THROWBACK THURSDAY: It's Norman Blake's Birthday

 

Master picker Norman Blake, whose talents on guitar, dobro, mandolin, fiddle, and banjo as well as his Tennessee-soaked vocals have amazed and delighted country and bluegrass fans for decades, turns 84 today! 

Happy birthday, Norman.

Even if you don't recognize his name, if you're a fan of the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, or the classic 1972 hillbilly collaboration Will the Circle Be Unbroken -- or certain seminal records by the likes of Johnny Cash, John Hartford, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Steve Earle and others -- you have heard the music of Norman Blake. (I probably first heard him on Dylan's Nashville Skyline.)

Blake was born in 1938 in Chattanooga. According to a 2003 article in Vintage Guitar:

His career started when he left school at age 16 to be a professional musician. Early jobs included playing fiddle, dobro, and mandolin in country dance bands before a short stint in the Army. After serving, Norman worked with June Carter, then Johnny Cash when Cash’s regular dobro player couldn’t make a session. He stayed with Cash’s band for over 10 years.

Here is what I believe is Blake's finest moment with Cash. His dobro shines, though Cash's crazed vocal track almost makes you worry that he's going to go off the rails and start murdering his band.

Blake began his "solo" recording career (often sharing credits with his wife Nancy and other collaborators) in the early 1970s. Here are a couple of tunes from Norman or Nancy:

This is a favorite from 2001, Blake's version of an Uncle Dave Macon song, "All Go Hungry Hash House":

I looked for, but couldn't find a Youtube of Norman's "Precious Memories (Was a Song I Used to Hear)," which was written by our mutual friend and Santa Fe picker Jerry Faires. But here's that song on Spotify (I know, I know ...) by Norman & Nancy:

But this is my favorite Norman Blake song of all time, "Last Train from Poor Valley":

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, March , 2022
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

Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats

Burn, Baby Burn by Stud Cole

Narcissist by King Khan Unlimited

Midnite Blues by Detroit Cobras

Fun Girls by Xposed 4Heads

West Yorks Ballad by The Mekons

Out for Blood by Johnny Dowd

Elephant Man by Meet Your Death

How Far Can Too Far Go by The Cramps

Like Calling Up Thunder by The Gun Club

Crypt by Night Beats

Plea by Sam Snitchy

She's Out of Control by The Barbraellatones 

I Wanna Be Yours by The Grawks

No Makeup by Sloks

Wade in Bloody Water by The Grannies

Hunter S. Thompson by Nocturne Spark

You're a Whole Different Person When You're Scared by Warren Zevon

Monkeytown by Degurutieni

The Idiot Kings by Soul Coughing

Contort Yourself by James White & The Blacks

Daystar by SRC

The Gypsy by Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs

Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye by The Casinos

Jon E. Edwards is in Love by Jon E. Edwards

Your Love is Too Cold by Bobby Oroza

Hello Stranger by Trish Toledo

I Never Had it So Good by Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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THROWBACK THURSDAY: Celebrating Jackie Brenston, Ike Turner and "Rocket 88"

 

Delta Cats: Ike Turner, left, with Jackie Brenston 

Happy birthday rock 'n' roll!

On this day, March 3, 1951,  at Memphis Recording Service -- later renamed "Sun Studios," a band called Ike Turner & His Rhythm Kings, featuring a singer named Jackie Brenston from Clarksdale, Mississippi recorded a little jump blues tune called "Rocket 88."

And what a song it was.

Writing in Time Magazine in 2004,  Jamaican-born journalist Christopher John Farley said of "Rocket 88":

Rocket 88 was brash and it was sexy; it took elements of the blues, hammered them with rhythm and attitude and electric guitar, and reimagined black music into something new. If the blues seemed to give voice to old wisdom, this new music seemed full of youthful notions. If the blues was about squeezing cathartic joy out of the bad times, this new music was about letting the good times roll. If the blues was about earthly troubles, the rock that Turner's crew created seemed to shout that the sky was now the limit. And if anyone had ever thought before that black music was just for black people, Rocket 88 undercut that tall tale — the beat was too big, the lyrics too inviting, the melody too winning, the volume too loud, for the song to be taken as anything but an invitation for all who heard it, black or white or brown or whatever, to join the party.

Sun Studios licensed the song to Chicago's Chess Records. But instead of crediting the single to Turner and his band, Chess released it under the name "Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats." This had to have pissed off Ike Turner to the max.

Besides Turner's pounding piano, Brentson's joyful vocals and 17-year-old Raymond Hill's wild tenor sax, many "Rocket 88" fans also cite Willie Kizart's distorted electric guitar as a factor that made the song so unique. 

Talking to Rolling Stone in 1986, Sun king Sam Phillips said,:

"... when Ike and them were coming up to do the session, the bass amplifier fell off the car. And when we got in the studio, the woofer had burst; the cone had burst. So I stuck the newspaper and some sack paper in it, and that’s where we got that sound."

Many scholars dispute that "Rocket 88" is the very first rock 'n' roll song. Other candidates include Roy Brown's "Good Rockin' Tonight," or  Goree Carter's proto-Chuck Berry "Rock Awhile" or Sister Rosetta Tharpe's "Strange Things Happening Every Day" or other tunes. 

We'll leave that debate to grumbling academics. But even if it wasn't the first rock 'n' roll song, there's no denying "Rocket 88" is a wild joy.

Here's the song that made us all fall in love:

So why aren't we more familiar with Jackie Brenston? Not long after "Rocket 88," the singer left Turner's band to try a solo career. He never received much success, but Brenston, who died in 1979, left behind some pretty cool tunes. Here are a few of them, starting with one called "Leo the Louse":

This one is "Tuckered Out"

And from Jackie's short-lived career as a restaurant critic, (I know, I know) here's "Fat Meat is Greasy"

Oldsmobile's 1949 Rocket 88

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, February 27, 2022
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 Flame That Killed John Wayne by The Mekons

Al Capone's Syphallytic Fever Dream by King Khan Unlimited

Oofty Goofty (Wild Man of Borneo) by King Salami & The Cumberland 3

Pronto Un Doctor by Rolando Bruno

Meow Meow by Nesttor Donuts

Down by Sam Snitchy

Got to Love Me by Bloodshot Bill

Nothing Makes Me Happy by The Grawks

Weiner Dog Polka by Polkacide

Year of the Spider by Shannon & The Clams

I'll Make You See God by Afghan Whigs

Gravedigger's Song by Mark Lanegan

Me and You by Violent Femmes

Particle Filter Blues by The Blues Against Youth

Shack by Johnny Dowd

Middle Finger by Dropkick Murphys

Pictures by Ty Segall

Girl Watcher by The O'Kaysions

All You Fascists by Nocturne Spark

Dragon Slayer by Animal Collection

Love Spell by Old Time Relijun

Sun Can't Be Seen No More by David Lynch

Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk by Frank Zappa

Blackleg Miner by The Freakons

New Dying Soldier by Nick Shoulders

Waiting by Eric Hisaw

Jimmy Reed is the King of Rock 'n' Roll by Julie Chistensen

Your Mind is on Vacation by Mose Allison

Jacob's Ladder by Michael Hurley

CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis

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WACKY WEDNESDAY: Up With People Deep Cuts

 

They never had a radio hit, they never made the cover of the Rolling Stone,  they've somehow eluded the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame (though I'd argue that several inductees in recent years are just as lame, if not worse). 

But since the mid 1960s, the traveling musical troupe known as Up With People has traveled the world, including, probably, a high school auditorium near you spreading their weird, clean-cut cheer and saccharine platitudes. They played not one, not two but five goddamn Super Bowl halftime shows between the mid '70s and mid '80s. They've performed for presidents and foreign leaders.

There have been more than 22,000 members from more than a hundred countries.

Dazzled yet?

And yet some people -- including former member, actress Glenn Close -- have compared Up With People with religious cults. And in fact, the group sprang from an "alternative" religious movement called Moral Rearmament. (Close's parents belonged to that group, and Glenn spent her teenage years and early 20s under its spell.)

Up With People was started by a Moral Rearmament member from Arizona named J. Blanton Belk, According to a 2012 story from Inside Tucson Business:

During the turbulent 1960s, a prevalent scene in the U.S. was one of hippies occupying university presidents offices. It was a time of demonstrations, around the world from the University of California in Berkeley to the Sorbonne in Paris, and to San Marcus University in Lima, Peru.

Belk was at a point in his life when he was ready to take on a big challenge. He gathered student leaders from half a dozen universities challenging them to find a “positive voice” as an alternative to what he regarded as the negativism of the times.

Chances are you've probably heard Up With People's self-titled theme song, the one that goes "Up up with people, you meet 'em wherever you go ..." -- and possibly you even agree with the song's sentiment "If more people were for people" the world would be a better place. And maybe you remember one of their better known songs, "What Color is God's Skin?"

But I'd be willing to be bet that you probably haven't heard many of the other 300 songs or so written for Up With People over the past 50-whatever years. Well, that's what this blog is for.

Let's start with one written and sung by a young Glenn Close, "Run and Catch the Wind" (no relation to the similarly-titled Donovan song from that era.) And check out the endorsements from John Wayne, Pat Boone and Walt Disney on the album cover!

Here's one from Up With People's snazzy orange sweater period, "Where the Roads Come Together":

Up With People Get funky with this 1970 tune called "Man's Gotta Go Somewhere":

Finally, here's "Stand Up Now," a fairly recent one (2012) that has an anti-bullying message:

So I hope you agree with me that UP WITH PEOPLE KICKS ASS!

Check out other "Deep Cuts" posts from this blog:

* Freddie & The Dreamers

* Sgt. Barry Sadler

* The Village People