I’ve had this record for more than 50 years, and I am no closer to understanding the lyrics to Stavin’ Chain Blues now than then. J.D. Short sings it—too bad for me, I can understand everything Big Joe Williams sings. I could tell it was sex or violence (or maybe both). After more than an hour in YouTube, I can say Short’s version is about violence, most of the other versions are about all kinds of sex. One site claimed to know, having Alan Lomax as a source. Lomax knew this Stavin’ Chain character that Jelly Roll Morton sang about was Wilson Jones, a blues musician that Lomax photographed and recorded in 1934. Stavin’ Chain was a pimp. But there isn’t a song I can find that says that. An illustration of Stavin’ Chain has a drawing of a black man in prison stripes, but no details. One version I found quickly said “my heart is full of pain/they got me down with a stavin’ chain.” It was easy to understand but no sex. There must be 25 versions along the line of ‘you can’t ride my train, I’m the chief engineer, and I’m gonna run it just like Stavin’ Chain.’ Train songs in that context are sex. Mance Lipscomb says he’s winin’ boy (frequently teamed with Stavin’ Chain). He had mamma on the porch doing the double twist. Janis Joplin, who showed up on that search, had ‘mamma down on the levee doing the double twist.’ After all that, I’m sure it’s about sex. Sorry I can’t be more specific. Some singers turned it into an almost generic dirty song. [If Stavin’ Chain couldn’t find a woman, he would find his fist.] I’m pretty sure Short says Stavin’ Chain went to prison for killing a woman; upon his release, he went back for killing a man.
Month: April 2024
The Temptations Sing Smokey, Gordy Records, released 1965 (reissued 1968)
This was the second Temptations album when first released. It was reissued in 1968; that’s the version I have. It has three hits on it, pretty good for a second album—The Way You Do the Things You Do, It’s Growing, and My Girl, which Wikipedia calls the Temptations’ signature song. I say The Way You Do the Things You Do outshines it on this record. You can see for yourself.
John Sinclair, 82, died
That’s evidence that smoking marijuana every day for over 60 years doesn’t kill you. I’m disappointed that there’s only spotty coverage of his death in the mainstream media I follow (looking at you, New York Times). Any outfit that reported Wayne Kramer’s death two months ago should have as big a splash for Sinclair. He managed the MC5 for a while, after all. He had a vision of a society based on rock and roll, dope, and sex in the streets. He called for a communal, classless, anti-imperialist, anti-sexist, anti-racist culture of liberation. (He gave up on politics when he realized that middle-class kids only wanted the marijuana.) He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the late ‘60s for giving two joints to an undercover cop (the way I remember it, she had pestered him for it). Michigan changed the law so that possession of a small amount of dope was a misdemeanor with a one-year max. He was released a few days later. He was later arrested for conspiring to blow up a CIA office. He beat that charge because Nixon’s Department of Justice had ignored the Constitution as it collected the evidence. He is the godfather of decriminalized dope. Barefoot Jerry is on YouTube doing Tokin’ Ticket, but I can’t bring myself to link to such a lame song. Better you should play some MC5 loud.
Natural Boogie, Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers, Alligator Records, 1974
The liner notes on this record tell you what you’re getting—this band plays blues, but it’s happy music too. The notes continue by saying this is one of the tightest, happiest boogie and blues bands in the country. That’s a good description. It’s basic three-note boogie with slide guitar. Hound Dog Taylor played at the Memorial Day cookout behind my dorm in 1972. I was one of dozens drinking too much and dancing till we dropped. When I played the record this time, I was thrilled to hear Taylor sing ‘Sadie’ with finesse and meaning I had never noticed. When he asks ‘Sadie, will you come back home tonight,” he sounds hurt that she left. “What you want your man to do”—he’s asking because he wants to know how to do it right. “I don’t love no one else but you”—he’s making his case. It’s a wonderful love song.
About the accuracy of lyrics on the web—I only found two of his songs. One was Roll Your Moneymaker. What’s online is ‘Well my mind only chance/I won’t be here at all.’ That’s gibberish. What I heard made sense—’Well, if my mind don’t change/I won’t be here at all.’
953 West [Belmont], Siegel-Schwall Band, Wooden Nickel Records, 1973
That was the address of the Quiet Knight nightclub where Siegel-Schwall played many times. This was the band’s seventh record of ten, so if it seems to be uneven, I suppose they knew it and liked it that way. They seemed to have fun when they recorded this. I love I Think It Was the Wine, as in ‘It may have been the greasy pizza, but I think it was the wine.’ It’s another song that equates all wine with fortified wine and fighting. ‘I never hit anyone with a 2 X 4 before last night,’ Jim Schwall sang. ‘My daddy said a couple of beers are okay/but that wine is just no good.’ Denver must have been a special place—Bob Seger did Get Out of Denver, Canned Heat did a song that criticized the police in Denver, and this record had a song about a young woman’s leaving her parents’ house in Chicago for Denver without saying goodbye. They were the only blues band I know of who recorded some material on Deutsche Grammophon.
The record cover has a drawing of the Belmont L stop and a poem by Eddie Balchowsky, a Chicago poet, artist, composer, and certified character. His Wikipedia entry has a clunker in it, saying he went to Spain in the mid-1930s to fight for Communism. The way most people put it is that leftists of various sorts, including socialists and anarchists, fought to defend the Spanish Republic from the Nationalists.
In My Life, Judy Collins, Elektra, 1966
I started singing ‘I Think It’s Going to Rain Today’ when I was out in the rain recently. (I can be a master of irony.) It is a great song by Randy Newman from the mid-Sixties (many artists covered it before Newman released it in 1968). ‘Tin can at my feet/think I’ll kick it down the street/that’s the way to treat a friend.’ The people under 60 who have heard of Newman think of Toy Story and You’ve Got a Friend in Me. Older people mostly remember ‘Short People.’ That saddens me because he did a lot of good work about race. He had a chip on his shoulder, though, and used divisive language just to make a point. That hasn’t aged well.
When I played Collins’s album I realized it is MUCH better than I remember. She did a great job with Pirate Jenny, Suzanne, La Colombe, Marat/Sade, and Dress Rehearsal Rag, for example; I’m embarrassed I didn’t have those on my collection of Songs of Alienation and Despair. La Colombe (The Dove) is a powerful anti-war song that is timeless. Jacques Brel wrote it about French colonialism in Algeria, but it could be about the Spanish Civil War or the Cold War.
converselyspeaking 