Woke up at around 3, 3:30 this morning with a post about Aerosmith already assembling itself in my head when somehow, some way, the incomparable Barrence Whitfield elbowed his way into my creative process. I dragged myself up out of bed, went to the can to take a leak (bipedal males should take a moment to thank their lucky stars for being able to enjoy life’s simple pleasure of standing up to pee), grabbed a cup of java, and off we go…

I first got hipped to the man they call the Round Mound Of Beantown Sound and his fine band back then, the Savages, when I was living in the town of Ocean Drive, SC by a DJ who gigged weekly at the bar I worked at, Fat Harold’s HOTO Tiki Bar location—Harold’s On The Ocean, that would be— beachfront under the grand old Ocean Drive Beach and Golf Resort. HOTO’s is still around, or it was last time I was down thataway a few years ago, at least. Sadly, Fat Harold, the old skimflimp (in Pogo parlance), is long gone himself.

Harold’s other joint (of three, actually), only a cpl-three blocks up the way (a tumbledown little roadhouse with a big outdoor dance-deck yclept the Pad), is of course a bona fide legend in the Shagger/Beach music community. To be honest—even though I’ve been going to OD, Myrtle Beach, and Cherry Grove ever since I was a little kid and even spent a summer living in OD and bartending for Fat Harold back in the early 80s—I’ve never once set foot in the Pad for some odd reason, couldn’t tell you why. Never learned how to dance the Shag either, although years after he died my mom shocked the living hell out of me with the revelation that my dad had actually been a world-class Shag dancer, even had a big box full of trophies he’d won in various Shag competitions stuck up in a corner of the attic someplace. Blew my mind, I tells ya, I did NOT see that coming. Dad never said a word about it, not that I ever heard.

At any rate, modern Beach music sucks the big green weenie if you ask me, although the early stuff—basically just good old-school R&B and rock and roll, mixed with a little smidge of real true blues—is a whole ’nother story. Judged by that definition, this makes Barrence’s stuff the genuine Beach music article, no more nor less, so small wonder a DJ at HOTO’s would be playing him. First up, dig if you will this perfect-for-Halloween selection: “Bloody Mary.”

The rest of the Barrence Whitfield tunes I’ll tuck below the fold. Take my word for it, you’re not gonna want to miss a one of these gems; in my whole entire life, I’ve never heard anybody quite like the guy.

This next is a live performance from a Boston-area gin mill the BP’s also played a good few times: the Middle East.

Last but by no means least, the song that OD DJ played which kicked off my decades-long love affair with the music of the great, great Barrence Whitfield and his Savages: “Big Mamou.”