DO press that button: The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp

Another story-in-song which made an impression on me as a child was The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp, written by Dallas Frazier. Like Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town, the song had been a hit for Johnny Darrell on the US country charts in 1967, but I became aware of it via O.C. Smith's soulful interpretation, a greater success in Britain than America, the following year.

Listening to the opening chorus now, I'm aware of how quickly and efficiently the story is set up with a few telling details, preparing us for the fuller account to follow in the verses:

Oh, the path was deep and wide
From footsteps leading to our cabin,
Above the door there burned a scarlet lamp,
And late at night a hand would knock
And there would stand a stranger -
Yes, I'm the son of Hickory Holler's tramp.

When I first heard the song on Top of the Pops, however, I imagined that it was about some ne'er-do-well father who had belatedly decided to reveal his identity to his son, heedless of the public humiliation the child would suffer when it became known his dad was a vagrant.

Yes, yes, a cursory reading of the lyrics suggests an alternative scenario. But I had just turned ten and hadn't yet acquired the habit of analysing songs. Though O.C. Smith's record was certainly more than just an upbeat sound for me. As with Ruby and Honey, certain lines stuck in my ten-year-old mind - including, appropriately enough, the narrator's lack of awareness, when young, of local disapproval:

All we really cared about
Was Momma's chicken dumplings
And a goodnight kiss
Before we went to bed

Not to mention a rather curious and not wholly logical mondegreen which might well say something about my own childhood. I heard the final verse as:

Last summer Momma passed away
And left no one to love her
Each and every one was
More than grateful for their burden

I can't think now how I squared that mishearing of the second line (suggesting the entire brood predeceased her) with lines 3 and 4, although "burden" is consistent with my religious upbringing, which carried with it the implication that to be alive is to  suffer and endure.

Despite that, I didn't miss the essentially joyous, celebratory nature of the song. It may have contradicted what I thought I'd just heard, yet I accepted that the family were still a unit and all very much alive, honouring the memory of the mother who had kept them together, in this (corrected) version of the full verse:

Last summer Momma passed away
And left the ones who loved her
Each and every one is
More than grateful for their birth
And each Sunday she receives
A big bouquet of fourteen roses
With a card that reads
"The Greatest Mom on Earth."

So, listening as child, I picked out the bits I could understand and tried to make some kind of sense out of what I couldn't, beguiled as I was by O.C. Smith's singing and the irresistible rasp of those horns.

But before we listen to them blare here's a more pared-down arrangement: Johnny Darrell's take, which seems to have been the first version of the song to be recorded, in September 1967 (he was also the first to record The Green, Green Grass of Home). "Decent" seems the way to describe it: straight ahead, delivering the lyrics, trusting them to do the job; another, not dissimilar rendering by Merle Haggard can be found here.





In his own way, O.C. Smith does the same, but that sense of gospel-style celebration I mentioned permeates the whole record, the (all-female?) chorus, as though representing the rest of the family, joyously affirming the truth of his testimony:





At the age of ten I didn't know anything about gospel singing or its relation to soul music - probably wasn't too clear what soul music was, other than the Tamla Motown hits I might have heard on Top of the Pops, which I had only begun watching the previous year. I'd like to say that hearing Smith was a revelation which set me off on a lifelong quest to snap up unconsidered soul gems, but it wasn't so. (Didn't get enough pocket money, for a kickoff.)

Besides, encouraged by his appearance on Top of the Pops, I was more taken at the time with the unhinged passion of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown - a  hothead if ever there was one. Here is the performance which so captivated me then:





I have no clear memory of whether my brothers liked or disliked The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp, though it stayed in the charts for months and would almost have been on Top of the Pops more than once.

Judgement was passed on my musical taste outside the family home that summer. When we were on holiday in a small town in Ireland I tried to play Fire three times in succession on a jukebox in the local cafe - to the annoyance and incredulity of at least one other patron as Arthur first effected his diabolical introduction. I must have pressed a wrong button, however, because The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp played as the second selection.

(adopting sonorous voice:) Now, I don't know who guided my hand that day - possibly that same Person whose representatives on Earth encouraged me to think of life as burdensome - but that slip helped to fix the song in my mind forevermore, long after my passion for Fire had burnt itself out.

And with the knowledge I have acquired since then, I can see that although The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp was originally a country song, it's not unrelated to the gospel tradition of celebrating the role of the mother. An earlier post about the Soul Stirrers, here, includes a clip of Sam Cooke's group performing live, straining to drive the crowd into a frenzy, and it's the maternal references, cannily held in reserve, which finally do the trick.

Not that O.C. Smith's performance is similarly frenetic. "Jubilant" - not, of course, without its own gospel connotations - would be more appropriate. Which is understandable on two counts.

 Smith came from a jazz, rather than a gospel, background, singing with Count Basie in  the early sixties  (there is a detailed biography on the soulwalking website here). And where actual gospel songs on the subject tend towards the self-lacerating ("Did I treat my mother right?"), the message of Hickory Holler's Tramp, even if delivered in soul/gospel mode, is essentially upbeat: the children weren't fully aware of what was happening, and as adults they can only feel gratitude, not guilt, about their mother's sacrifice.

There are quite a few other covers of the song. Johnny Darrell was quickly followed by Sanford Clark, at the end of 1967, and there were at least eight more in 1968 alone, including the UK's Joe Brown. (You can find it here, though Mike Leander's arrangement sticks pretty close to Smith's record; the best bit is the guitar intro.) The composer, Dallas Frazier, recorded it himself in 1970, and it's also to be found on Kenny Rogers' second solo album.

Which makes me think just how much these three songs are interconnected by a kind of mutual admiration society. Goldsboro recorded Ruby and O.C. Smith recorded Honey, and had a hit with another song by its composer, Little Green Apples. The latter had been written by Russell for Roger Miller who, as I said in an earlier post, recorded the first version of Ruby which Kenny Rogers heard, and which seems to have inspired the First Edition's rockified smash. And whether out of simple gratitude for the pointer or some reason beyond my dull computing Mary Arnold, that member of the First Edition who joshingly dubbed their blend of country and rock as "crock", later married Miller ...

Enough. Here's Kenny Rogers' version. To my ears this doesn't have the whoomph of Ruby, though it's certainly cleverly done: the arrangement builds and builds, unlike some other country versions.

And country it is, or at least a crossover version of it, not "crock". Despite an opening which momentarily suggests it could be going in a more adventurous, rock-oriented direction, each new layering of instruments establishes it ever more firmly and reassuringly as a listener-friendly form of country. Rogers' first album was, William DeYoung says, an uneven mix of styles but the second, in which Hickory Holler's Tramp features, was

a cleanly-produced ... pop/country record that would ... light the way for a generation of crossover artists to come.

You can find out more about the song's composer, Dallas Frazier, on his page on the Nashville Songwriters Foundation website, here. I was surprised to learn he was also the composer of the Hollywood Argyles' Alley Oop, a song referenced by both Marc Bolan ("dinosawer") and ... David Bowie ("Look at those cavemen go"). Here's his own version of Hickory Holler's Tramp:





He also wrote Mohair Sam, the tune recorded by Charlie Rich which Elvis kept playing on the jukebox when the Beatles came to call. Here's Frazier's own version:





Which rendition helps make sense of a comment he once made about his songwriting:

I'm basically country because of being raised in the heart of country music -- but I have a lot of blues in my soul.

This is a considerably revised and expanded version of a 2010 post.



Links: 

My post about Honey is here.
Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town or The Angel Went can be found here. 
A biography of O.C. Smith can be found on the Soulwalking website here.
Kenny Rogers: Built to Last by Bill DeYoung is here. It's a detailed account of his career (to 1998, when it was written); DeYoung interviewed Rogers and other members of the First Edition for the piece.
Dallas Frazier's page on The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame website is here.