It’s a Groove Thang

Back in the ’80s, I used to play in blues and R&B bands, at least until I got tired of making no money. I surrendered to the zeitgeist, and started playing whitebread pop covers soon after. Happy Hour shite. I was instantly swimming in money and free beer and chicks, of course, but I still can’t hear three or four bars of a Beach Boys song without breaking out in hives. I specified three or four bars because that’s all I ever hear, before I plunge whatever’s making Beach Boys noises into the nearest tub full of water. This has led to problems when it’s a live band. Whatever. They all have it coming.

Da blues was really popular in the ’80s. Well, sorta. There was a lot of it, performed mostly in front of next to nobody. In the bar band world, the dividing line between straight blues and R&B was pretty much erased. I played electric bass, so I actually had something to occupy myself during R&B songs. The grooves were heavy on bass and drums.

We used to mine a weird little store that sold ’45 records used to load jukeboxes. It was cheaper to buy singles than whole albums when all you needed was an individual, audience-recognizable track. The original records were twenty or thirty years old already, and sometimes hard to lay your hands on back then. We were in cover bands, so we never played anything obscure, so the juke box guy always had what we were looking for.

This, I believe, is the granddaddy of all R&B groove thangs from that milieu. The Rosetta Stone of the genre. Junior Walker:

That’s James Jamerson playing the bass on the record. He’s in low earth orbit compared to the intergalactic stuff he played on later records. You could do worse than to learn Jamerson bass lines. He’s ranked Numero Uno on Bass Player Magazine’s 100 Greatest Bass Players list. Hmm. That’s news to me. Not that he’s number one. I’d rank him 1-10, and start the rest of the list on 11, but that’s just me. I’m only expressing surprise that a magazine thought bass players could read. And there are more than 100? I could barely play the thing, and I always worked. I thought there were only like forty of us.

Shotgun is about the first song I can remember learning on the drums, too. Big right foot, there. Of course the guitar part was also seminal. Learn that sharp 9, shangalang chord and you’re ready for bidness. It’s fun to watch Junior Walker sing and play, or at least mime Shotgun in that video. He was on Motown, and they were still in their Andy Williams sweater and business suit mode back in the early sixties. Everybody Frug!

It’s amusing to read that Junior was just supposed to play saxophone on the record, but the singer that Berry Gordy hired didn’t show up to the session. Junior offered to sing it to supply a reference track they could record over later. They liked it so much they released it that way. It was a big hit. Number One on the R&B singles chart, #4 on the Billboard chart.

People still recognize this song. They put it in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002. However, V-neck sweaters and skinny ties no longer need apply, I gather. Look what someone recently did with Shotgun using AI animation. Alice From the Hood Pulp Fiction Grand Theft Auto Wire in Wonderland:

Yikes. Hey, getting back to playing in front of nobody, the song made it all the way to RomCom movies in Norway. Let’s watch Public Enemies have a frosty go at it:

The song itself is truly a groove. There are essentially no chord changes. It’s all based on rhythms. James Brown would perfect this approach shortly after this. Lots of other musical people (who could afford the whole albums) mined the groove thang for their own sound back in the ’80s too:

So Shotgun was the Ur-Groove-Song for me, and I suspect plenty of other musicians. Not just Norwegians, either. That is, at least until Wilson Pickett showed up with this:

Lawd have mercy.

Sing Flat, Look Sharp

Texas Troubadours, indeed. Plenty of heavy hitters in that band. But Buddy Emmons, holy shit. Ernie Tubb was an impresario. If you’re a musician, you might be familiar with this sort of fellow. You can’t quite put your finger on their talent. Can’t really sing or play well enough to stand out. Not exactly Cary Grantish either.

Tubb was not known to possess the most adept voice: he always sang flat and actually mocked his own singing. He told an interviewer that 95% of the men in bars would hear his music on the juke box and say to their girlfriends, “I can sing better than him,” and Tubb added they would be right.

But somehow or another they end up with ten guys with way more talent working for them. I guess that’s the talent. Getting the gigs is the supreme skill. And a lot of those kinds of guys turn a taciturn, smiling face to the public, but are slightly more, ahem, serious in their private affairs.

In 1957, he walked into the lobby of the National Life Building in Nashville in the early morning hours and fired a .357 magnum, intending to shoot music producer Jim Denny. Instead, Tubb mistakenly shot at WSM news director, Bill Williams, as he was walking in to work. Luckily, Tubb barely missed (twice) before realizing he had shot at the wrong man. He was arrested and charged with public drunkenness.

Ernie Tubb is one of those guys that becomes larger than life. A country Santa Claus. I swear he was born looking fifty-five years old, but in return, the heavens decreed he would never look much older, either. He appeared on the Grand Ole Opry long after he had the chart hits to make it inevitable. He set up shop down the street with an eponymous record store, and hosted his own show, the Midnite Jamboree, right from the middle of the record stacks.

People just liked him. Sometimes it’s a simple as that.

Rag Rug Eclectic

The String Cheese Incident performing on Austin City Limits, I do believe. That was a good show to watch when you were a musician and got up late the morning after a gig. The video is 18 years old. The performance might be even older, who knows? Useful information is in short supply on ToYoube, generally.

That’s some fonkee whathaveyou. There’s some fun George Bensoning about four minutes in. The guy is a terrific player, and nice, relaxed singer, ain’t he? Audiences are unduly impressed when guitarists scat sing along with their solos. I was never much of a guitar player, but I’ve always found it harder not to grunt along with solos than to shut the hell up. I’ve found that it’s deuced difficult to sing scat while playing the trombone, though. Almost as difficult as playing cello in a marching band.

Dude’s got a beautiful guitar, too. I can’t pinpoint the maker. It’s koa wood, semi-hollowbody, and looks like it’s a short scale. Such questions vex me. The drummer is lefty, which also always freaks me out to watch. If you really need some disorienting drumming, you can watch old Fabulous Thunderbirds videos. Fran Christina is left-handed, but plays what’s called open grip, I think. He plays a right-handed set, but hits the hi-hat with his left hand, and the snare with his right. He was one of several Rhode Island guys that ended up in Austin.

The String Cheese Incident is still touring around, if you’re interested. I gather many people are. They’re from a genre I call Rag Rug Eclectic. Whenever I see bare feet and grandma’s carpets on the stage, I know I’m gonna get Jazz Odyssey or Groove Thang Omnibus or Whipping Post Deluxe or Grateful Dead Gloss, only longer. It’s generally just good time music for leisure spots like ski areas, beaches, festivoos, and multi-level marketing conventions. I’ve played all those places back when I was a musician. We were never that successful, however, because our grandma had tile floors, and we had to wear shoes.