Saturday I Go Out To Play

All right, IT'S PARTY TIME! Up first: the Wicked Wilson Pickett with "Mustang Sally"!



Let's stay with Wilson Pickett for "In The Midnight Hour":



Next, a guest shot from Cannibal & the Headhunters, doing Chris Kenner's "Land Of A Thousand Dances"!



Now, back in the saddle with Sam and Dave, doing "Hold On, I'm Coming," backed up by the musicians who cut the record on 'em, Booker T. & the MG's with the Memphis Horns, so you may as well say, the legendary Mar-Keys.



OK now ladies (and gents), don't forget this immortal advice from The Drifters, "Save The Last Dance For Me." I went for the best recording here, the original one with Ben E. King singing lead, for which there was no vintage video; so close your eyes, hug your lover, and listen.

The Eagle Flies On Friday

It's the weekend and time to try to leave the blues behind for a minute. What with one reminiscence leading to another, I first met Rufus Thomas when he came around to sell ads on his WDIA radio show to my dad's appliance business in Walker Homes that he set up to fill some space in a strip center he built, to get better prices for appliances he bought for homes he built, and to give my mom a job. It was around this time that Rufus came out with a monster hit, "Walkin' The Dog":



Somehow we became buds, and one afternoon I was over at his house on Trigg, I think it was. He kept wanting to demonstrate his new "clapper" switch, turning his stereo on and off by clapping his hands. A pretty young lady opened the front door, wheeling a bicycle in. "This is my daughter Carla," he said. My favorite of hers is "B-A-B-Y":



Another afternoon years later, I had what I thought was a great idea; so I went over to Rufus' new place in the Sharpe Avenue area and laid it out for him. Cable and music television had come about, along with all the ads for obscure products not available in stores. Rufus had had more records about dances than anybody, so it seemed a natural for him to have a videotape preserving all these teen dance steps for posterity. He liked the idea, but asked that question older musicians ask who feel they have been cheated out of royalties, "How much front money can you get me?", figuring that's all the money they'll ever see. Well, I was in no position to produce the damned thing; and unfortunately it never got done. I miss you, my friend.



One final anecdote: I had just read a biography of Jim Morrison which contained the following description of part of the goings-on on the singer's last day alive:

I called Rufus on the phone and asked him, "Have you ever heard of Jim Morrison?" He said no. I added, "Had that group called the Doors?" That didn't help either, so I said, "You remember the song 'Light My Fire.'?" Yeah, he remembered that. So I read him the passage above. Weird. I think he much preferred my call alerting him to WEVL-FM playing his music non-stop when the station got a re-release of Stax records stuff, because less than an hour after I alerted him, he had gotten himself invited down to the station to help DJ the stuff and sounded sooooo happy.

And Thursday's Also Sad

Doing Wednesday's post, I remembered that the Stax-Volt Yuletide Thing in 1968 was where I first met Albert King, through my bud Rufus Thomas. I had a few chats with Albert after that, the last one at the lower level of the Criminal Justice Center in Memphis (Albert got busted more than once for gambling). Here's "Born Under A Bad Sign":



OK, I might as well do a two-fer, but I'm skipping the white boy/girl covers in favor of giving you another look at Albert doing "I'll Play The Blues For You":

Wednesday's Worse

By popular demand, I am reprising one of our Tuesday artists, Big Mama Thornton, doing her tour de force "Ball n' Chain," followed by perhaps the earliest video of the cover version by Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company.





I never got to meet Big Mama, but I did get to talk to Janis once, backstage at the Mid-South Coliseum in 1968 when she appeared on a big Stax-Volt show. Nervous as hell, she asked me if there were any white people in the Memphis audience. I assured her there were plenty, especially down front in the expensive seats.

But Tuesday's Just As Bad

Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's original 1952 recording of "Hound Dog" was a monster hit for its time, especially for a black artist, selling two million copies. A version with slightly reworked lyrics was recorded in 1956 by a respectful young white fellow named Elvis Presley and sold four million copies.

Here's a 1965 video version by Big Mama featuring Buddy Guy on guitar accompaniment:



Here's Elvis on national TV in 1956, with Scotty Moore of course on guitar:

They Call It Stormy Monday

Another little blogger in Memphis has belittled the Feel Good Friday competition and shown us the kind of chump stuff he would post if he deigned to play.

Well, little blogger, I'm going to show you this stuff is like falling off a log for me. Check back each day this week, if you dare, to see if I run out of great material as you predicted.

First, the seminal T-Bone Walker (AllMusic bio) (Wikipedia bio), doing his immortal standard "Stormy Monday."

Jerry Lee Lewis Video

YouTube has some regrettable turnover in videos; but the original of the following awesome video has reappeared. So, I bring you my daddy's drinking buddy and my acquaintance too, The Killer, doing "High School Confidential." Don't miss the erotic sneer on his face when he pounds out his instrumental break. Bonus: the original in .mp3!


I admit, I share a bit of Jerry Lee's contrariness and orneriness, so in the spirit of good fun, The Killer and I salute my worthy competition!

It Shouldn't Be About Gender

I am very happy about the interest and involvement of America's young people in the 2008 Presidential race.

The World War II generation, whose lives have been greatly prolonged by advances in medical science, has cast an unprecedentedly long shadow over the lives of its children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It's time for their hegemony to end.

Generation X has been a disappointment to me. Generation Y, however, gives me hope. I keep up with them by running across their output on the Internet: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and the like.

I keep up with the polls -- not just the aggregate numbers, but the breakdowns by age, gender, and so on; and it has been heartening to see that Generation Y displays a remarkable and wonderful ability to follow and digest information and think independently upon it.

I stumbled last week upon one of the latest sensations on YouTube, LisaNova, because of a piece of comedy video she made; but I clicked on her webcam video of her analysis of the current state of the 2008 Democratic Presidential primary season and became even more impressed. Have a look.

I know that millions of women are heavily invested in Hillary Clinton's attempt to break the final glass ceiling in the United States.

Even though Hillary's shot at the brass ring would not have happened had she not been Bill Clinton's marriage partner, she has quite humanly taken advantage of the name recognition and connections that fuel the dangerous, royalist, dynastic trend that brought us Bush II.

Even though Hillary's ambition is more than usually destructive of her party's chances at ending the madness inside the White House, her supporters want that satisfaction and role model for their daughters and granddaughters RIGHT NOW. They want it so badly that they are willing to overlook what has not been good about Hillary. They relate to her "courageousness" at persevering and forgive her lack of courage in voting for a senseless, depression-causing war.

Many women say they will not even vote Democratic if Hillary is not the nominee. I don't believe them. Women care far too much about their offspring to destroy their best chance at more affordable health care, food, and transportation. Withdrawing love when disappointed has perhaps had to be more a woman's strategy, to compensate for lack of economic power at dependent times in her life.

I thought for a moment that our society was going to have to let women's desire for this victory play itself out, that this is so important to them that we have to let them have this one, so that next time they will feel relaxed in voting for the right candidate regardless of sex. Now it seems not. But it is no time to beat up on Hillary Clinton, to gloat or be anything but gracious in victory.

The day will come, and it won't be long, when a woman will emerge as the best hope for America's future; and I will stand in line to vote for her, proudly. I have always supported women's aspirations and achievements, in general and in my own life history.

This gender tension is something we need to get past as soon as possible. There is so much love to be made and given and so much strength to be found in unity.

UPDATE: "Why Didn't More Women Vote for Hillary?" by Amy Sullivan, Time Magazine. "Five reasons Obama won. Five reasons Clinton lost." by Jonathan Alter, Newsweek Magazine.

Young People Aren't Buying the Lies

Why does the first picture make me glad and the second one make me sad?


Uh, could it be the difference in their messages? Barack Obama is not Adolf Hitler. He's not Louis Farrakhan. He's not Malcolm X. And he's not that bombastic "Reverend" Wright.

Barack Obama is a half-white, half-black American man with a Harvard Law degree, a decent wife and two cute daughters, and an ample, peaceful, non-threatening, non-radical track record of his own.

Guilt by Association

[Tom] Hayden, one of the Chicago Seven who were acquitted of inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, said he is disappointed that Clinton has tried to taint Obama with guilt by association.

"Once you introduce the concept of guilt by association, everyone is in trouble because there is no end to it," he said. "The goal is to render Barack so unelectable that the party has to turn to her. Because the goal is so narrow and obsessive, she's not aware that she's also going to be collateral damage."

Maybe this information in the Washington Post is part of what Tom meant: Clinton Quiet About Own Radical Ties: Lawyers Who Knew Her In 60s And 70s Say She Was Hypocritical For Faulting Obama For Ties To William Ayers.

Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore

I feel the same about this Republican propaganda smear on Barack Obama about not always wearing a flag pin on his lapel that John Prine felt when he wrote his influential 1971 song, "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore." Click the title to the left or the play button below for a 29-second clip of the chorus.

Here are the lyrics in the chorus:

But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
They're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reasons for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.

If you're too young to remember John Prine, or weren't paying attention back in the day, here are his official site, fan site, Wikipedia bio, and AllMusic bio.

A little "institutional memory" courtesy of Wintermute.

Got to Love Al Green

I met Al Green back in the 70's when he helped open a district office for then-Tennessee State Representative Teddy Withers (one of Earnest Withers' sons) that I let Teddy have for very low rent. I haven't posted any videos of Al yet, perhaps because he no longer uses anyone except Leroy Hodges from the studio group that helped make him great, Hi Rhythm; but I still love his classics, so here are two of them. The first is a Letterman appearance featuring some guest stars on "Let's Stay Together."



The next is another truly live performance (not a lip-sync), this one on Soul Train, of a song Al co-wrote with my pal Teenie Hodges: "Take Me To The River."

Albert Einstein: Belief in God "Childish Superstition"

Well I must say I love this revelation:

Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday.

The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.
. . . .
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
. . . .
"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," he said.

"And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."

And he added: "As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

I've been watching a lot of mind-boggling TV programs on cosmology lately on the Science and History Channels, including one on the end of the universe (The Universe : Cosmic Apocalypse) and one by Carl Sagan (Episode 10 The Edge of Forever) on its beginnings and possible cyclical nature. I just don't see how religious myths of any stripe are going to survive much longer under the onslaught of scientific progress, unless widespread human desire for eternal life (the bottom line of Christianity and Islam) is strong enough to keep the human race stuck on stupid forever.

Victims of Our Own Success

I have to get used to this concept and let it mellow me out, because it's been evident to me in more than one area lately.

An Indian guy has a new book excerpted on Newsweek that points this out. The United States has said we want the rest of the world to do the right thing that we do; and now that some very populous countries have actually taken that advice to heart, the U.S. is getting hammered by foreign competition and the balance of payments deficits, employment dislocations, and currency devaluations that have resulted.

Closer to home, I have griped about the Blues Foundation: taking the annual awards and presentations that a brilliant coterie of Memphis blues mavens created to preserve the richest vein of popular music on the planet, and putting them in the hands of the national and international record labels that can still survive selling the blues. A couple of these label heads are friends of mine and superb human beings: David Less and Holger Petersen.

As time marches on, we can find ourselves -- if we are luckier in more ways than we anticipated -- victims of our own successes. We just really need to try to be as cool with that as we can.

UPDATE: I forgot to include one of the most striking examples of this principle at work: the fact that most newspaper and television websites have co-opted the commenting feature that helped make blogs so popular. In so doing, they have drained away some of the energy that went into the non-MSM blogosphere, even to the point of hiring some of the most talented bloggers and capturing their traffic. Again, we are victims of our own success.

Memphis Beer Buy

My friends at the Mid-Town Mini-Mart across from Snowden School in Midtown Memphis have scored tens of 12-packs of one of the best-tasting beers I have quaffed in many moons.

Students of legal age at Rhodes College and Midtown beer connoisseurs of every stripe should beeline to the Mini-Mart and take advantage of the deal they're offering: a 12-pack of this delicious California microbrew, Sierra Nevada Summerfest, for the awesome price of $14.

Sierra Nevada describes Summerfest as a Pilsner-style lager, but to me it has exquisite Kölsch notes.

I should keep this quiet in case I decide to buy more than the two 12-packs I've already laid in of this yummy beer; but as a service to Daily Docket readers and to reward my pals at the Mini-Mart for doing such good things, I'm tipping you off to the Memphis beer deal of Spring 2008. Get over there before you get beat out of this score. Tell 'em Wintermute sont ya. They'll know, their lawyer buddy who buys Camel nonfilters.

Minglewood Plaza in Memphis

This post is likely to be only of interest to hip people in Memphis and to musicians and booking agents, but just that makes it worth my effort.

Those of you who don't subscribe to the Memphis Daily News, either hard copy or online via RSS, may have missed a happy story about a new music venue in Midtown.

Some dedicated hometown Grateful Deadhead real estate investors are recycling and expanding the old Strings & Things building (Taystee Bakery) on Madison into a multi-use "Plaza" with retail, restaurant, offices, and a 1,500-seat concert hall.

This has got to breathe new life into nearby businesses like Murphy's, whatever the Antenna Club is called now, and the Poor & Hungry Cafe. And this new development may move the focus away from Cooper-Young back to Madison Avenue, considering that Mike Smith of Young Avenue Deli will take over as general manager of Minglewood Concert Hall.

I don't need to repeat the excellent story by Eric Smith in the News. Just click here to read all about it.

Raining on Memphis In May

Once again, rain is spoiling at least part of Memphis In May's "Beale Street" Music Festival.

When are the region's non-"classical" music fans going to demand that the date for the Festival be switched with the later and more rain-free weekend for the Sunset Symphony, which attracts far fewer and mainly local attendees who do not pump up tourism coffers?

Doctors Support Universal Health Care

A new scientific survey of American doctors conducted by Indiana University School of Medicine and published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine found that a 59% majority of physicians now supports universal health care, while doctors opposing it fell to 32%.

"As doctors, we find that our patients suffer because of increasing deductibles, co-payments, and restrictions on patient care," said Dr. Ronald Ackermann, who worked on the study with Carroll. "More and more, physicians are turning to national health insurance as a solution to this problem."
. . . .
"Across the board, more physicians feel that our fragmented and for-profit insurance system is obstructing good patient care, and a majority now support national insurance as the remedy," Ackermann said in a statement.

The Indiana survey found that 83 percent of psychiatrists, 69 percent of emergency medicine specialists, 65 percent of pediatricians, 64 percent of internists, 60 percent of family physicians and 55 percent of general surgeons favor a national health insurance plan.

This rings true to me, because the procedure-oriented surgical "elite" has been making out way better than other doctors.

Our system is the historical result of the World War II wage freeze, under which employers were still free to compete with health benefits. Insurance companies were more than happy to receive premiums and pocket eventually huge profits under this regime. Meanwhile, Congress sucked up to the new status quo by making health insurance premiums deductible for employers but not counting those premiums as income to employees.

The market for health care is extremely distorted by the super-strong desire of almost all people not to die or stay sick. Free marketeers need to take a look at true market failure in this sector and focus instead on efficiencies available under the inevitable entitlement system we will have sooner or later.

UPDATE: "Nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) favor a government guarantee of universal health insurance, even if it means raising taxes; 34% are opposed."  See the poll breakdowns by party, religion, and political philosophy on the Pew Research Center website.

Consensus emerging on universal healthcare.