On this day in 1819, Alabama was admitted to the United States of America as the 22nd state.
And just a couple of days ago, Alabama apparently decided it was time to rejoin the U.S.
Yesterday I noticed on Facebook that a lot of my friends were posting the words "Sweet Home Alabama" to celebrate Democrat Doug Jones' victory over Republican Roy Moore, a former state Supreme Court judge and a formercreepy guy at mall.
I support the sentiment, but "Sweet Home Alabama"? Really? There is a rich history of great American songs about Alabama that goes way beyond Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Here are a few of them. Let's start with "Alabama Bound" by Lead Belly
The Delmore Brothers sang this one, "Alabama Lullabye."
Cowboy Copas did this hillbilly classic simply called "Alabama."
But the greatest of all Alabama songs has no words at all. This of course was John Coltrane's song "Alabama" which the great sax man wrote in response to the Sept. 15, 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which killed four little girls -- Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley.
Here's a live version of Coltrane performing "Alabama" in December, 1963 on a public television show called Jazz Casual. He's playing with my favorite Coltrane band -- McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. The entire episode can be seen HERE.
By the way, the good people of Alabama just elected to the U.S. Senate a man who successfully prosecuted two of the Birmingham church bombers.
America's sweetheart, Tonya Harding, is back in the national consciousness once again thanks to an upcoming biopic I, Tonya, starring Margot Robbie that looks back on the life of the champion figure skater from the wrong side of the tracks.
In 1991 Tonya Harding won her first national skating title and became the first woman to complete a triple axel in competition. In January 1994, Harding earned notoriety when her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, hired a hitman to assault fellow U.S. figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. The attack seriously bruised Kerrigan's kneecap and quadriceps tendon, and prevented her from participating in the U.S. Championships. Harding pleaded guilty to hindering the investigation into Kerrigan's attack, which allowed her to avoid jail time. Under the plea bargain, Harding was stripped of her '94 national title and banned from competing in the U.S. for life. Despite her knee injury, Kerrigan went on to win the silver medal at the 1994 Olympic Games.
You confronted your sorrow
Like was no tomorrow
Kerrigan was clearly the victim in this story. But while there is still dispute about whether Harding was responsible for the attack, Harding became a national villain, hated and reviled.
But guess which one the nation's songwriters preferred. As one of my favorite college professor posed to a literature class, "Who do we love, Pat Garrett or Billy the Kid? Jesse James or the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard?"
In short, I'm not aware of any songs about Nancy Kerrigan. But here are three about Tonya.
I’ve been trying to write a Tonya Harding song since I first saw her skate at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in 1991. She’s a complicated subject for a song partly because the hard facts of her life are so strange, disputable, heroic, unprecedented, and indelibly American. ...
Tonya Harding’s dramatic rise and fall was fiercely followed by the media, and she very quickly became the brunt of jokes, the subject of tabloid headlines and public outcry. She was a reality TV star before such a thing even existed. But she was also simply un-categorical: America’s sweetheart with a dark twist. But I believe this is what made her so interesting, and a true American hero. In the face of outrage and defeat, Tonya bolstered shameless resolve and succeeded again and again with all manners of re-invention and self-determination.
He reportedly submitted the song for I, Tonya, but it wasn't used in the film.
Here's my favorite of Stevens' Tonya songs
But I don't like Stevens' lonesome ode a fraction as much as I love Loudon Wainwright's "Tonya's Twirls." I first saw him perform it at a Santa Fe concert about a year and a half after the Kerrigan attack.
It's truly a subversive little ditty, that starts off with a quick yuk at the expense of Hardin's "body guard" Shawn Eckardt, and includes a little bit of the " puns, punch lines and light-hearted jabs" Sufjan Stevens says he tried to avoid.
But once you're drawn into the song Wainwright hits you with the sad tale of class struggle -- the lower-class girl in that world of prissy little ice princesses.
... she was your parents' worst nightmare: the slut who moved next door
From the wrong side of the track, she liked the boys more than the girls
With their gliding and their sliding and their girlish dainty twirls-
And then Wainwright pulls back and uses the story to decry the corruption of a fun little activity for "giddy, slipping, sliding, laughing, happy little girls" that grew to be more about corporate sponsorship deals and American nationalism.
And I just learned that the immortal Tiny Tim wrote a little song for Tonya not long after the knee-capping incident. Dedicated to "Miss Tonya Harding," Tiny's song has some invaluable advice here:
Though you are sighing, though you are crying and everything has gone wrong
Sunday, Dec. 10, 2017 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
No Rest for the Wicked by Wayne Cochran
Stutterin' Sue by King Salami & The Cumberland 3
Gravy for My Mashed Potatoes by Dee Dee Sharp
Hot Pastrami With Mashed Potatoes Part 1 by Joey Dee & The Starliters
Hot Pastrami With Mashed Potatoes Part 2 by Joey Dee & The Starliters
Living Wreck by Mudhoney
Midnight Motorway by Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons
Caught in the Devil's Game by The Darts
The Devil and Me by The Vagoos
If You Live by Meet Your Death
She Left Me With the Herpes by Tiny Tim
Time Has Come by Mary's Kids
Pray You Parrots by The Devils
Loose It by Arvidson & Butterflies
Fox by Travel in Space
Police Call by Drywall
Brillo de Facto by The Fall
Yen For Your Yang by Pocket FishRMen
Stick a Knife in His Heart by Casey Jones Dead
Andres by L7
Yabba Ding Ding by Joe "King" Carrasco
A Lap Full of Hate by Movie Star Junkies
Monkey Bizness by Pere Ubu
Cave Girl by The Texreys
Steppin' Out by Paul Revere & The Raiders
Teeth by Baronen & Satan
The Unsignposted Road by The Masonics
Geraldine by The A-Bones
Bumble Bee by LaVern Baker
Dagger Moon by Dead Moon
Haunt by Roky Erickson
Nocturne by Mark Lanegan
I Felt My Courage Fail by Jon Langford's Four Lot Souls
House Where Nobody Lives by King Ernest
Take it With Me by Tom Waits CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, Dec. 8, 2017 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
Pinball by Hellbound Glory
Hard Livin' by Chris Stapleton
Ain't No Bars in Heaven by T. Tex Edwards & The Swingin' Kornflake Killers
Fast, Cheap or Well Done by Lara Hope & The Ark-Tones
Heal Me by Sarah Shook & The Disarmers
Gonna Be Flyin' Tonight by Wayne Hancock
Tape Deck in His Tractor by Dottie Cormier
Lay Me Down by The Perreze Family
To Heck With Ol' Santa Claus by Loretta Lynn
Walk Between the Raindrops by J.D. Wilkes
After You've Gone by Legendary Shack Shakers
Long Black Veil by Jocephus & The George Jonestown Massacre
Through the Hole by Dad Horse Experience
Devil Do by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs
Goodnight Dear Diary by Joe Ely
Dead Thumb King by Ray Wylie Hubbard
A Little Pain by Margo Price
I've Got Christmas by The Tail by Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
God Less America and other Country Weirdness
8 Weeks in a Barroom by Ramblin' Red Bailey
Ballad of a Small Town Sheriff by Clark Bentley
Too Many Pills by Arkey Blue & The Blue Cowboys
Insane by Katie Lee
Chick Inspector by Dick Curless
The School Bus by T. Tommy Cutrer
Ed's Place by Horace Heller
Please Don't Go Topless Mother by Troy Hess
Is Santa Claus a Hippy by Linda Cassady
Dysfunction by Joe West
Time Don't Wait by Marty Stuart
Honky Doodle by Peter Stampfel
Two Throwed Dat Rock by Ira Louvin
I'm No Longer in Your Heart by Charlie Louvin
Good God a Woman by David Rawlings
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.
On Nov. 21, while I was on vacation (and taking a break from blogging), a unique force in American music became an ascended master.
That was Wayne Cochran, "The White Knight," known for his gigantic blonde pompadour and his credible take on blue-eyed soul. He was 78.
The Georgia native, who wrote the classic teenage death song "Last Kiss" (a hit for J. Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers, was better known for his high-energy southern soul sound with his band The C.C. Riders -- which at one point included a teenage bass player named Jaco Pastorius, who later became an iconic jazz musician. (Cochran himself had played bass on some early Otis Redding recordings.)
The White Knight didn't have many radio hits of his own. At one point he left the music racket and became an evangelist. Somehow that makes sense.
But his music influenced a lot of people. Check out these videos and you'll get some idea why.
Maybe it's because I just started watching the new Netflix western series Godless. But somehow today I couldn't get this crazy country compilation out of my head.
Released back in 1995 by the wonderful Crypt label -- yes, that outfit responsible for the influential 60s garage music series Back from the Grave and the sleaze-sational Las Vegas Grind compilations -- God Less America is a collection of obscure country non-hits mostly by artists you've never heard of.
Covering the years between 1955 and 1965, the subject matter covered here includes murder, drugs, insanity and, on one track, a little boy pleading with his mom not to become a topless go-go dancer.
But for a distilled, single-volume collection of hillbilly weirdness, nothing beats God Less America.
Both the CD and vinyl versions of God Less are long out of print. You can buy it at Amazon for $28.99 (CD) or LP ($125) on eBay for $49 (CD)
But you can listen to several songs from it right here for free!
Probably the most famous of the contributors to God Less is Eddie Noack -- yes, the first guy to record "Psycho." It's a pretty song about a serial killer who tried to warn his latest victim.
This one is a spoken-word masterpiece by Horace Heller.
Chances are you've never heard of Country Johnny Mathis. But he sang a sweet tribute to Caryl Chessman, a convicted California murderer known as the "Red Light Bandit" who was executed in 1960. (Supposedly Chessman inspired Merle Haggard, who met him him at San Quentin prison, to write "Sing Me Back Home.")
Arky Blue & The Blue Cowboys warn about popping too many pills
Finally, here is the sad story of little Troy Hess who's ashamed that his mama works as an exotic dancer in a gentleman's club.
Sunday, Dec.3 , 2017 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
Oft Times When We Pork by The Pocket Fishrmen
Satan is a Lady by Baronen & Satan
Bad America by The Gun Club
Step Aside by Sleater-Kinney
Get Messy by The Darts
Mon Nom by The Yawpers
Make It Mine by The Howlin' Max Messer Show
Come Back Lord by Reverend Beat-Man
Groove is in The Heart by The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Linda Blair by Redd Kross
LSD by The Pretty Things
Half Believing by The Black Angels
Swampland by Pere Ubu
Texas Band by Count Vaseline
Valley of the Wolves by The Ghost Wolves
The Wasp by Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons
Then We Kissed by Skip Church
William Blake set
A Poison Tree by Movie Star Junkies
Tyger by Arrington de Dionyso & Old Time Relijun
Jerusalem by The Fall
So Long Sucker by Oh! Gunquit
Down to Earth by Pearced Arrows
Vegetable Man by The Movements
Leadfoot Down by Leadfoot Tea
Love Has It's Jokes by Flat Duo Jets
School by Travel in Space Captain Captain by Mark "Porkchop" Holder
Come and Be a Winner by Sharon Jones
Tough Guy by Phil Hayes & The Trees
I Thought He Was Dead by Jon Langford & Four Lost Souls
Fear and Beer by The Mekons
Lord I've Been Changed by Tom Waits with John Hammond CLOSING THEME: Over the Rainbow by Jerry Lee Lewis
Friday, Dec. 1 , 2017 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
Don't Say It by Margo Price
Sun Valley Blues #3 (Bloodweiser) by Hellbound Glory
Hard Luck n' Old Dogs by Nancy Apple
A Hangover Ago by Dale Watson & Ray Benson
My Wife Thinks You're Dead by Junior Brown
Burn Your Fun by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs
Down to the River by The War & Treaty
Curse of the Cajun Queen by Legendary Shack Shakers The Pill by Loretta Lynn
Honky Tonk Flame by Tyler Childers
Long White Line by Sturgill Simpson
Air Mail Special by Marty Stuart
Choctaw Bingo by James McMurtry
Amie by Pure Prairie League
Bobbie Gentry tribute
Okolona River Bottom Band by Bobbie Gentry
Fancy by The Geraldine Fibbers
Ode to Billy Joe by Ike & Tina Turner
Harlan County by Jim Ford
Touch 'em With Love by Bobbie Gentry
Sing Me Back Home by Chesterfield Kings
You Broke My Heart by Steve Earle
What's It? by Jimmie Rodgers
The Secret in This Lady's Heart by Ellen McIlWaine
I'll Walk Out by Miss Leslie
Don't Touch Me by George Jones
Possum Ran Over My Grave by Jesse Dayton
The Vigilante by Judee Sill
Don't Leave Poor Me by Eilen Jewell
Dublin Blues by Guy Clark 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 Dec. 1, 2017
Here are four recent (and fairly recent) country albums that I’ve been enjoying lately.
Tyler Childers
* Purgatory by Tyler Childers. Let’s get to the point: This is the year’s best album by a young country singer. Hands down. It’s also the best Sturgill Simpson album of the year, as Simpson co-produced the record for his fellow Kentuckian Childers.
This twenty-six-year-old guitar slinger writes and sings songs that sound timeless. Covering evergreen hillbilly themes, he tells tales of good moonshine, bad drugs, an all-seeing God, a powerful devil, and the joys of love and sex. Some tracks have a pure outlaw country sound, while some come right out of the world of bluegrass.
One of my favorites is the fiddle-and-banjo-fueled title song, a fast-moving hoedown concerning a hillbilly kid looking for salvation from his religious girlfriend. Each verse ends in the refrain “Catholic girl, pray for me/You’re my only hope for heaven.”
The most impressive musical moment here comes in the sweet love song “Honky Tonk Flame.” It starts out as a kind of clunky waltz, but evolves into an extended fiddle/guitar showdown.
The whole album consists of just 10 songs and weighs in at a modest 37 minutes (pretty much how long albums used to be when I was a lad). So it leaves you wanting a little more. But something tells me there’s a lot more to come from young Tyler.
Margo in Austin last March
* All American Made by Margo Price. I was a latecomer to Price’s solo debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter (released last year). But I soon came to realize that it’s one of the best country albums released in recent years. I even got to see Price in concert in Austin earlier this year — and she was fantastic. Maybe my expectations were too high, but the new album just doesn’t measure up to her first one. I have to admit, I’m slightly disappointed.
But it’s still a good record with plenty of worthy songs. The first two tracks, “Don’t Say It” and “Weakness,” are rocking little tunes. I love this bit of advice in the former: “Don’t blame me for what you did to yourself/Don’t fall in love if you’re in it for your health.” And “Learning to Lose,” her duet with Willie Nelson, is beyond lovely. It sounds so much like a long-lost Willie weeper I was surprised to learn that Price, not Nelson, wrote it.
There are more than a little politics on All American Made. “Pay Gap” is about the fact that womenfolk are paid less than the men. And on “Heart of America,” Price sings about a subject dear to her: the corporate takeover of family farms and the brutal effect it had on families like her own.
All American Made ends with the title song, a sad tune in which Price contemplates the future of the country: “I wonder if the president gets much sleep at night/And if the folks on welfare are making it all right/ I’m dreaming of that highway that stretches out of sight/That’s all American made.”
Hellbound Glory, Austin Elks Lodge 2012
* Pinball by Hellbound Glory. This band is the domain of a Reno singer born Leroy Virgil Bowers. (With a name like “Leroy Virgil,” how could he not end up as a country singer?)
The group rose out of the great underground country scare of seven or eight years ago — a “movement” whose standard-bearers included punk- and metal-influenced acts like The Goddamn Gallows, The .357 String Band, and, of course, Hank 3. But Hellbound sounds more like straight country than many of their wilder, heavily tattooed, heavily bearded contemporaries.
Pinball, which was produced by Shooter Jennings, is filled with good country songs. Lots of the tunes are soaked in lyrics full of “whiskey and hell-raisin’ women” (that’s right out of the good-time “Sun Valley Blues #3 (Bloodweiser).”
The main song that first grabbed me here was “Vandalism Spree,” in which Leroy sings, “Baby how’s about you and me/go on a vandalism spree/Burn down the Dairy Queen/Maybe rob the cash machine.”
Kids, remember that vandalism, arson, and robbery are bad. Please don’t let this song negatively influence you.
Marty & Superlatives, doing a gospel set
at a church in Austin 2006
* Way Out Westby Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives. For decades, Mississippi native Stuart has been known as one of Nashville’s most respected pickers and singers. He’s been a sideman for bluegrass giant Lester Flatt as well as Johnny Cash (who was his father-in-law for a time).
Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Stuart seemed to be heading toward a comfortable career in mainstream country. Except that he had this artistic integrity thing that got in the way. He’s a country traditionalist who is blessed — or cursed — with musical curiosity and a penchant for experimentation.
And those qualities are what drive Way Out West. On this record, you hear echoes of Marty Robbins, Hag, Buck, The Byrds, and Link Wray, as well as a quick wink to younger contemporaries like Sturgill Simpson. And in the title song — a series of spoken-word vignettes about pill-popping characters from the vast California underbelly set against a dreamy, reverb-heavy soundscape — Stuart sounds almost like a clear-throated Tom Waits. Like a mad scientist of hillbilly music, he seamlessly blends surf music, Bakersfield country, Mexican music, and — getting back to that title song — psychedelia.
The first great Santa Fe concert of next year most likely will be Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Jan. 20, 2018. For more information, CLICK HERE Video Time!
Here's Tyler Childers
Near the end of each episode of Cocaine & Rhinestones, an impressive new podcast about the history of country music, host Tyler Mahan Coe asks listeners if they like the show to share it with just one person -- rather than sharing it on Facebook or Twitter. " ... mostly, I really would like to think that there are people out there having real world conversations about this show."
Well, OK. In the past couple of weeks I have shared individual episodes with a handful of friends and loved ones I think would appreciate them, just like I learned word of mouth from my country music fanatic friend Adam from Ohio.
But fuck it! This is my current favorite podcast (after my own of course), so I want to plaster it on my blog and post it on Facebook, Twitter and anywhere else I can think of. I love what Coe is doing here -- even when I disagree with him about some esoteric point.
Coe, who is the son of The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, David Allen Coe, explains on the show's website what he's trying to accomplish:
You don’t have to know what it’s like to drive a tractor. You don’t need to have spent the last 20 years listening to nothing but Merle Haggard 8 tracks while sipping Pearl beer from a can in order to appreciate these incredible stories and this genius music.
You don’t need to “be country” to hear the truth about country.
Spade Cooley
The truth is that country music is wild and it is amazing because the people who made it were wild and they were amazing. Sometimes they went too far. Sometimes, the amazement we feel will not be the happy kind.
He's darn tootin' there. His episode on Spade Cooley is downright excruciating as Coe goes into deep gruesome detail about what western swing master Cooley did to his poor wife Ella Mae.
Yes, Cooley murdered his wife. But as Coe explains the word "murder" in this case is basically an euphemism.
Now, I don’t know how so many people are comfortable using a simple word like “murder” to sum up Spade Cooley’s actions on the day of his wife’s killing. This was not a domestic argument that got out of hand. Not an accident with a dangerous weapon. Not a so-called crime of passion. This wasn’t even an isolated incident. It was a savage and deliberate execution which many people had to have seen coming.
Says Coe, "If this episode doesn’t screw you up, you’re already screwed up."
Hear for yourself here:
But not all the episodes are that dark. There are thoughtful deep dives into songs like Merle Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee" and "The Pill" by Loretta Lynn.
There are oral portraits of Ernest Tubb (who apparently was the nicest guy in country music -- except maybe on that night when he was arrested with a loaded he intended to use on the manager of the Grand Old Opry) as well as The Louvin Brothers (the latest episode, which I haven't heard yet.)
And there's the one I listened to yesterday, concerning Bobbi Gentry and why she became a recluse in the early '80s.
(Check that one out below)
So check out Cocaine & Rhinestones. And if you like it, tell one friend. ...
One thing I love about this podcast is the fact that Coe often turns us on to some great obscure songs somehow related to his subject at hand. For instance in the Loretta Lynn episode I learned of a great Jimmie Rodgers tune called "What's It" that like "The Pill" also faced censorship problems.
And in the Bobbie Gentry episode, Coe takes a side trip into the of Jim Ford, a singer-songwriter who at some point claimed that he, not Gentry, actually wrote "Ode to Billy Joe." Coe does a thorough job of demolishing that contention. But like Coe, I can't help but love some of Ford's songs. Here's one of his best, a southern soul stomper called "Harlan County.
Let's go out with a hit from Spade Cooley's band from 1945. Sorry, I couldn't find the name of the singer here.
Happy belated birthday to rock 'n' roll poet William Blake, who was born 260 years ago yesterday.
An yes I did say Rock 'n' Roll. Blake's poems not only influenced the lyrics of rockers like Bob Dylan and Patti Smith, he's been covered by several acts in the rock era.
Folkie Greg Brown did a whole album of Blake songs called called Songs of Innocence and Experience. Here's a track called "The Tyger."
Welcome, good people, to another breathtaking episode of The Big Enchilada. No need to worry about nuclear war because many cities across this land of the free still have fallout shelters left over from the Cold War. And if you're well-stocked with Big Enchilada episodes in your portable music player of choice, you'll be thrilled and entertained until the whole thing blows over.
In all seriousness, this episode is dedicated to the late great Fred Cole of Dead Moon / Pierced Arrows / The Rats, etc, who died recently. His truth goes marching on!
Special thanks this month to Dirty Water Records (Pussycat, Baronen, Bee Bee Sea) and Beluga Records (Satan's Little Helpers, Why Oh Whys, Norris Experiment) for supplying a big chunk of the music this month
