So being an American living in high style, but well below just about everybody's means in the land of the fleeced, I decided to do the right thing and just give up. I started pullin' and puttin' a whole 'nother one together from scratch, all the while hopin' against Hopi hippies that the lost links will magically appear eventually, if not sooner, 'cause it was a real killer-diller. I was about halfway home on this brand gnu GP #7 when it started RAININ' records on me all through the winter and spring.
Here at the AMHF, we are building a record library, so I pretty much had to drop everything I was doin' and since January I've been movin' 'em, groovin' to 'em and sortin' and snortin' (from all the dust) through a serious stash of over 35,000 LPs, 78s and 45s.
So here's a great big special delivery of some serious celluloid for all you extremely patient out-patients. Stick with me and GP and I'll learnya all about music the funhouse way - instead of the schoolhouse way.
As always, plug in the big speakers if you got 'em and the headphones if you don't and turn it up to at least eleven, 'cause those tiny, tinny little speakerettes in your computer make great music sound like $#!t.
Let's start with a sweet little bit o' Soul:
1.(a) Barbara Lynn "You'll Lose a Good Thing" (mid-1960s)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAnSyQA_fT4
If you really wanna dig deep into what soul singing is all about, here's two more awesome early versions of her magnum opus or you can "skip to the loo, my darlin'" and go directly to 1. (d) - her rare original version of an early Rolling Stones cover. These next 3 linx are audio only:
1.(b) Barbara Lynn "You'll Lose a Good Thing" The original 45rpm (1962)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FMsT9wb6a4
1.(c) Barbara Lynn "You'll Lose a Good Thing" Another excellent version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x4AZHDT-4A&NR=1
1.(d) Barbara Lynn "Oh Baby! We Got a Good Thing Goin'" Original 45rpm (1963)
http://hypem.com/track/790537/Barbara+Lynn+-+Oh+Baby+We+Got+A+Good+Thing+Goin+
1.(e) Barbara Lynn "You're Losing Me" video clip (1968 recording)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ZBlHL4Sgo
2.(a) Washboard Serenaders "In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town" (1933)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu14gQewgAA
2.(b) Washboard Serenaders "Dark Eyes" "St. Louis Blues" (1934)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh7ozAfUKl4
3. Whistler's Jug Band "Foldin' Bed" (1930)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwo6HVTacYs
4. Luis Bonfa "2 Note Samba," "Tenderly," "Sambolero," "Manha de Carnaval" (1963)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xevuv4HLrbA
5. Perry Como & Martha Stewart "Dig You Later (Hubba, Hubba)" (1945)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMPnja_k3ws
6.(a) Cousin Jody & the Country Cousins "Wouldn't You Like To?" (1950s)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlytJU1swU4
6.(b) Cousin Jody & His Country Cousins "Don't Make Love in a Buggy" (1950s)
Jody starts kickin' his licks in at 2:38 right after Jim Reeves and right before Rita Faye.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqoGjdfPlec
7.(a) Baby Rose Marie "You're Gonna Lose Your Girl" (1934)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwOq_oW0lLI
7.(b) Baby Rose Marie "My Bluebird's Singin' the Blues" (1934)
An hardcore encore from an early GP you may have missed . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmok0Ugk3Fs
Here's the links followed by my eye liner notes for your education and Edisonification:
1.(a) Barbara Lynn "You'll Lose a Good Thing" (mid-1960s)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAnSyQA_fT4
Dis heah clip ain't about to be dissed because this little miss is jest 'bout as good as it gets. Dig this tried and true Texas treasure chest of talent who made the usual nowhere near enough records or film clips, but is still playing today, long after all those girl bands like the Go-Gos done gone-gone to wherever the hell they go-go when they give up.
As a teen, she fronted an early all-girl band called Bobby Lynn and Her Idols decades before any of those old new wavy girly-girly groups that sprouted like mushrooms out of the vidiotical "compost heap" of the eMpty TV years. With few exceptions, the whole era was culture-clubbed to death and the music of the 1980s has continued to devolve into what the mainstream serves up and / or throws up against the wall today. We'll soon see if their current crop of crap clicks and if their sick schtick still sticks - or maybe just sits there and stinks.Video not only killed the radio, it turned pop music into an endless assembly line of painstakingly produced and processed pitch-corrected pretty people pleasantly lip-synching to backgrounds laid down over entirely too much studio time by tricked or treated hollow-weenie overpaid absentee studio musicians spread over more tracks than you'd find on a whole network of New York Junkies (which I believe is the name of their baseball team and if it isn't, it should be). In contrast, these links were pretty much recorded in real time by real people playing together in the same room at the same time, just like folks used to do in real life.
Remember real life?
Videos had the effect of putting the less gorgeous and downright funky-looking folks with real talent effectively out of the music game in one swell foop. These days, even the female classical musicians and opera singers seem to be all total hotties. WTF?!"Music" looks better than ever, but mostly sounds like something you sometimes have to scrape off your shoe. It's like the audience of "ears" we had in the olden days have been rudely replaced on the scene by some obscene seers who are just lookin' at "lookers." It's da enda da music world, I guess - except for this old stuff.
1.(b) Barbara Lynn "You'll Lose a Good Thing" The original 45 rpm (1962)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FMsT9wb6a4
1.(c) Barbara Lynn "You'll Lose a Good Thing" Another excellent version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x4AZHDT-4A&NR=1
Here's a couple of more old renditions of Barbara's "You'll Lose a Good Thing." Like most of the best soul/gospel singers, she nails it down differently each time, but always tastefully, and true to the basic melody while tunin' and teasin' up the vocal jest a little bitty bit. If you are any kinda canary, you'll do well to get down and deep into these righteous renditions, which make for a mighty fine little lesson-ette on the fine art of soul singing.
1.(d) Barbara Lynn "Oh Baby! We Got a Good Thing Goin'" (1963) (audio only)
http://hypem.com/track/790537/Barbara+Lynn+-+Oh+Baby+We+Got+A+Good+Thing+Goin+
Brian Jones started a band called the Rolling Stones who covered her non-hit single on their third LP, "The Rolling Stones, Now," way back when 1965 was like "Now!"
Dig this R&B classic, the way it was before the Stones went and toned it down a tad for the teenagers.
1.(e) Barbara Lynn "You're Losing Me" (1968)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ZBlHL4Sgo
Here's a later lip-sync video done to the original 1968 recording. You'll dig it. If she gigs anywhere near your neck or your woods be sure to catch her in the flesh.
2.(a) Washboard Serenaders "In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town (1933)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu14gQewgAA
2.(b) Washboard Serenaders "Dark Eyes" "St. Louis Blues" (1934)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh7ozAfUKl4
I don't know a whole hell of a lot about these krazy kats except that on their first session for Victor records they had Teddy Bunn on guitar and Clarence Profit as the piano professor who are fairly familiar to those well versed in the hystery of jazz. This ain't that. These clips were of a later combo, probably filmed in England when they did their second and last session in London in 1935.The secret history of jazz absolutely includes the various washboard, jug and spasm bands that were an essential part of its evolution even though the fiscally challenged black folks couldn't afford much in the way of instruments, let alone the Steinways, Selmers, Slingerlands and other expensive fare the Ellington band adopted fairly early on. The Duke had the ducats to dole 'cause they were mob favorites and makin' money like it was bein' counterfeited in the basement of the Cotton Club, which it probably was.
Louis Armstrong useta reminisce fondly about the little spasm band he had as a kid and hundreds of other jazz greats came up playing music on whatever they could find around them. Like a kazoo will do, if it's comin' out of the right cat's face, and a washboard ain't gonna make anybody bored when it lands in the hands of a man with the jive, like Washboard Sam or even a contemporary thimble thumper like Wammo of the Asylum Street Spankers, f'rinstance.Inspired music exists on every level of musicianship. These guys aren't the topmost virtuosos and greatest technicians of all time, but they got rhythm, a groove from hell and have an infinite depth of blues feeling, which is a lot harder to write about than harmonic innovations and other technical trivia, so most of your acadumbass jazz history books just pretend this stuff isn't really jazz 'cause it isn't intellect-you-all enough for the ivy tower set. It always was and always will be jazz, but it was runnin' it down on a budget way the hell Shorter than Wayne's. You don't need to be a Weatherman to know how to blow, Joe, and the Serenaders prove that in spades.
Let's give thanks to the Euro-peons once again for being un-clueless enough to freeze a few frames of American brilliance while our own country did its best to ignore anything American while we were acting like their fine arts symphony-baloney from the "old country" was the only game in town.
Where was the House Un-American Activities Committee when our own musical heritage remained poor and ignored while the real money was being funneled off to perform music from Russia, Germany, Italy and other current and ex-official enemies? Kinda makes ya wonder what this country is comin' to if it doesn't come to pretty soon.
This awesome early footage is dedicated to the memory of my old buddy-cat and former AMHF Advisory Board member Fritz Richmond of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, who was THE first chair virtuoso of the tub, washboard and jug before he drove off in the general direction of the Heavenly Gatemouth a few years ago in his '62 Buick Special. Hiyo, Silver!
Fortunately, he left me his awesome record collection and "I'm confessin'" that I still have his Kaloobafax number, so we're still in touch and we can all catch him anytime, in the grooves of his old recordings. He now resides (in very good company) on the AMHF Ouija Board of Advisors.
3. Whistler's Jug Band "Foldin' Bed" (1930)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwo6HVTacYs
This band's leader wasn't just whistlin' Dixie - he's got a whole goddamn jug section! I heard about this film mega-moons before it finally reached my retinas. It's a major miracle that anything like this was filmed in the first place, and yet another stroke of a leprechaun's karma that it fell into the hands of some frantic film freak who was not a bore, knew the score and saved it for.Historically, most of the old school film collectors weren't even remotely hip to music and often sent "uninteresting" film stock like this one along with newsreels and musical shorts for a measles-ly 30 pieces of silver to be reclaimed for the silver content. Whoever rescued this little piece of nitrate from oblivion deserves the AMHF "No Bull Piece Prize" for above and beyond the call of the wildest!
Again, Louis, Lester and Lionel had nothin' to fear from these cats in a cuttin' contest, but this fearsome fivesome still had the razor d'etre and more than enough chops to cut to the chase and come up with a serious slice of vintage Americana!
Decades ago I spied a newsreel clip of a 20s black jug band doin' "He's in the Jailhouse, Now," and I been sufferin' from peeled eyeballs over it ever since. Does anybuddy out there in the Peanut Gallery have a clue as to where the hell it's been holed up? Is it still stashed in some secret hideout just waitin' for some mindless moron to throw it away? Will we ever learn to take care of this stuff, for real?
4. Luis Bonfa "2 Note Samba," "Tenderly," "Sambolero," and "Manha de Carnaval" (1963)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xevuv4HLrbA
Luiz Bonfa can definitely take the blame for the Bossa Nova since he beat 'em all to the punch, all the way down and into some solid slabs of wax for the "Epic" soundtrack of the fairly Braziliant Brazillion flamboyant film/flam, "Orfeo Negro" ("Black Orpheus") in 1958. Joao Gilberto and A.C (not D.C.) Jobim soon entered the fray and then Astrud Gilberto laid it all out in front of everyone's face from the Getz-go, which really put Ipanema and that whole scene of a beach on the musical map by the enda 1964. Sambady told me that in contemporary Ipanema, there are women who wear no Bikini Atoll! Whadda blast it must be to see these radiant-active beauties struttin' their stuff on the beach in the sand dunes, dudes. Gotta go get your Geiger, tiger!
This hip clip demonstrates how Bonfa plays bass, rhythm, lead and harmony all at once. His take on "Tenderly" will give some of you guitar-slingers and cotton-pickin' finger pickers some exercise for your eyeballs and something to think about and it's all right there in front of your face. Kinda makes stealin' licks as easy as 3.14159 . . ., or as quick as servin' a sneaky snake a piece of cake you didn't have to make or bake, Jake.
Perry Como was a former professional barberian (the shave and a hair cut kind of Samsonizer-cat that stoops to conquer by chopping off all your hair and then has the nerve to charge you mucho moolah for the privilege of taking it all off the top on top of all that). If you haven't noticed by now, let me hip you that I totally run on "run-on" sentences. There's no better way to add flab to my blab and its like a more wonderful way to jumpstart my day than a big bowl of "Weakies, the Breakfast of Chimpanzees." It's the perfect fuel for colossal fossil "Fools Like Me," though "High School Confidentially," it wouldn't put a dimple or a dent in the musical girth of a giant like Cowboy Jack Clement, who is a producer, not a reducer.
In no time flat, he traded in his barber polecat and tool kit to Satan Claus from up at the North Polish part of the planet for a gig as the boy singer in the fairly cheesy Mickey Mouse band known as the Ted Weems Orchestra. A few years of that grind prepped and primped him into the perfect crooner for the post-war "pop culture" of the pre-rock n' roll late farties and flabuous early fifties, probably the least interesting era of American pop music since well before we first listened to the mockingbird and like popped with the weasel on some seriously sticky mulberry bush.
Actually, at his best, Como is an original stylist of the not-quite-highest odor, I mean order, but still a real player in the almost cool end of the pop pantheon in the company of 50s crooners like Dino (Martin), Desi (Arnaz) and Billy (Eckstine). So like with this new-fangled cool-school jazz-influenced bossa nova style, it doesn't matter that he's a little deficient in the soul department and never did get much hotter than hot diggedy, dog diggedy, boom - which wasn't gonna get anybody Rushing off to land him a gig with the Basie Band or anybody in that league.
Though I'd rather see Bonfa sing himself, like he did in the 50s on his solo album on he Cook label, Perry does a pretty reasonable reading of the English lyrics written by Como's Italian producers and proud prod-fathers, Hugo & Luigi, who got their start with the (Russian?) Roulette Record label's own Morris "the cat" Levy, who definitely knew where the bodies were buried. If there were any loose corpses he wasn't on top of, he knew a cat who knew a cat who knew which catacombs they stashed 'em in, because that cat was the cat who did the diggin' for the Genovese family, who had their own ideas about the meaning of "family values."
5. Perry Como & Martha Stewart "Dig You Later (Hubba, Hubba)" (1945)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMPnja_k3ws
Whooooooo could imagine that Perry Como used to be young and was even "once upona" briefly passing for hip? Well, hep, actually, but when it was hip to be hep he was halfway hep and made a doozie of a duet where he came clinically close to jestabout getting off! Here's a few frantic feet of a fraction of a feature that treats us to some very "un-P.C." P.C. This is the young Perry Como from 1945, which was like nearin' the da capo al fine of the second in a series of World Wars if you count "The Great War" which pretty much everybody did, even if the reason for fightin' I never did get.
Perry was soon flyin' high in Hollywoodland after racking up a cool million shekels worth of circular shellac for RCA Records (and a couple of rolls of nickels for himself) over "Till the End of Time," which was about how long his singing career lasted. Como even put a demi-dent into Sinatra's wartime monopoly over the attention of the hormonally-hospitable bobby-sexers and Victory Girls who were busy doing their part(y) to keep the soldier boys' morale up and morals down for the duration (and maybe even a little after) before they settled down to become our newly-wholesome mothers and grandmas.
This clip has won the AMHF "Perfect" Award for the perfect combination of superbly "hep" white bread slang paired with a currently politically incorrect "tra-la-la-la-la" take on bombing the b-geesus out of the Japanese. That seemed to be quite a popular sentiment in the early part of 1945 with the soda set and his girl, which was understandable since it had not even been a solid 4 go-rounds since Admiral Yamamoto's big blind date with Pearl pissed off America's rank and fillies like these cats and kittens filmed for this fine & fiendish little flicker.
If you watch closely towards the start, you'll see a quick cameo of an all-time AMHF favorite - a fairly fruitless and dare I say conservatively-capped Carmen Miranda signaling her approval with both left and right "cool hand loops" (apologies to Paul Newman, G.I.P. - groove in peace). Does anybody know what this handy dandy little hand jive was called, where it came from, what it meant to whozis and like all that there? Lemme know by emale unless you are a double x-er, in which case you can shoot me a female email.
Check the "too cool to fail as a fool" Minnesoda-jerk tweaking his bow-tie as he sings all about being "hep," like he's the one who'd really be in the know. This ain't no kinda Cab Calloway hep - it's more like your dad's or Old Grandad's wonder bread and buttered take on being "really with it," when if fact they were mostly pretty much WAY "without it."
Was Perry Como (born Pierino Como) an Italian spy for the then designated enemy cats? Was this seemingly innocent "hep talk" some kind of code message for the Emperor Hero-hito, his Banzai buddies and his Original Cast of excess Axis extras? Why was this Italian-American singing "I gotta go a-fission" months before even future prezidentist Hairy asS Truman was hoisted upstairs and hipped and only the relativityly few studs and spy-kitties giggin' with the Manhattan Merrymakers out in the Projects in New (or recently stolen from) Mexico had any clue that fission season was about to open for real, and real soon. We are still waitin' for the fission season to close.
Did someone forget to remember the (Los) Alamos and all that Davy Crock-of and General Insanity Anna shit? Was J. Edgar too busy with his Hoover, vacuuming his clyde to notice such a blatant security breach? Maybe he was already getting' ready to round up some Reds (makin' a list and checkin' it twice) for his post-war party project for whatever would be left of the Communist Party USA and their soon to be felon travelers. Maybe he just decided to wait until he had the opportunity to a dress those issues later. Whadda guy, but some folks say more like "whadda drag!"
Did the Japanese find out about the A-bombs ahead of time from P.C. but let the attack proceed like FDR supposedly did with Pearl Harbor? Was this all just a scam by Japan to get the U.S. foreign aid that led them to a higher standard of living than they'd ever known? Was Enola gay? Stay tuned for more revelations from the GP All Bran New News Nutwork, NNN. I'm a-hopin' I don't get any fallout from this missive since my half-life is like almost more or less half over and I still got a lot of old records to rescue from the impending oblivion.
6.(a) Cousin Jody & the Country Cousins "Wouldn't You Like To"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlytJU1swU4
One of the pug-ugliest motherfuggin' muggers in the whole-dern history of Music City, USA was also one of the wickedest and wackiest wizards ever to whip it on up and all the way back down on the electric lap steel guitar. Jody didn't make all that many records (and they weren't hits) and there are way too few film clips out there to keep the world safe for or from any mockery of any leftover residual demockracy, let alone any truth, "just us" and / or the Americana way.
Even though this is fairly early footage, we still find old Jody longing for the days of his youth, when he hadn't yet gotten so short in the tooth.
This snappy little number catches our hero in the role of "King Leer," a-courtin' a Country Cousin that's about a tenth his age, yet she somehow seems quite intrigued and acts like she thinkin' whatever he's pitchin' is totally bitchin'! Go figger.
Maybe love is blind or it could be she just likes him because he has the slowest handslide (by a landslide) and the greatest glissando in all of steel guitardom, or in his case, steel guitardumb. Maybe this fine little frail had it all figured out way before the Pointer Sisters made the scene to point out to the female kitties the finer points about the righteous rewards possible even from some dumb numbskull who has attained that level of skill, on the biscuit board, I mean. As the Texas Kinkster usedta sing to his shy little shitkickin' shiska-bow-headed cow-girlfriend, "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed," which probably means something in the Lone Stare State where the men are men and even the vegetarians eat barbeque.
She promises to kiss him when no one's lookin' - and from the look of him, she probably shouldn't be lookin' either.
On this udder clip, we can catch Country Cousins Smiley and Kitty sing while Cousin Jody burns the biscuits and rips some righteous riffs right out of his trusty, dusty, rusty Rickenbacker in "Don't Make Love in a Buggy."
Jody starts coming on at 2:38, but it wouldn't hurt you to sit through the B+ pre-pop Jim Reeves country love song that precedes the mayhem. Diabetics may want to avoid the third song, "Mommy's Real Peculiar," by Little Rita Faye, a country chiclet clearly cut from the Shirley Template. If she's got any stranger songs than this one, she may find her way to reapin' the American Musical Heritage Foundation's highest award for young performers along with the likes of Baby Rose Marie.
6.(b) Cousin Jody & His Country Cousins "Don't Make Love in a Buggy" (1950s)
Jody starts kickin' his licks in at 2:38 right after Jim Reeves and right before Rita Faye.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqoGjdfPlec
Speak of the little devil Baby Rose Marie, here she is:
7.(a) Baby Rose Marie "You're Gonna Lose Your Girl" (1934)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwOq_oW0lLI
The very first inductee chosen for the American Musical Heritage Foundation Juvenile Hall of Fame was this little hotcha, hot-jazz honeychile who effectively played the anti-christy minstrel to a more wholesome Shirley Temple during the previous Great Depression. She eventually grew up to play the wisecracking husband-hunting gag writer Sally Rogers on "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Baby Rose was a bluesy-woozey wild child from the tail end of the 20s and first half of the 30s, the youngest red hot never-to-be-a mama and the most radical radio lady of them all. What were you doin' when you were six? Baby Rose Marie was already settin' the standard for rockin' out!
7.(b) Baby Rose Marie "My Bluebird's Singin' the Blues" (1934)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmok0Ugk3Fs
Here's a hardcore encore from an earlier GP you may have missed where Baby Rose Marie really tears it up on a piano. She doesn't actually play the piano, but she's really on it!
Plant you now rubba dubba, and dig you later, (hubba, hubba).
Glenn Allen Howard
Special thanx to the AMHF Duct-Taped Together Producktion Crew we've accrued over the last year: John Gilmore, Katherine Armer, John Perry Barlow, Leigh M. Hill and Bill Eberwein, without whom I'd be usin' a steam-powered computer and stuck with two dixie cups and a thread instead of an iPhone. I'd like to also thank all the little people without whom there would be nobody for the big people to bully around. Let's all send out a great big heartfelt Teddy Roosevelt-type Wooly Bully for them!
