This Weekend At The Fool's Paradise Twin

A caveman is discovered out in the desert who proceeds to fall in love with a girl and then wreak havoc on a nearby town.  Starring Ray Dennis Steckler as Mr. Fishman.

EEGAH!

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!

Carolyn Brandt Is Cee Bee Beaumont

 

Rat Pfink

The Coasters - What Is the Secret of Your Success

R. Crumb On Rock 'N' Roll

    He's not generally perceived as a big fan of post-depression era pop music, but Crumb has spoken at various points of his fondness for early rock 'n' roll. And while his general distaste for hippie music has been addressed in many interviews through the years, no one has ever asked what '60s music he did like until now:


From Crumb On Others, Part One, by Alex Wood:

TOMMY JAMES AND THE SHONDELLS

Robert: "Yes! Last great proletarian rock 'n' roll band. 1966 -- My Baby Does the Hanky Panky, great record. That to me was the last year there was a bunch of good, proletarian rock and roll hits on the radio. After that it was taken over by the California psychedelic thing. I just didn’t find that as interesting. That was all very middle-class. Once the Beatles became famous, then the middle class began to embrace rock 'n' roll and abandoned the kind of middle of the road sound of Bobby Rydell and Pat Boone and all that stuff. And when the middle-class embraced it, they cleaned it up, it wasn’t the same. But Tommy James was one of the last bands, and Sam The Sham, he was another one of the last ones: Wooly Bully and stuff like that."
Alex: "Did you like Little Red Riding Hood?"
Robert: "Great, great masterpiece. [laughs] But after that, I started to lose interest in rock n’ roll. The golden age of rock 'n' roll was in the 50s and for me, particularly Rockabilly. I really liked that. A lot of the rockabilly stuff was really wild and kind of scared the bourgeois, scared them."
Alex: "Like Jerry Lee Lewis?"
Robert: "Yeah, great! Great piano player. Little Richard too, excellent piano player but they’re showmen so you don’t get to hear enough piano. But going back to Tommy James, he made a psychedelic song called Crimson and Clover. Remember that? I thought that was pretty good… 'Crimson and clover, over and over…'"

Recent Additions To The Ichiban New Bin

V.A. - The Music City Story

Wanda Burt & The Crescendoes - Scheming (mp3)

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Radio On!

Staple Singers

Mr. Fine Wine did an outstanding fill-in for Sinner's Crossroads last week.  Catch it here.  Also, don't miss Kevin Nutt from Sinners Crossroads filling in for Fine Wine here.

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I've Got My Pride (MP3)

Jan Howard - I've Got My Pride

In late 1960, Jan Howard released I've Got My Pride, a fine honky-tonker authored by one of country music's greatest songwriters, her then-husband Harlan Howard. Despite the fact that it was a superb performance and a great song, it quickly disappeared without coming anywhere near the charts.

Billboard's anonymous reviewer described it this way: "She doesn't have her man, but she has her pride, is the theme of this up-tempo country weeper, handled in sparkling fashion by the thrush over strong support. A sock side by the lass." I'd say that's about the size of it.

Eddie on Elvis

Noted author and possibly the world's most perfectly developed man (now that Charles Atlas is gone) Eddie Deezen tells you about some of Mr. Presley's animal pals, right here.

BONUS! Here's more from Eddie, writing about Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

Mr.Deezen

This Weekend At The Fool's Paradise Twin

The Maniacs Are Loose! aka The Thrill Killers! (trailer)

B/W

Lemon Grove Kids Meet The Monsters (Theme)

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June Is Ray Dennis Steckler Month

Riding the Pfinkmobile

France Gall - "Das war eine schone Party" ("Poupee De Cire, Poupee De Son" In German)