Seasons greetings, internet! Here is a much belated playlist from the last episode of Musicians, Mentors, and Barroom Heroes I aired before Christmas: “Red DeVecca and the Old Blues Guys.” (Next up: Curtis Casados!) Red was such a wealth of experience and knowledge and colorful stories… all those fallen giants he’s laid down the bassline for over the years, and it was especially great to hear about the members of that generation that are still going strong. (Alabama Slim! Little Freddie King! J. Monque’D! James Winfield! Red DeVecca! etc etc etc. Go see them! Treasure them!) [Another interesting fact, “Red DeVecca” is my second-favorite name to say aloud, right after “Olivia de Havilland”.]

Many thanks for coming in and making it such a fun night, and many thanks as well to Pizza Mike, that always-entertaining fountain of local lore, contagious fondness for things, and pleasant radio tones. Tune in to 102.3 WHIV FM this Sunday to hear from Curtis Casados, longtime bartender, familiar face of Frenchmen/Lower Decatur/everywhere, music aficionado, artist, jack of all trades, champion of Guilty Pleasures, spiritual leader of The Abbey, and generally one of the most interesting and eloquent people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet as a side effect of day-drinking.

——playlist details/self-indulgent rambling———————-

[Based heavily on Red DeVecca-related bands. Folks he currently plays with–Alabama Slim, Little Freddie King, J. Monque’D, the Sleeping Giant aka James Winfield–and those he played with in the past–Ernie K-Doe, Carl Perkins, Wayne Bennett, Mighty Sam McClain. Some other things. Mostly on Spotify.]

1. “Silent Nights” – Jim Smith. A properly bleak Christmas “carol”. I heard it live at Checkpoint Charlie’s right after this program too. (Is it unhealthy that the warmest and fuzziest I felt about the holidays this year was listening to drunk carolers at Checkpoint Charlie’s? Don’t answer that.)
2. “Blue Suede Shoes” -Carl Perkins
3. “Be Sweet” – Ernie K-Doe, who Red got to play with back in the day. Great to hear those stories, on and off air. (And in the twilight zone in between, when I may or may not have remembered to turn the mics off. It’s like Schroedinger’s cat.) Also for the record, “be sweet” is a strange request to make of someone.
4. “Mr. Charlie” – Alabama Slim. Red on Slim: “That song ‘Mr. Charlie’ was basically him telling it like it is, what his life was like, the people he knew…”
5. “Shillin’ for the Blues” – One of my favorite tunes by Chris Smither(unrelated to “Red DeVecca and the Old Blues Guys,” except in genre.) This version’s got “EEWB featuring members of Morphine” on it (whatever that means, exactly, unidentified mysterious acronym) and sounds f-ing amazing… Those horns, that slow burn… (“It’s never nice to hear advice you know you’ll never use, the spirit might be willing, but the flesh is out there, still shillin’ for the blues”….. :0)
6. “Drinkin Wine” – Carl Perkins. Live in New Orleans. We ran this one off youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YAdeJHm5Hc), great video showing Red on upright bass. Filmed, incidentally, at yesteryear’s Mermaid Lounge (the subject of the previous week’s program.)
7. “Gentilly Lilly” – J. Monque’D The cubes aren’t out but if all those other years are any evidence, you should be able to catch Red playing with J. at Jazz Fest. Speaking of Gentilly (Blvd.)
8. “Too Much Jesus, Not Enough Whiskey” – Mighty Sam McClain. I confess, I picked this one for the title. Not actually my favorite McClain tune, as it turns out. (Currently enjoying “Silent Tears”.)
9. “Hound Dog” (medley) – James Booker. DeVecca never played but a few notes with Booker, but he certainly had some funny tales.
10. “Rockin’” – Wayne Bennett
11. “King Freddie’s Shuffle” – Little Freddie King, and Bobby Lewis on harmonica.(You can find Bobby tending bar at BJs, too, where LFK is wont to play.)
12. “I Want to be Evil” – Eartha Kitt (Note: I do not want to be evil. But Pizza Mike might…)
13. “Ain’t Evil No More” – J. Monque’D
14. “Crazy Jungle Groove” – Mark Zeus (CD), off ‘One Magic Moment’. WHIV’s CD players no longer terrify me, so I’m trying to play a few tracks every week from the “piles of CDs I’ve picked up at gigs” annals.
14B (I don’t want to retype these numbers.) “So Wrong It’s Funny” – Jon Hatchett Band. Country/”spiderbilly”, this track’s off their recent epynomous album. Great music for dancing, drinking, lurking around after St Roch Trivia on Mondays, & beyond.
15. “Moanin’ Low” – Billie Holiday
16. “All I Really Want to Do” – Bob Dylan
17. “Someday Baby” – Alabama Slim
18. “Now You Know” – The Sleeping Giant aka James Winfield.You can see him playing at Ray’s on St. Bernard. “He’s like a time capsule. He could have been a giant of the era, but he never got a chance. Then one day he would wake up and surprise everybody.” (-Johnny Sansone, as quoted in an old nola.com article by Keith Spera.)
19. “Blue Rain” – Guitar Lightnin’ Lee and His Thunder Band. This might have been the one I clumsily cut off so all of you (all six of you) could tune into the fascinating discussion about backyard archaeology that was going on in the room around me. Fun fact: I got my college degree in archaeology and originally only “planned” on living in New Orleans whilst contemplating where/when to go to grad school for something of that ilk (when I still thought I had the balls for academia.) Then once I got here immediately “fell in love with the music”, the community, the history, the ghosts, the timeless romance, the illusion of the timeless romance, etc etc etc (game over.)
20. “Purple Rain” – Prince (youtube)
21. “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” – Bob Dylan (clearly now we’re into the part of the programming where I start forcing my depressing preconceived notions into the mix instead of just chilling out, playing some more na$ty blues, and giving into the gaiety.)
22. “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” – Gladys Knight & the Pips. Little known (by me) fact: this is the original version. I once lost us a valuable point at St. Roch Tavern trivia by insisting it was Marvin Gaye. Thankfully, some lessons you do learn eventually, and Bob Bateman likes recycling.
23. “Godless” – The Dandy Warhols. Odd choice, Laura. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but still odd.
24. “Hallelujah” – Spencer Bohren. (CD) Cover from one of my all-time faves, Leonard Cohen, Bohren’s album ‘Tempered Steel’, which is a fantastic record, especially if you are as much a sucker for lap steel, pedal steel, anything steel as I. (Speaking of which, how about Red DeVeccaplaying that lap steel at Old Arabi Bar’s open jam night a few Tuesdays back??)
25. “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” – Johnny Cash feat. Fiona Apple. Their harmonies are enough to make you cry, or at least enough to make me cry.
26. “Time Stands Still” – Chris Smither. Still standing around waiting for the time when a new song will take over the title for most beautiful song currently in my brain.
27. “Cotton Fields” – CCR. One of the old standbys/great champions of all of my driving CDs ever. {Ah, take me back to the days when I was in high school, choking or thinking I was choking in suburban Boston, driving around in a rusty stick-shift jeep named after Paul Bunyan’s blue ox, listening to CCR, being self-satisfied about driving stick, over-romanticizing myself, over-romanticizing “America”, over-romanticizing everything, being self-satisfied about naming my car after Paul Bunyan’s ox, fancying myself an old soul… (Oh dear. What’s changed, really, except for that I’m slightly better cannon fodder for my own masochistic jokes? And I miss that goddam car.)