Four killer tracks: Ray Stevens, Howlin' Wolf, Avery Parrish, and Pete Lewis

Only one of these is a bona fide Halloween track, but all four are killers. Killer-dillers, even. We begin with Ray Steven's Laughing Over My Grave (1964) for this close-to-Halloween, feel-good Friday:

Laughing Over My Grave (Stevens), Ray Stevens, 1964. From Mercury 45.

Hm. That cackling sounds suspiciously Stevens-esque. You don't think...?

And, from 1965, here is Howlin' Wolf with Killing Floor, a term that, for the purposes of this song, probably refers to Death Row, no? Great guitar work by (as far as I know, and as far as my ear tells me) Hubert Sumlin:

Killing Floor (Chester Burnett), Howlin' Wolf, 1965, from Chess 1923.

Killer blues piano work by Avery Parrish is only one of the highlights of the famous 1940 instrumental After Hours. The other highlights are a pause/tremolo--clunk! riff that showed up years later in the form of the R&B hit The Hucklebuck, and a call-and-response triplet section near the end, which was memorably re-clunked-out in 1947 by Johnny Otis and Pete Lewis. Before I heard this record, I wouldn't have believed that anything so roots-of-rock-and-roll had existed in 1940, during the height of the big band era. But hearing is believing:

After Hours (Parrish), Erskine Hawkins and His Orch., with Avery Parrish on piano, 1940.

I keep telling people that rock and roll had its start in, and as, jazz music. Records like After Hours hopefully help my theory sound less eccentric.

And here's Johnny Otis' 1947 rocker Midnight in the Barrelhouse, which is little more than After Hours augmented by amp-overloading power chords (courtesy of guitarist Pete Lewis).

Midnight in the Barrelhouse, Johnny Otis and His Orchestra, featuring Pete Lewis on guitar, 1947.

Of course, power chords are defined, rock-wise, as two-note chords with or without one of the notes doubled (ye olde 1-5-8, for example). Link Wray's Rumble (1958) is usually cited as the original instance of power-chording. However, triads abound on Wray's record, alternating with actual power chords: the first progression (which consists of two chords, not three, as claimed by at least one website) is 4-b7 to 3-5-8. The next point of rest is a second inversion of IV--again, three notes are clearly there. Then, back to the first power-chord-to-triad progression.

Here's the beginning of Rumble in a crackly excerpt:

Rumble (crackly excerpt), Link Wray and His Ray Men (1958), from scratchy Cadence 45.

So... if Wray's chords qualify as power chords, so do Lewis' bigger and more distorted voicings. This is the judgment of MYPWHAE.

Elvis, however, thinks I should shut up and just enjoy the music. Anything The King demands (pictured below).













"Power chords, schmower chords."--Elvis

Lee

Elvis sighting on our back porch

I'm not kidding--here he is:













Elvis is one of three free Manx cats we recently received--via car, in cat carriers--from a cat breeder who needed to downsize her herd. Elvis had been one of the herders in the cattery--a supervisor cat, or feline foreman--but in his new environment he sneaks around, flirts for attention (but runs from it), and generally zips about as if invisible beings from another dimension are coming to steal his tail. Of course, since he's a Manx, he has no tail. But try telling that to the invisible beings.

I think that, most of the time, such behavior is part of the chase game that Nature programmed into cats. Being the chaser and/or chasee is a huge part of cat social interaction. It's a very complex game: chase/run. Repeat. Repeat again. Keep repeating.

Anyway, Elvis is as friendly as can be. Once "captured," he purrs and rolls and purrs. And rolls. Working names included Otto, Bismarck, and Fritz, but somehow he became Elvis. He's fine with Elvis.

Which leads us, somehow, to three concert Halloween pieces (for your concert Halloween), played on four pianos by the "Forty Fabulous Fingers" of the Original Piano Quartet. The first--In the Hall of the Mountain King--is a traditional concert Halloween piece, but La Danza and Flight of the Bumble Bee are not. MYPWHAE aims to change that. In spite of their titles, these two pieces are every bit as spooky as Mountain King or Saint-Saen's Danse Macabre (another Pops-Halloween favorite). Both are in minor mode and filled with chromatic notes, and La Danza even has some Misirlou stuff going on. We're talking Pops-concert Halloween exotica. Which isn't have as silly as a musical category I encountered earlier today in my copy of the All Music Guide to Rock. Proto-punk adult pop something-or-another. They had to be kidding. But they weren't.

In the Hall of the Mountain King (Grieg), The Original Piano Quartet, 1964.

La Danza (Rossini, transcribed by Liszt), The Original Piano Quartet, 1964.

Flight of the Bumble Bee (Rimsky-Korsakoff), The Original Piano Quartet, 1964.

Maybe the last title can be changed, for Halloween purposes, to Flight of the Bumble Bat. La Danza, I don't know about. Its composer, Gioacchino Rossini, had quite a filmography --from The Lone Ranger (1949, TV) to this year's Robots. And the dude was born in 1792! "Sometimes credited as G. Rossini." One amazing composer.

Lee

Voodoo Halloween

Deer have been showing up around our place. Not zombie deer, of course--though these creatures do have a talent for staring blankly at people and things. I managed to get a couple of photos. Here's one:













It's early in the season, so the deer aren't in focus yet. Within a few weeks, they'll look less fuzzy.

Meanwhile, I've got two voodoo mp3s to post--numbers I thought I'd already posted. Funny, how you think you posted something, but it turns out you didn't. I guess that happens to everyone these days. "My word--I could swear I posted those files, but I didn't!"--Computer user. "I hate it when that happens."--Another computer user.

I've been in a sort of zombie state myself. I blame two things: my sinus infection and too much time spent reading my copy of the previous edition of the All Music Guide to Rock. The infection is already yielding to antibiotics prescribed by my doctor, but there's no cure for the AMG. To put it bluntly, the writing sucks. It's atrocious. Even the few writers who can write churn their words out in the soulless fashion pioneered by Rolling Stone and the music review section of the New York Times. At no point is actual musical knowledge tolerated--did you know, for instance, that Yoko Ono performed atonal music? Neither did I. Do the folks at AMG know what atonal means? Obviously not.

Back when such drivel was written by professional journalists, rock writing consisted of really stupid ideas expressed well. Now it's stupid ideas expressed poorly. Which, really, is more appropriate, so maybe I should be praising this volume. At last, rock writing has found a balance between content and presentation.

But, now, two voodoo songs. At least, I think the first song is about voodoo. It must be. It's about something. After any number of listens, however, I've yet to determine what. (Voodoo, maybe?) It's a great side, regardless. (Especially now that I've got the correct file uploaded! Thanks, Don.)

The Girl Around the Corner, Lee Andrews and The Hearts, 1957.

And this one is definitely about voodoo. Main clue: the title (The Voodoo Man). Terrific rock and roll from the folks who gave us the magnificent Come Go with Me.

The Voodoo Man, The Del Vikings, 1957.

As the deer come into focus, the photos should follow suit. Should--what a funny word, "should."

Lee

A gift for awful prose

Jeane, praying for sinus relief.

Jeane Dixon is famous, primarily, for having predicted JFK's assassination--though, to be fair, there is some reason to doubt that she, in fact, actually did. This is the form in which her prediction appeared in a 1956 issue of Parade: "As for the 1960 election Mrs. Dixon thinks it will be dominated by labor and won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated or die in office 'though not necessarily in his first term.'"

Not as specific as we might like. It doesn't, after all, read: "Mrs. Dixon predicts that JFK will be shot by Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 22, 1963 at 12:30 pm in Dallas, Texas." On the other hand, her prognostication did specify the 1960 election, and it did report that a Democrat would win. And Kennedy did win in 1960, and he was a Democrat. And he did die, and not necessarily in his first term, though it did turn out to be his first term. So, Jeane was right. More or less.

Except that... oh, my. Except that later, just before the 1960 election, Jeane predicted that Kennedy would not win. Wouldn't win?

So, JFK wasn't going to win, but he was going to die. In office. As the president. After not winning the election. How was that supposed to work?

Yeah, I guess I can see why some people have doubts about Jeane's ability, at least in this instance. However, it doesn't look as if Jeane had any doubts: on this 1967 side made for the Bell label, she goes on and on about her "gift of prophecy" (as bestowed upon her by The Supreme Being and first detected, in gasping fashion, by a "Gypsy") and how wonderful the gift is and how "Visions are not a form of psychic phenomena" (a very important point, for some reason), and how we all have the potential to "become great," though, to become great, we "need only go one inch beyond mediocrity," and so on and so on. We get the point--Jeane had great powers. Wonderful, marvelous powers. Unfortunately, her great powers had zero impact on the shape of things to be, save for making her rich and famous. JFK sure didn't benefit from her prophecy. Not that Jeane didn't try, with all her might, to alter the course of time--to wit, she made a phone call urging a friend of the Kennedys to persuade JFK to cancel his trip. "What trip?" she was asked. (The trip hadn't been planned yet.) Whereupon, apparently, she hung up. Oh, well. She made the attempt.

A Gift of Prophecy, Jeane Dixon. Arranged and conducted by Joe Sherman.

I wonder if Jeane ever remade this record? Considering her gift for embellishment, we can picture a scenario in which Jeane shoots it out with Lee Harvey Oswald (not to give Oliver Stone any ideas, here) or otherwise makes like a crazed Sci-Fi-Channel action hero: "I broke into the TV studio and demanded two minutes of air time. God had willed that I strap myself with grenades to show them I meant business. But it was too late. As we all now know, the President was indeed dead. Luckily, so were the grenades, for I fell upon them when I fainted."

This record is our Halloween gift to you on this Monday.

Lee

"It's About Time" for more sci-fi Halloween sides

Or so says Reddy, who strikes a striking and timely mantelpiece pose, her eyes lit up in haunting Halloween-cat fashion:



It's About Time premiered in 1966, though my faulty memory insists that it started around 1963 or 1964. Actually, the show began in caveman times and switched over to the modern world of 1967 in a (failed) attempt to bring the ratings up to date. Produced by Sherwood (Gilligan's Island) Schwartz, It's About Time concerned two astronauts who.... Well, why not let the song tell the whole silly story:

It's About Time (Wylie-Schwartz-Fried), Wade Denning and the Port Washingtons, 1966.

For years, portions of that theme have been running through my head, and now that I've got the entire ditty, it's playing in my head non-stop. Thanks, head.

It's about time, it's about space. About two men in the strangest.... Oops. Sorry.

Speaking of silly, here's one of the sillier break-in novelties of the 1950s, though I'm not sure how to qualify "silly break-in novelty," let alone "silliest." Seems pretty redundant. Anyway, this one is worth groaning through for the very funny ending. Bill Buchanan was one half of the team (Buchanan and Goodman) who gave us 1956's The Flying Saucer. Bob Ancell, I never heard of until I bought this record. And here they are, with The Creature (from a Science Fiction Movie) and its flip side, which completes the story, to the extent that there is one:

The Creature (From a Science Fiction Movie)--Bill Buchanan and Bob Ancell, 1957. Flying Saucer 501 (45 RPM).

Buchanan and Ancell Meet the Creature(From a Science Fiction Movie) , 1957. Flying Saucer 501 (45 RPM).

And here's the Carpenter's 1977 version of Klaatu's Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day). "Edited version," says the 45 label. The tune sounds like the result of a Paul McCartney-Burt Bacharach teamup--to my ears, anyway.

"The recognized anthem of World Contact Day." Recognized by whom, I wonder?

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (John Woloschuk--Terry Draper), The Carpenters, 1977.

And what sci-fi Halloween post is complete without Ferrante and Teicher? Not this one, for sure. Here's F&T's Man from Mars, from 1955's Soundproof LP (the one with the Forbidden Planet saucer on the cover). This Man from Mars must be an exotica fan--dig the Misirlou scale throughout. This is from Art and Lou's John-Cage-inspired "prepared-piano" period. I'm not making any of this up.

Man from Mars, Ferrante and Teicher, 1955.

Jeane Dixon is next! I predict you'll love her.


Lee