If I haven't made this clear enough already, a lot of the stuff on this blog is way past my era, so while I love songs that tell me to do the watussi etc., I wouldn't know a watussi if I saw it. I spent a lot of time scrutinizing details of the surfer's stomp to no avail, I need a visual representation.
My friend's dad (and music enthusiast) reminded me that this is why youtube exists
but even then there's a lot of misinformation with lots of little girls dancing the mashed potato they saw in the Hairspray movie
The Mashed Potato is pretty basic (and DeeDee Sharp provided a video as well, though there are backup dancers that might confuse as to what the dance really is). But what about The Jerk? The Watussi? The Surfer's Stomp?
James Brown tries to show off a few, but ends up really just showing off with no room for education
What I'm saying here is that if you know this stuff and want to go stick it on youtube, you've done us all a service and you might achieve internet celebrity status! I know, that may not sound horribly attractive, but if you're not going to do it, who will?
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If you demand more complicated dances than these provide, I came across something the other day that's pretty cool. A local thrift store was selling 45s in little plastic grab bags, 5 for 5. You could only see what was on the outside, but I noticed a Champs single I didn't have on one side, so I bought it. Turns out San Juan \ Jalisco is a pretty boring single from later in their career, turning a little more Latin than rock & roll with less-than-exciting results. It's since been put on one of their compilations, so here's that version The Champs - San Juan
But more excitingly, it came with somebody's instructions for what looks like a pretty complicated dance. I doubt any of you would go through the effort of performing this, but it's a cool little artifact.
click for the readable version (I'll get a scanner one day)
Today's post is stupid: a semi-sci-fi sample-ridden comedy track from Bill Buchanan & Bob Ancell. This isn't a whole lot different than his earlier "Flying Saucer"
but anything on a label called Flying Saucer records is welcome here in my book. I'll admit, it's genuinely funny too.
Both sides have been spliced together because it makes more sense that way.
So I've been sorta hinting at how I want to break into Gospel a bit. I haven't really ever considered myself Christian except by birth as it clashed with my preteen love of dinosaurs, but I find it hard to take issue with the passionate hollerin' that comes out of (black) gospel music.
So for a class I decided to a do a presentation on it for my final project. I'm not exactly an expert now, but I found some pretty stomp-worthy stuff. And I'm about to give you a real quick tour. Most of this stuff is actually pretty basic and blogged about in plenty of places, but I'm willing to guess that a lot of y'all are just as dumb as I was about this stuff. I'm not attempting a full-on history lesson here, just sharing some stuff that y'all might like.
Booker records = hot: It was mostly a one-man operation, started out as rhythm and blues but went gospel after just a few. I've got a pretty good 45 of normal semi-musical sermoning off there but the real hot thing is Rev. Charlie Jackson. Think male Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I know, that's no more appealing than female SRT, but more Tharpe in any form is welcome in my book.
Apparently learned guitar from a cousin growing up in Alabama. His mom told him he can't play blues during the week and church music on the weekends, and in a move so un-rock&roll it's rock & roll, he listened to his mother, played only religious music and became a minister. Later he went to Louisiana and headed up a church in Amite LA.
So while he was hangin' out over there he met Elder Utah Smith. Utah's only barely Louisiana related, as he ran around touring all over the country and eventually ran his whole operation out of New Jersey. But who cares, because again Think Male Sister Rosetta Tharpe
This song is sort of his theme song because he would perform with two big ol' wings on his back. And if you couldn't tell, he liked to play LOUD. So when he would come around to middle-a-nowhere towns with no power, he would plug his amp into a car battery and perform that way.
So Mahalia Jackson is probably one of the first names you'll hear of in gospel, so I'm not going to bother finding her funkiest track. But I will prove to you that she's funky, despite how clean people try to keep her image. According to a book I was reading, she started up a fried chicken chain in competition to KFC (pure New Orleans) and was quoted saying "The Colonal says his chicken is finger lickin' good... well I think mine is tongue-lickin' good". Personally, this new light on the New Orleans gospel queen got her records back on my platter lickety-split.
And in case you've never heard of her, there's another New Orleans queen of soul.
Really, gospel is a strange genre to follow, as a lot of good albums were very locally circulated, often just among church members, and there's no real cohesive history (a good thing I think, since most rock&roll histories are incomplete and biased (though it would impossible to tell it right)). But what this means is that blind purchases really aren't such a bad thing. One such blind purchase that paid off is this weirdo.
So while this album is purchaseable purely by diner rules (i.e. if it looks that ugly, the food/album must be great), it's also worth noting the names Milton Battiste, Dejean's Olympia Brass Band, and Frank Minyard MD. (coroner!). Unfortunately, in the few weeks that I've had this album I've been irresponsible and there's a big old scratch on Frank Minyard's part and a few others, so I'll hold off on the whole album, but the best two songs are doin' fine. Jesus What A Wonderful Child (I Found Out It Was) the Holy Ghost This is sitting in a strange middle ground between foot-stompin' big choral gospel, second-line music, and occasionally funk. It's fun.
I could throw a few more in there but this is already one of my longer posts and at the rate I've been making new posts I need to save material. And don't worry, I'll give you some straight rock & roll before I drop another gospel on ya. And if you want more right now, here's a youtube playlist I hastily made a few weeks ago. Further recommendations are always ok, and hopefully I'll clean this up post-July 4th.
Saw this in Domino Sound, which rarely carries anything surfy save for a Link Wray album or two. I looked at the tracklisting and thought "could it be THAT Lively Ones? Surf Rider Lively Ones?" all signs point to yes, the classic surf instro band switched gears for their last LP and played vocal soul/BUGALU covers (though at 1967, the surf craze is mostly over and that scene is just getting started, so good on 'em!)
And it ain't half bad! Oddly enough, the highlight here are the vocals, which at times remind me (very vaguely) of The Monks. Unfortunately, I realized during the ripping process that if you speed it up just a little bit, it goes from good soul album to great. However, the little orange-lit dots on the turntable confirmed that what you're hearing is more or less the correct speed.
Highlights here are some of the originals: "She Moved Me" and the sole instrumental "We Got A Thing That's In The Groove", but both sides are pretty great and it's consistent throughout.
We've got a simple one for you. If you want to know about Ed Townsend, it's not hard but I haven't seen much about him in this orchestral form. Well, what you get is a great dancing number with Ed only chiming in for hype purposes. The B-side had a few dings on it and would skip, so I'm keeping it off (it was more or less an more instrumental version of this mostly instrumental song). But as you'll see, it's a pretty cool song and not nearly as lovey dovey as the stuff he's recognized for writing.
I post Storm Surge of Reverb updates on my myspace, surfguitar101.com, facebook and here. While it doesn't really hurt the site in the sense that it makes it oh so much more googleable, I feel bad when half of these are radio show posts. Do people enjoy seeing these playlists or should I stick with the real posts? By the way, I've got at least two more of those comin' up.
Estrume'n'tal - vacalgada Impala - The Scratch Los Banditos - Kalaschnikow Fifty Foot Combo - Dimitrius Husky & The Sandmen - Malibu Run Bitch Boys - The Breeze & I
Ramblin' Ambassadors - Frank Slide Song Ramblin' Ambassadors - Hangin' tree The Ultras - Rocket Boy Sandy Nelson - And Then There Were Drums The Ventures - Exploration In Terror
Messer Chups - Mr. Hyde & Mr. Hyde The Emporers - The Breeze & I Pandoras - Haunted Beach Party Man...or Astroman? - Transmission from Venus El Ray - Jack the Samurai New Dimensions - Avalanche
Frantics - Oh yeah Gee-Cees - Buzzsaw Twist Johnny Guitar - Mon Du Dow The New Dimensions - Wild Wave (Didn't mean to play that) The Pagents - Big Daddy Reeker - Don't Call Me Flyface
Crimson Ghosts - Where Eagles Dare Archers - Hybrid Moments The Staggers - Eagles Surf Tremolo Beer Gut - OK Boys Hangee V - Batman (the 4 of us) Torquays - Pit Stop
The Panasonics - Kaiser Pan The Bedwells - Karate Again Tornadoes - Moon Dawg Johnny Devlin - Red River Rock Routers - Washington and Lee Swing Scramblers - Mister Hot Rod
Lively Ones - We Got A Thing In The Groove Cavernarios - El Bravo Surfites - Mercurian Surf Stomp Johnny & The Shamen - Dick Tracy Phantom Surfers - Buy High, Sell Low A-Bones - The Fez Man Walks
The Atlantics - The Boys Sea Lions - Hevenu Shalom Alechem Link Wray - Hold It Treble Spankers - The Model
I need help y'all. As I keep returning to my Sister Rosetta Tharpe album I start to feel like I want more. While I'm still investigating in my favorite manner: raiding thrift stores and buying interesting 45s, nowadays we've got blogs like this one to open us up to this sort of thing.
However, I've yet to find a good blog full of old foot-stomping Gospel. I'm afraid to delve into the whole genre, since I know a lot of it these days has a cheesy new-age production that I can't stand. I'm not much of a christian... I follow Rock &Roll, but given the amount of surf on here you could guess that lyrics don't matter much. This stuff has OOMPH though, andI'd appreciate it if somebody could point me and the rest of RRHHWW readers to a good resource for more of this sort of stuff.
Anyway, my small amount of headway into this has shown me one certain thing: this HSE label is hot. Thankfully, the Stepfather of Soul blog has already done the legwork of dredging up the information on the label, and he's got some pretty choice comments helping him out.
So what do I know about this particular 45? Zip! I know that I've Got It In My Walk is the better of the two, but not by a whole lot, and "I see the blood" makes up for it with its decidedly metal name.
The music made available on this blog has been posted in hopes of helping the popuarity of culture that I enjoy and in almost all cases I try to post things that are out of print. If your music is featured here and don't like it, please contact me and I will remove it immediately. If you do like it, please drop some knowledge because I tend to be missing some.
