Wedding Wednesdays - Stevie Wonder - At Last

So have I mentioned I'm getting married in January? I haven't? Sorry -- you folks need to keep up.

Naturally, I'm excited to choose music to play during the ceremony, and afterwards at the reception. So for a few weeks, I'll be putting up some of the choicest cuts, and talking about them here.

We've been working oh so slowly on compiling the music for our ceremony and reception. I personally have DJ'd one wedding, and "At Last" was the first-dance song there. Tiki and I both love the song, and Etta James in general. (Now, as you may know, I don't care for Beyonce, but that's neither here nor there as far as the original version of the song is concerned.) Our thinking is, everyone everywhere plays "At Last" during their wedding, and the lyrics are quite appropriate to both weddings in general and our relationship in particular.

Etta's version is the classic, of course, but Stevie Wonder's cover is just magical. It's fast, funky, and furious. This is not a first dance song. This is an upbeat song for walking down the aisle as man and wife.

(My cousin suggested that we should walk down the aisle to this, and though we both love everything about the song, and I know a lady who did just that [Hi, Martha! Love to all the Tough Pigs!], we won't be doing that either.)

This is heartfelt, triumphant, celebratory: everything we want our wedding to be. We haven't figured out what our first dance song will be, but there's no way I could dance to this song without spraining something.

Stevie Wonder - At Last
mirror 1 -- mirror 2
Buy from Amazon -- Buy from Deep Discount

Happy Halloween From Thurl Ravenscroft!

First, I need to get some housekeeping out of the way. Here is last year's Halloween post, with links to all of 2008's spooky stuff. This year, in addition to the stuff this week, I've posted 20 versions of "Season of the Witch" and ten more versions of "I Put A Spell On You." If the stuff I've put up this week is too goofy, and not horrific enough for you, why not try this post, with a cowboy ghost story? Or this post about crazed murderers? (Speaking of murder, there's no Stag post today, sorry. Stagger Lee Saturdays will return in one week.)

Now that that's out of the way, ladies and gentlemen, may I present a collection of spooky music from this blog's patron saint, Thurl Ravenscroft.

Last year I posted several different recordings of Thurl (and other people) singing "Grim Grinning Ghosts," the theme song to The Haunted Mansion. All those from Thurl are included here, but if you want the other versions, you should go there and download the newly reupped zipfile.

This also has clips from a lot of the LPs Thurl recorded for Disneyland records, including excerpts from the Pirates of the Caribbean story record, the Jungle Cruise record, and the gem of this collection, the newly rereleased Story and Song from The Haunted Mansion (where the buy link sends you today -- in addition to Thurl, the record features a pre-Happy Days-but-post-Andy-Griffith Ron Howard). You'll also hear from Spike Jones and, naturally, The Mellomen. I even threw in a track from the soundtrack to The Hobbit.

I usually upload individual files along with the zips, but not today. I've actually taken a few minutes to sequence this out, so just get the whole thing, all right? It's only 30 MB, and about 30 minutes long. Happy Halloween, everyone!

Zipfile

Buy The Story and Song from The Haunted Mansion from Amazon

Multiple Mondays: Season of the Witch Volume Two

Here's a second helping of Donovan's atmospheric classic (click here to see Volume One).

In chronological order, here are ten versions. As always, I recommend the zip, but you can cherry pick. (I have many more versions, but they are mostly either terrible, or jambands, which -- sorry! -- tend to run together to me. If you wanna hear more, comment down below.)

Zipfile

Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger (1967) 1 2
Vanilla Fudge (1968) 1 2
Terry Reid (1968) 1 2
Pesky Gee! (1969) 1 2
Suck (1970) 1 2
Coupla Prog (1970) 1 2
Richard Thompson (2003) 1 2
David Gans and Bob Weir (live 2004) 1 2
The Strangelings (2007) 1 2
Blue Matter (2007) 1 2

Multiple Mondays: Season of the Witch

It's October, so here's another ten spooky recordings for ya. Donovan Leitch (official myspace wiki AMG) wrote and recorded "Season of the Witch" in 1966. It's a perfect, almost obligatory garage jam -- only two chords, with incredible atmosphere and a perfect skeleton to hang your own improvisations and musical ideas on. (I spent some time at archive.org this week, and downloaded 21 live versions from 21 different artists, which should give you an idea of the popularity among jam bands.)

The covers of this song started right away -- here we have The Little Boy Blues' take from 1967, and Sam Gopal's magnificently fuzzy, amped-up version from 1968 (via). The Dedikation (via) were a New Zealand group, and their 1969 cover has the tastiest organ licks this side of Al Kooper. Speaking of Mr. Kooper, we're also hearing his version with Steven Stills and Mike Bloomfield, from their 1968 Super Session album (featuring Donovan's drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh).

G. Love and Special Sauce want to play you a representative jamband version, Lou Rawls adds his distinctive jazzy soul touch to the song, and Jenny DeVivo turns the song into a techie dance groove, complete with obscure audio samples.

Finally, we're going to hear two of my ten favorite covers of all time. Luna's take on this song has one of the five best openings of any pop song ever (someday I'll write a post with the entire list) -- this is one of the peppiest records ever, and my favorite version of this song.

Then, my final mention of Dr. John (previously 1 2 3) for a while: his dirty, funky, greasy voodoo take on the song is not only the best thing about Blues Brothers 2000, it's quite possibly the best thing any human being did in the entirety of 1998.

I have about 30 more versions of this song, almost all of them good, so if I get any requests I'd be more than happy to put up a second volume of this song. As usual, I recommend the zipfile, but you can cherrypick if you feel like it.

Zip file

Donovan 1 2
The Little Boy Blues 1 2
Sam Gopal 1 2
The Dedikation 1 2
Steven Stills, Mike Bloomfield, and Al Kooper 1 2
G. Love and Special Sauce 1 2
Lou Rawls 1 2
Jenny DeVivo 1 2
Luna 1 2
Dr. John and The Blues Brothers Band 1 2

Stagger Lee Saturdays - Bruce Jackson and Snatch and the Poontangs

This week we have two variations on the toast version of Stag. First, we'll listen to Bruce Jackson (official) read a transcription. Bruce Jackson is the compiler of Get Your Ass In The Water and Swim Like Me!, a book first published in 1974. (You can click on this link to read part of the book on Google Books.) The book was reissued in 2004 with a CD of readings; since this is just basically a book on tape, Jackson doesn't expend a lot of energy acting the toast. (For more energetic readings, click and listen to R. L. Burnside and Samuel L. Jackson do two VERY similar rockin' versions.)

Snatch and the Poontangs (myspace AMG wiki) are actually Johnny "Willie and the Hand Jive" Otis (official) and his son Shuggie "Strawberry Letter 23" Otis, along with The Johnny Otis Show's vocalist Delmar Evans. In 1969, they were releasing mainstream funk/rock/soul records, but they also pseudonymously released this gem of profane, obscene rants. As you might guess from the band's name, today's two tracks are totally NSFW. In fact, they're probably NSFHome too. Listen with headphones first.

Bruce Jackson - Stackolee
mirror 1 -- mirror 2
Buy from Amazon

Snatch and the Poontangs - The Great Stackalee
mirror 1 -- mirror 2
Buy from Amazon -- Buy from Deep Discount

Stagger Lee Saturdays - Taj Mahal

This is the second version of Stag I heard in my young life (the first, of course, being Lloyd Price). It's from a 1969 double album which also includes Taj Mahal's covers of Hank Ballard, The Band, Leadbelly and even Dave Dudley's "Six Days On The Road."

This is the first blues album I ever bought (after hearing Taj on Prairie Home Companion) and probably still the one I've listened to all the way through the most times.

Taj Mahal is, no foolin, the official blues musician of the Commonwealth of Massachusettes. For comparative purposes, the official insect is the ladybug, the official marine mammal is the right whale, and the official rock is the Roxbury Puddingstone. (I'm not sure, but I think that might also be the name of one of Bertie Wooster's close chums -- though he probably goes by "Bongo".)

Taj Mahal - Stagger Lee
Buy from Amazon -- Buy from Deep Discount