Thanks Fayetteville Flyer!

Thanks to the folks at The Fayetteville Flyer for adding this blog to the Flyer Blogfolio. If you wander here from over there, please drop me a note. I'm still messing around with the format, and since I can't find a way to caption it I'll jsut tell you here that the picture at the top of the page is Windy Austin and Jojo Thompson playing the same piano at the Library Club, around 1988. The picture at the bottom is Don Tyson bringing Jojo a drink around the same time. I'm working on a post about early 1960s Northwest Arkansas/Tulsa based record label Cimarron Records, and I'm amazed that I haven't posted anything about the amazing Avett Brothers show here in Iowa city last month. And my band played a show too...more on all this later.

I promise I'll do a free music Friday this week. Until then, give the Stompers a listen below.

Free Music Friday: Blue Boy Orlis & The Stompers: Same Old Man

Hi Folks

Since the recordings from the last two weeks were from Orlis' archive, I decided to put up some of his music this week. This is called Same Old Man, and it's the song I always want to use when I introduce the Stompers to people. it was the the first song we recorded when we set up the four track at the Peace & Justice Center in 1993. It was January of 1993 in fact, and listening to it I'm remembering doing alot of playing and recording in that building with only a little wood stove for heat. Anyway, here's the track:



And, you can take one home, here. Creative Commons license, you can have it, just don't sell it.

Credits: Orlis: vocals and guitar. Levi Williams: bass, mouth harp, vocal. Mark Mcgee: harmonica, sandpaper blocks. Chris Moody: banjo, saw. Eric (who usually played bass) vocal. Brian Petty: vocal. Cori Teeple: vocal. Stomper engineered by Lvi, Chris and Eric.

let me know what you think!

Free Music Friday: Kiwi at the Library Club, I Am the Walrus

Kiwi, at the Library Club 1981. The song is a full-on, over the top cover of "I am The Walrus" by two (three?) musicians, an excerpt from a sociomusical relic, a cassette recording called Kiwi's Last Stand. Lead singer Tommy Elskes is still playing in Texas (*update, no, the google is telling me something about Colorado and now New Orleans...) He's put out a couple of albums and there are videos on Youtube to be found. I think that Kiwi was from Texas and moved up to Fayetteville, or played in Fayetteville alot in the 1970s. Beyond that I don't know much and would be grateful to hear more in comments.




* note this recording is also thanks to Orlis! Download link at here.

Test: Jojo Thompson in Cybersapce

Alright folks,

I'm going to start putting songs up here, and I think I figured out how.

I'm hoping to generate some conversations about the music that I'm listening to, mostly related to my project on Northwest Arkansas. So let me know what you think.

Here's a test: It's Jojo Thompson, playing at his own birthday party at the American Legion Hall in Fayetteville, Arkansas, sometime in the late 1980s or very early 1990s. The recording is from Orlis, Thanks!



Update: by the way, most of what's going up here is going to be stored at
the internet archive, that's where the player is from, and where I can I'll put links up like this one.

Update #2: That's Jojo playing piano and having a drink served to him by Don Tyson at the Library Club in the picture at the bottom of this page, by the way.

I salute You, Brother.

when I met my friend Billy in 1985 he had a cassette tape of the Jim Carroll Band playing this song, "It's Too Late" on Fridays. he'd recorded it by holding his cassette player up to the TV speaker. That cassette was/is like a holy relic to us, or at least to me and I think to him. Despite what some might think, it isn't any less so because can go fetch the audio and video from all three songs that Jim and his band played that night, and stick them up here. That's what we wanted, after all, and that wanting, to hear this throbbing, snarling, slashing performance at will, is what made that cassette so special.

Jim Carroll died yesterday. I suppose that it's a wonder he made it to 60, but it's still sad. I've seen "People Who died" posted alot, but thanks to my friend Billy, this song has always been the one I remembered from the performance on Fridays that we'd both seen at the same time in different places. "Day and Night" from the Fridays show is up on Youtube as well, and it's also a great performance. There are also some homemade videos from Dry Dreams, the Jim Carroll band's second and I think best LP.

I'll post something tomorrow so this doesn't just turn into the RIP blog.

Keeping the Zebra Ranch Going.

I was searching out blog remembrances of Jim Dickinson, when I came across this. It's from Mary Lindsay Dickinson via Robert Gordon via Paul Duane via Joe Nick Patoski:

"People have been asking me what they could do to help us. I didn't know what to say until yesterday when I woke up with Jim's voice in my head, saying as he often did, "I am never insulted by money." This fits into Cody and Luther's plan for the Zebra Ranch Studio, which is to continue to record there with the benefit of Jim's sonic genius and musical ambiance.

If people want to participate in keeping Jim Dickinson's dream alive, they can donate to friendsofjimdickinson@gmail.com through paypal or mail to
Mary Dickinson
P.O. Box 1015
Coldwater, MS 38618

Please help us spread the word that the Zebra Ranch studio is always open
for business, either as a rental or with the addition of Cody as producer,
Luther as guitarist and aesthetic consultant,and Jim smiling down on us from Heaven."

If you know anywhere this information should be posted, post it. World Boogie is Coming.



Damn right it's coming. And, I'll have that other post up soon--Jim generated some amazing memorials, befitting the work that he did.

I'm just dead, I'm not gone: James Luther Dickinson 11/15/41 to 08/15/09

(L-R: Lee Baker, Jim Dickinson, Sid Selvidge, Jimmy Crosthwait, photo by William Eggleston)


The first time I heard the album Dixie Fried and really heard it was late at night in the Record Exchange in the Boardwalk at the top of Dickson street. Subsequently, every time I listen to something from the body of work that flows back to Jim Dickinson, it's with the awareness that I'm in danger of having my mind blown. That album was a hard record to find then, and for years it was just a tape of that and a copy of the even-more obscure Beale Street Saturday Night audio collage that represented, for me, a great pronouncement of how to do and feel and be with music, how to stare down history and have a damn good time doing it. Except that "staring down history" doesn't really get at the incredible warmth in his music, and saying that it represented (made real) in musical praxis the real possibilities of southern collectivism after the 1960s sounds too heavy, but that's what it did. For years, when he wasn't making records, we still knew he was down there, in North Mississippi, just south of Memphis. Thinking he might hear it was a good reason to keep making music.

Dixie Fried was re-released on CD a few years ago, and it's been kind of odd to see copies of this former talisman on sale for $8.99 on Ebay. Odd, but not bad at all since it also came with a veritable flood of new material, 4 new music records, a spoken word album, albums with and by his sons, Cody and Luther, all since 2002. I was really getting used to living in a world where James Luther Dickinson not only was around, but was making records, making lots of records, and playing music. I'll miss that. Condolences to the Dickinson Family and friends, and thanks to Jim for the music.

L-R: Jim, Luther, Cody, and Mary Dickinson
photo by Annie liebowitz