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Swing, Soul, and Rock'n'Roll

by The League Of Decency

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Caldonia 06:05
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Radar Love 08:41
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Happy Trails 02:32

about

I had heard that the annual Radio Zombie Barbecue was the hip place to be for electronic-media types. It’s a fund raiser for those who suffer from Tourette’s Syndrome, attended by night-time radio personalities, broadcast crews, local music press people and assorted creatures of the night. Doreen had dragged me out to the Gate City Lounge to see what she referred to as her favorite band. I didn’t want to go but Doreen’s got the cure for what ails me.

What a place! The first thing I noticed were the giant political posters of Herman Talmadge and Lester Maddox on the same wall with big pictures of Mohammed Ali, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There were autographed photos of everybody...Elvis Presley, Roland Kirk, Jackie Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald, Jerry Lee Lewis, Tony Bennett, Willie Dixon, Sara Vaughn; I mean everybody. And the smells… soul-food scents of smoldering swine, corn bread and turnip greens, mixed with seductive traces of Escada and Bijan.

Doreen pulled me upstairs. Through the blue haze and the dark, I could tell the crowd was electric; beautiful black sisters with their solemn ebony escorts dressed to the nines, brown-and-white couples, multi-cultured college kids in deadlocks, bottle black or burred heads, a few fugitives from a Dead concert, some Latinos, several suburban fashion victims in black leather with pierced extremities, and a couple of good ‘ol boys out for a big time. What a mix! Talking and drinking and digging on Mose Allison tunes coming over the sound system.

The band was introduced while I was trying to get two beers and a Jack Black, and as I tipped the bartender, I heard this mongrelized, half-redneck, half-black, mixed up voice from somewhere in the mosquito-infested, hog-callin’, coastal South yell, “Hold back the dawn...Stop all the clocks…” and time stood still.

I turned around and saw eight on stage. The guitar player was the only one that didn’t look as if he had served time in the state pen. The horn section (two saxes and a bone at a collective eight hundred pounds, at least) had just hit me between the ears. I reeled with the rhythm section, and the whole thing took off.

It was some sort of ritual that the crowd was familiar with. Doreen grabbed a cowboy and hit the dance floor. I looked around and it felt like every inch of the place was moving. I drank both beers, threw down the Jack and waded into the sweating, swinging, swarm to be baptised into some sort of happening rhythm-cult. At some point I ended up with Doreen on the dance floor and we shook it till our hearts were pounding and we were soaking wet.

That band could really blow!

I wondered, “How long have they been doing this stuff?” I mean, from Louis Jordan to Howlin’ Wolf, to some twisted swing version of Radar Love. They weren’t teenagers, but, God, it was scary to think of adults working like this. It was like a crazed pack of road-worn semi-truck drivers, dressed in quasi-zoot suits chasing me down to work me over with musical instruments.

The vibe in this place was so hip, so much about music and passion and joy. The crowd was so together. The scene was so right. I don’t remember how we got to Doreen’s place that night, and I never got the name of the band, but when I came to, Brother, I was healed.

credits

released January 20, 2021

Recorded Live by Shalom Aberle, drums by Brian Childers, electric guitar and vocals by Rick Callahan, electric bass and vocals by Jean-Marc Porson, baritone, tenor, and alto saxes by Ted Dortch, trombone and vocals by Earl Ford Jr., tenor saxophone by Randy Hunter, Hammond organ and synthesizer by Mike Ewbank, lead vocal by Tommy Dean

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about

T. Wesley Dean Atlanta, Georgia

I am a singer and songwriter currenly based in Atlanta, Georgia USA. Artists that have recorded my tunes include Joe Walsh, Joe South, Billy Joe Royal, Tinsley Ellis, Heaven Davis, Alex Lattimore, Chick Willis and Kristie Agee.

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