The Americana and roots music authority
My back-roads affair with the Frizzell brothers
The truth of my headline is this: Neither my wife, nor my daughter, can stand the sound of twang. Not a bit, except Maggie can maybe tolerate Johnny Cash every once in a while and Susan can listen to the Dixie Chicks when not provoked. And since I no longer make my living writing about music, opportunities to listen methodically to what I wish to hear are typically limited to those twenty-minute runs I make each day out to the garden, and back.
But I do still get a bit of mail, and sometimes I make time even to open it. A week or so back I stumbled on a new Varese Serabande compilation, The Very Best of David Frizzell & Shelly West. The first track, inevitably, is "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma," and at that moment I felt the need to hear that song, so into the little red truck it went. I couldn't place the year of the song (it went #1 on the country charts in 1981, as it turned out), nor did I know until reading Laurence Zwisohn's liners that Shelly (daughter of Dot) was married to Allen Frizzell (the youngest, and David was 13 years behind Lefty), much less remember that it was David who sang "I'm Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our House" and Shelly who sang "Jose Cuervo," which in my mind still segues into a Courtney & Western song from the first Diesel Only compilation, but I digress.
The Frizzell/West producer was a chap named Snuff Garrett, who had also produced Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee (and Julie London!) and Cher's "Gypsies Tramps & Thieves," which production in a lower case way most of the succeeding 15 songs echo. Which is to say that these two fine voices are shrouded in a very dated plastic keyboard sound, and swaddled in what sound to be fake strings even if there were real people playing them. One is also struck by how very, very carefully "You're the Reason" is sung, on both sides of the mike (mice crawl around the floor, hence my abbreviation phobia). And by how strikingly muscular both voices are, by how very much I'd love to hear these songs without the garbage accompanying them. Midway through "Please Surrender," to pick an egregious example, the snare drum takes a rat-a-tat martial turn, which might have seemed high concept at the time, but smacks of a singular absence of creativity.
I can imagine few weights as crippling as knowing one's brother was Lefty Frizzell, a hall of famer, or that one's mother was Dottie West, another hall of famer, and wishing to compete in the same arena at which they had so spectacularly succeeded.
So I dug up a Raven compilation of Lefty's hits, not remembering that it was he who'd written Hank's "If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time," nor that his was the first cut on "The Long Black Veil," nor, even, that his last big hit was "Saginaw, Michigan," which is now stuck on replay in my imagination, for which nobody else in my family has a shred of sympathy. I haven't gotten round to hunting for Dottie West, as it's in a different cabinet and I ended up stuck on Lefty, anyhow.
Not the first one to be stuck there. I associate Lefty with the honky-tonkers, with Hank and Ernest Tubb and maybe even Johnny Paycheck, except that it is David who ends up sounding more like Paycheck because Lefty was really a crooner, no matter what his songs were about nor how many jukeboxes played them. Once he found his voice, Lefty had a magnificently gentle way of singing, generally surrounded by a very small and understated combo, and carefully miked. At moments one hears where Merle Haggard came from, and Randy Travis, and many others.
By contrast, David is a full-throated singer (as is Shelly West). But the odd thing is how easily Lefty sings, how casually he finds his phrasing, contrasted against the great care with which these Frizzell/West duets are pieced together. And I've no idea how much tape editing was done, nor what the circumstances in the studio were...David had kicked around a good bit before this first duet hit, in which the labels were so uninterested that it was initially released on Clint Eastwood's imprint, through Warner Bros. How anybody listening could have missed that this was a hit, I dunno. But, on the other hand, how anybody could have though the balance of these tracks could be hits (and some were, if of more modest stature), well, I dunno that, either.
The upshot being that when I put these two discs away in a moment, I'll trouble to see if I have anything of David Frizzell singing on his own, with maybe a different producer, and maybe no keyboards tossed in to tart up the proceedings.
And then I shall have to find something else to play in the truck. Maybe, finally, I'll listen to that new Wilco album. Nah. Probably not. Ah. Guy Clark's new one, Someday the Song Writes You. That's probably worth the trouble, eh? Although I note with some sadness (or prejudice) that they're all co-writes, save Townes' "If I Needed You." And the opening track tells me right off that Mr. Clark is no longer a young man. Well, let's see, then, what he does with that, because he surely knows it better than do I.
But I do still get a bit of mail, and sometimes I make time even to open it. A week or so back I stumbled on a new Varese Serabande compilation, The Very Best of David Frizzell & Shelly West. The first track, inevitably, is "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma," and at that moment I felt the need to hear that song, so into the little red truck it went. I couldn't place the year of the song (it went #1 on the country charts in 1981, as it turned out), nor did I know until reading Laurence Zwisohn's liners that Shelly (daughter of Dot) was married to Allen Frizzell (the youngest, and David was 13 years behind Lefty), much less remember that it was David who sang "I'm Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our House" and Shelly who sang "Jose Cuervo," which in my mind still segues into a Courtney & Western song from the first Diesel Only compilation, but I digress.
The Frizzell/West producer was a chap named Snuff Garrett, who had also produced Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee (and Julie London!) and Cher's "Gypsies Tramps & Thieves," which production in a lower case way most of the succeeding 15 songs echo. Which is to say that these two fine voices are shrouded in a very dated plastic keyboard sound, and swaddled in what sound to be fake strings even if there were real people playing them. One is also struck by how very, very carefully "You're the Reason" is sung, on both sides of the mike (mice crawl around the floor, hence my abbreviation phobia). And by how strikingly muscular both voices are, by how very much I'd love to hear these songs without the garbage accompanying them. Midway through "Please Surrender," to pick an egregious example, the snare drum takes a rat-a-tat martial turn, which might have seemed high concept at the time, but smacks of a singular absence of creativity.
I can imagine few weights as crippling as knowing one's brother was Lefty Frizzell, a hall of famer, or that one's mother was Dottie West, another hall of famer, and wishing to compete in the same arena at which they had so spectacularly succeeded.
So I dug up a Raven compilation of Lefty's hits, not remembering that it was he who'd written Hank's "If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time," nor that his was the first cut on "The Long Black Veil," nor, even, that his last big hit was "Saginaw, Michigan," which is now stuck on replay in my imagination, for which nobody else in my family has a shred of sympathy. I haven't gotten round to hunting for Dottie West, as it's in a different cabinet and I ended up stuck on Lefty, anyhow.
Not the first one to be stuck there. I associate Lefty with the honky-tonkers, with Hank and Ernest Tubb and maybe even Johnny Paycheck, except that it is David who ends up sounding more like Paycheck because Lefty was really a crooner, no matter what his songs were about nor how many jukeboxes played them. Once he found his voice, Lefty had a magnificently gentle way of singing, generally surrounded by a very small and understated combo, and carefully miked. At moments one hears where Merle Haggard came from, and Randy Travis, and many others.
By contrast, David is a full-throated singer (as is Shelly West). But the odd thing is how easily Lefty sings, how casually he finds his phrasing, contrasted against the great care with which these Frizzell/West duets are pieced together. And I've no idea how much tape editing was done, nor what the circumstances in the studio were...David had kicked around a good bit before this first duet hit, in which the labels were so uninterested that it was initially released on Clint Eastwood's imprint, through Warner Bros. How anybody listening could have missed that this was a hit, I dunno. But, on the other hand, how anybody could have though the balance of these tracks could be hits (and some were, if of more modest stature), well, I dunno that, either.
The upshot being that when I put these two discs away in a moment, I'll trouble to see if I have anything of David Frizzell singing on his own, with maybe a different producer, and maybe no keyboards tossed in to tart up the proceedings.
And then I shall have to find something else to play in the truck. Maybe, finally, I'll listen to that new Wilco album. Nah. Probably not. Ah. Guy Clark's new one, Someday the Song Writes You. That's probably worth the trouble, eh? Although I note with some sadness (or prejudice) that they're all co-writes, save Townes' "If I Needed You." And the opening track tells me right off that Mr. Clark is no longer a young man. Well, let's see, then, what he does with that, because he surely knows it better than do I.
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Comment by Grant Alden on July 22, 2009 at 5:33am -
Really? No comments 12 hours later (or whatever it's been)? Peter was right, though I'm still not sure what it means nor how best to proceed.
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Comment by Easy Ed on July 22, 2009 at 5:16pm -
I've noted that writing a blog or whatever you want to call it online, is often akin to going to a 12 step meeting. You share, open your soul and sometimes get something back and sometimes not. And then six months later some kid comes up to you and says "remember that night when you shared about...." , and he proceeds to tell you how much it meant to him and helped keep his crap together. So no comments shouldn't be taken as anything other than no comments. I liked this piece so much after you posted it, I came back this afternoon and actually took my time with it again. I'm a big Lefty fan...I don't think he's ever gotten his due. David and Shelly's output, along with a lot of Snuff's work, was kind of caught in a weird time for Nashville and country music and is more a reflection of a time when quality wasn't that much held in esteem. There was a lot of very ordinary songwriting and recording going down. Interesting to note that when my boys were really little, we lived in Minneapolis and every Saturday I made them listen to the bluegrass show on public radio. They hate it now, as well as all twang...but a few months ago they liked Guy Clark when I played it in the car and have since asked for it a few more times. Must be doing something right.
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Comment by Grant Alden on July 22, 2009 at 5:29pm
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Oh, I'm used to the silences...my comment had more to do with how easily I wound this little community up arguing about Dylan and Haggard with a provocation that took barely as long to type as it did to think about, as opposed to this, which -- in a print world -- would have been a more tightly researched and phrased 1500 word think-piece. Y'know, I'm just poking around absently here, trying to figure out what works and what the new rules are.
Without, y'know, telling the kids to stay off my lawn. Or, at least, not to run the four-way stop, but that's another rant...
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Comment by greasepaint on July 22, 2009 at 8:10pm -
Had a chance to see David Frizzell and Shelly West in a small club along about the time of "You're the Reason God Made O.k," Truth be told, I ran the soundboard for the show. Yes, it was much more palatable without the cheese. They were both solid singers. In particular, David Frizzell had a touch of his legenday brother's twang with some honky tonk soul. Didn't appreciate until much later that a musician in the house band was not blowing smoke when he mentioned what a profound influence Lefty was on Merle Haggard. Skip a generation or two and you can make a pretty good argument that John Anderson is the one who really picked up the honky tonk torch.
Didn't weigh in immediately since Grant is a heck of a lot more entertaining if he gets worked up about something.
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Comment by Grant Alden on July 23, 2009 at 3:39am
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Worked up? That's my natural voice...
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Comment by Arty Hill on July 23, 2009 at 11:39am -
Lefty's style was sort of an inverted Jimmie Rodgers yodel - instead of jumping up 6 or 8 notes to a yodel like JR, Lefty would jump down 4 or 5 notes (as in "I love you, I'll prove it in days to co-ome"). His early material (I love you a thousand ways, look what thought will do, always late, etc) remains a great challenge for any country singer, which is why you so rarely hear it performed. Or when you do hear it, the melody is usually modified to make it easier to sing, i.e. Dwight Yoakam's "Always Late," John Prine's "I want to be with you always." One of the few guys who can actually re-create Lefty's style is Redd Volkaert - his version of "Always Late" is spot on !
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Comment by Patrick Shields on July 23, 2009 at 6:22pm -
Thoroughly enjoyable piece! Two things: one reason "You're The Reason God Made Oklahoma" may have sounded a bit different at the time is simply because it was recorded in Hollywood rather than Nashville. Maybe it's one of those deals where "you had to be there." I was, and I thought it was a great record. You mention a Raven re-issue of Lefty songs... "not remembering that it was Lefty who wrote Hank's 'If You've Got The Money (I've Got The Time)." Wrong. The song was Lefty's first single AND his first #1 hit. Hank did not record it.
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Comment by Easy Ed on July 23, 2009 at 7:36pm
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Hey Patrick...Great catch on the Hollywood connection. I forgot that Snuff was out here as head of A&R for the old Liberty label. Earlier this afternoon I started thinking about the 50 Guitars' series he did with Tommy Tedesco and did a little research. I lifted this off a website I found out there in space:
He produced Johnny Burnette (You're Sixteen), Gene McDaniels (A Hundred Pounds Of Clay, Tower Of Strength), and Bobby Vee (Take Good Care Of My Baby, Run To Him, The Night Has A Thousand Eyes). He also had seven straight top ten hits with Gary Lewis and the Playboys. Among these were This Diamond Ring, Count Me In, Save Your Heart For Me, and Everybody Loves A Clown.
Interesting to note that he hired Phil Spector to produce in NY...but none of this has anything to do with Lefty, David or Shelly...so I'm done.
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Comment by greasepaint on July 23, 2009 at 10:20pm
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Is it your natural voice, or are you just hittin' that Ale-8 a little to hard?
Some impressive honky tonk historians. I would just add that while I can't claim the sort of familiarity with Lefty's canon to state this with much authority, I think John Anderson's version of I Love You a Thousand Ways has to worthy of the original.
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Comment by Grant Alden on July 24, 2009 at 5:26am
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It's funny the things that stick in your head so solid you don't even stop to make sure they're true. I'd have bet a significant pile of money (metaphorically speaking, since that's as close as I get to significant piles of money) that Hank had covered "If You've Got the Money." Maybe it just sounds so much like Hank that...oh, I dunno. This is why I miss Peter, an exemplary fact checker.
As to John Anderson...I'd put his version of "Long Black Veil" ahead of Lefty and Johnny, and it pisses me off some that I've not been able to find the original (he re-recorded it, as the Nashville folks are prone to do when their careers wane and they want to own their own masters) on CD. It may well be by now, but...
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