One Hit No More, No. 66: Vicki Lawrence Turns Out the Lights In Georgia. Briefly.

Vicki in her natural milieu.

The Hit
I don’t know if remember Vicki Lawrence’s double gold hit, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” or if it just feels like something I should remember. The fact it dropped in 1973 puts it a few years ahead of my time, but commercial radio also has this thing about playing a song more than once, which means it depends on how far the echo carried.

The song clearly comes from the 70s, only with a couple genres passing through it. It has a 70s singer-songwriter body and the same production, but the chorus - not to mention the song’s theme/title - has a southern twang. It squeezes a story of betrayal, revenge, then more betrayal into under four minutes - it even gets in a plot-twist, so it’s pretty solid work.

The story behind the song is a little better. Vicki Lawrence’s first husband, Bobby Russell, actually wrote the song, but he couldn’t get anyone to either buy or sing it. A producer Russell worked with, Snuff Garrett, tried steering it to a couple heavy-hitters. As Vicki Lawrence recounted to Classicband.com’s Gary James:

“Snuff wanted it to go to Liza Minnelli. He said, ‘I want to work with her.’ I said, ‘She is so not right for this song.’ Then he decided to send it over to Cher and Cher never heard it. Sonny said, ‘It will offend the South.’ That's how I ended up having one huge, big hit. I was married to the guy who wrote it for ten minutes.”

Long story short, either Garrett or Russell said, “screw it, we’ll have Vicki sing it,” and the next thing she knows, Carol Burnett is handing Lawrence her gold album in the final episode of season six of the Carol Burnett Show. Recording it came and went like a breeze, they dual-tracked her vocals to create the harmony, and she’s still unsatisfied with the top part. She also notes that recording the song killed off her dying marriage to Russell. In a 2016 interview with Smashing Interviews Magazine, she hints that her hit single played a role:

“Honestly, it did become the device of an already doomed marriage. That song became a hit, and the whole marriage just went downhill.”

Crash Course Timeline, No. 10: The Carter Family & Uncle Dave Macon, Intro to First Gen Country

Dig the confidence, Bristol.

Webster’s Dictionary defines country music as….I kid, I kid.

As part of my disjointed series on the history of American popular music, this post and the next two after it will make a quick introduction to country music and a few of the first major acts in the genre. What became popularized as “country music” existed long before it was recorded or played on the radio, of course, but it would also evolve due to its entry into the public sphere, not least by influences from other musical genres. But the two artists highlighted in this post - Uncle Dave Macon and the Carter Family, along with Jimmie Rodgers, who I profiled in an earlier post (whoops) - get you as close as you can get to what country music sounded like immediately before the first recordings. Which still leaves open the question: what is country music?

I didn't bite and claw for an answer, but I don't know that I could find better answers than the following (both from Wikipedia):

“…a genre of popular music that originated with blues, old-time music, and various types of American folk music.”

Its origins and influences fill in the picture a bit:

“Immigrants to the southern Appalachian Mountains, of the Southeastern United States, brought the folk music and instruments of Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean Basin along with them for nearly 300 years, which developed into Appalachian music.”

The “old-time music” and American folk music” tradition stands out a bit for me, in that country, as a genre, has long tended toward cultural conservatism. While other contemporary genres that became popular in the same period (e.g., jazz), or even before it (ragtime) embraced musical innovations like syncopation, a wider variety of instruments (e.g., brass and woodwinds), and more complex arrangements, country stuck with simpler, “folksy” musical structure, themes and sounds from popular 19th-century songwriters like Stephen Foster and traditional instruments like guitar, banjo, harmonica and fiddle. It never had any trouble borrowing from other genres - a tradition that runs from Western swing in the 1940s to country rap today - but country rarely drives musical innovation.

One Hit No More, No. 65: Apollo 100, One Hit Versus 45

El Maestro.

The Hit
Apollo 100’s “Joy” dropped the year after I was born, but the whole “souped-up classical” vibe brought back vivid memories of hearing a disco spin on Beethoven’s 5th in the late 1970s (by Walter Murphy, titled "A Fifth of Beethoven"). While both got…let’s go with surprisingly popular, nothing connected the two outside the call-back to classical works.

I’ll get to who (or what) Apollo 100 very briefly was below, but the most surprising thing about their riff on “Joy” was the fact they weren’t the first band/act to do it. As noted in Wikipedia’sslim write-up on Apollo 100, their version of the song was “a nearly note-for-note remake of the pop music arrangement by Clive Scott of ‘Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring’ as recorded by the British band Jigsaw.” In other words, a cover of another song that, in pop culture terms, didn’t make a lot of sense. Jigsaw has a bigger, better story than Apollo 100, but the bounds of this project means playing the cards I’m dealt. About that…

The Rest of the Story
“But after those two albums, Apollo 100 was history, and what became of Tom Parker after that, the Internet is not forthcoming.”

Parker got the writing credit for “Joy,” but he was just one part of Apollo 100, “a short-lived British instrumental studio-based group.” He hailed from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and bounced lower (jazz clubs) and higher (played with Eric Burdon and the New Animals) over a career that, as implied above, ended in both obscurity and Spain. Based on everything I saw, Apollo 100 was the main work of his career, a project he built with Vic Flick (guitar), Zed Jenkins (also guitar), Jim Lawless (“percussion”), Brian Odgers (bass), and, hold this name for the segue, Clem Cattini (drums).

The two albums alluded to above were Joy and Master Pieces, released in 1972 and 1973, respectively. Even after “Joy” blew up (No. 6 on Billboard), neither album sold well and, given that most of them held down regular jobs as session musicians (see below), it didn’t make much sense to stick with a limping project. As such, the pieces of Apollo 100 scattered after 1973. But a couple of the members had better days on either side of Parker’s project.

Playlust Playlist, No. 14: Kicking The Shins and A Couple Other Legs

Huh. It's a whole damn event in Wales.

For this week’s playlist, I decided to finally learn about and listen to the rest of The Shins’ catalog. When someone first passed the two albums I know (and too well) - Chutes Too Narrow and Wincing the Night Away - I lost it a little and played both deep, deep into the ground, scattered some favorites across some CDs I made (thus burying those songs deeper into the ground). It was a good time, basically, until I ruined it…

…which means I’ve got something in common with The Shins’ front-man, James Mercer. I kid, I kid. At any rate, because I didn’t know…well, anything about the band - not even that Zach Braff helped make ‘em famous when he bought “New Slang” for his directorial debut, Garden State - everything I read this week was new to me. For people who kept current on music news just over a decade ago, it’ll be old news. I chose a path and walked it, etc.

Also, just to mention, future features in this project will bounce between bands I’ve listened to from, oh, call it somewhere around the middle of high school to circa 2015 - i.e., the point I stopped really collecting music and became one of the simps who streams everything - and the random new stuff that I’ve discovered since. Enough about me…let’s talk about The Shins!

Who They’re For
Fans of dense, metaphor-laden lyrics backed with an indie-rock sound that (generally) leans acoustic, but still has a reasonable poppiness and accessibility.

The Basics
The Shins actually started in Albuquerque, New Mexico as an off-shoot of another Mercer-fronted project - first Flake, then Flake Music. Wikipedia’s timeline on all this isn’t perfect, but it looks like most members of the collaborative Flake Music transferred over to the Mercer-dominated The Shins (and Flake Music permanently disbanded in 1999). While the membership shifted around a bit, the original members of The Shins included Mercer (guitar, vocals, songwriting), James Langford (bass), Martin Crandall (keys), and Jesse Sandoval (drums). The band was already tight and touring with a couple established acts - e.g., Cibo Matto and Modest Mouse - but they caught their first real break when Sub Pop’s Jonathan Poneman saw them open for Modest Mouse in San Francisco and offered to release a one-off single - which happened to be “New Slang.” That one single blew up big enough to give the band’s debut album, Oh, Inverted World (2001), a head of steam before it even dropped. And, when it did, it sold about 90,000 more units than Sub Pop expected (100,000) and the band took off. Mercer, who was never shy about licensing his music (what the hell? Get paid, son), boosted the band even more by dishing to McDonald’s for an ad that aired during the Tokyo Olympics in 2001. Mercer relocated to Portland, OR on the royalties, built a basement study for future recording, and started working on 2003’s Chutes Too Narrow…and replacing Langford with David Hernandez from a band called Scared of Chaka. Chutes Too Narrow actually charted (No. 86 on Billboard!), but then the whole Garden State thing happened and The Shins’ first two albums sold even more. The whole she-bang had enough momentum to carry over into Wincing the Night Away (2007), which reached (holy shit!) No. 2 on Billboard.

One Hit No More, No. 64: Dr. John, a Life in the Right Place at the Wrong Time

In a phrase, mad genius.

The Hit
Whether by classic radio, or a commercial for a beer, a car, a brand of “man” deodorant…maybe Axe Body Spray(but also, probably not), you’ve almost certainly heard Dr. John’s “Right Place Wrong Time.” You might not have connected the tune to Dr. John - God knows I didn’t - even if you have a dim understanding of who Dr. John was.

Unlike some recent selections in this series, “Right Place Wrong Time” doesn’t have a good story, never mind a great one. Still, it’s a solid tune that gets better if you can disconnect it in your mind from some awful visual that’s lurking in the back of your head from some goddamn commercial. The pulsing buzz that starts it doesn’t promise much, but the funk rhythm line rescues it before too long; the horns that come in next give it a nice lift and the jangling funk guitar accents it just so. That pile of instruments leaves a surprising amount of space, which gives the whole thing a loose, lean feel.

Unlike that cocky, goddamn beer ad I only half remember, an under-current of danger bubbles under Dr. John’s biggest hit - something that tracks all the way with his early years. But, again, I haven’t seen or read anything that suggests a particular inspiration or even a back-story. In fact, the most interesting thing I can pass on comes with his thoughts on commercial music, which he gave to Rolling Stone in a 1973 interview:

“The only thing that make a record commercial is if people buys it. Originally I felt to go commercial would prostitute myself and bastardize the music. On reflecting, I thought that if without messin’ up the music and keeping the roots and elements of what I want to do musically, I could still make a commercial record I would not feel ashamed from, I’m proud of, and still have a feel for, then it’s not a bad thing but it even serve a good purpose.”

I’m not entirely sure what to make of the broken English - especially after watching a short clip of him talking to Time magazine in 2010. At any rate, there’s more. Like, a lot more…

Playlust Playlist, March 2021, ft. Homeboy Sandman + a Top 10

[Ed. - For the sake of time constraints and my general sanity, this will be the last monthly playlist I post on this site. The next plan will be to post a weekly Top 10, plus ONE featured artist, because personal restraint and/or failure thereof. The biographical/programming notes will dry up at the same time. With that, here’s this month’s/week’s featured artist...]

Homeboy (Restless) Sandman
Who He’s For: Fans of indie hip-hop, lovers of complicated flows, topical and conceptual variety, and samples that from fluid to grating.

The Basics: Real name, Angel Del Villar II, Queens-based, born in 1980. He had enough sportz talent to go to UPenn (I think) on a basketball scholarship, but he dropped out for the proper college experience (parties and the ladies). Homeboy Sandman has lived abroad a couple times (the story about living in Sweden, but only half paying attention, when A$AP Rocky got arrested), but he’s pretty close to a five boroughs lifer. He came up in the New York scene via underground radio; by 2008, Source featured him as “unsigned hype.” A couple regular, sturdy gigs came his way - e.g., a stint running “ALL THAT, hip-hop, poetry and jazz” at the Nuyorican Café, a Youtube series he operated called “Homeboy Sandman presents Live From…” - but, in an extended interview with Hot97, he described his career as something closer to a series of accidents/accidental collaborations, things he backs into by the God’s grace. He’s also blunt about his method: he writes a rhyme when he needs money. That speaks to the volume of his discography, which includes 10 full LPs, nearly as many EPs and one, early mixtape. While I picked at a couple other albums, I spent real time on Actual Factual Pterodactyl (2008), Kindness for Weakness (2016), Humble Pi (2018), and Dusty (2019). I really tried with Don’t Feed the Monster, but that fucker is bleak (see, "Trauma"). Homeboy Sandman has a sharp-eyed and unflinching sense of humor and he points it both outward and inward, and he can phrase most ideas six different ways at a minimum. All that follows from a restless, anxious mind. One last thing: he referred to the version of himself that recorded Dusty as an “alter-ego.” And it sounds like it.

Crash Course Timeline, No. 9: OG Jass & a Few of Its Pioneers

What the hottest bands of the 1920s probably looked like...

I hadn’t planned on either doing a general post on 1920s jazz or touching on more half-forgotten names, but, when I learned that one of the first songs Bix Biederbecke learned by ear was the Original Dixieland Jass/Jazz Band’s “Tiger Rag,” the lack of context started to bug me. And so…

What is jazz, who started it and where? To tackle the first question, and contra Jelly Roll Morton claim that he invented it, no one really knows the answer. One can nail down some specific firsts - say, that Jelly Roll Morton wrote the first published jazz composition, or that the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (hereafter, “ODJB”) recorded the first 78 rpm album featuring jazz (“Livery Stable Blues,” b/w “Dixieland Jass Band One-Step,” Victor 18255) - but jazz, like the blues, had a long unwritten history that most people have the good sense not to fill in. In structure and theory, it has roots in blues and ragtime. Getting the a more useful answer, however, involves a couple twists and turns that still leave a handful of open questions.

“When Broadway picked it up, they called it 'J-A-Z-Z'. It wasn't called that. It was spelled 'J-A-S-S'. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies.”
- Eubie Blake (quoted from Wikipedia’s overview, the main source for a lot of this)

Something forbidden, in other words, some new thing let loose in the wild of "real America." And yet the crowd went wild; in one of the oldest tales of American history, "real America" wanted jazz. The first ODJB 78 was sold as a novelty, only to surprise everyone by becoming a hit. Before too long, jazz and the people who played it came to dominate pop culture and ultimately become a big enough part in daily life that sense of the forbidden fall away. And, as often happens (which, here, means almost always), that didn't take long.

To return to the question of what jazz is, the Wikieditor had one theory on the origins of its name: it might have come from the slang term, “jasm,” which means “pep and energy” (...but when?). To flag some other, appealing theories:

“Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions.”