I’ve had a place in my heart for this sappy little pop tune since it was a top 40 hit and I was a youngster. In between the advertisement and the silliness, I like this version quite a bit.
Booker T and the MG’s “Green Onions”
Green Onions holds a particular place in my life.
Certainly, prior to Booker and the MGs releasing the hit in 1962, I had many brushes with the radio and records.
I loved Little Star, Peggy Sue, Sorry, I Ran All the Way Home, the Happy Organ, and Red River Rock among great tunes released prior to Green Onions, but that was before I had a radio in my room, or our family had a phonograph player let alone a stereo.
Meaning I had no regular or consistent means of channeling the hits of the day aside from Dick Clark and Ed Sullivan.
The summer of ’62, however, we went to Lake Tahoe for a week, staying at a University of California family camp. I was nine then, and The Locomotion, Runaway, and Sherry were all huge hits that lived on the juke box in the dining room at camp where the collegiate staff ruled the roost at night.
That made it great for my brother and I to hang with the kids we had met, and listen to those great songs as the entry to regular exposure of pop music, something that then never left.
That fall I entered 6th grade, and also began Hebrew School, being just a little ahead of three years before my suspected Bar Mitzvah date. Hebrew class was held at our Temple, and usually one of my mates in school who also attended car-pooled me with them while either my mother, or Cantor Cohn, whose son Ron was a great friend, would ferry me back home.
But, on one particular day, Miriam Costa, a neighbor from across the street whose family’s life has criss-crossed with mine in strange ways over the past 55 years, was there to take me back to our house.
I was quiet riding in the car, and Mrs. Costa had the radio on, and truth was I wasn’t paying that much attention save suddenly Green Onions came on and that is the first time I clearly recognized a song on the radio I had heard, and identified it by name and performer in what became my ridiculous mental data base of music trivia.
So, the song has always held a special spot in my heart.
Well, last week I was watching the wonderful Barry Sonnenfield film Get Shorty, a movie I also dig a lot and during an airport sequence, Green Onions came on the soundtrack.
Knowing that I had heard the song in both American Graffiti and The Big Lebowski, I began to wonder just how many films had included the great instrumental as part of their production.
So, I went to the Independent Movie Data Base (IMDB) and discovered 34 movies and TV shows had borrowed the song, which I think is kind of a lot.
It is a great tune, and, it both reminds me of Miriam Costa, and also of my love of song really kicking into full gear just after that fall, when my brother and I got a little Packard Bell radio for our room, while our parents purchased a Philco phonograph player and there was no looking back.
Rock Roots: Everyday, Buddy Holly
I don’t think there is any more minimal version of the roots of rock out there. Beautiful and abstract. The reason we don’t only listen to boogie.
Song of the Week – I’ve Found Someone of My Own, Smoked Sugar
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
Today’s SotW is another installment in my “Rare Record Series.” It is “I’ve Found Someone of My Own” from the self-titled soul classic by Smoked Sugar.
Smoked Sugar was a 70’s soul/R&B group in the style of their contemporaries, The Chi-Lites. Their 1975 album received favorable critical notices but never connected with the music buying public. Why, I don’t understand.
“I’ve Found Someone of My Own” is a remake of the 1971 hit by the Free Movement. But where the Free Movement’s version had a dinner club feel (smooth with flute accompaniment) Smoked Sugar’s take is a grittier, southern soul take – like a lost Al Green cut. It’s wonderful!
The vinyl album is still pretty rare and commands prices from $16-50 on Discogs, though prices have come down since the record was released on CD in 2012.
Enjoy… until next week.
Best Version
Garnet Mimms was a soul singer of distinction, best known for the original version of “Cry Baby” that Janis Joplin covered. This is my fave of his. The singing is great beginning to end but it’s not even the best thing about it, which is the beat. It rides and it’s funky at the same time, with a big assist from the unknown-to-me rhythm guitar player. He cuts The Drifters by a mile.
Japandroids, “The House That Heaven Built”
I do like my Spofity shuffle and mixes because they do indeed jumble eras and genres up, although the band in question here is one our friend, Kyle Elfrink, of Sirius/XM, another baseball/music junkie, turned me onto.
They would be the Japandroids. And, Kyle was right, for I like them having added a couple of their discs to my continually growing Playlist. Which means their stuff pops up out of nowhere, which is good fun.
This tune crushes it for me. You?
Song of the Week – Whipped Cream, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
In 1965 Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass released their 4th album – Whipped Cream and Other Delights. The album was hugely popular. If you’re a baby boomer, odds are your parents owned a copy; if a millennial, your grandparents. In fact at the height of the British Invasion and Motown the album was able to shift over 6 million copies!!! As a lifelong “crate digger” I think I’ve touched half of them!
The album was as well known for its provocative cover as the music it contained. A 3 month pregnant model named Dolores Erickson (now in her 80s) posed under a pile of shaving cream for the shoot. Her “come hither” expression and the illusion of nudity under that cream was a turn on for adult and adolescent men and no doubt helped sales.
The iconic cover inevitably led to a number of parodies, a sampling included below.
“Whipped Cream” was written by Allen Toussaint under the pseudonym Naomi Neville, his mother’s name. (He also credited the oft recorded “Fortune Teller” to “her.”)
The music was performed by the famed LA session players known as the Wrecking Crew. Artists that played on this album included Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye and Leon Russell (using the name Russell Bridges).
Even if you never heard this album, “Whipped Cream” may sound familiar to you. That’s because it was the music used on The Dating Game TV show as the lead in music when introducing the bachelorettes.
Now that’s a trip down memory lane!
Enjoy… until next week.
New Queens
Just found out about this today. A new album at the end of August (it’s been an excessively long time) excites me greatly. Not sure about this yet; I’ll have to see how it grows on me. For now I’ll say “catchy.”
It’s A Man’s Man’s World
Apparently there’s a new Residents doc.
The Residents were/are a band I always wished I liked more. This is one of their defining moments. If nothing else, one could never call The Residents unoriginal or boring.
CarTunes: Paul Simon, “America” and Lucinda Williams, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”
I thought hard during the last presidential campaign if I had ever seen a political ad that appealed to me more in substance and presentation than this wonderful Bernie Sanders ad which features the ridiculously beautiful Paul Simon penned song, America.
It is just a 1:00 minute splash, but so effective, somewhat because the editing feeds right into Simon’s composition, which is indeed such beautiful poetry, the whole thing just sort of transcends the words of almost any other song/ad I can think of.
The whole tune came on my shuffle the other day as I was heading off the golf links and America is also a great car tune; that is, a song that is great to listen to while driving, so I decided to drop a new category for songs that are a great listen on a road trip.
I guess it goes without saying that arguably the greatest of the “Car Tunes” is Roadrunner by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, a song that has been featured here before, but another great reflection of travel and riding and life and the open road is Lucinda’s Williams fantastic painting of a tune, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road from the album of the same name.
As it was, Car Wheels popped onto my shuffle right after America the other morning making this whole mess fall together in some kind of prophetic way, but make no mistake, Williams words are just as beautiful and evocative as Simon’s, which is indeed saying something.
So, what else kills in the car on that long ride? Radar Love? Don’t Fear the Reaper? You tell me.