TNN Weekly Weekend Reward

September 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Weekly Weekend Reward 

Bluegrass pioneer and legend Bill Monroe frequently serenaded his home state.  In 1948, inspired by hearing Monroe’s “Kentucky Waltz” on the radio one night, Pee Wee King, the leader of the Golden West Cowboys, teamed up with his vocalist Redd  Stewart, and wrote one of the greatest —and most enduring— of American popular songs: “The Tennessee Waltz.”

Pee Wee (né Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski), had toured with Gene Autry and was a member of the Grand Ole Opry, came to country music via a polka band in his native Wisconsin.  Redd, at least, was born in Tennessee, although he grew up next door in Kentucky.  According to the legend, because they had no paper at hand, he emptied a matchbox and tore it open in order to jot down the words to the melody they crafted.

Here are the composers —Redd vocalizing and Pee Wee accordionizing— performing the “The Tennessee Waltz” and another of their major hits, 1952’s “You Belong To Me.”

Roy Acuff’s 1948 recording reached Number 8 on the country charts. But it wasn’t until two years later that the singing rage Miss Patti Page’s pop ballad cover of the song became one of the best-selling singles of the 20th Century.   Released at the end of the year, her record spent thirteen of its thirty weeks on Billboard’s pop chart at Number One.

Patti Page’s”Tennessee Waltz” was the first pop song of the wayward preadolescence that would shortly become my misspent youth.  I remember wearing out needles playing the 78-RPM record; and being taken, after some serious pestering,  to see her stage show at the New York Paramount.

The Gannons were relative rubes, and, as we arrived to see the movie that preceded the show, we couldn’t figure out why the first dozen rows —seemingly the prime real estate for the show that was to follow— were empty.  The movie ended; and, accompanied by mighty organ music, the vast stage slowly rose from the lower depths and preceded to rise to the height of at least a two story building, and we were suddenly staring at a blank wall.

An hour later we all had creaks in our necks.  But we had, occasionally, seen what we were pretty sure was the hem of Patti Page’s gown that had occasionally appeared  over the lip of the stage.

I wanted to learn the song, and I remember bringing the sheet music to a piano lesson, which was held in in the parlor of the the convent at the St. Barnabas School.  Sister Regina Florence was —as I now see, and for which I am still grateful— amazingly tolerant and, even, hip, for a Sister of Charity of Halifax in 1953.  And I wonder what the other nuns must have thought at some of the decidedly secular sounds that started emerging during my lessons.  But she still drew lines; and one of them was at the photograph that displayed Ms. Page’s bare shoulders.  I had to put a plain brown wrapper —literally made from a shopping bag— over the cover for the subsequent lessons.

Three years later, in 1953, Les Paul and Mary Ford’s cover reached the Top Ten:

“The Tennessee Waltz” was among the twenty-two “home recordings” made by Elvis Presley in Memphis, LA, and Germany during the mid-1960s. His version is alternately goofy, raunchy, and, when he puts the power of his voice behind the mojo of the music, pretty darn moving:

In 2005, Bonnie Raitt invited Norah Jones to join her on stage in Atlantic City for an excellent VH-1-produced show — Bonnie Raitt and Friends.

And Leonard Cohen, who rarely sings covers, included “The Tennessee Waltz” on his 2004 album Dear Heather.  Of course, he fitted it out with a extra verse of Cohenesque lyrics.

She goes dancin’ with the darkness
to the Tennessee Waltz
and I feel like I’m falling apart
and it’s stronger than drink
and it’s deeper than sorrow
this darkness she left in my heart

And the last words go to terrific version, from a late ’50s radio program, by a native Tennessean — Patsy Cline.

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