Where Is New Orleans?

(Versión en español: http://granfusion.blogspot.com/)

I don’t know for sure how “Blue Monday” by Fats Domino was still sitting around the store when my uncle started buying 45s for me. The record was six years old then, and it had been collecting dust the whole time, perhaps, because of a defective label. My mom bought “Blueberry Hill” when it was a hit, and I still have that 45. At one point, when Fats is singing “those vows you made,” the master tape or the cutting lathe wobbled, so my 45 came from a bad master disc. My copy of “Walking to New Orleans” wasn’t defective, though.

In contrast to the not-so-exciting red Imperial labels, “Walking to New Orleans” sported a black label with colorful pinstripe-width rays shooting from the virtual center of the 45. (I can’t show you the label, because that 45 died in the Great Meltdown. My “Blueberry Hill” has a hint of a warp at one spot on the edge as well.)

Once I discovered “Walking to New Orleans” among my 45s, I was hooked. I did have to ask my mom where New Orleans was, though, since it sounded pretty far away. Fats probably contributed to hastening my awareness that the world was bigger than Gary and Shoals and the four-hour drive (or train ride via the Monon Line) between them. I would soon become aware that there were such states as Illinois, Michigan, Denmark and Australia.

I know. Leave me alone. I figured it out by the time I turned five, and boy, was I disappointed. I so wanted Denmark and Australia to be states.

What intrigues me now is that three-year-old caithiseach was not much of a fan of slow songs with strings in the background. Fats showed me that a solid performer sounds good regardless of the backing. In this case, the somber strings were the idea of producer Dave Bartholomew and came via the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra. No Fats Domino recording had included a string section prior to this one, and Fats had the wisdom to embrace the innovation. It was also the first string-laden song that appealed to me, and perhaps the first song with a 6/8 beat that I played repeatedly.

The writer of the tune, Bobby Charles (born Robert Charles Guidry in 1938), also wrote “See You Later, Alligator” and “But I Do.” He appeared with The Band at their farewell concert, but his featured song didn’t make the final cut. He did appear during “I Shall Be Released” at the end of the concert.

Charles met Fats after the latter recorded his tune “Before I Grow Too Old.” Fats invited him to his house in New Orleans, and Charles said he would have to walk to get to New Orleans. He wrote “Walking to New Orleans” expressly for Fats and sang it for him at Fats’s house when he finally got there.

And so, these three talents combined to create a slow, stringy song I enjoyed. It was a revelation to me somewhere around 1963, and I hope you enjoy it if you’ve never heard it before.

The song (Imperial 5675) hit the Top 40 on July 4, 1960, peaking at #6 and spending 11 weeks in the Top 40. Its flip side, “Don’t Come Knockin’,” entered the chart two weeks later and climbed to 21.

Tonight, Fats is making an appearance at a special concert for his 80th birthday. Be sure to wish Fats a happy birthday on Tuesday, and buy his new album in support of musician victims of Hurricane Katrina:

Buy Fats Domino's new CD

And enjoy the mournful tones of today’s song. Wednesday I’ll be talking about another idol of mine, and the song will be one you probably haven’t heard. See you then!

Fats Domino, Walking to New Orleans

Fats Wednesday

(Versión en español: http://granfusion.blogspot.com/)

By all rights, I shouldn’t have gotten any records by Fats Domino or Little Richard from my Uncle Tom. These were two huge artists, commercially successful icons whose 45s fell outside the purview of my source, the Big Top department store. Despite the quality of their music, I have a quality-control rejection to thank for their presence in my 1963 record collection.

As you can see if you look at this label scan, my copy of “Blue Monday” would be considered defective. Some label-attaching machine went haywire, and an eagle-eyed worker at Imperial Records tossed my copy into a cutout bin. What happened to my Specialty 45s from Little Richard was a bit different. A couple of the labels had purple smears on the yellow-and-white color scheme, one label was blurred, and I believe yet another was printed as a mirror image. All of my defective Specialty 45s finished their lives in the Great Meltdown, so I can’t show you what a mess those labels were.

Thanks to this label defect, I got my first taste of the guy that three-year-old caithiseach simply called Fats. Until the day in late 1963 when I declared that a hit song (one I’ll profile in April) was my favorite song, Fats Domino stood above all the other artists I knew as my favorite performer.

I have chosen to include Fats in my blog of mostly obscure recordings because February 26, 2008 will be his 80th birthday. This post also marks roughly 45 years of my admiration of his work.

Fats is a New Orleans native, given the birth name of Antoine Dominique Domino. His tendency to portliness was the obvious source of his nickname, one that served as the inspiration for the nickname of Ernest Evans: Chubby Checker. Fats charted his first hit in 1950, “The Fat Man.” That song was the intended B side of “Detroit City Blues”; from the beginning of his career, the B sides of Fats Domino records charted well.

Fats logged 37 Top 40 hits, including 11 Top Ten hits. He never hit #1, though “Blueberry Hill” sat at #2 for three weeks.

His chief collaborator was Dave Bartholomew, producer and co-writer of numerous Fats hits, including “Ain’t It (That) a Shame” and “Blue Monday.” Bartholomew is still performing at age 87. Both are members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Extensive biographies of the man exist elsewhere. So does information about his close call with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but I want to reflect on that terrible time for a moment.

New Orleans is where my ancestors landed when they immigrated from Ireland. My grandfather’s grandparents are buried there. Concern for their graves crossed my mind when Katrina struck, and the second thing that occurred to me was that Fats lived there.

I had wanted for years to write him a fan letter. It’s such an easy thing to do; often, if not always, appreciated, and yet a task that tends to sit on the back burner. Fats wouldn’t notice if I didn’t write him a thank-you note for all the music, but I would. According to early reports, it was too late. Fats had stayed in New Orleans to tend to his ill wife, and chances were good that he had perished in the hurricane.

We lost Barry Cowsill, and who knows how many other talented people, to Katrina, but in a near-miraculous turn of events, Fats and his wife were evacuated and taken to the Superdome. Their house was a mess, and Fats lost many prized career-related items. One of his first post-Katrina efforts was to release a new album, Alive and Kickin’, the proceeds of which go to Tipitina's Foundation, to benefit New Orleans musicians displaced by Katrina. The foundation serves also to encourage the reestablishment of the New Orleans local music scene. You can help the foundation and celebrate Fats’s 80th birthday by buying his album here:

Buy Fats Domino's new CD

Fats is in good voice on the title cut, which he recorded in 2006. Amazing. He returned to live performing on May 19th, 2007, my birthday. What a birthday present. Thanks, Fats, for everything. If you're in New Orleans on Saturday, you can catch his latest appearance.

Now, give “Blue Monday” (Imperial 5417) a spin. It made the Top 40 on January 12, 1957 and reached #5. Fats wrote the song with Dave Bartholomew for the film The Girl Can't Help It. If you don’t own any Fats, get some. More Fats to come on Saturday, so I’ll see you on the flip side!

Fats Domino, Blue Monday

Blue Monday label scan

Dixieland Pop Exposure

I’m sure my Uncle Tom didn’t look closely at the 45s he bought for me. He would walk into the Big Top department store near Gary, grab 20 singles from the cutout bin, lay down his dollar and two cents for the tax, and bring the records to me. If he had inspected his choices carefully, he would have noticed that, on a couple of occasions, he brought me two copies of the same 45 in the same batch.

He also would have noticed that he was bringing me an incredibly wide variety of music, the majority of which I appreciated thoroughly. The 45s, often either DJ copies (Not For Sale!) or cutouts (hole through the label), consisted of a healthy dose of R&B, some fun pop, and the occasional “Warsaw Concerto” or “Sabre Dance.”

Thus, Uncle Tom gave me the broadest musical education of any one human being. Others have shown me specific genres in greater depth, but nearly every musical genre I have heard (that existed as of 1966 or so) appeared among the 45s I received from Uncle Tom. When, on a subsequent visit, I would corner him and make him listen to some of the songs he had bought me, he didn’t flinch. I think he got it: I was an open-minded music fiend.

I received a couple of Latin singles, but I didn’t receive any African music on 45; you pretty much had to buy LPs to get genuine ethnic music. Another flavor of music I never acquired via Uncle Tom was Dixieland-style music.

Dixieland comes to mind because I mentioned on Wednesday that I could hear Nat “King” Cole’s “Send for Me” only at my grandparents’ house. Today’s song falls into that category as well. On our visits to Shoals, Indiana, my grandfather often played music for me. I remember a lot of Nat, and a lot of Celtic tunes, and a banjo plucking the melody of “Tom Dooley.” I asked my dad what song that one was, and he had to ask his dad.

My grandfather, who had begun to work in the coal mines of Beckley, West Virginia in 1911, when he was nine years old, had another banjo tune he played for me. I remember this song as the background music for a TV commercial full of black-and-white Depression-era images, so I always associated the song with the Great Depression. Unlike “Tom Dooley,” I didn’t ask the name of this song, and so I never knew what it was.

Finally, random chance gave me the song’s name. In 1996 I bought a Rhino CD called Cocktail Mix Volume 2: Martini Madness. I bought it for another song, one I’ll discuss on February 27. Track 16 of the CD was the song whose name I didn’t know: “Washington Square.” This version was by Dick Hyman & His Orchestra.

It will seem odd to you that I could remain ignorant of the name of such a famous song for so long. Try to keep in mind that, while I had email in 1996, I didn’t have much access yet to this thing they called the World Wide Web, and it was another couple of years before it became an ingrained habit to do an internet search for anything, especially a song I knew from just the melody. Right now I can hold my phone up to a speaker and identify a song, but folks, it’s 2008, and a lot of technology has developed in twelve years.

So, the song was “Washington Square.” And a quick look at my Top 40 Hits book gave me the probable artist: the Village Stompers. Just about the time I was ready to seek the song, Collectables, a favorite label of mine, issued a twofer of Village Stompers LPs from 1963-64. And so I got the song, and a whole lot more Dixieland-style tunes, in pristine transfers, some of the cleanest I’ve ever heard. I never actually owned either the 45 or the LP, so I didn’t lose the song in the Great Meltdown. But I did lose access to the song when trips to Shoals became less frequent, so that counts for a loss of some sort.

The song itself had an interesting genesis. The writer, Bob Goldstein, who now goes by Bobb Goldsteinn, wrote the melody before he entered high school. He came up with the idea of fusing a folk beginning for the song and morphing it into a Dixieland tune. That approach suited the Village Stompers, whom I’ll discuss in a moment. But Mr. Goldsteinn wasn’t a one-hit wonder, unlike the Stompers.

Bobb Goldsteinn worked with Woody Allen and Andy Warhol, and it was Goldsteinn’s idea to synch lights to the sounds emanating from the turntables in disco clubs. So, we owe him for the lights that pound out the beat of Donna Summer’s tunes. And what did he call it? “Multimedia.” He’ll take credit for inventing the term.

Mr. Goldsteinn says he came up with the idea for the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers album cover, which features an Andy Warhol photograph. Designed by Craig Braun to have a real zipper, the cover impressed fans and annoyed record stores, since it scratched the cover of any album in front of it.

Bobb Goldsteinn produced the albums by the GoldeBriars, a 1960s folk group that included Curt Boettcher, who wound up producing albums for Tommy Roe and the Association and serving as an influence on Brian Wilson.

The Village Stompers recorded a pair of LPs for Epic. The first LP was a #5 smash on the strength of its #2 single, “Washington Square,” Epic 9617. Joe Sherman, co-writer of “Ramblin’ Rose,” produced the recording and sorted out the arrangement of the banjo-to-Dixieland-to-banjo concept. The song hit the Top 40 on October 5, 1963 and spent about three months there.

The Stompers—Dick Brady, Ralph Casale, Don Coates, Frank Hubbell, Mitchell May, Al McManus, Joe Muranyi and Lenny Pogan—hit the Hot 100 twice more, with “From Russia with Love” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” but that was the extent of their chart action.

“Washington Square” was, according to Bobb Goldsteinn, a huge favorite of Japanese listeners. Them, and one three-year-old Irish-American kid.

Village Stompers, Washington Square

Nat

Today’s 45 survived the Great Meltdown. By the time I got it, paying full price, I had good needles, so it was never Ground to Dust, though I played it plenty. It even made the Top 40, peaking at #6 in 1963. And its artist is one of the great male vocalists of all time.

Why is this 45, despite its fame, getting the Great Vinyl Meltdown treatment today? February 15 will be the 43rd anniversary of the death of Nat “King” Cole, and he was a huge figure in my musical formation. My parents introduced me to him via “Send for Me,” a single that belonged to my grandparents. I got to hear it only when we were visiting them in Shoals, Indiana. That song, a 1957 hit, was unavailable on 45 by the time I heard it in the early 1960s, so I didn’t hear enough of it.

When “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer” (Capitol 4965) hit the Top 40 on May 25, 1963, my parents told me who the singer was, and they bought me the 45. While the B side, “In the Cool of the Day,” didn’t impress me much, “Lazy” was exactly the kind of tune I enjoyed. The idea of girls in bikinis already intrigued me, and I liked going to the drive-in movie. I didn’t quite get the insinuations of the song, but the summer spirit was upon me in 1963.

It’s a clever song, and its provenance deserves a mention. One of its writers, Charles Tobias (1898-1970), co-wrote “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” and “Merrily We Roll Along.” Apart from him, though, the situation is sketchy. As you can see, the 45 credits H. Carste as co-writer of “Lazy.” Hans Carste, a German composer, is listed as the writer of just two tunes connected with ASCAP, and neither of them is “Lazy.”

ASCAP gives co-writing credit to Hans Bradtke, who wrote “Calcutta,” a #1 hit for Lawrence Welk in 1961, with Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance, the two men responsible for another bikini song, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini.” Those two also wrote “Leader of the Laundromat,” and boy am I getting far from the core of this story.

The third songwriter listed by ASCAP is Hans Haring, another German composer whose ASCAP crosslisted songs are almost all in German, save “Lazy.”

Given two Hans to choose from, it seems that the label-maker for Capitol Records failed to get the right Hans, ignored another Hans and assigned credit to the Hans that was left. Unless, of course, Hans Carste is an alias for one of the two right Hans and no one at ASCAP figured that out.

Seriously, something is curious about the writing credits. The original sheet music lists Carste as the composer, and neither Bradtke nor Haring is mentioned. ASCAP’s records seem to be in error.

Speaking of the label, you can see a number written in pencil. At least three times, after I learned to write my numbers, I decided to count how many 45s I owned. Rather than simply count the records, I wrote a number on each one, perhaps so I wouldn’t lose track. The second time I did it, I didn’t put the records in the same order (there was no order; it was really tough to find a song I wanted to play), so I scratched out the old number and wrote a new one. There are numbers on all of my original 45s, though the scans of the black labels I’ve featured before now didn’t show the pencil marks well.

The orchestra leader on “Lazy,” Ralph Carmichael, became Cole’s main collaborator for the 1960s, after which Carmichael turned to gospel music and became known as the primary creator of the Contemporary Christian sound.

The track was recorded on April 11, 1963, with Lee Gillette as producer. Born in 1912 in Indianapolis, Gillette grew up in Peoria and Chicago. Among his first productions for Capitol was “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette),” the iconic Tex Williams hit that adds a twist to today’s story. He also signed Tennessee Ernie Ford to Capitol and produced “Sixteen Tons.” Gillette became a close friend of Nat “King” Cole, so much so that, upon Nat’s death, he took early retirement from Capitol. He did little work after that, though in 1981 he produced some work by Alvino Rey. In August, 1981, Gillette fell at his California home and died that same month.

Unlike almost any other producer I mention, Lee Gillette will make an audio appearance when you play the recording. That’s because some preliminary chatter from the recording session was left on this track. I am a real sucker for studio chatter; knowing what happened just before the people involved made music history fascinates me as a peek into another world. The interactions often show the personalities of the performers, as is the case this time. I hope you don’t mind that I left the preliminaries on for you. The song starts 30 seconds in. The track is taken from the Capitol Collector Series, CDP 7 93590 2. It’s a great collection, and it deserves to become part of your collection.

You can find a hundred biographies of Nathaniel Coles, so I’ll keep this bio short: he was born in Alabama in 1919 (year seemingly confirmed at last), became a superb pianist, led the King Cole Trio, started singing more, switched from jazz to pop, smoked constantly (you can see video of him performing, smoking) because smoking helped him hit low notes. Which leads me to the reason for this post.

On February 15, 1965, my parents were watching the news. Five-year-old caithiseach didn’t watch the Huntley-Brinkley report often, but when my dad told me that Nat “King” Cole had died, I stopped whatever I was doing and paid attention. His death from lung cancer, caused by smoking, gave me something to fret about, since my parents smoked at the time. Now, when I listen to his final recordings, I can hear the toll taken on his voice by smoking. The rasp in his voice is the sound he was after, but it’s the sound that killed him as well.

What mattered most to me, though was that Nat wouldn’t be making any more records. I didn’t know about his family, and I didn’t think to grieve for anyone but him. He was the first musician of whose death I became keenly aware, and learning that this great voice had been stilled took me to a place I had never before visited. When I assimilated the news of his death, I went to my record player and put on today’s song.

Nat “King” Cole, Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer

45 label scan