Red Simpson is, Dave Dudley excepted, the voice of trucker country music. That may or may not mean much to you, but it makes Out On The Road For Christmas a quintessential trucker Christmas song.
There's a really, really great profile of Red Simpson that WFMU put up earlier this year. I highly recommend you go read it. I'll just share one anecdote from the article:
The oft-told story goes that after a gig in the early seventies a real life truck driver approached Simpson for an autograph. Expressing his admiration for Simpson's musical treatment of his daily drudgery, the trucker asked Red how long he had been trucking. The fan was shocked when Simpson explained he had never been in the cab of a rig in all his life. Feigning disbelief the trucker awkwardly stumbled as he asked Simpson "... then why would you write so many songs about trucking?" Red Simpson confidently answered, "Money."Money. Isn't that what the holidays are all about? :)
[Note that this copy of the song includes a snippet of unrelated dialog at the end. Can't remember why that is.]
Photo: Coronado Plaza on Route 66.
12 comments:
Great photo. Memories of a time gone by - the theater, the barber shop, the seedy jewler; did you ever visit the John Birch bookstore that used to be under that sign?
Must be Old OKC week.
I think I liked the dialogue about Ken and that lady wrapping presents better than the song...But the photo is damned good! Are you the new OKC Eggleston?
That's funny because the picture I posted the other day of our ceiling, I was sitting there wondering how I could have made it look more like the Radio City album cover.
oh, and that john birch book store. I'm pretty sure I never did, but still I kinda half remember walking in there for 5 seconds once. it's also the shopping center where we used to get all of our soccer gear
That talky bit at the end reminds me of Red Sovine, whose Teddy Bear cassette I picked up on a whim at the Flying J in Tucumcari, NM years ago - a cover so bad it had to be good. Just some simple country music with a twinkling piano in the background and Red telling stories about crippled children whose trucker parents are either dead or not home cb-ing with long haul drivers on the road. I laughed my way to Santa Fe. The story-telling is a niche genre, I suppose, but fascinating nonetheless.
This might be overstepping the role of the comments section, but a google of Red Sovine turned up a really unique Christmas tune. Wish I knew why I find it so funny!
http://www.bubblegum-machine.com/hereitis12.mp3
No, that's great, and I'm just about to download it. But it's generally not good etiquette to link directly to someone else's content (a.k.a. hotlinking). You should send them to their own page first and get it from there. So, everybody, go listen to that song HERE.
My apologies for the hotlink - feel free to redact it.
No problem. I don't really know how to redact comments on here anyway (w/o deleting them entirely), and besides, it's not like we're sending thousands of people over there to steal bandwidth.....
Wow, gotta be a record for comments, eh? Great xmas tune, never knew he wasn't a trucker, much less even been in a cab. John Birch reference makes me think of the old billboards along the Turner that always called for the impeachment of Earl Warren.
You must be on the road to not have a post on the kids game yesterday. If you haven't seen it, catch it. WOW!
I'M 10, I'M A KID!
It is indeed. But I've kinda inflated the total myself...
Not above padding my own totals, here goes notmuchthin.(home did word, as my old latin teacher would say..)
Have you seen the hubbub bout the removal of a word from the song "Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl" by BBC radio.
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