Streets & Homes Have Stories, Too

Carter Family historians can pinpoint to Helen Carter’s radio debut as young as 10 years old, but, she formally began her career at the age of 12, when she sang backup harmony along with her sisters. She performed twice each week, and was paid $15 per week, for four years. The trio and children were known as The Carter Family Band when they were featured on XERA, the most powerful radio station in North America, ten times more powerful than any radio station in the country, in the late 1930’s. Because the radio program was heard by all of North America and beyond, the Carter Family Band performances were the first time that Country music was heard beyond the borders of America.

"Helen's oldest son, Kenneth, was killed in a car crash out on Briley Parkway in 1969. He and a couple friends were speeding down briley in Ken's new Corvette and lost control. A friend of mine was telling me about that crash. Her sister had dated Ken and was in that fatal crash.

I was in the attic of that house and found some old envelopes with Glenn Jones name on them. I also found a small gold ring in backyard with letter D on it, from David, Ken's brother. Every year, at tax time, there would come an envelope addressed to David and Helen for the royalty payment tax info. Don't know how many years I'd write return to sender on those things. One year, I even call out to Johnny Cash offices and asked them to please give a corrected address for David and Helen so that they'd quit sending them to my address.

Beings that the house was right across the road from Tennessee Pride Sausage factory, I can remember when they used to bring truck loads of pigs in, about 3 am daily. They'd be just a squealing! And you could tell

when they killed them,too. There'd be lots of squealing, a loud noise, then silence."

Alabama-born Sawyer, who has died in Florida aged 81 after a brief illness, co-founded Dr Hook (to which they abbreviated the name in 1975) in Union City, New Jersey in 1968. A year before he and Locorriere assembled the original five-piece he had decided to abandon hopes of becoming a musician and drove to Oregon to work in a log mill. On the way he was involved in a car crash in which he lost his right eye. While recovering he resolved to try again to make it in music.

The accident necessitated Sawyer wearing an eye patch. What he regarded as his resemblance to Captain Hook, the piratical Peter Pan villain, inspired the name under which the band played, initially on the New Jersey bar circuit. They specialised in dope-oriented material such as “I Got Stoned and I Missed It”, veering between humour and pathos, but had struggled to make a breakthrough until lyricist Shel Silverstein decided they were the ideal vehicle for the songs he had written for the soundtrack for the 1971 comedy-drama Who Is Harry Kellerman…?

Dr Hook recorded all the music for the film, which starred Dustin Hoffman. Silverstein then wrote their entire, eponymous debut album. The single “Sylvia’s Mother”, on which Sawyer harmonised with Locorriere, shot to No 2 in the British charts and No 5 in America. In 1972 Sawyer took the lead vocal on “The Cover of Rolling Stone”, a No 6 hit in the US which followed The Byrds’ “So You Want To Be a Rock’n’Roll Star” and The Raspberries’ “Overnight Sensation” in chronicling the rock business with tongue firmly in cheek.

Rolling Stone did feature Dr Hook on its cover, in caricature form, in 1973. The front of what was then a countercultural magazine tended to be the domain of artists such as Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, Sawyer claimed, but his “little old band” had cheekily said “put us on the cover – and it worked”.

Dr Hook, which at one point expanded to seven members, enjoyed an intermittent romance with the charts. Their biggest British sales were for “A Little Bit More” (No 2 in 1976) and “When You’re In Love With A Beautiful Woman” (No 1 in 1979). However, the hits dried up in 1980 after six top 10 singles on either side of the Atlantic.