Stagger Lee Saturdays - Sleepy LaBeef

Hi there, folks. I'm worn out. In real life, I've been moving boxes full of books all morning, but in the interest of pretending this blog is my only life, let's say It's from cleaning up behind all those pirates. They can mess up anything. I've never seen so many apple cores and bones from various meats piled up before.

Since I'm tired, here's Sleepy LaBeef (official wiki AMG). Born to a Houston family of melonfarmers in 1935, he started recording in 1957, which means he's in his fifth decade as a professional musician. If you had to classify LaBeef, most people would call him either country or rockabilly, but he's got a lot of blues and straightforward rock in him too.

This is a great, full-steam-ahead rocking cover of Lloyd Price's take on Stag. Though LaBeef is a guitarist, his piano player is really high in the mix, which is a trait of a lot of great versions of Stag (for example, see here).

Sleepy LaBeef - Stagger Lee
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Multiple Mondays: Ball N' Chain

I usually tend to stay away from blues songs on Mondays: I spend so much time with "Stagger Lee", and so many blues songs have been recorded by literally hundreds of people. But apparently people loved the post with Janis covering Etta James, so I thought I'd let Etta return the favor, and while we're at it you can all learn about Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton (Wiki).

Those of you who are rock geeks will already know that she recorded "Hound Dog" three years before Elvis, and you may even know that she helped write it (though she got no credit, and one royalty check for $500 in total). There is an excellent biography here though, sadly, I can't find a decent discography anywhere. (Even the usually-reliable AMG doesn't have any of her singles listed, not even "Hound Dog.") This wouldn't matter much, except there's a dearth of info online about how many times she recorded "Ball and Chain." Most places agree she wrote it in 1961 or so, but a few sites also claim she first recorded it then. The best discography I could find, with the most complete-appearing info, says she didn't record it till 1968. So until I get my hands on better info, I'm going to assume this version I'm giving you is the first studio recording she did. (The album this appeared on is mostly rerecordings of her earlier hits for another label. Boo hiss for rerecordings.)

Then, we'll hear from Ms. Janis Joplin (with Big Brother...), who heard Big Mama perform the song live in California in the mid-to-late 60's. (I chose the Cheap Thrills version solely for my own convenience, as I already have it here on the computer in digital form.)

Next, Etta James covers Janis's version, from an excellent 1997 blues tribute album to Janis. (This whole series, with collections of songs by Dylan, The Stones, etc, is extraordinarily good.)

Finally, we have Big Mama Thornton's final live performance of "Ball and Chain," recorded about three months before her death. (I ripped this MP3 from the video here.)

Big Mama Thornton
Big Brother and The Holding Company
Etta James
Big Mama Thornton (live)
Buy Thornton's 1968 recording from Amazon -- Buy from Deep Discount