Jimmie Skinner – Doin’ My Time (6-CD box)
Jimmie Skinner’s raw voice and quirky guitar earned him few imitators, one reason Bear Family placed this exhaustive box set into the “Alternative Country” category. That’s accurate in the sense that Skinner was an entity unto himself — although, as a rustic who wrote and sang tunes of sorrow, regret or even anger, Skinner was never far from the bluesy influence of Jimmie Rodgers.
Nonetheless, he broke through to the mainstream, once in 1948 and again, in a more extended way, a decade later. Two of his songs gained substantial fame. Ernest Tubb made “Let’s Say Goodbye Like We Said Hello” his own. Johnny Cash did likewise; he covered Skinner’s prison ballad “Doing My Time” (inspired by the book and film I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang) first at Sun and again on Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison.
Skinner’s hardscrabble early life in rural Kentucky (where his dad was murdered) and later in Hamilton, Ohio, led him to seek stardom. Yet in the end he chose not the Opry, but a more Cincinnati-Kentucky focus. He played bars and halls and became a regional radio personality with some national fans. Only occasionally did he tour nationally. He appeared at the Opry only as a guest.
Five of the six discs here (enhanced by home recordings and demos from the early and mid-1940s) document Skinner’s musical evolution. He began at tiny Red Barn Records with little real success. Things improved after he connected with young, business-savvy Cincinnatian Lou Epstein, a former King Records employee who owned the small Radio Artists label. A Radio Artists cover of Jimmy Work’s “Tennessee Border” gained Skinner his first national notice.
Epstein, cognizant of Skinner’s local appeal, became his manager and opened the Jimmie Skinner Music Center, a downtown Cincy clone of the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, complete with a live daily radio show and visits from every star passing through town. Skinner earned royalties for use of his name; Epstein, his family and business partners actually owned the store.
Skinner’s primitivism remained when, in 1950, he joined Capitol. The Hollywood-based label didn’t try to change him (the many samey arrangements with his longtime accompanist, mandolinist Ray Lunsford, are best sampled in limited doses). Skinner broadened slightly at Decca in 1953-54 as the Nashville studio players he worked with afforded him greater flexibility. One example: a startlingly effective rendition of Duke Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”, the equivalent of Tubb recording “Satin Doll”.
Joining Mercury in 1956 brought Skinner his greatest visibility. Still hard country by anyone’s standards, he had his biggest hits, including “I Found My Girl In The USA”, the Louvin-esque “What Makes A Man Wander”, and “Dark Hollow”. Fans saw Skinner, like Ray Price or Kitty Wells, keeping the faith in an era when many others embraced rock ‘n’ roll or the Nashville Sound. Indeed, Skinner’s one-shot experiments with semi-rock and recording with the Anita Kerr Singers proved disastrous. He also managed one of his truest efforts at Mercury, the LP Jimmie Skinner Sings Jimmie Rodgers, before moving on to Starday and smaller labels.
Dave Samuelson’s exhaustive research for the huge hardcover book reveals previously unknown details of Skinner’s career (a 1931 recording for Gennett and later turndowns by RCA, King and Decca prior to his Red Barn deal). It also details the woes that Skinner’s consummate lack of business sense caused him, and his eventual turnaround. After some quiet years, he found renewal after relocating to Nashville in 1974 and embracing bluegrass. On October 27, 1979, the 70-year-old Skinner played a show in Kentucky. Hours later, his heart gave out.
The final disc’s nine tracks, from a series of reminiscences taped for a planned autobiography, are in many ways icing on the cake. Evocative, vivid and often moving even if some details are embellished, they reveal the complexity and conundrums beneath the simple persona as he sought to define his true career goal.
“Anticipation,” he reflected, “is often greater than realization. And certainly all the things I had anticipated for so long I was now beginning to realize….I had become a challenger, and I didn’t know if I wanted to become a champion or not.” He erred on the side of caution. For Jimmie Skinner, the slow lane turned out to be infinitely more satisfying.