Michael ONeill posted a great little ditty on my facebook page called "Beer Can Christmas Tree (visit this site for a free download)." What a great idea and concept, and as you can see above it takes quite some work to achieve the task of building (emptying) an aluminum pyramid aka "Beer Can Christmas Tree."
Well Michael allowed me in writing to share his song (with collaboration by Jimmy Baldwin) with y'all.
Well Honky Tonks are normally closed on Christmas Day as the majority of patrons stuff themselves with a 3500 calorie meal containing an amino acid called L-tryptophan and enough booze, wine and beer which puts them to immediate sleep and out of reach of any beer serving joint. The ones which are open may also attract the loners who want to share just one too many tears in their beers. Hank Williams recorded a song with that name in the early 50s but decided to not release it. Son Hank Jr. used electronic merging technology and it seems as he would be playing with dad. That video was released in 1989 and was awarded the Video of the Year by the Country Music Association (CMA), it's Californian counterpart the Academy of Country Music (ACM) and they were able to "share" a Grammy as "Best Country Vocal Collaboration."
Well there is not much of a loner crowd in one of Austin's fav Honky Tonks on Christmas night. For years one of Austin's favorite Honky Tonkers, Dale Watson invites the "aamasses on Christmas into the Continental Club to celebrate, you guessed it a "Honky Tonk Christmas." Well my international readers in Europe should visit his tour page, in early 2012, he has shows coming up in Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, The Netherlands and France.
And now please eschcuse me, I gottttaaa wourk on miy Beer Can Chrischmasch tree. Happy Holidays y'all.
Well I had to add one more, I used to play the heck out of that Mickey Gilley song, when I was a DJ at the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. Cheers everybody!
You may have looked for an update to my blog "Honky Tonk Daily," well the daily part gotta a bit stretched as I was writing two obits for Billie Jo Spears.
The obits are done: in English and in German, so lets feature that Texas girl in this Honky Tonk blog as well. Her early stuff on Capitol Records, was a pure delight for the traditional country fan, a lot of steel guitar and/or dobro, simple arrangements, just pure boot-scootin' on sawdust - what a bliss.
Some of the stuff, which didn't make my obit is featured here.
"You Couldn't Even Light His Candle" (Dallas Frazier)
"A Thing Of Pleasure" (Eddie Rabbitt; Larry Lee Favorite)
"Midnight Train" (Bob Milsap; Jack Rhodes)
There are also some gems on United Artist like the sassy little ditty "Never Did Like Whiskey" penned by Kenny O'Dell, with Billy Sherill as recording engineer and Larry Butler as producer. Even though it sounds like eons apart from her earlier recordings Spears' voice dominates over the Countrypolitan arrangement, label boss Larry Butler put behind her recordings. If you want to read the full obit I wrote, visit the links above.
Yesterday's lunar eclipse triggered the title "Honky Tonk Moon" back into my memories.
And was I glad to find a live recording of this song, as far as I know, there was never a video released with it.
It was Randy Travis' seventh number #1 Hit in the "Billboard Hot Country Songs" chart and was on top of the charts on October 8, 1988. The song itself, written by Dennis O'Rourke (more about the writer after the video), was the opener from Randy's 3rd WB album "Old 8x10."
I actually saw and interviewed Travis two years earlier in Nuernberg, Germany, in December of 1986 while he was on a USO tour of American bases in Europe. There was finally a voice that brought the traditional country sound back.
As to the writer, Dennis O'Rourke; after sailing on freighters and tankers in the Far East as a Merchant Marine, living and performing in Ireland and getting a dual-citizenship, he moved back to the USA and started to perform full-time and recorded a first album. A DJ advised him to move to Nashville and after several years of pitching songs, Randy Travis decided to record "Honky Tonk Moon." Music copyright company BMI awarded him with two awards. Here is O'Rourke doing his own take on "Honky Tonk Moon" - recorded in October of 1993.
He still writes music and short-fiction, and had a song placed in the Award-nominated documentary "Megamall" for which he wrote the opening song "Anywhere USA." According to his website, a new album is in the works.
I also found a Czech version of "Honky Tonk Moon" by country-singer Radek Tomáše with his own lyrical adaption as "Kymácivý Měsíc" (which google translates into Creeping Moon).
This is a start of a regular unregular or in better words, unregular regular blog about all the aspects of Honky Tonks, it's music and it's patrons. In one of the future editions, I will try to explain what a Honky Tonk is or what it has become over the years.
Just to start the blog, let's use Hank Williams' "Honky Tonkin'" which was Williams second big hit on MGM, reaching #14 in 1948. The reason why it didn't reach the Top-Ten could have been because there were two versions of the song available. A first version was recorded on 2/13/47 at WSM radio studios and included besides Williams, Zeke Turner on electric guitar, Dale "Smokey" Lohman on steel guitar, Louis Innis on bass and Tommy Jackson on fiddle. The first version was released as a B-Side to "Pan American" on Hank's last record for Sterling (Sterling 210) but failed to chart.
New manager Fred Rose was able to sign Williams to MGM on April 1st, 1947 and bought all copies of the earlier release for $ 2,000 and sold them to MGM and made Williams re-cut "Honky Tonkin'" on November 6, 1947. Zeke Turner was still on the electric guitar, but it was Jerry Byrd on steel guitar and Robert "Chubby" Wise on fiddle. Bassist could have been Louis Innis again, but that's not known for sure, it is also speculated who the piano player on this recording is, either Fred Rose or Owen Bradley. This second version is more vibrant, maybe of better recording utilities at Castle studios, maybe also of a better relationship by now, between Williams and Rose.
