Thursday, July 26, 2007

Jimmy McCracklin - "The Drag"


Heading into the weekend, I thought that I'd post something upbeat and simple, something that you can dance to for the next three days or so. So, I give you "The Drag" by Jimmy McCracklin, another of my St. Louis record show finds and a winner by any measure.

In my somewhat limited experience, just about any record by McCracklin is worthwhile. The ones that I have range from good to outstanding, with "The Drag" being my new favorite. The disc is from 1961, meaning that McCracklin had been recording for a good 15 years when it was released.

"The Drag" begins with a set of hand-claps, followed by a pounding drum beat and horns. McCracklin starts vocalizing about various dances of the day and then promptly advises that you forget all of those and do the drag instead. And given that it's such a stomper, who's to argue?

The song has backing vocals on each chorus and a cool sax break. It also has that grade z, lo-fi sound that was on all of those U.S. Bonds singles of the day. Yep, a real good one for bopping into the weekend.

9 comments:

Brian Marshall said...

Way to go, Todd! This one's definitely one of my all-time faves. I love the trashy sound it has.

As I told you earlier, I also recommend you check out "Get Tough" on Checker, especially for the semi-mysoginist lyrics.

Anonymous said...

Hey Todd(or any other kind person),

I'd really like to join in the fun here but for the life of me can't find anything like a 'jukebox to the right'. I'm not using any fancy system here & I tried on a friends pc & got no further

D

Todd Lucas said...

Anonymous, you're not seeing the mp3 player on the right, under where it says "movers and shakers"? Can you see the list of links on the right?

Can anyone else chime in and let me know if they're also having trouble? I'd like to know if this is something that I need to work on.

Anonymous said...

Hi Todd,

Dave(anonymous)again. Immediately under "movers & shakers" I have "our checkered past" then just under that the drop down for our checkered, then "spin-o-rama" & the list of other blogs.

Thanks for working on this.

Dave

Todd Lucas said...

Dave, the mp3 player is immediately under where it says "movers and shakers". The player has a list of songs, currently with "The Drag" listed first. You can't see that on your screen?

thisistomorrow said...

hi there... just discovered your amazing blog today... i have also added your link on my blog, would be cool if you could do the same... keep up the good work... mike

Todd Lucas said...

Mike, just added a link for This Is Tomorrow. Thanks for the kind words.

Anonymous said...

Hi Todd,

Dave again. Well "movers & shakers" has gone replaced by "the jukebox" but it's not a link. Immediately under this is "our checkered past" in the same font then the under that a drop down for "our checkered...".

Todd Lucas said...

Ok Dave, thanks for the continued input. I'm going to try and check out the blog on a different computer later today. I'm not sure what the problem might be.