We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Give It To Me, Daddy!

by Hartman's Heartbreakers

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD  or more

     

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

about

Trigger warning: Jailbait Bluegrass.

Originally released on LP in 1981 by the curatorial (and now long-defunct) Rambler label, this set comprises ten 78 rpm sides of a risqué late-1930s string band, which features the seductive southern stylings of a vocalist known as Betty Lou Demara (or possibly DeMorrow). "Betty Lou" was a stage name for Carrie Beatrice Clontz (1898–1982; she married Ernest Goodman and became Carrie Clontz Goodman).

Betty Lou doesn't actually qualify as "jailbait"—she was nearing 40 when these recordings were made—but her untrained crooning, girlish growl, and frequent references to "Daddy" are suggestive, to say the least.

The band grew out of Dick Hartman's Tennessee Ramblers, a conventional country string band whose lineage began in the late 1920s, possibly in Rochester, New York. They eventually relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina, and recorded a number of sides for RCA Victor's Bluebird imprint in the mid-1930s. Those sides are fine, but they might as well be church hymns compared to what emerged when Betty Lou became their featured vocalist. She added salaciousness, bawdiness, kinkiness, and debauchery. And yet, there's a naiveté, an ingenuous quality to Betty Lou's come-ons. She sounds like a Nabokovian nubile with a twang.

The ten HH sides were recorded in 1936 (some possibly in 1937) and issued on Bluebird. It doesn't appear that "Betty Lou" made any other recordings under this or another name.

Bear Family Records included three tracks on their 2018 compilation CD She's Selling What She Used To Give Away. In the booklet, reissue producer Tony Russell writes: "It wasn't until the mid-'30s that a hillbilly A&R man made the daring experiment of recording a female performer who unashamedly, even riotously, strutted her stuff. The A&R man was Eli Oberstein, the company Bluebird, the singer one Betty Lou, fronting a band called Hartman's Heartbreakers—actually Dick Hartman's Tennessee Ramblers, a string band popular on the North Carolina airwaves. Drawing on an obviously deep acquaintance with African American hokum records, Betty Lou created a folio of exuberant paeans to getting down and dirty, delivering them in pert Kiddieish like a hillbilly Shirley Temple, with the Heartbreakers tooting kazoos, wielding swanee whistles, and shouting encouragement like dirty old men on a schoolgirl porn site."

Since the release of the 1981 Rambler LP, the complete recordings have not been reissued digitally (or appeared on a new CD or LP). However, they're too sensational to languish in obscurity, so we decided to renew their circulation. The tracks on the Rambler LP were fairly straight transfers from 78 rpm discs with very little (if any) restoration. However, audio cleanup programs have improved tremendously in 40 years, and for this release, a number of flaws have been fixed. Distortion has been lessened, transient clicks have been removed, crackle minimized, and volume levels adjusted—although we've strived to retain that fine veneer of shellac surface noise.

If you were involved with the first issue of this LP by Rambler Records in '81, get in touch. We're happy to share any revenue.

P.S. Carrie's daughter Hope Powell was one of the foremost photographers of country music legends. Obit here: bit.ly/3pUf7fn

credits

released December 15, 2020

Personnel:
Betty Lou Demara (or DeMorrow): vocals
Harry "Horse Thief" Blair: fiddle
Cecil "Curley" Campbell: guitar and/or banjo
Dick Hartman: guitar
Fred "Happy" Morris: bass
Kenneth "Pappy" Wolfe: fiddle

"Some like 'em fat, and some like 'em lean / But I like a daddy who uses Vaseline / 'Cause it feels so good ..."

All sides originally recorded for Bluebird Records. Recorded in the Southern Radio Building, Charlotte, North Carolina, June 22, 1936, and at an unknown location, c. 1936-1937. Compiled on 12" LP in 1981 by Rambler Records (cat #104).

Cover artwork by Marty Pahls (1941–1989). Pahls was a childhood friend of cartoonist/illustrator/underground comix-pioneer Robert Crumb. Pahls was also a record collector and Western Swing specialist who wrote liner notes for a number of reissue projects.

Thanks to Lou Smith for tracking down Betty Lou's real name.

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Cosmic Spy Music Hoboken, New Jersey

Finding things on the scrapheap of history that we know don't belong there, and salvaging them.

contact / help

Contact Cosmic Spy Music

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account

If you like Give It To Me, Daddy!, you may also like: