Blues for the Safety Boy, or...We Used to Be Ashamed (Imagine That)

Ain’t nobody rocks like a puppet. Perhaps it is the added incentive of a strangers hand up your ass which feeds the seemingly untapped amount of nervous energy which a puppet exudes. Add to that the stigma of being a ‘black’ puppet on a predominantly Caucasian street (i.e. Sesame) and you begin to see the allure that is Baby Ray Franklin.

Now, unlike Dr. Teeth & the Mayhem and the River bottom Nightmare Band, Baby Ray - little bro of Sesame Street regular Roosevelt Franklin - takes his beef to the street w/ a decidedly more bluesy improve, touching on such important urban mainstays as traffic safety; a cause close to my heart as I recall my complete bitch of an elementary school music teacher hammering away on a spinet (and my psyche) to the strains of the following tune. Feel free to sing along if you like…

"Play ball, play ball. Everyone loves to play ball.
sometimes you catch it and sometimes you miss
But when you miss, remember this:

Let the ball roll, let the ball roll
No matter where it may go
Let the ball roll, let the ball roll
It has to stop sometime you know
Often a truck will flatten a ball
And make it look like an egg
Although you can get many a ball
You never can get a new leg"

Hopefully you, the reader, have both your legs, cause you’d need to walk a mile in Baby’s shoes before you could even begin to dig the cultural implications of ‘Safety Blues’ flip , the ‘Skin I’m In’. Not since the ‘Rainbow Connection’ and ‘It’s not Easy being green' has a song so beautifully encapsulated the racial tensions extant in the Muppet world. From the saprophyte leanings of Big Bird to the urban blight of Oscar’s dwelling, only now, thirty some odd years after the fact, can the truth finally be told. Fight the power!

Safety Boy Blues - Roosevelt Franklin

Skin I'm In - Baby Ray Franklin

"Hey Kowalsi, you out there?"

In the words of 'Super Soul':

"And there goes the Challenger, being chased by the blue blue meanies on wheels. The vicious traffic squad cars are after our lone driver, the last American hero, the electric sitar, the demigod, the super driver of the golden west. Two nasty Nazi cars are close behind the beautiful lone driver. The police numbers are gettin ' closer, closer, closer to our soul hero in his soul mobile, yeah baby. They're about to strike, they're gonna get him, smash him, rape the last beautiful free soul on this planet. But, it is written, if the evil spirit arms the tiger with claws, Brahman provideth wings for the dove. Thus spake, the super guru."

Some might argue that existentialism has no place in a road movie, but any "Chase" celluloid worth it's salt, whether it be 'Two Lane Blacktop' or 'Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry', is really more about the concept of limitless possibilities and the freedom of the decade, then it is about torque ratio and power sliding. Take the sublime and criminally under appreciated 'Vanishing Point' for example. You got methamphetamine abuse, a desert journey of self discovery, a seemingly telepathic link with a blind, black soul DJ, a naked chick on a Honda 'sickle'. Hell, Barry Newman even manages to get high and bang the Grim Reaper before threading his 70' Challenger through the eye of the needle.



As one might imagine, a tale of such gravity requires a proper soundtrack, and though the burden is more than shouldered by the inclusion of such bands and pickers as 'Mountain' and the fabulous 'Big Momma Thornton', the highlight for me is the instro work of the ambiguously credited 'J.B. Pickers' Aka. hayseed legend Jimmy Bowen.

"{Jimmy}Bowen began as a teenage recording star in 1957 with "I'm Stickin' With You," originally the flip side of the hit record "Party Doll" by Buddy Knox, but ultimately a Top 20 recording on its own. Bowen was a less successful singer than Knox, his partner in the Rhythm Orchids, and ultimately he abandoned a singing career, but stayed in the music industry.In the early 1960s, in Los Angeles, California, he bucked the 1960s rock phenomenon when Frank Sinatra hired him as a record producer for Reprise Records, and Bowen showed a strong knack for production, getting chart hits for Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., all regarded as too old-fashioned for the Sixties market."

Released on the 'Bell / Amos' label in 1971, here is a little taste of the 'Vanishing Point' soundtrack.

Freedom of Expression - J.B. Pickers