24. Ooh Poo Pah Doo, Parts 1 & 2

Jessie Hill (Minit 607, 1960);
composed by Jessie Hill

I love a manifesto that knows what it is about, which is that some of the most resonant harbingers come after the fact as well as before it, because the fact is mostly irrelevant. This great Allen Toussaint production begins with an a capella Mardi Gras Indian style call and response before the beat drops and the auteur promises to tell us all about “Ooh Poo Pah Doo.” And then he tells us nothing about it, as such, except to repeat in numerous variations, precisely this: “Baby, don't you know they call me the most? / And I won't stop tryin' till I create disturbance in your mind.” And that disturbance is what happens. Is there any “what” here, or just a “how”? Are there nouns, or just gerunds – incognito verbs posing as fixed entities? Is anything “fixed”? Dick Hebdige once made a delightful point about the Sex Pistols in his book Subculture: that “Holidays In The Sun” was both about semantic disorder and a prime example of it. Maybe it was, but this was more to the point. Part 2 is not the other half of a long performance cut in two: it is exactly the same, except completely different.

Note: 25 secular essays about 25 songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day during Advent (approximately).