By Tony Attwood
Previously in this series
- 1: Happy 20th anniversary, Theme Time Radio Hour. Still offering us fun
- 2: Mother
- 3: Drinking
- 4: Coffee
- 5: Jail
- 6: Father
Now I may be the odd one out here, revealing vast amounts of ignorance as I write, but a lot of the songs that Bob chose in the “Theme Time” are indeed songs I didn’t know before his show came along. Maybe I have a bit of an excuse in being English, given that for many years we didn’t have a choice of radio stations that enabled us to choose the music we liked. Or maybe I don’t know nearly as much about the history of popular music as I thought when I started this story. Bob certainly has phenomenal knowledge.
Either way, when I come to each new episode of Bob’s radio series, I find there are songs I don’t know, and so in desperation, I flip down to find something I do know and feel I can write a few words about.
From this episode’s list, I find “Get Me to the Church on Time” as the one I know. But fortunately, there is a second issue I can indulge in within virtually every episode and that is the finding of a song with a crazy name. And this time we get “The Man Who Wrote ‘Home Sweet Home’ Never Was A Married Man” by Charlie Poole. Quite remarkably, (in my view anyway) this was composed in 1908 by a woman: Fleta Jan Brown
And I just have to lead with that…
This is such an amazing find I really have to include the lyrics….
Man gets up early in the morn, leaves his wife in bed, She lies there as the kids wake up and cry, "Get up and cook some bread!" Let me tell you a thing or two, that a woman like that Won't never do: And the man that wrote the Home Sweet Home Never was a married man. He never had no loving wife To greet him with a frying pan. She'll meet you at the door when you go to come in And knock you down with a rolling pin, And the man that wrote the Home Sweet Home Never was a married man. Man comes in at dinner-time Hungry and he wants to eat, Finds his wife piled up in the bed Lying there sound asleep. He gets so mad that he tears his hair Swears and declares that he won't stay there: Man comes in from work at night And he goes to bed; Baby lying there in the cradle Screaming loud enough to wake the dead; He'll sit and he'll rock for about an hour And never a hand to help prepare:
Not amazing music, I must admit, but amazing lyrics and amazing concept; it is just so funny.
I suppose I am influenced by the fact that if I start thinking about marriage songs, the first piece that comes to mind is “Get me to the church on time” which Bob does include in the show by Rosemary Clooney. It comes from 1956 so I guess I heard it aged about nine or ten. I think I wondered who Pete was
If you feel so inclined, do listen to what the band does after each line that Ms Clooney sings; this is an arranger both on the top of his game, but also able to incorporate what people expect. That combination of saxophone “commentary” after the first line (which does crop up several times) is a repeated moment of genius.
But I do like music that links back to the old music. This is Dave Edmunds….
Dave Edmunds was always one of my favourite performers – and I did meet him a couple of times and was able to thank him for the fun he’d brought into my life. If you remember his music, you might recall “Girls Talk” And Goodness knows how many times I played this track – it was good to hear it again today.
But one of the great things about Bob’s selections is just how varied they are. This is Johnny Tyler & His Riders of the Rio Grande recorded in 1948. What a great name for a band!
And one of the things to note here is that this is just another variation on the old 12 bar blues, but they make it sound like something quite different.
And just to contrast with that Bob also gave us “Married Woman” – an absolutely straight 12 bar blues (with the second line a repeat of the first line) by Big Joe Turner, recorded in 1974.
Bob’s final selection was “Where Were You (On Our Wedding Day)” by Lloyd Price from 1959, which was an interesting choice since the next episode of Theme Time Radio Hour turned out to be on Divorce.
Lloyd Price became known as “Mr Personality” not because he was particularly blessed in that regard, but because in 1959 he had a million-selling hit called “Personality” which is rather a clever way to get a nickname. This is the Lloyd Price version…
I’ll have a bash at finding some of the recordings Bob played in the next episode, in a week or so.