50 Years Ago Today: Howlin Wolf Releases Rockin Chair

At 6 foot 6, "300 pounds of muscle and man" , Howlin' Wolf was literally a giant in the Chicago blues scene. But his recording career didn't begin until the age of forty-one. He worked as a farmer, a fertlizer salesman and as a disc jockey.

Fifty years ago on this day he released his most influential album, Howlin' Wolf ( also known as the Rockin Chair album for its cover). Famous songs--most written by Willie Dixon-- include "Little Red Rooster", "Wang Dang Doodle", "Back Door Man" and the Wolf's version of "Spoonful". This is one of the albums all the skinny British blues fanatics studied. In fact just about every British blues band had a Howlin Wolf song in the repertoire. The Stones covered "Little Red Rooster". The Yardbirds, Manfred Mann and The Animals did "Smokestack Lightnin". Cream covered "Spoonful". You get the idea. The album comes as part of a two-fer with Wolf's first LP, Moanin' in the Moonlight, recorded by Sam Phillips.
In 1964, Howlin' Wolf toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival. Below, one of the performances in England. Little Hubert Sumlin is playing lead guitar. Sunnyland Slim is on piano. Willie Dixon is playing bass and Clifton James on drums.

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Ian Dury Picks His 12 All Time Faves (1979)

As told to Smash Hits October 18 1979 via Like Punk Never Happened. His #1 UK hit, "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick", would be voted the best single of 1979 in the Pazz and Jop poll of music critics taken by The Village Voice.




1.Millie Small: What Am I Living For? - Terrible record but it's a magic song by Chuck Willis
2. Dean Martin: That's Amore - Because I think Dean Martin's really great in a way.
3. J.J. Zackerley: Dinner With Drac - He was a DJ in America who made one record. Good words, great sax solo.
4. Billy Fury: Jealousy - The best singer that England's ever seen. My ambition has been to write enough songs so that Billy Fury can do an album called "Fury Sings Dury".
5. Kay Starr: Rock and Roll Waltz - One of the few bits in three four time that I like.
6. Groovy Joe Poovey: Ten Long Fingers and Eighty-Eight Keys - Wonderful old rock and roll record.
7. Minnie Ripperton: Lovin' You - Beautiful record, specially now that the poor girl's gone.
8. Gene Vincent: Hot Rod Gang EP - The best four songs he ever did.
9. Merle Haggard: Okie from Muskogee
10. Wilson Pickett: In the Midnight Hour
11. Adriana Celentano - Anything, preferably something in Italian
12. Roger Collins: Oh, You Sexy Thing - He's a local soul singer from San Francisco. The inventor of the short sleeved suit.

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RIP Tom Ardolino of NRBQ

We lost a great member of The Ravioli Rhythm section this weekend: drummer Tom Ardolino,56 ,  of NRBQ.
A fan of the band, Ardolino was at a show when original drummer Tom Staley got ill and left before the band could perform an encore. He spoke to Mike Skully, who made a documentary for A&E's "Breakfast With the Arts":


I told them I played drums but I never was in a band before. I learned to play with records in the basement.

Bassist Joey Spaminato continues the story:

And Terry just pointed to Tom and said "Get on." He came up and he just laid it down.

Tom:

Al (Anderson), the guitarist then, turned around. He thought it was the old regular drummer.

Joey:

So when it came time to try out for drummers in our band, he was the first one who came to mind.I said "It might be crazy. We don't know if he can play all the styles of music that we play. We know that he likes it and we know that he's smart. But we've got to give him a shot"

Tom played on 15  NRBQ  records and in thousands of shows from 1974 to 1993* ( actually 2004), endearing audiences with his rare turns on the mic to sing "Volare".

photo by Merritt Brown

Al Anderson said "He was a great drummer and a great guy.He had a totally unique style of drumming that nobody can ever duplicate. That was one of the baddest rhythm sections in the world."

RIP Tom

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Last Ramone Standing

Just in case your winter months aren't depressing enough, a  new tumblr blog called Live! uses photoshop to edit out deceased members of rock bands from album covers. The above image may be the most disturbing: original drummer Tommy Ramone standing by himself, the lone survivor.

In fewer than three and a half years we lost three Ramones:

Vocalist Joey Ramone died April 15,2001of lymphoma.
Bassist Dee Dee Ramone died June 5, 2002 of a heroin overdose
Guitarist Johnny Ramone died September 15, 2004 of prostate cancer.
Update:
    Tommy Ramone died July 11, 2014 from cancer of the bile duct.

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I Was A College Radio DJ In The 80's: Art In The Dark - Number

Art in the Dark: Number

[out of print]

Thanks to a door blown wide open by R.E.M., if you lived in Athens GA in the mid-80s, could sing with sincerity and knew enough guys to form a jangly rock band, you were already halfway to getting played on college radio. Art in the Dark was better than most. They often opened for R.E.M in their hometown. R.E.M. producer and Let's Active founder Mitch Easter produced their 1983 EP at his Drive-In Studio. They even covered Big Star's "Way Out West" on their first and only full length album The Icons. At the time, the only way to hear Big Star was to find a used vinyl copy in the back of a record store.

 The Icons had a number of good songs but at WTUL we played the lead off cut, "Number", the most. If expectations were for even greater things in the future, they weren't met. The boys split up. Some went to grad school. Some opened businesses. Most have kids. Humid nights in stuffy Southern clubs are now just a memory.

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Jim Kerr of Simple Minds Picks His All Time Faves

As told to Smash Hits Magazine for their April 16th, 1981  issue issue,  via Like Punk Never Happened 


1 Velvet Underground: Waiting For the Man - Music from the original Factory - America's Premiere journalist.
2 Ike and Tina Turner: Nutbush City Limits - Best ever melting pot where synthesiser shows its soul in solo.
3 Eno: Needle in the Camel's Eye - Not many pieces could live up to the promise of such a title - beautiful and sad.
4 Magazine: The Lights Pours Out of Me - Howard the insect and true star climbs on producer John Leckie's marble wall - best song of the last three years.
5 T Rex:  Get it On - For the saxophone and the cloak full of ego.
6 Neu: Neu 2 (LP)  - Sheer feelings, clear sounds, new musical realities for me. Take it to the hard hinterland.
7 Peter Gabriel: The Intruder - The darker side of Gabriel that maybe does exist. Look into his eyes and you'll see what I mean.
8 Joy Division: Love Will Tear Us Apart - The most uplifting single in a long - long time. It floats around me
9 Iggy Pop and David Bowie: The Idiot - Bass, drums, refrigerator and striplight combine - the offspring is "Baby, baby I like your pants"
10 Talking Heads: Don't Worry About the Government - The building is over there. A mixture of greatness and overpowering admiration for Tina Weymouth. Unworkable and Uncontrollable.

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Deep Cuts: Ry Cooder - FDR in Trinidad (1972)

[Buy It!]



This is not the album version but a 1974 solo performance. I shrank the video box because of the annoying shot of the candy character.


With the dawning of 2012 1001Songs has a new year of music to explore: 1972. The year Stevie Wonder and Al Green each released two great albums while Big Star gave us #1 Record. The year The Stones dropped Exile on Main Street. Of Harvest and Ziggy Stardust. Of Backstabbers and Can't Buy A Thrill. Of Sail Away and The Slider.

We begin with a deep cut from Ry Cooder's Into the Purple Valley, a tremendous album released 40 years ago this month. It could have been a dust bowl era concept album, with its covers of Woody Guthrie's "Vigilante Man", Leadbelly's "On a Monday" and "Taxes On The Farmer Feed Us All" from the public domain. But  Cooder--a session guitarist who had played with The Rolling Stones, Randy Newman and Captain Beefheart --digs even deeper, unearthing this calypso gem from Fitz McLean originally recorded in 1937 by Attila The Hun to commemorate the president's visit to "The Land of the Hummingbirds". Buy Purple Valley and Paradise And Lunch first, but don't stop there.

By the way, here's the original version:



[Buy It!]

FDR aboard the USS Indianapolis off the coast of Trinidad.

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