Sure Fire Kisses (MP3)

Justin Tubb  & Goldie Hill  -  Sure Fire Kisses 

Justin's 45-themed Nudie attire is likely the best stage wear any of us will ever see.  Surely, Ernest was beaming with pride.  Courtesy of Bear Family's superb Pepper Hot Baby, a collection of Tubb's honky-tonkin' 1950s sides.

My confession: The Rat Fink book I co-wrote with Ed Roth. IT'S FINKING TIME!

One of the hardest things I ever did was write this book with Ed Roth. He was so nuts! He made me make up a lot of his autobiography. Haha. He had a letter that I wrote him in nutso beatnik slang, that i wrote after meeting him in 1986 with Miriam Linna, Billy Miller, Andrea Kusten, etc.(see Miriam's recent postings here & on Facebook for info on that fateful day, Miriam wound up writing the intro to this book. I was pretty vocal that i wanted her to write the book but it was too late...), this letter was the blueprint for all writing of Fink stuff from that point on. He had called & asked me to write the comics he was publishing, but I couldn't get it together. So some years later in fine small town hick style, not realizing just how large a city Noo Yawk really iz, the Grand Finkster hisself jingled our ol' bud Pat Redding who was handling the krazy book deal-o in da big rotten apple & sez "Hey Pat! You live in New York, do ya know this cat named Howie Pyro?" (kinda slipped into the sorta lingo the book was scrawled in...). Miraculously she did & he said he wanted me to write it. He just happened to wind up on the phone with the one person in the publishing field in the biggest city on earth (or there abouts) who DID know me. Too weird. Or maybe not weird enough. Anyhooo this thing was WRITTEN, yeah, written with pencil/pen & paper! Waaay before computers, and i couldn't type. Still can't! It took forever & was beyond difficult. Big Daddy turned out to be pretty darned difficult as well. I loved him to death & don't wanna tarnish his rep (hahaha) but truth is he hated Rock N Roll & I seriously hadda fight to get it in the book. And other stuff too. And he insisted on mentioning his wife Bev literally about every other sentence, like a thousand times. (We counted cuz they had to pay me to remove her damned name & change it to "my wife" when she left him & he didn't want her name in it anymore! It had to be done by hand & i wanted to be paid ten cents or a quarter or some nonsense per name. Somewhere i have it written down...hahaha). I just found all the letters i got from Roth festooned with tons of drawings, on great stationery with cassette tapes and all kindsa good stuff. Luckily i had moved to LA in 2,000 and Roth was gonna be at the Rat Fink Reunion at Moon Eyes the following year & that same day I was just starting to reord the first Danzig record that I was on & I had to sneak out & see Ed. I just HAD to. I got in trouble, but Glenn understood, being a fan & big collector. This photo is from that meeting & Big Daddy died literally weeks after this & I just knew it was meant to be. I really am one lucky fink to have gotten to do all this stuff. See you all at the big LA Norton Records Benefit. I'll have lotsa krazy surprises in store for you fellow finks there!
Rat On!
Howie Pyro 3/26/13

Miriam Linna - Rat Fink

Miriam's letter to Bill Gaines from Mad Mag!  Thanks, Mimsy!

Do The Rat Fink With Howie Pyro!

Big thanks to Howie Pyro over at Luxuria Music for playing an Ed "Big Daddy" Roth set on his show!  Listen here.  You can catch Intoxica Radio with Howie every Tuesday night live at 9 PM PST.  The show is also archived every week!

Hardrock Gunter

Hardrock Gunter - February 25th 1925 - March 15th 2013

Hardrock Gunter passed away a few weeks ago. Give a listen to this fantastic interview that took place back in 2010 on Fool's Paradise with Rex. Learn the origin of the "Hardrock" name and hear how he acheived the amazing echo Boppin to Grandfather's Clock.

Great Music and Great tales from the man himself. 

Thanks Rex for this amazing interview.

Fool's_Paradise_with_Rex__-__Hardrock_Gunter_Interview_ 

For further study: http://www.hardrockgunter.com

Happy Birthday To The Patron Saint Of Ichiban

Thinking About Lee "The Burner" Austin And A Few Nice Things

March 22, 1934 I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) I am never without it (anywhere I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) Here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart) ~EMMA~

Published in The Augusta Chronicle on March 22, 2013

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth & Von Dutch On Network Awesome

Benefit For Norton Records!

More info.

COWABUNGA!!! IT'S BIG DADDY'S SURFITE!

Ed Big Daddy Roth's ULTIMATE Surf Buggy
Seen in Beach Blanket Bingo & Village Of The Giants

Divorce Court: So Much For Me, So Much For You

1 Carole King: A Road To Nowhere

2 Del Shannon: Break Up

3 The Five Du-Tones: Divorce Court

4 Gladys Knight & The Pips: The End Of Our Road

5 Marvin Gaye: You Can Leave But It's Going To Cost You

6 Hank Snow: Marriage And Divorce

7 Hoosier Hot Shots: Divorce Me C.O.D

8 Skeeter Davis: Set Him Free

9 Dolly Parton: D-I-V-O-R-C-E

10 Tammy Wynette: The Divorce Sale

11 Johnny Moore with "Col." Tex Herring: Sold To The Highest Bidder

12 Stonewall Jackson: Recess Time

13 Waylon Jennings: For The Kids

14 Irma Thomas: We Won't Be In Your Way Anymore

15 Skeets McDonald: Mrs. Right's Divorcing Mr. Wrong

16 Buck Owens & Rose Maddox: Mental Cruelty

17 Hank Williams: Help Me Understand

18 Joan Rivers: The Shaft

19 Jerry Reed: She Got The Goldmine (I Got The Shaft)

20 T-Bone Walker: Alimony Blues

21 Bobby Bare: Alimony

22 Mickey Rooney: Alimony Blues

23 The Belvederes: Wage Assignment Blues

24 Merle Haggard & Bonnie Owens: So Much For Me, So Much For You

25 Carole Bayer Sager: You're Moving Out Today

26 Wreckless Eric: 33s And 45s

27 Doris Duke: Divorce Decree

28 Laura Lee: The Rip-Off

29 Richard "Dimples" Fields with Betty Wright: She's Got Papers On Me

30 Kitty Wells: Will Your Lawyer Talk To God

31 George Jones: Divorce Or Destroy

32 Beth-Anne Hayes: Oh Please Dear Santa Claus

33 Vikki Carr: With Pen In Hand

34 Sonny (Bono): You Better Sit Down Kids

35 Rob Orbison: It's Over

36 Lenny Bruce (with Steve Allen): All Alone

37 Elvis Presley: Suspicious Minds (live)

38 Molly Bee: I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again

DIVORCE COURT

Arigatou!

Thanks to all the Ichibaners who have pledged to our 2013 - Year Of The Snake Fundraising Marathon!  We reached our goal!!!

Ichiban All-Stars include William T in NY, Stephanie C in Boise, our own Bill Kelly, Paul T in Ma, Eugene R in Jersey City, Carmen S in Philly, Michael F in Brooklyn, Justin C in Brooklyn, Sebastian V in Canada, Keenan P in Brooklyn, Erick Z in NYC, Joe R in NYC, Paul H in Canada, Anna A in Brooklyn, Mark E in Canada, Vito D in Canada, Station Manager Ken, last week's co-host, Chris T!, Give The Drummer Radio's Doug Schulkind, our own Terre T, Eva Z in Brooklyn, Wasted T in Brooklyn, Andrew S in NJ, Kelly H in Canada, John T in beautiful Burbank, California, Greg G in Georgia, Jonathan L in Ca, Matthew C in Ky, Dan M in Sea Bright, NJ, Tania B in Somerville, Ma, Steven Rk in Arlington, VA, Laura B in Brooklyn, Thomas P in Sweden, Mike D in Palm Harbor, Fla, Brian D in Chicago, John S in Kingston, NY, our own Irene Trudel, Gaylord Fields, Rex Doane and Kevin Nutt, Arjan P in the Netherlands, Holly in Durham, NC, Andy R in Greeneville, TN, Chris H in Hackensack, Chris P in the UK August G in NYC and Colin M from Austria.  You guys rule!!

"Fanilla Fudge"

A while back, a nice woman named Debbi* contacted me at work about buying her son's Star Wars toys, and mentioned that she also had some comics and trading cards from her childhood. I bought what she had, and in our conversation, she mentioned that she thought that she had some more Monkees memorabilia packed away, which I urged her to bring in. A few weeks later, she returned with a batch of cool stuff... two partial fan club kits that had belonged to her and her sister (which, combined, mad one near-complete one), some newsletters, some of the mail-order-only magazines from Tiger Beat, and a batch of trading cards. Also among them was this oddly mislabeled ticket for a Vanilla Fudge show in her hometown of Simsbury, Connecticut. I'm not really a fan of their sludgy sound, even if they were produced by the late, great Shadow Morton, but this is pretty cool. Thanks, Debbi!

Here they are on the Ray Anthony Show. I'd like to

imagine that they closed the show by jamming with 

Ray on an extended version of Bunny Hop, but I

expect that that was not what happened.

*No relation to our Glorious Leader.

Twisted Tales From The Vinyl Wastelands 11

You could win this great comp when you pledge to WFMU's Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban today!!

Mr. Gasser And The Weirdos

Thanks to our pals over at Sundazed Records for donating these limited edition "Black Friday" LPs to WFMU's Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban fundraising marathon!  Rods n' Ratfinks & Surfink!

Sharkskin Louis Jordan

"Giving the impression of an unwanted backstage "John," bubble-eyed bandleader Louis Jordan is about to be expelled by resolute dancing twins, Joyce and Jean Spencer, as trio hams it up between performances at the Tivoli Theater in Chicago."  Jet magazine, 1959.

Ray Price & Wanda Jackson

This remarkable photo of Ray Price and Wanda Jackson comes to us from the Nudie Cohn Facebook page.  Thanks for sharing.

Mother's Worry

You could win a sealed "Mother's Worry" model kit from 1996, if you pledge $15 or more to WFMU's Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban fundraising marathon before Sunday!

Weird-Ohs On Wheels!

Thanks to J.R. Williams for donating this collection of Motor Monsters to WFMU's Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban fundraising marathon!  You could win it if you pledge $15 or more before this Sunday's show.  Preview some tracks here.

Rockabilly Rebel

Thanks to the fine folks at Sunbury Press for donating this prize to Ichiban!  You could win it, if you pledge today.  You can also order signed copies from their website!

Ichiban One-Liners Volume 4

You can help keep us streaming 24 hours a day when you make a pledge to WFMU!  $75 gets you this CD with artwork by Takeshi Tadatsu.

Elijah & the Ebonites - Hot Grits (Girls Raised In The South)

Two Hour Excursion To Nowhere

Pledge your support for the old noise, win fabulous prizes!!  1-3 PM.

Big Daddy Roth Month: The Orbitron-- Lost and Found!

Note the tricolor headlight array, mimicking the dot pattern on a color television screen. 

   The Orbitron was always a favorite of mine among Big Daddy's cars, but I'm apparently in the minority. There was never a model kit, slot car, or Hot Wheel, either in 1965 or since, and unlike the Outlaw and the Mysterion, it didn't even get its own Car Craft cover, as you can see.

Only approximately 1/12 of the cover? An insult!

 It had a short life on the car show circuit, and Ed sold it to Darryl Starbird in 1967 for $750. He sold it it to someone in Texas shortly thereafter, and it was lost to history for decades (one story holds that around 1973 it was in the hands of a teen-ager who actually drove it to school!). In recent years, it was tracked down in Ciudad Juarez, and it's since been restored to its original glory. Read the story here, and for more photos, click here.

This fellow is no relation, but he's also cool. Learn more about him here.

Total Destruction To Your Mind

Thanks to David Marchese for sending us this great interview he did for Spin Magazine!

Check it out here.

Mr. Gasser & The Weirdos

Hot Rod Hootenany was released in 1963 with cover art by Big Daddy aka Mr. Gasser.  Musicians included Ichiban All-Stars Gary Usher, Glen Campbell, Jerry Cole and Darlene Love, just to name a few!  Long out of print, the geniuses over at Sundazed Records reissued a limited edition run for Black Friday.

Cookout Time

This one is dedicated to all you Rat Finks who've already pledged out there, along with Ron Haydock & the Boppers, V-neck sweaters, beehives, Liz Renay, gingham and monster masks.  Thanks!

Happy Birthday Ed "Big Daddy" Roth

1932-2001

The Weird-Ohs - Francis The Foul

Hot Rod High

BIG DADDY!

March Is Ed "Big Daddy" Roth Month

Coming soon

"Big Daddy"!

Do the "Weirdo Wiggle" with Ed "Big Daddy" Roth!

Mr. Gasser & the Weirdos - WEIRDO WIGGLE

Fare thee well, Jack Dupree!

Thanks for checking out CDJ month, everybody!

Jack Dupree and King Curtis live on stage in Montreux

As CJD month winds down, here's a concert appearance from Montreux, Switzerland in 1971.  Check out Aretha in the audience in the red dress!

This was released on LP as well, but it's really the sort of thing YouTube was invented for.

Green Mosquito

Somewhere On Skid Row: Hobos, Bums & Other Urban Outdoorsmen

1 Felix Slatkin: Happy Hobo

2 Al Jolson with Guy Lombardo Orch.: Hallelujah I'm A Bum

3 The Coasters: D.W. Washburn

4 J.B. Lenoir: Slow Down Woman

5 Porter Wagoner: Sidewalks Of Chicago

6 The Cowsills: Newspaper Blanket

7 The Cowsills: The Candy Kid

8 Reparata & The Delrons: That's What Sends Men To The Bowery

9 Rags Rafferty: The Bowery

10 Gene Pitney: That's What Sends Men To The Bowery

11 Jerry Lee Lewis: Skid Row

12 Freddie Hart & The Heartbeats: Skid Row Street

13 Merle Haggard: Somewhere On Skid Row

14 Merle Haggard: Skid Row

15 Johnnie Allan: Somewhere On Skid Row

16 Pete Johnson Sextette: Skid Row Boogie

17 Bob Durham: Skid Row Boogie

18 Gene Marshall: Skid Row Bum

19 Frank Sinatra: Don't Sleep In The Subway

20 Nappy Brown: Skidy Woe

21 Earl Curry: Hobo

22 Link Wray: Hobo Man

23 Porter Wagoner: The Alley

24 Louis Armstrong & His Orch.: Hobo, You Can Ride Dis Train

25 The Four Seasons: Beggar's Parade

26 Rhubarb Red & His Rubes: The Dying Hobo

27 Art Hodes: A Selection From The Gutter

28 Danny Reeves: I'm A Hobo

29 Johnny Cash: The Hobo Song

30 The Fantastics: Millionaire Hobo

31 The Honeyman: Brother Bill (The Last Clean Shirt)

32 The Rockin' Berries: Brother Bill (The Last Clean Shirt)

33 Snakefinger: Here Comes The Bums

34 Leb Brinson: Hobo A-Go-Go

35 Porter Wagoner: Skid Row Joe

36 Lightnin' Jr. & The Empires: Raggedy And Hungry

37 Luke Gibbons: Queen Of Skid Row

SOMEWHERE ON SKID ROW

Champion Jack Dupree and T.S. McPhee: Groundhog in the Cabbage Greens

One of the most unusual recordings of Champion Jack's career was made in 1967 with T.S. McPhee from the Groundhogs. The 'hogs had backed up Champion Jack on a 1964 tour, and McPhee played on Champion Jack's first Decca recordings, alongside Eric Clapton and John Mayall.  When CDJ was signed to Decca blues spinoff writeoff Blue Horizon in '67, somebody had the bright idea to pair Champion Jack's voice with solo guitar accompaniment.

Jack doesn't play piano on these recordings at all - it's just him and McPhee's acoustic guitar.  The result is unique in the British-Blues-Personality-Plays-With-Blues-Legend genre, and it's a very pleasant listen. The songs are all short, and while some of them are readymades, they sound different than CDJ's usual readymades. Dupree's sounds warm and engaged, and McPhee is neither to staid or showoffy.

The recordings basically stayed in the vault until Ace released them on CD in 1997. A 45 of "Get Your Head Happy" came out in the late 60s in a limited white label only run.

You can hear the whole thing on Spotify.

The Snow Is on the Ground

Champion Jack Dupree - with no pants on!

Lest I give you the impression that Jack Dupree's European music was all sad sack introspection, here's an unreleased-until-the-Complete-Blue-Horizon-Sessions CD version of Fats Waller's "Sheik of Araby" wherein Jack and his mother-in-law finally settle the tension that's been building between them for something like 20 years.

SHEIK OF ARABY

Champion Jack splits the states

Dupree with pianist Curtis Jones and some unknown guide

Champion Jack Dupree left America for Europe in 1959. According to possibly sketchy internet/liner note lore, he made the decision to move to Europe when he went to the UK for his first appearances there. Apparently a customs officer called him "sir" and that token of respect was what sealed his decision.  Whether that tale is apocryphal or not, it's pretty clear from his recordings that his decision was based on the superior treatment and lack of racial segregation that he faced in the states.

His famous quote about racism, repeated many times in many variations in concert, goes like this:  "When you open up a piano, you see freedom.  Nobody can play the white keys and don't play the black keys.  You got to mix all these keys together to make harmony."

The first two albums Jack recorded in Europe were his 2nd and 3rd Atlantic LPs, Champion of the Blues & The Natural and Soulful Blues.  Champion, which is a solo LP and a fascinating record, contains a number of songs expressing his sorrow over the treatment of blacks in the US.  They were recorded in Denmark, and Jack was delighted to be there.  He even says, in "Daybreak Stomp" (which bears very little relation to the Mr. Bear song of the same title from his King era) that if he could live his life over, he'd stay in Copenhagen. In the liner notes to Champion of the Blues he describes his sense of what the blues meant to the people of the South.  

"You can go in them little country towns and hear the juke box playin' all night, nothin' but the blues. That satisfies their mind. That's the only thing that'll ease their minds, 'cause they're not happy people. Nobody in the South, in the line of colored people, is happy."

Jack eventually moved to Switzerland, then Denmark, the UK (where he got married for the third time),   then Sweden, and finally Germany. He'd record dozens of records while in Europe, and many of them would have songs expressing how happy he was to be out of the states.

There are numerous examples of Jack's sorrow over the condition of race relations in the states, including his eulogy to Martin Luther King and a sorrowful live cut called "Black and White Blues" (where he actually tells his European audience that they should be psyched to be white, making him one of the ballsiest of the blues revivalists of the late 60s playing to white college kids with romantic ideas of southern poverty).

Two non-youtoobabble examples I'll leave you with are the terribly sad "Poor Poor Me" and "I'm Happy to Be Free".  "Poor Poor Me" was cut in the Mid-60s for the first of his "jam with the popular British guitarists album", From New Orleans to Chicago, which featured John Mayall, Eric Clapton, and T.S. McPhee.  "I'm Happy to Be Free" was cut for a relaxed Mickey Baker session in the late 60s and appeared on the GNP LP of the same name.

Jack would not return to the states until the late 80s, when he recorded a couple of albums for Rounder in New Orleans.  He died in Germany in 1992.

"Poor Poor Me"
"I'm Happy to Be Free"
More thoughts on Copenhagen on "Roll Me Over Roll Me Slow"

A' Peelin' Music! (mp3 mix)

The Peel - Jim Pierce & the Pistols
Curb-Service - Billy Dee & the Super-Chargers
Bulldozer - Les De Merle & his Band
Goofin' - Robbie Robinson Orch.
Gibraltar Rock - The Rockets
Rat Trap - Ralph Grasso

Take it off!

Champion Jack Dupree: Babs Gonzales and the Mother in Law Blues

Before we move to Europe with Champion Jack Dupree, I want to do a quick clean-up on a few stray tracks lying around that I haven't had a chance to note yet.  Specifically I want to talk about Babs Gonzales.

Babs Gonzales was a jazz and jive singer who lived in New York City and did the bulk of his recordings in the 40s and 50s.  His style of jive was less knocked out and random than, say, Slim Gaillard (he even wrote his own dictionary of jive much like Gaillard's published-on-Ichiban-somewhere Dictionary of Vout), and he eventually ended up in the weird world of vocalese, managing James Moody and no doubt sharing ideas with Eddie Jefferson and King Pleasure, occasionally subbing for Mel Tormé at gigs. Champion Jack seemed impressed enough with his rap to incoprorate some of his nonsensery into his own introductions.

The two collaborated on the first side of the only Gonzales KING 45, "House Rent Party". Apparently Babs crashed a Dupree session to lay down this tale of crashing/mooching his way through a house party. Which, believe it or not, gets busted. Dupree lays down the piano on this cut.

In an interesting bit of expoobident coincident, the flip of this 45, "She's Just Right for Me", was apparently cut at a session led by last February's Ichiban front-figure, Joe Tex!

Since it's not on youtube, here's "She's Just Right for Me".

Back in Dupree land, here's him laying down his own rap, on one of his favorite topics.  From the Atlantic 45 and/or the "Natural and Soulful Blues" LP, here's "Mother-In-Law Blues".  She calls him son.  Too bad he can't say the rest of it on the record.

Champion Jack Dupree: Blues from the Gutter

In 1958 CJD went into the studio with producer Jerry Wexler, three musicians from his Vik tenure -Larry Dale (now playing under his real name, Ennis Lowery), drummer Willie Jones and sax player Pete Brown, and bassist Wendell Marshall, to record Blues from the Gutter, an album so filled with weed, smack, goofer dust, sex, booze, violence, disease, betrayal and evil that it makes Sticky Fingers seem sweet and innocent.

In internetese:

makes

sound like

This is not merely blogger hyperbole - it is also a ham-handed segue to the fact that Blues from the Gutter was one of the recordings that inspired Brian Jones to move from his home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire to London to learn how to play the blues.

That Blues from the Gutter was one of the first blues LPs Jones heard and was a huge influence on his playing is documented in several sources. But a description of his first time hearing the record is documented in the book Foundation Stone, by Graham Ride, a friend of Jones' in Cheltenham, and apparently the guy who introduced him to the record.

A description of that event, along with a good breakdown of Blues from the Gutter track-for-track, can be found in an excerpt from the book from the author's website.  The upshot of Ride's thesis is that before Ride played Jones BFTG* he was something of a trad/jazz snob, but after hearing the record he is a blues convert, saying more than once, "I just have to play this stuff . . . what a sound."

He got the habit

So whether or not the detailed description of Brian's first encounter with the blues in Foundation Stone is 100% accurate, the record certainly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Rockin at the Hops and The Best of Muddy Waters as one of them LPs what helped create the Rolling Stones.

Not only that, but it's great from beginning to end, and while a lot of the material is recylcled from earlier Dupree recordings, the decision to gather together all of his material with grittier subject matter in once place was brilliant - I don't know that there was a blues LP before this one that had any kind of thematic unity.

 In fact, I don't know of any better "after hours" styled blues record than this one.  The recording is excellent, Dupree is in top-notch vocal form (I particularly love his Big Joe Turneresque turn on "Evil Woman") and the band is not only killer, they are extremely sympathetic and supportive of one another - the shouts of encouragement and pleasure that accompany the music are infectious. 

The album starts with "Strollin'", and once again, Dupree starts a record by saying "I want all you teenagers and bobbysoxers to gather around this jukebox", although the notion that any bobbysoxer in the late 50s would be attracted to this steaming pile of skid-row squalor (or that their parents would allow such a thing in their home) is pretty hilarious.  The CD reissue blew it initially and used the wrong take, and the 45 is edited, so the LP is the way to go.  Here's the whole track.

But the 45 sure is purty

I'm not going to go through every track, because you probably either already have this record, or you should just go find a copy to have for your own three in the morning nasty boogie woogies.  But here's a couple more - the excellent version of "Bad Blood", for me a distillation of what this whole record is about, and the version of "Stack-O-Lee" that closes the record with a classic album ending verse if there ever was one:  "Said I want Louis Armstrong and his band to play the blues as they lay my body down/I want 10,000 women to be at my burying ground."

*No, not Back from the Grave, but, hey - anagramology certainly rears its head on that coincidence. Blues from the Gutter begats the Rolling Stones who beget Back from the Grave which means somehow in the twisted world of Dr. Filth rock and roll logic (for this month anyway) Jack Dupree is the father of the Keggs.  Or at least "Orphan Boy".

The House Where Jerry Byrd Lived

On a recent trip to Nashville, I headed for the library to dig around some old city directories in an effort to find out if the houses where Homer & Jethro used to live might still be around, but I came up empty. I couldn't find a listing for either of those guys for some reason.  I did, however, discover that Jerry Byrd lived here, at 4849 Aster Drive, in 1962.

Byrd (1920 - 2005) made a name for himself as one of the nation's top (non-pedal) steel guitar talents in the 1940s and '50s.  He spent time playing in Ernest Tubb's Texas Troubadours before departing to join up with Red Foley and play steel in his band for several years.  In the early '60s, he began exploring Hawaiian music and recorded several LPs in that vein.  Byrd eventually relocated to  Hawaii in the late '60s and remained there until his death.

Here's a track from his 1964 Monument LP, Admirable Byrd.

Jerry Byrd  -  Theme For A DJ   (2:06)