Last night the Big Mo Blues Show focused on women vocalists, partly because he said he got phone calls urging him to play more music from female performers. It was an exceptionally good show and I can mention 3 of the women singers who really impressed me.
Early in the show, he played a song called “This Train” by Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I can’t remember hearing her recordings on his show before, but then my memory is not what it used to be. This song was first recorded in the 1930s and Big Mo played a version from the 1950s with her accompanying herself on an electric guitar. It was fun to listen to.
She led an interesting life according to biographies I found on line. She was black and queer and while it must have made her life really challenging (especially during the time of the Jim Crow laws in the 1940s), she was a great success. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.
I can pick out a couple of other songs by female artists that were memorable. One of them was “Let the Tears Roll Down” by Marcia Ball. It was haunting.
And I thought the guitar riffs were stunning on Samantha Fish’s “Highway’s Holding Me Now.” The hairs on the back of my neck always stand up when I hear her song “She Don’t Live Around Here Anymore.” She has that kind of voice.
I heard a song entitled “Cheese and Crackers” on the Big Mo Blues Show last night. I’ve heard a few times over the years, but I never looked up what it meant until today.
The song was originally written by a rockabilly singer named Hayden Thompson, although I’ve only heard it sung by blues artist Roscoe Gordon. According to a Reddit social media thread, “Cheese and Crackers” was the B side of a record by Thompson and the A side was “Shoobie Oobie.” Thompson couldn’t find anyone to arrange the “Cheese and Crackers” lyrics at a recording studio and left in a huff, leaving the lyrics on the piano.
Roscoe found it and put it in an R&B arrangement. Billboard magazine called it the strangest new release of the week. The song is about a guy repeatedly being offered cheese and crackers although he doesn’t like or want them. According to a Wikipedia article, the term “cheese and crackers” is a kind of mild swear word chilled down from “Jesus Christ.”
That’s funny, because that’s how I feel about all the anti-vaccine bills coming out of the Iowa Legislature this year. One of them is SF 2095, which seeks to penalize private postsecondary colleges and universities if they don’t accommodate students who want to be exempt from all vaccines for any reason and to find clinical training programs who will accept them. An excerpt from the bill:
“A postsecondary school offering a degree requiring a clinical rotation shall, upon request of a student enrolled in the degree program, identify a clinical rotation placement where the student will be permitted an exemption from any vaccination requirements imposed by the placement location during the duration of the student’s clinical rotation.
A postsecondary school not in compliance shall not qualify as an eligible institution for the purposes of Iowa tuition grant.”
The other punishment could be a fine. Unless I’m looking on the web in the wrong place, I don’t find any such facility anywhere in Iowa. That would mean the postsecondary private school would be punished for something it can’t control. I’m pretty sure that would be called unjust—or maybe tricky if the goal is to coerce clinical training program leaders to loosen up their vaccine exemption policies. Right now, the only exemptions are religion or medical.
This sounds like the Iowa legislature is offering us cheese and crackers. No thank you.
I heard a song on the KCCK Big Mo Blues Show that I first heard in June of 2025. The song is “Artificial” by Walter Trout.
At first blush, I agree with what I think is the point of the song, which is basically a protest against artificiality which could manifest in a range of ways from superficiality and dishonesty in communications, attitudes, style of clothing, relationships, and all the way to Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The other connection I make is to the artist himself. Walter Trout developed Hepatitis C (eventually leading to liver transplant) according to a Wikipedia article which connected his lifestyle to contracting the disease. In my role as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist, I saw many patients with Hepatitis C who were referred to psychiatry from gastroenterology.
I was the main psychiatrist who evaluated them for treatment with Interferon-alpha. At the time it was the only treatment for Hepatitis C and was frequently associated with many side effects including depression. I was also one of the psychiatrists consulted as part of liver transplant evaluations.
Trout got very sick from Hepatitis C and made a remarkable (even miraculous) recovery after his liver transplant. Interferon is no longer used to treat Hepatitis C. It has been replaced by direct-acting antiviral (DAA) agents. They’re much better-tolerated and more effective.
The other aspect relevant to Trout’s song is ironic. The newest scientific literature supports the idea that AI can be helpful for diagnosing Hepatitis C, predicting its progression and response to treatment.
That doesn’t mean I’m completely sold on AI.
Aside from that, there’s interesting research suggesting that there may be a link between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and Hepatitis C infection (which could be hiding deep in the brain’s choroid plexus lining the cerebral ventricles). In other words, some people might have mental illness because of the liver disease itself.
If you think about the dictionary definition of the word “artificial,” you can hardly dismiss this kind of research as insincere.
The Big Mo Blues Show was really interesting last night. I’m just going to highlight a number done by John Hiatt called “Riding with the King.” The lore about this that I picked up from the internet is that Hiatt originally wrote and sang the song for the 1983 album Riding with the King. It was a tribute to a king known as Elvis Presley. The short story is that the song was inspired by a weird dream that the album’s producer, Scott Matthews, had about flying with Elvis Presley.
Years later, in 2000, the song was covered in an album by Eric Clapton, and the other king, B.B. King. The album was also called Riding with the King. Some reviewers thought the product was too slick, although to be frank about it, Hiatt’s production didn’t chart in the U.S.
The first time I heard Hiatt, I think it was on the Big Mo Blues Show. He sang “Gone,” which was on the album Crossing Muddy Waters, produced in 2000, the same year Clapton and King made the album which had the cover of Hiatt’s original song “Riding with the King.” I liked “Gone” because it was funny. I’m partial to humor in just about any context.
That reminds me of the Elvis Presley connection here about “Riding with the King.” About 8 years ago Sena and I made peanut butter and banana sandwiches, which Presley made famous. I blogged about it but I can’t find that post anymore. We didn’t really like the sandwich, although I wonder if the guy who had the dream that inspired the song “Riding with the King” had a PB & Banana sandwich just before bedtime. I kept the pictures but the post is—Gone!
Last night was the second time John Heim (aka Big Mo) introduced the song “Silent Night” by Peter Green and the Men in Blue using the title in German, “Stille Nacht.” He also played it last Friday night, saying “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht” in what sounded like perfect German. I immediately liked this version.
I might be remembering this wrong, but when I was a kid, I think I somehow got assigned to sing “Silent Night” when I went out caroling (in a horse-drawn sleigh, no less!) with the members of our church. It’s a good thing smartphones weren’t around to record that.
I remember last week trying to find it on the Big Mo Blues Show playlist but I couldn’t. Then I tried to find it by searching the title in German. I forgot or didn’t hear the name of the band. I gave up looking for it and I wondered why he said the title in German.
So, after I heard it again last night and looked for it on the playlist, I found it right away on the web.
I have never heard of Peter Green, so I looked him up and found a Wikipedia article about him. His original name was Peter Allen Greenbaum. I found out that Greenbaum is a German surname (originally Grünbaum which means greenery or green tree. As an aside, Heim is also a German name. It means “home.” For many people (just listen to his Shout-Outs list!) the Big Mo Blues Show is home.
Those are just observations I find interesting and maybe point to a clue why Big Mo pronounced the title of the song “Silent Night” in German.
Anyway, the Wikipedia article doesn’t say anything about Peter Green’s ancestry. He was born in 1946 in London and died in his sleep at the age of 73 on Canvey Island, Essex.
He was a gifted blues rock guitarist and singer-songwriter and was founder and original leader of the band Fleetwood Mac. He was a very influential figure in the British blues movement. Some thought he was greater than the other often-mentioned blues guitarist, Eric Clapton.
Peter got some coaching early in life from his older brother but was essentially self-taught by the age of 11. In the mid to late 1960’s people were calling him “The Green God” which was similar to what many were calling Eric Clapton (“God’).
Around 1969(70) Peter started to develop signs of mental illness and during the 1970s he also used LSD several times. Eventually he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Like other people who develop psychiatric illness, it was probably difficult to settle the chicken/egg question of which came first. He attributed much of his mental health issues to his use of LSD. He was hospitalized and treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the mid-1970s.
However, by the 1980s, he returned to the music scene. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. He was described as being more interested in expressing emotion in music rather than displaying dazzling technical skill. He influenced many musicians.
We saw the news story about the Florida Man who recently got busted by the cops in Ormond, Florida after he stole a BMW and when he was stopped for going 130 mph (about 5 mph over the local speed limit), he thanked the police for saving him from the extraterrestrials who evidently had teleported him into the BMW. Well, that explains everything!
This is just further evidence on top of what has already been thoroughly documented by Dave Barry in his 2016 documentary book, “Best State Ever; A Florida Man Defends His Homeland.”
Did you hear about the blackout in Florida?
People were stuck on the escalators for 4 hours.
I used to have a ton of Dave Barry books. I got hooked on his humor shortly after I graduated from Iowa State University back in the 1980s. I was in a post graduate program in Medical Technology in a Des Moines hospital and back then you could always find a newspaper on some tables in the cafeteria.
Over the years, I lost many of his books during moves. Sena would ask me something like “Do you really still want all these Dave Barry books?” I knew better than to say “These are very important examples of timeless prose exemplifying humor literature that will be excavated in the distant future by archaeologists who will preserve them in hermetically sealed glass bookcases so people can admire the covers.”
I just threw them out. Please don’t tell Dave.
Anyway, I have managed to preserve a photo of Florida Woman, taken in Miami many years ago. Let this be a lesson to you: never call your wife “Florida Woman” unless you want to live the rest of your life in a refrigerator packing box—although you can use duct tape to seal off those cracks to keep the wind and snow out.
Did you know there’s a song titled “Florida Man”? Believe it or not I heard it a couple of years ago on the Big Mo Blues Show on KCCK radio. It’s by Selwyn Birchwood who is from—that’s right, Tampa, Florida. The song was released by—you guessed it, Alligator Records.
And here’s Iowa Man:
Jim with 48 inch pusher plow shovel and new coverallsYou’re doing it wrong, man!Strong-and stupid!
Well, I listened to the Big Mod Pod Show today and I have a couple of thoughts. Big Mod mentioned something about some kind of an AI assistant maybe selecting some records on the KCCK Facebook site. He didn’t sound all that pleased with the choices the AI makes, specifically with the John Lee Hooker tune, “Mr. Lucky.”
I may have the wrong understanding about the “AI guy blues buddy” on the Big Mo Facebook page but if it’s the AI guy like CoPilot or Gemini, then it would be great if you could deactivate it somehow. I know I get pretty annoyed with AI when I search the web (not always, but sometimes it’s annoying).
I just happen to have the 1995 CD called “The Very Best of John Lee Hooker.” Far be it from me to be the judge of what’s the best for any blues artist, but I think the CD is pretty good, though I haven’t listened to it in a while. The other thing I have to admit is that I’ve found differences of opinion on is whether “Hobo Blues” is a 12-bar blues type number or not.
If Big Mo says he can’t understand why Hooker would confine himself to a constraining 12-bar blues song, then I’ll have to agree with him.
Then, of course, I ran into something else I don’t know about and that’s something called “trance blues.” Supposedly, John Lee Hooker did trance blues. How I find out about things I don’t know anything about is to peck around the internet and I found this link that defines it as something that has “a strong electronic component.”
I don’t know about “electronic” and I noticed some authors describe trance blues as “repetitive and hypnotic.” Does that mean that 12-bar blues is not trance blues?
So, here’s the thing. I’ve got my own pesky AI assistant Gemini that I never ask for any advice from, but it never misses a chance to make a point about some query I have for the internet—like trance blues.
Gemini says Hooker’s “Boogie Chillen” is an example of trance blues and also mentions that “Hobo Blues” is another example of it.
I don’t know if I can get this straight. Is 12-bar blues an example of a chord progression pattern and is trance blues a genre of blues which has a repetitive, hypnotic rhythm? It’s over my head.
I heard the Big Mo Blues Show last night and the Big Mo Pod Show today. I can say that the Garage Show title refers to a get together during the Covid pandemic that Big Mo threw and held in his garage and featured local Blues artists including Bryce Janey, who is number 5 on the list of songs with “Down Home Blues.”
Anyway, the most interesting part of the podcast was the 3rd song, “Coal Black Mare” (misspelled as “Cold Black Mare”) which was produced by Bob Corritore and released as part of historical album released October 17, 2025 entitled “Bob Corritore and Friends—Early Blues Sessions.” It includes songs recorded between 1984 and 2007. Corritore was on harmonica and blues artist Clarence Edwards sang the song (he died in 1993).
I looked up Clarence Edwards on Wikipedia and he was born in Louisiana in 1933 and became more widely known in the 1980s when he performed on a national blues festival circuit. I found a version of Coal Black Mare recorded in 1961 by Edwards.
The song “Coal Black Mare” has a very interesting history all by itself. Most internet articles say Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, was probably best known for writing the song “That’s All Right” in 1946 which Elvis Presley make famous later. Some say “That’s All Right” was the first rock and roll song. The Blues Hall of Fame says that Crudup was the “The Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
I found references that say Crudup wrote “Coal Black Mare” and released it in 1962 or 1965 (the Fire Sessions) depending on which web site you read. I also found a song entitled “Black Pony Blues” which on most web sites is the same as “Coal Black Mare” and was recorded in 1941 under Crudup’s name. They both sound like the same song.
Opinions differ about the meaning of the song “Coal Black Mare.” While I think most would say that it’s about a black race horse that won a lot of races, I think the “gold earrings” and “gold teeth” lyrics could make some people wonder if this is a metaphor for a woman. I found a web reference hinting at this, speculating that Charley Patton’s 1929 “Pony Blues” might have inspired the song and say that in all versions, including Crudup’s, the black mare stands for “…a black lover.”
I got lost in the internet forest on this one and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have the first idea of whether or not “Coal Black Mare” was inspired by Charley Patton’s “Pony Blues.” And while I think gold earrings and teeth would look odd on a horse; I also suspect Crudup was probably singing about a race horse.
I’m a little slow getting to the Big Mo Pod Show after his blues show this last Saturday night. I guess that’s just the way things go. The title of the pod show “Cheers to Kevin” is a shout out to somebody important in Big Mo’s life. It turns out Kevin was really supportive of Big Mo when he was just getting started years ago when he was first starting on the KCCK blues show. Kevin has also made many donations to KCCK to support the show. Big Mo calls him his favorite bartender.
That gets me started with the last of the 5 songs Big Mo and Producer Noah talked about, which was Bob Margolin singing the song “Brown Liquor in a Dirty Glass.” I remember speculating in a past blog that the “dirty glass” part might have meant putting olives or olive brine in the drink—but I don’t think so after listening to the song again.
I’m pretty sure it means the singer is feeling so down and dirty himself that he might actually want a dirty glass in the usual sense of the word.
And by the way, Big Mo mentioned “mambo” again. Last week, it was hard to tell what he meant, but this time it sounds like he might be referring to a Latin American dance rhythm influence—maybe. The influence of different rhythms on blues music was a topic in that maybe steered the discussion about one song on the list, and I believe it was “Star” by Gary Clark, Jr., which Big Mo thought had more of a reggae than a blues rhythm to it.
One interesting song was from someone who has been around a long time but I’ve not heard her before, Duffy Bishop. She sang “69 Years Old.” It mentions Viagra, which is in line with the general theme, which is sex and not just for the old. I stumbled on an article in which she’s interviewed about her music. When they start talking about this “69 Years Old song,” Bishop has this funny anecdote. She had just finished singing it at a club in Daytona Beach and some old gentleman walks up to her and says, “Here, I got something for you, pass these on to someone who needs them,” and then hands her some Cialis.
I’m 70 and I’m a little embarrassed about it but I want to pass the tune on to you guys because we just never know.
This was a fascinating episode of the pod show for more than one reason. The title is interesting if only in the sense that it might a reference to B.B. King—who wasn’t on the playlist either last night or the song selection for today’s podcast. Briefly, what we learned was that B.B. King had a lot of heirs (17 was the number of dependents) to his fortune when he died and that led to conflict over his estate. This came up during the conversation about Mud Morganfield.
One song that I couldn’t find on the Big Mo Blues Show playlist was “Floating Bridge” a 1937 classic by Sleepy John Estes and I couldn’t remember hearing it last night. It’s a deeply personal story of his own near-death experience when he nearly drowned but was saved by a friend. Eric Clapton covered it in 1981.
Another thing we learned about was the double neck guitar, which came up in the conversation about the tune “Blue Guitar” by Earl Hooker. Earl Hooker was famous for playing the double neck guitar, a heavy instrument with two necks, in this case a six string and a 12 string. I found a very long and deep web article about multi-neck guitars and they appeared in the late 17th century.
As Big Mo and Noah pointed out, there were other musicians who played double necks, among them Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin (“Stairway to Heaven”).
Big Mo mentioned the word “mambo” while talking about Mud Morganfield, who sang “Big Frame Woman.” I had to look up mambo and I think he might have meant a latin dance of Cuba? On the other hand, I found a reference that the word has African origins as well. Maybe some of you have ideas about that?
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