We all know Johnny Cash and Johnny Paycheck. But less well known is a singer from Kilgore, Texas named Johnny Dollar. And yes, according to his biography at the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, "John Washington Dollar, Jr." was the name he was born with on this day in 1933.
From that bio:
In 1952, Johnny started recording for Shelby Singleton's D Records and cut a record called "Walking Away" at his own expense. When nothing happened with the disc, he became a deejay at stations in Louisiana and New Mexico, formed a band called The Texas Sons, and began performing in Shreveport at the famous Louisiana Hayride, which was regularly broadcast over radio station KWKH. He tried his hand at releasing a record again, this time for Winston Records, called "Lumberjack", but again it failed to garner much attention. By 1957 or '58, he drifted back to Texas where he took up the rockabilly style that Elvis Presley and others were making popular ...
By the way, I've looked but I haven't found exactly where in New Mexico Dollar worked as a DJ.
In Dallas, Dollar became part of the cast for the influential country radio show Big D Jamboree on KRLD in Dallas. During this time he began recording a bunch of rockabilly songs in Dallas. Among them was "Action Packed," which would become a hit for another Jamboree regular, Ronnie Dawson (under the name Ronnie Dee). Dollar also did this one, also covered by Dawson. It was first recorded by Elroy Deitzel (under the title "Rock-N-Bones") and --decades later -- by The Cramps and Flat Duo Jets.
Here's another Dollar rockabilly tune.
But few people knew about his rockabilly records.
An unbeatable combination that should have (and surely would have) made Johnny Dollar famous if the recordings had ever been released on record to the public. Mysteriously, however, they were not and instead they remained trapped in a Bekins Moving Company box on old reels of Scotch audio tape in the closet of a north Dallas home for almost forty years until their discovery in 1997.
Frustrated with his lack of success in the music biz, Dollar hung it up and began selling insurance in Oklahoma. But bu the mid '60s, he met Ray Price, who helped reboot his career in country music. Some of his records were released under the name of "Johnny $ Dollar."
By the '70s Dollar was working more as a producer than a singer. But by the '80s, his story became tragic:
Unfortunately, after he divorced his fourth wife, Carole Dollar, he appeared to lose his way, became depressed and began to drink heavily. According to his nephew, Dr. Charles Yeargan, Johnny was diagnosed with throat cancer in the early 1980s and underwent an operation to remove the cause of the disease, effectively destroying his voice in the process. The loss of his voice and the subsequent reappearance of the cancer by the mid-1980s plunged Johnny into an even deeper depression, resulting in more drinking bouts and ending with him taking his own life on April 13th, 1986.
But let's remember the good times, Here are some of my favorite Johnny Dollar country songs.
"A large pepperoni & mushrooms and a Diet Coke, please ..."
On this day in 1876, the U.S. Patent Office granted a patent to a guy named Alexander Graham Bell for an invention he called the "telephone"
Here are just a few songs that would have never been without Mr. Bell
Apparently an early user of this new invention was Jesus. You cold just call Him up and tell Him what you want. Here's a 1959 Alan Lomax field recording of James Shorty, Viola James and some church congregation singing "Jesus on the Mainline."
One of my earliest rock 'n' roll memories was being four or five years old and laughing at the line in Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee" where Chuck sang, "My uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall."
The Big Bopper couldn't have done it without a phone
On this Muddy Waters classic, somebody calls him long distance -- and that used to cost extra back then! -- just to tell him something about a mule.
"Hanging By the Telephone" by The Nerves, about a guy who won't stop calling his ex, shows why caller ID was inevitable.
But I think Meri Wilson would have been happy to take a call from The Nerves
Speaking of Caller ID, The Replacements tackled other new phone technology of their era
Ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn in 1991 sang of the rise of mobile phones. One thing I love about this song is the conversation segment, which features Stan Ridgway and Kimmy Robertson, (Lucy from Twin Peaks!)
But my favorite phone song of all time is this country weeper from Conway & Loretta
Sunday, March 4, 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
F*!#in Up by Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Sam the Homosapien by Mean Motor Scooter
Lizard Liars by Nobunny
You Can't Hide by The Electric Mess
Mystic Eyes by Them
Bottle of Wine by The Fireballs
The Last Cul de Sac by The Black Lips
Second House Now by The Fall
(Background Music: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf PArt 2 by Jimmy Smith)
Death on the Dial by Killer Hearts
Conception of the Blues by The Goon Mat & Lord Bernardo
Duct Tape Love by He Who Cannot Be Named
Bugs on My Back by Wild Evel & The Trashbones
Slowly Losing My Mind by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Don't Curse the Darkness by The Bonnevilles
This Dog is the King of Losers by Bee Bee Sea
(Background Music: Night Theme by James Williamson & Deniz Tek)
Don't Mess With My Mind by Stomachmouths
Rejection Hurts by Rattanson
King of the Beach by Wavves
Backstreet Girl by Social Distortion
Gudbuy T' Jane by Hickoids
Poor Poor Pitiful Me / I'll Sleep When I'm Dead by Warren Zevon
Ain't That Pretty at All by Pixies
(Background Music: Audrey's Dance by Xiu Xiu)
Just a Little Bit by Bobby King & Terry Evans
The Trip by Donovan
Fat Angel by Jefferson Airplane
Love Letters by Dex Romweber Duo
Down Where the Valleys are Low by Judee Sill CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, March 2, 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
I Won't Go Huntin' With You, Jake (But I'll Go Chasin; Wimmin) by Jimmy Dean
Sweet Love on My Mind by Ray Condo & His Hard Rick Goners
King of Sleaze by Mojo Nixon
Pine Grove Blues by Mama Rosin
Diggy Liggy Lo by Doug & Rusty Kershaw
Honky Tonk Queen by Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys
Out There a Ways by Waco Brothers
Truth or Dare by Salty Pajamas
Driftwood 40-23 by Hickoids
The Bottle Never Lets Me Down by Sarah Shook & The Disarmers
I Will Stay With You by Emily Kaitz with Ray Wylie Hubbard
[Background Music: High Noon by Duane Eddie]
The Weald & The Wild by The Tillers
I Like the Way by The Imperial Rooster
Oklahoma Stars by Turnpike Troubadours
Go Ahead Baby by Jessica Lee Wilkes
Rain and Snow by J.D. Wilkes
San Antonio Stroll by Tanya Tucker
[Background Music: Gear Shiftin' by Pete Drake]
Nitty Gritty by Southern Culture on the Skids
Gas Girl by The Bottle Rockets
The Wine Flowed Freely by Stonewall Jackson
Down the Mississippi by Dad Horse Experience
Snake Farm by Ray Wylie Hubbard
Hippies and Cowboys by Cody Jinks
Cocaine Blues by Dave Van Ronk
[Background Music: Beneath the Willow by Bashful Brother Oswald]
Ring of Fire by Steve Ortiz y Mas Tequila
Leave That Junk Alone by Johnny Cash
I'll Trade You Money for Wine by Robbie Fulks
Empty Bottle by Calamity Cubes
Say It's Not You by George Jones & Keith Richard
Seven Bridges Road by Mother Earth 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.
Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, aka Josef Stalin, the Fearless Leader of the Soviet Union (technically the general secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR) for 30 years suffered a stroke on March 1, 1953. He never recovered. Just four dayslater, in the words of American country singer Ray Anderson, "Stalin kicked the bucket."
Apparently country singers, including a couple of America's best-known hillbilly stars, had a thing for Stalin, Here's a 1951 "tribute" from Roy Acuff:
A year before that, Hank Williams himself weighed in on the Stalin question. (Unfortunately, Hank died two months before Stalin did.)
Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith wasn't nearly as famous as Roy Acuff or Hank Williams, but with his band The Crackerjacks, he had a thing or two to say about Stalin in 1950.
But let's let Ray Anderson have the last word. Here's his 1953 novelty hit:
American gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was born Fe, 28, 1906.
According to the Internet Index of Tough Jews, he was "a gangster who through a combination of movie star looks, murderous prowess and visionary instincts with respect to Las Vegas, established himself as one of the most enduring figures in American pop culture. "
(Personally, I just like the fact that there's an "Internet Index of Tough Jews.")
For Siegel's birthday here's a scene from Boardwalk Empire in which Siegel, portrayed by Michael Zegen, is being held hostage by Nucky Thompson's organization. Faithful readers should recognize the song.
Welcome to the freakishly delightful new episode of The Big Enchilada. It's a mutant sock hop for the Frog Girl and her swinging cohorts, rockin' and rollin' to a spectacular line-up. Party til you croak!
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.
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"
Yesterday was the birthday of Moran Lee Boggs, better known as Dock Boggs, was botn in Norton Virginia on Feb. 7, 1898.
Yesterday also was the anniversary of the death of Dock Boggs. He died in 1971 in Needmore, Virginia, about four miles from Norton.
Oh Death! You sure know how to ruin a birthday party.
Of all the early hillbilly singers, the banjo-picking Boggs was spookiest. His thin, terse tenor seemed to embody hard times and hard living.
Here's what Greil Marcus, on a 1994 road trip through Virginia coal country, had to say about the man called Dock:
Dock Boggs was born in Norton in 1898. For most of his life he worked the coal mines in the area, save for time as a moonshiner in the ’20s and as a professional musician between 1927 and 1929, when he recorded twelve sides for the Brunswick and Lonesome Ace labels. In 1963, at the height of the folk-music revival, he was rediscovered, right where he’d always been, and went on to record three albums and play festivals and concerts around the country. He died in Norton in 1971. He was—as Thomas Hart Benton had recognized from the first, pressing Boggs’s version of the old ballad “Pretty Polly” on anyone who would listen to it—possessed of one of the most distinctive and uncanny voices the American language has ever produced. On Boggs’s 1927 “Country Blues” a wastrel faces ordinary, everyday doom. The banjo, which as a white man Boggs plays like a blues guitar, presses a queer sort of fatalism: fate in a hurry. At the close (“When I am dead and buried/My pale face turned to the sun”—Boggs worms you into the old, common lines until you sense the strange racial transformation they hint at), the singing rises and falls, jumps and plummets in a rush, as if to say, Get it over with. In 1963 Boggs recorded “Oh Death”—“Won’t you spare me over for another year?”—and you can imagine Death’s reply, which would have been as fitting thirty-six years before. Sure thing, man, what the hell. It’s no skin off my back. You sound like you’re already dead.
Here's Dock's "Country Blues":
Here's "Oh Death," recorded in the 1960s when Boggs was getting older. It's starker, far less melodic, and, true to Marcus, more dead than the Ralph Stanley that everyone knows from O, Brother Where Art Thou?
Marcus also talked about another song Boggs sung, the ancient murder ballad "Pretty Polly," which he recorded in 1927.:
... in its English versions Polly’s pregnancy is part of the story. In Boggs’s version there is ... no mention of it — but there is something more, or anyway something else. The evil in his singing, a psychotic momentum that goes beyond any plain need to do-this-to-achieve-that, overwhelms the song’s musicological history. As Boggs sings, the event is happening for the first time and the last.
Hear the evil in his singing here:
One of Boggs' best known songs is "Sugar Baby." But it's not very sweet. It sounds like it's coming from a guy who truly hates his wife. The song has a similar line as one in "Pay Day," a Mississippi John Hurt song, also from the late 1920s. But when Hurt sings, "I've done all I can do and can't get along with you/ Gonna take you to your mama pay day," he sounds sweet, if sad. But when Boggs sings, "I'll send it to your mama next payday," a listener just hopes the woman does make it back to her mama. And when he sings, , "I'll rock the cradle when you gone," you hope he doesn't murder the baby too.
If this music is just too intense for you, calm your nerves with a good stiff belt of rub alacohol. Bottoms up and happy belated birthday, Dock!
So what do you do with all the fake news that's spewing forth on social media these days? Well if you're David Byrne, you make a movie with it.
That's what Byrne did back in 1986, while still a member of The Talking Heads. He took a bunch of twisted tabloid tales of the day and made them come to life in a little town in the middle of nowhere called Virgil, Texas.
Aided by his band, and a handful of other musicians -- including Pops Staples and Tito Larriva -- and actors including John Goodman, Spalding Gray, Swoosie Kurtz, Annie McEnroe and Santa Fe's own Jo Harvey Allen -- Byrne's True Stories was, in my book, the most under-rated movie of the '80s. It was a commercial flop, but it's one that I keep going back to, each one uncovering a new secret I'd missed before.
There is no real plot here, just wonderment. ... This movie does what some painters try to do: It recasts ordinary images into strange new shapes. There is hardly a moment in "True Stories" that doesn't seem everyday to anyone who has grown up in Middle America, and not a moment that doesn't seem haunted with secrets, evasions, loneliness, depravity or hidden joy - sometimes all at once.
Byrne's Polaroids of Virgil become an accumulative portrait that hints at unease in the heartland. ... When Byrne shows us that glowing neon stage out in that eerie emptiness, or The Invisible Hospital of St. John the Baptist, a great voodoo altar to love, ... he also fixes in our minds a view of the country he is unwilling to see vanish.
Here are some of the songs and scnes that made True Stories the wonder it is:
In this scene, featuring John Ingle, Byrne foresaw the rise of Alex Jones -- if Jones were backed by good music. Contemplate the "Puzzling Evidence."
In that scene the choir's keyboard player was none other than Tito Larriva from the influential Chicano punk-rock band The Plugz (and later Cruzados and Tito & Tarantula) Here is Tito's big solo spot in True Stories, a song called "Radiohead," featuring Tejano music titan Steve Jordan on accordion. I heard a rumor that some overrated band in the '90s named themselves for this song.
Pops Staples, known for his gospel and soul music with The Staples singers, appeared as a voodoo priest to invoke the trickster god Legba in this scene.
John Goodman, as the lovelorn bachelor Louis "The Bear" was the star of True Stories. He wrote a little song that, with the help of Papa Legba, won the heart of his true love. (And he's not a bad country singer!) What good is freedom? God laughs at people like us.
One of the most memorable citizens of Virgil, Texas was a lady known only as "The Lying Woman." She was portrayed by Jo Harvey Allen (wife of artist/musician Terry Allen) (This looks like a dead YouTube link, but it's not. Go ahead and click.)
"I wrote 'Billie Jean.' And half of Elvis' songs."
Sunday, Feb. 4, 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
Good Morning Judge by Wynonie Harris
We're So Ugly by Hornet Leg
This Dog is the King of Losers by Bee Bee Sea
Close to Me by The Cynics
Blue Ether by The Loons
Wimp by Jean Caffeine
Black Eyes by Boss Hog
Pictures of Lily by Hickoids
Flesh Eating Parasite by Pocket FishRMen
You'll Bring Me Flowers by The Darts
Surrender My Heart by Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons
Don't Look Down by Lovestruck
Sunshine Don't Make the Sun by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
It's a Lie by King Khan
Mysterioso Blues by Harvey McLaughlin
You Keep Me Hangin' On by Vanilla Fudge
Saved by Lavern Baker
Manny's Bones / Walking Song by Los Lobos
Red Hot by Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs
Dick's Automotive by Rugburns
Late Night by Dinola
Stand by Your Ghoul by The Cavemen
1932 Berlin by Kult
Hell by The Bonevilles
Job 17: 11-17 by Johnny Dowd
Ride Cyclo by Yol Aularong
Gravy for My Mashed Potatoes by Dee Dee Sharp
I'm Not Satisfied by The Fall
In My Tenement by Jackie Shane
Lay Me Low by Nick Cave CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
