_One thing about being a Southerner in New York, you can’t help but have certain areas of expertise, at least as far as New Yorkers can tell. When Krispy Kreme doughnuts came to Gotham a year or so ago, I was telling newspapers and TV programs right and left, “Oh yeah, I been eating Krispy Kremes my entire life. Which is one reason my entire life may not last much longer—but good, aren’t they? And listen, here’s what’s crucial: get ’em when the neon sign outside says they’re hot.” I was like somebody in the seventh grade who has had sex.

So I chuckled authoritatively when, at a grocery store on the Upper West Side called Gourmet Garage, I came upon a tray full of cold Krispy Kremes for sale beneath a sign that read, “Fresh from the Antebellum South.”

“Well, now,” I said to the man behind the counter. “They can’t be any too fresh.”

The man behind the counter, whose English was limited to “cruller” and one or two other strictly job-related terms, just narrowed his eyes like a pestered zoo animal, or a table dancer who has been asked to take a letter. Not wanting to be suspected of service-personnel harassment, I went on, “I mean, if they date back to circa 1859...” I looked around for someone who might share my amusement, but the only thing I descried in my fellow shoppers’ expressions was impatience.

Until a young woman leapt upon me from out of nowhere and demanded, “How does the tune to ‘Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech’ go? We have the lyrics. How does the tune go?”

“Well, now, I’m not all that great at carrying a melody,” I said, “but I’ve been singing that song my entire life. In fact—”

“I’m a rambling wreck...” she prompted me.

“From Georgia Tech and a heckuvan engineer,” I sang. “A heckuva heckuva—”

“Helluva,” she snapped.

“Well, I was raised in a Christian home,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes like a cat that a dog has just barked at.

“What do you want to know for?” I asked, trying not to narrow my eyes at all.

“Shooting a film,” she said, and after glancing around to make sure people had noticed what business she was in, she was out the door.

I followed, thinking that I might fill the filmmakers in on some of the great Yellow Jacket broken-field runners of my boyhood—Billy Teas, Leon Hardeman...But she was gone and there were no signs that any principal photography, as they call it, was going on in the vicinity. She was probably a production assistant who had been sent running up and down Broadway to jump in and out of stores looking for somebody with my accent. No telling how many blocks she’d had to scour to find somebody from Georgia. The budget of this movie was probably millions. And I didn’t get a nickel.

I haven’t profited from my doughnut expertise, either. The Krispy Kreme people offered to send me a free dozen, but they’d be cold, and I’d feel beholden, and anyway I can afford doughnuts. What I need is a retainer.

I got to thinking...doughnuts and music. As it happens, I have the greatest collection of food songs anywhere in private hands. Forty-eight tape cassettes comprising 183 food songs by 918 artists—including Andie MacDowell singing a little number that I wrote the words to: “Pie.” She sings it in Michael, a movie with a big pie scene. People make whole food movies—Soul Food, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Big Night, that one about the Italian restaurant with the Louis Prima songs. I’ll bet somebody, somewhere, is about to embark on a film project that could use a highly paid consultant in the field of songs involving food.

Say you want something on your soundtrack to help make the transition from night-time to breakfast. Depending on the mood and what your characters have been up to with one another, I could recommend Lee Wiley’s “Chicken Today, Feathers Tomorrow,” Zuzu Bollin’s “Why Don’t You Eat Where You Slept Last Night,” Johnny Cash’s “Beans for Breakfast,” Lightnin’ Hopkins’s “Breakfast Time,” Nicky Williams’s “I Want You for Breakfast,” or the Freight Hoppers’ “How Many Biscuits Can You Eat This Morning?”

Maybe your movie is set in Memphis. I’ve got King Curtis’s “Memphis Soul Stew,” Dan Penn’s “Memphis Women and Fried Chicken,” Memphis Slim’s “Sweet Root Man,” the Memphis Seven’s “Grunt Meat Blues,” and twelve different Memphis Minnie food songs, including “Good Soppin’” and “I’m Selling My Porkchops (But I’m Giving My Gravy Away).”

I don’t claim to have every food song ever recorded. I don’t even have Cecil Gant’s “Owl Head Soup”—yet. But do I have Slim and Slam performing “Mama’s in the Kitchen, But We’ve Got Pop on Ice”? Sure. Harry “The Hipster” Gibson’s “Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine?” Absolutely. “Chocolate Porkchop Man” by Pete “Guitar” Lewis? “Anyone Here Wants to Buy Some Cabbage?” by a group of anonymous women inmates of Parchman Penitentiary? Uncle Dave Macons “Eleven Cent Cotton, Forty Cent Meat”? Yes, yes, yes. “Save the Bones for Henry Jones (’Cause Henry Don’t Eat No Meat),” as sung by Ray Charles? Uh-huh, and also by Johnny Mercer.

And I have “Feast of the Mau Mau” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Hamhark and Limer Beans” by Champion Jack Dupree, “Sal’s Got a Sugar Lip” by Johnny Horton, “Pizza on the Ground” by the Austin Lounge Lizards, “Gimme Some of That Yum Yum Yum” by the Harlem Hamfats, “Who’ll Chop Your Suey When I’m Gone?” by Margaret Johnson, “In the Garden Where the Irish Potatoes Grow” by Dr. Smith’s Champion Horse Hair Pullers, “Got No Bread No Milk No Honey But We Sure Got a Lot of Love” by James Talley (remember him, from during the Carter administration?), Clyde Edgerton’s “Quiche Woman in a Barbecue Town,” Wynonie Harris’s “Keep on Churnin’ (Till the Butter Comes),” Buster Benton’s “Spider in My Stew,” John Lee Hooker’s “Onions,” Louis Armstrong’s “Big Butter and Egg Man,” Jimmy Buffett’s “I Wish Lunch Could Last Forever,” Nellie Lutcher’s “Princess Poo-Poo-Ly Has Plenty Papaya,” Elvis’s “Crawfish,” Z.Z. Hill’s “Home Ain’t Home at Supper-time” (it’ll tear your heart out), Slim Gaillard’s “Avocado Seed Soup Symphony,” Louis Jordan’s “A Chicken Ain’t Nothing But a Bird,” Fats Waller’s “Hold Tight (I Want Some Seafood, Mama),” and Gene Autry’s “Methodist Pie.”

I’ve got food songs sung by Little Richard, Little Milton, Little Jimmy Dickens, Little Feat, Little Temple, Little Sparrow, Mighty Sparrow, Little Joe and the Thrillers, Little Jack Melody and His Young Turks, Little Son Joe, Li’l Son Jackson, Li’l Ed and the Imperials, Bea Lillie, Lil Johnson, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson, Jimmy Johnson, Pete Johnson, Earl Johnson, Sherman “Blues” Johnson and His Clouds of Joy, Eddie Johnson and His Crackerjacks, the Chips, the Box Tops, Buckwheat Zydeco, Gravy, Greasetrap, Stringbean, Peaches and Herb, Biscuit, Cracker, and Cake.

Is it a family picture you have in mind? I’ve got the Andrews Sisters, Boswell Sisters, Chenille Sisters, McGuire Sisters, Pointer Sisters, Sister Carol, Sister O.M. Terrell, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The Holmes Brothers, McGee Brothers, Mills Brothers, Neville Brothers, Carson Brothers and Sprinkle, Big Wheeler with the Ice Cream Boys, Famous Hokum Boys, the Happiness Boys (“I’ve Never Seen a Straight Banana”), the Sweet Violet Boys, Blue Scott and His Blue Boys, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Johnny Lee Wills and His Boys, Jimmy Revard and the Oklahoma Playboys, A.E. Ward and His Plow Boys, and Rude Girls.

That was a good group, Rude Girls. I have their “Chitlin Cooking Time in Chatham County.” Not to mention “Peach Picking Time in Georgia” by Jimmie Rodgers (and by Willie Nelson, and by Kenneth Threadgill), “Honeycomb” by the other, lesser Jimmie Rodgers, and the bluesman Jimmy Rogers’s “My Last Meal.” And speaking of pickin’: “Pickin’ Peas (Down the Long Pea Row)” by the Carlisles. “When It’s Tooth-Pickin’ Time in False Teeth Valley” by Homer and Jethro, “Pickin’ Wild Mountain Berries” by Conway and Loretta, and “Pickin’ Off Peanuts” by Seven-Foot Dilly and His Dill Pickles.

I’ve got “Good Jelly Blues,” “Jelly Whipping Blues,” “Jelly Jelly Blues,” “Hot Jelly Roll Blues,” “Jelly Bean Blues,” “Fine Jelly Blues,” “Sugar Blues,” “Sugar Mama Blues,” “Ration Blues,” “Food Stamp Blues,” “Red Cross Store Blues,” “Grocery Blues,” “Fort Worth Hambone Blues,” “Stewmeat Blues,” “Grunt Meat Blues,” “Meat Cuttin’ Blues,” “Butcher Shop Blues,” “Sweet Potato Blues,” “Yellow Yam Blues,” “Bakershop Blues,” “Bakin’ Powder Blues,” “Rice and Gravy Blues,” “Vitamin A Blues,” “Plain Food Blues,” “Your Greens Give Me the Blues,” and “I’ve Got the Yes! We Have No Bananas Blues.”

The great majority of food songs are Southern. Southern Culture on the Skids has recorded thirteen that I know of, including “Fried Chicken and Gasoline” and “Too Much Pork for One Fork.” I also have “Hambone Am Sweet’ by Four Southern Singers.

And both Asleep at the Wheel’s and Phil Harris’s renditions of “That’s What I Like About the South.” And Moon Mullican’s “Southern Hospitality,” “Southern Deep-Fry” by someone named C. McAlister, and Margaret Johnson’s “Folks in New York City Ain’t Like the Folks Back South,” which is full of food references, for instance:

 

The horses and the numbers keep most of them alive.

All they eat is hot dogs when eatin’ time arrives.

Maybe you’re making a Southern movie about what folks in New York City are like. I could help you on that.

But not on a pro bono basis. I ain’t giving any more of my gravy away. I can’t afford to—I live in New York.