxford Apartments complex began noticing awful smells coming from Dahmer’s apartment, as well as loud noises from falling objects. Although most serial killers stick with one racial background, Dahmer killed a variety of people from different racial backgrounds.

... Further investigation of the home lead to a severed head in the refrigerator, three more severed heads in the apartment, multiple photographs of victims and human remains and more human remains in his refrigerator. It was later assumed that he practiced necrophilia and cannibalism. A total of seven skulls were found in his apartment as well as a human heart in the freezer. An altar was also constructed with candles and human skulls in his closet.

Yep. All the prefect ingredients for a good pop song!

Dahmer, who was murdered in prison in 1994, inspired a few songs. Here are a few of them

First, as an appetizer, (sorry) here's this brief ditty from Dahmer's fellow Wisconsinites, The Violent Femmes:



Here is one from the mighty Dead Moon, immortalize the apartment where about half of Dahmer's killings occurred.


Most of Dahmer's "tribute" songs come from the genre of death metal. I'm not sure why.



Pearl Jam even took a whack at Dahmer. But for reasons I'm not quite sure of, they changed his first name to "Frank."

Dirty Frank Dahmer, he's a gourmet cook / Got a recipe for Anglo-Saxon soup ...I got a cupboard full of fleshy fresh ingredients / Very careful, at the same time quite expedient ...


Bon appetit