Dale Hawkins - La-Do-Dada

Dale Hawkins hailed from the swamps near Shreveport, Louisiana. The skinny, pimply faced white kid had a penchant for employing great guitarists like Roy Buchanan and James Burton. James Burton, who would go on to play with Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley and Gram Parsons, plays on this Hawkins original, La-Do-Dada. This A-Side, Hawkins' 5th single, was released on the legendary Chicago blues label, Checker (a subsidiary of Chess Records) in July of 1958. He may be the only white guy on that label. Anyone?

Dale Hawkins got into the production business and worked with The Uniques, who we just featured a few days ago, Mike Nesmith of The Monkees, The Five Americans and The Blue Things. The Blue Things, incidentally, covered La-Do-Dada in 1965 for their major label debut.

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!

Happy 87th Birthday Chuck Berry -- Memphis/Back In the USA

Memphis

Back In The USA

Happy 87th birthday to the man with the plan, Chuck Berry. The single most influential rock musician ever?

Here is my favorite Chuck Berry single ever. On Chess Records, from May, 1959, we have Back In The USA paired with the heartbreaking, Memphis.

Song of the Week: Sonny Boy Williamson (ii) -- Peach Tree

We had to follow up our last post on the Sonny Boy Williamson (i) composition, Good Morning School Girl with a number from Sonny Boy Williamson (ii). Here the master of the blues harp performs his original composition, Peach Tree. The number was released posthumously on The Real Folk Blues album in 1965 for Chess Records. Somehow I don't think he is really singing about a tree that bears the fruit of Peach. Hmmm, what else could he be singing about that looks and feels like a peach? Think. Think. Think.

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!

The Song Still Remains The Same: the unauthorized etymology of Led Zeppelin songs. Bring It On Home

Bring It On Home - Led Zeppelin

Bring It On Home - Sonny Boy Williamson

We are back (after a long hiatus) with our fourth installment of The Song Still Remains The Same: the unauthorized etymology of Led Zeppelin songs. You know, that little thing I do where I look at a song Led Zeppelin claims to have written, and then play you the original song...that they didn't write.

We started with Dazed and Confused. 
Then we looked at Whole Lotta Love.
Then we analyzed Since I've Been Lovin' You.

Today, we look at Bring It On Home.

The last song on the October 1969 release of Led Zeppelin II is a song called Bring It On Home. As you can see from the above label scan, it is a song that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have claimed to have written. The song is a laid back blues shuffle with Robert Plant's trademark billy-goat styled vocal delivery. Plant pleads with his lover:

Bbbbaaaaabbbbbwwwaaaayyyyy. Well,  Bbbbaaaaabbbbbwwwwaaaayyyyy, I'm going to bring it on home to you. I've got my ticket, I got that load. Join up, going higher, all aboard. I'm going to take my seat, railway bag. Ooh-ch'yeah. Watch this train roll down the track. I'm going bring it on home, break it on down now to you.

Ahhh, you can hear Robert Plant's native Mississippi accent as he drawl's out his pained lyrics.

Whoa. Wait. No. That's not right. Robert Plant isn't from Mississippi, he's from the UK. And Jimmy Page wasn't an itinerant sharecropper who made his way to Chicago after World War II. How did I mess this up? Oh yeah, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant didn't write the damn blues song! They stole it.

Sonny Boy Williamson (II) recorded the Willie Dixon penned song, Bring It On Home, in January of 1963 at Chess Studios in Chicago. However, the number wasn't released on Chess Records until February of 1966, shortly after Sonny Boy Williamson's death in Helena, Arkansas in 1965.

It's undeniable that it is the same song. Lawyers for Atlantic Records agreed and settled out of court for an undisclosed sum in 1972. Subsequent pressings of the record show Willie Dixon as the composer. Only one person seems to still believe it is a different song:

The thing with Bring It On Home, there's only a tiny bit taken from Sonny Boy Williamson's version and we threw that in as a tribute to him. People say, "Oh, Bring It On Home is stolen." Well, there's only a little bit in the song that relates to anything that had gone before it. Just the end.
--Jimmy Page as interviewed by Dave Schulps, Trouser Press, October, 1977. 

Well, to that, I just have to say...Huh? Just a little bit? It's the same frickin' song, Jimmy. It's not just taking the shuffle, it's not just lifting a lyric or two. It's not just that it's the same title. You even have Robert Plant even imitates Sonny Boy Williamson! It's the same thing Led Zeppelin did when Robert mimicked The Small Faces' Steve Marriott with Whole Lotta Love (aka, You Need Lovin').  You make call it an homage, Misters Plant and Page, but it's not. It's standing on the shoulders of others and pushing them down in the mud. Not OK lads.

And yes, I understand that Sonny Boy Williamson tended to steal stuff too...like another person's entire identity! But we are dealing with just one deviancy at a time here.

Listen for yourself. Let us know what you think. Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!

Song of the Week: Chuck Berry - Thirty Days

There are two kinds of people in this world. Cool people and those who don't understand what Chuck Berry means to the world of music.

In the damn near 6 years we've been running this website (yep, 6 frickin' years of flippy goodness), we've NEVER featured Chuck Berry. To be honest he is so damn good, so damn big, so damn fundamental to the very foundation of rock-n-roll, that we've been intimidated to feature him. The songs, the guitar work and the amazing lyrics that typify America more than perhaps ANY other American songwriter. Wow, where to start? What song? What to say to honor him? We're tired of being scared of coming up short. Thus we are going to let Chuck Berry do all the talking. 

Here is Chuck Berry with his second single, recorded at The Chess Records studios in 1955. We present to you Thirty Days. What a guitar tone!

Song of the Week: Howlin' Wolf (featuring Hubert Sumlin) - Smokestack Lightning

Hubert Sumlin died yesterday. He was 80. I would like to think that most everyone knows and appreciates what he did for blues music, but that just isn't the case. Hubert Sumlin was the quiet, diminutive and happy-go-lucky sideman to blues giant, Howlin' Wolf.

Howlin' Wolf first started working with Hubert Sumlin when Sumlin was still a teen, and not terribly confident on guitar. Sumlin played second guitar to Willie Johnson. Where Willie Johnson was aggressive in his playing and his life and would musically go toe to toe with the massive Howlin' Wolf, Sumlin sat back and remained quiet.

When Willie Johnson parted ways with Howlin' Wolf, Hubert Sumlin was moved to first chair. His style had not taken shape and Howlin' Wolf pushed him hard, perhaps too hard. In a wonderful Howlin' Wolf documentary film, Sumlin recounts how Wolf would badger and bully him to be better. As they worked on an important recording, Howlin' Wolf grew impatient at what he felt was Sumlin's lack of originality. As he often did, Wolf sent Sumlin packing. As Sumlin packed up his gear and began to leave the studio, Howlin' Wolf yelled after him something along the lines of "put your guitar pick away. Learn how to play with your fingers and come back with something that will stand out. If you don't trust yourself to play something great then how I can trust you to play something great? You can come back tomorrow and have one more try at it. If I don't like what you have, then I will let (studio musician and Wolf's second guitarist on the session) Buddy Guy take it over." With that, Sumlin recounted, the wallflower that was Hubert Sumlin went home, cried and began on the task Howlin' Wolf had given him: A finger picking guitar riff that would compliment the song. The next morning, fingers raw from a sleepless night of playing his new riff, Hubert Sumlin came back to Chess Studios where Wolf and his band, including Buddy Guy were ready to record. Wolf tersely told Sumlin he better impress and that he only had one chance to do so. Hubert Sumlin sat down and began to play his finger-picking riff in the key of E. After a few seconds Howlin' Wolf interrupted Sumlin's audition and turned to producer Leonard Chess and said, "you ready to record?". With that the band took off on Howlin' Wolf's biographical song, Smokestack Lightning. The guitar riff was unique and catchy and fit perfectly with the song and Wolf's pain stricken tale. The guitar riff would soon be pilfered by Dale Hawkin's own teenage guitarist, James Burton, to create the iconic Suzie Q. Bands like The Yardbirds, Manfred Mann, Creedence Clearwater Revival and a host of others would also mine the guitar riff with great success.

The relationship between Hubert Sumlin and Howlin' Wolf was very similar to father and son. As detailed in James Segrest's book, Moanin at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf, the two did not always get along, but they always respected each other, looked out for each other and, in the end, were always inseparable. An illustrative tale from the book stands out. While touring thru the South shortly after Wolf had "made it", Howlin' Wolf drove the tour bus late one night to a spot not on the route. Wolf was quiet and tense and the whole band had fallen asleep in the back. Sumlin, sensing something was up, sat with his mentor in the front row and said nothing. Wolf stopped the bus in front of a run-down house and walked tentatively to the front door before eventually knocking on the door. An elderly woman came to the door and and the powerful Howlin' Wolf began to shake and said "Mama, it's me, Chester. How ya doing?". His mother had rejected him years before for a violent incident that happened when a teenage Chester Burnett, now The Wolf, had laid out a man he found on his mother's property. She told him to leave and he had not seen her in the 30 or so years since. That incident, by the way, is the major theme of the song, Smokestack Lightnin' as it is in another of his songs, Back Door Man.  Howlin' Wolf handed the elderly lady a $100 bill, a fortune in the mid-50's. The mother ripped up the money and threw the pieces on the ground proclaiming she wouldn't take money earned by singing the devil's music. With that she turned and went back into the house. The mighty Wolf fell to his knees and wept. Hubert stepped out of the car and walked his friend to the passenger seat and then took over the driving duties. Sumlin only said, "I'm sorry Wolf" and the two never spoke of the incident again. And the rest of the band never woke and never knew of the moment of vulnerability.

Another interesting tale, this time from Robert Gordon's book, Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters, is when, in one of the common instances of Sumlin and Wolf parting ways, Sumlin quickly got snatched up by arch-rival Muddy Waters. Wolf had more than able musicians filling in, but they weren't Hubert. One night Howlin' Wolf burst into a club on Maxwell street and pushed his way to front and center of the stage and began heckling Muddy Waters for stealing his guitarist. Muddy could give as good as Wolf and began taunting Wolf. After a few rounds, Howlin' Wolf pointed to Sumlin and said something along the lines of "get off that damn stage with these fools, you're my guitarist." At this point the band stopped playing and one of Waters' musicians pulled out a gun (the two books talk incessantly about how many guns and knives were stored in blues musicians' guitar cases). Wolf moved onto the stage and headed right at the man pointing a gun at him and said something akin to "you better put that away before I pull it out of your hands." With that Muddy Waters signaled to the sideman to stand down and Howlin' Wolf unplugged Hubert's amp and walked off.  Hubert packed up his guitar and followed Howlin' Wolf out of the club.

Hubert Sumlin remained Howlin' Wolf's sideman until Wolf died in 1976. Hubert's unique, bouncing and warbling guitar riffs often spoke in retort to Wolf's guttural howls. Any musician knows how important Hubert was to Wolf. Wolf knew it and he would stand up to defend it.

I got a chance to see Hubert Sumlin perform when he was but a spry 75 years old. His skills had diminished, that's for sure. Guitarist GE Smith performed with him and brilliantly would fill a missing part as soon as Sumlin would stumble. But still, at 75, he was a better guitarist with far more style than the vast majority of the strat-n-a-hat SRV clones that fill every blues jam around the globe. I got to shake his hand and see him smile and hear him play. How damn cool is that?

Enjoy this great live performance of Howlin' Wolf with Willie Dixon, Sunnyland Slim, Clifton James and, of course, Hubert Sumlin off on the right of our screen. Dig that crazy guitar work.

Thank you Hubert Sumlin!

Song of the Week: "High & Lonesome" Jimmy Reed

Listen - Jimmy Reed performs High & Lonesome

Jimmy Reed originally hailed from Mississippi, and after a stint in the US Navy during WWII, found himself, like so many other Mississippi men of a certain age and socio-economic status, migrating north to look for work. Reed landed in Gary, Indiana where he cut his teeth in clubs and on radio shows playing with the likes of John Brim, Elmore James, and Eddie Taylor. Like each of those men, Reed failed to satisfactorily impress Chess Records executive Lejzor Czyz (now renamed Leonard Chess).

Chess Records' loss was Vee Jay Records' gain as Jimmy Reed took his catchy, stripped down approach to writing and performing the blues and strung together certifiable hit after certifiable hit that would become industry standards once the Brit invasion hit. Songs like Big Boss Man, Baby What You Want Me To Do, Bright Lights Big City, Ain't That Loving You Baby and Honest I Do would become the bedrock of the song list for bands from both sides of the pond, like The Animals, The Rolling Stones, The Pretty Things, The Shadows of Knight, Link Wray and countless other bands looking to find that nexus of danceable, catchy and gritty. In short, Jimmy Reed defined that nexus perhaps better than any of his contemporaries.

Today we listen to Jimmy Reed's first recording ever. Before the hits started rolling in, before he got a contract with Vee Jay Records, and before alcoholism would turn the tap of hits off. The song is High & Lonesome and it was recorded in Chicago in 1953 for Chance Records. It's primal and the number of measures varies with his whim. And it is damn good.

Enjoy.

Song of the Week: "Bring It To Jerome", Bo Diddley

Listen - Bo Diddley performs Bring It To Jerome.

"Look it here purty baby, this mess I won't stand. All the other women, say you got another man." Those are the words spoken by the terribly wronged Jerome Green. "Who?" you may ask? Well, how dare you not know. Jerome Green is only the fiercest maraca player since Carmen Miranda shook hers for all the public to see back in the 1940s. Jerome Green was, as you may have guessed by now, the maraca player for rock-n-roll steam engine, Bo Diddley. You can see Jerome in the above picture with a fistful of maracas and a face that shows the requisite 'tude to bring it hard on them chica-chica-boom-boom machines we call maracas.

Today's SOTW, aptly titled, Bring it To Jerome, was written by Jerome and he and Bo serve double duty on the vocals. It was the flip-side of the Bo Diddley penned hit Pretty Thing and was released on Checker Records in 1956. It's a damn perfect song -- as all those early Bo Diddley numbers were.

We'll keep the words short today. Just click the song link, grab a fist full of maraca and bring it on home in front of your mirror in your living room. Don't know how to bring it like Jerome? Then check the video below to get some Jerome Green teaching.

Song of the Week: "Burr Clover Farm Blues", Muddy Waters

Listen - Muddy Waters performs Burr Clover Farm Blues.

On a sweltering hot morning in 1941 a large, green Buick Century rolled out of Yazoo City, Mississippi around 8am. Just like it had done for three weeks now, the large sedan with Washington DC plates cut out through the Mississippi Delta on a mission. Enola. Patosi. A brief stop in Holly Bluff for a cup of coffee and the obligatory question that defined the mission. The car turned onto Mclaurin Street past the dusty farm town of Rolling Fork, Mississippi and turned north on highway 61 towards Clarksdale.

It was almost noon when the two occupants -- one white, one black -- pulled into a small store called the Stovall Commissary. It was run by the one farm in town that employed everyone, housed everyone, sold the only goods available, doubled as the post office and served the only liquor for miles around at the on-site juke joint. It was the Stovall Plantation. The drivers of the car walked inside, their hard soled shoes making an echo on the wooden floor. The man behind the counter eyed the strangers closely as the clerk asked if he could help them. "Well, we're hoping maybe you can. You see we're looking for man goes by the name of Robert Johnson," said the caucasian man. "A blues musician who cut some records a couple-few years back. Said to be from these parts," added the other passenger. The clerk thought for a second. "I don't recall no Robert Johnson 'round these parts, no sirs."

The two strangers already knew the answer. It was the same they got wherever they went. The clerk continued. "What'cha looking for him for? He owe you money or something?" The visitors gave a polite chuckle and said "no, nothing like that. It's just that we're from the Library of Congress up in Washington DC, and we're making field recordings of blues musicians from around these parts." The clerk livened up a bit. "Well, sorry I can't help you with old Mr. Johnson, but we've got some pretty good musicians here on Stovall. Guitarists, fiddle players, you name it. Doing some playing tonight. Y'all ought to stay and listen. And maybe somebody know your fellow that you are all looking for."

It had already been a long day and the two visitors took him up on his suggestion. They checked into separate rooms above the Commissary and waited for the night to fall and the heat to abate. When the work day was done the Commissary began to fill with workers cashing their checks on this sweltering Friday evening and drinking grape Nehis. The two wanderers came down and began to ask their question of Mr. Johnson's whereabouts. Some knew him. Some claimed to have seen him just a few months ago. Others said the kid was dead. One even claimed to be Robert Johnson himself. Another dead end. Then a tall balding man with a dirty white shirt and suspenders sat down and began to play the fiddle. When he was done with the first song, one of the historians asked the musicians name. "Son". "Son House?" asked the historian. "No. Son Simms" was the response. "You play with anyone? A guitarist or a singer?" Of course he did. He sent a young boy down to a ramshackle house to go get Simms' friend and musical partner. "And tell him to bring his guitar" was Simms final call to the kid. Not long after a powerfully built young man with sleepy eyes and a devilish smile walked slowly onto the long porch. He wore white shoes and a long sleeve black work shirt. He held in his right arm a wood and steel National guitar. "What's all the hub-bub, Son?" "These here men are from Washington DC, they want to hear some music."

The guitarist sat to the left of Son Sims and looked at the ground for a bit. "How 'bout we do Burr Clover Farm Blues?" The guitarist had clearly been studying at the proverbial feet of Robert Johnson and elder-statesman Son House. The style was undeniable. But the lead lines on the guitar were more stark and boiled down to the core melody of the song. The two historians smiled broadly to each other now. They hadn't found Robert Johnson, but they had something here on the Stovall Plantation. "I'm sorry," said the caucasian historian, Alan Lomax, "but I don't think we got your name." "They call me Muddy Waters" was the short response. The historians asked if Muddy Waters would come over to the back of their car. He warily followed the men to the back of the Buick where they opened up the trunk to reveal a 300 pound "portable" recording machine. "You think we could record that song you just did?" asked the black historian, John Work III. Muddy Waters sat down with his friend Son Simms now picking up a 2nd guitar. The field historians asked everyone to please be quiet. Pressed a button and counted down to Muddy Waters. Waters began to play his own composition, the first recording he would ever make.

Song of the Week: Tommy Tucker - Hi-Heel Sneakers

Tommy Tucker was one cool dude. That's for sure. The organ player from Ohio penned this week's SOTW, the sublimely mellow Hi-Heel Sneakers, in 1964. It became a pretty darn big hit for Chicago based Checker Records (a subsidiary of Chess Records) that year, but Tucker wouldn't have another like it. He apparently quit music and became a Real Estate agent in New Jersey. Ouch.

We're not positive who The guitar work by Dean Welton Young plays the is beautifully understated. guitar on this, but we are guessing it is Jimmy Reed's right-hand-man, Eddie Taylor. It has that same never break a sweat nor waste a note approach that never grows outdated. Taylor played so well. If you know who plays guitar on this, please let us know in the comment section below.

Cheers me flip-sidey friends. Put on your hi-heel sneakers and your wig-hat upon your head. Don't forget the red dress and the boxing gloves, in case some fool my want to start a fight.

We'll see you on the Flip-Side

Song of the Week: "Summertime", Billy Stewart

Today's look at George Gershwin's Summertime has us digging up one of the most unique takes on the classic song. It hails from 1966 and appeared on the blues label, Chess Records. It's by scat-soul singer and all around unique showman, Billy Stewart. Two versions of this song were released. A single, which became a minor hit, and this version, the longer album version. This longer version includes more scat, more sax and more crispy good Summertime love. Click here to listen to Billy Stewart's remarkable take on Summertime. We'll see you tomorrow with another very different version of the song. Until then, cheers.