WACKY WEDNESDAY: Rocking Madison Avenue

Bob Dylan was a spokesman for his generation.

The Pepsi Generation.

According to Billboard, his commercial, which debuted during the 2009 Superbowl, also featured rapper Will I. Am, is "the only piece of recorded music history that features the writers of `Visions of Johanna' and `My Humps,' with the latter rapping all over the Planet Waves cut `Forever Young.' The ensuing Super Bowl ad attempts to float the similarities between the two artists, mostly in that they both wear cool sunglasses. Doing it all for the Pepsi."

And unlike Michael Jackson, Dylan didn't even have to catch his hair on fire to do it.

But this hardly was the only t.v. commercial Dylan licensed his songs for or actually appeared in ads for Victoria's Secret, Chrysler, Apple iPods, Chobani yogurt, Google, his own brand of whiskey called Heaven's Door, and probably others I'm forgetting.

And he's not alone.

The world of rock 'n' roll tends to look down at rockers prostituting their pure art for the filthy lucre of the corporate world. In the '80s, John Fogerty preached that sermon in his song "Soda Pop", as did Neil Young in "This Note's for You." I also remember, around this era, Paul Simon on Late Night With David Letterman talking about Simon & Garfunkel being approached by Midas Muffler execs pitching an ad in which "The Sounds of Silence" would be changed to "The Sounds of Midas." 

Paul & Artie didn't bite. But Dylan and many others took big bites out of the corporate apple.

Back in the mid '80s, Lou Reed tried hard to make Honda motor scooters look tough. Anthony DeCurtis wrote in his 2017 biography of Reed, wrote: 

That Reed, a serious motorcycle aficionado, would not have been caught dead riding a scooter in real life seemed beside the point. At times, he could be defensive about the ad—“Who else could make a scooter hip?” he challenged one journalist. But he also cited more pragmatic reasons for his decision, and mentioned Andy Warhol, an early mentor of the Velvet Underground, as a model for his thinking. “I can’t live in an ivory tower like people would like me to,” Reed said. “I used to watch Andy do something for TV Guide or Absolut Vodka … When our equipment broke, that’s how it got replaced. We didn’t turn around and tell Andy we can’t touch that money because it came from doing a commercial. 

But Open Culture in 2013 said "The spot made a huge splash on Madison Avenue. Its influence could be seen all over the next generation of commercials. But it didn’t sell many scooters."

The piece quotes ad man and author Randall Rothenberg's book Where the Suckers Moon: The Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign: “For all its impact on the advertising industry the Lou Reed commercial did little for Honda. Young Americans had little interest in scooters, no matter how hip they were made out to be.”

But Lou wasn't alone, shilling for Honda in the 80s. Check out Devo's contribution:

And Iggy Pop apparently had a lust for auto insurance 

But it didn't start in the '80s.

The only disappointing thing about The Rolling Stones when I saw them play in Austin last month is that they didn't perform their classic Rice Krispies jingle from the mid '60s:

And in 1967, the same year as The Who Sell Out, The Who actually sold out!

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, December 5, 2021
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres

Too Cool to Dance by The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band

Murder City Nights by Radio Birdman

What Happens When You Turn the Devil Down by Mystery Lights

Never Look Back by Night Beats

Black Metal by Reverend Beat-Man & Izobel Garcia

Gimme Germs by The Monsters

Johnny Voodoo by Empress of Furs

Sally Was a Good Old Girl by Shocking Blue

My Bathroom by Patt Stanton Gjonola

Some Dispute Over T-Shirt Sales by Butthole Surfers

Oklahoma by P

Born Stupid by Paul Leary

Don't Want You Either by Mal Thursday

Castrati by Pocket FishRmen

Fire Engine by 13th Floor Elevators

Some Conversations You Just Don't Need to Have by Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears

Garbageman by William Shatner

Whiskey in the Jar by The Pogues & The Dubliners

Whatcha Gonna Do (When Your Baby Leaves You) by Chuck Willis

St. James Infirmary by Billy Lee Riley

Alligator Waltz by Rockin' Sidney

Everybody Calls Me Crazy by Clifton Chenier

I Am the Walrus by Frank Zappa

Yes We Have Bananas by Louis Prima

Five Guys Named Moe by Louis Jordan

Any Else by Negativland

Monday Morning Blues by Mississippi John Hurt

Marina by Honshu Wolves

Love Me by Elvis Presley

Sweet Mama by Alto Street

Party While You Still Can by Shinyribs

I Pity the Fool by Bobby "Blue" Bland

Muriel by Eleni Mandell

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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THROWBACK THURSDAY: Remembering Odetta

 On this day, just 13 years ago, December 2, 2008, a very powerful voice in American folk music went silent. Odetta Holmes, who was known to the world simply by her first name, died at the age of 77.

She was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1930. According to The Washington Post:

After showing musical skill at a young age, she began classical vocal training that developed into ambition for a concert singing career. Her mother hoped she would follow the racially groundbreaking career of opera singer Marian Anderson. ...

After graduating from high school, Odetta followed her mother into work as a domestic worker. She also studied music in night classes at Los Angeles City College and found choral work in the West Coast touring company of the musical "Finian's Rainbow."

The show took her to San Francisco in 1949, and it was there that she was exposed to the folk music scene.

Odetta, who came to be known as the "Voice of the Civil Rights Movement," sang “I’m on My Way” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during Dr. Martin Luther King's March on Washington in 1963. Also in 1963, she appeared on television with President John F. Kennedy on a nationally televised civil rights special called "Dinner With the President." She marched with King for voting rights in the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. 

And she played at the Thirsty Ear Festival at Bonanza Creek Movie Ranch in 2001. That's the only time I ever got to see her perform live. 

Bob Dylan said in a Playboy interview just a couple of years ago " Bob Dylan, who said, "The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson."

Here's Odetta  singing a chilling tune on Belgian TV in the '60s:

I believe this is the very first Odetta  song I ever heard back in the '60s, Woodie Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty":

Skip ahead a few decades and here's Odetta with a full band singing Lead Belly's "Jim Crow Blues" with a full band. (Trigger warning for sensitive right-wingers: This song could contain traces of Critical Race Theory. Take note and protect the children):

In the spirit of the Christmas season, this is from Odetta's appearance on the Ed Sullivan show on Christmas night in 1960:

And here is a song I vividly remember from the time I saw Odetta at the Thirsty Ear Festival in 2001. She's backed here by The Holmes Brothers. 

Let it shine!

Sunday, November 28, 2021
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time
Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist :

OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres

The Holygram's Song (Back from the Shadows Again) by Firesign Theatre

Journey to the Center of the Mind by The Amboy Dukes

I've Got to Get to You by Dion with Boz Scaggs

Lonely Wolf by Ray Harris

Sit Down Comedian by Dave Del Monte & The Cross-Country Boys

She's a Bad Motorcycle by Tav Falco & Panther Burns

I Appeared to The Madonna by The Devils

Man in a Suitcase by Thee Oh Sees

Shut Up and Get on the Plane by Drive By Truckers

Jungle Boogie by Frank Zappa

They Won't Let Me Forget (The Things I Can't Recall) by Legendary Shack Shakers

Can't You See Me by Divine Horsemen

Bad to the Bone by Sloks

This Foundation is Cracked by Old Time Relijun

Lubrication by The Sex Organs

Catfight by The Barbaraellatones

Night and Day by Rockin' Dopsie

ROLLING STONES TRIBUTE SET 

Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones

Under My Thumb by Social Distortion

I Met the Stones by Dinosaur Jr.

Let's Spend the Night Together by Muddy Waters

Gimme Shelter by Merry Clayton

Connection by Keith Richards & The X-Pensive Winos

Child of the Moon by The Fleshtones

Radio Control by Mick Jagger 

Blame it on the Stones by Kris Kristofferson

Carol by The Rolling Stones

Sweet Virginia by Jerry Lee Lewis & Keith Richards

Back on Top by Buffalo Nichols

Your Red Wagon by Paul Burch

Right Track Now by Powell St. John with Roky Erikson

True Grit by Alto Street

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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THROWBACK THURSDAY: Hey Annie, It's Hank Ballard's Birthday!

On this day in 1927, a baby named John Henry Kendricks was born in Detroit. He grew up to become an R&B belter named Hank Ballard, who in the early 1950s made some good old fashioned suggestive, scandalous rock 'n' roll, getting most of his well-known tunes banned on radio stations all across the land of the free.

As his page on the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame website says, "His success is a perfect representation of rock and roll appeal—it behaves so bad but it sounds so good."

Happy birthday, Hank.

Ballard died in 2003. But I had the pleasure of interviewing him by phone before a Santa Fe concert in April 1989 and then meeting him backstage before the show at the old Sweeney Convention Center. (I also got to meet Ballard's wife and manager Theresa McNeil, who was killed just a few months later in a hit-and-run crash.)

In that phone interview, Ballard talked to me about the state of music back when he recorded "Work With Me Annie."

"We was still in the Victorian Age," he said with a knowing laugh. "Man, as young as we were, we didn't think we wereb being insulting to anyone. We were just having fun."

But, as I noted in my story, Ballard wasn't claiming complete innocence. "The kids like them risque songs. They still do. ... It was a wonder that we didn't get arrested."

Ballard was born in Detroit, but, as he told me, his family moved to Alabama when he was very young, where he grew up singing in his church choir.

But another huge influence on his music, he told me, was cowboy music. "Gene Autry was my first idol," he said. "I also liked The Sons of the Pioneers. Remember `Cool Water'? Man, I still love it."

Ballard still is best known for this song, which, he told me,  was about an old girlfriend from Louisville, Kentucky. "She's a school teacher in Chicago," he told me in 1989. "She's been doing that for about 25 years. We played a gig over there and she happened to be present. I introduced her as the real Annie and people lined up to get her autograph."

Work with me here:

I guess Annie had to take maternity leave. (Though Ballard insisted that his Kentucky sweetheart did not have his baby.) 

In that 1989 interview, he told me that this next song was a rush job, recorded "at some woman's house in Washington, D.C. during a break in a gig." This version of "Annie Had a Baby" is from the wonderful old show Night Music, from around the same time I saw Ballard at Sweeney Center.

And the third part of Ballard's Annie cycle was an ode to Annie's Aunt Fannie.

"Annie" inspired a lot of 1950s singers, including Etta James, who cleaned up "Work With Me Annie" into a tune called "The Wallflower, which had the refrain, "Dance With Me Henry." Also Buddy Holly expanded on the character of Annie and put her to work on the "Midnight Shift":

And years after the Annie songs, Ballard wrote a little tune about a little dance. His version wasn't the hit one however. That distinction goes to a guy named Ernest Evans who Dick Clark reinvented as Chubby Checker:

And finally, a Ballard tribute from Ronny Elliott. As Ronny said, "I never liked Chubby Checker ..."