Johnny Paycheck and Merle Haggard
Johnny Paycheck was born 84 years ago today.
Paycheck was a country music singer and Grand Ole Opry member most famous for recording the David Allan Coe song, "Take This Job and Shove It." He achieved his greatest success in the 1970s as a major force in country music's "Outlaw Movement" popularized by artists such as Billy Joe Shaver, David Allan Coe, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.
In the 1980s, his music career suffered from his problems with drugs, alcohol and legal difficulties. He served a prison sentence in the early 1990s, but his declining health effectively ended his career in early 2000.
Born in Greenfield, Ohio as Donald Lytle, he was performing in talent contests by the age of nine. He took a job with country music legend George Jones, playing bass and steel guitar. He later co-wrote Jones' hit song, "Once You've Had the Best."
In 1964, Lytle changed his name legally to Johnny Paycheck, taking the name from Johnny Paychek, a top ranked boxer from Chicago who once fought Joe Louis for the heavyweight title. The name was often seen as a pun on the name of the popular country singer, Johnny Cash.
Paycheck was a tenor harmony singer with numerous hard country performers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These included Ray Price. Paycheck, along with Willie Nelson, worked in Price's band, the Cherokee Cowboys. He is featured as a tenor singer on recordings by Faron Young, Roger Miller and Skeets McDonald.
All of these recordings are recognizable by their honky tonk purism. The recordings shun vocal choruses and strings that became known as the "Countrypolitan" sound in favor of steel guitar, twin fiddles, shuffle beats, high harmony and self-consciously miserable lyrics.
As George Jones' tenor singer, Paycheck has been credited with the development of Jones' unique vocal phrasing.
After the year 2000, his health would only allow for short appearances. Suffering from emphysema and asthma after a lengthy illness, Paycheck, 64, died at Nashville's Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2003.
A tribute album, Touch My Heart: a Tribute to Johnny Paycheck, was released in 2004 on the Sugar Hill Label. Produced by Robbie Fulks, the album features George Jones, Marshall Crenshaw, Hank Williams III, Al Anderson, Dallas Wayne, Neko Case, Gail Davies and Fulks himself covering some of Paycheck's best-known songs.
Here, Paycheck performs “The Outlaw’s Prayer”