Ichiban One-Liners!

Here are some fun facts that you may not know about WFMU:

• We have made our signal available worldwide via the internet.

• We now offer podcasts, blogs, alternate webstreams and an enormous programming archive, providing our online listeners with countless forms of entertainment.

• And we have done all of that without accepting money from corporations or underwriting.

• WFMU is completely independent, which is a claim that few other non-commercial stations can make. We have to pay for everything ourselves, from headphones to rent to electricity, roof maintenance, telephones, etc. There's no "them" to give us any kind of support whatsoever.

• WFMU DJ's do not get paid. No one gets reimbursed for labor, travel, expenses, "Santo research", parking tickets, 45s.

• We're economical and resourceful. When a piece of equipment breaks, we try and fix the old one. Our headphones are held together by duct tape and our turntables are supported by inner tubes.

• WFMU does not take money with strings attached. We don’t accept money from a university or underwriting.

Once a year we throw a big fundraising party and invite every listener to throw in a few clams to keep us on the air for one more year.  That means you!!  We even offer fabulous prizes and swag for your pledge of support.

  

A $50 pledge gets you entered in the drawing for Ichiban One-Liners, complied by artist extraordinaire,  J.R. Williams!!!  Pledge here before Friday, February 24th at 5:00 PM EST.

More infos coming your way next week!!

Joe Tex month day 16: Soul Country

“You wanna know my secret for getting a cross-over hit? I used the same formula every time – half soul musicians, half country.” - Joe Tex


Once Joe Tex and Buddy Killen started collaborating, country music became an essential part of JT's sound. Killen was an ex-bass player at the Grand Ole Opry, and was also a Nashville song publisher with vested interest in Tree Publishing.  Under Killen's influence, some of the country elements present in Tex's early music were brought front and center. Most of his LPs included a straight(ish) country number or two, and countrified arranging techniques added surprising elements to hits like "I've Got to Do a Little Bit Better Than I've Been Doing".  


The 1968 Country Soul LP is all country songs, and with the exception of "If I Ever Do You Wrong" they're all covers. I suspect that part of the reason for the song selection on this LP, and part of the reason for some of the cover choices on other LPs ("Heartbreak Hotel", for instance) is because Tree Publishing owned the rights to the songs, so Killen got some bread coming and going.  


But the results are a pretty good LP - maybe some of the cover choices could have been better suited to Joe's natural abilities, but it was still one of the first full-length country LPs by a soul artist. And while folks like Ray Charles, Arthur Alexander and Solomon Burke were working similar veins, Joe's approach as always made the best of the songs uniquely Tex.  Many of the notable numbers got posted in the "Joe Tex Show" post of February 15, so you should just go watch them there. 


But there are a couple of other real winners on the record that deserve extra attention. His version of "Time Slips Away" is pretty hilarious - underneath the ordinary lyric of the Nelson standard, a second JT mumbles unspoken words of resentment. It's like Joe's dueting with his own subconscious.


But the track I love most is his chitlin' circuit version of "Ode to Billy Joe". I don't know whose idea recording the Bobbie Gentry megahit was, but the results are inspired. The funky soul arrangement drives the song from a lazy lope to a solid mid-tempo dance number, and Joe makes a number of lyrical modifications to personalize it. These make the song even weirder than it already was. 

Joe Tex month day 15: The Joe Tex Show - complete! - THIS IS GENIUS

We've mainly been talking about Joe's recordings here on Inchiban, but today what we have for you is the best video and audio evidence available for his legendary status as a live performer.  This video was recorded for a TV Special in Scandanavia in 1969, post Happy Soul, and it is 20 minutes of excellence. Great picture and sound quality, with spectacular dancing, singing, and an incredibly cooking band. Even the camera work is passable. Seriously - there are not many better live videos on YouTube than this. 

Almost everything that makes JT my favorite soul guy is right here - the only thing missing is a slow "Hold What You've Got" style sermon. Check out that 1000 mph version of "Show Me"! And do not miss the workout on "Papa Was Too", where Joe defies gravity with the microphone stand. 

"Man That's Your Baby", an extremely funny satire about delinquent baby daddies, is from Happy Soul.  A whopping three songs from Country Soul (tune in tomorrow!) make up the bulk of the set, including the classic original, "I'll Never Do You Wrong".  I love the sweat glistening on his forehead while he earnestly deadpans "I hope a sore come on my elbow/I hope a rock fall on my big toe./I love my toe/and my elbow/so you know I'll never do you wrong." Unassailable logic, that.

It all caps with a jive talkin' "Skinny Legs and All". Stick around past the credits for the best mic trick yet.

Unfortunately, the only "live" recording of Tex that's been officially released, Live and Lively, is a studio + overdub job. It's not a bad record, parts of it are, in fact, great - but it certainly isn't close to that video footage above. I can't help but think a real live album would put JT's rep up there in the highest tier, like he deserves.  But, oh well.  That's Life!

And what the heck - here's a crummy rip I made a couple of years ago, for my own devices, of that version of "Show Me" that leads the Joe Tex Show. Use it for your own devices.

Tassel Twirler Tuesday!

Po-Ter-Zee-Bee!

Joe Tex month day 14: The Original Tex-Ter

YCSTAOT
(you can spin this any old time)

We all know that Joe Tex was rapping before anyone called it rapping, but that's not the only "modern innovation" that JT foresaw and performed with both style and wit above and beyond the level it's normally practiced today.

I'm talking about Tex-ting.

Sure, we all occasionally, perhaps to our embarassment, LOL or TTYL in our random wordphone/ chatpane conversations. And if you don't, IMHO you've had to make the conscious decision to hate on the practice, probably for sound or perhaps just reactionary reasons.

But in "The Letter Song", Joe took the art of the abbreviation/acronym to such a high level that I propose we adopt some of them for Joe Tex month.

Particularly on today, Valentine's Day, how much better would it be to send one of Joe's messages to your sweetheart, rather than a silly less than sign with a three stuck on the end of it?

Check out Joe's personal Texicon:

YCCMAOT = You can call me any old time.
SYSLJFM = Save your sweet love just for me.
DKWIMTM = Don't know what it means to me.
DETYSLA = Don't ever take your sweet love away.
ICLMLTW = I can't live my life that way.
TCAHYTU = To come and help you to unwind.

So on Valentine's Day - don't just send your loved one a text. Send 'em a Joe Text.

Joe Tex Month, Day 13: I've Got to Do a Little Bit Better

It's a hit!

Joe's fourth Atlantic/Dial LP is, for me, his best - and one of the best soul LPs I've heard, period. Joe's performances are infectiously joyous, the arrangements on the tunes are exciting (and loaded with guitar!) and it's his best collection of original material ever. The two covers only add to the good natured, hilarious vibe of the entire record.

 It starts with one of Joe's patented responses to a current hit, this time the "Tramp" rewrite "Papa Was, Too" (more on this one on Wednesday) and never lets up. "Watch the One (That Brings the Bad News)" is a great blues vamp about shoe shops, eating chicken, and rattling bags. "Lying's Just a Habit John" is a funny and instructional riff on the "Twistin' the Night Away" melody - it seems there are good lies and bad ones and John's are no good.

And the three that start side two are total jaw droppers. The countryish bowed bass fiddle hook that breaks up the title track is Buddy Killen arranging at its best. "The Truest Woman in the World" is one of JT's greatest sermons ("98% of us are jealous and suspicious and the other 2% are sneaking around!").  And what can be said about the soldier so in love with his girlfriend that he uses her letters to inspire him to get him some more enemies in "I Believe I'm Going to Make It" except maybe . . . "Batman and Robin!"

And then there's "S.Y.S.L.J.F.M" a song so good it gets its own post tomorrow.

Tip top! Get it at the record shop.

Joe Tex and Arthur Alexander - the sequel: I'm Not Going to Work Today

Obviously I'm not one to belabor a point, but here's a second connection between Mr. Ichibans of December and February. This time it comes courtesy of Clyde McPhatter.

On a 1966 Amy/Stateside 45 (seen here in its non-styrene UK pressing) Clyde covered the early Arthur Alexander hit, "Shot of Rhythm and Blues".

And on the flip he drops his version of "I'm Not Going to Work Today", Joe's calypso-fied ode to parental exhaustion.  The song's from Hold What You've Got but must have been around for a while - Boot Hog Pefferly and the Loafers released it on Sound Stage 7 in 1963, and Hold What You've Got didn't come out 'til 65.

Me neither, Boot.

Mad Dog Coll

Doin' The Bump With Joe Tex

Seen here is a 1981 JET photo of Joe Tex on the dance floor. Well, to be fair, almost nobody looked very good in '81.

Joe Tex month day 11: Ernie K-Doe-Nus Cut!

In which we all learn that a h-o-m-e without l-o-v-e is just a h-o-u-s-e.  Excellent 1963 B-side by the one and only Ernie K-Doe, penned by Joe Tex and never recorded by anyone else that I know of. 

DETROIT TEX

Joe Tex month day 10: The New Boss/The Love You Save

Now that they had their hit and they knew how to get the most out of Joe's talent, JT and Buddy Killen really started cranking out the product. In 1965 and 1966, Joe Tex released four different LPs for Dial/Atlantic, most of them loaded with original material. In addition most of the companies that released his material in the 50s and early 60s released LPs to cash in on the Tex craze. I think there are six different JT LPs with a 1966 date on them.

Technically, the New Boss, JT's follow-up LP to Hold What You've Got, isn't entirely new. It has a couple of songs overlapping with HWYG, and it's also unique in Joe's 60s library in that almost half the songs are covers (I don't care what he says or how good his version is, Joe did NOT write "C.C. Rider"). Recorded quickly on to cash the new demand for JT's music, it's not the best Tex album of the 60s, but it's got its moments, like the big hit "I Want to (Do Everything for You)" (which is a Joe Tex original and I don't care what it says on that King Sound Quartet LP In the Red put out in 1996) and "What in the World", which has a seriously great Tex vocal and a righteous horn chart.

But to my ears the next in the Dial Series, The Love You Save, is the more entertaining listen. Purpler commentariats than myself have made grand claims for the title track being about social unrest and the Civil Rights movement, and it's safe to say that there's more than love affairs being talked about when Joe's saying he's been hit in the head, left for dead, taken outside, brutalized, and always been the one who had to apologize. No wonder he looks so mad on the cover.

Other winners include the previously posted "If Sugar Was Sweet As You" and in particular "I'm a Man". This mind-boggling rewrite of "You Keep Her" has the greatest lyrics in musical history. If "If I were a song I'd like to be sung by the Rolling Stones" is not carved into my tombstone, someone hasn't been paying attention. Is this song some kind of slam on Bobby Darin's "If I Were a Carpenter"?

And lest y'all think I've forgotten I'm posting on Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban, there's also a hilarious mush mouth version of "Heartbreak Hotel", and a sleeper dance 45 - "You Better Believe It, Baby". This song wound up as the B-side of "I Believe I'm Gonna Make It", and it smokes - a hornless, rhythm guitar driven pounder with a pronounced Beatle influence - check out that scream that leads in the brief guitar break. Get it Elvis! Fill that floor!