Tag: June Carter

Hank Williams – Hey, Good Lookin’

I got a hot rod ford and a two dollar bill
And I know a spot right over the hill
There’s soda pop and the dancin’s free
So if you want to have fun come along with me

 If you had told me that Chuck Berry wrote those lyrics I would have completely believed you. I have to wonder how often this line has been used in the history of dating since this song came out?

Little Jimmy Dickens said that Williams wrote the song in just 20 minutes while on tour with Dickens and Minnie Pearl. He intended the song for Dickens but decided to keep it for himself after realizing its potential.

The song was released in 1951. It was recorded at Castle Studio in Nashville with his backing band The Drifting Cowboys. After the release, he was on the Kate Smith Evening Show to debut it. The video is at the bottom and the girl beside him is June Carter…later to be June Carter Cash. 

Williams was making inroads into a more crossover audience. He was the first country star to make an appearance on the Perry Como show at the time. He was wildly popular in the early 1950s. He probably would have helped broaden country music’s popularity had he lived longer. 

This song is very popular, to say the least. It has been covered 252 times and more than once by his son as well.  Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Gene Vincent all tackled it in 1958. Other versions have included those by George Jones (1959), Ray Charles (1962), Del Shannon (1964), Roy Orbison (1970), and Waylon Jennings (1985). A 1973 live version by Van Morrison was on the expanded 2016 reissue of his It’s Too Late To Stop Now set.

Hank Williams took 12 songs to #1 and had 55 charted singles in his career, which ended too soon when he died on Jan. 1, 1953, at the age of only 29. He is listed as the writer or co-writer of 167 songs in his lifetime. 

The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles at the time. In 2004 it peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart with Jimmy Buffet singing and also #63 on the Billboard 100. 

The man lived hard…look at the bottom video. He is just 27 years old in that clip…he could be easily mistaken for much older. He was one of the best songwriters in the 20th Century. 

Hank Williams:  “If a song can’t be written in 20 minutes, it ain’t worth writing.”

Hey Good Lookin’

Say hey, good lookin’ whatcha got cookin’?
How’s about cookin’ something up with me?
Hey, sweet baby don’t you think maybe
We can find us a brand new recipe?

I got a hot rod ford and a two dollar bill
And I know a spot right over the hill
There’s soda pop and the dancin’s free
So if you want to have fun come along with me

Hey, good lookin’ whatcha got cookin’?
How’s about cookin’ something up with me?

I’m free and ready so we can go steady
How’s about saving all your time for me
No more lookin’ I know I been cookin’
How’s about keepin’ steady company?

I’m gonna throw my date book over the fence
And find me one for five or ten cents
I’ll keep it ’til it’s covered with age
‘Cause I’m writin’ your name down on every page

Say hey, good lookin’ whatcha got cookin’?
How’s about cookin’ something up with me?

…

Kris Kristofferson – Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down

I first heard Kristofferson as a kid with Why Me on the radio during the seventies. I also remember him on SNL with his then-wife Rita Coolidge. You could tell Kris had been having some fun but it sounded good. Then I found Janis Joplin’s Me and Bobby McGee and I found out that Kris wrote that song…I became a fan. Plus he was one of the Outlaws in country music that I really liked. 

In the sixties, Kris was working as a janitor in Nashville while living in a run-down tenant house. He was also a janitor at Columbia Records at the same time. This might seem normal for a songwriter who was trying to make a mark but the man had something else as well. He was a Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford University earning a master’s degree in English language. He also served as a captain in the U.S. Army, where he became a helicopter pilot, in addition to having completed U.S. Army Ranger School. The guy was highly talented and very smart.

He befriended Johnny’s wife, June Carter. June liked Kristofferson, and would often sneak demo tapes of his songs in her purse to bring home to Johnny. At night, she’d play the tapes for him in their bedroom above Old Hickory Lake in Tennessee. Every night Cash would listen and throw them out the bedroom window into the lake below. 

There are many stories about how Johnny got the song…but this is the version that Johnny told. At the time, Kristofferson was also working part-time as a helicopter pilot for the Army Reserve. On a routine flight training mission, Kristofferson veered off his course and headed for Cash’s home. After landing the chopper on Cash’s lawn, he walked up to the home with the demo of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” in hand. Cash said he heard the chopper land and walked out to find Kristofferson walking up to him.

“As I approached, out stepped Kris Kristofferson, with a beer in one hand and a tape in the other,” Cash said. “I stopped, dumbfounded. He grabbed my hand, put the tape in it, grinned and got back into the helicopter and was gone, a bit wobbly, but almost straight up, then out high above the lake where all his songs lay on the bottom. He disappeared through the clouds. I looked at the tape of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “Me And Bobby McGee.”

The first version of this song was not by Johnny Cash. Ray Stevens did the first version of the song. Ray’s version peaked at #55 on the Country Charts in 1969. Johnny Cash did the most successful version releasing it in 1970. The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard Country Charts, #1 on the Canada Country Charts, and #30 in Canada on the RPM charts. 

Kris passed away on September 28, 2024. 

Sunday Mornin’ Comin’Down

Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head, that didn’t hurt
And the beer I had for breakfast,
Wasn’t bad so I had one more, for dessert
Then I fumbled through my closet,
For my clothes and found my cleanest dirty shirt
And I shaved my face and combed my hair,
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day

I’d smoked my brain the night before on cigarettes and songs
That I’d been pickin’
But I lit my first, and watched a small kid cussin’ at a can
That he was kickin’
Then I crossed the empty street and caught the Sunday smell
Of someone fryin’chickin
And it took me back to somethin’ that I had lost somehow,
Somewhere along the way

[Chorus]
On the Sunday morning sidewalk, wishin’ Lord that I was stoned
Cause there is something in a Sunday, makes a body feel alone
And there is nothing short of die’n, half a lonesome as the sound
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks, Sunday morning coming down

In the park I saw a daddy,
With ‘w(?)’ laughin’ little girl who he was swingin’
And I stopped beside a Sunday school,
And listened to a song that they were singin’
Then I headed back for home and somewhere far away
A lonely bell was ringin’
And it echoed through the canyons like the disappearing dreams
Of yesterday

[Chorus]
On the Sunday morning sidewalk, wishing Lord that I was stoned
Cause there is something in a Sunday, make a body feel alone
And there is nothing short of die’n, half a lonesome as the sound
On the sleepin’ city sidewalks, Sunday morning coming do