Sunday Chicken Dinner

What’s that you say? Pass the chicken? Well, okay. But bear in mind, there’s no way I can give you every piece of the bird, as I’m no doubt missing a gizzard here, a drumstick there. Still, you get a pretty decent poultry platter with the following tracks:

Rufus Thomas “Chicken Scratch”, Joe Tex “Chicken Crazy”, Fuitt Forst “Chicken Bop”, Link Wray “Run Chicken Run”, The Raunch Hands “Chicken Scratch”, Andre Williams “Greasy Chicken”, and the toughest piece of all: Don & Juan’s “Chicken Necks”.

Hasil Adkins knew poultry too. In fact Norton Records put together an entire LP of his chicken songs called Poultry in Motion.

Here chick, chick, chicken... Here chicken...

Arthur Alexander: A Shot of Rhythm & Blues

Back in 1961, Arthur Alexander, a rhythm & blues singer who dug country music, teamed up with Dan Penn & the Pall Bearers, country boys heavily into soul. Together, at Rick Hall's Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, they pioneered the so-called "country soul" sound. The most famous product of this successful collision of American musical strains was the single “You Better Move On,” an Arthur Alexander original which has been covered by everyone from the Rolling Stones to George Jones.

Alexander had already proven his song-writing abilities before writing and recording that first big hit. In 1959 he co-wrote a single “She Wanna Rock” for Candian C&W singer Arnie Derskin. The following year he wrote and recorded for Judd Phillips’ Judd label his own first single, the amazing double-whammy “Sally Sue Brown” b/w “The Girl that Radiates that Charm.”

During these formative years Alexander struck up a partnership with his manager/co-writer Tom Stafford, who, like Alexander, had grown up in small-town Alabama. It was Stafford who took the “Sally Sue Brown” demo to Judd Phillips, and it was Stafford who helped to arrange those first sessions with Rick Hall at Fame, and Stafford, again, who convinced Alexander leave Muscle Shoals to seek his own undoing in Nashville. In that corporate Babylon, Alexander’s song-writing & recording career was stripped of creative control and publishing rights, setting him up for eventual obscurity.

Conflicting stories surround the sale of “You Better Move On”--was it Stafford or Rick Hall who first peddled it around Nashville? Apparently every A&R man in town rejected it at first, everyone but Noel Ball, that is, a local disc jockey and Nashville rep for Dot Records. Dot agreed to release the record and quickly nabbed Alexander’s contract. Sadly, “You Better Move On” would be some of the last original material Alexander would record for a long time. Under the guidance of Ball, Alexander’s records began to suffer from the usual Nashville trappings typical of that era: cover songs, corny background singers, and string sections. Meanwhile, the big hit made a ton of money for everyone but its writer.

And yet those follow-up Dot records, however tarnished, are killer. To hear Arthur Alexander perform “A Shot of Rhythm & Blues,” “Black Night,” “Pretty Girls Are Everywhere,” “Soldiers of Love,” “I Hang My Head and Cry,” even the Johnny Bond number “I Wonder Where You Are Tonight” (set to the same melody as Kitty Wells' “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” which is also the same Hank Thompson’s “Wild Side of Life,” which is, again, the sameRoy Acuff’s “Great Speckled Bird”--follow that melody any further back and you begin to wander into the mystical realms of country music’s origins), you wouldn’t think you were hearing a man who was disappointed by his treatment in Nashville. Still, great as these songs are, they're no “Sally Sue Brown.” Imagine the catalog Arthur Alexander might have left if he'd have maintained creative control.

By the late 60’s Alexander ditched Dot Records. In 1972 he recorded an album Arthur Alexander for Warner Brothers, which includes his great version of “Burnin’ Love,” predating Elvis’ version. Still the money was poor and he was forced to play the gut-bucket circuit of small southern clubs. Finally, in 1975, Alexander threw in the towel after getting stiffed for another record, this time for the Buddha label, then quit the business entirely.

One song on the Warner LP, “Rainbow Road,” a sort of hard-luck ballad involving a knife fight and prison time, written by Dan Penn & Don Fritz, helped to surround Alexander’s retirement with fictional mystique. Whatever happened to Arthur Alexander? Didn’t you hear? He’s doing time for knifing a guy! In actuality, he'd settled in Cleveland where he worked as a bus driver for some 15 years.

In 1993 he returned to recording, making the Ben Vaughn-produced album Lonely Just Like Me for Elektra Records. A few months later, in June of that year, Arthur Alexander died of a heart attack.

*****

Post Script: Check the always amazing archive of Radio Hound airchecks, April 17, 1993, for a great interview with the man himself, done a mere few months before his death.

Dale Hawkins: Mrs Merguitory's Daughter... She Don't Love Me but She Really Oughter

(Repost from Jan. 14, 2009. RIP Dale Hawkins.)

Delmar Allen Hawkins, aka Dale Hawkins, was born in 1936 in Goldmine, Louisiana, just 30 miles from Ferriday, hometown of fellow northern Louisianan Jerry Lee Lewis. Dale's dad, a hillbilly musician in his own right, died when Dale was a kid. This event cast the young Hawk loose to live with various share-cropper relatives around the Shreveport area. Some claim he acquired his early love for black music, those blues, so essential to his "swamp bop" sound, while working in the share-cropper fields.

Then again, he might have just as easily come by this love at Stan Lewis' Shreveport store, Stan the Man's Record Shop. Here Hawkins worked as a counter clerk when he wasn't playing gigs on the Bossier City strip, a blue zone just across the Red River from Shreveport. Stan Lewis happened to be the biggest distributor of Chess/Checker records in the region, and Leonard Chess knew him well.

In '56 the Hawk cut his earliest demos in the studios of Shreveport's KWKH radio late at night, during dead air time. At that point he was trying to get signed to Chess, just like his friend Bobby Charles had with the song "See You Later Alligator." The title of Dale Hawkins' first demo: "See You Soon Baboon." Apparently Stan the Man dug it. And apparently Leonard Chess dug "Susie-Q," which he released in '57 after a bit of a tug-o-war with Atlantic Records over the song. Hawkins went on to record roughly 30 sides for Checker from 1957-1961.


Besides cutting all those classic records for Checker ("My Babe," "Cross-Ties," "Baby Baby," "Mrs. Merguitory's Daughter," "Little Pig," "Tornado," "Susie-Q," "Worried About My Baby" etc.), Dale Hawkins also cut his teeth as producer, working with Johnny Horton at KWKH. Eventually he went on to produce hits for the Uniques, Five Americans, and others. Does anyone know if he also produced the Arena Twins' version of "Little Pig"?

Dale Hawkins also hosted the teen dance show "Big Big Beat" on WCAU-TV outta Philadelphia, which I think was also called "The Dale Hawkins Show" at some point. Couldn't find any youtube action for either of those (which sorta makes me doubt my sources --like if it ain't on youtube by now, did it ever really happen?). But here's a clip from "American Bandstand," Dale Hawkins lip-syncing along to "Little Pig," circa '58. Hey, the guy can dance too!


And if all that's still not impressive enough for you, Dale Hawkins also discovered and/or hired young guitar wizzes James Burton* --that's JB at age 15 playing that unmistakable & immortal lick on "Susie-Q"-- and Roy Buchanan --RB plays lead on "My Babe."

If you'd like to hear a pretty funny interview with Dale Hawkins, check out the Norton Records 20th Anniversary Party special broadcast of WFMU's "Music to Spazz By" with Dave the Spazz.

Buddy Holly's Nashville Sessions

Ollie Vee, he come from Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee. But Buddy Holly, he come from Lubbock, Texas, home of country western radio station KDAV, where announcer Hipockets Duncan helped Buddy and his early sidekick, guitarist Bob Montgomery, get a regular slot on the Sunday Party live show. Here Buddy and Bob’s popularity grew, and they eventually got a spot opening for Bill Haley when he passed through town. Bigshot Nashville promoter Eddie Crandall heard them that night in 1955, and, like Hipockets before him, also got interested. Crandall got KDAV to cut a few demos, then he arranged a recording contract with Decca for... er, well, for Buddy only. It seems that Decca, in their scramble to find their own Elvis, was only interested in solo Rock 'n' Roll acts. So no Delmore Brothers, Louvin Brothers, Santos & Johnnies, or Johnnies & Jonies for Decca Records. But they did let Buddy record with a crack Rockabilly outfit that included guitarist Sonny Curtis, who wrote “Rock Around with Ollie Vee,” bassist Don Guess, who wrote the great “Modern Don Juan,” and guitarist Grady Martin.


So we’re still talkin’ pre-Crickets here on these songs, which were all recorded in Nashville, in three separate sessions, way back in 1956. Owen Bradley even produced one of the sessions, demonstrating once again that, despite being one of two main architects of countrypolitan shmaltz, he knew how to make a good Rock’n’Roll record, having also produced the earliest sides by the Johnny Burnette Trio, and I suspect possibly those by Donny “Soon to Become Johnny Paycheck” Young. Most of these songs were originally released as Decca singles (although today they come to you by way of MCA LP Buddy Holly The Nashville Sessions, released in 1975), failed to chart. The record company grew restless, and thus began Buddy Holly's fabled departure from Decca. Less than a year later he broke big with "That'll Be the Day." Boy o boy, Decca probably sure wished it had held its mud for a few more months.

And while Bradley was demonstrating all that R’n’R producer prowess, Buddy Holly showed us how gone for the girls he was. Besides the aforementioned “Modern Don Juan,” hear him pant and pine convincingly enough on “Love Me” and “Ting-A-Ling.” Young and free is a real fine thing to be, but, alas, love ain’t free. It left Buddy to sing with equal aplomb about “The Midnight Shift” and “Blue Days – Black Nights” as well.

Big Boy Crudup's Atomic Bomb Blues

For originating the song that first broke Elvis, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup sometimes got called the “Father of Rock’n’Roll.” For Crudup it was a dubious distinction, one that sure didn’t pay. By the mid-50s, as his young white imitator climbed the charts with his rendition of “That’s All Right, Mama,” Crudup had already quit recording for a spell, tired of getting stiffed for royalties by RCA, Checker, Ace, and Trumpet records.


Of course Crudup eventually came out of retirement. He cut a few singles and a long-player for Bobby Robinson’s Fire label, who released “Mean Ole Frisco" b/w "Rock Me, Mama” and “Katie Mae" b/w "Dig Myself a Hole" both in 1962. The last of these sides, “Dig Myself a Hole,” takes Gemini Spacecraft’s top spot in the category of atomic bomb blues, right up there with Sun Ra’s “Nuclear War” from the Arms Race 80s.

These releases placed Crudup in a good position to reap some limited exposure on the folk revival scene then emerging. But misfortune dogged the Big Boy, and none of his records earned him any money. Crudup never escaped poverty, and to the end he earned his meager living as an agricultural laborer and small-time moonshiner.

Memphis Heat: The True Story of Memphis Wrasslin'

Once more on the subject of Memphis wrestling: Shangri-La Projects, the same folks who brought you Ron Hall’s great book Sputnik, Masked Men, & Midgets: The Early Days of Memphis Wrestling, have also produced a documentary film. Memphis Heat: The True Story of Memphis Wrasslin’ is based on Hall’s book, but it apparently delves more deeply into the 80s era than the book does, which focuses more on the 50s & 60s golden age. Hall, Sherman Philpott, and Billy Worley produced the film, and Chad Schaffler directed. Official release date: sometime in 2010.

Willie Mitchell With the 4 Kings: Tell It to Me Baby

Willie Mitchell, Memphis trumpeter and band leader most famously known for running Hi Records, for cutting a string of great instrumentals in the 60s, and for producing Al Green and Ann Peebles in the 70s, died yesterday. He was 81.


For decades Mitchell worked his magic at his own Royal Studios, in Memphis, TN, often with great session guitarist Teenie Hodges leading the Royal house band. On the Al Green & Ann Peebles records these guys were the Kings of Quiet, achieving a rare level of warmth and intimacy in the studio. Still, great as all that music is, it’s all a little too “suede denim” for me. I prefer the earlier Willie Mitchell, of 4 Kings fame, here performing their first single “Tell It To Me Baby,” from 1958, on Memphis Rockabilly/C&W great Eddie Bond’s Stomper Time label. The song was written by 4 Kings lead singer Don Bryant. In fact, Willie Mitchell wasn’t actually in the band, tho he finagled song credit nonetheless, as he was more like the band’s leader and manager. Anyway, it’s a rocker. Tell it to me baby!

The Weekly BOMP!: The Voxx Rebellion

Crawdaddys

By now it’s an old story: It’s 1979, the last few spurts of punk drizzle into either the testosterone jockstrap of hardcore, or the twinky commercialism of “new wave.” And to make matters worse, not even the Real Kids can save power pop. Underground R’n’R looks to the past again for inspiration & direction, to what is still a largely bypassed trip, it looks to 60s punk.

Greg Shaw temporarily folded both Bomp Magazine and the BOMP! label in 1979. He then launched the Voxx imprint to “offer a home to bands working in a purist '60s garage/punk/psych tradition.” At least that’s the story (never mind that Bomp continued releasing classics like Stiv Bators’ "Disconnected" and the Taxi Boys mini-LP). So you can credit Voxx for getting the drop on 80s garage revivalism. At first business was slow, with only a few bands answering the call. Still, the label probably reached its zenith with its first few releases, namely two by San Diego’s Crawdaddys, their 1979 LP “Crawdaddy Express,” a veritable slab of ’64 time-traveled to the Year of the Voxx, and their 1980 EP “5 x 4.” Mike Stax, also of the Tell-Tale Hearts, and editor/publisher of Ugly Things magazine, in a short piece on Voxx included in the book Bomp: Saving the World One Record at a Time, tells of hearing these records on John Peel’s show as a lad, then writing a fan letter to Crawdaddys leader Ron Silva. Silva replied by inviting Stax to come to San Diego from England to play bass for his band. Stax hopped the next plane and the rest is garage revival history. Here’s a couple of cuts from “5 x 4”.

Mono Man

If the Crawdaddys took the purist’s approach, Voxx stalwarts DMZ, fronted by Jeff “Mono Man” Connolly, who would go on to lead one of the greatest of 80s garage bands the Lyres, hammered out a crazed hybrid sound, at times made of equal parts Sonics, Stooges, and 13th Floor Elevators. Shaw helped DMZ get signed to Sire records for their eponymous debut, which kicks ass despite a few flaws like closely mic’d, clicky drums, but which flopped on the sales. Shortly after Sire dropped them, Voxx released some truer sounding DMZ tracks, originally recorded in 1977, on the “Relics” LP. Here’s “Do Not Enter” plus their version of the Standells’ “Barracuda.”

Paula Pierce & the rest of the Pandoras

Low-budget recording and packaging was a major part of the Voxx ethos, and Shaw booked cheap studio time at a place called Silvery Moon, in Los Angeles, the city which, with the Cavern Club as its live showcase, functioned as the scene’s ground zero. Unfortunately, it being the 80s and all, the studio featured modern equipment more suited to recording Hollywood hair metal than 60s punk. One of the cuter bands on Voxx, the Pandoras, who came out swinging on their debut LP “It’s About Time,” from 1984, got the Silvery Moon treatment. Then, as if too much of the studio’s effects rubbed off on them, the Pandoras evolved from 60s punk purists to a hair metal band themselves. By ’89 they looked and sounded more like Poison. Leader Paula Pierce died suddenly from some type of brainurism in 1991, aged 31. Here’s their version of the Invictas “Do the Hump,” plus one Paula Pierce original, both from “It’s About Time.” Don’t they sound like nice girls?




So, yes, today’s post offers but a small sampling from the Voxx roster. There were lots more bands, like The Gravedigger V, The Tell-Tale Hearts, The Miracle Workers, The Eyes of Mind, and The Things, to name a few. Also excluded from this post are the great & influential Battle of the Garages comps, just because I don’t own any, and the Acid Visions comp, which, actually, I do have, so maybe down the line I’ll add a couple of tracks from that as an update to this post.

Washing Down the Holidays with Colorado Cool-Aid

Malcom Yelvington & Band, sometime in the mid 1950s.

Portrait of Red Sovine by Jesse Weidel

Neighbor there's no need to let any holiday give you the blues, whether you're talkin' about Christmas, Hannukka, Kwaanzaa, or the passage of our new compromised health care reform bill. Why, all you gotta do is blow off all any and all of it that doesn't involve bright shiny lights, time off from work and school, and all the free grub you can eat. Then skip out to your local non-Judeo-Christian ethnic restaurant and order up some Aloo Vindaloo, extra spicy. And be sure to wash it all down with a couple of nice, cold cans of Colorado Cool-Aid. Which brings us to the real point of today's post, which is to give you, dear reader, a special holiday gift. Introducing Gemini Spacecraft's Washing Down the Holidays with Colorado Cool-Aid playlist. Just download and play. Not a single Christmas song in the lot. And don't say we never give ya nothin'. Happy Holidays.

Playlist:

1. Lester Roadhog Moran - Intro + Liza Jane
2. Donny Young - Shakin' the Blues
3. T. Texas Tyler - Texas Boogie Woogie
4. Red Sovine - Colorado Cool-Aid
5. Lester Roadhog Moran - Monologue
6. Wanda Jackson - Swinging Doors
7. Delmore Brothers - Hillbilly Boogie
8. Guy Drake - Welfare Cadillac
9. Lester Roadhog Moran - Monologue
10. Malcom Yelvington - Yakety Yak
11. Tommy Blake - F-Oldin Money
12. Glen Glenn - One Cup of Coffee
13. Eddie Bond - Boo Bop Da Caa Caa
14. George Jones - Sparkling Brown Eyes
15. Lester Roadhog Moran - Monologue