Episode 47 - Xmas with Freddie B.

Photo: Jitterbugging in Negro juke joint. Memphis, Tennessee, November 1939. Marion Post Wolcott, photographer. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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We try to stay away from just doing playlists without commentary at Dreamtime, as we're trying to do our best to stay in the spirit - if not always the letter - of the Law of Fair Use.

But, as a one-time special gift to our listeners, here's a Dreamtime Christmas playlist from us to you - sans narrative for once from Your Host, Fred Bals.

For all of you who enjoy commentary and history on each selection, that can still be found at the Dreamtime blog (that's right here!).

From all of us to all of you, a safe and Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

~ Fred, Jailbait, Joyride, Shaggy Bear, and Curly Lasagna

1. At the Christmas Ball - Bessie Smith.

Reportedly the very first Christmas Blues song ever recorded, way back on November 18, 19 and 25 in New York City. Bessie shares vocals with Joe Smith who's also on cornet, Charlie Green is on trombone, and Fletcher Henderson is sitting at the piano.

At the Christmas Ball would become the center of a lawsuit between Jack Gee Jr., Smith's adopted son and heir, and Columbia Records. The song was originally rejected by Columbia, and wasn't released until 1951 when a researcher found it buried in the Columbia vaults - still with a ledger sheet attached noting Rejected and the column recording payment to Smith left blank. Gee's lawyers maintained that since Smith had never been paid for the song her estate still owned full rights to it, and Columbia was liable for damages.

Unfortunately for Gee, by the time the suit was brought in the mid `70s, "Columbia's arguably wrongful possession of exclusive rights to 'At the Christmas Ball' [had] ripened into complete and perfect ownership, good against Bessie Smith's estate...." according to the court, and he lost the case.

2. Christmas Island - Bob Atcher and the Dinning Sisters.

Here's the version I mentioned in my video post featuring the Andrews Sisters. Recorded in 19 and 50, I like this one better than the Andrews' more standard orchestral version because it's a good representative example of how Hawaiian music crept into both country swing and pop music.

As I mentioned in that earlier post, the Dinning Sisters were another "sisters" singing act that, while not remembered as well as The Andrews Sisters, had no small measure of success during their career. The Dinning Sisters' biggest hit was the million seller Buttons and Bows, originally featured in the Bob Hope movie, "Paleface. " One of the sisters, Jean, would later turn her hand to songwriting and pen a hit for her younger brother Mark with Teen Angel.

Known as the "Dean of Cowboy Singers," most of Bob Atcher's collaborations were with singer "Bonnie Blue Eyes," (Loretta Applegate) or his younger brother Randy. He probably hooked up with the Dinning Sisters when he joined their "National Barn Dance" radio show on Chicago station WLS in 19 and 48. As far as I can tell, Christmas Island was the only song Atcher and the Dinnings ever recorded together.

3. Jingle Jangle Jump - The Dexter Gordon Quartet (featuring Gladys Bentley).

A rara avis (that's a hard-to-find rental car) indeed with a Theme Time Radio Hour connection. Gladys "Fatso" Bentley as the vocalist on 19 and 52's Jingle Jangle Jump, backed by Dexter Gordon and his group.

Bentley showed up in TTRH Season 1's Summer episode, singing Juneteenth Jamboree. Dylan refers to Bentley as "Fatso," and to her as "him" in his commentary during that show. But while Bentley did perform under the "Fatso" nickname for a time, "he" was actually a "she," an openly gay performer who was well-known during the Harlem Renaissance of the `20s, and who once announced an "engagement" to her white, lesbian lover in the New York City society columns.

By the late `30s, Bentley had moved to California, where she maintained her career in a small way at lesbian and gay bars, although with nowhere near the flamboyant success of her Harlem days. Jingle Jangle Jump was recorded towards the end of her performing career. The same year she'd renounce lesbianism, claimed to have married two different men, and eventually devote herself to her church, The Temple of Love in Christ, Inc. Bentley was about to become a minister in that church when she died at age 52 in 19 and 60.

4. Christmas Mornin' Blues - Kansas City Kitty.

New Year he won't be here, 'cause death will be his Santa Claus.

At one time, the term "Santa Claus" was used in the black community to mean a Christmas gift as well as the Jolly Old Elf. Thus, "death will be his Santa Claus," and the title of one of the stranger Christmas songs ever recorded, Junior's a Jap Girl's Christmas for his Santa Claus, where the singer, a soldier in WWII, promises to bring back an enemy skull for his son's Christmas present.

Kansas City Kitty was the title of a tune released in 1929 by Harry Reser's Syncopators, and the pseudonym of a blues singer working between 1930 and `34, possibly Jane Lucas, Mozelle Anderson or Victoria Spivey, with most historians split between Lucas and Anderson as the real identity of "Kitty." Whoever she was, Kitty usually worked with "Georgia Tom" on piano, full name Thomas Dorsey, but not that Tommy Dorsey.

5. Did You Spend Christmas Day in Jail? - The Reverend J.M. Gates.

He's talking to you, you Midnight Rambler! Recorded sermons were among the most popular of the so-called "race records" of the `20s and `30s, and Gates was was one of the most popular sermonizers, cutting over two hundred recordings between 1926 up to his death in 1941.

The Good Reverend liked Christmas especially to belabor and rescue his sinning congregation. Did You Spend Christmas Day in Jail? was his follow-up to an earlier recording, Will You Have Christmas Dinner in Jail?, and variations on the theme included Will Hell Be Your Santa Claus? Death Might Be Your Santa Claus, and You May Be Alive or You May Be Dead, Christmas Day.

6. White Christmas - Patti Smith.

We edge dangerously close to Dr. Demento territory with this cut, but I think Patti's sincerity, if uneven reading of the Christmas classic, makes it a worthwhile addition. Sometimes mistakenly identified as a bootleg, this was the 1978 A-side of a (somewhat) officially released 45 recorded in support of musician/producer Lenny Kaye's launch of an independent label.

Unfortunately, Smith was already under contract to another label, so the single was credited to a "R.E.F.M." Fans have speculated that the acronym stands for anything from "Records Exist For Music" to "Radio Ethiopia Field Marshal," but the exact meaning remains unknown, as does the producer of the single, who may have been Todd Rundgren or Lenny Kaye himself.

7. Papa Ain't No Santa Claus (Mama Ain't No Christmas Tree) - Butterbeans & Susie.

Jodie and Susie Edwards stage act of Butterbeans & Susie was considered a bit too raunchy for polite company, but they were one of the top comedy music teams on the minstrel show and vaudeville circuits during the `20s and `30s. Their typical act featured a duet, a blues song by Susie, a cakewalk dance and a comedy sketch, interspersed with rounds of marital bickering, usually centered on Butterbean's ah, "shortcomings."

Papa Ain't No Santa Claus is a classic example of one of their comic songs, filled with double entendres and almost the equal to Susie's signature number, I Want a Hot Dog for My Roll.

8. Shake Hands with Santa Claus - Louis Prima.

Perennial TTRH favorite Louis Prima recorded several Christmas-themed songs including Senor Santa Claus; Santa Claus, How Come Your Eyes Are Green When Last Year They Were Blue?; and his first, best-known, and arguably best Santa song, What Will Santa Claus Say When He Finds Everybody Swinging? from 19 and 36. Prima even did a turn as the voice of Santa Claus on wife Keely Smith's recording of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Since TTRH had What Will Santa Claus Say... on its Christmas playlist last (and this) year, Dreamtime weighs in with Prima's Shake Hands with Santa Claus from 19 and 51. Maybe next year we'll be back with that musical question, Santa Claus, How Come Your Eyes Are Green When Last Year They Were Blue?

9. Christmas around the World - Christmas in Jamaica - Brent Dowe and Christmas in Vegas - Dale Watson.

We pair these two up, as Dreamtime is dreaming of anyplace warm and without the white stuff - and we don't mean cocaine - on this snowy New Hampshire day. Brent Dowe is probably best-known for his work with The Melodians, and for Rivers of Babylon. The Melodians sold over 75,000 copies of their version, but the song was a mega-hit for Boney M. Their version of the song charted at #1 for 5 weeks in the U.K. Dowe also had a successful career as a single act, before passing away much too early in 2006 at age 59.

Someone once said of Dale Watson that he plays country like country was when country was country, a sentiment Our Host would probably approve of. Watson rejects the "country" label these days, but whatever he's playing, I like his Elvis-flavored Christmas in Vegas, which has a nod to the King's Viva Las Vegas. If you like what you hear, you can find more info about Dale at his Web site.

10. The Only Thing I Want for Christmas - Eddie Cantor.

We're closing out tonight's Christmas show with a song that was a new discovery for me, and my current Christmas favorite - Eddie Cantor and the Mitchell Choir's 1939 single, The Only Thing I Want for Christmas. If you've been cruising these here interwebs for the past month or so, you may have already come across The Only Thing... as it's been featured on several popular sites, including BoingBoing.

I love the recording, Cantor's vocals, and especially the sentiment, which I think a good way too close...

What do I want for Christmas? Well it’s simple and its plain.
It isn’t tied with ribbons or wrapped in cellophane

If Santa passes by my stocking, I promise not to mind a lot
The only thing I want for Christmas is
just to keep the things that I’ve got
A pair of loving arms around me, a garden of forget-me-not
The only thing I want for Christmas
is just to keep the things that I’ve got.

May you all have a Merry Christmas,
and may you keep the things you have.

Judy Garland - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

There are several types of Christmas songs: the religious, the traditional, the novelty songs and, of course, the bittersweet. Most of us get the blues at one time or another during Christmas. It's as much part of the season as candy canes and snowmen.

Here's one of the most bittersweet of those bittersweet Christmas songs, the original Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, introduced by a 22-year-old Judy Garland in 19 and 44's classic Meet Me in St. Louis, which this clip is from.

In 1943 Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane were hired to pen the songs for Meet Me in St. Louis, which would pair Garland with her future husband, director Vincente Minnelli. Though Martin and Blane shared credit for the tune, Martin was actually the sole writer of Merry Little Christmas according to this Entertainment Weekly article tracing the song's history.

Merry Little Christmas is always close to the top in ASCAP's Top 25 Holiday songs. Last year it was in the #2 slot, right behind the usual #1, The Christmas Song. In 2007, both songs were trumped by Winter Wonderland, according to ASCAP.

Originally from Minnesota, a birthplace she shares with Prince as Our Host often notes, Garland was featured on the first episode of the first season of TTRH with her version of Come Rain or Come Shine. And we'd also feature Judy here at Dreamtime, in our first Halloween show, where we put an outtake from The Wizard of Oz on the turntable, Judy Garland, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, and Ray Bolger performing The Jitterbug.

Rick Nelson - The Christmas Song

Appropriately, Rick, still Ricky then, sang this song 51 years ago today - December 19th, 19 and 56 - in an episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, "Busy Christmas."

You can pick up that episode and a companion Christmas episode on DVD at Amazon. Also featured in the clip is a very young Tracy Nelson, Rick's daughter.

Although feeling he was a bit too polished and slick, Dylan mentions Nelson with obvious respect and admiration in Chronicles: Volume One, and has played his Waiting in School in Season 1, as well as his version of Hello, Mary Lou in the first show of Season 2. We first mentioned Rick at Dreamtime in Episode 13 - where we played his Travelin' Man, as well as his on- and off-air relationship with Lorrie Collins in Episode 41, And the Angels Sing.

Christmas Island - The Andrews Sisters

How'dja like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?

I have to say that from snowy New Hampshire's perspective, the prospect looks inviting. I wish I could have found the Bob Atcher and Dinning Sisters version as video, since it's the music I think of when I think of Christmas Island, but the Andrews Sisters do a nice turn on this song from 19 and 46.

Another one of the "sisters" singing acts popular in the 40s and 50s, The Dinning Sisters were probably best-known in the Midwest. Three sisters, twins Jean and Ginger and sister Lou, were winning amateur singing contests before the age of ten, and later began to perform with older brother Ace Dinning's orchestra. The young ladies eventually made their way to Chicago, where they were picked up by NBC Radio and ultimately became the highest paid radio act in the Windy City. And an interesting piece of trivia for you, Jean Dinning wrote the song "Teen Angel" later in her career.

One of the more popular entertainers of the post WWII-era, Bob Atcher had a 21-year career at OKeh and Columbia Records, as well as being a featured performer on the WLS National Barn Dance out of Chicago. His range of material ran from traditional country to comic novelty songs. In 1948, Atcher cut two of the earliest LPs ever released by Columbia, a pair of discs devoted to cowboy songs and folk music.

The Andrews Sisters - LaVerne, Maxene, and Patti - are still probably the most successful female vocal group of the 20th century in the U.S. having 113 singles chart entries between 1938-1951, an average of more than eight per year. Their second Decca single, Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,"an Anglicized version of a Yiddish song, became their first hit, making ts first appearance on Your Hit Parade on January 8, 1938, and charting at #1 two weeks later.

The Andrews Sisters premiered their own weekly network radio show, Eight-to-the-Bar Ranch - as in Beat Me Daddy... - at the end of 1944, and had one of their biggest hits with Rum and Coca-Cola which went to #1 in February 19 and 45, becoming the top single of the year. That song, as Constant Listeners to TTRH or Dreamtime know, was not written by Morey Amsterdam no matter what the copyright says, but by Lord Invader and Lionel Belasco.

Dean Martin - The Christmas Blues

We're going to try our hand with a video Christmas countdown for the next week featuring performers who have made an appearance on Theme Time Radio Hour and Dreamtime.

First of our Christmas Crooners is Dino himself, who sang I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine on Episode #1, the Weather show. Dylan remarked in that show that, "we forget how much Elvis wanted to be Dean," an off-hand comment that would eventually inspire the first Dreamtime show. Dean Martin would also be featured in Dreamtime Episode 11 - All Mobbed Up.

Originally released as a 19 and 53 single, The Christmas Blues appears on the Making Spirits Bright CD, and can also be downloaded as an mp3 through Amazon.

007 (Shanty Town) - Desmond Dekker

Desmond Dekker performs his 19 and 67 hit in 2004, two years before the King of Ska's death at age 63.

It's a bit bemusing watching aging white mods rocking to a song celebrating rude boy gangsters with lyrics like, "them a loot, them a shoot, them a wail, at Shanty Town." But, what the hey, radical chic crosses both sides of the Atlantic.

Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar - Maurice Rocco and Mabel Lee

Not The Andrews Sisters performing their paean to masochism, but I think Our Host would approve of this Soundie from 19 and 40 anyway. Featuring Maurice Rocco on boogie-woogie piano and Mabel Lee offering what they used to call in carny-speak, an "interpretative dance."

Born Maurice Rockhold in Oxford, Ohio, Rocco was an early progenitor of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, being one of the first to play the piano while standing up. He studied at the music school of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, intending to pursue a career as a concert pianist. But the ol' boogie-woogie claimed his soul and he ended up beating eight to the bar on local radio stations in and around Cincinnati. He'd later work with the Noble Sissle band and eventually form his own group, Maurice Rocco and his Rockin' Rhythm Boys, which played to enthusiastic audiences in New York and Chicago night clubs, theaters and radio stations. Rocco also had a creditable career in the movies, performing in Duffy's Tavern, Incendiary Blonde, 52nd Street, and Vogues of 1938.

Mabel Lee appears to have had a successful career struttin' her stuff, as her jazz dancing appears in several early jukebox Soundies, including ones with Louis Jordan, Noble Sissle, and Pigmeat Markham. Soundies director William Forest Crouch claimed to have"discovered" Mabel Lee, though she was already well-known in the Harlem community as one of the original Apollo Girls and for her night club performances. Although better known as a dancer, Lee also sang in several of the jukebox shorts, and also had a small acting career. One of Lee's most memorable performances was in 19 and 43's Chicken Shack Shuffle, another Soundie reviewed here by "Paghat the Ratgirl." An excerpt...

The Chicken Shack Shuffle (1943) celebrates a Harlem landmark, Tillie's Chicken Shack, the place for fried chicken & sweet potato pie during the Harlem Renaissance, right up to today.

In the 1920s & '30s it was one of the few places where white musicians could jam with black musicians in order to learn how to play jazz right. It remains a Harlem landmark up on Sugar Hill.

Mabel Lee sings the title number, wearing as little as was legally possible at the time, a slightly ridiculous feathered bikini.

The soundies were not subject to the motion picture decency code, & between filming burlesque acts for the panoramas in the adult arcades & getting girls to show lots of skin in musical numbers for the entirely above-board, those panorama boxes whether in the back room or front room alike were selling sexiness.

So Mabel wears a tiara & feathered bathing suit, the same as worn by Pauline Bryant in Jungle Jamboree (1943). On a set tricked out to look like a chicken restaurant, Mabel sings:

"There's a skiffle & a skuffle/ In the chicken shack shuffle/ You can do it any way you will/ You jump to the left & you cross your legs/ And tip along like you're walking on eggs/ Do anything but a pigeon wing/ Strut like a rooster but you gotta swing.

"There's a riffle & ruffle/ In the chicken shack shuffle/ Up on Sugar Hill/ In Harlem, up on Sugar Hill."

Mabel then dances a wild long-legged dance around the chicken shack, while boogie piano provides the instrumental. The uncredited pianist was the legendary Dan Burley.... Mabel's voice for Chicken Shack Shuffle is adequate; but without showing so much of her gorgeous body the voice might not have been enough to make it seem like a good song.

At 80+, Mabel Lee is still working, recently offering Senior Dance classes at the 2007 Tapology Tap Dance Festival.

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Collins Kids - Let's Have a Party

I was going to post Elvis' better-known version (from 19 and 57's Loving You), but ran across my faves, the Collins Kids, and decided to go for this one instead. Larry Collins on the double-neck Mosrite. His sis, Lorrie, rocking out.

Lesley Gore - It's My Party

... and she'll cry if she wants to. A great little clip from "Hullabaloo." Watching the background go-go dancers who, my god, look like real people, slightly wide hips and out-of-step syncopation and all, is worth the price of admission alone.

Gore recorded It's My Party in 19 and 63, at age 16 and it would be her only #1 hit. She'd follow up later in the year with a sequel song, Judy's Turn to Cry, which tells the story of the lead character reuniting with her boyfriend, Johnny, after he dumps Judy. Those fickle kids!

Wanda Jackson - Let's Have a Party

I haven't listened to this week's "Party" episode yet, but I'll take any opportunity to post about Wanda Jackson. According to a 1996 interview, this clip is from a show called Star Route, and you'll note a criminally young Glen Campbell on guitar.

Wanda: ...I had been doing the nation's first network country music TV show, the Red Foley show, it was called "Ozark Jubilee" and later, "Jubilee U.S.A.," which is referred to as "The Red Foley Show". I was with them for five years. On that show, I did country and some rock, too, whatever record I had out at the time, I'd sing that. So, television wasn't really new to me. I enjoyed doing "Ranch Party." I like all the people on it. It seemed kind of strange to me, at the time, though (both laugh). But, it was a popular show, and I knew everyone on it, so it was always fun to do. I have some of the old videos of my performances on it.

John: Yes, so have I!

Wanda: You do, too? (laughs)

John: I have one of you. I don't know what it's from, of you singing, "Let's Have A Party" with Glen Campbell on guitar.

Wanda: I think that was called "Star Route."

John: Right. I've got some episodes of that show on video, too . . .

Wanda: Yeah, Glen Campbell was playing guitar . . .

John: Yeah, Glen Campbell was in the house band (and a slightly older Collins Kids were regulars --John).

Wanda: And they had me sitting on a stool and everything! (laughs) It was kind of funny, trying to sing "Let's Have A Party" like that. I wasn't comfortable with that. That's what we called the "Hollywood production." It would take them three days to tape a thirty minute show, and you just got so worn out, you did it however they wanted, just to get it over with (laughs). You got tired of fighting 'em.

Daydream - The Lovin' Spoonful

One of those songs where everybody gets the title wrong, most people thinking it's (What a day for a) Daydream. While the Lovin' Spoonful had a profound influence on a number of bands, including The Grateful Dead, and a number of memorable songs, including this one, only one would chart to #1, Summer in the City.

Everly Brothers - All I Have To Do Is Dream

Written by the legendary husband and wife songwriting team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who Mr. D. mentioned in the "Classic Rock" episode when playing another song the team wrote, Rocky Top. The Everly's version is the only song to be at #1 on all of Billboard's singles charts simultaneously, on June 2, 1958.

Episode 46 - The Girl Can't Help It

"...Here's a song from a movie called, "The Girl Can't Help It." In that movie you can see technicolor footage of Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran, and many other fabulous performers. But it's not just a music movie. It's very funny, stars Tom Ewell and Jayne Mansfield and was directed by Frank Tashlin. Frank directed Bugs Bunny cartoons in the `40s, and directed movies by Bob Hope, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in the `50s. His films had an amazing full-color, animated quality, even when they were starring real actors. And "The Girl Can't Help It" is one of his best. This song is sung by Edmond O'Brien in the movie, and it's all about whiling away the hours in the "Gray Bar Hotel"... I mean prison.

"You'll hear a siren on this record. It's not really a siren, it's Jayne Mansfield screaming. You have to see the movie to understand. Performed by Ray Anthony who was married to another sexpot, Mamie Van Doren. Here's Ray... "Rock Around the Rock Pile." - Bob Dylan, "Classic Rock," Theme Time Radio Hour

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If you decide - as I did - that you need to know exactly why Jayne Mansfield is screaming like a siren on "Rock Around the Rock Pile," your best bet is probably the three-DVD set, Jayne Mansfield Collection, that includes "The Girl Can't Help It," and the equally funny Frank Tashlin-directed movie, "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" The third movie of the set, "The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw," isn't anywhere near the quality of the other two, but two out of three ain't bad, especially since with a little judicious shopping, you can pick up the Jayne Mansfield Collection for around $35 bucks. You'll probably find, as I did, that it's still money well-spent just for the first two movies.

Released on the 1st of December, 19 and 56, "The Girl Can't Help It" has a plot that goes all the way back to Damon Runyon: Mobster has knockout no-talent girlfriend who he's determined to make a star. Mobster muscles unwilling citizen with show biz connections into making it happen. In the course of events, knockout girlfriend and unwilling citizen fall for each other and hilarity ensues.

Heck, give that story to any half-decent writer, and you'd get at least a half-decent movie in return. But, "The Girl Can't Help It" is something else. Part of it is Frank Tashlin's direction. As Dylan mentions, Tashlin came out out of the animation biz, and he loves sight gags above all things. There is one scene with men reacting to Mansfield walking down a city street in all her pneumatic glory that is just one cartoon shtick after another - melting ice, shattering eyeglasses, and a bit that is tame by today's standards but one that will make you wonder how it got by the 1956 censors. A milkman holding a very phallic bottle gazes on as Mansfield sways by, and the bottle erupts in a pure milk orgasm.

Another piece of the puzzle is the music. Some people might hold out for 1955's "Blackboard Jungle" as the first rock-and-roll movie, since it had the first airing of Rock Around the Clock, although you can make the argument that since it only featured a rock song, it wasn't really a rock movie. "Rock Around the Clock" the movie is a better contender, shot in January of 1956 and released just two months later to capitalize on Bill Haley and the Comets blockbuster single. While not a very good movie, "Rock Around the Clock" did have The Platters, Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, and, of course, Bill Haley and the Comets doing the title song three different times... although never in a complete performance.

But, you can make the case for "The Girl Can't Help It," released about nine months after "Rock Around the Clock," as the first good rock-and-roll movie. It had a plot loosely - very loosely - based around the music business, plus a strong cast. And, as Mr. D. noted, the movie had a crew of "fabulous performers," including Fats Domino, Little Richard, Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (pre-Tommy Facenda by about a year), The Platters, who seemed to show up in all rock movies of that era, and Gene Cochran. With rock-and-roll still in its infancy, the film also had a few strange selections, such as Teddy Randazzo and the Three Chuckles. To add a touch of class, Abbey Lincoln, the great jazz stylist, also makes an appearance, plus a Theme Time sweetheart, Julie London, who shows up in a dream sequence singing Cry Me a River.

It's a funny movie, and a good movie, and a movie with good music. Annnnnnnnnnd it's got Jayne Mansfield.

In the strange male world where some of us are Superman guys and others are Batman guys, and some of us are Mary Ann guys and others are Ginger guys, I'm in the minority when it comes to blonde bombshells, being more of a Jayne Mansfield guy instead of a Marilyn Monroe guy. I've got nothing against Monroe, but I kind of like the idea of Jayne Mansfield a bit better. Monroe is - I dunno - unattainable when I think about her. You'd figure her to end up with ol' Joltin' Joe DiMaggio or Arthur Miller or JFK, but not with an average schlub like me. Mansfield is more like the girl next door, given that you knew a girl next door who fit into a 40D cup.

And like the old Avis commercials, Mansfield, always running second to Monroe, tried harder, sometimes too hard, and because that drive often got her into trouble, she seems more human to me than the iconic Monroe.

Born with the plain-Jane name of Vera Jane Palmer in 1933, Mansfied seemed to have only one thing on her mind from age 7 on - to become a star. By age 17 she was married and already had several beauty queen titles under her belt... titles that included "Miss Photoflash," "Miss Magnesium Lamp" and "Miss Fire Prevention Week." Mansfield once said the only title she ever turned down was Miss Roquefort Cheese, because it "just didn't sound right."

Following in the steps of Monroe, Mansfield was the Playmate of the Month in February 19 and 55 at age 21, and would go on to appear in Playboy more than 30 more times. Unlike Monroe, whose first Playboy nude pictures were unauthorized, Mansfield happily posed for the Playboy spread.

Mansfield had a few bit parts in various movies during the early `50s, but her career didn't pick up traction until her Broadway role as sex siren Rita Marlowe in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Wearing only a towel, Mansfield would rise to answer a telephone each night, flaunting as much of herself as she could get away with without closing down the show. Although it was her breasts that garnered most of the attention, Mansfield was also a better-than-average comedienne and received the 1956 Theatre World Award for her work in the play.

That gave her enough street cred to come back to Hollywood and get the role of Jerri Jordan in "The Girl Can't Help It," the voluptuous tone-deaf girlfriend of a retired mobster who just wants to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. While her comic talents weren't put to as much use as they were in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Mansfield does more more than a good job as Jordan, especially when playing against Tom Ewell.

And what's with her making like a siren? To paraphrase Our Host, you'll have to go see the movie.

Mansfield would go on to reprise her Rita Marlow role in the 1957 movie version of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? another movie directed by Frank Tashlin, and probably Mansfield's best picture. But by the early `60s, her movie career was essentially over, at least in big budget films. By 1962 Marilyn Monroe had died, making herself an ageless legend in the process. Mansfield would go on for another five years, her looks coarsening, losing her audience as the public taste for big-bosomed platinum blondes withered. In an uncharacteristically savage - or honest - moment, moptop Paul McCartney called Mansfield an "old bag" during a 1965 Playboy interview of the Beatles, claiming that while he had never met her, she was "a clot."

PAUL: "Yeah, Some of those American girls have been great."
JOHN: "Like Joan Baez."
PAUL: "Joan Baez is good, yeah, very good."
JOHN: "She's the only one I like."
GEORGE: "And Jayne Mansfield. PLAYBOY made her."
PAUL: "She's a bit different, isn't she? Different."
RINGO: "She's soft."
GEORGE: "Soft and warm."
PAUL: "Actually, she's a clot."
RINGO: "...says Paul, the god of the Beatles."
PAUL: "I didn't mean it, Beatle People! Actually, I haven't even met her. But you won't print that anyway, of course, because PLAYBOY is very pro-Mansfield. They think she's a rave. But she really is an old bag." - Playboy interview of the Beatles, 1965

Paul may have been having a bit of a tweak of his mate, John Lennon, as Lennon reportedly spent an evening canoodling with Mansfield during the Beatles first U.S. tour in 1964. How that happened is lost to history: various reports have it that McCartney mentioned that the one film star he wanted to meet in Hollywood was Jayne Mansfield. Other reports say that it was Lennon. More likely is the story that the never publicity-shy Mansfield set up the meeting. Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ press officer claimed, "...I got a phone call from the actress Jayne Mansfield, who wanted to meet the Beatles and be photographed with them. She hassled me and she very badly wanted to meet them, at her place, then our place, at any place. I told her that we had a ‘no photographs with celebrities’ rule, and that I had already turned down even my own friends. She was most annoyed."

Annoyed but not defeated, Mansfield somehow ended up at the Whiskey a Go Go at the same time as at least two of the Beatles, John and George. Some reports have her necking with John at the Whiskey, others with the two in a tight embrace during a limo ride to the club. George Harrison would later report, "... John and I were sitting either side of her and she had her hands on our legs, by our groins – at least she did on mine." George would later get annoyed at an obtrusive photographer, and throw a glass of water, missing the paparazzi, but soaking the third of the fabulous M's - Mamie Van Doren, who just happened to be passing by.

In later years, Sir Paul apparently mellowed on Mansfield a bit, citing "The Girl Can't Help It" as one of the Beatles favorite movies, to the point where the Fab Four took time off from a recording session in order to catch the movie on T.V.

It wasn't Mansfield's only brush with rock gods. In 19 and 65 Jimi Hendrix played bass and lead guitar for Mansfield on two songs: a ballad called As The Clouds Drift By, and a B-side titled Suey, which included the memorable lyric, "he makes my liver quiver." According to Hendrix historian Steven Roby, the Jayne/Jimi summit took place because they had the same manager.

As I noted earlier, by 1962 Mansfield's movie career was essentially over, although she'd appear in over a dozen more flicks - most low-budget - until her death. But even with her movie career on the rocks, Mansfield still commanded an audience, and big bucks for live appearances. With husband and ex-body builder Mickey Hargitay in tow, Mansfield headlined at the Dunes in Las Vegas in an act called The House of Love, picking up a cool $35,000 a week for her efforts. The act proved such a hit that 20th-Century Fox Records came calling and recorded the show for an album called Jayne Mansfield Busts Up Las Vegas, in 1962.

[The House of Love excerpt - Jayne Mansfield and company]

Probably the best thing about Mansfield's House of Love show is that it perfectly captures a moment in time - a B-level Las Vegas lounge act of the `60s. It's not very good: you can imagine Mansfield flouncing around stage surrounded by a chorus line of bodybuilders and exchanging one-liners with what sounds like the world's worst female impersonator, Arthur Blake, who apparently got most of his laughs by appearing in drag. But hell, in Vegas in the `60s the show probably played like a dream to the rubes in town for the faucet convention. Not a big enough fish to get comped in for a Sinatra or Martin and Lewis show? Not to worry, bubbie. We can get you ringside seats to The House of Love at the Dunes and you can spend the night staring at Jayne Mansfield's knockers.

Mansfield essentially spent the remainder of her life working clubs, still commanding serious money: between $8,000 and $25,000 a week. She'd release one more album too, a novelty thing called Jayne Mansfield: Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me, on which she recited Shakespeare's sonnets and works by various other poets: including Robert Herrick's appropriate Upon the Nipples of Julia's Breast.

[Upon the Nipples of Julia's Breast - Jayne Mansfield]

Possibly the most memorable thing about Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me is the album cover, which illustrates one of the eerie things about Mansfield as she entered her 30s and neared the end of her life. There are dozens of photos of Mansfield where it's obvious she's still a good-looking woman, in fact, still close to the knock-out who posed nude for Playboy at age 21. But there are also dozens of photos taken around the same period where she looks - in the memorable words of Sir Paul, like an "old bag." It's hard to believe that either Mansfield or her publicist would let the cover for Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me out on the street: except for the fact that her breasts are just barely covered by a fur stole, the blowzy Mansfield looks like a guy in drag doing a bad Carol Channing imitation.

I mentioned earlier that most guys can be separated into either Mary Ann or Ginger guys: the two lasses from Gilligan's Island. If you're a Lovey Howell guy, you're way too weird for me. In 19 and 64, Mansfield was actually offered the role of Ginger Grant. She turned the part down, publicly claiming that Ginger embodied the stereotype she was trying to leave behind, which is a little hard to believe since Mansfield was happily playing that stereotype each night in her stage act. It's more likely that the "stereotype" which annoyed Mansfield was the fact that Ginger was obviously based on Marilyn Monroe, and the idea of playing a Monroe clone on a TV sit-com was too much for Mansfield to stomach. The role was given to Tina Louise, an unprepossessing actress who did a a journeyman Marilyn Monroe during the show's run. It's one of those forks in history where you wonder what the outcome would have been. Louise wasn't a particularly inspired actress who had no comic talent at all. She reportedly hated the role, later claiming that she had been sucked in by her agent who had told her the show would be centered around her. One would think that since the series wasn't called Ginger's Isle, Louise might have gotten a clue, but who knows? Mansfield had enough talent - aside from her native assets - and enough competitiveness to have made the part her own, and maybe the show would have become Ginger's Isle by its second season. We'll never know.

By the way, in the Big Scheme of things, I'm a Mary Ann guy. But I would have been a Ginger guy if Mansfield had played the role.

That winds up tonight's show. I'm going to take a pass on talking about Mansfield's death by car accident, except to note that the Rumor That Will Not Die - that she was decapitated in the accident - is false. There's more to the story, and some exceptionally ugly photographs, available on the Web if your curiosity gets the better of you. Me, I'd recommend you follow my lead, and take a pass. Ditto on her rumored affair with JFK, which seems to have one person as its source... and he may just have been pissed about Mansfield's dogs peeing on him.

It may have been true. It may not. But, as the poet says, it was another country, and the wench is dead.

The Dreamtime team is taking the month of December off from a podcasting standpoint. We'll see you again at the beginning of the New Year. However you celebrate the holidays, Curly, Bear, Jailbat, Joyride and her shyster boyfriend, Jailbreak, and me, Your Host, all wish you a happy and comfortable one. Thanks for your email, your comments and feedback, and making it a good and fun 2007 for Dreamtime. And, if you're in a gift-buying mood, remember to start your Amazon shopping at the Dreamtime store (that's right here!): dreamtimepodcast.com. Your purchases help to pay for cat food and Jailbait's bail.

See you soon, gang.

Sources/Further reading/listening: The bed music opening and closing the show is a spooky version of Que Sera Sera, performed by Pink Martini, and can be found on their album Sympathique. Most of the information on Jayne Mansfield came from her Wikipedia entry. The Beatles and Mansfield encounter is documented at the Mersey Beat site. What information there is on the Web about the Mansfield/Hendrix connection can be found through Google. Industrious searchers can find much of Jayne Mansfield music and/or poetry readings in digital form on the Web.

***

You've been listening to the Dreamtime podcast – occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. Dreamtime is researched and written by Fred Bals and is a Not Associated With production. As the name says, we're not associated with XM Radio, Bob Dylan, or much of anything else.
Some of the music on Dreamtime is provided via the Podsafe Music Network. Check it out at music.podshow.com.

Remember that the Dreamtime team loves to get email. You can write us at dreamtimepodcast@gmail.com

The Dreamtime top cats are Curly Lasagna and Shaggy Bear. Our announcers are the notorious honky-tonkin' sisters, Jailbait and Joyride.

Until next time, dream well.

Theme Time Radio Hour art

Found via William Gibson's blog, I've fallen in love with the net.art.generator, which will compose a - sometimes unexpected - collage of images based on a word or phrase. Above, "Theme Time Radio Hour," almost pretty enough to replace the Dreamtime logo. If you need a productivity-buster time waster, try a selection of themes, including Drinking, Smoking, and Weather.

Teddy Grace w/ Mal Hallett & His Orchestra

A Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. audience from the Dreamtime team - Jailbait, Curly, Bear and Your Host. Jailbait is preparing our gobbler even as I write, and the Top Cats and I are trying to stay out of her way, and thus are hiding out in the studio.


Although not connected to TTRH, I thought the above clip might be of interest. It features Teddy Grace, a white woman "of privilege," as they say in the South, who sang white-boy swing and, at her best, black-girl blues, and led a life that ended in a California nursing home, where she was known by her fourth, final and sadly appropriate name - Stella Hurt. The 9-minute clip may be a little tough to get through, unless you're an aficionado of obscure big band one-reelers, but you can also catch Grace's individual segments here and here.

If you like TTRH, you'll love Issue 58 of The Oxford American magazine - their 2007 music edition - where you can learn more about the life and times of Teddy Grace through Derek Jenkins' excellent article in that issue. Jenkins is the person who uploaded Grace's video clips, and maintains a personal blog here.

The magazine also contains equally interesting articles on the great Thelonious Monk, as well as an exhaustive account of the making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville, Tennesse. TTRH aficionados will note familiar names in the credits on page 145, including Diane Lapson and Robert Bowers.

Edie Adams for Muriel Cigars

Hang in there if the smoke is getting to you, this is the last video tied to the "Smoking" episode.

The great Ernie Kovacs married actress and singer Edie Adams on September 12, 1954 in Mexico City. From all reports, Adams was smitten with Kovacs, and remained his #1 fan even after his death. Adams once said about Kovacs, "He treated me like a little girl, and I loved it - Women's Lib be damned!".

Although Kovacs' hassles with the IRS and Adams subsequent work to pay off his debt are well-known, I hadn't heard the story Dylan relates about her allergies to cigar smoke. But if true, it must have been tough on Adams given that Kovacs was a cigar smoker at the level of a George Burns or Desi Arnaz. In any case, Adams was the pitch-lady for Muriel cigars both before and well after Kovacs' death, and her trademark, "Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?" modeled after the signature Mae West line, became a buzz phrase in the U.S. I can remember intoning it myself while on the playground.

Here's Adams in triplicate selling that ceegar which could be had in those days for just a thin dime.

The Flintstones for Winston Cigarettes

Fred and Barney flog cigarettes, possibly providing the reason why the Bedrock civilization died out.

It should be pointed out that even in the depths of `60s Madison Avenue greed and lack of concern for public safety that this commercial wasn't deliberately targeted to the kiddie krowd, although I'm sure if Winston hooked a few kidlets in, they weren't weeping. The original early 1960s version of The Flintstones was a prime-time animated series, and the episodes -if not exactly high-brow - were as much written for adults as they were for kids.

Winston would discontinue its sponsorship of the series in 1963, after Wilma became pregnant with Pebbles, and the healthier Welch's Grape Juice would take over as primary sponsor.

Reefer Man - Cab Calloway

The original, as performed by Cab Calloway. From the 1933 movie International House, when marijuana was still legal in the U.S., incidentally.

Joe and Rose Lee Maphis - Don't Make Love in a Buggy

As Mr. D. says in the "Smoking" episode, there's lots of good video of Joe Maphis working that double-neck Mosrite, happily some of it on YouTube. Here's one with Joe and wife Rose Lee. As a commenter says, a silly song, but worth watching.

Episode 45 - Back Where I Come From: The Roots of Theme Time Radio Hour

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. - Ecclesiastes

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All things have a past, a history. All trees have roots. All rivers have a source.

There is nothing new under the sun.

It's night time in the Big City. In a loft apartment, a young man rummages through a shelf of old audio tapes. He stops, re-reads a label. He doesn't know the title on the box, but he definitely recognizes at least one performer's name.

"Can I listen to this?" Bob Dylan asks.

Sixty-six years before the first episode of Theme Time Radio Hour, when radio was just radio and the word satellite was only used by astronomers, there was another series that was organized around themes. A fifteen minute radio program that aired three days a week - Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays - at 10:30 p.m., and ran from September 1940 through January 1941. The show, titled Back Where I Come From, was written by Alan Lomax, directed by Nicholas Ray, who would later go on to direct Rebel Without a Cause, and featured Woody Guthrie.

[Back Where I Come From excerpt]

In the summer of 1940 Alan Lomax began work on one of his long-time pet dreams, a folk music series for prime time network radio. Lomax would act as the writer and long-distance producer for Back Where I Come From from his Washington, D.C. home base, while his pal Nick Ray would be the on-scene New York City director.

To give the series the creative foundation it needed to be more than just another hillbilly radio show, Lomax came up with the idea to have each of the programs dedicated around a theme - trains, marriage, animals - and would include skits and dramatic readings as well as songs on that night's subject. The theme idea probably came from the all-night singing contests that Guthrie, Lomax and other invited folksingers delighted in, where the group would challenge each other to name as many songs as they could on a given subject. During one six-hour evening, Lomax recalled, he and Guthrie came up with over 200 songs about animals and stopped singing only after neighbors threatened to call the police.

The pilot of Back Where I Come From aired on August 19, 1940 on the Forecast series; a try-out incubator for new CBS radio shows. The first episode was hosted by Clifton "Kip" Fadiman, a New York literati - writer, editor, and critic - who was already well-known to radio audiences as the host of the popular Information Please quiz show, which he would moderate for 17 years. Joining Fadiman were Willie Johnson and the Golden Gate Quartet, Josh White, Burl Ives, actor Len Doyle, and Woody Guthrie.

Just like the first episode of Theme Time Radio Hour sixty-six years later, the theme of the first episode of Back Where I Come From would be... the weather.

That first 30-minute show was, charitably speaking, a bit uneven. Whatever his skills as a music historian, Lomax was a ham-fisted writer, at least as it came to radio dialog. With the exception of Guthrie's relaxed, entertaining segment on the Dust Bowl and the Golden Gate Quartet's closing gospel sermon-in-miniature about Noah and the Flood, which sounded as if it were being delivered direct from a Baptist Church, most of the show was leaden and artificial. It was all very "merry" and "jolly" Lomax would later write sarcastically, and had little of the authentic voice of America he wanted.

Typical of the pseudo-folksiness in the first episode was a lengthy segment starring Len Doyle, sometimes described as a "cornpone comedian" in accounts about the pilot. In reality the cornpone was being supplied by Lomax, and Doyle was actually a journeyman character actor who would later move on to the popular Mr. District Attorney crime drama that same year, and stay with that show for a 12-year run. Doyle was probably relieved to find a better gig than "The Natural-born Expert" role he had been saddled with on Back Where I Come From. "The Natural-born Expert" was a particularly irritating "done-everything and knows-it-all" character, delivering his pronouncements in a W.C. Fields-like voice, and was apparently conceived by Lomax as a foil for Guthrie, who dryly interrupts Doyle's "Now, you take me-" blustering with, "Brother, I wouldn't take you to a Sunday dance."

Happily, there are genuine nuggets in the show too, especially its major production number, intermingling Woody's So Long, It's Been Good to Know You with dramatic vignettes illustrating people's response to the Great Dust Storm of 1935.

[So Long, It's Been Good to Know You - Woody Guthrie and cast]

The pilot of Back Where I Come From was generally regarded as a success by CBS execs., who took the unusual step of moving ahead with the series even though the show had been unable to secure a sponsor. We might take a moment to reflect on this: Here's an experimental show on folk music, hosted by a New York intellectual, with a cast of relatively unknown black and white artists, some of whose politics is a bit Red, and all sharing the stage on a equal footing. The show can't find a sponsor... and the network decides to put it on the air anyway. Somehow you can't imagine that happening today.

In any case, Woody, who had been paid $83 for doing the pilot, found himself an overnight radio sensation thanks to Back Where I Come From. In close order Guthrie was invited to sing on a CBS talent show and offered three hundred dollars to write and perform a ballad about Wild Bill Hickok for a new NBC radio series. But both offers were topped by the Model Tobacco Company, who wanted Guthrie as host for its weekly show on CBS, Pipe Smoking Time. Pipe Smoking Time offered $200 a week, and with an agreement that Woody could keep his role on Back Where I Come From, which paid $150 a week, Guthrie's income had gone from problematic to healthy in a matter of days.

But not without problems. Back Where I Come From began as a regular program in late September 1940, and by the end of the month Woody Sez - Guthrie's popular column for the U.S. Communist Party's newspaper The Daily Worker - was discontinued without explanation. A spokesperson for the Party said it had been done by mutual agreement. Guthrie later claimed he had been fired for being "too wild." The truth might have been that the Daily Worker wasn't happy about having a people's columnist who was also going to flog tobacco for a capitalist boss.

Or maybe Woody was feeling overstretched and guilty. Certainly he started acting as the gadfly on Back Where I Come From, where he had much more influence than the tightly controlled Pipe Smoking Time. Less than a month after the series start, Guthrie was threatening to quit over what he felt was Nicholas Ray's obstructionist attitude towards Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. Ray wasn't enthusiastic about Leadbelly's appearances on the show, feeling that his thick accent was incomprehensible to a white audience. Worse, Leadbelly was functionally illiterate, meaning that he couldn't read the lines scripted for him. Woody didn't care; he wanted his friend to have a regular role on the show. And if he didn't, then neither would Woody. Lomax arranged a long-distance compromise, and show regular Josh White ended up reciting Leadbelly's spoken lines, while Leadbelly himself continued to sing his songs.

But still in conflict with Ray about almost every facet of the show, Guthrie quit in late October, eventually missing a few episodes before Lomax again stepped in as mediator between the two. Guthrie would return and eventually take on a larger role in Back Where I Come From, narrating several shows, including what would become Nicholas Ray's favorite, a December 6th episode on the 13th Amendment.

In the interim, Pipe Smoking Time with Your Host Woody Guthrie had begun its run in November of 1940, and Woody found that the Model Tobacco Company was a much harsher boss than Lomax and Ray. Guthrie was almost immediately sickened by the compromises he was forced to make - including singing a rewritten version of So Long as the show theme - and by the end of the year he had had enough of radio. In early January 1941 Woody sent off an "I Quit!" letter to Nick Ray. He may have done the same with Pipe Smoking Time's producers. The record is unclear about whether he was fired, quit, or simply walked away from the program after only seven episodes. In any case, he was gone, "lit out again," as he would write to Lomax.

"Money sometimes takes on the appearance of a something that's used to put monkeys in your head." - Woody Guthrie

Typically, Woody Guthrie would bounce between a desire for commercial success and then do his best to sabotage his own chances whenever success seemed within his grasp. By February 1941, he was writing an apologetic letter to Nicholas Ray from California, asking for his old job on Back Where I Come From. But the show - still without a sponsor - had been canceled by CBS, and that was that.

Fast-forward some 20-odd years later, and Bob Dylan is visiting Alan Lomax's loft on West 3rd Street in New York City, where as Dylan would relate, "I spent many nights... listening to and meeting all kinds of folk music people which I never would have come in contact with." One of those "folk music people" Dylan would meet would be Carla Rotolo, Lomax's personal assistant, who would go on to introduce him to her younger sister Suze. Both Rotolo and Lomax's daughter, Anna, remember Dylan as a regular visitor to the apartment, spending much of his time digging his way through Lomax's extensive music collection, which almost certainly contained recordings of the Back Where I Come From program. You can imagine the 20-year-old pausing as he studied a label for a radio show that aired the year before he was born and starred his hero, live, and at the height of his powers.

"Can I listen to this?" Bob Dylan asks.

Fast-forward another 40-odd years, and now we're in the realm of pure fantasy, but imagine: We're still in New York City, in a large room in Greenwich Village, four or five people talking. Jeff Rosen is almost certainly there. Maybe Eddie Gorodetsky. Maybe one or two others of the small trusted cadre.

"Well, we know what sort of music we want to play," someone says. "But we need something to tie it all together, I dunno, some sort of-"

Bob Dylan, who doesn't do meetings well, is bored, staring out the window, thinking of the old days in this city, thinking of the apartment he used to visit on a cold, snowy New York day like this.

"- a theme," someone interrupts. "Exactly."

And the Man Who Never Forgets Anything Connected to Music swings his cowboy boots off the table, clears his throat and says, "Ya got it. We're gonna do a theme radio show. Things like 'Marriage,' 'Trains,' 'Animals.' All songs connected to that theme."

Thinking 40-odd years back, Bob Dylan laughs. "And the first show has got to be about the weather," he says.


Sources and Further Reading/Listening: Dreamtime wants to thank the reader/listener who sent us an email that set us on the trail of Back Where I Come From and who prefers, as the saying goes, to remain anonymous. But you know who you are, and this episode is dedicated to you with my thanks.

Woody Guthrie's involvement with the Back Where I Come From and Pipe Smoking Time radio shows during 1940-41 is noted in both Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie: A Life, and Ed Cray's Ramblin' Man. Although neither biography has a particularly detailed description of that four-month period, with the two together I was able to piece together what I think is an accurate time-line.

Bob Dylan's meeting Carla Rotolo and his frequent visits to Alan Lomax's apartment are well-chronicled in several places including, if you'll forgive the pun, Dylan's own Chronicles: Volume One. Anna Lomax's recollection of Dylan's visits to the apartment are from Howard Sounes' Down the Highway.

I was pleased to find that the pilot "Weather" show of Back Where I Come From is in wide circulation among collectors, and is available as a torrent on the Web in a number of locations, including hungercity.org. Readers may also be interested in this transcription of Guthrie's So Long segment from that show.

Although only one man can tell us whether the idea for TTRH was born from Back Where I Come From, consider whether all this can be chalked up to coincidence. Both shows' pilots were on "The Weather," and both shows have had episodes on marriage, trains, and animals. Bob Dylan was a frequent visitor to Alan Lomax's apartment as well as being a major fan of Woody Guthrie, and was known to immerse himself in Lomax's music collection whenever he had the opportunity. All that makes the possibility shift from "likely" to "near-certainty," in my opinion. I'm a poker player, and I would happily shove my entire stack into the pot on that much circumstantial evidence.

***
Back Where I Come From timeline

August (19) 1940 - Pilot from "Forecast" series for BWICF.

August 1940 - Guthrie signs BWICF series contract for $150 per week. Model Tobacco offers him hosting job on NBC's Pipe Smoking Time starting in November 1940 at around $200 per week. Offers includes agreement that Woody can continue gig with BWICF.

(Late) September, 1940 - BWICF begins airing for 15 minutes at 10:30 p.m. on MWF evenings on CBS. Show is unsponsored.

September 1940 - Woody's Daily Worker Woody Sez column ends without explanation. CWP spokesperson says "mutual agreement." Woody would later claim he was fired because he was "too wild" for the Party.

September/October? 1940 - Woody in conflict with Ray over Leadbelly and threatens to walk off show. Lomax provides compromise.

Late October 1940 - Guthrie quits BWICF because of continuing conflicts with Ray.

Nov (1) 1940 - Lomax letter writes to Woody to get "his side of story" on conflicts with Ray, and offers to again act as mediator between them. Guthrie returns to BWICF after missing at least one show and becomes narrator for many of the following shows.

Nov( 25) 1940 Pipe Smoking Time program with Woody as host begins.

Dec (6) 1940 - Woody narrates BWICF episode on the anniversary of 13th Amendment's ratification. Ray later recalls it as BWICF "at its very best."

Jan (1) 1941 - Most of cast from BWICF plays fund raiser at Will Geer's house.

Early Jan 1941 - Woody sends notice to Ray at BWICF and quits/is fired from PST radio show. He and the family return to California.

February 1941 - Woody writes to Ray asking for his BWICF job back; Ray replies that show has been canceled.

***

You've been listening to the Dreamtime podcast – occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. Dreamtime is researched and written by Fred Bals and is a Not Associated With production. As the name says, we're not associated with XM Radio, Bob Dylan, or much of anything else.

Some of the music on Dreamtime is provided via the Podsafe Music Network. Check it out at music.podshow.com.

Remember that the Dreamtime team loves to get email. You can write us at dreamtimepodcast@gmail.com

The Dreamtime top cats are Curly Lasagna and Shaggy Bear. Our announcers are the notorious honky-tonkin' sisters, Jailbait and Joyride.

Until next time, dream well.

Visit the Dreamtime Store

Reflections on Porter Wagoner

"Listener Greg G." writes one helluva an article on the late, great Porter Wagoner over at WFMU's Beware of the Blog, which includes a photo gallery of Wagoner's themed album covers (to your left, the cover for Wagoner's "murder" album, The Cold Hard Facts of Life), and various mp3s from different stages of Wagoner's career.

Highly recommended, as is Wagoner's biography, A Satisfied Mind: The Country Music Life of Porter Wagoner. The book is indeed out-of-print, but can still be ordered from Amazon and other venues.

...Other bummers on [Confessions of a Broken Man] include Hank Williams' Men With Broken Hearts, How Far Down Can I Go, and Skid Row Joe, a downbeat recitation that wound up as a Top Ten hit despite its relentlessly depressing story line. Amazingly, the shockingly seedy cover photo won the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover Photography for art director Robert M. Jones and photographer Les Leverett. Always in search of a cheap thrill, when I found myself in Nashville recently I could not resist perching myself on the steps of the Ryman in a hammy effort to recreate the cover photo for this LP. Rather than dressing like a thirsty panhandler, however, I posed in a WFMU t-shirt for a contribution to the station's Flickr page, where they've got a section comprised of photos showing listeners sporting their 'FMU duds. The photo was taken on October 7th, about 10 days before Porter checked into the hospital.

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy - Pete Seeger

Written by Seeger in 1967, when the U.S. was about neck-deep in Vietnam, the song was censored by CBS when Seeger first performed it on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in September, 1967, but the network reversed itself, and Seeger would ultimately perform Waist Deep on the show in February 1968.

Seeger noted in May 1983,

Now the Smothers Brothers did a clever thing. They took their argument to the newspapers and they got lots of free publicity. They said, "CBS censors our best jokes, they censored Seeger's best song. It ain't fair." Finally in the month of January, 1968, the word came from New York, "O.K., O.K., you can sing the song if you want."

On 48 hours' notice I flew out to California, taped the song, and this time 7 million people saw it and even got some extra newspaper publicity. Only one station, I think, in Detroit, scissored the last verse out of the tape.

Did the song do any good? No one can prove a damned thing. It took tens of millions of people speaking out, before the Vietnam War was over. A defeat for the Pentagon, but a victory for the American people.

Top Cat Redux

Although the debate about whether the music for Theme's Time closing credits was the theme from Top Cat or not has largely abated, I've always wondered where that jazzy acoustic piano version came from.

Thanks to a purchase through the Dreamtime store, now I know. The song was probably taken from a 1996 CD, later re-issued in 2002, and available in the U.S. as an import at Amazon, Tunes from The Toons: The Best of Hanna-Barbera. The CD is also available at Amazon U.K. and Amazon.de.

If you follow the link(s) and scroll down a bit to Track #4, which is listed as Top Cat (Underscore) on the U.S. page, and play the clip, you'll find that it is indeed the music from TTRH's closing theme.

Head to Toe mp3 Downloads From Amazon

I'm going to start trying something new, and rather than links to albums that an episode's song appears on, I'm going to start linking to available mp3 downloads at Amazon, which run on average from $0.89 to $0.99 each.

Starting us off is this week's Head to Toe episode, where I was fairly successful in locating 9 8 of the 14 songs Our Host played. A couple of caveats: These may not be the same cuts as the ones played on Theme Time - if you're looking for a specific cut - for example, the Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms cut is by Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys rather than the Monroe Brothers - preview it first to ensure you're getting what you want. Second, I get a percentage of each sale; think of it as Dreamtime being your own personal NPR. But, if you don't like that idea, just make note of the link and go back to Amazon at another time.

Head to Toes - November 2007

1. Going to a Go-Go - The Miracles*
   
   
2. Dry Bones - The Delta Rhythm Boys
   
   
3. I've Got You Under My Skin - Louis Prima & Keely Smith
   
   
4. Fist City - Loretta Lynn
   
   
5. Finger Poppin' Time - Hank Ballard & The Midnighters
   
   
6. Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms - Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys
   
   
7. She's Scattered Everywhere - Archibald
   
   
8. Brain Cloudy Blues - Bob Wills
   
   
9. Waist Deep in the Big Muddy - Pete Seeger
   

* You ask, what does Going to a Go-Go have to do with Head to Toes, Fred? And the answer is, absolutely nothing. But somehow between the time I looked up The Miracles' From Head to Toes (which isn't available as an Amazon mp3) and wrote the blog posting, gremlins had convinced me that one was just like the other. It finally occurred to me several days later that it seemed like a strange track for a Head to Toes theme, and indeed, GtaG-G was not played on the Head to Toes episode. I leave it up for historical purposes. And who knows? Maybe somebody out there has been looking for Going to a Go-Go.