Don Williams doesn’t have the edge, star quality or sheer talent of country legends like Waylon or Willie or Johnny. He does have one of the smoothest, sweetest voices that earned him loads of success through the 70s and 80s. Williams is one of the artists that reminds me of growing up, because Dad would throw on records as soon as we got home from church, and they would play through the whole house as we changed back into regular clothes and fought over the funnies from the paper. This one is “Good Ol’ Boys Like Me”.
On this day in 1963, The Beatles released Please Please Me, their first album. With that, I give you this insane clip of some sort of Bollywood Beatles. Rumor has it all dancers were recruited from the tiny island of Grand Mal, just off the coast from Visakhapatnam.
Luther Ingram, the soul singer and songwriter most famous for his 1972 hit, “(If Loving You is Wrong) I Don’t Want To Be Right”, died yesterday in Belleville, Illinois at age 69. Ingram had suffered from poor health in recent years including kidney disease, diabetes and partial blindness.
Born in Jackson, Tennessee, Ingram’s early career included rooming with Jimi Hendrix while recording in New York, playing shows in East St. Louis with Ike Turner and opening for Isaac Hayes. Originally hooking up with producer, songwriter and controversial businessman Johnny Baylor’s Koko label that was distributed by Stax, Ingram became a familiar face at the Stax Records facilities on East McLemore avenue from the early 1970s until the doors were padlocked shut in 1975.
Though he is most often associated with 1972’s “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want To Be Right”, a #1 R&B hit, it was actually written by Homer Banks. Ingram did team up with Sir Mack Rice (“Mustang Sally”) to write “Respect Yourself” for the Staple Singers, a massive smash for Stax in 1972. Ingram also earned a songwriting credit for “Ike’s Rap II: Help Me Love” from Hayes’ 1971 album Black Moses. His career endured long after Stax closed its doors, recording and releasing music into the late 1980s.
Word on the street is that Ingram’s surviving son, Eric, already has a script and music rights for a movie about his father and the early-to-mid 1970s Memphis soul scene.
Here are two videos, both from the 1972 documentary Wattstax. One is Ingram performing “Wrong”, while the other is the Staple Singers performing “Respect Yourself”.
Blast from the past! Swervedriver’s “Last Train to Satanville” off 1993’s Mezcal Head, which I need to break out this weekend and play at dangerously high volume. I’m also starting to think that the 90s looked almost as bad as the 80s. Blech.
It’s Friday. Let’s have some damn fun. Brainless, shaggy hair and lip syncing guitar sounds fun. Eddie Money. “Shakin’”. Snappin’ her fingers…
Don’t think that it’s all fun and cocaine, however. It may be a lowly music video, but Mr. Money puts forth quite possibly the finest acting performance since George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove. Though he has never stated publicly for the record, it has been assumed that Mr. Money had the video in the can before the song was even written or recorded. That, my friends, is the genius of Eddie Money.
This is a clip from the documentary Heartworn Highways, which was shot in 1975, but not actually released until 1981. Writer/director James Szalapski filmed a handful of promising country singer-songwriters who had chosen to remain outside of Nashville. The movie features a Townes Van Zandt porch performance, David Allan Coe playing a prison while decked out in a sequined jumpsuit and John Hiatt.
In this clip, a very young Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell take on “Stay All Night (Stay A Little Longer)” written by Tommy Duncan and Bob Wills, and performed by Willie Nelson on Shotgun Willie. You also get a little Guy Clark in there, too.
I loved Chavez Ravine. The music was good, the story was good, but what made it such an enjoyable listen was the way it painted a picture and planted the listener into a very specific time and place.
This leads me to Cooder’s latest release, which I picked up tonight. This is nothing more than a snap judgment review based on a quick listen on my way home. Take that for what it’s worth. I plan on giving this a proper listen over the next few days and revisiting these pages with a more complete review. My Name Is Buddy is a story told from the perspective of a cat, a mouse and a toad. It’s been described collection of dust bowl ballads with political themes, but it’s not rooted in that specific time period, or else the song “Hank Williams” makes no sense. Either way, I’m not impressed one bit. This record is far too cutesy and goofy for my tastes. Buddy feels as if Cooder feels he needs to make another Chavez Ravine, but the idea isn’t fleshed out as well. It sounds like forced children’s music. If I’m going to revive Depression-era folk music, I’d rather throw on Mermaid Avenue.
I respect Cooder’s nods to musical history and varied cultural influences, but this one’s appears to be a dud. I still have high hopes for Cooder’s production of Mavis Staples’ We’ll Never Turn Back, due out April 24th.
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