John Heim, aka Big Mo of Iowa KCCK radio blues show delivered his penultimate program last night. I heard the “penultimate” title from Ron Adkins who announced it on his Afternoon Jazz show which comes just before the Big Mo blues show. It’s one of those adult words that Big Mo would probably never use—only he did last night. Penultimate means “next to last” and Big Mo’s last show will be next Friday. It’s hard to believe.
Big Mo dropped some gentle goodbye notes into his program. Among them was a shout out to local and national Blues artist Kevin Burt. He won the Acoustic Blues Artist award a couple of days ago at The Blues Foundation’s 47th Annual Blues Music Awards event in Memphis, TN. Congratulations to Kevin Burt!
We also really liked the music of Jimmy Thackery and the Drivers that Big Mo played. He praised the brilliant performance on the Stratocaster guitar evident in the number “Daze in May.” I almost didn’t find this tune because I thought the title was “Days in May” which at first made sense. Anyhow, Big Mo spelled it right. I’ve never looked up the Stratocaster on the web, but I did for the first time today. We like the tremolo.
There are a couple of ways to interpret the title “Daze in May.” One of them is an obvious connection to Big Mo’s upcoming retirement next Friday, May 15th, which will be his last show. And, I think there are a lot of Big Mo’s fans, including me, who are dazed that his long KCCK career in blues music broadcasting is coming to an end.
The other big feature of his show last night was a more colorful and detailed Shout Outs list—and I’ve always wondered if I was on it. Now I’m pretty sure I’ve been on it for a while. It turns out Jim the Shrink is probably me. He told a short anecdote about how he first heard from a guy who emailed him about where he could find MayRee’s hand-battered catfish. It really tickled Big Mo that he’d got “a clinical psychologist” to bite on this faux sponsor gag. That happened about 4 years ago. He mentioned an idea he had about designing a tee shirt about MayRee. That led to me writing a blog post (my blog is Go Retire Psychiatrist) suggesting a design and making a fake picture of me wearing it. It never caught on, for some reason. But I made the Shout Outs list.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 