#PJ Harvey #Polly Jean Harvey #alternative rock #art rock #indie rock #hard rock #punk blues #folk rock #avant-rock #lo-fi #singer-songwriter #1990s
PJ Harvey, in full Polly Jean
Harvey, is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist whose mythically
pitched, fanatically intense recordings and concerts set new standards
for women in rock. Harvey, born to countercultural parents in rural
England, seems to have grown up with a sense of rock as simply another
elemental force within the landscape. “Sheela-na-gig,” for instance, a
single from her first album, Dry (1992), took as its central image the
female exhibitionist carvings with gaping genitals found throughout
Ireland and the United Kingdom, whose origins are the subject of debate.
The song, like many others by Harvey, treats female sexuality as a
ravaging, haunted force, but, instead of acting the victim, she
theatrically embodies her obsessions, equates them with the alluring
menace of rock and the blues, and builds herself into an archetype.
From: https://www.britannica.com/biography/PJ-Harvey
"Wang Dang Doodle" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon. Music critic Mike Rowe calls it a party song in an urban style with its massive, rolling, exciting beat. It was first recorded by Howlin' Wolf in 1960 and released by Chess Records in 1961. In 1965, Dixon and Leonard Chess persuaded Koko Taylor to record it for Checker Records, a Chess subsidiary. Taylor's rendition became a hit and "Wang Dang Doodle" became a blues standard and has been recorded by various artists.
"Wang Dang Doodle" was composed by Willie Dixon during the second part of his songwriting career, from 1959 to 1964. During this period, he wrote many of his best-known songs, including "Back Door Man", "Spoonful", "The Red Rooster" (better-known as "Little Red Rooster"), "I Ain't Superstitious", "You Shook Me", "You Need Love" (adapted by Led Zeppelin for "Whole Lotta Love"), and "You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover". In his autobiography, Dixon explained that the phrase "wang dang doodle" "meant a good time, especially if the guy came in from the South. A wang dang meant having a ball and a lot of dancing, they called it a rocking style so that's what it meant to wang dang doodle". Mike Rowe claimed that Dixon's song is based on "an old lesbian song" – "The Bull Daggers Ball" – with "its catalogue of low-life characters only marginally less colorful that the original". Dixon claimed that he wrote it when he first heard Howlin' Wolf in 1951 or 1952 but that it was "too far in advance" for him and he saved it for later. However, Howlin' Wolf supposedly hated the song and commented, "Man, that's too old-timey, sounds like some old levee camp number":
Tell automatic slim, to tell razor totin' Jim
To tell butcher knife totin' Annie, to tell fast talkin' Fannie
We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Dang_Doodle
