Let Me Be Your Lovin’ Daddy for a While

• Hoyt Axton, “Double Dare”

Holy moly!

I knew Hoyt Axton – dimly – as the well-trained country troubadour who was led out and paraded for display on bad TV shows (WKRP in Cincinnati, Hee Haw). But on this thing from the sixties he’s like all rock & roll brute, snorting-horny & gruesome creepy. The guitar lines & the vocals are unstable, ready to go off like dynamite, carted along fast & rickety by the organ and the backbeat, snarl twisting to falsetto & back again. It could all blow a hundred feet off the ground any second but Jesus hold on & laugh because there aren’t enough thrills like this one in this life.

(Buy a hard-to-find used copy here.)