I was at a record convention this past Sunday and found an album entitled Tragedy & Destruction in Country Music by Howard Vokes --14 tunes guaranteed to make your granmaw boo-hoo real salt tears into her hard cider. Songs full of the plaintive pleas of tow-headed moppets begging "Please mama don't go get likkered up at that party.....please old abandoned well, don't swaller me up....please cyclone, demolish another schoolhouse". HAH we know how those stories turn out, or where would be the country song if there's a happy ending? Knowing that PCL's own Donna Lethal LOVES these tragedy tunes, I decided I liked her $4 worth and bought that album on her behalf.
After posting highlights from the album on my blog, I got a message leading me to MORE tunes by Pennsylvania's own King of Heartbreak, Howard Vokes, on Allen`s archive of early and old country music. They're not all weepers (can't wait to hear Polka From Outer Space!), but I'm guessing "Ghost of a Honky Tonk Slave" might be a moderate downer. Mix you a cocktail of those pills you pinched from your surly auntie's medicine chest and have you a good weep!
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2 comments:
As I suffer with a summer cold, I weep at the joy you have brought me, Ange.
I worked at a classic country radio station outside of Pittsburgh, Pa for about a decade. Howard was a good friend of the station and used to come up and sit and visit quite often. He was always in good spirits and loved to tell stories. He also had a very 'mel tillis' like stutter. Very nice guy.
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