5 facts about 5
songs . . .
Rewatching The
Blues Brothers (the first film, not the sequel, which was nowhere as good) with
Kate, I started wondering what the words of the first number – She Caught the
Katy – meant. So I looked it up and am
sharing it with you below. It also
touched off an idea to do a 5 x 5 on numbers
from The Blues Brothers film. The
problem is that there are more than 5 numbers worth “fiving” so there will be
two bursts
She Caught the
Katy:
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She Caught the
Katy is a blues standard written by American blues musician and songwriter Taj
Mahal, and James Rachell. The song was
first recorded for Taj Mahal's 1968 album The Natch'l Blues, and is one of
Mahal's most famous tunes.
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The song plays over the opening credits of The
Blues Brothers, as Jake Blues leaves prison.
Blues Brothers version:
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The Katy
referred to is The MKT, or Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, commonly
known as "The Katy". It's been known as the M-K-T since it was spun
off and renamed from the Union Pacific Railway Southern Branch in 1870. An express train called the Katy Flyer was
inaugurated in 1933 with service from Parsons, Kansas to St. Louis. This could
be the "Katy" in the song.
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According to
John Belushi's widow, it was Belushi's favorite blues song.
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Being a blues
song, it carries the common theme of a man losing his woman, she getting a fast
train away, the Katy.
According to the
lyrics, “She took the Katy and left me a mule to ride.”
The mule is The
Kansas City Mule, a train running from St Louis to Kansas City.
The Kansas City
Mule and St. Louis Mule were a pair of 283-mile (455 km) passenger trains
operated by Amtrak running between St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri as part
of the Missouri Service train network. Also operating over this route was the
Ann Rutledge, which originated in Chicago. In January 2009, Amtrak consolidated
these trains under the name Missouri River Runner.
Everybody Needs
Somebody:
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See and hear the
Blues Brothers version:
Elwood Blues:
We're so glad to
see so many of you lovely people here tonight. And we would especially like to
welcome all the representatives of Illinois's law enforcement community that
have chosen to join us here in the Palace Hotel Ballroom at this time. We
certainly hope you all enjoy the show. And remember, people, that no matter who
you are and what you do to live, thrive and survive, there're still some things
that makes us all the same. You. Me. Them. Everybody. Everybody.
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Written by Bert Berns,
Solomon Burke and Jerry Wexler, originally recorded by Solomon Burke in 1964
and peaked at number 58. Also record by Wilson
Pickett , The Jerry Garcia Band, The Rolling Stones and The Blues Brothers.
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In 1989 it was
released as a single in the UK, backed by Think and it peaked at
#12.
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After performing
this at the concert after Elwood’s intro, Jake and Elwood are pursued by police,
The Good Ol’ Boys and Illinois Nazis in a high speed pursuit. During the chase the police dispatcher announces
to the pursuing police cars “Use of unnecessary violence in apprehension of the
Blues Brothers…has been approved”.
A world record
103 cars were wrecked during filming. The Junkman (1982) broke the record 2
years later, wrecking 150 cars and a plane. That record held for 2 decades,
until over 300 cars were wrecked during the filming of The Matrix Reloaded
(2003).
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Hear and see The
Rolling Stones version, with a very young Mick Jagger, at:
This is their into:
I'm so glad to be here tonight and I'm so glad
to be home
And I believe I've got a message for every woman and every man
Here tonight that ever needed somebody to love
Someone to stay with them all the time
When they're Up and when they're down
You know, sometimes you get what you want
And then you go and lose what you have
And I believe every woman and every man here tonight listen to my song
And it save the whole world
Listen to me
Sweet Home Chicago:
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See and hear the version from
The Blues Brothers film:
Never realised Dan Akroyd could move that well.
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Sweet Home
Chicago is a blues standard first recorded by Robert Johnson in 1936.
Although he is often credited as the songwriter, several songs have been
identified as precedents. The song has become a popular anthem for the city of
Chicago despite ambiguity in Johnson's original lyrics. Numerous artists have
interpreted the song in a variety of styles.
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Johnson was the
great Mississippi bluesman who was reputed to have sold his soul to the devil at
a local crossroads to achieve musical success. That is reference in O Brother Where
Art Thou? He is now recognised as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta
blues style. Johnson died in 1938, after
someone apparently slipped strychnine into his whiskey.
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Johns had only
one moderate hit song during his lifetime (Terraplane Blues), but, after
Columbia Records released a collection of his recordings, King of the Delta
Blues (1961), the man and his music both achieved near-mythic status. Columbia
later issued the box set Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings (1990).
Johnson was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in its inaugural class (1980),
and he became a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
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The version from
The Blues Brothers adopts a version that follows Sykes' version, substituting "back to the same old
place" for the more confusing "back to the land of California."
Come on
Oh baby don't
you wanna go
Come on
Oh baby don't
you wanna go
Back to that
same old place
Sweet home
Chicago
Come on
Baby don't you
wanna go
Hidehey
Baby dont you
wanna go
Back to that
same old place
Oh sweet home
Chicago
Well, one and
one is two
Six and two is
eight
Come on baby
don't ya make me late
Hidehey
Baby dont you
wanna go
Back to that
same old place
Sweet home
Chicago
Come on
Baby don't you
wanna go
Back to that
same old place
Sweet home
Chicago
Six and three is
nine
Nine and nine is
eighteen
Look there…
Peter Gunn Theme
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Peter
Gunn is the theme music composed by Henry Mancini for the television show
of the same name.
Peter Gunn was
an American private eye television series, starring Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn
with Lola Albright as his girlfriend Edie Hart, which aired on NBC from
September 22, 1958, to 1960 and on ABC
in 1960–1961.
The series is
probably best remembered today for its music, including the iconic Peter
Gunn Theme, which was nominated for an Emmy Award and two Grammys for
Henry Mancini and subsequently has been performed and recorded by many jazz,
rock, and blues musicians.
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In his 1989
autobiography Did They Mention the Music? Mancini states:
The Peter Gunn
title theme actually derives more from rock and roll than from jazz. I used
guitar and piano in unison, playing what is known in music as an ostinato,
which means obstinate. It was sustained throughout the piece, giving it a
sinister effect, with some frightened saxophone sounds and some shouting brass.
The piece has one chord throughout and a super-simple top line.
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In addition to
the many different arrangements of the Peter Gunn theme recorded by
Mancini, the music has also been recorded by numerous other artists.
Guitarist Duane
Eddy reached number six on the UK Singles Chart and number 27 on the Billboard
Hot 100 in 1959.
There is an
Australian connection to the Duane Eddy hit. From Songfacts:
Duane Eddy
recalled to Mojo magazine November 2010 why he decided to cover this song:
"We were
doing the second album, Especially For You. (Saxophonist) Steve Douglas said,
'Duane, I learnt Peter Gunn last night.' I said, 'Well, that's nice.' He
thought it'd just be good as an album cut but I didn't think so. So we forgot
about it and we got 11 or 12 songs done. Lee and me were sitting there
discussing what we could do and Steve wandered over and said, 'We could do
Peter Gunn.' I thought, 'What the heck! It's only an album cut.' So we figured
out the intro, then the riff, and we cut it. It became a single because
somebody in Australia in the record company took it from the album and it got
to #3. Somebody in England noticed that so they released it as a single. It got
to the top of the charts. Finally, Jamie noticed this and said, 'Maybe we
should make this a single in the US.' So that's how Peter Gunn came to
be."
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Here is the link
for The Blues Brothers film version:
The original
Blues Brothers Band many years later in a live performance:
Minnie the
Moocher:
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Hear and see the
Cab Calloway performance in The Blue Brothers at the following link:
Calloway was
born in 1907, acted and sang in The Blues Brothers film in 1980, which resulted
in renewed interest in his career, and died in 1994. His CV is to long to mention, it includes a
lengthy stint at The Cotton Club, being taught to sing scat by Louis Armstrong (watch
the above clip to see him doing so) and singing for Al Capone and other
mobsters.
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Minnie the
Moocher was first recorded in 1931 by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, selling
over a million copies. In performances, as
in the above BB clip, Calloway would have the audience and the band members
participate by repeating each scat phrase in a form of call and response, until
making it too fast and complicated for the audience to replicate it.
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Minnie the
Moocher was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and in 2019
was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry as
"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the
Library of Congress. It has been argued that the record was the first jazz
record to sell a million copies.
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The
"hi-de-ho" scat lyrics came about when Calloway forgot the lyrics to
the song one night during a live radio concert.
When Cab
Calloway originally recorded Minnie The Moocher in the 1930s, the
chorus lyrics were simply "Ho-dee-hody" rather than the lengthened
"Hody-hody-hody ho". In an interview, Calloway explained that one
time when he was singing the song, he suddenly forgot the words, so he
immediately shouted "Hody-Hody-Hody-ho!", and carried on the song
that way. That proved to be more popular with fans than the original, so he had
been singing it that way ever since.
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The November 22,
1951 issue of Jet magazine gives this account of the "Minnie" on whom
the song was based:
Minnie "The
Moocher" has died. She was a familiar figure In downtown Indianapolis. An
82-year-old woman whose real name was Minnie Gayton, she acquired the quaint
nickname of "The Moocher" by regularly begging food from grocers and
carting it off in a baby buggy. She slept in doorways, on porches and in
garages. During the record-breaking blizzard, her body was found on a porch,
blanketed with snow. She died from exposure.[
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Bonus item:
In the 1935 Marx
Brothers' film A Night at the Opera, Groucho Marx famously quipped,
"You're willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing?
Why, you can get a phonograph record of 'Minnie the Moocher' for 75 cents. And
for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie."
