• 1963 — Pop Pandemonium in Israel

    Lame DogClassic Rock

    Fifty-five years ago, two thousand shrieking youths converged on Lod Airport, now Ben Gurion International Airport, in Tel Aviv.  They trespassed on the tarmac to meet an incoming flight bearing a group of British musicians who had taken the world by storm, starred in hit films, and even recently appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.  Who were this fab foursome?  I’m speaking, of course, of …. Cliff Richard and the Shadows!

    While comparatively obscure in America, Cliff Richard is among of the most successful British musicians of all time.  He has sold over 250 million records worldwide and has had more top twenty records on the UK charts than any other artist.  He was originally marketed as “the British Elvis” and recorded what some consider the first British rock song.  Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate any concert footage of his 1963 tour of Israel.  But this clip from the same period gives a sense of what Israeli teens were screaming about:


    As best I can judge, Richard is a true gentleman who has avoided many of the pitfalls of stardom during his sixty year career.  That said, I am unable to call myself a fan.  I find most his material — the above clip excepted —  stultifyingly bland.  Indeed, listening to him renews my appreciation for just how remarkable both Elvis Presley and that other Fab Four really were. Which leads to a question.  Why didn’t they ever perform in Israel?

    In Presley’s case, the short answer is straightforward:  he never toured anywhere outside the United States and Canada.  That may have been due to the dubious immigration status of his manager, “Colonel Tom Parker,” who — despite attempting to pass himself off as a native of West Virginia — was born Andreas van Kuijk in the Netherlands and was rumored to have fled to America after murdering a woman in his home town.  But what about the Beatles, who traveled the world?  Following much speculation, the true story emerged with the help of research by historian Alon Gan in the Israeli State Archives.

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  • Stan Rogers — The End of Good Work

    Lame DogFolk

    Perhaps the closest thing I have to a religion is Stan Rogers.  The great Canadian sang with the passion and fury of an Old Testament prophet. He wrote, at times unfashionably, of the things that matter most:  home, love, fidelity, history, and the pride that comes from hard labor. If he sometimes teetered on the brink of sentimentality, one can easily forgive the flaw.  Indeed, his contribution appears all the more impressive as the years go by.

    When most of us first heard his voice, he was already dead.   He perished abroad Air Canada Flight 797 on June 2, 1983.  He was 33.  I dimly recall television coverage of the tragedy.  It did not mention his name; he was too obscure a figure, at least in America.

    From Fresh Water    , his final album of original material, was released posthumously.   Lately, I have been focusing on what it has to say about work and aging.  In “The Last Watch,” the narrator is a watchman on a steamboat slated for demolition.  Rogers’ inspiration was an actual ship, the SS Midland City, that transported cargo and passengers on the Great Lakes for over a century.  In 1955, as it proved too expensive to comply with new safety regulations, it was towed into the Bay of Tiffin and intentionally set aflame. In the song, the watchman, another “old wreck” who is about to be cast aside, is left to pray that “when men with torches come for her … angels come for me.”

    Another piece from the same collection, while understated, is even more powerful.   This time, Rogers’ immediate subject was the fisherman of Port Dover, a town on the polluted shores of Lake Erie.  The twist is that it is not a song about unemployment.   They still have their jobs; in fact, “there’s plenty of pay.”  Instead, the work has become strangely meaningless as they are restricted to catching the smallest fish exclusively for export .  Or as Rogers writes, “it’s all just a job now” (emphasis added).  Have a listen:


    In this pair of compositions, Rogers speaks to us from beyond the grave.  He shows (more…)

  • The Case for Ugly — From Roaring Lion to Rory Block

    Lame DogCalypso, R & B

    What’s the number one compliment paid to women in popular music?  I suspect that it boils down to “you look beautiful.”  The appeal of a pleasing physical appearance is so visceral that its value is ordinarily taken for granted.  Only on rare occasions will a song champion the opposite.  Can you think of any examples?

    Among the most familiar is “If You Want to Be Happy” — a 1963 hit for James McCleese  a/k/a “Jimmy Soul.”  It famously asserts:
    If you want to be happy for the rest of your life
    Never make a pretty woman your wife.
    So from my personal point of view
    Get an ugly girl to marry you.
     A pretty woman makes her husband look small
    And very often causes his downfall.
    As soon as he marries her, then she starts
    To do the things that will break his heart. 

    The song is credited to Joseph Royster, Carmella Guida, and Frank Guida.  But in fact, it’s a revised version of a 1934 release by  a singer/songwriter known as Roaring Lion.  Here is the original.

     
    The true author is a figure of sufficient interest to merit a detour.  Roaring Lion was Rafael de Leon  (not to be confused with the Spanish lyricist of that name — give or take an accent mark — who was also born in February, 1908).  An illegitimate child from the hill country of northern Trinidad, he spent time in orphanages before being adopted by an Indian Muslim family.  After winning various calypso competitions, he was invited to record in New York, where he had the honor of performing for President Roosevelt.  He had a prolific career in the ’30’s and ’40’s, a highlight of which was writing the calypso standard “Marianne” (who is “down by the seaside … sifting sand”).  In 1951, he went to England where, contrary to his own advice, he married a Norwegian woman who was not at all ugly.  Sadly, as an interracial couple, they were repeatedly subject to racist attacks.  In the 1960’s, de Leon returned, along with his family, to Trinidad, where he was honored for his cultural contributions.  In later years, he wrote a controversial book maintaining that calypso derived, not from African roots, but from the music of medieval French troubadours.  Over sixty years after his  “Ugly Woman,” song, he released his final album.  He died at the age of 91 in 1999.
     
    If de Leon made the case for choosing an aesthetically challenged woman, what about a similarly situated man?   For that, let’s turn to one of the Dog’s personal favorites, blues queen Rory Block.  Her main point in this 1984 recording seems to be that handsome men are narcissistic assholes.

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  • The Troups — “Motoring West” in America’s Heyday

    Lame DogR & B

    In 1946, a young couple left Pennsylvania for Hollywood, where the husband hoped to make his mark as a songwriter.   At one point during the journey, the wife suggested that he write something about Route 40.  He rebuffed her on the ground that they would be spending far more time on a different highway — Route 66.  After a pause, she replied, “Get your kicks on Route 66!”  And with that, what is arguably the greatest road song of all time was born.

     Here’s a performance by the author himself:

     

    Bobby Troup came from a family that ran music stores in Harrisburg and Lancaster.  Cynthia Troup (nee Hare) was a strong-willed girl from the Philadelphia Main Line who delighted in telling the boys at parties, “I’m only wearing (more…)

  • Meghan Trainor — All About That Parody

    Lame DogPop

    The song was written in forty minutes.  It was reportedly offered to Beyonce and Adele, who turned it down.  So the author (in collaboration with Kevin Kadish), recorded it herself.  The rest is history.  Following its release in June 2014, “All About That Bass” became a cultural phenomenon, reaching number one in nineteen countries and generating well over two billion views for the accompanying video, along with endless buzz.  Not least among the reasons for its astounding success is the most obvious one — the tune is maddeningly catchy.  But behind the hoopla was a perfect storm of deeply felt issues involving body image, self-assertion, and the evolution of intimate tastes.

     As day follows night, a host of parodies ensued.  A few were direct send-ups, most famously one by Bob Barker featuring a grotesque Meghan Trainor caricature spewing venom at “thin people.”  Most of the imitations, however, co-opted the song for unrelated purposes.  There was a Star Trek version (“All About Deep Space.  No Tribbles”) and a Harry Potter version (“All About That Magic.  No Muggles”).  Some boosted sports teams (“All About the Saints.  No Cowboys”) or private businesses (“All About That Brace” by Showtime Orthodontics — not to be confused with “We’re Taking Off That Brace” by Mori Orthodontics).  There were occasional  commentaries on political issues:  “He’s Just a Pretty Face” (an attack on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau”), “All About That Hill. No Donald” (total views to date under 450 — an omen), and even “Police Will Shoot You in the Face.”  Two different videos were made by women advocating the practice of breast-feeding (“All About That Breast” and “All About That Boob”).  Two others poked fun at Bill Cosby’s legal difficulties (both entitled “All About That Rape”).  Several focused on fishing (“All About That Bass. Same Spelling,” “All About That Bass.  No Minnows,” etc).  And there were further permutations I could never have imagined:  “I Go to Palengke” touts Filipino street markets;  “All Aboot the Toon,” sung in the Geordie dialect, celebrates the Tyneside region of Northeastern England.
     
    Of the many versions I have sampled as a dogged investigator, however, this is the one that sticks in my mind.  And not in a good way:

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  • Edgar Leslie and the Jazz Age Gender Benders

    Lame DogNovelty
    At twenty-two, he made his songwriting debut with “I’m a Yiddish Cowboy” (the subject of our last post).  Eighteen years later,  Edgar Leslie wrote a novelty song on an equally surprising topic, this time with the aid of a rollicking  score by James V. Monaco. It was so successful that over half a dozen versions were released in 1926 and 1927.  Listen here to one of them:

     
     
    I first encountered this ditty a half-century later on the Dr. Demento radio program. That was an era with its own gender controversies — the heyday of David Bowie and Alice Cooper.  It was not too far removed from a time when even shoulder-length hair on men was viewed as a threat to the natural order. But Leslie’s song suggested that our grandparents’ generation had itself been ridiculed for being androgynous. That came as a revelation to me.
     

    The Roaring Twenties were a period of social experimentation and rebellion.  Women took up smoking, bobbed their hair, and adopted “mannish” styles.  Cross-dressing was gist for humorous silent films and publicity photos.  And in what became known as the Pansy Craze, female impersonators were popular on the New York nightclub scene.   The 1930’s saw a retrenchment:  ironically, while Prohibition ended and politics swung left, Hollywood was constrained by a puritanical motion pictures code and most of the the “pansies” were driven from the stage.  Leslie probably intended his song as little more than light entertainment. Yet he captured something of the spirit of the age before the fall.

     
     
    Among his more intriguing lyrics are the following:
     
                       Since the Prince of Wales in ladies’ dresses was seen,
                       What does he intend to be, the King or the Queen?
     
    The Prince of Wales refers to the man who was then heir to the British throne — the future King Edward VIII.  Was he really seen wearing dresses?  In some online versions of the lyrics, the word “kilts” appears next to dresses in brackets.  It is true that the Prince was photographed in a kilt, perhaps in an effort to appeal to his future Scottish subjects, but that’s probably not what Leslie had in mind.  In October 1925, the Prince had entertained sailors aboard the H.M.S. Repulse by appearing in drag as a “red-haired vamp” in a farce entitled “The Bathroom Door.” The incident was covered in both the American and British press and reportedly embarrassed the royal family.  The Prince may also have been a target, not only as a fashion-conscious celebrity who had recently visited the United States, but because of rumors about his private life.  Those rumors persisted to the time of his coronation in 1936, when a song was released entitled, “The King is a Queen at Heart.”   You may be surprised by

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  • Tough Guy Levi and the Jokey Jewish Cowboy Song Tradition

    Lame DogNovelty
    The September 1908 Edison Phonograph Monthly is out.  Let’s see what’s listed for sale. Hey, this looks interesting:   “A dandy new cowboy song with Western effects galore.  Among them — the tom tom, cowboy chorus, cowboy and Indian yells, hoof beats, etc.” The ad also says that  the vocalist “sings this number with the spirit and fire that the unusual words and music call for — so plainly too that not a word is lost, even in the yiddish dialect portion.”   Let’s have a listen:
     

    “I’m a Yiddish Cowboy” was performed by Edward Meeker (who had also sung the first recorded version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”).   The composers were Al Piantadosi and Halsey Mohr.  Of primary interest, however, is the overall theme as reflected in the lyrics of Edgar Leslie.  What was funny about Jewish cowboys?  And what about this one was viewed as Jewish in the first place?  His Yiddish vocabulary appears to be limited to a single word — “oi” — and, while he insists on sending for a rabbi to preside at his wedding, the bride is Native American.   Perhaps the key is his status as an upstart — brashly courting a “blue blood [sic] Indian maiden” and crassly refusing the offer of a peace pipe in favor of cigarettes.  What chutzpah!  Yet as a manly creature of the frontier, he appeared positioned to counter some negative stereotypes. 
     
    That promise was squandered in a follow-up song  in which our protagonist, Tough Guy Levi, makes a guest appearance.  Al Piantadosi again supplied the score, but this time the words were by Jeff T. Branen.  As far as I can tell, no recording has survived, but the cover for the sheet music shows a caricature of a man with a black beard and huge nasal appendage in an Indian headdress.  The lyrics state in part:  
     
              Cohen got tired of the simple life
              And turned his pawnshop over to his wife….
               [O]whoopska, owhoopska
               Big Chief Dynamite, oi, oi,
               I’m a tough Jew-Indian boy,
              Who’s afraid of the western life?
              What care I for the cowboy’s knife?
              Tough Guy Levi and his bunch,
              I will eat them for my lunch….
     
    Spoiler alert — he’s Big Chief Dynamite because he blows up Tough Guy Levi in the second stanza.
     
    Another specimen from the sheet music collections is almost as offensive.  The chorus of a song from 1907 went:

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  • An Awesome Singer You’ve Probably Never Heard

    Lame DogUncategorized

    Today the Dog is writing less as a wannabe critic than as a fan.  A few years ago, I came across a cover of a song that stopped me dead in my tracks.  Who was this woman?  Some further online rambling led to the recording below, a personal favorite.  If the lyrics sounds suspiciously literary, it’s because they were written by Jack Pendarvis, the author of several collections of short stories.  But the voice and phrasing perfect the mood:

     

    Kelly Hogan was born in 1965 in Atlanta, the daughter of a army helicopter pilot turned cop who modeled himself after the Great Santini.  She describes herself as having been a painfully shy nerd — so shy that the first time she performed publicly was at summer camp after her bunkmates stole her clothes and refused to return them for three days until she broke down and agreed to sing at the end of the season ceremony.
     
    Hogan later joined the band Jody Grind, two of whose members, along with another man, were tragically killed when a drunk driver collided head on with their van . (By happenstance, Hogan was not in the vehicle.)  In the years that followed, she relocated to Chicago and Wisconsin, sang in bars, tended bar, and served as an assistant to cartoonist Lynda Barry.  She also provided backup vocals for a long list of other performers including Mavis Staples and Jakob Dylan.
     
    In 2012, Hogan called in her professional chits and asked artists with whom she had worked over the years to contribute songs to her for a new album.  The result was “I Like to Keep Myself in Pain,” the collection sampled above.
     
    Hogan has said that she “hears melodies in everything” and even harmonizes with factory whistles and vacuum cleaners.  In addition to being talented and creative, she is strong and bold  — the sort of woman who sports a tattoo on her lower back that reads,

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  • Aqua Versus Barbie: The Day “Speech-Zilla” Demolished “Trademark Kong”

    Lame DogPop

    Twenty years ago this month, a lawsuit was filed that resulted in a significant ruling on First Amendment protection for satire, a subject close to the Dog’s heart. The defendants included MCA Records, a music distributor.  And the plaintiff was Mattel, the maker of what is probably the world’s most famous (and infamous) doll:  the Barbie.

     A few weeks earlier, the Danish eurodance band Aqua had released a single entitled “Barbie Girl.”  Almost immediately, it charted at Number 7 in the United States, the fastest rise ever for a new group according to Billboard.  In other countries, including Australia, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom, it reached number one.  Not everyone was pleased; years later, a poll by Rolling Stone Magazine rated it the 11th most annoying song of all time.  But no one was more dismayed than Mattel, which complained that the “adult-oriented lyrics” detracted from their product’s “wholesome image.”
     
    Take a look at the famous Aqua video, which has been viewed over 400 million times.  And keep an eye on what happens to “Barbie” after two minutes and forty seconds:
     

    Mattel’s lawsuit was filed in a federal district court in California and assigned to Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr., who is best remembered for his decision dismissing charges against Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case based on governmental misconduct.  In essence, Mattel alleged that the song had infringed its trademark and confused the public concerning its brand.  To support its argument, it hired an expert to

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  • Esquerita — “A Back Seat to No One”

    Lame DogClassic Rock

    Sometime in the early 1950’s, an obscure singer named Richard Penniman spent the night in a Greyhound Bus Terminal in Macon, Georgia. He was trying to meet someone to have sex with. Among the characters he encountered was “Sister Rosa” who hawked “blessed bread” that was really only “regular old bread that you could buy at the store.” She was accompanied by a musician with enormous hands who ended up back at Penniman’s place and taught him to play piano. Penniman went on to release recordings under the name Little Richard that had such an impact that he has been dubbed “The Architect of Rock and Roll.” In contrast, the fellow he met that night — who later called himself Esquerita — was never commercially successful. But he enjoyed cult status among a small body of devoted fans.

    Esquerita was born Eskew Reeder, Jr., in the mid to late 1930’s (the evidence as to the date is conflicting) and raised in Greenville, South Carolina in an atmosphere permeated by the Baptist Church and its music. He attended Sterling High where, many years earlier, the renown gospel group the Dixie Hummingbirds had originally been founded as “the Sterling High School Quartet.” At some point, Esquerita made the leap from gospel to rock and began wearing a six inch high conk hairdo, along with flashy clothes, rhinestone-studded glasses, jewelry and make up.

    It is difficult to disentangle where Esquerita’s influence on Little Richard ends and Little Richard’s influence on Esquerita begins. But in his 2011 biography of Little Richard, David Kirby wrote that as a “gay, black, flamboyant, gospel-trained and immensely talented singer, songwriter, and pianist,” Esquerita was “the template” from which Little Richard “drew his own image.”

    After Little Richard left the music business to become an evangelist minister, Capitol Records tried marketing Esquerita in the hope of filling the void. A 1959 album was released with linear notes stating: “For the most stomping, all out rock ‘n roll, Esquerita takes a back seat to no one. In fact, he takes no seat at all — he stands crouched and weaving over his piano…. His sensational music, just like everything else about him, is truly the farthest out that man has gone.“

    Capitol also released a series of singles, including this one, which includes the lyrics:

    I’ve been walking all over town, running from door to door.
    Everyone I asked about a job, they give me the answer no.

    Another performer may have sung these lines in a morose or understated manner. But when Esquarita, reaches the word “no” — he nearly shouts it. It feels like a gratuitous slap in the face, but it’s also funny — as if the very indignity of life   (more…)

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