Kevin L. Glaser The Great Tompall: Forgotten Country Music Outlaw

Tompall and the Glaser Brothers

Gone Girl

Tompall and the Glaser Brothers

Gone Girl

(Jack Clement)

recorded May 21, 1970; Nashville, Tennessee

with Thomas Paul (Tompall) Glaser, Charles 'Chuck' Glaser, Jim Glaser: vocal; other details unknown

MGM K 14169 - master 70N 51 142

Marty Robbins had found the Glaser brothers in Nebraska and brought them to Nashville because he loved close harmony singing. Tompall, Chuck, and Jim Glaser had been recording since 1957 with very little success. Their first contract was with Robbins Records before Owen Bradley picked them up as Decca's answer to the Kingston Trio. The Glasers didn't help themselves in that they wrote or published Streets Of Baltimore, Gentle On My Mind, Sittin' In An All-Night Café, and Woman, Woman without keeping even one of those hits for themselves. Jack Clement signed them to MGM, for whom he was already producing the Stonemans. On their recordings, Clement could add all the elements that were off-limits on his Charley Pride productions: marimbas, Latin percussion, and mock-mariachi horns. In writing Gone Girl, Clement set himself the near-impossible task of finding seven lines to rhyme with gone girl. The fact that the rhymes only share assonance (ie. rhyming vowels) doesn't seem to matter greatly because the song is so engaging. Swirling and romantic, it hints at Clement's background in ballroom dancing. The Glasers' success with Clement at the helm earned them some belated recognition, including the CMA's Vocal Group of the Year award in 1970. True, it was a low competition category (in 1969, Johnny Cash and June Carter somehow qualified and won). Clement repurposed Gone Girl on his 1978 Elektra album 'All I Want To Do In Life,' and it became the title track of a 1982 Cash LP.  

- Colin Escott -

Various Country & Western Hit Parade 1970

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