Dan McCorison (MCF 2810) (1977)

LOCAL RECORD STORE CLERK THINKS HE’S NICK FUCKING KENT OR SOMETHING

(Columbus, OH) Erroll Graine obviously thinks he’s some kind of fucking music critic or something the way he bangs on and on about record minutia in that smarmy, know-it-all way of his, patrons of local music emporium Secondhand Student Records reported yesterday.

“Jesus, what a prick,” recalled Phillip Green. “When I brought this country record I’d got in the cheapo section up to the counter, he goes, ‘Ah, songwriter Dan McCorison’s eponymous debut’–I mean, who ever uses the word ‘eponymous’?”

“And then he went on, ‘A solid, late 70s commercial country effort produced by ex-Byrd bassist Chris Hillman that neither disappoints nor challenges country orthodoxy’,” said an exasperated Green. “Yes, the pretentious asshole really said ‘country orthodoxy’?”

“Oh yeah,” agreed Tom Weston, another Second Student customer,”That guy’s totally into ‘crit-speak’ bon mots, using words like ’oeuvre‘ and ‘canon’ and ‘sophomore effort’ and describing records as like someone else ‘on acid’.”

“It is very fucking tiresome,” Weston added.

“I like to think I’m doing a public service,” smiled Graine smugly unaware of the irritation he causes. “If people come into a record store, you know, they expect some expert guidance which I’m happy to provide.”

“Like that Dan McCorison Lp I sold today….” The dorkwad, now beginning to witter as if unable to help himself, launched into music writer mode.

“I definitely enhanced that guy’s shopping experience by explaining that it betrayed none of its producer’s former band’s glorious harmonic sheen, but rather was the kind of likeable, half-decent country record you found clogging up the K-Mart cut-out bin back in 1981.”

“And really, you should have seen how grateful he was when I pointed out that the only blip in the album’s aw-shucks-ma’am, hick-schtick was a truly bizarre reggae take on Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’.”

Secondhand Student manager, Dan Onhigh, believes Graine is “perpetually stringing Dorothy Parker-isms in his head” and is so able to blurt them out when required.

“He should start a blog to get all that bullshit out of his system,” Onhigh said.

Teenie Chenault and the Country Rockers (ERS-517)

I can’t tell from the (autographed!) sleeve and research is inconclusive, but I believe this is a compilation of 60s singles by Virginia country musician Teenie Chenault released around 1969-1970 and may have been produced by Pete Drake. And 90˚straight edge high-lonesome country it is with pedal steel cryin’ in every alcohol consumption/relationship troubles song; the only exception to the good lovin’ gone bad scenerio is “You’re No Inspiration” and that’s about a woman who doesn’t cheat, run around, beat time, etc. on her man and is therefore “no inspiration, Gracie, for a hit song.” Nice little turnaround there.

While the song-writing and vocal delivery inevitably lack the panache of the first-rate country singers of the day, the band is very good and there’s something otherwise heartwarming about this nifty regional C&W Lp: In a sense, it’s real folk music, you know.

Awesome cover that I have to suppose is of an earlier vintage; even country singers, who are, almost by definition, several years behind the times, wouldn’t look like that by the turn of decade, though, funny enough, Bryan Ferry certainly looked like Teenie (below) a couple years later. Chenault’s band were regulars at Wheeling, West Virginia’s Jamboree USA, which is just a few miles from my Grandparents place, so it’s possible that I would have seen the Country Rockers advertised as a young boy.

The most interesting piece of writing I found about Chenault comes from the book, Tourette – That’s What Makes Me Tic, starting on page 108.

What this record was doing in Faversham, I don’t know; but what I was doing in Faversham was looking for records like this.

Classic Willie Nelson (UAS 29945) (1976)

What with a few of his own standards (“Funny How Time Slips Away”, “Hello Walls”) and those of others (“Nightlife”), songwriting on this budget-looking United Artists comp of the Red Headed Stranger’s early 60s Liberty Records material is always well above par. The treatments, Owen Bradley-style background singers/strings à la Jim Reeves, while a bit Hollywood, don’t overwhelm Nelson’s reedy, talk-sing vocals, the contrast even adding to the pathos. The mood is meditative throughout apart from a very uptempo, very jazzy “Columbus Stockade Blues”. The version of his own “Crazy” can’t touch Patsy Cline’s more famous take, but then what can?

Another from yesterday’s Demelza House bunch…more to come.

Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two – Story Songs of the Trains and Rivers (Sun 6467012) (1969)

You know how if you say a word enough times it becomes ludicrously and eye-wateringly funny? Try it with the word Lurpak® (an English butter) or make up your own.

See? Hilarious!

Now, the next time you see a picture of Johnny Cash, have a real close look. Take your time and study the picture hard. In the same way, you will find that Johnny Cash is really funny looking, especially his nose.

A trip to Hythe on Bank errands gave me the sneaky opportunity earlier today of finding at Demelza House this transport-themed rockabilly Lp from Cash’s own Sun Sessions (’55-’58), which offers no surprises, but no gaffes and plenty of the Boom-Chicka-Boom you want.

Merle Haggard and the Strangers – Swinging Doors (SM-2585) (1966)

Being something of a hybrid, it’s a nonsense to call Swinging Doors ”pure country” and yet there’s a mathematical precision and natural beauty here that only art of purity can achieve. In the same way that the recent MJQ and BB King posts discuss representative five-star albums of mature, but not yet ossified, genres, Swinging Doors is, as my friend said, the real deal;  a perfect example of the so-called “Bakersfield sound” which successfully (and long before Bubba-Come-Latelys of the country-rock movement) absorbed a rock & roll feel without compromising its country roots. Pointless and goofy commercial country records by Alan Jackson, George Strait, Brooks & Dunn, etc., etc., ad nauseam poured forth over the following decades in Hag’s wake, but don’t let that put you off–this is fantastic focussed music. Another US pressing, all mine for a pound from an Etchinghill bootfair.

Incidentally, I have Merle to thank for my enthusiasm for George Dickel‘s whisky (alluded to in the Rickie Lee Jones post). His quip (in the excellent The Tenacity of the Cockroach) that he keeps “a shot of George Dickel within heart-attack range at all times” led me to sample some–it’s like Jack Daniels, only smoother–now my mom kindly brings a bottle over every time she visits.

Hank Williams – Memorial Album (MGM 2683 016)

This generous none-more-country double Lp compilation of the Hillbilly Shakespeare eschews the big hits in favour of a perfectly balanced selection of relationship blues, apocalyptic warnings and mother-is-dead weepies all housed in a truly odd Alan Aldridge-style psychedelic sleeve.

For two pounds, a charity shop in Sandwich has this afternoon avenged the decades-long travesty that was no Hank Williams in the Asbo music library.

Waylon Jennings – Ol’ Waylon (RCA PL 12317) (1977) and Waylon & Willie (RCA AFL1-2686) (1978)

The painting on the right can also be purchased as a limited edition plate suitable for wall-mounting and Greek weddings.

These two Chip Moman produced, songwriting showcase records, picked up at a temporary-looking store-front junk shop in Rye, loom large in my childhood. His long-haired, marijuana indulging redneck ways were philosophically influential in my neck of the woods. I even saw Waylon in concert at a small arena gig in Kentucky in 1980–fabulous show–with people who had an Ol’ Waylon bumper stick plastered on their bathroom mirror.Waylon’s probably best known in this country for his Dukes of Hazzard theme, but he only got that gig because of albums like this. Famously, Jennings was also Buddy Holly’s airplane-avoiding bass player, so his credentials stretch back quite a ways before he (and Willie Nelson and Tompall Glasser) hit on their “outlaw” wheeze, whereby they could remain country artists while performing Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac songs. The sound here is clean with only the electric guitars slightly phased, “Eat shit”-style bass (e.g. 2/4 time notes alternating on the root and lower fifth) abounds. Jennings, in fact, is no great shakes as a singer, but his presence sells the songs and blends well Willie’s downhome nasal croon. Of course, at this point in history it’s hard to see any musical or philosophical difference between the “outlaw” country music of Jennings, et. al. and the slightly defensive/God-fearing/footloose/country singer hero who resignedly celebrated his flaws of  generations previous, but back in the day, the choice of covers, the length of one’s hair and the amount of dope one smoked were important points of cultural division. By the 80s and 90s, the “outlaw” movement and its absorption of pop and rock moves had hardened into pose; the “New Traditionalist” movement sought redress this.Favorite line: “Take back the weed/take back the cocaine, baby/I can get off on you.”

Buzz Rabin – Cross Country Cowboy (Elektra 75076) (1974)

Pull up a stool son and set a spell, lemme tell yew mah story…can I gitchoo a drank? Yew wanna cheroot?…well, it all started when that Pete Drake…huh? uh, he’s a producer and pedal steel player…he done some pickin’ on that All Thangs Mus’ Pass record album by Beatle George. Well, him and ol’ Ringo, who’s a-drummin’ on that record album, got to be best buds and ‘fore yew know it, they’s in Nashville makin’ another record album. Pete comes to me and says, “Buzz,” that’s my name by the way, Buzz Rabin, “Buzz,” he says, “We need a title track for this here record album.” And I goes, “How’s ’bout ‘Beaucoups [editor: pronounced boo-koos] of Blues’? That’s a good song for yer Limey friend to sang.” And dam’ if they didn’t up and do it.

Well, I starts to writin’ songs for ever’body in country music then and perty soon my buddy, Russ Miller, says you’s a perty good sanger, Buzz, you should be fixin’ to make yer own record album and git ol’ Pete to hep yew make it. So we did. Me and Pete decided to make it a concep’ album about life on the road with lil’ bits o’ what I calls “travelin’ music” in between the songs, you know, fast country stuff, with the title track openin’ the album an’ a reprise of it at the end, jus’ like Sgt. Pepper’s or Venus and Mars.  Yuh see, Ol’ Willie ditn’t make the firs’ country music concep’ album–Buzz Rabin did! Had him beat by a year, I did [editor: Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger (1975)]. Heh, heh. Yeah, that Cross Country Cowboy‘s professionally performed, typical country music with the typical chord changes and typical subjec’ matter [editor: drinking, women, Jesus]. Took the pitchure on the cover at T.G.I. Friday’s [editor: true]. It’s a perty good album and I ain’t a bad singer, jus’ mebbe a little characterless. I wonder why I done never made another record or why I don’ have me an entry in Wikipedia. Anyhoo, I bought me some fancy suede duds and a leather vest with the record album advance, so it ain’t all bad.

Say, can I gitchoo anothuh drank?

[editor: I paid 50p for this US pressing of Cross Country Cowboy at an animal charity shop in Deal, Kent.]

Red Rhodes – Velvet Hammer In a Cowboy Band (CS-102) (1973)

As with cigarettes, whiskey, coffee and pumpernickel bread there’s something at first off-putting but ultimately compelling and satisfying about this instrumental record by pedal steel session guy Red Rhodes. From the beautifully shot, dynamically balanced and deliberately banal cover photograph by 70s lensman du jour Norman Seeff, Velvet Hammer is an unlikely record—kind of country, kind of jazz, kind of lounge—that puzzled even the players: “We didn’t know what we were doing when we made this album,” defiantly announces piano player David Barry on the back cover’s witty liner notes. He goes on, “We played together until we had what we wanted on tape or decided to try another song. We got confused, silly, drunk, depressed, high, mad, straight, stoned and joyful and it’s all on the record.” The fact that it was produced by Monkees’ oddball and proto-country rocker Mike Nesmith (and was released through Countryside, his vanity label) makes sense. Everyone I’ve played this record to has reacted the same way: first bemusement and then enthusiasm.

Picked up at the boot fair on Hythe Green, it’s the kind of record that makes crate-digging fun.

Jack Barlow – Baby, Ain’t That Love (Dot – DLP 25923) (1969)

CONFIDENTIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORT ON BARLOW, JACK

based on interview with psychologist Prince Asbo conducted 28th July 2011.

Mr. Barlow’s perception of events is likely to be significantly influenced by a long series of confused, cumulative and traumatic family and social experiences. He makes repeated fantastical claims, with details both banal and surreal, in a rich Basso Profundo voice full of a kind of corn-pone sentimentality. Barlow asserts by way of explaining/excusing his larcenous behaviour that his “Papa didn’t give me no love/He didn’t care if us kids went hungry” and that “He didn’t bother to take me fishin’”. He alleges that his “Momma tried to kill [him] three months before he was born/And daddy killed himself one sunny Sunday morn.” Whether or not his testimony can be trusted is open to question as he later claims that a man named Andrew Irvin shot and killed his “hot-headed Papa” (whom he later refers to as an “uncarin’, no good dad”) 20 years ago “up on Tucker’s Hill.”

As a result of his very vivid fantasies, his fight or flight responses are immediate, frequent and rapid (Barlow admits that he’s “gotta a lotta Devil in [him]” and further offers that the “devil [has] listed [him] as next of kin”) suggesting that he perceives threats within many everyday events. His ability to rationalise, predict and infer remains compromised by his arousal levels which affect higher order thinking: frequent trouble at school (“for some strange reason I was slow in school”) and difficult, borderline abusive interactions with teachers (who he claims “stood him in the corner and called him ‘Fred the Fool’”) have no doubt exacerbated feelings of rejection and bitterness towards authority figures in general. “Ain’t that love?” he asked rhetorically after listing a series of rejection both familial and societal. “I can’t give what I never had,” he says he says of his uneasy relationships women. “And I’ll hurt you if I can.” Certainly he is an unrecontructed sexist: “Shut your mouth woman”, “Get out of my way woman”, and “Let go of my shirt-tails woman” are frequent rejoinders.

Clearly (and understandably) sociopathic, Barlow has lived a nomadic adulthood moving from Texas to Utah to Alabam’ to Memphis to Nashville to Nebraska and finally to Alaska–all the while chasing “elusive dreams and schemes”. And when he “didn’t find it [the elusive dream] there, we moved on”. It was in the latter location where Barlow suffered another cruel fate: the loss of his child. Though not specific on details, he tells that it happened near a bogus gold mine. While several pathologies are in evidence from this interview, he shows some capacity for remorse, saying, regarding his marital infidelity: “My conscience is slowing [sic] with my head bowed low” and “We [he and his lover] did some things we both knew was wrong.” Barlow’s perceptive self-diagnosis is a “case of the Birmingham blues”

In light of these findings, immediate institutionalisation is recommended until such time as Mr. Barlow can be re-integrated into society, a scenario which seems unlikely at this point.