Orange blossom special
The singular, very best version of Orange Blossom Special I’ve ever heard was a live performance featuring Hank III’s fiddler, doing his demonic, satanic, otherworldly fiddling that he does. A good second would have to be local favorite Alvin Crow at the Spoke.
I was flipping through the songs I’d ripped, and I was looking for some ideas for how to stack one kind of music up next to another. For starters, I’ve got the Folsom Prison version of Johnny Cash’s “Orange Blossom Special” backed up next to Charlie Daniel’s version. Hank III’s Cocaine Blues followed by Cash’s original version [digitally remastered, according to the label>.
So here are a few of the themes for road music CD’s: songs about San Antonio [Lyle Lovett, Bob Wills, Asleep at the Wheel, various tribute albums with all those San Antonio songs on them.> Then there’s Cadillac songs, Dwight Yoakum, Chris LeDoux. Rambling Man songs, either featuring that as a title [Hank Sr., Hank III, Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd and so forth>, or as a central thematic element. I was going to do El Paso songs, but there are only two songs that I could think of, The Gourds [personal fave>, and that one about the Cantina, the ballad that’s so overworked by me, it’s tiresome – not enough to burn a full CD.
Ft. Worth is for more evocative than Dallas, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s classic about Dallas [from a DC-9 at night> is about the only one that’s worth it. Or maybe Rev. Horton Heat’s “Big D Boggie-Woogie,” but Dallas doesn’t do too well in the country vein. What’s odd, to me, Willis Alan Ramsey’s “Northeast Texas Women” is listed as “folk.” Whatever.
I suppose, a “cities and towns in Texas” wouldn’t be a bad one. I had one playlist running while I was working, and I kept trying to come up with other options. A little Bob Dylan, some Grateful Dead, Don Walser, it can all fit, it’s just trying to put it together that’s a challenge, looking for coherent thematic elements, Like Lyle Lovett’s “Truck Song” next to the Dead’s “Truckin’.”
“Friend of the Devil” [Grateful Dead> “Devil’s Daughter” [Hank III> “Sin Wagon” [Dixie Chicks> “Speak of the Devil” [Kevin Fowler> “Devil Went Down to Goergia” [CDB> “Conversation with the Devil” [Ray Wylie Hubbard>. I know, “Sin Wagon” doesn’t exactly fit, but how can I pass up lyrics like, “Praise the lord and pass the ammunition”?
Van Halen [\\Diver Down\\, last cut> “Happy Trails” – roots, man, it’s all about roots.
