Grinderswitch

[Tom Roche]

At 12:26 PM +0000 11/3/01, peel@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>Having listened to most of the shows through the 70s I was never aware
>that "dum di dum di dum di dum" with the overlayed slide guitar was by
>Grinderswitch.  Some Internet research shows it's actually an Elmore
>James song,



This prompted some more research here on a Saturday night when I should be watching the baseball series but it is a rout.

I have the the original Grinderswitch LP right here "Macon Tracks" released in '75 on Capricorn... recorded an hour down the interstate from here in Macon Georgia.

There may have been a song called Pickin' The Blues by Elmore James, but the Grinderswich label credit for that cut says it was written by one Lloyd Copas. A little further research shows that Copas a.k.a Coyboy Copas recorded a few singles for King and Dot in 57-59 (see http://rcs.law.emory.edu/rcs/index.htm) and that his version of Pickin The Blues appears on the Nashville Records LP  Late and Great Cowboy Copas Nashville NLP-2013 (see http://folkindex.mse.jhu.edu/CP13.htm  )

A dead rock stars site (http://users.efortress.com/doc-rock/1960.html ) says

Cowboy Copas  (Lloyd Copas) - Died 3-5-1963 - Plane crash ( Country - Honky Tonk ) Born  7-15-1913 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, U.S.  (He did,"Tragic Romance" and "Alabam").


Now we come the Stuff I never Knew part. It turns out Coyboy Copas was one of the two other passengers killed in the Plane Crash that killed Patsy Cline. This from a Patsy Cline bio page:

Patsy's life tragically ended on March 5, 1963 when the airplane, in which she was a passenger, crashed in the mountains near Camden, TN. The plane was owned and piloted by her manager,  Randy Hughes. The other two passengers were "Cowboy" Lloyd Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins. They had been in Kansas City performing in a benefit  show for the family of a local disc jockey. The weather was too bad to fly so they had to spend the night after the show. They waited all of the next  day and Patsy was going to drive back with her good friend Dottie West, but the weather cleared up enough to fly, so she left with her entourage. They  were last seen at the airfield in Dyersburg, TN, approximately 90 miles from Nashville, where they'd stopped to refuel. The airport manager suggested  that they stay the night after advising of high winds and inclement weather along the flight path, but Hughes responded, "I've already come this far.  We'll be there before you know it." Unfortunately, they never made it to Nashville.





As for Pickin' the Blues being Peel's "former" theme song note that still  is used on his half-hour World Service show (which after 15+ years is still on once a week, on a 6-weeks-on, 6-weeks-off rotation with a Steve Lamacq half hour.) It is webcast  at 04:05 GMT (Wed),  13:05 & 20:05 GMT (Sun) plus on SW and LW at various times if you want to weed thru the schedules. The BBCWS info page, w/track listings for this week's show (incl good 'ol Grinderswitch) is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/peel.shtml

tom in atlanta