Silly Sundays - Macy Skipper - Goofin' Off

All right. I've been sitting on this for literally months, trying to write it up. Sadly, I can't find much of anything about Macy Skipper online (apart from his other three recordings which you can listen to here). He's apparently from St. Louis, MO, released just a few singles on as many labels, and lived in obscurity.

I wish he would've recorded more stuff like this -- the other records he put out are more standard rockabilly stuff, which I love well enough, but this just feels so special to me. This is a wonderful slab of nonsense which fits ten minutes' worth of absurdity into 180 seconds. It's consistently dazzling, bewildering, and hilarious. I've listened to it at least twenty times in the last week, and I don't think I'll ever want to slow down. Like the best funny spoken word records, I want to memorize it and perform it at parties.

And the worst part is, I want to write something funny about this record, but I can't come up with anything. Man, I feel so unnecessary...

Macy Skipper - Goofin' Off
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Stagger Lee Saturdays - Margaret Walker

This is Dr. Margaret Walker (wiki bio poetry selection). She was born in Alabama in 1915, went to school in New Orleans, and worked as a poet and professor right up until her death in 1998. Her take on Stag was originally published in 1942, when Walker was still a young woman, recently employed by the New Deal's Work Progress Administration and its Federal Writer's Project (alongside Richard Wright). This is a transcription of dialect, and Walker reads it as such in both recordings below. (Both source albums also include recordings of Walker's poem about "John Henry," another legendary black American story also told in dialect.)

Walker recorded her poem twice for Folkways, the record label that also released Harry Smith's epic Anthology of American Folk Music, and a lot of the recordings of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Leadbelly. The first time was in 1954, twelve years after she published the poem -- at the time she was living in Jackson, Mississippi with her husband and their four children. Twenty-one years later, she returned to Folkways to record three albums, one of which included her poem about Stag.

I've included both of them here, so you can hear how the two versions are different -- the text is identical in both, but the delivery varies. The first one is faster, and Walker makes the cartoon birds flying around the cop's head funnier. The second is clearly the voice of an older woman -- this version spends a little more time (going a little slower) when we hear how Stag escaped the lynching meant for his hide, and the tale of how Stag haunts New Orleans.

Walker is pretty important as far as poets go, and this post clearly hasn't done her justice -- click on that poetry link at the top to read more, or go down to the buy link and support the work of Folkways while listening to more from her.

Margaret Walker - Bad Man Stackalee
(1954)
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(1975)
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John Fogerty - Paradise

John Fogerty started his solo career under the semi-pseudonym of The Blue Ridge Rangers, and that first album is a wonderful cover album of Americana, with covers of songs by Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, among others. (I put up one track a while ago.)

Last year, Fogerty issued a sequel, again mostly a cover album, and it opens with the John Prine song I posted here a while ago. The album has a lot of other great covers, with some famous guests, and is definitely well worth your CD-buying dollar.

John Fogerty - Paradise
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Wedding Wednesdays - Ben Folds - The Luckiest

Here it is, the final song from our wedding, and the one that had the most potential to make me cry. Ben Folds (official wiki AMG) is from Winston-Salem, NC, and is best known to pop audiences as the guy who wrote "Brick," though that might be his most solemn song ever.

When we sat down to start compiling wedding music, I played this for my lovely wife. It was a song she'd never heard before, but Ben's words and sentiments almost had her in tears, something I totally understand. The narrator of this song is an awkward guy, one who can't necessarily express his emotions well in words, but he stumbles around until he manages to say what he feels. (Live video here.)

I'm terrible at that myself, but I just hope that I can help Tiki feel loved, and cherished. I hope I can make her see how much I appreciate her -- everything she does for me, and everything she is. If she feels even half the love I have for her, this marriage can't help but work.

Ben Folds - The Luckiest
Removed due to my 4th DMCA takedown
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Stagger Lee Saturdays - Broke Toe Rezo

Broke Toe Rezo (archived official AMG) is another guy who's only released one album, so again there's not much about him online. From what I can tell, he claims he broke his toe hopping a train, and he also helps rebuild trains. He's just a train kind of guy.

This might be the most sadistic version of Stag we've ever heard, maybe even moreso than Nick Cave's badass version. Stag doesn't personally tell Billy Delion's wife to look at the hole in Billy's head, but he puts his body on a train. He puts his body on a train!

I'm not sure if this is, in fact, Broke Toe's natural singing voice (it sounds like he drops out of it at one point), and I'm not sure if I like it, but this man plays a crazy guitar. This is amazing slide blues work, some of the best we've heard in any version of Stag.

Broke Toe Rezo - Stagger Lee
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Wedding Wednesdays - Michael Bublé - You And I

Got a few more wedding songs to upload for all of you. This is a song written by Stevie Wonder -- we already heard from him both on this blog and at the wedding, which is why I'm not posting the original. (It's not a coincidence, though -- Stevie is high in the list of our top ten favorite musicians as a couple. He might even be in the top three.)

Michael Bublé (official mySpace wiki AMG) is a Canadian big band/swing crooner, who's been doing some press the last few weeks connected with the Olympics and his upcoming tour. We'll hear his cover of the Stevie Wonder song today (but during our actual wedding ceremony the song was performed by the bride's sister, who did a great job and blew us all away). The album this song comes from also includes Michael's version of "Try A Little Tenderness," and his lackluster cover of "Can't Buy Me Love."

Michael Bublé - You And I
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Stagger Lee Saturdays - Patrick Whelan

Patrick Whelan (official site) is an Irish-born folk-blues musician who has since moved to London and, ultimately, Pennsylvania to ply his trade.

He's only released one album, so there's little about him online outside of his official site. This version is credited to Mississippi John Hurt, though it doesn't sound a lot like Hurt's 1928 take. (It's from a later version, which I haven't posted here yet.) This is also another version where the hat is magical, which we don't hear about often enough for my taste.

Patrick Whelan - Stagolee
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Happy Saint Thurl's Day!

Hi, everyone. I'm back in town from my wonderful honeymoon, and I'm afraid I let Thurl Ravenscroft's birthday slip up on me. I don't have any new stuff uploaded, but here's a link to all the stuff I've put up in the past.

Don't forget you can find a lot of stuff at the WFMU blog too, and I'll be back soon with more posts. Happy Birthday, Thurl!