3 Chords & the Truth

Well, maybe I am.

Then again, I put in a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears into production of this here show, this 3 Chords & the Truth thingamajig, so why shouldn't I jive you if I feel like it?

So I hope you enjoy the 90-minute program I've prepared this week on Tibetan throat singing and "the romantic zither" of Ruth Welcome. Naaaaaw . . . I'm just jivin' you!

See, there you go.

THAT'S CORRECT, after putting in the work and summoning the creativity necessary to conjure up each new episode of the Big Show -- and let's not even think of the Herculean effort that is saying something pithily original about the program every week, week after week, month after month, year after year -- I reserve the right to mess with your mind.

The show is free on the Internets but, no, there is no free lunch. Particularly since the "sequester" went into effect in Washington. So here's the deal: You get the best in freeform musical programming; I get to screw with your head.

Sound fair? Who cares?

YOU SEE, that Ruth Welcome album, The Romantic Zither, is on the shelf at the local Goodwill, and I am not afraid to pay the 99 cents.

Naaaaaw . . . I'm just jivin' you!

Or am I? Listen to the show and find out.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

This episode of 3 Chords & the Truth has a theme song.

I stole it from a TV show of my youth, The Partridge Family, which was the Hollywood version of the Cowsills, sans the abusive father. Because that's how we illicitly roll on the Big Show.

I blame bad parenting; your mileage, as always, may vary.

Here it is:

Hello, world, here the song that we're singin',
C'mon get happy!

A whole lot of lovin' is what we'll be bringin',
We'll make you happy!
We had a dream, we'd go travelin' together,
We'd spread a little lovin' then we'd keep movin' on.
Somethin' always happens whenever we're together,
We get a happy feelin' when we're singing a song.
Trav'lin' along there's a song that we're singin',
C'mon get happy!

A whole lot of lovin' is what we'll be bringin',
We'll make you happy!
We'll make you happy!
We'll make you happy!

-- Words and music by Wes Farrell and Danny Janssen

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

It's May. It feels like February -- and looks it, too.

This is no way to run a springtime.

What do you do when you're tired of something, but that something's the weather -- which you cannot change?

There's nothing left but to abide, dude. In the face of crappy, unchangeable weather . . . the dude abides.

Like Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski, whadda ya gonna do, man?

WELL, I'd suggest what I'm doing this week -- and every week on 3 Chords & the Truth. That would be listening to some tasty tunes. Lots of luscious jazz and pop, for starters.

Maaan.

To ease your stress level, we've been digging through the laid-back music section of the Big Show archives. You wouldn't believe the great stuff in there. Well . . . maybe you would if you're a regular 3 Chords & the Truth listener, man.

Like, just listen to the show, man. It'll put a smile on your face -- even if the weather is crappy, and it seems to be staying that way.

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Riddle me this.

Tell me the truth.

What can this mean on 3 Chords & the Truth?

"Carry your fear on the radio because your baby is gone."

The mystery is deep.

The show is long.

Thank God the Big Show is known for fine song(s).

Does this make sense? Not a whole lot.

But I'm pretty sleep-deprived, so this is what you've got.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Somewhere in America today, there is a little girl blue.

You see, when someone asked her "Do you remember rock 'n' roll radio?" she realized that, no, she did not. Truth be told, she barely remembered radio at all.

Her parents, engrossed in the latest episode of 3 Chords & the Truth -- a most excellent podcast, by the way -- said that rock 'n' roll radio hadn't mattered, hadn't really mattered, since the end . . . the end of the century. Maybe the end . . . the end of the '70s.

For some reason, this left the child on needles and pins. She knew that her parents, despite their advanced age, were barely old enough to remember this thing -- was it on television?-- called Hullabaloo.

Upbeat, Shindig and Ed Sullivan, too.

But they remember rock 'n' roll radio.

YES, they remember rock 'n' roll radio. Country, jazz and easy-listening radio, too. Were they anything like that Hullabaloo? Wow. Rock 'n' roll radio. It must have shone brighter than the California sun.

The folks told her radio was a lot like 3 Chords & the Truth is today. In other words, a really Big Show, only back at the end of the century. Back at the end -- the end of the '70s.

But then the country took a swing to the right, and Mom and Dad said it was like everybody just put their teeth up on the windowsill after moving into a one-room country shack. And not even Mr. President has pity on the working man -- unemployed DJs, for instance.

It's all in the game, apparently.

Everybody wants you to pay them their money down. This has caused many to have almost lost their mind in the still of the night. After hearing her parents bare a piece of their hearts, the little girl blue wished she could bring Murray the K and Alan Freed to show and tell.

But she learned the two great DJs were not on Broadway, but instead were long cold, cold, cold in the ground. I don't know about you, but I go to pieces just thinking about it. Mercy, mercy.

THEN the little girl blue thought that, perhaps, she could bring the Big Show to show and tell. That's as close to rock 'n' roll radio you can get now, the folks say. And it makes them feel so young! They dream of lying in bed, with their covers pulled up over their head. Radio playin' so no one could see.

Yes, she thought, we need change, we need it fast. Before rock's just part of the past.

Yes, she thought, she will bring 3 Chords & the Truth to show and tell. She'll rock it like it's the end, the end of the century. Like it's the end, the end of the '70s.

Mom and Dad, she realized, are pretty smart. So's the Big Show.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

This week's show is not about chickens.

On the other hand, the music on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is so good that it just might cockle your doodle do. That's a funny, boy! I say . . . I say, I made a funny! What's wrong with you, boy! Cat got your sense of humor!

I say, that's another funny, boy!

SORRY, the weather's been so bad this week, we're all a little loopy.

So, on the Big Show, we decided to have a little dance party to cheer ourselves up. But you'd better be versatile if you want to join in -- just a word to the wise.

And we're also going to have the mother of all Beatles-covers sets. Really, you'll want to hear this.

Other than that, I got nothing else to add -- other than a giant rooster.

That is all.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

And we're back . . .

This is the first new 3 Chords & the Truth episode since January, when the Big Show was being produced on an old PC that went BRRRRRRRT -- no, Beano isn't for electronics, alas -- in an overcrowded studio that really needed a facelift. So, it got a facelift.

And a new iMac. With new software.

And some paint.

And a lot of uncluttering.

And we're feeling groovy now.

YES, LIFE ON the Big Show front is good, and so is the music. Well, that's one thing that didn't change -- the good music.

It would have been a bloody shame to do all that remodeling work for the sake of sucky tunes.

Am I making any sense here? Exhaustion, don't you know?

So check out this brand-new episode of our studio-fresh music extravaganza while I enjoy the new digs here. And maybe take a nap.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

This week on Four Songs: five songs. It was necessary, one of the songs is by John Denver, and a "make good" was in order.

IN MY DEFENSE, I didn't pick the music. That was done according to what was hot with the record-buying public . . . in April 1975. Unfortunately, John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" was big back then.

Unsurprisingly, I would have picked differently. But they don't let 14-year-old kids program Top-40 radio stations, and that's how old I was when this episode of Four Songs was done. Live. Through the facilities of the Big 91, WLCS radio in Baton Rouge, La.

In all its amplitude-modulated glory.

And glorious it was. So glorious that I was sitting at the kitchen table, early the morning of April 17, 1975, with my portable reel-to-reel tape recorder patched into the earphone jack of my clock radio to preserve a piece of WLCS forever.

It was a Thursday. Gary King was the morning man.

WLCS was one of Baton Rouge's two Top-40 blowtorches. Radio 13 -- WIBR -- was the other. 'IBR had some great jocks, and a friend of mine even was a part-timer there when I was in high school . . . but I was an 'LCS man.

No offense to WIBR.

Of course, by 1976, I was firmly in the camp of Loose Radio (WFMF during its album-oriented rock salad days). But I'll always love Double-U ELLLLLLL CEE Ess . . . even though it died in 1983, a few months after I married a KOIL woman from Omaha.

And if you're under, say, 30, you're not getting this conversation at all, are you?

LET ME EXPLAIN. Once upon a time, there was this thing called radio -- AM radio -- and we listened to it on "transistors," which were like iPods, only affordable. And better.

An iPod only can bring you the few hundred songs you load into it after illegally downloading them off the Internet or legally buying them on iTunes. But a transistor radio, that could bring you the world, baby.

All for free. And without the threat of a lawsuit by the music cops.

The world first came to my bedroom on a transistor radio tuned to WLCS. I also could tune in the whole wide world on WIBR, or maybe WTIX in New Orleans -- and sometimes KAAY through the ether from Little Rock at night -- but I mostly dug those rhythm and blues . . . and rock 'n' roll . . . and countrypolitan . . . and a bit of ring-a-ding-ding, too, on the Big 91.

What it was, was the breadth of American popular culture at my fingertips. And British Invasion, too.

Never was education so fun. I turned on the radio just to listen to some tunes, and I found myself under the spell of a thousand different tutors -- friendly voices from morning to overnight -- playing for me the breadth of musical expression . . . or at least the musical expression that charted well. It is because of 'LCS, 'IBR, 'TIX (and later, 'FMF) that this Catholic Boy has catholic tastes.

Your iPod is cool and all, but it can't do that.

SEE, THE DEAL IS that I can't repay the debt I owe to WLCS, for one. I can't repay the debt I owe to Gary King, that friendly morning voice on this episode of Four Songs.

For a spell there, King's was the voice I woke up to, got ready for school to and ate breakfast to. He played the hits and told me what the weather was outside, and Gene Perry gave the news at the top and bottom of the hour.

Back in the day, radio was a well-rounded affair.

King's also was the friendly voice that answered the studio line when an awkward teen-ager in junior-high hell would call to request a song. And his was the friendly voice that would take time to chat for a bit when that kid -- or his mother -- sometimes thought he had nothing better to do . . . like put on a morning show.

I didn't know it then, and Gary King (real name: Gary Cox) probably didn't know it, either, but what he was doing was being Christ, in a sense, to a lonely kid and his -- come to think of it -- lonely mother. I shudder to think what one of today's "morning zoo" shows would do with rich material like me and Mama.

That is, if they answered the studio line at all.

Via the AM airwaves, I made a human connection with WLCS and Gary King. I needed that. We all need that. And you can't get that from your iPod, though some of us will try to give it, because you have to work with what you have.

BEFORE APRIL 1975 was done, Gary King was gone. He originally was from Kentucky, and one day the call came from WAKY, the Top-40 powerhouse in Louisville that Gary grew up listening to.

On his last show, Gary's ending bit was "convincing" Gene Perry that he could catch a bullet in his teeth if the newsman would just help him out on the gun end. It didn't work as planned . . . which means it worked perfectly in radio's "theater of the mind."

I think I shed a tear or two.

And a couple of years later, I was learning the ropes at WBRH, Baton Rouge High's student-run FM station. And 33 years later -- after various pit stops on the air and hot off the press -- here we are at Revolution 21, trying to figure out what "radio" will be in this new millennium . . . right here on the Internet.

Thanks, Gary. I can't repay you in full, but maybe this will make a nice down payment.

Here's another special audio presentation: A bit of nostalgia recorded off the TV in the early '70s in Baton Rouge.

I remembered this recording when I heard of the death of Jules d'Hemecourt, a journalism professor when I was in school at LSU . . . and the man behind "The Cajun 12 Days of Christmas" when he was news director at Channel 33 in Baton Rouge.

This must have been recorded by me, off the air, sometime around Christmas 1973. Maybe '74. D'Hemecourt, who also was the Channel 33 news anchor at the time, introduces the recording on a holiday newscast.

Back in the day.

Enjoy.

Here's a special audio presentation -- don't worry, the podcast will post as usual Friday -- from Revolution 21. I thought you just might want to hear this . . . a ghost in the machine, as it were.

What it is, is a recording of legendary Alabama radio host Joe Rumore from Oct. 28, 1949 on WVOK, Birmingham. And it's an extraordinary look back 58 years across the tidal wave of change and cultural revolution that radically transformed America.

It's a look at who we used to be, and at a kinder, more gentle and humane era of broadcasting that -- to today's ears -- sounds like a just-received transmission across many light-years of interstellar space from a star system far, far away.

You can read more about it on "Revolution 21's Blog for the People" at http://revolution-21.blogspot.com/2007/03/way-we-were-1949.html.

Enjoy.