Love those longshots

Everybody has recorded it: Peter, Paul and Mary, the Hollies, Joan Baez, Dan Fogelberg ... you can go all the way back to Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly.  Go to YouTube, type in "Stewball" and see what you get.

It was the first song we learned on brother-in-law Mike's guitar. (It could be yours, too, just go with G-Am-D-G, G-C-D.) Our favorite version of "Stewball," which we can't seem to find anywhere, was recorded by the Chicago band Mason Proffit.

But it's Derby Day folks, and we needed something to remind us that longshots do win horse races, so here's a clip from a Hugues Aufray concert in Marseille.  It's a little down tempo for us, but the French sure like it! As one commenter chimed in: très belle chanson!!!

Here's hoping that Comma to the Top, a 40-to-1 shot in the morning line, somehow finds the finish line first in Louisville.

Here's what love has to do with it

Oh what's love got to do, got to do with it
What's love but a second hand emotion
What's love got to do, got to do with it
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken

On this day in 1984 Capitol Records released Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do With It" and the earth shook. Or maybe that was just Ike Turner desperately stalking the woman who had bolted 10 years earlier with 36 cents, a gas card and the clothes she was wearing..

Things turned out OK for Tina, thanks in part to this song, which would make it to the top of the Billboard chart in September and set a noteworthy record: Longest time between an artist's first chart appearance and first No. 1 single (24 years).

We have nothing to add, except: Today's video is mandatory viewing.

Synco de Mayo

We have referenced this song before, but you know what? It's Cinco de Mayo and we can't think of a better way to kick off the celebration.

You might reach for Los Lobos, and maybe we'll do that too.  But we start with Jeffrey Foucault, who is neither Mexican nor Chicano. Far from it. He's a homeboy from nearby Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. But when he sings about that Mexican joint in "Mesa, Arizona," where he's listening to a mariachi band on the juke box with an empty Corona, well, he might as well be somewhere south of the border. Will someone buy this man another beer?

We checked Foucault's tour schedule and this week he takes on the Netherlands, beginning tomorrow night at Sted. Concertgebouw in Leiden.  Ought to be a hoot. The Dutch know how to have a good time without shooting guns in the air. 

Wherever you are today, be careful out there. And if you're headed out for some authentic Mexican food and drinks, don't forget the words to one of our favorite drinking songs:

Una mas cerveza por favor senorita...

(Unless of course you're ordering more than one -- and your server is a senor.)

UPDATE: NPR just introduced us to alt.latino. Click below to hear the tapatio punk band Le Butcherettes performing "I'm Getting Sick of You" from their new album Sin Sin Sin.  Good stuff!

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=135964043&m=135959492

All quiet on the revolution front

We've posed the question before, but today on the anniversary of the Kent State shootings it's time to ask again: What ever became of protest songs?

It has been 41 years since Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder were shot to death on the campus of Kent State by the Ohio National Guard -- the "tin soldiers" in Neil Young's raging "Ohio." The song, recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young almost immediately after the tragedy, has not lost a bit of its punch through the years. Even the video above from Young's 1971 Massey Hall acoustic performance resonates today, albeit in more reverential tones. It would be difficult to find a song with a more powerful opening line:

"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming..."

Abbie Hoffman once declared that "rock musicians are the real leaders of the revolution," and "Ohio" would seem to be his Exhibit A.  But where are the others to support such a notion?  Listeners who aren't paying close attention sometimes offer up Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," but Stephen Stills wrote that three years before Kent State. 

Maybe we just ran out of revolutions.

Breaking up is hard to do

By Mike Tierney

An admired artist, who has been around the block enough to complete a marathon, releases a fresh record. Increasingly, I feel a tug of reluctance to acquire it, fearing more evidence of a theory that I hold true:

Almost every songwriter/performer was born with a finite amount of original music inside him/her. At some point, a limit is reached, and subsequent efforts are either a desperate reach for originality or a recycling of previous gems.

Steve Earle, a Hall of Famer in my book, just released I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive. Normally, I would be fetching a copy before it has settled into the store's bin.

But because I sense that Earle has covered all the rock 'n'' roll ground that he is capable of, I have resisted. (Perhaps to his credit, he has veered off into a home-y, acoustic area, which I welcome only in small doses.)

With similar trepidation, I picked up R.E.M.'s recent release Collapse Into Now. Frankly, I'd be fine if the lads kept regurgitating certain types of tunes until they became a lounge act. This record features one of those "Mine Smelled Like Honey," that offers a template for the perfect pop song.

Yet these selections are nearly all direct descendants of previous numbers. Michael Stipe, while still remarkably full-throated and mellifulous, follows all-too-similar vocal paths.

Their balance has gradually tilted toward slower songs, no doubt a reflection of age (and possibly an effort to make Stipe's often garbled lyrics easier to decipher.) So, artistically, good for them.

I wonder, though, if R.E.M. has covered all of the unexplored rock 'n' roll territory that it was gifted. This is a good record, but not one I will dig out 10 years from now, as I will their masterpieces of yore.

You never know what you'll get on Tuesdays with Tierney, other than the straight skinny on rock 'n' roll.

Put it in the blender and hit 'pulse'

Although his music never topped the pop charts,
Little Richard would become a crossover star
with seven gold records.

Can you tell us what the following five songs have in common?
Heartbreak Hotel, Elvis Presley
Blue Suede Shoes, Carl Perkins
Why Do Fools Fall in Love, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers
Long Tall Sally, Little Richard
Magic Touch, Platters

If you guessed they are all from the same year, you're correct. All five were ranked among the Top 10 on Billboard's Pop chart this day in 1956.  More significantly, they were also among Billboard's Top 10 R&B songs -- the first time that ever happened.

"Heartbreak Hotel" was Elvis' first No. 1 song, and it was monster hit, staying in the top spot for an impressive eight weeks.  We didn't need Danny & the Juniors to tell us that rock 'n' roll was here to stay. Bill Haley and the Comets had sounded the alarm three years earlier when "Rock Around the Clock" became the first rock hit to reach No. 1 -- also for eight weeks. 

Now, with Elvis hitting the national stage, there would be no turning back. The once distinct lines between pop and R&B would blur, and music by black artists like Little Richard -- whose "Long Tall Sally" was riding No. 1 on the R&B chart on May 2 -- and Fats Domino would easily blend into the pop mix.

At least among radio stations that felt the earth shake and weren't bound by unyielding guidelines. 

The bells of St. Berry

By Al Tays

Remember how in 1977 NASA launched its Voyager spacecraft, and included phonograph records containing sounds meant to represent the diversity of life on Earth? (You don't? Well, you're just going to have to trust me on this.)

The sounds on the records included music from artists including Beethoven, Mozart and Chuck Berry.

Saturday Night Live did a skit in which it was reported that aliens had come across the records, and sent back their reply:

"Send more Chuck Berry."
Now, aside from the fact that advanced space civilizations are unlikely to still be using turntables (these days it's hard enough to find them on Earth), the sentiment that Chuck Berry has (literal) universal appeal is one I concur with.

His guitar riffs are one of the first snippets of music that I recall sending shivers up my spine. Of course, the first Chuck Berry guitar riff I ever recall hearing was actually played by Carl Wilson, the intro to "Fun, Fun, Fun." And my introduction to "Roll Over Beethoven" came via the Beatles, not Berry.

Eventually I became exposed to the genius himself, duck walk and all. (And much, much later I learned that the "Johnny B. Goode" griff was an adaptation of the horn intro from Louis Jordan's "Ain't That Just like a Woman.")  Here's a live performance from 1958: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ofD9t_sULM&feature=related

I still love to watch how effortlessly Berry seems to play, even today in his 80s.

Why Chuck Berry? Why today? Because it's the first of May, the month in which, in 1955, Berry signed with Chess Records on the suggestion of Muddy Waters. His first go-round with Chess produced such classics as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958).

Berry had his problems, too, including a couple of jail terms, more convictions, sloppy live performances and a reputation as a difficult artist to work with. And please, I'd rather not talk about "My Ding-a-Ling" -- which was previously discussed here at the Sanctuary.

But with a Gibson in his hands, Chuck Berry will always be the guy who "could play the guitar just like ringin' a bell."