Sam Bush – “Bowling Green” 2016 from Storyman. For a long time, Sam Bush was my favorite mandolin player, until I discovered Chris Thile who can actually do even more things on those four strings than Bush can. This song, however, features Bush’s other instrumental weapon, the fiddle. It’s an old-timey tune with some modern chord changes, if that makes any sense, about Bush’s life growing up on a farm in Bowling Green, Kentucky. His father taught young Sam to appreciate the fiddling (and by extension, mandolin playing) coming over the old Philco on the Grand Ol’ Opry, and Bush imagines his parents in heaven dancing to a fiddle tune. Then he gives us two fiddle tunes to dance to, each steeped in the Scots-Irish folk tradition that translated itself to the hills of Kentucky over a century ago. Bush never gets enough credit for his solid songwriting and singing, both of which are clearly demonstrated here – he did co-write this with Jon Randall Stewart, but it’s very much Bush’s story to tell. I’ve never been disappointed by a record or live performance with Sam Bush involved.
The Wonder Stuff – “From the Midlands With Love” 2013 from Oh No It’s . . . The Wonder Stuff. I was not enamored of much British rock in the late 80s, but I shelled out the big import bucks for a CD called The Eight Legged Groove Machine which was chock full of melody, hooks, and wild abandon. I stuck with the band for the next couple of records, though I missed their swan song in 1994. Well, the band name rejuvenated itself when singer/guitarist/songwriter Miles Hunt recruited some new people, including Fuzz Townshend of Pop Will Eat Itself (thus answering at least part of the trivia question, whatever happened to Pop Will Eat Itself.) In 2012, Hunt and Townshend started releasing a series of cover singles under the series name “From the Midlands With Love,” then Hunt and guitarist Stevie Wyatt figured they might as well write a song by that name. And damned if it doesn’t sound like classic era Wonder Stuff, maybe just a little bit toned down. It’s got a solid rock groove to it with a hard 1-2 1-2 beat and some fiddle sawing in between the chugging chords. The bright uplifting chorus may not have the kind of power hook they once churned out at a whim, but it’s more than a little catchy. There’s some cowbell in the fiddle-drenched bridge (or is that a pre-coda? It’s kind of an unusual structure) and that’s always a plus. (Sorry for the lack of a youTube video - I could have sworn I found one the other day, but I must have been confused - those with Spotify accounts can check it out above.)
The Beach Boys – “Honky Tonk” 1963 from Surfin’ U.S.A. I do enjoy hearing records like this, the kind of song that every garage band in America had been playing for seven years by the time the Beach Boys slapped down a take for their second LP. Bill Doggett had released the original in 1956. It had developed out of a jam session onstage when organist Doggett, guitarist Billy Butler, saxophonist Clifford Scott, and drummer Shep Shepherd settled into a miraculously relaxed groove over blues changes one night. The single, released with “Part 1” on the a-side and “Part 2” on the b, was a huge hit. The simplicity of the song made it a standard go-to at teen dances for a decade. The Beach Boys had neither an organ nor a tenor sax, so their version is a showcase for Carl Wilson’s guitar playing. He doesn’t veer far from Butler’s original performance, but he plays longer, and his guitar tone is reverb-drenched and trebly, just as it would be on all those classic Beach Boys hits. It may be perverse to choose a Beach Boys song that’s both a cover and an instrumental, but it’s plenty of fun to hear them relax into something they’d probably done at least a hundred times.
Ferlin Husky – “Puxico Polka” 1959 from Country Songs From the Heart. I co-authored with Amanda Doyle a book called St. Louis Sound: An Illustrated Timeline a few years back, and only just today did I find out Ferlin Husky spent a number of musically formative years right here in my home town. The Missouri small town native had a few hits by the time he came up with this song putting alliteration to work on the name of a little place just north of the bootheel. I have no idea whether or not they ever did polka much down in Puxico, and this song doesn’t offer the two-step rhythm necessary to dance like that. So it’s all down to the sound of the words, and they sound just fine. This is a terrific example of late 50s honky tonk on the verge of pop – there are no heart-felt emotions here, no love discovered or ripped away. It’s just a celebration of a possibly imaginary bit of joyful experience, with some lovely pedal steel, jaunty piano, and an insistent shuffle with brushes on the drums. Husky has a pleasantly inviting voice which invites us to imagine the people blowing their tops next to the barber shop. I even enjoy the standard late-fifties white bread female/male vocal chorus behind him. A sweet little record.
Roe – “Sheila” 1962 from Sheila. Second only to Bobby Fuller in the ability to carry on the legacy of Buddy Holly, Tommy Roe had several hits in the 1960s. He was often filed with bubblegum artists, but his best records had a quiet insistence that made them deeper than many people credit them. “Sheila” was actually recorded in a different version two years before his new record label, ABC, had the bright idea to amp up the Holly resemblance and snatch the classic drum pattern of “Peggy Sue” while Roe hiccuped his way through the vocals. It’s a sweet song about the singer’s love for the titular young woman. Roe captures a yearning for a love that seems more like it’s in his head than in the words he says she whispers in his ear. It’s all in the sound of the record, which feels like a delightful fantasy rather than a real love story. Perhaps it’s because he’s aping the then three-years-gone Buddy Holly, bringing listeners a fantasy that the music didn’t really die that day in 1959.