Here's a tie-in post. This ties in Stagger Lee with my recent series of posts on Break-In Records. Spencer and Spencer were actually Dickie Goodman, king of the break-in records, and Detroit DJ Micky Shorr. A bit of clarification before you download: This isn't actually a break-in record per se, using song lyrics as dialogue. In fact, it only samples two records: Lloyd Price's then-current hit version of Stag, and Stan Freberg 's epic takedown of Lawrence Welk . The Freberg record was still very well-known in 1959, two years after its release, and [...]
Remember how I was supposed to be doing a month of break-in records , right before my computer broke itself? Well, here's post #2. In 1973, some seventeen years after his first break-in release, Dickie Goodman produced (and presumably helped write and edit) this record by John and Ernest ( wiki ). It tells the story of Superfly, who's gone missing, and Shaft , who is called in to investigate. I bought my own copy of this 45 long before I knew it was connected to "The Flying Saucer," on the title alone, and in fact [...]
Frank Morey ( official AMG FB MyS profile ) is a Massachusetts blues-folk type of guy, with a perfect gravelly voice. Like Waits and Wolf before him, he uses his voice to express not just beauty but pain and anger and wrecked ennui and all sorts of other things, and even occasionally that beauty but through a cracked window. This version of Stag has a slow, tuning-up kind of start, but soon begins swinging hard and loose. Then it turns into a medley, with quotes from "Delia" (the [...]
So while my computer was broken, I was stuck with what I had uploaded to my MP3 player, which turned out to be this wonderful Otis Redding box set . Over the course of a few weeks, I spent at least 36 hours listening to those four discs, over and over and over, and I never got tired of it. Otis Redding was an amazing performer, and if I ever get time machine access, he's one of the top ten concerts I'll be attending with it. Case in point -- soda commercials don't have to be great. [...]
Foghorn Stringband ( official bio AMG MyS FB ) are an old-timey bluegrass band from Portland, OR. They just completed a major European tour and have their whole summer planned out (including a folk fest next weekend -- if you're in the area, I'm jealous). This is fast and furious (in a slightly different way from this take on Stag ), and the speed and energy the band put into this are almost punishing -- I can't imagine any group of five people keeping this up live [...]
Hi, everyone! I'm finally back, after a nice sabbatical. I had all sorts of musical and real-life adventures, and I'll be back next week with a post about some of that. Sorry about the wait for this return. David Bromberg ( official wiki AMG discography ) is a Philly-born multi-instrumentalist, probably better known as a backing player for people like Bob Dylan , John Prine , Tom Rush , Ringo Starr and Jerry Jeff Walker. He currently lives in Wilmington, Delaware, where he occasionally performs live but also runs [...]
Hi, everyone. My computer is currently out of order, so I won't be posting anything new until I get it fixed. As a slight apology, please note that all the stuff I've uploaded is usually available in two open directories: here and here . I hope it won't be too long. Sorry, folks.
As promised back in December , this kicks off a month of themed Silly Sundays posts about break-in records. And here's the very first break-in hit. Dickie Goodman ( wiki AMG extensive bio ) and Bill Buchanan ( wiki AMG ) only worked together for about three years (probably less in reality, but records were credited to the pair until 1959), though they both continued releasing break-in records under various names and pseudonyms for a while, with Goodman continuing until right before his death in 1989. [...]
I've mentioned field and prison recordings before in our discussions of Stag, and here's a take on the song from 1952, in Louisiana State Penitentiary . That same year saw a protest by 31 inmates, who intentionally cut their own Achilles' tendons to protest the inhumane work program. Matthew "Hogman" Maxey ( AMG see also ) was recorded by Harry Oster in Angola, and as you'll see at that AMG link, never recorded anything outside of a prison environment. This version isn't particularly dynamic; from the enthusiastic strumming of [...]
Today is my wife's birthday, and in her honor I'm posting her favorite song right now. Since we returned from our honeymoon, we've started watching 30 Rock in earnest, and in the last six weeks we've watched all the available DVDs -- by the end of this season we'll be caught up. I had to edit this together myself, since the show still hasn't released an official soundtrack, so I took recordings from the two original episodes where the song was featured and slapped them together. It's a tiny bit sloppy at the cuts, but I [...]
If you made a list of your 20 favorite songs from all the different Muppet productions, I think you'd find that Jerry Nelson ( archived fansite bio interview ) sang at least 12 of them. As Count von Count, Floyd Pepper, Kermit's little nephew Robin, and Gobo Fraggle, Jerry has spent the vast majority of his life singing and funning his way into the hearts of kids and adults around the world. And a few months ago he finally released his first solo album, composed of songs he's been writing all his [...]
I'm trying to get back in the habit of posting more random songs here, without so much dependence on theme weeks to post frequently -- let's see how I manage... If you're reading this blog, chances are pretty good that I don't need to tell you who Steve Earle is, and almost as good I won't need to tell you who Townes Van Zandt is. Earle's tribute album has been out for a while now, and in fact I got my copy for my birthday back in September (thanks, Jen!), but I'm just now getting around to writing [...]
Long Cleve Reed and Harvey Hull were also known as The Down Home Boys, and other than that I can't find anything else about them. They recorded a few other sides for a couple of labels, but this record is why they'll be remembered. Not this recording; this record. This record is incredibly rare -- there's only one copy still extant , and it's worth at least $30,000. (That makes it one of the most valuable records ever .) I like this -- it feels to me like the best [...]
Dom Flemons ( official MySpace AMG ) is better known as one-third of Carolina Chocolate Drops , who are currently on tour promoting their new album. (Sadly, I don't think I can make the Atlanta show -- what with the wedding and honeymoon I have very few spare pennies around here right now. Too bad; what I've heard of the album is fantastic.) This is a high-energy take on Stag (and yet another featuring Furry Lewis' "When you lose your money" moral). Dom puts everything he has into this song, and [...]
Champion Jack Dupree ( wiki discography bio MySpace AMG ) was a New Orleans-born boogie-woogie blues piano player, who at various times in his life was also a painter, a cook, a POW, and a very good boxer. (For more about boxing and Stag, see here .) This is a N'awlins-sounding poppy blues take on Stag, recorded the same year as Lloyd Price's huge hit, but not sharing much in common with that. This is from Dupree's biggest hit album, Blues From The Gutter , which also includes [...]
All right. I've been sitting on this for literally months, trying to write it up. Sadly, I can't find much of anything about Macy Skipper online (apart from his other three recordings which you can listen to here ). He's apparently from St. Louis, MO, released just a few singles on as many labels, and lived in obscurity. I wish he would've recorded more stuff like this -- the other records he put out are more standard rockabilly stuff, which I love well enough, but this just feels so special to me. This is a [...]
This is Dr. Margaret Walker ( wiki bio poetry selection ). She was born in Alabama in 1915, went to school in New Orleans, and worked as a poet and professor right up until her death in 1998. Her take on Stag was originally published in 1942, when Walker was still a young woman, recently employed by the New Deal's Work Progress Administration and its Federal Writer's Project (alongside Richard Wright). This is a transcription of dialect, and Walker reads it as such in both recordings below. (Both source albums also include recordings of Walker's poem [...]
John Fogerty started his solo career under the semi-pseudonym of The Blue Ridge Rangers, and that first album is a wonderful cover album of Americana, with covers of songs by Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, among others. ( I put up one track a while ago .) Last year, Fogerty issued a sequel , again mostly a cover album, and it opens with the John Prine song I posted here a while ago. The album has a lot of other great covers, with some famous guests, and is definitely well worth your CD-buying dollar. [...]
Here it is, the final song from our wedding, and the one that had the most potential to make me cry. Ben Folds ( official wiki AMG ) is from Winston-Salem, NC, and is best known to pop audiences as the guy who wrote "Brick," though that might be his most solemn song ever. When we sat down to start compiling wedding music, I played this for my lovely wife. It was a song she'd never heard before, but Ben's words and sentiments almost had her in tears, something I totally understand. The narrator [...]
Broke Toe Rezo ( archived official AMG ) is another guy who's only released one album, so again there's not much about him online. From what I can tell, he claims he broke his toe hopping a train , and he also helps rebuild trains . He's just a train kind of guy. This might be the most sadistic version of Stag we've ever heard, maybe even moreso than Nick Cave's badass version . Stag doesn't personally tell Billy Delion's wife to look at the hole in Billy's head, but he [...]
She'll Grow Back
Download: James Blake Live Album (Unofficial)
Lana Del Rey - Without You (Kill Paris Remix) [Dubstep]
My Funny Valentines
Miike Snow - “Paddling Out” Jacques Lu Cont Remix (MP3 Stream)
Iron & Wine and Patty Griffin
