“E.E. Lawson…he got him a plan.”
- Ozark Mountain Daredevils
It was an honor to be back in the studio again Monday with Randle Chowning, a founding member of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. He came in and put some good ol' harmonica on a track for me.
I've touched on this before, but each time I have the opportunity to work with him, it feels a little woo woo surreal. I couldn't have imagined it 50 years ago, as rock and roll obsessed teenager, standing at the foot of the stage, watching our homegrown Missouri hippie band that had made good, play to a full house at Pershing Arena. Wow! There they were, live and in person.
You'd have to have been from that time and place with a certain musical palate to appreciate what they represented. First of all, they were famous, by golly. They had songs that were on the charts and all over the radio. They were on TV shows like Don Kirshner's Rock Concert where bands like The Allman Brothers, The Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper and The Eagles also appeared. They were big time, the Daredevils.
And they were our big time. Their vibe was our vibe. Rock and roll with elements of the music some of us rural boys had grown up around: banjos, fiddles, washboards, harmonicas, Jew's harps and the like. This was way before anyone conjured up labels like “Alt-Country” and “Americana,” but that's indeed what they were. They were a cross between The Stones and Grandpa Jones. Theirs was a distinctive sound, un-categorizable, and that was part of their dilemma, or at least it was for the record company suits. What box do we put them in, they wondered. I could have offered a helpful suggestion: Put them in the “Good Music” box.
But, that was all back then. Now there's only three of those original guys left. I celebrate them still and the music the gave us Missouri homeboys as well as the rest of the world.
***I have a handful of names I use whenever I have to give one for a waiting list at a restaurant or some such. I rotate them but quite often I just stick with E.E. Lawson.