Lulu Roman

Artist: Lulu Roman

LP: One Day at a Time

Song: "Hallelujah Wheels"

[ listen ]

Here's something I picked up when I was in Fargo, North Dakota back in July of 2009. (You can probably tell I'm finally cleaning the records out of my living room.) I wondered what "Hallelujah Wheels" were before listening to this song—it turns out they're like "Meals On Wheels," but in addition to delivering food, they also sing to crying babies and read letters to the blind. And according to the sounds at the beginning and ending of the song, "Hallelujah Wheels" delivers their acts of kindness on a moped. I've loved Lulu Roman ever since I was a kid watching episodes of "Hee Haw" with my dad in the 1970s. Of course at the time I had no idea that Lulu had grown up in an orphanage, that she was beaten and made fun of because she was fat; that she had a ten-year drug addiction and would sometimes drop acid and dance in water-fountains; that she worked in one of Jack Ruby's strip clubs, and that she was a "mean mama" until turning to Christianity in 1973, when her newborn son nearly died after being born addicted to drugs. But now I know all of this, thanks to Alan Mercer's terrific interview with Lulu in September of 2009. You can read more about the fabulous and inspiring Lulu Roman on Wikipedia here and on her website here, and you'll find some neat old photos from the back of her "One Day at a Time" LP below.

 

 

 

 

 [ Lulu Roman in 2009 ]