Blues Hangover - Hangover Blues

Label scan nicked from TheHoundBlog

Now lay aside all worries about chickens and eggs. What we wanna know today is which one do you have, a Blues Hangover or the Hangover Blues? Strung together like so, the titles nearly form a palindrome, or do a figure 8, or make two railroad tracks, one of ‘em goin’ away, the other one comin’ back.

Slim Harpo

“I am the Alpo and the omego,” sez the Alpha Dog. He chases his own tail, but ends up sniffing his own anus. He reads a portent there: Blues was here in the Beginning, Blues will be here in The End. Like most Blues, these two had their antecedents. The Texas Boogie-man Lloyd Glenn, who played piano for T-Bone Walker, among others, woke up with our first hangover, an instrumental version of Blues Hangover released in 1950 on the Swingtime label. Although a fairly low-down number, Glenn still drank pretty smooth hooch. His hangover is a product of an earlier era of big band R&B. Ten years later, Slim Harpo swilled from a much raunchier batch of bathtub gugalug, and he added this lament: I done gave my baby $20 for Christmas, and all I got was a slice of jelly cake. Drink up, Slim, because nowadays, $20 is a pretty fair price for a slice. 

Maddox Brothers and Rose

The hayseed hears the cottonpicker’s same three chords, repeated 100,000 times, all the way from Baton Rouge to Bakersfield. Love and theft, that’s the story of American music, at least during the 20^th Century, anyway. Blues in the beginning, blues in the end. Hangover Blues by the Maddox Brothers and Rose borrowed its title from a 1951 b-side by the Johnny Otis Orchestra, a West Coast, Central Ave R&B stalwart. Decca released the Maddox Bros and Rose's newer version in early 1953 amid the vacuum left by a recently deceased Hank Williams. Hank knew about hangovers. While walking in the shadow of death he tipped a few bottles of Wine Headed Baby. Did he ever see his own skull floating near the bottom? While he was busy dyin’, the Maddox Brothers and Rose gave the hangover a few new lines, just like Slim Harpo would later. Walkin’ down the street with my head hangin’ low, my bottle is empty I ain’t got no dough. I gotta go… I gotta go… I gotta go and lose these mean hangover blues.

  

Blues Hangover - Slim Harpo

Hangover Blues - Maddox Brothers and Rose

WFMU Record Fair Finds

Last weekend brought the big annual WFMU Record Fair back to New York City. I slogged through the rain and the thick crowd of fellow record hounds at the Metropolitan Pavilion and managed to catch a couple of songs from the Trashmen's very short set, which sounded great and proved they still got it. My only gripe is that it ended so soon. What the hell tho, I guess if I'd wanted to hear more, I could have made the shlepp over to Maxwell's later that night. Anyway, at the record fair, I kept walking past all the Tropicalia and Jandek LPs and managed to snag the following 45s.




From the Filling-Out-the-Collection-with-Much-Needed-Classics Department: Slim Harpo's "Don't Start Cryin' Now," from 1961 (Excello 2194), B-side to "Rainin' In My Heart." I love how LOUD this record is.




From there the fingers did their own walkin' through various 45 boxes to come up with this pair from the under-researched genre of Cow-Milkin songs. First of these two classics is another from the Excello label (Excello 2268), the Blues Rockers' "Calling All Cows," b/w Jerry McCain's "Courtin' in a Cadillac," from 1965.




Next is Red Foley's 1952 country boogie "Milk Bucket Boogie," on the Decca label. I like the milk-in-the-pail percussion effect on that one.



From the Norton table I also picked up a copy of Andre Williams' brand new novel Sweets and Other Stories, recently published by Kicks Books, edited by Miriam Linna. Gemini Spacecraft will post a more detailed review of Sweets shortly. For now I'll say it kind of reminds me of a cross between Iceberg Slim's Mama Black Widow and Babs Gonzales' I Paid My Dues (see previous GS post about that last one).