JOHNNY BOND
Hot Rod Lincoln
Over the course of a nearly-four-decade career as an entertainer, Johnny Bond often had to change the game plan, especially in the early going when major stardom seemed out of his grasp. Content to stay in the background as needed, he made steady progress into radio, television, films and comedic acting while placing his main focus on being a country and western guitarist and songwriter. Success came with recordings that covered subjects like volatile romantic entanglements, speeding around in fast cars and guzzling lots of liquor. He famously sang about these things, but...didn't necessarily participate in them!?
Enville, Oklahoma was the birthplace of Cyrus Whitfield Bond in 1915, though he grew up Marietta, a small town of about 1500 near the southern border of the state. With "Singing Brakeman" Jimmie Rodgers as his main influence, he would practice on any handheld instrument that was lying around in the homes of relatives or friends, resulting in a fair ability on guitar, banjo and ukulele as early as elementary school. After graduating from Marietta High in 1933, he headed to Oklahoma City and gained a temporary spot playing with Otto Gray's Oklahoma Cowboy Band from the nearby town of Ripley; under original leader Billy McGinty (a former member of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders), the band had been performing regularly at Tulsa's 1170AM KVOO radio.
After considering using his given name, he settled on Johnny Bond as a more showbiz-type moniker. In 1937, he joined two other singing guitarists, Scotty Harrell and rural Arkansas-born Jimmy Wakely; they called themselves The Singing Cowboy Trio and secured a spot performing on 900AM WKY in Oklahoma City. For a time they had a sponsor, the Bell Clothing Company, and were known as The Bell Boys, going so far as to wear bellhop uniforms with those little pillbox hats. Gene Autry met the trio while passing through and recommended them for an appearance in Saga of Death Valley, a Republic picture released in 1939 starring Roy Rogers. In 1940, Autry started his own series for the CBS radio network, Doublemint's Melody Ranch (changed later in the year to Gene Autry's Melody Ranch), and he offered the group, then known as The Jimmy Wakely Trio, a spot on the show. Gene, recognizing Johnny's sense of humor, started using him as a comedic foil in skits. In addition, Republic Pictures gave the trio more opportunites in films.
Johnny's first recordings were made in August 1941 at L.A.'s KNX radio facility. The trio performed with bass and harmonica player Dick Reinhart (who functioned as a fourth, or fill-in, member of the trio). "I'm Gonna Be Long Gone" was the the first A side on Columbia's subsidiary label Okeh. Many of Bond's early songs dealt with the American experience: "Draftee Blues," "I'm Pounding the Rails Again" (an unfortunate consequence of a love gone bad) and "Gotta Make Up For Lost Time" (what happens after reconciliation). In the early '40s, 78s by the group were released on Okeh as Johnny Bond and his Red River Valley Boys and on Decca as Jimmy Wakely and his Rough Riders. In 1946, Bond had a supporting role in his most high-profile film, Duel in the Sun starring Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones. The following year, while working a steady side gig as a session guitarist, he began recording at the Vine Street Theatre in Hollywood and scored his first nationwide hit.
"Divorce Me C.O.D." ('...if you want your freedom P.D.Q.!'), another tune about leaving his love, took Johnny into the C&W top ten and forefront of country music in 1947. As success endured, he and his Valley Boys developed more of an upbeat honky tonk style; two more top ten C&W singles that year, "So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed " ('...she's for me!') and "The Daughter of Jole Blon" ('...she's got more to offer than her mom!') formed a trifecta. Three more hits came in '48 and '49 ("Oklahoma Waltz," "Till the End of the World" and "Tennessee Saturday Night"). Cohort Jimmy Wakely signed with Capitol Records in '48 and had an incredible four-year hit streak on country and pop charts, most notably a series of duets with Margaret Whiting from '49 to '51 that included the million seller "Slipping Around."
In 1950, Bond made an adjustment to his repertoire. "Love Song in 32 Bars" gave listeners a detailed account of a drinking binge ('...you can buy your own beer, dear!') played out, not in a musical measure but in 32 taverns, dives, etc. It was the beginning of an occasional-but-long-running series of drinking songs, some funny...some not. "Sick, Sober and Sorry," a hit in 1951, took a humorous approach, as did his recitation on the best way to pour "Ten Little Bottles" down the drain per wifey's request (just take "one little swallow" from each), though it failed to catch on after its Columbia release in 1954. Through inclusion in live shows, the routine would make its mark at a later date.
While Johnny examined the consequences of alcohol consumption, others found high-speed thrills more to their liking. Relatively unknown songwriter George Wilson came up with "Hot Rod Race," a wild, youthful advert of sorts for the Ford Motor Company recorded in late 1950 by Arkie Shibley (nicknamed after the state he was born in) and his Mountain Dew Boys, telling the story of a speed demon in a Ford with his wife (whose face turned blue) and brother (he was a nervous wreck) racing some guy in a Mercury through the streets of San Pedro (South L.A.), both cars outdistanced at the end by "...a kid in a hopped-up Model A." The spoken-word track caused a sensation in the early months of 1951; there were cover versions by Ramblin' Jimmie Dolan, Tiny Hill and Red Foley, each with slight variations in tempo and lyrics (and melody in Foley's case)...and each one gained a slice of the pie in the top ten of the country charts. Faron Young and Arthur Smith are among several artists whose versions were left in the dust, while Shibley made no less that four follow-ups to the original recording that had started the trend. If you were around at the time and above the age of six, you couldn't have missed this passing but high-octane fad. Johnny Bond may or may not have noticed. I'm thinking he did.
By 1953, Bond had constructed his own studio at his home in Burbank, California, and begun to make records there, sometimes with old friends like Wakely, continuing through the end of his contract with Columbia in 1957. For several years he was a regular on KTTV channel 11's Town Hall Party in addition to his stint on Autry's radio show until it ended in 1956. He'd made more than 35 onscreen appearances during an eight-year movie career, but didn't have much going on in the late '50s other than a couple of singles for the Ditto and 20th Fox labels. In 1960, Johnny signed with Autry's Republic label (named after the film studio) and proceeded to find out what it's like to be ignored by country radio for the first time as he scored a big pop radio hit!
Minnesota-born Charlie Ryan recorded "Hot Rod Lincoln" in 1955 with backing from The Livingston Brothers for Souvenir, a small label in Spokane, Washington. It was intended as an sequel to the original and started with the lyrics "You heard the story of the hot rod race..." followed by his claim to be the kid in the Model A. Still set in San Pedro, the track set the Lincoln against General Motors' luxury Cadillac sedan, details based on an actual race Charlie had been involved in one night near Idaho's Snake River. The ending: he got arrested, called home for bail money and "pop" had the last word: "Son, you're gonna drive me to drinkin' if you don't stop drivin' that hot rod Lincoln." The record received very little radio play, but eventually a newly-recorded version by Charlie Ryan and the Timberline Riders was issued by 4 Star Records in the fall of '59. The single finally reached Billboard's Hot 100 in May 1960, then bounced in and out of the survey for the next couple of months.
Johnny decided to cover the tune as his first single for Republic; in August, just as Ryan entered the top 40, Bond's disc started its climb and suddenly...they were in a race! One would surge over the other, only to fall back the next week. By late summer, Ryan had peaked in the top 40 while Bond reached the top 30. Oddly, Ryan's recording spent several weeks on the country charts in those final weeks while Bond was a no-show. Yet a hit single, even in unfamiliar territory, can spark renewed interest in a longtime star. The "drive me to drinkin'" line of "Hot Rod Lincoln," the same in both versions, may have given Johnny Bond an idea on how to continue his hitmaking ways.
After his self-penned "X-15," an unsuccessful bid to extend the car racing momentum, and another cover of a song by Ryan ("Side Car Cycle"), Johnny revisited a familiar subject: drinking songs became his stock-in-trade in the years to come. After signing with Starday records in 1963, he landed another country hit the following year with "Three Sheets in the Wind," farcically voicing a preference for staying snockered rather than face life's struggles. More singles and full albums of drinking tunes followed. In 1965 he scored his biggest country chart hit, an expanded "10 Little Bottles," which he'd been doing onstage for years. A live "standup comedy" version (funniest/weirdest line about his uncle dying of alcoholism at 102: "Don't laugh, we dug him up last week, he looks better'n y'all do now!"), it spent four weeks at number two in April and May and reached the top 50 on the pop charts.
"Here Come the Elephants," another in the series, addressing the cliche of envisioning large trunk-nosed animals when you've had eleven-too-many servings, came in 1971. But could it be the drinking songs paralleled his private life? During a nearly ten-year hitch with Starday, he made dozens of recordings, many of them covering the usual subjects of boozing, driving and philandering in addition to updates of earlier hits and occasional collaborations with Red Sovine, The Willis Brothers and Tex Ritter (about whom he penned a biography after the singer's death in 1974). A few records appeared after he left Starday and he wrote and published his own autobiography, Reflections, in 1976. Over the course of his life, Johnny Bond made his mark as a singer, guitarist, songwriter, session musician, author and all-around funny guy. But it all ended too soon: in June 1978, he had a stroke and died at the age of 63.
