Johnny and Jack
Coop
By Charlotte Fulton, anc...@pclnet.net
Forty-one years after Jack Anglin -- the tenor half of Johnny and Jack,
country music's top duo of the 1950s -- perished in an automobile
accident on his way to a prayer service for Patsy Cline, he and his
brothers still exert a strong influence on country music.
Their songs (ones written by Jim and/or popularized by the Anglin
Brothers or Johnny and Jack) have been recorded by the likes of Waylon
Jennings, Dr. Hook, the Amazing Rhythm Aces and Desert Rose Band. The
Bailes Brothers have released "Call to Potter's Field," and Bob Dylan
claims "Searching for a Soldier's Grave," a song penned by Jim, as a
favorite for concert performances.
It's a mystery to Gary Anglin, great-nephew of the talented brothers,
that they have not been included in the Country Music Hall of Fame or
the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.
Gary has boxes and boxes of memorabilia -- most of it found on eBay --
pertaining to his great-uncles' music career.
"My grandfather told me the Anglins moved to Athens from Tennessee,
where they had lived in several towns," said Gary. "They'd move in near
a railroad line and make their living by cutting cross ties and selling
them to the railroad. I don't know why they moved to Athens or how they
made their living here, but in the 1920s, the Anglins were living in
Athens."
Of the seven children who lived to adulthood, at least three were
musically inclined. Brothers Jim, Jack, and Van Buren (known as Red)
formed a trio and performed around Limestone County, during which time
they influenced and were influenced by the Delmore Brothers, another
country duo hailing from Limestone County.
Jim was a poet, and the impressions he put to paper would surface as
songs sung, at first, by him and his brothers, and later by Roy Acuff,
Kitty Wells, and a multitude of country recording artists.
The trio began performing as the Anglin Brothers, but because the era
saw the rise of so many "brother" singing acts and because so many
people mistook Jim and Jack for twins, the brothers changed their stage
name to The Anglin Twins and Red. (Another common misconception is that
Johnny and Jack were brothers. They actually were brothers-in-law; Jack
married Johnny's sister, Louise Wright.)
In the early 1930s, parents John and Lue Anglin and their seven
surviving children (two had died in epidemics) moved to Nashville.
According to Gary Anglin, the brothers were played at WSIX Radio in
Nashville. WAPI in Birmingham tried to hire the Delmore Brothers but the
Delmores didn't want to leave Nashville. They recommended the Anglins,
who took their act to Birmingham. The Anglins traveled all over the
Southeast U.S. and recorded at least 37 songs. Gary has a couple of
their 78 RPMs he found on eBay.
In "Honky Tonk Angels," a book about Kitty Wells and Johnny and Jack,
author Walt Trott said that by the mid or late 1930s, Jim and Red had
become less interested in singing. Jack Anglin and Johnnie Wright (who
later changed the spelling of his name to Johnny), performed together as
The Backwater Boys at a benefit for Ohio flood victims. The two of them
began playing around Nashville, often accepting pay in the form of
refreshments. Both worked regular day jobs and had a radio show.
Johnny's wife, Muriel Deason, ironed shirts for $9 a week. (Later,
Johnny would give Muriel a stage name taken from a favorite ballad,
"Sweet Kitty Wells." Jack would continue performing with Johnny, and Jim
would pen dozens and dozens of songs for Johnny and Jack and for Kitty,
often sharing writing credit with Johnny and Jack.)
Around 1940, a promoter talked Johnny and Jack into leaving Nashville
and going on radio in different states. (Their band played first as the
Roving Cowboys and later as the Tennessee Hillbillies.) The two couples
-- Jack and Louise Anglin and Johnny and Muriel Wright -- sold their
furniture and hit the road, working at stations in North Carolina, West
Virginia and Tennessee until in 1942, gas rationing forced them to disband.
Returning to Nashville, Jack Anglin started playing with Roy Acuff's
band. Jim Anglin had meanwhile been busy writing, and sold many of his
songs to Acuff -- 21 of them for $15 each, including compositional
credit. (In the 1950s, rights and royalties reverted to Jim Anglin.
That's why you might see Roy Acuff listed as author of "Lonely Mound of
Clay" in an early songbook, and the same song attributed to Jim Anglin
in later editions.)
Jack Anglin had been playing with Acuff's band for just six months when
he was drafted. All three Anglin brothers saw action in World War II.
Jim saw fought in the Pacific; Jack was a combat medic in the European
Theater; Red , a rifleman in the Normandy Invasion, returned to the U.S.
shell-shocked and never again performed.
The horrors of war became a theme for Jim Anglin's song-writing,
surfacing in tunes like "Searching for a Soldier's Grave." "Buried
Alive," written by Jim and sung by Johnny and Jack, was based on Red's
memory of seeing a bomb blow up and bury a soldier alive. Jim's
unsuccessful first marriage was grist for the "love gone wrong" songs he
became known for. The most notable of those, sung by Red Foley and Kitty
Wells, begins: "One by one, you broke each vow we made. It was you who
lied; it was me who paid."
In 1947, Johnny and Jack were invited to perform for WSM on the Opry,
with the provision that they get rid of their one-armed banjo picker,
change their name from the Tennessee Hillbillies to the Tennessee
Mountain Boys, and leave Kitty at home where she belonged. The Opry
wasn't accepting of female singers then -- but in time, Kitty would
change all that, earning the name The Queen of Country Music.
Jack Anglin's career path after that is legendary. He, along with Johnny
Wright and Kitty Wells, joined the Louisiana Hayride in 1948, sharing
the stage with people like Elvis, Johnny Cash, George Jones and Hank
Williams. In 1951 they rejoined the Opry. In all, Johnny and Jack
recorded 150 sides for RCA, 20 releases for Decca, 12 sides for Apollo,
and six for King Records as part of the King Sacred Quartet. They made
the Billboard charts 15 times with favorites that included "Poison
Love," "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight," "(Oh, Baby Mine) I Get So
Lonely," "Ashes of Love" and "Stop the World and Let Me Off."
Joe Anglin, former superintendent of Athens City Schools and a nephew of
the Anglin brothers, remembers how two of Jim's best-known songs were
inspired by happenings here in Limestone County.
"It was the Fourth of July, and Jim and Jack were visiting here from
Nashville," Joe Anglin recalls. "They and my father, Joe, had been to
Decatur. Coming home, they ran across a terrible wreck and discovered
that the victim was somebody who had grown up with them. Jim later write
'The Wreck on the Highway.'"
On another occasion, Jim was walking past a cemetery in Depression-era
Limestone County when he saw a man whom he knew bending over a tombstone
and sobbing. It was a man he'd seen around town before, usually walking
hand-in-hand with his wife. Jim learned that the man had taken the train
to other towns in search of work. Returning home, he learned that his
wife had died during his absence. It was the memory of that incident
that inspired "Lonely Mound of Clay."
"Jim could write the saddest songs," said Joe.
"When I took a class on the history of country music at the University
of Alabama," said Phillip Anglin, another great-nephew, "a professor
played 'Wreck on the Highway' as a song that epitomized the tear-jerker."
Phillip perhaps had not realized how far the Anglin influence had
reached until, in the 1980s, he was in the Alps listening to an Austrian
radio station when he heard Johnny and Jack's "Ashes of Love."
In an article they wrote for "Bluegrass Unlimited," Ivan M. Tribe and
John W. Morris sum up the contributions of the Anglin Brothers.
"The Anglins are significant for four reasons," they wrote. "First, they
displayed greater versatility than most brother groups. Being three in
number, the Anglins featured a trio and two duets within their act.
Second, Jim Anglin became one of the greatest, albeit often uncredited,
country songwriters of the forties and fifties. Third, and best known,
is Jack Anglin's later work with Johnnie Wright. In a sense the Anglin
Brothers served as the predecessors of the Tennessee Mountain Boys.
Lastly, the music of the Anglins has merit in its own right although
many of their recorded songs and stylings show more Delmore influence
than the originality later shown in Jack's artistry or Jim's writing."
Red Anglin died in a veterans' hospital in the mid-1979s. Joe Anglin
said Jim lost his edge in writing as time dimmed his memories of war,
and a happy second marriage mollified the bitterness of his first one.
He continued writing for Kitty Wells for many years, dying in the 1980s.
Johnny Wright and Kitty Wells live on. They and their son performed in
road shows as recently as 2000.
dick...@webtv.net
were 'cause I never pay much attention to who wrote most of the songs I
listen to. Among my Johnny and Jack favorites are "I Overlooked An
Orchid", "Lonesome", and "Borrowed Diamonds", just to name a few.
I looked at the CMHOF list and the only "brother" artists I see there
are the Delmore, Louvin, and Everly. No J and J or Bailes or Buchanan,
and, very surprising to me, no Statlers! Guess they didn't "schmooze"
the right people, or in the Statler's case, stayed in Staunton, VA
instead of moving to Nashville. -- Dick
NoRepliesPleeze
> I didn't realize what prolific writers the Anglins were<
Please. Harlan Howard was prolific, the Anglins were not !
Could you please show me another member of the human race who ever thought they
were "prolific" ? Are you related ? :)
>I looked at the CMHOF list... very surprising to me, no Statlers! <
Again, are you related ? The Statlers belong on Lawrence Welk, not the CMHOF.
dick...@webtv.net
Larry Davis
While many country songwriters have been criticized for claiming credit for
songs they actually bought (most notably, Jimmie Davis), I wasn't aware that
Roy Acuff was part of that group. It would be nice to see a list of all the
songs that carry Acuff's name that he didn't write.
"Wreck On The Highway", although associated with Roy Acuff's version
(recorded by him in May, 1942), is usually shown as having been written by
Dorsey Dixon. The article doesn't say whether Anglin sold songs to others
besides Acuff. Dorsey Dixon was part of the Dixon Brothers who recorded for
Bluebird in the mid-1930s. Another famous song credited to Dorsey Dixon is
"The Intoxicated Rat".
Ironically, of the 15 songs that Johnnie and Jack (their name appeared that
way on record, not as Johnny and Jack) charted with, Jim Anglin only
composed two of them. Among their highest charting and best known records,
"Poison Love" was written by Mrs. Elmer Laird, "I Get So Lonely (Oh Baby
Mine)" by Pat Ballard, "I Want To Be Loved (But Only By You)" by the Bailes
Brothers, and "Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight" by members of The Spaniels,
the R&B group that had the original hit version.
I agree that their legacy is important to country music and that they should
be in the Hall of Fame. For some reason, their Bear Family box set has been
deleted from Bear Family's catalog (being replaced by a single disc
compilation), one of the very few Bear sets to have been deleted. Yet when
the box set turns up on Ebay it usually goes for a pretty price.
Jim Anglin wrote some of Kitty Wells best songs. Besides "One By One", he
wrote "You And Me", "Jealousy" (her only record to make Billboard's HOT
100), the duet with Roy Drusky "I Can't Tell My Heart That", and both side
of the excellent duet record with Roy Acuff, "Mother Hold Me Tight" and
"Goodbye Mr. Brown".
Talk about paying your dues. So many contemporary artists are "discovered"
young, get a contract and their label pushes hard for (or as Floyd says,
"buys" them) a hit. The Anglins and Wrights labored for over a decade to
finally be "discovered" and even so, back then a country hit might never
sell more than 50,000 copies. The only real money came from touring. Johnny
and Kitty just retired after playing concerts for about 50 years. Not an
easy way to make a living.
Larry Davis
"Coop" <co...@twang.edu> wrote in message news:40F5623C...@twang.edu...