Hank Snow, The Singing Ranger, and the Rainbow Ranch Boys, "Country Classics" (Stetson)

The Very Early Patsy Montana & The Prairie Ramblers (Cattle Records, 1981)

Salty Holmes joins Patsy Montana and The Prairie Ramblers on this album released by the German record label Cattle Records. I love the ghost-y, sullen looking outline of a cow face looking straight out, contrasted with the gold (though you can't see very well the sparkle upon scanning it).

Plantation (1968)

Oh, the jukebox single... beat to hell, dirt cheap, and easily available on a Ronco comp replete with "As seen on TV!" ads. But the 45 is cheaper and only features one song that you don't want to listen to instead of twelve. So you pay for it at the resale shop counter--a few barely listenable 7"s mixed in with some Isaac Asimov paperbacks, an old high-school gym t-shirt, some old Time Magazine back issues...

Consider the scene: 1968, a Moose or Elk lodge, entertainment slot machines by the bar, and in the corner a mini-skirted, single-mom regular punching in #13 for Jeannie C. Riley's "Harper Valley P.T.A." There's a greatness to this scene no matter how you look at it.

By the late 1960's, alcohol was decidedly uncool in the youth scene. It was your dad's habit, not yours, so there's something telling in the success of this single in the year that America fell into radical bedlam--a reminder that it was the same year that Nixon was inaugurated. The song tells the story of a "Harper Valley widowed wife," tramping around in miniskirts at bars, causing a ruckus in the neighborhood, and finally telling off all the judgemental hypocrites in the P.T.A. for being just as bad as she is. What makes the song even weirder is that Jeannie C. Riley, in her 20s at the time, is singing about her own mother, a woman who would have hit her prime while the boys were overseas in the Pacific. I guess the jukebox success of this song, evidenced by the worn grooves on this particular copy, gives a little hint to the motivations and secret wildness of Nixon's silent majority.

Plantation Records proprietor Shelby Singleton, name-checked here on the label, is yet another weird fixture of the Nashville music scene, and probably deserves a book of his own. He made a fortune on this particular single, purchased Sam Phillips' Sun Records (and back catalog) in 1969, and co-founded a label with Bill Cosby called Tetragrammaton, which released John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Two Virgins." Weird. Weird all over the place.

So, you know, a drink to the jukebox single, to the Elk lodge, to everyone in town being kind of a drunk and sexpot... Nostrovia!

Sin (1986)

Thanks to Alexander for the opportunity to contribute here! In gratitude, our first posting is a tribute to this blog's own inaugural entry, highlighting the beautiful Sun Records label via Johnny Cash.

Sin Records of Brixton, London, home only to the Mekons and only for a few years, was born in 1985 with these words: "I was out late the other night/Fear and whiskey kept me going/I swore somebody held me tight, but now there's just no way of knowing." Supposedly, Sam Phillips chose the name Sun Records as a symbol for a new beginning, new opportunity--you know, a new day.* Fitting, then, that the half-joke of Sin Records marked the Mekons' rebirth as a hybrid "country" act, replete with ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots.

In terms of their career arc, the Mekons don't get a good rap or a bad rap, but mostly just a weird rap. It seems hard at first to connect the dots from the Leeds post-punk scene (Gang of Four, Delta 5, Mekons) to Bloodshot records and quiet nights at Chicago's Hideout, but there's an underlying continuity threaded into the band's post-hiatus transition to "country" music.

In contrast to the Gang of Four, the Mekons were always already folk music, in a way. The narrative was remarkably consistent: some poor, disillusioned person trying to keep his or her shit together in the midst of some completely fucked and confusing situation. War, labor strikes, unfriendly strangers, unreliable friends and lovers--these environmental hazards are just as common in the Mekons discography as in the Anthology of American Folk Music. And somehow, there's nothing nostalgic or retro-fit about the Mekons, at all.

"The Edge of the World," Sin's second LP, is the first Mekons LP to feature Sally Timms and Jon Langford together, then in Leeds and now in Chicago, and always, surprisingly, the very same Mekons.


*Supposedly, meaning based on several unsourced websites, of course. It's worth pointing out that one of the four sites we referenced suggested the name was chosen due to the sun's "universal power." Sam Phillips was a weird enough dude where that certainly seems just as plausible. Who knows? Anyways...

HERE'S TO VETERANS

Design (1962)

I'll follow up on Peter's "simple and direct" choice, but this is on the other end of the elegance spectrum from Jazzland. Design Records: Talk about a misnomer. Could there be any less design on this label? Actually, there definitely could be. After teaching enough visual design classes, I have learned that someone can always find a way to make it worse. The font here is very smartly done, and it's got a crisp, tasteful, less-is-more style. However, I think that if you choose to name yourself Design, you might try and produce more interesting design.

no information provided

What a raw, simple and strange drawing. Beautiful. The music is similarly raw and direct coming from former Bad Livers plucker Ralph White, who I assume also did the drawing.

LHI (1969)

Monument (1965)

Columbia Record Club (1967)

Pickwick (1978)

Sun (1966)

The classic Sun label is one of my all-time favorites.