TGIF! Let's have some DEATH: Running Bear - Johnny Preston

It's Friday and you know what that means! Somebody's gotta die! Musically!

Today we have the drowned love of Running Bear and Little White Dove. This sweeping tale of young Indian Braves, rivers, and minor racial insensitivity was sung by Johnny Preston in 1959. The track was written by The Big Bopper, who had discovered Johnny playing in his band The Shades a few years prior.

There are two things in particular I like about this song. First: I love the belchingly bassy 'hoomba-doomkas' that underpin the verses, and how they collide into the far more traditional rock and roll choruses. It's a meeting of cultures! At least I'm sure that's how they pitched it back in 1959. Definitely.

Secondly, I like the song's Wikipedia entry. It has a plot breakdown that looks like a paragraph out of a book report. It tickles me that someone took the time to get that specific and still have it read like something a twelve year old pulled out of CliffsNotes.

So! Happy Friday! Memento Mori! HOOMBA-DOOMKA-HOOMBA-DOOMKA.

Donna Summer Dies At Age 63

The Queen of Disco, Donna Summer, has died at the age of 63.

Summer defined the sound of disco, becoming especially well known for her erotically charged performances and recordings. The BBC famously banned her 1975 hit Love to Love You Baby from the airwaves for its intense aural-gasms and because it was just too damn FUNKY (probably). They went so far as to count the number of orgasms (for Science of course) and found that there were twenty three  instances of ladies having too much passion in their lives. Scandalous.

This was of course just in the five minute radio edit. The album included a seventeen minute disco sexathon (before you ask- YES I've tried counting the orgasms in this version, the jury's still out) which we present to you in celebration of The First Lady of Love.

Donald 'Duck' Dunn Passes Away, 1941-2012

Donald 'Duck' Dunn passed away yesterday (May 13th) in his sleep after finishing a double show in Tokyo. Duck was one of the most influential soul and R&B bass players in the history of pop music. He played on an enormous range of Stax records releases throughout the sixties and seventies including Albert King's 'Born Under a Bad Sign,' Otis Redding's 'Respect,' and most famously as part of the organ fried Booker T. & the M.G.'s. While he joined the M.G.'s after the release of their well known song 'Green Onions,' he helped define the bumping and shaking instrumental grooves the band would go on to explore, creating rhythms still built upon and sampled to this day.

Duck, nicknamed after Donald Duck by his father when he was a kid, was a largely self taught bass player. Rather than take lessons or learn specific lines to practice he would play along with records and fill in what he felt was the missing sound in the rhythm. As a result his playing is a relatively unique mixture of fluid lines, hard jazz and grooving funk that fills in the melody of a song as much as it provides a rhythm. It never draws too much attention to itself, but creates a fuller and richer sound for the song over all- the mark of a truly great bass line and player.

We've pulled out a triple bill song selection to celebrate Duck and his contribution to pop music.

The first is the title track from Melting Pot, Booker T. and the M.G.'s 1970 instrumental R&B opus.

Next the final track of McLemore Avenue,  the four part instrumental reworking of The Beatles Abbey Road. The track comprises of a medley of Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window and I Want You (She's So Heavy).

And finally from the soundtrack to Michel Gondry's 2008 film Be Kind Rewind, a rendition of standard I Ain't Got Nobody which reunited him with M.G. members Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper and Al Jackson Jr.