WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Christmas In The Country (PSAs)

Well, it's that time of year so here are a few mildly maudlin Christmas-themed PSA announcements for your enjoyment.  It's a little unusual in that the four artists are not label mates.  Instead they all shared the same manager, Dick Heard, who was also a record label president (of Royal American, the label of Van Trevor and Lynda K. Lance), producer and songwriter.

Heard co-authored Abigail Beecher, My History Teacher for Freddy Cannon in 1964, and also co-wrote (along with Eddie Rabbitt) Elvis Presley's Kentucky Rain in 1970.

Johnny Dollar  -  Holiday Greetings  (:54)

Van Trevor  -  Patriotism  (:55)

Lynda K. Lance  -  Safe Driving  (:49)

Nat Stuckey  -  Letters From Home  (:53)

Springhill Mine Explosion (MP3)

Jack Kingston  -  Springhill Mine Explosion  (3:01)

On November 1, 1956 disaster struck the Dominion Coal Company's Springhill, Nova Scotia mine when a powerline ignited some coal dust 5,500 feet below the ground, trapping over 100 miners in the deep tunnels below the Earth's surface.  Eighty-eight of the trapped miners were eventually rescued, but 39 workers died in the tragedy.  Google map

JFK - The Greatest Of All (MP3)

 

Lee Roy Abernathy  -  John F. Kennedy The Greatest Of All 

Next week, of course, will mark the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assasination on November 22, 1963 in Dallas.  Here is one of the many topical tribute songs about the death of the President, this one from my hometown of Atlanta.  Lee Roy Abernathy, who delivers the recitation on this 45, was a prolific gospel artist from Cartersville, Georgia.

Abernathy, who apparently liked cutting topical tunes, also recorded campaign songs for FDR and Eugene Talmadge, Georgia's governor from 1933 to 1937 and again from 1941 to 1943.  And in 1947, Abernathy released The Burning Of The Winecoff Hotel which detailed the nation's deadliest hotel fire ever.

Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for Kennedy's murder inside the Texas Theatre, located at 231 West Jefferson Boulevard in Dallas' Oak Cliff neighborhood.  On the anniversary of Kennedy's death, the theatre will commemorate the occasion by hosting "JFK Day" and playing the same films that were running on the day of the assassination (War Is Hell and Cry Of Battle), along with some other thematic offerings.  More details on the event can be found on the Dallas Observer's Unfair Park blog.

 

Seymore Weed (MP3s)

 

Seymore Weed  -  God Please Protect America  

Seymore Weed  -  Born Without A Name 

Today's offering comes from the delightfully named Seymore Weed, who recorded these sides for the Vokes label in New Kensington, Pennsylvania in the mid-to-late 60s.  Could that possibly be his real name?  Though I have no hard evidence to point to, I'd say that Seymore Weed is probably not a pseudonym as he doesn't really come across like a guy who wants to be associated marijuana.

On the top side of this record, Weed rails against the encroaching menace of communism, while on the flip side he employs his atonal and anguished croak to warn of the perils of unwed motherhood.

Wisconsin Grave Robbing In The News

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel comes the news of the arrest of a grave robber who plundered a mausoleum to steal a treasured Fender Telecaster that was interred along with its recently deceased owner.  Take that Ed Gein!

Image borrowed from the Flickr stream of vintageguitarz.

The Runt (MP3)

Dave Rich  -  The Runt 

If you didn't already know it, October is National Bullying Prevention Month.  And, boy, do I have a horrifying theme song to offer up for the cause.

Believe it or not, this song's been recorded at least three times.  Hank Snow did it for his 1966 RCA-Victor album Gospel Train and a guy named Dick Miles put it on a Capitol LP around the same time.  Miles' version can be heard on this Music To Spazz By With Dave The Spazz program.

Tribute To Jim Reeves (MP3)

  

Larry Cunningham & The Mighty Avons  -  Tribute To Jim Reeves  (3:21)

Singer Larry Cunningham waxed this Jim Reeves tribute disc, a Top 10 hit in his native Ireland,  a few short months after Reeves perished in a Tennessee plane crash.  Reeves' popularity extended to some pretty far corners of the globe, especially when compared to most of his Nashville colleagues.  At the time of his death, he'd established substantial fan bases in far-flung locales like South Africa, the UK, Norway, India and Sri Lanka.  Hoping for a stateside hit, the tune was picked up for domestic distribution by Louis Prima's Las Vegas-based PR1MA label (also known as Prima One).

To be honest, I've never been particularly fond of the Jim Reeves records I've heard as I find them way too lush and polished and completely missing the harder edged sounds heard on the country discs I enjoy.  Friends tell me that his earlier sides have a bit more pep to them and that some of them are actually pretty good.  Probably so, but I'm still not compelled to seek out the "good" Jim Reeves records.  So even though I'm not particularly fond of Reeves himself,  I felt compelled to pick this disc up as there's something about country tribute records that I find oddly appealing.  I'm always intrigued when a virtually unknown singer books time at a recording studio to literally sing the praises of another singer and rhapsodize about his idol's appeal.

Reeves died on July 31, 1964 just outside of Nashville when the plane he was piloting ran into a powerful late afternoon thunderstorm.  Amazingly, Reeves and Randy Hughes, the pilot in the 1963 crash that resulted in the deaths of Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas, were both trained by the same flight instructor.  Reeves' plane went down northeast of Brentwood, near the intersection of Baxter Lane and Franklin PIke Circle, just east of Interstate 65 (Google map).  Of no significance whatsoever (but worth noting anyhow, I think) is the fact that Marty Robbins' house stood approximately a quarter mile away on Redwood Drive, just across I-65.

The most amazing thing about Reeves' death, though, is that he continued to have big hits long after his funeral.  It's not terribly uncommon for pop or country stars to chart a few records following their demise, especially if the death in question was sudden and unexpected, but Reeves' widow oversaw a constant flow of new product after his death, some of it unreleased material from the vaults and some of it re-released after dubbing extra voices onto the records so that they could be marketed as duets.  Reeves managed an astonishing 34 Billboard charting singles after his death, with Top 10 records landing on the charts until the early 1980s.

If you'd like to know more about Reeves, you'll be happy to find out about a couple of posts from Devlin over on the WFMU Rock 'N' Soul Ichiban blog, which can be found here and here.

We Miss You Marty Robbins (MP3)

Alvie Self  -  We Miss You Marty Robbins  (3:15)

Here's Alvie Self's Marty Robbins tribute 45, We Miss You Marty Robbins.  Last time we heard from Alvie here on Beware Of The Blog, he was running down dirty hippies.  So he loved Marty Robbins and despised hippies...my kind of guy!

Robbins died in 1982, but if he were still with us he'd be cutting a slice of his 86th birthday cake today.  Self held back on releasing his tribute to Marty for over five years after his death, so his sincerity seems beyond question.  It's certainly not like he was attempting to cash in on a recent tragedy.

About a year ago when I was in Nashville, I hit the library and looked up Marty Robbins in an old city directory.  Below is a photo of the house in which he lived in 1966, located at 807 Redwood Drive, a few miles south of downtown Nashville.  Google map.

Hall Of Fame Throwdown: Country Vs. Bluegrass

  

Hank Locklin  -  The Country Hall Of Fame  (3:08)

Louie Setzer & The Appalachian Mt. Boys  -  Bluegrass Hall Of Fame  (3:37)

Yes, I'm partial but I'm awarding trophy to Hank Locklin, whose record wins hands down. 

It's not that I necessarily hate bluegrass music, but in my book it will always be country music's occasionally tolerable red-headed hillbilly step-child.  As with the lunar battle fought between country and bluegrass, country emerges on top again.  Some things will probably never change.

Country Fuzz Spectacular - Part 2 (MP3s)

  

So here's a long overdue follow-up to a 2007 Beware Of The Blog post about country music records featuring fuzztone guitar sounds.  Call me nuts, but I find extraordinarily endearing the improbable blend of country music traditionalism with tastefully restrained space-age guitar pyrotechnics that can be heard in these tunes.

A quick recap: the fuzztone guitar sound was born in the summer of 1960, on Don't Worry (MP3), a Marty Robbins country record that featured Grady Martin's fuzz-drenched 6-string bass guitar coming through engineer Glen Snoddy's mixing board.  In some accounts this new sound was the result of a malfunctioning channel in the sound board, while others attribute the sound to a loose wire in Martin's amp. 

Some hold that the fuzztone sound was born earlier - in the 1950s, with the jolting guitar blasts heard on some amazing-sounding records by the Johnny Burnette Trio, like Train Kept A Rollin' (MP3) or Link Wray's Rumble, but I tend to side with the experts who refer to those wild sounds as distortion, rather than fuzztone.

In any event, here's another dozen country fuzz tunes for those who enjoy exploring the odd sounds heard on the fringes of country music.

Johnny Dollar  -  Do Die  (1:39)

Cowboy Copas  -  Sold The Farm  (2:19)

Bob Morris  -  Queen Bee  (2:32)

Johnny Dollar  -  Windburn  (1:49)

Curtis Leach  -  Wheelin' & Dealin'  (2:39)

Sanford Clark  -  The Fool  (2:33)

Sue Thompson  -  Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass  (2:25)

Loretta Lynn  -  It'll Be Open Season On You  (2:42)

Buddy Merrill  -  Gentle On My Mind  (2:10)

Bobby Zehm  -  Sitar Pickin' Man  (2:18)

Billy Gray  -  Rotten Love  (1:47)

Cornell Hurd Band  -  This Gun Don't Care  (2:43)

 

The Fairbanks Flood (MP3)

Ted Harris  -  The Fairbanks Flood  (2:10)

In early-mid August 1967, heavier than normal rains caused the Chena and LIttle Chena Rivers to overflow their banks and flood "The Golden Heart City" of Fairbanks, Alaska.

The event was documented by Ted Harris on this 45rpm record.  The photos below were taken by Life magazine photographer Ralph Crane.

     

Gary Gilmore's Last Request (MP3)

The Sundowns  -  Gilmore's Last Request

Today's topical song is all about an extremely highly publicized execution in Utah.  On January 17, 1977 the state of Utah executed convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, marking the first time a prisoner the United States had been executed since 1967, when the state of Colorado put Luis Jose Monge to death.  Monge's death was followed by an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment that gained formal legal backing in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Furman v. Georgia brought all death penalty sentences to a temporary halt.

Because Gilmore was the first prisoner to be executed after this extended hiatus, his case drew considerable press attention both domestically and internationally.  Adding to the public's fascination with the case was the fact that Gilmore essentially agreed with the verdict and hastened his own death by refusing to appeal his sentence.  Referring to his death sentence, Gilmore said laconically, "It's been sanctioned by the courts and I accept that."

"Gilmore's Last Request" refers to Gilmore's wish to see his death sentence carried out swiftly, a desire from which he never wavered.  Given the choice of death by hanging or firing squad, Gilmore chose the latter.  Reportedly, his last words were "Let's do it."

Although the Sundowns failed to find commercial success with their Gilmore song, over in the UK the Adverts managed to make a pretty sizeable hit of one of their own songs about the case, "Gary Gilmore's Eyes."  Recorded not long after Gilmore's execution, the song refers to the fact that Gilmore was an organ donor and is told from the point of view of the recipient of the murderer's eyes.

  

More recently, the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, fronted by Jon Langford of the Mekons and the Waco Brothers, recorded a version of Gary Gilmore's Eyes in a rockin' country vein for The Executioner's Last Songs, a 2002 release on the Bloodshot label.

The Fate Of Mary Jo Kopechne (MP3)

   

Reuben Ware  -  The Fate Of Mary Jo Kopechne  (3:51)

Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.  On July 18, 1969, Kopechne left a party with Senator Ted Kennedy who piloted  his Oldsmobile 88 off the side of a nearby bridge and into the water below.  He managed to escape, but Kopechne drowned in the car.  In an act of indefensible cowardice, Kennedy fled the scene and did not get around  contacting the police until 10AM the next morning.

A couple of years back, I posted two other songs about the incident at the Chappaquidick bridge.

Southern California Earthquake (1971) - MP3

    

Jimmy Bryant  -  Southern California Earthquake

Jimmy Bryant's Southern California Earthquake tells the story of the February 9, 1971 San Fernando earthquake, also commonly known as the Sylmar earthquake due to the fact that the city of Sylmar was the location of some of the quake's most intense damage.

What makes this release a bit more interesting than most topical records detailing various disasters is that it was written and recorded by one country music's most spectacular guitarists ever, Jimmy Bryant.  Bryant made a name for himself playing guitar in various country and hillbilly bands on the Los Angeles bar circuit in the early 1950s.  This led to his status as a sought-after session musician, one who cut some of his most memorable work playing alongside the great steel guitarist Speedy West.

As for the Sylmar earthquake, it was, as are most earthquakes in heavily populated areas, a complete disaster.  Sixty-five people lost their lives, but hundreds of thousands of residents of the San Fernando Valley suffered the disruption of electricity, telephone service, gas, and water.  According to one source, one-third of all buildings in the San Fernando Valley were damaged by the quake and thirty schools were so badly damaged they had to be demolished and rebuilt.

The documentary video below, sadly plagued by egregious re-enactment scenes, memorably describes the quake as "shaking most of Southern California like an angry parent shaking a screaming child." Now there's a phrase I'll wager you won't hear again any time soon.

A Tribute To Stringbean (MP3s)

       

If David Akeman (better known as Stringbean) and his wife Estelle hadn't been brutally murdered in November 1973, Hee-Haw's laconic banjo-playing funnyman would be celebrating his 96th birthday on Friday, June 17.  Upon returning home from one of Stringbean's regular appearances on the Grand Ole Opry, the couple was confronted by a pair of money hungry losers at their modest home in Ridgetop, Tennessee, about 20 miles north of Nashville.  The criminals in question, two ne'er-do-well cousins named Doug and John Brown, had heard rumors about Stringbean's having a large stash of greenbacks hidden in his house. Kliph Nesteroff beat me to this story by several years, so I highly recommend his extremely detailed piece on Stringbean elsewhere on Beware Of The Blog.

The cash eventually surfaced in 1996 over two decades after the tragic murders, when $20,000, almost completely shredded by time and rodents, was found behind a brick in the home's chimney. 

Bobby Land - Banjo Man (A Tribute To Stringbean) (3:03)

Gary Revel - Little Did We Know (The Ballad Of Stringbean) (3:29)

Sam Bush  -  The Ballad Of Stringbean And Estelle  (4:45)  The story of the Akemans' demise continues to resonate.  This Sam Bush song was released in 2009.

Stringbean  -  Big Ball In Nashville  (1:48)

Big Ball In Nashville, String's banjo-flavored version of the western swing standard Big Ball In Cowtown, was released on the Starday label in the mid 1960s.  I'd scan the 45's label for you, but I can't seem to remember exactly where I put the record.

Above: a recent picture of Stringbean's home.

The Grand Island Tornado (MP3)

   

Bob Ayres  -  Grand Island Tornado

Friday will mark the thirty-first anniversary of the Grand Island Tornado outbreak, which pummeled the town of Grand Island, Nebraska on the night of June 3, 1980.  Although the tornadoes in Grand Island were not as extraordinarily lethal as some of those seen in the U.S. recently, they nevertheless wrecked large parts of the town and claimed five lives, while injuring an additional 200 people.

Shortly afterwards, Bob Ayres headed into the recording studio and laid down this lugubrious ballad to offer some first-hand documentation of the tragic event.

Tragedy At The Sunshine Mine (MP3)

Frank Starr  -  Tragedy At The Sunshine Mine  (4:45)

On May 2, 1972 a fire of undetermined origin swept through the nation's richest silver mine, the Sunshine Mine, located a few miles southeast of Kellogg, Idaho, resulting in the worst mining tragedy in the history of the state.  The disaster claimed 91 lives, all of whom died from smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning.

The tragic event was memorialized on a 45 rpm record by Frank Starr (aka Andy Starr), a country / rockabilly singer who made a pretty big splash in the late 1950s with some fiery sides like Rockin' Rollin' Stone,  I Wanna Go South,  Dig Them Squeaky Shoes, She's A Goin' Jessie, and Give Me A Woman.

The Great Tornado (MP3)

Sue Simpson  -  The Great Tornado 

On May 15, 1968 a series of powerful tornadoes battered Jonesboro, Arkansas and several surrounding communities. The tornado outbreak actually consisted of a series of tornadoes across several states that resulted in 72 fatalities, 45 of them in Arkansas alone.  Of the 45 Arkansas deaths, 36 of them were in Jonesboro, a city about 70 miles northwest of Memphis.

Sue Simpson's song about the devastating storms may well sound chillingly familiar to people in the southeast, where tornadoes last week did almost incalculable financial damage and claimed at least 339 deaths, a figure that will likely climb because hundreds of people are still missing.

Turn Off What Marijuana Turned On (MP3)

Basil McLaughlin & The Hacksaws  -  Turn Off What Marijuana Turned On  (2:53)

In case you didn't already know it, April 20 is a kind of high holy day for marijuana legalization enthusiasts and that makes today a fine time to blog a marijuana-related record.   Among other places, there will be rallies today in San Francisco, Denver, New York City, and Washington D. C., where someone named Jonny Apple Weed will address the crowd at 4PM. 

Basil McLaughlin's "Turn Off What Marijuana Turned On" might not exactly be a good philosophical fit for the crowds gathered to encourage more permissive marijuana laws, but here's hoping that we can all enjoy some first-rate propaganda.

The etymological experts tell us that 420 became short hand for marijuana thanks to a group of California high school students from San Rafael who used the term as code language for "time to get high."  I'm generally a decade or two behind the slang curve, so I had no idea 420 was code for anything until I ordered a beer a few years back at my friend DeWitt's wedding reception in the nearby town of Athens, Georgia.  The guy standing next to me at the bar, in town for the big event from Boston, cocked his head and looked at me funny when he heard me ask the bartender for a "420".  "What did you just order?" he asked me in a tone of disbelief.  I explained that I'd asked for a bottle of a local beer known as Sweetwater 420.  When I followed up with a question of my own about his curiosity, he explained that 420 was widely known as shorthand for marijuana. 

I'm tempted to assume that now that I know the term, it's already passe and no longer in use but for once that doesn't appear to be the case. 

A few more country records about marijuana can be found over here.

Happy Birthday, Merle Haggard

Skeeter Harmon  -  A Tribute To The Hag  (2:01)

On behalf of music lovers everywhere, I'd like to wish Merle Haggard a very happy 74th birthday.  Merle was born on April 6, 1937 in Oildale, California just a few miles north of Bakersfield.  To help you get into the proper celabratory mood, here's Skeeter Harmon's Merle Haggard tribute 45.

I'd like to thank Ichiban boss Debbie D for sending me one of my favorite Merle Haggard photos, which can be seen below.  One very nice feature of the picture is its caption, which helpfully points out that Merle is on the left and Smokey Bear is on the right.  One would think that Merle's guitar strap and Smokey's hat would have made such a caption unneccesary, but better safe than sorry I guess.