Search - Don Gibson :: The Singer -- The Songwriter: 1961-1966

Unrecognized

Gary Toporoski | Canada | 10/23/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Don Gibson , long recognized as an influential songwriter of considerable merit , is clearly the most under-rated "singer" of his .... or any generation. This collection is vastly superior to any other material currently available.... and is a testament to this claim."

Don Gibson - The Real Genius

V. A. Peek | Summerville, SC | 03/13/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"They might have labeled Ray Charles, The Genius, based on the song I Can't Stop Loving You, and the Ray Charles Country Album which it was on, but remember, Don Gibson wrote it with no more than a 2nd grade education. According to the booklet that comes with this box set and the other two, he came in from school one day when he was 8 years old and in the second grade, and told his mama that school was a waste of time and he wasn't going back. He didn't. (I hate to tell you what would have happened to me if I came in the house and told my mama that; in ANY grade. But then I was NO genius. I refused to dissect a frog in Science Class in High School and when the teacher said to me "If you don't dissect that frog, I'll have to give you a failing grade." I said "give it to me 'cause I ain't dissecting no FROG." (I come from the same area as Andy Griffith, so if he can talk that way, so can I. He was a college professor before he was an actor.) If my science teacher had been my Language teacher, no doubt that he would have given me a failing grade in that as well. So, proof that I'm no genius. It also was obvious at that stage that I would not become a brain surgeon. I became something better. The wife (52 years now) of a career Navy Petty Officer and the mother of 4 of the greatest kids in the world and the grandmother of 8 and 2 grandsons-in-law. All just the most perfect people in the world. No great-grands yet, though. I'm not pushing them. I helped raise them all.)

Don bought an old guitar from someone around his home town of Shelby, NC (I happpen to have been born and raised, until I married and started following my sailor all over the world,) 20 miles from Shelby in Gastonia) and taught himself to play it and he went out and promoted himself and some of his friends who made up his band, to different ones in Gastonia and Charlotte and several other dinky little towns in NC and inched his way on out to Knoxville, TN and eventually to Nashville. When Country Music was Country Music.

He also told about helping his step-father pick cotton on someone's farm around Shelby, and would be looking up to the sky and God, and pray for rain because he knew there had to be a better way to make a living. He was right about that too. The boy was a GENIUS! He left home at the age of 12 years old, because his step-father insisted he had to help pick cotton. He roomed with his friends.

I would say, again, truly, that Don Gibson was a true Genius. I play his music constantly. I have for years, and everytime I put a different album on, I find something that sounds new to me, knowing that I've heard it time and time again. The latest one is "You Win Again." I just can't get enough of it. I put my headphones on and play it over and over. The back-up musicians are awesome. Especially the piano (which I think has to be Floyd Cramer, and the steel guitar picker, who I haven't been able to identify yet. I'm thinking it might be Pete Drake, but there are others from that era and I can't pick their names out of my tired old brain right now. One day I'll break out those booklets and figure out who it is. And then there was Chet and also the Jordanaires and another group that I want to say was the Anita Kerr singers, but, again, it's late and I can't be positive. They're just very good. I'll look them up tomorrow. These CDs are of such good quality that I hear Don above my head, the instruments come through my right ear and the Jordanaires through my left ear. I'm just totally amazed at the technology that has allowed me to rediscover his greatness. I thought they were great enough when I was playing my 45's on that little "suitcase" record player that Santa brought me one year.

The musicians names, composers, and almost nothing else is on the album that I have with You Win Again on it. They didn't do that back then, However, these box sets have all the information you could ever want to know about the songs on the CDs, listed in chronological order. I really like that. I'm constantly dragging out my books to see "who was that playing that?" or "who wrote that?" It tells me right there. As well as what day and what time it was recorded. I tell you it's all there. The Bear Family really know how to put these Box Sets together. I have several others including Elvis and Dick Curless. Unfortunately, You Win Again is not in the Box Sets. At least I haven't been able to find it. So far, it's the only one that I've discovered that isn't in the box sets.

I wouldn't take thousands of dollars for my box sets by him. Nor any of my albums.

Another thing that impressed me that he told the interviewer. Elvis came out in the hall at the RCA studio one day in Nashville, and heard Don picking with that 2 finger style he had, and Elvis asked Chet "Who's picking that guitar like that?" Chet said "That's Don Gibson." (I can hear Chet saying it in my mind. He had such a unique way of talking.)Elvis said "I'd really like to learn to do that. Will you ask him to show me how?" Chet knew Don very well, and he told Elvis that he, Elvis, needed to go ask Don himself. I don't know if Elvis actually asked Don, but Don told Chet to tell him to get his own 'licks'. He wasn't showing him "nothing".. Laid back Don, wasn't impressed at all by that new racket coming out of the other side of the studio, nor the person performing it. I'm not being sassy here, because I was one of those screaming teenagers wild about Elvis in 1955 and from then on, but I still loved my Don Gibson. They were 2 different types of music and I am very versatile at picking the music that I like. No one will ever take Don's place though. I like Blues, Gospel, Bluegrass, Classical, Instrumental, you name it and there are plenty that I love.

At last count, when I "googled" I Can't Stop Loving You, it had been recorded and played more than any other song in history, including White Christmas and God Bless America and at the time that number was over 7 million times. I don't know how "they" counted the plays, but apparently "they" know how to count.

Don lived long enough, self taught or whatever, to write over 400 songs.

He was living in a small trailer up above Knoxville somewhere and sat in there one day and wrote 2 of his huge hits, right off the top of his head in a matter of minutes or an hour or so, and I can't recall which ones now, but it tells them in the box set. There are so many of his "huge hits" that I'd rather not speculate on it until I go get my books. So if you want to know, reply to my review or buy the box set.

He said "I'm no writer. I just sit and make up words and they fit together somehow or other." Or he said something to that effect. Same thing. I guess that's the way GENIUSES do it.

After he retired though, he was reading some pretty heavy tombs of books and novels. He loved reading those books. I think I remember one being about Abraham Lincoln and another about Django (?) Rheinhart?? I can't remember how it's spelled and I'm too tired to go look it up. You get my drift. He had several favorites.

He ABSOLUTELY WAS A GENIUS.

If you're a Don Gibson fan you will most definitely never regret spending the money for this or the other 2 box sets. They are well worth the price.

Even if you're not a Don Gibson fan, you might become one.

One more little story from the booklet. Fred Rose had to retire from being the publisher of the songs most of those singers would put out, or whatever he was called. Fred was in his 90's and was just probably spent out. His son Wesley took over. I might shouldn't be naming names here, but hey, it's published in that little booklet. Don and Wesley didn't get along. Wesley would come in the room and tell Don how to record this and how to sing that. It didn't work with Don. He didn't say much. He just went on recording the way he wanted to. Most of them were his songs, for crying out loud. Wesley would keep on badgering him, and found that he wasn't getting anywhere with Don, and so he told Chet to tell him. Chet said, "you might as well leave him alone and let him do it his way; he knows what he's doing; and if you don't leave him alone he might just tell us all to go to H (you can spell it) and go stomping out of here and we might not ever see him again." Sure enough, one day it happened. Don left and went to his mama's home in Shelby and stayed 9 months.

I JUST LOVED HIM.

Well, I haven't told you all of the interesting things from the booklets, so you really will enjoy buying them and reading them. Those are just my favorites.

Buy them and I hope you enjoy them as much as I have and do."