THE 12″ LUCKY DIP (12): The Cramps – Can Your Pussy Do The Dog

The Cramps.   One of Dirk’s favourite bands.  He came up with this ICA away back in December 2017, and one of their songs featured in his ongoing alphabetical rundown of his favourite One Hundred and Eleven 7″ singles….more of the latter to come in a few paragraphs.

The Cramps, according to wiki:

An American rock band formed in 1976 and active until 2009. Their line-up rotated frequently during their existence, with the husband-and-wife duo of singer Lux Interior and guitarist Poison Ivy the only ever-present members. The band are credited as progenitors of the psychobilly subgenre, uniting elements of punk rock with rockabilly.

The addition of guitarist Bryan Gregory and drummer Pam Balam resulted in the first complete line-up in April 1976. They released their debut album Songs the Lord Taught Us in 1980. The band split after the death of lead singer Interior in 2009.

That’s just the intro….there’s loads more to read over there if you want.

Strangely enough, I have way more digital material from The Cramps than I have physical copies of vinyl, and that’s based on my villainous ways of downloading stuff posted on other blogs.  I do, however, have a wonderful second-hand copy of 12″ single that I picked up a few years ago, back in the days when there were bargains still to be found

mp3: The Cramps – Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?

It’s from the album A Date With Elvis (1985), the band’s third studio release.  By this time, they were a trio, with Lux and Poison Ivy joined on drums by Nick Knox who had actually joined as far back as 1977, being the third drummer engaged by the band. It was the lead-off single, and in reaching #68, it gave them a first ever chart single in the UK.  The album reached #34, easily their most commercially successful release ever.

This most wonderful of a-sides also contains a b-side that Dirk is very fond of, as he shared with us just over a year ago.

Within their career The Cramps released numerous brilliant records and amongst those were quite a lot of equally brilliant 7” singles. It would in fact be a hard task indeed to number those down to one and decide for this one to be the best of the lot. But I have one advantage: from their beginnings, The Cramps occasionally covered their favourite songs from the 50’s, perhaps most notably The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird”, put out as a 7” in 1978. And somehow I have always been very fond indeed of these old tunes, at least when having been modified to impact strength by Lux and Ivy!

But “Surfin’ Bird” wasn’t the only cover the Cramps released. They also put their own spin on “The Way I Walk” by Jack Scott, punctuating the verses with shrieks to give it some B-movie flavor. Other songs they covered include Jimmy Stewart‘s “Rock on the Moon,” Dwight Pullen‘s “Sunglasses After Dark,” Elvis Presley‘s “Jailhouse Rock,” the Sonics‘ “Strychnine,” and Little Willie John‘s “Fever.” None of which I chose though today.

No, my favourite is this, friends, originally  written and performed by David Fatalsky, or, as you and I know him better, Dave “Diddle” Day, in April 1957 :

mp3: The Cramps – Blue Moon Baby

As it turns out, the additional track on the 12″ is another rockin’ cover

mp3: The Cramps – Georgia Lee Brown

Written in the 50s by Phil Zinn and Robert Hafner, it was first released in 1959 by Philadelphia-based rockabilly artist, Jackie Lee Cochrane, often referred to as Jack The Cat.

JC