Cain's Ballroom - Tulsa, Oklahoma - 9.8.10

The Black Crowes

Cain's Ballroom

Tulsa, Oklahoma

September 8, 2010

Waiting Guilty

Hard To Handle

Go Tell The Congregation

Only A Fool

Show Me

Seeing Things

Whoa Mule             

What Is Home

Poor Elijah (Tribute To Johnson)

Downtown Money Waster

Thorn In My Pride

She Talks To Angels

Wiser Time

- encore -

Miracle To Me

Tied Up & Swallowed

What a beginning to this show.  Look at those first five songs.   Everybody loves a Waiting Guilty opener, Hard To Handle is best early in a set, Go Tell The Congregation has been long overdue and always gets people moving, Only A Fool is one of those songs that is served best by the occasional rare appearance and Show Me is, well...Show Me is just a good old fashioned first rate wimbo sheshe.  This was a helluva fine beginning to the evening...and even though Cain's is non-smoking, as soon as the lights went down and the music started, puffs of smoke (both kinds) could be seen wafting through the air.  Tulsa was getting down.

Show Me was written by Joe Tex and was first debuted live by the band on July 23, 2008 at....guess where...Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa.   Serendipitous indeed.  They also played it a few weeks later that year in Wichita on August 13, 2008 to honor the day of his passing in 1982.  If you aren't hip to Joe Tex you should be; not only is he mandatory listening if you like soul music, he's also credited as the first to coin the term rap in describing part of his style of music.  Not that Joe was a rapper; he was more down home southern soul with a little jackleg preacher thing going on.  Rappers have sampled a lot of Joe Tex's music, but nobody has been sampled more than James Brown.  In fact, back in the day Joe and JB had a famous rivalry you may or may not know about...

It started out friendly enough; JB recorded one of Joe's tunes (Baby You're Right) and took it to #2 on the R&B charts in 1961.  Nevermind that JB reportedly also stole some of Joe's stage moves – what happened later was much worse – JB invited Joe's wife, Bea Ford, to join the James Brown Revue - you can hear her sing on the JB tune “You've Got the Power” - and eventually JB did the dirtiest of dirtys by bedding her.  After a while, JB wrote Joe a letter telling Joe he could have her back.   Joe let them both know how he felt by recording “You Keep Her.”  Click on that link and listen to it right now.  Despite all of this drama, the two continued to perform shows together occasionally.  After JB's 1963 album Live at the Apollo was released, JB returned to Macon to play a homecoming show, with Joe on the bill.  That night, Joe hilariously mocked JB's famous act from “Please, Please, Please” where he would drop to his knees, have his emcee come out and drape a cape over his shoulder and pretend to walk off stage.  Newton Collier, who played trumpet in Sam and Dave's Band, describes what went down during Joe's set in Macon:

"You know how James came out with the cape? Joe had one made up out of a raggedy blanket, with holes all in it. You know how James would break down and fall on his knees?   Joe fell on his knees, and all of a sudden, he grabbed his back.  He had the cape on and got all tangled up in it, and he was fighting to get out, singing, "Please, please, please, get me out of this cape."   He just made a mockery of James. Here it was, James' homecoming show, and James didn't appreciate this at all.  He went out to Club 15 after the show, and Joe Tex was out there.  And James took a couple of shotguns, and I think six people got shot.  James did most of the shooting, and Joe was running back behind the trees and bushes.  So that was the end of the Joe Tex/James Brown revue."

Another interesting nugget about this story - Club 15 was located in east Macon, and that night Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers were performing.  In addition to Jenkins, the band also included a cat by the name of Otis Redding.   Here's Jenkins' recollection of what happened when JB showed up...

"Seven people got shot. They were reloading and coming back in.  Me and Otis, we were hiding behind a piano.  A guy went around later, and I think he gave each one of the injured $100 apiece not to carry it no further.  And that just quieted it down."

Now is that a story or what?   Kind of makes you look at Joe Tex and JB in a whole new light.  Well, maybe not JB.  His reputation had preceded him for years.   Let's get back to the show...

After those fantastic first five set the place on fire, Seeing Things brought things down a few levels while Chris went ahead and sang the hell out of it.  When Shake Your Moneymaker came out, a review of the album described Chris' third verse vocal on Seeing Things as being in “Mahalia Jackson territory.”  We didn't even know who Mahalia Jackson was back then.  Next was the criminally underrated Whoa Mule, with Steve out front on the hand drum.  Arguably the best song on Warpaint, sometimes it makes us think of an old Looney Tunes bit with Yosemite Sam riding a camel in the desert, screaming Whoa Camel!  You'll just have to watch the video to get where we're coming from.  What Is Home followed, and coupled live with Whoa Mule creates one of the best two song combos of recently written material by the band.  If you've been following these guys since the early days, did you honestly ever think you'd see them writing songs like Whoa Mule and What Is Home?  We're not sure what to think of Crowes fans who aren't real fond of the newer stuff, especially the more roots music oriented tunes; but you can count us among those who are.

Poor Elijah and Downtown Money Waster into Thorn In My Pride provided the next 40 minutes of entertainment for everyone. Luckily, Cain's lets you buy sixers of beer, complete with the plastic rings, so you don't have to keep winding your way back to the bar every time you finish a can of Bud. If you were at the show, you may have noticed a few folks walking around carrying a six pack of cans. Those people are known as professionals. With the show winding down at this point, She Talks To Angels and Wiser Time made their 13^th and 17^th appearances out of 18 shows so far this tour and then it was on to the encore.

As the band walked back on stage, Miracle To Me came out unexpectedly, having not been seen or heard from since November of last year in Indianapolis.  Without question one of the best tunes on Lions, not only would it fit in nicely in an acoustic set, this is one we think some of the diehards would probably like to see pop up a little more often in place of some of the more frequently played selections.  

Closing out the night was Tied Up and Swallowed, which also capped off the Kansas City show a few weeks ago.  We love Tied Up and Swallowed and never, ever sneer at its arrival; what we'd really like to see though is for it to open a show or even kick off the electric portion of a double setter.  Curveballs are what us weirdos need and the more we get the happier we are.   So with that, the night came to an end.  We'll share a video we found shot by a genius on the front row during Tied Up and Swallowed whose directorial endeavors were thwarted by Chris throwing a towel over whatever type of cell phone or digital camera she was using to film.  The sound drops out and you may have to turn your head sideways to view the action but the ending is worth it.  A few pictures are below for your viewing pleasure as well.

By the way, Cain's is the home of Bob Wills, who just happens to be The King of Western Swing, and if you're not hip to the man, add him to your list next to Joe Tex.  Some of you may have been turned on to him by seeing BR5-49 cover his tune  "Take Me Back To Tulsa"  back in that decade we call the 90s.  J.J. Cale, Leon Russell, Roy Clark, Elvin Bishop, Carl Radle, Hank Thompson, Gene Autry, Gary Busey and S.E. Hinton are a handful of other notable folks from Tulsa.  

Well, it's a long drive east to Charleston, South Carolina but there's a nice long double set evening of music going down there in two days, so hit 'em up and move 'em out...