I’m pretty sure my first exposure as a child to a live music simulcast of sorts – and public drunkenness – was the weekly “Curly O’Brien Show” which was broadcast on the old WEMT (Channel 7) out of Bangor, ME.
[Note to editor: Wait, Dean – don’t panic with visions of slander suits. Ol’ Curly and the gang didn’t try to be any more than what they were – as we shall talk about shortly. These folks just wanted to play some tunes … and if some adult beverages were consumed along the way, well, so be it. That’s just the way it was; and I don’t believe there was a soul in Downeast Maine who turned their TV set off because of it.]
To understand the popularity of Curly O’Brien (and other Maine-based performers like Yodelin’ Slim Clark, Dick Curless, and Hal “Lone” Pine), you need to understand the musical culture of the world I grew up in. Here was a place where all you had to do was go sit outside with a guitar for a few minutes and wait: someone would eventually come along lugging their own instrument and ask if you wanted to have a tune. It’s been like this for a long time, folks.
Call it a mix of traditional folk, bluegrass, and country-western (but don’t confuse it with the slick-produced stylings of today); call it Americana; call it anything you’d like: it really comes down to just wanting to play. Musicologists can go hog-wild tracing roots … around here, they’d tell you: don’t bother. Just sit down and let her rip – we can take the time to tune up afterwards.
When I was a kid, MTV didn’t exist – but the local stations out of Bangor (we could pick up Channels 2 and 5 without going out on the ledge and turning the antenna; a slight tweak to the no’theast would bring in 7) did a pretty decent job of getting Maine country artists on the air. There were a few of them that had regular weekly spots – but the undisputed king had to be Curly O’Brien & The Top Hands, who were on the air for 25 years. And on the road, too, folks … and that’s where our tale gets a bit rough around the edges – even at the regional level of fame, there were dues to pay and demons to wrestle … but regardless of how tough the rest of the week was for Curly and the band, you could always count on them making it to the studio on Sunday afternoon.
There they’d be, Curly & The Top Hands, including his wife, Jackie King, on bass; his younger brother Bob on lead guitar (known as, well, “Brother Bob”, believe it or not); good ol’ Doc on rhythm guitar and vocals; and Fiddlin’ Harold – as close as the state of Maine ever got to having a Vassar Clements of its own.
Almost always, the show would start off with an apology to the residents of some town east of Bangor: “We’d like to let the fine folks that was hopin’ to see us at the VFW Hall down in Steuben that we’re sorry we couldn’t make it last Tuesday night. We broke the universal on the van and … well … you know how it goes.” (Sometimes at this point you’d hear some off-mike guffaws) “But we’ll be back down that way real soon!” You never actually knew if the universal joint had broken – or if three tires out of four had really gone flat – or if it truly was a savage patch of black ice that had put them off the road … but, by God, if they said they’d make the show up, they’d make it up, no doubt.
During Curly’s opening monologue, you might hear the wails of instruments being yanked into tune. One of the beauties of Curly’s show was that it was completely live – no retakes for tuning problems, broken strings, missed chords, or blown lyrics (or clinking bottles or wracking cigarette coughs by someone with a live microphone.) What you got was what you got. That applied to the ad spots, as well.
I have to assume there was a limited production budget for ad work on Curly’s show back then, as I remember a tri-legged easel standing off to one side with ads written on poster board. Curly would peel off the signs periodically, based on how much ad time an advertiser had purchased.
Hey – you may think I’m making fun, but to this day, I can close my eyes and hear ol’ Curly telling us all to “Call the good folks at Hardy’s Trailer Sales and they’ll fix you right up with the trailer of your dreams. Isn’t that right, Bob?” And there’d be some off-camera noise of gagging affirmation, Curly having purposely caught Brother Bob mid-swallow. Hey – if I can still remember the name of Hardy’s Trailer Sales 30-some years since the last time I watched the “Curly O’Brien Show”, then I guess he did a pretty good job at it, right?
Of course, there were the Sundays that never completely got over Saturday night, where it was hard going for Curly and the crew right from the beginning. Sometimes it appeared it would be a struggle to get through the show. But, you had to give the man credit: I can’t speak for the off-air Curly, but the man in front of the camera just rolled with the flow. Sometimes that cussed easel would try to get the better of him – upside-down signs, backwards signs, signs that fell on the floor and took the easel with them – but Curly would just laugh (sometimes, he’d laugh a lot) and press on.
But forget all that: the reason folks tuned in every Sunday was to hear the music, of course. The afore-mentioned Saturday>Sunday demons never kept them off the air, though it might have been touch-and-go at times. What needs to be said here and now is that these folks wanted to play: pounding frontal lobes and heads full of snakes be damned; they cranked it on when the cameras started rolling.
Off they’d charge into some rollicking number; Curly all show and flair, Doc stock-still like a Downeast version of Roy Orbison, Brother Bob’s guitar tone soaked with a bottomless-well reverb that no doubt inspired My Morning Jacket, and Fiddlin’ Harold making it all look easy. Oh, yeah. There may have been some unsteadiness, some bumped mike stands and missed camera cues, but once the Top Hands hooked onto the groove, they were chugging.
There were the occasional wipe-of-the-mouth-with-the-sleeve moments caught on camera, but there weren’t any flagrant displays of alcohol usage, as I remember. Cigarette ashes did tend to get longer, however (Brother Bob often spent the latter portion of the show sitting on his amp, head down, balancing a 3” ash while offering the occasional lead). There were the standard spotlight moments each week: Harold would get to tear it up on some fiddle tune like “Orange Blossom Special”; Doc would push his glasses up on his nose and let loose on “Paper Roses” or some equally teary number; and Jackie would give us a gospel song – or maybe treat us all to her signature tune, “Snowbird”.
By the tail end things, ad messages would start to take a beating (“… and remember, folks – I’m tellin’ ya right now – if you’re lookin’ for a quality automobubble, these are the people to call …”) and lyrics would go astray as the foreheads got increasingly sweaty and it was obvious that Curly had one eye on the clock, trying to hold it all together until the top of the hour. As the time wound down and things began to get really shaky, Curly would thank everyone for tuning in and made sure to mention the coming week’s appearances (“All you folks down in East Machias keep an eye out for us!”) and then cue Fiddlin’ Harold to take off on some blazing instrumental. It would be interesting to know how long some of those show-ending fiddle tunes were: Brother Bob throwing out quasi-surf guitar squawks while balanced on top of his amp; Doc strumming chords and praying his glasses wouldn’t completely slide off the end of his nose; Jackie holding down the beat with ladylike grace; and ol’ Curly trying to keep from tripping over the heap of ad signs and the collapsed tripod.
And they always made it. The jam would still be roaring as the camera faded. Week after week.
Perhaps some folks tuned in hoping to catch the seemingly-inevitable trainwreck; I know my father (who didn’t drink a drop) watched Curly and the band every week just because they were there to play.
And, where I come from, that counts for a lot.
