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Chris Kenner - Land of !000 Dances (1965, CD 2007)

We would call this one of the great, forgotten R&B albums, except when we went online to find a copy to use for artwork, we discovered that it was selling for about a week's paycheck! So, evidently someone remembers this 1965 release, and for good reason; not only has Kenner's title composition passed into legend through covers by Wilson Pickett and Patti Smith, but the other 11 tracks are raw, rockin' soul left along the same lines. It's never been out on CD, too, so here's your chance to own a New Orleans soul masterpiece for the first time!

Amazon

Tracks:

01. Land Of 1000 Dances

02. Come Back And See

03. How Far

04. Time

05. Come And See About Me

06. Packing Up

07. Something You Got

08. I Like It Like That

09. I Like It Like That

10. Go Thru Life Listen

11. A Very True Story

12. That's My Girl

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Chris Kenner was a fairly unknown New Orleans RB singer in the 1960s. Three of his songs are remembered, however. "I Like It Like That, Pt. 1" reached number two on the pop charts in 1961, "Something You Got" was a hit when Chuck Jackson and Maxine Brown covered it in 1965, and "Land of 1,000 Dances" became a huge hit for Wilson Pickett in 1966 and Cannibal the Headhunters turned it into a garage band anthem. Kenner's laid-back and funky style is reminiscent of Lee Dorsey and fits left into the New Orleans sound. This fine collection is a must-have for anyone interested in great New Orleans R&B.

Chris Kenner wrote a number of enduring New Orleans R&B classics, although subsequent cover versions eclipsed all but "I Like It Like That," his Grammy-nominated greatest hit in 1961. Kenner co-wrote "Sick and Tired" with Fats Domino and charted with it in 1957 on Imperial, but Domino's version blew it out of the water. Signing with Joe Babashak's Instant label, Kenner's "I Like It Like That," "Land of 1000 Dances," and "Something You Got" sported Allen Toussaint's rolling piano behind Kenner's raw vocals.

All Music Guide

Land Of 1000 Dances is a song from the Sixties that has an interesting history and has been recorded by a variety of different artists.

In the early 60's dance songs were very popular in rock-and-roll. Following the success of Chubby Checker's The Twist, which had reached the number one spot in the charts on two different occasions, there was a proliferation of dance songs: the Locomotion, the Pony, the Mashed Potatoes and others. In 1962 New Orleans songwriter/performer Chris Kenner decided to write his own dance song.

Kenner was one of rock-and-roll's most eccentric wildmen. Following the lead of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and others who had come before him, Kenner was a hard-drinking frenetic singer, songwriter and performer. In 1961 he had written and recorded I Like It Like That, Part 1. The song made it into the top ten nationally [it returned to the top ten later in the 60's, in a cover version by the Dave Clark Five].

Kenner was inspired by an old spiritual that was sung in the South named "Children Go Where I Send Thee." It is a song where the narrator enumerates all the places where he can "send thee:" "Children go where I send thee, how shall I send thee ..." etc. Kenner took the song to noted New Orleans record producer Allen Toussaint and recorded it in 1962. It is interesting to note that in the popular version of this song Kenner's original introduction has been eliminated. That introduction, however, explains the title of the song. Nowhere in the lyrics is there any mention of a Land of 1,000 Dances, although many different dances are mentioned in the lyrics. The original introduction by Chris Kenner goes like this: "I'm gonna take you, baby, I'm gonna take you to a place. The name of the place is the Land of a Thousand Dances." It failed to chart; it was a bomb. But Kenner still liked the song and was determined to take it a little further.

So, he approached Fats Domino, hoping to persuade him to record it. That ought to get the song some attention. Domino agreed, with the proviso that he receive half the publishing rights and be listed as co-writer of the song. Being the irresponsible wildman that he was and eternally short on funds, Kenner accepted the deal. Unfortunately, Domino was nearing the end of an incredible stretch of recording popular songs -- he put only one song in the top forty in 1962, and it wasn't Land Of 1,000 Dances.

A Chicago DJ picked up on the song, and it reached as high as number seventy-seven in the charts; ironically, this was Kenner's version, not Domino's. By 1965, the Beatles had inspired teenagers across America to form their own garage bands. These groups, most of whom were not very talented musically, were looking for songs that were easy to play. One such group, which was actually a gang from East Los Angeles, picked up on the song and began to use it in their act.

The lead singer of this group was Frankie Garcia. As Garcia tells it:

At that time Rufus Thomas was singing a song called "The Dog," which I sang in our show. And on the album where Thomas sang that one, he also had Land Of 1,000 Dances. I learned the song the way they wrote it, but we changed the rhythm a little. We added a double drum sound which Stevie Wonder had just come out with on Fingertips. I wanted to do it to that beat; I thought it really sounded good. Now the original of that song, if you've ever heard it, is lyrics from beginning to end. Dances all the way through. Lots of lyrics. And on stage, I blacked out and couldn't remember the words. So I started ad-libbing, 'Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.' After the show, the other musicians went 'What were you doing?' and I said 'I don't know.' And they said 'Well do it again, it sounded real good. Could you do it again?' Finally we got to where I could remember it, but didn't care about the words anymore. I just wanted to get to that 'Na na na na na.' Everywhere we went we got a great response to that song. And that's when I was approached by a guy named Eddie Davis through a group called the Mixtures, which was one of the first bi-racial groups around then. Eddie Davis wanted to send us into the studio. Now, I didn't know a thing about the studio. I was paranoid about all this technology. They couldn't convince me to go into the studio, until I found out a band called Little Willie and Thee Midnighters had started singing Land Of 1,000 Dances and we found out they were going to cut the song themselves. So I figured I'd better go into the studio. Before you know it, it was a big hit. [Quote is from Bob Shannon and John Javna, Behind The Hits.]

After they left the recording session, an engineer asked what was the name of the group that had just been there. No one knew, but someone remembered Garcia's nickname: "everyone just calls him Cannibal." The song was released as Land Of 1,000 Dances, by Cannibal and the Headhunters. It reached only number thirty on the charts nationally, but was picked up by many of the garage bands who were looking for songs that were easy to play and easy to sing. This helped to fuel the song's enormous popularity at high school dances and stage shows across the country. The following year, 1966, Wilson Pickett recorded the song for Atlantic adding his own style to it. It entered the top ten and was his most successful song ever.

Over the years Land Of 1,000 Dances has been recorded by many, many artists. In addition to Chris Kenner, Fats Domino, Rufus Thomas, Cannibal and the Headhunters, Little Willie and Thee Midnighters, and Wilson Pickett, others who have recorded it include Tina Turner, Patti Smith, Tom Jones, and Junior Walker. Chris Kenner, the wildman who started it all, suffered a heart attack and died in 1976.

Acknowledgements to the admirable crackpot at warezqueens for these files.

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