Silly Sundays - Rose and the Arrangement - The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati

It's less than a week to Halloween, so hang on to those hats and glasses -- we're going to hear some spooky, kooky, ooky things between now and then.

Here's my favorite song ever about horror films. With a title reminiscent of "The Eggplant That Ate Chicago," and a group of accomplished musicians and singers, Rose and the Arrangement (Dr. Demento loves them) serve up a delicious platter of horrendous rhymes and a catchy earwig of a tune. This was on the first Dr. Demento compilation I ever got, and it's a great novelty tune. Its greatness is largely due to a refusal to take anything seriously, even its own jokes. (I love that the singer has to apologize for one particularly bad pun, and that the background singers criticize the finale of the song.)

The title was borrowed for an otherwise unrelated micro-budget film in 1996, and I don't normally link to these things, but this fan video for the song made me laugh a lot.

Come back tomorrow -- more spoooooky recordings are on the way!

Rose and the Arrangement - The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati
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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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Stagger Lee Saturdays - Professor Longhair

Professor Longhair (Official Wiki fansite AMG) was born Henry Roeland Byrd in Louisiana in 1918, and started performing in New Orleans in the 1940's. and became a jazz/rock and roll pianist, kind of like Fats Domino but not as popular. He couldn't seem to find a hit anywhere, and so ended up sweeping floors in a record store to feed his gambling habit. (Who's best to sing about Stag? Murderers, gamblers, and pimps, in my book.) Nonetheless, a lot of his songs served as templates for Dr. John and other N'awlins performers.

In the early 70s, as we've seen so many times before, 'Fess was rediscovered by a new generation of jazz and blues fans, and suddenly his career restarted itself. This is from a 1974 album (incidentally, recorded the same year as Fats' live version linked up there) which also includes his rerecordings of some of his greatest songs, "Tipitina" and "Mardi Gras in New Orleans," along with his covers of "Rockin' Pneumonia" and Hank Williams' "Jambalaya."

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Happy Birthday Thurl Ravenscroft!

Today is February 6, which would've been Thurl Ravenscroft's 95th birthday. Around here, we call it Saint Thurl's Day. (You'll recall, I'm sure, that Thurl is the patron saint of She'll Grow Back.)

You can find a LOT of Thurl's stuff here and here, thanks to WFMU and Bob Purse, but this post contains a few of the other things in my collection.

In keeping with the theme of covering Etta James and Janis Joplin, Thurl does one of each, sort of. (By the way, I was hoping this story would've been reported earlier, so I could link it from one of those two posts, but sometimes the AP just won't cooperate!)

First, he helps out whitebread pop singer Georgia Gibbs (who was no stranger to "whiting-out" R & B records, then getting big hits with them) cover Etta's "Roll With Me Henry (The Wallflower)". Next, he joins in with the Modern Barbershop Quartet to give us the tale of "Me and Bobby McGee." (I know, it's really a Kris Kristofferson song, and one Monday soon I've got about a dozen versions for you all.)

Finally, I've featured a lot of Thurl from The Haunted Mansion, but here he is, narrating the story of Pirates of the Caribbean, and singing on "Yo Ho A Pirate's Life For Me." He also plays more than half the voices here. (For some reason, the folks at Disneyland Records decided to rerecord almost all the vocal tracks from the ride, rather than just use the ones they already had in the can. Bonus: more Thurl per minute, or TPM as I call it.)

Happy birthday, Thurl!

Georgia Gibbs - Dance With Me Henry
The Modern Barbershop Quartet - Me and Bobby McGee
Thurl Ravenscroft - Pirates of the Caribbean LP

Multiple Mondays - Be Thankful For What You Got

In 1974, minor government worker William DeVaughn went into a vanity recording studio in Philadelphia and paid $900 in cash so he could record a song he wrote. As a devout Jehovah's Witness, he was interested in music with a spiritual message (and in fact would preach to live audiences during his shows).

I've collected 23 different versions of this song (many from a wonderful cover blog called Versions Galore), with a message you might want to consider this Thursday. Normally, I keep Multiple Mondays posts to ten or less versions of any given song, but I'm incredibly thankful to all of you out there who are reading, downloading, commenting, and hosting your own blogs. I'm so grateful I zipped up every single version of this song I own, AND I cherry-picked them to upload a few files you can download one at a time.

Artists included here: Bunny Clarke, Bunny Rugs, Cornell Campbell (original + dub remix), Donald McCollum, Donovan Carless (original + dub remix), Fingazz, Fo Clips Eclipse, Kings of the City, Love, Ludacris, Massive Attack, Omar feat. Angie Stone, Pauline Henry, Portrait, Rare Gems, Slammin All Body Band, Big Hands Colvin Band, Walter Beasley, William De Vaughn, Yo La Tengo.

First, the big ol' zip file (130 MB).
Now, some individual files:

William DeVaughn (the original)
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Love (1975, the standout track from an otherwise largely unappreciated album)
Massive Attack (1991, from their first album)
Yo La Tengo (1997, from one of their many EPs)
Big Hands Colvin Band (2007, an indie folk-blues band)

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not a particularly spiritual person, but counting your blessings is really underrated, and the best way I know to ensure you don't overlook them. Peace and love to all. (Be sure to be back here December 1, when I'm going to try to post something every day till the 25th.)

Stagger Lee Saturdays - Fats Domino

Here's a live version from 1974, courtesy of Antoine "Fats" Domino. Musically, I love this version -- it's upbeat and as catchy as Stag can get.

I'm not sure I understand Fats' spoken introduction, though. ("It's about two people who love to gamble, and now make three.") Unless he's saying that Stag and Billy are somehow producing a child, it's completely nonsensical to me.

Fats Domino - Stagger Lee
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Stagger Lee Saturdays - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Elvis!

Here's a combination of what may be my favorite rendition of Stag ever, with what is certainly one of my least favorites. They contain the same themes -- sex, cursing, and violence (which, granted, go well with singing about Stag) -- but the execution is quite different.

Nick Cave takes most of his lyrics from a 1967 transcription of Stag found in The Life: The Lore and Poetry of The Black Hustler. Elvis pulls his lyrics out of his, by this time, drug-addled brain. Cave's version is violent, and tough, and perverse. Elvis's is scatological and ... well, immature.

But what else do they have in common? Well, right now I'm reading Gershon Legman's Rationale of the Dirty Joke, and in the introduction, he mentions this style of humor (and even attribution to true-life people):

"[War comics and spy novels, like violent Italian pulp novels and folk-ballads]... do not present their materials as jokes or made-up stories at all, but as factual relations concerning the violent and insensate actions of real persons, generally named, and implied to be historical, such as Blackbeard and Rasputin.
What is suggested here is not that all these stories are necessarily true ... What is meant is that these stories and individuals do personify what the tellers and singers well know to be real but inexplicable peculiarities of human behavior, which they are attempting somehow to fit into a rational view of the world, whether as horror or as humor. [This process of making horror innocuous] represents an effective and time-tested folk method of dealing with the unbearable abnormalities of human conduct..."

In other words, when Stag tells a bartender to kiss his ass, and eludes the police through sheer badness, he helps us ameliorate our own fears and demons. (I'm not comfortable with what this means about Elvis's personal demons being exorcised in this performance, really, but I've always thought of him as a big goofy kid anyway.)

Next week, we hear the textually unrelated version by Ike and Tina Turner, another favorite version of mine.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Stagger Lee
Elvis Presley - Stagger Lee (live 6-29-74)
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