Category: Music

Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘Strange’ Songs

In three categories:  Rock, Religion, Romanticism.

Cream, Strange Brew
Doors, People are Strange
Doors, Strange Days
Mickey and Sylvia, Love is Strange

Stanley Bros., Rank Strangers
Emmy Lou Harris, Wayfaring Stranger

Frank Sinatra, Strangers in the Night  To be is to do (Socrates).  To do is to be (Sartre). Do be do be do (Sinatra).
Barbara Lewis, Hello Stranger
Acker Bilk, Stranger on the Shore

Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘Green’ Songs

I was going to cover 'strange' songs tonight, but then I remembered it is St. Patrick's Day. 

Remember The New Christy Minstrels?  Here is Barry Maguire belting out their 1963 hit,
Green, Green."  It was sanitized, well-scrubbed hootenany stuff like this that caused a lot of my generation to pick up guitars and then find our way back to the more authentic material.  Check out this video of a live performance at an Arizona university.  This was before the '60s became the '60s. But by '65 the cultural as opposed to the calendrical  '60s had arrived with a vengeance and the same Barry Maguire came out with The Eve of Destruction.  Topical songs and social protest came to displace songs about Tom Dooley and workin' on the railroad . . . .

Joan Baez, Green, Green Grass of Home.  Red Foley does a great job with this 'green' song.

Hoyt Axton, Greenback Dollar. Here is the Kingston Trio's cleaned-up collegiate version.  Fretkillr's  killer amateur version is modelled on Hoyt Axton's.

Hoyt Axton, Greensleeves

Jim Lowe, Green Door, 1956.

Roy Buchanan, Green Onions.  A guitar-slinger's version.

Finally, a song about the lean green.

And now to bed.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Guns and Gun Violence

Jr. Walker and the All Stars, Shotgun
Beatles, Revolver (the whole album!)
Hoyt Axton, Pistol Packin' Mama.  Al Dexter wrote the song and had a hit with it in '43.
Lloyd Price, Stagger Lee, 1959.  "Stagger Lee went home and got his .44 . . ."  Mississippi John Hurt's version.
The Leaves, Hey Joe.  "Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?"
Gene Pitney, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962
Johnny Western, The Ballad of Palladin.  Theme song of "Have Gun Will Travel." Duane Eddy's cheesy version.
Tom Waits, Sixteen Shells from a Thirty-Aught Six
Phil Ochs, The Men Behind the Guns
Joan Baez, Rock Salt and Nails.  "If the ladies was squirrels with high bushy tails/I'd fill up my shotgun with rock salt and nails."
No, I will not link to Sonny and Cher's "Bang, Bang"!

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Superstition

Stevie Ray Vaughan, Superstition
Howlin' Wolf, I Ain't Superstitious.  "Well, I ain't superstitious, but a black cat just crossed my trail."
Elvis Presley, Good Luck Charm
Leon Redbone, When You Wish Upon a Star
Blind Lemon Jefferson, Rabbit Foot Blues, 1926
Screamin' Jay Hawkins, I Put a Spell on You.  Don't miss this one!
Albert King, Born Under a Bad Sign
Eagles, Witchy Woman
Santana, Black Magic Woman
Lovin' Spoonful, Do You Believe in Magic?
Marty Robbins, Devil Woman
Mitch Ryder, Devil with the Blue Dress
Elvis Presley, Devil in Disguise

That makes 13! Time to pack it in.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Underplayed/Forgotten Oldies

I'll reckon you haven't heard one of these in a righteous spell:

Betty Everett, You're No Good, 1963.  More soulful than the 1975 Linda Ronstadt version.
The Ikettes, I'm Blue, 1962.
Lee Dorsey, Ya Ya, 1961.  Simplicity itself. Three chords. I-IV-V progression. No bridge.
Paul Anka, A Steel Guitar and a Glass of Wine, 1962.
Carole King, Crying in the Rain, 1963.  The earnest girl-feeling of young Carole makes it better than the Everly Bros.' more polished and better executed version.   
Don Gibson, Sea of a Heartbreak.  A crossover hit from 1961.  It's a crime for the oldies stations to ignore this great song.
Ketty Lester, Love Letters, 1961.  Gets some play, but not enough.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Gerry Rafferty

The Guardian obituary has him born on 16 April 1947 and dead on 4 January 2011.  I recall his smash Baker Street from the far-off and fabulous summer of 1978.  It came over the car radio in my quondam girl friend's Toyota  many times as we drove from Boston, Mass to Dayton, O to secure me an apartment there.  I hated leaving the Athens of America for the dreary Midwest, but I had landed a tenure-track job and one goes where the jobs are.  In retrospect, I was extremely lucky to get that job.  Was I the best of the 100 people who applied for it?  Not even I believe that.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Memorable Instrumentals from the ’60s

Jorma Kaukonen's Embryonic Journey from The Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow LP, 1967.

Bent Fabric, Alley Cat, 1962.

The Village Stompers, Washington Square, 1963.

Kenny Ball, Midnight in Moscow, 1962.

David Rose, The Stripper, 1962.

Acker Bilk, Stranger on the Shore, 1962.

Dick Dale and the Deltones, Misirlou, 1963. If surf music had a father, Dick Dale was the man.

The Chantays, Pipeline, 1963. A nice college boy effort, but the definitive version is the Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughan cover.

Floyd Cramer, Last Date, 1960.

Michael Bloomfield, Albert's Shuffle, 1968.