Car Songs…Part 2

I have so many songs I want to have on here. I read the original post I did and re-read the comments and took some songs from your suggestions and used them. I haven’t got to all of them…so the others probably will be on the next one. I picked one song and you all picked the rest. Some will be in the next edition that I couldn’t fit in this one.

I hope you are all having a great Sunday.

Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats – Rocket 88

CB mentioned this one and it should have been on the first one…since this is often said to be the first rock and roll song. It’s only fitting that it was about a car. The recording session happened on March 3, 1951, at Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service in Memphis, Tennessee, which would later become the legendary Sun Studio.

The song was written by Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston. The Delta Cats were actually Ike Turner’s band Turner’s King of Rhythm. 

A review from Time Magazine in 1951

Rocket 88 was brash and it was sexy; it took elements of the blues, hammered them with rhythm and attitude and electric guitar, and reimagined black music into something new. If the blues seemed to give voice to old wisdom, this new music seemed full of youthful notions. If the blues was about squeezing cathartic joy out of the bad times, this new music was about letting the good times roll. If the blues was about earthly troubles, the rock that Turner’s crew created seemed to shout that the sky was now the limit.

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen – Hot Rod Lincoln

The main thing I like about the song is the guitar. It has a slight Chuck Berry feel to it and I like the fills the guitar player throws in. Of course, I like Commander Cody’s (George Frayne) vocal sound as well. 

The band signed with Warner Brothers and the label wanted a soft country sound but the band refused to change its raw style. 

Hot Rod Lincoln was originally written by Charlie Ryan. It was first recorded and released by Charlie Ryan and The Livingston Brothers in 1955. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were a County-Rock group formed at the University of Michigan. Commander Cody is the lead singer and piano player George Frayne. This would be their only top-ten hit. Another song that is well-known by them is Smoke Smoke Smoke. 

The Renegades – Cadillac

Fellow blogger HotFox63 mentioned this song when I did a Clash post on Brand New Cadillac so I thought it would be perfect for this. Very cool song that I knew nothing about. 

The Renegades were a British rock band formed in Birmingham in 1960. The original lineup consisted of Kim Brown (vocals, guitar), Denys Gibson (guitar), Ian Mallet (bass), and Graham Johnson (drums). Cadillac was released as a single in 1964. The song quickly became a hit in Finland, reaching #1 on the charts. Its success in Finland helped the band gain a substantial following in Scandinavia, and the song’s popularity also spread to other parts of Europe, including Italy.

Rosanne Cash – Black Cadillac

Obbverse mentioned this one. It’s a song from 2005 from an album with the same name. The black Cadillac in the song symbolizes both a funeral car and a connection to her father, who owned a black Cadillac…and about loss, memory, and mourning.

She wrote the album about dealing with the death of her father. 

“It certainly crossed my mind that I was opening myself to questions about how much [of the album] was documentary and how much was poetry, I certainly did think about it. But, at the same time, I think that the themes are so universal that it almost doesn’t matter what’s particular to my life. … People can bring their own lives to this subject very easily.”

Beach Boys – 409

Christiansmusicmusings and Halffastcyclingclub both mentioned this one by the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys would be an endless supply of cars and endless summers. This song was written by Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and Gary Usher and was released in 1962. 

This song was the B side to Surfin’ Safari. 

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

38 thoughts on “Car Songs…Part 2”

  1. While Commander Cody was often considered a One-hit Wonder due to Hot Rod Lincoln, I preferred a lot of their other stuff. “Seeds and Stems (Again)” was simultaneously one of the best crying in your beer songs and a parody of them. “Family Bible” was straight up – you looked for hippie tongue-in-cheek vibes but they weren’t there. (But just now, listening to “Hot Rod Lincoln” again, I realize how great it is.) George Frayne (Commander Cody) was also a painter.

    I had to listen to the Renegades carefully – the first time I heard the line as “My baby threw up in a brand-new Cadillac.” As a kid I had a scale model of the Cadillac pictured in the Roseanne Cash song (mine wasn’t black but was made of metal).

    A great selection today! (And I like the Opel GT in the featured photo – not the classic muscle car of the songs.)

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    1. Thank you! I get laughed at but my dream car is an Opel GT… a poor mans Corvette. I’ve been looking around here for a cheap one that needs fixed up for a while. I love those cars and they are not super expensive like Mustangs etc.
      I have a buddy who knows cars…I really don’t…but I would love to learn. He loves older cars and refuses modern cars because of the sensors and computers.
      A model of that Cadillac would be cool.

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    1. I don’t know…some of my favorite cars are British – in our family we owned two Triumphs, an Austin-Healy, an Austin-Cooper, and a Morris. (Also a Ford Cortina, much less cool.) Morgans are about the coolest cars out there. Old Jags, Aston-Martins, MGs, ACs, Lotuses…

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  5. ‘Hot Rod Lincoln’ was one of the first 3 or 4 45s I had as a little kid. Thought it was a fun tune and I still like it now & then.
    Gotta be a part 3 to cover ‘Chevy Van’ !

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  6. The Renegades cut is very cool. Never heard it before. I’m a Big Cody and Airmen fan. That guitar player in the band is Bill Kirchen. I was just listening to some of his stuff the other day. Caught them a few times and they were great. Gotta love the Commander with the cigar in his hand.
    Did you come across Tom Robinson’s car song?

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    1. Oh yea! The 2-4-6-8 Motorway…. that will be in the next one.
      Well Kirchen is great…those are clean licks with no studio tricks…just looked him up…he is still touring.
      They seem like they would have been a lot of fun to see.

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      1. ‘Grey Cortina’ is the one I was thinking about. Half fast might like the British car angle.
        The Airmen were great. Kirchen was like the MC of the band.. A lot of fun. I’ll send you some Bill tunes one day. Buffalo Bruce on bass.

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      2. No….that one I don’t remember…I’ll check it out.
        Cool dude…I’ll like that. I dont’ know Cody much more than two or three songs….
        totally unrelated…I love some of the musicians nicknames…Buddy Blue, Buffalo Bruce, Country Dick Montana… etc

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    1. Thank you! That will be in the next one. I love that song/story.
      Later on MASH did an episode of Radar mailing one part at a time home from an army jeep.

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      1. You’re welcome. Funny but true I was mentioning the Johnny Cash song to my kids last Tuesday while we were walking at Meijer Gardens.

        LMAO on Radar and the jeep!

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  8. Great idea for a post. Car songs are fun, fun, fun, and I dig all of your picks!

    While I’m not a car expert, I immediately recognized that handsome little red sports car in your cover image: An Opel GT, which was quite popular in Germany while I was growing there. It looks more zippy than it actually was!

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  9. Still like that GT Max, so clean, so 60’s, so Maxwell Smart. It doesn’t have to go like a bat out of hell if it looks smooth fast and sleek parked up. One day Max, one day your Opel will arrive…

    Great series, and after I added ‘Hummingbird’ to my driving list what else could the next post I opened be?

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  12. American cars always sounded so exotic, and the cars were huge compared to the UK motor industry. I’m guessing that’s why we don’t do car songs! 🙂 Driving In My Car is much more British (Madness) 🙂

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