Born Bad Series

BORN BAD SERIES

A series of CD’s on Born Bad Records called Born Bad – a/k/a Songs the Cramps Taught Us (actually that might be two different CD series; I’ve never been able to tell for sure) – brought the original songs introduced by the Cramps to the masses (as did a popular radio show by the band called The Purple Knif Show that was later released as an album also). I have the first six volumes of Born Bad (and were they expensive, too, at $18 a pop); but the price has come down recently, so I might see about getting some more. (More about that another time). At any rate: Highly recommended.

I had heard the most successful of Hasil Adkins’ singles on one of the Born Bad CD’s, “She Said”; and even that one song demonstrates that Hasil Adkins can burp and beep and howl his way through a song better than anyone this side of Charlie Feathers (he is known as the “king of rockabilly” and is the co-author of one of Elvis Presley’s earliest hit songs, “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”).

Near the end of the arc of her rockabilly career, Wanda Jackson recorded one of the songs on my All-Time Top Ten, the sublime “Funnel of Love” with her hot new band, the Party Timers that featured a young Roy Clark. This was yet another song that was introduced to me on a Born Bad CD.

(May 2011)

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Earlier this year, I had the great pleasure of seeing the “Queen of Rockabilly” Wanda Jackson live in concert at the Hollywood Casino in Bay St. Louis, MS. One of the first songs she played was “Funnel of Love” which dates from 1961; Wanda said that the song had gotten a lot more attention in the last 10 years. I first heard the song on one of the overpriced but essential Born Bad CD’s back in the 1990’s, and the song thrilled me to the core of my being; it immediately became one of my all-time favorite songs.

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Holly Ramos first got into the music scene when she met Jesse Malin in high school. They started a “party” (rave?) together in 1991 called GREENDOOR (where Ramos was the DJ) that persisted sporadically through the end of the 1990’s. “Green Door” is the name of a fun 1956 hit song by Jim Lowe about a mysterious nightclub where the singer could never gain admittance; I have a copy of the song on one of the Born Bad CD’s. However, the name was probably taken from one of the first high-profile pornographic movies (from 1972), Behind the Green Door – whose name was taken from the song – that starred then-unknown Marilyn Chambers (the famous “Ivory Snow” porn queen).

(June 2013/2)

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Pebbles, Volume 10 is also how I came to find out about the Human Expression, one of several garage-rock and psychedelic-rock bands that I wrote about in Wikipedia in the pre-UARB days. The album also includes a song by the Ides of March that came out before their hit song, “Vehicle”; as well as an early song by the Five Americans of “Western Union” fame. “Primitive” by the Groupies, one of the best songs on this album was later featured on one of the Born Bad CD’s.

(July 2013)