So, as we near the end of the WMMCM Car Bizarre marathon we have given a bit of thought to the kind of car that we want to drive. We can’t just drive any old thing that could be found at your local street corner dirt lot, could we? We want a car with some style, some class, lots of power and it really needs to be something that you just don’t see everyday.
What could be more cool than Johnny Cash building the automotive wonder that we want to ride in?
A couple of guys wanting a Cadillac is not unusual. Bringing the car home in your lunchbox over a period of twenty five years, well that’s some serious effort.
Written by Wayne Kemp, “One Piece At A Time” was to be Johnny Cash’s last number one hit on the country charts although Johnny kept recording for the rest of his life returning for the final time with his amazing cover of Nine Inch Nails “Hurt.”
A Pontiac Trans Am was about the coolest thing a dude could have for a short while, and Sammy got his tribute in early, in 1979. The song is a bit dated even for its day, heavy on Brit-metal stylings in both vocal and guitar that hark back* to the other end of the decade, but nobody ever accused Sammy of being an innovator.
This is a tribute to a low-slung black Trans Am — they were always black — with a custom “I EAT Z28″ plate and “horsepower overload.” And Sammy details the car’s gifts decisively: From Daytona Beach
Down to Riverside
If there’s a race
She’s qualified.
And he challenges (repeatedly): Come on, catch me if you can
In my Trans Am
Highway wonderland
Trans Am, Trans Am, Trans Am
He sure is fond of his car. And they were great-looking cars, although by ’81 or so the black Trans Am had begun to get that poseur whiffiness about it. But ’79 was still the glory days, and Sammy’s just diggin’ his cool machine.
But then there’s this: She shines on the street
And she shines at the heat
And she shines in my baby’s eyes
So Sammy is gazing into his girlfriend’s eyes, and what he sees to admires there is the reflection of his car. This is not just automotive affection we have here — it’s true love.
And, because we missed a day earlier this month, here’s an extra to make it truly 31 car songs in 31 days: “Stick Shift” from the Trashmen, best known for “Surfin’ Bird.” The Duals did this first, but the Trashmen did it better.
*No, not “hearken back.” To hearken is to listen. You can either hearken or you can hark back, but you can’t hearken back.
This song has been recorded by dozens of country artists over the years, and by Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers on the pop side. (That would probably qualify more strictly as “classic rock” than the Elvis version, but it honestly isn’t very good.)
It is not a subtle record, and, with the lyrics so overwrought, some good singers have done the vocal very straight and let the story carry it. Merle Haggard’s approach, for example, is positively dignified.
But that is not Elvis’ style. After the arrangement kicks off with a suggestion of church bells, he milks this morality tale for all of its considerable dramatic potential. But the emotional attack, while it displays a good selection of Elvis’ considerable stock of vocal tics, stays just on the right side of cheesy.
It is, of course, the story of a young man left behind by his girlfriend, who’s gone off to fulfill those bright lights, big city ambitions with her wealthy pals. But now she’s come home:
Now everyone is watching,
You finally got your dream,
For you’re riding in a long black limousine.
But, sadly, his girl can’t enjoy the ride, having been lured into excess and indiscretion:
All the papers told of how you lost your life,
Of the party, and that fatal crash that night,
‘Bout the race upon the highway,
And that curve you didn’t see,
And now you’re riding in a long black limousine.
Yes, she’s finally got a ride in a chauffeured limo, and her rich pals have turned out for the processions, but it is too late for her, and for the boy back home, who declares,
I’ll never love another,
‘Cause my heart and my every dream,
Ride with you in that long black limousine
I’m not sure a hearse technically qualifies as a limo, but the point is nonetheless made: Better a small town and a boy who loves you than the fast, short life of a girl in the big city (though, to be fair, many women have recorded this too).
Elvis’s heavily gospel-influenced approach, complete with choral backup, is not the most obvious choice for what is essentially a pure-twang country tune, but it turns out “Long Black Limousine” fits just fine into a gospel box.
In the beginning there was a guy. When this guy wanted to get a guitar to play some music because he didn’t have a guitar, he needed a car to get to where the guitars were. (We are assuming that public transportation was not available and the trains were just too darn fast to run and jump on to take a ride to the big city where the guitars live).
So, either way, you need a car.
Now once you have made your way to where the guitars are and saved your pennies to buy the guitar, then you need to learn how to play the thing so you can make some money to buy the car that your best buddy that you don’t really like, (but hey, he does have a car…), drove you to the city to buy the thing with….
Are we clear?
After you devote the next few years of your life learning to play the guitar that you got with your buddy’s car that you wanted to buy but couldn’t because you spent all your money on the guitar to get the money for the car, if your really good and start to make some money…
Then you can buy A Cadillac!!!
Cadillac!
The mark of success in the world. There has never been a Cadillac that didn’t mean power, prestige, importance and just coolness… (As long as you just block the Cimarron from your mind that is…)
Sorry, I had to show it…
Now in “Look At That Cadillac” Brian Setzer and the Stray Cats are talking about the real thing. Four miles long with a hot tub in the trunk just because you can- kind of Cadillac. Chrome everywhere with fins so tall they might just take your arm off like the Mad Magazine cartoons said they would.
A great bit of rockabilly heaven here with the Stray Cats guys singing about the ultimate coolness of riding up in a Cadillac “tank”.
That’s right folks. Built like a tank, drives like a tank and eats gas like a tank. That’s part of the fun of owning one. Setzer’s showy guitars and the simple bass and drum combo works wonders for the feel of this car classic.
“I gotta get a cadillac, Look at that cadillac, look at that
Look at that cadillac, look at that
Rock and rolling down the avenue, I’m gonna get me a cadillac too
If it’s the last thing I do!”
And today’s entry in the last full week of our monthlong auto race is a deeply dumb but very entertaining tune from the band that practically defines the term cheese metal: It’s Foghat, and “Chevrolet.”
Even if this one’s new to you, you can likely place it easily in the mid-’70s (it’s from 1976). The a cappella opening is a bit Zeppelinesque and reflects the blues obsession many Brit bands were still hanging on to in those days, but the Foghat dudes soon start running this bluesy melody through a nice metal filter.
Lyrically, it seems to be a raunchy play on the old “Hush Little Baby” American folk tune, with offers of gifties of various types in return for “some of your love” (as opposed to just being quiet already). The words aren’t much, but they do illustrate a nice sort of headbanging cluelessness about how to make one’s romantic case (a baldly offered Chevy is not going to do it, dude, much less a watch).
But what this is, really, is an excuse for Rod Price to step up front with the guitar. The guitar is the first instrument to kick in, fuzzing in alongside the bam-bam-bamming drums, and the first break’s about a minute in. But the really nice solo is in the long bout of grand metal shreddage that comes up at 1:40.
It doesn’t mean a thing, but it’s great fun. In other words, vintage Foghat.
When rock n’ roll was young and developing what it might be and where it might go Chuck Berry was one of the first real stars. With his breakout hit “Maybelline,” Berry was a true pioneer in the long process of melding rhythm and blues with gospel and country sounds that eventually became what we now know as rock music.
First hitting the charts in 1955 with his cover of the country standard “Ida Red” which had morphed into“Maybelline,” (with some stylistic help along the way from Bob Wills), Berry had broken out with hits like “Rock And Roll Music,” “Roll Over Beethoven” and“Johnny B. Goode.”
In 1964 after a well publicized break from music, Berry returned with one of my favorite songs,
Coming out in 64′ “No Particular Place To Go” sounds out of date. It was in fact but it didn’t really matter as Berry’s music had been re-popularized during his absence by both the Rolling Stones with their cover of “Come On” and The Beatles with “Rock And Roll Music” and “Roll Over Beethoven.” So when Berry returned it didn’t take him long to be back on the charts with “No Particular Place To Go, “Nadine” and “You Can Never Tell” but music was changing far to rapidly for Berry to keep in style, ironically being left behind musically by the two major acts that had allowed his all to brief comeback.
“No Particular Place To Go” is a fun romp with all the things one would expect from a three chord, 12 bar blues package. All the stops are there for the vocal to jump out at you and the story is just fun.
“So we parked way out on the Kokomo, The night was young and the moon was bold,
So we both decided to take a stroll, Can you imagine the way I felt?
I couldn’t unfasten her safety belt! “
“Ridin’ along in my calaboose, still tryin’ to get her belt unloose,
All the way home I held a grudge, But the safety belt, it wouldn’t budge.”
For this Sunday’s WMMCM car marathon it’s only fitting that we break format a bit in celebration of the induction of the Inaugural Class to NASCAR’s Hall Of Fame.
The original song, “The Ride” was written by country wild man David Allen Coe originally as a tribute to music legend Hank Williams. Keith Bryant rewrote the song as a tribute to NASCAR’s “Man In Black” shortly after his death on the track, adding a bit more to outsized story of the driver who took the race series to heights of popularity never anticipated by it’s founders.
Here’s the original David Allen Coe song with a nice photo montage of “The Intimidator.”
Dale Earnhardt, “The Intimidator” was one of the most polarizing figures to ever get behind the wheel of a NASCAR stock car. Even today nearly a decade after his death on the track at the 2001 Daytona 500′s last lap his presence and influence is still felt at every race and event. The number “3″ flags, jackets, hats and pretty much every other item you could imagine, (and some you would never have thought of), are still in sight any direction you may wander while at a race.
A seven time Champion matching only “The King,” Richard Petty, Earnhardt’s induction was a forgone conclusion. Joining NASCAR founder Bill France Sr, Richard Petty, Bill France Jr, and Junior Johnson, the Inaugural Class is truly a portrait of five men who built a sport up from small local dirt tracks to today’s mega-tracks that hold over a hundred thousand fans thirty six weekends during the year.
Whether you are a race fan or not, these five men, (and others who will undoubtedly be joining future classes), are owed some respect for creating a truly American spectacle.
I hesitated, in our month-long festival of car songs, to include Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac” because it’s not actually about a car. But is an extended, car-derived metaphor, and a rather unusual one at that — it’s rare for a car to serve as a metaphor for female sexuality. (Although whoever wrote Aretha Franklin’s “Freeway of Love” had exactly the same idea.)
It’s a terrific record in the tradition of radio-friendly rock ‘n’ roll raunch, but there was a reason Bruce initially didn’t want women to sing it. That Natalie Cole had a hit with her washed-out and now extremely dated version is only further proof that not enough people pay attention to the words.
And they’re fine words, uncharacteristically playful for post-’70s Bruce, but in 1984 he had not yet completed his mutation into the total drag that he has since become. (Why does everybody think they have to be so damn sincere? It’s only rock ‘n’ roll, as the least sincere of rock stars sang about a thousand years ago.)
The lyrics of “Pink Cadillac” are, in fact, so neatly assembled that they’re a little tough to excerpt. Not particularly female-friendly, for all that, but a testament to the enduring power of sex appeal:
Well, baby, you know you bug me,
There ain’t no secret ’bout that,
But come on over here and love me,
Baby, I’ll spill the facts,
Well, honey, it ain’t your money,
‘Cause I got plenty of that,
I love you for your pink Cadillac
For those who still insist that it’s about a car, the lines around which the song was reportedly built: They say Eve tempted Adam with an apple,
But man, I ain’t goin’ for that,
I know it was her pink Cadillac…
The analogy gets a bit overworked in the last verse, which I won’t quote, but it’s all in good fun and this is a fine old-fashioned, CCR-style dirty boogie. I’m not a big Bruce fan, at least of anything he’s done in the last couple of decades, but this is a charmer and hard to resist.
Here’s an alternative version — complete with a rather nifty computer-animated video — by someone who, though past his vocal prime, is in his element on this one.
