Jimmy Johnson Heap See

JIMMY JOHNSON

How About Me? Pretty Baby

JIMMY JOHNSON

How About Me? Pretty Baby

In 1954 and 1955 The Sunset Riders were the house band at local radio personality Ray Odom's big Saturday night shows at Madison Square Garden in downtown Phoenix. The band, featuring 19-year-old string genius Al Casey on steel and lead guitar, backed most of the touring national acts and all of the locals. Casey's teacher, Forrest Skaggs, played bass, Gene Pine was on piano and Jimmy Johnson played rhythm guitar and sang lead vocals. Soon producer and writer Lee Hazlewood was using this band to back up local star Jimmy Spellman on his country Viv label releases and get his own compositions recorded. Johnson and his wife, Billie, had written a new song Cat Daddy (Volume One) that Hazlewood liked enough to invest in a drummer for the session, Larry Vanlandingham, to give the primitive rockabilly number some extra punch. Hazlewood's song How About Me? Pretty Babywas the flip side of this great record that was pressed on both 78 and 45 RPM speeds. Casey's Sun Records-influenced guitar riff really pushes this side along with a boppin' rhythm. Like all the other releases however, it never garnered more than local airplay and most of the early Viv records got buried in Hazlewood's garage. This was the first two-sided rocker from Phoenix and it sounds as good today as the day it was recorded at Ramsey's Recording Studio in 1955.

Various Rockin' And Boppin' In The Desert Vol.2

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