Tag: rockabilly

The Cramps, Tom Waits, Khruangbin album covers

Random record reviews: The Cramps, Tom Waits, Khruangbin

by thedailyrecord, posted in Album review, review

By Joel Francis

The Cramps – Stay Sick!

While mainstream America was reliving the 1950s via sock hops and malt shops in “Happy Days,” the Cramps slid a hand underneath the decade’s poodle skirt to celebrate rockabilly music, monster movies and pin-up girls.

The  Cramps roared into the 1990s with Stay Sick!, a debaucherous offering every bit as good as their first few albums nearly a decade earlier. The band’s musk is evident just by reading the song titles on Stay Sick! If a whiff of “The Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon” and “Journey to the Center of a Girl” don’t get you going, dig their perversion of Bob Seger’s milquetoast “Old Time Rock and Roll” into the infinitely superior “God Damn Rock and Roll.”

This is the music your parents warned you about – and for good reason. If that doesn’t provide enough motivation, there’s a song called “Bikini Girls with Machine Guns” which is every bit as awesome as it sounds. C’mon. You know you want to.

Tom Waits – Small Change

Tom Waits’ fourth album plays like the daydreams of a janitor resigned to cleaning up a strip club as the sun rises and the last customer stumbles out. “Tom Traubert’s Blues” opens the album, a romantic fantasy set against a lush orchestra, borrowing the melody and chorus from “Waltzing Matilda.” Jim Hugart’s upright bass propels the next number, “Step Right Up,” a monologue that dances in the common ground between carnival barkers, beat poetry and TV preachers.

The rest of the album settles in between these two poles. Small Change is largely filled wistful, piano ballads with “Step Right Up,” “Pasties and a G-String” and “The One That Got Away” puncturing the fatigue of the late-night blues. Waits quotes a bit of Casablanca’s “You Must Remember This” in the opening and closing bars of “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart,” illuminating a major influence on the compositions here and the booze-fueled perspective from which Waits was writing.

Waits mined this same fertile territory across the half-dozen albums he released annually in the 1970s, but he never did it better than he did on Small Change.

Khruangbin – Mordechai

Working with vocals seems to please Khruangbin. After building an all-instrumental ouvre, the Texas funk trio released an EP with soul singer Leon Bridges earlier this year. Several months later, they released Mordechai, their third album, replete with singing.

The disembodied vocals on “First Class,” the opening cut, give way to actual lyrics on “Time (You and I),” which recalls Kool and the Gang sans horns. While most songs feature vocals, the singing complements and reinforces the vibe set by the instruments. The upbeat “Pelota” features handclaps and Spanish lyrics delivered with so much gusto it is impossible to listen without moving your body to the rhythm. A couple other high points feature African elements. “Connaissais de Face” incorporates bits of film dialogue alongside African guitar elements and dub rhythm. The relaxing “So We Won’t Forget” floats on a midsummer breeze with its Afro-pop arrangement and chill vocals.

Far from being a gimmick, by the end of Mordechia it becomes clear that the human voice is yet another texture for Khruangbin to play with in their impressive musical arsenal. It will be fun to see where this leads them next.

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Key King Artists

by thedailyrecord, posted in Music history
(Above: The groundbreaking “Working on a Building,” which the Swan Silvertones cut for King Records.)

By Joel Francis
The Daily Record

James Brown is certainly the best-known artist to record for Syd Nathan’s Cincinnati-based label, but King Records had forged a reputation long before Brown emerged. For a quarter century, from 1943 to 1968, King recorded some of the top performers in not only R&B, but gospel, jazz, bluegrass, rockabilly, blues and early rock and roll.

Here are some other King artists worth checking out.

Bill Doggett
Organist Bill Doggett was the biggest-selling instrumentalist on King. He joined the label after leaving Louis Jordan’s band in 1951, and recorded several sides with a trio. When the results weren’t what he’d hoped, Doggett added saxophone and guitar to the lineup and scored big hits with “Ding Dong, “Hammer Head” and “Shindig.” Doggett’s biggest success, though, was the 1956 smash “Honky Tonk.” The record sold 1.5 million copies that year, spent seven months on the chart and won several awards Doggett left King for Warner Bros. in 1960 when King owner Syd Nathan refused to increase Doggett’s royalty rate.

Swan Silvertones
Claude Jeter’s Swan Silvertone’s were the biggest gospel act to record for King. They were only with the label for five years, from 1946 to 1951. The 45 songs cut for King bridged the transition from the traditional barbershop-based style of gospel singing to a more spontaneous, emotional approach. Jeter’s duet with co-lead singer Solomon Womack on “Working on a Building” epitomized the potential of the new method and influenced future stars Al Green, Curtis Mayfield and Sam Cooke. The Slivertone’s later recordings on Specialty and Vee-Jay receive more attention, but the half-decade at King cemented the group’s sound and reputation.

Charlie Feathers
Rockabilly guitarist Charlie Feathers is one of those criminally forgotten musicians whose talent outshines his reputation. Feathers grew up in Mississippi listening to the Grand Ol Opry, but learned guitar from bluesman Junior Kimbrough. Feathers briefly recorded for Sun before coming to King in 1956. After cutting several raw, visceral rockabilly numbers that went nowhere, commercially speaking, Feathers decided to model himself after Elvis Presley. When the sanitized new records also refused to budge, a frustrated Feathers left King. He bounced around from label to label, continuing to perform until his death in 1998. In 2003, director Quentin Tarantino resurrected a couple Feathers songs for his “Kill Bill” films.

Stanley Brothers
Bluegrass legends Carter and Ralph Stanley were already stars when they signed to King in 1958. That fall, the duo released one of the genre’s landmark albums, an untitled recorded nicknamed after its catalog number, King 615. Along with old-timey mountain music, the Brothers recorded gospel and even R&B numbers, putting their stamp on Hank Ballard’s “Finger Poppin’ Time.” The Stanley Brothers reached new audiences during the folk revival of the early ‘60s, and cut their final album for King in 1965. Carter Stanley died the following year, but his Ralph kept the flame alive. In 2006, Ralph Stanley found improbable acclaim for his a cappella reading of “O Death” on the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.

Little Willie John
Soul singer Little Willie John had one of the longer tenures at King, spending one third of his life on the label. Unfortunately, John only lived to 30 and all his success came early. The Detroit native was just 18 when he landed his first big hit, “All Around the World.” In the next few years, John racked up 10 more To 20 R&B hits, including his signature number, “Fever.” A has-been at 25, John struggled with alcohol and drug addiction. He was charged with manslaughter after stabbing a man to death following a concert in Seattle. In 1968, John died in prison.

(Below: “Can’t Hardly Stand It” was one of several great rockabilly songs Charlie Feathers cut for King in the 1950s.)

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Happy Clash-mas Eve

by thedailyrecord, posted in Music history, Song Review

Above: Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl and Little Steven Van Zant do “London Calling” at the Grammys for Joe Strummer.

By Joel Francis

I remember getting the call from my brother-in-law like it happened yesterday. I was sitting in my apartment, it was the night before Christmas Eve, 2002 His words slowly trickled out: “Joe Strummer is dead.” The next day I loaded my CD changer with nothing but Clash and Mescelaros music and played it on shuffle for the entire day. Every Christmas Eve since then has been Clash-mas Eve, with at least a couple hours devoted to celebrating the art of Joe Strummer. To borrow a line from The Hold Steady’s “Constructive Summer,” let’s “raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer” and revisit five of his greatest moments.

“Letsagetabitarockin'” by the 101ers, from “Elgin Avenue Breakdown Revisited”
The 101ers drew more on the bluesy rock of the Rolling Stones and classic American rock and roll than they did on the jagged precursors of punk rock. Formed in 1974, Joe Strummer knew his band was done in 1976 after hearing just five seconds of the Sex Pistols. When the 101ers lone single, “Keys to Your Heart” came out later that year, the group was already over. Having seen the light, Strummer jumped ship to join the Clash, but the 101ers remained a curious footnote of Strummer’s pre-punk powers. In 1981, the group’s few studio and live recordings were cobbled together for release.
“Letsagetabitarockin'” kicks off that album with a shot high-octane rockabilly recorded in 1975 that would become the Stray Cats stock in trade several years later. Stylistically, it’s not much of a leap from this to the music Strummer was making in the Clash. The change in attitude and approach, however, is huge.

“1977” by the Clash, from “Super Black Market Clash”
Strummer eviscerates his former life as a pub rocker and skewers rock’s sacred cows with his cry of “no Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones” on the chorus of “1977.” An early calling card for the band, it appeared on the b-side of their first single and helped establish them as the new guard of rock and roll.
Written by Strummer and Clash guitarist Mick Jones, the two packed a lot into their 99 seconds. In addition to denouncing the previous generation’s music, they draw on the Rastafarian prediction of July 7, 1977 bringing chaos and tip a hat to George Orwell’s novel “1984” by counting up to that year before ending abruptly.

“Brand New Cadillac” by the Clash, from “London Calling”
“Letsagetabitarockin'” and “Brand New Cadillac” are both rockabilly songs, but the similarity pretty much ends there. Strummer not only changed his surrounding musicians, his voice has transformed. His singing has the edge of a switchblade knife and you can hear his sneer as he angrily spits likes like “Jesus Christ, where’d you get that Cadillac?”
That line wasn’t in the 1958 version of “Brand New Cadillac” written and recorded by Vince Taylor and his Playboys. Taylor’s version was menacing in its own right back then, but he sounds less inclined to track his woman down. Strummer, on the other hand, is ready to do more than slash her tires.

“Magnificent Seven” by the Clash, from “Sandinista!”
Rap music wasn’t much older than punk when the Clash cut this track in 1981. Strummer throws stream-of-conscious lyrics over a bass loop composed not by Clash bass player Paul Simonon, but Norman Watt-Roy from the Blockheads. The arrangement over the loop is strongly influenced by reggae and dub, two of the cornerstones of the Clash’s sound.
The result, though, was unlike anything recorded up to that time. Preceding Blondie’s “Rapture” by six months, this was white rock’s first attempt to write a rap song.
Strummer delivers his story about a good working boy with his typical swagger, but throws a curveball in the third verse – the work isn’t to make ends meet, but to buy all the junk he sees advertised on TV. Emboldened by his anti-consumerist diatribe, Strummer tosses Ghandi, Karl Marx and Richard Nixon into the final verse before musing who’s better known, Plato the Greek or Rin Tin Tin.

“Straight To Hell (live)” by the Clash, from “From Here To Eternity: Live”
Recorded live at The Orpheum in Boston on the Combat Rock tour, the band stretches this reading of “Straight To Hell” more than three minutes longer than its LP run time. Given more space, the song becomes even more moody. Strummer wallows in the beat as he damns those who mistreat immigrants by closing steel mills or burning their communities.
The deliberately slow tempo shows how much the Clash have grown since their rapid-fire debut just five years earlier. The arrangement again echoes strongly of reggae and dub elements and was borrowed by M.I.A. for her hit “Paper Planes.”
The defining moment comes at the end when Strummer yells at the crowd to “sing in tune, you bastards.” For a man who always wore his emotions on his sleeve, it doesn’t get more heartfelt than this.