Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

Seeing as the History of Country series is proving so popular, let us put on a Santa-red Stetson and have a country Christmas. This lot is old-skool: Ernest Tubb riffs (badly) on his 1941 honky tonk classic, Loretta Lynn socks it to it disagreeable Santa, while Brenda Lee aims to lassoo him, yee ha. George Jones goes X-Mas twisting, and Buck Jones provides some serious pathos. And if you had to choose one man to sing Little Drummer Boy, it would have to be Johnny Cash, right? Hey, even horrid old Jingle bloody Bells sounds good here!

As ever, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R, and it comes with homebaked front and back covers.

TRACKLISTING
1. Loretta Lynn – To Heck With Ole Santa Claus
2. Skeeter Davis – Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
3. George Jones – My Mom And Santa Claus
4. Jim Reeves – An Old Christmas Carol
5. Marty Robbins – One Of Your (In Every Size)
6. Buck Owens – All I Want For Christmas Is My Daddy
7. Red Simpson – Truckin’ Trees For Christmas
8. The Everly Brothers – Christmas Eve Can Kill You
9. The Louvin Brothers – It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
10. The Statler Brothers – Mary’s Sweet Smile
11. Johnny Cash – The Little Drummer Boy
12. Merle Haggard – Santa Claus And Popcorn
13. Emmylou Harris – Christmas Time’s A-Coming
14. John Prine – Christmas In Prison
15. Willie Nelson – Pretty Paper
16. Dolly Parton – Hard Candy Christmas
17. Crystal Gayle – Hallelujah
18. Lynn Anderson – Joy The World
19. Charley Pride – Santa and the Kids
20. Brenda Lee – I’m Gonna Lasso Santa Claus
21. The Maddox Brothers & Rose – Jingle Bells
22. Johnny Horton – They Shined Up Rudolph’s Nose
23. Faron Young – I’m Gonna Tell Santa On You
24. Hank Snow – Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
25. Ernest Tubb – I’ll Be Walkin’ The Floor This Christmas
26. Chet Atkins – Jolly Old St Nicholas
27. Bob Atcher and the Dinning Sisters – Christmas Island
28. Dottie West – Blue Christmas
29. Roger Miller – Old Toy Trains
30. Eddy Arnold – I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
31. Waylon Jennings – Away In A Manger

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CHRISTMAS MIXES WITH WORKING LINKS:
Any Major Christmas Soul Vol. 1
Any Major Christmas Soul Vol. 2
Any Major Christmas Soul Vol. 3
Any Major Smooth Christmas (2010)
Christmas In Black & White
More Christmas In Black & White
Christmas Mix, Not For Mother
Any Major X-Mas Mix
PLUS: Rudolph, a victim of prejudice

More Christmas Mixes
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It was the age of the country songwriter, with people such as Harlan Howard (Heartaches By The Number), Hank Cochran (I Fall To Pieces), Roger Miller (Billy Bayou), Willie Nelson (Crazy), Mel Tillis (Detroit City), Tom T Hall (Harper Valley PTA) and the Bryants (Love Hurts) creating many classics. Some of them would become stars in their own right. None maybe more so than Kris Kristofferson, a man whose early biography reads like a far-fetched penny novel. Many of the songs he is known for were first recorded by others, sometimes several times. With the arguable exception of Me And Bobby McGee, Kristofferson eclipsed them all. One need just compare the Kristofferson version of For The Good Time with the song’s first incarnation as Ray Price’s hit.

Kristofferson had a rock attitude which didn’t always go down well with the country establishment. The establishment of the genre that helped give birth to rock & roll seemed to prefer distancing itself from the long-haired hedonism of rock. But rock wanted a bit of country.

In the 1960s, The Beatles would cover Buck Owens, Dylan record a couple of pure country albums, and The Byrds (in the incarnation featuring Parsons, Roger McGuinn and bluegrass veteran Chris Hillman) would help inaugurate what would become known as country rock — The Grateful Dead, Poco, The Eagles et al — with their LP of country covers, 1968’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The Byrds even performed at the Grand Ole Opry, but the response was hostile, inspiring the acerbic Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man. Some country acts will have dug that. In 1972, the strands came together when the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band recorded their Will The Circle Be Unbroken album which featured legends from the repository of country music such as Roy Acuff, Maybelle Carter, Merle Travis, Doc Watson, Jimmy Martin and Earl Scruggs.

With civil rights and social integration defining American politics for much of the 1960s and early ’70s, large portions of the country scene (but by no means all) flew the Confederate flag. Most disgusting were the pure racist records of Louisiana’s Johnny Rebel (the coward declined to make known his name), whom the Internet sometimes confuses with the much more likable, and tragic, Johnny Horton. Tammy Wynette, George Morgan and Grandpa Jones were among the country stars who endorsed Alabama’s segregationist governor George Wallace.

The fissure ran deeper with the Vietnam War. On the one hand, Mel Tillis in his Ruby Don’t Take Your Love To Town sang about that “crazy Asian war” (even if that line referred to the Korean war), and Willie Nelson, not yet famous, weighed in with Jimmy’s Road, but the pro-war sentiment was more voluble. Apart from Haggard’s Okie From Muskogee, Marty Robbins called anti-war protesters communists, Stonewall Jackson and Ernest Tubb made their flag-waving views known as well. And bluegrass legend Lester Flatt, always more conservative than Earl Scruggs, complained about men with long hair, whom he could not distinguish from women.

TRACKLISTING
1. Bonnie Owens – My Hi-Fi To Cry By
2. Conway Twitty – Hello Darlin’
3. Porter Wagoner – The Carroll County Accident
4. Marty Robbins – Hello Daily News
5. Elvis Presley – I’m Movin’ On
6. Bob Dylan – Country Pie
7. Poco - Pickin’ Up The Pieces
8. The Byrds - Hickory Wind
9. Johnny Darrell - Why You Been Gone So Long
10. Tom T. Hall - That’s How I Got To Memphis
11. Johnny Cash – Cocaine Blues
12. Jim & Jesse – When I Stop Dreaming
13. George Jones – A Good Year For The Roses
14. Ray Price – For The Good Times
15. Kris Kristofferson – To Beat The Devil
16. R. Dean Taylor – Indiana Wants Me
17. Kenny Rogers and The First Edition – Shine On Ruby Mountain
18. The Statler Brothers – Bed of Rose’s
19. Loretta Lynn - Coal Miner’s Daughter
20. Dolly Parton – Coat Of Many Colors
21. John Prine – Donald And Lydia
22. Country - Man From Alabama
23. New Riders Of The Purple Sage – Glendale Train
24. Johnny Paycheck – She’s All I Got
25. Charley Pride – Kiss An Angel Good Morning
26. Sandy Posey – Bring Him Home Safely To Me
27. Lester Flatt – I Can’t Tell The Boys From The Girls

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Few TV shows ever have so accurately observed the condition of the suburban teenager as The Wonder Years did. One may regard the series, which ran for six seasons (from January 1988 to May 1993), as an exercise in nostalgia. Coming into the middle of a revival that celebrated the 1960s and the beginning of the ’70s, it benefited from fortuitous timing, but as a story of growing up as told by an adult man, the timeframe made perfect sense.

Some may accuse the show of being an apologia for the oppression of nameless bourgeois suburbia, or right-on rhetoric to that effect. Indeed, in the pilot episode the narrator does defend suburban life, arguing that far from being anonymous, suburbia has plenty individual stories to tell. Like that of Kevin Arnold. It may be rose-tintedly nostalgic, it may be middle-class, but it is also profoundly human. Kevin’s stories are not extraordinary; they are universal, at least for those growing up in similar western middle-class circumstances. Imagine the teen embarrassment at having to take a three-year younger girl to a dance where everybody is a head smaller than you, as Kevin has to in one of my favourite episodes.

Fred Savage as Kevin was outstanding. The nuances of his body language were as articulate as his delivery of the scripted lines. Daniel Stern narrates as the adult Kevin, and Savage expresses the inner life exposed in the commentary, with a half-smile here or raised eyebrow there. He was wonderfully understated. And we can recognise the people around him. People much like them existed in our own families or in the circles of our childhood friends. The obnoxious brother Wayne? Know him. Geeky friend Paul? Know him? Grouchy dad Jack? Know him. Kindly mom Norma? Know her. Schoolmate Hobson? Oh dear, yes, I know that son of a bitch too.

I don’t think the female roles are as well realised. Winnie looks like she is going to cry even when she’s full of joy. Nemesis Becky Slater is one-dimensional. Sister Keren too often slides into the realms of caricature. But so does Wayne, even as his obnoxiousness is awesome. The thing is, we are watching these people exclusively through the filter of Kevin’s memories, with all his biases. So Winnie is soft as a melting marshmallow because that’s how Kevin sees her. Keren is an overcompensating hippie because Kevin remembers her that way. And Mrs Arnold might be sexy, for all we know, but Kevin won’t see her like that, so nor shall we.

Twenty years ago, when I first watched The Wonder Years, my empathy resided almost exclusively with Kevin. I was in my mid-twenties, and remembered well being a teenager. Now I have a teenage son (whose superb quality of character reminds me a little of Kevin Arnold’s more admirable qualities), and I can identify with the father, too. Well, not entirely. Although Dan Lauria, who played Jack Arnold, was about the age I am now when the show was filmed, he seems to be so much older, at least in my mind (I bet Jack Arnold wouldn’t write blogs about Twattery in Pop). But I can see the father’s point of view now.

Lauria’s performance was admirably subtle, at least if one looks carefully. There is an almost imperceptible moment in the first season in which Lauria captures the loving father beneath the grumbling gruffness. Kevin and his dad had bonded during a day spent in Jack’s office. Back home at night, Jack lets Kevin look through his telescope. As Kevin looks through the instrument, Jack has his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He gently strokes it with his thumb, as fathers do. It’s a beautiful scene. I somehow grieve Jack’s death, though fictional and post-scripted in the final episode to 1975.

The first four seasons (the first consists of only six episodes) are as good as any half-hour show on TV. By the fourth season, the storylines became more laboured, and by the fifth the steam was beginning to run out. The sixth and final season, in which Kevin suddenly grows up, was one too many.  Still the latter seasons featured the always watchable Giovanni Ribisi (and a more regular future Friends star, David Schwimmer). In The Wonder Years we were also introduced to Juliet Lewis, as Wayne’s girlfriend, and John Corbett (Northern Exposure, Sex And The City, My Big Fat Greek Wedding) as Keren’s libertine hippie boyfriend who gets fiercely interrogated by little Kevin. And Teri from Albuquerque (pictured right), whom Kevin kisses while on holiday in Ocean City in season 3, went on to become porn star Holly Sampson (article here).

Alas, The Wonder Years is not available on DVD (though it’s not difficult to find the entire series on the Internet), apparently because of licensing problems with the many songs featured in the show – several repeatedly, such as The Byrds’ Turn Turn Turn, The Temptations’ My Girl, Joni Mitchell’s version of Both Sides Now, Joan Baez’s Forever Young, The Association’s Cherish, Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. The title song, Joe Cocker’s version of With A Little Help From My Friends, was astutely picked — suitably nostalgic with lyrics that invoke the broad premise of the show (that is, the importance of relationships). The songs were well chosen — not many TV shows were scored with pop numbers back then. The pedantic music fan will of course be mildly irritated when scenes are scored by songs that had not yet been released at the time. But evident care was taken to ensure that songs that featured in a storyline – playing in the background on the radio, perhaps, or being referred to by name – already existed at the time the scenes are set in.

Here is the theme song, the abbreviated version  of Joe Cocker’s With A Little Help From My Fiends:

Theme from The Wonder Years.mp3

And so on to a mix of songs that featured in The Wonder Years. In brackets are the year of the song’s release, followed by the season and episode number it appeared in. As usual, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R (sorry folks, no cover this time).

TRACKLISTING:
1. Joe Cocker – With A Little Help From My Friends (1968 – 4/68)
2. The Beach Boys – When I Grow Up (To Be A Man) (1964 – 6/111)
3. The Association – Cherish (1966 – 1/6)
4. Lovin’ Spoonful – Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind (1965 – 3/44)
5. Percy Faith Orchestra – Theme from A Summer Place (1960 – 2/23)
6. The Chordettes – Never On A Sunday (1961 – 2/23)
7. Hank Williams – Hey Good Lookin’ (1953 – 4/51)
8. Marty Robbins – A White Sport Coat (1957 – 6/113)
9. Johnny Rivers – Swayin’ to the Music (Slow Dancin’) (1977 – 6/105)
10. Jackson Browne – Jamaica Say You Will (1972 – 5/70)
11. Elton John – Seasons (1971 – 3/40)
12. The Spinners – Could It Be I’m Falling In Love (1973 – 6/109)
13. Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell – You’re All I Need To Get By (1967 – 3/37)
14. Fontella Bass – Rescue Me (1965 – 4/58)
15. John Fred & The Playboy Band – Judy In Disguise (With Glasses) (1968 – 5/89)
16. Ronny and the Daytonas – Little G.T.O (1964 – 5/74)
17. Jo Jo Gunne – Run Run Run (1972 – 5/85)
18. Iron Butterfly – In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968 – 2/20 & 3/40)
19. Mott The Hoople – All The Way From Memphis (1973 – 6/106)
20. Randy Newman - I Think It’s Going To Rain Today (1968 – 4/68)
21. Tim Hardin – If I Were A Carpenter (1966 – 5/73)
22. Joni Mitchell – The Circle Game (1970 – 3/27)
23. Joan Baez – Forever Young (1974 – 4/47 & 5/83)
24. Pachelbel – Canon In D Major (2/13)

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In Volume 9 of the country history series, we look at the glory years of country, a time when the genre was at its most self-confident and profitable. It was still a vibrant genre, as this collection shows, though the crooners were already beginning to define the genre, a situation that would give rise to the outlaw movement, the protagonists of which were inspired by several of the artists on this mix.

It’s difficult to say who was the biggest star in 1950s country. The crooner likes of Eddy Arnold were immensely successful, but in terms of sales and influence, the biggest names were Left Frizzell and Webb Pierce, rival kings of honky tonk music. Pierce notched up more country #1s than any other in the 1950s, having in the late ’40s gained recognition by placing girls in the frontrow of his gigs and paying them to scream at him, bobbysoxer style.

Pierce was famous for his Nudie suits – the ornately decorated outfits country singers used to be associated with, if they didn’t wear cowboy hats. Indeed, Pierce did much to popularise the suits made by Nudie Cohn, the Hollywood tailor who got his start from Tex Williams (whom we met in Volume 7). After a row over money, Pierce resigned from the Grand Ole Opry in 1957. The move coincided with the decline of Pierce’s career, though he continued to record until 1982. He died in 1991 at the age of 69.

Marty Robbins was a prolific songwriter and versatile performer. In Volume 8, he covered Chuck Berry’s Maybelline; here he sings his own composition El Paso, a cowboy song from his hugely successful 1959 album, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. Robbins also wrote one of the Lefty Frizzell songs featured here, Cigarette And Coffee Blues.  From the time of his first hit in 1952 till the year after his death at 57 in 1982, Robbins was never off the country charts. He did a cover of Arthur Crudup’s That’s Alright Mama before Elvis’ recorded his version. Who knows what might happened had Robbins’ single been a huge hit? He also scored a batch of pop hits, most famously A White Sports Coat (And A Pink Carnation), a US #2. He might have had another massive pop hit; he was the first to record Singing The Blues, written by Melvin Endsley, but his label, Columbia, pushed the version by Guy Mitchell, recorded almost two months later. Robbins’ version sold 750,000 copies; Mitchell’s 3 million. Robbins was also a skilled NASCAR racing driver, notching up six top ten finishes (he played himself in the NASCAR film Hell on Wheels).

For a long time, country music was not a place for women. Sporadically, one or two would have big hits, of course, but it was a solidly male world. Rose Maddox was among the pioneering women in country, even if she, as the frontwoman, still had to take second billing behind her brothers (they featured in Volume 8). The Maddox family had migrated from Alabama to California, a couple of years before the dustbowl sharecroppers from Oklahoma made their exodus there. Living in Modesto, the Maddox kids quickly established a reputation as California’s best hillbilly band (in the days before the term hillbilly was a slur), specializing in what then passed for racy lyrics. Their country boogie won the Maddox Brothers & Rose a recording contract in 1946. They made their breakthrough in 1949 with a song written by Woody Guthrie, Philadelphia Lawyer. It is said that Fred Maddox’s style of slap bass playing was central in the development of rockabilly, and therefore rock & roll. Only one of the six Maddox siblings – Don, 88, – is still alive. Fred died in 1992 at 73; Rose in 1998 at 72.

R&B musicians had an affinity with country music. Hank Ballard adopted his first name in tribute to Hank Williams, and Chuck Berry reworked a Bob Wills song from the 1930s, Ida Red, to create the seminal Maybelline. Over the years several R&B singers would sing country. Among them was Clarence Frogman Henry, a Louisiana musician in the mould of Fats Domino, who is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R, and includes covers.

TRACKLISTING
1. Don Gibson - Blue Blue Day
2. Hank Locklin – Geisha Girl
3. Buddy Holly – An Empty Cup (And A Broken Date)
4. Barbara Pittman – Two Young Fools In Love
5. Patsy Cline – Three Cigarettes In The Ashtray
6. Webb Pierce – There Stands The Glass
7. Hank Snow – Tangled Mind
8. Leroy Van Dyke – The Auctioneer
9. Ferlin Husky - Gone
10. Tommy Collins – You Better Not Do That
11. Jack Clement - The Black Haired Man
12. Lefty Frizell – Cigarettes and Coffee Blues
13. Charlie Walker – Pick Me Up On Your Way Down
14. Little Jimmy Dickens - Me And My Big Loud Mouth
15. Billy Brown - High Heels But No Soul
16. Cowboy Copas – Circle Rock
17. Clarence Frogman Henry – I Told My Pillow
18. Wes Holly – Shufflin’ Shoes
19. Johnny Cash – Guess Things Happen That Way
20. Patsy Cline – A Stranger In My Arms
21. Hank Locklin – Send Me The Pillow You Dream On
22. Marty Robbins – El Paso
23. Eddy Arnold – Tennessee Stud
24. George Jones – White Lightning
25. Lefty Frizzell – Long Black Veil
26. Skeeter Davis – Set Him Free
27. Brenda Lee – I’m Sorry
28. Wanda Jackson – Tweedie Dee
29. Jim Ed and the Browns - Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons
30. The Stanley Brothers – Rank Stranger
31. Johnny Horton – Johnny Freedom (Freedomland)

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Some years ago, the brains at Rolling Stone grappled to identify the first ever rock & roll record. In the final face-off, they picked Elvis Presley’s debut single That’s All Right, a cover of R&B singer Arthur Crudup’s song, over Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock (itself a cover, though the song was actually written for the former western swing singer).

It is, of course, a fruitless mission to identify a “first” rock & roll song, because the genre is a jumble of diverse influences that convened, not always simultaneously, in an untidy evolution. One might as well seek to pinpoint the first piece of classical music or identify the inventor of the wheel. There is no single originator; there cannot be, because rock & roll is not a recipe consisting of essential ingredients. The genre has always been diffuse, subject to a broad sweep of influences.

Rock & roll grew from various strands of what we broadly term R&B, gospel and country. Alas, the latter influences are often relegated to the incidental. Rock & roll might have received its name from Cleveland DJ Allan Freed as a crossover term for black music, but what the genre became is not what Freed had in mind in 1951, at least not musically.

Indeed, it could (and, indeed, should) be argued that more than a genre of music, rock & roll was an attitude, a new ethos, a response to the times. Rock & roll was an assertive posture, a rejection of prescribed inhibition and the formulae of social expectations. It was a cultural insurrection, and politically helped nudge America towards racial integration. A social (and sexual) revolt, and, briefly, a musical uprising.

A bid to emphasise the contribution of country music to the rock & roll revolution must not be seen as diminishing the absolute centrality of black musical genres in the narrative. Almost all American music, save perhaps for Appalachian broadside ballads, has its roots in black sounds. But country and R&B were not driving on so segregated tracks that there was no cross-pollination before rock & roll. The reality is that in the South, where the roots of rock & roll are so deeply embedded, the social boundaries always were crossed when it came to music. The notion of white and black workers singing together in the cotton fields (proverbial and otherwise) is documented fact.  Some blues of the 1920s or ’30s sounds much like some of what would come to be called country, and vice versa. Early country produced a huge number of songs with the word “blues” in the title, and these were indeed blues songs; not because these singers were consciously imitating black musicians (though they were profoundly influenced by them), but because the blues cut across the races. The father of country music, Jimmy Rodgers, had a catalogue full of blues songs. In short, as we saw in the first instalment of this series, early country owed a debt to black music, perhaps above all in the songs’ authenticity. The late soul singer Brook Benton once described country music as a form of gospel music, “the soul of the country”.

Jazz also influenced some country. Bob Wills, the biggest name in western swing, commented in the 1950s that he was doing rock & roll already 25 years earlier: “Rock & Roll? Why, man, that’s the same kind of music we’ve been playin’ since 1928! [...] But it’s just basic rhythm and has gone by a lot of different names in my time. It’s the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. The rhythm’s what’s important.” Wills also provided a prototype for one of rock & roll’s most pivotal songs. Chuck Berry’s Maybelline, another perennial contender for the first rock & roll song, was a reworking of Bob Wills version of the fiddle number Ida Red (as featured in Copy Borrow Steal Vol 4).

It is striking that Rolling Stone named as the “first” rock & roll records those by singers whose roots were in country (if I had been asked, I’d have nominated any number of songs by the jump blues and jazzman Louis Jordan, who sounded and acted rock & roll long before it became a thing). Bill Haley was a western swing musician, and Elvis might have grown up in a small white enclave in Tupelo’s black ghetto and hung out in Memphis’ Beale Street, but his roots were in country. The first song Elvis ever sung in public, at 14, was Red Foley’s Old Shep.  After his handful of recordings at Sun, Elvis was signed to RCA by the label’s head of the country division, Steve Sholes; was often produced by country guitarist and producer Chet Atkins with legendary country pianist Floyd Cramer occasionally on the ivories and country harmonising quartet The Jordanaires on backing vocals.  And the b-side of That’s All Right was, of course, a country song, Bill Monroe’s Blue Moon Of Kentucky).

And surely there can be no denying the importance of rockabilly – a sub-genre of country that did not really sell well – in the rise of rock & roll. The most notable exponent of rockabilly was Carl Perkins, who was taught the guitar by bluesmen, but the musical styles rockabilly drew from had been around since the late 1930s. Buddy Jones’ 1939 song Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama (featured in A History Of Country Vol. 3) is generally regarded as the first rockabilly record.

Likewise, rock & roll would not have been quite the same without the “hillbilly boogie” of Moon Mullican, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Cliffie Stone, the Delmore Brothers, Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant, Merril Moore or The Maddox Brothers & Rose (who drew also from rockabilly). The slap bass, so integral to early rock & roll (imagine Elvis’ singles without Bill Black’s bass!), was standard in boogie, rockabilly and western swing.

Many leading rock & roll stars crossed over from country: Jerry Lee Lewis (whose piano style borrowed heavily from Merril Moore’s), Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Eddy Cochran, Roy Orbison, the Everly Brothers, Del Shannon, Ricky Nelson, Wanda Jackson and so on. Many of them intermittently returned to their country roots.

Several R&B performers were at home with country. Ike Turner (another regular “first” rock & roll song nominee) could do a mean country song, as could deep soul men Joe Tex and Solomon Burke. Ray Charles recorded a whole collection of country songs. Arthur Alexander, a massive influence on The Beatles, was known for his country-soul. Hank Ballard, another black rock & roll legend, identified as his most pivotal influence the singing cowboys, led by Gene Autry (of course, Hank was not his real name).

The mutual respect and shared sources of rock & roll may be summed up well by Carl Perkins. When he first heard Chuck Berry’s Maybelline, he recalled thinking: “Here is a man who likes country” – just as Carl loved the blues.

……………………………………..

And so on to the country songs of the incipient years of the rock & roll era, itself a golden age for the genre.Some of these songs are country classics, some a relatively obscure (especially a handful of rockabilly tunes). There is a symbolism in my choice of opening and closing track: Jerry Lee Lewis covering Ray Price’s big hit.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Ray Price – I’ll Be There If You Want Me
2. Webb Pierce – More And More
3. Rudy Gray – Hearts Made Of Stone
4. Lefty Frizzell – I Love You Mostly
5. Hank Snow - The Next Voice You Hear
6. Kitty Wells – Making Believe
7. Jimmy Heap and the Melody Masters – You’re Nothing But A Nothing
8. Doug Poindexter & the Starlite Ramblers – My Kind Of Carrying On
9. The Davis Sisters – Fiddle Diddle Boogie
10. Charlie Feathers – Peepin’ Eyes
11. Johnny Cash – Hey Porter
12. Carl Perkins – Movie Magg
13. Jess Hooper – Sleepy Time Blues
14. Tennessee Ernie Ford – Sixteen Tons
15. Eddie Bond – Double Duty Lovin’
16. Hank Locklin – Love Or Spite
17. Werly Fairburn – I Guess I’m Crazy (For Loving You)
18. Terry Fell – That’s What I Like
19. Merrill Moore – Rock-Rockola
20. Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant – Caffeine Patrol
21. Maddox Brothers & Rosie – I Gotta Go Get My Baby
22. The Farmer Boys - It Pays To Advertise
23. Jimmy Newman – Teardrops In My Heart
24. Marty Robbins – Maybelline
25. Cliffie Stone – The Popcorn Song
26. Bonnie Lou – Daddy-O
27. Buck Owens – Down On The Corner Of Love
28. Kitty Wells – I Don’t Claim To Be An Angel
29. Johnny Horton – Honky Tonk Man
30. Elvis Presley – How Do You Think I Feel
31. Eddy Arnold – I Wouldn’t Know Where To Begin
32. The Louvin Brothers – Kentucky
33. Jerry Lee Lewis & his Pumping Piano – Crazy Arms

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The grim reaper evidently is a big football fan, stepping up his reaping only after the World Cup concluded (taking, however, the great South African saxophonist Robbie Jansen before its conclusion), but then with a vengeance. The most notable musician this month may be Harvey Fuqua, whose impact on music was mostly behind the scenes. Fittingly, Marvin Gaye on the last track of his last album paid tribute to his mentor. Just a short while after Big Star’s Alex Chilton, Andy Hummel died.

A couple of session musicians who played on rock classics passed on. I usually don’t include technical staff other than influential producers. But as a sound engineer Bill Porter shaped the Nashville sound. We all know songs that he has produced (many have featured on this blog), including classics by the Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Skeeter Davis, Hank Locklin, and Jim Reeves. Also passing on is the relatively obscure funk and soul singer Melvin Bliss, whose 1973 b-side Synthetic Substitution became a staple hip hop sample (for a list, see here)

But the most tragic death came towards the end of the month when the jazz drummer Chris Dagley — who also was a session man (as featured on jazz singer’s Claire Martin’s latest album) — died in a motorbike accident on the way home from playing a gig at London’s famous Ronnie Scott’s. He leaves behind his wife and three kids.

Tracks listed for each entry are on the compilation linked to at the end of this post.

*    *    *

Ilene Woods, 81, American singer and actress, on Juy 1
Ilene Woods – Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo (from Cinderella, 1950)

Harvey Fuqua, 80, singer with The Moonglows and record producer, on July 6
Harvey & The Moonglows – Ten Commandments Of Love (1959)
Marvin Gaye – My Love Is Waiting (1982)

Bill Porter, 79, hugely influential rock & roll and country sound engineer, on July 7
Bobby Bare – 500 Miles Away From Home (1963)
Skeeter Davis – I Can’t Stay Mad At You (1963)
Elvis Presley – (You’re The) Devil In Disguise (1963)

Robbie Jansen, 60, South African jazz saxophonist and singer, on July 7
Robbie Jansen – Praise My Soul (1998)
Tony Schilder Trio – Give Her Back To Me (1995)
More Robbie Jansen here

Sugar Minott, 54, reggae singer, on July 10
Sugar Minott – Good Thing Going (1981)

Walter Hawkins, 61, gospel singer, on July 11
Walter Hawkins – For My Good (1998)

Tuli Kupferberg, 86, poet, cartoonist and musician with folk-group The Fugs, on July 12
The Fugs – The Garden Is Open (1968)

Paulo Moura, 77, Brazilian saxophonist and clarinetist, on July 12
Paulo Moura & Os Batutas – Lamentos (1996)

Olga Guillot, 87, Cuban “Queen of Bolero”, on July 13
Olga Guillot – Sabor a mi

Gene Ludwig, 72, jazz organist, on July 14
Gene Ludwig – Blue Flame (1966)

Hank Cochran, 74, country music singer-songwriter and duo partner of Eddie Cochran, on July 15
Cochran Brothers – Slowdown (1956)
Wanda Jackson – I Fall To Pieces (1988)

Yandé Codou Sène, 78, Senegalese singer, on July 15
Yandé Codou Sène & Youssou N’Dour – Sama Guent Guii (1995)

Carlos Torres Vila, 63, Argentinian folk singer, on July 16
Carlos Torres Vila – Que Pasa Entre Los Dos (1976)

Fred Carter Jr., 76, guitarist (e.g. on The Boxer and bass on Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay), songwriter and producer, on July 17
Marty Robbins – El Paso (1959)
Simon & Garfunkel – The Boxer (1970)

Andy Hummel, 59, founder member of Big Star, on July 19
Big Star – My Life Is Right (1972)

Phillip Walker, 73, blues musician, on July 22
Phillip Walker – Hello My Darling

Harry Beckett, 75, British trumpeter, on July 22
Harry Beckett – Ultimate Tribute (2009)

Al Goodman, 63, singer with The Moments and Ray, Goodman & Brown, on July 26
The Moments – Love On A Two-Way Street (1970)
Ray Goodman Brown – Special Lady (1979)

Melvin Bliss, 75, soul singer, on July 26
Melvin Bliss – Synthetic Substitution (1973)

Bice, 37, Japanese singer-songwriter and producer, on July 26
Bice – An Apple A Day (2001)

Ben Keith, 73, country/folk/rock musician and producer, on July 27
Neil Young – Are You Ready For The Country? (1972)

Chris Dagley, 38, English jazz drummer, on July 28
Claire Martin – Everybody Today Is Turning On (2009)

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By The Time I Get To Phoenix is not even my favourite Jimmy Webb song, much as I love it, but I cannot think of many other songs in pop music that traverse interpretations and genres as effortlessly as this. Here I am offering a bunch of versions that cover pop, country, soul, jazz and easy listening.

By The Time I Get To Phoenix sounds like it belongs in any of these genres. And even when interpreted by artists from the same genre, it is an immensely flexible a song. Just compare the versions by the Four Tops, Erma Franklin, Isaac Hayes, the Intruders, the Mad Lads, Wayne McGhie and New York City. So I think one can listen to all 23 versions here without necessarily getting bored.

The first version of the song was recorded by Webb’s mentor, Johnny Rivers, in 1966. Since then it has been covered many time. I’ve managed to date 50 versions released within five years of Rivers’ inaugural recording. Apparently there are more than a thousand versions of it.

Rivers’ version made no impact, nor did a cover by Pat Boone. The guitarist on Boone’s version, however, picked up on the song and released it in 1967. Glen Campbell scored a massive hit with the song, even winning two Grammies for it. In quick succession, Campbell completed a trilogy of geographically-themed songs by Webb, with the gorgeous Wichita Lineman (written especially for Campbell) and the similarly wonderful Galveston.

Another seasoned session musician took Phoenix into a completely different direction (if you will pardon the unintended pun). Isaac Hayes had heard the song, and decided to perform it as the Bar-Keys’ guest performer at Memphis’ Tiki Club, a soul venue. He started with a spontaneous spoken prologue, explaining in some detail why this man is on his unlikely journey (apparently it is physically impossible to complete the song’s itinerary — Phoenix, Albuquerque, Oklahoma — in a day). At first the patrons weren’t sure what Hayes was doing rapping over a repetitive chord loop. After a while, according to Hayes, they started to listen. At the end of the song, he said, there was not a dry eye in the house (“I’m gonna moan now…”). As it appeared on Ike’s 1968 Hot Buttered Soul album, the thing went on for 18 glorious minutes.

So, apart from Isaac Hayes’, which version is your favourite? I think I like Al Wilson’s best. Or the Four Tops’. Or Erma Franklin’s. Or Nick Cave’s…

TRACKLISTING
1. Johnny Rivers – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1966)
2. Glen Campbell – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1967)
3. Ace Cannon – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1968)
4. Al Wilson – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1968)
5. Bobby Goldsboro – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1968)
6. Engelbert Humperdinck – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1968)
7. Four Tops – By the Time I Get To Phoenix (1968)
8. Frank Sinatra – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1968)
9. Johnny Mathis – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1968)
10. Marty Robbins – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1968)
11. The Intruders – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1968)
12. The Lettermen – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1968)
13. A.J. Marshall – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1969)
14. Dorothy Ashby – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1969)
15. Erma Franklin – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1969)
16. Isaac Hayes – By the Time I Get To Phoenix (1969)
17. José Feliciano - By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1969)
18. The Mad Lads – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1969)
19. Wayne McGhie & the Sounds of Joy – By the Time I Get To Phoenix (1970)
20. Fabulous Souls – By The Time I Get to Phoenix (1971)
21. New York City – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1973)
22. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1986)
23. Reba McEntire – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1995)

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