Happy Birthday, Peetie Wheatstraw

Peetie Wheatstraw, a.k.a. William Bunch, the Devil's Son-in-Law and High Sheriff of Hell, was born during the Winter Solstice of 1902 and died on the Solstice in 1941. He was born in Ripley, Tennessee and his people relocated to eastern Arkansas. By 1920 he had moved to St. Louis, taken his stage name, and recorded more than 160 songs starting in the 1930's.


You can always tell
When your woman gon' throw you down
She's always got business
Ooh-well-well, on the other side of town

At least one historian, Ted Gioia, thinks Robert Johnson borrowed some of his myth-making from Peetie's stories about a relationship with the Devil, just as some of it was borrowed for a Rudy Ray Moore comedy in 1979. A character in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is based on the musician's persona.


I am going to Chicago
An' get my ham bone boiled
Because these St. Louis women
Woo-well, going to let my ham bone spoil.

My father knew a blues singer called "Wheatstraw" along the Mississippi delta near Blytheville, Arkansas, but that seems to have been a family man who sang from his front porch and in the field. William Bunch would have been a well-known professional by then, more likely to perform in the "blind pigs" or speakeasies around the delta.
He was riding in the back of a Buick up in East St. Louis when the car hit a freight train, December 21, 1941. His body was shipped to Cotton Plant, Arkansas in Woodruff County.

Bring me flowers whiles I'm livin'
Please don't bring them when I am dead
And bring ice bags to my bedside
Ooh-well-well, to cool my achin' head

Bring me water to my bed
A drink will keep me cool
And just say after I am gone
Ooh-well-well, 'I sure tried to help that fool'

"Hate to Talk About Myself"

I usually start answering memes and then don't finish them; too much like work, or Who Cares? But this one from Elspeth was fun and involves some word play:

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to people you like and include me. Try not to repeat a song title.

Pick your band/artist: Fats Waller

Are you a male or female: The Sheik of Araby

Describe yourself: Keeping Out of Mischief Now

How do you feel about yourself: I’ve Got My Fingers Crossed

Describe where you currently live: Lounging at the Waldorf

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: I Wish that I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate

Your favorite form of transportation: Alligator Crawl

Your best friend is: My Very Good Friend the Milkman

Your favorite color is: Black and Blue

What’s the weather like: Russian Fantasy

Your favorite time of day is: Loafin’ Time

If your life were a TV show, it would be called: Blue Because of You

What life is to you: The Panic is On

What is the best advice you have to give: Squeeze Me

If you could change your name what would you change it to: Big Chief de Sota

Your favorite food is: Fat and Greasy

Thought for the Day: Ain’t Got Nobody to Grind My Coffee

How you would like to die: Pantin' in the Panther Room

Your soul's present condition: Numb Fumblin'

The faults you can bear: The Curse of an Aching Heart

Your motto: It's a Sin to Tell a Lie

The Can-Can's Such a Pretty Show

I wrinkle my brow at those who limit themselves to the music of their youth, but here I am with three acoustic songs written before 1980, one of them when Shakespeare was a toddler.

Poor old Granddad, I laughed at all his words
I thought he was a bitter man when he spoke of women's ways:
"They'll trap you and they'll use you before you even know; but love is blind, and you're far too kind-- don't ever let it show."

I wish that I knew what I know now
when I was younger
I wish that I knew what I know now
when I was stronger


"The can-can's such a pretty show; it'll steal your heart away
But backstage, back on earth again, the dressing rooms are gray.
They come on strong, and it ain't too long 'fore they make you feel a man,
But love is blind, and you soon will find you're just a boy again."

"When you want her lips, you get her cheek; makes you wonder where you are. If you want some more then she's fast asleep, leaves you twinkling with the stars. Poor young Grandson, there's nothing I can say; you'll have to learn, just like me, and that's the hardest way."

Ooh la la
Ooh la la, la la

The morning after seems like a good time to re-appreciate "Ooh La La" by Ronnie Lane.
The earliest surviving version of "John Barleycorn Must Die" dates to 1568, and even Robert Burns had a version; the one I know was recorded by Traffic in 1970.


I've always wanted to ask Bruce Cockburn if this really was based on an archetypal dream, or if he thinking of the lions playing on the beach in the dreams of The Old Man and the Sea.

Unheard of Music: Concrete Blonde Doing Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows"

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows



Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that its now or never
Everybody knows that its me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old black joes still pickin cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the plague is coming
Everybody knows that its moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows its coming apart
Take one last look at this sacred heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Unheard of Music: Yoko Kanno

Yoko Kanno with her big band in a live performance of "Tank", a sound that, without fear or favor, truly kicks ASS and TAKES NAMES. If you aren't moving around to this, I don't think I want to know you:

Yoko Kanno is a Japanese composer and leader of "The Seatbelts", a jazz band/pick up orchestra. She found the usual paths closed to her, so she made a name writing soundtracks for animation, much as Ennio Morricone elevated Westerns.

Kanno must have worked every type of jazz, funk, blues, even shamanic chants and lullabies into my favorite, Cowboy Bebop. What amazes me is how authentic it sounds, even with her goofy habit of mixing Japanese with English and sometimes Russian lyrics. If you'd told me I'd be singing along phonetically-- and feeling-- to a Japanese blues... (the title refers to Howling Wolf's first album, The Real Folk Blues)

"The Real Folk Blues" by Yoko Kanno
Aishiteta to nageku ni wa
Amari ni mo toki wa sugi te shimatta
Mada kokoro no hokorobi o
Iyasenumama kaze ga fuiteru
(It's too late to cry I love you.
The wind still blowing, my heart still aching)
Hitotsu no me de asu o mite
Hitotsu no me de kinou mitsumeteru
Kimi no ai no yurikagode
Mo ichido yasurakani nemuretara
(One side of my eyes see tomorrow,
And the other one see yesterday
I hope I could sleep in the cradle of your love, again)

Kawaita hitomi de dareka na itekure
(Somebody cry for me, with dry eyes)
The real folk blues!
Honto no kanashimi ga shiritaidake
Doro no kawa ni sukatta jinsei mo warukuwanai
Ichido kiri de owarunara
(The real folk blues:
I just want to feel real sorrow
It's not so bad a life, sitting in muddy water
If life is only lived once)
Kibou ni michita zetsuboto
Wanagashikakerareteru kono chansu
Nani ga yoku te warui no ka
Koin no omoi to kuramitaita

(Hopeless hope, every chance becomes a trap
What is right, or wrong
It's like both sides of a coin)
Dore dake ikireba iyasareru no darou
(How long I must live till I'm set free?)
The real folk blues
Honto no yorokobi ga shiritai dake
Hikaru mono no subete ga ougen to wa kagiranai
(The real folk blues
I just want to feel pleasure that's real
All that glitters is not gold)

This is a scene from the penultimate episode of Cowboy Bebop. Faye Valentine draws the outline of her childhood bedroom in the ruins of a devastated Earth. Radical Edward, the child savant known as "Ed" leaves the ship, alone-- and Ein, a genetically enhanced, hyper-intelligent corgi, decides that Ed needs him more than the others do.


Here she tries her hand at ska, "Bad Dog No Biscuit":


Or fooling around with standards on solo piano ("How Long Has This Been Going On" at the beginning and "Rhapsody in Blue" at the end and I don't know what in the middle):

One more favorite: wringing emotion out of techno music on "Inner Universe", with lyrics in Russian, English and Latin for Ghost in the Shell.

I didn't even know techno could contain so much emotion. I love this woman.

Death of a Ladies' Man

Louis Armstrong was a fan of Guy Lombardo, for reasons that passeth understanding-- but there was an elderly producer who said one of the most profound things he learned was that professional musicians have much wider tastes than their fans.
Most of my friends have open ears-- Pat Relf pushed Danger Mouse and Gnarls Barkley on me, her daughters found Louis Jordan before I did, I keep nudghing them about the composer Yoko Kanno... Still, I've resolved to post more music this year, if only to shake my more calcitrant friends-- the ones with mullets and restored Barracudas-- loose from the music they're used to.

Ah the man she wanted all her life was hanging by a thread
"I never even knew how much I wanted you," she said.
His muscles they were numbered and his style was obsolete.
"O baby, I have come too late." She knelt beside his feet.
"I'll never see a face like yours in years of men to come
I'll never see such arms again in wrestling or in love."
And all his virtues burning in the smoky Holocaust
She took unto herself most everything her lover lost
Now the master of this landscape he was standing at the view
with a sparrow of St. Francis that he was preaching to...

Now you might think I'd start with my own version of musical comfort food, Fats Waller or Gordon Lightfoot, but no, it's been a dark lonely weekend with biting cold outside and soul-wrenching weather inside, Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley ain't cheering me up, and damnit, if this is the Dark Night of the Soul come back for a visit (and yes, it stinks after three days) then this is the night (you win, Doris) for the patron saint of disappointment, Leonard Cohen:


First "Suzanne" (with the best understanding of Jesus on this cross this side of Alan Moore's Promethea), some lyrics from "Death of a Ladies' Man" because it's that kind of a day, and finally Jeff Buckley's and K.D. Laing's covers of "Hallelujah". Aristotle tells us this pity and fear is supposed to bring catharsis, cut the poisoned right out of us, but god-damn.

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Letters I've Written, Never Meaning to Send

The National Enquirer and Wonkette claim that Cindy McCain was entwined with a man not-her-husband at a Tempe Moody Blues concert.
We cast no stones here. It may be, as one Wonkette reader opined, "Being finger-banged during 'Knights in White Satin' isn’t very First Ladyish"-- but hell, when I was in high school that pretty much defined my love life.

My Kind of News Day

Congress tightened control of interstate monkey sales (good) but forgot to include a provision for trained caupuchin helper monkeys (bad). One lonely strip club on Bourbon Street (the French Quarter being on high ground, remember) remains open in spite of the hurricane, but only at half-staff (Bada-BING!). And regardless of John McCain's fantasy life, the invasion of Iraq is still so FUBAR that the first major oil contract between Iraq and a foreign country went to China instead of the U.S.; this administration can't even do "Blood for Oil" right.

I'm recovering with coffee and a copy of Burne Hogarth's Drawing Wrinkles and Drapery after a week of extroversion: getting ready for school on Tuesday, out for live music almost every night including a terrific performance by E.C. Scott at the new 411 Blues Club in town and a life-changing performance by Zion Lion on the downtown mall, and finally an Obama/Biden rally in Battle Creek. But mostly I like confounding the search engines with an entry like this. Whoever typed 'strippers', 'helper monkey', 'Barack Obama', 'Burne Hogarth' and 'the blues' into Google-- I was born to love you.

"The Blue Light was My Blues, and the Red Light was My Mind"

My favorite Robert Johnson song performed by Keb Mo. The version on his album Slow Down is more personal, and well, just a hair slower, and for me about as heartbreaking as it gets this side of Mozart's "Lachrymosa" or Skip James' voice on "Cypress Grove Blues".

READING IN CHICAGO MONDAY NIGHT

A reminder for Chicago friends and family that I'll be part of the mix at The Mix in Chicago tomorrow night, as part of the Twilight Tales writer's group early Mardi Gras celebration.

I'll be reading a new story written for the occasion-- "If There's Anyone Here That Weeps Like Mary", a horror story about Buddy Bolden's years in the insane asylum, as well as a sketch of Bourbon Street at 3AM and "They Carry Knives", the mostly true story of why we call it "Jazz" instead of "Spasm".
There will be King Cake and the wearing of amusing hats.

Buddy Bolden, Pray for Us Sinners

I'm working on a story about Buddy Bolden for Twilight Tales' annual Mardi Gras show, coming up January 28th in Chicago. Along the way I found an Australian band, The Buddy Bolden Revival Orchestra, that meticulously researches and tries its best to reproduce the sound of Bolden's band, never heard by living ears. Bolden is generally considered by everyone (except a proprietory Jelly Roll Morton) to be the "Father of Jazz", but he was hospitalized for schizophrenia in 1907 before he ever recorded, and died there in 1931.

Click on the song titles to play. May I commend to you the most excellent "Funky Butt", kept in memory by the ragtime guitarist Mississippi John Hurt, and developed by the Bolden band from an older dance tune they called "Doing the Ping Pong" .

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Björk Guðmundsdóttir: It's Oh, So Quiet...

How Mississippi John Hurt Stole Music

AND WHO SHALL WE BLAME, THE CYNICAL RECRUITER OR THE NAIVE RECRUIT?

I make a date for golf, and you can bet your life it rains.
I try to give a party, and the guy upstairs complains.
I guess I'll go through life, just catching colds and missing trains.
Everything happens to me.

I never miss a thing. I've had the measles and the mumps.
And every time I play an ace, my partner always trumps.
I guess I'm just a fool, who never looks before he jumps.
Everything happens to me.

At first, my heart thought you could break this jinx for me.
That love would turn the trick to end despair.
But now I just can't fool this head that thinks for me.
I've mortgaged all my castles in the air.

I've telegraphed and phoned and sent an air mail special too.
Your answer was goodbye and there was even postage due.
I fell in love just once, and then it had to be with you.
Everything happens to me.

I've telegraphed and phoned. I sent an air mail special too.
Your answer was goodbye and there was even postage due.
I fell in love just once, and then it had to be with you.
Everything happens to me.

'Everything Happens To Me' lyrics by CHET BAKER

Happy Mozart's Birthday-- and Elmore James, Too!

Violin Concerto 5 with Janine Jansen on a violin made by Stradivarius.

The Sky Is Crying
by Elmore James, Morgan Robinson and Clarence Lewis

The sky is crying,
Look at the tears rolling down the streets.
The sky is crying,
Look at the tears rolling down the streets.
I looked out my window,
The rain was falling down in sheets.

My baby left me this morning,
Lord knows I don't know the reason why.
My baby left me this morning,
I don't know the reason why.
And everytime I think about it,
I hang my head and cry.

The sun is shining,
Although it's raining in my heart.
The sun is shining,
Although it's raining in my heart.
I love my baby,
I hate to see us part.

Some wonderful nut with bottles and roller blades.

Saint James Infirmary Blues

Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
Wherever she may be;
She can look this whole wide world all over
She'll never find another man like me.

Now when I die, I want you to dress me in straightlace shoes
A boxback coat and a stetson hat
Put a twenty dollar gold piece on my watch chain, so's
The boys'll know I died standing pat.

Cab Calloway: "Reefer Man"

I'm not a viper (the stuff doesn't affect me), but I am a true devotee of "reefer songs", double entendre lyrics and hot jazz of the '20s, '30s and '40s. It is because of this that I die alone and childless; none of the women who let me get close enough to have sex with them were willing to name a child "Fats" Waller Fountain. In our beginning is our end.
This clip is from W.C. Fields' 1933 film "International House", a film so surreal that if you saw it on late night television and tried describing it to your friends, YOU would be accused of being high. The performance is being watched by Fields (in the straw boater) over Dr. Wong's Radioscope, which "needs no broadcast station; no carrier waves are necessary." Indeed.

JAMES BROWN, 1933 to ...

James Brown is gone at seventy-three, relatively young but still a long time for someone who drove himself to exhaustion in his professional and private life—they chased him through three states, once-- and still held his head high as The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.

He had a good death, if there is such a thing. He’d worked more than 100 shows the last year of his life, celebrated his annual toy give-away for children on Friday, had a cough that worried his dentist on Saturday, entered the hospital with pneumonia Christmas Eve and had slipped away by Christmas Day.

I will always love him for the performances when he was so exhausted by a song, so overcome with emotion he had to helped off the stage, with a friend draping his coat around his shoulders and helping James stagger off under the weight of his loss— but no! He has more to say! He can’t hold back! He throws off their support and staggers back to center stage, falls to his knees, screaming OHBABY PLEASE!— howling his cri de coeur to lost love, still melodic, still heartfelt, still funky, a shriek to make Orpheus and the Bacchantes envy his skill, too much for mortal man, collapsing again, soaked with sweat, lifted again by his crew like a deposition from the cross of human feeling, still trying to sing, staggering off the stage, blind with anguish maybe but each step keeping time with the music...

“Howl, dogs, for a Wolf has died this day.”

A Brief Reflection on the Name Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern- schplenden- schlitter- crasscrenbon- fried- digger- dingle- dangle- dongle- du

[Title: 'It's the Arts'. Classical music plays.]
Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Panties...I'm sorry...Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Bach. Names that will live for ever. But there is one composer whose name is never included with the greats. Why is it that the world never remembered the name of Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern
- schplenden-
schlitter-
crasscrenbon-
fried- digger- dingle- dangle- dongle- dungle-
burstein- von- knacker- thrasher- apple- banger-
horowitz- ticolensic- grander- knotty- spelltinkle-
grandlich- grumblemeyer- spelterwasser- kurstlich-
himbleeisen- bahnwagen- gutenabend- bitte- ein- nürnburger- bratwustle-
gerspurten- mitz- weimache- luber- hundsfut- gumberaber- shönedanker-
kalbsfleisch- mittler- aucher von Hautkopft
of Ulm?
(Monty Python's Flying Circus, writing credited to Graham Chapman and John Cleese)

It just occured to me that one of the funniest things about the name Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern- schplenden- schlitter- crasscrenbon- fried- digger- dingle- dangle- dongle- dungle- burstein- von- knacker- thrasher- apple- banger- horowitz- ticolensic- grander- knotty- spelltinkle- grandlich- grumblemeyer- spelterwasser- kurstlich- himbleeisen- bahnwagen- gutenabend- bitte- ein- nürnburger- bratwustle- gerspurten- mitz- weimache- luber- hundsfut- gumberaber- shönedanker- kalbsfleisch- mittler- aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm is the closing phrase-- as if to imply that there are other Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern- schplenden- schlitter- crasscrenbon- fried- digger- dingle- dangle- dongle- dungle- burstein- von- knacker- thrasher- apple- banger- horowitz- ticolensic- grander- knotty- spelltinkle- grandlich- grumblemeyer- spelterwasser- kurstlich- himbleeisen- bahnwagen- gutenabend- bitte- ein- nürnburger- bratwustle- gerspurten- mitz- weimache- luber- hundsfut- gumberaber- shönedanker- kalbsfleisch- mittler- aucher von Hautkopfts out there, perhaps from Worms or Brest, and not to be confused with the great composer of Ulm.

"The Preacher and the Slave" by Joe Hill

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer in voices so sweet:

CHORUS: You will eat, by and by,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die

And the Starvation Army they play,
And they sing and the clap and they pray,
Till they get all your coin on the drum,
Then they tell you when you're on the bum:

CHORUS: You will eat, by and by,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die

Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out
And they holler, they jump and they shout
Give your money to Jesus, they say,
He will cure all diseases today.

If you fight hard for children and wife-
Try to get something good in this life-
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Workingmen of all countries, unite
Side by side we for freedom will fight
When the world and it's wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:

You will eat, by and by,
When you've learned how to cook and how to fry;
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good
Then you'll eat in the sweet by and by.

Joe Hill, 1879-1915