Hank Snow was born May 9, 1914, in Brooklyn, Nova Scotia.
He finally got to Nashville and the Grand Old Opry in 1950.
In 1958, he opened the Hank Snow Music Centre at 810 Church St. It was first managed by Henry Farrell, then by former Rainbow Ranch Boys steel player Joe Talbot, and then by songwriter Ted Daffan. Hank closed the store after nine successful years.
Daffan began writing and performing country songs in the late 1930s, including “Truck Driver’s Blues” and “Born To Lose” which Hank and many others recorded. He co-wrote one of my favorite Hank Snow songs, “Tangled Mind”, which went to number 4 in 1957.
Here’s Hank with the Rainbow Ranch Boys at the Town Hall Party c. 1958.
As one-time Atlantic Records producer Joel Dorn says in the preface to Lee Friedlander’s American Musicians, “Until Lee, I’d never been a fan of a photographer”. The 1998 book contains mostly pictures of jazz and R&B artists (many of whom recorded on Atlantic) along with some gospel singers, and a section called “Bluegrass and Country & Western”.
I had this Lefty Frizzell LP for a while before realizing the cover photo was by Friedlander. I’d seen a lot of his photos by then, including some of the famous jazz musician pictures, all of his early and late self-portraits, landscapes of deserts and Olmstead parks, many streetscapes and scenes from various places in the US and Europe, the nudes, and the giant book The American Monument.
Lee Friedlander. Florida, 1974.
I don’t know much about Friedlander’s pictures of country musicians. Friedlander’s books are long on images and short on text. I shouldn’t have thought the one of Lefty was a sole occurance–he doesn’t work like that. Then last year, I saw one of Newsweek/TheDailyBeast art writer Blake Gopnik’s daily pics, about a recent purchase by the Museum of Modern Art, a Friedlander of Jim Ed Brown and his sisters. When I got American Musicians last Christmas I saw even more, like this one of Mother Maybelle Carter and her daughters June, Anita and Helen, taken sometime in the 60s.
American Musicians includes some beautiful pictures of Carl Smith on his ranch, and shots of people I’d never heard of like The Harden Sisters.
Lee Friedlander. Ray Price, 1970.
Lee Friedlander. George Jones, 1971.
In 1972, George Jones released A Picture of Me (Without You). Photo credits for album artwork are often nonexistent or unreliable, but Friedlander’s name is attached to this Columbia LP (but not to the cover image) that went to number three on the charts issuing only one single–the title track–that reached number five.
Before digging up that LP credit, in American Musicians I’d noticed Friedlander had photographed Tammy Wynette, who was then married to Jones, at the same time as the one of him above in the red shirt, but separately. The picture is very nice, very Friedlander, and unusual since natural settings weren’t really Wynette’s element. She and Jones being dressed in matching outfits made me wonder if they expected to be photographed as a couple that day, like the one Friedlander did of Pearl and Carl Butler wearing co-ordinated Nudie suits.
Lee Friedlander. Tammy Wynette, 1971.
As Gopnik points out in his comments about Jim Ed Brown and The Brown Sisters, most Friedlanders in galleries are black and white, with radical compositional disjunction, like Nashville,1971, also in the MoMA collection.
Lee Friedlander. Nashville, 1971.
There are lots of colour pictures in American Musician, gorgeous shots of Sarah Vaughn, Duke Ellington, and unrecognizable players in the 50s that were clearly not meant for album artwork. While most of the country portraits seem intended for PR purposes, like the ones of Lefty, it’s hard to say how many were actually used, given Friedlander’s style isn’t really in accordance with the slick Nashville standards he alludes to in Nashville, 1971.
Lee Friedlander. Lefty Frizzell, 1966.
Lee Friedlander. Santa Fe, 1971.
George sings “A Picture of Me (Without You)” in 1982, co-written by George Richey for the 1972 album.
Jones and Wynette divorced in 1975, and she married Richey in 1978.
Despite his life of poverty and hardship, Snow was a man of great principle who sang about travelling and trains rather than drinking and cheating.
First off, I’m not sure about the connection between poverty and hardship and lack of principles. But, since the CBC seems to think it’s OK to keep celebrifying self-important corporate poster boy Kevin O’Leary after he called Occupy commentator Chris Hedges a left-wing nutbar, and the Occupy movement “nothingburgers”, I guess we know where they stand on principles.
Second, the text also refers to “I’ve Been Everywhere” topping the charts in 1962 as an avenue to hail its Canadian content. Apparently the CBC historians who are telling us Hank never sang about cheating aren’t familiar with the rest of the LP’s songs, which include “Ninety Miles An Hour (Down A Dead-End Street)”, a #2 hit with 22 weeks on the charts.
In this clip from The Jimmy Dean Show, Hank does excerpts from “Ninety Miles An Hour”, “A Fool Such As I”, “The Last Ride” and “I’m Movin On”. Another of Hank’s best known recordings is the classic train song “The Wreck of the Old 97″.
Vernon Dalhart’s 1924 version is often said to be the first million-selling country music release. (Others claim the first was Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel #1″)
Hank’s mother bought the Dalhart 78 with a two-dollar used Victrola in 1927 or 28. He also heard the song on the radio while at sea on the Lunenburg fishing schooners, and learned to sing it. It’s about the 1903 derailment of a behind-schedule mail train that killed nine people.
Instead of investigating and disseminating the incident with a folk ballad, however, two class action lawsuits have been launched against VIA. Lack of a voice recorder means the reason why the train was going so fast may never be known.
Wait a minute. I thought 9 were killed on the Old 97. This official-looking book says 11.
I just got this picture of Canadian country singer and world champion yodeller Donn Reynolds.
This would have been in the forties. The picture came from Nashville. There’s several sites around with write-ups about Donn. I have his first Arc LP The Blue Canadian Rockies and love his incredible yodelling.
I recently got his other Arc release, Springtime in The Rockies and enjoyed that too. He had several other LPs on other labels, and lots of singles. There’s a comprehensive discography, pictures and bio at this site, including Donn looking cool at the top of Toronto’s CN Tower,
Ferlin Husky was best known for his two big Nashville Sound hits, “Gone” from 1957 and “Wings of a Dove” from 1960. Between 1953 and 1975, he had 41 songs on the country charts.
Ferlin Husky, Patsy Cline, Faron Young, Jerry Reed
Husky found success crooning in Nashville with Ken Nelson at Capitol, but got his start in Bakersfield California in the late 40s-early 50s, in Tommy Collins’s band. (when he went to Nashville, Buck Owens took his spot) But in the late 50s, for many country singers, hard country and rockabilly went out along with hillbilly outfits.
Ferlin Husky, Elvis, Faron Young, Hawkshaw Hawkins c. 1957
On the new style of recording, Mr. Husky told The Tennessean in 2009,
“We had the Jordanaires on there as the [backing] vocal group, and Grady Martin on vibes, and a ton of people in the studio. The producer, Ken Nelson, got upset. He said, ‘If one more person comes through those doors, the session is off.’ And then here comes Miss Millie Kirkham to sing the soprano vocal part…..He said, ‘You’re going to cost me my job,’ Mr. Husky recalled. In the middle of the song, I stopped the band and sung this, ‘Ohhhh’ part, and Ken said, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m making a hit record.’ And that’s what we did.”
In his early days, Husky’s sound was more Bakersfield and his dress more western, like this version of the Cindy Walker/Bob Wills song “Don’t Be Ashamed of Your Age”
Charlie Louvin died today at his home in Wartrace, Tennessee.
In the 50s, Charlie recorded with his brother Ira as The Louvin Brothers, above with Ernest Tubb.
The brothers went solo a couple years before Ira’s death in 1965. Charlie continued playing and recording and said he always missed Ira’s high tenor harmonies. At 81, he released two records in one year: Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs and the appropriately named Steps To Heaven, a gospel record which contains several odes to his own mortality including “I Feel Like Traveling On”.
My heavenly home is bright and fair I feel like traveling on No pain nor death can enter there I feel like traveling on.
Charlie and Ira always wore matching outfits, often made by Nudie. They were known for both Christian material and murder ballads, with LPs like Satan Is Real and Tragic Songs of Life. Some of their best-known songs are “There’s A Higher Power”, “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby”, number one for two weeks in January 1956, and “Cash On the Barrelhead” also from 1956, which was covered by Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris on the 1974 LP Grievous Angel.
Charlie Louvin with a smitten fan at the Americana Music Association Conference in Nashville last September.
“I only bid once and I bid last. I made the $200,000 bid — the premium on the sale brought the price up to $254,500.”
The trunk of the 1963 Pontiac Bonneville convertible has Roy and Trigger’s names in sterling silver. (hm. what about Dale?)
There are twenty guns in and on the car, like these on the fenders, and the Winchester rifle on the trunk.
There are also more than three hundred silver dollars inlaid in the car, and on this saddle that doubles as a jump seat.
Here’s Nudie and a couple of his other custom jobs:
One of his signatures (as if it’s not all his signature) is the personalized continental spare tire. Like on Webb Pierce’s Nudie Mobile, on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Webb Pierce was one of Nudie’s best customers when he was topping the charts in the fifties with huge hits like “In The Jailhouse Now” and the all time classic drinking anthem “There Stands The Glass”.
He didn’t live like this for his entire career, but Webb kept singing and stayed true to real country.
It’s worth noting that Pierce’s last hit was thanks to our friend Willie Nelson, who re-recorded a duet version of “In The Jailhouse Now” with Webb that just made it onto the charts in 1982.
Webb left us in 1991.
He probably drove up to the gates of heaven in a Nudie Mobile.
I make western shirts and jackets, and do chainstitch embroidery. I also write about Hank Snow, the history of westernwear and country music, slow fashion, and Willie Nelson's rap sheet.
