A song speaks to us from nearly 60 years ago, one that
acknowledges gloom, to be sure, yet one that traffics amply in propulsion as
well. Too many songs don’t possess such crude sophistication; they’ll either veer
into tinny, tintype, saccharine testaments, or if not, they’ll sag into the
lower registers without any humor whatsoever. We’d otherwise weep into our specialty
cocktails (margarita + pineapple?) while the lightshow berates our questionable
decision-making. Thankfully, “Dark Valley” nourishes us with its worldly grit. It
may inherit some of this momentum from Bo Diddley’s classic freight train racket,
but we offer this last observation cautiously.
We know very little about this song. A man named Darrell
Tatum probably played lead guitar for the Holidays, a group that appeared most likely as a trio, who
recorded “Dark Valley” as an A-side b/w “Desperate” in 1961. Santo Records
released the two songs as catalogue No. 500—potentially its first release—in Memphis,
Tenn. Songwriting credit goes to Messieurs Alonzo Burris & Bruce Welch. Darrell
Tatum and the Holidays joined “the quicksand legions / of history,” to quote the
poet Richard Brautigan, and didn’t seem to record again together; Mr. Tatum may
have recorded two more songs as a solo act on the Fernwood label about four
years later, after which, he may have become
a guitar salesman. This is what we know, which is admittedly very little,
except to say that “Dark Valley” deserves an audience.
sources
of information
45cat entry
for Dark Valley
Billboard magazine
July 3, 1961
Dead Wax blogpost on
Darrell Tatum
Discogs entry
for Dark Valley
Hillbilly Country blogpost
for Santo Records
too musicky?
(sic) see update by photo essay
Very nice, but I could hardly hear the vocal.
ReplyDeletemr. winch, good sir. i think this record was cut before the era of vocals. but not before the era of hardly heard vocals. in the end, perhaps we're just talking about heard immunity. which is in the news these days. mostly i'm grateful that you took time to have a listen. with all best wishes, ----------------b.a.
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