Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

In the slipstream of Johnny Cash came what would become known as the Outlaw Movement, an informal response to Nashville’s easy listening, corporate and safe style, often recorded in Texas, reviving the honky tonk sounds of Hank Williams with strong lyrical content. Starting in the mid-’60s with singers like Bobby Bare, Tompall Glaser and Johnny Darrell, the sub-genre’s standard bearers would include Waylon Jennings and his wife Jessi Colter, Willie Nelson (after he grew his hair), Kris Kristofferson, Leon Russell, Billy Joe Shaver, Hank Williams Jr, Jerry Jeff Walker and Gram Parsons.

More traditionally-minded country stars, many mentored by the great RCA producer and guitarist Chet Atkins,  still broke through — Loretta Lynn, Roger Miller, Charley Pride (the first black mainstream country singer), Tammy Wynette, Porter Wagoner (on whose TV show Dolly Parton began her iconic career),  or Conway Twitty, hitherto a rock & roll singer. And some straddled the mainstream/Outlaw divide. Merle Haggard, though not part of the Nashville establishment, sang about social issues, but had much success with hippie-bashing, hyper-patriotic songs such as Okie From Muskogee, which won him the greatest establishment accolade, the Country Music Association’ Entertainer of the Year award. Haggard was in fact satirising small-town values, though he didn’t advertise that too loudly. Whatever the case, the counter-culture liked the song because they thought they got the joke, and those who didn’t get the joke loved it because it articulated their feelings accurately. In that way, Okie is the first postmodern country hit. The follow-up, The Fightin’ Side Of Me, was more angry-American fodder, entrenching Haggard in the public imagination as a right-wing spokesman, a position he resented.

Haggard, an ex-convict, came from the country scene in Bakersfield in California, where the sounds of the South where brought by Dust Bowl migrants, like his parents, in the late 1930s. While Haggard was actually born there, the king of Bakersfield doubtless was Texas-born Buck Owens, whose long career was influential (and whose names Beatles fans will recognise as the original singer of Ringo’s Act Naturally). He was preceded by the Ferlin Husky, an innovator and creator of some of the worst records ever made. And Bakersfield gave rise to Gram Parsons, whose brief but eventful career continues to influence music today. And up the road, in Los Angeles, Arkansas-born Glen Campbell was enjoying great success with a slicker brand of country.

The counter-culture touched Country in a time of change.  The Fraternity Of Man, for example, recorded the drug anthem Don’t Bogart That Joint in 1968, helping to ring in a fusion of country music and rock which would locate its spearhead in The Byrd’s collection of country covers, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and which saw a member of bluegrass outfit The Dillards record a couple of duet albums with a member of The Byrds.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Lefty Frizzell – She’s Gone, Gone, Gone
2. Ernest Tubb – Waltz Across Texas
3. Eddy Arnold – Make The World Go Away
4. Justin Tubb - Take A Letter Miss Gray
5. Chet Atkins - Back Up And Push
6. Don Bowman – Dear Harlan Howard
7. Dane Stinit – Don’t Knock What You Don’t Understand
8. Hank Thompson – A Six Pack To Go
9. Flatt &  Scruggs with Doc Watson – Pick Along
10. Willie Nelson – Three Days
11. Hank Locklin – The Girls Get Prettier (Every Day)
12. Kitty Wells – Crying Time
13. Merle Haggard – Life In Prison
14. Johnny Paycheck – Pride Covered Ears
15. Statler Brothers - Flowers On The Wall
16. Johnny Cash & June Carter – Long-Legged Guitar Pickin’ Man
17. Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner – The Last Thing On My Mind
18. Faron Young - Unmitigated Gall
19. George Jones – Walk Through This World With Me
20. Mel Tillis – Life Turned Her That Way
21. Skeeter Davis – Precious Memories
22. Red Sovine – Phantom 309
23. B.J. Thomas – Hooked On A Feeling
24. The Dillards – Nobody Knows
25. Fraternity of Man – Don’t Bogart Me
26. Bobbie Gentry – Louisiana Man
27. Glen Campbell - Dreams Of The Everyday Housewife
28. The Everly Brothers – Less Of Me
29. Loretta Lynn – Fist City
30. Dillard & Clark – Train Leaves Here This Mornin’
31. Townes Van Zandt – Tecumseh Valley
BONUS TRACKS:
Waylon Jennings – Destiny’s Child
The Byrds – You’re Still On My Mind

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In this segment we briefly turn our focus on some of the individuals featured on this mix and the 1950/51 compilation. Pictured on the cover is the 1952 Cadillac in which Hank Williams died of heart failure on New Year’s Day 1953, aged 30 (though he always looked much older than that). His was the first of a series of young celebrity deaths that created legends for all times.

Among the more unexpected names in country must be that of Ole Rasmussen, a western swing bandleader who with his Nebraska Cornhuskers enjoyed success in the early ’50s. Rasmussen had a Bob Wills obsession; he was widely regarded as an imitator. Indeed, he would interject ad-libs into songs much like Wills (though not quite in a falsetto). Still, the quality of the music was fine, driven by Tex Atchison’s fierce fiddle. Atchison had previously been a member of the Prairie Ramblers, who featured in Vol. 4 of this series. It seems curious that a Danish-named country musician and businessman (more the latter than the former) would lead his band named after the state of Nebraska in sunny California.

Of course, California had a vibrant country scene, due largely to the Dust Bowl migration in the 1930s. Spade Cooley, whom we met in Vol. 5, was based in LA. But California’s country capital was Bakersfield, whence the likes of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and Gram Parsons would emerge. Another Bakersfielder, though by choice, was Ferlin Husky, a man of annoying accent and often sentimental lyrics (his maudlin The Drunken Driver is a stone-cold candidate for worst ever record). These shortcomings did not stop the D-Day veteran from having a string of country chart-toppers, and even a couple of top 10 pop hits.

His Korean war-themed duet with fellow Bakersfielder Jean Shepard was one of these country #1s and pop Top 10 hits. With it, 19-year-old Shepard set a record as youngest female country chart-topper until 14-year-old Tanya Tucker eclipsed her almost two decades later. Shepard, at one point one of only two female singers at the Grand Ole Opry (the other was Kitty Wells), went on to marry country singer Hawkshaw Hawkins, who died in the 1963 plane crash that also killed Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas.

Another California-based country legend was Johnny Bond, who had a long career as a performer of cowboy songs (Gene Autry and the Sons of the Pioneers being particular influences), and with Jimmy Wakeley appeared in b-movies and on Autry’s radio show in the 1930s. Both went on to have successful careers in the ’40s; each has a song on the History of Country Vol. 4 compilation. Bond was also a productive songwriter, the oft-covered Cimarron probably being his best known song. By 1957, the 42-year-old was dropped from the Columbia Records roster. Soon he made a comeback with the rock & roll hit Hot Rod Lincoln, on Autry’s Republic label. In his later years, before his death in 1978, Bond wrote a biography of fellow singing cowboy Tex Ritter (father of the late actor John Ritter) as well as an autobiography. Incidentally, the Bond song featured in the 1950/51 mix – Sick, Sober And Sorry – was co-written by Tex Atchison, the fiddler in Ole Rasmussen’s band.

We met Cowboy Copas in The Originals Vol. 37 as the first to record Tennessee Waltz. He enjoyed success in the late ’40 and early ’50s, but then his recording career began to stutter. He made a comeback (in the charts; he had been a member of the Opry and a regular on the Ozark Jubilee TV show) in 1960, with the hit song Alabam. Things were looking up when he agreed to perform at a benefit on 3 March 1963 in Kansas City for a radio disc jockey who had died in a car crash a few months before. Copas and the other performers boarded the Piper Comanche aeroplane piloted by his son-in-law Randy Hughes, who was also Patsy Cline’s manager. Nobody on the plane survived the crash in a forest near Camden, Tennessee.

Half a year earlier and much less prominently, Leon Chappel died, also in tragic circumstances. Chappel was one of the shapers of western swing in the 1930s as a member of the Lone Star Cowboys. After a serious car crash in 1935 left him with long-term injuries, his career gradually fizzled out. During World War 2 he served as a policeman, but that career was cut short when he apparently was caught accepting bribes. He was jobbing as a pipe fitter and truck driver when Jimmy Davis, singing star and former governor of Louisiana, briefly revived Chappel’s career, this time in the honky tonk medium (though the great True Blue Papa shows traces of his western swing background). The resurgence didn’t last very long. Chappel disappeared from the scene. His music career gone, his injuries forcing him into retirement and marriage broken down, Chappel on 23 October 1963 put a revolver to his head and pulled the trigger.

The man with the greatest influence on country music was Hank Williams, but Lefty Frizzell’s contribution was nearly as significant as his erstwhile touring partner’s (even if Eddy Arnold was outselling both). Like Williams, Frizzell was a prolific songwriter; at one point in 1951, he had four songs in the country top 10. It was this artistic independence, his charisma, laid-back honky tonk stylings and soulful vocals that directly influenced future country giants as diverse as George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison (whose Traveling Wilbury name, Lefty, was a tribute to Frizzell), Merle Haggard, George Strait, Randy Travis and so on. Frizzell was also a hard drinker, and his abuse of alcohol contributed to his death at 47 in 1975.

Drinking can kill, and so does smoking. It’s a myth that until the 1960s people had no idea how poisonous cigarettes are. Tex Williams in the brilliant Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette), which he co-wrote with Merle Travis in 1947 and re-recorded in 1953 and 1960, admonishes: “Puff, puff, puff until you smoke yourself to death.”  In the same song he jokes: “I don’t reckon that it’ll hinder your health. I smoked ‘em all my life and I ain’t dead yet.” Tex frequently sang about smoking and advertised cigarettes, so after he died, the persistent story arose that he had died of lung cancer. It was in fact pancreatic cancer that did him in 1985 at the age of 68. While battling the cancer, he reportedly managed to cut down from two packets a day to one. He probably had disagreeable breath.

One might think that the title bestowed on Carl Smith, “Mr Country”, was a slice of hyperbole in an industry not known for its bashfulness. Smith, who died last year at 82, did have a string of quality hits which continued into the 1970s, including 30 country hits in the 1950s alone. But he is also a suitable Mr Country for his connections: he was married to June Carter before his good friend Johnny Cash, then married Goldie Hill, and from his first marriage was the father of Carlene Carter. Smith rarely bothered the pop charts, but there is no doubt that songs like Hey Joe (written by Boudleaux Bryant) helped influence the many country singers who would soon cross over into rock & roll.

Smith remained married to Goldie Hill until her death in 2005. Hill was in that first great wave of female country singers that came through in the 1950s, paving the way for future stars such as Loretta Lynn, Skeeter Davis, Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette. I Let The Stars Get In My Eyes, an answer record to Perry Como’s Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes (featured here in Skeets McDonald’s hit version), topped the country charts, not long after Kitty Wells’s own million-selling answer record, It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels, eclipsed Hank Thompson’s The Wild Side Of Life. Suddenly the record company bosses saw commercial prospects in letting the gals sing. Unlike Wells, Hill’s career was relatively short-lived. When Goldie married Carl Smith in 1957, she retired from the music business, other than a brief and unsuccessful comeback attempt in the ’60s, to breed horses on the couples’ Tennessee farm.

Kitty Wells occupies a pivotal position in the history of country music. Already in her 30s and a mother of three when she became a star, she was the first female ever to top the country charts – though she was not the first female million-seller; that honour belongs to Patsy Montana. And in that first hit she made a statement that a woman need not be submissive (even if it was written by a man, JD Miller), and knocked off Hank Thompson’s slightly misogynist anthem off the #1 spot. Many women in country would peddle the submissiveness of their gender in song (Tammy Wynette, a victim of domestic abuse, sang the anthem), but Wells introduced feminist themes long before that was regarded as ordinary and articulated a female self-confidence that would become characteristic of many women who succeeded her – especially Loretta Lynn. Wells, who took her stage name from a 19^th century song, was country’s leading female singer every year from 1952-65.

We first encountered Stuart Hamblen in The Originals Vol. 22 as the writer and first performer of This Ole House, later hits for Rosemary Clooney and Shakin’ Stevens. Hamblen, who was born in 1908, started his career in the late 1920s as a cowboy song singer, before that sub-genre crossed over into Hollywood, taking Hamblen along as a sidekick to the great cowboy singers such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.  In Hollywood the Texan also became a close friend of John Wayne. The story goes that Hamblen was hunting with Wayne when they happened upon an abandoned cabin with the skeleton of a man inside, giving rise to This Ole House. Soon after that, the son of a Methodist preacher had a religious conversion. Billy Graham has credited Hamblen’s pulling power with getting his ministry off the ground. The conversion had consequences: he was fired as a radio DJ because he refused to have alcohol ads on his show. Hamblen also tried his hand in politics. In 1938 he stood, unsuccessfully, as a Democrat candidate for Congress; in 1952 he was the presidential candidate for the Prohibition Party. History records that Dwight Eisenhower was elected that year.

Where Hamblen represented an old age, Sonny James in some ways anticipated the advent of a new youth-driven musical form, if not in sound (he crooned mostly ) then in his look and public image. The fiddle-playing farm boy from Alabama had fought in Korea, but looked like he had been scrubbed up straight from college in a New York salon, not to look like a rock & roller but like one of those nice boys who, we often forget, were hugely popular too. He looked, one might say, like the 1950s, and it was his 1957 hit Young Love that introduced country to the teenage mainstream. It might be a coincidence, but the character Sonny in the film Grease looks not unlike Sonny James. James enjoyed a long and very successful career in country, hitting his peak in the early 1970s.

The title of George Morgan’s song in this mix is obviously appropriate for this blog. Morgan was best known for his 1947 hit Candy Kisses, which featured in A History Of Country Vol. 5. He worked the roses theme hard with songs such as Room Full of Roses, Red Roses For A Blue Lady and Red Roses From the Blue Side of Town. Morgan is also a great (and correct) trivia answer to the questions: Who is country singer Lorrie Morgan’s father? Who was the last singer to sing at the Grand Ole Opry’s legendary Ryman Theatre in 1974? Who was the first singer to sing at the new Grand Ole Opry House? Morgan died in 1975 at the age of 51.

As a bonus, I include a comedy bit by Archie Campbell from 1952. Campbell was a writer and star of the TV show Hee Haw. The bit here is one of his famous That’s Good/That’s Bad routines wherein Campbell would tell of an event, countering the straightman’s reactions of relief or alarm with a subsequent event that proves the opposite of that response.

The next instalment will look at country’s often underestimated influence on rock & roll. Some of the songs on this mix anticipate the new sound. Listen to Roy Hogsed’s She’s A Mean Mean Woman, Jaye Morgan & Hank Penny’s Fan It, Merrill Moore’s House Of Blue Lights (hear the influence on Jerry Lee Lewis) or Moon Mullican’s Rocket To The Moon.

TRACKLISTING
1. Tex Williams – Smoke, Smoke, Smoke
2. Eddy Arnold – I Wanna Play House With You
3. Roy Hogsed – She’s A Mean Mean Woman
4. Lefty Frizzell - Always Late (With Your Kisses)
5. Hank Thompson – The Wild Side Of Life
6. Kitty Wells – It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels
7. Hank Snow – (Now And Then) There’s A Fool Such As I
8. Cowboy Copas – Don’t Leave My Poor Heart Breaking
9. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys – I Want To Be Wanted
10. Little Jimmy Dickens – No Tears In Heaven
11. Slim Whitman - Indian Love Call
12. Hank Williams – Kaw-Liga
13. Skeets McDonald – Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes
14. Goldie Hill – I Let The Stars Get In My Eyes
15. Kitty Wells – I Heard The Juke Box Playing
16. Webb Pierce - Back Street Affair
17. Jean Shepard & Ferlin Husky – A Dear John Letter
18. Hank Locklin – Let Me Be The One
19. Ernest Tubb – Counterfeit Kisses
20. Jaye P. Morgan with Hank Penny – Fan It
21. Jenks Tex Carman – Hillbilly Hula
22. Sonny James – I Need You
23. T. Texas Tyler – Bumming Around
24. Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant – Bryant’s Bounce
25. Carl Smith – Hey Joe
26. Hank Locklin – Empty Bottles, Empty Heart
27. Merrill Moore – House Of Blue Lights
28. Moon Mullican – Rocket To The Moon
29. Hank Williams – Take These Chains From My Heart
30. George Morgan – Half-Hearted

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As before, this album refers to artists and songs featured on both 1940s compilations.

The importance to country music of Ernest Tubb’s Walking The Floor Over You cannot be underestimated. It was not the first honky tonk record, nor the first to use the new-fangled electric guitar. But it was the first really big hit to use electric guitar solos, performed by Fay ‘Smitty’ Smith, and is considered the breakthrough record for honky tonk music, a label that was variously used for different genres, but now usually applied in country music.

Trouble is, honky tonk is difficult to define as an identifiable genre. One can identify the distinction between, say, barndance, bluegrass, and rockabilly, but barroom music (a honky tonk is a bar) has few definable characteristics. Honky tonk arguably is an attitude more than a genre. In fact, most of what would be defined as mainsteam country — from Tubb to Hank Williams to Hank Thompson to Lefty Frizzell to George Jones to the stetsoned gang of latter years — is honky tonk. But so are the Outlaw of the ’70s, such as Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser and Willie Nelson. But here we are moving ahead of ourselves.

If there are three absolutely pivotal singers in country history, then consensus would surely be that they are Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash (though I’d insist on the group being enlarged to include the original Carter Family). Williams has become something of a litmus test for country authenticity, as in the title of Waylon Jennings’ protest against the sentimental, automated schlock churned out by the Nashville machine by the mid-70s: Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way? (No need to specify which of the genre’s many Hanks he meant). In his short career, from his first hit in 1947 to his death while touring on New Year’s Day 1953, Williams recorded 66 songs. Of these, 37 became hits – an astonishing strike rate. Williams’ death at 29 (though he always looked at least ten years older than that) established in him as an icon, much as the other three big premature deaths of the decade that followed did for James Dean, Buddy Holly and Marilyn Monroe.

Williams’ first hit, Move It On Over, was a rockabilly number that in parts sounds more than a little like Rock Around The Clock, and reflected Williams’ affection for and knowledge of blues. We’ll look at the extent of country’s parentage of rock & roll at a later stage, but no discussion on the futile question of “the first ever rock & roll record” is complete with a consideration of Move It On Over.

The song that borrowed from Williams’ debut hit is remembered as rock & roll’s big breakthrough. The performer, Bill Haley, came from country music, specifically the western swing scene. Just a couple of years before he started to shake, rattle and roll with his Comets, Haley was still churning out country records (of course, the likes of Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ricky Nelson, Everly Brothers and even Elvis had their roots in country as well, and would revisit that heritage periodically). Unlike most of the era’s country musicians, Haley was not a Southerner, even if his band, the future Comets, was known as the Saddlemen. Born in Detroit, he lived and gigged in Pennsylvania, where he was a director of music at a radio station in Chester, before becoming a rock & roll pioneer.

If Hank Williams was the live-fast-die-young prototype for the rock & roll lifestyle, then his favourite artist was among the most influential on the yet-to-be-conceived genre. Moon Mullican drew his influences widely—blues, honky tonk, jazz, western swing, folk, bluegrass, Tin Pan Alley—and reflected these in his versatile repertoire. Long before Elvis, Mullican could sound white or black or both at the same time. His piano-playing style directly inspired that of Jerry Lee Lewis. His first big hit, New Jole Blon, updated Harry Choates’ cajun-country hit.

In the 1940s, Bob Wills was still a big star, but he was being eclipsed by Spade Cooley, whose brand of California-based western swing was more pop oriented than the rest of the genre. Indeed, it is said that the term western swing was invented by Cooley’s manager, and after Cooley beat Wills in a Battle of the Bands contest (on Cooley’s hometurf), he modestly styled himself “King of Western Swing”. His appearance in 38 western films helped further to make Cooley a star, and by the late 1940s he hosted his own Emmy-winning variety television show. That show was dropped in 1956.

Five years later, his wife asked for a divorce. In a drunken rage, Cooley beat her to death. He served eight years of a life sentence. The night before he supposedly was to be paroled, he died backstage after playing a benefit concert in Oakland for the Deputy Sheriffs Association of Alameda County.

Al Dexter’s catchy Pistol-Packing Mama (“Now down there was old Al Dexter; he always had his fun, but with some lead she shot him dead; his honkin’ days are done”) was the first record to top what would become Billboard’s Hot Country & Western Sides Charts, but was initially known as the Most Played Juke Box Records chart, which was based, as the title suggests, not on sales but on juke box requests (today’s equivalent probably would be download charts). A huge World War 2 hit, Pistol-Packing Mama was also the theme song of the New York Yankees. Dexter, whose version was released by Okeh Records, shared the incipient top spot with the versions by the Andrews Sisters (on Decca) and Don Baxter (on Musicraft). Dexter was also at #5 with Rosalita. The other top 5 artists that week were Ted Daffan, Bob Wills and Floyd Tillman.

Ted Daffan’s Born To Lose was recorded in 1942, but became a hit only in 1943/44, distribution having been held up by a war-time shortage of shellac. Daffan is better known for having written Truck Drivers’ Blues (first a hit for Cliff Bruner), and Born To Lose is probably more famous in Ray Charles’ interpretation on his seminal Modern Sounds In Country & Western album of 1962. It was also covered by artists as diverse as Dean Martin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Rosemary Clooney and Elton John & Leonard Cohen.

Perhaps the longest performing country musician today is Ralph Stanley of the Stanley Brothers, who feature on the 1947-49 compilation (or perhaps it is Charles Louvin of another brothers act that split due to one sibling’s mid-’60s death was born the same year as Stanley, or maybe it’s Earl Scruggs, now 86 years old). Stanley still recorded into the new millennium, playing a prominent role in the much-lauded bluegrass soundtrack for the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou. Now 83 years old, Stanley still performs.

The 1940s saw the rise of bluegrass with acts like the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs (whose Foggy Mountain Breakdown featured so prominently in Bonnie And Clyde) and, of course, the virtual inventor of the genre, Bill Monroe, after whose band, The Blue Grass Boys, it was named. Founded in 1939 after Bill split from his brother Charlie as the Monroe Bothers, the band at its peak included Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, who lend their names to their distinctive guitar and banjo picking styles. Monroe, a mandolin maestro, resented other bluegrass acts for encroaching on his territory. So when the Stanley Brothers signed with Columbia Records, Monroe left the label in a huff for Decca. Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys performed for 57 years until a few months before his death in 1996. It was a Monroe song, Blue Moon Of Kentucky, that served as the b-side of Elvis Presley’s debut single.

As far as I can tell, the only other performer on this set still alive apart from Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs is Arthur ‘Guitar Boogie’ Smith, who was born in 1921 (he is a different Arthur Smith from the fiddlin’ one featured in Vol. 3). The instrumental song that gave Smith his distinguishing middle name – it draws from country, jazz and blues – sold 3 million copies and has been immensely influential; he was something like the Jimi Hendrix of his day. In Britain, the renamed Guitar Boogie Shuffle became a big hit for that country’s electric guitar pioneer Bert Weedon, who played an seminal role in a whole generation of kids picking up a guitar; some of whom formed part of the British Invasion. In 1955, Smith co-wrote a track titled Feudin’ Banjos, which would later be ripped off for the Duelling Banjos track in the film Deliverance. Smith successfully sued for copyright infgringement. His backing band, the Crackerjacks, comprised two more guys named Smith, none of them related, and Tommy Faile. Smith built a recording studio in Charlotte, North Carolina, in which counrtry artists such as Johnny Cash and Chet Atkins as well as James Brown (Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag was cut there).

Cindy Walker was a big star in the 1940s, one of the first female superstars of country. But she made an even bigger mark as a prolific songwriter. Her credits include Jim Reeves’ This Is It and posthumous megahit Distant Drums, Eddy Arnold’s Take Me In Your Arms And Hold Me and You Don’t Know Me (later a hit for Mickey Gilley), Roy Orbison’s Dream Baby, Dean Martin’s In The Misty Moonlight, Jack Greene’s You Are My Treasure, and more than 50 songs for Bob Wills. Walker died in 2006 at 87.

In 1964, the Beatles recorded a song, fronted by George Harrison, called Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby, which was a cover of Carl Perkins’ song. Perkins himself borrowed heavily from Rex Griffin’s song of the same title. Griffin’s song was first released in 1936 (that version will feature at a later stage in a different series, as will his suicide anthem Last Letter). The version here is a re-recording from 1944. By then Griffin was washed up. His alcohol abuse did not go well with his diabetes. His recording career over, he wrote for others in the 1950s. He contracted tuberculosis in the mid-50s, and died in 1959 at the age of 47.

The 1940s compilations feature two notable originals that may be better known in versions by others. Cool Water was written by Bob Nolan of the Sons of the Pioneers, but became a bigger hit in versions by Vaughn Monroe and Frankie Laine. And in 1948, T. Texas Tyler gave us Deck Of Cards, in which a GI uses playing cards — associated with gambling and immorality — as a Christian catechism. Perhaps not coincidentally, the song is set at the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy, the site of a series of brutal battles in World War II. Tyler had a #3 hit with it in 1948, and it would become a huge international hit for Wink Martindale in 1959.

Edit: On a point of housekeeping, reader Don B. has rightly pointed out that track 18 by Judy Hayden is in fact Feudin’ And Fightin’, the same song as track 9 by Dorothy Shay. The happy upshot of the unfortunate mix-up is that we get to compare two very different treatments of the same song, at a time when songs would be covered copiously soon after the initial release. The tracklisting below has been amended accordingly; should you feel it necessary, as I would, please do the necessary editing of filename and ID3-Tag (if that’s your thing).

TRACKLISTING:
1. Cowboy Copas – Are You Honest?
2. Paul Howard’s Cotton Pickers – Drinking All My Troubles Away
3. Eddy Arnold – I’ll Hold You In My Heart (Till I Can Hold You In My Arms)
4. Hank Williams – Move It On Over
5. Bill Haley – Rovin’ Eyes
6. Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys – When You Are Lonely
7. Jack Guthrie – Oakie Boogie
8. Hank Thompson – Humpty Dumpty Heart
9. Dorothy Shay – Feudin’ And Fightin’
10. Merle Travis – Nine Pound Hammer
11. Sons Of The Pioneers – Cigarettes, Whiskey And Wild Women
12. Lonzo & Oscar – I’m My Own Grandpa
13. Harry Choates – Fais Do Do Stomp
14. Moon Mullican – Jole Blon’s Sister
15. Hank Williams - Honky Tonkin’
16. Arthur Smith and his Cracker-Jacks – Guitar Boogie
17. Spade Cooley – Fickle Woman
18. Judy Hayden – Feudin’ And Fightin’
19. Ernest Tubb – Forever Is Ending Today
20. T. Texas Tyler - Deck Of Cards
21. Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys – Tennessee Waltz
22. Little Jimmie Dickens - Take An Old Cold Tater
23. Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs – Foggy Mountain Breakdown
24. Stanley Brothers - Let Me Be Your Friend
25. Tennessee Ernie Ford – Mule Train
26. Wayne Rainey – Why Don’t You Haul Off And Love Me
27. Tex Williams – With Men Who Know Tobacco Best (It’s Women Two To One)
28. George Morgan – Candy Kisses

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Country music is a fertile field for answer records. So here we’ll look at three answer records from that genre. Kitty Well’s response to Hank Thompson was a massive hit, a breakthrough for country’s first female superstar that outsold the hit song it was responding to. And I defy anyone not to like, even secretly, these songs — few things annoy me so much than people claiming categorically that they hate “all country music”.

*     *     *

Should he stay or should he go now?

Act 1: Jim Reeves – He’ll Have To Go (1960).mp3
Gentleman Jim is in a bar when he figures out that only a phone call can get his two-timin’ gal back to him. And with that mellifluous baritone the recipient of Jim’s call should not find it difficult to make a decision. To complicate matters, she presently is with another man, which Jim realises rather constrains her from telling him exactly how she feels. So he’ll do the talking, cunningly asking her to put her “sweet lips a little closer to the phone”, to create an atmosphere of intimacy, while he tells the barman “to turn the juke box way down low”. And so he puts an ultimatum to her, all she has to do is answer yes or no. If it is the former, than he — the he of the title — will have to be told to leave. If it’s no, Jim will put down the phone, whereafter he’d presumably order the barman to pump up the jam and fill a few glasses for a heartbroken fella learnin’ the blues.

Act 2: Jeanne Black – Hell Have To Stay (1960).mp3
Using the same melody, Jeanne gives her answer away in the title. But it’s not just a simple no. Jeanne explains to Jim exactly why “he’ll have to stay”. See, the night before, Jim and Jeanne had a date, but guess who didn’t show! Jeanne clearly is not one to take such a sleight lightly, nor is she short of potential suitors. Within a day of Jim standing her up — she demands no explanation — she has hooked up and ostensibly fallen in love with with the personal pronounced joker of the title, who right now must be feeling pretty smug. Jeanne does not hold back. Once she loved Jim, but he’s messed her around too much. She suspects cheating on his part: even now she suspects he’s “out again with someone else”, citing the softly playing juke box as evidence. But why would Jim phone her if he was already sorted out for the night? Jeanne won’t concern herself with questions of logic. It’s time to tell Jim they’re through: “I have found another love I know is true, and [to answer Jim’s question] he holds me much more tenderly than you. Loving you is not worth the price I have to pay. Someone else is in your place, he’ll have to stay.”

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A vow’s a vow’s a vow…

Act 1: Hank Locklin – Please Help Me, I’m Falling (1960).mp3
Oh shit, Hank is falling in love with somebody he can’t be with, and he cannot be with her because he belongs “to another whose arms have gone cold”.  He has made his vows “to have and to hold” (even if the arms are cold and legs presumably locked), and the mere act of  falling for somebody else would be sinful, apparently (that is some pretty dodgy theology there, I think). So he begs the object of his desire to “close the door to temptation; don’t let me walk in”. In other words, he wants her to go away. But he doesn’t really. “I mustn’t want you, but darling I do; please help me, I’m falling in love with you.” The confusion is evident, poor bastard.

Act 2: Skeeter Davis – (I Can’t Help) I’m Falling Too (1960).mp3
And if the object of your desire is Skeeter Davis (who on her album also responded to Jim Reeves in Jeanne Black’s stead, and who previously in this series featured responding to Ray Petersen, all on the same album), then falling in love can be easy. Skeeter reciprocates Hank’s love, and tells him so. Two poor souls in love but circumstances and morals prevent that love’s consummation. But Skeeter can be of no assistance in Hank’s predicament: “You say that you’re falling, but what can I do? You want me to help you, but I’m falling too.” So might an affair be on the cards? Not likely: “We could never be happy living in sin. Our love’s a temptation, but we just can’t win.” Sigh, no chance then. As you wish, Skeeter. As you wish.

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Answering the MCPs.

Act 1: Hank Thompson – Wild Side Of Life (1952).mp3
Hank has been left by his best girl, and he has to tell her how he feels. But he can’t do so by telephone, because she has told him not to phone her (in any case, she might go all Jeanne Black on him should he phone her), and not by letter, which Hank thinks she wouldn’t read. Confronting her face-to-face could lead to a restraining order, if one isn’t in effect already. And with Facebook still almost six decades in the future, Hank shall communicate through the ancient medium of song. And he won’t exercise much tact: “I didn’t know God made honky tonk angels, I might have known you’d never make a wife. You gave up the only one that ever loved you, and went back to the wild side of life.” Where Hank comes from, a honky tonk angel evidently is a very bad thing, a lady of promiscuous virtue even: “The glamour of the gay night life had lured you to the places where the wine and liquor flow, Where you’re waiting to be anybody’s baby, and give up the only love you’ll ever know.” It may be necessary to point out that Hank’s understanding of the “gay nightlife” may not coincide with ours.

Act 2: Kitty Wells – It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels (1952).mp3

Let’s remember that it’s 1952; women’s liberation is not really on the agenda yet, much less so in the conservative, Lawd-fearin’ world of country music. So when Kitty is challenging Thompson’s notions of the jezebel, which she has heard on the juke box (obviously not turned down low), she is challenging the whole patriarchal system. So, for starters, don’t blame God for the reality of “honky tonk angels”. It wasn’t Him who created them, but bad, two-timing, untrustworthy men. “Too many times married men think they’re still single. That has caused many a good girl to go wrong. It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women. It’s not true that only you men feel the same. From the start, most every heart that’s ever broken was because there always was a man to blame.” Kitty Wells’ song did not produce a comoplete change in attitudes .A decade and a half later, the women’s rights movement had gathered steam, but in country world, big-haired right-wingers like Tammy Wynette still counselled wives to stand be their man.

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