Way back when
They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to do – no kidding.
This thought came across my mind as I listened to W. Lee O’Daniel and his Lightcrust Doughboys teeter through the “Doughboys Theme Song,” recorded in 1934.
Actually, W. Lee O’Daniel didn’t play on the record, he was a politician that found out that music could be a good stumpin’ tool. He used this discovery to good measure, as he ascended to the governorship of Texas in 1938.
If there is something vaguely familiar about these facts, it might be that you saw “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The “Pappy” O’Daniel character in that movie was based loosely upon the real O’Daniel. The group that O’Daniel fastens his political star onto in the movie, The Soggy Bottom Boys, is a great sight better than the real O’Daniel’s Doughboys.
Before the advent of electric solid body guitars, a wider variety of music permeated the airwaves and sold in the record stores. The sound coming out of the radios and phonographs that played the thick 78 rpm records wasn’t the high fidelity stereo we take for granted today.
The song I’m listening to right now, “Le Valse Des Yeux Bleu,” by the Cajun legends Breaux Freres, warbles as it plays from the spinning of the record it was recorded from. It’s sounds a sight better than the Charley Patton songs I have, which sound like they were recorded simultaneously with sizzling frying bacon.
The songs’ lyrical structures were much less complicated than those introduced by Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s. That’s strange, because Dylan copped a lot of his best lines from songs recorded in the 1920s and 30s.
I don’t blame him, who could resist lines like this one from “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground,” by Bascom Lamar Lunsford? “A railroad man will kill you when he can and drink up your blood like wine.”
Dylan “borrowed” that line for his 1966 classic “Stuck Inside Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.”
While music groups still take pride in their ability to pick a memorable name for their group, those old 78s carry some names that jump up at you. Examples: A’nt Idy Harper and The Coon Creek Girls; the South Georgia Highballers; Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers; Hoyt Ming and his Pep-Steppers; Miff Mole and his Little Molers and Miller’s Bullfrog Entertainers.
Of course my all-time favorite old-time band name is The Mississippi Shieks. The Shieks played a powerful brand of Delta string music that was quite influential – their classic “Sitting On Top of the World” has been covered by famous bluesmen like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, not to mention white rock and rollers like Cream.
Anybody deeply interested in modern music should take a trip into the past and listen to the “old-timey” music that is the well-spring of today’s popular country, blues and rock and roll.
A good place to start is Harry Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk Music.” The three CD set is a reissue of the three record set that spawned the folk revival of the early 1960s. It can be picked up on-line or at “high-brow” stores like Barnes and Noble.
Columbia’s four-CD collection titled “Roots and Blues – The Retrospective (1925-1950)” is also excellent. It also is out there on-line and in places like Barnes and Noble.
Once you get hooked, you find yourself becoming acquainted with lots of lesser known record labels as you search for more music by the people in the compilation collections. Me, I got it bad, I try to find the 78 rpm records of those performers.
This thought came across my mind as I listened to W. Lee O’Daniel and his Lightcrust Doughboys teeter through the “Doughboys Theme Song,” recorded in 1934.
Actually, W. Lee O’Daniel didn’t play on the record, he was a politician that found out that music could be a good stumpin’ tool. He used this discovery to good measure, as he ascended to the governorship of Texas in 1938.
If there is something vaguely familiar about these facts, it might be that you saw “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The “Pappy” O’Daniel character in that movie was based loosely upon the real O’Daniel. The group that O’Daniel fastens his political star onto in the movie, The Soggy Bottom Boys, is a great sight better than the real O’Daniel’s Doughboys.
Before the advent of electric solid body guitars, a wider variety of music permeated the airwaves and sold in the record stores. The sound coming out of the radios and phonographs that played the thick 78 rpm records wasn’t the high fidelity stereo we take for granted today.
The song I’m listening to right now, “Le Valse Des Yeux Bleu,” by the Cajun legends Breaux Freres, warbles as it plays from the spinning of the record it was recorded from. It’s sounds a sight better than the Charley Patton songs I have, which sound like they were recorded simultaneously with sizzling frying bacon.
The songs’ lyrical structures were much less complicated than those introduced by Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s. That’s strange, because Dylan copped a lot of his best lines from songs recorded in the 1920s and 30s.
I don’t blame him, who could resist lines like this one from “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground,” by Bascom Lamar Lunsford? “A railroad man will kill you when he can and drink up your blood like wine.”
Dylan “borrowed” that line for his 1966 classic “Stuck Inside Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.”
While music groups still take pride in their ability to pick a memorable name for their group, those old 78s carry some names that jump up at you. Examples: A’nt Idy Harper and The Coon Creek Girls; the South Georgia Highballers; Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers; Hoyt Ming and his Pep-Steppers; Miff Mole and his Little Molers and Miller’s Bullfrog Entertainers.
Of course my all-time favorite old-time band name is The Mississippi Shieks. The Shieks played a powerful brand of Delta string music that was quite influential – their classic “Sitting On Top of the World” has been covered by famous bluesmen like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, not to mention white rock and rollers like Cream.
Anybody deeply interested in modern music should take a trip into the past and listen to the “old-timey” music that is the well-spring of today’s popular country, blues and rock and roll.
A good place to start is Harry Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk Music.” The three CD set is a reissue of the three record set that spawned the folk revival of the early 1960s. It can be picked up on-line or at “high-brow” stores like Barnes and Noble.
Columbia’s four-CD collection titled “Roots and Blues – The Retrospective (1925-1950)” is also excellent. It also is out there on-line and in places like Barnes and Noble.
Once you get hooked, you find yourself becoming acquainted with lots of lesser known record labels as you search for more music by the people in the compilation collections. Me, I got it bad, I try to find the 78 rpm records of those performers.
posted by D.Rey at 2:47 PM
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