Wordy-Gurdy on the radio, December

Bye-bye for now-now! 

After five-plus years of a regular monthly 'Wordy-Gurdy on the radio' we're hanging up the mic as we move into new publishing projects in 2012. We’ll be dropping in every so often, though.

We played some highlights, some listener favourites, some rarities from five years' worth of shows. You can find the annual playlists by scrolling down here, with 2011 up shortly, as well as sorting by the Radio label on this blog. 

Of course steel guitar featured heavily in music predominantly from the South and Hawaii, but we ventured up to LA, for the inimitable Chuck E Weiss, and back in time, for treasure unearthed by Oxford American magazine. We’re waiting breathlessly for the 2011 Southern music issue with CD, this year focusing on Mississippi, but there’s a 30-track taster available online, as well as a whole treasury of videos and writing. 

Listen here (half an hour in). And here's to a holiday season that's better than great!

‘Radio blues’, Ken Emerson, Slack & steel (Liko Records) 

‘Goodbye old Missoula’, Willis Alan Ramsey, Willis Alan Ramsey (Shelter Records) 

‘He sends me’, Nellie Lutcher, Oxford American 10th anniversary Southern music CDs, 2008 (Oxford American magazine) 2009 

‘This little girl’s gone rockin’’, Rosie Flores, Girl of the century, Bloodshot) March 2011 

‘I told you I love you now get out’, Maryann Price with Tom Morrell & the Time Warp Tophands, Jugglin’ Cats (WR Records) 

‘If you ain’t lovin’ you ain’t livin’, Chris O’Connell with Tom Morrell & the Time Warp Tophands, Jugglin’ Cats (WR Records) 

‘She’s so tight’, Wilson Pickett, A funky situation (Atlantic)

‘Rocking in the kibbitz room’, Chuck E Weiss, Extremely cool (Ryko)

Wordy-Gurdy on the radio, November

No-name November

Perhaps in keeping with a story I’m writing called ‘Nothing’, this show had no name and no theme – but it surely evolved. The show could now justify being called Evening Up the Score. The half hour zoomed by with just four thrillifying tracks from recent releases featuring women, often shamefully overlooked when it comes to ‘best of’ lists.

The Texan queen of cool, Jolie Holland, contributed two tracks from this year’s Pint of blood. And of frontliners on Californian stringbender Tommy Castro’s star-dusted collection from his legendary blues cruises, we cherrypicked guitar goddess Debbie Davies, who set the stage alight at last year’s Wangaratta Fest (we flash-reviewed this year's just gone) and, not quite so familiar, Sista Monica Parker with some supersize vocals.
 
Jolie Holland, Pint of blood (Anti):
‘Rex’s dream’ (Townes van Zandt)
‘The devil’s sake’ (Holland)
Nominated by stablemate Tom Waits for the Shortlist Music Prize, Holland came on our radar as cofounder of the Be Good Tanyas. Leaving after just one album, she’s forged a solid solo CV that includes a half-dozen albums, credits for lyrics and performance of ‘Flood of dreams’ in the film King of California and collaboration with Booker T Jones on the album What a wonderful world. Pint of blood resides in that space between dream and awakening, yet quoting Holland verbatim on her Facebook page: ‘Its so strange that the press has been playing this telephone game about the idea of "pint of blood" being "loose"--its the only record I've ever made where most of the tracks were to a click--a metronome. The least "loose" record I've ever made.’
Catch her talking about the making of the album here.

Tommy Castro presents the legendary blues & soul revue (Alligator):
‘Never say never’, Sista Monica Parker (vocals)
‘All I found’, Debbie Davies (vocals & guitar)
Award-acing guitarist/singer/songwriter Tommy Castro took the best of the best of the no-holds-barred jam sessions recorded on the road with his Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise outfit, which roams the waters of the Pacific and Caribbean annually. Other stars on the album include Rick Estrin, Janiva Magness, Joe Louis Walker and Theodis Ealey. If we’d had 10 minutes more, a sensational track featuring Michael ‘Iron Man’ Burks would have knocked our socks clear to Antarctica.

Listen to the show, starting half an hour in.

Next month’s show 21 December

Wordy-Gurdy on the radio, October

For this special show, we spoke with songwriters extraordinaire Yvonne Norman and Rita Grimm (now Moak) in Bossier City, Louisiana, across the Red River from Shreveport. The music cultures of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma spill into this fertile area, ArkLaTex aka Arklatexoma, where the four states meet. It’s no wonder that filmmakers flock to its forests, bayous and waterways.

Yvonne and Rita were contracted to Fame Studios, Muscle Shoals in the years when songwriters took their songs to recording studios and hung out there, honing their creations. Fame’s founder Rick Hall coached the duo, driving home the ethos of rewriting again and again to perfect the hook.

With a catalogue comprising 600 songs, the sisters have had their work recorded by the likes of Wilson Pickett, Dobie Gray, Mac Davis and Bobbie Gentry. Songs have been covered to make international hits by artists such as Sylvia Vartan (France, ‘Thunder in the afternoon’) and even integrated into rap (‘She’s so tight’).

Thanks to host Roger Taylor, taking over the cockpit from the globetrotting Helen Jennings.

Tracks
‘Why are people like that?’, Maria Muldaur, Steady Love Sroney Plain, 3:14
‘Thunder in the afternoon’, Mac Davis
‘She’s so tight’, Wilson Pickett
‘Thunder in the afternoon,’ Bobbie Gentry

Gigs
Station Hotel goodbye, 3-8pm, Saturday, Prahran
The Moonee Valley Drifters 4-8pm, Sunday, Royal Derby, Fitzroy
MBAS PBS 106.7 FM Blues Performer of the Year Finals 5-10pm Sunday GH (Greyhound) Hotel, 1 Brighton Rd St Kilda

Wordy-Gurdy on the radio, September

September songs: six of the best

Well, it was six seasons in a day. Listen. From the bluesman-goes-country of Watermelon Slim to a tearaway josh with fellow Clarksdalian Super Chikan to tender ditties from Georgian Robert Burke Warren and NSWelshman Darren Jack. (Oh and here's a cool link to Watermelon Slim at the Green Parrot.)

In the June show we listened to Emmylou Harris’s ‘My name is Emmett Till’. The Backsliders reprise that terrible US event last century when a black boy was brutally murdered and his white killers acquitted of wrongdoing. (And it’s not like we don’t have blood on our hands here.)  I asked Dom Turner what inspired him to write it. ‘Just so we never forget,’ he said.

Songs ‘Cowboys are as common as sin’, Watermelon Slim, Ringers (Northern Blues) ‘Moonshine’, Watermelon Slim & Super Chikan, Okiesippi Blues (Northern Blues) ‘Don’t worry’, Darren Jack, Better place (indie)
‘Emmett Till’ and ‘Failed preacher’, Starvation box, the Backsliders (Fuse)
‘Jacksong’, Robert Burke Warren, …to this day (Jackpot Music)

Gigs reviewed Dom Turner & Ian Collard, CD launch, Saturday 17 September, Union Hotel Brunswick Coming up the Lowbrow Medal Shindig, Monday 26 September, 7–11.30pm at Handsome Steve’s House of Refreshment, Abbotsford Convent; Celebrating the Station Hotel, Saturday 22 October, 2pm, Station Hotel, Prahran 

Listen to the show.


Next show 19 October live interview with Yvonne Norman in Louisiana, songwriter extraordinaire to the likes of Wilson Pickett, Dobie Gray and Bobbie Gentry in the years when songwriters went to studios and hung out there, honing their creations.

Wordy-Gurdy on the radio, August

Arcin' it up in Arkansas

Continuing our report from the South with some blues mixed into true soul and other musical and literary treats from the Natural State.

Music: ‘The thrill is gone’, Albert Smith, True soul: deep sounds from the left of Stax vol 2 (Now Again)

‘Scratch my back’, Frank Frost, Live in Lucerne (ROAD Records)

From Keep it to yourself – Arkansas blues vol I: solo performances (Stackhouse)
Delta tradition: Helena, Pine Bluff, Little Rock, Osceola
‘King Biscuit Time – opening theme’, ‘King Biscuit Time – closing theme’, WC Clay
‘Standing round crying’, Willie Wright
Southwestern hill country
‘Educator’s blues’, Trenton Cooper
‘Roaring Twenties rag’, ‘Hill Country blues’, Nelson Carson

Reading: Our own sweet sounds: a celebration of popular music in Arkansas, Robert Cochran (University of Arkansas Press)  
Oxford American magazine (Conway, Arkansas)

Further listening: Tyrannosaurus Chicken (Mudstomp Records)

Next show 9:30–10 am Wednesday, 21 September

Wordy-Gurdy on the radio, July

Mississippi in the morning 

Robert Johnson would have turned 100 this May. The blues still drenches his Mississippi Delta – the ruler-straight horizon and the gently decaying ghost towns and the sun-baked fields of cotton and corn. Some musicians still drift home and away, along that mighty river and beyond, and some never left.
This month – music gathered from Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Music
From Big Head Blues Club, 100 Years of Robert Johnson (Big Records):
‘Cross road blues’ (feat BB King)
‘Sweet home Chicago’ (feat David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards)

From Big George Brock, Live at 75 (Cat Head):
Intro (feat Sonny Payne)
‘Cut you loose’, Big George Brock
‘Bring the blues back home’, Big George Brock

From Mistakes were made: Five years of raw blues, damaged livers & questionable business decisions (Broke & Hungry Records):
‘Everything’s going to be all right’, the Mississippi Marvel
‘The wolves are howling’, Wesley ‘Junebug’ Jefferson
‘Pretty baby’, Terry ‘Harmonica’ Bean 

Books
Hidden history of Mississippi blues, Roger Stolle, the History Press
The land where the blues began, Alan Lomax, The New Press, New York

Wordy-Gurdy on the radio, June

Emmylou Harris drives a Hard Bargain: her latest offering reviewed

We're a week early as we're off to the South next week!
On today’s feature album, Emmylou Harris’s Hard Bargain (Nonesuch)  Harris offers the most expressive song yet about her brief time with Gram Parsons, beginning 40 years ago. See the Gram Parsons project website for the full interview quoted about how they met – from her point of view.

‘Love hurts’ (alternate take), Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris, The complete Reprise sessions
And to follow, a two-minute interview with Parsons:
‘How I met Emmylou Harris’, Gram Parsons, GP + bonus tracks

From Hard Bargain: ‘The Road’; ‘Big black dog’; ‘My name is Emmett Till’
On the same subject as the last track (which I consider immeasurably more finely crafted) is Bob Dylan’s olde-folke 1960s song ‘The death of Emmett Till’. This was such a brutal and horrifying occurrence that this website considers it crucial to never forget it actually happened.

‘Oh yes that’s right’, True Gospel Wymics
‘Holding On’, Sister Ernestine Washington, Oxford American 11th annual Southern Music Issue 

From San Francisco I’m heading way across the country to Little Rock Arkansas and thence to Petit Jean Mountain for the inaugural Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers. Anyone who’s managed to get their hands on Charles Portis’s classic novel True Grit (1968), long out of print but since reprinted since the Coen Brothers’ film, would recognise Petit Jean as the place Mattie Ross liked to go coon hunting. And if I don’t get totally waylaid in beautiful Arkansas, from there it’s Heartbreak Hotel and Graceland and other Memphis sacred places, as well as a wander down the Blues Highway.

Gigs Moonee Valley Drifters will be doing their last show until mid-July – 9.30–12.30 Saturday, 11 June, Lomond Hotel, Nicholson Street, Brunswick

See you on 20 July with some souvenirs.