Here's a juxtaposition; Amy Winehouse doing a reggae cover of Sam Cooke's "Cupid" and the Jolly Boys, a soca and reggae group, covering her "Rehab". I ran into these minutes apart, so what the hell. Something tells me I've posted them before. Not my problem.
Okay, I've heard the song a zillion times over the years and never absorbed who it was by. I'm speaking of "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)". Without looking it up, I could have sworn that it was by someone like Lou Rawls, you know, someone known primarily as a singer. When I gave up, I looked it up. Junior Walker. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know that. But I'm not going to dwell on it. The whole reason the topic came up is because I was digging on Alton Ellis's cover of it and couldn't believe that I didn't know who did the original despite hearing it no less than a zillion times. Regardless, dig it.
Whoa! Look at that bill! Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Bill Haley, all on the same bill! What you don't see on the movie poster are the other acts that played that day. Also on the bill were the Platters, the Coasters, the Drifters, Screaming Lord Sutch, Billy Fury, the Move and the MC5 (!). Some of the latter ended up on the cutting room floor, but even if you consider the big five and the fact that they were a little past their prime,...shit, I'd be there in a second even if they were all in their seventies. As it was they ranged in age from Jerry Lee Lewis, thirty seven at the time, to the oldest, Bill Haley, forty seven.
I'm having a Gories fit over here. I started watching a documentary on them and stopped after about fifteen minutes, I decided to tailgate in a way first, in this case getting psyched to watch the rest of it by checking a few live things first. That was all it took and I was on another Gories binge. There's just something about them. They're rough around the edges, they're not flashy, they are definitely not maestros. I can't explain why it is that I like them. I guess it comes down to them not quite giving a fuck, always an admirable trait. So, I'm going back to the documentary. There's a link below to a post from a few months ago with a live video and a couple songs.
I let this sucker stew for a week because it was so out of left field, I didn't know what to think of it. Keith Richards doing a cover of Lou Reed's "I'm Waiting For The Man". If you know both artists and the song, you know this is unexpected. On the outside it seems to make sense. Both Reed and Richards were junkies and the song is about a guy waiting for his dealer. But I've never heard Richards even mention Reed, or the Velvet Underground (Reed's band). And I can't think of any other instance when he's covered a contemporary. I'm sure there have been instances but I'm too lazy to look. Feel free..
The beauty of letting this thing stew for a week was thinking about it a thousand ways. Was it a good thing? A bad thing? Richards trying to remain relevant to hipsters? A sell out? A chink in the armor? Or just an old rocker starting to relax a bit? I found myself cynical. Then, after after several days, I was reminded. I don't have to have an opinion about Keith Richards covering the Velvet Underground at all. It will in no way, shape, or form, disrupt or enhance my life. I don't have to like it or dislike it. It is.
If you're of a certain age, you probably know the song "Different Drum", it was a hit for the Stone Poneys [sic] in 1967 with Linda Ronstadt singing. It still gets played on what few oldies stations are still around. It's a great song but, not being a big Linda Ronstadt fan, I heard it for years and never bothered looking at the songwriting credit. For half my life I walked around not knowing that it was written by Mike Nesmith, pre-Monkees. He was the one with the ridiculous knit cap topped with a little pom-pom thing. He recorded the song a few years after the Stone Poneys. As good and heart-tweaking as the Stone Poneys' (Ronstadt's) version is, Nesmith's lean version is sadder. Sadder even than the other version he did. He recorded the song twice. Having found just the songs with no background info, one of his versions may be a demo, I've no clue. But the bare bones version has the more believable effect. As corny as this sounds, close your eyes and imagine you're on the porch, it's a hot and dusty afternoon, you're just tossing back a few while your buddy strums and does his lamenting thing.
Here's the Stone Poney's version and both Nesmith versions and a few more Nesmith cuts. Nesmith had a hit in 1970 with "Joanne", another plaintive hit, so that's down there. A couple others of note are covers. One is "She Thinks I Still Care", a song that was a hit for George Jones. Headscratcher of the night is a cover of Dave Dudley's "Six Days on the Road". If you're familiar with Dudley's original, you'll know why I'm certain that Nesmith was ten kinds of stoned when he recorded his version. It's more than twice as long as Dudley's and sounds like it was arranged by the Velvet Underground.
Yesterday I was at the neighborhood hardware store. It's a mom and pop store that really caters to the community it serves. None of the bulk shit, none of the racks to the ceiling or tricked out shit you don't need. It's a hammer and nails type place. I was there for rope.
I got to the counter and recognized the two people behind it. I'd been in the store a month or so ago and they were playing some music from South America. I don't remember what it was exactly but when I mentioned that I liked it the conversation turned to international music in general; Brazilian, African, all over the place. Just a few days ago I'd been thinking about those two hardware store people. I knew I was going there for rope and I remembered that there was site I'd posted a ways back that was basically a spin-the-globe radio station finder. I tried every which way I could think of to find it on this, my own fucking blog, and failed. When I mentioned that to one of the hardware clerks, he did a quick web search and found the site in a milli-second. Yep: doh!!
On the globe, there are no borders or city names, just the shapes of the continents with green dots all over it. You'll probably need another map to reference where the cities from music rich regions are. I needed it to find Cape Verde and Lagos Nigeria, but Kingston Jamaica was easy enough to find. Once you know where the city is, just click among the closest green dots and it plays the station from that locale. When I got home I messed with it again, ended up on an armchair world tour for two hours. You should bookmark it so you don't have to go to the hardware store to find it again.
The weekly Saturday Night Fish Fry radio show on the local jazz station is a total gas. All old school jump blues and early rhythm and blues, hosted by Billy Vera, who some of you might remember from his band Billy Vera and the Beaters (who are not at all like his radio show). Regardless of what type of music his band played, he knows R&B. He knows names, record release dates, gig notes and all sorts of trivia. It comes on from 6:00-8:00 Saturday evenings, perfect for after beach putzing around. It's like you've got a buddy in the living room spinning the wax while you man the burritos.
One song Vera plays a lot is "Drunk" by Jimmy Liggins (above). Man, I dig that song. Years ago I was a pretty heavy drinker, so I get it. It's been decades since I've been shitfaced drunk, but this song makes it seem like yesterday. One thing Vera mentioned on the show is that Jimmy Liggins had a brother, Joe (below), also a singer. So here's a couple from each of them. You Don and Dewey fans will recognize "Pink Champagne".
One last thing, I just checked and there's a bunch of Vera's
shows that you can stream on the radio station's web site. But really, a
transistor radio is the way to go.
When you think of guitar in jazz you might think of Kenny Burrell or Jim Hall, that stuff with a mellow tone, clean and exact. The other jazz guitar that comes to mind is the fusion stuff, more electrified but still a tad too exact to appeal to my more rock tainted sensibilities. Enter Sonny Sharrock, who can sound almost like a rock guitarist. I guess the closest comparison is someone who plays as loose as Hendrix, as loose as you'll hear in a jazz context.
The songs below are from one of Sharrock's last albums, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. The person who posted them refers to the LP as his masterpiece. Not being familiar with Sharrock's output I'll have to take him at his word. No matter, this stuff is good. "Out to Launch" is some crazy shit.
Listen:
Sonny Sharrock - Hit Single mp3 at Xtrmntr
Sonny Sharrock - Out to Launch mp3 at Xtrmntr
Sonny Sharrock - Rocket 99 mp3 at Xtrmntr
Sonny Sharrock - Fear of a Ghost Planet mp3 at Xtrmntr
Just a quick one because I ran across a favorite that I'd been wanting to share for a while for one reason. The the lyrics fucking crack me up. It's by the Knitters, a side project that included John Doe, Exene Cervenka, and DJ Bonebrake from X, Dave Alvin from the Blasters and Jonny Ray Bartel from the Red Devils. The song, "The Call of the Wreckin' Ball", is about a guy who stomps chickens to death for a living. It starts with: "Well I woke up this morning, lookin' for kicks, went out to the barnyard to stomp on some chicks. They call me Wreckin' Ball, 'cause I'm the baddest of 'em all." That's just the first couple lines. The rest of the song is just as goofy. When I hear it, I'm envisioning the Max Fleischer version of Bluto from the early Popeye cartoons. The lyrics definitely have a cartoon feel to them. Lil' Abner shitfaced drunk. Anyway, it's best to hear it first but if your English is spotty there's a link below to the lyrics. The Knitters' version of Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings" is down there too because it's a good one.
I'm posting these for a few reasons. I never heard of Charline Arthur until a few hours ago. I'm reading a bland book about early rock 'n' roll. The stuff in it is the same stuff most of us know backwards and forwards. It a $1 used book and it's just holding me over until I get to the library. I've been tempted to put it down but have been holding out hope that there'd be some nugget of early rock trivia that I's missed, in this most basic book. There, mentioned between Janis Martin and Barbara Pttman was the name Charline Arthur. The book considers her rockabilly but, eh, it's really more country or hillbilly. But another reason I'm posting these is that, whether country, hillbilly or rockabilly, I knew Rocky 52 would have something. That he did. Five songs and a bio. Three of the songs are below and there's a link to the page at Rocky 52. Bookmark Rocky's site. It's invaluable when it comes to anything country, western, hillbilly, rockabilly, bluegrass or early rock 'n' roll. That's another reason for this post, props for Rocky 52.
If you ever wanted to test your rapping skills but are so unbelievably white that you were embarrassed even thinking about it, I have just the thing. Pete Rock's instrumentals. There were three or four LPs worth (I think), in a series called PeteStrumentals (credited to Pete Rock and the Soul Brothers) . Throw 'em on. Let 'em roll while you go about your business and see if you aren't singing, rhyming, rapping, or toasting after a few minutes.
A few days ago I heard that Dexter Romweber had recently passed away. Fu-huck. This one hurts. He was the real deal, a little full of himself when he was younger but musically, man, pure manic rocker. That was in the Flat Duo Jets, a rockin' combo, good and raw. Even as a kid Romweber's taste was early rock 'n' roll and rockabilly. As he got older, it was still classic sounding shit but a little more under control. Here's just a few things, early stuff and a couple later cuts from the Dexter Bomweber Duo. The video below is from a 1987 music documentary about the Athens, GA scene, There's tons more stuff at YouTube, as well as clips of his later duo, the Dexter Bomweber Duo.
The party starts at 3:12
Listen:
The Flat Duo Jets - Harlem Nocturne mp3 at Beware of the Blog
The Flat Duo Jets - Golden Stings mp3 at Leave You Wanting Less
Dexter Romweber Duo - Lookout mp3 at Internet Archive
Dexter Romweber Duo - Picture of You mp3 at Internet Archive
Video:
Flat Duo Jets - MTV 120 Minutes segment at YouTube 1985
Flat Duo Jets - Dark Night at YouTube 2016
The Flat duo Jets - Lonely Wolf at YouTube
The Flat Duo Jets - Hoy Hoy at YouTube
Visit:
Dexter Romweber, Raucous Torchbearer of the Power Duo, Dead at 57 at Indy Week
I'd been away from things for a few days, limiting my online time to strictly necessary shit. So I didn't find out until this past weekend that Wayne Kramer had passed away (on February 2nd). Kramer was one of the guitarists in the MC5 (the other being Fred "Sonic" Smith). Proto-punk influence, "Kick Out the Jams", guitar hero, blah blah, blah. He was a great musician, if you know the MC5, you know that. But he was so much more than just another hot shit guitarist.
If you don't know about his incarceration and his prison reform activism after his release, Capital & Main, a Califonia based non-profit site, has a great article about all that. That part of Kramer puts him on a whole other tier. Read the article. For now, here's my favorite clip of him, doing a cover of Ted Taylor's "Ramblin' Rose" with the MC5 (followed by "Kick Out the Jams"), from 1970. Check his foot work. (Look out Prince.) There's a few other MC5 things down there to keep you from the dishes..
Listen:
MC5 - Ramblin' Rose mp3 at Internet Archive
Ted Taylor - Ramblin' Rose mp3 at Probe Is Turning-On the People
MC5 - Kick Out the Jams mp3 at Internet Archive
MC5 - Rocket Reducer#2 (Rama Lama Fa Fa) mp3 at Internet Archive
Video:
MC5 - Kick Out the Jams (live) at YouTube Colorized version of the clip above. Had me fooled.
Visit:
Wayne Kramer’s Rage Against the Prison Machine at Capital & Main "Years behind bars for drug dealing led the influential proto-punk rocker to work for criminal justice reform."
Everything below was posted last year. I wasn't paying attention this year and just realizede that tomorrow's Fat Tuesday, so it's too late to start from scratch. Most of below should still be good. Don't miss the Funky Sixteen Corners mixes. Here's the old post:
It's crunch time! Here's the last of the New Orleans shake that I was able to scrounge up, including a couple other mixes from Funky 16 Corners and a radio show from the eighties with rip roaring Ernie K-Doe as DJ. In case you should whoop it up too much tomorrow night, these might even hold your hair while you puke.
Listen:
Al Tousan (Allen Toussaint) - Cow Cow Blues mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Eddie Bo - Check Mr. Popeye mp3 at Probe Is Turning-On the People
Al Tousan (Allen Toussaint) - Moo Moo mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Lee Dorsey - Yes We Can, Pt 2 mp3 at Videogotz
Clifton Chenier - Zydeco Sont Pas Sale mp3 at Let's Polka
Huey "Piano" Smith - Would You Believe It mp3 at Modern Kicks
Jessie Hill - Oogsey Moo mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Jessie Hill - Whip It On Me mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Shirley and Lee - Feel So Good mp3 at Rocky 52
Lee Dorsey - Holy Cow mp3 at Probe Is Turning-On the People
Al Tousan (Allen Toussaint) - Pelican Parade mp3 at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban
Huey "Piano" Smith - Popeye mp3 at Probe Is Turning-On the People
The Mixes:
Funky Nawlins, Volume 1 at Funky 16 Corners 16 songs Go here for the song list (fifth mix down)
Funky Nawlins, Volume 2 at Funky 16 Corners 17 songs Go here for the song list (tenth mix down)
Vintage ranting
Ernie-K Doe on WWOZ, New Orleans (1980s) mp3 at Beware of the Blog An hour and ten minutes of K Doe going off, DJing, ranting and actually playing some records.
Listen live:
WWOZ "Guardians of the Groove" streaming here
It's a Big Jay McNeely Friday Night Honkin' Sax Special. Here's a bunch of stuff from the one guy that pretty much defines "honkin'". The photo above says it all. Basically, "Blow, baby, blow!!" I think I remember someone commenting here on another McNeely post in the past saying that they didn't like honkin' sax. Fine, they can go listen to Kenny G somewhere else. The rest of you guys can let 'er rip. Drink cheap beer and shake those ruffled tail feathers.
Oh yeahhhh. These suckers are right up my alley. I love instrumentals, I love movie soundtracks, I love reggae and Studio One is my favorite reggae record label. Put those together and you have something close to a royal flush. I'm on it.
I've heard a handful of reggae versions of the theme from "Shaft" over the years and Cedric Im Brooks's (seen above) version is the one that really sounds still deeply rooted in Jamaica. Other reggae versions are good, they just stray too far. Jackie Mittoo's version of "Hang 'em High" strays quite a ways, still, it's great. Mittoo was part of the house band at Studio One, the Sound Dimension. He pretty much has a license to do anything. An earlier band, the Soul Brothers, is represented by "007", an earlier cut that's really ska. Still cool.
In the U.S. it's Black History Month. Per the White House, "This National Black History Month, we celebrate the vast contributions of Black Americans to our country and recognize that Black history is American history and that Black culture, stories, and triumphs are at the core of who we are as a Nation." Hear, hear! That goes triple for the contribution to the music we listen to. Black Americans are responsible for 90% of what's considered American music. Where to start? I was mulling that over when I was talking to a friend today. He's in his late twenties. I mentioned Howlin' Wolf. He didn't know who he was. We can't have that.
I'm trusting you all know how to search for a Howlin' Wolf bio, so no regurgitating here. One thing I do want to point out. The songs below were all released on Chess Records with the exception of two, recorded by Sam Phillips at Sun. One of the songs, "Mr. Highway Man" is represented twice, one on Chess and one on Sun, so you can hear how much more raw the Sun sides were. Alas, per usual, the superior version was on the smaller label so it's also the lesser heard. I highly recommend starting with his stuff on Sun (entry at Discogs here).
Most of you know David Bowie once had an LP that was all covers, Pin Ups. It was covers of songs that were hits in the UK between 1964 and 1967. He did a shitload of other covers throughout his career and they're all over the map. I chose the ones below because they illustrate that tendency. You've got a Velvet Underground cover, a John Lennon cover, a Nat King Cole cover (w/Massive Attack) and, drum roll, an extended mix of a Legendary Stardust Cowboy cover. That last one is the one that slays me. If you're not familiar with the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, I encourage you to listen to "Paralyzed" first, then watch the video of Bowie telling Jools Holland how he ended up doing a Legendary Stardust Cowboy cover in the first place. And yes, I'll use any excuse to post the Legendary Stardust Cowboy.
