Dean and Me
(See Update At bottom of post)
No. Not Howard Dean. Just Dean — Dean Armstrong. 
No sooner did I promise to start daily blogging about the presidential race, do I veer off on a completely different subject. One very close to my heart.
The guy standing next to me in that picture, snapped two weeks ago at Lil Abner’s Steak House in Tucson, Arizona, is Dean. Next to him is Don and also Earl. Lead singer, in the background, is Toni. Together they form what just might be the greatest still-functioning, untarnished, unreconstructed cowboy band of the 1950′s – Dean Armstrong and the Arizona Dance Hands.
These folks were actually the staff musicians for Gene Autry in the early 1950′s. They were the stars of the first ever live TV show broadcast from Tucson. They still sing Autry’s tunes. And Roy Rogers‘ too. And without even a whiff of irony, thank you very much.
They’ve been playing at Lil Abner’s at least twice a week for the last 47 years. Indeed, I must have first seen them more or less during one of their debut seasons there. My dad was a traveling salesman with big accounts in Arizona and first took me to Tucson in 1959. On one or another subsequent trip a few years later, when I was maybe 11 or 12, we first went to Abner’s and I first heard the Dance Hands play.
I’ll cop to having been a big, big Roy Rogers fan back then (enough to have a pre-pubescent crush on Dale Evans). So when I first heard the Dance Hands play “Happy Trails,” at a time when I still would secretly call my dog Trigger, I was ecstatic.
And the 20 or 30 times I’ve been back to Abner’s to see Dean and Toni play it, I still love it. A dozen years ago or so I turned my then-tweenie daughter into a Dance Hands junkie, making sure we visited Tucson and chowed down on a flame-broiled Porterhouse Abner’s at least once every summer.
Two weeks ago, I was back in Tucson to help run a USC-related border journalism fellowship. The night before it started, I went out alone to Abner’s , sat in the front row, and reveled in the mastery of the Dance Hands. Dean, after all, is a product of Joliet. And Earl makes the steel guitar wail like no one else.
The tourists sitting around me must have thought I was nuts. Here was a better than middle-aged guy sitting alone, picking at a steak, and visibly grooving to some of the most cornball music ever thought up. When the Dance Hands got around to “Okie From Muskogee,” I kid you not that I began to mist up. Fortunately, I wasn’t armed with a cigarette lighter or I’d have been standing up on the table making a complete ass of myself.
A week later, on the concluding night of the fellowship, I led a group of 15 of our participants back out to Abner’s (a converted, well-more-than-century-old Butterfield Stage station) to seen Dean and company. This was a group of ethnic media: a number of Mexican and Latino reporters, a Chinese reporter, a couple of New Yorker types, some Tucson homies, and even a Jew or two from L.A. (present company included). Not a cowboy in sight — except for those four up on stage.
They brought us clapping to our feet. And this time around, I tried not to quiver in front of my friends when they once again struck up “Okie from Muskogee.”
Photos courtesy of the marvelously talented Emilio Flores of La Opinion.
UPDATE:Â Here’s some great video of Dean and the Dance Hands.
April 4th, 2008 at 3:08 am
You had the hots for Dale Evans? I guess when I was watching Roy Rogers, I was still having severe cootie reactions to anything female.
But you might have been onto something:
http://www.celeblegs.net/af/evansdale01.jpg
April 4th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Do you accept the rules for Roy Roger’s club?
Roy Rogers Riders Club Rules:
1. Be neat and clean.
2. Be courteous and polite.
3. Always obey your parents.
4. Protect the weak and help them.
5. Be brave but never take chances.
6. Study hard and learn all you can.
7. Be kind to animals and take care of them.
8. Eat all your food and never waste any.
9. Love God and go to Sunday school regularly.
10. Always respect our flag and our country.
Doh! You guys almost made it until you got to 9 and 10.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Wow, what a great story! Do they play `Ghost Riders in the Sky?
Oh, and Woody? Rule 9 needs to be left up to the beholder. And Rule 10 is not exclusive to those who think George Bush is a man worthy of respect.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:02 am
That was tongue in cheek, of course, Woody…I wouldn’t was to defile the great Roy’s Rules.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Marc, I knew that somewhere in that progressive body there lurked the smallest portion of a country lovin’ cowboy with more than a grain or twelve of Muskogee dust lodged in his heart.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Great post…
Woody, I didn’t make it past #2. But would have been fine at #9 part A and 10 – except I admit I have a problem with the implicit equation of “flag” and “country,” just as I do with “God” and “Sunday School.”
As for the Dale Evans pinup, I’d rather not have gone there. Trying to figure out the genesis of that photo, I went to her Wikipedia and found out she was first married at 14, had a child at 15 and went through three husbands before she hooked up happy trails ever after with Roy. I’m assuming she managed all of that without breaking any of the Rider’s Club rules.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Oh, and Rule 11?
Thou shall not stuff thine horse.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Happy trails to all!
April 4th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
9. Love God and go to Sunday school regularly.
So, I guess Roy Rogers Riders Club excluded Jews.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Nice post. Very cool.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
>Thou shall not stuff thine horse.
Don’t you be rude about Marc’s crush on Dale Evans
April 4th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
No, only Orthodox and Conservative.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I haven’t seen that the RRR Club excludes people who don’t live up to the ten golden standards. It simply appears that those are the values according to the King of the Cowboys. However, I would exclude obnoxious Yankees. Why do some of you hate cowboys?
I liked Marc’s story. It must have been a lot of fun.
That is one huge guitar in the picture.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
As for the Dale Evans pinup, I’d rather not have gone there. Trying to figure out the genesis of that photo, I went to her Wikipedia and found out she was first married at 14, had a child at 15 and went through three husbands before she hooked up happy trails ever after with Roy. I’m assuming she managed all of that without breaking any of the Rider’s Club rules
*********************
Damn that Reg., he had to ruin our perception of Dale Evans and mom’s apple pie.
April 4th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
My Reform temple used to order pepperoni pizzas to temple youth events.
April 4th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
If you excluded “Obnoxious Yankees” then I’m afraid Ole Roy couldn’t be a member. He was from Ohio!
April 4th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
And this is “Confederate Heratige Month”. Everybody beat up a slave for nostalgia’s sake!
April 4th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
rlc, I know where Roy Rogers was born, which is the midwest, he moved to California, and he wasn’t obnoxious.
Who besides rlc knew it was Confederate Heritage Month? Who besides rlc thinks that the War Between the States was started over slavery?
April 4th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Great story!
April 4th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Oh just about every historian who has looked at it except for those in the bag for the South.
April 4th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
“Okie from Muskogee” is not really a cornball song if you consider the context in which it was written. Merle Haggard didn’t write it specifically as a slam on 60″s counterculture. The song was actually a parody of how middle America was so different from the rest of the country. If you listen carefully to the single, Haggard chuckles periodically (including the part about people in Arkansas respecting the college dean). and, really, does anyone really believe that Haggard spent his young adulthood with his woman “holding hand,” and making a “party out of loving?” No wonder the man could barely control his laughter when recording that song.
In fact, from what I understand, Haggard wrote a song for Hilary Clinton called “Let’s Put a Woman in the White House.”
April 4th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
that should be, “holding hands,” and NOT making “a party out of loving?”
April 4th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I myself love country/cowboy/western swing music as much as rock and roll; in fact, my house is filled with classic 78s and 7 inches by Bob Wills, Hank Snow, Hank Thompson, Roy Acuff, Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline, etc. I suspect that Woody misunderstands and stereotypes some of us “Yankees.” (and I do consider myself a Yankee, as my great great GREAT granddandy won one of the first medals of honor for the union army out of the great state of Kansas.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Marc: Very cool read & pixs!
April 4th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I don’t think traditiona country is corny at all. Those songs are great.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
The songs are great actually. And, David, thanks for noticing Merle Haggard’s chuckle during his rendition of Okie from Muskogee. Of course, when I first heard the sonfg back in the 60′s, I remember muttering to myself “what a fascist.” But then one grows up.
Okie is, indeed, a wonderfully complex song that is joking only half on the square (so to speak). What was marvelous to see it sung by the crowd at Abner’s those two nights a few weeks back. Truth is, the audience for that song is all 55+ and when you deal with that demographic, at this point, it’s sorta hard to sort out the lonng-haired hippies from the rednecks cuz now they all look so damn similar. And what 58 yeard olf Okie, by now, hasn’t smoked some marijuana now and then?
Even more charming that last nite at Abner’s, I asked Dean if he would play Cielito Lindo — figuring that’s the only song in Spanish his group would know. He happily complied and our gang of Latino/Mex reporters whooped and cheered during the song. Dean figured it out and followed up with Alla Hay Un Rancho Grande and the whole joint lit on fire! Dean and Toni and Earl and Don broke some big grins following the outburst of yelps and applause. Talk about a REAL multi-cultural moment!
Anyway… now Im thinking that as fund raising venture for this blog, maybe I ought to organize and lead a tour of readers to Tucson and to Lil Abners — sort of like a low rent Nation magazine cruise but a lot cheaper. And with a LOT fewer blow-hard political panels.
April 5th, 2008 at 4:36 am
Awesome video. Thanks Marc.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:01 am
“PLAY ‘CRAZY’!”
“PATSY!! ‘CRAZY’!!!”
or
“TUMBLE WEEDS!!! WOOOOOOOOOOO”"
April 5th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Cooper, nice pic, you look pretty good. You’re selling me on thatgringo music.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:35 am
As I think I might have mentioned before, when Haggard played the SFJazz Festival (!) a few years back he interrupted his rendition of “Okie” at the “we don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee” line to crack, “That’s the only place me and my band didn’t smoke it.” More recently he’s written a couple of songs critical of the Iraq war. Depending on his mood, Haggard comes across alternately as a “Jim Webb populist Democrat” or a libertarian with some paleo-con mixed in for good measure. Pretty much the perfect bundle of contradictions for his genre and background. He was a big defender of the Dixie Chicks when they were getting blacklisted by the corporate media conglomerate C&W DJs.
April 5th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Yes, thank God for Merle, Buck and the rest oif the Bakersfield Boys. I love Bluegrass but most of the Nashville Sound is as phony as the Republican candidates who use it as Musack at their rallies!
April 5th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
A great, great story Marc; I am going to make Abners my primary destination next time I’m in Tucson.
BTW: on my turntable this evening: Southern Culture on the Skid and their 2007 cover of classic country western tunes, “Countrypolitan Favorites.” Faithfully played straight faced, I cannot turn it off. I actually like their Wolverton Mountain cover better than the great Claude King’s original.
April 5th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
That should be, “Southern Culture on the Skids.” With an s. Great, great stuff.
April 5th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I think Haggard is on M. Legere’s label is he not? Great score if so, I know he’s on an “indie”.
April 5th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Ditto on that Southern Culture on the Skids record. Also check out Ween’s 12 Golden Country Greats, for original songs played with Nashville musicians, by the finest duo since Steely Dan, (and finer in my humble opinion…best live rock band left…)
Real country music – Bakersfield is my preference, but Nashville as well (and Alberta) is as good as it gets, and has a “truth” that is missing from so-called country now. In terms of the hippy/redneck thing – these were all labels – that Haggard was clearly making fun of – after all the Dead, with his permission, had aminor hit with Mama Tried. It all started – hippy/redneck that is – with the Allman Bros.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:21 am
I’d say that – while the Allman Bros. are the architects of the straight-ahead “southern rock” branch of “hippy/redneck” – Doug Sahm and Gram Parsons surely get props for helping get “it all started.”
April 6th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Because the number of American military killed in our wars against savagery are going down, I suppose Mr. Balter is running short of material. In the spirit of commenter fellowship, I offer him this from the NYT:
“Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.”
(via Protein Wisdom)
Happy death knells, Mr. Balter.
April 6th, 2008 at 10:28 am
jc:
I’ve never *gotten* Ween, as much as I would like to. Maybe I need to listen to them again, but to me they sound like a slightly less smart aleck version of King Missile. They do seem to get a lot of critical praise from both mainstream and non-mainstream fanzines, so perhaps I will give them another try.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
David
You need to see Ween live to get them…
April 6th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Doug Sahm indeed probably did more to start it than the Allmans, but the aesthetic came from the Allmans.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:42 am
Thanks for the tip, jc.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Anyone else want MC Gainey (of Sideways and Lost fame) to play the lead in Translate This!: the Marc Cooper story?
April 7th, 2008 at 8:39 am
>More recently he’s written a couple
>of songs critical of the Iraq war.
>Depending on his mood, Haggard
>comes across alternately as a “Jim
>Webb populist Democrat†or a
>libertarian with some paleo-con
>mixed in for good measure.
I have “Chicago Wind” and read Haggard in the tradition of the old-time rightwing America Firsters. He denounces the Iraq war (album came out around 2005) on the grounds, correct but tangential, that the cost is better spent at home. He complains about the erosion of civil liberties, but his idea of civil liberty is the “right” to public school prayer “are we a nation under God any more?”)
I like both Haggard’s old and new work, but you have to stretch pretty far to make it ideologically sympathetic. He is the right-winger that he is, but you don’t have to agree with the point of view to like the art.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:47 am
>old-time rightwing America Firsters.
PS, I forgot when I wrote this that one of the songs on this album is actually titled “America First.”
April 7th, 2008 at 8:49 am
>Anyone else want MC Gainey (of
>Sideways and Lost fame) to play
>the lead in Translate This!: the Marc
>Cooper story?
Unfortunately, we have just lost the clear choice to play Milton Friedman.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Uncle Miltie was not Moses!
April 7th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Yup, Norman Thomas was sure right wing.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:50 am
>Yup, Norman Thomas was sure right wing.
that’s why I used the term “right wing America Firsters,” which is not redundant.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
>I remember muttering to myself “what
>a fascist.†But then one grows up.
Call me naive, but I take “Okie” at face value, just a self-consciously corny song about a guy who’s proud to be an Okie from Muskogee. I don’t hear a chuckle in “respect the college dean,” I hear a sobbing note of sanctimony, perhaps from someone who wishes he had had the privilege of getting an education himself.
“Fighting Side of Me,” though, is the kind of thing Leni Riefenstahl would have written if she had been a musician-a well done piece of art expressing violent and reactionary content. The otherwise nice “Workingman’s Blues” is infected by the line about how he’s “never been on welfare.” There is the obvious drawing on the racist coding the word “welfare” carried in the 70s. I doubt that it is even factually true of Haggard that he’s never been on welfare, which makes this even worse. Incidentally, Johnny Cash sings this line with ambiguously arched eyebrows in the fantastic recent DVD of this 70s TV show. I wonder what he was thinking.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Stu de Nimm – listen to “Mama Tried” and “Irma Jackson” to get a more complex version of Haggard. Trying to find a consistent ideology in his songwriting is a fool’s errand. As I said, the guy’s a bundle of contradictions – most of which are reflected in the history of even ostensibly “left” populism. And I’m fine with that. But he’s also the closest in “C&W” mainstream history to the Steinbeckian, full-tilt leftist Woody Guthrie in his evocation of the life of “dust bowl refugees.”
April 7th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
“I doubt that it is even factually true of Haggard that he’s never been on welfare.” On the other hand, perhaps he felt it was so beneath his dignity that he’d rather rob gas stations.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:55 am
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