PATSY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (23)
By:
September 19, 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.
GEORGE HAMILTON IV | ABILENE | 1963
In 1993, in a record store below Washington Square that is long gone, I came across Meet the Beeb!, a five-year-old bootleg LP containing offline fan recordings of the Beatles on BBC Radio. The final track, quarantined from the others with the note “… and from unknown BBC-programme,” was called “My Evelyne.” The title was unfamiliar, the taping undocumented, the whole thing a question mark — and it excited me to think that there were still Beatle mysteries out there, odd things of unknown provenance, like “Have You Heard the Word” and “The Candle Burns” back in the day.
The mystery of the title was quickly dispatched: despite all the crackle and hiss, this was plainly an English band’s cover of George Hamilton IV’s “Abilene.” It was a song that the Beatles might have done. The voice sounded like George Harrison’s. And besides, it was pretty to think so. Everything about the recording was distant, untouchable, and it worked on me as the best mysteries always have. Listening to it in a strange city, far from my Iowa hometown of Cedar Falls (three syllables, like Abilene), I felt lonely and lost, but also warm, and anticipatory of what life might have in store.
Thoughts flowed from there back to the original “Abilene,” and how lovely it had always been. A #1 country hit in summer 1963, it was a winsome ballad about feeling empty, watching trains, and being alone in a big city where “there ain’t nothing free.” In terms of the era and the style, it was what you’d expect. At the same time, it wasn’t. If its moist, lush sound was antithetical to prairie dust, its feel was pure Midwestern desolation and drift. Yet Hamilton’s voice, backed by an angel chorale, made desolation sound blissful. The record was a downer, and a restorative.
So much depends on a song. A vanished record store; an illicit LP with guesswork listing; a Beatles performance that wasn’t; a title that didn’t exist; someone’s delaminated, decades-old tape of English boys yearning for a Kansas they’d never seen — all leading back to a once-neglected, now-treasured record about the distance between towns, lives, and worlds.
By the way: I later learned that “My Evelyne” was not the Beatles. Rather, it was their guests on the fifteenth and final episode of the BBC showcase Pop Go the Beatles. It was broadcast September 24, 1963, just after Hamilton’s version had dropped off the charts. The band was Tony Rivers and the Castaways.
Mystery solved — I guess.
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 SATISFIED 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 | Mark Richardson on Elvis Presley’s BLUE MOON | Adam McGovern on Elvis Presley’s BLACK STAR / FLAMING STAR | Chris Spurgeon on Ricky Nelson’s BELIEVE WHAT YOU SAY | Devin McKinney on George Hamilton IV’s ABILENE | Stephen Thomas Erlewine on George Jones’ WHITE LIGHTNING | Annie Zaleski on Patsy Cline’s WALKIN’ AFTER MIDNIGHT.
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.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!