Just how great are Black Oak Arkansas? Well rock critic Ubermensch Robert Christgau once posed the question of why they couldn’t fill NYC’s Academy of Music on a Saturday night after two years of relentless touring and then answered it himself with the words, “Because unlike most similar bands they have never achieved competence—they are actively untalented, incapable of even an interesting cop.”
Is that a glowing endorsement or what? But if you ask me Christgau was missing the point. If you have a sense of humor and a taste for the totally inexplicable those are the very qualities that make Black Oak Arkansas so great! I mean, ANYBODY can be competent! And talent’s bullshit! The Police were talented, and they should have been arrested! Eric Clapton is talented! Talent kills!
Black Oak Arkansas were working at a level of total inspiration that made basic proficiency much less mastery irrelevant, starting from the day they stole the PA from their high school and set up in an abandoned grain bin at the outskirts of the tiny burg they’d name themselves after and commenced to produce such an ear-splitting din that it took the cops all of ten minutes or so to swoop down on ‘em and not only pull the plug but arrest them for grand larceny, after which they were sentenced to TWENTY-SIX YEARS at some horrifying penal farm, although the sentence was later suspended. But there’s a lesson in there—playing the sounds they heard in their collective unhinged head could have put them away for decades, and it that ain’t the spirit of rock ’n’ roll, what is?
Black Oak Arkansas was a band of renegade long-haired redneck Krishna Baptists at the bizarro fringe of the southern rock movement who liked to sing about the halls of Karma and called themselves “mutants of the monster” and lived at one with nature in some kind of hairy hippie commune in the sticks where they perfected their totally incompetent but always electrifying and utterly unique brand of radioactive psychedelic southern rock, complete with their own three-guitar army and a drummer who liked to play solos with his bare hands, perhaps because he couldn’t afford drum sticks. But if so, why didn’t he just steal some? Arkansas is Purdue Country and literally crawling with chickens!
But the star of the show, and the reason they’re so great, was gravel-voiced frontman Jim “Dandy” Mangrum, who was this shirtless cornpone blonde Adonis who had no control whatsoever over his own vocal cords. Jim Dandy was the consummate wild pitcher—on rare occasions he’d hit the catcher’s mitt, but mostly he hit the batter or the first baseman or that old lady sitting a good fifty feet above the third base line or one of the rings of Jupiter even.
Listening to him sing is really exciting; even HE doesn’t know where the next note or the note after that and so on is gonna go because his tonsils are possessed! Oh, and not only did he have washboard abs he played an actual washboard, how about that, talk about your backwoods rockers—they may have written a song about the day electricity came to Arkansas but evidently the Maytag washing machine was still on its way. Hell, maybe that’s why he never wore a shirt on stage—he was washing it!
And despite what Christgau says about Black Oak Arkansas not being able to fill some joint in New York City they were a huge concert draw—the city slickers in NYC were simply too hip and jaded to realize that BOA were the New York Dolls of southern rock—unencumbered by mere musicianship, but brimming with back-forty charm and charisma. And despite what Christgau says, they produced some honest-to-God great songs that are not only “interesting” but downright inspirational.
And you can hear them all—along with some songs that are so flat-out bad they’re downright hilarious—on 2005’s Hot & Nasty: The Best of Black Oak Arkansas, which is not to be confused with a slimmer compilation of the same name that hit the record stores way back in 1974. Both compilations prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that BOA were a band with a vision, and better yet a band that saw visions. Who cares if playing in tune was above their pay grade? The remarkable thing about them is they were NEVER boring—Mangrum’s vocal tics alone made sure of that—and there are plenty of bands in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame you can’t say that about. Buffalo Springfield? Yawn. James Taylor? Seriously? Jeff Beck? The guy puts me in a coma!
BOA were always at their best in boogie mode, as they demonstrate on songs like “Fever in My Mind.” The song is totally manic frantic; there’s this mad guitar that turns cartwheels through the entire proceedings and when Jim Dandy isn’t growling or grunting or doing some backwoods speed-rapping in a demonically high-pitched voice he’s saying “Give it to me” or laughing like a madman or going “Oh, no, oh no, oh no.”
It’s a bravura performance, as is “Hot and Nasty,” a real rural funk number on which Jim Dandy lets you know he’s the premier cocksman in all of Arkansas and does this great thing where he sings the first part of a verse in this really macho voice and the second part of the verse like he’s part Satan and part special needs possum and it’s like listening to a guy with multiple personality disorder talk to himself. And sometimes he just slides right out of tune altogether, and he keeps making these sex noises like he’s recording a porno flick instead of a song. Why, it’s even better than the Killdozer cover, and how often does that happen?
“Lord Have Mercy on My Soul” opens with a very theological Mangrum delivering this metaphysical sermon (delivered over some very solemn church organ) about entering the halls of karma where he feels “the power of the two energies” although he isn’t completely sure any of it really happened: “Now when you go into the Halls of Karma the way I did, I don’t know, it might have been hallucination, but I think it was real.”
Then Mangrum puts down the Bhagavad Gita and the song kicks into spiritual overdrive. You get this great snaky guitar riff and Pink Floyd backing vocals but the best thing about it is (I shit you not) Jim Dandy sounds like at least five completely different people during the proceedings, and I’ll betcha he doesn’t even notice! “Hot Rod” is a live barnstorming barnburner that comes roaring out of the barn and commences to turn these crazy circles; it’s a real hard rocker and beats anything Grand Funk ever did. Mostly Jim Dandy is just out of tune—it’s not one of his more lunatic performances—but you won’t mind because this hot rod is fuel-injected.
“Uncle Lijiah” opens with some really purty pickin’ and grinnin’ and you can almost see the sun a’rising over the hen house until the melody (which is really home-spun and neighborly) comes along at a comfortable trot and Jim Dandy commences to tell you about his uncle, who’s one hundred and five but in his younger days was a gamblin’, knife-carryin’, no-good varmint who actually had the gumption to declare he could lick Old Scratch hisself until one day the devil actually SHOWED up, which took all the spit and vinegar out of him to the extent that “He jumped in bed with his/Maw and Paw/And he told ’em that/The devil was in Arkansas” and promptly announced that he was mending his evil ways.
But once again it’s Dandy’s untutored pipes, which received no formal education whatsoever, that make the song—he’s on his best behavior for a while, almost sounds like he can hold a tune in a bucket, but before long he’s doing vocal backflips and at one wonderful point sounds like a rabid raccoon trying to learn Portuguese. It’s edifying.
On the straight-ahead hard rocker “Keep the Faith” (a positive bunch, these guys) Mangrum manages to growl out of tune the whole damn way, which is an accomplishment if you ask me. And I like the end, where the song turns into a clay-eating gospel tent show revival complete with tambourine, lots of communal singing, and for all I know an uncredited snake-handler or two.
On the up-tempo country honk number “Gravel Roads” Mangrum puts in what may be his most erratic vocal performance of all time—listening to him on this one is like watching a blind pitcher throw knuckleballs. On the live “Mutants of the Monster” Mangrum delivers a lecture to kick things off, the point of which being you have to go off into the wilderness to live if you want to live, dig, then this throbbing bass comes slow-walking in and Mangrum serves up some of the most atrocious singing you ever will hear. Then things kick into high gear, then back into low gear again, and while the song is absolutely nothing to write home about NOBODY else sounded like this, most likely because nobody wanted to but STILL.
BOA’s legendary cover of LaVern Baker’s 1955 R&B chart-topper “Jim Dandy” is pure jump and jive and 100 percent boogiefied (to say nothing of sanctified). You can’t beat the beat with a stick, Jim Dandy is a one-man rescue service presumably with the Department of Fornication, and his back and forth with BOA fellow traveler the fabulous Ruby Starr (who steals the show) is pure entertainment gold.
The slow blues shuffle “Happy Hooker” is basically solo David Lee Roth a good decade ahead of his time. Mangrum sings the whole thing like he’s squeezing his tonsils together—you get this eerie thin nasal tremolo that could be a wolverine in heat, and as an added bonus you get this long guitar solo that I happen to think is fantastic but which would probably give any true student of the blues a heart attack.
“Son of a Gun” is upbeat Allmans stuff and actually sounds like there was somebody who knew what they were doing in the studio; in reality it was produced by a pair of Iron Butterfly vets, one of whom spent time in Blues Image! I wouldn’t call it slick, but it sounds professional right down to the streamlined vocals. Why, even Mangrum sounds in tune, or more in tune than he does anywhere else, and while it’s a catchy number I kinda feel cheated every time I listen to it—I don’t turn to Jim Dandy to hold a tune, I turn to him to drop it.
But he more than makes up for it on “Diggin’ for Gold,” a good ole acoustic guitar hoedown that’s real catchy and would for damn sure have knocked the audience out at BOA’s MTV Unplugged session had there ever been one. Damn Yankees got their shot. Hell, Vixen even made the cut. But no Black Oak Arkansas? MTV can hardly say they ignored them because they failed to meet their exacting standards.
On the good-natured and countrified “Everybody Wants to See Heaven “Nobody Wants to Die”” the Good Reverend Dandy delivers a sermon on salvation over Deliverance banjo and some heavenly backing vocals. “Have some faith in the Great Creator” sings the washboard pastor, and I have no doubt he means it. And he’s in such a sanctified frame of mind and sitting so comfortably on his future throne in Heaven he actually manages to sing the damn thing the whole way through using the same voice. Praise be to Jesus!
I could say lots about “When Electricity Came to Arkansas” but where would I start? With Mangrum’s opening washboard solo (it’s really something!) I suppose, or the fake “live” sound, or the football chanting that goes on as the song thumps along real bass heavy like until the band comes in sounding like the Allman Brothers on a harrowing morning glory seed trip. This is blues for people who prefer their blues butchered, and just to rub salt in the wounds of true blues enthusiasts the song seems to come to an end only to start all over again, to the accompaniment of an increasingly deranged “audience.” I can’t imagine what a real Allman Brothers fan would make of it, hell maybe that’s them right there in the studio except it can’t be because they’d be booing.
Then there are the hideous live covers of whiny rich guy George Harrison’s “Taxman” and “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star,” which is basically BOA pretending to be the Allman Brothers who are pretending to be The Byrds. And then there’s the downright embarrassing cover of “Dixie,” although you really HAVE TO HEAR Jim Dandy’s vocal cords swell with with rebel pride—it’s real touching! And provides a telling clue as to why the South lost the Civil War! And when the band comes in to do this up-tempo ersatz Allman Brothers jig with it, well it’s just plain dumb.
Black Oak Arkansas were not a musician’s band. They were a musician’s nightmare, and most of the real musicians I know can’t even LISTEN to their brand of inspired ineptitude. But for my money Jim Dandy Mangrum is one of the most exciting performers to ever grace a stage—an untamable force a nature with a voice as meteorologically unpredictable as a tornado making its erratic and merry way across the countryside, laying waste to innocent trailer parks. You can keep your greats—I’m sticking with the one-man demolition derby.
Loving Black Oak Arkansas the way I do requires a sense of humor, a populist bent, and a fundamental belief that proficiency is a grossly overrated virtue and that not doing it well by no way means you’re not doing it right. Although as often as not, Black Oak were doing it wrong, as wrong as a seven-car pile-up. Which is of course a thrilling form of entertainment in its own right, and where the sense of humor comes in.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
