I'm sitting here listening to Sirius and their traditional country station, "The Roadhouse." They play good stuff, mostly. I'm intrigued that they are playing Eddie Rabbitt's "Driving My Life Away" and what's so funny is that in 2006, that is considered "traditional" country. When that thing came out in the early 80's, it played like crazy on Top 40 radio. Nothing traditonally country about it. Just funny to me how perspectives change.
I do like that song. I remember when it came out, my sister LOVED it. We used to record songs from the radio to our little tape recorder. This was before we had stereos and decent stuff to record to.
Eddie was probably the first and only Nashville country act that was born in Brooklyn, New York. His daddy was an Irish immigrant who played the fiddle. It's kinda sad to me that Eddie is one people seemingly have forgotten about. Eddie died of lung cancer in 1998 and he was not an old man. He had a string of hits a mile long...some I liked better than others. He really did nothing for traditional country music. However, he found him a formula and traditonaled himself all the way to the bank. I was always partial to his "Two Dollars In The Jukebox"...not bad country singing for a boy from Brooklyn.
For some reason, hearing him on the radio made me a little sad and I felt like remembering Eddie Rabbitt today.
I do like that song. I remember when it came out, my sister LOVED it. We used to record songs from the radio to our little tape recorder. This was before we had stereos and decent stuff to record to.
Eddie was probably the first and only Nashville country act that was born in Brooklyn, New York. His daddy was an Irish immigrant who played the fiddle. It's kinda sad to me that Eddie is one people seemingly have forgotten about. Eddie died of lung cancer in 1998 and he was not an old man. He had a string of hits a mile long...some I liked better than others. He really did nothing for traditional country music. However, he found him a formula and traditonaled himself all the way to the bank. I was always partial to his "Two Dollars In The Jukebox"...not bad country singing for a boy from Brooklyn.
For some reason, hearing him on the radio made me a little sad and I felt like remembering Eddie Rabbitt today.
7 comments:
I did a phone interview with Eddie in March of 1998, about two months before he died. He was promoting an album of children's songs of all things.
I was the last station on his list of people to talk to that day so he was late when he called but he was very nice and gave me some extra time past the imposed ten-minute time limit.
To this day, I haven't been able to find out if that was indeed his last interview. Of course, I still have it in my box of tapes from the last fourteen years. There are literally hundreds of tapes to go through.
This post has reminded me that I seriously need to spend some real time going through that box and start getting those tapes uploaded and transfered to mp3. I would love to post some clips on my website.
Kentucky Rain" is still one of my favorite songs of all time.
Thanks for the Eddie Rabbitt memories.
I used to like his music a lot, but I always remembered from when I worked there that he would come to the Cumberland Museum with his kid only on Mondays. Free Mondays.
Cheapskate.
The two mentions of Alabama bring to mind that I was a 'big' fan of them and especially the June Jam in Fort Payne. But the last show I saw of them in 'Murrvulle', Tennessee on their Farewell Tour and how I was shocked when Randy mentioned after some song or other on how great that old classic country was. I loved their music, but did not really consider it classic, but I reckon that at least, he did not say traditional...
But yes, Eddie had that "something" and I did like most everything he did. It is a shame that he left us too soon.
And yes, Frank, get off your butt and get that done. And hopefully in something better than mp3. Tapes do go bad.. But there are so many videos and tapes that I also need to get digitalized, so I am one to talk....-grin-
ceelcee, not to critize your cheapskate remark, but with Eddie being a working musician, Mondays may have just been 'his' weekend...
Jerald
You know what though, C....he may have come on Mondays cause he was out of town on the weekends and other days...Monday is often like Mr. Smiff's Saturday.
I always like his music, too. He wasn't traditional country, for sure. now (at least locally), they play his music (i.e., "I Love A Rainy Night") on the mostly 80s pop station. I never considered his music as pop, but I guess it's as much pop as it is trad. county.
In response to anonymous' comment about Alabama...they also did not sound traditional at the time they came out, but compared to some of the current country offerings, I think they do now. LOL! Around here, a song only has to be 10 years old to be played on on the classic country stations. At the expense of some of the true classics they could be playing.
Oh I can remember the hours I used to spend holding my tape recorder up the radio speaker to get the songs I loved on tape. I would even tape a sign to my bedroom door that said, "Recording in progress!" so no one would walk in and ruin the song. Good times!! These kids today with their downloads and iPods have no idea how good they have it!!
This is very funny to me, because a couple of nights ago I had quite an email discussion with a listener upset because we didn't play more Eddie on our traditional country channel, America. And just yesterday I loaded several of his songs into US Country.
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