DISGRACELAND - Johnny Paycheck: Pardon Me, I've Got Someone to Kill

Episode Date: August 14, 2018

Lots of country music stars wear the black hat but none of them wore it with more authenticity than Johnny Paycheck. Johnny Cash may have bragged about shooting a man “just to watch him die” but Johnny Paycheck actually pulled the trigger. He was a true outlaw and totally hardcore – hardcore honky tonk.To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com.This episode was originally published on August 14, 2018.To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership.Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan GroupTikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about country music star, Johnny Paycheck, or hardcore. He shot a man in the head. He escaped from jail twice. He lived under a bridge in Los Angeles in between the success of two top ten country hits.

And he, arguably more than anybody else, embodied the hardcore honky-talk outlaw country image. While other country musicians were telling tall tales about the devil down in Georgia, Johnny was riding with the Hells Angels. He walked it, talked it, lived it, loved it. And all along the way, he made great music. And that music I played you at the top of the show,

that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Bruce Viola Lowe. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Broken Wings by Mr. Mr. And why would I play you that specific slug? of pastel trench coat cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America

on December 19, 1985. And that was the day that Johnny Paycheck, aka Little Donny Little, aka the real Mr. Heartache, aka the last of the hardcore troubadours, shot a man in Ohio, pretty much just to watch him die.

On this episode, The Lo Viola, pastel trench coat cheese, hardcore honky tonky ton. and Johnny Paycheck. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. It's a popular name for American cemeteries. There are literally too many woodlawn cemeteries to count.

Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx is one of the most famous woodlawns. Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Herman Melville, and Rosa Parks. They're all buried there. And there's a woodlawn cemetery in Compton, one in Santa Monica, another in Dayton, Ohio, now the eternal resting place of the Wright brothers. and there is even a Woodlawn Cemetery in my hometown of Clinton, Massachusetts, where my grandmother is buried. But Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Nashville, Tennessee is where country music royalty buries their dead. Webb Pierce, Porter Wagoner, George Jones, and Johnny Paycheck are all interred at Woodlawn,

and their graves serve as a measure of how successful their careers were. Webb Pierce's grave borders on ostentatious. There are no inlaid silver dollars like the one. ones that adorned his Cadillac, but there is a picture of him, 17 lengthy lines about his life and an homage to his first big hit, Wondering Boy. Porter Wagoner's grave features the quote, I've left this old world with a satisfied mind. Having inspired and produced Dolly Parton's, I will always love you.

I'm sure that's an accurate statement. George Jones's grave is befitting of a king, and justifiably so for arguably the greatest country singer of all time. His final resting place is a monument to his stature. A great stone arch emblazoned with the title of his greatest hit, he stopped loving her today, gives shade to an etched portrait of Jones, along with an etched acoustic guitar,

and in large letters, his inscribed nickname, The Possum. By contrast, the grave of George Jones' good friend Johnny Paycheck is almost forgettable. It's a small stone with just Johnny's name, his birth, and death dates, and etchings of an acoustic guitar and a fiddle. and George Jones paid for it, and George also paid for Johnny's funeral, and somewhat surprisingly Nashville showed up. Underneath the high ceilings and stained glass windows of Woodlawn's Cathedral, a who's who of country music at the time,

who somehow managed to not be alienated by Johnny Paycheck during his career, or who somehow founded in their hearts to forgive Johnny Paycheck for as many transgressions, assembled to see the legendary hardcore troubad are off. Trace Adkins and Little Jimmy Dickens, along with Jones, with a bold-faced named musicians and attendance. Local DJs, record executives, sunglass nightclub, emprosarios, sidemen, music row song, pluggers,

and a whole pewsworth of hell's angels, sat to listen to the eulogy. Eddie Stubbs, the WS.M. AM DJ, delivered it with reverence and poise, saying of Johnny Paycheck, he was a complicated man. That's one way of putting it. Another way would be to say,

He was a raging alcoholic Coke fiend who, despite his success, and unlike Porter Wagoner, could never be satisfied. Paycheck was a hardcore musician, that rare combination of talent and authenticity that needn't be tended to. He just was. A truly unique voice, a good enough player back in the day to back Ray Price and George Jones. And despite having his biggest hit, take this job and shove it penned by someone else, Johnny Paycheck was an excellent songwriter, who saw. songs, particularly, pardon me, I've got someone to kill, and that old violin, are uniquely identifiable as his own, incapable of being written by anyone else, immensely resonant,

and the very definition of real, hardcore. Other than the star-studded attendees, the funeral was pretty much unremarkable, which is saying something, given who was being laid out. Johnny Paycheck was anything but unremarkable. From an early age, he gave zero fucks and last anyone checked on the day he was buried, there was still little proof that he wasn't born standing up and talking back. The first punch didn't sound like much, but Donnie could feel the impact he'd made by the blood rippling out from under his knuckles. The second punch, now that punch sounded like something. Even with the sounds of waves crashing into the side of the Navy aircraft carrier they were on, the punch could still be heard. But it didn't land with the desired effect. The dude was still on

his feet, wavering, perhaps aided by the steady ebb and flow of the ship on the ocean's surface. And the dude swung wildly, too wild to get a real swing in on Donnie. Donnie was wiry, quick. He dodged to his right and the dude's fist barely graced the left side of his head. However, it was enough to send Donnie into a blind rage. He fired off a string of punches, fast, furious, each one landing more solidly than the one before until finally the dude fell to the deck. and Donnie barely had time to feel good about himself.

Within seconds he was being wrestled to the floor by a group of sailors who'd come up behind him. He struggled, but it was no use. He was cuffed, shipped off to the mainland, jailed, escaped, was caught, was caught again, was caught again, tried and sentenced to 18 years for assaulting his superior naval officer. Somehow, his sentence was reduced to two years, and in 1959, Little Donnie Little, fresh out of the brig,

headed to Nashville, Tennessee to make his... name in the world of country music. And the name he made for himself was Johnny Paycheck, after a heavyweight boxer who once went toe-to-to-to with Joe Lewis and whose pugnacious attitude Donnie admired. And after stints backing George Jones, Farron Young, and others, Johnny caught the ear of producer Aubrey Mayhew. And Mayhew was smart enough to design a sound that was as big as Johnny's own personality. With Lloyd Green's shredding and loud steel guitar and two fiddles up front in the mix. The sound of Johnny Paycheck, the musician,

was as tough as Johnny Paycheck, the man. But the main attraction was Johnny's voice. It refused to conform to the standards of country music, diction, and melody. It sounded more cockneyed than Chattanooga. Words like Night came out his mouth sounding like noit, and time like toim. They sound silly coming out of my mouth right now, but trust me, go listen to the original version of Johnny Paijooge.

paychecks A-11. It's wild. It's totally something else. Both now to this day and then, which is why it was a hit in 1965. Success led to excess. More drinking, drugging, pissing in the punchball, literally and figuratively. Forged checks, petty theft, rumors about sex with underage girls, and eventually Johnny quickly burnt his way out of Nashville and for unknown reasons to San Diego, and then a brief stint on L.A.'s Skid Row where he was forced to play music for beer money. And he eventually ended up in Denver, where he likely would have drank himself into an early Rocky Mountain grave had it not been for the intervention of famed country producer Billy Chorrell, who'd sometime earlier made it his mission to locate the drifting paycheck and wrangle him back into the studio.

Shirel knew a unique talent when he heard one. It was convinced that Johnny's bizarreal voice and hard-edged attitude would contrast perfectly over the country-politian style he was perfecting back in Nashville. And Billy Chorale was right. Their first collaboration, Don't take her, she's all I got. It's as close to being a perfect recording as you can get. When the aliens come and want to know what country music sounds like, you'd do good to play them this number two country smash from 1971.

But again, despite his success or perhaps because of it, Johnny Paycheck couldn't help but find more trouble. It was in his blood. It was who he was. He was hardcore. And success didn't matter. Neither did failure. Johnny Paycheck lived hard no matter life's circumstance. That's all success or failure were to Johnny, just circumstance.

He believed that he himself had no influence over how his career turned out. And there was no ambition or lack of ambition. He simply just was. Things either happened to him or they didn't. Music was a trade. No different than fixing cars was to a mechanic or fixing toilets was to a plumber. Successful plumbers don't seek out and find success, and Johnny's estimation they got what they got through luck of the draw,

lots of busted toilets in their hometowns or whatever. And after work, like everyone else, they blew off steam. So when Johnny clocked out, he too made it his business to get down to business, drinking, fucking, fighting, not necessarily in that order. Instead, in any damn order he pleased, it was his life and he'd do what he damn well wanted whenever he wanted. and if you couldn't get with that, then you could just get the hell out of his way, or else. We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

The hell's angels weren't dicking around. Friend or no friend. They weren't going to let the man who showed no-show Jones how to not show fuck up their party. And they like Johnny Paycheck, sure, but if you pulled any shit like you did back at the chili factory in Santa Barbara, where he fell off the stage, too drunk and too stone to play the gig, they'd be hell to pay. George Christie, the Hells Angels, Ventura club leader, was throwing a party, and had hired Johnny to play. George knew there was zero chance Johnny would arrive and show for him.

And he knew that while on the plane, Johnny would just be Johnny, take his pills, drain the plane's mini bar, flirt with a stewardess or two, get himself wasted, and ultimately arrive legless and unable to perform. So George had a plan. He let Johnny believe that he was playing the show that Thursday night upon arrival, but the party was actually planned for two years. nights later on that Saturday. When Johnny landed at the airport, hammered, there were two big, bad-looking hells angels waiting for him. One named Garbage, aka Garbage, and the other named Tiny, who of course weighed 400 pounds. And they took Johnny back to his hotel room, where he believed he'd be popping in for

a cold shower, some black coffee, and a bumper two from the bindle of coke he'd successfully squirled on and off of the plane. Little did he know. He wouldn't be going anywhere. And there would be no Coke. Worse than that. No mini-bar. No drugs or alcohol of any kind.

Just coffee, cigarettes, and shitty fast food brought in by Tiny's old lady who was staying nearby. Johnny was livid. At first, he tried to head into the bathroom to do his blow, but Tiny made him empty his pockets beforehand. And when Johnny refused, Tiny stuffed his fat figures into Johnny's greasy gene pockets and found what he was looking for,

Johnny's Coke. Johnny then made a run for the motel room door but was quickly snapped up by garbage, who tossed Johnny back onto the bed, where he flopped down into an open pizza box and a half-eaten pie. Johnny tried again for the door. This time, tiny clothes lined him. Johnny's wiry little cokehead frame peeled backward and fell hard onto the motel room floor where he curled up into a ball, closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and accepted his fate. He staled himself for a long night of no substances. Friday morning finally came. Johnny woke up and tried his best to convince Tiny to go find him a joint,

but Tiny wouldn't budge. So instead, Johnny chain smoked cigarettes, gorged on candy bars and Coca-Cola. He sat on the motel bed and watched Creature Double Feature Reruns, Godzilla versus Megalon, wild. By dinner time, he started plucking at his guitar, modeling the lyrics to his biggest hit to date, take this job and shove it,

an ode to the working man, an outlaw anthem. The song was a smash, in part because it was catchy as hell, but also because America had caught up to Johnny Paycheck. America, in the 1970s, was searching for itself between the post-hippy haze of the 60s and the greed is good Gordon Gecko 80s. In the process, while stumbling through its own cultural wilderness, America gave rise to outlaw culture. Suddenly, renegades were in fashion.

Bert Reynolds, Smoky and the Bandit and John Travolta's urban cowboy brought black hats and bad attitudes to the mainstream. And thus, an inevitable backlash happened where real country stars started looking less like cowboys, or Hollywood Pretty Boys playing cowboys, and more like pirates, or perhaps more accurate, like bike gangs, like hell's angels. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash

most famously adopted this outlaw image, and Charlie Daniels seemed hell-bent on driving the image straight into the cheese factory, but Johnny Paycheck not only looked the part, He lived it. He'd been living the outlaw life day and night since he was nine years old. Since he first picked up a guitar, since he first jumped a train like his hero of the singing breakman Jimmy Rogers.

So 30 years later, in 1977, when he released Take This Job and Shove it, it was no surprise that it went to number one. It was real, authentic, hardcore, hardcore honky-tonk, and America could handle it. And Johnny was handling his bout with sobriety as best he could. He passed out in bed with his telecaster at his side and awoke Saturday morning to spend the rest of the day getting ready for the gig. Singing, playing, doing push-ups.

He even read a newspaper. Man, he thought, that Jimmy Carter sure seemed like a pussy. By the time the sun went down, Johnny was ready to play. George Christie took the mic front and center. Johnny's band stood quietly. Their instruments plugged in and ready, onstage. behind him. With the exception of the clueless pedal steel player who was loudly trying to tune and bumming out the audience, George shot him a look that said, shut that thing up or I'll hog tie you

with those steel strings. The audience was giddy, drunk on white lightning, schlitz, and excitement, hootin, hollering, and George queued the band to start their intro. The drummer started banging away this kid at 180 beats per minute. The bass player peddled from the one to the five manically, somehow managing to look cool in the process. And the pedal steel player, who was two beats behind, frantically looking up from his stool to the bassist and sliding his left hand up and down the upper neck, trying to keep pace with his bandmates.

The fiddle player, coolly slid his bow across his strings and peered out over the body of his instrument at a big busted blonde and a too tight t-shirt in the front row. She smiled back, and somewhere, not too far away, the devil smiled too. George leaned into the mic with the band now blazing behind him. Ladies and gentlemen, the Hells Angels proudly present Johnny Paycheck. The audience broke into applause while a short dude and a big black hat moved through the crowd from the back of the beer hall toward the stage.

Johnny Paycheck hopped up under the riser and a chubby rody in a blue satin white sleeve jacket appeared out of nowhere with Johnny's TV yellow telecaster. The roadie was careful not to knock the cigarette out of Johnny's mouth. while he placed the strap over his hat and head and onto his shoulders. And with the band still raging behind him, his guitar hanging off of him just below the center of his chest like a proud pimp's gold medallion. Johnny grabbed the mic with two hands and gave the crowd a loud quick.

Well, all right! And with that, he raised his right hand and stomped his left foot, cueing the band to abruptly halt. The crowd was brimming with excitement. Johnny's beady little eyes surveyed the crowd, He cocked his head back and then lowered his chin toward the microphone slowly, and in his deepest, baddest baritone, saying, Take this job and shove it.

The crowd nearly pissed themselves with excitement. They screamed, held their cowboy hats to the sky, and busted into dance while singing along with one of their own, the hardcore troubadour, Johnny Paycheck. His beer belly barreling out of his red, white, and blue suspenders, his long, greasy hair sliding down the sides of his face alongside his chiseled cheekbones and out of his black hat, a Stetson with a small bedazzled Confederate flag front and center.

The Stetson, whose time on stage would be short-lived, as it always was, was strictly for show. For introductory purposes, it was part of the uniform. It got Johnny in the door, established him as country, but after the first song, it was gone, replaced by the outlaw's headband, one of those classic blue-and-white Paisley handkerchiefs, rolled tight, making him look more like a heroin trafficking Vietnam vet than a cowboy country singer.

And that cowboy shit was for the movies. Johnny Paycheck was hardcore. After the success of Take This Job and Shove It, Johnny Paycheck morphed into a parody of himself. The outlawed country singer driving his life away. through whiskey, women in song, mountains of cocaine, and pretty much any other narcotic he could get his hands on. The hardcore outlaw lifestyle, it never stopped, even after the success of take this job and shove it had. Johnny Paycheck was at the bottom again, and he was headed up north on Interstate 65 from Nashville, home to Greenfield, Ohio, to see his mother for the holidays. It was December 19,

19, 1985, and Johnny thought to himself that he was thankful to live in a country that still celebrated Christmas. But he didn't think it would be that way much longer. He knew that all the outlaws had it coming, and that even that long-haired freak with the Crown of Thorne's bandana, Jesus Christ, would one day get what was coming to him too. America was changing. It might have been the 80s, but hippie thinking was like a bad hangover that the country just couldn't shake. The Ask Clown Baby Boomers had their touchy-feeling 1960s hands all over everything, telling you what they thought you wanted to hear while stabbing you in the back at the same time, preaching community and respect and cheating on their wives with their secretaries

and latchkeying their kids into alienated adolescence. The boomers with their trendy psychoanalytical bunk made it so you couldn't just look a man in the eye anymore and tell them how you felt. You had to listen to him. You had to respect his feelings. You could no longer just tell your boss. to take this job and shove it, you had to go to employee counseling with your manager

and work out your differences. Or if you fell in love, you couldn't just tell the person. No, that would be too direct, too smothering. If you love someone, you had to set them free. And what the hell did that even mean anyways if you love someone, set them free? Fuck this. Outlaws said what needed saying and did what needed doing.

Thinking about all this made his head hurt. He needed a drink. especially to get himself primed to deal with his mother. Johnny pulled off Highway 71 in Hillsborough and into the North High Lounge parking lot. He grabbed a seat at the bar, ordered a bud bottle, tilted the brim of his black stetson down low over his forehead, and listened to his old friend George Jones filled the smoky lounge air from the Seaberg jukebox in the back corner. Then, after George, Johnny heard his own voice coming from the jukebox. It was his 1966 classic, Pardon me, I've got someone to get you.

kill. Lloyd Green's pedal steel intro still sounded dark and evil as ever. Johnny's voice rang out. It never had a finer moment, and his lyrics never had more menace. Johnny's eyes were closed as he listened and sipped ice-cold bud from a bar bottle, and for a moment there was Zen. He just was, and then there was giggling. Johnny snapped out of it and turned to the sound of laughter behind him. At the back wall huddled around the jukebox were two men laughing and staring at Johnny, pointing, snickering under the breath, taking turns, clowning about and aping Johnny's unique voice,

making wide-eyed he-ha facial expressions. Johnny tried ignoring them, turned his head, closed his eyes, and smoothed out his thick mustache with his thumb and index finger while continuing to listen to his voice filled the air. But the snickering continued, and Johnny felt his blood begin to boil, One of the giggling so-called men was now standing next to Johnny at the bar.

Well, I'll be damned. Lookie here. It's Charlie Daniels. What the fuck? Johnny turned his head slowly to size up the smart mouth standing to his right. Excuse me? I'm just playing. We know who you are.

Take this job and shove it. You're Johnny Paycheck. Greenfield's own celebrity. How you like Greenfield anyway? Got enough turtles for you? What did you just say? Turtles. You know.

For suit. That's what all you rednecks up in Hillsborough eat, ain't it? Turtle suit? Oh, of course, maybe if you know how Daddy could afford bullets and you'd be eating deer meat. That is, if you're lucky, am I right? What did you just say to me? You see me as some kind of country hick? Johnny reached down to his side and pulled his piece. A 22-caliber pistol and shoved it in the face of the smart mouth who without a second stop broke into a sprint toward the bar room exit. Johnny got up out of his stool and took aim. He fired.

A shot blew off. the smart malt's hat and grazed his scalp. He fell to the floor bleeding badly from above his eye. The local cops, all two of them, not including the dispatcher, were on the scene in no time. Johnny Paycheck was arrested and held on $50,000 bail. His old friend, George Jones, posted it for him. While awaiting trial, another one of Johnny's friends, Jerry Lee Lewis played a benefit concert to help raise money for Johnny's legal fees.

But no amount of bread would make a difference. Johnny's plea of self-defense fell on deaf ears and the judge wasn't interested in hearing this tired outlaw's sad song so he slapped Johnny paycheck with a seven-year prison sentence and in the end, the outlaw got what was coming to him. Hardcore. I'm Jake Brennan and this. Disgraceland was created by yours truly

and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelampod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month.

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