In the handful of times I have performed this song in public, I have jokingly introduced it as the song that might get me kicked out of the Commonwealth one day. That’s because it bemoans the state of the Canadian stamp with Queen Elizabeth II’s face on it on it as she ages. I don’t know why Canada Post decided to have an embossing of the Queen’s profile, like on the back of a coin, for many years during her youth, on its Queenie stamp. Then, sometime in late 80s, as the Queen started nearing seniority, Canada Post decided to put her senior face on the stamp, a face that would only wrinkle away as any other does with age.
lyrics
A Dirty Song Called All That Meat and No Potatoes? (and Lyrics)
There once was a time when you could take a dirty phrase to make a classy hit song out of it. I don’t know when it ended, but it was certainly alive in the 1940s when this song came about! This is the Louis Armstrong version, with Velma Middleton and the Louis Armstrong Orchestra, not the original Fats Waller version (at the end) that wasn’t nearly as good.
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Hey Pops! What’s wrong Daddy?
You look like somethin’ botherin’ you
Ain’t nothin’ botherin’ me honey
That a piece of roast beef can’t fix up
A man works hard then comes on home
Expects to find stew with that fine ham bone
He opens the door, then start to lookin’
Say, Woman, what’s this stuff you cookin’?
Now all that meat and no potatoes
I just ain’t right, dey like da green tomatoes
Here I’m waitin’
Palpitatin’
With all that meat and no potatoes
All that meat and no potatoes
All that food to the alligators
Now hold me steady
I’m really ready
Now all that meat and no potatoes
I don’t think that peas are bad
With meat most anything goes
Yes, I look into the pot
I’m fit to fight
‘Cause, woman, you know that mess just ain’t right
Oh, Pops!
All that meat and no potatoes
Just ain’t right, like green tomatoes
Woman, I’m steamin’, yeah!
I’m really screamin’
All that meat and no potatoes
Say, I don’t think that beans are bad
With meat most anything goes
I look into the pot
And what a sight!
Oh, woman, you know that without rice
Beans just ain’t right
Oh, Pops!
All that meat and no potatoes
Just ain’t right, like green tomatoes
Now woman, I’m steamin’
And I’m really screamin’
All that meat and no potatoes
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Louis Armstrong & Velma Middleton
When I first heard this song, I found it really groovy, and I still do, but I thought to myself, why would someone write such a great song about meat and potatoes?
Well, after some researching, I found out.
The title of this song, All That Meat and No Potatoes, was a slur from the early 1940s that was used to described a big figured attractive woman with small breasts. Gee, don’t you wish English was still that classy these days?
Hey, some people will never be classy, but you could help them by giving them language like this rather than, well, you use your own choice words.
Anyhoo, the story regarding how this song came about was that Fats Waller liked some female vocalist he was working with, except that she was all that meat and no potatoes. So he wrote a song about it.
Awww. Wasn’t that romantic? 🙂
But you’ve got to give credits to Fats, and his manager Ed Kirkeby. They wrote a good song on the literal end of things, expressing discontent with cooking that had a lot of meat and no potatoes, as a metaphor for Fats’ feelings towards this woman.
Then Louis came along and just took it to another level. Compare the version above to the version below.
It might be jazz, but I’ll tell ya, can Louis rock it or what???
The Louis Armstrong version of this song goes on my list for Best Songs I Heard for the First Time in 2010. I make a list every year. Please click here for links to other songs I have put on this list so far.
Find Yourself, by Brad Paisley (Lyrics and Video)
For the past four years, I have made it a habit to note songs I heard for the first time in those years which I really liked a lot. I share these with friends and family at the end of the year as a personalized gift, but more recently, I have blogged about them as well to share with readers who happen by. This is the latest on my Best Song I First Heard in 2010 list.
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Vodpod videos no longer available.
When you find yourself in some far off place
And it causes you to rethink some things
You start to sense that slowly you’re becoming someone else
And then you find yourself
When you make new friends in a brand new town
And you start to think about settling down
The things that would have been lost on you
Are now clear as a bell
And you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself
Well you go through life
So sure of where you’re heading
And you wind up lost
And it’s the best thing that could have happened
Cause sometimes when you lose your way, it’s really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself
When you meet the one, that you’ve been waiting for
And she’s everything, that you want and more
You look at her and you finally start to live for someone else
And then you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself
We go through life
So sure of where we’re headed
And we wind up lost
And its the best thing that could have happened
Cause sometimes when you lose your way, it’s really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself
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Brad Paisley
It’s the first country song that has made my list. Country isn’t my favourite genre of music, to say the least, but this song isn’t typically country. If you look at the lyrics below, you’ll see that the singer doesn’t lose anything. Rather, things were lost on him.
More shockingly, he finds something… and it’s himself!
In all seriousness, it’s a spiritual song, and those work for me if done right and well. I don’t care what genre it’d be in, whether country, rap or Martian Space Age punk.
If you’ve never heard this song, I hope you will like it. It’s easy enough to sing along and learn to play on guitar. I see chords for it are pretty simple. I will learn it and put it in PDF tabs for guitar and ukulele like other songs I have tabbed that way (with notes) on this site.
I came across this song flipping the channels just a few nights before this. It was from the Disney Pixar Cars soundtrack. It stopped me dead in my tracks, that’s for sure.
I wonder, though, is the rest of Brad’s stuff this good? I guess I’ll have to do some research to find out.
The last song which made my Best Song I First Heard in 2010 list was The No-No Song, covered by Ringo Starr. Links to other songs that have made my list this year, as well as my list from some previous years, can be found through those past posts. Enjoy!
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 4.4
Guitar and Ukulele Tabs for Goin’ Up Yonder (Walter Hawkins)
It’s hard to tab gospel music, if you know what gospel music can be like to perform with all its passionate fervour, improvisation and such. This isn’t meant as a tab as much as a starting guide for you to create your own version of this popular gospel. The version below is a relatively quiet version from which I created the guitar and ukulele tabs found below that.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Walter Hawkins
Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Guitar Tabs Letter Sized PDF
Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Guitar Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF
Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Ukulele Tabs Letter Sized PDF
Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Ukulele Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF
If the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) are too small for your eyes, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.
Please click here for guitar and ukulele tabs and chords to other songs on this blog.
I picked the choral version above to tab because it was the most “practical” one to tab. You can document something reasonably similar to that version, aside from all the harmony parts you couldn’t sing simultaneously if you were to do this solo. However, if you’re adventurous, you can add your own touches to this song and make it as different from the version above as the version below… all 10 minutes of it! It is soloed by Tramaine Hawkins.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
It’s generally the same style so you should be able to use pretty much the same chords if you sing it using the notes in the tab PDFs. However, it has a complete different swing and swagger. You could add a reasonably facsimile with your singing and some funky strumming if you give it a try.
Enjoy!
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 9.0
Guitar and Ukulele Tabs for Leaving on a Jet Plane (John Denver)
Leaving on a Jet Plane is a fantastic example why tabs and chord files you tend to find online, without notes written out, can be so problematic. The slightest change in how you sing a phrase can cause a different chord to be used. But without the notes, you just see a chord. Unless you happen to sing the phrase the same way in terms of notes, the listed chords might sound quite wrong to you. Or singing by ear, you might find trying to fit the phrase into the chording given is rather awkward.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
John Denver
In my tabbed files below, I have two sets of chords for each file, though they are both in the same key. It’s just a matter of how you phrase the first line, and some subsequent lines like it within the verse. If a C is your high note, as John Denver sings it in the video above, then one set of chords works well for it. If B is your high note, just a semi-tone below that C, another set of chord works better. But if there were no notes written out, you’d be scrambling to try to figure it out. And you’d be wrong if you sang it with a B for the high note, if you were a purist to try to sing it “right”.
That said, though, on the ukulele, I would actually recommend singing the version with the B high note in that first line (page 2 of the ukulele tabs). The C chord is just too open for my liking in the middle of the phrase. But that’s just my take. You play what you want. Hopefully, having these two versions will give you one that’s reasonably close to how you would sing it. Any further deviations and well, you’re on your own, I’m afraid. 🙂
But this is a prime example of why I have notes written out with my tabs and chords, aside from helping you (and me) sing things correctly.
I also left out a few chords on the ukulele version which didn’t add as much colour as the chords in the guitar version did. Most noticeably, I left out a bunch of D7 chords in the ukulele version, or just used a D. They were arranged in the guitar as such to denote mid-verse and end verse points, leading to transitions or not. But on the ukulele, l;et’s just say I’m not the biggest fan of the D7 chord in the C6 tuning of GCEA. You get to avoid it if you use a ADF#B tuning like Chalmers Doane preferred his ukuleles. In this song, where the D7 Â is used, it follows a D. As such, then, instead of using the barred version of D7, I recommend just dropping your pinky (baby) finger on to the 3rd fret of the A string while hold the D previously with your other three fingers.
Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver Guitar Tabs Letter Sized PDF
Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver Guitar Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF
Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver Ukulele Tabs Letter Sized PDF
Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver Ukulele Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF
If the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) are too small for your eyes, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.
Please click here for guitar and ukulele tabs and chords to other songs on this blog.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 6.6
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