I grew up with a father who sang in the car. And not just humming along to whatever was on the radio. I'm talking about a guy who would seek out the most cruel strip of airwave, absolute nadir of the seven year old's radio dial, the notch between "help me, please" and "he's only going 35, I'd probably live if I flung the door open and pulled a stuntguy roll." Yes, that specific hurting known in the Schmalz family as dad's favorite: the local country and western station. Mind you, my dad's not a singer so much as a dog-ear defying warbler of the rarest breed. If you heard him sing, you'd think he's joking. But he's not. And he knows the words... or most of them.
After such prepubescent scarification, how is it that thirty years later, I've grown a certain taste for pedal steel and Nudie Suits? Did my friends Brownie (Flatt & Scruggs), Bambouché (a K. Kristoferson devotee) and Robinson (the Womack piece of the puzzle) help me stop worrying and learn to love the yodel?
To make a long story short (that is what country music is about, right?), a few months ago, Lily came into the house while I was blazing "Close up the Honky-Tonks." Somewhat shamed, I went for the volume, hoping to fade into something more aurally comfortable. See, with her not having lived through my childhood, I hadn't really wrapped my brain around the idea that she could possibly think country was cool.
As I turned it down, I heard from the hallway, "What are you doing? That's FUN!"
And it was on!
Today, for you, Pops, a couple junk store four-song picture sleeve 45rpm finds to hang your spurs on...
Springtime In Alaska - Johnny Horton
"when it's springtime in Alaska/it's forty below"
"it was red-headed Lil who was singing so sweet"
Life To Go - Stonewall Jackson
"I've been in here eighteen years / that's a long, long time I know / but time don't mean a thing to me / cuz I've got life to go."
Frankie's Man, Johnny - Johnny Cash
"weellll noooww... Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts..."
Great story about a red-headed sister/spy... seems there's a high redhead-to-cheatin' heart ratio in 1950s C&W songwriting.
Cigarettes and Coffee Blues - Lefty Frizzell
this is SO GOOD... I won't even quote the lyrics, I'll just show you the picture-sleeve back cover:
file under: "fringe elements"
Don't take your guns to town - Johnny Cash
- all (both) you Joe Hicks/Bobby Womack fans may recognize this track as the foundation for "Ruby Dean" ("don't take your love to town...")
That's what it's like to be lonesome - Ray Price
hack country... I think my ESL students may have written:
"afraid of each tomorrow with its heartless cold alone"
file under: postmodernism, unintentional
I'm in Love Again - George Morgan
yodel styles... "I hear wedding bells and I'm in love again..."
"I'm so happy I'm afraid this dream might end"
classic.
5 comments:
Yee-haw! You can take the boy out of West Virginia, and even outside of a 100-mile radius of Boot City, but the warbling and twanging is still in there somewhere. Maybe it took being transported to Germany for the love that dare not speak its name to come forth. But if years from now you develop some kind of weird fondness for the German variety of C&W (or Dixieland for that matter), I'm going to be scared.
Some people think "tack" is something you do with your yacht, or something you use to put a picture up on the wall.
I have 2 words for you
JIMMIE RODGERS
When it's springtime in alaska, it's 40 below... that voice, dear brother, is the soundtrack of many a dusty car ride from god-knows-where to BFE, and all the side roads in between
can't wait for my mix tape.
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