Robert Elms always began his BBC Radio London show with an instrumental track (or one with few words ) so he could get in a few words about the upcoming proceedings. He played this when it came out in 2001 and had so many people call in and ask about it that he had to play it in full during his stint – in full and without interruption. Moulin, an accomplished jazz pianist, died of throat cancer in 2008. – bluepeter
I was playing this to someone I know who thought Gene Vincent was just “Be-Bop-A-Lula” and they were amazed. Then we decided to do it in the band and so I played it for the other guys and now I can’t stop playing it! I’ve always loved it, of course. JUST DON’T CALL IT ROCKABILLY!!!!! – Mitch
Felt bad about the Guardian’s article slagging off of song titles from Richard Ashcroft’s new album. Remembered how much i love some of their lovely pop tunes, and this one’s been a cheery earworm on deck ever since. - prunus
Gotta feel sorry for ‘The Poor’ in England. They woke up this morning to papers rubbing in that a) their footie team sucks and b) their benefits are about to be pinched. And the topless girl on page 3 was nothing special, either. The least the Earworms can do is give The Poor their own song this week. It’s from 80′s electro pioneers from the country soon to be formerly known as Belgium. -tin
A harmonica classic from 1941 recorded as Bill McKinley. The accompaniment is stellar: Big Bill Broonzy on guitar, Washboard Sam on, er, washboard and unknown stand-up bass player (no-one remembers the bass player, eh Mitch?). The harp, played acoustically, is great, the words are fun and the whole thing bounces along in a pre-skiffle style. I’ll leave you to puzzle over what the monkey is. (btw Gillum was first to record ‘Key To The Highway’ in the 8-bar format in which it is known today.) - WilliamsBach
I saw him twice in London in the 50′s and was knocked out. He was without doubt the most riveting performer I’d ever seen/heard. I immediately bought several of his Folkways LP’s, which I still have and still enjoy. - goneforeign
Love The Bill Broonzy track. I saw him on TV (I was too young at the time to go to concerts) in the 50s. Very interesting piece by and about him in Studs Terkel’s “And They All Sang” which is a superb book.
@williamsbach. I can’t be sure, but I have a feeling that the bass player may be Willie Dixon. I’ll check in his autobiography and get back to you. Us bass players are always the sensible ones !!!
“What?” – - “CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!”
Rockabilly? That’s not rockabilly. That’s pure blues, that is. With an early-Stratocaster-doing-its-best-to-sound-like-a-Telecaster cheesewire solo. Lovely!
Yep, blues it is, Mitch! Loved the two Bills too -’Jazz’ Gillum and Big Broozny.
I should explain that one thing which really gets my goat is the lazy use (usually by 12 year old journalists) of the term “rockabilly”. I’ve seen it applied to Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and even Little Richard. In the UK at the time, “Rockabilly” was a song by Guy Mitchell and a B-side by Johnny Duncan (“Rockabilly Baby”). Everything else was Rock And Roll (note “and” and not ‘n’). Somehow, the term is now applied by people who want to box things up to anything with a beat that was pre-Beatles. Well, not in my house!
By the way, Williamsbach, I can’t confirm that Willie Dixon was the bass player. All I can say is, he was gigging around at the time and appeared uncredited on lots of records. Later on he wrote “Signifying Monkey” which was cut by Cab Calloway and the rest, as they say, is history.
“…What?” would have been a good shout for the 10 words or fewer topic.
I’m sorry to say I was singing “Be Bop A Lula” over the top of “Baby Blue”. It works rather nicely.
“Lucky Man” takes me straight back to first year of uni, where it and the other Verve hits were played to death, exhumed, and played to death again. I can just about listen now – they did a handful of very good songs.
Front 242 I enjoyed. I remember the name but don’t know what else I know by them. Are they from Flemland or Walloonia?
The Bills passed me by in a pleasant blues-y sort of way. I rarely hear a blues tune that gets more or less than a 6 out of 10 from me. That’s entirely my problem, I realise.
barbryn-
You know, i was afraid of that and said the same thing to Tinny when he asked me for a worm. I’m in the USA, and i said they didn’t get a lot of play over here as far as i knew (except for Bittersweet Symphony of course), but i had hoped that they didn’t play the crap out of them in the UK. I should have figured that they did – sorry about that.
But my other possiblilty was a blues tune, and given the 3 good ones up there, it was probably a good call not to unknowingly put up another.
No apology necessary! Others might not have experienced quite as much over-exposure as me – I had a housemate who played “History” on repeat.
I asked prunus for an earworm because we were one shot this week. I can ask people, and have, but please don’t wait to be asked. This is the first time in a month I’ve had to ask, which is great.
(In other words, get ‘em in or I’ll have to ask prunus again!)
* ducks and hopes prunus has a sense of humour
Prunus fully realizes that her taste is crap. And is proud of it, and just for that i’m sending off the most sanctimonious and overwrought U2 tune i can find. No, even better, a Sting “folk” song.
Your taste is far from crap.
Send one of those Sting rain forest songs. I think that’s when he was at his best s&o wise.
And why is prunus referring to herself in the third person?)
How about an Abba cover of a U2 song as interpreted by Sting and backed up by Ted Nugent?
cracking!
With added rap from Akira the Don
(c.2008 in-joke. Sorry.)
Tinny-
Third person because my replies are under my Spill moniker, but the earworm was posted under my RR one.
Mitch-
Now you’re talking. And Madge on backup.
Loved this week’s playlist, even the Verve track, because it reminds me of some really good times in my life.
I have two major worms in my ears, I may have to submit both for next week.
I’ve just spent two hours of total frustration dealing with Dropbox and WordPress, I wasn’t able to achieve any of what I started out to do. Here’s a part of what I intended to post:
I was very sloppy when I sent that cut of Big Bill’s ‘In the Evening’ to Tinny, instead of transferring it from my original Folkways vinyl I took a shortcut and bagged it from Spotty without listening to it, it isn’t the version I intended, it’s badly recorded. So, here’s the real version from the Folkways 1956 LP, a much cleaner recording and I’ve included a few other favorites including ‘Key to the Highway’.
Big Bill Broonzy – In the Evening When the Sun Goes Down
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/531886/%20Big%20Bill-%20In%20the%20Evening.mp3
Big Bill Broonzy – Key to the Highway
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/531886/Big%20Bill-%20Key%20to%20the%20highway.mp3
Big Bill Broonzy – Trouble in Mind
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/531886/%20Big%20Bill%20-%20Trouble%20in%20Mind.mp3
Big Bill Broonzy – Digging My Potatoes
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/531886/Big%20Bill-%20%20Digging%20my%20Potatoes.mp3
Big Bill Broonzy – Louise
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/531886/%20Big%20Bill-%20%20Louise.mp3
If anyone’s interested these versions are at Spotty, they’re on a CD re-issue titled Trouble in Mind.
Sounds like a whole separate Spill post just waiting to happen.
Thanks for these gf
Yeah, What’s moderation?
Front 242, and more precisely tin’s blurb on them just got me all tangenital:
1) Walonia: what a cracking name for a country! Grouchesque, too.
2) Belgium v The Netherlands: watching from afar, The Netherlands always seemed to be more interesting as a country, while Belgium was a bit of an afterthough… we have some free space left between France and Holland, folks, why should we have in it???.
However, music wise, Belgium seems to have the upper hand here. Leaving Jacques Brel’s genius aside, I can think of a handful of Belgian bands I like a lot, or at least a little… dEUS, Front 242, Hooverphonic, An Pierlé… Hitting a wall with Dutch ones, though… Bettie Serveert? (and I never paid so much attention to begin with)
The beer’s a lot better too. Of course, since Belgium currently seems to be busy falling apart, maybe we need guidance on whether the different bands come from Wallonia or Flanders…
Listening to Baby Blue, & Mitch don’t take this the wrong way, but I keep hearing Heartbreak Hotel which is one of the very few Elvis songs I think are ace. Was this before or after that? Or am I imagining it? The Verve is atmospheric & lovely to listen to as I’m certainly not over exposed. Big Bill & Jazz bill are USDA Choice. Just my style. Lovin’ the Mark Moulin. Not the biggest electronica fan I – Front 242 still manage to make it all interesting. Another great week all.
Fintan. Well spotted! “Baby Blue” was 1958 and “Heartbreak Hotel” was 56. Mind you, lots of slow(ish) blues numbers sound very similar. Although I quite like “Heartbreak Hotel” I really do prefer Gene. I just think his voice was better and I realise in saying that, I am very much in a minority. Also, I prefer the backing. This was the second incarnation of Bluecaps. Most of the first set (except the drummer) had gone by the end of 57 and these guys were new recruits. Johnny Meeks was a very talented lead guitarist, who is often over-shadowed by Cliff Gallup, the first in that position.
One of the backing voices was a guy called Tommy Facenda who had his own little bit of history by making 11 different versions of “High School USA”, each mentioning different towns. Imagine the session!
@Lambretinha – what about Golden Earring?
‘I’ve been driving all night, my hands are wet on the wheel,
And there’s a voice in my head that drives my heel…’
Focus! Jan Akkermann is a guitar god…
Yeah, on the Dutch camp, I thought of Shocking Blue too (of Venus fame). And I love Radar Love, but I’m afraid it’s as much Golden Earring as I know!.
+1 for Akkerman too
On the other hand. On smashing singles from otherwise unknown acts, Belgium can also boast Plastic Bertrand’s fantastic C’e Plane Pour Moi…
But Abahachi just cut to the chase above: Beer!!! Game, set & match for Belgium…
Don’t forget Johnny Halliday (French Elvis) was Belgian and I think members of Los Bravos (“Black Is Black”) were Dutch. The group was multi-European.
another great selection of Earworms, liked pretty much all of them.
I thought I had a Big Bill Broonzy LP, I just checked and it was Bill Browning (too many B’s!!), which I won’t mention too much about as I remember RockingMitch showing a particular distaste for his “Wash Machine Boogie” tune which I nominated for RR way way back – can’t for the life of me think what the topic was now, though
Wow. You’ve got a long memory. “Wash Machine Boogie” was a particular unfavourite of my wife. If I wanted to wind her up, I would suggest that my band learn it!
I think it was because some especially bad rockabilly (and I use the term advisedly) bands used to play it.
loved all of those BBB tunes you put up there GF, thanks!
Just to thow some more Holland v Belgium stuff in, Marc Moulin was from…………..Belgium.
Sorry Mitch, Johnny Hallyday is French. He was born in Paris of a Belgian father and a French mother, and was turned down when he officially applied for Belgian citizenship in 2005. After that didn’t work, he skipped to Gstaad in Switzerland, demonstrating the real reason for his wanting out of France – tax.
My pet taxi driver is a huge Johnny fan, so I have to hear the latest news, as well as the live CDs at mega-volume, every Friday night…
Well bust my boots. Some of his stuff was quite good, but I preferred Sylvie Vartan (his one-time missus). Some of Johnny’s things I would not like to hear at any volume!
I had that Claude Francois and Eddy Mitchell in my cab once.
Hang ‘em. That’s the only language they understand.
Yep, some of the cabbie’s stuff is quite good – a good band Johnny had, at least for the later cuts. It still feels wrong to be listening to Stones, Beatles, CCR songs with French words credited to Hallyday, though.
Can’t believe it took me so long to get round to listening to these! Blame bishbosh and his aotw – I just had to give that a spin first. (Shane’s homework didn’t help either and I still haven’t commented there). What a great week this has been for posts!
New to me and blew me away: What..?
Knew it, had almost forgotten it and was glad to hear it again: Lucky Man
Can’t (and wouldn’t dare to) argue with: Gene Vincent (Keep ‘em coming Mitch! – I like and need to be reminded of the stuff that was happening before I started listening to music)
Enjoyed both the Bills too.
Electro pop never was, or will be my scene, Tin. But I think that’s the first of yours in the months that this great feature, which you know I am really enthusiastic about , has been going on that didn’t hit the spot.
Time to send another one in. Question is English language classic or willfully obscure foreign?
Maki – everyone can’t comment on everything.
I always listen to this feature – but it’s one that I rarely comment on, unless I think of something profound – (that’s never then)
no worries maki. I wanted it in for balance – er, which isn’t to say it’s not good or I didn’t enjoy it. I like all sorts and don’t expect everyone to like my choices all the time.
…. we had dealings with a label that sent us Front 242, Skinny Puppy and Young Gods stuff to review… (we had to steal a CD player cos they sent us the music on these mini ufos with no-where to place the needle) lovely people.. I was positive the label was called ’13′ but I just can’t track it down… and I can’t remember if it was from Belgium or Switzerland.
(they released Electronic Body Music as it was termed then – not necessarily those bands)
so good memories for me tin.
Me and my big mouth! Who cares if I like it or not!!! Thanks for dropping by Casa Maki this morning, tin.