A guitar picker extraordinaire and redneck comedian whose songs could almost be called funky, the late Jerry “Alabama Wild Man” Reed is one of my favorite country artists. Me, I’d love him if he’d never cut anything but “East Bound and Down” (the theme song of Smokey and the Bandit!), “Amos Moses,” and “The Preacher and the Bear,” a hilarious tale of an unfortunate meeting in the woods between a preacher hunting on the Sabbath and a grizzly bear that ends with the preacher up a tree and praying to his Lord, “I mean/Look at how he’s lookin’ at me/Does the word ‘fast food’ mean anything to you, Lord?/Oh, he’s hairy/And he’s still thinkin’/And he’s lookin’ at me like I… smell good!”
The man’s usual mode was high-spirited, and he had a knack for what you could call novelty tunes, but he was also capable of singing about the more lugubrious aspects of life; you know, broken hearts and all that. But I much preferred him at his wildest and woolliest, as did Robert Christgau, who called him “a great crazy,” and said apropos his more saccharine tunes, “He couldn’t sell soap to a hippie’s mother” and “RCA should ban the ballad.” Me, I hadn’t listened to him for years when my girlfriend gave me a truly terrible ‘70s compilation CD redeemed only by R. Dean Taylor’s great “Indiana Wants Me” and Reed’s fantastic swamp tall tale, “Amos Moses,” which is one of the songs on the 2000 best-of compilation, Jerry Reed Visits Hit Row.
Fiddle-driven opener “East Bound and Down” is a bootlegger’s anthem and smooth as Jim Beam Single Barrel bourbon, and includes a great solo by Reed. It speeds along like an 18-wheeler on the run from Smokey, and if you think it’s a bit slick, well, all I can say is all those thirsty boys in Atlanta don’t agree. “Amos Moses” is a funky tune about a Cajun alligator poacher, mean as a snake on account of his old man, who used the young Moses as alligator bait. He’s got one arm on account of a hungry gator, most likely killed a sheriff trying to track him down in the bayou, and the only thing cooler than his biography are Reed’s righteous guitar picking and distinctive voice, which are as good old boy as you can get.
His humorously expressive vocals are also on great display in “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot,” another tasty slice of country funk. A tale of a back alley gambler whose luck at craps runs hot just in time for him to get busted and pushed in front of a judge, the tune is rambunctious and Reed is in fine fettle, especially after the judge sentences him to 90 days in the slammer. At that point Reed blows up, and delivers a hilarious diatribe that goes something like, “Well let me tell you one thing judge, old buddy/If you wasn’t wearin’ that black robe/I’d take you out in back of this courthouse/And beat you like a government mule/You understand that, you hillbilly?/Who gonna collect my welfare?/Pay for my Cadillac?” and so on. The cleverly titled “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)” is also a slick and funky number, with Reed (and a chorus of female backing vocalists) humorously recounting the sad story of a shitty divorce settlement (“said they was splittin’ it all down the middle/But she got the bigger half”).
“A Thing Called Love” is a simple and pretty little ditty about a giant of a man “brought down to his knees by love.” Reed is not a natural at the tear-jerking ballad, but he knows the score, and this tune is the kind of canned melodrama designed to make the country charts by squeezing out tears when played on the roadhouse jukebox. “Remembering,” as its title indicates, is another case of hackneyed country self-pity, and about as tasty as one of those rubbery jarred pickled eggs you still see on the back shelf of working class taverns all across our great land.
“Guitar Man” is a rip-roaring tune that kicks ass and takes names, and it so mesmerized Elvis Presley that he tried his own take on it, only to find that the only way to capture its spirit was to summon Reed to sit in on the recording. Reed’s guitar playing is indeed impeccable, and his vocal interjections (love the laugh) are irresistible. “Lord, Mr. Ford” is another novelty tune of sorts, and features lots of hillbilly instrumentation over which Reed performs a kind of talking blues taking Henry Ford to the woodshed for his greatest invention. He fires off the lyrics like an early Bob Dylan, condemning those “gas drinking, piston clanking, air polluting, smoke belching four-wheeled buggies from Detroit City.” He then proceeds to damn his “ready made pile of manufactured grief” and complains that “If I ain’t out of gas in the pouring rain/I’m a-changing a flat in a hurricane/I once spent three days lost on a cloverleaf.”
“The Preacher and the Bear” is a rollicking example of hillbilly hyperbole with lots of fiddle in which Reed humorously communicates that preacher’s dilemma. Meanwhile, the chug-a-lugging “The Bird” recounts the story of a man sitting in a bar when in comes a fella with a bird that can sing. And sure enough Reed (in the role of the bird) performs an uncanny imitation of Willie Nelson singing “Whiskey River.” The guy sitting in the bar sees dollar signs, especially after the bird performs a perfect imitation of George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Convinced the bird will make him thousands, he offers its owner $500. But no sooner has the deal been made and its former owner left than the bird flies out the door, singing Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” altering the line “The life I love is making music with my friends” to “The life I love is making money with my friend.” To which Reed responds, “Somebody shoot that thing!”
Reed’s style of singing was unapologetically dramatic, which makes sense given the film career (he appeared in 14 in his lifetime) he pursued alongside his music making. He approached singing the same way he approached acting, that is to say with the humorous flourish of a wise-cracking redneck who refused to take life too seriously. Whether the good-natured hillbilly persona he adopted was real or not (I suspect it was), it’s almost impossible to dislike the man. Me, I can’t hear “The Preacher and the Bear” without smiling. “Does the word ‘fast food’ mean anything to you, Lord?” Cracks me up every time.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
