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Dalton
Roberts |
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Old musicians never
die, they just camp out in your head forever. I know because there’s a
big jam session going on in mine all the time. Pete Cassell is there.
He was a blind man who played on local radio when I was a boy. No one
could beat him at yodeling and doing recitations. When I was a child, a
neighbor who attended the Pilgrim Holiness Church on Taylor Street, told
us Pete was going to be there and I badgered mother until she let me go.
He branded me good that night. A few years ago when I
was on Earl Freudenberg’s Show talking about Pete, Bill Watson of
Ringgold was listening and made me some tapes of Pete’s songs. If Bill
becomes the worst serial killer in America, I will always love him for
doing that for me. The prophet Joel spoke of “restoring the years the
locust has eaten.” That sounds like an impossibility but Bill showed
me it could be quite real. I didn’t know Pete
recorded on several small labels and one major. Since then I have been
able to get a CD of his music from Old Homestead in Brighton, Michigan (www.mywebpages.comcast.net/oldhomestead). Another old picker who
refuses to be evicted from my mind is Floyd Tillman. In my teens I had
my first puppy love affair. Never underestimate the power of an early
puppy love. It can hit you like that hurricane just hit Florida and make
you as crazy as a hummingbird on vodka. At night I would lay
alone in my bedroom and listen to a small radio. One night they played
Floyd’s “I Love You So Much It Hurts Me,” and it almost finished
me off. I bought the 45 and played it until the needle ate through to
China. When my favorite poet,
James Dillet Freeman, died without me taking time to drive to Missouri
to meet him, I swore something like that would never happen again. I
decided to go see my heroes, so I tried to find someone to set me up a
brief sitting with Floyd. I finally communicated with a lady who knew
him personally. It quickly became clear that Floyd didn’t like
idolaters. He basically just liked his solitude. I shouldn’t have
been surprised. I had researched him enough to know how different he
was. After he had smash hits with “Slipping Around” and “I Love
You So Much It Hurts,” the Nashville star-makers counseled him about
buying a bus and hitting the road, explaining that big stars had to be
on the road to stir up record sales. Floyd just sat there lazily
blinking his eyes like a Texas steer in a rainstorm and quietly told
them he liked playing the clubs and joints in Houston and didn’t like
to be away from his sweet little wife and their farm. In other words,
take your stardom and shove it. He played around Houston until he was in
his eighties. Floyd died last year
at eighty-eight, exhausted by running away from fans like me. But I
caught up with him last week, thanks to a record review by Bill
Littleton, Nashville’s walking roots music encyclopedia. He put me
wise to “The Influence,” one of those tribute CDs that seldom turn
out right. This one did. There’s Floyd
singing “Slipping Around” with Dolly Parton” and “I Gotta Have
My Baby Back” with Ray Price and “Driving Nails In My Coffin” with
George Jones and “Each Night At Nine” with Willie Nelson and “I
Love You So Much It Hurts” with Connie Smith – possibly the best
female singer ever. Isn’t it hilarious
that this idol that fled my presence for years is now permanently
encased in my skull and captured in a little CD cell on my wall? I let
him out of his cell just long enough to sing to me.
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