Everybody Loves A Nut

Tristen gave me this record for Valentine’s Day. It’s an interesting album. Everybody Loves A Nut is kind of a mixed bag as far as song quality goes - the album came out in 1966 when Johnny was in the depths of his pill addiction - but the cool stuff on this album is really cool, starting with the album cover by noted Mad Magazine and Time Magazine illustrator Jack Davis. Just check out those hippies. Not only that, it contains one of Cash’s best prison ballads, the darkly humorous “Joe Bean”. “Joe Bean” is about a kid about to hanged by the state of Arkansas on his 20th birthday for a murder he didn’t commit (in fact, Joe Bean had never even been to Arkansas.) The problem is Joe Bean was busy robbing a train on the day of the murder, not exactly the best alibi. Joe’s mother pleads his case to the governor of Arkansas, who refuses to pardon him but does wish him a happy birthday. Now that’s some serious country music. Tristen gave me vinyl by The Who and Merle Haggard as well, but this album was definitely the stand out of the bunch. Thanks Tristen. You know the way to a man’s heart.

Tryin' Like The Devil

Sooo, you were in Randy’s Records the other day (in my best Wayne from Letterkenny voice) … killing time after a hard day at work (don’t ask.) I’d already found a two-record collection from 1974 of one of my favorite country-rock bands, The Flying Burrito Brothers (featuring the always amazing Gram Parsons, the guy who arguably invented the genre), and I was just lackadaisically thumbing through the rest of the new arrival bins, not really expecting to find anything else good. I was actually kind of bored and ready to go home when I glanced to my right at the bins I hadn’t looked through yet, and saw an album I’ve never actually seen in the wild before. At first, I thought it was just wishful thinking, but even after I blinked, the album was still there: James Talley’s 1976 album, Tryin’ Like the Devil.

“Who is James Talley?” you might legitimately ask, and it wouldn’t mean you were an idiot in my eyes because you didn’t know. James Talley is a fairly obscure country singer from Oklahoma who released two pretty amazing records in the mid-1970s. President Jimmy Carter – who, among his other virtues, has great musical taste – sang Talley’s praises and invited him to play at the White House. James Talley is a guy who should have been a star (if intelligence and talent counted for much) but instead faded into undeserved obscurity.

Tryin’ Like the Devil, James Talley's second album, is my favorite – working class outlook (despite Talley’s doctorate in American Studies), great lyrics and melody, and heartfelt singing. I discovered James Talley in the 1990s through Peter Guralnick’s book Lost Highway, a collection of essays about country and blues musicians. According to Guralnick, Talley’s cultural heroes are musicians Merle Haggard, Woody Guthrie, blues singer Otis Spann, and author James Agee, and it shows in his music. After reading the book, I managed to track down digital downloads of Talley’s albums, but had given up hope of ever finding an original vinyl copy of any of his records because they went out of print forty years ago, were never best sellers, and, to the best of my knowledge, have never been reissued. Yet there was Tryin’ Like the Devil staring me in the face at Randy’s today, moderately priced compared to how that place usually jacks up the good stuff.

So tonight, I’m listening to James Talley sing,

“I’m like that pot-bellied trucker drinkin’ coffee,

I’m like that red-headed waitress named Louise,

I’m like every workin’ man, all across the land

Just tryin’ like the devil to be free,”

and happy that the day turned out half-way decently after all.

 

A John Prine Winter

 

Man, I still miss John Prine. The guy was an amazing artist, and from all accounts, an amazing human being as well. I still haven't gotten over his death from COVID last April. Standing outside today in a snowstorm with a bunch of fifth graders brought memories of his music to mind. Few performers can evoke a time or a place for me the way John Prine could, and with a cold winter wind blowing through me and snow pellets lashing my face, I thought of Prine's songs "Storm Windows" and "Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)". "Storm Windows" came out in 1980 and has been a part of my life for a long time. Here are the lyrics:

 

Storm Windows

By John Prine

 

I can hear the wheels of the automobiles so far away

Just moving along through the drifting snow

It's times like these when the temperatures freeze

I sit alone just looking at the world through a storm window

And down on the beach, the sandman sleeps

Time don't fly, it bounds and leaps

And a country band that plays for keeps

They play it so slow

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Well, the spirits were high till the well went dry

For so long, the raven at my window was only a crow

I bought the rights to the inside fights

And watched a man just beating his hand against a storm window

While miles away o'er hills and streams

A candle burns a witch's dreams

Silence is golden till it screams

Right through your bones

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Storm windows gee but I'm getting old

Storm window keep away the cold

 

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down, oh no

 

Here’s what John Prine said about “Storm Windows”:

“I grew up on a four-lane highway. Lots of trucks. Lots of traffic. I used to have these spells every so often as a child where like the ceiling of the room was in normal perspective, but the doorway would appear much farther away than it was. Coupled with this, all noises seemed muffled and distant, particularly the traffic moving on the wet or snow-covered pavement. I was really in another world. I finally worked up the courage to tell my mother and father about it, and Mom made Dad take me to the eye doctor. I love them both.”

        

Another reason I have John Prine on my mind today is I went to Randy’s Records after work, waited outside for fifteen minutes until it was my turn to go in, and bought a boxed set of John Prine’s albums he recorded for Asylum Records. Not only did I get Storm Windows with the set, it also contained Bruised Orange, which was released in 1978. Here’s John Prine's intro to "Bruised Orange (Chain Of Sorrow)", and his lyrics to the song:

 

“I used to work at this Episcopal Church when I was like thirteen years old. I was saving money for a guitar and I'd go in on weekends and dust the pews up because round about then, a lot of people started going to church, so the pews would get real dusty. And I'd wax the cross up, vacuum the carpet and clean up the cup they put the wine in. Religion kind of lost its magic for me. I was a roadie for god."

        

"In the wintertime they used to call me up early on Sunday morning to come get the snow out, off the walk in front of the church, because if one of the congregation fell and busted their ass they'd sue the church for all the money they'd given it all those years. And I used to have to go in pretty early, about five thirty, six o'clock on Sunday morning to take care of the snow. I always thought it was a real strange time of the day, particularly on a Sunday morning. You normally see people are out late from Saturday night, or else people really had a job on Sunday morning, like a newsboy or altar boy or a bunch of people like that."

“I seen, I was going over one Sunday morning and this kid who was going over to a Catholic church, this altar boy, he got hit by a train. He was just kind of screwing around, walking down the track, looking at his shoes and he got hit. He was a pretty bad mess. And there was about six or seven mothers around the scene of the accident. They didn't know where their sons were at the time. They didn't know who had gotten hit, and it took about fifteen, twenty minutes to identify him. I always remember, like, the look on one mother's, on the other mother's faces. Not the ones that, the others had a big sigh of relief. And they tried to comfort the other one but they were too relieved to be very comforting.”

 

And that’s the story behind this song …

 

Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)

By John Prine

 

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley

Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley

On a cold winter's morning to a church house

Just to shovel some snow

 

I heard sirens on the train tracks, howl naked, gettin' nuder

"An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter"

Just from walking with his back turned

To the train that was coming so slow

 

You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder

Throw your hands in the air, say, "What does it matter?"

But it don't do no good to get angry

So help me, I know

 

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there

Wrapped up in a trap of your very own

Chain of sorrow

 

I been brought down to zero, pulled out and put back there

I sat on a park bench, I kissed the girl with the black hair

And my head shouted down to my heart

"You better look out below!"

 

Hey, it ain't such a long drop, don't stammer, don't stutter

From the diamonds in the sidewalk to the dirt in the gutter

And you'll carry those bruises to remind you wherever you go

 

You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder

Throw your hands in the air, say, "What does it matter?"

But it don't do no good to get angry

So help me, I know

 

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there

Wrapped up in a trap of your very own

Chain of sorrow

 

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley

Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley

On a cold winter's morning to a church house

Just to shovel some snow

 

I heard sirens on the train tracks, howl naked, gettin' nuder

"An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter"

Just from walking with his back turned

To the train that was coming so slow

You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder

Throw your hands in the air, say, "What does it matter?"

But it don't do no good to get angry

So help me, I know

 

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there

Wrapped up in a trap of your very own

Chain of sorrow

Man, I still miss John Prine.

Men Without Women

Randy's Records, November 14, 2020

Nowadays, unless it’s a new album by Bruce Springsteen, most of the vinyl records I buy have some emotional resonance for me, which means I mostly buy old stuff. If I can find an original pressing of a favorite album rather than a reissue, it’s even better.

In 1982, my brother Phil gave me the album Men Without Women by Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul for Christmas. Little Steven is actually Steve Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen’s best buddy and lead guitarist in the E Street Band. It’s a great album – Steve’s take on 60s soul music. Phil passed away in 2006, and my original copy of the album disappeared years ago. I finally found an original pressing of the album at Randy’s Records around 2017 or 2018, which made me really happy, because it had never – up to that point – been reissued on vinyl. Finding that album was also like having a little bit of Phil back with me, which I think was ultimately the point. Unfortunately, in December 2018, I took my new old copy of Men Without Women with me to a Little Steven concert at The Depot, hoping for an autograph, and due to circumstances beyond my control, I lost the album. I recognize that losing an album is really a #firstworldproblem, but I have missed having it in my collection ever since. Even buying the newly remastered CD version that came out this year did nothing to alleviate the sense of loss I felt over misplacing my vinyl copy.

 

Today, I finally decided that screw it, I was going to see if they had another copy of the album at Randy’s Records. I get nostalgic for deceased family members this time of year, so I didn’t even care if it was an original pressing or the new reissue. Because of social distancing and the exploding Utah COVID numbers, Tristen and I had to stand in line about fifteen minutes to get into Randy’s. Once I finally got in the store, I searched the record bins, but to my dismay, there wasn’t a copy of Men Without Women to be found, new or old. I finally asked a clerk if they had the album, and after debating with him over the title of the album (which I admit is a little weird; Steve Van Zandt named it after an Ernest Hemingway short story collection), he went in the backroom and found a copy from 1982 that even contained the poster that came with the first pressing. Not only that, it was in great shape and reasonably priced. You better believe I snatched up that sucker and paid for it without a second thought.

Right now Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul are singing the song “Forever” on my turntable – one of my all-time favorite love songs, and a song that never fails to bring a tear to my eye – and I’m reminded that life doesn’t always suck. Sometimes it’s pretty good.