Let Us Now Celebrate "Don'tcha Just Know It" by Huey 'Piano' Smith & The Clowns

And "Silent Night."

I think my favorite in the "total nonsense" category (a la "Don't You Just Know It") is "Don't You Know Yockomo":

Coombah lay lee (Coombah lay lee)
Doo way pop a way (Doo way pop a way)
Hidey hidey hidey ho (Hidey hidey hidey ho)
Don't you know Yockomo? (Don't you know Yockomo?)
Lang tang tang (Lang tang tang)
Hey ey oh (Hey ey oh)

Other interesting ones I managed to SoulSeek include, yes, "We Like Birdland," although the repetition doesn't work quite as well there as it does on some of the other ones; and "Free, Single, and Disengaged," which is strikingly different, thanks to a truly sublime, mournful horn break which suggests a layer of melancholy otherwise completely absent from the song, or indeed the rest of the Clown catalog as far as I know.

I would love to hear all this stuff remastered, incidentally - my MP3 of "Don't You Just Know It" (which has been anthologized and cleaned up with considerably more regularity to my ear) blows all those other tracks away in terms of clarity.

As for "Don't You Just Know It" itself, I've been putting it on dumb little 50s rock-rhythm-n-blues comps for years and I'll probably never stop. My mother loves it too.

You know, I've only ever JUST now, listening quite hard, realized that the first line of that verse is "Baby, baby, you're my blue heaven." I really thought it was just more nonsense in the vein of the chorus... Now I'm going to have to try and figure out what he's saying in the other verses...

Dude, I wish I was in a band that covered this.

But then, you knew that.

Great fucking song.

Doo way pop a way (Doo way pop a way)

Not mentioned upthread -- maybe it's common knowledge among those who love this music -- but this line is borrowed from the Mardi Gras Indian chant "Two Way Pak E Way" (variant spellings and pronunciations abound) which also spawned The Meters' "Hey Pocky Way."

"Total nonsense" with a history!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpjKHdPirME

btw the title track was in jonathan richman's live set during his best period (late 70s/early-mid 80s)

If one has Huey's "Rock'n'Roll Revival" comp, is there a logical next step if one wants more?

See: Cruise

Actually, check out Frankie Ford, for real.

oh yeah, forgot i have a handful of his tracks as well.

New bio out.

Here is only review I could find: http://somethingelsereviews.com/2014/04/12/books-huey-piano-smith-and-the-rocking-pneumonia-blues-by-john-wirt-2014/ which is not really a review but more of a retelling of the story. No byline, maybe the same guy wrote the book and this piece, which like I said isn't really a review despite the site name.

D'oh. It's an except.

Book bucks the trend by trying to capture dialect phonetically. Some interesting facts in there: for instance, how many of you know about the Rudy Ray Moore connection?

Think this is the only Huey specific thread! Sadly, he's passed, but what a life indeed.

https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/new-orleans-rock-n-roll-pioneer-huey-piano-smith-dies/article_1a451915-0f9f-5e14-a98d-c1372185dc62.html

I got this during lockdown:

https://www.discogs.com/release/3385873-Huey-Piano-Smith-His-Clowns-Having-A-Good-Time-The-Very-Best-Of-Volume-1

Can’t recommend it enough. “Don’t You Just Know It” alone is so fun to sing and play along to, it’s rock n’ roll at its elemental best.

^OTM. As was the OP.

He's reunited with Dolemite now.

I read a pretty good bio a while back, let me see if I can find it

https://lsupress.org/books/detail/huey-piano-smith-and-the-rocking-pneumonia-blues/

RIP. An absolute legend, who deserves to be better known. Currently giving a very appreciative sunny morning listen to my copy of the 70s Rockin' Pneumonia & The Boogie Woogie Flu comp, which is tremendous. As I've said before (ex. on Early New Orleans Rock N Roll/R&B ), the one really golden cut that seems to get left off of about half the comps is "Free, Single & Disengaged" - strongly recommended to anyone who doesn't know it.

Seriously had no idea he was still alive. R.I.P. to a great one.

Wondering now how many people know that he and his band played the track on "Sea Cruise."

I was just reading about him in Birnbaum's Before Elvis, where his songs are repeatedly cited as links between pre-war boogie woogie and rock 'n' roll. RIP, it's sad that he's gone but also amazing to realize how close in time we still are to that mythic era.

Here's Smith and his band on the b-side to "Sea Cruise":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZxPASRZE-I

I think he even originally did the vocal on "Sea Cruise" but they wiped it and put on Frankie Ford.

The original take was reissued sometime later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7BA1pu4sXk

At some point I'll learn that threads popping up for ancient people generally means death. It was the first Paul Gambaccini Top 200 book that got me to buy this around 1980, one of the first imports I ever bought:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQbMtDvPR3yrDPelvmY6BUqHvwOv_CSaGN95Q&usqp=CAU

I really had no idea he was still alive.

First thing I would have consciously heard from him, either original or a cover, was Aerosmith doing "Rockin' Pneumonia" for the Less Than Zero soundtrack back in late 1987 -- lead track on the album IIRC! Given Aerosmith had started the slow descent into cheese by then, it was a nice little moment of them remembering why they did what they did to start with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1JgH-5BmY

YouTube the one internet thing I want to live forever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gdDubu1L2Q