Bare: I had come to Ohio, to where I had registered for the draft. I was there a couple of weeks. Bill Parsons had just got out of the Army, he’d been in for two years, and we were best friends. He thought he’d take a crack at getting a record deal. I said, “Well, you’ve got to cut some demos.” This old boy owned a nightclub down in southern Ohio, said he’d pay for ’em. He had a little record label called Cherokee Records. It was a demo session.
So we went down, got a band out of Dayton, a nightclub band that I knew. Went to Cincinnati to cut Bill a demo. We spent most of the time on “Rubber Dolly”, which is an old traditional song, on Bill. I was playing bass on that. But the bass was broke. Seemed like we had all kinds of technical problems. They were revamping the studio. So we spent all our time on that.
Then, we had about twenty minutes, I said, “Well, let me put this song down while I’ve got it in my head,” because it was about going in the Army, and I thought it was funny. And everybody else did, too. So I just put it down. Most of it I was making up as I went along, the ad libs and things. But we got it done. To get a copy made then you didn’t get tape copies, you got acetates. Their acetate machine didn’t exist at King because they were redoing the studio.
So we took it down to Fraternity Records, and Harry Carlson heard it while they was making the acetate, and said he’d give him [Cherokee Records] $500 to let him put it out. And he said, “Who’s that singing?” “Well, that’s Bill Parsons.” Which was true on “Rubber Dolly”. They didn’t talk about the other side, because he thought they were talking about “Rubber Dolly”. When Cherokee called me and Parsons up — by then we were already up in Dayton — said $500, which was the magic word because we was broke.
Bobby: $500 for y’all to split, or per person.
Bare: Split. Cherokee said, “Great, because that check I wrote King Records for studio time was not covered.” So I wound up getting 50 bucks and Parsons got 50 bucks. Which was fine. I’d never heard of Fraternity Records, and it was like a gift.
Bobby: But were you signing over publishing also?
Bare: We didn’t sign anything. Nobody signed nothing. We just took the $50 and ran with it. Then the next day or so, I got on a bus with a bunch of other guys and we went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, and that was the end of that. I thought.
I didn’t particularly care for the record; I thought it was silly. I didn’t like the sound. I learned to like it. I thought the drums was playing too much, just sounded like a sloppy record. But when it mastered it definitely came together. But, anyway, I went to Fort Knox about two weeks later, somebody had smuggled in a transistor radio, and I heard it, and I said, “That’s me!” Nobody believed it. I was just getting a lot of shit.
That was back when a record could be an overnight smash. Ship ’em out, radio stations play it, two days later it’s the hottest thing in America. Which is exactly what happened, because everybody thought it was about Elvis. He was getting all that press on being in the Army. He’d gone in in February or March, something like that. He was six months older than me.
Parsons called about a week or so later, and he was really upset. He said, “Man, they want me to do the Dick Clark show.” At this point, nobody knew it wasn’t him. His picture was coming up on the front of Hit Parade magazine, oh, man. And the PR was starting to roll. Parsons said, “What am I going to do?”
“Well,” I said, “I know I’m stuck here for two years, and this is only a freak rock ‘n’ roll hit and it’ll be forgotten in six months anyway. Why don’t you just go ahead and do it, take the money and buy yourself a new car or somethin’. I can’t do anything with it.”
He went to sing it on “American Bandstand” [small laugh], which I couldn’t even have done, because I didn’t know what I was doing when I started. I had no tempo, you can’t lip-synch talkin’. Especially if you’re ad-libbing. It was a nightmare. Glad it was him, not me.
Besides that, I think everything happens for a reason. I thank that if my name had been on that record, I would have been immediately pegged as a novelty singer, and I would never have had hits like “Detroit City”, “500 Miles”. Nobody would have taken me seriously.
My prediction that it wouldn’t last six months went by the wayside. Everybody’s still talkin’ about it.
Bobby: Big Al, the guitar player for NRBQ, just thinks that’s the greatest song ever written.
Bare: It’s just a rip-off of the old talking blues.
Bobby: You ever notice how it really sounds like a Shel Silverstein song?
Bare: No, but you’re probably right. It’s probably why I liked Shel’s writing, it’s got that humor in it.
Bobby: It’s got the phrasing…
Bare: Well, did you ever stop to think, maybe he’s ripped me off?
Bobby: [laughs, loudly] I did.
Bare: Same as “A Boy Named Sue”.
Bobby: That’s what I mean. When you got out of the Army, did you have anything set, ready for you to go work?
Bare: Yeah. While I was in the Army, everybody figured out this Bill Parsons thing.
Bobby: So what did you have waiting for you when you got out?
Bare: Well, I was going to do a record…for Harry Carlson [of Fraternity Records].
Bobby: What about your record deal with Capitol?
Bare: That went by the wayside. I told them I wanted out. They didn’t drop me, I quit. Because I wanted to try new things, and Ken Nelson didn’t want to. He wanted to things just the way he’d been doing. And I had a jillion ideas on what to do. But Harry Carlson gave me free reign.
Bobby: Harry was still in Cincinnati and you were going to be in California, right?
Bare: Yeah. I had it all set up to do a Hollywood session. I used all those Hollywood strings…prettiest sound I ever heard in my life. First thing I did was “Lorena”, the old Civil War song. And I had talked through it: “We’ll have the strings come up on the second verse, just kind of sneak up on it.” I was in there singing and those strings sneaked up on me, I had to quit, man. It was the prettiest sound I’d ever…the record did fine. Matter of fact, I went back and did it on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand”.
