Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

One of my favorite Robert Johnson tracks despite its divergence from the blues idiom with an unfamiliar, more commercial vocal and guitar style. Vamping an interesting danceable tune, Johnson hawks for a street vendor and humorously sells his craft and her wares with enough double entendres for everyone. He recorded it in 1936 at Gunther Hall in San Antonio, and the music is catchier than many of his songs, providing valuable insight into the different types of songs he would sing in performance. Instead of the usual topics of souls and hard. troubled luck, Johnson invites us to have fun and buy some of his girl's tamales or just loosen up: "I got a girl, says she long and tall / she sleeps in the kitchen with her feets in the hall / Hot tamales, and they're red hot / yes she got 'em for sale" to an infectious rhythm. I wish Johnson had recorded more songs like this.  Track This  is a recurring feature of Snobbin' that turns the music appreciation dial up and ...

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times is his last Little Tramp picture and a commentary on the financial situation during the Great Depression. The Little Tramp has difficulty adjusting to the industrialized world as he works in a factory and attempts to help an orphan girl, Ellen Peterson (Paulette Goddard), as she escapes from the police. The Tramp works on an assembly line that causes him to have a nervous breakdown in the film's most famous scenes. Another high point occurs when he sings a gibberish song, "Je Cherche Après Titine," or as Chaplin's version was known, "The Nonsense Song," at the cafe where Ellen works as a dancer. This scene serves as a fitting final tribute to the character as Chaplin's voice is heard in a film for the first time.