We're at Amoeba Music Hollywood with Cheech Marin and we want to find out what's in his bag.
Whaddya got today?
I got a bunch of stuff. I like this place because they have stuff that nobody else has.
First, I was watching this Edith Piaf movie that
Marion Cotillard won the Oscar for.
And I really dug the music, so I should get a whole album of Edith Piaf.
I got the 30th anniversary album. If it's not in here it's not worth having, Edith Piaf-wise.
King Sunny Ade who is one of my favorites of all time
and this is the original album. You can't find it, but now they have it so you have to have
two albums, you have to buy two albums in order to get the original one but it's
cheap at twice the price. King Sunny Ade. If you want girls, girls like this.
Karen Dalton I heard when I was living in Vancouver and I was reviewing records
and this record came through and I heard this voice
it was the most incredible voice I'd ever heard.
I go, I've got to find out some more about this.
When I came to LA and I was reviewing records for magazines here
I asked them, they said who would you like to interview? I said Karen Dalton.
Oh, really? Karen Dalton?
And so she lived here in LA, in Hollywood, right on the corner of
Sunset and Kings Road, no La Cien...
Where the Whisky a Go-Go is.
There was this house, right kitty corner across from the Whisky a Go-Go.
It's not there anymore, it's a hotel.
So I knock on the door. They told her I was coming, it's Karen Dalton.
And I was looking for a place to stay at the time, live, because I was getting kicked out of wherever I was.
And they had a room there to rent out
and I rented the room. So I lived with Karen Dalton for months, maybe six months.
Not only Karen, and her old man John John.
And I got to see Karen Dalton up close and she has the most incredible voice.
Problems, but you know.
And then there was this other person there that lived in the house named Jill Byrem
who later became Lacy J. Dalton. I don't know if you're country music fans
She had huge records.
Yeah, huge records and she took her name from Karen.
Really? That's how Lacy J. Dalton got her last name?
Yeah her name's Jill Byrem and she renamed herself Lacy J. Dalton.
And I never knew that she was Jill until I was doing interview for People magazine
and they called back and said, I want to get a quote from you how it was to live with Lacy J. Dalton.
I don't know Lacy J. Dalton. They said, oh yeah, she said she lived with you
and oh, her name was Jill. Jill Byrem. Oh baby.
So she had so many famous supporters, Fred Neil, yourself, Lacy J. Dalton.
Why do you think Karen never made an impact in her own time?
Well she had drug problems and y'know that can slow you up a lot
and it did slow her up a lot.
Tim Hardin was one of her great supporters and just a lot, a lot of people are very influenced...
I blew my daughter's mind... I have an 18 year old daughter, the youngest one
and she's always trying to out hip me, you know
and she fills up my iPod with all the groovy whatever, the now stuff.
So we're driving along, she plugs it in, it goes
this song comes on, I listen to it, I go, is that Karen Dalton?
She goes, how do you know Karen Dalton?
I said, eh I used to live with her.
Ofra Haza. Ofra Haza is this Middle Eastern singer that was kind of like Middle Eastern pop
and she was really great. She had a little run there for...
I can't remember when, early 80s? Right in there.
And I saw her in Tokyo at some big deal
and I was knocked out by her, like, how come I'd never heard of her.
And I've followed her ever since. I don't have this album, but Ofra Haza. Get it, you'll like it.
Best of Brigitte Bardot. I got because I gotta see what it is.
I gotta hear what it sounds like. What does Brigitte Bardot sound like?
I think this is the first time that her version of 'Je T'aime...' with Serge Gainsbourg was issued was on this.
Really? Oh, cool.
She was married to an ultraconservative
and if I recall correctly, I don't know that much about her but
I think that he had the recording suppressed because it was so sexual.
Oh I can't wait. This one goes first in the car.
Marty Robbins 'Greatest Hits.' Now Marty Robbins is one of the kings of country music.
He wrote 'El Paso.' Didn't really need to write anything more.
But he has this... I've been looking for this song and I can't find it. 'Is There Any Chance.'
It's a very famous song that nobody ever heard of.
And I wanted to get it to have a good recording of it, so I can learn how to play it and sing it.
Fred Neil. Fred Neil was the original folk/blues guy.
He discovered Karen Dalton among others, Harry Nilsson...
'Everybody's Talking' that everybody thinks is Harry Nilsson, that's a Fred Neil song.
And he was just a giant influence on everybody.
He was another junkie from Florida.
And he lived in the village in New York and these are all... if you gotta get a Fred Neil album
this is one of the ones to get. 'The Many Sides of Fred Neil' is another one.
Webb Pierce. Now I was sitting in the hotel room recently, I don't know where
but they had one of those late-night infomercials.
You know, '154 of the world's greatest country music hits during the golden age of country.'
And I watched it long enough that I ordered it, y'know. And it comes in a box.
And one of the great tunes that Webb Pierce had is 'There Stands the Glass.'
It's the quintessential 'get drunk because my baby left me' song.
And so I know Webb Pierce, I know all his songs and we met his daughter a long time ago in Nashville.
So I want to get a whole album of Webb Pierce and just see what he was all about but
'There Stands the Glass,' they don't get better than that.
Buck Owens. He was in that 154 things, and I like Buck Owens.
I just like 'Act Naturally' and 'Tiger By The Tail.'
And I want all those, so I'm going to listen to a whole...
I've never listened to a whole album of Buck Owens, I just know his singles.
I play guitar and so how I learn music is I get the guitar books of anybody I dig
and I learn their songs. And I have a giant library.
I play a lot of standards, I play a lot of everything.
So I'm always on the lookout for rare oddities.
This is Tom Lehrer. He was a satirical...
Wasn't he a piano player?
Yeah, piano player, but satirical and he had 'Vatican Rag' and
'National Brotherhood Week' and it was big during the 60s.
And so I wanted to get all the lyrics and all the chords to all his books. Tom Lehrer.
'The Commitments.'
I don't know if you've seen the movie 'The Commitments'
about this Irish band that's trying to be an Irish soul band.
And I didn't find all these other tunes. I mean, it has all the R&B classics.
'Bye Bye Baby,' 'Chain of Fools,' 'Dark End of the Street,' 'Do Right Woman.'
But you can't find them all in one place.
So I thought, I'll get that one book and I'll get all these songs. Yeah, 'The Commitments.'
So that's what I spent my money on.
Awesome. Thanks so much for sharing your bag with us.
My pleasure.
I'm Rob Sevier from the Numero Group. This is Cheech Marin.
Thank you.