PATSY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (17)
By:
August 29, 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.
BILL BROWNING and HIS ECHO VALLEY BOYS | DARK HOLLOW | 1958
A confession: the version of this song that I know, which is probably the version that you know, is not the one by the songwriter. That was a B-side, released in 1958, the most popular of Browning’s songs. It’s mostly known via The Grateful Dead’s acoustic album Reckoning, though it was also covered by Greenwich Village folkie David Bromberg, himself best known for his song “Sharon,” because it provided the riff for the Beastie Boys’ “Johnny Ryall.”
Everything is a cover song. Entire mediums have been born of misunderstanding: opera’s creation as an attempt by Renaissance scholars to revive truly “authentic” Greek tragedy, for example. In the ’60s, Browning, Bromberg, the Dead, and Pentangle were doing what I was doing in the 1990s: trying to revive a past that never existed so we could live there. Mine was not as illustrious as the Dead’s, or even Browning’s, but a fantasy is a fantasy. To me, “Dark Hollow” is a theme song of my simulated summer of love, one of a handful of songs I’d sing as I schlepped my possessions in a grocery cart from one cheap New Jersey apartment to another. I was born too late and in the wrong place to be at the center of anything, but I did get to enjoy the cheap rent that made it all possible. It was fun to pretend.
“Dark Hollow” was what I sang with my friend Mike as we drove through the Painted Desert in Arizona. We drove cross-country together, but he did all the driving. I didn’t have a license, and besides, nobody else could drive his 14-foot Ford Ranger supercab. By then I’d also run out of money, and Mike’s patience was beginning to wear thin. I can hardly blame him, but my own feelings of precarity and obligation made me prickly, too, though I made no effort to return to New Jersey on my own (I don’t know how I could have). But at that moment, we sang together, and I cried, moved by the music, our friendship, and the beauty of the stones.
A few years ago Mike died suddenly, a freak accident, skiing in Vermont with his wife and kids. At his memorial service, hundreds of people showed up. We all thought he’d outlive every one of us. Later that night, I drove alone to a hotel by Newark Airport. I was going home to LA, to my own wife and kids, incidentally the place where Mike and I had been visiting. It was cold and empty and I’d never felt so alone. I wished I could have been back with my grocery cart, thinking it was the saddest I would ever be.
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 | 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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