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Wednesday 3 April 2019

State of the Union - Oklahoma


George writes:
In Oklahoma, it is against the law to have a sleeping donkey in your bathtub after 7 pm.


I really can’t follow that up with anything else except to give you two unrelated songs


First, a country song, of course, dating from 1973, by Michael Franks,




Now, Michael Franks seems to be a smooth jazz musician, and this track comes from an allegedly smooth jazz vocal album. I have checked and rechecked the song and it is nothing of the sort, although the rest of the album may indeed be nonsense.


During the course of my pathetic “research” concerning Oklahoma, I did unearth that the official state meal is: fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecue pork, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken-fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas. Hopefully not all one the one plate. I had no idea what grits were, so went to the obvious place, where I discovered that there was a thing called“hominy grits”, that are grits made from hominy ie “corn that has been treated with an alkali in a process called nixtamalization with the pericarp removed”. If you understand any of that and can explain it readily to me……..don’t bother……..anyway I think  grits are a sort of porridge. Not that I have lived there for almost three decades, but I don’t think people form the land of my birth are in the habit of putting sausages and gravy on their porridge, never mind any kind of vegetables, and certainly not that foreign-sounding okra stuff!


Above is meant to be the official food, although it resembles the kind of unappetising snapping you get in a vegan restaurant……..you know, brown lentils splattered with calf scour…..


I would really have liked to included a song by Lefty Frizzell’s younger not-so-famous brother, but his Oklahoma song is rubbish.


There are more than a plethora of songs about Tulsa.  Some good, one by Mark Lanegan in the same league as David Frizzell’s song referred to above. The last track on Neil Young’s first album is called The Last Trip to Tulsa. CC might include it on the Monday long slot, if 9 mins 25 seconds is long enough to merit it.

The horribly-named O’Kaysions covered the well known Tulsa song, and did so quite horribly. Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien also covered that song, but your not getting it here. But all pale into insignificance when compared to the travesty made by Claire Hamill, that’s 33 seconds of my life I’ll never get back. Although Ms Hamill features with many prog. acts she is no relation to Peter Hammill.



(that’s Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien pictured above)

No songs about Tulsa, here anyway, but another about Oklahoma. A song by soul singer Ted Taylor (he of the absolutely fantastic Friendship Only Goes So Far) which has some  splendid and unexpectedly wild guitar.


So no Western Swing songs, despite there being many many of them, and thus no songs by Donnell Clyde Cooley, or Spade Cooley as he was better known.  

Another state next week.

CC writes:
Is Ted Taylor the same right wing nutter who was the Conservative MP for Glasgow Cathcart for many years?
No Neil Young George as I know you much prefer Bruce Springsteen.
Here is a song off We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions


21 comments:


  1. I don't recall Teddy Taylor ever having a recording career, but he would fit right in with the current wackjobs in the European Research Group.

    Don Williams "Tulsa Time" is pretty good. Eric Clapton covered it the same year. But I think Gene Pitney's "24 Hours From Tulsa" must be the most famous song about that city.

    There are shedloads of songs about Oklahoma but I think "Okie from Muskogee" by Merle Haggard is probably the best known.

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    1. I was giving serious consideration to posting Take Back To Tulsa instead of the Teddy Taylor song. But I did not.

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  2. That is a strong candidate for my favourite Springsteen song. (Is he the main singer of this track?). It is good enough to merit inclusion on volume 147

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    1. As far as I am aware he is the main man
      The whole album is good - covers of mainly traditional tunes
      My brother and I went to see him at Wembley Arena (a Christmas present) to see the live version.
      Only time I have been in London in the last 30 years

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  3. I take it Snooker Loopy will feature on volume 147?

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    1. That's on a much earlier one. I have Michael Gove's version of the Black Lace song "we're having a gang bang" lined up for vol 147.

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    2. What is "Vol. 147?"

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    3. Are you dropping a hint about the MM selection this weekend there, CC?

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  4. I didn't know what grits were either, but pivotal to Joe Pesci winning the court case in the film My Cousin Vinnie. Apparently they take so long to cook, you couldn't possibly have time to witness a murder at the same time! They sound yummy - NOT.

    No Gordon McRae or Shirley Jones here I see - shame.

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  5. That chicken-fried steak looks delicious. I have driven through Oklahoma a few times from Chicago to Austin via the ultra-boring Will Rogers Turnpike, but I have never really spent any time in the Sooner State. The Flaming Lips are the first band that comes to mind from there. I really got into them for a few years around the turn of the century. Even though we are Yanks, my wife makes a mean bowl of grits.

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    1. Brian, given your Scottish experiences, do grits bear any similarity to porridge

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    2. The consistency of grits is similar to porridge, but the corn taste makes it different. It's very time consuming to prepare... something like 45 minutes... but is worth the wait. I like it with butter and that's it, but many people cook it with other ingredients because grits will take on the taste of other foods in kind of the same way tofu does.

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    3. Thanks for the education Brian - I stand corrected, they are/it is perhaps tastier than it looks.

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  6. Hey Alyson. If you asked 100 people at random from coast to coast less than 20 would probably say they like grits. Most will not have even tried it. That was me until about 10 years ago. That white sauce above is not grits, by the way. That's country gravy, sometimes called white gravy. That's delicious too.

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    1. Yes I knew the picture wasn't of grits but am finding it hard to be convinced that while gravy is tasty - Just sounds all wrong, but you should know. (This all coming from someone who lives in a country who invented Haggis!)

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  7. From a limey viewpoint hear the mighty Kinks' Oklahoma U.S.A from their Muswell Hillbillies album http://tinyurl.com/yxpved7n which, for a bonus Alyson, namechecks Gordon McRae & Shirley Jones

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  8. That's a beautiful song with a beautiful video clip to go wth it - Thanks for the heads up Spence.

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  9. Where is Howard Keel!?!

    The band Spearmint did an excellent Christmas album called Oklahoma, the title track involves a drunk singing that song at the top of his voice while Christmas shoppers do their best to ignore him.

    Jimmy Webb - Oklahoma Nights

    The Kinks - Oklahoma USA

    Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Billy Joe Shaver - Oklahoma Wind

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    1. I convinced myself that Howard Keel was in the film Oklahoma but after checking, realised he wasn't, so had to reference Gordon and Shirley. Now I see was in the stage production for a long time and recorded the song many times so now it all makes sense. One of the few films he wasn't in around that time though. (It was never going to put in an appearance here though).

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