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Why Tommy James sang for the mob but not at Woodstock

Scattershooting … and wondering what happened to Tommy James. (“Scattershooting and wondering what happened to …” was a journalistic trademark of the late great sports writer and columnist, Blackie Sherrod who wrote for The Dallas Morning News.)

Why Tommy James? I haven’t a clue. Maybe it was so I could get “Crimson and Clover” stuck in my head until I go to sleep tonight. 

Tommy James of the Shondells fame as pictured in 2010.

“Yeah. La la la la la la. My mind’s such a sweet thing. La la la la la la. I want to do everything. La la la la la la … over and over.”

O-kay.

James career kicked off with a little “Hanky Panky.” Actually, that was the name of his first hit song.

His songs weren’t what you were called “deep.” In fact, they seem to have tread the netherworld of pop bubblegum with a touch of psychedelia thrown in. Apparently though, James and the Shondells were cool enough to have been invited to Woodstock. They didn’t make it. Supposedly his manager didn’t want him playing at some stupid pig farm.

It was okay, he was in good company. The list site, 11points.com, says in a list titled “11 Bands That Skipped Woodstock For Incredibly Lame Reasons,” Jethro Tull didn’t play because band frontman Ian Anderson reportedly said in an interview that he didn’t like hippies and he feared naked women “unless the time is right.” Roy Rogers, who had been invited to sing “Happy Trails” at the end of the festival said the reason he didn’t take part was that he would have been “booed of the stage by all them (expletive) hippies.”

Tommy James was much more well known and had more hit records than some of the other bands that did play at Woodstock. Take for instance, Sweetwater, Bert Sommer, Quill and the Keef Hartley Band. Most younger people today also would have no idea who some of the bands were of the day that enjoyed some measure of popularity and played at Woodstock, yet were not huge names to all. I use for examples Melanie Safka, who was known only by “Melanie,” and had several big hits back then including “Brand New Key” and “Lay Down.”

Plenty of folks, both old and young, have probably heard in commercials or films the flute and guitar intro of “Going Up The Country” by Canned Heat but do not know who or what the band was. Even many rock and roll fans may not have known of or heard of Tim Hardin back when he played at Woodstock. Songs Hardin, who was a folk singer and composer, had written are much more well known than he was. Among those tunes are the beautiful ballad “Reason To Believe” recorded by Rod Stewart.”

Back to Tommy James once more, I found out doing this Internet scattershooting that he released a book in 2010 in which he revealed that the record company that recorded his songs, Roulette, was actually a front for the Genovese crime family in New York. James tells in his book that his deal was he would make the records and the company would keep the money. Great deal, huh? The book is called “Me, The Mob And The Music.” Give it a read. I plan to do so.

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The Allman Brothers Band: Not Beethoven but pretty damned close

This afternoon I was thinking about instrumentals. Songs with mostly no vocals lost popularity, I don’t know, maybe in the ’80s. Maybe it was before. Maybe it was after. Maybe it was for good reason. Then I thought: “Jessica.”

The Allman Brothers Band selection released in 1973 is a classic that is mostly Dickey Betts leading the upbeat Southern rock tune on guitar along with Chuck Leavell on the piano and Gregg Allman on the Hammond organ. This was with the rest of the band, of course, which by that time featured only one Allman after Duane Allman’s death in 1971.

Gregg Allman wide awake and not in a bowl of soup while out with Cher.

Well, you know how the Internet is. You start with one topic and you are off to another. However, I stuck with the Allman Brothers even though I had originally thought about instrumentals. If you know the Allman Brothers Band then you probably know more about them than I do.

I was not a great Allman Brothers fan during their 1970s heyday. I look back today and don’t know why. They were and remain a fantastic band. I mean I liked their songs that I heard back in the day. “Ramblin’ Man” was a favorite. Another song written and with lead vocals by Richard Betts, the “All right!” voiced at the end of the tune’s guitar solo used to make my old Seabee buddy Buffalo Bob chuckle because that was the feeling he got listening. “Jessica” was great, of course, as was what is my favorite by the Allman Brothers “Melissa.” It is a great ballad in the “Southern” style that set the Allman Brothers apart from so many other rock and blues bands of the time. The song itself is such a great poem for the young man that travels with his home, all that he ever knew, not far away in his mind. As well, spending the first years away from home in the heart of the South during that time, well, it just seemed I was in the midst of what might now be a Southern version of a bunch of Navy people in a movie like “Dazed and Confused” while “Melissa” could have served as a melancholy anthem.

The other of the Brothers songs I knew I would hear in a road ride on a car stereo or on juke boxes at the Mississippi Gulf Coast taverns where we hung out, talking about life while waiting for some girl to come along and break our hearts.

Only 28 days after the then-Louisiana Superdome — now the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, go figure — opened in 1975 was I there to see the monster dome’s first rock concert. None other than the Allman Brothers Band headlined a show that also featured Marshall Tucker Band, Charlie Daniels Band and Wet Willie. Remember Wet Willie? Then “Keep on Smilin.’ “ I remember the show probably a lot better than some of my fellow attendees. It was a long but great concert. It was the kind of show an edifice like the Superdome should have had to welcome it into history.

The Allman Brothers, through the whole Gregg-Cher era and on into more recent times, remain relevant and still tour with shows I am sure I could never afford today. That’s just a dig at the times and economics and not the band.

These days, I figure that it can’t be only the old, hard-core Allman Brothers Band fans that see them touring in places like tonight at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J., or Friday at the Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Performing Arts Center. I can’t even find tickets for those shows — not that I could go anyway — but seats are still available at the Chastain Park Ampitheater in Atlanta. That’s practically homecoming for the Brothers and a seat in the Orchestra or Terrace levels is only $106.20. That could feed me for about a week. I can’t remember what the Superdome concert cost back in ’75. I bet I could find the price somewhere on the Web or perhaps track down Junior, with whom I went to the concert. But, it doesn’t mean a thing. That’s just the way “times” are. Wouldn’t that be a great name for a blues song, “That’s Just The Way Times Are?” Maybe a song of that name already exists.

As I pick through various You Tube selections of Allman Brothers Band songs I find that I pretty much like them all which is rare when it comes to my music appreciation. Yet, I don’t feel as if I missed out on anything way back when. I heard many of the Allman’s songs and like them even more today. One can’t beat music that stands the test of time. Just ask fans of Beethoven or Bach. Maybe Melissa isn’t a Beethoven composition. It sure satisfied my love for music and for the love in my heart at the time as well as for the many years past. I don’t think one can ask more of a song.

 


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Fun fact. Watch me ramble. Learn my likes and dislikes. Shoot me out of a cannon into outer space!

¿Le voten por mí, por favor?  Please? Pretty please, with azúcar  on top?

El Presidente and the Guv’nor are courting the Latino as if their lives depended on it. Well, I suppose their political lives depend on it. Not so much heard today about the House panel vote just yesterday on a contempt of Congress charge for Attorney Gen. Eric Holder. “You’re up one day and then you’re down,” as that great Americana poet songster John Prine says. Something the GOPers seem to be finding out on a regular basis. Dems too.

But it is true. That isn’t even my point although I think Rachel Maddow did a spectacular job last night showing the craziness of the right and pretty much the Republican mainstream in office. Apparently the right has been playing this “Fast and Furious” thing up as a big Obama conspiracy to take away the citizenry’s guns. That’s right! Sell guns illegally to take everybody’s .22, .410, Glock and bazooka away. It is amazingly … lame. I am a firm believer in the public’s right to have a gun. I, have, well, had one. I hocked it to a friend and I hope he still has it. It’s a Remington .870 pump shotgun.

Nevertheless, I am at the point where I think Wayne LaPierre and the rest of the NRA leadership are insane. I mean just totally batsroom crazy! Guns don’t kill people, lobbyists kill people!

Actually, I was going to satirize those little “Bio Boxes” that have been so popularly used by newspapers over the past decade or so. Perhaps more than that. I saw this one from the Associated Press on the Washington Post Website about Rob Portman. He is the Ohio Republican senator who is supposedly on the “short list” as a Romney veep pick. I only know a little about him and the bio box referenced really doesn’t do a super job in telling me who the wannabe Romney-Portman ticket No. 2 really is.

I once worked at a small newspaper where we did something similar to a bio box. Monday being a slow news day, especially at what was then an afternoon paper, we shined the spotlight on someone in our fair town worth noting while filling up a big ol’ news hole to boot. We asked questions like what books were they reading, their favorite TV show and the like. We also asked the question if you had a dream dinner, who were four people would you invite and what would you have to eat? That question always struck me as particularly funny for some reason even though I don’t think most people would find it unreasonable to ask.

Since I used to crack jokes about the four people and dinner, a colleague asked me the question “who were four I would invite” for a very flattering column she wrote about me upon my departure at the paper. My answer to the question about the four I would invite was “Myself and a three-way mirror.” Well, she didn’t ask who were the four people  I would invite.  I guess you had to be there. Anyway, it was sweet what Beth wrote about me and I’ll always appreciate it.

And now without further a do-do, here is my bio box just so you all will get to know me better. Hahahahaha!

NAME: Puddintain. Just kidding, Eight Feet Deep.

AGE: 56, in dog years.

PLACE OF BIRTH: In a hospital, in a galaxy far, far away.

EDUCATION: B.A., Stephen F. Austin State University. Home of “Surfin’ Steve.”

EXPERIENCE: Yes, I am experienced. I also have been experienced. I have experience too.

ON THE NIGHTSTAND: A CPAP mask for my sleep apnea. A secure hotline to the Kremlin.

RECENT MOVIES I’VE SEEN: “Fort Apache.” I stayed up way too late one night last week watching this on TCM.

MUSIC: Dude! Americana-Country: John Prine, Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Hank Williams Sr., Dr. Hook, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones. Rock: Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, Allman Brothers, Led Zepplin, Cracker, Coldplay; Blues-Soul: Freddy King, Chuck Willis, Sam and Dave, Al Green, Taj Mahal. Swamp Pop-Zydeco-Cajun, The Boogie Kings, Jivin’ Gene,  Jerry LaCroix,  Wayne Toups, Marcia Ball and on and on and freakin’ on.

HOBBIES: Hiking, until I developed back problems and now can’t walk for more than 10 minutes. Biking. I need to fix my flat. Camping. Building ships in a bottle that are able to blast their way out and kick some seafaring ass! Just kidding.

FUN FACT: One time, at a party at my house when I was in college, we once burned my couch on a bonfire. But that was not before we spent all day shooting it with all manner of guns. Each time we would shoot, we would yell: “This is what you get for f***ing my wife!” We, thus, learned that if you were having an affair, don’t ever hide behind the couch!

 

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TGIF

Noting nothing in particular here is the quote for the day:
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in. — H.L. Mencken

Open up the windows, let me catch my breath. Mama told me not to come. — Randy Newman. Oh well, they can’t all be Louisiana 1927.

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The news is a commercial-free comedy channel is on local radio: Is the joke on us?

It isn’t the OJ trial. It isn’t even the local case of Calvin Walker, the electrician who allegedly bilked the Beaumont school district out of several million dollars. But one would think that when the programming of one area radio station for the past month consists of nothing but comedy — not even commercials — isn’t that worth a story?

This little blurb on a site called radio-info.com explains all that I have heard about “Comedy 103.3” in Beaumont, Texas. Radio mega-owner Clear Channel Radio apparently owns the FM translator in question. Just what a translator does is explained here, which makes it for the tech challenged such as me, clear as mud. In its most basic sense, a TV or FM translator allows broadcast signals into places that cannot receive the primary signal of a radio or TV station.

In older days, I might just walk next door to the building that houses five or maybe six Clear Channel stations, walk in the door and just ask those who work there what in the hell is up? Maybe I’ll go ask tomorrow. But judging the multi-stations these days — which probably has one person announcing — you are likely to get a pat on the head and a kick in the ass out of the facility.

What drips in irony is that one of only a few TV stations in the area that does local news sits next door to the building housing all of the Clear Channel stations. Of course, the Clear Channel group also has a “news-talk” station in its facility. KLVI 560 AM also does local news, though not a hell of a lot. Going local for news where I live isn’t as sure a bet as it once was.

In the meantime, I am pretty happy with the comedy I’ve heard lately on this newly configured frequency. Some of it gets played over and over, of course. But there are some pretty hilarious bits — some even raunchy and very un-PC these days — for one to hear. The bits played might range from Jerry Clower’s deep-country tales to Cheech and Chong’s hilarious “song” “Earache My Eye.”

I have no idea how far geograhically this comedy channel, 103.3 on the FM dial, reaches. I listed to it for a good 30 miles or more when I was driving on Texas 105 last week coming back from Dallas. Since they never talk on the station — too good to be true, I know — my crystal ball sees a short lifespan for this funny bidness.