12 Great Performances Now For The First Time On Records - Johnny Horton

 

Tetched In The Head

12 Great Performances Now For The First Time On Records

Johnny Horton

I Can't Forget You

Produced by Dow Law and Frank Jones

Columbia CL 2299

1965

From the back cover: Johnny was born in Los Angeles. When he was a boy, his family moved to Texas where Johnny worked his way through high school. A star basketball player, he was offered twenty-six different athletic scholarships. At Seattle University, he majored in geology and petroleum engineering.

In high school, Johnny sang very little, except to his mother, "who taught me to play three chords in two keys on the guitar." During his college days, however, he became interested in composing and began to write numbers to sing for his classmates. One day in Los Angeles, a friend challenged him to enter a singing contest. He went to Harmony Park in nearby Anaheim, sang the thirteen songs he knew at the time – and won! A recording company executive heard him and helped him get a featured spot on "Home Town Jamboree," a program originating in El Monte, with Cliffie Stone and Tennessee Ernie as masters of ceremonies. Johnny's talents brought him a wide following and he was soon signed to appear on radio station KWKH's "Louisiana Hayride" in Shreveport, where many other important Country music stars got their first big opportunity.

For three years Johnny was famous throughout the South. Then he burst into nation-wide popularity with his single-record version of "The Battle Of New Orleans," which sold more than two million copies. What time he could spare from personal appearances and Nashville, Tennessee's recording studios, he devoted to is hobbies of hunting and fishing.

Then tragedy struck. In November 1960, Johnny was killed in an automobile accident en route from an engagement in Austin, Texas, to his Shreveport home. His unique artistry survives, however, in the recordings he left behind. Listen to him as he sings I Can't Forget You and the other songs in the album, and share in the urgency and vitality that make Johnny Horton himself unforgettable.

From Billboard - March 27, 1965: Collectors in the country field will want this package. It consists of 12 hitherto unreleased performances by the late, great country and folk singer. There are some Horton originals here, including "Hot In The Sugar Cane Field" and several notable other sides, one of which is the late Leon Payne's "Lost Highway."

Hot In The Sugar Cane Field

Lonesome And Heartbroken

Seven Come Elven

I Can't Forget You

Wise To The Ways Of A Woman

The Same Old Tale The Crow Told Me

Out In New Mexico 

Tetched In The Head

Just Walk A Little Closer

Don't Use My Heart For A Stepping Stone

I Love You, Baby

Lost Highway