Lee Emerson, "Catch That Train" c/w "What A Night," Columbia 41046 (rel. 11/1957)

 

Much of Lee Emerson’s career was spent as a manager and promoter of country acts who achieved mainstream fame. Born Lee Emerson Bellamy in 1927 in the coal-mining town of St. Paul, Virginia, he lived the hard-scrabble life of poor rural folk. As a teenager, he found work driving decoy cars for local moonshiners—he’d drive at fast speeds to attract the interest of revenue officers, who’d stop him as the real booze-laden car crept by.

World War II took Lee to the Pacific theater of war. He was awarded a Purple Heart for injuries during battle. Back home, Lee married and relocated to the West. He and his wife first settled in Billings, Montana, where Emerson got a country band together and had a son. Emerson opened a nightclub in Lewiston, Idaho around 1953 and it gave him a stage for his own music and for traveling country artists, including Capitol Records star Tommy Collins. These established performers caught Emerson’s act, liked his songs, and urged him to give Nashville a shot. Prior to this move, Lee made a single for a label in Cody, Wyoming which made zero impact but might have been a helpful calling-card for a new arrival in a cut-throat musical town.

Things happened fast in Nashville. Lee found a manager and impressed Troy Martin, who worked for Golden West Music. Martin took some of Lee’s songs and noodged Don Law, Columbia Records’ country producer, to get Emerson on the label’s roster. Emerson soon met Columbia’s country star Marty Robbins; the two made three duet recordings in early 1957. In the meantime, some of Lee’s songs were successfully waxed. Porter Wagoner had a country hit with “I Thought I Heard You Calling My Name” that year.

Robbins and Emerson became fast friends. Marty hired Lee as a traveling buddy and bodyguard on his tours, and the two opened a talent management agency. Emerson didn’t realize that his career as a performer would soon morph into behind-the-scenes management.

Before this happened, Emerson made today’s single—a fly-in-amber artifact of Nashville in stunned transition. Shockwaves that began with Elvis Presley’s first record, in 1954, continued as Johnny Cash added a new influence to the mix and Nashville attempted to combat rock ‘n’ roll with a fancier sound that did the music little good. This single shows the turmoil of Music City—fighting for its life while unsure where to place their next footstep.

“Stop That Train” is more Nashville Sound than rockabilly, but it sits at the right spot to earn the sobriquet of “country bopper.” And, hey, it’s a train song! Who doesn’t like a good train song? It was one of four fine songs recorded in Owen Bradley’s Quonset hut-style studio (“Bradley’s Barn” to locals) on June 19, 1957, in a room full of unusual suspects: only pianist Floyd Cramer and bassist Grady Martin are session regulars. The rest are, I’d wager, Emerson’s own band—a welcome change that gives these four sides a special sound.

I believe The Jordanaires provide the background chorus, but the jaunty rocking feel is all Emerson’s band, as its leader sings a winning come-awn-back-tah-me song that stands with the best of these here train-type numbers. It’s a keeper!

Cash Box picked the most rockin' side of today's platter-bless their hearts!

“What a Night” is a superb rocker with a wicked li’l guitar figure (and a sweet solo) played by Hillous Butrum, Jack Pruett or Joseph Wright. Whichever picker did that pickin’, it is swee-eet! The Jordanaires are decent on this side; their vocal asides egg on Emerson as he relates the deets of a swingin’ Lover’s Lane interlude he enjoyed with a sweetheart. Lee is doin’ the kiss-and-tell routine, but The Jordanaires want to know everything, and urge him to dish it!

It’s a perfect Nashville rocker not far from Elvis Presley’s records of the era. Had Columbia Records been willing to push this single, it might have gone pop. Cash Box praised it on their page of country reviews, but it had mainstream potential. It was Emerson’s second and final single for the label, which, as a corporate ‘person,’ couldn’t have cared less.

Emerson wrote “Ruby Ann,” a major hit for his pal Marty, and ended his recording career in late 1957. A blur of travel, deal-making, booze and pills later, Emerson ended up in Texas, where he befriended Freddy Fender and wrote songs with him while fighting the demons of addiction. With Fender’s encouragement, Lee returned to Nashville, where tragedy awaited. I’ve long despised Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler for his infernal “Ballad of The Green Berets,” a big 1966 hit single that litters record bins everywhere. Sadler murdered Emerson in a dispute over a woman in 1978.

To be fair, Emerson had made his and the woman’s life hell with in-person and telephone harassment. The man was out of his gourd on liquor and pharmaceuticals most of the time—but he was unarmed in their final confrontation. Sadler shot Emerson in the head and then planted a firearm in Lee’s vehicle so he could plead self-defense. Sadler got 30 days in a county prison workhouse and was let go. In a rare stroke of poetic justice, Sadler was murdered in Guatemala in 1988. He, too, was shot in the head in what appeared to be a botched robbery.

Germany’s Bear Family Records issued It's So Easy for You to Be Mean, a 35-track CD of Emerson’s recordings, which include several songwriting demos and the full story of this tragic, ambitious life. His songs became part of the Nashville canon, and good works speak louder than personal flaws.

Tomorrow: singer-songwriter-producer Richard Berry (he who wrote "Louie Louie") is back with a fab 1960 Warner Brothers 45. Two fine songs sung by the man what wrote 'em.