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In 1993 Bear Family Records assembled all of Jimmy Work’s records in a double compact disc package, including his earliest efforts made in Detroit for the Trophy and Alben labels. Work also cut all of his Dot records (1954 to 1956) in Detroit. Liner notes author Rich Kienzle and Bear Family’s Richard Weize made some very good guesses at the personnel on these sessions.
From personal conversations with Jimmy Work, as well as a timeline of Casey Clark’s Lazy Ranch Boys assembled from interviews with various members of the band, I’ve pieced together some information that’s probably as close to the truth as a body can get without being there. This information concerns just Work’s activities in Detroit, as I don’t have anything to add to his better documented Decca, Bullet, London, and Capitol sessions. Work’s story appears in the book “Detroit Country Music – Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies.”
1945, unknown studio, Detroit, Michigan
Trophy T14 “Those Kentucky Bluegrass Hills” backed with “You’re Gone, I Won’t Forget”
Trophy T15 “Rainy Rainy Blues” b/w “Heart That Steamboat Whistle Blow”
Jimmy Work: vocal/guitar; Dorris Woodruff: electric guitar
Autumn 1948, unknown studio, Detroit, Michigan
Alben 501 “Tennessee Border” b/w “Your Jealous Heart Is Broken Now”
Jimmy Work: vocal/guitar; Dorris Woodruff: electric guitar; unknown: rhythm guitar; unknown: bass
Listen to: Jimmy Work & his Border Boys – Tennessee Border
Circa August 1954, United Sound Systems, Detroit, Michigan
Dot 1221 “Making Believe” b/w “Just Like Downtown”
Dot 1245 “That’s What Makes The Jukebox Play” b/w “Don’t Give Me A Reason To Wonder Why”
Jimmy Work: vocal/guitar; Casey Clark: fiddle; Bronson Reynolds: bass; Buddy Emmons: steel guitar; Chuck Carroll: electric guitar
Ca. August 1955, United Sound Systems, Detroit, Michigan
Dot 1267 “Don’t Knock, Just Come On In” b/w “Let ‘Em Talk”
Dot 1277 “My Old Stomping Ground” (paired with “Hands Away From My Heart”)
Unissued “Blind Heart”
Jimmy Work: vocal/guitar; Casey Clark: fiddle; Bronson Reynolds: bass; Terry Bethel: steel guitar; Donnel Hemminger: electric guitar
Ca. September 1955, United Sound Systems, Detroit, Michigan
Dot 1272 “There’s Only One You” b/w “When She Said You All”
Dot 1277 “Hands Away From My Heart” (paired with “My Old Stomping Ground”)
Unissued “Puttin’ On The Dog (Tom Cattin’ Around)”
Jimmy Work: vocal/guitar; Casey Clark: fiddle; Bronson Reynolds: bass; Jimmy Murrah: steel guitar; Donnell Hemminger: electric guitar
Ca. February 1956, United Sound Systems, Detroit, Michigan
Dot 1279 “Rock Island Line” b/w “That’s The Way It’s Gonna Be”
Jimmy Work: vocal/guitar; Casey Clark: possibly bass; Dick McCobb: piano; Donnel Hemminger: electric guitar; Ted Bay: drums
Ca. April 1956, United Sound Systems, Detroit, Michigan
Dot 1284 “You’ve Got A Heart Like A Merry-Go-Round” b/w “Blind Heart”
Dot 1287 “That Cold, Cold Look In Your Eye” b/w “Digging My Own Grave”
Jimmy Work: vocal/guitar; Casey Clark: fiddle; Bronson Reynolds: bass; Billy Cooper: steel guitar; Donnel Hemminger: electric guitar
This Friday, Dec. 13, 2013, the first book signing event takes place at D:hive in downtown Detroit. Click here to see the flier. Friday evening we’ll present tributes to guitarist Al Allen, and bandleader Chief Redbird. Redbird died in 1978, and many of us never had an opportunity to meet him. Thankfully, Redbird’s daughter Della will be with us to reminisce, along with Al Allen himself, who played guitar for Redbird on many occasions. Stories about Chief Redbird and Al Allen can be found in the book “Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies.”
Chief Redbird’s first break into the top tier of show business was with Otto Gray’s Oklahoma Cowboys. He was known as Chief Sanders, then. From about 1927 to 1933, Redbird worked with the group, performing in vaudeville circuits and radio stations across the Midwest and East. Lucky for us, the group was so popular that they were invited to make a motion picture with sound. Here are parts one and two of the film, which give us an inkling of the immense talent Chief Redbird brought to stages in Detroit and across Southeast Michigan.
At the start of the first video, Redbird plays a cello (at right, in the still). At the start of the second, Redbird plays fiddle (second from right, in the still).
Two videos recently posted to YouTube are perfect complements to the stories in the “Detroit Country Music” book.
Born in 1921, Cliff Gilbert started playing music on a fiddle at age three. Gilbert eventually mastered the guitar, and wound up inventing quite a few elements and variations of the instrument. Based in Flint, but well-acquainted with Detroit and its country musicians and nightclubs, Gilbert played all over the United States during his career. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, he spent six years demonstrating guitars and crafting components for Fender in California, before returning to Michigan. I recommend watching each video in its entirety. Thanks to veteran musician Lafayette Yarbrough for the tip!
I met Gilbert in 1995. He was playing guitar at a party for Fran Mitchell with Eddie Jackson, Swanee Caldwell, and Marv Weyer. Bob Lowe, who produces a fine show called “Bob’s Music Time,” posted an interview with Gilbert in January 2014. Many thanks to Bob for featuring the “Detroit Country Music” book in this episode. The program includes some inspiring vintage video, courtesy Gilbert’s personal library, including a performance with Eddie Jackson and Swanee Caldwell at about 35 minutes, from the early 1990s.
The Fraternal Order of Eagles in Burton, Michigan, set Gilbert on a stage and turned loose an affectionate crowd in another fascinating video posted this month (April 2014). Congratulations to Cliff Gilbert, a true guitar hero and first-class fellow.
Ever since finding out the research Craig and I had compiled was actually going to be published in a book, “Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies,” the most frequent question I’ve received from people is, “What was the coolest thing you found in your research?” I always answer the same thing: meeting the people who made this music! My research led me to talk with hundreds of people, whether they were bandleaders, musicians, songwriters, disc jockeys, club owners, or fans. Each person had something special and enlightening to add to the story. Many conversations were over the telephone, but I also traveled across the Midwest and South, visiting with several folks over the years. As the bass player in a traveling bluegrass band, I found myself in cities where some of our contacts had moved after retiring from working in Detroit. Every one of them was so kind, and the warmth and excitement they communicated refreshed and encouraged me.
On several occasions I had the honor of being the guest of singer Okie Jones at his ranch outside of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. During the late 1940s and 1950s, Okie was a ball of energy on stage and off, traveling as part of Little Jimmy Dickens’ troupe and with Casey Clark’s Lazy Ranch Boys in Detroit. My visits often turned into a weekend of stories and sing-along sessions late into the nights. Okie shared with me songs he’d never recorded, and we taped some in his living room with a makeshift studio I had the habit or carrying with me on my trips. We also put several of his recitation numbers on tape for the first time ever.
Many memorable visits happened right here in Michigan, too. The first time I visited the farming community of Delton was to witness an induction ceremony for the Michigan Country Music Hall of Fame in July 2001 (Look for a blog post about memories and photos of trips to the MCMHOF in the future.) That day, I met a truly amazing woman and a real legend in the Detroit country music scene of the 1940s and 1950s. May Hawks had been inducted previously, and she returned to perform and support the new inductees, when I sat with her on her friend’s bus. We recorded an very long interview that day, and she expressed amazement that after all these years, this “kid” knew all about her records from half a century ago (I was all of 23 at the time). After we passed the guitar around a few times on the bus, she asked if I would play on stage with her that afternoon. I was bowled over with delight, and we performed about three songs, the highlight being an electrifying version with audience participation of “Ya’ll Come.” May Hawks’ full story can be read for the first time in the book.
I organized one of my most memorable visits at the Detroit area home of Al Allen and his wife, Kathy. I had visited them many times before, but this time we invited Jack Scott. Al played lead guitar on many of Jack’s hit records from the late 1950s and early 1960s, and although they parted as friends when they stopped working together, they hadn’t seen each other in several decades. I remember the tears in Al and Kathy’s eyes as they hugged Jack’s neck, and they seemed right back where they had left off, all those years ago. As part of their 1950s road show, Jack would sing Ray Price’s “Crazy Arms” and Al would not only play lead guitar, he’d step up to the microphone and sing a clear, pitch-perfect harmony. This and many other great country standards were played in Al’s basement that day. I would often find myself forgetting to play along on my bass, as I just watched and listened to this magical combination of musicians who obviously worked so well together years ago, working together just as well that day. Singer Danny Richards, another Detroit legend and good friend, stopped in to lend a tune or two. Getting the three of them together was certainly one of the highlights of my experience.
Bonus
On another occasion at Al Allen’s house, Danny Richards showed up with guitarist Jimmy Crabtree, and I recorded a few songs as I played bass with them. Here’s a sample from the session, a song made popular by Porter Wagoner.
What’s the deal with the arts, and specifically music? A person gets interested in the music others are making, learns chords and scales, seeks out training, and with practice and performance, may reach a point where their abilities are recognized as having value, contributing to a community of music makers and music lovers. A few musicians come up with a personal way of playing that sounds different from what’s been played before … Whether that helps or hinders the artist is hard to tell in advance, but with perseverance, some succeed beyond expectations.
During his life, guitarist Al Allen (1927–2020) demonstrated unbridled curiosity combined with grit — although the man often played it cool, in person — and indeed, developed a unique style of touch and tone that his contemporaries regarded with open and friendly admiration. According to Al, it all came together for him when he began playing his “Black Beauty” 1955 Les Paul custom Gibson guitar.
According to Keith Cady’s research, Al’s work in Detroit included playing in clubs, radio, TV, and Detroit-based recording studios with the likes of Chief Redbird, the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, Boots Gilbert and Chuck Hatfield, Bobby Sykes, Tommy Cantrell, the Davis Sisters (whose hair was often done before performances by Al’s wife Kathy at her salon), May Hawks, Casey Clark (briefly), Danny Richards, Lonnie Barron … You get the idea how popular he was!
Perhaps the earliest recorded example of Al’s picking with his Black Beauty available on a commercial record was Pete DeBree and his Wanderers’ “Hey, Mr. Presley” sung by Jimmy Franklin on Fortune (200). In this rocker, you hear Al’s blend of percussive swing and his guitar’s tremolo. He also recorded during the mid-1950s for Fox Records with the Lucky Lee band, and also with vocal groups the Larados (“Bad, Bad Guitar Man”), and the Romeos (“Fine, Fine Baby”).
Al combined his picking technique, influenced by Les Paul, Tony Mottola, Chet Atkins, as well as Detroit jazz guitarist Bob Mitchell, with the dials on his guitar and amp, as well as a vibrato bar he and Detroit machinist Jack Matthew (1916–1999) created, and eventually patented in 1958. Gibson Guitars ended up licensing and manufacturing the accessory for their guitars.
Here’s an excerpt from a conversation Keith Cady and I had with Al in 2005:
Craig Maki: I wanted to ask you about the [guitar] vibrato [arm]. Were you always a tinkerer? How did you come up with that?
Al Allen: Probably the only guys I seen back then – in the late ’40s and early ’50s – that had one was Chet Atkins and Les Paul. Now, Chet Atkins had one that worked like the one that we made … But what was different about it [Al and Jack’s invention] was, if you pulled the arm up, the strings went up. And you had to push the arm down to make the strings go down. I’m trying to get this right in my head now … Well anyway, it was the opposite of how I thought a vibrato should work. Rickenbacker had a small vibrato – It was either for a banjo, or a four-string guitar, because … you hook up only four strings. Me and Jack started on that one, and we modified that one. And that’s the one I have on my guitar, yet.
CM: That’s the prototype?
Keith Cady: You took it off your [Les Paul] gold top and put it on the black?
AA: After we modified it. I’ve got a picture of it on the gold guitar – a little bitty thing with a handle up there. … I don’t know if you ever heard of Jack L. Matthew? He was my partner on the vibrato. I met him when I first came to town. He was absolutely the best repairman there was (on instruments), in the city of Detroit.
KC: Did you meet him at a show, or did you take something to him for a repair?
AA: I probably took something for him to work on. We got to be very good friends. We had parties and would go out to dinner almost every week. … He was a genius at that stuff. He was in charge of four plants that his brother owned. Honing stuff. … So help me, I’ll swear to you: He could have been a Leo Fender on guitar stuff. He made some guitars and sold them in Detroit. He put pedals on Don Tannison’s steel [guitar], and a whole lot more.
CM: What led you guys to get a patent and go into business [together]?
AA: He did most of the work, and I did most of the paying for the patent papers and everything. … I would try it out, and if there was something I thought was wrong, he’d be able to fix it.
CM: So you were the guy who tested it, and he would make adjustments to it.
AA: More or less, yeah. After we licensed that vibrato to Gibson, we came up with one even better than that one. Much, much better! But there was a span of about five or six years, I think … and we took that one up to Gibson. But they didn’t want to change, because they spent a lot of money on building the one they had going. … Well, they sold them from ’59 until about ’63.
In 1958 Al began a collaboration with local singer and songwriter Jack Scott, for Carlton Records. Al’s guitar featured prominently on the recordings, and Jack’s first single, “Leroy” backed with “My True Love” became a hit gold record. Al and Jack both had unique approaches to making music, and when one heard a Jack Scott record come on the radio, the vocal and guitar parts made it identifiable almost immediately. Between 1958 and 1960, Jack had fifteen tunes in the Billboard Hot 100, including four in the Top Ten, and a total of nine in the Top 40 charts. Al played his Black Beauty on all of these sessions.
In 1959, Al cut an instrumental single for Carlton (511) featuring his compositions “Egghead” backed with “I’m Beat.” In the age when instrumental guitar pop dominated teen-ager playlists (think Duane Eddy, Link Wray, and so on), Al’s “proto-surf” music received great reviews and earned him and his band “The Sounds” radio and TV appearances around Detroit.
After he left Jack’s band in favor of settling back into his domestic life, Al continued playing this guitar with Detroit-based country acts. He remained much in demand, and had the luxury of choosing the gigs he played … all the way into the early 2000s.
For a more complete story about Al Allen’s music career, look up the chapter about him in “Detroit Country Music – Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies.”
Click here to read part one. Harold Thomason Harry Thomas Odom was born in Paris, Tennessee, in 1923. A gifted guitarist, his take off (or lead) playing on records was comparable to the best western swing pickers on recordings. He learned his licks from local jazz guitarist Bob Mitchell, playing jazz standards and country throughout his career. Although he played guitar in Detroit for more than three decades (1940s through 1970s), younger generations recognized Odom for his vocal on a risqué novelty called “She Won’t Turn Over For Me,” which first appeared as a jukebox single on Fortune Records subsidiary Renown, performed by Floyd Compton’s Western Troubadours in 1951 (see discography below). In 2001, when this interview was done at his apartment in Detroit, Odom had suffered a stroke and no longer played guitar. He died in September 2010. The following features excerpts from a lengthier conversation. [1]
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Do you remember making those records with Roy Hall?
Yeah. There was a studio and a guy with the records. I played there sometimes with Roy Hall, and sometimes with Freddie Bach. We made some good records. Five or six, and I just heard them. I never did get one of them, for some reason or another. I never did know what happened to them. There was a woman and a man. That woman, she played them for me. He died first.
Fortune Records.
Yeah, down there on Third Street. …
Listen to: Roy Hall and his Cohutta Mtn Boys, feat. Tommy Odom – Freckle Face Gal
Your playing on some of those records was really hot. It had a lot of punch, and it was clean.
I played different with every band. Every band has different music. You gotta learn … The band where I played better was when I was playing twin guitars with Tommy Craig. Boy, we had some good ones. … I worked every damn bar all over. On Third, Second, Woodward. I used to work that bar over there, where Eddie Jackson used to play a lot.
The Roxy?
Yeah. His bass player was …
Bob Norton?
Bob Norton. I went down there to stay with him one night, and two or three days later … Bob Norton used to play with me, over at the West Fort when I was playing over there. … He went to the theater and fell dead. [2]
At the movie theater.
Yeah. It was just two or three days [later]. … I knowed Bob Norton’s younger brother. He used to play sax. But he never did work some. He worked at that big company down there … He was an electrician. He made good money. I used to work with Chief [Redbird], he used to work down there. I used to play down on Third with a guy who went back to Texas. His name was … There was so many guys I played with, I just can’t remember all of them.
You sang on one record, “She Won’t Turn Over For Me.” Do you remember that?
Probably that’s me and Frankie [Brumbalough] singing on that.
It was on a guy’s record named Floyd Compton and his Western Troubadours. It was on Renown Records.
Floyd Compton. I remember that name, but I can’t place what he looks like. …
Listen to: Floyd Compton, feat. Tommy Odom – I Can’t Get Her Started
Another guy that played in Detroit for years and years … He played fiddle and steel. Roy Hall played with him, too. I’ll think of it. A car fell on him, out in the garage, when he was working on it.
Oh, Eddie Jackson told me about him, too.
… Well, his wife put her boyfriend up to it. He pulled the … car off onto him. … They never did prove it, but they knew damn well it was so. She’d go out and stay about eight hours, and you know if she’s going out for eight hours, she ain’t “going out.” It was a put-up job. What the hell is his name? I almost said it. He played all over. He played fiddle at first, then he played steel. He played on 8 Mile. He was playing in Detroit when I was still working at White Castle. That’s how long ago. [3]
Danny Richards used to tell me about him, too.
Danny Richards. Is he still living? … When I played over at the Roosevelt Lounge, Danny was playing there. And this [other] guy who was playing steel guitar, when he died, we went to his funeral. His brother, he came over here …
Was it Whitey Franklin?
Yeah. He died [in 1974]. I played with him. He was a nice guy. …
[About pianist Freddie Bach …] He really got good on that piano. He could play every damn thing … modern songs. … When we first started at Rose’s Bar, he was playing there and we just couldn’t keep him. And then, later on I saw him, and he was like Liberace. It’s like me. Bob Mitchell taught me all them runs and everything. But his fingers was twice as long as mine. Bob would make a chord, and my fingers could make just half of it. Bob, he’d make them long reaching chords, and I’d have to jump back and forth [on the frets]. I couldn’t play it like him, ’cause he could reach it all. But I could reach some of them. I learned to stretch my fingers.
Last five years, I’d go to [my brother’s] and he’d say, “You can strum on my guitar.” I hurt my fingers when I tried to mash the strings down. I said, “That guitar ain’t no good.” He said, “I can play it.” He could play it okay, and he could mash ’em down. He plays some every day. I couldn’t play it like I wanted to, so I said, “To hell with it.” I could play anything I wanted until that damn stroke. …
For how long did you play with Frankie Brumbalough? Did you guys play together for a few years?
We played together … We went to work at that … eventually it was the Caravan, but it used to be another place out there. I used to go up Livernois and turn right. … They got that highway there.
The Davison?
Davison. There used to be a bar down there. That’s where a lot of them used to play. I think that’s where Eddie Jackson played.
Six Mile and Davison.
Yeah. I played out there. … A brother of mine (he’s dead now), he went in there one time, and he told the [bartender], “Tommy told me to come by here and get fifty dollars.” “Okay.” He didn’t know my brother, but he just give it to him. I didn’t know a thing about it. When he complained to me, “I’m short fifty dollars,” I said, “What the hell are you talking about?” He said, “You sent your brother out here after it.” I said, “My brother? Who?” He said, “Lewis.” I said, “Lewis? I didn’t send him.” I didn’t say a thing, but I knew what was up. He needed fifty dollars [to take a woman out for a date]. And he knowed where to get it. [laughs]
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Discography
Roy Hall and his Cohutta Mountain Boys “The Dirty Boogie” b/w “No Rose In San Antone” (Fortune 126, 1949)
Roy Hall and his Cohutta Mountain Boys “The Dirty Boogie” b/w “Okee Doaks” (Fortune 126, 1949) [4]
Roy Hall and his Cohutta Mountain Boys “Never Marry A Tennessee Gal” b/w “We Never Get Too Big To Cry” (Fortune 133, 1949)
Roy Hall and his Cohutta Mountain Boys “Five Years In Prison” b/w “My Freckle Face Gal” (Fortune 139, 1950)
Roy Hall and his Cohutta Mountain Boys “Mule Boogie” b/w “Old Folks Jamboree” (Bullet 704, 1950)
Roy Hall and his Cohutta Mountain Boys “Turn My Picture To The Wall” b/w “Ain’t You Afraid” (Bullet 712, 1950) [5]
Floyd Compton and his Western Troubadours “She Won’t Turn Over For Me” (vocal by Tommy Odom) b/w “Careless Lover” (vocal by Floyd Compton) (Renown 5002, 1951) [6]
May Hawks “Jealous Love” b/w “Year After Year” (Fortune 173, 1953) [7]
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Notes
- Tommy Odom interviewed by Keith Cady and Craig Maki in 2001.
- Eddie Jackson said he thought that Norton had a heart problem that caused his death.
- The musician’s name was Taft “Rosebud” Blevins.
- Fortune 126 was issued twice, with different songs backing “The Dirty Boogie.”
- In Keith Cady’s 2001 interview with Bud White, White said Odom traveled with the Roy Hall band to Nashville for the recording session for Bullet.
- It sounds as though Tommy Odom also played guitar on the Compton record, when he wasn’t singing (between verses, and on the song by Floyd Compton). Around 1941 the Detroit-based Universal label issued “She Won’t Turn Over For Me” (masters 114/115 together on one 78 rpm disc) by local pop singer Chick Fowler, backed by a hot jazz band. The guitarist on Fowler’s record sounded very much like Odom’s friend Bob Mitchell, who may have introduced the song to him. Bob Mitchell’s story is included in the book, “Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies.”
- Due to his association with Roy Hall at the time, Odom could have played on Fortune 173. The band sounds like Hall’s.
Of course, one would need weeks or months to present the connections between the labor movement and country-western music in Detroit during the 20th century. On this Labor Day, I’m reaching for low-hanging fruit by showing a couple of union-operated social halls used for country shows in Detroit 60 years ago.
12101 Mack Avenue is an address remembered fondly by longtime country music fans in Detroit. The site of the weekly “Lazy Ranch Boys Barn Dance” from 1952 to 1957, the union hall at 12101 Mack held many weekend stage shows by Casey Clark’s group (all members of local musician unions), which in turn hosted famous entertainers and guests from across the U.S.A. and Canada. Originally a Hudson local, the hall became the base for a Chrysler local after the demise of the Hudson Motor Car Company.
Photos from the past demonstrate Clark’s band’s popularity. When Clark and his partners first arrived to head the WJR “Big Barn Frolic” in 1952, the Saturday night show was held at the Dairyworkers Hall on 2nd Avenue in Highland Park (see a contemporary photo below).
Within a year, Clark and company moved to a larger space at 12101 Mack, where they packed in audiences with their stage shows, followed by square and round dances. Its location off Connor, near Chrysler’s east side facilities, easily drew country music fans who worked for Chrysler, many of whom lived in the surrounding area.
Read all about Casey Clark and the Lazy Ranch Boys, along with other artists who appeared on the “Big Barn Frolic,” such as Chuck Hatfield, Boots Gilbert, Al Allen, Roy Hall, May Hawks and the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers in the book “Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies.”
We went to King Records and they gave us quite a tour, and we talked with them some. Nothin’ ever come of it. We didn’t try too hard at that time. [laughs] – Skeet Ring [1]
Despite the nation’s economic recession, 1949 was a banner year for the three-year-old Fortune Records company in Detroit. Billboard magazine reviewed several country platters that Fortune issued by Detroit artists, including the first commercial disks by Roy Hall, Lawton “Slim” Williams, Earl and Joyce Songer, Jeff Durham, and Eddie Jackson. Among Fortune’s 1949 country-western records appeared the only one ever made by Lowell Otis “Skeet” Ring. Ring’s disk was also the last commercial record made by a country music pioneer.
Born 1926 in Black Rock, Arkansas, a small town on the Black River, which flows into the Mississippi, Ring came of age during the Great Depression, when live music – usually made at home in rural areas – figured prominently as entertainment. “I had a grandfather that played the fiddle. … He was pretty good on it,” said Ring.
When the United States entered World War II, Ring headed to Detroit, to work in a defense plant. “I was [classified] 4-F [by] the Army. … I wanted to do something for the war effort,” he said. Ring found work manufacturing artillery shells. With money saved from his factory job, Ring bought a guitar and began picking and singing around the house. He often jammed with guitarist Tracey White, who lived next door in a community of workers from the South surrounding Grand Boulevard and Woodward Avenue.
Hillbilly Swingsters
After the war ended, Ring trained to become a millwright. He and two friends from East Tennessee worked during the week and played music on weekends at the Pullman Bar in Highland Park. It was located on Manchester, across the street from a Ford Motor Company facility. The stage included chicken wire fencing to prevent flying bottles from striking entertainers when fights broke out. “They just sold beer,” said Ring. “They didn’t sell liquor at that time.” He called the band the Hillbilly Swingsters, and the trio included guitarist Les Bonine, who had moved from Knoxville, where he had worked at a radio station.
The Hillbilly Swingsters’ bass man, Sam “Dynamite” Hatcher, also came from Knoxville. A vocalist and harmonica player, Hatcher sang “Wabash Cannonball” and other numbers with Roy Acuff and his Crazy Tennesseans at a 1936 session for the American Recording Company. “He done all the singin’ for Roy, when Roy first started,” said Ring. “Roy didn’t think he could sing [well], so Sam done the singing. … He was a good singer. We kinda took turns singing.” [2]
Hatcher left the Crazy Tennesseans in 1938, when Acuff moved the group to WSM radio Nashville and changed the band’s name to the Smokey Mountain Boys. In Detroit, Hatcher mostly sang popular C&W songs from the 1930s such as “Little Red Wagon,” and “Freight Train Blues,” another tune he cut with the Crazy Tennesseans. Ring, with his baritone, gravitated to songs by Ernest Tubb.
On top of the world
When the men heard of Fortune Records in 1949, they recorded and paid for the manufacture of a few hundred records. They cut an up-tempo version of the blues standard “Sitting On Top Of The World” backed with a song that Bonine and his sister wrote, “Sunset Beau.” A jazz pianist who sounded like Bobby Stevenson added a pop feel to the session. [3] Fortune’s public relations agent promoted the disk, distributing samples to jukebox vendors and disk jockeys in the region.
“I heard it a lot on WEXL,” said Ring, referring to the Royal Oak radio station. He recalled disk jockey Brother Bill, a.k.a. Guy Bowman, spinning the record on his “Hillbilly Hit Parade” show at WJBK radio Detroit. The band visited Cincinnati, Ohio, to meet famous country music disk jockey Nelson King at WCKY radio. While in Cincinnati, they visited King Records facilities, but never pursued a deal with the company.
Listen to: Skeet Ring & the Hillbilly Swingsters – Sitting On Top Of The World
Sunset bow
Besides working at the Pullman bar on weekends, the band visited local jamborees and played private parties. “We would pick up, at different times, other players … steel players,” said Ring, who remembered working some gigs with Dwight Harris. Harris played Hawaiian steel in the manner of Jerry Byrd. The Hillbilly Swingsters continued gigging across Southeast Michigan until the mid-1950s.
“We were playing a wedding out around Romeo,” said Ring. “We got done singing, and [Hatcher] said he was having a hard time. … Said he had a bump on his tongue. And he goes to the doctor, and the doctor just cuts it off, so they could examine it. It turned out to be cancer, and he didn’t live very long. … [The band] just about dried up, then.” Hatcher was about thirty-two years old when he died.
Ring worked jobs across the United States and Europe, but not as a musician. “I worked construction as a millwright,” said Ring. “I worked all over, back then, … in different states. I worked out of the country a couple of times … Belgium.”
In 1964 Ring was sent to a job site in Nashville, near a television broadcast studio. “I got to know Roy Acuff pretty well,” he said. “We sat around and drank coffee around the coffee machine there, in the recording studio. Of course, we had a lot to talk about, because of Sam.”
He lived in Westland, a Detroit suburb, for thirty-five years before retiring and moving to Northern Michigan woods. Skeet Ring died January 2010, in Big Rapids.
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Notes
- Lowell Otis “Skeet” Ring interviewed by Keith Cady in 2004.
- Frank “Red” Jones also sang and recorded with the Crazy Tennesseans. Until 1938, Acuff sang but a few songs per show, sharing vocals with Jones and Hatcher. When Acuff moved the band to Nashville, Hatcher chose to stay in Knoxville, before heading to Detroit.
- Bobby Stevenson led a trio in jazz nightclubs and worked with the WXYZ orchestra in Detroit. He played occasionally on country recording sessions during the late 1940s.
I’m very excited to present a guest post written by Jack North, who worked at WEXL radio Royal Oak in 1966-70, during the era when the pioneering station was the No. 1 country radio broadcaster in Detroit. This piece is written in his own words, so read on and enjoy! — Craig Maki
In October of 1966 at the age of eighteen, I fulfilled my dream to be a radio disc jockey when I was hired by Dale Lewis at WEXL, Detroit’s only country station at the time, to be the 6 p.m. to midnight DJ. After graduating from Cass Tech, where I was in the Performing Arts curriculum, I skipped college and went to EIT’s School of Broadcasting on Woodward Avenue. One day, about midway through the three- or four-month course, I was pulled aside by the instructor (who was a DJ at one of the Detroit stations, but I’m somewhat ashamed to admit I cannot remember his name) who told me about the opening at WEXL. He said that even though I hadn’t finished the course, he thought I was ready. I made an audition tape and got the job, so I dropped out of the class to begin my broadcasting career.
Being a typical Detroit teenager in the 1960s I was more into rock and roll and rhythm and blues, dividing my loyalty between WXYZ, WKNR, WJBK (before they switched to WDEE) WJLB, and others. Almost as soon as I started at WEXL, I felt right at home with country music. The station’s format had us playing a couple of “oldies” every hour and, oddly, I was familiar with about seventy-five percent of the older country songs. I had been exposed to country music in my family more than I realized. (A favorite aunt of mine was from Kentucky originally, so I guess that was one of the sources.)
I worked at the station for four years alongside Dave Carr, Bill Mann, newsman Bob Mason, and others. It was a fun time, and I learned a lot from everyone.
Because I was initially on an evening shift, rather than “drive time,” I had a little more leeway in straying from playing strictly the top charting country hits. I’d play an album cut once or twice an hour, either from a new release or from one of the older albums by the top country artists. I tended to favor the “folksy” sound of artists such as George Hamilton IV, early Waylon Jennings, or Bobby Bare. But I also really liked the greats, such as Ray Price, Hank Thompson, Earl Scruggs, Patsy Cline, etc.
Occasionally, during my evening shows, I’d get a call from the Detroit Tigers locker room, requesting a song or two! I never actually spoke to any of the star players, though. I think the calls came from trainers or coaches.
The evening show also developed a following from a group of listeners who called themselves “Peggy and the Hospital Bunch.” They’d send me cards and little gifts, and let me know they enjoyed my show, but they never once broke the anonymity of their group. I never knew who they were, nor at which hospital they were working while listening. When the Tigers won the pennant in ’68 they sent me a huge stuffed tiger and poster board display. I have a picture of it taken in the WOMC studio across the hall from our WEXL studio.
Yes, WOMC was owned by the Sparks family at that time. It was located in the same building. One of my duties during my shift was to change the huge reels of tape that were used by WOMC’s automated system. In those days, WOMC was basically a background music station … the kind you’d hear in a doctor’s office. I also had to read and record occasional newscasts to be played back during the night. (The news at Sparks’ stations was strictly “rip ’n’ read,” which meant you just pulled the hourly three- to five-minute news summary off the AP machine and read it. In fact, I’d occasionally begin my late-night WOMC newscasts with something like “This is Rip Enreid with the news.” No one ever caught on.) It’s strange to think now that FM stations in those days were generally not very popular. Radios that included FM reception were more expensive, high-tech devices.
One of the perks of working in radio was being able to see live concerts by the biggest stars in the country. A couple times a year a huge all-star “Grand Ole Opry” show would come to Detroit for two big shows, matinee and evening, at Cobo Arena. WEXL personalities emcee’d the shows, so I had the thrill of not only seeing some of the biggest stars of the day, like Johnny Cash, Sonny James, Ray Price, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Ernest Tubb, Porter Wagoner, and on and on and on, but also of being on stage introducing some of them including Tammy Wynette, Hank Snow, “Little” Jimmy Dickens, and many, many more.
The way those shows were presented was this: Each of the day’s shows, matinee and evening, was divided into two halves, or acts. Each of the dozen performers would have about fifteen minutes to do a few songs backed by the first performer’s band. The band would stay on stage, playing for several performers. At the end of each act a headliner would take the stage with his or her own band and do a slightly longer set. George Jones, for example, would be the first act closer, and Sonny James would close out the second act to wrap up the matinee show. Then at the evening show, they’d switch and James would close out the first act and Jones the second.
One of the most unforgettable memories of those shows was seeing Waylon Jennings. This was early on in his career, before the “outlaw” phase. What made it so memorable wasn’t that I met him … in fact, I never did, officially. But after his fifteen- or twenty-minute gig, he came offstage and went back to the large dressing room where all the other performers would hang out and eat, drink, and talk. After a few minutes backstage, Jennings came back out to the side of the stage where I was standing and watching the show. I was tempted to introduce myself and tell him how much I liked his songs, but something stopped me. It was plain to see that this artist was still working. He wasn’t just watching the performers on stage; the young, future superstar was studying them, learning. It was very, very impressive. Over the years I’ve kicked myself for not talking to him, but at the time it just didn’t seem appropriate to interrupt him from his work.
Sonny James, by the way, was one of the most likeable and courteous people, performer or no, that I have ever met. I don’t know what his secret was, but once he met you and talked a bit, he could come into town a year later and address you by name, ask about your wife, by name, or make other chit-chat that referenced something you talked about during his previous visit. I don’t know if he had a file card system back on his bus, or a personal assistant who kept up with all that info, but it made you feel as if he really cared about you. Sonny James was awesome.
My time at WEXL was very precious and formative. I left Detroit to work at a station in York, Pennsylvania, where I won Billboard’s small market Air Personality of the Year award. Then I worked for a time in Nashville at a country music fan magazine. I ended up in Savannah, Georgia, where I worked briefly in pop radio before going into television. I had my own local TV show for many years, hosting late-night horror movies. I also worked behind the camera as a writer, producer director and sometimes performer for stations or ad agencies in literally hundreds of local or regional commercials. I also owned my own theatrical company, Murder Afloat, where I wrote, produced, directed and performed in murder mysteries aboard several of Savannah’s riverboats for twenty years. I’ve done dozens of professional and amateur theatrical shows, including one off-off Broadway stint in New York City.
I have now “semi-retired” to the Atlanta area, so my wife and I could be near some of our family. I continue to work in theater; I am a King at Medieval Times in Atlanta. I also play music out at some open mikes, playing guitar and singing old R&B, rock, or jazz standards. I’ve posted a few on YouTube.
For some reason I’ve never been one to hang on to memorabilia, but I do occasionally get curious about people I’ve worked with in the past. It was while looking for information about WEXL and Dave Carr, for example, that led me to this site. It brought back great memories, many of which I hadn’t really thought of until writing this piece.
Thanks, Jack North
I’ve always enjoyed going to clubs and watching the bands. There’s a lot of entertainment going on, up on the bandstand. This is one thing that I admired so much about Eddie Jackson and Frankie Meadows. These guys had the people out there dancing and they would involve their audience in the show. Guys like Eddie and Swanee Caldwell – they’re true entertainers, because they see someone come in the door and say, “Hi so-and-so” and call them by their names, “How are ya?” – Patti Lynn [1]
From the time she started singing in public, Patti Lynn’s vocal abilities, charm, and interest in all styles of country music attracted the support of Detroit musicians and bandleaders such as Ford Nix, Eddie Jackson, Billy Martin, and Frankie Meadows. Eddie Jackson wrote a song that graced her first record, on the Hi-Q label. A couple of years later, while Lynn worked bandstands with Frankie Meadows, Detroit producer Kit Wright signed her up with Indiana-based Glenn Records. Lynn quit performing for a few years to raise her children, then returned as Kelly Roberts during the 1970s. We’ll refer to her as Patti Lynn.
Born Patsy Waters and raised in Nantahala, North Carolina, in the state’s western mountains, Lynn arrived in Hazel Park, Michigan, with her parents and brother around 1954. She was 13 years old and had already been singing in church for most of her life. “My cousin and I sang together in church,” she said. “I was raised in a Baptist church, and we went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night and every Wednesday night. My uncle led the choir … and as soon as he found out we could sing, we were into it.”
According to Lynn, Nantahala is a Cherokee name meaning “Land of the Noonday Sun.” Lynn claimed Cherokee ancestry as well. Because of the family’s somewhat isolated location, within the Nantahala National Forest where many areas don’t receive direct sunlight until midday, Lynn grew up listening to country music radio from neighboring Tennessee.
We lived down in the mountains and the only radio programs we could get were the “Midday Merry-Go-Round” out of WNOX in Knoxville, Tennessee, at twelve o’clock every day. I remember Don Gibson singing “Sixteen Chickens And A Tambourine.” We would get the “Grand Ole Opry” on Saturday night. Back in those days, I grew up listening to the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, Carl Smith, Goldie Hill. … So it had been like a mix of bluegrass and country. And I was seeing country coming out of bluegrass with the electric instruments.
“The first rockabilly song I remember hearing was Marty Robbins doing ‘That’s All Right,’ covering Elvis,” said Lynn. “I left North Carolina shortly after Elvis was on the scene and came to Michigan. Elvis was popular up here, but I thought, ‘Where’d Marty go?’ [laughs] But there’s never been a solid definition between bluegrass, country and rockabilly. To me, it was like a big family growing. Thank God, because I made a lot of friends in bluegrass. … When I was growing up, there was little definition between what was country and what was bluegrass. I saw musicians coming up to the bandstands and trying new things, and if it was good, the music evolved naturally into what it is today. I love Mac Wiseman, Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, Flatt and Scruggs – all of them.”
Ford Nix and his tricks
Around 1958, Lynn attended a house party and met musicians Grady Sartane and J.O. Turner. After hearing Lynn sing, Sartane invited her to join them at some shows he had booked in local high schools. It was during one of these appearances that Lynn first met Ford Nix. “He just started dragging me around with him, introducing me to people, and getting me up every chance [he had],” said Lynn.
He took me to a bar down in Detroit called Taylor’s Bar. Ford said, “You’re gonna get up there and sing.” And I said, “No, I’m not.” He said, “Yes, you are!” They called Ford up, and Ford introduced me. I was shakin’ like a leaf, and a fellow by the name of Ray Taylor was working there. Anyway, I got up and did three or four songs, and I really liked it. The people applauded, and I thought, well, I lived through this and I think I can do it again!
“One time I was working with Ford down at the Pullman Bar [in Highland Park], and they had chicken wire up around the band. That Pullman had a really bad reputation,” said Lynn. “But no, I’ve never had any problems. … Which is really amazing, because I saw a lot of fights, but I always tried to keep my nose clean and be a lady. Normally, if trouble broke out, they had bouncers to put a stop to it pretty quick.”
Listen to: Same Old Blues – Patti Lynn
Ford Nix introduced Lynn to WPON Pontiac disk jockey Billy Martin, when he was assembling the cast for his TV variety show on WLIX Channel 10 in Jackson. Martin’s “Michigan Jamboree” aired in 1960 for 26 weeks. Besides Martin, Nix and Lynn, entertainers included Martin’s band, the Drifting Wranglers, and vocalists Arizona Weston, Billy Gill, and Jimmy Odell. “When I first met Jimmy, he was playing a flattop [guitar] and singing,” said Lynn. “He had an excellent voice. Red Lynch was playing steel for Billy, and Jimmy was playing flattop and singing. A couple of years after I worked on the Billy Martin show, I ran into Jimmy and he was sitting behind a steel guitar! … I still believe the Detroit area in Michigan has some untapped resources of talent.”
After Martin’s TV show ended, Lynn tagged along with Ford Nix, Wendy Smith and their bluegrass band. Promoter Fay McGinnis booked them around the region.
Coming in Part Two: Patti Lynn meets Eddie Jackson, makes records
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Notes
- Patti Lynn interviewed by Craig Maki in 1995.
Seventy-five years ago, two young men from Kentucky cut a juke box record for a Detroit vending company. Its surprising success sparked a country music recording industry in Detroit, only interrupted by the men’s departure at the height of World War II.
During the early 1930s, George and Leslie York sang and played guitars together in a group with two more of their brothers and an older sister for church and social events around their home town of Louisa, Kentucky. The York Brothers first entertained as a duo at WPAY radio Portsmouth, Ohio, around 1936. By 1938 they had moved to Detroit to work in its factories. Leslie had developed a songwriting habit that wouldn’t quit, and “… between cars on the assembly line, Leslie wrote his impressions of the Polish section of Hamtramck, Michigan, and called it ‘Hamtramck Mama’.” [1]
She’s truckin’ in the daytime, shimmy’n at night
She’s a Hamtramck Mama and she shakes it right
The York Brothers cut the song for their very first record [2] at Universal Recording Studios, located on East Jefferson Avenue, for the Detroit-based Marquette Music Company, which distributed records in juke boxes across Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. Soon after its release, Leslie York was let go from his job. He returned to Ohio, where he played WPAY radio and local taverns with Portsmouth musician Virg Frazie. [3]
Two months later [Leslie] turned on the radio to [NBC Network broadcaster] Lowell Thomas’ program and heard how the district attorney in Detroit had banned “Hamtramck Mama” from the city’s juke boxes because he considered it defamatory to Hamtramck. [Leslie] was scared to go back until George sent for him to play some of the biggest night spots in Detroit. The publicity had “made” the record. [4]
“Hamtramck Mama” reportedly sold 300,000 copies in Detroit, appearing on three different local record labels: Universal (at least two different pressings), Hot Wax, and Mellow. The York Brothers’ popularity led to lucrative bookings (mainly in Detroit, due to wartime travel restrictions) and more recordings issued by Detroit juke box vendors. In 1941 they signed a contract with major label Decca, which issued three records. After “Hamtramck Mama” hit, a few other C&W groups in Detroit made records for the Universal and Mellow labels, but the Yorks supplied Mellow Records with scores of titles (most penned by Leslie) before they joined the U.S. Navy in March 1944. [5]
After their return to civilian life, the York Brothers moved to WSM radio in Nashville, Tennessee, and re-made “Hamtramck Mama” in 1947 for Bullet Records. When they moved back to Detroit in 1949, Fortune Records re-issued the original 1939 recording, which again proved popular among Detroiters, and stayed in print for a few more decades.
Listen to: The York Brothers – Hamtramck Mama (1939)
As we toast the 75th anniversary of “Hamtramck Mama,” don’t forget to check out the survey of the York Brothers’ entire musical career in “Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies.” Cheers!
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Notes
- Source: Unidentified 1947 news clipping from scrapbook of country music historian John Bell.
- The York Brothers cut “Going Home” for the flip side of the record.
- Correspondence between Craig Maki and John Bell, 2014.
- Bell’s 1947 news clipping (see note 1).
- When he enlisted, Leslie York’s weekly pay as an entertainer at Detroit’s Jefferson Inn nightclub was $115. At the time, servicemen earned about one-third that amount per month.
From decades ago to the present, country artists have created and sold promotional books. Most contain a combination of pictures, song lyrics and music. In Detroit, the Lazy Ranch Boys sold two “scrapbooks” of photos and descriptions from 1953 until they left town in 1958. Here are the covers of three known Casey Clark and the Lazy Ranch Boys books, along with a special bonus: Jimmy Martin’s Detroit scrapbook from ca. 1955.
Casey Clark’s story will be included in the book “Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies” by Craig Maki and Keith Cady, published by University of Michigan Press.
