After that election, I need a drink. Grant Alden’s Field Notes…
Grant Alden
Posted On November 3, 2010
happens to oblige, quite by coincidence. My regular monthly one-hour foray into public radio is scheduled for the last Friday of every month. This time, it got moved for the pledge drive. And so it airs this Friday on WMKY at 7 pm eastern time.
An hour of songs about booze. Not quite drinking songs, but…
1. “Three Nights Drunk,” J.E. Mainer. Not the Hamper McBee version on the floor next to me, a reminder I still need to address that re-release one of these days. And not the version(s) my mom played whilst ironing dad’s shirts and shorts. Can’t remember who sang that. But a great old song, regardless.
2. “Drinker Born,” Uncle Earl.
3. “Rye Whiskey,” Blue Mountain. Another great old song. Wish I could remember who sang the more feral version I grew up with, but it’s always nice to honor the folks in Oxford.
4. “Give Me One More Drink,” Sammy Cotton. Finally getting time to actually listen to all those glorious box sets I was once sent.
5. “Sloppy Drunk,” Walter Brown.
6. “Sloppy Drunk Blues,” Sonny Boy Williamson. None of them the version of “Sloppy Drunk” I have on LP in the back room, but the turntable at the radio station is a little dodgy, and my copy’s pretty scratched up. And I can’t remember who recorded it, so I couldn’t find it. Not Michael Bloomfield, but that’s the name I keep coming back to.
7. “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” John Lee Hooker. Wow.
8. “Love My Whiskey,” Big Bill Broonzy
9. “Booze in the Carter,” Carter Brothers
10. “There Stands the Glass,” Webb Pierce
11. “The Bottle Let Me Down,” Merle Haggard. Inevitably.
12. “What Made Milwaukee Famous,” Del McCoury
13. “Get Drunk and Die,” Sister Double Happiness. My roots, if not roots music…
14. “The Fourth Night of My Drinking,” Drive-By Truckers. Another movie in song form. This one starring Mickey Rourke.
15. “Don’t Come Home A’ Drinkin’,” Eilen Jewell. For some reason my stash of Loretta Lynn is woefully incomplete. Something to fix.
16. “Yes to Booty,” Elizabeth Cook. Hope nobody in radio land here is offended by that one, but…it does air on Friday night.
That’s all, folks. off to work.
