THROWBACK THURSDAY: Happy Birthday Ernie K-Doe

Happy birthday Ernest Kador, Jr., a New Orleans R&B singer who probably would be accurate to describe as a one-hit wonder.

Except for the fact that he's Ernie K-Doe.  

He's the kind of artist whose work you'd like to think was full of hit potential --  even if he did in fact only have one,  a smoldering little tune from 1961 called "Mother-In-Law," written by Allen Tousaint.

With or without Toussaint, Ernie  kept plugging away, releasing records for decades after "Mother-In-Law," even though none of his releases made it as big as his signature tune.

And Ernie persevered, eventually becoming a beloved New Orleans fixture.  In the 1980s he became a radio personality on WWOZ. And in the '90s, he opened his own club,  Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge on Claiborne Avenue in Treme.

Ernie died in 2001.                                                                                                                                                                                          

Here's his big hit:

And here's one that shoulda been a hit. This song has been sung by Warren Zevon, Mary Weiss and untold others.



Here's one called "Te-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta," which is secret New Orleans code talk for "Keep listening and maybe I'll play mother-in-law again."                                               



Here's one called "I Got to Find Somebody."



Ernie was a real man ...

WACKY WEDNESDAY: I Don't Think Jimi Done it That Way

Over the weekend, the biggest threat to America and the freedoms we cherish was the version of "The Star Spangled Banner sung by Fergie, formerly with The Black Eyed Peas (not to be confused with The Dutchess of York) sung at the NBA All-Star Game.

I don't think that was how Jimi Hendrix intended it be performed.

True, Cosmopolitan called it "different AND sexy," but other reaction on social media was far less positive. (I think my favorite was comedian Johnny Taylor, Jr., who tweeted, "Not sure what Fergie was going for on that national anthem performance but if it was `my friends drunk mom acting sexy' she nailed it."

By Monday, the singer apologized in a statement saying, “I’m a risk taker artistically, but clearly this rendition didn’t strike the intended tone. I love this country and honestly tried my best.”

Judge for yourself:



This whole stink reminded me of 1968, when at a World Series game, Jose Feiciano, known as "The Blind Puerto Rican Fergie," shocked an dismayed patriots everywhere by his unconventional take on the national anthem. 

An NPR story last year explained:

 Back then, the anthem was generally performed by popular musicians of stage and screen, or talented first-responders and members of the military, always in a very straightforward way.

Feliciano's gentle, Latin jazz-infused version puzzled some people. And it outraged others. 

"After I sang it, it was really strange to hear me being booed, as well as yay'd, and I didn't know what happened," he recalled when I reached him by telephone last week, while he was on tour in London.


A Tigers official told him the club's phones were lighting up with angry calls from around the country: "Some veterans were taking off their shoes and throwing them at their television screens," he was told.




Jumping ahead a few decades, I do like this version of the anthem by the group Patax, "a communion between flamenco, funk and Afro-Cuban folklore" from Spain.  "Star Spangled Banner" appears on their latest album, Creepy Monsters.

On their Youtube channel the band says the song is their, "humble contribution to tolerance and mind openness sending a musical message to the Trump Administration: lets make America open minded and tolerant again. Greatness will be the result."

What kind of commie talk is that? (By the way, percussionist Jorge Perez is a citizen of both Spain and the US of A.)



And if you don't like that, there's always Tiny Tim. He even knew the largely forgotten second verse  ...

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, Feb. 18, 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
Did It All by Gogol Bordello
I've Really Got the Blues by Jackie Shane
Don't Mess With My Toot Toot by Jello Biafra
Ooh Poo Pah Doo by Jesse Hill
Shotgun Pistol Grip by Ghost Wolves
The Traveler by Archie & The Bunkers
Tall Black and Bitter by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
I Gotcha by Joe Tex
Comet by Baronen & Satan
40 Great Unclaimed Melodies by The Firesign Theatre

The Other Side of This Life by Jefferson Airplane
White Wedding by Herman's Hermits
Down the Road by The Monsters
Love by Country Joe & The Fish
Total Destruction to Your Mind by Swamp Dogg

One Kind Favor by Canned Heat
Shut Up Woman by Bo Diddley
Poor Beast, Marginal Man by Rattasnson
Runaway Child, Runnin' Wild by The Temptations
Before I Die by The Guttercats
Radio by Young Harvel
House of the Rising Sun by Johnny Dowd

Mog Maz (My Husband) by Kult
Everything's Dead by The Dead Brothers
Storm Warning by Mac Rebennack
Desert Mile by King Khan
In Your Hnds by Phil Hayes & The Trees
Lay Me Low by Nick Cave
CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, Feb. 16, 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
Country Girl by Roger Miller
Glendale Train by New Riders of the Purple Sage
You Can't Talk to Me Like That by Nikki Lane
I'll Stand In Line by Miss Leslie
Cowboy in Flames by The Waco Brothers
8 Piece Box by Southern Culture on the Skids
Rainy Day Woman by Waylon Jennings
Wanna Get Outta Here by The War and Treaty
I've Endured by Ola Belle Reed

Lesson by Sarah Shook & The Disarmers
Fool for Love by Marty Stuart
Jealous Loving Heart by Ernest Tubb & Johnny Cash
Man With the Blues by Willie Nelson
Toot Toot Man by Doug Kershaw
Alligator Waltz by Rockin' Sidney
Wolverton Mountain by Claude King

Some of Shelly's Blues by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Secrets and Lies by Becky Lee & Drunkfoot
Crazy Sons of Bitches by John Egenes
Hog of the Forsaken by Micheal Hurley
Watching the River Go By by John Hartford
Last Train from Poor Valley by Norman Blake
Mystery of the Dunbar Child by Richard "Rabbit" Brown

Midnight Moonlight by Old and In the Way
Wild Heart by Modern Mal
Mercy Now by Bobby Bare
Blue Distance by Peter Case
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets



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THROWBACK THURSDAY: Songs of Bobby Dunbar

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