Allen Toussaint Month

Matt Fiveash kicks off Allen Toussaint Month with a barnburner of a show.

 Listen Now!

Matt Fiveash Live On Ichiban!

Fiveash & Debbie D

I'm happy to announce that starting tomorrow at 1 PM EST, Ichiban All-Star, Matt Fiveash will be coming to you live on the Rock 'n' Soul webstream.  Tune in every Thursday from 1-3 PM or catch him in the archives while you're at work and getting paid.

And don't forget about Ted Barron, live on Wednesday 8-10 PM, me on Friday 3-5 PM and Dr. Filth and Greg Cartwright for the Saturday night dance party, live from the Admiral in scenic Asheville, NC, rock time - until.

Detroit Blues: The Early 1950s

I picked this LP up for cheap a couple of weeks ago. It includes John Lee Hooker's first recording of "House Rent Boogie", recently fallen hero Eddie Kirkland's "No Shoes", "I Need $100" by One String Sam (one of those rare tracks where you see the name of the artist and the song title and think "There's no way this isn't good" and then get the record home and find out you're right), and most amazingly, Detroit Count's "Hastings Street Opera", a travelogue of the buckets o' blood that lined Detroit's pre-urban renewal main stem. Listen and learn. I guarantee you there was no guidebook to bars where the bartenders shoot everyone in there after 2 in the morning and you can get a steak sandwich that tastes like fish. The LP was in one of those heavy plastic library covers and a closer look revealed that some enterprising soul had snatched it from the New York Public Library's listening room. Whether they did it out of greed, or figuring that it was justified because one day soon the library wouldn't have a turntable, we'll never know, but in the end they did the world a favor because now it's available in the demented wilderness that we call the internet. There are a couple of annoying but brief left channel dropouts courtesy of my dying receiver, and, sadly, a skip on Bobo Jenkins's "Ten Below Zero", but it could have been a lot worse.

Baby Boy Warren - Sanafee
Baby Boy Warren - Baby Boy Blues
Baby Boy Warren - Mattie Mae
Baby Boy Warren - Chicken
Dr. Ross - Thirty Two Twenty
Bobo Jenkins - Ten Below Zero
Bobo Jenkins - Baby Don't You Want To Go
Eddie Kirkland - No Shoes
Detroit Count - Hastings Street Opera, Parts 1 & 2
L.C. Green - Remember Way Back
Big Maceo - Big City Blues
John Lee Hooker - House Rent Boogie
One String Sam - I Need $100
Brother Will Hairston - Alabama Bus

Addendum: Commenter BB points out an important fact that I forgot to mention, which is that the harmonica player on the Baby Boy Warren tracks is none other than Sonny Boy Williamson (the second Sonny Boy, aka Rice Miller, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Sonny Boy Williamson Too, or Sonny Boy Williamson Also, not to be confused with the first Sonny Boy Williamson). Thanks BB!

Roy Loney & Cyril Jordan

Roy Loney and Cyril Jordan of the Flamin' Groovies are playing at the Bell House in Brooklyn tonight, backed by the A-Bones. For some reason, the Loney-era Groovies didn't become the biggest band on earth, but they were the best, as good as, and often better than, the Rolling Stones. Don't get me wrong, I love the Stones (almost as much as I hate them, but that's a topic for another post, and if you know me personally it's probably a topic that you have tried to steer me away from after a few drinks), but Flamingo and Teenage Head stand up to their very best material, and the Groovies did it with a lot less money and - probably - lower-quality drugs.
I saw the Roy/Cyril/A-Bones configuration several times, the most recent being last September at One Eyed Jacks in New Orleans where they just flat-out levitated the joint. Since time is of the essence here and we're trying to get the word out about this show, I will spare you any more of my clumsy superlatives and instead leave you with some songs the Groovies taught us. In the meantime, stop reading this and go out and buy Flamingo, Teenage Head, and California Born and Bred and Slow Death. Do it now. Tickets for tonight's show can be purchased here. This is the only show in the USA this time around. You can also catch them this Easter Sunday in London. Check your local listings.

Freddie Cannon - Talahassee Lassie
Chuck Berry - Sweet Little Rock & Roller
Bill Woman Orchestra - Jumpin' Jack Flash
Dr. Ross - Boogie Disease
Rufus Thomas - Tiger Man
Joe Hill Louis - Tiger Man

Elizabeth and Richard

“She has wonderful eyes, but she has a double chin and an overdeveloped chest, and she’s rather short in the leg.”   -Richard Burton, who married Liz Taylor twice

Elizabeth Taylor has checked out on us after an amazing career that managed to embody the heights of high glamour and the depths of horrifying vulgarity, sometimes all at once. There will be plenty of well-written obituaries and career overviews to come; our job at Ichiban on this sombre occasion is to share with you this tribute to the most famous champions of drunken matrimony and amour fou ever to walk the planet.

John and Marsha - Elizabeth and Richard

Thanks to Rex, hero to morons everywhere, for hipping me to this record some years ago.

Guitar Lightnin' Lee

Guitar Lightnin' Lee is coming to town this week. You've probably never heard of him. Neither had I, until I wandered out onto the back patio at the Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans last fall to take a break from the overcrowded main room. Who was this gentleman in the cowboy shirt playing guitar sitting in a chair, backed by a band about 20 years his junior playing high octane rock and roll and blues, kicking all kinds of ass and following him through his oddly placed chord changes like it was easy? His songs sounded mostly, basically, like Chuck Berry or Jimmy Reed. That might be a little bit of an oversimplification, and I don't want you to think that this is some kind of imitative nostalgia act, because Guitar Lightnin' Lee and the Thunder Band were on fire and very much in the moment. How can I explain it? When I hear, say, a beat up 45 of "Sweet Little Rock & Roller" blasting out of the speakers, I don't think "Wow, this takes me back to another time when I wasn't even born yet, before music sucked like it does now." I think (if I'm thinking anything at all), "This sounds really good RIGHT NOW". And thus it was on this autumn night in New Orleans. Sometimes he would play a Chuck Berry guitar intro and it would go into a Jimmy Reed sounding song, or vice-versa. I have no idea how the band knew what to do, but they did. After a few songs I was hooked and had completely forgotten about whatever bigger-name act I was waiting to go back inside for. Then Guitar Lightnin' said "Okay, we got one or two more" and the crowd let out that collective "awwww" whiny-kid sound. Then he played one or two more. And then some more. Like another hour and a half at least. It kept going like that. "We got one more", followed by ten more songs. The longer they played, the more intense and loose and crazy it got. The Stomp was an embarassment of riches, as it is every year. At the 2010 edition I saw Sugar Pie DeSanto, DL Menard, Roy Loney and Cyril Jordan of the Flamin' Groovies backed by the A-Bones (and Lazy Lester playing harmonica on "Scratch My Back"!), The Trashmen, Tommy Brown, Roy Head, and on and on, but if forced to pick the best act I saw, I would have to say it was Guitar Lightnin' Lee and the Thunder Band. So there.
Our pal Todd-o-phonic Todd was there too. I remember because we looked at each other while the show was going on with that look that says "are you effin' kidding me?" I also remember because he yelled a lot and tried to shimmy up one of the cables that held up the tent that hung over the patio and got admonished by House of Blues security. Anyway, reached out to for a blurb from a nightlife tastemaker, Todd had this to say:

"Guitar Lightnin' Lee truly captures lightnin' in a bottle, as long as it's a whiskey bottle. Mix up Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed and a good chunk of old fashioned New Orleans hoodoo and you've got the musical equivalent of Razzles. Is it rock'n'roll? Blues? R'n'B? I don't know...all I know is....IT SPLITS MY MIND WIDE OPEN!!!"

Hells yeah!


And now you jaded New Yorkers have a chance to get some for yourself.

Thursday February 17th: Live on Three Chord Monte with Joe Belock on the mighty WFMU, noon to 3 PM
Thursday February 17th: Lakeside Lounge, NYC
Friday February 18th: The Bell House, Brooklyn. Opening for the Reigning Sound, who feature our own DA the DJ on keyboards and friend of the Ichiban Greg Cartwright (Oblivians, Compulsive Gamblers, Parting Gifts), who is the best songwriter we have on the planet right now. The Reigning Sound put on a scorching live show and I imagine they will step it up an extra notch when they have to follow Guitar Lightnin'! Also on the bill: Detroit's The Sights.
Saturday February 19th: Maxwell's, Hoboken NJ
Sunday February 20th: Trash Bar, Brooklyn NY

Here are two tunes that I ripped from the double 7" single I got after that show in New Orleans. Purchase it here, buy the self-released CDR here or buy them at one of these shows. The 7" features Antoine Domino III on piano! Yes, that is who you think it is. These are posted to give you a taste of what a treat you're in for. Buy the damn record and/or CD, ya freeloaders.


Guitar Lightnin' Lee and his Thunder Band:
Going To Amsterdam
Mississippi Alabama Bound

Fannie Mae!

Here's another overlooked masterpiece from Booker T. and the MG's. Yeah, I called it a "masterpiece".
"But", you protest, "it's just a simple 12 bar blues workout!" Then I say it sure is, and it's better than anything the Beatles ever did, and then we either agree to disagree or the whole thing escalates into physical violence.
This version of Buster Brown's "Fannie Mae" was originally on the flipside of "Mo' Onions" and was later pulled in favor of "Tic Tac Toe", a move that to my mind is a little like trading Sandy Koufax in his prime for Pedro Martinez in his. Anyhow, this "Fannie Mae" is slower and a little more loping and dirty than the (also great) different take issued on the Stax CD Soul Men, a collection of covers of hits which you should go get right now if you don't already have it, it's got killer versions of Harlem Shuffle, Day Tripper and Baby, Scratch My Back, among other gems.
Steve Cropper's solo here says pretty much everything that needs to be said, and he only takes one time thru the changes to say it. So, in all its scratchy glory, direct from the 45 RPM record to your home typewriter, here it is:
Booker T. and the MG's - Fannie Mae

Schoolgirls, Airplanes, and Motor Vehicle Operators

This ditty has been re-used, re-written, and ripped off for good and ill, which is as it should be. Everything good is a rip-off of something else. But the first Sonny Boy Williamson (John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, not to be confused with Sonny Boy Williamson II, aka Sonny Boy Williamson Too, Sonny Boy Williamson Also, or Rice Miller; more on him here) is generally credited with inventing it. And maybe he did. I don't claim any scholarly high ground here. If you can read enough Document Records liner notes to figure it out without killing yourself, then god bless you.

"Good Morning Little School Girl" was popular enough that one of its verses, the one about getting an airplane and flying it all over your town, was given its own franchise with "Airplane Blues".

And then Memphis Minnie gave it new lyrics and had a big old hit with "Me and My Chauffeur Blues".  Fittingly, Chuck Berry, no slouch when it comes to songs about schoolgirls, automobiles and occasionally even airplanes, re-shaped it into "I Want To Be Your Driver", one of his many criminally under-rated mid 60's recordings.
So here are those and others, as always presented in the scratchiest fidelity available for your responsible home use as consenting adults.

Sonny Boy Williamson - Good Morning Little School Girl
Sleepy John Estes - Airplane Blues
Blind Boy Fuller - Flyin' Airplane Blues
Memphis Minnie - Me And My Chauffeur Blues (1941)
Muddy Waters - Good Morning School Girl
Nina Simone - Chauffeur
Memphis Minnie (w/Little Walter!) - Me And My Chauffeur Blues (1952)
Junior Wells & "Friendly Chap" - Good Morning Schoolgirl
Lattie Murrell - Good Morning Little School Girl
Mississippi Fred McDowell - Good Morning Little School Girl
Chuck Berry - I Want To Be Your Driver
Larry Williams - Little School Girl

Thanks to Andy Maltz for putting on his pants and leaving the house to loan me some of these recordings, and to Robert Crumb (in advance) for not suing us for using his Sleepy John Estes drawing.

Charley Pride In Person

Seeing Charley Pride sing the national anthem on TV the other night before his beloved Texas Rangers were summarily dispatched from the World Series by a bunch of sixteen year old hippies from San Francisco, I was reminded that he cut what might be the best live country album ever. It's like a country version of the first Ramones album in its brevity and perfection. If you're used to his studio recordings, many of which are slathered in high fructose Nashville additives, it's a treat to hear him swinging and loose with nary a string section or choir in sight and a killer band that prominently features the astonishing Lloyd Green on pedal steel, who does this thing on "Six Days On The Road" where he imitates an approaching police siren and for a moment you think that either something's wrong with your stereo or your ride is finally here. This album appears to be out of print but you can find the LP used easily enough, and you should. Until you do, here's a few cuts to tide you over:
Six Days On The Road
Just Between You And Me
Shutters & Boards

This greasy riff

I love this greasy, grinding riff (or lick, or motif, or whatever the stratocaster-playing lawyers who run everything are calling it these days).  It has long since been run into the ground by the giant-beer-company-sponsored, neatly-trimmed-bearded legions of "blues" "musicians" all over America and the world, but these variations on it still sound pretty good to my ears and hopefully to yours:

Little Richard- Directly From My Heart
Don and Dewey- Pink Champagne
Howlin' Wolf- I Walked From Dallas
Hound Dog Taylor- Sadie

So Long, Solomon Burke

"I'm talkin' about Brother Solomon Burke, you all know him dontcha."
-Wilson Pickett

The world lost a literal and figurative giant yesterday with the passing of Solomon Burke. Please enjoy these admittedly obvious choices from his oeuvre as well as various other stabs at material written by or associated with King Solomon, until somebody else, hopefully The Hound, posts something more eloquent and comprehensive.

Home In Your Heart
Cry To Me
Stupidity

Otis Redding - Down In The Valley
(complete with skip to help perpetuate the illusion that you are listening to a record)
Wilson Pickett - Everybody Needs Somebody To Love
Betty Harris - Cry To Me
Dr. Feelgood - Stupidity
Bill Woman & the Limey Fops - If You Need Me

Red Beans and Rice

This is one of Booker T. and the MGs mightiest performances, but (and please feel free to correct me on this if I'm wrong) it's one that seems to be unavailable anywhere other than the original 45. There's a live version that shows up on a couple of greatest hits compilations, and it's good, but not this good. On the Stax/Volt live in Norway DVD, whoever did the titles calls one of the tunes Red Beans and Rice, but it's actually Tic-Tac-Toe. Not that the titles matter too much.

The MGs were somehow more than the sum of their parts, but what parts! Without overanalyzing things too much, take a listen to the greatest drummer who ever lived, Al Jackson, Jr. The rat-a-tat drum fills he plays starting at about 1:13 in (and by the way, what the hell is Steve Cropper doing there? Jesus.) are simple enough, nothing flashy, and technically speaking anyone could learn to do 'em, but you try it and see how it sounds. Further proof that it ain't what you do, it's the way how you do it. "It ain't what you eat, it's the way how you chew it" is a topic best left for a future posting.

Booker T. and the MGs - Red Beans and Rice

Thanks to Bill Judkins for the loan of the 45.

Restless

This is one of those song titles that seems to have a pretty high batting average, from Stax and Hi in Memphis all the way to the pre-Columbian United Kingdom.

The Cobras - Restless

Willie Mitchell - Restless

Johnny Kidd & the Pirates - Restless

Get Down, and Do The Do

"We gonna get down. We gonna do the do. I'm going to hit these motherfuckers."

-Dock Ellis, in a clubhouse speech to his teammates before a 1974 game against the Cincinnati Reds in which he plunked the first three batters he faced (Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and Dan Driessen, for those of you keeping score at home).

Harvey Scales & the 7 Sounds - Get Down

Howlin' Wolf - Do The Do

Quotation taken from Dan Epstein's essential new baseball tome Big Hair and Plastic Grass .

Jethro Burns, Crimefighter

Homer and Jethro played on the March of Dimes telethon in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1965. Our friend Ron Kellum was there. This is his story.

Camera: Debbie D Fountain

Interviewer: Bill Judkins

Martinis: Matt Fiveash

Filmed on location at Great Jones Cafe, New York City.

Homer and Jethro's neighbors (some guys from Lubbock and Memphis and two Hookers)

If you are looking at this website, then in all likelihood you are an obsessive-compulsive weirdo who alphabetizes his, her or its records. So you probably know that without these guys to their immediate left and right, there would be nothing to keep your Homer and Jethro records from falling down.

Buddy Holly - Crying, Waiting, Hoping

The Hombres - Let It Out

Earl Hooker - Guitar Rag

John Lee Hooker - Baby Don't Go

Homer, Chet and Jethro

Homer and Jethro played guitar and mandolin, respectively. They were pretty good.

Country All Stars - Royal Garden Blues

Country All Stars - Indiana March

Chet Atkins and his Guitar Pickers - Centipede Boogie

Bix Beiderbecke - Royal Garden Blues

Sol Hoopii - Indiana March

Homer and Jethro

Homer and Jethro month continues with the fellas' ode to that most essential of regional American cuisines: Ground Hogmeat. I mean Groundhog Meat.

From the liner notes of the Barefoot Ballads LP:

"Today we feel that we have a great future behind us, and we have never let failure go to our heads... these are songs that our recording boss Steve Sholes wanted us to sing very badly, and that's the way we did them."

Homer and Jethro - Ground Hog

Mayday!

You know how to whistle, don't you?

Lonesome Sundown - Lonesome Whistler

Wee Willie Wayne - Travelin' Mood

Itchin'

James Moore, better known to the world as Slim Harpo, created the greatest works in the history of modern civilization in any medium. One of these is "Baby, Scratch My Back", presented here along with several worthy other versions, plus an unrelated but nonetheless excellent slab of limey fuzz also entitled "Scratch My Back". The Otis Redding and Booker T. versions contain some of Steve Cropper's finest moments, in my unwanted opinion.

Slim Harpo - Baby Scratch My Back

Booker T. and the MG's - Baby Scratch My Back

Otis Redding - Scratch My Back

Tony Joe White - Scratch My Back

Clifton Chenier - Keep On Scratchin'

Frank Frost - My Back Scratcher

Jan Panter - Scratch My Back