TuneIn

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Untie Me



Written by Joe South, produced by Ray Stevens. What more could you ask?

I Knew You When



Written by... you guessed it! Joe South.

Country Club


A little Sunday afternoon putting practice, Nashville style. Left to right: Carl Smith, Marty Robbins, Ernest Tubb and Faron Young.

Joe South

Joe South - I'm Snowed (45)

Now With Added Goober!



From The Johnny Cash Show

Bar-B-Que Break

Wendy Rene - Bar-B-Que (45)

Who Needs Deep Purple?


Games People Play


Joe South Was Born 70 Years Ago

 

Joseph Alfred Souter was born February 28, 1940, in Atlanta, GA. He cut "The Purple People Eater Meets The Witch Doctor" before he was even out of high school, and would go on to cut tons of great records ranging from rockabilly to psychedelia for the next seventeen years. He wrote and/or produced most of the Tams' and Billy Joe Royal's best stuff, he's had his songs cut by anyone you can think of, he's on Blonde On Blonde and "Chain of Fools", and is posessed of such magic powers that his work on The Sounds of Silence* actually rendered Simon and Garfunkel palatable! Even Deep Purple couldn't completely ruin his song! Surely he is the son of God! ALL HAIL JOE SOUTH!

* The album, not the single as I assumed until I was fact-checking this.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Fool's Paradise W/ Rex




Let's do the Window Pane this week, cause next week we'll be doing the Chicken!
Al Prince - The Window Pane (45)

Ichiban On The Iphone!

I'm thrilled to announce that WFMU has updated the free iphone app to include Ichiban!! Grab it right here. It's like having a transistor radio but with music you actually want to listen to! You can also listen to Archived Shows from your favorite Ichiban DJs! More info.

He Plays The Bongo, I Play The Banjo



Jean Shepard - He Plays The Bongo, I Play The Banjo (1:59, MP3)

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Lee Andrews & The Hearts - "Tear Drops" / "The Girl Around The Corner"



Here's both sides of the highest charting single by Lee Andrews and The Hearts. This was #20 in 1957. A couple more of Lee and The Hearts' songs charted, but I don't think either of them ever cracked the top 20. The B-Side's quite a contrast to the hit here.

You may also be interested in this newspaper article which mentions the upcoming (in 1972) performance at a Pittsburgh mosque's "Oldies Night". Be sure to check out the movie ads in that paper, too. Just think...you could've gone to the mosque to see Lee Andrews and The Hearts and then hit the Colonial Drive-In to see Rosey Grier and Ray Milland in The Thing With Two Heads, possibly on the same night. What a world!

Click here to download Chess Records # 1675!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Weather Man


From Soundac Studios, the folks who brought you Colonel Bleep.

The Orbit Room

Dave "Baby" Cortez - In Orbit (45)
Churchill & The Radars - Going Into Orbit
The Orbit Rockers - Rock It
The Blue Orbits - Let's Do The Hip
Dave & The Detomics - Detomic Orbit
Dave And The Orbits - Cheetah's Uncle
The Saturn V (Featuring Orbit)
Johnny Acey - I Go Into Orbit

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Bobby Womack

Photo by Isaac Sutton

Bobby Womack - Broadway Walk (45)

Show me a man that's got a good woman...



That's Joe Tex from "The Joe Tex Show" tearing up "Show Me".

Against the better side of my human nature, I actually read the comments on this youtube video to try to find out when and where there was ever a "Joe Tex Show", and while there was one commenter wondering the same thing, there was no answer. Does anyone know about this?

Here's Joe slowing it down for the kids on Hullabaloo with "The Love You Save"

Monday, February 22, 2010

Little Pink Mack


Kay Adams - Little Pink Mack (45)

Swinging-Exciting-Rocking!

The Astonishing Cab Calloway







I actually got to see him perform at Atlanta's Chastain Park around 1992 (with The Professor and some friends), but Betty Boop wasn't there.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Nolan Strong

Nolan Strong - Mambo Of Love (45)

Adopt A WFMU Ichiban DJ!

Act now to adopt your favorite WFMU DJ! For one low payment of $365 you can adopt Debbie D, Rex, Mr. Fine Wine or Dave the Spazz. Offer expires March 7, 2010. Must like monkeys.

For more details and special offers check our 2010 Gallery

The Disk-Go-Case


Fun Fact: The creator of these beautiful-yet-totally-impractical-for-record-nerds devices was none other than Bill Buchanan... as in "Buchanan and Goodman!"

Coming Soon!

With cover art by Takeshi Tadatsu!

Friday, February 19, 2010

Frank Tashlin Would Have Been 97 Today





Thursday, February 18, 2010

Flaming Fire Races

Johnny Fortune - Dragster (45)

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Betty Wright

Betty Wright - Sweet Lovin' Daddy (45)

Jack Webb wedding photos


Here, via the always engrossing USC Digital Library, are a few 1958 photos from Jack's third wedding, to former Miss USA Jackie Loughery. For more Jack Webb goodness, go check out the Dull Tool Dim Bulb blog.

Jack Webb - Try A Little Tenderness (2:49)

The (Filipino) Kingsmen



Not as good as the American Kingsmen when they recorded "Louie Louie", but better than a lot of their later work. And probably better than the gospel Kingsmen, but I'll have to admit that I've never actually listened to them, just snorted with irritation when I found them filed in the "oldies" section (other irritants: black Roger Miller, reggae Donovan, the reggae Wailers, and, of course, Vivaldi's The Four Seasons).

More Phun Phrom The Philippines: a commenter on a previous post sent us this link to a cool Tagalog cover of "Long Tall Sally." Thanks, Pat!

Monday, February 15, 2010

Black Denim Trousers


The Cheers- Black Denim Trousers

Happy President's Day



Big Maybelle!

Big Maybelle - It's A Man's Man's World (45)

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Happy 39th Birthday, Benjamin Kubelsky!

...his 78th 39th birthday, if my math checks up. Here's the birthday boy performing with the greatest underage Filipino rock group of all time, the Rocky Fellers:


Note that the M.C. is the great Jack Soo!

Irma Thomas!

Irma Thomas - I Need Your Love So Bad (45)

Happy Valentine's Day!



From Rex - Patience And Prudence - Tonight You Belong To Me (45s)
From Jimmy - The Flamingos - I Only Have Eyes For You
From Devlin - Webb Pierce - I Don't Care
From Greg G - Ray Price - Sweet Little Miss Blue Eyes
From Kogar - The Phantom - Whisper Your Love
From SShark - Ronnie Hawkins And The Hawks - Southern Love
From Jukeboxmafia - Otis Redding - These Arms Of Mine
From Debbie D - Arthur Alexander - Another Place, Another Time
From Spazz - Conway Twitty - You've Never Been This Far Before

Bonus Fool's Paradise VD Message:
Groundhog - Take It Off

Friday, February 12, 2010

Let's Pretend "Like A Rock" Never Happened


One Monkey Don't Stop No Show

View outside our Jersey City studios

Big Maybelle - One Monkey Don't Stop No Show (45s)
Charlie Rich - Break Up
Irma Thomas - Break-A-Way
Ray Agee - Love Is A Cold Shot
Question Mark & The Mysterians - 96 Tears
Puppets -Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart
The Tempos - Two Timer
Gardenias - I'm Laughing At You
Jimmy Lee - I'm Diggin' A Hole To Bury My Heart
The Blenders - Don't Fuck Around With Love

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Gladys "Gee Gee" Hill KCOH

Photo by Benny Joseph (1957)
Boss Jock, "Gee Gee" on the air 1970 in Houston Texas.
Added to "Airchecks" over on the right side of this page.
Richard "Groove" Holmes - Misty (45)
I lost a lot of quarters playing this one on the juke at the H & O Cafe in Pensacola Fla.

Hoodie vs Hooty, Man vs Record




Kogar-


Thank you so much for your kind words. I am always pleasantly
surprised to find someone who shares my private passion (the legendary
H.S.). The song is an important piece of his story, and certainly one
of the best known parts of it, even if most people have no idea it’s
about a real person) but it’s really only the beginning.
I’m sending you a rough (very rough) draft of my interview with, Mud
Hut Brown from November 2004. This is only the first half. I’ve held
the rest back because it’s not in a form I would feel comfortable
releasing to the public yet- and because I still hold out some hope of
getting a publisher for my full Sapperticker bio one of these days ;).

If you do find your interest piqued I would be happy
to revisit my notes on Hoodie and maybe polish up an odd tale or two-
there are dozens of them.

Everything below is free for you to use or distribute as you wish as
long as I am credited on my work.

PS- Please excuse any misspellings or grammatical slights (as well as
the lack of footnoting and accreditation), since your request for info
seemed casual in nature I only took a minute to look it over for
content.


Yours Truly,

Glenn A. Hettinger

What follows is a segment of the forthcoming book by Hettinger titled, The Unknown Impresarios of Rock and Roll. Enjoy this preview.


“Why is it whenever I sit my old bones down for a rest and a drink some
fool’s always got to come along and ask me ‘bout, Sapperticker? The old
man asked with a laugh that trailed off into a coughing fit. When he
regained his composure he went on,“Why is it after all the years and
all the folks I’ve known all you kids want to talk about is that crazy
old legend, Hoodie? The song says all d’ is to say- or used to at
least, you prob’ly never heard most of the words that was writ for it.”

It was hard not to see why, Mud Hut would be frustrated with fielding
questions about his former employer, and underground music legend,
Sapperticker. “I just thought the man was crazy, I still do- I mean, I
saw him with my own eyes, hell, I wrote that song about him didn’t I?-
that don’t mean I got to believe what I saw, though…and now, almost
fifty years later, that’s all anybody wants to talk to me about…”

Royal Aloysius Brown was something of a legend himself. Born in a mud
hut among the marshes and swamps of the lower Mississippi, he’d gotten
his first guitar when he was still a child and there hadn’t been a day
since that didn’t find one in his hand.

The son of a violent, alcoholic father, Royal had been raised in such
abject squalor that even the poverty strapped neighborhood kids looked
down on the Brown family. They gave Royal the derogatory moniker, ‘Mud
Hut’ a name they taunted him with as they chased him down the street
after school, most days bombarding him with dirt clumps and rocks as he
ran.

Yes, Royal Brown had plenty of reasons to grow up bitter about life
but, apparently, it just isn’t his nature to harbor resentment, “I got
my first gi’tar when I was about six or seven, I guess, and I just
loved that ol’ thing with all my heart. I didn’t know what I was doin’
but I played it every day ‘til one day my old man comes home full of
the ‘shine and stomped on its neck and broke it on me. Oooh, I cried
and cried ‘cuz I was just a little feller then and that gi’tar was
about the only good thing I’d ever known.

But the next day I got up and put it back together again with twine
and pine tar. That worked for a few days until the old man comes home
drunk again- that time he smashed it to bits- the old cuss. Guess he
just couldn’t stand to see a happy soul in his house. Didn’t stop me
none though, I just took the strings off it and home-made myself a
g’tar. I used the broken pieces from the other one as a go by. It
wasn’t very good, I suppose, but it did the trick, once the old man saw
me playin’ it he knows he was beat and he just went on back to
drinkin’” The memory of besting his bastard of a father still brings a
boy’s smile to his old wrinkled face.

By his teenage years, Royal was out the door and travelling the south,
playing for whoever would listen, “I had my stage name and everything,
right from the first whiskey house I stopped in, the man asked me,
‘what’s your name boy?’ and I said, “’suh, I am Mud Hut Brown’- and I
reckon I been Mud Hut ever since.”

After his emancipation, Brown toured the south’s storied chitlin’
circuit almost continually, building a small but dedicated following as
the years went by, “My sound was unique, I suppose, part soul, part
screamin’ banshee-man- depending on what night you saw me.”

Commercial success and fame never found their way to Brown despite
coming close with two singles he cut for Dixie Sunshine Records, 1951’s
“Mama, Go Make Pancakes” and his signature song, “Mud Hut Shuffle”
recorded on a portable reel to reel in Dixie Sunshine’s studio lavatory
(an outhouse) in December of 1953.

“I finally had a song worth callin’ my own,” the singer laments today,
“so that’s what I did, I called it ‘Mud Hut Shuffle’ and it was going
to be my chance at really breakin’ it big. Finally after all the years
of hard work I knew I had my first hit- and then you know what happened
to me? Fuckin’ Elvis, that’s what. That’s what happened to a lot of us
colored folks, that’s what happened to Hoodie, too- I wish that boy had
a-stayed a truck driver, I really do.

That’s what he was doin’ you, know when that colonel of his
‘discovered’ him, he was driving a damned truck- Elvis that is, not
Hoodie. No one discovered no Hoodie Sapperticker,” His infectious laugh
started up again like a motor coming to life deep inside his chest, “if
they had they’d a put him back where they found him.”

“Thinkbouit,” He returned to the subject of Elvis Presley, “one day
he’s just some guy driving a truck and I’m some guy playin’ music for
the people, then, next thing you know he’s shak’n his ass on TV like he
was some barrel house flooze and the people done disappeared-
DIS-A-PEARED. Black man couldn’t sell a record after Elvis went on the
TV, not unless he’s was standing behind a shop counter at least.

“Hound Dog” He went on, “Shit son, that song’s older than me, ain’t no
Elvis song. They call that some kind of revolution? Why? ‘cuz he was
white? Why is it every time white people find something other people
been doing forever they got to act like it’s brand new and then claim
they discovered it. First they discover it, then they shit on it,” He
laughed for a few moments at his own joke, “–I guess that’s how it
works.”

“Everybody was talkin’- Elvis this an’ Elvis that-Well, I saw that boy
Elvis, and I said, shit, he ain’t that bad I but he ain’t doin anything
I ain’t already been doin’ my whole life.” He leaned in close to me,
close enough to envelop me in a cloud of whiskey breath, “ Weren’t no
girlies cryin’ when Uncle Sam drafted my black ass- and I could
actually play my guitar.” He leaned back with a ginger grimace that
reflected the pain of his long years and then chuckled softly and shook
his head.

“Anything left in that bottle you brung?” He nodded towards the quickly
disappearing bottle of Wild Turkey at my feet.

I’d picked it up at the airport in Jackson, as a gift for a legend,
something to warm his house and free his tongue- in simplest terms; a
bribe. Now, caught up in the enchantment of the man and his story, the
rapidly draining bottle felt less like a cynical attempt to ply the
truth from him (which is exactly what it had been) and more like a
sacrifice to a village shaman.

I poured two snorts and we touched glasses before he drank his empty in
one long, slow swallow. “Aah, now. Where was I- Oh yes, Hoodie- not
HOOTY! By the way- I never met no HOO-T Sapperticker in my life, - Oh I
knew Hoodie Sapperticker, I wrote a song about, Hoodie Sapperticker and
I recorded a song about, Hoodie Sapperticker, but I ain’t never met no,
Hooty- like the name on that record they sold.”

The words hit me like a bolt out of the blue. In all my years of
searching for the origins of the Hooty Sapperticker legend I had come
across so many conflicting stories about him that I had almost begun to
regard things like ‘fact’ and ‘truth’ as subjective- at least where
Hoodie was concerned. My research had found different birthdays, places
of origin, family history and, yes- even different spellings for his
name. Now, for the first time I was talking to someone who knew the man
personally and who was telling me that his name was in fact; HOO-DIE.

“So that wasn’t his real name!” I blurted out, a bit too much of the
‘sacrificial lamb’ coursing through me.

“Shiit-“ He said with an experienced smile, “that was just somethin’
them Sherman boys concocted so they wouldn’t have to pay the man,
wouldn’t have to pay none of us. Mary Poppins…” He shook his head
again, “Shiiit-what a laugh.”

Mudhut was referring, of course, to ‘Hooty Sapperticker’ the song made
famous in 1958 by ‘Barbara and The Boys’. Its release, in the summer of
that year, created such demand that production of the disc required the
services of two different record companies to keep up with sales. That
version of the song, mistakenly regarded for years as the original,
featured some of the finest studio musicians of their time including LA
session great, Plas Johnson, best known for his work on the Pink
Panther and Odd Couple themes.

Most importantly, to Royal ‘Mudhut’ Brown, at least, is that the
writing credits were given to Bob and Dick Sherman- the Oscar-winning
songwriting duo of, ‘Mary Poppins’ fame and a host of other very
‘un-Hooty-ish’ work.

“I never got drunk with Johnny Otis again after I heard that song on
the radio, I knew it was him that gave it to the Sherman’s, I knew it
then and I know it now- him and Plas were just thick as thieves, and
thieves is what they was.

Not that I ever cried about it much, they never did get the song right.
Otis never realized the acetate I played for him was just a work in
progress kind of thing, they never got the lyrics, and without the
words you ain’t got, Hoodie.” He left off with a sly wink.

Ahhh, the long lost lyrics to the Hooty (Hoodie) Sapperticker song, I
thought to myself, a sort of American folk music historian’s holy
grail. This is what I’d come here for, this was what I’d spent all
those years digging through record shops and scrutinizing liner notes
to find…

His eyes clouded over and I could tell he was ‘seeing’ a memory from
half a century ago. “I swear that man lived on Russian vodka, pimento’d
olives and the nectar of teenage girls,” and then he added with a wink,
“- which he preferred to get straight from the tap, if you, uh, follow
my meaning.”

I did. If even half the stories of Sapperticker’s legendary appetite
for booze, sex and destruction could be believed then it was a wonder
there wasn’t a whole catalogue of songs written about the man.

“It was that train of his…his train tour, that’s how I got on with
Sapperticker. I had no idea what I was in for but once I seen it I knew
there was a song in it. Musta been a good one too, for them Sherman’s
to steal it the way they did.”

‘The Sapperticker Unlimited’, arguably the impresario’s most noted
achievement, was intended to be a twenty-one city whistle-stop tour of
the mid-west featuring the best live musical acts, premier burlesque
dancers, acrobats, pantomimes and half a dozen rhesus monkeys trained
to do everything from juggle bowling pins and make martinis, to lifting
up ladies dresses whenever they heard applause- even if Hoodie was the
only one applauding.

The entire company loaded itself on a train in St. Louis one fateful
day and pulled out of the station for a month long excursion across the
country that Sapperticker promised, “Would revolutionize the way people
thought about entertainment!” and “Sound the death knell of the
television set!”

Lofty promises aside, the ambitious plan ended four days after it
began, with only two and a half shows under its belt, somewhere outside
of Kansas City on a barren piece of train track in the middle of the
Missouri wilderness.

The exact circumstances of what went wrong have never been recorded but
the tales of excess, lunacy, feces throwing monkeys and shrieking
burlesque girls running away from the martini-drunk and amorous (and
frequently pant-less) Hoodie Sapperticker have echoed down through the
years to give the impression of a kind of ‘rolling mayhem’ that moved
along the tracks raising the ire and attention of every authority in
the mid-west as it went.

After a few days enough rumors and warnings had been passed ahead of
the advancing train, to cause the ‘decent and God fearing citizenry’
(as the local paper would later describe them) of one small Missouri
town to refuse, almost sensibly at that point, to allow the moveable
feast entrance to their presumably ‘decent and God-fearing’ hamlet-
stopping the Sapperticker Unlimited Tour dead in its tracks
(literally)… and that, of course, if you believe the reports, was when
all hell really broke loose…


Hooty_Sapperticker

The Silencers


Vikki Carr - The Silencers

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Lightnin' Hopkins

Lightnin' Hopkins - Hear Me Talkin' (45)

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Barbara Lewis!

Barbara Lewis - Hello Stranger (45)

Monday, February 8, 2010

Hound & Wildgirl flyers


Cooking to Kill/Cannibal Stew Double Post

















Cannibal_Stew - (from rex's premium cd of the same name)

No Damp Amps

Radio News 1945

Little Willie John!


Little Willie John - Katanga (45)

Sunday, February 7, 2010

The Universal Language

Since Greg was just taking us South of the border, here's your handy language lesson for the day in case you find yourself shopping for clothing in Mexico.

Who knew Soul Brother Number One was singing in Spanish?

Hot Pants (Part 1).mp3

¿Quien Puso El Bomp?



Boogety translated into Spanish = Boogety. Video clip borrowed from Sir Basilde Brush.

Monkey Business


By Vip

Honda Wanda

Wanda Jackson - Sticks And Stones (45)

Appearing live at the Knitting Factory Thursday, February 11.

Mable John!

Mable John - Your Good Thing (Is About To End) (45)

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Japanese Oldies

Peanuts - Poison Ivy (Twist)
Izumi Yukimura - Fujiyama Mama (Tighten Up)
Unknown Hodads - Surf Instro (Stomp)
Mieko Hirota - Gonna Get That Man (Mashed Potato)
Mieko Hirota - Louisiana Mama (Popeye)

add