Wayne Raney
Why Don’t You Haul Off and Love Me
20 Old-Time Gospel Favorites
Gusto 2228, 2229

www.gustorecords.com
 

Besides ranking with the top harmonica players of the post-World War II years, Arkansas-born Wayne Raney (1921-93) composed both gospel and hillbilly boogie, even co-authoring and playing on the Delmore Brothers’ 1949 classic “Blues Stay away from Me.” His biggest success, “Why Don’t You Haul Off and Love Me” (written and recorded with his mentor and friend, fellow harmonica ace Lonnie Glosson, on King Records) hit number one on ’49’s country charts. Syd Nathan (King’s savvy owner who also controlled his label’s publishing rights) sensibly had his bluesman Bull Moose Jackson record the song for the black market in order to boost his businesses’ total income. Jackson’s cover reached number two on the r&b charts, while Raney’s country original crossed over into the pop market to outpace Rosemary Clooney’s middle-of-the-road cover.

Also on 20-track Why Don’t You Haul Off and Love Me, dance song “Real Hot Boogie”‘s line “My shoes are getting wicked ’cause they’ve done and started losing their soles” (followed by an instrumental riff from “The Hucklebuck”) shows his wit. “Fox Chase” is a harp-and-vocal interpretation of a four-legged pursuit. The point of “You Are My Brother,” the disc’s one religious song, is that rich and poor alike stand equal before God.

20 Old-Time Gospel Favorites too comes from his long-ago sides for the King and Starday labels – both of which Nashville-based Gusto now owns andd is commendably keeping in print. Raney’s composition “We Need a Whole Lot More of Jesus (and a Lot Less Rock and Roll)” exudes simple sincerity in his pleasant, unassuming vocal style, though later renditions by Greenwich Village’s Greenbriar Boys and then Linda Ronstadt may have had traces of irony.

The brief liner notes say he wrote twelve of the disc’s tracks, but unfortunately don’t tell which. Besides “Where the Soul of Man Never Dies” and “Drifting Too Far from Shore,” another he didn’t pen, “He Set Me Free” (published by noted gospel songsmith Albert E. Brumley in 1939), is obviously a melodic and lyrical source of Hank Williams’ 1948 classic “I Saw the Light.”

— Bruce Sylvester