WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Li'l Cap'n Travis - Natural Fool

Without a doubt, Natural Fool by Li'l Cap'n Travis of Austin, Texas is the most addictive music video I've seen in years, maybe ever.  The song's alluring melody is fortified by irresistible vocal harmonies, a swirling organ and the perfect combination of country and psychedelic pop influences. 

And the video footage (apparently circa 1968 or so) of kids tooling around on bikes while wearing crazy ape masks is positively surreal.  I've been trying to figure out where the hell it could possibly have come from, but I have no clue.   Anyone want to fill me in?

Li'l Cap'n Travis will be appearing at the Hole In The Wall in Austin on July 17.

Marijuana, The Devil Flower (MP3s)

So here are a few country anti-marijuana tunes that I've been enjoying lately.  Any one of them would likely scare a reasonable person into completely forsaking the evil dope for the rest of his life. 

In fact, most narcotics experts attribute the total demise of recreational drug consumption to the effectiveness of songs like these.  Well, that and Dragnet.  OK, so maybe I'm exaggerating and songs like these have not, in fact, wiped out drug use.  They're still pretty damn entertaining, hysteria and all.

Johnny Price  -  Marijuana, The Devil's Flower  (2:40)

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Mr. Sunshine & His Guitar Pickers  -  Marijuana, The Devil's Flower  (2:43)

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Buck Jones  -  A Box Of Grass  (3:09)

Before departing, I need to once again acknowledge Mark Lee Allen, who generously set me up with the MP3 of A Box Of Grass, though I actually harvested the accompanying label photo from a YouTube user by the name of StaatsratsTube.  And I found the Mr. Sunshine tune over on a YouTube channel run by someone going by the name of bourbonneat.   So big thanks go out to all of them.

The Rapid City Flood of 1972 (MP3)

Earle Sutton  -  The Rapid City Flood  (2:56)

Next week will mark the 38th anniversary of the deadly flood that tore through Rapid City, South Dakota on June 9 and 10, 1972.  Like the recent flooding that pulverized Tennessee, the Rapid City flood left incredible property damage in its wake.  Unlike Tennessee however, where, fortunately, only a small handful of people died, the Rapid City flood claimed a horrifying 238 lives.

In 2007, the Rapid City Public Library launched a digital archive that collects survivors' stories, photographs, and news accounts of the flood and its aftermath.

Keep America Beautiful, Get A Haircut! Part Four

Above:  Li'l Abner creator Al Capp takes aim at the counterculture in a 1968 comic.

Here are a few tunes documenting the toxic levels of contentiousness that characterized relations between the youth movement and much of middle America in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

There are are couple of tunes that don't strictly adhere to the hippie hater formula though.  Jay Mesco's Generation Gap tells the story of a father who is appalled by his son's counterculture tendencies but reads a book called How To Build A Bridge Across The Generation Gap and promptly grows a beard and begins wearing striped flairs in a desperate attempt to fit in.  And in Charlie Daniels' first person Uneasy Rider (1973), it's Charlie himself who is picked on by intolerant rednecks.

Tom Harvey  -  It's The Shape The World's In  (2:27)

Merv Shiner  -  Protest  (2:51)

Leon Womack  -  Far Left  (2:06)

Jay Mesco  -  The Generation Gap  (2:27)

Charlie Daniels  -  Uneasy Rider  (5:18)

             

Previous Beware Of The Blog dispatches on this topic can be found at the following links:  KABGAH Pt 1, KABGAH Pt 2, KABGAH Pt 3 and Santa's A Hippie.

The Ballad Of Candy Barr (MP3)

        
George McCoy & The Balladeers  -  The Ballad Of Candy Barr  (2:30)

Born Juanita Dale Slusher in 1935 in Edna, Texas, Candy Barr skyrocketed to fame in the 1950s on the Dallas burlesque scene.  She suffered through a miserable childhood (her mom died when she was 9 and her dad remarried a cruel hag), left home after the ninth grade and made a beeline for the bright lights of Dallas.  Shortly after arriving, Juanita was strong-armed into appearing in Smart Aleck (aka Smart Alec) an early stag film about a motel room romp with a sleazy traveling salesman that did gang-buster business on the bachelor party circuit of the day.

In Dallas, she worked in various bars as a cocktail waitress and a cigarette girl before landing a job as an stripper at Abe Weinstein's Colony Club, where she and Abe cooked up the Candy Barr handle.  Candy adopted a tantalizing cowgirl costume consisting of a western hat, cowboy boots, and a pair of six-shooters holstered on her hips and large crowds flocked to the nightspot to witness her riveting bump and grind routine.  The Colony Club was situated just two doors down from Jack Ruby's Carousel Club.  Candy and Jack struck up a friendship and there are those who believe that she was privy to some inside details about Ruby and his decision to kill Lee Harvey Oswald in November 1963.  Incidentally, Abe Weinstein is the "old Uncle Abe" mentioned in the lyrics of The Ballad Of Candy Barr.   

In January 1956, she made headlines and inspired the disc above when she shot her ex-husband (number 2 of 4) after he showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night, drunk and belligerent, and threatened to beat her.  She was arrested for the shooting, but never indicted.  In 1957, Candy again ran afoul of the law when she was busted for possession of a small quantity of marijuana, less than an ounce.  Since we're talking about a drug offense involving a notorious stripper in Texas in the 1950s, this was serious business: she was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison, though she was released after only three.  In 1968, she was issued a pardon by Texas governor John Connally.

If you'd care to read a lengthy profile of Candy Barr, I recommend this one, written by Gary Cartwright and published by Texas Monthly in December, 1976.  Also well worth your time is Josh Alan Friedman's article on Jack Ruby from Lowest Common Denominator, the former house organ of WFMU.  Candy passed away in 2005.

After the jump: one more Candy Barr photo.  It probably does not fall into the NSFW category, but since there are pasties involved.....

Skunk Ape (MP3)

    

Donny Lee  -  Skunk Ape  (3:24)    

According to true believers, the Skunk Ape is a regional variation of Bigfoot that makes its home in Florida, mostly in and around the Everglades.  Like Bigfoot, the mysterious Skunk Ape has rarely been spotted and one has never been captured.  The good folks at the National Park Service contend that the evasive creature exists only as a local myth.

But it's a myth embraced by a large swath of people and one that has worked its way into a wide variety of cultural artifacts like a Facebook group, annual festivals, coins, t-shirts and web sites too numerous to list individually.  And, of course, I should probably mention the Donny Lee 45rpm recording of Skunk Ape, which is posted above.

As you might imagine, confirmed Skunk Ape sightings are few and far between. 

If you really want to see a Skunk Ape, by far your best bet is to check out Stomp! Shout! Scream!, a contagiously fun beach party rock and roll monster movie set in 1966.  Written and directed by Jay Wade Edwards, the 2005 film depicts the adventures of The Violas, an all girl band of garage rockers whose van breaks down in a small Florida town where the Skunk Ape has been wreaking havoc.  Everyone involved seems to have a deep and genuine affection for the classic beach party flicks of the 1960s and the movie boasts more heart and soul than a decade's worth of big budget blockbusters.  And it surely doesn't hurt that it's accompanied by a stellar soundtrack  with songs by the Fleshtones, Catfight!, the Woggles, the Penetrators, the Hate Bombs, Johnny Knox & Hi Test, Tiger! Tiger!, the Vendettas, the Clutters, and the Evidents.

It's probably not a bad idea to mention that a distributor has retitled the film Monster Beach Party, which is how it's listed on Amazon and Netflix. Below are a few images I harvested from the movie's Flickr site.  On the right is director Edwards.  Don't let that photo fool you, though.  He doesn't play the Skunk Ape in the movie.  That role went to Ned Hastings.

       

Burn Your Bra Baby (MP3s)

   

Benny Johnson  -  Burn Your Bra Baby  (2:41)

Alex Houston and Elmer  -  Burn Your Bra Baby  (1:55)

Ever heard of a woman named Cathy O'Brien? Strap your seat belt, this is about to get exceedingly weird.

She alleges that she was an incest victim and CIA mind control operative "sold" by her father to Senator Robert Byrd and sexually abused and raped by Byrd, Gerald Ford, George Bush Sr., Dick Cheney, Bill Bennett, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and a myriad of other government officials of both political parties that were united by their desire to bring about the New World Order. 

O'Brien also claims that for a period of time in the 1970s and 80s, she was sent (by Byrd) to Nashville, where she was put under the control of Alex Houston, a country music hypnotist and ventriloquist who used her as cover while he smuggled cocaine for Uncle Sam.  O'Brien is silent on the question of whether Elmer the dummy played any role in the shocking depredations that transpired.

Here's a link to a transcript of a 1996 speech in which O'Brien goes into great detail about the disturbing events she says she witnessed on a daily basis during those years.  If you're left hungering for more information, don't worry, that's just the tip of the iceberg.  There's plenty more information in O'Brien's tell-all book Trance: Formation of America. 

Many thanks to Mark Lee Allen for fixing me up with the Benny Johnson MP3 and label scan.

PS - I'd love to know the story behind the fact that a "B. Butler" is the co-author of both these songs....

Frank Sutton On His Day Off

     

As a nod to the beginning of the 2010 Major League Baseball season, here's the best Frank Sutton photo ever.

He's seen here on his day off, dropping by the L.A. Dodgers' locker room for a visit where he encounters Jim Nabors lookalike Claude Osteen and promptly begins berating him.  More Sutton-o-bilia can be found on an earlier BOTB post over here.

Troubled Troubadours

Here's some good news for discriminating country music fans.  The fine folks at the Omni Recording Corporation have just released Troubled Troubadours, an extraordinary reissue compilation that concentrates almost exclusively on country songs from the deeply weird side of the tracks.  Topics include execution, murder, abortion, a pregnant woman's suicide, war and assassination.  And that's just the first four or five songs!

Most of the 27 songs here date from the late 1960s or early 70s and the changing times are reflected in many of the selections in one way or another.  A prime example is Henson Cargill's Daddy, What's A Tree? which focuses on a bleak future in the aftermath of an environmental apocalypse.  But that's practically a lighthearted romp next to Are They Gonna Shoot God? by Mark Slade.  And there are some fine songs about murder (Justin Tubb's The River Road Mystery), car crashes (Trooper Jim Foster's Four Chrome Wheels), the nut house (Dolly Parton's Daddy Come And Get Me) and the ravages of war (Arlene Harden's Congratulations You Sure Made A Man Out Of Him).

It's not all relentlessly depressing, though.  Two obscure Homer & Jethro tracks are present, and so is Autry Inman's loopy anti-hippie/protester anthem The Ballad Of Two Brothers.  Also on the menu are songs by Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Jr., Porter Wagoner, Stonewall Jackson, and Roger Miller among others.  And the package comes with a nifty booklet full of rare period photos, label shots and illuminating liner notes.

The folks at Omni have spent the last few years assembling a pretty impressive track record with their reissues and compilations which have included two separate Porter Wagoner discs, one of which (The Rubber Room) collected most of Porter's oddest sides.  Other worthwhile projects have included collections by Johnny Paycheck (from his formative years with the Little Darlin' label), Dee Mullins, the Stonemans (3 LPs on a single cd!), John D. Loudermilk, Jimmy Driftwood and a two-disc retrospective on the Plantation label.  While most labels strive to avoid soiling their rosters with collections like these, Omni, thankfully, is one of a handful of outfits that forges ahead with conviction.

Here's a sample track from Troubled Troubadours, one that's been a long-time favorite at my house.  In 1971, Marty Robbins wrote and recorded The Chair, a hauntingly grim first person account of a prisoner's trip to the electric chair and the terrible jolts he feels when they throw the switch.  Perhaps the most amazing thing about this macabre tale is that it somehow made it all the way to #7 on Billboard's chart of Country Singles!

Marty Robbins  -  The Chair  (4:16, MP3)

We Need A Lot More Jesus And A Lot Less Rock And Roll (MP3s)

In about 1960 or so, Wayne Raney, a veteran harmonica player from Wolf Bayou, Arkansas, took a look around and concluded that the world was in pretty pathetic condition.  Rather than simply sit back and complain, however, Raney proceeded to write a song detailing his plan for getting things back on the right track. The record came out on Nashville's Starday label.

The song, We Need A Lot More Jesus (And A Lot Less Rock And Roll), was a catalog of modern ills that came with a decidedly religious recipe for correction.  Writer Colin Escott called it "gloriously anthemic" and I really can't add much to that.

It's almost too bad the song came out when it did, though; had it been written a decade later, Raney almost certainly would have worked up a verse condemning the hippie movement.

So here are the 11 versions I've unearthed.  Are there are others?  Almost certainly there are.  If you know any I'm missing, feel free leave a comment so I can continue the quest. 

No doubt, several of these recordings were made in completely in earnest, while others were made with tongue in cheek.  All of them are enjoyable, though.

Wayne Raney & The Raney Family   (2:16)  

Cowboy Copas  (2:07)

Sunshine Boys   (2:02)

Skeeter Davis   (2:23)

Gospel Quartet   (1:29)

Greenbriar Boys   (2:07)

Larry Donn   (2:14)

Dick Monda   (2:01)

The Gas Company   (2:01)

Linda Ronstadt   (2:28)

Nate Gibson & The Gashouse Gang   (1:58)   Nate's version, released in 2007 on his All The Way Home CD, is the most recent one here.  Gibson is a budding musicologist and the author of a forthcoming book that will likely be a mandatory addition to your library:  The Starday Story - The House That Country Music Built, which University Press Of Mississippi will publish a little later this year. 

                

Angels From The Opry (MP3s)

       

March 5th will mark the 47th anniversary of the plane crash that took the lives of Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins.

Returning to Nashville from Kansas City where they'd participated in a benefit for the survivors of a recently expired Kansas City DJ named Cactus Jack Call, the stars were heading east aboard a Piper Comanche four-seater.  In the pilot seat was Randy Hughes, Patsy Cline's manager and Cowboy Copas' son-in-law.   Shortly after 6PM, the aircraft  went down after being pummeled by high winds and powerful storms.  The crash site (a marker was finally erected in 1996) is just outside Camden, Tennessee - about 90 miles west of Nashville.

WFMU's Radio Thrift Shop proprietress Laura Cantrell visited the site of the crash and recounted the experience for Vanity Fair, in a piece published last year about this time.

Today, we'll commemorate the three fallen stars with a trio of mournful and tear-inducing tribute records.

Rusty Adams  -  Angels From The Opry  (2:55)

Dick Heil  -  Three Country Stars  (3:08)

Sammy Masters  -  On Tour In Heaven  (3:08)

Bonus:  Rusty Adams went whole hog; both sides of his record pay tribute to the deceased Grand Ole Opry stars.  Dateline Disaster gets downright weird, with a DJ explaining the spooky events he experienced in the broadcast booth when he learned of the disaster in the midst of an air shift. 

Rusty Adams  -  Dateline Disaster  (3:59)

The Ballad Of The Walking Postman (MP3)

    
The Ballad Of The Walking Postman (The Freedom Walk Of William L. Moore)  (2:32)

Today's musical selection tells the story of Bill Moore, a white civil rights protester from Baltimore who was murdered in rural Alabama in April 1963 while on a one man Freedom Walk.  He was killed on the way from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi where he planned to hand deliver to governor Ross Barnett a letter imploring him to accept racial equality and integration. 

On his walk, Moore promoted his agenda by wearing sandwich board type signs reading "Equal Rights For All - Mississippi Or Bust" and "End Segregation In America - Eat At Joe's Both Black & White."

That alone would have been provocative enough to warrant concern for his safety.  But Moore, a committed atheist, also pushed a cart displaying a "wanted" poster adorned with a sketch of Jesus that was captioned "Jesus Christ - Wanted for sedition, criminal anarchy, vagrancy, and conspiring to overthrow the established government."

Moore had been warned of the danger of undertaking the march by himself while carrying such signs through small towns across the deep South, but he was undeterred.   On the third day of his journey, his dead body was found along the side of the road about an hour northeast of Birmingham.  He'd been shot twice in the head.  An arrest was made, but the grand jury neglected to issue an indictment so no one was ever convicted. 

The Ballad Of The Walking Postman was written and produced by Buck Ram, a noted songwriter, arranger and producer who was also the manager of the Platters, for whom he'd written such huge hits as Only You (And You Alone), The Great Pretender, and Magic Touch.

In April 2008, a quartet of activists paid tribute to Moore by completing his march.  They walked the 300 miles from Reece City, Alabama all the way to Jackson to deliver a copy of Moore's letter to the Mississippi governor.  Well, that was the plan, anyway.  When the marchers arrived, the governor, citing a scheduling conflict, was not on hand to accept the letter.

High Heels But No Soul (MP3s)

 
Lonzo & Oscar  -  High Heels  (3:07)

Billy Brown  (The Country Gentleman)  -  High Heels But No Soul  (2:49)

Paul Harper And His Westerners  -  High Heels And No Soul  (2:53)

       

The Richmond (Indiana) Explosion (MP3)

Unconnected historical events in Richmond, Indiana being discussed on Beware Of The Blog for the second consecutive day?  Incredibly, yes.

Cecil Pigott  -  The Richmond Explosion   (2:46)

On Saturday afternoon April 6, 1968 Richmond, Indiana was hammered by a natural gas explosion caused by faulty transmission lines directly beneath the heart of downtown.   The extensive damage was then intensified when the resulting fire reached gunpowder stored beneath a sporting goods store, causing a second explosion.  

Twenty buildings were condemned in the aftermath of the devastation, which took 41 lives and injured over 100 people.  

On the 40th anniversary of the tragedy, a documentary film called 1:47 (the time of the first explosion) was released to tell the story of what the town and its citizens experienced that day.  Additional documentation and photography of the event can be found in Esther Kellner's book Death In A Sunny Street, published shortly after the events took place.  The book is long out of print, but the entire volume has been digitized and can be perused at your convenience.

And for another topical song of tragedy from the history-minded Cecil Pigott, check out the other side of this record, which is about the collapse of the Silver Bridge.

The Hyden Miner's Tragedy (MP3s)

Forty years ago today, Richard Nixon signed into law new federal safety guidelines enacted in an effort to make coal mining a bit less lethal.  The Federal Coal Mine Health And Safety Act was passed in the aftermath of a 1968 coal mine explosion in Farmington, West Virginia that took 78 lives. 

For the first time, the government set standards for maintaining equipment and supplying fresh air to miners.  In addition, underground mines were required to be inspected four times per year and all safety violations triggered mandatory fines.

So far, so good.  Unfortunately, on December 30, 1970, exactly one year after the new legislation passed, tragedy struck again in the form of an explosion at the Hurricane Creek mine, 5 miles outside Hyden, Kentucky.

J. D. Jarvis  -  The Hyden Miner's Tragedy  (2:36)

J. D. Jarvis  -  Don't Go To The Mines Today  (1:46)

The Conway Twitty Tribute Pistol (MP3s)

Hey, did you know you can buy a Colt .45 Conway Twitty Tribute Pistol if you happen to have an extra two grand lying around?

Hell, if you collect firearms you should probably go ahead and make the purchase and put it right next to your George Jones Tribute Rifle.  Both these firearms come from a Second Amendment-loving outfit known as America Remembers, headquartered in Ashland, Virginia.  Poking around their website, I see their tributes go far beyond Conway Twitty and George Jones.  They've also issued scores of other firearms commemorating figures such as Elvis, Melvin Purvis, John Dillinger, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, the Navajo Code Talkers, and even Travis Tritt! 

If you'd prefer to remember Conway Twitty for his talents as a singer and songwriter, here are a few MP3s to help you out.  All were written by Twitty, with the exception of Pop A Top, which was composed by Nat Stuckey.

Conway Twitty  -  Pop A Top  (2:11)

Conway Twitty  -  Walk Me To The Door  (2:37)

Conway Twitty  -  A Table In The Corner  (2:07)

Conway Twitty  -  Ain't It Sad To Stand And Watch Love Die  (2:04) 

Thanks to Dave The Spazz for fixing me up with the murderously twisted Ain't It Sad To Stand And Watch Love Die.

    

1972 Buffalo Creek Flood, W.V. (MP3)

    

Irene Perry  -  The '72 Flood  (3:45)  

Here's a heart-wrenching tune about a devastating flood that swept through 17 small West Virginia towns on February 26, 1972.

The flood was caused by the catastrophic failure of a coal slurry impoundment dam built along Buffalo Creek in Logan County, WV (about 30 miles south of Madison).  What the hell is a coal slurry impoundment dam?  Basically, a colossal (mostly) liquid garbage dump built to contain the impurities that are left over as a result of the coal mining process.  The poorly built dam in question was less than 3 years old when it gave way, the deadly consequence of a myriad of engineering deficiencies. 

The resulting flood killed 125 people and left approximately 4,000 people homeless.

For more appalling details on this horrific disaster, check out the video clip below from the History Channel.

And speaking of totally avoidable catastrophes, Dave The Spazz has graciously invited me to be his guest on tomorrow night's Music To Spazz By program. If you're so inclined, tune in from 8PM - 11PM (EST) to hear a wealth of goofball hillbilly oddities and full-throttle honky tonkers. 

Credit:  The Charleston Daily Mail image above was borrowed from 1horsetown's flickr stream.

Georgia Slop

Get ready for round three of Whacked Out Hillbilly Night on Music To Spazz By.  Listener Greg G will be stopping by our Jersey City studios this Thursday to bring you more of the hillbilly hangovers, rubber room wig outs, hippies from Mississippi, fuzzed out instros, and head scratching cover versions and answer songs that you silly Citybillies (Jefferson County) have been missing.  As if that wasn't enough, see Greg live and in person at the Lakeside Lounge this Saturday, December 5th at the Ichiban Launch Party !  Here are a handful of GG approved 45s to get you in the mood.

WPLO - Atlanta My Home Town

Tomahawk - Tom Brown & The Tom Toms

James Brown   -  James Brown's Boo-Ga-Loo

Delmore Brothers - Peach Tree Street Boogie

Big Al Downing - Georgia Slop

National Country Music Week 1962 (MP3s)

Here are several radio spots promoting the 1962 observance of National Country Music Week.  I must admit I was a bit surprised to see that they found room for Connie Francis and the Kingston Trio, performers not generally associated with country music, alongside old stalwarts like Faron Young and Roy Acuff.

       

Side A
Faron Young  (:30)    |    Connie Francis #1  (:23)   |     Connie Francis #2  (:32)   |     Connie Francis #3  (:37)   |     Flatt & Scruggs  (:26)   |     Patsy Cline #1  (:26)   |     Patsy Cline #2  (:37)   |     Patsy Cline #3  (:35)

Side B
Roy Acuff #1  (:36)   |     Roy Acuff #2  (:35)   |     Eddie Arnold #1  (:19)   |     Eddie Arnold #2  (:35)   |     Chet Atkins  (:35)   |     Kingston Trio  (:29)   |     Tommy Hunter  (:37)   |     Gordon LIghtfoot  (:24)   |     Jim Reeves  (:38)

The 1961 National Country Music Week promotional radio spots are over here.

Please Pass The "Please Pass The Biscuits" Records (MP3s)

   

Here are five versions of Please Pass The Biscuits, the timeless story of one hungry kid's desperate attempt to snag some nourishment. 

From my perspective, the definitive version is the one recorded by Andre Williams for the Fortune label in Detroit in 1958, the year after the original version, by author Gene Sullivan, landed in the Top Ten on Billboard's Country chart.  Williams, a pioneer of R&B sleaze, is still out there hustling.  His most recent album came out just last year and this month his first book, a semi-autobiographical tale of pimps, gangs, and drug running, was published by Kicks Books.

Gene Sullivan  -  Please Pass The Biscuits  (2:52)  1957

Andre Williams  -  Pass The Biscuits Please  (3:19)  1958

Jimmy Dean  -  Please Pass The Biscuits  (2:57)  1962

Norval & Ivy  -  Please Pass The Biscuits  (2:56)  1967

And to wrap things, up we'll check in with an unforgettable live performance from the Collins Kids featuring a great vocal performance by young Larry.  Tex Ritter provides the introduction and somehow manages to keep a straight face while he observes, "You show me a growing boy and I'll show you a biscuit eater."