Walk, don't run

First of all, congratulations to The Ventures for being nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They should have been voted in years ago but they don’t have the sort of back catalog sales that the Hall of Fame votes for. I hope they make it in this year, very few groups deserve it more. How many times have you heard somebody say they learned guitar by playing along to a Ventures LP? Do yourself a favor and go get a copy of the Venture’s SURFING album.

Since I’m on the subject of acts that should be in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. Link Wray. Jeez. The only guy I can think to ever have an instrumental banned for “promoting teen gang warfare” isn’t in there. I don’t think Link has ever even been nominated. Billy Miller put it best: “Alla these guys could make a guitar talk, but face it – if you wanna dig talkin’, listen to a conversation. Now if you wanna hear a guitar sound like a GUITAR, Link Wray is yer boy.” Pete Townshend said "He is the king; if it hadn't been for Link Wray and "'Rumble,'" I would have never picked up a guitar." How’s that for influential?

Looking for a place

where I'll have nothing to do

Happy birthday

Jerry Lee Lewis!

Nature has beauty, nature has its place

7 years before the Velvet Underground started, Lou Reed’s teenage doo-wop group recorded a 45 that influenced absolutely nobody. High school seniors Phil Harris and Lou Reed got together with a bass singer named Al Walters to play a Little Richard style act in the school talent show. A neighbor of Harris’ girlfriend arranged an audition for Bob Shad, an A&R man at Mercury Records that was looking to start his own label. Shad agreed to record the group and set up a studio date.

To help fill in the sound of the high school trio Shad bought in a backup singer whose name is forgotten but Reed remembers that he was a big black man with ‘a giant mound of snot hanging out of his nose.’ Shad also hired the mighty King Curtis to play saxophone on both songs. Reed is playing guitar. Harris wrote “So Blue” by himself and helped Reed write “Leave Her For Me”.

The record was released on Shad’s Time label in 1958. It didn’t get much airplay although Reed says that the record got played on Murray The K’s show once earning the band 78 cents in royalties. Harris remembers seeing the record in jukeboxes. The group got some sunglasses, string ties and glitter jackets and played a few bars and shopping center openings. Nothing came of that so Shad recorded Harris performing solo. This record was more popular but I’ve never heard it or seen a copy.

Make her holler, make her holler

“Safronia B” by Calvin Bose is one of the great songs of the pre-rock era. Some humor-impaired critics say that the ‘I surrender, I surrender’ shout ruins the song. It doesn’t. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this record. Bose comes close enough to Louis Jordan’s style that casual listeners have confused the two bands.

Trumpeter Bose grew up in Houston. Illinois & Russell Jacquet and Arnett Cobb were in the same high school band as Bose, the great Charles Brown was in his college band. After a stint in the Army during WWII, Bose settled in LA, released some records and wrote a few songs for Charles Brown. 1949 to 1952 were Bose's peak years. "Looped" did well on the charts but “Safronia B” was his only big hit. Bose was not able to support a family and a band so he retired from music to become a social worker and teacher. He died in 1970.

What you gonna do

when the world is on fire?

Happy birthday

Nick Cave!

I hate to see that evenin' sun go down

I’ve been listening to the new Pine Hill Haints album pretty much non-stop for a week now. All of the Haint's records are good but this one is the best yet. One song I really like is the cover of the W.C. Handy standard “St. Louis Blues”. It’s a long time favorite of mine and I was glad to hear the Haints take a stab at it.

Here are a few other versions of the song. It’s been recorded hundreds of times. I’m only gonna post a few though. Both of you regular readers will be glad to know that I’m all out of mister songs too.

Mister

Sun
Mingo
Wilson
Screwdriver
Custer
Woods
Rebel

Way down yonder

in the valley

Mister

Time
Tough
Spaceman
Airplane Man
Teabaggin'
Grieves
Misery

R.I.P.

Bobby Byrd

Get on up!

They don't stand for no jiving

no conniving

Attention Capitol Records

I want the singles. I've got the LP and I'm happy with that. I don't want to buy the PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN again, I don't want a mono/stereo set, I don't want a "resembles a cloth-covered book" pamphlet - I want a single CD with all of the '67/'68 singles by The Pink Floyd to replace the bootleg CD I bought 20 years ago. A CD that includes "Scream Thy Last Scream"/"Vegetable Man". Put out a deluxe version of RELICS if you need to but release ALL of the singles. If you really want to make me happy, you'll put "Lucy Leave" on there too.

Thanks!

And he told her

everything that she'd done

Mister

Guitar
Reporter
Tambourine Man
Ambulance Driver
Pharmacist
Limpet
Whirly

Happy birthday

Sonny Rollins!

R.I.P.

Janis Martin

She was 67.

KO? K.O.? K O? AKO? x 3

Another request which makes the third time for this post. My latest theory is that the band was based in Bowling Green but related or connected to somebody in the music industry in nearby Nashville.

********************************************

Here’s another mystery record. All I know is what’s written on the label and there’s a lot of information there but not much useful stuff. There is not an address and only one last name (Hardaway) in a single songwriting credit.

I’m not even sure about the band’s name. It’s written as KO but is that KO or is it K.O.? The name on the label doesn’t have the periods. If it’s not K.O., what does KO mean? There is a Japanese character next to the name on the label so I thought it might be Japanese. I ran KO through Babelfish, it came back as KO. That wasn’t any help.

I looked on Collectorscum and didn’t find anything under either name. I did a Google search and found one mention of the record on a want list. No other information though, although they did have the record listed twice, once as KO and again as AKO. AKO?

The song titles are not very helpful either. Allmusic.com has 271 entries for songs called “Out Of Control” and none of them are by our mystery band. There aren’t any entries for this song and Homeland Security is gonna start listening to my phone calls if I put the name on the blog.

I think the band had heard the Weirdos, I hear a lot of that band in this song. It's KO's best moment.

The label does say that there are NO Ballads – NO Lovesongs which is true, there aren’t any. The songs were published by Magical Music, Hardaway was published by Milene Music, which makes me think he was not a member of the band.

The record didn't have a picture sleeve. The record came in a paper sleeve with ‘For Sale ONLY NO Promotional copies’ stamped on it. The record is on Wow Records Inc. and has a 1979 copyright. The band may have been from Bowling Green, Kentucky. That’s where I found the single in a used record shop near the university in 1986. There were at least a dozen other copies in the same box. I wish I had bought all of them. They were marked 75 cents each.

Here's a couple scans of the KO single:





Thanks Melissa!

Where you gonna graduate from?

In high school, my friend Phillip and I spent way too much time listening to The Firesign Theatre's DON'T CRUSH THAT DWARF, HAND ME THE PLIERS album. We were seniors and we really liked the High School Madness section. We started calling each other names from the LP - Phillip was Mudhead, I was Porgy. We would drop lines from the LP into a conversation and stop it dead. It's hard to explain why "Gee Mom, isn't that bridge built yet" or "Only to ten, Mudhead" are funny to somebody that hasn't heard the album. And most people that heard the record didn't understand why a couple of 16 year olds found a 45 minute collage of fake commercials and movie skits from 1970 so funny.

Anyway here's the "High School Madness" section from DON'T CRUSH THAT DWARF, HAND ME THE PLIERS. Maybe you'll appreciate it more than Miss Chauncey's French III class. They didn't think it was funny at all.

Mister

Brown
Norris
Clarinet
Eliminator
Moonlight
Mister
Lucky

Just want

to see his face