Friday Night Videos

After the stress of last week and the angst of yesterday's blog post, I think it's time for some levity. And not just any levity, but full-blown corn-pone humor, heavy emphasis on the corn. I love Sheb Wooley. Most know him either for "Purple People Eater" or perhaps the "Wilhelm scream." But he was doing clever parodies of songs decades before "Weird Al" was even born. For example, he was originally supposed to record and release the song "Son, Don't Go Near the Indians," but Rex Allen got his version out first and scored a top 5 country hit with it. I imagine Wooley was annoyed by that, but he took those lemons and made lemonade, recording the brutally clever "Don't Go Near the Eskimos," which I actually think is a better song. Certainly less melodramatic. Wooley recorded some awful stuff, too, mind you, often as his drunken alter-ego Ben Colder. Some of that's just terrible. But even so, most of his work makes me smile. Even the uber-cheesy, on-the-cheap videos he made for his songs in the 80s. Remember Johnny Preston's 1960 hit "Running Bear"? Well, Sheb worked his magic on that one, too, and came up with the gloriously goofy "Runnin' Bare." Any song willing to use that bad a pun as its title has got to be a keeper, right?

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Friday Night Videos

I'm a big fan of Sheb Wooley, the clever lyricist who was cousins with the brilliant Roger Miller. Wooley is best known for his massive hit "Purple People Eater," but he turned out a great deal of music in his time, both humorous and less so. He perfected the parody of popular songs for the country audience well before Weird Al Yankovic struck gold decades later, but most of Wooley's work is now as obscure as the classic songs he spoofed. His "Don't Go Near the Eskimos" is a spot-on riff of Rex Allen's iconic "Don't Go Near the Indians" and a personal favorite of mine. Another great spoof is his irreverent sendup of Johnny Preston's "Running Bear" (a song written by the Big Bopper, no less) as "Running Bare," a piece obviously influenced by a certain Ray Stevens song of similar theme. Wooley continued to record and act--he voiced the famed "Wilhelm scream" used so often in movies and television--up until his death from leukemia in 2003. Not a bad legacy for an Oklahoma farm boy.



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