Johnny Hallyday – "Hey Joe" (1966)

Je pensais avoir une fille

Mais il paraît, Joe

Qu'elle dort maintenant entre tes draps

Bravo!

What is wrong with this photo of the elevator control panel in a European hotel?

Everybody knows there’s no such thing as a “0” (zero) floor in a building.  The first floor is the first floor – not the zero floor!  That should be as plain as the nose on your face.

But to get to the ground floor of this hotel, you had to press the zero button – not the “1” button.  (Push the “1” button and you ended up on the second floor.)

New York City has a Third Avenue and a Second Avenue and a First Avenue.  But the last time I checked, it didn’t have a Zero Avenue.  The same should apply to hotel floors.

Calling the first floor the “0” floor is bad enough.  What’s even worse is calling the basement level the “-1” (minus-one) floor.  

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This is the kind of thing that makes a right-thinking American like me tend to eschew European travel.

About a decade ago, I spent a few days in Paris.  Other than that, I managed to avoid Europe for the first three score and six years of my life.  (I’ve been to the UK three times, but I’m not counting that.  The UK is a lot more like the United States than it is like France, Germany, or the other countries of continental Europe.)

That all changed last month when I spent two weeks in France and Belgium with a small group of other Americans.

My fellow pilgrims and I spent most of our time marveling at medieval cathedrals and visiting World War One battlefields and cemeteries.  Truth be told, we also spent a fair amount of time bending our elbows at the bars in our hotels.

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I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore – or any of the other fifty states – as soon as my airplane landed in Europe.  

For one thing, H2O is never free at restaurants – you have to buy a big-ass bottle of water if you want to wet your whistle with something other than beer or wine.  

European flush buttons

For another, the toilets always have dual flush controls.  You push one for number one, and push the other one for number two.  (I was never sure which was which, so I usually pushed both of them simultaneously.)  

Manual-transmission cars have pretty much disappeared in the good old U.S. of A., but automatic transmissions are the exception in Europe.  If you rent a car, expect it to come with a manual transmission – you’ll have to pay extra if you’re like my children and don’t have a clue how to use a clutch.

Also, you have to get used to kilometers and liters and other such metric units of measurements.  This is particularly important when you are ordering beer.  Draft beer is served in either 25-centiliter or 50-centiliter glasses – which are roughly equal to a half-pint and a pint, respectively.  Bottled beer usually comes in 33-centiliter bottles or cans, which are a bit smaller than standard 12-ounce American containers.  

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I had one experience on my European trip that still mystifies me.

My tour group spent two nights at a fancy resort hotel in Chantilly, France – a rather posh town just 25 miles northeast of Paris.

Chantilly is the site of the Château de Chantilly, a sort of mini-Versailles built by a lesser branch of the French royal family (the House of Bourbon).  It is also the home of a prestigious thoroughbred turf racecourse, the Chantilly Polo Club, and the Living Museum of the Horse.  (That museum is housed in the château’s luxurious Great Stables, which have room for up to 240 horses.  The Great Stables were built in 1719 by Louis Henri, duke of Bourbon and prince of Condé, who believed that he would be reincarnated as a horse).

Horse-sized lamp in the
lobby of our Chantilly hotel

Our hotel was within spitting distance of the château and all that fancy horsey stuff, and came equipped with its own golf course.

What it did not come equipped with were any drawers or shelves where I could unpack my clothes.

In the United States, even the humblest Red Roof Inn or Motel 6 provides drawers or shelves where its customers can store their clothes during their stay.  My hotel room in Chantilly had five hangers in a closet, but no chest of drawers or other place to put my clothes.  I thought that I must be overlooking something, and called the front desk for assistance.

When a hotel employee finally answered, he claimed to not be able to hear me.  I tried calling back on the other telephone in my room and was told the same thing when I asked where the drawers or shelves were.

So I walked down to the lobby and put my question to a group of desk clerks.  Their expressions showed their utter lack of comprehension of what I was driving at, so I asked to speak to a manager, who assured me that my room was perfect just the way it was.

“Let me ask you something,” I said to the manager.  “Where am I to put my socks?  If you were me, and you wanted to take your socks out of your suitcase and put them somewhere, where would you put them?”

Fine for coats, but useless for socks

The manager had no answer to what seemed to me to be a most reasonable question.  Apparently, the custom at this hotel was for guests to place their socks on the floor, or perhaps on the desk.

Shortly after I returned to my room, there was a knock on the door.  When I opened it, one of the housekeeping staff handed me some wooden hangers, then turned and left without a word.  

Did this mean I was expected to put my socks on hangers?  Zut alors!

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This is the first in a series of posts about my trip to France and Belgium, several of which will feature a song by a French or Belgian recording artist.

The late Johnny Halladay was the biggest of all French pop stars.  He released an astonishing 79 albums and sold well over 100 million records during his 57-year career.

Hallyday covered a number of American and British hits – including “Let’s Twist Again,” “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear,” “House of the Rising Sun,” “Proud Mary,” and even “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini.”

Some called Hallyday “the French Elvis,” and it’s not a bad comparison.  Both were hugely popular, and both were hugely ridiculous.

Johnny Hallyday (1968)

The lyrics in Hallyday’s cover of “Hey Joe” are very different from the lyrics in the Jimi Hendrix version of the song.  For one thing, the singer didn’t shoot his old lady down.   

Here’s an approximate translation of the French lyrics quoted above:

I thought I had a girl who would be good to me, Joe 

But she’s sleeping between your sheets now

Bravo!

Click here to hear Johnny Hallyday’s cover of “Hey Joe.”

And click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Tony Joe White -- "Polk Salad Annie" (1969)

Down in Louisiana

Where the alligators grow so mean

There lived a girl

That I swear to the world

Made the alligators look tame

I have a strict policy of staying away from any woman who makes alligators look tame.  

Maybe if I found myself in New Orleans on business and I could avoid giving this woman my real name, I might consider one teeny little "date" with such a femme fatale.  Especially if I had been drinking at this fine French Quarter establishment:

But it's probably a better idea to steer clear – especially if the woman's momma was working on a chain gang as the result of a rumpus involving a straight razor, which was the case with "Polk Salad Annie's" momma.

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Polk salad – American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) – is a large herbaceous perennial that is native to the eastern half of the United States.  ("Poke salad" seems to be the more common spelling, but I'm following White here.)

Parts of the plant are quite toxic, but the leaves are apparently safe to eat if you pick them before they mature.  (One source I found says leaves that are under seven inches in length are OK, but I think I'll take a pass on pokeweed altogether – there are plenty of varieties of lettuce, spinach, etc., at my local grocery store to satisfy my needs.)

Pokeweed (a/k/a/"Polk salad")

If you live out in the woods and have no money and decide to pick you a mess of polk salad and carry it home in a towsack, my understanding is that you need to rinse the leaves in cold water, cook them in boiling water, rinse them again, boil them again, and rinse them again.

Of course, you can just buy them in a can:

Polk salad is similar to collard, turnip, or mustard greens, and is at its best when cooked in bacon grease and served with bacon.  But you could say the same thing about almost any green vegetable (e.g., Brussels sprouts).

Click here for an article that tells you everything you need to know about cooking polk salad.

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Tony Joe White was born and reared (not raised – as my high-school English teacher taught us, you raise animals but you rear children) in a small town in northeast Louisiana, near the Mississippi River.  

"Polk Salad Annie," White's only hit single, was recorded in 1968 in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and released late that year.

Initially, the record went nowhere.  White was living in Corpus Christi, Texas, at the time, and the people who heard him play live bought enough copies to make it a local hit.  Eventually, it charted nationally in July – months after its initial release – and stayed in the top 10 throughout August of that year.  (We started school in August in those days, so "Polk Salad Annie" qualifies for inclusion in my ongoing series of one-hit wonders from my senior year of high school.)

White's other singles didn't do nearly as well, although his "Soul Francisco" single was something of a hit in France and Belgium.  ("Rainy Night in Georgia" – which he had written in 1962 – became a big hit for Brook Benton in 1970.)

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Tony Joe appeared in the 1974 movie Catch My Soul.  That movie – think of it as "Othello" meets "Hair" – was directed by Patrick McGoohan, the star of two of my favorite television series of all time, Secret Agent and The Prisoner.  

The movie starred Richie Havens (of Woodstock fame) in the Othello role, Lance LeGault as Iago (you might remember him from The A-Team), Season Hubley as Desdemona, Susan Tyrrell as Emilia, and White (who wrote and performed several songs on the movie's soundtrack) as Cassio.  Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett and Billy Joe Royal also appeared.

Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner

Catch My Soul was – in director McGoohan's words – "a disaster."  (He never directed a movie again.) 

Here's an excerpt from Vincent Canby's review in the New York Times:

The music, a lot of it written by Tony Joe White, who plays Cassio ("a wino from Baton Rouge, Louisiana") is not at all bad, especially when it's being sung by Mr. White or Richie Havens, who is as creditable an Othello as it's possible to be under the nervy circumstances.  It's the hybrid plot and dialogue that keep one in what is genteelly called stitches. . . .

Says Desdemona in plighting her troth: "Whither thou goest, I will go. Whither thou lodgeth, I will lodge."  . . . You wouldn't be at all surprised if she added: "In whatever car thou renteth, I will be beside thee, on the fronteth seat."

When Desdemona, asks Cassio why Othello no longer favors him, the sodden Cassio pulls himself together just long enough to say: "Ah don' know.  A mess a things.  Ah ain't much of a talker."

"I like not that," says Iago, as Desdemona goes off to whisper into Cassio's ear. Says the distracted Othello: "Wha's dat?" . . .

Susan Tyrrell, who was so good in Fat City, turns up as Emilia, a woman who talks like Mae West and who dresses as if she had access to the wardrobe of the Madwoman of Chaillot.

Forget the movie and get the soundtrack album.

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"Polk Salad Annie" has been covered by a number of artists – unfortunately, Tina Turner was not one of them.  

Elvis Presley regularly performed "Polk Salad Annie" in concert.  Click here to view a video of one such performance, featuring Jerry Scheff's fuzzy bass solo.  (Scheff, whose first achieved success as the bass player on the Association's "Along Comes Mary," was a member of Presley's "Taking Care of Business" band from 1969 until 1977, and also played bass on L.A. Woman, the final Doors album.)

Click here if you'd like to watch a video of Tony Joe singing "Polk Salad Annie" with Johnny Hallyday, also known as "the French Elvis Presley."  (Why Tony Joe and Johnny were sharing the stage in Memphis in 1984 is a very good question.)

And click here if you'd like to hear Dan Aykroyd and Jim (not John) Belushi's version of "Polk Salad Annie."  It's OK, although Aykroyd's faux-Louisiana accent is a bit much.

Click here to listen to the original "Polk Salad Annie."

Click here to buy the recording from Amazon.