Category: Retro & Vintage

Saturday Matinee – Froggy Chillin’, Leon Redbone, Lonnie Johnson, Bob Brozman, Bonnie Raitt & Roy Rogers

Froggy be chillin’.

“I’m just an entertainer, and I use music as a medium for entertaining. But I’m not really an entertainer either, because to be an entertainer it implies you have a great desire to want to entertain.”
Leon Redbone

Leon Redbone‘s take on Lonnie Johnson’s “Mr. Jelly Roll Baker” in 2009. (BTW, “jelly roll” was slang for something other than a pastry.)

On growing up in New Orleans Parish: “There was music all around us, and in my family you’d better play something, even if you just banged on a tin can.”
Lonnie Johnson

Lonnie Johnson created the single-note guitar solo in the 1920s, and decades passed before the guitar was regarded as more than a background rhythm instrument. I don’t know who’s on drums or piano, but that’s Willie Dixon on bass, and the vid is likely from the mid to late 1960s.

My first impression of “ethnomusicologist” Bob Brozman was that he’s a pretentious jerk. On the other hand, he’s crammed some great country/Delta blues licks into his American Steel.

Let’s wrap this baboso up with two of the greatest modern day slide guitar players, on stage together in Austin: Bonnie Raitt & Roy Rogers jamming “Gnawin’ On It.”

So gnaw on that, folks, and have a great weekend.

The Prisoner – Beta Version

Number 6, Rover & The New Number 2.

[Found here.]

Yawning Practice

Obviously some are better at it than others, and yes, I think that’s Al Franken in the middle leading the group.

[Found here.]

Update: If you find yawning contagious, whatever you do, don’t click this, this or that.

Update 2: See Dana’s comment below for the story behind the photo.

Welcome current & former members of The Bison Glee Club!

retro-choir ID

Here’s a photo key for anyone who wants to identify individual choir members.  Click on it to view full size.

Saturday Matinee – Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears, The Bamboos, & Rufus Thomas

Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears ” Sugarfoot.” Pure retro soul/funk.

The Bamboos, live at Revolver 2006. I recognize the song but don’t know the name.

Rufus Thomas, live at Wattstax 1972, with “Breakdown.”

That’s a wrap for a late post, and enough funk R&B and soul to hold you until tomorrow (or not). Have  a great weekend.

Retro Travelling Companion

It’s a seven hour flight, and lucky for you, she really likes to talk.

[Found here.]

Bimbo & The Beast

Meet Beta, a woman from Venus who collects alien monsters as a hobby. She’s the heroine of La Nave de los Monstruos (Ship Of Monsters), a classic film that’s showing tomorrow as part of a celebration of Mexican science fiction in New York. Star Lorena Velázquez appeared in 300 movies, alongside legendary Mexican masked superhero El Santo, who defeats a Martian invasion in another film.

[Found here.]

Saturday Matinee – The Osmonds, Imelda May, The Black Keys

The Osmonds‘ “Crazy Horses.” I dare you to watch the whole thing. I couldn’t handle it. Now for some eye & ear bleach:

Imelda May‘s take on Johnny Burnette‘s take on Tiny Bradshaw‘s “Train Kept A-Rollin.”
[Nice find by Iowahawk]

The Black Keys, live at Abbey Road 2009. That should make up for the first vid, and with that, I’m out for now. Happy Passover & Easter to all.

Saturday Matinee – WKYT’s Weather Report, Pastorius’ Weather Report, Waits’ Weather Report, Redbone’s Weather Report & Dale’s Weather Report

Tornado damage captured by security cams – scary stuff.
[Found here.]

Weather Report was a breath of fresh air from the garbage that was being pumped out over the airwaves in the late 1970s. Although it is pure jazz-fusion, they initiated a resurgence of a nuanced genre based upon the substantial willingness of proper associative mindset awareness and shit. Jaco was great.

Meanwhile, Tom Waits was working the other end of the jazz resurgence spectrum as a hep-cat jazzbo 50s street poet.

Leon Redbone took the jazz resurgence in a completely different direction – right to it’s early American roots. “Diddy Wah Diddy” was a song by itself, complete with the requisite innuendo, but listen to the cornet solo. It’s a note-for-note copy of  King Oliver from 1926, “Sugar Foot Stomp.”

And for you babosos who don’t give a carp about weather, this vid of Dick Dale & The DelTones (ca. 1963) is supposedly a rare video of the King of Surf Guitar, but nothing is rare on the internest, and I dare you to name the dances. Double dog dare you.

Have a great weekend, folks. More stuff coming tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Slinky Workout, Eating Wood Grubs, Judex, Ruin & The Cowsills

[Found here.] And speaking of slinkys…

…be sure to watch this, especially if you’re squeamish. [via]

Apparently this was from a French 1963 remake of a 1914 film about a crime fighter who wears masks. [Found here.]

Ruin is an animated action short film set “way in the future” in a green post-apocalyptic universe. Directed by Wes Ball, who has been working in Hollywood for 8 years doing graphic work for HBO and DVD/Blu-ray featureetes.  Described as his “passion project”, Ball has been working on Ruin off and on for the last two years.

[Found here.] And now we’re gonna rock.

This last one made me wanna puke, too, and I’d rather overwork a slinky, eat a giant wood grub, don a cockatiel head and ride the Road to Ruin than hear that again. Have a great weekend folks. See you back here tomorrow for palate cleansers.

Monopod

The Original Bigfoot. [Found here.]