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Fire Water: makes ya spend every quarter...I first heard of Stick McGhee (not "Sticks") about 30 years ago courtesy of my early "race music" advisor, Larry K. I don't know much about Stick except that he was the little brother of bluesman Brownie McGhee and that he died youngish. He came to my attention on a Larry K. mix tape of Carolina beach music that included this tune and another (in my opinion even better) side called "Whiskey, Women, and Loaded Dice," the latter of which you can listen to here on YouTube. I chose not to present that tune on this blog because some well-intentioned knucklehead pissed all over the song with an insufferably distracting video pastiche. But you go and listen anyway, I Command You. And I'll interject that some years ago Beer-D perceptively noticed that the melody to "Whiskey" is a traditional old timey tune performed as "In The Jailhouse Now" by the Soggy Bottom Boys in the Coen Brothers movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?
I'm not a musicologist but this music has a reedy, swinging New Orleans boogie woogie sound to it. Listen how it swings --- a perfect tempo and beat for kids dancing the Shag on sand-covered floors in Virginia Beach dives. Stick has a terrific laid-back delivery and a voice like a tenor sax. And the lyrics are just plain delightful: a tribute to all the wittily named "craft" moonshine the adults could get ahold of if they knew what to ask for. God help them all after the happy hour (6 - 8), when they could get two "Moon Graveys" for the price of one. Also, listen for the little gender-bending joke near the end --- quite sophisticated for the mid-'50s.
Six To Eight, Stick McGhee (1955, King Records), via YouTube.
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