Rob explores R&B stars Brandy and Monica’s legendary duet “The Boy Is Mine” by discussing the extent to which the two singers’ purported feud was true and how, regardless of its legitimacy, it shaped a compelling narrative around the song.
This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music.
Affordable and quality childcare services are rare, sometimes costing as much as public university tuition. But this is not a new issue and has been challenging the industry before the pandemic.
Reset brings on a reporter to talk more about how childcare services and providers are doing as the world slowly opens back up.
Wednesday will be President Biden's first meeting with one of America's greatest adversaries. Drawing a contrast with his predecessor is the least of what the commander-in-chief hopes to accomplish when he sits down with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly is covering the summit in Geneva, where she spoke to former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul about what the U.S. could expect to gain from negotiations.
The IRS is a broken agency with a poor record of giving advice and securing data about taxpayers. Joe Biden wants the agency to get bigger and stronger. Andrew Moylan of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation comments.
with special guest Aaron Rabinowitz! You know him from Embrace the Void and Philosophers in Space, but today he's here to philosophize at us. A paper on pointlessness was published in the first issue of the Journal of Controversial ideas. How good is it? How controversial? Find out!
The question of digital currencies is a question of power. On today’s episode, NLW explores that power in multiple dimensions: between states, between states and companies and within states with regard to their citizens.
NLW looks at recent regulatory announcements, including:
The SEC leaving crypto off its regulatory priorities list
A House hearing on the digital dollar
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This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021. Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast. If you want to get those, and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com/andrewhickey to sign up for a dollar a month or more.
Click below for the transcript.
In this week's main episode, we're taking our first trip to Jamaica, and having our first look at ska music. But of course, ska wasn't the only music to come out of the Caribbean, and calypso music had already had a great impact on the wider music world. Today we're going to look at a major R&B hit from 1963 that had its roots in a calypso song from decades earlier. We're going to look at the career of the great Trinidadian Calypsonian Roaring Lion, and the tragic story of Jimmy Soul, and "If You Wanna Be Happy":
[Excerpt: Jimmy Soul, "If You Wanna Be Happy"]
Jimmy Soul started his career as a gospel singer, but was signed to SPQR Records with a specific mandate -- sometimes Frank Guida, the producer for Gary "US" Bonds' hits, would come up with something that Bonds didn't want to record. When that happened, Soul got to sing them instead. This meant that Soul would often get saddled with novelty songs, like his first hit, "Twistin' Matilda", which managed to make number twenty-two in the charts:
[Excerpt: Jimmy Soul, "Twistin' Matilda"]
That was originally a Calypso song from the 1930s, and had been a hit for Harry Belafonte a few years earlier, in a non-Twist version. Soul recorded a follow-up, “When Matilda Comes Back”, but that had no success:
[Excerpt: Jimmy Soul, “When Matilda Comes Back”]
So they tried to repeat the formula, with was another 1930s calypso song that Bonds had rejected, this time a remake of a song from 1933, originally written and performed by the great Calypsonian Roaring Lion.
Roaring Lion was one of the most important Calypsonians of the pre-war era, and wrote many classics of the genre, including his paeans to other singers like "The Four Mills Brothers":
[Excerpt: Roaring Lion, "The Four Mills Brothers"]
and "Bing Crosby":
[Excerpt: Roaring Lion, "Bing Crosby"]
Those of you who know Van Dyke Parks' album of calypso covers, Discover America, will probably recognise both those songs.
"Ugly Woman" was another song by Roaring Lion, and it advised men to marry ugly women rather than beautiful ones, because an ugly woman was more likely to stay with her husband:
[Excerpt: Roaring Lion, "Ugly Woman"]
History does not relate what Mrs. Lion thought of that advice.
Jimmy Soul's version, retitled "If You Wanna Be Happy", credited three writers along with Roaring Lion -- Frank Guida, Carmella Guida, and Joseph Royster -- though the song has very little difference from the original:
[Excerpt: Jimmy Soul, "If You Wanna Be Happy"]
The main difference between Soul's record and the original was a brief dialogue at the end, presumably included to give the other writers some reason for their credit:
[Excerpt: Jimmy Soul, "If You Wanna Be Happy"]
That dialogue was largely inspired by Bo Diddley's earlier "Say Man":
[Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Say Man"]
"If You Wanna Be Happy" made number one on the Billboard charts, and made the top forty in the UK, where it was also covered by an instrumental group, Peter B's Looners:
[Excerpt: Peter B's Looners, "If You Wanna Be Happy"]
That group, with the addition of vocalists Beryl Marsden and Rod Stewart, would later morph into Shotgun Express, before the guitarist and drummer went on to form a blues band, and we'll be hearing more about Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood in a year or so.
While "If You Wanna Be Happy" made number one, the follow-up was less successful, and I'm not going to excerpt it here. I did excerpt Wynonie Harris' "Bloodshot Eyes" in the main podcast, and had to think long and hard about including a song that trivialised domestic abuse the way that song does, but Jimmy Soul's next single, "Treat 'Em Tough", goes much further. It is essentially the same tune as "If You Wanna Be Happy", but rather than the dated but arguably humorous misogyny of advocating marrying an ugly woman, which is pretty much par for the course for 1930s humour, it just flat-out advocates beating up women to keep them in line. I won't excerpt that, and I don't suggest you seek it out. It's a quite vile record.
That only went to number one hundred and eight, and Soul never had another hit, and joined the army. He became a drug addict, and died in prison in 1988, aged forty-seven. Roaring Lion had a rather happier ending, dying in 1999, aged ninety-one, after sixty-five successful years in the music business.
About a year ago I did a pledge week, to encourage people to back me on Patreon. This seemed relatively successful, so I'm going to do it again.
For those who don't know, the podcast is supported by listeners pledging money on the crowdfunding site Patreon. Listeners can give $1 a month or more, and I use that to fund the project. They also get various other bonus things, like the ability to send me private messages, free copies of my books for those on higher tiers, and so on.
Some of those bonuses haven't been that frequent in the last few months, as between the pandemic, various things in my personal life and health, and the disruption caused by a false DMCA claim, this has been the single most difficult six months of my life to date, as you can probably tell from the disrupted schedule recently, though I'm now trying to get back on track with everything.
But one bonus they always get, and have for two years, is a ten-minute or so extra podcast along with every regular episode. Anyone backing the Patreon at a dollar a month or more gets access to those as they come out, plus to the ninety or so old ones I've already done.
So this week, like last year, I'm going to give everyone a taste of what the backers get -- every day for a week I'm going to upload an old Patreon bonus episode, in the hope that some of you like what you hear enough to sign up for the Patreon.
However, I want to make something very clear -- I only want you to sign up *if you can afford to*. New signups mean I can afford to do this podcast without having to add advertising and so on, but I know that a lot of people are having financial problems right now. If you have enough money after looking after yourself and your family, and after any charitable giving and so on to actual important causes, that you feel able to throw a dollar a month to someone talking about music, great. If you don't, then please don't feel obliged, and the podcast will continue to be free.
The next proper episode of the podcast, on "Here Comes the Night" by Them, will be up in a day or two -- I'm recording it right after I upload this and the first of the Pledge Week episodes, which will be on "If You Wanna Be Happy" by Jimmy Soul, and it'll be up as soon as it's edited. In the meantime, enjoy the free bonuses.
