Posted on 06/04/2013 6:14:10 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
There are a lot of strange songs out there. But how many strange country songs are there? (By "country" I include "hillbilly," "western," "western swing," and "bluegrass," but not "folk" simply because there are oodles and oodles of bizarre folk songs). For the most part country is the sane, genre, the level-headed genre, the "plain folks" genre. But I've found a country song that is disturbing and bizarre, and I'm sure some of you have found others as well.
Many years ago on the old Porter Wagoner TV show I saw Porter perform a song he had written but wished he hadn't. He apologized for the strange song then introduced Speck Rhodes for his comedy segment, and Speck teased him unmercifully. It was a hoot.
Anyway, this Porter Wagoner song was The Rubber Room, and Porter (if I remember correctly) said he realized that the song could be disturbing to people who had loved ones who were institutionalized. That was the first and, until recently, the only time I had ever heard the song.
The other day I did a search for this song and found the original record on YouTube.
But apparently in later years he changed his mind about the song because I also found this video of Porter the year he died performing it live. He's almost 80 years old, and it's just him singing accompanied by nothing but two acoustic guitars (his and Marty Stuart's). This time (unlike the record) there are no electronic sound effects to augment the performance. It's so sparse I think it's more emotionally stirring than the original recording.
And oddly enough, I've found that there are several covers of the song by younger artists who weren't even around when I heard Porter sing the song on his TV show. Apparently it's considered shocking and "edgy."
Well . . . this is my candidate for weirdest/most bizarre country song. Does anyone else have one? (Again, folk songs don't count simply because so many of them are bizarre.)
The funniest song is the one I wrote myself:
If I was a horsefly
and you were a mare
I’d bite you on the a$$
to show I care
The End
Jamey Johnson is the same type of artist.
My Top 20:
What Was I Thinkin’
That’s How They Do It in Dixie
Kick My Ass
She’s Single Again
Bubba Shot the Jukebox
I’m Gonna Miss Her
Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off
Take Your Tongue Out of My Mouth I’m Kissin’ You Goodbye
Back in the Saddle
Flushed You From the Toilets of My Heart
Red Necks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer
Did I Shave My Legs for This?
It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long
She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft
She Never Cried When Old Yeller Died
Beer, Bait, and Ammo
Bad Liver and a Broken Heart
If Heaven Ain’t a Lot Like Dixie
Lipstick on My Dipstick
Alcohol of Fame
Take Your Tongue out of My Mouth (I'm Kissing You Goodbye), by Waylon Jennings.
It's absolutely a real song, it's on the album Right for the Time, available on the iTunes store.
You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly; Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn
I Wouldn’t Take Her to a Dog Fight (not even if she had a chance to win) Tommy Collins
Loving this, what an interesting thread. But yeah, it’s going to be hard to top the Rubber Room. Porter must have been in a really weird place at that time, because he did a bunch of strange ones. There was George Leroy Chickeshea, about a guy who was part white, part black, and part Indian, so he always carried a gun, a switchblade and a tomahawk!! Yikes! And Charley’s Picture, though it doesn’t seem so weird now as it did then. Porter and Dolly were both into the weird stuff then - their duet Jeannie’s Afraid of the Dark, and then Dolly’s solo Daddy Come and Get Me.
Some other of the wall ones:
The Cave - Johnny Paycheck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8gKRgNg584
The great Marty Robbins slid off the high road with a real wacko one called The Chair - not to be confused with the more recent George Strait song. This one was about a guy being executed, and Marty went into great detail as to how he imagined it would feel. (In Marty’s defense, this wasn’t too long after his first heart surgery, so he was probably thinking a lot of morbid thoughts.)
A couple of great writers came up with some weird ones they kept for themselves - Dallas Frazier - The Conspiracy of Homer Jones (I LOVE this one!)
Sterling Whipple - Dirty Work - songs about older farmers and hired hands seem to be big.
Bill Anderson - The Proof - As with all the Porter Wagoner hits, this one relies on the oh-so-sincere recitation to bring it all home. In his best Whispering Bill style, he tells of the woman who apparently talks in her sleep, yet denies anything is going on. So tonight he is going to put a tape recorder under her pillow, and tomorrow he will have the proof - “that you snore”!!!!
Poor Old Ugly Gladys Jones - This one took Don Bowman, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Bobby Bare to put it all together. Best line - her parents finally moved away from home.
But in my estimation, the all time weirdest one was by Sheb Wooley, called The Recipient. About an older man about to marry a younger woman, but one little detail stood in the way - he needed a heart transplant!! He got the transplant, and the next morning he woke to a newspaper article about a woman killed in a car crash - you guessed it, his fiancee, and he now has her heart. Ewwww.
I couldn’t disagree more about Johnny Cash and It Ain’t Me, Babe. Johnny’s version was BEFORE the Turtles, and if you listen to the lyrics, it’s obvious he has the real handle on the song. The anger and assertiveness in the way he says “NO,NO,NO” - it’s just great. The Turtles version is just wimpy by comarison. No emotion, no anything.
Funny about June singing with him. At the time, not everyone knew that. The great Bruce Bradley on WBZ was playing this record, and in his totally off the wall style, he said: “This song....was written by a guy who never washes. Johnny Cash washes, though...Because a lady sings this song with him.”
And while on the subject of Vince Gill- don’t even remember what they called themselves - Vince and some other guys - It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips At night That chew Your Ass Out All Day Long.
Lots of Jerry Reed, roger Miller and Ray Stevens on this thread. Those guys are just amazing - and just as good serious as funny! It sems to go hand in hand.
Richard Bowden was also in the Austin Lounge Lizards for quite some time - my favorite of theirs is Put the Oak Ridge Boys in the Slammer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZpXj0CLk6U
Junior Brown “You’re wanted by the police and my wife thinks you’re dead”
I actually think it’s quite lovely. And it’s from a movie, so it doesn’t have to make sense.
Yeah, Junior Brown!! Just a totally weird but extremely talented guy. And a guy who came along 20 years too late. In the great era of country, this would have been a huge hit.
It’s just a silly song written for a guy who could do several voices. So he “sings like a girl” and he “sings like a frog.” Totally meaningless fun.
Here it is,live with Vince. He did it at MerleFest one year.
Hard to kiss the lips at night that chewed your a.. out all day long....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJdK-EJuKg
No, it’s not. I know the Beatles version: “Rocky Raccoon - went back to his room - only to find - Gideon’s Bible” etc. I thought it was at first when I heard it, because it has the same character name of “rocky raccoon”, but it was *way* weirder. It had a lot of other “animal” characters, and all kinds of other crazy stuff going on. It was almost like a musical version of “The Feebles”, if you know what that is. It might even have been a parody of the Beatles song. Like I said earlier, I heard it on an AM-band “real” country music station in TX (not “Nashville” country). They actually played it a couple of times, back in maybe 2006 or so, that I recall, but for the life of me I can’t remember anything more about it.
You should check out his porter wagoner show performance of a song called “there’s better things in life” or something like that. Its on youtube.
re: “I couldn’t disagree more about Johnny Cash and It Ain’t Me, Babe. Johnny’s version was BEFORE the Turtles, and if you listen to the lyrics, it’s obvious he has the real handle on the song. The anger and assertiveness in the way he says “NO,NO,NO” - it’s just great. The Turtles version is just wimpy by comarison. No emotion, no anything.”
Both Johnny Cash and the Turtles released the song in 1965 although it is possible Johnny’s release was earlier in the year. As to the better performance, I have to give it to the Turtles, but that’s just my opinion. I would say Johnny’s version is closer to Bob Dylan’s original rendering, but I think it works better as a rock song than a country song.
Either way, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” is just not one of Johnny’s better recordings and I doubt it is on any Johnny Cash fans “favorite recordings” list. It is a song that is out of his genre. No one can beat Johnny Cash doing Johnny Cash’s own songs. I LOVE his compositions and his performance of his compositions the best.
So, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
You’re right. It’s meaningless because it’s from BEFORE there was meaning to such things.
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