PATSY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (8)
By:
July 27, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… Country Music of the Fifties (1954–1963)! Series edited by Josh Glenn. Qobuz playlist here.
LEFTY FRIZZELL | THE LONG BLACK VEIL | 1959
The Bear Family boxed set reproduces a window card from circa 1952: “Americana Presents … America’s Most Sensational Folk Artist … Columbia Recording Artist … Lefty Frizzell and His Driftin’ Playboys.” That genre-babble of signifiers skipped country & western, though fans would have caught the play on Hank Williams’s just disbanded Drifting Cowboys. Frizzell had outcharted Williams in 1951, as DMX would Jay-Z in 1998, by epitomizing a rowdy genre with a weepy undercurrent: “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time” into “Mom and Dad’s Waltz.” Frizzell’s twang curlicues, a 1991 best-of noted, influenced singers from Haggard to Travis. His life, a 1997 best-of added, included a statutory rape conviction at age 18, by which point he already had a wife and two-year-old. Bear Family’s elongated bio relished a 30-hour session at the pool table with fellow guzzler George Jones, who missed his plane to a show.
But “ten years ago,” when we are told this song’s narrator and ghost was executed for having no alibi to a murder, that was a different kind of number. Closer to the 47 years Frizzell (1928–1975), who wasn’t much of a talker either, ultimately got. Lyricist Danny Dill (“Detroit City”) kept the narrative courtly, but pulp-fiction quick: “I spoke not a word though it meant my life / For I had been in the arms of my best friend’s wife.” The music, by “Den Mother of Music Row” Marijohn Wilkin (“One Day at a Time”), added to the fatalism: middling chug as singer stepped to scaffold; then pop-gospel to evoke the wife, climbing cemetery hills, to moan o’er the singer’s bones.
Frizzell, forced by the death of his producer Jim Beck to leave Dallas studios for Music Row, if anything undercrooned the gothic “dark country” on hand. Bluegrass covers (Bill Malone, Country Gentlemen) went high lonesome. Folk covers (Joan Baez, the Band) aged the content. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds simply foamed. Sammi Smith made the narrator the woman left behind. The song’s biggest advocate was a later figure of Americana, sensational folk, and Columbia Records: Johnny Cash. Though he giggled about the absurd premise in front of the Folsom prisoners.
I have long loved Frizzell and had “Long Black Veil” stuck in my head, without a specific performer attached. Linking the two suggests a country music tradition alternate to our own. One that remained largely unnamed, more folk and Americana, tinged with rock and singer-songwriter and self-defeating impulses, fond of constructed myth. Not the format of commercialized counterculture and red states. But instead Willie Nelson bringing Patsy Cline “Crazy” country. Johnny Cash in a duet of “Long Black Veil” with Joni Mitchell on his network TV show country. John Anderson country in 1982, finding the vocals for “Veil” that Frizzell couldn’t in his haze of booze and reduced $250 appearance fees with local bands.
“Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me.”
PATSY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn. Nadine Hubbs on Marty Robbins’ EL PASO | Elizabeth Nelson on Dave Dudley’s SIX DAYS ON THE ROAD | Lynn Peril on Jean Chapel’s WELCOME TO THE CLUB | David Cantwell on Porter Wagoner’s MY BONFIRE | Will Hermes on Johnny Cash’s RING OF FIRE | Mimi Lipson on Loretta Lynn’s I’M A HONKY TONK GIRL | Charles Hughes on Roger Miller’s YOU DON’T WANT MY LOVE | Eric Weisbard on Lefty Frizzell’s THE LONG BLACK VEIL | Steacy Easton on Jean Shepard’s A SATISIFIED MIND | Josh Glenn on Johnny Cash’s THE REBEL — JOHNNY YUMA | Carlo Rotella on Buck Owens’ CLOSE UP THE HONKY TONKS | Annie Nocenti on Patsy Cline’s THREE CIGARETTES IN AN ASHTRAY | Douglas Wolk on Lucky Starr’s I’VE BEEN EVERYWHERE | Will Groff on Ray Price’s NIGHT LIFE | Jonny Auping on Willie Nelson’s CRAZY | Brian Berger on Ernest Tubb’s THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS | Jason Grote on Bill Browning and His Echo Valley Boys’ DARK HOLLOW | Peter Doyle on Willie Nelson’s FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY | Sam Glenn on Johnny Cash’s BIG RIVER | Annie Zaleski on Patsy Cline’s WALKIN’ AFTER MIDNIGHT | Adam McGovern on Elvis Presley’s BLACK STAR / FLAMING STAR | Chris Spurgeon on Ricky Nelson’s BELIEVE WHAT YOU SAY | Stephen Thomas Erlewine on George Jones’ WHITE LIGHTNING | Devin McKinney on George Hamilton IV’s ABILENE | Mark Richardson on Elvis Presley’s BLUE MOON.
ALSO SEE: DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (25 of our favorite Country records from 1964–1973) | & more Country at HILOBROW, including short appreciations of Gene Pitney, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Buck Owens, George Jones, June Carter Cash, Charley Pride, and many others.
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