Tuesday, September 2, 2008

R.I.P. Jerry Reed

Folks who know me well know of my fondness for the music of Mr. Jerry Reed, he of "East Bound And Down" from "Smokey And The Bandit," one of my all-time favorite movies. Sadly, Mr. Reed apparently passed away a couple days ago. His lung collapsed. Yet another reason to quit with the coffin nails.

Here's Jerry and Glen singing two of my favorite songs -- "Country Roads" and "Ko-Ko-Joe," one of Jerry's weird idiosyncratic late-60s hits.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

As Graham Nash wistfully says in moments like this, "Lost another one". Hurts a little more for me because he's a fellow Dixie boy a.k.a. the "Alabama Wild Man". Jerry was also a very underrated actor; just a natural...I wish WW and the Dixie Dancekings was out on DVD; that was my fave movie of his (featuring some other guy you may have heard of named Burt Reynolds).

What a great clip from the "Goodtime Hour"; that whole series needs to be on DVD...what a trip to see two of the greatest pickers of all time having a time; Country Roads is also my Mom's fave song as well as a huge fave of mine, too. And I'd forgotten what a great song Ko Ko Joe was...Awesome!

I always felt it was a pity that Jerry never got a chance to be a house songwriter for Elvis Presley...After making one too many movies with the likes of "No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car", E wanted to get serious about recording good songs in non-soundtrack sessions...and Jerry's "Guitar Man" fit Elvis to a T; they even got Jerry to play his distinctive thumb pick riffs on it...but when E's greedy publishing honchos wanted more material and pressured Jerry to sign other songs away, he wisely walked off...and the good feelings and great potential for the rest of that particular session were finis. But fortunately, Elvis did get to do another Jerry tune down the line via the highly underrated U.S. Male...