Recently I received an email from Justin St Clair of Cheezeball.net, a site devoted to alt.country, who has come across a new single by that great 20th century musical enigma, Wee Willie Shantz.
As some of you may be aware, Shantz was responsible for one of the strangest singles ever recorded – Coo Coo Bird/Hush Puppy Hush – two tracks of backwoods ramblings buried underneath the most bizarre sound collages. Up until September last year, this perplexing artifact was hosted at Oddball Auditorium. Unfortunately, that site has passed on and it has taken its mp3s of Shantz with it (much to the disappointment of Justin who didn’t get to hear them while they were still up). So, for the benefit of Justin – and anyone else who missed out – I’ve decided to host the “classic” versions of Coo Coo Bird and Hush Puppy Hush on this site.
By way of comparison, Justin’s finding amounts to a kind of “Shantz Unplugged”. There are none of the weirdshit overdubs here; just Shantz whittling away at a melody beneath jerkily plucked banjo and out-of-time bass… A million miles away from the bat-shit crazy production of the OA single, and consequently, rendering it even more inexplicable…
The single he has posted includes a version of Coo Coo Bird, and another track entitled Going Up The River.