Greatest Country Song of All Time? Part two.

Mr. George Jones' signature song He Stopped Loving Her Today is widely considered by most to be the greatest country song of all time. I have no real interest in argueing that point. However i've never been a real fan of claiming any one thing as the greatest whatzit. Here's part two in a series of songs i'll be presenting here (in my own sweet time and in no particular order) that move me just as much as Mr.Jones' famous heartbreaker.

Mr. Johnny Paycheck- (Pardon Me)I've Got Someone To Kill MP3
Daryle Singletary- Old Violin MP3

Damn do I feel sorry for all the folks in the world who only know of Johnny Paycheck from his big hit Take This Job and Shove It. So may artists have been artistically screwed by their biggest hits and by radio wanting just another version of that hit. Like people who judge a certain genre, say rap music, by what's played on the radio so too are artists unfairly judged. Not to say Take This Job isnt a good song it's fine. But as with Springsteen's Born In The USA it ain't about what people think it's about.
As blogger Muppetpastor so finely puts it:

"Twenty-five years into his career Johnny Paycheck was a forty-year-old overnight success - and he’d never live that success down. “Take This Job and Shove It” became an inevitable albatross and Johnny Paycheck pretty much became that outlaw country guy who’d sung “Take This Job and Shove It.” Sure, to the knowing few who’d followed his entire career, he was still a honky-tonk singer like few others, but to the wider audience who’d embraced the “Take This Job and Shove It” moment, muddied up its message, and then ran with the idea of weekend urban cowboy-dom, Paycheck was just another disposable character who’d helped them feel like suburban southern rebels for the two-minutes and thirty six seconds that it lasted. The song had rendered Paycheck a trivial national curiosity and nothing more. But “Take This Job and Shove It” impacted: it reached out to listeners across every industry defined demographic and was at the peak of the cresting wave of country music’s first commercial swell - one that would, from that point on, open up many doors for country music as a viable trans-demographic sound and saleable music."

But anyway. Let's get back to the task at hand. First of all Paycheck's song "Pardon Me..." is off his critically acclaimed compilation The Real Mr. Heartache: The Little Darlin' Years. And like most good albums worth a tinkers damn (don't ask me what a tinkers damn is cuz I don't know. Just something my dad said) it's outta print. You can get it off Amazon from some heartless bastard for $45.00! But its a fantastic album that includes such songs as A-11 which was also done well by Buck Owens. It also includes (it's a mighy Thin Line) Between Love and Hate (which is probably my wife's favorite song in the set) as well as He's in a Hurry to get ome to My Wife, Apartment #9 which which was a hit for Tammy Wynette, It Won't be long and i'll be Hating You, The Cave, and several more that'll set you to drinkin' alone but quick. I might as well add it's probably worth every penny of $45 bucks or a highly illegal non-sanctioned by me download. "Pardon me.." has probably been covered by every punque rawk lovin' alt-country cowboy belted hipster bastard in the western hemisphere. and rightly so. You cannot go wrong with a song the contains everything that pop country does not allow. It's a beaut and a heartbreaker and I hope y'all love it as much as I do. Please DO not burn a cd of this song and throw at the collective hydra heads of Rascal Flatts.

The Daryle Singletary track is from his classic (in my world) and far too honkytonk for soccermom country radio album "That's Why I Sing This Way". Old Violin is Mr. Paycheck's last recording. Please read about it HERE.