The music Little Richard Penniman made in the mid-fifties was a crazed jittering sugar rush—sweet candied yams with marshmallow eyeballs popping. Tutti Frutti, Lucille, and Rip it Up turned the heads of every would be flamboyant front man or woman to follow: James Brown, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, Elton John; they all looked up at…
Tag: themusicalingredient
The Legend of ‘Champ’: Eyewitness Accounts
Champ——the prehistoric god of the lake— didn’t bestow Lucas, Alex, Mario and I with any good luck on our ice fishing trip trip last February. We left without fish or new lake monster sightings to add to the record. Perhaps in the age of smartphone cameras, she’s been laying low. In the late eighties/early ’90s though……
Paella Recipe & Camarón de la Isla
Nothing will ever match my first wood fired paella. When I was twelve and my family lived in Spain, we took a road trip out to the farmhouse of some family friends in the dry Spanish countryside near Pamplona. When we arrived there was a stout old man standing over a fire, roughly shoveling heaps of shrimp and vegetables the…
Buttermilk Pancake Recipe & Willie Nelson
Don Fonda was a king in the realm of pranks and wisecracks. He would spin yarns to us grandkids about his days working at the telephone company—like the time he switched around the gas gauge and the speedometer in a co-worker’s truck, or the time he drove a fussy trainee deep into the Adirondack Mountains, looking at him suggestively the whole way, and then finally…
THE MUSICAL INGREDIENT 