Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

On the last leg of our US tour we visited Elvis’ cities: Memphis and Tupelo. We now enter the territory where Elvis tasted much success before he broke nationwide: Louisiana. In a strange turn of events, Elvis appeared first at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, to little acclaim, supporting Hank Snow. Shortly after Elvis became a weekly regular on the Louisiana Hayride, based in Shreveport, Louisiana, whence many country legends (Hank Williams among them) moved to Nashville. Alas, we will have no time or song to make a turn to Shreveport, but we’ll visit two cities in the state.

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Baton Rouge, Louisiana

I was entirely oblivious to a place called Baton Rouge until, as a young man, I read John Kennedy Toole’s wonderful novel, Confederacy of Dunces, which mentions the city. I loved the name. But we have no time to hang aorund in the state capital of Louisiana, so we move on to the city in which Confederacy of Dunces is set. As we set off in our eight-wheel truck (the beauty of this journey is that we can travel by any mode of transport of our fancy) we spot a pretty hitchhiker. We stop and let her (Bobby by name, as it turns out) and the suddenly appearing boyfriend in — and just in time, too, because it looks like rain, and the poor fellow looks as faded as his jeans. The whole way down to New Orleans we exhaust our song repertoire, with Bobby’s handclaps and the windscreen wiper keeping the rhythm.
Kris Kristofferson – Bobby McGee.mp3

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New Orleans, Louisiana

The city of legends has popularised the idea of Mardi Gras, which idiots around the world have a way of scheduling all year round (it is, of course, the carnival before the season of Lent). More lately, New Orleans has become a symbol of George W Bush’s callous incompetence. There are hundreds of songs about New Orleans — perhaps only New York among US cities has been the subject of lyrics more frequently — so the challenge here was to identify three top tunes that mention in the title neither the city nor its state, nor Mardi Gras, nor Bourbon Street nor the Latin Quarter (though one does so partly), nor houses of rising suns. So here we entertain ourselves with a trio of songs about a parade confrontation between “tribes” of African-American Mardi gras reveller; a love song for a prostitute (Steely Dan rocking the pedal steel!); and the tale of a hoofer (the version here was not featured in my recent Bojangles line up). The first of these songs became famous in the version by the Dixie Cups, renamed Iko Iko; this is the 1953 original by Sugar Boy Crawford, who co-wrote it with Lloyd Price.
Sugar Boy Crawford & his Cane Cutters – Jock-A-Mo (Iko Iko).mp3
Steely Dan -Pearl Of The Quarter.mp3
Nina Simone – Mr Bojangles.mp3

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Biloxi, Mississippi

Biloxi, pop. 50,000, is another one of those obscure American towns which gained some fame due to American cultural hegemony, thanks to a rather endearing movie featuring Matthew Broderick and Christopher Walken, and earlier to Goldie Hawn’s Private Benjamin. Biloxi is well-known also as a casino resort and as the one-time abode of the beautiful Jessica Alba. And now Biloxi attains great fame thanks to Any Major Dude, who’s not even American. More recently, of course, Biloxi was frequently mentioned in association with Hurricane Katrina. So, here we are in Biloxi on the Gulf of Mexico and meet a middle-aged fellow with his young girlfriend. He came from Houston, just left is family behind. Sometimes he goes back to see his family. It doesn’t sound like they are very impressed with him. But our new friend seems to have no regrets. Or does he?
Jack Ingram – Biloxi (live).mp3

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We will leave the former capital of French Louisiana, known then as Bilocci, for the town that had that honour before. Before Biloxi we had visited the city especially built as a capital to succeed it, La Nouvelle-Orléans. The French decided that New Orleans would be safer from hurricanes and flooding… And our next stop will be the city which was the French colony’s first capital.

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Previously on American Road Trip

When we last checked in from our US tour, we were on our way from Kansas City. You will have received our postcards from Albuquerque, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Wichita.

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St Louis, Missouri

Well, isn’t that typical. We turn up at the fair, but where was Louis? All the best laid plans… Without Louis in tow and nothing better to do, we revisit that other great song about St Louis. The Blues named after the city is said to be one of the first and longest-lasting blues cross-over song. Written by W.C. Handy (whose 1923 instrumental recording features here) in 1914, it inspired the foxtrot. Covered by a cast of zillions — from Louis Armstrong to Chet Atkins to the Flaming Groovies — wikipedia says the song is often called “the jazzman’s Hamlet”. Travelling the US can be educational.
W.C. Handy – St Louis Blues (1923).mp3
Bessie Smith – St Louis Blues (1929).mp3

Memphis, Tennessee

Having made a huge detour in our bid to meet up with that schmuck Louis, we heads back south along the Missouri, passing Union City (where Goodyear tires are made) but not stopping because we think Blondie’s song is about the California or Connecticut city of the same name, and arriving in Memphis. Of course, our first stop is Beale Street where we meet a chap wearing — oh dear, what a cliché — blue suede shoes blabbering on about how he is a Christian for tonight because of Al Green, or something (to his credit, he also mentions W.C. Handy). We see the same fellow again at Memphis’ obligatory destination number 2, Graceland, and quickly take flight when he pretends to see the ghost of Elvis.

Repasting to a bar, we meet a terribly heartbroken fellow from Denver. He tells us his sad tale of how he made the decision to leave for Memphis instead of staying put to be with the girl he loves (and who might have dumped him). “I waited my whole life just to see Memphis,” he says, “now all I can see is her.” As he wells up, we cry cry cry with him.
Marc Cohn – Walking In Memphis.mp3
Cry Cry Cry – Memphis.mp3

Tupelo, Mississippi

Elvis' birthplace

We might have cut our visit to Graceland short, but we aren’t going to miss out the place where Elvis was born one cold winter’s morning in 1935, and where his father, Vernon, went to prison for what is said to be the only crime he ever committed. And the town where the Presleys lived in a tiny white enclave in an African-American area, giving the young boy a feel for the rhythms of black music. Two men, a balding Englishman with a languid drawl and a rather peculiar Australian compete to instruct us on Elvis life.

The Australian goes off on a discourse riffing on John Lee Hooker’s song Tupelo and cryptically characterising Elvis as some sort of apocalyptic Messiah. “Yes, that’s nice, dear,” we say, tipping him generously as we turn to the other fellow. Drawlin’ Baldy constructs a treatise which holds that after making the movie calamity that is Clambake Elvis lost his way (Baldy evidently has not seen many of Elvis ‘60s movies) and ought to have returned to the innocence of Tupelo. Or something. Which leads us to Krusty the Clown, and whether he has reached his Clambake yet.

I ought to point out that I didn’t choose Van Morrison’s very lovely Tupelo Honey because it’s not about the town but about the tupelo gum tree which gave the town its name via a civil war battle — but is known in Tupelo as the blackgum tree, horticulture fans.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Tupelo.mp3
Mark Knopfler – Back To Tupelo.mp3

See you in Louisiana next time.

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Previously on American Road Trip

In the first part of this series, we started our US tour in Albuquerque, moved east to Amarillo, and further east to Oklahoma City. Continuing our musical journey we now leave Oklahoma City and move north-west across the Arkansas river to Tulsa.

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Tulsa, Oklahoma

On our way to an appointment in Wichita we pick up a hitchhiker on his way to Tulsa. He tells us that he left his home in Tulsa a while ago to pursue a career in the movies (he even thought Arizona was glamourous, which tells you something about our destination). Well, our boy didn’t cut it in Hollywood (or Phoenix), so he is coming home, to go “livin’ on Tulsa time”. We too live on Tulsa time — for five minutes, and move on.
Eric Clapton – Tulsa Time (live, 1980).mp3

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Wichita, Kansas

Moving north along the Arkansas we go on to Wichita to ask one of the locals about the offside rule in football (or “soccer”, as the locals call it) which his colleagues can never get right. Well, our new friend don’t know nuthin’ about that. Turns out, it was all a misunderstanding hinging on a missing letter. Instead our friend tells us about his adventures as a telephone technician who conducts his romantic liaison from the top of a telephone pole, and how the weather determines when he may take time off.  To be honest, half the time we cannot make out what our pal is on about. Best be on our way.
Glen Campbell – Wichita Lineman (1968).mp3

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Kansas City, Missouri

American geography is a bastard. Apart from idiosyncrasies in the pronunciation of certain names (Arkinsaw?), you have Kansas City located not in the state of Kansas (not Kinsaw?), but just across the state border in Missouri. Stop confusing us, Americans! Kansas City  has a mayor with a great name: Mark Funkhauser. Anyway, on the corner of 12th Street and Vine we see a strange dude and his girl drinking a bottle of Kansas Wine, the taste and effect of which we prefer to imagine than to experience. But the girl is not his wife, oh no. She’s one of the “crazy little women” the man came to the city for. Hmmm, maybe time to move on before Any Major Dudette gets suspicious.
Wilbert Harrison – Kansas City (1959).mp3

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We’ll go down south on the Missouri to reach our next destination. If you are going ahead, I’ll meet you there.

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Previously on American Road Trip

Any Major Dude With Half A Heart is going on a tour of the USA. Not physically, alas, for Any Major Dude is poor and cannot afford to travel. So what we have here is a new series in which I start a musical journey, starting from a random place in the United States, post a song that mentions that location, and travel to the nearest town which brings to my mind a lyric, and then to another. Next instalment I move on from the last featured town. Sounds complicated? Well, come and join me on my tour and make sense of it as we travel together.

The scientific blind-stab-at-the-map of the United States brings us to…an empty spot in the middle of nowhere near Albuquerque. So in that amusingly-named town, we begin our journey

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Albuquerque, New Mexico

In Albuquerque we meet a fellow you seems to be too well-known in nearby Santa Fé, so he comes down to the bigger city of Albuquerque for a bit of anonymity, grabbing a cholesterol swelling breakfast on theway. Shall we accompany him on his return north to Santa Fé (where we might encounter Bob Dylan, Brooks & Dunn or Bon Jovi)? Head east, you say? Ok, do you know the way to Amarillo?
Neil Young – Albuquerque (1975).mp3

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Amarillo, Texas

It never occurred to me that Amarillo was a real place. Well, the good people of Amarillo will have you, and me, know that their’s is the 14th biggest city in the Lone Star state, with a population of about 200,000. According to Wikipedia, Amarillo also boasts one of the largest meat packing areas in the US, and has the only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility in the country. Wow! And here, in the one-time Helium Capital of the World, we meet sweet Marie, who is waiting for the sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-ing Tony Christie. As the church bells are ringing, we retire to a bar where we encounter a dude playing on a pinball machine, feeding coins into a juke box to play the country stylings of Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. The fool left the lovely Emmylou Harris behind in Atlanta, we learn. Which way is Atlanta? Due east? Let’s be on our way.
Emmylou Harris – Amarillo (1975).mp3
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Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

So we turned right from Amarillo and landed up in Oklahoma where the exciting new Wilco-esque band Deep Vibration (presumably named after the cellular adventures of one Ashley Cole) entertains us with a sound so rich, we have no idea what the man is singing. Something, it seems, is on his mind. Fun fact about Oklahoma City #1: It is twinned with Rio de Janeiro, which seems somehow less than obvious. Fun fact about Oklahoma City #2: It is the 31st biggest city in the United States. Fun fact about Oklahoma City #3: It has water taxis, which is pretty cool.
Deep Vibration – Oklahoma City Woman Blues (2008).mp3

Next stop north, south, east?