Jimmy Simpson on Jiffy 210

Nashville, mid-1950s. From left: Billy Byrd, Ernest Tubb, Jimmy Simpson. Courtesy Jimmy Simpson. (Click on image to view full size.)

Jimmy Simpson and the Oilfield Playboys - Blue As I Can Be / Just the Kind of Man (Jiffy 210)


"Blue As I Can Be"


"Just the Kind of Man"




Jimmy Simpson, Tennessee honky tonk singer, Texas oilfield wildcatter, and Canadian gold digger made this one superb session in a West Monroe, Louisiana radio station studio in 1956 with Bobby Garrett (steel) and Leo Jackson (lead guitar), both on hiatus from Jim Reeves' Blue Boys. Records and gigs weren't paying Jimmy's rent, so he picked up jobs working in Texas oil fields for much of the 1950s, before moving to Alaska in 1957.

"I lived at Greggton, Texas (in 1956-57)," Jimmy said in an interview. "We were on our way back from Nashville to San Angelo, and we stopped at Greggton…little town just out of Longview. We had everything we owned in the car. I had my work shoes and my hardhat, ‘cause I could always go to work on an oil rig if everything else failed. In a little restaurant there in Greggton, there was a driller in there that was short-handed, and I overheard ‘em talking. I walked over there and said, “You looking for a derrick man?” He said, “Yeah. You got your work shoes and hardhat with you?” I said, “I got it all underneath the trunk of my car.”




At the time of this session, Jimmy was appearing at the famed Reo Palm Isle club in Longview. "That’s Bobby and Leo (on the session). I forget who that bass player was. He was from Monroe. I’m on rhythm guitar. I didn’t carry a fiddle at that time, but when I was in San Angelo at the Peacock Club, I had two steels and a fiddle. Everybody else would talk about two fiddles. I didn’t make any money up there myself. I was working on an oil rig. But I thought it would be different... Jiffy (Fowler) was a jukebox operator. I just kind of stumbled into him. It was a disc jockey there in Monroe, Ed Hamilton, who set us up in there and turned us loose...You know why that 'Blue As I Can Be' come by? Johnny Horton’s 'I’m a Honky-Tonk Man.'" Two other songs recorded at this session were released on Big State 595 in the Starday custom series.



Billboard, Feb. 3, 1958.

Below: Bobby Garrett and Leo Jackson in the late 1950s. (Click on image for full size view.)

Billy Briggs and his X.I.T. Boys on Time 102

Billy Briggs and his X.I.T. Boys in Amarillo, Tx., 1947. From left: Billy Briggs (doubling on trumpet), Freddy Beatty, J.R. Chatwell, Herschell Marson, Jimmy Pearce (sitting in on piano for Loren Mitchell), and Honest Jess Williams. Courtesy the Jewell Chatwell Collection. (Click on photo for full size image.)

Billy Briggs and his X.I.T. Boys - X.I.T. Song (vocal by Briggs) b/w Autograph Your Photograph (vocal by Honest Jess Williams) (Time 102)

"X.I.T. Song" (vocal by Billy Briggs)


"Autograph Your Photograph" (vocal by Honest Jess Williams)

While Billy Frank Briggs, Jr. (1919-1984) is best remembered today for his '50s novelty-dementia songs ("Chew Tobacco Rag," "The Sissy Song"), for a long time prior to that he was one of the more daring and progressive steel guitarists in the Southwest. The son of a Fort Worth lawyer, Briggs -- one of the few musicians who ever figured out how to sing and play steel simultaneously, and possibly the first to stand, rather than sit, while playing the steel -- moved to Amarillo in the late 1930s to work with the Sons of the West, playing with them off and on until 1946. He then organized his own group, the X.I.T. Boys, and they made their first records for the small Time label, based in Dalhart, in early 1947. ("X.I.T." refers to the 19th Century X.I.T. Ranch in the Texas Panhandle. There is an X.I.T. Museum online here.)

In contrast to his later Imperial singles, "X.I.T. Song" is pure western swing with hip, jivey lyrics with the patented Briggsian sexism ("be a lady when you walk and talk with me"), local references ("The Dalhart X.I.T.," referring to an annual rodeo, though no one outside of the Panhandle had any idea what he was singing about), and imaginative wordplay ("quit wearing out the hinges on the back of your neck" to a girlfriend who always shakes her head "no"), but more importantly, hot solos from Briggs, J.R. Chatwell (fiddle), Freddy Beatty (tenor sax), and Loren Mitchell (piano). Fortunately for posterity, a photograph of this group survives and is shown here. As good as this group was, Briggs discovered that he could draw just as many people and make more money with just a trio. Thus the large band experiment came to a halt in early 1948. A shame they didn't record more, as the original "X.I.T. Song" is one of the great western swing records of the era. With the trio, Briggs recorded a much inferior version of the song a year or so later (also issued on Time).

Billboard reviewed the record in its June 7, 1947 issue, noting that while the "combo comes very close to playing race swing," its sales were possible "only in the Texas territory."

Indeed, it didn't even sell in Texas. Only one lone copy of the original, full-band "X.I.T. Song" survives, in the Bob Pinson Collection at the Country Music Hall of Fame. It was discovered there by Kevin Coffey in 1995, who was able to tape it, and provides us with these sound files.