Totally Shuffled Day 274 Mickey Lee Lewis-Tutti Frutti

Extracted from Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod. There isn't a You Tube clip of this for reasons that will be apparent below.

Mickey Lee Lewis-Tutti Frutti-unknown single

Bit of an obscure one, this track. I’ve poked around on the internet and cannot find any specific reference to a Mickey Lee Lewis. I’ve joined some tenuous dots however, and discovered that Jerry Lee Lewis had a brother called Mickey Gillard. Mickey, as well as having a full pilots licence(according to Wikipedia), is a bit of a musician on the side, having released a fair few records from the late 1950’s until the 1990’s. I’m guessing that Mickey Lee Lewis is, in fact Mickey Gillard, and that this gem of a cover of Little Richards’ “Tutti Frutti” was Mickey’s attempt to release a song under the banner of his brothers more famous name, rather than the Gillard moniker. Of course, I may be totally incorrect and there might be no connection at all between Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Lee Lewis. It may all be sheer co-incidence and I may be making too many false assumptions. It wouldn’t be unusual either for some unknown chancer  to have just tried to scam his way to fame and fortune by trying to pass himself off as something he wasn’t by ripping off Jerry Lee Lewis’ name. I’d bet there was an Eric Presley out somewhere in the 1950’s as well. (I could actually spend an inordinate amount of time and effort trawling through the more obscure and esoteric sides of the internet trying to prove or disprove all this theory, but really life is too short and some things are best left unexplored (or at least unproven)).

Anyway, despite who on earth Mickey Lee Lewis really was, he had a pretty decent stab at “Tutti Frutti”. It’s not one of those songs where someone tries to put their own stamp or twist upon a classic and it turns out to be embarrassingly dreadful-but neither is it something that’s simply a carbon copy of the original. The best way to describe it is if you could imagine a karaoke-style backing track of “Tutti Frutti” (or even the original backing track as the music itself is quite faithfully rendered), but having the vocals sung by someone, who whilst they clearly know and love the song, have a singing voice quite unlike Little Richards’. On the strength of this cover, Mickey can carry a tune fairly well and has a good enough range, but with a distinctively country twang. I get the feeling that straight-up rock and roll was not his natural forte although he has a good enough go, and by and large, he pulls it off. The more I hear it, the more I like it. I wonder if there are any other Mickey Lee Lewis tracks out there? Hopefully there’s at least a whole album of country- inflected rock and roll covers floating around by the man. If Mickey Lee Lewis was the one and the same Mickey Gillard, then I have a vision of him piloting a little Cessna somewhere over the mid-west and singing his heart out in a weird amalgam of Hank Williams and Elvis.    

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Totally Shuffled extract-Johnny Burnette

(extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod")

September 19^th

Johnny Burnette Trio-Lonesome Train on a Lonesome Track-Coral 7” single

Big Black, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Royal Trux. AC/DC, ZZ Top.  Sonic Youth, The Three Johns, The Fall. A long list of hard rockin’(sic),foot to the floor, no nonsense, low down and dirty rock and roll purveyors. (All the clichés coming out here). None of them, absolutely none of them, hold a candle to this track by Johnny Burnette, recorded in 1953 for Coral Records. I can’t actually write about this without falling deep into cliché territory as it rocks so hard (see, there I go). This is the sort of thing that’s recorded in one take and one take only. Johnny and his Trio would have gathered around the microphone, slammed it out in three minutes and that would have been it. No overdubbing, no multi-tracking, no auto tuning, no 48, 24 or even 8 track, this whole thing would have been “let’s give it a go and head off for a beer.”  I’m sure that there are some bum notes, out of tune vocals, missed cues and fluffed chords, but it doesn’t matter one iota. This is what music should be all about-whether it’s rockabilly (like this track), blues, jazz, rock, classical; it should have this raw outpouring of emotion. (I have a recording somewhere on the iPod of Shostakovich’s 7^th Symphony, played in New York and conducted by Toscanini on its Western premiere in 1942. That showed the (short-lived) spirit of unity between the USSR and the U.S. at the height of the Second World War and in defiance of the Nazi threat at the siege of Leningrad. That 1942 recording is powerful in itself; how much more powerful and emotive would have been a recording of the premiere itself from the besieged city?) It doesn’t matter therefore what the genre of music is-that passion can be as evident in a two and a half minute rockabilly song as it is a lengthy symphony. It’s when music is made without that passion, and when it is simply soulless and mechanical, that it becomes irrelevant and disrespectful.

Johnny Burnette was born in Memphis in 1934. He grew up (with his brother, who also played in his band) in the same housing project that Elvis stayed in with his parents between 1948 and 1954.  There was an incorrect tale, which would have done Johnny’s career no harm, that he went to same school as Elvis-this wasn’t true as he was a little bit younger than Elvis. However, Johnny recalled Elvis passing him on his motorcycle, guitar strapped to his back, and waving to him and his brother was they walked home from school.

Although Johnny’s brother was a boxer for a while, and that avenue was also open for Johnny as well, he decided that ending up with a broken nose and picking up a few dollars for each fight wasn’t really worth it. He got a job working on the river boats on the Mississippi and the story is that he honed his songwriting skills by taking his guitar to work and writing songs whenever he had a spare moment. (It’s a good tale, but a bit too romantic to be believed). Johnny’s career never really took off. He was killed in a boat accident at the young age of 32; but he left the world this fantastic song.   

Get/read/see more of Totally Shuffled here:

UK:http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CJYZ3CA/

US: http://www.amazon.com/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA

 

Wrestling (!) at Glastonbury

Here's a brief, rough extract from current, yet untitled, work-in-progress follow-up to "Turn Left At the Womble". The year I worked at Glastonbury as I couldn't get a ticket. And, as part of that, I was lucky enough to see a wrestling match in the bar I worked. (It's not all Arcade Fire and glamour.) Now read on... 

 

If anyone is old enough to recall World of Sport (ITV’s Saturday afternoons 1960’s/1970’s equivalent of Sky Sports) then I expected the wrestling to be a bit like that. World of Sport had a 45 minute slot of wrestling each week, from 4.00 pm to just as the classified football results came in. It was recorded in such exotic locations as Barnsley, Bolton, Croydon, Luton and the like and had to be seen to be believed. I could go on about it for paragraph after paragraph, but that’s not what this book is about. Maybe another time. Suffice to say, it is one of those things that, you can look back on and realise that we all grew up in much simpler and more naïve times. I think that sometimes repeats of it are shown on cable. It’s well worth catching up on. I didn’t expect however, that the wrestling would be like the Las Vegas/WWE American-type glamour fest, all bells and whistles, strobes and pantomime villanry. As the lights dimmed and the crowd’s (and mine, to be honest) expectations reached fever pitch, it was nearly time for one of the highlights of the night. I actually may be building this up a bit too much here; after all, if was simply a bit of wrestling and messing about in a little bar. On the other hand, in comparison to the rest of the shift, it was a shoe-in.

There was a bit of shouting and what may be termed a melee on the edge of the crowd. At first I thought it was a bit of a fight. Steve nudged me. “It’s all kicking off there,” he pointed, and then it dawned on us that it was part of the act. I guess that what wrestling is anyway; not really a sport, more light entertainment. Four wrestling blokes literally grappled their way through the crowd and into the ring. Just like a proper fight, a microphone descended from the ceiling. Not quite like that. I could see someone at the side threading it through one of the ceiling struts, but it had the same effect. They had however, put on a full show. There was an MC, complete with bowtie (and wellies, which sort of was appropriate but odd) and a referee, with one of those black and white striped shirts that American umpires wear. The wrestlers were introduced, in that over-the-top style that you’d expect. I can’t recall what they were called, but they were all purportedly from America save for a Mexican who was wearing a face mask and a spangly leotard. As soon as the introductions were over it all went off big time with all four of them in the ring at the same time. They weren’t messing around either and although it was clearly choreographed, they did throw each other about in a reckless fashion. The ring juddered under the impacts and there was a lot of booing and cheering from the crowd. From our vantage point it was hard to see exactly what was going on but there was clearly one baddie who relished winding the crowd up and used every excuse to fight dirty. (The words “baddie”, “fight” and “dirty” must really be considered only in the context of “professional” wrestling by the way.) The Mexican chappie seemed a dab hand at jumping off the top rope and launching himself at his opponents. Unfortunately he also seemed pretty adept at getting himself “whupped” , in the quaint American terminology of the evil baddie with the mullet. We could really only see what was going on over the heads of the crowd and most of that was the aforesaid Mexican jumping around. This spectacle lasted surprisingly for an hour or so. Surprisingly because all four of the wrestlers didn’t let up for a minute. Neither did we, as the cider kept flowing and the tills kept bulging. The whole bout ended with the Mexican “unconscious” in the middle of the ring and the evil villain-who thought he had won- being defeated by the combined efforts of the other two. Which was odd, as a few minutes earlier they had been knocking seven bells out of each other.  They were all helped out of the ring, battered, limping and bruised and, like one of those “there’s nothing to see here, move along, now” events, the crowd rapidly dissipated, all the fun over.

(As aside.when all the jollity was over, I nipped out the back for a quick smoke. Standing in the mud, I heard a few chaps laughing together in very strong Brummie accents. I stuck my head round the corner to see the stars of the show chilling out. Wrestling, like a lot of entertainment, is not what it all seems.)  

You can see/get/read "Turn Left At The Womble" here:

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0060YCKGW 

US:http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Left-The-Womble-Glastonbury-ebook/dp/B0060YCKGW

Totally Shuffled Day 227 Arahamic Wedding Chants

extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod" 

August 14^th

Arahamic Wedding Chants-Merchant Street, St James’ Church, Valetta, Malta 24^th January 2010

There’s some obscure stuff on the iPod-Pygmy music from the 1950’s being a prime example, as well as assorted Japanese avant-garde/hardcore music- but this one tops the list. It’s not particularly old or really from the other side of the world. After all, plenty of people go to Malta for (fairly sedate) holidays and January 2010 is only two and a half years ago from today. So, what’s so obscure about this then? Everything. The whole thing only lasts just under twenty minutes, being comprised of four “tracks”. None of these tracks are named and I have no idea what they are about. They all last about 5 minutes or so and are comprised of chanting and rhythmic drumming and percussion. There’s a variety of voices and although it all sounds like it’s just women chanting, the sounds rise and fall, high and low over the twenty minutes or so. 

There isn’t a moment when you can hear a single voice-as one voice falls away, another one picks up the chant, followed by yet more until they fade and then the whole thing is picked up again. It’s like a waving, rolling ocean; an undulating sea with waves that never fully break. This is not a professional recording either; it’s nothing that has ever been released on CD, there’s no connection with a record company and it’s just here for one reason only. Someone, ( I know not who, but I’m eternally grateful to them) came across this wedding ceremony outside a small church in Valetta on a day in January 2010, decided to record it and put it out to the world. It wasn’t really put out to the world though-just uploaded to a small music site. I’ve looked back on the site and it’s just gone-there’s no trace of it. It’s as if it was never there. I only have a CDR with the details at the top of this piece written in my scribbled scrawl. I’ve racked my brain to remember anything else about it, but all I’ve got (and this may be a bit of a false memory) is that whoever recorded it just came upon it by chance. It wasn’t a professional performance by professional musicians, but guests at a wedding spontaneously bursting into song. I think that the performance was split fairly arbitrarily into four tracks-listening to it all there doesn’t seem to be any particular point within the whole twenty minutes or so when the performance shifts to different songs; it just seems to be one whole twenty minute rolling chant. 

I suppose in the end that the question is what prompted me to download it? Well, I guess that I’m always going to fall for something as esoteric as this-after all what did I really have to lose? There was inevitably a fair chance that it would be utter rubbish and something I’d never listen to again. If that was the case,well, I’d just put it down to experience. By that measure though, there’s many more traditionally “rock” albums I’ve got hold of after hearing them hyped to the eyeballs, and then been disappointed. So this wasn’t really too much of a punt, and, as it turns out, is one of the most unexpectedly brilliant things I’ve ever heard.   

Get/read/see the rest of Totally Shuffled here:

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA

US:  http://www.amazon.com/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA