Wang Dang Doodle

Take a narrow basket of songs or the covers and originals that live specifically in Pigpen's blues and R&B world, not Good Lovin' or New Minglewood Blues, which Weir kept alive as his own vehicles.

The narrower stuff, Turn On Your Love Light, Smokestack Lightnin', Little Red Rooster, Wang Dang Doodle, Walkin' Blues, the material that came directly from Pigpen's blues and R&B inheritance.

From 1969 through 1972, the Dead played that narrow basket 457 times.

457 performances of Pigpen's specific musical vocabulary in four years.

Music is God.

So when someone like me hears legendary bluesman Howlin' Wolf belt out a gravelly list of names he's inviting to his wang dang doodle, and that list includes a conjure woman, a hoodoo lady, we pay attention.

When the name of a witch, who for the record would never have called herself that word, shows up in dozens of songs sung by bluesmen from the genesis of the blues itself, we know we've got to dig a little deeper.

On the floor.

When the fishhead fill the air.

Mason up juice everywhere.

We gonna put your wang dang doodle all night long

Aunt Caroline Dye, whose legend encircled her town of Newport, Arkansas in a 400-mile diameter, had become famous for her hoodoo, root work, conjure, psychic abilities to locate lost or stolen goods, and predict the weather.

This is the Steelers Blitz with Vince Williams and Tom Offerman on Steelers Nation Radio, a part of the Steelers Audio Network.

Oh, Kinger, I got to tell you, as soon as he turned the corner and went wang dang doodle down that sidelines, you knew nobody was going to catch him.

I can't wait to hear all these throughout the show today.

Wang Dang Doodle down the sidelines.

There was nobody like Wolf and his Wolfisms on the broadcast, and I don't think there will ever be anybody quite like him again.

How does your brain even think of something like that? He quite literally made up his own language, basically.

You know how J.R.R. Tolkien has his own language for orcs and all the other characters in his Lord of the Rings novels? Wolf did that for his broadcasting in The Steelers.

Wang Dang Doodle... snotification like just really crazy things I don't know how else to describe them so Craig Wolfley going into the Hall of Honor our Sunday is when the ceremony is officially during the Steelers and Bengals game the dinner is of course tonight we'll get more into that in our next segment Vince but getting back to the Bengals here and previewing them the offensive side of the ball is obviously still the headliner for Cincinnati and Yes, the defense has gotten better, and I think it's kind of stolen the narrative a little bit through the first two weeks for them because people are so surprised that they're playing defense.

And Lee Graziano, my friend, was the drummer.

All three grew up in the Chicago area, and they changed their name to The American Breed and released several songs, with Bend Me, Shape Me becoming their biggest hit.

And Mark, you know, it charted around the world.

It hit number five in the USA, but you know where it was number one? Can you tell me?

I was.

You were at the wedding.

Did you dance to any of their songs?

I can't remember.