The hits and the stars keep coming. Percy Mayfield had a minor hit with I Don’t Want to Be President. Nixon was gone in 1974, and Mayfield says he didn’t want to get stuck with that mess. Next there’s Ted Taylor doing a big Mayfield hit—River’s Invitation. Esther Williams isn’t accusing her man of being a cold fish—she’s just like a fish because she keeps going for his line. She likes what he uses for bait. Otis Clay describes the meanest woman in Pouring Water on a Drowning Man. She pushes him when he’s falling, kicks him when he’s down, stabs him in the back, puts salt in his wound, and leaves him in the cold. Rufus Thomas did Walkin’ the Dog and sang duets with his daughter Carla Thomas. Titus Turner wrote All Around the World, which Little Willie John turned into the immortal Grits Ain’t Groceries. Bobby Bland, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, complains that his baby treats him like a school boy. Johnny Copeland (perhaps best remembered now as Shemekia Copeland’s father) said he’ll cry if he wants to (but not the way that Leslie Gore put it). Johnny Taylor has a bad dream that the only woman he ever loved was leaving. [My nightmare was that the goggle brought back Johnnie Taylor to my queries for Johnny.] Miss Aretha Franklin told her man that if he’s not gonna take care of business then he oughta stop taking up space. Z.Z. Hill (who was Z.Z. before ZZ Top) wants his baby to be home at dinnertime.
Category: date
Canned Heat, Canned Heat, Liberty, 1967
This album was the first time I heard ‘If you don’t like my taters, don’t you tickle my vine.’ It’s cute, but I don’t think anyone really ever said it. This was a pretty impressive group of kids playing blues standards on this LP. The liner notes called the guitar playing of Henry Vestine ‘incendiary,’ which is about right. Larry Taylor probably sold as many records as Muddy Waters—he played bass on Last Train to Clarksville by the Monkees. Al Wilson wrote scholarly analysis about Robert Pete Williams and Son House, which help prompt academics to take the blues seriously. He was also good on slide guitar and harmonica. Frank Cook had experience with pop success drumming behind Shirley Ellis and Dobie Gray.
The band sold well. This album made it to #76 on the charts, says Wikipedia. The band played at the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967, as well as Woodstock. They had three big hit singles.
Golden Apples of the Sun, Judy Collins, Elektra, 1962
Yeats’ poem, The Song of Wandering Aengus, is the source of the golden apples reference. It starts, ‘I went out to the hazel wood/Because a fire was in my head.’ That was divine inspiration, I’ve always thought. The poem popped into my head the other day and so I dug out this record. The liner notes say Collins has ‘clean, fresh beauty, gamine manner, and vivacious stage presence’ and get more sexist and patronizing from there. I’ll say it: Judy Collins had a wonderful voice. I have five more of her albums to play through to show it.
Great Selchie of Shule Skerry is the strangest story in a song so far. It starts with a woman nursing a baby, wondering where it came from, and ends with a her husband killing a seal that was the baby’s father. This album has a song named Fannerio that so far as I can tell has nothing in common with the Grateful Dead song Dire Wolf that mentions the backwash of Fannerio.
Happy Groundhog Day
It’s Sonny Boy Williamson I singing Ground Hog Blues. He was born John Lee Curtis in 1914 and died in 1948. Wikipedia says he is known as the father of modern blues harp, best known for Good Morning, School Girl, and Stop Breaking Down. He and Muddy Waters played together. He was shot and killed in a robbery. I have one of his records I’ll get to later.
Doc Watson gathers the family around to sing about hunting a groundhog. The lyrics call it a whistle pig. The Dictionary of American Regional English confirms that the usage was widespread in Appalachia. My Random House unabridged dictionary tells me groundhogs are marmots, derived from the Old French for murmur, referring to the whistling noises such animals make. I never knew. In German to sleep like a marmot is to sleep long and hard, with no mention of whistling. I hope you enjoy this break from a steady stream of Punxsutawney Phil and the movie Groundhog Day.
Happy Thanksgiving
In my family, we played Alice’s Restaurant every Thanksgiving. That might be why the kids stopped coming home. I saw Arlo Guthrie in his first 50th anniversary tour for Alice’s Restaurant. Before he sang it, he apologized, saying if he’d know he was going to play the damn thing for 50 years he’d have done it better. After the crowd’s polite laugh, he added–and shorter. Big laugh. Now I agree. I’ll look for replacement material during the year. Feel free to send in your choices.
Say, would you rather spend eternity playing “The Letter” every 1:54 or Alice’s Restaurant every 16 minutes or so depending on how much patter you put in?
Happy Labor Day
Since I am happily retired, here are some relatively light-hearted songs about working for a living. I saw Son Seals do ‘Call My Job’ at Chicagofest in 1978 and was horrified. I realized there are people who had to call in sick to get a day off (I didn’t get paid, but I had all the time I wanted) and people who had to run a machine at work (not me, I painted apartments). Anyone who has to run a machine is entitled to sing the blues. As Goethe wrote: Just you wait, boy. Five years later I was sitting in an office in front of a computer, truly an infernal machine. Son Seals was a great singer, songwriter, and guitar player.
And a version of Peter Pan by the Fools: I don’t wanna get a job/I don’t wanna go to work. Also: I don’t wanna wear a tie/and a serious expression every time I get high. (This was 20 years before business casual and work from home.)
As I write when I send a birthday greeting: It isn’t the growing old that kills us, it’s the growing up. Let’s think about not working on this Labor Day.
It Was the Third of September
That day I’ll always remember, yes I will, ‘Cause that was the day my daddy died.
The Temptations got the best material from the Motown bosses. The word on the street in my neighborhood was that the Temps were supposed to attract kids who loved the Rolling Stones. I don’t know about how it was planned, but this rock and roll fan loved Cloud Nine and Ball of Confusion. When the Stones covered Just My Imagination and Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, the envy was clear.
Here’s the album version.
Happy Father’s Day
I raised my kids to believe it is merely an event for greeting card companies. Seems that Randy Newman doesn’t have a lot of sentiment for his dad either.
I was in my 40s when I went from feeling I was the child in this song to being the father. I love the line, “You want to stay I know you do/But it ain’t no use to try/’Cause I’ll be here-and I’m just like you/Goodbye, old man, goodbye.”
Billie Joe Day
It’s Billie Joe day.
No, not the Piano Man who didn’t start the fire, it’s the poor fellow who jumped from the Tallahatchie Bridge. Ode to Billie Joe was a hit in 1967, so if you were born since 1960 you probably don’t have a clue. It was a big hit for Bobbie Gentry. I liked it the first 10,000 times I heard it, but I got tired of it.
But every time it started the same: “It was the third of June, a sleepy, dusty Delta day.” There aren’t many songs that mention a specific day—Richmond fell on May 10 (plus or minus six weeks; James McMurtry says that songwriters are bound by meter and rhyme, not historical accuracy) and Papa stopped rolling on September third. Some songs feature the Fourth of July or Christmas Day. I’m keeping track. Hope not to be late to the party next time.
I was in the Delta in late March one year. Believe me, it was hot. It must be very sleepy by June.
converselyspeaking 