Hogie's Heroes: Tennessee Ernie Ford

Just to preface: I pretty much decided that I'd blog here about music that I'd experienced chronologically starting from early childhood. Beyond Puff the Magic Dragon or those Power book and record sets, I wasn't much of an independent record purchaser in early elementary school. So we're mostly dealing with my parents' record collection at this point...hence we're a few years away from rockin' out. My parents didn't have edgy tastes.

As a kid I always kept coming back to Mom's Tennessee Ernie Ford records. Like Herb Alpert, a lot of the songs were funny and kid friendly. Ford's warm drawl reminded me of my Uncle from Texas, an easy natured guy who loved fishing and jelly donuts. Given that Ford's music served as the aural equivalent of comfort food, it's ironic that the one song he sang I still remember is a dark portrait of the hopelessness of working poverty. Hell, the song even positions Ford as a badass that you wouldn't want to run into! Still it's a snappy little cover of depressing, and I remember it well enough that I surprised my wife by singing along to it when it popped up at the end of an episode of Mad Men. (She was impressed and a little disturbed.)