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.
“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.”
Just learned that Don Bowman died this week. He was one funny guy! Loved his Tijuana Drum and Bugle Corps album.