Johnny Paycheck--

The Real Mr. Heartache: The Little Darlin’ Years

(Country Music Foundation 023D)

Hey, I consider myself somewhat musically-aware, but I always thought Johnny Paycheck was a joke.

You know: one of those terrible performers rewarded with success that you just can’t fathom, riding a particular trend-- with the big ‘70’s hit, "Take This Job and Shove It!," it happened to be Carter-style populism-- until the ride stopped. Think about his name for a second. Ha! Take this job and shove it. Good one.

You remember Johnny Paycheck, right? With his scraggly gray beard, perpetual bandanna and Charles Manson stare, he was kind of like the Evil Willie Nelson for about five minutes there. He could just as well have been your worst 3 a.m. biker bar nightmare. You certainly wouldn’t think of him as a ‘60’s music pioneer-- you’d run like hell if you saw him. I would.

But. . . this is Johnny Paycheck?

The cover of the 1996 CMA compilation, The Real Mr. Heartache, has this guy on the cover in gauzy B&W--

Not an Evil Willie, a matinee idol!

And the music inside . .

Folks, all I can say is this is where honkytonk barroom music-- two fisted crying in yer beer music and who the hell asked you anyway music-- begins and ends. And then reinvents itself.

Paycheck was a young nobody in the early ‘60’s. He had played with George Jones for six years as George’s primary background vocalist and live bassist (leading to speculation as to who influenced who-- Paycheck sounds like a richer, deeper George, and used similar phrasing techniques); he hooked up with producer Aubrey Mayhew for a couple of singles on the very small Hilltop subsidiary in 1964 and then the duo started their own label, Little Darlin’.

This incredible CMA disc compiles Paycheck’s scorching Little Darlin’ singles, and the earlier Hilltop cuts. The disc reveals a hard-edged sound and sensibility (country looking at rock and not vice versa)...listening with fresh ears, you could even say these 24 cuts make stuff like the Byrds’ "pioneering" Sweetheart of the Rodeo appear-- hey and I’m a fan-- most tame. They certainly make pretty boy country-death fetishists like Nick Cave and Will Oldham sound like pussy boy time at the Mall Food Court. Sure enough.

Because if Paycheck’s Little Darlin’ singles weren’t country-ROCK, before it even really happened, then nothing was. This was hardcore honkytonk, but recorded and mixed-- in your face-- like the best rock ‘n’ roll of that heady era: The drumming (by a young Kenneth Buttrey, who also backed Dylan) is punchy and sympathetic, the steel guitar sears your guts high up in the mix, the electric leads sizzle, and the tales themselves are hardbitten and sad to the point of some very serious nilhism. If these sordid lyrics were comin’ out of the mouths of So. Cal punks or blunt-mouthed urban youth, Wal-Mart wouldn’t have it!

(How’s this for a song title: "Pardon Me, I’ve Got Someone to Kill.")

In Paycheck’s world, the world on these hellish, brooding singles, no one is spared. "The Cave" is about nuclear war, delivered matter-of-factly, like it was just another big ol’ bar fight, and yet some unknowing stranger playing "A-11" on the jukebox is a REAL catastrophe-- it’s that kind of world.

You thought Robert Johnson was bleak. . . Paycheck would make that Hellhound a pet. As in Greil Marcus’ mythical Smithville, where the doomed and murdered spirits of Harry Smith’s Anthology of Folk Music dwell, nothing matters in the world of these scattered ‘60’s distress signals. . . ‘cause If you’re gonna sink, as the man says in yet another classic cut here, you might as well go to the bottom.

Jealous murderers, alcoholic truckers, fallen women, spent souls-- they’re all here. In "The Ballad of Frisco Bay," about a doomed jailbreak, Paycheck throws in a stray lyric, one line of the verse: "She killed a man and for the baby’s sake, I took the blame."

That’s an aside-- think about that: Even if the sounds enveloping Paycheck are often as achingly lovely as anything in the country, or rock, universe, this burring voice of a man expects you to understand every double barrel and double shot of this violent world just like he understands it. Remember, this was a guy who LIVED these songs.

I almost forgot the reason I really like these Little Darlin’ singles: That voice! Paycheck’s vocals here are a revelation.

Forget that he sometimes sounds like his pal George Jones (especially on upbeat cuts like "Hang On Sally"-- the way he says "Tauuumm-Kett," that’s all George)-- but it would be fairer to say that his throat on these early cuts sound like Merle Haggard with George’s phrasing-- mixed and recorded very, very well. In any case, Paycheck doesn’t waste a note on any of these songs (especially ballads like the wrenching "Touch My Heart") and his voice has some stirring emotion in it-- you could write a book on the way the guy softly ends his lines. Heartbreaking.

Producer / cowriter Mayhew did some serious experimenting in the studio too, and (as you’d figure) Nashville thought it was too much. Few of these astonishing cuts were hits, although you can still catch "A-11" and "Apartment #9" (the latter a cover hit for Tammy Wynette) on the all-night AM Trucker shows. Nashville thought the Byrds were a bit too much too-- the hair! But somebody remembered this stuff-- it was too good to get totally lost.

But forget "country-rock" artifacts like Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Paycheck’s "It’s a Mighty Thin Line Between Love and Hate" could easily fit on the Byrds’ psych-epic Younger Than Yesterday. The Paycheck tune uses some ominous diminished chords, and fuzztone guitar, to add spooky resonance to a despairing tune of love gone wrong. Someone was reaching for more than the honky-tonks with this stuff. . .

. . ..and then there’s the short story-worthy "Like Me (You’ll Recover In Time." I doubt the ‘60’s mainstream-- even in an era which saw genuine weirdos like Lee Hazlewood make the charts-- could embrace a ballad involving a crazy man’s hallucinations in the hospital ward with his ex-wife, no matter how heartbreaking the arrangement, how stirring the vocals. Is she there. . . is he even there? The enigmatic story circles on itself, and on Paycheck, so many times that the listener is left wondering.

And drinking. Maybe it’s a good thing these potent slabs of vinyl never hit the big time. This stuff is for the jukebox in Hell.

-- Don Harrison

(Johnny Paycheck: The Real Mr. Heartache:The Little Darlin’ Years is available from The Country Music Foundation , available from 4 Music Square, Nashville, TN. 37203.)