Playlist for July 27, 2008 from 12:00AM - 3:00AM
Playlist Date & Time: 7/27/2008 12:00AM - 3:00AM
Program: Blues in the Night with Jamie Dell'Apa
You've heard the horrible song, Smoke on the Water, well tonight's theme for the audio Mardi Gras float is "Diesel on the Water" as we play the music of sinking ships and diesel-billy classics. The inspiration is that gas station smell that pervades the French Quarter.
In the early morning of July 23rd, a barge was T-Boned and bent around the front of a freighter near the French Quarter. The barge dumped 400,000 gallons of what was originally reported as diesel but was actually a bit more viscous than the oil that regularly leaks out of my old truck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBRqTFB4MqU
Tonight, there will be plenty of music about ship wrecks including the Jamie Brockett 25 minute classic re-do of the blues classic; USS Titanic. Brockett's version traces the disaster to a hemp rope smoking session between the Captain and the first mate and weaves the great Jack Johnson into the narration. Guaranteed to raise a smile. (For all you who wanted discography information on Brockett, see the last song on the below playlist.)
At the absurd end of the musical spectrum, Pat Boone will turn the horrible song, Smoke on the Water, into something surprisingly, worse. Pat the white-shoed crooner was a great basketball fan and once owned an American Basketball Association team. Using the same financial wisdom that inspired his singing of this song, he once gave a blank check to someone in the cash-strapped league and they filled it out for $1,000,000. They should have added one more zero to pay for the damages caused by Pat's singing of this song. Of course, we'll play it.
We'll balance out the ship sinking pathos with too many diesel-billy songs from Bill Kirchen and George Fraim (a.k.a. Commander Cody). Look to the links for goofy video and always, always e-mail me at soundieswwoz@yahoo.com with music that I should have played and your own goofy links - the best of your suggestions will be played on the next show (and I'll send you a e-mail telling when to listen for your submission).
Playlist Tracks
Randy Newman "Burn On" Guilty Chapter One:
It takes a musician with Louisiana roots to create a perfect theme song for tonight's musical story. Newman sings about the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland that actually caught on fire which created the ironic gravitas needed to catch America's attention that we had to pay attention to water quality. |
Pat Boone "Smoke on the Water" No More Mr. NIce Guy Who cares Only playing about a minute of this stinker. |
Howlin' Wolf "I Asked For Water (She Gave Me Gasoline:" The Chess Box 1956-63 Chess Try this link for Chester's personality and performance. |
Tom Waits "Oily Water" The Black Rider Island? So I'm watching my favorite show of the 1970's and surprise, one of my favorite performers shows up. The paring of Barth Gimble, Jerry Hubbard, and Tom Waits became an instant TV classic. Ask the next person you see in a tie-dye shirt with a gray-haired ponytail about this episode and they'll all quote the Waits line; "I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." |
Tower of Power "There is Only So Much Oil In the Ground" Greatest Hits A period piece that is undergoing a comeback. Check out the video from the early 1980s. |
Ferlin Husky "I'll Sail My Ship Alone" Chapter Two, Lets Go Boating and Sinking.
The link has a nice shot of where the barge was initially peeled off the front of the freighter and trapped from drifting further downstream by tug boats. The tugs then repositioned the barge closer to the Crescent City Connection. (Everyone in the world now knows this bridge is only open between hurricanes).
This Ferlin Husky song is from WFMU.org 's "beware of the blog" and "On the Download" WFMU collected a bunch of songs that featured fuzzy reverb bass back when gas was thirty cents a gallon and the federal government subsidized our gas purchases. The lyrics barely fits into tonight's story but the music sounds so good that we'll crowbar it in. |
The Three Stooges "Sinkin' the Robert E. Lee" The Best of Spinnett Records Spinett Instrumental riff is familiar to most WWOZ listeners but the title isn't. |
Johnny Horton "Sink The Bismark" Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits The web link may be the goofiest of the night. Do these dinky ships have bb guns on board or are people shooting at the ships from shore?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmfxl2oQGqI&feature=related |
Wesley Tuttle "Smoke on the Water" War Songs 1933-47 The only link goofier than the above this link of many dinky ships sinking with the Benny Hill theme song. For me, this is 3:19 of gender embarrassment. |
Howard Seratt "Make Room in the Lifeboat For Me" Sun Collection Sun Howard makes his introspective plea to get into the lifeboat. A great theme for a song but it is actually as absurd as this video of a lifeboat drill on a cruise ship. |
The Ravens "Ol Man River" The R&B Box: 30 Years of R&B Atlantic? Chapter Three, A Return to the River
By request, this is my second favorite version of this classic song and since we're not going to repeat songs, click on the youtube link for my (and your) favorite version of this song by the great Paul Robeson. |
Fats Domino "No, No (The River)" They Call Me The Fat Man Imperial A fair Fats Domino video but the dancing Olympics are a hoot. It gets creepy at the end. See if you can pick me out in the black and white dance sequence. |
Charlie Feathers "Wide River" That Rock-a-Billy Cat The link is to the Feather's family photo album. |
Earl King "Hard River to Cross" King of New Orleans Is this from that Crescent City Gold session or the JazzFest night concerts? I miss Earl. |
Leonard Cohen "By The Rivers Dark" Ten New Songs These river songs are getting darker, like the color of the Mississippi River these days. |
Tom Waits "Misery is the River of the World" Blood Money Anti The end of Chapter Three, Where does all that spilled oil go? Five knots per hour down to those beautiful wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi River. |
Bill Kirchen "Truck Stop at the End of the World" Tied to the Wheel Chapter Four, Songs About Diesel and Diesel-Billy Songs.
Bill Kirchen just played a couple nights in New Orleans with Spencer Bohren. Two great guitarists and we're lucky they spent some time with us.
Okay so the attached link doesn't match the end-of-the-world lyrics of this song but this is Kirchen's signature song, the revival of Hot Rod Lincoln. Kirchen's gotta play this song at every gig and you know that could become deadly boring to him but he came up with a great way to keep the song fresh for him and everyone else. Reminds me of the days at Mark Gretchel's Tornado Alley in Maryland. |
Modern Mountaineers "Everybody's Truckin" Western Swing and Country Jazz Proper? You know you've heard this song plenty of times by modern musicians but have you ever heard it by the Modern Mountaineers? So do you think these swing and country musicians were hip enough? |
Smoky Wood "Keep on Truckin" Western Swing and Country Jazz Proper? Smoky was named for his in vivo chemistry experiments with oxidized hemp rope. This link to government educational video may have inspired Smoky's explorations.
Check out the script about how hemp rope was indispensable for the "executioner. Cheez, who writes this stuff? Unlike the video, Smoky's performance is timeless. |
Truck Driven Man "Commander Cody" Too Much Fun Commander Cody was probably inspired by Smoky Wood. |
Willie Nix "Truckin' Little Woman" Chess Blues 1952-54 Chess Diesel-billy music was around well before the Old Commander and Sr. Kirchen re-popularized it. |
Commander Cody "My Window Faces the South" Got a Live One for You Warner Brothers? |
Little Richard "Heebie Jeebies" The Specialty Sessions Specialty Chapter Five; Today, New Orleans should be considered one of the most resilient cities in the US. Remember about three years ago when the namby-pamby types were saying the entire city should be abandoned? Remember those fear and hate mongers who also said we deserved Katrina? Well we handled Katrina with enough humor and aplomb that our detractors should be humbled.
Yeah, consider us New Orleanians as space-age-a-go-go toughs who can handle any mishap. Next hurricane, all the fear and hate mongers should shut up and clean my refrigerator. |
Snake Dance Boogie "Roy Hogsed" Hillbilly Boogie Box Proper? Salma will show you what Roy was singing about. Love the pyrotechnics but I like the next video under Denise Marie's song so much more. |
Denise Marie "She Dances Like a Hooker" Open the Door Self What is that sound at 1:45 and was it the reason that Hazel Telly and Willy Kaney won the contest? |
Morris Land and his Orchestra "Blue Jeans" Honkers and Bar Walkers V2 Delmark? Bar walkers are those performers who jump up onto the bar for a blowing session and nobody does it better than Big Jay - here is a video of Big Jay McNeely walking, sitting, and blowing away another crowd. I hope you caught him at last year's JazzFest. |
Blue Jean Bop "Ernie Vincent" Capitol 1971 Those blue jeans have inspired for years. |
The Marvelows "I Do" Beg Scream and Shout Rhino This box set is required in everyone's collection. Consider this link as the weak link in tonight's playlist. |
Mary Jane Hooper "Teach Me" New Orleans Deep Roots |
Wallace Johnson "Private Eye" New Orleans Popeye Party Video link is to Popeye as a detective. |
Maurice Joe Vaughn "I Want to Be Your Spy" Alligator Records 25th Anniversary Alligator Bogart in Maltese Falcon was the interstitial |
Jaime Brockett "Legend of the USS Titanic" Remember the Wind and the Rain Capitol 1971 Rereleased in 2005 on EMI. A fan group can be found at: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/jaime/messages?o=1 |
Jaime Brockett "Legend of the USS Titanic" A better link to the fan group. Basta! This play list took longer to compile than the run length of the show. |
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