Apr 21 2006
Charlie Parr and ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’
Greg Brown recorded a traditional song called Who Killed Cock Robin on his Honey in the Lion’s Head album. (What does that mean, anyway, honey in the lion’s head?) I love the album and I love the song. While doing some research on the story behind the song, I came across a guy named Charlie Parr. Some other guy named Alan Sparhawk had this say about him:
Charlie Parr is one of the greatest musicians and human beings I know. So many country-blues artists are crippled with retroism and purism, but he has brought wonder and excitement to this music. Even Charlie’s foot coming down on the floor boards screams with more soul and life than most anything — past or future.
That’s another way of saying he’s real good. He has several songs available for download on his site. I recommend starting with Bethlehem (MP3). His take on Who Killed Cock Robin ain’t too shabby either.
In the past couple weeks, I’ve downloaded a bunch of songs from his site (Jesus at the Kenmore is hilarious), but most of them don’t seem to be available anymore. Too bad. However, an entire concert can be downloaded at the Live Music Archive. Check it ‘em out.
The Charlie Parr concert from the Live Music Archive is excellent. I’m webcasting it now at a higher-than-normal bandwidth, hopefully with no buffering. I’m impressed with lossless audio compression. Sounds great on this end. I might not have time to webcast the entire concert (about 2 hours), but I’ll replay some other time once I’ve converted it to MP3s.
“Honey in the Lion’s Head” presumably refers to Judges 14:8-9, though I’m not sure where the ‘head’ bit comes from.
Gonna break on the show until after Jim’s rant.
Whole Wheat Radio folk might like the sound of the Charlie Parr I’m playing now. The concert files are not MP3, but you can check out the set list at the Live Music Archive link. I love this stuff.