Sunday, Feb. 25, 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
The Beast is You by The Electric Mess
Get Into Yours by Mudhoney
Anything That Moves by The Dwarves
One More Time by He Who Cannot Be Named
Necrophiliac in Love by Blood Drained Cows
Don't Curse the Darkness by The Bonnevilles
Flesh Eating Cocaine Blues by Daddy Long Legs
I Don't Wanna by Flying Over
Just Like Me by Paul Revere & The Raiders
(Background Music; Flight of the Bumble Bee by Al Hirt)
Sex Billy by Pocket FishRmen
Bad Betty by The Sonics
Pain by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Johnny Gillette by Simon Stokes
30 Seconds Over Tokyo by Rocket From the Tombs
The Cosed Circuit by Kult
The Man Whose Head Expanded by The Fall
(Background Music; Taxi Driver by Bernard Herrmann)
I'm Horny, I'm Stoned by The Doors
Teenage Barbarian by Rattanson
A Cutie Named Judy by The Sloths
Wade in Bloody Water by The Grannies
Lovin' Machine by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Evil Hoodoo by The Seeds
Dead Moon Night / Burn the Fires by Dead Moon
(Background Music; Blue's Theme by Davie Allan & The Arrows)
Baron Samedi by The Dead Brothers
Talkin' at the Same Time by Tom Waits
Sorry Somehow by Husker Du
Love Me by Flat Duo Jets
In That Great Gettin' Up Morning by Mahalia Jackson CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
There's a brand new Big Enchilada Podcast epsiode -- Frog Girl & Friends -- creeping around the Internet. So, keep the party going after I sign off at midnight Go to The Big Enchilada Podcast which has hours and hours of music like this.
Friday, Feb. 23, 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
Never Be Your Darlin' by The Backsliders
Ruby Get Back to the Hills by Hank 3
A Real Country Song by Dale Watson Artificial Flowers by Cornell Hurd
Mean Blue Spirit by The Dead Brothers
That's the Day by Dad Horse Experience
He Kept to Himself by Ramblin' Deano
Highway Cafe by Kinky Friedman & The Texas Jewboys
It's Movin' Day by Charlie Poole
(Background Music: Cow Cow Voodoo by Clothesline Revival) PRESIDENTS SONGS
FDR in Trinidad by Ry Cooder
Mr. Garfield by Norman & Nancy Blake
Ex-Presidents Waltz by David Massengill
Over You by Sarah Shook & The Disarmers
La Prision de Folsom by Steve Ortiz y Mas Tequila
Have You Ever Been Lonely (Have You Ever Been Blue?) by Ernest Tubb
(Background Music: Roustabout by Clothesline Revival)
Five Brothers by Marty Robbins
Divorce Me C.O.D. by Wayne Hancock
Big Fake Boobs by The Beaumonts
I Ain't Got Nobody by Merle Haggard
Heartache by the Number by Ray Price
Linda on My Mind by Conway Twitty
You've Never Been This Far Before by Freakwater
This Cat's in the Doghouse by Rosie Flores & The Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Tear-Stained Eye by Son Volt
I Really Don't Know Me Anymore by Clay Blaker
(Background Music: Crawdaddio by Clothesline Revival)
When You Awake by The Band
With a Vamp in the Middle by John Hartford
Drifting Too Far from the Shore by Jerry Garcia, David Grisman & Tony Rice
Thirteen Silver Dollars by Colter Wall
To Know Her is To Love Her by David Bromberg
Passin' Through by Gary Heffern 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. 23, 2018
I’m a few days late in celebrating Presidents’ Day, but that inconvenient fact shouldn’t detract from this important American holiday. Actually, the holiday celebrated on the third Monday of February is still officially called “Washington’s Birthday,” though George’s actual birthday is Feb. 22. So I’m only a day late.
In honor of George and Abe and all the others, I’d like to present several tunes about past chief executives of this great land of ours.
* “Crazy Words, Crazy Tune” aka “Washington at Valley Forge” by The Jim Kweskin Jug Band. As it is performed by the greatest of the ’60s neo-jug bands, a listener might naturally think this tune is a surreal take on the life of the first president. The song starts out, “Washington at Valley Forge/Freezing cold but up spoke George/Said vo-doe-de-o, vo-doe-de-o, doe/Crazy words, crazy tune/All that George could croon and swoon.”
In the bridge, Kweskin tells of the father of our country playing his ukulele and shouting “red hot mama.”
Now that’s presidential!
The song actually goes back to 1926. It was written by Jack Yellen and Milton Ager (the men behind such ’20s hits as “Ain’t She Sweet” and “Hard Hearted Hannah”). In its original form, as recorded by Irving Aaronson and the Commanders, the “Washington at Valley Forge” part doesn’t appear until much later, sandwiched between couplets about Napoleon and Patrick Henry.
The original tune centers around a guy whose uke-playing neighbor, who I don’t believe is George Washington, is driving him nuts. I don’t know whether Kweskin rearranged the song himself or picked up this version from a more obscure source (more obscure than Irving Aaronson and the Commanders). Whatever the case, I salute his patriotism for putting George first.
* “James K. Polk” by They Might Be Giants. Ever so often, John Flansburgh and John Linnell write songs as if they’re moonlighting as writers for elementary school textbooks. “Why Does the Sun Shine?” is one of those. But the one they wrote about our 11th president — which appeared on their 1996 album Factory Showroom — is my favorite of these.
It’s also one of the few songs I know that uses the phrase “manifest destiny.”
The Johns sing: “Austere, severe, he held few people dear/His oratory filled his foes with fear/The factions soon agreed/He’s just the man we need/To bring about victory/Fulfill our manifest destiny/And annex the land the Mexicans command.”
* “Mr. Garfield” by Johnny Cash. There have been songs written about all four of our presidents who were assassinated. Strangely, the one I like best is about the president I know the least about, James Garfield, who was elected in 1880 and killed in 1881. Cash, who recorded it in the mid-’60s for his Sings the Ballads of the True West album, didn’t write the song. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott has the songwriting credit on this album, but there is a 1949 Library of Congress recording by banjo man Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who said he first heard it in 1903.
Wherever it came from, Cash makes the song his own, supplying a childlike wonder at the thought of someone shooting a great man like Garfield (“Charlie Guiteau done shot down a good man, good man”), as well as a very subtle shade of humor — as humorous as you can get in a song about a political assassination — especially in the conversation between the president and his wife, as Garfield urges the missus to find another husband if he kicks it.
* “FDR in Trinidad” by Atilla the Hun. The first version I ever heard of this classic calypso tune was the one by Ry Cooder in the early ’70s. It’s good, but it doesn’t match the sincerity and enthusiasm of the original by the Hun (Raymond Quevedo), which commemorates Franklin D. Roosevelt’s trip to the Caribbean island in 1936.
This is how folks in foreign lands used to react to visiting U.S. presidents:
“Struck by his modest style/We was intrigued by the famous Roosevelt smile/No wonder everybody was glad/At the great honor shown Trinidad.”
Barack Obama, who visited the land of the hummingbird in 2009, was the first — and so far the only — president since Roosevelt to go there. But if any songs were written about that 2009 trip, I haven’t heard them.
* “The Ex-President’s Waltz” by David Massengill. This sardonic tune by the Tennessee-born folkie first appeared in a 1985 edition of theFast Folk Musical Magazine.
It has an irreverent verse for each living ex-president at the time: Jimmy Carter (“Once he was president, but now he’s a saint/Once he was president, but now he ain’t”); Gerald Ford (“Oh the president came to my country club to play in a charity game/But you had to watch out when he teed off/He was known to cripple and maim”); Richard Nixon (“Oh the president came to my library to autograph his latest book/With his 4 o’clock shadow and sweat on his lip/He assured us he’s still not a crook”).
There’s one for John F. Kennedy (“Oh for the days of Camelot/The president sure had a ball/From Nikita Khrushchev to Marilyn Monroe/By God, he screwed them all”), and one for the then-current president, Ronald Reagan (“Send him to Hollywood, give him a pass/Once he was president, you know the rest”).
Maybe I’m showing my age by liking this song so much. A lot of youngsters probably don’t remember Khrushchev or Carter, much less President Ford’s golfing mishaps. But that’s history, kids. My only problem is trying to figure why LBJ got left out of this little party.
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."
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.
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 ...
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
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
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.
