There's A Riot Goin' On

[koganbot]

Embedding a couple of threads I'm proud of. —We've been running Unpolled Bangers From Unpolled Years at the People's Pop Polls (see footnote* for what those words mean). Tom let me have 1954 and I chose the Robins' "Riot In Cell Block #9," which gave me the opportunity to expand a thread I'd initially done for the Soundtracks poll: where the song came from, where the sound came from, what it led to, what various places the various riffs led to. I'll let the tweets tell the story, may add a word or two of explanation or embellishment. One thing: I don't actually name "Hoochie Coochie Man" in the first thread. I wasn't playing coy. Back in Soundtracks, Twitter'd flagged my tweet for "sensitive content" whenever I used the song title or embedded the song – their software must've thought it was porn – it is a sexy song! – so that's why I don't call it by its title here in the first thread; instead I break it off into its own thread. If Twitter had flagged it again, only the second thread would've been affected. Fortunately, this time they didn't flag it.

[For some reason, Dreamwidth software doesn't embed the full tweet, with its bells, its whistles, and its own embeds, so I'm pasting in the relevant video under the relevant tweet.]

Starting with the heat itself (a tough one for my nominee).

And back to the ancient BANGERVERSE...

🔵UNPOLLED BANGERS 4.6! #PPPMatches

1 CHARLIE PARKER! https://t.co/WCSP1gsESJ
2 HANK WILLIAMS! https://t.co/LJK9AtHPPJ
3 LITTLE RICHARD! https://t.co/1SB20cOK4A
4 THE ROBINS! https://t.co/GEO8sQdxmr

— People's Pop Polls: 2003 (@peoples_pop) November 21, 2023

Thread no. 1: Working and varying a riff

Thread for "Riot In Cell Block No. 9:
In the 1954 prison film Riot In Cell Block 11 (scored by Herschel Burke Gilbert), the musical prelude starts with high drama and then stops dead for two beats, then starts the drama again. /1https://t.co/M9spLJyTIs

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

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Meanwhile, a long time earlier, in a galaxy far, far away... no, at virtually *the exact same moment* actually, but in a *genre* far, far away, Muddy Waters and his band start a Willie Dixon song with a riff that goes two beats and then drops to silence for a half measure. /2

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

Not gonna embed it yet, though, 'cause Twitter thinks its title is pr0/\/. /3

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

When the Muddy song hits, Leiber & Stoller (a couple of middle-class Jewish boys), recognize its cinematic potential and create the underclass anthem "Riot In Cell Block No. 9" by the Robins, using a variant of the Muddy stop-time riff. /4https://t.co/o2Z9E4naWj

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

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"Riot" is up today in the People's Pop Polls' as a previously unpolled banger, hence this thread – but the thread's not near done; and I urge you all to join the polls: w/ another Leiber-Stoller song, Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog" in the Animal poll /5https://t.co/zCDO6lYgcU

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

[Note: Animals poll has just concluded. "Hound Dog" made the quarterfinals, where, however, not only did it fail to catch a rabbit, it lost to a rabbit, a white rabbit.]

The following year (1955), Elmer Bernstein lifts Riot's variant of the Muddy riff for the soundtrack to Man With The Golden Arm, which we polled back in Soundtracks (the Frankie Machine version), so we're back full-circle to ci-ne-mah. /6https://t.co/kNTH54D6BW

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

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Still threading, tho, 'cause there's more People's Pop content: same year as "Arm," Bo Diddley does "I'm A Man," which is *his* variant on the Muddy stop-time riff. "I'm A Man" gets covered yon and hither, and the riff is lifted by the Animals /7https://t.co/2xcOLgR5Ry

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

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[Note: The Animals double the second note of the riff, but for practical purposes it's the "I'm A Man" riff.]

The Animals riff was in turn sampled in Girls Aloud's "Biology," which not only made our Charity Crusher, it danced all the way to Pollhalla: /8https://t.co/UcPel95hKk

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

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Meanwhile, Muddy Waters himself had appropriately copied "I'm A Man" on "Mannish Boy" with a riff that triangulates Riot In Cell Block No. 9, I'm A Man, and his original riff itself. We polled Muddy's remake of "Mannish Boy" in our 1977 poll. /end pt 1https://t.co/ivepgDwrQW

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

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Thread no. 2: Willie Dixon gets diplomatic

Riot Thread 2: Elmer Bernstein's score for Man With The Golden Arm, which lifted the Robins' variant on the Muddy riff, got an Oscar nomination. Wikip reports Willie Dixon saying, "We felt like this was a great achievement for one of these blues phrases to be used in a movie." /1

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

But Wikip leaves out the tone of voice from the original interview, in Robert Palmer's Deep Blues (p. 167): "'We felt like this was a great achievement for one of these blues phrases to be used in a movie,' says Dixon, diplomatically." /2

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

So here's the original "H00chi3 Coochi3 Man," written by Willie Dixon, performed by Muddy Waters, with the stop-time riff that by rights should be on Tweet 2 of the previous thread. Am hoping my l33t speak evades Twitter's buffoonery. /3https://t.co/KUP5yYhKdB

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

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Dixon says the riffs were band-written, which means Little Walter on harmonica is as crucial as Muddy Waters on guitar (they're not doubling each other: Walter plays four notes while Muddy does five). /4

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

Don't want to imply that Gilbert originated the use of musical starts and stops in movie melodrama, or that Dixon, Waters, etc. did so in R&B. Palmer points to its long use in jazz, for instance. But it's Leiber & Stoller who connect the dots, use it to make songs cinematic. /end

— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) November 21, 2023

And here's a playlist. There's A Riot Goin' On.

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*Here's Tom Ewing's basic primer on the People's Pop Polls. Here are my own thoughts on the polls. "Unpolled banger" is a fairly high-profile track we hadn't previously polled, by an act that has never put a song into Pollhalla. (Dif. criteria for Pollhalla for different polls, but most often means making it to the quarterfinals; unpolled year means we're not taking tracks from one of the years we've given a dedicated poll to (we have year polls and theme polls; so by "dedicated poll" I mean one of the year polls).)

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