Sunday, April 21, 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell
Email me! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Sunday, April 14, 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell Email me! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
I was born in a dump / Mama died and my daddy go drunk...
These are the first words of a song that became one of the most covered tunes
of the 1960s, though the covers have gone well beyond. "Tobacco Road" is the
story of poverty, sentimentality and a young man's determination to better his
circumstances. Or maybe "sentimentality" shouldn't be part of that
description, as in the last verse, the singer declares his desire to "blow it
up and start all over again."
It sounds like some ancient blues song, something John or Alan Lomax might have picked up from some half-drunk sharecropper or mean-eyed Angola Prison inmate.
But, no, it was written by John D. Loudermilk, a country and pop songwriter from Durham, N.C. He wrote it and was the first to
record it 1959 (and released in 1960).
I got the idea for writing that song from a road in our town that was
called Tobacco Road because it waswhere they rolled the hogsheads full of Tobacco down to the river to be
loaded onto barges. Along that road were a lot of real tough, seedy-type
people, and your folks would have just died if they thought you ever went
down there.
He didn't mention that "Tobacco Road" previously had been used as a
title of a 1941 movie directed by John Ford, as well as a 1933 Broadway play,
both of which were based on a 1932 novel of the same name by Erskine
Caldwell.
But that's neither here nor there. The movie, play and novel largely have been
forgotten, while the song is a classic. It's been recorded by everyone from Edgar Winter to David Lee Roth; from Hank Williams, Jr. to The Jefferson Airplane ... and lots of folks in between.
Here's that original 1960 version by Loudermilk:
But Loudermilk's version failed to become a hit. It wasn't until the 1964
British Invasion, when a one-hit-wonder band called The Nashville Teens
recorded it. And yes, their one hit was indeed wondrous:
And soon after this, the song became a garage-rock standard. One of my
favorites was by The Blues Magoos.
Even before The Nashville Teens, Lou Rawls gave "Tobacco Road" some soul gravitas:
Eric Burdon performed the song with The Animals. But a few years later he did a more interesting version with War:
Had you told me that "Tobacco Road" was written especially for Bobbie Gentry, I probably would have believed you. It's just her kind of tune:
Junior Wells took it to Chicago in 1990:
And in 2007, Southern Culture on the Skids returned the song to its rightful North Carolina home:
Sunday, April 7, 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell
Email me! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Sunday, March ,31 2024 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM, 101.1 FM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell Email me! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
You Better Run by The Stooges
Bad Girl by The Detroit Cobras
Holy Water by WolfWolf
Without You by The Grawks
Circus Freak by The Electric Prunes
Black Eyes by The Darts
The Mouth of Harahan (Ballad of King Louie Bankston) by Quintron & Miss
Pussycat