Junkers, Jivers & Coke Fiends - Vintage Songs About Drugs 1926-1952

Although each generation seems to think it's invented the dubious art of illicit drug use, this alternately amusing and harrowing set of vintage drug songs put together by the seriously bent staff of Britain's Buzzola Records shows that the party has been going on for generations. Cocaine features heavily here, showing the uncanny ability of Bolivia's and Peru's little coca plants to influence American music (check out Charley Patton's gruff, charging "Spoonful Blues," contrasted by Luke Jordan's cool, collected "Cocaine Blues"). Marijuana raises some smoke here, too, led by the Harlem Hamfats' (the Hamfats were apparently geographically confused, hailing from Chicago rather than Harlem) delightfully wheezing and swaying "The Weedsmoker's Dream." Then there's Tommy Johnson, whose canned heat as featured in the classic "Canned Heat Blues" is a deadly mixture of Sterno, cooking oil, methanol, alcohol, and boot polish known to bring on temporary (if not permanent) blindness. Part celebration of drug use, part a cautionary tale, Junkers, Jivers & Coke Fiends leaves the final determination up in the air, although closing with Andy Kirk & His Twelve Clouds of Joy's "All the Jive Is Gone" might be wishful thinking. ~ Steve Leggett|