Happy Birthday Wanda Jackson!

Cheers to rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson on her birthday... let's have a party! Check the clips. 

Watch Sierra Ferrell saw her way through Wanda Jackson's Funnel of Love

After a life of rockin' parties, Wanda Jackson hangs up her rock 'n' roll shoes

Now 85, rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson has decided to stop performing. We wish her all the best on her new adventures. 

Here's the scoop from Wanda's FB page...

"After over 60 years of touring, Wanda Jackson wishes to announce her retirement from performing. This retirement is solely based on health and safety. It has been a wild ride. Thank you all for all the years of continued fandom and support. This is not the end, just the beginning of a new chapter. Join us as we congratulate the Queen of Rockabilly on over six decades of rip roaring live performances, priceless stories and countless shimmies."

Tav Falco enlists Gary Taxali to create 2022 tour poster

There's no Toronto date scheduled as yet but Tav Falco will be rocking Buffalo's Mohawk Place on Sept. 12th. 

Here's the scoop...

         photo: Eugene Baffle

Tav Falco and his band Panther Burns have announced dates for a U.S. summer tour. Falco started his musical career playing alongside Big Star frontman Alex Chilton in the first lineup of Panther Burns in 1979. In more recent years, he has been backed by a trio of Italian musicians for both recording and live dates. The "Rogue Male" tour will run from August through October and include favorites from throughout Panther Burns' four decades of recordings.

 

The most recent addition to Falco's discography is last November's Club Car Zodiac EP. Released for Record Store Day by ORG Music, the vinyl and digital release features five tracks, including an electric cover of the traditional folk song, "House of the Rising Sun." The same musicians featured on the EP — producer/guitarist Mario Monterosso, bassist Giuseppe Sangirardi, and drummer Walter Brunetti — will appear on the concert dates.

 

The primary opening act for the "Rogue Male" tour will be this trio, performing selections from Monterosso's debut instrumental solo album, Take It Away. The album is available now digitally with a CD release following August 12. Last month, Monterosso traveled to Los Angeles at the invitation of Priscilla Presley for a pre-release screening of director Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. This Friday, July 22, he and his band will perform at a black-tie tribute to Priscilla Presley, honoring her efforts to preserve Graceland and promote Memphis music worldwide. The event takes place at Theatre Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee.

 

In 2019, Falco released his fourteenth studio album, the critically acclaimed Cabaret of Daggers. Upon its arrival, Mojo Magazine wrote, “Four decades into a career which began alongside kindred spirits Alex Chilton and the Cramps, Tav Falco’s new album conjures up a potent mix of blues, jazz and tango rhythms in which 1920s Vienna café culture seamlessly rubs shoulders with Beale Street juke joints.” At the time of the album's recording in Rome, Falco's home base was Vienna, Austria. This past January, he relocated to Bangkok, Thailand.

 

Falco was born in Philadelphia and raised in rural Arkansas. As a young man, he worked as a railroad brakeman for the Missouri Pacific Lines before studying theater and film at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He moved to Memphis in 1973. In the middle of that decade, he co-founded the nonprofit Televista video art-action group and filmed many notable blues musicians. His documentation is now regarded as historically significant and his footage of R.L. Burnside appeared in a CBS Sunday Morning segment in 2021. While with Televista, Falco also trained in photography and filmmaking under William J. Eggleston.

 

Falco is the only constant member of his band, Panther Burns. The group played its first show in a cotton loft in Memphis on February 10, 1979. Early years featured a revolving door of underground rock luminaries entering and exiting the band, including noted producer/session musician Jim Dickinson (Mud Boy and the Neutrons, the Dixie Flyers), and multi-instrumentalist Jim Sclavunos (Nick Cave, Lydia Lunch). Panther Burns thrived on the early 1980s music circuit and were a popular draw at such storied New York clubs as the Peppermint Lounge and Danceteria. Despite Chilton’s exit from the live lineup in 1984, the band carried on and has released a vast discography of albums, EPs, and singles for such crucial independent labels as Rough Trade, New Rose, In the Red, Sympathy for the Record Industry, and now ORG Music.  Watch the short tour preview clip below. 

 

PRAISE FOR TAV FALCO

“Tav has long been a hero/inspiration to Primal Scream. A true master of rock and roll and a cultural ditch digger on the same level as The Cramps. Thanks for all the great music, Tav. Stay Free!” — Bobby Gillespie, PRIMAL SCREAM

 

“I have been listening to Tav Falco’s Panther Burns since his first LP, Behind the Magnolia Curtain (1981), when Tav, along with The Cramps, turned a whole new generation onto the twisted pleasure of rock ‘n’ roll. He’s got everything... rock ‘n’ roll, blues, tango, style in abundance, and most important, but never overrated, SOUL.” – Jason Pierce, SPIRITUALIZED

 

“I don’t think folks give Tav Falco and the Panther Burns enough credit... Tav Falco is hip!” – Jon Spencer, BLUES EXPLOSION

Whaddya mean you don't know the J Ann C Trio

The twisted 1966 lounge private press gem from the J Ann C Trio is being reissued by Modern Harmonic – matches not included. 

Here's the scoop...

Growling and prowling like a more playful Wanda Jackson, Ann Delrene leads this trio down avenues of jazz, rockabilly, & folk, all from the comforts of a Missouri resort! A record that sounds as good as it looks, there’s no wonder folks have traded four figures for a copy! This private press treasure from the J Ann C Trio gets its first ever reissue!

Here's one right here that goes way back for me. In fact this is one of the life-changers for me. Just looking at it and, “woah, what's she sound like?” and those guys. Back then I would go to the post office and look in phone books and write down names. Just start calling people and calling people and calling people. I got nowhere with this one except back whenever like 20 years ago, or something. The place was still there, the Tan-Tar-A, the resort in the Ozarks in Missouri where they used to play. So, I was saying, "Can you ask around? Anybody remember these people?” And nobody's heard of them. It was a long time ago. But I did get brochures for vacations there in the mail, that's all I got. 

But this one, the song "Voodoo Doll,” in particular, when I heard it, that was what put it all together for me. At that time, I was still heavily into garage music. It had the garage thing. I was really into space music and sort of, science fiction-y aspects and the guitar is sort of freeform reverb noise and I was really into sexy female vocalists and having those three, and having a groove sort of beat going. Not a corny song where it's going to get blown, like you have a great verse then you have a cheesy chorus that comes in that's cheap not cheesy in the correct way to make the song work. That just had it.. half this album’s like that to me, and that song in particular stands out to me. 

And "Funnel Of Love" also appeals to the twilight zone sort of strange aspect, which was early on a heavy thing for me – getting that twilight zone feeling when I hear a record, like I got with Peter Grudzien. Where I feel like what I imagine drugs would have done for me if it’d worked, when I was a little kid wanting to run away to San Francisco or something. Something that just seems like it's from another dimension. When I hear it. it just puts me into this almost... is my hair going to prickle up? Am I making some sort of secret mysterious contact with some lost little scene that's going on? What was that scene like? Who were the people around it? You know, what were their friends like? What did they do? Or like, was it a David Lynch type weirdness or what? So, I had that sort of thing going on. So, for lounge bands, it is one of the big ones and one of the first ones that I got into.

– Paul Major (from Enjoy The Experience)

J Ann C Trio - at Tan-Tar-A

Jambalaya (On The Bayou) (2:19) • Night Train (2:58) • More (2:47) • Hey Bo Diddley (1:32) • If I Had A Hammer (2:25) • Voodoo Doll (1:46) • Your Cheatin’ Heart (2:33) • Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White (1:45) • The Girl From Ipanema (3:15) • The Tide (2:28) • Funnel Of Love (2:13) • Moon River (1:44)