▶︎ Owing it all to Pamela Brown

The happy guy in Tom T. Hall’s 1972 song Pamela Brown is a ramblin’ man, just roamin’ around the world and having good times.

He had a close shave all those years ago: if he’d married Pamela Brown, he’d probably be back home driving kids to school. He’s "the guy who didn’t marry pretty Pamela Brown", and he’s glad to be shot of all that.

You get a different slant, though, if you listen to Leo Kottke’s 1974 version of Pamela Brown on 1974's Ice Water.

The way Kottke tells it, the guy sounds kinda glum thinking about Pamela Brown. He might be trying to crack hearty, but it's clear that he regrets not marrying Pamela Brown: maybe he wouldn’t have minded driving kids to school after all. When he sings “I guess the guy she married was the best part of my luck” he doesn’t sound convinced.

There's a change of emphasis here between the two versions:

Tom T. Hall:
I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown
All of my good times and all my roamin' around
One of these days I might come ramblin' through your town
And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

Leo Kottke:
I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown
All of my good times - all my roamin' around
One of these days I might be in your town
And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

Tom T. Hall’s guy really sounds like a ramblin’ man, and the whole arrangement is more upbeat, introduced with a jaunty guitar bit that’s missing from Leo Kottke’s version.

Even TomT. Hall's guy might be protesting too much, because there’s irony enough in the song just as it was written. From the first line it’s clear that this is an anti-love song, about the guy who didn’t marry Pamela Brown. He's grateful to Pamela Brown’s husband for stealing the girl of his dreams, and he’s glad she dumped him because she saved him from the small town domestic round.

The trouble is, you can’t help catching a picture of what might be domestic bliss: driving pretty Pamela Brown’s kids to school mightn’t be all bad.

What's more, although the last verse has a final throwaway line, it shows the guy could still ache a bit at the thought of Pamela Brown:

I don't have to tell you just how beautiful she was
Everything it takes to get a country boy in love*
Lord, I hope she's happy 'cause she sure deserves to be
Especially for what she did for me

(*Kottke distances himself from the country genre here, changing the line to:
Everything it takes to get a guy like me in love.)

Leo Kottke has picked up on the wistfulness, dropped the carefree air, and made his guy sound sad about not marrying Pamela Brown, even jaded by his ramblin' lifestyle.

Because the original guy sounds so happy and carefree, though, you could think the irony is Leo Kottke's idea, but I'm thinking now that Tom T. Hall planted the ambiguity there from the start, and Leo Kottke ran with it

▶︎ Northern Soul formula breakthrough

Phil X Milstein emailed from the lab to say he's refined his formula for identifying a Northern Soul track (mentioned previously). Now it goes:
Bari sax and vibes included, Northern Soul; no bari or vibes, no Northern Soul.

Or, BS + V = NS

Let's hope he's got it right this time. In the meantime, be careful about trying it in your own home.

▶︎ Red Sovine, Tom Waits and Big Joe: Phantom 309

Phantom 309 is a trucking ghost song, a 1967 country hit for Red Sovine (right), but written by North Carolina singer-songwriter Tommy Faile. It's about a hitchhiker who's picked up at night by a big-hearted guy called Big Joe in his semi, The Phantom 309. After he's abruptly dropped off at a truckstop, the hitchhiker finds out that Big Joe and The Phantom are both, well, phantoms.

It's more a recitation than a song, a narrative poem with an oldtime country backing: a foot-tapping rhythm, punctuated by guitar licks and some wistful fiddling.

I got to know it through Tom Waits's version (he uses its full title, Big Joe And Phantom 309) on his 1975 live album, Nighthawks at the Diner. Being Tom Waits, he tells it in that half-sleepy barkeep's voice, over an after-midnight jazz backing, and he takes his time: around 6½ minutes, compared with Red Sovine's under 3½. Tom Waits here is leisurely and conversational, savouring the story in that world-weary, regretful way he has.

Going back later and hearing Red Sovine's original recording is a revelation. The first surprise is how brisk it is, almost perky by comparison with Tom Waits's smokey nightclub feel (his album's title presumably refers to another late night scene, Edward Hopper's 1942 painting Nighthawks) .

Red Sovine gets in and tells the story in a straightforward and businesslike way, without much emotional display, letting the words speak for themselves. Where Tom Waits has a conversation with the audience, you can hear the rhyming couplets in Red Sovine's version, much as you would with a traditional bush balladeer.

Here's the part where the hitchhiker first mentions Big Joe in the truckstop, when he tries to buy a cup of coffee with a dime from Big Joe:

Red Sovine:
Well, I went inside and ordered me a cup
Told the waiter Big Joe was settin' me up
Oh, you coulda heard a pin drop, it got deathly quiet
And the waiter's face turned kinda white
Well, did I say something wrong?
I said with a halfway grin

Tom Waits:
So I walked into this stop
Well I ordered me up a cup of mud
Sayin' Big Joe's settin' this dude up
It got so deathly quiet in that place,
Yeah, it got so deathly quiet in that place
That you coulda heard a pin drop
And as the waiter's face turned kinda pale
I said, whassamatter, did I say somethin' wrong?
I kinda said with a halfway grin...

Sovine more or less states the last two lines: with Waits you can hear the sheepish grin in his voice as he looks around the diner.

On the page, too, you can see how Waits's embellishments and repetitions draw the tale out, and the way he plays with the structure of the lines in favour of a more conversational feel.

See how Waits adds repetition for dramatic effect in the closing lines:

Red Sovine:
Here, have another cup
And forget about the dime
Keep it as a souvenir
From Big Joe and Phantom 309

Tom Waits:
So here son, he said to me...
You get yourself another cup of coffee
It's..'s'on the house..
I kinda want you to hang on to that dime...
Yeah I kinda want you to hang on to that dime as a souvenir...(yeahmmm)...
I want you to keep that dime as a souvenir of Big Joe...
Of Big Joe and Phantommm...
Big Joe and Phantom 309.

You have to hear it, of course, to get the full impact: you can hear the hitchhiker's awe at the story, and Waits's awareness of the impact of the story on his audience.

When I first heard Tom Waits's version I was vaguely aware of the original, and I naturally suspected irony, but I don't think this is tongue-in-cheek, and I believe that Waits is sincere about the song.

Is it an improvement on the original? Waits has reimagined the song, seen further possibilities in it, and I prefer his version, but I can't say how I would have felt if I'd already been a fan of the original.

I can imagine that some fans of manly, forthright country style might think Tom Waits is making too much of an entertaining song, but for me he has turned it into a masterpiece.

▶︎ Budget labels, Embassy Records

[Updated] 

After I wrote about budget labels, I heard from Michael White, who had researched the Embassy label, the British source of Australia's Golden Fleece Top Hits label. Embassy was sold in the UK through Woolworths stores from the early 50s till the mid-60s:

• Johnny Worth who, as Les Vandyke, wrote a number of hits for Adam Faith and Eden Kane, recorded covers of his own songs under his own name for Embassy;
• Elvis Costello's father Ross McManus, a vocalist with the Joe Loss Orchestra, recorded for Embassy using the names David Ross and Hal Burton;
• Ray Pilgrim was a vocalist with the Oscar Rabin Orchestra. He also recorded for Embassy as Bobby Stevens, and recorded with Embassy groups including The Jaybirds (not to be confused with another, later band called The Jaybirds that included Alvin Lee). He also recorded for associated label Oriole.
• A song co-written by Ray Pilgrim and recorded by Dick Jordan, "Little Christine", charted Top 10 in Belgium, was covered by other Belgian artists, and was released in the US on Everest (#19360, 1960). 

Michael also wrote about Embassy artist Rikki Henderson in a thread at Vinyl Vulture [now defunct, not archived]. 

I have recently read that Rikki Henderson won his contract with Embassy through a competition run by Mirabelle magazine, but I have also seen a reference to a resident vocalist with the Denny Boyce Orchestra called Rikki Henderson (Rikki also apparently made one appearance on TV's 'Oh Boy').

Henderson's appearance on Oh Boy! on 21 February 1959 is listed at the Oh Boy! Diary website. [Archived page.]

See my links page at the website for some of the sources I've found about cheapo/budget/soundalike labels, including the British soundalike hits albums Top Of The Pops. 

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Digression: Gerry Dorsey, before he was Engelbert, also pops up in the Oh Boy! Diary. For another Oh Boy! connection see my post about Trevor Peacock.