‘Get Rhythm’ – On the corner where Rockabilly meets the Blues

Listen to ‘Get Rhythm’

I first heard this tune in 1957, My older brother had bought the Johnny Cash single, ‘I Walk the Line’. When we flipped that yellow Sun record over and played the B-side. ‘Get Rhythm’, the track seemed to jump right out of the grroves.I remember sliding around in my stocking feet on the living room’s hardwood floor; a ten-year-old dancin’ fool.

Get rhythm
When you get the blues
Come on get rhythm
When you get the blues

It’s a simple but contagious song with a positive message, and I love it just as much today as when I first heard it.

In the early nineties I was playing in a band called Jamnuts with siblings Jimmy, Pammy, and Marty, and family friend Kenny Weinstock. Jimmy suggested we add ‘Get Rhythm’ to the set list and that I take lead. Performing it live week after week allowed me to season the song and make it my own. In 1994 I decided to record it and contacted my friend, Tim Horrigan. Tim ran a basement studio out of his home in Eagle Rock. At the time he was making his living by recording demos for aspiring artists. He was amazing! Not only could he engineer, arrange, and produce; he could play guitar, keyboards, bass, and program drums like only a real drummer can. Tim had often hired me to sing on demos and I had been using his studio and his talents to create some original recordings for several years.

The result of our three hour session that night is pure magic. The track begins with a vocalized ‘We-ell’ (Got the idea from Ray Charles’ ‘i Got a Woman’) before the guitar plays the pick-ups into the chorus. The backing is Memphis rockabilly –
acoustic and electric guitar, bass and drums – all supplied by Horrigan. The playing is clean but snappy and red hot.

I chose to sing with a gospel feel but using clear tone (well, as clear as these pipes can get). On the original, Cash sings the line –
I said ‘You’re mighty little boy to be a workin’ that way.’ –
down in his low bass register as the instruments chug. I chose to do it as a stop time and in a style and timbre I had gleaned from listening to black gospel quartets.

For the instrumental sections I kept the shape and the spirit of Luther Perkins’ guitar solo but put the spotlight on the harmonica. I used a 1940’s Astatic dispatcher’s mic plugged into a 1952 Fender Champ amplifier. I was going for that Little Walter Chicago blues sound. The harp adds doses of ferocity and excitement to the mix, and further pushes the track across genre lines.

I was delighted that the recording turned out so well. It was even better than I’d expected.Every now and then over the next seven years or so I would get out my cassette copy and give it a listen. Yep, still dug it!

Then, in 2001 as I was putting together a collection of tracks that would become the album, ‘A Blue Little Corner’ it occured to me that I should include ‘Get Rhythm’.  Tim Horrigan had the master tapes of all our recordings. I made a date to get together to transfer them to a digital format. By this time Tim and his lovely family had relocated to San Juan Capistrano.. As drove down south I put the cassette copy
in my player and listened a few times. I was excited about it. When I arrived, however, search as we may, we could not find the master
of the song. Tim suggested we use the casstte as the master. We did and to my relief it still sounded good.

So I made the trip back north to L.A. flying on a cloud. I slipped the cassette into the machine to hear it again. Oh my God, the stuttering warble sound told me that the player had eaten the tape. Upon ejection, the tape appeared as a loop of sad, twisted ribbon. I gasped. That could have happened on the way down. I realized that the track had come that close to disappearing forever. Thank-you, Lord!

I recently appeared as a guest on the Dave Darin Show. Dave wrapped up my segment by playing a zany video he’d put together of people of all stripes and colors dancing eccentrically to ‘Get Rhythm’. Got me out of my seat. Just a dancin’ fool!