Ponderables
Why can’t any politician ever give a simple “yes” or “no” answer?
What compels sports play-by-play callers and colour commentators to use cumbersome phrases such as “the stick of Ovechkin” instead of the possessive “Ovechkin’s stick?”
Things I firmly Believe
Under no circumstances should we ever let our debit or credit cards out of our sight.
Dale Carnegie was absolutely right when he said that if we lay an egg the best thing to do is stand back and admire it.
Teams are never as good as they look during a winning streak nor as bad as they look during a losing streak.
A Super Bowl Bust
Last Sunday’s Super Bowl was the most boring football game I’ve ever seen, plus the ads were sub par and the half-time show was beyond painful. The best line I heard about the game itself was that neither team wanted to win because nobody wants to have to visit the White House these days.
Perhaps I Was Wrong
I didn’t think it was possible for any politician to be as repulsive as Donald Trump, but Nancy Pelosi is causing me to think that I may have been mistaken.
My List Of Country Music’s Best Performers
This, of course, is just my opinion
Marty Robbins was the best male country singer ever; Patsy Cline the best female singer; Glen Campbell the most versatile; Chet Atkins the best lead guitar player; Ed Hyde the best rhythm guitar player; Leon McAuliffe the best steel guitar player; Jerry Douglas (still active) the best dobro player; Chubby Wise the best fiddler; Earl Scruggs the best banjo player; Jethro Burns the best mandolin player; W. S. Holland the best drummer; Roy Huskey Jr. the best bass player; and, Johnny Cash had the most commanding stage presence.
Jethro Burns and Chet Atkins were married to twin sisters, Lois and Leona Johnson. And, yes, Jethro was one-half of the country comedy duo Homer and Jethro, whose real names were Henry Haynes and Kenneth Burns. They became Homer and Jethro when a Knoxville radio announcer forgot their names while introducing them on a live show. They were only sixteen years old at the time and didn’t feel they should complain, so the names stuck. Chet Atkins’ brother Jim played with the Les Paul trio. There must have been some great jam sessions at the Atkins house.
Chubby Wise and Ed Hyde were long-time members of Hank Snow’s band, The Rainbow Ranch Boys, who played on most (if not all) of his hit records. At the height of Hank’s popularity the band also included Sleepy McDaniel on bass and Buford Gentry on steel guitar with, of course, Hank himself playing lead acoustic guitar. From the early 70s until the mid-90s I spent a lot of time in Nashville and often heard country music pundits rank that particular aggregation as the best five-piece country band ever. Listening to I’m Moving On; The Golden Rocket; Rhumba Boogie; Music Makin’ Mama From Memphis Tennessee; Honeymoon On A Rocketship; I Don’t Hurt Anymore; and Golden River makes it hard to argue with that assessment.
W. S. Holland was Johnny Cash’s drummer for decades. When Holland started with Cash, Johnny changed the name of his backup band from The Tennessee Two (Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant) to The Tennessee Three.
My Five Favourite Songs (Not Just Country)
They are: Faded Love; Sunday Morning Coming Down; Hallelujah; Closing Time; and, Hotel California. A couple of comments are in order.
Many of you will not recognize Faded Love. It was a melancholy love song about lovers breaking up that was a Bob Wills country hit in 1950, and I have no idea why, when I was only twelve years old, it became, and still is, my favourite song of all time. Then Patsy Cline had a hit with it in 1963, which reinforced its number one position on my list.
Although Leonard Cohen holds two of my top five spots, and even though I spent a lot of time in some of his haunts in Montreal during the 70s and 80s, to my great regret I never saw him perform.