Goin' Instro-Mental #7 - Ike Turner

We like Ike

The Rooster - Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm

Square Dance - Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm 

Andy Starr - Rockin' Rollin' Stone

“I don’t want to hear none of your tales, boy… Too many tales come from these mountains and everwhere…”*

The Ozark Mountains breed many legends. In the foggy hollers there, tales abound of witches, of the impending revolt of the Nini indians, and of a chicken-legged man-monster known as the Yarp. Yet another to have once roamed those hills was rockabilly legend Frank “Andy” Starr, the Rockin’ Rollin’ Jumpin’ Crazy Stone.

Born into abject poverty, named after a U.S. president, Franklin Delano Gulledge (b. 1932) grew up in a dirt shack near Mill Creek, “about six mile from Combs, Arkansas.” His mother struggled to feed the brood bestowed upon her by her rounder husband. The elder Gulledge, Grover Cleveland by name (yes, such naming was a family tradition), came and went according to the movements of an itinerant hustler. He was rarely present in the home. To help out around the dirt farm, sister Drew sold the Cloverleaf Salve that arrived by mail order. She sold so much, in fact, that she won a prize: a cheap guitar. The siblings all shared that guitar, beating and bashing it in the hillbilly fashion, but young Frank took a true shine to it. Blowing thru Mill Creek again around that time, G.C., a fiddle player himself, heard his middle son strumming on that mail order guitar. Father encouraged son to “tag along in the Key of D.” He liked what he heard and began to take his son with him to play the local dances held in cabins around the hills. 

(Continued, with song files, after the jump.)

Hillbilly Hayride #6: Teenage Boogie - Webb Pierce

Teenage Boogie - Webb Pierce

ESQUERITA! - The Voola's First Capitol Single



The Voola's debyoola, released 1958.

Oh Baby - Esquerita 

Capitol Ad, 1958

Esquerita & Friend in New Orleans, mid-1960's

Hey Trumpet Ears! It's National Sputnik Monroe Day

Image courtesy Off the Top Rope Productions

Repost from Last Year: 
March 24th is now National Sputnik Monroe day, commemorating the legendary grappler celebrated in Robert Gordon's It Came from Memphis and elsewhere. In the late 50s, Sputnik effectively put the bionic elbow drop on segregation at Ellis Auditorium in Memphis. Go here to read more about this, or pick up a copy of Gordon's great book. 

Coinciding with National Sputnik Monroe Day is the world premiere (happened last year, 2011: ed.) of the Memphis wrestling documentary Memphis Heat. If you're in Bluff City tonight and want to catch the movie and ceremony for the late, great Sputnik, go here for more details.

"Sputnik Hires a Band"  on Peak Records (a label owned by Lansky's clothiers?). Year? Supposedly the first wrestler record, even before Classy Freddy Blassie's "Pencil Necked Geek."

The Crazy Cajun on the Teevee!

Huey P. Meaux, aka The Crazy Cajun, record producer, erstwhile resident of Huntsville Penitentiary, and disc jockey broadcasting his last Friday night oldies sheaux on KPFT, Houston, TX, 1974. You better sho believe it! 

Skeets McDonald's Tattooed Lady Plus Eleven Other Sizzlers

Travel the boondocks, go back in time, out past Rackemsack, on the Hamtramck Line. Hear a boogie piano played by a man from the hills. Pet a shaggy-haired poodle, it’ll give ya a thrill. At the burlesque show you’ll see pasties twirl, but you best watch your step ‘round a Highland Park Girl. She took it to the country, and she took it to the town, but when the preacher saw her, he laid his Bible down. 

In that past, nearly forgotten now, in that golden age of raunchy hillbilly records that began in the pre-war days and culminated in the early 50’s, folks knew how to make a party record. Some were tawdry, some were trite. But the best songs portray the deed with salty humor and no guilt and, what’s more, they convey the sense that death and decency lurk just outside the whorehouse door. So you'd better have your fun while you can. 

           Collected here on the 1959 LP Skeets McDonald’s Tattooed Lady Plus Eleven Other Sizzlers, is a twelve-pack of tracks chock full of leering, lascivious, and barely concealed double-entendre. For the most part all of these sides were originally released on long lost 78 rpm singles on Devora and Jack Brown’s fabled Fortune label.

           Brief, anonymous liner notes tell more of the story:

Skeets McDonald’s orignal hit recording of ‘The Tattooed Lady’ heads this spicy, risque collection of party novelties. This is the ‘Lady’ that burned up the juke boxes in the 50’s. What a song! Also included is Skeets McDonald’s ‘BirthdayCake Boogie,’ another sizzling scorcher in the honky tonk tradition.

Here is hilarious party fun galore as this album spins merrily on its way with ‘DirtyBoogie’ and ‘She Sure Can Rock Me’ by that outstanding honky tonk piano player and singer, Roy Hall, who is also a fine comedian and a versatile actor. Another high-light of this great album, are the two evergreens, ‘HamtramckMama,’ and ‘Highland Park Girl’ by the famous York Brothers. Additional spice added to this album is, ‘At the Burlesque Show’ by Rufus Shoffner, also the humorously spicy, ‘He’s a Mighty Good Man to Do That’ and ‘Song of the Club’featuring the talented and naughty vocal stylings of Boots Gilbert. The titles of the other three numbers, by Johnny Bucket and Tommy Odim, speak for themselves [See below - ed.]. Have a ball with this exciting TATTOOED LADY album!

 If Not Available At Your Dealer Order Direct

FORTUNE RECORDS

3942 THIRD AVE. DETROIT 1, MICHIGAN

Let us end here, stopping as abruptly as do the tracks on this crude album. Now move your hand, don’t let it linger, or you’ll get sticky stuff all over your finger.  

Let Me Play With Your Poodle - Johnny Buckett

Griddle Greasin' Daddy - Johnny Buckett

She Won't Turn Over For Me - Tommy Odim 

Birthday Cake Boogie

 

Can I Play With Your Poodle?

 Original cover illustrations by David R. Kirk

Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!

Mike Edison apparently has a soft spot for book reviewers. Or maybe he just doesn’t want us to sweat the job too hard. As for our portion of summary and description, he's already done most of he work for us with his long-assed subtitles. First there was his memoir I Have Fun Everywhere I Go, Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and The Most Notorious Magazines in the World (whew! I get bushed just typing it!). Now he gives us his latest Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!, Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, an American Tale of Sex and Wonder (New York, Soft Skull, 2011).

            Edison contextualizes this latest tale with an epigram.

“America,” he writes, “always the most audacious of cultures, is also the most repressed.”

For said repression’s release—manual and otherwise—we owe a debt to our pornographers. Or so the premise goes.

From here, as if in anticipation of the collective nose-holding such names still elicit among prudish readers, Edison makes haste to establish Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, Larry Flynt, and Al Goldstein as champions, not only of the beaver shot, but also, more importantly maybe, of free speech. But then you can’t have one without the other. No Free Speech fight, no beaver shot. For few have tested the First Amendment more rigorously than the smut peddler.

After this introduction, Edison then informs us that, of these Four Horsemen of Porn, “I want to tell you their story, and then some.” On this score, Edison delivers the goods. Pick up a copy of Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! and read about Lenny Bruce, Little Annie Fanny, and Helen Gurley Brown, learn how the set of Caligula was even more decadent than the actual film, revel in Larry Flynt’s foul-mouthed antics before the Supreme Court, dig all this and a whole lot more. 

            As for the story-teller, we've got the right man on the job here. Go ahead, check his resume. Edison once edited Screw, wrote girl-copy for the Crescent Publications family of fine smut rags (Cheri, High Society, Swank, etc.), and claims to have penned dozens of pornographic novels. (What’s that you ask? What’s a ‘pornographic novel’? Well, imagine a dirty book, sold on a dirty newsstand… Er… What’s a newsstand? Aw… forget it.) So Edison possesses more than a little first-hand experience with his subject. Plus he’s pretty fuckin’ funny, and his brash narration, at its best, strikes a balance somewhere between seasoned journalist, borscht-belt comic, and titty-bar emcee.

            Elsewhere, however, Edison relies too heavily on that brashness, and his research seems a bit light. Much of the thrill of this sort of story comes from marvelling at the reporter's legwork. And sure, Edison bags many good quotes here, from Flynt, Paul Krassner, the Jr. Gooch, et. Al (Goldstein). Plus D!D!D! comes with a fairly extensive bibliography and footnotes on most pages. Yet Edison often uses the latter less like a tool for documentation than an opportunity for another aside, one where a few hopped-up similes work to convince us to not sweat the sources, Edison's good for it, he'll get us back tomorrow, don't worry about it.

            But, in the end, these are minor gripes. After all, this ain’t a PhD dissertation. A sensational subject calls for a similarly sensational narration. The important thing is Edison perceives the big stuff, like the tragedy of fortune, and the prices paid by each of his Four Horsemen.

             And did I mention that he’s also pretty fuckin’ funny?

Lowman Pauling & The "5" Royales

"5" Royales in hot pink, 1 Lowman Pauling with Guitar Face

This post is largely motivated by the recent circulation on the interwebz of the above photo. I mean, check it OUT! Pink dinner jackets! A black lacquer Duo Jet! Guitar Face! For the full run-down on R&B guitar legend L.P. & The "5" Royales, see the Hound's great post on the subject. Oh yeah, and these two records kill.

Say It - The "5" Royales

 The Slummer the Slum - The "5" Royales