Stagger Lee Saturdays - Terry Melcher

Terry Melcher (AMG Wiki) was a songwriter and producer who worked with The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Paul Revere and The Raiders, and also his mom Doris Day.

In 1968, Dennis Wilson introduced Terry Melcher to a friend of his, Charles Manson, and Melcher had Manson as a guest at his home several times, along with Melcher's then-girlfriend Candice Bergen. After Melcher (and Wilson) severed ties with Manson, he left that house, and it was leased to Roman Polanski and his young wife Sharon Tate. Shortly thereafter, Manson's group of followers went to that house. In an attempt to kill Melcher, they ended up murdering five people, including Tate.

This has been another history lesson brought to you by Stagger Lee Saturdays.

In 1974, Melcher continued to work as a musician and producer, and he also released his eponymous first solo album. (via) This has an easy-listening, country rock vibe I just can't warm up to, and Melcher's slow reading and attempts to imbue the material with emotional meaning put me off. (The album also includes a cover of Dylan's "The 4th Time Around," which I'm not sure Melcher realized was a joke, and the least emotionally affecting version of "These Days" I've ever heard.)

Though I don't particularly care for it, I've posted this version today for a reason. Next week I'm posting a really nice slow version, which may be the most moving version of the song I've heard lately. Stay tuned.

Terry Melcher - Stagger Lee
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Beck - Sunday Morning

Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico 'Sunday Morning' from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

I don't normally do this, embed videos without posting an MP3. But until I can find a nice clean file I wanted to go ahead and post this anyway. Here's the news article that led me this far. This is from Beck's website (which has been a source for a previous post here).

I'll post more once it comes across my desk.

Edited to add: I don't need to blog when I'm supposed to be sleeping. Had I been wide awake, I probably would've done the two-minute Google before I posted, not after. Here's the file:

Beck - Sunday Morning
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Stagger Lee Saturdays - Nathan Singleton and His Sideshow Tragedy

Here's another recent take on Stag. This one's from Nathan Singleton and His Sideshow Tragedy (official MySpace). This original version, from last year, reminds me of some of Bob Dylan's best long, rambling story-songs, like "Lily, Rosemary, and The Jack of Hearts" or "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream."* Musically, this is one of the rockingest, most driving versions of Stag I've ever heard.

Some people like this take on Stag; some do not. Me? I do, most definitely. I'll queue it up again in a minute, right after I listen to "Highlands."

(Oh, and greetings to all my high school friends who found their way over from Facebook. If you have no idea what this post is about, please click here to learn more.)

Nathan Singleton and His Sideshow Tragedy - The Ballad of Stagolee and The Preacher Man
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*Or "Tweeter and the Monkeyman" by Bob's distant cousin, Lucky Wilbury.

Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer - Redemption Song

Bob Marley, dying from cancer, wrote "Redemption Song" in 1979, borrowing some words from a speech by Marcus Garvey. Twenty-odd years later, another music legend in the last years of his life recorded a version of the song.

Bob and Johnny didn't share a religion, or a race, or a musical style. I think they would've liked each other, though, and Johnny's take on Bob Marley's original is haunting, moving, and uplifting.

I composed a twelve-hour mix of music for a friend's birthday party last week, and this is one of two songs I got specific raving compliments about. Here you go, Julian. I hope this makes up for us running out of corn.

Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer - Redemption Song
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Silly Sundays - Monster Mansion!

Back in 1981, Six Flags Over Georgia hired a former Disney Imagineer to put together a new dark ride, one that couldn't be found anywhere else in the world. That ride became known as Monster Plantation. Last month, the ride reopened as a new, refurbished version of the original, with a new name and a lot of new effects. (If any of those A J-C links want you to register, don't forget bugmenot.)

One thing that didn't change was the theme song (though it sounds better now, thanks to advances in speaker design during the intervening decades, and a new instrumental version plays near the queue area). Here is the original theme song, played in several different instrumentations, all of which can still be heard in the new version of the ride.

I hadn't been to Six Flags in years and years, but when I heard they were refurbing this ride, I bought a season pass. I also wrote this, in an email to my friends:

The first audio-animatronic robots I ever saw were at Six Flags Over Georgia, in The Monster Plantation. I remember almost every part of it, and if it hadn't been as good as it was, I'd probably care less about robots, and dark rides, and Disney parks (and their themed brethren).

Those of you who aren't near Atlanta can see the difference between the old and new versions of the ride on YouTube, but of course watching a dark-ride video is pretty unsatisfying. Anyway, enough talk. This song is insanely catchy, so I don't recommend listening more than twice in any given week.

Monster Plantation/Mansion Theme
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Stagger Lee Saturdays - Axe Masterson

Axe Masterson (MySpace interview) is a Vermont blues/folk musician who's been playing live and in the studio for over 25 years. In 2007, he recorded an album as tribute to the Lomax field recordings, with a version of "Death Letter Blues" (a song best-known recently for the White Stripes' version) and, of course, his version of Stag.

Musically, this is a peppy but stripped-down version, just Axe's vocals, harmonica, and some lovely slide guitar. The lyrics are similarly stripped down -- we don't get to hear about any gambling, or a bulldog, or Stag's adventures in hell, or how all the women weeped and moaned.

The CD is out of print, so the buy link down there goes to MP3 downloads at [redacted], the MP3 downloading service I personally prefer, and one which USED TO send a high percentage of proceeds back to the artists. ([redacted] has given me no money to say this; I just think they're great.)

Axe Masterson - Stack O'Lee Blues
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Buy link removed due to Ukrainian lawbreaking

Stagger Lee Saturdays - Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Boy Williamson

In 1947, Alan Lomax sat down with three blues musicians and asked them about the blues. The blues, they decided in a recorded discussion, came from trouble. Trouble came from oppression.

And oppression, it need hardly be said, came from white people.

It's been said better by other people, but Stagger Lee, no matter the spelling, is a story about oppression. Stag is a black antihero who fights back against a crooked game, and in most versions cannot escape retribution.

In this version of the song, Stag drags Billy down the street, which you don't hear in a lot of versions. The three men talking and singing on this album would've heard of, or even witnessed, identical acts in the American South of the time. Again, it need hardly be said, the victims would be black, the perpetrators white.

At the time of this recording, as you'll read in the first link above, the three artists wouldn't let Lomax release the album under their own names, fearing violent reprisals against themselves, and their families, for their brutal honesty. The album didn't get released for over a decade, and then under assumed names.

I'm not a person of color; I can't claim to know anything about racial oppression. What I do know is that music and friendships can give people the strength to survive unbearable situations, and fight against incredible odds. What you hear on this record are three men, honestly and openly talking through their political troubles, and singing songs which might help others deal with the same problems.

Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Boy Williamson
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