Mickey Gilley: Call Me Shorty

Mickey Gilley, native of Ferriday, LA, cousin to the gods, and another one touched by the “Crazy Cajun” Huey Meaux, here from back before he sucked, from back when he still wore his hair slick. As a general rule, I try to stick with country records that show the artists on the jacket wearing either a flat-top or greased-back hairdo. Once they go to the dry-look and Billy Sherrill, it’s all downhill, except maybe in the case of George Jones. The Mick's cut tons of C&W over the years, but this one, Gilley's one and only single for the Dot label, “Call Me Shorty,” from 1958, is straight rock 'n' roll. Not only is it not country, it's not autobiographical either, much as it could be (that head-and-half he stands beneath Jerry Lee in the photo above is not an effect of camera angle). Song-writing credit on "Shorty" goes to Charles Matthews, and with lyrics like “the girls call me Daddy/’Cause I’m the biggest little man they’ve seen!” it's one suggestive little ditty. It's hard to know whether or not Meaux actually produced this record, although this was about the time that he began to work with Gilley. The flip, “Come On Baby,” a Mickey Gilley original, ain’t no slouch either.


Photo of Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley taken from Nick Tosches' Country: The Biggest Music in America (Stein & Day, 1977).

Cover Song Cage Match #1

Introducing a new feature to the GS: Equal parts comparison study and contest, the idea here is to locate original versions of a few songs and pit them against imitators in a Cover Song Cage Match. Hey, it might not be as fun as a chicken fight, but at least it’s cleaner, and you're less likely to break yr pecker. Anyway, if you want to vote on a winner on any of these matchups, just user Blogger’s comment tool below.

First up⎯Can’t rightly start a Cover Song Cage Match without this one, eh?⎯The Novas vs. the Cramps doin’ “The Crusher.” My copy of the original comes from Back from the Grave, vol. 2. Liner notes on that comp say this about it: “THE NOVAS⎯The Crusher. The height of intellectual psychedelia. These Minnesota Gentlemen must be the ‘precocious,’ ‘ephemeral,’ and ‘interpretive,’ teenagers referred to on the liner notes to the RCA/COLUMBIA collection MINDBLOWERS.” The Cramps’ version ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at neither. You be the judge.

Next, another one from Back from the Grave, vol. 2, the Unrelated Segments’ original version of “Cry, Cry, Cry” (originally released on the Liberty label) vs. the Cynics’ cover, from their 1990 Get Hip LP Rock ‘n’ Roll.



Finally, the main event on this week’s card, Roy Orbison & the Teen Kings’ original 1956 version of “Go Go Go” (Sun 242) vs. an entire tag team of challengers. You got Jerry Lee Lewis doing his version, which he called “Down the Line,” from the Live at the Star Club LP, from 1963. Then there’s the Killers’s cuz Mickey Gilley’s version, from 1965, likewise dubbed “Down the Line,” on the Astro Label (and yes, that one does play better than it looks). And the Del-Tinos' 1963 version puts the Atomic Knee Drop on it to wrap things up.

All right turkey necks, until the rematch…