Last week – on Mardi Gras to be precise – I had intended to post a link to a .zip file of a Swamp Pop compilation that Townsman BigSteve made me last year for my fellow Townspeople to download and enjoy. A week later, that link is now here:
Swamp Pop Compilation .zip file
Track List follows!
Cookie and the Cupcakes, “Mathilda”
Bobby Page and the RiffRaffs, “Hippy-Ti-Yo”
Rod Bernard, “This Should Go On Forever”
Rod Bernard, “Colinda”
Jivin’ Gene, “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”
Johnnie Allan, “Promised Land”
Lee Martin, “Born to Be a Loser”
Lil’ Bob & the Lollipops, “I Got Loaded”
Clint West, “Our Love”
Warren Storm, “Prisoner’s Song”
Dale & Grace, “Leaving it All Up to You”
Rod Bernard, “Diggy Liggy Lo”
Johnnie Allan, “Lonely Days & Lonely Nights”
Johnnie Allan, “South to Louisiana”
Tommy McLain, “Sweet Dreams”
Rod Bernard, “Fais-do-do”
Cookie and the Cupcakes, “Sea of Love”
Randy & the Rockets, “Let’s Do the Cajun Twist”
Tommy McLain, “Before I Grow Too Old”
“I Can Hear the Jukebox Play.”
Irma Thomas, “It’s Raining”
I’ll leave this file up for a week or two. Perhaps we will be graced by BigSteve’s insights and personal recollections. Download. Unzip. Play. Enjoy. Thanks to BigSteve for getting me in touch with some of his regional delights!
OK, I found my “hard” copy. The track list is now posted. Get downloading and unzipping.
Hey guys – speaking of downloads and unzips, Germany’s City Slang has a six-track goodie bag that was posted in an email including the charmer by The Jai-Alai Savant, Scarlett Johansson Why Don’t You Love Me.
Six For 0-Seven
Digital Slang
1. Malajube – Etienne D’Aout
2. Apostle of Hustle – My Sword Hand’s Anger
3. The Jai Alai Savant
4. Justine Electra – Bluesman
5. Calexico – The Guns of Brixton
6. Lambchop – Pre
You can go here to get it:
http://www.slangstore.com/digislang/loader.htm
And Malajube really are interesting kids from Quebec, one of the bands I was booking played with them at the first Pop Montreal a few years ago and their live show is really great!
I’m going to try to get back to this later today, but as I mentioned before there’s a really good article on Swamp Pop at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swamp_pop. It will orient you to where this music comes from.
Thanks for the reminder about that article!
I hope it’s not too late for me to comment on this. I don’t know if the lack of comment indicates a lack of interest, or if people are waiting for me to weigh in.
Basically this is the regional pop music of southwestern Louisiana that sprang up in the gap between Elvis and the Beatles. My dad came from that area (grew up speaking French, then forbidden to speak French upon starting school, then getting assimilated in the Air Force in WWII, then moving to New Orleans after the war, but working the railroad between N.O. and Lafayette), though this is not his music, but rather the music of the generation between his and mine. This is not New Orleans music, but the music that resulted from Cajun guys hearing Fats Domino etc. and giving it their own twist. (Speaking of which, Let’s Do The Cajun Twist, an adaptation of Allons a Lafayette, totally rules.)
I think of it as jukebox music, but from my very early years, when the only jukeboxes I would have heard would have been in rec centers and restaurants, on the rare occasions when we went out to eat. I also have memories of the music in a bar in a weird part of town where my dad used to go to pay his union dues. At least that was his story, and I’m not sure why I went along all the time. What I remember mainly was that this place had a window on the side of the building where sandwiches were sold, and the sign over it read “For Women and Negroes.” How’s that for local color?
Mathilda is the opening track in the file, because it’s THE swamp pop song. Some of these tracks supposedly made the charts, and I definitely remember hearing Dale & Grace’s Leaving It All Up To You and Rod Bernard’s This Should Go On Forever on the radio a lot, but I’m not sure how much play these got nationwide. In the 60s ‘oldies’ was not a separate radio format; top 40 stations interjected ‘oldies but goodies’ into the pop hits of the day, so people still heard older stuff even after the British invasion took over.
Some of you might know these songs as covers. Los Lobos did a fine version of Lil Bob & the Lollipops’ I Got Loaded. Sea of Love was covered by Robert Plant, and it’s also the opening track on that excellent Del Shannon record that he recorded with Tom Petty’s band in the early 80s. Doug Sahm did Colinda, and Joe Strummer’s last album ends with a fine version of Tommy McClain’s Before I Grow Too Old. I prefer McLain’s version of Sweet Dreams, with the weird vibes/organ sound, to all others.
I like hearing the Cajun accents, and I even enjoy the hokey backwoods routines, although again it’s hard for me to judge what this stuff sounds like to yankees.
A couple of caveats. I compiled this collection from a number of different sources, and listening to it again, I realized that the version of Warren Storm’s Prisoner’s Song is a souped up rock&roll re-recording. It’s ok, but the original (available on the Excello compilation The Sound of the Swamp) is much better. Irma Thomas’ It’s Raining is also a later re-recording. It’s not true swamp pop, but it’s a great song, and the original appears on the best-of of her early material called Time Is On My Side, which is highly recommended. Also a couple of classics are not on here but worth seeking out – Joe Barry’s I’m a Fool to Care and Clint West’s Big Blue Diamonds.
BigSteve wrote:
Whenever I listen to this comp, I’m surprised at how many songs I know – in many cases these versions, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve always been a fan of oldies radio in Philadelphia, even when I was a kid and these songs weren’t as old, so maybe that’s how I know some of them. Also, my piano-playing uncle is a big Fats Domino fan and passed along a handful of Fats singles to me, so the general style isn’t foreign to my Yankee ears either. In short, I find this swamp pop not too different than a good deal of regional music from that same period in the NYC-Philly-Baltimore corridor. Just recently we watched Hairspray with the kids, and I know that soundtrack’s songs are exactly like this stuff, but it’s close enough.
From my Yankee neck of the woods, it’s outright country music that always sounds foreign to me. That zydeco stuff too, with the exaggerated oomp-pah rhythms and accordian. And Chicago blues sounds foreign to me too. But this swamp pop stuff? No. A lot of it has the general “sound of the city” sound that I like.
I think the tag is missing for track 20, which appears to be called “I Can Hear the Jukebox Play.”
This was a really awesome compilation BigSteve thanks for sharing Mr. Mod/Steve with the rest of us. I am especially enjoying the Cookie & The Cupcakes tracks. I only got to go to N’awleans once a few years ago, but I loved every second of it. It was also the only time we ever got chased by a swarm of “flying termites” from the swamp where my friends parents were living near! Scary insects! Maybe every second except for that part… My friend’s father is one of the civic engineers helping in the rebuilding of the levee. I love the accents on the songs, it really reminds me of the french infusion and the local inflections. We bused down to the French Quarter a lot, and walked around a bunch. One of the first nights we were there, just off Bourbon Street, we were stopped by one of the local older ‘fellas asking us to take him up on a bet:
“I bet you ten dollars I know where you got yo’ shoes!”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll bite – where?”
“Well, now fella. You got yo shoes, ON YO FEET. Ten dollars, please.”
(!)
I saw that that track was not in the listing, but I thought maybe Mr. Mod had decided to ditch that track, which is from a later period, the early 70s — Rufus Jagneaux’s “Opelousas Sostan.” I had included it on the CDR for a friend who is from Opelousas, a town outside of Lafayette. The artist was actually a group, not a person. Sostan is a person’s name.
I can’t believe you fell for that one. You actually paid?
No editorial comment intended. I must have skipped over that title while typing out the titles from the CD case. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. Good to know that not only are folks downloading this, they’re listening and paying attention!
Heh, heh, actually – HE paid. I was too busy trying not to bust out a smile;) It was a pretty good one though! We were both really amused – if only for the moment!
The funny part about it is that I think he thought that he had a clear-cut case because when I asked him later about it, he said there’s no way he could have guessed because his shoes were SECOND HAND. Oh my!
I’m loving this, BigSteve, especially the ballads. Like Jim, I can also pick up a similarity in sound to Philly oldies.