Big Sound Saturdays: Old-Time Psychedelia

I imagine that everyone woke up like I did, sucking down your own personal version of a growler full of iced coffee (Spring & All, right?) and donning at least one item of mourning purple, asking the music gods What It All Means. So RIP Prince, the greatest!, holding hands with Hag and Lemmy and Bowie in 2016 heaven—this mix isn’t about any of you, but I place it at your feet!

Old-Time Psychedelia is actually a mix I’ve been sitting on for the past couple of weeks, because it’s so hard to untangle the wound-up-web of early 20^th century weirdo Americana into ten little bites. It all started with Willie “Red” Newman’s 1936 rendering of the classic “St. Louis Blues,” a W.C. Handy tune on acid that was a $15 gift from the record den of niche-infamous Joe Bussard’s unbelievable collection of 78s. When I played the hopped-up proto-version of “St. James Infirmary” on WTJU’s “Walkin’ Blues” a few weeks back, I got so many text messages that I had to turn my phone off. It’s hard to believe that there’s a person behind those lopeing, driving harmonica notes.

I promise you, intrepid Saturday listener, the whole mix is like this! Check “The Cowboy’s Dizzy Sweetheart” (by Goebble Reeves, “The Texas Drifter”) —a yodeler whose chicken sounds rival those of the DeZurik (or, colloquially, the “Cackle”) sisters—for more truly disorienting feats in sounds-coming-from-human-mouths, or Tommy Settlers with his “Blues moaner,” a kazoo that he makes do wild, nasty things in “Big Bed Bug (Bed bug Blues).” Or listen (god DAMN it!) when Bessie Smith tells both you and her Shakespearian chorus of hot jazz accompanists to “hear me talkin’ to ya” in what I think is one of her most un-genre’d and disorienting songs, “Moan, You Moaners” (or “Moan Mourners,” depending on what 78 you’re looking at).

I set Blind Blake’s beautiful, tinkly “Guitar Chimes” as inauguration into Sidna Meyers’ banjo dream “Twin Sisters,” into prewar Hawaiian steel trendsetters Kalama’s Quartet’s “Sassy,” an up-tempo romp through the history of vaudeville and medicine show crossings between Hawaiian and popular black, white, and Cajun entertainers’ touring circuits, rounded off by two gospels and a mourning song. Elder Curry’s “Memphis Flu”—a vibrant sonic celebration of life, death, and God in the face of the flu epidemic of 1918—was made as popular as it has been in its 1952 reissue in Harry Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk Music” and again in the three disc opus “People Take Warning: Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938” in 2007. And “Cuba 401” is the numbered shape note sheet music used by the oft-anthologized Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, singing a non-denominational and participatory refiguring of the solfege note progression into a gospel song.

Listen til the finish for the wonder that is the Segura Brothers’ “Bury Me In A Corner Of The Yard.” A medly of accordion and what sounds like a triangle or a cowbell with deriving, soaring lyrics sung in Cajun creole, it hollers over into a song that I’m saving for a different version of this mix, Blind Mamie Forehand’s “Honey In The Rock,” a blues sotto voce with guitar and some kind of bell, and back, deep, into the heart of popular, rural Americana. The perfect mo(u)rning song for a sunny Saturday in April.

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Big Sound Saturdays: Pussy Cat Rag

Say fellers, I lost my little pussycat! Can you help me find it?

Thus spake Zarathustra, and the Lord saw It, and he said that It was good. This week’s mix is all about pussy! I do love a thinly veiled innuendo. Even though slant-songs like these do abound in old-time music, songs that are plain and simple About The V are a much smaller sub-genre. And lieu of a full-blown write up—I don’t want you to feel jet-lagged before you soak in every word of these goofy ass tunes—I’ll leave you with a few fun facts and, this time, a playlist. These titles are too good to hide.

Big Sound Saturdays: ‘Taint No Sin to Take Off Your Skin! (Guest Post)

The sordid secrets of the pop stars of the 1920s and 1930s hold a fascination that far outstrips any scandal Kanye could conjure. From Ruth Etting, whose mobster boyfriend shot her pianist and lover, to Libby Holman, whose extravagantly wealthy husband conveniently disappeared on a boating trip in 1932, tabloid queens, dulcet voices, and songs both classic and forgotten dominated the radio waves and records of the 1920s and 1930s.

Sarah Bernhardt paved the way for women to behave badly at the turn of the century, but it wasn’t until the rise of mass entertainment in the 1920s that women found their way as public celebrities. Many of the women on this mix were constantly scrutinized in public and private, their lives intersecting with famous names, drinking and partying through their most vital decades. Still others are greats whose limited recording output or race meant their powerful voices are frequently forgotten. For me, listening to most of these songs makes me ask, like Lee Wiley on the Fats Waller recording of the Gershwin hit, “How long has this been going on?”

The mix begins with an early example of public trolling: the short message that Max Fleischer sent to Helen Kane after she unsuccessfully sued him for infringement in 1932.  It bears the question: was Helen Kane the true “boop boop be doo girl” or was it “Baby Esther,” a black singer popular at the Cotton Club? Baby Esther’s voice may be lost to time, but Kane’s “I Wanna Be Loved by You” remains a perennial classic. The next few tracks travel through the radio pop of the 1920s and 1930s: hitmakers like “America’s Sweetheart of Song” Ruth Etting, “The Personality Girl” Annette Hanshaw, the jazz singer Lee Wiley, and the tragic and beautiful Lee Morse dueled for top plays for almost two decades.

Next up are a few oddities, first from Greta Keller, whose husband was mysteriously murdered in 1943, possibly following an affair with Howard Hughes. Marlene Dietrich copied Keller’s unique style, and while she never achieved wide popular appeal, she remains the First Lady of Viennese Chanson. Zarah Leander may have been Hitler’s favorite singer, but that didn’t stop her from recording a confused version of “Bei Mir Bist du Schön,” possibly most recorded Yiddish song of all time. Rounding out these jazzy ladies are Minnie and Claire Bagelman, otherwise known as the Barry Sisters. They began their recording career in the late 1930s, and this rare Yiddish version of “Makin’ Whoopee” is a charmer.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most rare, most pioneering, and often most forgotten women on this mix are the black blues singers of the 1920s. While Clarence Williams’s “Cake Walkin’ Babies from Home” may be a standard, its brilliant singer Eva Taylor is often overlooked by jazz lovers. Mamie Smith isn’t related to the more famous Bessie Smith, but her version of “Crazy Blues” was the first blues hit in 1920.  These racy, often risqué tunes include the powerhouse Sippie Wallace, the rare and vital Texas blues singer Mary Dixon, and Lucille Bogan’s apocryphal alternate (and filthy) take of “Shave ‘em Dry.”

Making this mix proved to me, more than anything, the fleetingness of the hit machine. While all these women were profoundly talented and most found acclaim in their time, many of these records aren’t usually listed among the greats. Some of them died young, like the influential Clara Smith, best friend of Bessie and lover of Josephine Baker. Others faded into obscurity like Annette Hanshaw, who retired from show business in 1935, and still others like Sippie Wallace, who was nominated for a Grammy Award at 85, continued to record past their golden age. 

Still, Mildred Bailey charted hits eighteen times, Lee Wiley launched the concept of the songbook, and the alcoholic Lee Morse was one of the most famous women of her time. They were all uncompromising and strong women with lives marked by tragedy, diverse sexual politics, and scandalous love lives. I’ll quote Bea Foote in her jazzy and flirty “Try and Get it” to try and explain why they’re not household names: “I’ve got something that can’t be had/But try and get it.”

These women didn’t hide their talent, but these songs are pearls that need to be discovered, which is a difficult metaphor for a 21^st Century feminist, and one that’s still too common for women. These recordings are surprising, funny, and often shockingly ahead of their time. When Bette Midler recorded Holman’s hit “Am I Blue?” in the 1970s, she sang it almost note for note, but Holman’s voice has a deep drama that lives on in the original.

Annette Hanshaw ended all her songs with a peppy “That’s all!” before Porky Pig was a twinkle in Mel Blanc’s eye, so that’s where I ended this mix. Say goodnight, Gracie. (Goodnight, Gracie!)

Weekly Dance Break: Rebirth of Slick – Cool Like Dat (Digable Planets)

An old one but a good one, which wormed its way back into my mind by way of the movie Dope. Take a break and chill like that.

Big Sound Saturdays: C-H-I-C-K-E-N vol. 2

Today, S.A. continues our journey into a beloved and weird American musical trope: the eternal chicken! 

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Welcome to feature number two of ACRO Collective’s C-H-I-C-K-E-N series; all jump blues, R&B, hot jazz, and jive. I walked into this with big dreams of ‘60’s rock and Hasil Adkins chicken-punk, but these sounds overcame me: Big Joe Turner bending “Shake, Rattle and Roll” into “Chicken and the Hawk,” Billy Ward and the Dominos with their overwrought moanings, the anthropomorphized chicken clucks of Slim & Slam! You get a real sense of the hand-holding between hot jazz and early country music from some of these tunes, particularly Zeb Turner’s chicken-ified “Walking the Floor Over You,” and the chicken even stands to usher in the early soundings of rock ‘n’ roll. Listen up for the stacked, scooping harmonic bursts in Andre Williams’ “The Greasy Chicken,” the proto-Wall of Sound bumping of “Little Chickee Wah Wah,” and take a look at Mabel Lee performing the Chicken Shack Shuffle in an on screen celebration of Tillie’s Chicken Shack, in Harlem, 1943. “A Chicken Ain’t Nothin’ But A Bird,” maybe, but this bird’s stuck with us. We owe each other this chicken dance!

Special thanks, once more, to Dave Rogers, WTJU-FM’s own Professor Bebop, for sharing many of these songs with me. Looking forward to collaboratively magnetizing the chicken ad infinitum!