"Today I Was Standing On My Head"
Today was a rainy day,
so I was standing on my head, with a flashlight in my teeth,
looking through our old 45’s and LP’s,
in a hidden compartment under our bedroom closet.
The trap door over the compartment
kept banging me on the back of the skull.
I didn’t find the item I was looking for,
an acetate disc of our Dawn Breakers recording
of “Big Town Blues” and “Dream”,
that we made in the mid-fifties.
I did find a lot of other good stuff that I’d forgotten we did,
or thought had decomposed by now.
(First the songs are composed
and then they decompose.)
Acetate discs were recorded one at a time
on a machine like a phonograph in reverse…
The needle dug the music into the grooves.
These were mainly given to recording artists and producers
to take home and listen to after a recording session.
They started to deteriorate before you got them home,
and were only good for a few plays.
This was before cassette tapes, CD's, and maybe the wheel.
A while back, when we sold a house
and were heading out on the road,
we entrusted our accumulated treasures to a friend to hold for us.
The friend let her kids use our records for Frisbees and drink coasters.
I think they ate lunch and skated on them too,
so most of the records are in rough shape,
but I think I can salvage a lot of the lost music.
She refused to return more than half of our things,
and will probably sell them on Ebay.
I found the original acetate disc of “Tennessee Bird Walk”
that they gave us at the studio in 1969,
immediately after we recorded it.
It’s in surprisingly good condition.
There is an Armed Forces Radio show
Misty and I did for the government in 1978.
On the other side of the LP
is a show with Ferlin Husky & Betty Jean Robinson.
We did these shows live.
Under a bunch of lost socks,
was a Jack & Misty Columbia LP that was never released.
I also found a bunch of songs I wrote
that were recorded by other people.
One was Billy Joe Burnette singing “Don’t It Look Like Georgia”.
Another was Englebert Humperdink” doing “Second Tuesday in December”,
and The Ventures playing our “Gemini”.
But, best of all,
I found some recordings we made
and released in Florida on our own labels, Darn, Earth, Zodiac, and Marianna.
Some of these are really good songs
that I’ve been hoping to find for years.
There is an acetate recording of our jazz band
made in Key West around the time of the Civil War.
I think the record is in worse shape than General Grant is right now.
I’ll try to get something off it,
but I don’t expect much.
I found these rarities…
“Lonely Bell”, No Sign of Love”, “Cotton Blossom”, "Midnight Greyhound”,
and some cuts Misty made under her numerous aliases
when we were just starting out.
We were very proud of these at that time.
It'll be fun to hear them again.
Now Misty will wash them all with dish detergent,
let them air dry,
and then I’ll hook up my trusty Grandmaphone,
and see what’s on them.
We’ve found rainy day treasure.
Copyright © November 13, 2006 Jack Blanchard. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission.
