Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday February 21, 2023: Remembering Dr. John on Mardi Gras Day

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU in Ottawa on Tuesdays from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also available 24/7 for on-demand streaming.

CKCU can be heard live at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and https://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web.

This episode of Stranger Songs was recorded and can already be streamed on-demand by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/59458.html

Theme: Remembering Dr. John (1941-2019) on Mardi Gras Day.

Mac Rebennack – whose stage name was Dr. John, and who died in 2019 at age 77 – was a New Orleans musical legend who drew on traditional jazz, blues, folk music, rock ‘n’ roll and even classical motifs, all with a distinctly New Orleans influence, in his music. Dr. John performed a lot of Mardi Gras music over the years, so it seems appropriate that we honor his legacy on Mardi Gras Day.

Dr. John with The Neville Brothers- Litanie des Saints

Goin’ Back to New Orleans (Warner Bros.)

Dr. John- Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya

Gris-Gris (Atco)

Paul Asbell- Such a Night

Steel String Americana (Busy Hands)

Deacon Jones with Dr. John- I Didn’t Want to Do It

Deacon John’s Jump Blues (Vetter Communications)

Odetta with Dr. John- Oh Papa

Blues Everywhere I Go (M.C.)

Odetta & Dr. John- Please Send Me Someone to Love

Blues Everywhere I Go (M.C.)

Dr. John- Didn’t He Ramble

Goin’ Back to New Orleans (Warner Bros.)

Dr. John & The WDR Big Band- My Indian Red

Big Band Voodoo (Orange Music)

Dee Dee Bridgewater & Dr. John with Irvin Mayfield & The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra- Big Chief

Dee Dee’s Feathers (Okeh)

The Wild Magnolias- All on a Mardi Gras Day

Life is a Carnival (Metro Blue)

Dr. John- Iko Iko

Dr. John’s Gumbo (Atco)

Preservation Hall Jazz Band & Dr. John- Winin’ Boy Blues

Preservation (Preservation Hall)

Dr. John & Danny Barker- I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say

Goin’ Back to New Orleans (Warner Bros.)

Dr. John- Milneburg Joys

Goin’ Back to New Orleans (Warner Bros.)  

Maria Muldaur & Dr. John- Layin’ Right Here in Heaven

Louisiana Love Call (Black Top)

Irma Thomas with Dr. John- Be You

Simply Grand (Rounder)

Dr. John & Rickie Lee Jones- Makin’ Whooppee!

In a Sentimental Mood (Warner Bros.)

Dirty Dozen Brass Band & Dr. John- It’s All Over Now

Voodoo (Columbia)

Dr. John with Chris Barber’s Jazz and Blues Band- Right Place Wrong Time

Live from London (The Store for Music)

Dr. John with The Neville Brothers, Al Hirt & Pete Fountain- Goin’ Back to New Orleans

Goin’ Back to New Orleans (Warner Bros.)

Next week: A Tribute to Josh White.

Find me on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday March 1, 2022: Part 1 – Solidarity with the people of Ukraine; Part 2 – I Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans (on Mardi Gras Day).

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU in Ottawa on Tuesday afternoons from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also available 24/7 for on-demand streaming.

CKCU can be heard live at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and https://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web.

This episode of Stranger Songs was prerecorded at home and can already be streamed on-demand by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/55400.html

Themes: Part 1 – Solidarity with the people of Ukraine. Part 2 – I Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans (on Mardi Gras Day).

Part 1 – Solidarity with the people of Ukraine

Paul Konoplenko- Our Ukraine
A Folksong Portrait of Canada (Mercury/Smithsonian Folkways)
The Mando Boys- Ukrainian Medley: Liturgical Music and Dance Tunes
The Mando Boys Live: Holstein Lust (Borderland Productions)

Michael Alpert & Julian Kytasty- Chernobyl
Night Songs from a Neighboring Village: Ballads of the Ukrainian & Yiddish Heartland (Oriente Musik)
Michael Alpert & Julian Kytasty- Night Songs
Night Songs from a Neighboring Village: Ballads of the Ukrainian & Yiddish Heartland (Oriente Musik)
The Malvinas- The Ukrainian Song
God Bless the Grass (Soona Songs)

Finjan- Azoi Tantzt Men Odessa (This is How We Dance in Odessa)
Dancing on Water (Rounder)

Part 2 – I Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans (on Mardi Gras Day)

Brenda Lewis- Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans
Far & Near (Brenda Lewis)
Paul Simon- Take Me to the Mardi Gras
There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (Warner Bros.)
Dr. John- Iko Iko
Dr. John’s Gumbo (Atco)
Kermit Ruffins & Irvin Mayfield featuring Dr. Michael White- Drop Me Off in New Orleans
A Beautiful World (Basin Street)

Mike Regenstreif & Marc Nerenberg (2009)

Marc Nerenberg with Noah Zacharin- On the Street Again, Revisted
On the Street Again, Revisted – single (Marc Nerenberg)
Chris Rawlings & Anne Lederman- Cindy Cindy 2.0
A Whistle, a Tune, a Song and a Dance (Cooking Fat Music)
Susan Werner- NOLA
NOLA: Susan Werner Goes to New Orleans (Sleeve Dog)
Long John Baldry- Midnight in New Orleans
The Best of the Stony Plain Years (Stony Plain)

Jennifer Warnes- I Am the Big Easy
Another Time, Another Place (BMG)
Mark Brine- Wrong Side of Bourbon St. Blues
New Blue Yodel (re:signed)
Victor Mecyssne (Victor Anthony)- Going to New Orleans
Hush Money (Sweetfish)

Larry Johnson- The Beat from Rampart Street
Fast and Funky (Blue Goose)
Little Brother Montgomery’s State Street Swingers- South Rampart St. Parade
Goodbye Mister Blues (Delmark)
David Roe- I Wish I was in New Orleans
Angel of New Orleans (David Roe)

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band & The Del McCoury Band- Milenberg Joys
American Legacies (McCoury)

Next week: Voices of Women.

Find me on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday February 16, 2021

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU in Ottawa, on Tuesday afternoons from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also available 24/7 for on-demand streaming.

CKCU can be heard live at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and https://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web.

This episode of Stranger Songs – Episode #2 – was prerecorded at home and can already be streamed on-demand by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/50868.html

Today’s show falls on Mardi Gras day – on what is undoubtably the quietest Mardi Gras day in New Orleans history – so this edition of Stranger Songs features music from or inspired by New Orleans – including some specifically Mardi Gras songs.

Leonard Cohen- fragment of The Stranger Song
Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia/Legacy)
Fats Domino- Walking to New Orleans
Fats Rocks (Bear Family)

Professor Longhair- Mardi Gras in New Orleans
Big Chief (Tomato)
Michael Doucet- Walking on a Mardi Gras Day
Lâcher Prise (Compass)
Dr. John & The WDR Big Band- My Indian Red
Big Band Voodoo (Orange Music)
Neville Brothers- Brother John/Iko Iko
Fiyo on the Bayou (A&M)

Marc Nerenberg- On the Street Again
On the Street Again (Marc Nerenberg)
Chris Rawlings- Pshaw
Pearl Soup (Cooking Fat Music)

Mike Regenstreif at Preservation Hall, New Orleans, LA.

Jelly Roll Morton- Buddy Bolden’s Blues (I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say)
Last Sessions: The Complete General Recordings (GRP)
Wynton Marsalis with Catherine Russell- Buddy’s Horn
Bolden: Music from the Original Soundtrack (Blue Engine)
Preservation Hall Jazz Band- Mama Don’t Allow It
Because of You (Sony)

Danny Marks- Heading Down to New Orleans
Cities in Blue (Danny Marks)
David Roe- Just a Little While to Stay Here
Angel of New Orleans (David Roe)

Susan Werner- What He Said in Jackson Square
NOLA: Susan Werner Goes to New Orleans (Sleeve Dog)
Danny Barker- St. James Infirmary
Save the Bones (Orleans)
Odetta- New Orleans (House of the Rising Sun/When I was a Young Girl)
Lookin’ for a Home: Thanks to Leadbelly (M.C.)

Louis Armstrong- Basin Street Blues
New Orleans Nights (Ace of Hearts)
Louis Prima- Bourbon Street Blues
Rocks (Bear Family)
Ida Cox & Coleman Hawkins- Blues for Rampart Street
Blues for Rampart Street (Riverside)
Jon Cleary- Frenchmen Street Blues
Treme: Music from the HBO Series Second Season (Rounder)

Tom Waits- I Wish I was in New Orleans
Small Change (Asylum)
Kermit Ruffins- When the Saints Go Marching In
We Partyin’ Traditional Style (Basin Street)

Dr. Michael White- Take Me to the Mardi Gras
Adventures in New Orleans Jazz Part 1 (Basin Street)

Next week – Chanteys and other songs of the sea.

Find me on Twitter. www.twitter.com/mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

The Del McCoury Band – Del and Woody

THE DEL McCOURY BAND

Del and Woody

McCoury Music

woodyguthrie.org/projects/DelandWoody.htm

As I’ve noted before, “Woody Guthrie’s astounding writing career – not just songs; also books, poems, letters, newspaper columns and more – was brief, less than 20 years. He began in the mid-1930s and it was over by about 1954 when he was hospitalized with Huntington’s disease, the hereditary neurological disease that eventually robbed him of his life in 1967 at just 55.

“It wasn’t too much time after Woody’s death that I, as a teenager, discovered his songs, books and records. I’ve been listening and reading for [almost 50] years. More recently, I’ve been fascinated with the work that Nora Guthrie has been doing to bring the thousands of her father’s unheard songs back to life.

“When I first began listening to Woody Guthrie records, and to others doing Woody Guthrie songs, back in the 1960s, it was commonly said that Woody was so driven to write that he must have written about a thousand songs. Through Nora’s work at the Woody Guthrie Archives, we now know there were many more songs, about 3,000, and most of them have never been heard. Whatever tunes or melodies Woody wrote or adapted for them are forgotten or were never known.

“Over the past two decades, some of these songs have come to life in new musical settings by a wide variety of artists – some in album-length projects, some in one-off settings. Among my favorite album-length projects have been Wonder Wheel by the Klezmatics, Ticky Tock by the German artist Wenzel, and Note of Hope by various artists in collaboration with Rob Wasserman. What never fails to astound me is how wide-ranging Woody’s writing was – all of these newly come-to-light songs revealing more clues into the Guthrie mystery – and how adaptable his writing was to so many different styles and musical genres and how it continues to speak to very varied artists.”

Bluegrass legend Del McCoury is another of Nora’s great choices for setting Woody’s lyrics to music. Steeped in traditional bluegrass – he played guitar and sang lead vocals with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys for a time in the early-1960s – and is widely regarded as one of bluegrass music’s greatest standard bearers. He’s been unafraid of looking for material beyond the bluegrass rules and he’s done some great collaborations with artists ranging from Steve Earle to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

On Del and Woody, Del adds a dozen “new” songs to the Guthrie canon while creating one of the best bluegrass albums I’ve heard in years. The lyrics are all Woody’s set to melodies by Del.

The album begins in terrific form with “The New York Trains,” a song Woody wrote in 1940 after his first family – wife Mary Guthrie and their three kids – came by train from Texas to join him in New York. Woody humorously describes the family’s first exposure to New York’s expansive subway system.

Woody’s humor can also be seen in such songs as “Wimmen’s Hats,” a bumpkinny – but good-natured – spoof of women’s headwear; “Cheap Mike,” a complaint about a used car dealer who sold him a “‘48 motor on a ’32 frame”; and “Californy Gold,” a tale of a California Gold Rush prospector who loses his fortune to a gold digger.

Among the most poignant songs are “Left in This World All Alone,” sung by a man left without family or friends, and “Family Reunion,” in which Woody encourages families to stick together and support one another.

Other highlights include a love song, “Because You Took Me in Out of the Rain,” and “The Government Road,” sung from the perspective of an ex-con who finds employment building new roads.

Throughout the album Del, who sings lead and plays guitar, is supported by his virtuoso band – sons Ronnie McCoury on mandolin and Rob McCoury on banjo, Jason Carter on fiddle and Alan Bartram on upright bass, all of whom sing harmony vocals – perhaps the greatest traditional bluegrass band currently active.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Guy Davis – Kokomo Kidd

GUY DAVIS

Kokomo Kidd

M.C. Records

guydavis.com

As I said two years ago in the intro to my review of Juba Dance, over the past two decades, Guy Davis has been one of the premiere interpreters of traditional acoustic blues and one of the songwriters whose in-the-tradition work has kept the genre vital and alive in modern times. In the hands of Guy and a few of his peers, the traditional blues forms remain timeless – as relevant now as they were 30, 50 or 80 years ago. All of the recordings Guy has released since the limited edition Guy Davis Live in 1993 (repackaged as Stomp Down Rider in 1995) have been both a homage to Guy’s musical forebears and a crucial contribution to contemporary music.

Guy is in great form on Kokomo Kidd with eight new songs and five covers – a couple of which are very pleasant surprises.

The album opens with the bouncy “Kokomo Kidd.” Guy assumes the persona of Kokomo Kidd, a seemingly ageless bootlegger/dealer/pimp/fixer, who supplies liquor, drugs and women (or men) to top Washington politicians during Prohibition and through to the present where he continues as an ultimate dirty trickster. Guy’s banjo playing sets the rhythm, his voice tells the story in a kind of blues-based pre-rap style, and the bottom is filled by some terrific tuba playing by Ben Jaffe of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Other favorites from among Guy’s originals include “Taking Just a Little Bit of Time,” which celebrates stepping out of the hectic pace of contemporary life “for just a little bit of time”; “Shake It Like Sonny Did,” a great tribute to country blues harmonica legend Sonny Terry (who I had the opportunity to know and work with in the 1970s); and the delightfully catchy “Maybe I’ll Go,” a nod to Mississippi John Hurt.

With the support of Professor Louie on Hammond organ, Guy moves into classic soul ballad mode on the powerful “She Just Wants to be Loved,” an empathetic piece about a lonely woman who has never found the love she’s spent her lifetime looking for.

The most moving piece on the album is “I Wish I Hadn’t Stayed Away So Long,” in which Guy poignantly laments that his life as touring musician meant the he “got home too late to say goodbye” when his mother (the legendary actress Ruby Dee) died.

Guy Davis & Mike Regenstreif (2006)

Among the songs Guy didn’t write are three blues standards. Among them is Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster” done in classic Chicago blues style with Charlie Musselwhite on harmonica. 

The pleasant surprises I mentioned are a soul ballad version of Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” and a reggae version of Donovan’s “Wear Your Love Like Heaven.” Both songs so familiar and yet so fresh-sounding in these interpretations.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif