Re: O.T - Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour, Season 3
Date: October 27, 2008 03:55
A transcript of the show (copied from expectingrain.com):
Season 3
Money Part 1
Begin:
Jerry McCain & His Upstarts - That's What They Want (1955)
Louis Prima - Pennies From Heaven (winner! winner!!)1957
Papa Charlie Jackson - You Put It In, I'll Take It Out (1934)
Van Morrison - Blue Money (1970)
Ray Charles – Greenbacks (1957)
Mel Blanc – Money (1954)
Buddy Johnson & His Band - It's the Gold
Lefty Frizzell - My Baby's Just Like Money (1964)
Nic Jones --Farewell to the Gold (1980)
Buddy Guy - 100 Dollar Bill
Diddy - It's All About the Benjamins (1998)
Clovers - Your Cash Ain't Nothin But Trash (1954)
Jesse Price - You Can't Take It With You (1948)
End
next week Money Part 2
It’s night in the big city
A man says a prayer, puts down a twenty and rolls the dice
The faucet won’t stop dripping
This is Theme Time Radio Hour with your host Bob Dylan
Welcome to Season 3 of Theme Time Radio Hour
And we’re glad to have you
We’ve had a lot of fun the last couple years presenting the greats and near greats, the fondly remembered and the almost forgotten performing a wide variety of music on a veritable cornucopia of subjects. But as we start Season 3 we’re going to take our cue from the sign Harry S. Truman kept on his desk, The Buck Stops Here and not just the buck the yen, the shekel, the nickel and dime and if you still subscribe to the barter system maybe a bushel of corn, so break open your piggy banks and cash in your bonds, this weeks episode of Theme Time Radio Hour is most definitely cash and carry.
Let’s start off with a song on the Excello record label, we played the A side of this record on our Cadillac show and that sounded so good I thought I’d flip it over and play the B side for you. From 19and55, features Christopher Collins on guitar, backing up a harmonica player by the name of Jerry McCain, here he is along with his Upstarts, ‘And That’s What They Want’.
#1
That was Jerry McCain and his Upstarts, And That’s What They Want. Jerry, of course, wrote that song for the American market, if he was trying to reach a worldwide audience he might have changed the words a little. In Albania what they wanted was a lick, instead of money in Bosnia they work for marka, in Denmark it’s the chrona, in Slovakia the caruna, Oland has it’s zlatti, and Mozambique the metzecal.
No matter what you call it, you gotta work real hard to get it.
Here’s Louie Prima, the king of New Orleans, his success started a whole Italian trend in America,as a matter of fact he was the first of the Italian singers making way for guys like Perry Como, Vic Damon, Tony Bennett & Dino. Here’s Louie with a song written by Johnny Burke and Arthur
Johnston, ‘Pennies From Heaven’.
#2
That was Louis Prima with Pennies From Heaven. Sometimes pennies from heaven can be dangerous.We’ve all heard the story about dropping one off the Empire State Building but would it really kill a guy if you did that? Let’s look at it scientifically. The Empire State building is 1250 ft tall, ignoring wind resistance for a second, a penny dropped from the top of it would hit the ground in about 8.8 seconds, that’s reaching a speed of 280 ft per second, that’s not particularly fast. Like a low powered hand gun, a 22 or a 25. A pennies about the same mass as a bullet but the bullet is going between 800 and 1100 ft per second and on top of this the penny is flat so it’s going to be tumbling and there’s wind resistance so by time it hits the ground it’s only going about 65 miles an hour. A penny wouldn’t go through anyone’s head or crack the sidewalk, it would barely break the skin.. In order to kill somebody you’d have to drop something bullet shaped like a pen or a bullet but this is just in the interest of science
I don’t suggest you do it or maybe I do, all I know is I’m not walking under there.
This is Theme Time Radio Hour reminding you that he that goes a borrowin goes a sorrowin. When a man is twenty years old he wants to save the world, when he’s forty he’s lucky if he can save his salary. It’s hard to hold on to money, some people try anything to get their hands on some. Papa Jackson has a plan, he recorded this in 19and34 on the Vocallion label. If you listen, it’s a very unusual instrument he’s playing. It’s kind of half banjo, half guitar. It’s a 6 string instrument tuned and fingered like a guitar but with a banjo body so it has that trebley banjo sound but there’s more notes available. Papa Jackson was a much in demand side band played with Freddy Kippert and his jazz cardinals, Johnny Dodds, Tommy Parm, Kidd Orrey and number of other folks. He was one of the first self-accompanied blues singers to record and we’re going to hear him in that context today.
Here’s Papa Charlie Jackson, ‘You Put It In, I’ll Take It Out’.
# 3
That was Papa Charlie Jackson and ‘You Put it in and I’ll take it out’. Papa Charlie was one of the creators of hokum, a spicy form of popular song that was chock full of double entendres. His most famous composition was ‘Shake That Thing’. He also played with Ma Rainey and Etta Cox. He died in 1938 and unlike some other guys from that time, he’s not been rediscovered. It’s a shame cuz he made some great records. I almost think we play too much Van Morrison, then I play one of his records and I think No, we don’t. Here’s one that Van recorded in 1970 from his album His Band and Street Choir, he’s gonna tell you all about the ‘Blue Money’.
# 4
That was Van Morrison and ‘Blue Money’. Only two places I’ve found blue money are a Terry Southern novel and on a Monopoly board. Monopoly was a game that has its roots in the 1800’s, a woman by the name of Elizabeth Magi created a game called the landlord’s game. It showed you how to be a landlord, to become rich by buying property, it was actually educational. It was used in a number of colleges, students were able to see the ins and outs of property taxes, mortgages and interest rates. As people started using it, they started making personal copies, naming the properties after local streets and landmarks. Charles Darrow made a version using local streets like Boardwalk and Marvin Gardens.
He brought it to Parker Brothers and after a few tries, he got them to accept it. Well, you all know the rest. It became one of the most popular games in the world. Don’t worry, they paid a royalty to Elizabeth Magi for every one sold. Darrow became a multi-millionaire, he retired at the age of 46, became a gentleman farmer, a world traveler and a collector of exotic orchids. The game Monopoly was so strongly identified with capitalism that it was once banned in Russia and China and is outlawed in North Korea and Cuba to this day.
Well from Blue Money to Greenbacks. Here’s a record from 19and57 on the Atlantic label, when it was still a yellow and black label, before it went to the red and black that you see more usually. There’s a great baritone sax solo on this record, it’s probably Howard Cooper, and you can almost hear him stepping back into the reed section to blend back in at the end of his solo. I always like to give you a little something to listen to in a song, I find it makes you listen to the whole thing more carefully. Here’s Ray Charles and ‘Greenbacks’.
# 5
That was ‘Greenbacks’ by Ray Charles. Ok, so it’s not really chlorophyll, but why was money green? Well, when the small currency notes were first introduced in 19and29, the bureau of engraving and printing used green ink, there were a lot of reasons for this. That color ink was readily available, the color was high in resistance to chemical and physical changes, the public identified the color green with the strong and stable credit of the government, and perhaps most importantly photography was developed in the mid-1800’s, if you kept the currency black and white it was easy to counterfeit so they had to add a tint and they went with green.
Now if you listen to the show regularly you know that quite often I’ll give you a list of all the slang terms for the subject. You might notice I didn’t do that this week, that’s because Mel Blanc beat me to it, here’s Mel, the voice of Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, with a regularly recorded for the Capitol label. It was written by fellow capitalist recording artist Stan Freeberg and just like this week’s show, it’s called ‘Money’.
# 6
There’s a man who knows what he wants, Mel Blanc, talking about money. Mel mentions a double eagle in that song, you won’t believe how much one of those is worth. I’ll tell you about it a little later in the show, in the meantime, here’s a couple interesting facts about money. Only the front of a dollar bill is valuable, if you were able to separate the front of the bill from the back only the front would be considered money, the back would be just paper. How much does a million dollars weigh? You’ve seen actors in movies make million dollar payoffs, is that possible with that little satchel? Well, here’s some information, since there are 490 hundred notes in a pound, if you use one dollar bills it would weigh over a ton, but who would make a payoff like that? If you use hundred dollar bills it would come in at a tidy 20.4 pounds, easily done. And finally, coins with ridges were originally made with precious metals, they put the ridges there so they could tell if people were filing away at the precious metal. The United States quarter has 119 grooves on it’s circumference, a dime, a thin sliver of silver, has 118 grooves and the Kennedy half dollar 150. Most US coins were made of silver, not all of them, the double eagle for example, was made of gold. Right now Buddy and Ella Johnson are going to tell you about the Gold. This is one of their early tracks, more of a big band sound than their later R&B numbers but that’s just splittin hairs. Here they are on the Decca recording label ‘It’s the Gold’.
# 7
That was Buddy and Ella Johnson here on Theme Time Radio Hour where I’ve got a dollar in my pocket. We just heard It’s the Gold and one place it was definitely the gold was the Republic of South Africa. Stefanous Johann Polis Kruger was a prominent Boer resistance leader and eventually the fifth and last president of the old south African republic. The krugerrand is a gold coin that was named after him, it was introduced in 1970 and became the world’s first gold bullion coin. More than 54 million of them been circulated the worldwide. They were almost pure gold, having only a tiny amount of copper to give it stability. In 1985, President Reagan signed an executive order banning the import of krugerands as a protest against south Africa’s racially separate policy of apartheid. The Canadian gold bullion maple leaf coin quickly moved in to fill the void. The Krugerrand never made a comeback, even after the sanctions were lifted in 19and92. Ronald Reagan, friend of the black man, striking a blow for world justice. While we’re on the subject of gold, Nic Jones was part of the British folk revival, played guitar and the fiddle and his album of 19and80 Penguin Eggs was named folk album of the year by Melody Maker. Turned out to be his last new recording, two years later he was in a car crash, critically injured and forced to retire from performing. Here’s Nic Jones and ‘Farewell to the Gold’.
# 9
That was Farewell to the Gold by Nic Jones, a song that was actually written by Paul Metzers, who said this about the origin of the song. “There’s no mystery source for it, no distant broadside or doggerel from where it gains it’s inspiration, it all came out of my head as it happens. I was reading the small but fascinating book called the Gold(Goat?) Fields of Central (L)Oratago when I read of the tragic flash flood of July of 63, 1863. I knew I had the basis of a story, I invented a young man who teams up with an equally imaginary experienced old prospector who I called Jimmy Williams, who had dreams of riches to come. Jimmy is lost to the sudden waters while the youngster survives to tell the tale, that’s it.” Well, thanks Paul, you took all the mystery out of it.
The year this record came out the guy singin it had four songs in the Country top 10. That was a record that was never broken, though the Beatles had five in the Pop category in 19and64. Lefty Frizzell was a very popular singer and deservedly so, at one point Lefty joined the Grand Ole Opry but decided he didn’t like it and left almost immediately. It was the Opry’s loss because he was one of the finest singers in country music. Lefty’s gonna tell you about his baby, she’s just like money, money goes from hand to hand and his baby goes from man to man. Tell us about it, Lefty.
# 10
40:05 That was one of the true honky tonk heroes, Lefty Frizzell and my baby’s just like money. If your baby goes from hand to hand perhaps she suffers from nymphomania. Nymphomania is not a scientifically meaningful term. The concept of nymphomania was first laid out, if you’ll pardon the expression, by the French physician McVeal in his 1771 treatise ‘Nymphomania’. Among the behaviors cited as conducive: dwelling on impure thoughts, reading novels, eating too much chocolate or indulging in secret pollutions. Alfred Kinsey, the sexual pioneer of lewdness, said that terms like nymphomania had no scientific basis. He said, “a nymphomaniac is just someone who has more sex than you do, the grass is always greener.”
This is Theme Time Radio Hour and we’re talking all about Money. It seems like whenever you talk about money the phones light up, let’s see what we got.
Hello, caller, you’re on the air.
Holla, Bob, soy Antonio Hernandez y estoya mondo de
Guadalajara, Mexico.
OK, Antonio, como te puedo olvidar (ayudar).
Oy en Estadus Unidos y yo quiero sabir quantos pesos en un dollar.
Poy Antonio como siempre vi es peso por un dolar.
entonces es como quienentos pesos for cincuenta dolares, no?
si, si claro.
bueno, bueno
Ojala que todo esta bien.
Si, muchas gracias.
gracias por la llamada
Bob, my este un favor, no puedes tocar, como se dice, Amigo Hombre?
Amigo Hombre? you mean Buddy Guy?
Si, si – Buddy Guy
Ok, Antonio, aqui esta, Buddy Guy – Amigo Hombre
# 11
That was Buddy Guy, or as they call him south of the border, Amigo Hombre and Hundred Dollar Bill. A song that sounds a little bit like Barrett Strom’s Money. Not enough to get sued, I guess.
The almighty hundred, some people know it as a C note, other people know it as a Benjamin. P Diddy, Lil Kim, the lox and the notorious big are going to tell you all about it. ‘It’s All About the Benjamins, Baby.”
# 12
That was a whole bunch of folks but mostly Sean Puffy P Diddy Combs, number one mogul, clothes designer, media star and entrepreneur telling you all about the Benjamins.
Here are some other famous Benjamin’s: there’s Benjamin Disraeli, the British statesmen. I’m pretty sure I heard a verse in there about Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States. I know they mentioned patriarch Benjamin the First, who was the patriarch of Constantinople. Pope Benjamin II, St. Benjamin who was an early 5th century martyr in Persia, we celebrate his feast day on March 30th. There’s Arthur Benjamin, Ashe Benjamin a Confederate politician, Duder P Benjamin, Richard Benjamin, Ben Stiller, and of course Ben Cartwright, patriarch of the Ponderosa, all of them famous Benjamin’s.
The Clovers helped build Atlantic records. A lot of doowop bands only had one or two hits but the Clovers hit the national charts 21 times. It’s because of them we have the familiar sound of the saxophone solo on vocal group records. You see what happened was back Feb 22nd, 19and51 tenor saxophonist Frank Floorshow Cutty brought his band into the Atlantic studios to back the Clovers. Well, Ahmet Ertegun only wanted to use the rhythm section, Frank knew if he didn’t play he wasn’t going to get paid. Ahmet said to him, “Now listen, man, if I pay you, you’re going to play.” So play he did and it was the first saxophone solo on a vocal group record. It reached # 1 and the boot and tenor solo was the mainstay of vocal group records ever since. Here’s one of their best remembered songs, from 19and54, the Clovers and ‘Your Cash Ain’t Nothin But Trash.’
# 12
That was the Clovers and ‘Your Cash Ain’t Nothin But Trash.’ When money gets worn out they shred it and these shredded notes are sent to landfills or sometimes put in little plastic baggies and given as souvenirs when you visit the federal reserve bank. On the average a dollar bill lasts for 21 months, a five, they wear out the quickest, only lasting 16 months. A ten dollar bill can last a year and a half, whereas a twenty hangs in there for two years. A fifty is good for 55 months and a hundred dollar bill makes it’s rounds for 89 months before it hits the shredder.
Well, when it’s all said and done, no matter how much money you have it don’t matter when you go cuz you can’t take it with you. Here’s a guy named Jesse Price, he’s a drummer from Memphis, Tennessee, migrated to Los Angeles, played with all the greats Basie, Stan Kenton, Louis Armstrong, Slim Gaillard and a number of others. Put out a few records on his own though, mostly in the Rhythm &Blues arena, and this one seems very appropriate to end our money show with, ‘You Can’t Take It With You When You Go’, here’s Jesse Price.
# 13
That was Jesse Price, You Can’t Take It With You. And one reason you can’t take it with you is because it usually leaves before you do. You know I’m lookin in my bag of records and I brought too many again, I’m the victim of bad planning. Ah well, I’ve always been bad with money. There’s just too many songs to fit into a single hour and there’s no reason for us to cut fiscal corners, I mean Hell, we did two shows about birds last year, we can do two about money. So next week we’ll dig back into our pockets and continue our look at filthy lucher, join us again in a short seven days as we present part two of our look at the almighty dollar. Two shows about money, it makes good sense. See you next week.