It was 130 years ago this Saturday -- Nov. 10, 1888 -- in the Spitalfields district in London that Thomas Bowyer, who was helping his boss collect back rent from a tenant, Irish-born Mary Jane Kelly, a 25-year-old prostitute, came upon a ghastly scene.
Kelly wouldn't be paying any back rent. She is believed to be the fifth and final victim of the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
When Bowyer arrived at #13 Miller’s Court, he knocked on the door twice. Receiving no answer, he rounded the corner of the yard to see that a couple of glass windowpanes were broken. He reached in through the knocked-out glass and moved the curtain to see whether Mary Kelly was at home or not. The first thing he saw were what looked like two lumps of meat sitting on the bedside table.
The autopsy by Dr. Thomas Bond describes what the killer had done to Kelly
"The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was turned on the left cheek. The left arm was close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle and lying across the abdomen. The right arm was slightly abducted from the body and rested on the mattress. The elbow was bent, the forearm supine with the fingers clenched. The legs were wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk and the right forming an obtuse angle with the pubes. The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone.
There are more gruesome details. You can read them all HERE.
If you must.
It's probably pretty twisted, but somehow Kelly's killer became a rock 'n' roll hero -- or at least the subject of a lot of songs.
Guitar hero Link Wray led the way with this rumbling instrumental in 1961. Below is a latter-day live performance.
A few years later, Screaming Lord Sutch was possessed by the spirit of the Ripper, at least during this performance:
Skip ahead a few decades to the early '90s and Nick Cave came up with this terrifying tune
Also in the '90s, another Jack did this version of Sutch's song
Finally, I'm not crazy about this next song by Danish pop-metal group Volbeat. But it's the only one I could find about Kelly herself .
Sunday, November 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
House Rent Jump by Peter Case
Go Loco by Gogo Loco
Hemmin' and Hawin' by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
The Wild Ride of Ichabod Crane by The Blue Giant Zeta Puppies
Marijuana Hell by The Rockin' Guys
We're Gonna Crash by The Electric Mess
Shirts Off by Armitage Shanks
My Love is a Monster by Compulsive Gamblers
Slap by Hamell on Trial
Bosco Stomp / Papa's on the Housetop by Bayou Seco
Peter Case
Hey You by Simon Stokes & The Heathen Angels
Bullshit is Going On by Charlie Pickett
Shallow Grave by The Nevermores
I'd Kill For Her by Black Angels
Bloodlines by Full Speed Veronica
Pretty Jane LeBeaux by Cedar Hill Refugees
Wirt by LaBrassBanda
Rockabilly Fart by A Pony Named Olga
Abysmal Urn by Thee Oh Sees
Riot City by Archie & The Bunkers
Step Aside by Sleater-Kinney
She Said by The Cramps
Pero Te Amo by Reverend Beat-Man & Izobel Garcia
Slowly Losing My Mind by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Cool Town Woman by Tony Joe White
Awful Dreams by Lightnin' Hopkins
One Dog Bark by Thought Gang
Cold Trail Blues/HW 62 by Peter Case CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Peter Case is playing at GIG Performing Space, Sunday, Nov. 11. Bayou Seco is playing there the night before. Details on both shows areHERE
I took that as an omen, so today I treat you to some tacky and obscure Halloween novelty songs.
Let's start off with rockabilly royal Billy Lee Riley. Billy was a monster in his own right. Why he felt compelled to record this "Monster Mash" rip-off is way beyond me.
Bob McFadden and Dor recorded a cult classic called "I'm a Mummy." It was so inspired, in it's own stupid way, that it was covered by The Fall.
Sunday, October 28, 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
Monster by Fred Scheider
Frankenstein Meets the Beatles by Dickie Goodman
Sisters of the Moon by Fleetwood Mac
SOB by Full Speed Veronica
Psycho by The Swamp Rats
Edgar Allan Poe by Lou Reed
The Swamp by Sloks
A Good Problem by He Who Cannot Be Named
Goddamn USA by Trixie & The Trainwrecks
Don't Bring Me Down by The Animals
Hearse With a Curse by Mr. Gasser & The Weirdos
Dead Moon Night by Dead Moon
It's Her Eyes by The Ar-Kaics
Zombie Outbreak by Alien Space Kitchen
Bo Meets the Monster by Bo Diddley
I Came From Hell by The Monsters
I Think of Demons by Roky Erikson
R.I.P. Tony Joe White
All songs by TJW except where noted
Bad Mouthin' Polk Salad Annie by Elvis Presley
Undercover Agent for the Blues
Who You Gonna Hoodoo Now?
Willie and Laura Mae Jones by Bettye Swann
Run With the Bulls
Even Trolls Love Rock 'n' Roll
Rainy Night in Georgia by Otis Rush
Polk Salad Annie
Murder in the Graveyard by Screaming Lord Sutch
Feast of the Mau Mau by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Ghost by Harlan T. Bobo
American Tune by Paul Simon CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Oct. 26, 2018
Harlan T. Bobo isn’t exactly a household name — unless you’re a dedicated devotee of the underground rock scene in Memphis. And he seems to consciously choose to cling to his anonymity. Though the singer says he’s legally changed his name to the one you see on his records, like Leon Redbone, he keeps his birth name secret. He’s been known to wear masks at his performances and in general doesn’t seem to have a naked thirst for big-time success and stardom.
But he’s good, and his sporadically released records are well worth seeking out. A great place to start is his latest, A History of Violence, which is his first album since 2010’s Sucker and his best so far.
While there are several stark, moody acoustic songs here, most of the strongest tracks are the ones in which Bobo and his stripped-down band of Memphis mafiosos rage and roar as if they are fighting off demons from a madman’s dreams. These include “Spiders,” “Paula,” and “Town” (yes, he uses one-word song titles), which starts off with Bobo singing, “God damn this town” and proceeds to get even angrier.
Like his first album, Too Much Love, this one is considered a break-up album. It comes in the wake of his divorce. That would put it in the same stratosphere as romance-on-the-rocks records like Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks; Phases and Stages by Willie Nelson; Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear; Sinead O’Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got; Back to Black by Amy Winehouse; and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. (I don’t care what anyone says, a ripping version of “Go Your Own Way” by Bobo and combo would have sounded great on this album.) Maybe even Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours.
They call me MISTER Bobo!
However, Bobo claims it’s not really a break-up album at all. In an interview in Memphis Flyer a few months ago, he said, “The fact is, the record has very little to do my marriage. A couple songs are about that, but the rest of it is addressing something that’s disturbed me since childhood, and it’s that aggression wins, you know? It wins out on top of consideration for people, diplomacy, because all those things are very boring compared to the visceral excitation of aggression and violence,” referring to the southern French city of Perpignan, where he lives these days with his young son. “And the place I live in now, it’s not violent like anything in America, but it’s very aggressive. And the way people raise their children and treat each other is really disturbing to me,” he said.
Still, it’s hard not to think that the emotional strain of divorce doesn’t seep into these songs, which are packed with frustration, desperation, and loneliness. Some of the hardest rocking tunes are obviously dark fantasies of wanton violence. There’s “Nadine,” a tragic tale of a cabaret singer, and “Paula,” in which a musical crime spree ends with a disturbing vision of the narrator swinging from the gallows after being dragged through the town by angry citizens.
It’s not the most fierce rocker on the album. One of the most powerful tunes here is the brooding, slow-burning “Ghost,” which invites comparisons with Nick Cave. It’s one of the obvious break-up songs here. The most heart-wrenching verse is a scene from a marriage in which the singer recalls some tensions sprouting from a day at some carnival: “You remember that fish you won at the fair/You said I fed it too much, I said you didn’t feed it enough/Either way, the damned thing died.” But immediately after that bad memory, Bobo’s attention turns away from the fish and toward a child. “That boy’s gonna suffer, and Lord, he’s suffered enough/He’ll make someone suffer from all he’s learned from love ...”
A History of Violence is not easy listening by any stretch. But unless you’re a cold, dead fish, it’s a rewarding listen for the stout of heart and deserves a wider audience. Also recommended:
3 Cheers to Nothing by Trixie & TheTrainwrecks. Trinity Sarratt is a California-born singer who moved to Berlin. There she began performing in a number of bands, even doing a stint as a one-person group called Trixie Trainwreck No-Man Band. With the aid of harmonica blower called Charlie Hangdog, she assembled a group, The Trainwrecks, and recorded this album of what their label Voodoo Rhythm Records accurately calls “overdriven-long-gone-broken-hearted-country-blues-trash numbers from the wrong side of the tracks.”
But it’s the kind of trash I like.
Made up mostly of original tunes, Trixie romps through rough-edged bluesy tunes like “Daddy’s Gone,” “Poor and Broke,” and “Commuter Blues.” She invokes the ghost of Jimmie Rodgers on “Yodelin’ Bayonne Blues” (with the best use of a slide whistle since The Hoosier Hotshots) and does a sweet cover of one of my favorite Hank Williams songs, “Lonesome Whistle.”
There’s an instrumental called “Everybody Goes to Heaven,” though the words in the title appear in the next track, “End of Nowhere.” (Neither is the Mose Allison classic.)
Big Halloween podcast: It’s the dynamic 10th anniversary of the Big Enchilada podcast, as well as my annual Halloween episode. You’ll hear horrifying sounds from the likes of Thee Oh Sees, Black Joe Lewis, The Fuzztones, The Compulsive Gamblers, Ronnie Dawson, and New Mexico’s own Alien Space Kitchen.
Also this week, check out Terrell’s Sound World, my local radio show on KSFR, 101.1 FM, or ksfr.org, where you’ll hear a lot of spooky tunes in honor of this sacred holiday season. (And you'll also hear a tribute to the late Tony Joe White.) The show starts at 10 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 28.
Lawson family portrait, taken about a week before Charlie killed all but
one of them.
On Christmas Day, 1929, a western North Carolina tobacco farmer named Charlie
Lawson woke up, engaged in some father-and-son bonding in the form of some
varmint hunting.
Then when son Arthur went into town to buy more ammunition, Charlie went back to
his house and shot and killed his wife and his six youngest children. Before
Arthur got back. Charlie had gone back to the woods and killed himself.
It's that most wonderful time of the year ...
The Lawson family massacre was discussed in a recent episode of the true crime /
comedy podcast My Favorite Murder-- in their typically irreverent and hilarious fashion. To the credit of
co-hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, they credit my
favorite true-crime podcast, Criminal with Phoebe Judge, which covered this bloody Xmas massacre a few years ago.
I'm not going to go into the gruesome details of the crime. Listen to Karen
& Georgia and / or Phoebe for that. (Plus it's all over Google. Try
THIS
for starters.)
The reason I'm posting about the killings -- and a big reason people are still
talking about it after nearly 90 years -- is because of a song.
Just months after the killings. singer Walter "Kid" Smith and fiddler Posey
Rorer, in a group called The Carolina Buddies, recorded a hillbilly waltz they'd
basically ripped from the headlines. And this is it:
Never mind that Karen & Georgia poked vicious fun at the recording, the song
was a big hit for Columbia Records. And through the years, all sorts of folk,
country and bluegrass artists have kept it alive. Here's a version by The
Stanley Brothers.
Fast forward to the turn of this century and Dave Alvin covered it -- using the
original lyrics but a different melody, on his Public Domain album. Alvin
talked about the song with author Paul Slade:
"Most murder ballads tend to be about one person killing another, or
maybe one person killing two other people. In this case, it's a whole family.
There's usually an innocent in a murder ballad, but this was an innocent
family. And there's little justification given for it. It's left to the
listener to decide. Was it economics? Was it insanity? Why did this guy kill
his family? So that mystery gives it some power. "It's the murder of innocent children, which is pretty intense. And then it
has that final verse, which is kind of sentimentally sweet but at the same
time gives the whole scene some kind of redemption."
Here's Dave's version.
This more one is by an Ohio band called Sport Fishing USA from their 2012 album
Live at the Pool. The words and music are different but the story
basically is the same.
Finally here's the spooked-out version Phoebe used on Criminal. It's by
Elephant Micah (aka Joseph O'Connel)l, a singer/songwriter from
Indiana.
"They all were buried in a crowded grave / while the angels watched
above / "Come home, come home, my little ones / to a land of
peace and love".
Sunday, October 21, 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
Pet Semetary by The Ramones
I Was a Teenage Werewolf by The Cramps
Me and The Devil by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
Haunted House by Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs
Hooky Wooky by Lou Reed
The Wolf by The Bloodhounds
Father and Son by Oizone
High Tide Killer by The Morlocks
Elephant Man by Meet Your Death
Negro Gato by King Salami & The Cumberland 3
Daddy's Gone by Trixie & The Trainwrecks
Big Cluckin' Mistake by MFC Chicken
Burn, Baby, Burn by Stud Cole
I Smoke Dope by The Gears
Two Girls (One Bar) by Pere Ubu
Leave the Ghost at Home by Troy Gregory
Falling Star by The Velquins
Do the Freddie by Freddie & The Dreamers
Kim Deal by Johnny Mafia
Gigantic by The Pixies
Some Conversations You Just Don't Need to Have by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
No Vacancy by The Ar-Kaics
Gangsters by The Dustaphonics
The Witch by Syndicate of Sound
So Long Johnny by Charlie Pickett
Walking Through My Hell by The Peawees
Spice Girls (Who Do You Think You Are by Period Pains
Baron Samedi by The Dead Brothers
Nikki Hoeky by P.J. Proby
Tease It to Jesus by Miss Celine Lee
Storied by Harlan T. Bobo
Candy by Iggy Pop with Kate Pierson
Wayfaring Stranger by Raw Death
Last Day of Our Acquaintance by Sinead O'Connor CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
