Thursday, June 3, 2010

It don't matter who's in Austin...

Every time I open my iTunes library, the first song I play is "If No News is Good News...."

I think you should obtain it if you don't already have it. If you don't know how, ask us. This song opens with a five- or six-note steel guitar slash that gets your attention like a flyswatter tunes up an insect. Then you get three-, maybe four-part (maybe five-part, maybe six) harmony...

If no news is good news then I should be happy
Cause honey you know you ain’t wrote a line
Not a word have I heard since the day that you left me
So maybe now I should be feeling fine

Then Tommy Duncan, the masculinity of whose voice is unrivaled, solos...

But these blues won’t go on and leave me alone
Pay no heed though if you hear me sighing
So if no news is good news then I should be happy
And baby I’m so happy I’m crying

Then things repeat.

I first became aware of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys around 1973, when I was directed to buy "For the Last Time," a two-record album that was produced as a project by Merle Haggard (our greatest still-performing country artist) featuring Bob Wills and several of the surviving Playboys (there were a couple dozen or so who were able to claim the name for a while). I quickly understood why Waylon Jennings claimed (in a song that also hit pop charts around 1973), "It don't matter who's in Austin, Bob Wills is Still the King."

I challenge you to direct me to where I can hear a more poignantly agonized bleat (delivered in a stomach-thrilling baritone) of romantic estrangement than Tommy Duncan's "But these blues won’t go on and leave me alone; Pay no heed though if you hear me sighing..." I'm cueing it up...right...now.
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1 comment:

  1. Wayne GilbertJune 7, 2010 at 3:16 PM

    "He stopped loving her today" meets the challenge as you phrased it.

    ReplyDelete

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