Career in Music
Guthrie's rewritten version of a Woody Guthrie song "Oklahoma Hills" (Capitol 201) reached No. 1 in 1945, staying on the charts for 19 weeks. The b side, "I'm A Brandin' My Darlin' With My Heart", reached No. 5 later that year. At the time the record became a hit Jack Guthrie was in the U.S. Army and stationed in the Pacific Theater. As soon as he got out of the service he wrote and recorded more songs, played live gigs up and down the West Coast. His version of "Oakie Boogie" (Capitol 341), a hit at No. 3 in 1947, is considered a candidate for the first rock and roll record. In July 1947 he was admitted to a hospital with tuberculosis. He died in 1948 in Livermore, California.
Guthrie's style was influenced by Jimmie Rodgers and adapted to fit his cowboy image. Although the labels listed Jack Guthrie and His Oklahomans as the artist, in reality Guthrie had no band. The studio brought in some of its better musicians to back Guthrie. Many of them, Porky Freeman, Red Murrell, Cliffie Stone, and Billy Hughes among them, were stars in their own right.
Read more about this topic: Jack Guthrie
Famous quotes containing the words career and/or music:
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)