THE CRYPT OF THE CRAMPS: DISCOGRAPHY Part Three

(An asterisk * denotes a clickable link to something.)

Off the Bone is the first compilation of previously released material by American garage punk band The Cramps. It was released in 1983 in the United Kingdom on Illegal Records. The original release featured an Anaglyph on the cover and a pair of paper red and blue "3D glasses" inside the sleeve for viewing it. Sounds magazine, the now defunct British music weekly gave the album a 5 star review, calling it " a hell-fire cocktail of gutter riffing and chattering Rockabilly voodoo strum into which is dropped an electric sugar cube of psychedelic power"

Side One

1 Human Fly

2 The Way I Walk (Jack Scott)

3 Domino (Sam Phillips)

4 Surfin' Bird (Steve Wahrer)

5 Lonesome Town (Baker Knight)

6 Garbage Man

7 Fever (John Davenport, Eddie Cooley)

Side Two

1 Drug Train

* 2 "Love Me" (Marty Lott)

http://www.rockabilly.nl/artists/phantom.htm

Jerry Lott a.k.a. The Phantom was born near Mobile, Alabama in 1938 and moved to Leaksville, Mississippi during infancy. He played country music until 1956 when Elvis Presley turned his head around. "Love me", recorded in Mobile in the summer of 1958, is one of those rare, lusty explosions which crackle with more energy than the national grid.

"I'd worked three months on the other side of the record", he told Derek Glenister. "Somebody said, 'what you gonna put on the flip-side' I hadn't even thought about it. Someone suggested I wrote something like Elvis 'cause he was just a little on the wane and everybody was beginning to turn against rock 'n' roll. They said, 'See if you spark rock 'n' roll a little bit'... so that's when I put all the fire and fury I could utter into it. I was satisfied with the first take, but everybody said, 'let's try it one more time'. I didn't yell on the first take, but I yelled on the second, and blew one of the controls off the wall."

The second take of "Love me" can be found on Bear Family's "That'll flat git it!" series, volume 5. The first take apeared on "Cotton Pickin' Rock" (Anchor) in 1978.

"I'm telling ya", Lott continued, "it was wild. The drummer lost one of his sticks, the piano player screamed and knocked his stool over, the guitar player's glasses were hanging sideways over his eyes."

Lott took the master to Hollywood. On a Satanic impulse, he followed Pat Boone to church and persuaded him to listen to the tape.The devil was surely working overtime that Sunday. It was Boone's idea to call Lott "The Phantom" and he even agreed to issue the record on his own label, Cooga Mooga (an euphemisme for God, as in Great Cooga Mooga). In the event, Lott signed a contract with Boone's management and never met anyone at Dot, who finally released "Love me" in 1960.

In 1966 this screaming bundle of testosterone sustained paralytically severe injuries when a car in which he was travelling tumbled 600 feet down a mountainside near Spartanburg, South Carolina. There were no more records on Dot or Cooga Mooga (although a mediocre fragment has surfaced on a White Label collection).

Notes on "Love me":
Recorded in 1958 at Gulf Coast Studio, Mobile, Alabama.
Master: MB 14019, Issued on Dot 16026

Jerry Lott (The Phantom) - Vocals
Frank Holmes - Electric Guitar
Pete McCord - Bass Guitar
H.H. Brooks - Drums
Bill Yates - Piano

3 I Can't Hardly Stand It (Charlie Feathers, Jerry Chastain, Jody Huffman)

Charlie Feathers (1932-1998) was born in the state of Mississippi, not very far from Slayden & Holly Springs, Mississippi in Marshall County. On June 12th, 1932, Leonard and Lucy Feathers were blessed with the birth of a boy whom they named Arthur Lyndbergh Feathers (a.k.a.Charlie Feathers).

By the age of nine, Feathers had become an adept guitarist:

"Let's see my first guitar; I was real young, about ten I guess. I had an aunt; she'd sit down, and she'd pick the guitar. She'd pull on the strings, which I could tell you right now; women have the greatest touch on guitar of any human being here on Earth to start with. A lot of people think you rap guitars… you don't! A guitar is really supposed to be picked on, like that. You can get some wonderful sounds out of rappin' it, but actually you pick upon a guitar string to get tones out of it. The old timers, they used to pick that thing."

Backed by Quinton Claunch and Bill Cantrell, along with Sun all rounder Stan Kesler on steel guitar and Marcus Van Storey plucking the string bass, Charlie cut his debut record for Sam Phillips on February 17th, 1955. Held at 706 Union, Feathers launched the session with a hopped up boogie number titled "Peepin' Eyes," a song peculiarly similar to Bill Monroe's reading of "Rocky Road Blues." A further five cuts were waxed the same day, but are hitherto unissued and were presumably lost.

http://www.charliefeathers.com/

4 Goo Goo Muck (Ronnie Cook)

(Hasil Adkins)

Hasil Adkins (pronounced "Hassle," not "Haysil") (April 29, 1937 – April 25, 2005) was an Appalachian country, rock and roll, and blues musician, though he was frequently considered rockabilly and sometimes primitive jazz. He

generally performed as a one-man band, playing guitar and drums at the same time and singing. Hasil was equally skilled on the harmonica and on keyboard.

Nicknamed "The Haze", Adkins claimed a repertoire of over 9,000 songs including over 7,000 original compositions (though it has been said he has been known to have grossly exaggerated these figures), recorded scores of small, micro-label 45s, and is responsible for the birth of Norton Records, Psychobilly, and a dance called "The Hunch". His music can be sad, humorous, and/or frantic. He was well known for shrieking certain catchphrases, such as "hot dogs", "I want your head", and "AaaaaaaaaaaaaHeeeeeeeeeeee-Wooo!!!!"

Hasil Adkins made an appearance in the cult film Die You Zombie Bastards! as himself On April 15, 2005, Adkins was deliberately run over in his front yard by a teenager on an ATV. The perpetrator was apprehended by police (after running over another person a short distance down the road from Adkins' house), and Adkins identified him in a picture the police showed him. Ten days later, on April 25, Adkins was found dead in his home.
http://www.hasiladkins.com/

*6 "The Crusher" (Bobby Nolan)

* 7 "Save It" (Hargus Robbins, Mary Biggs)

8 "New Kind of Kick"

*9 "Uranium Rock" (Warren Smith)

Bad Music for Bad People is the second compilation of previously released material by the American garage punk band The Cramps. It was released on I.R.S. Records and was seen by most fans as a cynical cash-in by the record label following the departure of the band. Sounds magazine, the now defunct UK music paper, whilst giving the album a five star review said "Miles Copeland's IRS label pick the carrion of their former label mates even cleaner by releasing a watered down version of the Off the Bone singles collection that was released in the UK...The music's still great even if the scheming behind Bad Music for Bad People stinks of decay and corruption"

1991
LOOK MOM NO HEAD

Lux Interior - vocals
Poison Ivy Rorschach - guitar
Slim Chance - bass guitar
Jim Sclavunos - drums

Side one

"Dames, Booze, Chains and Boots"