Big Jim Ashford:
Back To The Bottle/Country Boy Really Livin' (Stop)

Some men's names sound much better with "Big" in front of them than others. Big Jim, Big Bill, Big Al, Big Dave, Big Joe, Big Mike, those all sound pretty good. But Big Scott, Big Craig, or Big Brad wouldn't cut it. For a big guy, Jim Ashford sings like a sobbin' baby on the drunken "Back To The Bottle" and I'm all for it. I love this swingin' tune. It's sorta like Johnny Bush's early 70s stuff where it sounds more like Ray Price than Ray Price did at the time, only Big Jim's voice isn't really like Ray's or Johnny's, it's a drier and earthier plainspoken croak instead of an operatic instrument of drama, so I guess he doesn't really sound more like Ray Price than Ray Price did at the time, but Johnny sure did and I can hear how Johnny would sing this if Big Jim wasn't singing it so that's what I'm talking about. It sounds like Ray Price insofar as it's a Texas shuffle with walking bass and twin fiddles and all that good stuff, so I guess my point is just buy the damn thing if you ever run across it. I don't remember what "Country Boy" sounds like.

Don Bailey:
Bring Me Back My Heart/I Don't Like Me Without You (Decca)

Don who? I don't know either, but I like this mid-60s single a lot. He has a high tenor voice with a warm, smokey rasp to it, sorta like Bill Phillips with much of the brittle, nasal edge rounded off. It's a fine and pleasant instrument, but not so distinct that it could go far without good material. Fortunately he scored well in that department this go-round. The a-side marries a catchy Buck Owens-ish chorus to rapid-fire Hank Snow-ish wordy verses. A trick to sing but Don makes it sound easy. The flip is an effective weepy shuffle, a Johnny Russell composition that wallows in regret and guilt on a theme similar to Haggard's "I Can't Stand Me" only without that song's humor. Simple statements of bad behavior pile up until our narrator can only reach the conclusion that he is, in fact, a total loser. I wouldn't like you either. Sing it Don!

Don Bailey:
Hang On Heart/Make A Liar Out Of Me (Decca)

Holy cow. If the above gave me the impression that Don's voice was merely a "pleasant instrument", this one's got me convinced that he was a serious talent. Once again we have two really good songs, above-average composition-wise, and that helps a lot. But it's the way Mr. Bailey sings the living daylights out of them that makes this record such a standout. Don may have a high register but he can groan with the best of them, and he can sing all slippery-like in ways reminiscent of George, Faron, Lefty, or JLL. Both tunes are sorta downtempo and bluesy. "Hang On Heart" in particular would have sounded right at home at the hard-drinkin' end of Hag & the Strangers repertoire, but here it's given a more straightforwardly formulaic major-key Nashville studio reading, which is still OK because Don's warm, raspy tenor curls all around the melody and pulls a big ol' load of sour hurt out of it. "Make A Liar Out Of Me" relies on the old make-a-statement-then-negate-it trick that's been used in a zillion country songs, but when it's done right an old trick can still do the trick and that's the case here. I repeat, holy cow. From what I can find, Bailey only cut one other single for Decca, one or two for indies, plus a few Eddy Arnold covers for a budget LP, and that's about it for his recording career. A lot of obscure artists deserve to be so, but every once in a while I run across a guy like this and I scratch my head in puzzlement as to why such a talented singer didn't rise at least a little bit closer to the top of the hillbilly heap.

Wiley Barkdull:
Lonesome Journey /Keep A-Lovin' Me Baby (Hickory)

Wiley's the man. He's got a resonant, mellow baritone/bass voice, with a style that's half Lefty Frizzell glissandos and half Frankie Miller groans; he's also got great time and dead-on pitch, which all adds up to a real talent. Perhaps you've heard him sing the bass parts on some of Rusty & Doug's records like "Mr. Love". Both tunes here are upbeat boppers, not quite rockabilly but they have a touch of that "Nashville's response to rockabilly" flavor. One side's a Melvin Endsley cover and that can't be bad. I'm telling you, this record would be the cat's pajamas if my copy of it didn't play off-center. Scratches, surface wear, warps, those are easy to spot, so if you buy a record that has those you at least know it might sound sorta crummy, but how can you tell just by looking that a record is pressed ever-so-slightly off-center? It's a silent killer.

Wiley Barkdull:
Pencil And Paper Love/I'll Give My Heart To You (Hickory)

The second Barkdull release I've come across, and the second to look perfectly normal at a brief glance only to prove to be messed up when actually played. This one appeared to be a clean VG++, with the only blemish being some slight discoloration on the surface that I took to be simply part of the vinyl. But I got it home and dropped the needle down only to be greeted with super-sludgey sound and an accumulation of loads of gunk on the needle after about 15 seconds of play. Turns out the discoloration was due to a fat layer of some sorta grease all over both sides of the record. Vaseline? Pomade? French fry oil? You tell me. Since I'd already dropped the $2 and I couldn't play it anyway, I dove right in with an ounce of record cleaning fluid on each side and scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed. Hey, it worked! The record is a little worse for wear, but at least now I can play it through, and I'm glad I can because Wiley's deep voice caresses these two JD Miller-produced midtempo honky-tonk heart songs with Lefty-ish care. They're sweet, rich, and buttery, to make this quite a nice little two-sided greasy nugget. More please.

Gary Buck:
Welcome To The Club/I've Fouled Up Again (Petal)

Funny how song subject matter trends come and go. For some reason unknown to me, lots of people wrote songs about joining the club in the 60s. "Member Of The Blues" by Skeets McDonald, "Mention My Name" by Tony Douglas, a different "Welcome To The Club" by Bobby Durham, all play on the idea of an exclusive club for broken-hearted drunken losers and detail the miseries that must be experienced before membership is extended to the particular broken-hearted drunken loser singing the song. This here is yet another effective stab at the topic. Gary's vocal style is standard manly 60s country, a little reminiscent of Bobby Austin only with less vibrato, and with a little hint of a rockabilly flair to some of his mannerisms. It's an apt instrument for the so-60s midtempo rockin' country beat arrangement presented here, bled dry of fiddles & steel and sugar-coated with some backup singers but still pretty palatable cuz it fits the song like a glove. There's an awesome "buddaba buddaba" drum fill on the bridge and a real cool guitar break that climaxes in rapid escalating arpeggios. The lyrics touch on all the stuff you would expect, like you have to cry all the time to join, that whole routine. It's an old gag but it works, so what can you do? Put it on a mix tape, sit back, and enjoy. As for the flip, I've listened to it at least half a dozen times and as I'm writing this I can't remember anything about it, so that ought to tell you something.

Sonny Burns:
Patches On My Heart/Blue House Painted White (United Artists)

Sonny is best remembered, when he's remembered at all, as an early duet partner/drinking buddy of George Jones, but if records like this are any indication of his talent he should be considered in his own right a little more often. His was an ace honky-tonk groan, a resonant Texas baritone full of whimpering masculine injury, reminiscent of Frankie Miller, Eddie Noack, or James O'Gwynn. This platter is from the tail end of his active recording heyday, but if his vitality was sagging at this point it sure ain't obvious in these grooves. "Patches" is one of the catchiest, most propulsive Texas-style shuffles I've run across in quite a while, with a great lyrical play on the premise of patching things up. Kicks off with a full twin-fiddle onslaught just like it oughta, then the lyrics of the first verse sink their hooks in you, and finally they reel you in with a great chorus slathered with three-part male harmonies and more of those fiddles squeaking away. One nice detail in Sonny's vocal is the last line of the chorus: first time through he sings it an octave lower than you'd think he would, then the second & final time he hits it up high to take the song out. It's a killer folks. The b-side is more downbeat & morose, one of those I'm-going-home-to-an-empty-house songs, and though it doesn't pack the punch of its partner it's still above average. Again features those harmonies, reminiscent of Porter Wagoner's signature sound and bringing out some Porter-like shadings to Sonny's voice that otherwise would have gone right past me. Highly snag-able little disk here folks.

Sonny Burns:
Never Never Land/I Just Slipped Your Mind (United Artists)

Oh, those pesky Nashville assembly-line over-producers. I'd like to dope-slap whoever it was had the idea to saddle "Never Never Land" with a ridiculous instrumental hook of single-note runs played all plinky-plinky on a goddamn banjo. A crying steel or a weepy fiddle should have been the lead instrument; it woulda fit the sonority of Sonny's voice a helluva lot better. This poor tune is further trivialized by the ubiquitous male quartet singing distracting ahh ahh ahh ahhs, another knuckleheaded move. Yet even with these terrible burdens, Sonny makes something decent of this song, a typically goofy Harlan Howard co-write with a reasonably clever premise that Sonny digs into with an earnest, downbeat sob in his voice. And I'll give the piano player a little credit here too, his/her break is nice & bluesy in its own tighty-whitey way. Fortunately "I Just Slipped Your Mind" is given a much more sympathetic treatment, with all the fiddle & steel a-cooter-ments you'd expect. A piano takes the intro in the middle register with high fiddle sighs and harmonic steel cries floating around it, then Sonny's groaning vocal takes full center stage with a sad tale of woe about his gal taking up with a new crowd of friends and leaving him behind. It's sorta like "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down" only less class-conscious and more slavish-devotion-ish. I give the a-side a C+ and the b-side an A.

Buddy Cagle

Buddy Cagle:
Honky Tonkin' Again/We The People (The Great Society) (Mercury)

I've heard plenty of singers who imitated Hank Williams or Lefty Frizell or Ernest Tubb, but this has to be the first record I've ever heard of someone who sounds like he's consciously imitating Skeets McDonald. And a quite credible job Buddy does of it too, tossing in those bluesey sing-speak inflections and snapping off his words with a little good-humored venom just like the master himself. Sounds like a Nashville production but Buddy's west coast orientation still comes through strong, particularly on the a-side, what with the overt Skeets-isms, the song's spirited I'm-down-and-out-but-I-don't-care sentiments, and the writing credits, which include Janet McBride & Vern Stovall among its four credited tunesmiths. This'n went straight into the "put me on a mix tape" pile. The flip promises from its title to be a topical number. I was expecting some sort of statement on the Johnson administration or the war on poverty or something. Instead it's a more generalized populist anthem, the gist of which is "all us Americans wanna do is live well on modest means, have families, and drink a little beer in the process," a sentiment that many of us may share but wouldn't necessarily rally around with a lot of excitement. Went straight into the "don't bother with me" pile.

Gene Davis:
I'll Tell Her Tomorrow/I'm In The Book (Liberty)

Gene Davis is one of those journeyman 60s west coast scenesters who never achieved national stardom, but his name is always spoken with admiration by those who know his work. This is the first thing I've been able to dig up by him, and despite the presense of sticky vocal chorus goo all over these sides I'm suitably impressed. The band sound is otherwise nightclubby, with the bass and the kick drum turned up nice & loud. The steel is a little undermixed, but maybe I just think that because on one side it's run through a rotating speaker to atmospheric effect. Songwriting-wise, both songs are Davis-penned and memorable. "I'll Tell Her Tomorrow" is the sound of a shameless schmuck making lame excuses for not dumping his mistress, set to a stomping shuffle beat, while "I'm In The Book" lists the categories under which you might find Gene should you look for him in the yellow pages (clowns, teardrops, & fools - yeah!). Now this one speaks to me. One of those songs that effortlessly sings itself, it's strongly reminiscent of classic Willie Nelson. The lyrical premise is woefully sad and shamelessly gimmicky at the same time, the melody is elegant in its simplicity, spacious and unhurried, and Gene delivers it with dry, deadpan sing-speak flatness like Willie would've. Yes it's derivative, but it's also brilliant and is deserving of wider reknown. The only real flaw is the phrasing of the title line, which is flattened out and sung right on the beat, presumably in order to make the vocal chorus' job easier. It could've been a lot more expressive had Gene had the freedom to phrase it ahead or behind the beat a little. Still in all this is a real groovy one, and if I still had my radio show this single would be pretty high up on the playlist right now, I tellya.

Don Deal:
A-11/You'll Get Used To Being Lonely (Capitol)

The top honors for the definitive version of "A-11" may belong to Johnny Paycheck's fabulous recording, but Don Deal can stake a claim that he was the first to have a record out on it. That alone would make this of interest, but what really grabs me is how many noticeable differences there are between the two. My guess is that this one is probably much closer to what Hank Cochran originally wrote. F'rinstance we have Don's handling of the melody, which is much more defined than Paycheck's: each pair of lines in the verses match up pretty well and follow the same basic shape, with the second & fourth lines dipping down to the V below the I. Johnny didn't bother hitting that lick even once in his recording, preferring to belt it out with all his guts and slip & slide & slur all around and out-George-Jones George Jones. Likewise here the chords follow the melody and make a quick stop on the V, whereas in Paycheck's version it's all I to IV with nary a V chord in sight. But more dramatic than that, the song here has a bridge, a whole other section that I've never heard in any other version. After each verse it does a IV - I - II - V thing with the melody taking a sharp turn upward, hitting some dramatic heights before going into that killer chorus. It's a real nice little bit that fits very well with the downward motion of the last line of the verse, but Paycheck threw it out altogether and put the weight of the melodic climax on the third line of the verse instead. Me, I think it's a nice addition to the song. As a writer myself, I know I would have felt compelled to add another part to the song, it would have felt too skimpy to me otherwise. This version makes the song feel more substantial, like the composition itself is at center stage instead of the performer's interpretation of it. That said, Paycheck sang the sh*t out of this song and Don comes up wanting in comparison. Deal's style is soft, fey, and whispy, with occasional drops into a throaty attempt at manliness that come off these many years later as nearly self-parody. He sounds like a run-of-the-mill self-consciously puppy-dog teen idol singer, which really surprised me given his connections to the So Cal hard country scene, but there it is. The b-side is a fine Harlan Howard song, with Don again sounding too teen-idol for my taste but it works ok. Harlan's erstwhile wife Jan makes an uncredited cameo on the last verse, singing in overdubbed harmony while Don whispers the lines in a cheesy call & response bit.

Bud Deckelman:
What Is It Darlin'/No One But You (MGM)

Two very nice Hank Sr-style honky tonk weepers. Deckelman's got the right voice for the songs, and the Bud Isaacs-ish pedal-pushing is exceptional. So how come these tunes don't quite make it? The answer is simple but it took a while to hit me: lousy lyrics. I was walking to work today, singing "What Is It Darlin" to myself, and I couldn't remember any of the words beyond the first line. The memorable melody kept going, the sincere sonority of Bud's voice rang in my head, I could hear those piercing steel bends, but the lyrics simply vanished in the mist. They're not bad really, it's just, you know, you can't remember them. So no big hit record here, but still a pleasurable listen for those with a fondness for this sub-style. If you're partial to Jimmy Work, Jimmie Swan, or Dot-era Jimmy C. Newman, try cutting the Jimmies with a little Bud.

Claude Gray

Claude Gray:
My Ears Should Burn/Crying In The Night (Mercury)

The a-side is one of Claude's finest recorded works, and a good example of Nashville's crossover pop production methods actually working for, instead of against, the singer and the song. It kicks off with a standard I to V intro melody line, played not on a steel, fiddle, piano, or guitar, but on a glockenspiel (!?). Surprisingly enough it works like a charm, perking up your ears and generating some interest. It sounds close-mic'ed and is left very dry, setting it on top of the lush reverb & echo-laden band sound that comes in behind it. Claude's baritone voice then steps in to deliver a simple melody with a lot of space between the words, allowing him plenty of room to phrase effectively a little behind the beat. Un-rushed, it allows the lyric's regret to resonate as it soaks into the spaces. The bridge introduces a close third male harmony vocal as an abstract wordless female soprano voice sighs above it. Coming off the bridge Claude's voice goes solo again as the melody hits its climax, then the duet reemerges to nail the refrain. Goosebumps ensue, then the process repeats for the second verse and it's just as good as the first. Roger Miller sure could write them heart songs when he wanted to. For my money they stand the test of time much better than turds like "You Can't Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd". To complete the one-two punch, the b-side is a re-recording of a Willie Nelson co-write that Gray originally recorded for D. A third-person narrative of a couple's disolution, it's less effective than Willie's more typical black-humored first-person tales of woe, but Claude does a good job with it and I like this recording better than the D version. Shelby Singleton & his engineers always did a top-notch job recording Gray's voice, and the dense wall of shuffling jangle behind it provides the perfect bedding. I also like the weird snare sound on this tune, they must have recorded some other percussion instrument (tambourine? sandpaper?) and mixed it in there. It's got a high-midrangey clap to it that makes it jump right off the vinyl.

Martha Lynn:
I'm Going Huntin' Tonight/Just For Fun (RCA)

One of those finds that makes the whole ridiculous endeavor of digging through box after dusty box of vinyl worthwhile. Of course there are naysayers out there who, upon listening to this, would proclaim Martha's obscurity well-deserved: she goes sharp here, flat there, her vibrato is un-pretty, etc. Compared to the golden pipes of Jean Shepard, who Martha stylistically resembles somewhat, she's strictly a bush league singer. But goddammit she sounds so real, and how often do you hear a female singer really going for the Hank Williams thing with gusto anyway? "Huntin" is a gutsy gonna-live-it-up-while-I-can flippin-you-the-bird-for-spite song. Well-crafted songwriting wise, with lots of words going by nice and fast, flowing easily off Martha's tongue, punctuated with a laughing yodel lick at the end of each verse. A midtempo plunk & plod hillbilly beat lays a 4/4 behind her while the lyrics spew out in 8th notes, so it sorta feels faster than it really is. It's a cool & unusual way to assemble a rhythm. The lyrics really shine too, making all these defiant statements of the wild & wooly ways she's planning to (mis)behave. And lastly I'm a sucker for the sort of super-primitive pedal steel bends on display here, the kind they were just figuring out in the early days of the instrument's development. The ballad side is less successful, as is often the case with these less-assured singers, and here you can hear her singing some of her vowells (esp. oooo sounds) with too much emphasis or formality or something, like a voice lesson gone bad. But the last time I listened to "Just For Fun" I found myself unexpectedly moved by the hurt and passion she puts into it. Like I said before, she puts this stuff across like it's real, like it's true. You can't ask any more of a hillbilly singer than that.