Walk The Dog
Rufus Thomas was an iconic performer who quite literally did it all—his career straddled all the major musical forms that emanated from Memphis between the 1930s and the 1970s. He toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels in the 1930s, he was an early DJ at the first black radio station (WDIA) in the 1950s, and he holds the distinction for charting the very first hits for both Sun Records and Stax. Thomas recorded “Walking The Dog” for Stax in 1963, though our version owes a big debt of gratitude to the arrangement played by Ramblin’ Steve Gardner and the Jericho Road Show/Jake Leg Stompers boys. Hats off to Rufus Thomas for giving us the most modern song in our repertoire.
Everybody Does It Now
Recording on Columbia Records alongside the better known Bessie Smith, little is known about Martha Copeland outside of her recording career. She started with OKeh in 1923 and appeared in the vaudeville review Shuffle Along. Vera heard Abigail Washburn do a version of this song and fell in love with it; this is in fact one of the earliest numbers in the Side Street Steppers repertoire. It is also one of two Martha Copeland songs that we do—you can find I Ain’t Your Hen, Mr. Fly Rooster on our debut album, Memphis Stomp.
Why Don't You Do Right?
This is one of those perfect songs with a distinguished blues & jazz provenance—originally recorded by the Harlem Hamfats as “Weed Smoker’s Dream” in 1936, Hamfats band member “Kansas” Joe McCoy later re-wrote the song with new lyrics as “Why Don’t You Do Right?” It was recorded in 1941 by Lil Green with Big Bill Broonzy on guitar. The next year, 1942, saw Peggy Lee and Benny Goodman recording it as a million record seller. Our original washboard player, Emily Breckenridge, found it through the Jessica Rabbit (Amy Irving) version in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and thus it entered the Side Street Steppers repertoire. From the blues to jazz to modern American pop culture, ladies and gentlemen!
If It Don't Fit Don't Force It
Barrelhouse Annie recorded this and other bawdy blues in a single session in 1937. There has been speculation that Annie was in fact Paramount house pianist Aletha Dickerson, but Dickerson herself denied this, stating, “I do not recall anyone named Barrelhouse Annie.” So it’s a mystery, but what a perfectly saucy song to lend the title track and cover image for this record!
All Of Me
This 1931 song by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons has become a jazz standard, being one of the most recorded songs of its era. Originally recorded by Ruth Etting (“America’s Sweetheart of Song”) in December 1931, notable versions have been done by Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Washington, and the list just goes on and on. Ruth Etting, it might be noted, was married to the notorious gangster Martin “Moe the Gimp” Snyder, and if you ever want a good story, read up on the history of that relationship—not to spoil the ending, but let’s just say there was a kidnapping and a big shooting scene followed by several sensational trials. Less sensational is the story of how this song entered our repertoire—when Chris Ruppenthal (the special guest guitarist on our Sweetest Peaches record) would come to town for his annual visit, he and Nathan Breckenridge (our original bass player) would always noodle around on this song. I had not yet learned many jazz chords or progressions, so I go Chris to show me how to play it and suddenly we were a jazz band!
I'll Fly Away
Nobody really remembers where we first found this song or when the Steppers started playing it, but one thing is certain—this 1929 hymn by Albert E. Brumley is one of the most widely recognized gospel songs in existence. I do remember the Kossoy Sisters 1956 version being a stand out track in the Coen Brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou? Wherever we found it, it is a crowd favorite at Steppers shows and it is always the big sing-along number, and hopefully redeems us somewhat from all the sinful material we sing about. Lord help us to get right!
Jug Band Blues
I owe a big debt of gratitude (and possibly some money, now that I think about it…) to blues mandolinist Rich DelGrosso. He has been both a personal inspiration and a guide through the original blues mandolin repertoire of the 1920s and ‘30s. His book Mandolin Blues: From Memphis to Maxwell Street has now provided transcriptions for two of my own recordings—“Dallas Rag” on Memphis Stomp, and this piece here, which I am calling “Jug Band Blues”. Rich originally transcribed this as a representative sampling of blues playing in the style of Vol Stevens, who played mandolin for the Memphis Jug Band.
I Want To Be Bad
I found a neat little piece of sheet music for Vera on a trip I took to Michigan a couple years ago—it was called “There’s A Little Bit Of Bad In Every Good Little Girl”, and of course that’s Vera in a nutshell. The current Helen Kane number, “I Want To Be Bad”, is more in the same vein, and bookends nicely with the rendition of Kane’s “I Wanna Be Loved By You” that we put on the Sweetest Peaches record. This song is from the musical Follow Thru, which also yielded another gem in “Button Up Your Overcoat”—you can look for that one on the next Steppers record.
Ukulele Lady
Who doesn’t love Hawaiian music?!? This 1925 song by Gus Kahn and Richard A. Whiting became a popular standard, and was originally recorded by Vaughn de Leath, who was also known as “the first lady of radio”. This track features the return of our extra-special guest guitarist Chris Ruppenthal, who over the past year has gone totally wacko for Hawaiian music and now plays Hawaiian steel guitar. Oh, and by the way, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy did a fabulous rendition of this song in the second season of the Muppet Show, which you can easily find on YouTube.
Bill Bailey
This fine Dixieland jazz standard was brought to the band’s attention by Mandy, who remembered it from the movie Corrina Corrina. I’m glad she did, because I had been wanting to add another traditional New Orleans jazz tune to the set. It gives me the opportunity to do one of those snappy Dixieland banjo banjo breaks, which is always a big hit at live shows, and I do so love getting to do pieces on the tenor banjo—this helps to justify my continuing to purchase tenor banjos, which is something of a problem, to be frank. If any of you out there are looking to unload any Bacon & Day Silver Bell tenor or plectrum banjos from the 1920s or ‘30s, I’m the guy to call…
Summertime
I notice that I have been using the word “standard” a lot in these liner notes, and it’s true that the band’s repertoire has progressed more into the jazz realm over the past few records. The hokum and jug band material is still there, but we do love all that jazz, ladies & gents! One reason for this is that we are playing for a lot more swing dances these days—and one thing swing dancers love is a slow, steamy, sultry number to slip into after an arduous set of fox trots and Charlestons. Enter our lone Gershwin piece, from the American opera Porgy & Bess—Summertime. Vera sings this number like she was born to the part, which is rather fitting as it is an ode to her favorite season.
New Rubbin' On That Darned Old Thing
Speaking of Hokum, here’s a good ol’ naughty number for you—though it’s really about getting clean, not dirty, if you take it at face value! Oscar’s Chicago Swingers were led by “Lovin’ Sam” Thread, and Sam played with some cats in his time—his very first sessions were accompanied by Tampa Red and Cow Cow Davenport, two of the giants of the field. In an interesting footnote to history, the Grateful Dead adapted this tune as their song The Rub. Sam Thread was originally from New Orleans, though he ended his days in Los Angeles, California, where had roles in a few Hollywood TV productions in the 1970s.
If You Want Me To Love You
The Asylum Street Spankers were pretty much the goal to which we aspired when we first started the Side Street Steppers six years ago—well, maybe a cross between them and the Jake Leg Stompers. At any rate, there was once a song that the Spankers did that Vera was sure they had naughtied the lyrics up a bit, but when she heard the Lucille Bogan original she realized that if anything, the Spankers had toned it down! Not so much the case with this version of If You Want Me To Love You as compared to the Georgia Tom & Tampa Red original, but this song has been a big late-night crowd pleaser for us, and we’ve had numerous requests to record it, so here it is. I’d like to add that one of the best moments of my musical career occurred at a Folk Alliance conference in Memphis a few years back, when Guy Forsythe came to our showcase and told me that even though the Spankers were winding down and getting off the road, the baton had been passed and he felt like the music was in good hands with us.
Five Foot Two
The first (and so far only) festival headlining spot we’ve been able to land was the 2014 Banjo Rally International in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. This is a four-string banjo event, folks, and Dixieland bands predominate. To beef up our Dixieland repertoire for the festival, we added this number, though I play it on jazz guitar rather than banjo. Five Foot Two was written in 1914, which blissfully places this song in the public domain.
Wayward Gal Blues
This song is by Lottie Kimbrough, “the Kansas City Butterball”, one of the handful of recorded female country blues artists in the 1920s. You just gotta love the male/female yodeling duet in the chorus—they just don’t make music like this anymore. We found the song via the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who do a pretty nice version themselves.
Let's Get Drunk Again
Bo Carter recorded some of the funniest double entendre blues and hokum numbers in the 1920s and ‘30s. His real name was Armenter Chatmon, and he was a member of the musical Chatmon family from the Jackson, Mississippi region—notably, with his brothers Lonnie and Sam and their friend Walter Vincent, they formed the Mississippi Sheiks, one of the most highly regarded black string bands of the era. We found this song via a Roy Bookbinder and Fats Kaplan record, Git-Fiddle Shuffle on Blue Goose 2018.
