Little Bobby Dunbar -- or was it Bruce Anderson? -- standing in front of a car with "unidentified people."
I just heard an amazing story on This American Life called "The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar." First presented in 2008, it was just recently replayed.
Here's the basic outline of the story from the show's website:
In 1912 a four-year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar went missing in a swamp in Louisiana. Eight months later, he was found in the hands of a wandering handyman in Mississippi. In 2004, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter discovered a secret beneath the legend of her grandfather's kidnapping, a secret whose revelation would divide her own family, bring redemption to another, and become the answer to a third family's century-old prayer.
You can listen to the whole story at the bottom of this post. But suffice it to say it's such a crazy story it inspired its own instant folk ballad.
Here's the story according to New Orleans bluesman Richard "Rabbit" Brown. i'm not sure when this was recorded but I'd guess sometime in the 1920s:
Here are a couple of more recent songs dealing with the Bobby Dunbar legend. First this one from an Denver artist called King Cardinal.
Jon Dee Graham wrote a song about Bobby also
And, as promised, here's the episode of This American Life
Instead of Wacky Wednesday this week, let's do Fat Tuesday.
That's right, it's Mardi Gras Day. I've never actually been to a Mardi Gras. The couple of times I've been to New Orleans, an average summer weekday night has more festive celebrations in the streets than most places I've ever seen.
But I sure love the music associated with Mardi Gras -- as those of you who listened to the second hour of my radio show Sunday night must realize. So for those of you who can't make it to New Orleans, here are some of my favorite Mardi Gras songs.
For those of you who are in New Orleans ... WHY THE HELL ARE YOU SITTING AROUND READING BLOGS???!!?!? GET OUT AND PARTY!!!!!!
Firsst some Fess ...
Kermit Ruffins with The Rebirth Brass Band
Below is a scene from HBO's Treme featuring the song "Indian Red." This scene was among Actor Wendell Piece's favorite scenes in Treme listed in Rolling Stone.
We had all the [Mardi Gras Indian] chiefs — who had never been photographed together in New Orleans, or anywhere, — come together to sing 'Indian Red' to memorialize their friend who they found buried in the wreckage of his house in the Lower 9th ward. All of these people who are cultural icons and heroes in the community getting international attention," Pierce says. The scene features several Big Chiefs of local Mardi Gras tribes singing the traditional prayer-chant song including Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles, Chief Darryl Montana of the Yellow Pocahontas Hunters, Chief Lionel Delpit of the Black Feathers, Chief Otto DeJean of the Hard Head Hunters, Chief Clarence Dalcour of the Creole Osceolas, Council Chief Fred Johnson, and Spyboy Irving "Honey" Banister of the Creole Wildwest.
Speaking of Mardi Gras Indians, you're probably familiar with the song "Iko Iko" by The Dixie Cups, which was a big hit in 1964. But 11 years before that, a New Orleans R&B singer named James "Sugar Boy" Crawford released a song called "Jock-A-Mo" that's strikingly familiar ....
And nearly a decade before that, a song called "Chocko Me Feendo Hey" by Baby Dodds Trio sounds kind of similar too ...
Meanwhile, in 2003 Big Chief Monk Boudreaux & The Golden Eagles recorded this close cousin of all these songs
Finally, here's Dr. John with The Neville Brothers and a cameo by Pete Fountain
Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018 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
Dial 666 by The Night Beats
Laptop Dog by The Fall
Riot in Cell Block #9 by Flat Duo Jets
Little Girl by The Goon Mat & Lord Bernardo
Lil Lobo by Joe "King" Carrasco with Patricia Vonne
Coyote by Wild Evel & The Trahbones
Memphis Creep by The Oblivians
Mumbles by Jack Ross
Shock the Monkey by Don Ho
Let's Go to Mars by Barrence Whitfierld & The Savages
Tainted Love by King Salami & The Cumberland 3
Sugar Walls by Baronen & Satan
Chum on the Drum by Bee Bee Sea
Tie My Hands to the Floor by Sulphur City
I Love Mean Girl by Pan Ron & In Yeng
Two Thumbs Up by Rattanson
All's Well in Roswell by Harvey McLaughlin
200 Years Old by Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart
MARDI GRAS SET
Mardi Gras in New Orleans by Professor Longhair
Chock Mo Feendo Hey by Baby Dodds Trio
Jockamo Sugar Boy Crawford
Zydeco Mardi Gras by C.J. Chenier
My Indian Red by Dr. John
Meet Me Boys on the Battlefront by Wild Tchoupitoulas
Wild Injuns by The Neville Brothers
Mardi Gras Day by Kermit Ruffins & The Rebirth Brass Band
Mardi Gras Mambo by The Hawkettes
Down at the Mardi Gras by Rockin' Dopsie, Jr.
La Danse de Mardi Gras by Steve Riley, Steve Earle & The Eunice Revelers
Might Mighty Chief by Bo Dollis & The Wild Magnolias
In the Morning (Jockomo) by Big Chief Monk Boudreaux & The Golden Eagles
I Wish I Was in New Orleans by Tom Waits CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, Feb. 9, 2018 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
Trouble by Sam Outlaw
I've Endured by Stump Tail Dolly
Mama's Got the Catfish Blues by Tom T. Hall
Four Years of Chances by Margo Price
Gin and Juice by The Gourds
Out in the Smokehouse Takin' a Bath by Leroy Pullins
Pretty Polly by The Dead Brothers
Little Sadie by The Sadies
Sing a Worried Song by Legendary Shack Shakers
Starlings, Ky /Rain and Snow by J.D.Wilkes
Something's Goin' On by Jessica Lee Wilkes
Trucks Tractors and Trains by The Dirt Daubers
Invisible Hand by Legendary Shack Shakers
Parting Words by Sarah Shook & The Disarmers
I Love My Truck by Glenn Campbell
The Mermaid Song by Jim Kweskin
Buy My Snake Oil by Jello Biafra & Mojo Nixon
Snake Oil by Steve Earle
The Snakes Crawl at Night by Charley Pride
Man Overboard by Libbi Bosworth with Toni Price
Single Girl Again by Oh Lazarus
Pay Day by Laino & Broken Seeds
I Know Your Name by Dad Horse Experience
Looks Like I Killed Again by Slackeye Slim
Soul Mercenary Blues by Blues Against Youth &The Restless Livers Collective
Springtime of Life by Zane Campbell
The Hard Way by Turnpike Troubadours
E.T. Bass at Last Finds the Woman of His Dreams by Jim White
Cold Trail Blues by Peter Case CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
Want to keep this hoedown going after I sign off at midnight? Check out The Big Enchilada Podcast Hillbilly Episode Archive where there are hours of shows where I play music like you hear on the SF Opry.
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Feb. 9 , 2018
I’ve got a few things in common with J.D. Wilkes. For one, he lives in Paducah, Kentucky. My grandfather was born and raised in Kuttawa, Kentucky, a small town near Paducah. (My grandfather pronounced it “Ka-TOY.”) Another thing — Wilkes has been honored by his state as a “Kentucky Colonel.” Similarly, I’m a colonel aide-de-camp, that distinction having been bestowed upon me by former New Mexico Gov. David F. Cargo and former Lt. Gov. Walter Bradley. So we both know the pressures and responsibilities that such an office demands. We both were present at a Legendary Shack Shakers and Dirt Daubers show at the old Santa Fe Brewing Company in June 2012. (He was on stage. I was in the audience.)
But most important, both Wilkes and I are fans of American folk songs, blues, bluegrass, Gypsy jazz and swamp rock. (He plays it a lot better than I do. I do better in the audience.)
Wilkes’ love for this music and his ability to make it sound fresh, fun, and vital, is obvious in his new solo album Fire Dream, which will be officially released next week. This comes just a scant few months after the Shack Shakers’ most recent album, After You’ve Gone, which I’ll get to later.
Fire Dream, which was co-produced by Jimbo Mathus, is more eclectic than either the Shakers or The Dirt Daubers, a more country/bluegrass-based group that also featured Wilkes’ ex-wife Jessica.
A lot of the songs should sound familiar. There are at least a couple of tunes here — “Hoboes Are My Heroes” and “Bible, Candle and a Skull” — that Wilkes recorded before with the Shack Shakers. “Hoboes” was my favorite song from the Shakers’ 2010 album AgriDustrial. While both versions feature Wilkes’ banjo, the slower new version also has a dreamy violin and clarinet. The new take on “Bible, Candle and a Skull,” which first appeared on Pandelerium (2006), is also a departure from the more rocked-out original. On the solo record, Wilkes’ vocals are deep into the mix while a ghostly, tinkling piano and clarinet play an otherworldly tango.
Also here are a couple of venerated classics of rural America songs — a fine old outlaw ballad called “Wild Bill Jones” (first recorded by a woman named Eva Davis in 1924 but undoubtedly much older) and “Rain and Snow,” which I first heard as “Cold, Rain and Snow,” on The Grateful Dead’s first album but actually goes back at least to 1917, when it was collected in North Carolina by folklorists Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp in their compilation English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. “Well I married me a wife, she’s been trouble all my life/Left me out in the cold, rain and snow.”
Tom Waits fans might hear some similarities between Wilkes and Waits in some of the tunes here. Their voices aren’t similar at all, but both are fond of Gypsy violins and Eastern European stomps. The song “Fire Dream” has serious echoes of Waits’ “Cemetery Polka.” And try to listen to “Moonbottle” without thinking of “Jockey Full of Bourbon,” I dare you!
Meanwhile, “Down in the Hidey Hole” has traces of metal and (might that be?) reggae. And “Starlings, Ky” might be described as lo-fi bluegrass, though the fiddle solo sounds suspiciously Cajun.
Fire Dream stands well on its own, but playing it side by side with the recent Legendary Shack Shakers record gives you a fuller glimpse of Wilkes’ artistry. As Shakers fans have come to expect, After You’ve Gone is a rocking, bluesy assault with some rockabilly overtones. This album comes closer in sound and raw spirit to roots-punk pioneers The Gun Club than past Shack Shakers efforts.
Though the music is more upbeat than Fire Dream, much of the subject matter, sparked by Wilkes’ divorce, is the personal, confessional kind of material that you might expect on a solo album.
There is something classic about break-up albums. Think Marvin Gaye’s stunning Here My Dear or Willie Nelson’s Phases and Stages or Shoot Out the Lights by Richard and Linda Thompson. Lots of the song titles here can be heard as Wilkes raging at his pain. In fact, the first words you hear on the opening track “Curse of the Cajun Queen,” are “Well, I feel so bad.”
The sax-augmented “War Whoop (Chief Paduke’s Revenge)” is pure anger. In the title song, Wilkes states his case clearly: “This place just ain’t the same/And I’m calling out your name/Just an empty echo/After you’ve gone.” And the hyped-up “Get Out of My Brain” shows just how hard a haunted psyche can rock. “You’re welcome to my heart, but stay out of my brain,” Wilkes pleads.
One of the most interesting cuts here is a cover song — a Bo Diddley-on-diet-pills version of a hillbilly classic, “Single Boy.” Usually this is done as “Single Girl” with a female singer. That’s how The Maddox Brothers and Rose recorded it back in the ’40s. And that’s how The Dirt Daubers recorded it with Jessica Wilkes singing just a few years ago. I’m not sure whether this is Wilkes thumbing his nose at his ex, or if it’s a private joke between them. Or what.
A little more subtle is the final song, “Invisible Hand,” in which Wilkes sings a pretty melody backed by what sounds like a player piano. And that melody seems hauntingly familiar. It took me a minute or two, but I realized that the melody is dangerously close to “Trucks, Tractors and Trains,” another Dirt Daubers song that Jessica sang. The Daubers did it upbeat in a jaunty bluegrass style. But the After You’ve Gone version is slow and sad.
Fire Dream shows a man still standing, made stronger by his musical roots. After You’ve Gone shows the storm he has endured.
* Los Lobos returns to Santa Fe Friday night, Feb. 9,with a 7:30 p.m. concert at Santa Fe Community Convention Center. The show is a benefit for the Española Valley Humane Society, which gets 100 percent of the proceeds. Tickets are $35 in advance; $40 at the door; and $100 (which includes a meet-and-greet with the band). Get tickets at holdmyticket.com.
Video Time
Let's start with the official video for Wilkes' "Walk Between the Raindrops"
Here's a live recording of "Wild Bill Jones"
The Legendary Shack Shakers "Curse of the Cajun Queen"
