365 DAYS PROJECT

2003   MAY 24   #144

The Phi Mu Washboard Band - Love Hurts

This is my latest "find". I'm still digging through the piles of things I bought at the last ALS sale, but this is by far the best thing I've come across yet.

I don't know much about these singers, aside from what it says on the album cover, as well as what the hairstyles tell me about the likely era that it was recorded (early '60's). It's by the Phi-Mu Washboard band, an intreped band of young women from the south, who got together as undergrads at a school in Georgia (probably Athens), and apparently became quite a big hit, for a time.

As you may be able to see from the picture, the featured instruments on this album include spoons, sticks, comb, bongos, bucket, uke, tambourine, shakers, tub and broom, and, in a unintended double entendre, "rack".

I enjoy most of the tracks on this album, such as the brief version of "This Land is Your Land", and the longish arrangement of "Mama Don't Allow". But the real winner, and an immediate all-time favorite of mine the moment I heard it, is this abridged version of "Love Hurts". I especially adore the inflections near the end of the chorus (i.e. "holds a lotta Rayne").

- Bob Purse

TT-1.42 / 1.6MB / 128kbps 44.1khz


(Image courtesy of Bob Purse)