The guitarist and bassist might be Cropper & Dunn, but it’s hard for me to tell without another 15 years of age (and hair) on them. It might be worth noting that while those two worked out of Memphis, Pete Drake was a Nashville guy. Could still be them, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millie_Kirkham

The audience for these TV shows would not expect frantic whooping-it-up unless it was clog dancers. And this isn’t a fast dance tune. Think of the country music culture in that time period. People behaved differently. It didn’t mean that they were zombies or lobotomized. Sheesh.

Sadly, I didn’t get to see this video before it was taken down.

Fuller story here: http://www.jpgr.co.uk/pas10002.html

Back in the mid ’90s, I was living in Olympia Warshington. I would make frequent trips down to Centralia and Chehalis to hit the thrift shops and to visit Richard’s Art Yard.

On one of these trips, I found a record called 50 Country and Western Hits. It was one of those half-assed Starday compilations of Nashville also-rans. I picked it up for my girlfriend at the time. Until I scrutinized the album cover.

There were the standards in all of their early sixties grand-ol-opry wannabe stylings; White Stetsons, bolo ties, toothy smiles.

Until on reached a photo of this balding, pallid, liver-lipped nobody called Pete Drake. On this album he has one of those vacant thousand mile stares and a paisley shirt.

In all honesty, I never looked at the album cover until I heard his song. A Frampton-esque tribute to the late Porte Waggoner’s Satisfied Mind.

Always wanting to assume that art is born from adversity, and trying to make sense of the soul wrenching truth meets Steven Hawking vocals, and not knowing Drake’s background, I contrived my own history of Pete Drake.

In my mind, he was a young trachiotamy (sp?) victim, who fell in love with the true country legends, but because of his ailment (pasty, liver-lipped, voice-box-removed) couldn’t sing. So he picked the closest instrument to a human voice box (steel guitar) and rigged the open hole in his neck to a microphone wired in to the pickups on said steel guitar so he could sing.

That is a pretty amazing thing to want to believe in, no?

I began collecting as much of his steel guitar work as possible. I have a lot. I love it more than Charlie Rich singing “Life Has It’s Little Ups and Downs”. And, that, my friends, is a lot.

I am also a huge believer in mix CD’s (nee Mixtapes). Mark, forgive me, but anyone who is going to dig this deep into Pete Drake deserves to contact me at mike@mountholly-lamano.com for instructions can connect for more info…am I wrong?

I swap.

So, long story short. Mr. Drake was not disabled. He played steel in The Sons of The Pioneers back in the ’50s. He became a session musician for Nashville. He worked an early morning job as a milkman (his nickname was The Milkman) will sitting in on literally every session requiring steel guitar that came out of Nashville from 1959 to roughly 1974.

Most of you not prone to overalls and bare feet (I pity you) can sample mor of Nick Drakes work on Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline and George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass.

Thanks for the coincidence, Boing Boing. I wish I could say it was the first time, but I can’t.

Wikipedia has an article about Sonovox and its relatives at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_box

Devices like this were around as early as the thirties. You can hear the effect in old radio commercials of the era (wish I could remember the product that made it famous…). The guitarist Alvino Rey used it on record in 1939. And the sound turns up in movies such as “Dumbo,” where it modulates the whistle of the circus train, Casey Jr.

According to the same Wiki, the Pete Drake track in the video dates from 1964.

I misspent my youth doing sound and lighting for local bar bands. Certain notes can really rattle your teeth. It hurts.

Wikipedia says it dates back to 1939. Who knew?

But keep in mind, as poor as my grammar is, my grampar is poorer.

Good night.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059692/

Its creepy. But in an offsetting way.