A totally random click this one. Revisited a Clifton Chenier post I had bookmarked at Groove Addict and there was a "you might also like" below it, Lynn August, some dude I never heard of. Now I've listened to the the same Lynn August song four times in a row. Not sure what his other stuff sounds like, but this one sounds like Little Richard's restrained cousin singing with Clifton Chenier backing him. His voice almost cracks a half dozen times, as if he'd be belting out one of those Little Richard "Wooooo!"s if he went one notch louder. This is a good one, I mean, I listened to it four times in a row. That gave me sixteen minutes of respite. Felt good. Now, back to the project at hand. Resist.
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Man, I can't get enough of this one. "Prancing" by Ike and Tina's Kings of Rhythm, which on this cut was minus Tina, because it's an instrumental. A guitar instrumental with some sufficiently tweaked playing, and intermittent whammy bar flare. The horns are really cool too. This is one of those instrumentals that despite the repetitiveness, keeps you guessing; you don't really want it to end. That doesn't happen nowadays.
The strange thing: The instrumental is the A-side, th vocal number with Tina Turner is the flip, That doesn't happen often. Usually instrumentals are put on the B-side. Said flip, "It's Gonna Work Out Fine", is just as badass as "Prancing". The two together on the same record is just about everything you'd want out of a 45.
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I heard T-Bone Walker on the radio today. It's 2017 and you can still hear T-Bone Walker on the radio. A regular radio. In your yard. In a parking lot. Really, how cool is that? The simple things. Keep your fancy shit, I heard T-Bone Walker on a ten dollar radio today. Hell yeah.
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It's a good thing I reserved judgement. I've never been a big Pink Floyd fan, but I never hated them, always ambivalent, well aware of their days with Syd Barrett as well as a young Johnny Rotten's homemade "I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt. But the constant exposure to Dark Side of the Moon, which was played incessantly by heads and FM free format stations back in the day (and still is in some parts), put off objective appraisal for decades. Pink Floyd, or anything Pink Floyd oriented, was the last thing I'd ever expect to be posted here. But that changed a couple days ago. A video of Roger Waters playing "Pigs" has started to circulate. It was filmed in October, but was posted on YouTube by Waters a week ago, on the day of Trump's inauguration, with the comment "The Resistance begins today". I liked that comment, I agree with that comment, and I was pleased as punch to see Waters, a Brit, be so bold as to pipe in on a concern that many of us share. I was not prepared for the video, rather, the stage and lighting of the live gig, Mammoth in scale, well done, and loud in its color and intensity, and there is no mistaking who he is singing about this time, despite the songs vintage. Take a look at the clip, read the lyrics, and spread this sucker like butter. This is not some attempt to boost page views here, I've nothing to gain from that. Link directly to the YouTube video if that's how you roll. If resistance is in order, and it most certainly is, you know someone who needs some firing up.
A brief note to the anonymous pro-Trump person who chose to leave a now deleted comment on an earlier post. Dear misguided "anonymous", Try as you might to do the same thing again, I will continue to delete your comments. Even if I have to use one of those filters that requires comments to be approved. Get this straight: My blog, my ideology. Blogger doesn't charge anything to create your own blog, so have at it. Make your own noise over there. There is no agreeing to disagree on this one. Trump is just plain bad. There's just no way to reason out of it. Try as you might to convince yourself otherwise, there's going to be a time when you question whether or not you should jump ship. Make no mistake, this is a blog that does not like Trump, or anything he represents. This is not tit for tat. This is all tit. I am part of the resistance.
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Al Wilson had a bigger hit than "The Snake". In 1973 "Show and Tell" hit #1, but "The Snake", #27 in 1968, was way cooler. It was his song, but it didn't matter who sang it, it was a cool record. AM radio, stealth badass creeping out from Dad's workbench. That's where I am every time I hear it, right outside the garage at the end of the driveway.
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I don't know much about Ty Segall. I don't know that it matters. His story will always be there. When the time comes I'll read up on him or something. I know enough to know that he has about a thousand records out and that I've yet to hear a stinker. I don't know how old he is. When I first heard him I thought of him as a kid, a general impression from what had crossed my path. But that was something like eight years ago. I blinked. Has he matured? How the hell would I know? I've never paid attention to what chronological order his stuff was released. I do know that "The Drag" is from about 2009 and "Break A Guitar" was just released. Compare those two. "The Drag" reminds me why I started paying attention to him. Loud distorted guitar. That's a nice start. The new one "Break A Guitar" is a buzz ride. As ridiculous as it sounds, it's like Ron Asheton, Mark Bolan, Badfinger, Sabbath, and Redd Kross all on the same song.
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Via the folder of forgotten band images, here's a cool one of Pee Wee Crayton, and an excuse to go hunt. Bam, right off the bat, a compilation of twenty Pee Wee Crayton songs ranging from slow blues to rockin' R & B, some with a real nice raw sound, as though Crayton and Co. turned it up, right out back behind the house. Damn, that would be heaven wouldn't it?. You come home early evening, after a day at the beach, and fuckin' Pee Wee Crayton's doing his thing in your back yard. Your friends are there, some already past that elusive four beer buzz, and it smells of lit coals, beers and salty beach funk. Pee Wee Crayton. Write that name down. We gotta get him for our kegger.
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When I go from the Equals to J.J. Fad in a matter of minutes, it's time to give in to distractions. So here's just the first couple legs of my fucking around tonight. It began with a funky live cut from 1968, by the Equals. It may be a full five piece, but all you really hear are the guitar, bass, and drums with the vocals. There's organ in there somewhere, but it's barely audible. Regardless, this isn't anything like "Baby Come Back" or "Police on My Back". This song, as its title suggests, is funky like a train. Funky as it is, and being an extended jam (sixteen minutes plus), you might hear James Brown, or Fela, something like that. But the sparse instrumentation, the guitar, the bareness of the beats, it kind of reminded me of no wave stuff, then it hit me, ESG. Not in structure or sound, just the feel, the naked sound of the rhythm. After a brief stop at ESG's "Moody" it was off to look for their "Erase You", It's been posted here before, but the link went dead. (Unfortunately, no mp3 just streaming, but if you've not heard it, you out to give it a listen.) After that I was off to J.J. Fad's "Supersonic", because I always follow ESG with J.J. Fad. Don't ask me why. I don't know, I just do. I just fucking love "Supersonic", just as much as "Erase You", but the two back to back is a dyn-o-mite pairing. That's where I get off.
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This is a fun and liberating experiment. I was browsing the offerings from Bear Family, a label known for reissues. They had an Dick Dale album, Live on the Santa Monica Pier, and with the listing were fifteen samples, each thirty seconds long. You see where I'm going? I clicked on all the samples in quick succession, until they were all playing at once. It was a rush, a glorious racket. After one faded out, the rest followed, in the same order they were originally clicked on. When it was over I was wishing I had a record of it. So I did it again, this time clicking out of order with different amounts of delay, then clicking on samples as they ended, and kept the mess going for a couple minutes, composing my own surf noise symphony. If that sounds like fun to you, the link to the page at Bear Family is below. If it's not your thing, or worse, you question why it would be anybody's thing, then you're in the wrong place.
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Hell, Champion Jack Dupree would be good enough, add Mickey Baker and what you have is bona fide 100% click bait. Dupree was a pianist from New Orleans, and Micky Baker, one half of Mickey and Sylvia ("Love is Strange"), was one well used session guitarist. He's the guy, Baker that is, that I was actually hunting for. He was all over all sorts of records in the fifties and sixties, with concise licks and, almost without exception, a killer guitar tone. Dupree was something of a boogie woogie blues guy with just enough New Orleans feel that once you know he's from there you begin to hear it. The pairing is some good shit.
If I were to make any changes in Champion Jack Dupree And His Blues Band featuring Mickey Baker it would be to make it mono. The separation is just too, uh, separate. That's a problem easily solved by moving your speakers closer together. You headphone people are on your own.
Baker's playing with Dupree is decidedly more blues than the stuff he plays on rock 'n' roll oriented stuff, so I included a few of those so you get an idea of his versatility.
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Don't get me started. I'm old enough to have lived through bad Presidents. This time I'm lacing up my boots. It's going to be a hell ride. Resist. Don't ask me to give him a chance, don't tell me the country should come together. He is not my President. I have less respect for him than I do the common thug that lives down the street.
For the Sake of the Song posted the cut below back in December. Blaze Foley actually wrote it with Reagan in mind, so it could use a bit more bite to accurately fit the ire. But it's a little nicer than saying FUCK DONALD TRUMP AND EVERY IDIOT THAT VOTED FOR HIM.
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Last Saturday, I was listing to Saturday Night Fish Fry, a show on the local jazz station that's three hours of jump blues and early R&B. Out here on the west coast it's on at 8:00 to 11:00 (Pacific time), an opportune time to get tuned for the night. It could be just as good a couple hours later, so for the better part of the U.S. it's either a party starter or after hours extension. Stream it here, click on "Listen Live" (and don't let DJ Raymond O'Donnell's mellow looks fool you, Dude knows boogie).
This past Saturday they featured Ruth Brown, "the Queen of R&B", the biggest seller in the early days of Atlantic Records. This was back when R&B really was rhythm and blues, before Aretha was the queen of anything, So for the past few days, I've been high on Ruth Brown. I ran into a collection of twenty one cuts of her early stuff, including her breakthrough, "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean". Dig it.
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I've been meaning to get off my retro bag of late, but, man, one thing always seems to lead to another You're looking for something completely different when you run across a video of a Willie Highwater session at Fame Studio, and then it's all over. Bam, Cool video, dynamite old promo photo and the most haunting song you'll hear all week. Play "It's Too Late" loud and try to go back to what you were doing.
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Man, Mississippi Fred McDowell was some kinda slide player, wasn't he? Good, no, excellent, but not too flashy, and not afraid of a sour note. Relaxed. Like he owned the style. Rock guitarists could try all they wanted, and many did, but the bigger they were, the more self aware they were and that is what dissipates the feel. McDowell, though, was the real thing. They wished they could be him, maybe, if only for a song.
Here's a few of his, including "Good Morning Little School Girl", a song that became a staple in the sets of Ten Years After and Johnny Winter, and "You Gotta Move", one the Stones covered on Sticky Fingers. Speaking of Stones, check out "61 Highway" and tell me you don't hear more than a little of Exile on Main St., that is until he takes a solo at 3:30. That starts out sounding like like someone fooling around with a slide for the first time (see "sour note" above) and gets reeled in just as it ends.
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Gads! I've been doing this thing for almost ten years and have never posted any Carl Perkins. What the hell? That's a hugh oversight. It didn't even occur to me until I started reading the Sam Phillips bio. My only excuse, if there is one, is that he's such an obvious go-to rockabilly guy that I figured I'd already posted some of his stuff before.
Perkins was the first Sun Records artist with a million seller, "Blue Suede Shoes", right after Elvis jumped ship. He was only on the label for a few years, and, like Billy Lee Riley, left in the dust as Phillips put all his promo resources behind Jerry Lee Lewis. Pissed off, he went to Columbia, a label ill equipped to get the performances that Phillips had, and make no mistake, Phillips didn't just press "record" and turn knobs. He coached and he coaxed. It doesn't matter what your studio is like, if you don't have the patience or wherewithal to do that, you might get a good record, but you won't get the awesome shit for the ages that Phillips did.
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A few months ago, I read Getting Nowhere Fast: The Untold Story of Independent Music in San Diego 1976 - 1986 by Ray Brandes. Primarily about the local music scene, there is an antidote as told by Joel Kmak, a drummer and mainstay of the San Diego scene for decades. He describes a local show that actually predates the particular period, but is a crack up that makes me smile every time I imagine the scenario. One night Howlin' Wolf was playing a club gig, and Bo Diddley, who happened to be playing at another club across town, showed up unannounced and joined Howlin' Wolf onstage. Kmak says "So they're playing and then all of a sudden Howlin' Wolf gets off stage and goes back to the bar and orders a bunch of hot dogs! He's sitting back at the bar, eating hot dogs and talking to the cute groupies! Meanwhile Bo Diddley's getting pissed because he's up on the stage playing Howlin' Wolf's show!"
It's with that scenario in mind that I went looking again for "The Super Super Blues Band" an album that features Bo Diddley, Howlin Wolf, and Muddy Waters (along with Otis Spann, Hubert Sumlin and Buddy Guy). It's not a compilation, but rather in-studio jams featuring different combinations of the assembled giants. The big reason I wanted to hear again it is because it includes a lot of wisecracks and ribbing that might shed some light on the goat-getting dynamic of the hot dog incident. In other words, I wanted to hear them giving each other shit. There might not be much of it in there, but, hey, I get to listen to Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters fuckin' around while I look for it.
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To put it mildly, I'm suspect of reggae not originating from Jamaica. I'm even more suspect of reggae covers of punk rock songs. Show me a non-Jamaican reggae cover of a punk rock song, and I'll request in no uncertain terms that you get the fuck out. But, when I see a post of various semi-current (the post is from a year ago) reggae cuts that includes a song called "My War", out of curiosity, I'm gonna bite. It couldn't possibly be a cover of Black Flag's "My War", and if it is, it will surely suck. Guess what? It doesn't.
If you're gonna spout off about Black Flag's original being more Sabbath than punk rock, no one cares. Split hairs on your own time. If you'd actually been at a Black Flag show back in the day, you might see it differently.
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This is one of those songs that you may run across once. Not a hit, not a big name, probably didn't create so much as a ripple, but it swings, and it may not ever pop up again. I run across enough of these to know that if I don't download it or at least bookmark it, a year from now when the song pops into my head, I'll kick myself for not remembering where I heard it.
Gus "The Groove" Lewis was a New Orleans DJ, so given the song title, this seems like an elaborate ad. But it was on a label that was co-owned by Allen Toussaint. And it does have that unidentifiable oomph.
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Kogar the Swinging Ape is up to his ol' tricks again over at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban. Out of nowhere comes a mix of thirty instrumentals, all from Bo Diddley. No clue what LPs or B-sides these are from having just run across this mix I haven't even started to look, but regardless, it's a no brainer. Bo Diddley shits riffs. I'm gonna right click and just fucking wallow in it.
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It's not the greatest record in the world. Hell, it really isn't great at all. Maybe not even good. It's just a little oddball, four fairly lame, but differently lame, covers done by a Mexican rock band. I'll tell you what, I'm snagging "Hola Te Quireo", a cover of the Doors' "Hello I Love You", partly because it's a right racket, and also for the same reason I always snag these sorts of things, so they'll end up buried for years only to reappear in a shuffle at which time I'll ask myself "Where the fuck did this come from?"
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I'm still in the thick of reading Peter Guralnick's Sam Phillips - The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll, and it's a whopper. So good that I've found it hard to listen to anything other than Sun related stuff for the past week. Just about every page has some factoid, story or quote worthy of a bookmark. My brand new copy is no more. It's dogeared to shit.
If you happen to have read it, or are reading it, you know the name Dewey Phillips, the Memphis DJ that was pals with Phillips. The only guy Sam Phillips really let his hair down with, particularly because Dewey Phillips was such a good natured fast talking good ol' boy. Sam Phillips's girl Friday, Marion Keisker MacInnes, who was dedicated and indispensable at Sun from the start, thought Dewey Phillips was crass, common, in short a hick. You can get a good a good idea of where both impressions come from by listening to an hour his show, Red Hot and Blue as aired on WHBQ in the early fifties. An interesting thing to note is the way he talks over the records, not just as the intros but even in the middle of songs, which is exactly how the whole reggae DJ sub-genre began a decade and a half later. A hick U-Roy.
Phillips song selection on this particular show is 100% hell yeah: Amos Milburn, Rosco Gordon, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Larry Williams, Bill Dogget..you get the idea, and when this non-stop yapper opens his mouth, you can understand why he was a hot DJ. Even his improvised pitches for beer, furniture, suits and beer are entertaining. To wit, in a spot for CV beer, he recommends that when you're "playin' canasta or whatever" and you have your CV beer, "you jus' go back to the fridge there, and if the ol' lady has it crammed full of ham 'n eggs 'n all dat, you jus' pull 'em out and lay 'en down on the floor, put dat CV in there and get it cold." This guy's a trip.
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Yee haw! An Ethio-jazz inspired eighteen song mix from the ever boss Hearsay. Don't ask me why, and I know I'm not alone here, I'm a nut about this type of music. It's exotic, that's pretty obvious, but it's more the feel that I dig. For the duration of any length, when I hear this stuff, I am not of America, I become a world citizen. Sounds corny as hell, but after hearing this type of music I don't even give a shit about seeming corny. I'm a world citizen. Get out of my way. I have no time for your bullshit. I'm ready to jam.
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Man, this internet is getting to be like some giant blog thrift store. All of these blogs that are still online, that haven't seen a new post in years. It's like the crap in thrift stores. Do you ever look at some poor old object in a thrift store and think, you know what, this thing ain't so bad. It looks like it's been here a while, and the the poor thing's not getting any use. Pretty soon the whole world is going to forget where they saw it, and may be unsure it ever existed. Well, I'm not going to stand by and let that happen, not to any dormant blog that's still online years after the last post, definitely if it's still got good content. So, for the hundredth time, dig Soul Garage. Here's Laverne Baker and Ruth Brown, both posted over there back in 2010. Both were released on Atlantic back when the label had it really going on. Dig the guitar tone on "Bumble Bee". And hear Baker and Jackie Wilson call each other filthy names on that other cut, "Better Think Twice".
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It's 1958, you're nineteen years old. Rock 'n' roll has been around for a couple years and you're eating that shit up. When it comes time to write your first song, you bear allegiance. That's what Trini Lopez did. Although "The Right to Rock" wouldn't exactly give Gene Vincent a run for his money, it's sturdy enough to be surprising considering the source. When I think of Trini Loez, I think of some V-neck sweater dude, a guy that pays the bills playing "If I Had a Hammer" at the Sands, One thing I was right about, when I saw "Trini Lopez" and the name of the song I correctly imagined it would have some hokey background vocals. The surprise is that it doesn't derail the song. Corny lyrics as they are, if this really was the first song he ever wrote (as I've seen mentioned) it's a pretty decent first effort.
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I can't think straight. The past few weeks I've been ODing on music. New acquisitions, a couple of books, the most fruitful trip to a record store I've had in years, a little hang time with some old punk friends and reconnecting with one of the first reggae fiends I ever talked shop with. Haven't been much in the mood for slowing down. The two books I'm reading happen to be by the same author, Peter Guralnick. One is "Sweet Soul Music" an excellent read so far, all about Southern soul. I've had it since 1986, and had read parts but never cover to cover. So after thirty years I start reading it, get about halfway through it, and then Christmas comes and my sister gives me Guralnick's recently published bio of Sun Records and Memphis Recording Studio owner Sam Phillips. So I'm halfway through that as well. Busy, busy, I'm going to cut out and leave you with these Sun obscuros. They've been posted before, but it's been a few years.
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So who's Barbara Perry? All I know is that she recorded at Fame. That's it. I don't know how many records or whether there were any hits. I don't need to know much of anything, that's how good this one is. Actually I would like to know who's big idea it was to put those weird guitar effects in there. That's probably why I never heard of Barbara Perry. But, hey, iIt's a cool song from a cool studio, a little known singer and a weird guitar sound. What's not to like?
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I may not have been on the money at midnight, but I will be the asshole waking you up in a few hours, on the phone screaming "What?!! Your're hungover???!!" Prepare yourself with these from Lightnin' Hopkins. He slays me. Dude had a song for everything,
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