5 x 5: Songs

5 facts about 5 songs . . .

Rewatching The Blues Brothers (the first film, not the sequel, which was nowhere as good) with Kate, I started wondering what the words of the first number – She Caught the Katy – meant.  So I looked it up and am sharing it with you below.  It also touched off an idea to do a 5 x 5 on numbers  from The Blues Brothers film.  The problem is that there are more than 5 numbers worth “fiving” so there will be two bursts

She Caught the Katy:

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She Caught the Katy is a blues standard written by American blues musician and songwriter Taj Mahal, and James Rachell.  The song was first recorded for Taj Mahal's 1968 album The Natch'l Blues, and is one of Mahal's most famous tunes.

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The song plays over the opening credits of The Blues Brothers, as Jake Blues leaves prison.

Blues Brothers version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5xexv-dMrM

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The Katy referred to is The MKT, or Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, commonly known as "The Katy". It's been known as the M-K-T since it was spun off and renamed from the Union Pacific Railway Southern Branch in 1870.  An express train called the Katy Flyer was inaugurated in 1933 with service from Parsons, Kansas to St. Louis. This could be the "Katy" in the song.

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According to John Belushi's widow, it was Belushi's favorite blues song.

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Being a blues song, it carries the common theme of a man losing his woman, she getting a fast train away, the Katy.

According to the lyrics, “She took the Katy and left me a mule to ride.”

The mule is The Kansas City Mule, a train running from St Louis to Kansas City.

The Kansas City Mule and St. Louis Mule were a pair of 283-mile (455 km) passenger trains operated by Amtrak running between St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri as part of the Missouri Service train network. Also operating over this route was the Ann Rutledge, which originated in Chicago. In January 2009, Amtrak consolidated these trains under the name Missouri River Runner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mules_(train)

Everybody Needs Somebody:

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See and hear the Blues Brothers version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHV0zs0kVGg

 Elwood Blues: 

We're so glad to see so many of you lovely people here tonight. And we would especially like to welcome all the representatives of Illinois's law enforcement community that have chosen to join us here in the Palace Hotel Ballroom at this time. We certainly hope you all enjoy the show. And remember, people, that no matter who you are and what you do to live, thrive and survive, there're still some things that makes us all the same. You. Me. Them. Everybody. Everybody.

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Written by Bert Berns, Solomon Burke and Jerry Wexler, originally recorded by Solomon Burke in 1964 and peaked at number 58.  Also record by Wilson Pickett , The Jerry Garcia Band, The Rolling Stones and The Blues Brothers.

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In 1989 it was released as a single in the UK, backed by Think and it peaked at #12.

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After performing this at the concert after Elwood’s intro, Jake and Elwood are pursued by police, The Good Ol’ Boys and Illinois Nazis in a high speed pursuit.  During the chase the police dispatcher announces to the pursuing police cars “Use of unnecessary violence in apprehension of the Blues Brothers…has been approved”.

A world record 103 cars were wrecked during filming. The Junkman (1982) broke the record 2 years later, wrecking 150 cars and a plane. That record held for 2 decades, until over 300 cars were wrecked during the filming of The Matrix Reloaded (2003).

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Hear and see The Rolling Stones version, with a very young Mick Jagger, at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIJ_flTdEvo

This is their into:

I'm so glad to be here tonight and I'm so glad to be home

And I believe I've got a message for every woman and every man

Here tonight that ever needed somebody to love

Someone to stay with them all the time

When they're Up and when they're down

You know, sometimes you get what you want

And then you go and lose what you have

And I believe every woman and every man here tonight listen to my song

And it save the whole world

Listen to me

Sweet Home Chicago: 

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See and hear the version from The Blues Brothers film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0zyuc_2UVg

Never realised Dan Akroyd could move that well.

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Sweet Home Chicago is a blues standard first recorded by Robert Johnson in 1936. Although he is often credited as the songwriter, several songs have been identified as precedents. The song has become a popular anthem for the city of Chicago despite ambiguity in Johnson's original lyrics. Numerous artists have interpreted the song in a variety of styles.

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Johnson was the great Mississippi bluesman who was reputed to have sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads to achieve musical success. That is reference in O Brother Where Art Thou? He is now recognised as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style.  Johnson died in 1938, after someone apparently slipped strychnine into his whiskey.

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Johns had only one moderate hit song during his lifetime (Terraplane Blues), but, after Columbia Records released a collection of his recordings, King of the Delta Blues (1961), the man and his music both achieved near-mythic status. Columbia later issued the box set Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings (1990). Johnson was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in its inaugural class (1980), and he became a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

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The version from The Blues Brothers adopts a version that follows Sykes' version, substituting "back to the same old place" for the more confusing "back to the land of California."

Come on

Oh baby don't you wanna go

Come on

Oh baby don't you wanna go

Back to that same old place

Sweet home Chicago

Come on

Baby don't you wanna go

Hidehey

Baby dont you wanna go

Back to that same old place

Oh sweet home Chicago

Well, one and one is two

Six and two is eight

Come on baby don't ya make me late

Hidehey

Baby dont you wanna go

Back to that same old place

Sweet home Chicago

Come on

Baby don't you wanna go

Back to that same old place

Sweet home Chicago

Six and three is nine

Nine and nine is eighteen

Look there…

Peter Gunn Theme

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Peter Gunn is the theme music composed by Henry Mancini for the television show of the same name.

Peter Gunn was an American private eye television series, starring Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn with Lola Albright as his girlfriend Edie Hart, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1958,  to 1960 and on ABC in 1960–1961.

The series is probably best remembered today for its music, including the iconic Peter Gunn Theme, which was nominated for an Emmy Award and two Grammys for Henry Mancini and subsequently has been performed and recorded by many jazz, rock, and blues musicians.

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In his 1989 autobiography Did They Mention the Music? Mancini states: 

The Peter Gunn title theme actually derives more from rock and roll than from jazz. I used guitar and piano in unison, playing what is known in music as an ostinato, which means obstinate. It was sustained throughout the piece, giving it a sinister effect, with some frightened saxophone sounds and some shouting brass. The piece has one chord throughout and a super-simple top line.

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In addition to the many different arrangements of the Peter Gunn theme recorded by Mancini, the music has also been recorded by numerous other artists.

Guitarist Duane Eddy reached number six on the UK Singles Chart and number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959.

There is an Australian connection to the Duane Eddy hit. From Songfacts: 

Duane Eddy recalled to Mojo magazine November 2010 why he decided to cover this song:
 "We were doing the second album, Especially For You. (Saxophonist) Steve Douglas said, 'Duane, I learnt Peter Gunn last night.' I said, 'Well, that's nice.' He thought it'd just be good as an album cut but I didn't think so. So we forgot about it and we got 11 or 12 songs done. Lee and me were sitting there discussing what we could do and Steve wandered over and said, 'We could do Peter Gunn.' I thought, 'What the heck! It's only an album cut.' So we figured out the intro, then the riff, and we cut it. It became a single because somebody in Australia in the record company took it from the album and it got to #3. Somebody in England noticed that so they released it as a single. It got to the top of the charts. Finally, Jamie noticed this and said, 'Maybe we should make this a single in the US.' So that's how Peter Gunn came to be."

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Here is the link for The Blues Brothers film version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DgFOsEs-kE

The original Blues Brothers Band many years later in a live performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlLNSBVEtuY&list=RDOlLNSBVEtuY&index=1 v

Minnie the Moocher:

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Hear and see the Cab Calloway performance in The Blue Brothers at the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ5gCGJorKk

Calloway was born in 1907, acted and sang in The Blues Brothers film in 1980, which resulted in renewed interest in his career, and died in 1994.  His CV is to long to mention, it includes a lengthy stint at The Cotton Club, being taught to sing scat by Louis Armstrong (watch the above clip to see him doing so) and singing for Al Capone and other mobsters.

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Minnie the Moocher was first recorded in 1931 by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, selling over a million copies.  In performances, as in the above BB clip, Calloway would have the audience and the band members participate by repeating each scat phrase in a form of call and response, until making it too fast and complicated for the audience to replicate it.

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Minnie the Moocher was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and in 2019 was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress. It has been argued that the record was the first jazz record to sell a million copies.

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The "hi-de-ho" scat lyrics came about when Calloway forgot the lyrics to the song one night during a live radio concert.

When Cab Calloway originally recorded Minnie The Moocher in the 1930s, the chorus lyrics were simply "Ho-dee-hody" rather than the lengthened "Hody-hody-hody ho". In an interview, Calloway explained that one time when he was singing the song, he suddenly forgot the words, so he immediately shouted "Hody-Hody-Hody-ho!", and carried on the song that way. That proved to be more popular with fans than the original, so he had been singing it that way ever since.

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The November 22, 1951 issue of Jet magazine gives this account of the "Minnie" on whom the song was based: 

Minnie "The Moocher" has died. She was a familiar figure In downtown Indianapolis. An 82-year-old woman whose real name was Minnie Gayton, she acquired the quaint nickname of "The Moocher" by regularly begging food from grocers and carting it off in a baby buggy. She slept in doorways, on porches and in garages. During the record-breaking blizzard, her body was found on a porch, blanketed with snow. She died from exposure.[ 

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Bonus item:

In the 1935 Marx Brothers' film A Night at the Opera, Groucho Marx famously quipped, "You're willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can get a phonograph record of 'Minnie the Moocher' for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie."