CD Odyssey Disc 1611: Johnny Horton

Happy New Year! 2022 was quite an eventful year and I think I could use fewer events in 2023. A nice quiet year. Yeah, I’m sure that’s what will happen.

Disc 1611 is…The Best of Johnny Horton

Artist: Johnny Horton

Year of Release: 2017 but featuring songs from 1955 to 1960

What’s up with the Cover?  Mr. Horton himself, looking very dapper in his ‘outfit for cowboys who don’t actually have to work on the range’ attire. This lack of authenticity is also what sets some of the tunes back – but more on that later.

How I Came To Know It: I grew up with Johnny Horton and I’ve loved him all my life.

I already had a solid Greatest Hits package for Horton, but this release has a ton of songs I’d never heard before, so I decided to give it a shot. You can’t have too much Johnny Horton in your collection. Or can you…?

How It Stacks Up: as a compilation album, this doesn’t “stack up” under CD Odyssey rules.

Ratings: No ratings for best of albums. This is because they’re not records in the strictest sense, but more of a selection of music.

Do you like Johnny Horton? Maybe you own Johnny Horton’s Greatest Hits (reviewed back at Disc 725, FYI). Well, before you take the leap from the 13 songs on that record to the 50 on this one, you better like Johnny Horton a lot.

I do like Johnny Horton a lot, but this compilation put that opinion to the test in places. As with more aggressively curated collections, Horton’s music falls into one of three broad categories: working man tunes, romantic rambles and historic set-pieces. Here you just get more of it.

Country Life

These are tunes where Horton celebrates the slow meandering country life. These are the “countriest” of his tunes and are often punctuated with fiddle and steel guitar solos. I will give the 1950s credit on those – back then Soulless Record Execs landed some Grade A studio talent. Despite the early recording techniques on this stuff, it is hard to not love the musicianship.

The tunes themselves are OK, but that jumpy pop-country delivery of Horton’s can take a heartfelt expression of pastoral love on a song like “In My Home in Shelby County” and make them feel kind of…fake.

Worse is “Go and Wash Your Dirty Feet” which is a song about how young kids in the country used to run about barefoot. It is supposed to be whimsical and fun, but I just couldn’t get the thought of those dirty feet tromping through the house at the end of the day. Yech. Better is “Sleepy-Eyed John” which I like to imagine features the same rapscallion, now fully grown and finding himself not only without shoes, but without britches as well.

Romantic Rambles

These are mixed bag, with some of Horton’s best songs ever in this genre, but also some of his creepiest.

On the “best” side is “Whispering Pines” a beautiful warbler of a tune, featuring a lovelorn fellow serenading the trees in the hopes they’ll send his baby back to him. On the strength of lyrics alone, this tune is unadulterated schmaltz, but with Horton’s high tenor evoking the gods of love, you will be well and truly smitten. The guitar bits in the song are also sublime.

On the creepy side, we have “All Grown Up”. Opening with a chorus of very childlike singers chanting, “hey daddy, I’m all grown up.” It gets worse from there with…

“Standing at your door just like I done before
You've changed so strange, you're all grown up
You wear those heels and hose dressed up in your mama's clothes
You're hip, I'm flipped, you’re all grown up”

Yeesh.

Historic Set-Pieces

This is what Johnny Horton is most famous for, with enduring ballads “The Battle of New Orleans” and “Sink the Bismark” still kicking around most record collections of any significant vintage. I grew up loving this stuff as a kid, and it has sunk pretty deep into my consciousness over those formative years. These tunes still hold up well, although songs like “Sink the Bismark” are over too soon. That 2:30 song length of the 1950s gets in the way of what could’ve been even more memorable verses.

On this massive collection, Johnny reminded me of Swedish metal band, “Sabaton” in his propensity to tell exactly the details of each battle or historic event, never mind the metaphor. We learn young Abe Lincoln was good at wrestling and that John Paul Jones killed one of his crew, but don’t expect much exposition beyond that, because the “Cole’s Notes” approach to song length leaves precious little time to tell a story.

Overall, I enjoyed getting a whole host of new (to me) Johnny Horton tunes, even though some of them land flat. Horton is great when he’s crooning away, or digging into some historic Civil War battle, but despite great musicianship, there are too many moments where the emotional authenticity is missing, often because the song is in too much of a damned hurry to wrap up.

In those moments Horton leaves behind his folksy country and western charm and becomes a studio vocalist, in tune and with a lovely tone, but uninspired. His voice is a joy to hear, but I liked it best when I felt a bit of gravitas and pain in the delivery.

Best tracks: North to Alaska, When It’s Springtime in Alaska (It’s Forty Below), Lost Highway, Joe’s Been A-Getting’ There, Young Abe Lincoln, The Battle of New Orleans, Sink the Bismark, Comanche (the Brave Horse), Whispering Pines

CD Odyssey Disc 725: Johnny Horton

My beloved Bruins tanked the end of the season and are heading to the golf course early this year. Damn. Being a sports fan can be hard. Anyone who says it’s no big deal isn’t a sports fan.

Disc 725 is…. Greatest Hits

Artist: Johnny Horton

Year of Release: 1961 but featuring music from 1953-1960

What’s up with the Cover? Johnny Horton looking very bonnie in his red blazer and white shirt. When I was a kid I thought Johnny was some kind of mythic hero when I looked at this cover. I still kind of feel that way.

How I Came To Know It: My Mom owned this on record and I put it on often as a kid. Now that record is mine (thank you Mom!) and I’ve bought it on CD as well since it is really hard to walk around town while listening to vinyl.

How It Stacks Up:  Best of albums don’t stack up, jerky!

Rating: Best of albums also don’t get rated, just reviewed. I have a studio album (sort of) by Horton as well and I’ll review that when I get there.

Back in 1961 when this album came out “best of” wasn’t really that different from a lot of regular studio albums. Through the fifties, artists just released a bunch of singles and when the Soulless Record Execs figured they had enough of them, they’d market them as an LP.

The year before “Greatest Hits” Johnny Horton had released “Johnny Horton Makes History” and seeing it do pretty well, I suspect the aforementioned Soulless Record Execs mashed a bunch of those songs into some of his other popular favourites and had at ‘er. Even my studio album, “Battle of New Orleans” is just a repackaging of a bunch of pre-existing hits mostly from the fifties, but at least it doesn't rub it in my face.

Of the 13 songs on “Greatest Hits,” eight of them appear on “Battle of New Orleans” (hint: those are the songs you’ve heard of). However, I’m going to focus this review on the other five songs.  I’m whimsical that way.

First though, I would be remiss if I didn’t say something about Johnny Horton in general. Horton is one of the most beautiful vocalists I’ve ever heard. He is part rockabilly fifties crooner and part country balladeer, and the combination is enchanting. His tone is pure and easy; capable of climbing way up the scale without ever losing its power or his undeniable ‘manliness’. That he died so young is a true tragedy.

Horton could have been a fifties pop icon with that voice but instead he chose to bring American history to life through music. Sometimes the songs are a bit hokey, but Horton’s sincerity almost always shines through. He also does some top forty type fare to show he can do that as well. These include playful songs like “I’m Ready If You’re Willing” slower tear-jerkers like “The Mansion You Stole” and the sublime “All for the Love of a Girl.”

All three of those songs aren’t on my other album, but given the subject matter I need to mention at least one song that appears on both of my records. That is “Whispering Pines,” which is one of the most heart-rending songs I’ve ever heard. I also holds the distinction of being the first song to make me truly understand what it is to have your heart rent.

I think I was around 9 or 10 when “Whispering Pines” first started to affect me. I loved being out in nature back then, and I think the song’s naturalist imagery appealed to me. I could key in on the Mourning Dove cooing tragically for a lost mate through the whispering pine trees and understand true loss through music, long before hormones would make me susceptible to the same fate. I’d wander the woods singing this song, reveling in the abject sadness of it.

“Whispering pines, whispering pines, tell me is it so?

Whispering pines, whispering pines, you’re the ones who know.

My darling’s gone, o she’s gone, and I need your sympathy

Whispering pines, send my baby back to me.”

To this day when I’m out for walk in the woods on a windy day (far less common in recent years) this song always springs to mind. Whenever I’m feeling lonely and forsaken it comes to me just as surely, no trees required.

As far as the history songs go, I’ll stick to my original promise and limit my commentary to the two songs that appear only here in my collection: “Jim Bridger” and “Johnny Freedom.”

“Jim Bridger” is the reason I bought this album, despite having more than half the songs somewhere else (did I mention that yet?) Jim Bridger was an actual legend of early America – an explorer and outdoorsman of the 19^th century. As a kid I just loved the heroic nature of the character the way Johnny sung it:

“Once there was a mountain man who couldn’t write his name

Yet he deserves a front row seat in history’s hall of fame

He forgot more about the Indians than we will ever know

He spoke the language of the Sioux, the Blackfoot and the Crow.”

The other song, “Johnny Freedom” is not a real character, but instead an amalgamation of a bunch of Americana virtues that are comically ridiculous. All the earnest storytelling of “Jim Bridger” is out the window. Horton lays it on thick from the start, opening with a banjo strumming “God Save the Queen.” “Johnny Freedom” dumps tea in Boston Harbour, pioneers out west and as evidenced by these lyrics eventually becomes some kind of combination of Abraham Lincoln, a hired goon and a gigolo:

“If we need a mess of thinking, he’s the Lincoln of the day

If we’re fixin’ for a tussle it’s his muscle all the way

If we need a handsome fella so the ladies’ hearts can throb

There’s a Yankee-doodle-dandy always handy for the job.”

Yikes. I am pleased to say at the tender age of ten I knew this song sucked as surely as I knew that “Whispering Pines” was pure gold.

Despite “Johnny Freedom” this Greatest Hits package is a brilliant collection of one of country music’s early greats. Over forty years of listening to it, I’ve never grown tired of it.

Best tracks: A whole bunch of great stuff also on “Battle of New Orleans” including “Whispering Pines” and  a couple of sweet tracks not on that record – notably “Jim Bridger” and “All For the Love of a Girl.”