#carson robison

[mudwerks]

(via That Horse Named Pete ~ Carson Robison and His Pleasant Valley Boys (1950)

[hazel-da-basil-deactivated]

Texas Dan -Carson Robison

Favorite Song from 1936

A song about a dangerous gunslinger.

I really like the rhythm, and the comedy in it.

[peonymoss]

[upperswampmonkey]

Carson Robison - I'm No Communist (1952).

[redrosesinblue]

[nocturnals-anonymous]

Carson Robison - “I'm No Communist” 

I'm no Communist, and I'll you that right now I believe a man should own his own house and car and cow I like this private ownership, and I want to be left alone Let the government run its business and let me run my own

Our government is bigger than it ever was today The more they hire to work for it, the more they have to pay Our public servants should be proud and honest you would think Instead of taking bribes and dressing up their wives in mink The taxes keep on going up of that there is no doubt But still they just can't take it in as fast as they dish it out Our national debt is monster size and growin' every day Our children's children, still unborn are gonna have to pay Our dollar used be the soundest money on this earth But now two bucks won't even buy a good old dollar's worth Unless we stop inflation and take care of what we've got The Communists may win the fight and never fire a shot

‘50s song written by a smart person.

[wakingfromthewater]

Visit Original Link

The bureaus and departments have been busy night and day They're figuring out just how we gave our secrets all away And Congress has appointed a committee, so they said To find who's American and who's a low-down red

[dinosaurdiscs]

"Late Carson Robison Pioneered Hillbilly Disk Biz 30 Years Ago"

This is a short obituary of Carson Robison, written by recording industry historian Jim Walsh, for Variety Magazine in 1957. It's very biased, but it tells a pretty good history of Robison's influence in the early hillbilly and country recording markets.

Late Carson Robison Pioneered Hillbilly Disk Biz 30 Years Ago

By Jim Walsh

Published April 24, 1957 in Variety Magazine

               Death on March 24 of Carson Robison points up the fact that the end of the pioneer hillbilly songwriting and recording era has been reached.

               Robison was the only survivor of the earliest hillbilly period, which began well over 30 years ago, who still managed to write and wax an occasional fair selling number. One of his last selling songs, “Life Gets Teejus, Don’t It?” dates back to 1948. (His one-time duet partner, Frank Luther, is still active, but long since eschewed the western and southern styles of pseudo-folk music to specialize in children’s records.)

               In retrospect, the emergence of the hillbilly platter as an important part of the American musical picture appears due chiefly to the earlier success of “race” records - blues and jazz - and later famous as rhythm & blues - and the way the newfangled radio muscled in on phono and record sales in the early 1920’s. An allied factor of success of special “foreign language supplements” for use chiefly by dealers in the larger cities.

               A smattering of Negro artists had made records from the earliest days of cylinders and disks. George W. Johnson began recording his laughing songs in the early 1890’s. By 1901 Bert Williams and George Walker were singing for Victor. A few years later Carroll Clark was singing “plantation songs” for Columbia. During the next decade or so the Fisk University Jubilee Quartet made many records of spirituals and camp meetings songs; Jim Europe’s band played dance music for Victor and Pathe (its soloist, Noble Sissle, also made many solo Pathes[)] and W.C. Handy’s Jazz Band recorded for Columbia. But it was not until Okeh came along in 1920 with “The Crazy Blues” and similar numbers by Mamie Smith and quickly followed with other Negro performers that the industry as a whole realized there was big money waiting for intensive cultivation of the specialized “race” field.

Radio Hits Sales

Record biz enjoyed its peak years, up to that time, in 1919, 1920 and 1921. Then, almost overnight, radio sneaked into the picture and the novelty of tuning in music and static from a distance, combined with the convenience of no cranks to wind and no records to buy and change, began sending the sales of platters downward. Something had to be done, and again the bright boys at Okeh thought of something. It occurred to them that a special series of southern-style records should sell below the Mason-Dixon line and that, to perhaps a less degree, there would be a market for cowboy-style ballads elsewhere, especially west of the Mississippi.

               Up to that time there had been virtually no recording of back country music. The nearest approach was a comic-talking specialty, “The Arkansas Traveler,” which Len Spencer had recorded, beginning in the ‘90’s, for many companies. Judged by enduring popularity, it was a phonograph classic.

               Late in 1923 Wendell Hall scored a terrific hit with a comedy number, “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’,” the music of which was adapted from another country dance tune. It undoubtedly made the nation music conscious, as it had not been before.

               But even before that Okeh had sent a scouting expedition into the south to capture some authentic hillbilly flavor. This was a couple of years before electric recording came into use and the portable horn recording equipment which it was necessary to transport didn’t give results that were good even by acoustic standards. But the boys really hit a hot one when they discovered “Fiddlin’ John Carson” down in Georgia. His bathetic Okeh record of “You’ll Never Miss Your Mother Till She’s Gone” coupled with the downright vulgar “Papa’s Billy Goat,” swept the south. So did “Old Joe Clark” and others of similar genre.

‘Wreck of the 97’

               Another find was Henry Whitter, a southwest Virginia mouth harp and git-tar player. His great hits included that southern ballad classic, “The Wreck of the Southern Old 97,” sung to the tune of Henry C. Work’s Civil War era opus, “The Ship That Never Returned.” Okeh added many other hillbillies to its string of performers and the other companies took notice and sent out recording parties of their own.

               So did the late Vernon Dalhart, greatest name of the early hillbilly era. Dalhart (real name Marion Try Slaughter) had grown up on a ranch in Texas and taken his show biz name from two near-by towns. With a background of operatic and Gilbert & Sullivan singing behind him, he had become one of the leading recording artists specializing in pop tunes. Then he head Whitter’s record of “The Wreck” and decided there might be money in this hillbilly racket. He made an Edison disk of the number coupled with a black face comedy song by Ernest Hare. And, for the year 1924, it sold amazingly.

               Dalhart decided a Victor record of the same song was in order. He found Victor responsive, but a hitch arose. There was no suitable coupling. Eventually, Dalhart came through with some scrawled doggerel which he said had been written by his cousin, Guy Massey, on the strength of a jail house experience. He called it “The Prisoner’s Song.” It was recorded and coupled with “The Wreck of the Old 97” and thus came into being one of the biggest selling records in all phono history.

               Dalhart went on to make thousands of records, singing for virtually every American platter purveyor. His ditties were so much in vogue that Edison issued five double-faced disks by him in one monthly supplement, and for a time each Edison cylinder supplement, circulating chiefly in rural areas, contained a complete list of the Dalhart backwoods classics.

Enter Carson Robison

               About here is where Carson Robison comes in. Metropolitan papers recording his death said “The Prisoner’s Song” swept him to success. Actually, Robinson had nothing to do with it, other, perhaps, than playing the guitar accompaniment in some of Dalhart’s waxings. (Dalhart’s first guitarist was Frank Ferara, soon succeeded by Robison. His fiddler was Murray Kellner, who gave way in 1927 to Adelyn Hood.)

               Robison, a native of Chetopa, Kans., came to New York in 1924, aged 34, after minor radio successes in Kansas City. He arrived with just $3.65, but was lucky enough to get in with Wendell Hall, who used him as a partner in a few Victor recordings. Robinson also got a job with a dance band as a feature whistler and made some whistling records. He worked with Gene Austin and Roy Smeck. But what seemed his big break came when he became associated with Dalhart in the bestseller list for years. One of the biggest was “My Blue Ridge Mountain Home.” His first song to attract notice, “ ‘Way Out West in Kansas,” was on the back of Dalhart’s Edison record of “The Prisoner’s Song.”

               Robison had a natural gift of melody and a keen sense of topical values. He soon became a specialist in writing songs about wrecks and disasters. When the giant dirigible, the Shenandoah, crashed, he contrived “The Wreck of the Shenandoah.” He sought out details of obscure Southern train wrecks and chronicled the harrowing details, both words and music, always being sure to take on a moral at the end, to the effect that no man knows when death will strike, “so be prepared to meet your doom.” Some appeared under his own name; some under the maiden name, Maggie Andrews, of his mother, and some under the alias of Carlos B. McAfee - a name that Robison said in later years he had no idea how he hit on.

               There were other disguises, but if a successful hillbilly song were written in the ‘20’s and ‘30’s, chances were it was Robison’s work. Soon he ceased to be merely an accompanist and arranger for Dalhart and was given equal billing on the records, which they made not only under their own names but a bewildering array of no de disks.

Team Splits

The team split in 1927. Robison said Dalhart, who had been getting a third of his song publication royalties, demanded half and he wouldn’t agree. From the time he lost Robison, Dalhart ran out of good material and by 1930 he was through as a hillbilly recording artist of any stature. Robison teamed up with Frank Luther, and together they were known as Bud and Joe Billings. The Black Bros., the Jimson Bros., etc., in addition to their real names.

Their popularity lasted long after Dalhart’s had declined, and even after the record business went to pot in the ‘30’s, Robison was a popular radio figure and made successful tours abroad. Records by Carson Robison & His Pioneers sold well not only in England, but in India, New Zealand and Australia. During World War II he made a series of big selling Bluebird platter containing gives at Hitler and Mussolini.

Perhaps the first phase of the pioneer hillbilly recording era ended when Dalhart began to decline, and Jimmy Rodgers and the Carter Family began their enormously successful efforts in 1927. Rodgers is now regarded as one of the great classic characters of hillbillyana. His records still sell and there is an annual observance honoring him in his native Mississippi. The Carter Family, from Maces Spring, Va. has undergone changes of personnel - in fact, there have been two competing groups - but the name is still a potent one on platters.

In more recent years, the hillbilly market, thanks to performers like Roy Acuff, Hank Snow, Hank Williams, Ernest Tubbs, Little Jimmy Dickens and entirely too many others to mention, has realized potentialities never dreamed of in the 1920’s. Solely on the strength of country music’s appeal, Nashville has become one of the nation’s leading music publishing centers. But it remains true that Carson Robison’s death marks the end of the tru pioneer hillbilly recording era.