There will be good times & bad times I suppose...
good things like this...
and bad things like this...
One upcoming good time I assume, is being at a performance tomorrow night featuring my pal Bone Cootes at The SF Eagle, which is nice.
Plus unlike this song...he's not just making a temporary stand...
Bone Cootes - Yours Temporarily
cuz the good news is, he's got a few more gigs booked coming up...
including the freaking Castro Street fair in October !!!
and this cool ass one at SF's Elks Lodge next Friday!
Bone's in The Poontones who are playing @ The Elks Lodge
Bone Cootes - Paging Mr Babylon
Bone Cootes - Let's Fly This Winnebago To The Moon
Hope I have time to stop by after I while away a few hours getting liquored up at some droll dinner affair at some Country Club named after a bird or a canyon or both out in the sticks beforehand...
The weekend has it's own maniacal agenda shaping up, with nightclub nincompoopery likely in effect, as well as a gig in Golden Gate Park I promised to work featuring some fairly faceless new adult rawker types like James Blunt, Joss Stone ...
James Blunt - 1973
Joss Stone - Fell In Love with A Boy
oh, and I do believe there's one of those platinum plus bands that got washed up in the creek ever since VH 1 stopped playing music videos...
(but maybe it won't be so bad if they can remember this one)
Gin Blossoms - Christine Sixteen
Which, now that I consider all this, and the abject hideousness of today's pre-fab pop rock flavas of the minute... and the followers themselves...
yikes
like Mission of Burma...
that's when I reach for my...
I reach back, and not finding a revolver...look into the oldies collection I've amassed
Now hey, this was some tasty pre-fab pop idol shit!!!
Eat yer heart out annoying American Idols, yer like 50 years late on that shtick at least...
Let's talk about our boy Scotty McKay aka Max K. Lipscomb
Dude was born destined in Dallas in 1937. Out of High School or whatever he was up to, after filling out a talent agency application, he joined up as a rhythm guitarist/pianist in Gene Vincent's Blue Caps in late 1957. Lipscomb was of course listed as being 17, even though he was already 20. He admitted to being recommended not being much of a backing musician and figures Vincent was likely not paying attention at the audition. The rest is obscure rock n roll history, as Vincent soon dumps the Blue Caps, and McKay either has to go back to school or figure something out...
Philly based "teen idol" producer's Bob Crewe and Frank Slay soon figured he was handsome & blond enough, and recorded him under the stage name Scotty McKay. Lipscomb remembers being called that at the suggestion of Dick Clark after turning down other possible monikers like Dal Houston & Chess McKay. So, the newly branded Scotty McKay released sides on a series of small East Coast labels including Event, Parkway, Swan, and Lawn before the 1960 Payola scandal pulled Clark's pre-fab "teen idol" empire apart.
McKay ended up recording until 1962 in New Orleans at Ace Records, who needed some fresh whiteboy faces after attempting to abandon R&B. McKay did 6 classic singles with sidemen like Mac Rebbenack, Allen Toussaint and Fats Domino's backing band.
The Ace material is considered by some to be the bulk of his really key shit, so I'll tuck a few in here for you to hear...
McKay's brightest Ace moment supposedly occurred with Fat's band behind him on Lil' Liza Jane.
Scotty McKay - Lil' Liza Jane
His album on Ace compiled these aforementioned 45s, plus "bonus tracks" by throwing McKay's voice over a couple original Frankie Ford backing tracks made by Huey "Piano" Smith. Here's McKay doing Ford's previous big hit for Ace...
Scotty McKay - Sea Cruise
After his relationship with Ace ended, McKay kept his career as alive as possible with one shot deals with labels like SSS, Dot, Desk, Phillips, Capri, Falcon and Claridge. In 1963 a song he wrote called Summer's Comin' was a hit for Kirby St. Romain reaching # 49 on the cahrts. By 1965, The Scotty McKay Quintet found themselves a cameo role in a low budget Vincent Price horror flick for AIP based on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat" where he appears briefly on screen performing his own tune Sinner Man and covers of Bo Diddley's "Bo Diddley" and Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man". His only other on screen credit occurs in an even lower budget 1967 TV movie called "Creature of Destruction". At one point while on a Dick Clark package tour backing Brian Hyland, he ended up recording a single with brit blues act the The Yardbirds that was released in the U.K on Columbia in 1967.
The story how that occurs is pretty funny so I'll toss it in...
The Yardbirds were on one of those package tours, playing alongside Sam The Sham & The Pharoahs, and Brian Hyland of "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" and "Gypsy Woman" fame...
Brian Hyland - Gypsy Woman
Scotty McKay had taken up a gig as one of Hyland's backing "band" which was essentially one guitarist, and a bunch of other guys in ponchos appearing to strum along in time to the music. Apparently the road hardened Brits took to cracking up at this silly scene, and taking the piss out of Hyland's ego, they'd jump in alongside occasionally with Hyland even noticing the additions to the backline.
McKay struck up a friendship, and the amphetamine rattled rocker ended up recording with the Yardbirds.
He kept trying, also recording for the Squire label as Max K Lipscomb With Bobby Rambeau Orchestra, and tried his luck as Tommy And The Tom Tom's and even as the Shut Downs. In 1970, Scotty McKay contributed a song to Gene Vincent's first Kama Sutra album at Gene's request, and sang backing vocals. Despite some 30 years in the biz and a lengthy if haphazard discography, he never truly reached the pinnacles of pop infamy he'd sought before his death came in 1991.
There were undoubtedly good times, but as we know too well, also bad times as well...
Here's a McKay cut from a rare acetate, but now immortalized digitally on a Norton Records collection that's chuck fill of classic rockabilly fodder.
I downloaded it at eMusic, the site that never quits offering up tasty tuneage...
SCOTTY MCKAY - Bad Times (ACETATE)
words by Max Lipscomb
Oh mama-mama-mama, come look at me
I'm a-sittin' and a-waitin' and a-hopin' you will see
You treat me bad, plain ole bad
There'll be no fun tonight, unless you treat me right
Gimme no bad
Well, I called for you at eight, you asked me who I am
You open up the front door, I hear the backdoor slam
You treat me bad, plain ole bad
There'll be no fun tonight, unless you treat me right
Gimme no bad
Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah
One and one is two, two and two is four
Baby-baby-baby I just can't take no more
No bad, mmmm got it bad
No fun tonight, unless you treat me right
Gimme no bad
Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah
Well now honey-honey-honey, what'ya gonna do
Why I love you baby, yeah I love you like I do
You treat me bad, oh real bad
There'll be fun tonight, try to treat me right
Don't be bad
Yeah, never bad
Oh, way ever bad
Yeah, way ever bad
[fade]
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