1. Why does it always sound like his guitar is out of tune? Or is it just me?
2. I love The Twenty-Eight Greats (1982) to death, but all the songs sound the same. Do I need to own anything else by him?
― Mark Espisito, Monday, 5 December 2005 02:52 (nineteen years ago)
1. Just you.
2. Top of my head additional singles not on the 28 that are indispensible:
You Never Can Tell
Dear Dad
Run Rudolph Run
Around and Around
Anthony Boy
Good Morning Little School Girl
It Wasn't Me
― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Monday, 5 December 2005 03:14 (nineteen years ago)
I think Around and Around is on Great 28. Here are some other classics you're missing:
No Money Down
Downbound Train
Jaguar and Thunderbird
Down the Road a Piece
Thirteen Question Method
Back to Memphis
Promised Land
Tulane
Have Mercy Judge
Chess box has all of those I think but Back to Memphis. But if Chuck sounds all the same and out of tune to you, I doubt more will help much.
― Roy Kasten, Monday, 5 December 2005 05:32 (nineteen years ago)
No! Different songs. Chuck's "Downbound Train" is, like Maybelline, an updating/radical revision of a trad. country tune. In this case, Chuck takes "Hellbound Train" (which goes by lots of other names too) and adds a spooky, trapped-in-hell's-well vibe:
A stranger lying on a bar room floor
Had drank so much he could drink no more
And so he fell asleep with a troubled brain
To dream that he rode on a downbound train
The engine was blooded, was sweaty and damp
And brilliantly lit with a brimstone lamp
An imp for fuel was shoveling bones
While the furnace rang with a thousand groans
The boiler was filled with a lot of beer
The devil himself was the engineer
The passengers were most a motley crew
Some were foreigners and others he knew
Rich men and broad clothed beggars in rags
Handsome young ladies and wicked old hags
As the train rushed on at a terrible pace
Sulphuric fumes scorched their hands and face
Wider and wider the country grew
Faster and faster the engine flew
Louder and louder the thunder crashed
Brighter and brighter the lighting flashed
Hotter and hotter the air became
Till their clothes were burned with each quivering flame
Then out of the distance there came a yell
Ha ha, said the devil we're nearing home
Oh, how the passengers shrieked with pain
They begged old satan to stop that train
The stranger awoke with an anguished cry
His clothes wet with sweat and his hair standing high
He fell on his knees on the bar room floor
And prayed a prayer like never before
And the prayers and vows were not in vain
For he never rode that downbound train
Those lyrics are pretty much the same as the traditional ones, with some funny and clever alterations/additions. I don't know for sure what earlier version Chuck would have known, but Wade Mainer had a pretty popular recording of it in the '30s. Chuck, as is his want, kept the songwriting credit to himself!
― Roy Kasten, Monday, 5 December 2005 17:28 (nineteen years ago)
There's some mild intonation issues with Chuck's guitar on "No Particular Place To Go", but other than that, I can't think of any instances where he sounds out of tune.
― Brooker Buckingham (Brooker B), Monday, 5 December 2005 20:30 (nineteen years ago)
3. Yes, he placed surveillance cameras in the women's restrooms of his Southern Air restaurants in the late 1980s.
― Mugged Outside the Jabberjaw, 1993 (Bent Over at the Arclight), Monday, 5 December 2005 20:51 (nineteen years ago)
He's down for crap. Gives songs like "In the Wee-Wee Hours," and "No Particular Place to Go," an entirely new meaning.
― Dukey Dee, Monday, 5 December 2005 22:20 (nineteen years ago)