“I’d buy myself some stylish clothes but I sure hate to pay.” Hard to beat a yellow t-shirt and button shirt. Pennywise positive thinking from the back of the car by John Mellencamp.
Johnny B. Goode
You provide the backing band and pay me up front, in cash. I’ll play Johnny G. Goode.
RIP Chuck Berry
Givin It Up For Your Love – Delbert McClinton
Self-abnegation with cowbell: Delbert McClinton, Live from Austin, 1989
It’s Not Christmas Time Until Darlene Love Sings
Darlene Love’s first appearance on Late Night in 1986, singing Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). With a bonus Spuds MacKenzie commercial afterwards!
Kill the Flame
That Irish Cowboy Western Song by the Guy Who Wrote Got My Mojo Working
That would be Two Shillelagh O’Sullivan sung by Bing Crosby and written by Perry Botkin and Preston Foster. Botkin was a session musician who played with, well, everybody, from Al Jolson to Roy Rogers to Spike Jones, and then was Bing’s music director for many years.
Preston Foster, born in New Jersey, was an actor on Broadway and in Hollywood (he had roles in Annie Oakley and The Informer, among many others). He also was a singer and songwriter. In 1952, he and Botkin wrote about the fantastical O’Sullivan, “This bronco-busting Irishman from the sod of Erin’s Isle” who didn’t need a six gun, because he always had his two shillelaghs (“the Tipperary rifle, you never have to reload it”).
Inspired, no doubt, by the tall tales of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan, O’Sullivan could lick them both. In fact,
“He was so strong… He could put his right hand in his own left pocket, and hold himself out at arm’s length. ”
“No man could do that!”
“It’s O’Sullivan I’m talking about!”
“Oh, well he could.”
Just four years later, Foster would write another song: Got my Mojo Working. Originally sung by Ann Cole, it was recorded by Blues great Muddy Waters in 1957, who made it famous.
Listen to Bing sing about O’Sullivan here:
And here’s Muddy singing about his mojo at Newport:
Roadrunner: The Highway is your Girlfriend
I’m Free and I Love to be Free
Arguably her most timeless song, You Don’t Own Me was released in 1963.
She’s a Fool was released the same year. Lesley Gore passed away from cancer February 16, 2015.
It Snowed
Blizzards of historic proportions are not all bad:
Rock and Roll Christmas Songs
Here’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s list of 20 “essential” rock and roll holiday songs. The somewhat random list includes Brenda Lee (no, not that song), Elvis (of course), Ray Stevens (what?), Louis Armstrong (a rock and roller?) and more. Listen to all of them here.