Beware of The Doghouse. Been there. I overlooked the first Valentine’s Day post-marriage as I considered it to be a dating holiday. I ate damp corrugated cardboard for months [via].
The Greg Johnson Set is a band from New Zealand, sounds like a traditional Irish band, performs “People Can’t Talk In This Town” from 1992. Somehow the concept of Freedom of Speech is being quietly vanquished [via].
Lets lighten it up a tad. How ’bout some great rippin’ by Jimmie Vaughan with The Fabulous Thunderbirds?
Have a great weekend. Be back here tomorrow for more powerful stuff.
“Milk Cow Blues” was originally recorded by Sleepy John Estesin 1930. This version is a kinda late night early morning retro country thang performed by Wayne Hancock & Co. in 2008. Hoy hoy hoy, indeed. Here are two other versions:
Aerosmith did a nice cover of “Milk Cow Blues” that had nothing to do with the 1930 original that I can tell, but at least they worked in some Chuck Berry riffs.
Have a great weekend, folks, and we’ll be back here tomorrow whether you like it or not.
Tribute to a great singer Ben E. King, who passed away 30 April 2015, as performed by an a cappella group featuring Grandpa Eliott Small.
Prior to his solo career, Ben E. King was a key member of The Drifters, a doo-wop group founded in 1953 and fronted by Clyde McPhatter. King replaced McPhatter as lead singer in 1958, and the New Drifters were born. Most of King’s hits were written by the team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, prolific songwriters of the time.
Tribute to Johnny Cash (1932-2003) on beer bottles [via].
Tribute to the B-52s by Full Blown Cherry. Yeah, it’s a crappy video, but watch what they pull off. They’re not amateurs, and by 02:50 a roadie has to hold the amp down. Any three-man band that can pull off a Rockabilly Tribute To The Ramones gets my full respect.
Have a great weekend folks, be back here in a few minutes.
“She was 5 feet tall. She was less than 100 lbs “soaking wet”. She spent her childhood in Oregon and Idaho yet was proud of her family’s Southern roots. She could hunt and fish and, if you deserved it, she could punch your lights out! She was Lee Morse, one of the most popular female recording artists during the Jazz Age 20’s and 30’s. And, she is worth remembering.” ~Ian House
Jimmie Rogers (1897-1933) is considered the Father of Country Music for his long-lasting music influences, worked the railroad until he contracted tuberculosis in 1925. While fighting off the disease and unable to perform physical labor, he returned to his original love, writing and performing, until he succumbed at the age of 35.
Sadly, there was a vaccine to combat TB as early as 1921, but according to Wiki it wasn’t widely available in the U.S. or Europe until after WWII. Rogers also sang about his affliction in “TB Blues.”
Here’s Jimmie Rogers in the Columbia Pictures short “The Singing Brakeman” from 1930.
That’s it for this edition of The Saturday Matinee. Have a great weekend, folks.
There’s a bizarre history to that familiar song credited to The McCoys, and it traces to Dorothy Sloop of Steubenville Ohio who became a New Orleans singer and piano player with the stage name “Sloopy.” The song was originally recorded by The Vibrations in 1963, predating the McCoys’ version:
So how did a 60s soul group from LA decide to sing about a girl who moved to New Orleans?
“Sloopy” was Dorothy Sloop, a Bourbon Street piano player. Born Sept. 26, 1913, in Steubenville, she performed at a New Orleans nightspot under the stage name Sloopy.
‘Hang on Sloopy’ was written by Bert Russell Berns and Wes Farrell, two New York City songwriters. Berns also wrote The Isley Brothers and Beatles hit Twist and Shout. Farrell went on to become the musical brains behind the Partridge Family.
The song was originally recorded as My Girl Sloopy by the Los Angeles R&B vocal group the Vibrations. It debuted in April 1964 in the Top 40 of the Billboard pop chart, where it spent five weeks and reached No. 26.
A rock version, ‘Hang on Sloopy,’ was recorded by the McCoys, a Dayton garage band led by Celina native Rick Zehringer. Locally, the band was known as Rick and the Raiders, but it changed its name to avoid confusion with chart-toppers Paul Revere and the Raiders. Hang On Sloopy debuted in September 1965 in the Top 40 of the Billboard pop chart, where it spent 11 weeks and reached No. 1.
Rick Zehringer later changed his name to Rick Derringer and became one of the top rock guitarists and producers of the 1970s. He recorded with the Edgar Winter Group and scored a 1974 solo hit with Rock and Roll, Hootchie Koo. [More at this source]
“Dottie” Sloop recorded an album, “Sloopy Time” Featuring Dixie and Sloopy, in 1957 with Yvonne “Dixie” Fasnacht, a jazz vocalist and clarinetist.
“Dixie” Fasnacht operated a bar called Dixie’s Bar of Music on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It was there that Dorothy’s acquaintance and co-writer of “Hang On Sloopy” Bert Berns-Russell found the inspiration for the song. During problems with the sound equipment and a crowd getting rowdy, he heard a regular call out to her “Hang on, Sloopy!” [Source]
I couldn’t find a recording of either Dottie Sloop or Yvonne “Dixie” Fasnacht, but there has to be a copy of the album in someone’s basement somewhere. One more piece of trivia: Ohio is the only State to have an Official State Rock Song.
The Best Damn Band In The Land adopted “Hang On Sloopy” as a signature song for the times when OSU was down a few points, and their a capella version is classic.
Nice pumpkin carving tips. I use an orange Sharpie to mark the design, and carve with a serrated fish boning knife. Pre-designed push-pin patterns are for pussies, and using a Dremel is cheating big time. BTW, this is NOT how to do it.
That’s from Frank Zappa’s MTV Halloween Show 1981 at the Palladium NY. “Doreen” is classic, with doo-wop lyrics and chord patterns done in 4/4 time. “Goblin Girl” is typical FZ snark and innuendo.
That’s just bizarre, but it kept my attention for more than 15 seconds, so I’m posting the clever mashup featuring Iggy Pop and Peggy Lee. Little Willie John’s “Fever” will never sound the same. So where do we go from here? I’m stumped. Oh wait, I got it. Let’s slow it down a tad with some retroness.
Valerie June plays “organic moonshine roots music.” More popular in Europe than the U.S., her recording of “Workin’ Woman Blues” was produced and engineered in Budapest. [via]
“Rake My Back” by The Forbidden Pigs (live at the Zoo Bar, Lincoln Nebraska 2001). The missus and I saw them in L.A. about 10 years prior by accident. We went to see The Paladins, and Jimmy & The Mustangs were there, too. The Paladins were great, The Mustangs were loud, but The F Pigs blew everyone away. Best stunt was when the drummer got up on his stool, took a flip over his kit, landed on his feet and beat the strings of Bacon’s bass. Pure awesome.
Have a great Labor Day weekend, folks. We’re not going anywhere soon.
Tacky Raccoons 