Cowboy Hit Parade

I must admit that I chose this album primarily for its spectacular cover, with a facsimile of an iconic Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox, cowboy trio, Western scene, and jukebox strips listing the contents.

It is indeed a "cowboy hit parade," with some of the big hits of the late 1940s, the difference being that they are not presented by the original hit artists but by the ones who occupied stalls in Capitol's stables.

The back cover (below) suggests that the Capitol artists each picked a tune they wished had been a hit for them for inclusion in this album. I suspect the reality was a little different - at the time, the practice was to for record companies to hustle out cover versions of any song that looked like it might be a hit for a competitor. These were probably cover versions that didn't sell well.

Nonetheless the contents are enjoyable, with Merle Travis and Tex Williams in especially good form. The only dog on the record is Old Shep. Pardon the pun, but I do hate this tune. Ironically two of the songs here were hits for artists who appear elsewhere on the record. Jack Guthrie had a hit with Oklahoma Hills and Tex Williams had a giant success with Shame on You when he was Spade Cooley's vocalist.

By the way, this album is a box of four 45-rpm singles. This was one of the many packaging variations that came along following the 1948 microgroove revolution. The same contents were likely also available in a 78 album and possibly as a 10-inch LP.

LINK

Shorty Warren and His Western Rangers

If you were looking for something to do in the early 1950s in northern New Jersey and were a country music fan, you may well have ended up in the Copa Club in Secaucus, a short distance across the Hudson from Manhattan. There you would have encountered Shorty Warren and his brother Smokey, veteran country entertainers and entrepreneurs who both owned the club and led the house band.

If you liked what you heard, you may well have invested in this 10-inch record as a souvenir of your visit. To us today, it is a souvenir of a time when western bands also played polkas for dancing, when novelty tunes were a staple of most every act, and when sentimental fare like "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine" was expected as part of the complete entertainment package.

The Warren brothers, born in Arizona in the mid-teens, never became big stars and there is nothing here to suggest that was an injustice. But they did operate a succession of clubs, appear on radio and television in Newark, and made records for a number of labels. This is the only LP that I have found under their own name (they did back Rosalie Allen on a Waldorf records budget album), and as I suggested above, it appears to have been a private pressing. If so, I do hope that Smokey and Shorty got their money back because it is one of the worst produced records I have ever heard - poorly recorded, cut at far too low a level, and on the noisiest vinyl imaginable. I have done my best to uncover whatever music was in the grooves, and the results are listenable if not lovely.

The Warren brothers had long lives, dying only a few years ago

Adolph Hofner

Another Western swing LP, much less slick than the earlier offering by the virtuosic Spade Cooley.

This is Adolph Hofner and his San Antonians, whose version of Western swing often veered in the direction of polkas, reflecting his German heritage and the substantial German-Czech population in Texas. Among the tunes on this album, for instance, is a Seven Step Polka and something called Herr Schmidt (known to the folks around here as the Mexican Hat Dance).

The record's big item, though, is the reputed first-ever recording of Cotton Eyed Joe, which in a decidedly more rocked-up version now can be heard at earsplitting volume in sports venues across the US.

This record is anything but rocking. It is a rather sedate affair apparently designed for use at square dances, and was one of a series that Columbia offered circa 1950. I'm not even sure that this is the original Hofner recording of Cotton Eyed Joe, which was cut in about 1940.

I'm partial to the style of the cover, which shows a couple of young folks having fun at the barn dance. It's innocuous, but well done - similar to the music.

NEW TRANSFER - MARCH 2015

Spade Cooley

Well, I admit this isn't really folk, early jazz, or blues, although it has elements of all three. It's Western swing and I love it.

This is one of those records I am posting more because I am fond of the music and the cover than because of the inaccessibility of the recordings themselves - although this 10-inch LP is in itself pretty rare.

These sides were made during Spade Cooley's apex of success in the mid-1940s, when he was probably the hottest thing on the Los Angeles country scene. And were these records hot - listen to Three Way Boogie and you can just imagine the dancers stomping the Riverside Ballrooms off its foundation. The accordion solo - by George Bamby, I believe - is almost surreal.

The sad story of Spade's later life is well known - convicted of murdering his second wife, then dying of a heart attack backstage at a benefit concert in 1969, shortly before he was to be paroled.

LINK