Thanksgiving Leftovers

For a brief break from our ongoing hiatus (which continues officially until Tuesday), here are some things that have been hanging around my inbox for a few days, waiting for the right moment, which this now is.

Despite the fact that Thanksgiving is the most American of holidays—one that can be enjoyed by people of all races, ethnicities, and faiths—it doesn’t have nearly the pop-cultural reach of Christmas. When Vincent put together his Thanksgiving mix earlier in the week, he used A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving as a framing device—and you’d be hard-pressed to name another Thanksgiving TV perennial. One show that should be on every Thanksgiving is the famous Turkey Drop episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. The series has largely disappeared from broadcast or cable TV, although it is out on DVD (albeit in a badly truncated form). So you don’t miss it, here’s Les Nessman’s description of the drop, and Mr. Carlson delivering the episode’s famous punchline.

Also left over in my to-blog-about file on this Thanksgiving Day: a very interesting set of covers from K-Tel samplers of the 70s. (I own at least 20 of the albums shown.) Some TV ads are here. This sort of thing causes me to mourn anew the apparent demise of Radio Radio, a blog that frequently recreated old K-Tel samplers in mp3 form. (Clive . . . are you still out there somewhere?)

And finally: The next time you hear a classic Motown tune, give thanks to the Funk Brothers, the famous house band, who gave Motown’s greatest hits their stomp, sizzle, and/or sugar. James Jamerson, Earl Van Dyke, Robert White, Benny Benjamin, Eddie Brown, Richard “Pistol” Allen, Johnny Griffith, Joe Hunter, Uriel Jones, Eddie Willis, Joe Messina, Bob Babbitt, and Jack Ashford—few people knew their names back then. More know them now, thanks to the 2002 film biography Standing in the Shadows of Motown. (Seen it? See it.) They recorded only a little on their own, separately and together, and those recordings are rare. The Motown blog Fullundie put up a bunch of them recently—hustle on over while the links are still active. The Funk Brothers: Naked Instrumentals is the most interesting batch, and gives you the Brothers at their most unadulterated. Another post features tracks from which the lead vocals have been stripped while leaving the background vocals intact, which makes them a lot like karaoke music. There are two volumes—the 60s tracks are worth a listen, the 70s tracks, which feature more orchestration and fewer actual Funk Brothers, less so.

I’ve always thought that “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas was one of the Funk Brothers’ mightiest works. Until I heard it without Martha’s vocal, however, I had no idea how mighty. The thing should be licensed as a lethal weapon—the drums are like cannons and the horns move the earth, so play it as loud as you can. Thanks to Big One at Fullundie for putting up that track, and the rest of ‘em.

“Dancing in the Street”/The Funk Brothers (buy some Funk Brothers—sadly, not this, though—here)