MC Quixote

DJ Homage Part 29

I've been stuck on this homage thing for a while now and I'm thinking about changing my DJ name to DJ Homage or maybe DJ Ham and Eggs (nobody would probably get that), but I'm stuck on it. So it's time to do a mix, in fact, I'm thinking this whole DJ thing is an homage machine. Choose your favorite artist and pay tribute by reworking one of her/his songs into a new song.

So, I'm going to put something together with a Chuck Berry song. I was watching some old footage of him on YouTube and became mesmerized. It was the 1955 video for "You Can't Catch Me", amazing! At the end of that song he does this "Chicken Walk", wow. I wonder what people thought back in 1955 watching Chuck Berry pull off those moves.

James Brown is another animated performer from that era who shook the conventions of that time. And musically, both Brown and Berry are fundamental for what's happened over the last 60 years.

I want to name this song by paying homage to both artists and use a poetic twist. But how do I combine James Brown and Chuck Berry? Looking closer at the names, I see that Chuck Berry could be a derivative of Huckleberry; drop the "C" and add "le" after the "k". The homage continues.

This leads me back to Mark Twain; whose real name was Samuel Clemons. His nom de plume / pen name becomes Mark Twain; which Clemons says he jacked from the infamous riverboat pilot Isaiah Sellers after he died. Clemons wrote that Sellers used "Mark Twain" when he wrote articles about river boating on the Mississippi, but there's no evidence of these articles. "Mark Twain!" is what boatmen shout when the water gets too shallow for a riverboat; it supposedly means "two leagues", which is a measurement of 12 feet (a mark is 6 feet and twain is an old word for 2). So maybe it means "to get to the bottom of something"?

There's another theory that it comes from what Clemons supposedly used to say to bartenders at this saloon in Virginia City, Nevada. The claim is that he always ordered two drinks at a time and therefore "Mark Twain" or put two on my tab. What's in a name? Quite a bit, if you're a writer or an artist.

So my Chuck Berry path crosses with Twain and Huckleberry Finn, funny thing, that goes back to Tio Robo and how he tags Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick as the two most significant books in the U.S. I can't even think of the implications behind Moby Dick, I'll have to do some research. But back to naming this song, hmm. I think I call it "A Perfectly Browned Huckleberry Omelet" = James Brown and Chuck Berry with my homage / omelet for good measure.

Even if there's no truth to any of my crazy ideas about homage, it's still fun. For me, it makes the world make a little more sense. Sometimes, I think of it as all these artists and writers are on my team, cheering me on from the sidelines. They're my coaches, my fellow players, and my most important audience. I just have to follow their lead by creating something that's honest, interesting, and artistic. That's my new mantra while I'm making this perfectly browned huckleberry omelet.