While we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog missed the TCM Classic Film Fest and shall, having found ourselves increasingly and seriously homesick as our March-April CA trip progressed, also miss the epic 2019 San Francisco Silent Film Festival (and drive all the blog's cinephile readers away by covering other totally unrelated 20th century pop culture topics), we never miss a favorite song.
At the top of the list of ridiculously catchy tunes from the halcyon days of 1960's AM radio (KFRC, KYA and KDIA where I grew up), even higher than Mother-In-Law by Ernie K. Doe and Quarter To Three by Gary U.S. Bonds: the one, the only Gene Chandler's 1962 hit The Duke of Earl.
It's a great tune and Gene's snazzy getup tops Bela Lugosi, Liberace and Screamin' Jay Hawkins.
Gene Chandler sang this hit with pleasure for 50+ years!
Amazingly enough, The Duke of Earl made it into the late 20th century.
In 1991, the Latino American hip hop group Cypress Hill sampled it 29 years after The Duke Of Earl topped the charts.
What do the kings of doo-wop and hip-hop have in common? Well. . . in this writer's estimation, a certain goofy, tongue-in-cheek sensibility and humor underlying a strong desire to entertain and give the audience their money's worth, not unlike the aforementioned Screamin' Jay Hawkins.
Lyrically, Cypress Hill's (would-be) macho tough guy anthem Hand On The Pump is more akin to Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting than Gene Chandler's doo-wop masterpiece, even though one suspects neither the glam pop star Englishman nor the very thoroughly 420-ed Cypress Hill in actuality administered "beat-downs" ever.
Few recording artists had the temerity to actually cover The Duke of Earl. One musician who did was Alex Chilton.
Alex Chilton, as he did with many 1960's tunes, rearranged Gene Chandler's classic as a rock n' roll song, gave it his all and had fun in the process!
The fact that
Alex Chilton, the uncrowned king of covers throughout his solo career and even in his concerts with Big Star and The Box Tops, tackled The Duke Of Earl should be no big surprise. Alex covered one of this blogger's favorite 1967 hits, Brenton Wood's classic "The Oogum Boogum Song."
As far as this blogger knows, Alex did not cover Brenton Wood's second big 1967 hit, Gimme Little Sign. Possibly he did and it was never recorded; didn't call Alex Chilton the uncrowned king of covers for nothing!
Meanwhile, here's Brenton Wood performing Gimme Little Sign on Top Of The Pops - and sounding great as usual.
While asking just how I might wrap up this post, the notion arises that some readers of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog might want to sing The Duke of Earl at home. Why not? Here are the lyrics - have fun!
WGXC, the community radio station for Greene and Columbia counties (New York), will be presenting their Alex Chilton tribute from 9:30 to midnight Eastern Standard Time. To listen to WGXC streaming, click here.
Now, readers of this blog know that I'm a huge fan of the music of Alex Chilton in all its phases and incarnations. He was great with The Box Tops, the ill-fated but wonderful Big Star and on his many solo albums, which try out everything from punk to soul music covers to experimental rock to standards.
Never afraid to tackle varied material, both as producer and performer, Alex was often the only person to perform covers of various 1960's R&B chestnuts and goofy novelty songs. For example, this 1967 hit by Brenton Wood, which qualifies as both:
He also produced one of the most original and incendiary albums of crazed rockabilly ever recorded, Songs The Lord Taught Us by The Cramps.
The 1996 Live in Glasgow recordings Alex did with Teenage Fan Club are, IMO, a standout among his later work.
Alex couldn't care less about current fads or what the recording industry wanted and, sadly, paid a price for being true to himself and his artistic vision; the fact that he could not afford to see a doctor about recurring chest pains directly led to his untimely passing on March 17, 2010.
Since he shared with Elvis Costello and Mike Patton a musical taste that was gleefully, aggressively all over the freakin' map, one can present a veritable panorama of clips and just barely scratch the surface of Alex' sonic oeuvre. He could not be contained.
This - and a sense of person behind the performer - is best expressed in the following article, The Alex Chilton Panel At SXSW, written by Ann Powers for the L.A. Times not long after Alex' passing.
I generally prefer to avoid posting something about a death, since wonderful, beautiful, inventive amazing people die every day - and, bluntly, I am "Way Too Damn Lazy" to write blog postings about even a fraction of 1% of them. Sadly, here's an untimely passing I'm compelled to call attention to.
One of the most inspired, original songwriters and impassioned performers in rock n' roll, Alex Chilton, succumbed to a heart attack on March 17 at the age of 59. He was a rare talent who could seamlessly jump from rock to psychedelia to folk to jazz to blues to Beatle-esque pop to Memphis r&b (at times in the same set) and sound great in every genre. And Alex' best known work, with The Box Tops and Big Star, is strictly the tip of the iceberg.
Big Star, 1971: Jody Stephens, Chris Bell, Alex Chilton and Andy Hummel
Although most of us (myself included) didn't hear Big Star, which Alex co-led with the very talented singer-songwriter-guitarist Chris Bell, when their albums were first released, barely distributed and never, ever played even on FM radio back in the early 1970's, the band would be hugely influential on the music that followed: without Big Star, there's no R.E.M., no Replacements, no Marshall Crenshaw, no Beck, no Wilco, etc.
Keith Spera in the New Orleans Music News has done an excellent job delving into who Alex Chilton was and how he loved New Orleans, where he lived for the last 28 years of his life. There is also a good tribute written by Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney for NPR Music, the official obit from NPR, which also includes links to various interviews and other pieces, as well as a good article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Aidin Viziri.
I add to this the following excerpts from Chris Talbott's article for the Associated Press."It was Chilton's work with a second Memphis band, Big Star that cemented his legacy as a pioneering voice for a generation of kids looking for something real in the glossy world of pop music. The band was never a commercial success, but R.E.M. counted Chilton as an influence, the Replacements name-checked him with their 1987 song "Alex Chilton," and his band still provides a template for musicians today. "In my opinion, Alex was the most talented triple threat musician out of Memphis — and that's saying a ton," Paul Westerberg, the former Replacements frontman, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "His versatility at soulful singing, pop rock songwriting, master of the folk idiom, and his delving into the avant garde, goes without equal. He was also a hell of a guitar player and a great guy."
Original Big Star member Jody Stephens and Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of The Posies, who joined Chilton in the reformed group (a.k.a. Big Star 2.0), all plan to play Saturday's show as scheduled. Stringfellow said the band will likely invite special guests to join in, but that details were just starting to be worked out.
"That Alex died two days before we were going to play, it has dropped the bomb on South by Southwest in a lot of ways," Stringfellow said in a phone interview from Paris. "We have a lot of fans there. I hope this show will be a good release and a kind of way to memorialize Alex. He deserves that and a lot more."
Paul Westerberg, author of the aforementioned fabulous song about Alex, has posted links to a host of tributes here on his website. No doubt many more are forthcoming, especially at SXSW over this weekend.
Here are three songs from the August 2008 concert by Big Star 2.0 (Alex, Ken Stringfellow, Jon Auer and Jody Stephens) at the Rhythm Festival in Clapham, Bedfordshire. There is no band that synthesized protean elements of American folk-rock and pop - Gram Parson's songwriting and Roger McGuinn's jangly guitar sound from The Byrds, plus Arthur Lee's cryptic lyricism and the vocal harmonies of Brian Wilson/ Beach Boys - with British Invasion soundscapes (from The Beatles to The Move to The Kinks to The Small Faces to The Who to early Pink Floyd) quite like Big Star. It is also noteworthy that Big Star, devoted to succinct pop songcraft, existed completely apart from the pronounced early 1970's bent towards flashy, highly theatrical "stadium rock".
Also posted on youtube were the following home movie clips of the 1971-1972 Big Star lineup, shot by Andy Hummel and the late Chris Bell, with "Thank You, Friends", one of Alex' best tunes as the soundtrack. It is just one of many Chilton songs that has grown on me over the years.
Always musically curious, he loved all kinds of genres and incorporated all of it into his unique approach. Thus, like Elvis Costello, he remains close to Mr. Blogmeister's musical heart. Only Alex Chilton could pull off rocked-out versions of both "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and "April In Paris" in the same set as covers of "There Will Never Be Another You", Michael Jackson's "Rock With You" and "Can't Seem To Make You Mine" by Sky Saxon And The Seeds in its full psychedelic era rave-up splendor - or even attempt to.
I'll simply close with both the painfully obvious understatement that Alex Chilton, still underrated after all these years (only in his earliest incarnation with The Box Tops was he ever a pop "flavor of the month"), left a highly original, often inspired legacy - and three great recordings of his. First, a cover version of an irresistible Byrds-Beatles style song by Scottish rockers (and frequent collaborators of Alex) Teenage Fanclub, then a caustic lil' number which ventures successfully into Jimi Hendrix "The Cry Of Love" territory. The third song is a well-known jazz standard and Nina Simone signature tune.
Since it's state law that I must follow any rendition of the last tune by Paul Westerberg and The Replacements with a genuine Alex Chilton clip, here's Alex, playing an improbable but very nice cover of Rock With You from Michael Jackson's Off The Wall album.
Enjoy this excellent version of "I Am The Cosmos" by Chris Bell (Alex Chilton's songwriting partner in the original Big Star lineup), live from Clapham, Bedfordshire in August 2008. Jon Auer tackles the lead vocal originated by Bell on his brilliant, alas, posthumously released solo album - and does a fine job. Bell's untimely death in a 1978 automobile accident that eerily resembled the one that claimed comedy innovator Ernie Kovacs in 1962, was yet another of those way too numerous tragedies in rock 'n' roll history.
This blog pays tribute to Burt Bacharach on the 20th of each month. Today, we also salute an equally inspired composer/pianist/vocalist who first made it big in the 1960's, Brian Wilson, who is 67 years young today. Thankfully, Brian, like Burt, is still touring and bringing good music to audiences around the world.
Enjoy Brian's cover of Burt's "My Little Red Book". It's quite wonderful and stylistically midway between the renditions by Elvis Costello and Arthur Lee & Love.
In retrospect, it's too bad Brian didn't record a cover of this with The Beach Boys. It would have sounded great and fit in beautifully in their 1967 album Wild Honey.
I'd enjoy hearing a cover of this featuring a Brian arrangement, Burt on Fender Rhodes, Brian's current band (featuring "C.E.O of falsetto" Jeffrey Foskett, soaring soprano Taylor Mills, multi-instrumentalists Paul Van Mertons and Scott Bennett, as well as all members of the fabulous Wondermints) and. . . Alex Chilton, another inspired, prolific and original songsmith who first hit it big in the 1960's.
It's not a far fetched idea at all. Alex' first band, The Box Tops, opened for The Beach Boys in the late 60's. The Boys returned the favor by covering Alex' biggest hit.
Then again, Alex is one of the few musicians to cover a song from Brian's magnum opus, "Pet Sounds." Really? Here's Alex and Big Star, performing Wouldn't It Be Nice at Shepherd's Bush Empire on August 28, 2008.
Hearing Big Star rock out on that classic Beach Boys number reminds me how much I would love to hear them cover Burt's "I Don't Know What To Do With Myself". Thanks to whoever found these rare demos and concert clips and posted them on YouTube!
