So, the story goes that back in the early seventies Cub Koda, the lead vocalist and guitar player for Brownsville Station, wandered into the Orbit Room cocktail lounge at the Brentwood Lanes bowling alley in Detroit and witnessed one of the worst musical performances he had ever seen. In the liner notes of this album Koda describes the experience this way; "Lame out of tune vocals delivered with third rate Elvis imitator enthusiasm...horrid two and three note guitar and sax solos...flagrant disregard for tempo or even remotely keeping their instruments in tune...every song in their repertoire being played in same monotonous key of E natural." Ladies and Gentlemen we bring you, King Uszniewicz And The Uszniewicztones.
King Ernie Uszniewicz (pronounced, You-Sneb-Bitch) was a Detroit vocalist and tenor saxophonist who trolled the Detroit bar band scene back in the seventies. Ernie and his band, the Uszniewicztones (U-Tones for short), landed a five night a week gig at the Orbit Room where their auspicious meeting with Cub Koda resulted in a recording deal with his own 1-Shot record label.
They released a single (Surfin' School/Cry On My Shoulder) and recorded three albums (all produced by Cub himself) before it all fell apart at the end of the decade.
Teenage Dance Party is their first and perhaps best (worst?) album. King U and his right hand man, guitarist Logjam Lurch Patterson, lead the way as the band bludgeons its way through golden oldies like" Little Latin Lupe Lu", "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" and "Greenback Dollar". Highlights include covers of The Novas' "The Crusher" and The Broadside Brass Bed Band's ridiculous, "Little Dead Surfer Girl". Drunk, out of tune, out of control and fun best describes the contents of this album.
Koda lost track of the band in 1979. Their gig at the Orbit Room ended when the bowling alley burned down and Ernie reportedly quit his day job (wrapping produce at a motor city IGA) and left town.
Was there really a band called King Uszniewicz & The Uszniewicztines? Some say it was all a hoax, perpetuated by Cub Koda himself and that Ernie and the U-Tones never really existed. Koda died in 2000, so we may never really know. I like to think they were a real Detroit area bowling alley band. And I like to think they're still out there somewhere. Maybe Ernie split to Florida and is playing nursing homes and senior centers. Just enjoying the good life. Now that's a nice thought.
You can listen to the U-Tones blistering version of "The Crusher" HERE
The North Pole Chimney Shakers are the Artic Circle's premiere (only?) rock n roll band. Consisting of a group of former employees from Santa's Workshop, they spend their days collecting their unemployment checks and watching F-Troop reruns and their nights mixing it up at various North Pole watering holes. Their beer fueled live sets consist of sloppy garage rock and blues covers with a few originals thrown in for good measure. Their first record, the controversial "Mrs. Claus's Blues", not only got them fired from Santa's Workshop, it also got them a brutal beat down from a group of nasty elves and the "Bowl Full Of Jelly" himself. Still, they persevere. You can listen to "Mrs. Claus's Blues" HERE
The North Pole Chimney Shakers Are;
Rock N Roll Casey Vocals, guitars, drums
Lars St. Nicholas: Tambourine, beer runs
Herbie "The Dentist" Usziewicz: Keyboards, bowling
If you are looking for some weird creepy sounds this Halloween, look no further than this weird sixties album by the Marty Manning Orchestra, “The Twilight Zone: A Sound Adventure In Space.”
In 1960, the year this album was released, Marty Manning was a renowned conductor and arranger for Columbia Records. In the fifties, he had worked with such luminaries as Tony Bennett, Vic Damone, Buddy Greco and Barbara Streisand. He even won a Grammy for his work on Bennett’s “I Left My Heart In San Francisco”.
Marty Manning In Action
Perhaps bored with arranging strings for tin pan alley balladeers, Manning and producer Ernie Altschuler got together and recorded this freaky way out soundscape.
Filled with traditional instruments such as woodwinds, brass, guitars and pianos, Manning and Altschuler also threw in the kitchen sink of sound using a huge array of percussion instruments (marimbas, xylophones, tympani, tuned bongos, tuned logs!?!) and weird futuristic sounding instruments such as the Martinot, the Serpent (a snake shaped brass instrument) the Bazzimba and the Ondioline (an early synthesizer played by Manning himself). Add in the voice of Lois Hunt,who wails throughout, and you get a set of space age bachelor pad circus music from Mars.
The Serpent
The Ondioline
In addition to the cover of “The Twilight Zone Theme”, the album contains such spaced out numbers as, “Forbidden Planet”, “Far Away Places” and “Spellbound Concerto”.
Not sure what exactly the Columbia Records executives thought of all this but it was the last experimental album Marty Manning ever put out. For the remainder of the sixties, he went back to arranging music for such MOR schmaltzmeisters as Perry Como, Sarah Vaughn and Harry Belefonte although he did release a cool 45 cover of “The Tarzan March” in 1966 under the name Marty Manning And The Cheetahs.
Marty Manning died in 1971.
Although it wasn’t a hit in its time, I like to think it was an influence on future prog rock Gods such as, Yes, ELP and King Crimson. Could that make Marty Manning the Father Of Prog? Sure, what the hell, why not?
Halloween is only a couple days away and what better way to celebrate than to look at the life of The Godfather Of Horror Rock N Roll, Screaming Jay Hawkins.
Weird & Interesting Facts:
-Jay Hawkins was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio.
—He lied about his age and joined the Army at the age of thirteen and fought in World War II. He was captured and spent eight months in a Japanese POW camp.
—While in the Army he learned to box and in 1949 was the middle weight champion of Alaska.
—An accomplished pianist and guitarist, Hawkins worked as a sideman before going solo in the early fifties.
—In 1956 he recorded his classic, “I Put A Spell On You”. The song was supposed to be a serious ballad but Hawkins got drunk during the session, entertaining the band by screaming and grunting his way through the tune. Legend has it that he was so inebriated during recording that he blacked out and had to relearn the song later in order to play it live. The record eventually sold over a million copies.
—When performing the song live he would jump out of a coffin dressed in a cape and wearing a bone underneath his nose. He would proceed to stomp around the stage screaming, grunting and carrying on. General mayhem ensued. One of his stage props was a stick with a skull on top he named Henry.
—Screamin Jay recorded dozens of albums through the years doing everything from Opera to Country. He recorded several Tom Waits tunes ("Heart Attack & Vine", " Whistling Past The Graveyard") which suited his both his voice and delivery.
—He acted in a number of movies including “Mystery Train”, “A Rage In Harlem” and “American Hot Wax”
—Check out his documentary, “I Put A Spell On Me” featuring Bo Diddley, Eric Burdon, Arthur Brown and Jim Jarmusch. It can be streamed via YouTube. You can check it out HERE
—Hawkins was as wild off stage as on marrying six times and fathering 33 kids!
Jud Strunk was a seventies singer/songwriter. In the early part of the decade , he had a big hit with “A Daisy A Day” a bittersweet tune about the devotion of an elderly widower.
Although his heyday was at the height of the mellow singer/songwriter era, he didn’t fit into the long haired hippie style of the time. He dressed conservatively, kept his hair combed and well above the collar and he played the tenor banjo instead of an acoustic guitar.
Strunk was raised in Buffalo, New York and graduated from the Virginia Military Academy in 1959. In the early sixties he toured as a one man show for the United States armed services. He acted on Broadway and made appearances on Bewitched and was a regular on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.
A Daisy A Day hit the upper reaches of both the pop and country charts in 1973. He placed other songs in the country charts including Bill Jones General Store, The Biggest Parakeets In Town and The Next Door Neighbor’s Kid.
The astronauts on the Apollo 17 lunar mission brought along a copy of Daisy A Day making it the first song ever played on the moon!
A native of New York, Strunk moved to Maine in 1960 and became a Maine folk hero of sorts. Many of his songs were about the characters and places of his adopted state. He ran for a Senate seat there in 1970 and reportedly lost by only one one vote.
Strunk’s music falls into the early seventies folk/country style. Think a mellower John Denver. (Yes, I know, that seems impossible.) He was a good songwriter with a lot of humorous story songs and nostalgia for a simpler time. The production often tips his music into MOR territory with an over use of strings and backing vocals and his banjo is too often buried in the mix. Despite these drawbacks, Strunk’s song craft and humor still manage to shine through.
Sadly, Jud Strunk is all but forgotten today. Amazingly, none of his studio albums have ever been released on CD and you won’t find any available on any music streaming services either. You can still pick up used vinyl copies on Amazon, e-Bay and Discogs for a couple bucks and there are some videos of him performing live on YouTube. He is well worth checking out.
Strunk, a licensed pilot, died in a plane crash on October 5th 1981. He suffered a heart attack just after take off. He was 45 years old.
If you are looking for a fun breezy pop record to wind down the summer, Juniper’s debut album just may do the trick.
A fun collection of tunes about roller coasters, teenage garage bands and boys (lots of songs about boys), the music touches on many different styles including punk, bubblegum, glam, surf, Latin and eighties pop.
Juniper is the fifteen year old daughter of singer/songwriter and WFMU-FM disc jockey Michael Shelley who wrote six of the songs on the record and co-wrote one with Juniper and one with Juniper and Bucky. In addition, there are a handful of cover tunes written by members of Teenage Fan Club, The Muffs and The Rubinoos.
The album is filled with an amazing group of guest musicians too including Marshall Crenshaw, Chris Geddes (Belle & Sebastian), April March, Chris Collingwood (Fountains Of Wayne), Mark Spencer (Son Volt), Steve Goulding (Mekons), Dennis Diken (Smithereens) Greg Towson (Los Straitjackets) and Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo) just to name a few. Michael Shelley plays guitar, bass and a variety of keyboards throughout the album.
Speaking of Michael Shelley, the production on the recording is incredible. As on his own albums, he takes the minimalist approach with just the right amount of guitars, keys and drums with touches of more “exotic” instrumentation (harp, congas, electric sitar) giving each song a unique mix but with plenty of room to breathe.
Juniper is a vocalist and song interpreter far beyond her years. She handles a wide variety of different styles with ease and subtlety. Think a younger Amy Rigby or Palmyra Delran. She also plays keys and flute on several cuts.
Track By Track
(It All Started On) The Dragon Coaster: Understated beach rocker....Love on a roller coaster...Think Beach Boys’ “Amusement Park, USA"...Only cooler.
Kids On My Corner: Nice pop-punk ditty... "Joe's Garage" for Generation Z...Best lyric, "The other kids in the cul-de-sac/ Wouldn't like The Beatles if they came back"...Co-written by Juniper.
Everybody's Got A Crush On Chad: Righteous T-Rex style basher... Chad sounds like every parents worse nightmare...James Dean meets Arthur Fonzarelli meets Draco Malfoy.
Best Kept Secret: A fine slice of eighties pop that would do The Go-Gos/Bangles proud...Co-written by Tommy Dunbar of Rubinoos fame....Believe it or not, that's Marshall Crenshaw on the guitar solo...One of my favorite tracks on the album.
Boys! Boys! Boys! Boys! Boys!: Guess what this one’s about?...First single off the album and deservedly so...Great power pop tune that attempts to answer the age old question: Why do teenage boys act like morons?...Answer: Something to do with the pre-frontal cortex, maybe...The keyboard break, played by Belle & Sebastian’s Chris Geddes, manages to reference The Beatles “Strawberry Fields” and Sweet’s “Fox On The Run”...Pure genius
Sticking With My Henry: A song of devotion with a great guitar solo courtesy of Son Volt’s Mark Spencer.
Girls Just Want A Boy To Rest Their Head Upon: Nice co-write by Juniper and Michael...Pretty nostalgic ballad...Sounds like a lost Connie Francis song or a Grease outtake...Mercedes Bralo’s harp is a nice touch...When I say harp, I am not referring to a harmonica.
Poke You Eye Out: A Latin flavored tune co-written by Linda Marr and the late Kim Shattuck of Muffs fame...Flamenco guitar solo by Jose Luis Ushina
Gotta Draw The Line: Another album highlight...One of Juniper’s best vocal performances...Great back up singing from April March and Megan Reilly...Juniper plays the organ on this one too.
How Long She Gonna Stay In That Room: Fun song about another favorite teenage pastime; spending an inordinate amount of time in your room...Smashmouth inspired keyboard and wah-wah guitar by Michael Shelley who also wrote the tune.
Punk Rock Boy: Penned by Francis Macdonald of Teenage Fanclub...This song also may cause discomfort in parents of teenagers (see “Everybody’s Got A Crush On Chad”, above)...Chris Collingwood of Fountains Of Wayne chips in on backing vocals.
I Don’t Want To Dream About You: Another nice vocal turn from Juniper...She also adds flute and organ to this one...Perfect song to end the album...There is even a brief electric sitar solo by Keith Yaun. (Eat your heart out Denny Dias!)
Today is International Louie, Louie Day. A day set aside to honor the greatest song in rock n roll history. Why April 11th? That is the birthday of Richard Berry, the guy who wrote it.. Here are some random facts about Louie, Louie to help celebrate the holiday. Take some time today and crank up your favorite version. Remember; The Beatles said, 'All you need is love' but all we really need is: DUH DUH DUH- -DUH DUH--DUH DUH DUH--DUH DUH etc...
Random Facts About Louie, Louie
—Louie Louie is one of the world's most recorded rock n roll tunes having been recorded over sixteen hundred times. Some of the artists who have covered the song, either live or in the studio, include; Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Julie London, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, John Belushi, Lou Reed, Motorhead, Grateful Dead, The Fat Boys, George Duke, The University Of Washington Marching Band, The Doors, Barry White, Dave Matthews Band, Sherman Hemsley (George Jefferson of The Jeffersons TV show), Richard Simmons, Todd Snider, Bruce Springsteen, Young MC, Deep Purple and, of course, The Kingsmen. Here is Bob Dylan and Tom Petty performing the song.
-- The song was written by Richard Berry, an L.A based Doo-Wop and R&B performer. He was inspired to write the song after hearing "El Loco Cha-Cha" by Rene Touzet. Berry also said that Louie, Louie was inspired by Chuck Berry's (no relation) Havana Moon. The record was released in 1957 on the L.A based Flip Records and did well in Southern, California but did not chart nationally. Richard Berry eventually sold the rights to the song to Flip Records for $750.
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--In the early sixties, Louie, Louie became extremely popular in Tacoma, Washington. Tacoma had a thriving music scene of local teen garage bands and Louie, Louie
was a staple of most of those group's repetoire. A local band called The Wailers had a regional hit in the Northwest, United States with their version of the song in 1960.
--A couple of years later two Portland, Oregon bands, Paul Revere And The Raiders and The Kingsmen, recorded the song on the same week and at the same studio, Northwestern Recorders. Both records became minor hits locally.
--The Kingsmen 45, somehow, found it's way into the hands of a Boston, Massachusetts radio disc jockey named Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsburg. Ginsburg thought the record was terrible and played it on "The Worst Record Of The Week"segment of his show. To his amazement, his audience loved the record and, as they say, the rest is history. In 1963, the record spent six weeks at number 2 on
the Billboard charts. To date, it has sold over 12 million copies.
—Shortly after recording the song and before it became a hit, The Kingsmen’s lead singer, Jack Ely, either quit or was fired from the band. (There are several versions of what actually happened.) After he left the band, the drummer, Lynn Easton, became the lead singer. Easton’s vocal style was completely different from Ely’s so when the band performed Louie, Louie live, it sounded nothing like the 45 which resulted in some unhappy audience reaction. Jack Ely formed his own version of The Kingsmen and went out on the road, as well, often booking gigs in the same city that Easton’s Kingsmen were playing. Eventually, everybody “lawyerd up“. The Kingsmen won the rights to their band name and Ely toured as, Jack Ely & The Courtmen.
--The Governor of Indiana banned the song due to it's alleged dirty lyrics. The FBI undertook a two year investigation attempting to prove that the lyrics were pornographic only to come to the conclusion that Louie, Louie was 'unintelligible at any speed".
—In 1978, Louie, Louie was featured in the movie Animal House introducing the song to a whole new audience. (Mainly drunken fraternity dudes.) John Belushi, who starred in the movie, released his own wildly out of tune version. Below is a video of The Kingsmen performing the song at the actual Delta House from the movie. The House was torn down shortly after this was filmed.
--At 6PM on Friday August 19, 1983 KFJC, a college radio station in Los Altos Hills California, kicked off Maximum Louie, Louie a Louie, Louie marathon in which they played nothing but Louie, Louie for sixty three straight hours with no versions played more than once. In all they played eight hundred different versions of the song. On the second day of the event, Richard Berry (who wrote the song) and Jack Ely (The Kingsmen's original lead vocalist) performed the song live on the air. It was the only time they performed the song together. You can watch the video below.
--In 1985, the Washington State Legislature attempted to make Louie, Louie the official state song. Sadly, the measure did not pass but it is considered by many to be the "Unofficial" state song.
--Richard Berry, who sold the rights to Louie, Louie for $750 back in the late fifties, eventually sued to get the rights to his song back. After years of litigation, he settled out of court and became a millionaire.
-- The Louie, Louie Street Party has been held every Memorial Day weekend in Peoria, Illinois for over thirty years with proceeds from the event going to St. Jude Children's Hospital. To date, they have raised over $300,000.
Songs That Ripped Off Louie, Louie (In a good way)
Okay, so "Ripped Off" may be a strong way to put it. Some of these songs have the exact same chord progression, others don't but they all seem to be, at least in some way, influenced by Louie.
"Hang On Sloopy". The McCoys
"Farmer John" The Premieres
"I Want Candy" The Strangeloves
"Wild Thing" The Troggs
"Brother Louie" The Stories
"Cherry, Cherry" Neil Diamond
"Mary, Mary" The Monkees
"Parties In The USA". Jonathan Richman
"R.O.C.k In The USA" John Mellencamp
"All Day, All Night". The Kinks
"I Can't Explain". The Who
"Roadrunner". The Modern Lovers
Further Reading
--In 1993, music critic and author Dave Marsh published his book,
Louie, Louie: The History & Mythology Of The World's Most Famous Rock N Roll Song. An informative and really fun read. Highly recommended. I think you can buy a used copy on Amazon. Most of the information on this post came from that book.
--Former Kingsmen member Dick Peterson published a memoir in 2005 called, Me Gotta Go Now.. Dick didn't join the band until after they recorded Louie, Louie but he was their for the tour that followed and the FBI brouhaha. Good book and still available.
--A guy named Eric Predhole runs a website calked, The Louie, Louie Report. It is an incredible resource for all things Louie, Louie and it is constantly being updated. You can check it out HERE
Shameless Personal Plug
I host and produce a music podcast called, Casey's Musical Dustbin. A few years back, I did an all Louie, Louie show. It doesn't last sixty-three hours like KFJC's did but you get an hour's worth of Louie with some versions you've probably never heard. You can listen to the show HERE
