Except his original “Hungry & Horny”, with a really funny introduction, most of his repertoire on this Live is made of efficient less explicit covers specially designed to make the cruisers dance.
He also covers numbers from more recent artists as Coco Montoya (“Back In A Cadillac”), Don Nix (“Going Down”), Paul deLay (“What's Coming Next”), George Thorogood (the hilarious “I Drink Alone”), Gregg Allman (“Whipping Post”) or Steve Cropper (“Raise Your Hand”).
“Come on everybody, get up to the dance floor here !”, he's shouting to the audience before even starting to sing the first track, “Back In A Cadillac”. And dancing it is indeed ! Backed by a band presented as “Hokum Blues” enriched with two excellent guests, Steve Guyger (harmonica) and Gary Hoey (lead guitar), Barnes gives a hot show.
If he is rather funny in his way to introduce some songs (“Hungry & Horny”, Don Nix' “Going Down”) and in his singing style, musically the show gets down to a very efficient mix of energetic barrelhouse and jump blues, seasoned with R'n'B and rock'n'roll. ! With overflowing energy and a powerful voice, he is an exciting and rejoicing blues shouter. You have to hear the inimitable way he utters the words on songs like “You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover”, “Hoochie Coochie Man” and most of all “I Drink Alone” !
Not 100% real hokum but a collection of foot-stomping and jumping numbers by a road-tested comic master of the stage... ■
Hokum blues, a branch of the blues idiom which combines wicked, sassy and often raunchy humor through double-meaning lyrics mostly dealing with sexual matters, is as old as blues in general but far from the grit and plaintive "purity" of country blues from the Mississippi Delta. Musically, it was a lively dance style with a bouncy, ragtime-influenced rhythm.
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| Minstrel show |
The use of double-meaning in verbal communication to convey a different or opposite meaning to the literal interpretation, derives from the 19th Century when slave communities developed an ironic language that apparently sounded respectful to the “master” while expressing the opposite to fellow slaves.
The musical roots of hokum humor go back to the minstrel and medicine shows of the 19th Century, and spread to vaudeville and later burlesque theaters presenting semi-nude showgirls and scandalous songs as their main attraction, while lyrics could not be too explicit for fear of being closed by the authorities.
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| Tampa Red & Georgia Tom |
Like for “classic” blues, the first hokum blues recordings date back to the steamy atmosphere of the Prohibition era in the late 1920s. After the First World War, the early record industry split hokum off from its minstrel show or vaudeville context to market it as a musical genre, the hokum blues.
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| Jodie “Butterbeans” Edwards and Susie Hawthorn |
The word "hokum" was used for the first time in 1929 to describe this “new” genre of black music on a billing for Tampa Red's Hokum Jazz Band. The previous year the same Tampa Red (bottleneck guitarist Hudson Whittaker) and Georgia Tom (pianist Thomas A. Dorsey) recorded “Tight Like That”. The song was such a hit that the two bluesmen, along with "Banjo Ikey" Robinson, then performed together as The Hokum Boys.
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| L. to R. : Bo Carter, Will Shade & Gus Cannon |
Early hokum practitioners surfaced in jug bands performing in the saloons and bordellos of Beale Street, in Memphis. In the late 1920s, Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers and Will Shade's Memphis Jug Band performed a lot of suggestive material. |
| Bo Carter |
The trend was set and more salacious songs followed, including Leroy Carr‘s version of “How Long, How Long”. And Arminter Chapman, guitarist of the famous Memphis based Mississippi Sheiks, used the name Bo Carter and recorded explicit songs like “Banana in Your Fruit Basket” and “Warm My Wiener”.
Many “classic” blues songs contain subversive double-meanings about “black snakes” and “little angels spreading their wings”, but one of the most explicit was Lucille Bogan (1897-1948).
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| Lucille Bogan/Bessie Jackson |
Around 1927 she recorded “My Sweet Petunia” (not difficult to guess what this “petunia” stands for) accompanied by Tampa Red on guitar, which he did on several of her other recordings.
She moved to New York, changed her name to Bessie Jackson and started issuing “lesbian” songs like "B.D. Woman's Blues" (B. D. standing for “bull dykes”), “‘Tricks Ain’t Walking No More” and a personal cover of Ma Rainey's 1924 song “Shave ‘Em Dry”. She was bold enough to write lyrics like : “I got nipples on my titties, big as my thumb / Got something ‘tween my legs’ll make a dead man come”. It was not hokum anymore but a parallel genre called “dirty blues”... ■
(Acknowledgment : info mainly from All About Blues Music)
The Albums (audio)
► “90 Proof Truth” (2015) : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_liNdKHALGHTFBqEFb-tt8uWLbCSoPsRsU
► “Hokum Blues” (2017) : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mT1cGa3vsOWjBzunS1p870AEv_1yc4NKc
► “Live”, LRBC #32 (2019) : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mpS3cbOHwwrRV6Qb_zEXSwHNpdbX_lcLc
► “BadNews Rising” (2021) : https://www.youtube.com
/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m8yyferX8-7gnPIljH75kRyFlxE73ZitY
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| On set, acting in a movie |
■ Live Blues Performances
► “Going Down”, Rum Boogie Cafe, Memphis, 2015 : https://youtu.be/rGarhUWAJ1Q
► “America Needs A Queen”, 2015 : https://youtu.be/SwAOKzMZ8rc
► “Going Down”, with The Brethren of Blues, The Cutting Room, NYC, 2015 : https://youtu.be/1fjpk47Qk2w
► "I'm Gonna Get High", with Gary Clark Jr. & Jimmy Vivino, BB King's New York, 2017 : https://youtu.be/TyIE1gi00JA
► Chris “BadNews” Barnes & Hokum Blues w/ Steve Guyger & Gary Hoey, LRBC #32, 2019 :
→ “Back in a Cadillac” : https://youtu.be/5vd5Tc-h8H4
→ “Boom Boom” : https://youtu.be/g_CK4Rr2WX8
→ “Hungry & Horny” : https://youtu.be/nCRUCn5kL9k
→ “Going Down” : https://youtu.be/BWl3ZdBwM-U
→ “What's Coming Next” : https://youtu.be/6y9vvSae8Gk
→ “It Hurts Me Too” : https://youtu.be/lZduuReb-OI
→ “I Drink Alone” : https://youtu.be/W8x0I7vCTnU
→ “Keep Your Mind on It” : https://youtu.be/peRKJFraX0Y
Not on the album :
→ “Raise Your Hand”, “Stormy Monday” (16-minute medley) : https://youtu.be/1pxpj21cbUw
→ “Playing With Your Poodle” : https://youtu.be/qh3RcYLA3Mc
→ “I Just Want A Little Bit” : https://youtu.be/NrFseQom5gE
► “Hoochie Coochie Man” with Tas Cru, House of the Rising Pun, Avon, CT, 2019 : https://youtu.be/ws8YjfP8dkQ
► With Albert Castiglia & Mitch Woods, Rum Boogie Cafe, Memphis, 2019 :
→ “Feelin' Alright” : https://youtu.be/sbQjdFqKQA0
→ “Shake Your Moneymaker” : https://youtu.be/6ddaPrQVlps
► With Brethren of the Blues, Black-Eyed Sally's, Hartford, CT, 2019 :
→ #1 : https://youtu.be/SprDR_H9XCw
→ #2 : https://youtu.be/ypcDKBPXq7k
→ #3 : https://youtu.be/o8GUP7GUeuo
→ #4 : https://youtu.be/WQGpZR4RhJI
→ #5 : https://youtu.be/muKVe1U3TXE
→ #6 : https://youtu.be/NW_y_OLmVQI
→ #7 : https://youtu.be/f3zPA3_wYfA
► “When Koko Came to Town”, Westgate Hotel, Las Vegas, NV, 2022 : https://youtu.be/7CLVqGyhczI
► “Bad News Travel Fast”, with The Blues Ballers, 3rd & Lindsley, Nashville, 2023 : https://youtu.be/mkmK_4v4Md4
► With the Yates McKendree Band, BB King's Blues Club, Memphis, 2023 :
→ “Bluesman Can't Cry” : https://youtu.be/PoakTNl1YkM
→ “True Blues” : https://youtu.be/NcvMUvSLLYA
→ “You Right Baby” : https://youtu.be/2SQ3eaVYfd4
→ “The Juice Ain't Worth The Squeeze” : https://youtu.be/V6hUqXz59tI
→ “Bad News Travels Fast” : https://youtu.be/p4YaK9c7n9k
→ “Blues Baller Baby” : https://youtu.be/Slq4QeI5dcM
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